ABCNews.com(LANSING, Mich.) -- Former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal child pornography charges in July.



Investigators said he possessed more than 37,000 videos and images of child pornography.



Michelle Benham, chief deputy clerk of U.S. District County Western District of Michigan, confirmed the sentence to ABC News.



Nassar also faces sentencing in two state courts after pleading guilty last month to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving girls who were 15 years old or younger Ingham County in Michigan, as well as three other counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Eaton County, Michigan.



The charges relate to Nassar's time a faculty member at Michigan State University, from 1997 to 2016, when, the university said, he was fired after the allegations surfaced. As part of his plea agreement, Nassar admitted that touching the women and girls was not a medical procedure, and he will not be able to use it as a defense moving forward.



Sentencing in the state cases will take place in January.



Nassar is also named in civil lawsuits, in which he is accused of sexual misconduct by more than 125 women and girls.



Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Gabby Douglas have publicly said they were abused by Nassar.



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Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock(TAMPA, Fla.) -- A Florida grand jury has indicted the suspected Tampa serial killing with four counts of premeditated murder with a firearm, according to state prosecutors.



The Tampa Police Department previously charged Howard Donaldson III with four counts of murder in connection with the four shooting deaths that occurred between Oct. 9 and Nov. 14 in the Seminole Heights neighborhood after his arrest last week.



The grand jury has returned the indictment officially charging Donaldson, said State Attorney Andrew Warren in a press conference Thursday.



"The indictment means that the grand jury has found that probable cause exists, that the defendant committed each of these four murders," he said.



Warren promised that the Hillsborough County State Attorney's office will be "as transparent as possible every step of the way during the prosecution." The prosecutor's office has reached out to the families of the victims to inform them that the charges were filed, he said.



"My office continues to work to prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law," he said. "I'd like to remind everyone, please keep your thoughts and prayers for the victims and families at this time."



Donaldson was arrested on Nov. 28 after his manager at an Ybor City McDonald's alerted police to a McDonald's bag containing a firearm, which authorities later matched to the weapon used to kill all four victims.



On Thursday, a Hillsborough County judge ordered his parents, Rosita Donaldson and Howell Donaldson Jr., to show cause on why they should not be held in contempt for refusing provide testimony to state prosecutors Tuesday, despite being served with a subpoena ordering them to do so, according to court documents. They would not answer questions relating to their son's background, developmental history, mode of transportation, gun possession or state of mind, the motion states.



The Donaldsons were "fully advised" on their actions and are "ready to take the consequence," their attorney, Ralph Fernandez, told ABC News on Wednesday.



Donaldson is currently being held without bond in a Hillsborough County jail. His arraignment has been scheduled for Dec. 12, and he has not yet entered a plea.



It is unclear whether Donaldson has obtained a defense attorney.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Bicycle manufacturer TI Cycles of India today said it has signed an agreement to acquire controlling stake in Sri Lanka-based Creative Cycles Pvt Ltd and Great Cycles Pvt Ltd.

TI Cycles of India, a part of the USD 4.7 billion Murugappa Group, said the acquisition will help strengthen and expand the global supply chain for the premium cycles portfolio of TI Cycles.

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"With this acquisition, we will be able to grow the market for premium cycles and our market share in the premium segment even more aggressively," said L Ramkumar, Managing Director, Tube Investments India Ltd (of which TI Cycles of India is a division).

Creative Cycles and Great Cycles have manufacturing facilities in the Katunayake Export Processing Zone, Colombo with a capability to produce a range of bicycles. PTI PRJ SBT

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There are two widespread and competing interpretations of Donald Trumps behaviour. Many of his fans view him as a genius  artfully draining the swamp while playing his opponents like a fiddle. Many of his critics cleave to the opposite view  that hes mad, or an idiot, or a mad idiot, making decisions on the basis of the latest thing he saw on TV, whatever personal gripe occupies his thoughts, and whatever whim captures his tweeting thumb at any given moment.

The evidence seems to contradict each of these positions to an extent. If you believe hes the Stradivarius of strategy, even to the point of thinking his most grossly offensive moments are deliberate and beneficial in some way, then its still hard to explain how he has already lost so many of his advisors to various scandals, and left himself open to increasingly serious allegations about his campaigns links with the Kremlin.

Similarly, while its evidently the case that a troubling proportion of the things he does are ill-judged and petulant, if you think he is solely a copper-bottomed loon, thrashing around on the floor of the Oval Office with a smartphone in one hand and the nuclear button in the other, then it makes it all the more difficult to justify the fact that he won the selection, then the election, and has managed somehow to keep together a sizeable chunk of his original support base. His approval rating still stands at 45 per cent.

If anything, it seems that while he behaves like an erratic man-child much of the time, at other times he does act rationally  at least on the measure of his own interests. That might stick in the craw of some to admit, but its true  and theres danger in blindly assuming his every action is illogical and barmy.

Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and move the US embassy there accordingly, is a good example. It is easy for outside observers who disapprove of the decision to write it off as just some more insanity from the White House. But there are three ways in which this makes plenty of sense for him politically.

First, hes keeping a campaign promise  one which others have failed to honour. Its still central to Trumps message and campaigning identity that he is different to all the others in American politics. The riff of Mr Smith Goes to Washington remains a powerful archetype, and he is still acting out his very own remake (except this is a version where Mr Smith likes gold lifts and sometimes insults the disabled). Plenty of Republicans, in particular, have talked about moving the embassy and recognising Jerusalem, but theyve all backed off under the weight of official advice and international disapproval. For this President, going ahead in spite of those things is a positive benefit, reinforcing his claim to authenticity.

Second, plenty in Congress agree with him. Its over 20 years since both houses passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which authorises exactly this step. Clinton, and his successors, refused to implement it, but the Act has never been repealed. The fact remains that there are a lot of other politicians in Washington who agree with Trump about this specific issue, including some who abhor his politics more generally.

Third, the prospect of violence in the Arab world strengthens, not weakens, Trumpism. If Clinton, Bush and Obama all held back from this step for fear that it would spark condemnation, rioting, terrorism and possibly hostile state action in the Middle East, none of those things are a particular deterrent to this President. In America First terms, on what basis would he accept that the US ought to limit itself for fear that others  least of all Muslims  might disagree with its decisions about its own embassy? If the Arab world responds to this decision with mob violence, or terrorist atrocities, hen he will surely simply argue that this proves he is right to build a wall, and to implement a travel ban on various Muslim majority countries.

So disapprove all you like of Trumps decision on Jerusalem, but dont mistake it for a Twitter spasm or a temper tantrum. It serves his purposes  and so does everyones loud disapproval of it.
Daniel Hannan is an MEP for South-East England, and a journalist, author and broadcaster. His most recent book is What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.

This isnt about the border. It never was. Rather, its about the extent to which the UK can diverge from the EUs regulatory standards.

There is  this cant be stated too often  no need for a physical frontier on the island of Ireland. The Common Travel Area has existed since 1923. It covers both EU members (Ireland and the UK) and non-members (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man). As for different customs rates, they will no more necessitate frontier checks than do different VAT and alcohol duties today. Companies will simply present their customs declarations as they now present their tax declarations.

In many places, you can cross between Switzerland and the EU without noticing, and such minimal infrastructure as exists is mainly about making sure that foreign drivers have Swiss road discs. In any case, Britain has already promised not to put up border posts on its side of the line whatever the outcome of the talks.

What, then, is the fuss about? Why has what ought to have been a technical discussion about number-plate recognition cameras and licensing for cross-border traders instead become a block to an amicable UK-EU settlement?

Well, look at it from the point of view of the various actors. For London, its a simple question of using modern technology instead of the legacy infrastructure of physical checks  a process that is unfolding all over the world. For Dublin, which understandably regards the whole Brexit process as a thundering nuisance, its an opportunity to ease Northern Ireland a little bit further out of the UK, by ensuring that at least some of its technical standards are in effect determined by the EU and the Irish Republic. For Brussels, its a chance to keep the UK within the EUs regulatory orbit in perpetuity.

There are different opinions about how much Britain should use Brexit to pursue its own regulatory trajectory. Some want us to be like Norway, replicating Brussels standards through bilateral deals and domestic legislation, albeit without the direct effect of EU law and outside the customs union. Others want us to be like New Zealand, using Brexit to gain a competitive advantage over our neighbours. Both are legitimate points of view. Both would leave us better off than we are as full members. So, indeed, would an intermediate point between the two.

Determining where we want to diverge and where we dont is a critical issue, which will vary sector by sector. There are some areas where we would be unambiguously better off without the EUs rules: the art market for example. There are others where economies of scale and proximity to a large market make it sensible for us to be part of the existing system: aviation, say. But the worst possible way to approach this issue is through the prism of the Irish border.

The UK wants to have a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU that would make a land border even more obviously unnecessary. The EUs ideal is to keep the UK where it is now, but without representation in Brussels: in other words, still subject to EU regulations, but with no ability to veto them.

Plainly this outcome would be the worst of all worlds for Britain. Which is why it is critical that we do not make concessions now, notionally over a technical border question, that prejudice that final outcome.

For example, a big advantage of Brexit is the ability to buy food at world prices rather than under the Common Agricultural Policy. Understandably, the Irish dont much like this prospect: two thirds of their beef exports go to the UK, and would be threatened by admitting produce from the US, Australia and Argentina. So, under the guise of avoiding border checks, Dublin can hardly be blamed for trying to insert conditions about regulatory convergence that would prohibit the UK from buying at world prices  by, for example, keeping the EUs protectionist ban on the hormones that exist in the rest of the worlds herds. (Every public health body, by the way, as well as the WTO, has declared that the ban has no scientific basis. The hormone in question is harmless and, in any case, there is less of it in a kilogram of beef than in a single egg.)

The underlying problem is a lack of vision. It is hard to avoid the impression that Brexit is being undertaken in a spirit of damage limitation rather than a spirit of opportunity. Policy is being determined by officials and politicians who, having opposed Brexit, now have little sense of where to go with it. We seem reactive, unable to set out a positive agenda of our own.

We can aim for EFTA, working as closely as possible with our European allies. Or we can aim for Singapore: a low-tax entrepot flourishing next to an over-regulated federation. A case can be made for either. But no case can be made for failing to decide.
DUP and Hermon clash over Brexit

Sylvia Hermon, the left-leaning independent unionist MP for North Down, has been drawn into a ferocious clash with the Democratic Unionist Party over Brexit, according to the News Letter.

Nigel Dodds, the DUPs Westminster leader whose influence is growing as power shifts away from the non-existent Assembly, accused Lady Hermon of being on the side of the Dublin government on the issue of all-Ireland regulatory and customs policies.

This came during a debate on an amendment tabled by Lady Hermon to write a commitment to the Good Friday Agreement into the Withdrawal Bill, although she eventually decided not to force a vote. The North Down MP has warned that customs officials will be attacked by dissident republican terrorists if such infrastructure proves necessary at the border.

Speaking in the debate Owen Paterson, the former Northern Irish Secretary, stated that whilst he had great sympathy with the motivations behind the amendment it would hand too much power to judges.

Meanwhile, the Governments frankly weird mishandling of the DUP during the search for a form of words over the Irish border on Monday mean that the Northern Irish party now have more direct involvement in the talks, according to Jim Shannon MP. Ministers nonetheless remain absolutely optimistic that a deal will be reached.

Finally, whilst of course Irish Twitter is quick to insist that electoral calculations have little to do with Dublins new and tougher stance on Brexit the Daily Telegraph reports that Leo Varadkars poll ratings have surged as a result, despite his administration being mired in scandal only a week ago.

Mundell signals Government retreat on Clause 11

Writing in the Spectator, Stephen Daisley castigates the Government for being prepared to compromise the integrity of the UK for the sake of Brexit.

His charge is that hard Brexiteers are so hell-bent on getting out from under Brussels thumb that they dont care what harm is done to the Union in the process. This is certainly true of some, and its probably the most plausible interpretation of the decaying Brexit is bad for the Union! trope left to deploy if youre determined to pin the blame on the Brexiteers.

But whilst the DUP thwarted this particular assault on the Union, at least as popular understanding has it, the Government indicated this week that it may be about to collude in another that could be even more damaging. But because those pushing for it are nice, moderate Remainer types, it appears to have slipped under Daisleys radar.

David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, has said that the Government is going to amend Clause 11 of the Withdrawal Bill. This is the part which a broad coalition of separatists and devolutionaries  including, shamefully, some of the Scottish Tories  have branded a power grab against the devolved administrations.

This position is constitutionally illiterate, as I have sketched out on this site and one of the authors of the Governments position has laid out in detail in a paper for These Islands. It also, as I explained on Brexit Central, risks enormous damage to the Union and the UK single market.

Compared to the pace of politics, constitutions move in geological time. It would be perfectly possible for ministers to take an expedient course on Clause 11 today and leave their successors to inherit the unfolding, chronic damage it would cause. Any MP who supports the Union must be just as vigilant on Clause 11 as it is on an Irish Sea border with Northern Ireland.

Top civil servant to investigate claims that Welsh ministers sacking was leaked

Wales Online reports that Dame Shan Morgan, the Permanent Secretary to the Welsh Government, will head an inquiry into allegations that the sacking of Carl Sargeant was leaked.

Leighton Andrews, a friend of Sargeants and one of Welsh Labours nationalists, suggested on his blog that a number of people knew about his dismissal before Sargeant himself did. If true, this could be (another) breach of the code of conduct by Carwyn Jones administration.

The First Minister is already under huge pressure after his botched handling of sexual misconduct allegations  which will not now be investigated, we learned this week  and the apparent suicide of one of his former ministers. He has been accused of prejudicing an inquiry into the former.

A source inside Welsh Labour has suggested to the Times that the decision to abandon the investigation indicated that Jones advisers had attempted to construct a case to justify the sacking.

Meanwhile, Labour have announced they wont impose an all-woman shortlist on Sargeants former constituency. A friend of his had suggested he might run as an independent if he didnt like the candidate, which must have reminded party bosses too much of the mid-2000s revolt in Blaenau Gwent.

Given that the Westminster seat is also a relatively close-run thing with the Conservatives, they may also have feared that a split vote  and the unwinding of Sargeants personal vote  might have risked the loss of a vital seat to Andrew RT Davies Tories.

Named Persons scheme on brink of collapse after Holyrood stalls it

Another week, another blow to the Scottish National Partys flagship scheme to appoint a public sector worker to oversee every child in Scotland, the Scotsman reports.

This latest blow comes after a committee of MSPs voted to stall its passage into law, delaying implementation by at least a year. The original plan was last year ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

After largely neutering Holyroods committee system during their majority administration from 2011 to 2016, for the Education Committee to follow up on its threat of last week suggests that the Scottish Parliament has recovered a couple of teeth.

Education is an especially significant battleground because the minister responsible is John Swinney, the former Finance Minister and one of Nicola Sturgeons key lieutenants.
The shot across Gavin Willamsons fenceline was provocatively targeted. By describing him as looking like Private Pike from Dads Army, a reported ally of Philip Hammonds  whoever such a person may have been  was deliberately highlighting the new Defence Secretarys youth and inexperience as a senior Minister. It is a feature of such anonymous quotes that one usually cant be sure where they come from. If this was so in this instance, it follows that the Defence Secretarys own allies wouldnt have known who the culprit was and how close he or she was to the Chancellor  if at all.

In any event, they decided to escalate. The original shot was answered by a volley of mortar fire. A defence source briefed the Times that the Chancellor has been banned from using a fleet of RAF jets and helicopters until the Treasury settles a bill with the Ministry of Defence. Hammonds department disputes the claim. In any event, and as the paper itself acknowledged, the Chancellor is not the only Minister who uses RAF craft: so do the Prime Minister, and the Foreign and Brexit secretaries. Furthermore, it is understood that the Treasury is preparing to pay the bill, which stretches from at least last year, imminently.

There is little to add save the obvious. We journalists love incendiary quotes to bits (such as the one about the Defence Secretary originally given to the Mail on Sunday) and incendiary stories even more. But they do no Government any good at the sunniest of political times, let alone when Brexit storms are raging. There is a special risk for the Defence Secretary. He knows that anyone ill-disposed to him may take potshots at his newness to the post and the armed services. If his allies in the department fire back, and then some, the risk is to his reputation for grown-upness, not theirs  thus projecting the charge thrown at him in the first place.

This is unfair. There is no suggestion that Williamson himself had anything to do with the Times story, any more than there is that the Chancellor knew about the Mail on Sunday quote. But it is also how politics works, as the Defence Secretary knows well. He has a good case to make (and gives his first major interview today). The armed forces need numbers and kit to help deal with ISIS and deter Russia. At any rate, no politician can stop sympathisers miscalculating. So our message is to them, not him: dont act like children. And we will have one for Hammond, for what its worth, if the armed forces are refused further cash that they need.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Get ready for a wild evening of musical theatre as Seaway Valley Theatre Company presents Madagascar  A Musical Adventure JR.

Based on DreamWorks beloved animated motion picture, the musical follows four Central Park Zoo animals who find themselves stranded in Madagascar. Featuring Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the giraffe, Gloria the hippo, and the band of plotting penguins, children and parents, alike are sure to enjoy this high-energy show.

The play is directed and choreographed by Michael DeWolfe and Paula DiStefano, who are no strangers to directing young talent.

Kids can be easier to direct because they dont have a filter, and theyre not afraid to make fun of themselves, said DeWolfe. Theyre really enjoying this production because the music seems more modern, and some of the vocal parts are very challenging.

With 40 children ranging in ages from 6-16, DeWolfe says that this is the first time many of the kids will have performed onstage.

We have a really good mix this year of new people joining us as well as old favourites, said DeWolfe.

The musical is set to come to life for three shows Dec. 2-3. For more information about tickets, please visit the SVTC website.
CORNWALL, Ontario  In the spirit of the season, Serendipity Boutique will be offering winter coats to those in need through The Giving Tree.

While the boutique has a wide range of jackets in-store, all priced at $5, Baldwin House Executive Director, Debbie Fortier says that not everyone can afford even that.

Not everyone who needs a warm jacket has that five dollars, or would be comfortable coming into the store to shop, said Fortier. We wanted to help ensure that we are keeping everyone in our community warm this winter, and we feel that providing this type of free option that is accessible to everyone, allows us to do so in a way that offers individuals dignity and anonymity.

Instead, Serendipity will have winter coats available outside the store, set up on a rack between the trees on their front lawn.

While the community project seeks to keep people warm, it extends beyond social responsibility, aiming to reduce textile waste in the community.

Everyone has a coat that is missing a button, or has a tear in the liner, or a pocket zipper that doesnt work, said Danielle MacNeil, Public Educator and Volunteer Coordinator for Maison Baldwin House. Sometimes, rather than donating those items, people tend to throw them away, but those slightly imperfections wont stop those coats from keeping people in our community warm.

Fortier and MacNeil say that the project has received a positive response so far, proving to be a great exercise in community involvement.

We believe in the goodness in our community, and we know that this project is worthwhile, said MacNeil.

Donations will be accepted at Serendipity Boutique, and they ask that they are brought to the store or shelter to be sorted by volunteers.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Shortly after 2 p.m. On Dec. 6, 2017 members of the Cornwall Criminal Investigation Division with assistance of Cornwall Emergency Team executed a warrant at an apartment on Brookdale Avenue.

One man was taken into custody and is facing multiple charges in relation to an ongoing investigation. S/Sgt. Kurt Fraser confirmed the Criminal investigation Division is investigating an incident that occurred in early December, 2017, where a man suffered a gunshot wound to his arm. CCPS would like to assure the public that their safety is not at risk and the incident is considered isolated. CCPS will keep the public posted as its early the investigation.
A tempo van, carrying 15 people, rammed into a borewell truck parked on the Trichy-Madurai highway. According to latest update, the death toll has increased to 10.

By Akshaya Nath: A tempo van, carrying 15 passengers, met with an accident after it rammed into a bore well van at Thuvarankurichi situated near the Trichy-Madurai Highway last night.

The tempo, travelling to Tirupati from Nagercoil area, rammed into the bore well van which was parked on the highway.

According to the latest information, 10 people have died in the freak accident including women and children.

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The rescue operation went on for almost two hours. The rescue work was difficult as half of the van was stuck inside the lorry due to the intensity of the impact.

The neighbours rushed to the area and sent the injured to the Thuvarankurichi government hospital.

Trichy Central Regional Police head Varatharaju, Vice Chancellor of the Trichy Police Division (DIG) Mrs. Bhavaniswari and Trichy District Superintendent of Police Kalyan reached the spot and investigated the cause of the accident.

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CORNWALL, Ontario  The City of Cornwall Fire Services has aquired a new tool to help save the lives of our furry friends.

Invisible Fence Gatineau has provided oxygen masks for all City of Cornwall Fire Service Pumper trucks.

Our first priority in the case of fire is always to assist the occupants involved and ensure buildings are cleared. While doing our job though, we often have the opportunity to help pets, said Firefighter Jeff McIntyre. We recognize that pets are another important member of the family.

The masks are reusable and come in a variety of sizes suitable for cats, ferrets, rabbits, birds and different breeds of dog.

Before this donation, we used human oxygen masks on pets distressed by smoke. We have had success in saving pet lives in the past but with this donation, we will be better equipped to give our furry family members the proper oxygen they require, said McIntyre.
Carnival Cruise Line announced that it will position a newer, larger ship to Charleston when the Carnival Sunshine kicks off a year-round schedule of four- and five-day cruises in May 2019.

With its convenient location and strong tourism appeal, Charleston is one of our most popular homeports and were delighted to build upon this success with the deployment of Carnival Sunshine, Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line. Carnival Sunshine not only provides guests sailing from Charleston with a newer, larger ship with so much to see and do but also underscores our commitment to our year-round operations from this port, she added.

Added Jim Newsome, South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA) president and CEO, The decision by Carnival Cruise Line to homeport the Carnival Sunshine in Charleston is an important affirmation of their success and commitment to operations in Charleston. SCPAs cruise business is an important part of our maritime commerce mission and diversification of business segments. The Port succeeds through having world-class brands, such as Carnival Cruise Line, as its direct customers and looks forward to continuing this productive relationship.

Carnival Sunshine will kick off its four- and five-day cruise program from Charleston May 18, 2019, and is expected to carry approximately 220,000 passengers annually from that port.

Four-day cruises will visit the Bahamian capital of Nassau while five-day voyages will feature Nassau and the private Bahamian island of Half Moon Cay.

The Carnival Ecstasy, which currently sails from Charleston, will shift to Jacksonville, Fla., to operate year-round four- and five-day cruises beginning in May 2019. The Carnival Elation, currently based in Jacksonville, will reposition to Port Canaveral, Fla., in May 2019, as well, to operate a new schedule of four- and five-day voyages.
CUNA President/CEO appeared on MSNBC with Hallie Jackson Wednesday morning to talk about the possibilities of a government shutdown. Nussle previously served in Congress, representing Iowa from 1991 to 2007 and director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2007 to 2009.

Federal government funding is currently scheduled to expire Friday.

Right now everybody believes they have some leverage, thats the reason this is all happening, Nussle said. Theyre holding their vote because of taxes, holding their vote because of defense spending, holding their vote because of immigrations reform, holding their vote believing they can hold the government hostage and the function of the government hostage over their particular issue.

Nussle also addressed potential priorities both sides of the aisle would like to see during negotiations, and said he believed if there is in fact a government shutdown, he expects it to be very brief.
Although much of the early talk about a Trump appointed Director of the CFPB has centered on the potential for regulatory relief, the place where we will see the quickest and most dramatic shift is in the use of enforcement actions. Lets not forget that the CFPB has aggressively used its UDAP powers and enforcement authority to take legal actions against alleged wrong-doers. Acting Director Mulvaney is already decisively changing the Bureaus use of these powers.

Exhibit 1 is Nationwide Biweekly Administration, an Ohio-based company that transmits funds from consumers to their mortgage servicers. They have been sued by the Bureau over claims that it misrepresented the terms of its product, which enables consumers to make biweekly mortgage payments. The Bureau has now announcedthat it was no longer opposing a companys request that the CFPB not be allowed to collect a $9 million judgment against it. The Bureaus decision comes just days after it had filed a motion in opposition to the companys request for a stay.
Somerset County inundated with accidents after Tuesday snowstorm

Somerset County 911 dispatchers said they were inundated with emergency calls Tuesday because of the snow.
The run-up to RK Nagar by-poll, as always, seems to have generated more excitement than the actual election outcome.

The Assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu - that fell vacant following the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa last December - is finally set to go to polls on December 21. The by-poll, which was initially scheduled for April 12, was postponed by the Election Commission following allegations of rampant bribing of voters and other irregularities. Earlier, the EC even had to freeze the AIADMK party name and symbol (two leaves) due to too many claimants following major rifts within the party.

Now that the residents are finally looking forward to the election day in the VIP constituency, more controversies have cropped up keeping the drama and suspense alive.

The nominations of actor Vishal (who is fighting as an independent) and Deepa Jayakumar, Jayalalithaa's niece, were earlier cancelled by the EC. While Vishals papers were cancelled after two of the nominees mentioned in his affidavit claimed not to have signed the papers, the EC rejected Deepas nomination saying that one of the forms - Form 26 (I) - had discrepancies.

Following the developments, AIADMK opponents have started crying foul.

Opposition leader MK Stalin, CPI and VCK have accused the Election Commission of being "hand in glove" with the AIADMK in rejecting the nomination papers of actor Vishal. The situation in RK Nagar shows the high-handedness of the ruling government. The EC should immediately take action on this issue. This incident shows that the returning officer will act only as per the ruling government. EC should intervene. In light of Tuesday's (December 5) event, the returning officer should be transferred," says MK Stalin, DMK working president.

The cancellation of Vishals nomination added to the high drama that the constituency has been witnessing for more than a year now. In his defence, the actor initially produced before the EC an audio recording of his nominee confessing that he was threatened by Madusudanan (representing the EPS-OPS faction) supporters. Apart from presenting the audio recording, the returning officer's decision also created a lot of confusion.

Vishal, after a meeting with the returning officer, posted a series of tweets that explains the change in scenario:

After much struggle, my nomination for the RK Nagar election is finally accepted....Truth Always Triumphs !!#JusticeServed#DemocracyPrevails  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 5, 2017

Democracy at its lowest low !!Disheartening to hear that the nomination made by me was initially accepted & later when I left, has been announced as invalid.#PoliticalGame  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 5, 2017

To the people, I look upto, Hon @narendramodi & Hon @rashtrapatibhvn I am Vishal,I hope u r aware of wats happening in the RK Nagar Election process in Chennai. My nomination was accepted & later rejected. Totally unfair. I bring this to your notice & I hope justice prevails.  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 6, 2017

Still awaiting Democracy to lift its head up again....God save my beloved country from this anarchy !!#JusticeDelayedIsJusticeDenied  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

As time passes by, Dheepan and Sumathi, who proposed my nomination are not traceable. I'm very much worried about their safety & security....Whether I Win or Lose, Democracy truly Lost !!  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

While the Vishal episode continues to unfold, there is more drama in store for the state on December 21. The verdict on the 2G spectrum allocation scam, which involves senior DMK members A Raja and Kanimozhi, is also slated to be announced. And that's not all, after being pulled up by the Delhi High Court for not filing a supplementary chargesheet against TTV Dhinakaran in the case of attempt to bribe the EC for allotment of the party symbol, the Delhi Police has decided to file it on December 21.

Apsara Reddy, spokesperson of the TTV Dhinakaran faction of the AIADMK, feels this is part of the ruling EPS-OPS faction's conspiracy against her leader.

This is a way of cracking down on political opponents and it reeks of political indecency and vendetta. It is a shame that the Centre and state are ignoring the interests of the people. They are scared of the growing popularity of madam Sasikala and TTV. And people can see through it, claims Reddy.

A much-dejected Deepa Jayakumar too feels a major conspiracy game is being played out. There has been foul play. My nomination papers have been tampered with. One of the ruling AIADMK leader had called and threatened me and said if I go ahead with the nomination it will be cancelled, says Jayakumar.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) India today said an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

The defence ministry said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

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In Beijing, the Chinese defence ministry said the Indian drone recently "intruded" into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector, prompting it to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of Chinas territorial sovereignty.

The defence ministry here said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yis visit here to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," the defence ministry said in a statement.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."

It did not clarify when the incident happened.

"The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas," it said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country has lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the drone violating Chinese sovereignty.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day- long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off had ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border. PTI MPB ZMN

--- ENDS ---
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Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao engages in the retail of food, clothing, home appliances, electronics, and other products through its chain of supermarkets, specialized stores, and department stores in Brazil. It operates in Brazilian Retail, Grupo Exito, and Other Businesses segments. The company sells non-perishables, beverages, fruits, vegetables, meat, breads, cold cuts, dairy products, cleaning products, disposable products, and personal care products; and home appliances and other non-food products, such as clothing and baby items, shoes and accessories, household articles, books, magazines, CDs and DVDs, stationery, toys, sports and camping gears, furniture, mobile phones, mattresses, pet products, and gardening equipment and tools, as well as electronic products, including personal computers, software, computer accessories, and sound and image systems. It also offers medications and cosmetics at its drugstores; and non-food products at gas stations, as well as rents commercial spaces and e-commerce sales. The company operates its supermarkets under the banners of Pao de Acucar, Extra Supermercado, Mercado Extra, and Compre Bem; hypermarkets under the banner of Extra Hiper; and proximity stores under the banners of Mini Extra, Minuto Pao de Acucar, Pao de Acucar Adega, and Aliados Minimercado; and gas stations and drugstores under the banners of Extra and Pao de Acucar, as well as sells its products through its Websites. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 667 stores, 74 gas stations, and 68 drugstores in 16 Brazilian states and the Federal District, as well as 15 distribution centers and warehouses across Brazil. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao operates as a subsidiary of Casino, Guichard-Perrachon S.A.
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Thomson Reuters Corporation provides business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments. The Corporates segment provides a suite of content-enabled technology solutions for legal, tax, regulatory, compliance, and IT professionals. The Tax & Accounting Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on tax offerings and automating tax workflows to tax, accounting, and audit professionals in accounting firms. The Reuters News segment provides business, financial, and international news to media organizations, professional, and news consumers through news agency and industry events. The Global Print segment offers legal and tax information primarily in print format to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools, and corporations. The company was formerly known as The Thomson Corporation and changed its name to Thomson Reuters Corporation in April 2008. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Thomson Reuters Corporation operates a subsidiary of The Woodbridge Company Limited.
By PTI: protests

(Eds: Updates with fresh inputs)

New Delhi/Beijing, Dec 7 (PTI) An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Indian Army crashed around Dokalam in the Sikkim sector after it "crossed" the border into China following a technical problem, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India.

Sources in Delhi said today that the Indian security forces in Nathu La immediately informed the Chinese army over the hotline about the UAVs technical problem and crossing the Line of Actual Control(LAC).

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The Indian defence ministry said its border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location. It, however, did not give details of when the UAV had crashed but sources in Delhi said the incident happened around 10 days ago.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yis visit to Delhi to attend the Russia-India- China trilateral meeting on December 11.

In Beijing, Chinas Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded Chinas airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China- India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

The Indian defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," it said in a statement released in Delhi.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."

Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty, said, "I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited."

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated Chinas sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

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The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day- long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", Geng said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into Chinas airspace and crashed recently, and Chinas border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Commands joint staff department.

The Chinese militarys western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the LAC and including Tibets border region with India and the Ladakh region.

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"Indias move has infringed upon Chinas territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

Wangs visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping. PTI KJV/MPB MRJ ZH AKJ GSN

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KAR Auction Services, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides used vehicle auctions and related vehicle remarketing services for the automotive industry in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. The company operates through two segments, ADESA Auctions and AFC. The ADESA Auctions segment offers whole car auctions and related services to the vehicle remarketing industry through online auctions and auction facilities. It also provides value-added services, such as auction related, transportation, reconditioning, inspection, title and repossession administration and remarketing, vehicle research, and analytical services, as well as data as a service. This segment sells its products and services through vehicle manufacturers, fleet companies, rental car companies, finance companies, and others. As of December 31, 2021, this segment had a network of approximately 70 vehicle logistics center locations in North America. The AFC segment offers floorplan financing, a short-term inventory-secured financing to independent used vehicle dealers; and sells vehicle service contracts. The company provides wheel repair and hail catastrophe response services. It serves vehicle manufacturers, vehicle rental companies, financial institutions, commercial fleets and fleet management companies, and dealer customers. The company was formerly known as KAR Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to KAR Auction Services, Inc. in November 2009. KAR Auction Services, Inc. was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in Carmel, Indiana.
National Bank of Canada provides various financial products and services to retail, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients in Canada and internationally. It operates through four segments: Personal and Commercial, Wealth Management, Financial Markets, and U.S. Specialty Finance and International. The Personal and Commercial segment offers personal banking services, including transaction solutions, mortgage loans and home equity lines of credit, consumer loans, payment solutions, and savings and investment solutions; various insurance products; and commercial banking services comprise credit, and deposit and investment solutions, as well as international trade, foreign exchange transactions, payroll, cash management, insurance, electronic transactions, and complimentary services. The Wealth Management segment comprises investment solutions, trust services, banking services, lending services, and other wealth management solutions. The Financial Markets segment offers corporate banking, advisory, and capital markets services; and project financing, debt, and equity underwriting; advisory services in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, and financing. The U.S. Specialty Finance and International segment provides specialty finance products; financial products and services to individuals and businesses in Cambodia; and investment solutions, guaranteed investment certificates, mutual funds, notes, structured products, and monetization. It provides its services through a network of 384 branches and 927 banking machines. National Bank of Canada was founded in 1859 and is based in Montreal, Canada.
NCI Building Systems, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets metal products for the nonresidential construction industry in North America. It operates in four segments: Engineered Building Systems, Metal Components, Insulated Metal Panels, and Metal Coil Coating. The Engineered Building Systems segment offers engineered structural members and panels; and self-storage building systems under the Metallic, Mid-West Steel, A & S, All American, Mesco, Star, Ceco, Robertson, Garco, Heritage, and SteelBuilding.com brands to builders, general contractors, developers, and end users directly, as well as through private label companies. The Metal Components segment provides metal roof and wall systems, metal partitions, metal trims, doors, and other related accessories for use in new construction, and repair and retrofit applications; roll-up doors; and interior and exterior walk doors under the MBCI, American Building Components, Eco-ficient, Metal Depots, and Doors and Buildings Components brands to manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, lumberyards, cooperative buying groups, and other customers. The Insulated Metal Panels segment offers insulated metal panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and cold storage end-market applications under the Metl-Span and CENTRIA brands. The Metal Coil Coating segment engages in cleaning, treating, and painting flat-rolled metals in coil form, as well as in slitting and/or embossing the metal, before the metal is fabricated for use by industrial users. It also cleans, treats, and coats heavy and light gauge metal coils for use in construction products, heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, lighting fixtures, ceiling grids, office furniture, appliances, and other products; and provides toll coating and painted metal package services under the Metal Coaters and Metal Prep brands. NCI Building Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
By PTI: apology

By Aditi Khanna

London, Dec 7 (PTI) The UK has sidestepped London mayor Sadiq Khans call for an official apology on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, saying the government has "rightly condemned" the "deeply shameful act" in British history in the past.

The UK Foreign Office statement comes after Khan during his visit to Amritsar yesterday said the British government should apologise for the mass killing.

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"Im clear that the Government should now apologise, especially as we reach the centenary of the massacre. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need through a formal apology," Pakistani-origin Khan said during his ongoing trade mission to India and Pakistan.

He described the massacre as one of the most horrific events in Indias history.

The Foreign Office invoked former British Prime Minister David Camerons views on the issue after Khan asked for an apology.

"As the former Prime Minister said when he visited the Jallianwala Bagh in 2013, the massacre was a deeply shameful act in British history and one that we should never forget. It is right that we pay respect to those who lost their lives and remember what happened. The British Government rightly condemned the events at the time," it said in a statement.

The UKs Conservative party-led government had last fallen short of a formal apology for the massacre during a visit to Amritsar by Cameron.

During his Indian trade mission in February 2013, Cameron had said it would be wrong to "reach back into history" and apologise for the wrongs of British colonialism.

Meanwhile, a veteran UK-Indian MP has revived his petition calling for an apology by Britian for the massacre after Khans demand.

Virendra Sharma, a fellow Opposition Labour Party member like Khan, had launched the petition on the UK Parliaments website earlier this year but it has attracted just over 1,778 signatures.

At 10,000 signatures, the UK government would have to respond to the petition and at 100,000 it has to be considered for a House of Commons debate.

"In 1919 Colonel Dyer ordered his men to fire, and maybe 1,000 peaceful protesters were left dead. At the time Winston Churchill proclaimed the massacre monstrous and the British Government condemned Dyer for his actions, but no apology has since been forthcoming. It is now time to apologise," the petition reads.

Punjabi-origin Sharma has been campaigning for an apology over the years.

Khan, who was on a three-city tour to India, visited New Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar to strengthen the UKs capital trade ties with India. PTI AK MRJ AKJ MRJ

--- ENDS ---

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The Clorox Company manufactures and markets consumer and professional products worldwide. It operates through four segments: Health and Wellness, Household, Lifestyle, and International. The Health and Wellness segment offers cleaning products, such as laundry additives and home care products primarily under the Clorox, Clorox2, Scentiva, Pine-Sol, Liquid-Plumr, Tilex, and Formula 409 brands; professional cleaning and disinfecting products under the CloroxPro and Clorox Healthcare brands; professional food service products under the Hidden Valley brand; and vitamins, minerals and supplement products under the RenewLife, Natural Vitality, NeoCell, and Rainbow Light brands in the United States. The Household segment provides cat litter products under the Fresh Step and Scoop Away brands; bags and wraps under the Glad brand; and grilling products under the Kingsford brand in the United States. The Lifestyle segment offers dressings, dips, seasonings, and sauces primarily under the Hidden Valley brand; natural personal care products under the Burt's Bees brand; and water-filtration products under the Brita brand in the United States. The International segment provides laundry additives; home care products; water-filtration systems; digestive health products; grilling products; cat litter products; food products; bags and wraps; natural personal care products; and professional cleaning and disinfecting products internationally primarily under the Clorox, Ayudin, Clorinda, Poett, Pine-Sol, Glad, Brita, RenewLife, Ever Clean and Burt's Bees brands. The Clorox Company sells its products primarily through mass retailers; grocery outlets; warehouse clubs; dollar stores; home hardware centers; drug, pet and military stores; third-party and owned e-commerce channels; and distributors, as well as a direct sales force The company was founded in 1913 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.
By Mail Today Bureau: The importance of preserving our cultural and natural heritage is crucial, and groups like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) are key in this endeavour. As travellers, we can visit these locations which are a true legacy from the past, helping preserve and protect them. TripAdvisor presents the UNESCO cultural and natural heritage sites best rated by travellers around the globe.

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ANGKOR WAT, CAMBODIA

Whilst one could be in danger of being 'templed out' due to the sheer number of them in Siem Reap, Angkor Wat should not be missed and is best toured with a knowledgeable guide to provide you with fascinating facts on the building process, history of it and Cambodia generally. The best views are at dawn or dusk, when the lighting reveals its true majesty. You can find tours on TripAdvisor which include either a sunrise or sunset visit with a private guide from Rs 2,519, or even take a helicopter tour over this famed site, discovering the ancient constructions from above.

Photo: Mail Today

TAJ MAHAL, INDIA

Every year more than eight million people visit this great mausoleum, a true monument to love, constructed by the Shah Jahan while mourning the death of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. You can find hundreds of tours and experiences to visit this mesmerising site, from a private tour with guide and visit at sunset or sunrise, for Rs 2,597.

GREAT WALL OF CHINA (MUTIANYU)

Linked to Gubeikou in the east and Juyongguan in the west, this section of the Great Wall is the military hub defensing of the capital since ancient times. Known for its gorgeous scenery, Mutianyu is one of the best-preserved and best-known Great Wall sections. You can hire a tour to visit on TripAdvisor from as little as Rs 1,604.

Photo: Mail Today

MACHU PICCHU, PERU

Whether you visit it during the day, travelling from Aguascalientes, or engaging in the full experience by hiking the 5-day Inca Trail, you will be left speechless on arriving at one of humanity's most stunning landmarks, a 15th century Inca citadel located on a mountain ridge 2,400 metres above sea level.

IGUAZU NATIONAL PARK, BRAZIL/ARGENTINA

This massive forested park, with rare species of birds, pumas, tapirs, monkeys and other wildlife, is best known for housing the world's largest and most extraordinary waterfalls-- the Iguacu Falls--that extend for miles. Ask an Argentinian and they will say their side is the best; ask a Brazilian and they will say theirs is!

Also Read:Taj Mahal has been chosen as the second-best UNESCO World Heritage Site

SASSI OF MATERA, ITALY

The Sassi is breathtaking in its scale. History is literally carved into its landscape from Neolithic times until the present day. It may look at first glance like an abandoned ancient town with buildings piled high on top of each other. But as you begin to explore its cobbled alleyways and steep winding streets you discover stories of human endeavour stretching back through the centuries--from caves turned into homes, from 13th century frescoes to the magnificent gilded Cathedral.

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AUSCHWITZ BIRKENAU, POLAND

Established by the Nazis in 1940, Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of terror, genocide and the Holocaust. Although the exact number of victims is unknown, many Jews, Poles and gypsies died here. The museum consists of two parts: Auschwitz I, the first and oldest camp (the number of prisoners fluctuated around 15,000, sometimes rising above 20,000) and Auschwitz II, Birkenau (which held more than 90,000 prisoners in 1944).

OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

Characterised by narrow, winding streets and alleyways, this ancient part of the city is filled with shrines and attractions holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims including the Western Wall, Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tours star off in TripAdvisor for as little as Rs 726, for this Underground Tour, or authentic ways to appreciate the history of Jerusalem like this Palm Sunday experience, including a mass at Bethpage and Via Dolorosa procession.

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HISTORIC AREAS OF ISTANBUL, TURKEY

This World Heritage Site includes structures such as the Sarayburnu, the Topkapy Palace, the Hagia Sophia, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Hagia Irene, Zeyrek Mosque, Suleymaniye Mosque, Little Hagia Sophia and the Walls of Constantinople. Head back in time and discover the old world of the Sultanahmet area during this full-day small-group guided walking tour, exploring Hagia Sophia Museum and the Blue Mosque, which exemplify why Istanbul is the city where east meets west. Enjoy a walk through the famous Topkapi Palace, where Sultans roamed and harems flourished, spend time observing the Hagia Irene's Byzantine architecture and stroll through the Grand Bazaar.

HISTORIC KRAKOW, POLAND

The 13th century merchants' town is home to Europe's largest market square and offers numerous historical houses, palaces and churches with magnificent interiors, 14th century fortifications, ancient synagogues, Jagiellonian University and the Gothic cathedral where the kings of Poland were buried. Walking tours start from Rs 1,298 on TripAdvisor or, if you are the lazy kind, check out a tour on Segway, bike, or electric car from Rs 1,680.

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Autohome Inc. operates as an online destination for automobile consumers in the People's Republic of China. The company delivers interactive content and tools to automobile consumers through its three websites, autohome.com.cn, che168.com, and ttpai.cn on PCs, mobile devices, mobile applications, and mini apps. It provides media services, including automaker advertising services and regional marketing campaigns; and leads generation services comprising dealer subscription services, advertising services for individual dealers, and used automobile listing and other platform-based services. The company also offers Autohome Mall, an online transaction platform for users to review automotive-related information, purchase coupons offered by automakers for discounts, and make purchases to complete the transaction; data products; and online bidding platform for used automobiles, as well as collects commissions for facilitating transactions of auto-financing and insurance products on its platform. The company was formerly known as Sequel Limited and changed its name to Autohome Inc. in October 2011. Autohome Inc. was incorporated in 2008 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, and markets biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers products for hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, fibrotic, neuroscience, and covid-19 diseases. The company's products include Revlimid, an oral immunomodulatory drug for the treatment of multiple myeloma; Eliquis, an oral inhibitor for reduction in risk of stroke/systemic embolism in NVAF, and for the treatment of DVT/PE; Opdivo for anti-cancer indications; Pomalyst/Imnovid indicated for patients with multiple myeloma; and Orencia for adult patients with active RA and psoriatic arthritis. It also provides Sprycel for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia; Yervoy for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma; Abraxane, a protein-bound chemotherapy product; Reblozyl for the treatment of anemia in adult patients with beta thalassemia; and Empliciti for the treatment of multiple myeloma. In addition, the company offers Zeposia to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis; Breyanzi, a CD19-directed genetically modified autologous T cell immunotherapy for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma; Inrebic, an oral kinase inhibitor indicated for the treatment of adult patients with myelofibrosis; and Onureg for the treatment of adult patients with AML. It sells products to wholesalers, distributors, pharmacies, retailers, hospitals, clinics, and government agencies. The company was formerly known as Bristol-Myers Company. The company was founded in 1887 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Dec 7 (PTI) The US today issued a "worldwide caution" to its citizens travelling overseas, urging them to exercise caution in the wake of President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as it may trigger violent protests.

The travel advisory includes South Asia in particular Afghanistan and Pakistan in addition to the Muslim-majority countries.

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"As terrorist attacks, political upheaval, and violence often take place without any warning, US citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness when travelling," the State Department said.

The latest worldwide caution replaces the previous alert issued on September 14 this year.

The US government facilities worldwide remain in a heightened state of alert, the advisory said, adding that these facilities may temporarily close or periodically suspend public services to assess their security posture.

Terrorist groups including ISIS, al-Qaeda, their associates, and those inspired by such groups, are intent on attacking US citizens wherever they are, the department said.

Extremists may use conventional or non-conventional weapons to target US government and private interests, it said.

Terrorists are increasingly using less sophisticated methods of attack to more effectively target crowds, including the use of edged weapons, pistols, and vehicles as weapons, the alert said.

There are terrorists, guerrilla, and insurgent groups in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and the potential for al- Qaeda or ISIS-inspired attacks is high in several West African countries and countries bordering Somalia.

Armed terrorist and criminal groups are operating in the East Asian and Pacific region and may attempt to target US citizens, particularly for kidnapping in the coastal areas and outlying islands of the eastern part of the Malaysian state of Sabah and the southern Philippines, the State Department said.

Further terrorist groups continue to plot attacks in Europe as foreign fighters return home from Syria and Iraq, while other individuals may be radicalised or inspired by ISIS propaganda, it said.

Noting that terrorist groups are very active in the Middle East and North Africa, it said the US government remains highly concerned about possible attacks against US citizens, facilities, businesses, and perceived US and Western interests in the region.

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are considered violent and unpredictable war zones, and there is no official US diplomatic presence in the latter three countries, it said.

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The US government assesses terrorist groups in South Asia may be planning attacks in the region, possibly against US facilities, citizens, and interests, it said, adding that citizens should avoid travel to Afghanistan, as no region in the country is immune from violence.

"A number of established terrorist organisations, indigenous sectarian groups, and other militants pose a danger to US citizens in Pakistan. Extremist elements are also active in India, as outlined in a recent emergency message. Terrorists have hit a wide variety of targets and institutions in Bangladesh," the State Department said. PTI LKJ ZH

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UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. 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Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. 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Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. 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Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC.

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Centrica plc operates as an integrated energy company in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, North America, and internationally. The company operates through British Gas Services & Solutions, British Gas Energy, Centrica Business Solutions, Bord Gais Energy, Energy Marketing & Trading, and Upstream segments. It supplies gas and electricity to residential customers, as well as offers energy-related services; and generates power from nuclear assets. The company also provides installation, repair, and maintenance services for domestic central heating, plumbing and drains, home electrical, and gas and kitchen appliances; and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, as well as offers breakdown services. In addition, it is involved in the procurement, trading, and optimization of energy; procurement and sale of LNG; and supplies energy efficiency solutions and technologies to residential customers. Further, the company produces and processes gas and oil; develops new fields to maintain reserves; constructs, owns, and exploits infrastructure; and engages in the social enterprise investment fund activities. Additionally, it provides vehicle leasing, commercial, and insurance services, as well as energy management products and services; and operates a gas storage and franchise network. The company was formerly known as Yieldtop plc and changed its name to Centrica plc in December 1996. Centrica plc was founded in 1812 and is based in Windsor, the United Kingdom.
Membership of the Wassenaar Arrangement is expected to help New Delhi acquire critical technologies, and raise its stature in the field of non-proliferation.

Membership of the Wassenaar Arrangement is expected to build up a strong case for India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (Reuters file photo for representation)

By India Today Web Desk: The elite export control regime Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) decided to admit India as its new member at a two-day plenary meeting of the grouping in Vienna.

India "will become the Arrangement's 42nd participating state as soon as the necessary procedural arrangements for joining the WA are completed," Wassenaar Arrangement said in a statement.

This move is expected to help New Delhi acquire critical technologies, and raise its stature in the field of non-proliferation, even though it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.

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India has not signed the NPT, terming it discriminatory - as it only recognises nations which conducted nuclear explosive devices before 1967 as nuclear weapon states.

Membership of the Wassenaar Arrangement is also expected to build up a strong case for India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group - a 48-member group which controls the export of nuclear materials, equipment and technology.

The US has welcomed India's inclusion.

United States welcomes the successful conclusion of the #WassenaarArrangement plenary, which offered India membership, agreed upon over 80 control list updates, & exchanged views on proliferation challenges: US-UN Mission Vienna- ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017

Here's what you need to know about the Wassenaar Arrangement, in three points.

It plays a significant role in promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies.

Its member countries are required to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals.

It aims to prevent the acquisition of these items by terrorists.

Since its civil nuclear deal with the US, India has been trying to get into export control regimes like Wassenaar Arrangement and the NSG. In June last year, India joined the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) as a full member.

China, which is not a member of WA, has stonewalled India's entry into the NSG.

(Inputs from PTI)

WATCH | France backs India's entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group

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Deutsche Telekom AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides integrated telecommunication services. The company operates through five segments: Germany, United States, Europe, Systems Solutions, and Group Development. It offers fixed-network services, including voice and data communication services based on fixed-network and broadband technology; and sells terminal equipment and other hardware products, as well as services to resellers. The company also provides mobile voice and data services to consumers and business customers; sells mobile devices and other hardware products; and sells mobile services to resellers and to companies that purchases and markets network services to third parties, such as mobile virtual network operators. In addition, it offers internet services; internet-based TV products and services; and information and communication technology systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions with an infrastructure of data centers and networks under the T-Systems brand, as well as call center services. The company has 242 million mobile customers and 22 million broadband customers, as well as 27 million fixed-network lines. Deutsche Telekom AG has a collaboration with VMware, Inc. on cloud-based open and intelligent virtual RAN platform to bring agility to radio access networks for existing LTE and future 5G networks; and partnership with Microsoft to deliver high-performance cloud computing experiences. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) In a major development, leading export control regime Wassenaar Arrangement today decided to admit India as its new member.

The decision was taken at the groupings plenary meeting in Vienna.

The grouping said India will be its 42 member state as soon as the necessary formalities are completed.

"Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) participating states reviewed progress of a number of current membership applications and agreed at the plenary meeting to admit India which will become the arrangements 42 participating state as soon as the necessary procedural arrangements for joining the WA are completed," the grouping said in a statement at the conclusion of its plenary meeting.

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An entry into the export control regime would enhance Indias credentials in the field of non-proliferation despite not being a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). PTI MPB SMN

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Twitter, Inc. operates as a platform for public self-expression and conversation in real-time. The company's primary product is Twitter, a platform that allows users to consume, create, distribute, and discover content. It also provides promoted products that enable advertisers to promote brands, products, and services, as well as enable advertisers to target an audience based on various factors, including who an account follows and actions taken on its platform, such as Tweets created and engagement with Tweets. Its promoted products consist of promoted ads and Twitter Amplify, Follower Ads, and Twitter takeover. In addition, the company offers monetization products for creators, including Tips to directly send small one-time payments on Twitter using various payment methods, including bitcoin; Super Follows, a paid monthly subscription, which includes bonus content, exclusive previews, and perks as a way to support and connect with creators on Twitter; and Ticketed Spaces to support creators on Twitter for their time and effort in hosting, speaking, and moderating the public conversation on Twitter Spaces. Further, it offers products for developers and data partners comprising Twitter Developer Platform, a platform that enables developers to build tools for people and businesses using its public application programming interface; and paid access to Twitter data for partners with commercial use cases. Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in San Francisco, California.
The following companies are subsidiares of General Motors: 2140879 Ontario Inc., ACAR Leasing Ltd., ACF Investment Corp., AFS SenSub Corp., APGO Trust, Adam Opel GmbH, AmeriCredit, AmeriCredit Financial Services Inc., Annunciata Corporation, Argonaut Holdings LLC, Astyx Inc., BOCO (Proprietary) Limited, Banco GM S.A., Boco Trust, BrightDrop LLC, BrightDrop Solutions LLC, BrightDrop Vehicle Distribution LLC, CHEVYPLAN S.A. Sociedad Administradora de Planes de Autofinanciamiento Comercial, Cadillac, Cadillac Europe GmbH, Carve-Out Ownership Cooperative LLC, Chevrolet Deutschland GmbH, Chevrolet Otomotiv Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Chevrolet Sales (Thailand) Limited, Chevrolet Sales India Private Ltd., Chevrolet Sociedad Anonima de Ahorro para Fines Determinados, Controladora General Motors S. de R.L. de C.V., Cruise, Cruise LLC, Cruise Munich GmbH, DCJ1 LLC, DMAX Ltd., Dealership Liquidations Inc., Delphi Energy and Engine Management Systems UK Overseas Corporation, EDS (Electronic Data Systems), GCAR Titling Ltd., GM (UK) Pension Trustees Limited, GM Administradora de Bens Ltda., GM Asia Pacific Regional Headquarters Ltd., GM Components Holdings LLC, GM Corretora de Seguros Ltda., GM Cruise Holdings LLC, GM Defense LLC, GM Eurometals Inc., GM Finance Co. Holdings LLC, GM Financial, GM Financial Bank, GM Financial Canada Leasing Ltd., GM Financial Colombia Holdings LLC, GM Financial Colombia S.A. 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SOFOM E.R., GM Financial del Peru S.A.C, GM Global Technology Operations LLC, GM Global Tooling Company LLC, GM Global Treasury Centre Limited, GM Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, GM Holdings U.K. No.1 Limited, GM Inversiones Santiago Limitada, GM Investment Trustees Limited, GM Korea Company, GM LAAM Holdings LLC, GM Mobility Europe GmbH, GM Personnel Services Inc., GM Philippines Inc., GM Protections LLC, GM Regional Holdings LLC, GM Retirees Pension Trustees Limited, GM Speciality Vehicles UK Limited, GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, GM Technical Center Korea Ltd., GM-DI Leasing LLC, GMAC Administradora de Consorcios Ltda., GMAC Prestadora de Servicios de Mao de Obra Ltda., GMCH&SP Private Equity II L.P., GMF Funding Corp., GMF Global Assignment LLC, GMF International LLC, GMF Leasing LLC, GMF Wholesale Receivables LLC, General Motors (China) Investment Company Limited, General Motors - Colmotores S.A., General Motors Advisory Services LLC, General Motors Africa and Middle East FZE, General Motors Asia LLC, General Motors Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, General Motors Asset Management Corporation, General Motors Australia Pty Ltd., General Motors Australia and New Zealand Pty Ltd., General Motors Auto LLC, General Motors Automobiles Philippines Inc., General Motors Automotive Holdings S.L., General Motors Belgique Automobile NV, General Motors Chile Industria Automotriz Limitada, General Motors China LLC, General Motors Daewoo Auto and Technology CIS LLC, General Motors Egypt S.A.E., General Motors Europe Limited, General Motors Financial Chile Limitada, General Motors Financial Chile S.A., General Motors Financial Company Inc., General Motors Financial of Canada Ltd., General Motors Global Service Operations Inc., General Motors Holden Australia NSC Pty Ltd., General Motors Holdings LLC, General Motors IT Services (Ireland) Limited, General Motors India Private Limited, General Motors International Holdings LLC, General Motors International Operations Pte. 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Ltd., General Motors de Argentina S.r.l., General Motors de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., General Motors del Ecuador S.A., General Motors do Brasil Ltda., General Motors of Canada Company, General Motors-Holden's Sales Pty. Limited, Global Services Detroit LLC, Grand Pointe Holdings Inc., Grand Pointe Park Condominium Association, IBC Pension Trustees Limited, Lease Ownership Cooperative LLC, Lidlington Engineering Company Ltd., Limited Liability Company "General Motors CIS", Maven Drive LLC, Millbrook Pension Management Limited, Monetization of Carve-Out LLC, Motors Holding LLC, Multi-Use Lease Entity Trust, North American New Cars LLC, Omnibus BB Transportes S. A., OnStar Connected Services Srl, OnStar Egypt Limited, OnStar Europe Ltd., OnStar Global Services Corporation, OnStar LLC, OnStar de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., P.T. G M AutoWorld Indonesia, P.T. General Motors Indonesia, PIMS Co., PT. General Motors Indonesia Manufacturing, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center Company Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios GMF Colombia S.A.S., Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, Reliance Motor Car Company, Riverfront Holdings III Inc., Riverfront Holdings Inc., Riverfront Holdings Phase II Inc., SAIC GM (Shenyang) Norsom Motors Co. Ltd., SAIC GM Dong Yue Motors Company Limited, SAIC GM Dong Yue Powertrain Company Limited, SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Company Limited, SAIC General Motors Corporation Limited, SAIC General Motors Sales Company Limited, SAIC-GMAC Automotive Finance Company Limited, SAIC-GMF Leasing Co. Ltd., Servicios GMAC S.A. de C.V., Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co. Ltd., Sidecar Technologies, Ultium Cells LLC, Vehicle Asset Universal Leasing Trust, WRE Inc., and Zona Franca Industrial Colmotores SAS.

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By India Today Web Desk: Comedian Bharti Singh tied the knot with longtime beau Haarsh Limbachiyaa in a grand wedding in Goa on December 3. The wedding was a three-day extravaganza, attended by many popular faces of television industry.

The couple returned to Mumbai on Wednesday. Bharti, who entered Haarsh's house for the first time after her wedding, got a grand welcome by her mother-in-law.

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The comedian shared her griha-pravesh video on Instagram, where Bharti is seen pushing the kalash filled with rice before stepping inside the house. Bharti posted the video and wrote, "Sasural ki Hawa mein jaadu hai.... Happiness is being welcomed by in laws in such a cute way... Love you guys! We're going to have lot of fun and awesome memories together What say @haarshlimbachiyaa30? #sasural #inlaws #cuties #family #instafam #love #aftermarriage #hitched #bhartikibaraat #haarshkibharti #celebrations #homecoming."

According to reports, Bharti and Haarsh were scheduled to return on Tuesday but their flight got cancelled due to cyclone Ockhi.

The newlywed couple will soon be heading to Europe for their much awaited month-long honeymoon and will be visiting places like Italy, Venice, Budapest and Greece.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Mining China LLC, Bucyrus UK Limited, Cat Rental Kyushu LLC, Caterpillar (Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar (China) Financial Leasing Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Machinery Components Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (HK) Limited, Caterpillar (Huainan) Machinery Service Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Langfang) Mining Equipment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Luxembourg) Investment Co. S.a r.l., Caterpillar (NI) Limited, Caterpillar (Newberry) LLC, Caterpillar (Qingzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Shanghai) Trading Co. 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Ltd., Caterpillar Commercial LLC, Caterpillar Commercial Northern Europe Limited, Caterpillar Commercial S.A., Caterpillar Commercial S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Commercial Services S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Communications LLC, Caterpillar Corporativo Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Cote DIvoire, Caterpillar Credito S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., Caterpillar DC Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Digital Services & Solutions SARL, Caterpillar Distribution International LLC, Caterpillar Distribution Services Europe B.V.B.A., Caterpillar East Real Estate Holding Ltd., Caterpillar Emissions Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions S.A., Caterpillar Energy System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Engine Systems Inc., Caterpillar Equipos Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Eurasia LLC, Caterpillar FS (QFC) LLC, Caterpillar Finance France S.A., Caterpillar Finance Kabushiki Kaisha, Caterpillar Financial Acquisition Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Aftermarket Solutions Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Australia Leasing Pty Limited, Caterpillar Financial Australia Limited, Caterpillar Financial Commercial Account Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Corporacion Financiera S.A. E.F.C., Caterpillar Financial Dealer Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Funding Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Caterpillar Financial Leasing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial New Zealand Limited, Caterpillar Financial Nordic Services AB, Caterpillar Financial Nova Scotia Corporation, Caterpillar Financial OOO, Caterpillar Financial Receivables Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Renting S.A., Caterpillar Financial SARL, Caterpillar Financial Services (Dubai) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services (Ireland) plc, Caterpillar Financial Services (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Argentina S.A., Caterpillar Financial Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Renting France S.A.S., Caterpillar Reynosa S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar SARL, Caterpillar Services Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Servizi Italia Srl, Caterpillar Shrewsbury Limited, Caterpillar Skinningrove Limited, Caterpillar Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd., Caterpillar Special Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Switchgear Americas LLC, Caterpillar Switchgear Holding Inc., Caterpillar Tianjin Ltd., Caterpillar Torreon S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Tosno L.L.C., Caterpillar Transmissions France S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Tunneling Canada Holdings Ltd., Caterpillar Tunnelling Canada Corporation, Caterpillar Tunnelling Europe Limited, Caterpillar UK Employee Trust Limited, Caterpillar UK Engines Company Limited, Caterpillar UK Group Limited, Caterpillar UK Holdings Limited, Caterpillar Undercarriage (Xuzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Underground Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Used Equipment Services Inc., Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc., Caterpillar Work Tools B.V., Caterpillar Work Tools Inc., Caterpillar World Trading Corporation, Caterpillar Xuzhou, Caterpillar of Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar of Canada Corporation, Caterpillar of Delaware Inc., Centre de Distribution de Wallonie SPRL, CleanAir Systems, Downer Freight Rail, ECM Railway Evolution Romania s.r.l., ECM S.p.A., EDC European Excavator Design Center GmbH, EMC Holding Corp., EMD International Holdings Inc., ERA Information & Entertainment (BVI) Limited, ERA Mining Machinery Limited, Electro-Motive Diesel Limited, Electro-Motive Locomotive Technologies LLC, Electro-Motive Technical Consulting Co. (Beijing) Ltd., Energy Services International Limited, Equipos de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Eurenov S.A.S., F. G. Wilson (Proprietary) Limited, F. Perkins Limited, FG Wilson (Engineering) Limited, GB Holdco (China) Inc., GFCM Comercial Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., GFCM Servicios S.A. de C.V., Gremada Industries - Assets, Hong Kong Siwei Holdings Limited, Inmobiliaria Conek S.A. de C.V., JCS Co., Kemper Valve & Fittings Corp., Leo Inc., Locomotive Demand Power Pty Ltd., Locomotoras Progress Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Lovat, M2M Data Corporation, MGE Equipamentos & Servicos Ferroviarios, MWM, MWM Austria GmbH, MWM Benelux B.V., MWM Energy Australia Pty Ltd, MWM France S.A.S, MWM Real Estate GmbH, MaK Americas Inc., MaK Americas Inc. (Canada), Magnum Power Products LLC, Marble, Maschinenbau Kiel GmbH, Mec-Track S.r.l., Metalmark Financial Services Limited, Motoren Steffens GmbH, Nippon Caterpillar LLC, P. T. Solar Services Indonesia, PT Caterpillar Finance Indonesia, PT. Bucyrus Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia Batam, PT. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Indonesia, Perkins Engines, Perkins Engines (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, Perkins Engines Group Limited, Perkins Engines Inc., Perkins Group Limited, Perkins Holdings Limited LLC, Perkins India Private Limited, Perkins International Inc., Perkins Japan LLC, Perkins Limited, Perkins Machinery (Changshu) Co. Ltd., Perkins Motores do Brasil Ltda., Perkins Power Systems Technology (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines LLC, Perkins Small Engines Limited, Perkins Technology Inc., Progress Metal Reclamation Company, Progress Rail Arabia Limited Company, Progress Rail Australia Pty Ltd, Progress Rail Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Equipamentos e Servicos Ferroviarios do Brasil Ltda., Progress Rail Equipment Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Holdings Inc., Progress Rail Innovations Private Limited, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems GmbH, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems S.r.l., Progress Rail International Corp., Progress Rail Leasing Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Progress Rail Locomotivas (do Brasil) Ltda., Progress Rail Locomotive Canada Co., Progress Rail Locomotive Chile SpA, Progress Rail Locomotive Inc., Progress Rail Maintenance de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Progress Rail Manufacturing Corporation, Progress Rail Raceland Corporation, Progress Rail Rocklin Corporation, Progress Rail SA Proprietary Limited, Progress Rail Services Corporation, Progress Rail Services Holdings Corp., Progress Rail Services LLC, Progress Rail Services UK Limited, Progress Rail Switching Services LLC, Progress Rail Transcanada Corporation, Progress Rail Welding Corporation, Progress Rail Wildwood LLC, Progress Rail de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pyroban Group, Pyroban Group, Pyrrha Investments B.V., Pyrrha Investments Limited, S&L Railroad LLC, SCM Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., SPL Software Alliance LLC, Sabre Engines, Servicios de Turbinas Solar S. de R.L. de C.V., Shandong SEM Machinery Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines (Beijing) Trading Services Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines (Thailand) Ltd., Solar Turbines CIS Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Canada Ltd./Ltee., Solar Turbines Central Asia Limited Liability Partnership, Solar Turbines EAME s.r.o., Solar Turbines Egypt Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Europe S.A., Solar Turbines India Private Limited, Solar Turbines International Company, Solar Turbines Italy S.R.L., Solar Turbines Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Solar Turbines Middle East Limited, Solar Turbines New Zealand Limited, Solar Turbines Saudi Arabia Limited, Solar Turbines Services Company, Solar Turbines Services Nigeria Limited, Solar Turbines Services of Argentina S.R.L., Solar Turbines Switzerland Sagl, Solar Turbines Trinidad & Tobago Limited, Solar Turbines West-Africa SARL, Tangshan DBT Machinery Co. Ltd., Tecnologia Modificada S.A. de C.V., Towmotor Corporation, Traction & Mining Motor Repairs Pty Ltd, Turbinas Solar S.A. de C.V., Turbinas Solar de Colombia S.A., Turbinas Solar de Venezuela C.A., Turbo Tecnologia de Reparaciones S.A. de C.V., Turbomach, Turbomach Endustriyel Gaz Turbinleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited, Turbomach France SARL, Turbomach GmbH, Turbomach Netherlands B.V., Turbomach Pakistan (Private) Limited, Turbomach S.A. Unipersonal, Turbomach Sp. Z o.o., Turner Powertrain Systems Limited, UK Hose Assembly Limited, Underground Imaging Technologies Inc, United Industries LLC, VALA Inc., Vasky Energy Ltd., Wealdstone Engineering, Weir - Oil & Gas Division, West Virginia Auto Shredding Inc., Western Gear Machinery LLC, Wetland Sustainability Fund I LLC, Williams Technologies, Yard Club, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Sales Co. Ltd., and okyo Rental Ltd..

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BJP leaders differ on the suspected reason for blackening of Brahmaputra water in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kirren Rijiju denies reports of any construction on the river by China.

By Kaushik Deka : In what seems as a difference of opinions, BJP leaders have not been able to make up their minds on the issue of Brahmaputra water turning black in several parts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

While Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has claimed that some big construction work being done by China, perhaps to divert its water, could be behind this unusual phenomenon, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kirren Rijiju, who happens to be from Arunachal Pradesh, ruled out chances of any big project over the river by the neighbouring country.

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The Brahamputra, which originates in Tibet is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in China and Siang in Arunachal Pradesh. "Brahmaputra is not a drain, it's a big river. Constructing a canal to divert Brahmaputra water in a short span of time is not feasible. Any such projects cannot be kept hidden" , Rijijiu said. "No one should comment without due diligence. There can be ample reasons for dirty water and the government is looking into it", he added.

Sarma had earlier also raised the issue of China not sharing the hydrological data of Brahmaputra with India for the entirety of 2017, saying that the unusual third spate of floods by Brahmaputra needed to be investigated. Interestingly, China did share the data with Bangladesh but told India that because of some technical upgrade in the monitoring centers it could not share the information.

On December 4, Union minister of State for Water Resources Arjun Ram Meghwal said that a preliminary study of the Siang River found that its water could be turning black due to a recent earthquake. He added that the path of the river had been temporarily obstructed after an earthquake in Tibet on November 17.

Recently, Congress MP from Arunachal East constituency Ninong Ering had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the water in the river changing its colour was an unusual phenomenon in the winter months. In his letter, Ering had 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.

China has already denied any such development and said that it would not pollute its own river. China considers Arunachal Pradesh as its territory and refers to it as South Tibet.

Meanwhile, based on water sample collected on November 27, the East Siang Public Health Engineering Department has stated that Siang's Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU), caused by the concentration of suspended or dissolved particulate materials in water, is 425 NTU, whereas the permissible range is 0-5 NTU. "NTU is very high and if exposed for a long period of time, may affect aquatic lives," the report said. The level of iron in the water is also high at 1.6. Scientists at the State Water Quality Testing Laboratory in Itanagar say that a higher iron level is normal in groundwater but is unusual if found in surface waters of a river.

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Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP leader Pema Khandu has chosen to tread a cautious path. "I have informed this matter to Union Home Minister seeking his appropriate action. I have also personally visited Yingkiong and Pasighat to inspect the Siang River. We will plan our next course of action based on the reports after due consultation with Government of India," he told IndiaToday.in

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Matson, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides ocean transportation and logistics services. The company's Ocean Transportation segment offers ocean freight transportation services to the domestic non-contiguous economies of Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia. It primarily transports dry containers of mixed commodities, refrigerated commodities, packaged foods and beverages, building materials, automobiles, and household goods; livestock; seafood; general sustenance cargo; and garments, footwear, e-commerce, and other retail merchandise. This segment also operates an expedited service from China to Long Beach, California, and various islands in the South Pacific, as well as Okinawa, Japan; and provides container stevedoring, refrigerated cargo services, inland transportation, container equipment maintenance, and other terminal services to ocean carriers on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, as well as in the Alaska locations of Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. In addition, the company offers vessel management and container transshipment services. Its Logistics segment provides multimodal transportation brokerage services, including domestic and international rail intermodal, long-haul and regional highway trucking, specialized hauling, flat-bed and project, less-than-truckload, and expedited freight services; less-than-container load consolidation and freight forwarding services; warehousing and distribution services; supply chain management services, and non-vessel operating common carrier freight forwarding services. The company serves the U.S. military, freight forwarders, retailers, consumer goods, automobile manufacturers, and other customers. The company was formerly known as Alexander & Baldwin Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Matson, Inc. in June 2012. Matson, Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Oxford Industries, Inc., an apparel company, designs, sources, markets, and distributes products of lifestyle and other brands worldwide. The company offers men's and women's sportswear and related products under the Tommy Bahama brand; women's and girl's dresses and sportswear, scarves, bags, jewelry, and belts, as well as footwear and children's apparel and swimwear under the Lilly Pulitzer brand; and men's shirts, pants, shorts, outerwear, ties, swimwear, footwear, and accessories, as well as women and youth products under the Southern Tide brand. It also designs, sources, markets, and distributes premium childrenswear, including bonnets, hats, apparel, swimwear, and accessories through thebeaufortbonnetcompany.com and wholesale specialty retailers; men's apparel, which include pants, shorts, and tops through duckhead.com and wholesale specialty retailers. In addition, the company licenses Tommy Bahama brand for various products, such as indoor and outdoor furniture, beach chairs, bedding and bath linens, fabrics, leather goods and gifts, headwear, hosiery, sleepwear, shampoo, toiletries, fragrances, cigar accessories, distilled spirits, and other products; Lilly Pulitzer for stationery and gift products, home furnishing products, and eyewear; and Southern Tide trademark for bed and bath product. Oxford Industries, Inc. offers products through its retail stores, department stores, specialty stores, multi-branded e-commerce retailers, off-price retailers, and other retailers, as well as e-commerce sites. As of January 29, 2022, it operated 186 brand-specific full-price retail stores; 21 Tommy Bahama food and beverage locations; and 35 Tommy Bahama outlet stores. Oxford Industries, Inc. was founded in 1942 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. operates as a diversified financial services company in the United States. The company's Retail Banking segment offers checking, savings, and money market accounts, as well as certificates of deposit; residential mortgages, home equity loans and lines of credit, auto loans, credit cards, education loans, and personal and small business loans and lines of credit; and brokerage, insurance, and investment and cash management services. This segment serves consumer and small business customers through a network of branches, ATMs, call centers, and online and mobile banking channels. Its Corporate & Institutional Banking segment provides secured and unsecured loans, letters of credit, and equipment leases; cash and investment management services, receivables and disbursement management services, funds transfer services, international payment services, and access to online/mobile information management and reporting; foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income, securities underwriting, loan syndications, and mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets advisory related services; and commercial loan servicing and technology solutions. It serves mid-sized and large corporations, and government and not-for-profit entities. The company's Asset Management Group segment offers investment and retirement planning, customized investment management, credit and cash management solutions, and trust management and administration services for high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals, and their families; and multi-generational family planning services for ultra high net worth individuals and their families. It also provides outsourced chief investment officer, custody, private real estate, cash and fixed income client solutions, and fiduciary retirement advisory services for institutional clients. The company has 2,591 branches and 9,502 ATMs. The company was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
ResMed Inc. develops, manufactures, distributes, and markets medical devices and cloud-based software applications for the healthcare markets. The company operates in two segments, Sleep and Respiratory Care, and Software as a Service. It offers various products and solutions for a range of respiratory disorders, including technologies to be applied in medical and consumer products, ventilation devices, diagnostic products, mask systems for use in the hospital and home, headgear and other accessories, dental devices, and cloud-based software informatics solutions to manage patient outcomes, as well as provides customer and business processes. The company also provides AirView, a cloud-based system that enables remote monitoring and changing of patients' device settings; myAir, a personalized therapy management application for patients with sleep apnea that provides support, education, and troubleshooting tools for increased patient engagement and improved compliance; U-Sleep, a compliance monitoring solution that enables home medical equipment (HME)to streamline their sleep programs; connectivity module and propeller solutions; and Propeller portal. It offers out-of-hospital software solution, such as Brightree business management software and service solutions to providers of HME, pharmacy, home infusion, orthotics, and prosthetics services; MatrixCare care management and related ancillary solutions to senior living, skilled nursing, life plan communities, home health, home care, and hospice organizations, as well as related accountable care organizations; and HEALTHCAREfirst that offers electronic health record, software, billing and coding services, and analytics for home health and hospice agencies. The company markets its products primarily to sleep clinics, home healthcare dealers, and hospitals through a network of distributors and direct sales force in approximately 140 countries. ResMed Inc. was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
A new wildfire has erupted in Los Angeles' posh Bel-Air area. Firefighters have been having difficulties in tackling the numerous fires burning acres of land in southern California. The wildfire has forced evacuation and destroyed homes.

By India Today Web Desk: Southern California has been witnessing numerous fires burning over acres of land, ravaging homes and the winds are further making the wildfires so destructive that it is getting difficult for the firefighters to tackle the situation.

A new wildfire erupted in Los Angeles' posh Bel-Air area while the firefighters were battling three other blazes across southern California. In the posh Bel Air area, wildfire has destroyed "at least four and possibly six homes" and forced evacuation.

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A wildfire scorched a building at a winery estate owned by 21st Century Fox and Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Areas affected by wildfire in southern California

Inside Murdoch's property, Moraga Vineyards, a temperature-controlled wine storage shed burned after which firefighters tried to douse the flames but realised that it was not possible. Later, three helicopters dropped water to tackle the fire.

Murdoch bought the 16-acre property for about $30 million in 2013.

Murdoch release a statement saying "the property was evacuated but based on what we are seeing on TV there maybe damage to some buildings in the upper vineyard area. We believe the winery and house are still intact".

"We are monitoring the situation as closely as we can and are grateful to the efforts of all the first responders. Some of our neighbors have suffered heavy losses and our thoughts and prayers are with them at this difficult time."

Rupert Murdoch's statement Rupert Murdoch's statement

US President Donald Trump, in a tweet, asked people "to heed the advice and orders of local and state officials".

Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the path of Californias wildfires. I encourage everyone to heed the advice and orders of local and state officials. THANK YOU to all First Responders for your incredible work! https://t.co/g9y9PkB352- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2017

Wildfire in southern California (Photo: AP)

Hundreds of homes have already been destroyed across the Los Angeles metropolitan area and as many as five fires have closed highways, schools and museums. About 200,000 people were under evacuation orders, reported AP.

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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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Eagle Materials Inc., through its subsidiaries, produces and supplies heavy construction materials and light building materials in the United States. It operates through Cement, Concrete and Aggregates, Gypsum Wallboard, and Recycled Paperboard segments. The company engages in the mining of limestone for the manufacture, production, distribution, and sale of Portland cement; grinding and sale of slag; and mining of gypsum for the manufacture and sale of gypsum wallboards used to finish the interior walls and ceilings in residential, commercial, and industrial structures. It also manufactures and sells recycled paperboard to gypsum wallboard industry and other paperboard converters, as well as containerboard and lightweight packaging grades. In addition, the company engages in the sale of ready-mix concrete; and mining, extracting, production, and sale of aggregates, including crushed stones, sand, and gravel. Its products are used in commercial and residential construction; public construction projects; and projects to build, expand, and repair roads and highways. The company was formerly known as Centex Construction Products, Inc. and changed its name to Eagle Materials, Inc. in January 2004. Eagle Materials Inc. was founded in 1963 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Greenhill & Co., Inc., an independent investment bank, provides financial and strategic advisory services to corporations, partnerships, institutional investors, and governments worldwide. The company offers advisory services related to mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings, financings, private capital raising, and other similar transactions. It also advises clients on strategic matters, including activist shareholder defense, special committee projects, licensing deals, and joint ventures; and valuation, negotiation tactics, industry dynamics, structuring alternatives, and timing and pricing of transactions, as well as financing alternatives. In addition, the company provides restructuring advisory services to debtors, creditors, governments, and other stakeholders, and acquirers of distressed companies and assets; and advice on restructuring alternatives, capital structures, and sales or recapitalizations. Further, it assists clients in identifying and capitalizing on incremental sources of value; and on court-assisted reorganizations by developing and seeking approval for plans of reorganization, as well as the implementation of such plans. Additionally, the company advises on private placements of debt and structured equity, refinancing of existing debt facilities, negotiating the modification, and amendment of covenants, as well as acts as an independent advisor. It also offers financial advisory services to pension funds, endowments, and other institutional investors on transactions involving alternative assets; and advice to alternative asset fund sponsors for private capital raising, financing, restructuring, liquidity options, valuation, and related services. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
By PTI: Banda (UP), Dec 6 (PTI) Even as the Centre is planning to bring a bill against triple talaq in the Parliament, a 32- year-old woman in the neighbouring Fatehpur district was allegedly divorced by her husband from Kuwait on phone.

The woman, belonging to Dalelkheda village under Zafarganj police station area, yesterday visited the SP office and gave a complaint that she was divorced on November 24 by her husband from Kuwait by uttering "talaq" thrice on the phone, ASP Vinod Kumar Singh said.

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He added that the woman, who came with her two children, and her father, said she was married ten years ago to a man from the same village who went to Kuwait last year for work.

The father of the woman claimed that demands were being made for dowry and Rs two lakhs were given to them about three years ago, the ASP said adding that investigations were on and necessary action will be taken soon. PTI COR SAB ADS

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By PTI: racket

(Eds: Adds details)

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) A woman who helped the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and police to bust an illicit liquor racket in outer Delhis Narela, was today allegedly beaten and her clothes torn by other women of the locality who apparently were involved in bootlegging, police said.

Terming the incident as "shocking and shameful", Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today urged Lt Governor Anil Baijal to intervene and take action against local policemen who were allegedly colluding with those running the racket.

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Police have registered a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code against the women involved in the incident.

DCW chief Swati Maliwal has alleged that the woman had tipped off the Commission about illegal liquor sale during an inspection in Narela area last night after which she was today attacked by a mob of over 25 people and was assaulted with iron rods.

"Her clothes were torn and she was paraded naked in the area and the entire incident was filmed and the video was allegedly shared in the area by these criminals.

"The entire incident proves complete lawlessness and zero fear of law in the area and it is shocking that police did not take any action to protect these women," Maliwal said.

In a video which was shared by Maliwal on her Twitter handle, the victim alleged that she was threatened and asked to not raise her voice against liquor mafia.

"I was dragged and disrobed. A police personnel tried to stop them from meting out such inhuman treatment but he was also thrashed. They also said that they would do the same with Maliwal and other women who will oppose their actions," the victim said between sobs in the video.

Maliwal, in turn, summoned the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Rohini District, to appear before the womens panel and submit an action taken report along with details of the FIR registered in the incident of attack on the woman.

Rajneesh Gupta, DCP, Rohini, said, that the woman was beaten and her clothes were "torn a bit", but denied she was paraded naked.

The injuries are blunt and there is no fracture, he said, adding that the woman has always been associated with police in their action against bootleggers.

Maliwal also sought details of the FIRs registered over liquor being sold illegally in Narela and surrounding areas over the past five years.

Kejriwal took note of the incident and tweeted, "Utterly shocking and shameful that this is happening in the capital of India. I urge Honble LG to immediately intervene, take action against local policemen and ensure everyones safety."

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Maliwal claimed to have received several complaints from the women residents regarding sale of illicit liquor and drugs in certain houses in the area.

Last night, the local police confiscated 300 bottles of liquor from a house after they were provided information about it by a DCW team.

The house from where the liquor was seized was barely a few meters from the police post, Maliwal said, adding that "such illegal business is flourishing on a very large scale in Narela in full public view and knowledge of the local police".

"It appears that the illegal activity of selling liquor in homes is occurring with active connivance and protection of the police," she said in the summons to the DCP.

She also sought copies of all complaints along with status reports against police officers in the area regarding their inaction or collusion with people selling liquor in their houses.

"This house as well as many other houses in the area, have been selling illegal liquor for years. Please inform what action has been initiated by the Delhi Police to curb this menace," she said in the letter while asking the DCP to appear in person before the panel on December 12.

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The Delhi Police, in its Twitter, said the incident was a "quarrel".

"Incident referred to is reaction and quarrel by some ladies of same JJ cluster as victim. Injuries simple as per MLC. Case already registered against accused ladies. Incorrect that Police Post is 50 Mtrs away. Nearest Police Post from place of incident is about 5 Km away (sic)," the Delhi Police wrote on its Twitter handle.

"This year so far the Delhi Police has stepped up action and registered 55 cases under the Excise Act in this area. Consistent action being taken against illicit liquor by local Police which will continue. Matter being further looked into by the DCP Rohini," it said.

In a reply to the post by the police, Maliwal tweeted, "Shameful 2 term incident as quarrel when ppl who attacked, threatend her & DCW team in front of me last night. Also no MLC records someones insult on having been paraded naked! She has iron rod marks on body & is still hospitalised! Police Maalkhana is at 50 m, pl chk!" PTI SLB KJ

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By PTI: Gurgaon, Dec 7 (PTI) A woman toll collector was allegedly assaulted by an unidentified driver at Kherki Daula toll plaza today after he was denied a free passage, police said.

Todays incident comes weeks after a woman toll collector was allegedly molested by unidentified men there.

Police said the entire incident, which occurred around 11:00 am, was captured in CCTV cameras.

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The womans clothes were also torn, police said.

The Gurgaon police have registered the case and begun search for the accused.

On November 18, a woman toll collector was allegedly molested by unidentified men at Kherki Daula toll plaza after she asked them to pay the toll before crossing the booth.

The men asked the woman toll collector to open the barrier and let them go as they were members of a political party. When the woman refused, they stepped out of their SUV and molested her. PTI CORR SMN

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By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Organisations are strategically investing in workplace technology to improve success metrics and attract employees for whom cutting edge tech is more important than other office amenities, says a study.

According to Adobes the Future of Work: APAC study, released today, workplace technology is rated above all other office amenities like relaxation area, beautiful office design and access to food and beverages.

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"In the current Experience Business era, smart organisations are realising that outstanding customer experiences hinge on their ability to attract the best people," Abdul Jaleel, vice president, People Resources, Adobe India said adding that businesses are strategically investing in workplace technologies to drive productivity and deliver a compelling experience for employees.

Moreover, technology also enables work-life balance for office workers across APAC and India as round the clock availability and ability to work across all their devices, accelerates workplace productivity.

On artificial intelligence (AI), respondents from India were anxious about the impact of these new technologies on their jobs, but 95 per cent were optimistic about using AI to perform mundane tasks.

Interestingly, 48 per cent office workers in India would continue their current jobs even if they won a lottery (versus 28 per cent in APAC), and 37 per cent of Indian respondents said they would use the lottery money to pursue their dream careers.

The study further said the key contributors for overall motivation to work include supporting their lifestyle choices and families and the top three factors to work at the current organisation include salary and perks, the ability to advance in the company.

The Future of Work: APAC Study engaged more than 4,700 APAC office workers who use a computer daily for work and examined how the roles of people, experiences and machines are evolving and transforming workplaces. Research was conducted from October 17 to November 13, 2017. PTI DRR MR

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Kalpetta: The tea farmers of the district have launched their own tea factory, the Wayanad Green Tea Producer Company Limited, an initiative supported by NABARD at Karadippara near Ambalavayal on Thursday. A long time dream of Wayanad tea farmers, the factory focusing on Organic Tea is expected to give them a breather from middlemen and other factories who have been exploiting them for time immemorial, it was pointed out.

Costing Rs 77.88 lakh, a majority of the funds were mobilized from farmers as shares and the rest as repayable fund from NABARD, said Jose Sebastian, Chief Executive Officer of the newly formed producers company. It is for the first time that the farmers of the region invested in an attempt to save the farming community from the tentacles of middlemen who collect the tea leaves from them and sell them to the factories after siphoning off a major chunk of the profit, he pointed out.

Inaugurating the factory, Sulthan Bathery MLA IC Balakrishnan said that such models could be replicated in other areas of farming like coffee and pepper. The project aims at processing upto 5000 kilograms of green tea leaves per day producing the best quality Green Tea and Orthodox tea, assuring a good price for farmers.
Thai regulator the NBTC has awarded a satellite licence to start up firm mu space, allowing it to offer satellite-based services until 2032.

The company is the first start up to be awarded such a licence in Thailand. Its Chief Technical Officer Samathorn Teankingkaeo said that mu space planned to differentiate itself by offering affordable services that are easy to install, as well as fast customer support and wide coverage, including in rural communities.

Rural communities are mostly thinly populated and far from big cities. Thats why only a few companies go there to build telecom infrastructures. To overcome these challenges and provide rural communities with broadband, using a satellite is the best alternative, said Samathorn.

According to Thailands telecom industry database, nearly 12% - 8 million of the countrys population of 68 million - have access to broadband. While there has been progress in recent years, there is a long way to go to fully make broadband accessible to all - particularly in rural communities.

We want to help improve the quality of life. Through satellite, we can provide invaluable solutions to support the governments Thailand 4.0 economic policy, and bridge the digital gap between urban and rural areas, added Samathorn.
The Xiaomi Redmi 5 and the Redmi 5 Plus are expected to be the companys first mid ranged smartphones to sport 18:9 displays. They will come with rear mounted fingerprint scanner and a selfie flash.

Xiaomi will be launching the Redmi 5 and the Redmi 5 Plus today in China. The launch event in Beijing will commence at 11:30 AM and will be live streamed on the companys site. Ahead of the launch event, AliExpress has listed the smartphones on its website thus revealing its price.

Xiaomis Redmi 5 and the Redmi 5 Plus are the thin-bezel smartphones. According to the AliExpress listing, the former device will be priced at $199.99 (Rs 12,900 approx) for the 2GB RAM/16GB ROM variant whereas the Redmi 5 Plus is listed at $249.99 (Rs 16,120 approx) for the 3GB RAM/32GB storage model. Both the smartphones could be available in Blue, Gold, Black, and Pink colour options.

Previously, Xiaomi global spokesperson, Donovan Sung shared some official images of the smartphones which revealed the design of the smartphones. Both the smartphones are confirmed to sport reduced bezels and come with a taller 18:9 display. The images also reveal a rear mounted fingerprint sensor on both the smartphones and they will skip on hardware capacitive buttons on the front. The Redmi 5 was recently spotted on the TENAA website which reveaed some of the smartphone's hardware specifications.

As per the TENNA listing, The Redmi 5 is expected to be powered by a 1.8GHz octa-core Snapdragon 450 SoC. It will come with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and is tipped to sport a 3200mAh battery. As per the listing, the device could launch in three configurations of 2GB RAM/16GB ROM, 3GB RAM/32GB ROM and 4GB RAM/64GB ROM. The smartphone is expected to support expandable internal storage of up to 128GB via a microSD card.

The Redmi 5 Plus, on the other hand, is rumoured to be powered by a Snapdragon 625 chipset. It was earlier tipped to sport a dual camera setup with dual-LED flash, however, the official images reveal that it will come with a single rear camera setup. Finally, the Redmi 5 Plus is expected to be powered by a 4000mAh battery and could be launched with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage.

You can buy Redmi 5A from flipkart at Rs 4999.
Ryanair pilots in Italy have voted for a short strike on December 15, though the Irish company have shrugged off the threat.

The Italian union ANPAC, which claims to represent 280 Ryanair pilots have called a four-hour strike in the run up to Christmas. Although Ryanair states that the Anpac union plays no role in the company and that they have had attempts at a strike before but they have always postponed or cancelled them.

Pilots in Ireland, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and the Netherlands are also forming local labour councils to press for collective bargaining.

The Irish Air Line Pilots Association (IALPA) have warned the company that it is reserving its right to ballot for strike action if Ryanair do not negotiate with the bodies selected by its workers.

Ryanair's chief people Officer Eddie Wilson said in Thursdays letter to Dublin-based pilots that the IALPA had failed to be recognised as a union in 2007 and it would fail again now.

He has also answered to this threat by warning the pilots that if they support the IALPAs industrial action they will assume they no longer want to deal with the Employee Representative Committee system and they will withdraw benefits as well as base and annual allowances.

Michael OLeary, chief executive of Ryanair, recently admitted that the airline needed more pilot numbers and they have been recruiting to ease the problem.

In spite of this, the company believes that the strike in Italy will fall through, following the path of the past six strikes called on by the ANPAC.
Retail group Steinhoff International put out another statement on Thursday as it looked to reassure investors over its liquidity position, after announcing the departure of its chief executive a day earlier amid accounting irregularities.

The group, which owns brands such as Poundland, Bensons for Beds and Conforama, said it has received expressions of interest in certain non-core assets that will release a minimum of 1bn of liquidity.

In addition, the companys subsidiary, Steinhoff Africa Retail Limited (STAR), will on Thursday formally commit to the refinancing of its long-term liabilities.

It is expected that the STAR refinancing will be concluded on better terms than those applicable to STARs current liabilities due to Steinhoff, given the strong cash flow inherent in its business. The additional liquidity of circa 2bn expected to be achieved through these measures will strengthen the companys balance sheet and should provide additional comfort to stakeholders of the companys ability to be able to fund its existing operations and reduce debt.

Steinhoff also said there was no evidence to suggest that chief financial officer Ben La Grange had any involvement in the matters under investigation. As a result, he will remain in his position and has resigned from his role of CEO of STAR so he can focus solely on his position at Steinhoff.



On Wednesday, shares in company plummeted as its CEO Markus Jooste resigned with immediate effect amid accounting irregularities, while the release of the company's 2017 numbers were postponed.

The group, which owns more than 40 local brands in over 30 countries, said it has approached PWC to carry out an independent investigation after new information came to light related to accounting irregularities.

"Steinhoff will update the market as the aforesaid investigation proceeds. The company will publish the audited 2017 consolidated financial statements when it is in a position to do so. In addition, the company will determine whether any prior years financial statements will need to be restated."




Thousands of Catalan separatists have taken to the streets of Brussels to protest against the perceived lack of action from the EU in relation to the regions independence movement.

Over 45,000 people took part in the protest, according to Brussels police, which was centred around the European quarter of the city.

The demonstration took place while former leader of the Catalan parliament Carles Puigdemont remains in Brussels, despite a European warrant being lifted for his arrest earlier this week.

Puigdemont and several other regional MPs fled to the Belgian capital after the Spanish government sacked the regional government in response to a unilateral declaration of independence following an illegal referendum vote in October.

Europe has so far backed the actions of Mariano Rajoys government, with the independence supporters displayed messages such as "Shame on you" and "Wake up Europe" during the demonstration.

Spanish government spokesperson Soraya Saenz de Santamaria criticised the organisers of the protest, wryly remarking in a press conference that they were only able to travel to Belgium because of their Spanish passports.

"Its a European right derived from the fact Spain forms part of the EU. The organisers of this process have criticised the EU and what it represents, and they have undoubtedly thrown stones over a European roof when they dont support us," she said.
China's foreign exchange reserves were little changed last month, extending a spell of stability which some economists believe might encourage Beijing to take further 'baby steps' towards full-blown FX liberalisation such as widening the trading band for the yuan.

According to the People's bank of China, the Asian giant's foreign exchange reserves increased by $10bn in November to reach $3.119trn, which was roughly in-line with economists' forecasts.

According to Julian Evans-Pritchard at Capital Economics, Thursday's partial data appeared to show that capital inflows from the trade surplus were approximately offsetting outflows, albeit with officials keeping a "tight leash" on the latter.

Nevertheless, "the PBOC will undoubtedly be relieved that it has been able to step back in recent months and allow the market to drive the exchange rate without triggering unwanted volatility or depreciation pressure," Julian Evans Pritchard added.

So it may soon be a good time for Beijing to take further 'basy steps' towards its long-term goal of allowing the exchange rate to be 'fully' determined by market forces, he said.

The economist believed the next step down that road might take the form of another move to widen the currency's daily trading band.

In any case, the current account surplus was likely to continue over the "next couple of years" thanks to strong global demand which, when combined with the strict capital controls in place to guard against a repeat of the volatility seen in 2015/16, Evans-Pritchard believed meant that further renminbi strength was likely on the cards.
North Korea said war with the US is "an established fact", blaming the South Korean and US military exercises that are set to run until Friday.

The US and South Korea have teamed up this week for their annual military exercises to test their preparedness in case of an attack by the North, with a US B-1B bomber having joined on Wednesday the 'Vigilant Ace' drills that were underway,

Despite the annual nature of the military exercises, this time around they drew a shrill response from Pyongyang, who claimed they were a provocation and threatened war.

Speaking on the countrys state television KCNA, a North Korean spokesman said the US was pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

"[It's no longer a question of] if war breaks out, but a matter of when. These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula.

"We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it. And should the US miscalculate our patience and light the fuse for a nuclear war, we will surely make the US dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force which we have consistently strengthened," the spokesman for North Korea said.

Indeed, HR McMaster, the White House's national security adviser had recently cautioned that the possibility of war with North Korea was "increasing every day".

McMaster's remarks even saw Republican Senator Lindsey Graham say it was necessary to move all the United States military dependents out of the peninsula for fear of war breaking out.

The increased apprehension was also evident in neighbouring countries, with a newspaper in northeast China, the Jilin daily, publishing a series of instructions to teach local residents how to cope in case of a nuclear attack.
Countries from all over the world have rushed to criticise US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which has further raised tensions in the already-strained wider Middle East.

On Wednesday, Trump announced that he was delivering on a promise that other presidents had failed to do, and stated US recognition of the movement of the capital away from Tel Aviv.

He said that the US is still deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement accepted by both sides, although accepting Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is the right thing to do.

"Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital," Trump said.

He also announced an order for the state department to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem: This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace, the President said.

Most prominently Arab and Muslim countries have criticised the announcement, as leaders of some European countries like the UK, France and Germany also disagree with the move.

French president Emmanuel Macron said Trump's decision was "regrettable" and that the new American policy "contravenes international law."

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, said Macron.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that Trump's actions were "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region".

"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement," she said. May also added that the British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and there were no plans to move it to Jerusalem.

Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu has praised Donald Trump and has urged other leaders to do the same.

This is a historic day. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years. Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. Thank you, @realDonaldTrump!  pic.twitter.com/mWCUpUMpiC  Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) 6 de diciembre de 2017

On the other hand, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine accused Donald Trump of not being impartial and has taken the announcement as declaration from the United States to retire from the task of sponsoring peace between the two countries.

These condemned and unacceptable measures are a deliberate undermining of all efforts exerted to achieve peace and represent a declaration of the United State's withdrawal from undertaking the role it has played over the past decades in sponsoring the peace process, said Abbas

Palestines chief delegate to Washington, Husam Zomlot, had a similar opinion and thought that recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel was a stab in the back.

Strikes and protests have broken out in different parts of the region. According to Reuters, in one Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, hundreds were chanting anti-American slogans. The Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, has taken this statement as a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people.

From a financial perspective, markets have remained sanguine so far, observed Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at forex broker FXTM.

"Despite many warnings from Arab and European leaders that the move would have dangerous consequences, financial markets seem to have ignored the risks for now.

"However, the upcoming days may see increased tensions between the Muslim world and Trumps administration, which could lead to risk aversion. The move will undoubtedly undermine Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, and likely strain the U.S. relationships in the Middle East.

"Some investors might start worrying about war breaking out, leading to a surge in oil prices, but so far, the markets reaction does not seem to be reflecting this risk."
The European Union has set a deadline of Sunday for Theresa May to present an acceptable solution to the Irish border issue to progress to the second phase of Brexit talks.

A European Commission spokeswoman told reporters on Thursday that European leaders were waiting to hear of further developments from the UK and Ireland.

Prime Minister May has come under increasing pressure from several directions after an apparent agreement earlier this week on the thorny issue of Northern Ireland's border was rebuffed by the DUP over the proposed "regulatory alignment" with the south.

We stand ready to receive Prime Minister May at any moment in time when theyre ready, Schinas said. This will have to happen this week. In this building, we work for a full week, 24/7, and our week includes Sunday.

Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he is willing to consider changes to the post-Brexit border deal, which was vetoed by the Northern Ireland's DUP on Monday.

Varadkar told reporters however that any changes must not alter the core of the document which was drafted on Monday, which aligned NI with its southern neighbours for market and customs purposes in order to avoid a hard border.

He said that he would consider a new proposition from the Conservatives, who are scrambling to craft a paper which pleases both Ireland and governmental partners the DUP.

I expressed my willingness to consider that because I want to move things forward as well, Varadkar said late on Wednesday.

May has spoken with DUP leader Arlene Foster in attempt to break the impasse but reports suggest no movement has been made, as the EU deadline for sufficient progress in negotiations nears.
Lego won a landmark case against a pair of companies in China that made and sold toys nearly identical to the LEGO Friends range but using the brand Bela, said the Danish toymaker.

This is the first time Lego succeeded in a copyright case in China, where there has been a recurrent problem of companies copying the toymakers colorful figures and bricks. The toy market in China has become huge and is now at $31 billion.

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Earlier in 2017, a ruling was passed by the Beijing Higher Court that recognized the logo and name of Lego in Chinese as well-known trademarks, putting the Danish toymaker in a far better position to take action when its trademarks are infringed.

The court this week ruled that some of the Bela products had infringed upon the Lego Group copyright and that making and selling those products was unfair competition.

It was also decided by that court that Lego is protected by the China anti-unfair competition law for its unique and distinctive appearance of specific product lines, and in the case of this lawsuit LEGO Friends.

A key to the revival of growth for Lego is capturing the Chinese childrens imaginations with its plastic bricks, after the unlisted company disappointed on revenue in its core European and U.S. markets that brought to an end a sales boom that was over a decade long.

Lego, whose name comes from leg godt in Danish which means play well, is competing against the likes of Mattel Inc. the maker of Barbie and Hasbro the company that makes My Little Pony, for a piece of the pie in the Chinese toy market.

The case had been filed against a pair of Chinese companies that were making as well as selling their products under the Bela brand that had been nearly identical to most of the LEGO Friends toys.

Bela products must now stop being sold the way they are now including packaging and the companys logos.

The vice president of legal affairs at Lego said that the company thinks it is highly important for continued development of a more favorable business environment for every company that operates in China.

Toymakers are having their ups and downs. Hasbro has seen an increase in its sales, while Barbie maker Mattel has struggled the last two to three years.
Inside the Action Plan

The first mention of a Murray Energy action plan appears to be in a Frontline interview with Murray that aired in mid-October. Following the interview, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called for the plans release, but until now, no details of such an action plan have been made publicly available. The photographs obtained by In These Times capture sections of the document and indicate that its scope is vast. Bulleted items include proposals to replace members of the Tennessee Valley Authority board, FERC and the NLRB, whichthe plan allegesholds an anti-employer bias. The plan also advises cutting the staff of the EPA in at least half.

Another photograph shows a cover letter introducing the action plan, addressed to Perry, signed by Murray and printed on Murray Energy letterhead. It concludes, We are available to assist you in any way that you request.

The last page of the plan addresses FERC regulation of coal. The current Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has a history of favoring actions of the Obama Administration, it states. That has systematically devalued base load generation as a result of the Obama war on coal. Immediate action needs to be taken to require organized power markets to value fuel security ...

The text amounts to a rough blueprint of the rule unveiled by Perry in September and expected to come to a vote in a FERC meeting on Monday, December 11. At Perrys urging, FERC will decide whether to integrate the proposal into the countrys energy regulatory landscape.

On the premise that fuel storage will make the grid more reliable, the rule guarantees payments from utilities to power plants that store 90 days worth of fuel supplies onsitewhich applies only to coal and nuclear facilities. Natural gas, coals main competitor, is brought onsite via pipelines so would not qualify. Nor would sources of solar and wind energy.

The rub is that without this guaranteed payment, many of these coal and nuclear plants might soon have been slated for closure, mostly thanks to competition with natural gas. Thats because, in a deregulated market, utilities rely on the most cost-effective option in deciding which power source ratepayers use and pay for. The DOE rule preempts that, essentially making ratepayers in a number of Midwestern, Appalachian and Northeastern states foot the bill for a bailout of ailing coal and nuclear plants. An analysis by the research firm ICF finds that the proposal could cost up to $4 billion a year. A separate study, from the non-profit group Energy Innovation, puts the figure as high as $10.6 billion annually, virtually all of which would be paid for by electricity customers in the areas covered by the DOE rule.

The rule covers about 40,000 of the nations 280,000 Megawatts of coal-fired power generating capacity, largely focusing on something called the PJM Interconnection, a regional electricity market containing several Midwest, Appalachian and Northeast states. Murray Energy provides a large portion of the coal for coal-fired generation within the PJM market, which contains one of its biggest customers, FirstEnergy. Politico found that FirstEnergy purchased around two-thirds of its fuel from Murray Energy in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available. Murray argued in a letter to the Department of Energy that the companies fates were tied, and both would go bankrupt without federal intervention to help FirstEnergy.

FirstEnergy has used a mechanism similar to Perrys rule to keep troubled coal plants online in Appalachia. In 2013, the company transferred the coal-fired Harrison Power Station from a subsidiary in an unregulated energy market to West Virginias regulated energy market. The process, known as re-regulation, sticks utility customers with the bill for operating a plant they dont need. An analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found thatas of September 2017the transfer had cost West Virginian ratepayers upward of $160 million.

The philosophy behind [the DOE rule] is the same, says IEEFA energy analyst Cathy Kunkel. And though Perry has justified the rule on the basis of grid reliability, Kunkel, who co-authored the IEEFA study, says there are already policies in place through regional transmission networks to keep plants from closing in the event of an emergency.

Perry has used the Department of Energys own grid reliability study, published in August, to paint a dire picture of the nations energy stability. But the DOE studys lead author, Alison Silverstein, told Forbes that the recommendations in Perrys rule make it seem "as though they had never read [the study]." She downplayed Perrys dire warnings about plant shutdowns and threats to reliability, and her own recommendations based on the report differ dramatically from the DOEs.

The DOE rule would mean that ratepayer dollars that are spent to bail out old plants are not being spent to develop more efficient forms of energy, Kunkel says. You would effectively be crowding out the grid of the future, including investments in more resilient and cost-effective systems like microgrids. If youre serious about grid reliability in times of crisis, then develop microgrids, she says. Those are the only things that kept power on during Hurricane Sandy. Unlike central station power generation, microgridsoften run on renewablescan continue operating even when utilities generation and transmission systems fail.

In late July and early August, Murray and FirstEnergy representatives proposed that the DOE stave off coal plant closures by invoking Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, intended to give the agency expanded authority in the event of a war, natural disaster or terrorist attack. Though that request was ultimately denied, the DOE rule would perform a similar service for FirstEnergy: extending a lifeline from the federal government to troubled generation sources at the expense of utility customers.

Wheeling and dealing

If enacted, the plan would be a coup for Murray, whose direct and indirect ties to the administration are well documented. Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for Murray Energy tapped by Trump to serve as deputy administrator of the EPA, admitted during his Senate confirmation hearing that he had attended meetings on behalf of Murray with Perry and seen the action plan. Wheeler, who is pictured in the March meeting, denied involvement in the DOE rules creation. I have not been involved in anything the last few months when this issue has been front and center, he said. Wheeler said he attended on behalf of Murray.

Murray has heaped glowing praise on Trump, Perry and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who he calls a star. Speaking with Greenwire in October, he called the DOE rule proposal the single greatest action that has been taken in decades to support low-cost reliable electric power in the United States.

His endorsements of Trump and several senior administration officials have been financial, as well. The company poured $200,000 into Trumps presidential campaign last year through its PAC, with Murray personally hosting a fundraising dinner. Wheeler told the Washington Post recently that that dinner, hosted in Wheeling, W.Va., is what won him over to Trumps campaign.

Murray hosted a similar, $2,500-a-head fundraising reception for Perry in 2011 during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. We are having a reception and dinner for Presidential candidate Governor James Richard Rick Perry of Texas, who is likely to be the Republican Nominee to defeat the destructive Barack Obama, a letter of invitation from Murray states. The invite went on to describe the 2012 race as the likely most vital election for America in our lifetimes.

In summary, Murray concludes, Governor Rick Perry, a Reagan Republican, will attempt to restore confidence in the American Dream and American Exceptionalism, and get the Country moving again. In all, Perry received six figures in donations from Murray Energy and its employees during that race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murray has come under legal fire and FEC investigation in the past for strong-arming his employees into making political contributions to the companys conservative PAC. A 2012 memo from Murray, obtained as evidence in a lawsuit brought by one of his former employees, pressures managers into compelling salaried workers to attend a fundraising event for the chairs of the House Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees, the lower house bodies with the greatest jurisdiction over coal.

What is so difficult about asking a well-paid, salaried employee to give us three (3) hours of his [or] her time every two months? he asks, after bemoaning the preponderance of empty chairs at similar events. The email then lists several salaried employees whom Murray had not seen at recent fundraisers for coal-friendly politicians.

The parallels between the DOE language and Murrays mirrors an incident that occurred while Scott Pruitt was serving as Oklahomas Attorney General, where he reliably went after the EPA. As the New York Times Eric Lipton revealed, Pruitt allowed Devon Energy to draft a complaint to the EPA on official Oklahoma AG letterhead. Where in that case language was taken verbatim from industry sources, the language in Perrys rule is more general.

At this point, the remaining details on what else in the action plan have yet to emerge. One prize Murray and other fossil fuel industry interests have had their eye on is a scaleback of the so-called endangerment finding, the result of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling (Massachusetts v. EPA), which gives the EPA the authority and mandate to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, the leading contributor to human-made climate change.

Whether Trump administration regulators set their sites on the endangerment finding or not, what is clear is that the Trump administration is closely engaged in the business of picking winners and losers in Americas energy economy, and that at least one major campaign contributor in the extractive energy business has the administration's ear.

UPDATE: Murray Energy did not meet the initial deadline for comment, but spokesperson Gary Broadbent sent the following after the story was posted:

Mr. Murray confirms that he met with Secretary Perry on March 29, 2017 in order to discuss the reforms necessary to protect jobs and livelihoods in the United States coal industry, including initiating a study of the reliability and resiliency of the electric power grid. Ultimately, the Department of Energy did conduct a study. During the meeting, Mr. Murray never discussed the Grid Resiliency Pricing Rule, which has been proposed under Section 403 of the Department of Energy Organization Act, as he has stated heretofore. Indeed, he had no prior notice of this rulemaking and was not involved in drafting the rule.

UPDATE: The company first sent a version of the comment above stating that Murray had "invok[ed] Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to prevent the closure of coal-fired power plants" at the March 29 meeting. Broadbent emailed several hours later to say that 202(c) had not come up in the meeting. The comment has been updated.

Kate Aronofff is a writing fellow at In These Times covering the politics of climate change, the White House transition and the resistance to Trump's agenda. Follow her on Twitter @katearonoff.

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Complaints have been mounting over display and audio issues with Googles Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, launched just three weeks ago.

Consumers have reported a screen burn-in problem with the Pixel 2 XL, which refers to embedded functions leaving a ghost-like image on the display.

In addition to the Pixel 2 XL display issue, there have been numerous reports of high-pitched noises and strange clicking sounds occurring during calls on the Pixel 2.

The demand for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL has exceeded our expectations, and were thrilled with the positive reaction to our new phones, both from the reviewers who have tried and tested our devices thoroughly and from consumers who are switching to Pixel, said Mario Queiroz, vice president, product management at Pixel. We take all reports of issues very seriously, and our engineers investigate quickly.

The company will provide updates as soon as it has conclusive data, he said.

The Pixel 2 XL uses pOLED screens, which can display a leftover image when fixed backgrounds or pictures remain on them for a long period of time, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

Anyone who has a pOLED device should be using active backgrounds and make sure no one image remains on the phone for an extended period of time, he told TechNewsWorld.

Some games do have fixed grids, suggesting long-time game players need to watch this as well, Enderle added.

Sales Slowdown

If the reports about the scope of the complaints turn out to be accurate, Google will face a major test in the marketplace, said Werner Goertz, research director for personal technologies at Gartner.

I think it is a grave concern that these devices have been put into the market, he told TechNewsWorld, though certainly with excellent features on paper.

Concern about Googles ability to field a quality device has the potential to impact not only future sales, but also pending deals, Goertz said, including the US$1 billion agreement to acquire HTCs smartphone business, announced last month.

There are people who are going to speculate on the upcoming HTC integration, he added. People will argue maybe in anticipation of new design resources coming on board that maybe they overlooked that.

Despite those concerns, Google has some inherent positives to fall back on, Goertz said, noting that the original Google Pixel did not have the same issues, suggesting that Google has its internal design capabilities in place.

Its unlikely that the reported display issues will lead back to LG, he said, noting that its a company that typically knows what it is doing.

Although the complaints may dampen Pixel sales, Google will be able to absorb the blow, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Apple and Samsung have both had major product defects and survived, he told TechNewsWorld. Im sure Google will survive a product setback.

Every major company faces product issues like this at some point, McGregor said, often the result of too-aggressive scheduling.

Flagship Flounders

The Pixel 2 complaints come more than a year after Samsung went through a massive recall of its flagship Galaxy Note7 smartphones, which were the subject of a massive recall due to overheating batteries that exploded or caught fire.

Samsung ultimately halted production of the Note7 devices, because replacements were found to have similar problems.

Just over a month ago, iPhone and iPad users began reporting a host of problems with the upgraded iOS 11, the new mobile operating system from Apple. Consumers reported the new OS led to battery drainage issues, slow speeds, and problems with WiFi and Bluetooth.
Amazon on Wednesday announced a new service that will allow Prime members to receive in-home delivery of packages with the help of high-tech smart locks that allow drivers to open their front doors.

Amazon Key will launch officially on Nov. 8 in 37 U.S. cities and surrounding communities, with additional locations to be added over time. The service will be available at no extra cost to Prime members, and it will work with standard, two-day, overnight and same-day deliveries.

Amazon Key gives customers peace of mind knowing their orders have been safely delivered to their homes and are waiting for them when they walk through their doors, said Peter Larsen, vice president of delivery technology at Amazon.

To use the service, Prime members must order an Amazon Key in-home kit, which includes the Amazon Cloud Cam and one of several compatible smart locks offered by Kwickset or Yale. The Amazon Key In-Home Kit starts at US$249.99. The locks can be installed professionally at no extra cost or self-installed by customers, according to Amazon.

Beyond Deliveries

When a driver requests access to the customers home, the Cloud Cam confirms the driver is at the right address through an encrypted authentication process. After the request is authenticated, the Cloud Cam starts recording the delivery and the door is unlocked.

Customers can track the delivery using the Amazon Key app on their mobile phones. They get real-time notifications and can watch deliveries live or view recordings later. The entire delivery process is backed up by the Amazon Happiness Guarantee, the company said.

The agreement is a big step for Yale. Its parent firm, Assa Abloy, also on Wednesday announced that it is testing an in-home delivery service with 100 customers in Sweden, in collaboration with delivery firm PostNord and e-commerce retailers Jollyroom, Apotea and Komplett. Yale Doorman digital locks are being used in the tests.

Its significant in that were working with Amazon, obviously a powerhouse in online retailing, and working with them on one of the most innovative programs in e-commerce and home delivery, the firm said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Terry Shea.

The Amazon Key program will provide features beyond home delivery of packages, the company said. Customers will be able to grant keyless entry for family and friends, and theyll be able to set frequency and length of time for access to the home.

Amazon plans to roll out a new program that will allow thousands of companies to access homes using the smart lock technology, including companies like housekeeping service Merry Maids and dog walking and pet sitting service Rover.

Rover is changing the way pet owners discover, book and manage personalized care for their pets, said spokesperson Brandie Gonzales.

This new integration with Amazon Key is the latest example of how we are leading the pet care revolution, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Growth Outweighs Risk

Amazon is gambling that the benefit of having secure home delivery of packages will outweigh the potential downside of the perception that its seeking an invasive level of access to the customer.

While many customers might see this capability as overly intrusive, Amazon  and Walmart  has identified an intersection of customer needs and new technologies, noted Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Magid.

This capability [is] not only possible, but incredibly interesting to a subset of cutting-edge customers, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The need already exists, according to Sargent. People have been looking for a way to provide secure access to prevent package theft, and to allow entry of housecleaners and other service providers. The advent of remote security cameras and smart locks has made fulfillment of this need a reality.

The in-home delivery service is another example of Amazon inventing new ways to reach into consumer wallets without an obvious business case, said Paula Rosenblum, managing partner of RSR Research.

I think its too intrusive and too risky, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Amazon Prime has about 90 million members in the U.S., according to a report Consumer Intelligence Research Partners released last week.

About 63 percent of all U.S.-based Amazon customers belong to Prime, the firm noted. Amazon considers Prime members critical to its growth, because on average they spend $1,300 a year on purchases  nearly twice as much as non-Prime members.

From a security standpoint, smart lock technologies pose more of a physical challenge than a technology challenge, suggested William Malik, vice president for infrastructure strategies at Trend Micro.

The technology may grant access only to authorized Amazon employees, but it would be helpful to understand Amazons process for vetting delivery people, revoking their access, auditing conformance to Amazons standards, and providing warranty to misuse of that access, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Augusts Experience

August for years has been running August Access, a home delivery service that provides retailers and services of all stripes  including Sears Home Delivery and dog-walking service Wag  with the ability to get secure access to customers homes.

Years ago, when his former housekeeper had to return home to Brazil, she still had the keys to his house, recalled August CEO Jason Johnson.

What are people to do in situations such as that one, he wondered, change the locks? Although Johnson didnt feel he needed to do that, it seemed many people would value the ability to provide controlled access to their homes for certain activities,.

The desire to find a solution to that problem led Johnson and a cofounder to launch August.

From the beginning, we thought about how could we provide conditional access to the home, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The August smart locks use secure Bluetooth technology, with a layer of encryption on top, plus a third level of security that has been subjected to a white hat security audit to guard the systems against potential intrusion.

Just last month, Walmart began working with August and Deliv to test in-fridge delivery of food. The companies have been testing the service in the Silicon Valley area with a select number of customers who have August smart locks. They are provided a one-time passcode for secure access to allow deliveries to be placed inside the home.

Were interested in providing additional solutions and options for customers to make it easy for them, Walmart spokesperson Ravi Jariwala told E-Commerce Times.

Walmart earlier this month announced the acquisition of Parcel, a startup that delivers meal kits, groceries and e-commerce purchases to homes in New York City. Walmart plans to use Parcel for last-mile deliveries of groceries and packages from Walmart and Jet.
NEW YORK  US denim company DL1961 has announced a renewed collaboration with Austrian fibre producer Lenzing which the organisations say will result in more sustainable denim apparel.



Using Lenzings Refibra lyocell fibres, DL1961 aim to create a textile with all the typical qualities of denim but with less environmental impact  a range of garments utilising the material is anticipated to be launched in autumn 2018.
By Andrew Clayton

On Dec. 11 and 12, the 28 ministers of the European Unions Agriculture and Fisheries Council meet in Brussels to decide on 2018 fishing quotas for stocks in the North-East Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.

Under the EUs Common Fisheries Policy, the council is legally bound to end overfishing by 2015 where possible and at the latest by 2020. Still, ministers set 55 percent of 2017 fishing limits higher than the scientific advice.

This month they have the power and responsibility to turn the tideby setting 2018 quotas that end overfishingso everyone can reap the benefits of sustainable fisheries.

The 10 reasons detailed here underscore why its so important that fisheries ministers lead on ending overfishing:

1. Fish stocks would be allowed to recover.

Too many assessed stocks in EU waters remain outside safe biological limits. Ending overfishing would finally allow these stocks to rebuild and thrive.

2. Fishermen would benefit.

Ending overfishing in the Northeast Atlantic alone could potentially create additional annual revenue of 4.6 billion for the EU fishing fleet and support more jobs in the sector. Healthy fish stocks contribute to a more stable business environment and require less time and fuel for fishing. More profitable fisheries in turn reduce the need for taxpayers to support the industry through subsidies.

3. Doing so would help restore the health of our marine environment.

Fishing activities can take a toll on the marine environment beyond the removal of fish. Among the common negative impacts are damage to the sea-floor and corals, unintended catch of animals such as sea-birds and turtles, and pollution. Healthy fish stocks require less intensive fishing activity, limiting harm.

4. Europeans could eat more locally caught and sustainable fish.

Europe currently depends heavily on seafood imports from non-EU countries; almost half of fish consumed in the EU comes from external waters. This also has repercussions for developing countries where fish is a key source of animal protein for large parts of the population.

5. The ocean would be more resilient.

The ocean is under a variety of stresses, ranging from changing water temperatures to pollution and acidification. Healthy fish stocks play a key role in keeping marine ecosystems healthy and represent an investment in the future because they can help the ocean resist these kinds of stresses.

6. Fisheries management would be easier.

Managing fisheries with a high likelihood of collapse is complicated, risky, and demanding. It requires detailed and timely information. Healthy fisheries, on the other hand, are less sensitive to changes, uncertainties or mistakes in data, making management easier.

7. Its the law.

In 2013, EU decision makers agreed on a reformed Common Fisheries Policy that requires an end to overfishing by 2015 where possible, and by 2020 at the latest for all stocks. Failing to end overfishing in line with this legal requirement would undermine EU citizens trust in European institutions.

8. It would bring greater transparency.

Setting fishing limits that do not exceed scientific advice would make EU fisheries management more rational and predictable. Discussions could centre on maximizing the socio-economic benefits of healthy fisheries.

9. Case studies around the worldand closer to homeshow the benefits.

Other countries, such as the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, have already made major progress toward ending overfishing and are starting to reap the benefits. The EU has its own examples, such as hake in northern European waters, which prove that it is possible to end overfishing and illustrate the potential gains.

10. Decision makers have both the power and the responsibility to do so.

Many contemporary problems, such as climate change, are extremely challenging to address, but ending overfishing depends largely on better decisions by EU fisheries ministers. Political will is needed to implement the Common Fisheries Policy reforms and to set fishing limits that do not exceed scientific advice.

Too many assessed stocks in EU waters remain outside safe biological limits. Ending overfishing would finally allow these stocks to rebuild and thrive.

Andrew Clayton directs The Pew Charitable Trusts efforts to end overfishing in North-Western Europe.
Coal, oil and gas are tremendous resources: solar energy absorbed by plants and super-concentrated over millions of years. Theyre potent fuels and provide ingredients for valuable products. But the oil boom, spurred by improved drilling technology, came at the wrong time. Profits were (and still are) the priorityrather than finding the best, most efficient uses for finite resources.

In North America, governments and corporations facilitated infrastructure to get people to use oil and gas as if they were limitless. Companies like Ford built cars bigger than necessary, and although early models ran on ethanol, the oil boom made petroleum the fuel of choice. Public transit systems were removed and governments used tax revenues to accommodate private automobiles rather than buses and trains.

The oil industry fulfilled many of its promises and became the main driver of western economies. It increased mobility and led to job and profit growth in vehicle manufacturing, oil and gas, tourism and fast food, among others. Petroleum-derived plastics made life more convenient.

The industry boom and the car culture it fueled had negative consequences, thoughincluding injuries and death, rapid resource exploitation, pollution and climate change. Plastics are choking oceans and land.

Are these unintended consequences? When did people learn burning large quantities of fossil fuels might be doing more harm than good? Evidence suggests scientists, governments and industry knew all along there would be a steep price to pay for our excesses.

In the late 1800s, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius warned that burning fossil fuels and increasing carbon dioxide emissions would initiate feedback loops and increase water vapor in the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise. Scientific evidence for human-caused global warming has since increased to the point of certainty, but while few would dispute that burning coal, oil and gas causes pollution and public health problems, many still believe the role of fossil fuels in climate change is contentious.

Theres a reason for that: According to volumes of research by journalists, investigators and academicsincluding a new peer-reviewed studysome of industrys largest players have long been deceiving the public about climate science.

The new study, by Harvards Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes and published in Environmental Research Letters, analyzes 40 years of research and communications by Exxon Mobil. Our findings are clear: Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications, Oreskes and Supran write in a New York Times opinion article. Available documents show a systematic, quantifiable discrepancy between what Exxon Mobils scientists and executives discussed about climate change in private and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.

Taking up Exxons challenge to Read all of these documents and make up your own mind, the researchers examined the companys scientific research, internal memos and paid public-facing advertorials. They concluded that, although the company knew of and communicated internally about its products climate impacts and the danger of it becoming a stranded asset, it told the public a different story.

Exxon placed paid opinion articles in the New York Times between 1989 and 2004, at a cost of US$31,000 each. Contrary to the companys own research and internal communicationsas well as overwhelming scientific evidence from around the worldthe articles argued, among other things, that, The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil, and, We still dont know what role man-made greenhouse gases might play in warming the planet.

Oreskes and Supran also note Exxon is being sued by current and former employees and investigated by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general and the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Much relates to whether the company misled consumers, shareholders or the public about the environmental or business risks of climate change, or about the risk that oil and gas reserves might become stranded assets that wont be developed, affecting shareholder value.

Given climate changes serious implications, the fact that fossil fuel companies, aided by compromised governments and shady think tanks and media outlets, would put fossil fuel profits ahead of human health and survival is an intergenerational crime against humanity. We should commend Oreskes and others for their tireless efforts to bring this truth to light.
Over the summer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decided to strip Yellowstone grizzly bears of Endangered Species Act protections, sparking condemnation from conservationists over the agencys flawed ruling.

But now, USFWS is reviewing this decision thanks to an appeals court ruling that restored protections for a completely different animal that was taken off the endangered species list: the Great Lakes gray wolf.

In August, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC,

ruled unanimously that USFWS was wrong in its 2011 decision to de-list the Great Lakes gray wolf and should remain under federal protection. The three-judge panel wrote then, The Endangered Species Acts text requires the Service, when reviewing and redetermining the status of a species, to look at the whole picture of the listed species, not just a segment of it.

As it happens, the Fish and Wildlife Service used a similar method to de-list Yellowstone-area bears. Kelly Nokes, large carnivore advocate for

WildEarth Guardians, explained to Reuters, U.S. wildlife managers removed the bears from federal protections without assessing impacts on other grizzly populations in the lower 48 states.

The Yellowstone grizzly bear has long been considered endangered, with as few as 136 bears in 1975.

But in June, Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke announced that the population had been recovered to the point where federal protections can be removed and overall management can be returned to the states and tribes.

There are an estimated 700 today, which meets all the criteria for delisting, the

Department of Interior, which oversees USFWS, said.

The

Associated Press reported that USFWS has now opened up a public comment session on the implications of leaving the bears unprotected. While the review is pending, the animals will stay under state jurisdiction and off the threatened species list, agency spokesman Steve Segin said. The agency plans to release its conclusions by March 31.

Conservation groups responded with fierce outcry over the governments decision to de-list the grizzlies this summer.

Without continued Endangered Species Act protections, the recovery of grizzly bears in Greater Yellowstone is in serious jeopardy, said Bonnie Rice, Greater Yellowstone senior representative with

Sierra Clubs Our Wild America campaign. Inadequate requirements to protect and connect Yellowstone grizzlies to other populations and hostile state management policies will mean fewer bears restricted to an even smaller area. Grizzly bears will be killed through trophy hunts on the doorstep of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks instead of inspiring millions who come to the region just for a chance to see a live grizzly bear in the wild.

These iconic bears need to be protected, not gunned down so their heads can go on some trophy hunters wall, said Andrea Santarsiere, a senior attorney with the

Center for Biological Diversity. Facing ongoing threats and occupying less than five percent of their historic range, grizzly bears are nowhere near recovery and continue to need the strong protections of the Endangered Species Act.

National Parks Conservation Association refutes the Department of the Interiors short-sighted decision, which threatens Yellowstone grizzlies and ignores concerns, including those raised by many in the National Park Service. Despite Interiors claim, the long-term health of Yellowstone and Grand Teton grizzlies is far from certain, added Stephanie Adams, Yellowstone program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. We must ensure Yellowstone grizzlies have necessary protections in place for the population to thrive.
By WildEarth Guardian

Wednesday, WildEarth Guardians sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, challenging the agencys flawed rule stripping grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Endangered Species Act protections. The services premature removal of crucial federal safeguards undermines the recovery of the species as a whole, while subjecting grizzlies stepping outside the safety of our national parks to state-sanctioned trophy hunting.

The Service failed to carry out its paramountand mandatoryduty to ensure grizzly bears in the contiguous United States are recovered to the point at which the protections of the Endangered Species Act are no longer necessary, said Kelly Nokes, carnivore advocate for WildEarth Guardians. The Services decision is riddled with flaws, not based in science nor the law, and places this icon of all that is wild squarely in the crosshairs of extinction once again.

The lawsuit faults the service for illegally designating grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone as a distinct population segment and simultaneously removing protections from the population without first considering the impact such removal will have on imperiled grizzly populations located elsewhere in the lower 48 states. The suit also highlights the services failure to use the best available science when it determined that grizzlies in the Yellowstone region are recovered.

Biologists agree that grizzly recovery hinges on connecting isolated populations and distributing the genes they carry, said Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center representing WildEarth Guardians. Under this illegal and ill-advised plan, dispersing grizzlies essential to species recovery would be the first to die.

Grizzlies in the Yellowstone region remain threatened by dwindling food sources, habitat loss and fragmentation, and illegal killing. The Yellowstone population is isolated and has yet to connect to bears elsewhere in the U.S., including to bears in and around Glacier National Park. Grizzlies also have yet to reclaim key historic habitats, including the Bitterroot Range along the Montana-Idaho border.

Hunted, trapped and poisoned to near extinction, grizzly bear populations in the contiguous U.S. declined drastically from nearly 50,000 bears to only a few hundred by the 1930s. In response to the decline, the service designated the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, a move that likely saved them from extinction. The species has since struggled to hang on, with only roughly 1,800 currently surviving in the lower 48 states. Grizzlies remain absent from nearly 98 percent of their historic range.

At last count, approximately 690 grizzly bears resided in the Greater Yellowstone region in 2016, down from 2015s count of 717 bears. The last two years had near record-breaking grizzly mortality, with at least 139 bears killed since 2015 (including 20 documented deaths thus far in 2017, 58 dead bears in 2016 and 61 dead grizzlies in 2015). Of those, at least 98 bears died due to human-causes and 30 deaths remain undetermined or are still under investigation.

Wednesdays lawsuit challenges the services final rule removing Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. WildEarth Guardians is represented by Matthew Bishop and John Mellgren of the Western Environmental Law Center and Kelly Nokes of WildEarth Guardians.
By Joe McCarthy

Former President Barack Obama appeared at a gathering of mayors from around the world in Chicago Tuesday to talk about climate change and encourage leaders to take action, according to the Associated Press.

It was the latest in a series of appearances from the former president who offers a perspective that differs from his successor. Just last week, Obama met with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

The North American Climate Summit was gathered to explore how city leaders can take action on climate change. More than 50 mayors attended the event, including those from Paris, Mexico City, Montreal, Austin and Atlanta. It was partly inspired by the recognition that cities may have to play a bigger role if action at federal levels of government recedes.

The U.S., for instance, intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement, opening up a larger opportunity for action on the local level. Mayors throughout the U.S. have since reaffirmed their commitments to the global arrangement.

While Obama didnt refer to Trump by name, he expressed opinions that are at odds with the current president, the New York Times noted.

He also insisted that mayors have an important role to play on environmental issues, according to the AP.

Ultimately the work is done on the ground, Obama said during the event, AP reported. Cities and states and businesses and universities and nonprofits have emerged as the new face of American leadership on climate change.

Mayors have long played a crucial role in addressing climate change. This makes sense because cities hold the bulk of the worlds population and mayors can often take action more readily than leaders overseeing larger bodies of government.

Obama echoed these points during the event and drilled down even further, calling on individuals everywhere to play their part in mitigating climate change.

Climate change can be solved by human action, he said. We lead respectively where there is no consensus or directive out of our national governments.

Global Citizen takes action on the Global Goals which call for strong climate change. You can take action on this issue here .

Reposted with permission from our media associate Global Citizen.
What Is Ocean Bound Plastic?



Ocean bound plastic is plastic waste that is headed toward our oceans. The term ocean bound plastic was popularized by Jenna Jambeck, Ph.D., a professor from the University of Georgia. In 2015, she and a team of researchers estimated the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean from land.

Addressing ocean bound plastic is a key element to ocean conservation. Around 80% of plastic in the ocean can be sourced back to ocean bound plastic. Plastics that end up near bodies of water such as rivers are at risk of ending up in the ocean. Other plastic can reach the sea through sewage systems or storms.

For example, in 2011, after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami and earthquake hit Japan, around 5 million tons of debris ended up in the ocean. Some of the debris sank while some ended up on the U.S. west coast. Additionally, trash and plastic can come from ships or offshore platforms. However, decades ago, countries dumped their waste directly into the sea. In the U.S. this was outlawed in 1988 in the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988.

Plastic waste is a huge threat to our Earth, and diverting ocean bound plastic is one way we can do better to help the environment.

Fishes swim near a plastic fork and a bottle at the Samandag Cevlik Akcay diving site off the coasts of Samandag, near the Turkey  Syria border, in Hatay province of Turkey on December 6, 2018. Sebnem Coskun / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

How Much Plastic Is in the Ocean?



Each year, despite conservation efforts, 8 million tons of plastic reaches our oceans to meet the 150 million metric tons of plastic that already exists in marine environments. According to the Smithsonian, as of 2016, we produce around 335 million metric tons of plastic each year. Half of this plastic is single-use. Of the plastic we use globally, only around 9% of it gets properly recycled.

To create a mental picture of just how much plastic ends up in our oceans, imagine a garbage truck the size of New York City depositing its garbage into the ocean every minute of every day for a whole year. If this doesnt frighten you enough, the amount of plastic that will be produced and consumed is supposed to double over the course of the next ten years. If nothing is done to address plastic consumption, and the aftermath, there could be over 250 million metric tons of plastic in our oceans in ten years.

Even if you dont live on a coast, the plastic you throw away can still end up in the ocean. According to the World Wildlife Fund, plastic ends up in the ocean when its thrown away instead of recycled, when its littered on land, and when products we use are flushed down the drain or toilet. Additionally, cosmetic or cleaning products that contain parabens or microplastic beads can be washed into the ocean.

What Type of Plastic Is in the Ocean?

Plastic is not biodegradable, and it doesnt decompose. Many plastics are made only to be used one time, where they are then thrown out; theyre known as single-use plastic.

During the 2017 International Coastal Cleanup, the top kinds of plastics that were collected included wrappers, bottles, grocery bags, take-out containers  and the infamous plastic straws. These types of plastics and others combine into a category scientists call microplastics. According to the National Ocean Service, microplastics are the multi-colored pieces of plastic that can be found in a handful of sand on the beach or in the ocean.

Around 12% of plastic is incinerated  leaving 80% to end up in landfills. A 2014 study found that there are around 244,000 metric tons of plastic floating in our oceans. Out of the 244,000 tons found in the ocean, around 79,000 tons can be found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of floating debris thats twice the size of Texas.

Reducing our individual plastic footprint is important. However, most plastic pollution comes from large corporations. Corporations need to address their production processes, waste management, and how their operation can have an impact on the environment. Large corporations address their mass production of single-use plastics by shifting the responsibility of sustainable disposal onto the consumer.

According to Greenpeace.org, some of the brands that contribute to a large amount of plastic waste include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive. The soft drink industry in particular creates tons of plastic waste. In 2016, Coca-Cola produced over 110 billion single-use plastic bottles.

The Problems With Ocean Plastic

Plastics floating and polluting the ocean only scratches the surface of issues it causes  it impacts all of marine life, people, and Earths climate.

Marine Life

Animals are impacted by the plastic we use and dispose of. Ocean plastic has already affected 267 species, and 86% of sea turtles. They can suffocate, drown, or get entangled in plastic, or even ingest it. Some species such as birds, fish, turtles, and whales can mistake plastic for prey, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. When marine life ingests plastic, they can die of starvation because their stomachs are filled with plastic debris. Marine life can be cut by plastic, and also receive internal injuries. Seabirds are known for feeding on the oceans surface, making them more likely to ingest floating plastic debris. Adult seabirds go to feed their young, and their chicks feed on this plastic: One study from 1997, conducted by Albatross Biology and Conservation, found that around 98% of chicks sampled had plastic in them, and the amount of plastic has been increasing over time.

Additionally, plastic debris can promote the spread of invasive organisms, further hurting marine ecosystems; floating plastics get carried out to sea through ocean currents.

Food and Health

Plastic debris doesnt only harm the oceans wildlife  its affecting the human food chain, too. Microscopic plastic has been found in various foods and beverages, including water, beer and, salt. A 2008 Pacific Gyre voyage found that fish ingest plastic debris. Algalita researchers caught 672 fish, and 35% of the fish had eaten plastic pieces.

Climate Change

In a report released by Yale Climate Connections, Claire Arkin, communications coordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives said, Plastic pollution is not just an oceans issue. Its a climate issue and its a human health issue.

As of 2019, 4 to 8% of global oil consumption is linked to plastics, according to the World Economic Forum. If this persists, by 2050, plastics will account for 20% of oil consumption. Plastic, as a petroleum product, is inextricably linked to the fossil fuel industry: the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere, contributing further to the warming of our planet. Additionally, when plastic waste is incinerated, the process releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Human Impact

This rare Critically Endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) is entangled in discarded fishing net aka Ghost nets. Placebo365 / iStock Unreleased / Getty Images

Plastic reaching the ocean is largely due to human consumption. Companies that use plastic packaging, and oil companies, are part of the problem when it comes to plastic accumulating in our oceans. Individual littering of plastic is another contributor, as well as the improper disposal or accidental losing of fishing gear in the ocean.

Improper Disposal of Fishing Gear



According to a report from Greenpeace.org, fishing gear is the largest contributor to ocean plastic pollution. Commercial fishing gear including nets, lines, pots, and traps gets discarded into the ocean. The lost gear weighs the same as 55,000 double-decker buses, according to The Guardian.

Abandoned fishing gear, also known as ghost gear, has the potential to trap marine life. In 2015, an 80-foot blue whale was caught in an abandoned fishing line. Not only does lost fishing gear make up a significant portion of all ocean plastic, around 10%, but its also the deadliest to marine life, including coral, sessile animals, and vegetation.

Abandoned gillnets have caused the vaquita porpoise to near extinction, in the upper Gulf of California and Mexico; around 10 vaquita porpoises remain.

In addition to environmental impacts, ghost gear can affect the economy negatively. Some studies estimate around 90% of the species caught in abandoned gear are commercially valued.

Solutions to Minimizing Ghost Gear

Although the statistics may seem grim, there are ways to prevent fishing gear from ending up in the sea and harming marine life.

One way to prevent ghost gear from entering our oceans is through recycling. Fishermen should return no longer useful traps and nets to a port, rather than discarding the materials into the ocean. There are ports in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Rhode Island that offer recycling programs; more recycling facilities at ports could help minimize littered fishing gear.

The use of biodegradable fishing nets is on the rise. According to a study published in Animal Conservation, there are encouraging tests that show the utility and effectiveness biodegradable nets may have. A net made of polybutylene succinate and polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate showed promising results when compared to traditional nets used for fishing. The study showed that these biodegradable nets started to decompose after two years.

Clean-ups are another way to get abandoned fishing gear out of the ocean. There are organizations that specialize in retrieving discarded nets from the ocean. The Ghost Fishing Foundation has scuba divers retrieve floating fishing gear. Occasionally, the foundation will use cranes to pull out large pieces of netting.

Littering

Around 80% of marine debris and pollution is plastic, according to Pew Research. Marine litter mostly stems from unsustainable methods of production, as well as high consumption rates, and a lack of solid waste management infrastructure. Most of the plastic litter on Earth and in our oceans can be linked back to just a small number of multinational corporations.

According to an EPA report, every bit of plastic ever made still exists. The Plastic Disclosure Project estimated that 33% of all manufactured plastic is only used once. In 2018, only 8.7 percent of plastic was recycled. Although individuals should do their part to keep our planet and oceans clean, a small number of multinational corporations are to blame for the majority of littered plastic.

What Is Being Done to Help?

Greenpeace activists assembled two life-size reproductions of two whales that emerge from a sea invaded by disposable plastic waste, in the center of Rome, to denounce how our seas and the species living in them are in grave danger due to plastic pollution in 2018. Stefano Montesi / Getty Images

An elementary concept to positively impacting the environment is the buzz phrase, reduce, reuse, recycle. What this phrase fails to consider is that what will make the largest impact in helping our environment is to hold large corporations accountable. According to Greenpeace.org, recycling alone will never solve the plastic and pollution crisis our society is facing.

Organizations



Many organizations are addressing the ongoing and ever-growing issue of ocean pollution. For example, The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit aimed at ridding the ocean of plastic, is developing advanced technologies that are contributing to the largest ocean cleanup in history. The non-profits goal is to clean up 90% of floating ocean plastic pollution.

Plastic Oceans International is another organization that produces films and digital content in order to promote a global movement to rethink plastic. They also engage and teach students about the effects of plastic pollution and how they can contribute to ocean conservation.

Plastic Bank aims to not only stop ocean plastic but improve the lives of people who live in the poorest countries around the globe. The organization builds recycling ecosystems and processes the materials, so they can then be reintroduced to the economy through the global manufacturing supply chain.

One organization, Plastic Soup Foundation, aims not only to remove plastic from our oceans but also prevent plastic from reaching the sea in the first place. When it was founded, the organization had a heavy focus on protecting marine life, but the organization has expanded its priorities and aims to educate people on the potentially harmful effects marine plastic has on human health.

Indian residents walk past as they look at a large-scale sculpture of a killer whale made of single-use plastic and 40,000 plastic bottle caps being displayed to raise awareness on ocean contamination at Elliots beach in Chennai on May 11, 2019. ARUN SANKAR / AFP / Getty Images

Legislation



Some legislation helps to protect the oceans, and minimize plastic production and consumption. In the U.S, eight states have banned the use of single-use plastic bags, and more are hoping to in the coming years, including Connecticut and Virginia. Washington, DC implemented a ban on plastic straws on Jan. 1, 2019.

The Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act established programs in tandem with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Coast Guard. The programs help to determine sources of marine debris and how to reduce and prevent it.

Policies such as The Shore Protection Act, established in the U.S. in 1988, help to prevent the illegal dumping of waste off the coast. In 1967, a supertanker named Torrey Canyon spilled nearly 120,000 tons of oil into the ocean; it was the worlds first major oil tank disaster. Because of this incident, the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, passed in the U.S., most recently has been amended to regulate air pollution. It also regulates and limits the amount of nitrogen oxide levels, as well as requiring ships to use fuel with low sulfur content.

While these laws help to reduce pollution in our oceans, none of the laws listed are a cure-all, and many of them havent been amended in decades. Some conservation organizations are fighting for more rigorous laws, regulations, and policies to keep our oceans plastic-free.

What Can You Do?

Although large corporations are responsible for a majority of plastic waste ending up in the oceans, there are still things to be done on an individual level to help keep our oceans clean.

Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

Something everyone can do to contribute to the fight against ocean plastic pollution is to resist and reduce the use of single-use plastics. From plastic bags and bottles to plastic utensils, reducing your use of these plastics is a relatively easy step in limiting your plastic footprint.

When grocery shopping, bring your own reusable grocery bags. These bags are widely available and will last you a long time. Instead of using thin plastic produce bags, opt for reusable produce bags as well. Implementing the use of these reusable products will make you a more sustainable grocery shopper. There are incentives for altering your plastic consumption as well. At Target, for each reusable grocery bag you use, you get a 5 cent discount.

In recent years, Starbucks has made the switch to strawless drinking lids for their cold beverages. However, if you enjoy drinking out of straws, or want to prevent teeth staining, try using metal or reusable straws. Theyre widely available and easy to clean, and you can use them hundreds of times. Before the pandemic, Starbucks also started implementing reusable cups and tumblers. This way, when you make your coffee run, you dont have to use any single-use plastic. When you bring your own cup, you get a 10-cent discount. The program should continue when health authorities deem its safe to do so.

Other major chains have similar programs where you can bring your own cup or tumbler, including Dunkin, Panera Bread, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Caribou Coffee, Peets Coffee, and more.

Another ocean contaminant is microbeads and parabens. These are found in cosmetic products like face washes, toothpaste, and body washes. If you look at the ingredient list and see polyethylene or polypropylene, the product contains harmful microbeads, and you should avoid it.

When you grab some food to go, many restaurants will put your food in styrofoam containers, and then throw it in a plastic bag, and then go even further by supplying a bunch of paper napkins and plastic utensils. You can buy reusable utensils that are meant for traveling so you can skip the plastic utensils.

A more creative way to limit the amount of plastic you use is to buy in bulk. Singe-serving foods multiply waste. When youre grocery shopping, opt for a large tub of yogurt, instead of many small, single-serving yogurts. Buy trail mix that comes in one container, rather than many individually wrapped little ones. Buying products that you routinely use and consume in bulk can make a big difference.

When you forget your reusable bag or cup and have to use single-use plastic, you can help the environment and the oceans by recycling it properly. Be sure to be in the know about what types of plastics can be recycled in your community. If youre unsure of what you can and cannot recycle in your town, check out Earth911s recycling directory.

Engage in Cleanups

Employees from the organization 4Ocean clean Balis beaches daily from plastic Bali has long grappled with plastic pollution both on land and in its seas. Jonas Gratzer / LightRocket / Getty Images

Another tangible way to help is by physically removing plastic from the ocean and beaches by participating in a cleanup. If there are no cleanups in your community, organize your own. There are also larger cleanup events such as the International Coastal Cleanup that you can be a part of. Whether its with an organization or your friends and family, participating in a cleanup is a simple way to help collect plastic waste from marine communities.

Donate

There are a variety of organizations that aim to reduce the amount of plastic in our oceans, in creative, technologically advanced ways. Many of these organizations are non-profits and rely heavily on donations to continue to do important environmental work. Making a donation, even if its small, will help these organizations to continue to clean up and conserve our oceans.

Takeaway

Plastic debris floating in our oceans doesnt just affect the marine wildlife and plant species  it affects all of us. If action isnt taken now, there will be catastrophic consequences.

Plastic already kills over 100 million ocean animals each year; this number will only increase as time goes on.

Fish are being over-harvested already, but with many fish species dying off, and more fish consuming plastic, the fishing industry as we know it may not survive if incessant ocean pollution continues. This affects the entire food chain and will affect many fishermens livelihoods.

Ocean pollution is a huge threat to the overall biodiversity of our oceans. For example, coral reefs DNA can be altered from ocean pollution. Many fish and marine life rely on coral reefs for survival. If fish can no longer live in coral reefs, they wont gather in the same areas, affecting the land wildlife on the shore who fish for food. If the land animals cannot feed on fish, they may venture into new hunting territories, putting them at risk of being attacked by unfamiliar predators, which can then lead to extinction.

The impact of ocean plastic extends beyond marine life. If marine animals are affected, land animals will be affected and humans will be affected. The pollution of the oceans sets off a domino effect on the greater environment.

Oceans make up 71% of our Earth. If the sea isnt healthy and thriving, the majority of our planet isnt. Ocean plastics are a major threat to the health and well-being of all living species on Earth.

Audrey Nakagawa is the content creator intern at EcoWatch. She is a senior at James Madison University studying Media, Art, and Design, with a concentration in journalism. Shes a reporter for The Breeze in the culture section and writes features on Harrisonburg artists, album reviews, and topics related to mental health and the environment. She was also a contributor for Virginia Reports where she reported on the impact that COVID-19 had on college students.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the launch by the U.S.S.R. of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This important achievement was met in the West with surprise, confusion, and more than a little fear. U.S. civilian and military leadership alike were shocked at how far the Soviet space program had progressed and saw our own efforts lagging. Attention quickly focused on improving math and science education in the United States.

Following President Dwight Eisenhowers call to match U.S. education needs to the exigencies of the nascent Cold War, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act with bipartisan support in 1958. This act represented the first major foray of the federal government into the U.S. educational system since the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act 40 years prior.

The new law was unprecedented in its scope. Among other provisions, it provided large resource pools for strengthening science, mathematics, and modern foreign language instruction. Because a solid grounding in mathematics is required for success in science and engineering programs, the subsequent changes to the curriculum engendered by the NDEA elevated the importance of one subject in particular: calculus.

As the U.S. education system has matured, this push led to an unfortunate byproduct: Knowledge of calculus has become for manyincluding guidance counselors, college admission officers, and parentssynonymous with college ready. This has led high schools to push more students through a calculus course without adequately explaining the purpose of learning the material.

This pressure to complete calculus in preparation for college affects students in a variety of ways. To accommodate the additional material, students are accelerated through the curriculum without adequate mastery of important foundational concepts. Many of the incoming students who score poorly on our pre-calculus placement exam at Dickinson College, where I teach, are surprised and crestfallen because they have already completed a calculus course in high school. And incoming students are often surprised that they can complete a major in mathematics in four years without having completed a calculus course in high school.

It seems many students are not only not benefitting, but in fact are being harmed under our current system."

David Bressoud of Macalester College has examined these issues for the Mathematical Association of America. In one study, Bressoud concluded that taking calculus in high school was only beneficial if the student learned it well enough to earn college credit for it, and he found evidence that an introduction to calculus that builds on an inadequate foundation can be detrimental. This observation is important, considering that only 421,000 of the estimated 750,000 high school students who took a calculus course in 2015 took an AP exam , and of those taking the Calculus AB exam (the most popular AP calculus exam), 42 percent received a 1 or 2 out of 5, indicating poor understanding of the material.

Thus, it seems many students are not only not benefitting, but in fact are being harmed under our current system. The net effect can ultimately discourage students from continuing in mathematics and science. With STEM enrollment constituting a national priority, we need to rethink our strategies.

Also important in this debate is the hallowed place of calculus itself. While it remains indispensable to the fields of engineering and the physical sciences and is an incredible achievement of human thought, the vast majority of college majors do not use it at all. What could we replace it with? Many of the students currently in calculus would be better served with a course in statistics, modeling, or computer science.

Even among those students who will eventually need calculus, many are not ready for it in high school and would benefit from additional time with foundational material. In my opinion as an educator, the majority of students in high school calculus are either taking the wrong course or taking it at the wrong time. As education needs have evolved, so must we. Its time for us to critically reexamine the mathematics curriculum and prepare our students for the future instead of the past.
OFT warns of dangers of internet shopping at Christmas

The Island's Office of Fair Trading is warning Manx residents of the risks of buying Christmas presents online.

The OFT expects trends highlighted by Action Fraud in the UK will also be reflected in the Isle of Man.

Action Fraud warns mobile phones are the most likely item a person will try to buy from a fraudster, while Yeezy trainers and Kylie Jenner makeup were also featured in popular scams.

Last year Christmas shopping fraud rose by over a quarter, with 65% of fraud taking place in online auctions.

The OFT is urging those shopping online not to make rushed decisions, beware of those with little selling history and to google a website if you haven't used it before to see if its been linked to scams.
In the wake of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, the number of guns purchased in America spiked compared to baseline levels, and there were 60 additional accidental deaths related to firearms - 20 among children and 40 among adults, a new study estimates. The results begin to explore the question of whether greater exposure to guns can increase the risk of related accidents, which has been challenging to evaluate. The shooting at Sandy Hook left 20 children and six adults dead, stirring controversy over gun laws across much of the country. Here, Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight sought to better understand how this tragedy affected people's behavior surrounding guns. They looked at Google data between 2010 and 2014, finding that weekly search volumes for the terms "buy gun" and "clean gun" surged in the four months following the shooting, and particularly following two occasions when President Obama was vocal about the need for new gun control legislation. What's more, when the researchers looked at gun sales data (using background checks as a proxy), they found that an additional 3 million guns were sold during this same four-month window, compared to baseline sales. To understand how the resulting increase in exposure to guns might be correlated with deaths related to firearms, Levine and McKnight then looked at two different datasets capturing deaths across the country. Their results show that, as gun sales were increasing, and so, too, peoples' exposure to guns, accidental deaths related to firearms also increased - by 27% in such deaths overall, and by 64% among children. Spikes in accidental firearm-related deaths were concentrated in those states with larger increases in per capita gun sales, the authors found. The analysis provides evidence indicating that the spike in gun exposure that followed the Sandy Hook school shooting increased the incidence of accidental firearm deaths, the authors say.

In a related Policy Forum, Philip Cook and John Donohue discuss the challenges surrounding gun research in the United States, highlighting some progress, too. First, they discuss how funding through universities and private donors has helped fill the void of federal funding on gun research, one that has largely persisted since the 1990s (with a brief exception during the Obama administration). However, funding aside, comprehensive analyses of gun regulations are methodologically challenging, the authors say; variations in crime are driven by many factors, making it challenging to attribute changes to a specific policy. Researchers can take advantage of "natural experiments" in which changes across various jurisdictions and over time are accounted for, to isolate the specific impacts of gun-related policies. The authors discuss a study that suggested that "right-to-carry" (RTC) laws reduced crime, citing a number of technical shortcomings, including how the study dealt with the wave of crack cocaine-related crime during the 1980s/90s; these shortcomings have since been addressed in subsequent work, which predominatly suggests that RTC actually increases crime. Evidence also suggests that add-on sentences for gun use in violent crime have yielded positive results, for example by reducing robberies involving guns; as well, bans on gun possession by those convicted of domestic violence have resulted in a reduction in deaths among women by their partners. Moving forward, it's important that policies are rolled out with an eye toward experimental design, facilitating data collection to support causal inference on the impacts of gun-related policies, Cook and Donohue say, a tactic that the California Department of Justice is adopting by starting a violence-prevention initiative in stages.

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Personalized medicine has been one of the most promising medical developments in recent years. To personalize treatment for patients, some doctors have turned to predictive models to help determine which patients will benefit from different treatments.

A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University finds that using data from electronic medical records in those models could hold a lot of promise.

Researchers MGH's Roy Perlis and Harvard's Finale Doshi-Velez, joined by postdoctoral researcher Michael Hughes, looked over large amounts of electronic medical record data from more than 50,000 people with depression, a condition that is notoriously difficult to treat. Patients often try several different treatments before arriving at an effective one.

The researchers applied machine learning to sort the data into depression subtypes, some of which weren't necessarily standardized. The subtypes represented clusters of symptoms and features spotlighted by the data--such as age, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, or obesity.

Doshi-Velez's team also looked at 16 types of antidepressants that were ultimately successful in treating the patients' depression. From these data, they were able to develop an algorithm to predict an antidepressant's effectiveness based on depression subtypes.

When implemented in clinical settings, the new tool was more accurate than existing methods, the researchers found. And clinicians polled by the researchers said they found the tool more user-friendly than existing predictive models.

As there is a 50 percent failure rate among patients trying a first treatment for depression, and a 50 percent failure rate among those who try a second type of treatment, cutting down on the guesswork involved could be life-changing. "Each try can take multiple weeks to assess, while you're playing around with dosages. And these are already people for whom morale is sapped," says Doshi-Velez. "Even if we could make a modest improvement -- for instance, one less try--this could be a very significant result."

While the researchers studied the impact of mining records on depression, their method could apply more broadly and help patients with various health problems, mental and physical.

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Presenter: Finale Doshi-Velez
WASHINGTON, D.C. December 7, 2017 -- Cochlear implants have been a common method of correcting sensorineural hearing loss for individuals with damage to their brain, inner ear, or auditory nerves. The implanted devices use an electrode array that is inserted into the cochlea and assists in stimulating auditory nerve fibers. However, the speech patterns heard with the use of a cochlear implant are often spectrally degraded and can be difficult to understand. Vocoded speech, or distorted speech that imitates voice transduction by a cochlear implant, is used throughout acoustic and auditory research to explore speech comprehension under various conditions.

Researchers Kieran E. Laursen, Sara L. Protko and Terry L. Gottfried from Lawrence University, along with collaborators Iain C. Williams and Tahnee Marquardt from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and the University of Oxford, respectively, will present their work on the effect of musical experience on the ability to understand vocoded speech at the 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, being held Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Musical ability, described by a person's aptitude for playing an instrument, interpreting sound patterns or recognizing different tones, has long been linked to higher cognitive capacity and better communication skills.

"We are testing to see if someone's musicality or levels of musical experience affects their perceptions of vocoded speech," Laursen said in an email. "So, the question lies in how does music affect one's abilities to hear different pitches, intonations, and rhythms within distorted speech."

"The acoustic information in vocoded speech is quite different from that of natural speech in the presence of noise," said Gottfried. The rhythmic patterns of natural speech are often maintained in vocoded speech, so musicians may have the upper hand at interpretation due to their experience with rhythm production. However, musicians may also fair similarly to nonmusicians due to the loss of information that can result from vocoding.

Gottfried has been researching speech perception and its relation to music since he was in graduate school. "Over the years, I've continued my studies of this relation between speech and music perception, and there's been considerable recent research that suggests musical experience is related not only to improved second language speech perception, but also to improved phonetic perception in one's first language and in better recognition of speech in noise," he said, regarding a study on speech perceptions by nonnative listeners to Mandarin tones.

Using a commercially available program called SuperLab, research participants (both musicians and nonmusicians) were asked to transcribe vocoded sentences and words. They were then assigned to a training method on either vocoded or natural speech and asked to again transcribe vocoded sentences. The initial results showed that musicians had no significant advantage over nonmusicians in interpreting vocoded speech patterns, but this may be due to limited sample variation.

"Both groups scored well above chance on the Musical Ear Test, so it's possible that, if we tested listeners with very poor musical ears, they would also not do so well on the vocoded speech," Gottfried said. He also noted that the results are still useful in assessing the extent to which musical experience may relate to the perception of degraded speech.

The applications of this research span beyond the understanding of vocoded speech to a variety of acoustical interpretation patterns. Understanding normal speech in a noisy environment is dependent on rhythmic pattern interpretations and is acoustically similar to attempting to understand vocoded speech patterns. If musical experience improves vocoded understanding, it may also be useful in day to day speech interpretation in noisy environments.

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Abstract: 4pSC10: "Effect of musical experience on learning to understand vocoded speech," by Kieran E. Laursen, Iain C. Williams, Tahnee Marquardt, Sara L. Prostko and Terry L. Gottfried, is at 1:00-4:00 p.m. CST, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, in Studios Foyer in the New Orleans Marriott. https://asa2017fall.abstractcentral.com/s/u/OBlFa5aSFG8

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Nearly 100 hydropower dams are planned for construction along tributaries off the Mekong River's 2,700-mile stretch. The river, one of the world's largest, flows through Burma, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. It is an economic engine for fishermen and a food source for millions of people worldwide. And while the dams are expected to provide clean energy to the region, if not managed properly, they also have the potential to offset natural river patterns, which would damage food production, supply and business.

Arizona State University professor John Sabo and collaborators have proposed a solution to this problem in the Dec. 8 issue of Science Magazine that allows dam operators to generate power in ways that also protect - and possibly improve - food supplies and businesses throughout the Mekong river basin. The proposed solution, the first of its kind for this problem, can be applied to other large river systems around the world facing similar tradeoffs.

"We have figured out the relationship between river flows and fish catch, and we have developed an algorithm for dam operators to use that will increase fish harvests and still generate power," Sabo said. "Dams are going to be built no matter how much fuss we make, our research shows how we can be more strategic about the buildout and operations of these dams in the Mekong."

The Mekong river floods annually, and it is known that those floods are important for fisheries, Sabo said. New in this research is the recognition that seasonal droughts are equally important. Long droughts combined with short floods may create the ideal conditions for terrestrial nutrients to be entrained into the freshwater system. With that in mind, the algorithm presented by Sabo et al. in Science recommends long low-flow periods punctuated by pulses of flooding, which will allow dam operators to co-manage their power generation priorities, while protecting livelihoods for fisheries downstream.

Sabo worked with other ASU researchers on the project, as well as researchers from the University of Washington, University of Maryland, Conservation International, the University of South Florida, the Mekong River Commission and Aalto University.

"We have taken this conversation around fisheries and dams in the Mekong from a yes-or-no conversation, from a good idea-bad idea conversation, and we have come up with an alternative, a mathematical formula that has the possibility to achieve dam operator goals and protects fisheries," said Gordon Holtgrieve, an assistant professor at the University of Washington.

With recent funding from the National Science Foundation, Sabo, Holtgrieve and a team of researchers will expand the project to better understand how dam operators can balance power generation needs with other factors, including rice production, food nutritional quality, ecological goals and more.
Researchers report that transplanting genetically-engineered cells directly into the brain could help treat a variety of central nervous system diseases

A therapeutic technique to transplant blood-forming (hematopoietic) stem cells directly into the brain could herald a revolution in our approach to treating central nervous system diseases and neurodegenerative disorders.

The technique, which could be used to transplant donor-matched hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) or a patient's own genetically-engineered HSCs into the brain, was reported in Science Advances today by researchers from the Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy.

In their study, the team tested the technique in a mouse model to treat lysosomal storage disorders, a group of severe metabolic disorders that affect the central nervous system.

The team's findings are groundbreaking because, until now, it was thought that HSCs -- from a healthy, matched donor or a patient's own genetically-corrected cells -- needed to be transplanted indirectly, through an intravenous line to the bloodstream.

Therapeutic success has then depended on those cells engrafting in a patient's bone marrow, maturing and naturally circulating into the brain, at a very slow and inefficient rate.

A race against time

But in children with lysosomal storage disorders, caused by enzyme imbalances that result in a dangerous build-up of lipids, carbohydrates or other materials in the body's cells, time is of the essence to stop the disease's progression.

"The main issue with the conventional HSC transplant strategy has been the length of time needed for the therapy to take effect in the brain," says Alessandra Biffi, MD, director of the gene therapy program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's and the senior author of the new study.

"It can take up to a year for the genetically-engineered cell lineage to proliferate, spread and produce therapeutic effects in the brain -- oftentimes, patients don't have the luxury of time to wait," Biffi adds.

Biffi and her team wanted to find a faster -- and more direct -- way to transplant therapeutic HSCs into the brain.

In a mouse model of lysosomal storage disorders, Biffi's team transplanted HSCs -- which they had genetically engineered to correct the enzyme imbalance -- directly into the brain. They found the direct approach jumpstarted the therapeutic benefits much faster than intravenous infusion alone. They call their method, which infuses the cells into fluid-filled cavities in the brain called ventricles, "intracerebroventricular" delivery.

Creating a chimera

Once the genetically-engineered HSCs are transplanted into the brain's ventricles, the crucial enzyme they contain helps to metabolize the materials that were previously building up and causing tissue damage.

A new lineage of cells descended from the transplanted HSCs -- a type of cell called a myeloid -- begin to scavenge and consume the excess material that is responsible for neurodegeneration.

"There's a positive impact from the presence of the new, metabolically-functional myeloid cells because they release signaling cytokines that counteract neuroinflammation, which if unchecked can trigger neuronal damage," Biffi says.

Importantly, the transplanted HSCs engraft in the mouse brains without migrating to other areas of the central nervous system. This essentially could create a chimera -- a separate genetic profile within an organism -- within the brain.

The ability to engineer a chimeric population of brain cells could open powerful new avenues to preventing or reversing neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS and more.

From the lab to the human brain

Although transplanting HSCs directly into the human brain sounds invasive at first, Biffi explains that the procedure would not be overly complex in actuality.

"I envision this could be a one-time treatment accomplished via a catheter temporarily placed into the brain's ventricles, under standard anesthesia," Biffi says. "This would be in line with currently-used clinical procedures that enable access to the brain for treatment."

Based on the promising results of their mouse studies, Biffi and her colleagues are moving forward with plans to develop the procedure for the clinic.

She says there is great potential for intracerebroventricular delivery of genetically-modified HSCs, alone or in combination with intravenous gene therapies. This approach would be a new tool for clinicians to treat a range of conditions that affect the brain or the entire nervous system.

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In addition to Biffi, other authors on the study were: Alessia Capotondo, Rita Milazzo, Jose M. Garcia-Manteiga, Eleonora Cavalca, Annita Montepeloso, Brian S. Garrison, Marco Peviani and Derrick J. Rossi.

This study was funded by the European Community (Consolidator European Research Council 617162), the Italian Ministry of Health (GR-2011-02347261), Telethon Foundation (TGT_B01) and Boston Children's Hospital.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, Molecular Biosensor and Imaging Center (MBIC) and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) have received close to $7.5 million in new funding from the National Institutes of Health through the federal BRAIN Initiative to support innovative research and develop tools that will rapidly advance brain research.

"Carnegie Mellon's combined expertise in biology, psychology, computer science and engineering has positioned us to be at the forefront of creating new tools and technologies for neuroscience," said Alison Barth, professor of biological sciences and interim director of CMU's BrainHub neuroscience initiative. "The federal BRAIN Initiative's support is invaluable to increasing our understanding of how the brain communicates."

High Throughout Approaches for Cell-Specific Synapse Characterization

Marcel Bruchez, director of MBIC and professor of biological sciences and chemistry, and Barth were awarded more than $2 million to develop new tools and methods for high-throughput fluorescence synapse quantitation. They will work with the University of Pittsburgh's Simon Watkins, director of the Center for Biologic Imaging (CBI).

The human brain consists of billions of neurons, each of which passes information through thousands of synapses. Identifying how and where synapses develop under normal conditions and viewing how they change is vital to our understanding of learning, development and disease.

Fluorescence imaging has made it possible to identify specific cells among the sea of neurons in the brain and monitor how they are connected with one another. Under the new grant, the researchers will optimize reagents that will allow them to detect presynaptic and postsynaptic inputs and quantify synapse distribution between specific cell types in brain tissue. They will also develop software that will automate the analysis of the data, which was previously done by humans. This will allow researchers to count millions of neurons and billions of synapses, where previous studies were only able to look at small numbers of cells, or subcellular regions.

Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy Data Repository

Alexander J. Ropelewski, director of the biomedical application group at the PSC, Bruchez and Watkins received more than $5 million under the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network to build a confocal fluorescence microscopy data repository that will provide researchers with easy, searchable access to petabytes of neuroscience data.

New imaging tools and technologies, like large-volume confocal fluorescence microscopy, have greatly accelerated neuroscience research in the past five years, allowing researchers to image the whole brain at such a high level of resolution that they can zoom in to the level of a single neuron or synapse. These images, however, contain such a large amount of data that only a small part of one brain's worth of data can be accessed at a time using a standard desktop computer. Additionally, images are often collected in different ways -- at different resolutions, using different methodologies and different orientations. Comparing and combining data from multiple whole brains and datasets requires the power of supercomputing.

The Pittsburgh-based team will bring together MBIC and CBI's expertise in cell imaging and microscopy and pair it with the PSC's long history of experience in biomedical supercomputing to create a system called the Brain Imaging Archive. Researchers will be able to submit their whole brain images, along with metadata about the images, to the archive. There the data will be indexed into a searchable system that can be accessed using the internet. Researchers can search the system to find existing data that will help them narrow down their research targets, making research much more efficient.

Machine Learning Approaches for Electrophysiological Cell Classification

Barth was awarded more than $300,000 to develop method to identify neural cell types from extracellularly recorded spike trains, a "Rosetta Stone" for decoding brain activity. In a 500x500 micron column of brain tissue, there can be more than 60 different types of neuronal cells, each with its own properties. Currently researchers gather information from neurons by inserting an electrode into the brain and recording when neurons spike in response to a stimulus. While this reveals valuable information, researchers don't know which cell type they are recording.

Barth believes that researchers could determine cell type based on patterns found in a neuron's spike train. She will partner with researchers in Carnegie Mellon's machine learning department and Language Technology Institute to develop classifiers for neuron types and use machine learning to identify cell type based on the pattern of spikes collected from a neuron.

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Previously, Carnegie Mellon researchers received an additional $2.8M from the BRAIN Initiative. Engineering faculty members Steven Chase and Byron Yu received over $850,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish how variability in movement is encoded in the brain and how this variability contributes to learning and performance. Yu also received close to $1M from the NSF to understand how the sensory environment and state of mind combine to affect perception and interpretation of the world around us. Max G'Sell, assistant professor of statistics received close to $1M to study brain circuits in a real-world setting.
Classical scholars from the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" of the University of Munster discovered a large number of sealings in south-east Turkey. "This unique group of artefacts comprising more than 1,000 pieces from the municipal archive of the ancient city of Doliche gives many insights into the local Graeco-Roman pantheon - from Zeus to Hera to Iuppiter Dolichenus, who turned into one of the most important Roman deities from this site", classical scholar and excavation director Prof. Dr. Engelbert Winter from the Cluster of Excellence explains at the end of the excavation season. "The fact that administrative authorities sealed hundreds of documents with the images of gods shows how strongly religious beliefs shaped everyday life. The cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus did not only take place in the nearby central temple, but also left its mark on urban life", says Prof Winter. "It also becomes apparent how strongly Iuppiter Dolichenus, originally worshipped at this location, was connected with the entire Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD: many of the images show the god shaking hands with various Roman emperors."

The excavation team has been exploring the temple of the soldier god Iuppiter Dolichenus for 17 years. This year, the team focussed on the urban area. "Under a mosaic dated to 400 AD within a complex of buildings, we were able to uncover an even older mosaic floor of equally high quality", Prof. Winter explains. "According to the present findings, there is much evidence of a late antique church. This could turn out to be an important contribution to understanding the history of early Christianity in this region." The excavations in the three-local aisled building complex began in 2015. Up to the present, 150 square metres of the large central nave bordered by columns have been uncovered. Engelbert Winter: "Apart from the architecture, small finds from the surrounding area also point to the existence of a church, such as the fragments of a marble table or the mentioning of a deacon attested by an inscription."

"City centre discovered"

The researchers have now also discovered the public centre of the city of Doliche, which they had first located in the eastern part of the city by geophysical prospecting. "This assumption has been confirmed", the excavation director explains. "We were able to uncover parts of a very large building: it is a public bath from the Roman Iron Age with well-preserved mosaics. Since hardly any Roman thermal baths are known so far in the region, this discovery is of great academic importance." The research team from Munster also gained new insights to the extension of the urban area and the chronology of the city: an intensive survey carried out this year on the settlement hill of the ancient city, Keber Tepe, led to quite surprising results. "A large number of finds from the Stone Age indicate that Keber Tepe was obviously an extremely important place very early on. Doliche reached its greatest extent later, in the Roman and early Byzantine periods."

Excavation director Winter says about the large number of discovered sealings: "Many sealings can be attributed to the administrative or official seals of the city due to their size, frequent occurrence, and in some cases also due to inscriptions. In addition to the images of the 'city goddess' Tyche, the depictions of Augustus and Dea Roma deserve special attention, since they point to the important role of the Roman emperor and the personified goddess of the Roman state for the town of Doliche, which lies on the eastern border of the Roman Empire. However, the central motif is the most important god of the city, Iuppiter Dolichenus. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, his cult spread into large parts of the Mediterranean world, extending as far as Britain", explains Prof. Winter. Therefore, it is not surprising that hundreds of documents were sealed with images showing a handshake between this deity and an emperor. "It was a sign of the god's affinity to the Roman state."

The images also provide insights into the cult itself. In addition to sealings showing busts of Iuppiter and his wife Iuno, there are depictions of the divine twins Castor and Pollux, the sons of Zeus. "The sons of Zeus, also known as Dioscuri or Castores Dolicheni, are often portrayed as companions of Iuppiter and therefore play an important role in the cult", Prof. Winter explains.

Archaeological park for tourists

Under the supervision of Prof. Winter from the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics", the Asia Minor Research Centre of the University of Munster has been excavating the main temple of Iuppiter Dolichenus with the support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) since 2001. Each year, the international group of archaeologists, historians, architects, restorers, archaeozoologists, GIS analysts and excavation assistants have uncovered finds from all periods of the 2,000-year history of the place of worship. Among them were the massive foundations of the first Iron Age sanctuary, numerous monumental architectural fragments of the Roman main temple, but also the extensive ruins of an important Byzantine monastery which was built by followers of the Christian faith after the fall of the ancient sanctuary. In order to make the excavation site near the ancient town of Doliche accessible to a broad public, an archaeological park is being developed. Prof. Winter's research project at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" is closely connected with the excavation. It is titled "Syriac Cults in the Western Imperium Romanum". (maz/vvm)

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DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers at Duke University have devised a way to see through walls using a narrow band of microwave frequencies without any advance knowledge of what the walls are made out of. Besides having obvious applications in the realm of security, the approach could lead to inexpensive devices to help construction workers easily locate conduits, pipes and wires.

The study was published in the journal Optica on Dec. 5, 2017.

"Most technologies that can see through walls use a broad range of frequencies, which makes them expensive," said Daniel Marks, associate research professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. "They also don't have very good resolution. So while they might be fine for seeing a person moving on the other side of a wall, they're terrible for finding thin conduits or wires."

Current approaches also typically rely on knowing what material the wall is made out of before trying to see through it. This allows the software to predict how the wall will affect the scanning waves so that it can separate the echoes and distortions from the solid objects being sought.

In the new paper, Marks and his colleagues David R. Smith, the James B. Duke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Okan Yurduseven, a postdoctoral researcher in electrical and computer engineering at Duke, take advantage of a wall's symmetry instead.

Because walls are generally flat and uniform in all directions, they distort waves in a symmetrical fashion. The newly described technology uses this symmetry to its advantage.

"We wrote an algorithm that separates the data into parts -- one that shows circular symmetry and another that doesn't," explained Yurduseven. "The data that doesn't have any symmetry is what we're trying to see."

The technique uses only a single frequency to scan because it cuts down on the number of interference patterns created by the wall and single-frequency emitters are much less expensive than broadband emitters. Sticking to a narrow range also means that a future device would be easier to clear with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as it would be easy to avoid interfering with microwave frequencies dedicated to other technologies, such as Wifi, cellular phone service and Bluetooth.

The researchers built a prototype device to see how well it would work. In their laboratory, they constructed a couple of different kinds of walls and then placed objects behind them that a worker might want to find, like studs, electrical conduits, wires and junction boxes.

Looking at the raw data after scanning through gypsum plasterboard, it's difficult to make out anything other than a metal junction box, which is 4 inches wide and 2 inches thick. But after analyzing the data and removing the symmetrical patterns, the pictures clear considerably, and each individual component is easily recognized.

"We envision combining this technique with a machine vision system that someone could move over a wall to see what's inside," said Marks. "We think the technology has the price point and sensitivity to make an impact on the market."

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This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-12-1-0491).

"A sparse blind deconvolution method for imaging through layered media." Daniel L. Marks, Okan Yurduseven, David R. Smith. Optica, 2017. DOI: 10.1364/optica.4.001514
LUGANO-GENEVA, Dec. 7, 2017 - A new combination therapy for the first line treatment of advanced non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) improves progression-free survival (PFS), according to results of the phase III IMpower150 trial presented at the ESMO Immuno Oncology Congress 2017. (1)

"This is the first phase III trial to report on the combination of chemotherapy, antiangiogenic treatment and immunotherapy as first line treatment for advanced non-squamous NSCLC," said lead author Professor Martin Reck, chief oncology physician, Department of Thoracic Oncology, Lung Clinic Grosshansdorf, Germany. "The trial met its co-primary endpoint of PFS and the preliminary results of the co-primary endpoint of overall survival (OS), although immature, look encouraging."

There is a scientific rationale to support the combinations that have been explored in the trial. Bevacizumab may enhance the ability of atezolizumab to restore anti-cancer immunity by inhibiting vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-related immunosuppression and other mechanisms while chemotherapy may induce immune responses. The chemotherapy used in the trial was carboplatin plus paclitaxel. Atezolizumab is a monoclonal antibody that inhibits programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), while bevacizumab is a biologic antiangiogenic drug.

IMpower150 enrolled 1,202 patients who were randomised to one of three arms: A) chemotherapy plus atezolizumab; B) chemotherapy plus atezolizumab plus bevacizumab; or C) chemotherapy plus bevacizumab.

The PFS survival comparison was made between arms B and C and showed that the combination of atezolizumab, bevacizumab and chemotherapy was superior to bevacizumab and chemotherapy alone with a median PFS of 8.3 versus 6.8 months (hazard ratio [HR] 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.52, 0.74; P < 0.0001) in the intention-to-treat (ITT) wild type (WT) population, which excluded patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations or anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangements.

The corresponding median PFS in the Teff-WT population, which included patients with defined expression of a T-effector gene signature in the tumour tissue, was 11.3 versus 6.8 months (HR 0.51; 95% CI 0.38, 0.68; P < 0.0001). PFS benefit was seen regardless of PD-L1 immunohistochemistry status, including PD-L1-negative pts (TC0/IC0: HR 0.77; 95% CI 0.61, 0.99). (2)

There were no new safety signals with the combination therapy. Due to prespecified testing hierachy, Arm A versus C has not been formally tested yet.

Reck said: "There was a significant and clinically relevant improvement in progression-free survival favouring the addition of atezolizumab to bevacizumab and chemotherapy. The results show that there is a way to improve the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with advanced non-squamous NSCLC. There were no new safety signals or toxicity issues with this combination so it appears to be a feasible approach for this group of patients."

Commenting on treatment for advanced non-squamous NSCLC for ESMO, Professor Solange Peters, Head of Medical Oncology, Department of Oncology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland, said: "Immunotherapy is a standard of care treatment after platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. Frontline immunotherapy alone is beneficial in those with a high PD-L1 expression, who make up less than a third of NSCLC patients. (3) The combination of immunotherapy and platinum-based chemotherapy showed positive response rates in unselected non-squamous patients (without PD-L1 selection) in a hypothesis-generating phase II trial, which led to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval." (4)

"IMpower150 is the first phase III randomised trial to formally evaluate the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy versus chemotherapy frontline," she continued. "The backbone therapy includes bevacizumab which might, by targeting VEGF, facilitate the immune response and the trafficking of T cells. Median PFS for the immunotherapy arm in patients without EGFR mutations or ALK rearrangements had a promising hazard ratio of 0.62 and a median PFS improvement of a little less than two months."

Peters said the benefit of immunotherapy is best observed at later time points. "When you look at the 12-month PFS, you double the number of patients who have not progressed from 18% without immunotherapy to 37% when you add the immunotherapy," she said. "This is very, very promising. Doubling PFS at one year is something we have not seen with any targeted therapy in unselected patients to date."

Even more important was that the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy was beneficial regardless of expression of PD-L1 or a T-effector gene signature. It was also beneficial in patients with alterations in EGFR and ALK, who usually do not do well with immunotherapy. Peters said: "We know that for immunotherapy monotherapy, we need to highly select patients for PD-L1 expression. This trial shows that by combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy you completely delete any need for patient selection according to a particular biomarker. This strategy has the potential to benefit large numbers of patients with advanced NSCLC without the practical difficulties of biomarker testing."

Peters concluded: "These exciting results pave the way for a new standard of care in advanced non-squamous NSCLC. The initial overall survival data looks encouraging, but we must wait for it to mature. We will also need to understand the impact of this combination in patients who have already received other immunotherapies. In the next year, other trials will report results in frontline treatment-naive NSCLC patients using the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy or the combination of two immunotherapy drugs. The challenge will then be to judge which strategy is the best."

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Notes to Editors

Please make sure to use the official name of the meeting in your reports: ESMO Immuno Oncology Congress 2017

Official hashtag: #ESMOImmuno17

References and notes

1 Abstract LBA1_PR 'Primary PFS and safety analyses of a randomized phase III study of carboplatin + paclitaxel +/? bevacizumab, with or without atezolizumab in 1L non-squamous metastatic NSCLC (IMpower150)' will be presented by Martin Reck during the Proffered Paper session 'Combining immune checkpoint inhibitors and VEGF targeted therapies in cancer treatment' on Thursday, 7 December, 18:15 to 19:15 (CET) in Room A. Annals of Oncology, Volume 28, 2017 Supplement 11.

2 PD-L1 expression was assessed on both tumour cells (TC) and tumour-infiltrating immune cells (IC); and patients were scored as TC 0,

1, 2, or 3 and IC 0, 1, 2, or 3 with an immunohistochemistry test.

3 Reck M, et al. Pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy for PD-L1-positive non-small-cell lung cancer. N Engl J Med. 2016; 375:1823-1833.

4 Langer CJ, et al. Carboplatin and pemetrexed with or without pembrolizumab for advanced, non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer: a randomised, phase 2 cohort of the open-label KEYNOTE-021 study. Lancet Oncol. 2016;17(11):1497-1508.

Disclaimer

This press release contains information provided by the authors of the highlighted abstracts and reflects the content of those abstracts. It does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ESMO who cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the data. Commentators quoted in the press release are required to comply with the ESMO Declaration of Interests policy and the ESMO Code of Conduct.

About the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)

ESMO is the leading professional organisation for medical oncology. With 17,000 members representing oncology professionals from 150 countries worldwide, ESMO is the society of reference for oncology education and information. We are committed to supporting our members to develop and advance in a fast-evolving professional environment.

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During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, an encyclopedic dictionary of astronomy for French Sign Language, entitled Hands in the Stars, was published under the direction of Dominique Proust [1]. This dictionary contains approximately 300 signs describing several classical celestial bodies such as planets, asteroids, galaxies and quasars, as well as technical terms such as telescope, spectrograph and photometry. In 2016-2017, a large project led by the IAU Commission for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion (IAU Division C, Commission C1 WG3 ) , with funding from the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, translated Proust's dictionary into English (by Lawrence Augustin Orchard) and Spanish (by Maria Roser Garcia and Amelia Ortiz-Gil). The dictionary can be accessed from the website of the Commission through these links: French , English and Spanish .

Based on this previous experience, the Commission recently embarked on a long-term project to collect the different signs in several languages, starting with a selection of 47 words that the experts of the Commission agree are amongst the most commonly used in astronomy education and outreach. The languages involved include German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Polish, among others.

Sign language is now officially practised in almost every country, but diverse heritages and different cultures independently developed specific signs to designate common objects or identical situations. "A Universal Sign Language is gradually being developed, mainly to designate objects and situations related to contemporary technology or events. Nevertheless, there will always be differences between signs in each country that need to be noted, as countries have developed its own signs through time", says Dominique Proust [2].

Many astronomical words have no equivalent hand sign in any sign language. The signs presented in this list represent a collaboration between deaf communities, educators, and astronomers all over the world. The suggested signs are meant to engage the deaf community in scientific discussion.

The compilation of 47 terms is also available online here . Its main goal is to help to reflect on the differences between the various languages, perhaps even helping communities to develop their own sign if they did not yet have one for a particular term. The work is a joint ongoing effort between many individuals and organisations [3]. Signs in some of the languages have been retrieved from the Spread the Sign project.

The group working on this task is also analysing the case of words without a sign in some countries. One alternative could be to suggest the use of the sign of a closely related language, for example, Spanish for the Italian community.

The Commission is also considering the possibility of studying each sign in order to determine the similarities and differences between different languages and suggest, if possible, a common and unique sign for each word for every country. This may be an impossible task, but it is one worth exploring.

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Notes

[1] In France, the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Astronomy for the French Sign Language was published in 2009 under the direction of Dominique Proust, in collaboration with Daniel Abbou, Nasro Chab, Yves Delaporte, Carole Marion and Blandine Proust, in Burillier, in the framework of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009 ) and with the support of the Paris Observatory.

[2] Sign language has its own vocabulary and grammar and is expressed in all communication registers. Large numbers (such as millions and billions) have their own signs, as do operators. All mathematical quantities have equivalent signs, including weight, area, volume and distance. The Pythagorean theorem is expressed in a similar way to its oral version, except that the hypotenuse is signed "the side facing the right angle". The geometry exposes itself in an identical way, the hands describing previously a line, a plane or a volume. The origin of a coordinate system is precisely indicated.

Physics includes a set of very explicit signs for each topic. The constants are designated by the same letters: c is the speed of light (SPEED sign + LIGHT sign) with c = 300 000 km/s. Electricity is signed with the fists facing each other, curved index fingers pointing upwards like electrodes.

Nuclear energy includes two signs, the first being the generic sign for all forms of energy and the second symbolising the power of nuclear energy. In chemistry, the elements are signed either specifically or by their symbol.

Astronomy is one of the fields where the expression in sign language is both rigorous and poetic. The signs attributed to the various planets of the Solar System make use of their own characteristics: Mercury is very close to the Sun, Mars is red, Jupiter is represented by the famous red spot, and Saturn is characterised by its rings. The representation of the sky is easy since the majority of the constellations evoke animals or objects that already have a sign: bear (large or small), swan, fish, whale, etc. The mythological names respect the legendary traditions. Thus, Orion is a hunter, and the Centaur is a man mounted on a horse's body.

Scientific technology can also be expressed in sign language, including different types of computers (PC, laptops, etc.). In the same way, the fields of medicine and biology have a very complete and very technical vocabulary.

[3] The collaborators of the project are:

France

Dominique Proust, Astrophysicist, Paris Observatory

Daniel Abbou, deaf, teacher, pedagogue, co-producer and presenter of the weekly programme "The Eye and the Hand" on Channel 5

Nasro Chab, deaf, is responsible for LSF conferences at the Arts et Metiers Museum and at the Palais de la Decouverte

Yves Delaporte, hearer, ethnologist, emeritus research director at the CNRS

Carole Marion, deaf, professional artist, a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, teacher of LSF at the Institut Gustave Baguer at Asnieres

Blandine Proust, hearer, has studied at the French Academy of Sign Language

Spain

Fundacion CNSE Para la supresion de las Barreras de Comunicacion

Amelia Ortiz-Gil, Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia

USA

American Sign Language (ASL)

Constance Gartner, Wisconsin School for the Deaf

Christopher Rawlings, Wisconsin Educational Service Program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Italy

Nicoletta Lanciano, Sapienza Universita di Roma

Stefania Varano, Sapienza Universita di Roma

Dania Malerba, PhD student at Sapienza Universita di Roma

Japan

Yukie Fujita, Inagi City Hall

Akiko Hasegawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Ayana Hirose, Saitama Sakado School for the Deaf

Takateru Iizuka, Sea-horse Star Meeting for the Deaf

Haruki Kasuga, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Masami Kitamura, Tsukuba Barrier-free Learning Consortium

Iku Koyano, JTB

Shin Mineshige, Kyoto University

Shiomi Nemoto, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Katsuhiro Nishioka, TANSEISHA Co., Ltd.

Tomohiro Okada, SOKENDAI: The Graduate University for Advanced Studies

Hideo Shinohara, Saitama Prefectural Soka-higashi High School

Masaya Shinohara, Ishikawa Prefectural School for Students with Special Needs

Haruka Sudo

Noriko Takabatake, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Keiko Ueda, Japanese sign language interpreter

Kumiko Usuda-Sato, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Misa Wada, Japanese sign language interpreter

Lina Canas, IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach

Argentina

Lengua de Senas Argentina (LSA)

Miguel Angel Medrano, Federacion Nacional de Interpretes de Lengua de Senas Argentina

Luis Enrique Pinto Yohann, deaf, instructor of LSA, Miembro de la Asociacion de Sordos de Mendoza

Silvina Perez Alvarez, TeDA, CNEA-CONICET, UNSAM)

Beatriz Garcia, TeDA, CNEA-CONICET, UNSAM and National Tech University, Faculty Mendoza

Canada-Quebec

Langue des signes quebecoise (LSQ)

Pierre Chastenay, professor of didactics of science, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Sonia Dube, specialised trainer in bilingual education, Ecole Gadbois et Polyvalente Lucien-Page, Commission scolaire de Montreal

Laurence Gagnon, master's student in linguistics, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Michael Lelievre, teacher, Ecole Gadbois, Commission scolaire de Montreal

Anne-Marie Parisot, linguistics teacher, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Darren Saunders, PhD student in linguistics, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

UK-Scotland

Audrey Cameron, Science in BSL Glossary Project, Scottish Sensory Centre, University of Edinburgh

Gary Quinn, Science in BSL Glossary Project, Heriot-Watt University

Tania Johnston, ESO

Other Countries

* From the website of the project Spread the Sign , we retrieved the available signs for: English-UK, English-India, Bulgarian, Croatian, Chinese, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, German-Austria, German-Germany, Greek, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese-Portugal, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian-Russia, Russian-Belarus, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

In preparation:

Indonesia

Yudhiakto Pramudya, Universitas Ahmad Dahlan Yogyakart

More information

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is an international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 10 000 professional astronomers from almost 100 countries. Its mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

The IAU Working Group for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion (IAU Division C, commission C1 WG3) seeks to build new strategies, tools and resources in Astronomy that will facilitate the access to Astronomical resources and careers for people with special intellectual or physical needs, or to those who might be excluded for the particular race or gender.

Links

C1-WG for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion - http://sion.frm.utn.edu.ar/iau-inclusion/

IAU-Commission 1, Education and Development of Astronomy - http://sion.frm.utn.edu.ar/iaucc1/

IAU - https://www.iau.org/

Contacts

Dominique Proust

Paris Meudon ObservatoryFrance

Email: dominique.proust@obspm.fr

Beatriz Garcia

ITeDA (CNEA, CONICET, UNSAM)Argentina

Email: beatriz.garcia@iteda.cnea.gov.ar

Amelia Ortiz-Gil

Universidad de ValenciaSpain

Email: amelia.ortiz@uv.es

Lars Lindberg Christensen

IAU Press Officer

Garching bei Munchen, Germany

Tel: 49-89-320-06-761

Cell: 49-173-38-72-621

Email: lars@eso.org
Significant effort has gone into engineering the long-sought magnetic monopoles -- now scientists have found them in an unexpected place, and revealed that they have been around for a long time

The startling similarity between the physical laws describing electric phenomena and those describing magnetic phenomena has been known since the 19th century. However, one piece that would make the two perfectly symmetric was missing: magnetic monopoles. While magnetic monopoles in the form of elementary particles remain elusive, there have been some recent successes in engineering objects that behave effectively like magnetic monopoles. Now, scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have shown that there is a much simpler way to observe such magnetic monopoles: they have demonstrated that superfluid helium droplets act as magnetic monopoles from the perspective of molecules that are immersed inside them. Such droplets have been studied for decades, but until now, this fascinating characteristic had gone entirely unnoticed.

When working with electric charge, it is easy to separate the positive and negative poles: the negatively charged electron represents a negative pole, the positively charged proton is the opposite (positive) pole, and each one is an individual particle that can be separated from the other. With magnets, it seemed that they always have two poles that are impossible to separate: cut a dipole magnet in half and you will end up with two dipole magnets, cut them again and you will just get even smaller dipole magnets, but you will not be able to separate the north from the south pole. Challenged by this puzzle, scientists put a great deal of effort into constructing systems that effectively act as magnetic monopoles--with success: certain crystal structures were made to behave like magnetic monopoles. But now, an interdisciplinary team comprising theoretical physicists and a mathematician have discovered that this phenomenon also occurs in molecular systems that do not need to be engineered for this purpose but which have been known of for a long time.

Nanometer-sized drops of superfluid helium with molecules immersed in them have been studied for several decades already, and it is one of the systems that Professor Mikhail Lemeshko and postdoc Enderalp Yakaboylu are particularly interested in. Previously, Professor Lemeshko proposed a new quasiparticle that drastically simplifies the mathematical description of such rotating molecules, and earlier this year he showed that this quasiparticle, the angulon, can explain observations that had been collected over 20 years. Enderalp Yakaboylu moreover used the angulon to predict previously unknown properties of these systems. The property in superfluid helium droplets that they now discovered, however, came unexpectedly--and only after they had exchanged ideas with mathematician Andreas Deuchert, who says: "It was a surprise to all of us to see this characteristic emerge in the equations." At a strongly interdisciplinary institute like IST Austria, such collaborations are not unusual, and interaction between research groups of different fields is fostered.

"In the other experiments they engineered a system to become a monopole. Here, it is the other way round," Enderalp Yakaboylu adds. "The system was well-known. People have been studying rotating molecules for a long time, and only after did we realize that the magnetic monopoles had been there the whole time. This is a completely different viewpoint."

According to the researchers, the discovery opens up new possibilities for studying magnetic monopoles. In particular, the appearance of magnetic monopole in superfluid helium droplets is very different from the other, previously studied, systems. "The difference is that we are dealing with a chemical solvent. Our magnetic monopoles form in a fluid rather than in a solid crystal, and you can use this system to study magnetic monopoles more easily," Professor Mikhail Lemeshko explains.

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IST Austria

The Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria) is a PhD granting research institution located in Klosterneuburg, 18 km from the center of Vienna, Austria. Inaugurated in 2009, the Institute is dedicated to basic research in the natural and mathematical sciences. IST Austria employs professors on a tenure-track system, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students. While dedicated to the principle of curiosity-driven research, the Institute owns the rights to all scientific discoveries and is committed to promote their use. The first president of IST Austria is Thomas A. Henzinger, a leading computer scientist and former professor at the University of California in Berkeley, USA, and the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. The graduate school of IST Austria offers fully-funded PhD positions to highly qualified candidates with a bachelor's or master's degree in biology, neuroscience, mathematics, computer science, physics, and related areas. See http://www.ist.ac.at

Source: "Emergence of Non-Abelian Magnetic Monopoles in a Quantum Impurity Problem"

E. Yakaboylu, A. Deuchert, and M. Lemeshko

Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 235301 - Published 6 December 2017

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.235301
Metastasis, the process in which a tumor spreads to other parts of the body, is responsible for 90% of deaths from tumors. It is the greatest challenge to a cancer patient's survival. Metastatic spread occurs in several steps, these include that tumor cells become mobile and cross into and out of blood vessels. How these steps are controlled is not yet fully understood, but provides avenues for treatment. In a new project, the lab of Daria Siekhaus, Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), will investigate the role of a novel protein in metastasis. The group previously identified a protein in the fruitfly Drosophila that could play a role in metastasis. In cooperation with two researchers at the Karl Landsteiner University for Health Sciences, they will seek to understand its role in mice and human tissue. This project is funded by the NO Forschung und Bildungsges.m.b.H. (NFB).

From flies to mice to patients

In previous research, Daria Siekhaus' group identified a transporter protein, called CG8602, which is needed for macrophages to invade tissues during the fruitfly's embryonic development. CG8602 appears to be necessary for a larger amount of T antigen to be present on the surface of the invading cell. Intriguingly, such an increase in T antigens on the cell surface has been observed in metastatic cancer cells, and antibodies that block T antigens can reduce metastasis. An ortholog, or gene with the same function that evolved from the same ancestral gene, is present in mammals. However, no studies have yet looked at the function of this ortholog, called MFSD1.

The NFB-funded project will examine what role MFSD1 plays during the initiation of metastasis in the mouse. Questions the researchers seek to examine include: Is MFSD1 involved in changes to proteins, such as their glycosylation or stability? And does this affect metastasis? To transfer the Siekhaus' lab knowledge in fruitfly research to the mouse model, a new postdoc joined the lab of Daria Siekhaus. Marko Roblek has extensive experience in studying cancer metastasis in mice. The NFB-funded project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Wiesholzer and Dr. Kitzwogerer at the Clinical Division for Internal Medicine, KLU University St Polten. This collaboration allows the researchers to test how findings in the mouse model are relevant for the clinic. The scientists will analyze surgically resected tumor tissue from colon cancer patients to determine whether disease prognosis, i.e. whether a patient develops metastases, can be correlated with how much and where MFSD1 is found in the tumor samples. This research can lay the ground work for understanding the basic biology of a novel vertebrate gene that is involved in regulating invasion and metastasis. In the long run, this could eventually lead to the development of a new therapeutic target or diagnostic biomarker for the clinic.

Grants by the NFB

The project is funded through the Life Science Call 2016 of the NO Forschung und Bildungsges.m.b.H. (NFB). The Life Science Calls serve to competitively fund basic research in the life sciences. The grants aim to strengthen research competence in Lower Austria, as well as the connections between research institutes located in Lower Austria.

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Researcher biographies

Professor Daria Siekhaus is an American who received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University's Medical School and joined IST Austria in 2012. She and her group seek to understand the migration of cells, in particular how they move within the complicated environment of an organism and penetrate through barriers that lie in their way. Daria Siekhaus received an FWF Standalone Grant in 2016 and a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant in 2013. Postdoc Marko Roblek joined the group of Daria Siekhaus this year. He is Slovenian and came to the University of Vienna to get his Master's degree in Molecular Biology in the Max F. Perutz Laboratories. He obtained his PhD in the field of Cancer Biology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Dr. Martin Wiesholzer graduated from the medical school of the University of Vienna. He received his training in Internal Medicine, Hematooncology and Nephrology at the General Hospital of Vienna and the University hospital of St. Polten. In 2015 he became the head of the Clinic I for Internal Medicine, University hospital St. Polten. He teaches at the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences.

Dr. Melitta Kitzwogerer who graduated as a doctor of medicine from the University of Vienna in 1989, has been working as a pathologist since 1991 at the Department of Clinical Pathology at the University hospital of St. Polten. Being in charge of the tumor board she is continually dealing with neoplastic diseases.

IST Austria

The Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria) is a PhD granting research institution located in Klosterneuburg, 18 km from the center of Vienna, Austria. Inaugurated in 2009, the Institute is dedicated to basic research in the natural and mathematical sciences. IST Austria employs professors on a tenure-track system, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students. While dedicated to the principle of curiosity-driven research, the Institute owns the rights to all scientific discoveries and is committed to promote their use. The first president of IST Austria is Thomas A. Henzinger, a leading computer scientist and former professor at the University of California in Berkeley, USA, and the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. The graduate school of IST Austria offers fully-funded PhD positions to highly qualified candidates with a bachelor's or master's degree in biology, neuroscience, mathematics, computer science, physics, and related areas. See http://www.ist.ac.at
Many feared prolonged suffering at the end of their lives

Research has shown that better communication around assisted dying is needed between clinician and patients diagnosed with Huntington's Disease.

This is the first study in the UK (where assisted dying is illegal) into the attitudes of people with the condition, which usually leads to dementia and inability to coordinate movement.

Because it is inherited, people with a diagnosis will often have witnessed the suffering of a parent.

Assisted dying is legal in Holland where several Huntington's patients annually chose to die between 2007 and 2011.

Dr Jane Simpson of Lancaster University said: "Our findings suggest that people with the Huntington gene would welcome talking about assisted death but feel they are not able to do so."

Participants in the study spoke about the need for a balancing act between feeling supported and feeling distressed by conversations about dying.

Anna (pseudonym) said: "It is a really difficult balance. And I know that's the same with family and friends as well as medical professionals."

Many of them feared prolonged suffering at the end of their lives and saw assisted dying as an act of compassion towards their families.

They believed they were best placed to make such decisions about their own deaths provided they had the capacity.

Mary said: "If someone is sound of mind... and people can understand that person's wishes, I think quite strongly that it should be their right. "

Potential loss of role, personality and meaning were considered the most disruptive aspects of the disease which could lead to a decision in favour of assisted dying.

Dr Simpson said: "Fears for the loss of self, as well as fear for pain or symptom acceleration, seem to be main drivers for wanting the option of assisted dying to be available."

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It is well known that cancer incidence is increasing worldwide, with pockets of human populations and geographical locations seemingly at higher risk than others.

Researcher Konstantinos Voskarides, Ph.D., of the Univesity of Cyrpus' Medical School, noted that populations living in very low temperatures, like in Denmark and Norway, had among the highest incidences of cancer in the world.

Now, in a new paper in the advanced online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, he has advanced a new hypothesis: there is an evolutionary relationship that exists between adaptation at extreme environmental conditions -- like cold and high altitude -- and increased cancer risk in humans.

"The findings of this study provide evidence that genetic variants found to be beneficial in extreme environments, can also predispose for cancer," said Voskarides. "Cell resistance at low temperatures and at high altitude probably increases the probability for malignancy. This effect hardly could be filtered out by natural selection since most cancers appear later on in age after most people have their children."

Voskarides focused on the effect of low temperatures, either within Arctic/Scandinavian climates or high altitudes. Voskarides' analyses focused on the relationship between cancer risk and local average annual temperatures. He concluded that the extremely cold environment contributed to the cancer risk.

To do so, Voskarides carefully examined the most accurate and reliable data of worldwide cancer incidence (the GLOBOCAN-2012 database permits a variety of incidence/prevalence analysis per country or per cancer type , as well as sifting through genetic clues among 247 different cancer genome-wide association studies. Additionally, he probed the available literature bibliographic cancer incidence and genetic data for human populations living at extreme cold and extreme high-altitudes.

A striking pattern began to emerge, with the highest incidence of certain cancers linked to those populations living in the coldest environments. Additionally, analysis of 186 human populations showed a great linearity of high cancer incidence with the lower the environmental temperature.

"These data show that these populations exhibit extremely high cancer incidence, especially for lung, breast and colorectal cancer," said Voskarides.

The genetic evidence was also clear and highly significant. Genes that are under selection to populations in order to survive under extreme environmental conditions, also predispose for cancer.

Among the highest cancer associations with genes under selection is colorectal cancer for Natives Americans and Siberian Eskimos, esophageal cancer and lung cancer for Siberian Eskimos, leukemia for Oromi (a high-altitude population in Ethiopia) and a variety of cancers for high-altitude dwelling Andeans-Tibetans.

"Evidence was found that cancer rates have been increased in those populations through natural selection procedures," said Voskarides. "This is the first study that provides evidence that high cancer risk may be a result of evolutionary adaptation in certain environmental conditions."

Another finding of this study is that natural selection has favored especially tumor suppressor genes in those populations instead of oncogenes. This is in accordance with previous studies that showed that mutations in p53 (the most frequently mutated gene in cancers) help animals to survive at very high altitude.

"It seems that the populations segregated under the concept of extreme environment - extreme cancer risk," said Voskarides.

For scientists pursuing the confluence of the environment and genetic on cancer risk, the new study will open a new avenue for exploring some of the key adaptive forces that could be driving cancer epidemiology.

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A new method of harvesting stem cells for bone marrow transplantation - developed by a team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute - appears to accomplish two goals: making the donation process more convenient and less unpleasant for donors and providing cells that are superior to those acquired by current protocols. Results of the team's studies in animal models and humans will appear in the Jan. 11 issue of Cell and are being published online today

"Our new method of harvesting stem cells requires only a single injection and mobilizes the cells needed in 15 minutes; so in the time it takes to boil an egg, we are able to acquire the number of stem cells produced by the current standard five-day protocol," says Jonathan Hoggatt, PhD, of the MGH Cancer Center)and Center for Transplantation Sciences , lead author of the Cell paper. "This means less pain, time off work and lifestyle disruption for the donor; more convenience for the clinical staff, and more predictability for the harvesting procedure."

Currently, the most common way of harvesting hematopoietic (blood system) stem cells requires donors to receive daily injections of a drug called G-CSF, which induces stem cells to pass from the bone marrow into the circulation. After five days of injections - which can produce adverse effects ranging from bone pain, to nausea and vomiting, to enlargement or rupture of the spleen - the stem cells are collected through the bone marrow donation process of apheresis, which takes four to five hours. Sometimes more than one apheresis is required to collect enough stem cells, particularly when patients with conditions like multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are donating their own cells.

Hoggatt and colleagues at MGH and other institutions have investigated ways to enhance stem cell donation for several years. In a previous collaboration with Louis Pelus, PhD, of Indiana University School of Medicine , senior author of the current study, they found that adding NSAID drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen could double the effectiveness of the standard collection protocol. But since that approach still relied on multiple injections of G-CSF, the team determined that truly significant improvement to stem cell donation required eliminating the need for G-CSF.

In other previous work, Pelus's team had found that a protein called GRO (growth regulated oncogene)-beta induced rapid movement of stem cells from the marrow into the blood in animal models. Initial experiments by the current study's team revealed that GRO-beta injections were safe and well tolerated in human volunteers but had only a modest effect in mobilizing stem cells. As a result, they tried combining administration of GRO-beta with AMD3100, a drug that is already approved to increase stem cell mobilization in combination with G-CSF, and found that simultaneous administration of both drugs rapidly produced a quantity of cells equal to that provided by the five-day G-CSF protocol.

In addition to determining the mechanisms by which combined administration of GRO-beta and AMD3100 produced enough stem cells so quickly, the team found that transplantation with these cells led to faster reconstitution of bone marrow and recovery of immune cell populations in mouse models. The stem cells produced by this procedure also show patterns of gene expression similar to those of fetal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which are located in the liver, rather than the bone marrow.

"These highly engraftable hematopoietic stem cells produced by our new strategy are essentially the A+ students of bone marrow stem cells," says Hoggatt. "Finding that they express genes similar to those of fetal liver HSCs, the blood-producing cells you have before birth, suggests that they will be very good at moving into an empty bone marrow space and rapidly dividing to fill the marrow and produce blood. Now we need to test the combination in a clinical trial to confirm its safety and effectiveness in humans."

A principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Hoggatt adds that these new, highly engraftable HSCs and the protocol that generated them represent a valuable new scientific tool that could lead to ways of engineering cells that are even better at engrafting and to methods of expanding stem cells in the laboratory rather than within the bodies of donors.

"This is an exciting time in bone marrow transplantation, as the number of diseases that can be treated or possibly even cured is increasing," he says. "With new gene therapy strategies being developed for diseases like sickle cell anemia, beta thalassemia and severe combined immunodeficiency - the 'bubble boy disease' - having enough high-quality, gene-altered cells can be a key bottleneck. Our ability to acquire highly engraftable HSCs with the GRO-beta and AMD3100 combination should significantly improve and expand the availability of those treatments."

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Hoggatt and Pelus are co-corresponding authors of the Cell paper, as is David Scadden, MD, of the MGH Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Additional co-authors are Bin-Kuan Chou, PhD, and Shruti Datari, MGH Center for Transplantation Sciences; Peter Kharchenko, PhD, Amir Schajnovitz, PhD, Ninib Baryawno, PhD, and Francois E. Mercier, MD, CM, MGH Center for Regenerative Medicine; Tiffany Tate, Harvard Stem Cell Institute; Pratibha Singh, PhD, Seiji Fukuda, MD, PhD, and Liqiong Liu, MD, PhD, Indiana University School of Medicine; Joseph Boyer, GlaxoSmithKline; and Jason Gardner, DPhil, MA, and Dwight Morrow, Magenta Therapeutics.

Support for this study includes National Institutes of Health grants R00 HL119559, R01 HL069669, R01 HL096305 and R01 HL131768 and support from GlaxoSmithKline and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. A patent application covering intellectual property described in this paper has been filed by Harvard Office of Technology Development, and Magenta Therapeutics of Cambridge, co-founded by Hoggatt and Scadden, is exploring further clinical development.

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with an annual research budget of more than $900 million and major research centers in HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, genomic medicine, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, photomedicine and transplantation biology. The MGH topped the 2015 Nature Index list of health care organizations publishing in leading scientific journals and earned the prestigious 2015 Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service. In August 2017 the MGH was once again named to the Honor Roll in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
Technological advances and multidisciplinary research teams are reshaping our understanding of when and how humans left Africa -- and who they met along the way

Most people are now familiar with the traditional "Out of Africa" model: modern humans evolved in Africa and then dispersed across Asia and reached Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago. However, technological advances in DNA analysis and other fossil identification techniques, as well as an emphasis on multidisciplinary research, are revising this story. Recent discoveries show that humans left Africa multiple times prior to 60,000 years ago, and that they interbred with other hominins in many locations across Eurasia.

A review of recent research on dispersals by early modern humans from Africa to Asia by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa confirms that the traditional view of a single dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa around 60,000 years ago can no longer be seen as the full story. The analysis, published in the journal Science, reviews the plethora of new discoveries being reported from Asia over the past decade, which were made possible by technological advances and interdisciplinary collaborations, and shows that Homo sapiens reached distant parts of the Asian continent, as well as Near Oceania, much earlier than previously thought. Additionally, evidence that modern humans interbred with other hominins already present in Asia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, complicates the evolutionary history of our species.

New model: Multiple dispersals of modern humans out of Africa, beginning as early as 120,000 years ago

The authors brought together findings from multiple recent studies to refine the picture of human dispersals out of Africa and into Asia. While scientists once thought that humans first left Africa in a single wave of migration about 60,000 years ago, recent studies have identified modern human fossils in far reaches of Asia that are potentially much older. For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Additional finds indicate that modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Australia prior to 60,000 years ago.

However, other recent studies do confirm that all present-day non-African populations branched off from a single ancestral population in Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. This could indicate that there were multiple, smaller dispersals of humans out of Africa beginning as early as 120,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal 60,000 years ago. While the recent dispersal contributed the bulk of the genetic make-up of present-day non-Africans, the earlier dispersals are still evident.

"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations. A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter," explains Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Multiple interbreeding events

Recent genetic research has resolved the question of whether or not modern humans interbred with other ancient hominins - they definitely did. Modern humans interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with our recently-discovered relatives the Denisovans, as well as a currently unidentified population of pre-modern hominins. One estimate is that all present-day non-Africans have 1-4% Neanderthal heritage, while another group has estimated that modern Melanesians have an average of 5% Denisovan heritage. In all, it is now clear that modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and perhaps other hominin groups likely overlapped in time and space in Asia, and they certainly had many instances of interaction.

The increasing evidence of interactions suggests that the spread of material culture is also more complicated than previously thought. "Indeed, what we are seeing in the behavioral record is that the spread of so-called modern human behaviors did not occur in a simple time-transgressive process from west to east. Rather, ecological variation needs to be considered in concert with behavioral variation between the different hominin populations present in Asia during the Late Pleistocene," explains Christopher Bae of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

In light of these new discoveries, our understanding of human movements across the Old World has become much more complex, and there are still many questions left open. The authors argue for the development of more complicated models of human dispersals and for conducting new research in the many areas of Asia where none has been done to date. Additionally, it will be important to review materials collected prior to the development of modern analytic methods, to see what more can now be learned from them. "Fortunately," states Katerina Douka, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, "there have been an increasing number of multidisciplinary research programs launched in Asia over the past few decades. The information that is being reported is helping to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary records."

"It is an exciting time to be involved with interdisciplinary research projects across Asia," adds Bae.

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Hamilton, ON (December 6, 2017) - The type of needle used during a lumbar puncture makes a significant difference in the subsequent occurrence of headache, nerve irritation and hearing disturbance in patients, according to a study by Hamilton medical researchers.

As well, they found the pencil-point atraumatic needle with the better tip design has been available for about 70 years, but few physicians have been using it because they have not been aware of its benefits over the conventional bevelled traumatic needles.

The implications on clinical care are huge, says Dr. Saleh Almenawer, the senior author of the study and a neurosurgeon at Hamilton Health Sciences who worked with a team of researchers at McMaster University.

"There is a more than 50 per cent reduction in the occurrence of headaches with the atraumatic needles, and also more than a 50 per cent reduction in patient readmissions and return to emergency rooms for narcotics or blood patches."

A lumbar puncture, commonly known as a spinal tap, is a regular medical procedure used to diagnose and to treat disease. Post-dural puncture headaches appear in about 35 per cent of patients, sometimes causing debilitating pain that can lead to a return to hospital for painkillers or more invasive treatment.

The study published today in The Lancet says using atraumatic needles rather than conventional traumatic needles for lumbar punctures is just as effective and results in a significant decrease in complications such as the headaches.

"The two needles differ in how they penetrate the thick membrane, called the dura, surrounding the nerves," said Almenawer.

He explained that the sharp edges of the tip of a conventional needle cuts its way through, while the tip of an atraumatic needle causes the tissue to dilate and contract around it. The tiny hole left in the dura by the atraumatic needle makes it significantly more difficult for cerebrospinal fluid to leak through, thus diminishing the frequency of headaches, readmissions and treatment.

The study pooled data from 110 clinical trials, with more than 30,000 participants in 29 countries across the past 28 years.

Atraumatic needles have been around for decades, but their use remains significantly limited, according to the researchers. They also found the atraumatic needles cost the same or up to three times as much as the more conventional type.

"Several surveys from around the world showed that only a fraction of physicians know atraumatic needles exist, and among those even a smaller portion use the atraumatic type," said Almenawer.

"Lumbar puncture is a standard procedure, with thousands done every day around the globe by physicians of many specialties. Unfortunately, conventional needles created in 1890 are still the default in most hospitals around the world. This study provides convincing high-quality evidence for people to change to the atraumatic needles for a better patient care."

An accompanying commentary on the research in The Lancet says the study points out "the practice needs to change".

"Clinicians should start using atraumatic needles for lumbar punctures. We need to change practice," said Diederik van de Beek and Matthijs Brouwer, two neurology professors of the University of Amsterdam.

###

There was no external funding for the study.

Editors: A photo of Dr. Saleh Almenawer and his research team is attached. Alex Koziarz, Saleh Almenawer, Sheila Singh and Siddharth Nath, left to right, led a study on lumbar puncture needles published in The Lancet. Photo courtesy McMaster University

Also is attached is a photo of the two needles used in lumbar puncture: Left: Conventional. Right: Atraumatic. Photo courtesy McMaster University

The post embargo link to the paper is: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32451-0/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr

For more information:

Veronica McGuire

Media Relations

Faculty of Health Sciences

McMaster University

vmcguir@mcmaster.ca

905-525-9140, ext. 22169
NASA has tapped the University of Maryland to lead a new consortium focused on putting satellite data to use to enhance food security and agriculture around the world.

The Earth Observations for Food Security and Agriculture Consortium (EOFSAC) will combine the expertise of more than 40 partners to advance the use of Earth observations in informing decisions that affect the global food supply.

Food security is the challenge, particularly in developing countries, of ensuring reliable access to affordable and healthy food. NASA satellite data has long been used to study crop conditions globally, but this new office represents a more targeted effort to enhance the utility of satellite data to people around the world.

The consortium will partner with the Food Security Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and will be led by Inbal Becker-Reshef, of the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences, College Park.

"NASA's observations of Earth's complex natural environment are critical to understanding the global food system. Through this partnership NASA is interested in how uses of remote sensing data can enhance organizations' planning and operations, and support broader food security assessments, commodity pricing, risk assessments, and policy analysis," said Christa Peters-Lidard, deputy director for hydrosphere, biosphere and geophysics in the Earth Sciences Division at Goddard.

The consortium's core objectives are to enhance the use of Earth observations by key decision and policymakers, which can:

increase food security and resilience

reduce food price volatility and vulnerability

improve awareness and understanding of the applications of NASA's and other satellite data products by users from a wide range of sectors.

"Events such as food price spikes and food shortages related to severe weather illustrate the risks associated with knowledge gaps around food production and supply," said Becker-Reshef, associate research professor and co-lead of the university's Center for Global Agricultural Monitoring Research. "Satellite data can help identify areas vulnerable to things like drought, flooding and fire; as well as variability in soil, crop conditions, and yield status. The goal of this new consortium is to get this data into the hands of more people making decisions about agriculture and food production."

NASA awarded the EOFSAC a total of $14.5 million over a five-year period through its Research Opportunities in Earth and Space Science grant program. The consortium aligns with NASA's priority to make its Earth observations freely and openly available to those seeking solutions to important global issues such as food security, changing freshwater availability and human health.

This innovative effort will bring together top researchers, humanitarian aid organizations, economists, policymakers, agribusiness, defense and intelligence specialists, high-tech companies, financial experts and other disciplines and sectors. Collaborators include other U.S. institutions such as University of California Santa Barbara, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, Texas A&M University, University of Vermont, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture; and a range of international organizations, United Nations organizations and ministries in countries like Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Argentina and Canada.

"This innovative program will harness expertise from around the world to develop new solutions to challenges facing the global food supply," said Chris Justice, chair of the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences and scientific lead for the consortium. "Providing decision-makers with access to timely, objective, accurate and actionable information can strengthen food security, market stability and human livelihoods."

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For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. These observations are openly available to those seeking solutions to important global issues such as changing freshwater availability, food security and human health.

Learn more:

eofsac.org

https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/610/applied-sciences/nasa_food_security_initiative.html
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- What if you could look into the brains of potential drug abusers and see what messages would be most likely to persuade them to "just say no?"

That's the ultimate goal of researchers whose new study scanned the brains of people while they watched anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs).

The results provided new insights into how people at risk of drug use process anti-drug messages - and which messages they find most persuasive, said Richard Huskey, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University.

"It is very difficult to ask potential drug users which anti-drug PSAs work best. They are generally very defensive and are apt to say that none of the messages is convincing," Huskey said.

"Even though they often say that none of the anti-drug messages are effective, their brains tell a different story."

Huskey conducted the study with J. Michael Mangus and Rene Weber, colleagues from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his doctoral degree, and Benjamin Turner of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

The study appears in the December 2017 issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

For the study, 28 students at UCSB watched 32 real 30-second anti-drug PSAs while in an fMRI scanner. Half were at high risk of drug use and half were at low risk. Drug use risk was assessed with a validated self-report measure that the students had completed earlier.

Later, the participants rated each PSA on how strong its arguments against drug use were and on "perceived message sensation value" - how exciting the video was and how much it aroused the emotions and senses.

In analyzing the fMRI scans, the researchers looked specifically at connectivity patterns between different parts of the brain while the anti-drug messages played.

The researchers then took the results from these 28 fMRI participants and used them to predict how two large samples of people who weren't scanned, but who did watch the same 32 PSAs, would rate the effectiveness of the messages. One group was 599 college students and the other was a nationally representative sample of 601 adolescents in the United States. These larger groups also included people who were at high risk for drug use and low risk.

Results showed that the self-report data alone from the high-risk fMRI participants couldn't accurately predict if the larger groups of high-risk participants would say that any individual PSA was effective.

That's not surprising, Huskey said, since drug users often either misidentify which messages are most effective or say that all the messages were equally ineffective.

But when the researchers combined the self-report data from the high-risk fMRI participants with their brain scan data, they could do a much better job at predicting which PSAs the larger groups of at-risk participants would find persuasive.

Specifically, they found that fMRI-measured connectivity between two parts of the brain - the middle frontal gyrus and the superior parietal lobe - significantly improved the accuracy in predicting which PSAs were most effective with this at-risk group.

But the fMRI scans among low-risk subjects didn't help improve predictions of which videos participants would find most effective.

"That's because low-risk subjects are accurately telling us which messages are most effective with them," Huskey said.

"We don't need fancy technology to figure out which messages work best for people who are at low risk - we can just ask them."

This study alone can't say exactly which messages will work with all people at risk of abusing drugs, Huskey said. In fact, the results suggest that there may be different types of drug users who will respond to different types of messages.

The important point is that "we found neural evidence that people at risk for drug use are processing these anti-drug messages differently than other viewers," he said.

"Some of the follow-up work we're doing is to better understand the various dimensions that put people at risk of using drugs so we can tailor messages in a more targeted way. This is just the first step in figuring out how to design messages that will be effective in discouraging drug use in these high-risk people."

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Contact:

Richard Huskey

Huskey.29@osu.edu
In the largest, most rigorous study of its kind, acupuncture was found to significantly reduce the debilitating joint pain experienced by tens of thousands of women each year while being treated for early stage breast cancer, according to SWOG research results to be announced at a December 7 press conference at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Investigators from SWOG, the global cancer clinical trials network funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), conducted a randomized, blinded, multicenter trial, known as S1200, to test whether acupuncture is effective in alleviating pain caused by aromatase inhibitors, a common treatment for hormone sensitive breast cancers.

Treating this pain effectively, without the use of opioids or other drugs, is a top cancer research priority. Tens of thousands of women each year are treated with aromatase inhibitors (AIs), pills that stop the production of estrogen and essentially starve hormone receptor-positive breast cancer cells. Some women are advised to take these pills daily for up to 10 years. But as a side effect of this therapy, many women - as many as 50 percent - experience joint pain and stiffness. This affects knees, hips, hands, and wrists, and makes it difficult for women to walk, sit, climb stairs, and perform simple tasks like typing or driving.

"Some of my patients have difficulty getting out of a chair," said Dr. Dawn Hershman, the lead researcher of the study and a SWOG vice chair. "As a result, with no good treatment options for their pain and stiffness, many women stop their cancer treatment. This is probably the most commonly cited reason breast cancer patients stop taking AI medication. So we need a solution - one that doesn't include opioids or drugs that can be addictive or have serious side effects. We want women to continue their cancer treatment and have a good quality of life."

SWOG researchers for years have chased a way to relieve AI pain - known as AI-Associated Musculoskeletal Syndrome (AIMSS). At last year's San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Dr. N. Lynn Henry, a SWOG investigator from Huntsman Cancer Institute and co-chair of SWOG's Symptom Control and Quality of Life committee, presented findings that showed that the drug duloxetine, typically used to treat depression and anxiety, may effectively treat AIMSS.

But many women don't want to take pills to relieve symptoms caused by other pills, according to Hershman, leader of the Breast Cancer Program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia. In a single-center study at Columbia, acupuncture showed promise. Hershman wanted to put it to the test in a larger, more rigorous study. Hershman and her team enrolled a total of 226 patients from 11 cancer centers nationwide and randomly assigned them to one of three arms. One group received true acupuncture. Another received sham acupuncture, a method of superficially inserting needles in different, non-therapeutic locations on the body. Finally, another group received no treatment at all.

Patients got twice-weekly treatments for six weeks, then a weekly maintenance treatment for another six weeks. Patients reported on their pain before, during, and after treatment using a variety of methods. The primary endpoint - or key indicator for the trial - was the patient's level of worst pain using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-WP), a patient-reported measure, at the end of the first six weeks of treatment.

Results showed that, on average, patients experienced less pain on the acupuncture arm compared with the sham and treatment-free arms. Patients experienced relief for 24 weeks.

"This work strongly shows that true acupuncture results in better outcomes for women," said Dr. Katherine Crew, a SWOG executive officer, director of the Clinical Breast Cancer Prevention Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia and a co-investigator on the study team. "I expect this work to influence medical practice, as well as insurers' willingness to reimburse for acupuncture during AI treatment."

Hershman will present the study findings at a press conference to be held at 7:30 am CT on December 7 at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, one of the world's most prestigious breast cancer research meetings, which last year attracted 7,470 registrants from 93 countries. The Symposium is sponsored by the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at UT Health Science Center San Antonio, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and Baylor College of Medicine.

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Hershman's work was supported in part by NIH grants R01AT006376, NIH/NCI/DCP grant UG1CA189974 and legacy grant U10CA37429.

Along with Drs. Hershman and Crew, the S1200 team includes: Joseph Unger, Ph.D, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC); Heather Greenlee, N.D., Ph.D., of FHCRC; Jillian Capodice, M.S., L.A.C. of Mount Sinai Hospital; Danika Lew, M.A., of FHCRC; Amy Darke, M.S. of FHCRC; Alice Kengla, M.D. of Kaiser Permanente Walnut Creek Medical Center; Marianne Melnik, M.D., of Spectrum Health Medical Group; Carla Jorgensen, M.D., of NCORP of the Carolinas; William Kreisle, M.D., of St. Luke's Mountain States Tumor Institute; Lori Minasian, M.D., of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Prevention; Michael Fisch, M.D., of AIM Specialty Health; and N. Lynn Henry, M.D., of Huntsman Cancer Institute.

SWOG is a global network of researchers that design and conduct cancer clinical trials, and, as part of the Nation Cancer Institute's National Clinical Trials Network, is a major part of the cancer research infrastructure in the U.S. and the world. The group's goal is to change medical practice so it improves the lives of people with cancer. Founded in 1956, SWOG's over 1,300 trials have led to the approval of 14 cancer drugs, changed the standard of cancer care more than 100 times, and saved more than 3 million years of human life. Learn more at swog.org
Researchers from Stanford and Duke University examined recent studies on the causes of gun violence in the United States in an effort to find consensus in a body of research that often covers different states or different time periods, making conclusions difficult to draw.

The consensus of recent research shows that right-to-carry laws are linked with higher violent crime rates, according to a new Science paper co-authored by a Stanford professor.

The analysis by John Donohue, a professor of law at Stanford, and Philip J. Cook at Duke University published Dec. 7 in Science and reports some emerging consensus in the studies. Among the findings was that lifting restrictions on concealed carry guns increases violent crime and that laws restricting gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence reduced killings of female domestic partners.

The authors hope their work can help guide policy-makers who are debating measures to reduce gun violence.

The level of gun violence in the United States places it as an outlier among developed countries. In 2015, over 36,000 people died from gunfire, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with roughly two-thirds of those deaths being classified as suicide. America's gun-murder rate is 25 times that of the other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high. Despite these numbers, the last extensive analysis of research into the origins of gun violence, conducted in 2004, was inconclusive.

"Fortunately, the flow of high-quality research has increased in recent years," the experts wrote in the paper. "With journals in a variety of disciplines increasingly receptive to original research on gun violence and regulation, there has been a surge of publication in this area after a long plateau."

Concealed carry increases violent crime

In the mid-1970s, all but five states had banned or severely limited concealed carry of firearms. But by 2014 all states except eight passed right-to-carry laws, which eased those restrictions. Understanding how that change affected crime has been challenging, however, because of the fluctuating nature of crime.

"If a gun regulation is most likely to be enacted in jurisdictions that have recently experienced a surge in gun violence and if that surge is temporary, the result will be that implementation of the new measure is followed by a drop in crime, giving the false appearance that it was effective," the researchers wrote.

During the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, right-to-carry laws were adopted more often in states that had less of a crack problem. This means that any analysis of right-to-carry laws during that period will show those laws as beneficial unless researchers can adequately control for the influence of crack cocaine, which has proved to be quite difficult, Donohue said.

"This problem has plagued every panel data analysis of RTC (right-to-carry) laws, except for those that started after the impact of crack had fully dissipated by the late 1990s and early 2000s," the researchers wrote.

By analyzing studies from after that time period as well as recent research relying on new statistical techniques for assessing the impact of legal changes, the pair found an emerging consensus that deregulating concealed carry restrictions increases violent crime. This finding comes out of recent research published by Donohue and his team in June, as well as research from Duke and the University of Pennsylvania and from Boston University.

"The dilemma for science is that you're always working with imperfect data and imperfect statistical models," Donohue said. "What's appealing about the current growing body of evidence on right-to-carry laws is that different researchers using different methodologies and different data sets are coming to similar conclusions ... We are all coalescing around the same message, and that's the best that science can do: Look at the imperfect data in different ways and see if a consistent story emerges."

Domestic violence, harsher sentencing

The researchers also analyzed studies exploring the effects of an amendment of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the add-on sentencing laws adopted by a number of states during the 1970s and 1980s, which added prison time to crimes committed with a gun rather than a less lethal weapon.

They found that the 1996 Gun Control Act amendment that prevented people with a misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence from owning guns reduced killings of female intimate partners. Gun murders for that group were reduced by 17 percent.

Another research study analyzing a nearly 40-year time interval shows that harsher sentencing for crimes that involved firearms had the greatest effect on reducing aggravated robberies, decreasing them by 5 percent.

Challenges of measuring reform

Congress is currently considering a bill that would expand the ability of Americans to carry concealed weapons across state lines. The House of Representatives passed the measure Wednesday, and it is now headed to the Senate for approval.

"If Congress moves on that proposal, suddenly everybody from, say, Louisiana or Arizona can come to California and start carrying concealed guns, which is quite a violation of the traditional notion of a state's right to decide who carries weapons within its borders," Donohue said. "The November 2016 referendum results showed that the very large majority of Californians wanted more gun control. Yet we may be in a position where Congress is undermining the desire of California voters on an issue that is ordinarily left up to local control."

The Supreme Court is also likely to consider one of several cases involving conceal carry rights in the future because of conflicting rulings from intermediate courts of appeal, Donohue said.

"Right now, more than ever, it seems pretty important for the Supreme Court justices to know what the best research says about right-to-carry laws," Donohue said.

Despite advances in statistics that helped researchers tease out findings in the latest gun violence research, Donohue said that statistical research will never yield perfect answers.

"These are complicated issues," Donohue said. "Nothing in statistics is 100 percent certain. Science advances our knowledge when sufficient evidence is amassed that points in a certain direction."

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Increased rates of important health screenings and access to GPs amongst people with an intellectual disability have been highlighted in a new report launched this week. These health gains, however, are potentially being offset by poorly managed chronic health problems and emerging social isolation issues amongst the same population. The report was conducted by The Intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (IDS-TILDA) by academics from Trinity College Dublin.

The IDS-TILDA Wave 3 Report, entitled Health, Wellbeing and Social Inclusion: Ageing with an Intellectual Disability in Ireland, looked at how the ageing process is affecting the physical and mental health of those aged 40 years and over with an intellectual disability in Ireland.

The report marks 10 years since the inception of IDS-TILDA, which is the first study of its kind in Europe and the only one in the world with the ability to compare the ageing of people with intellectual disability directly with the general ageing population. The launch of the report marked the United Nations' International Day of Disabled Persons (December 3rd).

Physical and mental health:

The report found that almost half of participants rated their health as excellent/very good and over three-quarters of participants were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with life. As well as continued high levels of access to GPs and other health care professionals, uptake of screenings for dementia, prostate cancer, cholesterol, and breast cancer now match or, in some cases, exceed that of the general population.

However, significant challenges highlighted in this report include increased levels of chronic conditions that are not always being well managed. Overall, 28.3% of participants reported that they had no teeth at all, and 67.8% of participants with total tooth loss did not receive prosthetic dentures. This compares to only 5.3% of the general population who did not receive dentures. Chronic constipation rose from 17% in Wave 1 to 43% in Wave 3, placing people with an intellectual disability at increasing risk for pain, delirium, high levels of laxative use, and even death. Dementia continues to be very high for people with Down syndrome. Despite this, 47% of those with Down syndrome and without a diagnosis of dementia had never had any dementia assessment. This is of significant concern as the mean age of onset of dementia for people with Down syndrome within IDS-TILDA is 52 years of age.

Lead author and principal investigator for the Irish Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (IDS-TILDA), Professor Mary McCarron said: "People with an intellectual disability deserve the same attention as the rest of the population when it comes to how we plan, deliver and evaluate services. It's heartening to see the increased uptake of some screenings. However, significant differences in the prevalence of such chronic health conditions between the general population and people with an intellectual disability highlights the need for targeted health intervention programmes for oral health, bowel health, brain health, medication management and preventative care."

Social connectedness:

The report also highlighted serious social isolation issues faced by people with an intellectual disability that run contrary to the ideas underpinning the decongregration policy introduced by Government six years ago. Key issues included a decrease in the rate of individuals moving to community-based settings (11.4 % in Wave 3 compared to 26.7% at Wave 2) and increased numbers of older people with an intellectual disability living further away from family compared to Wave 2.

The report also highlighted a continued reliance of older people with an intellectual disability on siblings and their families. Respondents continued to have the highest rates of frequent contacts with their mothers and fathers, but fewer still had living parents and this trend will inevitably continue as they age. A concern, according to the report authors, is that many older people with an intellectual disability lose the people with whom they have their most frequent social contacts, and this may have knock-on effects on their social participation more broadly and overall quality of life, while also raising questions about long-term living arrangements.

The report also found that a large majority of those living in institutional settings reported co-resident friends but fewer than half had any non-resident friends. This compares to a large majority of respondents living independently or with family who reported friendships outside their home. In addition, while the rate of participating in social and leisure activities had increased from Wave 1, the proportion of respondents who did these activities in their local community actually decreased. The report found little change in the use of technology and social media to enhance the social and community participation of older people with intellectual disability.

Professor McCarron continued: "We are all working hard to increase community-based moves and to improve social connectedness, but the Wave 3 report has highlighted that movement over time is more likely to be about movement to settings with more supports, largely due to changing health needs. This raises two questions: what additional community supports are needed so that people with an intellectual disability may age in place and how can we better manage chronic conditions, especially in community settings?"

"Our findings are critical for the proper planning of services as we seek to realise the fullest lives possible for people with an intellectual disability and to support people living within their communities for longer. Unless we address some of the challenges outlined in this report, people living with an intellectual disability will continue to age in poor health."

Minister of State for Disability Issues, Finian McGrath, added: "The work being carried out by IDS-TILDA is providing evidence to inform education, practice and policy, to address challenges, and to enhance the lived experiences of people with an intellectual disability as they age. Ultimately, this research is changing the delivery of care for people with an intellectual disability and building a dynamic new generation of researchers and practitioners who are investigating the complex nature of ageing for people with an intellectual disability. Importantly, people with an intellectual disability are involved in informing research questions and delivering training. I am a strong advocate of people with intellectual disabilities being afforded the opportunity to manage their own lives where possible and I witness this happening on a daily basis with great pleasure. This is something that I want us to celebrate proudly as we recognise the International Day of Disabled Persons."

Among surviving participants, the Wave 3 response rate was 95.5%, a rate rarely reported in longitudinal studies, and is indicative of the level of sustained engagement between re-searchers, participants, family members, carers and the entire intellectual disability community.

Key findings:

Physical and mental health:

28.3% of participants reported that they had no teeth at all, with 50% of those aged 65+ reporting no teeth at all. When total tooth loss occurred, 67.8% did not receive prosthetic dentures to restore function. This compares to only 5.3% of the general population without teeth who did not receive dentures (as measured by TILDA wave 3).

Reported diagnosis of constipation increased from 17.3% in Wave 1 to 43.5% in Wave 3.

35.5% of people with Down syndrome had a doctor's diagnosis of dementia, which rose from 15.6% in Wave 1. However, dementia screening within the last two years rose from 14.5% in Wave 1 to 30.5% in Wave 3 for all and for people with Down syndrome from 13.9% in Wave 1 to 61.4% in Wave 3.

Dementia screening within the last two years rose from 14.5% in Wave 1 to 30.5% in Wave 3 overall and from 13.9% in Wave 1 to 61.4% in people with Down syndrome.

Doctor's diagnosis of osteoporosis at 21%, had increased almost three-fold since Wave 1; but remained lower than objectively measured osteoporosis at 42% reported in Wave 2.

Objectively measured overweight and obesity increased from 66% in Wave 2 to 79.7% in Wave 3 meaning it was now similar to rates reported by TILDA for the general older population.

Polypharmacy remained high in Wave 3 at 39.5% and excessive polypharmacy (5-9 medications) at 32.7%.

Prevalence of depression, as measured using the GDS-LD, was significantly higher than that in the general population with 10% of participants reporting symptoms. There was no significant difference in prevalence of depression between those in institutions (11.1%) and community group homes (11.3%).

Social connectedness:

Older people with an intellectual disability continued to be more socially excluded than their counterparts in the general population; while those with severe-profound levels of ID and those living in institutional settings remain the most excluded across practically all measures.

Overall there has been a decrease in the number of older people with an intellectual disability who live in close proximity to their family members.

The vast majority of respondents had friends (92.4%), the most common type being a co-resident friend (71.8%); however, a majority also reported they had friends outside their home (62.0%), and a similar number reported their keyworker/support staff were their friend (62.5%).

Just over half (56.6%) reported that they had a best friend and almost two-thirds (63.2%) said that their best friend was someone with an intellectual disability.

The vast majority of older people with an intellectual disability continued to engage in a broad range of social activities and most do these activities within their local communities; while the most popular organisations were 'Sports, Social or Leisure Club', 'Arts or Music' and 'Advocacy Group'. 'Special Olympics' fell from the first to fourth most popular between Waves 1 and 3.

Older people with ID continue to be dependent on others for their transport, in contrast to the general older population. Overall, 92.7% were driven as a passenger (just one person reported driving themselves), while just 29.7% used bus transport. Just over a quarter of respondents felt that a lack of transport facilities in their area affected their lifestyle (25.2%), and that they would like to use more public transport (26.7%).

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For the full report, please visit: https://www.tcd.ie/tcaid/research/publications/reports.php
More must be done to tackle air pollution in China, according to a leading climate change expert in a new study published today in the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Professor Wang Hui-Jun, from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, outlines five specific ways in which the issue could be more effectively managed. These steps, which can also be applied to other heavily polluted countries, center upon the need to conduct more research to better identify the cause of the pollution, and create more effective prevention and control methods.

Specifically, these strategies are:

Identifying the role of human-caused emissions on climate change.

Understanding what other factors (particularly, climate change and variability) affect air quality.

Recognizing the formation process and creating in advance prevention and control regulations.

Promoting the seasonal prediction of air pollution.

Implementing stricter air pollution prevention and control policies in key areas such as central North China.

It is emphasized in the paper that behind all the action points outlined, deepening scientific understanding of air pollution is crucial in order to better manage the problem.

In China, the pollution problem has progressively worsened. At the same time, both the public and government departments lack the necessary knowledge of its formation, the causes, and ongoing management.

China has invested substantial financial, human, and material resources in reducing the emissions of pollutants, and in promoting scientific research and technological development to support the protection of the atmosphere. Research has even been supported by organizations such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, the China Environment Protection Agency, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

However, Professor Wang outlines that so far, the actual effects of current attempts to control and manage haze pollution in the country are very limited, with air pollution still occurring frequently. One such recent example occurred in Tianjin and the surrounding areas, when a continuous outbreak of a wide-ranging and persistent haze pollution on 17 December 2016 caused two long-term severe haze pollution processes within 20 days.

Professor Wang comments, "The motivation of this paper is to offer some clarification on the key issues related to haze attribution and control measures. It is hoped that if these guidelines are put into practice the solution to the problem could be more achievable."

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This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41421004) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0600704)

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A team of Australian scientists has discovered a new species of marsupial lion which has been extinct for at least 19 million years. The findings, published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, are based on fossilised remains of the animal's skull, teeth, and humerus (upper arm bone) found by University of New South Wales (UNSW) scientists in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of remote north-western Queensland.

Named in honour of palaeoartist Peter Schouten, Wakaleo schouteni was a predator that stalked Australia's abundant rainforests some 18 to 26 million years ago in the late Oligocene to early Miocene era. This meat-eating marsupial is estimated to have been about the size of a dog and weighed around 23 kilograms.

The new species is about a fifth of the weight of the largest and last surviving marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, that weighed in at around 130 kilograms and which has been extinct for 30,000 years. Members of this family, the Thylacoleonidae, had highly distinct large, blade-like, flesh-cutting premolars that they used to tear up prey.

The discovery comes just a year after the fossilised remains of a kitten-sized marsupial lion were found in the same famous fossil site in Queensland. The UNSW scientists named that miniature predator Microleo attenboroughi after broadcasting legend Sir David Attenborough.

With this new find, the researchers believe that two different species of marsupial lion were present in the late Oligocene at least 25 million years ago. The other, originally named Priscileo pitikantensis, but renamed Wakaleo pitikantensis, was slightly smaller and was identified from teeth and limb bones discovered near Lake Pitikanta in South Australia in 1961.

This latest discovery reveals that the new species (W. schouteni) exhibits many skull and dental features of the genus Wakaleo but it also shared a number of similarities with P. pitikantensis - particularly the presence of three upper premolars and four molars, previously the diagnostic feature of Priscileo. Further similarities of the teeth and humerus which are shared with W. schouteni indicate that P. pitikantensis is a species of Wakaleo.

According to the authors, these dental similarities distinguish W. schouteni and W. pitikantensis from later species of this genus, all of which show premolar and molar reduction, and suggest that they are the most primitive members of the genus.

Lead author Dr Anna Gillespie, a palaeontologist from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia says that the latest finding raises new questions about the evolutionary relationships of marsupial lions: "The identification of these new species have brought to light a level of marsupial lion diversity that was quite unexpected and suggest even deeper origins for the family."

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In a first-of-its-kind study, Mount Sinai researchers are using adaptive optics (AO) to analyze retinal eye damage from the August solar eclipse on a cellular level. The research could help doctors develop a deeper understanding of this rare condition, called solar retinopathy, which has no currently accepted treatment.

Adaptive optics is a sophisticated technology that allows clinicians to examine microscopic structures of the eye in living patients with extreme detail in real time. Before the development of AO, researchers could only see this level of detail on glass slides with a microscope.

A team of scientists from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (NYEE) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai used this state-of-the-art imaging technology to get a precise view of how much individual cellular damage resulted from the solar eclipse, something that has never been done before. The findings were published in the December 7 online issue of JAMA Ophthalmology.

"We have never seen the cellular damage from an eclipse because this event rarely happens and we haven't had this type of advanced technology to examine solar retinopathy until recently," said lead investigator Avnish Deobhakta, MD, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "NYEE is one of the few sites in North America with access to this technology, and using this to get an exact look at this retinal damage on such a precise level will help clinicians better understand the condition."

Mount Sinai investigators used AO imaging on a patient who looked at the sun during the eclipse for 21 seconds without protective eyewear. Four hours later, the patient developed blurry distortion in both eyes and could only see the color black. NYEE specialists examined her three days later and found she had burned a hole in her retinas and diagnosed her with solar retinopathy and photochemical burns.

Using this technology, researchers obtained high-resolution images of the damaged photoreceptors, which may provide a deeper understanding of the condition that could one day lead to the development of treatments.

"It's exciting to be able to see such a correlation between the patient's symptoms and the photoreceptor injury on a cellular level. Hopefully this research allows us to potentially develop future therapies for solar retinopathy and other forms of photic injury to the retina," said Chris Wu, MD, a resident physician at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. "This study can prepare doctors and patients for the next eclipse in 2024, and make them more informed of the risks of directly viewing the sun without protective eyewear."

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About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system encompassing seven hospital campuses, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to provide the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The System includes approximately 7,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 10 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in four other specialties in the 2017-2018 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked in six out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 12th nationally for Ophthalmology and 50th for Ear, Nose, and Throat, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West are ranked regionally. For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org, or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
St. George, Utah -- Dec. 6, 2017 -- DxNA LLC, a molecular diagnostics company, today announced the regulatory clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its molecular test for rapid detection of Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever) using DxNA's GeneSTAT.MDx Coccidioides test and proprietary GeneSTAT System.

The GeneSTAT.MDx Coccidioides test on the GeneSTAT System is intended to provide a definitive diagnosis for both Coccidioides strains that cause Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever). The DxNA test significantly improves the time to results over current diagnostic methods. The cleared test provides for the availability of molecular testing for the disease at clinical laboratories and healthcare facilities where patients with the disease are primarily seen rather than requiring specimens to be sent to reference laboratories.

The high performance Valley Fever test on the GeneSTAT System was developed based on intellectual property exclusively licensed from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Currently, definitive testing is done by culture to grow the fungus in a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory, which is time consuming, up to 21 days, and exposes laboratory personnel to the highly infective fungus. The highly sensitive and reproducible GeneSTAT test (Sensitivity 100%, Specificity 99.6%, Reproducibility 100%) is performed directly on the patient specimen, providing a same-day result and significantly reducing the time to a definitive diagnosis and appropriate care.

"We are very pleased to announce the FDA clearance of our novel GeneSTAT.MDx Coccidioides test on our GeneSTAT system," said David Taus, CEO of DxNA LLC. "We appreciate the contributions from our development partners, clinical sites, and the FDA review team to move this important diagnostic test forward. We now look forward to bringing our unique Valley Fever test to the market in order to provide patients and their health care providers the potential for a much earlier and more definitive Valley Fever diagnosis.

"This significant achievement for DxNA also facilitates development of other high value molecular diagnostic tests on our FDA-cleared and CE-marked GeneSTAT platform," Taus said.

The Valley Fever Center for Excellence, under the direction of Dr. John Galgiani, and TGen, under the direction of Dr. Paul Keim and Dr. David Engelthaler, have been instrumental in working with DxNA in the process of developing the assay, providing clinical perspective and assisting with the clinical trial.

"Valley Fever is such an important disease for those who live in or visit the Grand Canyon state or many other places in the southwest. We certainly can use better tools to help doctors diagnose it," said Dr. Galgiani.

Dr. Paul Keim, Regents' Professor in Biology and Cowden Endowed Chair in Microbiology, and Executive Director, The Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at NAU; and Professor, TGen Pathogen and Microbiome Division, said: "This is a milestone in our efforts to battle this devastating disease and to improve the health of our citizens. It has been a long journey that started with an idea of how to design a better diagnostics assay and is now ready for physicians to use."

Dr. David Engelthaler, Co-Director and Associate Professor, TGen Pathogen and Microbiome Division, said: "TGen has been working on Valley Fever for more than 10 years, and we are glad to see commercial partners like DxNA are able to translate our research into new medical tools to help doctors better identify the Valley Fever fungus in their patients."

DxNA's clearance follows the successful completion of a multi-center clinical study that focused on comparing the GeneSTAT Valley Fever assay to the current gold standard for diagnosing Valley Fever. The clinical study was carried out at three centers in Arizona and New Mexico, and included California samples:

Banner Healthcare and Laboratory Sciences of Arizona; University of Arizona, under the direction of Dr. Michael Saubolle, System Medical Director, Infectious Diseases Division, Laboratory Sciences of Arizona/Sonora Quest Laboratories, Banner Health, Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix;

TriCore Reference Laboratories in New Mexico under direction of Dr. Stephen Young, Professor Emeritus of Pathology, University of New Mexico, and Director of Research & Clinical Trials, TriCore Reference Laboratories;

The Infectious Disease Research Core (IDRC) at the Bio5 Institute under the direction of Dr. Anne Wertheimer, Assistant Professor, Associate Director of the IDRC, and Director of Diagnostic Laboratory Sciences within the Applied Biosciences Graduate Interdisciplinary Program University of Arizona.

Clinical Site Comments:

Dr. Michael Saubolle: "FDA clearance of the GeneSTAT Coccidioides Assay which uses a 106-bp target sequence repeated multiple times, provides greater opportunity for clinical laboratories to implement broadly a test that is both sensitive and specific and can reduce time to diagnosis of coccidioidomycosis. Availability of this test allows more efficacious diagnosis of coccidioidomycosis in patients with negative early serologies or those with compromised immune responses."

Dr. Stephen Young: "The FDA clearance of this test will significantly reduce the time required for laboratory diagnosis of Coccidioides and should result in significantly better outcomes for patients with this infectious disease."

Dr Anne Wertheimer: "Sample handling and processing using the GeneSTAT coccidioides assay is straightforward and well-controlled. The self-contained assay in the cartridge format gave us confidence in the assay's performance and validity. It was very robust for use by both entry level as well as highly skilled technicians and eliminates exposure of lab personnel to highly infectious culture."

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About DxNA LLC

DxNA LLC http://www.dxna.com is a molecular diagnostics company that develops and distributes portable, integrated systems and tests for infectious disease in the medical, agricultural, food safety, and biosecurity markets. The Company's systems and technologies enable rapid and precise molecular testing to take place on-site by allowing for otherwise complex laboratory procedures to be performed almost anywhere. DxNA LLC is a privately held company located in St. George, Utah.

About TGen

Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a Phoenix, Arizona-based non-profit organization dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life changing results. TGen is focused on helping patients with neurological disorders, cancer, diabetes, and infectious diseases, through cutting edge translational research (the process of rapidly moving research towards patient benefit). TGen physicians and scientists work to unravel the genetic components of both common and rare complex diseases in adults and children. Working with collaborators in the scientific and medical communities literally worldwide, TGen makes a substantial contribution to help our patients through efficiency and effectiveness of the translational process. TGen is affiliated with City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and cancer and diabetes treatment center: http://www.cityofhope.org. This precision medicine affiliation enables both institutes to complement each other in research and patient care, with City of Hope providing a significant clinical setting to advance scientific discoveries made by TGen. For more information, visit: http://www.tgen.org. Follow TGen on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @TGen

About NAU

Northern Arizona University is a high-research university with a statewide enrollment of 31,000 students. More than 22,000 students attend the Flagstaff campus, with more than 8,000 students enrolled online and at Extended Campus sites statewide. Research in genetics, forestry and ecology has drawn international recognition to the university, which also is highly regarded for its education, business and engineering programs. NAU represents 127 tribal nations and is on its way to becoming the nation's leading university serving Native American/Alaskan and Hawaiian Native cultures. NAU launched competency-based Personalized Learning in 2013, the first self-paced, online education program that cuts the cost and time to an undergraduate degree. For more information, visit nau.edu. Follow NAU on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

About Valley Fever Center for Excellence

The UA Valley Fever Center for Excellence was established in 1996 by the Arizona Board of Regents for the benefit of the entire state. Based at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson, the center has developed a research base, including all three of the state's universities and an information program for both the scientific community and the general public. Much of the center's research is conducted at the University of Arizona BIO5 Institute.

About University of Arizona Bio5 Institute

The BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona mobilizes the collaboration of top researchers in agriculture, bioengineering, biomedicine, pharmacy, basic science, and biotechnology to find creative solutions to humanity's most pressing health and environmental challenges. BIO5 encourages an entrepreneurial culture, with scientists working across disciplines to accelerate commercial applications of research breakthroughs. Since 2001, this interdisciplinary approach has been an international model of how to conduct collaborative research, and has resulted in improved food crops, innovative diagnostics, devices, technologies, and promising new therapies. Learn more at http://BIO5.org

About Sonora Quest Laboratories

Sonora Quest Laboratories, a joint venture between Banner Health and Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), is part of the nation's largest integrated laboratory system with approximately 3,100 employees serving more than 23,000 patients every day throughout Arizona. Sonora Quest Laboratories is the market share leader in clinical laboratory testing in Arizona, performing more than 60 million diagnostic tests per year. Sonora Quest Laboratories offers a local comprehensive test menu, which encompasses routine, molecular, prescription drug monitoring, genetics/genomics, and pathology testing services. Ninety-eight percent of all testing is performed at our primary testing facilities located in Tempe, Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott and Yuma. Sonora Quest Laboratories is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP), which is the gold standard in laboratory accreditation, helping laboratories to maintain accuracy of test results and ensure accurate patient diagnosis. This accreditation ensures the highest standard of care for all laboratory patients as CAP inspectors examine laboratory staff qualifications, equipment, facilities, safety program and records, and overall management. For more information, visit http://www.SonoraQuest.com.

About TriCore Reference Laboratories

TriCore Reference Laboratories is an independent, not-for-profit clinical reference laboratory founded and headquartered in Albuquerque, NM, co-sponsored by Presbyterian Healthcare Services and University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. TriCore provides over 1,700 full-service, state-of-the-art laboratory tests to healthcare professionals and their patients. TriCore also provides analytics and research services, supporting healthcare and scientific organizations worldwide. For more information, visit tricore.org.

About Valley Fever

Valley Fever is a fungal infection caused by Coccidioides organisms that typically enter the body through the lungs. While the majority of people who are infected do not develop significant symptoms, a portion of infected patients develop symptoms that can be highly debilitating including cough, chest pain, fever, night sweats and fatigue. Given that these symptoms are similar to other respiratory diseases that are caused by bacteria or viruses, Valley Fever is often misdiagnosed and mistreated as pneumonia or cancer. As such an early definitive diagnostic is critical to optimal patient care and contributes to better antibiotic stewardship.

Media Contacts

Lori Christiansen

Vice President Marketing & Sales

415-531-1656

lori.christiansen@dxna.com

Steve Yozwiak

TGen Senior Science Writer

602-343-8704

syozwiak@tgen.org
Magnetic gels are the new generation of "smart" composite materials. They consist of a polymer medium and nano- or micro-dimensional magnetic particles embedded in it. These composites are frequently used in magnetically controlled shock absorbers, stabilizers, safety systems, mechanical stress amplifiers, as well as in engineering and in biotechnology (for the purpose of regeneration of biological tissues). A remarkable feature of magnetic gels is their ability to change their elastic properties under the influence of moderately strong magnetic fields (fields easily provided in laboratories). However, the dependence of elastic characteristics of these materials on the external field remains a poorly studied issue. Recently, the physical nature of these dependencies was investigated in by a professor of the Ural Federal University, Alexander Zubarev. He presented his findings at the international conference IBEREO 2017 (Valencia, Spain, 6-8 September).

Magnetic gels is a relatively "young" type of composite multifunctional materials. The first studies on their synthesis date back to the late 1980s - early 1990s, but they began to be studies in earnest only ten years ago. Depending on the area of their application, magnetic gels are manufactured on the basis of both synthetic and biological polymers. The size of the embedded magnetic particles varies from scores of nanometers to scores of microns. One of the most interesting features of magnetic gels is their ability to change their mechanical properties (coefficients of elasticity and viscoelasticity) by several times and even orders of magnitude under the influence of moderate magnetic fields, easily created in laboratories and in industry.

These unique properties are based on the ability of magnetic particles to preserve the most energetically favorable mutual position in a magnetic field of a given magnitude. When the material is deformed, this arrangement is disrupted, but the particles, under the influence of magnetic interaction forces, tend to return to it. This generates an additional, often very strong, elastic reaction of the material to its deformation. The ability to control the elastic response of a magnetic gel with a magnetic field is very promising for many industrial and medical technologies.

It has been demonstrated that the magnetoelastic phenomena in magnetic gels are largely determined by the initial spatial arrangement of the particles in the carrier polymer. In the new work of Andrei Zubarev (professor of the Department of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Ural Federal University, Russia), the deformations of a polymer sample with an initial homogeneous (as a molecule in gas) spatial distribution of magnetizable particles were investigated. The results achieved by Zubarev and his colleagues reveal the peculiarities of the change in the mutual arrangement of particles under the influence of the field and the general deformation of the composite, the influence of these features on the elasticity coefficients of the material. The theory predicts the possibility of radical increase of the stiffness of the composite in an external field.

In the future, scientists are going to work with materials that are synthesized in an external magnetic field. In this case, the particles, under the influence of magnetic attraction, form different structures (linear chains, dense columns, etc.), which are able to greatly strengthen both the elastic properties of the material and the magnetomechanical phenomena in it.

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The paper presented: Non-linear and hysteretic rheological properties of magneto-polymer composites (Book of Abstracts of International Conference IBEREO 2017, The multidisciplinary Science of Rheology, Valencia, Spain, 6-8 September 2017).
Countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America have seen a rise in incidence of inflammatory bowel disease as they have become increasingly industrialised and westernised, a new study has found.

The research, a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, the University of Calgary, Canada, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is the most definitive and comprehensive study of the global epidemiology of inflammatory bowel disease.

Future research should now focus on identifying environmental risk factors observed during the early stages of industrialization of society in order to highlight avenues to prevent the development of the disease. The data also highlights the need for research into prevention of inflammatory bowel disease and innovations in health-care systems to manage this complex and costly disease.

The study, published in The Lancet, was a systematic review of 147 world-wide observational studies reporting on the incidence or prevalence of two of the main conditions of inflammatory bowel disease - Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis - between 1990 and 2016.

Professor Subrata Ghosh, Director of the Institute of Translational Medicine, said: "Our study shows that, at the turn of the 21st century, inflammatory bowel disease has become a global disease with accelerating incidence in newly industrialised countries whose societies have become more westernised.

"We have shown an accelerating incidence in countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America that mirrors inflammatory bowel disease incidence in the Western world during the latter half of the 20th century."

Dr Gilaad Kaplan, of the University of Calgary in Canada, said: "While our study demonstrates a paradigm shift whereby the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease in most Western countries has begun to stabilize and in some regions decrease, it is important to note that the prevalence of the disease is now 0.3% of the population in North America, Australia and most countries in Europe.

"The high prevalence of this disease in the Western world will challenge clinicians and health policy makers to provide quality and cost-efficient care to patients with this condition."

Professor Siew Ng, of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, adds: "The rapid increase in incidence in many countries, especially in children, within one to two decades suggests strong environmental influence within a genetically susceptible population.

"The peak in the incidence of this disease has likely not transpired in newly industrialized countries. Consequently, these countries will need to prepare their clinical infrastructure and personnel to manage what is a complex and costly disease to treat."

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For further information or interviews contact Emma McKinney, Press Office, University of Birmingham, at 44-121-414-6681 or contact the Press Office out of hours on 44-7789-921165.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 5,000 international students from over 150 countries.

Ng et al (2017). 'Worldwide incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease in the 21st century: a systematic review of population-based studies'. The Lancet. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32448-0

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are important and as yet unexplained diseases affecting the intestine with considerable morbidity, loss of productivity and a high societal cost. It often affects young people and children at the peak of their productive life. It affects about 300,000 people in United Kingdom and the disease is prevalent in Western industrialised countries including Australia and New Zealand.

The researchers identified 147 studies that were eligible for final inclusion in the systematic review, including 119 studies of incidence and 69 studies of prevalence. The highest reported prevalence values were in Europe (ulcerative colitis 505 per 100?000 in Norway; Crohn's disease 322 per 100?000 in Germany) and North America (ulcerative colitis 286 per 100?000 in the USA; Crohn's disease 319 per 100?000 in Canada). The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease exceeded 0* 3% in North America, Oceania, and many countries in Europe. Overall, 16 (72* 7%) of 22 studies on Crohn's disease and 15 (83* 3%) of 18 studies on ulcerative colitis reported stable or decreasing incidence of inflammatory bowel disease in North America and Europe. Since 1990, incidence has been rising in newly industrialised countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, including Brazil for Crohn's disease +11* 1% [95% CI 4* 8-17* 8] and APC for ulcerative colitis +14* 9% [10* 4-19* 6]) and Taiwan (APC for Crohn's disease +4* 0% [1* 0-7* 1] and APC for ulcerative colitis +4* 8% [1* 8-8* 0]).
Freshwater resources are critical to both human civilization and natural ecosystems, but UBC researchers have discovered that changes to ground vegetation can have as much of an impact on global water resources as climate change.

UBC Okanagan Earth, Environmental and Geographic Sciences Professor Adam Wei, PhD candidate Qiang Li and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Forestry recently published a study examining the impacts of how changes in forest vegetation effect water supplies. Using several decades worth of data, their work examined how water resources are responsive to vegetation ground cover and climate change.

"As we urbanize land and continue to convert forests for other uses, our water regimes change," says Wei. "We end up with the systems we do not design for, and entire watersheds are being affected."

Forested areas are critically important water resources, explains Li. But as land is developed or the green vegetation is destroyed, watersheds are irreversibly damaged.

"We need to recognize the importance of vegetation," says Li. "Forest cover is an important element and we need to keep this in mind for the future. Scientists talk about how climate change affects waterwhen they measure global warming. We're suggesting they also need to keep an eye on forest vegetation. It's a key indicator of the health of our water resources."

Forests cover more than 30 per cent of the world's land surface and Li says about 21 per cent of the global population directly depends on these catchments for their water supply. Using computer modelling, the researchers examined historical data from 2000 to 2011. They looked at changes in land vegetation and annual water yield in boreal and tropical forests in locations such as British Columbia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Finland and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with development, intensive forest logging, fire, and insect infestation were reasons for forest and ground vegetation loss.

"Our simulations show that the average global alteration in annual water flow due to vegetation change is as high as 31 per cent. Our results also show that on average, in 51 per cent of the study area, vegetation change and climate change operate together and can lead to either fewer water resources, meaning higher chances of drought, or an increase in water supply and higher chances of devastating floods." These findings have far-reaching implications for assessing and managing future global water resources, says Wei.

"Our watersheds and landscapes are experiencing significant pressures from vegetation or land cover change and climate change," he adds. "Because vegetation change and climate change play a similar role in water resources change, ignoring either one will likely lead to an incomplete understanding and ineffective management of our future water resources, particularly for the regions where intensive forest change occurs."

Future water resource assessment must, he says, consider both climate and vegetation or land cover change, and our management paradigm should be shifted from "adapting and mitigating climate change impacts" to "managing both climate and land cover change together."

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This research was recently published in Global Change Biology and was partially funded by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Research Program for Public-welfare Forestry and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Narwhals released after entanglement in nets and outfitted with heart monitors performed a series of deep dives, swimming hard to escape, while their heart rates dropped to unexpectedly low levels of three to four beats per minute. This combination of hard exercise and low heart rate while not breathing under water is costly and could make it difficult for the deep-diving whales to get enough oxygen to the brain and other critical organs, according to a new study.

"How do you run away while holding your breath? These are deep-diving marine mammals, but we were not seeing normal dives during the escape period. I have to wonder how narwhals protect their brains and maintain oxygenation in this situation," said Terrie Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz who has studied exercise physiology in a wide range of marine and terrestrial mammals.

Williams is first author of a paper on the new findings published December 8 in Science. Narwhals, known as "unicorns of the sea" for the large tusks on the males, live year-round in Arctic waters. They have been relatively isolated from human disturbances until recently, when declines in Arctic sea ice have made the region more accessible to shipping, oil exploration, and other human activities.

Narwhals monitored after release gradually returned to more typical behavior and normal heart rates. But Williams said she worries that the stress from human disturbances could cause behavioral responses in narwhals that are inconsistent with their physiological capacities. Their natural escape response to avoid killer whales and other threats typically involves moving slowly either to great depths or into shallow coastal areas beneath ice cover where killer whales can't follow. "This is not a speedy animal," she explained.

A decreased heart rate (called bradycardia) is a normal part of the mammalian dive response, along with other physiological changes to conserve oxygen. In narwhals, the researchers measured resting heart rates at the surface of about 60 beats per minute. During normal dives (after the escape period), their heart rates dropped to between 10 and 20 beats per minute, depending on exercise level. Heart rate normally rises with increased exercise, even during a dive.

"That's what is so paradoxical about this escape response--it seems to cancel out the exercise response and maintains extreme bradycardia even when the whales are exercising hard," Williams said.

The extremely low heart rates that Williams observed in fleeing narwhals are similar to those seen in animals with a "freeze reaction," one of two mutually exclusive responses animals can have to perceived threats, the other being a "fight or flight" response that revs up heart rate and metabolism. The narwhals, in their response to a stressful situation, seem to combine elements of a physiological freeze reaction with a behavioral flight reaction, with potentially harmful consequences.

"For terrestrial mammals, these opposing signals to the heart can be problematic," Williams said. "Escaping marine mammals are trying to integrate a dive response on top of an exercise response on top of a fear response. This is a lot of physiological balancing, and I wonder if deep-diving marine mammals are designed to deal with three different signals coming to the heart at the same time."

The same phenomenon may occur in other deep-diving whales when they are disturbed by human-generated noise in the oceans, which has been associated with strandings of deep-diving cetaceans such as beaked whales, she said.

"The disorientation often reported during strandings of deep-diving whales makes me think something has gone wrong with their cognitive centers," Williams said. "Could this result from a failure to maintain normal oxygenation of the brain?"

She calculated that the escape dives her team monitored in narwhals required 97 percent of the animal's oxygen supply and often exceeded its aerobic dive limit (meaning depletion of oxygen stores in the muscles, lungs, and blood, followed by anaerobic metabolism). Normal dives of similar duration and depth used only about 52 percent of a narwhal's oxygen store, the study found.

The study was conducted in Scoresby Sound on the east coast of Greenland, where coauthor Mads Peter Heide-Jrgensen, a research professor at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, has been studying narwhals since 2012. Native hunters in the area set out nets to catch fish, seals, and other animals, including narwhals. Heide-Jrgensen developed a collaboration with the hunters to allow scientists to tag and release narwhals caught in the nets. He has been using satellite tags to study the movements of the East Greenland narwhal population.

Williams's group at UC Santa Cruz developed unique tagging technology for marine mammals that enables researchers to monitor exercise physiology during dives by recording electrocardiograms, swimming movements (stroke rates), and other data. The tags function much like the Fitbits people use to monitor their daily activities. For this study, resting heart rate was measured in nine narwhals, and five were monitored during dives after release. The instruments were attached to the narwhals with suction cups and fell off after one to three days, floating to the surface where they could be recovered by the scientists.

In previous studies, Williams has used the instruments to study exercise physiology and dive responses in bottlenose dolphins, Weddell seals, and other species. "This was our first opportunity to put the tags on a deep-diving whale to monitor its physiological and behavioral responses," Williams said. "It all began with the work on dolphins in our facilities at Long Marine Laboratory."

Among the findings of her earlier studies was a surprising frequency of heart arrhythmias in dolphins and seals during intense exercise at depth. The new findings add to her concerns about the effects of disturbances that cause an escape response in deep-diving marine mammals.

"Unlike threats from predators like killer whales, noise from sonar or a seismic explosion is difficult to escape. Problems can start if the whales try to outrun it," Williams said. "The implications of this study are cautionary, showing that the biology of these animals makes them especially vulnerable to disturbance. This technology has given us a window into the narwhal's world, and what we see is alarming. The question is, what are we as humans going to do about it?"

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In addition to Williams and Heide-Jrgensen, the coauthors of the paper include Susanna Blackwell of Greeneridge Sciences in Santa Barbara, California; Beau Richter at UC Santa Cruz; and Mikkel-Holger Sinding at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. This work was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and National Science Foundation and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.
Between 2014 and 2016, it was taxation and extortion--not oil--that filled the coffers of the militant Islamic group ISIS, according to a new assessment that relied on NOAA satellite data. The publication also describes how anyone can use rapidly updated NOAA data to quickly assess the production status of oil wells around the world.

Quy-Toan Do, a senior economist with the World Bank's Development Economics Research Group, led the research, which estimated 2012-2016 oil production rates in areas of Iraq and Syria taken over by ISIS, also called ISIL, Daesh or the Islamic State.

Do and his colleagues--including NOAA's Chris Elvidge and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder's Mikhail Zhizhin and Kimberly Baugh--found that production in 43 key sites peaked in 2014 at about 80,000 barrels per day. That figure dropped to about 35,000 in 2015, and plummeted to just 16,000 in 2016.

"This is important information if we are talking about postwar reconstruction," said Do. "Most of the oil wells are not as operational as they were before. This information is critical for people who will try to rebuild the area."

It's also important for anyone seeking to understand the impact of conflict on oil production rates, Do and his colleagues concluded. Their work could be applied almost anywhere in the world, to inform decision makers who need to understand oil production rates for social, political or other reasons.

In Syria and Iraq ISIS expansion began in 2013 and accelerated in 2014. At times, some governments and media suspected that the terrorist organization was financing itself primarily from oil revenues. The new study shows that to be highly unlikely.

"These results lend support to the view that Daesh is financing itself out of other sources such as taxation and extortion rather than oil," the team wrote in the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, released online Nov. 1.

The analysis relied on a heat-sensing technique developed by a team of Boulder, Colorado-based researchers associated with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Zhizhin, who has been part of that team for five years, is a mathematician, and his recent focus has been on working with data from an instrument called VIIRS (the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite.

Since 2012, Zhizhin has produced monthly updates on gas flaring around the world with incredible precision, using an algorithm dubbed "Nightfire." "These are at level of individual flares," Zhizhin said.

The technique relies on the fact that during oil production, engineers must somehow deal with gas that comes up to the surface along with oil. Generally, that gas is flared, producing a nighttime signal that's possible to see by satellite--though it takes careful analysis to separate flaring from other signals, such as electric lights.

For verification that their oil production estimates were reasonable, the team compared their estimates other sources of information, e.g, administrative data in documents captured in May 2015. That month, U.S. Army special forces killed Abu Sayyaf, known as a leader who "helped direct the terrorist organization's illicit oil, gas and financial operations," and the raid also yielded production statistics.

Pre-war estimates compared well, and the satellite data also matched the captured administrative data for 2014. However, the Daesh documents indicated significant output later, from a few sites at which satellites detected no activity at all, not even the electrical lighting one would expect at a production site. "It's possible that internal political motivations may bias administrative data upwards,' the authors concluded.

Do said his work with the Boulder-based team was, in part, accidental. "I was working on Syria and contacted Chris Elvidge with the idea of trying to see damage from the war. Could we detect electrical power outages, for example, or areas under ISIL control that might be blacked out?"

Elvidge explained that one of the challenges in reliably tracking electric light signals by satellite is removing the signal from nearby flaring activity. "So we began talking about how we might use this to our advantage, looking at production," Do said.

Although the oil production analysis took several months to complete this first time, it demonstrated that the technique can be reliable and could be applied in real-time to other situations.

Zhizhin said it's been rewarding to work on a project with real-world implications. "I am a mathematician. I just love numbers. But you have to be able to touch results sometimes. This is touching the result."

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CIRES is a partnership of NOAA and the University of Colorado Boulder.
A large-scale international study led by the University of Exeter Medical School has discovered new genes linked to parents' lifespan - which could one day be targeted to help prolong human life

A large-scale international study led by the University of Exeter Medical School has discovered new genes linked to parents' lifespan - which could one day be targeted to help prolong human life.

How long we live is determined by a range of factors including our lifestyle and how well we treat factors including blood pressure and cholesterol from midlife. However, genetics, and how long our parental relatives lived, also plays a role. Now, the number of genes we know influence lifespan has expanded, potentially paving the way to new therapeutic targets to prolong life.

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council and conducted in collaboration with a number of US universities, undertook a genome-wide search for variants influencing how long participants' parents lived. The team studied 389,166 volunteers who took part in the UK Biobank, with confirmation in the US Health and Retirement Study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The DNA samples from the volunteers carry the genetics of their biological parents, so provide a practical way of studying exceptionally long lifespans.

Eight genetic variants had already been linked for lifespan, mainly involved in heart disease and dementia. The latest study, published in the journal Aging NY, has expanded this to 25 genes in all, with some specific to mothers' or fathers' lifespan separately.

Dr Luke Pilling, who undertook most of analyses said: "We have identified new pathways that contribute to survival, as well as confirming others. These targets, including inflammatory and cardiovascular pathways, offer potentially modifiable targets to reduce risk of an earlier death and improve health."

Genes involved in senescence, the 'frozen' state that cells enter into after being damaged, played an important role in longevity. Drugs targeting senescence have already been shown to extend life in laboratory animals.

Genes related to inflammation and auto-immunity related genes were also prominent, opening up the possibility that precision anti-inflammatory treatments may one day be helpful in extending life.

The results confirm that many genetic variants combine to influence human lifespan: no single gene variant was found to be responsible. The study found evidence to suggest that the genetic variants for average lifespan also influence exceptionally long life expectancy. A genetic risk score combining the top ten variants was statistically associated with parents being centenarians.

Professor David Melzer, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the group said: "This study help open the way to novel treatment, but the strong role for genes affecting heart disease risk again underlines the importance of controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels throughout the lifespan. Of course, adopting healthy lifestyles is important, and can probably overcome the negative effects of most of the genes found so far."

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Dr. George Kuchel, Professor of Geriatrics at University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Director of the UConn Center on Aging said, "These findings extend the number of genetic markers now shown to be associated with exceptional longevity. However, even more importantly they add to a growing body of knowledge highlighting specific targets and biological pathways useful for the development of interventions designed to help maintain health, function and independence in later life."

The study, Human longevity: 25 genetic loci associated in 389,166 UK biobank participants, was authored by Luke C. Pilling, Chia-Ling Kuo, Kamil Sicinski, Jone Tamosauskaite, George A. Kuchel, Lorna W. Harries, Pamela Herd, Robert Wallace, Luigi Ferrucci, and David Melzer.
THE centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia has led to widespread debate about its impact. Now, an economics lecturer at the University of Huddersfield has published an article which argues that the tumultuous events of 1917 played a part in toppling the British Empire.

In addition to his view that Marx and Lenin provided ideological inspiration to opponents of the Raj, Dr Kalim Siddiqui has compiled figures that he claims show how British rule in India shattered the economy and industry of the Sub-Continent, which only recovered after independence.

"Those living under colonial rule viewed the Bolshevik Revolution as a positive sign in their struggle for independence," writes Indian-born Dr Siddiqui, who specialises in development and international economics.

His latest article, titled The Bolshevik Revolution and the Collapse of the Colonial System in India, appears in the current edition of the journal International Critical Thought.

It is a severe critique of how Britain viewed and governed the "Jewel in the Crown" of its global empire.

"The British rulers did not settle in India and they were only interested in the wealth from India to support their own development of capitalism and industrialisation in Britain," writes Dr Siddiqui, adding that not only did India provide British industries with vast markets for their products and raw materials, but also money and soldiers who died by the million to protect the Empire.

The article includes a historical account of how Britain gained control of India and an analysis of its economic impact on a region that had once had one of the world's most productive economies.

"Colonial policy led to the decline of indigenous industries, which were not replaced by modern industries, leading to the de-industrialisation of India during British colonial rule. In addition, high land rents and the drain of wealth from India created extreme poverty," writes Dr Siddiqui.

His article also analyses the impact made by the pronouncements of Karl Marx and of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Bolsheviks, on independence movements in the British Empire, including radical new political parties in India.

"Lenin claimed that the world was divided between oppressors and oppressed nations. His anti-imperialist writings on colonial issues... became increasingly popular," according to Dr Siddiqui, who states that Lenin also argued for nations to have the right of self-determination and that colonialism had not led to capitalist modernisation in Asia.

Dr Siddiqui's article concludes that the Bolshevik Revolution dealt a significant blow to imperialist countries and - despite the collapse of the Soviet Union - had changed world history by making decolonisation possible.

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University of Leicester archaeologist Dr. Richard Thomas provides expertise to upcoming BBC One documentary with Sir David Attenborough on Sunday, Dec. 10

New insights into the life and mysterious death of Jumbo the elephant - a celebrity animal superstar whose story is said to have inspired the film 'Dumbo' - will be revealed in a BBC One documentary hosted by Sir David Attenborough and featuring a University of Leicester archaeologist on Sunday 10 December.

Dr Richard Thomas, from the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, was invited as lead scientist on the 'Attenborough and the Giant Elephant' documentary.

As part of the project Dr Thomas spent a week in New York analysing Jumbo's skeleton, which offered vital clues into Jumbo's life and controversial death.

Dr Thomas worked with Professor John Hutchinson (Royal Veterinary College) and Dr Holly Miller (University of Nottingham) to build a biography of Jumbo's life - with the hope of resolving the long-standing mystery of how he died.

The documentary will reveal Jumbo's height and body mass, and establish if he was as big as it was claimed.

Detailed macroscopic and chemical analysis of his teeth and bones will also reveal the stresses and strains of captive life and provide insights into how Jumbo might have died.

Dr Richard Thomas, from the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, said: "Jumbo is perhaps the most famous elephant in the world. His name is now used as an adjective to describe everything from passenger planes to toilet roll. His story is both captivating and tragic. Born in Sudan in 1860 he was captured as a calf and transported to a zoo in Paris, before arriving at London Zoo in 1865 as their first African elephant. Whilst at London he became the pride of the Zoo, often giving walks to children around the city.

"Jumbo had an intimate relationship with his keeper John Scott - under whose care he survived illness and grew to be the 'largest elephant in the world', or so it was claimed.

"Unfortunately, Jumbo became increasingly aggressive as he reached sexual maturity and the zoo took the controversial decision of selling him to Barnum and Bailey's travelling circus. Despite major public protests, a petition, and an outbreak of Jumbo-mania, Jumbo was eventually shipped across the Atlantic, arriving in New York to great fanfare in 1882.

"In America he became centrepiece of the Greatest Show on Earth, a travelling circus that traversed the length of the US and Canada. Unfortunately, Jumbo died in tragic circumstances: contemporary accounts describe that he was hit by a train while crossing the track to reach his carriage, possibly saving a younger elephant in the process; however, a number of stories emerged at the time suggesting that his death may not have been an accident."

As part of the analysis the team were given unique access to Jumbo's skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History.

As well as Jumbo's skeleton, Sir David will also explore the lives of wild elephants to explain Jumbo's troubled mind, and he discovers how our attitude to captive elephants has changed dramatically in recent years.

Dr Thomas added: "Working alongside Sir David Attenborough has unquestionably been the highlight of my professional career. Like many, watching Sir David's documentaries was incredibly formative during my childhood, inspiring my own love of natural history. His knowledge, passion and curiosity for all aspects of our natural world was wonderful to observe first-hand."

'Attenborough and the Giant Elephant' is broadcast on Sunday 10 December between 9.00pm-10.00pm on BBC ONE.

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More information about the documentary is available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2017/50/attenborough-and-the-giant-elephant

Image of the team with Sir David Attenborough available here (Credit - Photography: Vik Manchanda, Copyright: Humble Bee Films): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lbg7dp8innvjctc/AABETnBr2pyCNUh1cKxNdrMWa?dl=0

More pictures are available to download at http://www.bbcpictures.co.uk
Greg Madejski held his breath as he looked into the microscope, trying to weld two fingernail-sized chips together: a tiny chip containing a nanofilter on top of another chip with a DNA sensor.

It was frustrating work. The chips weren't making good contact with each other. Madejski gently poked at the chips, then peered over the top of the microscope.

And exhaled.

The sudden waft of warm air swept over the nanofilter, transferring it to the sensor -right on target. The "accident" led Madejski to an important insight: the water vapor in his breath had condensed on the device, causing the nanofilter to adhere ever so neatly to the sensor.

"It was like a really high-tech temporary tattoo that I created by accident; lick and stick!" says the PhD student in the lab of James McGrath, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Rochester.

And that's how water vapor became integral to the development and design of a novel device for detecting DNA biomarkers affiliated with disease. Created by McGrath's lab in collaboration with Professor Vincent Tabard-Cossa and graduate student Kyle Briggs at the University of Ottawa, the device is described in an article published online at Nano Letters. The article, and an image from Madejski's homemade animation of the device in operation, will be highlighted on the cover of the February 2018 print issue.

'A remarkable structure'

The device is comprised of three ultrathin layers:

a nanoporous silicon nitride membrane which serves as a prefilter.

a biosensor membrane with a single nanopore.

a spacer layer that separates these by only 200 nm.

The arrangement creates a nanocavity filled with less than a femtoliter of fluid--or about a million times smaller than the smallest raindrops.

During operation, the device uses an electric field to lure a strand of DNA to enter one of the pores of the prefilter and then pass through the nanocavity to reach the pore of the underlying sensor membrane. This triggers changes in the device's electrical current that can be detected and analyzed. The fact that DNA must elongate itself in a consistent way to pass through the two-membrane combination improves the precision and reproducibility of detection.

"This is a remarkable structure," says McGrath. "We've built an integrated system with a highly porous filter within molecular reach of a sensor. I think there are many sensors, particularly those that hunt for biomarkers in raw biological fluids, that would benefit from filtering away unwanted molecules immediately upstream of the detector."

The method of fabrication instantly wets the nanocavity, which is often difficult at the nanoscale. The device contains dozens of these nanocavities, which may eventually increase the amount of material that can be screened by enabling parallelized biomarker detection.

Solving problems that others need solved

Tabard-Cossa's lab uses solid-state nanopore devices to find new ways to manipulate and characterize single molecules. His lab was interested in finding new materials that could be used for biomarker detection. The prefilter in the new device addresses a problem with other silicon nanopore detectors: They are more likely to clog than alternative devices that use that biological pores for sensing. Biological membranes, on the other hand, are less stable than solid state nanopores, McGrath noted.

"We love to apply our membrane technologies to solve problems that others need solved. This is a very nice example.," McGrath says.

McGrath is co-founder of SiMPore, a University-based startup that develops highly portable, chip-based devices that incorporate silicon membranes for a variety of applications, from biological sensing to dialysis.

"I think we're going to realize the practical advantages of this technology in the near term," he says. A second generation of the new device, developed at SiMPore, incorporates the prefilter right on the chips during manufacturing at the wafer scale, "so there's nobody breathing on it anymore," he notes. "It's actually all built as one unit and should make future studies very easy. That's a credit to the ingenuity at SiMPore and quite a legacy for Greg."

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Biologists at the University of St Andrews have discovered how New Caledonian crows make one of their most sophisticated tool designs - sticks with a neatly-shaped hooked tip.

New Caledonian crows are the only species besides humans known to manufacture hooked tools in the wild. Birds produce these remarkable tools from the side branches of certain plants, carefully 'crafting' a crochet-like hook that can be used for snagging insect prey.

The study, published in Current Biology today (7 December), reveals how crows manage to fashion particularly efficient tools, with well-defined 'deep' hooks.

The hook is widely regarded as one of humankind's most important innovations, with skilful reshaping, a useless piece of raw material is transformed into a powerful tool. While our ancestors started making stone tools over 3 million years ago, hooks are a surprisingly recent advance - the oldest known fish hooks are just 23,000 years old.

Project leader Professor Christian Rutz, from the School of Biology, has conducted field research on New Caledonian crows for over a decade. His team recently noticed that crows' hooked tools vary considerably in size and shape. While some tools only exhibit a small extension at the tip, others have immaculate hooks.

Professor Rutz explains: "We suspected that tools with pronounced hooks are more efficient, and were able to confirm this in controlled experiments with wild-caught crows. The deeper the hook, the faster birds winkled bait from holes in wooden logs."

This finding raised the intriguing question of what it takes to make such well-formed hooks. The researchers started planning their study by imagining how humans would approach a comparable task. "When a craftsperson carves a tool from a piece of wood, two things ensure a quality product: good raw materials and skill," Professor Rutz said.

Researchers found that the same, apparently, applies to New Caledonian crows. The researchers discovered that the depth of the hook was influenced by both the properties of the plant material, and the technique crows used for detaching branches. When birds made controlled cuts with their sharp bills, the resulting hooks were significantly deeper than when they used a 'sloppier' alternative method of simply pulling off branches. Careful cutting may leave more wooden material at the tip of the stick from which the hook can subsequently be 'sculpted'.

Surprisingly, adult crows, which are expected to have considerable tool-making experience, did not produce the deepest hooks and regularly employed the 'quick-and-dirty' manufacture technique. Professor Rutz notes that making very deep hooks may not be the best strategy in the wild: "It probably takes more time and effort to make such tools, and experienced birds may try to avoid these costs. It is also possible that deep hooks break more easily when inserted into narrow holes and crevices."

Professor Christophe Boesch, a world-leading chimpanzee expert and Director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, comments: "We have recently discovered that chimpanzees routinely use naturally-hooked stems to fish for algae, but they don't actively craft these hooks. The crows can reshape plant material with their pointed bills, which act like 'precision pliers', but this would be very difficult for chimpanzees with their large fingers."

The present study is the first to examine in a non-human animal what factors determine the morphology of crafted tools, and as a consequence, their foraging efficiency. Palaeo-anthropologists try to understand how our ancestors produced relatively complex tool shapes from basic raw materials, such as wood, bone or seashell, but they face the challenge that the manufacture process cannot be directly observed.

The New Caledonian crow, with its remarkable ability to fashion hooked tools from plant stems, provides a fascinating window into humans' evolutionary past.

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NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS / PICTURE DESKS

The paper 'Causes and consequences of tool shape variation in New Caledonian crows' is published in the journal Current Biology (7 December); an advance copy is available upon request. Contact the Communications Office - contact details below.

Please ensure that the paper's DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.11.028 is included in all media stories, and that Current Biology is credited as the source. Please note this link will become active after the embargo.

Photos of tool-using crows are available via http://bit.ly/2AtcacD with credits indicated in the file names.

New Caledonian crows live on the remote tropical island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where fieldwork for the present study was conducted. Birds were kept in field aviaries for the brief duration of behavioural experiments, before being released back into the wild, so they could re-join their social groups.

Earlier this year, the team exhibited its crow research at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London; a promotional YouTube video explaining the significance of the research is available here.

Forbes magazine recently selected the fish hook as one of the most important tools of all time, as reported here.

The study was funded by the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Last year, the team reported in Nature (see here) that a second tropical crow species - the critically-endangered Hawaiian crow - is a highly-skilled tool user. It is not yet known whether Hawaiian crows also make hooked foraging tools.

INTERVIEW REQUESTS

Professor Christian Rutz is available for interview, and can be contacted either directly (christian.rutz@st-andrews.ac.uk), or via the Communications Office (see contact details below).

St Andrews has an in-house ISDN line for radio and a Globelynx camera for TV interviews, which can be booked through the Communications Office.

Issued by the University of St Andrews Communications Office. Contact Christine Tudhope on +44 (0)1334 467 320 / 07526 624 243, or email christine.tudhope@st-andrews.ac.uk
A study carried out at the University of Tampere has shown that carbonic anhydrase VI (CA VI) is present in some species as a combination of two proteins. According to current data, this "fusion protein", called pentraxin-carbonic anhydrase, has disappeared from the genome of - almost all - mammals through evolution.

Carbonic anhydrases (CAs) are enzymes that catalyse the transformation of water and carbon dioxide into bicarbonate and hydrogen ions. They play an important role in maintaining the acid-base balance of many tissues and biological fluids.

CAs are present in almost all organisms. Humans express fifteen CA isoforms. Professor Seppo Parkkila's research group at the University of Tampere's Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences investigated isoenzyme VI, the CA VI enzyme that humans secrete into saliva and milk. It is the only known secreted CA.

"We have conducted this study for over ten years," Professor Parkkila says.

Pentraxin is a close relative of C-reactive protein (CRP), which is mainly produced by the liver. Its levels quickly increase in the human body in inflammatory conditions, and the CRP concentration of the plasma is the most commonly used inflammatory indicator in clinical medicine.

The research group's study used zebrafish embryos. For a five-day period, the gene that produces CA VI was silenced in the fish. The change had a clear effect on their ability to swim.

"The fish whose organs did not produce the 'fusion protein' prospered and were healthy in other respects except that they were unable to stay close to the water's surface; they instead sank to the bottom of the pool. The swim bladder of the fish did not function normally. When the gene function resumed at about five days of age, the development of the zebrafish returned to normal," Parkkila explains.

In humans, carbonic anhydrases and pentraxins are not related to each other but are completely separate proteins. The "fusion protein" is present in frog, bird and fish species. The same feature is also found in one of Australia's most iconic animals.

"The platypus, which is an egg-laying mammal, is probably the most advanced animal in which this combination of proteins is found," Parkkila says. The gene encoding pentraxin-carbonic anhydrase has not been found in mammals that give birth to live offspring.

In addition to the researchers at the University of Tampere, researchers from Italy, Nepal, Hungary and elsewhere in Finland participated in the study. The research results have been published in the PeerJ open access journal.

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Patrikainen et al. (2017): Identification and characterization of a novel zebrafish (Danio rerio) pentraxin-carbonic anhydrase. PeerJ 5:e4128; doi:10.77170/peerj.4128.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Dec. 6, 2017)--A team led by scientists at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) has revealed for the first time the atomic-level structure of a promising drug target for conditions such as stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Called TRPM4, this protein is found in tissues throughout the body, including the brain, heart, kidney, colon and intestines, where it plays a major role in regulating blood flow via blood vessel constriction as well as setting the heart's rhythm and moderating immune responses.

"Understanding the role TRPM4 plays in regulating circulation is vital, but for years research has been limited by a lack of insight about its molecular architecture," said Wei Lu, Ph.D., an assistant professor at VARI and lead author on a study describing TRPM4's structure, published today in Nature. "Our findings not only provide a detailed, atomic-level map of this critical protein, but also reveal completely unexpected facets of its makeup."

TRPM4 is critically involved in regulating the blood supply to the brain, which comprises only about 2 percent of the body's total weight yet receives 15 to 20 percent of its blood supply. Conditions that disrupt blood flow in the brain, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral edema and hypertension, can have devastating consequences and are significant public health problems.

"Many safeguards exist in the brain's circulatory system to protect against a sudden interruption in blood supply, one of which is TRPM4," Lu said. "We hope that a better understanding of what this protein looks like will give scientists a molecular blueprint on which to base the design of more effective medications with fewer side effects."

The structure of TRPM4 is markedly different from the other molecules in the TRP superfamily, a category of proteins that mediate responses to sensations and sensory stimuli, such as pain, pressure, vision, temperature and taste. Broadly known as ion channels, proteins like TRP nestle within cells' membranes, acting as gatekeepers for chemical signals passing into and out of the cell.

Even within its own subfamily, which comprises eight molecules in total, TRPM4 appears to be wholly unique. Today's publication represents the first atomic view of a member of the TRPM subfamily.

It reveals a crown-like structure, with the four peaks composing a large N-terminal domain--a hallmark of TRPM proteins. This region, found at the start of the molecule, is a major site of interaction with the cellular environment and other molecules in the body. On the opposite end of TRPM4, commonly called the C-terminal domain, Lu's team found an umbrella-like structure supported by a "pole" and four helical "ribs"--characteristics that have never before been observed.

The findings were made possible by VARI's state-of-the-art David Van Andel Advanced Cryo-Electron Microscopy Suite, which allows scientists to view some of life's smallest components in exquisite detail. VARI's largest microscope, the Titan Krios, is one of fewer than 120 in the world and is so powerful that it can visualize molecules 1/10,000th the width of a human hair.

Lu's structure is the second molecular structure determined on the Institute's Krios since completion of the suite's installation earlier this year.

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In addition to Lu, VARI Assistant Professor Juan Du, Ph.D., also is an author on today's paper. Paige A. Winkler, Ph.D., and Yihe Huang, Ph.D., both postdoctoral fellows in Lu's lab, and Weinan Sun, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the Spruston Lab at Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus, are co-first authors.

ABOUT VAN ANDEL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Van Andel Institute (VAI) is an independent nonprofit biomedical research and science education organization committed to improving the health and enhancing the lives of current and future generations. Established by Jay and Betty Van Andel in 1996 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, VAI has grown into a premier research and educational institution that supports the work of more than 360 scientists, educators and staff. Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), VAI's research division, is dedicated to determining the epigenetic, genetic, molecular and cellular origins of cancer, Parkinson's and other diseases and translating those findings into effective therapies. The Institute's scientists work in onsite laboratories and participate in collaborative partnerships that span the globe. Learn more about Van Andel Institute or donate by visiting http://www.vai.org. 100% To Research, Discovery & Hope
Global efforts to eradicate malaria are crucially dependent on scientists' ability to outsmart the malaria parasite. And Plasmodium falciparum is notoriously clever: It is quick to develop resistance against medications and has such a complex life cycle that blocking it effectively with a vaccine has thus far proved elusive. In a new study reported in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, together with collaborators in Ireland and Australia, have shown that Plasmodium falciparum is even more devious than previously thought: Not only does it hide from the body's immune defenses, it employs an active strategy to deceive the immune system.

Among transmittable diseases, malaria is second only to tuberculosis in the number of victims, putting at risk nearly half of Earth's population. More than 200 million people become infected every year; about half a million die, most of them children under five years of age. "Malaria is one of the world's most devastating diseases - it's a true bane of low-income countries, where it kills a thousand young children every day," says Dr. Neta Regev-Rudzki of Weizmann's Biomolecular Sciences Department. "To fight malaria, we need to understand the basic biology of Plasmodium falciparum and figure out what makes it such a dangerous killer."

Regev-Rudzki had previously discovered, in her postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Alan Cowman at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, that these parasites communicate with one another while in the incubation stage in the blood. They do so by releasing sac-like nanovesicles - less than 1 micron across - that contain small segments of the parasite's DNA. Apparently these signals help the parasites learn when it's time to start transforming into male and female forms, both of which can be carried by mosquitoes into new hosts. This finding was all the more startling because the nanovesicles need to cross six separate membranes to communicate the message from a parasite inside one red blood cell to another.

In the new study, performed in collaboration with Prof. Andrew G. Bowie of Trinity College Dublin and other researchers, Regev-Rudzki and her Weizmann team discovered that in parallel with communicating with other parasites, Plasmodium falciparum uses this same communication channel for yet another purpose: to deliver a misleading message to the infected person's immune system. Within the first 12 hours after infecting red blood cells, the parasites send out DNA-filled nanovesicles that penetrate cells called monocytes. Normally, monocytes form the immune system's first line of defense against foreign invasion, sensing danger from afar and alerting other immune mechanisms to mount an effective response. Naturally, the immune system dispatches its next line of defense to these cells.

But in fact, the nanovesicles have converted the monocytes into decoys. While the immune system is busy defending the organism against fake danger, the real infection proceeds inside red blood cells, allowing the parasite to multiply unhindered at dizzying speed. By the time the immune system discovers its mistake, precious time has been lost, and the infection is much more difficult to contain.

Regev-Rudzki's team has identified a key molecular sensor, a protein called STING that becomes activated when the parasite's nanovesicles penetrate monocytes. It is STING that delivers the fake alert to the immune system, tricking it into "thinking" that its monocytes are in danger. When the scientists "knocked out" the gene that manufactures STING, the chain of molecular reactions generating the misleading alert was interrupted.

"We've discovered a subversive strategy the malaria parasite employs in order to thrive in human blood," Regev-Rudzki says. "By interfering with this subversion of the immune system, it may be possible in the future to develop ways of blocking malarial infection."

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The research team included Dr. Yifat Ofir-Birin, Paula Abou Karam and Tal Giladi of Weizmann's Biomolecular Sciences Department; Dr. Ziv Porat of Weizmann's Life Sciences Core Facilities Department; Dr. Xavier Sisquella, Matthew A. Pimentel, Dr. Natalia G. Sampaio, Jocelyn Sietsma Penington, Dr. Andreea Waltmann, Prof. Louis Schofield, Dr. Diana S. Hansen, Prof. Anthony T. Papenfuss and Dr. Emily M. Eriksson of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia; Dr. Lesley Cheng, Dr. Benjamin J Scicluna, Robyn A. Sharples and Prof. Andrew F. Hill of the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia; Dr. Dympna Connolly and Prof. Bowie of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Dr. Dror Avni and Prof. Eli Schwartz of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, Israel; and Dr. Motti Gerlic of Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Neta Regev-Rudzki's research is supported by David E. and Sheri Stone; the Weizmann - UK Making Connections Program; and the European Research Council. Dr. Regev-Rudzki is the incumbent of the Enid Barden and Aaron J. Jade President's Development Chair for New Scientists in Memory of Cantor John Y. Jade.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
Thursday, December 7, 2017

Free Webinar, December 19, 2017



Webinar Overview

Peppercomm CEO Steve Cody joins PRIME Chat in December to share his experiences and insights into The Research-driven Agency. Peppercomm is one of the worlds few mid-sized agencies with a dedicated research team devoted to helping clients set smarter objectives, develop better strategies, plan more compelling execution and evaluate results. As a result, Peppercomm clients gain the benefits of improved performance and greater efficiency.

As the 2017 Vice Chair of the Institute for Public Relations, Steve works with the fellow Trustees and the Institutes Centers of Excellence to elevate the role of research in public relations.

Sharing the session is Mark Weiner, CEO for PRIME Research, LP and Chairman of the IPRs Commission on Measurement and Evaluation. Together, Steve and Mark will explore the ways by which professional communicators benefit from research-based communications decision-making.

Speakers

Steve Cody

Co-Founder and CEO

Peppercomm

Im a climber, comedian and dog lover. But not necessarily in that order.

Named one of 50 Game-Changers of PR for 2017 by PRNews, Steve is responsible for overall agency direction and management, new business development, new product development and agency marketing. Most recently, Steve pioneered the creation of the agencys insights and strategy group, an internal consultancy at Peppercomm that bridges proprietary research and program activation to serve both current accounts and business development initiatives. Hes also been instrumental in shaping the culture that inspired Crains New York Business and was a ?nalist for EYs Entrepreneur of the Year Award with co-founder Ed Moed.

A proli?c writer, Steve pens a weekly column for lnc.com, was named the PRNews Blogger of the Year in 2011 and a ?nalist for the same award in 2012. He was named one of Northeastern Universitys 100 most successful alumni, and his podcast, RepChatter, won a Silver SABRE from Holmes. Steve is co-author of Whats Keeping Your Customers Up at Night? He is a member, editorial board, PR Journal, the PRSA Counselors Academys executive committee, the Corporate Communication Advisory Board of Baruch College, the Civilian Corporate Affairs Committee at West Point, and member of two key subcommittees on purpose and digital engagement for the Arthur W. Page Society. Additionally, he is a member of The Northeastern University Corporation, the College of Charlestons Department of Communication Advisory Council, vice chair of the Institute for Public Relations, and board member of the PRSA Counselors Academy.

The agency was named after his family dog, Pepper.

Mark Weiner

Chief Executive Officer

PRIME Research Americas

One of the worlds largest corporate communications research and consulting firms, PRIME employs more than 500 analysts and consultants who combine talent with technology to foster better business decisions among its global clients. Weiner joined PRIME as CEO in 2008. Prior to PRIME, Weiner was the Global Director and Senior Vice President of Ketchum Research where he led an international team of analysts before which he was the CEO of Delahaye, a corporate communications research and consulting firm. Weiner founded Medialink Research in 1994 which became Delahaye Medialink in 1999 after the acquisition of The Delahaye Group. Weiner is a member of the PR News Measurement Hall of Fame and delivered the Distinguished Lecture in Public Relations at Quinnipiac University.

Weiner is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society, serves as a Trustee and the 2017 Chairman of the Measurement Commission for The Institute for Public Relations, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Museum of Public Relations. He is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators, the Public Relations Society of America and AMEC. Weiner sits on the editorial advisory boards of The Strategist and PR News. He is a regular contributor to PR Week, IABCs Communication World, PRSAs Tactics and The Strategist, and Commpro.biz/PR-ROI, as well as an active participant at conferences by The Institute for Public Relations, The Conference Board, ABERJE, the Association of National Advertisers, The American Marketing Association, The Arthur Page Society, IABC and PRSA. Since 1993, he has devoted his career to helping many of the worlds most respected organizations and brands to demonstrate and generate a positive return on their investment in corporate and brand communications.
When I was a kid, way back in the 1940s, my mother took the Saturday Evening Post magazine and I loved the fiction stories.

Several of them were the recurring adventures of the main character and my favorites were Tugboat Annie, about a widow who took over her deceased husbands tugboat and held her own against the aggressive male competition in the harbor, as well as Alexander Botts, the incompetent but supremely self-confident Earthworm tractor salesman who always seemed to come out on top in spite of his bumbling.

The Botts stories, which were published from the 1920s into the 60s, primarily in Saturday Evening Post, were written by William Hazlett Upson (1891-1975), who graduated from Cornells agricultural college in 1914 and worked as a farmer for a couple of years.

Upson joined the U.S. Army in 1916 and served in France as an artilleryman during the World War before joining the Cleveland Tractor Co. in 1919. As he told it:

I did not know anything about the Cletrac, and I did not know anything about the tractor business. But I was young. And I was confident. I had enlisted in the Army knowing nothing of military affairs, and in only two years I had worked my way up through sheer merit from private to private first-class. Having done so well in the Army, I felt I could do even better in the tractor business.

I barged into the office of the president of the company, Mr. Rollin H. White himself. I told him how good I was. I asked for a job. He referred me to Mr. George Pontius, manager of the service department. I told Mr. Pontius how good I was. He hired me as a service mechanic. I then told him  with a degree of caution unusual for me in those days  that although I was one of the finest mechanics in the country I was not completely familiar with the particular machinery they were making.

Hard work

Mr. Pontius thereupon assigned me to a (company) tractor school. For several weeks I toiled and sweated. I took apart several Cletracs. I put them together. I scraped bearings. I ground valves. I adjusted carburetors. I cleaned magnetos. I played with pistons and piston rings, rocker arms, push rods, tappets, gears, shafts and hundreds of other parts.

And I fell in love with the tractor business. Every night I studied books about machinery and internal combustion engines. After two weeks, I was sent out as a trouble shooter. The West Penn Power Company was having difficulties with a fleet of six of our tractors that they were using in the construction of a power line.

When I arrived on the job I was received as a very important person. The chief mechanic conducted me to a tractor and respectfully asked if I would show him how to adjust the carburetor.

I assumed a very impressive bedside manner which I had been practicing. But right way, a problem. The tractors I had worked on at the factory had had no hoods over the engines. But this tractor had a hood.

It was held in place by four fancy catches of such a new and elaborate design that I had no idea how to operate them. So there I was  the factory expert who was supposed to understand everything  and I couldnt even open the engine hood.

I did some fast thinking. I would have to get rid of this chief mechanic for a few minutes. I said, How would you like to run over to the shop and get me a few tools?

What sort of tools? he asked. Just tools, I said. A screwdriver, a wrench, a pair of pliers.

He opened the toolbox on the tractor and produced everything I had asked for. I tried again.

Im sorry, I said, but Ill need a shorter screwdriver, a longer monkey wrench, and a heavier pair of pliers.

Following instructions

He looked puzzled but was sufficiently awed by my prestige as an expert to follow my instructions even when they didnt seem to make sense. He disappeared into the shop.

While he was gone I had plenty of time to get those fancy catches open. When he came back I had no difficulty adjusting the carburetor. I had learned all about that in the factory tractor school.

At that time, Cletrac used three lower track support wheels in each track and the wheels ran in roller bearings that werent protected from the grit, mud and water that was the crawler tractors natural environment.

Inevitably, the bearings failed after only a few days use and the power companys chief mechanic complained bitterly about this to Upson, who continues the story:

Again I had to think fast, I said, Sir, I agree with you entirely. You have been cheated. You have been treated unfairly. You have been bamboozled. You have been done dirt. I apologize on behalf of the company. Now that I am here, I can promise you that your troubles are over.

I had come to several conclusions. First, having had no experience with this problem, any solution I might dream up would be mere guesswork. Second, mere guesswork would be better than nothing.

Third, the trouble was apparently caused by dirt filling up the empty spaces around the rollers in the bearings. Fourth, if there were no open spaces there would be no place for the dirt to lodge.

Fifth, I would have to get rid of these open spaces. We took out all the little rollers. We melted up some babbitt metal and we poured solid babbitt bearings in all of those truck wheels.

Going strong

Then we started the tractors and hauled supplies for the power line through the worst swamps and gravel beds we could find. After two days, our babbitt bearings were still going strong.

They had lasted longer than any of the roller bearings. And they looked as if they would last indefinitely. The chief mechanic and I congratulated each other on our superior wisdom and engineering skill.

And I came back to the factory full of pride and joy.

After explaining what he had done, Upson wrote: Unfortunately, Mr. George Pontius was not favorably impressed.

He said that it was not my job to redesign the tractor. I was not supposed to make unauthorized experiments by pouring hot babbitt into truck wheels which were designed for roller bearings.

I was not expected to tell the customers that the tractor was built wrong and that I knew more than anybody else in the factory. I answered these comments by modestly pointing out that I had fixed up the tractors so they ran perfectly  at least until I got out of town.

And I had left the customer completely satisfied  for the time being anyway. Mr. Pontius came back with the suggestion that I was perhaps a little too good to work for anybody as conventional and matter-of-fact as he was.

With my superior abilities, he felt sure that I could do better elsewhere. In other words, I was fired.

  

Upson later worked as a service mechanic for the Holt Manufacturing Co. and then Caterpillar, while writing a few short stories that he was able to sell.

He left Caterpillar in 1924 to become a full-time writer, including more than one hundred Alexander Botts adventures. Ill tell you about Botts another time.
UTICA, Ohio  Four members of the Utica FFA chapter competed at the district job interview event at Clearfork High School Nov. 20.

Emily Keener placed second in division four, for seniors. Shaeley Warner placed second in division three, for juniors. Rachel Dickson placed third in division two, for sophomores. Emily Hill placed sixth in division one, for freshman.

  

CRESTON, Ohio  On Nov. 18, the Norwayne FFA hosted its annual fall benefit to help a local person in need.

This year, the recipient was a 2006 Norwayne graduate Larissa Widmer. She has been living with cystic fibrosis since she was a young.

Larissa has been on the lung transplant list for more than a year. The theme for the benefit was Lungs For Larissa.

The FFA chapter received many donations for the live and silent auctions. One item in particular consisted of a jar of pickled eggs that went for $500.

For the silent auction, there were around 190 items, and 45 items for the live auction. One of the items was an old tractor seat donated by FFA Sentinel Cal Boss.

Members raised more than $37,000 for Larissa and her family.

  

WEST SALEM, Ohio  The Northwestern FFA chapter is selling poinsettias. Four-inch pots are $5 and 6-inch pots are $15.

For sale along with the plants, students have made wooden pallet Christmas trees and stars. The trees will be $25, and the prices of stars range from $8-$12 depending on size.

Purchases can be made at the Northwestern High School greenhouse, 7473 N. Elyria Road, during the week from 10:20-11:03 a.m. and again from 11:38 a.m.-2:30 p.m. After school purchases are by appointment only; call 419-846-3833.

  

SULLIVAN, Ohio  On Nov. 2, Black River FFA partnered with the Black River Pirate parents to prepare and serve dinner for the high school staff members before the parent-teacher conferences.

The dinner served as an opportunity to show the staff members the students appreciation for the hard work and time they dedicate.

The following students volunteered to help prepare and serve the meals: Mya Kunsman, Jared Bradford, Hannah Abfall, Chloee Howard, Hope Diaz and Callee Aviles.

On Nov. 7, the chapter hosted an Ohio FFA state leadership night.

Guest presenters for the evening were Ohio FFA state officers, Ryan Matthews (president) and Milan Pozderac (vice president at large). The theme was Setting Your Heart on Fire, and Passion.

The schools in attendance were Black River, Buckeye, Mapleton and Loudonville.
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More than 300 incidents of hare coursing has been recorded in the space of one month in Lincolnshire, severely impacting local farmers and their livelihoods.

Hare coursing continues to be an issue of concern for rural communities across the UK.

In November, Lincolnshire Police recorded 306 incidents of hare coursing, giving a three month total of 690 incidents.

This equates to an average of 10 incidents a day in November.

Some days there are no reports of hare coursing and other days there have been up to 24 incidents reported.

Lincolnshire Police's Operation Galileo has been in place to tackle hare coursing and wider rural community safety.

The force says it recognises the impact that hare coursing has on farmers and their families, their staff and wider rural communities.

'Upturn' in cases

NFUs Lincolnshire county adviser, Danny OShea said there has been an "upturn" in coursing activities, especially in the last three weeks.

We are keen to see Lincolnshire Police take action against these criminals and send the uncompromising message to hare coursers that they are not welcome in our county.

It is good news that action is being taken, and NFU will continue to work with Lincolnshire Police to tackle these frightening and ruthless criminals.

We want Lincolnshire Police to continue to improve their response rates to reports of coursing; we must see greater conviction rates and tougher sentences and increased numbers of dogs, vehicles and the proceeds of crime seized.

So far this year Lincolnshire Police have arrested or reported 30 men, and 40 hare coursers dogs and 15 hare coursers vehicles have been seized.

Looking out for hare coursing

Farmers and landowners can help fight hare coursing by looking out for activity in the area.

The most obvious sign is groups of vehicles parked in a rural area, perhaps by a gateway to farmland, on a grass verge, on a farm track or bridle path.

They will usually be estate cars, four wheel drives or vans. It will be obvious looking inside whether there is evidence of dogs or not.

They often travel in convoy, with vans at the front and rear containing minders, and will often use binoculars to spot hares.

Coursers will often walk along the edge of a field to frighten a hare into the open.
An anaerobic digestion certification scheme has been launched which hopes to support operators of AD plants such as farmers.

UK trade body the Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association (ADBA) has launched its scheme at its national conference in London on Wednesday (6 December).

The voluntary, industry-led scheme is designed to support operators of AD plants, including those based on farms, to improve their operational, environmental, and health and safety performance, in particular in terms of energy generation and digestate quality.

ADBA has developed the scheme, working closely with industry stakeholder. The National Farmers Union (NFU) and CLA have contributed to ensuring the scheme is suitable for farmers who operate AD plants.

The scheme includes detailed assessment criteria that will allow third-party certification bodies to verify the achievement of good practice at AD plants, and is the most comprehensive of its type.

The scheme pilot was completed in September this year, with one on-farm plant, one food waste plant, and one on-site plant for a food manufacturer taking part.

Diversifying income

ADBA Chief Executive Charlotte Morton said investing in an AD plant is a "great way" for farmers to diversify their income in the context of uncertainty over future support from government post Brexit.

AD offers a treatment option for organic wastes such as manures, slurries, and vegetable off-cuts, producing on-site renewable heat and power, transport fuel for farm vehicles, and nutrient-rich biofertiliser, Ms Morton explained.

AD crops also give farmers a great option for crop rotation, helping to keep soils healthy and avoid the spread of blackgrass and nematodes.

ADBAs new AD Certification Scheme defines good practice and enables on-farm AD plants to be recognised as meeting it. A certification process is essential to ensuring that regulators, insurers and investors have confidence in the scheme, which offers AD operators a range of financial and regulatory benefits.

'Positive intervention'

Marie Fallon, Director of Regulated Industry at the Environment Agency, called the scheme a "positive intervention", and said reducing pollution incidents is one which the EA shares with determination.

Stefan Jimenez Wisler, Land Use Policy Adviser at the CLA, said: AD is an important tool for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, driving more efficient resource use and enabling a range of other on-farm environmental benefits.

This new certification scheme sets out good practice and allows on-farm AD plants to be recognised for meeting it. This will crucially provide operators, regulators and the public with the confidence to support AD for the financial and environmental benefits it can provide.
Farmers are risking severe financial repercussions, and even jail, because they are unaware of tougher penalties for health and safety breaches.

An agricultural risk expert fears is worried there is a lack of knowledge among the farming community around The Health and Safety Sentencing Guidelines  particularly that fines are now based on turnover.

Since February 2016, farming companies with a turnover of up to 2m who are found to have breached the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 can expect to pay fines of up to 450,000.

Larger businesses  with turnovers in excess of 50m  can face fines of up to 10m. Individuals found guilty of breaching the law can be handed unlimited fines or face a two-year prison sentence.

Judges could previously only impose custodial sentences in very specific circumstances, with fines in the lower courts limited to 20,000.

'Fatal consequences'

Richard Wade, of Lycetts Risk Management Services said health and safety breaches can have very serious, and even fatal, consequences. He said it is no longer "a slap on the wrist."

Anything to improve health and safety in one of the most dangerous industries is certainly welcomed and supported, Mr Wade said.

But our feedback from farmers suggests many may not fully comprehend how business-critical a breach can be. It is no longer a slap on a wrist and a fine amounting to hundreds of pounds. Farmers who are lax with their health and safety procedures can expect to feel the full force of the law.

Now a number factors are taken into account when deciding punishment, including the level of culpability, the risk of causing harm and the level of potential harm, and the turnover of the offending business.

These guidelines are meant to act as a deterrent  and farmers should be aware that lapses in judgement, or a failure to take a proactive approach to safety, could cripple their operations.

Fatal injury rate

Agriculture has the worst rate of worker fatal injury  7.61 per 100,000 people  which is 18 times higher than the all industry rate. In 2016/17, 30 people were killed in agriculture.

Although not all fatalities on farms are a result of health and safety breaches, these figures highlight how risky an industry it is.

A company in Essex was fined 120,000 earlier this year after an employee was seriously injured by a chainsaw while felling trees.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the man had not been trained to operate the chainsaw, nor was he wearing any personal protective equipment. There was no supervision and no proper planning had been put in place.

Falling from height

A company in the South West was fined 115,000 after a worker fell from height at a farm. The worker fell through a fragile skylight and broke his back.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the company failed to take adequate precautions to prevent workers falling from height. There was no edge protection, under-roof netting or boarding provided on site. The company instead relied on an ineffective use of harnesses.

It was found that unsafe working had been taking place for months before the accident and then continued for months afterwards.

Mr Wade said: These cases  and the significantly higher fines  serve to illustrate how seriously courts are taking health and safety breaches on farms and highlight what farmers can expect if they cut corners or take shortcuts.

Peoples lives are being put at risk on a daily basis on farms and an accident can have a devastating effect on the victim and their family. Farmers need to prioritise compliance with the health and safety regulations and make sure they are doing all they can do to protect their workers  or face the consequences.
Stakeholders from the halal sector visited a Leicestershire farm to gain a greater understanding of the livestock industry.

The group were invited to a local farm to learn more about on-farm practices and procedures which could affect the suitability of sheep for certain Muslim festivities.

A total of 20 visitors, which included Islamic scholars, halal certification bodies and abattoir operators, attended the event  which was organised by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) in conjunction with the National Farmers' Union (NFU).

After being welcomed by AHDBs Halal Sector Manager Awal Fuseini, the group was given a presentation on livestock by the NFUs Chief Livestock Advisor John Royle.

Topics discussed throughout the day included feeding, breeding, identification and other husbandry practices. Visitors were also given a demonstration by AHDBs butchery specialist Martin Eccles.

Mr Fuseini said: This farm visit was the first of its kind in the UK and I was particularly pleased with the level of interest shown by Islamic scholars and halal certifiers in improving their understanding of British livestock farming.

Muslims account for a significant proportion of sheep meat consumption in the UK, so we need to create a platform for farmers and opinion leaders within the Muslim community to share ideas.

We have received excellent feedback from the event and as result we are planning to make this farm visit an annual event.

The red meat industry has been looking at the growing domestic halal market for it to capitalise on.

In 2015, the global halal spend was $1.2 billion, and 16.6 percent of the total food expenditure. By 2021 this figure is expected to rise to $1.9 billion, representing a huge market potential for UK farmers.

In March, the AHDB appointed its first halal manager to help the organisation focus on the growing market.
A lack of devolved government in Northern Ireland could deepen an already growing skills shortage in the food and farming sector, a major industry event has heard.

Leaders from the sector voiced their concerns at a recent event held at Hilden Brewery, where more than 20 directors from some of Northern Ireland's best-known agri-food companies attended.

During the event, many voiced concerns that the lack of a functioning, devolved assembly was harming the agri-food sectors efforts to address a growing skills gap in the industry.

In particular, some directors said that not having a devolved minister in place meant there was a lack of local influence to ensure that funds from the recently-introduced Apprenticeship Levy were sufficiently addressing the skills shortage.

Charlie Kerlin, Head of Grant Thorntons Food and Beverage team commented: There are many factors impacting the shortage, including a reliance on workers born outside the UK and too few young people viewing the industry as a viable career option.

These concerns have also been borne out in research conducted by Grant Thornton alongside the Food and Drink Federation which found that, despite all the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and its implications, the number one concern in the sector isnt tariffs, trade or exchange rates, but skills.

Lack of labour

Joy Alexander, Head of Food Technology Development at CAFRE (College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise) said the big issue for everyone is a concern about future labour.

In some parts of Northern Ireland, as many as 65% of workers at agri-food firms are foreign nationals, and there is anecdotal evidence that many of those are either already in the process of moving away, or are considering  Mr Alexander explained.

The implications, therefore, for our businesses are huge. Its across all sectors at different levels, but seasonal and horticultural firms in particular are feeling the effects.

The gap has to be filled somewhere, and thats the next challenge on the horizon for all of us.

Image problem

With a need to refocus on ensuring the local workforce is sufficiently skilled to assume the positions, Charlie Kerlin said the sector has suffered from an image problem at times.

He said: There is a perception of the food and drink industry that it is low paid and low skilled, but this is not the case. In fact, some of the greatest gaps in employment are at the senior end in management.

It is true, however, that the workforce is ageing so there is a major opportunity for young people to take their first steps on what could be a very successful career path.

Young people

Joy Alexander said that great strides had been made in recent years to encourage young people into the industry.

Thankfully, over the last six to eight years we are seeing a growing trend of students wanting to enter the food and drink sector, with around 400 now at CAFRE.

Crucially, there are more than enough jobs to satisfy the numbers when they graduate. Food is currently in a resurgent position and there are a lot of good news stories coming out of Northern Ireland.

We still have work to do, though, to show that there is a pathway of progression and a good career path for those that do take it up.
The NFU is expecting to meet with Muller next week following its decision to slash the milk price paid to its farmers.

The farming union said it was "shocked" by the steep price cut of 1.5p per litre that Muller will be imposing on it supplying farmers come January 2018 and is looking for an explanation from the processor.

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.

And now the NFU will meet with Muller next week in an urgent face-to-face meeting to ask why farmers are now "left to pay the price".

It has also wrote to Grocery Code Adjudicator Christine Tacon and Defra Secretary Michael Gove asking them to do what is necessary to bring some "badly needed" price transparency to the market.

NFU Scotland Vice President Gary Mitchell said that such a large drop in price from Britains largest producer of branded and private label fresh milk, butter, yogurt, desserts and dairy ingredients needs to be properly explained.

Why have Muller been the first to cut and cut so savagely when they have lucrative contracts that should provide milk price certainty to their dairy farmers? Mr Mitchell asked.

What makes the whole situation even worse is that this drop in price is out of line with our European neighbours and has, once again, left the UK market out of sync with the rest of Europe.

The size of the UK retail market, and the percentage of milk that continues to be sold daily as fresh, should provide stability to prices, but it just hasnt happened. Are we again seeing processors chasing retail contracts on price to the detriment of their dairy farmers?

Dairy farmers need answers and Muller needs to explain their action when we meet next week.

Transparency

Mr Mitchell said it is impossible for the milk market to function properly while price transparency between farmers, processors and retailers "does not exist".

He said it is imperative that all sections of the industry are open and honest with each other for the industry to move on from the "hard times of a few years ago".

The reality is that, when commodity prices surged, farmgate prices were slow to respond and now that markets have softened, Muller has chosen to drop prices like a stone, Mr Mitchell explained.

That has huge impact on confidence at a time when bank accounts have still to recover from the milk price crash in 2015 and 2016.

Knowing little

At AgriScot, dairy expert Chris Walkland stated that analysis of all UK milk price indices showed that the average Scottish dairy farmer had missed out on between 40,000 and 45,000 of income.

This is based on what they could have reasonably expected to have received as a milk price in 2017 and what their milk buyers have actually delivered.

Mr Mitchell added: As an example of the lack of transparency, it is now common knowledge that in aligned supermarket milk contracts there is a cream price tracker and rebate system - yet the industry knows little about how that operates.

However, it is hugely important in setting the milk price, as cream income to a liquid processor is currently worth 12.75p per litre - the 5th highest on record when three years ago it was worth 5.5p.

That is value in the chain that should be getting shared with producers and isnt.
A cannabis factory with drugs worth approximately 1.5 million has been found in poultry barns.

Staffordshire Police have made six arrests after one of the countys biggest cannabis factories was found in poultry barns in south Staffs.

Officers discovered the massive haul of drugs, worth 1.5 million per cultivation, after raiding Three Angels Farm, Ivetsey Road in Wheaton Aston on Wednesday (5 December).

Three men were detained at the scene and three other men were arrested following a police search of the area, which included support from the National Police Air Service, in connection with the production of cannabis.

The men, aged between 17 and 44, are from the United Kingdom and Albania. All six were taken into custody at Watling police station.

Inspector Richard Meaden, South Staffordshire local policing commander, said: The investigation is at an early stage, however we can confirm that approximately 3,100 cannabis plants were recovered. This estimated value of this crop is estimated to be worth 1.5 million pounds.

This is the largest and most sophisticated cannabis factory Ive ever experienced and I am delighted we have been able to take such a large number of drugs off the streets.
Police are searching for a group of criminals who stole a farmer's partridges in what has been described as a bizarre theft.

The farmer, from Reigate in Surrey, rang police after reports of men trespassing on farmland on Slipshatch Road at 2.45pm, November 5. It was thought the men were hunting deer.

But when police arrived on the farm and surrounding land they were unable to trace them.

In a bizarre turn of events, the farmer then noticed all of his partridges were missing from their pens. It is now thought that the same men who trespassed on private land hunting for deer stole them.

Surrey Police last made a public appeal on November 29 in a frequent newsletter the force publish for fresh leads.

In the newsletter, Police Sergeant Ross Spanton wrote that he hoped the fresh appeal would "give the suspects nagging doubt and remind would-be criminals [Surrey Police] know who they are."

No arrests have yet been made in connection with the suspected theft or trespass incident.

It follows news of farmers being reminded to take part in the governments Commercial Victimisation Survey and record the nature, extent and costs of any crime they have faced.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Surrey Police on 101 and quote reference number 45170122935.
The nation's most-famous war veterans begun their annual festivities by celebrating British dairy and cheese.

The Royal Hospital Chelsea hosted a ceremonial celebration of British cheese as dairy farmers and cheesemakers from around the UK donated enough cheese to the hospital to feed a small army.

Cheese has been a favourite among British soldiers serving on the front line for centuries. The Chelsea Pensioners consider the Ceremony of Christmas Cheeses the start of their Yuletide celebrations.

The Ceremony is an annual event which dates back to 1692 when a local cheesemonger agreed to provide war veterans at the Royal Hospital with their festive supply of cheese.

Ever since, cheesemakers from all over the country have continued the tradition and donated a selection of cheeses to the Chelsea Pensioners. The Dairy Council, a non-profit organisation which promotes dairy, has organised the event for over 50 years.

This year, British cheesemakers donated an impressive 514lbs worth of the finest quality cheeses from around the UK including cheddar, stilton, brie and red Leicester.

The ceremonial cheese was a giant 53lbs of Montgomery Cheddar, donated by J A E Montgomery Ltd, which was cut by In-Pensioner Leo Tighe, aged 74.

Mr Tighe joined the Army in 1959 and served in the Irish Guards for 25 years, reaching the rank of Warrant Officer Class 2. During his service, he was deployed to East Africa, Hong Kong, Germany, Belize and the Middle East. Following outstanding service in Jordan, he was honoured to be awarded the British Empire Medal.

He became a Chelsea Pensioner in January 2016 and along with his colleagues feels deeply privileged to represent the Royal Hospital throughout London and overseas.

He said: It is a great honour to take part in this wonderful ceremony, especially as it involves one of my favourite foods. I am extremely proud to be representing my fellow In-Pensioners here at the Royal Hospital today. We cannot thank the cheesemakers enough for their generous contributions. Every year we look forward to receiving this delicious Christmas gift."

Ash Amirahmadi, chairman of The Dairy Council, said: Cheesemakers across the UK have a great tradition of paying tribute to the courage and contribution made by our war veterans, and this year they certainly didnt disappoint.

Cheese is a food of the forces. It has been included in soldiers rations for centuries and that says it all  from its nutritional value to its much-loved taste, we have a great British product.
For Immediate Release: December 06, 2017 Statement From:

Today were announcing three new, significant policy documents to advance the FDAs approach to the development and proper oversight of innovative digital health tools. We know that consumers and health care providers are increasingly embracing digital health technologies to inform everyday decisions. From fitness trackers to mobile applications tracking insulin administration, these digital tools can provide consumers with a wealth of valuable health information. Further, clinical evidence demonstrates that consumers who are better informed about health make better and more efficient decisions, take steps to improve their lifestyles and their health choices, and often experience better outcomes.

Given these meaningful benefits from empowering consumers, we believe the FDA must, whenever possible, encourage the development of tools that can help people be more informed about their health. And we recognize that our regulations play a crucial role in the efficient development of such technologies. Therefore, our approach to regulating these novel, swiftly evolving products must foster, not inhibit, innovation. Moreover, we must always lean in the direction of enhancing access to more information  not restricting information flow  given the ability of reliable information to positively impact daily life.

Over the last five years, the FDA has made great strides in adapting our policies to better align our regulatory approach to the iterative nature of digital health products. Were finding that in some parts of our regulatory portfolio, our traditional approach to overseeing certain health care products does not easily fit the types of innovations that are being developed. In these cases, we must adapt and evolve our policies to make sure we continue to provide a gold standard for oversight, while enabling advancement of beneficial innovations and greater consumer access to technologies that can improve their health.

To this aim, this past summer, we issued the Digital Health Innovation Action Plan, which outlines our efforts to reimagine the FDAs approach to ensuring all Americans have timely access to high-quality, safe and effective digital health products. As part of this plan, we committed to several key goals, including increasing the number and expertise of digital health staff at the FDA, launching the digital health software precertification pilot program (Pre-Cert) and issuing guidance to modernize our policies.

As we come to the end of 2017, Im proud of the significant progress the FDAs digital health team has made on the Action Plan. We launched the Pre-Cert pilot and selected nine diverse companies to participate. We also have invested in hiring additional talent for our digital health team, including announcing the Entrepreneurs in Residence program. Yet, we recognize theres more work to do.

Today, were announcing three new guidances  two draft and one final  that address, in part, important provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), that offer additional clarity about where the FDA sees its role in digital health, and importantly, where we dont see a need for FDA involvement. Weve taken the instructions Congress gave us under the Cures Act and are building on these provisions to make sure that were adopting the full spirit of the goals we were entrusted with by Congress.

The first draft guidance, Clinical and Patient Decision Support Software, outlines our approach to clinical decision support software (CDS). CDS has many uses, including helping providers, and ultimately patients, identify the most appropriate treatment plan for their disease or condition. For example, such software can include programs that compare patient-specific signs, symptoms or results with available clinical guidelines to recommend diagnostic tests, investigations or therapy. This type of technology has the potential to enable providers and patients to fully leverage digital tools to improve decision making. We want to encourage developers to create, adapt and expand the functionalities of their software to aid providers in diagnosing and treating old and new medical maladies.

This draft guidance is intended to make clear what types of CDS would no longer be defined as a medical device, and thus would not be regulated by the agency. For example, generally, CDS that allows for the provider to independently review the basis for the recommendations are excluded from the FDAs regulation. This type of CDS can include software that suggests a provider order liver function tests before starting statin medication, consistent with clinical guidelines and approved drug labeling.

However, the FDA will continue to enforce oversight of software programs that are intended to process or analyze medical images, signals from in vitro diagnostic devices or patterns acquired from a processor like an electrocardiogram that use analytical functionalities to make treatment recommendations, as these remain medical devices under the Cures Act. For example, we would continue to oversee software that analyzes data from a patients spinal fluid test to diagnose tuberculosis meningitis or viral meningitis. These are areas in which the information provided in the clinical decision software, if not accurate, has the potential for significant patient harm, and the FDA plays an important role in ensuring the safety and effectiveness of these products.

Similarly, the CDS draft guidance also proposes to not enforce regulatory requirements for lower-risk decision support software thats intended to be used by patients or caregivers -- known as patient decision support software (PDS) -- when such software allows a patient or a caregiver to independently review the basis of the treatment recommendation. Although PDS was not part of the Cures Act, the FDA believes that PDS should follow a similar regulatory structure as CDS. An example of lower-risk PDS products could include software that reminds a patient how or when to take a prescribed drug, consistent with the drugs labeling. PDS software that does not clearly allow independent review of the recommendation by the patient or a caregiver would continue to be subject to the FDAs active oversight. This might include a warfarin monitoring device that makes recommendations for dosing based on the outcome of a home blood test.

We believe our proposals for regulating CDS and PDS not only fulfill the provisions of the Cures Act, but also strike the right balance between ensuring patient safety and promoting innovation.

The second draft guidance being issued today, Changes to Existing Medical Software Policies Resulting from Section 3060 of the 21st Century Cures Act, addresses other digital health provisions included in the Cures Act. Specifically, this second guidance outlines the FDAs interpretation of the types of software that are no longer considered medical devices. Were making clear that certain digital health technologies  such as mobile apps that are intended only for maintaining or encouraging a healthy lifestyle  generally fall outside the scope of the FDAs regulation. Such technologies tend to pose a low risk to patients, but can provide great value to consumers and the healthcare system.

Through this draft guidance, were proposing changes to previously published agency guidance documents, including: General Wellness and Mobile Medical Applications, among others, to be consistent with the Cures Act and reflective of the agencys new, more modern approach to digital health products. The proposed changes include updating the categories of products for which, prior to the Cures Act, the FDA already intended to exercise enforcement discretion owing to their very low risk and potential benefits to patients from greater innovation. Now, to create an even clearer distinction, consistent with the Cures Act, were saying that many of these products no longer qualify as medical devices that would be subject to the FDAs oversight.

In addition to taking steps to clarify the FDAs position on digital health, were also working with our global counterparts to harmonize and streamline the regulation of digital health products internationally.

Innovations in digital health remind us that we live in an interconnected world  one that reaches across borders and joins us in new and unique ways. Thats why in recent years, weve worked closely with regulatory authorities across the globe through the International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) to evaluate requirements in individual countries, and harmonize our regulatory approaches to digital health medical devices, where possible. Many of our global counterparts are represented, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Russia and Singapore.

As part of our package of policies being announced today, the FDA also is issuing a final guidance, Software as a Medical Device: Clinical Evaluation, in fulfillment of these international harmonization efforts. This guidance was initially issued in draft in October 2016 and informed by global and domestic comments. Todays final guidance expands on that draft. It establishes common principles for regulators to use in evaluating the safety, effectiveness and performance of Software as a Medical Device (SaMD). This final guidance provides globally recognized principles for analyzing and assessing SaMD, based on the overall risk of the product. The agencys adoption of these principles provides us with an initial framework when further developing our own specific regulatory approaches and expectations for regulatory oversight, and is another important piece in our overarching policy framework for digital health.

In sum, these three important guidance documents being issued today will continue to expand our efforts to encourage innovation in the ever-changing field of digital health. Our aim is to provide more clarity on and innovative changes to our risk-based approach to digital health products so that innovators know where they stand relative to the FDAs regulatory framework. Our interpretation of the Cures Act is creating a bright line to define those areas where we do not require premarket review. And were providing more detail on those technologies and applications that would no longer be classified as a medical device subject to FDA regulation. This will allow us to focus our efforts on the highest-risk products. Finally, were issuing new details on the common principles we and our international partners will use for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of SaMD. Through this comprehensive approach, we can deliver on our commitment of promoting beneficial innovation in this space while providing proper oversight where its merited.

Well be taking other steps to implement our Digital Health Innovation Action Plan. Were hosting a Pre-Cert Pilot Program workshop on January 30-31, 2018 to update FDA staff, participants and stakeholders on the lessons learned from the pilot. Later in the year, well share the pilots proof of concept and outline next steps for establishing a Pre-Certification Program. We look forward to working with patients, providers, technology developers and other customers in helping Americans access safe and innovative digital health products.

###
Puneeshs Father Visits Him

As we revealed earlier, Puneesh Sharma's father will be visiting him in the Bigg Boss 11 house. Apparently, Puneesh and his father do not share a warm relationship.

Puneesh & His Father

According to the latest promo, as soon as Puneesh watches his father enter the house, he smiles at him and gets emotional.

Puneeshs Father Impressed With Shilpa

In the promo, Puneesh's father meets Shilpa and tells her that Puneesh's mother wants to meet Shilpa, first.

Puneeshs Father Tells Akash Is Puneeshs True Friend

He goes towards Akash and tells him that he is Puneesh's real friend in the house and outside the house as well!

Puneesh & His Father Have An Emotional Reunion

After Bigg Boss frees Puneesh, he hugs his father and cries. He introduces him to his friends. Puneesh's father is impressed with Shilpa. Puneesh tells that he loves Shilpa a lot and she is his darling'!

Puneesh Introduces His Father To His Friends

Puneesh introduces him to Akash, who is in tears. He then introduces him to Arshi and others. All housemates hug his father after Bigg Boss frees them. As soon as his father goes out, Puneesh is seen shouting, "Daddy, I love you."

Vikas Mother Enters The House

As soon as Vikas hears his mother's voice, he gets excited. Bigg Boss asks everyone to freeze, while Vikas' mother enters the house. She hugs him and tells him that she is proud of him.

Emotional Moment!

On seeing Vikas and his mother, all the other housemates get teary-eyed. Bigg Boss frees Vikas and the duo hugs each other.
Siddharth Quits Dil Se Dil Tak!

It was said that the show might go off air soon! But, according to the latest report, Siddharth has quit the show. It is said that the actor is not happy with the way his character on the show is shaping up!

Siddharth Wasnt Happy With The Way His Character Was Shaping Up

Siddharth was quoted by BT a saying, "I wasn't happy with the way my character was shaping up and the track didn't pan out as I was promised. I had a meeting with the producer and we decided to part ways mutually."

Siddharth & Producer Meeting

A source was quoted by TOI as saying, "Sidharth had a meeting with the producer on Tuesday, after which they both felt things weren't working out and it was best to part ways."

Rohan Gandotra To Replace Siddharth

Apparently, Kaala Teeka fame Rohan Gandotra will be stepping into Siddharth Shukla's shoes to play the role of Parth Bhanushali.

Sumeet Mittal Says

The producer of the show, Sumeet Mittal confirmed Rohan's entry on the show. He said, "Sidharth and we had creative differences and hence, we decided to go our separate ways on a good note."

Dil Se Dil Tak

For the uninitiated, Dil Se Dil Tak deals with surrogate motherhood. Apparently, the show is loosely based on Salman Khan, Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta starrer Chori Chori Chupke Chupke.

DSDT

Rashmi (Shorvari) and Siddharth (Parth) play a Bengali couple on the show. Shorvari suffers a miscarriage and they will get to know that she will not be able to conceive again! The couple will seek help from Jasmine, who plays a Gujarati girl, Teni (surrogate mother)!
Fred Hutch has been the leader in bone marrow transplantation for decades, and Geoffs expertise as a researcher and clinician will enable the Hutch to stay at the cutting edge of the field, said Dr. Nancy E. Davidson, senior vice president of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutch and president and executive director of SCCA. She took up those positions a year ago and also was then named head of the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Were thrilled about the vision Geoff will bring to our efforts to advance stem cell transplantation, which is one form of immunotherapy, Davidson said.

Integrating BMT with emerging immunotherapies

Hill comes to Seattle as Fred Hutch and SCCA seek to integrate bone marrow transplantation  for which the Hutchs Dr. E. Donnall Thomas earned a Nobel Prize in 1990  with new and emerging immunotherapies for cancer.

Bone marrow transplantation was the first immunotherapy, and since pioneering the procedure, we have learned vastly more about how the immune system enables the therapy to work, said Dr. Gary Gilliland, president and director of Fred Hutch. Geoff is a world-renowned stem cell transplant expert and he will lead the Hutch into the next era of cellular therapies for treatment of cancer. We are very excited to have recruited him.

Hill will work closely with immunotherapy experts at Fred Hutch and the Bezos Family Immunotherapy Clinic at SCCA to identify ways to combine transplantation with Fred Hutch expertise in other immunotherapies that involve engineering T cells to target and kill cancer cells.

As a transplant physician, there is a great attraction to move to the Hutch, both because of its historical significance in pioneering bone marrow transplantation and its continuing innovation in this therapy, Hill said.

Hills research team has produced significant insights into the immunological processes that underlie GVHD, the complication that arises when the newly transplanted donor immune system mounts an attack on the transplant recipient. The common condition varies from mild to disabling and can be fatal.

He has developed preclinical models demonstrating the type of cells that initiate GVHD and how molecules called cytokines orchestrate the severity of the disease, leading to a number of new therapeutic approaches. At Fred Hutch he will continue his lab research aimed at minimizing GVHD and making transplantation more tolerable to patients.

Patients drive his work

What drives my work as a clinician and a researcher is seeing patients with poor outcomes after transplant and trying to address those through clinical research, Hill said. Weve found a number of new immune pathways involved in initiating and maintaining GVHD, which give us good therapeutic targets.

Hill received medical training in New Zealand and Australia and additional research training and experience at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. He is a long-standing Senior Principal Research Fellow of Australias National Health and Medical Research Council, co-authoring more than 150 journal articles on stem cells, transplantation and GVHD.

Hill was the 2005 Queenslander of the Year and received both the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand 2009 Ian McKenzie Award and the 2014 Translational Research Institute National Prize for excellence within basic and clinical research in the transplant field. He was also awarded a Queensland Health Senior Clinical Research Fellowship in 2010 to translate new cytokine and cell-based therapies into clinical practice.

We are excited to welcome Geoff Hill to the faculty of the UW Department of Medicine, said Dr. William J. Bremner, chair of the department and the Robert G. Petersdorf Endowed Chair in Medicine. He will be clinically active in the SCCA and his translational research will greatly advance our understanding of the immunological mechanisms involved in transplantation and its complications, including GVHD, thereby improving patient care.
A police force recorded more than 300 incidents of hare coursing in just one month  the equivalent to 10 a day.

In November, Lincolnshire Police said there were 306 incidents of hare coursing, giving a three-month total of 690 incidents.

This, however, is a drop compared with 803 incidents recorded over the same period in 2016.

See also: Hare coursing  what you need to know if your farm is targeted

Some days there were no reports of hare coursing, but on others there up to 24 incidents were reported.

#harecoursing is not just about animal welfare but about wider rural community safety. #ruralcrime #OpGalileo pic.twitter.com/eIdUuWBZYE  Lincs Rural Crime (@LincsRuralCrime) December 3, 2017

Although the figures remain high, the NFU said it was encouraged to see that Operation Galileo, the forces campaign to tackle hare coursing, was working to reduce incidents in the county.

Danny OShea, an NFU county adviser in Lincolnshire, said: We are keen to see Lincolnshire Police take action against these criminals and send the uncompromising message to hare coursers that they are not welcome in our county.

It is good news that action is being taken, and the NFU will continue to work with Lincolnshire Police to tackle these frightening and ruthless criminals.

To tackle hare coursing in Lincolnshire, the NFU wants:

Police to improve response rates to reports of incidents

Increased number of dogs, vehicles and proceeds of crime seized

Greater conviction rates and tougher sentences for criminals

The NFU is also urging farmers to report all incidents of hare coursing this winter to police to ensure officers have the best intelligence and chance of ending this epidemic.

Police forces across the UK are using social media to engage with farmers and the public to increase awareness of illegal hare coursing activity.

This is the state of our cars after pursuing a Grand Cherokee Jeep that was suspected of Hare Coursing & causing criminal damage near Buckland. The vehicle has front & rear end damage, it now in the Essex area near Clavering. If seen please call 999. pic.twitter.com/Kjes6fuAEO  E Herts Rural Police (@EHertsRrlPolice) December 3, 2017

Meanwhile, in Cambridgeshire, police are using social media to connect with the public and gather intelligence of hare coursing incidents.

Following a post on Facebook about a suspected hare coursing incident near Witchford, officers from East Cambridgeshire held a Q&A session with the public to gather information and answer questions.

See also: Video  farmer hit in face with metal bar after taking on illegal hare coursers

Hare coursing is a rural crime where greyhounds or other dogs are used to chase, catch and kill hares, with large sums of money often wagered on the outcome. It is illegal under the 2014 Hunting Act.

Levels of hare coursing increase significantly after harvest, when large areas of arable land are cleared.

Anyone with information about hare coursing should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. If you see hare coursers operating, call 999.
Build your dream home on this lovely 17.7+/- acres of land in the beautiful Graves Mill Valley of Madison County, Virginia. From the elevated building site, you can view the Blue Ridge Mountains in one direction and in the other direction look down over the valley where over 1300 acres are protected by conservation easements. Enjoy fishing and wading in the Rapidan River which forms the southern boundary of the property. The land is mostly open and would make a nice small farm.

Just a few miles from the property you can hike in the Shenandoah National Park as well as the Rapidan Wildlife Manangement Area. This is a very unique and affordable parcel nestled in a very protected setting of large farms. The land is located 45 minutes north of Charlottesville and two hours from Washington D.C.

Offered at $282,500.
Saakashvili to begin impeachment of Poroshenko - Georgia's ex-president adresses his supporters - GeorgianJournal
Nokia 6 (2018) reportedly in the works; January launch possible News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu

Nokia 6 carries the credits for being the first Nokia branded Android smartphone to be launched by HMD. The device is one of the bestselling models from HMD and will turn one year old in a few more days.

Having said that, it looks like the Nokia 6 will be getting a successor very soon. A recent leak by a Baidu user via GizmoChina has revealed that HMD could be working on a Nokia 6 successor that is slated to be launched soon. An image that has been posted on Baidu also shows the model number of the alleged second generation Nokia 6 smartphone and the memory configuration too.

Going by the leaked image, it is believed that the Nokia 6 will carry the model number TA-1054 but this will differ in each region. Notably, this is not the first time that we are coming across this model number. Back in November, a Nokia smartphone with the same model number was spotted on the database of China's Communications Commission and there were claims that it could be the Nokia 9.

As mentioned above, the leaked image also reveals the memory configuration of the Nokia 6 successor. It can be seen that the smartphone might be launched with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage space. Again, the storage capacity is set to differ based on the market. There are possibilities for the company to unveil a variant of the Nokia 6 with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage and one more with 4GB RAM and 64GB variant.

The Nokia 6 (2018) is to feature a durable and sturdy build as the original device but there are major design changes are expected. The bezels at the top and bottom are likely to be narrower tipping that there could be a full-screen design. Eventually, the fingerprint sensor might be positioned at the rear and there will be on-screen navigational buttons too. The primary camera is likely to have a new design as in the Nokia 5. Talking about specs, the Nokia 6 second generation model is believed to pack more power with a Snapdragon 660 SoC.

Besides revealing the details of the second generation Nokia 6, the source also revealed another image showing the model numbers of the Nokia 9. The image tips that there will be three variants of the Nokia 9 with the model numbers TA-1005, TA-1009 and TA-1042.

We recently came across a report that the Nokia 9 might be unveiled at an event on January 19. It was also speculated that the Nokia 9 might be accompanied by another one - the new Nokia 8. Now, we can expect the new Nokia 6 to also share the stage with the other devices.

Best Mobiles in India
MediaTek and Qualcomm partner with Google to provide Android Oreo (Go edition) software News oi -Samden Sherpa MediaTek along with Qualcomm have collaborated with Google to deliver improved performance in entry-level smartphones.

MediaTek one of the popular semiconductor companies has now announced that it is a System-on-Chip (SoC) partner for providing Google's AndroidTM Oreo (Go edition) software to smartphone makers. After a deep collaboration with Google, MediaTek's MT6739, MT6737, and MT6580 SoCs, among others, now have board support packages available to run Android Oreo (Go edition).

Google collaborated with MediaTek to ensure that Android Oreo (Go edition) works well on its line of processors, enabling a faster time-to-market mechanism for device manufacturers, and ensuring a quality Android smartphone experience that is both secure and affordable for devices with 512MB to 1GB of memory. This marks one of the first times that entry-level SoCs are ready to be used shortly after the latest version of Android, in this case, Android 8.1 Oreo, which has been released to the Android Open Source Project.

With Android Oreo (Go edition), Google has optimized its OS platform, first-party apps, and the Google PlayTM Store to improve the capabilities of entry-level devices. Limited processing power and storage are top pain points for entry-level device users. Android Oreo (Go edition) was created to not only address these issues but to also ensure that the devices are secure and that users have more control over data usage.

Android Oreo (Go edition) leverages the existing Google Play Store ecosystem to deliver apps that run smoothly on low memory devices. This improves the overall user experience with, and support for, devices that have 512MB to 1GB of memory, which results in a significant bill of materials (BOM) cost savings. These savings enable device makers to provide the 400 million users who buy entry-level smartphones every year, a better option.

"Entry-level devices are the gateway to the internet for many people, and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience when they use these devices," said Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management, Android and Google Play. "We're excited that Android Oreo (Go edition) will significantly improve storage, performance, data management, and security."

"Today's announcement builds upon our existing work with Google, including our recent collaboration on Google's GMS Express to speed up the certification process," said TL Lee, General Manager of MediaTek's Wireless Communication business unit. "With Android Oreo (Go edition), we are partnering with Google to tackle the performance challenges of lower memory phones, improving the user experience of entry-level smartphones for consumers in key markets across India, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America and South East Asia."

Android Oreo (Go edition) leverages MediaTek's acclaimed turnkey references and chipsets that are designed specifically to reduce product development time and compliance testing. A wide range of MediaTek SoC's supports Android Oreo (Go edition), including the MT6739 and MT6737 for 4G devices, as well as the MT6580 for 3G devices. This gives device makers the range of capabilities they need to develop devices for specific price points and markets.

Android Oreo (Go edition) smartphones powered by MediaTek will be available in the worldwide market by Q1, 2018.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm, the other major mobile processor maker, has also announced full support for bringing Android Oreo (Go edition) to low-RAM smartphones. The company has said that it will be working closely with Google to offer an optimised experience on smartphones with a memory of 1GB or less.

Qualcomm claims that this partnership will help leverage growth for both brands in emerging markets from South Asia and Africa. Android Oreo (Go edition) is expected to be available running on devices based on Snapdragon mobile platforms in early 2018.

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Exclusive: BSNL to launch 4G LTE services in January News oi -Priyanka BSNL has more than 100 million mobile customers, 10 million broadband customers, and 16 million landline customers. The telco is also providing various enterprise services like lease line and VSAT

Although it's comparatively late, the State-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) may soon start competing with the private telecom service providers, as it is all set to launch its 4G LTE service in January.

"We have a different strategy for 4G like one is to utilize Wi-Fi route of 4G and for that we have already installed 15000 Wi-Fi hotspots which are 4G enabled and second is to go classical route like LTE which we will begin in January," Anupam Shrivastava, Chairman, and Managing Director, BSNL, told Gizbot in an exclusive interaction.

He further said, "Nokia and ZTE are going to install the 4G equipment by this month end first in West and South Zone and then in North, East Zone.

BSNL also wants to increase Wi-Fi hotspots up to 100,000 over two years, he added.

Meanwhile, a report in Deccan Chronicle says that Chennai will be the first city receiving 4G services if everything goes according to the plan.

The telco has also recently announced its tie-up with domestic handset maker Micromax for 4G feature phone which is branded as "BHARAT-1." The co-branded device is already available at Rs. 2,200/- and has all facilities which are required for the 4G user. BSNL has bundled a voucher worth Rs 97/- per month which provides unlimited voice and unlimited data to the consumer. This combination of BSNL and Micromax is perhaps one of the most reasonable cost-effective mobile bundling available in the market at present.

"The product has already hit the market and it is picking up quite well, Shrivastava said when asked about the response. The company is also talking to Lava for 4G feature phones and have signed one MOU with them, he further said.

Yet another aspect of the telco is that it is also geared to sign MOU with Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson this month, for 5G and IoT in India.

So far, BSNL has more than 100 million mobile customers, 10 million broadband customers, and 16 million landline customers. The telco is also providing various enterprise services like lease line, VSAT and various managed services.

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Vodafone launches its i-RoamFree service to Thailand and New Zealand News oi -Vijeta With this, customers planning their holidays can now enjoy the benefits of Vodafone i-RoamFREE in 20 countries including popular destinations like UAE, USA, UK, Singapore, Malaysia etc.

India's second largest telecom operator Vodafone today has announced its new offer under which the company extends its Vodafone iRoamFree, international roaming scheme to two more countries- Thailand and New Zealand.

With this, customers planning their holidays can now enjoy the benefits of Vodafone i-RoamFREE in 20 countries including popular destinations like UAE, USA, UK, Singapore, Malaysia etc.

Avneesh Khosla, Associate Director - Consumer Business, Vodafone India, said, "Vodafone customers have had a delightful experience with our Vodafone i-RoamFREE plans. This holiday season, we wanted to further add to the festivities that our travelers are looking forward to. We are delighted to add two popular destinations to the I-RoamFREE proposition - Thailand & New Zealand, strengthening our unlimited offering to 20 countries."

He said, "Thailand is amongst the top 4 international holiday destination for Indians for business, leisure or even a weekend gateway. With a large Indian diaspora, New Zealand is a popular long-haul choice for Indian travelers for visiting family and for exploring the country's natural beauty. With calls and data being completely free under the i-RoamFREE packs, customers would not have to look for alternatives and can have a completely worry-free roaming experience."

The packs are available at multiple affordable price points ranging from Rs 5000 for 28 days (which is effectively Rs 180 per day) to Rs. 500 for a 24 Hours usage, for those on a short visit. Both Vodafone prepaid and postpaid consumers can activate the pack through My Vodafone App.

The company has introduced the Vodafone i-RoamFREE for customers traveling to Europe recently. Apart from Europe, travelers can also use unlimited calling and Data in USA, UAE, Singapore& Malaysia with the same pack.

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The AmeriKat's new tattoo

By law, before a medicinal product can be placed on the market, it requires a MA. Getting a medicinal product to this point cant take upwards to 15 years.

By the time a MA for a medicinal product is granted, much of the term of the patent that protects the product will have expired. This means that the effective protection under the patent is insufficient to cover the investment in R&D (see Article 4 of the SPC Regulation).

For this reason, a new right - the Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) - was introduced by the SPC Regulation in order to address that problem.

SPCs provide an additional period of protection - up to a maximum of 5 years - for a product (i) subject to a valid MA at the date of the application (Article 3(b)) and protected by a patent (basic patent) in force at the date of the application (Article 3(a)).

National courts and the CJEU have spent many years wrangling with the interpretation and application of the SPC Regulation.

Oh, why did the SPC Regulation have to

be that clear?

"ezetimibe and atorvastatin or pharmaceutically acceptable salts thereof, including atorvastatin as atorvastatin calcium trihydrate".

The path to a granted SPC under the DCP

1. Is an end of procedure notice issued by the reference Member State under Article 28(4) of Directive [2001/83] before expiry of the basic patent to be treated as equivalent to a granted marketing authorisation for the purpose of Article 3(b) of [the SPC Regulation], such that an applicant for [an SPC] in the Member State in question is entitled to apply for and be granted [an SPC] on the basis of the end of procedure notice?

No - an end of procedure notice issued by a reference Member State in accordance with the DCP is not to be treated as equivalent to an MA. The natural reading of the word "granted" in Article 3(b) is that the action has to have been completed. The grant of an SPC is linked to the grant of a MA so an SPC can only be granted if an MA has been granted. After setting out the specific procedure of the DCP, the CJEU turned to the crux of the issue. It stated that the adoption of an end of procedure notice under Article 28(4) of Directive 2001/83 represents an intermediate stage in the DCP. The notice does not have the same legal effect as a "valid" MA. Although the notice has features of an MA (guaranteeing safety, identifying the product, etc), it importantly does not not permit an applicant to place on the market the medicinal product - an MA does. This is the "essential feature " of a MA.

The Court cited Forsgren C-631/13 ) on the basis that that Court stated that a patented product may not give rise to the grant of an SPC unless the medicinal product has been granted a MA.

2. If the answer to question 1 is no: in the circumstances in question, is the absence of a granted marketing authorisation in the Member State in question at the date of the application for [an SPC] in that Member State an irregularity that can be cured under Article 10(3) of [the SPC Regulation] once the marketing authorisation has been granted?

No. Article 3(b) states an SPC is to be granted "if...a valid authorization to place the product on the market as a medicinal product has been granted". There needs to be a granted MA in the Member State concerned. If this condition is not met, then the SPC should be rejected by the relevant MS's authority. Article 10(3) only relates to irregularities relating to the application for the SPC. An absence of an MA does not constitute an irregularity of the application - it is "an irregularity in connection with the product, as a medicinal product, not an irregularity in connection with the SPC application." Essentially Article 10(3) is for curing defects relating to paperwork, not defects relating to the conditions of grant.

of the Court's Trinity Term, Mr Justice Arnold referred two questions to the CJEU on the SPC Regulation in [2016] EWHC 1896 . Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union responded to Arnold J's questions in Case C-567/16 holding that an end of procedure notice does not amount to a granted marketing authorization for purposes of Article 3(b). The AmeriKat summarized the background of the dispute, parties' arguments and referred questions in this post - but for ease she repeats the background for readers below.What do you do if your patent is about to expire, but despite notice that Member States (MSs) have agreed to grant your marketing authorization (MA) under the decentralized procedure, a MS has not yet taken the step to actually grant it? You still make your SPC application, of course.What happens after that was subject to a reference to the CJEU (form of questions below).Nothing makes the AmeriKat happier than SPC law (as far as "legal happiness" goes). For those who have better things to do with their time than to understand the wonderful world of SPCs or to follow the myriad of national and CJEU decisions in this area, the key points are as follows:Atozet is the medicinal product which contains the active ingredients of ezetimibe and atorvastatin. It is used to lower cholesterol. Claim 17 of EP(UK) 0 720 599 (the basic patent) protects a pharmaceutical composition comprising ezetimible and atorvastatin (this was not in dispute). MSD applied for a SPC for the "product" on the basis of this patent for:The problem was that at the time of the SPC application, there was no granted MA in the UK.MSD obtained a MA and SPC for the mono product - ezetimibe - in 2003. It then obtained a MA and SPC for a combination of ezetimibe and simvastin - in 2004 and 2006, respectively (Merpel was struck by the relevance of this in the decision given that Article 3(c) objections were not in dispute, save for in the Dutch court).In September 2006, MSD began development of the fixed dose combo of ezetimibe and atorvastatin. However, it encountered formulation difficulties. Seven years later, in September 2013, MSD filed MAs for Atozet in a number of Member States using the decentralized procedure (DCP) of obtaining a MA. MSD designated Germany as the reference Member State (RMS). As the RMS, the German medicines regulatory authority - Bundesinstitut fur Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte - coordinated the approval process, preparing the draft documents and, most importantly, the draft summary of product characteristics (SmPC) on which the other Member States comment. All Member States' respective regulatory bodies need to be happy with the documents before the procedure is closed. Thereafter, once agreement is reached, each Member State has 30 days to grant the MA.The German medicines authority did not accept that MSD had filed a valid application until 13 February 2014. On 12 September that year - a single day before the patent expired (remember the basic patent has to be in force under Article 3(a)) - MSD applied for its UK SPC at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). However, MSD did not have a granted UK MA. Instead, MSD submitted, with their SPC application, a copy of the end of procedure (EoP) notice from the German medicines agency stating that the DCP had ended with approval. MSD explained that the effect of the EoP notice was that concerned Member States, including the UK, had agreed to grant a MA for Atozet. MSD therefore asked the UK IPO for permission to supplement their application when their UK MA was granted.Five days later, the UK IPO's examiner said MSD's application did not comply with Article 3(b) because at the time of filing their SPC application, they did not have a valid UK MA. The EoP notice did not satisfy that requirement. The IPO also objected to the application on Article 3(c) grounds. Three weeks later, the UK MHRA granted the MA on 10 October 2014. MSD submitted a copy of the UK MA, together with the first EU MA (from France) and asserted that these documents would rectify any irregularities in the application. The examiner maintained her objections, leading to a hearing in which the hearing officer agreed that Article 3(c) was satisfied but the SPC application fell foul of Article 3(b) which could not be cured under Article 10(3).The final form of the questions referred to the Court and the CJEU's answers are set out below:On the strict literal wording of the SPC Regulation, the AmeriKat can understand the reasoning of the Court. But why should an applicant be penalized because (i) it takes longer to prove the safety and efficacy of a formulated medicinal product and (ii) a national medicines agency's speed may slow the DCP leading to a granted MA? Isn't this time loss exactly why we have an SPC Regulation? This may be a hangry rant, but the AmeriKat is left searching for the justice of a telelogical approach amongst the black and white interpretation of the drafting of the SPC Regulation in this decision. Merpel also finds irony in that, seemingly for once, the SPC Regulation is too clear.
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NATO Foreign Ministers meeting wraps up in Brussels

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

05 Dec. 2017

NATO Foreign Ministers on Wednesday (6 December) discussed ways to increase NATO's role in projecting stability and fighting terrorism as part of preparations for the upcoming NATO Summit in Brussels next July.

"From the Balkans to Afghanistan, NATO has great experience in training local forces and building the capacity of local institutions", NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of a two-day meeting of the Alliance's Foreign Ministers in Brussels. "These are the best tools to make our partners better able to defend themselves and to combat international terrorist threats". Ministers also discussed how NATO's role within the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS should evolve as the Coalition moves from combat operations to stabilisation efforts.

Earlier in the day, Ministers reaffirmed their practical and political support for Georgia as well as their commitment to Georgia's eventual membership of the Alliance. NATO and the European Union decided to further boost their cooperation on Tuesday, signing off on 32 new joint proposals for more cooperation particularly in the areas of military mobility, fighting terrorism and promoting the role of women.

North Korea's illegal weapons programme was also on the agenda after last week's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea showed that all Allied nations could be within range. Mr Stoltenberg said the missile test showed North Korea's reckless behaviour, and added that the world must put maximum diplomatic, political and economic pressure on North Korea order to achieve a peaceful solution.

The Ministerial ended with a review of NATO's Open Door policy and how Allies can best support the countries which aspire for NATO membership. Secretary General Stoltenberg stressed that successive rounds of enlargement have secured peace in Europe and supported European integration. In preparation to NATO's 2018 Summit, Ministers agreed to review the progress of each aspirant country by April 2018.



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35th FW relocates for Vigilant Ace 18

35th Fighter Wing Public Affairs / Published December 06, 2017

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AFNS) -- The 35th Fighter Wing relocated 18 F-16 Fighting Falcons and more than 280 personnel to participate in Vigilant Ace 18, an annual flying exercise at Osan Air Base, South Korea, occurring Dec. 4 - 8, 2017.

The exercise tests the readiness of 35th FW Airmen to rapidly respond within the Indo-Asia-Pacific region and enhance interoperability with allies and sister services across the Korean Peninsula, while sustaining operations away from home station.

"Overall, this exercise will help identify shortfalls our fighter squadron would endure if we had to relocate to [South Korea] during a real-world scenario," said 1st Lt. Michael Mayclin, 13th Fighter Squadron F-16 pilot. "We want to safely execute our 'Wild Weasel' mission set during our time here, while further learning about our role within the Pacific."

During the relocation, both pilots and maintainers focused on a seamless operational transition from Misawa AB to Osan AB.

"Our number one priority ensures bed-down procedures, or getting equipment and personnel in the right location, are completed and will sufficiently support the mission for immediate operational use," said Capt. Gabriel Byrd, 13th Aircraft Maintenance Unit officer in charge. "It is important to find and correct errors during a simulated exercise versus a real-world wartime contingency."

Alongside the 35th FW, Airmen with the 51st FW at Osan AB received realistic training in-processing Airmen from another unit.

"There are very few differences between receiving forces and cargo during Vigilant Ace 18 and during a wartime environment," said Staff Sgt. David Mayo, 51st Maintenance Group unit reception monitor. "If we are flying by the seat of our pants when a real-world scenario occurs, a lot of time and effort will be wasted, potentially costing lives. This exercise forces us to be flexible and accommodate the needs of incoming units."

Vigilant Ace 18 encompasses more than 12,000 U.S. personnel at eight South Korea and U.S. military installations across the Korean Peninsula.

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571st MSAS trains El Salvador air force for peacekeeping mission

By 571st Mobility Support Advisory Squadron, 621st Contingency Response Wing / Published December 06, 2017

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- The 571st Mobility Support Advisory Squadron sent a 15 member mobility training team to the Republic of El Salvador to conduct training for two weeks.

The MTT's mission was to train and advise the Latin American expeditionary forces to deploy in support of the U.N.'s peacekeeping efforts in the Republic of Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa.

El Salvador is Central America's smallest and most densely populated country, but is the region's largest contributor to this U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The 1st air brigade has been supporting the U.N. in Mali since 2014, but will soon undertake new responsibilities in firefighting, air traffic control, airfield management and weather operations.

The MTT executed more than 170 combined hours of instruction to 48 students that will be assigned to one of the new operational areas. However, the uncertainty of the scope of responsibility Salvadorans will face in Mali required the instructors to dynamically tailor their course material to the mission their students would face in a foreign geographical area.

"As air advisors we want to provide our partner nations with the best quality training the (U.S.) Air Force can offer," said Capt. LaDarian Outsey, the MTT's mission commander. "When we work with our partner nations, we seek to provide them with the most tangible training and enlighten them with current techniques and procedures. With their upcoming Mali deployment, we sought to tailor the course work to facilitate what they can expect to see in Mali. Doing this will have a direct impact on how the Salvadoran military conducts their contingency operations."

This approach empowered the MTT's instructors to both train and make observations that resulted in key recommendations to prevent potential downrange mission degradation.

The MTT's firefighting instructors, Master Sgts. Johnathan Hall and Golangia Jenkins, noticed a critical error in the Salvadoran firefighting team's purchase order. Their actions enabled the Salvadorans to repurpose $10,000 in "not needed" purchases, and purchase critical lifesaving equipment.

"Identifying the incorrect item on their purchase order early enabled them to cancel the order and request the proper equipment for safe emergency operations," Hall said. "Without this equipment they would not have been able to effectively perform their duties in Mali."

"I'd like to thank the 571st MSAS air advisors for their dedication and for taking the time to prepare my team for the challenges it will soon face," said Lt. Col. Robert Baires Hernandez, Salvadoran 1st air brigade unit commander.

The 571st MSAS is charged with strengthening partner nation's capabilities and the squadron trains, advises and assists partner nations in developing airpower capabilities. The unit includes Spanish-speaking Airmen and is aligned with the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility.

"Air advisors are a key asset in the Air Force's enduring Building Partner Capacity mission," Outsey said. "Each successive engagement assists to achieve freedom, stability and prosperity in the region, and contributes to USSOUTHCOMM joint intermediate military objectives."

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DoD Urges Congress to Pass FY18 Budget

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2017  The Pentagon urged Congress to pass the Fiscal Year 2018 Defense Appropriations Bill before the current continuing resolution expires on Friday.

Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning said the men and women of the department deserve the certainty such a move would make.

"To be very clear, continuing resolutions are wasteful and inefficient," Manning told Pentagon reporters today. "Continuing resolutions immediately disrupt training, impede readiness recovery, delay maintenance, impose uncertainty on the workforce and induce inefficient and constrained contracting practices."

Continuing Resolution

The department is under a continuing resolution now. A continuing resolution is designed to be a short, stopgap measure to allow Congress to finish work on pending appropriations bills. Continuing resolutions provide funding at the level most recently approved -- in this case the funding level for fiscal 2017. During a continuing resolution, the department cannot begin new programs or new construction.

"The longer [continuing resolutions] last, the more damage they do," Manning said. "A stable and robust defense spending bill received on time is critical to the Department of Defense both now, and in the years to come."

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End-of-term exhaustion of academic Kats

The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has kindly informed us that they are looking to commission research around exhaustion of rights.

As readers are no doubt aware, exhaustion of rights in IP refers to the limits on the rights to control distribution and resale of a good after it has been legitimately put on the market in a specific territory. Once a good has been marketed, depending on the territory, the IPRs (or certain aspects of it) are said to be exhausted. The UK is currently part of a regional exhaustion system, with the region being the European Economic Area (EEA). This means that goods marketed in the EEA cannot be barred from being resold/distributed across member states on the basis of IPRs, but rights holders have the ability to control imports from outside the bloc. (Some recent Kat posts on the topical issue here here and here .)



As such, the UK IPO, is looking to determine the overall economic and social value of parallel trade arising from the current IP exhaustion regime and how this would vary across the different possible regimes.



This work will encompass multiple research projects with the current proposals looking at: the role of price differentials, sector specific impacts and enforcement impacts.



The IPO would welcome any interest in bidding for this research. Please contact Nirojan Pathmanathan (Nirojan.pathmanathan@ipo.gov.uk) for further details.













Sleepy cat image: Jon Brinn




NATO Ministers affirm support for Georgia

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

06 Dec. 2017

NATO Foreign Ministers reaffirmed their practical and political support for Georgia today (Wednesday 6 December) as well as their commitment to Georgia's eventual membership of the Alliance.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed gratitude for Georgia's many contributions to Euro-Atlantic security. "Especially the service of the highly-skilled men and women of the Georgian military, many of whom have served in Afghanistan, where Georgia is the largest non-NATO contributor to our Resolute Support training mission."

Ministers discussed ongoing NATO-Georgia cooperation, including the planning of a joint military exercise, planned for 2019. "We continue to implement the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, on which, together, we are making impressive progress." said the NATO Secretary General.

Mr Stoltenberg said, "The Alliance is fully committed to providing Georgia with the advice and tools it needs to advance toward eventual NATO membership."

The Secretary General underlined NATO's strong commitment to Georgia's security and territorial integrity. He said, "We remain concerned by the deepening of Russia's relations with the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia. We call on Russia to end its recognition of these regions and withdraw its forces from Georgian territory."

The Secretary General was speaking following the meeting of NATO-Georgia Commission foreign ministers at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

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Dallas Holds Inactivation Ceremony After 36 Years of Service

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS171206-22

Release Date: 12/6/2017 1:40:00 PM

From Commander, Submarine Group 9 Public Affairs

BANGOR, Wash. (NNS) -- The crew of the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Dallas (SSN 700) held an inactivation ceremony, Dec. 5, at Naval Kitsap-Bangor, celebrating the boat's 36 years of service.

The occasion marked the crew's final public event before the submarine is officially decommissioned in the controlled industrial area (CIA) at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) in Bremerton, Washington.

"Today we celebrate the numerous accomplishments of this fine ship and the crews who sailed her, the outstanding efforts of both the crew and the shipyard over the inactivation, as well as our close association with both the great city of Bremerton and the boat's namesake, Dallas, Texas," said Dallas' Executive Officer Lt. Cmdr. Todd Bowers.

Many supporters, Dallas Navy League members, and former crew members attended the ceremony to reunite with old shipmates and bid the submarine farewell. Also in attendance was Mr. John Hayes, who represented the City of Dallas, and Texas Congressman Kenny Marchant.

"The boat and her crew, through their years of dedicated service, have lived up to the USS Dallas' motto, 'First in Harm's Way,' and I know that the crew of USS Dallas will continue to hunt for excellence throughout their lives," said Hayes. "I am honored to recognize the USS Dallas and the incredible men and women who served as her crew."

When a commissioned U.S. Navy ship is decommissioned, it is taken out of active service and the crew is reassigned to another ship or command. Inactivation is the process in which the submarine will be de-fueled, with the hull retained in safe storage until decommissioning.

"We anticipate that sometime in early April 2018, behind the layered security of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's Controlled Industrial Area and with little fanfare, a small fraction of the crew and a handful of shipyard personnel shall observe the final striking of the commissioning pennant and hauling down of the ensign, following which Dallas will be officially decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry," said Cmdr. David Kaiser, Dallas' final commanding officer. "Today's ceremony is our opportunity to bring together current and former crewmembers and families, our adoptive families from Dallas, Texas, members of our project team, and a number of our brothers and sisters in our profession of arms to remember and to truly appreciate the sacrifices of the crew and their families. This is a chance to finally say goodbye to Dallas."

Capt. Robert Jezek, Submarine Force U.S. Pacific Fleet Puget Sound Naval Shipyard representative was the guest speaker for the event.

"The decommissioning of Dallas marks the end for this amazing submarine that has served our country for more than 36 years," said Jezek. "When commissioned on July 18, 1981, Dallas was hailed as the cutting edge of the nation's defense system. For all these years Dallas carried out missions vital to national security, deployed 14 times, steamed [more than] one million miles, visited [more than] 30 countries, starred in one blockbuster movie, and has been considered home for hundreds of Sailors over the years, some of which are in the audience today."

The ceremony concluded with the lowering of the national ensign and the hauling down of the commissioning pennant, along with a symbolic securing of the watch.

"Today I am truly humbled to have had the opportunity to lead these fine men and to be part of the family and history of such a fine warship," said Kaiser. "Following 36 years of commissioned service, it is time to let this great lady rest. Today's ceremony does not mark the death of a vessel; rather it symbolizes a transition which occurs in the life of every warship. The transition where her legacy shifts away from the individual ship accomplishments and now to the Sailors and families which carry all that they've learned and all they've experienced."

Dallas completed their most recent deployment on Nov. 22, 2016. During their final extended 7-month deployment to the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operation, the submarine traveled 37,000 nautical miles and made port calls to Brest, France; Al Hidd, Bahrain; and Duqm, Oman.

Dallas departed Groton, Connecticut for Bremerton, Washington on March 24, 2017. During their transit, Dallas transited the Panama Canal and conducted port calls in Port Canaveral, Florida and San Diego. They arrived at PSNS, May 22.

Dallas was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Dallas, Texas. The keel was laid by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics in Groton, Connecticut on Oct. 9, 1976. The boat was launched April 28, 1979, and commissioned July 18, 1981.

Dallas has received two Meritorious Unit Commendations, two Navy Unit Commendations and has been awarded the Battle Efficiency "E" for 1986, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1999, 2000 and 2013.

Dallas was featured prominently in the Tom Clancy novel, "The Hunt for Red October," and its film adaptation. However, instead of filming on Dallas, they used the recently decommissioned Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Houston (SSN 713) as the primary boat.

Measuring more than 360 feet long and displacing more than 6,900 tons, Dallas has a crew of approximately 140 Sailors. Dallas is capable of supporting various missions, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

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USS Nimitz to return to Naval Base Kitsap

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS171206-03

Release Date: 12/6/2017 9:17:00 AM

From Naval Base Kitsap Public Affairs

BREMERTON, Wash. (NNS) -- There's no place like home for the holidays and the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) will arrive home at Naval Base Kitsap (NBK) Bremerton after a six-month deployment in time to celebrate this festive season.

USS Nimitz departed NBK-Bremerton, June 1. The carrier, embarked with Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, will return home to NBK and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Shoup (DDG 86) and USS Kidd (DDG 100) will return to Naval Station Everett.

The strike group consists of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11, Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 9, and Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59). The air wing and DESRON command staff disembarked in San Diego, Dec. 5. Princeton and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Howard (DDG 83) arrived at their homeport at Naval Base San Diego (NBSD), Dec. 5, as well. USS Pinckney (DDG 91) is scheduled to return to its homeport at NBSD, Dec. 10.

CVW 11 consists of Lemoore, California-based Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, VFA 154, VFA 146, Whidbey Island, Washington-based Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 142, Norfolk-based Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 121, and San Diego-based Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 323, Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 8, Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 75, and Fleet Logistics Support Squadron (VRC) 30.

The strike group:

* Sailed more than 78,000 miles during the deployment (equivalent to approximately five times around the world)

* Flew more than 1,300 combat sorties into Iraq and Syria

* Dropped more than 900 pieces of ordnance

The strike group conducted training and operations with the:

* French Marine Nationale

* Indian Navy

* Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force

* Republic of Korea Navy

* Royal Australian Navy

* Royal New Zealand Navy

* United Kingdom's Royal Navy

These included Malabar 17 in the Indian Ocean, Intrepid Sentinel in the Gulf of Oman, and landmark Three-Carrier Strike Force Operations in the Western Pacific. In addition, the strike group conducted visit, board, search and seizure drills, close-in coordinated maneuvers, flag hoisting drills, sea surveillance, replenishments-at-sea, maritime patrol and reconnaissance, explosive ordnance disposal operations, and air, surface and anti-submarine warfare training.

"I am very proud of the entire strike group and all that our Sailors and Marines accomplished during this deployment," said Rear Adm. Gregory Harris, commander, Nimitz Strike Group. "The team demonstrated the professionalism, strength and resolve of the U.S. Navy around the world. They battled through the intense heat of the Arabian Gulf to conduct operations in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, and now it's time for all of us to get back and enjoy some well-deserved family time."

Over the six-month span, the strike group conducted port visits in:

* Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

* Colombo, Sri Lanka

* Chennai, India

* Manama, Bahrain

* Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

* Dubai, United Arab Emirates

* Hamad, Qatar

* Duqm, Oman

* Pattaya, Thailand

* Sasebo, Japan

Sailors participated in numerous volunteer events, including interacting with children at schools, visiting patients at hospitals, and socializing with animals at shelters. Pinckney Sailors also participated in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations 50th anniversary celebration in Thailand, which included an International Fleet Review, conferences and a parade.

Nimitz Strike Group is part of U.S. 3rd Fleet, which leads naval forces in the Pacific and provides the realistic, relevant training necessary for an effective global Navy. U.S. 3rd Fleet constantly coordinates with U.S. 7th Fleet to plan and execute missions based on their complementary strengths to promote ongoing peace, security and stability throughout the entire Pacific theater of operations.

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OIC set to meet in Turkey to coordinate response on Trump's al-Quds move

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 03:41PM

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is set to meet in Turkey to coordinate a response to US President Donald Trump's plan to declare Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters in the capital Ankara on Wednesday that the summit would take place on December 13 in the city of Istanbul.

"In the face of developments that arouse sensitivity over the status of Jerusalem [al-Quds], Mr. President is calling a leaders' summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in order to display joint action among Islamic countries," media outlets quoted Kalin as saying.

Turkey currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC.

The spokesman went on to say that the recognition of al-Quds as Israel's capital and the moving of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to there would be a "grave mistake" against international agreements.

"Jerusalem [al-Quds] is our honor, Jerusalem is our common cause, Jerusalem [al-Quds] is our red line."

Elsewhere in his remarks, the spokesman also urged the Trump administration to "return from this grave mistake immediately."

Meanwhile, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Wednesday that the expected US move risked igniting a "fire" in the Middle East and will prove a "great disaster."

The recognition will "throw the region and the world into a fire and it's not known when it will end", Bozdag wrote on Twitter.

Bozdag said such a step which showed "great intolerance and mindlessness" would "destroy the peace process."

Also on Wednesday, Jordan and the Palestinians requested an emergency Arab foreign ministers' meeting to discuss Trump's plan. A diplomatic source said that the meeting is likely to be convened on Saturday.

Arab League member state delegates on Tuesday issued a joint statement, saying Trump's move would constitute a "clear assault on the Arab nation and the rights of Palestinians and all Muslims and Christians."

Trump's plan sparks more global reactions

The move by Trump, set to come in a speech later on Wednesday, would ignore dire warnings of a historic misstep that could trigger a surge of violence in the Middle East.

The US plan has prompted global reactions ranging from concern to alarm. In a frantic series of calls, several world leaders, the European Union EU, France, Germany, China, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan all warned Trump against the move.

Pope warns of potential for dangerous fallout

Pope Francis joined a list of leaders warning of the potential for dangerous fallout of Trump's plan. The pontiff added that maintaining Jerusalem al-Quds' status quo was important "in order to avoid adding new elements of tension to an already volatile world that is wracked by so many cruel conflicts."

Jordan's king warns Trump over moving US embassy to Quds

According to a Jordanian palace statement, Jordan's King Abdullah told Trump that any move by the US to declare al-Quds as the capital of Israel would have "dangerous repercussions" for regional stability.

It would also inflame Muslim and Christian feelings, the king added.

King Abdullah warned Trump of the risks of any decision that ran counter to a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on the creation of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem [al-Quds] is the key to achieving peace and stability in the region and the world," the statement said.

The monarch also phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and said they had to both work together to "confront the consequences of this decision."

Jordanian officials are worried the move could trigger violence in the Palestinian territories and a spillover into Jordan, a country where many people are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948.

The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas says Israel has "no land" and naturally no right to designate "a capital" city.

Trump's plan could fuel tensions in the region: China

China expressed concern on Wednesday over Trump's intention to recognize al-Quds as Israel's capital, saying it could stoke regional conflicts.

"(We are) concerned that the move could sharpen regional conflicts. The status of Jerusalem [al-Quds] is complicated and sensitive. All parties should do more for the peace and tranquility of the region, behave cautiously and avoid impacting the foundation for resolving the long-standing Palestine issue and initiating new hostility in the region," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news briefing in Beijing.

UK opposes Trump's move

British Prime Minister Theresa May also said she would speak to Trump about the US move.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, speaking as he arrived for a NATO meeting in Brussels, said "we view the reports that we have heard with concern, because we think that Jerusalem [al-Quds] obviously should be part of the final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a negotiated settlement."

Pakistan 'unequivocally opposed' to Trump's plan

Pakistan also joined a global chorus of alarm, calling on Trump to "refrain" from the move.

A statement from Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's office warned on Wednesday that the US move would "constitute a clear violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions."

"It would also sidestep decades of global consensus on this issue, undermine regional peace and security as well as derail any prospects for a lasting peace in the Middle East," it added.

Bolivia seeks UN Security Council meeting on Trump's move

Meanwhile, Bolivian UN Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz plans to ask for a public meeting of the Security Council over Trump's move.

The Bolivian envoy said the US plan would be a "reckless and a dangerous decision that goes against international law, the resolutions of the Security Council, it also weakens any effort for peace in the region and also upsets the whole region."

Trump move will harm US-Arabs ties: Arab League

Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Wednesday that Trump's formal recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of Israel could undermine existing relations between the US and Arab countries.

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Hamas: Israel has no land to claim 'capital'

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 09:15AM

The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas says Israel has "no land" and naturally no right to designate "a capital" city. The announcement came shortly before US President Donald Trump's expected declaration of the recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital."

Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri tweeted the remark on Wednesday, shortly after Trump reportedly "informed" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of his intention to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds.

Trump is expected to declare that the US would recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital" in a speech later on Wednesday, in what would most likely be a moment of euphoria for Israeli officials.

But the Palestinians, and the rest of the world, are opposed to such recognition. The Palestinians want Jerusalem al-Quds, which is the site of Islam's third holiest site, as part of a future Palestinian state.

Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman, added that such recognition "would harm Israel" and ultimately bring it "regret."

'Crossing every red line'

On Tuesday, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh warned the United States that the potential relocation of the US embassy would cross "every red line."

In a statement addressed to world Muslim leaders, Haniya said, "Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is a dangerous escalation and provides cover for the extremist government of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to carry out its plan to Judaize the city of Jerusalem."

In a separate statement, Hamas called for Palestinians to "make Friday a day of rage against the occupation, rejecting moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capital of the Zionist entity." It called on young people in the West Bank to rise up and "respond to the American decision that targets our Jerusalem in every possible way."

Trump's pictures set on fire

People, meanwhile, rallied in the city of Bethlehem in the south of the Israeli -occupied West Bank to protest the prospect, setting fire to pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbas has also warned Trump of the "dangerous consequences of such a decision."

Tel Aviv has long been building settlements deep into Palestinian territory to make the prospect of a Palestinian state less likely. It has been supported in that move by the Trump administration.

Israel alerts forces

Meanwhile, Netanyahu said Israeli forces had been placed on alert for a potential escalation of the already-tense situation in the Palestinian territories.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers reportedly traveled to the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank to visit Joseph's Tomb on Wednesday. Violent confrontations were also reported around the site between Palestinian youths and the Israeli forces, who fired sound bombs and teargas canisters at the protesters.

Separately, Palestinian al-Aqsa television network said dozens of Israeli forces had stormed the village of Yabod in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, raiding houses and beating residents.

Palestinian Shehab News Agency cited American media outlets as reporting that the US had deployed Marines to its embassies in the region to avoid incidents following the potential announcement.

Chorus of international outcry

Various world leaders have also raised concern about the controversial American plan.

The UN

Most recently, the United Nations (UN) envoy for the Middle East negotiation process said on Wednesday that al-Quds' future status had to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians and warned of the repercussions of any action over the city.

"The [UN] secretary general has spoken many times on this issue... and he has said that we all have to be very careful with the actions we take because of the repercussions of these actions," Nickolay Mladenov told a conference. "The future of Jerusalem is something that needs to be negotiated with Israel, with the Palestinians, sitting side by side directly in negotiations."

China

China warned that Trump's plan could fuel tensions in the region.

"We are concerned about the possible escalation of tensions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing. "All relevant parties should bear regional peace and tranquility in mind, be cautious in words and deeds, avoid impacting the foundation for the settlement of the issue of Palestine, and avoid causing new confrontation in the region."

The Pope

Also in reaction, Pope Francis called for al-Quds' "status quo" to be respected.

The pontiff expressed his hope for "peace and prosperity" for the Palestinian people during a scheduled meeting with a Palestinian delegation of religious and intellectual leaders.

The UK

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was concerned about reports that Trump would recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's "capital."

"Let's wait and see what the president says exactly. But, you know, we view the reports that we have heard with concern because we think that Jerusalem obviously should be part of the final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," he told reporters in Brussels.

Russia

The Kremlin said Russia was concerned that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian authorities could be aggravated further by the embassy plan.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added however that "we would not discuss decisions that have not been taken yet."

Turkey

In the harshest reaction so far, Turkey threatened to cut ties with Israel if the US carried out the recognition.

Later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul on December 13 to discuss the US plan.

Erdogan called for the meeting "in order to display joint action among Islamic countries," presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters in the Turkish capital.

Ankara currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC.

Jordan had also said earlier that it planned to convene an emergency meeting of the OIC on how to face the "dangerous" consequences of Trump's decision.

Germany

Germany's foreign minister warned that any US move toward such recognition would be dangerous and could deepen the Middle East conflict.

Sigmar Gabriel said such a move "does not calm a conflict, rather it fuels it even more" and "would be a very dangerous development."

Gabriel told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels that, "It's in everyone's interest that this does not happen."

France

French President Emmanuel Macron also said he was concerned about the potential relocation during a phone call with Trump.

The EU

And the European Union warned of the "serious repercussions" of the prospect.

Jordan and the Palestinians request Arab League meeting

The regional Arab League grouping said Jordan and the Palestinians had requested an emergency meeting of the body's foreign ministers to discuss the US scheme.

The meeting is likely to be convened on Saturday, a diplomatic source told AFP.

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Saudi-led coalition intensifies airstrikes against Yemen after death of Saleh

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 08:35AM

The Saudi-led coalition has intensified its airstrikes against the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, and other areas following the killing of the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The coalition's warplanes conducted dozens of airstrikes on positions of the Houthi Ansarullah movement in Sana'a and other northern provinces early Wednesday despite calls for a humanitarian ceasefire in the country, Yemen's al-Masirah television reported.

The coalition also bombed the presidential palace, Saleh's residence and houses of his family members.

Local residents said loud explosions were heard in downtown Sana'a.

The airstrikes also targeted other Yemeni provinces, including Ta'izz, Hajjah and Sa'dah.

The assaults on Hajjah left a woman and a girl dead and injured 10 others in Mabyan District. The Saudi warplanes also fired more than 150 rockets and mortar shells at Razih and Shada'a districts in Sa'dah Province.

Elsewhere in the southwestern province of Ta'izz, four people were wounded following the bombardment of a fuel station in Mukha District.

Yemeni forces, on the other hand, targeted the positions of the Saudi-led mercenaries in Nihm District in Sana'a Province and Maton district in the northern province of Jawf.

Saleh was killed on Monday while attempting to escape Sana'a to Ma'arab Province. This came shortly after he broke ranks with the Houthi Ansarullah movement in favor of the Saudi-led military coalition, which has been pounding Yemen to reinstall its former Riyadh-allied government.

On Tuesday afternoon, tens of thousands of Yemenis staged a demonstration against the Saudi-led war against Yemen, calling for unity among all factions in the country.

The Houthi movement has been both running state affairs and defending the country against the Saudi aggression.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia's military campaign in March 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

According to the UN, the country is experiencing "the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet."

The new round of airstrikes came a day after Saleh's son Ahmed Ali vowed to lead a campaign against the Ansarullah movement.

In a briefing to the Security Council, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has urged all parties to exercise restraint.

According to Yemen's Interior Ministry, Yemeni forces, backed by fighters from the popular Houthi movement, are in full control of all positions previously held by Saleh's militias in Sana'a.

'Riyadh sought to use Saleh to save itself'

Omar Nashabi, editor of Al-Akhbar newspaper believes that Saudi Arabia in fact intended to use Saleh's position to find a way out of the quagmire it is stuck in.

"The Saudis would like to find a way out of this situation. They thought perhaps the way out would be by actually engaging Ali Abdullah Saleh and getting him back in control of the capital Sana'a at least and pushing for a solution in a forced way. They thought they could turn the time and go back to the past where Ali Abdullah Saleh was always a player who used to know how to deal with the situations inside Yemen," he told Press TV.

As it turned out, the Ansarullah movement succeeded in foiling the Saudi "conspiracy," he noted, insisting that the need for unity in Yemen is now greater than ever before.

Nashabi warned of "the very tight" situation in Yemen and predicted that there will be further escalation on the part of the so-called Saudi-led coalition in the coming weeks.

He also emphasized that Saudi Arabia's military aggression should stop as fast as possible, and that more interference in the internal affairs of Yemen will only complicate things further.

There needs to be an immediate ceasefire for the Yemenis to figure out their future, because if the Saudi aggression continues, there will not be a way forward to the negotiating table for a political settlement, he stated.

Also talking to Press TV, a professor at George Washington University, Nabil Mikhail, predicted that the killing of Saleh will "expand the regional scope" of Yemen's conflict.

He warned of a possible involvement of Egypt in the conflict by moving closer to Saudi Arabia as well as efforts to get Russia to also play a role.

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Honduran opposition urges total vote recount or run-off

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 07:07AM

Honduras' opposition presidential candidate has demanded either an entire vote recount or a run-off poll following a controversial vote-counting process that resulted in favor of incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez by a low margin but no declared winner.

Salvador Nasralla, who had earlier demanded a recount of at least one-third of the votes, said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that the electoral tribunal now had to review all the voting cards.

"If you don't agree with that, let's go to a run-off between (Hernandez) and Salvador Nasralla," he added.

It took Honduran authorities more than a week to count the votes from the November 26 presidential election in the country of only nine million people.

Early on Monday, electoral authorities said Hernandez had won 42.98 percent of the votes, compared with Nasralla's 41.39 percent. But the authorities stopped short of declaring a winner.

As the results began to trickle in last week, Nasralla was in the lead with a significant margin before a 24-hour hiatus in the official vote count reversed that trend. The opposition candidate soon alleged fraud and called on his supporters to take to the streets. Tens of thousands took to the streets on Sunday in a show of support for Nasralla, a former TV star.

Former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled in a US-backed coup in 2009 and now supports Nasralla, also declared through a Twitter message that the opposition was seeking a total recount of the vote, or legislation to allow for a run-off.

Meanwhile, police forces rebelled against the Hernandez administration on Monday, refusing to take part in a crackdown on protesters and calling on the government to address the political stalemate.

A top official at the Honduran electoral tribunal, David Matamoros, invited the opposition to compare their copies of voter tally sheets with the official body's versions. He also said the tribunal would extend a deadline for legal challenges from Wednesday to Friday.

Meanwhile, protest rallies in favor of Nasralla that started last week continued on Tuesday afternoon as scores of people, including police officers, converged at the Tegucigalpa headquarters of Honduras' elite police force yelling "Out, JOH," using President Hernandez's initials.

Hernandez, who has been commended by the US for his crackdown on violent street gangs, has also claimed victory a number of times since the election but avoided making the claim in remarks broadcast on Monday and Tuesday.

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Saudi jets continue to bomb Sana'a despite calls for humanitarian ceasefire

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 01:25AM

The UN has stressed that despite calls for a humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen, Saudi Arabia continues to bomb the capital Sana'a.

"Airstrikes have continued while ground fighting and shelling have been reduced," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Tuesday.

He added that Saudi Arabia had bombed the capital over 25 times in less than 24 hours, adding that some of the strikes had hit close to the UN's compound in the city.

Dujarric added that UN food supplies in Yemen were running out, and that seven vessels carrying food requirements are blocked by Saudi-led coalition from entering Hudaydah and Salif ports.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council also stressed that humanitarian situation in the country was "dire," and that the country "stands at the brink of catastrophic famine."

The spike of airstrikes seems to be related to the death of former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was killed on Monday while attempting to escape Sana'a to Ma'arab Province. This came shortly after he broke ranks with the Houthi Ansarullah movement in favor of the Saudi-led military coalition, which has been pounding Yemen to reinstall its former Riyadh-allied government.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign against Yemen in March 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

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Allow aid into Yemen, Trump asks Saudis

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 09:45PM

US President Donald Trump has called on Saudi Arabia to "allow food, fuel, water, and medicine" into neighboring Yemen, where the impoverished nation is experiencing a human disaster in the wake of the monarchy's aggression.

"I have directed officials in my Administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it," read a statement by the president on Wednesday.

The president's rare move against the US ally stopped short of requesting the monarchy to stop the US-backed bombardment of the Muslim nation.

According to humanitarian policy leader at Oxfam America, Trump's call was long overdue but "hugely important."

"The past month's escalation has killed thousands and condemned thousands more to die in the near future. Millions will die in a historic famine and public health crisis if President Trump's call is not heeded," Scott Paul said in a statement.

He also noted "the fact that US support has helped create Yemen's horrific crisis" and called on Washington to cease military assistance to the aggressors.

Riyadh imposed a tight blockade on nearly all Yemeni air, land and sea ports on November 6, prompting human rights and charity groups to raise the alarm over the deteriorating situation in the country as people, particularly children, are increasingly suffering from the lack of food and medical supplies.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign against Yemen in March 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

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Iran says Trump's al-Quds move to spark another Palestinian Intifada

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 08:39PM

Iran has strongly condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to move his country's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem al-Quds, saying the measure will ignite a new Palestinian Intifada (uprising).

In a Wednesday night statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Washington's recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital is a "blatant violation of international resolutions."

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has always stressed that the most important reason behind instability and insecurity in the Middle East is [Israel's] continued occupation, the US' relentless support for the Zionist regime, and denying the oppressed Palestinian nation the right to establish an independent state with al-Quds as it capital," the statement said.

Describing the US move as "provocative and unwise," the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned that "recognizing al-Quds as the Israeli regime's capital" will "provoke Muslims and inflame a new Intifada and intensify extremism and violent behavior for which the US and the Israeli regime will be responsible."

The statement also called on the international community to pressure the US not to go through with the embassy move or the recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli regime's capital.

The statement was issued shortly after Trump officially declared the disputed city of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital, despite warnings from around the world that the measure risks triggering a fresh wave of violence in the Middle East.

In a speech at the White House earlier in the day, Trump said his administration would also begin a years-long process of moving the American embassy in Tel Aviv to the holy city.

The announcement was a major shift by Washington that overturns decades of US foreign policy.

Al-Quds eternal Palestinian capital: Abbas

In a televised speech after Trump's announcement, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Jerusalem al-Quds is the "eternal capital of the State of Palestine."

Abbas added that the US president's speech was "tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator."

"In addition, these measures are considered a reward to Israel for denying the accords and challenging the international law," the Palestinian president stated, adding that the US "encourages the occupation policy, settlements, apartheid and ethnic cleansing."

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip staged a demonstration against the US and Israel, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital.

The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas which rules Gaza condemned the US move as "flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people," and called on Arabs and Muslims to "undermine the US interests in the region" and to "shun Israel."

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement that the Palestinian people "know how to respond properly to the disregard of their feelings and sanctuaries."

He added that the decision "will not change the facts of history and geography."

Turkey condemns 'irresponsible' US decision

Reacting to Trump's speech, the Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced Trump's speech as an "irresponsible statement."

"We call upon the US administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem al-Quds," it said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Trump's recognition does not automatically make Jerusalem al-Quds the capital of Israel.

"You can't come out and say, 'I'm a great power, I can do what I want.' There can be no understanding under which one can say I made such an announcement and it will become reality," Cavusoglu stated, adding that "the whole world opposes" what he described as Washington's "dangerous" move.

US decision won't weaken Palestinian cause: Assad

The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed Trump's move, saying in a statement it would not undermine the "Palestinian cause."

"The future of Jerusalem al-Quds is not set by a state or a president, but by its history, will, and the determination of those loyal to the Palestinian cause, which will stay alive in the conscience of the Arab homeland until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," it said.

Trump's move 'legally null': Jordan

Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told state news agency Petra that Trump's announcement violated longstanding UN Security Council resolutions that "stipulated the non-recognition of the Israeli occupation" of Jerusalem al-Quds' eastern sector and the occupied West Bank.

The kingdom also considered "all unilateral moves that seek to create new facts on the ground as null and void", Momani added.

UN against 'unilateral measures'

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres implicitly criticized Trump's announcement, warning that the Palestinian city's status must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

"From day one as secretary general of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said.

Trump's decision drew a chorus of condemnation from many other countries, including its close allies France and Britain.

"This is a regrettable decision that France does not approve of, and which goes against international law and all the UN Security Council resolutions. The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community, and I'll reaffirm that the status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations," said French President Emmanuel Macron.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May also said her country disagreed with the US decision before reaching a "final status agreement."

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region," May's spokesperson said.

Israel lays claim to the entirety of Jerusalem al-Quds as its "capital" while Palestinians want its eastern part as the capital of a future state for themselves.

Palestinian leaders have warned that the potential relocation would fuel strong reaction in the region and deliver a death blow to any prospect of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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"Even if it is a legitimate business interest not to enforce trademark rights in Israel whilst there is no business decision to enter into the Israeli market, such decision has its price, especially considering the fact that the defendants had been aware of Mr. Majerowicz's activities in Israel. Such conduct constitutes bad faith and exploiting the [local] trademark, now that it has acquired goodwill by the plaintiffs, constitutes unjust enrichment."

The District Court of Tel Aviv has ruled in Habitat Ltd. and Avraham Majerowicz vs. CAFOM, Habitat International S.A et al that the trademark HABITAT, registered in Israel in multiple classes more than 40 years ago by a local furniture and houseware retailer, should be cancelled on the ground that it was registered in bad faith, since it was done with the knowledge that HABITAT was an "international mark" that enjoyed "international goodwill." Nevertheless, the District Court ruled that the local retailer will be permitted to continue use of the HABITAT mark in commerce since the holder of the international mark, i.e. Habitat International S.A. and other affiliated companies ("Habitat International"), had acted in bad faith in not seeking to enforce its rights in the mark for over 40 years. In so ruling, the District Court has favored the interest of the parties over that of the public and disregarded the basic notion of likelihood of confusion under trademarks law.Habitat International is a retailer of household furnishings. It opened its first store under the mark HABITAT in 1964 in London. By 1969, Habitat International had opened eight more stores in the UK and one in Canada and by 1976, it had more than 30 stores worldwide, but none in Israel. Mr. Majerowicz is a furniture retailer who opened a furniture and houseware store in Israel in 1972 under the name "Habitat". In 1976, Mr. Majerowicz sought to register the mark HABITAT in Israel but only then discovered (according to him) that the mark had already been registered by Habitat International in 1973. He thereupon successfully filed a non-use cancellation proceeding against the then-existing registrations. At the time, Habitat International did not file any arguments against cancellation of the mark.Continuously since 1972, Mr. Majerowicz has used the HABITAT mark in Israel in conjunction with furniture and household retailing activities. On or about 2016, Mr. Majerowicz became aware that Habitat International was contemplating entering the furniture market in Israel under the HABITAT mark. Accordingly, he sued Habitat International, seeking a preliminary injunction on the ground of anticipatory infringement. Habitat International counter-claimed that Habitat Ltd. and Mr. Majerowicz should be enjoined from using Habitat International's well-known mark and that the registration of the HABITAT mark should be cancelled on the ground of bad faith.In ruling that Mr. Majerowicz had acted in bad faith, the District Court pointed to two major grounds. First, Section 39(a1) of the Israel Trademarks Ordinance [New Version], 1972, provides that "a notice of cancellation of a trademark based on claim that the trademark was registered in bad faith may be submitted at any time". Second, and despite the fact that Habitat International had neither established goodwill nor operated in Israel in 1976 (the year that Mr. Majerowicz filed the HABITAT trademark application in Israel), he was aware of Habitat International and its world-wide operations under the mark. Therefore, the District Court concluded that Mr. Majerowicz had acted in bad faith in registering the mark. It should be noted that the District Court did not set out the test for determining bad faith but rather analyzed the specific facts at hand and then concluded, without more, that they constituted bad faith.Nevertheless, the District Court ruled, without providing any guidance as to the applicable legal standard, that Habitat International may not enjoin Mr. Majerowicz from using the mark HABITAT in Israel because it is not a well-known mark, nor had it established any goodwill in Israel. Since Habitat International, in bad faith, has not enforced its rights in the mark, it is not entitled to enjoin Mr. Majerowicz from using the mark in Israel, the court concluding as follows:At this stage you might be wondering: what about likelihood of confusion? Did the District Court ignore such a basic notion of trademark law? The answer is "kind of". The District Court noted that "the public's interest should be taken into account but it should not undermine the parties' interests". That said, the District Court asked the parties to seek to reach settlement on the manner of use of the HABITAT mark in Israel. He ruled that if no such settlement is reached within 90 days of the decision, the defendants shall be permitted to use "HABITAT INTERNATIONAL in their advertising material, and the mark "HABITAT" on the products themselves", while Mr. Majerowicz will be permitted to use the mark HABITAT (in Hebrew). We are already confused what will happen in practice? If Habitat International registers the mark HABITAT in Israel (since the registration in favor of Mr. Majerowicz will presumably be cancelled), will it nevertheless be disallowed to enforce its rights against Mr. Majerowicz pursuant to the District Court's ruling? This remains to be seen as the District Court's ruling is, to our understanding, being appealed to the Israel Supreme Court.The upshot is that if you are the holder, or its representative, of a mark used in a number of countries, and you are contemplating entering the Israel market, the instant case might be a bleak peek into your future. That is so, unless you make sure that the mark is not being used or registered in Israel and that you seek to enforce your rights sooner than later.A final note: This is not the first time that an international brand has sought to enter the Israeli market, only to discover that a local business has already taken over such brand. Examples include the Versace, Saks [Fifth Avenue], and Roots, each of whom has had to confront the "hijacking" of its mark by local businesses.Image at top left is by Helen Crook, contributed by Kalory.co.uk and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Saudi blockade of Yemen cuts fuel lifeline as Riyadh tightens siege

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 07:23PM

Saudi Arabia has prevented fuel shipments from reaching Yemen's key port of Hudaydah for a month, tightening a blockade on the impoverished country in defiance of international calls to put an end to the siege, a report says.

A Reuters analysis of port and ship tracking data showed that oil tankers have turned away from Hudaydah, without unloading.

The United Nation's body tasked with inspecting ships seeking to enter the area said on Wednesday that the Saudi-led coalition have denied tankers permission to enter the Red Sea port despite its approval, "and repeated attempts by the vessels to proceed."

A spokesperson for the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM) said the coalition has turned away up to 12 tankers in recent weeks, adding, "UNVIM is unable to say when the coalition will allow fuel tankers to enter Yemen's Red Sea ports' anchorage areas."

Hudaydah records showed that at least six oil tankers were ordered to leave the port before unloading last month.

Captain Mohammed Ishaq, executive chairman of the Yemen Red Sea Ports Corporation, which runs Hudaydah, said on Tuesday that no fuel shipments had reached the port since Saudi Arabia imposed the blockade last month.

On November 6, Saudi Arabia announced that it was shutting down Yemen's air, sea, and land borders, after Yemeni fighters targeted an international airport near the Saudi capital with a cruise missile in retaliation for Saudi's devastating aerial bombardment campaign against Yemen.

The United Nations made a plea for the Saudi-led coalition to remove its blockade, warning that without aid shipments "untold thousands of innocent victims, among them many children, will die" and that its partial lifting was not enough.

The lack of fuel means areas hardest hit by Saudi aggression, malnutrition and cholera lack functioning hospital generators and water pumps. It also makes it harder to move food and medical aid across the country.

Residents of Hudaydah said the fuel shortage has pushed up the prices of existing fuel and other products.

Iman Ahmed, a 43-year-old teacher, said in late November the high price of diesel was having a devastating effect in rural areas outside Hudaydah.

"Fishermen have stopped working because of warships and coalition airstrikes. Farmers have stopped work because of a sharp rise in the price of diesel."

Meanwhile, a 43-year-old father of seven said, "Life has become so hard."

"Before the war things were going OK, there were jobs. I was able to feed my family. Now ... gas is barely available and basic necessities cost double. Most of the time our food is now bread and tea," Abdo Haidar 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 Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign more than two and a half years ago. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

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Trump declares Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 06:14PM

US President Donald Trump has officially declared the disputed city of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital, despite warnings from around the world that the measure risks triggering a fresh wave of violence in the Middle East.

In a speech at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said his administration would also begin a process of moving the American embassy in Tel Aviv to the holy city, which is expected to take years.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said. "While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering."

The US leader also said that Vice President Mike Pence will travel to the Middle East in the coming days "to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism."

The announcement was a major shift by Washington that overturns decades of US foreign policy.

Trump's decision was mostly aimed at pleasing his main supporters - Republican conservatives and evangelical Christian Zionists who comprise an important share of his voter base.

Trump's predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, had consistently deferred that decision to avoid inflaming tensions in the region.

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.

The city has been designated as "occupied" under international law since the 1967 Arab War, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

Trump had vowed during his presidential campaign that he would relocate the US embassy in order to court pro-Israel voters.

Palestinians have repeatedly warned Trump against such an action, saying it would deliver a death blow to any prospects of the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and fuel extremism in the region.

A Palestinian envoy said the Trump decision was a declaration of war in the Middle East.

China and Russia also expressed concern the plans could aggravate Middle East hostilities.

Pope Francis joined a list of leaders warning of an historic misstep, saying new tension would further inflame world conflicts.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's recognition as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision."

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Uzbekistan, Seeking Sea Access, Signs Railway Deal With Afghanistan

December 06, 2017

Uzbekistan and Afghanistan have signed an agreement to extend a railroad connecting the two countries in a move that may eventually give Uzbekistan a direct link to sea ports.

Landlocked Uzbekistan's access to marine shipping is very limited.

In 2011, the Uzbek state railway company, Ozbekiston Temir Yollari, built a short link between Hairatan, a town on the Uzbek-Afghan border, and Mazar-e Sharif, a major city in northern Afghanistan.

Tashkent has since expressed interest in extending that line to Herat, another Afghan city in the northwest, and a gateway to Iran. Another link, already under construction, will connect Herat to Iran, which may eventually enable Uzbekistan to send cargoes to and from Iran's Persian Gulf ports.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev's office said in a statement that he and visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani signed an agreement on the construction of the Mazar-e Sharif-Herat railroad.

Ghani said the agreement inspired hope for growing economic ties between the two neighboring countries, Russian news agency Interfax reported.

"Afghanistan wants to be Uzbekistan's reliable trade and economic partner, expand mutually beneficial contacts, and set upnew joint ventures," Interfax quoted Ghani as saying.

The statement from Mirziyoev's office provided no details on the cost or source of funding for the rail project.

The original, short link was almost fully financed by the Asian Development Bank, which has also financed studies for the expansion project.

Mirziyoev and Ghani also signed 20 other deals, including an agreement on the construction of a new electric power line and deals for supplies of Uzbek agricultural products, medicines, and other goods to Afghanistan.

Interfax reported that they also reached agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Hairatan Bridge connecting the two countries.

Based on reporting by Reuters and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/uzbekistan-seeaking- sea-access-signs-railway-deal-afghanistan-hairatan- mazar-e-sharif/28899419.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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Trump Says U.S. Recognizes Jerusalem As Israeli Capital, Vows To Move Embassy

RFE/RL December 06, 2017

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump has announced that the United States now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that drew praise from Israel but criticism and condemnation elsewhere.

Trump in his December 6 speech also said that he has ordered the State Department to begin preparations to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed city, a move experts say could take three to four years.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said. "Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious -- that Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

"Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital," he added.

The announcement reverses a decadeslong U.S. policy that the city's status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state, the so-called "two-state" solution.

Trump said that he still intends "to do everything in my power to help force" a peace agreement acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians.

Most nations do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, which includes sites considered holy by Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's declaration as "historic" and urged other countries to follow the United States by moving their embassies to Jerusalem.

However, Palestinians and Arab leaders, as well as key U.S. allies, warned that the move risks triggering violence across the entire Middle East and complicating the peace process.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Trump's decision "destroyed the two-state solution" and that the U.S. president "disqualified his country from any role whatsoever" in the peace process.

"As a chief Palestinian negotiator, how can I sit with these people if they dictate on me the future of Jerusalem as Israel's capital?" he added.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, urged Arabs and Muslims to "undermine" the United States in the region and called Trump's move "flagrant" aggression against the Palestinian people.

French President Emmanuel Macron said during a visit to Algeria that Trump's decision was "regrettable" and that his country did not support it, adding that the final status of Jerusalem should be decided by Israelis and Palestinians.

He called for calm from all sides, saying that violence must be avoided "at all costs."

British Prime Minister Theresa May called Trump's decision "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

The European Union also warned of the potential adverse effects the move could have on peace prospects.

"The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states," said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said that Jerusalem's future must be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian talks and that "there is no alternative to the two-state solutionThere is no Plan B."

Iranian state media quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying it "seriously condemns" the U.S. decision.

In a Twitter statement, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khwaja Asif called the U.S. move "an affront to Palestinians and the Muslim world...practically burying the two-state solution."

Egypt and Jordan accused Trump of violating international law with his decision, which the Turkish Foreign Ministry called "irresponsible."

Reuters reported that several hundred people gathered outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in a largely peaceful protest.

Moments before Trump's announcement, the U.S. State Department asked in a cable to all U.S. diplomatic posts for officials to defer nonessential travel to Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank until December 20, Reuters news agency reported, citing an official document.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-united-states- israel-jerusalem-capital/28901399.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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Stoltenberg Expresses NATO Support For Georgia, Urges Russian Troop Pullout

RFE/RL December 06, 2017

BRUSSELS -- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has expressed the alliance's "strong commitment" to Georgia's security and called on Russia to withdraw its forces from separatist regions in the Caucasus country.

Stoltenberg was speaking to reporters in Brussels on December 6 -- the second and last day of a NATO foreign ministers' meeting.

The meeting was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who also stressed NATO backing for Georgia.

"We discussed NATO's strong commitment to Georgia's security and territorial integrity and reviewed the many ways that Georgia and the alliance are working together," Stoltenberg said.

"We remain concerned by the deepening of Russia's relations with the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia. We call on Russia to end its recognition of these regions and withdraw its forces from Georgian territory," he added.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are Russian-backed separatist regions that have declared independence from Georgia. Russia recognized the regions as independent states following a short war with Tbilisi in August 2008. Only a few countries followed Russia's lead.

Georgia, which has expressed hopes of joining NATO, and Russia broke off diplomatic relations following the 2008 war. Moscow keeps troops in both regions in what Georgia considers an occupation.

Stoltenberg said NATO ministers also discussed Georgia's "successful efforts to modernize its armed forces" and that the alliance is "fully committed" to providing Tbilisi with the advice and tools needed to move toward eventual membership.

"Our armed forces are increasingly capable of operating together, and planning is already under way for the 2019 NATO-Georgia joint military exercise," the secretary-general said.

"Our Joint Training and Evaluation Center in Georgia is up and running, and the NATO-funded Defense Institution Building School in Georgia has already trained around a thousand soldiers in subjects as diverse as the rule of law in armed conflict, hybrid warfare, and cybersecurity," he added.

"NATO continues to benefit from Georgia's advice on security issues relating to the Black Sea. And we are engaged in increasingly close dialogue on the Black Sea region and the cooperation in the region."

In late July, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Georgia in a trip timed to correspond with the Noble Partner 2017 military exercises that featured some 1,600 U.S., 800 Georgian, and other allied troops in a show of defiance to Moscow.

Stoltenberg cited work in other areas of cooperation, such as energy security, explosive-ordnance disposal, cyberdefense, intelligence, secure communications, and promoting the role of women serving in the Georgian armed forces.

"In other words, NATO's support to Georgia is concrete and is making a real difference," he said.

Meanwhile, Tillerson hailed what he called "a productive discussion" with Georgian Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze.

"Georgia is a large contributor to our joint efforts in Afghanistan. In fact, they are the largest per capita of any contributing nation, and we strongly support Georgia's aspirations to become a NATO member," the U.S. secretary of state told reporters.

With reporting by Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-georgia- stoltenberg-russia-support/28901322.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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Stoltenberg Stresses NATO's 'Defense And Dialogue' Approach To Russia

RFE/RL December 06, 2017

BRUSSELS -- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the Western alliance will continue to pursue dialogue with Russia while strengthening its deterrence capabilities and support for partners in Eastern Europe.

Stoltenberg was speaking to reporters in Brussels during the second and last day of a NATO foreign ministers' meeting, which was also attended by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

"We agreed that our approach to Russia decided at the Warsaw Summit in 2016 -- defense and dialogue -- has been effective," Stoltenberg told reporters. "We have strengthened our collective defense, while remaining open to dialogue."

"As we look to the [NATO] summit next July, we agreed we should continue to strengthen our deterrence and defense, pursue dialogue in good faith, and support our partners in Eastern Europe," he added.

Tillerson, meanwhile, told reporters in the Belgian capital that NATO ministers had agreed that there was "no normalization" of ties with Russia at the current time.

"We had a lot of discussion at this NATO meeting...over what is the proper engagement with Russia, and I think there is broad consensus among all the NATO members that there is no normalization of dialogue with Russia today," he said, without going into detail.

Tillerson also said the United States was pushing hard for agreement with Moscow on deploying a United Nations peacekeeping force to eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists are battling Ukrainian government forces in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people since its started in April 2014.

"We prioritize ending the violence -- that's our first priority -- and to seek to do that we need to put a peacekeeping force in place," Tillerson said ahead of planned talks with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on December 7.

But the secretary of state cautioned that "significant differences" remained between Washington and Moscow over the exact nature of any peacekeeping force.

"We hope that we can close those gaps. We think it's vitally important to stop the violence. People are still dying every day," he said.

Discussions about deploying a peacekeeping force have heated up since September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed deploying UN peacekeepers along the line separating the opposing forces.

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.

Tillerson once again denied there is any truth to media reports that President Donald Trump plans to fire him and put CIA Director Mike Pompeo in his place.

Tillerson told reporters that "this is a narrative that keeps coming up about every six weeks, and I would say you need to get some new sources because your story keeps being wrong."

Trump has rejected the reports of Tillerson's impending dismissal as "fake news."

The president and the secretary of state have often contradicted each other in public statements regarding major international issues.

Tillerson will move on to Vienna on December 7 for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where his planned meeting with Lavrov is scheduled to take place. He will then move on to Paris for the last leg of his European journey.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Rikard Jozwiak, AFP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-russia-defense-and-dialogue -approach-tillerson-stoltenberg/28901245.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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Meeting in Belgrade, Serbian And Bosnian Leaders Seek To Solve Problems

RFE/RL's Balkan Service December 06, 2017

After meeting in Belgrade, Serbian and Bosnian leaders said that they want to resolve the issues outstanding since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and Bosnia's war that followed.

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic said on December 6 that his talks with the Bosniak, Croat, and Serb members of Bosnia-Herzegovina's tripartite presidency "have not been simple or easy."

"We are not here to love or hug each other; we are here to solve problems," Vucic added.

The chairman of Bosnia's presidency, Dragan Covic, said that the meeting "focused on how to boost bilateral cooperation and gradually remove problems."

The presidency's two other members are Bakir Izetbegovic and Mladen Ivanic.

The Serbian and Bosnian leaders said that defining the border between the two countries, trade, and infrastructure were among the matters discussed.

Vucic pointed out that Bosnia is one of Serbia's most important trade partners, adding that some economic barriers to exports have been eliminated since the Bosnian presidency visited Serbia in July 2015.

The Serbian president paid his first visit to Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, in September.

Tensions have soared in the region over the conviction of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and the death of ex-Bosnian Serb commander Slobodan Praljak at a UN tribunal.

Posters supporting Mladic surfaced on several locations across the Serbian capital ahead of the December 6 visit.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on November 22 convicted Mladic of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 conflict and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Separately, Croatia and Bosnian Croats have been mourning the death of Praljak, who died on November 29 after taking poison moments after judges at The Hague court confirmed his 20-year-sentence for war crimes in Bosnia.

Bosnia's war resulted in the death of an estimated 100,000 people and the displacement of some 2.6 million more.

As part of the 1995 Dayton accords that mostly ended the violence, Bosnia was broken into two constituent states: a Muslim-Croat federation and the Serbian entity, Republika Srpska.

Bosnia faces internal tensions among the Bosniaks -- the Bosnian Muslim population -- ethnic Croats, and ethnic Serbs.

With reporting by AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-bosnia-talks-outstanding -issues-belgrade-meeting/28901082.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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France's Macron Says Trump's Jerusalem Move 'Regrettable'

Sputnik News

21:40 06.12.2017(updated 22:03 06.12.2017)

Earlier today Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocate the US diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv, a move many countries worldwide have urged the president to refrain from.

"This decision is a regrettable decision that France does not support and goes against international law and all the resolutions of the UN Security Council," Macron told reporters at a news conference.

Macron also called for calmness across the Middle East.

"The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations," he added.

The French president's statement comes in the wake of Donald Trump's announcement that he declares Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and orderes the Department of State to take measures for the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Rumours about Trump's intention spreaded after Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner hinted at the possibility of such gesture.

The Arab world fiercly condemned Trump's looming decision over Jerusalem's status, warning that such move would threaten the peace process in the region.

Trump pledged to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and to move the US embassy to Jerusalem during his presidential campaign in 2016. However, in June, Trump signed a waiver to keep the US Embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv and delay moving the mission to Jerusalem. The White House explained Trump's move as an attempt to "maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians."

 Sputnik

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Hamas Says Trump's Israel Embassy Decision 'Opens Gates of Hell'

Sputnik News

21:40 06.12.2017(updated 22:20 06.12.2017)

Palestine's Hamas movement has slammed US President Donald Trump over his move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, warning that the decision "opens the gates of hell."

According to Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan, Trump's "decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region."

The political and militant group issued its statement on Wednesday, immediately following Trump's announcement that Washington would be relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in six months' time.

"Trump's decision on Jerusalem will not succeed in changing the fact that Jerusalem is an Arab Muslim land," Radwan said, according to AFP.

The group urged Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East to work to "cut off economic and political ties with the US embassy and expell the US ambassadors" in order to "cripple" the decision.

On the eve of Trump's announcement, the Israeli Defense Forces started preparing for unrest in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the latter controlled by Hamas, after the millitant group announced plans to hold a "day of rage" if Washington went ahead with the decision.

Radwan stated that the US president's decision was "foolish," and that "time will prove that the biggest losers [from it] are" Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestine's other major political force, issued its own statement, saying that Trump's decision has "destroyed the two-state solution" and ended Washington's chance of playing a positive role in the regional peace process. Trump "disqualified his country from any role whatsoever" in that process, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters. "As a chief Palestinian negotiator, how can I sit with these people if they dictate on me the future of Jerusalem as Israel's capital," he added.

On Wednesday, Trump announced that it was "time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," and ordered the State Department to prepare to move the US Embassy. He added that he would do "everything" in his power to faciliate Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.

 Sputnik

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Israeli PM Calls on All States to Recognize Jerusalem as Jewish Capital

Sputnik News

21:42 06.12.2017(updated 22:27 06.12.2017)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on all states to follow the pattern of the US and recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital to move their embassies there. Earlier, US President Donald Trump announced his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"We are deeply grateful to the US President for his courageous and fair decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the forthcoming move of the US embassy,"  Netanyahu said in a video message.

Israeli Prime Minister promised to maintain the status quo of the Jerusalem holy places and to ensure religious freedom for Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Previously, the US president has stated that Israel has the right to determine its own capital. According to Donald Trump, the recognition of Jerusalem would not hamper the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians and would prevent the US from assissting them.

This decision has already stipulated fierce crisisim from several world leaders, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron and so on, social media, because it contradicts with their political stance.

Trump pledged to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and to move the US embassy to Jerusalem during his presidential campaign in 2016. The Israeli parliament sits in West Jerusalem, which Israel established as its capital in 1950, in spite of a 1947 UN plan for a special international regime for the city. Jerusalem was declared the unified capital of Israel in 1980 in a move that was never recognized by any foreign state. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital. The PLO demands that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian territories that it seized during the Six-Day War in 1967.

 Sputnik

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Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Israeli Capital, Orders to Prepare Embassy Move

Sputnik News

21:10 06.12.2017(updated 21:49 06.12.2017)

The US president has stated that Israel has the right to determine its own capital and the decision is a long overdue step to advance the peace process between the Jewish State and Palestine.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Donald Trump said on Wednesday. "It is the right thing to do so."

He has announced he ordered the Department of State to take measures for the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. However, Trump has said he signed a waiver delaying the Embassy relocation for six months.

The president reiterated Washington's commitment to the two-state solution of the Israel-Palestine issue and vowed to do "everything" in his power to facilitate reconciliation between them. He described the decision as "a historic day" and "an important step toward peace".

Last week, US officials revealed President Trump's intention to declare formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and initiate the process of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv, thus overturning decades of US policy.

Objections to the move from across the Arab world failed to deter the president from making Wednesday's announcement, which fulfils a campaign promise Trump made.

A spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas warned that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would threaten the peace process in the region.

"Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the U.S. 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 Arab lawmakers from Israel, the Wafa news agency reported.

President Trump forewarned several regional leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who reportedly told Trump there was no need to "complicate" matters in the Middle East and warned him against "taking measures that would undermine the chances of peace in the Middle East."

According to the Saudi Press Agency, King Salman told the US president, "Such a dangerous step is likely to inflame the passions of Muslims around the world due to the great status of Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque."

King Abdullah of Jordan stated that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would have "dangerous repercussions on the stability and security of the region."

At a joint news conference with King Abdullah last Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move "will only play into the hands of terror groups." Erdogan has also called for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to meet in Istanbul on December 13 to discuss the status of Jerusalem.

US embassies in the Middle East increased security with teams of US Marines ahead of Wednesday's announcement, in expectation of unrest. The Israeli Defense Force began preparing for riots in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, after Hamas announced it plans to hold a "day of rage" in aftermath of the announcement.

In a sign that Trump was planning to change the US policy, on Monday he did not sign a national security waiver traditionally signed by US presidents every six months, which keeps the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital. The Israeli parliament sits in West Jerusalem, which Israel established as its capital in 1950, in spite of a 1947 UN plan for a special international regime for the city. Since 1967, Israel has also occupied East Jerusalem and claims the city as its undivided capital.

 Sputnik

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Iran's Supreme Leader, Hamas Blast US Plan to Relocate Its Embassy to Jerusalem

Sputnik News

11:32 06.12.2017(updated 14:04 06.12.2017)

Earlier on Wednesday, a White House official said that US President Donald Trump will order the State Department to start the process of relocating the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has slammed Washington's plans to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem as incompetent, according to Reuters.

"That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure," Khamenei said. Quds is known to be the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

The relevant decision will be announced by US President Donald Trump, according to a high-ranking White House official who declined to elaborate.

During separate telephone calls on Tuesday, Trumps discussed the issue with the leaders of five Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, for his part, warned Trump that any decision made by the United States regarding the status of Jerusalem before reaching complete settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "will damage the peace talks and increase tensions in the region."

"This dangerous step will provoke the feelings of Muslims around the world, for whom the importance of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is great," he said," he said.

Earlier that day, Husam Zomlot, top representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the US, said that Washington recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital will have "catastrophic consequences" and prompt a "strategic and political" response from the PLO.

Hamas Shows Angry Reaction

Commenting on possible relocation of US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh warned that it would cross "every red line," according to the Iranian news agency Press TV.

"Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is a dangerous escalation and provides cover for the extremist government of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to carry out its plan to Judaize the city of Jerusalem," Haniyeh said.

In separate development, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri tweeted Tuesday on Trump's plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying that Israel has "no land" which is why it cannot pick "a capital" city.

He warned that the recognition "would harm Israel" which will finally "regret" the decision."

Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kusher said late last week that the US President was allegedly close to a decision on the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The PLO insists that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian territories that it seized during the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel proclaimed its ownership over East Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was declared the unified capital of Israel in 1980 in a move that was never recognized by the majority of UN states and international organizations.

 Sputnik

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President Trump's Decision to Recognize Jerusalem as Israel's Capital

Press Statement

Rex W. Tillerson

Secretary of State

Washington, DC

December 6, 2017

President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital aligns U.S. presence with the reality that Jerusalem is home to Israel's legislature, Supreme Court, President's office, and Prime Minister's office.

We have consulted with many friends, partners, and allies in advance of the President making his decision. We firmly believe there is an opportunity for a lasting peace.

As the President said in his remarks today, "Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach it."

The President decided today, as Congress first urged in the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, and has reaffirmed regularly since, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The State Department will immediately begin the process to implement this decision by starting the preparations to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The safety of Americans is the State Department's highest priority, and in concert with other federal agencies, we've implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions.

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International Community's Anxiety Rises Over US Jerusalem Decision

By Margaret Besheer December 06, 2017

The international community reacted swiftly to President Donald Trump's announcement the United States would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that could reignite Israeli-Palestinian violence.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres led the chorus of global voices Wednesday urging calm and restraint.

"From day one as secretary-general of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," he told reporters. "Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides.

"I understand the deep attachment that Jerusalem holds in the hearts of so many people, it has been so for centuries and it will always be," Guterres added.

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," the U.N. chief said.

The United Nations said late Tuesday that the delegations of Bolivia, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, the UK, and Uruguay are requesting an emergency meeting of the Council, with a briefing by the secretary general, to be held before the end of this week.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Trump's announcement on Jerusalem "is a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process."

Palestinian top negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "This step is prejudging, dictating, closing doors for negotiations and I think President Trump tonight disqualified the United States of America to play any role in any peace process. The Palestinian leadership will call for an emergency session for the Palestine Central Council to study this speech and to review all the options available and take the proper decision concerning many issues."

Egypt  the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979  has denounced the U.S. president's decision. A Foreign Ministry statement says Trump's decision is a violation of international resolutions on the city's status, and notes Egypt is worried about the fallout of the move on the stability of the region and about its "extremely negative" impact on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

French President Emmanuel Macron's reaction was swift and critical. "It is a regrettable decision taken by the Americans vis-a-vis Jerusalem. France does not approve, it contradicts international law and it ignores U.N. Security Council resolutions," he said.

Earlier, Bolivia's U.N. ambassador said his delegation would request a public meeting of the Security Council should Trump go ahead with the expected announcement.

"It would be a reckless and a dangerous decision that goes against international law, the resolutions of the Security Council, also weakens any effort for peace in the region, and also upsets the whole region," Ambassador Sacha Llorentty told reporters.

At his weekly audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, just hours ahead of Trump's announcement, Pope Francis said he could not "remain silent" about his deep concern over Jerusalem.

He urged respect for the "status quo" of Jerusalem, a city he noted is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. He said he prays that "wisdom and prudence prevail, to avoid adding new elements of tension in a world already shaken and scarred by many cruel conflicts."

Leaders and analysts have raised the alarm in recent days that such a move could be seen as a major provocation to the Palestinians and could trigger another intifada or uprising.

In 2000, five years of deadly violence was ignited when Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount at the Al Aqsa mosque complex. Both Jews and Muslims claim the site as among their most sacred.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the announcement.

"We're profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to prepare for the opening of the U.S. embassy here," Netanyahu said.

Former U.N. secretary-general and leader of The Elders, Kofi Annan, said in a statement there would be no lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians unless both parties' rights and claims are respected in the historic city.

"I deeply regret today's decision by the U.S. president, reversing a long-held position and breaking with the international consensus on Jerusalem," Annan said. "I hope Palestinians and regional Arab powers will react with restraint, and U.S. allies will do all they can to realign Washington's policy with international norms. All parties must avoid stoking tensions, which could all too easily spill over into violence."

"With this move, the United States is violating its own international legal obligations not to recognize or assist an illegal situation and to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions," said Raed Jarrar, Amnesty International USA's Middle East Advocacy Director. "No country in the world recognizes Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, making the decision to confer U.S. recognition deeply troubling."

Jarrar said the decision would undermine international rule of law and shows "a total disregard for mass human rights violations that Palestinians are facing as a result of Israel's annexation policies."

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Arabs, Muslims Warn Trump Against Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's Capital

By Robert Berger December 06, 2017

The Middle East is on edge as President Donald Trump plans to make a controversial change in U.S. policy on Jerusalem.

Palestinians are calling for three "Days of Rage" to protest Trump's plan to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh warns that the decision would have dire consequences for American efforts to revive peace talks with Israel.

"It would complicate things," he said. "It would put an obstacle to the peace process. Maybe it will be the end of the peace process."

Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital touches a raw nerve among Arabs and Muslims in general, and Palestinians in particular. The city is home to the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, the third holiest place in Islam, and Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

But for Jews, Jerusalem is the holiest place of all, and they claim ancient ties to the city going back to the biblical King David.

"Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital for 3,000 years," said Israeli Cabinet Minister Naftali Bennett. "It was never, and will never be, the capital of anyone else."

With that in mind, Israelis on the streets of Jerusalem say U.S. recognition is long overdue.

"I am very, very happy," said one Israeli. "I think it is about time. I think this the first time a president of America is keeping to his promises."

Jerusalem is a traditional flashpoint of violence, and Israeli security forces are on high alert. As one Palestinian official put it, "When you look at a place that is on the verge of an explosion, you do not introduce a flame."

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Turkish President, Jordanian King Unite Against US President Over Jerusalem Move

By Dorian Jones December 06, 2017

The news of the United States' intention to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel dominated talks Wednesday between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and King Abdullah II of Jordan. In statements to the media at the presidential palace, both leaders voiced concern.

"If the wrong step is taken regarding Jerusalem's status, it will be the cause of indignation in the Islamic world," Erdogan said, adding that it will "dynamite the ground for peace, igniting new tensions and clashes."

Abdullah, underlining Jordan's role as guardian of Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, said he had spoken Tuesday with U.S. President Donald Trump, and had raised his concerns. The king said the Palestinians' cause remains the central issue in the region and the current tensions over Jerusalem reaffirmed the need for a peace settlement.

"It is imperative now to work fast to reach a final status solution and a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and this must allow the Palestinians to establish their independent state side-by-side with Israel and its capital in East Jerusalem," Abdullah said. "Ignoring the Palestinians and Christian rights in Jerusalem will only fuel further extremism."

Abdullah backed the Turkish president's call for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, OIC, in Istanbul next Wednesday. Turkey currently heads the group of 57 Muslim nations.

"I want to make the following call to the whole world from here: Any steps to change Jerusalem's legal status should be avoided," Erdogan said. "Such a step would only play into the hands of terrorist organizations."

Erdogan has been speaking to Muslim leaders to lobby against any move by Washington to change Jerusalem's status.

The Turkish president's efforts are expected to intensify ahead of next week's meeting of Muslim countries' leaders in Istanbul.

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Trump Urges Saudis to Immediately Allow Aid Supplies Into Yemen

By VOA News December 06, 2017

Calls comes as country grapples with bloody conflict, cholera outbreak, lack of fuel, food and medicine

President Donald Trump has ordered U.S. officials to urge Saudi Arabia to completely allow fuel, food and medicine into Yemen.

In a short statement Wednesday, Trump said, "This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately," saying the Yemeni people "desperately need it."

A Saudi-led coalition is carrying out an air and ground campaign to drive the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels out of Yemen.

The Saudis imposed a blockade on all Yemeni ports last month when the Houthis fired a missile near the Riyadh airport.

The blockade has been eased to allow some humanitarian aid into the country, but the Saudis have tightened restrictions on commercial shipping, causing severe fuel shortages.

No fuel means generators that pump clean drinking water, run hospitals and cook food cannot operate.

Saudi Arabia is one of the closest U.S. allies in the Arab world, but it is unclear exactly what approach U.S. officials and diplomats will take in persuading the Saudis to ease the blockade.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters last month that no country has given more aid to Yemen than Saudi Arabia. But he said none has gone to Houthi-controlled areas of northern Yemen, accusing the rebels of stealing and selling the aid.

The Houthis seized the Yemeni capital of Sana'a in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia before returning to the southern port of Aden.

The Saudi airstrikes aimed at forcing out the Houthis have obliterated entire neighborhoods and killed thousands of civilians.

Yemen is also struggling with a cholera outbreak and what the U.N. is warning is a looming famine.

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Saudi Arabia Must Lift Yemen Blockade 'Immediately' - US President

Sputnik News

01:28 07.12.2017

Right after infuriating the Muslim world by announcing that he'd move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, US President Trump called for Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade on Yemen and allow food and other supplies into the famine-stricken country.

"I have directed officials in my administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people, who desperately need it," Trump said in a brief statement Wednesday.

"This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately," he added.

A blocked on Yemen was imposed by Saudi Arabia last month after Houthi rebels fired a missile at the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Following the attack, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that while pro-Saudi government already controls 85 percent of the country, "anything less than 100 percent is problematic," according to a New York Times essay on the crown prince.

However, facing increasing international pressure as hunger in Yemen grows more widespread, the Saudis did lift the blockade partially, the Hill reports. Saudi Arabia continues to obstruct the transportation of food, fuel and medicine the war-torn country so desperately needs, however.

Yemen faces the worst outbreak of cholera in recent history, with nearly 1 million people contracting the disease, Bloomberg reports. Three million people out of a population of 28 million, are internally displaced, according to UN figures.

United Nations World Food Program head David Beasley said Yemen right now is on the "brink of famine," and UN head of Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock reportedly agrees with him.

"It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year, where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011. It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims," Lowcock said last month, according to the Independent.

Trump's call to end the blockade contrasts his public praise of bin Salman, who has led the Yemeni campaign, for his "efforts to clamp down on terrorism and corruption" in his own country, Bloomberg notes. Bin Salman is behind the anti-corruption sweep that has arrested more than 200 people in Saudi Arabia and exposed corruption to the tune of more than $100 billion. Critics argue that the anti-corruption movement is actually a power grab.

Yemen has been in the grip of a civil war since 2015. The internationally recognized government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, supported by the Saudi-led coalition, is fighting the Houthi movement backed by army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed in fighting this week.

 Sputnik

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Jerusalem

There is no other place in the world like Jerusalem, which is at the core of the identity of all three monotheistic religions in the world. For Jews, it is the location of their ancient Temples, and the place where God tested the patriarch Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac.For Christians, Jerusalem is the site of the resurrection of Jesus, the central event of their faith. And for Muslims, Jerusalem is where the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven on his Night Journey. The Arabs renamed the city al-Quds, the holy one. It is at the core of what it means to be a Palestinian, at the core of the identity of what it means to be an Israeli.

Jerusalem is more than an intriguing global historical city. It is a classroom for liberal learning and international understanding. It had never, as far as we know, been a city of one language, one religion and one culture. Looking at the origins of Jerusalems name indicates its international and multicultural nature. First known in Pharonic Egyptian texts as Urusalem (City/House of Salem or Peace) and then in the Judaic traditions as Yerusalem.

As early as 3000 BC, the Old City was an organic entity focused on its religious and sacred nature becoming in time both a pilgrimage and market center. From the mid-19th century, Jerusalem began to grow out of its Old City into a New City until after the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State of Israel and the subsequent ceasefire agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria in February 1949.

From 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem was a city divided. For nineteen years, concrete walls and barbed wire sealed off one part of the city from the other. Its eastern section, including the Old City, was annexed by Jordan, and ruled from its capital, Amman. The western sector of Jerusalem became Israel's capital.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move the international community has not recognized. UN Security Council Resolution 242 called on Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, which would include a complete withdrawal from the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem. Israelis say they have allowed Christians and Muslims free access to their holy sites since they took control of all of Jerusalem in 1967. Palestinians disagree, and say the only way to guarantee access is if they have full control.

Israel insists that Jerusalem be its undivided capital, while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent Palestinian state. At the 14-day July 2000 Camp David Middle East peace summit, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians sovereignty over some predominantly Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. But Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected them, demanding full sovereignty over East Jerusalem. Arafat was especially angered over Israel's refusal to grant Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem's walled Old City - offering only access to the Al Aksa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

Israel has not been willing to concede sovereignty on the Temple Mount, or Haram as-Sharif, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The first Jewish temple was built there by Solomon and then subsequently the second temple reconstructed after the Babylonians had destroyed the first. The massive limestone rock at the center of the Dome of the Rock mosque also figures in Jewish tradition. It is known as the place from which the universe itself was created. The stone according to Jewish tradition is known in Hebrew as Even ha- Shetiyah, the Foundation Stone from which the whole universe was created. It is where the idea of the nexus between Heaven and earth originates within the Jewish tradition.

In 1995, Congress passed The Jerusalem Embassy and Relocation Act, which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on 06 December 2017 and announced plans to relocate to the city the US embassy, currently based in Tel Aviv. The move, long-sought by Israel, broke with decades of US policy as well as the international consensus. World leaders urged Trump to reconsider, warning it could derail peace efforts and stir unrest in the region and beyond.

Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem effectively put the entire city under de-facto Israeli control. Israeli jurisdiction and ownership of Jerusalem, however, was not recognised by the international community, including the United States. In 1980, Israel passed the "Jerusalem Law", stating that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel", thereby formalising its annexation of East Jerusalem. The 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act required the US government to establish an embassy in Jerusalem, but allows the president to delay doing so by signing a waiver every six months. The waiver spared the state department financial penalties for failing to comply with the law. Presidents Bush and Obama signed the waiver twice per year with little fanfare. However, Trump had long hinted he would deviate from his predecessors.

After occupying the city's eastern part in the 1967 War, Israel annexed the territory, and proclaimed it as its "eternal, undivided capital." The Palestinians, however, see East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

The US already has a 99-year lease on a plot of land in Jerusalem; it was granted by Israel in 1989 at the cost of $1 per year but remains undeveloped. No other country keeps an embassy in Jerusalem.





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China Launches Their Own Air Exercises to Counter US/South Korea Drill

Sputnik News

23:36 06.12.2017

The Chinese air force launched an exercise of their own concurrent to the enormous air drills being run by the US and South Korea, causing experts to speculate what, exactly, Beijing is trying to communicate to the West.

On Monday, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) flew exercises in "routes and areas it has never flown before" over both the Yellow Sea that divides China and the Korean Peninsula as well as the East China Sea between China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

These waters comprise China's "air defense identification zone," where China has flown numerous military exercises since 2011  often during moments of tension with Japan and South Korea, as the zone includes waters claimed by either nation.

The exercises were of significant size: they included fighter jets, reconnaissance planes, early warning aircraft and surface-to-air missile batteries along the coast. PLAAF spokesman Shen Jinke said that such exercises will be a regular occurrence in the future. Their purpose, Shen said, is to "'improve combat-readiness and safeguard the country's strategic interests."

But this time the drill coincided with a massive 230-aircraft joint exercise being held between South Korea and the US nearby on the Korean peninsula. That exercise, which involved F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, 12,000 US soldiers, and even B-1B strategic bombers that could be equipped with a nuclear bomb, has been decried by North Korea as "begging for nuclear war."

Li Jie, a Beijing-based military expert, described the exercises as an implicit message from the Chinese leadership to the US. "The timing of this high-profile announcement by the [People's Liberation Army] is also a warning to Washington and Seoul not to provoke Pyongyang any further," Li told the South China Morning Post.

China has condemned North Korean nuclear tests and gradually distanced themselves from their once-close ally, even backing UN sanctions against the fellow socialist country in September following a test of their nuclear program.

But while Beijing is openly opposed to the North Korean nuclear program, they are certainly not in favor of the US invading North Korea, putting an end to the Kim government, and either reunifying North Korea with the US-friendly South or installing a US-friendly regime in North Korea.

The sheer size of the US-South Korea exercise, as well as the continuous American military buildup in the peninsula since the spring, may be taken by Beijing as indication that the US plans to do exactly that.

As recently as August the Chinese leadership reaffirmed its commitment to the half-century-old defensive alliance  making clear that it was only a defensive alliance and that they would not necessarily back Kim should he go on the attack first.

During the Korean War that began in 1950 and is still technically ongoing, China came to the aid of the communist Northern Korean factions against the US and their Southern allies, repaying the fledgling North's contribution to their own civil war, which the Chinese Communist Party had only won the previous year with Korean communist help. Beijing running an air drill of their own in complement to the high-profile US/South Korea drill could well be taken as their expression of willingness to do so again.

 Sputnik

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MATTOON -- Lake Land College students from varying nations learned about other cultures during the International Student Clubs annual Show N Tell event celebrating International Education Week.

Students from Taiwan, Turkey, Colombia, China and Democratic Republic of Congo all came out to display cultural mementos.

Attendees of the event had their names spelled out in Chinese calligraphy by a student from Hong Kong. Several students brought in examples of currency from their countries, so others were able to see and feel pieces from all over the world.

The International Student Club organizes and supports activities that represents members who are from diverse countries. The International Student Club focuses on helping international and exchange student integrate into their new school, student body and community by providing endless opportunities to enrich their living and learning experience while studying at Lake Land. There are about 50 international students at Lake Land College this year.

To learn more about the International Studies Program, call 217-234-5382 or visit lakelandcollege.edu/international/.
World's Deadliest Missile BrahMos to Achieve Hypersonic Speed in Next 7 Years

Sputnik News

21:19 06.12.2017(updated 21:22 06.12.2017)

The present version of BhraMos travels at a speed of 2.8 Mach. Indian and Russian scientists have been jointly working on increasing the speed to hypersonic levels in a phased manner.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, an Indo-Russian joint venture product, is expected to achieve hypersonic speed in next seven to 10 years.

"We are working on increasing the speed of the missile in a phased manner. The current BrahMos missiles have a speed of 2.8 Mach. In two years time, we would have a speed of 3.5 Mach. In the next three to four years time, we would have a speed of 5 Mach. Then we have to go hypersonic which would take seven to 10 years," Sudhir Kumar Mishra, CEO & MD of BrahMos Aerospace Ltd said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, BrahMos Aerospace is soon expected to start the production of the air-launched version of the missile as Godrej Aerospace, a unit of Godrej & Boyce, has bagged an order for 100 units of airframes for the missiles.

As Indian scientists with the help of Russia have locally developed specialty aluminum alloy that can be used in the construction of the airframe and fuel tank, the manufacturer will not have to import the alloy from abroad. This would significantly cut the cost of manufacturing.

BrahMos considered the world's most formidable precision weapon is currently in service only in the Indian armed forces. The company says it has an additional order worth over $7 billion from different wings of the Indian armed forces.

Moreover, with the recent successful test of the air-launched version of the missile last month, the Indo-Russia JV expects a major boost in orders from Asian countries, provided the Indian government gives its nod for export of the missile systems.

"We have a set of users (Indian armed forces). We are working with them. We are manufacturing it. However, the issue of exports or other things has to be decided at the level of the Government of India," Mishra added.

The BrahMos missile is a stealth universal supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from ships, submarines, aircraft and land-based platforms. It can be used for precision strikes to destroy targets on land and sea. It can cruise at an altitude as high as 15 km and as low as 10 meters above the ground and currently maintains a speed of more than one kilometer per second throughout the duration of its flight.

 Sputnik

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Israel's F-35 Joint Strike Fighters Officially Ready for Action

Sputnik News

22:00 06.12.2017

Israeli Air Force head Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin announced on Wednesday that fifth-generation F-35 Adir fighters have joined the fleet, about one year after the first Lockheed Martin-made jet was delivered to the country.

The F-35s will provide the needed capabilities for the "constantly evolving and complex challenges" Israel faces in the Middle East, Norkin said, as cited by the Times of Israel. The timing of the new stealth craft's addition couldn't be better, as Israel's air force "is operating on a large scale on a number of fronts in a dynamic Middle East," the general added.

The F-35 is "well-suited for the mission of selectively targeting the ongoing Iranian-Hezbollah weapons trafficking program," according to a report by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

The IAF has received nine F-35s so far, with the most recent pair of aircraft delivered in November.

The F-35 has struggled with years of cost overruns and technical malfunctions; indeed, while the US and NASA took about 10 years to reach the moon, 20 years after Lockheed received its first contract related to F-35 concept design the jets still suffer engine fires and sometimes provide insufficient oxygen to pilots mid-flight.

Nevertheless, Israel plans to buy 50 F-35s in total. The Israeli legislature, the Knesset, originally planned to by 75 or 100 F-35 aircraft but recently ordered a review of alternatives.

An agreement between Israel and the US written into the US legal code, specifically as part of the Arms Export Control Act, states that the US may not sell "defense articles or services" to Middle East nations that "adversely affect Israel's qualitative military edge." But US President Donald Trump is reportedly shopping the F-35 to the United Arab Emirates.

Speaking in November, Shoshana Bryen, director at the Jewish Policy Center in Washington, said that while Israel and the UAE "are not allies, not even friends if anyone thinks that the UAE will use this airplane to attack Israel, he or she is not living in reality."

 Sputnik

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Russian Duma Bars RFE/RL, VOA As 'Foreign Agents'

RFE/RL December 06, 2017

The Russian State Duma has voted to prohibit U.S. media outlets branded by the government as "foreign agents" from entering the lower house of parliament.

Lawmakers in the chamber adopted the resolution in a 413 to 1 vote on December 6.

It means that reporters for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA), which were designated as foreign agents by the Justice Ministry on December 5, will be barred from the Duma.

"The decision to strip us of access to the Duma is regrettable," RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said. "It is another restriction on our journalistic activity in Russia. It makes it harder for us to provide independent and accurate information on the legislature's activities to the Russian people."

The Duma, which is dominated by the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party, passed a bill last month enabling the ministry to declare foreign-based or foreign-funded media outlets foreign agents. President Vladimir Putin signed it into law on November 25.

The United States, European Union, and international media freedom and human rights groups have sharply criticized the law.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on December 5 that it was "reprehensible that Russia, which restricts its own independent, critical media, is now taking action to obstruct the work of international outlets that provide a vital alternative news source to Russian citizens."

Russian officials have said the law is a "symmetrical response" after Russia's 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 the action 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 Duma ban comes after the organization overseeing media access to the U.S. Congress stripped RT of its press credentials for the legislature.

Duma deputies initially announced plans to ban all U.S. media, but the Foreign Ministry later made clear that the government wanted the ban to affect only those outlets designated as foreign agents.

In a November 15 statement, RFE/RL said there was no symmetry in Russia's actions. It said that while RT and state-funded news outlet Sputnik distributed freely in the United States, RFE/RL "has lost its broadcast affiliates in Russia due to administrative pressures" and has no access to cable, and that "RFE/RL reporters are subject to harassment and even physical attack in Russia."

RFE/RL and VOA are overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a U.S. agency that supervises civilian government broadcasting and media operations. VOA is a federal entity, while RFE/RL is a private, nonprofit organization funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress.

With reporting by Interfax, TASS, and RIA Novosti

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-duma-bars- rferl-voa-foreign-agents/28900011.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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Young People And Factory Workers: Launch Of Putin's Reelection Bid Hints At Campaign Strategy

Tom Balmforth December 06, 2017

MOSCOW -- The first appearance was in front of throngs of euphoric young people. The second was before cheering workers at a car manufacturing plant in a regional city. Vladimir Putin has finally announced what few had doubted: He will seek reelection as Russia's president in the March vote.

But if Putin's decision was all but predicted, the strategy he and his advisers will use in the coming campaign has so far been unknown. The staggered December 6 announcement came in two grand, highly choreographed TV appearances and offered the first indications of the optics and tactics the Kremlin will use to help coast Putin to victory.

In his first appearance in Moscow, the 65-year-old Putin, wearing a suit and a purple tie, swaggered onto a stage in front of a huge hall of beaming young activist volunteers -- some wearing glowing wristbands and recording with smartphones. There, he dropped his biggest hint yet that he would seek to extend his rule until 2024, saying he would make his decision "soon."

Soon came just a few hours later, when Putin appeared at a second event, this time in the Volga region industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod. Standing on a stage at the GAZ auto manufacturing plant, which makes boxy Volga sedans and GAZ light trucks, Putin, sporting a navy tie this time and surrounded by workmen in slacks, announced his intention to run.

"I will put forth my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation," Putin said on live TV.

Asked whether he would run for reelection by a GAZ workman -- who later insisted that his question hadn't been scripted -- Putin said that he couldn't "think of a better time or place to announce it," after which the crowd erupted in chants of "GAZ is for you!"

Valentina Buzmakova, a political analyst in Nizhny Novgorod, said the Kremlin is hoping to invigorate Putin's image through his proximity to young people and predicted he will continue to do so throughout his campaign.

She called the auto factory a "postcard enterprise."

"They needed a postcard and a workers' collective, and against this backdrop, Mr. Putin, the servant of the people, the candidate of the people, announced his participation in the election," she told RFE/RL's Russian Service.

"He is now going to undoubtedly choose a young audience so that there are as many smiling young faces around him to make him look younger. This is all calculated and he's been doing this for a long time," she said.

Putin has courted younger voters at a series of youth forums and events organized by authorities in recent months.

These events, all of which are covered extensively on state TV and elsewhere, suggested a Kremlin concern about a lack of support from younger Russians, who may be drawn to Kremlin gadfly and anticorruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny.

Despite being blacklisted from opinion-shaping national TV, Navalny has twice this year brought thousands of his supporters onto the streets in the capital and across the country in anti-Kremlin protests. He's harnessed social media like Twitter and in particular YouTube to attract young supporters.

Last December, Navalny, 41, announced his intention to take part in the election in March and has since set up scores of campaign offices and met voters across the country. However, he is likely to be barred outright from taking part because of a criminal conviction on charges he says were trumped up to keep him off the ballot.

Speaking to RFE/RL's Russian Service on December 4, Navalny ally Vladimir Milov said it is wrong to expect Navalny's campaign to give up and throw in the towel if or when he is officially barred from running.

"That will only be the start of it," Milov said, claiming they will dispute the decision in court and "fight for Navalny's registration until March 18," the scheduled date of the election, and beyond.

Writing on Twitter on December 6, Navalny noted how Putin's presidential announcement was made not far from where Navalny's campaign manager, Leonid Volkov, is being held on a 30-day jail sentence.

Volkov was jailed for organizing a rally in Nizhny Novgorod that authorities said he did not have permission to hold. He insists he did have permission.

"The best illustration of how elections work in Russia is that Putin announced his candidacy in Nizhny Novgorod, and 1 kilometer away from him is the cell containing Leonid Volkov, the head of my campaign headquarters. He was arrested for conducting an election campaign."

In an opinion piece for Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper's chief political editor, Kirill Martynov, argues that the optics of the announcement -- Putin flanked by blue-collar automotive workers -- appears to pave the way for an ultraconservative campaign.

"The format of the announcement was maximally conservative, which definitely will influence the onward course of the campaign and its results. The details speak for themselves," Martynov wrote.

The last time Putin announced that he would stand again for president was in September 2011 when he declared he would return to the Kremlin after a four-year stint as prime minister.

The constitution prevents presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms, and Putin honored this rule, stepping aside for four years as Dmitry Medvedev served as president from 2008-12. The constitution was later amended, however, by Medvedev to allow presidents to serve for six-year terms.

The 2011 announcement that Putin would return riled a swathe of Russians, particularly in the capital and in big cities. Thousands took to the streets months later to protest against alleged fraud during parliamentary elections in December 2011.

Putin weathered those protests, making a conservative pivot in his politics and making overtures to blue-collar workers. After his reelection, he appointed Igor Kholmanskikh, a tank factory foreman, as his special presidential envoy to the Urals region.

There were echoes of this in his December 6 announcement at the car factory, though with Putin's genuine popularity and the Kremlin's tight grip on both media and the levers of power, some analysts played down the significance of the location.

"Of course, it is interesting that he chose a big factory to demonstrate his proximity to the people," said Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Moscow-based Mercator think tank. "But who would doubt this? He could have done it, for instance, somewhere in a remote village and it wouldn't have looked bad."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-russia-reelection- strategy-analysis/28901505.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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Putin declares 'complete victory' on both banks of Euphrates in Syria

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 05:59PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a 'complete victory' over the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group on both banks of the Euphrates River in Syria, stressing the significance of switching to a political process to ultimately end the crisis in the Arab country.

Putin said in remarks released by the Kremlin on Wednesday that the terrorists have been completely defeated on both banks of the Euphrates River in Syria.

"Two hours ago, the (Russian) defense minister reported to me that the operations on the eastern and western banks of the Euphrates have been completed with the total rout of the terrorists," Putin said.

He further said "some pockets of resistance" could remain in the area, "but overall the military work at this stage and on this territory is completed with, I repeat, the total rout of the terrorists."

Putin did not specify whether he was referring to the end of operations in entire Syria, or just the areas around the Euphrates valley.

The Russian president stressed the need to move to a political dialogue that would eventually involve presidential and parliamentary elections, but said this is "a big and prolonged task."

"We need to ... move, undoubtedly, on to the next stage - the start of a political process."

Since September 2016, Moscow has been launching military operations in Syria, targeting the positions of Daesh and other militant groups upon an official request from the Damascus government.

Different foreign-backed terrorist groups have been wreaking havoc in Syria since 2011.

Russia, Iran and Turkey have been acting as a guarantor state in peace talks for Syria in Astana, Kazakhstan. The three countries have helped set up de-escalation zones across Syria to reduce fighting on the ground.

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Putin Informed About Daesh's Total Defeat in Syria's Euphrates Valley

Sputnik News

18:46 06.12.2017(updated 20:04 06.12.2017)

Over the past months, the Syrian government forces have achieved a major breakthrough in the province of Deir ez-Zor, and now the remaining terrorist units have been expelled from the Euphrates River Valley.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has reported a complete victory over Daesh terrorists in the east and west banks of the Euphrates in Syria, President Putin announced during his visit to Nizhny Novgorod.

"Naturally, some detached resistance hotspots still can exist, but on the whole the combat work at this point and on this territory is finished. I emphasize the complete defeat over Daesh and victory over terrorists," Putin added.

The president also noted that de-escalation zones in Syria must be strengthened and the bloodshed must be stopped before transitioning to a political settlement.

The overwhelming defeat of the Daesh terrorist group in Syria followed the liberation by government forces of the last major Daesh stronghold in the country, the town of Abu Kamal.

The advances of the Syrian government forces became possible after the breach of the three-year-long Deir ez-Zor's blockade in September, a victory which secured a firm foothold for further offensives.

Moscow launched its air campaign in the Arab Republic at the request of President Bashar Assad in September 2015 and has been successfully providing aerial support for the Syrian government army ever since.

 Sputnik

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Pentagon Questions Advances Made by Russia to Defeat Daesh in Syria

Sputnik News

01:47 07.12.2017(updated 01:42 07.12.2017)

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Islamic State had been defeated on both banks of the Euphrates River in Syria, while Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov said that Syria was fully freed from terrorists.

"Naturally, there may still be isolated points of resistance, but in general, the combat work at this stage and in this territory is over," Vladimir Putin said.

Meantime, the US military disagrees with Russia's announcement that the Daesh terrorist group has been defeated on both banks of the Euphrates River in Syria, Defense Department Spokesman Eric Pahon told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"I think that's an interesting announcement, I respectfully disagree," Pahon said. "We still know that there are ISIS [Daesh] pockets in Syria that remain to be taken care of  This is just not true, ISIS is not defeated. There are still a couple thousand fighters left and that's still a significant amount of fighters. It's premature."

Pahon believes more efforts are required to prevent a resurgence of the terrorist group.

"The whole of our philosophy is you cannot just kill the terrorists and walk away. They are going to come right back. The things that allow them to come to power in the first place are still there," Pahon said.

He added that many areas recaptured from Daesh do not yet have local governments and lack basic necessities such as water and food.

"So, there is a lot of work to be done in that area to make sure people can come back, can rebuild and can be comfortable and start to reform society again," he said.

When asked about the US estimates of the number of remaining Daesh fighters, Pahon said he did not have a specific figure, though he said he believed the terrorists' numbers had dwindled to around 3,000 or fewer, most of whom are concentrated in Syria's Middle Euphrates River Valley.

"We still have to hunt down those isolated pockets [in Syria]," Pahon said. "But Iraq for all intents and purposes is nearing the end of Daesh."

Pahon also stressed that other terrorists are operating in Syria, including the Al-Qaeda terror group and its offshoot the Nusra Front.

"You still have Al-Qaeda, Nusra, you still have all of these other kind of terror offshoots that are still operating," he said. "They as well need to be taken care of, because ISIS branched out of these things ISIS was just the worst version almost of Al Qaeda, and what became Nusra as well. Unless all of those terror elements are eradicated, killed off and prevented from returning, we are going to deal with the same problem again."

Russia, alongside Iran and Turkey, is a guarantor of the ceasefire regime in Syria. Moscow has also been assisting Damascus both through supporting the struggle against the terrorist groups and by providing humanitarian aid to the residents of the crisis-torn country.

The US-led coalition of more than 70 members is conducting military operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The coalition's strikes in Iraq are conducted in cooperation with Iraqi officials, but those in Syria are not authorized by either the government of President Bashar Assad or the United Nations Security Council.

 Sputnik

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Erdogan Says U.S. Trying To 'Blackmail' Turkey With Iran Sanctions Case

RFE/RL December 06, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the New York trial of a Turkish banker accused of conspiring to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions "blackmail" and a "blemish" on his country.

His comments in Ankara on December 5 came as the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla continued with a fifth day of testimony by the U.S. government's star witness and alleged mastermind of the scheme to evade sanctions.

Erdogan said the trial was a ploy to distract Turkey while Washington makes plans to strengthen Kurdish groups in Syria that Turkey considers to be "terrorists" allied with armed separatists in Turkey.

"Turkey has no plans against the United States, but it is clear that the U.S. has plans against us," Erdogan said. The Iran sanctions "case has nothing to do with law, justice, or trade, it's an acrobatic spectacle," he said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim has called Turkish accusations that his prosecution is politically motivated "ridiculous."

The government's star witness, wealthy Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, conceded in testimony on December 5 that he had a proclivity to pay bribes to get what he wants, under cross-examination from Atilla's defense attorney, Cathy Fleming.

But Zarrab said he never paid Atilla a bribe and that Atilla never asked him for money.

According Zarrab's agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to some charges in exchange for leniency, Zarrab paid bribes to foreign officials and corporate representatives between 2002 and March 2016 in return for personal benefits, favorable business dealings, and the protection of government officials.

Zarrab estimated that he made from $100 million to $150 million between 2010 and 2016 by carrying out various illegal schemes, including helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

As part of the plea deal, Zarrab has agreed to give up any illicit profits. He testified that he might be permitted to be released on bail once the trial is finished.

Zarrab's testimony likely will win him leniency against charges that otherwise could carry a prison term of up to 130 years.

Turkish authorities have detained 17 people linked to Zarrab in an investigation launched after he cooperated with U.S. authorities and agreed to testify in the case.

Some of those detained in Turkey are accused of sending documents to the United States to help with the case.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkish-president- erdogan-says-us-trying-blackmail-turkey-iran- sanctions-case/28899592.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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Ukrainians free Saakashvili from police van after hours of standoff

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 6, 2017 06:36AM

Several hundreds of supporters of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, now a Ukrainian opposition leader, have managed to free him as he was being arrested by Ukrainian police in the capital, Kiev.

On Tuesday, Saakashvili's supporters surrounded the police van that was supposed to take him away from his residence in downtown Kiev and blocked it. After hours of standoff, during which security forces fired tear gas to unsuccessfully disperse the crowd, Saakashvili was freed.

Saakashvili, who was still wearing his handcuffs, led his supporters  some several hundred  in a rally toward the parliament, while urging them to rise against President Petro Poroshenko "and his gang."

With the handcuffs still hanging off from one wrist, the opposition leader told his supporters, "I'll keep these handcuffs. I'll save them for Poroshenko, for [Prosecutor General Yuriy] Lutsenko."

"An organized criminal group has seized power in our beloved Ukraine," he told the crowd. "I call on everyone, every real Ukrainian, to demand his resignation."

He called on "all Ukrainians to take to the streets and drive out the thieves."

"Do not let Poroshenko and his gang continue the robbery," Saakashvili said. "Ukraine is under a real threat. These people have completely usurped power."

After he was freed from police custody, Saakashvili was given an ultimatum by Lutsenko, the prosecutor general, to turn himself in within 24 hours or 'the entire law-enforcement system of Ukraine will do everything necessary" to bring him into custody.

Lutsenko has charged Saakashvili of having received 500,000 dollars from Russian sources to fund the rallies against the pro-Western Ukrainian government.

The opposition leader, however, said the accusations against him were "all fake" and vowed to continue resisting arrest in Ukraine.

Poroshenko granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship back in 2015 to allow him to become governor of the southern region of Odessa. The pro-reform politician, however, stepped down in November 2016 after accusing Poroshenko of blocking efforts to uproot corruption. Later in July 2017, Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.

Saakashvili served as president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, but he lost the citizenship of his native country after he was granted the Ukrainian passport. Under Georgia's law, individuals are not allowed to hold dual nationality.

Saakashvili, now a stateless person, is also wanted on criminal charges in Georgia.

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Saakashvili Defiant As Police Clash With Supporters At Kyiv Protest Camp

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service December 06, 2017

KYIV -- Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president turned Ukrainian opposition leader, has vowed that he will continue to resist arrest after his supporters dramatically freed him from custody in Kyiv.

Facing a deadline to turn himself in to the authorities later in the day, Saakashvili told supporters at a protest camp near parliament early on December 6 that he would not comply.

"I will not show up at the pseudo Prosecutor-General's Office," he said. "I am ready to talk to investigators here in the camp."

"Our plans are clear. Our main goal is to remove a criminal group from power and impeach it," Saakashvili said, referring to President Petro Poroshenko's administration.

His remarks came after prosecutors on December 5 issued a 24-hour deadline for Saakashvili to turn himself in to police, and after a predawn clash between National Police officers and protesters camping out near the Verkhovna Rada.

Ukraine's National Police said at least 14 police officers and two civilians were injured in clashes that broke out as authorities began searching tents in an attempt to locate Saakashvili. Protesters said at least nine activists were injured.

The police "planned to take me out of a tent, but attacked the wrong tent" and "severely beat" activists who had been sleeping, Saakashvili said on Facebook.

Saakashvili also appealed to Poroshenko in the Facebook post, saying: "Why do you want these provocations? Don't attack and you won't make people fight back! It's a peaceful action! Haven't you learned anything?"

That was reference to previous turmoil in Ukraine, including attempted crackdowns on the massive Euromaidan protests that pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych out in 2014 and brought Poroshenko to power.

Some of Saakashvili's supporters were stockpiling bricks at the protest camp and setting up barricades with tires shortly after dawn on December 6 as heavy snow fell on the Ukrainian capital.

Meanwhile, in Tbilisi, about 3,000 members of the Georgian political party founded by Saakashvili staged a demonstration on December 6 to warn against the former president's extradition from Ukraine.

The demonstrators said their rally was a signal to the authorities that mass protests will be held if Saakashvili is extradited and arrested in Georgia.

The Ukrainian charges are unrelated to those Saakashvili faces in Georgia. But members of the opposition United National Movement said at the Tbilisi rally that they believe he might be extradited.

The United National Movement was ousted from power in 2012 parliamentary elections. Saakashvili is wanted in Georgia for alleged involvement in the violent dispersal of protesters and a raid on a private television station during his 2004-13 presidency.

In Kyiv, Prosecutor-General's Office spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the authorities ordered the manhunt following a chaotic scene on December 5 in which security forces stormed Saakashvili's apartment and detained him, but supporters later freed him from a police van.

Larisa Sarhan, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general, said on December 6 that Saakashvili now faced three criminal charges -- attempting to commit a crime, involvement in premeditated criminal activity by a group of persons, and providing assistance to a criminal organization and concealing their criminal activities.

Sarhan also said criminal investigations had been started against several parliamentary deputies suspected of obstructing Saakashvili's arrest on December 5.

Prosecutors have also informed National Police chief Serhiy Knyazev that Saakashvili is a wanted man.

Saakashvili Vs. Poroshenko

After he was freed from detention, Saakashvili led hundreds of his supporters in a march to parliament and demanded Poroshenko's resignation, calling him a "criminal" and a traitor to Ukraine.

Saakashvili also urged Ukrainians to rally on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, the epicenter of the Euromaidan protests in 2013-14.

"An organized criminal group has seized power in our beloved Ukraine," Saakashvili told the impromptu rally. "I call on everyone, every real Ukrainian, to demand his resignation."

Ukrainian authorities claim that Saakashvili is being backed by Russia or forces there -- an assertion that the former Georgian president, who has been hated by the Kremlin since a five-day war between Georgia and Russia in 2008, has dismissed.

Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko alleged on December 5 that an "organized crime" group led by Yanukovych, who is in exile in Russia, has financed protests organized by Saakashvili.

Lutsenko claimed that by pursuing Saakashvili, the Ukrainian authorities were thwarting an anti-Kyiv plot sponsored by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

The turmoil in Kyiv comes at a time when Ukraine is fighting Russia-backed separatists in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in the eastern region known as the Donbas, and with no end in sight to Russia's occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

From Georgia To Odesa

Saakashvili rejected the allegations against him as "cynical and ridiculous."

"There is no more bitter foe of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in the world than me, and the accusation that I am linked to Russia is completely absurd," said Saakashvili, who also called for Lutsenko's resignation.

Lutsenko on December 5 told parliament: "In 24 hours the entire Ukrainian justice system will do everything necessary for the stateless Saakashvili to face investigators, and afterwards, court."

Saakashvili became stateless when Poroshenko issued a presidential decree in July, while he was abroad, that stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship.

He returned to Ukraine in order to challenge that decree in the Ukrainian courts and has been leading opposition protests against Poroshenko.

Saakashvili rose to power in Tbilisi during Georgia's peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003 and served as Georgia's president from 2004-13.

He conducted major reforms and fought corruption in the former Soviet republic, but was accused of abusing his power. Authorities in Tbilisi have charged Saakashvili of trying to organize a coup there after leaving office, an allegation he denies.

Poroshenko in 2015 appointed Saakashvili -- an acquaintance from university days -- as governor of Ukraine's Odesa region in the wake of the Euromaidan protests that brought a pro-Western government to power in Kyiv.

Saakashvili surrendered his Georgian citizenship to take the post.

But Saakashvili resigned from the Odesa governor's post and went into opposition in November 2016, saying his reform efforts there were being blocked by Poroshenko's allies.

With reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv and Merhat Sharipzhan in Prague, Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa, UNIAN, Pravda.ua, 112.ua, and Ukrayinska Pravda

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-saakashvili -defiant-police-clash-supporters- kyiv-tent-camp/28899883.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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Preschool indoor picnic to be held at library

CHARLESTON -- The Charleston Carnegie Public Library will host a Preschool Indoor Picnic on Monday.

Bring a sack lunch and join them from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. for a warm indoor picnic. We will have plenty of room to spread out and enjoy the company of other families. This is a free program, open to the public. A library card is not needed to attend.

For further information, call 217-345-1514 or log on to www.charlestonlibrary.org.

PCH volunteers host chocolate sale

PARIS -- The Paris Community Hospital Volunteers will host their annual Christmas South Bend Company Chocolate Sale in December.

The sale will take place Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., near the Paris Family Medical Center rotunda entrance.

The sale will offer nearly 50 varieties of gourmet chocolates and snacks. Items will include award-winning salsas, hot sauces, jams, jellies, relishes, and preserves made by Kathy's Kitchen.

Cash, checks, and credit cards will be accepted. Chocolate sales support the efforts of the PCH Volunteers, who provide financial assistance to hospital projects and award scholarships to area students who are pursuing health care careers.

Annual 'Light Up Strasburg' light contest set

STRASBURG -- The annual Light Up Strasburg Christmas light contest will again be held this year. All residents are encouraged to participate in the Christmas light contest sponsored by the village.

Judging will take place Thursday. Individuals do not have to enter contest as anyone with Christmas lights is eligible to win. For further information, call the Strasburg Village Office at 217-644-3007.
GREENUP (JG-TC) -- A driver who was outside of his semitrailer was struck and injured by another semitrailer early Thursday morning on Interstate 70, approximately six miles west of Greenup.

An Illinois State Police District 12 press release reported that the collision occurred 12:25 a.m. as a semitrailer driven by Shawn M. Montgomery of Saint Peters, Mo., was stopped on the right shoulder of I-70 near milepost 113. Montgomery was outside the truck when he and his trailer were struck by a semitrailer driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena of Millville, N.J.

State police reported that Varela-Mojena said he saw Montgomery's semitrailer and looked down. When Varela-Mojena looked up, he reportedly was unable to avoid striking Montgomery's semitrailer. Varela-Mojena's tractor became detached from the trailer and this trailer subsequently came to rest in the center median. Montgomery's semitrailer moved slightly but remained on the right shoulder.

Montgomery was taken to Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana for treatment of injuries. Varela-Mojena was cited for improper lane usage.
Why Is Pawan Talking On Betrayal Of Chiru?

Ever since he floated Jana Sena Party in 2014, power star Pawan Kalyan has hardly talked about his elder brother Chiranjeevi or his Praja Rajyam Party.

Occasionally, he spoke about his brothers mistake of merging the Praja Rajyam with the Congress, but he never made any further comments on him.

More often than not, Pawan preferred to stay away from the shadow of his brother, but grow independently.

Even in the film industry and also family relationship, Pawan maintained distance from his mega brother, though he occasionally met Chiranjeevi to seek his blessings.

So, when Pawan spoke elaborately about Chiranjeevi in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, everybody was surprised.

He said several people had betrayed Chiranjeevi who had floated Praja Rajyam only with an intention of serving the people.

Some rogue pests inflicted the PRP and destroyed it for their selfish motives. They backstabbed Chiranjeevi, who had a great heart for the people. I have not forgotten any of them who backstabbed my brother. I am not going to leave any one. Jana Sena will give fitting reply to such people, he said.

The sudden recall of PRP by Pawan and his anger at the detractors of Chiranjeevi made one wonder whether the both the brothers have joined hands with each other.

There was a talk that Chiranjeevi would come out of the Congress party soon after his Rajya Sabha term is over in April 2018 and would solidly back his brother.

The entire mega family will fight together in support of Pawan Kalyan and that would give him a major boost in the elections.

Already there are reports that Pawan and Chiranjeevi will act together in the next film and that would be the new beginning in the mega journey in politics, say sources.
CHARLESTON -- The barn's not ready to move but there are bricks for the floor once it does.

Work to relocate a barn to the Five Mile House is continuing with plans to try to raise money for the next phase of the project.

The effort began earlier this year and has a goal of using the barn to replicate the blacksmith shop once located at the site as well as for educational purposes and other uses.

"We're making good progress," said Tom Vance, president of the Five Mile House Foundation. "It's a very significant next step in the development of the site."

The foundation has worked for several years to renovate and improve the Five Mile House site, thought to be the location of the oldest structure in Coles County, and its grounds. The original structure at the site was built in 1840.

The house's name comes from its location at the intersection of Illinois Route 130 and Westfield Road, about five miles southeast of Charleston. Through much of its history, the location served as a stopping point for people traveling through the area.

The nearly 140-year-old barn is located a few miles east of the Five Mile House. Owner Dallas Nichols donated it to the foundation but funds are still needed for its renovation and relocation.

Vance said the project's total budget is about $175,000. The foundation already raised about $46,000 and is making a year-end appeal for another $50,000 in donations, he said.

Then, later next year, the foundation will try to raise an additional $50,000. Vance the Charleston Area Charitable Foundation will award a $25,000 grant to the project if the foundation raises $100,000 by May.

Donations can be made through a link on the foundation's website, www.fivemilehouse.org, or by mail to P.O. Box 114, Charleston, 61920.

Work so far has included obtaining bricks from a Cayuga, Ind., company for use in the forge and the floor in the blacksmith's shop.

Blacksmith and foundation member Eric Gray, plans to do demonstrations in the blacksmith's shop. He said the bricks for the shop's floor can handle hot objects dropped on them so "you don't take the chance of it exploding."

Also, Eastern Illinois University student volunteers also helped in clean up efforts at the barn's current location.

The company that will restore the barn, Trillium Dell Timberworks, located in Knoxville near Peoria, has done measurements of the barn and inventoried its timbers.

Vance said the company will use that information to design the building's new configuration as well as decide what lumber can be reused, what can be restored and what needs to be replaced.

Trillium Dell Timberworks will take the barn's lumber to its location for the restoration work then return it to the Five Mile House site, Vance also said.

He said the foundation already has enough money to pay for the barn's dismantling. It's possible that the project could be completed this coming summer or fall, he also said.
OnePlus has already confirmed that it'll not have Project Treble on any of its current devices, including the recently launched OnePlus 5T. Now, the Chinese company has provided more information on the matter.

During and AMA session on its official forums yesterday, a staff member explained that implementing Project Treble on current devices through an OTA update comes with risk of bricking the units. Here's what they exactly said:

Project Treble requires a storage partition, by which the Android framework and vendor image are separated. However, because partitions were not required of Android N and previous versions of Android, all of our current devices do not feature a partition. According to our tests, if we were to modify the partition layout via OTA there is a risk that devices will brick during the partitioning. We feel this poses too great a risk for our community of users, which is why we have decided not to implement Project Treble on current OnePlus devices.

For those who aren't aware, Project Treble was announced by Google several months ago as a feature of Android Oreo. It basically modularizes the Android OS so that OEM customizations stay separate from Android, which would effectively lead to reduced time between update roll outs.

Source | Via
Just a couple of weeks after learning Chinese Samsung's Bixby has gone fluent in Spanish.

The update doesn't seem to be widely available at the moment, with reports currently only coming out of Spain (obviously). It may take some time, but the feature should eventually be available in all key markets.

With this, Bixby Voice now supports a total of four languages, including Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish.

Source | Via




Haiti - Social : Closing of the project Menm Katye Lot Visaj





Monday, the European Union (EU) and its partners closed the important project "Menm Katye Lot Visaj" launched in June 2014 as part of the European Union Neighborhood Management Program (PARAQ) and implemented in the informal neighborhood of Haut-Turgeau and Debussy with the aim of improving the living environment and the safety of the inhabitants.



On this occasion, were inaugurated with the inhabitants of the neighborhood the new infrastructure built. Thanks to infrastructure improvements, residents can now benefit from comfortable and accessible social spaces. Formerly threatened by floods, and difficult of access, some sites such as the source, the Cave are now protected and have a public wash and a playground and relaxation area. The Ravine Lucien whose reconstruction required 1000 m of stone, is secured and provided throughout its path of public spaces. In addition, nearly one kilometer of corridors have been reconstructed, and rainwater drainage has been improved, significantly reducing flooding in the area. No less than 85 housing units with latrines were constructed or rehabilitated to earthquake-resistant standards. In addition, access to basic services has been strengthened with now 1,000 households served by a waste collection service and toilets have been provided in schools. In addition, economic activities were initiated through the project: 15 micro-enterprises were created, 100 small merchants were supported and savings were stimulated by the granting of micro-credits. Finally, multisectoral action has been deployed to provide a better living environment but also to improve the economic and social inclusion of vulnerable and at-risk households.



The overall value of the project "Menm Katye Lot Visaj" amounts to  4.5 million, 80% financed by the EU, the rest being financed by the International Humanitarian Organization GOAL, CARE, Entrepreneurs du Monde, OFDA, Jersey Overseas Aid and Bank of Ireland.



In his speech, EU Ambassador Vincent Degert declared "The many actions carried out here with GOAL and all the partners illustrate concretely how we can, by uniting our forces, give another face to a whole neighborhood [...] The new infrastructures give the neighborhood not only a more pleasant living environment but also better protect the community against natural hazards such as floods. I am therefore particularly happy that all these actions were carried out in a participative process by consulting the inhabitants of the zone at each decisive stage."



HL/ S/ HaitiLibre


























Haiti - News : Zapping...





March against corruption dispersed

On Tuesday, the march against corruption could not get to Parliament, protesters were repulsed and dispersed by police who used tear gas. Heavy gun fire from unidentified sources was reported to the Primature.



"Sweet Micky" in Port-de-Paix

Thursday, December 7, under the patronage of the City Council of Port-de-Paix, Radio Capois will organize a great musical event called "Festi Immaculee" at the Breeze Marina to celebrate the patron saint of the town. Reste #1, Rebel La & Cash Music are among others the 3 local music bands that will undertake to open the festivities and Cle Compas from Boston carefully selected will guarantee the continuity of the atmosphere. The inevitable long awaited moment of this anniversary of the city of Port-de-Paix, remains the performance of the group "Sweet Micky" of the former President Michel Martelly...



FLASH : Evening fundraiser of CFHCI

The traditional fundraising evening of the Franco-Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is back. Unite for the benefit of the Cancer Support Group on Saturday, December 9, 2017 in ASU from 7:00 pm Tickets are on sale at CFHCI. All details on : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-22903-icihaiti-flash-fundraising-evening-of-the-cfhci.html



Minister Georges in Kenya

Pierre Simon Georges, the Minister of the Environment represents Haiti at the Third United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, from December 4 to 8, 2017. Delegates and Environment Ministers from around the world gather to discuss the best solutions for combating pollution. In the margins of this Assembly, Minister Georges met with the Director and Representative of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) for the Latin America and Caribbean region.



CEP : Hearing of parliamentary candidates

Earlier this week, a hearing session was held before the bicameral Commission to analyze the candidates' files to represent the parliament at the permanent CEP.



Success of the Fair "Konsome Lokal"

The first edition of the "Konsome Lokal" fair took place last weekend in the Historical Park of the Sugar Cane https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-22658-icihaiti-flash-1st-edition-of-the-konsome-lokal-fair.html . More than 80 exhibitors presented their different products to a large audience with diverse tastes. Food, bags, pottery, jewelry and also music, all imbued with a local touch or better, national, confirmed the name chosen for the activity.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - FLASH : USA will invest nearly $100M in health care in Haiti





The United States Government announces $98,5 million in new investments in health services in Haiti. The "Projet Sante" will work in partnership with the Haitian government to support the country's health system and expand essential health care to 4.2 million people.



Spending $98.5 million over the next four years, Projet Sante, a cooperative agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Caris Foundation International, will increase the number of Haitians receiving quality, essential health care. As part of a patient-centered approach, the project will offer integrated maternal and childcare to Haitian families, including immunization, reproductive health, nutrition services, and HIV prevention, care, and treatment.



The project will be led by Caris Foundation and implemented in partnership with a consortium of partners that includes Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB) and the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF). With USAID support, the consortium will expand proven strategies for improving community and facility-based health services and increase local Haitian partners capacity to build on the projects accomplishments and best practices.



"Projet Sante builds upon an established foundation and proven track record of strengthening local management and operational capacities to deliver health services," said USAID Mission Director Jene Thomas. "This agreement will not only improve access to care for millions of Haitian citizens, but promote a culture of Haitian excellence, leadership, and accountability.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Justice : Opening of the 32nd Congress of the International Bar Conference





Wednesday the 32nd Congress of the International Conference of Bar Associations of Common Legal Tradition (CIB 32) opened in Haiti in the presence of President Jovenel Moise, President of the National Assembly, the Honorable Youri Latortue, of President of the Council Superior of the Judiciary, Me Jules Cantave, of the Minister of Tourism, Colombe Emilie Jessy Menos, and of secretary of the CIB, the batonnier Bernard Vatier and a pleiad of batonniers, lawyers and other legal professionals from Haiti, Europe, Africa, America and Asia.



This event, organized for the third time on the American continent, after Montreal in 1988 and Quebec in 2004, which takes place at the Karibe Convention Center, from December 6 to 9 at the initiative of the Bar Association of Port-au-Prince is organized around of the theme: "The advocates of the Francophone space at the service of economic and social development". Its objective is to allow intellectual exchanges and to promote the sharing of experiences between the different member of bars and their lawyers.



During his speech at the opening ceremony, President Jovenel Moise expressed his appreciation of the holding in Haiti and declared "[...] I wish the most cordial welcome to the different guests During his speech at the opening ceremony, President Jovenel Moise expressed his appreciation of the holding in Haiti and declared "[...] I wish the most cordial welcome to the different of the corruption that are delaying its economic and social development."



The Head of State took the opportunity to recall that the judicial system in general, lawyers and magistrates in particular have a fundamental role to play in the realization of the profound change initiated by the new Haitian public administration "The Rule of Law allow to guarantee the fundamental rights of the people and to implement the economic and social development programs likely to improve the living conditions of the population. It promotes the intensification of private investment, the development of tourism and the expansion of arts and culture."



While reassuring the Councils of the Order and the lawyers of Haiti of his full and whole support, the President Jovenel Moise said he is convinced that the various topics will allow the bars of Haiti to go further in their reflections for the flourishing of law and justice.



The bar president rancis Jackson Ngnie Kamga, President of the CIB, welcomed President Moise's presence as a tangible proof of the importance given by the Head of State to questions of law and the promotion of good justice in the country.



HL/ SL/ HaitiLibre






















How many of u have been sexually harassed? How many have seen harassment? How many have come forward? #tippingpoint #metoo #BeFierceBook
Hollywood actor Gabriel Byrne has revealed that a former girlfriend of his was subjected to sexual harassment at RTE.

Byrne spoke out after allegations of rape and sexual assault were levelled at movie figures including Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey.

The 67-year-old star, who worked on RTE series The Riordans from 1978 to 1979, told Today with Sean O'Rourke on RTE Radio 1 that he was dating an RTE employee at the time.

Appalling

He revealed that she was subjected to sexual harassment and that two producers took bets on who would get a new female employee to bed first.

"The climate of abject sexism [in RTE], when I look back on it, was absolutely ridiculous, and there are still a few people walking around the place, who are regarded as, I don't know what you'd call them... sex pests?" he said.

"People just kind of laughed and kind of said 'There he is doing his thing again'.

"One of those guys made [my girlfriend's] life an absolute misery through his sexual improprieties.

"Nobody thought 'Oh, my God', that this was really appalling behaviour. It was just the climate that it was at the time. Nobody questioned it."

The behaviour was not reported, Byrne said, adding: "It was common knowledge, and the idea that you would go to RTE and complain about it was never an option so like there was no such thing as go see the department of whatever, social relations, people just knew it."

Byrne also worked with disgraced Hollywood producer Weinstein on three movies, including Into the West.

Asked whether or not he knew what was going on behind closed doors, he said: "I had a vague idea that there were things that went on behind closed doors. The problem is, they were rumours."

Byrne revealed that he knew some of the actresses approached by Weinstein.

"It's still shocking to me today, even though I knew he was, as I said, a sleazebag," he added.

Byrne also worked with Spacey who, like Weinstein, faces several allegations, on The Usual Suspects in 1994.

Earlier this week he revealed that production was halted for two days after "allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour" against his co-star.

"The filming itself was a really happy experience and the film went on to become... somebody told me it plays somewhere in the world like every day, but at that time we were making what we thought was a movie that might have moderate success," he said.

"There was a great camaraderie and hilarity on the set and then one day filming came to a halt, which is most unusual, because to lose a day's filming costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a big deal.

"We didn't understand why and it later transpired something inappropriate sexually had happened and it involved Kevin.

"I think we didn't really understand what was going on at the time. It was only in retrospect the knowledge began to seep out."

Complaints

Byrne was appearing on the programme to promote his documentary My Astonishing Self which airs tonight on RTE One at 9.35pm.

In a statement, RTE said: "Any formal complaints by RTE staff during the period referred to by Gabriel Byrne would have been dealt with at the time.

"RTE takes its responsibility to all staff very seriously and provides a number of formal and informal channels through which staff can raise concerns."
Theresa May has reworked the text of her Brexit document

Theresa May will today provide the Irish Government with a new text aimed at resolving the impasse over a Brexit deal.

During a 15-minute phone call with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the embattled British Prime Minister said that, having consulted with the DUP and officials in London, she was preparing fresh language for the document.

Mr Varadkar said he would review the wording with an "open mind" but that "red-line issues" adopted by Ireland remained.

"The room to manoeuvre is small," he said, but added he believed Ms May was "negotiating in good faith".

Following a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Taoiseach adopted a diplomatic tone in a clear attempt to calm the friction which has developed between Dublin, Belfast and London.

He warned that the Government was not so much concerned that a border would have to be erected on the day after Brexit, but that a "creeping border" would develop over time. He said the language was not a major problem for Ireland but the outcome was.

"I think the risk is over a number of years," Mr Varadkar said, making the case for regulatory alignment.

He said the laws in Republic and the North did not have to be similar on everything but did need to be "sufficiently" aligned so that a "border by stealth" didn't develop.

"It's not an attempt in some ways to impose [the] same laws on both sides of the Border," he said.

Mr Varadkar also urged the UK to adopt a similar approach for England, Scotland and Wales.

He repeated that Ireland had no hidden agenda but said he wanted "normal business and normal people to continue their normal lives".

Asked to respond to DUP leader Arlene Foster's claim that Dublin blocked Ms May from showing the party the text of Monday's deal, Mr Varadkar said: "I know it's not true."

He added that the accusation made no sense since the UK government would not take instructions from Dublin, adding that he "won't be accepting any provocation from anyone on any of these matters".

Rift

The Taoiseach said he wanted to work with Ms May to repair the rift which had opened up in Anglo-Irish relations since the Brexit vote.

"I wouldn't like to be the Taoiseach, and I know she wouldn't want to be the prime minister, that began the unravelling of all that progress that has been made in the past 20 years," he said.

Mark Rutte said the Netherlands fully backed the Irish position and would continue to do so for as long as it took to get a deal, even if that meant delaying progress into the new year.

"I hate Brexit from every angle. I don't understand it," he said.
Army Rangers in action during the extensive training exercise in Dublin

Swarms of soldiers flooded on to Dublin's streets yesterday to tackle multiple terrorist attacks. But to the relief of bemused onlookers, it was all just a drill.

More than 500 troops were deployed in the exercise, designed to test the reaction of the Defence Forces to multiple attacks at different locations.

The troops were called in at short notice at the request of garda authorities to help cope with the fallout from an initial terror strike - and intelligence that further terror strikes were planned at key installations.

Elite

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It was a scenario based on real-life attacks in major European centres like Barcelona and Paris. The military response was spearheaded by the elite anti-terror unit, the Army Ranger Wing.

The Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, watched the main thrust of the exercise at a derelict site at Dublin Port.

He said increasing the strength of the Ranger Wing, as proposed in a Government white paper on defence, was a top priority, adding that plans were well advanced.

His deputy chief in charge of operations, Major General Kieran Brennan, said it was their biggest deployment so far in an exercise to ensure they were fit for purpose.

He said the Defence Forces gave back-up on a daily basis to the gardai through deployment of bomb-disposal teams and providing armed escorts for prisoners being moved from the jails to the courts.

The troops were drawn from stand-by units at two barracks in Dublin, McKee and Cathal Brugha, as well as the Defence Forces training centre at the Curragh, Dundalk, Athlone, Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Finner, Co Donegal.

They were not notified about their tasks until 6am and were taken in convoy to a number of holding centres.

According to the exercise scenario, six terrorists had mounted a marauding knife attack at Pearse Street railway station on Tuesday night, resulting in eight people being killed and 20 injured. Gardai had shot and captured one terrorist.

Raids

As a result of questioning him and raids on addresses of suspects, officers found other terror cells were in place and planning attacks. Five were still at large in the scenario.

The Army Rangers were deployed to the former Odlum's site at Dublin Port, where a derelict building played the role of a block of apartments where terrorists had an explosives factory.

The Rangers moved in to take control of the block, conscious that some of the apartments could be booby trapped while others could be occupied by innocent people.
A university student who assaulted a stranger in a nightclub with a bottle has received a suspended sentence on condition he pays 12,500 to his victim.

Hakim Mansour (22), who is studying economics and politics, was identified as the attacker by the injured party when he looked through Facebook photos of the night.

Mansour, of Collegefort, Castleknock, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm at Krystle nightclub on February 21, 2016. He has no previous convictions.

Judge Martin Nolan said it was not clear if Mansour had thrown or struck out with the bottle.

He said the victim had suffered injuries, including lacerations to his face and nerve damage to his hand. The judge said it was a vicious assault that happened without provocation.

He noted in mitigation Mansour's guilty plea, that he had co-operated with the investigation and made full admissions.

He said Mansour came from a good family, was a bright young man and in all probability would be a good citizen of this country.

He added that an assault with a bottle was always serious and the court must consider an immediate custodial sentence.

He said it was "a close-run thing" but had decided to impose a sentence of two years imprisonment which he suspended in full on condition that Mansour be of good behaviour and paid 12,500 to the victim.

Kevin White BL, defending, said Mansour would like to apologise unreservedly.

He said his client had been born in Algeria and come to Ireland when he was eight.

Angry

Garda David Dutton told the court the victim had been in the nightclub with friends when a young man came over to their table.

There was a brief interaction with the group which seemed to make the young man angry.

The victim said he then saw someone come from the side and he put his hand up to defend himself. He was struck on the head with something sharp.

His girlfriend reported seeing a man hitting her partner with a bottle "out of nowhere".

Mansour told gardai he had picked up an item, which he accepted was a bottle, and thrown it.
The Road Safety Authority has cautioned motorists to expect the unexpected with high winds and icy conditions.

Strong winds today will be followed by very cold weather tonight and tomorrow, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 3C in some parts.

Met Eireann forecaster John Eagleton said it will be windy throughout the country today, but we'll be spared the worst effects of Storm Caroline.

Today will be "windy, blustery, cold and bright and it will be quite showery in the north-west", he said.

"When evening comes in, temperatures will drop and those showers will turn wintry in Donegal, north Mayo, Connemara, north Longford and north Midlands."

Temperatures will drop to zero or below zero tonight for the bulk of the country, he said, but will hit as low at minus 3C in the northwest tomorrow.

"It will be cold for the next 10 days, with temperatures hardly making it up to 10C during the day," said Mr Eagleton.

A status yellow wind warning for Donegal, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Sligo, Clare and Kerry will remain in place until 8pm tonight.

Earlier, Met Eireann warned that the cold air and some icy conditions coming tonight will be "a real shock to the system" after the mild period. It will turn increasingly wintry with biting north-west winds. There may be a light dusting of snow around the country, and it may stick in places in the north and northwest.

Debris

The Road Safety Authority has cautioned motorists to expect the unexpected with high winds and icy conditions.

Its advice included:

 Watch out for falling/fallen debris and vehicles veering across the road.

 Control of a vehicle may be affected by strong crosswinds. High-sided vehicles and motorcyclists are particularly vulnerable to strong winds.

 Allow extra space between you and vulnerable road users such as cyclists and motorcyclists.

 Drive with dipped headlights at all times.

 Check tyres and consider replacing them if the thread depth is below 3mm.

 It takes longer to stop in wet conditions, so slow down and leave extra space between you and the vehicle in front.

 Take special care when driving behind heavy goods vehicles, as they generate a considerable amount of spray which reduces visibility.

 Be aware of the danger of aquaplaning, especially on roads with speed limits of 100kph and 120kph.
Thank goodness President Donald Trump has made saying what's "obvious" now en vogue.

That's what he said he was doing, loud and proud, Wednesday when he bulldozed years upon years of American and international policy and officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Arab and European leaders strongly appealed to the president ahead of time not to do so, forecasting anti-American protests and violence. But, as everyone knows, the old approach hasn't brought peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Why not just flip a li'l ol' switch and try something different?

Trump also personally gave his nod to the concept of a "two-state solution" for Israel and the Palestinians when both sides agree.

To quote an early Associated Press account of the announcement:

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," he said in a White House address, calling it "overdue" and in the best interests of the United States. He said recognition acknowledged the "obvious" that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel's government despite the disputed status that is one of the key elements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality," he said.

Of course Jerusalem is Israel's capital. It's also the capital city for the Palestinians. Um ... isn't that the whole between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place that the Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting about for umpteen years?

I guess Trump doesn't realize that one person's declaration isn't going to solve the Mideast's conflicts. But it can make things worse.

Perhaps he didn't intend it to be so, but I'm just relieved that everyone can now state what's "obvious" in life without thought for ripple effects, and that "recognition of reality" will now be the "in" thing to do.

So if one of my co-workers walks up to me today and points and says, "You're fat," I won't take offense -- not me! After all, it's "obvious." It's "recognition of reality." I'll just smile and say, "Good for you! Another important Trump lesson learned!"

There won't be consequences for anyone who just "tells it like it is" now. Whew! We're all about piping up and saying aloud to the world what's "obvious."

Hasn't that been cited as part of Trump's appeal? "He tells it like it is"?

No longer will a man have to say something different than what he's thinking if his wife asks, "Does this dress make me look fat?" I can see all the obviousness breaking out now.

"Yes, it does," a loyal Trump follower can answer. And certainly, his wife will answer, "Thank you, Honey! I appreciate you recognizing reality!"

When your mother-in-law cooks a manicotti you could anchor a boat with (that phrase courtesy of "The Golden Girls"), pipe right up: "This stuff settles like a rock in my stomach!" Surely she'll smile demurely. She knows you're just expressing reality.

Expect good things to happen -- what could go wrong? -- when you express the "obvious" to your boss that you're underpaid. "This is just recognition of reality," you can say with confidence, "nothing more or less." Surely a generous raise will follow.

The entire spate of sexual harassment brouhaha will disappear. "You have nice breasts," a senator will be able to tell his administrative assistant. "Yes, that's obvious," she'll no doubt reply. "Thank you for acknowledging reality."

Sigh.

The fact is that there are reasons that normal, mature human beings don't speak aloud many things that are "obvious" or just "recognition of reality." Top among these reasons are things called "consequences."

Let me acknowledge something else that may be "obvious" in this day and age, the era of Trump, and the geographic and philosophic area in which we live: 49 percent of me did not want to write this column.

Never before have I worried about expressing my opinion. I count on our readers who disagree with me to understand several things: They can write letters to the editor to express their own views; my personal views don't translate to how we cover news in the paper; my opinion is only one view out of many we offer on the Opinions page; and we're all mature enough to disagree yet discuss our disagreements like adults.

But the era of Trump is different. Many of his supporters and detractors alike are absolutely rabid about their views. Journalists are one of his favorite targets. When a big box retailer sells a shirt that says: "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required," there is something wrong in this country.

Some folks think that what my column says must dictate how I edit the newspaper. Not so. First of all, I'm not the only one who makes decisions here. Second, I keep my opinion and my news judgment separate.

Can't be done, you say? Let me offer a crude example. When your gastrointestinal system requires it, you probably pass gas aloud in the confines of your own home. Perhaps loudly. Would you do this in a five-star restaurant? Of course not.

My dedication to covering news objectively and fairly is not diminished by the fact that I have my own opinion about things. But my views belong on the Opinions page, not elsewhere. I am staunchly dedicated to the separation of the two.

Besides, I don't even belch aloud in public, let alone anything else. I separate what's appropriate around other people versus what's OK at home. And you know that you behave differently around your buddies and pals when you're out having fun, for example, than you do in front of your boss, or in church, or spending time with your mother. Not a tough thing to do.

Speaking of things that aren't difficult, I do want to say that it's not hard for me at all to acknowledge why so many people found/find Trump appealing. Just because I disagree doesn't mean I don't understand, and I most certainly support everyone's right to their opinion. Trump is not politically correct, what many say is a refreshing change from the past. I'm simply saying that there's balance somewhere between the two extremes.

Finally, I believe that newspaper readers are mature adults who can handle differences of opinion while also expressing their own. I always read views expressed on our Opinions page -- especially those with which I disagree. That's how I learn. And if I decide I'm wrong and change my stance, that's called personal growth.

So, to our majority Trump-supporting audience, I have expressed my opinion honestly. And I respect yours. I hope others on both sides of the pro- and anti-Trump feel free to do the same. We offer the Opinions page just for that.

Now I've said what's "obvious"; just a "recognition of reality." Your turn.
Thursday, December 07, 2017 Clippings From Our Newsroom Floor



Is State Senator Howie Morales the new front-runner for the '18 Dem Lt. Gov. nomination in the crowded field now that Sen. Michael Padilla has dropped out? Probably. What if Santa Fe Mayor Gonzales gets in?



On the GOP side they have a lieutenant governor contender coming in after Kelly Zunie dropped out. Michelle Garcia Holmes ran as an independent in her recent unsuccessful bid for ABQ mayor, now she has turned R and is the only announced GOP candidate for Light Guv. Everyone is still waiting on ABQ Sen. Mark Moores to make his move.



Curious about where state lawmakers get their income? "Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has posted the financial disclosure statements of public officials dating back to 2013 on the Secretary of States Offices website. The financial disclosures, which are searchable by year and name, can be found here."



Pedal fast. ABQ has just been named the most dangerous city in the USA



Headline of the week: "San Miguel Commissioner Rock Ulibarri Endorses VeneKlasen for Land Commissioner." Be still my heart!



Spin zone. "Joe, of the 10,700 people elected to the Congress, not one has ever been a Native American woman. If Deb Haaland wins next year's Dem primary for the ABQ congressional seat she will very likely be the first Native American woman to ever serve in Congress."



Did you hear? The erudite former Las Cruces area Dem State Senator Steve Fischmann



He is 99% sure that contractor Mick Rich will be the only '18 GOP candidate for the US Senate seat that is held by Dem Martin Heinrich. That from Rich's new campaign manager, Evan Machan, who has arrived from Ohio. By the way Rich is also rich.



Slippery slope? Minnesota Sen. Al Franken



A readers asks: "Is KKOB-AM radio going under?" No, but there is "Radio broadcaster Cumulus Media Inc. says ill-fated acquisitions and competition from digital streaming and web-based formats contributed to its chapter 11 bankruptcy filing." The company says it has the cash to keep things running while it deals with the bankruptcy.



About the goings on at UNM Health Sciences and its plans to build a new hospital, a reader writes: "I just love closed meetings for strategic planning for a billion dollar replacement hospital."



THE BEST







It's always an honor to have it reaffirmed that it is many regular New Mexicans--not just political insiders or the media--we are reaching.



We'll continue to work hard to illuminate and improve our beloved Land of Enchantment because that's the ultimate reward of this journey.



By the way, the Best of City party is at Sandia Resort and Casino tonight (Thursday) Tickets are



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here.



( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2017 Dan Lewis may be gone and already pretty much forgotten, but he lives on as a city councilor, at least in the official photo of the council. Republican Lewis left his westside council seat to run for mayor and was defeated by Tim Keller. His seat was won by Democrat Cynthia Borrego, but in one wee corner of cyberspace Councilor Dan Lewis lives on. Congrats, or something, Dan.the new front-runner for the '18 Dem Lt. Gov. nomination in the crowded field now that Sen. Michael Padilla has dropped out? Probably. What if Santa Fe Mayor Gonzales gets in?they have a lieutenant governor contender coming in after Kelly Zunie dropped out. Michelle Garcia Holmes ran as an independent in her recent unsuccessful bid for ABQ mayor, now she has turned R and is the only announced GOP candidate for Light Guv. Everyone is still waiting on ABQ Sen. Mark Moores to make his move.ABQ has just been named the most dangerous city in the USA in which to ride a bike Be still my heart!The erudite former Las Cruces area Dem State Senator Steve Fischmann is running against Public Regulation Commissioner (PRC) Sandy Jones in the Dem primary next year. That could make Sandy grey.that contractor Mick Rich will be the only '18 GOP candidate for the US Senate seat that is held by Dem Martin Heinrich. That from Rich's new campaign manager, Evan Machan, who has arrived from Ohio. By the way Rich is also rich.Minnesota Sen. Al Franken should resign because of the many sex harassment complaints he faces, say NM Dem Senators Heinrich and Udall. However, they are not saying whether State Senator Padilla, who dropped his light guv bid because of sex harassment charges, should give up his leadership position in the NM senate." No, but there is this news about the owner of the conservative talker:The company says it has the cash to keep things running while it deals with the bankruptcy.and its plans to build a new hospital, a reader writes:Finally, thanks to the readers of ABQ The Magazine for voting me the best blogger in the city in the magazine's 13th annual Best of the City awards.It's always an honor to have it reaffirmed that it is many regular New Mexicans--not just political insiders or the media--we are reaching.We'll continue to work hard to illuminate and improve our beloved Land of Enchantment because that's the ultimate reward of this journey.By the way, the Best of City party is at Sandia Resort and Casino tonight (Thursday) Tickets are here. If you stop by be sure to say hello.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)
How good are these two guys, Penn State fans? It may surprise you ...
The Lincoln Airport plans to seek a government grant to help attract air service to Dallas.

Executive Director David Haring said Thursday that the airport is applying for a Small Community Air Service Development grant from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The grant application is due Dec. 14, and Haring said he would expect to get a decision within 90 days.

He said he wasn't sure of the exact amount the airport will seek but it would be similar to the $750,000 it sought and received from the FAA in 2013.

That grant helped entice Delta Airlines to start service from Lincoln to Atlanta in September 2014.

In that case, the airport had a commitment from Delta beforehand that if it got the grant, the airline would agree to start new service.

This time around, Haring said there is no such commitment from an airline, but he said the airport has had discussions with various airlines about adding service to Lincoln, and those talks "are continuing to progress in a very favorable fashion."

American Airlines would be the likely candidate to provide Dallas service, as it and Southwest Airlines are the only carriers that use Dallas as a hub.

A consultant the airport hired last year, Forecast Inc., has advised that it should target flights to Dallas.

Many airlines, including American, have been expanding service this year. In March, American added flights to Dallas from Billings, Montana, and from Omaha to Miami. In October, it announced new flights to Philadelphia from Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa, and Madison, Wisconsin.

The Lincoln Airport has been unable to attract other new service since the Atlanta flight began, and after several years of passenger traffic gains, the number of people flying out of Lincoln has dropped, with traffic down 4 percent year-over-year through the end of October.

Haring has blamed a fare war in Omaha because of increased competition there for much of the passenger decline in Lincoln.

If the airport is approved for another grant, it would be used to help offset any losses an airline might incur in the first year after starting up service.

Haring said the Lincoln Airport could potentially be at a disadvantage because it got a grant four years ago, but he said it also helps that the service is still going after three years, which shows the previous grant was money well spent.
Today, The Elizabeth Hotel officially opens its doors in historic Old Town Fort Collins as part of Autograph Collection Hotels' diverse portfolio of more than 125 hotels around the world - all one-of-a-kind properties that champion values of vision, design and craft. Guests of The Elizabeth Hotel can enjoy locally inspired art, music and craft beer at the hotel, serving as an introduction to the city's culture and lifestyle. Cultivated by McWHINNEY, a Colorado-based national real estate development company, and Sage Hospitality, the hotel's operator, the 164-room hotel invites guests to explore the adjacent pedestrian-only Firehouse Alley with direct access to shops, dining and community activations.

The hotel's warm and inviting design was thoughtfully considered by Denver-based project architect 4240 Architecture. The interior design, by DLR Group, elevates the personality of The Elizabeth Hotel  a charismatic balance of femininity and masculinity - by evoking a light and airy ambiance paired with aged wood and metal materials that feel handcrafted and welcoming. Throughout the hotel guests will see custom filigree, intricate metalworking on balconies, and cast plaster ceiling ornamentation. The hotel's art collection, curated by award-winning Denver-based firm NINE dot ARTS, celebrates Fort Collins' adventurous spirit with works by artists local to Colorado and with ties to Colorado State University.

The Elizabeth Hotel offers thoughtful amenities that embody Autograph Collection Hotels' Exactly

Like

Nothing

Elsebrand philosophy. The hotel proudly welcomes pets ensuring that those traveling with their furry friends feel right at home. Music lovers can take advantage of the hotel's lending library, complete with string instruments, keyboards and more, available to check out during their stay. In addition to musical instruments, the lending library features a wide selection of vinyl records that guests can play on their personal record players, found in each of the hotel's guestrooms.

The Elizabeth offers 3,500 sq. ft. of meeting space, including two indoor spaces, the Walnut and Chestnut Ballrooms, as well as the second-floor outdoor terrace that overlooks Walnut St. and downtown Fort Collins. When not in use for private events, the hotel's second floor terrace doubles as a gathering place for guests to enjoy a glass of wine, warm up by a fire circle, watch the sunset or admire the beautiful views of the Rocky Mountains.

Hotel website
In 2015, the Swiss Tourism Office started promoting the 'Grand Tour of Switzerland'. Some people called it the 'Route 66' of Switzerland. It's a 1,600 km long route that connects 44 major sights and attractions of this rather small country.

With that in mind, Michaela Wehrle from Horwath HTL Switzerland thought it would be a good idea to select a few of those wonderful places, put themselves on the tourist's trail to explore their own country and find out if the promotional tool, 'Grand Tour of Switzerland', has had an impact on the tourist demand.

Click here to download our report

About Horwath HTL

Horwath HTL is focused one hundred percent on hospitality, tourism, and leisure consulting. Our services cover every aspect of hotel real estate, tourism, and leisure development. Our clients choose Horwath HTL because we have earned a reputation for impartial advice that will often mean the difference between failure and success. Each project we help is different, so we utilize the experience we have gained throughout our 100-year history. Being a global firm with 52 offices in 40 countries, we have successfully carried out over 30,000 assignments for both public and private clients. As part of the Crowe Global network, a top 10 accounting, and financial services network, Horwath HTL is the number one choice for companies and financial institutions looking to invest and develop in the industry.

For more information, please visit www.horwathhtl.com.
The new head of DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) at SiteMinder, the global hotel industrys leading cloud platform, is urging Germanys hotels to begin embracing the digitisation of travel.

Clemens Fisch, a travel industry expert for more than a decade, has been appointed as regional manager for SiteMinder in DACH and France and says a world of opportunity is awaiting hotels not yet on the cloud.

In Germany, like in many other countries, we are seeing an industry that no longer doubts digitisation is taking place  online hotel sales are expected to surpass EUR8.8 billion in Germany this year  and yet, for the most part, local hotels remain behind in welcoming the change. The cloud is still new and often frightening for many hoteliers, as is everything that comes with it, such as online payments. This resistance to embracing modern, compelling and cost-effective solutions is holding back a nation of otherwise world-class hospitality, says Mr Fisch.

Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, Clemens Fisch has spent almost 12 years working within Europes dynamic hospitality and travel industry, beginning as a humble tour guide before leading tour operator EF Cultural Tours as an area manager in Switzerland, contracting hotels to provide affordable accommodation for travellers. From there, he served for five years at travel agency PDM Touristik, initially as a delegation manager before being promoted to deputy head of sales. Prior to joining SiteMinder, he was a senior account manager at Booking.com where he discovered the real challenges of hoteliers behind the front desk.

Todays hoteliers have one of the hardest jobs in the world. Not only are they expected to excel at hospitality, they are expected to be masters of technology, online reviews, social media and everything in between. While there are many hoteliers leading the way, the reality is the vast majority lack understanding of technology, its benefits and potential.

In a region where we see many hotels disadvantaged by outdated technology, SiteMinder has shown a unique ability to scale and bring smart and simple, cloud-based technology to the masses. Its portfolio of 27,000 hotels is testament to that.

Ruairi Conroy, Managing Director  EMEA at SiteMinder, says, Clemens has deep, multi-faceted experience gained within DACHs travel industry. With an openness to embracing digitisation and the cloud, I believe the regions hotels have a tremendous opportunity to compete on the international stage under the leadership of Clemens and his team.

Media contact

Maria Cricchiola

+61 410 233 735

media@siteminder.com

About SiteMinder

As the leading cloud platform for hotels, SiteMinder allows hotels to attract, reach and convert guests across the globe. We serve hotels of all sizes with award-winning solutions for independents and groups alike, wherever they are in the world.

SiteMinders products include The Channel Manager, the industrys leading online distribution platform; TheBookingButton, a wholly-branded booking engine for direct bookings via the web, mobile or social; Canvas, the intelligent website creator for independent hoteliers; Prophet, the real-time market intelligence solution that takes the guesswork out of pricing rooms; and GDS by SiteMinder, a single-point of entry to a six-figure network of travel agents and the worlds major global distribution systems. With more than 27,000 hotel customers and 550 of the industrys top connectivity providers as our partners, today we have presence in more than 160 countries on six continents.

For more information, visit www.siteminder.com.
August Ames is known for her role in over 290 adult films and has won two AVN awards in 2015 and 2017 because of it. The 23-year-old who is from Nova Scotia, Canada, was found dead in her Camarillo, California home on Monday, December 5th.

According to Independent, police have found no indication of foul play that leads to her passing but fear August may have taken her own life.

Her husband, film director Kevin Moore, released a statement saying, She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me. Please leave this as a private family matter in this difficult time.

Her death comes just a few days after she was criticized for saying she refused to do porn with men who have also had sex with men.

Brazzers, an online destination for porn, postponed a video with August that was set to air last night in respect of her passing.
Though he didnt release any studio cuts during the latter half of 2017, Drakes More Life still stands out as one of the years most popular records. Having already been confirmed as the artist with the most entries in Pandoras Most Thumbed Tracks of 2017, the Canadian icon is now taking home another end-of-year honor, this time from Apple Music.

According to a news update from the company itself, Drakes album/playlist that featured hit tracks like Portland, Fake Love, Free Smoke and others was their top LP release of the year in terms of audience popularity. Appearances from Kanye West, Quavo, Travis Scott, Young Thug, Giggs, Sampha, PARTYNEXTDOOR, and more helped bolster the 22-song collection and proved to be a worthy follow-up to his Grammy-nominated 2016 effort Views.

Drake premiered More Life on the March 18th episode of his immensely popular Beats 1 radio show, OVO Sound, before making it available publicly via downloading and streaming points of sale. It combined elements of afrobeat, reggae, dancehall and other genres alongside some typical hip-hop and R&B production, showcasing Drake as an artist who is willing to go beyond what most might consider his boundaries to craft some compelling, radio-ready music. All in all, it turned out to be yet another very strong year for Drizzy and his continued dominance of the music industry as a whole.

Listen to More Life below and make sure you carve out some time to peep our list of the years hottest albums, highlighting some of our favorite projects from the past 12 months.

Drake
After 10 years, bread&cup is closing following Sundays brunch service.

It hasnt been generating the amount of business we needed to keep it open, co-owner Nick Cusick said, noting the restaurant was losing $3,000 a week. We gave it a shot; it just didnt work.

Opened in August 2007 by Kevin and Karen Shinn, the restaurant at 440 N. Eighth St. was known for its locally sourced food-to-table menu, summer Saturday market meals and evening supper club events.

In a news release, Cusick said changes in dining habits and clientele in the West Haymarket, coupled with the addition of 20 dining options around Pinnacle Bank Arena, contributed to bread&cups difficulty to attract patrons sufficient to continue the unique business model.

The restaurant nearly closed in April, when the Shinns ran into financial problems caused in large part by a failed restaurant venture at the Piedmont Shoppes. They closed the Piedmont Bistro in December 2016 after less than a year in business. The restaurant later reopened as Piedmont Bistro by Venue under new ownership.

They also opened Jack & June  a restaurant named for Kevins parents  in October 2013 in the Railyard, but it, too, struggled out of the gate. They left it in January 2014, and it closed six months later.

But Cusick, president of Lincoln-based manufacturing company Bison Inc. and a friend of the Shinns, stepped up with three others to keep bread&cup afloat, with Kevin Shinn continuing as executive chef. They even renovated the dining room.

I had no interest in the restaurant business, nor did the others, Cusick said. But we really liked the place, and we liked Kevin and Karen.
In preparation for the release of his upcoming album Revival, Eminem has been in the public more than usual. Known as a private individual who shies away from the media spotlight, the legendary rapper has nevertheless come together with longtime friend and performer Elton John for a lengthy interview that was published in Interview magazine. Touching on many topics, Eminem admitted off the top that the process of putting Revival together has been a long and painstaking one.

Speaking with Sir Elton over the phone, Em said, You know how it isyou make songs, and as you make the new ones, the old ones get old and you throw them out. The album is called Revival. Its a reflection of where Im at right now, but also I feel like what I tried to do was diversify. Ive tried to make a little something for everyone. Elsewhere, Slim Shady detailed how he changed after getting sober, something that John had to go through nearly 30 years ago.

Getting clean made me grow up, he said. I feel like all the years that I was using, I wasnt growing as a person. Theres more than a hint of trying to grow and expand his artistic horizons on Revival, which also comes at a time when the United States feels more divided than ever.

Never one to dodge a political line of questioning, Eminem addresses Trumps conduct since hes been sworn in as President directly. As long as hes got his base, he does not give a f**k about anybody else in America, the rapper claimed. But guess what? Theres more of us than there are of them. I still feel like America is the greatest country to live in. This is my opinion. But we have issues that we need to work on and we need to do better.

Check out the full version of the interview here.

Eminem
Chance The Rapper has been continuously doing what he can to improve the lives of kids in Chicago. Earlier today, we reported he gave unreleased Jordan Retro 11s to kids that were in attendance. He revealed his SocialWorks non-profit organization has received $1M donation from Google.

Earlier today, Chance took to Twitter to unveil that Google funded coding classes for 20 public schools in the south and west sides of Chicago with a $1M donation to his SocialWorks initiative with an addition $500K being donated towards Chicago Public Schools CS4ALL initiative. The rapper said, Today @Google funded coding classes for 20 schools on the south and west sides. God bless everyone involved. Thank you.

Google elaborated further on their blog. They said theyre donation is meant to help teachers implement computer science and arts curriculum in their classrooms, and it builds on $40 million in Google.org grants that provide opportunities for students underrepresented in computer science to explore the field.

Executive director of SocialWorks, Justin Cunningham, said in a statement, Our grant with Google.org helps SocialWorks provide programming that sheds light on another pathway to success for young Chicagoans. While every student doesnt need to become a computer scientist, understanding the basics empowers them to understand the world they live in. The opportunity to help kids code to share their music, artwork, and distinct point of view is at the core of our mission and an experience we look forward to providing in classrooms across the city.

This is the second million dollar donation Chance has announced for his SocialWorks. In November, he revealed that Jewel-Osco donated $1M for his New Chance: Arts & Literature Fund.
Issa Raes skills of being an actress, producer, writer and director have not gone unnoticed in her most beloved HBO series, Insecure.

The 32-year-old recently hit up Miamis Art Basel where she was hosting Bombay Sapphires eighth-annual Artisan Series, a competition to discover multicultural artists. Complex was on the scene to chat with her about Insecure season three, succeeding in her industry as a woman of colour and what made her have to step away for Twitter for a hot moment due to fans erupting over a moment in her shows season two.

There is nothing that fuels me more than being doubted. Thats my drive; thats when I become unstoppable, Issa says on the topic of dealing with sexism and racism. Like, Oh you think I cant do this? or Oh, Im beneath you? Well, Im just going to prove you wrong. Its very much a silent fight, and Im just like, Bring it on.

As for season three of her show, she says the episodes are not meant to shock viewers as they are just simply stories that are real-life situations the writers have gone through, with added effects  such as the episode where Lawrence has a threesome with two girls he met a grocery store. When it comes to certain topics, Issa wants Insecure to stay relevant to viewers when they are hopefully watching years later. Bottom line is, I just dont want any Trump stench on this show, period. But things outside of that, anything that feels culturally or socially relevant at this moment, youre going to see it in the show, she says.

As for her Twitter blow-up moment, season two episode six killed her mentions when the episode showed her on-again, off-again man friend Daniel ejaculating in her eye.

A thousand percent the cum in face episode for just so many reasons, she said when asked. That was just one of those times where I was like, Im going to take a break this week.
Its been a few months since we last heard from OVO affiliate Pressa. In fact, the last time the Toronto artist impacted our site was back in early August when he teamed up with Fridainite for the song Flashy, but thankfully that changes here today. With no warning at all, Press decides to call on fellow Toronto crooner Tory Lanez for a new single called Canadian Goose.

Its unclear at the moment on where this record will end up, but Pressa has been teasing an upcoming project called Pressabrick over the past couple weeks, which we would assume be the home to this collab. However thats just speculation at this time.

This collab surfaces just days after Tory murdered his 8-minute Funk Flex freestyle, which you can check out right here if you missed it.

Take a listen to the Toronto connection and let us know what you think!

Quotable Lyrics:

Bang let it bang let it shoot (woo)

Hit a stain while Im laying out the coupe (coupe)

With Somalis and theyre down to let it shoot

Do do do do do I caught the pussy on a roof (ha)

From the doll where we known to let it go (go)

My niggas they gon make a hole up at the dope (ayy)

Her mama trip I fucked her in the Bando

She said she like the way my wrist whippin on the stove

 Tory Lanez
A. Status and structure

1. Since the implementation of IHL is primarily the responsibility of governments, national bodies set up to this end must be linked to the executive branch. Their legal status will depend on the constitutional structure and the procedures applied by the State concerned.

2. Promoting respect for IHL and, in particular, the implementation of this law at national level, is a permanent process. Providing the IHL body with a formal structure will ensure the continuity of this work.

B. Competence and attributions

3. National bodies on IHL must be authorized to promote, advise on and coordinate all matters relating to the implementation of the law at national level, and to compliance with and development of the law. The competence and composition of the bodies should be clearly defined and may be set out in a statutory text.

The bodies should have sufficient authority to:

Promote

Promote the ratification of the humanitarian treaties or adherence to those treaties; work for the harmonization of national legislation, regulations and practices with the international instruments of humanitarian law to which the State is party, and promote their implementation.

Evaluate

Be in a position to study and assess existing national legislation, judicial decisions and administrative provisions in the light of the obligations stemming from the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and, where applicable, the Additional Protocols of 1977 and other instruments of humanitarian law.

Propose

Be in a position to submit to the national authorities advisory opinions on issues relating to the implementation of humanitarian law, and to formulate recommendations and proposals in this regard. Have a right of initiative in this regard.

These opinions and recommendations may rela te to the following areas in particular:

 incorporation of the provisions of humanitarian treaties into national law;

 preparation of all the legislative, statutory or administrative measures required for the effective application of and hence respect for the rules of humanitarian law ;

 in particular, adoption of appropriate legislation providing for the repression of grave breaches of the law and regulating the use of the red cross/red crescent emblem and other protected signs and signals;

 adoption of regulations to define and guarantee the status of persons protected under the terms of humanitarian law and to ensure respect for the individual and fundamental guarantees in times of armed conflict;

 training and appointment of staff qualified in the field of humanitarian law, particularly legal advisers to the armed forces;

 location and marking of sites protected by humanitarian law.

Monitor

Monitor implementation of their recommendations and conclusions.

Support, coordinate and standardize

Support individuals or entities involved in m atters relating to humanitarian law, particularly representatives of the ministries and governmental departments concerned; encourage and support cooperation among those entities and coordinate their activities if necessary. Act as a catalyst for the political and social forces concerned.

Advise

Carry out any other task relating to humanitarian law that the government may assign to them, and give opinions on any questions on the law submitted to them.

Disseminate

Play a key role in spreading knowledge of humanitarian law and, to that end, have the necessary authority to carry out studies, propose dissemination activities, and take part in such activities. The bodies should also be involved in the preparation of training programmes on humanitarian law for the armed forces and the security forces, and for any civilian or military authority with responsibility for the application of IHL. They should also be involved in developing educational programmes on IHL for schools and other academic and vocational institutions, including universities.

C. Composition

4. In order to fulfil their role, national bodies on IHL should be set up in such a way that they:

Are representative

National bodies must comprise representatives of all government departments concerned with humanitarian law, and in particular must include representatives of the executive, judicial and legislative branches with sufficient authority to make commitments on their principals'behalf.

Involve National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

They should associate the National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society with their work and activities, because of the role conferred on National Societies by the humanitarian treaties and by the Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and because of the National Societies'knowledge and expertise in the humanitarian field.

Include experts

Their operating mechanisms should allow them to consult or associate in their work experts such as legal specialists, doctors, university professors and military personnel, as well as representatives of civil society such as professional associations and non-governmental organizations.

D. Operating procedures

5. The operating procedures of national bodies for IHL should take the following factors into account:

Continuity and regularity

They should be organized in such a way as to ensure continuity in their work on IHL, so that the matter remains a topical item on government agendas.

They should meet as often as is necessary, and if possible on a regular basis, with all members duly convened and present.

Working methods

The bodies should define their working methods, and in particular draw up a table of areas requiring implementation measures, identify the measures to be taken and the authorities concerned, establish a plan of action, and set priorities.

They should hold their discussions in plenary sessions or, if necessary, delegate responsibility for certain activities to individual members or sub-committees .

Progress reports

They should report periodically to the government and other authorities concerned with their work.

Resources

They should be allocated sufficient human, material and financial resources to undertake the tasks entrusted to them.

E. Cooperation

6. National bodies for humanitarian law should contact and cooperate with each other on a regular basis, since the problems and issues they handle are often similar. Accordingly, they should:

Exchange information and cooperate with each other

Maintain relations and exchange information on their activities and experiences with bodies in countries in the same regions or with similar legal systems; organize joint activities and/or invite experts from other bodies to participate in their own work.

Develop regular contacts with other institutions involved in or concerned by the implementation of humanitarian law, and with the ICRC Advisory Service.

Inform the Advisory Service

Keep the ICRC Advisory Service informed, in particular reporting to it any new development concerning humanitarian law at the national level.

Hold meetings

Organize and take part in multinational and regional meetings between bodies of the same type; seek the support of regional and i nternational organizations to this end.

Ref. LG 1998-056-ENG
We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
April Henke earned college degrees in teaching, but discovered her passion was in food service.

After working several years at two different bars in New Orleans, she has returned home to run her own restaurant. In August, she bought the Red Fox Steakhouse at 1339 West O St. from Don Arena, who opened the restaurant in 1989.

I remembered going there in college with friends, Henke said. I had good memories of it while I was here. When I got back, I asked a lot of people their impression of it. I received very positive input.

Arena, who also owns the Fox Neighborhood Grill at 1245 Libra Drive, No. 110, near Lincoln Southwest High School, said he sold the Red Fox to free up time for himself.

Im at that point where I want to enjoy life, said Arena, whose been in the bar/food service business since 1976. In this business, you have to be dedicated. You have to be there everyday, and at some point you say to yourself Im not going to be here forever.

Henke grew up in Beaver Crossing and graduated from Centennial High School in Utica and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2006, she moved to New Orleans where she began teaching elementary education and earned a masters degree.

While she taught, she also worked part time at a bar. Then, about a year ago, she started working full time at a bar and taught part time.

I really, really liked management of the bars, she said. I liked being able to market them and see the trends.

She said she liked it so much, she wanted to own her own place, but had trouble finding anything that suited her in the Big Easy. Her mother in Beaver Crossing suggested she take a look in Lincoln. Thats where she found the Red Fox, with an owner ready to sell.

Henke's made a few changes, most notably allowing her kitchen manager, Becky Conrad, freedom to experiment with the lunch specials. Last week, for instance, Conrad made chicken cream enchiladas as the lunch special.

They were gone before noon, Henke said.

But for the most part, shes hasnt messed with whats worked since 1989 -- thats serving affordable steaks, burgers, salads and comfort food at affordable prices. Shes also kept Sundays Burger Madness, which features a plain hamburger and potato chips for $2.99.

There were two things I knew I couldnt change, she said. The food and atmosphere.

The Red Fox opens daily at 11 a.m. and closes at midnight, later if theres still a bar crowd. The kitchen closes at 10 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 9 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, go to theredfoxsteakhouse.com or call 402-438-3300.

Source. Eat Fit. opens third store

Brother and sister Matt Zimmerman and Dawn Steffen on Sunday opened their third Source. Eat Fit.

The new store, which specializes in chef-made, healthy to-go meals, is at 5020 N. 26th St. Hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Phone is 531-500-5764.

The original Source opened November 2014 at 1701 Pine Lake Road. Zimmerman and Steffen opened a second store, at 4400 S. 70th St., Suite 110, in March 2016.

For more information, go to sourceeatfit.com.

Brewskys rolls out new menu

Brewskys Food & Spirits has added 11 new items -- its biggest menu-item increase it its 28-year history.

The new menu includes a Philly section, featuring spinach artichoke, garlic parmesan, habanero and gyro Phillys as a sandwich or a wrap. Brewskys brought back the tuna melt and added four new gourmet burgers, two sandwiches and an appetizer.

Brewskys has four locations in Lincoln: 201 N. Eighth St., 2662 Cornhusker Highway, 1602 South St. and 2840 S. 70th St. For more information, go to brewskys.com.

Graduate presents holiday lights tour

On Dec. 21, Graduate Lincoln, 141 N. Ninth St., will serve wine and appetizers followed by a two-hour tour of local holiday lights in a limousine bus. The event begins at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30 each and available at eventbrite.com. All proceeds benefit CEDARS Home for Children.
Becky Boesen resigned as executive artistic director of Lincoln's Flatwater Shakespeare Company, effective Dec. 8. The organization announced it was grateful for the energy, innovation and artistic quality that Boesen contributed to Flatwater Shakespeare during her tenure.

Her achievements have included expansion of the 2017 summer tour of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor," which was named an official event of the Nebraska Sesquicentennial Celebration, and included stops at Pioneers Park's one-room schoolhouse and the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice.

Boesen was also the primary architect and instructor for Flatwater's outreach programs for youth, "Little But Fierce" and "Sonnet Intensive." She directed a compelling production of Conor McPherson's "The Weir," staged in the Swan Theater at Wyuka Stables. One of the initiatives she inaugurated will continue through The Lincoln Shadow History Project, which completes Flatwater's 2017-18 season and draws upon community stories that were shared after performances of The Weir. Also, in spring 2018, Boesen will include Flatwater Shakespeare's "Little But Fierce" in the Lincoln Arts Council's Art Makes Me SmArt program.

It's been a complete honor to fill this role for Flatwater Shakespeare Company during this exciting year of growth and transition, says Boesen. FSC is a cornerstone of Lincoln culture, and I am very lucky to have been a part of that. I look forward to championing Flatwater Shakespeare in years to come!

Boesen is leaving Flatwater Shakespeare to concentrate on her arts education, management and creative company BLIXT, and on several of her own original plays, which are in development and already in performance regionally and nationally.

The board of directors thanks Becky for all that she has done to move the Flatwater Shakespeare Company forward over the past year, says Michelle Zinke, board chair. We know that she will continue to support Flatwater Shakespeare as a member of the Lincoln arts community. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.
Here is a selection of stories curated by AP editors to keep you informed as you start your weekend.
This School Dropout Now Owns Four Houses; Know Her Secret Here
PSNI's Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said any border infrastructures would give terror groups a further rallying call to drive recruitment

Senior police officers in Northern Ireland have warned MPs that a hard post-Brexit border would be an obvious area of attack by dissident republican terrorists.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons Brexit Committee in Co Armagh, the PSNI's Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said any infrastructures along the border would give terror groups "a further rallying call to drive their recruitment."

"They have a focus on this. They see it as an opportunity.

"Infrastructure on the border would be an obvious point for dissident groups to rally around and attack," Mr Harris added.

He said the threat from dissident republicans remains severe and that there were four attempts on the lives of police officers over the past year. There were also 58 shooting and over 32 bombing incidents.

Mr Harris told the committee it was regrettable that a lot of the current border conversations "take us back to the 80s."

"We in law enforcement see no rational of that infrastructure at the minute," he insisted.

Mr Harris said that during the 1980s there was a major problem with cross-border burglaries of older people in their homes.

He said many of the culprits escaped justice by heading over the border.

The Deputy Chief Constable outlined a number of shared European initiatives, such as the European Arrest Warrant, shared information systems and joint investigation teams, which have helped in the fight against crimes including human trafficking and drug smuggling.

Mr Harris told the committee he would be concerned if the shared systems were lost.

"The systems are for a safer Europe. It is not a one-way street. We have a lot to offer our European partners after Brexit.

"We are unsure of what the landscape is going to look like going forward. Our responsibility is to do our very best to maintain the safety of everyone on this island.

"That has to be backed up with legislation and policy which allows intelligence and evidence to be shared quickly."

When asked what would happen in the event of a no Brexit deal, Mr Harris said the PSNI would have to fall back on existing legal provisions with the Garda in the Republic.

However, he said a new extradition treaty would be needed in the absence of the European Arrest Warrant.

Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin, head of the PSNI's serious and organised crime branch, told committee members there is good cross-border cooperation between the PSNI and the Garda.

He said the two organisations assist each other "across a whole spectrum of crime."

Mr Martin said the PSNI has been sharing intelligence with the Garda in relation to an ongoing drugs feud in Dublin between the rival Hutch and Kinahan gangs that had resulted in a number of murders.
Hilary Benn at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland cannot afford to go back to the days of border posts, the chairman of the House of Commons Brexit Committee has insisted.

Hilary Benn warned that the "clock is ticking" for a resolution to the border issue and said that a solution must be found to ensure the Northern Ireland peace process is not placed in jeopardy.

"We simply can't afford to go back to the past.

"We have got a matter of days to find a way forward on this border question to enable us to move onto phase two of the talks.

"The clock is ticking," the Labour MP said.

The Brexit Committee travelled to the region on Thursday for a site visit to the village of Middletown where the Irish border separates Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

It is one of 275 land crossings between the two.

Speaking from the border Mr Benn said: "We need to find a solution.

"You just stand here, you see the traffic, the goods moving backwards and forth, you talk to the people who have lived here, who have lived through the Troubles, this is progress, this busy road is progress.

"I really hope the peace process is not in jeopardy."

This was the first time the Committee visited Northern Ireland to gather evidence.

Earlier the Committee heard evidence from senior officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) who warned that border infrastructures would be an obvious area of attack by dissident republican terrorists.

Addressing the meeting, which was held in Armagh, the PSNI's Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris said any infrastructures along the border would give terror groups "a further rallying call to drive their recruitment."

Mr Benn said the evidence from the PSNI was clear.

"If you do have a return to physical infrastructure, border posts, with people having to stand here, people having to be protected, then there is a risk that (the border) becomes a target once again.

"We simply can't afford to go back to the past," he said.

Mr Benn said a way to avoid a hard border would be for regulatory alignment with the whole of the UK and the EU member states.

"That clearly provides a way forward because it would not be separating out Northern Ireland which is what the DUP object to.

"It could well be a way forward to meet the concerns of the government of the Republic of Ireland about going backwards in terms of what has been achieved here on this border.

"I hope that will enable us to make sufficient progress to enter phase two of the talks."

The committee of MPs was brought to the border by the chief executive of Cooperation Ireland, Peter Sheridan, a former PSNI Assistant Chief Constable.

Mr Sheridan told them that none of the region's politicians want a hard border.

"None of our politicians want a hard border. None want to see structures on the border.

"All of our politicians want to see free movement of people across the border.

"They don't want to go back to (structures)", he said.
The aftermath of an August confrontation between a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student recruiting for a conservative group and a lecturer became fodder for a satirical news show earlier this week.

"The Opposition with Jordan Klepper," which airs nightly on Comedy Central, featured a Dec. 5 segment about Turning Point USA and founder Charlie Kirk, by "citizen journalists" Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp.

The duo interviewed Amanda Gailey, an associate professor of English at UNL, who was photographed holding a sign asking to be put on the "Professor Watch List" maintained by Turning Point USA.

(And also  blink and you'll miss it  a graphic used near the end of the video includes a stock photo of the former Beatrice City Library.)

Gailey was among a half-dozen faculty and graduate students who protested a recruiting event for Turning Point USA hosted by undergraduate Kaitlyn Mullen  an action Gailey said was a show of solidarity with other faculty targeted by the group.

Two professors Gailey said she knows personally who have appeared on the list were subject to "threats and weeks of harassing, racist and misogynist emails," Gailey told Jackson and Sharp.

Courtney Lawton, the graduate student lecturer who was filmed referring to Mullen as a "neo fascist" and making an inappropriate gesture toward her, was removed from her teaching duties after she "received many hostile emails and threats," she said in September.

Gailey also referred to recent public-records requests made by top Nebraska Republican Party officials for emails including the names of elected leaders such as President Trump, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry and Sen. Ben Sasse.

Turning Point USA founder Kirk, who also appeared in the segment, described the watch list as "an awareness tool" for students with conservative political beliefs.

"It's not 'Professor Blacklist' and it's not 'Professor Hit List,'" Kirk said. "We're not calling for the termination of these professors. Let the schools make their own decisions there," he added.

But, based on the social media outrage that followed the Aug. 25 event, state Sen. Steve Erdman called on UNL to fire Gailey for what he called "immoral, unprofessional and unacceptable" behavior.

After top NU administrators met with Erdman and two other state senators on Nov. 16, Lawton was informed her contract with UNL would not be renewed at the end of the school year.

"Simply because I came out against Turning Point USA and got in their cross-hairs, I've had several elected officials here in the state of Nebraska call for me to be fired," Gailey said.
Any infrastructure on the border will give violent dissident republicans an opportunity to rally, boost recruitment and attack, top PSNI officers have warned MPs.

Drew Harris, the Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said there remains a severe terrorist threat in the North. This year there has been four attempts to kill police officers, as well as 58 shooting incidents and 33 bombing incidents, he said.

Mr Harris told the House of Commons Brexit Committee during a hearing in Armagh that dissident terrorists are focused on the border issue in the context of Brexit.

Obviously violent dissident republican groups see this as an area that is contentious, which will give them in effect a further rallying call to try and engender support and try and drive their recruitment, Mr Harris said.

It is of concern. We know from information that we have that they have a focus on this, that they see it as an opportunity.

The UK have said that there will be no infrastructure on the border because that will be an obvious point for dissident groups to rally around and attack, but also try to engender support and sympathy in local communities and further afield.

Assistant chief constable Stephen Martin told the committee that an attack in Northern Ireland from dissidents remains highly likely.

He said that while the dissidents do not have the capability and capacity that the IRA had during the Troubles, they have demonstrated an ability to kill.

If there was infrastructure such as you describe, whether it be buildings or people that reemphasised the border in the physical, tangible, visible, way, I think it is highly foreseeable that dissident republicans would seek to take action against that, and that could include attacking the buildings and the people, he said.

Asked if he believed that threat would exist even for cameras, Mr Harris said there already exists an extensive number plate recognition system in Northern Ireland, and it does get regular criminal damage.

The Committee was also hearing evidence from HMRC, the UKs equivalent of the Revenue Commissioners. Evidence in private was heard from a number of trade bodies as well as drinks giant Diageo. Members also visited the border between Co Armagh and Co Monaghan at the village of Middleton.

The senior PSNI officers also told the committee that a joint report between the Gardai and the PSNI on the implications of the UKs EU withdrawal has been commissioned. A first draft has been completed. The two officers will travel to Dublin next week to meet senior garda offciers, including the acting Garda Commissioner.

Mr Harris said that during the 1980s there was a major problem with cross-border burglaries of older people in their homes.

He said many of the culprits escaped justice by heading over the border.

The Deputy Chief Constable outlined a number of shared European initiatives, such as the European Arrest Warrant, shared information systems and joint investigation teams, which have helped in the fight against crimes including human trafficking and drug smuggling.

He said many of the culprits escaped justice by heading over the border. He said there focus was in ensuring that people in border communities continue to feel they are safe.

Mr Martin added: What happens as a consequence of Brexit, that sense of knowing that you will be brought to justice, and that the Republic of Ireland administration and ourselves can come after you, bring you to book, bring you to justice, must be retained.

Simon York, Director of HMRC's Fraud Investigation Service, told the committee that he did not believe there was a requirement for any infrastructure on the border post Brexit to deal with smuggling.
Brexit is causing uncertainty over arrangements allowing Irish solicitors to practise in England and Wales, the head of the Law Society has warned.

Since 1989, qualifications in both common law jurisdictions have been mutually recognised under an EU directive, allowing solicitors to work with relative ease on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Hundreds of Irish-qualified solicitors have forged careers in Britain since then, particularly during the recession.

In recent times, hundreds of English and Welsh solicitors have also entered the Irish roll of solicitors in an effort to maximise their status as European law practitioners ahead of the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

Law Society director general Ken Murphy said the directive had been beneficial and there would be concerns if mutual recognition were to end as a result of Brexit.

"If EU law doesn't apply, England and Wales will not be compelled to keep such an arrangement in place," he said.

"Nobody is seeking to end it, but certainly Brexit is creating uncertainty about its future."

His comments came as figures published by the society showed some 511 English and Welsh solicitors entered the Irish roll this year up to November. This is in addition to 806 who joined it last year.

However, Mr Murphy said rumours that loads of English firms would be starting up here had so far been baseless. Of the 1,317, only about 250 have taken out practising certificates, a further requirement needed before they can practise here.

Mr Murphy said soundings he had taken from law firms in London indicated they were not seeking to set up bases here and were more than happy to use the expertise of Irish firms when required. Instead, the major concerns of the UK firms relate to their right of access to EU courts and the entitlement of their clients to legal privilege in EU investigations.
Leo Varadkar and Theresa May at a meeting earlier this year in Downing Street

"Progress is being made" and an early morning meeting is expected as talks on a new text aimed at meeting Irish demands to avoid a hard border after Brexit continue, a spokesman for the EU Commission has said.

The new text is currently being reviewed by the government.

Donal Tusk, president of the European Council, is expected to make a statement early on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the EU Commission said Jean Claude Junker discussed the situation with Mr Varadkar and Mrs May during separate phonecalls.

"We are making progress but not yet fully there.

"Early morning meeting possible with press/point thereafter," he said.

Brexit negotiations have stalled since Monday when the DUP refused to support UK Prime Minster Theresa Mays offer of a declaration to Ireland ensuring Britain would commit to protecting the Good Friday Agreement.

The DUP holds the balance of power in government in the UK.

They refused to support the agreement made between the British Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU task-force which committed Northern Ireland to keeping the same trading rules as the rest of the Europe after the UK leaves the EU.

"Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the EU Taskforce, the Irish government and the British government", a spokesperson from the Irish government told Independent.ie.

Read More

In addition, president of the European Council, Donald Tusk is due to give a press conference in Brussels at 06.50 Irish time tomorrow morning.

A crucial summit of EU leaders is taking place in Brussels next Thursday and Friday.

They will decide whether the UK has reached sufficient progress to move on to the next phase of Brexit talks.
Factory bosses were at pains this week to give the impression that base prices were steady at 3.90/kg for bullocks and 4.00/kg for heifers, the reality is there is more to be had. If you've got in-spec finished bullocks 3.95/kg appears to be where the real-time price is at, while the heifer trade is seeing prices as high as 4.10/kg floated.

These prices tend to be more prevalent the further north you go with some factories in the south appearing to be off the pace when you initially open the conversation on pricing.

All factories however seem to have "a want for heifers" to the point where one west of Ireland finisher said that "They (the factories) are dead keen for heifers and 4.15 may yet happen this week". Prices for Aberdeen Angus are reported by IFA's Angus Woods as having hit 4.20/kg over the weekend.

Last week's kill set yet another record for this year at 40,541. This kill figure was arrived at after some plants worked on Saturday.

Trade for bulls sees under-16 month stock being base priced from 3.90-4.00/kg, with prices for their heavier under-24 month comrades also pushing up. Despite prices for cull cows continuing to push forward at the marts factory prices for cows continue to remain stable.

Prices have improved but numbers are at the point where everyone associated with the business from the factory boss to the dog in the yard is waiting for the week when the numbers go off the edge of a cliff. When that happens the Christmas holidays won't come quick enough for the factories.

Our reputation as a green beef producing island is built on grass finishing with the dairy sector's male progeny contributing immensely to that image and tonnage.

Recent commentary that dairy farmers were not in the "business of meat sales" delivered an industry wake-up call.

It raises the uncomfortable question of what the powers that be in the beef industry might do to offset the consequences of any further deterioration in the conformation and size of stock coming on to the market from that quarter.

Mart Trade

1 Ennis

Nearly half the 800 cattle on offer here were cull cows. While it underlines the absolute efficiency that is the hallmark of those in the dairy sector strong prices also underline the cull cow's importance as a source of primarily manufacturing beef. Prices for dairy beef saw up to 1.44/kg paid for heavy Friesian cows with the more storish type Friesian making from 1.30-1.56/kg. The better conformation cull cow hit 2.02/kg as in the case of a 650kg Charolais, while a 755kg Limousin saw the hammer at 2.04. Trade for bullocks and heifers was strong, particularly for the better types.

2 Ballinasloe

Prices for bullocks averaged 2.20/kg with a batch of 355kg Charolais animals ringing the bell for top price at 2.66/kg. The average price in the weanling ring was 2.16/kg with a 345kg Limousin achieving the top price of 2.67/kg. Round prices for cull cows went from 535/hd to 1,260/hd.

3 Kilkenny

George Candler described his trade for bullocks as "sharper", with the forward continental, who was not overly plentiful, hitting a top call of 2.71/kg, while heavier 600kg+ bullocks sold from 1.70-2.30/kg. The better Friesian bullock met an improved trade with his prices ranging from 1.70-1.95/kg. A good showing of cull cows saw Friesian types sell from .80c/kg to 1.70/kg, while continental cows made from 1.30-2.29/kg.

4 Castlerea

The large entry of heifers here saw improved prices for quality store and forward heifers with 390kg Limousins at one end of the weight spectrum making 2.69/kg, while at the heavier end 585kg Charolais stock came into 2.39/kg. Among the cull cows the better suckler continental types clocked in at between 1.60-2.06/kg, while cows with calves at foot sold from 1,040-1,720/hd. Prices for quality weanlings were maintained with a 270kg Charolais bull hitting one of the better returns at 3.20/kg, however plainer stock were a "harder sell".

5 Carnew

A large entry of stock saw prices hold firm with beef and forward bullocks selling from 650-980/hd over the /kg. Continental store bullocks made from 470-820/hd over their weight, while Friesian bullocks made from 220-560/hd over their weight. Beef heifers sold from 550-980/hd over the weight with store heifers making from 320-780/hd over the weight. In the calf ring Friesian bulls sold from 60-190/hd, while continental bulls made from 225-460/hd. Continental heifer calves sold from 180-440/hd.

6 Baltinglass

Prices for both bullocks and heifers were reckoned to be up by 30-40/hd here as buyers intensified their efforts to fill their quotas before the Christmas shut out. In the bullock ring a 443kg Charolais made 2.14/kg, however a 465kg Hereford at 2.25/kg might have been a better medium-term bet. The South Devon breed isn't overly popular in Ireland but at 2.17/kg for 530kg I'd be tempted to see how we'd get on. Demand for weanlings was strong with top prices averaging from 2.25-2.50/kg.

7 Balla

This was a big sale given the day of the year but trade was reported as "good all round for quality stock". Store bullocks under 400kg averaged 2.38/kg, while the 400-500kg bullock averaged 2.23/kg. Best price of the day among the bullocks however was 2.51/kg as given for a March 2016 born 495kg Charolais. That said the biggest individual cheque of the day was written for an 810kg Charolais at 1,950 which works out at 2.41/kg. The heifer trade also saw some cracking prices including the 2.66/kg paid for an August 2016 born 395kg Charolais.
Ireland has a psychological as well as an environmental problem with solid fuels, which has to be addressed, the Minister for the Environment has said.

Denis Naughten, Minister for the Environment, is proposing a country-wide ban on smokey coal - 27 years since the ban was introduced in Dublin city.

He told Newstalk Breakfast this morning that one in five homes in rural Ireland's only source of heating is solid fuel. The Minister announced plans to run a pilot scheme in six rural communities to look at moving homes away from solid fuel heating.

It comes as the country's advisory watchdog on climate change recommended that coal and turf should be banned in the coming years.

While a number of powerplants use solid fuel, the Minister said plans were being looked at to move these to biomass.

But, domestic use of solid fuel, he said was more complex, and one in five homes, he said, is fully reliant on solid fuel for heating.

The pilot project, he said, would look at how homes can move away from solid fuel to renewable and sustainable forms of heating and then a national scheme can be rolled out to move away from solid fuel.

Ultimately, in relation to power generation we have to move away from coal, peat oil an even gas, he said

Ireland, he said, we have a significant amount of work to do if we are to reach our 2030 climate targets.

And, he said that Ireland has to move away from turf fires, although he said it would be more accurate to say it will be a longer-term move.

"We have to get people to move away from it (solid fuel) and I think it will happen.

"We have a psychological as well as an environmental problem, to move away from solid fuel," he told Newstalk Breakfast.

We need to be honest with people, he said, and we need a road map in place to see what will work in rural Ireland and the practical steps needed to be put in place.

Since he became Minister for the Environment, he said he has taken definitive steps around environmental issues and he has decided to make Ireland the first country in Europe to have a nationwide ban on smokey coal.

The air quality, he said, in some smaller towns and villages is worse than the City of London or some cities in China. "It's completely unacceptable that some evenings in winter people cannot go out for a walk if they suffer from asthma with the poor air quality."

There is a huge positive impact on our health services, he said.

A substantial increase in carbon taxes on home heating and motoring fuels is needed to reduce emissions and help prevent dangerous climate change, as well as a ban on coal and turf to generate power and heat homes, coupled with increased investment in public transport over roads, the Climate Change Advisory Council has said.

In its first annual review, the council said the Government needed to put in place major new policies and measures to meet international targets to reduce emissions, and that the pace of reductions needed to be accelerated across all sectors of the economy.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said the report was a wake-up call to the Government, while Cliona Sharkey, policy adviser at Trocaire and member of Stop Climate Chaos, said it made for disturbing reading.

Political difficulties for the Government include a call to stop subsidising peat-fired power plants in the Midlands, which support almost 1,500 jobs.
A carpet of fallen apples at the Bulmers factory orchard in Clonmel  Storm Ophelia blew the apples off the trees and flooding from Storm Brian swept them into a corner of the field. Picture by Jonathan Ryan

Bulmers cider maker C&C has confirm that it has completed its investment in the UK pub chain Admiral Taverns.

The manufacturer, marketer and distributor of branded cider, beer, wine and soft drinks announced in September that it would buy a 47pc stake in Admiral, giving it a greater direct-to-market platform for its broad range of drinks.

At the time C&C agreed to pay 37m (40.2m) for its stake in the pub chain, which operates mainly in England and Wales.

Admiral confirmed today that it has completed on the acquisition of a portfolio of 17 pubs in England and Wales from Heinekens Star Pubs and Bars business.

Admiral's model is well-used in the UK but non-existent in Ireland. Individual entrepreneurs rent pubs from Admiral, which assists them in buying stock.

In October C&C posted half-year results showing that Bulmers had under performed in the Irish cider market, with volumes declining by 5pc, compared to the wider Irish cider market that declined 1pc.

Adjusted earnings at the group fell by 4.6pc year-on-year in the six month period to 57.6m.
UK-headquartered shopping centre giant, Hammerson, is expected to ramp up its investment in the Dundrum Town Centre and its other Irish assets after making a 3.4bn (3.8bn)all-share offer for rival retail centre owner Intu.

The merger of Hammerson and Intu will see the creation of Britain's largest property company with the new enlarged group boasting a combined gross asset value (GAV) of 21bn.

In taking control of Intu, Hammerson will bolster its existing portfolio through the addition of major retail assets such as London's Brent Cross, Birmingham's famous Bullring and Manchester's Trafford Centre. The deal was met with a mixed response by investment analysts in view of the challenges being faced the UK retail sector in the wake of Brexit.

But Hammerson's announcement of its intention to reinvest the proceeds of a 2bn (predominantly UK) asset disposal programme in Ireland, Spain and in its premium outlets, was viewed as being positive for the future of its Irish portfolio particularly.

Investec economist Philip O'Sullivan noted it would give Hammerson enhanced flexibility for future projects such as Dundrum Phase 2.

While the south Dublin retail mecca, which Hammerson owns jointly with German insurer Allianz, has proved to be hugely successful with over 50 million visitors annually, Hammerson has stated on a number of occasions that it is considering delivering a residential-led scheme for its next phase.

The proposed development will take place on the site of the original Dundrum shopping centre.

The enlarged Hammerson group will be led by Hammerson CEO David Atkins, and chairman David Tyler.

Intu's deputy chairman John Whittaker will assume the role of senior independent director within the enlarged company. "This marks an exciting milestone in the history of Hammerson," said Mr Atkins. "Bringing together the high-quality portfolios of both companies establishes Hammerson as a larger, leading European retail Reit (Real Estate Investment Trust), enhances shareholder returns and supports opportunities for long-term growth. I hold Intu's high-quality centres in high regard and I look forward to working with a strengthened team to enhance the performance of our entire portfolio."
Dublin-based aircraft lessor Fly Leasing, which is headed by former Aer Lingus chairman Colm Barrington, has confirmed that it has $2bn available to expand its fleet as it eyes further jet purchases in 2018.

Fly Leasing currently has 84 aircraft in its fleet, primarily narrow-body, single-aisle jets such as Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s.

However, it also has a small number of long-haul aircraft on its books, including Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s. The fleet is valued at more than $3bn.

Fly Leasing, which is listed on the stock market in New York, has sold 72, older, less profitable aircraft since 2015. It told investors at a Goldman Sachs aircraft-leasing conference in New York that it has invested $1.6bn in 30 younger jets in the same period.

In a presentation at the conference this week, Fly Leasing said that it has an "annual growth target of $750m" and will continue to eye opportunistic secondary market purchases.

From the beginning of 2017 to the end of November, Fly Leasing said that it has spent $456m on aircraft, and identified more than $40m of potential purchases for 2018.

It's focusing on aircraft such as Boeing 737 Max jets.

Fly Leasing has also been restructuring its business by optimising its capital structure and reducing the management fees it pays.

Global aircraft management company BBAM manages and services the Fly Leasing fleet. BBAM shareholders also own 14pc of Fly Leasing.

In September, Singapore wealth fund GIC - which owns 16pc of Irish telecoms firm Eir - agreed to buy a 30pc stake in BBAM.

Prior to that, BBAM's management team owned 50pc of the company. Mr Barrington, a former senior GPA executive, is also a shareholder of BBAM.

The other 50pc of BBAM was owned by Canadian private equity firm Onex, which acquired that holding in 2012.

Onex confirmed last month that it sold a 15pc stake of its BBAM holding to GIC, and that since it first took a stake in BBAM, Onex has realised $454m from the investment, including the disposal proceeds.

"GIC's involvement will add to BBAMs resources and capabilities particularly in Asia, an important part of the market for these aircraft," said Onex CEO Gerry Schwartz.

"Strategically the partnership builds on a first mover advantage as the world's largest dedicated manager of leased aircraft," he added.

Fly Leasing's customers include airlines such as India's SpiceJet, and Malaysia Airlines.

Mr Barrington is also a non-executive director of Finnish airline Finnair, and Irish property investment firm Hibernia REIT.
With Brexit looming, there are growing concerns that businesses trading across the Irish Border are not ready. The latest InterTradeIreland Business Monitor found that 95pc of businesses across the island of Ireland simply don't have a plan for Brexit.

Bucking this trend however is Silver Hill Farm, a county Monaghan-based duck producer that has already slashed its dependence on Britain by looking east.

The family-owned company was established in 1962 and is betting that a decision four years ago to move into Asian markets has vastly lessened any potential fallout from Brexit.

"We had already started on the path to Asia before the Brexit vote came, the background being that Chinese customers are our core market," says head of sales Barry Cullen. "You go where the markets are and south-east Asia made the most sense from a strategic point of view. We had got ahead of Brexit, no one expected it so when it did come we were already well on the path to developing those markets."

Four years on, Monaghan duck can now be found in around 50 of the top hotels and restaurants in Singapore, on a growing number of menus in Hong Kong and in Macau's Mandarin Oriental five-star hotel. In addition, Cullen expects Malaysia to come on stream in the next six months, then Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan.

Ironically, the Irish-reared fowl is known in the Far East as 'London Duck' because it initially took off among the restaurants of the UK capital's China Town district.

Because the company looks after every element of production, Cullen says it is important that it carried out its expansion in phases to ensure they do not run out of the product.

"There is lots of potential out there and duck would be the dish of honour in these markets so it is less price sensitive. We would be three times more expensive than the local Malaysia duck but the locals know the London duck so they are prepared to pay the extra for the quality and that is our uniqueness, that is our selling point."

Silver Hill send around three containers of frozen duck a month to Asia, with each container carrying 10,000 ducks. By comparison, the company sends about two containers a week to London, - the aim for the company is to be sending two containers of duck to Asia each week.

Cullen is quick to credit both Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture in Ireland for their support in helping Silver Hill with its expansion into Asia.

"There have been a lot of trade missions over the last two years into those markets to try and develop trade links and that is bearing fruit now - you are starting to see more and more business contracts being signed.

"We have fantastic produce here in Ireland. We don't realise it until you go out to these countries and you get the feedback from the customers and they say it is the best food they have ever tasted.

"We have had customers over here and chefs, and they try not just our product but the milk, the beef, the pork, on the back of that then they have started doing business with more local companies. The Bord Bia phrase is co-opetition and we are very much into that."

Cullen's advice for companies looking to move into the Asian market is to contact Bord Bia from the very start.

"Their guy Ciaran Gallagher is based out there (in Singapore), what he doesn't know about Asia isn't worth knowing ... Bord Bia have a fantastic market intelligence library down in Dublin - use that before spending a lot of money to go out there."

Despite the company's expansion into Asia, Cullen says that Silver Hill has no plans to lose sight of its main market.

Brexit or not, in 10 years' time he still thinks London will be Silver Hill's biggest market, with expansion complementing rather than replacing the UK business.

"The focus will be for the next phase of growth on Asia but at the same time we don't take our eye off the ball back at the home markets that we are established in. Longer term it makes sense that, in time, Asia will overtake all other markets, but getting into mainland China would be the big catalyst - we would need to build another factory if that were to happen which is a nice problem to have."

One thing is for sure though, the company will expand on its own terms,

"We are not like shareholder companies where you need an immediate return on investment.

"We take a 10-15 year view - we are happy to invest in the long-term relationship. We have been here 55 years and we plan to be here another 55 years."

In terms of the immediate impact of Brexit on the company that employs 220 on both sides of the Border, Cullen says that Silver Hill has taken all the necessary steps as far as it can.

"We have a committee here, a project-led group which looks at all the different aspects of Brexit. So, from that point of view, we have prepared as well as we can. We have also looked at currency hedging. We are naturally hedged because we sell a lot into the UK. We buy our feed in the UK, but we have dual supply where possible for all the large inputs; packing, feed, fuel and so on."

In terms of the daily impact of the Border, all Silver Hill duck eggs are laid in Northern Ireland in the Tyrone village of Aughnacloy.

They are hatched just outside Emyvale in Monaghan, and the company has farms both North and in the Republic where the ducks go to grow, before all being processed in the Republic. So potentially the ducks could cross the Border three times in their life cycle, and that is before they get exported.

While a hard border would have a huge impact on this, Cullen says that the company is there long enough that it remembers the last border.

"We would deal with it - we are entrepreneurial people around the border regions so you just get on with life. We will hope that it doesn't have a massive impact on us."

Cullen, who himself lives north of the Border, says that approximately 20-25 of the company's employees live in the North and work in the Republic, while there are also a small number of employees living in the Republic and working on the company's farms in the North.

He remains hopeful however that "sense will prevail" and there will be some agreement in respect of the Border.

Along with the geographical difficulties posed by Brexit for the company, the UK remains the company's biggest market, with approximately 40pc of the company's 80,000 ducks produced each week being exported there. However, with the company expanding into Asia, this figure is something Cullen expects will decline.

In addition, the company last year moved its prices on two separate occasions based on exchange rates. Overall prices in sterling increased 15pc in 2016 and the company did not lose any business from the increases.

Nonetheless, Cullen acknowledges that they will have to wait and see what tariffs, if any, are in place once Britain leaves the European Union.

"We are a premium product so we are lucky in one sense that we are not as price sensitive as say the mushroom growers in this area particularly would have been hit, but the exchange rate more so, now there is a price where people will not pay but we haven't thankfully reached that yet."

"Worst case scenario you are looking at WTO tariffs at 30pc-plus, obviously that would have an effect. We have taken estimates on how much we will be hit in the business but no one knows for sure, but we are trying to spread the risk.

"We are exporting into 27 countries now, the UK is the biggest the minute but we will become less reliant on that, worst case with a hard Brexit certainly we will lose a fair chunk of business but hopefully we will pick it up elsewhere."

In terms of advice for other companies on in the Border area, Cullen recommends that they get as much information as possible, something he says will reduce the potential for shocks when the UK does leave the EU.

"We started getting dual suppliers. If we have an important product that we were sourcing in the UK or in the North of Ireland we now have an alternative supplier in the South of Ireland.

"With that kind of thing you just need to eliminate the risk. You try and eliminate as many unknowns as possible in the absence from a clear direction from the Government, you have to wait and see to a certain extent but the more homework you do, the luckier you will get".

Meanwhile, at Silver Hill, the company sells "everything but the quack". Duck feathers are washed in Monaghan and graded, and then the company makes them into duvets and pillows that are supplied to the same top-end hotels where the meat is so sought after. The head, the feet, and the necks of the duck go out to Hong Kong, the fat and the liver go to Belgium for pate, and Monaghan farmers get the benefit of duck-generated fertiliser.
HUNDREDS of investors who pumped 13m into the Eddie Hobbs-fronted Brendan Investments Pan European Property plc (BIPEP) have been left with just a single boarded-up house in Detroit valued at just 7,000 and 29,000 in a bank account.

The fund once controlled hundreds of properties, but a single derelict house in strife-hit Detroit currently up for sale is the sole remaining property owned by the fund.

Around 29,000 in a bank account, and a potential VAT refund of 53,000 are the other assets. The investors are nursing losses of more than 12.9m.

Liquidator Aidan Garcia was appointed to try to recover money for investors after Brendan Investments PEP collapsed into liquidation earlier this year.

Yesterday, at a packed meeting in a Dublin hotel, the court appointed liquidator told dozens of mostly middle aged and elderly investors that almost all of the 13m raised by the high profile scheme in 2007 had been wiped out after failed investments in Germany and the crisis hit US city of Detroit.

The devastating losses were racked up despite the funds only being invested after the property crash.

In response to questions from the floor of the meeting, the liquidator said he would look at a number of avenues in an attempt to increase their recovery.

Investors were told he has powers to look back through the history of the company to sift through how the losses had wracked up.

Mr Garcia said that he intended to look at payments of around 4m that were made from the fund to businesses in the US to see if any of that money could be recouped, as well as examining the Brendan Investments fee structure - which saw the main fund pay 1pc of its value to a sister company owned and controlled by the directors every year.

Those fees added up to in excess of 2m paid out by the main fund while the company was in operation. However, the fee structure were clearly flagged in BIPEP's original prospectus, seen by the Irish Independent, as was the potential that investors could suffer a loss.

Distressed

In response to questions from the floor, Mr Garcia also said he would look at whether the fund originally set up to buy high quality European real estate acted properly when it shifted into distressed America housing, something individual investors say they were against. He said financial results had not been filed for any year since 2014.

The timing of the Brendan Investments fund in 2007 meant that many of the investors put the proceeds of their special savings incentive accounts (SSIA) into the scheme.

Then RTE star Eddie Hobbs had fronted a massive publicity drive to attract people to Brendan Investments, which he had established along with Vincent Regan, Hugh O'Neill and Dermot Flanagan.

The four were originally directors of BIPEP and the sister company, Brendan Investments Property Management, which managed the fund.

Up to 800 investors - including families, small business owners, farmers, GPs, and even a priest in Brooklyn, New York - ploughed in 13m.

The minimum investment was 5,000 but in some cases, including Eddie Hobbs himself, the figures were significantly larger.

Eddie Hobbes and Dermot Flanagan, who were non executive directors, resigned as directors in early 2015, by which time the value of the assets had declined to about 5.5m, according to financial accounts audited by PwC.

Last night Eddie Hobbs said he couldn't comment on the situation while the liquidator works through his process. He's previously said he'd suffered significant losses himself on Brendan Investments.
Lawyers for Eaglehill sought injunctions at the High Court in Dublin to stop the 'Irish Times' newspaper publishing an article about the sale.

A High Court action over the proposed sale of Castletown Cox, a mansion in Co Kilkenny, has been resolved.

The case had been brought by Edward Magan, a beneficiary of the Eaglehill family trust - valued at up to 50m - which owns Castletown Cox.

Mr Magan had objected to the sale of the south Kilkenny estate on 513 acres by its trustee, DW Trustees.

Mr Magan failed earlier this year, via a court hearing in Jersey in the Channel Islands, to stop the marketing of the property for sale.

The Jersey court ordered DW Trustees could proceed with facilitating marketing of, and access to Castletown and the estate agent, Knight Frank, was instructed to proceed with the sale.

The beneficiaries of the trust, which is governed by Bermuda law, are Edward and Henrietta Magan, children of Lord George Magan, who purchased the estate in 1999.

Lawyers for Eaglehill then sought injunctions at the High Court in Dublin to stop the 'Irish Times' newspaper publishing an article about the sale.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan refused to restrain the newspaper publishing the article.

Yesterday, following talks between the parties, counsel for DW Trustees told Mr Justice Gilligan the matter was not going ahead.

The parties had agreed the Irish courts lack the jurisdiction to hear Mr Magan's action, and that all previous orders made in the case could be vacated, he said. Counsel for Mr Magan said his side was consenting to that.
'The Irish Times' has finally agreed to buy the media assets of the financially troubled Landmark Media Group, the publisher of the Cork-based 'Irish Examiner' newspaper.

The move ends the ownership by the Crosbie family of the former 'Cork Examiner' newspaper title, which has been in their family since the 19th century.

However, the deal has been in the offing for some time and follows months of speculation.

AIB, Landmark Media's banker, has also supported a "significant debt restructuring", according to 'The Irish Times'. The company behind Landmark Media, Landmark Media Investments, had bank loans totalling 17.2m at the beginning of this year.

The deal, months in the making, will also include the 'Evening Echo' newspaper and seven regional titles.

Landmark also owns 75pc stakes in Waterford's WLR and Beat, as well as a 17.6pc stake in Cork station Red FM.

All the assets are being acquired by 'The Irish Times' The new owners described the planned acquisition as an "important strategic decision".

'The Irish Times' said it will "retain the core identity and independence of the respective news publishing titles".

"The overall increase in audience allows the group to build a digital platform with a strong reach, countrywide and internationally," it added.

The 'Irish Examiner' sold an average of 28,338 copies a day during the first six months of 2017, according to ABC circulation data.

'The Irish Times' said that it is "fully committed" to working with unions "on any restructuring proposals that will need to be made".

The managing director of Landmark Media, Tom Murphy, told staff yesterday that the sale is in the "best interest" of the group.

"Consolidation within the industry is an inevitable outcome and both Irish-owned groups will be best positioned to survive and prosper as part of a larger, stronger and better resource and unified entity," he said.

The regional titles being acquired by the 'Irish Times' are: the 'Roscommon Herald'; the 'Kildare Nationalist'; 'Waterford News & Star'; the 'Laois Nationalist'; the 'Naas and Newbridge Nationalist'; the 'Nationalist'; and the 'Western People'.

Landmark Media also owned the 'Wexford Echo', to which a liquidator was appointed during the year.

The deal with 'The Irish Times' also includes three websites that are wholly-owned by Landmark Media, and another in which it has a 75pc stake, Benchwarmers.ie. The other sites are irishexaminer.com, breakingnews.ie, and recruitireland.com.

The acquisition by 'The Irish Times' has to be cleared by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland; and the Minister for Communication, Denis Naughten.

No details of the financial terms of the deal were disclosed, but the enlarged group will have an annual turnover of about 100m and employ 900 people.

National Union of Journalists Irish secretary Seamus Dooley said he welcomed the assurances that had been provided by 'The Irish Times'.

"The devil is in the detail," he said adding the union will study the proposed acquisition.
Besides Dublin 7, the new line crosses parts of Dublin 1 and 2 where there are relatively few residential properties. Photo: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos

The impending opening of the new Luas Blue line in Dublin is leading to a surge in property prices near the tram tracks.

Prices have jumped by up to 75,000 as buyers who commute into the capital scramble to buy near the line.

Asking prices are up more than 20pc in the first nine months of the year in parts of Dublin 1 and Dublin 7, according to an analysis of the official Property Price Register by website MyHome.ie.

This compares with average increases in asking prices in Dublin this year of around 11pc.

The new analysis shows that the average asking price in Stoneybatter is 374,000.

This is 74,000, or 25pc, ahead of the average selling price of 300,000, achieved in the first three quarters.

Besides Dublin 7, the new line crosses parts of Dublin 1 and 2 where there are relatively few residential properties.

The average sold price in the North City Centre for the first three quarters was just over 291,000. However, asking prices in the Dominick Street area - where a new Luas stop is located - are now around 356,000, an increase of 22pc.

In nearby Cabra, which will have two Luas stops, the average asking price is now 337,000. This is up 30,000 from the average selling price. Neighbouring Phibsboro has one the highest average sold prices of 359,000 in Dublin 7 with the average asking price currently set at 349,000.

The Luas Blue line opens this Saturday. It will allow people to travel from Cabra to St Stephen's Green via Phibsborough, Stoneybatter, the North City Centre, Parnell Square, O'Connell Street, Dame Street and Dawson Street. It will also connect up the Red and Green lines.

MyHome.ie managing director Angela Keegan said the data indicated that the Luas together with the shortage of affordable properties was causing a spike in prices in some areas.
It was a great year for history books in Ireland, and specifically for political and military history. Given that it was the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and of the Battle of the Somme during World War I, there was a continuing stream of books on these events, not all them of crucial interest, it must be said.

However, one fascinating book which looks at how the two events have been commemorated is Remembering 1916: The Easter Rising, the Somme and the Politics of Memory in Ireland, edited by Richard S Grayson and Fearghal McGarry (Cambridge University Press, 28).

This examined the reverential and at times obsessive focus of both traditions on the island on the two 1916 events - the Easter Rising for the Irish nationalist/Republican tradition and the Somme for the Ulster Unionists. In their failure, both military procedures solidified the sense of sacrifice for their respective causes, although not without excessive radical elements that the prevailing political cultures tried to contain.

The Somme was the great traumatic battle of what was already a hugely costly and increasingly pointless world war. Its effect was devastating on western Europe, Britain, Unionist Ireland but also southern nationalist Ireland, with huge numbers of Catholic Irish soldiers, many of them Home Rulers, also dying.

This was brought home forcefully in Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front by Ronan McGreevy (The History Press, 20), which could now be seen as the superlative and definitive account of Ireland in Word War I, combining research, original interviews, travel to the former battlefields and a vivid and often disturbing recreation of events. Official Irish amnesia about all this has been now thankfully addressed.

The two '1916s' are central to Professor Paul Bew's intriguing and succinct Churchill and Ireland (Oxford University Press, 23.80), which is a long overdue exclusive focus on the great statesman's deep relationship with Ireland, from the early Home Rule period right up to the 1950s.

Although a staunch imperialist, Winston Churchill was also a committed Home Ruler and tried his best to avoid Partition - and even more so a civil war more bloody than the one that briefly ensued after the Treaty. The onset of World War I postponed Home Rule, and serious ethnic conflict, and Bew describes the sobering effect of the trench slaughter on both Irish sides, with even Edward Carson baulking at the carnage wrought by Churchill's own ill-fated decision to land at Gallipoli.

Through Churchill's mediation, Carson and the Nationalists were almost at a settlement. But the 1916 Rising occurred and Irish Republicanism swept away limited Home Rule demands. (Not that the Republicans were able to gain a whole lot more, even after an armed struggle.)

In dealing with Ireland, and with the Nazis, Churchill was armed with incredible self belief, but also a gambler's confidence, and both of these were honed in a crucial formative year in South Africa fighting the Boers, when he saw intense action, was captured and escaped. This is vividly described by Candace Millard in the gripping Hero of the Empire - The Making of Winston Churchill (Allen Lane Penguin, 28).

The Boer War, which dented the British Empire, had a major effect on the Irish cause and its influence can be seen in two major biographies of Irish nationalist figures - Arthur Griffith by Owen McGee (Merrion Press, 27.99), and Carla's King's study of Michael Davitt (UCD Press, 50), which I reviewed on these pages on December 3.

Talk of this war and of the other tumultuous events in the late 19th century to Edwardian era hang heavily over The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses - A Biographical Guide by Vivien Igoe (UCD Press, 40), which is as fascinating for its historical detail as it is for its literary reference. Fenians, Prussians, Zionists and Parnellites - all are here.

There is a curious overlap, too, to Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency (Collins Press, 19.99), an excellent, original account by former speechwriter Brian Murphy about the Gaelic League founder who became our State's first president.

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Murphy tells the sad story of Julius Pokorny, a Czech-German Jew and Gaelic scholar who worked in Dublin and who appears in Ulysses. Later, in Germany, Pokorny was under serious threat from the Nazis and both Hyde, and de Valera, tried to intercede to help him, the latter in a more energetic way than Hyde, it must be said.

Another absorbing read, for a later period, is Stephen Kelly's A Failed Political Entity: Charles Haughey and the Northern Ireland Question 1945-1992 (Merrion Press, 21.99), which charts the frequently positive but too often malign influence of the former taoiseach on this most vexatious issue. It is a fair assessment, even though, surprisingly and disappointingly, the author was apparently denied access to Haughey's official papers.

It is refreshing then to read about the ambitious Irish who went overseas and made an impact on foreign cultures. Tim Fanning's Paisanos: The Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America (Gill and MacMillan, 24.99) is an absorbing and original account of these adventurers, military strategists and entrepreneurs who from the period of the Wild Geese on did so much to enrich the emerging states of colonial and post-colonial South America.

When idealism descends into chaos

Away from Irish history, Ian Davidson of the Financial Times has written an excellent account of the violent events that, in many ways, heralded modern democracy with The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny (Profile Books, 30.99). He shows how an initial idealism can quickly descend into chaos and even tyranny - and be exported elsewhere. We can think of how, in more recent times, the Arab Spring became an Islamic Winter.

Meanwhile, the wholesale destruction of modern democracy, decency and humanity is remorselessly charted by the late David Cesarani in The Final Solution: the Fate of the Jews 1933-49 (Macmillan, 42.00), a project of unimaginable cruelty which puts the so-called 'Irish question' in a dwindling perspective.
Did you ever leave a jacket in Coppers after a night out? Chances are it's in this heap.

The famous Harcourt Street nightspot is currently inundated with jackets and coats that forgetful punters accidentally abandoned.

"On one of our busiest nights during the week, you could expect something like four or five full bags of jackets left behind. We are kept so busy with our lost and found that its pretty much a full time service, between messages, emails and collection times," said Copper Face Jacks spokesman Rory Traynor.

"Id say we would have probably two or three hundred built up over the space of a year. "

The jackets that don't get reclaimed are put to good use. The club donates the clothes to multiple charities once an owner doesn't come forward within six weeks.

"Id say around 90pc of people who leave behind their jackets, will call and collect their jacket at the instructed times, without any issues. In some cases, people may have been in Ireland for a weekend and travelled back home without even realising theyve left it behind. Its nice for people to think that the coat they lost or forgotten may just keep someone warm this winter.

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"We give customers up to six weeks to claim their items before we move them to charity organisations, who needless to say are delighted with the contribution," Rory told Independent.ie.

"Instead of donating to just one charity, we try our best to share them out to various charities and homeless foundations. With the cold spell we are facing in the coming weeks we will be sending a lot of the jackets to the homeless. Were aware that homelessness is an ongoing problem in the city, so were glad to be doing our bit."

Other items like passports and driving licences are common items that are left behind but they are usually collected the next day after being lost, but the club have quite a huge collection of bank cards left behind to add to their mountain of coats.

"We could have nearly a full box of bank cards at this stage in the year."

Last year it was revealed that the club had turned its cash mountain into a whopping 54.8m.

Accounts for the company that operates the venue revealed that its pre-tax profits last year totalled 5 million - or 97,657 per week.
Saoirse Ronan looks well on her way to nabbing a third Oscar nomination after being named as one of the nominees for the Critics' Choice Movie Awards.

The Carlow native (23) is up for Best Actress for her leading role in Lady Bird, which is one of the few films to receive a perfect score of 100% positive reviews on film site Rotten Tomatoes.

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She sits alongside the legendary Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Sally Hawkins, Margot Robbie and Jessica Chastain in the category.

Ronan, who recently hosted US comedy show Saturday Night Live, is also nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy for the film.

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It is also up for Best Picture, Best Director for Greta Gerwig, Best Supporting Actress for Laurie Metcalf, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Ensemble.

Lady Bird sees the Irish actress star as a restless teenager who is desperate to get out of her hometown in California.

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She was previously nominated for an Oscar at just 13 years old for Atonement and at the 2016 ceremony for Brooklyn.

Ronan has already kicked off awards season with a win, taking home Best Actress for Lady Bird at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.

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She dedicated her award to "the two women who mean so much to me," referencing her mother and Lady Bird writer and director Greta Gerwig.

Fellow Irish star Caitriona Balfe has also been nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her role in Outlander. She is up against Chrstine Baranski for The Good Fight, Claire Foy for The Crown, Tatiana Maslany for Orphan Black, Elisabeth Moss for The Handmaid's Tale and Robin Wright for House of Cards.

In Bruges director Martin McDonagh's latest offering, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has been nominated for Best Picture along with The Big Sick, Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Get Out, Lady Bird, The Post, and The Shape of Water.

McDonagh is also in the running for Best Director and Best Screenplay while star Sam Rockwell has also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film.

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The Breadwinner has been nominated for Best Animated Feature. The stunning film, the latest from Cartoon Saloon who previously brought us THe Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, faces tough competition from Pixar's Coco, Despicable Me 3, The LEGO Batman Movie, and Loving Vincent.

However, it beat Coco to be chosen as Best Animated Feature by the LA Film Critics Circle last week.

Daniel Day Lewis is also nominated for Best Actor at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards for his role in Phantom Thread. The three-time Oscar winner (60) recently revealed Phantom Thread will be his last film as he has decided to retire from acting.

Full list of winners:

FILM NOMINATIONS FOR THE 23rd ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS

BEST PICTURE

The Big Sick

Call Me by Your Name

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

The Florida Project

Get Out

Lady Bird

The Post

The Shape of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

BEST ACTOR

Timothee Chalamet  Call Me by Your Name

James Franco  The Disaster Artist

Jake Gyllenhaal  Stronger

Tom Hanks  The Post

Daniel Kaluuya  Get Out

Daniel Day-Lewis  Phantom Thread

Gary Oldman  Darkest Hour

BEST ACTRESS

Jessica Chastain  Mollys Game

Sally Hawkins  The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Margot Robbie  I, Tonya

Saoirse Ronan  Lady Bird

Meryl Streep  The Post

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Willem Dafoe  The Florida Project

Armie Hammer  Call Me By Your Name

Richard Jenkins  The Shape of Water

Sam Rockwell  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Patrick Stewart  Logan

Michael Stuhlbarg  Call Me by Your Name

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Mary J. Blige  Mudbound

Hong Chau  Downsizing

Tiffany Haddish  Girls Trip

Holly Hunter  The Big Sick

Allison Janney  I, Tonya

Laurie Metcalf  Lady Bird

Octavia Spencer  The Shape of Water

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS

Mckenna Grace  Gifted

Dafne Keen  Logan

Brooklynn Prince  The Florida Project

Millicent Simmonds  Wonderstruck

Jacob Tremblay  Wonder

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE

Dunkirk

Lady Bird

Mudbound

The Post

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

BEST DIRECTOR

Guillermo del Toro  The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig  Lady Bird

Martin McDonagh  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Christopher Nolan  Dunkirk

Luca Guadagnino  Call Me By Your Name

Jordan Peele  Get Out

Steven Spielberg  The Post

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor  The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig  Lady Bird

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani  The Big Sick

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer  The Post

Martin McDonagh  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Jordan Peele  Get Out

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

James Ivory  Call Me by Your Name

Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber  The Disaster Artist

Virgil Williams and Dee Rees  Mudbound

Aaron Sorkin  Mollys Game

Jack Thorne, Steve Conrad, Stephen Chbosky  Wonder

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Roger Deakins  Blade Runner 2049

Hoyte van Hoytema  Dunkirk

Dan Laustsen  The Shape of Water

Rachel Morrison  Mudbound

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom  Call Me By Your Name

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau, Jeff Melvin  The Shape of Water

Jim Clay, Rebecca Alleway  Murder on the Orient Express

Nathan Crowley, Gary Fettis  Dunkirk

Dennis Gassner, Alessandra Querzola  Blade Runner 2049

Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer  Beauty and the Beast

Mark Tildesley, Veronique Melery  Phantom Thread

BEST EDITING

Michael Kahn, Sarah Broshar  The Post

Paul Machliss, Jonathan Amos  Baby Driver

Lee Smith  Dunkirk

Joe Walker  Blade Runner 2049

Sidney Wolinsky  The Shape of Water

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Renee April  Blade Runner 2049

Mark Bridges  Phantom Thread

Jacqueline Durran  Beauty and the Beast

Lindy Hemming  Wonder Woman

Luis Sequeira  The Shape of Water

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP

Beauty and the Beast

Darkest Hour

I, Tonya

The Shape of Water

Wonder

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Blade Runner 2049

Dunkirk

The Shape of Water

Thor: Ragnarok

War for the Planet of the Apes

Wonder Woman

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

The Breadwinner

Coco

Despicable Me 3

The LEGO Batman Movie

Loving Vincent

BEST ACTION MOVIE

Baby Driver

Logan

Thor: Ragnarok

War for the Planet of the Apes

Wonder Woman

BEST COMEDY

The Big Sick

The Disaster Artist

Girls Trip

I, Tonya

Lady Bird

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Steve Carell  Battle of the Sexes

James Franco  The Disaster Artist

Chris Hemsworth  Thor: Ragnarok

Kumail Nanjiani  The Big Sick

Adam Sandler  The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

Tiffany Haddish  Girls Trip

Zoe Kazan  The Big Sick

Margot Robbie  I, Tonya

Saoirse Ronan  Lady Bird

Emma Stone  Battle of the Sexes

BEST SCI-FI OR HORROR MOVIE

Blade Runner 2049

Get Out

It

The Shape of Water

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

BPM (Beats Per Minute)

A Fantastic Woman

First They Killed My Father

In the Fade

The Square

Thelma

BEST SONG

Evermore  Beauty and the Beast

Mystery of Love  Call Me By Your Name

Remember Me  Coco

Stand Up for Something  Marshall

This Is Me  The Greatest Showman

BEST SCORE

Alexandre Desplat  The Shape of Water

Jonny Greenwood  Phantom Thread

Dario Marianelli  Darkest Hour

Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer  Blade Runner 2049

John Williams  The Post

Hans Zimmer  Dunkirk

TELEVISION NOMINATIONS FOR THE 23rd ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS

Best Drama Series

American Gods (Starz)

The Crown (Netflix)

Game of Thrones (HBO)

The Handmaids Tale (Hulu)

Stranger Things (Netflix)

This Is Us (NBC)

Best Actor in a Drama Series

Sterling K. Brown  This Is Us (NBC)

Paul Giamatti  Billions (Showtime)

Freddie Highmore  Bates Motel (A&E)

Ian McShane  American Gods (Starz)

Bob Odenkirk  Better Call Saul (AMC)

Liev Schreiber  Ray Donovan (Showtime)

Best Actress in a Drama Series

Caitriona Balfe  Outlander (Starz)

Christine Baranski  The Good Fight (CBS All Access)

Claire Foy  The Crown (Netflix)

Tatiana Maslany  Orphan Black (BBC America)

Elisabeth Moss  The Handmaids Tale (Hulu)

Robin Wright  House of Cards (Netflix)

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Bobby Cannavale  Mr. Robot (USA)

Asia Kate Dillon  Billions (Showtime)

Peter Dinklage  Game of Thrones (HBO)

David Harbour  Stranger Things (Netflix)

Delroy Lindo  The Good Fight (CBS All Access)

Michael McKean  Better Call Saul (AMC)

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Gillian Anderson  American Gods (Starz)

Emilia Clarke  Game of Thrones (HBO)

Ann Dowd  The Handmaids Tale (Hulu)

Cush Jumbo  The Good Fight (CBS All Access)

Margo Martindale  Sneaky Pete (Amazon)

Chrissy Metz  This Is Us (NBC)

Best Comedy Series

The Big Bang Theory (CBS)

Black-ish (ABC)

GLOW (Netflix)

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

Modern Family (ABC)

Patriot (Amazon)

Best Actor in a Comedy Series

Anthony Anderson  Black-ish (ABC)

Aziz Ansari  Master of None (Netflix)

Hank Azaria  Brockmire (IFC)

Ted Danson  The Good Place (NBC)

Thomas Middleditch  Silicon Valley (HBO)

Randall Park  Fresh Off the Boat (ABC)

Best Actress in a Comedy Series

Kristen Bell  The Good Place (NBC)

Alison Brie  GLOW (Netflix)

Rachel Brosnahan  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

Sutton Foster  Younger (TV Land)

Ellie Kemper  Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

Constance Wu  Fresh Off the Boat (ABC)

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Tituss Burgess  Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

Walton Goggins  Vice Principals (HBO)

Sean Hayes  Will & Grace (NBC)

Marc Maron  GLOW (Netflix)

Kumail Nanjiani  Silicon Valley (HBO)

Ed ONeill  Modern Family (ABC)

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Mayim Bialik  The Big Bang Theory (CBS)

Alex Borstein  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

Betty Gilpin  GLOW (Netflix)

Jenifer Lewis  Black-ish (ABC)

Alessandra Mastronardi  Master of None (Netflix)

Rita Moreno  One Day at a Time (Netflix)

Best Limited Series

American Vandal (Netflix)

Big Little Lies (HBO)

Fargo (FX)

Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Godless (Netflix)

The Long Road Home (National Geographic)

Best Movie Made for TV

Flint (Lifetime)

I Am Elizabeth Smart (Lifetime)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (HBO)

Sherlock: The Lying Detective (PBS)

The Wizard of Lies (HBO)

Best Actor in a Movie Made for TV or Limited Series

Jeff Daniels  Godless (Netflix)

Robert De Niro  The Wizard of Lies (HBO)

Ewan McGregor  Fargo (FX)

Jack OConnell  Godless (Netflix)

Evan Peters  American Horror Story: Cult (FX)

Bill Pullman  The Sinner (USA)

Jimmy Tatro  American Vandal (Netflix)

Best Actress in a Movie Made for TV or Limited Series

Jessica Biel  The Sinner (USA)

Alana Boden  I Am Elizabeth Smart (Lifetime)

Carrie Coon  Fargo (FX)

Nicole Kidman  Big Little Lies (HBO)

Jessica Lange  Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Reese Witherspoon  Big Little Lies (HBO)

Best Supporting Actor in a Movie Made for TV or Limited Series

Johnny Flynn  Genius (National Geographic)

Benito Martinez  American Crime (ABC)

Alfred Molina  Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Alexander Skarsgard  Big Little Lies (HBO)

David Thewlis  Fargo (FX)

Stanley Tucci  Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Best Supporting Actress in a Movie Made for TV or Limited Series

Judy Davis  Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Laura Dern  Big Little Lies (HBO)

Jackie Hoffman  Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)

Regina King  American Crime (ABC)

Michelle Pfeiffer  The Wizard of Lies (HBO)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead  Fargo (FX)

Best Talk Show

Ellen (NBC)

Harry (Syndicated)

Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC)

The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS)

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC)

Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen (BRAVO)

Best Animated Series

Archer (FX)

Bobs Burgers (FOX)

BoJack Horseman (Netflix)

Danger & Eggs (Amazon)

Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)

The Simpsons (FOX)

Best Unstructured Reality Series

Born This Way (A&E)

Ice Road Truckers (History)

Intervention (A&E)

Live PD (A&E)

Ride with Norman Reedus (AMC)

Teen Mom (MTV)

Best Structured Reality Series

The Carbonaro Effect (truTV)

Fixer Upper (HGTV)

The Profit (CNBC)

Shark Tank (ABC)

Undercover Boss (CBS)

Who Do You Think You Are? (TLC)

Best Reality Competition Series

Americas Got Talent (NBC)

Chopped (Food Network)

Dancing with the Stars (ABC)

Project Runway (Lifetime)

RuPauls Drag Race (VH1)

The Voice (NBC)

Best Reality Show Host

Ted Allen  Chopped (Food Network)

Tyra Banks  Americas Got Talent (NBC)

Tom Bergeron  Dancing with the Stars (ABC)

Cat Deeley  So You Think You Can Dance (FOX)

Joanna and Chip Gaines  Fixer Upper (HGTV)

RuPaul  RuPauls Drag Race (VH1)
If you watch only one celebrity-fronted arts documentary this year  and theres been no shortage of them to choose from in 2017  make it this wonderful film.

Written and directed by Gerry Hoban, the man behind last years fiery and quirky two-parter A Fanatic Heart: Bob Geldof on Yeats, this is half the length of that production, but arguably twice as informative about its subject.

Which is just as well, because if any writer is in dire need of recognition and rediscovery in his own land, its George Bernard Shaw.

Joyce and Beckett are Official Irelands literary icons, even though very few among us have actually read them. Whether or not you have a taste for Yeats and Kavanagh, youre force-fed them at school.

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But you wont find Shaw on the school curriculum. Hes under-appreciated, said Byrne, the forgotten man of Irish literature. People around Dublin know his name, but perhaps not much else.

We probably should have given him greater recognition, said President Michael D Higgins, one of an impressive roster of contributors that included actors (Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton), theatre directors (Nicholas Hytner, Josie Rourke), historians and journalists (Diarmaid Ferriter, Fintan OToole), Shaw biographer Michael Holroyd and comedian Dara O Briain.

The driving force of this excellent, impeccably produced film was the kinship Byrne feels with Shaw. Growing up in Dublin in the 1950s, Byrne felt stifled. There was some instinct inside me to prove myself against something else, he said.

When he moved to London in the 1980s, he felt like an outsider. Yet, whenever he returned to Ireland, he felt like he didnt quite fit in here, either.

Shaw, a Protestant, was similarly ill at ease as a shy young man, eventually feeling neither wholly Irish nor wholly English, even though he spent most of his life in the latter country.

Born into what he called genteel poverty in Synge Street (though the family wasnt so poor as not to be able to afford a nanny, who had a sideline as a prostitute), he was embarrassed about his circumstances, which made his time at the Central Model School in Marlborough Street a deeply unhappy experience.

Shaws poverty was nothing like that endured by the working-class of Dublins slums, of course, but he saw their deprivation and suffering around him every day, and it appalled him. Theres the smell of the slums in his nostrils, said Fintan OToole.

It was this burning desire for equality for all that would shape his socialist and feminist beliefs  way ahead of their time  and also inform his plays, including Mrs Warrens Profession (about prostitution), which scandalised Victorian society, Man and Superman, and his most famous work, Pygmalion  which, despite being sunnily repurposed as the Hollywood musical My Fair Lady, is seriously political as well as seriously funny.

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But before the world discovered Shaw, Shaw had to find his place in it. In order to make it in London, he reinvented himself, created a persona. He had to invent GBS, said Michael Holroyd, he had to become this entertainer.

In 1904, Shaw enjoyed a residency at the Royal Court  the very theatre where Byrne made his London debut. He began his run by taking the piss out of the English, and the Irish, said Byrne. The play was John Bulls Other Island. David Lloyd George went to see it five times. Edward VII laughed so hard, he broke his chair.

While laughter is what we most associate with Shaws plays, a cloud hangs over him: his wrong-headed admiration for fascist dictators. Archive footage from the 1930s captured him praising Hitler and Mussolini, and ending with a fascist salute.

But by then, Shaw was in his 70s, frustrated with democracys failure to deliver equality, and naively thought dictators might do a better job. He never admitted in late life that hed made a terrible mistake.

He didnt have the humility to admit he was wrong, said Fintan OToole, but for all the dark parts of him, he did more than any modern individual to uphold the ideas that everybody could be dignified by their mind, by having the power to think as individuals.

My Astonishing Self: Gabriel Byrne on George Bernard Shaw is available on RTE Player.
Members of the Defence Forces take part in a terror scenario based on a knife attack at Pearse Street rail station yesterday

Five hundred troops were deployed on the streets yesterday as part of an exercise designed to test the reaction of the Defence Forces to terrorist attacks.

The troops were called in at short notice at the request of the Garda authorities to help cope with the fallout from an initial terror strike and subsequent intelligence that further terror strikes were being planned at key installations.

The scenario was based on real-life attacks in major European centres like Barcelona and Paris and the military response was spearheaded by their elite anti-terror unit, the Army Ranger Wing.

Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, who watched the main thrust of the exercise at the former Odlum's site at Dublin Port, pledged that increasing the strength of the Ranger Wing was a top priority and said plans were well advanced.

The troops were drawn from stand-by units at 10 barracks in Dublin (McKee and Cathal Brugha), the Defence Forces training centre at the Curragh, Dundalk, Athlone, Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Finner, Co Donegal. They were not notified about their tasks until 6am.

According to the exercise scenario, six terrorists had mounted a knife attack at Pearse Street rail station, resulting in eight people being killed and 20 injured. Gardai had shot and captured one terrorist and discovered other terror cells were planning a series of attacks.

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Scene of the shooting in Ballymun this morning

THREE people have been arrested after an Emergency Response Unit (ERU) officer was shot during an operation in Ballymun in Dublin this morning.

Early indications are that the garda was shot from inside a property as officers tried to force an entry to a house in the Barnwell area of Ballymun in Dublin.

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It is understood officers were using an angle grinder to try to gain entry through a reinforced door at the back of a house.

A member of the ERU was shot in the arm as they tried to force their way in. Gardai believe the shots - one of which hit the officer - were fired from the house.

When the gardai gained entry, there were further shots fired and a man inside the property was shot. He was hit in the shoulder. He is understood to be in his late teens.

A source told Independent.ie that the armed Gardai shot during the raid was extremely lucky he wasnt hit in the head.

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The source said:It is just pure luck that he wasnt hit in the head or neck. This is what you are dealing with these days, dangerous armed criminals who are happy to fire their weapons on anyone, including Gardai

The injuries to the garda and the man are not believed to be life-threatening. Both were treated at the scene before being taken to hospital.

Gardai have confirmed that three people have been arrested in relation to the incident.

Two women and one man, aged in their 30s and 40s, have been arrested.

They are being detained in Clontarf, Swords and Ballymun stations.

The Garda Ombudsman has been notified of the incident because a gun was discharged by a garda member during the planned operation.

In a statement, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan said: I learned with concern this morning that a member of An Garda Siochana was shot and injured in the course of a Garda operation in North Dublin. I wish him a full and speedy recovery. Incidents like this highlight the danger that can face members of An Garda Siochana in carrying out their duties.

"The work of uniformed Gardai and the special units is critical in keeping people safe and tackling serious criminals whose activities can destroy communities. I acknowledge the good work of An Garda Siochana and assure the force of my continued support for its efforts."

Deputy Commissioner John Twomey, who is appearing today at the Oireachtas Justice Committee, noted that a Garda member was "shot in the line of duty" this morning.

He offered the Garda member and his family his best wishes.

Members of the committee echoed those sentiments.
A Dublin civil servant who stole over 6,500 in fake Jobseekers allowance claims under her brother's name has received a three and a half year suspended sentence.

Jacqueline Walsh (33) was brought to the attention of gardai by her brother, William Walsh, after he tried to make a Revenue claim and discovered false claims had been made under his name.

Walsh, with an address in Millbrook Lawns, Tallaght, pleaded guilty in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday to four counts of stealing money from the Department of Social Protection between October 2011 and May 2012. Eight other counts were taken into consideration.

The mother-of-four stole a total of 6736 over nine months while she was working in the Tallaght branch of the Dept of Social Protection.

The court heard that Walsh had accessed details in relation to her brother's PPS number.

On Wednesday, Judge Karen O'Connor said she had not lightly imposed a wholly suspended sentence and had very seriously considered custody.

She noted the premeditation involved and said: Better services can be provided to those in need and to children in need if the Exchequer is not at a loss.

The judge took into account Walsh's difficult upbringing, past tragedies and that she provided for two young children with health difficulties when passing sentence.

Judge O'Connor said she saw no reality in imposing community sanctions on Walsh given her personal circumstances and family commitments.

She suspended the sentence for three and a half years and ordered that Walsh undergo 18 months of probation service supervision and complete victim focused work.

Detective Garda Colin Rochford told prosecution barrister, Karl Finnegan BL, that three claims were made in the name of William Walsh under three different staff member user names within the department. None of these user names belonged to Jacqueline Walsh.

The court heard that a culture existed in the Tallaght office back in 2011 whereby computers were regularly left unlocked and employees could access each other's user names.

Walsh resigned from the department shortly before her offending came to light in 2015 and moved to a company. When interviewed by gardai she said she did not have the expertise to carry out the claims, but admitted to receiving the money into her account.

This was refuted by her superior, who told gardai Walsh was competent at accessing the claims system.

Det Gda Rochford agreed with defence barrister Kieran Kelly BL, that gardai were unable to prove who carried out the claims.

The court heard Walsh has no previous convictions save for some minor road traffic offences. None of the stolen money was recovered.

Mr Kelly said Walsh has four young children, including two with health issues. She is currently on maternity leave and is receiving state maternity benefit.

Her partner is a full-time carer for his father and receives a carers' allowance. They struggle financially and are currently in arrears on their mortgage, the court heard.

Mr Kelly said Walsh was remorseful for her actions. Ordinarily, she is a good person and she wants to move forward, he said.
A young woman who was sexually assaulted by her grandfather claims her grandmother failed to exercise reasonable care for her safety when she was looking after her, the High Court heard.

The woman, who is in her 20s, is suing both grandparents and also claiming both entered a conspiracy to defeat her claim for damages. She alleges her grandfather transferred three specified properties into the grandmother's name.

When she was aged between nine and 12, the woman was subjected to a large number of sexual assaults by her grandfather at various locations in Ireland and abroad when she was in his care.

The court has granted the woman, who cannot be named by order of the judge, orders directing her grandfather's psychiatric records be given to her legal team. She also won an order directing her grandparents to give details of property transactions.

Mr Justice Anthony Barr said it was a somewhat unusual application where the young woman sought an order directing the grandfather should make discovery of his medical records from two psychiatric institutions.

The abuse involved her grandfather intimately touching and rubbing the area of her private parts and this occurred on a weekly basis between June 2005 and January 2008.

Criminal charges were brought against the grandfather who pleaded guilty before the Circuit Criminal Court in 2010 to 18 offences against his granddaughter and was jailed.

As part of her claim, she says that sometime in May 2010, her grandparents allegedly entered a conspiracy to defeat her claim for damages and with intent to defraud her and render worthless any judgment obtained by her arising out of the property transfer.

Mr Justice Barr said in a defence filed there were certain partial admissions by the grandfather who put in issue certain matters in relation to his mental state at the time the admitted acts were carried out.

The judge said medical records in general, and in particular psychiatric records, are of a highly confidential nature.

However, the court can direct discovery of the medical records, if it is satisfied it is necessary in the interests of doing justice between the parties. He was satisfied, as the grandfather had specifically put his mental state and his perception of the particular acts in issue in his defence, that it was appropriate to order the discovery.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday sent the nomination of Omaha attorney Steve Grasz to a seat on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the full Senate for its consideration on an 11-9, party-line split vote.

Democratic members of the committee lined up in opposition to the nomination in the wake of the American Bar Association's judgment that Grasz was "not qualified" to serve on the federal bench.

Grasz, Nebraska's former chief deputy attorney general, was recommended to President Donald Trump by Sens. Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse and the president, in turn, submitted his nomination to the Senate.

Next stop is Senate action to confirm the nomination.

"Steve Grasz has extraordinary ethics, sterling credentials and bipartisan support from across the state of Nebraska," Fischer said in hailing the committee's action.

"Without a doubt, he is the right choice for this seat on the 8th Circuit.

"I hope Steve's nomination will swiftly move to the Senate floor for a final vote so he can put his skills to work for the American people," Fischer said.

Sasse, a member of the committee, took to the floor of the Senate to describe Grasz as "one of the foremost appellate attorneys in the state of Nebraska" and a man of "integrity, humility and decency."

"Steve has earned the support of Republicans and Democrats back in Nebraska," Sasse said, "and I hope that when his nomination comes to the floor of the Senate, we will take to heart all of the support that he has across the political spectrum and from well-respected lawyers across our state."
The father of missing Trevor Deely has told how the unsuccessful search operation for his son has left him "emotionally drained".

Michael and Ann Deely and their three other children will tomorrow mark the 17th anniversary of the disappearance of 22-year-old Trevor with a prayer service in their home town of Naas, Co Kildare.

Michael (75) said his hopes of a breakthrough in the case had been raised earlier this year after renewed appeals and CCTV images led to what was the most significant search yet for the missing bank official.

Dozens of gardai took part in a painstaking dig at a 12-acre site in west Dublin in August, following new information. But the family's hopes of a breakthrough were dashed when gardai confirmed there was no trace of Trevor.

Speaking on National Missing Persons Day, which was marked with a ceremony at Farmleigh House in Dublin's Phoenix Park, Michael said his overriding emotion in what has been a rollercoaster of a year, was "huge frustration".

"For years and years we had got nowhere and there were no new leads in the case, and then all of a sudden there was a very dramatic development. In terms of the investigation into Trevor, it's been the most active year we have had.

"But unfortunately nothing has come of it. Of course I'd been hoping that this anniversary and this Christmas period might be different and that we'd get a breakthrough, but that hasn't happened."
CAO applicants have until February 1 to submit their application form. Many applicants can find this process confusing as the CAO allows application to three separate levels on two lists. Applicants should place Level 8 courses on one list and Level 7 and 6 courses on the other. It is possible for applicants to be offered a place on courses from both lists.

Level 8

A Level 8 degree is also known as an honours degree. This is what many people think of when they think of a traditional university degree.

They are generally four years in duration, with some notable exceptions. Architecture, for example, is five years and arts degrees are often three years, although more four-year options are available from this year.

Students mainly apply for these courses through the CAO, with some private colleges also offering Level 8 courses, outside of the CAO system.

Leaving Cert students must meet the minimum entry requirements and any essential subject requirement for these courses and then compete with other students on the basis of CAO points to win a place. Minimum requirements for all Level 8 courses are normally two H5 grades and four O6 grades (with the exception of Trinity College Dublin which requires three H5 and three O6/H7).

Once those requirements are met, it is the competition for places - which depends on the demand for any given courses and the number of places on it - that determines the cut-off points.

Level 8 programmes are offered at universities, Institutes of technology, private colleges and training colleges.

Level 7

Level 7 degrees are known as ordinary degrees. They are generally three years in duration and students mainly apply for these courses through the CAO, while some private colleges offer Level 7 courses outside the CAO. Students are required to meet the minimum entry requirements, essential subjects and then compete for places on the basis of points. Many institutions require a student to achieve five O6/H7 grades for entry to Level 7 although there are some exceptions. Essential subject requirements are also lower at Level 7.

For example, a student wishing to study engineering at Level 8 in DIT will require a H4 in math while engineering courses at Level 7 in DIT require an O4/H7 in math. Level 7 degrees are offered at universities, institutes of technology, and private colleges. Minimum CAO points tend to range from AQA to late 400s.

The majority of Level 7 courses contain an option of an 'add on' year.

This makes it possible for students to complete one extra year and receive a Level 8 qualification.

In order to identify if a level 7 course offers an add-on year, a student can check their CAO handbook. If the course offers an 'add on' year, the third column of the handbook will contain the letters 'DG+HD'. DG indicates that the course is a degree while +HD indicates that an add-on year is available to achieve an honours degree.

I will deal with Level 6 next week.

Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin
Irish 10-year-olds are holding their heads high after emerging as the best in Europe, and among the top in the world, in reading.

In fact, that goes for our 11 and 12-year-olds too, because the 4,800 Irish pupils who participated in the world's largest assessment of reading ability at primary level in April 2016 are now in sixth class. In five short years, Ireland has lifted its performance in PIRLS - Progress in International Reading Literacy Study - on all counts, making some remarkable leaps in the process.

The credit belongs to a combination of policy, dedicated teachers and principals and high-level engagement by Irish parents in their children's education.

As would be expected, there was a 100pc response rate from Irish teachers to questionnaires associated with PIRLS and 99pc response from schools. Parents were also surveyed about matters such as how often they read to their children and, In Ireland, some 92pc replied; in some countries, it was below 50pc.

PIRLS is a project of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), which started in 2001. It runs at five-yearly intervals and Ireland participated for the first time in 2011, when alarm bells were ringing about key educational indicators in this country. There had been the shock lower-than-expected performance in reading literacy and maths among 15-year-olds in the country in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009.

Department of Education inspectors were raising issues about standards in their reports on school visits and there had been no improvements since the early 1980s in the National Assessments of English reading and maths. These are conducted by the Educational Research Centre (ERC), Drumcondra, on behalf of the Department of Education, and track standards within the country, but don't allow for external comparison. The ERC is also the Irish agency for PIRLS.

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That perfect storm of unfavourable indicators led to the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy in 2011, around the same time as Ireland was getting the first results from PIRLS 2011.

Then, Irish 10-year-olds were 10th among 48 participating countries, with five countries, including Northern Ireland, performing at a significantly higher level.

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Today, their score of 567 is 15 points higher than in 2011 and they are third out of 50 internationally and the best in Europe. Only two countries - Singapore and the Russian Federation - performed significantly better.

PIRLS assessment is equally divided between literary and informational texts. ePIRLS only assesses pupils' ability to read for informational purpose. However, while ePIRLS students have to navigate a simulated internet environment, the focus of the assessment is on reading comprehension rather than navigation skills.

In both PIRLS and ePIRLS, 60pc of the assessment is directed at examining pupils' ability to make straight-forward inferences and to interpret and integrate ideas and information. Some 20pc examines what is regarded as the generally easier process of retrieving explicitly stated information and another 20pc assesses the more difficult process of evaluating and critiquing.

What is particularly encouraging is that Ireland has improved on every measure in PIRLS.

At the top end, the percentage of pupils with "advanced" reading skills in Ireland rose from 16pc in 2011 to 21pc in 2016, more than double the international average of 10pc. And 62pc of Irish pupils came in the next category "high", compared with the international average of 47pc. The outcomes for weaker students are just as important, and the results show that the number of pupils with only basic reading skills has dropped significantly.

The gender gap in Ireland is smaller than the gap internationally and it has narrowed significantly because boys have made greater strides than girls, although girls have also improved. In ePIRLS, only Singapore outperformed Ireland.

Eemer Eivers of the ERC, one of the PIRLS report's authors, describes the results of ePIRLS as particularly interesting.

ePIRLS was the first assessment of its kind at primary level and she says "it is encouraging to see that most Irish pupils had little or no difficulty navigating through the complex online scenarios they encountered. Equally, they seem able to evaluate information in a digital environment - for example, identifying the more reliable sources of information and integrating information from multiple web pages."
The National Assessments of English Reading and Mathematics, published in 2014, showed the first significant improvements in the reading achievement of Irish primary pupils for over 30 years. Stock picture

Any single set of test results in an international survey has to be treated with caution. Outcomes can fluctuate unexpectedly up and down. But this very positive outcome tallies with other information that we have about the reading achievement of Irish pupils.

The National Assessments of English Reading and Mathematics, published in 2014, showed the first significant improvements in the reading achievement of Irish primary pupils for over 30 years. Data from the Educational Research Centre's evaluation of the DEIS initiative in schools serving pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have shown consistent improvements in pupils' achievement in reading and maths.

So what has brought about this welcome improvement in literacy? There is no single cause for the gains we see. Instead, I think it is fair to say that a combination of factors and a coordinated effort across many fronts have helped bring about improvement. Certainly, yesterday's results are a tribute to our school leaders and teachers who have worked assiduously to raise reading standards. PIRLS data shows, too, that Irish parents are deeply committed to providing the home atmosphere that supports their children's learning.

Probably the most significant initiative to support schools and parents in this work was the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy 2011-2020, the first fully coordinated national attempt to set out clear targets and a range of linked actions to improve literacy and mathematics in schools. It has supported and challenged the education system in a range of ways to improve reading (and mathematics) achievement. The 4th class pupils who took the PIRLS 2016 test experienced the changes the strategy brought about since they were in infant classes.

Schools were asked to increase the time available for the teaching of the core skills of literacy. Teachers were also encouraged to extend the teaching of literacy throughout all areas of learning in a broad and balanced primary school curriculum.

School Self-Evaluation (SSE) was introduced in 2012. SSE asked principals and teachers to examine how well their own pupils were learning and to identify how their achievement might be improved. A range of supports was provided and schools were encouraged to set targets and monitor how well they were improving learning. School inspections were altered to bring a sharper focus on literacy and numeracy achievement.

Standardised tests of reading became mandatory at 2nd, 4th and 6th class levels and schools have to share the results with parents. In addition, schools were required to look at the overall trends in their data and report to the Department. This helped to create a culture where monitoring and improving outcomes is becoming a routine part of school life.

Initial teacher education programmes were revised significantly to enhance young teachers' capacity to teach literacy. A major investment was also made in the Professional Development Service for Teachers.

So the improvements we are seeing in PIRLS 2016 come after a sustained period of effort and focus on literacy in our primary schools. They demonstrate that when challenging targets are adopted and there is a strategic, system-wide effort to address them, improvements can be achieved in pupils' learning.

The challenge now is to build on this success. Initiatives included in Minister Richard Bruton's Action Plan for Education 2016-2019, such as the Excellence Fund, revised literacy and numeracy targets, and comprehensive policies for STEM education are seeking to bring an equally ambitious and concerted approach to the development of other elements of the school system. It is through such focussed approaches, matched by necessary investment, that the Action Plan's goal of having Ireland become the best education system in Europe by 2026 may be realised.

Harold Hislop, Chief Inspector, Department of Education and Skills
The number of patients waiting for a bed in hospital A&Es yesterday soared to "national emergency" levels, with many enduring delays of over 24 hours on a trolley.

There were 494 patients on trolleys - just one short of when overcrowding was deemed an emergency in 2006 by former Health Minister Mary Harney.

Hospitals in Galway, Tullamore, Limerick, Cork, Mullingar and Kilkenny were struggling to care for patients in cramped conditions.

Health Minister Simon Harris had to get a 195m bailout to cover a range of health service overruns, including 30m for hospitals. This was despite earlier claims they would have to stay within budget in 2017.

He blamed some private patients for refusing to allow public hospitals to bill their insurance company for their care. This is in response to a campaign by health insurance companies urging members not to pay for their accommodation if they are in a public ward.

It means the level of private income has fallen, Mr Harris said.

Some 10m of the funds will go to reduce hospital waiting lists, he added.

Meanwhile, the three children's hospitals in Dublin have reported a surge in young patients with a serious respiratory virus.

The outbreak of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), the most common cause of pneumonia in children under the age of one, is causing major patient delays.

Parents are being urged not to bring their child to Our Lady's Hospital Crumlin, Temple Street or Tallaght Hospital if they have a minor or non-urgent complaint and to see their GP instead.

The increase in cases has led to a dramatic rise in attendances and admissions to the three hospitals and it has been particularly bad this week. A statement from the hospitals said there is a particular increase in young children and infants presenting with respiratory infections, in particular RSV.

"While this occurs every winter, the increase in presentations to our emergency departments has been more significant this season.

"Some babies and children with this virus can become very unwell requiring supportive treatment and prolonged hospital admissions.

"Based on previous infection control data it is anticipated that this virus will continue to be at peak levels for the next three to four weeks."

The three A&Es are open but patients can expect delays.

Meanwhile, the decision to name the new national children's hospital as Phoenix Children's Hospital Ireland is set to be reviewed following threats of legal action by the Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona over possible confusion. Mr Harris said he will consider the name in advance of legislation establishing the new entity in law to run the new hospital.
WHEN Sophia McGuinness was examined by surgeons at Our Lady's Hospital Crumlin last April her family were told the sooner she is operated on for her scoliosis the better.

But the schoolgirl from Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, who turns 12 this week, is still on a waiting list for spinal fusion and has no date yet for surgery.

Sophia, who suffers from cerebral palsy and can only communicate by computer, is in increasing pain and discomfort as her scoliosis worsens.

Her father Aaron said: "This is the second time Sophia has needed surgery. She was previously on a waiting list for 14 months before eventually having an operation on her lower lumbar spine.

"At that point the delay left her very sick and her right lung stopped working because her organs were squashed."

She could not sit in her chair and she was on morphine.

He said the delay made the surgery more complicated and she lost a lot of blood.

Her scoliosis has since deteriorated and she is on regular pain medication.

"Sophia cannot speak but through a computer can tell us if she is in pain or sore. She is telling us a lot of that now."

Aaron said he wrote to Health Minister Simon Harris who referred him to the waiting list plan to have no child on a list for more than four months by December.

"I know that children who are more severe than Sophia are getting priority, which is fine. But it means my daughter has to become sicker to get treatment.

"If politicians put half the effort into fixing the problem as masking it we would be a whole lot better off.

"We can never get a straight answer," he said.
An investigation was launched at a south Dublin school after a female teacher gave a teenage boy a computer which contained a topless photo of her on it.

The incident happened early last week when the boy opened the device, said to be a laptop or tablet, and found the photograph of the teacher topless with her breasts exposed.

The student reportedly then copied the image, added a message to it, and circulated it on social media.

Sources said there are reports that the image has been re-shared many more times and that it has now spread to people as far away as Cork.

Independent.ie understands the student was suspended as a result of his actions.

However, parents of students are said to be angry at the school management because they claim there was no action taken against the teacher for having the image on the computer, which is school property accessible by students.

The parents are up in arms over it. They say all the punishment has been in the direction of the young lad but nothing appears to have been done about the teacher, a source said.

They feel the punishment is one-sided and that the teacher must bear some responsibility. They cant understand why they have not been informed of any action against her over this, they added.

The Irish Independent contacted the school for comment in relation to the allegations that the female teacher had supplied a computer to a young male student with a topless photograph of her on it and that the image was accessed by the student.

The school principal declined to comment on the issue.

The Irish Independent also put it to the principal that while the child had been punished by suspension there appeared to be no reprimand or disciplining of the teacher. Again, the principal declined to comment.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said it had not received any report or compliant relating to this matter.

However, a spokesperson stressed that it was very conscious of ensuring any information it received in relation to child protection matters was transmitted to the appropriate authorities in accordance with Children First Guidelines

It is the responsibility of the relevant school authority to ensure that the procedures for dealing with child protection concerns are followed in accordance with department guidance, the spokesperson explained.

Schools are not required to report child protection concerns to the Department of Education and Skills.

However, on occasion child protection concerns can be brought to the attention of staff in the department. Where this occurs the departments procedures for responding to child protection concerns are followed.

The spokesperson added: While the Department has no role in investigating individual child protection concerns, it is very conscious of ensuring any information received is transmitted to the appropriate authorities in accordance with Children First Guidelines.

Tusla and the Garda have the necessary statutory powers and expertise to conduct investigations in this very sensitive area.

Any referral by the department involving a school makes clear that the agency can contact the department if it is not satisfied with the schools role or cooperation during the course of their work.
Ireland will consider British proposals to reassure the Democratic Unionist Party on a border deal for Brexit  but will not agree changes to the core of a draft agreement which emerged on Monday.

That was the view of Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney who told the Dail the Irish Government remained determined that a hard border cannot be put in place after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

The Tanaiste said the Irish Government would certainly look at any new proposals from British Prime Minister, Theresa May, aimed at overcoming the DUPs objections to the draft deal allowing cross-border relations continue after Brexit happens.

But our position is that the core meaning of the text we had on Monday needs to remain intact, Mr Coveney said.

He was replying to Sinn Fein deputy leader, Mary Lou McDonald, who said her party had given the Government qualified support for its conduct of Brexit negotiations.

Today we hear new and worrying language coming from the Government, Ms McDonald referring to the Taoiseachs statement that he would consider changes proposed by Mrs May.

If the Tories want to sail off into the sunset away from the European Union, thats their business. But the North of Ireland is our business, she added.

Ms McDonald demanded a guarantee from Mr Coveney that the North remain part of the EU single market and customs union after Brexit. She also said the EU Courts jurisdiction must remain in tact and the Good Friday Agreement must be respected.

But Mr Coveney said he had an obligation not to stoke things up in an already difficult situation.

We will not support the re-emergence of a hard border, he stressed.

But I need to be cautious about what I say and how I say it, the Tanaiste added.

In another Dail exchange, Mr Coveney insisted moves towards greater EU defence cooperation does not amount to joining an EU army.

People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett said Government moves to take Ireland into the EUs Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) programme breached the Irish Constitution and went against military neutrality.

Mr Barrett accused the Government of trying to ram through legislation permitting Ireland joining PESCO with a rushed and very limited debate. He said PESCO was being touted by EU leaders, Jean Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, as an EU army.

But Mr Coveney said some TDs were trying to suggest PESCO was something more than it was in reality. He said the programme allowed countries to opt into certain things on a case by case basis.

Mr Coveney insisted that PESCO would allow cooperation on things like peacekeeping, counter terrorism, training and marine surveillance.

Mr Boyd Barrett said this was cynical rubbish and he challenged the Foreign Affairs Minister to publish Attorney Generals legal advice on the issue.

But the Minister for Foreign Affairs said Deputy Boyd Barrett knew this was not permitted.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar during a press conference at Government Buildings in Dublin following Brexit negotiations. Laura Hutton/PA Wire

BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May is to provide the Irish Government with a new text aimed at resolving the impasse on a Brexit deal today.

During a 15-minute phonecall with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the embattled prime minister said that, having consulted with the DUP and officials in London, she was preparing fresh language.

Mr Varadkar said he would review the wording with an "open mind" but that the "red-line issues" adopted by Ireland even before the referendum remained.

He said "the room to manoeuvre is small", but he believed Mrs May was "negotiating in good faith".

Following a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Taoiseach adopted a diplomatic tone in a clear attempt to calm the fractures which have developed between Dublin, Belfast and London in recent days.

He warned that the Irish Government was not so much concerned that a Border would have to be erected on the day after Brexit, but that a "creeping Border" would develop over time.

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He said the language in the deal was not a major problem for Ireland but the outcome would be.

"I think the risk is over a number of years," he said, making the case for regulatory alignment.

He said the laws in the Republic and the North did not have to be similar on everything but did need to be "sufficiently" aligned so that a "Border by stealth" didn't develop.

"It's not an attempt in some ways to impose the same laws on both sides of the Border."

Mr Varadkar also urged the UK to adopt a similar approach for England, Scotland and Wales.

He repeated that Ireland had no hidden agenda but said it wanted "normal business and normal people to continue their normal lives".

Asked to respond to DUP leader Arlene Foster's claim that Dublin blocked Mrs May from showing it the text of Monday's deal, Mr Varadkar said: "I know it's not true."

He added that the accusation made no sense since the UK government would not take instructions from Dublin, adding that he "won't be accepting any provocation from anyone on any of these matters".

The Taoiseach added that he wanted to work with Mrs May to repair the rift that had opened up in Anglo-Irish relations since the Brexit discussions began.

"I wouldn't like to be the Taoiseach and I know she wouldn't want to be the prime minister that began the unravelling of all that progress that has been made in the past 20 years," he said.

Mr Rutte said the Netherlands fully backed the Irish position and would continue to do so for as long as it took to get a deal, even if that meant delaying progress on Brexit talks into the New Year.

"I hate Brexit from every angle. I don't understand it," he said.
NORFOLK  The TransCanada pipeline company plans to hold meetings in three Nebraska cities to discuss its Keystone XL project.

Company spokeswoman Robynn Tysver says TransCanada knows that many landowners have questions about the pipeline and the alternative route approved by the Nebraska Public Service Commission last month.

The company is arranging what it's calling Landowner Engagement Centers in Columbus, Norfolk and Seward starting Monday and running through Thursday. They will open at noon and close at 8 p.m. each day. Landowners are invited to visit with company representatives at the informal gatherings.

The Divots Conference Center will be the Norfolk site. In Columbus, TransCanada officials will be at the Ramada Columbus Hotel and Convention Center. The Cobblestone Hotel will be the Seward location.
Mr Connolly said that the Eighth Amendment imposes a restriction on bodily autonomy. Stock photo: Tom Honan/PA Wire

A majority of TDs and senators on the Oireachtas Committee on Abortion will recommend repealing the Eighth Amendment.

The committee is charged with recommending to the Oireachtas the wording of the referendum on abortion due to be held next year.

A series of votes on the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly will be taken next week. Earlier in the year, the assembly voted overwhelmingly for greater access to abortion for Irish women.

At least 12 out of the 21 members of the committee say they believe the Eighth Amendment should be changed.

Since September, the committee has been hearing expert testimony from lawyers, doctors and consultants.

A debate was held yesterday in which all members discussed their views on both the committee and the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly.

Calling for the amendment to be repealed, Independent TD Claire Daly said: "The Constitution isn't the place to regulate medicine."

Meanwhile, the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference has appealed to members of the committee to "consider how society can best respond to the personal needs of women within a legal and constitutional framework which acknowledges the right to life of the unborn, together with the equal right to life of the mother".

In a statement following their winter meeting, the bishops said the removal of Article 40.3.3 "can have no effect other than to expose unborn children to greater risk".
THE Dail has passed a government proposal to join, Pesco, an organisation aimed at deepening defence cooperation among EU member states.

TDs voted 75 to 42 in favour of the decision to take part in Pesco (Permanent Structured Co-operation Agreement) despite opposition concerns about the implications of the move.

Independents4Change TD Mick Wallace had argued on Wednesday that an EU army was being created and raised concern.

He raised concern that Ireland's neutral status is already "on a pretty shaky footing" and raised fears it could be the final nail in the coffin of this policy.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar insisted that the government will defend Ireland's neutrality and said the country would be joining Pesco on an opt-in, opt-out basis.

He said Europe is "worth defending" and should not be dependent on the United States in this regard.

Mr Varadkar gave counter-terrorism initiatives, cyber-security and peacekeeping as as example of areas Ireland may participate in.

He said Ireland won't be buying aircraft carriers or fighter jets.

Labour TD Brendan Ryan had asked for a halt to the vote on Pesco membership arguing that there hadn't been enough national debate on the matter.

He referred to Mr Varadkar's remarks about how Ireland won't be entering the market for heavy weaponry but raised concern about the desire among some member states for an "increasingly militarised" EU.

Fine Gael TD Martin Heydon last night said joining Pesco will be good for the Irish Defence Forces pointing to a plan to build a peace and leadership institute at the Curragh Camp.

"I hope that our joining Pesco will lead to the advancement of that proposal," he said.

He said there's no obligation on Ireland to increase defence spending to 2pc of GDP under Pesco membership.

But he said he would like to see increased investment in Defence Forces personnel given the reduction in their allowances over the past decade.
Ms Fitzgerald insists she will be vindicated at the tribunal. Photo: Gerry Mooney

The Department of Justice has come in for stinging criticism over the level of information it has sent to the Disclosures Tribunal which is examining the treatment of Garda whistleblowers.

The Oireachtas Justice Committee heard that there was no general trawl of emails when the tribunal first sought discovery of documents and that officials forwarded items they deemed relevant to the probe.

Justice officials were grilled just over a week after tanaiste and former justice minister Frances Fitzgerald's resignation.

She fell on her sword after the emergence of emails from 2015 showed she was informed about the legal strategy being pursued by Garda management against whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe at the previous O'Higgins Commission.

Ms Fitzgerald insists she will be vindicated at the tribunal.

Acting Department of Justice secretary general Oonagh McPhillips told the committee that all three discovery orders made by the tribunal have been fully complied with. She said the email chains that sparked the recent controversy have also been forwarded to Mr Justice Charleton's probe.

The department official responsible for policing, John O'Callaghan, said the emails hadn't been found at the time when the discovery orders had been made earlier this year.

He said the staff involved in dealing with the discovery orders were "fully au fait with all of the issues" and knew the relevant documents that were available.

Under questioning by Fianna Fail TD Jack Chambers, Mr O'Callaghan confirmed that there had been no widespread electronic trawl of documents of the kind seen in recent weeks to see if there were emails that might be relevant.

Ms McPhillips said there are many thousands of documents that mention the people involved in the whistleblower issue and she didn't believe sending all of them to the tribunal would be of assistance.

Fine Gael Senator Martin Conway said he was "flabbergasted" that the department would argue that "an overload of information to the tribunal would be inappropriate".

Labour TD Alan Kelly claimed the department "effectively didn't provide the information because it wasn't asked for it", saying he found this "very alarming".

Ms McPhillips repeatedly insisted there was "no withholding" of any information.
Gardai at the scene of the fatal crash between a rental car and a truck which saw four members of the Alexander family killed in Cushinstown Co Wexford. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Grieving relatives of the Alexander family will finalise details today for the repatriation to the US of the remains of the four people killed in a horror road crash in Co Wexford.

A memorial service is expected to be held in Ireland before the remains are repatriated.

Tyrone-born Doug Alexander, his wife Lily, both aged 75, and their two sons Steven (49) and Doug Jnr (52) died when their hired car was in collision with an articulated lorry a few kilometres from New Ross on Monday evening.

They were travelling from Shannon Airport to the wake of Lily's sister Winnie at her home in Lacken, New Ross, when the crash happened. Lily and Winnie were originally from Patrickswell, Co Limerick.

The Alexanders lived in Oaklawn, Chicago. Building contractor Doug Snr, a well-known musician, was born and raised in Sion Mills in Co Tyrone. Their children were all born in America, but lived in Ireland sporadically over the years.

People in Doug's home village of Sion Mills, where his brother and other family members still live, were in "total shock" yesterday as they came to terms with the loss.

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Doug Snr's nephew Billy Cochrane, who lives in Co Donegal, said the family were "the nicest, most friendly people you could ever meet" and that his cousin Debbie, the only surviving member of the Alexander family, was devastated.

"They were very close. We are totally devastated. We just can't accept it at the minute. It just doesn't seem real.

"My uncle and aunt have a daughter Debbie who lives in America. She is the only one left now, God bless her.

"You can lose a family member, you will grieve, but when four are lost, it's different. It's hard to take in," he said.

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He said Doug Snr and his wife Lily are to be cremated in Ireland and their ashes flown back to America alongside the bodies of their sons after a memorial service in Co Wexford next week.

Steve, a police officer, and Doug Jnr, had two young daughters each back home near Chicago, he said.
A security guard who was assaulted by a group of up to six men was then locked into the boot of his own car for nine hours.

Gardai are investigating the incident in which a security guard at an Irish Rail compound was assaulted, before he was locked into a car boot.

The alleged incident occurred at approximately 5am on Tuesday morning, December 5.

Gardai report the victim to be a member of the security personal employed at the Irish Rail compound in the Kilbricken, Mountrath area in Co Laois.

The assault occurred when the victim, who arrived for work, was approached by a number of men who assaulted him and locked him into his car boot before they escaped.

Speaking on RTE Radio One's Drivetime, Irish Rail spokesperson Barry Kenny said the man was securing the compound at the time the assault occurred.

"The man was assaulted by a group of people," Mr Kenny said.

"They put him into the boot of his own car, locked him in, and stole devices from the site.

"The man remained there until his colleague arrived for the afternoon shift at 2.30pm.

"He was locked into the boot for almost nine hours, and he was injured as a result of the assault."

He continued; "He is very, very shaken. He suffered a blow to the head during the assault too.

"We obviously hope he makes a full recovery.

"It was a very distressing incident as you can understand.

"There were between five and six men involved in the attack.

"It was very much pre-meditated."

Mr Kenny said a number of items were stolen from the site and Irish Rail are currently working with gardai in a bid to recover them.

The compound where the incident occurred is in a rural area.

The assailants left the area in a vehicle, of which the make and model is unknown at this time.

Gardai said they are now investigating an incident of assault and false imprisonment.

Anyone who may have witnessed unusual activity in the vicinity are asked to contact Portlaoise Garda Station on 057 8674100 or the Garda confidential line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
At this time of year there's plenty of advice out there telling you not to get absolutely slaughtered at the company Christmas do. But what happens if you don't heed it? What happens if you're the person who is two drinks ahead of everyone else, not two behind? How do you explain your behaviour the next day if you were the one who called your boss a w***** or tried to snog Rachel in sales?

Bad behaviour is surprisingly prevalent at company dos. According to a CIPD survey in the UK, one in 10 workers knows someone who has been disciplined or sacked for inappropriate Christmas party behaviour. The top three transgressions are fighting, threatening behaviour and sexual harassment.

Closer to home, in a survey by Peninsula Ireland, more than a third of Irish workers admit that the free bar at the office Christmas party has led to a sexual encounter.

So, you wake up with a pounding head and a gummy mouth, to which your shrivelled brain quickly adds the memory of something awful. You want to crawl back under your duvet and hide until January, but unfortunately this is not an option. There's the rest of December to get through and you need to face the music, even if the music will be colleagues' laughter or, worse, their anger. "If you behaved very badly, you have to hold your hands up and admit you were in the wrong," says author and personal branding expert Jennifer Holloway. "Putting your head in the sand and pretending it didn't happen is not an option." Start by asking yourself how bad your behaviour really was. Be realistic and try and have a bit of perspective. If you've just been a bit stupid or annoying, you're probably okay. Also, how drunk was everyone else and what is your company culture like? These are important as they supply the context: if everyone else was almost as drunk as you and your company has a work-hard play-hard culture, you might still get away with it. Your table dance that ended with 30 broken glasses might be forgotten by the New Year.

If in doubt, sound out a trusted colleague. They will also be a good port of call if you can't remember what it is you did and just have a black space and a nagging sense of dread where the end of the evening should be.

Next up - the apology. Richard Maun, author of Bouncing Back And How To Keep Your Job, suggests there are two appropriate levels of apology, depending on the severity of the offence. The first, for serious but not monumental missteps, might be a bottle of wine (or other gift) and a sincere face-to-face acknowledgement of your poor conduct. "Say something like, 'I'm sorry, I was an idiot to say that and I'd like to apologise'." The second level, he adds, involves writing a letter. "This lets you get your thoughts down on paper, formulate what you want to say and allows you to manage the conversation."

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You then hand it to the boss or colleague you offended the minute you see them. "Apologies are very hard to do and this looks like a proper gesture, provides you with a bit of theatre and makes an impact."

In terms of the content of your letter, along with the fulsome mea culpa, Maun suggests you might ask the other person to nominate a charity to which you'll donate a sum of money by way of apology. This shows sincere contrition (it's costing you something) and it also sends out the right sort of message about the kind of person you really are.

In both cases, the idea is that you draw a line under your misdeed and this allows you to move on.

If, however, they do not accept your apology, the best tactic is to apologise again and say: "I understand I overstepped the mark and you are angry - what can I do to make this right?" This, at least, puts the ball in their court - and means they are the one who is preventing rapprochement.

In tandem with all this, there is a second problem to consider, and this is that your behaviour may constitute gross misconduct. Here, you need to tread very carefully.

"If you resign straight away, you have no comeback and you won't even be able to claim jobseeker's allowance. You may be better off throwing yourself at the mercy of your employer's disciplinary system," says Maun. This tack is also worth bearing in mind too if there is uncertainty about what happened or mitigating circumstances.

Someone may have flirted with you all evening and then claimed harassment when you leaned in to kiss them; that punch you swung might have been after horrendous provocation; that term of abuse could have been misconstrued.

In fact, in some circumstances, taking the formal disciplinary route and getting a written warning can be the best way out of a very bad situation.

In the medium term, Holloway says you should view repairing a damaged reputation rather like improving your Google search results. If there's a load of negative stuff on the first page, you want to push all that down on to page two or three.

The best way to do this is to become better known for your positive achievements. If you give enough brilliant presentations, people will quickly start to forget you were sick all over the table at the party.

In the longer term, she adds, you should absolutely not repeat the performance the following year.

"As soon as the Christmas season comes round again, memories will start to flood back and people reminisce. Stories will get retold."

Here, the last thing you want to do is reinforce this memory.

Of course, some incidents are never forgotten. Even this is not necessarily a disaster. A bit of notoriety can make you stand out as a character and, if you have the right kind of personality (and work in the right kind of company), you could conceivably turn this to your advantage.

However, if whatever it is you did is just cringe-inducing and embarrassing and awful - the so-called 'career-limiting move' - you may be better off looking for another job where you can start with a clean slate.
Handout photo issued by the University of Oxford of a pelvis fragment believed to be that of fourth-century saint St Nicholas who inspired the story of Father Christmas. Photo: PA

A fragment of bone said to belong to the fourth-century saint who inspired the story of Father Christmas could indeed be from the legend himself.

Researchers at the University of Oxford radiocarbon tested the relic, long venerated as the bones of St Nicholas, and found it dates from the correct historical period.

While they cannot categorically prove they are from the Christian saint, the team said the results pinpointed the relic's age to the fourth century.

"Many relics that we study turn out to date to a period somewhat later than the historic attestation would suggest," said Professor Tom Higham, director of the Oxford Relics Cluster at Keble College's Advanced Studies Centre.

"This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself."

St Nicholas, one of the most revered Christian saints, is thought to have lived in Myra, which is now modern-day Turkey.

According to legend, he was a wealthy man who was widely known for his generosity - a trait that inspired the story of Father Christmas as a bringer of gifts on Christmas Day.

Most of his remains have been held in Bari, Italy, since 1087, but over the years relic fragments have been acquired by churches worldwide.

The bone analysed in Oxford - a pelvic fragment - is owned by Fr Dennis O'Neill, of St Martha of Bethany Church, in Illinois, US.
The cocktail avocado is grown in Spain. Photo: Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer is selling a stoneless avocado that could - temporarily - give the country's accident and emergency departments a break from so-called "avocado hand".

The cocktail avocado is grown in Spain and is only available in December, when it is usually sent to the Parisian food markets and snapped up by top-end restaurants.

M&S said it had secured "some" of the elongated fruit, which measures just five to eight centimetres long but is entirely edible, including the skin.

The cocktail avocado is the result of an unpollinated blossom. The avocado develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth.

It follows the success of the mini and giant avocados sold by the retailer last year.

Earlier this year plastic surgeon Simon Eccles suggested that avocados should carry warning labels following a rise in the number of knife injuries from cutting into the fruit.

Mr Eccles, honorary secretary of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said he treated about four patients a week at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for wounds caused by an avocado accident, with staff dubbing the injury "avocado hand".

M&S agronomist Charlotte Curtis said: "We've had the mini, the giant, ready sliced and we're now launching the holy grail of avocados - stoneless.

"This amazing fruit has been on our radar for a couple of years and we're very excited to have finally been able to get hold of some for our customers to try.

"We know they will be in demand and we've only been able to get our hands on a limited amount so make sure you get them while you can."

She added: "They're perfect for snacking and lunchboxes as they can be eaten whole but can also be used for a beautiful garnish or in a salad. My top tip is to try them deep fried."

M&S first introduced the fruit in 1968 as an avocado pear, which customers enjoyed as a dessert with custard.

Avocados are packed with essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamin E, vitamin K, folate and antioxidants and contain more potassium per gram than bananas.

They are high in omega 3 fatty acids, which can help to lower cholesterol and improve heart health, and can be good for weight loss as they release slow burning energy, reducing hunger.

Cocktail Avocados are available in selected M&S stores for 2 per pack.
Karen Birney checks into the Radisson Blu Athlone for a taste of the Midlands and stonking views over the River Shannon.

Set the Mood

The sun always shines on Athlone.

Or at least that seemed to be the case when, on my second trip to the maritime town this summer, the sun broke through the cracks of a cloudy grey sky that followed me from the capital as soon as I pulled into the hotel carpark.

This visit was an altogether more subdued one to 'Ireland's Ancient East' however, as I' was swapping the rather cramped cruiser I'd shared with old college friends on the River Shannon weeks previously for the far plusher setting of a river-front suite in the newly refurbished Radisson Hotel.

The Radisson has undergone a stylish revamp since I last stopped in for a look; the new interiors are clean, cool, slick and unfussy and a newly decked terrace overlooks a glistening marina just begging to be enjoyed with a crisp G&T in hand.

That would have to wait, however. First, our group was wetting whistles with a tour of the famous Kilbeggan Whiskey Distillery... a 15-minute drive from the hotel.

Guilty Pleasure

Putting My Fitness Pal to sleep, I stepped into the oldest licensed distillery in Ireland and geared up for a tasting of a drink I'm admittedly a long way from appreciating myself.

The scent of old oak wood greeted us, and following a full tour (and weighing up the possibility of hiring the bar streaming with natural light on the first floor as an intimate wedding venue - watch this space), we tasted three whiskeys from the Kilbeggan Distillery Range.

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I decided whiskey #2 was most palatable, but that I would be limiting my purchases to stationery instead of a bottle from the adjoining gift shop.

Cheap Kick

The panoramic views of the Shannon on a sunny morning will draw you out of your room and into Athlone no matter how long you promised yourself you'd lie in.

A short and quiet run through the town is a pleasure awarded to the early risers. The only trouble is trying not to stop to take photos of the beautifully still, colourful pubs and shop fronts that really showcase their personality when there's nobody else around.

Runners and cyclists should ask about the #BluRoutes trails which have been carefully planned by the hotel's fitness staff.

Top Tip

If you find you often suffer a case of diner's envy at mealtime, go for the steak in Elements Restaurant - mine was cooked to perfection.

And don't pass on dessert. I did and the sounds my fellow diners made as they savoured their's will haunt me for many nights to come.

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Hens and stags will enjoy the evening atmosphere of one of the oldest pubs in the world, Sean's Bar on the Left Bank (seansbar.ie), which can trace its official routes back to 900AD. And while you can relax over a pint in the main bar at Sean's, the hustle and bustle of the outdoor area is never far from earshot.

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For some peace and quiet try out the less touristy Gertie Browne's on Costume Lane which serves a creamy pint and is a treasure trove of old world knick-knacks that'll keep your eyes busy for hours.

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Glitches

The Nespresso machine in the suite is a welcome addition for some. But for those unfamiliar with the concept of capsule coffee it sits like a infuriating puzzle until you find yourself in a Crystal Maze style conundrum of your own making.

I may be one of the only civilised coffee drinkers left still enjoying my morning instant, but a little 'how to' wouldn't have gone amiss. I'm sure I could have picked up the phone to just ask at reception, but I found myself 'locked-in'.

Get me there

Athlone is less than an hour-and-a-half from Dublin by car and the Radisson (radissonblu.ie/hotel-athlone) is ten minutes walk from the train station. Summer packages are available from 119.

Kilbeggan Distillery (killbeggandistillery.com) is about 15 minutes away from the hotel by car. Tours start from 14pp and run seven days a week.

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Damage limitation: Georgina Chapman is trying to save her clothing label by splitting with her husband. Photo: Getty

Georgina Chapman attends the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS 2009 Cocktail Party at the Hotel du Cap during the 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2009 in Antibes, France Photo: Getty Images

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 03: Designer Georgina Chapman attends the 11th annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards at Spring Studios on November 3, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

US producer Harvey Weinstein poses with his wife Georgina Chapman as they arrive to the 2016 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, California on February 28, 2016. / AFP / ADRIAN SANCHEZ-GONZALEZ

Co-Chairman, The Weinstein Company Harvey Weinstein (L) and fashion designer Georgina Chapman attend the 2017 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Graydon Carter at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 26, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Fashion designer Georgina Chapman is struggling through "very dark times" as she comes to terms with sexual misconduct allegations made against her estranged husband Harvey Weinstein, according to her friend Alyssa Milano.

The co-founder of luxury womenswear brand Marchesa separated from disgraced movie mogul Weinstein in October, days after he was accused of being a serial sexual predator in an initial New York Times expose.

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Many other women have since come forward with further allegations of assault, including rape, against the producer, who has denied all claims of non-consensual sex, although he has acknowledged behaving inappropriately in the past.

Milano, whose former Charmed co-star Rose McGowan was one of the first celebrities to go public with her Weinstein assault accusation, has remained in contact with Chapman to help her longtime pal through the tough time, and although she has her bad days, Alyssa is confident she will pull through.

"She goes through very dark times. She's very sad," Milano told U.S. broadcaster Megyn Kelly. "This is not easy for her, but I have no doubt that not only will she come out on the other side of this, but she deserves too. She's a good woman."

The actress reveals Georgina has been focusing on the needs of the former couple's seven-year-old daughter India and four-year-old son Dashiell, and in that part of her life, the Brit is doing "very well".

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Milano said, "She's an amazing mother. She's an amazing woman, and I think her priority right now is focusing on how to raise those two children to the best of her capacity, given the situation."

The star made her comments as she celebrated editors at Time magazine naming "The Silence Breakers", those who have recently spoken out about sexual misconduct via the #MeToo social media movement she helped to popularise, as their 2017 Person of the Year.

Responding to the news, Milano said, "It's sad, it's really sad for me, just to know that so many women hurt from this pain, but I'm also hopeful that this collective ache can really bring about something that's meaningful and powerful, and that we can change."
Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on November 27, 2017 in London, England. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been a couple officially since November 2016 and are due to marry in Spring 2018. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on November 27, 2017 in London, England. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been a couple officially since November 2016 and are due to marry in Spring 2018. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Prince Harry and his fiancee, US actress Meghan Markle, visit Nottingham for their first official public engagement together on December 1, 2017 in Nottingham, England

Prince Harry and his fiancee, US actress Meghan Markle, visit the Nottingham Academy as part of their first official public engagements togetheron December 1, 2017 in Nottingham, England

Meghan Markle meets well-wishers as she arrives with Prince Harry at the Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, to attend a Terrence Higgins Trust World AIDS Day charity fair on their first official engagement together

Britain's Prince Harry's fiancee US actress Meghan Markle greets wellwishers on a walkabout as they arrive for an engagement at Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, central England, on December 1, 2017 which is hosting a Terrence Higgins Trust World AIDS Day charity fair

Meghan Markle could be the first royal fiancee to spend Christmas with Queen Elizabeth.

The 'Suits' actress is reportedly planning to spend the festive period with her fiance Prince Harry in the UK before the pair jet out to the United States to spend the New Year with her family.

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The royal family traditionally spend Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, where they have a black-tie dinner, enjoy a full English breakfast and also go pheasant shooting.

It comes after Prince Harry revealed he proposed to Meghan Markle during a "cosy night" in.

She said: "It was a cosy night, we were roasting chicken ... and it was an amazing surprise. It was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee."

When asked if it was an immediate yes, Meghan added: "Yes! As a matter of fact, I could barely let [Harry] finish proposing."

Whilst Prince Harry shared: "She didn't even let me finish. She said 'Can I say yes'. Then there were hugs and I had the ring in my finger. I was like ' Can I give you the ring?' It was a really nice moment. Just the two of us."

Despite the pair only having dated for 16 months prior to their engagement, Meghan insists the relationship hasn't been a "whirlwind" as they had "five or six months" to get to know one another without being in the spotlight.

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Whatsapp Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce their engagement at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on November 27, 2017 in London, England. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been a couple officially since November 2016 and are due to marry in Spring 2018. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

The brunette beauty said: "I don't think that I would call it a whirlwind in terms of our relationship. There have been layers attached to how people it has become, after we had a good five, six months almost with just privacy, which was amazing. I think we were able to have so much time just to connect and we never went longer than two weeks without seeing each other even though we were obviously doing a long distance relationship. We made it work."
Handout photo released by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge of the Duke of Cambridge with his son Prince George on his first day of school

Prince George of Cambridge arrives at Berlin Tegel Airport during an official visit to Poland and Germany on July 19, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Robin Utrecht - Pool/Getty Images)

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince George of Cambridge arrive at Berlin Tegel Airport during an official visit to Poland and Germany on July 19, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Robin Utrecht - Pool/Getty Images)

Prince George stands in a rescue helicopter as his father the Duke of Cambridge adjusts a helmet for him to wear, during a visit to Airbus in Hamburg, Germany with the Duchess of Cambridge and sister Princess Charlotte. Photo credit: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte of Cambridge view helicopter models H145 and H135 before departing from Hamburg airport on the last day of their official visit to Poland and Germany on July 21, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

The picture was taken at Kensington Palace in London at the end of June by Chris Jackson Getty Images Royal Photographer. Chris Jackson/Getty Images/PA Wire

Prince George holds his father Britain's Prince William's hand as he arrives on his first day of school at Thomas's school in Battersea, London, September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Richard Pohle/Pool

Prince George arriving with the Duke of Cambridge at Thomas's Battersea in London, as he starts his first day of school. Photo: Kensington Palace/PA Wire

Britain's Prince George accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L), Duke of Cambridge arrives for his first day of school at Thomas's school in Battersea, southwest London on September 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prince George is carried by his father Prince William as they visit the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in western England, on July 8, 2016. / AFP / POOL / RICHARD POHLE

Prince George of Cambridge with Prince William, Duke of Cambridge at a children's party for Military families during the Royal Tour of Canada on September 29, 2016 in Victoria, Canada

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince George during a visit to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford on July 8, 2016 in Fairford, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

Britain's Prince George (C) accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L), Duke of Cambridge arrives for his first day of school at Thomas's school where he is met by Helen Haslem (R) head of the lower school in southwest London on September 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prince George (C) accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L), Duke of Cambridge arrives for his first day of school at Thomas's school where he is met by Helen Haslem (R) head of the lower school in southwest London on September 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prince George accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L), Duke of Cambridge arrives for his first day of school at Thomas's school in Battersea, southwest London on September 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prince George (R) accompanied by Britain's Prince William (L), Duke of Cambridge arrives for his first day of school at Thomas's school in Battersea, southwest London on September 7, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

It's been a rather cute week of Prince George updates.

After the world was gifted with a copy of his adorably simple Christmas list (he wants a police car), Prince William has revealed that his eldest son has been busy celebrating the festive season at school too. George, who enrolled at St Thomas's in Battersea, recently took on a role for his school's nativity play.

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Whatsapp Handout photo released by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge of the Duke of Cambridge with his son Prince George on his first day of school

"I went to my boys Nativity play. It was funny. He was a sheep," William said at an event in Manchester on Wednesday.

Last year, William and Kate broke tradition by spending Christmas with the Middleton family at their home in Berkshire with George and Princess Charlotte, but it's unclear where they will be spending the festive season this year. Like most married couples, they could alternate and spend Christmas Day at Sandringham Estate with the rest of the British royals - and Prince Harry's new fiancee Meghan Markle if new reports are to be believed.
Communications officer for the charity Anteneh Tadele discovered the children - all named 'Goal' - in an isolated camp in Melut, in the north-east of South Sudan

It's certainly a namesake with a difference.

An aid worker has discovered 35 babies in a remote camp in South Sudan who have all been named 'Goal' after the charity.

The South Sudanese toddlers were all named after the Irish-headquartered charity who has teams of aid workers in the area.

The children, all ranging in ages from two to four years, include a set of twin boys who were both called 'Goal'.

Communications officer for the charity Anteneh Tadele discovered the children in an isolated camp in Melut, in the north-east of the African country.

The community were once based in Baliet town, but were forced to flee during the ongoing conflict in Upper Nile State.

One mother, Nyale Bolchwal, said she named her twin boys 'Goal' after the staff who helped her deliver her babies in the clinic.

"The conflict broke out while I was pregnant," said Nyale Bolchwal.

"At that time, I was having treatment at GOALs clinic at home in Baliet and I was ready to give birth.

"When we were forced to flee, GOAL followed us and provided all the services that we needed on the way to the camp in Melut. A few days after I arrived here, the GOAL staff delivered my children safely in the clinic. I had twin boys and I named them both Goal."

At just two and half years of age, Nyales boys are too young to understand their names, but their mum said she will tell them in time.

Another mother said she named her daughter 'Goal' because her baby was delivered safely at the charity's clinic in a country where she knows that giving birth to a healthy child is not a straightforward procedure.

Nignan Bam said; "At that time, the women had so many complications at birth but when they came to GOALs clinic they were able to have the baby safely with the help of the midwife."

The mothers and babies have formed a friendship at the camp and regularly meet up for their children to play together, despite the confusion of having 35 children all bearing the same name.

The charity's Head of Programmes, Fiona Gannon, said she was astonished to hear about the children's names.

Fiona, who has worked with the organisation for 28 years, described the phenomenon as "unique".

"I have worked across many, many countries in my time as an aid worker, but I have never heard of anything like this before," she said.

"I have come across cases where mothers have named their children after someone or something that has played a significant role in the birth of their child, but to find 35 kids all called Goal in one camp is quite unique."
Cristina Fernandez was president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015

A federal judge has asked Argentina's senate to allow the arrest and trial of former president Cristina Fernandez on a charge of treason for allegedly covering up the role of Iranians in a 1994 bomb attack on a Jewish centre.

Judge Claudio Bonadio asked politicians to remove Ms Fernandez's immunity from prosecution, which she gained when she was sworn in as a senator last week.

She was president from 2007 to 2015.

The judge also ordered the arrest of several aides and allies of Ms Fernandez, including former presidency secretary Carlos Zannini and activist Luis D'Elia on the same charges.

Former foreign minister Hector Timerman was ordered held under house arrest due to health issues.

Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano said the charge of treason carries a potential prison sentence of 10 to 15 years while aggravated cover-up has a six-year penalty.

A vote of two thirds of the senate would be required to remove Ms Fernandez's immunity from prosecution.

Ms Fernandez and the other defendants have repeatedly denied wrongdoing or involvement in any cover-up involving Argentina's worst terror attack, the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.

Investigators have linked former Iranian officials to the attack, but Iran has denied any connection with the attack and declined to turn over suspects.

AP
A Chinese investment group has snapped up the Lloyds Banking Groups headquarters for an undisclosed sum in the second major foreign property deal to be announced this week.

Hengli Investments Holding Group has signed a 20-year lease on the property at 25 Gresham Street in London, which has housed the UK bank since it was constructed.

The 119,742 square foot site is the Hong Kong investors first UK purchase, according to business law firm Addleshaw Goddard, which helped advise Hengli on its acquisition.

The deal took less than four weeks to negotiate, Henglis chairman, Chen Chang Wei, said.

The firm is now keeping an eye out for further investments in London.

This is a brilliant outcome after a lot of careful research and site inspections, the chairman said.

As this is such a rare commercial property, we are particularly happy to have reached a swift mutual agreement with the seller, closing the tender in only a month.

We will continue to consider any remarkable property investment opportunities locally and internationally.

It is the second Chinese company to confirm a major commercial deal this week, as Asian demand for London property continues to grow.

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Cheung Kei Group forked out 270 million for a Canary Wharf tower that is currently let to businesses including US banking giant JP Morgan, which rents 10 floors, as well as Time Inc, American Express, Balfour Beatty and Cision Gorkana.

The company bought the site  at 5 Churchill Place  from Said holdings.

Earlier this year, Hong Kong food conglomerate Lee Kum Kee spent 1.3 billion buying out Canary Wharf Groups and Land Securitiess 50% stakes in the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in June.

Londons landmark Cheesegrater building was also sold in March to the investment vehicle of Chinese property magnate Cheung Chung Kiu for 1.15 billion.

Commenting on the Lloyds Banking Group lease, Addleshaw said it was encouraging to see deals of this size coming through despite the potential for geopolitical factors to dampen investment.

Lee Sheldon, Addleshaw Goddards co-head of real estate, said: We are certainly seeing a continuing appetite for investment and the deal pipeline remains healthy despite tough market conditions.

We are likely to see more transactions of a similar ilk in the coming months, with more money expected to pour into the UK, chiefly from Asia-based investors.
Jerusalem's old city is seen as President Donald Trump said the US now recognises the holy city as Israel's capital (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Donald Trump has shattered decades of unwavering US neutrality on Jerusalem by declaring the sorely divided holy city as Israel's capital.

The move sparked frustrated Palestinians to cry out that the US president had destroyed already-fragile Middle East hopes for peace.

Defying dire, worldwide warnings, Mr Trump insisted that after repeated peace failures it was time for a new approach, starting with what he said was his decision merely based on reality to recognise Jerusalem as the seat of Israel's government.

He also said the United States would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although he set no timetable.

"We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past," Mr Trump said, brushing aside the appeals for caution from around the world.

Harsh objections came from a wide array of presidents and prime ministers.

From the Middle East to Europe and beyond, leaders cautioned Mr Trump that any sudden change on an issue as sensitive as Jerusalem not only risks blowing up the new Arab-Israeli peace initiative led by Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, but could lead to new violence in the region.

No government beyond Israel spoke up in praise of Mr Trump or suggested it would follow his lead.

Israelis and Palestinians reacted in starkly different terms.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Mr Trump's announcement as an "important step towards peace", and Israeli opposition leaders echoed his praise.

However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Mr Trump's shift serves extremist groups that want religious war and signals US withdrawal from being a peace mediator.

Protesters in Gaza burned American and Israeli flags.

Mr Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a powerfully symbolic statement about a city that houses many of the world's holiest sites.

He cited several: the Western Wall that surrounded the Jews' ancient Temple, the Stations of the Cross that depict Jesus along his crucifixion path, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Muslims say their Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

And there are major ramifications over who should control the territory.

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish state's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has seen the city's future as indelibly linked to the "deal of the century" between Israel and the Palestinians that Mr Trump believes he can reach.

Beyond Mr Kushner, Mr Trump has dispatched other top emissaries to the region in recent months in hopes of advancing new negotiations.

Mr Trump said he was not delivering any verdict about where an Israeli-Palestinian border should lie.

Instead, he described his Jerusalem declaration as recognising the reality that most of Israel's government already operates from the city, and he suggested the US ally should be rewarded for creating a successful democracy where "people of all faiths are free to live and worship".

"Today we finally acknowledge the obvious," he said, emphasising that he would not follow past presidents who tiptoed around Jerusalem out of diplomatic caution.

US embassies and consulates around the world were put on high alert.

Across the Middle East and Europe, they issued warnings to Americans to watch out for violent protests.

In Jordan, home to a large Palestinian population, the US said it would close its embassy to the public on Thursday and urged children of diplomats there to stay home from school.

AP
A man has been charged with planning to use an improvised explosive device to blow up the gates of Downing Street before entering No 10 and making an attempt on British Prime Minister Theresa May's life.

Naa'imur Zakariyah Rahman (20) allegedly planned to launch a bomb attack on the security gates outside Downing Street before detonating a suicide vest in Number 10 in a bid to kill Mrs May.

Mr Rahman has been charged with preparing acts of terrorism and will appear in court alongside Mohammed Aqib Imran (21), who is accused of trying to join Isil.

Mr Rahman, of north London, and Mr Imran, of south-east Birmingham, were arrested by officers from the Met's Counter Terrorism Command on Tuesday, November 28.

Expand Close An artists sketch of Naaimur Zakariyah Rahman (right) and Mohammed Aqib Imran in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. Photo: Elizabeth Cook/PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp An artists sketch of Naaimur Zakariyah Rahman (right) and Mohammed Aqib Imran in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. Photo: Elizabeth Cook/PA

Both men appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday and were remanded in custody. Details of the alleged terror plot were set out to Cabinet members on Tuesday during a briefing by Andrew Parker, the head of MI5. Mr Parker revealed that British intelligence had foiled nine terror plots in the past 12 months.

The disclosures about the charges came just hours after an official report into the Manchester terror attack revealed that the suicide bomber had been flagged for closer scrutiny by security services and that the atrocity could have been averted "had the cards fallen differently".

MI5 investigators misinterpreted intelligence on Salman Abedi earlier this year and it was disclosed his case was due to be discussed at a meeting scheduled for nine days after his May attack at the Manchester Arena.

Internal reviews into the police and MI5's handling of the four terrorist attacks in Britain this year also revealed one of the London Bridge attackers had been under active investigation by the security Service.

The Westminster Bridge attacker, Khalid Masood, had also watched suicide attack videos on YouTube in the days before he carried out his assault.

David Anderson QC, a former terrorism law reviewer asked by the British Home Secretary Amber Rudd to independently check the secret internal reviews, said they were "no cause for despair" and that most attack plots continued to be broken up.

In response to his report, Ms Rudd said the blame for the attacks "lies squarely" with the terrorists. The reviews found that 22-year-old Abedi had previously been a MI5 suspect, but was not under active investigation.

In advance of the attack, officers had on two separate occasions received unspecified intelligence on him "whose significance was not fully appreciated at the time" and which could have led to his case being reopened.

"In retrospect, the intelligence can be seen to have been highly relevant to the planned attack," the report said.

Mr Anderson concluded that while it was "unknowable" if reopening the investigation would have thwarted Abedi, it was "conceivable that the Manchester attack in particular might have been averted had the cards fallen differently".

Between March and June, London and Manchester experienced four attacks killing a total of 36 people and wounding another 200. Abedi had first become an MI5 "subject of interest" in 2014, but it transpired he had been mistaken for someone else and his case was closed. It was reopened the following year on mistaken intelligence that he had contacted an Isil figure in Libya.

But though his case remained closed from that point, Abedi "continued to be referenced from time to time in intelligence gathered for other purposes. In two separate instances before the attack, intelligence was received that related to "possible non-nefarious activity or to criminality".

An automated trawl of suspects' data designed to spot closed cases that may need re-examining identified him as one of fewer than 100 individuals "out of a total of more than 20,000 closed subjects of interest, who merited further examination".
A bizarre feathered dinosaur resembling a nightmarish mutant swan has been identified by scientists.

The strange creature had a graceful swan-like neck but also scythe-like claws, a reptilian tail, and a beak lined with teeth.

Halszkaraptor escuilliei, which lived 75 million years ago, was about the size of a modern swan and is thought to have been semi-aquatic.

It walked on two legs on land, but probably used its flippered forearms to manoeuvre in water.

The dinosaur is the first of the large family of meat-eaters, called theropods, known to have adopted the lifestyle of a present day water bird.

Other theropods include the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex and agile Velociraptor, star of the movie Jurassic Park.

Dr Andrea Cau, from the Geological Museum Capellini in Bologna, Italy, said: "The first time I examined the specimen, I even questioned whether it was a genuine fossil ..

"When we look beyond fossil dinosaurs, we find most of Halszkaraptor's unusual features among aquatic reptiles and swimming birds. The peculiar morphology of Halszkaraptor fits best with that of an amphibious predator that was adapted to a combined terrestrial and aquatic ecology: a peculiar lifestyle that was previously unreported in these dinosaurs."

He added that Halszkaraptor had sickle-shaped "killer claws" on its feet similar to those of Velociraptor.

Scientists at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, used an advanced form of X-ray imaging to create a 3D reconstruction of the creature.

The scan revealed hidden details within the rock in which the fossil was embedded, including numerous teeth.

ESRF researcher Vincent Beyrand said: "We also identified a neurovascular mesh inside its snout that resembles those of modern crocodiles to a remarkable degree. These aspects suggest that Halszka was an aquatic predator."

A description of Halszkaraptor appears in the latest issue of Nature journal.

The unusually well preserved fossil skeleton was discovered in southern Mongolia before spending years in the hands of private collectors around the world.

It was one of many fossils illegally exported from Mongolia. The scientists, who acquired the specimen in 2015, plan to return it to the country.
Raila Odinga refuses to recognise the legitimacy of Kenya's president (AP)

Kenya's opposition leader has rejected US advice to cancel a planned mock inauguration of him as president, saying he does not recognise the legitimacy of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Raila Odinga alleged Thursday that dozens of Kenyans have been killed by the security forces and "nobody is talking about it.

"Yet they have the audacity to come and advise us to forget and move on."

He spoke outside a mortuary in the capital Nairobi while accompanying families collecting bodies of the police's alleged victims.

A US Embassy statement on Wednesday called Mr Odinga's planned protest event on December 12 "extra-constitutional" and urged him to cancel the event.

Mr Odinga successfully challenged Mr Kenyatta's August re-election but then boycotted a rerun vote in October, demanding electoral reforms.

Mr Kenyatta was inaugurated last week.

AP
A Palestinian steps on a poster of U.S. President Donald Trump and a representation of the American flag during a protest against the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, during a protest against the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) burn representations of an Israeli flag and a U.S. flag during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinians burn a U.S. flag during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

A damaged mosque minaret is seen as Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

A damaged mosque minaret is seen as Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

People watch as Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Palestinian protesters run for cover from teargas fired by Israeli soldiers during clashes on the Israeli border with Gaza, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

A Palestinian protester prepares to throw back a teargas canister that was fired by Israeli soldiers, during clashes on the Israeli border with Gaza, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017.(AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

A Palestinian protester throws back a teargas canister that was fired by Israeli soldiers during clashes on the Israeli border with Gaza, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

The Israeli military said on Thursday that an aircraft and a tank had targeted two posts belonging to militants in the Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel.

Sirens sounded in Israel at various locations on a day of heightened tension following demonstrations in the coastal enclave and the occupied West Bank as Palestinians protested at U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement on Wednesday that he was recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
DONALD TRUMP has announced that the US is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will soon move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Why is that a big deal?

The short answer is that the decision could lead to violent protests in Jerusalem and around the Muslim world, damage US relations with Islamic countries to whom Jerusalem is important, and derail Mr Trump's hopes of brokering peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

What is the backstory?

Jerusalem is incredibly sensitive for both political and religious reasons.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has always controlled the western half of Jerusalem. In 1967 it occupied the eastern half and today it claims the entire city as its "eternal and undivided" capital. No western country, including the US, has ever recognised that claim nor recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital in any form.

Expand Close The issue of the Al-Aqsa mosque, where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have risen to heaven, is sensitive for Muslims across the world. / Facebook

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The Palestinians say there can be no peace agreement unless they are able to have east Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state of Palestine.

In religious terms, the city is home to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.

What was the US position up until now?

The US has always refused to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The US Congress passed a law in 1995 which said that the president must move the US embassy to Jerusalem in a sign of solidarity with Israel. But the law included a get-out clause: if the president felt it would damage US security to move the embassy he could sign a waiver every six months to delay the move.

Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama all signed that waiver every six months to indefinitely delay the move.

Why is Mr Trump doing this now?

Mr Trump promised during the 2016 campaign that he would recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the US embassy there.

The issue is important to many US voters who support Israel, especially among Mr Trump's Evangelical Christian base.

Once he got into office, Mr Trump began to get briefings from US diplomats and American allies about the potential risks of moving the embassy. In recent months the White House has begun to signal that it planned to forge ahead.

Will the embassy move straight away?

No. Mr Trump is actually going to sign the waiver again to delay the move once more. But he has ordered the US State Department to begin the planning process. Construction of the physical embassy is likely to take at least four years.

Why do Palestinians care where the embassy is?

The US embassy will be built in the Jewish western half of Jerusalem. All major peace plans that have ever been seriously discussed agree that west Jerusalem will be part of Israel under a final deal. As one US official put it: "This is a recognition of reality."

So why should the Palestinians care that the US embassy is moving to west Jerusalem?

The answer is twofold. Firstly, the Palestinians have always been suspicious that the US is not an "honest broker" and that it consistently sides with Israel even though it claims to be a neutral party.

Secondly, the Palestinians have always clung to the international consensus that the status of Jerusalem can only be settled through peace talks. If that consensus begins to crumble, the Palestinians fear that other countries will follow the US lead.

What does the rest of the Muslim world think?

Arab and Muslim countries have traditionally been very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and deeply opposed to Israel. That consensus has weakened in recent years and some Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, are now eager to ally with Israel against their common foe Iran.

But even if Arab leaders are keen for peace with Israel they have to be careful about angering their populations, who are generally sympathetic to the Palestinians. So Arab leaders have made a public show of opposing Mr Trump's move.

The issue of the Al-Aqsa mosque, where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have risen to heaven, is sensitive for Muslims across the world. The mosque is built on top of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, and the question of access to the area is a perpetual source of friction.

Anything that looks like an Israeli encroachment on Al-Aqsa, which is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina could spark major protests, both among Palestinians and in the wider Muslim world. ( Daily Telegraph London)
Donald Trump said he was casting aside the "failed strategies of the past" last night as he upended 70 years of US foreign policy and forged ahead with his controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The US president's announcement was celebrated by Israel but met with fury from Palestinians, who accused him of destroying any hope of a peace deal. "We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past," Mr Trump said. "It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel." Defying warnings from world leaders, Mr Trump said he "judged this course of action to be in the best interest of the US and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians".

He said that America would become the only country in the world to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making good on a campaign promise important to many evangelical Christian and right-wing Jewish voters.

The Palestinians insist that there can be no peace deal unless they are able to have East Jerusalem as the capital of their own independent state and said Mr Trump's unilateral move had disqualified the US as peace broker.

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"These condemned and unacceptable measures are a deliberate undermining of all efforts exerted to achieve peace and represent a declaration of the United States's withdrawal from undertaking the role it has played over the past decades in sponsoring the peace process," said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant Islamist group, which controls the Gaza strip, accused Mr Trump of "flagrant aggression" and called for Muslims across the Middle East to rise up against US interests. US embassies across the Middle East bolstered their security arrangements last night in anticipation of potentially violent protests.

The decision was hailed by Israel, and Jerusalem's mayor ordered the US flag to be beamed in lights against the walls of the Old City in celebration.

"This is a historic day," said Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister. "We are profoundly grateful to the president for his courageous and just decision."

Mr Trump (below) tried to placate Palestinian anger by saying his decision did not rule out the possibility of a two-state solution, where Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and an independent Palestinian state.

"We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested issues," Mr Trump said. "The US would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides." He called "for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail".

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With Mike Pence, the US vice president, standing by his side, Mr Trump reminded US voters that both Bill Clinton and George W Bush had promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem but had reneged once in office.

"They failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering," he said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was among world leaders who expressed concern about the move. "We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement. We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace.

"The British embassy is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it," she said.

The Pope earlier said he had "deep concern" about the situation in Jerusalem and urged Mr Trump not to move ahead.

"I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city, in conformity with the pertinent resolutions of the UN," he said. Reaction was muted from most of America's Arab allies, many of whom have either official or covert relationships with Israel.

But reaction was fierce from Turkey. Bekir Bozdag, the deputy prime minister, warned that Mr Trump was "plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight".

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its president, called for a summit of Muslim leaders next week in Istanbul to discuss the situation.
A man shows a pizza cooked in the first stone oven which was used in 1889 to make the first pizza Margherita in Naples (Ciro Fusco/ANSA Via AP)

The city of Naples, often in the headlines because of its mafia violence and rubbish woes, is celebrating international recognition of its tastier side.

Unesco added the art of the Neapolitan pizza maker, or "pizzaiuolo", to its list of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity".

Neapolitan pizza making was one of 33 traditional practices from around the world that were added to the UN cultural organisation's list of "forms of expression" that are of importance to humanity.

Other winners this year were the ritual Kumbh Mela baths taken in India, Bosnian woodcarving, and the "Sega tambour" dance and song performances of Mauritius's Rodrigues Island.

In Naples, pizza makers celebrated the victory and planned to give away free pies next week at a massive street party.

Agriculture minister Maurizio Martina said Italy's campaign, launched in 2009, marked the first time Unesco had recognised a profession linked to food production.

The art of Neapolitan pizza making "involves Italian know-how based on experience, gestures and traditional knowledge passed on from generation to generation", he said in a statement.

Italy is already the country with the most Unesco World Heritage Sites at 53, including the historic centres of Rome, Naples and Florence, the entire lagoon city of Venice and the Amalfi Coast.

With the pizza makers, Italy now counts six cultural practices on the "intangible cultural heritage" list, including the "Mediterranean diet" and Cremona's violin craftsmanship.

Being added to the list involves obligations, primarily to safeguard the practice and enforce a UN treaty on protecting and promoting "intangible heritage".

Massimo Boddi, whose Univerde Foundation was responsible for gathering signatures to launch the pizza bid, said the recognition was an important victory of "tradition over globalisation" since each pie is made by hand individually.

AP
Palestinians burn posters depicting US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against the US intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

US President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, delivers remarks recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the White House in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Palestinians react during a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip

After signing, US President Donald Trump holds up the proclamation that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, during an address from the White House in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has condemned the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and called on militants to close ranks to support Palestinians.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In the statement carried by the U.S. SITE monitoring group, the Yemen-based AQAP said Trump's decision was the result of what it said were "normalisation steps" between some Gulf Arab countries and Israel.

"It is also a clear challenge to the Muslim world that sees the centrality of the Palestinian cause," the group said. "In the face of this serious events, we stand by our people in Palestine and support them' with all we possess."

Addressing Islamist militants, the group called on them to close ranks to be ready to support Palestinians and urged Muslims to help with money and weapons.

"If you do not move, God forbid, then tomorrow the holiest of places and the Muslims' Qiblah, Mecca, will be sold and you will find then no one to defend it," it said.

Expand Close White House senior advisor Ivanka Trump and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner sit behind U.S. President Donald Trump as he talks to reporters before a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst / Facebook

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Whatsapp White House senior advisor Ivanka Trump and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner sit behind U.S. President Donald Trump as he talks to reporters before a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The AQAP, which was formed in 2009 by the merger of al Qaeda's Saudi and Yemeni branches, is regarded by the United States as one of the most dangerous groups of the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

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The United States has repeatedly carried out drone strikes on members and leaders of the group, which makes remote areas in southern Yemen as its main base.

Expand Close Palestinians react during a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip / Facebook

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Whatsapp Palestinians react during a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip

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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's "unfortunate" decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was "trampling on international laws".

Expand Close US President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, delivers remarks recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the White House in Washington. Photo: Reuters / Facebook

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Whatsapp US President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, delivers remarks recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the White House in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Erdogan speaking in Athens after talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, also said Turkey wanted to see a lasting solution on the island of Cyprus, but said Greek Cypriots were avoiding talks.

Meanwhile, Germany's Merkel said, when asked about Trump recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel; "We are sticking with the U.N. resolution."
Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus (Majdi Mohammed/AP)

Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops have erupted across the West Bank while demonstrators in Gaza burned Israeli and US flags after Donald Trump moved to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger over the US president's move.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tyres on fire and threw stones at anti-riot troops.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus's birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tyres on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Mr Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians closed their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Mr Trump's decision.

Rallies were under way in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

There were no serious casualties reported in Thursday's clashes.

But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders".

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s.

But the group's capabilities are more limited now.

Gaza, Hamas's stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested.

Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tyres, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments".

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Mr Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Mr Trump's decision.

Mr Netanyahu said Mr Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Anger at the US has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia's royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the US ally.

The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said the kingdom had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the US administration's decision", describing it as "unjustified and irresponsible".

Mr Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind.

The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Mr Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Mr Trump's efforts to restart Middle East peace talks.

US embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Mr Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Mr Trump's move, the US disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The talks, stalled in recent years, have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

In parallel, Israel has steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate a deal.

Mr Abbas has not said what steps he would take, if any.

He is to meet with his closest Arab ally, Jordan's King Abdullah II, to co-ordinate positions.

Jordan plays a central role in the mounting controversy and, alongside other US allies in the region, has criticised Mr Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

The king is seen as one of Washington's most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role in Jerusalem, as religious guardian of a key Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem.

Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The consultations between the monarch and Mr Abbas will kick off a series of meetings in the Arab and Muslim world on how to respond to Mr Trump.

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet on Saturday.

Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Mr Trump's seismic policy shift.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom.

"It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Mr Erdogan said, referring to Mr Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankara's airport.

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Prosecutors in Turkey are seeking a maximum one-year prison term for a former beauty queen who was stripped of her crown over a social media posting deemed to be "insulting" to the victims of last year's failed coup.

Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday that prosecutors in Istanbul have charged 18-year-old Itir Esen with "overtly insulting a section of the public" for a remark she posted on Twitter as the country held memorials on the anniversary of the coup.

Ms Esen, who was stripped of her Miss Turkey 2017 title a day after the competition in September when the tweet came to light, denies any intent to insult.

The posting caused uproar on social media.

A court must accept the indictment before a trial date is set.

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The UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia has been called biased and anti-Serb by Russia as it closes after 24 years.

The tribunal, established by the UN Security Council in 1993 to deal with atrocities during the conflicts in the Balkans, also drew praise on Wednesday from its president, the US and many Security Council members.

It was the first international court to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide since the tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II.

At a council meeting before the tribunal ends operations on December 31 its president, Judge Carmel Aguis, said the court proved to be "a bold and innovative response to conflict" that has written "a very important page in the history of international justice and the fight against impunity".

He expressed hope that the tribunal's "legacy and judgments" will not be undermined by the dramatic death of Croat ex-general Slobodan Praljak, who took poison on November 29 after judges at the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed his 20-year-sentence for war crimes in Bosnia.

Deputy US Ambassador Michele Sison said the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia "established key precedents in international criminal law" and "has created a legacy of the greatest importance."

Russia's deputy ambassador, Petr Iliichev, disagreed. He said the court was based on "a one-sided, anti-Serb interpretation of the tragic events of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia" and didn't play an impartial and independent role.

"We are convinced that a whole range of its decisions have discredited the very idea of international justice," Mr Iliichev said.

According to the court, it indicted 161 people and concluded proceedings for all of them - convicting and sentencing 90, acquitting 19, referring 13 to national courts, and sending two to be retried by a "residual" court that is wrapping up the tribunal's work. It said 37 people had their indictments withdrawn or died.

Mr Iliichev complained that more than 60% of the convictions dealt with Serbs whose sentences totalled more than 1,000 years while the other parties to the conflict - Croats and Bosnian Muslims - often received "a range of non-guilty sentences".

Ms Sison highlighted the November 22 conviction of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces rained shells and snipers' bullets on Sarajevo and carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II at Srebrenica. He was convicted of genocide and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

Mr Iliichev called Mladic's sentence a continuation of the "politicised and biased line" against Serbs.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said her country shares the assessments that it "greatly lived up to the expectations of the international community" by fighting against impunity and ensuring accountability for war crimes.

"Equally important is the tribunal's role in giving voice to over 100,000 victims of horrific crimes," she said.

Serbia's justice minister, Nela Kuburovic, noted that Serbs accounted for 109 of the 161 people indicted by the tribunal.

"These numbers speak tellingly about the selective justice of the tribunal, especially in the context of its mandate to establish the truth about the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and bring about reconciliation," she said.

Serge Brammertz, a prosecutor for the court, said reconciliation in the Balkans remains a significant challenge, noting that convicted war criminals "continue to be seen by many as heroes, while victims and survivors are ignored and dismissed".

AP
Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, right, listens to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Maximos Mansion in Athens (Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)

The leaders of Greece and Turkey have publicly aired their grievances in a tense news conference as a two-day visit to Athens by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got off to a rocky start.

The Greek government had expressed hopes the visit, the first to Greece by a Turkish president in 65 years, would help improve often frosty relations between the two neighbours.

The Nato allies are divided by a series of decades-old issues, including territorial disputes in the Aegean Sea, and have come to the brink of war three times since the early 1970s.

But from the outset, discussions focused on disagreements.

On the eve of his visit, Mr Erdogan rattled his Greek hosts by saying in an interview with Greece's Skai television that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne should be "updated".

The treaty delineated modern Turkey's borders and set provisions for the status of the Muslim minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkey, among other issues.

In a visibly testy first meeting with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the two engaged in a thinly veiled verbal spat over the treaty and the Muslim minority, which Mr Erdogan is to visit on Friday.

"This happened in Lausanne, that happened in Lausanne. I get that, but let's now quickly do what is necessary," Mr Erdogan told Mr Pavlopoulos.

"Many things have changed in 94 years. If we review these, I believe that all the sides will agree that so many things have to (change)."

The spat continued during Mr Erdogan's appearance at an unusually candid joint news conference with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The two listed a series of grievances their countries have with each other, including religious and minority rights, the divided island of Cyprus and the case of 10 Turkish servicemen who have applied for asylum in Greece following a Turkish government crackdown after a failed coup last year.

"It is very important to strengthen our channels of communication, and this can only happen on the basis of mutual respect," Mr Tsipras said.

The prime minister said the two also discussed tension in the Aegean, where Greece complains Turkish fighter jets frequently violate its airspace.

"The increasing violations of Greek airspace in the Aegean and particularly the simulated dogfights in the Aegean pose a threat to our relations, and particularly a threat to our pilots," Mr Tsipras said.

For his part, Mr Erdogan insisted once more that the Lausanne treaty needed to be reviewed, but stressed his country had no territorial claims on its smaller neighbour.

On the topic of the Muslim minority in Greece - which the country recognises only as a religious minority, while Turkey has long pressed for better rights - Mr Tsipras said his government agreed that improvements must be made in their quality of life.

"But issues that concern reforms involving Greek citizens are not an issue of negotiation between countries," he said.

Mr Tsipras noted it was unclear exactly what Mr Erdogan was seeking with his call for an update to the 1923 treaty.

"The truth is I am a little confused about what he is putting on the table," he said.

Greeks have been aghast at Mr Erdogan's comments in the past over possibly revising the Lausanne treaty, considering the move could harbour territorial claims.

His bringing up the issue on the eve of and during his visit to Athens was not a move welcomed by his hosts.

Mr Erdogan and Mr Tsipras also sparred over the issue of Cyprus, divided since a 1974 Turkish invasion into a Turkish-occupied north and an internationally recognised Greek Cypriot south.

Another round of internationally brokered peace talks to reunify the island failed earlier this year.

"Who left the table? Southern Cyprus did ... We want the issue to reach a fair and lasting solution but that is not southern Cyprus's concern," Mr Erdogan said.

Mr Tsipras retorted: "My dear friend, Mr President, we must not forget that this issue remains unresolved because 43 years ago there was an illegal invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus."

Mr Erdogan also raised the issue of Athens having no official mosque, to which Mr Tsipras responded by saying Greece had restored several mosques around Greece, including a centuries-old mosque in central Athens.

The refugee crisis appeared to be the only issue the two sides did not disagree on, with both noting they had shared a significant burden of the migration flows into the European Union.

More than a million people crossed from Turkey through Greece at the height of the crisis.

AP
BURLINGTON  After hitting some unexpected delays and expenses, the Burlington pool project is back on track for its opening in May, according to city officials.

City Administrator Carina Walters reported to the Burlington Committee of the Whole on Tuesday that Reesmans Excavating and Grading discovered the pools site was covered with 6 feet of topsoil, which had to be removed. The extra earthwork added another $150,000 to the budget.

The project has also incurred increased costs due to an additional high dive, more air-conditioning in the concession stand, fire alarms, the sound system and security.

Walters said those costs have been accounted for under the projects contingency fund which makes up $705,025 of the overall $5.3 million budget. So far, $243,494 of the contingency fund has been spent, leaving $461,531.

The committee was asked to approve an additional $28,075 for extra chairs and $48,962 in concession stand equipment for a total of $77,037 that would be taken from the contingency fund.

Jeanne Otter from the Pool Board presented the list of equipment it plans to buy, including machines for slushies, soft-serve ice cream and popcorn for the concession stand, along with pricing from four potential sources.

The board debated spending more from the contingency fund this early in the construction process. Alderman Tom Preusker said he didnt feel like it was the citys obligation to furnish the pool and concession stand.

I dont like that were two months into an eight-month process and were two-thirds through the contingency fund, he said.

Alderman Bob Grandi argued that since the prices for items will go up after the new year, it was best to, give the board everything they need to be successful.

Alderman Jon Schultz asked Pool Board representative Scott Hoffman if the Pool Board was going to be making future requests for funds. Hoffman said the Pool Board was trying to be as fiscally responsible as possible, but he couldnt guarantee anything because the board members are still learning.

Were trying to look under every rock, Hoffman said.

Walters said shed been assured by contractors that the project was past the most difficult phase, so theres a reduced risk of further financial surprises.

In the end the Committee of the Whole approved the purchases.

The pool was also officially named the Burlington Community Aquatic Center.

In other business:

Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave stopped by the meeting on Tuesday to give an update on the county budget, which included $100,000 for the new pool. Delagrave said there is $750,000 of financial support available for existing businesses to assist with adjustments they might have to make due to the Foxconn development.

Which could include businesses in the city of Burlington who may be facing wage pressures or innovative pressures with the Foxconn development, he said. While we feel that Foxconn is mostly good news, we know that existing businesses face certain challenges with Foxconn coming in.

The Common Council approved the proposed 2018 budget, which includes a 75-cent increase on the tax rate from 2017. For 2018, the tax rate is estimated to be $9.87 per $1,000 in value.

Finance Director Steve DeQuaker said he expects the city will close TIF district III sometime in 2018, which would bring the mill rate down for 2019.

The council also approved a storm water management analysis of the southern side of the city along McHenry Street, which serves several industries including Lavelle Industries, Ardaugh Group, KW Precasting and Cretex Materials.

Walters said the study was prompted by the flooding incidents in September 2016 and July 2017. Speaker Robin Vos of the Wisconsin Assembly met with Walters and business owners along McHenry Street and allocated $50,000 from the Department of Natural Resources for the study.
New Delhi, Dec 7 (IBNS): Southern Naval Command continued to undertake Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) material support, over Southeast Arabian Sea and L& M islands in the aftermath of cyclonic storm Ockhi for the eighth consecutive day.

Nine naval ships and four types of aircraft (P8I surveillance aircraft, Dornier aircraft, Seaking and ALH helicoters) continued to be deployed for search and rescue.

INS Jamuna provided fresh water in excess of 12000 Lts on Thursday at Kavaratti even as work is in progress to repair the damaged desalination plant. The ship would be providing fresh water to the island for next five days.

INS Sharda reached Minicoy in the morning with consignment of HADR material comprising fresh water, medicines, food, clothing and blankets.

In addition, the ship had also carried other essentials like emergency lights, petrol, portable 10 KVA power generators, UPS, rechargeable torches, tarpaulin, electrical tool kits, boiler suits and a Public address (PA) system with speakers. However, the items could not be delivered on Thursday due to non availability of barge from Minicoy and these will now be delivered on Friday.


During the quarter, Jet Airways also reduced its net debt by INR 194 cr.



Despite an increase in the Brent fuel price, the overall CASK dropped due to the airlines ongoing efforts to improve operational efficiencies throughout its business.

CASK-excluding fuel fell by 5.3 percent to INR 3.07 against INR 3.24 in Q2 FY17 - in line with Jet Airways plan to achieve a 12-15 percent reduction in non-fuel CASK over the next 8-10 quarters.



Jet Airways continued to take steps to strengthen its domestic network footprint by augmenting services between emerging cities such as Jaipur, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Udaipur and Indore during the quarter, in order to facilitate the rising demand as well as travel aspirations of guests from these fast-growing cities.



Vinay Dube, Chief Executive Officer, Jet Airways, said, The weak demand in the Gulf continues, whilst low fares as well as yields in the domestic market have limited the ability to offset the increase in fuel prices. In line with our commitment to offer guests a superior experience, we continue to grow our domestic presence while keeping a tight control on costs, reflecting in the reduction in non-fuel CASK."

"Jet Airways also derived significant operational and business advantages via synergies with its strategic partner - Etihad Airways, as well as other codeshare partnerships, carrying a growing and significant number of global travellers across its 64 destination network, including gateways at Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Paris and London, said he.



The airlines focus in connecting global travellers as a result of its cooperation with codeshare partners such as Air France-KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines, drew robust dividends and the airlines percentage of alliance revenues went up by 8% during the recent Quarter.



In the same period, India's premier international airline also forged an industry-first partnership with Airbnb - the world's leading community-driven hospitality company allowing it to offer a wide spectrum of rapidly growing, global hospitality choices to guests from India and establishing a deeper connect with the new-age Indian traveller, who is increasingly seeking unique and interesting experiences while travelling in India as abroad.


New Delhi, Dec 7 (IBNS) : India on Thursday clarified that a UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost control and strayed across the LAC and the Government has maintained all established protocols to inform the Chinese authority.

The statement, made by the Ministry of Defence, was issued in response to the media article by Xinhua News Agency that an Indian drone had invaded the Chinese territory violating the country's territorial sovereignty.

The Defence Ministry statement said : An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC in the Sikkim Sector."

" As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," it said.

The statement added that in response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV.

"The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas.

Earlier in the day, the Chinese state media on Thursday claimed that an Indian drone had "invaded" China's airspace and crashed.

"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," Xinhua news agency cited the deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, as saying.

The incident comes months after India and China ended one of the worst border standoffs at the Doklam tri-junction.

In August, both the countries pulled back their troops to resolve a tense deadlock over part of the Doklam plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan.
Jaipur, Dec 7 (IBNS) : Police on Thursday arrested a man after a Muslim labourer was hacked to death in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan on Wednesday over alleged love Jihad, media reports said.

The police found the body and identified the victim as Mohammed Afrazul, 48, from Malda in West Bengal.

A video went viral on social media that shows a man, who the police identified as Afrazul, being hacked to death.

The assailant in the video, Rajsamand resident Shambhulal Regar, has been arrested.

The Rajasthan Government said that a Special Investigation Team has been set up to inquire into the incident.

The police have also detained eight aides of the accused and a woman.

A case under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearing of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered.
New Delhi, Dec 7 (IBNS): Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has asked his senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar to apologise for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi "neech aadmi" or "low person".

Disapproving Aiyar's comment, Rahul tweeted: "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said."

BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 7, 2017

Aiyar, later while interacting with media, said he will apologise if "neech aadmi" literally means "low born" but what he meant was "low".

Aiyar, who had once called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "chaiwala" or "tea-seller", on Thursday attacked the PM calling him "neech aadmi" or "low person" after the latter took a jibe at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at the inauguration of the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre.

Aiyar's comment came after the Prime Minister took a swipe at Rahul during the inauguration of the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre by calling the Congress' would be President a Shiva devotee.

Modi said some parties were seen to talk more about Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Babasaheb.

Reacting to Modi's jibe at Rahul, Aiyar told media: "Modi is a very cheap type of a person, he has no manners and always has a tendency to play petty politics."

Both Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were quick to respond to Aiyar's comment.

In a series of tweets, Modi has tried to snub Aiyar's comment. In one of his first tweets, the PM said: "I have nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling me Neech'. This is the Congress mindset. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box."

"They can call me 'Neech'- Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, Tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language we will do our work."

They can call me 'Neech'- Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, Tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language we will do our work: PM @narendramodi  narendramodi_in (@narendramodi_in) December 7, 2017

"I beg to the people of India- please let them be. Let them keep calling me 'Neech' we will not respond. In our hearts we do not have this mindset and want to congratulate them for theirs. If anything- we will answer them for their mindset by our votes on 9th and 14th" Modi tweeted later.

I beg to the people of India- please let them be. Let them keep calling me 'Neech' we will not respond. In our hearts we do not have this mindset and want to congratulate them for theirs. If anything- we will answer them for their mindset by our votes on 9th and 14th: PM  narendramodi_in (@narendramodi_in) December 7, 2017

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, on behalf of the ruling BJP, held a press conference to attack the Congress over Aiyar's comment. Prasad said the comment reflects the "feudalistic and arrogant thinking" of the Congress party.

"It is the feudal, arrogant thinking that only they (Congress) can rule India and no one else," the Union minister said.

Prasad believes the comments from the Congress party "are a part of a design to demean our PM because he is born of a poor family. It is an insult to poor people of India and Gujarat."

He also said Aiyar's comment had full approval of Congress' would be President Rahul Gandhi.
Kolkata/New Delhi, Dec 7 (IBNS) : Condemning the horrific murder of a Muslim labourer in Rajasthan, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday wrote on Twitter: How can people be so inhuman. Sad.

The labourer, Afrazul Khan, was hacked and then burnt alive over an alleged affair.

His family, which lives in West Bengals Saiyadpur, Malda district, has demanded the guilty be hanged.

The police found the body and identified the victim as Mohammed Afrazul, 48.

A video went viral on social media that shows a man, who the police identified as Afrazul, being hacked to death.

The main accused in the case, Shambhulal Regar, was arrested and his 14-year-old nephew, who filmed the crime, detained.

CPI(M) General secretary Sitaram Yechury also was among those who condemned the killing.

Yechury claimed the killing was a result of the atmosphere of hate and communalism fostered by the ideology of the Sangh Parivar.

Modi govt and BJP state govts refuse to act and their inaction patronises such barbarity, he tweeted.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and Rajasthan in-charge, Kumar Vishwas mocked Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje saying even shame is embarrassed, but not you.

Queen Vasundhara, this is the black earnings which your incapable government and intelligent people have given to this country of love. Even shame is embarrassed, but not you, he said.
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New Delhi, Dec 7 (IBNS): After Rahul Gandhi's disapproval, Congress senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar issued an apology on Thursday stating that he did not use "neech aadmi" to mean Prime Minister Narendra Modi's caste.

Speaking to media, Aiyar said: "My mother tongue is not Hindi and I do not use any filthy words. I did not mean low born when I used the word "neech aadmi". However, if my language has caused damage to the Congress party in Gujarat, I apologise, I apologise for using a word which can be interpreted into some other meaning."

Aiyar, who had once called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "chaiwala" or "tea-seller", on Thursday attacked the PM calling him "neech aadmi" or "low person" after the latter took a jibe at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at the inauguration of the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre.

Disapproving Aiyar's comment, Rahul tweeted: "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said."

Aiyar's comment came after the Prime Minister took a swipe at Rahul during the inauguration of the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre by calling the Congress' would be President a Shiva devotee.

Modi said some parties were seen to talk more about Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Babasaheb.

Reacting to Modi's jibe at Rahul, Aiyar told media: "Modi is a very cheap type of a person, he has no manners and always has a tendency to play petty politics."

Both Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were quick to respond to Aiyar's comment.

In a series of tweets, Modi has tried to snub Aiyar's comment. In one of his first tweets, the PM said: "I have nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling me Neech'. This is the Congress mindset. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box."

"They can call me 'Neech'- Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, Tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language we will do our work."

"I beg to the people of India- please let them be. Let them keep calling me 'Neech' we will not respond. In our hearts we do not have this mindset and want to congratulate them for theirs. If anything- we will answer them for their mindset by our votes on 9th and 14th" Modi tweeted later.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, on behalf of the ruling BJP, held a press conference to attack the Congress over Aiyar's comment. Prasad said the comment reflects the "feudalistic and arrogant thinking" of the Congress party.

"It is the feudal, arrogant thinking that only they (Congress) can rule India and no one else," the Union minister said.

Prasad believes the comments from the Congress party "are a part of a design to demean our PM because he is born of a poor family. It is an insult to poor people of India and Gujarat."

He also said Aiyar's comment had full approval of Congress' would be President Rahul Gandhi.


Gaza, Dec 7 (IBNS) : Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has called for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"This Zionist policy supported by the US cannot be confronted unless we ignite a new intifada," media reports qouted the head of the armed Palestinian Islamist movement that runs Gaza as saying during a speech.

Worried that the recrimination could disrupt reconciliation efforts, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza to meet Hamas.

Protests broke out in Gaza following the call, with dozens of Palestinians gathering at two points on the border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side.

In cities inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" and burning tyres.

Meanwhile, at a NATO summit in Brussels, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu didn't mince his words ahead of the US president's anticipated declaration.

"It's going to be a grave mistake. Grave mistake. It will not bring any stability, peace but rather chaos to the region," Cavusoglu said.

The EU and other key allies including France and Britain have also voiced their concern about the expected move.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: "We view the reports that we've heard with concern because we think that Jerusalem obviously should be part of the final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a negotiated settlement that we want to see. And we have no plans ourselves to move our embassy."

Pope Francis also expressed his profound concern. In his weekly address he called for Jerusalem's current status to be respected.

"I cannot hide my deep concern about the situation that has developed in the last days and, in the meantime, I make an urgent appeal to everybody to respect the status quo of the city.......and I pray that wisdom and prudence can prevail to avoid adding new elements of tension in a world scenario already convulsive."

Amid fears of a violent backlash over Trump's expected announcement, US Government employees working at the American consulate in Jerusalem have been told to avoid going into the old city.
New York, Dec 7(Just Earth News): An acute hunger emergency ravaging Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)s strife-torn Greater Kasai region could transform into a long-term disaster if additional resources are not made available urgently, the United Nations food relief agency warned on Thursday.

 Without immediate donor support, many  particularly women and children  will die, said Claude Jibidar, the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) operations in the DRC.

The eruption of violence in what used to be a poor but peaceful region has claimed countless lives and forced nearly 1.4 million people from their homes.

The crisis has also resulted in traditionally high malnutrition rates to sky-rocket and according to estimates, 3.2 million people are desperately short of food, the UN agency said.

A lull in fighting has allowed more staff to be deployed [and] aid workers have fanned out into the Kasai countryside. [We have] co-ordinated multi-agency logistics and humanitarian flights, it added.

WFP has been working against the clock to help ever more people. Its efforts have helped a population that is growing rapidly by the day  from 42,000 people assisted in September to 115,000 in October and 225,000 in November.

However, money is quickly running and WFP plans to feed almost half a million people in December seem impossible as its resources are so depleted that only half-rations can be distributed.

At the same time, donor assistance is extremely scarce.

Hunger not only puts lives at risk: it is forcing people into prostitution and increasing the risk of sexual violence, stressed Jibidar, calling on Government partners to do all in their power to spare Kasai from the kind of decades-long humanitarian catastrophe that has plagued other DRC regions
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RACINE COUNTY  Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has requested the Wisconsin Department of Transportation conduct a safety analysis of the intersection at Highway 11 and Interstate 94 in Racine County.

The life of a 20-year-old Pleasant Prairie resident was cut short following an accident near the northbound entrance ramp of the interstate, he said in the email request to Brett Wallace, southeast region director of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Because of this tragic incident, my office has had many inquiries about the safety at that location.

Vos met with Wallace Tuesday to discuss transportation projects in Racine County.

A preliminary investigation of the Nov. 26 fatality indicates a semi was westbound on Highway 11 and was making a left turn onto the northbound ramp to the Interstate. An eastbound passenger vehicle  driven by the 20-year-old  struck the trailer portion of the semi and became wedged underneath, the release states. That woman, Shauntia Renel Brooks-Dobbs, died at the scene.

The Foxconn project

Its important that a thorough review is conducted as this area is expected to see a significant increase in traffic due to the Foxconn development project, Vos said.

In addition, with the forthcoming expansion of the interstate, this study must be done in a timely fashion in order to allow for a robust public discussion to determine if certain improvements are necessary to ensure traffic safety.

As part of the $10 billion Foxconn manufacturing campus, the state is widening I-94 and reconstructing the frontage roads.

The seven miles of frontage roads between highways 20 and KR in Racine County will be included in upcoming highway reconstruction.

Mike Pyritz, regional communication manager for the Southeast Region with the state Department of Transportation, said in an interview with The Journal Times on Dec. 1 that The department is always willing to look at how an intersection works  we will adjust to the changes accordingly.

Among the changes that could be considered for the intersection are a four-way stop, turn lanes with flashing lights or stoplights, Pyritz said.

While there is construction planned at Highway 11, Pyritz said at the time there were no plans in the works to change the configuration of the interchange.

Currently the highway on- and off-ramps at Highway 11 are circular, meaning drivers drive a 180-degree half circle before getting on or off the interstate. That is in contrast to diamond interchanges that have a straight path on or off the interstate.

Pyritz said it would be difficult to build a diamond interchange at Highway 11 because there is an overpass just north of Highway 11 that could affect on- and off-ramps. Also, he said, DOT tries to minimize the impact on property owners when there is a viable alternative.

Later this month, DOT will host a meeting in Racine County at which residents will be able to ask questions about upcoming construction, including Highway 11, Pyritz said.
August Ames, an adult movie star, was found dead in California on Tuesday morning in what seems like an apparent suicide.

Her grieving husband confirmed the news and said, She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me. Please leave this as a private family matter in this difficult time.

being a gross kid with #KevintheCat in my NEWWWW @shopsinslife @coyotelovesyou SHIRT playing and hanging out wivvvv @emmahixofficial  A post shared by August Ames (@msmaplefever) on Dec 3, 2017 at 11:15pm PST

Although the police said that there was no indication of foul play, Ames's death indicates that she fell prey to cyber bullying.

Close friends have said that she was suffering from long-term depression. They fear she could have ended her own life.

my eyelashes weigh more than I do A post shared by August Ames (@msmaplefever) on Nov 30, 2017 at 10:47pm PST

The actress was branded a "homophobe" after voicing her concerns about a co-star who had previously acted in gay films.

She tweeted on December 3,

whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews , youre shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say Do agents really not care about who theyre representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 3, 2017

Sorry, it was just my opinion. My body, my rules. Honestly Im sorry if I offended anyone.  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 4, 2017

The conversation continued over the next couple of days,

Hi August, we're doing a story on you and this tweet. Why is it an issue if you (or any lady) shoots a scene with a guy who has shot gay porn? How does this represent something that agents don't "care about"? And, what does this have to do with "homework" on your body?  Str8UpGayPorn (@Str8UpGayPorn) December 4, 2017

NOT homophobic. Most girls dont shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety. Thats just how it is with me. Im not putting my body at risk, i dont know what they do in their private lives. https://t.co/MRKt2GrAU4  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 3, 2017

How am I homophobic if I myself am attracted to women? Not wanting to have sex with gay men is not homophobic; they dont want to have sex with me either so byeeeee  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 3, 2017

Choose who YOU want to work with

Dont do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable

Share your thoughts

Hmm. Well, I did all three, and twitter took a dump on me  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 4, 2017

Most girls I know DONT work with crossovers! Loving all the love and help ladies https://t.co/Qj9fiNBado  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 4, 2017

Soon after, she faced ire from many of her colleagues, both male and female actors. Actor Eli Hunter said, Its extremely unfair to be black listed because a ridiculous naive stigmatism created by unethical homophobes."

I have been doing films for over 8 years and have never contracted anything because my health and safety comes first. So yes, offence taken," Hunter added.

Contactsssss A post shared by August Ames (@msmaplefever) on Nov 28, 2017 at 7:04pm PST

Nick Capra said Ames may be the stupidest woman Ive come across in 15 years of this industry. Next time use your brain when openly being a c*** on Twitter," he said.

Ames had starred in 270 adult movies and won two Adult Video News awards after starting work in the industry three years ago.

Several people from the industry took to Twitter to express their shock and grief on Ames's passing.

Ames sent out her last Tweet on December 5,

fuck yall  August Ames (@AugustAmesxxx) December 5, 2017

If cyberbullying is the reason why Ames took her own life, it's saddening to know that yet another life has been lost to it.
As they say, you are not remembered for the status you hold or the wealth you gather, but youll be remembered for you deeds and work instead.

For many people, Shashi Kapoor has been an icon and will be one until eternity. The actor who passed away at the age of the 79 will forever live in the hearts of his fans.

The legendary star doesnt have fans in India only, he also ruled the hearts of those in Pakistan. After he passed away, residents of Peshawar organised a candle vigil called Pride of Peshawar outside the Kapoor Havelihis ancestral homeon Dec. 4.

The Kapoor Haveli, situated in the Dhaki Nalbandi area in the interiors of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, was built by Kapoors grandfather Dewan Basheswarnath Singh Kapoor in the early 20th century.

Cultural Heritage Council (CHC) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa paid a tribute to the Hindi cinema star, who passed away on December 4 at the age of 79. The event was attended by several people from different walks of life, including cinema lovers.

Shashi Kapoors memorial held in Peshawar - outside his fathers Prithviraj Kapoors house where his elder brother Raj Kapoor was born. He visited the house in the late 90s.. pic.twitter.com/K4bvDOj7BM  Ammara Ahmad (@ammarawrites) December 6, 2017

Speaking on the occasion, CHC secretary Shakeel Waheedullah said the veteran actor always remembered Peshawar as the home of his ancestors. It was the love for his roots that prompted Kapoor to visit the city back in 2000.

Shakeel added, Peshawarites have great love and respect for the Kapoor family and Bollywood actors belonging to the ancient city.

Peshawar owns Shashi Kapoor too: People from all walks of life gathered at his haveli at Dahki Nalbandi, Qissa Khawani Bazaar, Peshawar.

Photo by @rifatorakzai pic.twitter.com/2Z0X0Qvo03  Ammara Ahmad (@ammarawrites) December 6, 2017

It was in 1942 that the head of Kapoor family sold the house and migrated to Mumbai.
Have you noticed that the sparrow, a bird that once could be spotted all over the city is now a rare sight? The friendly chirp that once filled the air is now a rarity.

And its not an isolated case. Its happening to sparrows in the city and to the tigers in the jungles. The Living Planet Index (LPI) shows a 52 percent decline between 1970 and 2010, stating that biodiversity has declined massively in the last 35 years.

And its us humans who are to blame. We have killed them, used them, and exploited them for our own needs.

Heres a list of animals that we are on the verge of losing due to what we have done to the planet:

1. Vaquita

wildfor

Predominantly found in the Gulf of California, the Vaquita is the worlds rarest marine mammal. A porpoise, this animal was not discovered until 1958 and just a few years after that, it touched the line of extinction.

Illegal fishing and debris in the sea are taking its life away.

2. Mountain Gorilla

wwf

Another animal so commonly found and seen in the movies, the Mountain Gorilla is one of the two subspecies of the eastern gorilla and an extremely rare animal that suffers massive threat from poaching, habitat destruction, and disease.

They can only be found in just two places in the world: Central Africa and Uganda.

3. Amur Leopard

altaconservation

This member of the cat dynasty is a very rare and critically endangered leopard that has adapted to life in the temperate forests of Southeast Russia and Northeast China. As per data that was collected in 2015, there are less than 60 in the world today.

4. Glaucous Macaw

birdbreedscentral

Another gorgeous animal thats a large neotropical parrot is already extinct now. They were last recorded in 1960 and are considered to non-existent; however, some claim that they are there somewhere in the deep jungles of South America.

5. Great Indian Bustard

Youtube

Weighing more than 18 kg, the great Indian Bustard is undoubtedly one of the heaviest flying birds and we are losing them because of change in habitat system and poaching. The decimated population has reached a point where there are just 200 of them left in India and Pakistan.

6. Florida Panther

Typepad

These Panthers have been idealised in several cartoon and movies, but lets take a minute to know how they are doing in real life. The species is now endangered and there only just 20 of them in the wild. The recent headcount tells us that there has been an increase in number, but the big cat still faces countless challenges in its fight for survival.

7. Angonoka Tortoise

ThoughtCO

Native to Madagascar, the land of diversity, the Angonoka Tortoise is easily the most endangered tortoise in the world. They are only found in certain regions of Northwest Madagascar. They are poached and killed for their distinctive look and beautifully decorated carapace.

8. Singapore Stream Crab

wrscomsg

Discovered just recently in 1986, the Singapore stream crab are found in the live streams of Singapore and are going extinct due to rapid urbanization. Locals often hunt them as food. They only reach about 3 cm in width.

9. Madagascan Fish Eagle

Wiki Commons

Another gem from Madagascar, the Fish Eagle is a bird of prey. Close to 63 cm long, their population is in rapid decline as they are threatened by habitat destruction and persecution. The current wild population of this bird in the wild is estimated to be around 120 breeding pairs.

10. Mexican Wolf

LA Times

Also known as el lobo, this they roved in thousands across the Unites States. However, the rapid change brought about by urbanisation and too much intervention by humans in their habitat, has seen their population dwindling. To keep them safe, a small group of Mexican wolves was released back into the wild in Arizona from the zoo.

11. California Condor

La Times

A majestic North American bird, the condor has a wingspan of 3 m. Its a new world vulture and arguably the largest; sadly, it became extinct in the wild in 1987. Their numbers drastically declined in the 20th century due to poaching, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction. The condor is a significant bird to many Californian Native American groups and plays an important role in several of their traditional myths.

Can we say that better preservation of the earth we were given could have saved these animals? Can we say that our poaching and unhealthy intervening habits have killed so many species that its difficult to get them back now? Can we say that if not the past, we are willing to change the future with our actions?

Can we?
We spend most of our day in the office, so its only fair that employers throw in some perks and benefits that make the long hours and hard work less tiring. But some companies go the extra mile in looking after their employees. Leading the pack are companies like Airbnb, IKEA, and Netflix, who offer an array of perks that go beyond standard vacation and sick days.

1. Netflix

The online streaming service provider does more than just give subscribers the opportunity to binge-watch shows when they arent working. The company offers a years worth of paid leave to new mothers and fathers. Throughout the year, the new parents can return part-time or full-time depending on their need and take time off as needed.

netflix

2. Airbnb

Airbnb literally lives up to its name. The company offers its employees an annual stipend of $2,000 so that they can travel and live in any Airbnb listing around the world. Airbnb employees are indeed very lucky.

airbnb

3. Adobe

Adobes required time off is a perk that we all can get behind. The company gives its employees one entire week off in December and one week over the summer. During these two weeks, the company downs its shutters so that everyone can enjoy time off work without feeling guilty.

adobe

4. Starbucks

Starbucks offers full tuition reimbursement to its employees. This benefit covers Starbucks partnership with Arizona State University where the companys employees can earn their bachelors degree with full tuition coverage.

starbucks

5. Accenture

Accenture proudly supports the LGBT community and constantly strives to build an inclusive environment for the members of the community. As part of this initiative, the company even supports gender reassignment for its employees.

accenture

6. Google

Google is world famous for its swanky workplaces and employee benefits. Its a lesser known fact that the company offers a death benefit to its employees wherein the surviving spouse or partner of a deceased employee receives 50 percent of their salary for the next ten years.

google

7. Southwest Airlines

There are many perks to enjoy if one works with an airline company. But Southwest Airlines does it differently. The biggest perk of working at Southwest is that all employees get free unlimited travel packages for themselves and their eligible dependents.

southwest

8. Twitter

When employees arent tweeting, they are enjoying three catered meals a day. But this is a well-known benefit that the company provides its employees. In addition, employees are also treated to on-site acupuncture and improv classes.

twitter via cnbc

9. Deloitte

At Deloitte, employees can avail two kinds of sabbatical programmes. First, a month-long sabbatical can be availed for any reason. Second, a three- to six-month break can be taken to pursue personal or professional growth opportunities. Employees can avail the latter with 40 percent pay.

deloitte

10. Walt Disney Company

At the Happiest Place on Earth, employees of the Walt Disney Company are literally happy. The company provides its employees - along with their families and friends - free admission to all its parks. They also get discounts on hotels and merchandise.

walt disney

11. Salesforce

The company takes its corporate social responsibility seriously. Employees at Salesforce get six days of paid volunteer leave every year so that they can spend time on social work. In addition, the company also gives employees $1,000 to donate to a charity of their choice.

salesforce

It is imperative for companies to not only retain their employees but also keep them happy and interested at work. Perks and benefits go a long way in achieving this.
Aryasthan, Janesthan, Huansthan, Rohansthan, Nehasthan, Meerasthan  the new Rajasthan tourism advertisement campaign titled Jaane Kya Dikh Jaye  is hard to miss. Rajasthan, with all its golden sand, majestic forts and romantic lakes, is touted to be the most colourful state in India, or at least the Rajasthan government ensures to maintain a vivid image.

The advertisements, prefixed with the name of the tourists, capture everyones heart.

However, from being the most-loved tourist destination, Rajasthan is headed towards becoming a state of intolerance and extremism. Those bright and rich advertisements are a sham and stand in stark contrast to the ground reality.

On December 7, a migrant Muslim labourer, identified as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh, from West Bengal was burnt alive for allegedly committing 'love jihad' in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district. The video of the detestable crime has been making rounds on social media. This is the most recent incident in the horrid history of Rajasthan and what followed right after the start of 2017 is even more unsettling.

On April 1, 2017, Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old dairy farmer from Nuh, Haryana was attacked and murdered by a group of 200 Hindu cow vigilantes affiliated with right-wing groups in Alwar, Rajasthan. Khan was travelling to Jaipur to purchase dairy cattle hoping to increase milk production for the upcoming holy month of Ramadan. On his way back to Haryana, Khan was stopped on Jaipur-Delhi national highway by 200 cow vigilantes. He showed papers to cow vigilantes certifying that the cattle were bought for dairy farming. Despite the documentation, Khan and others were dragged out of the vehicle and beaten with rods and sticks. Pehlu Khan later succumbed to injuries and six others, despite serious wounds, survived.

Rajasthan has not looked back since then. In fact, things are getting worse by the day. And the state government is just silently witnessing the extremists ripping apart the composite culture and law of the land. Here are the things that government has thoroughly failed to deal with.

Cases Of Cow Vigilantism

Over the last one year, Rajasthan has become a centre for Gau Rakshaks and a hothouse for crimes relating minorities.

On November 11, 2017, 35-year-old dairy farmer Umar Khans dismembered body was found on a railway track in Ramgarh area of Alwar district in Rajasthan. His family members and activists alleged that he was shot dead by cow vigilantes while he was ferrying cattle in a vehicle the day before. The family alleged that cow vigilantes threw his body on a railway track to conceal his murder.

Allison Joyce/Getty Images

In yet another incident of brutal cow vigilantism, a crowd of about 50 miscreants at Barmer in Rajasthan attacked staff and officials of the Tamil Nadu governments Animal Husbandry Department on suspicion of cattle smuggling on June 12, 2017. Fifty cattle were purchased and were being transported in five trucks when cow vigilantes attacked. The mob thrashed officials and tried to set one of the trucks on fire.

The BJP-led government in Rajasthan has been shying away from taking stern action against cow vigilantes and malefactors taking law into their hands.

Padmavati Row

Pandoras box opened with the production of Sanjay Leela Bhansalis magnum opus Padmavati narrating the story of Queen Padmini, Alauddin Khalji and Maha Rawal Ratan Singh. Director Bhansali would have no idea that a rumour about a dream sequence in his movie Padmavati would take such an ugly turn. The Rs 180-crore film, based on the life of 13th century queen Rani Padmini, has been dogged by controversy since it went into production late last year.

Padmavati is a fictional film about the fictional tale of a Rajput princess written by 16th century Sufi poet Malik Muhamad Jayasi.

On January 27, Bhansali, who has denied the rumour, was pulled and slapped by the mob and the movie sets were vandalised by activists of an organisation called Rajput Karni Sena in Rajasthan in January. Protests mounted across the country and death threats were being issued, all right under the nose of the government. Right-wing outfits, with their easy-to-hurt sentiments, claimed that the movie distorts history and dishonours Rani Padmini.

Mahipal Singh Makrana, president of Rajasthan unit of Karni Sena, said that they would not hesitate to chop Deepika's nose like Shurpanakha (Shurpanakha was a character in the Ramayana whose nose was chopped off by Lakshmana).

BCCL

Members of the radical right-wing outfit also threatened to behead Bhnasali if he proceeds with the release of Padmavati.

The convenor of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, Lokendra Singh Kalvi, called for a Bharat Bandh on December 1, the date Padmavati is slated to release. He threatened to burn down any theatre, which screens the film and told ANI, "Jauhar ki jwala hai, bahut kuch jalega. Rok sako to rok lo. (This is the fire of 'jauhar', a lot of things will burn. Stop us if you can.)"

He also called Deepika Padukone naachnewali for her reaction to the protests and controversy. Deepika said the country is becoming regressive. Earlier in November, Bhansali released a video clarifying that there was no distortion of history in Padmavati.

As obstacles and protests refused to die down, the release of the movie, which was scheduled to hit theatres on December 1, was delayed for an indefinite period. The attack on Bhansali and Deepika did not elicit any response or condemnation from the government. The row, which took entire country by storm, at least on social media, failed to stir the government.

The matter was first echoed in the Parliament when Jaya Bachchan brought up the incident during the Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, speaking about the growing intolerance and threats to creativity.

However, In Rajasthans political circles, the matter is a closed subject. The Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad also warned against shooting the film in Rajasthan. Most political parties have not spoken to condemn the incidents, presumably fearing to disturb their well-guarded vote bank.

Love Jihad

The fictitious Love Jihad, also called Romeo Jihad, concept rose to national attention in 2009 in India with alleged conversions of Hindu girls to Islam in Kerala and Mangalore. While the alleged cases of Love Jihad are rising in the country, Keralas Hadiya, known as Akhila before marrying a Muslim man, is at the centre of the controversy and has been reduced to an object for political gains.

Today, an astonishing incident came to the fore. A Muslim labourer, identified as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh, from West Bengal was burnt alive allegedly for committing 'love jihad' in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district. Not just that, the accused Shambhu Nath Raigar, also made a video of the heinous crime and later put it on social media. Raigar first attacked the man with an agricultural equipment injuring him severely and later poured kerosene on him and burnt him alive.

In the video, Raigar can be seen mentioning that those who indulge in 'love jihad' will be met with same fate.

In another case, the family of a 22-year-old woman, filed a complaint claiming that she had been forcibly converted to Islam and that her marriage was a case of Love Jihad. The womans brother claimed that a man named Faiz Modi had been harassing her for a long time and had abducted her. He claimed that her sister was forced to sign some papers, to forge marriage documents and that she was blackmailed with objectionable pictures.

The Rajasthan High Court, that was hearing the case, later allowed the woman to stay with her husband and asked the police to ensure her safety.

BCCL

On November 19, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, at a spiritual fair organised in Jaipur, were distributing controversial booklets peddling anti-Muslim content.

One of the booklets, a manual being sold by VHP for Rs 5 each, advised the use of words like "terrorists", "anti-nationals", "pro-Pakistanis", "womanisers", and "smugglers" to describe Muslims to women in a Hindu household, pitching it as a campaign against 'love jihad'.

The second pamphlet was distributed for free and featured a morphed photograph of Bollywood actor Kareena Kapoor, with half her face covered by a niqab, and a bindi on her forehead.

The pamphlet said Muslims have been using 'love jihad' to "convert Hindus for the last thousand years" and cites Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Saif Ali Khan as "examples... as they have deserted their Hindu wives to entrap other Hindu women".

Defective Law and Order

Demise of Zafar Khan

The murder of 44-year-old Zafar Khan in Paratpgarh, Rajasthan, allegedly beaten to death on June 16, 2017, by officials of the Swachch Bharat Mission, showed multiple level of brutality and questioned the law and order situation in the state. The officials were visiting the Kuttchi Basti slum where Khan resided and were reportedly photographing women who, lacking domestic or public toilets, defecating in the open. The officials apparently took pictures, abusing and shoving the women.

Khan, an activist and a CPI (ML) member intervened and was soon attacked by the officials, who beat him so severely that he died on the spot.

What raises more questions is the fact that Khans autopsy report does not indicate any injury marks on his body and the reason for his death is being cited as cardio-respiratory failure.

The demise of Zafar Khan ji in Pratapgarh is extremely unfortunate. Investigation is on - justice shall prevail. https://t.co/1V9DmV26KY  Vasundhara Raje (@VasundharaBJP) June 18, 2017

Rajasthans Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje expressed sympathy on Twitter and called Khans demise extremely unfortunate. She also tagged a tweet of Udaipurs IGP which states that scientific evidence doesnt suggest murder.

Woman Beaten, Forced To Say Allah and "Jai Shri Ram"

Another shocking incident, yet again from Rajasthan, came into light after a video clip showed a group of men thrashing a mentally-unstable woman on June 13, 2017.

SHOCKING: Men thrash a mentally-challenged woman with a pipe in Rajasthan's Nagaur, forced to say "Allah", "Jai Shri Ram" & "Jai Hanuman". pic.twitter.com/EhlnaVkhxd  ANI (@ANI) June 16, 2017

The woman was forced to say Allah, Jai Shri Ram and Jai Hanuman while she was constantly kicked and hit with rubber pipe as she screamed and called for help in pain.

Sikh Men Thrashed By Mob In Ajmer

Four Sikh men were thrashed by a mob in Raigarh village of Ajmer district in April this year. The frightening video that surfaced on April 24 showing the four men, who were sevadars or volunteers at a Gurudwara in Alwar, were dragged out of the car and were beaten.

3 Sikh mercilessly beaten in Rajasthan, villagers labelled them as child kidnapper when they were asking directions pic.twitter.com/28El09IEoY  Owais Shah (@owaistshah) May 25, 2017

The men were labelled as child-kidnappers. Reports suggested that the four reached the area to seek money for Gurudwaras langar or free kitchen.

In Rajasthan, lynchings and mob violence have been motivated by an idea of hate and prejudice. The dismal condition of law and order in Rajasthan, hints that something is rotten in the state. Perhaps the mentality.

All these incidents clearly indicate how Rajasthan has become a state of disorder. The state that has a glorious past of camaraderie and peace is now threatened by its own men who are riding high on some pride. The current state of affairs in Rajasthan is completely different from what is reflected in history books.

The rise of revengeful, holier-than-thou India is a depraved sign for the people of this country. The country, that has been grappling with terror from far right-wing outfits, has found its breeding-ground in Rajasthan. The bigger question  Is this the New India we all are aspiring for?
Sadiq Khan, the first Asian-origin mayor of London, on Wednesday, called on the UK government to formally apologise for the April 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre by British Indian Army soldiers.

Also Read: Indian Origin MP Demands Apology For Jallianwala Bagh Massacre From UK PM Theresa May

Khan, who was in Amritsar as part of his six-day mission to India and Pakistan, called the massacre one of the most horrific events in Indian history.

reuters

"I'm clear that the (UK) government should now apologise, especially as we reach the centenary of the massacre. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need through a formal apology," Khan said as he visited the Jallianwala Bagh memorial and paid respects.

twitter

The UK has never extended a formal apology for the massacre in which hundreds of people were killed. In February 2013, the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron had described the massacre as a "deeply shameful event", falling short of a formal apology during his visit to Amritsar.

afp

Khan, who is of Pakistani origin, made it clear that a formal apology should have been made by the UK government decades ago. "The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is one of the most horrific events in Indian history. It is wrong that successive British governments have fallen short of delivering a formal apology to the families of those who were killed."
The National Green Tribunal has blamed Art Of Living Foundation's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for damaging Yamuna floodplains during it's World Cultural Festival on rivers bank in March 2016.

BCCL

We hold the AoL responsible for damaging the Yamuna floodplains in terms of the report submitted by the expert committee, the bench, headed by NGT chairperson Swatanter Kumar, said.

However, the bench didnt impose any extra penalty other than the earlier fine of Rs 5 crore imposed on AOL.

BCCL

If the restoration cost exceeds Rs 5 crore, it would be recovered from AoL. However, if the cost is lesser than Rs 5 crore, the remaining amount will be returned to the foundation, the bench said and added that the floodplain should not host any activity that damages the environment.

The bench also directed Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to assess the damage and estimate cost of restoration based on the expert panels recommendation.

The AoL has said that it will go to the Supreme Court against the verdict.
At least 53 persons including 21 children were killed in Russian air strikes on Monday morning in a village held by Islamic State in eastern Deir Ezzor province of Syria, a monitor said.

"The toll increased after removing the debris in a long day of the rescue operation," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP, adding the strikes hit "residential buildings" in the village of Al-Shafah on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.

The monitor previously gave a toll of 34.

Syrias Deir Ezzor is one of the last places under the control of the Islamic State. The terror outfit known as Daesh has been driven out of its major strongholds due to the raids carried out by Russia, Syria and US-backed forces.

Russia, an ally of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad, began a military intervention in September 2015 to help the Syrian government regain territory from the Islamic State and the rebels of the Syrian army who had once captured sizeable part of the country.

AFP

Monday's strike came as the UN is trying to end the six-year-old civil war which has killed over 3.5 lakh people and left millions homeless who flee their country and are living in other countries as refugees.
RACINE COUNTY  In the eyes of Eric Gallien, Racine Unifieds next superintendent, the districts new career academies program is a way for high school students to find themselves.

The Academies of Racine are small learning communities that provide real-world experiences with local businesses and professionals, linking schoolwork and the workplace. Students can choose between 14 career pathways, focusing on things such as engineering or business, as examples.

During an event about the progress of the Academies of Racine program hosted by Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce Tuesday at Roma Lodge in Mount Pleasant, Gallien drew connections between the program and his experiences in high school.

Gallien, currently the districts deputy superintendent, grew up in a single-parent home in the Milwaukee housing projects.

We were very poor, coming up, he said.

Gallien said that, during high school, he was somewhat of a class clown but was always able to bring people together, whether it was meeting at McDonalds after school or going to the homecoming game.

That wasnt always productive, but I had a principal and teacher that saw those skills in me, who saw that leadership ability, Gallien said.

They introduced him to his schools business education program, and his teacher challenged him to write his own business plan. Gallien accepted the challenge and found funding for his business project.

I was able to really learn a lot about who I was as a student, he said.

This experience helped Gallien to re-engage in school. He went on to join the U.S. Marine Corps and to obtain two masters degrees and a doctorate.

Gallien said it was the introduction to business that put him on the path toward success, and he said that is exactly what the Academies of Racine aim to do.

Its to really give these students an opportunity to find themselves, he said.

Student perspective

The academies program began last year with the freshman academy. Freshmen students took part in a commitment-to-graduate ceremony, attended the districts See Your Future Expo and visited college campuses. They also learned soft skills like how to shake hands and the importance of making eye contact.

Then, they participated in a spring freshman declaration day, in which they decided which academy they would attend. Now those students, who are currently sophomores, are attending their chosen academies.

Jaylen Love, a sophomore academy ambassador in the health services pathway, spoke about his experiences last year.

Overall I felt that the academy program itself was a great experience for me, because I didnt really know what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school and attending the See Your Future Expo, that kind of helped give me the idea of all the types of careers around the Racine area and the different things that I can do, Love said.

Through the academies, the district aims for every student to have the opportunity to leave high school with industry credentials or college credits.

The numbers

According to Gallien, so far 180 business and community organizations have committed to partnering with the school district on the program. And more than 400 teachers have visited businesses and college campuses to find out what their students need to learn to set them up for future success.

Last year, 89 percent of freshmen attended school on a regular basis, 91 employers and civic partners were involved in school programs, and 284 community volunteers were involved in the program.

One of the most significant numbers, Gallien said, is the 123 co-op and youth apprenticeships that were offered to students.

That makes Racine Unified the No. 1 district in the state of Wisconsin as it relates to those types of experiences, he said.

At the end of the last school year, 60.5 percent of freshman had obtained seven or more credits, and there was a reduction in office discipline referrals.

The average freshman grade-point average last year was 2.3. Gallien said the district is making efforts to improve that this year.
United Arab Emirate launched their maiden space programme on Wednesday. It is aimed at sending four Emirati astronauts to the International Space Station within five years.

"On this day, a new chapter in our history begins with the launch of the first UAE Astronaut Programme," within the next five years, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed Al-Maktoum, the UAE's vice-president and prime minister, said in a statement.

"The people of the UAE will break barriers," he said.

reuters/representational image

The oil-rich Gulf nation has already announced ambitious plans to become the first Arab country to send an unmanned probe to orbit Mars by 2021, naming it "Hope".

The astronaut programme would make it one of only a handful of states in the Middle East to have sent a person into space as it looks to make good on a pledge "to become global leader in space exploration over the next 50 years".

Geospatial World

The first Arab in outer space was Saudi Arabia's Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on a US shuttle mission in 1985. Two years later, Syrian air force pilot Muhammed Faris spent a week aboard the ex-Soviet Union's Mir space station.

Aspiring Emirati astronauts who apply for the programme will go through a rigorous vetting procedure, with finalists given months of specialised training before the last four are selected.

reuters/representational image

In the long-term, the UAE says it is planning to build a "Science City" to replicate life on Mars and aims to create the first human settlement on the red planet by 2117.
One of the most dangerous places to live in current times, Syria, is battling with new issues every day. While people are migrating from the war-torn country, those who are left are falling prey to the dangerous games that the armed militias are playing. Their ordeal is not limited to facing physical violence. A study commissioned by UNHCR, has found rampant sexual violence against men and boys in the Syria crisis indicates that this violence may be far more widespread than previously understood.

The study involved several dozen informants and focus group discussions with some 196 refugees in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan and mainly conducted in late 2016. Its main findings were:

1. Sexual violence and torture of men and boys in Syria by multiple parties to the conflict appears to be far more common than previously thought based on discussions with survivors, refugees and informants. UNHCR researchers heard accounts of violence against boys as young as 10, and against men including those in their 80s.

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2. Gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and this vulnerability does not end when people leave Syria. Inside Syria armed groups were reported as the main perpetrators. Outside Syria, the danger is often from opportunistic abuse.

3. Refugee boys in countries of asylum suffer sexual violence at the hands of other male refugees and from males in the local community. The high rates of child labour among Syrian refugee boys (up to 94% males in Jordan) are of particular concern in this regard.

4. Sexual exploitation and blackmail of refugee males in countries of asylum was reported, especially among those working in the informal economy.

reuters/representational image

People spoke of severe and debilitating violence, including weapons being used to sexually assault. Much of this was reported as occurring in detention or makeshift prisons.

When I was in detention in Syria I was tortured in every possible way. We were 80 persons in one cell with no light for 30 days. We were all naked. At night, they hung us from our hands  they tortured us with electricity to the genitals. They would come into the cell to violate us, but it was dark - we couldnt see them. All we could hear were people saying, Stop! Dont!  I thought we would die, said a gay refugee, identified as Tarek.

Another refugee spoke of the horrors a relative had endured:

One of my uncles in Syria was arrested. A few months after he was released from detention, he told us  he broke down, crying in front of us  that there was not one spot on his body that had not been abused by an electric drill. He had been raped After he was released he stopped eating and became alcoholic. He died from kidney failure.

reuters/representational image

Refugee men and boys working informally reported the refusal of some employers to pay wages until sexual favours were performed. They also spoke of blackmailing through the use of sexually humiliating photos and videos taken on mobile phones.

These are most disturbing accounts revealing just how grave the risk of sexual violence has become both for women and girls and, as shown by this recent report, also men and boys, said Volker Turk, UNHCRs Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.

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And its clear too that we are faced with a vicious cycle here of little help being available, limited outreach to male survivors, inaccessible services, and a culture of silence  all of which reinforce a myth that this problem is rare.

UNHCRs report was undertaken with a view to examining the characteristics, causes and impact of sexual violence against boys and men, and with a view to identifying good practices and other means of addressing the needs of victims of sexual violence.
If you haven't invested in Bitcoin yet -- oh well, join the club and don't kick yourself too hard. Not yet.

Bitcoin value soars past $14,000 / REUTERS

To say 2017 has been a stellar year for Bitcoin would be the most ridiculous understatement of the year. The digital currency has broken all sorts of records this year, even going past the $14,000 mark for the very first time earlier today.

Just last week, Bitcoin did the unthinkable when it surpassed the $10,000 price milestone. No sooner had it achieved this price valuation, when Bitcoin's value dropped sharply by $2,000 in just a few hours, causing top economists, entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world to issue warnings against the volatile nature of Bitcoin investments.

ALSO READ: How One Tech Writer Threw Away $14.8 Million Dollars In Bitcoin Along With His Old Hard Drive

Bitcoin's value just keeps on increasing / REUTERS

But despite these warning bells, Bitcoin's upward trajectory has been unrelenting. Not counting a couple of sharp dips, Bitcoin has blitzed past $12,000 and $13,000 price mark within a couple of days, finally breaching above the $14,000 on Thursday in Asia.

Despite briefly dipping down to $13,400, Bitcoin was was trading around $14,200 at the Hong Kong stock exchange.

DON'T MISS: 7 Things You Should Know About World's 1st Official Bitcoin Billionaires, The Winklevoss Twins

Bitcoin value is increasing / REUTERS

Bitcoin is a digital currency that is based on blockchain -- and it needs to be "mined" by running complex programs on a computer, which is a huge energy intensive task. Its current upswing is credited to big investments by South Korean and Japanese investors keen on cashing in on Bitcoin's soaring fortunes, according to a CNN report.

This is a crucial phase in Bitcoin's quest to be recognized as a legitimate source of currency across the world -- a thought that has stiff resistance from major governments and banking establishments from around the world.
The virtual currency Bitcoin has touched an all-time high value of $14,000 -- flirting with the $15,000 mark even. With such a meteoric rise in its value, how can anyone not be interested in investing in bitcoin?

Well, not so fast. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has some warnings for all of you eyeing Bitcoin as a shortcut to becoming a millionaire.

Reuters

The financial industry regulator has cautioned users, holders and traders of Virtual Currencies (VCs), including Bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security-related risks that they are exposing themselves to. Incidentally, India is not the only country to express caution on Bitcoins. Several other countries have placed restrictions on them as well -- including Russia, China, Iceland, Bangladesh, Sweden, Thailand and Vietnam.

ALSO READ: Beyond Bitcoin: How Blockchain Is The Foundational Building Block Of A Technological Revolution

Here's what RBI warning you against investing in Bitcoin at the moment...

1. RBI hasn't authorised any entity or company to deal with Bitcoin or any other virtual currency in India

RBI has clarified that it has not given any licence/authorisation to any entity/company to operate such schemes or deal with Bitcoin or any other virtual currency. Last week, finance minister Arun Jaitley too had said that the government has not granted any legitimacy to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

ALSO READ: Bitcoin Miners Are Using More Electricity Than Ireland & Other 159 Countries. No Kidding.

2. Bitcoin is prone to hacking and malware attacks

Reuters

Virtual currencies like Bitcoin ultimately reside in digital media or electronic wallets. Therefore, they are prone to losses arising out of hacking, loss of password, compromise of access credentials, malware attack etc.

ALSO READ: From $1300 In January, Bitcoin's Price Just Went Past $14,000 In Under A Year & Is Still Rising

3. There's no legal recourse for any case of Bitcoin fraud

Payments by virtual currencies, such as Bitcoins, take place on a peer-to-peer basis without an authorised central agency which regulates such payments. And since Bitcoins aren't recognized by RBI, there is no established framework for recourse to customer problems and disputes at the moment.

4. Bitcoin value is based on 'speculation'

Unlike paper currency which is assigned a value against gold holdings, and other material factors, there is no underlying or backing of any asset for virtual currencies like Bitcoin. As such, their value seems to be a matter of speculation. Huge volatility in the value of VCs has been noticed in the recent past. Thus, the users are exposed to potential losses on account of such volatility in value.

ALSO READ: 7 Things You Should Know About World's 1st Official Bitcoin Billionaires, The Winklevoss Twins

5. Bitcoin exchange platforms are set up in jurisdictions whose legal status is unclear.

It is reported that virtual currencies, such as Bitcoins, are being traded on exchange platforms set up in various jurisdictions whose legal status is also unclear. Hence, the traders of virtual currencies on such platforms are exposed to legal as well as financial risks.

ALSO READ: How One Tech Writer Threw Away $14.8 Million Dollars In Bitcoin Along With His Old Hard Drive

6. Bitcoins are used for illegal and terrorism activities.

There have been several media reports of the usage of virtual currencies, including Bitcoins, for illicit and illegal activities in several jurisdictions.

Reuters

The absence of information of counterparties in such peer-to-peer anonymous/pseudonymous systems could subject the users to unintentional breaches of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws.

WannaCry virus hackers collected ransom in Bitcoins from their victims to unlock their computers.

ALSO READ: Everything You Need To Know About Bitcoin, Now That It's Surged Past $10,000 Per Coin

7. RBI has constituted a group to look at the possibility of having a government-backed cryptocurrency.

Reuters

Meanwhile, the apex bank has constituted a group to look at the possibility of having a government-backed cryptocurrency.

This, if comes into being, can be an alternative to the rupee for digital transactions.
By Chris Purcell, Analyst Relations at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

If you ask Google the question, What is digital business, it takes less than a second for the search engine to serve up more than 75 million pages of answers. Thats according to Peter Burris, who explains the concept in a white paper entitled, The executive role in digital business technology decisions.

Burris, the Chief Research Officer and General Manager of Wikibon, SilicanANGLEs research team, believes that consumers are forcing organizations across industries, sizes, and geographies to become more digital. And the businesses that succeed will be the ones that can master the use of data.

Yet, how exactly does a company master the role of data to become a winning digital business? In the paper, Burris discusses 4 ways:

Apply data to differentially create and keep customers.

Data should be thought of as fuel for your business  an extremely valuable asset. As such, it needs to be gathered, refined, and put to use. For example, data from orders can be refined and then used to better predict supply chain, product management, and customer engagement actions. Those businesses that can gather more data  and refine it better than their competitors  will be more successful. This means every IT purchasing decision should be evaluated with the goal of gathering more data as a means of creating new revenue streams. Instead of just thinking about buying hardware, software, and services, business leaders should think, How does this technology selection increase the value of data options relative to other technologies?

Build a foundation for digital business success.

Every business possesses the necessary capabilities to create and keep customers, yet what leads to success in todays digital realm? Burris explains that you must be able to turn analog data into digital data to be analyzed, processed, and then turned into actionable insights. The emerging Internet of Things and People (IoT&P) will help by using sensors that continuously monitor and record real work and turn it into digital data. Big analytics (or big data) and machine learning will help by transforming data feeds into actionable insights and models.

Of course, these insights and models must be acted upon. Burris explains, Just as analog data must be translated into digital data to be processed by digital technologybig analytics must be transduced back into a form suitable for enacting an event in the real world.

Embrace cloud computing  but you cant do everything from the public cloud.

To some degree, all digital businesses will employ cloud computing. Yet, how it implements cloud is vital. Burris explains, Public cloud is not always the best option. Contrary to much popular commentary, your digital business designs will require a range of implementation choices. Thats because public cloud deployment is not always possible or practical. When you are using applications that require low-latency, the laws of physics make it impossible to send data back and forth fast enough to and from a distant public cloud. In terms of practicality, many legacy applications cant easily be moved to the cloud. Lastly, some applications, data, and intellectual property should be kept on premises because they are central to your value proposition.

If you decide to keep key applications on premises, you will still benefit from new innovations in cloud technology. The benefits of cloud-like technologies are permeating new on-premises solutions, giving you options such as simple integration with public cloud, subscription payment models, and elastic capacity.

Yes, execs must play a pivotal role in cloud decisions.

Successful digital businesses will demand spending lots of money on computing over the next decade. Yet, the real question is not how much you will spend, but who will decide how that money is spent? Burris is adamant that as digital business becomes increasingly central to achieving business outcomes, executives must get more involved.

As customers seek greater digital engagement, your digital business capabilities increasingly become the basis of your brand. By taking a more active role in these decisions, executives can ensure that customers, not technology, are the focus of IT spending. And as technology becomes more intertwined with the companys business model, execs need to step up to ensure that digital assets are effectively merchandised.

Simple, insightful IT visibility for executives

Mastering the role of data in any organization can be intimidating to anyone, particularly for an executive. Yet to be successful in your role  and to ensure the success of your business -- it is absolutely necessary.

As Burris explained, recent innovations are making traditional IT, private, and public cloud easier to deploy and manage. HPE just announced the industrys first multi-cloud management solution, HPE OneSphere, a tool that provides executives with the transparency they need to make better IT spending and deployment decisions. Real-time, cross-cloud insights enable CIOs and lines of business to increase resource utilization and reduce costs, improving efficiency across the board.

For example, HPE OneSphere collects, tags and displays usage metrics for all deployed resources. It also provides month-to-date and previous month usage costs for both private and public cloud providers. And with these improved insights, business executives can better master the role of data in their organization.

The role of data in business is growing every second. Burris concludes, Going forward, the businesses that win and the executives that succeed will master the role of data in business.

HPE has assembled an array of resources that are helping businesses succeed in a hybrid IT world. Learn about HPEs approach to managing hybrid IT by checking out this new video on HPE OneSphere. And to find out how HPE can help you determine a workload placement strategy that meets your service level agreements, visit HPE Pointnext.
Bullish Flat On Crude Oil Can Send USDMXN Even Lower Wavetraders - 2 minutes ago Crude oil can be unfolding a bullish flat formation, which can send the price of USDMXN even lower within a projected five-wave bearish impulse.

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Deal allowing Ukrainian grain exports extended for 120 days AP - 1 hour ago A wartime agreement that allowed grain shipments from Ukraine to resume and helped temper rising global food prices will be extended by 120 days $SPX : 3,916.15 (-1.08%) $DOWI : 33,302.91 (-0.75%) $IUXX : 11,599.55 (-0.85%)

Fed official suggests substantial rate hikes may be needed AP - 1 hour ago The Federal Reserve may have to raise its benchmark interest rate much higher than many people expect to get inflation under control, said James Bullard, who leads the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis... $SPX : 3,916.15 (-1.08%) $DOWI : 33,302.91 (-0.75%) $IUXX : 11,599.55 (-0.85%)
The Iroquois Group, an Allegany, N.Y.-based service provider for independent property and casualty insurance agencies, has announced changes to its regional structure to better align Iroquois regions with those of their carrier-partners and to provide greater resources and financial opportunities for its members.

Member agencies in the state of New York will be integrated into Iroquois of New England; Ohio and Kentucky will be integrated into Iroquois Mid-Atlantic; and Tennessee will join Iroquois South.

Ted Branch will continue as managing partner of New York and Ohio but will work in concert with Matt Ward who manages New England and Mid-Atlantic. Mike Petty and Johnny Cox will continue as managing partners of Tennessee but will now work with David Ward, who manages Iroquois South.

This realignment will allow Iroquois to bring new programs, strategies and resources to its members in New York, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as better position it for profitable growth with its core carrier-partners, according to Iroquois CEO Laurie Branch in a company press release.

Source: The Iroquois Group

Topics New York Ohio Tennessee
A house was flattened and others were damaged when a fire and explosion rocked the structure in a Baltimore suburb.

Baltimore County fire officials say no one was hurt in the explosion. Investigators say the house in Woodlawn was vacant.

The fire and explosion were reported Tuesday afternoon.

Pictures and videos show a completely leveled house, and heavy damage to the house next door.

Firefighters urged neighbors to shelter in place as crews and employees with Baltimore Gas and Electric checked homes for damage and dangerous gases. BGE spokeswoman Linda Foy says there is no indication the utilitys equipment was involved in the explosion, but workers are still inspecting the site.

Local and state investigators are working to determine the cause of the explosion.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Maryland
UK banks still arent telling regulators about all the cyber attacks on the financial services industry despite a ten-fold increase in reports to the Financial Conduct Authority over the last four years.

Our suspicion is that theres currently a material under-reporting of successful cyber attacks, Megan Butler, the FCAs director of supervision, said in a speech Tuesday, according to a copy of her remarks on the regulators website. The number of breaches relayed back to us looks modest when you set it against the number of attacks on the industry.

The number of material attacks reported by firms to the FCA has grown to 49 this year from five in 2014, as hacks become one of the biggest threats to the safety of the financial services industry. The type of hacks is also increasingly concerning for regulators and firms with ransomware making up 17 percent of attacks reported to the regulator, according to Butler.

The FCA opened an investigation in October into the hack of credit reporting company Equifax Ltd. that saw personal data stolen from at least 143 million people. Outside of the FCAs supervision, Uber Technologies Inc. paid hackers $100,000 to delete data taken from 2.7 million U.K. customers in a 2016 security breach.

Better Coordination

Butler emphasized the need for incidents to be reported to the regulator as theyre happening. She told the ICI global capital markets conference in London that the FCA had recently spent time with a number of U.S. agencies looking at how they could better coordinate cyber supervision against the global threat.

One of the challenges facing firms and regulators is the growing use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin in cyber attacks.

Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said at a London conference last week that crytocurrencies were a great enabler for ransomware because they allow people to act anonymously. He also highlighted the problem of cyber crime and fraud divisions in banks working separately when common actors could be better pursued together.

The growing sophistication of technology is also a positive for banks though when it comes to crime. On Wednesday, Rob Gruppetta, the FCAs head of financial crime, said firms are working on replacing humans with artificial intelligence to detect money laundering, according to a copy of his comments on the FCAs website. Gruppetta discussed how comfortable regulators would be if firms replaced human monitoring wholesale with technology.

We are chiefly concerned about whether these systems are effective and spot the needles in the haystack, Gruppetta said at an FCA fintech event. Any bank hoping for a black box in the corner that will sniff out the launderers will be disappointed, but the technology has the capability to better achieve what we all want: keeping finance clean.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Cyber
Indiana state regulators have fined farm supply chain Rural King $14,000 for alleged safety violations at a southern Indiana warehouse.

The Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a Nov. 30 order that lists seven safety violations inspectors found at Rural Kings Jeffersonville warehouse.

The Mattoon, Illinois-based company must either pay the fines or contest the violations.

The News and Tribune reports that IOSHA inspected the warehouse after an employee filed a complaint.

The agency says six of the seven violations its inspectors found are deemed serious and could have resulted in an accident or illness that would result in death or serious physical harm.

Those include a lack of railing for part of an upper-level of the warehouse that exposed workers to potential falls exceeding eight feet.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance Indiana
House Republicans are moving ahead with a plan to avoid a Saturday U.S. government shutdown by passing a two-week stopgap spending measure, overriding conservative GOP lawmakers who were pressing for a longer extension to get more leverage over Democrats and the Senate.

The decision on a stopgap bill with a Dec. 22 end-date rather than a Dec. 30 expiration came after House Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team held discussions on overall budget strategy with the leaders of the restive House Freedom Caucus.

The House Rules Committee approved a rule setting the bill up for a floor vote Thursday, after which the Senate will have until the end of the day Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown. A formal check of how members would vote on the Dec. 22 deadline came back showing widespread support, said Representative Dennis Ross, a member of the vote-whipping team.

The Freedom Caucus will discuss the stopgap at a meeting tonight, according to a House Republican aide. Votes from the groups three-dozen members may not be needed if Democrats support the stopgap plan.

As part of the talks, the Freedom Caucus has sought and Republican leaders are weighing a plan to attach the Houses fiscal year 2018 defense spending bill to a second resolution to keep the government funded after Dec. 22, according to Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows and Representative Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who leads the House Armed Services Committee.

Defense Spending

Under that measure, H.R. 3219, the Defense Department would receive $584.2 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2018 and $73.9 billion in war funding that is exempt from the budgetary caps set by law.

That bill could be enough to mollify Thornberry and Republican members of the House Armed Services panel who have threatened to oppose any spending measures that dont adequately fund the Pentagon. National security spending is capped at $549 billion for fiscal year 2018. The Pentagons spending, which is the majority of national security spending, is capped at $522 billion for the year. Congress would have to pass legislation to increase the caps and accommodate the Houses defense spending measure.

Meadows said Wednesday that progress had been made in obtaining assurances this plan would be followed. Even if this House Republican leadership plan passes muster in the the chamber, it is practically dead on arrival in the Senate where Democratic votes are needed to end debate.

Democratic Demands

There, Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, said that his caucus wouldnt support a full-year defense bill without funding the other government agencies. The plan to add childrens health insurance and disaster relief aid alongside the defense bill wouldnt make it more palatable to the Democrats.

We cant be selective, Durbin of Illinois said in an interview. The goal for the Democrats remains to win parity in funding for domestic programs, Durbin added.

Democratic Senator Jack Reed said on Tuesday that approving just a defense spending bill would shortchange other aspects of national security such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations and activities of the State Department, all of which would be funded by a stopgap measure.

Republican Representative Charlie Dent, one of the leaders of the moderate Tuesday Group caucus, said the Freedom Caucus strategy is doomed and a waste of time.

This is an act of Senate denial, he said, adding the Senate would not pass a standalone defense bill even if paired with disaster aid.

They will just strip out the defense bill and send it back, he predicted.

Meadows acknowledged difficulty with the Senate but said there could be a shot of getting the defense bill passed if it were paired with disaster aid and a childrens health insurance bill that Democrats would find it hard to vote against.

This weeks stopgap spending measure includes a short-term extension of the Childrens health funding to the end of the calendar year and of the National Flood Insurance Program to Dec. 30.

Democrats have yet to announce their approach to the government funding bill. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that a shutdown could happen because of Democratic demands. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi responded saying Democrats arent seeking a shutdown.

Trump, Pelosi and other top Republican and Democratic leaders head to the White House Thursday for budget talks. Democrats want any defense spending increases matched with equal domestic spending boosts as well as for a deportation relief by the end of the year for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

The government has been funded under a temporary measure known as a continuing resolution since Oct. 1. Republican leaders are aiming to finish work on all appropriations for federal agencies in the current fiscal year sometime in January.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Flood Politics
The investigative arm of the U.S. Congress is launching a probe into the safety of increasingly long freight trains being operated by CSX Corp, Union Pacific Corp. and other major U.S. railroads to boost profitability, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said.

Train length is currently unregulated. Any push to add rules would likely face stiff industry opposition because railroads use longer trains to boost margins through the better use of fuel, locomotive power, and rail cars without having to add extra crew.

In addition to the GAO study, safety regulator the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has beefed up its presence at CSX rail yards, according to CSX employees and SMART Union Chairman Dale Barnett, citing conversations with FRA inspectors.

FRA spokesman Marc Willis declined to characterize concerns over CSX train length but said any appearance of increased inspections is due partly to safety complaints and a spike in railroad accidents or incidents.

In recent months, there have been accidents involving long trains which are currently under investigation by the NTSB and the FRA, Willis said.

The GAO will launch its study on safety and other impacts of longer trains in February, GAO spokesman Chuck Young told Reuters on Tuesday. The action was prompted by a Nov. 7 letter, seen by Reuters, from U.S. Representatives Peter DeFazio and Michael Capuano, both Democratic members of the House Transportation Committee.

DeFazio said his office has received complaints over safety and traffic jams at rail crossings.

CSX, the No.3 U.S. railroad by revenue, told investors in October its freight trains have increased more than 400 feet to 6,833 feet (2.08 km) on average since March, when newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Hunter Harrison launched his plan to boost profits and streamline operations.

CSXs eastern U.S. rival Norfolk Southern Corps trains average longer than 5,500 feet, a year-to-date record, the company said in the third quarter.

Western U.S. railroad Union Pacific said it posted record third quarter train size performance after hitting a record in 2016.

Longer trains maximize crews, locomotives, fuel and other resources, said Union Pacific spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza.

FRA data shows CSXs train accidents and incidents as a portion of miles traveled at the highest level in a decade after climbing in each of the last five years. (https://tinyurl.com/ybf6bqyy)

SMART Union transportation division spokesman John Risch told top rail regulator the Surface Transportation Board (STB) at an October hearing on CSX service problems the average U.S. train is up to 1.5 miles long (2.41 km), but CSX has routinely operated trains two or even three miles long since Harrison took over.

The STB declined interview requests.

CSX spokesman Bryan Tucker said the industry trend toward longer trains is a tried and proven way to increase efficiency.

The latest concerns follow the fiery derailment of a 178-car CSX freight train in Hyndman, Pennsylvania in August, and the Nov. 27 derailment of a CSX train with 192 cars  nearly 2 miles long excluding locomotives  in Lakeland, Florida, spilling hazardous molten sulfur.

The FRA told Reuters it is also investigating the June derailment of a 13,147-foot CSX train in Crestline, Ohio.

National Transportation Safety Board rail division head David Bucher told Reuters train length and build were an important part of the investigation into the Hyndman crash, adding he was hesitant to draw conclusions about an ongoing investigation.

Train lengths are increasing across the country, Bucher said. It is becoming more and more common, not just with CSX.

The NTSB, FRA, and STB do not collect data on train length, except for specific accidents or mediations.

The American Association of Railroads (AAR) declined to comment.

CSX employees and union officials said many conductors lack experience to run long trains.

CSXs Tucker said the railroads crews are fully qualified to operate longer trains and CSX uses computer modeling before running longer trains on a new route.

One CSX manager told Reuters FRA inspectors have showed up almost daily in recent weeks looking for long trains and conducting inspections at terminals in Cincinnati, Ohio, Waycross, Georgia, and elsewhere.

They (FRA inspectors) do more blitzes than they used to, where several inspectors will show up in a place and stay for a couple days, the manager added.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Topics USA Trucking
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) recognized three state regulators for their contributions to state-based insurance regulation during the the NAICs 2017 Fall National Meeting.

The NAIC presented two state department regulators with the Robert Dineen Award for Outstanding Service and Contribution to the State Regulation of Insurance. The NAIC established the Award in 1989 in honor of the founder of the NAICs Support and Services Office.

This years Dineen Award recipients are Charles Angell, deputy commissioner and Casualty Actuary of the Alabama Department of Insurance, and Paula Pallozzi, associate director of the Rhode Island Insurance Division.

These two regulators exemplify the best of us and the collective work we do to enhance state-based regulation, said Ted Nickel, NAIC president and Wisconsin insurance commissioner. Angell and Pallozi have taken leadership roles in our work in big data and data collection  work that ultimately protects consumers.

Angell joined the Alabama Department of Insurance in 2008 as a casualty actuary and he was named deputy commissioner in September 2009. Since then, he has participated in 19 committees, task forces and working groups. Angell has served in an actuarial advisory role with the NAICs Property & Casualty Actuarial Credential/Qualification Study, an ad hoc group of the Executive Committee. Angell has also been an instrumental member of the NAICs Big Data Working Group.

Pallozzi joined the Rhode Island Insurance Division 35 years ago  serving as the chief Property & Casualty rate analyst from 1997 to 2013. She was promoted to associate director of the insurance division in 2014. Pallozzi is a member of the NAICs Property & Casualty Committee and has served as chair, vice chair or co-chair of working groups devoted to data collection and other catastrophe-related issues.

Presidents Award

New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner Roger A. Sevigny was presented with the Presidents Award for Distinguished NAIC Leadership. This award is given at the discretion of the NAIC President to honor an NAIC member who has shown exemplary leadership, a sustained length of service and contributed to advancing the NAICs mission.

For 15 years, Commissioner Sevigny has provided dedicated service and leadership in advancing the mission of the NAIC, Nickel said. His hard work and contributions to state-based regulations are immeasurable, which is why he is most deserving of the Presidents Award.

Sevigny served as NAIC President in 2009.

Topics Legislation Property Casualty Leadership Casualty
Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG are responsible for a womans injuries tied to the blood-thinning drug Xarelto and must pay almost $28 million in damages, jurors concluded in the companies first loss at a trial over the medicine.

Lynn Hartman said she took Xarelto, sold by J&Js Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, for more than a year before being hospitalized in 2014 with gastrointestinal bleeding she blamed on the drug. A Philadelphia jury on Tuesday ordered J&J and Bayer, which jointly developed the product, to pay $1.8 million in actual damages and $26 million in punitive damages, one of Hartmans lawyers said after the verdict.

Johnson & Johnson and Bayer won the first three cases to come to trial in federal courts in Louisiana and Mississippi, after juries found the drug was safe and the companies properly warned about Xareltos bleeding risks. Plaintiffs had pinned their hopes on winning in state court in Philadelphia, which is known for having plaintiff-friendly juries. The companies still face more than 20,000 Xarelto suits.

The plaintiffs needed to put a win on the board to keep these other cases alive, said Carl Tobias, who teaches product-liability law at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Otherwise, the rest of the cases may have been seen as having little value.

Appeal Plans

J&J and Bayer officials said Tuesday theyd appeal the jurys finding that Xarelto posed a health risk. Xareltos labeling has always warned of bleeding events and provided information doctors need to make proper treatment decisions, Sarah Freeman, a Janssen spokeswoman, said by email.

Bayer stands behind the safety and efficacy of Xarelto and believes there is no basis in fact or law for the verdict, including the punitive award, Chris Loder, a Bayer spokesman, said in an emailed statement.

The companies still face more than 20,000 patent suits over Xarelto, which has been linked to at least 370 deaths, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports. The number of Xarelto suits has grown by 27 percent this year, J&J said in an SEC filing.

The drug is Bayers top-selling product, generating $3.2 billion in sales last year and $2.5 billion in 2015 for the Leverkusen, Germany-based pharmaceutical company. Xarelto is J&Js third-largest seller, bringing in $2.3 billion in 2016 as the New Brunswick, New Jersey, company seeks to replace revenue from its Remicade arthritis treatment, which lost patent protection a year ago.

Xarelto belongs to a class of drugs aimed at replacing Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.s Coumadin, which has thinned patients blood since the 1960s. Other new thinners include Pradaxa made by Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, a German company that paid $650 million in 2014 to settle thousands of suits claiming it hid the medicines bleeding risks.

Xarelto is the worst in class of the new blood thinners, Michael Weinkowitz, a Philadelphia attorney who represents Hartman, said Tuesday in an emailed statement. The serious health complications suffered by thousands of patients could have been avoided if physicians were properly instructed about the risks.

Hartman, 75, argued she had to have four blood transfusions to counteract Xareltos bleed-out effects, which caused her pain and worry. She switched to another blood thinner and hasnt had similar problems, according to court filings.

During the trial, ex-FDA Chief David Kessler told the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury the companies Xarelto warning labels understated the drugs bleeding risks and didnt warn doctors that some patients would be at higher risks for bleed outs.

The case is Lynn Hartman v. Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Case No. 160503416, Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Drugs
The Texas Division of Workers Compensation has recognized Lauren Concrete for exemplary workplace safety programs and low rates of work-related injuries and illnesses at its Brenham, La Grange, and Waller locations.

Workers Compensation Commissioner Ryan Brannan presented the company with the Lone Star Safety Program Award.

Lauren Concrete manufactures ready-mix concrete. Commissioner Brannan praised the companys safety efforts, stating: Lauren Concrete has done a great job in providing a strong safety culture for their employees. We want to recognize them today for safety improvements like creating effective job hazard analysis procedures, preparing for emergency situations, and for developing excellent task-specific safety and health training courses for both management and employees.

Topics Texas Workers' Compensation
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has approved statewide rate increases on 2018 personal and commercial property insurance rates for Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

OIR approved a statewide increase of 6.6 percent for homeowners multi-peril policies, but held rates steady for Monroe County policyholders until Citizens completes analyses and review of Hurricane Irma, which devastated the Florida Keys in September. Citizens 2018 request called for homeowners wind-only rates in the Keys to climb by 3.9 percent.

Chris Gardner, chairman of Citizens Board of Governors, said OIRs rate order balances the needs of policyholders facing challenges from Irma with its responsibility to maintain a healthy property insurance market.

Under the approved rates, homeowners along the coast would see wind-only rates climb by an average of 0.9 percent. Rates for condominium unit owners would rise by a statewide average of 4.6 percent.

Citizens commercial property residential multi-peril rates will increase by 4.8 percent, while commercial property non-residential will increase by 8.1 percent. Wind-only commercial property residential will increase 10.3 percent.

The effective date for both new and renewal rates is no earlier than May 1, 2018.

Still, despite statewide increases, thousands of Citizens customers will see rate reductions.

OIR said the rate decision was as a result of its review of Citizens filings and the 200 comments and testimony received from policyholders and other interested parties, both by email and during a public rate hearing held on August 23, 2017, in Miami.

State insurance regulators postponed the rate filing review process, usually reached in September, on Citizens 2018 rate request to focus attention on response efforts following Hurricane Irma, a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in the Keys on September 10, 2017.

OIR issued an emergency order to assist consumers recovering from this storm. That order expired on Dec. 3, 2017.

Industry-wide as of December 4, Hurricane Irma had resulted in more than 850,000 claims with insured losses of nearly $6.3 billion. Citizens said it expects to receive about 70,000 claims, including more than 9,000 from Monroe County. Statewide Citizens losses are expected to exceed $1.2 billion.

OIRs new order calls on Citizens to review rating territories throughout Monroe County and analyze wind mitigation credits while working with local officials to review building codes for possible revision.

The residents of the Florida Keys have withstood challenges and will continue to do so as they rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Irma, said Barry Gilway, Citizens president, CEO and executive director. We look forward to working with all stakeholders going forward to address issues discovered as a result of the storm.

View Orders: Personal Property Order, Commercial Property Order.

Topics Trends Florida Pricing Trends Hurricane Property Homeowners
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says that the state is now investigating ride-sharing service Uber over an alleged cover up of a national data breach.

Bondi said Dec. 1 that her office has issued a subpoena to Uber.

The company late last month acknowledged that it covered up a year-old hacking attack that stole personal information about more than 57 million of the services customers and drivers. Several other states have already launched investigations.

Bondis office estimates that there are at least 32,000 Uber drivers in Florida who may have been affected by the breach.

Florida law requires companies to report data breaches to the attorney generals office within 30 days. Bondi said Ubers delay to provide timely notice is inexcusable.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida Cyber Personal Auto
San Diego, Calif.-based Cavignac & Associates has named Zoixza Martin an account administrator within its commercial department.

Martin will provide support and assistance to the departments team members and ensures clients are served. Her primary responsibilities include processing endorsements, certificates of insurance and new and renewal policies. She also handles billing and cancellation matters, reconciles audits, reviews contracts and performs administrative follow-up and account manager tasks.

Martin previously was an enrollment and matching specialist for Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County. Previous work experience includes having served as a case manager, and a bilingual outreach coordinator for the YMCA of San Diego Childcare Resource Service division. She was also a receptionist for Smith Barney.

Cavignac & Associates is a risk management and commercial insurance brokerage firm.

Topics California
The California Division of Workers Compensation has approved a labor-management carve-out agreement between the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

The agreement covers an estimated 10,000 union members.

Carve-out programs enable employers and unionized workforces to create their own alternatives for workers comp benefit delivery and dispute resolution under a collective bargaining agreement. Eligibility of parties to participate in a program must be approved by the DWC administrative.

There are 57 active labor-management carve-out agreements in California, including 27 that cover public safety unions, 21 in the construction industry, and nine in other industries, according to the DWC.

Topics California Workers' Compensation
Wildfires raging across Southern California have shut a major commuter artery in Los Angeles, suspended filming, wiped out more than $3 billion of market value for regional utility Edison International and are threatening some of the states lucrative crops.

Stretches of Interstate 405, which feeds major Los Angeles job centers, were shut as flames engulfed nearby mountainsides. Neighborhoods near the freeway and the famed Mulholland Drive, including parts of upscale Bel-Air, were evacuated. Snap Inc. shut operations, and a major conference on microcap stocks that was scheduled to be held in Los Angeles through Thursday was canceled. Ventura County, home to a third of Californias avocado acreage, has seen tens of thousands of acres consumed, and citrus growers have been affected.

The five wildfires come two months after the deadliest set of blazes in the states history broke out in Northern Californias wine country, racking up insured losses that top $9.4 billion. Theyre striking as the House and Senate are working on a final version of sweeping tax legislation that currently would phase out the deduction for personal casualty losses, including those from wildfires and earthquakes.

Edison plunged the most in 15 years on speculation that its power lines may be blamed, saddling the utility with the costs of damages. Energy explorer California Resources Corp. has halted production at several small oil fields in Ventura County and northwest Los Angeles County. The stock slid 9.2 percent Wednesday.

One fires blazing near the Jewish museum Skirball Cultural Center, and the prominent Getty Center is just south. All filming activity in Los Angeless mountain fire zone areas was suspended for the week.

Rupert Murdochs Moraga Estate, where the media mogul operates a winery and lives with wife Jerry Hall in a 7,500-square-foot house, is in the evacuation zone. Murdoch said in an emailed statement that some buildings in the upper vineyard area may have been damaged but he believed the winery and house remain intact. Murdoch acquired the property in 2013 for $28.8 million.

Lemon grower Limoneira Co. said it was still assessing crop damage but that it didnt look too bad at this point.

In Ventura County, 90,000 acres were burned as of 9:06 p.m. local time Wednesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. More than 150 structures were reported destroyed near Ventura. Dozens of schools in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were closed. The University of California at Los Angeles, adjacent to an evacuated area, canceled classes and is monitoring the situation.

As of 9.15 p.m., more than 11,000 customers were without power due to the wildfires, according to Edisons Southern California Edison utility. A local transmission emergency was declared by the states grid operator after the loss of high-voltage power lines serving the Ventura and Santa Barbara areas. Fire officials said Wednesday that theyre looking at all possible causes for the blazes.

President Donald Trump, who owns a home in Beverly Hills, tweeted that his thoughts and prayers were with Californians affected by the fires and thanked emergency personnel for their work.

The threat of more wildfires isnt over. Santa Ana winds will continue to whip through Southern California through the rest of this week, threatening to spread these blazes and ignite new ones, according to Accuweather.

As of 10 p.m. New York time, the biggest fire as wreaking havoc across Ventura County and slowly surrounding the the town Ojai, forcing several thousand more people to evacuate, according to the Associated Press. More than 30,000 people are now under evacuation orders because of the fires.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Agribusiness
Google Inc. won dismissal of a California class-action lawsuit alleging the company systematically paid male employees more than females.

The class proposed by the plaintiffs, covering all women employed by Google in California, is too broad, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Mary E. Wiss said Tuesday.

This class definition does not purport to distinguish between female employees who may have valid claims against Google based upon its alleged conduct from those who do not, Wiss wrote. She allowed the women to file an amended complaint.

The lawsuit claims that Google pays women less for equal or similar work and puts women on career paths with lower pay ceilings.

As we said before, we work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here, Gina Scigliano, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an emailed statement. If we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, she said.

James Finberg, plaintiffs attorney, said theyll file an amended complaint by Jan. 3.

The new complaint will make clear that Google violates the California Equal Pay Act by paying women less than men for substantially equal work in nearly every job classification, he said in an email Wednesday.

The case is Ellis v. Google Inc., CGC-17-561299, Superior Court, San Francisco County, California.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Lawsuits California Google
What Is an Agent?

An agent, in legal terminology, is a person who has been legally empowered to act on behalf of another person or an entity. An agent may be employed to represent a client in negotiations and other dealings with third parties. The agent may be given decision-making authority.

Two common types of agents are attorneys, who represent their clients in legal matters, and stockbrokers, who are hired by investors to make investment decisions for them. The person represented by the agent in these scenarios is called the principal. In finance, it refers to a fiduciary relationship in which an agent is authorized to perform transactions on behalf of the client and in their best interest.

Key Takeaways An agent is authorized to act on behalf of another person, such as an attorney or a stockbroker.

People hire agents to perform tasks that they lack the time or expertise to do for themselves.

A universal agent has wide authority to act on another's behalf, but a general agent or special agent has more limited and specific powers.

Agency by necessity is where an agent is appointed to act on behalf of a client who is physically or mentally incapable of making a decision.

Most agent jobs require a license and registration with the appropriate state authorities.

Understanding an Agent

An agent is someone that is given permission (either explicitly or assumed) to act on an individual's behalf and may do so in a variety of capacities. This could include selling a home, executing a will, managing a sports career, managing an acting career, being a business representative, and so on.

Agents often have expertise in a specific industry and are more knowledgeable about that industry's ins and outs than the average person. For example, if you started gaining attention as a musician, you would hire a music agent to help guide you through getting a record deal, signing record contracts, and arranging your touring schedule.

As you would not have any experience with the record industry, you would need an agent to look out for your best interests and take care of a lot of the work that you would otherwise most likely not be able to complete on your own. This would also free up your time so that you can concentrate on making music.

Types of Agents

Agents come in all types depending on their function and the industry in which they operate. In general, there are three types of agents: universal agents, general agents, and special agents.

Universal Agents

Universal agents have a broad mandate to act on behalf of their clients. Often these agents have been given power of attorney for a client, which gives them considerable authority to represent a client in legal proceedings. They may also be authorized to make financial transactions on behalf of their clients.

General Agents

General agents are contracted to represent their clients in specific types of transactions or proceedings over a set period. They have broad authority to act but in a limited sphere. A talent agent for an actor would fall under this category.

Special Agents

Special agents are authorized to make a single transaction or a series of transactions within a limited period. This is the type of agent most people use from time to time. A real estate agent, securities agent, insurance agent, and travel agent are all special agents.

Practicing as an agent in a specific industry without the proper license or registration can lead to fines or being prohibited from acting as an agent in that industry in the future. Before working as an agent, ensure that you have obtained the right license, certification, and registration.

Uses of Agents

People hire agents to perform tasks that they lack the time or expertise to do for themselves. Investors hire stockbrokers to act as middlemen between them and the stock market. Athletes and actors hire agents to negotiate contracts on their behalf because the agents are typically more familiar with industry norms and have a better idea of how to position their clients.

More commonly, prospective homeowners use agents as middlemen, relying on the professional's greater skills at negotiation.

Businesses often hire agents to represent them in a particular venture or negotiation, relying on the agents' superior skills, contacts, or background information to complete deals.

Loyalty Responsibilities of an Agent

Duty of Avoiding Material Benefit

During the course of business, an agent may benefit. This is especially true when an agent is paid to perform a task on behalf of the principal. For example, a real estate agent commonly receives a commission for their work in selling a house.

When acting on behalf of another, an agent must ensure they do not unjustly benefit from their agency position. This includes receiving large benefits from the relationship or taking advantage of their position to ensure they receive benefits that would not normally as part of a normal transaction.

Duty Not to Usurp

When an agent acts on behalf of a principal, the agent may receive information it would be able to personally capitalize on for personal benefit. For example, an agent may receive information relating to a potential investment opportunity. The agent owes the principal the duty to not steal or supplant the principal's ability to transact. In this example, the principal retains the right to decide whether or not to invest; the agent must not take the place of the principal without the principal explicitly declining an opportunity to invest.

Duty to Not Compete

On a similar note, an agent may not enter into transactions or business that compete with a principal. This conflict of interest puts the principal at a disadvantage as the agent may obtain trade or business secrets during the course of the business relationship. For example, imagine if an agent was tasked with shipping specific goods to an agent's manufacturing warehouse. The agent could obtain information related to the principal's operations that the agent could then use for its personal benefit.

Duty of Transparency

Formalized agent-principal arrangements often include verbiage that the agent must disclose if it has any other principals in which it is acting as an agent for. This includes disclosing a sworn statement that the agent will act in good faith across all principals and will incur fair dealing with each principal.

Duty to Protect Information

During the course of an agent's relationship with the principal, the agent may not disclose confidential information to unrelated parties. This may defined through confidentiality agreements or may not be explicitly called out. In either case, the agent must take care to evaluate the sensitivity of information and the necessity for other parties to obtain that information. This includes not using confidential information for the personal benefit of the agent (i.e. exchanging the information for personal benefit to an independent third party).

An agent may have express authority (via a written contract) or implied authority (entered into agreement based on actions)

Performance Responsibilities of an Agent

Duty of Contract

All terms of any written agreement between an agent and a principal define the relationship between the two. For many agent and principal relationships, the contract is not explicitly defined upfront. However, custom or deliberate agreements may call for very specific terms that define what is and isn't allowed.

Duty of Care

An agent is always tasked with acting with care and competence when handling affairs of the principal. The standard is often held that the agent must act as the principal would, using discretion as if it would incurring the personal gain or loss. Though the level of care may not be explicitly defined, the level of care should be equal to what is reasonably expected by local standards.

The duty of care may be complicated when considering the agent's personal benefit potential. For example, consider a broker that receives a commission for the sale of certain investment products. For some clients, it may not be in their best interest to buy those investments. Therefore, the broker has the duty of care to not sell such products to those individuals, sacrificing personal gain to uphold the sanctity of the relationship.

Duty of Obedience

An agent must comply with reasonable instruction. Though there may be situations where acting on one's behalf and following their guidance is not reasonable or legal, the agent may have recourse to not follow instruction. Otherwise, the agent is bound to perform tasks as expected by the agreement. This includes situations where the principal may be disadvantaged but has instructed the agent to act in a specific manner.

Duty of Disclosure

As the agent gains sensitive information that may influence the decision-making process of a principal, the agent has the duty to disclose that information in an accurate, timely manner. Consider the example of Los Angeles Dodgers' player Freddie Freeman. Freeman's agent reportedly did not disclose to Freeman that his former team, the Atlanta Braves, wanted to re-sign him. By withholding such information, Freeman reluctantly signed with a different team.

Duty of Separation

An agent also has the responsibility to keep the agent's and the principal's affairs separately. This includes ensuring that any transactions entered into on behalf of the principal are still legal property of the principal. This also ensures that any resources or capital used to transact are maintained in separate bank accounts and that separate reporting ledgers are maintained.

When acting as an agent, you are often protected from liability as long as you act with care, reasonableness, and transparency.

Agent Liability

An agent is often liable to their principal if they violate their duty or deviate from a reasonable, expected action performed on behalf of the other party. This may be the result of exceeding the authority they've been given, acting in misconduct, being unreasonably negligent, or any other situation where the principal may incur a loss that could have potentially been avoided.

In some situations when the agent performs a task for another without disclosing they are an agent, they may be considered liable because the agent was presumed to be a principal. An agent is also commonly liable when the agent expressly incurs a personal liability by entering into an associated agreement.

Agency by Necessity

There is also "agency by necessity," in which an agent is appointed to act on behalf of a client who is physically or mentally incapable of making a decision. This is not always a case of incapacitation. Business owners, for example, might designate agents to handle unexpected issues that occur in their absence. For example, if a CEO was on a flight and unreachable yet an emergency business decision needed to be made, agency by necessity could be used.

Agency by necessity is most often executed in times of emergency or urgency when the primary party is not available to make a decision. In these situations, courts would recognize a third party making the decision if that party was given power by the primary party to do so. The third party would be responsible for acting in the primary party's best interest.

Estate planning often sees agency by necessity. Though an individual may have created a will outlining how an estate should be disbursed at their time of death, there could be situations where the person became incapacitated before needed adjustments to the will were made. Here, agency by necessity could be used by a trusted party.

What Is an Enrolled Agent? An enrolled agent is one that represents taxpayers in front of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). To become an enrolled agent, one needs to pass an IRS test that covers individual and business tax returns or through experience by being a former IRS employee. Enrolled agents can represent any type of taxpayer over any tax matter in front of any tax department in the IRS.

What Is a Registered Agent? A registered agent is an individual that is authorized to accept legal documents on behalf of a limited liability company (LLC). All LLCs require a registered agent and they are legally allowed to accept tax documents, legal documents, government documents, compliance documents, and any other documents pertaining to the LLC. A registered agent for an LLC is known to be an "agent for service of processes." If an LLC does not have a registered agent, it may be fined by the state, not allowed to file a lawsuit, be denied financing, and not allowed to expand out of state.

How Do You Become a Real Estate Agent? To become a real estate agent, you need to obtain a real estate agent license. There are a few qualifications for this, and they can vary from state to state. In general, a person needs to be 18 years of age, be a legal resident of the U.S., complete the required relicense education, and pass the real estate exam. Individuals can enroll in relicensing courses before taking the real estate exam.

How Do You Become an Insurance Agent? The first step in becoming an insurance agent is deciding what kind of insurance agent you want to be, as the type depends on the path to becoming one. You can choose to be either a captive insurance agent or an independent insurance agent. From there, you will need to decide what insurance products you would like to sell to clients. The next step is becoming licensed in your state. The products that you decide you would like to sell will depend on the type of license you will need. You will take your licensing exam and from there you will have to submit a background check and license application to your state's licensing department. Once this is complete, you will need to find an insurance company to work with.

How Do You Become a Sports Agent? To become a sports agent you will need to obtain a sports license and register with the state. Not all states require this. The sport or league that you will want to join will require certification as well. Typically, a bachelor's degree is required before becoming a sport's agent, and advanced degrees, such as law, help in becoming one so that you can understand the legal language of the contracts of the clients you manage. Once you have been certified and received your license, you will need to join a sports agency and from there start building a client base.

The Bottom Line

An agent is anyone that has been entrusted to act on behalf of another individual. People usually call upon an agent when they need someone with more expertise or when they don't have the time to complete a task.

Agents are commonly used in the finance, law, real estate, insurance, acting, and music industries, yet they can be found in almost any situation when advanced knowledge on a topic is needed. Agents can save people a lot of time, money, and headaches in getting important tasks done.


What Is a Sub-Advised Fund?

A sub-advised fund is an investment fund that is managed by another management team or firm than where the assets are held. A sub-advised fund may consist of specialty or niche investments that the main fund portfolio managers seek outside expertise for.

Key Takeaways A sub-advised fund involves a third-party money manager that is hired by an investment company or mutual fund to manage an investment portfolio.

Sub-advised funds are typically sought by investment companies because of their expertise in managing a specific strategy.

Sub-advised funds may add performance to a larger portfolio, but will typically also come with added fees as the subadvisor must also be paid.

Understanding Sub-Advised Funds

Sub-advised funds can be found across a range of strategies in the investable market. They are the product of relationships formed across the investment management business. They allow an investment manager to contract with other investment managers to offer funds with specific investment objectives.

Sub-advisory relationships allow for one alternative in launching new funds for investors. In some cases, investment managers can launch new fund offerings more efficiently with lower costs and better operational processing through a sub-advisory relationship. Many investment managers partner with sub-advisors for lower costs and broader fund offering diversification.

Some of the investment markets largest and most experienced investment managers build a sub-advisory platform that allows them greater access to sub-advisory relationships in the market. Wellington Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors are two investment managers that actively seek to offer their services through sub-advisory relationships.

Sub-advisory fee structure agreements vary across the investment market. Fees for sub-advised funds are typically higher due to the multi-layered relationships involved with offering a sub-advised fund. In general, investors should more closely examine the fee structures of sub-advised funds because they are often higher and more complex than traditional fund offerings.

Despite potentially higher fees, other aspects of a sub-advised fund can be advantageous for investors. Specifically, sub-advised funds are typically managed by fund managers with in-depth experience and expertise in managing a certain strategy. Fund managers for sub-advised funds are often sought out for their strategy expertise, offering investors the best strategy option in the market.

Sub-Advised Fund Investments

Sub-advisory relationships span across the entire investment universe. Any type of fund can be sub-advised. Mutual funds and variable annuities are some of the most common sub-advised offerings. In a 2016 report from Pensions & Investments, Wellington is identified as the investment industrys largest sub-advisor by assets with $499.1 billion in sub-advised assets under management.

Wellington has a well-established sub-advisory relationship with Hartford Funds and serves as a sub-advisor for the firm. The Hartford International Equity Fund is one fund sub-advised by Wellington. The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation through investment in international equities. The Fund offers four share classes: A, F, I, and Y. Expenses vary for each of the share classes with the gross expense ratio ranging from 1.89% to 1.40%.
A 709-carat diamond found in Sierra Leone has been sold for more than 6.5 million US dollars (5.4m), officials said.

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.
Burma Drug Czar Rebukes Anti-narcotics Deal Between Yunnan, Wa Army

A UWSA soldier sets fire to seized drugs in the Wa Self-Administered Division in June 2017. / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYITAW  The chief of Myanmars counter-narcotics police force has criticized the signing of an agreement between Chinas Yunnan Province and the United Wa State Army (UWSA) to cooperate on drug eradication.

Yunnan Province government officials and UWSA leaders signed an agreement on Friday in Panghsang, the capital of the Wa Self-Administered Division, to work together to eradicate drugs and grow substitute crops in the division.

The Yunnan governments decision to sign an agreement directly with the UWSA can cause misunderstanding between the two countries, Brigadier General Mya Maung told reporters in Naypyitaw at the launch of the UNs Myanmar Opium Survey 2017.

At a meeting on drug eradication efforts in November in Kunming, China, Myanmar made it clear that China should consult with the Union government before signing any bilateral deals to fight drugs with Myanmars subnational authorities along its border.

Weve said very clearly that they can sign [memorandums of understanding] and letters of agreement on growing poppy-substitute crops only with the Union government, Brig-Gen Mya Maung said. They cant sign agreements with self-administered regions and state governments unless they are approved by the Union government.

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding about the policies of the Union government and political practices in areas that share a border with China, he added.

He said Chinas team at the meeting in November was led by the deputy standing general secretary of the National Narcotics Control Commission of China and included officials from Yunnans provincial government. The two countries, he said, agreed to get started on a poppy-substitution project in relatively stable parts of northern Shan State.

Political analyst Yan Myo Thein said the agreement between the UWSA and the Yunnan government was not unusual because the UWSA has been viewed as a distinct entity in Myanmar for a long time.

And because they share a border, he added, they may be cooperating in other areas as well.

Unless political problems are solved through political means, the UWSA will remain a distinct entity, he said. We need to build a true federal democratic Union promptly. Only then can similar problems and challenges be reduced.

The UWSA signed a ceasefire deal with the military regime in 1989. But it opted out of signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the government of U Thein Sein in 2015, saying it was unnecessary because the truce it reached with the previous government was holding.

It boasts of the largest and most powerful army among Myanmars ethnic armed groups with an estimated 30,000 troops and leads other armed ethnic groups along the Myanmar-China border in the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee, which is demanding an alternative to the NCA.

The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, who attended the report launch, urged armed ethnic groups to join Myanmars fight against the illicit drug trade.

The total area of opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar has decreased significantly in 2017 to 41,000 hectares, down 25 percent from the 55,500 hectares recorded in 2015, according to the report.

The report also reconfirms the link between conflict and opium cultivation in Myanmar, and that insecure areas with active insurgencies continue to produce at levels similar to 2015

Myanmars opium cultivation reached a low in 2006 but increased in 2013 before starting to decline again the following year, said Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe.

In June, the UWSA claimed opium poppy fields had been completely eradicated from the southern part of the area it controls along the Thai border, more than a decade after it adopted policies to combat drug production.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma ICG Urges World to Stay Engaged with Myanmar

People gathered outside City Hall in downtown Yangon to show their solidarity with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi while watching her televised diplomatic briefing on the Rakhine issue on Sept. 19. / Thet Htun Naing / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The International Crisis Group suggested on Thursday that policymakers in the West should resist the urge to disengage with Myanmar, while warning of potential negative consequences of any punitive action taken against the country.

Myanmar has faced international criticism for its armys recent campaign against Rohingya Muslims in the western part of the country, where more than 600,000 Muslims have fled across the border to Bangladesh. The army has been condemned for committing human rights violations including torching homes, arbitrary killing and rape.

In the wake of the exodus, the European Union and the United States imposed sanctions against Myanmars military leadership. Last month, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson labeled the armys sweep through Rakhine State as ethnic cleansing, after a visit to the country.

The warning by the Brussels-based NGO, which monitors democratic transitions worldwide, urged international policymakers not to lose sight of the distinction between the government and the people, who should not pay the price for the actions of a military that is constitutionally outside of democratic control.

People-to-people exchanges with the West through academic, cultural and commercial interactions and tourism are crucial for a country that was isolated for so many decades, the report says, while warning that the Myanmar peoples aspirations for a better economic future must not be forgotten as the country is home to millions of the poorest people in Southeast Asia.

Among the four action points suggested by the group were maintaining development assistance and non-military engagement, and leaving in place recently reinstated trade preferences by the EU and US, which it said were critical in supporting manufacturing jobs in the country and shouldnt be revoked.

As the US was considering imposing economic measures against those responsible for the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, the report also calls on the international community to work carefully to minimize the collateral impact of any targeted sanctions.

Recent experience in Myanmar shows, however, that ostensibly targeted sanctions can have broader systemic impacts on the economy that should be avoided, it says.

The ICG said that based on its contemporaneous research, until 2012 Myanmar was under some of the most stringent bilateral sanctions of any country and these did almost nothing to influence the then military regime but caused significant damage to the general economy and the fortunes of ordinary people.

The report also urges the international community to do all it can to mitigate the humanitarian disaster in Rakhine State and influence the situation in other ways, including providing substantial humanitarian support to Rohingya refugees, to reduce the risks of a further humanitarian catastrophe. Plus, it said, the international community should push Myanmar for a political decision to implement key recommendations of the Annan commission, including its suggestions on discrimination, segregation and citizenship.

Meaningful progress on these issue is vital to creating an environment conducive to voluntary repatriation, and giving international credibility to Myanmars efforts, the ICG said.

Given Chinas support for Myanmar on the Rohingya issue due to its significant economic interests in Rakhine State, the NGO also cautioned Naypyitaw against taking the countrys northern neighbors blanket support for granted. China doesnt want this to come at the cost of its important relations with Bangladesh and the wider Muslim world, it said, which was part of the reason why it allowed the recent UN Security Council presidential statement to be issued.

Security Risk

Despite their organized raids in August, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has not launched any new attacks since.

Based on interviews with ARSA members in camps in Bangladesh in September and November, the ICG says it appears most of the groups organizers and fighters are now in the camps, having fled along with the rest of the population.

The report says the group may thus shift to cross-border attacks as acquiring operating space in Bangladesh is a more realistic option given Bangladeshs anger and frustration towards Myanmar.

If ARSA launches cross-border attacks, it could aim at opportunistic security targets in northern Rakhine or turn to attack any non-Muslim villagers resettled on Rohingya lands, the report said.

New ARSA attacks would reinforce anti-Rohingya sentiment within Myanmar and prompt heightened security measures that would further diminish prospects for an eventual refugee return.
Burma Muslim village-head killed in Rakhine's Maungdaw District

Members of the security forces are deploy to safeguard a diplomatic tour of Rakhine State's northern Maungdaw Township in October. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  A Muslim village headman, Shaw Feik Amen, from Rakhine States southern Maungdaw Township, was shot dead in his house by unidentified armed men on Tuesday night, a border police officer confirmed on Thursday.

Police Major Aung Win, citing testimonies of witnesses, said a group of residents from the same village of Du Nyaung Pin Gyee had allegedly burst into the victims home to attack Shaw Feik Amen with guns and swords. The police officer, however, declined to provide the names of the suspects.

Du Nyaung Pin Gyee village is located about five kilometers from downtown Maungdaw and consists of more than 1,000 households. After the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), under its former name, Harakah al-Yaqeen (Faith Movement), attacked several dozen police border outposts in the surrounding area in late August, the majority of its residents fled to neighboring Bangladesh. However, some, including Shaw Feik Amen, chose to remain.

A primary school teacher, U Mg Tun, who lives in Kin Chaung village, not far from Du Nyaung Pin Gyee, told The Irrawaddy over the phone that he had heard some of the attackers crossed the river on a schooner from Bangladesh in order to kill the village administrative official for collaborating with the government.

Police Major Aung Win remarked that some Du Nyaung Pin Gyee residents had also come to a similar speculative conclusion but it was too soon to make an official statement as the case was still in the investigative stage.

U Mg Tun said Du Nyaung Pin Gyee village was mostly left alone during the Myanmar armys clearance operations and only a few houses were torched. Several hundred Muslims villagers had continued to live there despite the widespread armed clashes that had erupted across Maungdaw district following the ARSA raids. Moreover, nearly 700 villagers from Buthidaung Township had also temporarily sought shelter there.

During a government-sponsored diplomatic tour to Maungdaw Township in early October, which The Irrawaddy was also invited to attend  some Hindu and Arakanese villagers told the foreign envoys that residents had been warned by an unidentified group  believed to be ARSA members or supporters  to leave the village or they would be killed in the next round of attacks.

The threats came after Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called on the international community to seek the full story of the conflict-torn region as many Muslim villages continued to live in peaceful conditions.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has delivered diplomatic briefings and televised speeches twice in recent months calling on Muslim religious leaders to participate in the governments reconciliation effort in Rakhine State as well as to convince Muslims to apply for the National Verification Card (NVC).

On Nov. 27, the All Myanmar Moulvi (Ulama Al Haqe) Organization released a statement encouraging Muslims who do not possess any kind of official documents such as associated or naturalized citizenship papers or a white card to apply for the NVC.

The groups statement urged Muslims who live in Myanmar to hold at least one identity card issued by the authorities in line with existing laws.

Kyaw Soe, Ulama Al Haqes secretary-general, said that the statement was directed at the entire Muslim population of Myanmar rather than just the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and they purposefully stressed the effort was being carried out in the national and public interest. He assumed that many Muslims could be living in Myanmar without any identity papers as they are unfamiliar with government procedures on applying for them.

I can guarantee that our statement emphasized the interest of the public as well as the government, Kyaw Soe said.

However, the prospect of dealings with the government remains fraught with fear for many Muslims. Forty-eight Muslims were brutally beheaded by a suspected militant group between October 2016 and August 2017 and a further 20 went missing after collaborating with the government.

In response to a question on whether the Ulama Al Haqes effort could be effective on the ground as many people were killed for assisting government officials, Kyaw Soe said that although the group didnt know the exact perpetrators of the crimes, his organization was adamantly opposed to the violent conduct of ARSA.

We dont accept ARSA. All these things happened after they started the problem, he said of the unrest, which has resulted in more than 620,000 Muslim refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

He added that if government officials invite his organization to help, they could explain details of the NVC application process to Muslims in local areas.
Burma Myanmar Army Restrictions Leave Tanai Residents Lacking Basic Commodities

Trucks of food donations from the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society on their way to Tanai Township, August 22, 2017. / The 88 Generation Peace and Open Society / Facebook

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  As the Tatmadaw has restricted the transportation of basic commodities in conflict-torn Tanai Township, Kachin State, locals have run out of fuel and are suffering a rice shortage.

The Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) has restricted the transportation of goods in the region for more than a year, but the situation worsened after June 3, when the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Tatmadaw renewed fighting and displaced hundreds of locals from NGa Ga and Nambyu villages.

Tanai residents told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that diesel fuel ran out a few days ago, as fuel trucks from Myitkyina have been stuck at military checkpoints.

Only gasoline can be bought, and one Tanai resident said the price is up to 6,000 kyat per gallon in some places where previously it had been about 4,200 kyat.

Locals also said the price of rice sacks had risen to double or triple the going rate in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. They now costs 40,000 to 60,000 kyats per sack depending on quality, and they average around 20,000 in Myitkyina.

The Kachin State security and border affairs minister Col Thura Myo Tin told the Kachin State Parliament on Monday  in a response to a question by lawmaker U Zaw Win  that the Tatmadaws Northern Command scrutinizes the transport of rice and petrol in order to obstruct gold and amber miners who pay extortion money to the KIA in areas without rule of law.

U Zaw Win, a National League for Democracy lawmaker representing Tanai Constituency No. 2, questioned Parliament on Monday as to what the government was doing in regards to his urgent motion  in which he proposed that the government allow free transport of these goods, as was passed in March.

Despite the state security and border affair minister stating that the transport of such goods is now permitted following scrutiny, lawmakers insisted and showed evidence to Parliament that people were facing difficulties in obtaining these basic goods.

There has been a food shortage in the state because people have been unable to farm due to the frequent fighting. Now, with the Tatmadaw controlling the delivery of goods, locals lives have gotten harder, said Kachin State lawmaker Maran Ja Seng Hkawn.

Renewed fighting, following the breakdown of a 17-year ceasefire, broke out between the KIA and Tatmadaw in June 2011. More than 100,000 people have been displaced, including villagers from Tanai Township.

Local pastor Mung Dan said that villagers used to be able to buy rations of rice and fuel arranged at the township, village and ward levels but that this had stopped this week due to a shortage for unknown reasons.

We dont know why, but the quota system is no longer available and we are short of these supplies.

Lawmaker Maran Ja Seng Hkawn said the government would have to tackle this situation wisely, so that people arent taking advantage of those in hardship.

The Tatmadaws actions seem to undermine the image of the NLD, said Tanai resident U Zaw Tan, as this crisis happened soon after the NLD governance began.

Now the residents of Tanai have lost trust in the government and everyone is saying that the government cannot do anything, he said, adding that even without fighting in the town, locals are neither free to travel nor trade.
Burma US Grant to See Restoration of 19th Century Church Through

The Judson First Baptist Church in Moulmein, Mon State. / Tin Htet Paing / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  Restoration work on the 190-year-old Judson First Baptist Church in the Mon State capital of Moulmein will continue thanks to a second round of financial support from the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and help from conservation experts with the World Monuments Fund.

Built in 1827 by Adoniram Judson, an American missionary who spent nearly 40 years in Myanmar in the early 19th century, the church will receive an additional US$100,000 for its preservation. The church received US$125,000 in February 2016 from the same program. The World Monuments Fund aims to use the new grant to complete the two-year project.

Scot Marciel, the US ambassador to Myanmar, will announce the grant at the church on Saturday together with Mon State Social Welfare Minister Htein Linn and the churchs pastor, Reverend David, the US Embassys press invitation reads.

With hospitals and community organizations bearing the Judson name, the First Baptist Church represents Americas longstanding engagement with Myanmar, the embassy said in a November statement. It added that the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has provided some US$225,000 to preserve cultural heritage sites in Myanmar since 2015. In 2013, US$500,000 was awarded for the restoration of the Shwenandaw Kyaung Monastery in Mandalay.

According to the World Monuments Fund, the restoration of Judsons church will be an educational opportunity to introduce a cadre of local tradespeople, students and officials to cultural and architectural heritage conservation methods, building skills among Myanmar professionals that can be applied to similar sites in Moulmein and throughout the country.

In late September, leading members of Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT)  an advocacy group founded in 2012 for heritage protection in the countrys commercial capital  visited heritage buildings in Moulmein at the request of Mon State Chief Minister Aye Zan, who envisions the founding of a local conservation group similar to YHT. He has also asked for technical assistance from YHT for the restoration of other historical buildings in Moulmein.

Besides the First Baptist Church, other significant heritage buildings in Moulmein include a 19th century Buddhist monastery, the 120-year-old Yadanabon Myint Monastery built by King Mindons consort Sein Tone, the residence and tomb of the fourth daughter of Myanmars last monarch King Thibaw, the forestry office of the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation built in 1897, a cannon built in 1827 featuring the emblem of Britains King Edward, and a watchtower built in 1912.
A publication known as The Outline recently carried out what it called an investigation into how brands buy their way into well-known publications like Fast Company, Forbes and Huffington Post.

The practice of offering inducements, either monetary or material, to obtain favourable coverage in websites which have large visitor numbers is nothing new: cases come to light every now and then.

But what is surprising is that if happens with the most obscure publications  and here I speak from first-person experience because I was made an offer back in May.

Had it been an offer to write something in iTWire for a bribe, I would have written about it right away. But given that it was for my own inconspicuous blog, I never thought it was worth writing about until I read the yarn in The Outline. Now I think it is worth ventilating.

I have a personal blog which is; I set it up in 2009 because it was easy to do so and could play host to any writing I did that was not suited to iTWire. It gets negligible traffic because it was set up just for a few friends to be able to read my thoughts and opinions on subjects that we often discuss on the phone or by email.

Imagine my surprise then, when I received an email in May from a person who introduced himself as Ethan Andrews from a company known as Media-Top. He wanted to commission an article to be published on my blog!

"The piece should be on topic and true to your website. We will pay you a fixed fee for the work," he wrote.

Was I interested? You bet I was! Here was someone offering me money to write something and host it on my blog - a task that I do a few times a month for nothing but the enjoyment of doing so.

But then when I asked for details, it began to be apparent to me that this was what is known as cash for comment.

Andrews' next email made it plain: "My company represents an online gaming company. I would like to post a new article at your site. The article should fit the site and the readers, as it possibly can. This is why I prefer you will write it," he wrote.

"It should not mention 'advertisement', 'sponsors', 'PR'. It should have the same writing style like all other articles. It should be at least 350-400 words and with unique content (not copied from any other site)."

He asked me for rates and I responded that at $1 a word, it would come to between $350 and $400. And I added: "Also, before I forget, anything that is paid for will have a disclaimer. Else, the answer is no."

That was the end of my correspondence with Andrews. I never heard from him again.

What continues to puzzle me to this day is the fact that he approached someone seeking to get something published on a site that gets as little traffic as mine does. Clearly, his company does not do much homework before it makes these offers.
With the raft of sexual harassment, assault and misconduct complaints by powerful men roiling across Hollywood, the TV news industry and government in recent weeks, we were ready to applaud Assembly Speaker Robin Vos call for a mandatory meeting for Wisconsin legislative staff to discuss the process for reporting inappropriate behavior.

But in short order we were left with one hand clapping  a whiff  when Republican leaders in both the Senate and Assembly agreed that such complaints against lawmakers and their staff members and the results of any investigations into them will remain secret.

The goal of an internal process is to make sure that every single person who feels that they were a victim of some kind of harassment or sexual harassment has a way to go to be able to report it to somebody, have some confidentiality, have it investigated, because frankly, if the allegations are untrue, we want to ensure people have the right to their own privacy with a false accusation, but also if they are true, we want to make sure that the victim is protected, Vos told a Madison newspaper.

We understand that protecting the reputation of a lawmaker who might be falsely accused is something that the Legislature is concerned with. But they should also be concerned with the working climate at the Capitol and their responsibility to let the public know when such charges are substantiated and what actions have been taken.

I understand sometimes in the zeal of the press you dont really worry about naming the victims and all those kinds of things, Vos said. Our job is to ensure that people who want to come forward feel safe and that they are confident that we will treat it with the respect and due diligence they deserve.

That ranks up there in the pants on fire scale on the fib-o-meter. The fact is that across the state newspapers and other media take great pains to protect the identity of sexual assault victims day in and day out. Most, if not all, have strict policies against naming victims  unless the victim comes forth publicly.

The Legislature could have  and should have  adopted a policy of redacting names of sexual assault victims and legislators when complaints are made.

But identifying lawmakers when the results of investigations are complete and actions are taken  or no actions result  are an absolute responsibility of the Legislature and its leaders.

If Vos needs other reasons for the Legislature to be more transparent in reporting such abuses, we can give him 75,000 of them. Thats the number  in dollars  that state taxpayers paid out two years ago to a former lawmakers aide who complained of sexual harassment and discrimination by former state Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, and was later fired during an office downsizing.

That settlement only became public this week after an inquiry from The Wisconsin State Journal because although the initial complaint was filed with the Senate chief clerk, the agreement was reached after an investigation by the Department of Workforce Development.

According to accounts in the settlement, in one instance, Coggs asked the aide if she was showing a little more cleavage lately and said her breasts were a distraction in the office. In another instance, according to the Wisconsin State Journal report, Coggs asked the aide if she had a taste for white meat when she and a white co-worker both asked for the same day off.

When Coggs office was downsized after Republicans took control of the Legislature, the aide told Coggs how important her job was to her and he responded, You cant create an adversarial situation and then come back and ask me for something.

Coggs, who has since left the Senate and is now Milwaukee city treasurer, told the Legislatures Human Resources Office in 2009  before the state agency investigation  that the aide should have kept her concerns in-house.

That screams for more public accountability when state lawmakers have committed improprieties or harassed legislative staff  or others. The names can be shielded at the outset, but the public has a right to know when the results of investigations are complete, what actions have been taken and any costs to Wisconsin taxpayers.

Openness, not secrecy, is the disinfectant that will cure bad behavior and encourage Capitol staffers to come forward with complaints when they are warranted.
In October, the three biggest mainstream newspapers in the US carried stories about Kaspersky Lab that effectively ensured there would be no second thoughts about the company's deals with the US Government. Examined carefully, these stories are short on essential detail. They are full of holes.

Nobody questioned these reports. They were taken as gospel  after all, the target was a Russian company and for more than a year anything from that country has been considered the spawn of the devil. There are many infosec professionals in the US but they all kept silent.

The New York Times ran a story that claimed Israeli government crackers had witnessed Russian hackers searching for the codenames of NSA exploits on computers around the world. Where it was not specified.

The article omitted this essential detail. (It is known that Israeli government crackers broke into Kaspersky's network in 2014  the company only discovered it in 2015).

This implies that Russian government hackers had access to Kaspersky Lab systems and also that they had access to the company's source code. The Kaspersky Security Network is the component of Kaspersky A-V that uploads suspicious files from a device that is being scanned to a KSN server somewhere around the globe for analysis later.

With the home version of Kaspersky A-V, the user has to opt in to the KSN; the corporate product will query the KSN (by sending a MD5 hash and the file size), but nothing is uploaded. There is no option for businesses to upload files.

For anyone to divert suspicious files elsewhere, they would need to have access to the KSN source code in order to change the addresses to which the files would be sent. Such addresses would be hardcoded in the source.

The NYT did not bother about this detail but they claimed that, "What additional American secrets the Russian hackers may have gleaned from multiple agencies, by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, is not yet publicly known."

So how did the Russians get hold of the source code? No detail was offered by the newspaper. Mud was thrown and it stuck.

For the story to hold water, the Russians would have had to get hold of the Kaspersky source code for the home version, recompile it with the URLs pointing to their own servers, then remove the A-V running on whichever computer they found NSA files, install the modified version, and opt in to KSN. They would then have had to run a scan else no files would be exfiltrated.

All this under the nose of the computer user without attracting any suspicion. It takes a bit of faith to believe this.

The Washington Post story skipped over one essential detail  how did NSA exploits, which it claimed were found in Kaspersky's network, get into the possession of the Russian government as claimed?

The Wall Street Journal article also hinted that the source code of Kaspersky software had been made available to the Russian government which had modified it to search for NSA exploits around the world. How this happened is a little detail over which the newspaper skipped over.

There is mention in the stories of a NSA worker who was working on office material at home; he is known to have had malware on his machine through the use of key generation software to obtain a valid key for the version of Microsoft Office he was using. This man is suspected to be Nghia Hoang Pho, a Vietnamese American, who pleaded guilty recently to taking NSA material home to work on it.

It is said that NSA files on his machine were exfiltrated by Russian government hackers. But the question arises: if these hackers had broken into his machine, why did they not use something simple like SCP to send the files where they wanted, rather than mess with the Kaspersky software? All they would have to do was install a simple SCP client like PuTTY.

When Kaspersky issued two blog posts with its version of what had happened, it concentrated on the WSJ story. The explanation offered holds together, at least from a technical point of view.

But both the US media and Kaspersky Lab cannot be dealing with facts. One side is being somewhat parsimonious with the truth.

The legendary Middle East correspondent of the Independent, Robert Fisk, once described the Los Angeles Times as "official sources said". He was poking fun at the newspaper, which uses this term very often to float yarns that favour the US Government's point of view.

With all the holes in the Kaspersky stories run by the three big papers, it looks like this is another case of "official sources said".
A lone 20-year-old attacker hacked into the ride-sharing firm Uber last year and was paid by the company to destroy the data through a bug-bounty programme. The hack exposed the data of 57 million users globally, plus the details of seven million Uber drivers.

A Reuters report said Uber's bug bounty programmes, normally used to reward researchers for the submission of information about flaws in a firm's software, was hosted by HackerOne, which also offers its platform to other technology companies.

The chief executive of HackerOne, Marten Mickos, is a well-known former chief executive of MySQL, the Finnish database company that was bought by Sun Microsystems and then became part of Oracle when it bought Sun.

Mickos said he could not discuss an individual customer's programmes. "In all cases when a bug bounty award is processed through HackerOne, we receive identifying information of the recipient in the form of an IRS W-9 or W-8BEN form before payment of the award can be made," he said.

The Uber hack waslast month. The company's chief security officer Joe Sullivan and one of his deputies, Craig Clark, were sacked after both were found to have played a role in covering up the breach.

At that time, Uber chief executive Data Khosrowshahi said: ""None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. We are changing the way we do business."

The report said there was no clue as to the identity of the attacker who was said to be from Florida. Uber spokesman Matt Kallman refused to comment.

As to who authorised the payment, nothing is known, apart from the fact that former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick was aware of both the breach and the payout in November 2016.

Uber is said to have paid the money to confirm the attacker's identity and make him sign a non-disclosure agreement. The company also checked the man's machine to ensure that the data had been erased.

Uber suffered a data breach in 2014 as well and was discussing a settlement with the FTC while it haggled with the Florida hacker to keep the 2016 breach quiet.
New Zealand telcos Spark, Vodafone, Chorus and 2degrees Mobile are set to pay more than 90% of the countrys $50 million telecommunications development levy which covers the operation of telecommunications infrastructure and services that are not commercially viable.

The payment obligations of 16 of the countrys telcos towards the levy have been outlined in a final decision by the competition regulator The Commerce Commission following its initial draft decision announced in October.

Under this final decision, the contribution of telco Compass has now increased after the company provided further information on its relevant revenue.

The Commission says the remaining 15 providers have seen their allocations marginally reduce as a result of the adjustment to the Compass contribution.

As well as covering the cost of commercially unviable services, the levy is also used to pay for the telephone relay service for the deaf, hearing and speech-impaired, broadband for rural areas, improvements to the 111 emergency service, and providing greater mobile coverage in mobile blackspots.

The levy equates to about 1% of telecommunications services revenue earned by telecommunications services providers in New Zealand and is paid by providers earning more than $10 million per year from operating a telecommunications network.
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By Naimul Haq | (Inter Press Service) |  

IPS Correspondent Naimul Haq interviews WILLIAM LACY SWING, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec 5 2017 (IPS)  In less than four months, over 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled brutal persecution in Myanmar to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh. They are now crowded into camps across a stretch of 30 kms in Coxs Bazar, a southeastern coastal region of the small South Asian nation.

The UN migration agency, International Organisation for Migration (IOM), has appealed to the international community for urgent funds. Over 344 million dollars was pledged recently at an international meeting to ramp up the delivery of critical humanitarian assistance. IOM stressed that the international community must work together to help to bring about a political resolution to the Rohingya crisis.

We all need to work to create the conditions that will allow the refugees to eventually return voluntarily to Myanmar in safety and dignity.



IOM, at the request of the government of Bangladesh, has been leading the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), which is coordinating the humanitarian response to the influx of Rohingya refugees.

This appeal outlines IOMs funding requirement from September 2017 to February 2018 as a part of the wider UN Humanitarian Response Plan.

William Lacy Swing, IOMs Director General, told IPS Correspondent Naimul Haq that any durable solution must be a political one agreed between Bangladesh and Myanmar and supported by the international community.

Swing said that all stakeholders need to work to create the conditions that will allow the Rohingya refugees to eventually return voluntarily to Myanmar in safety and dignity.

He praised the Bangladesh governments mobilization of its own resources, as well as the local communitys support to help the refugees. Swing went on a four-day visit in mid- October to several camps in Coxs Bazar.

Following are the excerpts from the interview.

Q. During your visit to various camps, you witnessed the horror, heard the victims and saw the difficult situation prevailing in the camps. How do you compare the Rohingya exodus with the recent similar refugee crisis like in Syria?

A. The Rohingya refugee crisis, although much smaller than the exodus of five million people from Syria since 2011, is equally severe in many ways. It has unfolded at extraordinary speed with over 600,000 people arriving in a single, relatively small district  Coxs Bazar  since August 25th. By contrast the Syrian civil war has resulted in Syrias neighbors, notably Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, all hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees. But the speed, scale and complexity of what is now happening in Coxs Bazar has created a major global humanitarian emergency. The needs on the ground for shelter, food, clean water, sanitation and healthcare are enormous. When this happened, none of us  neither humanitarian agencies nor the government of Bangladesh  were fully prepared to cope with an influx of this magnitude in such a short space of time.

Q. In a joint statement about relief for the Rohingyas, you said, Much more is urgently needed. The efforts must be scaled up and expanded to receive and protect refugees and ensure they are provided with basic shelter and acceptable living conditions. They [Rohingyas] are fully dependent on humanitarian assistance for food, water, health and other essential needs. Basic services are under severe strain. In some sites, there is no access to potable water and sanitation facilities, raising health risks for both the refugees and the communities hosting them. How do you plan to expand the distribution and what is the estimated cost of the additional relief?

A. IOM has been providing assistance to Rohingya refugees in Coxs Bazar, in partnership with the government, UN agencies, international and local NGOs, since September 2013. Now more international and local agencies are coming in to work with us in a well-coordinated effort to help an estimated 1.2 million people  including nearly 900,000 refugees and 300,000 people living in host communities already living since 1992.

But there are still gaps in the response and more resources are needed to ensure adequate, lifesaving assistance for everyone who needs it. Even now, three months after the start of the crisis, hundreds more people are still coming across the border from Myanmar every day. The Joint Response Plan, launched by the UN and partners in September, appealed for USD 434 million to support 1.2 million people through February 2018. Only USD 149.1 million has been received so far, of which IOM has received USD 52 million.

Q. The need [relief] assessment is taking place almost on a daily basis as the influx continues with more Rohingyas arriving in the camps for safety. It appears that the refugees would need to stay in Bangladesh for quite a while before a diplomatic solution is reached for their safe return. Having said this, a sustainable approach is needed on the ground. How do you or the international community, including the UN, plan to pursue both the governments [Bangladesh & Myanmar] to come to terms and find a peaceful return and settlement?

A. Any durable solution must be a political one agreed between Bangladesh and Myanmar and supported by the international community. We all need to work to create the conditions that will allow the refugees to eventually return voluntarily to Myanmar in safety and dignity. The agreement on return signed by the two countries last week is an important first step. But this is going to take time. As the UN Secretary-General has highlighted, UN agencies need to first resume their humanitarian work in Rakhine State, to promote reconciliation between the communities, and to help the government of Myanmar to implement the recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission  the agreed roadmap to peaceful co-existence.

Q. During your visit you met with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who was quoted as saying, They [Rohingya] have to go back to their homeland, create international pressure on Myanmar so that they take steps to bring their citizens back. We just had the UN General Assembly expressing concern for the Rohingya refugees while many heads of government have already sent messages to Myanmar to take back their citizens. The Bangladesh PM and the world leaders are expressing concerns in the same tone. What could be the role of IOM in finding a lasting solution and how?

A. The Prime Minister is correct in saying that there has to be a political solution supported by the international community. Much of this solution lies with Myanmar. IOM, as the UN Migration Agency, is a humanitarian agency and as such does not have the political weight of the UN Secretary General or the UN Security Council. But we can support the Secretary-General in advocating for dialogue between the parties in the hope that it will eventually allow the Rohingya to leave the terrible conditions in which they are living in Coxs Bazar and return home safely to resume their lives.

Q. Do you have plans to visit Myanmar and meet the leaders there? If yes, what are you hoping to discuss and also see on the ground in Rakhine state where the Rohingyas are coming from?

A. I have no plans to visit Myanmar this year, but I look forward to returning next year to reaffirm IOMs commitment to promoting peace and stability in Rakhine State, and, of course, to review the many other excellent projects that we implement in the rest of the country.

Q. A Critical Pledging Conference was held in Geneva on October 23, 2017 organized by OCHA, IOM and UNHCR and co-hosted by the European Union and Kuwait. Apart from pledges for international funds, what was the main message at the conference to the Rohingya crisis?

A. The conference was organized to provide governments from around the world an opportunity to show their solidarity and share the financial burden and responsibility for the Rohingya refugees. Over USD 344 million was pledged to urgently ramp up the delivery of critical humanitarian assistance. But countries represented at the conference also stressed that the international community must work together to help to bring about a political resolution of the Rohingya issue.

via Inter Press Service
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Some sections of the crazy quilt that makes up the Trump administration want to push Iran back out of the Arab world and weaken it, in support of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those actors have just been handed a big setback by Trumps slurred and crazed announcement that he will move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize it as the capital.

While Washington pols fondly imagine that all politics is elite politics, it isnt actually the case. Ask Hosni Mubarak or Zine El Abidin Ben Ali. Political leaders have to get a minimum buy-in from their publics. One trial run for the 2011 Tunisian revolution was massive demonstrations in 2009 during the Israeli assault on little Gaza, where student activists, trade unionists, attorneys and others learned to network and get out enormous crowds. Ben Alis and Mubaraks toadying to Washington helped make them so hated that they were overthrown, in part because Washington stands for economic policies that punish workers and the middle classes, but in part because Washington stands for stealing Palestinians land and making them homeless and poverty-stricken.

Rulers like King Abdullah II of Jordan, who have a powerful alliance with the United States but whose people are pro-Palestinian (indeed 60% are of Palestinian heritage) are not sleeping well these days.

It isnt that everyone doesnt already know that Washington is on board with screwing over the Palestinians and humiliating the Arabs. But Trump just flaunted it in everyones face.

But let us consider the Saudi cold war with Iran. Given the open Saudi signals of cooperation with Israel against Tehran and given the Al Sauds embrace of Trump, Riyadh is implicated in the Jerusalem decision whether they like it or not. In the propaganda wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iran just got a big boost.

Irans president Hassan Rouhani called up Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan and the two agreed that Jerusalem is the permanent capital of Palestine. Turkey is majority Sunni, while Iran is a Shiite republic. Any attempt to block Irans influence would have to aim at instigating bad relations between these two, among the most populous and wealthy countries in the Middle East.

Trump managed to bring Turkey and Iran together by what they called his wrong and illegal action. In fact, Rouhani called for all 56 Muslim-majority countries to make a stand against the US. Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Jerusalem will always be Arab and Islamic. The countrys Leader, Ali Khamenei, also weighed in, pledging to organize the Muslim world for a response. So now the Iranians (not Arabs) are the champions of Arab nationalism, while Saudi Arabia and Egypt are supine. So Trump is helping make Iran a leader of the Muslim world. Good job.

Or take Iraq, the government of which is run by the Shiite, pro-Iran Dawa (Islamic Call) party. The blowhard CIA director Mike Pompeo strutted around saying hed written a letter to Qassem Solaimani, the head of the special operations Jerusalem Brigade force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, warning him about his operations in the Middle East. The US has some 6,000 men in Baghdad.

So after Trumps announcement, which way do you think the Iraqi government is tilting? Toward the Iranian position on Jerusalem. The Iraqi foreign minister wrote a harsh letter to Washington denouncing Trump decision.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned Arab leaders that if they abandoned Jerusalem it would be the end of them. His followers also staged demonstrations Wednesday, including in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

Former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki called the American announcement a declaration of war on the Arab peoples and an attack on the human rights of Palestinians.

So guess who is responsible for the security of the US troops in Iraq. Yes, that is right. The Iraqi government, its army, and its Shiite militias.

In Lebanon, the Saudis had tried and failed to break up the national unity government in which Shiite, Christian and Sunni officials serve. To the extent that Riyadh openly marked Saad Hariri, the prime minister, as a creature of the Saudis, they did him some harm with the Lebanese people. He has rescinded his forced resignation and hastily issued a stinging rebuke of Washington over Jerusalem. But it rings hollow given his identification with the Saudi-Israeli-American axis.

So if the Lebanese have to take sides on this one, it wont be the Saudi-Israeli-American side. Therefore the Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah is strengthened internally by this move, the opposite of what the Saudis were going for. Thank you Mssrs. Trump and Pence.

====

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Press TV: Iran Leader: Palestine will at last be freed
OAKVILLE, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Dec. 7, 2017) - Giyani Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE:WDG)(FRANKFURT:KT9) ("Giyani" or the "Company") has received positive metallurgical testing results, performed by Dalhousie Minerals Engineering Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, from the manganese oxide bearing rocks sampled at the K.Hill Prospect, the first of three potential deposits within the Kanye Manganese Project in Botswana.

Of significance, manganese nodule type material, abundant at K.Hill, can be easily treated using a trammel/gravity/washing process. Manganese found in staining and veins environments suggest only a light grind is required making it physically amenable to hydrometallurgical processes. Hydrometallurgical processing takes the product to a grade higher than 99.7% manganese in the form of electrolytic manganese dioxide (EMD) suitable for the battery industry.

Robin Birchall CEO of Giyani said, "I am very pleased with the results of these tests. They vindicate the approach the Company has taken to pursue the high value battery market. We look forward to continuing our exploration and test work in Botswana at our deposits and hope to have further supportive good news in the near future".

In detail, the results indicate manganese minerals at K.Hill occur in three forms:

Staining on the silicates, iron oxides and themselves.

Small veins, as manganese oxides deposited on each other

Nodules wherein the manganese has built-up into botrydal masses that may contain other minerals

This supergene mineralogy is complex as there are many oxidation states of manganese and a variety of other metals are present.

These results, however, are positive indications that the percentage of deleterious elements in the rock does not affect quality or recovery. For example, Kaolin is present in one layer of the manganese bearing rock tested. This mineral has a smaller particles size and is found in veins; thus, should not present a problem during processing. Iron oxides are also found which is normal in manganese ores.

It is recommended that additional testing be performed to determine the recovery of manganese nodules through a screening, washing and/or gravity separation system and that the remainder of the manganese be tested for recovery and purity using hydrometallurgical processes.

Dump Material: hydrometallurgy tests to determine potential recovery. It is unlikely that grinding will be required on this material. However, grinding should be done on a second iteration of these tests to determine if recoveries can be improved.

Manganese-Iron Altered Shales: Size reduction to the range of 100-300 micrometers followed by hydrometallurgical testing to determine potential recovery of the manganese.

Manganese Shales with Kaolin: this material is similar to the Manganese-Iron altered shales with the potential of a smaller required grind size and the presence of Kaolin. If Kaolin is detrimental to the hydrometallurgy a course grind should be performed at sizes larger than a millimeter, followed by a washing to remove the kaolin prior to size reduction to the 100 - 300 micrometers final size.

Manganese altered Silicates: This has a low grade of manganese. However, some of the manganese occurs in larger veins and could be separated with a course grind followed by leaching and hydrometallurgy.

Examples of the manganese minerals found in the samples are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Manganese minerals identified in the K.Hill samples

Name Lustre Colour Hardness Tenacity Density MnO Grade Cryptomelane Earthy Brown-gray 5-6.5 Brittle 4.17-4.41 60% Hausmannite Resinous Brown-black 5.5 Brittle 4.83-4.85 72% Hollandite Metallic Silver-Black 4-6 Brittle 4.95 52.8% Psilomelane submetallic Iron black 5-6 Brittle 4.7 48.8% Pyrolusite Varies Black-gray 2-6.5 Brittle 5.04-5.08 63.2% Jacobsite Resinous Brown-Black 5.5-6.5 Brittle 4.76 23.8% Coronadite Varies Gray-Black 4.5-5 Brittle 4.2-4.5 48.7%

The Bond Work Index for power requirements, to crush and grind manganese ore, ranges from 12 to 16 kWhr/tonne, but when grinding only to exposure can be as low as 6 kWhr/tonne. This is an approximation of the power required to break the rock from an infinite size to 100 micrometers.

Metallurgical testing was performed on samples collected from the K.Hill Prospect in Botswana in August and September of 2017 by Dr. Ian M. Flint, Ph.D., P.Eng. These samples were shipped to Dalhousie university in Nova Scotia, Canada, where sectioned mineralogy work was done on thin sections randomly taken from the samples using an electron microprobe and an optical mineralogical microscope. Dr. Flint supervised each stage of the work, including from the site, and ensured the chain of custody of the samples.

Ian Flint, Ph.D., P.Eng, is the qualified person, as that term is defined by National Instrument 43-101, on behalf of the Company and has approved the scientific and technical content contained in this press release.
Undergraduate students selected to join Kansas State University cancer research teams

Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017



The 2017-2018 recipients of Cancer Research Awards from the Johnson Cancer Research Center at Kansas State University. These students are working with faculty mentors to conduct cancer research. | Download this photo.





MANHATTAN  The Johnson Cancer Research Center at Kansas State University has selected 33 students to participate in its undergraduate research mentoring and awards program.



The center's Cancer Research Awards program promotes student participation in laboratory research. It encourages undergraduate students to consider careers in cancer research and medicine early on while they are still deciding what academic and professional paths to take.



"This opportunity gets students more engaged in their education, a critical factor in their success," said Stephen K. Chapes, the center's interim director and a professor of biology. "Many of these future cancer researchers and medical workers will undoubtedly go on to be some of the top professionals in their fields."



The awards program, which is open to Kansas State University undergraduate students interested in doing cancer-relevant research, provides $1,000 awards to up to 50 students a year, and $1,000 per student for research expenses.



Students applied for the awards by co-writing research proposals with faculty mentors affiliated with the center. The awardees conduct their research in the mentors' laboratories during the spring semester.



"These are some of the university's  and the state's  most outstanding science students, working closely with excellent faculty on real research projects," Chapes said.



The students will be recognized in the spring at a banquet attended by their families and faculty mentors, cancer research center supporters and university administrators.



The Johnson Cancer Research Center supports the research and training of affiliated faculty, undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. All programs are funded through private gifts.



The following students received Cancer Research Awards; included is each student's faculty mentor:



Jennifer Coats, senior in chemical engineering, Allen, mentored by John Tomich, professor of biochemistry and biomolecular physics; Micah Meyer, sophomore in biochemistry, Bern, mentored by Chingakham Singh, research assistant professor of biology; Marissa Komp, sophomore in life sciences, Clearwater, mentored by Jocelyn McDonald, assistant professor of biology; Spencer Ward, senior in biology, Colwich, mentored by Michael Veeman, assistant professor of biology; Seth Peery, junior in biochemistry, Goddard, mentored by Kathrin Schrick, associate professor of biology.



From Greater Kansas City: Alexa Wilden, junior in microbiology, Gardner, mentored by Stella Lee, assistant professor of biology; Sarah Gillaspie, senior in biochemistry, Leawood, mentored by Katsura Asano, professor of biology; Mackenzie Thornton, sophomore in microbiology, Leawood, mentored by Katsura Asano, professor of biology; Connor Horn, sophomore in microbiology, Olathe, mentored by Govind Vediyappan, assistant professor of biology; Jazmine Snow, senior in microbiology, Olathe, mentored by Nick Wallace, assistant professor of biology; Eric Aube, senior in biochemistry, Overland Park, mentored by Katsura Asano, professor of biology; Kathlyn Gomendoza, senior in biology, Overland Park, mentored by Lorena Passarelli, professor of biology; Olivia Haney, senior in chemistry, Overland Park, mentored by Ryan Rafferty, assistant professor of chemistry; Elizabeth Martino, senior in biology, Overland Park, mentored by Lorena Passarelli, professor of biology; and Marta Stetsiv, junior in biochemistry, Shawnee, mentored by Erica Geisbrecht, associate professor of biochemistry and biomolecular physics.



Emily Wessel, junior in biochemistry, Hutchinson, mentored by John Tomich, professor of biochemistry and biomolecular physics.



From Manhattan: Alexis Bieker, sophomore in biology, mentored by Lorena Passarelli, professor biology; Yusuf Ciftci, freshman in biochemistry, mentored by Revathi Govind, associate professor of biology; and Vaithish Velazhahan, senior in microbiology and biochemistry, mentored by Kathrin Schrick, associate professor of biology.



Riley Burghart, junior in biology, McPherson, mentored by Masaaki Tamura, associate professor of anatomy and physiology; Emily Roggenkamp, senior in biochemistry, Onaga, mentored by Greg Finnigan, assistant professor of biochemistry and biomolecular physics; Johnathon Dallman, senior in chemistry, Silver Lake, mentored by Ryan Rafferty, assistant professor of chemistry; Kelsey Ferguson, senior in biochemistry, Topeka, mentored by Ryan Rafferty, assistant professor of chemistry; Kyler Weingartner, senior in biochemistry, Topeka, mentored by Kathrin Schrick, associate professor of biology; Jayden McCall, sophomore in microbiology, Valley Center, mentored by Robert DeLong, associate professor of anatomy and physiology; Jordan Disberger, junior in electrical engineering, Wamego, mentored by Punit Prakash, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Alexandria Bontrager, junior in microbiology, Whiting, mentored by Erica Geisbrecht, associate professor of biochemistry and biomolecular physics; Faith Kim senior in biology, Wichita, mentored by Jeroen Roelofs, associate professor of biology; and Charles Schaeffer, sophomore in microbiology, Wichita, mentored by Rollie Clem, professor of biology.



From Missouri: Jared Newell, freshman in biology, Lee's Summit, Missouri, mentored by Thomas Mueller, research assistant professor of biology; and Marlene Campos-Guerrero, senior in microbiology, Kansas City, Missouri, mentored by Zhilong Yang, assistant professor of biology.



From out of country: Yibo Liu, senior in biology, China, mentored by Ruth Welti, university distinguished professor of biology; and Arashi Nakashima, senior in animal sciences and industry, Japan, mentored by Masaaki Tamura, associate professor of anatomy and physiology.
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Every patient eventually asks the same question: How can I find the best hospitals and doctors?

The solution might seem easy, since we live in a world where information is readily available on the Internet. In a few clicks we can shop for goods, review consumer products, market ourselves on social media, and complete financial transactions instantly. You would think that health care, which accounts for 17 percent of the GDP, would have all these same features.

Think again. Health care information for consumers is woefully unsophisticated compared to other industries. Ask anyone who has ever attempted to find prices for health care services, interpret a medical bill, or schedule an appointment online.

Health care information is primitive because it is focused on finances rather than customers  that is, the patients. As a result, hospital and physician offices are skilled at sending bills but often cant help patients with anything else.

Federal regulations have helped improve online medical records and lab results. But information about health care quality can be confusing. It lacks standardization about what is important, credible, and measurable.

There are several well-known hospital quality websites, but research shows that hospitals ranked highly in one website often score poorly in another and vice versa.

The reason? These rating systems use different measurement criteria, as well as different statistics to compute results. Some are heavily influenced by reputation rather than clinical outcomes. Even Medicares rating system  Hospital Compare  isnt very helpful since its hard to navigate and most hospitals come out OK. Many patients choose not to use these quality tools due to the inconsistency among them.

Report cards about doctors are not much better. Medicares Physician Compare suffers from the same problems as its hospital-focused counterpart. The average visitor has difficulty sorting out the quality information most valuable to them. Some commercial websites list doctors who pay to be listed on the website. This marketing approach is not aimed at assessing physician quality. Other websites list doctors based on a national or regional poll of their peers. This model, while interesting, is based on anecdote and offers little objective information about physicians clinical performance.

Finally, the newest report card for hospitals and doctors is the popular website Yelp. This rating service remains controversial, since the physician reviews are based on consumer opinions alone rather than data-driven methodology. Despite this flaw, Yelp reviews are popular among consumers.

In the midst of all this confusion, how can someone find a good hospital or doctor?

I think that the best source is still a recommendation from a trusted friend, preferably a health professional. It is what physicians tend to do for their families and friends.

Those in health care usually have a network of helpful contacts. Of course, many other factors can influence patient choice. Most patients prefer medical care that is nearby and convenient. Others, especially those with complex conditions, may want to see a specialist in a large medical center far from home.

Once a hospital recommendation is made, the patients and their families can examine the hospitals website to evaluate its staff and their credentials. A Google search of the physician may provide additional useful information.

Some hospitals publish their staffs expertise and experience in certain specialties. Such voluntary public reporting is becoming more common among hospitals that perform at a high level. If a hospital does not list such metrics, it is worth asking for them.

Clinical experience is highly important when choosing a physician. That information may not be listed on a website, but every physician should be able to summarize their experience. Patients are requesting this information more frequently, and physicians should be prepared for that discussion.

In summary, publicly reported hospital and physician scorecards are interesting and sometimes helpful  but not necessarily authoritative. We have a long way to go before public reporting in health care represents an accurate reflection of clinical performance in ways that consumers can understand.

In the meantime, the best approach is to contact a trusted source, especially a physician or nurse. Ask them where or to whom they would send their loved ones in times of need. That recommendation is bound to be reliable.

Mark Kelley is a pulmonologist and founder, HealthWeb Navigator , where this article originally appeared.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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If all politics is local, then Washingtons health care debacle has brought politics to the front stoop of every health care provider in America. There is no escaping it  debates taking place on Capitol Hill are set to affect the very survival of our patients. Irrespective of political leanings, doctors, nurses and providers of all stripes have ethical and professional obligations to speak up and become engaged in order to protect their patients.

While politics have always affected medicine  obstetricians and gynecologists have long fought for womens health issues, for example  current political events have pushed this into overdrive. In our current political climate, it no longer even makes sense to distinguish between events in Washington and my patient in front of me.

Earlier this year, Congress put forth a bill that among other things would strip 23 million patients of their health insurance, allow insurance companies to exclude people with preexisting conditions, eliminate essential health benefits such as pediatric services, ambulance rides, and lab tests from their plans, and increase costs, especially to older Americans.

Politicians are speaking frankly  even eagerly  about stripping services away from patients who currently have them. Each patient I see becomes another example of someone whose life could be at risk should any of the measures debated in Congress pass into law.

My elderly patients infected bedsore, for example, could only worsen, leading to sepsis and even death if she could no longer fill her antibiotic prescription. My patient with breast cancer, if unable to obtain chemotherapy due to her preexisting condition, would inevitably die. And any pediatric patient I see could suddenly be at risk of entirely preventable illnesses if left unimmunized due to the elimination of their essential health benefits.

Suddenly, being a physician and ignoring politics has become a lot like being an airplane pilot and ignoring the fact we are flying with the cabin doors wide open. Patients are about to be whisked into the sky with no parachute  it is just as unethical to ignore politics as it would be to continue flying that plane pretending everything was OK.

The truth is that avoiding politics is not only unethical, but also unprofessional. While many doctors, scientists at heart, find political advocacy uncomfortable, it is in fact a required part of the job.

In order to be allowed to practice independently, physicians must graduate from a residency training program and demonstrate proficiency in six core competencies. Most of them, such as medical knowledge and patient care and procedure skills, are well known. It is the sixth  systems-based practice  that is often overlooked, but equal in importance.

To quote the governing body that mandates these requirements: doctors must demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger context and system of health care  and are expected to advocate for quality patient care and optimal patient care systems.

In other words, to practice independently, we must not only know how to prescribe our medicines and perform our procedures, but also work toward improving our entire health care system. Our professional governing body makes no distinction between helping patients through syringes, scalpels or statutes.

As German physician Rudolph Virchow noted in 1848: Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.

Importantly, as physicians, we advocate for our patients all the time. We feel completely at ease when we do this on the day-to-day level. If one of our patients cannot get an appropriate follow-up appointment with a specialist or their insurance company denies them a specific medication, for example, we eagerly take up arms. We fight a million reams of red tape on a daily basis to get that one patient what she needs.

We must now embrace this same ethos on a macro level by lobbying our representatives, joining activist groups and even running for office ourselves. The only difference is the outsize impact these efforts could have: working through a single ream of red tape in the form of legislation could positively affect the lives of millions of patients.

Laws affecting human lives should not be drawn along partisan lines, but by evidence-based policy thats best for constituents. As Washington fails this litmus test, citizens must step up. As health care providers, advocating for our patients is both an ethical imperative and a professional requirement. Our patients depend on us for their care  we must help them get it, whether that comes in the form of pill or policy.

Farzon A. Nahvi is an emergency physician. This article originally appeared in the Guardian.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Editors note: This article contains a racial slur crucial to the writers story.

It took only 57 hours of working as a new attending physician in Charlottesville, Virginia for a patient to call me the N-word.

Fifty-seven hours. In fact, a racial slur found me before I found the shortcut to the hospital cafeteria. So, when torch-bearing White supremacists gathered downtown earlier this year, I saw more confirmation of my conclusion that bigotry feels right at home in Charlottesville.

Over the past decade, I have taken care of thousands of patients in North Carolina, Chicago, and New York City. Many have been grateful, some angry, a few have cussed at me and one, recently, even wrote me a poem. But, until a few weeks ago  on my fourth day of work in Charlottesville  no patient of mine ever directed the N-word at me during a clinical encounter.

This particular encounter with racism started routinely enough with a page to the emergency department to admit an elderly man with new-onset confusion. His race  though not an important detail at the time  was white. I walked into his room and introduced myself as his doctor. He responded by offering me a graham cracker. I imagined wed get along famously.

I kept our interaction light and free-flowing, as is my nature in patients with altered mental status. I wanted to assess his thinking patterns through our conversation. I wanted to know if he could explain to me the circumstances that landed him in our emergency department and led the physicians there to recommend admission to the hospital. More than that, I hoped to build rapport that would be the foundation for our partnership in his care.

Perhaps I was too easy-going and affable because our seeming familiarity piqued his interest. He asked me if I was from the area, and I replied that I lived in Charlottesville for a few years during college. His eyes lit up, and he cracked a knowing smile.

I do know you! he exclaimed, preparing his revelation. Youre that little nigger who used to hang out in Jimmys backyard!

I assured him that he was mistaken, and instructed him  as though it was for the first time in his life  that he should never use that word. He smiled and shrugged, seeming more surprised by his misrecollection than he was by the offense that his racial slur had caused.

I paused, more to punctuate the moment than to attempt to process it. Quickly, though, I returned to my assessment. In standard fashion, I examined my patient, shared my clinical impressions and plan, and asked if he had any questions before I exited the room. I was there to do a job, but more importantly, I was not going to allow him to have thrown me off my game.

Only after I stepped outside did I begin processing the deluge of emotions. I was both stunned and speechless. His word hurt  like a verbal lash of a whip, or thud of a baton, or tightening of a chokehold. It flung its illegitimate power at me, and I hated that I gave it any recognition at all. I felt silly for trusting that my white coat could protect me from moments like this. The chorus of Jay-Zs The Story of O.J. came to mind. Still nigger.

The casual way that he said it added a layer of unfamiliarity. In the past, when I have been called nigger, it was always my assailants intent to punctuate their disdain. This didnt appear to be my patients purpose. He said it simply as though it belonged to me. He said it assured that it was, and would always be my most appropriate descriptor.

Given my patients easy use of the word in conversation with me, a black physician, I wondered how many times he must have casually used the word nigger in conversations with friends, family members and coworkers over the years. For those who didnt share his racist beliefs, how many missed opportunities were there to tell him he was wrong to think and speak this way? Sure, it would require courage and conviction to speak up in those moments. On the other hand, when they were silent in the face of his slurs, that did, in some ways, make them complicit in his racism.

Lets take a timeout for a second. Did you cringe when you saw the N-word written out so many times? Did it bother you that I didnt spare you the discomfort of reading it after he rang that bell? Did you try to dismiss or rationalize his exchange with me, retreating to subconscious exceptions for his age or his confusion? Were you relieved that I did not perceive his intention as overtly hateful or hurtful?

If any of those thoughts crossed your mind, you should know that you are missing a bigger picture. Those blind spots are precisely why we need to have this conversation. We need to learn how to confront every last drop of racism in our society if we are to have any hope of eradicating it. We have to acknowledge these moments of offhand and casual racism as a reality and not as an outlier. Moments like these are our windows into the very real racism that still assaults black Americans  from many sides.

To be clear, the urgency behind these kinds of conversations is not purely a matter of human decency or political correctness. Of the dozens of white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville in October  or the hundreds who descended on the town in August  surely many were once casual racists, too. Right now, countless casual racists are being recruited and called to join the next white supremacist rally. It is their smoldering intolerance and hate that is at great risk for radicalization and mobilization amidst the racial division that grips our nation. But only those who know them best  those who can lovingly and tactfully correct their ignorance  have the opportunity and the agency to change hearts, minds, and vocabulary.

While this years fourth convening of white supremacists in Charlottesville made national news yet again, the signs and symptoms of those most likely to rally to their cause go unnoticed far too often. Preventing the hate speech, the fear-mongering and the tragedy starts with a commitment to recognizing racism in all forms with each of us taking responsibility to name it as unacceptable, intolerable and un-American. It starts by demanding a higher standard of the conversations we have about our neighbors in those moments when were sorted homogeneously.

So, if I could make one request of my fellow Americans, it is that we all be brave enough to make it a teachable moment the next time we hear someone casually use a racial slur around the kitchen table, at the bar or over the group text. You never know, you might stop the next hateful demonstration before it starts. At the very least, you can make sure your friend or loved one doesnt look like a bigot in front of their doctor.

B. Cameron Webb is an internal medicine physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The RNZ headline:

NZ unlikely to follow Oz move to ban foreign donations

That is because we already effectively ban them.

The Australian government has unveiled plans to ban political donations from overseas and introduce a register for foreign lobbyists. Under New Zealand law, political donations from overseas are allowed as long as they dont exceed $1500.

Or to put it another way, they are banned unless they are under $1,500. The $1,500 is simply a de minimis level at which below it is not worth trying to track donations. If someone gives you $100, you dont need to check their citizenship or residency.

Deputy Prime Minister and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said National had always found a way around the donations regime.

This is the man who lied to Parliament (and the public and the media) about Owen Glenns donation and whose party had many years of false donation returns that they had to correct after they were exposed. If he had any shame he would never ever talk about donations and transparency again.

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Stuff reports:

A damning new report card into the performance of the Health Ministry has found the agency wanting across a number of areas, including financial sustainability, behaviour and culture and the management of its people. The high level performance review, led by Dame Paula Rebstock on behalf of the State Services Commission, painted a picture of a ministry that was striving to reduce health inequities across New Zealand, but hamstrung by poor relationships and funding models across a highly devolved system. The release of the report comes days after Director-General of Health Chai Chuah announced his resignation, halfway through a five-year term. He said a change of direction was needed for the ministry, meanwhile Health Minister David Clark has branded the review as a damning indictment of the direction of the last Government.

I agree a change of direction is needed for the Ministry. Its performance has been woeful, including getting the DHB allocation figures wrong for the Budget.

But the Ministry is not the entire health system (thanks God). In terms of actual outcomes, weve seen the following:

From 70% to 94% of ED patients seen within six hours

From 65% to 100% of cancer patients staring treatment within four weeks

Immunization rates from 76% to 92%

Elective surgery procedures from 118,000 to 162,000

The Performance Infrastructure Framework review, or PIF, gave the ministry a weak rating for its financial sustainability, and its overall governance. It was also weak on values, behaviour and culture. The ministry scored well on vision but it needed to shift from aspirational statements to bringing the vision, purpose and strategy to life. The strategy needs to move from being thematic to directional. Significant resources needed to be committed to delivering on the Health Strategy, and that would require re-prioritisation and decisions to stop some things. And the executive leadership team itself, under Chuah, while it worked together initially, it had reverted to a group of individuals. They are technically competent, but do not lead in a systemic way at an enterprise level.

It is a scathing report, and shows change is needed at the Ministry. If David Clark can successfully institute that change, then that will be a very good thing.

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Stuff reports:

Children are being strangled, soiling themselves in class and threatening suicide as bullying remains toxic at a Christchurch school, parents say. 

They sent a letter to the Ministry of Education voting no confidence in the schools leadership in June, and Webb encouraged other parents to speak up.

More than eight families have removed their children from the school this year and others say they would if not restricted by zoning.
Seen above is a scene from "Alice Through the Looking Glass," a 2016 U.S. fantasy adventure film based on Lewis Carroll's novel of the same title. Helena Bonham Carter acted as the Red Queen, which has become a famous business term noting the necessity to keep moving forward so as not to fall behind. / Korea Times file



Asia's No. 4 economy struggles to compete with US, China



By Park Jae-hyuk



No matter how innovative a Korean firm is, it is rarely able to maintain the top spot in the global market, according to a chief executive of a domestic technology company. His company has provided local news outlets with articles written by a robot journalist over the past 10 years.



Although his company obtained a patent on the artificial intelligence-based technology in Korea in 2008, the businessman could not apply for an international patent, due to a lack of money.



Since then, foreign rivals have grown rapidly with mass investments. One of the competitors is Automated Insights, a U.S.-based technology company that has produced corporate earnings stories for the Associated Press since 2015.



"We are now unable to catch up with the fast-growing foreign companies," the Korean entrepreneur said. "It is usual for domestic first movers to lag behind companies in China or the United States."



The phenomenon is often called "The Red Queen effect." Its name is derived from a statement that the Red Queen made to Alice in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass"  "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."



In his thesis, "A New Evolutionary Law," published in 1973, U.S. evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen coined the hypothesis that species have to run or evolve in order to stay in the same place or remain extant.



The hypothesis was applied to business administration in a thesis, "The Red Queen in Organizational Evolution," published in 1996 by William Barnett and Morten Hansen at Stanford University.



Barnett and Hansen claimed companies that achieved successes in the market find it difficult to depend on their achievements, because latecomers can swiftly enter the market without trial-and-errors, learning from the first movers.



Many global enterprises have proved the argument.



General Electric, which first commercialized light bulbs 125 years ago, recently liquidated its light bulb business. Toshiba, which released the world's first laptop, DynaBook, in 1989, is also pushing ahead with the disposal of its personal computer business.



Sony, which commercialized the lithium-ion battery in 1991 for the first time in the world, sold its battery business last year to Murata Manufacturing, a Japanese electronic component manufacturer. Intel, which invented the world's first dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in 1970, withdrew from the market in 1985.



Motorola, IBM and Toshiba, all of which once took the top spot in mobile phones, smartphones and flash memory respectively, have small market shares for now.



In Korea, SayClub and Cyworld pioneered the field of social media, but they collapsed after the emergence of U.S. social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Pandora TV also started video-sharing services earlier than YouTube to achieve success here, but eventually failed to make its presence felt in the global market against the global giants Facebook and Twitter. Currently, Pandora is struggling to stay afloat.



Korean conglomerates that have led global semiconductor, display, battery and electronics industries are not exceptions, as Chinese technology firms are rapidly chasing them. Korean companies have already yielded the top spot in the global liquid crystal display market to a Chinese firm.



Hyundai Motor is also struggling to come up with countermeasures against the growth of Chinese automakers. Based on their price competitiveness, Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motors are chasing the Korean carmaker in the world's most populous country.


Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
CK Raut arrested from Janakpur

Police have arrested free Madhes campaigner CK Raut from Janakpur on Thursday.
Dahal casts ballot from Chitwan

CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has cast his ballot from Shantipur School in Bharatpur-14 of Chitwan district on Thursday.
European Commission invites Caan to explain progress on safety issues

The European Commission (EC) has invited officials of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (Caan) to Brussels, Belgium in January to explain the steps taken by Nepal to address safety deficiencies.
Government tells concerned agencies to expedite rescue of wrokers stranded in Kuwait

Following reports of hundreds of Nepali migrant workers stranded in a deplorable condition, without money, work and stay-permit in Kuwait, the government on Wednesday instructed the concerned agencies to step up their rescue process.
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The Asthma Society of Ireland has welcomed the announcement from Minister Denis Naughten of a nationwide smoky coal ban. Dublin led the ban in 1990, which has since saved more than 8,900 lives and many more will be saved with this announcement.

Kevin Kelly, Asthma Society Interim CEO, commented, We are delighted with this milestone announcement from Minister Naughten. The risk smoky coal poses to our health has now been recognised and tackled at source following years of campaigning. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 lives are lost on the island of Ireland each year from smoky coal pollution and the right to clean air has been acknowledged. The ban will reduce coal ash production, a source of exposure to arsenic and other health-damaging metals

With 470,000 people affected, Ireland has the fourth highest prevalence of asthma worldwide. Whilst patients of respiratory diseases are worst affected, ongoing exposure to this pollutant affects everyone.

It is now vital however for Minister Naughten and the Department of Environment to oversee the implementation of the ban across the country. Paramount to this is ensuring that as part of the existing Swift 7 process, they independently verify smoky coal stocks. Coal merchants should be unable to order smoky coal after April 2018. We feel that the only smoky coal that should be available for sale in 2019 is the left over physical bags from the 2018 burning season. Kelly added.
It is hard to believe, when you have been living in the quiet hell of Mortgage Arrears that you can still be your familys hero. This week a national campaign has started where the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation (IMHO) are asking you, if you are in long term Mortgage Arrears to contact us.

I know, and the IMHO know how hard Mortgage Arrears is. This has been our business for half a decade. You lose hope, direction, even the capacity to voice your case. Every envelope that comes in the door is a stealth bomber. But there are solutions.

In the case of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation 90% of people we work with stay in their homes. No matter how steep it is debt can be controlled and managed in a pragmatic way I have been involved in helping those with debt since 2010 and in 2012 established the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation to provide professional services to those in debt.

Here I outline the 10 vital steps to deal with debt based on experience of dealing with creditors nationally.

Step 1  Do your figures

Establish exactly how much you owe to the different creditors. Next calculate what the value of your assets are. This is vital to establish if your assets are more than your liabilities. Property prices have been moving considerably in recent years, so it is important to be accurate. Finally establish how much your household income is each month  this is key to establish how much you have available to pay creditors each month.

Step 2  Find out how much you can spend

If you are in trouble the Insolvency Service of Ireland has set out what it considers to be reasonable living expenses. The figures are available on www.backontrack.ie and explain what different family sizes should be living on each month. You also need to make sure that you consider payments towards a mortgage or rent along with any health and medical expenses, childcare costs or any other special circumstances that might arise.

Step 3  Find out what your options are

Find out what it is that you can do. The best place to start is get expert professional advice  either from a Personal Insolvency Practitioner (PIP) regulated by the Insolvency Service of Ireland or a debt management professional regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Most professionals dont charge for an initial meeting and a new Government scheme called Abhaile allows for you to meet with a PIP for free. There is now no excuse not to access professional help and it is never too late to get help. The Abhaile scheme also allows for legal help if you are in court facing repossession of your Family home. Your options will fall into one of three categories  a) informal direct negotiations with your lender, b) a Personal Insolvency Arrangement which is a formal arrangement, protected by the courts and arranged by a PIP or c) the option of last resort - Bankruptcy.

Step 4 - Engage

Dealing with debt is daunting, unpleasant and sometimes scary. However, like going to the doctor if you are sick you must engage with the process, your creditors and professionals who can help you. Engagement isnt simply writing letters and occasionally answering calls. It involves knowing what you are dealing with, finding out the rules of engagement in whatever process you choose and then committing to and executing what is required.

Step 5 - Find out if you are at risk of vultures coming on the scene

For many people, there is a risk that your loan will or has already been sold to a Vulture Fund. Vultures mean a couple of things. Firstly, if your loan is sold it probably means delay in anything happening while the vultures set up operations and get through the files. Dont be lulled into a false sense of security - just because you havent heard from the vulture fund. They will be back. It also means that the restructuring options that may have been open to you with your original lender may not be available with the vulture fund. This is very bad news and if you are looking to restructure a loan. It is vital that you engage now ahead of any risk of a loan being sold to a vulture fund. And be clear  they will come after your family home.

Step 6 - Compare the different options to see which one is best

Compare the pros and cons of each option that is open to you. Maybe informal negotiations will be quicker, but will they deal with all your debt? Is bankruptcy the only option or could you try an insolvency arrangement. You need to compare and make sure you are doing the right thing. A professional expert adviser will help you with this and should explain to you the different options.

Step 7 - Act Now

Dont leave your head in the sand - the problem wont go away unfortunately. You need to act immediately. A professional adviser is your first port of call. If you are struggling with debt contact professionals such as the IMHO today.

Step 8 - Mind your head

Mental health is important. Debt is a stressful thing to deal with. If you are feeling under pressure or anxious talk to your GP or contact the Samaritans. While dealing with debt is important minding yourself and those important to you is the most important thing.

Step 9 - Stay sceptical

When you decide as to what to do make sure to stick to the plan. There are lots of snake oil salesmen out there who will promise you all sorts of magical solutions to wipe out your debt. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free house and be very wary of anybody who comes telling you about legal remedies that just dont stack up. If anybody promises you something, ask them for proof of it working elsewhere. Ask for a court ruling or another official document. Most importantly if you are promised something and provided with paperwork get a second qualified legal professional. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Step 10 - Take a break

The banks close at the weekend and in the evenings. The postman only comes once a day. When Friday evening comes forget about banks, debt and insolvency. Try to relax with your family and friends ready to push on again next week. Please engage with a trusted third party next week and work towards giving you and your family a fresh start. When you go through this process you may wish to contact the IMHO or i-Care.

It is not easy for those of you who are in Mortgage Arrears to believe you can be your familys hero possibly just in time for Christmas by simply phoning us. Mortgage Arrears is as disruptive for many families and people as a death or a divorce. However, the IMHO and i-Care has begun the process of unwinding this living nightmare. Currently vultures are circling your towns, villages and communities in the hope they will profit from the zombie economics of Mortgage Arrears. But, if you call us quickly enough your Christmas present may be securing your family home for this Christmas and thirty more to come.

The Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation and David Hall can be contacted at 1800988977
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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An image taken of the woman's left retina shows damage at the center. Reproduced with permission from JAMA Ophthalmology. 2017. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2017.5517.

Using a new type of imaging, doctors were able to peer into the eyes of a young woman and see  on the cellular level  the type of damage that occurs from looking directly at the sun during an eclipse.

The woman, who is in her 20s, damaged her eyes during the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, according to a new report of her case, published today (Dec. 7) in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

In the woman's case, she told doctors that during the eclipse, she looked at the sun for approximately 6 seconds several different times without protective eyewear, and then again for 15 to 20 seconds with a pair of eclipse glasses, according to the case report. She also said she viewed the solar eclipse with both eyes open. [Did the Solar Eclipse Damage Your Eyes? Here's How to Tell]

But the woman was not in the path of totality during the eclipse (during totality it is safe to look at the sun without eye protection), and the sun was only 70 percent obscured during the peak of the eclipse in the area that the woman viewed the event. That meant the sun's bright light was still visible and damaging to the eyes.

Four hours after watching the eclipse, the woman said she had blurred vision, a type of distorted vision called metamorphopsia, and color distortion. The symptoms were worse in her left eye, in which she also reported seeing a central black spot, according to the report.

However, it wasn't until three days later that she went to the doctor, who found that she had a condition called solar retinopathy  a rare form of retinal injury that results from direct sungazing, the report said.

Looking into the eyes

Because total solar eclipses are rare, doctors don't often see patients with solar retinopathy, and when they have in the past, they didn't have the same imaging tools available to use.

"We have never seen the cellular damage from an eclipse because this event rarely happens and we haven't had this type of advanced technology to examine solar retinopathy until recently," lead author Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a statement.

The new technology, called adaptive optics, allows doctors and researchers "to get an exact look at this retinal damage on such a precise level [which] will help clinicians better understand the condition."

Solar retinopathy occurs when bright light from the sun damages the retina, causing blurry vision or a blind spot in one or both eyes. However, the damage is often painless and a person generally will not experience these symptoms immediately after looking directly at the intense light of the sun.

After examining the woman, the doctors determined she had burned holes in both of her retinas. She also had photochemical burns in her eyes, according to the report.

Adaptive optics allows doctors to examine the microscopic structures of a patient's eye with extreme detail in real time, the report said. Using the technique, the researchers obtained high-resolution images of the damaged photoreceptors in the woman's eyes. (Photoreceptors are the light-sensitive rods and cones of the eye's retina.)

The images showed no significant vision damage to the right eye, but revealed a yellow-white spot in the left eye. The images also showed multiple areas of decreased sensitivity and a central scotoma, or blind spot, in the left eye, according to the report.

The researchers said in the statement they hope the images will help provide a better understanding of solar retinopathy, which currently cannot be treated.

In addition, the report "can prepare doctors and patients for the next eclipse in 2024, and make them more informed of the risks of directly viewing the sun without protective eyewear," lead author Dr. Chris Wu, a resident physician at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, said in the statement.

Originally published on Live Science.
Picture of a reflection of the US embassy in Havana, taken on October 3, 2017. Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Tuesday slammed the US expulsion of Cuban diplomats as "unjustified... unfounded and unacceptable," in a deepening row over mysterious attacks on staff at the US embassy in Havana.

The U.S. embassy workers in Cuba who were initially thought to have been attacked by a "sonic weapon" have sustained damage to the white matter in their brains, scans reveal. And officials are increasingly skeptical that a sonic weapon was the cause, the Associated Press reported.

The first symptoms of a possible "attack" showed up in the fall of 2016. The workers heard loud, bizarre noises, such as chirps, hums and scraping sounds, or felt a ghostly movement of air near them, and then went on to have hearing loss and ringing in the ears, the Washington Post reported.

Afterwards, those affected by the bizarre phenomenon went on to have memory loss, hearing and vision problems, and troubles with balance. Brain scans now reveal alterations in white matter, which contains the neurons that communicate with one another, the AP reported.

While the U.S. government initially blamed a mysterious sonic weapon for the attacks, U.S. officials are now being careful to avoid the term, according to the AP. Many experts in acoustic waves said sound waves were unlikely to cause the brain damage seen in the state department officials. Instead, the sounds may have been the result, not the cause, of whatever injured the people, the AP reported.

Physicians who have been treating the mystery cases for months are expected to present their findings in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Originally published on Live Science.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Biology is becoming increasingly digitized. Researchers like us use computers to analyze DNA, operate lab equipment and store genetic information. But new capabilities also mean new risks  and biologists remain largely unaware of the potential vulnerabilities that come with digitizing biotechnology.

The emerging field of cyberbiosecurity explores the whole new category of risks that come with the increased use of computers in the life sciences.

University scientists, industry stakeholders and government agents have begun gathering to discuss these threats. We've even hosted FBI agents from the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate here at Colorado State University and previously at Virginia Tech for crash courses on synthetic biology and the associated cyberbiosecurity risks. A year ago, we participated in a U.S. Department of Defense-funded project to assess the security of biotechnology infrastructures. The results are classified, but we disclose some of the lessons learned in our new Trends in Biotechnology paper.

Along with co-authors from Virginia Tech and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we discuss two major kinds of threats: sabotaging the machines biologists rely on and creating dangerous biological materials.

Computer viruses affecting the physical world

In 2010, a nuclear plant in Iran experienced mysterious equipment failures. Months later, a security firm was called in to troubleshoot an apparently unrelated problem. They found a malicious computer virus. The virus, called Stuxnet, was telling the equipment to vibrate. The malfunction shut down a third of the plant's equipment, stunting development of the Iranian nuclear program.

Unlike most viruses, Stuxnet didn't target only computers. It attacked equipment controlled by computers.

The marriage of computer science and biology has opened the door for amazing discoveries. With the help of computers, we're decoding the human genome, creating organisms with new capabilities, automating drug development and revolutionizing food safety.

Stuxnet demonstrated that cybersecurity breaches can cause physical damages. What if those damages had biological consequences? Could bioterrorists target government laboratories studying infectious diseases? What about pharmaceutical companies producing lifesaving drugs? As life scientists become more reliant on digital workflows, the chances are likely rising.

Messing with DNA

The ease of accessing genetic information online has democratized science, enabling amateur scientists in community laboratories to tackle challenges like developing affordable insulin.

But the line between physical DNA sequences and their digital representation is becoming increasingly blurry. Digital information, including malware, can now be stored and transmitted via DNA. The J. Craig Venter Institute even created an entire synthetic genome watermarked with encoded links and hidden messages.

Twenty years ago, genetic engineers could only create new DNA molecules by stitching together natural DNA molecules. Today scientists can use chemical processes to produce synthetic DNA.

The sequence of these molecules is often generated using software. In the same way that electrical engineers use software to design computer chips and computer engineers use software to write computer programs, genetic engineers use software to design genes.

That means that access to specific physical samples is no longer necessary to create new biological samples. To say that all you need to create a dangerous human pathogen is internet access would be an overstatement  but only a slight one. For instance, in 2006, a journalist used publicly available data to order a fragment of smallpox DNA in the mail. The year before, the Centers for Disease Control used published DNA sequences as a blueprint to reconstruct the virus responsible for the Spanish flu, one of the deadliest pandemics of all time.

With the help of computers, editing and writing DNA sequences is almost as easy as manipulating text documents. And it can be done with malicious intent.

First: Recognize the threat

The conversations around cyberbiosecurity so far have largely focused on doomsday scenarios. The threats are bidirectional.

On the one hand, computer viruses like Stuxnet could be used to hack into digitally controlled machinery in biology labs. DNA could even be used to deliver the attack by encoding malware that is unlocked when the DNA sequences are translated into digital files by a sequencing computer.

On the other hand, bad actors could use software and digital databases to design or reconstruct pathogens. If nefarious agents hacked into sequence databases or digitally designed novel DNA molecules with the intent to cause harm, the results could be catastrophic.

And not all cyberbiosecurity threats are premeditated or criminal. Unintentional errors that occur while translating between a physical DNA molecule and its digital reference are common. These errors might not compromise national security, but they could cause costly delays or product recalls.

Despite these risks, it is not unusual for researchers to order samples from a collaborator or a company and never bother to confirm that the physical sample they receive matches the digital sequence they were expecting.

Infrastructure changes and new technologies could help increase the security of life science workflows. For instance, voluntary screening guidelines are already in place to help DNA synthesis companies screen orders for known pathogens. Universities could institute similar mandatory guidelines for any outgoing DNA synthesis orders.

There is also currently no simple, affordable way to confirm DNA samples by whole genome sequencing. Simplified protocols and user-friendly software could be developed, so that screening by sequencing becomes routine.

The ability to manipulate DNA was once the privilege of the select few and very limited in scope and application. Today, life scientists rely on a global supply chain and a network of computers that manipulate DNA in unprecedented ways. The time to start thinking about the security of the digital/DNA interface is now, not after a new Stuxnet-like cyberbiosecurity breach.

Jenna E. Gallegos, Postdoctoral Researcher in Chemical and Biological Engineering, Colorado State University and Jean Peccoud, Professor, Abell Chair in Synthetic Biology, Colorado State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Govt delays setting up body to compensate depositors

Its been exactly a month since the Ministry of Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation formally declared Oriental Cooperative problematic and decided to form a committee to take over the troubled institution and compensate depositors.
Local News, Business & Finance, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Montesano: "As businesses are the backbone of any community, discussions on how to improve them should occur frequently."

Long Island, NY - December 7, 2017 - Assemblyman Michael Montesano (R,C,I- Assemblyman Michael Montesano (R,C,I- Glen Head ) is excited to announce he will participate in a business roundtable discussion facilitated by Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C,I- East Patchogue ) on December 15. Topics will include how legislation regarding minimum wage will affect small businesses and tip workers (A.6203), wage compensation for schedule changes, paid family leave and other regulatory issues. The discussion will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Rose Caracappa Auditorium at the Suffolk County Legislature, William H. Rogers Building, 725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Smithtown

As businesses are the backbone of any community, discussions on how to improve them should occur frequently, said Montesano. I look forward to learning more about what my colleagues and business owners have to say about these topics and sharing my own thoughts about passed and pending legislation which affects the business community. I would like to invite business owners from my Assembly District to attend and participate in this discussion and give testimony on topics such as wage compensation for schedule changes, paid family leave and minimum wage. Coming together to share ideas and thoughts is important when it comes to the growth of the business community.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Funding to Support Crisis Hotlines, Programs that Assist Sexual Assault Victims and Enhance Sexual Assault Prevention Efforts in Communities, on College Campuses.

Albany, NY - December 7, 2017 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced nearly $6.5 million in grants to 55 state-approved anti-sexual assault crisis and prevention programs operated by hospitals, non-profit organizations and governmental agencies statewide. The grants will help fund local crisis hotlines and direct services for sexual assault victims, such as crisis counseling, advocacy and trauma therapy, and support prevention and education in schools, on college campuses and in communities.

"Sexual assault is a scourge on our communities and college campuses and with this funding, we offer vital resources to victims of this heinous crime," Governor Cuomo said. "With this aid, these critically important organizations will be able to improve existing services, establish new programs, and better reach New Yorkers in need of help."

The grants will fund a variety of existing programs, including 24-hour crisis hotlines, crisis counseling, trauma therapy, referrals to support services for both victims and their families, training for advocates, court accompaniment for victims and criminal justice advocacy. In addition, the funding will support community education, training for advocates and sexual assault forensic examiners, and prevention efforts in both community and educational settings, including schools, hospitals and on college campuses. Click here to see a complete list of the funded programs.

"Two years ago, Governor Cuomo enacted the toughest policy in the nation to fight sexual assault on college campuses. Today, we are focusing on prevention and advocacy, providing funding for programs at hospitals, non-profit organizations and government agencies, and getting victims the help they need to recover from this unconscionable crime," said Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. "New York has resoundingly said enough is enough and we are putting our foot down when it comes to sexual assault."

The $6.5 million awarded this week represents funding from three state agencies: a total of $2.8 million from the Office of Victim Services; $2.7 million from the Division of Criminal Justice Services; and $1 million from the state Department of Health. The Division of Criminal Justice Services will administer the one-year grants. To be eligible for funding, programs were required to be approved by the state Department of Health.

Office of Victim Services Director Elizabeth Cronin said, "Sexual assault is a crime that leaves its victims both physically and psychologically wounded. These programs serve as pillars of support for rape and sexual assault victims as they embark on their road to recovery. By providing additional resources to these state-approved programs, our hope is that they will be able to help even more victims as they recover from their ordeal."

Michael C. Green, Executive Deputy Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services, said, "These grants are providing critical funding that rape crisis programs can use to bolster and enhance their operations. These awards further demonstrate our resolve and the Governor's continued commitment to supporting services and assistance for victims and programs aimed at sexual assault prevention."

Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Howard A. Zucker said, "New York State is leading the fight against sexual violence and the Health Department is proud to support these efforts by working with hospitals across the state to expand access to services for victims of sexual assault. By working together, we can improve responses to sexual assaults and promote prevention strategies to reduce the incidence of victimization from rape or sexual assault in New York State."

The grants continue Governor Cuomo's commitment to combating sexual violence. In 2015, he signed into law the "Enough Is Enough" legislation, which aims to put an end to sexual assault and domestic violence on college and university campuses. Among other provisions, the law provided another $4.5 million in funding for rape crisis programs across the state.

The Division of Criminal Justice Services has a variety of responsibilities, including law enforcement training; collection and analysis of statewide crime data; maintenance of criminal history information and fingerprint files; administrative oversight of the state's DNA databank in partnership with the New York State Police; funding and oversight of probation and community correction programs; administration of federal and state criminal justice funds; support of criminal justice-related agencies across the state; and administration of the state's Sex Offender Registry.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Jason Depietto, 33, was arrested on multiple charges, including Possession of a Controlled Substance and Criminal Possession of a Weapon, officials report.

Massapequa, NY - December 7, 2017 - The Major Case Bureau reports the arrest of a The Major Case Bureau reports the arrest of a Massapequa man for narcotics that occurred on Tuesday December 05, 2017 at 9:30 p.m. in Hicksville

According to detectives, members of the Criminal Intelligence Rapid Response Team observed the defendant, Jason Depietto, 33, violate the New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law while driving west on West Barclay Street in a 2000 Nissan. A car stop was conducted on Broadway, Route 107.

As officers approached the vehicle they detected and odor of marijuana and observed several concentrated cannabis cartridges along with a clear pipe containing marijuana. Officers also recovered a white bag which contained 92 additional cannabis cartridges. Further investigation, with the assistance of Narcotics Vice Squad Detectives, led detectives to the defendants residence, along with a business location in the name of Hemp Smarts, 1097A North Broadway, North Massapequa. Additional narcotics and weapons were recovered which included:

1 strip of LSD

Approx. 265 grams of mushrooms

45 grams of concentrated cannabis wax oil

Approx. 140 grams of marijuana

168 vials of THC concentrated cannabis oil

12 gauge shotgun

22 gauge rifle

Rock River AR-15

4 high capacity magazines

bullet proof vest

expandable baton

numerous THC edibles

assorted pills

Approx. $ 12,000 in US currency

Defendant, Jason Depietto, is charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 2ND Degree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 4th Degree, two counts of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 5th Degree and Criminal Possession of a Weapon 3rd Degree. The defendant will be arraigned in First District Court in Hempstead on Wednesday, December 06, 2017.
Local News, Business & Finance

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Royal Renovators Inc., has recently been awarded GAF Master Elite certification in the New York area. Just 2-3 percent of the world's roofers are part of this exclusive club. CEO Sean Levine was quoted as ...

Long Island, NY - December 7, 2017 - Royal Renovators has recently been awarded GAF Master Elite certification in the New York area. Only 2-3 percent of the world's roofers are a part of this exclusive club. CEO Sean Levine was quoted as saying our head management did everything in their power to join this club because we wanted to be able to offer our clients the best roofing services, materials and warranties on earth

So what is GAF anyway and what makes the Master Elite certification so coveted?

GAF roofing is a new method which has already saved millions of homeowners thousands of dollars. The GAF method, in short, is a very different than most roofing companies are able to provide. Instead of any roofer coming to fix your roof, the roofer needs to be a certified GAF contractor. To get certified as a GAF contractor, a contractor needs to have a license, provided by their state or province, in order to perform any work on your roof. A GAF roofer also needs to be fully insured, so there is no risk of a personal injury lawsuit. But that isnt enough. In addition to all of these qualifications, the GAF contractor needs to have a good reputation. If his qualifications are great, but history proves otherwise, he wont be knocking at your door. But wait, that is not all. He needs to be committed to ongoing training, so that he doesnt forget anything. All of these requirements ensure that your roof gets elite service

A reason to choose a GAF Master Elite roofing contractor is because statistically, 93% of property owners recommend using only a Master Elite member.

GAFs technical experts have developed methods of working and teaching that drill deep into their Master Elite members bones, quality and improvisation. As well as, staying updated with the current, day to day technologies that can pop up and cause complications for regular roofers.

The intense training they went through, and still go through, give them a license to insure and provide warranties a non Master Elite roofer cannot provide. A Master Elite contractor can talk to you and come up with the perfect warranty option, custom made to fit your home, budget and family. The GAF system has been recognized locally by the Queens Ledger roofing division

As seen, with all the information given, it is not easy at all to get to a level of Master Elite contracting. Therefore, we sincerely congratulate Royal Renovators for getting all of their contractors to be members of Master Elite. We hope to bring more good news to the housing community soon.
Local News, Health & Wellness, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Brooks: "With one-in-four adults living with a mental illness in any given year, we are far beyond the point for mental health discussions to be shrouded in shame or fear."

Long Island, NY - December 7, 2017 - Senator John E. Brooks will be sponsoring a free Public Education forum for the general public on Friday night, December 8th on What is Mental Illness? - How families and others can support those struggling with mental illness. The program, sponsored in partnership with National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) will be held at the Brookside School, Senator John E. Brooks will be sponsoring a free Public Education forum for the general public on Friday night, December 8th on What is Mental Illness? - How families and others can support those struggling with mental illness. The program, sponsored in partnership with National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) will be held at the Brookside School, Bellmore Merrick CHS District Administration Building at 1260 Meadowbrook Road in North Merrick, NY from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Senator Brooks is the ranking minority member on the NYS Senate Committee for Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. Brooks regularly convenes workshops of his Mental Health Community Task Force, which is comprised of community members who are mental health advocates and other stakeholders in the field.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 07 2017

Danny Bonilla Zavala, 20, ran away from the crash scene on Route 112 near Sagamore Hills Drive in Port Jefferson Station in August of last year.

Suffolk County, NY - December 7, 2017 - A Suffolk County jury today convicted a A Suffolk County jury today convicted a Selden man of aggravated vehicular homicide, leaving the scene and other charges after deliberating approximately two hours in Central Islip

Danny Bonilla Zavala, 20, ran away from the crash scene on Route 112 near Sagamore Hills Drive in Port Jefferson Station in August of last year.

The driver of the car Zavala struck, Bob Hidalgo, 31, of Coram , was pronounced dead at the scene.

Bonilla-Zavala was convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide, manslaughter in the second degree, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree, leaving the scene of a crash without reporting, second degree assault, and resisting arrest.

The defendants blood, taken approximately ninety minutes after the collision, had a blood-alcohol level of .33; four times over the .08 legal threshold for DWI in New York State.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, December 7, 2017

After months of resistance from some of the agencys major shareholders, Bain Capital has succeeded with its tender offer to take Japanese ad agency ADK private, having acquired a little over 87% of the firm.

The deal, confirmed early Thursday, ends a nearly two-decade-long and often contentious relationship between ADK and WPP, which had been ADKs single largest shareholder, with a 25% stake.

When Bain first made its tender offer a few months back, WPP rejected it, arguing that the offer (about $1.35 billion for a little over half the company) undervalued the agency.

In late October, WPP even took legal steps in Japan in a bid to prevent the offer from going through. Last month, however, the holding company made an about face and agreed to tender its shares.

At that time, Bain stated if the tender were to succeed, it would discuss a potential re-investment by WPP in ADK via Bain. Any future cooperation will be discussed in good faith by both parties, Bain stated. There was no mention of any such talks today when the investment company confirmed the acquisition.

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But a WPP spokesperson said: "We're delighted to have the opportunity to reinvest in the new Bain-controlled ADK and realize a substantial capital return at the same time."

Yuji Sugimoto, a managing director at Bain Capital Private Equity, stated: Todays successful tender offer marks an important step in the right direction for ADK as we move closer to privatizing the business in order to better secure its future in a fast-changing market.
Health workers reach Mugu villages to contain viral fever

The Mugu District Public Health Office (DPHO) has mobilised a medical team to the viral fever-affected areas in remote Khatyad Rural Municipality.
by Mike Azzara , Op-Ed Contributor, December 7, 2017

In other contexts, I write a lot about cybersecurity. So, when I saw the acronym GDPR in one of Kantar Millward Browns 2018 predictions, very near this sentence: The question that remains to be answered in the field of marketing AI will be one of privacy and control, I shuddered involuntarily.

Ive written in this space before that data is the oxygen of modern marketing. As artificial intelligence hype skyrocketed in the past year, many others began to recognize that large mountains of good, clean data are key to success if you want to use AI in your marketing.

Thats a major challenge for most organizations, because until the Big Data era came suddenly upon us, the vast majority of companies sucked at what the IT folks call data hygiene. Since the arrival of Big Data is so recent, these companies still do.

Lets say you get past that challenge.

Then the best kind of data to have is data about your audience of prospects  the more detailed, the better. And, of course, the more personal, the better. That means personally identifiable data, or what the cyber experts call PII. Marketers can use AI to analyze that data and better understand individual prospects, at scale.

Therefore, collecting PII on large audiences, and feeding that Big Data into machine-learning algorithms, offers marketers great power.

You know the rest. Repeat after me: With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility. You must keep peoples data safe.

Now the European Union has put a price on that cybersecurity responsibility: 20 million, or $23.6 million (when I checked the exchange rate late last night).

This may sound confusing at first (Ill show the math in two paragraphs), but thats the lowest possible mandatory maximum fine that can be levied against your company by the EU if you fail to protect peoples data, or if you dont properly manage your data according to the rules laid out in the EUs General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

There are actually a complex variety of different fines and levels and whatnot, but the maximum fine is 20 million or 4% of your companys global revenue, whichever is greater. GDPR becomes effective on May 25.

And dont think because yours is a U.S. company, GDPR wont apply. A lot of smart folks mistakenly believe the G in GDPR stands for global, because the EU has made clear that it will apply these rules to any company, headquartered in any jurisdiction, that does any business with any person or persons in any EU country. What with soaring levels of cross-border ecommerce, and the internets more general ability to put buyers and sellers in touch across national borders, who isnt doing business with EU customers?

Do the math. If a company generates $1 billion in global revenue, its maximum possible fine under GDPR regulations is $40 million. At $2 billion, its $80 million, and so on.

Apples trailing 12-month revenue at the end of the third quarter of 2017 was $229.2 billion, so its maximum potential GDPR fine, should it earn one, would be $9.2 billion, with a b.

Here are just a few key GDPR requirements:

-- Companies must name a lead supervisory authority within the EU (that is, a given countrys cyber regulatory agency, presumably the country where you do the most business, but not necessarily) and report any data breaches to that authority within 72 hours.

-- Companies must get the proactive consent of whoevers data they have.

-- Companies must be able delete anyones data upon their request  an extension of the EUs right to be forgotten law.

-- Companies can only use data for the original purpose for which they collected it.

-- They must appoint a DPO (data protection officer).

In a study earlier this year sponsored by data security firm Veritas, 21% of 900 global respondents feared fines for noncompliance with the GDPR could lead to layoffs, and 18% believed the fines could be significant enough to put them out of business. Respondents all had 1,000 or more employees.

If youre a marketer with customers in an EU country, and you want to use AI to enhance your efforts, youre going to need a large lake of data. And youre going to have learn how to keep that data safe  or pay a very steep price.
by Alex Weprin , December 7, 2017

Googles YouTube has named Luke Hyams as head of originals for the Europe-Middle East-Africa (EMEA) region.

Before joining YouTube, Hyams worked in Disneys digital content unit. He will be based in YouTubes London office.

Hyams joins YouTube as many of the streaming video giants significantly build out their original and owned programming.

While YouTube started as a place for users to upload their videos, it has increasingly focused much of its efforts on its own creator community, and on professionally produced content for its YouTube Red subscription service.

Likewise, Netflix has been spending billions of dollars per year on original content, as have Hulu and Amazon.

As these companies spend money on originals, they are also turning to regional and locally produced fare in different countries. As YouTube, Netflix and others expand into more countries, they are betting that original content produced locally will provide an incentive for people to subscribe.
by Wayne Friedman , December 7, 2017

Nexstar Media Group is moving further into the digital space, acquiring video ad-tech company LKQD Technologies for around $90 million in cash.

LKQD will help the big TV station company -- which has 170 stations in 100 U.S. markets covering 39% of TV homes -- add hyperlocal digital/ mobile platforms for advertisers to target customers across TV and digital video platforms.

LKQD, a three-year-old company, provides digital video advertising technology for publishers and advertisers, reaching approximately 115 million U.S. online video viewers across desktop, the mobile web, mobile apps and connected TVs.

In the first half of 2017, LKQD tripled the number of customers using its platform and generated year-over-year gross revenue growth of 180%.

The business will be incorporated into Nexstar Digital, the wholly owned unit formed in late 2016, which doubled its third-quarter 2017 revenue to $56.2 million versus the same period last year.

Nexstar Digital includes the companies Lakana, a content management system platform; Kixer, a recommendation engine; and Yashi and Mass, the programmatic platform. It also includes LIN Digital and HYFN digital media agencies.
Masturbation is a normal and healthy sexual activity with few side effects. Many bizarre claims surround masturbation, such as going blind, and most of these claims are untrue. Masturbation is when an individual stimulates their genitals for sexual pleasure, which may or may not lead to orgasm. Masturbation is common among men and women of all ages and plays a role in healthy sexual development. Research has found that among adolescents aged 1417 years in the United States, around 74 percent of males and 48 percent of females masturbate. Among older adults, roughly 63 percent of men and 32 percent of women between 57 and 64 years of age masturbate. People masturbate for many reasons. These include pleasure, enjoyment, fun, and tension release. Some individuals masturbate alone, while others masturbate with a partner. This article looks at the potential side effects of masturbation and sorts the facts from the fiction regarding masturbation myths. It also identifies some of the health benefits of masturbation.

Masturbation myths

Many myths exist about the risks of masturbation, however none of these have been proven. There are many myths about masturbation. Even though many of these have been debunked several times, they seem to resurface time and time again. Most claims about masturbation are not backed up by science. There is often no scientific evidence to show that masturbation causes any of the adverse effects suggested. Masturbation will not cause: blindness

hairy palms

impotence later in life

erectile dysfunction

penis shrinkage

penis curvature

low sperm count

infertility

mental illness

physical weakness Some couples worry that their relationship must be unsatisfying if either one of them masturbates; this, too, is a myth. Most men and women continue to masturbate either alone or together when they are in a relationship or married, and many find it an enjoyable part of their relationship. One study found that women who masturbated had happier marriages compared to those who did not masturbate.

Masturbation side effects Masturbation is harmless. Some people may experience chafing or tender skin if they are too rough, but this will usually heal in a few days. If men frequently masturbate within a short space of time, they may experience a slight swelling of the penis called an edema. This swelling usually disappears within a couple of days. Other potential side effects include: Guilt Some people who worry that masturbation conflicts with their religious, spiritual, or cultural beliefs may experience feelings of guilt. However, masturbation is not immoral or wrong, and self-pleasure is not shameful. Discussing feelings of guilt with a friend, healthcare professional, or therapist that specializes in sexual health might help a person to move past feelings of guilt or shame that they connect with masturbation. Decreased sexual sensitivity

Aggressive or excessive masturbation techniques may lead to reduced sexual sensitivity. If men have an aggressive masturbation method that involves too tight a grip on their penis, they can experience decreased sensation. A man can resolve this over time with a change of technique. Enhanced stimulation, such as using a vibrator, may increase arousal and overall sexual function in both men and women. Women who use a vibrator have reported improved sexual function and lubrication, while men experienced an improvement in erectile function. Prostate cancer The jury is out as to whether masturbation increases or decreases the risk of prostate cancer. Researchers need to conduct more studies before they can reach a conclusion. A 2003 study demonstrated that men who ejaculated more than five times each week during their 20s were one third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer than those who ejaculated less often. Researchers speculate that the reduced risk was because frequent ejaculation may prevent the build-up of cancer-causing agents in the prostate gland. A similar link between frequent ejaculation and a lower risk of prostate cancer was discovered in a 2016 study . Researchers found that men who ejaculated 21 times per month or more had a reduced risk of developing prostate cancer. In contrast, a 2008 study found that frequent sexual activity during a mans 20s and 30s increased his risk of prostate cancer, especially if he masturbated regularly. Disrupting daily life In rare cases, some individuals may masturbate more than they desire, which may: cause them to miss work, school, or important social events

interrupt a persons daily functioning

affect their responsibilities and relationships

serve as an escape from relationship issues or substitute for real-life experiences Someone who thinks they might be adversely impacted by their masturbation practice should speak with a healthcare professional. A doctor or counselor may suggest talk therapy to determine ways that they could manage their sexual behavior. Consulting a sex therapist may also help with coping strategies for excessive masturbation. To locate a local sex therapist, a person can visit the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT).

Health benefits of masturbation

Masturbation may reduce stress and relieve tension. Masturbation has many physical and mental health benefits. Few studies focus specifically on the benefits of masturbation, but research suggests that sexual stimulation, including stimulation through masturbation, can: reduce stress

release tension

enhance sleep quality

boost concentration

elevate mood

relieve menstrual cramps

alleviate pain

improve sex Masturbation has also been identified as a strategy to improve sexual health by promoting intimacy, exploring self-pleasure, desires, and needs, reducing unwanted pregnancies, and preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV transmission. Individuals who choose to abstain from sex or who do not currently have a sexual partner may often masturbate as a sexual outlet. Masturbation also has sexual health benefits specifically for older women, such as less vaginal dryness and decreased pain during sex.
The Air Force will award a combat controller the Silver Star next month for engaging Islamic State fighters and calling in precision strikes during the Mosul offensive under Operation Inherent Resolve.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Lewis, a combat controller with 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, will be presented with the military's third-highest valor award during a ceremony at Hurlburt Field, Florida, on Jan. 19, the service said in a release Wednesday.

Lewis, who was featured in the Air Force's 2017 "Portraits in Courage" program, was engaged in a 10-hour firefight while embedded with a Navy SEAL team, alongside Kurdish Peshmerga forces, on Oct. 20, 2016.

The troops were tasked to advise, assist and accompany the Kurds to clear two villages held by heavily entrenched ISIS fighters, according to Lewis' "Portraits in Courage" story.

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Four days earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had declared the beginning of the assault to recapture Mosul.

Soon after the team arrived, ISIS fighters began a rapid assault of grenade, mortar and small-arms fire at them -- but the automated .50 caliber turret gun on Lewis' vehicle dislodged and became inoperable.

"Lewis systematically engaged the enemy in multiple locations from the open turret," according to the Portraits in Courage release. "He held this vulnerable position for hours despite direct enemy fire impacting within inches of him."

Lewis called in airstrikes from F-15E Strike Eagles and B-52 Stratofortress bombers. The strikes came within 400 meters of his team, crippling ISIS defensive positions.

During one of the strikes, "Lewis identified, engaged, and destroyed an enemy vehicle-borne improvised explosive device barreling toward his team at high speed -- exploding within 100 meters of the convoy," the release said.

As the team repositioned, an IED detonated and triggered seven additional explosions, killing one U.S. service member and wounding others.

Lewis without hesitation leapt out of the turret to assist the wounded, calling for casualty evacuation on the radio and providing medical care to his team.

Lewis called for more airstrikes, one of which took out yet another vehicle-borne IED headed straight for his team.

His actions aided in eliminating more than 20 enemy forces, the release said.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein on Nov. 6 tweeted out Lewis' profile, saying, "#MondayMotivation." Lewis had already been recommended for the Silver Star to his superiors.

Similarly in October, a combat controller who helped stave off an ambush in Afghanistan received the Air Force Cross.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson presented the Air Force Cross -- second only to the Medal of Honor for valor in combat -- to Staff Sgt. Richard Hunter for his steadfast decisions and courage during a U.S. Army-led mission in Afghanistan.

"Special operations is a force that we call when we really need the absolute best," Wilson said during the ceremony at Hurlburt.

She added, "There's no better friend -- and no worse enemy -- than the United States special operations forces."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
President Donald Trump declared U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's political capital Wednesday and pledged to move the U.S. Embassy there eventually despite the concerns of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the move could trigger violence in the region and put U.S. troops at risk.

Both Mattis and Secretary State Rex Tillerson laid out their views to Trump at a White House meeting last week, Defense and State Department officials said.

As he returned to Washington from a five-day trip to the Mideast and South Asia Tuesday, Mattis told reporters that the discussions on Jerusalem "went on for some time." He declined to characterize what he told Trump. "As always, my advice to the president I keep confidential."

However, Mattis said, "I gave to the president what I thought. You have to look at the world in different parts and pieces too. So, as you do that, you have to have a lot of information. I collected the information. I made my recommendation, and I'll just leave it at that."

In his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Mattis firmly declared that Tel Aviv was the capital of Israel. He also said he backed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The capital of Israel that I go to, sir, is Tel Aviv, sir, because that's where all their government people are," Mattis said in response to questions on whether Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital by the movement of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem was a matter for the Secretary of State, Mattis said at the time.

Ahead of Trump's announcement Wednesday, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip burned U.S. flags and photos of Trump. In Amman, members of the Jordanian parliament protested at the U.S. Embassy.

At the Pentagon, Army Col. Rob Manning, a spokesman, said that the Defense Department was working with the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security to guard against threats to U.S. Embassies worldwide.

"We are protecting our embassies" with bolstered Marine guard security and Marine FAST teams [Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Teams) on alert, he said.

Without giving specifics, Manning also said the department was taking additional "steps to mitigate" the potential risk.

"We're always postured for a range of threats," he said.

Manning added he was "not aware of any specific order" to U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to take precautions in the event of repercussions from Trump's declaration, which has drawn widespread condemnation in the region as an affront to Muslims.

In response to questions on the FAST teams, Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "Due to operational security, I won't get into specifics, but the Department of Defense takes necessary steps to mitigate threats to U.S. personnel and interests around the world."

In his White House address, Trump said recognizing Jerusalem as the capital was "the right thing to do," and he criticized his predecessors -- Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- for failing to make the move previously.

"Some say they lacked courage," Trump said, "but they made their best judgments based on the facts as they understood them at the time."

"Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious -- that Jerusalem is Israel's capital," the president said. "This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do."

Trump stressed "this decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement." He made no mention of Palestinian hopes to have their capital in East Jerusalem.

In his own address following Trump's, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned the Jerusalem declaration could encourage "extremist organizations to wage a religious war that would harm the entire region, which is going through critical moments and would lead us into wars that will never end, which we have warned about and always urged to fight against."

Trump's action drew a mixed response on Capitol Hill. Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the move "another diplomatic blunder and unforced error by President Trump."

He said that Trumps Jerusalem statements "could trigger a backlash against Israel and American interests and personnel overseas."

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, a SASC member, said Trump was only "following through on a promise made by many U.S. presidents in the past."

Later Wednesday, the White House issued a presidential proclamation on Trump's earlier action:

"The foreign policy of the United States is grounded in principled realism, which begins with an honest acknowledgement of plain facts."

"With respect to the state of Israel, that requires officially recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and relocating the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as soon as practicable."

In a background briefing Tuesday night, White House officials, speaking on grounds of anonymity, said that arrangements to move the embassy to Jerusalem could take several years.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Nearly fourscore years have passed since the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that catapulted the United States into World War II.

But a new examination of the fight and the sailors who defended the harbor with their lives has revealed two unsung heroes deserving of prestigious valor awards.

Aloysius H. Schmitt, a Navy chaplain who served as a lieutenant junior grade during the battle, and Joseph L. George, a chief boatswain's mate who was then a petty officer second class, will be posthumously honored on Thursday, the 76th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, according to a Navy announcement.

Schmitt, who died working to help other sailors reach safety when the Nevada-class battleship Oklahoma capsized and sank, will be honored with the Silver Star medal, the third-highest combat valor award.

George, who saved the lives of sailors aboard the Pennsylvania-class battleship Arizona, will be honored with the Bronze Star medal with combat valor device. George survived the battle and would go on to retire from the Navy in 1955. He died in 1996 at the age of 81.

Recognizing Heroism

That the Navy came to present medals to these men in 2017 illustrates the gradual, and often imperfect, process of recognizing military heroism. According to Navy officials, the bravery of both men and their merit of recognition was brought to the service's attention by their surviving families.

In October 1942, Schmitt received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the Navy's highest award for non-combat heroism. But while Schmitt was a chaplain and not actually fighting, a clearer definition of combat made clear that he was indeed part of the battle.

His family lobbied the Navy to ensure that he was properly recognized for his heroism, according to the Navy release.

Accounts of his actions made clear just how fitting that recognition was.

Schmitt had been hearing confessions when four torpedoes struck the Oklahoma on the port side, according to Navy historical documents used for training.

Amid the chaos as the ship tilted toward its injured side, Schmitt made his way to an open porthole and began helping sailors escape. When it came his turn to make his way out, he struggled to get through the opening. Rather than block the escape route as sailors waited behind him, he chose to sacrifice himself.

"Realizing that the water was rising rapidly and that even this one exit would soon be closed, Schmitt insisted on being pushed back to help others who could get through more easily, urging them on with a blessing," according to the account.

Schmitt was one of 400 sailors aboard the Oklahoma who died when it sank, according to officials.

Schmitt's great-nephew, Dr. Steve Sloan, said in a statement that the chaplain's story is the stuff of family legend and his presentation with the medal has deep significance for his relatives.

"We would talk about what happened, how many sailors he helped escape, and what went on -- we would kind of relive it every holiday and it became a bit of a tradition. So we're very excited about the medal," he said. "I think for the older people in the family, it's a form of closure but, for the rest of us, our hope is that this is just the beginning of the story; that with the return of his remains and the presentation of the medal, his story will become known to a whole new generation."

George, the chief boatswain's mate, received a commendation for his bravery in the battle, but was never recommended by his commanding officer for a valor award.

His family, too, fought to see him properly recognized. Lauren Bruner and Don Stratton, whose lives were saved thanks to George, also petitioned for him to be honored.

George's story might not be fully known if not for an interview he gave to the University of North Texas on Aug. 5, 1978. In the interview, he described relaxing and reading a Sunday newspaper aboard the repair ship USS Vestal when General Quarters sounded, indicating an imminent crisis.

As the Arizona was hit with Japanese torpedoes, George sprang into action, putting out fires and preparing guns aboard the Vestal so that the crew could return fire on the Japanese. He ultimately threw a line from the Vestal to the Arizona, enabling sailors aboard the sinking ship to escape.

George's daughter, Joe Ann Taylor, who will receive the medal on his behalf, said in a statement that her dad began talking about the war only after his retirement from the Navy.

"It was kind of surreal. You grow up with your dad thinking of him as dad; you're not used to thinking of him as a hero," she said. "But it's a wonderful story, and I'm quite proud of him. Plus I've gotten to know the men he saved and have developed a real bond with the Stratton and Bruner families."

George's Bronze Star will be presented in a ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor by Rear Adm. Matthew J. Carter, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Schmitt's Silver Star will be presented by Navy Chief of Chaplains Rear Adm. Margaret Kibben in a ceremony on the campus of Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, following a Catholic mass at a chapel where his remains are buried.

Legacy Lives On

While it took decades for Schmitt's combat valor award to be approved, his legacy has lived on in the Navy in other ways. He was the namesake for the Buckley-class destroyer escort Schmitt, in service for the Navy from 1943 to 1949.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer called the presentation of the medals "not only appropriate, but simply the right thing to do.

"One of my highest priorities is to honor the service and sacrifice of our sailors, Marines, civilians, and family members," he said. "And it is clear that Lt. Schmitt and Chief George are heroes whose service and sacrifice will stand as an example for current and future service members."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Officials say the device was known as an "unexploded ordnance," or an explosive weapon that did not explode and still posed a...
All military personnel, including troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, would go without pay in the event of a government shutdown due to the perennial failure of Congress to enact a budget on time, the Pentagon's comptroller said Thursday.

"No one gets paid" stateside and in war zones under a shutdown, Comptroller David Norquist said at a Pentagon news conference. "Payment will not be made until the shutdown is over."

The same goes for hundreds of thousands of Defense Department civilians, Norquist said. Most would be furloughed with the exception of those considered vital for national security.

While the House on Thursday passed another short-term resolution, even if the Senate follows suit, the chambers will have to do the same thing again in two weeks

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A day ago, President Donald Trump warned that a shutdown "could happen." He blamed Democrats for failing to compromise on immigration. He said Democrats want "illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime."

A shutdown would be the worst-case scenario for national defense but another continuing resolution also would impact readiness, according to Norquist and Dana White, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson.

"I can't emphasize enough how destructive a shutdown would be," Norquist said.

White noted the Pentagon has operated under stopgap measures for the last nine years -- for a total of 1,081 days -- in ways that delayed vital programs and disrupted planning. National security demanded a "robust and predictable" budget process, she said.

However, the budget process often is driven more by the politics of the moment rather than the long-term interests of the nation. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday Democrats were to blame for the continuing resolutions and the threat of a shutdown. She urged them "not to hold this bill hostage."

House and Senate Democrats have been pressing for more spending on health care, infrastructure and other domestic programs to match increases Republicans want for defense.

Although a shutdown on Friday appeared unlikely, Norquist said department contingency plans call for sending out hundreds of thousands of notices to those would be impacted.

He also said even a two-week continuing resolution would have a negative effect on the Pentagon. Norquist cited the additional funding for munitions requested by all combatant commands that was included in the proposed fiscal 2018 budget.

"A CR says 'Stop, wait, don't award that contract,'" Norquest said. The result would be a delay "in meeting the requirements of combatant commanders," he said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Sundays were ice cream days for several of the destroyers in Pearl Harbor, and they were taking aboard gallons from a local dairy in the early morning hours just before the attack began Dec. 7, 1941.

The ship's log for the Mahan-class destroyer Conyngham, kept that morning by Lt. [j.g.] J.R. Hansen, noted: "Moored as before. 0630 [6:30 a.m.] Received the following provisions for use in general mess ... from Dairyman's Association Ltd: ice cream -- 6 gals."

Hansen attested to the quantity received, and Pharmacist's Mate P.C. Parcheski attested to its quality.

Hansen's next log entry noted that the nation was at war again.

"0755 Japanese planes commenced bombing Pearl Harbor Area. Held general quarters, manned all guns, commenced breaking out powder. Commenced emergency repairs on main engines to get underway. Captain on the bridge."

Another Mahan-class destroyer, the Cummings, was "moored as before" and received 15 gallons of milk and seven gallons of ice cream from Dairyman's Association Ltd. on that morning, according to the log kept by Lt. [j.g.] J.B. Carroll.

Carroll then noted: "0758 Air Raid. Japanese planes commenced torpedo attack on battleships in Pearl Harbor. Sounded General Quarters."

Carroll's next log entry gave a just-the-facts portrayal of the frantic attempts of the Cummings' sailors to repel the attack that would destroy much of the firepower of the Pacific Fleet.

"Moored as before. Manning battery at General Quarters. 0803 After machine guns opened fire on Japanese Torpedo Planes. 0808 Opened fire on horizontal bombers with main battery."

The next entries said: "0810 Commenced preparations for getting underway in accordance with signal flying on signal tower. 0811 Opened fire on dive bombers with main battery. 0820 Lull in air attack. Ceased fire."

"0840 Opened fire to repel strafing attack. 0842 Following machine gun fire from after machine guns, glide bomber was observed veer away from ship with smoke trailing from it."

The Wickes-class destroyer Chew, a veteran of World War I, also took on ice cream before going to general quarters and turning its deck guns on the swarming aircraft.

Ensign W.H. Hartz, made the following log entry: "0757 Suffered surprise air attack by Japanese torpedo and bombing planes. Sounded General Quarters and manned anti-aircraft battery. Light and heavy Japanese bombers crossed Pearl Harbor at high altitude scoring direct hits on various fleet units."

The Chew managed to get underway and began patrolling southwest of the port entrance for submarines. The ship dropped 28 depth charges, but there was no evidence any Japanese submarines were hit.

Some of the most harrowing log entries came from Ensign A.T. Nicholson Jr., aboard the Tennessee-class battleship California, flagship of the Pacific Fleet. The California was hit several times, and the crew was temporarily ordered to abandon ship as a drifting oil slick threatened to engulf her in flames.

"0820 ship was struck at frame 47 with torpedo," the California's log said. "0830 bomb struck topside abreast casemate #1, frame 59, penetrated main deck and exploded on second deck causing large fire. Ship listed 8 to port, commenced counter-flooding starboard voids."

"1002 Captain with approval of Commander Battle Force ordered the ship to be temporarily abandoned due to enveloping flames of fire of fuel oil on surface of water."

"1015 flames from fire on water having cleared ship, the order to abandon ship was cancelled and ship battle stations were remanned and fire on main deck starboard and casemates fought. Attack resumed by enemy aircraft."

The California was salvaged and returned to the fight in the Pacific. Forty-four sailors aboard the California were killed in a kamikaze attack in the Philippines in 1945.

The ships' logs and accounts from naval stations ashore were compiled from 1941-1978 and are now stored at the National Archives, which said they "provide some insight into the events of the day -- before, during, and after the attack -- through the eyes of those who witnessed it."

"The vast majority of these entries document routine functions carried out aboard a ship, yet those entered at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, also capture elements of the shock and confusion brought by the Japanese attack," according to an Archives' preface to the logs.

In the confusion, the battleship Maryland, which was lightly damaged in the attack, logged a false report that Japanese paratroopers had descended from the skies over Pearl Harbor.

The ship's log had the following entry: "1137 Parachute troops reported landing on North Shore. 1143 Report received enemy troops wearing blue coveralls with red emblems."

It proved to be a minor distraction in the fog of battle.

"Before the day was over, 2,403 Americans were dead," the Archives report said. "In the two-hour attack, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was left nearly in ruins, with eight battleships, three cruisers, and 188 airplanes destroyed."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
IED goes off in two election centres of Nawalparasi, 6 injured [Update]

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) went off in two separate polling centres of Nawalparasi district on Thursday. The explosion occurred while the voters were in queue to cast their ballots.
Army officials, analysts and authors met Wednesday to try to improve the U.S. military's poor track record of predicting future conflict.

Maj. Gen. William Hix, director of strategy, plans and policy for the office of the U.S. Army's Deputy Chief of Staff G-3/5/7, said, "Prediction is fraught with danger," at the Atlantic Council's U.S. Army Futures Forum.

Throughout history, there have been many "sad examples" of the tendency of people to optimistically embrace the idea of decisive opening strikes and quick finishes for war, Hix said.

"Most often, those predictions have been hugely wrong and, in some cases, resulted in catastrophe," he said.

A large part of the problem is the failure to anticipate social and political change, as well as technology revolutions, Hix said, citing America's experience in the Civil War.

"Most of our officers were trained in Napoleonic methods, and we missed the fact that the industrial age was maturing," he said. "And the casualty rates that we suffered on both sides of our Civil War are indicative of the fact that we missed the importance of relatively small things like rifled muskets, artillery that fired indirectly, repeating arms, the railroad and the telegraph and what that meant to the speed of war at that time.

"Today, our failure to watch for those types of signals has led to strategic surprise in the Russian actions of Crimea," Hix said. "The Ukraine, in many respects, is a harbinger of future war ... and the long-term rise of China and the autonomy -- I think the world economic forum calls it the fourth industrial age -- suggests a potential shift in the character of war that is as profound and fundamental as the transition from the 19th to the 20th century."

Urbanization, speed, lethality, autonomy -- many things that used to be science fiction are rapidly becoming reality, and some of America's adversaries are moving quicker in these spaces than the United States, he said.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Army has a bad habit of failing to anticipate how advanced its adversaries are and then coming up short in the opening days of conflict, Hix said.

"Our record in the opening stage of most major conflicts we have been in has been poor," he said.

The U.S.' success in Operation Desert Storm is not the norm, Hix said, adding the normal experience is Kasserine Pass in North Africa -- a major defeat for the U.S. Army in 1944 during World War II.

"We have to learn what parts of war are going to come with us in the future, and what pieces we are going to have to discard, and what pieces we are going to have to embrace," he said.

But Ken Liu, author of "The Paper Menagerie, The Grace of Kings," cautioned against the tendency to rely on history to predict the future.

Mankind's addiction to stories and storytelling is often the reason why it fails to predict the future correctly, Liu said, describing this as a cognitive bias for the species.

"We literally cannot understand the world as it is; we understand the world [by] making a story out of it," he said. "The universe is irreducibly random, but we cannot seem to accept that, so we have to construct a narrative about why things are happening."

Liu, a science-fiction author, has made a study of this with a particular focus on why most sci-fi authors "have been terrible at predicting the future."

"We have a tendency to do the following: When you are in the moment, when you are looking toward the future, the reality is -- for any problem that you are trying to solve -- there are multiple teams round the world trying to tackle that from multiple directions, and the possibilities for the future are endlessly open," he said, citing the history of touch screen interfaces, a technology the world has been trying to perfect since the 1960s.

"In the moment, when you are looking forward, it is very hard to know which of these approaches will succeed and dominate the future," Liu said. "The problem is, once you are past that point and you are looking backward -- the iPhone came out, it is very tempting, almost inevitable for everybody who lived in this situation to construct a narrative for why that particular breakthrough was inevitable. This is the way history is written.

"We like to tell history as a series of stories of plots, of causes and effects, of inevitable lines of evolution," he said.

When humans look backward, it is very easy to construct a narrative saying, "Why did everyone else miss that this was the only path that could have succeeded?" he added.

"That is not true," Liu argued. "Actually, history is all of these random reasons why one particular approach succeeded over others, and it's very, very tempting to say, 'We should be able to predict the future because if you look at the past there is a clear narrative about why we ended up here.' "

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
The results are in.

The Air Force revealed Thursday it has the findings from the "light attack" aircraft demonstration, which took place in August at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, though it has yet to disclose them.

Members of Congress are eager to hear the verdict.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on acquisition reform Thursday, senators said they are hopeful the light attack aircraft -- known as OA-X -- procurement strategy may improve how future weapons systems are acquired.

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Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said she had not yet reviewed the report but emphasized the speed of the entire process.

"This is the letter of invitation and four-page set of requirements," she said, holding up the original proposal, which was released to the defense industry on March 8.

"In less than five months, we had four aircraft on the ramp to test at Holloman Air Force Base and, last night, I just got the test report. So in less than 11 months, with five pages, we have tested four aircraft for a potential light attack aircraft for the United States and allies," Wilson said.

Last month, key lawmakers agreed to provide the Air Force with $400 million to explore buying a new light attack aircraft for missions in the Middle East.

Addressing Wilson during Thursday's hearing, Sen Angus King, I-Maine, added, "What you told us about the light attack aircraft and the process is incredibly encouraging, and I hope that you will be able to continue along those lines."

Light Attack's Journey -- So Far

Four aircraft -- AirTractor and L3's AT-802L Longsword; Sierra Nevada and Embraer's A-29 Super Tucano; and Textron and AirLand LLC's Scorpion, as well as their AT-6B Wolverine -- conducted live-fly exercises, combat maneuver scenarios and, on some occasions, weapons drops during the Holloman demonstration.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen David Goldfein in September told Military.com that the light attack initiative should be viewed as a new way of doing business -- not just a plane, but part of a larger communications system.

OA-X "is actually not about the hardware -- it's about the network," he said, adding he wants the service to train more often with coalition partners -- who may not have high-end fighter aircraft.

Goldfein, who served as the U.S. Air Forces Central Command commander between 2011 and 2013, said, "Is this a way to get more coalition partners into a network to counter violence?

"Can I -- at the same that we're looking at a relatively inexpensive aircraft and sensor package -- can I connect that into a network of sharable information that allows us to better accomplish the strategy as it's been laid out?" he said.

Buying Power

During Thursday's hearing, Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, highlighted the need for interim solutions, such as light attack, given that the U.S. increasingly seems to require off-the-shelf technologies in times of rising tensions.

"After 30 years of disinvestment and only one major recapitalization, and after 16 years of combat, I believe we have a crisis," he said.

"How do we find quick, low-cost solutions for the battlefield? These high-cost solutions -- flying an F-35 into battlespace where an A-29 might be OK, those types of examples" are what's needed, Perdue said.

Light attack could be a refreshing start, considering the Joint Strike Fighter program -- the Pentagons most expensive program to date -- took more than 15 years to produce, between its first design to its date of operation.

Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the committee hearing that the Defense Department's goal is to shorten major acquisition programs from two-and-a-half years to 12 months.

"Now, that's a first step," she said.

Lord did not say whether that would apply to off-the-shelf experiments such as light attack, but touted OA-X's accomplishments.

The Air Force said it would share the findings of the report when appropriate.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
Two military MQ-9 Reaper drones and two C-130J Hercules aircraft have joined local authorities in battling Southern California wildfires, which are being fanned by high winds and have jumped highways to destroy homes and and burn a path to the Pacific ocean, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The two Air National Guard Reapers from the 163rd Attack Wing, flying out of March Air Reserve Base near Moreno Valley, California, are being used for surveillance and employing their infrared systems to detect hot spots, said Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

"The Reapers' infrared sensors yielded mission-critical thermal imagery on the afflicted area in real-time," according to a base release. "Airmen have mapped vast perimeters of six fires across four counties, encompassing some 77,000 acres and identifying some 1,500 burned structures."

Two C-130J aircraft from the 146th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard, flying out of Channel Islands Air National Guard Station near Oxnard, California, have Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) aboard to drop retardant on blazes that are still out of control.

The wildfires centered in Ventura County have forced about 27,000 residents to flee, local officials said, and Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency.

At least 150 structures have been destroyed, officials said, and thousands of homes are at risk.

"This fire is very dangerous and spreading rapidly, but we'll continue to attack it with all we've got," Brown said. "It's critical residents stay ready and evacuate immediately if told to do so."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
"A day which will live in infamy."

That was how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described Dec. 7, 1941, as he one day later asked Congress to declare war against the Empire of Japan.

In a surprise attack that began at 7:48 a.m. that sunny Sunday in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japan killed 2,403 Americans; wounded 1,178 others; sank four U.S. Navy battleships; destroyed 188 U.S. aircraft; and sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, one minelayer, and an anti-aircraft training ship.

America would never be the same.

Shortly after Roosevelt's Dec. 8 speech, Congress voted to launch the U.S. into World War II, a conflict that forever changed how Americans saw themselves and the world outside their borders.

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day marks the lives lost Dec. 7, 1941, and honors those who survived the attack.
Photo credit - Npr.org

07.12.2017 LISTEN

Looking at your smartphone in the dark may cause temporary blindness, doctors said.

Doctors discovered this condition when two women in the UK reported mysterious vision problems that happened only during the night or early in the morning.

According to medical experts, this vision problem occurs when people look at the bright screens of their smartphones in a dark room.

In a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the cases of two women aged 22 and 40, who experienced "transient smartphone blindness" for months.

The 22-year-old woman said she had trouble seeing from her right eye at night lying in bed, and that this happened multiple times a week for one year. She could only see an object's outline with her right eye. Her left eye vision was normal, and both eyes were able to see normally the following day, Live Science reported.

In the case of the 40-year-old woman, she reported that she could not see from one eye after waking early in the morning, before sunrise. This occurred on and off for six months and lasted for about 15 minutes.

In both cases, doctors found that the vision problems happened only after the women reportedly viewed their smartphones for some time while lying in bed.

Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London explained that both women look at their smartphones with only one eye while lying on their side in bed in the dark. The other eye was usually covered with a pillow.

"So you have one eye adapted to the light because it's looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark," he said in a report published in NZHerald.com .

The women were asked to try looking at their smartphones with both eyes, and then with each eye individually. The women reported that they did not experience the blindness when looking at their phones with both eyes, and when looking at the phone using one eye, the blindness happened in the eye that had been viewing the smartphone.

Temporary blindness is ultimately harmless and easily avoidable if people will look at their smartphones using both eyes, Plant said.

According to the report, cases of "smartphone blindness" are likely to increase as smartphones are now being used around the clock and smartphone screens are increasing in brightness.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

A decade after oil discovery in Ghana, the commodity's revenue generation developmental impacts so far are questionable, Professor John Asafu-Adjaye, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), has stated.

He said the fact that some of the revenue generated from oil had been saved for future generations, and it had increased exports and improved the trade balance; it had added very little to economic growth, and by extension, employment and poverty alleviation.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye said this in his presentation on Tuesday in Accra, during a roundtable organised by the IEA on the theme: 'A Decade after Oil Discovery in Ghana: The Economic Impacts and Policy Implications.'

The presentation sought to address the economic impact of oil production so far, the extent to which Ghanaians are benefitting and what can be done to enhance the developmental impacts of oil and gas production.

In 2007 a substantial discovery was made by Kosmos Energy LLC in the Gulf of Guinea's Tano Basin with recoverable reserves of more than 600 million barrels of oil an upside potential of 1.8 billion barrels.

First oil was in November 2010 with an initial output of 25,000 barrels of oil per day.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye said Ghana had therefore, experienced six years of oil production a decade after the discovery.

He said since the Jubilee discovery, 25 other discoveries of oil and gas condensates had been discovered in the Deep Water Tano and West Cape Three Points Blocks.

He said these include the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN) and the Sankofa-Gye Nyame (SGN) oilfields. Oil production from TEN commenced in August 2016 and is expected to plateau at 76,000 bopd between 2017 and 2020.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye said oil and gas production at the SGN field in the same area was expected to commence in 2018 and that over the next five years Ghana was expected to produce 250 Million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMscfd) and 190,000 Barrels Of Oil Per Day (BOPD).

He said although modest by international standards, these discoveries confirm Ghana's potential to establish a hydrocarbon industry.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye said the resolution of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) Boundary dispute with Cote d'Ivoire in favour of Ghana now means these developments could proceed with certainty.

On the question whether Ghanaians were getting the best out of the oil find, Prof Asafu-Adjaye answered no.

He said oil had, however, made some minimal impacts on output and job creation due to weak linkages between the oil sector and the rest of the economy.

'In spite of the local content provisions, many individuals and SMEs are unable to participate in the industry due to lack of skills and capacity,' he stated.

'Furthermore, Ghana has not benefited from previous oil contracts in terms of the economic rent extracted,' he added.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye, who is also an Associate Professor of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, said oil exploration had been documented as having taken place in Ghana in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the onshore Cape Three Points area, however, the initial exploratory wells did not return any evidence of substantial deposits.

He recounted that the first discovery of oil was in 1970 by the US firm AgriPetco off the coast of Saltpond; adding that the reserves were not in sufficient commercial quantities and were initially abandoned.

He said the field was currently being exploited by a joint venture comprising the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and Lushann Eternit Energy Limited of Houston.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye recommended that as a matter of urgency, government should make the necessary investments required to facilitate onshore processing of oil and gas.

He said this would enhance the developmental impacts of petroleum in terms of job creation and backward and forward linkages with other sectors.

He noted that the Government should also invest in human capital in this area to promote significant local participation.

Prof Asafu-Adjaye made a strong case for re-negotiating all oil contracts, to enable the nation have its fair share of the oil wealth.

'Much can be learned from Norway which began oil production in 1969/70 and has done very well in terms of the management of its resources,' he said.

GNA

By Iddi Yire, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Mr. Samuel Allotey, the Director General of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, says processes to finalise preparations for Goldstar Air, an emerging wholly Ghanaian airline and four others, would soon be completed for the airlines to take off.

Goldstar Air is originally scheduled to begin its flight operations by June 2017, but has been confronted with few paper work challenges, which caused a delay in its take off.

However, Mr Allotey, during the Quality Excellence Awards in Accra, assured the travelling and the business communities that the airlines, which are undergoing various stages of processing, would take off in 2018 to bring significant improvements in the aviation industry.

Gehab Award Events organised the awards, at which it conferred on Goldstar Air, the Most Promising Airline Company of the Year. It was on the theme: 'Awarding Loyalty through Service.

Mr Allotey said the arrival of the new airlines will bring competition and more options to travellers.

'So things will get better. There will be more competition in the coming months or by the end of 2019,'' he said.

''We will see a few more operators doing local, regional and intercontinental flights,' he added.

Goldstar Air, Smile Air, DAC and Montrac Air are undergoing certification; and Asamoah Gyan's Airline has already received an air carrier license.

Starbow and Africa World Airline are currently the only two airlines operating in Ghana, but a recent accident involving Starbow, which led to its suspension, leaves the local air travelling public to depend only on Africa World Airline, a situation that could lead to some short-term challenges.

The expected commencement of operations of the new carriers in a few months time would change the face of local, regional and intercontinental travel from Ghana.

Ms Felicia Cobblah, the Head of Human Resource, received the award on behalf of Goldstar Air, presented by Nana Osafo Kantanka Adjei, the Vice President for Business Development, Government Relations and Communications of TAQA Africa.

Madam Judith Worlali, the Managing Director of Gehab Events, said the award acknowledged, appreciated and brought together outstanding professionals and organisations whose behaviour was an inspiration to others.

She commended Goldstar Air for building a reputation amongst its contemporaries and its efforts at job creation among diverse professions.

She said the decision to give the award to Goldstar Air was arrived at having carefully evaluated the business performance, which strived for the highest customer satisfaction.

The award scheme is a prestigious annual scheme, which cuts across the whole of Ghana with the aim of centralising the strength and relationship that exists between customers and organisations.

The quality service excellence awards targets the Transport, Banking, Manufacturing, Packing and Unpacking, Hospitality, Automotive and Security industries.

Goldstar Air impressive strides in corporate social responsibility, corporate vision, inspiration and pioneering innovations in Ghana are critical parts of the country's transformation agenda toward economic growth.

Mr Eric Bannerman, the Executive Chairman of Goldstar Air, announced that the Airline would fly to 12 destinations worldwide namely; London, Dubai, Baltimore Washington, Guangzhou, Providence International Airport, Lagos, Abidjan, Monrovia, Freetown, Conakry, Banjul and Dakar.

'Our intention, as Ghanaians, is to build a state of the art and trend-setting aviation industry able to compete within the international market in terms of safety, quality, reliability, punctuality, efficiency and costs,'' he said.

Goldstar Air would improve the Ghanaian economy through the provision of affordable and available international travel and provide job opportunities, he said. GNA

By Benjamin Mensah, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Tuesday inaugurated a 15-member Local Government Service Council, with a charge to ensure integrity in Ghana's local governance system.

He also exhorted the Council members to offer honest advice on administrative decentralisation and uplift their game as a crucial strategic partner to the Government in its growth and development agenda.

'Ensure that local Government Services remains committed to its core values of professionalism, objectivity, integrity, accountability, impartiality, neutrality and customer sensitivity,' Vice President Bawumia said at the inaugural ceremony at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

Members of the Council, chaired by Mr Rex Owusu Ansah, include the Head of Local Government Service, Dr Stephen N.A. Arthur, two nominees of the President, Dr Esther O. Ofei Aboagye and Rev. Mrs Sanatu Nantogma, two nominees of Civil Service Organisations; Ms Gladys Gillian N. Tetteh and Mr Saaka Sayuti.

The others are Ms Dorothy Akosua Onny, a nominee of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Isaac Asiamah, the Director-General, NDPC, Mr Isaac Nsarko Biney, Ministry of Education, Dr John K. Awoonor-Williams, Ministry of Health nominee, and Ms Irene Naa Torshie Addo, the Administrator of the District Assemblies Common Fund.

The rest are a nominee of the National Association of Local Government Authorities of Ghana, Mr Felix N. Nii Annang-La, a nominee of the Local Government Workers, Mr Abdul Haleem Amadu, the Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies, Dr Dadson Awunyo-Vitor, and a nominee of the National House of Chiefs, Nana Soglo Allo IV.

Dr Bawumia entreated the members to bring their experiences to bear in developing an effective multi-sectoral cooperation with other services, departments and agencies for better implementation of government programmes.

'Your invitation to serve on the Council is to tap into your reserve knowledge, expertise, and skills in the management of the Service. I have no doubt that I can count on your competence, ability, influence and dedicated service'.

The Vice President urged the Council to ensure that the implementation of Human Resource policies were fair to all and devoid of favouritism.

Mr Owusu Ansah, on behalf of the Council, expressed gratitude for the opportunity to render service to the country.

He said the Council was prepared to work to fast track the effective administration and management of the decentralised system, which had been the expectations of governments in the past four decades.

GNA
Keeping old hopes alive

This column will appear on the day of the second and last phase of parliamentary and provincial elections in Nepal.
Vodafone Ghana has won two prestigious awards at the maiden edition of the Business Excellence Awards hosted by the UK-Ghana Chamber of Commerce (UKGCC).

The event seeks to recognise the great works of reputable Ghanaian and UK companies operating in the country whilst providing a platform for intimate interactions between key players in the business community.

Vodafone took home honours for two categories - Best Brand and Most Successful Company of the Year - to highlight the company's relentless efforts in establishing a company that continues to set the tone for the telecoms industry.

The organisers cited Vodafone's exceptional demonstration of strong growth and innovative strategies; stakeholder management and a notable customer experience, as key points that worked in their favour.

Commenting, Gayheart Mensah, Director of External Affairs at Vodafone Ghana said:"A persistent pursuit of excellence always yields results and that has been the Vodafone story to date. We are committed to putting the customer first in all we say and do because without them we have no business. We are excited to be honoured by the UK-Ghana Chamber of Commerce and for us, it is also a reflection of a year where, despite the industry challenges, we have emerged victorious. The future can only be exciting and we are ready to stand by our customers.

The UKGCC is an organisation made up of local experts and professionals that support British Businesses looking to access and engage with the Ghanaian market, whilst providing assistance to Ghanaian companies investing in the UK.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has charged eight newly sworn-in envoys to safeguard and promote the image and interests of Ghana outside her shores.

The 8 envoys are Mr. Francis Abakah, High Commissioner to the Republic of Sierra Leone; Mr. Emmanuel Enos, Ambassador to the State of Qatar; Mr. Ernest-Burke Asare Asiedu, Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia; and Mrs. Hannah Ama Nyarko, Ambassador to the State of Israel.

The rest are Mrs. Perpetual Dufu, Ambassador to the Republic of Angola; Mr. Joseph KwakuAntwi, Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo; Alhaji Sayuti Yahaya Iddi, Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran; and Alhaji Ahmed Rufai Yahaya Iddi, Ambassador to the State of Kuwait.

Photo: President Akufo-Addo with Mrs. Perpetu Dufu, ambassador to the Republic of Angola

At the Tuesday 5th event at the Presidency, President Akufo-Addo reminded the envoys of their threefold role  diplomatic, ceremonial and administrative, urging them to be mindful of the fact that they represent a country that, as a result of the commendable conduct of the Ghanaian people, is regarded as one of the most stable on the continent, a beacon of democracy.

Reiterating the policy of government to seek more private sector equity financing for infrastructure projects, rather than the historic resort to borrowing and more borrowing that resulted in the ballooning of Ghanas debt stock, the President noted that the new envoys have the responsibility to drive private sector investment into Ghana.

You are the chief promoters of Ghanas commercial interests to the respective countries to which you are going. Promoting Ghana means working closely with our Ministries and Agencies at home, whose duties are to generate investment in the country, he said.

The President continued, Remember vividly the slogans of our flagship programmes, 1-District-1-Factory; 1-Village-1-Dam; Planting for Food and Jobs. They are descriptions of our commitment to the rapid development and transformation of the nations industrial and agricultural sectors. We are determined to create the appropriate macroeconomic environment which will attract domestic and foreign investment into these, the real sectors of our economy. You have to help in that exercise.

President Akufo-Addo also urged them to strive to develop cordial working relations with the professional Foreign Service officers they will find at their duty posts.

They have invaluable experience and knowledge of the terrain, which should help you work effectively. You will need their assistance, and they will need your guidance and leadership. Mutual respect is the key to harmonious working relations, he said.

On their rapport with the Ghanaian communities in their respective countries, the President noted that the Ghanaian community will be vital to their prospects of success, indicating that they will be counting and looking up to you to champion not only our nations interests, but theirs as well. Do your best not to disappoint them.

With Ghana, through the creation of embassies, establishing formal diplomatic presence in Kuwait and Qatar for the first time, President Akufo-Addo noted that the respective Ambassadors have the important duty of cementing Ghanas relations with both States to promote mutual co-operation.

In doing so, you will recall at all times our objective  to build a Ghana Beyond Aid, a Ghana which has an honest system of governance, free of corruption, and which is self-reliant and exploiting its own resources with hard work, enterprise and creativity, to build the free, prosperous Ghana of the dreams of the founding fathers of our nation, he added.
A 63-year old former vice chancellor of the University of Education Winneba, Professor Akwasi Asabere-Ameyaw of Buoyem in the Techiman North District was on Friday declared the overall best farmer in the District.

Professor Akwasi Asabere-Ameyaw has more than thirty-five years of professional experience in teaching and research both at the secondary and tertiary levels of education in Ghana and West Africa.

By dint of hard work he became an Associate Professor and Full Professor of Science in 2004 and 2007 respectively in the University of Education, Winneba (UEW).

He began his farming career about seven years ago as a livestock farmer.

He currently owns 144 acres of farmland which includes 94 acres of Cocoa plantation, 40 acres of cashew, cassava, three acres of Yam, five acres of cassava, and two acres plantain.

He also has 250 local birds, 90 sheep and goats, 76 cattle, 3 ponds of Tilapia and catfish.

For his prize, Professor Akwasi Asabere received a tricycle (motor king), an LCD 32" flat screen television, a bicycle, a full piece wax print, three key soap bars, five cutlasses, three pair of Wellington boots, one radio and two knapsack sprayers.

The first runner up award went to 54 year old Enock Afrifa of Assamahunu who went home with a motor bike, 2 knapsack sprayers, 2 pair of Wellington boots, full piece of cloth, 3 cutlasses, 3 bars of key soap and a radio set.

The second runner-up, Amos Ackah Kwabena, a native of Ayeasu also went home with a double decker fridge, 2 knapsack sprayers, 2 pair of Wellington boots, full piece of cloth, 3 cutlasses, 3 bars of key soap, and a radio set.

Five others, including the best crop farmer, Patrick Kyeremeh of Ayeasu, best livestock farmer, Atta Kusi of Mesidan, best physically challenged farmer, Fordjour Joseph of Asueyi, best Agric extension Agent, Yaw Biatrng Foster and a special award winner Nana Annor of Asueyi were recognised and honoured with items like bicycles, wax prints, key soap bars, cutlasses, wellington boots, pesticides and knapsack sprayers, roofing sheets and bags of cement.

Speaking at the durbar held in Asueyi to observe the 33rd national farmers day celebration held under the theme: Farming for Food and Jobs, the District Chief Executive for Techiman North, Hon. Peter Mensah congratulated the award winners for their selfless and devoted contributions towards food provision for the people of the district and the entire nation.

He added that the choice of the theme for this year's event "is not only appropriate but timely particularly when everything including Ghanaian staple foods are being imported whilst youth employment stands at 48 percent".

He commended the Director and staff of the Agric Directorate for their dedicated services to farmers and urged them to continue to explore innovative ways of developing and strengthening the various Farmer-Based Organisations (FBOs) on business lines.

He also urged farmers to take advantage of government's flagship program the planting for food and jobs adding that government is committed to making agriculture a lucrative business.

Mr. Peter Mensah also advised the people to refrain from unsafe sexual practices as the day coincided with the world HIV/AIDS day.

On his part, the district director of Agriculture, Mr. Paul D. K. Tuolong urged farmers to take advantage of the Planting for food and Jobs (PFFJs) program by patronizing the subsidized inputs provided by government in the next farming season.

The programme was graced by dignitaries including traditional rulers in Asueyi, member of parliament Hon. Martin Oti Gyarko, the former DCE Anthony Kwaku Manu among others.

Citations were also given to five persons who have contributed immensely to the progress of the district. They include former education minister and MP for Techiman North Prof. Christopher Ameyaw Akumfi, former deputy education minister and MP Hon. Alex Kyeremeh, former regional minister, former minister for housing under the erstwhile Rawlings administration and former MP for Techiman North, the late Isaac Agyei Mensah, former DCE Hon. Anthony Kwaku Manu and former MCE for Techiman Hon. Isaac Osei-Antwi.
One thing you can't accuse the United Arab Emirates of lacking is vision.

First they unveiled plans to launch a Mars probe. Then it was an ambition to colonise the Red Planet.

Now the UAE has a new aim - to become a centre for space agriculture and the promotion of research into how food might be grown on Mars.

The space sector is a huge feature of the Dubai Airshow, with exhibitions, conferences, and speakers that include former Nasa Apollo 15 astronaut, Al Worden.

But even before a UAE Mars probe leaves the ground in 2020 from Japan - UAE is working in partnership with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - the Gulf state has now announced space agriculture intentions.

The UAE has launched a series of initiatives and university research projects to promote the growing of trees and plants.

"There are similarities between Mars and the desert," says Rashid Al Zaabi, senior strategic planner at the UAE Space Agency. "The landscape of the UAE, the soil, are similar."

He adds: "When we get there, we'll have to eat." The research, though, is not just about learning the lessons of space, but also how improve agriculture on earth.

Specifically, the UAE's studies will look into the date palm, a tree that survives in harsh desert conditions without much water or nutrients in the soil.

Working with collaborators internationally, researchers hope to build on research already done on space agriculture involving plants such as lettuce, strawberries, and tomatoes - three foods already shown to have thrived when grown in space.

Image copyright DUBAI MEDIA OFFICE

Image caption The country's Mars probe is set for launch in 2020

The date palm was chosen for its symbolic links with the region, as a source of food and shelter, Mr Al Zaabi says.

Although much of this may sound fanciful, there is a core underlying economic reason. The UAE, and specifically Dubai and Abu Dhabi, are trying to pump-prime the economy in preparation for an end of the oil era.

It started with a huge expansion of tourism and airlines, and the associated services and engineering that went with them. Now the UAE is moving into science and hi-tech sectors.

"There are 100 million young people in the Arab region," says Omran Sharaf, project manager on the Mars Mission probe. "

Image copyright MBRSC

Image caption The UAE has invested more than $5.4bn in its space sector

We want them to play a part in the future and take the region to the next level." (The UAE's population is about nine million, of which just 1.4 million are Emirati citizens).

He adds: "It's about creating a post-oil, knowledge-based, creative-based economy. So it is important we become a well established scientific centre. We have created many engineers, but not many scientists. This [Mars project] is a purely scientific mission."

The UAE has invested more than $5.4bn (4.1bn) in its space sector, including satellites.

A final full scale mock-up of a Mars probe was unveiled at the airshow.

The survey satellite was developed using a team deliberately made up only of Emiratis, the space agency said, and will search for water and assess atmospheric conditions.

Image copyright DUBAI MEDIA OFFICE

Image caption The plan is that scientists and researchers will live in the sealed facilities for a year

The UAE has also begun work on its Mars Science City, a centre dedicated to studying the colonisation of the planet. The series of domes in the desert, with two million square feet of living space and research facilities, will investigate food, water and energy needs.

The Mars mission makes the UAE one of only nine countries exploring how to get to the planet, Mr Sharaf says: "It means our investment in facilities and education - science, laboratories, universities - will need to be very big."

And, according to Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden, it will also require international cooperation. He's impressed with ambition of the UAE's project, and what's been achieved so far. But he adds: "The scale of the technological challenge will be too much for one country."

Image copyright DUBAI AIRSHOW

Image caption Former Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says putting humans on Mars will require international cooperation

The purpose of making space a big feature of the airshow was to attract international experts to participate, says Yousuf Hamad Al Shaibani, director general of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre.

Making the industry such a big features of this week's biennial Dubai Airshow was meant to be "an opportunity to meet with major international aerospace companies and institutions, and build strategic relations", he says.

Even the UAE's rulers have described what they are trying to do as "an epic challenger". Assuming everything progresses as planned, the final step will be a manned landing on Mars - within the next 100 years, that is.

It may never happen. But at least the country will have created a new generation of scientists in the Gulf - and learned how to grow a lot more fruit and veg in the desert.
Twyford GH Ceramics Company Limited held its annual West Africa Distributors programme at Takoradi for its customers across the West Africa sub-region.

The company is a Chinese tiles factory located within the Shama District in the Western Region. The factory started production of tiles in June this year and has currently employed over 800 local staff.

As part of efforts to strengthen the relationship between the company and its customers across the West Africa Sub Region and also to become more competitive within the region, the company held an Annual programme for Distributors across the sub-region.

The program was attended by the Deputy Western Regional Minister Gifty Kusi. Other notable people at the function were the District Chief Executive Officer for Shama, Joseph Amoah, the Chairman of Twyford, Mr. Y.C. Shen and the Managing Director of Twyford GH Ceramics, Mr. Armin Zheng among others.

In her speech, the Deputy Minister Gifty Kusi, she stated that without strong industries to create jobs and add value to raw materials, African countries risk remaining shackled by joblessness and static economic growth.

She added that the economic transformation of every country can happen through industrialization which cannot be considered a luxury, but a necessity for the development of Ghana and Africa as a whole.

The Deputy Minister said Twyford GH Ceramics Company Limited has come at the right time as it is the first factory in the Western Region to fit into the One District One Factory Policy of the government. She also praised the company for the employment opportunities given to local staff.

On the other hand, the Managing Director of Twyford assured the customers and the general public of the quality of their products and stressed on their resolve to strictly adhere to best standard practices. This he said makes Twyford Ghana unique from its competitors.

The Managing Director also touched on some Corporate Social Responsibilities the company had undertaken within the shortest period of operation in Ghana.

He mentioned the donation to the University of Ghana students and victims of the Atomic Junction gas explosion, donation to the 37 Military hospital, the Western Regional Naval Command, the Western Regional Police Command, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Shama District Assembly.

In an interview with an Ivorian distributor, manufacturing tiles here in Ghana would be of better quality compared to those imported.

In general the exportation of the product outside Ghana will bring foreign currency to the country. This will help in the stabilization of the Ghana cedis.

It will also strengthen the made in Ghana brand not only in Ghana but across the West Africa Sub Region.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Government of Nigeria, the Swiss Federal Council and the World Bank have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the repatriation and monitoring of $321 million of funds illicitly acquired by the family of the late former President of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha.

The MOU was signed during the Global Forum on Asset Recovery, a three-day forum hosted by the United Kingdom and the United States with support from the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative.

The MOU captures the tripartite agreement on the World Banks monitoring role and the proposed modalities of the funds repatriation and disbursement, following a December 2014 Swiss court order that the funds be repatriated.

The responsibility for the use of the funds is with the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The Nigerian authorities requested the funds be used to support a program of targeted cash transfers to poor and vulnerable Nigerians under the National Social Safety Net Project financed by a credit extended by the International Development Association.

The parties have agreed to establish monitoring framework for the use of the repatriated funds that will enhance transparency and accountability.

To that end, the Federal Government of Nigeria will engage civil society organizations to help monitor the use of the funds.

In December 2014, a Swiss court ruled that the Swiss government should repatriate the funds on condition that the World Bank would monitor their use.

On December 4th, 2017, the Federal Government of Nigeria, the Swiss Federal Council and the World Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) capturing the tripartite agreement on the World Banks monitoring role and the modalities of the funds repatriation and disbursement.

While the World Banks role is limited to monitoring the use of the funds, the responsibility for the use of the funds is with the Federal Government of Nigeria.

In 2006, the World Bank was involved in a similar effort providing institutional support for the sustainable use of repatriated funds from Switzerland amounting to approximately $723 million, which was illicitly acquired by the late General Sani Abachas family.

What is the World Bank doing to help countries like Nigeria recover stolen assets?

Through our partnership with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative, we are providing advice and helping countries recover stolen assets. The core of StARs work lies in country engagements that aim at building the capacity of the various stakeholders engaged in asset recovery and facilitating international cooperation on asset recovery cases. Country engagement programs are generally longer-term, and delivered using mentors, advisory services and training.

In December 2017, StAR provided organizational support for the Global Forum on Asset Recovery, which was hosted by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. This forum addressed the importance of strong political commitment and collaboration among practitioners, focusing on assistance to Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Ukraine as first priority countries.

The World Bank is also actively working with countries to strengthen transparency and accountability and to reduce illicit financial flows.

It is working to improve access to information on beneficial owners for public authorities and strengthen the exchange of tax information.

The World Bank is also helping governments build systems for asset disclosure by public officials and to protect against money laundering. These efforts to build transparency and accountability also aim to ensure that clean public officials and business are recognized, while corrupt and criminal ones are sanctioned.
Deputy Chief of Staff, Abu Jinapor, says he and his colleague Francis Asenso Boakye, feel vindicated once again by the findings of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), dismissing allegations of corruption leveled against them by Kwame Asare Obeng, aka A-Plus, a sympathizer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).

In September 2017, A-Plus took to Facebook to make what critics described as vague allegations against President Nana Akufo-Addo's two Deputy Chiefs of Staff, Francis Asenso-Boakye and Abu Jinapor.

It later emerged that the accusations had to do with the two putting pressure on the CEO of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr. Felix Anyah, to give back an on-site revenue-collection contract at the hospital to UniBank after the same contract had been terminated.

The two had subsequently threatened to sue A Plus over these claims. However, following CHRAJ's findings, Mr. Jinapor indicated that he was no more interested in pursuing the matter in court.

In a document containing its findings, sighted by Citi News, CHRAJ said it was satisfied that the evidence does not support the allegations of corruption and abuse of power against Messrs A. Jinapor and Asenso Boakye the allegations could not be substantiated whatsoever.

Accordingly, this complaint is hereby dismissed as being without merit and totally unwarranted, CHRAJ concluded.

CHRAJ noted that, the relations between A-Plus and the two Deputy Chiefs of Staff appeared frosty and may have accounted for the allegations Mr. Obeng leveled against the two.

It noted that a possible strained relationship between Mr. Kwame Asare Obeng and Mr. Asenso-Boakye might have been extended to Mr. Jinapor as well. That could possibly be the ulterior motive for the allegations Mr. Asare Obeng leveled against the two Deputy Chiefs of Staff.

CHRAJ was the second state institution that was tasked to investigate these corruption claims, after the Criminal Investigations Department's investigation also found the allegations baseless.

But the CID probe was marred by some controversy over an audio recording said to be a leaked recording of a conversation between the then-Deputy Director of the CID, ACP Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah and A-Plus, in which the police officer was heard advising A-Plus to deny the allegations because he is a member of the NPP.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Jinapor welcomed CHRAJ's findings, saying they had been vindicated for the second time.

I take the view that the combined effect of the CID's report and CHRAJ's investigative report has vindicated our reputation and exonerated us in this matter. 

Whatever it is, it is refreshing to hear about the outcome of the investigations. I am not surprised because from the very onset, I have always known that the entire brouhaha was much ado about nothing. It is refreshing and comforting that CHRAJ which is an independent body has gone into this matter and come out with a petition.

He also indicated that, he had no intentions of suing A-plus over the said claims, despite being cleared by CHRAJ.

I do not think that we need the court to make a pronouncement on our integrity. These two investigative reports in my view will settle the matter on that score.

Mr. Jinapor further pointed out that he was not interested in seeking for compensation from A-Plus.

The second one regarding compensation I am not interested. I believe any lawsuit will be straight forward but I do not want to pursue it. I want to move on with my life.

Background to Unibank, Korle bu issues

The onsite banking services at Korle Bu were needed to deal with revenue leaks that had saddled the hospital.

In 2015, six banks were shortlisted to undergo a competitive selection process where Stanbic Bank emerged first and UniBank was fourth.

But when the hospital submitted the names of the two banks to the Controller and Accountant General's Department for approval, issues were raised about weaknesses in UniBank's operations in two other hospitals.

Korle Bus still went ahead to sign an MoU appointing UniBank to simultaneously collect revenue in the Hospital with Stanbic Bank.

As the two banks started the onsite banking services, the revenue leaks persisted, and the hospital's management decided to adopt an End-to-End Hospital Revenue Collection Software to integrate and network its operations.

Stanbic Bank and UniBank were both requested to submit proposals for an End-to-End Hospital Revenue Collection Software in 2015.

Stanbic Bank successfully presented an efficient software, while UniBank was alleged to have failed to turn up during the two presentation sessions, thus the hospital awarded the contract to Stanbic Bank.

Unibank, however denied missing the presentation, but said it was sidelined by the hospital.

The End-to-End Hospital Revenue Collection Software was also said to be not compatible with the UniBank's system, thus the hospital decided to discontinue the MoU with UniBank in order to enable Stanbic Bank to deploy the new software throughout the entire Hospital.

But this was followed by the hospital rescinding the decision.

-Citifmonline
The Criminal High Court 3 presided over by Justice Iddirsu Abdulai has dismissed a bail variation application for portions of the bail conditions imposed by a sister court on the so-called Galamsey Queen Aisha Huang and four others.

The High Court presided over by Justice Charles Edward Ekow Baiden at the time of granting the accused persons bail ordered that they report to the Police Headquarters twice a week even though the accused persons are living in Kumasi.

In their Application, the accused persons were praying the Court to allow them to report to the Police Regional Command in Kumasi in the Ashanti Regional instead of commuting twice a week to Accra just to report themselves to the Police.

Delivering his ruling in court today, Justice Iddirsu Abdulai's noted that the applicant failed to demonstrate that the bail conditions imposed on them has brought any hardship on them.

The court said it expected the applicants to have presented evidence such as hotel bills or air travel receipts to show that they are indeed burdened by the bail conditions.

The court on the basis of its argument for want of compelling evidence dismissed the bail variation application.

The Chinese lady, popularly known as Aisha Huang, and four other Chinese nationals, were arrested by the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) in Kumasi and brought to Accra for trial following suspicion that they were illegally operating a mining concession.

She was granted bail by the court in June 2017 in the sum of GH500,000 with two sureties to be justified.

-Starrfmonline
A community level debate on livestock trading module has been held for stakeholders in the sector in the Gushegu District of the Northern to discuss challenges facing livestock production and trading in West Africa.

The event was also to analyse the challenges that face livestock trading in the future as well as how the livestock value chain worked through point of sale of cattle by farmers and how it followed different steps before reaching the final market.

Participants included; chiefs, Police personnel, cattle herdsmen including; some Fulanis, officers from the Ministry of Agriculture, veterinary officers amongst other officials from the Gushegu District Assembly.

The week-long event, which opened at Gushegu on Monday, formed part of the agro-pastoralism project dubbed: 'Strengthening the Resilience of Agro-pastoral Systems in West Africa (PARSAO)' being implemented by the Ghana Developing Communities Association and Community Life Improvement Programme (CLIP).

The project works to improve conditions for cattle breeding and movement across borders and regions in West Africa thereby increasing the local meat trade and access to markets.

It is funded by United Kingdom Agency for International Development (UKAID), Acting for Life, Air France and Danish International Development Assistance (Danida).

Mr Lukman Yussif, Project Manager in-charge of CLIP/PARSAO project, who spoke during the opening ceremony of the informed debate, said the initiative was a strategy to help cattle herders and communities to understand one another to help to reduce conflicts and tensions between them.

Over the years, Fulani herdsmen have been accused of destruction of food crops, rape, robbery amongst others, a situation, which fueled conflicts between them and members of local communities including farmers.

Mr Yussif said as had been done in some West African countries, there was the need for the country to create corridors purposely for cattle herders to pass to reduce interaction between them and communities to avoid conflicts.

He said CLIP would work to facilitate community level dialogues between cattle herders and other stakeholders to avoid conflicts between them.

Mr Yakubu Sumani, who represented the Regent of Gushegu, welcomed the idea of creating a corridor for cattle to pass saying it would help to minimise the destruction of food crops urging government to adopt the proposal.

Mr Abukari Guma, a Fulani cattle herder from Bulugu in the district, called for a continued dialogue between cattle herders and local people to address the issue of conflicts between them.

Mr Mohammed Tijani, Gushegu District Crop Officer described the initiative as laudable saying it would help create harmony between cattle herders and members of local communities including farmers in the district.

GNA

By Albert Futukpor, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Mr John Kojo Enimil, a 35 year-old man who emerged the overall district best farmer for Prestea Huni/Valley in the Western region, has rejected the award.

The items he was given include; bicycle, deep freezer, 32 inch flat screen television set, four knapsack sprayers, five pairs of Wellington boots, two bars of key soap, two rubbers for storing cocoa, eight machetes, two confidor insecticides and two bottles of weedicide.

Mr Enimil who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the items were returned to an agricultural extension agent of the Assembly on December 4.

He explained further that during the 2015 and 2016 farmers day programmes, the overall district best farmers received a tricycles each in addition to all the items and not a bicycle, pointing out that if the organizers of the programme cannot maintain the prizes for a farmer who had worked for years to help develop his community and the country, then they should not reduce it to discourage the youth from engaging in farming.

According to the 2017 district best farmer, he was expecting a tricycle to help transport his farm produce and not bicycle.

Mr. Gabriel Adzago, the District Director of Agricultural for Prestea Huni/Valley confirmed to the GNA that his office has received the items and stressed he was yet to find out why Mr Enimil took that action.

GNA

By Erica Apeatua Addo, GNA
Over 200,000 security forces for todays polls

Over 200,000 security personnel will be on the ground for the second phase of federal parliament and provincial assembly elections on Thursday, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) said on Wednesday.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Tema Dec. 6, GNA  The Director-General in-charge, National Patrol Department (NPD), Ghana Police Service, Commissioner of Police (COP) Yaagy Akuriba, says the reintroduction of the Community Police Unit (CPU) is consistent with Government's policy to develop the districts.

'This will give credence to President Nana Addo-Danquah Akufo-Addo's policy of One District, One Dam, One District One Factory, Planting for Food and Jobs, etc. So the idea is that, if you plant for food and put the food in a warehouse and somebody goes to steal it, nobody would want to come and invest in your country,' COP Akuriba said.

He said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Thursday on the sidelines of a lecture by the Tema Regional Police Command to the various District Commanders in the Region.

The presentation, which was on the theme, 'Innovation of the Community Policing Assistants and the responsibilities of District Commanders at Centres in Tema,' was to brief officers on the CPA concept and other proposed innovations by the police outfit.

He said if the community policing concept took off 'we will be executing the vision of the President and also the Inspector General of Police (IGP).'

COP Akuriba observed that community policing was one pillars of the IGP transformation agenda to maintain peace in Ghana, adding that, 'If there is no peace and justice in the community, all developments will come to naught. So this new concept is to make our community safe for economic activities to flourish.'

He said even though only 15,000 personnel out of the 36,000 requested were assigned, they could still carry out their duties perfectly if the communities formed Neighborhood Watch Committees (NWC) with members who would be willing to give out information on crime.

He added that crime prevention was a partnership between the community and the police and, 'This is supposed to be a reciprocal relationship which will give information to the police for them to act on.'

COP Akuriba said the first batch of 3,000 Community Policing Assistants (CPAs) were to be deployed across the country in December, 2017.

He said the CPAs who were recruited by the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) and trained by the Ghana Police Service were to assist at least one regular police officer in the various electoral areas to anticipate, prevent and fight crime.

He explained that the CPA model was started in 2006 but it had to be restructured to be more effective and efficient.

'They have been equipped with communication and observation skills and are being recruited from localities they would serve to be able to provide the police with vital information on crime,' he said.

The Tema Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) George Tuffour expressed joy for Tema being adjudged the best local government authority in Ghana.

He hinted that, 'Though petty crime cannot be totally eliminated in society, crimes such as robbery, murder, etc. have reduced by about 75 percent in the Tema Region.'

GNA

By Alexander Nyarko Yeboah, GNA
Ghana's leading telecoms giant MTN has secured about 510 million loan syndication from nine banks.

The deal which was arranged by Ecobank would be officially signed with all the banks including Barclays, Standard Chattered and Zenith Bank on December 7, 2017.

JoyBusiness is reliably informed that funds are expected to help with further network capital investments and expansion.

According to persons close to the deal, the amount will only compliment other internal funding sources of MTN.

Our CAPEX requirements in a single year is much higher than the amount raised, a source with knowledge of the deal said.

In 2012, MTN carried out a similar loan syndication deal to finance network expansion.

MTN just finished paying that loan, hence they are replacing it to fund higher business growth than was projected," the source said.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com |Abubakar Ibrahim
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed an application for stay of proceedings filed by the state against an Indian Businessman, Ashok Kumar Sivaram.

The five member panel presided over by Justice Sophia Adinyira described the application for stay of proceedings as incompetent because there was no appeal pending to warrant the stay.

The apex court however did not award any cost.

Representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and the Comptroller of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) were not in court.

There was also no legal representation from the Attorney General's Department.

Mr Gary Nimako Marfo, who represented Sivaram prayed the court to look at the processes before it and dismiss same.

According to Mr Marfo there was no appeal pending at the Court of Appeal to warrant the Supreme Court to grant the stay of proceedings.

On September 18, this year a High Court in Accra ordered GIS to restore the Residence and Work Permit of Mr. Ashok Kumar Sivaram, the Indian businessman within seven days.

Granting an order of Mandamus filed by Mr Sivaram against the Service, the Court also ordered the GIS's assigns, agents and servants to desist from harassing him until his application before the Service was duly processed.

On June 1, this year, the GIS following an order by the Interior Ministry, deported Mr Sivaram on the premise that he had forged his marriage certificate in an application for citizenship.

The Indian businessman, therefore, contested his deportation by filing a judicial review.

Mr Justice Kweku Ackah-Boafo, presiding at the High Court upheld the businessman's application and quashed his deportation order on July 31, this year, on the grounds that the Interior Ministry exceeded its jurisdiction.

GNA

By Joyce Danso, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Mr Francois Pujolas, France Ambassador to Ghana, has christened Dr Eric Graham, former Board Chair of Alliance Francaise in Accra (AF Accra) and Madam Lillian Osae-Kwapong, current Chairperson, as Knights of Order of Academic Palms.

A statement issued by the Embassy of France in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the distinction was conferred on them during the closing ceremony of Alliance FranAaise's 60th anniversary celebrations.

It noted that the Academic Palms, the oldest order originally instituted by Napoleon I in 1808 used to be an honorary title reserved for University members (including high schools at the time).

It said in 1866, the mode of attribution was extended to persons outside academia but having rendered distinctive services to education.

The statement said the decree of 4th October 1955, later established the Order of academic Palms, comprising the grades of Knight, Officer and Commander.

It said the Academic Palms might be bestowed on foreign nationals as well as French nationals living abroad, who actively contribute to the advancement of French culture in the world.

The statement said Ghanaian-born Eric Engmann Amonu Graham had his first encounter with France and the French language, in Senior High School, then afterwards, at the Alliance FranAaise in Accra, in 1963.

It said with the support of a French Government Scholarship, he gained admission to study at the University of Strasbourg in North-Eastern France.

It noted that having completed the first part of his studies in French language and medical sciences, he pursued his studies in Medicine in Liege (Belgium) where he obtained a degree in Medicine.

It said after 12 years in a francophone setting, he returned to Ghana to begin his medical career.

The statement recounted that Dr Graham served as Head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit of the 37 Military Hospital and afterwards became a board member of the Alliance FranAaise in 1999, before assuming the position of chairman from 2012 till February 2016.

It said since then, Dr Graham had continued to serve as an exemplary model to the Francophone and Francophile community in Ghana through his priceless contributions towards many activities and initiatives promoting Franco-Ghanaian cultural exchange.

It said for instance, he recently participated in the establishment of the France Alumni Ghana Association which was launched only last October.

The statement said Madam Osae-Kwapong in her early years, studied in Ghana and in Lausanne, in a bilingual environment.

It said she joined the Alliance FranAaise in the eighties when the institution was still located in the CFAO building close to the Makola market.

It said Madam Osae-Kwapong had multifariously been involved in the development of Alliance FranAaise; especially it's Bilingual Diploma in Office Management section.

It said for 26 years, she was a jury member for this course and would later become the first female board chair of AF Accra from 1994 to 1999, a position she currently holds, for the second time.

The statement said incidentally, the initial construction of the present premises and the recent renovations were both carried under her leadership, during her first and second tenures respectively.

It noted that Madam Osae-Kwapong had indeed made great contributions to the spread of French culture and language in Ghana and maintains her strong ties with Francophone countries.

It said both laureates thanked the French Ambassador FranAois Pujolas for this honour, and expressed their profound gratitude to France for all the merits they have gained from their association with it.

Mr Pujolas said: 'It is important to reward the people who have dedicated their lives to fostering cultural exchange and closer relations between our two nations. This year's special 60th anniversary celebration of our diplomatic relations only marks the beginning of an enduring collaboration between France and Ghana.'

'It is thus important for France to recognise the efforts of such persons who promote the French language and the values to which France and Ghana are both attached', the Ambassador explained.
Children have been urged to be humble, respectful and heed to good counsel from their elders to be able to succeed in life.

Dr George Maddy, a medical doctor from Russia, said it takes more than just studying to excel in life, thus children must be humble and willing to submit to the instructions given by parents and teachers to excel.

He said this at a Career Day celebration at the Christ the King Methodist School at Anaji, a suburb of Takoradi.

The event was held to mark a weeklong celebration of the school's "1st Speech and Prize giving Day", which was held under the theme: "Holistic Education the role of stakeholders".

Mrs Mildred Siabi-Mensah, a journalist at the Ghana News Agency, urged children to be dedicated and hard working to ensure that their dreams become a reality.

Madam Elizabeth Ofori, head teacher of the school, said the purpose of the Speech and Prize giving day was to reward deserving students and encourage others to emulate their example.

She said it is also to solicit for funds for the school in aid of the construction and expansion of the school building since the number of enrolment has increased.

Activities line-up for the week long celebration include: a procession through some streets, career day, clean-up exercise and a grand durbar.

GNA
Dr Eric Oduro Osae, Dean, Studies and Research at the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS), has proposed that a constitutional cap be placed on the number of districts and regions needed in the country to enhance planning.

'If we want to make sure that this thing works and development is well coordinated, let us put a cap in the constitution to the maximum number of regions and districts we can have, and then we can plan better', he said.

Dr Osae made the proposal in an interview with the media on the sideline of a one-day orientation workshop for members of the Upper West Regional Audit Committee organized by the Centre for Local Governance Advocacy (CLGA) in collaboration with the International Audit Agency (IAA).

'In fact, if you have a district assembly and it has planned that by the next four years it is going to develop its area of jurisdiction in a certain regard, then all of a sudden a new district is created and a portion of the district is cut; it puts the development of the district in jeopardy - so it is not good', he said.

He said the lack of a constitutional cap on the creation of regions and districts 'tells us that we cannot plan as a nation because we should be able to know that if we need 200 districts to develop, the constitution should spell it so that we don't come back to create new ones again'.

Dr Osae said if there was a ceiling on the number of districts and regions all they needed to do was to rearrange or divide and then also promote, adding that when that happened it would help them to know the area of jurisdiction and then plan for development.

He said as it stands now, politicians will only take advantage to create new districts anytime they wish for political gains, adding that as they create those districts every now and then, the issue of resourcing them becomes a challenge.

On the orientation for the Audit Committee members, the Dean in charge of Studies and Research at the ILGS noted that basically, the passage of a new Public Financial Management Act 2016, (Act 921) has abolished the Audit Implementation Committee (ARIC) system and replaced it with the Audit Committee.

He said this then made provision for every Local Government to have an Audit Committee made up of professionals from the private sector including Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA) and Internal Auditors among others.

Dr Osae said these Audit Committees were suppose to help the Assemblies to inject financial discipline into their Financial Management System, noting that these people did not know much about Local Government operations.

He said the training is meant to expose them to the processes of the Local Government System for them to understand their financial management processes so that they could better advise the Assemblies in the implementation of the audit recommendations.

'So we want that after the training, they will go back and work to reduce the serious audit queries that are raised in the Annual Auditor General's Report', he said.

GNA

By Proper K. Kuorsoh, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Asiakwa branch of the Save Our Soul Children's Villages (SOSCV), Ghana 'Quality Education Now' Project and the Accra Municipal Education Office have organised a two- day workshop for 50 members of the School Management Committee.

The training was to build the capacity of SMC members and to equip them with the requisite skills to perform their roles and responsibilities in their various schools effectively to help promote quality education delivery in the community.

Participants were selected from public schools across the Municipality.

Topics, such as effective participation of Persons Living with Disability (PWDs) in SMC, presentation and participation of women in SMC, promoting quality learning and teaching were treated.

Speaking at the training, Mr. Samuel Abrokwa Boye, the Asiakwa SOSCV-QEN Project Coordinator said every school needs a vibrant School Management Committee (SMC) and the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) to manage its affairs effectively, hence the workshop.

He added that the SOSCV- QEN was poised to ensure quality education delivery in the locality and therefore would continue to be organising trainings of this kind to help improve quality education delivery in the community.

Mr Abrokwa- Boye urged members to be transparent in managing financial affairs of the schools and advised them to involve communities as they placed crucial roles in the development of every institution.

He was hopeful the programme would go a long way to improve on the skills of the members to help bring development to Schools in the locality and therefore tasked participants to be committed to their duties in order to promote quality teaching and learning.

GNA

By Eunice Tekie Tei, GNA
An appeal has been made to the government to extend the payment of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) registration fee to candidates in private schools.

This was contained press statement issued by the Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) in Kumasi.

It was jointly signed by Mr' Enoch Gyetuah, its National Executive Director, and Mr. Edward Frimpong, the National Communications Director.

The statement said 'the 1992 constitution provides for free compulsory universal basic education (FCUBE)' and it was therefore only appropriate that no Ghanaian child was discriminated against.

It reminded the government of its responsibility of ensuring that all children completed basic education.

This could not be divorced from the payment of the examination fee of every candidate be they in public or private schools.

'GNACOPS expresses dissatisfaction with the current arrangement, where BECE registration fee of students in private schools is paid by the parent, while that of their public counterparts is taken care of by the government.'

The statement said it was the position of the association that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) proposed fee of GHE75.00 for every candidate should be met from the national budget.

'We do not want to believe that anybody is saying children in the private schools are not Ghanaians. Their parents are also tax payers and rightly deserve fair share of the national cake.'

GNA

By Abigail N-ebene Baka, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) has reiterated its unbridled support to farmers across the country with the setting up of dedicated a desk to deal with issues related to Agriculture in all the ten regions.

Dr. John Kofi Mensah, Managing Director of the Bank, at the recent National Farmers' Day in Kumasi on December 1, said the bank had created special agricultural desk in 36 of the 78 branches nationwide.

'The setting up of the desk is to dedicate a staff to deal with issues of agriculture from our farmers who need advice on agricultural related matters, 'he said.

Dr Mensah said the initiative was part of efforts by the bank to bring banking closer to the farmers. 'From next year the bank will also begin the process of tailor made loan facilities for farmers. We will have special interest on loans for specific sectors within the agricultural sector," he said.

The Managing Director indicated that the bank would continue to support the sector as the major backbone of the economy and ensure that the country becomes food sufficient within the shortest possible time.

"The government has shown a strong commitment towards the agricultural sector and as a bank we are going to ensure that we provide the necessary financial packages to make the planting for food and jobs and other agricultural related initiatives successful," he said.

According to him, ADB Bank was the only Bank in Ghana fully committed to the agricultural value chain and would continue to give the sector the necessary support to make it grow.

'The Bank is currently the best in Agricultural Financing in the country and we won the 2016 National Banking Awards. Over the past five years the Bank has committed more than Five Hundred Million Ghana Cedis (GHE500 million) to the growth of the sector and remains the platinum sponsor of the National Farmers Day Celebration.'

GNA
Two persons were on Wednesday sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in hard labour on the charge of conspiracy to commit crime to wit robbery.

Bright Anikpi, and Kofi Seyram Agamah, both labourers were said to have agreed to act together with a common purpose to commit crime to wit robbery pleaded guilty to the charges.

They were convicted on their own plea and are to spend ten years each in hard labour.

The court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh in sentencing said, the court took into consideration the number of days they had spent in custody, their plea for mitigation, and the fact that they did not waste the court's time.

The facts of the case as presented by Superintendent Kweku Bampah was that the complainant is a Businessman resident at Nmae Dzor in Accra, while the convicts are labourers who live around Tetteh Quarshie roundabout area.

He said in August this year, the complainant who a plot of land very close to his house had contracted the services of a building contractor and the said contractor brought the two convicts as labourers to the site.

He said the complainant constructed a temporal wooden structure at the site for Bright and Kofi to live there, and due to that they became close to the complainant and rendered other services to him.

The prosecution said on November 30, the convicts hatched a plan to rob the complainant, as a result, Bright went to Kaneshie and met a witness in the case and informed him that, he wanted him to assist him to rob the complainant.

Mr Bampah told the court that the witness feigned interest in accepting the job, so Bright brought him to Nmae Dzor and showed him the complainant's house and also planned as to how the operation would be conducted.

He said they also told the witness to rob him of his brand new BMW salon car and his money. But on December 1, the witness gave information to the plaice about their diabolic intentions.

According to the prosecution, the witness later led the police to the convicts' hideout, where they were patiently waiting for the arrival of the complainant to attack and rob him.

They were both arrested and sent to the police station. During investigation, they admitted the offence and added that, they needed money to celebrate the Christmas and use the rest to further their education.

GNA

By Hafsa Obeng, GNA
SC upholds EC move of revoking Shiva Pujan Yadavs candidacy

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Election Commission (EC)s decision to revoke the candidacy of Shiva Pujan Yadav.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Dormaa Central Municipal Assembly is making efforts to woo foreign investors to the Municipality for the development of the poultry industry.

That would be done through aggressive marketing of the poultry products in the Municipality to the outside world to attract investors.

Mr Iddrissa Ouattara, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), said this on Friday during a durbar of the 33rd National Farmers' Day at Dormaa-Ahenkro in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

He said with the capacity of producing one-third of the nation's poultry stock, there is the urgent need for government to continue to focus its attention on the speedy development of the industry in the area.

Mr Ouattara said the Ghana Poultry Project at Dormaa-Ahenkro, started in the era of former President John Agyekum Kufuor, is providing technical services to poultry farmers under a grant facility from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), but expressed concern that its laboratory was still uncompleted.

He appealed to government to prioritise the completion of that project to help ensure business growth in the area.

The MCE said the Municipal Assembly in collaboration with the Municipal Directorate of Agriculture has provided storage facilities for seedlings, embarked on educational campaigns, organised spraying gangs to control fall army worms invasion and established a technical committees for the local implementation of government's Planting for Food and Jobs programme.

He said government is committed to increasing budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector as an effort to boost productivity as the sector provides employment for over 70 per cent of the population and contributes about 40 per cent to Ghana's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mr Ouattara said government sees the agricultural sector as a conduit to addressing the unemployment challenges facing the country and noted that the sector remains under-exploited in spite of its huge economic potential.

The MCE appealed to stakeholders to work to ensure that agriculture transcends improving on farm productivity to addressing post harvest losses.

He enumerated various challenges such as poor marketing, lack of storage facilities, inadequate credit facilities, obsolete farm tools and bad road network as confronting the agricultural sector.

Mr Ouattara said as a measure to address short falls in the agriculture sector, next year government would employ over 2000 extension officers to offer advice to farmers and support them in modern farming techniques.

He urged farmers in the Municipality to form farmer-based organisations to have a stronger voice to influence policy to promote their interest.

Mr Abu Salifu, a 45-year old farmer from Kofiasua was adjudged the overall best Municipal farmer.

For his prize, Mr Salifu received a certificate, tricycle, a full piece wax print, four cutlasses, a knapsack sprayer, a radio set and four pairs of wellington boot.

Prizes were presented to other deserving farmers.

GNA

By Robert Tachie Menson, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Minister of Railway Development Mr. Joe Ghartey Tuesday said over 1,400 kilometer (KM) railway lines, expected to cost about $7.8 billion, would be created between three cities notably the Volta lake city, Ashanti rail city and the Paga rail city.

According to Mr Ghartey, the Eastern line of 300 km would be from Accra to Kumasi, with a central spine line of 595 km linking Kumasi to Paga, with another 58 km linking Kumasi to Nyinahin and a 102 km line linking Tamale to Yendi, adding that, this would ensure a convenient and comfortable trade links among the cities.

The Minister announced this at a Market Sounding event for both local and foreign potential investors at the Alisa Hotel, Accra, to deliberate on how best to expand the Boankra Inland Port and the Eastern Railway Lines.

Mr Ghartey said 'The infrastructure development in the towns where the rail lines would pass would be improved to facilitate the efficient transportation of passengers and goods.

There would also be improvement in internal trade and also with neighbouring countries, with reduction in road maintenance cost and fewer road accidents, which would also have a lower transport cost for both freight and passengers, due to the lower cost of transportation by rail' he added.

On the Boankra Inland Port, which is strategically located near Kumasi and partially developed with an administration block, access roads and utility connections, the Minister said the port would get a facelift from the investors to boost the carriage of containers in the northern sector of Ghana to ease pressure at the Tema port.

There are also plans to develop an Inland Container Depot, port administration, shippers and freight forwarders offices, warehouses and commercial buildings.

The Inland Port would also require the development of customs coordination protocols, customs clearance procedures and controls.

Both the local and foreign investors brainstormed about the work at hand and how the proposed Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements and would be operated under the Build Operate Transfer (BOT) system.

Mr Ghartey gave the assurance that 'Government was fully committed to the BOT arrangement and we are only going to contribute the right of way (lands, assets).

The two projects are expected to be completed by 2020. GNA

By Emmanuel Asante Attakora, GNA
The Financial Division of the High Court will on February 23, 2018 give its judgment in the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) case involving its former Co-ordinator Abuga Pele and Philip Assibit, Chief Executive Officer of Goodwill International Group (GIG).

The parties involve were to submit their written addresses by January 26, 2018.

Mrs Evelyn Keelson, Chief State Attorney ending his cross-examination of Pele pointed out that he deliberately assisted Assibit the second accused to dupe the state

The first accused however denied that saying he acted transparently, fairly and did not justified any false claims made by the second accused.

She suggested that as public officer he helped the accused to make false claims which brought losses to the State.

Mr Pele responded that 'I did everything in my capacity and in the interest of the State.'

He said the disabled and the youth in this country, would have benefitted from the World Bank $ 65 million and the DANIDA 5-million euros would have assisted in the country's development.

Mr Pele said, everything he said his memo to the former Minister of Youth and Sports, were work done for which, he personally visited the field and data processed to convinced the World Bank that Ghana's youth employment programme was a flagship project.

Mrs Keelson pointed to the accused that there was no agreement on record signed by the then Minister of Youth and Sport, Kofi Humado, which gave a contract to Assibit's company which provided an exit plan for which evidence were in court to show but he denied this.

He said this contract gave bases for the continuous approvals of payment to Goodwill International Group (GIG) and Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI).

The State suggested to Pele that his letter to the Minister, does not grant GIG/MDPI any consultancy services to develop an exit plan for the NYEP but the accused said the face of the letter does not state exit plan, neither does it state many of the services that were subsequently delivered by Assibit's company.

He said 'I still insist that there is a contract for all the services provided for which subsequent payment was made.'

Mrs Keelson pointed to the accused person, that the statement in his memo that it was the consultant's services that directly resulted in the World Bank's support of $65 million was not correct, but Mr Pele said the consultants work was what directly resulted in the World Bank approval of the facility for NYEP.

He said before, their work, the NYEP was faced with a lot of resource challenges but when they completed their work, the World Bank approved it upon submission.

'It not only the World Bank that approved their proposal but also DANIDA also approved a 5 million- euro facility and there are various documents and correspondents from these institutions in court to attest to that,' he added.

Mr Pele said in all their correspondence the words used were approved or secured and to release money from the World Bank, there were some preparatory activities that needed to be done, so in this case all stakeholders could agree that the fund was secured but not released.

The State pointed to Mr Pele that Assibit was paid GHE53,000.00 in February, 2011 by NYEP in respect of feasibility studies conducted with 250 personnel and yet he included it in his memo to the Minister for payment, but the former National Co-ordinator said 'I cannot remember any of such amount being paid to Assibit.'

She also suggested to Pele there was evidence on record that he approved certain amounts above his threshold without consulting the Minister but he said it was not true, adding that every payment for the consultancy was approved by the Minister.

The Mr Pele, the former National Co-ordinator of GYEEDA and Mr Assibit, a Representative of Goodwill International Group (GIG) are facing various charges of causing financial loss to the state to the tune of GHE4.1 million.

Assibit is accused of putting in false claims that he had secured a 65-million-dollar World Bank funding for the creation of one million jobs for the youth, which led government to part with GH4.1 million to his company but he failed to deliver per the agreement.

The case has been adjourned to Friday February 23, 2018 by the High Court presided over by Mrs Afia Serwah Asare-Botwe.

GNA

By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA
The President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is expected to pay a state visit to Ghana from 11th to 13th December, 2017.

President Steinmeier is to be accompanied by the Federal Minister of Economy and Energy, Mrs Brigitte Zypries, the Deputy Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Friedrich Kitschelt, the State Minister at the German Foreign Office, Maria BAhmer as well as a substantial business delegation and guests from civil society.

He is also expected to be accompanied by 17 representatives of German companies that are working to realise Germany's commitment under the G20 Compact with Africa to bring more investment to Ghana.

A statement copied to the GNA on Wednesday from the Cultural, Economic and Press Affairs Unit of the German Embassy said the state visit would be the first trip to an African country by President Steinmeier, since he took office in February, 2017.

'This underlines the close partnership between Ghana and Germany 60 years after establishing diplomatic relations,' it noted.

The statement said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would receive President Steinmeier on December 12th.

The visit would focus on discussions on the youth in Ghana, scientific and academic cooperation and migration, vocational training, investment and business promotion.

During the visit, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance and Germany's Deputy Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Mr Friedrich Kitschelt, would sign the bilateral 'Investment and Reform Partnership' agreement.

The agreement would bring up to 100 million Euros of the German Government's support to promote private investment into renewable energy in Ghana as well as vocational training.

The private investment is Germany's commitment under the G20 Compact with Africa, which was signed in Berlin in June, 2017.

A cooperation agreement for the opening of a Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Ghana would be signed under the auspices of President Steinmeier.

It would be signed by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Development, Mr Francis Dodoo, and the Director of the Arnold-Bergstraesser Institute of the University of Freiburg, Germany, Mr Andreas Mehler.

The Centre, the first of its kind in Africa, has a thematic focus on sustainable governance and would be supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research.

While in the country, President Steinmeier would hold a discussion at the University of Ghana, Legon, with academics and students as well as visit the West-African Transport Academy in Tema, which is a Public Private Partnership between the German investors Scania, Bosch, and ZF on one side, and German Development Cooperation on the other.

The Academy offers state of the art training facilities for young Ghanaians.

Under the support for Start-Up companies in Ghana, President Steinmeier would also meet with young Ghanaian entrepreneurs who are currently being supported by Germany to help them develop their businesses and link them with international ones.

The German President would also attend the sod-cutting ceremony at the new Ghanaian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration in Accra.

The Centre offers advice on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) opportunities in Ghana, supports returnees from Europe in their reintegration, provides information on the risks of irregular migration and the possibilities for legal migration to Europe.

It will make use of the extensive network of German cooperation in Ghana, especially in the areas of TVET and agriculture.

President Steinmeier would have encounters with experts and staff of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) and get first-hand information on the security situation in West Africa.

Germany is one of the main supporters of KAIPTC.

GNA

By Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Dec. 6, GNA - Parliament has expressed the need for the nation to intensify efforts at preventing and controlling HIV/AIDS, saying that, there has been a relapse after gains made in the fight against the menace.

The House described as frightening, the 20,000 new infections recoded in 2016 alone, insisting that, there was the need to intensify efforts to bring the prevalence of the disease down.

Despite the gains made over the last decade, there were concerns that the nation was backsliding because of negative attitudes, stigma, bad behaviour and complacency.

The House raised the concerns after a commemorative statement by Dr Kwabena Twum-Nuamah, Chairman of the Committee on Health to mark this year's World AIDS Day, which fell on December 1, 2017, and coincided with Ghana's National Farmers Day.

The House apparently deferred the statement to this week to enable the House to critically discuss the issue, which globally takes a heavy toll on health and life.

This prompted the United Nations to designate the day since, 1988, to heighten awareness on the disease and find ways to bring it under control.

Ghana joined the rest of the globe to mark this year's World AIDS Day (WAD), under the local theme: 'The Right to Health: Know Your HIV Status, Seek Early Treatment'.

World AIDS Day is marked annually to raise awareness on the AIDS epidemic, its impact on persons infected or affected and also remember those who have died from the epidemic.

The global theme for the WAD 2017: 'My Health, My Right' focuses on the right to health and explores the challenges people around the world face in exercising their rights.

Mr Alban Bagbin, the Second Deputy Speaker, making his remark on the statement, urged Members of the House to intensify their effort at activities that would bring down the disease.

He said the statement is also a wakeup call for everybody to go for voluntary testing and adopt life styles that would protect them from the disease.

Dr Bernard Oko-Boye, Member of Parliament (MP) for Ledzokuku in his contribution, stated that the nation must raise additional resources to support HIV/AIDS campaign since donor support for the programme was dwindling.

He said there is the need to address the issue of stigma, which was very critical to reducing HIV prevalence in the nation.

He said many HIV patients nowadays, were born with the condition and has nothing to do with their exposure to certain habits or bad lifestyles.

Dr Oko-Boye also noted that, it is about time Ghana chronicles all children, who were born with HIV, not just to have the figures, but to have a policy that would address their medical, economic and psychological challenges so that they do not become a 'burden' for the nation in future.

Dr Bernice Adiku Heloo, MP for Hohoe South in her contribution, stated that, though Ghana has achieved success in reduction from mother to child in HIIV transmission, a lot more needs to be done in the overall HIV/AIDS campaign.

She stressed the need for the nation to focus on preventive efforts in the HIV/AIDS campaign, since donor support for HIV/AIDS and malaria programmes are dwindling.

GNA
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Non-Governmental Organisations in the health sector have appealed to the Government to outline an action plan to speed up the implementation of the 2006 Disability Act.

The organisations have urged the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to collaborate with the Attorney General's Department to put in place the necessary legislative instrument to eliminate all barriers affecting the smooth implementation of the Act.

The organisations, including the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana, Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations, Vision for Alternative Development, Human Rights Advocacy Centre, Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights, and African Women Lawyers Association, have come up with a Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of People with Disability in Ghana.

The Report urged government to work with civil society to develop an implementation plan to set out the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders in achieving the tenets of the UN Convention on Disability and Ghana's Disability Act.

It urged the Ghana Statistical Service to conduct a nationally representative survey on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) to provide a holistic appreciation of their needs.

The Report urged the Curriculum Development Division of the Ghana Education Service to collaborate with the Ghana Disability Council to improve accessibility to information on sexual and reproductive health to reduce existing inequalities in access to information.

Dr Eugene Darteh, Lecturer, Population Department of University of Cape Coast, during the presentation of the Report in Accra, said the 2010 Census showed that three per cent of the country's population had some form of disabilities with about 40 per cent of all PWDs having multiple disabilities.

He said the three most prevalent types of disability were those related to visual impairment, physical disabilities and emotional impairment.

He said PWDs were faced with barriers to information and services related to sexual and reproductive health such as communication, ignorance of health professionals about deafness, and attitudes towards deaf people by health professionals.

Dr Darteh noted that a review of the literature on the sexual and reproductive health of PWDs showed that there was lack of information and data available on those issues.

He commended the Ghana Federation of Disability for setting up a committee to work towards the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to bring improvements into their lives.

GNA

By Kodjo Adams, GNA
Maritime Stakeholders, and Justice and Custom Service Officers have been urged to form stronger collaboration in the continuous fight against armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea to allow economies of countries to develop and grow.

Speaking at an opening ceremony of a two day Regional Seminar on Maritime Terrorism held in Abidjan, Mister Karim Coulibaly, Director General of the Regional Academy of Maritime Sciences and Techniques (ARSTM) gave his welcome remarks.

This was followed by several remarks including the Director General of Maritime Affairs and Port Operations of Cote dIvoire, the Coordinator of the Regional Program for State Action at Sea (AEM), the Representative of the European Union in Nigeria and the Representative of the European Union in Cote dIvoire.

One key statement that runs through all the speeches was the need for a continuous interaction of maritime stakeholders with justice and customs services to tackle the menace.

The areas of expertise of the different stakeholders, regional and international institutions such as ECOWAS, ECCAS and UNODC are indicators of fruitful outcomes to combat maritime terrorism in the Gulf of Guinea.

Combating maritime terrorism in the Gulf of Guinea was the core issue in the remarks which brought about a deeper reflection on the recurring terrorism acts at sea in Africa and mainly in the sahel-saharan belt.

They concluded by urging experts to share the experience and brainstorm on possible strategies to effectively fight this plague that keeps spoiling countries efforts and hindering the economic growth of the countries in the Gulf of Guinea.

The opening ceremony was chaired by Abroulaya FOFANA, Permanent Secretary of the Inter-ministerial Committee in charge of State Action at Sea and the Representative of Cote dIvoire Prime Minister.

About 60 experts from Benin, Mali, Cameroon, Djibouti, Togo, Niger, Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Ethiopia and France have attended the regional seminar on maritime terrorism.

The objectives of the seminar is to identify threats and risks linked to maritime terrorism specifically in the Gulf of Guinea and establishes the linkage between on-going terrorism in the Sahel region, and their connection with piracy and armed terrorist organizations.

The seminar will tackle maritime terrorism and look at the legal framework, and existing entities for the sharing of information system and inter-Agencies coordination in the Region.

It will also include a session to brainstorm and make recommendations as part of national strategies, to prevent and fight terrorism in the sub-region.
From forced labour in Libya to a job as a founding member of an Italian fashion start-up, Bassirou has come a long way in two years, thanks to his skills with scissors.

The 26-year-old Burkina Faso native is the star student of a novel project aimed at training asylum seekers in one of Italy's most emblematic crafts: making leather handbags

And after a 15-month apprenticeship, Bassirou has just become the first employee of a small company set up with the aim of turning the project into a self-sustaining venture.

"It is a great opportunity," he says of his new career move. "I had done a bit of cutting and sewing back home but that was with cloth, not leather.

"It wasn't easy at the start, every little thing seemed difficult, but after a certain point, you get the hang of it."

Bassirou left Burkina Faso in west Africa, and a partner then pregnant with his now two-year-old daughter, in 2015.

He says he fled because he feared for his life in the tumultuous aftermath of yet another military coup in the impoverished former French colony.

The EU-funded leather skills project is run by the social cooperative Lai-Momo in a small town near Bologna.

Now he is awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Italy and is one of some 400 recently-arrived immigrants being looked after by Lai-Momo, a social cooperative that runs the EU-funded leather skills project in the small town of Lama Di Reno near Bologna.

The decision to leave home was not an easy one, Bassirou says, and it is one he might have reconsidered had he known of the horrors that awaited him in Libya, the jumping off point for most Africans trying to get to Europe.

'It's slavery'

Shocking recent images of slave auctions in the troubled north African state came as no surprise.

"These are things that are really happening in Libya," Bassirou told AFPTV.

"I had a bit of a taste of it. They put us in a prison. At any time they could come and get us to do forced labour, all sorts of jobs. They never gave us enough to eat.

"All that, it's slavery," he said.

Bassirou endured these conditions for four months before the traffickers controlling his fate finally put him onto an inflatable dinghy packed with over 100 others.

After many fraught hours at sea, mostly spent praying it would not sink, the overcrowded dinghy was spotted by a British ship.

"At the moment we were rescued there was a bit of a stampede to get off and the boat started taking on water. In the end they got everyone off."

The date, March 20, 2016, is etched permanently in his memory. "These are things you don't forget easily," he says.

Now he dreams of being able to open his own shop, but the future path of his life remains uncertain, as is the case for tens of thousands like him in overcrowded reception centres across Italy.

Few of them will benefit from the kind of support that has helped Bassirou pursue his education to Italian high school level, or the distraction from the stress that comes with living in limbo.

"Doing this (working), you are going to have positive rather than negative thoughts, you're thinking that when you're finished, you'll have a trade," he says.

'Return issue not easy'

Issa, a migrant from Burkina Fasso, works at a sewing machine with the help of a volunteer at the training programme in leather bag making, one of 18 new participants.

A total of 15 migrants have completed the first round of training and another 18 have just started, including Bassirou's compatriot, Issa.

The 21-year-old recounts a similar tale about his time in Libya. "I have friends who are still there in slave camps," Issa says.

Having made it to Italy, he is now relieved to have escaped the frustrated boredom that is the lot of many asylum seekers.

"Before I came here, I was in another house, just sleeping all the time, doing nothing," he says.

"Now I feel much more relaxed. I have contact with (local) people and I'm beginning to learn the language."

Not all the apprentices can realistically aspire to the proficiency Bassirou has attained.

As some have limited literacy and numeracy, lessons in cutting have to be preceded by an introduction to basic concepts of measuring and geometry.

Lai-Momo says the goal of the programme is to give the migrants skills they need to enter the job market in Italy or if they return to their country of origin.

"The objective is to provide people with the ability and skills they need to enter the labour market here in Italy, but also in the event of a possible return to their country of origin," said Lai-Momo's president, Andrea Marchesini Reggiani.

The Lama Di Reno project is part of a wider programme overseen by the Ethical Fashion Initiative run by the United Nations and WTO-backed International Trade Centre with the aim of creating new economic opportunities in developing countries to help curb irregular migration.

People like Bassirou say going home is not an option they can contemplate, for now. And Marchesini Reggiani admits that the emphasis on voluntary repatriations can be problematic, given the risks, sacrifices and struggles involved in many migrants' journeys to Europe.

"For sure, it is not an easy thing to address the issue of return," he says. "For us the important thing is to give people skills. Whether they can use them here or whether they are refused the right to stay, they are being given an opportunity, let's say a plus.

"It is clear though that, after the journeys they have made, the ideal solution is to stay here and that's why we believe giving people the skills to work and integrate is so important."
Senegal opens a flagship new airport on Thursday seven years later than originally planned but with ambitions to become a west African regional hub with a capacity for three million passengers.

President Macky Sall will cut the ribbon at Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) at midday (1200 GMT) in the town of Diass, 47 kilometres (29 miles) from the capital of Dakar, while a plane from new airline Air Senegal will make the first symbolic takeoff.

Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro ($767 million) airport under former president Abdoulaye Wade, but unforeseen problems and a change of construction company have repeatedly delayed the project and ballooned costs.

Blaise Diagne -- named after the Senegalese MP who was the first African elected to France's parliament -- is at the heart of Sall's "Emerging Senegal" plan, which includes the construction of a new city, Diamniadio, close to the site in Diass.

As the country invests more heavily in tourism, Senegal is also betting on the facility's strategic position close to several beach resorts that are already heavily frequented by European holidaymakers.

Senegal hopes the new airport will make it a west African hub

"The airport will be key in the promotion of 'Destination Senegal'," Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne said in a speech on Tuesday, adding that airport services at the site would contribute to the development of the special economic zone nearby.

With a capacity of three million passengers, Blaise Diagne will still rank far below the busiest African airports and a long way off challenging Nigeria in the west African region, though plans for up to 10 million travellers are in the pipeline, according to officials.

Uncertainty for new airline

Passenger numbers have increased in recent years at Dakar's current airport in the middle of the city, leading to long waits at security and contributing to chronic traffic jams, and the old Leopold Sedar Senghor airport will become a military airfield from Friday.

The new airport boasts six footbridges direct to flight cabins, and will be able to service a range of aircraft including Airbus's massive A380s.

Work was completed on the 4,500-hectare site -- with 2,000 hectares unused in case of required expansion -- by Turkish consortium Summa-Limak after a disagreement with Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden construction derailed the final stage of preparations.

But bets on whether Blaise Diagne would open on time have lasted until the last minute amid complaints by major European airlines over fuel capacity and regulations.

Summa-Limak will now operate the airport for the next 25 years, furthering ever-closer economic ties between Ankara and Dakar.

A train linking the airport with the city is not expected to open for years, leaving taxi drivers in pocket but ordinary travellers nervous of arriving on time for flights in a city with unpredictable traffic.

Backed by loans from France's development agency the African Development Bank (ADB), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and Islamic lender the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), officials are celebrating the airport's completion -- but the future of Senegal's new airline is less certain.

Air Senegal still does not have all the licences required to begin commercial flights and has a fleet of just two ATR 72-600s, but Aviation Minister Maimouna Ndoye Seck said international ambitions for the airport meant a well-performing national airline was "a necessity".
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The past fortnight has stricken panic and tension in our country necessitated by an unascertained endemic disease that has hit Kumasi Academy in the Ashanti Region. We have witnessed galloping spate of deaths with the lives of four students snuffed out by the unexplained illness. It brings the net deaths to 11 since this jinx visited its icy hands on the campus of Kumaca in March this year.

The creme de la creme of our medical experts have found it an extremely difficult to precisely proffer the illness and its cause let alone a panacea. The pathologists who performed the autopsy on the remains of the students stick out reports which is next next to a nonentity given the exigency of the situation. Test results from the Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research in the University of Ghana have ruled out meningitis as the cause of multiple death at Kumasi Academy but has no reliable discovery beyond disputing the theory that it is a meninges anomalies.

It is instructive to note that Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research is undoubtedly the country's best scientific research joint. We have now surrendered by extending a call to World Health Organisation to touch down in our country to confront the situation.

The shameful internationalised audition of our incapability to see through the mystery has brought once again our educational system and its products to the fore. I am not a pessimist nor a cynic but this very situation in Kumasi Academy has made me to interrogate further the aptitude of Pathologists, Medical Doctors, Engineers, Economist and host of others we fully train here in Ghana. Our Pathologists and Medical Doctors cannot find an antidote to a mysterious illness in a High School of 2000 students unless experts from WHO arrives. Our Engineers cannot build our roads, airports, skyscrapers and bridges unless the Chinese. Our Economist cannot manage our economy fully unless a structural adjustments programmes from IMF and World Bank. What is made of our educational system here then? When the Melcom Shopping Centre edifice at Achimota collapsed in November 2012, our locally trained disaster managers could not salvage the situation. The country had to hurriedly import Israeli rescuers and disaster managers to help safe lives which were trapped under the rubbles.

The country is doomed if our medical experts are nothing but imprisoned by the consulting rooms which simple google research can now help in the comfort of your room. They hold us to ransom for better conditions of service but cannot cart us away from medical urgencies.

In Ghana, your success at any exam is guaranteed when you read and answer pass questions. It does not inspire your thinking to excite people individual initiatives.

The educational system needs a revolution from a rigid 'Pasco System' to a system based on real personal imagination and propounded knowledge.

Abdallah Abdul Matin

Fellow Aspiring Pasco Graduate...
Search for new male gharial to start after polls

Gharial conservation, which was affected with the death of the only male gharial in May, has been further hit, as search for a new one is yet to start.
A stakeholders dissemination workshop on universal periodic review report on sexual and reproductive health and rights of People with Disabilities [PWDs] has been held with a call on stakeholders to step forward their efforts.

The one day workshop put together by the Plan Parenthood Association of Ghana [PPAG] brought together experts from the academia, research institutions, politicians, Civil Society Organizations [CSOs] and the media to brainstorm on better ways of dealing with challenges facing the PWDs.

Mr. Albert Wuddah Martey, the PPAG Programs Director, said the essence of the workshop, the second of its kind was to complements the efforts of government in the provision of sexual and reproductive rights of the PWDs which according to him is basic human rights.

He among other things mentioned that the PPAG do engage in a lot of advocacy programs in its quest to ensure that voice of the vulnerable in the society is heard and equal opportunities are accessed by voiceless within our set up.

We do conduct some form of little research on the PWDs and come up with findings and solutions which is shared among the various stakeholders working for the interest of the People with Disabilities in the country.

He admitted that they alone cannot do it hence the need to bring on board experts, researchers as well as other stakeholders to share ideas and tap into each others expertise and experience for the betterment of the PWDs

He called on the government and other stakeholders to create an enabling and equal opportunities for people with disabilities to realize their potentials.

Mr. Martey further called on corporate bodies within Ghana to commit some financial resources to help better the lives of people living with disabilities in order to complements efforts been put in place by the PPAG and its external donors.

On his part, Dr. Eugene Dartey , of the Population Department of the University of Cape Coast , called for the formulation and implementation of concrete plans and actions with timelines.

He also welcomed the news on the introduction of sign language in the new curriculum for nursing training schools across the country and called for its extension to other training institutions nationwide.

He said CSOs with interest in PWD issues should be given the chance to make inputs into the newly adopted curriculum of schools as the PWDs have more potentials which needs the help of the people for it to be realized.

Participants including policy makers and stakeholders were tasked to move away from workshops and advocacy meetings to implementations. It was recognized that a lot of policies have been formulated for the PWDs but its effective implementation has been a challenge.

Participants also blamed the media for not supporting the course of the PWDs. The media need to give enough airtime and spaces for broadcasting and publishing of issues of disabilities and its related issues thereby helping in the dissemination of things affecting them.

Participants also agreed on the need for a stronger collaboration between the stakeholders and the media to help disseminate PWDs information to the people especially the rural areas.

Stakeholders dealing with disability issues need to involve PWDs in their planning from the initial to implementation stages. Participants also expressed sorrow on the lack of a disable person in the set-up of the Ghana National Disable Council.

The one day workshop was under the chairpersonship of Dr. Cecilia Bentsi, a patron of the PPAG, a Civil Society Organization.
Tarkwa- December 6, 2017- AngloGold Ashanti Iduapriem Gold Mine recently won a Johns Hopkins Award at the Private Sector Malaria Programme (PSMP) Safe Awards. The award was in recognition of the mines Malaria programme which aims to reduce malaria incident rates amongst employees, dependents and the surrounding communities.

In regognition of Iduapriems efforts a citation was read which said Your Companys participation in malaria prevention is a sure way to support the nation in sustaining health and promoting wealth in Ghana.

Malaria is a growing concern on the mine and its immediate host communities. On the mine, new cases of malaria amongst employees and contractors increased from 172 cases in 2015 to 236 in 2016. It is against this background that Iduapriem mine is channeling its efforts to eradicate malaria in its host communities.

The Managing Director of Iduapriem Gold Mine Jasper Musadaidzwa in recognition of this award noted The award will encourage the mine to do more in eradicating malaria from our host communities and Ghana at large. At AngloGold Ashanti, the fight against the disease is not only in our host communities but the bigger Tarkwa community. This recognition will spur us on to put in better measures to sustain our gains in that regard.

The National Malaria Control Pogramme Manager, Dr. Keiza Malm in her address commended Iduapriem Gold Mine for investing GH238,410 in the programme as part of its community investment resulting in the reduction of the malaria pandemic amongst employees.

The Chairperson of the Private Sector Malaria Prevention (PSMP), Elizabeth Villars noted As the private sector, let us emulate and support the interventions implemented by Iduapriem Gold Mine in eradicating the prevalence of the disease.

Mr Felix Nyanor-Fosu (the Chief of Party) of PSMP explained that the fight against the disease should be a collective effort and commended the Mine and other organizations for their support.

AngloGold Ashanti Iduapriem Gold Mine has so far distributed 12,500 mosquito treated nets in its host communities in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Centre for Communications supporting the community outreach programme with educational materials. The Municipal Health Directorate trained peer educators and 40 host community volunteers for the distribution of the nets and community education.

The project is contributing to the Municipal Directorates Malaria Control Programme in reducing the prevalence of malaria incidence in the Municipality from 25.7% recorded in 2014 to 15% by 2020.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, December 6, 2017  The 12th African Economic Conference (AEC) drew to a close on Wednesday, December 6, 2017 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with participants calling for governance to remain a priority of development programmes in Africa.

As they concluded their work, African researchers, policy-makers, civil society and private sector leaders, urged African governments to put governance at the heart of their agenda. The view was unanimous: African economies are among the most dynamic in the world, but better governance could accelerate their transformation so that growth benefits everyone.

Adam Elhiraika, Director of the Macroeconomic Policy Division of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), speaking on behalf of ECA Executive Secretary Vera Songwe, underlined that governance is a critical factor in the transformation of economies and inclusive development.

It is my hope that the outcome of this conference will assist all of us  researchers, policy-makers and the three partner institutions  to support Africas transformation and Africas efforts to improve governance for structural transformation. The conference cannot be an end in itself. It has to be a means to a greater aspiration, an aspiration of a reformed, prosperous Africa at peace with itself.

The African Development Bank was of the same view. Speaking on behalf of the Banks Vice-President and Chief Economist, Celestin Monga, Abdoulaye Coulibaly, Acting Director of the Governance Department, described governance as one of the most important, if not critical, issues, which might strengthen economic outcomes, while improving the daily lives of African people.

We addressed an issue which is the most important for the development of Africa: the structural transformation of our economies. We come away from these three days of discussion all the stronger as agents of change, to improve peoples daily lives, said Coulibaly.

Lamin Momodou Manneh, Director of the UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa, for his part, said that Africas long-term growth strategy depended on efficient management of deficits in political, economic, social and environmental governance. Good governance remains the crucial factor in the eradication of poverty in Africa, Manneh said in a speech he delivered on behalf of Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa. He also stressed the role of the state in establishing strong institutions and the depoliticization of governance with a view to the implementation of Agenda 2063.

Manneh also thanked the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn, for officially opening the conference and for sharing his vision for a prosperous Africa.

The 12th conference confirmed the selection of 36 papers out of 406 received, after a rigorous selection process. Two young researchers were commended for the best presentations of papers: a doctoral student from the University of Benin in Nigeria and another from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal.

The three-day annual event, organized jointly by the African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), brought together over 500 participants consisting of government officials, researchers and many other development actors. International leaders, authorities in the field of governance research, were also present.

The conference was an occasion for valuable exchanges, lively debates and innovative reflection on the best way to advance good governance in Africa, without limiting it to the perception that it is a prerequisite or precondition for development aid, as is all too often the case.

The 2018 African Economic Conference will be hosted by UNDP. The venue will be announced in due course, Manneh said. Work has already started on identifying the conference theme.
There is uneasy calm at Akropong Akuapem in the Eastern Region following a reported installation and counter installation of a paramount chief for the traditional area.

As a result, there is currently a heavy police presence at Akropong to forestall any possible bloodshed.

Two factions have emerged from the Sakyebea Royal Family and each is claiming to be the rightful gate to select the next Okuapemhene to succeed the late Oseadeyo Addo Dankwah III, who ruled for 41 years before his demise.

Currently, Odehyie Kwasi Akuffo, a 63-year-old retired journalist and businessman and one Nana Kesse, are being processed simultaneously to be installed the paramount chief.

Odehyie Akuffo is being presented by Okuapemhemaa (queen mother) Nana Afua Nketia Obuo II, while the Baamuhene, Nana Afari Bampoe, is backing Nana Kesse, believed to be in his mid-30s and once domiciled in the United States.

According to Akuapem customs and traditions, before one is enstooled a paramount chief of the traditional area, the person is supposed to go through a four-stage process of nomination, selection, enstoolment and finally, the installation; and it is the commencement of the process that is brewing trouble in the town.

Matters came to a head when the selection process was started in the palace of Nana Kwasi Omenako II, who is the head of the Akuapem Asona royal family (Asonahene) on Tuesday.

The Okuapemhemaa introduced Kwasi Akuffo to the Asonahene as the proposed successor to the late Omanhene and the nominee was sent to 'Mogyawere,' the palace of the Adumhene, Adu Panyin II, for confinement for about 40 days for traditional tutelage.

In the process, the Baamuhene, in the company of Nana Osim Kwatia, chief of Amanokrom and Akuapem Gyaasehene Nana Yaw Afari Bampoe, brought Kwadwo Kesse, slaughtered sheep and spilled the blood on his feet to signify the selection of another Akuapemhene.

They allegedly took over the palace and installed Kwadwo Kesse to occupy the Omanahene's Hall of the palace as a new paramount chief of the Akuapem Traditional Area.

The police then stepped in as things were getting nasty, picked up the Baamuhene, who has since been granted bail, and asked the other chiefs to vacate the palace.

Later, the Municipal Chief Executive of Akuapem North, Dennis Agyapong, told Citi FM in Accra that the residents were in safe hands.

There has been no casualty; there has been no quarrel; there has been no fight. Everything has been peaceful as it should be. From the outset, we have assured the people that their safety and security is paramount, so, we just put in place measures to ensure that their property and lives are protected, he said.

By William Yaw Owusu & Daniel Bampoe, Akropong
The Ghana Health Service has dismissed reports that it is overwhelmed by the situation at the Kumasi Academy where some 11 students have died of a yet to be identified ailment since the beginning of the year.

Four of the deaths have occurred over the last one week.

The Health minister Dr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu is contemplating closing down the school after consent is sought from the Education minister.

Some Ghanaians have accused the Health system of a disorganized response to the crisis as some 23 more students are being monitored of the infection.

Speaking to Francis Abban on Morning Starr Thusrday, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Nsiah Asare said people indicting the response of the health service are ignorant.

Dont hold GHS responsible, dont hold KUMACA responsible for the loss of lives. It was an epidemic and we have a robust system to counter it. The media didnt do their work right because they created fear and panic which shouldnt have been the case. When there is an epidemic, nobody can be held responsible for the lives lost. It is an epidemic.

In Ghana, we are too quick to condemn people. I do not think the GHS has failed at all. We are not overwhelmed. Since Friday, weve been on top of issues, he said.

Meanwhile, government has released GHC100,000 for the various interventions being taken to stop the deaths.
Lawyer Kojo Graham

07.12.2017 LISTEN

Concerned Voters Movement (CVM), has revealed that a certain contract given to Kojo Graham's VAS-INTEL and Stratom Inc to design an electronic software called Electronic Policing (ePolicing) as a pilot project for the Ghana Police Service, not clear and urging government to have a critical look at the contract again.

The system is being piloted in 26 police stations in Accra and Tema and once it is fully operational, was expected to create a seamless integration of police efforts across the country.

This means that the Ghana Police Service shall be using electronic means to take complaints, writing statements, verifying fingerprints, and all entries in CID forms shall be digital beginning with the 26 pilot Police stations in Accra and Tema, and the CID Headquarter.

In a press statement issued on Monday December, 6 and signed by the group's Founder and President, Mr. Razak Kojo Opoku, indicating that the contract given to Kojo Graham's VAS-INTEL and Stratom Inc was under sourcing without an open competition hence see the contract as problematic.

According to him, "After the Piloting of the Project, there is high possibility that the Ghana Police Service may award the contract to Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham and his partner, Stratom under sole sourcing at the detriment of potential companies who will have an interest in such project. Vas-Intel and Stratom cannot use their resources for Piloting and be ignore at the end of the day".

He is therefore appealing to the Minister of Interior, National Security Minister, Procurement Minister and Ghana Police Council of Ghana to intervene as immediately as possible and cancel the Pilot Project undertaking by Kojo Graham's VAS-INTEL and Stratom for the Ghana Police Service.

Below is the full statement

We are fully aware that Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham together with his partners such as Stratom Inc., a USA based Company and the Department of Computer Engineering of the School of Engineering Sciences of the University of Ghana are the group doing the Electronic Policing(e Policing) Pilot Project for the Ghana Police Service.

We are told by the Ghana Police Service that the Piloting is FREE, absolutely at no cost and that the Ghana Police Service has not yet sign any contract with the Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham, Stratom Inc. and the Department of Computer Engineering of the School of Engineering Sciences of the University of Ghana BUT the most important question CVM is asking the Ghana Police Service is that, will the Ghana Police Service award the contract to Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham and Stratom Inc after the successful completion of the Piloting at the 26 Police Stations in Accra and Tema? because there is nothing like Free Launch in this world.

CVM find this Pilot arrangement between Ghana Police Service, VAS-INTEL and Stratom very problematic due to the following reasons;

After the Piloting of the Project, there is high possibility that the Ghana Police Service may award the contract to Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham and his partner, Stratom under sole sourcing at the detriment of potential companies who will have an interest in such project. Vas-Intel and Stratom cannot use their resources for Piloting and be ignore at the end of the day.

The Ghana Police Service erred in carrying out such a laudable initiative. This is because irrespective of being Piloting or not, the Ghana Police Service should have open tender for all interested companies to partake in the Piloting Project at different Police Stations and at the end of Piloting, at least the Country can settle on the Company with the best package. There was no advertisement inviting applications for such Piloting.

The Data Protection Commission was not consulted by the Ghana Police Service when they gave the green light to the Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham and his partner, Stratom to carry out such Piloting at the 26 Police Stations in Tema and Accra.

The Procurement Minister and Public Procurement Authority were not notify before the Vas-Intel owned by Kojo Graham and his partner, Stratom carried out the Piloting at the 26 Police Stations in Tema and Accra.

Ghanaians have being kept in the dark, we dont know the nature of the contract to be awarded for the ePolicing whether PPP or Private Managed. Ghana Police Service should tread consciously because this is the Security Data of the Nation we are talking about.

We hope that the Minister of Interior, National Security Minister, Procurement Minister and the Police Council of Ghana would intervene and ensure that competitive bidding is open for all companies who are interested in such Project to also undertake the Piloting so that the Country can have value for money.

...Signed

Razak Kojo Opoku

(CVM Founder & President)

Source: Daniel Kaku
Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company (ECCBC), in partnership with The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has inaugurated a Water Health Center (WHC) in Prestea in the Western Region, which will provide potable water to approximately 13,000 people in the area.

This is the 12th Coca-Cola WHC constructed in Ghana under the Safe Water for Africa (SWA) Programme, which is part of TCCAF's flagship water programme, the Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN).

RAIN aims to reach at least 6 million people with improved water access, sanitation and hygiene by the end of 2020.

RAIN is helping Africa achieve the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals on clean water and sanitation access.

To date, RAIN has provide improved water access, sanitation and hygiene across 38 countries to more than 2.6 million people.

The Prestea site also falls under a water access, sanitation and hygiene project funded by the Water and Development Alliance (WADA) between Coca-Cola and USAID.

Implemented by WaterHealth International (WHI), SWA is a partnership between TCCAF, The Diageo Foundation, WHI and Kosmos Energy to provide access to safe, sustainable drinking water to African communities.

SWA seeks to work with communities to catalyze the expansion of an innovative water service delivery model across the African continent, which began in Ghana and Nigeria in 2011.

To date, across Ghana, SWA has improved water access for over 150,000 people through the installation of WHCs in 24 communities.

WHCs are small modular structures that house water purification equipment to treat locally available water through a combination of sedimentation, pre-filtration and Ultra Violet technology.

Additionally, WHI hires water system operators, typically from the local community, to maintain each system and establishes a Water Board with members of each community to oversee the project.

WHI works in partnership with communities to determine the appropriate, affordable, usage fees for the water purification service.

Representatives of the Ghanaian administration, various local businesses and members of Equatorial Coca-Cola's team attended the inauguration ceremony.

Attendees included Mozarc K. Oweh, District Chief Executive (DCE), Nana Nteboa Pra IV, Chief of Heman, Nana Fredua, Business Development Manager, Leah Waters, GETF Director of Partnership Development, Bethel Yeboah, Ghana Public Affairs and Communications Manager, ECCBC and Sonia Ventosa, Public Affairs and Communications Manager, ECCBC.

Ghanaians face many infrastructural and knowledge-based obstacles when it comes to accessing water and achieving healthy levels of sanitation. At times, these challenges seem insurmountable, but we believe something can and must be done to improve the situation, Mr. Yeboah said in a short speech at the inauguration ceremony.

Since launching activities on the African continent, Equatorial Coca-Cola has been actively involved in the development of the communities in which the company operates.
Small and Medium Scale Enterprises and Startups have been thrown a challenge to get involved and take full advantage of an entrepreneurship training offered by the International Labour Organization (ILO) under the Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE), flagship programme.

The project has entered its third phase following its official launch on Wednesday in Accra. The third phase of the SCORE would be running till 2021 in Ghana.

Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, who threw the challenge during the launch stated that the project identified SMEs as the key pillars which could avert this worrying trend of joblessness.

He indicated that the growth of SMEs is crucial to job creation and economic transformation, as it represents about 85 to 90 percent of businesses in the country.

The minister revealed that The SCORE, which began some six years ago, has greatly helped SMEs in the country to achieve their objectives.

Hon. Ignatius Baffour-Awuah said the project was introduced on the back of increasing unemployment across the globe with youth unemployment becoming a security issue for which Ghana is no exception.

"The SCORE goals ties in with the mandate of his ministry, which is to reenergize the productive sector to create more jobs. As a ministry with the mandate to ensure decent work outcomes, we are very committed to operationalizing our employment policies fully to address this situation for which decent work and economic growth is crucial, he assured.

On his part, the ILO Area Office Director for English Speaking country, Dennis Zulu, said with the successful implementation of the first and second Phases since 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 mainstreaming of gender, he said.

The Swiss Ambassador to Ghana, Markus Niklaus Paul Duty, in his address said Ghana has been one of its biggest partners on the continent, adding that his country has supported the country's economic development.

The facilitation of competitiveness and diversification, which features in SCORE, is the second portfolio of Switzerland in its economic relations with Ghana, the envoy added.

He said that despite the success of first two phases of the programme in the country, there are still challenges that stakeholders need to dialogue on especially as the country prepares to move from aid to trade.

I call on private sector organizations to engage and shape SCORE Ghana in a way that serves your needs and purposes so SCORE can become long term, he said.

In a full packed presentation, Mr. Kwamina Amoasi-Andoh, National Programme Manager of ILO, SCORE Programme, walked participants and dignitaries through the various activities under the ILO SCORE.
Youth in the Brong Ahafo Region remain defiant in their resolve to travel to Libya en route to European countries regardless of the recent expose on slavery and the murder of black youth from others parts of Africa.

The youth, especially, those from Nkoranza, Techiman and Berekum are still bent on travelling to overseas through Libya despite the dangers involved.

This was disclosed by the Chief Superintendent of Immigration in charge of the Migration Information Centre at Sunyani, James Hayford Boadi yesterday in an interview with the DAILY GUIDE.

He said even though the centre is trying its best to convince the youth from embarking on such dangerous trips, their response has persistently been their preference for hardship in Libya to hunger and joblessness in Ghana.

Brong Ahafo tops the other regions in terms of youth migration to Europe through the North African countries. So far, Nkoranza, Berekum and Techiman are the leading producers of illegal immigrants most of whom have little or no knowledge about what awaits them on the way and their final destination, he said.

There are more than 1, 500 illegal Ghanaian immigrants in Libya, he said adding that between January and October 2017 a total of 3,669 Ghanaians returned from Libya. The breakdowns are 406 Greater Accra, 536 Ashanti, 129 Central and 164 Western. The rest are 155 Volta, 151 Upper West, 224 Upper East, 298 Northern, 180 Eastern and 1,426 Brong Ahafo.

He explained that in the wake of the crisis, the government through the Ghana Immigration Service evacuated 127 Ghanaians on 29th of November 2017 into the country. 29 from Brong Ahafo, 6 from Eastern, 2 from Northern, 3 from Volta, 18 from Ashanti and 30 from Western. The rests are, 5 from Greater Accra, 23 from Central and 11 from Upper East.

He said each returnee was given GH 400 to help them get to their respective homes in the country. He pleaded with the youth in the region to listen to travel advice from the centre adding that Libya is not safe. He appealed to the youth in the region to engage in farming because there are fertile lands in Brong Ahafo which are good for cash crops like cashew and cocoa.

The Migration Information Centre was set up in February, 2016 to educate youth in the region about the dangers of illegal migration and is funded by the European Union and the International Organization for Illegal Migration and the Japanese government.

[email protected]

FROM Daniel Y Dayee, Sunyani
So close yet so far

The second phase of elections is scheduled for today, and we hope that the election environment will not be marred by violence and disruption.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo asserts publicly that he does not intend to repeat the mistakes of President Nkrumahs industrialization policy, and all hell breaks loose in the vacuously pontifical see-no-evil, hear-no-evil Nkrumaist camp. That was all to be expected, especially from those who presume it to be their religious obligation or their call of duty to prosaically rebut this naked truth, which, by the way, has been there for all to see for ages now. The fact of the matter, though, is that trotting in Singapore and South Korea as a convenient subterfuge for the epic failure of Nkrumahs patently inorganic industrialization program does not get us any farther from or to the reality anywhere. We have already since long dealt with this jaded subject and therefore do not intend to rehash the same herein in toto.

Suffice it to observe, without any fear of contradiction, that there were mistakes on both the part of the grossly misguided Nkrumaists and the equally overenthusiastic and economically Eurocentric Danquahists. But, of course, in terms of economic savviness or foresight, take it or leave it, Nkrumah has absolutely no parity withmuch less superiority over Danquah. Both in the realms of Pan-Africanist politics and economics, Nkrumah was scarcely even a notch above the pathologically pedestrian. And, by the way, what 7-Year Plan is Mr. Yusef Gariba talking about? (See Re: I Wont Repeat Nkrumahs industrialization Mistakes; Akuffo [sic] Addo Modernghana.com 12/6/17). I hope the critic has done ample research to discover that, indeed, the so-called 7-year Development Plan was lifted hook, line and sinker from the Russians, and that it had absolutely nothing to it that was organic or cultural relevant to the economic level and conditions in Ghana.

Even more significantly, it bears pointing out the fact that by the eve of the landmark and auspicious overthrow of the Nkrumah-led Convention Peoples Party (CPP), according to the then-Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Mr. Frimpong-Ansah (See The Vampire State in Africa: The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana, James Currey, 1991), Ghana had gone totally bankrupt. And so Mr. Gariba would do himself and his audience great favor by informing us precisely how and where President Nkrumah would have secured the requisite funding resources to launch the program, let alone sustain the same. What I want to emphatically point out to the hot-air-blowing Akufo-Addo critic is that absolutely no 7-Year Development Plan was ever launched by the CPP regime anywhere in Ghana. And the sooner self-infatuated myth-mongers like Mr. Gariba get off their pontifical hallucinations, the better stead the country stands to benefit from such prompt and salutary cessation of this Epistemic Galamsey of systematic and calculated dishonesty that has been sidetracking the rapid development of the country for quite a Methuselah while now.

It is also quite accurate that it is in the field of law or the legal practice that Nana Akufo-Addo has risen head-and-shoulders over and above most of his peers. But, of course, equally true is the fact that with a Bachelors Degree in Economics from the University of Ghana, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice has the same level and/or capacity of knowledge that has afforded former President John Dramani Mahama the authority to call himself a historian of remarkable repute. Yes, Akufo-Addo has a team of crackerjack economic advisers. But contrary to what Mr. Gariba would have the general public believe, Nana Akufo-Addo possesses adequate understanding of the Ghanaian economy not to play the vacuous sounding board or ventriloquist to any maven in this sphere of our national endeavors. He definitely understands more about the economy than can be confidently said of Mr. John Dramani Mahama.

We need to also highlight the fact that the virtually exclusive state control of industries was not the only weakness of Nkrumahs industrialization agenda. More significantly, the problem had to do with building up a technological capacity for which there was a gaping lack of local manpower resources to meet such critical need. In the process, Nkrumah made a veritable farce out of his much ballyhooed Africanization Program. The logical outcome of such grossly misguided economic policy was that a larger market for European technological skills and talents was created in Ghana under the Nkrumah regime than existed during the colonial era. If this was not an inexcusable misplacement of priorities, what else was? But, paradoxically, I must unreservedly agree with Mr. Gariba that President Akufo-Addo needs to harp far less on the wasted past and instead place more emphasis on his own development policy agenda. I am also a student of history, and can bet that Mr. Gariba would do himself much greater favor in critically examining the precise material circumstances that midwifed the industrial development of Singapore and South Korea.

I can bet the preceding had absolutely nothing to do with the landmark overthrow of the Nkrumah regime, but inescapably everything to do with the megalomaniacal and abjectly poor leadership skills of our protagonist. Indeed, had the CPP dictatorship not been overthrown at the time that it was, Ghana would still not have rivalled the enviable success stories of Singapore and South Korea. I mean, you have to critically examine factors like historical circumstances, the general level of literacy and intellectual and cultural awareness and an auspicious sense of a cohesive national identity. We have to look at signal factors like the deleterious and traumatic impact of the slavocolonial experience, and not statistical abstractions like income per capita at a particular moment in time. Such abject and wanton intellectual superficiality is the bane of the present-day Ghanaian politician and critic.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Introduction

Article 32 of the Visa Code provides that a visa shall be refused if the applicant does not provide justification for the purpose and conditions of their stay. The Code further states that an applicant shall provide documentation indicating the purpose of the journey and of their accommodation. Appendix II of the Visa Code provides a list of documents an applicant must submit to prove the purpose of their journey.

For journeys undertaken for business purposes, this include invitation from a company to attend meetings or conferences, documents showing the existence of trade relations, entry tickets for fairs or events, documents showing business activities, and documents showing the applicants employment status in a company. For tourism or private reasons, this includes invitation from a host, travel itinerary, and tour and hotel bookings.

Nonetheless, majority of Schengen visas are refused on the ground that the applicant failed to provide justification for the purpose and conditions of their intended stay. Why is this so? A number of factors account for this.

Failure to provide relevant documents showing the purpose of the visit.

If you fail to provide adequate documentation showing the purpose of your journey, your visa will be refused. For example, if you fail to provide documentation showing accommodation like an invitation from a host confirming accommodation or hotel booking, your visa will be refused.

Where the declared purpose is not coherent with actual information provided

Your visa will be refused if there is incoherence in your stated purpose and the factual information provided. Examples cited by the Visa Handbook include the following: An applicant claims to visit a professional event on dates that do not correspond to the actual event. An applicant claims to visit a friend but it turns out that the person concerned is absent during the period. A trader in jewelry claims to attend a medical conference.

The stated purpose is not credible

Some factors may cause the consulate to doubt the credibility of your stated purpose for the journey. For example, a person holds an invitation to attend a conference but fails to provide documentation showing that he holds a qualification relating to the subject of the conference. A large number of invitations from the same host may raise doubts on the credibility of your purpose. Applications following the same pattern or bookings made from same hotel may also raise doubts.

Failure to provide adequate documentation to prove the existence of a claimed relationship.

It is not sufficient to just provide a formal invitation from a host as evidence of your intention for the journey. You must provide adequate documentation showing that you are genuinely related to the person. Appropriate documentation may include evidence that the host has made previous visits, photos showing you and the host, communication records, remittance receipts, and statements from you or third parties affirming the relationship.

The stated travel dates contradict other documentation

On the visa application form, you are required to state your travel dates. Doubts may arise if your stated travel dates contradict other documentation showing purpose of journey. For example, an applicant states their travel dates on the application form as 20-12-2017 to 27-12-2017. However their hotel booking shows reservation from 21-12-2017 to 27-12-2017; or flight booking from 19-12-2017 to 27-12-2017. Such contradiction will cause the consulate to doubt the purpose of your stay.

The Flight and Hotel reservation submitted has been cancelled.

The Consulate routinely checks the validity of hotel or flight booking when assessing an application. When they find, for example, that your hotel booking has been cancelled, this will imply that you have no documentation showing accommodation. Your visa will thus be refused. To ensure that your booking stays valid, do follow-up calls to the hotel to satisfy yourself that the reservation is valid.

Conclusion

As the discussion show, a number of factors may cause your visa to be refused on the grounds that you failed to provide justification for the purpose and condition of your intended stay. The burden of proof is on you to provide evidence to justify the purpose of your visit. Merely providing documentation listed by the Visa Code may not be sufficient. The documentation must be consistent with all other information provided in your application.

By Emmanuel Opoku Acheampong

Disclaimer: This article only provides general information and guidance on Schengen immigration law. The specific facts that apply to your matter may make the outcome different than would be anticipated by you. The writer will not accept any liability for any claims or inconvenience as a result of the use of this information. The writer is an immigration law advisor and a practicing law attorney in Ghana. He advises on Ghana, U.S, UK, and Schengen immigration law. He works for Acheampong & Associates, a law firm in Accra. He may be contacted on [email protected] or www.acheampongassociates.com
The EU took the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to the bloc's top court Thursday over their refusal to accept quotas for asylum-seekers, setting up a new clash between Brussels and key eastern states.

The move shows the determination in Brussels to enforce the controversial scheme launched at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 to share 160,000 refugees around the bloc and ease the burden on Greece and Italy.

"The European Commission has today decided to refer the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to the Court of Justice of the EU for non-compliance with their legal obligations on relocation," the commission said in a statement.

There was no immediate reaction from Prague, Budapest or Warsaw, but all three have previously said the quotas are part of attempts by Brussels to limit national sovereignty.

Brussels launched so-called infringement proceedings against the three countries in June for failing to take in any refugees under the quota system, and warned them last month of further action.

They face heavy fines for failing to comply with any eventual ruling by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.

The ongoing row over the quota scheme has held up efforts to reform the bloc's asylum system, which leaders are supposed to be discussing at an EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15.

The EU's "relocation" scheme is now wrapping up having moved 32,000 out of an originally planned total of 160,000, but it caused bad blood when it was forced through two years ago despite the objections of some countries.

The row also underscores a growing rift between western European states and newer, former Soviet-bloc states in the European Union over a series of issues from migration to democratic standards.

Hungary in the crosshairs

Policemen patrol the border area at Triplex Confinium, where the borders of Romania, Hungary and Serbia meet

Budapest faced a triple legal whammy from Brussels on Thursday, with the European Commission also taking Hungary to the ECJ over a crackdown on education and foreign-backed civil society groups that critics say targets US billionaire George Soros.

The European Commission -- the executive arm of the EU -- said Hungary had repeatedly failed to answer its concerns over both cases.

It said in a statement that it was suing Hungary as the education law "disproportionally restricts EU and non-EU universities in their operations and needs to be brought back in line with EU law."

Hungary has introduced an education law that could shut the Soros-founded Central University in Budapest, which has long been seen as a hostile bastion of liberalism by Orban's right-wing government.

In June, Hungary approved a law aimed at forcing civil society groups receiving more than 24,000 euros ($26,000) annually in overseas funding to register as a "foreign-supported organisation", or face closure.

Map showing the number of migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe this year. The EU wants to stem migrant flows from Libya

The European Commission said that the laws on foreign non-governmental organisations "indirectly discriminate and disproportionately restrict donations from abroad to civil society organisations."

Poland's rightwing government is also in the EU's legal crosshairs.

Last month the ECJ warned Warsaw to stop logging in one of Europe's last primeval forests "immediately" or face fines of up to 100,000 euros a day.

The European Parliament also voted to start an EU sanctions procedure over Warsaw's controversial judicial reforms that could eventually suspend Polish voting rights in the bloc.
Senegal's president opened a flagship new airport on Thursday seen as the central plank of government plans to boost the economy and create a west African regional hub.

President Macky Sall toured the brand new Blaise Diagne International Airport accompanied by several west African heads of state in the town of Diass, 47 kilometres (29 miles) from the capital of Dakar, while a plane from new airline Air Senegal is expected make the first symbolic takeoff this afternoon.

Sall's supporters gathered in their thousands to celebrate the opening, banging drums and chanting slogans outside, according to AFP journalists at the scene. The airport will be a key test of Senegal's economic fortunes as the president seeks re-election in 2019.

Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro ($767 million) airport under former president Abdoulaye Wade, but unforeseen problems and a change of construction company have repeatedly delayed the project and doubled anticipated costs.

Blaise Diagne -- named after the Senegalese MP who was the first African elected to France's parliament -- is at the heart of Sall's "Emerging Senegal" plan, which includes the construction of a new city, Diamniadio, close to the site in Diass.

As the country invests more heavily in tourism, Senegal is also betting on the facility's strategic position close to several beach resorts that are already heavily frequented by European holidaymakers.

"The airport will be key in the promotion of 'Destination Senegal'," Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne said in a speech on Tuesday, adding that airport services at the site would contribute to the development of the special economic zone nearby.

With a capacity of three million passengers, Blaise Diagne will still rank far below the busiest African airports and a long way off challenging Nigeria in the west African region, though plans for up to 10 million travellers are in the pipeline, according to officials.

Uncertainty for new airline

Senegal hopes the new airport will make it a west African hub

Passenger numbers have increased in recent years at Dakar's current airport in the middle of the city, leading to long waits at security and contributing to chronic traffic jams, and the old Leopold Sedar Senghor airport will become a military airfield from Friday.

The new airport boasts six footbridges direct to flight cabins, and will be able to service a range of aircraft including Airbus's massive A380s.

Work was completed on the 4,500-hectare site -- with 2,000 hectares unused in case of required expansion -- by Turkish consortium Summa-Limak after a disagreement with Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden construction derailed the final stage of preparations.

But bets on whether Blaise Diagne would open on time have lasted until the last minute amid complaints by major European airlines over fuel capacity and regulations.

Summa-Limak will operate the airport for the next 25 years, furthering ever-closer economic ties between Ankara and Dakar.

A train linking the airport with the city is not expected to open for years, leaving taxi drivers in pocket but ordinary travellers nervous of arriving on time for flights in a city with unpredictable traffic.

Backed by loans from France's development agency the African Development Bank (ADB), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and Islamic lender the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), officials are celebrating the airport's completion -- but the future of Senegal's new airline is less certain.

Air Senegal still does not have all the licences required to begin commercial flights and has a fleet of just two ATR 72-600s, but Aviation Minister Maimouna Ndoye Seck said international ambitions for the airport meant a well-performing national airline was "a necessity".
07.12.2017 LISTEN

On 7 December, 2016 the National Democratic Congress ( NDC) under John Mahama was handed an embarrassingly technical knockout by the then candidate Akufo Addo.

Ten months on in opposition, nothing concrete and meaningful seems to be happening in the largest opposition party. Like a fog, the party seems to be waning, directionless, disoriented, fractured, buttered and torn apart with no sign of truly healing wounds and making efforts in bouncing back into political power. There is absolutely chaos, impunity and lawlessness and glaringly, like George Orwell's "Animal farm" the centre cannot be held together.

So the party is in deep crisis. Crisis of uniting and holding members and key elders together and truly healing wounds. Crisis of rebranding and recapturing power. Crisis of electing our next flagbearer for the next 2020 election. Crisis of key functionaries and NEC members seeking to inflict or foist a particular candidate on us.

The Kwesi Botwe report made a number of recommendations which sought to cure the above but sadly the report has been jettisoned and thrown into the dustbin by the powers that be and by the same people who put together the committee.

So what's the essence of putting together a committee whose recommendations will be side stepped and not be used?

Since the KB report was launched, nothing concrete whatsoever has been implemented in that report affording others the opportunity to doing their own things. John Mahama and his hangers on instead of seeking to action the report, have rather coined a charade "Unity walk" and using same to campaign for Mahama and leapfrogging ahead of the primaries. Sadly, on these platforms other would be candidates like Professor Alabi and Sylvester are not given the chance to talk except Mahama. The unity walk remains a vehicle, contrived to push Mahama's bid and leapfrog ahead of his contenders.

There has been grave concerns of this unity walk by well meaning and senior members of this party. The party is broke and cannot even afford to print registration materials for the ongoing reorganisation yet some Mahama apparachicks are busy organising unity walks and Thank you tours to bring him back when the party is in dire need of cash. It appears a culture of silence amongst us where anybody who does not share or endorse Mahama's bid is either pigeonholed, attacked or tagged as anti NDC.

The fact is that Mahama is the most marketed and best placed person to lead the party but he remains the biggest threat to the victory, unity, growth and survival of the party. Mahama has left this party more divided than before. The man himself appeared to have angered a lot of people within with his poor human relations and leadership style and till date shows no sign of improved way of dealing with party men and women. His minions who caused many to be angry, hungry, separated the party from government continue to hoover around him leaving many worried if he is given another chance to lead the party.

Mahama since we lost hasn't shown for one moment that he is a changed person for putting the party in the state it is now in the political doldrums. Not for once and I will explain. When John Mahama met his former appointees he defended these minions who caused the party to be where it is today and defended his own actions and inactions as well. What he did, did not show any sign of remorse. Mahama and his hangers on have thrown away party structures with senior party executives, MP's misbehaving with such impunity, alacrity and lawlessness. Few weeks ago, we heard and read that, all ten regional party chairmen endorsed Mahama when nominations have not been opened. This is lawlessness and disrespect for party structures. Before that, we also saw NDC MP's visits John Mahama in his house. The party's National Executives Council have subtly endorsed and working for the candidature of John Mahama at a time the focus is on reorganisation of the party.

The party is currently caught up in a web.

One, John Mahama "may" win next year's NDC's primaries but "cannot" win the 2020 General elections.

Two, Joshua Alabi "may" or "may not" win 2020 but there is hope that he can take the NDC to win two terms instead of a one term with Mahama.

As a party we have to choose between these two decisions and be ready to live by the consequences.

As NDC activist and a lover of John Mahama given the chance I will choose the latter over the former. Joshua Alabi will make a better President given his pedigree, depth and appreciation than Mahama.

WHO IS THE PROFESSOR JOSHUA ALABI

Professor Joshua Alabi has become an household name at the corridors of academia and professionals. He is a distinguished Ghanaian professor. He is also a Russian trained Industrial economist.

The renowned Professor is jockeying to be become the NDC candidate in the next primaries and clearly has unmatched attributes that puts him in pole position to take power from the current Akufo Addo's government and here are the reasons.

1. JOSHUA AS A NEW LEADER WILL OFFER NEW HOPE

Clearly the political dynamics are fast changing and one's ability to adapt to the changing political environment could perform magic for any political organisation in this part of our world.

The NDC lost more 7 seats in Greater Accra, 12 seats in Central Region, about 15 in the 3 Northern regions, a couple of seats in the Volta region with Mahama leading the charge and with all the incumbency advantage. In these regions our votes margin significantly dipped to incredible level. There is no way NDC can take back all these seats and improve upon its fortunes with Mahama as the candidate. There is no way NDC can win power with John Mahama as candidate. It is just not possible. Joshua Alabi is our saviour and best bet in this regard. He comes from the ewe, northern and Ga enclaves and very much likely to take back those seat with ease. Not only that, Joshua also schooled, lived and have strong camaraderie with the Northern region. He can pull a very big surprise as the people are disappointed in their own son Mahama for doing very little or nothing to improve their well being and welfare.

2. JOSHUA AS A PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMICIAN

It is a fact that, in the last election many in the academia fraternity particularly nurses and teachers from the basic to the tertiary level voted against the NDC. The reasons amongst others was the cancellation of nurses and teachers allowances as well as the replacement of the book and research allowances with research fund. Beyond the fact that, this was done with good intent, i feel that, it was a lazy way of solving a genuine problem.

Joshua as a teacher and a professional will bring back hope to this fraternity and better manage their affairs with respect, decorum and civility unlike Mahama who said he won't restore the allowances even if they will vote against him.

3. JOSHUA AS A UNIFIER.

Undoubtedly, its very clear that our loss in 2016 hinged on cracks Mahama created. Today it evidently clear that, there are cracks, division, and crisis more than before. The NDC now is more divided with Mahama and less divided with another person say Joshua Alabi. The pushing of Mahama as the candidate will mean entrenching the positions of these arrogant Mahama hangers on. It will also mean that, the party will remain more divided than it is today.

Joshua Alabi appeals to the Rawlingses; appeals to the Ahowis and also can attract the Mahama's base with ease. John Mahama on the other hand is not in the good books of the Rawlingses and the Ahowis and cannot attract persons from these quarters. Whether we like it or not the Rawlings' have a huge constituency and avoiding him may damage the party's electoral fortunes in 2020 elections and beyond.

4. JOSHUA AS A TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER

I have always held the view that, managing a business organization is just like managing a country. If you are successful in your endeavour to manage a business then, its automatic that you can manage a country successfully. You can ask any management mogul and he will tell you what I am telling you.

Joshua Alabi has proven to be a better manager and has successfully managed a business organisation like the University of Professional Studies ( UPSA). His tangible records at the University are there for everybody to see. I personally saw how IPS was like and what it is today. All the short buildings, sheds which served as classrooms, poor infrastructure have all been replaced with huge buildings to serve as lecture halls, office complex, modern library, recreational centre, modern mosque. All these happened under one man as rector, as Pro Vice chancellor and as chancellor of this prestigious University.

#NewHope#

#NewLeader#

December 7, 2017
07.12.2017 LISTEN

November goes by quickly and a certain breeze greets us. There is a mad rush in supermarkets and shops as almost everyone tries to do business before everything gets expensive. Families plan to spend time together and lots of travellers return home. Some call it the Yuletide , others call it Christmas. No matter how you choose to call it, this represents a period of love, happiness and giving. Ghanaians however do not celebrate christmas any differently from the rest of the world although there are a few noticeable differences. Christmas in Ghana is fun and relaxing at the same time but there are a few fun facts about the festivities in Ghana. Jumia travel , Africas leading online travel website looks at a few of these facts as we anticipate this years christmas.

Christmas tree - Have you ever wondered the significance of a christmas tree? Why do many people have it in their homes and companies at this time of the year. Now this may surprise you. One man, Yves Piaget, spent over 10 million (that's over $13 million US dollars) on decorating his Christmas tree. The tree was lavishly decorated with 83 pieces of jewellery in Tokyo. In Ghana, more than half of the population dont.use a Christmas tree anymore. The few who do, do not spend much on them. You may find only a few rich and luxury loving people buidling giant christmas trees at home. The bulk of fancy christmas trees you may find are the ones at hotels and other companies. Fun fact : 90% of Ghanaians would rather buy chicken than buy a christmas tree.

Home alone - Probably the most watched movie at this time of the year. Guess what? The 1990 American comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus, is more popular in Africa and specifically Ghana than it probably is in many states allover the US. Why is it so popular? Is it because Ghanaian television stations have run out of content? The first answer may be NO!!! However, from generation to generation, it has become increasingly clear that every child must see Home Alone at least twice before his/her childhood is over. If you were born in Ghana but have never watched  Home Alone , then you didnt have a television when you were a child. Fun fact : There is no Christmas in Ghana without Home Alone

Weight Gain - Have you ever heard of the term obolo? This is a popular Ghanaian term used to identify persons with excessive weight or those who have gained an appreciable amount of weight over a short period of time. Funny enough, there are a lot of obolos in Ghana when the new year comes. Need you ask why? Christmas is a period where Ghanaians, just like many others all over the world eat excessively. Maybe not because they want to but just because they have to. There is a general abundance of food everywhere and its difficult to maintain a 3 meal a day habbit. You may end up eating between 4 to 5 times with drinks and snacks in between. Even if you dont have the means to eat and your family doesnt prepare regular meals around this time, there is always that neighbour or friend who will invite you over or visit you with an already set buffet. Fun fact : One out of every three persons in Ghana will gain weight before the new year.

No funerals - Not your regular fun fact but since funerals are not occasions of joy and they bring so much sorrow and pain, it is fun not to have them at all during this period. Never will you see a funeral being held close to the Christmas period. NEVER!!! This is a period when everything that connotes sadness, sorrow and pain is put away and far from us. A period when the only thing we care about is love, joy and happiness. A period when nothing else matters but pure joy and appreciation of life. For once, we leave the pain and sorrow behind to concentrate on the good things in life. Fun fact : This is the only period in the year when Ghanaians do not have funerals.

Nearly Everyone becomes a Christian - So you may know that Christmas is a festival of Christians and they form the largest majority of people who celebrate this season worldwide. For many other religions, this period is a time to go on holiday and enjoy the free days off work. However, the festivities have become so widespread that during Christmas, many other religions get involved and enjoy christmas like its one of their own festivals. The world must be a happier place generally at this time because all become one. You will find the Muslim and the Atheist partying with the Christians as much as the traditionalists cooking and sharing with everyone else. Fun Fact : Christmas in Ghana is not for Christians, its for everyone.

Credit : Bennet Otoo, Jumia Travel
07.12.2017 LISTEN

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has indicated its resolve to ensure that there is a level playing field for both local and foreign companies doing business in the country.

It said as an agency of government with the oversight responsibility for the production, distribution and consumption of good and services, we will ensure that these activities are done in a competitive environment devoid of discrimination.

The position of the ministry follows the decision of an international pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Export Ltd, UK, to terminate its contracts with four Ghanaian pharmaceutical companies in favour of Worldwide Health Ltd (WHL), a wholly-owned Indian company operating in Ghana.

The ministry had earlier written to the pharmaceutical company insisting that the action of GSK to terminate the contracts was untenable and should be reversed.

The company reiterated its position in its response, which the ministry found unacceptable.

The ministry, consequently, arranged a meeting on October 13, 2017, between GSK and local parties. The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana and the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) were present at the meeting chaired by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen.

The deputy trade ministers, the chief director, sectional directors and representatives of interested parties were also present at the meeting.

Mr Kyerematen made it clear that the government was not against the companys decision to modify its operational strategies but that should happen within local content considerations.

The ministry gave GSK a month from October 13, 2017, to respond to requests to reverse the termination of the contracts.

Affected local companies

The affected local pharmaceutical companies are Ernest Chemists Ltd, Unicom Chemists Ltd, Gokals Laborex and Parkenstein Ltd.

Visibility of companies

While WHL has been operating in the country for a little over four years, with visibility only in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, the four local companies have over 25 years experience in the local pharmaceutical business and a nationwide presence.

The Daily Graphic gathered that the Ghanaian companies together distribute over 85 percent of the products, with WHL distributing 15 percent.

Monopoly

Some participants in the meeting are questioning why the modification of GKSs business strategy sought to create a monopoly for WHL at the expense of your better performing local Ghanaian companies.

Data and market intelligence available indicate that the local distributors are far advanced in terms of the level of investment, geographic reach as well as other considerations.

For example, Ernest Chemist, Unicom Chemist and Gokals Laborex operate from their own purpose-built warehouses in Accra and Kumasi and have a strong presence in all 10 regions of Ghana.

GSKs own sales data indicate that WHL, over the last four years, has not been among the top three performing distributors in Ghana, information showed.

Position of government

A source at the trade ministry said the governments position was for GSK to re-engage the local distributors in a mutually beneficial relationship based on respect and fairness.

GSK must consider the potential impact of their decision on access to medicines, prices, loss of jobs and investments, anti-competition and loss of trust.

We also expect GSK to be sensitive to the dynamics of the local environment, such as our free market policy and local participation, the source added.
Accra, GHANAOn December 5, 2017, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and MEL Consulting Limited hosted a Women in Agribusiness Summit to highlight the contributions of women in Ghanas agricultural sector. The event brought together women-led agribusinesses, farmers, processors, business service providers, financial institutions, the Government of Ghana and development partners. In attendance were the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Honorable Otiko Afisa Djaba; USAID/Ghana Mission Director Sharon L. Cromer; and Nestle West and Central Africas Head of Agricultural Services, Fatih Ermis.

The Summit promoted investment opportunities and linked women-led agribusinesses to business advisory service providers and financial institutions. The agenda featured panel discussions on finance and business support for women-led agribusinesses, as well as business-to-business sessions. The event culminated with an awards ceremony honoring women-led agribusinesses and smallholder actors for their contribution to Ghanas agriculture sector.

At USAID, we believe agriculture is paramount in driving Ghanas sustainable economic growth, remarked Sharon Cromer, USAID/Ghanas Mission Director. Our Feed the Future Initiative works to equip individuals and communities by investing in gender-smart solutions. We are linking business service providers to women-led agribusinesses to increase their productivity and access to markets. Fostering broad-based inclusive economic growth means unlocking everyones potential, including women, to fully utilize their talents.

This event was organized through Feed the Future and its partners, with support from USAID. Feed the Future works to increase access to finance for agribusinesses and smallholder farmers and improve agricultural productivity. To date, Feed the Future has unlocked $140 million in private capital for more than 2,400 agribusinesses in the maize, rice and soy value chains. These efforts have benefitted more than 150,000 smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana, 42 percent of whom are women.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Dec. 7, CDA Consult - The 193 State Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has elected Justice Solome Balungi Bossa, a member of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights as ICC judge after four rounds of voting, during its sitting in New York, the United States.

Justice Bossa who is a Ugandan Court of Appeal Judge was elected mainly due to the hard work of and lobbying by the team of experts, Ambassador Adonia Ayebare, Ugandas permanent representative to the United Nations stated.

The ICC was created by the 2002 Rome Statute to try cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ambassador Ayebare says, Africa presented four candidates that almost derailed Justice Bossas chances for the six slots available for ICC judges.

Justice Bossas election, according to Ambassador Ayebare, is important since the ICC is the worlds permanent court to adjudicate cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This victory is a vote of confidence in Ugandas judiciary and diplomacy at the United Nations, the envoy said.

Uganda nominated Justice Bossa, whose judicial and legal work spans almost three decades, for being a highly accomplished judge...at the national, regional and international level, according to information on the Judiciary website.

She has considerable exposure and experience in international judicial practice, international human rights, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and constitutional law.

Justice Bossa had also applied for the position of Deputy Chief Justice but missed the interviews in Kampala because she was out of the country campaigning to be a judge of ICC.

She joins Justice Julia Sebutinde, elected as a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a tight 2011 race, to represent Uganda at two key international courts.

A profile of Justice Bossa obtained by the Communication for Development and Advocacy (CDA Consult) indicates that a national of the Republic of Uganda. She was elected Judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights in June 2014, for a term of six years.

Judge Bossa is a highly accomplished Judge with over 27 years of legal and judicial work experience at national, regional and international level. She has considerable exposure and experience in international judicial practice, international human rights, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and constitutional law.

She has served as Judge with the High Court of Uganda for 16 years (1997-2013). The East African Court of Justice for five years (2001-2006), United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR) for nine and half years (2003-2013) and currently serves as Judge on the Court of Appeal/Constitutional Court for Uganda.

Before joining the Bench, she was a Lecturer/Law Reporter at the Law Development Centre of Uganda for seventeen years (1981-1997).

She has, been a human rights activist since 1980 and has founded/chaired non-profit Organizations in human rights like the East African Law Society.

The East African Centre for Constitutional Development, the Uganda Network on HIV, AIDS, Ethics and the Law, the Uganda Law Society, among others. She has also chaired government bodies like the Law Council and the National Steering Committee on Community Service,

On the international scene, she is a member of the International Commission of Jurists, the international Association of Women Judges, the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights and the East African Judges and Magistrate's Association, among others.

At national level, she is a member of International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Uganda Chapter, the National Association of Women Judges, and the Uganda Association of Judges and Magistrates.

As a Bar leader, she is well trained on improving access to justice, constitutional and democratic governance, leadership skills, among others.

She contributed significantly towards the establishment of the East African Law Society, the East African Centre for Constitutional Development (Kituo cha Katiba), and the Uganda Network on Law, Ethics, HIV and the Law.

She also participated through the aegis of the International Commission for Jurists, in the initial stages of drafting of the Additional Protocol on Women to the African Charter.

She holds a Bachelor of Laws Degree (LL.B) Honors from Makerere University. She is a candidate for a Master of Laws Degree (LL.M) from the University of London. She has received various national, regional and inter-national awards in recognition of her distinguished services as a legal practitioner, judge and human rights activist.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has made available US$300,000 in support of the government's aggressive push towards transforming the nation's agriculture.

Mr. Forster Kwame Boateng, its Country Head, Ghana, said it went into quality seeds production and fertilizers under the 'planting for food and jobs' programme.

Added to this was the development of a subsidy model and farmers' biometric registration to aid tracking of the distribution of subsidized inputs to make sure that these went to the right people.

Interacting with journalists in Kumasi, he said, the Alliance was eager to see small-holder farmers doubled crop yield and income.

Mr. Boateng said it was therefore determined to forge a stronger partnership with the government to craft a comprehensive strategic plan for the 'planting for food and jobs'.

As part of this, it was working closely with the Ministries of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and Monitoring and Evaluation, to put in place systems to strengthen accountability of donor funds.

They were also looking at setting up coordination mechanisms to manage government's investments in the regions and districts.

Mr. Boateng applauded the bold decision by the government to provide an insurance cover, to assure lenders - banks that giving loans to the agricultural sector was no longer risky.

The insurance is coming under the Ghana Incentive Risk Sharing Agricultural Base Lending, to be supervised by Bank of Ghana.

Mr. Boateng announced that the Alliance was partnering the World Bank to provide crop insurance for farmers on flexible terms to encourage lenders to grant them loans to expand their businesses.

AGRA exists to fulfill the vision that Africa can feed itself and the world-transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle to survive to a business that thrives.
Let me nonchalantly and respectfully tell patriot Martin Amidu that accusing former President John Dramani Mahama (JDM) and his party men of working against corruption fight does not only embarrass the incumbent government but also demonstrate a display of spurious pantomime. I have a great deal of endearment for attorney Martin Amidu for his sense of patriotism and honesty.

It is my fervent wish that the State will recognize and reward him one day to correct the clarion cliche that Ghana is not worth dying for. However, the underneath news item attributed to him is a far cry from fair analysis. Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin A.B. Amidu, has accused former President John Dramani Mahama of undermining efforts by the Akufo-Addo administration in fighting corruption in the country (Source: GHANAWEB.COM, Wednesday, December 6, 2017). I think this is very unfair to ex-president Mahama. I am curious to ascertain if rule of law could thrive on assumptions.

Popping the hood open about alleged corrupt practices could either be easy or impossible depending on the intuition and commitment of a given leader. Aristotle in his ethics opined that human as territorial and natural beings must fashion a way to live in this practical and unpredictable world. In democratic sense, laws, governance and institutions are among the practical ways of living together in this world. Erstwhile President JDM was axed from office through a democratic process of election last December because he probably failed to provide the people of Ghana the benefits of good governance. JDM is no more in office and as such the conversation on corruption fight must not focus on him.

If JDM can remotely controlled state institutions and a whole government machinery to the extent of obstructing efforts to fight corruption, as Mr. Martin Amidu wants us to believe, then it tells us about the salient weakness and ineffectiveness of President Akufo-Addo led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government! Dragging JDM into the current governments inability to deal with the alleged past corrupt public officers dents the image of the NPP government. John Mahama has done virtually nothing to frustrate the fight against corruption. Honorable Martin Amidu, such mistaken convictions were part of the reasons why God of Israel commissioned Prophet Ezekiel in the Bible.

Israelites had blamed their ancestors for going into captivity in Babylon although many prophets had foretold them the implications of their apostasy. When the southern state (Judah) was taken into captivity in Babylon finally around 587 BC, they began to miss their native land. How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:4). They began to condemn their forefathers for their repugnant conditions in Babylon. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge (Ezekiel 18:2). The Israelites could not be faulted for their convictions because The Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation (Deuteronomy 5:9) could motivate such perceptions. Through prophet Ezekiel, we are told God is interested in individual responsibility rather than collective responsibility. The soul that will sin shall die (Ezekiel 18:4). God is thus, telling us to stop blaming others for our misfortunes. The sinning souls that must perish now legally include those involved in the diversion of pre-mixed fuel and corruption allegation on national best farmer award. The new government must be solely responsible for corruption fight challenges.

Blaming Mahama and his appointees for the corruption fight challenge is neither here nor there. Sir, I beg to differ on this! Ghana is operating accusatorial judicial system wherein the impartial court acting as a referee can give verdict based on concrete evidence. Unlike the inquisitorial judicial system in which the court or part of the court is actively involved in investigation of a case. The court is a court of justices according to law. Justice in Ghana is attained by evidence. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8rlLPzxsN8 Ernest Kofi Abotsi, November 7, 2015). Corruption fight cannot be won by the court of public opinion. The judgment debt was paid to Mr. Woyome based on legal procedures. No president can retrieve it without following the law. You know better than I do on the matters of the law sir!

Lawyer Amidu was given the permission to interrogate Mr. Wayome by the Supreme Court of Ghana, but he voluntarily withdrew from cross-examining Mr. Wayome because he (Amidu) trusted the new governments commitment to retrieve the money. According to Mr. Amidu he brought the suit when he thought that previous government and the AG at that time had no intention to retrieve Wayomes money. Continuing the matter was needless as the new AG had expressed interest to retrieve the money (Source: Ghana News Agency, Wednesday, February 8, 2017). Is it not contradictory to turn around and accuse JDM and his NDC moles, as you put it of frustrating the fight against corruption? What happened to your trust for the current government relative to retrieving the Judgment debt paid to Mr. Wayome?

Politically and historically, payment of judgment debt has never been a big sacred-cow. Judgment debts were paid either duly or fraudulently in the past. Judgment debts emanate from wrongful termination of contracts. Judgment debt is part of legal outcomes. Nevertheless, create, loot and share nature of some judgment debts must be a source of consternation to everyone especially looking at their rippling effects on the economy. I think the passage of the special prosecutor act is a good step by Akufo-Addos government. It needs to be complemented by the right to information bill (RTI). It is unfair to drag Mahama into the picture of corruption fight. Let us give the current administration some time to tackle corruption. God Bless Our Homeland Ghana!

By Nana Yaw Osei, Minnesota, USA. N_y[email protected]
Hawkers in Koforidua in the Eastern Region on Thursday demonstrated against the New Juaben Municipal Assembly to relocate them off the street to a new place. They were led by New Patriotic Party (NPP) activists as they vowed to resist the exercise.

The women marched from the Jacksons Park in anger to make their case heard by government officials, especially the Municipal Chief Executive and the Eastern Region Minister. We will not go to Agartha market. That place is too small and has no toilet facilities, one of the demonstrators said. We jogged with them before the elections, another added, and voted.

We must sell to make a living. The MCE must allow us. Several of them joined in the hour demonstration from the Jackson Park through the central business district. Efforts to see the Municipal Chief Executive, Comfort Asante, was not successful as security guards prevented them. Some of the placards read: 'MCE as a Hitler', 'MCE2020 You came for our votes. No Way' among others.

However, they made their way to the Regional Coordinating Council amid drumming and singing. They are demanding a stop of any exercise to clear them off the pavement of the central business district. The demonstrators maintained actions of the MCE are endangering the chances of President Nana Akufo-Addo in the next polls. The hawkers managed to present their concerns to the Eastern Regional Minister, Eric Kwakye-Daffour, and management of the Regional Coordinating Council. He intends responding to their concerns soon.

Source: 3news.com
President Muhammadu Buhari has said those who looted the country's treasury over the years will best be judged by God.

He said this while insisting that those in authority in the past administrations 'lavishly squandered government treasury over the years.

Speaking in Kano on Thursday, Buhari also appealed to Nigerians to be patient with his administration, promising that things will be better soon.

He said, From 1999 to 2014, the wealth of this country was lavishly squandered by those in the position of authority. Those who have looted the treasury will best be judged by God.

As a politician, I really tasted the pains of seeking elective office.

Since I joined politics in 2003, I contested for president three times but I could not get it right until the fourth attempt in 2015. I was in court for 30 months, challenging the 2007 election and in 2011, I also spent 16 months in court.

When I was the military head of state, I arrested many people and jailed them for alleged corruption and in the end, I also ended in jail.

It is not easy for us to surmount all the obstacles against us; but knowing that the road to a promised land appeared rough, but all I want from Nigerians is to be patient that there will be light at the end of the tunnel.
07.12.2017 LISTEN

Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the press.

My name is Joseph Agyapong, the (CPP) flag bearer aspirant for 2016. As you may have it on your invitation letters, this press briefing is on the One year after the general elections; the fate of Ghana.

I chose this day because it is exactly one year ago today that the NPP government was elected to power again in the democratic dispensation of Ghana our motherland.

I will be touching on some key areas namely; EDUCATION, ECONOMY, CORRUPTION, SYSTEMS, ROAD NETWORKS, NATIONAL DATA BASE AND OTHERS under the current government.

I shall be very brief.

NPP administration led by President Nana Addo, with no doubt have a few success story which I would like to acknowledge,

Strong and willingness to control small mining, (Galamsey) to save our rivers and forests from destruction

Maintaining and proper control of inflation and foreign exchange rate, economy index is not all that bad

Maintaining and balancing our energy sector though we still have some issues to resolve, but they have done what they have to do within a year to make our energy specifically our electricity little bit stable.

On other hand, Ghanaians are moving from bad governance of the NDC administration led by former president John Mahama to worst administration for the reason of some unpopular policies introduced by this current administration.

I believe with no doubt that this current administration has men with high qualifications and experience in all areas of nation building, but I am really surprised such people have not managed and handled the economy the way it supposed to be managed in one whole year.

The economy is in its worse state today; everyone is struggling and complainingevery day.

Most people cannot even afford one square meal a day,and majority of Ghanaians are struggling to have a basic standard of living.

All the promises in their so called ASEMPA BUDGET IN 2017 did not yield any significant results for our people.The currentfinance ministers recent budget presented indicates clearly that, NPP hasnot done anything differentfrom the NDCadministration to change the struggle of Ghanaians.

I perfectly understand managing an economy is not bymagic; one needs to put correct mechanisms in place.

The NPP administration is repeating the same mistakes made by the NDC government when they were in power for over 20 years.

We all know that, one cannot build a house or structure without laying down a proper foundation.Foundation is the leadership crisis in this nation and in Africa as a whole.

Sustainable economy always stands on a sustainable foundation.

Before any economy can yield long term results, it needs proper systems, strong institutions; proper control of corruption and these can never be done until right leaders are in place.

What Ghana needs now is national decentralizing database and not a national Post GPS base.Without proper national database built from scratch, no government will be able to succeed in developing this nation.

I can see that the current government has an idea about systems but their implementation is totally wrong. If they continue in this way, nothing significant will be achieved at their term in office.

Free Education is good and amazing, no doubt about that. I agree and support free SHS but not the way this administration has implemented it.

At least we should learn from successful countries (Developed nations) how they provided free education to their second cycle institutions.

I can confidently tell all Ghanaians that, none of the developed nations such Canada, USA, Western Europe who even have the basic standard of living for their citizens could not afford given free accommodation, free food, free electricity, free water, and all the frees.

None of the government schools from Grade 1 or class 1 to grade 12 or SHS in all advanced nations hasa boarding house facility.

In Canada or USA for instance, children from grade 1 to 12 go to school withintheir neighbourhood or their postal code area without boarding house facilities.

Even if the countries Ghanaian leaders are seeking for funds to develop our nation could not afford this free food, free accommodation, free electricity, and all the frees, what about us, with 75% of our population not able to afford basic needs in life. What kind of leadership is this?

Ghananeeds simple systems that will become basic element for all government after government to follow.

I like the idea of NPP administration introducing Ghana ID Card, but not from top to bottom rather bottom up, which is another mistake they are making.

the current administration economic management favours only elites andnot for the ordinary Ghanaians on the street. Which should not be so!!!!!

Sometimes, I become surprise when I hear NDC criticising NPP with the same mistake they made when they had over 20years opportunity to change the country

NDC had over 20 years opportunity to put systems which is the foundation of this nation in place but failed, and what political right do they have to criticise the same mistakes theNPP administration too is doing.

Until we Ghanaian ask these two parties to stay aside by voting them out, all the infrastructural and systematic development we all looking for will never happen.

Most policies introduce by the current NPP administration have caused the other sector to be stagnant,bad roads are the order of the day in this country. Ghana is suffering from road networking deficiency, We have streets all over but we do not have system to fix them.

As for the environment, the least said about it, the better. Health is another huge problem in this country. Employment dont even go there, what is the future of our youth this nation?

What legacy are we leaving behind for future generation as todays leaders?

The saddest aspect in our democracy today is the effort and the behaviour of the other political parties excluding (NPP and NDC).Why saying that?

It looks like all the so called(smaller parties)seemto be okay with their respective positions after every generalelection. Most of them are easily convinced with some small tokens from the so-called bigger political parties to carry their agenda instead of thinking of how to work hard to take political power from NPP and NDC.

These make the smaller parties disorganised and weak to fight for power. This attitude has led us as a country to almost a two party state which should not be so for a country like Ghana.

, no way, something needs to be done.

It is very sad to talk about the current situation of my own party CPP

The Convention Peoples Party CPP, the party I belong to happens to have fallen in standard and is now conceded as a smaller political party in Ghana.

I will now concentrate on my CPP, OUR CPP, and Ghanas CPP.

Yes CPP over years has been unattractive and therefore performs very badly in the general elections, but it went worse in 2016 as we all know.

Dr. Nkrumah and Dr Limann left a vibrant and strong political organization (CPP) for this generation to continue with their good legacies. But what are we doing as a political party with great ideology of national development.

Today, few people within CPP have sold our ideology, pride and national developmental agenda for small amount of money that I call a token.

If Nkrumah had sold CPP to the British, how could we haveobtained the independence and the peace we have today in Ghana. . I have travelled over 60 countries and I have understood Nkrumah very well and why he took certain decisions.

Now it looks like CPP is no more, partially true, but at the right time the party will bounce back.

Let me take this opportunity to advice the so called CPP looters who are just waiting for someone to bring the party back to lime light and use that as an opportunity to collect money, Toyota Land cruisers and other meaningless things from other parties at the expense of majority of the CPP members.

Theyshould now be careful because we the youth in the party will not entertain those things anymore, and we will stand for our right to save CPP and Ghana as whole.

Ghana is waiting for CPP government again for the resurrection of the nations development.

Ghanaians cannot wait to see CPP united as a party and fight for their wellbeing.

We can only move forward as a political party whenwe elect or appoint good and trusted leaders.

TAKE NOTE:My fellow Ghanaians, I am not afraid to tell you, NPP and NDC are the same, and they only rule for the benefits of themselves and not of the nation.

CPP NOT FOR SALE ANYMORE

God bless Ghana

God bless CPP

God bless you all
The UN Security Council on Thursday said reports that migrants detained in Libyan camps were being sold into slavery could amount to "crimes against humanity" in a joint statement of condemnation.

It follows global shock over the atrocities suffered in Libya by African migrants, many of whom are trying to reach Europe, brought home by a CNN report showing people being sold as slaves.

The council said it "condemns such actions as heinous abuses of human rights which may also amount to crimes against humanity," according to the statement, which was drafted by Great Britain.

It added it was essential "to transfer detainees to State authorities and encourages the Libyan authorities to reinforce their cooperation with international organization and UN agencies and to ensure humanitarian access to detention centers."

Since the 2011 collapse of the Moamer Kadhafi regime, Libya has been riven by fighting between militias which hold captives. Libyan authorities exercise little control over them.

"The Security Council emphasizes that a stable Libya is the only way to help improve the living conditions of all people in Libya, including migrants," the resolution added.

It is rare for a UN resolution to single out a specific country when talking about slavery, a phenomenon that is normally discussed in the context of global rights abuses.

Revelations of slave auctions have prompted several African countries backed by the UN to begin evacuation operations aimed at bringing their nationals home.

According to the UN, the Libyan government controls around 30 detention centers with some 15,000 people -- but the number of refugees and migrants in the hands of traffickers and smugglers under the protection of militias is much higher.

Following the reading of the statement, the deputy representative of Russia to the UN, Petr Iliichev, said he regretted that it failed to mention "the origin of the chaos" in Libya, a clause proposed by Moscow but not retained in the final text.

Russia has long accused France, the United Kingdom and the United States of having contributed militarily to the overthrow of Kadhafi during an operation originally presented as a humanitarian mission.
It has emerged the four Kumasi Academy students who died over the last few days died of Influenza Type A popularly referred to as Bird Flu.

Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu has said 12 out of the 19 cases sent to the Noguchi Memorial Institute has tested positive for the virus.

Providing more details, the Minister said the Influenza type A has the H1N1 Pandemic strain.

More soon

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com
A Central African Republic aid worker was killed after gunman stormed his home, his family said Thursday, the latest death in a week of clashes in the country.

The 35-year-old man who worked for Italian humanitarian organisation Intersos, died at hospital following the shooting overnight Wednesday to Thursday in Kaga Bandoro, in the north of CAR.

The region is controlled by two armed groups which last week prevented the celebration of a national holiday.

At least 10 people had already been killed this week in a wave of incidents between rival armed groups, local officials and a UN source said on Thursday.

The bloodshed, which began on Sunday in the central town of Ippy, resulted from clashes between the mainly Muslim ex-Seleka rebels and Christian anti-Balaka militia.

"On Wednesday, we buried 10 people," a religious source told AFP, saying the dead included both civilians and gunmen and warning that the death toll could reach as high as 40.

The violence pitted members of the FPRC and the UPC, both offshoots of the Seleka rebel alliance who joined forces two months ago, against a dissident branch of the FPRC which is allied with the anti-Balaka, the sources said.

On Monday, a Mauritanian policeman with the UN mission in CAR was killed and three others wounded in an attack in the central city of Bria. He was the 14th peacekeeper to be killed in attacks in the country this year.

One of the world's poorest nations, CAR has been struggling to recover from a 2013 civil war that started when President Francois Bozize was overthrown by the Seleka rebels.

Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, sought revenge by organising vigilante units dubbed "anti-balaka" in reference to the machetes used by the rebels.

Since then, the country has been blighted by simmering sectarian violence which has killed thousands and displaced more than 600,000 people, almost a quarter of the total population.
Hmm, the truth is, things are really happening with some of these celebs and not all can be reported because they also have their personal life they need to protect.

The latest gists is coming from the camp of cute Nollywood actor, Bolanle Ninalowo, who shocked many recently after he revealed that he was yet to be married to the mother of his kids after about 12years together.

Chai, thank God he said it himself and that is because the union which only existed on paper has finally come to an end with both parties parting ways amicably.

It is well though, but here is what he said about the marriage with Genevieve Magazine, which he had hoped to legalise at the right time, I am separated from the mother of my kids. I have an 11 year old girl and a nine year old boy from her and they live in Atlanta. We met here in Nigeria, when I visited 12 years ago. I took her, with me, to the States and filed for her (married her on paper) with the hope to someday get married officially, but things took the wrong turn. So, for now I am married to my hustle.
Nollywoods new couple, Banky W with his better half, Adesua Etomi, some hours back stepped out as husband and wife as they attend their first official event.

The couple stepped out looking happy for the Dubai premiere of the much talked about Nollywood movie, The Wedding Party 2.

Trust Nigerians with their comment on the couple but that does not affect them in any way as they both look good together.

Fans cannot wait to have them back in the country as they are due to arrive the country soon for the Nigerian premiere of the movie which will be coming up on the 15th.
As the festive season draws near, lots of Property Company in Nigeria are seriously rooting for good faces to sell their brands and they are busy stealing faces they believe is worth the penny spent.

Some days back, fast growing property company, Maon Homes, engaged Nollywood actor, Kalu Ikeagwu as their brand ambassador and as if that was not enough, they have also snatched pretty actress, Yvonne Jegede before other brands comes for her.

The actress was filled with joy when she got a message about the deal as she immediately drove to their office in Lagos to put pen to paper.

Maon Homes is all about making live easy for Nigerians as they offer affordable properties for the average Nigerians.
Three hurt in NC-UML clash in Bhaktapur

Three people were injured in a clash between the cadres of Nepali Congress and CPN-UML near the Balkot-based Ganesh Primary Secondary School Voting Centre in the Suryabinayak Municipality-3 today under the Bhaktapur constituency-2 during the second phase of elections to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies.
If theres one thing you couldnt get away from in 2017, it was cryptocurrencies.

For many investors, it was a good thing. Those who bought bitcoin early this year would have made amazing returns by now.

Bitcoin Price Rise

The digital coin is up 1,300% year-to-date as global popularity for bitcoin surges.

According to Bloomberg, nowhere is bitcoin more popular than in South Korea.

Like thousands of South Koreans, Moonsung Bae is infatuated by bitcoin.

The 35-year-old financial analyst got his first taste a year ago, before the cryptocurrency exploded into one of the wildest investment stories of our time, and by the end of last month his personal holdings had swelled to half his liquid assets.

I had this fear when I first bought, Bae said. But then I realized, oh, it actually works.

Its certainly worked, at least so far, for those who got in early and rode the speculative wave that pushed the cryptocurrency above $13,000 on Thursday. But where bitcoin and its ilk go from here is the subject of fierce debate, nowhere more so than in Korea, which has emerged as a sort of ground zero for the global crypto-mania.

So many Koreans have embraced bitcoin that the prime minister recently warned that cryptocurrencies might corrupt the nations youth. The craze has spread so far that, in Korea, bitcoin is trading at a premium of about 23 percent over prevailing international rates.

Growing Bitcoin Mania

South Korean policy makers are now worried about this growing mania. Its why the countrys top financial watch dog, said it had grave concerns about speculative buying.

But why has bitcoin had such an effect in South Korea?

Bloomberg continues:

Theres no definitive explanation for why bitcoin has grown so popular in Korea, but local analysts point to a mix of geopolitical and cultural factors.

Bitcoins stateless status appeals to some Koreans whove grown wary of keeping their savings in a country that shares a border with Kim Jong Uns increasingly belligerent regime in North Korea, according to Kwak Keumjoo, professor of psychology at Seoul National University.

Cheers,

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Want to find out more about the secret world of bitcoin, click here.
Having been in finance and markets professionally for over a decade, weve seen a thing or two.

Your editors actually been investing longer than that  going as far back as when we were just 11 years old, learning about stocks with our Grandad.

Its a lifelong fascination. And one that were always learning more about. Whether thats investor behaviour or how to identify market opportunities were always learning.

But in 2010 we stumbled across bitcoin. It challenged everything we knew about markets.

The story we often tell is when we figured out that through bitcoin mining you could actually create your own money tree.

You know the one. The fabled money tree that our parents always led us to believe wasnt real. Well when bitcoin came along, the tree was real. And today, if youve got the computing power, the money tree is real.

Back in 2010 with a nice, shiny graphics processing unit (GPU) and a bit of programming skill, you could mine bitcoin. Back then the reward for successful mining of a block was 50 bitcoins.

However, back then that meant a 50 Bitcoin reward was worth a grand total of just $5.

Yep. 50 bitcoin, $5.

And the chances of mining a block as an individual were pretty good. Consistently mining might have landed you a couple hundred bitcoins over the space of a few months.

The question you may be wondering now is why am I not retired on a beach somewhere, enjoying my tens of millions worth of bitcoin?

Well, its simple. Back then I applied traditional financial thinking to bitcoin. I dabbled in it, but never really took it seriously enough. Instead of mining (which for me was too hard at the time) I tried to buy some (which was also too hard).

And then the price spiked and crashed, and spiked and crashed. It was all too much, too volatile. Too risky. I was only in my mid-20s, trying to carve out a career in financial advice. This went against all fundamental financial and economic principles Id learnt about in traditional markets over my lifetime.

Eventually I came around to the idea that we were dealing with a financial revolution. And that were in the earliest stages of a world-changing event. An event that the average person needed to know about.

The future is now

So I wrote a book about it all in 2016 and 2017. And then convinced my Publisher to launch a service for everyday folk to benefit from this financial revolution.

And in the middle of this year we launched Sam Volkerings Secret Crypto Network to thousands of excited Aussie investors. Now were sitting on an average return across nine crypto recommendations higher than 100%.

Not bad for just five months. Sure, there are crypto that have seen their price skyrocket more than 1,000% in that time, but theyre super high risk, typically initial coin offering (ICO) plays  not for the first time crypto investor.

But almost all the attention over the last few weeks has been on bitcoin. Its now a full-blown bitcoin frenzy. Everyone knows about it. Or at least knows someone that knows about it.

The explosion of Bitcoin Experts and Crypto Advisors on LinkedIn is a sign of the hype.

And yes, I classify myself as a Crypto Advisor. But I can. Ive been there and done that. Eight years of experience, not eight months.

However, I must admit the surge in the fiat denominated price of bitcoin isalarming, to say the least. Dont get me wrong, Ive been saying that the price of bitcoin could comfortably go well beyond US$50,000 and US$100,000.

But I didnt expect this so soon.

For example on 7 June, 2017 I tweeted:

[Go to Tweet]

Then on 11 June:

[Go to Tweet]

In just four days bitcoin had surged past AU$3,967.

By the start of September it scratched just under AU$6,609.

By the start of November it tipped just over AU$10,000.

Today, one bitcoin is AU$17,228.

Next stop, AU$20,000. And we think thats coming before Xmas.

The reason is that the Chicago Board Options Exchange is now offering options for bitcoin. That means traders will be able to buy bitcoin options, both long and short, settled in cash.

Thats going to bring a whole heap of institutional money into the cryptocurrency space. It may also see the price of Bitcoin absolutely fly. Were talking potentially billion in options trading on bitcoin. It will help large institutional investors manage their risk in holding actual bitcoins.

We could see the largest inflow of global money into real bitcoins that weve ever seen. And because of the finite nature of bitcoin, it may drive the price another 100%, 200%, 1,000% or higher from here, with barely a breath on the way.

We think this may be the single biggest catalyst for a rising bitcoin price weve seen all year. Maybe ever.

And in our view it could very well be your last chance to get your hands on bitcoin at what we still call bargain prices. Our long term view is that we still think the value of bitcoin is substantially higher than today. Maybe this is the run weve been waiting for  just much, much earlier than even we anticipated.

Regards,

Sam Volkering,

Editor, Secret Crypto Network
Academics promoting passive investing have argued that active managers do a poor job of beating their respective benchmarks. Fees are the most cited reason for this underperformance, with a higher fee structure prompting investors to reconsider the value they are getting.

This is combining with regulatory pressure and increased transparency, highlighting the ever-present importance of considering fee structures in the investment selection process. Yet, to comprehend the fee drag at a portfolio level, one must consider both the absolute level of returns that can be expected as well as the potential for gain. To illustrate, we must consider whether an investment can generate value, and this is commonly achieved by dealing with the dispersion of returns.

Understanding Multi-asset Dispersion

Dispersion can mean different things to different people and is especially sensitive to the way one defines it. Yet, most commonly, people think of dispersion as the range of outcomes that can be expected.

For instance, in the chart below we show the history of the broad global equity universe  illustrating the gap between the strongest performers versus the weakest, by assessing 47 key country markets and the gap between the 10th and 90th percentiles over five-year rolling periods.

The central idea is to identify the range of outcomes an active investor would have to choose from. We can see that the dispersion level has gradually dropped and is now at a level not seen in the past 20 years  where the range of outcomes is only 13% versus as high as 40% in 1998. While one must be careful when considering its permanency, it is a staggering statistic that could potentially illustrate the challenges being faced by active managers in recent years.

To quantify the relationship dispersion has with active management success, we can assess the dispersion of markets against the excess return achieved by the average active manager in the Global Flex fund category relative to its index benchmark  where we find an incredibly strong relationship, especially over the past 12 years.

In fact, statistically speaking, an extreme case leads this metric to an r-squared of 0.85 since 2005, meaning approximately 85% of the variability in a managers recent success, or lack thereof, is said to be explained by the dispersion of the market.

The obvious question to ponder is whether this is coincidental or causal  and if so, whether it is a cyclical or structural phenomenon. For example, a structural case would suggest that access to information is easier than ever, meaning an informational edge is increasingly difficult to maintain.

Globalisation could also play its part, as investors gain access to a more diverse set of markets that were previously off limits; for example, demand shifted as China opened their doors to foreign investors.

However, a longer-term view of dispersion  as shown above from 1973  shows that a cyclical element is likely at play too. To explain, one may not need to look any further than the six global recessions since 1970: 197475, 198083, 199093, 1998, 200102, and 200809. While imperfect, each of these recessions saw dispersion increase either during or in the aftermath of the economic stress.

Therefore, while our intuition leads us to see a causal connection, a wider range of outcomes should allow for greater value generation, the low dispersion at present may simply reflect the enormous quantitative easing programme that has shifted markets materially over the past 10 years. We have experienced one of the longest economic expansions in recent memory and strong asset flows into growth assets have lifted all boats. Therefore, should we see a market correction or recession  or simply a sustained period of wider dispersion  this could trigger a resurgence in active manager success.

Moving from Countries to Sectors

Another way of testing whether the low dispersion could be cyclical or structural is to check the results in alternative ways  a test of noise. We can run the exact same analysis on a sector-by-sector basis, showing the 5-year dispersion of 24 industry subgroups within the global index since 1999.

By doing so, we find that a structural decline is even less obvious, with the lows of 2016, a year of dramatic active manager underperformance, matching or nearing that of prior periods such as 2002/03.

How Should an Investor Use this Information?

Dispersion is clearly an important factor when assessing the fate of the active management industry. The first step is to acknowledge the challenges active managers face when dispersion is low, and to then realistically contemplate what value each manager offers in a portfolio context.

While there are limitations to the analysis; for example, it is possible that country and sector dispersion is low, but stock dispersion is wide  especially as we have ignored size/weight, it does tell us is that investors should garner a better understanding of the managers and the ways they deal with lower dispersion.

More broadly, it also raises the importance of fees, where we are seeing an exciting period of awareness and consolidation. The fee drag is a vital component to the investment selection dilemma and lower fees will help end investors obtain better outcomes. This is especially important when dispersion is low, as differences in fee structures can play an important role in an investors ability to protect capital from the erosion caused.
Muna Abu-Habsa: We recently published the Global Fund Investor Experience report, where weve taken a close look at the experiences of fund investors in 25 countries across the world. We evaluated countries across four key areas which are Regulation and Taxation, Disclosure, Fees and Expenses, and Sales. Depending on how each country fared within those areas, it was then graded on a 5-point scale of Top, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Bottom.

As evidence mounts that fees can be a crucial factor in investment performance, we weighted Fees and Expenses more heavily in 2017 than in previous editions of the report. The UK fared strongly in this area relative to other countries, reflecting the implementation of RDR, which has banned advice fees from being bundled with fund expenses. Since this has taken effect, weve found reported ongoing charges to have fallen in most asset classes. Overall, the UKs grade was Above Average.

A number of other European countries, particularly France, Italy, Finland, Spain, and Belgium suffered on Fees and Expenses, pushing their overall grades down to Below Average. We expect that the impending MiFID II regulations will bring in tougher rules to protect investors and should see those European markets improve in this study.

Overall though weve found that theres been widespread improvement in investor experiences across multiple markets across the globe and we think thats been driven by globalisation, stronger regulation, and a move towards adopting best-practices. In fact, no country received the Bottom overall grade, and more than half received an overall grade of Average. Having said that, theres still a lot of work to be done.

Although the United States remains the country with the highest gradeas it has since 2009leading with lower expenses and a strong disclosure regime, it is still held back by a Regulation and Taxation grade that trails many markets.

We hope that this study will continue to encourage dialogue about best practices and act as a catalyst for positive change.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.

To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun early followed by cloudy skies this afternoon. High 53F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 36F. Winds light and variable.
Vote count set to start this evening

The offices of the Chief Election Officers will start counting of the votes from Thursday evening in tight security arrangement, keeping in view incidents of violence or scuffles that could occur during vote counting in various districts.
I stuck to what the coaches ...
Works start for housing HoR and National Assembly

Despite delay from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in releasing the required budget, the Parliament Secretariat has started finalising contractors to set up buildings and halls for the federal parliament that comprises the House of Representatives (HoR) and the National Assembly (or Upper House).
NCs Chinta Bahadur Ghale elected in Manang Province Ka

Nepali Congress (NC) has opened its account, registering a win in Manang Province Ka.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Net Neutrality

FCCs next step on net neutrality: Blocking the states [Politico]. Stil germane. [Pais Restoring Internet Freedom order] calls broadband an interstate information service, and any state or local law regulating the service could not subvert or undermine the federal policy of deregulation, a second FCC senior official said.

Were thinking about internet freedom in all the wrong ways [The Week]. The net neutrality debate, however, has a problem: It discusses the social and cultural effects of the internet almost entirely in terms of the free market. In this narrow scope, it appears that only options for ensuring internet freedom are letting the market work, or limiting what large corporations can do. And in constraining the conversation to these terms of the companies who operate on the internet, we obscure the real threat to freedom in general: those companies themselves Put another way: There is no public space on the internet. The net neutrality debate has a free-market problem. In only thinking in terms of what commercial enterprises can and cannot do, we limit ourselves to thinking of the web as a privately owned space. Once again:

Municipalize the ISPs, nationalize the backbones, cooperativize the platforms  Ben Tarnoff (@bentarnoff) November 22, 2017

Why not?

The shape of things to come:

Google Is Blocking YouTube on Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV https://t.co/Gx29n44qea  Liberationtech (@Liberationtech) December 6, 2017

Trade

Despite the opportunity to blow open Canadas dairy market in a NAFTA 2.0, major U.S. dairy producers say they know where the money is and its south of the border [Politico]. Wed prefer to win both battles, but if you were to ask me if I had to choose one or the other, Id pick south of the border and give up north of the border. Simply because of the math and the number of consumers, said Andrei Mikhalevsky, president and CEO of California Dairies Inc., a dairy cooperative of 400 large farms that produce 9 percent and 23 percent of the nations milk and butter, respectively. However, the Trump administration has already taken a hard line on dairy, proposing NAFTA provisions that would effectively hobble Canadas supply management system and open more access for U.S. farmers than ever before.

Politics

2018

In a recruiting victory for Democrats, former Gov. Phil Bredesen announced today that he will run for the open seat created by the retirement of GOP U.S. Sen. Bob Corker. Bredesens announcement puts the race into the Toss Up column, a rating change that has larger implications for the 2018 Senate map [Cook Political Report]. Many Democratic strategists believe that Bredesen can appeal to voters across party lines in a state that has become increasingly more Republican in recent years. The national significance of Bredesens candidacy and the races move to Toss Up is that it puts three Republican-held seats in play. (For the purposes of this math equation, we are excluding Tuesdays contest in Alabama.) As the Senate stands today, Democrats need a net gain of three seats to win the majority. Until now, it has been mathematically impossible as only two GOP seats have been considered truly vulnerable. This does not mean that Democrats will win the majority; only that it is now mathematically possible.

2017

Alabama Senate Special Election  Moore vs. Jones [RealClearPolitics]. Moore +2.3 (Previous: Moore +1.5). No new polls. Worth noting that the race has been within the margin of error for some time; remarkable for a Democrat in Alabama.

New Cold War

Robert Mueller Jumps Onto the Trump Money Trail [The New Yorker]. Heres the conclusion: Whether these inquiries will lead anywhere remains an open question. One thing seems clear, though: Muellers investigators are following Deep Throats advice and following the money. For Trump and his associates, that has to be disturbing. Muellers probe doesnt end with a bang, but with a whimper [Ned Ryun, The Hill]. From a Bush speechwriter. I think its high time for President Trump to do what he should have done a year ago: declassify everything related to the Russian collusion case and the Hillary Clinton email investigation, both of which go to the heart of the Obama administrations Department of Justice, FBI and, possibly, the White House. Interesting idea Liberal Americas unhealthy fixation on Russia [Edward Luce, Financial Times]. [L]iberal America has worked itself [note lack of agency] up into a moral panic. If it were not for Vladimir Putin, we are asked to believe, western democracy would be in reasonable shape. Without Russia, there would be no Donald Trump. And: The latest to join the fray is Joe Biden, the former vice-president. As a potential White House candidate, Mr Biden is a good barometer of Democratic thinking. In a co-authored article for Foreign Affairs, Mr Biden calls for the creation of a 9/11-style commission to examine Russias assault on American democracy. The body would identify tools to fight the Russian menace. Americans need a thorough, detailed inquest into how Russias strike on their democratic institutions was carried out and how another one might be prevented, he writes. In sum, Mr Biden is calling for a new Cold War. As Ive been saying. Palestinians recognize Texas as part of Mexico [The Beaverton]. The territory north and east of the Rio Grande is very important to the Mexican people, explained a [Palestinian National Authority] spokesperson. Before American settlers showed up and implemented slavery, Mexico oversaw this land. Then, President Polk sent his armies to invade the rest of these Mexican territories, and force the country to give up California, New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. We may soon recognize these states as part of Mexico too.'

Tax Reform

The GOP not only entirely excluded Democrats from the process of drafting the bills, but the party punished Democratic constituenciesfrom residents of high-tax states to graduate studentsin the bills substance. The tax plans represent a political closed circle: bills written solely by Republicans and passed solely by Republican votes that shower their greatest benefits on Republican constituencies. Meanwhile, the biggest losers in the plans are the constituencies of the Democrats who universally opposed them. Its not just redistribution: The tax bills are also grounded in retribution [Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic]. In all these ways, the Trump-era GOP has grown impervious to virtually any opinion that resists its own internal consensus. Next Novembers midterm elections will begin answering whether the party has drawn that closed circle too narrowly to preserve its upper hand in Washington. Well, yes and no. Im not sure internal consensus is all that much a Republican thing, as weve seen on health care, and the continuing efforts of the #NeverTrump thing. To put this another way, its not all that difficult to create consensus around rewarding your partys friends and punishing its enemies. Twas ever thus! And as far as closed circles, surely there are rather a lot of those around right now? Few Americans think the plan will lead to lower taxes for them personally, and this is true of Republicans as well, despite their strong support of the plan. One-third of Republicans think their taxes will be lowered; most Democrats expect their own taxes will go up. By almost a 2 to 1 margin, independents are more likely to think theyll go up rather than down [CBS News].

Trump Transition

Top Republicans left no doubt that the House will approve legislation Thursday preventing a weekend partial government shutdown, erasing any suspense over an impending budget clash that would put a calamitous exclamation point at the end of the capitals tumultuous year [AP]. The leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members had been threatening to withhold needed support, also made clear that the bill would be approved. Donald Trumps Brains [New York Review of Books]. Interesting on the conservative institutions that actually do influence Trump. A battle for the future of conservatism is in effect being fought between these anti-Trump conservatives and pro-Trump conservatives associated with the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank based in California, which for years has been discussing the Federalist Papers, the dangers of progressivism, and, above all, the wisdom of the German exile and political philosopher Leo Strauss, who taught for several decades at the University of Chicago. ZOMG!!! The Struassians!!!! Not again!!!! (I can see the liar part just fine, but noble?) President Trump might actually be able to pull off [vs. Mueller] what Nixon failed to accomplish [vs. Cox and Jaworski]. He has a number of advantages that Nixon lackedfrom a Congress controlled by fiercely partisan Republicans whose political calculations have led them to stand by their president regardless of almost anything that he does, to a conservative media that perpetually broadcasts his points of view [The Atlantic]. Very poor advance work: Zinke had already rigged his fishing rod when our writer showed up to interview him at the edge of a lake in Glacier National Park. He'd rigged it backwards. https://t.co/ZJujN2c8hm pic.twitter.com/dOXv3mLxGP  Outside Magazine (@outsidemagazine) December 6, 2017

Realignment and Legitimacy

Al Franken announces he will resign from the Senate [WaPo]. Franken: Some of the allegations against me simply are not true, others I remember very differently. But this decision is not about me. Its about the people of Minnesota. Its become clear that I cant both pursue the Ethics Committee process and at the same time, remain an effective senator for them. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is expected to appoint his lieutenant governor and close ally, Tina Smith, to Al Frankens seat if the Democratic senator resigns on Thursday, three people familiar with the Democratic governors thinking said [Politico]. But that appointment would be just the start of an upheaval in Minnesota. Part of the reason Smith could be heading to the Senate, the sources said, is that she has indicated no interest in running for Congress in the past and would not run for the remainder of Frankens term, which expires in 2020, in a 2018 special election. That would clear the way for a wide open Democratic primary next year if Franken steps down. Hmm. Senator Ellison has a nice ring to it. While there is a presumption that Republicans arent competitive statewide in Minnesota, Frankens close 2008 race and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons narrow 43,695-vote victory in 2016 would suggest otherwise [Cook Political Report]. At this writing, the situation is very fluid and is likely to take weeks to sort itself out. Conyers exit after decades could open political floodgates [ABC]. John Conyers resignation from the U.S. House amid sexual harassment allegations unlocks the seat he has held for more than a half-century  and sets off a free-for-all race to replace him with at least three potential legacy candidates, including two relatives of Conyers and a son of a prominent former mayor. On Wednesday, Democratic senators sought to claim [the moral high ground] by pushing Franken to resign just one day after Conyers  the longest-serving House member  resigned over harassment allegations. The calls from nearly three dozen senators, members of the House, and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee came less than a week before voters in Alabama head to the polls for a special election to replace Jeff Sessions [RealClearPolitics]. * * * I followed Bernie Sanders as he went to Ohio and explained to crowds how Democrats could win back Trump voters. [Vice]. Important: It is clear that there is an element of Trump supporters who are racists, sexists, homophobes, and theres nothing Im going to say thats going to appeal to them, he said. But I think that the vast majority of Trump supporters are people who are in pain, who are struggling economically, who are worried to death that their kids are going to be in even worse shape economically than they are, and they turned to Trump because Trump said things that made sense. He said he was going to take on the establishment, and he was going to provide healthcare to everybody. You know what, its pretty much what I said. The difference, of course, is that Sanders seems to have a plan to provide benefits like health insurance to large swathes of Americans. The questionwhich may not be answered until 2020is whether Trump spoke to those voters because of his vague populist promises or because of his willingness to embrace the nastiest aspects of the culture war. Sanders, evidently, thinks that its the former. He has obvious compassion for subsection of Trump supporters, an undeniably practical perspective to havewhile some on the left might be giddy about writing off the 62,979,879 Americans who voted for the guy, Sanders wants to win them over with his populist, anti-elitist platform. We are winning the fight for the future of America, he told the audience in Dayton. Please never forget were the vast majority of the American people. Theres a good deal of heart-burning about this from liberal Democrats, even those of good faith, but let us again remember the key role that Obama voters who flipped to Trump played in 2016. And then theres this: Morning Consult/Politico poll released in late November showed 15 percent of Republicans would vote for Sanders over Trump 12% aren't sure https://t.co/ZeeTlyVHyZ pic.twitter.com/uV90rVpMuP  Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) December 7, 2017

So, there are other paths to victory for Democrats than appealing to wealthy suburbanite Republicans. Who knew? How Trump Is Ending the American Era [Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic]. An important perspective from a conservative member of The Blob: To a degree rarely appreciated outside Washington, it is virtually impossible to conduct an effective foreign policy without political appointees at the assistant-secretary rank who share a presidents conceptions and will implement his agenda. As of mid-August, the administration had yet to even nominate a new undersecretary of state for political affairs; assistant secretaries for Near Eastern, East Asian and Pacific, or Western Hemisphere Affairs; or ambassadors to Germany, India, or Saudi Arabia. At lower levels, the State Department is being actively thinned out2,300 jobs are slated for eliminationand is losing experience by the week as disaffected professionals quietly leave. High-level diplomatic contact with allies and adversaries alike has withered. Meanwhile, for fear of contradicting him, Trumps underlings avoid saying too much publicly. As a result, the administrations foreign policy will continue to be as opaque externally as it is confused internally. One consequence will be a corresponding confusion on the part of foreign powers about the administrations goals, commitments, and red linesand the likely misinterpretation of stray signals. Even well-run administrations can fail to communicate their intentions clearly, with dire consequences. I feel the authors pain, I really do. After all, WASPs of my age were raised to do our little bit for the empire, even if only maintaining American hegemony at several removes (say, though symbol manipulation). That said, its very hard to see how the American Era  certainly since 9/11, and probably since elites decided to move our manufacturing base offshore as neoliberalism took hold  has been a substantial net positive for most Americans, certainly those outside our swollen Imperial City.

Stats Watch

Challenger Job-Cut Report, November 2017: Lay-off announcements rose to 35,038 in November vs 29,831 in October and 26,936 in November last year. This is the highest total in seven months and, though still at an historically low level, does hint at softer-than-expected results for tomorrows monthly employment report [Econoday]. Lay-off announcements rose to 35,038 in November vs 29,831 in October and 26,936 in November last year. This is the highest total in seven months and, though still at an historically low level, does hint at softer-than-expected results for tomorrows monthly employment report.

Jobless Claims, week of December 2, 2017: Fell, lower than expected [Econoday]. The labor market is very healthy though claims data, along with this mornings Challenger report, are not pointing to increasing strength for Novembers employment data. In such rude health that Walmart doesnt have to pay a living wage However, and: The weekly claims was not the only report that offered support for a solid employment situation report this week from the Labor Department. ADP forecast earlier this week that private sector payrolls rose by 190,000 in November. That was marginally above the consensus estimates [247 Wall Street].

Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, week of December 3, 2017: Very strong, below Augusts peak [Econoday]. Full employment, the rally in the stock market, and solid home-price appreciation are all important pluses for confidence measures.

Quarterly Services Survey, Q3 2017: Information revenue rose 1.8 percent to $391.2 billion in the third quarter compared to the second quarter with the year-on-year rate at plus 5.8 percent [Econoday].

Manufacturing: General Motors Co. is building the future of its pickup trucks on the expensive and complicated supply chain for carbon fiber [Wall Street Journal]. Auto makers have been working with carbon fiber producers to ready the material for auto production, and researchers say carbon fiber prices have been falling. Carbon fiber is complicated and time-consuming to produce, however, and so GM would likely have to reset production operations by having fully formed parts shipped to its plants. The costs and complexity could improve if GMs use pushes broader adoption of the material at auto factories.

Shipping: Drewry Supply Chain Advisors say ocean cargo rates will firm up in 2018 [Logistics Management]. Despite the increase in deliveries of large containerships scheduled for 2018, we do not expect a new price war in ocean transportation, as robust demand growth and higher carrier concentration will also influence the market. Retailers and manufacturers should watch the ocean transportation providers closely in 2018 to see whether the effects of carrier concentration are starting to be felt in negotiations and in pricing, as they may have to rethink their vendor contract strategy to align with a narrower base of much larger carriers. Concentrations works!

Shipping: Contract talks between the International Longshoremens Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) broke down on Wednesday over union concerns about potentially job-killing automation [Splash 247]. Union officials fear employers aim to use automation to wipe out dockworker jobs entirely rather than have automated features that would be operated by workers.

The Bezzle: The contents of a digital wallet belonging to cryptocurrency company NiceHash, which included potentially millions of dollars worth of customers bitcoin, was stolen in a major security breach early Wednesday [Business Insider]. NiceHash is only the latest cryptocurrency company to suffer a major hack in recent months. Despite the widespread notion that the blockchain technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is safer and more trustworthy than that underlying other kinds of digital financial transactions, startups in the industry have struggled to secure their sites and software against hackers.

The Bezzle: A brief history of Bitcoin hacks and frauds [Ars Technica]. Here we present a short history of the Bitcoin worlds most significant scams and hacks. Its worth noting that all of these attacks were against Bitcoin-related services, not the core Bitcoin software. As far as we know, the Bitcoin network itself is highly secure, though of course thats little comfort if you entrust your bitcoins to a third party that gets hacked. Also, the list seems to skew toward older incidents. Users seem to have faced greater dangers of hacking and fraud in 2011 and 2012 than they do today.

The Bezzle: Old news to NC readers.

"Uber is only cheap because each journey is subsidised by venture capitalists, and because it exploits its workers Watch @L__Macfarlane at this year's Disruptive Innovation Festival. Full video: https://t.co/wcjZaPBOPC pic.twitter.com/eUB6ZHNlw8  openDemocracyUK (@openDemocracyUK) December 6, 2017



(I love Disruptive Innovation Festival)

The Bezzle: Airbnb guests are finding hidden cameras planted in their rentals [CBS News]. In late November, activist and filmmaker Jason Scott tweeted his colleague found a camera disguised in a motion detector at an Airbnb. The company called the discovery incredibly rare, [they would, wouldnt they?] and said the host was banned. In October, an Indiana couple said they found a camera in a smoke detector in the bedroom at their Airbnb in Florida. The home owner was arrested for video voyeurism. But dont worry: The company told CBS News about two million people use Airbnb on any given night, and they are always willing to work with law enforcement when complaints are made. Experts say there are a few things consumers can do to protect themselves: invest in a digital device detector, search rooms and use a flash light to try and spot lenses . Or maybe disrupt AirBnB and stay in a normal hotel, where you dont have to do things like that.

Concentration: Amazon is raising prices at Whole Foods after its highly-publicized cuts [Business Insider]. The average price increase on each item was about 1.6%, [research firm Gordon Haskett] said. The findings are surprising, given the myriad of positive press around Amazons price cuts at Whole Foods since the acquisition, Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom wrote. Its not surprising at all. Its classic monopolistic behavior.

Five Horsemen: So far Facebook is bouncing best out of Tech Wreck II [Hat tip, Jim Haygood].

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 60 Greed (previous close: 60, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 73 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed. Last updated Dec 7 at 11:58am.

Health Care

Ben Jealous calls for single-payer health care in Maryland [WaPo]. In a 19-page proposal that echoes U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders national plan for the government to cover everyones health insurance through Medicare, Jealous said a state-run, single-payer system would be the next logical step for a state like Maryland, which has an all-payer system, but he offered no specific details on how the government would cover the cost of the ambitious plan. Jealous said the state has saved more than $400 million under its all-payer system and a move toward single-payer would only lead to greater cost savings, money that could help pay for the program. He also did not rule out an increase in sales or income taxes to pay for the universal coverage.

Our Famously Free Press

MSNBC Reverses Decision to Fire Contributor Sam Seder [The Intercept]. Seder and MSNBC were set to part ways when his contributor contract expired next year, with reports indicating the departure had to do with a 2009 tweet from Seder surfaced by the far-right provocateur Mike Cernovich. After initially caving in to right-wing internet outrage over the tweet, MSNBC reversed its decision to not renew Seders contract.

10 Things You Can Do Now to Up Your Social Media Game in 2018 [Media Shift]. For news venues. One interesting nugget: Facebook still leads the pack, but over 20 other platforms now have more than 100 million users each.

Meet the new boss:

LA Weekly just fired 9 well-established experts on LA culture, news, music, etc. Now are calling all "Angelinos" for help writing the paper, misspelling Angeleno, the common demonym for LA residents. pic.twitter.com/8UYhJGSWCJ  Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) December 2, 2017

Break out the mops and buckets:

Wow. Its real. Thisll be featured in newspaper sub-editing courses for years. And available at all good newsagents near you today, folks. pic.twitter.com/JS8YpuedVW  Chris Rand (@ChrisRandWrites) December 6, 2017

Class Warfare

Georgetown University refuses to recognize graduate student union [WaPo]. Georgetowns decision echoes opposition to graduate student unions at other prestigious universities. Yale University, Boston College and Columbia University have railed against a 2016 National Labor Relations Board ruling that granted teaching and research assistants the legal protection to unionize. Yale, Columbia and Princeton posted information on their websites warning students that unionizing could alter their relationship with faculty and limit their individual rights once a union becomes their collective voice. Good liberal institutions

News of the Wired

AI is now so complex its creators cant trust why it makes decisions [Quartz]. Modern artificial intelligence is still new. Big tech companies have only ramped up investment and research in the last five years, after a decades-old theory was shown to finally work in 2012. Inspired by the human brain, an artificial neural network relied on layers of thousands to millions of tiny connections between neurons or little clusters of mathematic computation, like the connections of neurons in the brain. But that software architecture came with a trade-off: Since the changes throughout those millions of connections were so complex and minute, researchers arent able to exactly determine what is happening. They just get an output that works.

Waze, from Google:

LA peeps: DONT USE WAZE to get past 405 fire. It is taking people right into the neighborhoods that are on fire! #SkirballFire #TechnologyFail #LAFire  justin bellamy (@siliconbeacher) December 6, 2017

Can any Los Angeles readers confirm?

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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please put it in the subject line. Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . Todays plant (EJ):

EJ writes: Technically, on review, the site is best judged (years later) as at approx. lat. 42.7454 long -72.9276 in or at the Western edge of Sherman Reservoir inside the Green Mountain National Forest at the locations where the branches of the Deerfield River combine and get repleenished from reservoir (creating seasonal rapids rafting out of Zoar, MA).

* * *

Donate $25 $50 $75 $100

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Yves here. This post is bound to rile some readers, but the point must be made: there is no evidence that Catalonias separatists had or have majority support. Polls sponsored by Catalonias own government prior to the referendum showed that independence got the support of only 41%. The referendum cannot be seen as an indicator due to the lack of ballot controls and the refusal to participate by those who agreed with the ruling of the Supreme Court, that the referendum was illegal.

David Jimenez Torres is an associate professor at Camilo Jose Cela University in Madrid. His previous post was as Lecturer in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. He is also a regular columnist for the newspaper El Espanol. Originally published at openDemocracy

It is difficult to see why actions taken by the government in Madrid ought to be regarded as a curb on dissent, and not as a preservation of the countrys constitutional order.

On December 7, Catalan nationalists are expected to demonstrate in Brussels under the slogan Wake up, Europe. Help Catalonia. The protest is a new push to focus international attention on Catalonia ahead of regional elections on December 21, and which follow months of tense struggle between the regional and national governments.

Over the coming weeks, Catalan nationalist leaders will continue to frame the Catalan conflict along two lines of argument. The first is that Catalans are a unified people fighting against an authoritarian state (presumably one with no people behind it). The second is that they have merely operated at a soft level of expressing beliefs and identity, whereas the national government headed by Mariano Rajoy has responded on a hard plane with police action and incarceration of political leaders.

To study the playbook pursued by the Catalan movement is of value to any European or world citizen with concern or interest at the dimensions of contemporary ethno-nationalist populism. This is because neither of the arguments mentioned above stands up to rational scrutiny. Nationalist leaders have not simply been expressing dissent or putting forward political solutions; they have taken unilateral actions which affect the rights of all Catalans  and, indeed, all Spaniards  without having a mandate to do so. One might argue, in fact, that it is nationalist leaders who have turned a state (in the form of the powerful devolved administration) against its people. What is at stake in the Catalan crisis, then, is not a nineteenth century struggle for national liberation, but rather the very contemporary question of whether elites are answerable to the rule of law.

State Versus People

In 2015, Catalan premier Artur Mas called for regional elections. He did so after a couple of years in which he had reversed his deep unpopularity  the result of government cuts and corruption scandals affecting his party  by blaming Catalonias woes on the Spanish government, and by arguing that, if the region did not receive substantial concessions, it should vote on independence from Spain. Mr. Mas also harked back to the presumed grievance inflicted on Catalonia in 2010, when the Spanish constitutional court struck down some provisions in Catalonias regional charter. This grievance, it is worth pointing out, had not prevented Mr. Mas from voting in 2012 alongside Mr. Rajoys party in order to impose sweeping austerity measures in Catalonia.

The national government explained to Mr. Mas that an independence referendum was impossible: the current constitution, which received the support of 91% of Catalan voters in 1978, does not allow for this type of referendum to be held at a regional level; and a constitutional change would require building broad, cross-party support at the national level. Yet Mr. Mas pushed ahead, claiming that the new regional elections would be a plebiscite on independence.

The results of these elections-turned-plebiscite were clear: 52% of Catalans voted for anti-independence parties. A seriously flawed electoral law, which grants overrepresentation to rural areas, allowed pro-independence parties to achieve a majority of seats in the regional assembly, but it is nevertheless hard to imagine that anyone would have interpreted these results as a mandate for secession.

That, however, was exactly what the nationalist parties did, and the powerful resources of the devolved administration were soon mobilised towards the organization of a referendum on independence. This course of action was despite numerous warnings from the courts that no regional government had the authority to call for such a referendum, and that the new Catalan administration  now headed by Carles Puigdemont  was taking on powers which it did not constitutionally have.

On 6 and 7 September 2017, pro-independence parties passed laws in the regional parliament which would allow for both a referendum on secession and a national transition towards independence. This was accomplished by circumventing the procedures of the chamber and by overruling the parliamentary rights of the non-nationalist minority (which, it must be stressed again, represented the majority of Catalan voters).

If this is alarming for anyone who believes that respect for agreed-upon procedures is an integral part of the democratic process, it was nevertheless in keeping with the ethno-nationalist outlook of Catalan separatists, who have form in disregarding non-nationalists as mere foreigners or -worse- traitors. Indeed, the president of the regional assembly who presided over these fraught proceedings, Carme Forcadell, once explicitly excluded supporters of non-nationalist parties from her definition of the Catalan people.

The measures passed in early September abolished the framework of the same regional constitution which the nationalists had claimed to value so dearly. Their leaders legitimized these moves, as they have often in the past, with the argument that while there is no majority support for independence, there is large support for a referendum on the issue. This is true, yet the more pressing question is how many Catalans were in support of the path of unilateral secession (via referendum) that nationalist leaders had embarked on? The more pressing question is how many Catalans were in support of the path of unilateral secession (via referendum) that nationalist leaders had embarked on?

When viewed this way, the drop-off in support is stark. International audiences whose attention was understandably captured by the images of police action during the referendum of October 1 may be surprised to know that: this was a referendum that the No camp did not recognize as valid  and thus did not participate in; that journalists showed that it was possible for one person to cast multiple ballots on the day; and that the results have yet to be verified by any independent, international authority. Even in this context, and according to the regional governments own  and questionable  figures, only 38% of the Catalan census would have voted for independence. In a poll published a couple of weeks later, only 29% of Catalans favoured declaring secession from Spain on the basis of that vote.

Nevertheless, and once again, nationalist leaders pushed ahead and proclaimed independence on October 27. The effects that this has had on the welfare of their citizens (2900 companies have fled Catalonia since early October, and Catalan society is the most polarized it has ever been) seem to be of no concern to them.

In contrast to all this, the actions of the national government have achieved broad support across the Spanish political spectrum. Mr. Rajoys decision to activate Article 155 of the national constitution, which allows the national government to step in if any of the countrys regions are flouting the constitutional order, was agreed to with the Spanish Socialist Party and the centre-right party Ciudadanos (which, incidentally, is led by a Catalan, Albert Rivera). The decision to sack the regional government and call for new elections were thus not the result of some shadowy authoritarianism, as nationalist leaders would have it, but rather the work of a cross-party front which represents nearly 70% of votes cast in the national elections of June 2016. For many groups and voters who are otherwise actively opposed to Mr. Rajoy, what is most at stake in this crisis is whether a regional elite can hijack that regions institutions.

This in particular is an issue that often gets lost in foreign coverage of the Catalan crisis, but without which it is impossible to understand its recent developments. For many groups and voters who are otherwise actively opposed to Mr. Rajoy, what is most at stake in this crisis is whether a regional elite can hijack that regions institutions and push an agenda for which it does not have majority support, in open defiance of the democratically-sanctioned rule of law; all in the name of diffuse national essences. As someone who has voted against Mr. Rajoy in two general elections (and will likely continue to do so), I consider myself among the many Spaniards for whom the constitutional issues involved in the Catalan crisis go well beyond the question of which party happens to be in power.

Political Prisoners or Politicians in Jail?

Following the ineffectiveness of the declaration of independence, Catalan nationalism has reorganized itself under a new rallying cry: one which calls for the liberation of political prisoners.

These would be both the leaders of nationalist associations Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, and the members of the sacked regional administration, all of whom have been placed in preventative prison pending their upcoming trials. The charges against Cuixart and Sanchez are for directing a crowd against a police unit that was carrying out an investigation, while the government ministers are charged with sedition and misuse of public funds in the lead-up to the declaration of independence.

It is telling that, in recent weeks, a number of activists who were jailed during the Franco dictatorship have come forward saying that the label political prisoners does not apply to Catalan nationalist leaders. Their arguments are simple: it is not the same to rebel against a dictatorship as it is against a democracy and its democratically-sanctioned constitution. They might also point to the fact that the current Spanish judiciary can hardly be considered a puppet of the national government. This became particularly clear a few months ago, when Mr. Rajoy was called upon to testify in an ongoing trial over his partys finances. The judicial system has, in fact, already sent a number of previously high-ranking officials in Mr. Rajoys party to prison over corruption charges.

Indeed, the claim that nationalist leaders currently under investigation should be considered to be political prisoners is not merely disingenuous; it should be offensive to activists, journalists and opposition leaders in authoritarian countries, and to anyone who cares about their struggles. This is because nationalist leaders are not being prosecuted for expressing dissent. On any day of the week one will find an abundant supply of Catalan nationalists putting forward their views both in regional and in national media, and rightly facing no consequences for it. Yet the nationalist leaders declaration of independence was not the expression of dissent, but a top-down push to alter the constitutional order and the entire structure of citizens rights in Spain. The declaration would have made non-separatist Catalans foreigners in their own land, despite their being in the majority of the population. The only reason why this did not happen was because of the national governments decision to intervene. The declaration would have made non-separatist Catalans foreigners in their own land, despite their being in the majority of the population.

Rather than operating on the level of discourse, then, Catalan nationalist leaders have acted on the much harder stuff of citizens rights. In doing this, they have called into question at least one of the pillars of any mature democracy: the limits that the rule of law may place upon the actions of politicians. Meanwhile it is difficult to see why actions taken by the government in Madrid ought to be regarded as a curb on dissent, and not as a preservation of the countrys constitutional order against a threat that has professed itself at-ease with measures that are unilateral, and extrajudicial.
Even though poverty is a difficult, many-faceted problem, the US stands out in how openly it hates the poor, even as its economic system looks increasingly designed to produce more of them.

The Republican party, doing the bidding of members of the 0.1% and ideologues who treat poverty as the result of the lack of a work ethic, have made cutting the food stamp program a top priority. An overview from Huffington Post:

Democrats have warned that after passing a tax bill that adds to the national debt, Republicans will say its all the more urgent to cut Social Security and Medicare. While overhauling those popular programs is a long-term Republican goal, in the near-term conservative lawmakers are more eager to cut food stamps. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), founder of the House Freedom Caucus, told HuffPost on Tuesday that the influential bloc of conservative Republicans will push for welfare reform legislation next year that would add new restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits He said the basic idea would be new restrictions on able-bodied adults  even if they have children  along the lines of a bill he introduced earlier this year. Robert Rector, a welfare expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Jordans bill would cut SNAP spending by 20 percent over 10 years, which would amount to more than $100 billion. Roughly 42 million low-income Americans, of whom 44 percent are children, receive monthly SNAP benefits that can be used to buy food in grocery stores  making it one of the U.S. governments biggest and most expensive economic safety net programs. Jordan and Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) talked about the idea with Trump earlier this year, and Jordan said the president is enthusiastic about it Republicans have used resentment toward the food stamp program  established in 1964 as part of President Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty  as a political weapon since at least the 1970s. Ronald Reagan, during his 1976 presidential run, would tell audiences of a strapping young buck outrageously using food stamps to buy steak.

Before we turn to this Republican implementation of one of Lamberts rules of neoliberalism, Go die, note that Democrats are all with the bogus premise that Federal deficit spending is a problem, and therefore budget cuts are necessary and desirable. Since neither party will cut military spending or corporate pork, the only thing left to cut is social safety nets. So dont kid yourself about the Democrats. Theyll make cuts, but slowly and with feigned regret, while as we can see from the quotes in the HuffPo article, the Republicans make them with glee.

It only took a few minutes on YouTube to find this priceless clip in which a Fox reporter, with a straight face, tells viewers repeatedly that the rich suffered more in the aftermath of the crisis than the poor. Since when is a decline in paper wealth as big a deal as going from poor to desperate?

The Republican canard is the claim that the food stamp program is full of modern welfare queens, slough-offs who need to get off their couches and find work. First, as readers know all too well, there is plenty of un and underemployment in the US. People would not be accepting debilitating warehouse jobs at Amazon if there was adequate demand for workers. Nearly 95% of the jobs created when Obama was in office were part time or contract work. Those willing to work cant necessarily cobble together the equivalent of a full time paycheck.

Second, many jobs pay only the minimum wage, which is below a living wage for a family even with two earners, and below a living wage even for single people in virtually all cities in the US. And what are people in the boonies told to do? Move to cities to get work, even though they seldom have the personal connections to help them land a job there, and often dont have enough scratch to fund a relocation (as in have enough money to put down a deposit on a rental).

Third, in keeping with the fact that many jobs dont pay a living wage, people who are employed are also on food stamps. This article by Peter Van Buren, a former State Department employee who fell into low-wage work after he became a whistleblower and was fired, is important reading. Key section:

20 mega-companies dominate the minimum-wage world. Walmart alone employs 1.4 million minimum-wage workers; Yum Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) is in second place; and McDonalds takes third. Overall, 60 percent of minimum-wage workers are employed by businesses not officially considered small by government standards, and of course carve-outs for really small businesses are possible, as was done with Obamacare. Keep in mind that not raising wages costs you money. Those minimum wage workers who cant make enough and need to go on food assistance? Well, Walmart isnt paying for those food stamps (now called SNAP), you are. The annual bill that states and the federal government foot for working families making poverty-level wages is $153 billion. A single Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year in public assistance money. According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, in many states Walmart employees are the largest group of Medicaid recipients. They are also the single biggest group of food stamp recipients. In other words, those everyday low prices at the chain are, in part, subsidized by your tax money. Meanwhile, an estimated 18 percent of food stamps (SNAP) are spent at Walmart.

Yves here. Do you think the Walmarts of the world will raise wages to compensate for the loss of the food stamp subsidy? No way.

And lets look at another population that disproves the If you are broke, you must be lazy myth. From a must-read Guardian tory on farm suicides:

We were growing food, but couldnt afford to buy it. We worked 80 hours a week, but we couldnt afford to see a dentist, let alone a therapist. Since 2013, net farm income for US farmers has declined 50%. Median farm income for 2017 is projected to be negative $1,325.

Another sign of rising stress: homelessness is up for the first time since 2010. From the Wall Street Journal:

In an annual report to Congress released Wednesday, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data shows the homeless population was 553,742 in 2017, a 0.7% increase from 2016 HUD Secretary Ben Carson said rents are rising faster than incomes in major cities, forcing too many of our neighbors into our shelters and onto our streets... One in four of the nations homeless population could be found in New York City or Los Angeles County, according to the report. New York City had the largest homeless population with 76,501 people, a 4.1% increase from the prior year. Los Angeles County counted 55,188 people living in shelters and on streets, a 26% increase over the prior year. A key difference between the two major metropolitan areas: in New York, 95% were found to be living in shelters, while in Los Angeles County only 25% were in shelters.

Yves here. I question that 95% claim. The homeless often avoid shelters save when the weather is very cold because shelters are perceived to be unsafe. During the brief life of Occupy Wall Street, many homeless people came and camped out in Zucotti Park because Occupy Wall Street provided free food and staying there at night was perceived to be better than going to a shelter. When the encampment was cleared out, some churched opened up to allow the former Zucotti Park denizens sleep there overnight. Our Outis did night duty regularly at one of those churches because they needed people to act as de facto guards, particularly to keep men from trying to force themselves on women. And this was a real issue; I recall Outis describing various safety-related incidents in which hed had to intervene.

Back to the Journal:

Sizable year-over-year increases in the homeless population were registered in several California jurisdictions, including the Sacramento area, 47%, the Oakland area, 36%, and Orange County, 11%. Among major California cities, San Francisco was an outlier, with a 2% decline. The Seattle area, another West Coast region that has struggled with high housing costs, saw an 8.5% increase in its homeless population.

So if more of the working and unemployed poor have food stamps cut, one of the results will be more homelessness, of the visible sort that the Feds were able to count, and the under the radar type of people living in cars.

And as I said, dont expect the Democrats to do much, save for a few bona fide progressives who run on the Democratic party ticket. They also think the well-off deserve their high incomes, and while they express more concern about the poor, they are loath to spend any chips.
Mizoram

PC: Dan Markeye

Renowned for its alluring landscape and pleasant climate, Mizoram in translation means the land of the hill people, which is the abode of various indigenous tribes. The state shares its international borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The ILP can be procured from the liaison officer, Govt of Mizoram, in the following cities - Kolkata, Silchar, Shillong, New Delhi and Guwahati. For those who are entering the state by air, you can obtain the passes from the security officer on arrival at the Lengpui Airport in Aizawal.

Ladakh

PC: Sorcerer81

The region of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir is a very sensitive location as it shares borders with Pakistan and China. While not all parts of the region are open to civilians, an Inner Line Permit is required if you wish to visit the restricted places, such as Dah, Pangong Tso, Nubra Valley, Khardung La, Tso Moriri, Tangyar, the villages of Hanu and several others.

The permits can be obtained from the DC office located near the polo ground of Main Bazaar in Leh town between 9.00 am & 7.00 pm. However, the forms must be submitted before 3.00 pm. One can also get the permits online, but they need to be stamped. Travel agents, too, can get the permits done for the visitors.

Lakshadweep

PC: The.chhayachitrakar

Lakshadweep in translation means one hundred thousand islands and is a union territory of India. The holm is located in the Laccadive Sea and was previously known as the Laccadive, Minicoy and Amindivi islands.

All passengers heading to the union territory must obtain a permit to enter; the permits are available in the official site of the islands, which is available free of cost and is valid for a period of 5 months.

Sikkim

PC: Indrajit Das

The state of Sikkim shares its borders with three countries, China in the north, Bhutan in the east and Nepal in its west. The place does have a number of entry restrictions in place and one requires the ILP to visit the areas of Lachung, Tsomgo Lake, Yumthang, Dzongri, Goechala, Gurudongmar Lake and a number of other places.

The permits for Nathu La and Gurudongmar Lake are issued by the Tourism and Civil Aviation Dept and can be procured at the Bagdogra Airport and Rangpo Check Post. It can also be obtained from the official website of the state.

Arunachal Pradesh

PC: Sathis Babu

The land of dawn-lit mountains, Arunachal Pradesh is the north-easternmost state in India and shares its borders with Bhutan in the west, Myanmar in the east and China in the north. Every tourist requires a the Inner Line Permit to visit this beautiful land.

The permits can be obtained from the resident commissioner, Govt of Arunachal Pradesh, from the cities of Kolkata, Shillong, Guwahati and New Delhi. Apart from this one can also get the forms online.
NATO Allies and partners began this week helping Albania cope with the most severe rainfalls ever recorded in the country. Albania requested assistance from the NATOs Euro Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) on 4 December, following the onset of heavy rainfalls in central and southern parts of the country. According to the Albanian authorities, the floods damaged more than 4,500 buildings, 36 power stations and dozens of roads. The floods also led to the temporary closure of Tiranas main airport and to evacuations.

NATO Allies and partner countries responded immediately to Albanias request this week. Bulgaria, France, Montenegro, Slovenia and Slovakia well as Austria offered assistance, including water rescue equipment, power generators and temporary shelter.

Other NATO Allies and partners are considering providing additional assistance in the coming days.

The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) is NATOs main civil emergency response mechanism, and functions as a clearing-house system for coordinating disaster relief assistance.
On Friday, 8 December 2017, the NATO Deputy Secretary General, The Honourable Ms. Rose Gottemoeller will travel to Chisinau where she will inaugurate the NATO Liaison Office Moldova together with the Prime Minister, Mr. Pavel Filip.

During her visit, Ms. Gottemoeller will also meet with the President, H.E. Mr. Igor Dodon, the Prime Minister, Mr. Pavel Filip and the Minister of Defence, Mr. Eugen Sturza.

The Deputy Secretary General will also participate in a conference on NATO-Moldova Cooperation where she will deliver a keynote speech followed by a Q&A session at the Radisson Blu Leogrand Hotel.

Media Advisory

(local timing)

+10:15 Joint press conference with the Prime Minister  NATO Liaison Office

The press conference will be streamed live on the NATO website.

Still and video images of the event will be available on the NATO website after the event.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @Gottemoeller)
(As delivered)

Thank you, Mr. Secretary General.

Two days ago in Brussels, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Report of the Council on the Future Tasks of the Alliance  better known as the Harmel Report, after its main author the Belgian diplomat and then Foreign Minister, Pierre Harmel.

While reasserting NATOs basic principles of military security  deterrence and defence  it also introduced the policy of detente through political dialogue. This dual-track approach, adopted by NATO 50 years ago, has served us well ever since.

Todays security environment is fundamentally different than the one we faced during the Cold War. The principles that guide us, however, still ring true.

The decisions coming out of the Warsaw Summit on NATOs dual-track approach are consistent with the Harmel Report and with the enduring principles outlined therein.

NATO is a defensive alliance, an organization that understands the importance of deterrence and defence and the role they play in providing for stability and peace. The needs for deterrence and dialogue are intertwined  complementary, not contradictory.

It is my hope, in the context of the global challenges we are discussing this afternoon, that NATO and its dual-track approach can serve as a beacon to others who share these goals  deterrence and defence, stability and peace.

I want to stress in saying this that while we recognize NATO is a Euro-Atlantic organization and will remain one, our approach may serve as a model well beyond our region.

It is important that we have this discussion today because the peace and security that many of us are working to preserve is at risk.

Right here in the Euro-Atlantic region, the rules-based international order is being undermined by the illegal annexation of Crimea and the ongoing destabilization in eastern Ukraine.

Fundamental principles of the OSCE are being challenged principles enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the Paris Charter of 1990, the Istanbul Charter of 1999, the Astana Declaration of 2010, and most recently, the Hamburg Declaration from last December.

And this challenge to international order, unfortunately, has contributed to a lack of trust.

Trust is key. And I want to applaud the OSCEs Structured Dialogue initiative for its role in addressing this problem. Agreed only one year ago at Hamburg, it has been serving as a forum for discussing threats as well as near and long-term challenges to European security.

NATO Allies attach a great deal of importance to the role of the OSCE in fostering dialogue, building trust, and upholding the rules-based international order.
UML candidate Tulachan elected federal parliament member from Mustang

CPN-UML candidate Prem Prasad Tulachan has been elected as the federal parliament member from Mustang district.
(Natural News) Financial figurehead David Stockman has issued a stern warning for everyone involved, or considering involvement, with Bitcoin. In his personal view, the popular cryptocurrency is currently in the throes of a major bubble, and at some point soon it will eventually become so large that it finally bursts  to the financial detriment of millions.

A former United States Politician who served both as a Republican U.S. Representative for the state of Michigan and as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, Stockmans opinions on financial matters are taken seriously in the media. Last year around this time, he urged CNBC investors to sell everything because he saw a recession coming down the pike in 2017.

This recession never came to bear (though it presumably still could with just a few weeks left in 2017), but hes still considered to be a respected voice on how to be financially savvy. And hes now convinced that many investors are headed straight towards a cliff  especially those who are putting their faith in making bit returns on Bitcoin.

From bitcoin to Amazon, the financials, the Russell 2000 and most everything else in between, the casinos are digesting no information except the price action and are relentlessly rising on nothing more than pure momentum. The mania has gone full retard, he wrote in a recent article published to his blog, David Stockmans Contra Corner.

 Bitcoin is neither an outlier nor a one-off freak; its a poster boy for an unhinged financial system where honest price discovery, two-way markets, fear of risk and financial discipline have been completely destroyed by the central banks.

Cryptocurrencies are a no go, Stockman insists

While admitting that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have the potential to become solid forms of private money and payment systems that exist away from the grasping hand of the Deep State, he also says that many of them represent runaway bubbles that eventually generate their own demise.

Just in the year 2017, Bitcoin, in particular, has seen unprecedented increases in value relative to the U.S. dollar. On January 1, 2017, the price of Bitcoin had just topped $1,000 per coin. Fast-forward to December 1, 2017, and the price of Bitcoin blew right on past $10,000 per coin.

This might seem like a tremendously promising investment for people on the sidelines to consider, what with such massive increases, right? Wrong, according to Stockman. After pulling the data points showing how long it took for Bitcoin to go from $0 to $1,000  1,789 days to be exact  he then compared this to how long it took for Bitcoin to jump from $10,000 to $11,000  and everything in between.

In essence, the price of Bitcoin has been increasing exponentially ever since day one, an indication that it has reached mania levels at which every individual and his mother is now trying to snatch their piece of the Bitcoin pie. Eventually something has to give, and Stockman predicts that its going to get really, really ugly.

This exponential sequence, he says, is not the birthing throes of a new money being born; its just another iteration of the same old lemmings stampeding toward the cliff.

Commenting as well on President Trumps new tax plan during a recent segment with Fox Business Neil Cavuto, Stockman had a similarly sour view of what it will realistically bring about.

This is an economic dud, it is a political landmine and it is an ideological imposter parading as a Reaganesque supply-chain tax cut when its nothing like that, hes quoted as saying. Its a wish list of businesses and Wall Street.

Sources for this article include:

DavidStockmanContraCorner.com

CNBC.com

BitRaped.com

CoinDesk.com

FoxBusiness.com
(Natural News) We have been waging war with germs for the longest time, it seems. Since we were young, we have been taught that germs are harmful and that we should make sure we are clean all the time. It is a lesson that echoes even today, with the swaths of products that ensure you are spotless at all times.

It turns out, the phrase at all times may be the reason why we are losing out on sickness these days.

In the past two decades, asthma, allergies, and immune disorders have been on the rise all over the world, according to childrens allergist Dominique Bullens. People also noticed that children in large-scale daycare centers developed fewer allergies and that the chances to become allergic go down as from the fourth child in a family.

Bullens attributes this to the hygiene hypothesis, which states that lifestyle changes in industrial countries have contributed to a decline of infectious diseases. However, with the fall of infectious diseases, cases of allergic and autoimmune diseases have begun to elevate. This was first theorized by British epidemiologist David Strachan in 1989.

He postulated that an allergy is a sign that our immune system is spiraling out of control. With the introduction of a lot of cleaning products, our bodies have been affected by it to a level that our immune system is compromised.

Take the chemical triclosan, for example. This chemical was found in many household and cleaning products. However, a study conducted by the University of Michigan reports that prolonged exposure to soaps and gels containing triclosan can result in allergies in children. Aside from this, the substance poses an environmental hazard and is known to be an endocrine disrupting compound (EDC). (Related: More proof of hygiene theory  exposure to microbes help kids breathe better.)

According to Dorothy Matthews, a biologist at the Russel Sage Castle in New York, this reaction may be our bodies overreacting to helpful microbes, as our bodys immune systems have already forgotten how to co-exist with them.

This is why, instead of treating our bodies like hospitals, we should learn how to treat it as a field.

We shouldnt be turning our homes into hospital environments. That should be the message: a germ-free life is not healthier and germs arent bad. Bullens adds. Were constantly dragging more than 1.5 kilos of them with us in our body: each of us is carrying more germs than there are people on this planet.

She continues by saying that to there can be detrimental effects to being too clean. Take washing your hands: if a person washes his hands using cleaners and antibacterial soaps, he runs that risk of destroying his hands skin flora, which can heighten the risk of infection. However, using water alone can get the job done, while still keep some of the germs that are useful. The same applies to washing intimates: do not drown it in bactericides, just wash it and let nature run its course.

Of course, the advice is taken with a grain of salt. Can we have problems with being filthy? How long do we wash it then? How often? Researchers answer that not with how long you wash, but how well you do it. Good hygiene is not a deep-down clean of all areas of our body. Rather, it is a targeted approach that aims to address necessary areas. In this manner, our bodys natural flora is not disturbed as much as we clean ourselves.

If you want to learn more about the human body and overall health, you can visit NaturalHealth.news.

Sources include:

Nieuws.kuleuven.be

ScienceDaily.com

BBC.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov
(Natural News) If youre an illegal alien with a penchant for violent crime, San Francisco is the place you want to be. Not only is the landscape breathtaking and the weather comfortably mild year round, but this iconic liberal enclave is also a sanctuary city that provides refuge for people who live in the United States illegally, even going so far as to offer get-out-of-jail-free cards to any and all illegals who commit crimes there.

One of the most recent examples of this was the acquittal of an illegal immigrant murderer by the name of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. Despite confessing to the 2015 murder of Kate Steinle as she walked on a busy San Francisco pier with her father, Zarate was declared to be not guilty of this crime. The only crime the jury convicted Zarate of committing was felony possession of a firearm, staying true to the citys anti-gun reputation.

The shocking announcement of the jurys decision was quick to make national headlines, illustrating how sanctuary status has turned many formerly great cities into cesspools of crime and lawlessness. And San Francisco, as desirable as it might seem to some, is certainly no exception.

The jury of six women and six men considered charges against Garcia Zarate that include murder, assault with a deadly weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm in the death of (Kathryn) Steinle, a 32-year-old Pleasanton native and San Francisco resident, local news affiliates reports.

Defense attorney in this travesty of a case had the gall to threaten President Trump and Vice President Pence

Zarates lawyer in the case is fully aware of the fact that millions of law-abiding Americans are absolutely outraged over the ruling, which has allowed his illegal Mexican alien client, who just so happens to be a five-time deportee and seven-time convicted felon, to once again be turned loose on society. But rather than sympathize with them, he dug in his heels and actually lobbed accusations and threats against President Trump and his cabinet.

For those who might criticize this verdict  there are a number of people who have commented on this case in the last couple of years; the Attorney General of the United States and the President and Vice President of the United States, stated Matt Gonzalez, Zarates defense attorney.

Let me just remind them: They are themselves under investigation by a special prosecutor in Washington D.C. and they may soon avail themselves of the presumption of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, so I ask that they reflect on that before they comment or disparage the results of this case.

Gonzalez sure has a lot of nerve making such statements after shamelessly fighting for the release of his convicted criminal alien client. Hes now got a whole lot of blood on his hands, as does the city of San Francisco which, had it done its job in reporting Zarate to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, this murder never would have happened in the first place.

What San Francisco is communicating to the world with this whole saga is that it would rather harbor criminal aliens who dont even belong here in order to maintain its image of tolerance and political correctness, than protect the innocent, law-abiding citizens who live there legally. This is the nature of sanctuary zones in general, a full list of which is available through the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

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, commented Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the case. San Franciscos decision to protect criminal aliens led to the preventable and heartbreaking death of Kate Steinle.

Follow more news on totally insane current events at Insanity.news.

Sources for this article include:

SanFrancisco.CBSLocal.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Months ago critics of special counsel Robert Mueller pointed out that as he was assembling his legal team while ramping up his probe of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton  which we now know is completely bogus  he appeared to be putting together a hit squad of Democrat-leaning lawyers.

Four top lawyers hired by Mueller have contributed tens of thousands of dollars over the years to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates, including former President Barack Obama and President Donald J. Trumps 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, Lifezette reported in June.

As further noted by The National Sentinel, one of those attorneys is Jeannie Rhee. She has worked as a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation and actually helped persuade a federal judge to block a conservative activists attempts to require the former first couple to respond under oath to questions under oath surrounding their family-operated charity. (Related: Now DEMS have a Russia problem.)

Also, Rhee donated the maximum individual amount of $2,700 to Clinton in 2015 and 2016. In addition, she gave Obama 2,300 in 2008 and $2,500 in 2011, the site reported. While still working for the Justice Department, she donated $250 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp.

Rhee has also given to other Democrats, including Sens. Mark Udall of New Mexico, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Now, as exclusively reported by Fox News Laura Ingraham on her program Tuesday, Rhee also worked in the Obama Justice Department as a deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel, which provided legal advice to the Obama White House.

Moreover, Rhee served as the personal attorney of Obamas deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.

Adding more fuel to the bias fire, Ingraham noted that Rhee also worked in private practice with Andrew Weissmann, another Mueller team member who received deserved criticism this past week after it was discovered that he sent demonstrably partisan email to a former top Justice Department official. He praised outgoing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to enforce Trumps first travel ban.

Im so proud and in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respect, he wrote. Trump fired Yates after she refused to do her job.

Rhee becomes the third member of the Mueller team to demonstrate brazen partisanship towards the party opposed to the president, behind FBI counterterrorism investigator Peter Strzok (who has since been demoted off the investigation) and Weissmann, who also has a history of donating to Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, during his first campaign for president, when he wrote a check for $2,300.

There is no way these people are going to be fair to Trump  a fact not lost on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal advisor to the president, The National Sentinel noted.

Ingraham agrees.

What Mueller did was hire a pedigree team of obvious partisans, she said. They should all step aside, including Bob Mueller.

Shes not the first to call for Mueller to step down, especially as more is learned about Strzok  who exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Clinton emails with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whom he was also having an extramarital affair with.

Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring. check fec reports. Time to rethink, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., tweeted in June, using the acronym for the Federal Election Commission, which tracks political donations.

In November, House Republicans introduced a resolution calling on Mueller to step down after its become obvious hes a deep state operative who is so overwhelmingly compromised its hard to imagine were watching real life and not a Hollywood political thriller.

Muellers got to go Congressional pressure is growing by the hour, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said. Mueller was not a spectator to the transactions regarding the Uranium One scandal and other events that now give us grave concern, he added.

Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, writing at network affiliate site News Target, added that it is time to ARREST Robert Mueller, James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Peter Strzok and the rest of the lawless gang trying to overthrow America.

Read more of J.D. Heyes work at The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NewsTarget.com

DeepState.news

TheNationalSentinel.com
Press Release

The Symrise Global Culinary Team has launched the Joy of Authentic Food Initiative which helps food manufacturers create the unique food experiences their customers demand by capturing the best of science and nature.

Noah Michaels, Senior Chef and Culinary Team Leader, stated that the global Joy of Authentic Food program is part of a natural evolution that is taking place in the culinary arena. Consumers, especially the influential Millennial demographic, want to have real food experiences. They are watching cooking shows that highlight ethnic and local food, going on citywide tasting treks, shopping at local farmers markets and attending interactive chef-hosted events. These consumers go out of their way to know where their food is coming from, engaging with the farmers, bakers, butchers and artisans.

Chef Michaels explained that the Joy of Authentic Food is a collaborative, multileveled working approach with peer-to-peer partnership at the heart of it. This is clearly illustrated by the three-year journey taken by Symrise NA to elevate the Culinary Center to the high standards Symrise had set. He explains, In addition to completely rebuilding our culinary facility, an increased staff that includes two certified research chefs, have come together to bring exceptional culinary capabilities to support our customers. Our culinary flavor experts participate in an integrated concept development process, aiming toward long term partnerships with customers by combining nature  the commitment to source only the highest quality natural raw materials  with science  our technological expertise that allows us to interpret and translate these into new flavor concepts. We are dedicated to helping our customers discover, build and deliver the Joy of Authentic Food in their products, significantly supporting them through our industry leadership in high performance herb, spice and vegetable flavors  the core elements in creating authentic food that delivers incomparable joy to consumers.

Noah also explained that the Culinary Centers flavor professionals employ the Companys complete Authentic Food culinary toolkit to bring innovative solutions which deliver the Joy of Authentic Food to customers. The toolkit features the widest range of backwards integrated materials, solutions for clean labeling requirements and positive claims, superior supply security and regulatory and quality assurance. He said, Our analytical expertise, sensory modeling, flavor design and culinary application capabilities provide exceptional product development support for our customers.

Noah cited Symrise programs that support the Joy of Authentic Food Program. He highlighted access to culinary insights from Symrises internal Chefs United program which is comprised of 35,000 worldwide professional chefs. He also referenced Symrises online Flavor Designers Club whose participants help in predicting winning solutions through sensory and preference models.

About Symrise:

Symrise is a global supplier of fragrances, flavorings, cosmetic base materials and substances as well as functional ingredients. Its clients include manufacturers of perfumes, cosmetics, food and beverages, the pharmaceutical industry and producers of nutritional supplements and pet food.

With sales of more than  2.9 billion in 2016, Symrise is among the global leaders in the market for flavors and fragrances. Headquartered in Holzminden, Germany, the Group is represented in over 40 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Asia, the United States and Latin America.

Symrise works with its clients to develop new ideas and market-ready concepts for products that form an indispensable part of everyday life. Economic success and corporate responsibility are inextricably linked as part of this process. Symrise  always inspiring morewww.symrise.com
In a crowded military courtroom on Alamedas Coast Guard Island, attorneys made their opening statements Wednesday in the trial of a US Coast Guard member accused of neglecting his three-year-old daughter after she suffered injuries that led to her death.

Jimmy Barlow, 31, faces four counts of child endangerment in a military court-martial at the same time his wife Holli Barlow faces similar charges in Alameda County. The charges stem from the 2011 death of Eden Lynch, which the Alameda County coroners office ruled a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head. Eden had been in the couples care for about four months when she died.

In a 45 minute opening statement, the defense team argued that Barlow cooperated with medical staff and answered their questions about what happened to his daughter, and that Barlow was betrayed by social workers and medical professionals who reported suspected child abuse to police after Barlows daughter was rushed to the hospital in an unresponsive state. Barlows attorney, Colby Vokey, called Edens death a tragic accident resulting from a fall down a flight of concrete steps outside of Barlows apartment about a week before she collapsed. Vokey, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the United States Marine Corps, argued that Barlow could not have done anything that would have prevented Edens death. He told the court that Barlow was just learning to be a father and was making great progress with his daughter before her tragic death.

But Coast Guard prosecutors say Barlow failed to protect or seek medical care for Eden after she suffered the serious injuries that ultimately led to her death. Lt. Commander Karl Mueller argued Barlow saw bruises on Edens neck and witnessed strange behavior in the days leading up to her death, such as choking herself with a necklace and eating her own feces, but failed to take her to the hospital or have her evaluated by medical professionals. Prosecutors said they plan to show text messages in court from Barlow to his then girlfriend, now wife, Holli who provided daytime care for Eden, including one text from Barlow saying that Eden needed her dad to whoop that ass.

Barlows attorneys never disputed Edens odd behavior, but attributed her actions to major changes and disruptions in her life. They placed the blame on her recent move to Alameda after her mother Erica Lynch lost custody of Eden. Defense attorneys said Barlow was concerned about Edens care by her mother, who had been abusing drugs.

Following opening arguments, prosecutors began calling key witnesses and presenting evidence, such as the 9-1-1 call made by Holli Barlow when she found Eden unresponsive in their Alameda apartment.

Lt. Commander Geralyn Van de Krol played the recording, in which Holli Barlow frantically tells a dispatcher that Eden is convulsing and barely breathing and that she has recently been acting weird, banging her head on the wall and scratching herself.

Following the 9-1-1 call, prosecutors called two first responders to the witness stand to testify about what they saw when first arriving on scene at Barlows apartment.

Alameda Fire Department Captain Sam Yussim testified that when he arrived on scene, he saw Eden lying on the ground in a bedroom.

I noticed she had some bruising under her eyes. Raccoon eyes. It looked like two black eyes, Yussim said. There were some scratches on her neck and chest area.

Yussim further described for the court that Eden appeared wet, as though water had been splashed on her to revive her.

He recounted that when Jimmy Barlow arrived, he did not talk to paramedics or ask them any questions about Eden; instead he went to the kitchen and spoke with Holli. Yussim testified that neither of them rode in the ambulance to Childrens Hospital Oakland with Eden.

It didnt seem like he wanted to have much to do with what we were doing, Yussim said. I remember carrying this little girl out on a backboard and walking past the kitchen where he and the young lady [Holli] were talking.

Yussim said of the thousands of calls hes responded to in his career, this one was burned into his memory.

Alameda Fire Department captain, David Buckley, said the injuries he saw on Eden did not seem to match the Barlows account that Edens injuries were the result of a fall down a flight of stairs more than a week before.

It was my gut feeling that what we found as far as injuries did not add up, Buckley said, explaining why they decided to call Alameda police.

Prosecutors also called Holli Barlow as a witness. She was taking care of Eden while Jimmy was at work on the day Eden collapsed. With her attorney Randolph Daar standing beside her, Barlow took the stand and exercised her 5th Amendment rights protecting her from self-incrimination and then left the courtroom.

The days final witness, Dr. Robert Crawford-Jacubiak, the Director of the Center for Child Protection at Childrens Hospital Oakland, was called by hospital staff to examine Eden when she arrived because of the suspicious nature of her injuries.

Crawford-Jacubiak told the court that children rarely show up at the hospital with injuries like Edens.

The child had a collection of injuries that are unusual for a three-year-old, he said. The ear, the eye, under the eye, the neck, the jaw are all very unusual places for a child to have a collection of bruises. This is not the pattern of bruising that you typically see. When they have bruising on their face, sides of their head, it would immediately cause me to ask the question, Why did this child have these bruises?

On cross examination, when asked by defense attorney Vokey if the injuries on Edens neck could have been caused

by the toddler choking herself with her own necklace, he said he didnt believe that was a likely explanation for the bruising he witnessed.

I certainly think choking with a necklace could cause injuries like that to the neck, Crawford-Jakubiak said. Ive never heard of a three-year-old child being responsible for causing those injuries to herself.

Crawford-Jakubiak said if Edens injuries had been caused by a fall down a flight of concrete steps, she would likely have cuts and bruises on her shins or elbows. When examining Eden at the hospital, Crawford-Jackubiak said he found no such injuries.

Among those present in the courtroom were the prosecutors in charge of Holli Barlows case in Alameda County, Holli Barlows defense team, various members of the Coast Guard, and a large group of Erica Lynchs family members.

Eric and Rhonda Lynch, Edens maternal grandparents, traveled from their home in Maine to watch the trial. Grandmother Rhonda Lynch was not allowed in the courtroom because shes scheduled to testify as a witness in the trial, but Edens grandfather Eric wiped away tears during the prosecutions opening statements and when photos of Eden in the hospital were shown.

I want to see justice served, Eric Lynch said. And I believe it will be served.

Erica, Edens mother, was also in the audience for most of the day.

I just miss her laughter, she said. I miss her calling me Mommy. I just miss her.

Both Jimmy and Holli Barlow have declined to be interviewed by NBC Bay Area.

Jimmy Barlow elected to have a bench trial, which means a judge rather than a jury will decide the outcome of the case. The judge said he expects the trial to conclude by the end of next week.

NBC Bay Area will continue following the trial.
What to Know The fire had grown to around 12,605 acres by 7:25 p.m.

Evacuation orders were affecting about 110,000 households, and residents would not be allowed to return home for another night.

All LAUSD schools in the San Fernando Valley and some on the west side of LA will be closed on Thursday and Friday.

This story is no longer being updated. For the latest information on the Creek Fire, click here.

A stubborn, wind-driven brush fire that raged through the hills above Sylmar and threatened thousands of homes was holding at 12,605 acres burned Wednesday, but crews were bracing for violent gusts expected to return by nightfall.

The blaze, which broke out at 3:42 a.m. Tuesday in the area of Gold Creek and Little Tujunga roads in the Kagel Canyon area, was estimated at 12,605 acres by late afternoon Wednesday. More than 1,600 firefighters and other personnel were deployed against the fire, which was 5 percent contained.

Three firefighters were injured Tuesday, and were hospitalized in stable condition.

At least 30 homes were destroyed, about 20 of them in the Little Tujunga, Kagel Canyon and Lopez Canyon areas. The other 10 homes were within Los Angeles city limits, according to Margaret Stewart of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Virginia Padilla, whose family owns a ranch in Sylmar, told reporters the fire killed at least 30 of the ranch's horses. Padilla said she and her family were able to get out of her home just in time but were not able to take their horses with them as they had to evacuate immediately when they were awakened Tuesday morning.

Virginia Padilla and her family were devastated to learn that their family ranch, which houses more than 60 horses, was burned to the ground on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017 during the Creek Fire in Sylmar.

Evacuation orders first issued Tuesday were affecting about 110,000 households, according to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who said evacuated residents would not be allowed to return home for another night.

"We realize what an inconvenience this is and how traumatic this is to so many people, but we've watched fires in Northern California, we've seen through experience it's much better to err on the side of safety,'' Garcetti said at a Wednesday afternoon news briefing.

"And while the wind is not as strong at this moment as we have had in some of the briefings before and certainly yesterday, it is an unpredictablen wind and we do expect extreme wind starting at 10 o'clock today."

All Los Angeles Unified School District schools in the San Fernando Valley and some on the west side of Los Angeles -- a total of 265 district schools and affiliated charter schools -- will be closed on Thursday and Friday, district officials said. A full list of closed schools was available at lausd.net.

All Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District campuses will also remain closed Thursday.

An estimated 2,500 structures were threatened by the Creek Fire at one point, according to the U.S. Forest Service, which was fighting the blaze in a unified command with the Los Angeles city and county fire departments.

Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas warned that the battle was likely to continue until at least Friday.

While there was a lull in the winds Wednesday, allowing crews to work on containment lines around the various fires, a "significant'' wind event is expected Wednesday night and into Thursday, with hurricane-force winds possible, Terrazas said.

The LAFD's "brush burning index" that rates the fire danger was at 296 -- "the highest number I've ever seen in my career," according to Terrazas.

He said the usual threshold for extreme fire conditions is 165.

"Tonight may be the worst night of all,'' Terrazas said.

The LAPD was placed on a citywide tactical alert, which allows commanders maximum flexibility in deploying resources.

As the fire burned on Tuesday, the Foothill (210) Freeway was closed in both directions between the Golden State (5) Freeway and the Glendale (2) Freeway, but the freeway had been reopened by Wednesday afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol.

As the fire expanded and jumped south of the Foothill Freeway on Tuesday, so did the mandatory evacuation area. Evacuations were initially ordered in the area north of the Foothill Freeway from Glenoaks Boulevard on the west to the border with La Crescenta on the east.

But by early Tuesday afternoon, the eastern boundary of the evacuation area had been expanded to the Haynes Canyon area. And an area south of the Foothill Freeway was ordered evacuated in Shadow Hills between Sunland Boulevard to the south, Wentworth Street to the north and Tuxford Street to the west, officials said.

A dozen evacuation centers were opened throughout the San Fernando Valley, and all were accepting evacuees, including those with pets.

The fire also forced a mass evacuation of large animals, primarily horses but also others such as alpacas.

Many of the animals were being housed at Pierce College and the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, which were at capacity Wednesday afternoon and not accepting additional animals.

Horses and other large animals can be brought to the Hansen Dam Equestrian Center at 11127 Orcas Ave. in Sylmar and the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds at 2551 W. Avenue H, in Lancaster.

Dogs, cats and small pets can be brought to these locations:

-- Sylmar Recreation Center, 13109 Borden Avenue, in Sylmar;

-- West Valley Animal Shelter, 20655 Plummer St., Los Angeles; and

-- East Valley Animal Shelter, 14409 Vanowen St., Los Angeles.

Residents were urged to heed evacuation orders and to prepare well in advance of commands to leave home.

"Pack a go bag," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell.

McDonnell suggested residents take photo IDs, medications, food and water -- enough for a couple of days -- and important documents like birth certificates, passports and licenses.

He said 70 mph winds were forecast for Wednesday night.

"Please take this serious," McDonnell said. "Pack a bag, be ready to go, have your cell phone charged and please, heed the warning when we ask you to leave an area."
An alternate juror in the Kate Steinle murder trial said in an interview Wednesday with NBC Bay Area that the acquittal verdict was correct.



Phil Van Stockum first made the comment in a first-person account of the proceedings for Politico magazine, explaining why the not-guilty verdict was the right decision.

NBC Bay Area reporter Sam Brock sits down with an alternate juror in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a mechanical engineer who sat through the entire proceeding, saw all the evidence and says the jury's not-guilty verdict was the correct one.

Van Stockum sat through the entire trial, saw all the evidence presented, discussed the verdict with the jury after it was delivered and concluded that it was the right decision, he wrote in the article that was posted on Politico.com Wednesday.

However, Van Stockum was not part of the deliberations.

He said there was no evidence the defendant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, planned to kill Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015.

NBC Bay Area reporter Sam Brock sits down with an alternate juror in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a mechanical engineer who sat through the entire proceeding, saw all the evidence and says the jury's not-guilty verdict was the correct one.

Van Stockum agrees with the defense's opinion that murder charges should not have been brought against Garcia Zarate, a Mexican man in the United States illegally. He also outlines how the specific instructions given to the jury as well as another questionable move by the prosecution led to the not guilty verdict on manslaughter charges.

The jurors had to determine whether Garcia Zarate was holding a gun before it killed Steinle. Garcia Zarate told jurors he fired the weapon by accident, that he didn't know it was a gun until it fired.



Van Stockum, a mechanical engineer, also provides details about the gun and Garcia Zarate's actions before and after it went off.

NBC Bay Area reporter Sam Brock sits down with an alternate juror in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a mechanical engineer who sat through the entire proceeding, saw all the evidence and says the jury's not-guilty verdict was the correct one.

"In a criminal trial, the defendant has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt, instead of the other way around, " Van Stockum said in an interview with NBC Bay Area. "That presumption of innocence includes a stipulation that if there is a reasonable interpretation of the evidence that favors the defendant for any particular charge, even if there are other reasonable interpretations that incriminate him, the jury has to choose the one that favors the defendant."

To that end, Van Stockum said, the prosecution's job was to eliminate any reasonable interpretation of the evidence that favors innocence.

Van Stockum said the fact the bullet ricocheted 12 feet in front of Garcia Zarate and then traveled another 78 feet was critical evidence that the defendant was not aiming at Steinle. He said that evidence, pointing to an accidental firing of the gun, was important because murder and manslaughter charges require specific types of intent.

NBC Bay Area reporter Sam Brock sits down with an alternate juror in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a mechanical engineer who sat through the entire proceeding, saw all the evidence and says the jury's not-guilty verdict was the correct one.

Van Stockum said it was not an easy decision to come forward with the article and the interview. He consulted with his wife, family and other people close to him. Ultimately, the confusion and backlash over the verdict persuaded him to speak out.

"The role of a juror is to enact the justice that is enshrined in the law of the United States," he said. "And that is what the jurors did in this case, and they could not have done otherwise lawfully. I think we should commend them instead of calling them despicable."


An elderly man died and two others were transported to the hospital Thursday following a carbon monoxide incident in San Francisco, according to a fire official.

At least six people were exposed during the incident, which occurred around 4:30 a.m. at a residential structure with two units located at 301 Moultrie St. in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, Lt. Jonathan Baxter with the San Francisco Fire Department said.

Arriving firefighters found four people from the upper unit complaining of symptoms associated with carbon monoxide poisoning, Baxter said. Those people also told firefighters that two people were living in the downstairs unit.

Firefighters knocked on the lower unit's door, but no one answered, according to Baxter. Crews barged into the residence and found an unconscious elderly woman near the front door. She was rushed to the hospital in serious condition.

"We're commending the individuals from the upper levels for calling 911," Baxter said. "They basically saved the life of the lady who was unconscious that's currently at the hospital. If she had been exposed to these gases for any longer time, she probably would have been a fatality as well."

An unconscious elderly man was also found in the lower level residence, Baxter said. Crews tried to bring him back to life, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

One person from the upper level was transported to the hospital after complaining of symptoms, according to Baxter. The other residents were eventually allowed to go back inside.



Baxter said the odorless and colorless gas may have come from a water heater or heater, but an investigation is ongoing.

Baxter said the incident is a good reminder for all residents to have working carbon monoxide detectors in their homes and check with PG&E to make sure their heating sources are up and running properly.

"PG&E has a very important message as they're evaluating the scene right now and that is if you're opening up your appliances or starting your appliances, specifically your heaters cause it's getting cold, to call PG&E and they will actually come to your house and check your appliances," Baxter said.

PG&E customers can call 1-800-743-5000 to learn more about having their appliances inspected, Baxter said.
The chief digital officer of Stanfords Graduate School of Business has resigned after the university failed to disclose a data breach of personal information.

According to the SF Gate, Ranga Jayaraman, who had worked at Stanford for six years, e-mailed colleagues Saturday morning to announce his resignation.

I take full responsibility for the failure to recognize the scope and nature of the  data exposure and report it in a timely manner to the dean and the University Information Security and Privacy Office, said Jayaraman. I would like to express my most sincere apologies  to anyone whose personal information might potentially have been compromised.

The data breach came to light after Adam Allcock, an MBA student, revealed that thousands of confidential student financial aid records were visible to those within the business school. Student information was not the only data people could see, employee information such as social security numbers of nearly 10,000 employees and former employees were visible, according to a report by the SF Gate.

Allcock alerted technology officials and also analyzed the financial aid data on how the business school awarded scholarship money. His study revealed that despite claims that tuition discounts were awarded on a student need basis that was not the case. For years, the business school had been awarding discounts to non-needy applicants in hopes of attracting international students, women and students with a finance background.

Allcock showed his data analysis to Jonathan Levin, the business schools dean, alerting officials for the second time of the data breach in October. This time, Stanford officials confirmed a separate data breach, which was revealed by the Stanford Daily.

The university apologized for its failure to disclose their mishandling of confidential information and informed thousands of people who were affected.

Jayaraman told the SF Chronicle that he didnt intend to deceive anyone when he decided not to tell campus officials.

A decision like that is always a judgment call, said Jayaraman. I thought wed done a detailed enough evaluation, and we didnt hear there was super-sensitive information, so I decided to let it go.

NBC Bay Area reached out to Stanford University for comment and did not immediately respond.
Thousands of Oakland Unified School District employees had their most recent paychecks deducted from their checking accounts this week due to a "human error," according to a district spokesman.

In a tweet promising that the funds would be returned by end of Wednesday, district officials said, "The payroll issue was NOT caused by anything the District did or did not do."

About an hour later, spokesman John Sasaki retracted that statement, saying that the snafu was the result of a school district worker's error.

The SF Gate put the number of impacted employees at more than 2,800.

The banking mistake was first reported around 9:30 a.m.

"We have been informed by a number of staff members throughout our organization that there was some kind of problem with their most recent pay from the district. The bank OUSD uses to send out payroll, Union Bank, has apparently reversed the pay for these employees," according to a letter penned by Sasaki and posted on the school district's Twitter page.

Apologizing for the inconvenience and stressing that district leaders and Union Bank were investigating the incident, Sasaki said that not all employees had their paychecks withdrawn.

"It is important to note that this is not the result of District funds or any other issue with our finances," he said by way of reassurance.

That said, Sasaki told the SF Gate that it's unlikely that an employee was able to reverse thousands of payroll deposits simply with a click. District officials, however, don't believe this is an act of sabotage, he stressed.

The employee who made the mistake has not been identified and it remains unknown whether there is disciplinary action in the person's future.

Check back for updates.
The Thomas Fire has destroyed over 150 structures since it first blazed on Monday night, including Ventura County Fire Captain, Tom Lanskis, home.

Ive watched people my whole career sift through things and I feel for them, said Tom Lanski. Obviously its really hitting home now.

Tom Lanksi had planned to spend his birthday Tuesday with his family, including his daughter Amy, who is an intern for NBC Bay Area and a San Jose State University student. Amy was in town for her fathers birthday celebration when he was quickly called to the fire line.

Luckily for the Lanski family, they were able to pack their cars with photos and other irreplaceable belongings before the fire scorched their neighborhood.

Tom Lanski took Wednesday off to regroup with his family but plans to be back on the fire line soon. As for now, he is urging others to take the fire threat seriously.

If they get the call to evacuate they need to get out, he said. I lost my house in the fire, it happens. Insurance will take care of it. It will never bring back a life.
Donations are needed after massive fires broke out in Southern California this week, forcing the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people and destroying hundreds of homes.

Ventura County

The United Way of Ventura County is accepting donations via text and online. Text UWVC to 4144 or visit their website for the Thomas Fire Fund. One-hundred percent of donations will go to the fund.

The American Red Cross of Ventura County has set up three shelters in the area and are accepting donations. You can text REDCROSS to 90999, visit the redcross.org or call 1-800 RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) to donate money.

For anyone wanting to donate food and water, The Salvation Army of Ventura County has announced theyre accepting donations for people affected by the fire.

The Humane Society of Ventura County says that financial donations are the best way that people could help and they can be made through their website. Representatives for HSVC said they have enough food and water for animals and people, but they need Alfalfa hay to feed horses, burrows and alpacas.

The Ventura County Fire Departments Facebook page has also provided information for relief.

Los Angeles County

The Red Cross' Los Angeles chapter is providing information on its website about shelters available in the area.

Antelope Valley Fairgrounds is accepting animals in conjunction with LA County Animal Control. The facility is currently accepting donations of food and water and house animals from cats to exotic creatures.

San Diego County

San Diego County 2-1-1 said they needed volunteers at their call center, where people affected by the Lilac Fire fire were looking for resources and information.

People can sign up to volunteer online or by calling 858-300-1269.

The San Diego/Imperial County Red Cross (SDIC Red Cross) said the best way to help their organization is through cash donations.

The San Diego County Humane Society said those who want to help can donate pet supplies and food by going to their Amazon wish list.

The Del Mar Fairgrounds housing large animals said it could use donations of buckets, bedding, feed, shovels and rakes.

You can also donate to a Crowdfunding site:

GoFundMe has set up a "Southern California Wildfire Relief" page with dozens of campaigns to help individuals and families.

YouCaring has also created a landing page for 2017 Southern California Wildfire Relief Fundraisers.

Both sites rely on donor tips to defray costs.



If you know of someone trying to help, send an email at tips@nbcla.com.


A Vermont man denies in court papers allegations by his family that he killed his millionaire grandfather in 2013 and says he lacks sufficient information to admit or deny that no one's seen his mother since he went on a fishing trip with her in 2016.

Nathan Carman has been called a suspect in the shooting death of 87-year-old real estate developer John Chakalos in Connecticut. No one's been arrested.

He's also been questioned about the day his boat sank with his mother on it near Rhode Island. She's presumed dead.

In July, the three sisters of Linda Carman filed a lawsuit in New Hampshire accusing Nathan Carman of killing Chakalos and possibly his mother. They've asked a judge to block Nathan Carman from collecting money from his grandfather's estate. Chakalos left more than $29 million to his four daughters, including Linda Carman, and $7 million of that money could go to Nathan Carman.

The sisters' attorney, Dan Small, has said all the evidence points to Nathan Carman as the killer. If the family wins the lawsuit, Small has said any money that would have gone to Carman would go to investigate the death of John Chakalos and Linda Carman.

Nathan Carman on Wednesday moved to dismiss the lawsuit, saying Chakalos wasn't a resident of New Hampshire at the time of his death.

The family on Wednesday insisted in a statement that Chakalos was a "long time resident of Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and a well-known, active member of the community."

"The groundless claims and denials contained in Nathan Carman's response filing do not reflect reality, and we are confident the legal process will recognize this," Small said.

In the sisters' lawsuit, lawyers for the family said that no has seen Linda Carman since she boarded the boat, the Chicken Pox, with Nathan Carman. In their motion to dismiss, lawyers for Nathan Carman said he "lacks sufficient information to either admit or deny" that he was the last to see his mother.

Nathan Carman has acknowledged that he patched some holes on the 31-foot-long boat with marine putty before going fishing with his mother but insisted the boat was seaworthy. Insurance companies claimed in court earlier this year that "incomplete, improper, and faulty repairs" were made the day before the boat sank.
New information is emerging in the case of a man who punched a woman in the face and then sexually assaulted her in the citys Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

Chicago police released a surveillance photo connected to the crime on Wednesday in an effort to find the man responsible for the heinous act.

Meanwhile, residents of the neighborhood are issuing a call to action in the aftermath of the attack.

Its been scary, resident Jam Doughty said.

Doughty lives just blocks from where the attack took place in the 2200 block of West Chicago Avenue. In the early morning attack, which took place at a CTA bus stop earlier this month, a man allegedly punched a woman in the face and then sexually assaulted her before escaping.

A surveillance photo released Wednesday is believed to show the man responsible, and officials are hoping that the distinct pattern of the mans pants may help someone to identify him.

The attack is one of several crimes in the greater West Town area in recent months.

Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins believes that the increase in crime is due to the closing of the 13th District police station, which was located near the intersection of Augusta and Wood.

Hopkins has started an online petition calling for the station to reopen, and its already gotten more than 1400 signatures.

We have a new criminal element thats feeling emboldened, he said. (Theyre) likely to get away (and) not get caught. We have to change that, and send the message that you will go to jail.

In the meantime, people in the area continue to take extra precautions to prevent such an attack from happening again.

I suppose (people should) keep their eyes open, and to make sure people I know are paying attention, she said. Im not sure what else I can do.
U.S. senator for Connecticut Chirs Murphy is urging Senator Al Franken to step down amid harassment allegations.

"The increasing number of women coming forward suggests a pattern of repeated harassment and unacceptable behavior that is impossible to ignore. Senator Franken has denied some of these allegations and has the right to continue to seek a process through the Ethics Committee, but I believe the best course of action for him right now is to step down, as I expect he will do tomorrow," Murphy said in a statement.

Murphy is among his colleagues like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who are calling for Franken to quit the Senate.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal said he will make a comment after Franken makes an expected announcement on Thursday.

"Ive been listening to the courageous women across the nation who have come forward about sexual harassment and assault, as well as my Senate colleagues. I understand that Senator Franken will make an announcement tomorrow. Ill comment after he speaks," Blumenthal said.



The calls came as another woman accused Franken of sexual misconduct in an account provided to Politico. The accusation brought to seven the number of women accusing Franken of sexual impropriety.

The demands came in rapid succession after Franken on Wednesday vehemently denied a new sexual misconduct accusation that came from a former Democratic congressional aide, who said he tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The Minnesota Democrat said in a statement that the allegation, reported by Politico, was "categorically not true."
Ten South Windsor High School students and the driver of a minivan were taken to the hospital Tuesday morning after a school bus and a minivan collided. None of the students were seriously injured, according to officials.

The crash happened at Routes 5 and 30 in South Windsor around 7:45 a.m. and fire officials said the school bus carrying students from Hartford to South Windsor High School.

Fourteen students were on the bus and 10 were transported for very minor injuries, according to the South Windsor Fire Department. Another bus transported the other four people to the high school.

The female driver of the minivan was also taken to the hospital.

Officials from Connecticut Children's Medical Center said earlier they have received 10 children from the scene.
After being in business for nearly 80 years, Sally's Apizza in New Haven is under new ownership.

In March, a Connecticut Appellate Court allowed the Consiglio family to move forward with the sale of the iconic restaurant on the corner of Wooster and Olive streets. A lawsuit was filed against the family from a local bidder.

"He found that no contract existed whereby the Consiglio siblings were obligated in any way shape or form to sell the restaurant to Carmine Capasso," the Consiglio's attorney, Hugh Keefe, said in March.

The restaurant has new owners, however, the Consiglio family will continue to manage the restaurant, Keefe said on Thursday.

After Flo Consiglio, the wife of Sallys founder Salvatore Sally Consiglio, passed away five years ago, the children decided to put the family business up for sale.
Connecticut's two federally recognized tribes say they "want to be part of the discussion" if the General Assembly wants to expand gambling further, especially to Bridgeport.

The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal leaders sent a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders and Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy asking to be included in any potential talks.

The letter comes a day after MGM Resorts International's top executive Jim Murren spoke to a Bridgeport business group, touting the company's proposal for a $675 million resort casino in Bridgeport. He contends the revenue-sharing agreement Connecticut signed more than two decades ago with the tribes, granting them exclusive rights to casino gambling, "should be revisited."

[[462346233,C]]

Lawmakers this year allowed the tribes to open a jointly-owned casino in East Windsor, dismissing MGM's request to end the monopoly.
Texans know all too well the love for Whataburger.

It's something that can be intriguing to "non-Texans" who sometimes venture into the fast-food restaurant while in the Lone Star State visiting.

That intrigue got the best of First Lady Melania Trump and Karen Pence, the wife of Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday.

The two women flew to Corpus Christi on Wednesday to view recovery efforts since Hurricane Harvey hit more than three months ago.

But as they were leaving town, they stopped by Whataburger to see what all the fuss was about.

The first lady's director of communications tweeted out a photo of Melania and Karen standing at the front counter, making the tough decision between the Whatachick'n or the classic Whataburger.

Of course, any Texan already knows that Whataburger was founded in Corpus Christi back in 1950.
The Dallas Independent School District is set to continue a large portion of a major construction project on two of its campuses.

J. L. Long Middle School and Woodrow Wilson High School will be remodeled in an expansion project meant to provide space for the growing student population at both campuses.

In addition to the school construction, Dallas ISD has also proposed to pave over a portion of Randal Park for 22 new parking spaces.

The Parks and Recreation Board agreed, but later received some push back. Parents and residents who live in the neighborhood say the issue is about parking and not about politics.

Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston is against the idea of Dallas ISD paving over a portion of the park. He posted his opinion on facebook, suggesting Dallas ISD pave over its own land in front and behind the school to add parking.

"As if cutting down your trees and paving over your park weren't bad enough, here's an aerial view of lovely Woodrow Wilson HS showing the three sites on DISD's own property where it could temporarily park cars during the construction project," Kingston wrote in the post, which had a satellite view of Woodrow Wilson High School.

Dozens of people commented. Some agreed with Kingston while others questioned his suggestion.

"Is this a joke? I mean, are you seriously suggesting that Long and Woodrow rid themselves of any remaining greenspace they have in front of their schools in favor of additional parking? These buildings are landmarks," one comment read.



Some teachers and parents also commented by explaining the difficult parking situation.

"This is not about politics," said Deborah Stewart, who has a son that attends J. L. Long Middle School. "This is about parking and the safety of the students. The neighborhood supports this 100 percent, and they are the ones that will have to deal with the construction of the parking lot. This will benefit all of us."

The Park and Recreation Board will vote Thursday at their 8:15 a.m. meeting.


Read Friday's updated article here

A brush fire that sparked alongside a highway interchange that took off in extreme fire conditions Thursday, scorching thousands of acres in Fallbrook and Bonsall is heading toward the more populated community of Oceanside and Camp Pendleton.

The Lilac Fire, as it's been named by Cal Fire officials, is burning out of control and has burned 4,100 acres since it sparked just after 11 a.m. Officials say 5,000 structures are threatened.

Flames marched through parts of Fallbrook and Bonsall, burning homes and ranch properties to the ground.

A mobile home park in Bonsall was devastated by the Lilac Fire as it broke out and quickly spread west Thursday. NBC 7s Dave Summers reports from the Rancho Monserate County Club.

New mandatory evacuations have been issued as the fire moved west toward the cities of Oceanside and Camp Pendleton.



"Tonight is one of those nights, today is one of these fires," said Cal Fire Division Chief Nick Schuler. "This fire could make it all the way to Oceanside to the coast if it continues."

As of 9:20 p.m., new mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for:

South of N. River Road

North of Oceanside Boulevard

West of Melrose & N. Santa Fe

East of Old Grove Rd. & Douglas Drive

South of Camp Pendleton Eastern Fence Line

North of N. River Road

West of Wilshire Road

East of Douglas Drive

South of N. River Road

North of Bobier Drive

East of Melrose & N. Santa Fe

West of E. Vista Way

South of Reche Road

North of Burma Road

Areas east of Douglas Drive to Fallbrook and Oceanside City limits

Areas north of North River Road to Camp Pendleton

Areas east of College

State Route 76 is closed in both directions at North Santa Fe and Melrose eastward. Eastbound traffic on North River Road at Leon is closed.

NBC 7's Alex Presha is in Bonsall, speaking to one family packing up their vehicle as the Lilac Fire continued to ravage the area.

Northerly winds pushed embers to the area north of SR-76 at Olive Hill Road. Helicopters were making night water drops and a bulldozer was working to cut a fire break.

As of 7 p.m., winds were 20 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 to 40 mph.

"They're blowing in all kinds of directions," said NBC 7 weather anchor Llarisa Abreu.

#LilacFire [update] The fire is now 2,000 acres & 0% contained. pic.twitter.com/etN3NeX4R8  CAL FIRE/SAN DIEGO COUNTY FIRE (@CALFIRESANDIEGO) December 7, 2017

Two civilians suffered burns in the fire and were transported to area hospitals to be treated, Cal Fire officials said. It was unclear how the injuries occurred.

A San Diego County Sheriff's Department deputy suffered minor injuries while directing traffic. At the time of the incident, visibility in the area was low due to thick clouds of smoke. It was not clear if it was a factor in the injury.

Twenty structures were destroyed and 12 structures were damaged by a fire that officials said was spreading at a dangerous rate. However, the total number of structures lost could be much greater.

In the Rancho Monserate Mobile Home Park, at least 40 units were destroyed, according to an NBC 7 news crew. Several more homes were damaged.

One Bonsall resident said it was like nothing he had ever seen before.

"It looked very eerie, very dark and overcast. It's almost like driving into Hell," Jerry Vasquez, who lives off West Lilac Road said.

Vasquez said he could see three or four homes burning as he evacuated.

NBC 7's Rory Devine speaks with a Fallbrook High School student who describes the moment when students learned of the Lilac Fire and how their campus would be used as a shelter for evacuees.

Horses could be seen running in circles as firefighters opened homes' gates to free them.

Hundreds of horses were loose south of State Route 76 on Camino Del Rey, CHP officers confirmed.



As the Lilac Fire grew off SR-76 and I-I-15, horses on one property fled the flames. The troubling moments were caught live on NBC 7.

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for San Diego County Thursday, freeing up federal resources as crews battle the fast-moving blaze. The county had declared a state of emergency earlier in the day.



Closures

The fire, first reported at 11:20 a.m., prompted a SigAlert on southbound I-15 causing delays until all lanes were reopened as of 1:10 p.m. California Highway Patrol closed the off-ramp from I-15 to Old Highway 395, but it was reopened just before 2:15 p.m.

Here are the road closures as of 7:00 p.m.

Gopher Canyon Road is closed from East Vista Way to Little Gopher Canyon Road

Old River Road at Little Gopher Canyon Road through Golf Club Drive

Camino Del Rey is closed at SR-76 to Old Highway 395

Old Highway 395 from SR-76 to West Lilac Road

West Lilac Road from Old Highway 395 to Camino Del Rey

SR-76, from Old Highway 395 to Via Monserate

South Mission Road is closed at Winterhaven Road to southbound traffic to SR-76

Evacuations

More than 23,000 San Diego County residents received evacuation alerts from San Diego County.

A full list of the latest evacuations and closures can be found here.

The smoke was so thick, it was blocking out the sun for a while, according to an NBC 7 news crew.

Embers scorched some landscaping at Sullivan Middle School but the campus looked like a ghost town. Fire crews were walking around the school putting out hotspots. Watch: Drivers flee the smoke and flames of the Lilac Fire



A tutor at Fallbrook High School described the moment when the campus learned of the fire

"It was pretty wild. We saw the smoke clouds; everyone was a little frazzled," the tutor said. "Students were all worried about their homes and their families." Cal State San Marcos sent a message to student and staff saying no assignments or tests will be due during the campus closure. Palomar Community College District will be closed and classes canceled Thursday evening and Friday all day and evening. Sites at Camp Pendleton, Fallbrook and Mt. Carmel will be closed. MiraCosta College was also closed.

[[462655153,C]] [[462655153,C]]

Evacuation Shelters

An overnight shelter was set up for residents at the East Valley Community Center on 2245 E. Valley Parkway in Escondido.

Temporary evacuation shelters have also been set up at Great Oak High School on Deer Hollow Way starting at 6 p.m. Fallbrook High School was initially used as a shelter site but was later closed to evacuees.

Stagecoach Community Center and Oceanside High School were at capacity as of 11 p.m. Evacuees should head to East Valley Community Center in Escondido, 2245 East Valley Parkway.



FIRE ALERT: Were actively involved in animal evacuation and support efforts associated with the #LilacFire. Take your pets with you, if possible. If you need assistance, please call our dispatch at 619-243-3466. For information and updates, visit: https://t.co/tFtnC6tyxa. pic.twitter.com/Igb4OlX4ew  SD Humane Society (@sdhumane) December 7, 2017

The Del Mar Fairgrounds and the San Diego Polo Fields in Del Mar opened up their grounds for large animal evacuations. [[462703123,C]]

Conditions

The risk of a wildfire in San Diego County is extreme Thursday due to Santa Ana conditions and dry vegetation, according to the National Weather Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the NBC 7 weather team.

Watch: Aircraft Fight Lilac Fire in North San Diego



wind map shows widespread northeast wind direction (from northeast) with gusts 30-50 mph (red) near #Lilacfire #SantaAnaWinds humidity 3-5 percent https://t.co/HXffMQtPej traffic slowed on I-15 pic.twitter.com/WNH4Vpvx9N  NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) December 7, 2017

Humidity will be in the 5-15 percent range, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Any new fires will have a high probability of becoming large in a short period of time.

Under the high wind warning, in effect until 4 p.m. Friday, forecasters expect the strongest winds after daybreak morning through early afternoon Thursday.

A fire weather warning is in effect until 8 p.m. Sunday and means any fires that develop will spread rapidly and be very difficult to control.

[NATL-SD] Lilac Fire Burns Near SR-76 and I-15 in North San Diego County

Wind gusts in the area of the fire were recorded from a northeast direction as strong as 51 mph on Highway 76 in Pala, according to the National Weather Service. The winds along I-15 near the fire were recorded at 30 to 35 mph.

The county was reminding people seeking information about the fire to call 211 and that 911 should only be used for emergency situations.

Time Lapse of Lilac Fire from 1PM-2PM  as seen from Black Mountain area looking North.

The County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) closed the following Oceanside and Fallbrook facilities on Friday, Dec. 8 due to the Lilac Fire:

North Coastal Family Resource Center, Aging and Independence Services, and Child Welfare Services located at Union Plaza Court in Oceanside

North Coastal Public Health Center located at 3609 Ocean Ranch Boulevard in Oceanside

Fallbrook Community Resource Center at 202 West College Street

Please refresh this page for updates on this story. Details may change as more information becomes available.

Strong winds and dry conditions fueled the fast-moving Lilac Fire in San Diego's North County Thursday.




With several dangerous fires burning around Los Angeles, state and local law enforcement officials issued a consumer alert Wednesday, warning residents to be on the lookout for instances of price gouging.

"Price gouging during a public emergency isn't just outrageous, it's illegal," Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said. "Consumers should be very wary of price spikes for hotel rooms, gasoline and emergency items like generators. If you suspect price gouging, report it to my office immediately. When appropriate we will prosecute."

District Attorney Jackie Lacey and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra also issued similar warnings.

Feuer's office reminded residents that when a local state of emergency has been declared, for 30 days following such a declaration it is unlawful for a person or business to sell or offer any consumer food, goods or services used for emergencies that is more than 10 percent higher than the price charged immediately prior to the declaration.

The list includes items for clean-up, emergency supplies, medical supplies, home heating oil, building materials, housing, transportation, freight, storage services or gasoline. Hotels and motels are also prohibited from charging prices that are more than 10 percent higher than rates they advertised immediately prior to the declared state of emergency.

Officials also said that for a period of 180 days after the declaration, it is also unlawful for a contractor to sell or offer to sell any repair or reconstruction services or emergency clean-up services for more than 10 percent higher than they charged immediately prior to the declaration, although there are exceptions.

Price-gouging laws apply in California after the president of the United States, governor or city or county executive officer declares a state of emergency.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared a local state of emergency Wednesday in response to the Skirball Fire burning in the Bel Air area, requesting state and federal assistance. He also signed an emergency declaration Tuesday due to the Creek Fire near Sylmar. Gov. Jerry Brown also declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County Tuesday in response to the various fires burning in the area.

Feuer said anyone who is the victim of price gouging or who has information about it occurring in Los Angeles can file a complaint at the city attorney's office or call (213) 978-8340.


A man arrested for attempting to illegally smuggle a Bengal tiger cub in the passenger side of his car across the U.S.-Mexico border through the San Ysidro Port of Entry pleaded guilty to federal charges Tuesday.

Luis Valencia, 18, admitted that he had contacted an individual in Mexico to get the tiger cub and smuggle it to the U.S., according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He also admitted that he knowingly smuggled the Bengal tiger cub and neither he nor his passenger acknowledged the cub when they crossed the border--even though he knew the cub should have been declared.

Valencia also admitted that he planned on bringing the cub to the U.S. for a commercial purpose.

The cub was discovered on Aug. 23, around 1:30 a.m., at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers found a tiger cub lying on the floor of the front passenger side of Valencia's car during a secondary inspection.

When asked if it was a tiger, 21-year-old Eriberto Paniagua, a passenger in the vehicle, claimed it was just a cat, officials said.

Paniagua was charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of smuggling contrary to law.

The tiger cub was taken into the car of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. It was then transferred to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido and is in good health.

The Bengal tiger, also known as Panthera tigris tigris, is native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. It is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Valencia will be sentenced on Feb. 20, 2018. He faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Paniagua was also charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of smuggling contrary to law. He will appear in court for a trial on Jan. 9, 2018.
Medicare's fall open enrollment period ends Thursday.

During the annual seven-week period, which began Oct. 15 and ends Dec. 7, beneficiaries can make changes related to Medicare Part C (known as an Advantage Plan) and Part D (prescription drug coverage).

Medicare Advantage coverage is offered by private insurers under contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agencies that oversees these programs. These plans are offered in place of the original Medicare, which is comprised of Part A (in-patient coverage) and Part B (outpatient care).

Seniors with traditional Medicare also can buy supplemental prescription drug plans (Part D) through these companies. However, patients must have original Medicare and live in the plans service area in order to join an Advantage Plan.

Over the years, Advantage Plans have grown in popularity among Medicare recipients, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In 2017, 33 percent of beneficiaries, or 19 million people, were enrolled compared to 13 percent in 2007. The highest enrollment growth  71 percent  taking place since 2010 when the Affordable Care Act was passed, KFF found.

About 63 percent of Medicare Advantage enrollees have health maintenance organization (HMOs) plans and 33 percent are enrolled in preferred provider organization (PPOs) plan, according to Kaiser. The remainder are enrolled in private plans.

HMOs provide coverage to doctors, other medical providers and hospitals that are in the plan's network. This means an HMO typically will cover or reimburse medical costs incurred outside its network except in an urgent or emergency situation, according to Healthcare.gov. Enrollees also could need a referral from their primary-care doctor to see other physicians or specialists.

"It's really about how people want to manage their health care," Josh Norris, senior health insurance agent for Comprehensive Financial Consultants in Indiana told CNBC. "Some people want to visit whatever doctor they want, but for other people it doesn't matter as much."



A PPO costs more monthly and lets patients go to out-of-network providers. However, patients typically pay more in co-pays or co-insurance for that flexibility.

Premium costs for most Medicare Advantage recipients will average $30 a month in 2018, which is two dollars less than in 2017, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The average premium for Part D will go down by $1.20 to about $33.50 a month, the CMS estimates.

The average Medicare Part B premium will be about $134 a month for beneficiaries who make less than $85,000 ($170,000 for joint filing). About 28 percent of Part B enrollees will pay less  about $109  than the full monthly premium of $134, because the increase in their Social Security benefit will not be large enough to cover the full Part B premium increase, the CMS reported.

But the premium costs for many high earners is slated to rise in 2018. Individuals earning between $133,001 and $160,000 ($267,000 and $320,000 for married couples filing jointly), for example, Part B premiums will jump by $80 a month, according to CMS estimates.

Beneficiaries who are signing up for Medicare for the first time have a window that starts three months before the month in which they turn 65 and ends three months after. To enroll visit the Social Security site's Medicare Benefits page here.

The federal government has extended the last day of open enrollment from Dec. 7 to Dec. 31 for those living in designated disaster areas nationwide.

People affected by hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate, and the California wildfires, qualify for this assistance.

Those eligible may need to provide proof of residency, such as a drivers license or utility bill. To sign up, or find out if you are eligible for other disaster-related assistance such as extending a premium payment grace period, contact Medicare at 800-633-4227.
What to Know An Airbnb host discovered cameras in the three-bedroom Manhattan apartment she was renting

The cameras faced the toilet and shower and had remote-viewing capabilities, police say

Police arrested 44-year-old guest and charged him with unlawful surveillance

A New York City Airbnb guest allegedly hid cameras in the bathroom of a rental apartment so he could remotely watch people on the toilet and in the shower, according to court documents and police.

Ron Rothman, a 44-year-old New Jersey man, allegedly planted the cameras at a Airbnb apartment on Mulberry Street hosted by a woman and her roommate.

The cameras were disguised to look like cellphone chargers and at least one of them faced the toilet and shower. The devices were equipped with remote-viewing capability, police said.

Rothman allegedly planted the devices Monday while he was staying at a room in the three-bedroom apartment. The Airbnb host told police that at one point he asked about her and her roommate's bathroom habits, including when they typically go to the bathroom.

The host said that after Rothman arrived she noticed an iPhone inside a backpack, with its camera positioned toward the toilet. She said she also found a recording device plugged into the electrical outlet, according to a complaint filed Wednesday.

The host told police she looked at the phone and noticed it was running Cambush, an app that records video using motion-detection.

Rothman was arrested and charged with unlawful surveillance, a felony. The complaint says he admitted the iPhone and recording device were his.

A message seeking comment has been left with Rothman's attorney.

In a statement, Airbnb spokesman Jeff Henry said the company has offered to assist law enforcement in its investigation. He said Rothman has been permanently banned from the Airbnb community.

"Airbnb takes privacy extremely seriously and there is absolutely no place in our community for this kind of illegal and outrageous behavior," Henry said.

Airbnb policy doesn't allow cameras in bathrooms or bedrooms and any other camera must be disclosed ahead of time. It also prohibits spying on other people or violating their privacy.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More
What to Know Michael Jenkins, 24, of the Bronx, is accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl, police say

Jenkins worked at an NYC school, where he met the student and took her back to his house on Monday where they allegedly had sex, sources say

He is charged with rape, criminal sex act, forcible touching, acting in a manner injurious to a person less than 17 and sex abuse, cops say

A man working at a New York City after-school program was arrested after police said he took a 13-year-old girl to his apartment, raped her and later told her she couldn't get pregnant from oral sex.

Michael Jenkins, 24, of the Bronx, was cuffed Wednesday at his home after police were called to The Angelo Patri Middle School on Webster Avenue and determined the Special Victims Unit needed to get involved in a case, police sources familiar with the investigation tell NBC 4 New York.

Jenkins is charged with second-degree rape, two counts of criminal sex act, forcible touching, acting in a manner injurious to a person less than 17 and sex abuse, the NYPD said.

He did not enter a plea at an arraignment Thursday evening and is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail.

At the arraignment, prosecutors said Jenkins had met the 13-year-old student at the school and began sexting the girl around Nov. 20. Then, on Monday, authorities said he took her to his apartment, where he goaded her into performing oral sex and raped her.

Then, prosecutors said, some unidentified person discovered the messages on the girl's phone when she didn't come home from school.

Jenkins was later heard in a taped phone conversation with the child telling her she couldn't get pregnant from oral sex, and that she should "stay with your story" that she was at a friend's house. Prosecutors said that surveillance footage from the man's building also showed him with the girl as he walked into his home.

Jenkins is being represented by a public defender who said in court the man has no criminal record. Members of his family were also at the arraignment and could be heard shouting "we love you" and "we'll stand by you."

Jenkins worked for a group called Schools Out NYC. He has been suspended without pay and permnanetly barred from entering a city school.

The city Department of Education has also cut the program altogether saying, "DYCD has suspended funding for the program, as we determine whether the provider can continue to operate this school."
What to Know Amarjit Kaur, 34, vanished Tuesday morning while she was making a trip to a bank and hasn't been seen since, officials say

The Queens native is the mother of two 7-year-old twins and is said to be six weeks pregnant, authorities say

Kaur's car was found near the bank and her cell phone was discovered inside the vehicle, police say

Police in New York City are on the hunt for a missing pregnant mother of twins who was last seen making a short trip to the bank.

Amarjit Kaur, 34, of Queens, hasnt been seen since Tuesday morning when she left her home on 128th Street in South Ozone Park, officials said. Kaur was on her way to a Chase Bank when she vanished.

Kaurs car was found near the bank on 113th Street, authorities said. Her cell phone was inside the car.

Handout

Kaur is the mother of two 7-year-old twins and is also six weeks pregnant, police said. A surveillance video shared by investigators shows her walking on the sidewalk alone a short time before she disappeared.

She was last seen wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and yellow pants. Police said she is about 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Witnesses with information on the mothers whereabouts are urged to contact police.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More
A body found along the coastline of Hilo Bay in Hawaii has been identified as a Spring Valley man who died while crossing above a waterfall with his wife.

George Novinger, 61, was on vacation in Hawaii with his wife Gladys. On Nov. 25, the couple was crossing the Wailuku River above Rainbow Falls when they fell into the water.

She was found in the pool below and airlifted to Hilo Medical Center where she later died.

Her husband remained missing until Dec. 1, when authorities found his body at the bottom of a 35-foot cliff along the shoreline in Wainaku, according to the Hawaii Police Department.

The body was not identified as Novinger until Wednesday. The cause of death is not known yet, according to Hawaii police.

Gladys' son, Joseph Harmes released a statement thanking the Hawaiian community for their search and rescue efforts. He also thanked the local community for their support.

"Thank you for showing the respect to how much my parents dedicated their time, their energy, and their resources to the community here in San Diego," Harmes said over the phone. "Thank you for acknowledging this and for acknowledging the type of people that they were."

Monday night, more than 100 people gathered in Balboa Park at the House of Pacific Relations to honor the couple during a candlelight vigil.

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.

Board members of the House of Peru said they will name the cottage in the couple's honor.

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.
While traveling around during the holidays might give you headaches, you can tour the globe effortlessly with these six embassy events happening in D.C.

Movie Night at the Mongolian Embassy

When: Dec. 8, 6-8 p.m.

Where: Mongolian Embassy, 2833 M St. NW

Price: Free

The Mongolian Embassy will show Mujaan (The Craftsman), a 2005 documentary about how one man follows the tradition of hand-crafting his home like Mongolian nomads have done for centuries. Refreshments will be served throughout and after the showing. Attendees can also buy wine by the glass. A free ticket is required to enter the embassy.

Animezing!: Ghost in the Shell at the Japanese Embassy

When: Dec. 8, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Where: The Japanese Information and Culture Center at the Japanese Embassy, 1250 18th St. NW, Suite 100

Price: Free

The embassy will host a screening of the film Ghost in the Shell, which was considered a feat in animation when it premiered in 1995. A recent adaptation of the film was released this year. The screening is a part of the Japanese Information and Culture Centers retrospective called Journey Through Anime: Celebrating 100 Years. Tickets for the event are free but registration is required to enter the embassy.

French Embassy Holiday Gala

When: Dec. 9, 8-11:30 p.m.

Where: French Embassy, 4101 Reservoir Road NW

Price: $75 for general admission or $95 for the VIP Reception at 8 p.m.

The Holiday Gala is a night filled with drinks, dancing and desserts. For those who purchase VIP tickets, there will be a champagne reception at 8 p.m. and general admission tickets will be admitted into the gala at 9 p.m. All attendees must be at least 21 years old for the open bar, which will feature French wines. Show off your moves to a jazz band performance followed by a DJ playing dance hits. But save some energy for the buffet of decadent desserts from the embassys pastry chef -- including swan-shaped cream puffs with whipped cream and mini chocolate and coffee eclairs.

Winter Concert and Wine Reception at the Slovenian Embassy

When: Dec. 12, 7-9 p.m.

Where: Slovenian Embassy, 2410 California St. NW

Price: $40

Learn about Slovenia and listen to a winter concert from a saxophone and percussion duo coming from Slovenia to perform at the event. Stanislav Vidovic, the ambassador of Slovenia, is set to welcome guests with his opening remarks. Following the concert, guests can socialize with diplomats during a wine reception.

DC Gift Guide: Support Local Businesses this Holiday Season

Embassy of Bulgaria Dinner Reception

When: Dec. 15, 7-9 p.m.

Where: Bulgarian Embassy, 1621 22nd St. NW

Price: $65

From spinach pies to apricot rolls, the buffet of Bulgarian cuisine at the reception will be sure to fill the stomachs of all attendees. The dinner will feature an open bar along with the feast. Bulgarias traditions, including a performance from a folk dance ensemble, can help guests learn about the culture of the country.

Holiday Wines of Europe 101 at the French Embassy

When: Dec. 16, 3:30-5:30 p.m.

Where: French Embassy, 4101 Reservoir Rd. NW

Price: $50

The wine tasting will include samples from five different European countries -- all competing for the chance to be crowned European champion. Guests decide which wine will be the winner while learning from an expert about the dos and donts of wine tasting and pairing.

Get Active This Winter at Ski, Skate and Snowboard Attractions Near DC
Three Hyattsville, Maryland, students with learning challenges celebrated their induction into the National Honor Society at a ceremony on Wednesday.

Hannah Story, Amara Turner and Russell Collins Jr. stood in front of a sea of fellow students from the Chelsea School and pledged to uphold the high purposes of the society.

The school, which focuses solely on K-through-12 students with learning challenges, now has eight students in the society -- a feat that some thought impossible.

For Story, Turner and Collins, the pins were proof of their perseverance.

"I think now that I'm in this position now, I feel like I can do anything I put my mind to, Story said.

Story said the honor has made her more inspired to become a kindergarten teacher.

Turner, who has struggles with reading, explained how she achieved the accomplishment.

"It takes a lot of hard work to stay focused in school. Make sure you keep your head where it needs to be, she said.

Like Turner, Collins recognized how hard he worked to earn his spot in the society.

I worked really hard and I didnt think Id get it, but Im here now and am extremely grateful, he said.

Collins also credits his teachers, advisers and family for his accomplishment.

The three were honored with applause from their teachers and classmates who attended the induction.

School officials said they hope the inductions will inspire other students.

Our hope is that our other students look at these students and say they're just like me. If they can do it, I can achieve the same goals, as well," said Kristal Weems-Bradner, co-head of the school.

The school tries to focus on the individual needs of students. Average class sizes at the school are five to six students.

The parents of the students who were inducted expressed how proud they were of their children.

"The way that she works, nothing is going to stop her, Amara Turner's mother, Kahli Turner, said.

Robin Story, Hannah Storys mother, got emotional when talking about her daughter.

Hannah never gave up and thats -- Im going to start to tear up, she said before hugging Hannah. She never gave up and the Chelsea school has given her this opportunity.

Russell Collins' father, Russell Collins Sr., also talked about his thoughts on his sons induction.

Its a statement to all those people who think their children cant, Collins said.
A man has been indicted in the death of a North Carolina artist who was found bound and stabbed to death inside a row house in northeast Washington earlier this year.

El Hadji Toure, 28, formerly of Laurel, Maryland, is facing multiple charges in the death of Corrina Mehiel, including first-degree murder while armed and first-degree sexual abuse while armed.

Prosecutors say Toure broke into Mehiel's basement apartment on March 20, 2017, bound her and sexually assaulted her. He then stabbed her and took her car and debit card, according to prosecutors.

Mehiel, 34, was found unconscious inside her apartment the next day. She was pronounced dead after midnight March 22, one day before her birthday.

Police have pictures of Toure using Mehiels ATM card at several locations around the area, court documents said. Her card was used seven times to withdrawal a total of $4,000 in the days before and after her death.

Surveillance video also shows Toure walking in Mehiels block the morning of her murder and driving away in her 2004 Toyota Prius, according to court documents.

He was arrested March 27 after someone reported seeing sitting in a Ford Taurus on the 1700 block of Hamlin Street NE.

Mehiel was an artist and art teacher who was working at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design. She was last seen at the school March 19. She talked with her father by phone that night, too, her stepmother said.

Mehiel, who originally was from Burnsville, North Carolina, was living in D.C. temporarily. She specialized in art that engaged communities and was working with the artist Mel Chin.

Toure will be arraigned Dec. 14. He faces a maximum of life in prison.
What to Know Butler, an Environmental Protection Agency analyst, was last seen Feb. 12, 2009, outside her home on Fourth Street in northwest D.C.

Jose Rodriguez-Cruz pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for providing information on where her body can be found.

Rodriguez-Cruz told police he buried her in the median strip between the northbound and southbound lanes of I-95 in Virginia.

Police plan to search for the remains of Pamela Butler, the Washington, D.C., federal worker who disappeared before Valentine's Day 2009, in Stafford County, Virginia, Friday, sources tell News4.

Jose Rodriguez-Cruz agreed to serve 12 years in prison for Butler's murder. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder earlier this year in exchange for providing information on where her body can be found.

Multiple law enforcement sources told News4 Rodriguez-Cruz led investigators to a spot along Interstate 95 in Stafford County last week.

"We are elated," said her brother Derrick Butler. "Honeymoon happy and peacock proud. Just looking forward to getting her remains and doing the right thing."

Rodriguez-Cruz told police he buried Butler in the median strip between the northbound and southbound lanes of I-95.

Because D.C. police are investigating and Butler's body is believed to be in Virginia, it took time to coordinate an effort to recover her remains.

Part of the problem in finding the body is that memories fade over time and the landscape of that area has also changed over time due to road improvements, sources said.

Virginia State Police said Thursday it will assist D.C. police with a criminal investigation, which will close a portion of the I-95 express lanes beginning at 10 a.m. Friday. The Garrisonville Road access points to the express lanes will be closed for a few hours, state police said.

Derrick Butler said he plans to be there when police begin searching. The news of a possible burial site is bittersweet.

"The hardest part for me was just looking at my mother and knowing that this is not what she wanted to hear," he said.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham declined to provide any specifics but said he hopes they can get closure for Butler's family.

I know that its very important to the family to recover Pams remains, he said. I know thats extremely important to them, and so were working with the U.S. attorneys office right now to see if we can make that happen.

"I didn't think you ever get closure with this it's different if somebody dies of a natural death but for somebody to be snatched away from you, somebody to be killed, I don't think you get closure from that," Derrick Butler said.

Butler, an Environmental Protection Agency analyst, was last seen Feb. 12, 2009, outside her home on Fourth Street in northwest D.C. She was 47 when she disappeared.

Butler and Rodriguez-Cruz got into an argument in the basement of Butler's home Feb. 13, 2009, he said. He punched Butler and strangled her, he said.

Then he loaded her body into his car through a rear window of her home.

Surveillance cameras at Butler's home captured video of Rodriguez-Cruz entering and exiting in the days that followed. During that time, prosecutors believe, Rodriguez-Cruz went through her things and removed sheets from her bed.

Her family declared her legally dead after she had been missing for more than seven years. At the time, Derrick Butler said her family wanted to settle her affairs and had accepted that she is gone.

"To be honest with you, I knew - because I just know my sister - probably a week in that we were not going to find her alive," Derrick Butler told News4 Wednesday.

The declaration allowed police to pursue murder charges against Rodriguez-Cruz.

Rodriguez-Cruz, who dated Butler for about five months, repeatedly denied involvement in her disappearance.

Derrick Butler said when he asked Rodriguez-Cruz if he killed his sister, he spoke about her in the past tense, saying, "I loved your sister."

Derrick Butler said he had liked Rodriguez-Cruz the first time he met him.

"He seemed like a really nice guy to turn out to be such a sick character," he said.

Rodriguez-Cruz is also under investigation for the previous disappearance of his ex-wife, sources said.

His ex-wife, Marta Haydee Rodriguez, disappeared in 1989, but police located a woman by that name who had Rodriguez's identification in Florida in 2000 and closed the missing persons case, sources said. It appears that woman was an imposter and Rodriguez-Cruz's ex-wife is still missing.

She had accused Rodriguez-Cruz of assault and kidnapping involving a knife and taping her mouth. In court documents, he was quoted as saying, "If I can't have her, no one will." But she disappeared before she got to testify in court.
Hundreds of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank on Thursday while demonstrators in Gaza burned posters of President Donald Trump over his widely denounced decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger, as the demonstrators torched American and Israeli flags.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tires on fire and hurled stones at Israeli troops. In Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians shuttered their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Trump's decision. Rallies were underway in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

"We are here. We believe in our rights," said Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were lightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Friday, the Muslim holy day when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers, could prove more violent.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders."

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

The Israeli military said two rockets were fired from Gaza but fell short, landing in Palestinian territory. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s. But the group's capabilities are more limited now. Gaza, Hamas' stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank, many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets in Gaza capable of striking much of Israel.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments."

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Trump's decision. Netanyahu said Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said Thursday.

Anger at the U.S. has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia's royal court condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the U.S. ally. The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said Thursday it had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administration's decision," describing it "unjustified and irresponsible."

Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind. The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Trump's efforts to restart Mideast peace talks.

U.S. embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Trump's move, the United States disqualified itself as mediator, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The stalled talks have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel has meanwhile steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate.

Trump's claim Wednesday that he still wants to pursue what he has called the "ultimate" deal was met by mounting skepticism.

"With its decision, the U.S. has isolated itself and Israel, and has pushed the area into a dangerous situation and stopped the peace process," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Abbas aide.

At a meeting Thursday with his closest Arab ally, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Abbas said he is rallying international opposition to Trump's decision, which he called "an unacceptable crime."

Jordan, alongside other U.S. allies in the region, has slammed Trump's decision on Jerusalem. The king is seen as one of Washington's most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role as religious guardian of a major Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem. Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Trump's announcement "has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the one we are already living in."

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Trump's seismic policy shift.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Trump of throwing the Mideast into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom. "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Erdogan said, referring to Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankara's airport.

Associated Press writers Fares Akram and Aya Batrawy contributed to this report.
A firefighter was injured battling a blaze in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday morning.

The fire was first reported at 9:55 a.m. at 324 Hanover St., and when firefighters arrived they encountered fire conditions on all three floors of the building. They attempted to gain access to search for occupants, but that was difficult due to the heavy fire conditions.

Interior firefighting operations were deemed unsafe, and all fire department personnel were ordered out of the building to fight the fire from the exterior using ladder trucks.

Photos showed thick black smoke coming from the building that could be seen from miles away. Aerial video from the Sky Ranger helicopter showed flames and heavy smoke still coming from the roof of the building around noon.

More than 100 firefighters from numerous area departments helped battle the blaze.

Firefighters were able to re-enter the building later in the day and determine that all residents made it out safely.

Manchester Fire Chief Daniel Goonan said one firefighter was injured, suffering a burn to his arm or hand.

The fire is believed to be accidental, and it appears to have originated in the kitchen area of a first floor apartment. The investigation is ongoing.
Three people were shot, one fatally, in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood Wednesday evening.

Boston Police say three male victims, all possibly in their late teens, were shot near the intersection of Tremont Street and Parker Street. Officers were called to the scene around 7:45 p.m. Authorities initally reported two victims had been shot, but police confirmed a third patient shortly before 8:30 p.m.

Police said around 9 p.m. that one of the victims had died. One of the other victims is in critical condition, and the other is in serious condition.

The shooting happened near the Tobin Community Center, where hundreds of children were inside at the time.

Police did not announce Wednesday night that any arrests had been made.
Police in Massachusetts have found a vehicle of interest in connection with a fatal hit-and-run in November.

Shrewsbury police say the vehicle was found when a police detective working a traffic detail spotted it.

The owner of the vehicle, only identified as a West Boylston resident, told police that they were unaware they had hit anyone. The owner is cooperating with the investigation.

Charges have not been announced.

Fifty-nine-year-old Alma Cico, a Shrewsbury resident, died in Nov. 6 crash. Cico was walking through an intersection at Grafton Street and Municipal Drive in a pouring rain when she was hit by a driver who left the scene.

Police had previously described the suspect's vehicle as a light gray or silver pickup truck with an extended cab or four-door with black rims that had a dent on the upper right-hand side of the tailgate.

Police say their investigation is ongoing.
Calling it "fake news" and "vile," Maine Gov. Paul LePage is refuting a report that said President Donald Trump is urging him to run for the U.S. Senate, saying he's decided to not campaign.

Two anonymous sources told the Washington Post that Trump has said he plans to call LePage to ask him to run against Sen. Angus King in 2018 while offering his endorsement.

LePage's name has reportedly come up as the White House discusses the 2018 midterm races in various states.

However, LePage refuted the Post's report on Thursday, calling it "fake news."

King, a former Maine governor himself, is an independent who usually caucuses with Democrats.

Gov. LePage says @washingtonpost report that President Trump wants him to run for Senate is fake news. He says hes made up his mind and isnt running. Went on to call their report vile. pic.twitter.com/ZnfxMciFyR  Danielle Waugh (@DWaughNBCBoston) December 7, 2017

LePage has stirred controversies in the past, including when he left threatening comments on a lawmaker's voicemail, said he often makes up stories to mislead the press and said 90 percent of drugs dealers in Maine were black and Hispanic when a FOIA request showed the opposite.

The Post also reports White House officials said LePage happens to be a favorite of Trump's, including asking about him unprompted or making positive comments when he sees LePage on TV.

LePage is currently in his second term as governor.
The Phoenix Male Voice Choir will be performing their Christmas concert at Mile Cross Methodist Church in aid of East Anglia's Children's Hospices.

The Phoenix Male Voice Choir will be performing their Christmas concert at Mile Cross Methodist Church in aid of East Anglia's Children's Hospices.

Rebrand as Norwich church changes its name A Norwich church has changed its name for the fourth time in its 170-year history transforming from Surrey Chapel into CityGates Church Norwich. Read more

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
Bishop of Norwich to chair national care inquiry

The Government has today announced that the Rt Revd Graham James, Bishop of Norwich, will chair an independent Non-Statutory Inquiry into the malpractice of convicted surgeon Ian Paterson.

The Inquiry aims to learn lessons from this case and how this can improve care locally and by the independent healthcare sector across the country.



Paterson  a consultant breast surgeon who was employed by the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) and had practising privileges in the independent sector at Spire Parkway and Spire Little Aston  was found guilty in April this year of 17 counts of wounding patients with intent. He was sentenced to jail for 20 years.



Speaking about the role, Bishop Graham said: "It is a daunting honour to be asked to chair the Paterson Inquiry, details of which are published in a Written Ministerial Statement today in Parliament.



The pastoral and moral imperatives are clear, and I will do my very best to meet the expectations placed upon me. I consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury before accepting the invitation and he was emphatic that I should do so. While I do not intend this responsibility to affect my commitment to my work here we are fortunate to have an excellent Bishop's staff team and they are warmly supportive too. Please keep me and all those involved in the Inquiry in your prayers."



The Inquiry follows a pledge by Health Secretary Philip Dunne earlier in the year in which he committed to hold a 'comprehensive and focused inquiry'. Following this, and his meeting with the victims of Paterson and their families, the initial scope of the investigation has been widened in recognition of their feedback that broader issues about care in the independent sector needed attention. This includes whether any further action is needed to strengthen the Care Quality Commission's inspection regime in relation to the private sector.



Bishop Graham said: "The actions of Ian Paterson and the grievous harm he inflicted on patients are deeply concerning, and they have given rise to some serious questions which remain unanswered.



It is vital that the Inquiry be informed by the concerns of former patients of Ian Paterson and their representatives. The interests of all patients, whether they seek treatment in the NHS or the private sector, should be at the heart of this Inquiry and I will do my very best in the interest of those affected and the public."



Philip Dunne, Health Minister, said: "Ian Patersons malpractice sent shockwaves across the health system due to the seriousness and extent of his crimes, and I am determined to make sure lessons are learnt from this so that it never happens again in the independent sector or the NHS.



"I believe an independent, Non-Statutory Inquiry, overseen by Bishop Graham James, is the right way forward to ensure that all aspects of this case are brought to light and lessons learned so we can better protect patients in the future.



The Inquiry will be informed by the victims of Paterson and their families, and is likely to consider:

the responsibility for the quality of care in the independent sector; appraisal and ensuring validation of staff in the independent sector and the safety of multi-disciplinary working;

information sharing, reporting of activity and raising concerns between the independent sector and the NHS;

and the role of insurers of independent sector healthcare providers (including how data it holds about the scope and volume of work carried out by doctors is shared with the sector), and arrangements for medical indemnity cover for clinicians in the independent sector.The Inquiry will be formally established from January 2018, and its independence will mean its recommendations will be delivered quickly and it is expected to report in summer 2019.

Pictured above is Bishop Graham James.


It may not be rocket science, but a group of surgeons at the University of Michigan's Michigan Medicine have devised a strategy to curb the nation's opioid epidemic  starting at their own hospital.

Their findings appeared online Wednesday in the journal JAMA Surgery.

Opioid addiction has been deemed a "national emergency." It's estimated to have claimed 64,000 lives in 2016 alone. And research shows that post-surgical patients are at an increased risk of addiction because of the medication they receive to help manage pain during recovery.

It's a simple enough idea: Surgeons should give patients fewer pills after surgery  the time when many people are first introduced to what can be highly addictive painkillers. They should also talk to patients about the proper use of opioids and the associated risks.

That seemingly small intervention could lead to significant changes in how opioids are prescribed and make inroads against the current epidemic, said the researchers.

"The way we've been prescribing opioids until this point is we've basically been taking a guess at how much patients would need," said Jay Lee, a research fellow and general surgery resident at the University of Michigan, and one of the paper's authors. "We're trying to prevent addiction and misuse by making sure patients themselves who are receiving opioids know how to use them more safely  that they are getting a more consistent amount and one that will reduce the risk of them getting addicted."

The researchers identified 170 patients who underwent gallbladder surgery and surveyed them within a year of the operation  asking how many pills they actually used, what pain they experienced after surgery and whether they had used other painkillers, such as ibuprofen.

They used those findings to create new hospital guidelines that cut back the standard opioid prescription for gallbladder surgeries.

Then, they analyzed how patients fared under the new guidelines, tracking 200 new surgery patients who received substantially fewer pills  an average of 75 milligrams, compared with 250 mg previously. Despite getting less medication, patients didn't report higher levels of pain, and they were no more likely than the previously studied patients to ask for prescription refills. They were also likely to actually use fewer pills.

The takeaway: After surgery, patients are getting prescribed more opioids than necessary and doctors can reduce the amount without experiencing negative side effects.

Within five months of the new guidelines taking effect at Michigan Medicine, surgeons reduced the volume of prescribed opioids by about 7,000 pills. It's now been a year since the change took effect, and the researchers estimate they have curbed prescriptions by about 15,000 pills, said Ryan Howard, a general surgery resident and the paper's lead author.

That has real implications. Studies have found that overprescribing opioids helps drive the epidemic. It can put patients at risk of addiction. And it endangers friends and family, who can easily acquire unused excess pills in, for instance, an unsecured medication cabinet. Reducing prescriptions altogether makes that less likely.

"This really shows in a very methodological way that we are dramatically overprescribing," said Michael Botticelli, who spearheaded drug-control policy under the Obama White House, including the administration's response to the opioid crisis.

"Not only do we have to reduce the supply to prevent future addiction, but we really have to minimize opportunities for diversion and misuse," he said.

More hospitals are starting to turn in this direction, Botticelli said. He now runs the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, which is also trying to systematically reduce opioid prescriptions after patients have surgery.

Meanwhile, 24 states have passed laws to limit how many pills a doctor can prescribe at once, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"Those limits are just sort of generic limits across the board," said Chad Brummett, an anesthesiology professor at the University of Michigan and another co-author of the paper. Their concept, he added, "is a step even further beyond what some of these policymakers are trying to do, and it's one I think surgeons are more likely to adopt."

The researchers also created a set of talking points for doctors and nurses to use with patients based on "fairly common sense" measures, Lee said. They include:

Encouraging patients to use lower-strength, non-addictive painkillers first;

Warning them about the risks of addiction; and

Reminding them that even a sufficient opioid prescription would leave them feeling some pain.

The talking points also offer tips for patients on safely storing and disposing of extra pills.

"So much of this problem can be addressed with solutions that are not complicated  like telling patients what to do with the medications when they're finished using them," said Julie Gaither, an instructor at Yale School of Medicine. Gaither has researched the opioid epidemic's consequences, though she was not involved with this study.

The Michigan team is pushing its new prescribing guidelines online, in hopes of encouraging other hospitals to adopt similar practices. It also has started implementing the change in other hospitals around the state.

Still, this gets at only a small part of the problem, noted Jonathan Chen, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, who has also researched opioid abuse and addiction. The bulk of opioid prescriptions are written by family doctors and general internists, he said.

"This won't solve every problem  but nothing ever does," said Chen, who was not involved with this study. "It's one concrete area, and a natural place to start."
A study published in the neurological journal, The Lancet Neurology, has identified that patients with rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) have a dopamine deficiency in the brain and suffer from a form of brain inflammation. They are subjected to increased risks of developing dementia or Parkinson's disease as they grow older.

Credit: tab 62/ Shutterstock.com

Scientists from Aarhus University examined the condition of the nerve cells that produce dopamine in the brain and cells that participate in the brain's immune system in patients who were suffering from RBD.

The RBD syndrome is characterized by disturbances that occur during dream sleep. When compared with healthy people who are relaxed and lie still during dream sleep, people with RBD syndrome live out their dreams and they kick, hit out and shout while sleeping.

According to Dr. Morten Gersel Stokholm, the lead scientist of the PET Centre at Aarhus University Hospital, patients have a brain inflammation in the area where the dopamine-producing nerve cells are found.

Stokholm says With this study, we have gained new knowledge about the disease processes in the brain in the early initial stages of the disease development. The idea is for this knowledge to be used to determine which patients with the sleep disorder will later develop Parkinson's disease. At the same time, this is also knowledge that can help to develop drugs which can stop or slow the development of the diseases. Dr. Morten Gersel Stokholm, Aarhus University Hospital

Parkinson's disease is a chronic condition, which may progress and may become worse over time. The disease occurs when nerve cells producing dopamine in the brain stop working. The syndrome is more common in men than in women.

The first signs often occur primarily in adults between 50 and 70 years of age. The symptoms of the condition include slow movements, often with shaking, together with muscular rigidity.
A University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix researcher has received a $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop new treatments for depression.

Deveroux Ferguson, PhD, was awarded an RO1 grant by the National Institutes of Health for his research that demonstrates the pivotal role of SIRT1, a protein-coding gene, in anxiety and depression behaviors in the nucleus accumbens, a key brain reward region.

His previous research demonstrated that chronic stress activates SIRT1 in the brain, so changing SIRT1 activity using drugs or gene therapy could reduce anxiety and depression, which affects more than 350 million individuals worldwide.

Dr. Ferguson recently received a Young Investigator Grant from the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission to study the role of SIRT1 in addiction, and a joint R21 grant with Shenfeng Qiu, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, UA College of Medicine - Phoenix, to study the role of the prefrontal cortex in depression.

"Mental health is a major public health issue, and this grant will further Dr. Ferguson's vital work and allow him to translate his research into better options for the thousands of Arizonans who suffer from anxiety and depression," said UA President Robert C. Robbins. "This award from the NIH continues support of Dr. Ferguson's outstanding previous work. I look forward to seeing more breakthrough therapies that will have a positive impact on many lives."

Most drugs used to treat depression were developed 50 years ago, Dr. Ferguson said. Drugs like fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil) and alprazolam (Xanax) modulate the serotonin or dopamine in the brain.

"An urgent need exists to design and develop new therapeutics," said Dr. Ferguson, an assistant professor in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at the UA College of Medicine - Phoenix. "My research seeks to discover and characterize novel antidepressants."

Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

The idea behind Dr. Ferguson's research originated from his experience with animal models of neuropsychiatric disorders as a graduate student at Stanford University and as a postdoctoral fellow at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. His current research will build on that work by exploring cells' contribution to SIRT1 in depression. Sirtuin 1 is a member of the sirtuin family of proteins. The functions of human sirtuins have not completely been determined, but researchers believe they are involved in regulating cellular processes, including the aging and death of cells and their resistance to stress.

"We will test the hypothesis that SIRT1 regulates anxiety and depression in a cell type- and circuit-specific manner," Dr. Ferguson said.

His team consists of postdoctoral fellow Hee-Dae Kim, PhD; graduate student Tanessa Call; laboratory technicians Samantha Magazu and Monica Tang; medical scholar student Sandy Peoples; and undergraduate student Ross Johnson. They have been working on this research for three years.

"To obtain such a major and extremely competitive R01 has set the foundation to obtain the resources to conduct the proposed experiments and will allow for future collaborations with clinicians to advance my translational neuropsychiatric interest (drug development targeting the SIRT1 protein)," Dr. Ferguson said.

He said he expects the results will unravel the cell- and circuit-specific contribution of SIRT1 in stress-induced anxiety and depression.
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
GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us.
China will spend 22 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion) on two prototype molten salt nuclear reactors.

Two molten salt nuclear reactors will be built in the Gobi Desert in northern China.

* Molten salt reactors can produce one thousandth of the radioactive waste of existing nuclear reactors because of deep burn. More complete conversion of the nuclear fuel.

* Molten salt reactors can have designs that are proof against nuclear meltdowns

* The chinese reactors could use thorium. China has some of the worlds largest reserves of the thorium metal.

The Chinese project has been funded by the central government and the two reactors are to be built at Wuwei in Gansu province, according to a statement on the website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The lead scientist on the project is Jiang Mianheng  the son of the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin  and it is hoped the reactors will be up and running by 2020.

The US air force built a 2.5-megawatt molten salt reactor in the 1950s as part of a program to develop nuclear-powered aircraft engines.

The reactors use molten salt rather than water as a coolant, allowing them to create temperatures of over 800 degrees Celsius, nearly three times the temperature of a commercial pressure water nuclear plant. The superhot air had the potential to drive turbines and jet engines and in theory keep a bomber flying at supersonic speed for days.

Yan Long, a researcher involved in the Chinese project at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, said the Gansu facility might eventually help China develop a thorium-powered warship or aircraft.

He said it was now possible to build a very small molten salt reactor and that after years of research and government funding, scientists had developed special alloy and coating materials to prevent chemical corrosion.

The reactors in Gansu were designed to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology.

Both reactors will be underground and the heat they generate will reach 12 megawatts. The heat will be channelled to a power generation plant, several factories and a desalination plant by the lake to produce electricity, hydrogen, industrial chemicals, drinking water and minerals.

After the experiment, China may move on to commercial or military use of the technology on a larger scale, Yan said.

We are now developing new materials for warships. The materials must come with relatively low cost for mass production and they must be compact and light, otherwise the reactor wont fit in a ship.

Chen Fu, a thermal physicist at the Harbin Institute of Technology involved in the development of new power generation systems for Chinas navy, said the heat generated by a thorium molten salt reactor could be perfect to help generate power on a warship.

It should be able to generate enough electricity for propulsion and electric equipment on an aircraft carrier, he said.

Chen said the higher the temperature, the higher the power generation efficiency  a thorium-powered carrier could operate faster and longer than existing carriers using uranium as fuel.

A military drone researcher in Beijing said a molten salt reactor could be used on a new generation of large, endurance drones operating at very high altitudes because it could be made very small and its operation did not require water.

These drones would stay aloft over the oceans such as the Pacific. They would serve as a platform for surveillance, communication or weapon delivery to deter nuclear and other threats from hostile countries, said the researcher, who asked not to be named.

A nuclear-powered drone may be technically more feasible than manned aircraft because it does not require building a cockpit with lead to protect the human crew from radiation. It will also have more public acceptance. If an accident happens, it crashes into the sea, the person said.

Molten Salt reactors can become more powerful and smaller than current submarine nuclear reactors

U.S. naval reactors are pressurized water reactors, which differ from commercial reactors producing electricity in that:

Nuclear submarines have compact reactors that use higher enrichment than land based reactors. The reactros have a high power density in a small volume and run either on low-enriched uranium (as do some French and Chinese submarines) or on highly enriched uranium (over 20% U-235), current U.S. submarines use fuel enriched to at least 93%, compared to between 2145% in current Russian models, although Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker reactors are enriched up to 90%),

Naval nuclear reactors do not use uranium oxide but a metal-zirconium alloy (c.15% U with 93% enrichment, or more U with lower enrichment),

The reactors have long core lives, so that refueling is needed only after 10 or more years. New naval nuclear cores are designed to last 25 years in carriers and 1033 years in submarines,

The designs enable a compact pressure vessel while maintaining safety.

Terrestrial Energy (of Canada) is trying to develop integral molten salt nuclear fission reactors. These nuclear reactors would have about 20-200 times less volume than conventional nuclear fission reactors.

The US, Europe and China are trying to develop supercritical carbon dioxide turbines that would have 100 times less volume than regular steam turbines.

The 650 MWth IMSR (Integrated Molten Salt) reactor is about the same size as the smAHTR (125 MWth) reactor.

The smAHTR reactor is 9 meters tall (30 feet) by 3.5 meters (12 feet) in diameter.

The 220 MWth S8G reactor for the Ohio submarines is 42 feet in diameter, 55 feet long; 2,750 tons

So the IMSR with supercritical CO2 turbines would have almost 3 times as much power in an area about 16 times less volume. In the range of 150-200 cubic meters and about 200-400 tons.

A 650 MW thermal integrated molten salt reactor with a supercritical CO2 turbine would have about 400 MWe of power with about 200 tons of weight. This would be about 2 kW/kg.

There have been other molten salt designs with about 18 KW of power per liter. Those are early generation designs and the engineers believe that they can achieve 100 kW per liter.

There is a Molten Salt Reactor Review by Energy Process Developments

Terrestrial Energy  Integrated MSR (IMSR)

The Integral MSR is also based on the MSR Experiment but has been modified to have a more sealed, passive approach. The design team is based in Canada with international involvement and support. An 80 MWth prototype reactor is proposed.

Recently , Terrestrial Energy Inc.s (TEI) announced completion of the first phase of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commissions (CNSC) pre-licensing vendor design review.

They submitted the Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to CNSC in the fall of 2016, taking the first step in a several step process leading toward the construction and operation of power generation units. As promised, the CNSC completed its non-binding review of the design information within a year of the application submission.

Operating in the thermal spectrum with a graphite moderator inside the sealed unit, it can fit on the back of an articulated truck. This unit contains the fuel salt, moderator, heat exchangers and pumps. The plant is fuelled with 5% low enriched uranium where the U-235 is denatured with U-238. This core is modular, designed for a high power density and replacement after a seven year cycle in a plant with an overall lifetime of over thirty years. This seal and swap approach reduces on site complications and risks. Using low enriched uranium, it has a fuel cycle with which regulators are familiar. This proposal is suitable for developing fully and launching commercially immediately.

Terrestrial Energys IMSR features self-contained reactor Core-unit, where all key components are permanently sealed for operating lifetime. At the end of 7-year design life, the IMSR Core-unit is shut down to cool. Power is switched to a new IMSR Core-unit, in an adjacent silo within the facility. Once sufficiently cool, the spent IMSR Core-unit is removed and prepared for long-term storage, a process similar to existing industry protocols for long-term nuclear waste containment. The sealed nature of the IMSR Core-unit offers low-cost operational safety and simplicity.

Dr. David LeBlanc presented for Terrestrial Energy at TEAC7 (Thorium Energy Alliance Conference #7), held in 2015 Palo Alto.

Flibe Energy  Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)

Flibe Energy, one of the first to resurrect the molten salt reactor concept, and based in the USA, proposes a 2MWth two fluid breeder design. It is based on work carried out by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory team in the 1970s. It operates in the thermal spectrum moderated by graphite. Its fissile element is uranium-233 which is bred from thorium in a blanket salt at the outer edge of the reactor core.

Kirk Sorensen estimates that it will cost several hundred million dollars to get to the first LFTR

Martingale Inc.  ThorCon

The ThorCon design is a single fluid thorium converter reactor that operates in the thermal spectrum. It is in principal similar to the MSR Experiment and its fuel is denatured using a combination of U-233 from thorium and U-235 enriched from mined uranium. Its core is graphite moderated and the full scale version runs at 550MWth. A centralised facility is proposed to reprocess the spent fuel salt from multiple plants. The design team comes from a shipping background and brought in nuclear expertise from members of the MSR community from across the United States. As a concept, a pilot scale version of this plant would be similar to the MiniFuji, a concept that the Japanese have been working on for a long time

Moltex Energy  Stable Salt Reactor (SSR)

The Stable Salt Reactor has a design team based in the UK. It is a fast spectrum pool type reactor. Unlike all the other design concepts considered, its fuel is static and is not derived from the two molten salt reactors developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Its static fuel concept was actually correctly rejected as unsuitable for an aircraft borne reactor by ORNL and apparently never reconsidered when the program moved to ground based reactors. The full size version is proposed at 1GWe and the prototype at 150MWth, but run at a lower power.

Seaborg Technologies  Seaborg Waste Burner (SWaB)

The SWaB prototype proposal is a 50 MWth single fluid reactor that operates in the thermalepithermal spectrum. It is graphite moderated and fuelled by a combination of spent nuclear fuel and thorium. The design team based in Denmark, is a combination of physicists and chemists from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Technical University of Denmark. It is designed to take spent fuel pellets directly for de-cladding and insertion into the fuel salt.

Transatomic Power Reactor (TAP)

Transatomic Powers proposed design is a 20MWth demonstration reactor which is similar to the MSR Experiment except for its utilisation of zirconium hydride (instead of graphite) as a moderator and LiF-based salt (instead of a FLiBe-based salt). These changes enable a twenty fold increase in power density and the use of very low enriched fuel. It operates in the thermal spectrum and with a significant neutron flux in the fast spectrum. It is a single fluid configuration.

SOURCES  Youtube, Energy Process Development, Moltex Energy, Thorcon, Terrestrial Energy, Flibe Energy, South China Morning Post
A drug called erenumab can cut the number of days with migraine symptoms for 50 per cent of patients.

Across the UK, an estimated 8.5 million people live with migraine and research suggests the condition is likely to impact the lives of almost 200,000 people every day.

There is an urgent need for new treatment options and erenumab is the first and only fully human monoclonal antibody of its kind designed to specifically prevent migraine. It works by blocking the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor, which plays a critical role in migraine activation.

Amgen and Novartis, the codevelopers of erenumab, funded this Phase III STRIVE study.

STRIVE is the first fully reported Phase III study of the CGRP pathway monoclonal antibodies, and it clearly shows that blocking this pathway can reduce the impact of migraine, said Peter Goadsby, Director, NIHR-Wellcome Trust Kings Clinical Research Facility and Professor of Neurology at Kings College London. The results of STRIVE represent a real transition for migraine patients from poorly understood, repurposed treatments, to a specific migraine-designed therapy. STRIVE, as with the monoclonal antibody developments generally, represents an incredibly important step forward for migraine understanding and migraine treatment.

These data show erenumab can significantly reduce the number of monthly migraine days experienced by patients, with a 3.7-day and 3.2-day reduction with erenumab 140 mg and 70 mg, respectively, from a baseline of 8.3-days (1.8-day reduction with placebo). Additionally, 50 per cent of patients treated with erenumab 140 mg had the number of days with migraine symptoms cut by at least half (this figure was 43.3 per cent following treatment with erenumab 70 mg, and 26.6 per cent with placebo). Results from the Migraine Physical Function Impact Diary (MPFID) show patients treated with erenumab also reported improved physical health and ability to participate in daily activities over the six month trial period. Erenumab has also been shown to be effective and tolerable over the long term with a safety profile comparable to placebo.

Migraine is too often trivialized as just a headache when, in reality, it can be a debilitating, chronic condition that can destroy lives said Simon Evans, Chief Executive, Migraine Action. The effects can last for hours  even days in many cases. An option that can prevent migraine and that is well tolerated is therefore sorely needed and we hope that this marks the start of real change in how this condition is treated and perceived.

New England Journal of Medicine  Controlled Trial of Erenumab for Episodic Migraine

BACKGROUND

They tested erenumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody that inhibits the calcitonin generelated peptide receptor, for the prevention of episodic migraine.

METHODS

They randomly assigned patients to receive a subcutaneous injection of either erenumab, at a dose of 70 mg or 140 mg, or placebo monthly for 6 months. The primary end point was the change from baseline to months 4 through 6 in the mean number of migraine days per month. Secondary end points were a 50% or greater reduction in mean migraine days per month, change in the number of days of use of acute migrainespecific medication, and change in scores on the physical-impairment and everyday-activities domains of the Migraine Physical Function Impact Diary (scale transformed to 0 to 100, with higher scores representing greater migraine burden on functioning).

CONCLUSIONS

Erenumab administered subcutaneously at a monthly dose of 70 mg or 140 mg significantly reduced migraine frequency, the effects of migraines on daily activities, and the use of acute migrainespecific medication over a period of 6 months
Lets say that this year things were normal, that we missed the news about hurricanes and earthquakes and wildfires, knew nothing about men sexually harassing actresses, Capitol Hill staffers, journalists and teenage Alabama girls, nothing about bombings and massacres and never-ending refugee crises, nothing about the creep toward nuclear war and the dangers of a warming planet, nothing of the lava flowing from our presidents Twitter account. What story would we come up with to explain why horror films grossed more than a billion dollars in 2017? Horror movies probably dont need the world to be horrifying to be good. But when things are bad, the genre has a way of telling you they could be worse.

Theres a difference, of course, between being scared for fun and actually fearing for your life, your country, the future of humanity. But the thrill of horror movies has always been their grasp on collective nightmares. Horror is effective partly because its never new. Weve always seen boogeymen in the movies. Now were seeing boogeymen at the office, in the government, at the comedy club, doing the news. Some of what drew us to the genre this year might have been the urge to have our worst fears realized and to see whether the movies could upstage reality by reflecting it. Their darkness was a respite from our own.

Led by the surprise blockbuster Get Out, the horror movies of 2017 offer up reliable pleasures  jump scares, creaky door hinges, lonely houses late at night  while playing with our expectations. Get Out invented mind-blowing metaphors for racism. It refashioned a shopworn fear of clowns so that their viciousness felt like news. In Split, a trio of young women trapped in a basement work together to get free of the basket case imprisoning them. A metaphor, perhaps? Even Happy Death Day, with its heroine who keeps dying until she figures out whos killing her, seems right on time: Her horror movie might never end. And as bad as Friend Request is (very, very), it arrived with the tag line of the year: Evil is trending. Because, well, it is.

Like the superhero genre, horror is somewhat allegorical, a way of giving shape to abstractions. Monsters, demons, ghosts, psycho killers, that homicidal clown all pop out of the Pandoras box of the collective unconscious, as our tormentors and our proxies. For all the supernaturalism attached to horror, the real source of the terror is usually us  or folks more or less like us. Ghosts and zombies are nothing more than former people (a point made with metaphysical wit in David Lowerys mopey art house film A Ghost Story). Regular living humans turn out to be capable of diabolical cruelty (the point of Get Out) and coldblooded self-preservation (the revelation of It Comes at Night).

If horror movies were some of the years most illuminating, they were also some of the years cleverest and most fun. So we asked the actors who gave this years greatest performances  including Daniel Kaluuya, Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Nixon, Andy Serkis, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tiffany Haddish  to interpret the genres archetypes. Duck under a bedsheet, slip in a set of fangs, smear on some makeup, lose your mind and Boo!: Youve captured 2017. But, of course, these performers had already done that, in movies that offered relief and enlightenment as well as terror. They played sensitive primates and brilliant poets, ordinary heroes and exceptional children, best friends and beguilers in movies that were funny, sad, sweet and revelatory. Whats truly scary about them is their talent, commitment and craft.
After Pappu, shehzada, BJP baptises Rahul with a new name, immature shehzada

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 7: What is your favourite nickname for Rahul? Is it Pappu or shehzada? Now, add one more to the list of sobriquets with which the soon-to-be Congress president is often addressed with.

The leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who love to make fun of Rahul by calling him with names like Pappu and shehzada, has baptised him with a new name--"immature shehzada".

In Hindi, the word shehzada means prince. Rahul is called a prince by his critics as he comes from the Gandhi family which has been at the helm of affairs in the country for the most part of independent India.

Thus Rahul, like princes from the days of monarchy, has inherited the Congress party and if the Congress wins the next parliamentary polls, he would become the Prime Minister of the country by default.

Now, the BJP has added an adjective "immature" before the shehzada to highlight the fact that the scion of the Gandhi family is a "juvenile" after he recently committed mathematical blunders in a tweet criticising the Narendra Modi government over price rise.

Recently, Rahul in a tweet addressed to PM Modi gave wrong figures to highlight the astronomical price rise during the BJP's rule both at the Centre and in Gujarat. After Rahul's mistakes were spotted by the media and BJP members, the Congress vice-president deleted the tweet and posted a new tweet with correct figures.

However, since the damage was already done, the BJP could not stop making a mockery of Rahul and his mathematical abilities.

"Rahul Gandhi's act always shows that he is an immature 'shehzada'. How many times he will tender an apology. A responsible person, who is going to be named the next Congress president, should not make such mistakes," a BJP MLA told ANI.

On Wednesday, Rahul admitted that unlike Modi he often commits mistakes like any other normal human being.

He also thanked his "BJP friends" for pointing out his mistakes. Rahul in the same tweet asked his critics to keep on pointing out his mistakes as and when he commits one, as it helps him to improve. And at the end of the tweet, Rahul with great warmth wrote, "Love you all."

"For all my BJP friends: unlike Narendrabhai, I am human. We do make the odd mistake and that's what makes life interesting. Thanks for pointing it out and please do keep it coming, it really helps me improve. Love you all," tweeted Rahul.

While the BJP called Rahul's Wednesday tweet an apology, it was actually a sarcastic take on the BJP's obsession to pinpoint Rahul's mistakes often.

As far as the nickname Pappu is concerned, Rahul has been christened as Pappu, which in Hindi means a fool, by the BJP and his online critics.

It has been more than a week since Rahul has been daily posting questions to the PM on Twitter on various issues as a part of the Congress' strategy to attack the BJP ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections.

The Assembly polls in the state are scheduled on December 9 and 14. The results of the elections will be declared on December 18.

On Thursday, Rahul asked PM Modi his ninth question pertaining to the agricultural crisis being faced by farmers in Gujarat and across the country.

OneIndia News
Amarinder Singh promises to relook at industrial policy, if needed

India

pti-PTI

Amritsar, Dec 7: Chief Minister Amarinder Singh inaugurated the 12th edition of Punjab International Trade Expos (PITEX-2017) with the promise of more steps by the state government, including a review of the new industrial policy, if needed, to ease the processes for facilitating business and industry.

This was initiated by him during his previous tenure (2002-2007), would pave the way for giving impetus to international trade and commerce, thus helping the state grow and making the region a hub of industrial activity. PITEX, which will see 34 MoUs worth Rs 2,268 crore being signed to generate 13,370 jobs in the state, is expected to witness much higher footfall than last year's 3 lakh- an indication of the new mood in the state, said Amarinder.

He pointed out that since the Congress government had taken over the state's reins, MoUs worth Rs 50,000 crore had already been signed, with many more in the pipeline. Reacting to the concern raised by PHD Chamber president Anil Khaitan, that as many as 32 permissions were still needed to set up a factory in Punjab, while setting up a power plant required 50, the chief minister said he would surely look into the matter and, if needed, relook the industrial policy to make sure that the 'Business First' philosophy is not compromised.

Lamenting that the state lost its industrial hub at the time of its division in 1966, the chief minister said his government was committed to rebuilding the same and was keen on industrial development across the state. Pointing out that the state's agrarian advantage continues to exist, despite the problems faced by farmers, the chief minister said Punjab had contributed 51 per cent to the country's food stock even this year.

"It is time now to explore ways to expand the industry, which is essential for creating jobs and improving the lives of the people," he stressed. Citing the incentives provided under the new industrial policy, launched recently by the Congress government in the state, Amarinder Singh said the state government was ready to extend all help and cooperation to industrialists from India and abroad to invest in Punjab.

Noting that institutions like PHD Chamber were playing a significant role in promoting Punjab government's industrial development schemes, he further said his government would extend all support to ensure the success of PITEX-2017. Enterprising businessmen from India and other countries, visitors and buyers participating in this event would be greatly benefited, he added.

The Congress government, he said, understood the concerns of trade and industry and was continuously striving to address these issues to provide a conducive industrial environment not only in the state, but in the entire region.

Others present at the inaugural event including state government minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Media Advisor to Punjab CM Raveen Thukral, MLAs Sukhbinder Singh Sukh Sarkaria, OP Soni, Raj Kumar Verka, Tarsem Singh Attari, Sunil Datti, Harpratap Singh Ajnala, among others. Apart from these PHD Chamber Punjab Committee Chairman R S Sachdeva was also present.

PTI
They stay among you to kill you: Ansarul Bangla Team could be Indias biggest threat

Blow for al-Qaeda in India as its senior most leader is killed

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The second in command of the al-Qaeda in the Sub-Continent (AQIS) has been killed in Afghanistan. The killing of Omar Bin Khetab was the result of a joint operation by the Afghan intelligence and US military.

The Afghan National Directorate of Security termed Khetab as the senior most al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan since 2001. Khetab has been described as an expert in heavy weapons and explosives who trained the Taliban for night attacks, according to a NATO hand out.

Khetab was killed in the Gilan district in Afghanistan's Ghazni's province. Khetab who was in his early 40s hailed from the restive tribal regions of Pakistan.

This killing is a bloody blow for the al-Qaeda which has been making desperate attempts to make its presence felt in the sub-continent. In the year 2014, it announced its India operations with the formation of the AQIS. However, the group has not been able to get much traction as the Islamic State overtook it and spread the ideology among the jihadis.

Recently the AQIS made another attempt in Kashmir when it recognised Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa as its man.

OneIndia News
When delegates across the world pledged to fight terror through Gandhian principles

Construct park near Yamuna from amount depostied by Art of Living: NGT

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to construct a biodiversity park near the river Yamuna with the amount deposited by the Art of Living as the fine for damaging Yamuna floodplains.

The NGT had earlier slapped an interim fine Rs 5 crore on the AOL for environmental damage while efforts were made to ascertain the exact costs of the damage.

AOL's World Culture Festival, which was held in Delhi on the bank on Yamuna river, had grabbed headlines for allegedly polluting and damaging the Yamuna floodplain ecosystem.

Reports say that more amount could be taken from the AOL if five crores fall short.

The Art of Living founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had said that the Centre, Delhi government and the National Green Tribunal should be held responsible for allowing his foundation to organise the World Culture Festival on the Yamuna floodplains in March 2016.

AoL had contended that the event site was not an identified floodplain even after NGT's 2015 direction to the authorities to demarcate the floodplain, and hence it cannot even be considered a floodplain.

[Art of Living Yamuna floodplains case: NGT reserves judgment]

The AoL's contention came in the backdrop of an expert committee earlier telling the NGT that a whopping Rs 42.02 crore would be required to restore Yamuna floodplains which were ravaged due to the AoL cultural extravaganza.

AoL told the bench that the contention of the committee that compaction has been caused by the World Culture Festival organised by it was "erroneous and untenable" as the panel has not conducted any scientific test or geotechnical investigation of the soil density of the land.

OneIndia News
Delhi HC issues notice to EC, Nitish faction of JD(U) over 'Arrow symbol'

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The Delhi High Court has issued a notice to Election Commission, Nitish Kumar faction of Janata Dal (United) on a plea by rebel leader Sharad Yadav faction against Election Commission order allotting arrow symbol to the other faction. The matter to be heard on 18th February 2018.

K Rajasekaran, the newly appointed President of the Sharad Yadav faction of Janata Dal (United), had moved the Delhi High Court challenging Election Commission order rejecting their claim to the 'Arrow' symbol.

The JD(U) leader has challenged the November 25 order of the poll panel giving reasons for recognising the faction led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the real JD(U) and allotting the 'Arrow' symbol to it.

Kumar and Yadav had parted ways after the former decided to join hands with the BJP in July, triggering a battle for the control of the party.

The Sharad Yadav faction had earlier moved the high court against the EC's November 17 order which had ruled in favour of Kumar's faction with regard to which group was the real JD(U), but the poll panel had not given reasons for arriving at the decision. The poll panel gave a reasoned order on November 25.

(With agency inputs)
PM Modi should admit that demonetistion a failure: Owaisi on cash seizure in UP

Failure of demonetisation? How fake Rs 2,000 notes were circulated soon after note ban

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 7: While announcing demonetisation of high-value currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 on November 8 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi insisted that the move was taken to end corruption, black money, circulation of counterfeit notes and terror funding.

More than a year later, it is clear that none of the above-cited "benefits" of demonetisation actually took place.

Rather reports state that how fake Rs 2,000 notes immediately came to the market after they were introduced post demonetisation.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) latest report released on November 30, a total of 2,272 fake notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were seized in 2016.

Since the Rs 2,000 note -- along with the new Rs 500 currency -- was introduced only after November 8, 2016, it means that those counterfeiting the notes got into the act very quickly.

In just 53 days between November 8 and December 31 last year, police and other government agencies seized 2,272 fake Rs 2,000 notes -- at a time when people across the country were struggling to get hold of the new currency.

The maximum number of these Rs 2,000 fake notes were seized in Gujarat (1,300), followed by Punjab (548), Karnataka (254), Telangana (114), Maharashtra (27), Madhya Pradesh (8), Rajasthan (6) and Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana (3 each). Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala accounted for two fake notes each. One such note was seized in Manipur as well as in Odisha.

The Rs 2,000 notes were part of the 281,839 fake notes of various denominations recovered from different locations across India.

Among other fakes, 82,494 notes of Rs 1,000 and 132,227 of Rs 500 denomination were also seized last year along with 59,713 notes of Rs 100 and 2,137 notes of Rs 50, said the annual publication of NCRB released by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

In a number of raids across the country, police forces, the Income Tax department and other government agencies also recovered 184 fake notes of Rs 20, at least 615 notes and coins of Rs 10 and 2,001 notes of Rs 5.

Also seized were 196 fake coins of Rupee 1 denomination -- between January to December 31 last year.

The critics of demonetisation state that it was a masterstroke by PM Modi to help rich turn their black money into white. Immediately after demonetisation, the country faced serious cash crisis as 86 percent of currency notes in circulation were declared as illegal by the government.

The critics blame that the economy of the country has been badly hit by the demonetisation as a large section of daily wage earners and owners of small enterprises went jobless within days.

Recently, India recorded slowest economic growth in last three years. The country recorded 5.7 percent GDP growth during April-June. The previous low of 4.6 percent was recorded in January-March 2014.

OneIndia News
Surat Model of natural farming can become a model for entire country: PM Modi

7 arrested for lynching ragpicker on suspicion of being thief

Gujarat elections: Can Congress breach urban BJP stronghold of 'diamond city' Surat?

India

pti-PTI

Gujarat's diamond city and the epicenter of the Patidar quota movement, is set for a tough Assembly poll battle as the Congress has added the face of the Patidar agitation Hardik Patel to its arsenal this time.

Amid issues like implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation, apart from the 'Patidar' factor, it is to be seen for whom the large trading community of this diamond and textile hub will vote, when the city goes to polls in the first phase on Saturday.

Though Ahmedabad is the largest city of Gujarat, Surat is a favoured destination of political heavyweights in this poll season.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited the city twice last month to understand the plight of those who were "hit by GST and note ban".

During his visit, Gandhi also addressed a huge rally in the city's Patidar strongholds - Varachha and Katargam.

On December 3, quota agitation leader Hardik Patel led a mega road show in Varachha. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani led the BJP's road show in Majura area the same day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month addressed a rally at Kadodara, located on the city's outskirts.

The Congress is hoping to snatch some seats from the BJP this time by capitalising on the 'anger' factor of Patidars and the traders.

On the other side, the BJP is confident of retaining its bastion, as its leaders claim the "ground reality" is different from what the Congress is projecting.

Out of the total 12 constituencies in Surat city, nearly half of the seats - Varachha Road, Kamrej, Katargam, Karanj, Olpad and Udhna - have a concentrated population of Patidars, who mostly migrated here from Saurashtra.

The remaining six seats are - Surat-East, Surat-North, Surat-West, Choryasi, Limbayat and Majura.

To some extent, Surat-North and Majura seats also have a significant population of Patidars, who are into various businesses, including diamond cutting, polishing, trading and in different trades associated with textiles.

The city has been a bastion of the BJP since long. But, the political scenario in this bustling business hub seems to have changed after Hardik Patel started the agitation to get reservation for his community two years back.

At that time, Surat witnessed large scale violence and arson, mostly in Varachha and adjoining areas.

Out of the two sedition cases lodged against Hardik, one was registered in Surat. Since then, the Hardik-led agitating body, Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), is up in arms against the ruling BJP and has vowed to defeat it.

Notably, BJP president Amit Shah had to cut short his speech at a function in Varachha area in September when some PAAS agitators created chaos by shouting slogans and throwing chairs.

Now, in an apparent bid to thwart the anti-incumbency factor following the Patidar 'anger', the BJP has dropped six of its sitting MLAs - from Kamrej, Surat-East, Surat-North, Karanj, Udhna and Katargam seats.

These leaders include sitting MLA of Katargam, Nanu Vanani, who is a minister in the Rupani government.

Out of the nearly 1.98 lakh voters of Varachha Road seat, the Patidars are in the driving seat with their number being over 1.5 lakh.

In Kamrej, where the total electorate is about 4.28 lakh, the Patidars alone account for over two lakh.

In Katargam, having around 2.77 voters, the Patidars are in a dominating position with over 1.18 lakh electorate.

Besides the 'angry' Patidars and traders, there are various other factors which could breach the hull of BJP's ship in this coastal city.

Since a large population, mostly Patels, of this city belongs to Saurashtra region, the agrarian crisis back home could also add fuel into their "anger" here, Surat city Congress president Hasmukh Desai said.

"Many decades back, Patels and other communities from Saurashtra region started settling here. Since they still own agricultural land back home, they are holding the BJP government responsible for their dwindling farm income. It is possible that their anger could reflect in the voting here," Desai said.

Apart from Patidars, the Congress is also banking on small traders and entrepreneurs whose businesses were claimed to have been hit by demonetisation and the implementation of GST by the BJP-led government at the Centre.

In July, the textile traders of Surat city called a massive strike against the GST.

The Congress was quick to take up the issue and party vice president Rahul Gandhi held two back-to-back visits last month.

"On one side we are getting full support from the Patidars, while on the other the trading community and the shopkeepers, who are spread across the city, are seeing a ray of hope in Congress after Gandhi's visit. All the factors are in our favour," Desai claimed.

However, the BJP discarded the argument, claiming that the ground reality is totally different.

"Though traders were unhappy initially, they now understand the benefits of GST. This so-called anger will never convert into votes. If the people were still against us, then why so many had turned up for the chief minister's rally?" BJP's sitting MLA from Majura, Harsh Sanghvi, asked.

Meanwhile, the PAAS members have already hit the streets in the Patidar-dominated areas to convince people not to vote for the BJP.

According to PAAS convener for Surat, Dharmik Malavia, they have set a target of defeating the BJP on at least five seats - Varachha Road, Karanj, Kamrej, Olpad and Surat-North.

"When we tell people do not vote for the BJP, it implies that vote for Congress if you want to uproot the party which committed atrocities on us," Malavia said.

"The people are in our support and the BJP candidates are finding it difficult to even enter into the Patidar societies for canvassing," he claimed.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases on December 9 and 14 and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

PTI
Cong for Muslims, BJP for Hindus: Did Rahuls temple visits in Guj help to bust the myth?

Gujarat elections: 'Fake' poster urges Muslims to support Ahmed Patel for CM post

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A poster has been put up by unidentified by people in Surat calling for Muslims to unite and support Congress party for Ahmed Patel to be made Chief Minister of Gujarat. Gujarat is going to polls in two phases on December 9 and 14.

The poster, written in Gujarati urges Muslims to support Rajya Sabha MP Ahmed Patel to be made 'Wazir-e-Alam' of Gujarat. Ahmed Patel, who is also political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, called it 'misinformation campaign by the BJP', reports ANI.

"They (BJP) know they are going to lose. I was never the CM candidate and neither will I ever be," said Ahmed Patel.

Patel tweeted, "The moot issue is that BJP is trying very very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda. Hence their reliance on lies & propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time."

The moot issue is that BJP is trying very very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda. Hence their reliance on lies & propaganda.But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time  Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) December 7, 2017

OneIndia News
We cannot wait longer now: SC to hear Vijay Mallyas contempt case in January for final disposal

'Have a very strong case of fraud against Mallya'

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 7: Amid reports that India may not have enough evidence against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources have said that there is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against him.

"The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UK's Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya," a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the government's case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, yesterday.

"The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India," he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrate's court.

Mallya, who was arrested by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds.

PTI
Never asked for votes in the name of Islam, says Ghulam Nabi Azad; Rubbishes BJP's allegations

Hey Ram! Gujarat election turns communal

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 7: Finally, Lord Ram has set his foot in Gujarat. Jai Shri Ram!

Now, the things are pretty clear--the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections are not about development, atrocities on Dalits, Patidar agitation, demonetisation and GST, but about Ram temple, Hindutva and communal politics.

So, all the incoherent debates over what issues would dominate the all-important elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home turf have been settled.

With less than 48 hours to go when Gujarat will vote for the first phase of elections on Saturday, it's the fight over building the Ram temple in the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, that is hogging the limelight.

The Assembly elections in Gujarat are divided into two phases. While the first phase of polls is scheduled on Saturday, the second one is scheduled on December 14. The results of the elections will be declared on December 18.

Thanks to both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)--which is facing anti-incumbency and backlash from various groups in Gujarat--and the Congress--desperate to make its presence felt in the state--communal politics has reared its ugly head in Gujarat, once again.

The state is known for voting on caste and communal lines, although the ruling BJP maintains that it is development that drives the entire electoral process in Gujarat.

With the Congress' one-minded focus on Gujarat and a series of rebellions against the BJP in the state, all this while the saffron party was looking lost over issues to fight the upcoming polls.

The 25th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid on Wednesday and the Supreme Court's hearing on the long-pending Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute on Tuesday came as blessings for the BJP in Gujarat.

Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are poles apart, but communal politics works wonders in both the states, like in the rest of the country. So, the BJP decided to subtly fight the polls by bringing religious division among the voters.

The Congress also brilliantly prepared the ground to turn Gujarat polarised during the election season. First, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's repeated visits to temples in Gujarat since September, then serious gaffe on the part of senior Congress leader and advocate Kapil Sibal who on Tuesday during the hearing of the Ayodhya title dispute case in the Supreme Court asked the apex court to defer the final announcement of judgement in the matter to July 2019 after the completion of the parliamentary polls.

The moment the news about Sibal's request in the apex court was highlighted by the media, the BJP leaders literally pounced on the Congress and Rahul over its "double standard" on building the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

First, BJP president Amit Shah on Tuesday asked Rahul to clarify the Congress' stand on the disputed issue that has since December 6, 1992, when Hindu kar sevaks brought down the Babri Masjid, not only divided the country on religious grounds but has resulted in several Hindu-Muslim riots.

On Wednesday, Modi, who is aggressively campaigning in Gujarat, attacked the Congress during his rally in Dhandhuka over Sibal's remarks. "Now the Congress links the Ram Mandir with elections. They are least bothered about the nation," he said.

In another rally, the PM congratulated the Sunni Waqf Board for "their brave stand on the matter and disassociating themselves from the statement of Sibal".

Isn't it contradictory on the part of Modi to accuse the Congress of linking the Ram Mandir with the Gujarat elections, when he and his party leaders are repeatedly doing the same thing?

Sibal, while asking the Supreme Court to postpone the hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, stressed on the fact that the BJP has said that the Ram temple will be built before 2019 through legal means.

"They (the BJP) want to make it a part of their election manifesto and the court should not fall into the trap," said Sibal.

The Supreme Court rejected Sibal's appeal and said it would begin the final hearings on the case pertaining to the disputed site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims from February 8, 2018.

The Sunni Waqf Board, one of the groups who Sibal was said to be representing in court, disowned his comments. "Yes, Kapil Sibal is our lawyer but he is also related to a political party, his statement in the Supreme Court yesterday (Tuesday) was wrong. We want a solution to the issue at the earliest," said Haji Mehboob of the board.

Hours after the PM attacked the Congress and Sibal, the former Union minister insisted that the board wasn't his client. "Our PM comments without knowing things sometimes. Amit Shah and he said I represented the Sunni Waqf Board. I was never a Sunni Waqf Board lawyer," he said.

Sibal's own party, the Congress, too has already distanced itself from his comments in the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who has also campaigned in Gujarat, called the stand of the Congress and Rahul on Ram temple as "hypocrisy".

It was the Ram temple movement that helped the saffron party to win 161 seats for the first time during the parliamentary elections in 1996. Since then, the BJP overtly or covertly conducts election campaigns across the country on the basis of building the Ram temple for Hindus in the holy town of Ayodhya, considered as the birthplace of Lord Ram.

At a time when the Congress is fast shedding its minority appeasement tag to win over the majoritarian hearts and the BJP's Hindutva agenda becoming more and more militant with each passing year, the elections in Gujarat can't be anything but about religion and more religion.

OneIndia News
Hyderabad's 'Chaddi-baniyan gang' caught on CCTV, police ask citizens to keep vigil

India

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

Recommended Video

Notorious 'Chaddi-baniyan gang' caught on camera, police releases CCTV footage | Oneindia News

The Cyberabad police have released CCTV footages and pictures purportedly showing the notorious 'Chaddi-baniyan gang'. The police have appealed to the public to stay alert and provide any information they may have about the members of the gang.

The infamous gangs, the police claim, come from other parts of the country like Maharashtra, commit robberies and flee the city before. "The footages have been released so people identify the gang members and inform the local police. The members move around in gangs with tools to break into homes. They tie their shirts at the waist and apply oil all over their body to escape easily if caught by someone- hence the name of the gang," Vishwa Prasad, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyberabad told OneIndia News.

The CCTV footage released by the police show four members of the gang emerging out of a house at the Kukatpally Housing Board. The Deputy commissioner added that two cases of robberies have been registered against the gang. The CCTV footage is from one of the places where they broke into a house.

A screengrab showing the faces of the members have been made public and the police have urged the people to provide any information about the gang.

OneIndia News
Indian Army says drone was on training mission, strayed into China

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Rejecting China's claims that an Indian drone violated its airspace, the Ministry of Defence on Thursday said Indian drone lost contact and crossed over the Line of Actual Control in Sikkim sector.

The Indian Army, in a statement, said that the UAV was on a training mission and strayed into the Chinese territory.

The Army said that the protocol was adhered to and in fact, it was the Indian side which informed the Chinese about the incident.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," a statement from MoD said.

The Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts over the missing UAV, it said. "In response, Chinese side reverted with location details. Exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is dealt with in accordance with established protocols," it added.

The Chinese state media on Thursday claimed that an Indian drone allegedly "invaded" China's airspace and crashed.

"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," Xinhua news agency cited the deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, as saying.

India and China share disputed terrain along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh as well as in Arunachal Pradesh and regions adjoining Bhutan.

OneIndia News
Guns and Roses: The job of the next Governor in Jammu and Kashmir

J&K residents would be able to speak to Dineshwar Sharma directly

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

It would soon be possible for the residents of Jammu and Kashmir to get in touch Dineshwar Sharma, Union Government's interlocutor to resolve the long pending issue, directly, said an HT report.

In a briefing to senior union ministers and the National Security Advisor, Sharma had in November said that an 'open mind' would be needed to sort out the problem. During his last visit to the Valley in November visit, Sharma met with several locals. They appraised him about the problems being faced such as issues with governance and lack of infrastructure.

Sharma now seems keen to thoroughly understand the ground realities of Kashmir which would allow him to find a realistic solution to the long pending problem.

"Sharma's office will soon announce a dedicated phone number and email address for registering complaints of the Jammu and Kashmir residents," a Hindustan Times report quoted a government official as saying.

The appointment of Dineshwar Sharma as the interlocutor in Jammu and Kashmir was the first sign of a policy shift by the Narendra Modi government. While on one hand, several agencies went after terrorists and funding on the other the appointment of Sharma signaled that the government was willing to speak to all those who wanted peace in the Valley.

Top Home Ministry officials had informed OneIndia that Sharma had suggested that it was crucial to focus on the youth of Kashmir.

OneIndia News
India tells UNSC it is deeply concerned with developments in Jerusalem

Jerusalem declaration: Indias position on Palestine is independent, consistent, says MEA

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

After US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine will be 'independent' and 'constant'.

The spokesperson also said that India's views and interests are not determined by any other country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," Raveesh Kumar said.

Earlier this year, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed on India's support for an independent Palestinian state in a joint statement but did not mention East Jerusalem.

Following these announcements by Trump several jihadi groups took to messaging channels calling for a bloodbath in America. The Indian Intelligence Bureau too issued an alert.

Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital, which marks a major departure from decades of American diplomacy, prompted a wave of condemnations.

Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.

OneIndia News
Karnataka assembly polls: Congress to roll out red carpet for Rahul Gandhi

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Karnataka Congress is planning a major rally in honour of Rahul Gandhi who is set to be elevated as the Congress president later this month. One of Rahul Gandhi's first stops posts his elevation would be Karnataka, one of the few states that the Congress is in power.

Following a high-level meeting chaired by Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, it was decided that there would be a rally taken out in all the 103 constituencies that the party lost in the 2013 elections.

Siddaramaiah would kick-start the Sadhana Yatra from December 13 onwards. During the high-level meeting, the leaders suggested that the yatra must comprise a bus with 50 leaders including the CM and the Karnataka Congress chief, Dr G Parameshwar.

OneIndia News
Killing of RSS workers: Transfer of funds from Italy, Pakistan under scanner

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The ISI and the Khalistan forces hatched a plan to kill RSS workers and Hindu leaders in Punjab. It has been found by the National Investigation that as part of the many money transfers that had taken place, one such transaction amounting to Rs 40 lakh had been sent to Punjab through various channels.

The NIA learnt about the same during the probe into the murder of an RSS worker Ravinder Gosain in Punjab. Once the accused persons gave the green signal, the money was transferred by the ISI through a hawala channel and also the Western Union from accounts in the UK, Italy, France, Pakistan and UAE.

With the role of the Khalistan forces and the ISI becoming amply clear, the focus of the NIA is now on the international conspiracy. Targets in these incidents generally were members of the RSS and Hindu organisations. Besides, in July 2017, they also murdered a Christian pastor named Sultan Masih in Ludhiana. It has also come to light that the above-mentioned conspiracy to destabilise Punjab has been hatched by Sikh extremist elements and others located in various parts of the world including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan an NIA officer informed.

The international conspiracy behind the killing of RSS workers

On Tuesday, the NIA arrested Pahar Singh, a 48-year-old arms dealer in connection with the murder. He is accused of supplying a country made weapon to the main accused in the case, Hardeep Singh.

An NIA officer part of the probe says that they are joining the dots for now. While they have managed to get hold of the accused operating in Punjab, the NIA has learnt that the larger conspiracy was hatched abroad. It has been found that there is a systematic pattern of the killing and orders and funds have come from Italy, Canada and the UK.

OneIndia News
Congress suspends Mani Shankar Aiyar over Neech remark

India

oi-Madhuri

Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar was on Thursday suspended from primary membership of the Party for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'neech aadmi'. Congress has also issued him a showcause notice telling him to explain his remarks.

This came after Aiyar called Modi a 'neech aadmi', triggering sharp reactions from the BJP and censure from his own party two days before voting starts in the Gujarat elections .

Earlier, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said he did not appreciate the tone and language used by Aiyar to address the PM. "Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said, " Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet.

Within minutes, Aiyar said he was responding to the "foul language" being used by the PM daily against Congress leaders. "I am a freelance Congressi, I hold no post in the party, so I can reply to PM in his language," he said.

However, Aiyar clarified that he did not mean "low-born" when using the term 'neech'. "Neech word can have different interpretations, my intention was never to talk of PM's caste.I apologise if it also has a caste meaning."

OneIndia News (with inputs)
Delhi HC seeks Centre's stand on plea to terminate pregnancy of minor in 'consensual' relation

Tamil Nadu: Minor who 'married' Class 12 student at bus stop held, girl sent for counselling

Minor girls in brothel: Sign this petition to support fight against 'child predators'

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

A campaign has been launched by an NGO which wants the Maharashtra Government to come down hard on child predators.

A petition, which seeks support from the people, brings to light the issue of minor girls caught in the web of prostitution. Girls as young as 14-years-old have been pushed into prostitution and 'horrible men' seeking young girls visit the brothels often.

When raids are conducted, those running the brothel are arrested but the customers walk free.

The campaign launched by NGO Change.org seeks punishment to these customers who visit brothels seeking minor girls.

"The Maharashtra government has made Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) which are proactively looking at rescue and rehabilitation of girls like Rati. But hardly any men who are paying for sex with children have been arrested," the petition says.

It gives a gut-wrenching example of a 14-year-old girl, Rati, who "was sometimes forced to have sex with 30 men in a day."

The Maharashtra Anti Human Trafficking Unit police shut 78 brothels in 2011 where children were forced into the flesh trade. That number gives an idea of how big this problem is. But just arresting the brothel owners and traffickers is not going to solve this problem.

To join fight against 'child predators' click here.

OneIndia News
Move Indian embassy to Jerusalem says Subramanian Swamy post Trump statement

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Senior BJP leader, Subramanian Swamy wants the Indian embassy to be moved to Jerusalem. This statement was made by Swamy a few hours after US President Donald Trump ordered his administration to move the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Trump also said that it was time for the US to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Both the Indian and US embassies are located in Tel Aviv.

Swamy said that Israel has international recognition of a part of Jerusalem as its territory and hence India should shift its embassy to this part of the city.

As Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, ISIS threatens bloodbath

Following these announcements by Trump several jihadi groups took to messaging channels calling for a bloodbath in America. The Indian Intelligence Bureau too issued an alert.

OneIndia News
R K Nagar bypoll: EC releases final list of 59 candidates, just one woman in fray

India

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

A total of 59 candidates will contest the Radha Krishnan Nagar, popularly known as R K Nagar bypoll. The Election Commission on Thursday released the final list of candidates for the December 21 bypoll.

The final list of candidates was announced after the deadline to withdraw nominations ended on Thursday. In all 145 nominations were received out of which 137 were from male candidates and 8 from female candidates. After scrutiny of papers, the election commission accepted 72 nominations and rejected 73. Till the deadline of withdrawal of nomination on Thursday, 13 affidavits were withdrawn.

Out of the total 59 candidates who will not contest in the R K Nagar bypoll, only one is a woman. Out of the 59 candidates, 47 are independents. The AIADMK, BSP, BJP, DMK have fielded candidates for the bypoll. The bypoll is expected to be a three-cornered contest between the AIADMK's E Madhusudanan, DMK's Marudu Ganesh and independent candidate TTV Dinakaran.

Actor Vishal whose nomination was rejected alleged that false accusations were being levelled against him by the returning officer. Speaking to the media outside the election commission office, Vishal said, "Today the returning officer is alleging that I threatened him and hence he announced that my nomination had been accepted. This is absurd and mockery of democracy."

Deepa Jayakumar, Jayalalithaa's niece, whose nomination was also rejected alleged political conspiracy.

OneIndia News
R K Nagar bypoll: "My proposers are missing, I fear for their lives," says Vishal

India

oi-Anusha

Actor Vishal, whose nomination to contest in the R K Nagar bypoll was rejected by the election commission, has claimed that two people who proposed his nomination are missing. The actor on Thursday added that he feared for the lives of his proposers.

Sumathi and Dheepan, two residents of R K Nagar whose signatures on Vishal's nomination paper were deemed as forged have been missing ever since his nomination was rejected, the actor has claimed. He took to Twitter on Thursday to express concerns about the duo.

As time passes by, Dheepan and Sumathi, who proposed my nomination are not traceable. I'm very much worried about their safety & security....



Whether I Win or Lose, Democracy truly Lost !!  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

Earlier in the day, the actor has claimed that the election commission had asked him to produce the two proposers in person. The actor took to Twitter on Thursday to call it an "alarming turn of events".

"Alarming turn of events! Just received info thru media that I have to produce the 2 people who supposedly alleged that their signature in my nomination for RK Nagar Election has been forged, in front of the Election Commission before 3 PM today. Less than 2 hours to do this...(SIC)" the actor had tweeted earlier.

The actor's nomination, to contest in the R K Nagar bypoll as an independent candidate, was rejected by the election commission on grounds that signatures of two out of ten proposers were forged. On Thursday morning, he also told the media that he would file a missing persons complaint in this regard.

The election commission has announced the final list with 58 candidates who are set to contest in the R K Nagar bypoll as Thursday's deadline to withdraw nominations came to an end.

OneIndia News
Cong for Muslims, BJP for Hindus: Did Rahuls temple visits in Guj help to bust the myth?

My meet with Rahul would have prevented BJP's Gujarat win: Hardik Patel

Rahul uses 'Gabbar' jibe to attack PM Modi, now on farmers plight

India

pti-PTI

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday addressed the issues plaguing the farmers of the country.

Asking his 9th question in the series, he asked, "Neither loan waiver, nor remunerative price for produce, neither received crop insurance benefit, nor were tubewells installed." The Congress leader also used the 'Gabbar' jibe to target the prime minister

"Agriculture hit by Gabbar Singh, land snatched and the (Annadatta) farmer was rendered useless. PM sahib should explain why such step-motherly treatment with the farm labour," he also said on Twitter.

Gandhi had earlier termed the Goods and Services Tax as Gabbar Singh Tax to attack the government.

Under the ongoing offensive, the Congress leader is using the tagline "22 saal ka hisab, Gujarat maange jawab" (22years of account, Gujarat demands answers), in the run-up to Gujarat elections starting December 9.

The Congress vice president has been using the microblogging site to pose daily questions to the prime minister over the performance of the BJP in Gujarat and its "unkept" promises over the past 22 years of its rule in the state.

PTI
'Havan' of cow dung cake can keep house sanitised for 12 hours: MP minister Usha Thakur

Cow as national animal? Is this our job asks SC

Rajasthan: Cow smuggler killed in encounter with police in Alwar

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

A cow smuggler was killed in an exchange of fire with police personnel at Alwar in Rajasthan on Wednesday.

The incident took place in Rajasthan's Alwar district. 5 to 7 cow smugglers opened fire on police while they were illegally smuggling cows.

One of the smugglers was killed in the encounter which took place in Janta colony area of Alwar.

Mewat region in Rajasthan has seen several such incidents of stone pelting, firing between the cow smugglers and cow vigilantes

Umar Khan, who was recently killed in an exchange of fire with alleged cow vigilantes at Alwar in Rajasthan, had a history of cow-smuggling and his accomplice Tahir, who was injured in the incident, was a habitual offender,

The incident was also dubbed as a re-run of the Pehlu Khan lynching, which was reported from the state in April.

OneIndia News
SC leaves it to EC to decide on 'pressure cooker' symbol to Dinakaran's party

Will Sasikalas release change TNs political spectrum: Wait and see says TTV

RK Nagar bypoll: TTV Dinakaran gets pressure cooker symbol despite his Hat request

India

oi-Madhuri

The Election Commission on Thursday allocated the 'pressure cooker' symbol to AIADMK leader TTV Dinakaran to contest the RK Nagar bypoll and allocated the 'hat' symbol to another party, ANI reported.

Earlier on Monday, the Delhi High Court rejected the plea by the VK Sasikala-Dinakaran faction of AIADMK for the 'hat' symbol, which was allotted to them in March by the EC for contesting the bypoll. The EC froze the use of the 'two leaves' symbol in view of dispute between the AIADMK factions.

The bypoll to RK Nagar assembly constituency will be held on 21 December.

Dinakaran, who filed his nomination on 1 December, will contest as an independent candidate. Counting of votes will be held on December 24 and the result is expected in a matter of few hours on that day.

R K Nagar has an electorate of 2,28,234 comprising 1,10,903 men, 1,17,232 women and 99 transgenders.

Jayalalithaa was elected from the constituency in May 2016 general election to the state assembly. She had earlier also got elected from there in a bypoll.

OneIndia News (with inputs)
Unidentified men attack journalist, his family in Kanpur

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Attacks on journalists continue as another journalist was attacked by unidentified men in Kanpur's Ghatampur on Thursday. His father, mother and brother were also injured in the attack, reports ANI. The journalist was identified as Madhusudan Yadav.

This is the third attack on a journalist in the state in over two months. In October, RSS activist and Dainik Jagran stringer Rajesh Mishra were shot dead in Ghazipur district.

Last month, one journalist was shot dead in Bilhur, Kanpur by unidentified bike-borne assailants. The journalist was identified Naveen Srivastava and he succumbed to his injuries while being taken to a hospital after he was shot.

More details awaited.

OneIndia News
Why India must stay away from Trumps Jerusalem comment

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

India said that its position on Palestine is independent and consistent. The statement by the Ministry for External Affairs cams a few hours after US President Donald Trump said that his administration would shift the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalam. Trump also said that it was time now to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Analysts are of the view that India has taken the right stance. It is better that in this issue, India has an independent and consistent stance. The Intelligence Bureau has already warned that this could become a rallying point for jihadis and hence India must for now stay away from the issue.

In India, several terrorist groups have tried and targeted Israelis and hence taking any stance on the issue could only worsen the security situation in the country, analysts have warned.

Earlier in the day, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests are not determined by any third country. India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.

The IB has said that security must be upped in India as well especially around the Israel embassy and areas that have Israeli tourists.

There have been several plots busted in India where Israelis have been the target. A general alert has been issued says the IB as some element may look to make this a rallying point.

It was only recently that the National Investigation Agency busted a plot in which jihadi elements were looking to target Israeli tourists in Himachal Pradesh. Several plots relating to the ISIS too were busted recently where the operatives specifically spoke about targeting Israelis. During the 26/11 attack, the Lashkar-e-Tayiba targeted the Chabad House which housed Israelis.

Meanwhile on the other hand the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have threatened a bloodbath. Analysts feel that this would now become a fresh rallying point for jihadis. Immediately after the announcement pro-jihadi channels posted messages threatening to carry out a spate of attacks in the US.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Thursday, December 7, 2017, 17:22 [IST]
U.S. Senate(WASHINGTON) -- Minnesota Sen. Al Franken will resign from the United States Senate he said on Thursday, an announcement he made a day after a number of his Democratic colleagues called for him to step down amid mounting allegations that he sexually harassed women.



"Today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate," said Franken, adding, "It's become clear that I can't both pursue the ethics committee process and at the same time remain an effective senator for [the people of Minnesota]."



Franken also sought to highlight the difference in his response contrasted with Senate candidate Roy Moore, who, ahead of Tuesday's special election in Alabama, now has support from President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee, and a growing number of Republican senators. At least eight women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior toward them when he was in his 30s and, in some cases, the women were in their teens.



Moore has denied the allegations.



Roughly a dozen women accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denied all of the allegations, called his accusers liars and threatened to sue them.



"I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of the sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party," Franken said.



The allegations against the senator began less than three weeks ago with the account of a Los Angeles radio host who described Franken's actions while the pair were on a USO trip together in 2006. Though he apologized, acknowledged some wrongdoing and called for an ethics investigation to be initiated, Franken resisted early calls for his resignation, even after additional accusations of misconduct surfaced.



The tipping point seemed to come earlier in the day Wednesday, when, in what was a coordinated effort, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Patty Murray, D-Wash., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., each called for Franken to resign.



A host of additional Democratic legislators and Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez later joined the initial group of female senators in urging Franken to give up his seat.



In November, Leeann Tweeden, the radio host, was the first to go public with her allegation against Franken of forcibly kissing and groping her over ten years ago. Tweeden claimed that Franken forcibly kissed me without my consent while rehearsing for a skit on an United Service Organizations tour to entertain U.S. troops in Afghanistan.



I felt disgusted and violated, Tweeden wrote of the alleged incident in a blog post published Nov. 17.



Tweeden further wrote that Franken groped her while she was sleeping and included a photo of Franken appearing to place his hands on her chest.



I certainly dont remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann, Franken wrote in paper statement apologizing to Tweeden. As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn't. I shouldn't have done it.



The radio host accepted the apology, and, at the time, said she felt Franken should not step down from his Senate seat.



After the allegations surfaced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called for an ethics investigation into Franken and the 2006 incident with Tweeden.



Tweeden said she was inspired to go public with her story after two congresswomen testified in a House committee hearing that their colleagues on Capitol Hill had engaged in sexual harassment, including groping and exposing their genitals.



After Tweeden, six other women came out with similar allegations against Franken.



Franken became known to the public as a comedian and cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live for 15 seasons.



The Minnesota native decided to pursue politics, winning a close election recount in the 2008 Minnesota race and reelected to a second term in 2014. Before his resignation, Franken had been mentioned as a potential Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential election.



During his time in the Senate, Franken sponsored legislation that combatted sexual assault and violence against women. As the powerful Hollywood executives and producers faced a reckoning over sexual harassment and assault allegations, attention also turned to those in power on Capitol Hill.



Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and other female congressional members shared their #MeToo accounts of sexual harassment and assault during a hearing to review sexual misconduct policy in the House. Franken had spoken out in support of Speier and the women.



Sexual harassment and violence are unacceptable. We all must do our part to listen, stand with, and support survivors. Franken tweeted.



Franken is the second lawmaker to leave Congress in the wake of the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment allegations brought forth against congressional members. On Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., announced his retirement after more than 50 years in the House of Representatives following accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination.



In her statement Wednesday calling for Franken to step down, Gillibrand said that she has no doubt there will be more accusations against Democratic and Republican lawmakers because Congress is not immune to this scourge.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Lt. Gov. Tina Smith released a statements on Thursday extending their thoughts to the women who accused Franken of misconduct. Dayton says he has not yet selected Franken's replacement, who will fill the Senate seat until a 2018 special election.



Smith, considered a candidate to fill Franken's seat until that election, said "it is on all of us to come together and make the progress necessary to live up to the values we believe in."



This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
As Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israels capital, ISIS threatens bloodbath

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda have threatened a bloodbath moments after US President Donald Trump announced that it was time to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump while making the announcement said that he has directed his government to begin preparations to move the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

While Israel has welcomed the move, some analysts feel that this would now become a fresh rallying point for jihadis. Immediately after the announcement pro-jihadi channels posted messages threatening to carry out a spate of attacks in the US.

Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intel Group, a US based terror monitor agency posted the threats being issued on her Twitter handle. The jihadists are capitalizing on the possibility of the US moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and warns that the world should expect to see a long, ongoing campaign by jihadists about the move, she said.

While pro-ISIS channels have posted warnings and graphics in English, Arabic and Hebrew in line with the ISIS propaganda practices, the Al Qaeda channels are exhorting Muslims to come forward with comments of Osama bin Laden and other leaders on Palestine.

Until now the US has never endorsed Israel's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. It has always insisted that the issue be resolved through negotiation between Israel and Palestine.

OneIndia News
That is how far this drone delivered medicines in Bengal

Indian drone violated airspace, crashed, claims Chinese media

International

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

An Indian drone violated Chinas territorial sovereignty, invading its airspace was crashed, Chinese media reported on Thursday.

"The Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle," Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, told the official Xinhua news agency.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang said. "We will fulfill our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely".

China's accusation comes months after the two countries ended one of their worst border standoffs in decades in the disputed Doklam region near Indian state Sikkim.

The 73-day stand-off ended in August with troops of both nations pulling back their troops from the disputed territory claimed by both Bhutan and China.

In September, India's army chief General Bipin Rawat had said that India could not afford to be complacent and must be prepared for war.

Last week, the PLA said it had the right to deploy troops as it saw fit in Doklam, which China claims but India and Bhutan see as Bhutanese.

The statement also holds significance ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's December 11 visit to India.

OneIndia News (with agency inputs)
India tells UNSC it is deeply concerned with developments in Jerusalem

Iran says Trump Jerusalem move will spark 'new intifada'

International

pti-PTI

Tehran, December 7: Iran strongly condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel Wednesday.

Iran stated that the move threatened a "new intifada", or uprising.

"The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," said the Iranian foreign ministry in a statement on its website.

PTI
Merkel 'does not support' Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem

International

pti-PTI

Berlin, December 7: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said she "does not support" the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The German government "does not support this position because the status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter.

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, for his part, said he feared Trump's decision would lead to a "new escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians".

The decision will likely throw "fuel on the fire", he told public broadcaster ARD. "We hope that (our) worries can be... calmed. But this about-face is already a big problem."

Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital, which marks a major departure from decades of American diplomacy, prompted a wave of condemnations.

PTI
Saudi Arabia slams Trump's 'unjustified and irresponsible' Jerusalem move

International

pti-PTI

Riyadh, December 7: Saudi Arabia slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East. He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said. "The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.

PTI
Forex Africa Arrives at a Wonderful Time for Emerging Africa

Published December 7, 2017 by Lee R

Global benefits and unique innovation are going to be on full display at Forex Africa 2017.

The 7th Africa Forex Expo 2017 is coming up at a great time for iGaming in Africa.

The Particulars

Taking place on December 8 and 9th at Johannesburgs Sierra square Hotel (CNR Republic & Main Road, Ferndale, Randburg), the 2 day event is bringing together a wide range of traders, investors, affiliates, IBs, fintech companies and brokers from across Africa and the world.

The Opportunity

With the financial market in Africa growing by leaps and bounds, this expo will provide a diverse range of free seminars to exemplify to attendees how to enter African markets alongside a massive exhibition of forex products and services.

The Africa Forex Expo is an amazing opportunity for brokers worldwide to promote online forex trading platforms through direct access to Africas most dynamic forex market today, with thousands of attendees are expected, and registration and exhibition opportunities still open nonetheless!

Highlights

Agenda highlights include a forecast of Business in Global Market in 2018 for Africa, a panel discussion entitled How to enter Africa Forex Market in 2018, a Keynote Speech on Social Trading in Africa, and a Financial Analysis from expert Investors and IBs, and of course a crypto currency presentation for the African stage.

Forex Awards Ceremony

There will also be a forex awards ceremony, with hardware for full 50 awards to be handed out including awards for Best Forex Broker of the Year, Best Forex Broker in Africa, Most Trusted Forex Broker, Best Trading Platform Provider for Africa, and Fastest Growing Provider.

Big Name Local Speakers

The many big name local speakers will include Manyike Nicolas (Tale-Award), Naeem Aslarm (Think Markets) Daniel Nsiegbe (GTExchanger Ltd), Mziyanda Bidi (Bitcoin Entrepreneur Builder), Kobus Kemp (Forex Analyst).

Amazing Expo Floor

The exhibition floor will be loaded with local exhibitors eager to show of Africas latest technology, and looking to pleasantly surprise all visitors!

Still Time to Register

Most people still are not aware of Africas economic capabilities. Online gaming and forex represents a true chance for Africa to equalize its own opportunities and join the global economy through attracting foreign investment with refreshing regional innovation. Sign up while you can.
Donald Trump is tweeting about a particular spot in Hawaii. He visited it recently on his way to threaten war in Asia. It's a big feature this week in lots of U.S. magazines and newspapers. It has a lovely name that sounds like murder and blood because Japanese airplanes engaged in large-scale murder there in 1941: Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor Day today is like Columbus Day 50 years ago. That is to say: most people still believe the hype. The myths are still maintained in their blissful unquestioned state. "New Pearl Harbors" are longed for by war makers, claimed, and exploited. Yet the original Pearl Harbor remains the most popular U.S. argument for all things military, including the long-delayed remilitarization of Japan -- not to mention the WWII internment of Japanese Americans as a model for targeting other groups today. Believers in Pearl Harbor imagine for their mythical event, in contrast to today, a greater U.S. innocence, a purer victimhood, a higher contrast of good and evil, and a total necessity of defensive war making.

The facts do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.

World War II stands unchallenged as the worst thing humanity in general and the U.S. government in particular (as well as numerous other governments) have ever done in any short period of time. Recent wars don't come close. There's even a parallel to the Downing Street Minutes.

On August 18, 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: "The President had said he would wage war but not declare it." In addition, "Everything was to be done to force an incident."

Indeed, everything was done to force an incident, and the incident was Pearl Harbor.

Recent Memories

In May 2005 some friends and I launched AfterDowningStreet.org (now called WarIsACrime.org) to promote awareness of the Downing Street Minutes or Downing Street Memo and related documents.

This was a very useful document that was released in a moment when it could have an important impact.

Like every war ever launched by anyone before or since (at least up until the age of openly blurting out "steal their oil" and "kill their families"), the 2003 stage in the Iraq war had been launched on the basis of lies and had been and still is continued on the basis of other lies.

We ought not to have needed any evidence. It is illegal to attack another country under the UN Charter and under the Kellogg Briand Pact (and arguably under the Hague Convention of 1899). And in this case, as with Afghanistan two years earlier, the UN had specifically rejected war. Launching a war is illegal and immoral no matter what weapons may be in the nation attacked and no matter what crimes that nation has committed. Launching a total assault on civilians to supposedly shock and awe them is illegal even in the understanding of lawyers who ignore the illegality of war. Morally it is one of the worst things ever done. Practically it has never worked.

Even if we accepted that weapons in Iraq or Iraqi crimes could justify a war, the evidence was clear that these were lies. The Iraqi government was opposed to the group it had supposedly collaborated with. In 1995 Saddam Hussein's son-in-law had informed the U.S. and the British that all biological, chemical, missile, and nuclear weapons had been destroyed under his direct supervision. After U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the lead inspector said they'd come to the same conclusion. In 1999 at a primary debate in New Hampshire, Bush said he'd "take out" Saddam Hussein. "I'm surprised he's still there," he said. In 2001, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and others in the Bush Administration were telling the media that Saddam Hussein had no weapons. They transparently switched their views on command.

So, when the Downing Street Minutes came out on May 1, 2005, we jumped on it, not as new information but as evidence we could use, both to persuade others and to make a case in court or in Congress. These were the minutes of a meeting at Prime Minister Tony Blair's office on July 23, 2002, at which his head of so-called intelligence, just back from Washington, reported (as summarized in the minutes):

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

And so they were, as has been documented in extensive detail. The White House war schemers and their collaborators forged documents, solicited desired claims rejected by their own experts, relied on non-credible witnesses, fed fake evidence to complicit so-called journalists, and tortured desired statements out of victims they'd kidnapped. Bush concocted harebrained schemes to start a war that he publicly claimed to be trying to avoid. See, for example, the White House Memo.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).


market near damascus gate

(Image by Madmartigand) Details DMCA



American Muslim civil advocacy groups Thursday (Dec 7) vehemently opposed President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

They were of the view that Trump's announcement serves no one's interest but undermines the Middle East peace process couple with inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment across the globe.

On Wednesday, a coalition of Muslim, Interfaith and human rights groups scheduled a news conference outside the White House in Washington, D.C., to respond to President's Trump's announcement on the status of Jerusalem.

The Muslim groups argue that Trump's announcement has offended the religious sensibilities of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, and empowered political and religious extremists of all stripes at home and abroad.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later declared both halves of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital". The declaration is not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of the international community does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through final-status negotiations.

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee [ADC]

President Trump's announcement serves no one's interest; instead, it will have an immediate and catastrophic impact internationally by undermining the Middle East peace process and inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment across the globe, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) statement said adding:

"Israel's annexation and claim over Jerusalem is completely illegal under international law, as recognized by the entire world. The fate of Jerusalem has always been understood to be resolved by a completed peace deal between Israel and Palestine. Up until today, this was the U.S.'s official stance on Jerusalem. Today, President Trump has completely reversed U.S. policy and greatly weakened the prospect any long-term chance at a substantive peace deal in the Middle East."

"By endorsing Israel's annexation of Jerusalem, President Trump is acting against international law, hurting U.S. interests at home and abroad, and destroying U.S. credibility on an international stage. The Trump Administration's actions will not promote peace; conversely, the decision destroys the prospect of peace, promotes violence, and dismantles the U.S. credibility as a diplomatic force around the world," the ADC statement concluded.

Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR]

On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, joined a coalition of Muslim, Interfaith and human rights groups at a news conference outside the White House in Washington, D.C., to respond to President's Trump's expected announcement this afternoon on the status of Jerusalem.



CAIR is calling on Americans of all backgrounds to contact their elected representatives to oppose Trump's "reckless" change of policy on Jerusalem.

In a statement reacting to the president's announcement on Jerusalem, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said:

"By overturning a decades-long policy adopted by administrations of both parties, President Trump is casting aside America's role as a mediator in the Middle East conflict, harming our Muslim allies and our nation's strategic foreign policy interests, offending the religious sensibilities of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, and empowering political and religious extremists of all stripes at home and abroad. This dangerous, counterproductive and self-serving move should be rejected by every American who looks forward to a just and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

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This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

The following is the transcript of an interview of Lawrence Wilkerson by The Real News Network's reporter Sharmini Peries. The video of this interview was first broadcasted at The Real News Network.

SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Last Wednesday's test launch of an intercontinental ballistic rocket by North Korea appears to have had its desired effect, rattling Washington. White House National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, when asked about the test, said:

"Has the potential of war with North Korea increased since this latest launch? I think it's increasing every day."

SHARMINI PERIES: On CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said preemptive war with North Korea is more likely:

"We're 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 can deliver the weapon. We're running out of time. McMaster said that yesterday. I'm going to urge the Pentagon not to send any more dependents to South Korea. South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour. 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. I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea...The intelligence community can tell you that better than I can but I have an extensive discussion with the administration about this topic. The policy of the Trump administration is to deny North Korea the capability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile, not to contain it. That now means preemptive war as a last result. 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. If there's an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States."

SHARMINI PERIES: On to talk about this with me is Colonel Larry Wilkerson. He's a retired US colonel and former chief of staff to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, now a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary. Thanks for joining me, Larry.

LARRY WILKERSON: Good to be here with you, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Larry, let's take up what Senator Graham just said. First, that dependents and children of US military should not accompany them to the bases in South Korea, where there is some 28,000 US military personnel carrying out various extensive wargames in the region. Second, that a preemptive strike is near. How serious is this?

LARRY WILKERSON: I can only interpret what Lindsey Graham just said from two possible perspectives, very different perspectives: one, that he's trying to do what people say Donald Trump is trying to do in a very strategic way, and that is scare the devil out of Kim Jong-un and his North Korean military so that they'll come to the negotiating table, abjectly surrender in other words or he's just as dumb, as strategically inept as I think the entire administration is. I don't know which interpretation to put on it but increasingly I'm thinking, after having visited with the Senate and visited with representatives in the House for a number of other reasons and talked with them, that there are not a lot of people with a lot of smarts over there in the Congress.

SHARMINI PERIES: Larry, do you really believe that McMaster and other advisors to President Trump including the Pentagon, will allow Trump to carry out a preemptive strike on North Korea?

LARRY WILKERSON: They're all provocations. We may say that they're to keep our troops ready and exercises are just routine, and so forth but the timing of them makes them provocations. Anybody can crawl into Kim Jong-un's head and the collective head of North Korea for that matter, and see that they're provocations.

Let's just back up for a moment, though and let's examine what Lindsey said. You'll understand why I interpret it more on the one side than the other of those two alternatives I gave you. First, there are 210,000 plus Americans already on the Korean Peninsula. Some of them are sponsored by the military. Others just came there, which is permissible. They came there to live in Seoul and be near their loved one, who's in Pyongyang or Pyeongtaek or someplace else in the US armed forces. There's almost a quarter of a million Americans already there. There are 50,000 Japanese. There are a million Chinese.

Lindsay, how are you going to get all these people out of South Korea? How are you even going to get the Americans out of South Korea? By the way, Lindsay, if you do it over time, which your remarks suggested you might be smart enough at least to do, then it's going to take time. You're going to have to do it over civilian aircraft mostly, so you're going to get all these flights going and you're going to get all these people out of South Korea. That signal alone is going to be provocative to the maximum.

I've done this. I've done the war planning. I've done the war. If you evacuate all these people from South Korea, the South Koreans are going to know what you're contemplating. Whether you're contemplating it by starting it yourself, which sounds increasingly like the case, when you listen to Trump and Graham and others, or by provoking North Korea to do it so that they can destroy half of Seoul before you even get your act together, is irrelevant in terms of the destruction that's going to come to the peninsula. This is the kind of idiocy with which we're dealing now in Washington, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Larry, when President Trump was in China a couple of weeks ago, he urged the Chinese to do what it must to contain North Korea. Does this new missile test meaning that China is failing in its efforts to contain Pyongyang?

LARRY WILKERSON: Not at all, in my view. I think China has pretty much tried just about everything it could without violating its own strategic objectives, which are ultimately to keep North Korea standing. It might be a basket case, but to keep it standing.

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From Palestine Chronicle



Hopes for an end to the persecution of the Rohingya minority remain bleak.

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Pope Francis lost an historical opportunity to truly set his legacy apart from previous Popes. Alas, for him, too, political expediency trumped all else. In his visit to Burma (Myanmar) on November 27, he refrained from using the word "Rohingya."

But what's in a name?

In our frenzied attempts at understanding and articulating the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma, we often, perhaps inadvertently, ignore the heart of the matter: The struggle of the Rohingya is, essentially a fight for identity.

Burma's Buddhist majority and its representatives, including the powerful military and the country's de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, understand this well. They use a strictly-guarded discourse in which the Rohingya are never recognized as a unique group with pressing political aspirations.

Thus, they refer to the Rohingya as "Bengali," claiming that the Muslim minority are immigrants from Bangladesh who entered the country illegally. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But historical accuracy, at least for the Buddhist majority, is beside the point. By stripping the Rohingya from any name affiliation that makes them a unique collective, it becomes possible, then, to deny them their rights, to dehumanize them and, eventually, ethnically cleanse them as has been the case for years.

Since August, over 650,000 members of the Rohingya community have been driven out of their homeland in Burma by a joint and systematic operation involving the military, the police and various Buddhist nationalist groups. They call it "Clearance Operations."

Thousands of Rohingya have been killed in this grave act of genocide, some in most abhorrent and inhumane ways imaginable.

The United Nations Human Rights Council Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has recently referred to the purges in Burma as a "textbook example" of ethnic cleansing. There can be no other interpretation of this horrendous campaign of government-led violence.

But as thousands were pushed into the jungles or the open sea, the silence was deafening.

Only recently, US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who visited Burma last November decided to label the massive human rights violations against the Rohingya as "ethnic cleansing."

Although his statement labeled the government-centered genocide as "abuses by some among the Burmese military," it was still a clear departure from past failure to even address the issue altogether.

Still, it was a major disappointment that the Pope abstained from mentioning the Rohingya by name while in Burma. He only stated their name when he crossed the border to Dhaka. In Bangladesh, using the word "Rohingya" seemed like a safe political strategy.

It is understood that refraining from using the word "Rohingya" while in Burma was done as a "concession to the country's Catholics," reported the Washington Post. The logic goes: by challenging the popular narrative that cast the Rohingya as foreigners, the Pope would have ignited the ire of the Buddhists against the country's Christian minority, itself persecuted, at least in two Burmese states.

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Jeff J Brown has done it again: the man is obsessed with China, where he has spent a total of fourteen years, seven in the nineties, and seven more since 2010. During that time, he has made it a point to become fluent in Mandarin. His first book, "44 Days Backpacking in China" (https://ganxy.com/i/88276/ ) is the meticulous journal of an 8,000-mile journey, by bus, train and walking, which he took across China in 2012, one of the reasons being to perfect his Chinese by exposing it to many regional dialects. He then penned book number two of his China Trilogy, "China Rising- Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations" (https://ganxy.com/i/113798/jeff-j-brown/china-rising-capitalist-roads-socialist-destinations ), and now book number three, "China Is Communist, Dammit! Dawn of the Red Dynasty" (https://www.amazon.com/China-Communist-Dammit-Dawn-Dynasty/dp/6027354380/ )



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Having had many professions, starting as a livestock and grain expert for in the Middle East and Africa, Jeff has made bread in China, managed real-estate in the US, and a retail business in France with his French wife. For the last seven years in China, Jeff has been teaching in international schools, somehow finding time to write books and maintain a podcast.

His latest work traces the basic principle of Communism -- the responsibility of the government to ensure a decent life for all its citizens (which in contemporary China also includes foreign residents) -- all the way back to 1700 B.C. under the Shang dynasty. He does a wonderful job of describing the various periods of Chinese communism, seen against the yardstick of the Heavenly Mandate, which, like the American Declaration of Independence, states that if the people are not happy with their government, they can demand change. According to Brown, the system worked well for centuries, until Western nations got their foot in the door, exploiting the country and its people.

Mao Tse Tung's Long March was the drastic solution to Western -- and Japanese -- Imperialism, culminating in the defeat of the Kuo Min Tang led by US-supported Chiang Kai Shek, who ultimately retreated to the island of Taiwan, where a pro-Western entity exists to this day.

One of the most interesting customs described by Brown is the traditional effort by law enforcement to encourage the parties in a dispute to come to a compromise, thus avoiding the heavy hand of justice. He provides several examples of this practice, one of which involved him and his wife in a car accident.

Jeff's book is illustrated with many exquisite reproductions that will make it an attractive addition to any family library as Christmas looms. While children will be exposed to true exotica, adults will be reminded that the me-age was preceded by ancient dynasties that dwarfed those of Europe, and that China's progress toward becoming the biggest economy in the world is not surprising after all, given its enduring Heavenly Mandate, which Jeff affectionately refers to as Baba Beijing.
Boston suburbs, late 1970s. Ron was heir from a well-known brand of instant coffee who opened his mansion to our peer counseling splinter group a few times a year for personal growth weekends. We experimented with pagan rituals, nude dancing, drumming and chanting. There was a lot of confessional openness and support for venting feelings of all kinds. One time I brought a paper bag full of dollar bills, fives, tens and a few twenties to publicly burn them in Ron's ample living room hearth. This brought up more than a few hundred dollars' worth of feelings for most of us, plenty of grist for the mill. People laughed or screamed or just shook heads with their mouths open. Ron was the one who didn't see this as "feelings" at all. It was just wrong. He reached into the fire with his bare hands, tried to find the higher-denomination bills, pulled them out and rescued at least a few of them from the flames.



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Back when the word had very different connotations, the original "cynic" was Diogenes of Sinope, the philosopher who was mad enough to act on his professed beliefs. Son of a banker, Diogenes slept homeless in a wooden bathtub, let his beard grow to unfashionable lengths, tramped mud into Plato's soire'es, and mocked every pretense to civilization and respectability. There were things that people were not supposed to do in the Agora, including urination and (strangely enough) consumption of food. But Diogenes professed that what we do in private we should not be ashamed to do in public. How else he offended respectable society might be surmised from his response when chastised, "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."



jean-bernard_restout_-_diogenes_asking_for_alms

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What would become of a Diogenes on the streets of San Francisco or New York today? In the Golden Age of Athens, Diogenes was tolerated and even commemorated, so that we may read of his antics to this day. He did, however, commit one unspeakable sin for which he was banished from Sinope, and it is recorded as "debasing the coin of the realm". What does this signify? Some say that he and his father flooded the city with counterfeit money, others that he defaced the city's good money with a hammer, or that he melted it down.
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In 1971, Ellsberg was a high-level defense analyst when he leaked a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. He played a key role in ending the Vietnam War. Few know Ellsberg was also a Pentagon and White House consultant who drafted plans for nuclear war. His new book, published Tuesday, is titled "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." We speak with Ellsberg about his top-secret nuclear studies, his front row seat to the Cuban missile crisis, whether Trump could start a nuclear war and how contemporary whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden are his heroes.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZALEZ: North Korea is warning that U.S. actions are bringing the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. The warning came Monday as the U.S. and South Korea held massive war games, mobilizing warships, thousands of troops and some 200 U.S. planes, many of them capable of deploying nuclear bombs. North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling President Trump a, quote, "nuclear demon." Earlier this year, North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to U.S. and South Korean war games, an overture rejected by the Trump administration.

As tensions between the U.S. and North Korea ramp up, today we're joined for the hour by a nuclear war planner to discuss what nuclear war would look like. He is already well known for another reason, as one of the world's most famous whistleblowers. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg was a high-level military analyst when he leaked a top-secret report that detailed the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, including a secret dramatic escalation of troops and bombings in what looked like an unwinnable war. He photocopied and shared the 7,000-page document with The New York Times and other publications. The report came to be known as the Pentagon Papers and played a key role in ending the Vietnam War.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, few know that 10 years before, in 1961, Daniel Ellsberg was a consultant with the Pentagon and the the White House, where he drafted plans for nuclear war. In his book, just out this week, titled The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Dan Ellsberg reveals for the first time he also made copies of top-secret documents from his nuclear studies -- an entire second set of papers in addition to the Pentagon Papers, for which he is known. Dan Ellsberg is also the author of a 2003 memoir about the Pentagon Papers and Vietnam called Secrets, in which he did not discuss this other set of papers. He's the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. Dan Ellsberg will be a character in the forthcoming Steven Spielberg film about the Pentagon Papers called The Post.

When the come back from our break, we'll speak with Dan Ellsberg for the hour about nuclear war, the plans he drew up, what nuclear war would look like and his history as the most famous whistleblower in America. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "We Will All Go Together When We Go" by Tom Lehrer. This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez. We're joined by Dan Ellsberg for the hour, yes, known for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Today we learn about something else he did over the years, in fact, decades ago: writing up plans for a nuclear war. His book details this, just out this week, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

So, you made copies of top-secret reports for plans about nuclear war years before you copied the Pentagon Papers --

DANIEL ELLSBERG: That's right.

AMY GOODMAN: -- and released them to the press?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Essentially, my notes, and sometimes verbatim excerpts, not the entire plans themselves, but on plans that were then unknown to the president, to begin with, to President Kennedy. I briefed his aide, McGeorge Bundy, in his first month in office on the nature of the plans and some of the other problems, like the delegation of authority to theater commanders for nuclear war by President Eisenhower, which was fairly shocking to McGeorge Bundy, even though Kennedy chose to renew that delegation, as other presidents have.

But I was given the job of improving the Eisenhower plans, which was not a very high bar, actually, at that time, because they were, on their face, the worst plans in the history of warfare. A number of people saw them, but very few civilians ever got a look at them. In fact, the joint chiefs couldn't really get the targets out of General LeMay at the Strategic Air Command.

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(Article originally published here on May 14, 2008 under the title Explaining the Relationship Between Grateful Jews and Christian Zionists With a Twilight Zone Story

There are a number of Christian Fundamentalist leaders, like John Hagee, one of John McCain's endorsers, who seem to wish the very best for Israel and the Israelis.



These Christian Zionists are, by far, more avid in their support for Israel than most American Jews. We know a bit about the extent of their fervor for Israel because Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibi went undercover to Hagee's church and learned that the members of this megachurch and his movement are taught to be so loyal to Israel that they even oppose the giving up of land in any peace settlements.



So it is not surprising that there are many Israelis, and many American Jews who strongly embrace and welcome Hagee and his flock of brainwashed sheep.





There's one that seems to be a perfect allegory for the Israelis who are so grateful to Hagee's Rapture ready Christian Zionist.



The Twilight Zone story is titled, To Serve Man, originally written as a short story by Damon Knight. The story begins with a flying saucer landing on earth, near Newark (a short commute to the UN.) A nine foot tall "Kanamit" tells the delegates to the UN that he and his people have come to help Earth to become free from want, war, faminme... and in short order, thousands of humans are accepting the offer to fly to the Kanamit planet, where, the word is, they are treated like royalty

Meanwhile, the first Kanamit visitor has left a book, written in Kanamit. They cryptographers interpret the cover title-- "To Serve Man." And they start experiencing the benefits the Kanamits have brought-- new energy technologies, fertilizers that quadruple crop yields... so the job of translating the book, a job given to cryptographers who were involved in the cold war-- is put on hold, as peace seems to be taking over the earth.



But one woman is fascinated by the challenge. Even as she and her colleague are on the waiting list to fly to the Kanamit planet, she is working on breaking the language.



Finally, as her colleague, Michael Chambers, is literally climbing on board the flying saucer, she races to the departure area and calls out to him, and tells him she's translated the rest of the "To Serve Man" book.



"Don't get on. It's a cook book."



But it's too late. He's pushed up the ramp. It's closed, and we see him being very well fed by the Kanamit on board.



The Christian Zionists are like the Kanamit, pretending to be helping the Israelis, but, in truth, anything but their friends. Michael Chambers, on the Flying Saucer, knowing his final fate, opines, "Sooner or later we'll all of us be on the menu, all of us."



And of course, we can take this educational tale as a lesson. We can realize that not only are the Christian Zionists putting Israelis on the menu, but the neocons and their enablers they keep voting into office who have been claiming to help us, making us safer from terrorists, from the threats they've lied to us about-- they are putting us all on "the menu."



Rod Serling, in his inimitable way, wraps up "To Serve Man" with his final observation, "The evolution of man-- the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis of going from the ruler of the planet to an ingredient in someone's soup."



Here's a trailer for the Twilight Zone How to Serve Man episode.

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Merry Christmas! From the Nutcracker Suite. I am the Rat King

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The commenter shrugged (we can feel him snarkily do it): "I thought (the capital) already was Jerusalem. Did I miss something?"

You're an ignorant ass, OZ (as he anonymously styled himself). You've been hypnotized by the great and terrible Oz on the screen while the men behind the curtain push the buttons and pull the levers.





This is the fruits of the "peace negotiations" among Bibi Netanyahu and his nationalist partners, and Trump's bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, a major investor in Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank, and the soon-to-be-indicted neophyte weasel real estate man who happens to be a personal friend of Netanyahu, and is also an investor in settlements, Jared Kushner. How the US Senate could confirm such a candidate for diplomatic office given the conflict of interest represented by being a financial investor of millions of dollars in furtherance of a specific policy that counters the prevailing US policy stance for decades is completely beyond me, one more reason to throw the bums out.

As the reporter said, we must now brace for violence in the Middle East. For Trump to say he has a "Peace Plan" and then blow it to shreds as surely as Kim Jong-Un executed his uncle with an anti-aircraft gun once again demonstrates the dynamic that might be called massive cognitive dissonance in another less serious situation, but that in this case began with a calculated intention of a One-State Solution-- Israel-- in the region that comprises (the term is an old one, not currently being publicly espoused by Netanyahu or his government officially, but is echoed privately by many high current and former Israeli officials)-- "Eretz Israel," which is to say, "Greater Israel."

Trump signaled his support for a One-State Solution-- the term is well enough

known that it deserves capitalization, as a major historical action-- during the President-Elect period. Bibi was exultant. Trump has done this a little quicker than I thought he would. I expect Trump is hearing the hounds and seeing the glow from the torches, and he knows there are pitchforks in that crowd.

Lessee, so far Trump has removed the US from the TPP, chiding allies we might need for not paying enough; he's pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords; and now the US, some day (unless the Republican Party, whose job it certainly is, gives him the hook very quickly), will be the only nation with its embassy in Jerusalem.

He's got to be gone in 2018. As I have noted in the past, resignation before impeachment is his plea bargain. If he retires before he is indicted for federal charges, he can go back to New York and beat the state charges against him-- Kushner can do the same.

This president does not play well with others. He's an existential threat to the survival of the planet. We all (except for the coalition of right-wing ideologues and low-information voters that comprise Trump's base) are watching the atavistic process in horror.

I am a touring musician who plays for an international fanbase, and I am constantly apologizing to my fans from around the world for the earthshaking error that America has perpetrated on the world through a collective error in political and moral judgment. We elected a violence-encouraging p-grabber who's never read a full book in his life (no matter for his claim of "Ivy-League education"), and has gutted American diplomacy by his constant tweeting.

I am actually surprised that any American ambassador is currently serving (except Friedman of course). Who would want to work representing a man who even undercuts THEIR direct superior, the Secretary of State, on Twitter?

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It is easy to have courage when one no longer has to answer to a sect within one's party that has lost all sense of morality and decency. Republican Jeff Flake's symbolic act required little coverage but may convince a few Republicans to stop for a second to see if their moral compass will reset and not vote a pedophile into office.

Jeff Flake is showing a welcomed faux courage as he goes against his party for one moral issue but fails miserably on something that will hurt millions. He sent the following tweet.

"Country over Party"

So Senator Jeff Flake sends Alabama's Democratic Senatorial candidate Doug Jones a campaign contribution. The idea is to show that a Republican will support a Democrat to ensure that a pedophile, Roy Moore, the Republican opponent does not get into office. This act is a commendable gesture. The thing is, Flake is not running for reelection. He is leaving the Senate. One can be very courageous when one need not worry about immediate reelection.

If Jeff Flake wants to show that he believes in the country over party, the American citizens over party, he would not have voted for the Republican tax cut scam. Attempting to keep a pedophile out of the Senate is important. But Roy Moore is only one Senator who individually wields little power to affect the entire country.

The Republican tax cut scam hurts millions and will kill millions every year. If Flake wants to show courage, he should never have voted for the bill. He still has time to determine if his tweet "Country over Party" is true. But don't hold your breath. Flake will likely run for another office down the road. His base will forgive him after this election cycle. The Plutocracy, however, would make an example out of him for voting against the bill by ensuring he has little funds to work with for any subsequent run for office. They have everlasting memories.
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

Few Americans ever took in the vastness of the prison outsourcing system the administration of George W. Bush set up from Afghanistan to Iraq, Thailand to Poland, the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Guanta'namo Bay in Cuba. In those years, I began referring to that global network of prisons as our own "Bermuda Triangle of injustice." At one point, it housed at least 15,000 prisoners from Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca in Iraq to the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan and, of course, Guanta'namo. They were often kept under the grimmest of conditions, involving in a striking number of cases torture and sometimes death. All those prisons, large and small, were borrowed or built to ensure that captives in the Bush administration's Global War on Terror, the innocent and the guilty alike, whether taken in battle, traded for bounties, or kidnapped by the CIA off the streets of global cities as well as in the backlands of the planet, would be -- every last one of them -- beyond the reach of the law, American or international.

And that couldn't have been more intentional. An administration whose top officials had torture methods -- the euphemism of that moment was "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- demonstrated in the White House wanted a free hand to do whatever it damn pleased, including waterboarding, slamming heads off walls, depriving prisoners of sleep, or just about anything else. They were going to "take the gloves off," as the phrase of the era went, and no judge, no legal system was about to stop them. Their lawyers in the Department of Justice even redefined "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" in the classic legal description of torture so that an act would not be considered torture if "intent" wasn't there -- and the only way to know about intent would be to ask the potential torturer. (Even then, he or she would need to have "specific intent to cause pain" in mind.)

In this web of CIA-operated "black sites" extending across significant parts of the planet, the jewel in the crown, a veritable recruitment poster for jihadist groups, was Guanta'namo. It was tantalizingly just 90 miles offshore from American justice and pioneered those iconic orange jumpsuits for its prisoners that would later be adopted by ISIS for its torture and murder videos. There, prisoners could be kept more or less forever without either charges or trials, a system for which Donald Trump has shown remarkable enthusiasm.

TomDispatch has been covering all of this for years and yet I felt I first came face to face with Guanta'namo only the other day in the strangest, quietest way imaginable. I went to meet Erin Thompson, author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present. She then took me through "Ode to the Sea: Art from Guanta'namo," the first show of paintings and other works by some of the prisoners there, which she had curated. Who even knew that they painted, no less with a startling proficiency? Though the works were (as she describes today) in some way faceless -- untitled and largely without human images -- something about finally "meeting" those prisoners (and ex-prisoners), however facelessly, can't help but take your breath away and remind you that we are all, however uncomfortably, in the same grim world. Tom

The Art of Keeping Guanta'namo Open

What the Paintings by Its Prisoners Tell Us About Our Humanity and Theirs

By Erin L. Thompson 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 Guanta'namo 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 administration's Global War on Terror began to arrive at that offshore prison in January 2002. Since Guanta'namo 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 Guanta'namo. 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 Guanta'namo 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 Guanta'namo I'm 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 lawyer's 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 lawyer's 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.

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Muhammad Ansi, Untitled (Pier), 2016. As it turned out, the art doesn't leave Guanta'namo 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? Wasn't I, in other words, the ultimate Other?

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From Smirking Chimp

Some political experts doubted that Donald J. Trump would tough it out this long. This, after all, was a very strange man, possibly afflicted by obsessive-compulsive disorder to the point that he even floated the idea of staying in New York.

He moved to Washington. But Trump's dangerous old compulsions remain: Twitter diarrhea. Impulsiveness. Recklessness. He insults adversaries whose cooperation he needs. He's allergic to compromise. Will these character defects destroy him politically in 2018?

The odds of Trump remaining president by the end of next year, I said recently, were significantly less than 50%. I still think that's true. But as noted above, we have a tendency to underestimate this highly inestimable man. The will-Trump-survive question is an equation with many variables.

One thing is clear: "The Resistance," as the left-center political forces aligned against Trump and the Republicans grandiosely call themselves, is a null force. If Trump is forced out of office, it won't have much to do with these Hillary Clinton supporters. The Resistance's street activism peaked out with the Women's March on January 21, 2017. They are, in Trumpspeak, Losers.

Russiagate, the allegation that Putin's government "hacked the election" for Trump, still hasn't risen above the level of a 9/11 Truther conspiracy theory -- not one iota of actual evidence has appeared in the media. (Sorry, so-called journalists, "a source in the intelligence community believes that" is not evidence, much less proof.)

But Russiagate led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller's sweeping powers and authority to pursue any wrongdoing he finds regardless of whether or not it's related to Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election has already led to the downfall and flipping of ex-Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Mueller's pet rats may never turn up a smoking-gun connection between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. But they likely know where Trump's bodies are buried. In addition to obstruction of justice -- to which Trump de facto pled guilty in one of his insipid tweets -- charges related to sleazy business dealings are a strong possibility. Was/is Trump in deep with Russian oligarchs and corrupt government officials? Perhaps not -- but he's an amoral real estate developer who follows money wherever it leads, including authoritarian regimes where transparency is nonexistent.

Behind every great fortune, Balzac wrote, there is a crime. Trump's cash hoard probably results from many more than a single illegal act.

Impeachment or resignation? Having researched Trump for my 2016 biography, Trump is more likely to give away his fortune to charity than slink away in a Nixonian resignation. His ego is too big; he's too pugnacious. He'd rather get dragged out kicking and screaming -- unless it's part of a deal with Mueller or other feds to avoid prosecution.

So impeachment it would need to be.

But no political party in control of both houses of Congress has ever impeached a sitting president of its own party. And there's another powerful countervailing force protecting Trump from impeachment: Republicans' self-preservation instinct.

GOP lawmakers suffered devastating losses in the 1974 midterm election following Nixon's near-impeachment/resignation. Democrats did OK in 1998, after Bill Clinton was impeached -- but that was an outlier impacted by the biggest boom economy ever.

In the long term, the Republican Party would probably be better off without Trump. But Congressmen and Senators live in the here and now. Here and now, or more precisely in 2018, Republicans know that many of them would lose their jobs following a Trump impeachment.

Despite those considerations, I think that, in the end, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans are more likely to calculate that pulling the impeachment trigger is worth the likely losses in the fall.

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From Truthdig



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Wednesday's announcement by President Trump, who finds a soul mate in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem solidifies our status, along with Israel, as a rogue state and an international pariah. The United States long ago lost credibility as an honest broker in any Mideast peace agreement. We have provided $38 billion in military aid to Israel over the last decade despite Israel's flagrant disregard for international law and its well-documented war crimes. We do nothing to halt the expropriation of Palestinian land. We give unequivocal support to Israeli attacks on Palestinians, including the bombardment of largely defenseless civilians in Gaza, that have left thousands dead and destroyed whole neighborhoods.

The Trump decision sends a message to those who demand justice for the Palestinian people: Our only hope is to strengthen the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to isolate and cripple Israel. This would involve a robust boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. It demands divestment from companies with financial interests in Israel. And it seeks to impose international sanctions on the Jewish state. The goal of the BDS movement is to end the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, achieve equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure the right of return for all Palestinian refugees in the diaspora. If we fail to act we must accept our complicity in the slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people.

"The current xenophobic, racist U.S. administration is smashing international law as fast as it is smashing its own mask of respect for human rights and with it whatever credibility it still has around the world," said Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. He commented after I reached him by email.

"By trying to bestow legitimacy on Israel's patently illegitimate annexation of occupied Jerusalem, the U.S. administration, whose own legitimacy is contested by millions of Americans, is throwing a flame onto a haystack in a midsummer day," he said. "If we turn this deliberate act of mega-arson into an opportunity to further build the BDS movement to isolate Israel's regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, we can advance the struggle for freedom, justice and equality."

The United States is the only nation, with the exception of Israel, to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Trump's decision will enrage Muslims throughout the world. Palestinians in Gaza City, Bethlehem and Rafah have already marched through the streets chanting "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and "Down with Trump." They burned American and Israeli flags and photos of Trump. The Palestinian Islamic group Hamas is calling for "a day of rage."

"Trump's extensive reference to Israel's far-right policies of ethnic profiling, militarized walls and extreme racial violence as a model for his own fanatic policies in the U.S. and around the world confirms Israel's status today as a senior member of the xenophobic -- mostly anti-Semitic -- far-right club that is growing in the U.S., Europe, India and elsewhere," Barghouti said.

The Trump move, along with Israel's naked theft of East Jerusalem, will give rise to spontaneous acts of resistance such as that which took place last July when Israel tried to restrict Palestinian access to the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, in Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated at the site until Israel removed barriers, metal detectors and security cameras introduced after three Israeli Arabs killed two Israeli police officers at an entrance to the compound July 14.

Wednesday's announcement is one more indignity visited on a people who have known nothing but abuse, humiliation and violence since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. It says to all of the dispossessed of the earth that their rights and aspirations are meaningless. It is a public declaration of contempt for the oppressed. And the oppressed, filled with rage, unable to use the industrial weapons that rain death and destruction on Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans and Yemenis, will employ cruder instruments of death to fight back. The state terrorists in Israel and Washington will use those attacks to justify an escalation of violence in a never-ending cycle of hate that we, the oppressors, initiated.

"Jerusalem lies at the heart of Palestinian identity and is a unique spiritual, cultural and symbolic center for Palestinian life," Barghouti said. "It is also sacred for monotheistic religions, including about 1.5 billion Muslims. No state in the world [had recognized] Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. So, by recognizing it as Israel's capital, the Trump administration is not only isolating itself and trashing decades of U.S. policy and international law. It is deliberately inciting a global wave of protest against Israel's illegal control over the city and against the exceptionally reckless U.S. policy. I cannot see how this can serve U.S. interests, even if defined as the interests of the '1 percent.' It therefore indicates the administration's adoption of an Israel-first agenda that appeals to a small yet very influential part of its constituency -- fanatic Christian fundamentalists and the Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian far-right Jewish establishment. As the prominent South African jurist and former U.N. special rapporteur John Dugard once said, Palestine today has become the litmus test for the West's respect for human rights--just as South Africa once was. If the West fails to end its fatal collusion with Israel's regime of apartheid and colonialism it will lose all credibility around the world, especially in the Global South."

This is zero hour for the Palestinian people. Saudi Arabia, which has built a de facto alliance with Israel in its effort to launch a war against Iran, has signaled its willingness to sacrifice the Palestinians by proposing a "peace agreement" that Israel will embrace. The agreement, proposed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, traps Palestinians within Israeli-controlled borders, transfers East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian population in the city resides, to Israel, permits Jewish settlements to remain on Palestinian land, slices up sections of the West Bank to prevent contiguous Palestinian control and sovereignty, and prevents from returning to their homes the Palestinians who were "ethnically cleansed" from land Israel controls.

The Saudi plan mirrors the agreement offered in 2000 to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat by President Bill Clinton, an agreement no Palestinian could accept and Arafat rightly rejected. The Muslim world has long paid lip service to Palestinian rights while quietly backing the Israeli occupation. Egypt, for example, seals the southern border of Gaza to assist Israel in maintaining the world's largest open-air prison. But now the Saudi regime is public in its effort to sell out the Palestinians. This gives to the BDS movement -- and a separate BDS movement should be launched against Saudi Arabia--a new urgency.

The Palestinian Authority, a puppet regime put in place by Israel and the United States that has little support among Palestinians, will be further discredited and reviled as the U.S. Embassy is moved. Its loss of authority will weaken the last vestiges of Palestinian civil institutions. Trump's decision is also likely to accelerate Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes, evictions, expropriations, revocation of residency permits and colonization of the city by Jewish settlers. It will tighten the barrier set up by Israel to prevent Palestinians in the West Bank from traveling to East Jerusalem. It will continue to see the steady reduction of the Palestinian population as East Jerusalem, piece by piece, is handed over to Israeli Jews.

U.N. Resolution 476, adopted in 1980, declared Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem "null and void," called it "a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War" and said it "constituted a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East." But this resolution and others have routinely been ignored and defied by Israel and the United States. Israel since occupying East Jerusalem after the 1967 war has stripped more than 14,000 Palestinians of their right to live in the city. It routinely denies Palestinians new building permits, demolishes Palestinian homes and olive groves and builds huge, fortress-like housing complexes for Jewish settlers that surround the dwindling Palestinian neighborhoods. Israeli police patrol the streets of East Jerusalem, engaging in acts of open brutality and violence, including the killing of unarmed demonstrators. Basic municipal services, including education, have been degraded.

"Moshe Dayan [the onetime Israeli defense minister] once said that Israel must act like a mad dog so no one in the international community will bother it," Barghouti said. "His prophecy has come true like never before with the current extremely racist and dangerous Israeli government. With its influence in the White House finally matching its influence in Congress, Israel is drunk with power and, as a result, recklessly undermining the very legitimacy of its decades-long regime of oppression against the Palestinians. This is a key factor behind the impressive growth of the BDS movement for Palestinian rights worldwide."

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ASIAN STREET FOOD FESTIVAL AT CITYMAX HOTEL BUR DUBAI

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Citymax Hotel Bur Dubai is all set for a two-week Asian Street Food Fest at Sizzling Wok starting from 1st to 15th December 2017. During the festival, on offer for diners will be a wide variety of irresistible Asian street food specialties from across the region including China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Japan and Korea. Sizzling live cooking stations and a festive ambience will complete the experience, transporting guests to the bustling streets of the Far East.Satish Nambiar, General Manager of Citymax Hotels Bur Dubai, said, The Far East is a melting pot of exciting and varied cuisines. Its streets are a kaleidoscope of diverse and colourful regional dishes and we are delighted to bring the very best of Asias street food to Sizzling Wok. Our chefs have created a tempting mix of popular, ethnic delights that are hard to resist and will take you on a journey of discovery through the streets of Asia.ASIAN STREET FOOD FESTVenue: Sizzling Wok at Citymax Hotel Bur DubaiPrice: AED 55 per person.Day: Available Daily from 1st to 15th December 2017Time: From 7:00pm to 12 midnight.For more information call 050 100 7065For bookings and more information, please call us on +971 (0)4 4078000 or 0501007065Facebook:Instagram:- Ends -Notes to editorsAbout Citymax HotelsCitymax Hotels is part of the hospitality division of Landmark Group and has been developed as an affordable lifestyle hotel brand with a vision to lead the mid-market hospitality sector offering unique guest experiences at extraordinary value. With a superb portfolio of both owned and managed hotels strategically located in prime business and leisure hubs, the company is expanding rapidly in the UAE as well as other key markets in the Middle East. Citymax Hotels differentiates itself in the mid-market sector with outstanding dining and recreational venues, welcoming people to enjoy lifes little extras by transforming faceless hospitality with vibrant simplicity. The experience is further enhanced by exclusive tie-up with Shukran, the regions largest loyalty programme offering members fabulous benefits each time they stay or dine at Citymax Hotels.Follow @citymaxhotels on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and tag photos with #CitymaxHotelsFor more information please visit:For media contact:Hina BakhtVice PresidentMPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)Mob: +971 50 697 5146Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.comMPJ - Marketing Pro-Junction is a reputed marketing and communications agency in Dubai offering world-class services.MPJ - Marketing Pro-Junction1110, Yes Business CenterAl Barsha, Dubai, UAEMailing Address:P.O.BOX : 213443Dubai, UAETel: +971-4-438 7007Fax: +971-4-438 7008Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com
Alpha Destination Management Achieves 8 Per Cent Growth in 2017

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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 ManagementFounded 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 visitFor media contact:Hina BakhtVice PresidentMPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)Mob: +971 50 697 5146Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.comMPJ - Marketing Pro-Junction1110, Yes Business CenterAl Barsha, Dubai, UAEMPJ - Marketing Pro-Junction1110, Yes Business CenterAl Barsha, Dubai, UAE
Busch successful at Fakuma 2017

The new generation of Mink MV claw vacuum pumps generated significant interest at Buschs trade show booth

www.buschvacuum.com

The trade show appearance of Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems generated a great deal of interest amongst more than 48,000 visitors to the international trade fair for plastics processing in Friedrichshafen. The specialist audience used the opportunity to discuss highly energy-efficient and economical vacuum solutions with Buschs vacuum experts. Vacuum technology plays a central role in many applications relating to the processing and treatment of plastic.Visitors came from 25 countries, and were particularly impressed by the latest generation of Mink MV claw vacuum pumps, which are ideally suited for pneumatic conveying of materials and degassing of plastics. The contact-free compression principle ensures nearly maintenance-free operation. Mink claw vacuum pumps also feature high energy efficiency in all applications, which can be even further enhanced through the use of a variable speed drive.Many visitors to the Busch trade show booth were interested in vacuum systems for degassing during plastic extrusion. Vacuum systems from the Plastex series, which have been developed specially for degassing in extruders, guarantee optimum degassing. They can be individually adjusted to the materials to be processed, extruder types, and the material throughput.Visitors to the Busch trade show booth at Fakuma also received information about energy efficiency. The topic of energy efficiency during vacuum generation was of great importance, particularly for visitors who deal intensively with energy management according to ISO 50.001 in their operations. According to the Busch vacuum specialists, it is important here that, for example, entire processes are analyzed from an energy point of view so that the vacuum technology can be applied in ways that use resources as sustainably as possible.About Busch:Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems is one of the worlds largest producers of vacuum pumps, vacuum systems, blowers and compressors.Its extensive product portfolio comprises solutions for vacuum and overpressure applications in all industries, including the chemical, semiconductor, medical technology, plastics, and food sectors. It also covers the design and construction of customized vacuum systems, as well as a global service network.The Busch group is a family-owned company and is still managed by the Busch family. Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems has 3,000 employees in more than 60 companies in over 40 countries worldwide. Busch is headquartered in Maulburg, in southwest Germany. This is the location of Busch SE headquarters, as well as the German production facility and German sales company. In addition to Maulburg, Busch also has its own production plants in Switzerland, the UK, Czech Republic, Korea and the USA.History:Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems was founded by Dr.-Ing. Karl Busch and his wife Ayhan Busch in 1963. Dr.-Ing. Karl Busch developed the Huckepack, which was the first vacuum pump that could be used for vacuum packaging of foodstuffs. The follow-up product, the compact R 5 rotary vane vacuum pump, revolutionized food packaging. A further milestone represented the development of the COBRA screw vacuum pump. In 1971 the international expansion of the Busch group started with the founding of a sales company in the UK. The first production plant outside Germany was established in the USA in 1979.Busch Vacuum Pumps and SystemsSchauinslandstrae 179689 MaulburgTelephone: +49 (0) 7622 681 3376jasmin.markanic@busch.de
GoodMills Innovation focuses on health and functionality

2ab Wheat is an easy-to-digest alternative to modern bread

www.goodmillsinnovation.com

www.2ab-weizen.de

www.vollkorn-index.de

From baking ingredients with added value and innovative concepts for whole grain products right through to process optimization, at FiE 2017, Europes largest milling company showcased its comprehensive portfolio.Hamburg, 30 November 2017  At this years Fi Europe, GoodMills Innovation presented various products and concepts with a firm focus on health. 2ab Wheat, a newly discovered ancient grain, is an easy-to-digest alternative to modern bread wheat that delivers tasty and high indulgence baked goods that are ideal for wheat-sensitive customers. Additionally, with its Whole Grain Index and its innovative range of light-coloured whole grain flours, GoodMills Innovation presented effective solutions that make whole grain products more attractive to a broader range of consumers. The company also presented functional flours that facilitate processing and fulfill the highest Clean Label and salt reduction standards.2ab Wheat combines digestibility and indulgenceWith the ancient grain variety 2ab, the GoodMills Innovation experts presented a new product that offers bakers a real alternative to conventional bread wheat. Bakery products made from 2ab flour are particularly well tolerated, and are convincing in taste and texture. They are ideal for wheat-sensitive consumers whose options have thus far been limited to gluten- or wheat-free products with a distinct lack of indulgence. For both industrial and artisan bakeries, 2ab Wheat offers easy handling and excellent baking properties too.Increasing whole grain consumption the easy wayGoodMills Innovation also introduced a concept aimed at increasing consumption of baked goods made from whole grain. With an eye on delivering consumer health benefits as well as optimum taste and texture, the company has developed whole grain flours with a light appearance. SNOW WHEAT, White Gold and SNOW SPELT both have the valuable nutritional properties of whole grain, but are finely ground, of a light colour and enable the production of mild-tasting baked goods without the typical bitterness of conventional whole grain products. To communicate the fact that light coloured products can be as healthy as darker coloured ones, the company has created the Whole Grain Index. This allows manufacturers to calculate the precise whole grain content of their products online and then download the information in a graphic file for use on packaging. This then acts as seal of transparency that clears up the myth that browner bakery products are automatically more wholesome than whiter ones.Creative answers to current industry trendsWith more and more consumers critically questioning the ingredients in their food, PURAFARIN HydroSoft is an innovative functional flour that meets Clean and Lean Label standards and ensures high quality results in a broad variety of bakery items, from muffins and puff pastries to white bread and pizzas. Trade visitors to FiE were able to see first hand how the ingredient improves the volume, texture and freshness of bakery products and thus makes emulsifiers and thickeners redundant. PURAFARIN HydroSoft contains only wheat flour that has undergone special hydrothermal physical processing, and is free from synthetic additives.For the decor segment, GoodMills Innovations product developers have been working on solutions for salt reduction. The companys new Slow Milling Pretzel Salt Light SG allows bakers to create optically convincing decoration for their pretzels while reducing the salt content 50 percent in total and 75 percent in the decor. The innovative pretzel salt is a special blend of salt and rice flour, and thus looks delicious without having the usual intense and overly salty taste. Thanks to its natural coating, the product is stable during thawing and baking, so it is suitable for frozen items. At the same time, it meets Clean Label standards. For best application results, GoodMills Innovation recommends applying the pretzel salt with GECKO Ultra seed adhesive. This is based on wheat flour, so is of pure, natural origin, and guarantees much better adhesion of various decors, including seeds and salt. As well as producing visually attractive results and higher customer satisfaction, GECKO Ultra allows bakers to make significant cost savings through reduced waste and less time and money spent on cleaning.Better health for bakers tooTo help reduce the risk of occupational asthma among bakers, GoodMills Innovation has also invested its expertise in the development of low-dust release flours such as TIP-TOP. A special refining process not only reduces the fine dust content of the flour, but also cuts the potentially allergenic effects of wheat proteins. Not only does TIP-TOP bring benefits to bakery employees, it is also better for machinery since it reduces the need for cleaning and prevents mould growth.GoodMills Innovation GmbH has its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, and is a joint venture between Europes leading milling enterprise, the GoodMills Group, and the global ingredients manufacturer Palsgaard A/S, which is based in Denmark. Together with its Polish subsidiary GoodMills Innovation Polska Sp z o.o, the company employs a staff of 120 in Europe.Sound grain expertise and state-of-the-art refining technologies are the foundations of the company, which operates worldwide. Innovative and natural products that combine functionality and taste with health benefits have been developed in close cooperation with experts from science and industry. Customers from the food industry and the bakery trade benefit from tailor-made products as well as competent advice on application, food legislation and marketing issues.Company contactGoodMills Innovation GmbHSvenja FrankTrettaustrae 3234D-21107 HamburgT +49 40 75109-632svenja.frank@goodmillsinnovation.comPress contactakp public relationsKatrin WagnerTannenstrae 1aD-69469 WeinheimT +49 6201 18898-15wagner@akp-pr.de
Graphene Battery Market Outlook 2023 Graphenano, SiNode Systems

Graphene Battery

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-graphene-battery-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/

A market study  Global Graphene Battery Market  examines the performance of the Graphene Battery market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Graphene Battery market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Graphene Battery market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Graphene Battery Market 2017 report includes Graphene Battery market Size, Revenue, market Share, Graphene Battery industry volume, market Trends, Graphene Battery Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Graphene Battery Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Graphene Battery Market Forecast 2017:1. Graphenano2. SiNode Systems3. Graphene NanoChem4. Angstron Materials5. XG Sciences6. Vorbeck Materials7. Graphene 3D Lab8. NanoXplore9. Graphene Batteries10. Cambridge NanosystemsGraphene Battery Market : By Type Li-Ion Battery Li-Sulphur Battery Supercapacitor Lead-Acid BatteryGraphene Battery Market : By Application Automotive Electronics Energy Aerospace & Defense Industrial Robotics HealthcareFirstly, the report covers the top Graphene Battery manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Browse Report :Further, the Graphene Battery report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Graphene Battery industry, Graphene Battery industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Graphene Battery Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Graphene Battery 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 Graphene Battery market revenue worldwide.Finally, Graphene Battery market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:Spire Market Research is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States
Glass Table Market Report 2023 Steelcase, Herman Miller, Haworth

Glass Table

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-glass-table-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/

A market study  Global Glass Table Market  examines the performance of the Glass Table market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Glass Table market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Glass Table market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Glass Table Market 2017 report includes Glass Table market Size, Revenue, market Share, Glass Table industry volume, market Trends, Glass Table Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Glass Table Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Glass Table Market Forecast 2017:1. Steelcase2. Herman Miller3. Haworth4. HNI Group5. Okamura Corporation6. Kimball OfficeGlass Table Market : By Type Round Square RectangleGlass Table Market : By Application into Home EnterpriseFirstly, the report covers the top Glass Table manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Browse Report :Further, the Glass Table report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Glass Table industry, Glass Table industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Glass Table Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Glass Table research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Glass Table market revenue worldwide.Finally, Glass Table market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:Spire Market Research is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States
Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Market Status 2023 Bayer Cropscience, Syngenta

Fruit & Vegetable Seeds

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-fruit-vegetable-seeds-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/

A market study  Global Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Market  examines the performance of the Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Market 2017 report includes Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market Size, Revenue, market Share, Fruit & Vegetable Seeds industry volume, market Trends, Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Market Forecast 2017:1. Bayer Cropscience2. Syngenta3. Monsanto Company4. Groupe Limagrain5. Takii6. Advanta Limited7. Sakata Seed Corporation8. Mahyco9. Western Bio Vegetable Seeds Ltd.10. SamriddhiFruit & Vegetable Seeds Market : By Type Brassica Cucurbit Leafy Root-Bulb SolanaceaeFruit & Vegetable Seeds Market : By Application Agriculture IndustryFirstly, the report covers the top Fruit & Vegetable Seeds manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Browse Report :Further, the Fruit & Vegetable Seeds report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Fruit & Vegetable Seeds industry, Fruit & Vegetable Seeds industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Fruit & Vegetable Seeds Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Fruit & Vegetable Seeds 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 Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market revenue worldwide.Finally, Fruit & Vegetable Seeds market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:Spire Market Research is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States
Fixed Switch Cabinet Market Size 2023 Toshiba, SENTEG

Fixed Switch Cabinet

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-fixed-switch-cabinet-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/

A market study  Global Fixed Switch Cabinet Market  examines the performance of the Fixed Switch Cabinet market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Fixed Switch Cabinet market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Fixed Switch Cabinet market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Fixed Switch Cabinet Market 2017 report includes Fixed Switch Cabinet market Size, Revenue, market Share, Fixed Switch Cabinet industry volume, market Trends, Fixed Switch Cabinet Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Fixed Switch Cabinet Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Fixed Switch Cabinet Market Forecast 2017:1. Mitsubishi Electric2. Fuji Electric3. Hyundai Heavy Industries4. Toshiba5. SENTEG6. Schneider Electric7. ABB8. EATON9. SIEMENS10. GEFixed Switch Cabinet Market : By Type High Voltage Switch Cabinet Low Voltage Switch CabinetFixed Switch Cabinet Market : By Application Infrastructure & Utilities Energy Industries ResidentialFirstly, the report covers the top Fixed Switch Cabinet manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Browse Report :Further, the Fixed Switch Cabinet report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Fixed Switch Cabinet industry, Fixed Switch Cabinet industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Fixed Switch Cabinet Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Fixed Switch Cabinet research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Fixed Switch Cabinet market revenue worldwide.Finally, Fixed Switch Cabinet market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:Spire Market Research is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States
Dec, 7 2017: Polyester Filter Media Market Forecast 2023 Standard Filter, Airguard, Midwesco Filter Resources

Polyester Filter Media

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-polyester-filter-mediamarket-2017-demand-insights-key-palyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022

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Polyester Filter Media Market Research 2017A market study "Global Polyester Filter Media Market" examines the performance of the Polyester Filter Media market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Polyester Filter Media market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Polyester Filter Media market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Polyester Filter Media Market 2017 report includes Polyester Filter Media market Revenue, market Share, Polyester Filter Media industry volume, market Trends, Polyester Filter Media Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Polyester Filter Media Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Polyester Filter Media Market 2017 : Airguard Guangzhou Longhuilong Filter MAHLE Industry Midwesco Filter Resources Standard Filter NSW Afpro FiltersPolyester Filter Media Market : By Application Chemical Industry The Medical Industry Food Industry Sewage PlantPolyester Filter Media Market : By Type PET Material PBT Material Aromatic Esters MaterialFirstly, the report covers the top Polyester Filter Media manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Polyester Filter Media report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Polyester Filter Media industry, Polyester Filter Media industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Polyester Filter Media Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Polyester Filter Media 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 Polyester Filter Media market revenue worldwide.Finally, Polyester Filter Media 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, 7 2017: Sol-Gel Coatings Market Forecast 2023 Electrolube, Chase, Henkel, Nippon Soda, Idemitsu, Solvay

Sol-Gel Coatings

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-sol-gel-coatings-market-2017-demand-insight-key-plyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022

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Sol-Gel Coatings Market Research 2017A market study "Global Sol-Gel Coatings Market" examines the performance of the Sol-Gel Coatings market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Sol-Gel Coatings market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Sol-Gel Coatings market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Sol-Gel Coatings Market 2017 report includes Sol-Gel Coatings market Revenue, market Share, Sol-Gel Coatings industry volume, market Trends, Sol-Gel Coatings Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Sol-Gel Coatings Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Sol-Gel Coatings Market 2017 : 3M BASF SE Dow Axalta Coating System Chase Corporation Solvay KISCO Henkel MG Chemicals Electrolube Fuji Chemical Nippon Soda Idemitsu Mitsubishi Materials Hong Yi Sol-Gel Coatings Market : By Application Automotive Construction Electronics Consumer GoodsSol-Gel Coatings Market : By Type Resin Coatings Inorganic CoatingsFirstly, the report covers the top Sol-Gel Coatings manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Sol-Gel Coatings report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Sol-Gel Coatings industry, Sol-Gel Coatings industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Sol-Gel Coatings Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Sol-Gel Coatings 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 Sol-Gel Coatings market revenue worldwide.Finally, Sol-Gel Coatings 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
TRG Talk helps us to answer the question: Do businesses and employees hold the same definition of Professionalism in the workplace?

www.trginternational.com

https://www.trginternational.com/

In todays modern society, the concept of Professionalism is definitely the norm, the must-have for every business practice and every professional. The question is Do businesses and employees hold the same definition of professionalism? Furthermore, what factors contribute to the professionalism of not just one individual, but the entire organisation made up of different personalities?To answer the above questions, TRG Talk - Talent seminar with the topic that most people concern about: "Professionalism in the workplace: Does your perception differ from ours?", took place on the November, 2017. The main speaker of the event, Rick Yvanovich (Founder and CEO of TRG International), with more than 30 years working in various fields, helped participants to gain a better understanding of the concept of Professionalism in the workplace.Definition of Professional and ProfessionalismAt the seminar, Rick affirmed that professional is the premise of professionalism. The prerequisite in creating professionalism is owning a body of knowledge, having a scope of practice, and is a representative of their field of practice demonstrated through their behaviours.Rick further defined the concept of professionalism by giving specific examples, in which professionalism does not only confine in just dressing or communicating appropriately but also the way the employee is able to conduct within his/her scope of expertise, and displays the values of his/her profession (integrity, ethics, trustworthy ...). According to Rick, professionalism can also be seen through consistent high performance, contribution to the organization and continuously seeking way to improve personal skills.4 factors contribute in building professionalismPreviously, TRG Talent conducted a quick survey among professionals from various fields, and the results were that there are 4 main factors that influence an individual's professionalism: Image, Communication and Competence and Attitude.Attitude was agreed by many participants as the number one most important factor because having the right attitude drives you to the right behaviours, which help to show professionalism towards colleagues and supervisors. Meanwhile, Communication and Image occupy for nearly 50% because they are the external factors that we can easily see and judge at the first impression. And the fourth factor is Competence, it takes time to prove your capacity, effort and persistence so this is the factor cannot be seen and judged immediately.All participants were welcomed to raise any question or share their own experience in an open and warm atmosphere. The discussion ends with Rick once again stressing the importance of maintaining our attitude at all time, because as mentioned above, attitude is the most important factor in defining professionalism.ABOUT TRG TALKSTRG TALK is a series of events co-organized monthly by TRG International and PJs Coffee Vietnam in order to promote the latest trends in not only the IT, Talent industry but also other rising and upcoming notions in the HR world, tips and trick in improving your project management skills, at the same time provide a meeting place for the CGMA, ACMA and FCMA community.ABOUT TRG INTERNATIONALTRG International is an IT, Talent and F&B company. We help people and businesses to shine. We help people be the best they can possibly be by selecting the right people for the right job and developing them to their full potential. We help companies by providing an IT solution that works quietly and brilliantly in the background, freeing them up to focus on their core and not having to worry about their IT systems. We do this for more than 1,000 clients in 80 countries. Learn more at:TRG INTERNATIONAL2nd Floor, 145  147 Nguyen Co Thach Street, An Loi Dong Ward, District 2Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamContact-Details: Ngoc DoanPR Communication Officerngoc.doan@trginternaltional.com
Dec, 7 2017: PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market Forecast 2023 Nikon Lenswear, Mingyue, Rodenstock, Essilor

PC Ophthalmic Lenses

http://bit.ly/2zWAylC

http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-pc-ophthalmic-lenses-market-2017-demand-insight-key-plyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022

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PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market Research 2017A market study "Global PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market" examines the performance of the PC Ophthalmic Lenses market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the PC Ophthalmic Lenses market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of PC Ophthalmic Lenses market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market 2017 report includes PC Ophthalmic Lenses market Revenue, market Share, PC Ophthalmic Lenses industry volume, market Trends, PC Ophthalmic Lenses Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, PC Ophthalmic Lenses Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market 2017 : ZEISS Essilor International S.A. HOYA CORPORATION Rodenstock Nikon Lenswear Shamir Optical Industry Ltd VISION-EASE LENS Mingyue Shanghai Conant Optics Co., Ltd Zhenjiang Wanxin Optical Glasses Co., Ltd.PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market : By Application Progressive Lens Sunglasses Lens Cataract LensPC Ophthalmic Lenses Market : By Type Spherical Lens Aspherical LensFirstly, the report covers the top PC Ophthalmic Lenses manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the PC Ophthalmic Lenses report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of PC Ophthalmic Lenses industry, PC Ophthalmic Lenses industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. PC Ophthalmic Lenses Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The PC Ophthalmic Lenses 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 PC Ophthalmic Lenses market revenue worldwide.Finally, PC Ophthalmic Lenses 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, 7 2017: Adult Knee Sleeve Market Forecast 2023 McDavid, Emerge, Nordic, Rehband, Tommy Kono

Adult Knee Sleeve

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-adult-knee-sleeve-market-2017-demand-insight-key-plyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022

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Adult Knee Sleeve Market Research 2017A market study "Global Adult Knee Sleeve Market" examines the performance of the Adult Knee Sleeve market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Adult Knee Sleeve market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Adult Knee Sleeve market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Adult Knee Sleeve Market 2017 report includes Adult Knee Sleeve market Revenue, market Share, Adult Knee Sleeve industry volume, market Trends, Adult Knee Sleeve Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Adult Knee Sleeve Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Adult Knee Sleeve Market 2017 : Emerge Rehband Workt Tommy Kono McDavid Nordic Delta Iron BullAdult Knee Sleeve Market : By Application Cathletes Old Man The Injured KneeAdult Knee Sleeve Market : By Type Strength Knee Sleeves Lifting Knee SleevesFirstly, the report covers the top Adult Knee Sleeve manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Adult Knee Sleeve report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Adult Knee Sleeve industry, Adult Knee Sleeve industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Adult Knee Sleeve Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Adult Knee Sleeve 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 Adult Knee Sleeve market revenue worldwide.Finally, Adult Knee Sleeve 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
Silver Nanoparticles Market - Detailed Analysis and Forecast upto 2025

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Global Silver Nanoparticles Market: SnapshotSilver nanoparticles are sized between 100 nm to 1 nm and are often used as silver oxide rather than pure silver. One of the key physical properties of using silver nanoparticles is that their structures can be easily arranged depending on the application that they are needed for. More often than not, it is spherical silver nanoparticles are utilized in most applications, while other forms such as octagonal and diamond are preferred in more specific applications. Silver nanoparticles find a massive scope of applications in medical fields, where they can be used in animal studies and laboratory research, as well as assessments in toxicity or efficacy of chemicals.The common methods of synthesizing silver nanoparticles include wet chemistry which is the leading synthesis method, monosaccharide reductions which is one of the simpler methods, citrate reductions, and polyol processing. Silver nanoparticles also hold a wide range of applications in electrochemistry, electronics and semiconductors, textiles, food and beverages, optics, and cosmetics. Of these, food and beverage and healthcare hold the leading scope of applications for silver nanoparticles, a trend that is likely to continue over the coming years as well.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Silver Nanoparticles Market: OverviewSilver nanoparticles exhibit distinct electrical, thermal, and optical properties and are amongst the most widely used nanoparticles for consumer products. They find application in a wide range of products such as chemical and biological sensors and photovoltaics. For instance, silver nanoparticles are used in photonic devices and molecular diagnostics, which make use of novel optical properties of these materials. Additionally, they are extensively used in cosmetics, healthcare, chemical industries, electronics, nonlinear optical gadgets, food and feed, textiles, electronics, and electrochemical applications.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Key TrendsThe rising application scope of silver nanoparticles in healthcare and food and beverages due to its antimicrobial properties is expected to drive the global silver nanoparticles market. Silver nanoparticles improves product shelf life and prevents pathogens from infesting them.Silver nanoparticles are the most used commercially amongst all nanoparticles and accounted for more than half of the consumption of overall nanoparticles in the recent past. The advanced catalytic and optic properties of silver nanoparticles make them highly suitable for electronic goods. Silver nanoparticles are preferred in various applications including food packaging, wound healing, and plastic bags owing to its ability to destroy bacterial cells and weaken the cell membrane.Request TOC of the Report @Top beauty products companies around the world are using silver nanoparticles in their products for added offerings. For instance, Dior has introduced a nano-based product Diorskin Forever for improved skin. The roll out of differentiator products gives a competitive edge for product manufacturers over their peers, which is leading to the increased demand for silver nanoparticles.Strict regulations pertaining to the use of silver nanoparticles, particularly in North America and Europe is countering the growth of this market. However, research is underway to find out if silver nanoparticles have a detrimental effect on the environment.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Market PotentialNanoparticles are at the forefront of biological research is well established in a recent industry development. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University have reported the design and development of the most complex crystal made from nanoparticles.The work demonstrates that nanotechnology can bring together materials in new ways, forging new design capabilities. For instance, crystals made of nanoparticles, such as the newly developed ones, can be used to control light  this is because nanoparticles display coordinated interaction with light waves due to their similar sizes.Get Discount @Silver Nanoparticles Market: Regional OutlookNorth America, led by the U.S. is a major regional market for silver nanoparticles. The flourishing food and beverage industry along with regulations to adhere to food safety standards has positively impacted the growth of the regional market. Moreover, clothes sterilization is increasingly being adopted due to the increasing health safety considerations among workers.In Europe, Germany contributes significant revenue to the regional market due to the growth of the healthcare industry. Moreover, increasing healthcare expenditures combined with regulatory compliances for safe healthcare practices is contributing to the growth of this regional market.China and South Korea are key contributors to the growth of the Asia Pacific silver nanoparticles market. The presence of some of the top electronic goods manufacturing companies along with favorable FDI policies are the major factors supporting the industrys growth in the region.The Middle East and Africa is expected to exhibit significant growth in healthcare and life sciences segment.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Competitive LandscapeKey participants in the global silver nanoparticles market include Emfutur Technologies, Nanocs, Cima Nanotech, American Elements, NanoHorizons, Nanoshel, Cline scientific, and Applied Nanotech. Some other prominent companies in the market are Bayer, Ames Goldsmith, Meliorum Technologies, and Advanced Nano products.R&D initiatives and mergers and acquisitions for strong presence across the value chain and for strong distribution networks is among the key growth strategies.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Dec, 7 2017: Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market Forecast 2023 Honeywell, Samsung, DuPont, Corning

Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS)

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http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-low-temperature-poly-silicon-ltps-market-2017-demand-insights-key-palyers-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022

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Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market Research 2017A market study "Global Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market" examines the performance of the Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market 2017 report includes Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) market Revenue, market Share, Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) industry volume, market Trends, Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market 2017 : BASF DuPont Honeywell Universal Avionics System Corporation Kolon Industries Corning SamsungLow Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market : By Application Mobile Phones Digital Cameras Portable Media PlayersFirstly, the report covers the top Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) industry, Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) 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 Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) market revenue worldwide.Finally, Low Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS) 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
Carboxylic Acid Market - Analysis,Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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Global Carboxylic Acid Market: SnapshotThe global market for carboxylic acid is characterized by stiff competition on account of the presence of a large number of players who are involved in increasing their production capacities to outgun their rivals. The fragmented market is seeing swift progress on account of such initiatives of keen players. Some such prominent savvy participants in the market are Celanese Corporation, BASF SE, Eastman Chemical Company, The Dow Chemical Company, Jiangsu Sopo Group, OXEA, Perstorp Holdings AB, Alfa Aesar, Finetech Industry Limited, LyondellBasell Industries N.V., and Perstorp Holding.Carboxylic acids find application in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, dyes, plastics, detergents, textile, rubber, animal feed, soaps, and perfumes. Certain varieties of carboxylic acids such as benzoic acid, acetic acid, and citric acid are also used as preservatives in the food and beverages industry.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Other industrially-viable varieties of carboxylic acids are isovaleric acid, valeric acid, formic acid, isobutyric acid, butyric acid, propionic acid, and stearic acid. The last couple of years saw demand from end-use industries soar substantially, which resulted in companies upping their production capacities to meet the demand. Carboxylic acid is also used as an active ingredient in a number of drug formulations such as antibiotics, anticoagulants, cholesterol-lowering statins, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).Asia Pacific, powered by China, is a dominant manufacturer of carboxylic acid, at present. China not only produces maximum carboxylic acid, but also consumes it because of key end-use industries such as consumer goods, lubricants, food and beverages. Asia Pacific is also an upcoming hub for the production of bio-based chemicals.Global Carboxylic Acid Market: OverviewOrganic acids containing the carboxyl group (-COOH) are called carboxylic acids. These compounds are extensively used in the manufacture of products such as dyes, pharmaceuticals, plastics, detergents, textile, animal feed, rubber, soaps, and perfumes. Some carboxylic acids such as acetic acid, benzoic acid, and citric acid find wide usage as preservatives in the food and beverages industry.Request TOC of the Report @Some of the other industrially-viable varieties of carboxylic acids are valeric acid, isovaleric acid, formic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, isobutyric acid, and stearic acid. In the past few years, high demand from end-use industries has significantly increased the annual global consumption of these compounds and in response, companies in the market are increasing their production capacities.Global Carboxylic Acid Market: Key TrendsThe global market for carboxylic acid is chiefly driven by the increased consumption of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) in the food and beverages industry and the rising demand for valeric, butyric, and stearic acid in cosmetics and personal care products. The rising consumer preference to bio-based products will be the key factor driving the increased use of carboxylic acid in the cosmetics and personal care industries, especially in developed economies. The market will also gain traction on account of the increased use of organic acids in animal feed as growth promoters for animals.Get Discount @Carboxylic acid is also used as an active ingredient in a number of drug formulations such as antibiotics, anticoagulants, cholesterol-lowering statins, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). As the global geriatric population leads to the increased demand for these drugs, the pharmaceutical industry is also expected to be a key force driving the market in the near future.Global Carboxylic Acid Market: Market PotentialResearch activities have always been abundant in the area of developing commonly used organic compounds such as carboxylic acids from raw materials derived from natural sources, replacing the use of possibly hazardous chemicals. In a similar attempt, South Korean scientists have demonstrated the use of enzymes to turn algae into plastic. Researchers hope that the process can also be used in biopreservatives as a replacement to synthetic ingredients in foods and beverages, personal care products, and cosmetics.Algaes quick proliferation and low input needs have allowed its use in research activities for years as a possible biofuel and a way of capturing carbon dioxide for making plastic. This method, as the researchers claim, is unique because it uses enzymes as an environment-friendly method to develop heavy-chain carboxylic acid, a monomer which is considered the basic building block for the manufacture of a variety of high-quality plastics. Heavy-chain carboxylic acid is conventionally produced through a harsh chemical process.Global Carboxylic Acid Market: Regional OverviewCredited with being the largest producer of carboxylic acid, thanks to the thriving manufacturing sector in China, the Asia Pacific carboxylic acid market holds a dominant position in the global market. The region is also a significant consumer of the chemical owing to the steady growth of key end-use industries such as consumer goods, lubricants, food and beverages. The region is also emerging as the hub for the production of bio-based chemicals. Chinas role in the global carboxylic market, with the addition of more production capacities for the chemical, continues to be of significance.Global Carboxylic Acid Market: Competitive DynamicsThe presence of a large number of carboxylic acid producers has made the competitive landscape of global carboxylic acid market highly fragmented. The market is witnessing continuous expansions of production capacities and is expected to become highly competitive in the next few years. Some of the leading companies operating in the highly competitive market are BASF SE, Eastman Chemical Company, Celanese Corporation, Jiangsu Sopo Group, The Dow Chemical Company, OXEA, Perstorp Holdings AB, Alfa Aesar, LyondellBasell Industries N.V., Perstorp Holding, and Finetech Industry Limited.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Bi-axially Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) Market - Trends, Share,Growth & Forecast upto 2025

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Bi-axially Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) Market: SnapshotThe global market for bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) market is growing and one of the key factors for its growth is the high demand from labeling, packaging, printing, and lamination applications. The demand for bi-axially oriented polypropylene is also increasing from pharmaceutical and cosmetic packaging sectors. The growing inclination of consumers towards spending increasingly on personal wellbeing will help the bi-axially oriented polypropylene market to grow. The growing awareness among consumers towards food preservation is also boosting the growth of the market.The wavering price of crude oil will negatively impact the BOPP market as polypropylene is a derivate of crude oil. On the other hand, the application of BOPP as tapes in industrial packaging will drive the growth prospects of the global bi-axially oriented polypropylene market. The superior strength offered by BOPP along with high clarity are two important reasons for being preferred across industrial packaging sector. BOPP films are more flexible, a packaging solution. This ensures faster packaging and improved sealing properties, attracting several manufacturers in the food and non-food packaging industries to replace their conventional packaging materials. Bi-axially oriented polypropylene has abilities such as reprocessing and recyclability which are further strengthening their demand in packaging applications. Metalized bi-axially oriented polypropylene adds sparkle to packaging and thus, they are much in demand for gift wrapping and decorative packaging. All these factors will ensure a continued demand for bi-axially oriented polypropylene in the period from 2017 to 2025.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global BOPP Market: OverviewBi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) films have been available in the global market for nearly four decades and are now extensively used in place of aluminum foil, cellophane, and waxed paper across a number of applications. Owing to their superior strength, excellent printability, clarity, flatness, and light weight, BOPP films have become indispensable in the packaging industry and are used for packaging a variety of consumer products such as foods and beverages, textiles, garments, stationary, and textiles. The production of BOPP films is safe and energy efficient. BOPP films can be recycled and reprocessed into products for a number of new applications.Global BOPP Market: Key TrendsThe increasing use of BOPP in flexible packaging is the key driver of the global BOPP market. In the past few years, the global demand for flexible packaging has increased at a significant pace owing to demand from industries such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, and personal care, consequently boosting the consumption of BOPP on a global front. In the next few years as well, the thriving market for flexible packaging will boost the global uptake of BOPP.Request TOC of the Report @However, the fluctuating costs of crude oil, which is one of the primary raw materials for polypropylene, are expected to impact the costs of BOPP and thus the profitability of players operating in the highly competitive market.Global BOPP Market: Regional AnalysisThe Asia Pacific market for bi-axially oriented polypropylene presently holds the dominant share in the global market, leading other regional markets by a sizeable margin. The Asia Pacific BOPP market is also expected to achieve growth at a considerable pace over the next few years owing to the high demand for BOPP in the packaging and labelling industries.China is the leading consumer of BOPP products and is expected to account for a considerable share in the revenue of the global market throughout the reports forecast period. In regions such as Middle East and Africa and Latin America, the demand for BOPP products is expected to rise owing to the expansion of the food and beverages industry and increased consumption of packed products.Get Discount @Global BOPP Market: Market PotentialAsia Pacific being the most promising investment grounds for the BOPP industry, BOPP manufacturers are increasingly focusing on strengthening their grip on the regional market, through extension of production capacities of already present facilities or installing new ones in countries such as India and China. Cosmo Films, one of the leading companies in the global BOPP market, followed suit with its recent announcement of production capacity expansion by 40% at one of its plants in India. With this expansion, the company aims at catering to both domestic and export markets.Global BOPP Market: Competitive AnalysisThe global BOPP market features an exceedingly fragmented vendor landscape, with none of the top vendors accounting for a significant share in the overall market. The presence of a large number of small and large manufacturers has led to extreme cost competitiveness in the market, which is expected to further intensify owing to the entry of a large number of local players in the near future. Large vendors will also catalyze price wars in the market through economies of scale.Some of the leading players operating in the global BOPP market are Taghleef Indsutries, Jindal Poly Films, Vibac Group S.p.A., Vibac Group, Poligal S.A., Cosmo Films, Oben Group, Vitopel, Zubairi Plastic Bags Industry LLC, Futamura Chemical Co., Ltd., Treofan Group, Innovia Films, Manucor S.p.A., Kopafilm Elektrofolien GmbH, Rowad Global Packaging Co. Ltd., Chemosvit A.S., Dunmore Corporation, Oben Holding Group, Xpro India Limited, Cosmos Films Ltd., Uflex Ltd., Polyplex Corporation Limited, Tempo Group, SRF Limited, and Biaxplen Ltd.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Controlled-release Fertilizers Market - Future Market,Growth & Forecast upto 2025

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Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: SnapshotThe growing population in contrast with the decreasing arable land is one of the reasons behind the steadily increasing demand for controlled release fertilizers. Rapid urbanization has reduced the area of land available for agriculture and this has created a pressure to make use of good quality fertilizers so as to increase land productivity. Shortage of food crops and adverse climatic conditions are shifting the focus towards sustainable agriculture and this will fuel the growth of the global controlled release fertilizers market. Need for fertilizers so as to improve crop yield is aiding the growth of the market.Controlled release fertilizers provide better performance as compared to conventional fertilizers as they extend the nutrient intake time, and this is expected to help the market to grow in the years to come. Reduced labor cost and low risk of use are some other factors boosting their demand. Government initiatives are also expected to play a key role in the development of these fertilizers and drive the growth of controlled release fertilizers.Request Sample Copy of the Report @On the other hand, there are a few factors which are holding back the growth of the market to its fullest potential. These include, high price of controlled release fertilizers as compared to conventional ones and lack of awareness about this fertilizer in developing and under-developed countries. Many farmers are unaware of the potential benefits of controlled release fertilizers. This is also a factor restricting the growth of the market. However, with advancements in technology, the price of controlled release fertilizers may decrease and this will help fuel their demand.Global Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: OverviewControlled-release fertilizers are fertilizers that are capable of releasing nutrients in the soil in a controlled manner over an extended time frame. This technique, as compared to the fast-release technique of several conventional fertilizer varieties, is made possible with the help of encapsulating nutrient granules in polymeric coatings. Studies have demonstrated that controlled release of nutrients is more effective in providing nutrients to crops as compared to the fast-release technique as the availability of nutrients coincides with crops nutrient requirement - enhancing the efficiency of crop nutrition, improving crop quality, and increasing yield.Request TOC of the Report @Controlled-release fertilizers are also known to exert lesser impact on the environment as compared to fast-release fertilizers as they are not washed through or off farmlands, diminishing the possibility of chemicals in fertilizers leaching into water bodies or causing pollution. Earlier used mostly for nursery container crops, the rising awareness about these benefits of controlled-release fertilizers has extended their usage to conventional farming these days.Global Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: Key TrendsThe vast rise in global population and urban settlements and the resultant reduction in arable land are leading to a scenario wherein the demand for food products is rising and agricultural yield is failing to sustain these demands. Attempts to solve these issues are leading to an increased focus on sustainable agriculture practices, driving the demand for fertilizers with enhanced efficiency, such as controlled-release ones. In the next few years as well, the mounting demand for food products and limited arable lands will be key to the overall development of the global controlled-release fertilizers.Global Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: Market PotentialMergers, acquisitions, and expansion of knowledge base to be able to develop innovative products are some of the key strategies adopted by players operating in the global controlled-release fertilizers. Recently, ICL Innovation, a subsidiary of ICL (Israel Chemicals Ltd.), has recently entered into a multi-year research and development collaboration with Evogene Ltd., a company operating in the field of research and development related to crop production improvement. The collaboration will work towards the discovery of novel crop enhancers for the enhancement of nutrient uptake efficiency of selected crops.Get Discount @Under the collaboration, Evogene will work towards utilizing its computational discovery platform for identifying the potential of some compounds to improve the efficiency of nutrient use by crops. Successful candidates identified from the research activities could be used in ICL's future products.Global Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: Regional AnalysisFrom a geographical perspective, the global market for controlled-release fertilizers is dominated by the Asia Pacific market. The region single-handedly accounts for over half of the overall revenue generated by the global market and is both a high-production as well as high-consumption region. Rising government support for improvement of the agriculture industry in most agro-based economies and high population base in the region play a key role in encouraging the adoption of a variety of fertilizers that are capable of boosting food production. In the Asia Pacific controlled-fertilizer market, China accounts for a dominant share, in terms of production as well as consumption.The region features the presence of some of the worlds leading controlled-fertilizer manufacturers and low manufacturing costs owing to cheap labor and sustained supply of raw materials are bringing in more companies in the region. In the next few years, Asia Pacific is expected to retain its dominant position in the global controlled-release fertilizers market.Global Controlled-release Fertilizers Market: Competitive DynamicsThe market features a largely fragmented vendor landscape with a large number of companies operating in emerging economies such as India, Malaysia, and China. Cheap labor and steady availability of raw materials allow companies operating in such areas to economically expand their production capacities and supply products in the domestic markets with high-growth potential at low costs.Some of the leading companies operating in the global controlled release fertilizers market are Shandong Shikefeng Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., Chisso Corporation, ICL, Kingenta Ecological Engineering Group Co., Ltd., Ekompany, Agrium, AgroBridge, ATS Group, Compo GMBH & Co. KG, Greenfeed Agro Sdn. Bhd, and Haifa Chemicals ltd.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Bitumen Market - Future Market with Current Trend Analysis upto 2025

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Global Bitumen Market: SnapshotThe bitumen market is indirectly related to the GDP due to its widespread usage in road construction, industrial applications, and waterproofing. Robust growth of the construction sector primarily owing to government initiatives to improve infrastructure is positively impacting the bitumen market. This is because bitumen possess certain properties that are inbuilt at the time of its manufacture. Bitumen as a raw material in flexible road construction and bitumen as a mix offers several advantages that account for its wide usage in road construction.Bitumen is also used as an adhesive and as a sealant. Some other applications of bitumen include water proofing of ships and boats due to its water insoluble characteristics. Bitumen is used in the construction of water tanks, dams, and bridges.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Bitumen is a mixture of black organic liquids that are highly sticky, viscous, and entirely soluble in carbon disulfide. Crude bitumen is so thick that it must be heated to make it flowing. Refined bitumen is the residual obtained by the fractional distillation of crude oil. Naturally available crude bitumen is the key feedstock for petroleum production from tar sands that is currently under development in Canada.Some of the crucial factors responsible for the extensive usage of bitumen are its economical means of production, versatility due to its physical and rheological properties, low melting point, recyclable, adhesive properties, and color variety.On the other hand, climate change concerns due to greenhouses gases has led to the introduction of bitumen alternatives that are eco-friendly and are less toxic.Global Bitumen Market: OverviewBitumen is a mixture of hydrocarbons, which are highly viscous and black, obtained naturally or as a byproduct of petroleum distillation. It is extensively used for surfacing in the road construction. It provides excellent water resistance along with high stickiness and viscosity. The commonly available types of bitumen are paving grade, cutback, polymer modified, bitumen emulsion, and oxidized. Other than road construction, they find application in insulations, adhesives, waterproofing, and paints.Request TOC of the Report @Global Bitumen Market: Key TrendsThe increasing government measures for road development across the world are augmenting the global bitumen market. In addition, the rising road traffic is creating a dire need for wider roads, which is consequently boosting the global demand for bitumen. Moreover, the booming construction industry worldwide is favoring the growth of the market. The growing investments by governments in the upgradation of public infrastructure and rising disposable income of people around the world are leading to the greater construction activities. The robust growth of the paint and coatings sector is also supplementing the growth of the market. Paints manufactured using bitumen provide excellent weatherproofing and corrosion traits.On the flip side, the stringent regulatory environment for the manufacturing and application of bitumen is adversely affecting the growth of the market. Furthermore, bitumen manufacturing includes fractional distillation of crude oil. Thus, the protean prices of raw material are negatively impacting the growth of the market.Get Discount @Global Bitumen Market: Market PotentialTransportation of bitumen is a major concern for players in the market, as any accident can lead to environmentally damaging spills and high-profile explosions. As a result, bitumen manufacturers and transport authorities are focusing towards developing safer transport option. One such effort that could be a game changer is being taken by the Canadian National Railway Co. In February 2017, the company filed a patent for a novel technology that turns bitumen into mostly solid dry packets that would not leak, explode, or sink in water. It is still a bleeding edge technology, however, with constant efforts the technology is estimated to emerge niche alternative to traditional shipping methods. Such innovations are expected to provide a significant boost to the growth of the market.Global Bitumen Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key segments methodically examined based on geography are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. North America will be a prominent destination for global players during the review period. The increasing initiatives taken by governments towards the repair and redevelopment of existing roads are driving the demand for bitumen in the region. The growing residential remodeling practices, especially in the U.S., is also fuelling the growth of the region.Developing regions are expected to progress at a noteworthy CAGR in the forthcoming years. The growth of Asia Pacific can be attributed to the growing number of cities and increasing consumer disposable income, which is leading to the rising construction activities and sales of vehicles. China, Japan, and India will be sights of high growth rate in the region. The increasing infrastructure development will propel the growth of the market in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa.Global Bitumen Market: Competitive LandscapeThe presence of a large number of regional players has rendered the global bitumen market highly fragmented. The majority of players are operating throughout the supply chain of the market. Companies are focusing towards enhancing their visibility in the market by introducing advanced technologies that cater to the requirements of end users. Some of the prominent global participants in the bitumen are Total S.A., British Petroleum, Indian Oil Corporation, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation, Chevron Texaco Corporation, Total S.A., Royal Dutch Shell Plc., NuStar Energy, and Exxon Mobil Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Flight Data Recorder Global Market Size, Status, Analysis and Forecast 2023

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Market Highlights:The report for Global Flight Data Recorder Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance.The existing fleets are expected to be replaced by more than 40,000 new aircraft, over the next 20 years, and the global fleet is likely to reach 45,000 aircraft by 2036. Moreover, the high demand for air travel in the emerging regions, such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, leads to an increase in the number of aircrafts in these regions. As a result, approximately 22,000 aircrafts are expected to be delivered to these regions in the next 20 years. On the other hand, it is expected that over 15,000 aircrafts would be delivered in developed regions such as North America and Europe, by 2036. Modernization of aircraft fleets with the latest technology, and stringent government regulations, are some of the other primary factors driving the demand in the flight data recorder market. The rising demand for accurate and precise flight data among the airline operators and defense forces, also adds to the market growth.Get a Sample Report @Major Key PlayersHoneywell International Inc. (U.S),Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (U.S),AstroNova Inc. (U.S),SLN Technologies (India),FLHYT Aerospace Solutions Ltd. (Canada),Leonardo DRS (U.S),RUAG Group (Switzerland),Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions (U.S),L-3 Technologies Inc. (U.S),Universal Avionics Systems Corporation (U.S)Regional AnalysisThe market for Flight Data Recorder systems Market is expected to dominate in the North American region due to the rapidly rising research and development activities here. Established aviation industry and supporting infrastructure also aids the growth of the market. Existence of sophisticated technology and major manufacturers in the North American region has significantly contributed in the growth of the flight data recorder market in the North American region.Rapidly rising air passenger traffic in the Asia Pacific region has been key to the high growth rate in this region. Rising government investment towards development of new airports and upgradation of old ones, have been other major factors driving the growth of this market.Browse Full report @Intended Audience Distributer & Supplier companies End Users Consultants and Investment bankers Government as well as Independent Regulatory AuthoritieAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Coated Fabrics Market - Detailed Analysis and Forecast upto 2025

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Global Coated Fabrics Market: OverviewCoated fabrics are composite materials prepared by spreading bonding agents on one or both sides of the fabric and coating it with rubber compounds as per the requirement of the final end-use application. The final product is not only flexible, strong, heat resistant, and washable, they can also be electrically conductive or insulating as per desire. In the automotive industry, coated fabrics are used to manufacture air bags and seat covers. As the automotive industry touches new peaks in the near future, owing to rising population across the world, the demand for coated fabrics is anticipated to increment at a rapid rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.Global Coated Fabrics Market: Key TrendsApart from being utterly useful for the thriving automotive industry, coated fabrics are also used to make protective clothing for labors, which extends the horizon of its demand into several other flourishing industries. Strict government regulations such as European Unions Directive 89/686/EEC and Australia's Model Work Health and Safety Act are urging industries towards industrial protective clothing adoption. Food and beverage, chemical processing, agriculture, and law enforcement are some of the most prominent end-use industries for coated fabrics, after automotive. Conversely, this industry is facing stiff challenge from alternative materials including leather, plastic, uncoated fabrics, and rubber sheeting, which will hinder the growth rate to a certain extend during the forecast period.Request Sample Copy of the Report @In terms of products, the global coated fabrics market can be segmented into polymer, rubber, and fabric-backed wall coverings. Out of these, polymer coated fabrics serve maximum demand as it is relatively inexpensive as compared to other fabrics and offer desirable resistance to water, abrasion, and fire. As the regulations for safety spreads into several other emerging economies, the global polymer coated fabrics market is expected to flourish.Global Coated Fabrics Market: Market PotentialWith technological advancements, the application of coated fabrics now extends to defense, marine, and aviation industries. Herein, coated fabrics are now extensively used for their attributes of barrier protection, air retention, abrasion resistance, and high strength to weight ratio. This factor will open new opportunities for the players in the global coated fabrics market. Moreover, consistent research and development in the field is sure to extend the application of coated fibrics into other fields and further expand the market.Request TOC of the Report @Global Coated Fabrics Market: Regional OutlookNearly all regions are extending the demand for coated fabrics, with Asia Pacific growing at the best rate owing to vast population and a thriving automotive industry. Prosperity of healthcare industry is also expected to positively reflect on coated fabrics market in this region, especially in the emerging economies of India, China, Malaysia, and South Korea. In Europe, with stringent industrial safety regulations in the U.K, France, and Germany, protective clothing segment is most fruitful. Since the implementation of National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), OSHA, and ASTM, similar shift in the market is seen in the region of North America too, wherein the U.S. is extending the demand for coated fibrics to produce protective clothing for firefighting and law enforcement. In gulf, construction is at an all-new peak in the countries of UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, which serves the primary demand for coated fabrics to be used as safety clothing for the construction workers.Get Discount @Global Coated Fabrics Market: Competitive AnalysisSaint-Gobain, Omnova Solutions, Canadian General Tower, Trelleborg, and Takata Corporation are some of the leading companies currently operational in this market, which is fragmented in nature with the presence of several local players.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Composite Plate Market

Composite Plate Market

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Composite Plate Market Research 2017A market study  Global Composite Plate Market  examines the performance of the Composite Plate market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Composite Plate market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Composite Plate market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Composite Plate Market 2017 report includes Composite Plate market Revenue, market Share, Composite Plate industry volume, market Trends, Composite Plate Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Composite Plate Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Global Composite Plate Market Segmented By Regions : North America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaFirstly, the report covers the top Composite Plate manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Composite Plate report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Composite Plate industry, Composite Plate industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Composite Plate Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Composite Plate 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 Composite Plate market revenue worldwide.Finally, Composite Plate 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.comComposite Plate MarketDec 06, 2017: Composite Plate Market Forecast 2023Composite Plate MarketComposite Plate Market Research 2017A market study  Global Composite Plate Market  examines the performance of the Composite Plate market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Composite Plate market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Composite Plate market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Composite Plate Market 2017 report includes Composite Plate market Revenue, market Share, Composite Plate industry volume, market Trends, Composite Plate Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Composite Plate Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Composite Plate Market 2017 :Firstly, the report covers the top Composite Plate manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Composite Plate report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Composite Plate industry, Composite Plate industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Composite Plate Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Composite Plate 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 Composite Plate market revenue worldwide.Finally, Composite Plate 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
Foam Blowing Agents Market - Industry Analysis,Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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Global Foam Blowing Agents Market: SnapshotDevelopment in automotive industry is anticipated to expand the global market for foam blowing agents. Foam blowing agents are used for enhancing the properties of polymers. They provide the polymer matrix a cellular structure that strengthens the foam. Polymeric foams have optimum flexibility, low heat transfer, and low density. The various foam blowing agents available in the global market are methylal, inert gases, methyl formate, azodicarbonamide, hydrocarbons, and water.Foam blowing agents used in the production of various automotive parts such as bumpers, roll pans, wiper cowls, and side skirts. These growing applications in automotive industry and development in construction industry are expected to fuel the growth of this market. Furthermore, the growth of polystyrene, polyurethane, and other product-based foam industries are helping the market to grow. The growing world population is propelling the growth of construction industry. Demand for effective sound furnishing, flooring material, hospitality, and housing are envisioned to bolster the demand for foam blowing agents. Furthermore, the blooming of medical devices and packaging industry is foreseen to expand the market further.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The global market of foam blowing agents can be segment geographically in Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and North America. It is anticipated that due to development in the construction industry in developing countries such as India and China, Asia Pacific will dominate the global market. However, North America is also expected to show a steady growth in the market. As the major share of the global market of foam blowing agents is held by a few companies, the competitive landscape of the market is moderately consolidated.Global Foam Blowing Agents Market: OverviewFoam blowing agents are essentially used for enhancing the existing properties of polymers. Their very function is to provide the polymer matrix a cellular structure, which, in turn, strengthens the foam. Polymeric foams are known to have low density, low heat transfer, and optimum flexibility amongst other advantages. The various foam blowing agents available in the global market are water, hydrocarbons, azodicarbonamide, methyl formate, inert gases, and methylal.Request TOC of the Report @Global Foam Blowing Agents Market: Drivers and TrendsThe demand for foam blowing agents has been on an upswing due to the growing automotive industry. These agents are extensively used in the production of various automotive parts such as side skirts, wiper cowls, roll pans, and bumpers. The demand for foam blowing agents is anticipated to be on the rise in the coming years due to their growing application in the automotive and construction industries. The growth of the booming polyurethane, polystyrene, and other product-based foam industries are fuelling the growth of the global foam blowing agents market.The exponential rise in the global population has given the construction industry a significant boost in recent years. Demand for housing, hospitality, flooring material, and effective sound furnishing are expected to boost the demand for foam blowing agents in the near future. The foam blowing agents market is also expected to witness a good growth rate due to the emergence of the packaging and medical devices industry.Get Discount @Global Foam Blowing Agents Market: Market PotentialCompanies in the global foam blowing agents market are focused on developing eco-friendly blowing agents to minimize the impact on the environments. Currently, Lapolla Industries Inc. is working on commercializing Solstice, a liquid blowing agent that has the reputation to prevent ozone depletion and minimize global warming. The product is being developed by Honeywell International Inc., which is known to have fewer hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Lapolla and Honeywell are working in collaboration to develop products that bear a social and an environmental responsibility. Such efforts are expected to add value to the global market and work in favor in its favor in the coming years.Global Foam Blowing Agents Market: Regional OutlookIn terms of geography, the global foam blowing agents market is divided into Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and North America. The research report states that Asia Pacific foam blowing agents market is projected to lead the pack due to the protean construction industry, which is currently focused on making infrastructural developments.Presently, emerging countries of South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and India are undergoing major changes in terms of infrastructure, which is expected to increase the uptake of foam blowing agents in the regional market. Furthermore, significant technological advancements and phenomenal pace of industrialization in Asia Pacific, which is seen through the rise of industries such as medical devices, packaging, and automotive are expected boost the consumption of foam blowing agents.North America is also projected to show a steady growth in the global foam blowing agents market due to rising activities in the packaging and pharmaceutical industries. On the other hand, Europe will show a sluggish market growth in the global market.Key Players Mentioned in the Research Report are:The competitive landscape in the global foam blowing agents market is quite consolidated with the major share in the market held by a few companies. The research report states that the leading players operating in the global foam blowing agents market are Haltermann GmbH, ZEON Corporation, Sinochem Group, AkzoNobel N.V., Daikin Industries Ltd., Arkema S.A., Honeywell, Solvay S.A., Exxon Mobil Corporation, and DuPont.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Nano Copper Oxide Market - Trends, Share,Growth & Forecast upto 2025

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Nano Copper Oxide Market: SnapshotNano copper oxide is brownish black or reddish colored nanoparticle that is available in variety of forms depending on its applications. It is usually sold in dispersed or powdered form in the global market. It has numerous unique chemical and physical properties such as photovoltaic properties, superconductivity, low cost, antimicrobial activity, and is relatively stable. The global nano copper oxide market finds its applications in paints and coatings, electronics and electricals, energy storage among others. These copper oxide nanomaterials are manufactured for certain end uses and are nearly 100 times finer compared to the copper oxide material with diverse physical features.Rise in investments in research and development, growing penetration of copper oxide nanomaterials in multiple end-user sectors, and outstanding physio-chemical features of the nano copper oxides are the chief driving factors for the market growth. These nano copper oxide materials are generally added in modest quantities for the performance enhancement of the end product. However, some factors such as its high toxicity to aquatic life and human lungs may impede the overall market development. Presently, catalysts and electrical and electronics are the prominent end-user market segments for nano copper oxides. The overall demand for nano copper oxide materials is expected to witness a considerable growth in the coming years because of its unique properties and lucrative market opportunities created for all the key players in the global market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Nano Copper Oxide Market: OverviewNano copper oxide is referred to as a brownish-black or reddish nanoparticle, which is available in variety of forms according to the applications it serves. Nano copper oxide is basically a sold in powder or generally in discrete form in the market. It has various unique chemical and physical characteristics such as antimicrobial activity, low cost, relatively stable, photovoltaic properties, and superconductivity. They display very interesting electrical, mechanical, catalytic, and optical properties. They further possess photoconductive and photovoltaic properties as their crystal arrangements have a thin band gap. They are used in heat transfer fluids, microelectronics, solar energy converters, batteries, gas sensors, and semiconductor devices. Nano copper oxides are produced for specific end use and are almost 100 times finer in quality than copper oxide with absolutely different physical properties.Request TOC of the Report @The report examines the growth of the global nano copper oxide market that occurred in the last over the last few years and is likely to occur in the coming years. The research publication additionally explains the causes of the fluctuations in the global market. It does this by assessing of the facets and the different trends that have been prevalent from past few years and also the aspects that are anticipated to maintain a strong impact on the market over the coming years. The Porters five forces analysis has been considered by analysts to present a clear picture of the vendor landscape to readers. Agreements, mergers, acquisitions, and other dealings have been further mentioned in the study. It focuses on the strategies, products, and market share along with position of the companies operating in the market.Global Nano Copper Oxide Market: Trends and ProspectsThe global market for nano copper oxide is expected to witness stable growth over the coming years owing to growing investments for research and development in the field of nano technology. Rising penetration of nano copper oxide in several end-sue industries and its high physio-chemical properties are further expected to trigger the growth of the global nano copper oxide market over the forecast period. These oxides are basically added in small amount in order to improve the end products performance. However, it has high toxic levels that has negative impacts on aquatic life and human health. As a result of this, the market for nano copper oxide might face hindrances in terms of growth. The mounting demand for the energy storage segment closely followed by paints and coatings, catalysts, and electronics and electrical is expected to drive the growth of the market over the coming years. Players operating in the market are likely to be presented with significant opportunities owing to investments which are being made for innovations in this field.Get Discount @Global Nano Copper Oxide Market: Regional OutlookRegion-wise, Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness strong growth in the near future owing to rising demand for nano copper oxide from end-use industries in the region. Several new players are trying to venture in the market, mainly in India, China, and ASEAN. Robust industrialization coupled with growing disposable income of consumers is expected to drive the growth of various end-user industries, thus benefitting the nano copper oxide market in the region in return.Global Nano Copper Oxide Market: Vendor LandscapeCompanies such as American Elements, Inframat Corporation, Hongwu International Group Ltd, NaBond Technologies Co., Limited, Nanoshel LLC, and US Research Nanomaterials, Inc., among others are striving to gain an established position in the market.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Lyocell Fiber Market Boosted By Robust Development Of Textile Industry, Rising Eco-Friendly & Advanced Healthcare Products Till 2021 | Million Insights

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Lyocell Fiber Market is segmented on the basis of Application as Apparels, Home Textiles, and Others. Others may include Surgical Products and Baby Diapers. A kind of rayon that is usually obtained from cellulose is called a Lyocell. It is also popularly known as a man-made fiber. Absorbency and softness are some of the significant properties possessed by the Lyocell fibers. They are generally said to be biodegradable in nature.Lyocell fibers are basically those semi-synthetic cellulose fibers that are manufactured with the assistance of a closed loop technique via a solvent spinning technique, in which cellulose is subjected to a huge number of chemical changes. The chemical changes that generally occur include diminution of wood chips to wood pulp with strong alkali, dissolution of cellulose, setting and alignment of cellulose fibers, washing of fibers, carding of fibers, and recovery of the solvent. The solvent spinning technique here is being referred to the dissolution of cellulose in solvents. Lyocell fibers are extensively employed in the textile industry for the production of apparels, home textiles and baby diapers. Moreover, their application has also been seen in the manufacturing of medical equipment and surgical products. The prominent factors that are playing a key role in developing the market include robust development of textile market, increase in the awareness level regarding the eco-friendly products, rise in the disposable income and augmented demand for highly advanced healthcare products.Full Research Report On Lyocell Fiber Market Global Analysis available at:It has been observed that novel and modern product developments have been constantly taking place in the healthcare industry concerning the sterilized products. Plus the trend of employment of biodegradable fibers is also growing that is, in turn, paving way for many new growth opportunities for the Lyocell fiber market. The only factor that is acting as a major hurdle in the growth of the market includes availability of cheaper alternatives like polyester.It has been anticipated that Lyocell Fiber Market is likely to witness the highest CAGR in the next couple of years due to its augmenting applications and scope across various sectors.Lyocell Fiber Market is segmented on the basis of Geography as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa.As far as the geographical location is concerned, Asia Pacific is currently considered as the leader of the market, the reasons being development of textile market and eco-friendly fibers in the particular region. It is likely that the region will continue growing with the same pace in the near future in the lyocell fiber market.The major companies operating in the Lyocell Fiber Market include Qingdao Textiles Group Fiber Technology Co., Weiqiao Textile Company Limited, Acelon Chemicals & Fiber Corporation, Lenzing AG, The Aditya Birla Group, City Victor Corporation, Smartfiber AG, and Chon Bang Company Limited.This report studies Lyocell Fiber in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with Production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, covering Lenzing Hi-Tech Fiber Shangtex HoldingRequest for Free Sample Copy at:Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Region, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Lyocell Fiber in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), like North America China Europe Japan India Southeast AsiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided into Type I Type II Type IIISplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Lyocell Fiber in each application, can be divided into Application 1 Application 2 Application 3Related Reports of this Category available at Million Insights:About Million InsightsMillion Insights, is a distributor of market research reports, published by premium publishers only. We have a comprehensive market place that will enable you to compare data points, before you make a purchase. Enabling informed buying is our motto and we strive hard to ensure that our clients get to browse through multiple samples, prior to an investment. Service flexibility & the fastest response time are two pillars, on which our business model is founded. Our market research report store, includes in-depth reports, from across various industry verticals, such as healthcare, technology, chemicals, food & beverages, consumer goods, material science & automotive.Contact Details:Office No. 302, 3rd Floor, Manikchand Galleria,Model Colony, Shivaji Nagar, Pune, MH, 411016 IndiaPhone: 91-20-65300184Email: sales@millioninsights.com
Artificial Lift Market is projected to reach USD 2.2 Billion with 6.49% CAGR by 2022

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Artificial Lift Market is expected to grow with the CAGR of about 7% from 2016 to 2022. For the Global Artificial Lift market drivers are increased unconventional oil & gas production, declining reservoirs, and growing number of mature fields. However, strict government regulations environmental concerns are constraining the growth of the artificial lift market. The recent decline in oil prices is estimated to increase the demand for production focused services such as pressure pumping, artificial lift and enhanced oil recovery; as the focus has shifted entirely towards production optimization as comparison to drilling services. Consequently, artificial lifts are expected to experience a rise in demand from owner-operators, independent E&P companies, and other industry stakeholders.Market HighlightsFor the Global Artificial Lift market drivers are increased unconventional oil & gas production, declining reservoirs, and growing number of mature fields. However, strict government regulations environmental concerns are constraining the growth of the artificial lift market. The recent decline in oil prices is estimated to increase the demand for production focused services such as pressure pumping, artificial lift and enhanced oil recovery; as the focus has shifted entirely towards production optimization as comparison to drilling services. Consequently, artificial lifts are expected to experience a rise in demand from owner-operators, independent E&P companies, and other industry stakeholders.Key FindingsThe key findings of the report Global Artificial Lift Market includes: Increasing focus towards production optimization, and growing number of mature oil fields are major factors driving the growth of the artificial lift market Strict government regulations and environmental issues associated with the oil and gas production is inhibiting the growth of the artificial lift market Geographically, North America has the largest share in global artificial lift market and is also expected to be the fastest growing region Based on the type, electric submersible pumps have the largest market share in the artificial lift market.Request a Sample Copy @Key PlayersKey players in this market are: Baker Hughes, Borets, Cameron International, Dover Corporation, GE Oil & Gas, Halliburton, John Crane, National Oilwell Varco, Schlumberger, and Weatherford.Electric submersible pumps (ESP) and Rod Lifts held the major share within the Global Artificial Lift MarketThe major types of artificial lifts employed in the oil field includes electric submersible pump (ESP), rod lift, progressive cavity pumps (PSP), and gas lifts. Other types used include plunger lift, and hydraulic jet pumps which have a small contribution within the artificial lift market. Electric submersible pump is a multistage centrifugal pump used to lift moderate to high volumes of fluids from wellbores. Its advantages include wide range of operating flexibility , capability to lift extremely high volumes in shallow wells, and also the cost of lifting high volumes is low as compared to other methods. These advantages have contributed towards the immense popularity of ESPs in the artificial lift market, resulting towards its major share in this market.Artificial Lift Market:The global artificial lift market is growing due to decline in oil reservoirs, increase in shale oil and gas production. The recent decline in oil prices is also estimated to increase the demand for production focused services such as pressure pumping, artificial lift and enhanced oil recovery in comparison to drilling services. The unconventional production has transformed the oil and gas industry in North America over the last decade. The tight oil production in U.S. has pushed its crude oil supply to over 10% of world total. There are different types of artificial lifts which include rod lift, electric submersible pumps, progressive cavity pumps, gas lift and others. The Artificial lift Market is projected to grow at a high CAGR of around 7% during the forecast period.Browse Full Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by 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.Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Commercial Aircraft Actuation System Market 2017 Global Industry Sales, Supply, Consumption, Analysis and Forecasts to 2023

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Industry Highlights:The global commercial aircraft actuation system market has been experiencing substantial growth in recent years primarily due to growing air travel in developing nations. Of late, the emergence of auto pilot systems is also gaining traction. Autopilots are the best safety aid when flying in the clouds, low visibility, or in congested airspace. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) norms, an autopilot system is a mandate when a single pilot is operating the aircraft. FAA certifies the current technology autopilots at low cost. The integration of digital display systems and technologies, such as the autopilot system and FMS, in the cockpits of the aircraft, relieve the pilots of their workloads and assures availability of essential flight information. To enhance safety, the organization encourages the development and installation of autopilots in the aircraft. As a result, autopilot manufacturers are investing in the creation of new digital smart autopilots that is compatible with a variety of aircraft without additional certifications bearing high costs.Automation enhances flight operational safety and efficiency, which is especially critical for commercial airlines. It aims to cut down operating costs for greater profits. In 2014, a survey of airline pilots was conducted, which reported that the pilots operating the Boeing 777 military transport spent just seven minutes manually piloting their aircraft during a flight, whereas only half the time was required for those operating Airbus planes.Request a Sample Report @Tremendous progress in the aviation industry with the development of the More Electric Aircraft (MEA), such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Airbus A380, and Lockheed F35 airplanes was seen in last 15 years. In these aircraft, the pneumatic or hydraulic actuation systems have been replaced by the electric actuators, which make the aircraft lighter in weight and reduce fuel consumption. In addition, Airbus plans to develop 100 passenger electric aircraft during the forecast period. Therefore, thermal challenges of MEA can hinder the market growth.The major player operating in the market is Honeywell, Parker Aerospace, UTC Aerospace Systems, Eaton Corporation Plc, Liebherr, Moog, Curtiss Wright, Saab AB, Woodward Inc., and Triumph Group Inc.In 2016, North America accounted for the largest share in global Commercial Aircraft Actuation System Market. A number of the major actuation system OEMs are present in the region, resulting in a high market share of the region. Moreover, it is expected that approximately 10,000 aircraft would be in service in the region by 2035, which would create an opportunity for the major and prominent companies of the region.Based on aircraft type, it is segmented as narrow body aircraft, wide body aircraft and others. Narrow-body aircraft accounted for the largest share in 2016. Although these aircrafts have lesser capacity than the wide-body aircraft, they are larger in number. Some major narrow-body aircraft are Airbus A318, A319, A320, and A321; the Boeing B727s, and B737s. These planes generally fly over short routes, and are, thus suited to cater to budget travelers. As of 2016, there were over 15,000 narrow-body planes, across the globe, which would be replaced by approximately 12,000 such planes by 2035. Concurrently, there has been a rise in the number of low-cost carriers in the recent years, which has propelled the market for narrow-body planes, globally.Browse Full Report @Scope of the ReportThis study provides an overview of the global commercial aircraft actuation systems market, tracking two market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global commercial aircraft actuation systems market by its type, by aircraft type and region.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Flavored and Functional Water Market By Product, (Flavored Water, Functional Water), By Geography, (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Rest of the World), Trends and Forecast,2014 to 2024

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IntroductionIncreasing consciousness towards health among consumers across the globe is boosting the popularity of better alternatives of simple food & beverages which they generally consume. Flavored and functional water comes under the category of healthy alternatives of beverages whereas flavored water is purified, spring water or bottled mineral. Functional water is its derivative along with added functional values such as minerals, oxygen, botanicals and vitamins. Flavored and functional water comes under the category of beverages which are marketed in similar terms to water. Although, it contains some additional elements including sweeteners and natural or flavors vitamins. The global functional and flavored market concentrates on a healthy image attached with functional benefits and perceived health. Flavored water contains mineral water in combination with several fruit juices including blackberry, pineapple, apple, mango, orange and strawberry among others along with natural or artificial sweeteners. On the other hand, functional water comes from flavored water and is made by using multiple ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, herbs, vegetables, raw fruit and oxygen. These antioxidants and additives furnish added nutritional benefits and values to the functional water.Download Table of Content:Market DynamicsRising consumer awareness and health concerns is leading to the demand for healthy alternatives such as flavored and functional water as compared to artificial or carbonated soft drinks. The most commonly used flavored and functional water contains guava, cherry, peach, lemon, apple and mixed flavors. Flavored and functional water does not contain any preservatives, caffeine, colors and carbonation. Thus, flavored and functional water products are rapidly gaining popularity among consumers of all age groups. Other aerated drinks including fizzy drinks, cola, and soda contain carbon dioxide, which causes several side effects like weight gain which leading to diabetes, and high calories, among others. On the other hand, non-aerated drinks are non-carbonated and pose a lot of nutritional benefits. Supply of polluted water in industrial sector has led to an increase in demand for flavored and functional water. In addition, the ingredients of functional water addresses calcium and heart absorption and reduces cholesterol. Growing awareness towards healthy lifestyle among population in developed countries along with rising prevalence of obesity are some key factors anticipated to drive the growth of flavored and functional water market during the forecast period. Functional water is gaining popularity due to its reduced switching costs and health benefits. Moreover, increasing availability of flavored water and increasing options in flavored and functional water is another major factor anticipated to boost the overall growth of global flavored and functional water market. In addition, since consumers generally prefer to opt for new tastes in flavored water, companies are focusing on innovations in product development. However, high cost of flavored and functional water is the key reason hampering the market growth.Request Customization:Market ClassificationThe Global Flavored and Functional Water Market can be segmented on the basis of product type and geography. By product type, the global flavored and functional water market can be segmented into flavored water and functional water. On the basis of geography, the global flavored and functional water market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Asia-Pacific.Report CoverageMarket Global Flavored And Functional Water MarketAnalysis Period 2014  2024Historic Data 2014  2015Base Year 2016Forecast Data 2017  2024Market Stratification Product Type, GeographyRegional Scope North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa (MEA)Report Coverage Market Trends, Drivers, Restraints, Porter's Five Forces Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Player Profiling, Value Chain AnalysisMarket ParticipantsSome of the key players in the global flavored and functional water market include New York Spring Water, Nestle S.A., PepsiCo, Groupe Danone, The Coca-Cola Company, Kraft Foods, Hint Water, Sunny Delight Beverages Company, and Balance Water Company among others.Inquiry Before Buying:Market SegmentationMarket By Product Type Flavored water Functional waterMarket By Geography North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo UKo Germanyo Franceo Rest of Europe Asia-Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao Australiao Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin Americao Brazilo Chileo Rest of Latin America Middle East and Africa (MEA)o South Africao Saudi Arabiao Rest of MEABuy Now This Report From Here:About UsAcumen Research and Consulting (ARC) is a global provider of market intelligence and consulting services to information technology, investment, telecommunication, manufacturing, and consumer technology markets. ARC helps investment communities, IT professionals, and business executives to make fact based decisions on technology purchases and develop firm growth strategies to sustain market competition. With the team size of 100+ Analysts and collective industry experience of more than 200 years, Acumen Research and Consulting assures to deliver a combination of industry knowledge along with global and country level expertise.Contact -Frank WilsonSales Manager | Acumen Research and ConsultingEmail: frank@acumenresearchandconsulting.comPh - USA +1 716-2400-831Asia-Pacific +912065600384Website:
Submarine Market: Key Driver, Top Vendors, Application Analysis and Outlook

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Industry Highlights:The global submarine market is expected to witness high growth over the forecast period. The market is majorly driven by the increasing demand for UUVs for naval intelligence; mine countermeasures (MCM) operations; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles; and anti-submarine warfare missions. Many countries are modernizing their naval defense units by manufacturing submarines, surface- mine countermeasure unmanned underwater vehicles, and other combat and tactical UUVs, which is driving the growth of the global submarine market.However, the growth of this market will be hampered, due to the costs associated with refit & maintenance and proliferation of nuclear weapons.Request a Sample Report @The global Submarine Market is projected to grow at ~4% CAGR during the forecast period.Of all types, the SSN segment is projected to account for the largest market share. Unlike the SSKs, these submarines do not have to surface periodically for air, which preserves their stealth characteristic. Such advantages will drive the demand for SSNs globally during the forecast period. Although many countries refuse to accept nuclear-powered vessels, due to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), SSNs have a high demand due to their advantages (longer endurance, higher speeds, and better efficiency) over the traditionally powered SSKs.Of all regions, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate the global Submarine Market. With the increasing defense budgets and spending, defense authorities of all the nations of the region extensively invest into submarines and other underwater vehicles. The rapid modernization of Chinas submarine fleet has also impelled the demand in countries such as India, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and Vietnam. The growth is significantly driven by major countries such as China, India, Australia, and South Korea, due to the rising number of maritime conflicts in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. As a result, these countries are developing their naval capabilities.The key players of global submarine market include BAE Systems AB (U.K.), Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd (South Korea), General Dynamics Electric Boat (U.S.), Huntington Ingalls Industries (U.S.), Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. (Japan), Fincantieri - Cantieri Navali Italiani S.p.A. (Italy), Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), Saab group (Sweden) and Thales Group (France).Scope of the reportThis study provides an overview of the global submarine market, tracking one market segment across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global Submarine market by its type and region.Browse Full Report Details @Moreover, regional disputes between nations such as India and Pakistan or China and Japan have triggered the demand for nuclear submarines. Globally, many nations are modernizing their fleets due to their unstable security situations. Submarines are used for electronic warfare and as force multipliers; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; target recognition systems; and damage-assessment systems.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market - In-Depth Analysis & Forecast upto 2025

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Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: SnapshotPolypropylene, a thermoplastic polymer that finds widespread applications in textiles, laboratory equipment, packaging and labeling, automobile components, and stationery. Increasing knowledge about polypropylene random copolymer, including its high impact resistance, good flexibility and optical characteristics, transparency, gloss, and lightweight is said to be stoking growth in its demand.On account of its many benefits, its applications is growing. Further rising spending capacity of people worldwide, is resulting in elevated packaged and processed food demand, which in turn is working in favor of the global polypropylene random copolymer market.Mushrooming supermarkets, particularly in developing countries, is also proving beneficial to the market. Further, growing focus of food manufacturers towards aesthetic packaging and labeling along with added durability is also bolstering growth of the market. Ethylene and naphtha are basic raw materials required for the production of polypropylene random copolymer. The turbulent prices of crude oils and petrochemicals are, therefore, negatively impacting the growth of the market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The main regions studied in the report are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. North America, of them, is a leading market on account of the presence of a solid healthcare infrastructure that is fuelling growth. The U.S. is the primary driver of expansion in the region due to high demand for food and beverage packaging.Asia Pacific is another key region which will likely grow at a healthy clip due to changing lifestyle of people and a burgeoning middle class population. Japan, China, and India are major markets in the region.Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: OverviewPolypropylene, which is also referred to as polypropene, is a thermoplastic polymer extensively used in a wide range of applications such as textiles, packaging and labeling, laboratory equipment, automobile components, and stationery. In polypropylene random copolymer, randomly polymerized ethylene monomer is added to polypropylene homopolymer, which lowers the melting point, reduces the polymer crystallinity, and makes the polymer more transparent. They are used for stretch blow molding and injection molding applications that require improved clarity and impact. Their demand is high across different verticals such as food and beverages, pharmaceutical, chemicals, and consumer products.Request TOC of the Report @Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: Key TrendsThe rising awareness regarding the benefits of polypropylene random copolymer, including excellent impact resistance, good flexibility and optical characteristics, transparency, gloss, and lightweight is augmenting the market. Owing to its benefits, its scope of applications are widening. The increasing disposable income of people around the world is resulting in elevated packaged and processed food demand, which in turn is working in favor of the global polypropylene random copolymer market.The growing number of supermarkets in emerging regions is also providing a fillip to the market. Moreover, the shifting focus of food manufacturers towards aesthetic packaging and labeling along with added durability is supplementing the growth of the market. Ethylene and naphtha are basic raw materials required for the production of polypropylene random copolymer. The turbulent prices of crude oils and petrochemicals are, therefore, negatively impacting the growth of the market.Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: Market PotentialThe healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors are presenting tremendous lucrative opportunities, which is prompting manufacturers to develop products that can better adapt and scale to suit the requirements of the end users. For instance, in February 2017, LyondellBasell introduced a new polypropylene random copolymer, Purell RP320M that can be used in labware, caps and closures, flexible and rigid packaging of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The copolymer is designed to offer homogeneity and clarity to address high-quality requirements in injection molding and cast film extrusion conversion technologies.Get Discount @Besides, polypropylene random copolymers carry immense potential to replace conventional beverage packaging such as PET and glass, which is likely to attract new players to invest in this market.Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: Region-wise OutlookThe key segments analyzed in the report based on geography are Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. North America will account for a substantial share in the market throughout the forecast period. The presence of robust healthcare infrastructure is fuelling the growth of the region. The U.S. will be at the forefront of the growth of the region, owing to the high demand for food and beverage packaging.Asia Pacific will be rise at a noteworthy CAGR during the same period. The growth of the region can be attributed to the changing consumer lifestyles, widening base of middle-class population, and increasing purchasing power of the populace. Moreover, the flourishing growth of the food and beverage sector is driving the market in the region. Japan, India, and China will be the major revenue contributors to the growth of the region.Global Polypropylene Random Copolymer Market: Competitive LandscapeLarge refineries have a strong foothold in the global polypropylene random copolymer market, owing to the availability of abundant raw materials and massive sums for investments. The majority of manufacturers are aiming at achieving a competitive edge by diversifying their product offerings. Some of the key companies operating in the market are Reliance Industries Limited, LyondellBasell, Pinnacle Polymers LLC, Formosa Plastics, Total Petrochemicals & Refining USA Inc., Entec Polymers, Sasol, and INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
PVDF Resin Market - Industry Analysis,Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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Global PVDF Resin Market: SnapshotThe global PVDF resin market has seen an upswing in the past couple of years and going forward too is expected to retain that trend. Majorly fuelling the market is the rising usage of PVDF resin in various end-use industries. Their excellent performance is one of the primary reasons behind it.In order to cater to demand from various consumers, market players are seen investing in product innovations and indulging in strategic alliances with other leading companies. Moreover, the rising penetration of PVDF resin in industries such as aviation, automotive, oil and gas, and new energies is fur slated to provide a shot in the arm to market by driving the demand for PVDF resin in the next couple of years. Posing a challenge to the market, on the other hand, is the emergence of substitutes, rising environmental concerns, and volatility in raw material prices.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Some of the prominent regions in the global PVDF resin market are Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. Among them, Asia Pacific is slated to become one of the dominant region in the global PVDF resin market on account of rising investments in industries such as automotive, pharmaceuticals, chemical, and oil and gas. The regions growth will be primarily powered by the developing economies of India and China owing to the swift pace of industrialization.Some of the prominent participants in the global PVDF market are Arkema S.A., Daikin Industries, Ltd., Dyneon GmbH & Co. KG, Kureha Corporation, Shanghai Ofluorine Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., Solvay S.A., and RTP Company, Inc.Global Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Resin Market: SnapshotIn materials and polymer chemistry, resin is a solid or tremendously glutinous material found from a plant or from a synthetic origin which is principally converted into polymers. They are often a combination of organic compound, mainly terpenes and its byproducts. Several plants, mainly woody plants, give it away as a result of any wound. The resin thus acts a protection to the plant from the invading pathogens and insects. Many resins also comprise a rather sizeable amount of resin acids. The single components of the resin can be unglued through fractional distillation. Many materials are manufactured through the conversion to solids from synthetic raisins.Request TOC of the Report @Polyvinylidene fluoride is the homopolymer of 1, 1-di-fluoro-ethene. The properties which it has such as high electrical ability and desirable insolubility are the result of the polarity of irregular CF2 and CH2 groups of the polymer chain. Hard and porous PVDF can be used at temperatures ranging from -80 to 300 degree F. PVDF is available as an insulator, plate, films, tubing, sheet, and piping products. It can be welded or molded, injected, and used in the defense, medical, semiconductor, and chemical industries. PVDF resin can also be found as a closed-cell cross-linked foam, thus can is highly used in aerospace and aviation applications.The report examines the growth of the global PVDF resin market that occurred in the last over the last few years and is likely to occur in the coming years. The research publication additionally explains the causes of the fluctuations in the global market. It does this by assessing of the facets and the different trends that have been prevalent from past few years and also the aspects that are anticipated to maintain a strong impact on the market over the coming years. The Porters five forces analysis has been considered by analysts to present a clear picture of the vendor landscape to readers. Agreements, mergers, acquisitions, and other dealings have been further mentioned in the study. It focuses on the strategies, products, and market share along with position of the companies operating in the market.Get Discount @Global Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Resin Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe global PVDF resin market is expected to be driven by the growing demand for PVDF resin across several end-use industries. The growing acceptance of PVDF resin coupled with high performance characteristics are expected to further bode well for the growth of the market. To meet the incessant growing demand from consumers, market players are focusing on innovating their products and create strategic alliances with other leading companies. Moreover, the rising penetration of PVDF resin in industries such as aviation, automotive, oil and gas, and new energies is further expected to drive the demand for PVDF resin over the coming years. However, growing threat from substitutes, rising environmental concerns, and fluctuating prices of raw materials are likely to hamper the growth of the market.Global Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Resin Market: Regional OutlookAsia Pacific is expected to emerge as a prominent region in the global PVDF resin market owing growing investments in industries such as automotive, chemical, pharmaceuticals, and oil and gas and rapid industrialization. China and India are likely to provide lucrative growth opportunities to manufacturers.Global Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) Resin Market: Vendor LandscapeSome of the leading companies in the market are Arkema S.A., Daikin Industries, Ltd., Kureha Corporation, Dyneon GmbH & Co. KG, Solvay S.A., Shanghai Ofluorine Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., and RTP Company, Inc.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Military Laser Rangefinder Market Growth Opportunity and Industry Forecast to 2023

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Market Highlights:It is expected that by 2023, North America would be the dominant region in the military laser rangefinder market, primarily due to the presence of major manufacturers in this region. In addition, the increasing military expenses by the US Department of Defense (DOD) on miniature military rangefinders have resulted in the market witnessing a significant surge in demand, in this region.Moreover, the current military operations and exercises in the Middle Eastern countries will also result in the U.S. focusing on the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the laser rangefinder systems, which will further deepen the scope for the market in the North American region and across the globe. Europe is expected to acquire the second largest market due to the high expenses on soldier modernization programs by the countries in this region, such as in the UK, the Netherlands, and France.Request a Sample Report @Major key Players Elbit Systems, FLIR Systems, General Atomics, Gooch & Housego, L3 Technologies, Leonardo, Northrop Grumman, RPMC Lasers, Thales, UTC Aerospace Systems.Market Research Analysis:Many countries are focusing on upgrade of their airborne defense and offence systems, thus application of drones as laser rangefinders is rapidly gaining momentum. Growing preference for miniature rangefinders will further provide the market with growth prospects, owing to the several advantages of miniature rangefinders which include enhanced accuracy, safety of soldiers, and efficiency in military operations. As a result, the market for military rangefinders is expected to register a growth rate of more than 5%.Although the military laser rangefinders assist the soldiers to efficiently mark their targets, the health issues associated with these laser systems is one of the major challenges faced by the manufacturers of such systems, the defense authorities, and the market.Global Military Laser Rangefinder Systems Market:The changing landscape of war in the recent times is one of the major factors driving the military laser rangefinder market, with the evolution of the 21st century digital warfare. The lightweight laser rangefinders enable faster mobility and significantly reduce the chances of fatigue for the armed troops. These portable devices are carried by the armed forces, Special Forces, and Forward Air Controllers (FAC), and they consist of an optical sight, laser emitter, and range finder. These systems may vary in size but they are usually mounted on tripods to ensure a stable aiming platform. They provide the soldiers with higher adaptability, attack capability, accuracy, and maneuverability, which makes them more lethal.For further information on this report, visit @Table of Content1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of Study1.3 Research Objective1.4 Assumptions & Limitations1.5 Market Structure:2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3 Market Dynamics3.1 Drivers3.2 Restraints3.3 Opportunities3.4 Challenges3.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4 Market Factor Analysis4.1 Porters five forces model4.1.1 Bargaining Power of suppliers4.1.2 Bargaining Power of Customer4.1.3 Intensity of Competitors4.1.4 Threat of New Entrants5 Military Laser Rangefinder Market, By Type..ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Delivery Takeaway Food Sales Market Segmentation, Application, Trends, Opportunity & Forecast 2014 to 2024 By Acumen Research and Consulting

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IntroductionThe delivery takeaway food sales market involves packaging and providing different variety of food options to consumers in their workplaces, homes or at their locations as per their convenience. Food is delivered to customers through delivery channels and vast network. Online takeaway food option allows customers to order food from various locations and from varieties of items, and by using efficient method of payments such as online transaction or cash on delivery (COD). The delivery takeaway food market is changing rapidly as online platforms are gaining more acceptances among people who wish to dine food at comfortable location and desire for quality food. Thus, increasing demand for home delivery and fast food items is expected to increase the growth of delivery and takeaway food market during the forecast period.Download Table of Content:Market DynamicsDelivery and Takeaway Food Sales Market is witnessing drastic growth which is proportional to hectic schedule, rise in busy lifestyle and expanding urbanization, quick access to digital world by using mobile phones via internet penetration, demand for hygienic fast foods, and access to online platforms to order food by online transaction. Rising need for convenience is effectively driving the demand for food products. Online ordering can be expensive at times as restaurants charge extra for home distribution and pickups which is halting the growth of market. Increasing consumer preference towards easy availability and convenience to huge variety of food at home will rapidly accelerate business. Growing employment opportunities and easy availability of workforce will accelerate the demand for food products during forecast period.Market Classification and OverviewThe market can be classified on the basis of product type, distribution channel and geography. By product type, the delivery takeaway food sales market can be segmented into non-vegetarian, vegetarian. By distribution channel, the delivery takeaway food sales market can be segmented into online channels, and offline channels. On the basis of geography, the delivery takeaway food sales market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Asia-Pacific. North America dominates thedelivery and takeaway food market, global revenue is anticipated to grow at a rapid speed, over the upcoming period of time. The market is expected to perform well in the near future due to consumer prefer for ordering online, growing digital marketing strategies by companies to connect with customers, and as consumers prefer for sterile & healthy food rather the fast food while ordering. Moreover, fresh food demand, and instant home delivery are some of the factors that can accelerate the global revenue growth of delivery and takeaway food sales market during the upcoming period. This is added to the convenient option for the customers with respect to easy mode of payment, transparency, high security, and location traceability of their order.Request Customization:Report CoverageMarket Delivery Takeaway Food Sales MarketAnalysis Period 2014  2024Historic Data 2014  2015Base Year 2016Forecast Data 2017  2024Market Stratification Product Type, Distribution Channel, GeographyRegional Scope North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa (MEA)Report Coverage Market Trends, Drivers, Restraints, Porter's Five Forces Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Player Profiling, Value Chain AnalysisMarket ParticipantsSome of the key players involved in the supply of delivery takeaway food sales market include Hero Holding GmbH, Foodpanda GmbH, Just Eat Holding Limited, Takeaway.com Holding B.V, Grubhub, Inc., Domino's Pizza Inc., Snapfinger, Inc., Pizza Hut Inc., Foodler Inc., Mobo Systems, Inc., and among others.Inquiry Before Buying:Market SegmentationMarket By Product Type Non-Vegetarian VegetarianMarket By Distribution Channel Online Channels Offline ChannelsMarket By Geography North Americao U.S.o Canadao Mexico Europeo UKo Franceo Germanyo Rest of Europe Asia-Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao Australiao Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin Americao Brazilo Chileo Rest of LATAM Middle East and Africa (MEA)o South Africao Saudi Arabiao Rest of MEABuy Now This Report From Here:About UsAcumen Research and Consulting (ARC) is a global provider of market intelligence and consulting services to information technology, investment, telecommunication, manufacturing, and consumer technology markets. ARC helps investment communities, IT professionals, and business executives to make fact based decisions on technology purchases and develop firm growth strategies to sustain market competition. With the team size of 100+ Analysts and collective industry experience of more than 200 years, Acumen Research and Consulting assures to deliver a combination of industry knowledge along with global and country level expertise.Contact -Frank WilsonSales Manager | Acumen Research and ConsultingEmail: frank@acumenresearchandconsulting.comPh - USA +1 716-2400-831Asia-Pacific +912065600384Website:
Future of Manned Security Services Market Size 2022 G4S, Securitas, Allied Universal, US Security Associates, SIS, TOPSGRUP, Beijing Baoan

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MarketStudyReport.com Add New Report Global Manned Security Services 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 122 pages with table and figures in it.Global Manned Security Services Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 provides Market information about Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application. This Industry report also states Company Profile, sales, Manned Security Services Market revenue and price, market share, market growth and gross margin by regions.This report studies the Manned Security Services market, it is mainly including the service and equipment; the applications are concentrated in the Commercial Buildings, Industrial Buildings and Residential Buildings.Request a Free sample PDF of this research to evaluate more:Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Manned Security Services in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers G4S, Securitas, Allied Universal, US Security Associates, SIS, TOPSGRUP, Beijing Baoan, OCS GroupMarket 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 Type, covers Service, EquipmentMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into Commercial Buildings, Industrial Buildings, Residential BuildingsRequest Discount for Global Manned Security Services Market Research Report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Manned Security Services market.Chapter 1, to describe Manned Security Services Market Size Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Manned Security Services Market Size, with sales, revenue, and price of Manned Security Services, 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 Manned Security Services, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the Manned Security Services Market Size by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Manned Security Services market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Manned Security Services sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceFor More Info on Market Research @Related Reports: -World Pipetting Robot Market Research Report 2022 (covering USA, Europe, China, Japan, India, South East Asia and etc)Pipetting Robot market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.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:
Goggle Damper (Gf) 2017 Global Industry Key Players - Orbinox, DeZURIK, Flowrox, Bray International, SISTAG, VAG Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Global Goggle Damper (Gf) Market

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Global Goggle Damper (Gf) MarketThis report studies Goggle Damper (Gf) in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringOrbinox(Spain)DeZURIK(USA)Flowrox(Finland)Bray International(USA)SISTAG (WEY Valve)(Switzerland)VAG(Germany)Stafsj? Valves(Sweden)Weir(UK)Pentair Valves & Controls(Switzerland)AVK(Denmark)Tecofi(France)ITT(USA)Red Valve(USA)Davis Valve(USA)GEFA Processtechnik(Germany)Zhejiang Linuo Flow Control Technolog(China)Trueline Valve Corporation(Canada)Valtorc(USA)CYL(Spain)SUPERO SEIKI(Japan)Chuan Chuan Metal Valves(Taiwan)Tianjin Exxon Valve(China)Request a Sample Report @By types, the market can be split intoWithout BonnetWith BonnetBy Application, the market can be split intoGas Transportation EquipmentDust Extraction PlantsBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaTo enquire about this report visit @Table of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal Goggle Damper (Gf) Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.1 Definition and Specifications of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.1.1 Definition of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.1.2 Specifications of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.2 Classification of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.2.1 Without Bonnet1.2.2 With Bonnet1.3 Applications of Goggle Damper (Gf)1.3.1 Gas Transportation Equipment1.3.2 Dust Extraction Plants1.3.3 Application 31.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Goggle Damper (Gf)2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Goggle Damper (Gf)2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Goggle Damper (Gf)2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Goggle Damper (Gf)..8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Goggle Damper (Gf)8.1 Orbinox(Spain)8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 Orbinox(Spain) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Orbinox(Spain) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 DeZURIK(USA)8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 DeZURIK(USA) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 DeZURIK(USA) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Flowrox(Finland)8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 Flowrox(Finland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Flowrox(Finland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 Bray International(USA)8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 Bray International(USA) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 Bray International(USA) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 SISTAG (WEY Valve)(Switzerland)8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Product A8.5.2.2 Product B8.5.3 SISTAG (WEY Valve)(Switzerland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 SISTAG (WEY Valve)(Switzerland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 VAG(Germany)8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Product A8.6.2.2 Product B8.6.3 VAG(Germany) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 VAG(Germany) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 Stafsj? Valves(Sweden)8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Product A8.7.2.2 Product B8.7.3 Stafsj? Valves(Sweden) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 Stafsj? Valves(Sweden) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Weir(UK)8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Product A8.8.2.2 Product B8.8.3 Weir(UK) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Weir(UK) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 Pentair Valves & Controls(Switzerland)8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.2.1 Product A8.9.2.2 Product B8.9.3 Pentair Valves & Controls(Switzerland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 Pentair Valves & Controls(Switzerland) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 AVK(Denmark)8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.2.1 Product A8.10.2.2 Product B8.10.3 AVK(Denmark) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.10.4 AVK(Denmark) 2016 Goggle Damper (Gf) Business Region Distribution Analysis8.11 Tecofi(France)8.12 ITT(USA)8.13 Red Valve(USA)8.14 Davis Valve(USA)8.15 GEFA Processtechnik(Germany)8.16 Zhejiang Linuo Flow Control Technolog(China)8.17 Trueline Valve Corporation(Canada)8.18 Valtorc(USA)8.19 CYL(Spain)8.20 SUPERO SEIKI(Japan)8.21 Chuan Chuan Metal Valves(Taiwan)8.22 Tianjin Exxon Valve(China)Continued.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
Well Test Market 2017: Analysis, Segments, Key Players, Drivers and Trends by Forecast to 2023

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Well Test Market is expected to grow with the CAGR of about 6% from 2016 to 2022. One of the primary factors that are driving the Well Test market is the increasing spending in the E&P industry.Market HighlightsOne of the primary factors that are driving the Well Test market is the increasing spending in the E&P industry. The well testing market growth was affected by the price crisis in the Oil & Gas industry. With the recent stabilization in the prices and the O&G industry the market has portrayed immense growth potential.Residential held the major share within the Global Well Test MarketGlobal increasing demand for energy has resulted in rapid increase in the offshore drilling activities to meet the increasing demand, which ultimately has provided significant boost to the well testing market. Owing to the shale and drilling activities in the North America region, the market is the leading region for the Well Testing market. Increased exploration activities in this region specifically in Canada have boosted the demand for Well Testing. Increased Infrastructural and Manufacturing activities in the Asia-Pacific region have resulted in increasing demand in the Oil & Gas market translating into Well Test market achieving high growth in this region.Request a Sample Copy @Key PlayersSome of the key players in the Well Test market are AGR Group ASA (Norway), FMC Technologies Inc. (U.S.), Schlumberger Ltd. (U.S.), Halliburton Company (U.S.), Tetra Technologies Inc. (U.S.), Weatherford International Ltd. (Ireland), Expro International Group Ltd (U.K.), Greene's Energy Group (U.S.), Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. (U.S.)Market Research Analysis:Owing to the shale and drilling activities in the North America region, the market is the leading region for the Well Testing market. Increased exploration activities in this region specifically in Canada have boosted the demand for Well Testing. Increased Infrastructural and Manufacturing activities in the Asia-Pacific region have resulted in increasing demand in the Oil & Gas market translating into Well Test market achieving high growth in this region.Table of Content1. Report Prologue2. Introduction1. Definition2. Scope Of The Study Research Objective Assumptions Limitations3. Market Structure4. Market Segmentation3. Research Methodology1. Research Process2. Primary Research3. Secondary Research4. Market Size Estimation5. Forecast Model4. Market Dynamics1. Drivers & Oppurtunities2. Challenges & Restraints3. Value Chain Analysis4. Porters Five Forces Analysis5. Well Test Market, By Services1. Introduction2. Surface Testing3. Downhole Well Test4. Reservoir Testing6. Well Test Market, By Well TypeContinueList of TablesTable 1 Global Well Test Market SnapshotTable 2 Drivers For The MarketTable 3 Restraints For The MarketTable 4 Global Well Test Market, By Well TypeTable 5 Onshore, By RegionContinue..List of FiguresFigure 1 Research MethodologyFigure 2 Impact Analysis: Drivers And RestraintsFigure 3 Global Well Test Market, By Well TypeFigure 4 Global Well Test Market, By ServicesFigure 5 Global Well Test Market, By RegionContinueBrowse Full Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by 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.Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Augmented Expansion of US$3.48 bn to be Registered by Bone Grafts and Substitutes Market by 2023

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The global bone grafts and substitutes market is consolidated with leading three companies accounting for over 50% of the market in 2014, finds Transparency Market Research (TMR). These three companies are: Stryker Corporation, Zimmer, and Medtronic. Players within the market are competitive and are each vying for sustainable growth so as to increase their global footprint. Players in the market are showing interest in being a part of long term contracts with dental clinics and hospitals so as to better maintain their sales and service relationships. Players are also offering additional services to improve their relationship with buyers. Many companies are participating in merger and acquisitions so as to expand their geographical reach.According to Transparency Market Research, the global bone graft and substitutes market will be worth US$3.48 bn by the end of 2023. On the basis of geography, the market was led by North America in 2015 on account of the presence of a large number of players. The increasing number of product innovations and launch of novel therapeutics in this region is driving the bone grafts and substitutes market in North America. The high demand for orthopedic surgeries especially by geriatric population base is another reason for the growth of the market in the region. By 2023, the North American market is estimated to be worth US$1.23 bn. By application, the bone grafts and substitutes in spinal fusion segment is estimated to expand at a 4.4% CAGR between 2015 and 2023.Read Report Overview @Increasing Incidences of Arthritis Driving Bone Grafts and Substitutes MarketThe growing prevalence of bone and joint disorders is a key factor boosting the growth of the market across the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that over 67 mn people in the U.S. alone, are expected to be diagnosed with arthritis by 2030. Since arthritis is a leading cause of disability and is affecting millions around the world. All these factors are anticipated to fuel the growth of the bone grafts and substitutes market. The dramatic growth in the number of orthopedic surgeries being held will also fuel the growth of this market. The market in developing nations is expected to boom on account of medical tourism. The countries such as, Japan, Mexico, China, and Malaysia are emerging as key markets for bone grafts and substitutes. Affordable treatment is boosting the growth of this market in these nations.Increasing Cases of Implant Failure to Pose a Threat to MarketThe increasing reports of post implantation infections are one of the key challenges of the global bone grafts and substitute market. The increasing implant failures are also posing a threat to the growth of this market. The increasing difficulty in obtaining allografts from donors and reserving is causing ethical issues related to storing and harvesting them, which is another challenge for the market. In addition to this, gestation periods between supply and demand of allografts are very long and will give rise to ethical issues. Thus, several stringent regulations have been implemented on the use of bone grafts and substitutes so as to curb malpractices. These regulations are also being implemented to keep risk of infections in check. All these factors will restrict the growth of the market. However, the growing geriatric population will drive the growth prospects of the market. In addition to this, growing healthcare expenditure is also expected to bode well for the market. This will even inspire new players from entering the market, stated a TMR analyst.Request Sample Report @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
Oil Field Chemicals Market Size and Industry Estimated to Rise Profitably with CAGR 5% during Forecast Period 2017-2022

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Oil Field Chemicals Market is expected to grow with the CAGR of about 5% from 2016 to 2022. Being an essential for the drilling and exploration activities the Oilfields Chemicals market is heavily dependent on the Oil and Gas industry. Increasing demand for oil and gas is expected to result in a rise in demand for the Oil Field Chemicals market. In recent times the oil and gas has been experiencing a significant downturn due to the continuous fall in the prices.Market HighlightsOilfield chemicals play a key role in the oil & gas industry and are used in various stages during oil exploration. Various types of oilfield chemicals used are drilling fluids, production chemicals, and completion fluids. The growing demand for advanced drilling fluid and production chemicals with capability to improve penetration and maximum recovery from the well, is fuelling the demand of the market. However, declining price of crude oils may hamper the growth of the market.Drilling Chemicals held the major share within the Global Oil Field Chemicals MarketThe changes in the supply and demand dynamics is expected to induce a rise in the number of oil wells thus resulting in boosting the Oil Field Chemicals market. Increasing demand for oil and gas is also expected to fuel the demand in the Oil Field Chemicals market. Considering the oil and gas industry is recovering from the recent price crisis, the growth in the oil and gas industry is imminent which would result in a complimentary increase in the demand in the Oilfield Services Market.Request a Sample Copy @Key PlayersSome of the key players in the Oil Field Chemicals market are BASF SE (Germany), Lubrizol Corporation (U.S.), AkzoNobel N.V. (Netherlands), The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Schlumberger, Halliburton (U.S.), Kemira Oyj (Finland) Clariant (Switzerland) others.Oilfield chemicals are important in the oil & gas industry and are used in various stages of oil exploration. Various types of oilfield chemicals used are drilling fluids, production chemicals, and completion fluids. Growing interest in deep water & ultra-deep-water activities and rising exploration of unconventional resources are driving the growth of the oilfield chemical market. However, growing environmental concern may hamper the growth of the market.Market Research Analysis:North America is the leading region for this market mainly due to the increased exploration activities in USA and Canada. The increasing exploration activities in this region have in turn resulted in an increase in the Oilfield Chemicals market. Although there exists political instability in the Middle East, this region is expected to register high growth rate in the forecast period due to increasing trend of deep water exploration and working in high temperatures which require much more expensive Oilfield Chemicals.Enquire about this Report @List Of TablesTable 1 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market SnapshotTable 2 Drivers For The MarketTable 3 Restraints For The MarketTable 4 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market , By MaterialTable 5 Specialty Chemicals Market, By RegionTable 6 Polymers Market, By RegionTable 7 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market, By Fluid MaterialTable 8 Residential Market, By RegionTable 9 Commercial Market, By RegionContinue.List Of FiguresFigure 1 Research MethodologyFigure 2 Impact Analysis: Drivers And RestraintsFigure 3 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market , By MaterialFigure 4 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market , By Fluid MaterialFigure 5 Global Oilfield Chemicals Market , By RegionFigure 6 North America Oilfield Chemicals Market , By CountryContinue..Browse Full Report Details @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.Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Medical Education Market Value Projected to Expand by US$38.4 bn During 2016-2024

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The global medical education market has a handful of players such as Apollo Hospitals, TACT Academy for Clinical Training, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. (Zimmer Institute), Olympus Corporation, Gundersen Health System, GE Healthcare, and Medical Training College. Transparency Market Research identifies Apollo Hospitals as the leading contributor to the growth of the overall market owing to its extensive course portfolio, strong market penetration in countries in Asia Pacific, and vast scope for practical hospital experience.Geographical expansion in several developing countries has been Apollo Hospitals leading growth strategy, in addition to the acquisition of smaller local players, finds the lead author of the TMR study.In July 2016, Apollo Hospitals Group signed MoUs with Kenyatta National Hospital and Airtel Kenya to not just focus on capacity building in the Kenyan healthcare sector but to also conduct educational lectures and training programs in the country. In the same month, the company signed an agreement with Hainan Ecological Smart City Group in China to develop a highly integrated modern healthcare service facility in the Hainan province, which is likely to lend nursing, medical, and paramedical colleges in the island city tremendous support.Read Report Overview @Advantages of Online Training over Traditional Modes of Education a Driving FactorThe demand for medical education is primarily driven by the growing preference for online education. Online education is a highly lucrative investment avenue, a TMR analyst observes. The exposure to modern technologies around the world and the increasing penetration of the internet has greatly fueled the preference of students for online education. Moreover, online training presents several advantages over traditional modes of education, including variation in training and educational programs, lower cost, comfortable and flexible learning programs, and opportunities for improved technical skills.In line with this growing trend, TMR predicts that the emergence of e-learning markets in several developing countries will be a major opportunity for players in the medical education market.High Tuition Fee a Major RoadblockThe cost of higher education, especially in developed countries, continues to pose a key challenge for low-income students. Medical education is one of the most expensive fields and the tuition fee for classroom courses as well as on-campus training is extremely high. This acts as a major barrier for the medical education market, the author of the study says.In addition to this, the declining preference for distance education in medicine and paramedical training is likely to restrict the growth of the medical education market to an extent.Request Sample Report @Steady Growth in Store for Medical Education MarketExpanding at a 4.3% CAGR over the course of the forecast period, the global medical education market is poised to rise from a value of US$25.9 bn in 2015 to US$38.4 bn by 2024. By mode of education, the medical education market is led by on-campus training. Changing student preferences will restrict the demand for distance training by 2024, TMR predicts. However, online training is fast emerging as a lucrative mode of medical education and this segment is likely to register the highest CAGR of 7.29% from 2016 to 2024.By type of training, the demand for cardiothoracic training has surpassed the rest, while training in radiology presents the highest scope for growth. By geography, North America led the overall medical education market with Asia Pacific as the most rapidly expanding regional segment through the forecast period.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
Medical Device Cleaning Market Estimated to Record Highest CAGR of 4.4% by 2022

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The global medical device cleaning market could lay high hopes on developed regions such as North America boasting of a mounting volume of surgical procedures performed, high occurrence of acute diseases, and a well-established healthcare sector. However, emerging regions such as Asia Pacific are predicted to offer faster growth opportunities in the market on account of a favorable regulatory environment, low labor cost, rising count of healthcare institutions, rising healthcare awareness, healthcare reforms for infrastructural development, and expanding healthcare expenditure.The global medical device cleaning market is envisaged to rise at a CAGR of 4.4% between 2017 and 2022 to achieve a valuation of US$1.7 bn by the end of the forecast period. In 2017, the market exhibited a revenue collection of US$1.3 bn.Global Medical Device Cleaning Market: Major InsightsThe world medical device cleaning market is envisioned to witness the ascendancy of the disinfection cleaning process due to the rising effectiveness of high-level disinfectants and their elevating demand for heat-sensitive instruments alongside high-grade sterilization. Surgical instruments, on the other hand, are foretold to account for a sizable demand in the market owing to the surging count of surgeries conducted, expanding geriatric population, strengthening prevalence of chronic diseases, and growing burden of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).Read Report Overview @The world medical device cleaning market is prophesied to be classified as per type of process and type of instrument. In terms of process type, the market could see a classification into pre-cleaning, manual cleaning, automatic cleaning, and disinfection cleaning. Amongst these, disinfection cleaning is foreseen to secure a larger share in the market while growing at a 4.1% CAGR during the forecast timeframe. In view of segregation by instrument type, the market could offer opportunities in three chief segments, viz. surgical instruments, endoscopes, and ultrasound probes. The report offers a complete segmentation study of the market for helping readers to receive a clear understanding of different segments and their growth.With respect to regional segmentation, the world medical device cleaning market could be divided into the Middle East and Africa (MEA), North America, Asia Pacific except Japan (APEJ), Latin America, and Europe. According to the report, North America could secure a stronger share in the market and an estimated larger revenue of US$0.6 bn by the concluding forecast year. Europe could be second on the list of lucrative regions but is anticipated to lose some basis points (BPS) by 2022 over 2017.Request Sample Report @Global Medical Device Cleaning Market: Vendor LandscapeThe authors of the report profile some of the leading companies in the worldwide medical device cleaning market such as 3M Company, Cantel Medical Corporation, Ecolab, Inc., Getinge Group, Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Steris PLC, ORO Clean Chemie AG, and Ruhof Corporation. Companies could emphasize on fortifying their geographical network and market presence via acquisitions. Players with a widespread global presence and comprehensive scope of products such as but not limited to sterility assurance cleansing and cleaning chemistries are projected to take a dominating position in the market in the coming years.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
Cloud Service Brokerage Market: Increasing Complexities of Data Spike Demand for Efficient Storage

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The cloud service brokerage market faces a high degree of competition due to the presence of a large number of players. The growing number of competitors in the market have intensified the competition over the past few years. The top three players showing dominance in the global cloud service brokerage market are Accenture Plc., Capgemini S.A., and Cognizant Technology. Collectively, these companies are estimated to hold a share of 58.2% in the global market by the end of 2017. Offering a wide range of cloud choices, mergers and acquisitions, and enhancing the product portfolio is expected to keep these companies ahead of other players in the coming years.Download exclusive Sample of this report:According to the research report, the global cloud service brokerage market was worth US$3.3 bn in 2015 and is expected to reach US$22.4 bn by the end of 2024. During the forecast period of 2016 and 2024, the global market is expected to progress at a CAGR of 23.6%.Europe and North America Stay Ahead as Adoption of Cloud Technologies GrowsThe end users in the global cloud service brokerage market are the telecom and IT, BFSI, retail, healthcare, energy, and government sectors. Of these, the telecom and IT sector is expected to maintain a dominant stance in the global market as it is poised to acquire a share of 26.5% by the end of 2024 in the global market. The growing demand for high-speed internet and the escalating uptake of smartphones, tablets, and other devices is expected to spike the demand for cloud service brokerage in the coming few years.In terms of regions, the global market is divided into North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and South America. Europe and North America are the most attractive markets in the global cloud service brokerage market. Of the two, North America is estimated to hold a dominant share in the global market reaching a valuation of US$9.8 bn by the end of 2024. This dominance will be supported by the strong presence of established players and soaring adoption of cloud services among the end users.Browse Market Research Report @Widening Penetration of Internet Boosts Demand for Cloud Service BrokerageThe growing adoption of cloud services to store data across various platforms has led to a spike in the demand for cloud service brokers. These brokers help users to choose the right services and provide customizations that suit their requirements. The global cloud service brokerage market is also gaining traction as it provides assistance with integration, deployment, and customization of software and service. The rising adoption of hybrid cloud model is also fueling the demand for cloud service brokers.In the coming years, the increasing complexity and volumes of data have created a need for an organized storage space and its effective management. This premise has been driving the demand for cloud services in the recent past, in turn augmenting the need for cloud service brokerage. The widening penetration of internet is also estimated to give the global market an adequate fillip in the near future. Advantages of cloud services such as reduced costs and low capital expenditure are expected to accelerate the demand for cloud service brokers during the forecast period.Lack of Awareness about Advantages of Cloud Services Hampers Market GrowthThough the market has a bright future, it is being hampered due to the lack of awareness amongst end users. As the market is merely budding, it is being challenged by several roadblocks. The stubborn perception of businesses to operate in traditional ways is expected to hamper the adoption of cloud systems in the coming years. Furthermore, the difficulty in handling end-to-end personalization of services and software is also expected to hamper the growth of the overall 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:
Protein Therapeutics Market Volume Analysis, size, share and Key Trends 2016-2024

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Global Protein Therapeutics Market: OverviewThe global market for protein therapeutics has witnessed a significant rise in application in the treatment of a number of genetic, rare, and life-threatening diseases. It is known that proteins are crucial for maintaining a healthy lifestyle and people, whose bodies cannot produce or break down some essential proteins naturally, are prone to several diseases. The rising global prevalence of diabetes for instance, a disease that is caused due to dysfunctional production or processing of the protein insulin, has led to significant developments in the global protein therapeutics market in the past few years.This report on the global protein therapeutics market presents a detailed analysis of the market and its key segments in the present scenario. The report examines the market across several regional markets and includes an analysis of the key factors driving and restraining the growth of the market. An analysis of key trends of the past and present years, which have helped shape the markets present dynamics, is also included.Report Overview and TOC @Global Protein Therapeutics Market: Drivers and RestraintsOne of the key factors fueling the growth prospects of the global protein therapeutics market is the vast rise in the rate of incidence of a number of chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular conditions, and diabetes. The market is also driven due to the increased awareness among consumers regarding the high efficiency of protein therapeutics with the minimum risk of side effects and the increased level of acceptance among end users. However, the markets growth prospects are retrained to a certain extent owing to the vast funds required to undertake research and develop efficient methods for studying complex biological systems that can simulate the target organs or tissues.Global Protein Therapeutics Market: SegmentationThe market for protein therapeutics is segmented in the report broadly on the basis of criteria such as protein therapeutic modalities, product variety, application, indication, and geography. The key protein therapeutic modalities include protein diagnostics, protein vaccines, protein therapeutics with special targeting activity, and protein therapeutics with enzymatic or regulatory activity. Key product varieties in the protein therapeutics market include insulin, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), and blood clotting agents. Key indications making extensive usage of protein therapeutics include neurological disorders, diabetes, genetic disorders, and cancer.Request for Broucher @Global Protein Therapeutics Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsOn the basis of geography, the global protein therapeutics market has been categorized in the report into regions such as Latin America, Europe, North America, Middle East, and Africa. These regions are further segmented and analyzed according to the key countries contributing significantly to the development of the protein therapeutics market across these regions. Aspects such as regulatory framework of these regions surrounding the field of protein therapeutics, the process of approval protein therapeutics products, and the overall growth prospects of the market across each of these regions and countries are examined in the report.For Specific and Customized Requirements @The report also includes an elaborate section analyzing the competitive landscape of the global protein therapeutics market. With the help of a Porters five forces analysis, the report analyzes the key forces that are shaping the present state of the competitive landscape of the market, including threat of substitutes and new entrants, degree of competition, and bargaining power of suppliers and buyers. The key players in the market are profiled in detail based on attributes such as recent developments, company portfolio, business strategies, financial overview, and market share.Companies Profiled in the ReportSome of the key players operating in the global protein therapeutics market profiled in the report are Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Company, Roche Group, Pfizer, Inc., Bristol Myers Squibb Co., Sanofi, Merck Sereno S.A. Amgen, Inc., and Novartis.Pre Book Full Report @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
Live Cell Imaging Market Growth, Forecast and Value Chain 2016-2024

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Live Cell Imaging Market: OverviewLive cell imaging is the use of time lapse microscopy to study the living cells. The scientists use it to get a better understanding of the biological functions with the help of cellular dynamics. The live cell imaging technique is becoming increasingly popular in the healthcare industry.The market can be categorized by products, by technologies, by end users and by regions. By product types, the live cell imaging market can be segmented into instruments, consumables and softwares. The instruments segment can be further sub-divided into standalone systems, cell analyzers, microscopes and image capturing devices. By technologies, the market can be segmented into fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), high content screening (HCS), fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), ratiometric imaging, total iternal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TRIF), and multiphoton excitation microscopy (MPE) among others. Furthermore, the market can be segmented by applications into pharmaceutical industry, contract research organization, government and academic organization and diagnostic laboratories.Report Overview and TOC @Live Cell Imaging Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe rising concern of cancer is one of the major factors behind the growth of increasing demand of this technology. Furthermore, the government is actively taking initiatives to fund cell based research. Moreover the live cell imaging has a wide area of application and it can used to understand dynamic processes and cellular structures. In addition, it can also be used to study cellular integrity, protein trafficking, enzyme activity, localization of molecules, exocytosis and endocytosis among others. Furthermore, the process can also be applied to monitor the molecules in live animals. Moreover, the pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using live cell imaging in research and development in order to develop new medicines. In addition, the live cell imaging is also used for high content screening.Request for Broucher @However, the cost of implementing live cell imaging is very high is acting as a restraint for the market. Moreover, the technology requires highly skilled professional in order to study and understand the cell functions. The lack of availability of skilled professional is also expected to restrain the growth of live cell imaging market. However, with increasing investments in training and development programs this factor is expected to have low impact in the long run. In addition, the live cell imaging technique is gradually being applied by pharmaceutical companies to develop personalized medicine. This demand is expected to grow in future.For Specific and Customized Requirements @Live Cell Imaging Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsBy geography, the market can be divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the world. North America and Europe are the early adapters of technology. Furthermore, government initiatives are being taken in this region for research and development using live cell imaging. U.S. is the largest market for live cell imaging in North America. However, Asia Pacific region is expected to witness robust growth due to presence of developing nations such as India and China.The key players in the live cell imaging market are Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, Nikon Corporation, GE Healthcare, Carl Zeiss AG, Danaher Corporation, Olympus Corporation and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Molecular Devices, LLC, Becton, Dickinson and Company and Perkinelmer, Inc. among others.Pre Book Full Report @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
Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market Professional Survey Report 2017: By Product, Application, Manufacturer, Sales and Segmentation

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Global motorcycle laser headlight market to grow at a CAGR of +162.76% during the period 2017-2021 has been spread across 112 pages in order to detail the key areas of the industry in a comprehensive manner. During their study of the market, the authors of the report had concluded that there could be three critical segments by both type and application. Each of the segments, also the discussed geographical markets, have been analyzed in one of the most insightful ways of market research.Take a look to the Sample Copy:The research report not only offers readers a broad overview of the international industry but also provides a granular assessment of the regional market in several countries and regions. Aspects such as the history of market development, the major development trends in the Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market, the development of products and technologies, the vendor landscape, and the promising countries and regions have been included in this report, in addition to a comparative analytical assessment of the various regional segmentsGlobal Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market Key Players: Osram, ZKW Group, BMW, Bosch, Philips, GE Lighting, Hella, Koito Manufacturing, Varroc Group, Merdia, FSL Light, Ruilipu, MeixingThe most recent pattern picking up force in the market is an expansion in R&D spending by merchants in front light advances to drive development and application. The sellers in the car lighting market have expanded their interest in R&D of innovations, for example, OLED and laser lighting boards. They are inspired to put resources into R&D to create advancements for financially savvy generation, thinking about the noteworthy capability of the market. In addition, sellers are creating innovation models for each item through a successful R&D process.Under the overall analysis of the Global Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market, the researchers have shed light on sales price, sales, and capacity factors. The sales price analysis of the global market has been offered for the year 2015 based on company segmentGet more Information about this report:The report profiles the key market players which are dominant in the Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market. It also provides essential information about leading companies, such as product specification, financial overview, business overview, contact information, and recent developments. The list of figures provided in the table of content has mentioned all of the statistical representations of the market offered in the report.Global Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market by Application,Sport MotorcycleRoad MotorcycleSuper MotorcycleOtherMarket segments:The Report features the market segment by regions such as Motorcycle Laser Headlights Market, sorts with creation, income, value, piece of the pie and development rate, utilization. By different measures, the report segments the market and studies them independently, giving data, for example, the main segment or sub segment and slowest developing segment and sub segment of the market. The income and development forecasts for each of these segments is additionally given. Diagrams, graphs, tables and insights have been incorporated wherever required to show the data in an unmistakable way.Get discount on this report:About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Sunny Denis10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com ,
Global Laser Cutting Machine Market to grow at a CAGR of 8.04% during 2017-2021 - Coherent, IPG Photonics, MKS Instruments, TRUMPF

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Laser cutting machines have high-power lasers that can cut a range of materials, from steel to plastics, with high levels of accuracy. The versatility of these machines allows manufacturers to develop complex geometric products. Thus, laser cutting machines offer an efficient and effective way for manufacturing parts and components for a wide range of industries, such as automotive, aerospace and defense, healthcare, electrical and electronics, textiles, and wood working.The global laser cutting machine market to grow at a CAGR of 8.04% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global laser cutting machine 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.Click to get Sample PDF:The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEATechnavio's report, Global Laser Cutting Machine 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.View Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key vendors- Coherent- IPG Photonics- MKS Instruments- TRUMPFOther prominent vendors- ALPHA LASER- Bystronic- DPSS Lasers- Trotec Laser- Universal Laser Systems- Xenetech- Amada MiyachiMarket driver- Growing automotive market- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- CO laser manufacturer challenges- For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Global Commercial Aircraft Seating Market to grow at a CAGR of 7.81% during 2017-2021 - Aviointeriors, Geven, RECARO, Zodiac Aerospace

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Airline seats are usually arranged in rows and separated by aisle(s) running along the length of aircrafts fuselage, and the diagram that demonstrates the seating arrangement in an aircraft is known as aircraft seat map. Airlines have dissimilar seat maps for similar type of aircraft, which are purely based on the routes and the targeted passenger segment. They also aim to make the seats flexible and comfortable for their passengers. Therefore, they equip the seats with a reclining mechanism, which is usually operated mechanically in the economy and short-haul business class and electrically operated in long-haul business and first class.The global commercial aircraft seating market to grow at a CAGR of 7.81% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global commercial aircraft seating market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers new installations and aftermarket market sales of commercial aircraft seats.Click to get Sample PDF:The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEATechnavio's report, Global Commercial Aircraft Seating 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.View Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key vendors- Aviointeriors- Geven- RECARO- Rockwell Collins (B/E Aerospace)- Zodiac AerospaceOther prominent vendors- Acro Aircraft Seating- Expliseat- HAECO Americas- JAMCO- MIRUS Aircraft Seating- EnCore- STELIA Aerospace- Thompson Aero Seating- ZIM FLUGSITZMarket driver- High-density seating configuration- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Flaws in aircraft seat design- For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
PodM2M Connects TAHMO IoT Weather Monitoring Systems to Remedy Chronic Hunger in Africa

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PodM2M (a division of Pod Group), a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) specializing in global, mission critical connectivity solutions for the M2M/IoT market, has today announced that it is providing its resilient Best Signal IoT connectivity solution to the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO), a socially driven network of 20,000 connected weather monitoring stations every 30km across the African continent, to accurately measure previously undocumented weather systems.One in four people in sub-saharan Africa is undernourished. A lack of climatic information across this vast continent makes it difficult to plan a cropping strategy which would go some way to remedying the chronic hunger. Using a combination of weather pattern data and predictive computer models gathered by TAHMO, farmers in Africa can more efficiently plan their crop cycles, improve water productivity by up to 26% and plant more crops, with the risk of failure due to drought or flooding severely diminished.TAHMOs requirements for transmitting climate data across a huge distance, from different countries and in an extremely patchy coverage environment made choosing a sufficiently resilient IoT connectivity solution difficult, as many multi-network solutions are not able to transmit data efficiently across borders, and many operators are simply not present in the areas of Africa that benefit from TAHMOs system.Pods Best Signal Multi-Network SIMs connect to the best available signal on device start-up, and automatically switch networks in case of signal loss. This provides the TAHMO team with the resilient connectivity they need to measure weather systems across multiple countries without risk of losing valuable data. Thanks to Pods coverage in 185+ countries and over 600 networks, TAHMO has no problem collecting results from all the countries their devices are present in, and is assured of receiving the best possible coverage in Africa, as well as in US and European partner bases.Rebecca Hochreutener, TAHMO Operations Manager, immediately recognised the advantages of PodM2Ms specialist remote and mission-critical IoT SIM cards; Although connectivity in Africa is not always simple, PodM2M has been able to provide reliable services and a very good and responsive support team, she commented.Charles Towers-Clark, Managing Director of Pod Group added, TAHMOs application is an excellent example of how the IoT can vastly improve standards of living and help to resolve some of the worlds most complex problems. We are extremely excited that our specialist mission critical connectivity is helping to make this project possible.About PodM2MPodM2M is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) specializing in global, mission critical data connectivity solutions for the M2M/IoT market. Our expertise, dedication to innovation, and comprehensive range of products and services help companies develop resilient, future-proof M2M/IoT solutions, generating innovative new revenue streams for IoT communications.About TAHMO:The Trans-African HydroMeteorological Observatory (TAHMO) aims to develop a vast network of weather stations across Africa. Current and historic weather data is important for agricultural, climate monitoring, and many hydro-meteorological applications. The idea behind this project is to develop a dense network of hydro-meteorological monitoring stations in sub-Saharan Africa  one every 30 km. This entails the installation of 20,000 stations across the continent. By applying innovative sensor technology and ICT, TAHMO stations are both inexpensive and robust. Stations are placed at schools and integrated in educational programs, adding richness to the curriculum and helping foster a new generation of scientists. Local weather data will be combined with models and satellite observations to obtain insight into the distribution of water and energy stocks and fluxes. For more information please visitPodM2M1161 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, USAAmy Garcia RendleEmail: amy.garcia@podgroup.comUK: +44 (0) 1223 850 900Skype: amygarciarendleUS: +1 415 707 0500
TMR Releases New Report on the General Surgery Devices Market 2017-2025

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General surgery devices are used for a wide variety of diseases. These devices are employed for routine procedures or in complicated surgeries. Over the time, several innovative devices have been invented for serving a particular purpose with more ease while performing surgeries and for reducing discomfort after the surgery. General surgery devices are used in gastrointestinal problems, trauma and burn care, hernias, and breast cancer. These devices are employed in several sub-specialties of general surgery such as orthopedics, obstetrics, neurology, urology, cardiovascular, and gynecology. The key purpose of general surgery devices is to cut, clamp, grasp, tie, and spread anatomical parts of the human body during surgical procedures. These devices are deployed primarily in hospitals, small clinics, and health care centers.Report Overview and TOC @The increasing number of geriatric patients worldwide, awareness among patients about different surgeries and minimally invasive procedures, technological developments in surgical procedures such as robotic and power-assisted systems are factors likely to fuel the general surgery devices market in the next few years. One of the technological developments is that the market is witnessing preference to minimally invasive procedures and use of robotics and computer-assisted devices, thereby reducing time required for surgery as well as complications. This has opened new avenues for growth of the global general surgery devices market. Market players are competing with one another with new product launches, expanding geographic presence, and innovative and educational offerings. However, the market is also facing challenges such as development of other non-invasive surgery technologies and intense competition among existing manufacturers of general surgery devices. Moreover, factors such as product recalls, government regulations regarding reduction in overall health care costs, and subsequent increase in bulk purchasing through INHs (Integrated Health Networks) and GPOs (group purchasing organizations) are restraining the market.Request for Broucher @The general surgery market have been segmented by product, application, and geography. In terms of product, it can be segmented into disposable surgical supplies, reusable, minimally invasive surgery instruments, energy-based and power devices, adhesion prevention products, and medical robotics and computer-assisted surgery devices. Among them, the disposable surgical supplies segment leads the market, due to rising demand for disposable needles, syringes, and catheters.For Specific and Customized Requirements @Geographically, the general surgery devices market can be classified into North America (U.S. and Canada), Europe (Germany, France, the U.K., etc.), Asia Pacific (Australia, China, Japan, and India), Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The emerging markets in Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa are expected to witness robust growth during the forecast period. North America leads the global market, holding the maximum share. This can be attributed to strong policy support of governments, favorable reimbursement policies, and the increase in demand for surgeries led by lifestyle-related diseases in the region. However, in terms of growth rate, Asia Pacific is likely to surpass all other regions in the next few years, due to the increasing expenditure on health care in developing countries of the region. Some of the prominent markets in Asia Pacific are India, Japan, China, Australia, and Singapore.Some of the key players operating in the global market for general surgery devices are B. Braun Melsungen AG, Boston Scientific Corporation, Smith & Nephew, Covidien Plc (Medtronic), Integra LifeSciences, Conmed Corporation, 3M Healthcare, CareFusion Corporation Ethicon, Inc. (Johnson & Johnson), Integra LifeSciences, Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH, TransEnterix, Inc., and Integer Holdings Corporation.Pre Book Full Report @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
Healthcare Natural Language Processing Market: Efforts to Reduce Incidental Errors Ensure Swift Uptake

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The top three players leading the pack in the global healthcare natural language processing market held a share of 41% in 2015. IBM Corporation, Apple, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation emerged as the leading players due to ongoing investments in research and development of NLP technologies for the healthcare sector. In the coming years, players are expected to focus on delivering text mining, advanced analytics, and cognitive intelligence for efficient handling of healthcare data to stay ahead of the competition, states Transparency Market Research.According to the research report, the global healthcare natural language processing market is expected to be worth US$4.3 bn by the end of 2024 as compared to US$936 mn in 2015. During the forecast years of 2016 and 2024, the global market is projected to rise at a CAGR of 18.8%.Download exclusive Sample of this report:North America to Remain Ahead as Region Embraces Technological AdvancementsIn terms of geography, the global healthcare natural language processing market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and South America. Out of these, North America is expected to lead the global market in the coming years due to growing technological advancements and a strong presence of NLP companies in the region. By the end of 2024, the global market is expected to acquire a share of 38.2% in the global market.On the basis of technology, the global market is segmented into machine translation, automatic summarization, information extraction, and text and voice processing. Analysts state that the machine translation and information extraction collectively held a dominant share in the global market in 2016. However, in the forecast period, text and voice processing segments are projected to exhibit the fastest CAGR of 19.9%.Obtain Report Details @Meaningful Comprehension of Unstructured Data Boosts Adoption of Healthcare NLP TechnologiesThe growing adoption of advanced technologies to simplify clinical solutions is anticipated to boost the overall market. The increasing usage of electronic mediums to maintain health records systems has created a humungous amount of raw data. This unstructured accumulation of crucial data about patient information pertaining to diseases, surgical procedures, medications, and other treatments has created a significant need for healthcare natural language processing technologies. The rising usage of electronic systems in public and private hospitals and amongst physicians is anticipated fuel the growth of this market. Healthcare NLP allows conversion of unstructured data into structured, making the documentation process meaningful.Streamlining of processes in the healthcare industry by adopting natural language processing technologies are anticipated to bring down the overall costs. The new methods have also eliminated the conventional ways of documentation processes, which, in turn, has made record keeping efficient and effective. Thus, the positive aspects of NLP and growing demand for automation are projected to drive the growth of the overall market. The growing focus of healthcare organizations to improve their clinical documentation by minimizing the chances of incidental errors to reduce financial losses and enhance patient care are estimated to encourage the uptake of healthcare natural language processing technologies.Poor Understanding of Exhaustive Medical Vocabulary to Hamper Market GrowthThe exhaustive medical vocabulary, medical concepts, and abbreviations, which are continuously increasing have created the biggest challenge for the global healthcare natural language processing market. Incorrect understanding of this vocabulary, wherein a same abbreviation can be used in multiple scenarios can lead to ambiguity and blunders. These challenges can complicate the processes of analyzing the data and thus hamper the performance of the NLP systems. The market is also facing retarded growth due to the slow penetration of electronic healthcare record systems, which are projected to have a direct impact on the demand for NLP technologies.This review is based on Transparency Market Researchs report, titled Healthcare Natural Language Processing (NLP) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024.Market SegmentationHealthcare NLP Market, by TechnologyMachine TranslationInformation ExtractionAutomatic SummarizationText and Voice ProcessingAbout 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:
Global Corrugated Boxes Market Likely to Grow at 3.6% CAGR and Surpass US$ 115 Bn in Revenues by 2022

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The global corrugated boxes market is likely to grow at a moderate pace during the forecast period 2017-2022 on account of a slew of global and regional factors. The market is presently valued at nearly US$ 97 Bn and it is likely to grow at 3.6% CAGR to surpass US$ 115 Bn in revenues by the end of 2022. These insights are according to a new research report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). The report titled Corrugated Boxes Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017  2022 offers valuable insights and guidance on the corrugated boxes market during the assessment period.Get Free Sample Report @According to the report, steady demand from end-use industries such as e-commerce, fresh food & beverage, and electronic equipment will continue to provide growth opportunities to manufacturers in the global corrugated boxes market. Of particular prominence will be the growth in the e-commerce industry, as it accounts for a significant demand for corrugated boxes globally.To offer readers detailed insights on the global corrugated boxes market, the report offers lucid segment-wise analysis on the basis of material source, end user industry, packaging form, board type, and region. On the basis of material source, the key segments include virgin fiber and recycled fiber. Among these, demand for recycled fiber remains higher and the trend is likely to continue during the forecast period as well. By end-use industry, the key segments include food, beverages, tobacco, healthcare, personal care & cosmetics, homecare & toiletries, electronic & consumer durables, e-commerce, chemicals & fertilizers, and others. Steady demand from the food and beverage industry, combined with growing applications in e-commerce are likely to provide new avenues of growth for manufacturers. By packaging form, the key segments include primary packaging and secondary packaging.Browse Complete Report with TOC @By region, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is likely to remain one of the leading markets for corrugated boxes globally. The region is home to nearly 60% of the worlds population, and many countries in the region are growing at a higher rate than developed countries in Europe and North America. This had led to wide-ranging opportunities in the region, which is helping corrugated boxes manufacturers. The APEJ corrugated boxes market is likely to grow at a higher CAGR than the global average during the forecast period.Some of the leading companies profiled in the report include KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp., WestRock Co., Smurfit Kappa Group Plc., Stora Enso Oyj., Huhtamaki Oyj, Pratt Industries Inc., International Paper Co., Sonoco Products Co., DS Smith Plc., and Georgia Pacific LLC.Enquire About this Report @About MRRSEMarket 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:
Venous Stents Market Projected to Discern Stable Expansion During 2017-2025

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Transparency Market Research (TMR) observes that the competitive landscape in the global venous stents market is intensifying. The rise of venous disorders amongst the global population has urged several key players to develop better products. Key players such as Boston Scientific Corporation, C. R. Bard, Inc., Jotec GmBH, are Veniti, Inc. are making major investments in conducting clinical trials to understand the implications of their products. Such efforts are expected to lead to wide array of products to tackle difficult disorders in the near future, making the competitive scenario consumer-oriented.Europe Leads as Patients Demand Minimally Invasive SurgeriesAccording to the research report, the global venous stents market was worth at US$750.00 mn in 2016 and is estimated to be worth US$1.72 bn by the end of 2025. During the forecast years of 2017 and 2025, the global market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 9.95%. Out of the various technologies available in the global market, the iliac vein stent technology is likely to surpass all others due to increasing incidences of obesity. In terms of regions, the global market will be dominated by Europe as the region boasts a strong presence of players and higher demand for minimally invasive procedures.Read Report Overview @Launch of Innovative Products to Augment GrowthThe global venous stents market has witnessed a steady rise in the recent years as the several vein-related diseases and disorders are being diagnosed. These tiny metallic tubes are inserted in veins to expansion in case of blockages. Venous stents are used for peripheral and central veins, depending the need. In recent years, the demand for venous stents has shot up due to the growing lifestyle diseases, obesity, and poor habits. A venous stenting procedure is typically performed to contain the peripheral venous hypertension amongst those suffering with symptomatic or chronic venous disorders.The report suggests that the global market will be driven by the increasing investment of players in developing innovative products. Research and development toward launching innovative products is also projected to benefit the global market in the coming years. Furthermore, the persistent rise in chronic venous diseases has also been identified as an important growth driver the overall market. Additionally, shifting preference toward minimally invasive surgeries has also led to a spike in the demand for venous stents market. Surge in cardiovascular ailments that is being aided by stressful lifestyles will also augment the growth of the global market in the near future.Request Sample Report @Poor Healthcare Infrastructure in Developing Economies Challenges Market GrowthOn the flip side, the global market is likely to face some tough challenges as well. The high cost of stenting procedures and the lack of awareness about the possible consequences of narrowing arteries are likely to restrain the market from achieving its full potential in the near future. The poor medical and healthcare infrastructure in developing countries is also projected to hamper the overall market in the foreseeable future. Unsupportive reimbursement policies and poor insurance schemes are also expected to complicate growth for venous stents market in certain regions.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
Solid Tumor Market Size, Analysis, and Forecast Report 2015 - 2023

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Solid tumors are formed due to aggregation of a group of abnormal tissues that do not comprise of any cyst or liquid areas within. Solid tumors can be of both types, i.e. benign (non-cancerous) as well as malignant (cancerous) in nature. Solid tumors majorly comprise of lymphomas, carcinomas, sarcomas and melanomas; whereas, all forms of leukemias usually do not cause solid tumor formation. The treatment of these solid tumors is a complex task and it requires coordinated actions of many healthcare professionals, such as, radiologists, surgeons, oncologists, radiation specialists, nurses and other professionals. Hence, most of the solid tumors are treated via radiotherapy, chemotherapy and/or surgery. However, at present, surgery is the most preferred choice of treatment for cancerous solid tumors. Chemotherapy is often utilized along with other modes of solid tumor treatment i.e. radiation and/or surgery. Several chemotherapeutic drugs are available along with a ripe pipeline of drugs that will soon be commercialized in the global market. Solid tumor market can be classified into five major segments, based on the site of origin, namely, prostrate cancer, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer and other cancers.Report Overview and TOC @Some of the major driving factors for the growth of this market include increasing incidences of several cases of solid tumors, rising prevalence of different forms of metastatic cancers, increasing demand for highly effective chemotherapeutic agents and ripe pipeline of drugs which is available in the global market. According to World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 8.2 million people died due to different types of cancers worldwide in 2012. Among them lung, colorectal, breast and liver cancers were among the leading causes of cancer deaths. Most common forms of solid tumors include brain tumors (medulloblastoma and glioma) and neuroblastoma; other less common solid tumors include rhabdomyosarcoma and osteosarcoma.Request brochure @Some of the major drugs that available in the global market are Avastin (bevacizumab), Afinitor (everolimus), Jevtana (cabazitaxel), Sutent (sunitinib), Tarceva (erlotinib), Taxotere (docetaxel), Zytiga (abiraterone acetate), Carboplatin, Cisplatin, Doxorubicin, Gemcitabine and Paclitaxel among others. Also, major promising drugs that are in different stages of clinical trials include Abraxane (albumin-bound paclitaxel), AMG 386 (trebananib), Votrient (pazopanib) and Xtandi (enzalutamide) among others. These drugs will soon be commercialized in the global market, which will further boost this market in future.For Specific and Customized requirements@Geographically, North America holds the leading position in solid tumor market followed by Europe. Major factors responsible for their dominance in this market include high incidence rate of various solid tumor cases along with very well developed healthcare infrastructure of these regions. These regions also comprise of high geriatric population, which contribute heavily towards the solid tumor patient population in the region. However, Asia Pacific is considered to be the most lucrative market for solid tumor market due to recent advancements in healthcare infrastructure and growing medical tourism in these regions. The region also accounts for high cancer patient population and increasing awareness and affordability of the people of this region will contribute heavily towards the future growth of this market in the region.Pre Book full report@Some of the major players operating in this market are AstraZeneca plc, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Amgen, Inc., Biogen Idec, Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Baxter International, Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd., and Sanofi among others.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.Transparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453
Bag-in-Tube Packaging Market: Western Europe to Remain Dominant Regional Market Throughout 2027

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"The Report Bag-in-Tube Packaging Market: Western Europe to Remain Dominant Regional Market Throughout the Forecast Period: Global Industry Analysis (2012 - 2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017 - 2027) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Future Market Insights in its newly published report, Bag-in-Tube Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012-2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017-2027), provides forecast and analysis of the bag-in-tube market on the global and regional levels. Through an extensive research, our analysts have studied how the different market dynamics are likely to impact the current and future scenario of the global bag-in-tube market, thereby providing useful insights to market players to plan their differentiating strategies, capable of evolving with the changing market landscape. We have analysed the key trends, drivers, restraints and opportunities while studying this report. Impact analysis of key growth drivers and restraints based on the weighted average model are included in the report to better equip and arm clients with crystal-clear and decision-making insights. This report provides historical data of 2012-2016 along with forecast from 2017 to 2027 in terms of revenue (US$ Thousands) and volume (Thousand unites). The report also includes macroeconomic indicators along with an outlook on packaging consumption across the globe. The report also comprises the study of current issues with end users and opportunities for bag-in-tube manufacturers. It also includes detailed pricing analysis by bag-in-tubes and value chain analysis.View Report @The report has indicated the segment wise definition of the market along with its overall scenario in the assessment period. The publication focuses on to identify opportunities in the market and present updates and insights, pertaining to the various segments of the global bag-in-tube market. Weighted average prices in US$/units have been considered for bag-in-tube to arrive at market size numbers. While researching this report, market splits have been deduced from a survey and primary research. The prices of bag-in-tubes have been tracked at wholesaler level after conversion through trade websites and primary interviews.Our unique style of describing this reportIn order to provide a comprehensive view of the market, we have included detailed competitiveness analysis and company players with unique selling propositions. The dashboard provides the detailed comparison of bag-in-tube manufacturers on parameters such as operating margin, unique selling propositions, collective market share, and geographic concentration. The study encompasses market attractiveness analysis of various segments of the global bag-in-tube market.The report has included the consumption of bag-in-tube and the revenue generated from sales of bag-in-tubes in all regions and important countries in these regions. Growth in per capita food consumption, GDP growth, retail industry growth, global consumer flexible packaging, packaging films demand, top 10 companies growth have been closely referred to arrive at market forecast. Market splits by packaging type and preference of bag-in-tube packed products per packaging type have been deduced from survey and primary research. For instance, the market shares may not arrive to the total due to rounding off. Apart from value chain analysis, profitability margins, cost influencing factors, pricing trends and factors influencing the sales of construction aggregates have also included in the report.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @Research MethodologyA number of primary and secondary sources were consulted during the course of the study. Secondary sources include Factiva, World Bank, Packaging Digest, and Hoovers. Companies annual reports and publications were also examined while researching this market. The Market numbers have been estimated based on average consumption and weighted average pricing of bag-in-tube by tube type and the revenue is derived through regional pricing trends. Market size and forecast for each segment have been provided in the context of global and regional markets. The bag-in-tube market has been analysed based on expected demand. Prices considered for the calculation of revenue are average regional prices obtained through primary quotes from numerous regional bag-in-tube manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors.All key end users have been considered and potential applications have been estimated on the basis of secondary sources and feedback from primary respondents. Regional demand patterns have been considered while estimating the market for various end users of bag-in-tube in different regions. Top-down approach has been used to estimate the bag-in-tube market by regions. Market numbers for segments have been derived using the bottom-up approach, which is cumulative of each regions demand. The company-level market share has been derived on the basis of revenues reported by key manufacturers. The market has been forecast based on constant currency rates.Send An Enquiry Request @Table of Contents1. Executive Summary1.1. Market Overview1.2. Wheel of Fortune1.3. FMI Analysis and Recommendations2. Global Wine & Olive Oil Industry Outlook Market Definition2.1. Global Wine Production2.2. Global Wine Consumption2.3. Global Per-Capita Wine Consumption2.4. Global Olive Oil Production & Consumption3. Case Study3.1. Four Wine Company3.2. BiBoViNo Wines4. Market Introduction4.1. Market Definition4.2. Market Taxonomy4.3. Market Share5. Market Viewpoint5.1. Parent/Associated Market Overview5.1.1. Packaging Market Outlook5.2. Value Chain Analysis5.3. Drivers, Restraints & Opportunity5.4. Overall Opportunity Assessment6. Global Bag-In-Tube Market Analysis6.1. Market Volume Projection6.2. Market Size and Y-o-Y Growth6.3. Absolute $ Opportunity7. Global Bag-In-Tube Market Analysis By Region7.1. Introduction7.2. Market Size (US$ Thousand) and Volume (Units) Analysis By Region7.2.1. North America7.2.2. Latin America7.2.3. Asia Pacific Excluding Japan7.2.4. Western Europe7.2.5. Eastern Europe7.2.6. Japan7.2.7. Middle East and Africa7.3. Market BPS & Y-o-Y Analysis By Region8. Global Bag-In-Tube Market Analysis By Product Type8.1. Introduction8.2. Historical Market Size (US$ Thousand) and Volume (Units) Analysis 2012-2016 By Product Type8.2.1. EVOH Barrier + PE8.2.2. Metallized PET8.3. Current Market Size (US$ Thousand) and Volume (Units) Forecast 2017-2027 By Product Type8.3.1. EVOH Barrier + PE8.3.2. Metallized PET8.4. Market Attractiveness Analysis By Product Type8.5. Key TrendsAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketaState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Antihypertensive Drugs Market Growth and Forecast 2015 - 2023

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Human health is being affected by various factors which include rapid urbanization, demographic ageing and the globalization of unhealthy lifestyles. Hypertension is one of the keyhealth issuesthat are observed in both developed as well as developing countries. It is a silent, invisible killer that rarely causes symptoms and is one of the key risk factors forcoronary heart disease and ischemic as well as hemorrhagic stroke. Hypertension can also lead to various other problemssuch as renal impairment, visual impairment, heart failure and retinal hemorrhage. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 7.5 million deaths globally are caused due to hypertension, and it accounts to 12.8% of the total deaths. Globally,in 2008 prevalence of hypertension was observed to be around 40% in adults aged 25. According to the National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey, ithas been noted that in United States from 2007 to 2010,81.5% of the population is aware of their hypertension condition, out of which 74% are being treated and only 52.5% are under control.Report Overview and TOC @Theantihypertensive drugs market based on the therapy area is classified into diuretics (hydrochlorothiazide and indapamide), calcium channel blockers (nifedipine, felodipine and diltiazem), angiotensin receptor blockers or ARBs (losartan), angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)inhibitors (captopril, lisinopril and perindopril), beta blockers vasodilators (atenolol and propranolol), alpha blockers (clonidine, guanabenz), and renin inhibitors.Diuretics being the first line of treatment for hypertension holds the major share of the market. All these drug classes (drugs) have shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The drugs are administered either as a single or combined dose depending upon the stage of hypertension, whilethe choice of drugs depends upon the patients medical history and current conditions.Request brochure @On the basis of the geography, the antihypertensive market can be segmented into North America, Europe, AsiaPacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa.The global antihypertensive market is dominated mainly by North America and Europe. According to the WHO, the prevalence of hypertension is highest in Africa and lowest in Americas. In Africa more than 40% of the adults suffer from hypertension and many of them remain undiagnosed due to the high cost of medications.The increased genericization by the local companies can be a challenge for the market. Similarly, in recent years, there has beena significant improvement in the management of hypertension contributing to a strong decline in the death rates in North America and Western EuropeFor Specific and Customized requirements@The change in lifestyle, elevated stress level, and rise in prevalent population, early detection and penetration of combined dose would be the main factors to drive the growth of antihypertensive market. The patent expiry for major drugs such as Diovan (Novartis), Cozaar (Merck),Revatio (Pfizer), Exforge (Novartis), Atacand (AstraZeneca), Avapro (Sanofi Aventis), BIopress(Takeda) and Benicar (Daiichi Sankyo), along with low diagnostics rate and increased generic penetration would result in the antihypertensive market slowdown, but the novel antihypertensive drugs in the pipeline can recover the losses of patent expiration.Pre Book full report@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.Transparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453
Global Automotive Torsion Test Bench Market to grow at a CAGR of 2.23% during 2017-2021 - DYNA-MESS, IABG, Illinois Tool Works, TestResources, Zwick Roell

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Torsion testing machine is a material testing machine that is used for testing certain properties of the material, such as torsional stiffness, shear stress, yield strength, and ductility. Automotive torsion testing bench can measure the properties of materials under different load conditions and temperature conditions. Automotive parts and components, such as driveshaft, steering system, and BIW are tested using automotive torsion test machine.The global automotive torsion test bench market to grow at a CAGR of 2.23% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global automotive torsion test bench 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.Click to get Sample PDF:The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEATechnavio's report, Global Automotive Torsion Test Bench 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.View Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key vendors- DYNA-MESS- IABG- Illinois Tool Works- TestResources- Zwick RoellOther prominent vendors- ADMET- ALFING- Hegewald & Peschke- Krystal Elmec- Link Engineering- Xcite SystemsMarket driver- Technological advancement in automotive parts- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Increase in use of simulation software for torsion testing- For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
4 Key Projections on the Prospects of Automotive Transmission System Market

Automotive Transmission System

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Demand for automobile is on the rise, especially in regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America, which is reflecting positively on the global market for automotive transmission system. Increasing sales of low range and mid-range vehicles in countries such as China, India and Brazil is creating lucrative opportunities for the overall automotive industry. As per the latest report published by Fact.MR, the global market for automotive transmission system will ride at a CAGR of 5% during the forecast period (2017-2022). In addition, the introduction of next-gen cars with fully automatic and semi-automatic transmission systems is projected to favor the growth of the market over the next couple of years. Apart from premium models, such transmission systems are now available in mid and low-range segments as well. Rising concerns over energy consumption and carbon emission is prompting auto engineers to tune and update transmission systems. The focus remains on developing breakthrough transmission systems to meet regulatory norms and client expectations. In the near future, automatic transmission is likely to gain more prominence as consumer preference for comfortable driving increase.Request Free Sample Report-Following assumptions on the global automotive transmission market are likely to define its future prospects, During the next five years, adoption of manual transmission is expected to remain strong as compared to other type of transmission. The manual segment is expected to reach a market valuation of US$ 26,020 Mn by 2022, reflecting a steady CAGR. By vehicle type, passenger car is expected to remain the largest segment of the market throughout the forecast period. Between 2017 and 2022, this segment is likely to create an absolute $ opportunity of US$ 5,897.2 Mn. Meanwhile, the LVC segment is expected to retain its second spot over 2022. Based on fuel type, the diesel segment is expected account for a relatively larger value share of the market as compared to gasoline segment during the forecast period. The diesel segment is expected to ride at a moderate CAGR to reach US$ 30,821.5 Mn by 2022-end. The market for automotive transmission system in Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is projected to remain highly attractive during the assessment period. Further, the regions market is expected to expand at an impressive CAGR during 2017 to 2022. Europe and North America will remain the two other key regions as a number of leading OEMs and carmakers are based in countries such as Germany, France, the UK and the US.Browse Full Report with TOC-Competition TrackingSome of leading players operating in the global market for automotive transmission include Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co., Ltd., Saint-Gobain SA, Asahi Glass Co., Ltd., Nippon Sheet Glass Co. Ltd., Safelite Auto Glass, Guardian Industries, Xinyi Glass Group, Samvardhana Motherson Automotive Systems Group, Pilkington, Montaplast GmbH, Valeo S.A., and SL Corporation.Check Discount-About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MRSuite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandTelephone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.com/Web:
Transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) Market Prediction and Analysis Offered By New Study-END

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Transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) is a surgical procedure to remove excess part of the prostate gland which obstructs normal urine flow. The prostate gland is a vital part of the male reproductive system which secretes fluid that nourishes and protects sperms. This obstructive condition of prostate is also referred as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Initial signs and symptoms of BPH are often vague, variable, and nonspecific, making its diagnosis challenging. During TURP procedure, prostate gland is investigated through the cystoscope (surgical instrument) and a small surgical tool is inserted through the cystoscope to remove the enlarged prostate. Sometimes, the fluid that is used to flush bladder during transurethral resection enters into bloodstream and causes severe problems such as hypothermia, bradychardia and hypoxia. This condition is known as TUR syndrome and is temporary in nature.Report Overview and TOC @For more than 60 year, TURP has been the gold standard for treating lower urinary tract obstructions caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and benign prostatic obstruction (BPO). Current technological advancements such as continuous-flow instruments, bipolar TURP and video-TURP have substantially decreased the mortality and morbidity due to urino-genital infections. Globally increasing elderly population has been identified as one of the major factors contributing to the growing demand for transurethral resection procedures. As per the U.S National Library of Medicine, 60% of men over the age of sixty years and 80% of men over the age of 80 years have been diagnosed as BPH patients. Visual, hands-on access to the prostate, immediate removal of excess tissue and ability to combine with other procedures are some of the advantages of TURP over other available treatment options for lower urinary tract infections. Some major minimally invasive treatment options for BPH include lasers, microwave, radio waves, photoselective laser vaporization of the prostate (PVP) and ultrasound. These treatment options are expected to serve the market for TURP as growth restraints during the forecast period from 2014 to 2019.Request brochure @Moreover, medications, another possible treatment option such as alpha 1-blockers, antibiotics, finasteride and dutasteride to decrease the size of the prostate are also restraining the current TURP market. Resectoscopes, catheters and resectoscopes electrodes (monopolar electrodes bipolar electrodes, grooved roller turp electrodes and straight cutting loop turp electrodes) are some major devices that are widely used during TURP procedures.Based on geography, the TURP market has been analyzed as North America, Asia-Pacific,Europe, and the Rest of the World (RoW). North America and Europe held the largest shares in terms of market revenue of the global TURP market in 2013. The primary reasons for North America and Europe holding the leading positions in the global TURP market are high prevalence of lower urinary tract diseases such as BPH and BPO, and well established healthcare infrastructure in both the regions. According to the American Urological Association, 15 million men in the United States are symptomatic to BPH and in the approximately 150,000 people have TURPs performed each year.For Specific and Customized requirements@Asia-Pacific is expected to witness highest growth rate during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. A number of factors such as increasing prevalence of urinary tract infections, aging population, increasing focus on research and development would be fuelling the growth of TURP market in Asia-Pacific in coming years. According to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, 23 million individuals aged 80 years or over were living in China in 2013. The Department of Economic and Social Affairs further states that nearly 10 million and 9 million individuals aged 80 years or over were living in India and Japan, respectively in 2013.Some of the major players in TURP market include Olympus Corporation, Richard Wolf, Degania Silicone Ltd, Limbs & Things Ltd and KARL STORZ GmbH & Co. KG.Pre Book full report@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.Transparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453
Ultra-mobile Devices (UMD) Market share will expand till 2025

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Global Ultra-mobile Devices (UMD) Market: SnapshotUntil a couple of years from now, the future of the sleeker, smaller, and portable computing devices, now dubbed as ultra-mobile, looked bleak. The segment had few devices and the flagship devices failed to entice masses. But the scenario soon transformed and ultra-mobile devices charged in the burgeoning global computing devices market with immense force, a host of new products from some of the worlds most renowned brands and are witnessing massive sales.Analysts predict that ultra-mobile devices will soon supplant desktop computers in professional as well as public spaces. With the impressive rate of technological advancements that this segment of computing devices is achieving in a short span, this transition does not seem very far or difficult. Vast advances in battery, screen, processing, and material processing technologies are supplementing this change, making it technically very feasible to develop portable devices that can easily compete with the present-day ubiquitous, relatively bulkier, and mostly immobile workhorse personal computers.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The rapid influx of a number of technologically advanced and highly promising candidates in the global ultra-mobile devices arena is strengthening the position of the segment as the right candidate to claim a significant stake in the workplace computers replacement process that many organizations eagerly await. Conventional smartphones and tablets fail to be as productive and fast as desktop computers when it comes to fulfilling a number of requirements, a factor that makes the high demand for ultra-mobile devices more likely. This report gives a detailed overview of the global ultra-mobile devices market and its crucial segments.Global Ultra-mobile Devices (UMD) Market: OverviewUltra-mobile devices (UMD), also referred to as ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPC), the notebook computers with physical features such as screen and overall size scaled down to bring about a reduction in weight make the devise more compact, have emerged as one of the largest selling computing devices in the past few years. These portable and easy to carry computing devices, which majorly pack capabilities and functionalities similar to those of a traditional personal computer, are steadily outpacing the conventional personal computer models.Request TOC of the Report @The market for ultra-mobile computing devices is expected to expand at a promising pace in the next few years as the trend of mobility gathers further pace. This report on the global ultra-mobile devices market provides a thorough analytical overview of the market in the present times and several forward-looking statements predicting the growth prospects of the market and its segments for the period 20172025, wherein 2016 is considered the base year.The report covers a detailed analytical overview of all the key trends expected to play a key role in the overall development of the market over the said period. The study highlights factors such as drivers, restraints, regulations, and opportunities expected to impact the growth prospects of the market during the forecast period.Global Ultra-mobile Devices (UMD) Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe report states that of the key varieties of ultra-mobile devices available in the market, including basic UMD, utility UMD, and premium UMD, the segment of premium UMD accounted for the leading share in revenues in the global market. Operational capabilities equal or enhanced as compared to conventional personal computers, compact size, and high cost have made premium UMDs one of the most profitable UMD segments in the global market in the past few years.Request Discount of the Report @On the basis of operating system, the global UMD market can be segmented into Windows, Mac, Android, and open source. Presently, the Windows category accounts for the dominant share in the global market and is expected to retain dominance over the next few years as well.Global Ultra-mobile Devices (UMD) Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsFrom a geographical perspective, the report analyzes the UMD market across regions such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Of these, the North America market contributed to the leading share in the global markets revenue. The presence of an affluent consumer base and some of the worlds leading UMD manufacturers have helped the region take the top spot in the UMD market.Emerging economies across regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America have become some of the worlds profitable destinations for the personal computers market owing to the rising population of affluent and digitally aware consumers and the burgeoning enterprise and education sectors. However, the high prices of UMDs could crop up as one of the key challenges for markets expansion in these regions, making people favor budget computing devices over UMDs. The consumer perception that UMDs lack in data processing or operating functionalities as compared to conventional personal computers could also be a factor limiting the overall demand for ultra-mobile devices to mostly business professionals and enterprise circles in these regions.The study also includes business profiles of some of the leading players operating in the global immersive simulator market with details such as recent developments, growth strategies, market share, market positioning, finances, and product portfolio. Some of the leading companies operating in the global UMD market are HTC Corporation, Google, Dell, Microsoft Corporation, Lenovo, ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Apple Inc., Sony, HP Development Company L.P., and Samsung.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Metal IBC Market: Growing Trade among Emerging Economies Opening New Opportunities

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As per the findings of a recent commerce and business study by Transparency Market Research, the global metal intermediate bulk container (IBC) market is highly fragmented, with top ten companies collectively managing less than five percent of the total shares in 2017. The report identifies Time Technoplast Ltd., Thielmann US LLC, Hoover Ferguson Group, Precision IBC, Inc., Custom Metalcraft, Inc., Snyder Industries, Inc., Metano IBC Services, Inc., Yenchen Machinery Co., Ltd., Sharpsville Container Corporation, Automationstechnik GmbH, Pensteel Ltd., Titan IBC, Hawman Container Services, Transtainer, CLA CONTAINERS LTD, SCHAFER WERKE GmbH, Brookeson Material Handling Ltd., Plymouth Industries, SYSPAL Ltd, Obal Centrum s.r.o., La Garde, and Acura Group as some of the notable players currently operating in the global metal IBC market.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Demand Expanding at CAGR 4.1%, Forecast 2017-2027As per the projections of the TMR report, the demand in the global metal IBC market will expand at a CAGR of 4.1% during the forecast period of 2017 to 2027, attaining a revenue valuation of US$1,995.0 mn by 2022, considerably up from its evaluated worth of US$1,334.4 mn in 2017. As far as the strategies of the key companies are concerned, Time Technoplast aims to enhance its production capacity and product portfolio through expansion of capabilities, whereas Theilmann US LLC has been acquiring carefully as well as increasing its manufacturing locations in the key developed economies. In the global metal IBC market, Time Technoplast accounted for a revenue of US$372.8 mn in 2017.Metal IBCs are extensively used for the transportation of hazardous industrial chemicals to minimize the snapping chances. The industrial chemicals segment of the global metal IBC market is expected to reach USR852.0 mn by the end of 2027. Among the two sub-segments based on content, metal IBCs are mainly used for the bulk transportation of liquids. The segment is expected to account for a market revenue share of 88.1% by 2027. Technology-wise, aseptic technology is highly preferred for manufacturing metal IBCs, as they maintain high standards of hygiene. Geographically, North America is currently the most lucrative region, promising a demand worth of US$621.7 mn by 2022, although vastly populated region of Asia Pacific is projected for the most impressive growth rate of 4.9%, significantly higher than the global average.Browse Market Research Report @Benefits of Customized Containerization of Consumer Products Driving DemandThe global metal IBC market is driven by a number of factors, but primarily owing to containerization of consumer products that are leading to cost optimization and ease in transportation, rapidly evolving cross order trade between various emerging economies, and growing demand for sophisticated solution of bulk liquid transportation. Containerization has made it possible for the shipping industry to transport products without being a financial burden. Intermediate bulk containers have generated a great level of productivity as they help in proper stacking and enhance the efficiency of warehouse management. Governments of economic powerhouses such as India and China have various ongoing projects that aim to essentially double the volume of current trade in the next five years. Low cost of manufacturing in China and India has led manufacturers across the globe to move their production facilities to countries in the Asia Pacific, which is expected to facilitate growth in trade volume in the region, as well as enable the APAC region to emerge a global trade hub.On the other hand, the availability of low cost alternate transportation solutions such as flexible IBC and high cost of Metal IBCs as compared to Plastic IBCs are two factors hindering the prosperity of the global metal IBC market. Nevertheless, emergence of intermodal transportation, improving infrastructure in various emerging economies, and growing trade among them is expected to open new opportunities in this 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:
Aseptic Processing Market - By Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025

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Global Aseptic Processing Market: SnapshotAs per the Food and Agriculture Organization, 43% of the food produced in Asia Pacific in 2014 was wasted, leading to huge financial losses for both manufacturers and retailers. Thus, the need for efficient packaging which offers long life and maintains the quality of products was felt. This gave rise to the demand for aseptic processing and the market for this technology is projected to witness a high growth in the years to come.The growing preference for eco-friendly packages is behind the high demand for aseptic processing technology, despite their complexity when compared to terminal sterilization or canning. A surge in the demand for convenience foods and pharmaceutical supplies is boosting the growth of the aseptic processing market. Aseptic processing enables longer shelf life and thus, in demand. As the disposable income of consumers is increasing, their spending capability is also growing, creating a heightened demand for various products, driving the global aseptic processing market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Players in the market are expected to witness a stupendous growth as they increase their already large production capacities. The increased demand for aseptically packaged goods has compelled manufacturers to expand their business and production capacity. The cosmetics and dairy sectors are two areas demanding aseptic processing increasingly, thus pushing the growth of the market. The dairy industry is witnessing robust growth on account of the high demand for varieties in terms of flavors, which is benefitting the aseptic processing industry in turn.Global Aseptic Processing Market: OverviewAseptic processing is referred to as the methodology through which sterile or aseptic products, mainly pharmaceutical and food is packed in a sterile container which would efficiently maintain its sterility. Sterility is obtained through a process of flash heating between a temperature of 195 and 295 degree F which recollects more nutrients and employs less energy than the traditional form of sterilization methods such as hot-fill canning or retort. The method of aseptic food preservation allows the storage of processed food for elongated periods without the use of preservatives. These type of aseptic packages are generally a mix of aluminum, polyethylene, and paper. Collectively, these materials form a constricted seal against degradation, contaminants, microbial organisms, thus removing the requirement for refrigeration. The products which packed using aseptic processing are tomatoes, gravies, liquid whole eggs, fruit juices, and milks.The market intelligence report investigates into the conceivable growth prospects for the aseptic processing market and the sequential growth of the market during the course of the forecast period. It also exclusively provisions the mandatory data related to aspects such as the dynamics manipulating the progress in all possible reflective manner. Numerous pervasive and non-pervasive trends have also been stated in the report. An outlook of extensive nature keeping in mind the Porters five forces analysis has been provided to make the vendor landscape transparent to the reader. The report further points out several activities related to R&D, mergers, acquisitions, and crucial conglomerates and corroborations. The companies in attention have been examined on the basis of market shares, prime products, and key marketing strategies.Request TOC of the Report @Global Aseptic Processing Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe global aseptic processing market is likely to witness exponential growth over the forecast period owing to rising focus on environment-friendly packaging and improvement in technologies and equipment in the packaging industry. The market is also expected to be benefitted by the mounting need for pharmaceutical supplies, growing demand for quality and convenience food products, and significant progress of the dairy beverage market. However, the market is expected to be negatively impacted by the high initial capital investment required for buying equipment and the need for advanced understanding of the technology in question in place forms of packaging forms.In terms of packaging, the segment of paper and paperboard is expected to lead the market in the coming years. This is because, paperboard can be easily cut and processed and is both strong and lightweight, thus making it an ideal material for packaging. Paperboard packaging is available in different grades with unique qualities. The grades are thus chosen on the basis of the respective packaging requirements.Request Discount of the Report @Global Aseptic Processing Market: Regional OutlookDeveloping countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, and China are likely to contribute significantly to the revenue of the global aseptic processing market in the coming years. The growth of the markets in these countries can be primarily attributed to the hectic lifestyles of consumers and their shift towards processed and ready-to-eat meals, growth in household incomes, and favorable demographics.Global Aseptic Processing Market: Competitive LandscapeEquipment manufacturers and suppliers are focusing on offering innovative equipment in different categories along with integrating processing equipment. They are also diversifying the product offerings to strengthen distribution base. Some of the leading companies are JBT Corporation, Greatview Aseptic Packaging Co. Ltd., GEA Group, Amcor Limited, Becton, Dickinson and Co., GEA Group, Tetra Laval International S.A., E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, and Robert Bosch GmbH.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
International Conference on Hematology and Oncology

Its our pleasure to invite all the participants from all over the world to attend the International Conference on Hematology and Oncology which is held during June 18-20, 2018 at London, UK.The main theme of our conference is " Advancing the Diagnosis of Hematologic Disorders " which covers a wide range of critically important sessions."The live format of the conference will be accredited with CME and CPD Credits"The Allied Academies group of journals that have been performing exceptionally well in Business and Management and are an ideal fit for our peruses. We give our writers and peruse a stage that serves them well and causes them share their work with the worldwide group. We are growing the concentration of Allied Academies past Business and Management Journals to fuse logical regions too.85 Great Portland St, Marylebone,
Hyper loop Technology Market 2017 Growth Rate Analysis and Key Players: AECOM, Hyperloop One, Dinclix GroundWorks, TransPod, Space Exploration

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Market Research Future published a research report on Global Hyper loop Technology Market Research Report- Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Market HighlightsThe global hyper loop technology market is a very dynamic market and is expected to witness high growth over the forecast period. The growth of the hyper loop technology market is influenced by rising industrialization, fastest as well as cheapest mode of transportation and not vulnerable to any kind of natural calamities. Furthermore, hyper loop technology offers various benefits such as convenient, lower cost and not disruptive. However, the safety issue, lack of awareness and various government regulations are hampering the growth of the hyper loop technology market.The global Hyper Loop Technology Market is expected to reach approximately USD 2 billion by the end of 2023 over the forecast period 2017-2023.Key Players:The key players in the global hyper loop technology market include- AECOM (U.S.), Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (US), Hyperloop One (US), Dinclix GroundWorks (India), TransPod Inc. (Canada) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (U.S.) among others.Get Sample of Report @Regional Analysis-Regionally, North-America is projected to grow by 2023. The first operational hyperloop is expected built between Los Angeles and California. Hyperloop One Global Challenge shortlisted teams to present hyperloop route plans to be developed after various check in this region. Also, government approval to develop hyperloop technology development companies in this region. Furthermore, capital investments plays an important role for the development of hyper loop technology.Segmentation:According to Market Research Future, market has been segmented into component, type, application and region.On the basis of type, the market has been segmented into passenger and freight. Out of these, passenger type is expected to lead the hyper loop technology market. There are various benefits which are offered in transportation industry. However, hyperloop offers a fastest mode of passenger transport compared to other transportation system such as train, airplan. Also, the cost of hyperloop is comparatively lower than airplanes or bullet train which is expected to attract more population. For instance, this particular mode of transportation will cover Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.Study Objectives of Hyper loop Technology Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the global hyper loop technology market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the global hyper loop technology market based porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by type, component, application and region. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global Web hyper loop technologyGet Complete Report @Intended Audience Manufacturers Distributors Research firms Consultancy firms Software Developers Vendors Semiconductor Manufacturers End-user sectors Technology InvestorsAbout Us: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.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Medical X-ray detectors Market to be Worth More than US$ 3.3 Billion by 2022; Large-Area Flat Panel Detectors to Dominate for Foreseeable Future

Medical X Ray Detectors Market

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Increasing private and public investment in digital imaging technology particularly in the field of healthcare, the numerous benefits offered by digital detectors, analog X-ray reimbursement cuts, and reducing prices are the main factors driving the medical X-ray detectors market. Furthermore, technological advancements coupled with strong encouragement by venture capitalists should boost the medical X-ray detectors market throughout the course of the study period. The medical X-ray detectors market is poised to grow with a robust CAGR of 6.1% from 2017-2022.Read Report @Digital X-ray systems are twice the size of retrofit X-ray systems in terms of module type and are expected to become even more popular in the days ahead. The digital x-ray systems medical X-ray detectors segment is on track to be worth more than US$ 2 billion by the end of the study period, making it imperative for key stakeholders to target this segment. Retrofit systems are slowly but surely fading in popularity. Nonetheless, this segment still accounts for a revenue share approaching a third of the medical X-ray detectors market in 2017 and companies cannot overlook it entirely in favor of digital x-ray systemsFixed detectors comprise more than half the medical X-ray detectors market by revenue share. North America alone has a third of the market in 2017 and is expected to be the only region in the medical X-ray detectors market to record a robust CAGR in excess of 6%. Europe is the second largest region in the fixed detector segment of the medical X-ray detectors market but MEA and Latin America are predicted to grow at a higher CAGR. Portable detectors occupy the balance revenue share in the modality segment of the medical X-ray detectors market. This segment is highly likely to see strong growth and companies can try to target this lucrative segment accordinglyRequest Sample Report @Large-area flat panel detectors are dominant in the medical X-ray detectors market by panel size segment in 2017 and are estimated to remain so going forward. The large-area flat panel detector segment in both North America and Europe is assessed to be worth more than US$ 600 million by the end of the forecast period, ensuring that all major players can be profitable in such a large market. The small-area flat panel detectors segment is particularly popular in North America with a high CAGR in the APEJ regionComputed radiography has a revenue share of just over a fifth of the medical X-ray detectors market by product type segment and is likely to lose popularity over the study period. A similar CAGR greater than 4.5% exists in Latin America and APEJ but the latter is considerably larger in terms of market sizeNorth America is the largest region in the medical X-ray detectors market and the U.S. accounts for the lions share within the continent. The U.S. medical X-ray detectors market is anticipated to grow to more than a billion dollars by end 2022.Buy now @The companies profiled in the medical X-ray detectors market report are Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, Rayence Co., KONICA MINOLTA, Hamamatsu Photonics, DRTECH Corporation, Canon Inc, Analogic Corporation, FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation, Onex Corporation, and Agfa-Gevaert N.V.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Walkie Talkie Market to grow at a CAGR of 9.47% during 2017-2021 - Motorola Solutions, Hytera Communications, JVCKENWOOD, ICOM, Tait Communications

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A walkie talkie, also called a handheld transceiver (HT), may be described as a portable and handheld two-way radio transceiver. A walkie talkie works on simplex communication and uses inbuilt transmitters to send and receive radio signals to communicate and hence does not require a separate network tower. Walkie talkies are commonly used in settings where portable radio communications are necessary such as public safety, business, outdoor recreation, and military. Devices are available at various price points, ranging from inexpensive analog units sold as toys to ruggedized analog and digital units, which are waterproof or intrinsically safe, for use in boats or heavy industries.The global walkie talkie market to grow at a CAGR of 9.47% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global walkie talkie 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.Click to get Sample PDF:The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEATechnavio's report, Global Walkie Talkie 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.View Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key vendors- Motorola Solutions- Hytera Communications- JVCKENWOOD- ICOM- Tait CommunicationsOther prominent vendors- Abel- BFDX- Cobra Electronics- Kirisun Communications- Midland Radio- Shenzhen HQT Science and Technology- Uniden- WintecMarket driver- Augmented disposable income- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Competition from smartphones- For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Membrane Separation Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry Forecast to 2019: PMR

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Persistence Market Research Released New Market Report on Global Market Study on Membrane Separation: Water & Waste Water Segment to Witness Highest Growth by 2019, the global membrane separation market was valued at USD 19.0 billion in 2012 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2013 to 2019, to reach an estimated value of USD 39.2 billion in 2019.Request for Report Sample @Mandatory government regulation and increasing demand for clean processed drinking water is propelling the water processing industry to provide the public with clean processed drinking water free of impurity. Providing growth opportunity for water treatment industry among which, Membrane separation technology is one of the most popular methods used for cleaning water. Mandatory adherence of certain environmental standards by the national government such as the Clean Water Act especially in areas with water scarcity have influenced the demand for better water treatment technology, including membrane separation technology. Shifting from chemical to physical treatments of water is also a major driver as chemical treatments are perceived as an environmentally unclean technology with associated disposal costs. Additional awareness of water scarcity has influenced the demand for water reuse in water stressed areas.Request for Report TOC @Governments and municipal authorities are increasingly waking up to the effects of environmental degradation on the economy. Worldwide industrial expansion and growing population are propelling the demand for better water treatment technology, providing growth opportunity for the global market of membrane separation technology. Additionally, the oil and petroleum industry is well established in the gulf and European countries such as Italy and Germany which involve membrane separation technology for liquid separation. Expansion of such industry is expected to increase the overall demand for membrane separation technology. Membrane separation technology is bifurcated into four major processes, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. Microfiltration dominates the market with more than 35% global market share in 2012. Whereas water & wastewater dominates the end-user market with 36% global market shares in 2012. The global membrane separation market grew from USD 19.0 billion in 2010 to USD 21.2 billion in 2013.Obtain Report Details @European membrane market (largest in 2013) is expected to reach USD 13.8 billion in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 9.6%. In 2012 water & wastewater sector was the major end-user of membrane separation technology and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 11.1% during 2013-19. The membrane separation market is fragmented with several players in the market supplying membrane separation products to the end-users (water and wastewater, industrial and healthcare) in the market. Most of the companies produce different types of membrane products such as microfiltration, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis and sell them globally. Major companies operating globally and manufacturing all four products are Evoqua Water Technologies, Pall Corporation, Koch Membrane Systems Inc., Merck Millipore, Degremont SA, Dow Chemical Company, GEA Filtration, 3M Company, Nitto Denko Corporation and Veolia Environnement.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Our client success stories feature a range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing startups. PMRs collaborative environment is committed to building industry-specific solutions by transforming data from multiple streams into a strategic asset.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1-646-568-7751Tollfree: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Smart Packaging Market to Strengthen Its Position at 5% CAGR through 2022

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Global Smart Packaging Information by Technology (Active, Intelligent and MAP), by Application (Food & Beverages, Automotive, Healthcare, Personal Care and others), and Region - Forecast to 2022The market for global smart packaging market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 5% during the period 2016 to 2022Market HighlightsThe popularity of smart packaging is growing over the past few years. Smart packaging are used for food & beverages, personal care, healthcare and automotive products. Rising health awareness, technological advancement, increased shelf life and rising industrialization fueled the demand of the market. High research and development cost is expected to hamper the growth of the market in coming years.Personal care is the fastest growing sectorPersonal Care segment is expected to grow fast over the forecasted period due to rising awareness about health safety. However, Food & Beverage segment dominates the market, majorly due to increased safety with low cost and increased shelf-life.Europe is the largest marketEuropean region contributes largest to the market share. The reason is attributed to the advancements of technology and European Commission laws favor smart packaging. However, Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow over the forecasted period.Get Sample of Report @Factors attributed to the growth of the market are improved health & safety, changing lifestyle, easy implementation and reduced counterfeiting. On the basis of application, Food & Beverage dominates the market. However, high research & development costs and lack of sustainable e-packaging products are hampering the growth of the market. The global smart packaging market size is expected to cross USD 40 Billion at CAGR of approximately 5% by 2022.Regional Analysis of Global Smart Packaging Market:North America is expected to lead the smart packaging market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. North America accounts for the largest share of 42.72% in the global smart packaging market in 2016. The region has witnessed increased investment in the R&D and product innovation as far as packaging is concerned. APAC is expected to experience the fastest growth during the forecasted period due to the economic growth of China and India. The region offers flourishing market for such technological advanced packaging solutions.Key PlayersThe key players of the global smart packaging market include- 3M Company, TempTime Corporation, PakSense Inc., American Thermal Instruments, Avery Dennison Corporation, R.R. Donnelly Sons & Company, BASF SE, International Paper, Stora Enso, Huhtamaki Group and Smartrac N.V.Enquiry before Buying @The report for Global Smart Packaging Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Access Full Report@About Us: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 , regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Akash Anand,Market Research FuturePune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone No. :+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Algorithmic Trading Market by Manufacturers, States, Type And Application, Forecast To 2022

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MarketResearchNest.com adds Global Algorithmic Trading Market By Manufacturers, Countries, Type And Application, Forecast To 2022new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 124 pages with table and figures in it.This report studies the Algorithmic Trading market, Algorithmic trading is a method of executing a large order (too large to fill all at once) using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume to send small slices of the order (child orders) out to the market over time.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Algorithmic Trading 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.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversVirtu Financial, KCG, DRW Trading, Optiver, Tower Research Capital, Flow Traders, Hudson River Trading, Jump Trading, RSJ Algorithmic Trading, Spot Trading, Sun Trading, Tradebot Systems, IMC, Quantlab Financial, Teza TechnologiesMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoInvestment banks, Funds, Personal InvestorsRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report:This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rateIt provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.The research provides answers to the following key questions:What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2022?What are the key factors driving the United States Algorithmic Trading Market?Who are the key market players and what are their strategies in the United States Algorithmic Trading Market?What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the United States Algorithmic Trading Market?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the United States Algorithmic Trading Market?What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the United States Algorithmic Trading Market?There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Algorithmic Trading market.Chapter 1, to describe Algorithmic Trading Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Algorithmic Trading, with sales, revenue, and price of Algorithmic Trading, 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 Algorithmic Trading, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Algorithmic Trading market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Algorithmic Trading sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceOrder a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Global industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Now Available Global ADHD Therapeutics Market Forecast And Growth 2015 - 2023

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Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), also referred as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Hyperkinetic Disorder (HKD) is the most common psychiatric disorder among adolescents and children. The disorder is characterized by the presence of inappropriate levels of attention, impulsivity and hyperactivity, commencing in childhood and leading to impairment. Although these symptoms tend to cluster together, some people are majorly hyperactive and impulsive, while others are inattentive. ADHD was for long considered a childhood disorder but there is growing awareness that ADHD is also a significant source of impairment for many adults. The pathophysiology of ADHD is not clearly understood. Majority of scientific research states that ADHD is neurologically based but some experts claim that psychological factors are the major and primary cause of the disorder.Treatments available for ADHD;Medication, Stimulants, Amphetamine, Methylphenidate, Dextroamphetamine ,Dexmethylphenidat, lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, Non stimulants, Atomoxetine, Bupropion, Guanfacine, Clonidine, Psychotherapy, Behavior therapy, Cognitive behavioral therapy, Psychoeducational input, Interpersonal psychotherapy, Family therapyEducation or training , Parent management training, Social skills training, School-based Interventions A combination of treatments.Report Overview and TOC @The available medications help to control the symptoms of ADHD but do not cure the disorder. However, medications assist a child to pay attention and complete their school tasks. It is still not clear whether medications are able to improve learning and academic skills among children. Combination of therapies such as behavioral therapy, medication, practical support and counseling can help children to survive normally with ADHD. According to a Research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) it has proved that medication gives good results when treatment is repeatedly monitored by the doctor and the dosage is modified according to the child's needs.Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common disorder among children that continue through adolescence and adulthood. Some of the causes that may lead to ADHD are genetic disorders, environmental factors, brain injuries and food additives. The onset of ADHD starts at the age of 7 years. According to The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), around 4.1% of adults in the U.S. are affected by ADHD who are 18 years of age and above in a year. Also around 9.0% of children who are aged between 13 to 18 years in the U.S. are affected by ADHD. Boys have four times more risk than girls.Request brochure @Geographically, the global ADHD therapeutics market is segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). In terms of geography, North America accounts for the highest market in terms of revenue, followed by Europe due to highly developed healthcare industry, high disposable income, ongoing clinical trials, and early approval of drugs in the U.S market. However, Asia Pacific market is also witnessing a very positive growth due to high rate of development in healthcare industry, government initiatives for treatment of mental illness and increasing prevalence of mental disorders.For Specific and Customized requirements@The global ADHD therapeutics market is witnessing an admirable growth due to the medical advancements, high number of research activities in this segment and high awareness among people about mental illness. However there are many side effects associated with medication such as decreased appetite, sleep problem, headaches, dizziness, Irritability, mood changes and tics. The high cost of treatment and the number of side effects associated with medication are some of the factors that may hinder the growth of ADHD therapeutics market. Some of the major players operating in ADHD therapeutic market are Amedra Pharmaceuticals LLC, Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Noven Therapeutics, LLC, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Shire Plc.Pre Book full report@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.Transparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453
Automotive HVAC Market Driven By Demand Surge to Grow Exceptionally, 2022

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Global Automotive HVAC Market, By Material (PET, PP, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, and others), By Application (Food & Beverages, Personal Care, Pharmaceutical, Consumer goods, and others) - Forecast 2016-2022Target Audience: Manufactures Raw Materials Suppliers Aftermarket suppliers Research Institute Potential InvestorsMarket HighlightsAutomotive HVAC is a system combining three major functions such as heating, ventilation and air- conditioning. Factors such as increasing demand for thermal insulations for energy efficient applications, and growth in the automotive sector are driving the market of Automotive HVAC. Recent trend shows that Companies, such as Audi, Mercedes, and BMW, focus on customized and consumer-friendly HVAC systems and supports automatic air conditioning, fogging sensor, and automatic climate control system. Moreover, Due to least level of human intervention, the automatic HVAC system are being installed in large extent, especially in premium and luxury segment passenger vehicles. Additionally, R&D focuses on automotive HVAC market for improving fuel efficiency, reducing environmental effect and lowering the weight of HVAC system. Government initiatives acts as a driving factor for the growth of Automotive HVAC market. Awareness about the environment in countries such as China and India lead to the growth of Automotive HVAC market.Get Sample of Report @Regional Analysis of Global Automotive HVAC MarketThe Asia-Pacific region dominating the market of Automotive HVAC. Presence of automobile manufacturers and growing demand for automobiles in developing countries such as China and India. Increasing adoption of premium automobile brands in developing nation such as India and Brazil provides growth opportunities for industry players. Whereas, Japan referred as one of the largest automobile manufacturing companies in the world such as Toyota and Honda. Increasing production capacities, investment in R&D and requirement for hybrid technology drive the HVAC automotive market. Moreover, favorable government policies pushing the market towards growth. Moreover, demand for effective thermal systems in electric and hybrid powertrains. Vehicles require low-temperature cooling equipment along with normal equipment for regulated battery cooling. Whereas, increasing vehicle production and stringent government regulations to encourage the energy efficiency are driving the market in North America.Key PlayersThe key players of global Automotive HVAC market report include- Denso Corp, Valeo SA, Behr GmbH, Halla Climate Control Corp., Delphi Automotive, Visteon Corp., Sanden Corp., Air International Thermal Systems, Calsonic Kansei, and DelStar Technologies.Enquiry before Buying @BRIEF TOC:1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY3. MARKET DYNAMICS4. GLOBAL MARKET SEGMENTATION5. REGIONAL MARKET ANALYSIS6. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS7. CONCLUSION8. LIST OF TABLES9. LIST OF FIGURESAsk for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.We recognize the key players in the global Automotive HVAC market as Denso Corp, Valeo SA, Behr GmbH, Halla Climate Control Corp., Delphi Automotive, Visteon Corp., Sanden Corp., Air International Thermal Systems, Calsonic Kansei, and DelStar TechnologiesAccess Full Report @About Us: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 , regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Akash Anand,Market Research FuturePune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone No. :+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Smart City Market 2016: Company Profiles, Segments, Landscape and Demand by Forecast to 2022

Smart City Market

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Market Highlights:Internet of Things plays a vital role in various fields apart from communication networks, such as sanitation, healthcare, transport and energy use. Internet of things refers to a technology that connects all devices to a network. Internet ready and connective devices are achieved by IoT technology. This enables the flow of data creating a network of objects. Internet of Things leads to advanced use of internet which would result in developing device to device relationship. Internet of Things when applied to smart cities it adds more technology into everyones life and also enables a new and fully integrated approach to the designing and developing of the smart cities. There are tremendous ways in which internet of things help in the development of smart cities. Higher the adoption of internet of things; easier would be the implementation of smart city solutions.The Global Smart City Market is growing rapidly over 27% of CAGR and is expected to reach at USD 1,900 billion by the end of forecast period 2022.Major Key Players: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. (China) IBM Corporation (U.S.) Cisco Systems, Inc.(U.S.) AT&T Inc. AG (U.S) Siemens AG (Germany) Oracle Corporation (U.S.) Microsoft Corporation (U.S.) Schneider Electric SE (France) Hitachi Corporation (U.S.) Ericsson (Sweden)Request a Sample Report @Global Smart City Market SegmentationThe global Smart City Market has been segmented on the basis of component, application and region. On the basis of component, the market is segmented into hardware, software and service. On the basis of application, the market is classified into utility, transport, government, residential, education, healthcare and others.Regional Analysis of Smart City Market:The global smart city market is expected to grow at a promising rate during the forecast period, 2016-2022. North America is projected to have the largest market in Smart City Market. High adoption of internet of things, growth in high end infrastructure and focus towards energy saving and availability of efficient network connectivity is driving market in North America region.Followed by Europe region would hold a large share in the market. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing region in smart city market due to the increasing initiatives and high investment by government.Intended Audience National/ State Government Real Estate Developers Research & consultant organization IT Solution Providers System Integrators Networking Solution Providers Telecom Service Providers Transportation Service Providers Utility CompaniesMarket Research Analysis:Regional analysis for global Smart City Market is studied in different geographic regions as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of world. The study reveals that North America region would evolve as a leader in global Smart City Market. North America is the most technically advanced region and is growing with high end-infrastructure and focused towards energy savings which thereby has developed high growth for smart city market. Europe is expected to be the second highest market in terms of revenue generation. Whereas, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness high growth in the forecast period and projected to grow with approximately 25% CAGR during the forecast period. Technological and industrial growth in Asian countries, such as China and Japan, is giving boost to the Smart City Market in the coming years. Further, Increasing technological advancements and increasing disposable income in also supporting market growth of smart city components in Asia-Pacific region However, privacy issues is expected to hinder the growth of the market in the region.Access Report Details @Table of Contents1 Market Introduction2 Research Methodologies2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Global Smart City Market By Component, 2016-2022 (Usd Billion)Table 2 Smart City Market Of Hardware Segment By Region, 2016-2022 (Usd Billion)Table 3 Global Smart City Market Of Software By Region, 2016 - 2022 (Usd Billion)ContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Mrfr Researh ProcessFigure 2 Forecast ModelFigure 3 Global Smart City Market: Drivers & ChallengesContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Online Education Market Key Players - Adobe Systems, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson Education by Forecast to 2023

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Market Scenario:Online Education Market refers to learning in a 100% virtual environment. Online education can play a major role in developing the education industry overall in terms of money as well as innovation. With growing popularity of internet and many active user, online education market is expected to witness high growth rate during the forecast period. Increasing implementation of IT security and cloud based solutions and rapid growth in digitization are the factors responsible for the growth of online education market.Online Education Market has been segmented on the basis of product, learning type and end user. The learning type segment is further bifurcated into synchronous learning and asynchronous learning. Asynchronous learning refers to online spaces where work is supported through the use of digital platforms like threaded discussions or emails. In asynchronous learning, the participants need not be compulsorily online at the time whereas in synchronous learning type, the users need to be online and is moreover like face-to-face learning environment. It involves real-time responses that allow better provision for clarity.The global Online Education Market is expected to grow at approx. USD 423 Billion by 2023, at 24% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.Major factors driving the growth of online education market are conducive government policies and increasing demand for technical education. Increase in popularity of distance learning is another major factor driving the growth of online education market.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players: Adobe Systems (U.S.) McGraw-Hill Education (U.S.) Pearson Education (U.K.) Blackboard (U.S.) Lynda.Com (U.S.) Aptara (U.S.) Docebo (Italy) Edmodo (U.S.) PowerSchool Learning (U.S.) Tata Interactive Systems (India)Study Objectives of Online Education Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the online education market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future perspective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segmentation on the basis of product, learning type and end user. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for online education market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the online education market.Segments:Online education market can be segmented on the basis of following:By Product Content ServicesBy Learning Type Synchronous Learning Asynchronous LearningBy End User K-12 Education Higher Education Industry & ProfessionalRegional Analysis:The regional analysis of online education market is being studied for regions such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. It has been observed that North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the market, whereas Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period.The major growth in online education market in North America is attributed to technical advancements and increasing use of internet, mobiles and tablets in that region.Access Report Details @Intended Audience Technology investors Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) Research/Consultancy firms Educational Institutions StudentsTable of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market StructureContinued.List of TablesTable 1 Online Education Market, By ProductTable 2 Online Education Market, By Learing TypeTable 3 Online Education Market, By End UserContinued.List of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Online Education Market, By Product (%)Figure 3 Online Education Market, By Learing Type (%)Continued.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our clients 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 Solutions, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Deep Learning Market : Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2025

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Global Deep Learning Market: SnapshotThe scope of deep learning technology traverses across the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics, yet is quite distinct from each of them. In recent years, the application of deep learning technologies has gathered much steam in developing autonomous systems that help make decisions and solve problems. Using the massive amount of data fed through neural networks, it has the potential to solve just about any problems in the way humans think and decide. Deep learning can be considered to be a very specific subset of machine learning tools that are focused on developing neural networks, which in essence expands the real-life applications of autonomous systems. Most popular applications of deep learning lies in the domain of business to consumer (B2C), and are said to benefit a wide range of industries that constantly seek to capitalize on these systems to drive consumer satisfaction.Self-driving cars using deep learning technologies have already gained traction with several technology behemoths and prominent car makers. This has been showing promising prospects in the automotive and automobile industries, with the option of driverless cars in the not-so-distant future. Another attractive application of deep learning is making sense of unstructured data emanating from a wide range of smart consumer products and services. With the proliferation of IoT devices, the volumes of organizational data is likely to soar to unmanageable levels in the coming years. Autonomous systems with the help of deep learning will churn these data and transform them to provide meaning information and finally into useful business insights. Driven by the advances in natural language processing, this will pave way for data-driven decisions.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Deep Learning Market: OverviewDeep learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, which is anticipated to revolutionize several industries. For example, deep learning is used for voice and image recognition by Google, promotion of what to watch next by Netflix, and highlighting related products to potential customers by Amazon. As the technology of deep learning evolves, many new applications are expected and consequently, the demand in the global deep learning market is projected for a robust growth rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.This report on global deep learning market is aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of the current scenario and based on an analysis of all the factors that may impact the growth rate, it estimates the future of the market until 2024. The report also picks-out a few trends that must be noted in order to stay ahead of the competition. It also contains a dedicated section on company profiles, wherein a number of key players have been studied for their market share, regional presence, and recent strategic developments. The global deep learning market can be segmented on the basis of application into image recognition, signal recognition, and data mining, whereas on the basis of offering, the market can be bifurcated into hardware and software. By end-use industry, the market can be categorized into aerospace and defense, automotive, medical, finance, retail, media and advertising, IT and telecommunication, and oil, gas, and energy. Geographically, the report studies the opportunities available in the regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa.Request TOC of the Report @Global Deep Learning Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIncreasing application of deep learning in several industries including advertising, automotive, and healthcare is the primary driver for the market. In addition to that, rigorous research and development that are currently underway are expected to evolve the technology and ability of the processing hardware in a way that other industries can enhance their production. Increasing need for discovering useful insights from available information, growing need for enhanced human and system interaction, and the demand for more knowledge about decisions and processes are other factors favoring the growth rate of the market. Conversely, the lack of experienced talent is expected to hinder the growth to a certain extent during the forecast period.Currently, data mining is the most profitable application segment of the global market, which is a reflection of increasing usage of deep learning in cyber security, database systems, data analytics, and fraud detection. In terms of end-use industries, the medical segment is expected to expand at the best growth rate, wherein deep learning is used for processing medical images for diagnosis, drug discovery, and virtual patient assistance. In terms of application, the segment of image recognition serve maximum demand in the current scenario of the market. Deep learning are used for pattern recognition, code recognition, optical character recognition, facial recognition, and digital image processing.Request Discount of the Report @Global Deep Learning Market: Region-wise OutlookThe region of North America serves the maximum demand for deep learning, which is a result of high adoption rate of new technologies in the developed countries of the U.S. and Canada. In these countries, government funding is readily available and several leading players have their headquarters. The country-wide market of the U.S. has been encouraging deep learning technology within organizations for safeguarding content from piracy and data breaches, cyber-attacks, preserve against data losses, and negotiate with web and network security threats.Companies mentioned in the research reportGoogle, Inc., IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Facebook, Inc., and Qualcomm, Inc. are some of the prominent players currently operational in global deep learning market, while several new players with financial might are expected to join this evolving sector.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Dual Dispensing Technology market Volume Forecast and Value Chain Analysis 2016-2024

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Dual dispensing technology is used to deliver two different formulations which can be mixed simultaneously or mixed after actuation. This technology can be used for standard as well as customized dispensing solutions in cosmetic creams, high end lotions, oil, glues and even food applications. End users benefit from complete customization of perfumes and colors, changeable strengths and intensities, separation of ingredients and more. Now a days, consumers are more tech savvy and ready for advanced customers packaging which brings optimal results and satisfy the needs.Increasing demand for compact and easy to carry products is increasing among the consumers. Consumers are looking for cost effective product with multiple options for its applications. This accounts among the few important drivers for this market. The dual dispensing technology market is driven by increase in demand for smart and innovative dispensing systems and equipment in developing countries such as India and China. Dual dispensing technology offers the user multiple ratio option which allows for multiple settings between formulas.Request for Report Sample @A variety of marketplace aspects have combined to shoot sales of compact beauty and skin care products. Cosmetics market is expected to experience a high impact due to this technology. Redken has already started offering dual dispenser custom blending technology in professional hair care products. This market is expected to grow with a rapid pace. Today there is a need to show packaging functionality and appealing ergonomics in various consumer products which in turn anticipated to drive dual dispensing technology market. Global skin care market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.96% from 2015-2016 in terms of value. Dual dispensing technology has a wide scope in skin care market and the growth of skin care market will ultimately account for the growth of dual dispensing technology.High cost of the equipment for dual dispensing could act as a restraint for this market. In addition to this, well-established manufacturers can lead a monopoly in this market acting as a barrier to entry for new players.Request for Report TOC @In terms of geography, the global dual dispensing technology market has been divided in to five key regions including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East & Africa. The global dual dispensing technology market is expected to register healthy CAGR during the forecast period. Currently Europe is leading the market followed by North America. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to experience higher growth for dual dispensing technology market. Factors such as urbanization, increasing standard of living along with an increase in sales of skin care, hair care and oral care products will stimulate the demand for the dual dispensing technology market globally.Obtain Report Details @Some of the key players in the global dual dispensing technology market are DEMA Engineering Company, Dispense Park Inc., Exact Dispensing System, Fisnar Inc., Graco, Inc., Henkel AG and Company, Jensen Global Dispensing, Kleerblue Solutions, Nordson Corporation System, Sulzar Mixpac Inc., Toyo Aerosaol Industry, Versadail.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Our client success stories feature a range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing startups. PMRs collaborative environment is committed to building industry-specific solutions by transforming data from multiple streams into a strategic asset.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1-646-568-7751Tollfree: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Passive Infrared Motion Sensor Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors are electronic sensor devices that detect motion and the presence of an identity or object that is a infrared emitting source. Any object that exceeds the temperature of absolute zero emits heat at a wavelength of infrared lights. The sensors are enabled for identification of the variations in IR radiations when an object is colliding with the primary subject of infrared radiation detection. Benefits of using passive infrared motion sensors are that these sensors use limited power and are scarcely activated by airflow. The global market for passive infrared motion sensor is segmented on the basis of device into motion controller, smoke detector, heat detectors and other devices. According to range covered, the global passive infrared motion sensor market is subdivided into long wave passive infrared sensor, short wave passive infrared sensor and mid wave passive infrared sensor. Passive infrared motion sensor market, on the basis of application, can be segmented into defense and aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, security and healthcare and industrial sectors. The consumer electronics sector is further sub-divided cameras, smart mobile devices, smart phones and other electronics. The security segment holds the largest market share in the application segments and is forecasted to have a steady growth rate throughout the forecast market.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Major driver driving the global market for passive infrared motion sensor market is increased application area of passive infrared sensor. In addition, rising demand for motion enabled industrial machineries, smart phones, military and aerospace devices and medical equipment, growth of home and industrial automation, rising use of wireless communication are acting as major drivers driving the global passive infrared motion sensor market. Increasing demand for motion sensing applications in the gaming sector and low power consumption also acts as a major driver to the global passive infrared motion sensor market. Increased growth in public construction projects which includes the installation of escalators, automatic doors, and taps in these projects. With increasing use of passive infrared motion sensors in these devices, the market is showing substantial growth over the forecast period and is thus acting as a major driver of the market. High cost of passive infrared motion sensors and lack of availability of cheaper alternatives is a major restraint hindering the growth of the PIR motion sensor market. In addition, passive infrared motion sensors cannot detect objects moving at a very low speed which is also a major hindrance in the growth of the overall market. Passive infrared motion sensors cannot determine the distance between two objects which limits its use in the various application sectors which is hindering the market growth substantially. Growing use of passive infrared motion sensors in consumer electronics is a major opportunity in the global market for passive infrared motion sensors.The global passive infrared motion sensor market geographically is segment into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America is the largest market for passive infrared motion sensors. Europe follows suit and both these regions are comparatively matured markets. Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa are the most lucrative markets and Asia Pacific is forecasted to witness the highest growth rate. This is facilitated by increasing presence of the application areas in these regions and thus more and more key players are investing in these regions.Browse Market Research Report @Major players of the global passive infrared motion sensor include Axis Communications AB (Lund, Sweden), General Dynamics Corporation (Virginia, U.S), Bosch Security Systems Ltd. (Stuttgart, Germany), Current Corporation (Port Moody, Canada), Atmel Corporation (California, U.S), Elmos Semiconductor AG (Dortmund, Germany), Cypress Semiconductor (California, U.S), Honeywell International Inc. (New Jersey, U.S),Epson Toyocom Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) and STMicroelectronics N.V. (Geneva, Switzerland) among others.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Glue-applied Labels Market: The Biggest Trends to Watch out for 2017-2022

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The global glue-applied labels market is forecasted to largely benefit from the rising adoption of small-sized polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles used for toiletries, cosmetics, and carbonated soft drinks. The increasing demand for highly durable and readily available labels is predicted to support the growth of new innovations in the market. Besides shrink sleeves, complex films could be extensively used for labeling purposes in the coming years. Avery Dennison already introduced its curvy film technology to apply labels on curved and extremely complex container shapes.Download exclusive Sample of this report:The global glue-applied labels market is envisioned to attract a revenue earning of US$25.3 bn by the completion of 2022 after progressing from a US$19.6 bn achieved in 2017. It is estimated that the market could rise at a 5.3% CAGR.Global Glue-applied Labels Market: Major InsightsThe international glue-applied labels market is foreseen to draw a whole lot of demand from the strengthening trend of esthetically-appealing offerings among consumers. As a result, food and consumer packaged product manufactures could be compelled to focus on visually appealing labels and ease of use packages. Moreover, manufacturers are expected to make constant innovations in labeling solutions by providing customized solutions or designing attractive labels.The international glue-applied labels market is projected to be cataloged into three categories, i.e. face stock material, type of layer, and application sector. In respect of face stock material, paper could exhibit a colossal share in the market while growing at a CAGR of 4.8%. Other segments such as polypropylene, polyethylene, and PET could also contribute toward the growth of the market under the face stock material category.Obtain Report Details @In terms of layer, there could be two segments, viz. laminated and non-laminated. On the basis of application, the international glue-applied labels market could be segregated into food and beverage, pharmaceutical, tracking, logistics, and transportation, home and personal care, semiconductor and electronics, retail labels, and other products.Regionally, the international glue-applied labels market is predicted to testify the ascendancy of Asia Pacific except Japan (APEJ), which could rake in a US$9.6 bn by the end of 2022. A high demand for packaging and labeling in China and India could augur well for the APEJ market. Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are prognosticated to gather a slow pace of growth during the forecast period. However, there could be faster growing prospects available in North America and Europe, which are envisaged to be among the lucrative markets other than APEJ.Global Glue-applied Labels Market: Vendor LandscapeThe report offers a complete evaluation of the competitive scenario of the worldwide glue-applied labels market in both the present and future forecast years. The analysts profile some of the leading players of the market such as Avery Dennison Corporation, Coveris Holdings S.A., CCL Label, Inc., Constantia Flexibles Group GmbH, Henkel, Lintec, Inland Labels, 3M, and WS Packaging Group, Inc. The competition in the market could intensify on the back of price wars caused due to the availability of innovative solutions at lower prices offered by local players compared to those of global companies.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:
China Textile Dyes Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

Textile Dyes Trends

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MarketResearchNest.com adds China Textile Dyes Market by Manufacturers, Regions (Province), Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 121 pages with table and figures in it.Dyes are the colouring material that colour commodities of our day to day use. Hardly there is any industry where dyes are not used commercially. From Plastic toys to jazzy t-shirt, everywhere there is application of dye. Textile dye means the dye used in the textile industry, in this report, the statistics data is including all kinds of textile dyes.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Textile Dyes in China market, to split the market based on manufacturers, Regions (Province), type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversArchroma, Huntsman, Kiri Industries, Nippon Kayaku, Kyung-In, Colourtex, Jay Chemicals, Everlight Chemical, BEZEMA,Bodal Chemical, Sumitomo, Eksoy, Aarti Industries Ltd, Osaka Godo, Setas, Atul, Anand International, LonSen, Runtu,Jihua Group, Transfar, Hubei Chuyuan, Tianjin Hongfa, YaBuLai Dyestuff, Yabang, Linfen Dyeing, Dalian Dyestuffs, Zhongdan, ANOKY, Tianjin Dek Chemical, Zhejiang Jinguang Industrial, Matex ChemicalsMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers South China Southwest China East China Northeast China North ChinaMarket Segment by Type, coversDisperse Dyes, Reactive Dyes, Sulfur Dyes, Vat Dyes, Acid Dyes, Other DyesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPolyester fibers, cellulose acetate fibers, etc., Cotton textiles, Wool, silk, polyurethane fibers, OthersRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Textile Dyes industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Global Automotive Lightweight Materials Market is likely to cross US$301.36 bn 2016-2024

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This report analyzes and forecasts the market for Automotive Lightweight Materials at the global and regional level. The market has been forecast based on revenue (US$ Mn) & Volume (Kilo Tons) from 2016 to 2024. The study includes drivers and restraints of the global Automotive Lightweight Materials market. It also covers the impact of these drivers and restraints on demand for Automotive Lightweight Materials during the forecast period. The report also highlights opportunities in the Automotive Lightweight Materials market at the global and regional level.The report comprises a detailed value chain analysis, which provides a comprehensive view of the global Automotive Lightweight Materials market. Porters Five Forces model for the Automotive Lightweight Materials market has also been included to help understand the competitive landscape in the market. The study encompasses market attractiveness analysis, wherein various application areas of automotive lightweight materials are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate, and general attractiveness.Click to get Sample PDF:The study provides a decisive view of the global Automotive Lightweight Materials market by segmenting it in terms product and end use. These segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends. Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for Automotive Lightweight Materials in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.The report provides the estimated market size of Automotive Lightweight Materials for 2015 and forecast for the next nine years. The global market size of Automotive Lightweight Materials has been provided in terms of volume and revenue. Market numbers have been estimated based on product, vehicle type and application segment of Automotive Lightweight Materials. Market size and forecast for each major product, vehicle type and application have been provided in terms of global and regional markets.View Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Primary research involves e-mail interactions, telephonic interviews, and face-to-face interviews for each market, category, segment, and sub-segment across geographies. We conduct primary interviews on an ongoing basis with industry participants and commentators in order to validate the data and analysis. Primary interviews provide firsthand information on market size, market trends, growth trends, competitive landscape, and outlook, etc. These help validate and strengthen secondary research findings. These also help develop the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.Global Automotive Lightweight Materials Market: Competitive AnalysisThe study includes profiles of major companies operating in the global Automotive Lightweight Materials market. Key players profiled in the report include Automotive Lightweight Materials market include BASF SE, The Dow Chemical Company, Momentive Performance Materials, LANXESS AG, Lear Corporation, Faurecia S.A., Magna International and others. Market players have been profiled in terms of attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, recent developments, and SWOT analysis.ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Pillow Support Systems Market Research Report 2017-2025: by Product Type, Application, Distribution Channel, by Geography and Company Profile

Pillow Support Systems Market

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Pillow support systems products are designed for hospitals, clinical settings and research centers. They offer pillow support system kits that can be used by multiple patients in hospital and clinical outpatient MRI suites. Concern over infectious disease and fluid contamination has been various organizations primary reason to develop coatings and fabrics that can resist repeated cleaning using hospital grade disinfectants. A pillow support system is generally U shaped or horseshoe shaped with an ovate shaped cavity in the center and a means for fastening. At the point when utilized as a part of a horizontal position, the cavity is sufficiently extensive to fit around the midriff of an adult hence taking into consideration a back support with arm rests, a pregnancy pillow, a floor pillow for sleeping, watching TV, or a nursing pillow.At the point when the fastener is utilized, the two tubular arms cover at the closures framing a shut oval or doughnut shape. In this position, the cushion can bolster a little tyke in a sitting or leaning back position. The pillow can likewise be utilized as a part of a vertical position supporting both upper and lower back of the patient. The cushion is loaded with a pliable material making it to a great degree of comfort for all ages and as a result of the fastener it is easy to convey. Pillow support systems provide comfort and accuracy during imaging studies such as coatings give impervious hindrance to infections and microbes, available in vinyl or fabric coatings that resist puncture or tearing. Designed with high-grade memory foam ensure maximum comfort, to eliminate repeat testing and minimal movement.Read Report @The Pillow Support Systems market is driven by global increasing rate of accidents, increasing demand for various diagnostic imaging instruments. Further increasing prevalence of osteoporosis and back, neck pain and hike in geriatric population is fueling global Pillow Support Systems market.However, the unawareness about Pillow Support Systems, and advanced technologies in Pillow Support Systems can impact negatively on the revenue growth of the Pillow Support Systems Market and restrain the growth of the global market over the forecast period. Side effects or adverse effects associated with Pillow Support Systems are also hindering the growth of global Pillow Support Systems market. Lack of awareness for advanced technologies in Digital Imaging technology is another restraining factor in global Pillow Support Systems market.Request Sample Report @Players in Pillow Support Systems Market are adopting new pillow support systems technologies as the key strategy. Owing to high revenue and demand in the image diagnosis (X-Ray etc.), players are investing to build up their product diversity. By distribution channel, hospitals are anticipated to grow in positive traction owing to global rising awareness for pillow support system as a preventive major during surgery. By product type neck pillow support systems are expected to garner larger share in global Pillow Support Systems market due to increased prevalence of neck pain and related issues.Geographically, Pillow Support Systems market is segmented into regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America and Europe regions are anticipated to hold larger market revenue share in pillow support systems market over the forecast period. Awareness of Pillow Support Systems is anticipated to fuel the revenue growth in the Asia Pacific region. The countries like India and China are attractive markets for key players for global Pillow Support Systems market.Buy now @The key players in Pillow Support Systems Market include NoMoCo Pillow, Inc., Sissel UK Ltd, Putnams, to name a few.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Hybrid Solar Wind Market size was over USD 700 million in 2015 with forecast of more than 8% from 2016 to 2024

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High urge for reliable power supply along with strict legislations to curb the release of GHG in the atmosphere will push hybrid solar wind market growth. Moreover, favorable government policies encouraging the use of renewable energy along with strict regulation executions for reducing power consumption is expected to positively influence the industry growth.Hybrid solar wind systems find key applications across industrial, residential, and commercial sectors. High requirement for continuous electricity supply is anticipated to drive the hybrid solar wind industry revenue across the commercial sector. Hybrid solar wind market size in industrial sector worth USD 224 million in 2015, is anticipated to witness a significant growth over the coming years. Government efforts to minimize carbon emissions is expected to drive the growth. The rise in the number of electrification programs across the emerging economies, primarily concentrating on decentralizing the power generation, will boost the industry growth across the residential sector.Standalone and grid connected are the major products through which hybrid solar wind systems are deployed. Grid connected hybrid solar wind industry size is expected to record a CAGR of 10% over the period of 2016-2024. Net metering, low deployment costs, and feed in tariff are the key growth drivers. Standalone hybrid solar wind market revenue is expected to grow significantly over the coming years, owing to its cost-effectiveness as compared to grid connected products.Request for Sample Copy of this research report @Below are the regional trends influencing hybrid solar wind market over 2016-2024Growing investments across renewable energy projects is projected to drive Australia hybrid solar wind industry size over the next few years. The government of Australia has allocated USD 1 billion funds for clean energy technology projects.Chile hybrid solar wind market revenue is anticipated to grow at a rate of 11% over the period of 2016-2024.Shortage of power supply and high demand for off grid electricity will favor Nigeria hybrid solar wind industry outlook over the next few years.South Africa hybrid solar wind industry revenue is expected to hit USD 12 million over the coming timeframe.Government policies encouraging the use of sustainable energy along with rural electrification programs are expected to boost India hybrid solar wind market trends.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @U.S. hybrid solar wind industry will grow considerably over the coming years, driven by heavy focus on consumption of renewable energy along with beneficial government policies supporting energy conservation.Market participants will try to enhance their ROI through product differentiation as well as technological innovations. Key industry participants include Blue Pacific Solar Product Inc., Alpha Windmills, Alternate Energy Company, ReGen Powertech, Unitron Energy System Private Limited, Polar Power Inc., Zenith Solar Systems, Gamesa, Grupo Dragon, and Supernova Technologies Private Limited.Browse Related ReportDistributed Solar PV Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Germany, UK, Italy, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa), Application Development, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016  2023About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary researchContact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
New Wave In CryptoTrading 2018

Nakamoto Capital is proud to announce Pre-ICO of its new project  CoinPlace platform. This is the first platform in the world that offers P2P service for direct trading of cryptocurrency of any volume or kind (bitcoin, altcoin, etc.) CoinPlace is eBay for the whole variety of cryptocurrencies and tokens. It is PayPal for new businesses based on the ICO model.Now users buying crypto assets face a number of challenges: high service fees, loss of anonymity while working with exchanges, a time consuming verification process, complex user interfaces that most exchanges use (see, this one for example), and a very limited number of payment methods.As a result people who are unfamiliar with the crypto market, get a feeling that it is impossible to enter the market off the street and that "this whole subject is too complicated and incomprehensible, you try to make sense of this crypto enigma" Founders of CoinPlace platform themselves walked the same path several years ago.After studying the subject thoroughly they founded the Cryptocurrency Investment Fund Nakamoto Capital. Having been successfully operating for a year they have finally decided to hold an ICO of their own platform.CoinPlace CEO George Blagov says "by the end of this year we are planning to operate with more than 100 digital assets, and in five years to hold more than 50 percent of the ICO tokens market and more than 40 percent of P2P crypto assets trading market.The team of CoinPlace has a rather ambitious goal  to bring the crypto market into mainstream and to make it universally accessible.The visionary and the founder of the project Stan Teo emphasizes the difficulties currently awaiting any participant in crypto economy. "Today only one percent of people in the world who have the financial resources can buy ICO tokens because they know how. With the help of CoinPlace we want to increase this number to 50-70 percent.On top of that, people have to use several third party organisations (banks or exchanges) to buy altcoins with fiat currency. This means excessive service fees, a time consuming verification process and delayed reception of funds. CoinPlace platform allows anyone to trade crypto assets in just a few clicks directly avoiding the middleman. Moreover, any beginner will be able to buy any digital currency or tokens also in just a few clicks, and we will help them make an informed decision as to which asset is worth acquiring."oinPlace is not just an idea, it is already a functioning product (at alpha testing stage). Its market already exists and is growing rapidly. CoinPlace business model implicates that it will meet operating revenue in six months.In summary, CoinPlace provides an opportunity to securely exchange digital assets. All transactions are made directly between users, and the platform acts as an escrow. The project team ensures the security of transactions via smart contracts with minimal oversight of the buying and selling process."We are also implementing an innovational system beneficial to both buyers and sellers: it will allow to trade real crypto assets below the exchange price. We are now testing three radically new protocols that we plan to gradually implement in our project within eight months after launch of the platform" says George Blagov."We are going to change the whole crypto world for the better, and provide easier access to this world. For that we need to substantially simplify all operations for every participant of crypto processes to enable more people who now have no access to the crypto market to invest in an ICO" explains Stan Teo. "We will give them an opportunity to buy tokens not just with crypto assets as is currently possible, but with fiat money."CoinPlace is excited to announce that it supports almost every means of 2 payments: from interbank transfers to quasi cash and payments through Contact or WesternUnion.Project leaders believe that precisely such a symbiosis of payment methods, fiat and crypto assets, the combination of simple and familiar with the new and complex, promotion of the Cryptoeconomics phenomenon itself, and informative explanation of its benefits, is the most direct way to develop the new digital economy  a new relationship between people and the crypto world.Perhaps due to CoinPlace the crypto geek community will lose its aura of elitism, and the phenomenon of crypto knowledge will no longer be inaccessible and incomprehensible. Crypto economy will become user-friendly, uncomplicated, easy to understand and secure. At least that is what the members of CoinPlace team strive to achieve.Visit coinplace.info for details.Contact us for more information: news@nakamoto.newsOr +7 (977) 775 51 46 or + 7 (917) 577 81 81Oxana IvanchenkoOur company collects the information and distributes it to the press from all over the world.Vandal Media CenterRussia, Moscow, 9 Maslovka Sttel. +79175778181e-mail news@nakamoto.newsalina@nakamoto.news
Distributed File Systems and Object Storage 2017 Global Market Key Players  IBM, CLoudian, Dell EMC, Hitachi, DataDirect Networks, NetApp  Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market

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Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling and the financial health of the organization.This report studies the global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market, analyzes and researches the Distributed File Systems and Object Storage development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeIBM (US)CLoudian (US)DataDirect Networks (DDN) (US)Dell EMC (US)Hitachi Data Systems (US)Caringo (US)NetApp (US)Panasas (US)Red Hat (US)HGST (US)SUSE (Germany)Request a Sample Report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoLocal StorageShared StorageMarket segment by Application, Distributed File Systems and Object Storage can be split intoIT and TelecommunicationRetailTransportation and LogisticsBFSIGovernmentEducationOtherIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Distributed File Systems and Object Storage1.1 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market Overview1.1.1 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage 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 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market by Type1.3.1 Local Storage1.3.2 Shared Storage1.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 IT and Telecommunication1.4.2 Retail1.4.3 Transportation and Logistics1.4.4 BFSI1.4.5 Government1.4.6 Education1.4.7 Other2 Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage 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 IBM (US)3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 CLoudian (US)3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 DataDirect Networks (DDN) (US)3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Dell EMC (US)3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Hitachi Data Systems (US)3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Caringo (US)3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 NetApp (US)3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Panasas (US)3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Red Hat (US)3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 HGST (US)3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 SUSE (Germany)Continued.Buy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Biochar Market projected to experience a CAGR of 14.5% during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025

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Biochar is a charcoal which is obtained by heating different waste products such as wood waste, agricultural waste, animal manure and forest waste. These waste products are used as feedstock for production of biochar. Biochar is produced mainly through modern pyrolysis processes in which direct thermal decomposition of biomass waste in the absence of oxygen, resulting into biochar along with bio-oil and syngas. Biochar obtained is rich in carbon content and is fine grained residue. Biochar can also be obtained using different technologies such as gasification, microwave pyrolysis, etc.Request For Free Sample Report @The report estimates and forecasts the biochar market on the global, regional, and country levels. The study provides forecast between 2017 and 2025 based on volume (Tons) and revenue (US$ Thousand) with 2016 as the base year. The report comprises an exhaustive value chain analysis for each of the product segments. It provides a comprehensive view of the market. Value chain analysis also offers detailed information about value addition at each stage. The study includes drivers and restraints for the biochar market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. The study also provides key market indicators affecting the growth of the market. The report analyzes opportunities in the biochar market on the global and regional level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through quantitative and qualitative data. These have been verified through primary and secondary resources. Furthermore, the report analyzes substitute analysis of biochar and global average price trend analysis.Global Biochar Market: Key Research AspectsThe report includes Porters Five Forces Model to determine the degree of competition in the biochar market. It comprises qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein end-users and countries have been analyzed based on attractiveness for each region. Growth rate, market size, raw material availability, profit margin, impact strength, technology, competition, and other factors (such as environmental and legal) have been evaluated in order to derive the general attractiveness of the market. The report comprises price trend analysis for biochar between 2017 and 2025.Secondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report.In-depth interviews and discussions with wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report. Primary research represents the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. Key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and strengthening secondary research findings. Primary research further helped in developing the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.Global Biochar Market: SegmentationThe study provides comprehensive view of the biochar market by dividing it into feedstock, application and geography. The biochar market has been segmented into woody biomass, agricultural waste, animal manure, and others. Application segments electricity generation, agriculture, forestry and others have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends.Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for biochar in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Additionally, the report comprises country-level analysis in terms of volume and revenue for end-user segments. Key countries such as the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., China, India, Japan, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil have been included in the study. Market segmentation includes demand for individual end-users in all the regions and countries.Browse Full Report with TOC @Global Biochar Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the global market. Major players profiled in the report Pacific Pyrolysis Pty Ltd, Vega Biofuels, Inc., Full Circle Biochar, Genesis Industries LLC, Diacarbonn Energy Inc., Earth Systems Bioenergy, Agri-Tech Producers, LLC , Pacific Biochar, Phoenix Energy, Biochar Supreme LLC, CharGrow, LLC, Cool Planet Energy Systems. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview (wherever applicable).The global Biochar market has been segmented as follows:Global Biochar Market  Feedstock Type AnalysisWoody BiomassAgricultural WasteAnimal ManureOthersGlobal Biochar Market  Application AnalysisElectricity GenerationAgricultureForestryOthersGlobal Biochar Market  Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaS.CanadaEuropeGermanyK.FranceItalySpainRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaASEANRest of Asia PacificMiddle East & AfricaSouth AfricaGCCRest of Middle East & AfricaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilRest of Latin AmericaEnquire about this Report @About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Barcoding Software Market 2018 Emerging Opportunities by Application, Specification, Technology with Forecasts Report 2017 to 2022

ReportsWeb

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http://www.reportsweb.com/global-barcoding-software-market-size-status-and-forecast-2017-2022

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Global Barcoding Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2017-2022 newly adds in ReportsWeb.com database. This report covers leading key company profiles with information such as business overview, regional analysis, consumption, revenue and specification.This report studies the global Barcoding Software market, analyzes and researches the Barcoding Software development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like Jolly Technologies, Seagull Scientific, ASAP Systems, Cristallight Software, iWinSoft, TEKLYNX, Optima Warehouse Solutions, NiceLabel, Almyta Systems, Assetware Technology, Barcode Software, Aulux Technologies and Tharo.Get FREE Sample Copy of this report atMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. Market segment by Type, the product can be split into One-dimensional Barcoding, Two-dimensional Barcoding and 3D Barcoding. Market segment by Application, Barcoding Software can be split into Commodity Circulation, Library Management, Post Management, Banking System and Others.Access Report Details atTable of Content1 Industry Overview of Barcoding Software2 Global Barcoding Software Competition Analysis by Players3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Jolly Technologies3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Barcoding Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Seagull Scientific3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Barcoding Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 ASAP Systems3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Barcoding Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Cristallight Software3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Barcoding Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments4 Global Barcoding Software Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)5 United States Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook6 EU Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook7 Japan Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook8 China Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook9 India Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook10 Southeast Asia Barcoding Software Development Status and Outlook11 Market Forecast by Regions, Type and Application (2017-2022)12 Barcoding Software Market Dynamics13 Market Effect Factors AnalysisPurchase complete report atContact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comOrganization: ReportsWebPhone: +1-646-491-9876ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.533, 5th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Wine Barrel Market - Present Scenario and the Growth Prospects with Forecast 2026

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https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/wine-barrel-market

A wine barrel is a hollow cylindrical container, traditionally made of Oak wood staves and bound with wooden or metal hoops. The wine barrel is majorly used for the aging of wine. After the fermentation of wine, it gets stored in the barrel for sedimentation of large solid particles and make it smooth. While the aging process, various flavors are imparted to wine as it goes through various chemical changes and allows a slow introduction of oxygen into the wine. Wine barrels are last for up to 100 years. While the aging of wine in barrels, usually gets the 50% extract that the barrel has on the first use and it gets decrease simultaneously as per the further utilization.Get an exclusive sample of this report @Wine Barrel Market: DynamicsThe global wine barrel market has expected to register the significant growth as a demand of wine is increasing globally over the forecast period. Use of oak wine barrels for aging the wine makes it rich in taste and quality which is leading factor drives for the growth of the global wine barrel market. The controlled oxidation takes place during the aging in the barrel and resulted into decreased astringency and increased colour and stability of wine over the use of other barrels made up of plastic and metals which also boost the global wine barrel market in terms of revenue and volume.However, the many wine producers have started using alternative to oak wine barrels such as oak powders, chips and blocks in the normal metal vats of wine to give the essence of oak aromas and flavors which hampers the growth of the global wine barrel market. The prices of the oak wine barrels are increasing due to the difference between demand and supply, which can also restrain the growth of the global wine barrel market.Obtain Report Details @Wine Barrel Market: Regional OutlookIn terms of geography, the global wine barrel market has been divided into five key regions, including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Middle East & Africa (MEA). The global wine barrel market has expected to register moderate growth over the forecast period. North America has contributed the major share to the global wine barrel market due to the rapidly growing parent market of wine in the North America. North America followed by Europe has also registered a significant growth rate in terms of revenue due to increasing demand of wine. Latin America and APAC are also contributing descent market shares to the global wine barrel market over the forecast period. MEA is at nascent stage in the global wine barrel market and anticipated to register the healthy growth over the forecast period.Wine Barrel Market: Major PlayersSome of the key players of the global wine barrel market are OENEO, Francois Freres, THE BARREL MILL, Seguin Moreau Napa Cooperage, StaVin Inc., G & P Garbellotto S.p.A., Barry's Barrels, Canton, Bouchared Cooperages Australia PTY. Ltd. and Nadalie Australia.Various global companies are contributed descent growth to the global wine barrel market. The key players from North America and Europe has contributed major share to the wine barrel market in terms of revenue and volume.About FMIFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact FMI3rd Floor, 207 Regent Street,London W1B 3HHUnited KingdomT: + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790D: +44 (0) 20 3287 4268Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.com
CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Global Market Top Key Players  Leco , Horiba , Jung-Instruments , Bruker , Eltra , NCS and Forecast to 2021

CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market

https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2501537-global-cs-analyzer-high-frequency-infrared-market-report-2017

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Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) MarketDescriptionWiseGuyReports.Com adds Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Report 2017 Research To Its Database.With the slowdown in world economic growth, the CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of -5.53% from 133.8 million $ in 2013 to 112.8 million $ in 2016, Bis Report analysts believe that in the next few years, CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2021, The market size of the CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) will reach 103.6 million $.This Report covers the manufacturers data, including: shipment, price, revenue, gross profit, interview record, business distribution etc., these data help the consumer know about the competitors better. This report also covers all the regions and countries of the world, which shows a regional development status, including market size, volume and value, as well as price data.Get sample Report @Besides, the report also covers segment data, including: industry segment, channel segment etc. cover different segment market size, both volume and value. Also cover different industries clients information, which is very important for the manufacturers. If you need more information, please contact Bis ReportSection 1: FreeDefinitionSection (2 3): 1200 USDManufacturer DetailLecoHoribaJung-InstrumentsBrukerEltraNCSDekaiQilinHigh-speed AnalyzerNCS TestingBaoyingDeyangkeruiKeguoHuaxinAoxiangYingzhichengYanruiJinshiBoqiWanliandaxinkeSection 4: 900 USDRegion SegmentationNorth America Country (United States, Canada)South AmericaAsia Country (China, Japan, India, Korea)Europe Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy)Other Country (Middle East, Africa, GCC)Section (5 6): 500 USDIndustry Segmentation (Metals, Ceramics, Ores, Cement, Other)Channel (Direct Sales, Distributor) SegmentationSection 7: 700 USDTrend (2017-2021)Section 8: 700 USDDownstream ConsumerSection 9: 200 USDCost StructureSection 10: 500 USDConclusionEnquiry About Report @Table of Contents -Major Key PointsSection 1 CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Product DefinitionSection 2 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Manufacturer Share and Market Overview2.1 Global Manufacturer CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Shipments2.2 Global Manufacturer CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Revenue2.3 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market OverviewSection 3 Manufacturer CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.1 Leco CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.1.1 Leco CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.1.2 Leco CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Distribution by Region3.1.3 Leco Interview Record3.1.4 Leco CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Profile3.1.5 Leco CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Product Specification3.2 Horiba CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.2.1 Horiba CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.2.2 Horiba CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Distribution by Region3.2.3 Interview Record3.2.4 Horiba CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Overview3.2.5 Horiba CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Product Specification3.3 Jung-Instruments CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.3.1 Jung-Instruments CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Shipments, Price, Revenue and Gross profit 2013-20163.3.2 Jung-Instruments CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Distribution by Region3.3.3 Interview Record3.3.4 Jung-Instruments CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Overview3.3.5 Jung-Instruments CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Product Specification3.4 Bruker CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.5 Eltra CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business Introduction3.6 NCS CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Business IntroductionSection 4 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Region Level)4.1 North America Country4.1.1 United States CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.1.2 Canada CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.2 South America Country4.2.1 South America CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3 Asia Country4.3.1 China CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.2 Japan CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.3 India CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.3.4 Korea CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4 Europe Country4.4.1 Germany CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.2 UK CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.3 France CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.4 Italy CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.4.5 Europe CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5 Other Country and Region4.5.1 Middle East CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5.2 Africa CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.5.3 GCC CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Size and Price Analysis 2013-20164.6 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Region Level) Analysis 2013-20164.7 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Region Level) AnalysisSection 5 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Industry Level)5.1 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Industry Level) Market Size 2013-20165.2 Different Industry Price 2013-20165.3 Global CS Analyzer (High Frequency Infrared) Market Segmentation (Industry Level) Analysis..CONTINUEDAbout UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, Industry research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)
Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market Expected to Expand a 6.6% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024

MRRSE

https://www.mrrse.com/sample/2124

https://www.mrrse.com/nickel-alloy-welding-consumables-market

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https://www.mrrse.com/

https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/

This research study analyzes the market for nickel alloy welding consumables in terms of revenue (US$ Bn) and volume (kilo tons). The nickel alloy welding consumables market has been segmented on the basis of product, alloy type, welding technology, end use applications, and geography. The geographical segmentation includes regions, which are further divided into 20 countries. The report features a detailed regional segmentation with market growth forecasts for the period between 2016 and 2024. For the research, 2015 has been considered as the base year and 2016 the estimated year, while all forecasts have been given for the period from 2016 to 2024. Market data for all the segments has been provided at the regional and country-specific levels from 2016 to 2024.Request For Free Sample Report @The report provides a broad competitive analysis of companies engaged in the development of nickel alloy welding consumables. The report also includes key market dynamics such as the drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the global nickel alloy welding consumables market. These market dynamics are analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report with the help of supporting graphs and tables. The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of the market with the help of the Porters Five Forces Analysis model, which helps in understanding the five major forces that affect the structure and profitability of the global nickel alloy welding consumables market. The forces analyzed are the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of new entrants, the threat of substitutes, and the degree of competition.The high-level analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the nickel alloy welding consumables business globally. There are currently numerous drivers for the market. The most prominent drivers include rapid growth in various industries such as transportation and power and the increasing use of nickel and its alloys. With nickel finding applications in renewable energy including wind and solar energy, the nickel alloy welding consumables market may find new avenues for demand generation. Lack of skilled workers and knowledge about the use of welding technologies and welding consumables might act as restraints for the consumable market. Market attractiveness analysis and comparison analysis was carried out for the nickel alloy welding consumables market on the basis of product, alloy, technology, application, region, and country. Market attractiveness was estimated on the basis of common parameters that directly impact the market.The global nickel alloy welding consumables market has been segmented on the basis of products into stick electrodes and wires. By welding technology, the market has been segmented into shielded metal arc welding, gas metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding, flux cored arc welding, and submerged arc welding. By alloy type, the market has been segmented into monel alloys, inconel alloys, and other alloys. Furthermore, the nickel alloy welding consumables market has been segmented by various end-use applications including oil & gas, power, construction, marine, and other applications. Other applications consist of the transportation and manufacturing sector. Applications such as transportation and manufacturing are expected to occupy a leading share in the nickel alloy welding consumable market.Browse Full Report with TOC @In terms of geography, the market has been segmented into five regions: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. China is expected to remain the dominant market in the nickel alloy welding consumables with market for nickel alloy welding consumables reaching 417.74 kilo tons by 2024. GCC countries are anticipated to show a significant growth rate of 7.14% in the period between 2016 and 2024. The rapid development in infrastructure and trading activities in the emerging economies of the region, such as Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, will boost the market for nickel alloy welding consumables.Key players in the nickel alloy welding consumables market are Ador Welding Ltd., Colfax Corporation, Illinois Tool Works, Inc., Kobe Steel, Ltd., Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc., MEC Holding GmbH, Sandvik Materials Technology AB, Special Metal Corporation, Tianjin Golden Bridge Welding Materials Group Co., Ltd., and voestalpine Bohler Welding GmbH. Other players included are Arcos Industries, LLC, Berkenhoff GmbH, Cor-Met Inc., Kunshan Gintune Welding Co., Ltd., Linan Dayang Welding Material Co., Ltd., Oxford Alloys, Inc., Ramtec Welding Products Limited, Senor Metals Pvt. Ltd., and Weld Mold Company.Nickel alloy welding consumables market: By ProductStick ElectrodesWiresNickel alloy welding consumables market: By TechnologyShielded Metal Arc WeldingGas Metal Arc WeldingGas Tungsten Arc WeldingFlux Cored Arc WeldingSubmerged Arc WeldingNickel alloy welding consumables market: By Alloy TypeMonel AlloysInconel AlloysOther AlloysNickel alloy welding consumables market: By ApplicationOil & GasPowerConstructionMarineOther ApplicationsNickel alloy welding consumables market: By RegionNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaEuropeGermanyFranceThe U.K.ItalySpainRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaASEANRest of Asia PacificMiddle East & AfricaGCCEgyptSouth AfricaRest of Middle East and AfricaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaEnquire about this Report @About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Cushings Disease Treatment Market Estimated to Soar Higher During 2017 - 2025

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/cushings-disease-treatment-market.asp

https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14155

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Cushing disease is caused by tumour in the pituitary gland which leads to excessive secretion of a hormone called adrenocorticotrophic (ACTH), which in turn leads to increasing levels of cortisol in the body. Cortisol is a steroid hormone released by the adrenal glands and helps the body to deal with injury or infection. Increasing levels of cortisol increases the blood sugar and can even cause diabetes mellitus. However the disease is also caused due to excess production of hypothalamus corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) which stimulates the synthesis of cortisol by the adrenal glands. The condition is named after Harvey Cushing, the doctor who first identified the disease in 1912. Cushing disease results in Cushing syndrome. Cushing syndrome is a group of signs and symptoms developed due to prolonged exposure to cortisol. Signs and symptoms of Cushing syndrome includes hypertension, abdominal obesity, muscle weakness, headache, fragile skin, acne, thin arms and legs, red stretch marks on stomach, fluid retention or swelling, excess body and facial hair, weight gain, acne, buffalo hump, tiredness, fatigue, brittle bones, low back pain, moon shaped face etc. Symptoms vary from individual to individual depending upon the disease duration, age and gender of the patient. Disease diagnosis is done by measuring levels of cortisol in patients urine, saliva or blood. For confirming the diagnosis, a blood test for ACTH is performed. The first-line treatment of the disease is through surgical resection of ACTH-secreting pituitary adenoma, however disease management is also done through medications, Cushing disease treatment market comprises of the drugs designed for lowering the level of cortisol in the body. Thus patients suffering from Cushing disease are prescribed medications such as ketoconazole, mitotane, aminoglutethimide metyrapone, mifepristone, etomidate and pasireotide.Report overview @Cushings disease treatment market revenue is growing with a stable growth rate, this is attributed to increasing number of pipeline drugs. Also increasing interest of pharmaceutical companies to develop Cushing disease drugs is a major factor contributing to the revenue growth of Cushing disease treatment market over the forecast period. Current and emerging players focuses on physician education and awareness regarding availability of different drugs for curing Cushing disease, thus increasing the referral speeds, time to diagnosis and volume of diagnosed Cushing disease individuals. Growing healthcare expenditure and increasing awareness regarding Cushing syndrome aids in the revenue growth of Cushings disease treatment market. Increasing number of new product launches also drives the market for Cushings disease Treatment devices. However availability of alternative therapies for curing Cushing syndrome is expected to hamper the growth of the Cushings disease treatment market over the forecast period.Cushings disease treatment market revenue is expected to grow at a good growth rate, over the forecast period. The market is anticipated to perform well in the near future due to increasing awareness regarding the condition. Also the market is anticipated to grow with a fastest CAGR over the forecast period, attributed to increasing investment in R&D and increasing number of new product launches which is estimated to drive the revenue growth of Cushings disease treatment market over the forecast period.Depending on geographic region, the Cushings disease treatment market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East & Africa (MEA).Request to sample report @North America is occupying the largest regional market share in the global Cushings disease treatment market owing to the presence of more number of market players, high awareness levels regarding Cushing syndrome. Healthcare expenditure and relatively larger number of R&D exercises pertaining to drug manufacturing and marketing activities in the region. Also Europe is expected to perform well in the near future due to increasing prevalence of the condition in the region.Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR because of increase in the number of people showing the symptoms of Cushing syndrome, thus boosting the market growth of Cushings disease treatment market throughout the forecast period.Some players of Cushings disease Treatment market includes CORCEPT THERAPEUTICS, HRA Pharma, Strongbridge Biopharma plc, Novartis AG, etc. However there are numerous companies producing branded generics for Cushing disease. The companies in Cushings disease treatment market are increasingly engaged in strategic partnerships, collaborations and promotional activities to capture a greater pie of market share.Buy now @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Processed Meat Market estimated to reach US$1.5 bn, expanding at an 8.4% CAGR by 2024

MRRSE

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https://www.mrrse.com/gcc-processed-meat-market

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Processed meat is popular across the world and its consumption varies from region to region. New flavors and convenient products are boosting the processed meat market globally. The GCC processed meat market has been segmented by meat type, product type, package type, and region. In terms of meat type, the market has been segmented into lamb, beef, and poultry. In terms of product type, the processed meat market has been segmented into: chilled processed meat, frozen processed meat and others. Under the chilled processed meat segment, the market is further categorized into burgers, nuggets, and others. Others segment includes kebab, and meat balls among others. Frozen processed meat is further segregated into hot dogs, mortadella, salami and others. The others processed meat segment includes shelf stable meat products. In terms of packaging type, the processed meat market has been segmented into: retail package and bulk package.Request For Free Sample Report @The research report on the GCC processed meat market offers detailed analysis of the processed meat products market in Qatar and rest of GCC and helps to understand the driving forces behind the popularity of this market. Under the scope of the report, detailed analysis of major segments and sub-segments of processed meat market for the Qatar and rest of GCC are provided for the historical years (2010-2014) and the next eight years (2016-2024). Moreover, the report includes in-depth analysis of the drivers, restraints, market trends, and future outlook of the industry. The strategies for stakeholders to succeed in the business have been comprehensively assessed in the report. It also provides an understanding of volume (million kg) and value (USD million) of processed meat consumption across GCC. The study highlights the current and future market trends, historical market (2010 to 2015), and provides forecast from 2016 to 2024.In terms of meat type, poultry accounts for the largest market share across GCC. Frozen processed meat, especially poultry led in terms of growth in 2015 and is expected to maintain its leading position over the forecast period. In general, poultry consumption in Saudi Arabia is on the rise. Burgers, franks, nuggets, salami, and hot dogs are favorite lunch items amongst the growing young population. They are conveniently stored and easily prepared when needed. Thus, the market of processed meat is expected to grow over the forecast period.In terms of product type, frozen processed meat type occupied the largest market share in the overall GCC processed meat market both in terms of revenue and volume in 2015. Processed meat sales are expected to be driven by frozen variants across all the countries in GCC. Chilled processed meat, on the other hand, does not enjoy the same variety, and these products also have a shorter life. For the processed meat market, the target segment is mainly foreign workers, who want to add some protein to their meals without spending too much money and time. Frozen processed meat product such as hot dogs, salami based packaged food products are very much popular among the younger generation across GCC. Another factor which is helping the processed meat market to grow in GCC countries mainly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE is the busy life style of people over the years.Browse Full Report with TOC @By country, the market has been segmented into Qatar and rest of GCC. This report helps distributors, suppliers and manufacturers to formulate strategies based on understanding of the trends in this market. Among the overall meat type segment, poultry is analyzed to be the most attractive segment for the processed meat market due to increasing health awareness among consumers in Qatar. Across the GCC, consumers are shifting from the consumption of red meat to poultry, as cholesterol content of red meat is high as compared to poultry. Growing popularity of processed meat based food products among the younger generation, and rising demand for organic food products, among others, are the major factors driving the processed meat market across GCC.The leading brands which have the maximum market share in processed meat market across GCC include National Food Co. (Americana Meat), Al Islami Foods, Sunbulah Group, BRF S.A., Tyson Foods, Cargill Inc., Gulf Food Industries and Almunajem among others.Enquire about this Report @About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Global Aerogels Market 2017: Key Players  Aerogel Technologies LLC, Airglass AB, American Aerogel Corporation, Aspen Aerogel (U.S.), BASF

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SummaryWiseguyreports.Com Adds Aerogels Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 To 2022According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Aerogels market accounted for $465.79 million in 2015, and is projected to register a CAGR of 21.7% to reach $1840.23 million by 2022. Favourable policies related to eco-friendly infrastructure, increasing application of aerogels in oil & gas, construction are the major factors fuelling the market growth. In addition, unique properties of aerogels such as thermal resistance, technological innovations are some of the other factors driving the market growth. The major constraints for the growth of aerogels market are high cost of production coupled with the complicated manufacturing process of aerogels which are negatively impacting the market.The carbon aerogel segment is expected to grow with a high CAGR during the forecast period. The growth of this segment is attributed to increasing application of carbon aerogel in electronics, super capacitors, and semiconductor applications. North America commands the aerogel market with a higher CAGR due to increasing transportation and construction. Asia Pacific is expected to witness fastest growth, over the forecast period.Request a Sample Report @Some of the key players in global aerogel market include Acoustiblok UK Ltd, Active Space Technologies, Aerogel Technologies LLC, Airglass AB, American Aerogel Corporation, Aspen Aerogel (U.S.), BASF, Cabot Corp, Dow Chemicals (U.S.), Enersens SAS, Guangdong Alison Hi-Tech Co. Ltd, Jios Aerogel Corporation, Nano High-Tech Co. Ltd, and Svenska Aerogel AB.Aerogel Types Covered: Carbon Polymer Silica Alumina Other Aerogel Typeso Chalcogelo CdSe aerogelo Safe Emulsion Agar gel (SEAgel)Applications Covered: Automotive Marine Aerospace Oil & Gas Construction Performance Coating Day lighting & LVHS Chemicals Electronics Other applicationso Apparelo Cryogenicso Power generationo AgricultureProcessing Covered: Virgin Aerogel Fabricated Aerogelo Additiveso CompositesForms Covered: Monolith Blanket Powder or Particle Panel BlocksRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptAt any Query @1 Executive Summary2 Preface2.1 Abstract2.2 Stake Holders2.3 Research Scope2.4 Research Methodology2.4.1 Data Mining2.4.2 Data Analysis2.4.3 Data Validation2.4.4 Research Approach2.5 Research Sources2.5.1 Primary Research Sources2.5.2 Secondary Research Sources2.5.3 Assumptions3 Market Trend Analysis3.1 Introduction3.2 Drivers3.3 Restraints3.4 Opportunities3.5 Threats3.6 Product Analysis3.7 Application Analysis3.8 Emerging Markets3.9 Futuristic Market Scenario4 Porters Five Force Analysis4.1 Bargaining power of suppliers4.2 Bargaining power of buyers4.3 Threat of substitutes4.4 Threat of new entrants4.5 Competitive rivalry5 Global Aerogels Market, By Aerogel Type5.1 Introduction5.2 Carbon5.3 Polymer5.4 Silica5.5 Alumina5.6 Other Aerogel Types5.6.1 Chalcogel5.6.2 CdSe aerogel5.6.3 Safe Emulsion Agar gel (SEAgel)6 Global Aerogels Market, By Application6.1 Introduction6.2 Automotive6.3 Marine6.4 Aerospace6.5 Oil & Gas6.6 Construction6.7 Performance Coating6.8 Day lighting & LVHS6.9 Chemicals6.10 Electronics6.11 Other Applications6.11.1 Apparel6.11.2 Cryogenics6.11.3 Power generation6.11.4 Agriculture7 Global Aerogels Market, By Processing7.1 Introduction7.2 Virgin Aerogel7.3 Fabricated Aerogel7.3.1 Additives7.3.2 Composites8 Global Aerogels Market, By Form8.1 Introduction8.2 Monolith8.3 Blanket8.4 Powder or Particle8.5 Panel8.6 BlocksContinued....What our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsBuy NowContact infoContact Us: sales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRESS:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Neuro-oncological diseases device Market to Witness Growth Acceleration During 2017 - 2025

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Neuro-oncological diseases are the disorders that are typically caused due to the growth of a benign or malignant tumor in the brain or any part of the central nervous system. Neuro-oncological tumors are highly fatal, and so their diagnosis becomes a topic of foremost importance. There are a number of neuro-oncological diagnosis devices based on a variety of techniques for the diagnosis of neuro-oncological diseases. Due to the changing lifestyle, changing environmental conditions and other factors, the incidences of neuro-oncological diseases are increasing swiftly which in turn leads to the growth of neuro-oncological diagnosis device market.View Report Preview @As per the data of German Brain Tumour Association incidence rate of the malignant tumor is 3.4 per 1,00,000 people worldwide. Also, the association claims that every day 700 people are diagnosed with malignant tumors. This data clearly illustrates the requirement of neuro-oncological diagnosis devices worldwide. The higher resolution power and increased efficiency of the newer neuro-oncological diagnosis devices also make their market to boom.The market for neuro-oncological diagnosis devices is most likely to be driven by the worldwide statistics that shows the prevalence of cancer around the globe. Also, the growing incidence rates of neuro-oncological diseases will play a key role in the growth of the market. The advancement in the technology makes it easier for doctors to understand various types of neuro-oncological diseases and so they always prefer newer neuro-oncological diagnosis devices over the older neuro-oncological diagnosis devices. Neuro-oncological disorders are highly fatal, and therefore even the patients do not compromise with their safety and in the case of only a few symptoms they prefer to go for a neuro-oncological disease diagnostic test.The neuro-oncological diagnosis devices are very expensive, but even this factor can not become a limitation to this market cost of neuro-oncological diagnosis devices can not overpower the function these devices perform. Hence, even after the high cost, the neuro-oncological diagnosis device market is projected to grow over the forecast period.Request to View Sample of Research Report @The market for the neuro-oncological diagnosis devices is currently in its growth phase. With the advancement in technology, neuro-oncological diagnosis devices with higher resolution power and better accuracy are being manufactured. The market for neuro-oncological diagnosis devices is expected to grow swiftly in the forecast period due to the increase in the number of patients suffering from neuro-oncological disorders. Also, the growing awareness of people about the advancements in the neuro-oncological diagnosis devices makes way for the growth of the market of devices with more sophisticated technologies. Neuro-oncological diagnosis devices like MRI machines are being manufactured which are based on the techniques like contrast enhancement and dynamic contrast enhancement.The market for neuro-oncological diagnosis devices is most developed in the North American and European region owing to the funds that government provides for research and development of high-quality neuro-oncological diagnosis devices. The market for the devices is also increasing rapidly in Asia Pacific due to new policies of governments which fascinates manufacturers for manufacturing neuro-oncological diagnosis devices in these countries. Neuro-oncological diagnosis device usage is obligatory in the diagnosis of fatal diseases. Therefore, many under-developed economies of middle east and Africa also have a large market for neuro-oncological diagnosis devices.Some of the key participants of neuro-oncological diagnosis devices include .Buy now @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Portable Gas Chromatograph Market Revenue Growth Predicted by 2025

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The Portable gas chromatograph does not require any external electrical connections. The Portable gas chromatograph instrument may vary in size and portability from an independent unit size, as small as a small suitcase which can be carried easily by a single person to a much bigger unit wanting auxiliary gas supply and which will require many people to transport. Many Portable gas chromatograph devices do not have any provision to heat the columns, detector or the injection port. Because of this, there is a limitation in analyzing the volatile compounds. Therefore, this results in deviation of retention times with ambient temperature. Likewise, late-eluting peaks will be weakly formed and will then not be useful for quantification.View Report Preview @Applications of Portable gas chromatograph are MTBE and BTEX On-site Rapid Screening of Contaminated Ground Water, Rapid Field Detection of Chemical Warfare Agents, Volatile Organic Compound Identification in Water, Trihalomethanes Identification in Drinking Water, Volatile Organic Compounds Screening in Soil, Volatile and Semi volatile Compound Screening of Cocoa Raw Materials and Chocolate Products, Profiling of Essential Oil VOCs and SVOCs, Onsite Illicit Drug Identification, Semi-quantitative Determination of Volatile Oligomers of Halogenated Compressor Oil in a Manufacturing Process Accelerated Trace Level Detection of Selected VOCs in Air, Using a Needle Trap Device with a Portable gas chromatograph.The key driver to the Portable Gas Chromatograph market is the rising awareness about the therapeutic applications of Portable Gas Chromatograph. Rise in increasing investments by the governmental bodies will ultimately rise the market for Portable Gas Chromatograph. Low maintenance costs and manufacturing costs of Portable Gas Chromatograph is alluring the end users to adopt this market. However, the costly setup and lack in expertise is restraining the Portable Gas Chromatograph market. Moreover, the strict rules and regulations by different governments is creating difficulties for the Portable Gas Chromatograph market.Request to View Sample of Research Report @Geographically, North America is the dominating region in the Portable Gas Chromatograph market owing to the advancing biopharmaceutical field in this region. Also, rising awareness of Portable Gas Chromatograph has fueled the Portable Gas Chromatograph market.US holds the prominent market in the Portable Gas Chromatograph market in North America trailed by Europe including Germany, France and UK. The Asian market for Portable Gas Chromatograph is also expected to witness a high CAGR during the coming years. Increased foreign investments.In this region will also boost the Portable Gas Chromatograph market ahead. China and Japan are projected to be the fastest growing in the Portable Gas Chromatograph market.Currently, the global Portable Gas Chromatograph market is highly competitive owing to the involvement of many established players. Some of the key players in the global Portable Gas Chromatograph market are ABB Ltd., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Emerson Electric Co., Elster Group GmbH., PerkinElmer, Inc., Siemens AG, SRI Instruments, Shimadzu Corporation and Thermo Fisher Scientific.Buy now @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Transfection Reagents and Equipment Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2025

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Transfection is a process of introducing genetic material such as DNA or RNA into eukaryotic cells to enable the production or expression of proteins using the cells own machinery. A double stranded RNA transfection is employed to stop the production of certain proteins by hindering the translation process. The process of transfection enables the study of gene functioning and expression, genetic mutations, and protein functioning. Transfection can be divided into two types: stable and transient. Stable transfection is a process in which the transfected genetic material remains in the genome, during which a marker gene is co-transfected that gives selective advantage to the cell. In transient transfection, the induced gene is transiently expressed and hence is not incorporated into the nuclear genome, which is further diluted or degraded during the course of mitosis.Report Overview and TOC @The transfection reagents and equipment market is driven by increased focus on the development of protein therapeutics, government initiatives to support health care, and increasing prevalence of diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, increase in mass production of proteins is projected to propel the market in the near future. Similarly, advances in cell research, target validation and drug discovery, and technological advances such as synthetic genes, whose demand has been growing, are anticipated to contribute to the growth of the market. Furthermore, a number of patent expiries during the forecast period are expected to fuel the growth of the biosimilars market. Development of biosimilars is highly dependent on the combination of genomic, proteomic, and cytological analysis, which would involve a significant application of transfection procedures. However, risk associated with the process of inserting genetic material into the cell, high cost of the transfecting reagents and equipment, selective effectiveness of transfecting reagents, the cytotoxic effects associated with the process, and the growing applications of home brew reagents are likely to hamper the growth of the market.Request brochure @The transfection reagents and equipment market can be segmented based on product, application, end-user, and region. In terms of product, the market can be segmented into reagents and equipment. Reagents can be sub-segmented into lipid mediated transfection, DEAE-dextran, calcium phosphate, magnetic beads, activated dendrimers, and cationic polymers. Transfection equipment can sub-segmented into liposome mediated, electroporation, microinjection, laserfection, and adenoviral vectors, and others. The reagents segment is anticipated to record significant growth during the forecast period owing to the ease of the method and cost effectiveness. Based on application, the transfection reagents and equipment market can be segmented into gene expression, biomedical research, protein production, and others. In terms of end-user, the market can be segmented into research institutes, biotechnology companies, and others.for Specific and Customized requirements@Geographically, the transfection reagents and equipment market can be segmented into five regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is anticipated to be the high revenue generating region, closely followed by Europe. Rising demand for genomics technology and proteomics and increased government spending on health care in these regions contribute to the growth of the market. The market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to expand at a high CAGR during the forecast period. Increased outsourcing of clinical trials to countries in Asia, rise in demand for protein therapeutics, and developing health care infrastructure primarily in China and India fuel to the growth of the market. The transfection reagents and equipment market is in a nascent stage in countries in Middle East & Africa.Leading players in the transfection reagents and equipment market include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Merck Millipore, QIAGEN N.V., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Promega Corporation, Lonza Group, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Polyplus-transfection SA, Altogen Biosystems, and GE Healthcare.Pre Book full report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.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:
Electro-diagnostics Market to Represent Significant Revenue Growth -2025

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Electro-diagnostics is a testing process which measures the speed or degree of electrical activity in the body. Electro-diagnostics equipment are employed to study the electrical conduction or activity of muscle and nerve impulse. These devices help practitioners or physicians for their recommend diagnosis for patients such as myopathy, neuropathy, neuromuscular junction disorder, and plexopathy. Major electro-diagnostic study includes nerve conduction studies (NCS), somatosensory evoked potential studies (SSEPs), and electromyography (EMG). The study of nerve function is performed by NCS, which is done by the application of electrical impulses through electrodes placed on the skin. Electromyography is carried out by a small needle electrode which is inserted into various muscles of the body to reveal the status of the muscles electrical activity.Report Overview and TOC @Advancement in technology, safe electro-diagnostic devices with portable features, low power consumption, accuracy, and capacity to incorporate advanced diagnostic features are major drivers for growth of electro-diagnostic equipments. Increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases and rising geriatric population are propelling the expansion of the electro-diagnostic devices market. An important factor is that the health fraternity depends heavily on diagnostic equipment. Consciousness about health has uplift the global health care spending. These are major market drivers for the expansion of the electro-diagnostic equipment market. However, high cost of devices, economic instability, and high maintenance cost are key factors that hinder the market growth of these devices.Request brochure @The global market of electro-diagnostic devices can be segmented into diagnostic device (electroencephalography (EEG), electroretinography (ERG), electrocardiography (ECG), and electrogastrography (EGG)), by end-user (clinics, hospitals, home /ambulatory care research centers, rehabilitation centers, surgical centers, diagnostic centers, and physician offices), by therapeutics devices (wearable pain management devices, wearable glucose/insulin monitoring devices, wearable respiratory therapy devices).In terms of geography, the global market of electro-diagnostic devices can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of World (RoW). North America is a significant market for electro-diagnostic devices due to the inventions of advanced technology, and wide spread awareness about device advancements. Rising preference for an independent lifestyle, need for the elderly and physically-challenged individuals to explore the world, increased longevity, and the staggering cost of caregiver services have fuelled the demand for mobility devices globally, apart from increased government support and reimbursement facilities. Asia Pacific is a rapidly expanding market for electro-diagnostic devices due to increasing healthcare expenses, high patient base, and high cost of medical treatment in the region are key factors that are boosting the expansion of the market of electro-diagnostics in Asia. Europe and Rest of world are also the other global markets for electro-diagnostic devices.for Specific and Customized requirements@Presently, the advanced electro-diagnostic equipment has conquered the limitations of earlier diagnostic equipment. Advancement in technology provides the physician with live, more precise, and recordable information. This has led to a global increase in demand for electro-diagnostic equipment.Top players operating in the global market of electro-diagnostic devices include Zephyr Performance Systems (Medtronic plc.), Boston Scientific Corporation, Abbott Vascular Devices, Siemens Medical Solutions Cleveland Medical Devices, Inc., OMRON Corporation, Corventis, Inc. (Medtronic plc.), Fitbit, Inc., Koninklijke Philips N.V., LifeWatch AG, Intelesens Ltd., Nuubo, Polar Electro, Basis Science, Sotera Wireless, Inc., and Polar Electro Oy. These companies have a prominent position in the global market. Few companies such as Fitbit, ResMed, Inc., and Philips Healthcare, are offering intense competition to these top players with their innovative and advanced product designs. Major players of the global market launch new products, which are acquired by smaller companies, to extend their product market and simultaneously develop their own products by advantage of the core competencies, thereby enhancing their product line. Companies are also looking at acquisitions in this market to expand their capabilities and position themselves in this expanding market.Pre Book full report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.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:
Dry Eye Disease Market to Surge at a Robust Pace in Terms of Revenue Over 2025

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Dry eye disease is a disorder of the tear film that occurs when the eyes are incapable to produce tears, which are required to maintain lubrication and moisture on the surfaces of the eyes. It is commonly known as dry eye syndrome or dry eye. Major symptoms include irritation, blurred vision, and burning sensation. If left untreated, it leads to pain, ulcers, and loss of some vision. Complete loss of vision is uncommon with the dry eye disease. Alternative medical terms which are used to describe the dry eye disease include keratoconjunctivitis sicca (affects cornea and conjunctiva), keratitis sicca (dryness and inflammation of the cornea), and dysfunctional tear syndrome (inadequate quality of tears).Report Overview and TOC @The two types of the disease are aqueous tear-deficient dry eye and evaporative dry eye. In aqueous tear-deficient dry eye, the lacrimal glands fail to produce ample of the aqueous component of tears to uphold a healthy eye surface. Evaporative dry eye may result from inflammation of the meibomian glands. These glands make the lipid part of tears that slow down evaporation and keep the tears stable. Globally, the dry eye disease affects approximately 60 million people. This disorder can affect individuals of any age, but it is most common in elderly people (prevalence of about 5%-30% above the age of 60 years). It affects primarily women as compared to men due to hormonal changes. Use of certain medications such as antihistamines, analgesics, and antidepressants increases the risk of developing the dry eye disease. People with diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and thyroid problems are more likely to have symptoms of the disease.Request brochure @The dry eye disease has been recognized as an inflammatory process. The primary approach to treat the disease includes adding tears using over-the-counter artificial tear solutions, increasing tear production (omega-3 fatty acid), and treating the inflammation (topical cyclosporine and topical corticosteroids). Drug manufacturing companies such as Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. are focused on new treatment strategies, targeting potential targets such as glucocorticoid receptor which can improve the current standard of care. Additionally, the dry eye disease has become a target for device development (Oculeve neurostimulator device) which addresses different and innovative ways to treat the disease. As of 2017, the clinical pipeline of the disease consists of 50 drug molecules, out of which 44% are small molecules, 2% are small molecules, 21% are peptides, and 33% are others. Increased in research and development expenditure, development of new treatment strategies, growth in patient awareness about the treatment are factors fueling the dry eye disease market. However, increase in use of self-medication such as over-the-counter medications or home remedies acts as a key restraint for the growth of the dry eye disease market.The global dry eye disease market has been segmented by product type and geography. Based on product type, the market has been divided into small molecules, biologics, and others. The small molecules segment is expected to grow as compared to other therapeutic segments because the majority of pipeline molecules for the treatment of dry eye disease are small molecules.for Specific and Customized requirements@Geographically, the global market is classified into five regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. The Europe and North America markets are expected to grow as compared to the Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa markets due to higher prevalence rate, increase in the use of other medications such as antihistamine, and rise in geriatric population. Asia Pacific is likely to be an emerging market in the next few years due to the developing health care infrastructure, rising government expenditure in the health care industry, increasing use of effective diagnostic tools, and growing prevalence rate of the disease. However, lack of proper treatment and poor patient awareness are restraining the growth of the market in regions such as Middle East & Africa and Latin America.Major players operating in the dry eye disease market include Novartis International AG, Ocular Therapeutix, Inc., Allergan Plc., LTT Bio-Pharma, RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., Alcon Research, Ltd., Xigen SA., Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and Novaliq GmbH.Pre Book full report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.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:
Global Fire Resistant Fabric market 2017 - TenCate, Milliken, Mount Vernon, SSM Industries, Springfield

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Fire Resistant Fabric Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Fire Resistant Fabric Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Fire Resistant Fabric industry, and estimates the future trend of Fire Resistant Fabric market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Fire Resistant Fabric Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportTenCateMillikenMount VernonSSM IndustriesSpringfieldCarringtonKlopmanSafety ComponentsDelcotexGoreThe market research report explores the Fire Resistant Fabric market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Fire Resistant Fabric Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Fire Resistant Fabric market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Fire Resistant Fabric. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Fire Resistant Fabric market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Fire Resistant Fabric is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Fire Resistant Fabric market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Fire Resistant Fabric market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The global Fire Resistant Fabric market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Fire Resistant Fabric production volume, data pertaining to demand and Fire Resistant Fabric supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Fire Resistant Fabric along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Fire Resistant Fabric across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Data Quality Tools Global Market Top Key Players  Experian , Informatica , SAP , SAS Institute , Trillium Software (Harte Hanks Company) and Forecast to 2021

Data Quality Tools Market

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Global Data Quality Tools MarketDescriptionWiseGuyReports.Com adds Global Data Quality Tools Market 2015-2019 Research To Its Database.Data quality tools refer to the wide range of tools required for ensuring quality and reliability of data in various business processes including core business operations, BI, analytics, and decision making. The data quality vendors offer a wide range of functionalities including data profiling, monitoring, parsing, standardization, and data enrichment. These tools are applied on customer data, financial data, and product data to improve the quality of data. Many organizations use data quality tools to avail the benefits of Big Data.The analysts forecast the Global Data Quality Tools Market to grow at a CAGR of 17.11 percent over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this ReportThis report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the Global Data Quality Tools market for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the sales of data quality tools. The report also specifies the revenue generated from software and services. The report also details the revenue generated from the deployment of on-premises and cloud models.Get sample Report @It presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top five vendors in the Global Data Quality Tools market. To calculate vendor share, the report considers revenue generated from software licenses and services. In addition, the report discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the Global Data Quality Tools market. It also outlines the challenges faced by vendors and the market at large, as well as the key trends emerging in the market.Key Regions Americas APAC EMEAKey Vendors Experian Informatica SAP SAS Institute Trillium Software (Harte Hanks Company)Other Prominent Vendors ActivePrime Attaccama Business Data Quality DataMentors Datiris DQ Global IBM Infoglide Software Infoshare Systems Innovative Systems Intelligent Search Technology Melissa Data Oracle Pitney Bowes RedPoint Talend UniservMarket Driver Increased Demand for Data Quality Functions in Big Data For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Challenge Inconsistency in Collection of Data For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Trend Increased use of Data Quality Tools for Marketing For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Questions Answered in this Report What will the market size be in 2019 and what will the growth rate be? What are the key market trends? What is driving this market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Enquiry About Report @Table of Contents -Major Key PointsExecutive SummaryList of AbbreviationsScope of the Report03.1 Market Overview03.2 Product OfferingsMarket Research Methodology04.1 Market Research Process04.2 Research MethodologyIntroductionMarket Description06.1 Data Quality Process in Data Integration Workflow06.2 Functions of Data Quality Tools06.3 Data Types for Data Quality ToolsMarket Landscape07.1 Market Overview07.2 Global EDM Market07.3 Global Data Quality Tools Market07.4 Global Data Quality Tools Market as Segment of Global EDM Market07.5 Five Forces AnalysisMarket Segmentation by Deployment Model08.1 Segmentation of Global Data Quality Tools Market by Deployment Model 201408.2 Global On-premise Data Quality Tools Market08.3 Global Cloud Data Quality Tools Market08.4 Difference between Cloud and On-premise Data Quality ToolsMarket Segmentation by Revenue09.1 Segmentation of Global Data Quality Tools Market by Revenue 201410 Geographical Segmentation10.1 Segmentation of Global Data Quality Tools Market by Geography 201411 Buying Criteria12 Market Growth Drivers13 Drivers and their Impact14 Market Challenges15 Impact of Drivers and Challenges..CONTINUEDAbout UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, Industry research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)
Barclays Wealth Market 2017  By Analyzing the Performance of Various Competitors

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SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Super League In-Depth Analysis: Barclays Wealth"Super League In-Depth Analysis: Barclays Wealth 2017", is a comprehensive analysis of Barclays Wealths wealth management operations. It offers insight into the companys strategy, financial results, and marketing activities. It also covers recent merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, customer targeting, and product innovation.Headquartered in London, Barclays Wealth operates as part of Barclays Wealth, Entrepreneurs and Business Banking. It is part of Barclays UK operations and one of the companys two main divisions. Some wealth and investment management services are also aligned under Barclays Africa division and Barclays International, the private banking division.It provides in-depth analysis of the following - Insight into Barclays Wealths growth strategy.- Overview of the firms organizational structure.- Clear presentation of its geographical coverage and expansion strategy, including M&A activity.- Analysis of the firms financial performance, including comparison with other global wealth managers.- Examination of key target client groups.- Analysis of Barclays Wealths product and service proposition and how it is unique compared to those of its competitors.- Review of Barclays Wealths marketing and social media activities.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Scope- Barclays Wealth provides wealth management services to clients in the UK through a network of regional experts.- Barclays is withdrawing from non-core markets, focusing on its major markets in a strategic effort to reduce risk and costs.- Barclays Wealths assets under management (AUM) decreased in 2016, reflecting the companys divestment activities.- Entrepreneurs are one of Barclays key target groups. The company sponsors programs to support start-ups and help high-growth companies scale up.Key points to buy- Examine the financial performance and key ratios for Barclays Wealth and benchmark this competitor against other global wealth managers.- Explore Barclays Wealths recent M&A and growth strategies and their impacts on its AUM growth and financial performance.- Understand Barclays Wealths client targeting strategies and examine whether these have been successful.- Learn more about Barclays Wealths marketing strategy, social media presence, and digital innovations.Table of ContentsExecutive SummaryStrategyFinancial PerformanceCustomers & ProductsMarketing & AdvertisingAppendixFor 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
Global Saturated Polyester Resin market 2017 - Allnex, DSM, Evonik, Hitachi Chem, Stepan

Global Saturated Polyester Resin market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Saturated Polyester Resin Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Saturated Polyester Resin Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Saturated Polyester Resin industry, and estimates the future trend of Saturated Polyester Resin market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Saturated Polyester Resin Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportAllnexDSMEvonikHitachi ChemStepanNIPPON GOHSEIHexionArkemaSK ChemCSE GroupArakawa ChemicalTCVNuplexDIC CorpRoyal Gent IndHelios ResinsGOO ChemKimteksCiech ChemSynthopolSIR IndTUPSino-French IndShenjian New MaterialTiansongThe market research report explores the Saturated Polyester Resin market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Saturated Polyester Resin Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Saturated Polyester Resin market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Saturated Polyester Resin. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Saturated Polyester Resin market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Saturated Polyester Resin is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Saturated Polyester Resin market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Saturated Polyester Resin market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The global Saturated Polyester Resin market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Saturated Polyester Resin production volume, data pertaining to demand and Saturated Polyester Resin supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Saturated Polyester Resin along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Saturated Polyester Resin across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Digital Fare Meters Market to Reflect Impressive Growth Rate During 2017 - 2025

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Global Digital Fare Meters Market: OverviewDigital fare meters are electronic devices which are installed in taxicabs and auto rickshaws, which is used to calculate fare on the basis of distance travelled and waiting time. The digital fare meters have ticket receipt printers embedded in them, GPS systems to assist with the location and safety of the travelers. Credit and prepaid card support, Bluetooth support for communication with smartphones and tablets and other electronic devices, USB support. GPS technology has been used in digital taxi meters in order to protect the citizens from overpaying. Initially the digital taxi meters were based on optical transducer but due to the difference in the timer in the measurement controller and the module the reading were inaccurate, and the taxi owners chose longer roots to fake the digital fare meter readings. With the digital meter the customers can get benefits of a printed copy and SMS notifications. The digital fare meter has three basic functions which are for hire, Hired and stopped. The digital fare meters have built-in real time clock for automatic transitions from day fare to night fare, as the fare prices change from day fare to night fare.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Digital Fare Meters Market: Market DynamicsThe global digital fare meter is driven by factors such as accurate reading, easy to install, temper proof, weather proof, high durability and easy compatibility. As the digital fare meters are low in maintenance they are widely preferred by end users. The demand for global digital fare meters is expected to increase due rules and regulations set by governments regulatory bodies. The restrain for the global digital fare meter would be the cab services offered by new market players which use online technology to calculate the fare such as android based fare meter.Global Digital Fare Meters Market: Market SegmentationThe global digital fare meters market has been classified by digital fare meter type, vehicle type and sales channel.On the basis of type of digital fare meters, the global digital fare meters market is segmented into:Meters with printersMeters with without printersOn the basis of vehicle type of digital fare meters, the global digital fare meters market is segmented into:Auto RickshawTaxiOn the basis of sales channel, the global digital fare meters market is segmented into:OEMAftermarketAuto rickshaw segment has the higher rate of usage of digital fare meters. Digital fare meter with printers are expected to grow at a higher CAGR.Global Digital Fare Meters Market: Regional OverviewBased on the geographies, the global digital fare meters market is fragmented into seven key regions- Latin America, North America, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific except Japan and Japan. Among the regions mentioned above, Asia-pacific except japan has highest share for global digital fare meters followed by Japan. North America and Western Europe will see a decrease in the usage of digital fare meter due to increase in android based technology. Eastern Europe has a sluggish growth rate for the global digital fare meter market, other than Asia pacific the global digital fare meter market is expected to witness a steady growth rate. Overall the global digital fare meter market is expected to grow at a steady growth rate for the forecasted period. Auto rickshaw segment has the higher rate of usage of digital fare meters. Digital fare meter with printers are expected to grow at a higher CAGR.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global Digital Fare Meters Market PlayersSome of the market players identified in the global digital fare meters market includes:Sansui ElectronicsPulsar Technologies (I) Pvt. LtdPrecision Electronic Instruments Co.Pricol LimitedSuper Meter Mfg. Co.MIJO AUTO Meter Pvt. LtdSuperb Meter Mfg. Co.Automotive Techno Co. Inc.National Meter Mfg. Co.Maruti Meter Mfg. CorporationUnique Digital MetersHydaker IndustriesSrisenthilnathan Meter WorksAr. Micro Equipment Pvt. Ltd.Smart Technology systemsAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Servo Press Market to Register Substantial Expansion by 2025

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Servo Press Market: IntroductionA servo press uses a servomotor that basically makes a slide a controllable axis instead of a flywheel, main motor and clutch. The servo-driven press is coming on strong in the market where mechanical presses still dominate the manufacturing and stamping industry. In the recent years, press-makers have come up with a variety of types and designs of servo presses to overcome issues associated with traditional mechanical presses. The servo press provides end users the ability to control slide position and velocity within the range of microns. This helps gain better control of the forming stroke, ultimately improving performance and efficiency. Automotive is one of the major drivers for the growing demand of servo presses as the industry is realizing the benefits of this new technology. Engineers are coming up with new designs, which are inclined towards improving the forming capabilities of these presses and using high strength materials. The transition to high-strength steels and advanced materials and the necessities of producing parts that meet the shape and tolerance requirements in automotive and other industries has forced end users to shift towards servo presses. In the last few years, many small sized servo presses are finding applications in high technology based sectors, such as aerospace and defense.A sample of this report is available upon request @Servo Press Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe sales of servo presses will continue to make headway into the press market as they meet the increasing demand for cost effective, consistent and reliable manufacturing. The market in the developed regions will be driven by replacement of traditional presses with servo presses that can generate various combinations and operate on broad types of dies, components and production speeds and strokes. Adding to this, slide motion, slide position and speed are also programmable in servo presses. Asia Pacific is one of the worlds most strongly expanding regions, due to growing manufacturing activities in developing nations in this region. The upswing in the regional mechanical engineering industry and growing demand for automation technology offer a promising future for the servo press market. Major countries that will drive growth in this region are China, followed by Korea and India. Manufacturers are taking steps to align their portfolios to meet high precision end-user requirements in order to sustain growth in the servo press market. The traditional mechanical press can still achieve high production speeds when compared with a servo press. However, technological advancement in the sector is estimated to overcome these limitations in the coming years. The initial investment required to acquire a servo press is relatively high as compared to that for its traditional counterparts. In the long term, the benefits associated with servo presses provide enough operational savings to cope with the increased investment.Servo Press Market: SegmentationOn the basis of technology, the servo press market can be segmented into:Link AssistedDirect DriveOn the basis of model type, the servo press market can be segmented into:UnitStandaloneHeadServo Press Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global servo press market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe and Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and Middle East and Africa (MEA). In the coming years, Western Europe, Japan and North America are expected to witness notable growth in this market. The alignment towards adopting latest technology and advantages of servo presses over traditional presses are two factors expected to drive the demand for servo presses in these developed regions. APEJ and Latin America regions are expected to register significant growth, due to ongoing rapid industrialization boom in the developing countries of these regions. MEA and Eastern Europe are also expected to register healthy CAGRs over the forecast period.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Servo Press Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants identified across the value chain of the global servo press market include:AIDA CompanyFagor ArrasateFesto GroupKomatsu LimitedPromess IncorporatedS. I. InstrumentsSchimidt TechnologySEYI SHIEH YIH Machinery Industry Co., Ltd.Stamtec Inc.Tox PressotechnikAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Beverage Packaging Market - Production, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2025

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The global beverage packaging market, valued at over US$ 186 billion in 2015, is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of over 3% through 2020 and beyond. In the backdrop of innovation in packaging techniques, beverage companies are able to experiment with their packaging, enhancing their functionality and sustainability. The key trend expected to shape up the beverage packaging landscape during the forecast period 2015-2025 are,Get an exclusive sample of this report @Shift from glass to plasticPlastic bottles are becoming more ubiquitous by the day owing to their advantages over glass bottles. Choosing plastic over glass is an easy decision for manufacturers looking to reduce weight, speed up transportation, and reduce packaging costs. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are expected to witness steady demand from end-use sectors during the forecast period 2015-2025.Increasing emphasis on personalisationBeverage packaging has relied upon the mass production model for years; however, as consumer aspirations shift to personalisation and greater customisation, brands are adopting collaborative design ideas to cater to the shifting trends. Co-creation is gathering steam in the beverage packaging landscape, with Coca Cola and Nutella collaborating with consumers to create the packaging that they desire.Increase in one-person packagingPackages designed for one-person households are gaining traction as the percentage of one-person households continue to increase in key, lucrative markets. During the forecast period, multipacks of individual portions will include a significant revenue share of the global beverage packaging market.Obtain Report Details @Next-generation packaging will make inroadsThe next-generation packaging market, valued at over US$ 32 billion in 2015, will witness steady increase in global revenues, and reach US$ 58 billion by 2025. Active packaging, intelligent packaging, and modified atmosphere packaging are expected to gain adoption among end-users.Beverage Packaging Market: Region-wise Analysis and ForecastAsia Pacific (excluding Japan) and North America will continue to be the two largest markets for beverage packaging globally, closely followed by Western Europe. The beverage packaging market in APEJ will continue to witness steady gains during the forecast period. Accounting for a revenue share of over 25% in 2015, the APEJ market will continue to offer growth opportunities to existing and new entrants, as the beverage industry in the region witnesses a period of progression. Among all the regions, the market will witness fastest gains in APEJ.About FMIFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact FMI3rd Floor, 207 Regent Street,London W1B 3HHUnited KingdomT: + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790D: +44 (0) 20 3287 4268Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.com
Rubber Additives Market Value Share, Analysis and Segments 2015 - 2023

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Rubber additives are chemicals or agents added during the processing and synthesis of rubber polymers. Rubber additives are incorporated with raw rubber polymer to enhance structural and mechanical properties, and improve the overall performance and quality of rubber. Various types of rubber additives include vulcanization accelerators & inhibitors, processing aids, adhesion promoters, chemical blowing agents, antiozonants and fillers. Vulcanization accelerators improve cross-linking efficiency, while inhibitors slow down the vulcanization process. Processing aids are used to reduce the viscosity of rubber. This helps fabricate rubber with other components and reduce the overall energy required during fabrication. Furthermore, adhesion promoters are used to improve the rubber-to-metal adhesion during tire manufacturing. Other rubber additives such as fillers are generally used to increase the stiffness of unvulcanized rubber. Tire & tubing, consumer goods, construction, and electrical insulation industries are some of the major end-users of rubber additives. Tire & tubing industry accounted for the largest market share of rubber additives in 2014.Global demand for rubber additives is significantly driven by increasing consumption of rubber polymers in tire manufacturing and electrical insulation industries. Tire manufacturing industry is the largest consumer of rubber. Vulcanization accelerators, process aids and oil extenders are some of the rubber additives used in tire manufacturing. Accelerators which are used commonly to increase the cross-linking efficiency during vulcanization include guanidines, thiazoles, thiurams and sulfur. Furthermore, processing aids such as chemical peptizers and some plasticizers help reduce the viscosity for easy fabrication and stabilization. Extenders used during designing of tire treads include clay and calcium carbonate. Electrical insulation in household and industrial constructions is another driver of global demand for rubber additives. Rubber is a bad conductor of electricity; hence, it is one of the favored insulation materials. Oil extenders are extensively used rubber additives that help reduce the overall insulation costs. Stabilizers such as esters of fatty acids are also added to improve the heat and voltage resistance of rubber. However, environmental concerns coupled with stringent governmental regulations may hamper market growth. Regulations are imposed on rubber manufacturing industries, especially for VOC emissions that cause air pollution.Request Report Brochure @In terms of global demand, Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest growing rubber additives market by the end of the forecast period. China is likely to lead in Asia Pacific, due to growth in automobile & rubber processing industries. Other countries that are likely to exhibit a similar trend include India and Japan. Furthermore, Vietnam is expected to have emerging rubber additives market by 2022, owing to the current trend in shift of rubber manufacturing bases from China. The rubber additives market in North America is likely to witness sluggish growth, as the region has established rubber & tire manufacturing markets. Currently, the U.S. is the leading market for rubber additives in North America. The country is likely to maintain its position by 2022. Demand for rubber additives in Europe (including France and Germany) is anticipated to decline, owing to stringent regulations and policies imposed by the European Union. In terms of export, the rubber additives market in Latin America (including Brazil) is estimated to be in the emerging state due to increase in rubber plantations and rubber processing industries in the region.Request For Customization@Global companies manufacturing rubber additives include Akzo Nobel N.V., King Industries, Inc., Arkema SA, Eastman Chemical Company, Thomas Swan & Co., Ltd and Lanxess Corporation.About Us  Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others.Contact Us:Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
China Phytases Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

Phytases Trends

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MarketResearchNest.com adds China Phytases Market by Manufacturers, Regions (Province), Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 115 pages with table and figures in it.This report studies the Phytases market, A phytase (myo-inositol hexakisphosphate phosphohydrolase) is any type of phosphatase enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of phytic acid (myo-inositol hexakisphosphate) - an indigestible, organic form of phosphorus that is found in grains and oil seeds - and releases a usable form of inorganic phosphorus.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Phytases in China market, to split the market based on manufacturers, Regions (Province), type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversBASF, DuPont, DSM, AB Enzymes, Beijing Smistyle, VTR, Jinan Tiantianxiang, Huvepharma, Novozymes, Vland Biotech GroupMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers South China Southwest China East China Northeast China North ChinaMarket Segment by Type, coversGranular Phytases, Powder Phytases, Liquid Phytases, Thermostable PhytasesMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoFood Industry, Pharmaceutical Industry, Feed IndustryRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Phytases industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
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.

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TMR Releases New Report on the Microinverters & Batteries Market 2015 - 2023

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Microinverters and batteries are the next breakthrough solution for residential and commercial based photovoltaic systems. Microinverters facilitate independent use of each solar panel within a solar system ensuring maximum energy output of renewable and clean source of energy for houses and businesses. Microinverters are small and compact in size and are designed to match single module or panel installation and thus help overcome difficulties involved with small roof accommodations. These are highly advantageous as they operate solely on independent DC to AC inverters and are very useful when panels require to be adjusted in more than one direction. Microinverters are far more superior to central or string inverters. Microinverters are characterized by flexibility, clean source of energy, safety and redundancy. Batteries are used to provide energy backup to photovoltaic systems at night time or at the time where solar energy is not sufficient to produce electricity. Popularly lead acid batteries due to their cost effectiveness, ability to recycle and safety are used in photovoltaic systems. Nevertheless, due to increased energy storage requirements lithium-ion batteries being compact in size, having longer life and less maintenance find increased application for use in residential and commercial areas. Microinverters and batteries are applicable to both battery-based and off-grid photovoltaic systems.Large numbers of solar panels are in operation worldwide and there increasing awareness of renewable energy to minimize power bills and reduce carbon footprint has increased adoption from various businesses and households. Due to characteristics such as precise monitoring of individual modules, improved holistic readout of system production and operation at lower voltage has led to increased adoption of micro-invertors worldwide, which has intensified the growth of microinverters and batteries. As microinverters are clean and economical source of energy, have long term benefits and more features as compared to conventional inverters, they have found growing demand in foreign market which has fueled growth of microinverter and battery market. Microinverters and battery market find increased opportunities in developing regions like France, Switzerland, the U.K. and Australia that open to adoption and implementation of newer technologies.Request Report Brochure @Microinverters and batteries face challenge in their installation pertaining to the high cost of installation and the restriction on energy production and storage for use to facilitate greater electricity demand. However companies like Enphase Energy and Vine fresh are coming up with large scale projects with capacities ranging between 2.30 MW to 3.1 MW. Additionally, microinvertors have growth opportunities in regards to geographical expansion and installation of commercial sized photovoltaic installations. Companies strive to remain competitive in the market through acquisition, mergers with photovoltaic module suppliers, launch of cost effective models, enhancing product offering and increasing their R&D expenditure. Moreover, newest trend adopted by companies in this market is offering the entire solar panel with integrated microinverters known as AC module which is a big step ahead for this technology.Request For Customization@Some of the key market players include Solaray Energy Pty Ltd., Enphase Energy, Schneider Electric SE, PowerSmart Solar, Panasonic Electric Works Europe AG, SolarBridge Technologies, Vine Fresh Produce, Ltd., SMA Solar Technology AG, ABB (ASEA Brown Boveri) Ltd., Enecsys Ltd., and others.About Us  Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others.Contact Us:Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Sol Gel Nanocoating Market Dynamics, Segments and Supply Demand 2015 - 2023

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In order to enhance products and add new properties to the existing technology, an increasing number of manufacturers are opting for sol gel nanocoating, thus driving their market. Sol gel nanocoating coats materials with a layer of nanocomposites and structured materials. This chemical way of coating substrate, can be used for a wide range of nanotechnological products and thus, a large number of manufacturers are preferring sol gel nanocoating technology. Sol gel nanocoating can be used on powders, ultra-thin coatings, aero gels, and fibers, among the various nanotechnological products. The global sol gel nanocoating market is expected to grow at a substantial rate in the period from 2015 to 2023 on account of the various benefits of this technology.The report is a comprehensive analysis of the market, its key segments, and also the vendors operating in the global sol gel nanocoating market. The report highlights key factors, both negative and positive, which are impacting the market. The impact of the drivers and restraints is also analyzed. The global trends which are influencing the industry have also been discussed in the report. Future opportunities, which are most likely to bring profits to the players in the market, both new and established are elaborated upon. The bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, the threat of substitutes, and the level of competition in the market are discussed at length. The obstacles or barriers faced by new entrants and the level of threat these new entrants have on other players in the industry are discussed.Request Report Brochure @Global Sol Gel Nanocoating Market: Trends and OpportunitiesSol gel nanocoating help in the enhancement of material properties such as surface energy modification, high abrasion resistance, improved scratch resistance, moisture control, and photocatalytics. They can be used on materials such as metallic, ceramic, papers, polymers, wood, and fibers. Thus their demand is increasing. On the other hand, the application process is complicated and this will be a major challenge for the market. In addition to this, the high cost will also hamper the growth of the market.The global sol gel nanocoating market is driven constant efforts taken by players in the market to bring about innovation and improve the technology. Thus, players are increasingly focusing on investing extensively in research and development. This is helping them in meeting the dynamic requirements of customers and also helping the market to grow.The report segments the global sol gel nanocoating market on the basis of end-user industries into marine, aerospace, electronics, automotive, and energy. Of these, the aerospace segment is expected to be the leading segment throughout the forecast period on account of the high level of accuracy and efficiency required in the aviation industry.Request For Customization@Global Sol Gel Nanocoating Market: Region-wise OutlookThe report segments the global sol gel nanocoating market on the basis of geography into Europe, the Rest of the World, North America, and Asia Pacific. Of these, North America is currently leading in their demand for sol gel nanocoatings. Europe follows North America in terms of leading regional segment. However, the growth of the European and North American markets for sol gel nanocoating is expected to experience a sluggish growth in the coming years. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the region, which experiences the most significant growth rate in the market over the forecast period. The high demand from the healthcare sector will help boost the sol gel nanocoating market in the Asia Pacific region.Key Players Mentioned in the ReportSome of the key players mentioned in the report are Inframat Corporation, Bio-Gate AG, Cima NanoTech Inc., Buhler PARTEC GmbH, and Eikos Inc. The report discusses the recent developments by these companies and their strategies employed to grow in the market. In addition to this, information regarding their strategic collaborations, partnerships, and mergers is given in the report.About Us  Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others.Contact Us:Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Renal Denervation Devices Market to Raise at a CAGR of 41.2% During 2012 and 2021

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According to a recent market research report released by Transparency Market Research, the global renal denervation devices market is estimated to take a leap at a CAGR of 41.2% during the period between 2012 and 2021. The report, titled Renal Denervation Devices Market  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, and Forecast 2012  2021, projects the global renal denervation devices market to be worth US$1.9 bn in 2021. The overall market was worth US$88.5 mn in 2012.Read Report @Growing prevalence of hypertension among urban population has significantly contributed to the growth of the global renal denervation devices (RDN) market. Renal sympathetic nerves are directly affected in hypertension. The report cites the increasing cases of treatment resistant hypertension and uncontrolled hypertension as the key factors driving the global renal denervation devices market. Short duration and permanent effect of renal denervation procedure will increase adoption of RDN devices. Further, rapid development of RDN devices and growing geriatric population worldwide will augment the growth of the global renal denervation devices market.However, the report mentions that the shortage of clinical evidence is restraining the expansion of the global renal denervation devices market. Lower awareness of RDN devices as compared to drug-based therapy along with unstable reimbursement regulations will hinder the growth of the overall market during the forecast horizon. The report points out that the renal denervation devices market has a huge opportunity to grow in the emerging economies.On the basis of technology, the global renal denervation devices market has been segmented into ultrasound- based renal denervation systems, renal sympathetic denervation procedure, radiofrequency-based renal denervation systems, and micro-infusion catheter-based renal denervation systems. In 2012, radiofrequency-based RDN devices accounted for the largest share of the market. Due to benefits such as time-efficiency and safety, radiofrequency-based RDN devices will continue to dominate the global renal denervation devices market.On the basis of product, the report focuses on ReCor Medicals Paradise, Boston Scientifics (Vessix Vascular) V2, Medtronics Symplicity, St. Judes EnlighHTN, and Covidiens OneShot. In 2012, Medtronics Symplicity accounted for around 85.5% market share. However, during the forecast period, this product is expected to face stiff competition from other emerging products in the market.The report studies the global renal denervation devices market across four key regions: Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Europe leads the global renal denervation market owing to a large number of research and development activities and device approvals. The region held 80% of the market in 2012 and is estimated to dominate the overall market during the forecast horizon. Asia Pacific is expected to follow Europe as the second largest market for renal denervation devices.Request Sample Report@The report profiles some of the key players in the global renal denervation devices market such as Medtronic Inc., Kona Medical, Boston Scientific Corporation, St. Jude Medical, Covidien PLC, CardioSonic, and Mercator Medsystems.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.com
Cardiac Rhythm Management Market: Global Demand, Growth Potential & Opportunity Outlook 2015 - Forecast to 2025

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Around 30% of total death worldwide is caused by cardiovascular diseases, of which major part is accounted by heart diseases. The risk factors of heart disease includes elevated cholesterol levels, diabetes mellitus, cigarette smoking, obesity and hypertension. Frequency of these factors varies demographically, i.e. on the basis of geography, sex ratio and ethnicity.Ischaemic heart disease, is the leading type of heart disease, and causes 46% of cardiovascular deaths in men and 38% in women.Cardiac rhythm management market is the established segment of cardiology devices market, used majorly in the treatment of patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF) and atrial fibrillation (AF).Read Report Preview:Cardiac Rhythm Management Market: Drivers & RestraintsAn implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is a specialized device designed to directly treat a cardiac tachydysrhythmia. High level of alcohol consumption, cholesterol levels and smoking obesity contribute to heart disease; continence of such lifestyle will increase the requirement of ICD implants. Lack of awareness about sudden cardiac arrests and high cost of the devices is expect to hinder the growth of the cardiac rhythm management market. Higher disposable income increase in number of aging population, technological advancement will spur the growth of global cardiac rhythm management market.Cardiac Rhythm Management Market: Region  Wise OutlookNorth America cardiac rhythm management market is matured and hold the major share of the total market. Asia  Pacific cardiac rhythm management market is expected to be the fastest growing market during the forecasted years. Manufacturers in the industry are looking forward for capitalized growth in developing countries such as China and India. With rapid technological advancement global cardiac rhythm management market is expected to increase at a double digit CAGR during the forecast period.Request to view Sample Report:Cardiac Rhythm Management Market: Key PlayersSome of the players in the cardiac rhythm management market we identified includes, Medtronic Plc, St. Jude Medical Inc, Boston Scientific Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, Biotronik, and Sorin Group.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.Buy Cardiac Rhythm Management Market Research Report:About UsFuture 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 and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.Contact Us616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): +44(0)20-7692-8790Sales: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market 2017 - Hospira, GaltNeedleTech, Teleflex, Vygon

Global Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) industry, and estimates the future trend of Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportBD MedicalC.R. BardSmiths MedicalB. Braun MelsungenTerumo MedicalRetractable TechnologiesNIPRO MedicalHospiraGaltNeedleTechTeleflexVygonMedline IndustriesDukwoo MedicalVigmedMVM Life Science PartnersShanghai Puyi Medical InstrumentsThe market research report explores the Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC). Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The global Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) production volume, data pertaining to demand and Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Peripheral Intravenous Catheters (PIVC) across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Skin Replacement Market: Global Demand, Growth Potential & Opportunity Outlook 2015 - Forecast to 2025

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Skin is the largest organ in human body which is highly dynamic in nature. It is composed of two layers, the outer layer called epidermis and the inner layer called dermis. Its network of nerves, blood vessels and cells thus acting as a protective armor. It serves the body in diverse ways. Its of paramount importance owning to its protective functionality. The skins protective function creates a barrier for internal organs and tissues from toxins, disease-carrying microbes, heat and cold and other dangers present in the environment. It also plays a significant role in regulating the body temperature and preserving bodys fluid balance. Nerves within skin sense the presence of potentially harmful agents, such as bees, and immune cells in the skin help to fight against these malicious agents. For the aforementioned reasons, the loss of skin due to burns or trauma can cause a severe blow to the human body; leading to impairment or sometimes elimination of many vital functions which it typically performs.John F. Burke invented the first synthetic skin, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Artificial skin considered to be the Holy Grail in treating burn victims for more than hundred years till a flexible material was found. It protects against dehydration and infection, easy to produce from ordinary substance and is completely acceptable by the victims immune system. The artificial skin can be easily sterilized and usually stored at room temperature. Skin replacement represents a prospective source of advanced therapy in combating acute and chronic skin wounds. With the capability of large scale production and immediate availability for grafting, its potential for use is easy and relatively economic among the burn patients.Read Report Overview:Skin Replacement Market: Drivers & RestraintsMuch progress has been made toward the development of artificial skin replacement products. Continued research promises to bring more products to the marketplace, and each new product seems to develop a niche in the field of skin replacement. Increased life expectancy, increasing disposable income and favorable demographics are some of the key factors driving the growth of the global skin replacement market.Bioengineered skin replacements are continually being developed and improved. The next generation of skin replacements will probably evolve from lessons learned from our understanding of wound repair and regeneration. Competition from low-cost substitutes, lack of clinical support are probable factors restraining the growth of the global skin replacement market.Skin Replacement Market: OverviewThough skin replacement is a new technology for emerging economies, but in the developed nations the same technology is in use for few decades. With increasing disposable income and rising urbanization the acceptance of skin replacements is gaining popularity. The global skin replacement market is expected to expand at a promising CAGR during the forecast period (2015-2025).Request to view Sample Report:Skin Replacement Market: Region-wise OutlookSkin replacement market is still in its early stage of maturity. The global skin replacement market is expected to register an optimistic CAGR for the forecast period. Depending on geographic regions, global skin replacement market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Skin Replacement Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market participants in global skin replacement market are Cellular Dynamics International, Cynata Therapeutics Limited, Platelet BioGenesis, Tengion, TissueGene, Inc.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types.Buy Skin Replacement Market Research Report:About UsFuture 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 and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.Contact Us616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): +44(0)20-7692-8790Sales: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Hospital and Laundry Boilers Market Research Report 2020: by Types, Application, Products, Technology, by Geography and Company Profile

North American Hospital Laundry Boilers Market

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Laundry and boilers services play an important role in sterilization and maintains contamination free environment in hospitals. Laundry service is responsible for delivery of adequate amount of clean and sterile linen to patients and healthcare professionals. The major tasks of laundry service include collection of linen, washing, drying and delivery to users. Boilers are used for steam and hot waters for vital needs, such as space heating and sterilization of linen and provide hygienic conditions for patients.The U.S. and Canada dominates the North American hospital and laundry boilers market due to improved healthcare infrastructure in the region. For instance, in 2012, American Hospital Association (AHA), a national organization that represents and serves all types of hospitals and healthcare networks conducted an annual survey of total number of registered hospitals in the U.S. This number was 5,723 in 2012. Registered hospitals are those hospitals that fulfill all the AHA criteria. This improved healthcare system in the U.S. has resulted in significant rise in demand of laundry and boiler services to main hygienic conditions for the patients and healthcare professionals.Read Report @In recent time, rising number of hospital admissions is key driver for the North American hospital and laundry boilers market. For instance, in 2010, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 2, 58,000 hospital admissions had registered for hip fractures among people aged 65 and above and the number is expected to reach 2, 89, 000 by 2030. This increasing number of hospital admissions requires sterile linen for their better comfort in hospitals. However, the high energy cost to operate boilers in hospitals is key restraint for the North American hospital and laundry boilers market. In addition, strict regulation associated with the generation of steam through boilers also obstructs growth of the North American Hospital and laundry boilers market. For instance, hospitals require accreditation from Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) for steam generation.Request Sample Report @Some of the major companies operating in the North American hospital and laundry boilers market are Parker Boiler Co., Indeck Power Equipment Co., Fulton, Powerhouse Equipment & Engineering Co., Inc., Smith Hughes Co., Nationwide Boiler, Inc., Energy Equipment Co., Inc., Reagan-Riter Boiler Works, Inc. and Energy Products Co..Buy now @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Instant Tea Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2025

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Tea is the most enjoyed beverage in the world that bestows a sensory experience to its drinker. Its components have been repeatedly researched and it has undoubtedly proven itself to be one of the best drinks. It is consumed in huge quantities because of its unique aroma, taste and flavors. Even though the demand for tea in Asia and Europe have been considerably huge, instant tea has also continued to gain an equal market share among the new tea drinkers in the non-tea drinking countries. Instant tea is a soluble type of tea powder that is either roasted or grounded in form. It has recently gained popularity over the traditional style of consuming tea as it is easier and quicker to prepare. The grounded crushed leaves of tea are extracted along with hot water to derive the desired tea flavor and aroma. Furthermore, these tea extract is then dried either by spray drying or freeze drying to prepare and pack the tea powder in glass jars or sachets. Individuals worldwide are found accepting instant tea rather than the traditional one as it is helping them to save time and resources in preparing the originally brewed tea.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Instant tea market is observed to gain an unprecedented growth in the global market and has several driving factors that are increasing the acceptance of this market. Clearly, instant tea has been dominating the market because of its convenience over fresh tea Due to the recent change in the lifestyle and urbanization penetrating the developing regions, youngsters are preferring instant tea and changing the social trend. Moreover, due to its availability in sachets, instant tea can be carried and prepared at workplace or during travel. Simultaneously the hassle of disposing the leftover tea is also reduced on consumption of instant tea. Innovation is another driver in maintaining the perennial demand of instant tea in the market. Although, its high popularity in the market the tea industry is facing high competition and commodification in the environment due to the availability of substitute products in the market. Additionally, consumers falling in the lower income group category find it difficult to buy and experience the culture to sipping a sophisticated beverage. Nevertheless, tea will always maintain its popularity as a widely consumed beverage globally.The instant tea market can be segmented on the basis of types and distribution channel. By product, the instant tea is available either spray dried or freeze dried. Under spray dried the tea extract gets sprayed with stream of hot air in a cylindrical tower. In this process the quality and aroma of the tea is preserved better. On the other hand, freeze drying involves the tea extract to be frozen below -40C and then crushed into granules. Even in this product type, the aroma and flavor is maintained due to low temperature and gentle drying conditions. The evolving retail concept all over the world has channelized the successful distribution of instant tea in to the market through departmental stores, hypermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores and online retail.Obtain Report Details @In terms of geography, instant tea market is consumed in all the regions of the world. North America, Europe, Asia- Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa have succeeded in attracting the consumers for its consumption. Asia Pacific and Middle East have been recently getting acquainted with the modernized lifestyle where consuming instant tea at cafeterias and tea joints are a trend. Europe and North America is forecasted to dominate this market where countries like UK, US, Turkey are heavy consumers of instant tea.Prominent vendors in the market for instant tea are Nestle, Starbucks, JDE, Strauss Tea, AMT Tea, Kraft Heinz, Tata Tea, Twinnings, Trung Nguyen, Lavazza are among the many other suppliers that are technologically advancing to produce instant tea.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:
Global Taurine market 2017 - Honjo Chemical, Yongan Pharmaceutical, Yuanyang Pharmaceutical

Global Taurine market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Taurine Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Taurine Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Taurine industry, and estimates the future trend of Taurine market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Taurine Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportTaisho Pharmaceutical(JP)Honjo Chemical(JP)Yongan Pharmaceutical(CN)Yuanyang Pharmaceutical(CN)Grand Pharma(CN)Fangming Pharmaceutical(CN)Jiangyin Huachang(CN)The market research report explores the Taurine market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Taurine Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Taurine market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Taurine. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Taurine market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Taurine is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Taurine market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Taurine market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The global Taurine market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Taurine production volume, data pertaining to demand and Taurine supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Taurine along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Taurine across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Global Mycoses Market to Receive Overwhelming Hike in Revenues by 2014  2020

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Mycoses are fungal skin infections caused by fungi and are primarily caused by three groups of fungi: dermatophytes, yeasts and molds. Dermatophytes cause fungal infections on head and feet, for instance, trichophyton and microsporum. Yeasts cause infections at the genital area, mouth area and esophagus. Example of yeast fungi includes candida and pityrosporum. Molds are responsible for infection in internal organs that results in systemic mycoses, for example, aspergillus. Systemic mycoses lead to the spread of fungi via bloodstream to other organs, causing multiple organ failure.Report Overview and TOC:Mycoses are caused due to weakened immune systems, i.e., immunocompromised state that includes patients with HIV/AIDS and patients being treated with corticosteroids for a prolonged period. Other causes include poorly controlled diabetes, being overweight, and any sort of contact with contaminated items such as clothes, towel, etc. Tests used to diagnose mycoses include a general physical examination of the body, complete blood count, skin biopsy, flow cytometry and immunophenotyping.Request brochure:Based on treatment, the mycoses market can be segmented as follows:Photodynamic therapy: The therapy uses laser light and a drug to destroy the fungal cancer cellsRadiation therapy: The therapy uses high-energy X-rays or radiation to prevent the fungal cells from spreadingChemotherapy: Chemotherapy stops the growth of fungal cells with the aid of various drugs, either by preventing the cells from dividing or by killing the cellsTargeted therapy: The therapy identifies the affected cells without harming normal cellsDrug medication: Antifungal medications such as amphotericin B, fluconazole, caspofungin, and itraconazole are used for the treatment of mycosesBased on geography, the mycoses market can be segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). Out of these regions, North America holds a leading position in the mycoses market followed by Europe. According to National Institutes of Health, mycoses affect approximately 200,000 people in the U.S. every year. The major factors which are driving the growth of the market in these regions are increasing prevalence of AIDS/HIV across the North American region, leading to weakened immune systems of individuals and constantly growing awareness about mycoses. Asia Pacific is also expected to be one of the promising markets for the growth of mycoses market due to faster developing rate of Asia Pacific countries.For Specific and Customized requirements@The advantageous factors which would accelerate the growth of the market in Asia Pacific are presence of large population base in countries such as China, Japan, and India, prevalence of numerous diabetes patients and, populations changing lifestyle and environmental conditions. Furthermore, various tax benefits and favorable reimbursement policies in developing nations are most likely to augment the growth of mycoses market.Various pharmaceutical companies are coming up with novel therapeutic treatments for mycoses. Some of the top players operating in mycoses market for mycoses therapeutic development are Bayer AG, Dr. Reddys Laboratories Limited, Helix BioMedix, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Pfizer, Inc., Nuvo Research, Inc., Moberg Derma AB, Novabiotics Ltd, Pacgen Biopharmaceuticals Corporation, Quinnova Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Xel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and others.Pre Book full report@About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Global AIDS Associated Dementia Market Set to Surge Significantly During 2014  2020

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Dementia is characterized by a set of symptoms which includes loss of mental abilities such as social abilities, thinking, memory and judgment. Dementia is severe enough to affect an individuals daily activities and functions accompanied by certain changes in personality. A person with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) develop severity of dementia, termed as AIDS associated dementia or AIDS Dementia Complex (ADC). AIDS associated dementia is primarily caused by viral proteins that damage nerve cells directly by infecting cells of the brain and spinal cord. AIDS associated dementia occurs in six stages: normal, subclinical, mild, moderate, severe and end stage.Report Overview and TOC:Additionally, a severe form of AIDS associated dementia includes symptoms such as speech problems, muscle weakness, vision problems, and loss of bowel control.Certain imaging diagnostic tests are used for the diagnosis of AIDS associated dementia: CT scan or MRI of the head and position emission tomography (PET). Other tests include spinal tap, Electroencephalography (EEG), and neuropsychological testing.Request brochure:Based on the treatment, the AIDS associated dementia market can be segmented as follows:Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART): Highly active antiretroviral therapy is used for the control of HIV infection and also protects people with HIV-positive from developing AIDS dementia complexDrug medication: Certain drugs may improve the symptoms of AIDS associated dementia such as antidepressant medications are administered to treat depression and antipsychotic medications are used to treat severe aggression, hallucinations and delusions. Various novel drugs such as abacavir, efavirenz, d4T, and indinavir are used are used to lessen the extent of HIV infection in the cerebrospinal fluid of an individual.Based on geography, the AIDS associated dementia market can be segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. Out of these regions, North America dominates the market followed by Europe. The factors which are driving the growth of AIDS associated dementia market are increasing incidences of HIV infection amongst the population, and growing awareness regarding the loss of mental abilities caused due to AIDS associated dementia. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1.1 million people in the United Sates are affected with HIV infection.For Specific and Customized requirements@Asia Pacific is one of the most promising markets for the growth of AIDS associated dementia market as the region is developing at a rapid pace. The advantageous factors which would accentuate the growth of the market in Asia Pacific are constantly increasing population density, and growing demand for more advanced treatment options especially non-surgical treatments. Furthermore, other factors such as major government support for various healthcare infrastructures, favorable reimbursement policies and easy market penetration would also fuel the growth of AIDS associated dementia market in the next few years.Various clinical trials are in development for the AIDS associated dementia therapeutics. Some of the top players involved in the clinical trial with regards to AIDS associated dementia market are GlaxoSmithKline plc, Centaur Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Glaxo Wellcome GmbH & Co. KG, Glaxo Wellcome GmbH & Co. KG and many others.Pre Book full report@About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Chromatography Instrumentation Market: Global Demand, Growth Potential & Opportunity Outlook 2015 - Forecast to 2025

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Chromatography is the most essential and well known separation technique which is extensively used across various industries. Chromatography is referred to as a technique that is used for the purification of biomolecules in which the components that are to be separated are distributed between two phases. Among these two phases, one is stationary phase and other is a mobile phase. All types of chromatography systems work on the same principle i.e., separation of sample mixture into stationary phase (solid or liquid supported on solid) and mobile phase (liquid or gas). Over the years chromatography technique and its instrument are being used in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies for the development of pure drug molecule. The instruments that are utilized in the chromatography have benefitted the researches due to their ability to separate, analyze and purify a molecule in an efficient and effective manner. These chromatography instrumentation techniques are used in various application areas such as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food production, diagnostics, genetic engineering, drug discovery and water analysis.Read Report Overview:The market for chromatography instrumentation holds an immense potential due to increasing number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Rising government investments for research purpose, expansion of chromatography companies in the Asian region and increasing collaborations among the existing players in the market are some of the other propelling factors for this market. The chromatography instrumentation market is also witnessing huge advancements in the design of column which is consequently raising the demand for development of better analytical resins and reagents. Additionally, emergence of green chromatography, usage of nanomaterial in chromatography and increasing usage of chromatography instrument for monoclonal antibody purification are some of the other opportunities that are fuelling the growth of this market. However, high cost of the chromatography systems and economic slowdown across the globe has resulted in decreased sales of chromatography systems. In addition need of skilled personnel for operates chromatography instrument is a factor which might restrict its demand in the global chromatography instrumentation market.Request to view Sample Report:Geographically, North America accounts for the largest share of the chromatography instrumentation market followed by the European region. The dominance of these regions in this market is seen due to growing government investments and funding for research. Further, augmented research and development activities of drugs and biologics and increasing number of conferences on chromatography are some of the key drivers of this industry. However, in the near future the U.S market is expected to decline its market share owing to the market maturity. Asia-Pacific region is expected to show healthy growth in the near future due to expansion of chromatography companies in the regions of India, China, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. Additionally, several major pharmaceutical companies are also increasingly outsourcing their drug and development services especially in the Asian region which is indentified as another major driver that is augmenting the demand of chromatography reagents in this region.Buy Chromatography Instrumentation Market Research Report:Major players operating in this market includes Agilent Technologies, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Bio-Rad Laboratories, GE Healthcare, Life Technologies Corporation, Pall Corporation, Regis Technologies, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, Waters Corporation, Helena Laboratories, Phenomenex, Inc. WWR International, Tosoh Corporation and others.About UsFuture 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 and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.Contact Us616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): +44(0)20-7692-8790Sales: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
China Carbon Monoxide Market by Manufacturers, States, Type And Application, Forecast To 2022

Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Monoxide Market, Carbon Monoxide Industry

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MarketResearchNest.com adds China Carbon Monoxide Market By Manufacturers, Regions (Province), Type And Application, Forecast To 2022new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 118 pages with table and figures in it.Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, flammable, toxic gas. High-purity carbon monoxide that is dry and free of sulfur compounds is normally noncorrosive to metals at atmospheric pressure. Lower-purity grades containing moisture, sulfur compounds and other impurities can form toxic metal carbonyls and can cause stress corrosion cracking in carbon steels at elevated pressures. Chemically, carbon monoxide is stable but can act as a strong reducing agent at elevated temperatures.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Carbon Monoxide in China market, to split the market based on manufacturers, Regions (Province), type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversLinde, Air Liquide, Praxair, Air Products, Messer, Yingde GasesMarket Segment by Regions (Province), coveringSouth China, Southwest China, East China, Northeast China, North ChinaMarket Segment by Type, coversCommercial Grade, Electronic GradeMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoChemical Industry, Metal Industry, Electronic IndustryRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report:This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rateIt provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.The research provides answers to the following key questions:What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2022?What are the key factors driving the United States Carbon Monoxide Market?Who are the key market players and what are their strategies in the United States Carbon Monoxide Market?What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the United States Carbon Monoxide Market?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the United States Carbon Monoxide Market?What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the United States Carbon Monoxide Market?There are 18 Chapters to deeply display the China Carbon Monoxide market.Chapter 1, to describe Carbon Monoxide Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by Region (province), market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Carbon Monoxide, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4,to show the China market by Regions (Province),covering South China,East China,Southwest China,North China,Northeast China,Northwest China and Central China,with sales, price,revenue and market share of Carbon Monoxide,for each region,from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13 to analyze the key Province by Type and Application,covering South China,East China,Southwest China,North China,Northwest China,Central China and Northeast China,with sales,revenue and market share by types and applications;Chapter 14, Carbon Monoxide market forecast, by Regions (Province), type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 15, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 16, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 17, to describe sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 18, to describe Carbon Monoxide Appendix, methodology and data sourceOrder a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on China industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Global Water Sampler Market 2017 - Teledyne Isco, HYDRO-BIOS, Grasp, HACH, Sea-Bird Scientific (Danaher), Aqualabo Group

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Water Sampler for field studies in environmental science is an efficient yet inexpensive way to sample water from any desired depth. It includes a unique trigger mechanism and invaluable for measuring the water quality of lakes.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Water Sampler 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 For Sample Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversTeledyne IscoHYDRO-BIOSGraspHACHSea-Bird Scientific (Danaher)Global Water (Xylem)Aqualabo GroupMcLane Research LaboratoriesBurkleKC DenmarkMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversAutomatic Water SamplerManual Water SamplerMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoSea WaterWaste WaterOtherAccess Full Report With TOC @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Water Sampler market.Chapter 1, to describe Water Sampler Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Water Sampler, with sales, revenue, and price of Water Sampler, 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 Water Sampler, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Water Sampler market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Water Sampler sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry. Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise. We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Global Orthomyxoviridae Infections Treatment Market Pegged for Robust Expansion During 2014  2020

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Orthomyxoviridae infections are caused by a large family of viruses spanning six genera. They are responsible for the occurrence of influenza amongst both humans and animals. Influenzavirus A, Influenzavirus B, Influenzavirus C, Isavirus, Thogotovirus and Quaranjavirus are the six different types of orthomyxoviridae. Each of these genera also include several serotypes or sub-types, Influenza A includes major sub-types such as H1N1, H1N2, H2N2, H3N1, H3N2, H3N8, H5N1, H5N2, H5N3, H5N8, H5N9, H7N1, H7N2, H7N3, H7N4, H7N7, H7N9, H9N2 and H10N7.Report Overview and TOC:Thogotovirus includes Batken, Dhori and Jos sub-types. Influenza B includes the Victoria and Yamagata sero-types. Orthomyxoviridae diseases are communicable and spread through infected food, feces and bird droppings, water and mucus in aerosol form. Influenza viruses are destroyed when exposed to bleach, 70% ethanol, aldehydes, oxidizing agents, and quaternary ammonium compounds. The viruses are also inactivated by raising temperatures above 56 C for minimum of 60 minutes, and in acidic conditions. Avian flu has the highest risk and mortality with more than 800 cases per 100,000 across the world according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The viruses replicate by beginning from endocytosis, where haemagglutinin protein fuses the viral envelope with the vacuoles membrane, releasing the viral RNA (vRNA) molecules, accessory proteins and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase into the cytoplasm. Due to the absence of RNA proofreading enzymes, the replication process makes a genetic error every 10,000 nucleotides thus mutating the virus on a very large scale.Request brochure:The genome of orthomyxovirus comprises six to eight segments of single stranded, linear and negative sense RNA. The complete genome is about 10,000 to 14,600 nucleotide long. Though the epidemic and mortality associated with orthomyxoviridae has been prevalent for almost 100 years yet the worst of them was 1918 pandemic which almost caused 20 million deaths across the globe of which 500,000 were in the United States. Sore throat, nonproductive cough and nasal discharge are some symptoms of the infection.Ease in transmission of virus through inhalation, coughing and living in close proximity of infected person is major divers for the growth of orthomyxoviridae Infections treatment market. Moreover, inclination of tier 1 pharmaceutical companies for developing novel therapeutics as a cure to the infection will further compliment for the growth of the market. Geographically market for Orthomyxoviridae infections treatment market is dominated by the developed economic countries owing to government funding, implementation of stringent regulations to develop cost effective drugs/vaccines and intense research activities by scholars at universities and private research centers. Market for orthomyxoviridae infections treatment in emerging economic countries is growing at a rapid pace pertaining to rise in incidences of influenza and H1N1 infections in past.For Specific and Customized requirements@Some of the prominent pipelined drugs in the market encompass Q-LAIV Flu Vac, FluBlok, Cholecalciferol, GSK2340272A, Resfenol, Relenza, Vaxigrip, Preflucel, Oseltamivir and others. Such a distinct pipeline profile clearly depicts the intense research activities conducted by the players operating the market. Living in close proximity with poultry and animal husbandry are another prominent factor for increasing orthomyxoviridae infection rate especially in underdeveloped and developing parts of Asia Pacific and Middle East countries.Some of the prominent companies operating and conducting research activities include Orthomyxoviridae Infections Therapeutics market include Baxter International Inc., AstraZeneca PLC, Vical Incorporated, Sanofi-Aventis, Generex Biotechnology Corporation, Novartis AG, AlphaVax, Inc., BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., CureVac GmbH, PepTcell Limited, Hawaii Biotech, Inc. and others.Pre Book full report@About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Truffle Oil Market 2017 - Urbani, Marcel Plantin, Truffle Hunter, Sabatino Tartufi, AROTZ, Monini

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"This report studies the Truffle Oil market, Truffle oil is a modern culinary ingredient used to impart the flavor and aroma of truffles to a dish.Truffle oil is top-quality olive oil that has been infused with either white or black truffles. Both types of truffles have an earthy, mushroom flavor. Truffle oil was originally created when truffles are soaked in olive oil. Before commercial truffle oil was introduced in the 1980s, chefs in Italy and France traditionally made they own by steeping tiny bits of fresh truffles in high-quality olive oil. Our data do not cover chemically synthesized truffle oil."Request For Sample Report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Truffle Oil in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversUrbaniMarcel PlantinTruffle HunterSabatino TartufiAROTZMoniniLa truffe du VentouxConservas FerrerSavitarGazzarrini TartufiMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversBlack Truffle OilWhite Truffle OilMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPasta and RisottoPizzaEnhance the FlavorVegetablesMeatOthersAccess Full Report With TOC @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Truffle Oil market.Chapter 1, to describe Truffle Oil Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Truffle Oil, with sales, revenue, and price of Truffle Oil, 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 Truffle Oil, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Truffle Oil market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Truffle Oil sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry. Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise. We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Smart Carry-on Bags Market will grow at a CAGR of 24.51% during the period 2017-2021: Radiant Insights

Radiant Insights, Inc

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Smart carry-on bags are suitcases or trolley bags that are incorporated with smart technology. Most notably, smart carry-on bags are equipped with location tracking technology through GPS. The bags are incorporated with other advanced features like integrated scales to help the luggage stay within weight limits. Smart carry-on bags have built-in batteries with USB ports to charge electronic devices.Request a Free Sample Copy of Smart Carry-on Bags Market Report @Global Smart Carry-on Bags 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 vendors AWAY Barracuda Bluesmart FUGU LUGGAGE RADEN TrunksterOther prominent vendors DELSEY MODOBAG Neit Planet Traveler RIMOWA Samsonite International TRAXPACKDownload Full Research Report of Smart Carry-on Bags Market @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global smart carry-on bags market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the retail sales of different types of smart carry-on bags.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography: Americas APAC EMEARead more related reports by Radiant Insights: Popcorn Machine Market- Online On-Demand Food Delivery Services Market-Market driver Premiumization through product innovation For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge High cost associated with smart carry-on bags For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend Advent of e-commerce For a full, detailed list, view our reportAbout Radiant Insights, IncRadiant Insights is a market research and consulting company offering syndicated research studies, customized reports, and consulting services. Market research studies are designed to facilitate strategic decision making, on the basis of extensive and in-depth quantitative information, supported by extensive analysis and industry insights. Using a patented and robust research methodology, we publish exhaustive research reports covering a host of industries such as Technology, Chemicals, Materials, and Energy. Radiant Insights has a strong base of analysts, consultants and domain experts, with global experience help for delivering excellence in all research projects.Media Contact:Michelle Thoras201 Spear Street 1100,Suite 3036,San Francisco,CA 94105, United StatesTel: 1-415-349-0054Toll Free: 1-888-928-9744Mail: sale@radiantinsights.com
Geosynthetics Market: Road Segment by Application Anticipated to Register a Higher CAGR of the market during period 2017- 2027

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"The Report Geosynthetics Market: Road Segment by Application Anticipated to Register a Higher CAGR as Compared to Other Segments: South Asia Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017 - 2027 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Future Market Insights in its latest report titled Geosynthetics Market: South Asia Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017  2027, presents a comprehensive and a detailed outlook on the South Asia geosynthetics market. The report starts with an executive summary that gives the market outlook of the South Asia geosynthetics market consisting of the pertinent market numbers, CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2017  2027, and market volume numbers in terms of million square metre of geosynthetics consumed. The market overview also lists the most important region in the South Asia geosynthetics market and the corresponding market share of that particular region. The executive summary also contains a brief mention of the drivers, restraints and opportunities present in the South Asia geosynthetics market so that the report audience get to know in brief the important factors impacting the growth of this market. Also, a list of important market players operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market is also given in the executive summary.View Report @The executive summary also lists the various segments in the South Asia geosynthetics market and their market value split for the year 2016. At the end of the executive summary, Future Market Insight analysis is presented, which is a concise and yet informative representation of the overall market approach of the leading players operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market and also the target segment and the target region that are most attractive in this market. The differentiating strategies of key market players operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market is also listed in the executive summary. The section that follows is the market introduction section that gives the market definition explaining what this market is all about and the explanation of the different products, materials, primary functions and the applications of geosynthetics. After this, there is a section devoted to the market taxonomy.After the market taxonomy, there is a section of the report devoted to South Asia geosynthetics market analysis scenario that gives the pricing analysis of various geosynthetics by product type in various regions as mentioned in the market taxonomy. Prices are calculated on a weighted average price model, based on percentage volume sales for the year 2016. After this, geosynthetics market value chain analysis is given from which we can infer that the South Asia geosynthetics market is characterised by the significant presence of local manufacturers and distributors serving products of different qualities. A section of the report is devoted to the market dynamics of the South Asia geosynthetics market. In this detailed and comprehensive section, the drivers, restraints, opportunities and trends operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market are explained in detail. Through this informative section, the report audience can gather a sense of direction of where the market is heading. This section gives a detailed explanation of all the factors that are encouraging and challenging the growth of the South Asia geosynthetics market. After the market dynamics, the subsequent sections of the report give the South Asia geosynthetics market analysis and forecast by product type, by material, by primary function, by application, and by region/country. In these sections, important information on the South Asia geosynthetics market is presented like the Basis Point Share analysis, year-on-year growth projections, incremental dollar opportunity and market attractiveness analysis.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @Last but not the least, there is an entire section of the report devoted to the competition landscape of the South Asia geosynthetics market. This competition landscape gives a dashboard view of the key companies operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market along with their important information and broad strategy adopted to stay as leaders in the South Asia geosynthetics market. Each of the leading companies is also profiled individually and important information about the company such as company details, company description, product portfolio along with key developments concerning the company and strategic analysis is presented. A SWOT analysis of each leading market player is also presented which gives detailed information about the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that the company is dealing with. This competition landscape is the most important section of the report as it imparts a deep understanding of the leading companies operating in the South Asia geosynthetics market and is valuable for new entrants in the field to get a learning about how the companies are leading this lucrative market and also for the established market players to get a better understanding about their competitors.Research MethodologyOverall market size has been analysed through historical data, primary responses, and public domain data. Revenue of companies operating in the geosynthetics market has been benchmarked to ascertain the market size for the base year. Macroeconomic indicators such as GDP and industry growth have been considered to forecast the market size over the assessment period. The historical growth trend of end-use industries, market participants performance, as well as the present macro-economic outlook has been taken into consideration for estimating the overall market trend forecast. This data is then validated using the triangulation method and is extensively scrutinised using advanced tools to garner quantitative and qualitative insights into the South Asia geosynthetics market.Send An Enquiry Request @Table of Contents1.Executive Summary2.Market Introduction2.1. Market Definition2.2. Market Taxonomy3.South Asia Geosynthetics Market Analysis Scenario3.1. Pricing Analysis3.2. Value Chain4.Market Dynamics4.1. Drivers4.2. Challenges4.3. Opportunity4.4. Trends5.South Asia Geosynthetics Market Analysis and Forecast, By Product Type5.1. Introduction5.1.1.Basis Point Share (BPS) Analysis By Product Type5.1.2.Y-o-Y Growth Projections By Product Type5.2. Market Size (US$ Mn) and Volume (Mn m2) Forecast By Product Type5.2.1.Geotextile5.2.2.Geomembrane5.2.3.Geogrid5.2.4.Geonet5.2.5.Geosynthetic Clay Liners5.2.6.Geocomposite5.2.7.Others5.3. Market Attractiveness Analysis By Product Type6.South Asia Geosynthetics Market Analysis and Forecast, By Material Type6.1. Introduction6.1.1.Basis Point Share (BPS) Analysis By Material Type6.1.2.Y-o-Y Growth Projections By Material Type6.2. Market Size (US$ Mn) and Volume (Mn m2) Forecast By Material Type6.2.1.Polyethylene (HDPE/LDPE/ Others)6.2.2.Polypropylene (PP)6.2.3.Polyester6.2.4.Natural fibres6.2.5.Others (PVC, Synthetic Rubber, etc.)6.3. Market Attractiveness Analysis By Material Type7.South Asia Geosynthetics Market Analysis and Forecast, By Primary Function7.1. Introduction7.1.1.Basis Point Share (BPS) Analysis By Primary Function7.1.2.Y-o-Y Growth Projections By Primary Function7.2. Market Size (US$ Mn) and Volume (Mn m2) Forecast By Primary Function7.2.1.Separation7.2.2.Drainage & Filtration7.2.3.Reinforcement7.2.4.Containment7.3. Market Attractiveness Analysis By Primary Function8.South Asia Geosynthetics Market Analysis and Forecast, By Application Type8.1. Introduction8.1.1.Basis Point Share (BPS) Analysis By Application8.1.2.Y-o-Y Growth Projections By Application8.2. Market Size (US$ Mn) and Volume (Mn m2) Forecast By Application8.2.1.Roads (Paved & Unpaved)8.2.2.Railways8.2.3.Retaining WallsAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: +1-518-621-2074 USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948
South East Tourism Destination Market Country Focused Analysis, Trends and Forecast Till 2025

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To understand the tourism destination Industry Status worldwide, Market Research Hub (MRH) has included the latest Forecast report titled South East Tourism Destination Market Report 2017 to its vast database. This report is a professional and in-depth analysis on the present state and future prospect for the global market. It provides valuable information to the industry insiders, potential entrants or investors. It includes an exhaustive enquiry with the reliability of logic and the comprehensiveness of contents.Request Free Sample Report:GlobalData Destination Market Insight provides in-depth analysis of a tourist destination, in this case for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The countries included in this report are Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Laos, and Myanmar.The report uses regional and country focused analysis to explore inbound tourist markets, infrastructure and attractions, as well as risks and opportunities. The report provides clear insight into current and future tourism developments in the region.The ASEAN welcomed over 110 million international arrivals in 2017. The ASEAN Tourism Strategic Plan 2016-2025 aims to create a unique and diverse tourism offering across the region, with the agreement to create a more collaborative tourism strategy. The regions tourist industry has experienced substantial growth in recent years, which has brought a number of benefits including jobs and incomes. However, there are a number of issues which need to be addressed if growth is to be sustained.Scope- Thailand is the ASEANs leading tourist destination, welcoming 31% of total arrivals to region in 2017. However, Myanmar is the fastest growing destination, experiencing 211% growth in arrivals between 2009 and 2017.- A key goal of the ASEAN Tourism Strategic Plan 2016-2025 is to promote the ASEAN as a single tourist destination. By moving towards a collaborative tourist strategy, the region will benefit from arrivals being less concentrated in a few countries and therefore growth in the future can be more easily sustained. However, there currently remain a number of barriers which make moving towards a more singular market difficult.- International tourists most commonly travel to the region for leisure purposes. For example, leisure trips comprised over 80% of international arrivals to Thailand in 2017.Reasons to buy- This report provides clear and detailed insight into new developments in a fast growing tourist destination.- The report uses data and analysis to explore future trends related to international arrivals, airlines, and hotel developments.- The reader gains a strong understanding of the opportunities in the market, as well as the risks, to support better business decisions.Browse Full Report with TOC:Table of Content:OverviewMap of ASEAN nationsSnapshotKey trends and new developmentsCountry focusMyanmarThailandSingaporeRisk analysisMarket risks and opportunitiesOutlookAppendixTerminology and definitionsReferencesAbout the authorAbout GlobalDataEnquire About This Report:About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of retail market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: - 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email:- press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:-Read Industry News at :-
Corrugated Boxes Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type And Application, Forecast To 2022

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MarketResearchNest.com adds China Corrugated Boxes Market By Manufacturers, Regions (Province), Type And Application, Forecast To 2022new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 118 pages with table and figures in it.This report studies the Corrugated Boxes market, Corrugated box is the use of hollow structure of the corrugated cardboard, through the molding process made of packaging containers.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Corrugated Boxes in China market, to split the market based on manufacturers, Regions (Province), type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversInternational Paper, WestRock (RockTenn), Smurfit Kappa Group, Rengo, SCA, Georgia-Pacific, Mondi Group, Inland Paper, Oji, Cascades, Alliabox International (Alliance), DS Smith, Packaging Corporation of America, Bingxin Paper, SAICA, Shanying Paper, Rossmann, BBP (Alliance), YFY, Cheng Loong Corp, Stora Enso, THIMM, Hexing Packing, Europac Group, Long Chen Paper, KapStone, Salfo Group, Come Sure Group, Jingxing Paper, PMPGC, Jingxing Paper, Shengda Group, Nine Dragons Paper, Jinlong PaperMarket Segment by Regions (Province), coveringSouth China, Southwest China, East China, Northeast China, North ChinaMarket Segment by Type, coversSingle Corrugated, Double Corrugated, Triple CorrugatedMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoFood and Beverage, Electronics and Home Appliance, Consumer Good, Pharmaceutical Industry, OtherRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report:This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rateIt provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.The research provides answers to the following key questions:What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2022?What are the key factors driving the United States Corrugated Boxes Market?Who are the key market players and what are their strategies in the United States Corrugated Boxes Market?What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the United States Corrugated Boxes Market?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the United States Corrugated Boxes Market?What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the United States Corrugated Boxes Market?There are 18 Chapters to deeply display the China Corrugated Boxes market.Chapter 1, to describe Corrugated Boxes Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by Region (province), market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Corrugated Boxes, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4,to show the China market by Regions (Province),covering South China,East China,Southwest China,North China,Northeast China,Northwest China and Central China,with sales, price,revenue and market share of Corrugated Boxes,for each region,from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13 to analyze the key Province by Type and Application,covering South China,East China,Southwest China,North China,Northwest China,Central China and Northeast China,with sales,revenue and market share by types and applications;Chapter 14, Corrugated Boxes market forecast, by Regions (Province), type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 15, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 16, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 17, to describe sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 18, to describe Corrugated Boxes Appendix, methodology and data sourceOrder a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on China industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Industrial Sugar Market Evolving Industry Trends and key Insights by 2025

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Industrial sugar category include sweeteners that are used by the confectionery manufacturers as well as in baking, catering, pharmaceuticals and beverage industries. Industrial sugar offers wide range of sweetening solutions to the manufacturers. Industrial sugar is an important commodity that is traded in the international market. India is a popular country where industrial sugar is cultivated and exported across the globe. It is a sweet, soluble carbohydrate that is used in adding to various food items. There are various types of industrial sugar that are derived from various sources. The table sugar or the granulated sugar is the most common form of sugar that our body consumes, is customarily used as sucrose in the form of food additives. Industrial Sugar beet is another major source of industrial sugar that lately gained popularity in the market during the 19th century. It is cultivated as a root crop in temperature regions that experiences adequate rainfall with enough fertility for the soil.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Industrial sugar is a booming commodity across the globe with challenging factors that are driving the market. Rise in the average international prices and the increase in the importance of international trade of industrial sugar is resulting in the soaring demand for industrial sugar. Moreover, the growth is predominantly supplemented by the rising population and increasing consumption of sweetened items. The rise in the confectionery products, especially bakery items are fueling the higher usage of industrial sugar in the market. However, certain restraints like the water consumption due to monoculture production of industrial sugar are a major drawback for the industrial sugar market globally. Additionally, the recent changes in the trend of consuming alternate sweeteners or sugar substitutes are adding up to the negative demand of the industrial sugar market.The global industrial sugar market can be segmented on the basis of type, application and source. On the basis of type, the industrial sugar can be segmented into white sugar, brown sugar and liquid sugar. Amongst these, the white industrial sugar is the commonly used type of sugar in the market. Brown industrial sugar is popular in the western countries and is available in sachets and jars. The growing retail industry and expansion of product of portfolio of industrial sugar are driving the global industrial sugar market in recent years. On the basis of application, the industrial sugar market can be segmented on the basis of dairy, bakery, confectionery, beverage, canned and frozen foods and pharmaceuticals. Dairy, bakery, confectionery and beverage are the most popular areas in which huge amounts of sugar are used on a daily basis. Furthermore, by source the industrial sugar market can be segmented into cane sugar and beet sugar. Cane sugar is the most popular and common source of industrial; sugar globally. This has resulted in the increase in demand of sugarcane in the international market.Browse Market Research Report @Geographically, industrial sugar is expected to be a leading market across the globe. Regions like North America and Europe are the largest consumers of these type of products and the same is being propagated in to the developing regions like Asia- Pacific and Latin America. Recently the developing regions have been in great demand by the producers and the trend of such consumption is passing on to the developing countries. The growing South African industrial sugar infused products has created an increasing demand for the industrial sugar market in recent years. Nevertheless, the size of the population and the rate of change in consumption pattern are pushing the demand for industrial sugar consumption. However, the increase in demand for industrial sugar in Asia Pacific has increased due to the higher consumption of confectionery products. Therefore, Asia Pacific industrial sugar is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period majorly due to the nutritional transition compounded by lifestyle changes in the developing countries.The global market for industrial sugar is highly consolidated. The prominent vendors in the industrial sugar market are Cargill incorporation (U.S.), Archer Daniels Midland (U.S.), Raizen SA ( Brazil), Sudzucker AG ( Germany) , Tereos ( France) , Nordzucker Group AG ( Germany), Tongaat Hulett Sugar South Africa Limited ( South Africa), Illovo Sugar (PTY) Limited ( South Africa), Dangotte Group ( Nigeria), E.I.D Parry Limited ( India).About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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:
Television Broadcasting Market Structure And Overview Of Key Market Forces Propelling Market

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Television broadcasters are into TV broadcasting business since the inception of TV. TV industry has seen a significant transformation with the emergence of digital broadcasting and the Internet. With developing digital ecosystem worldwide, and improving penetration of Internet, online TV viewing has been increased in past decade. Although, traditional pay TV still dominates the TV broadcasting market. The transformation from analog to digital transmission is one of the prime factors fuelling the growth of television broadcasting market.Obtain Report Details @TV broadcasting market is segmented on the basis of content delivery method and revenue channel. On the basis of content delivery method, television broadcasting market is segmented as analog, cable, DTT, IPTV and satellite. Analog transmission technique is the conventional broadcasting method, which uses analog audio/video signals for delivery of content. Cable TV and satellite TV are the modern day content delivery techniques, which came into effect post international telecommunication union (ITU) digitization guidelines. In terms of revenue channel, TV broadcasting market is further classified as subscription fees, advertising, public revenue and others (video-on-demand (VOD), e-learning, games, internet, etc.). Revenue generated from advertisement is likely to be the key factor in development of TV broadcasting industry.To gain competitive edge, businesses from all the major segments viz. telecommunication, automotive, consumer goods often choose TV as the primary platform for marketing their products. This advertising leads to significant revenue generation and is one of the major growth driver for television broadcast industry. Further, increasing consumer base, owing to transformation from analog to digital signals is anticipated to propel the growth of TV broadcasting market. Alongside this, improving quality of media content such as introduction of 4K/UHD and full HD signals on TV platform and widening adoption of HD content is likely to fuel the growth television broadcasting market in near term. Moreover, additional TV services such as VoD, e-learning and online games, through TV is expected to complement the growth of television broadcasting market throughout the forecast period. However, shifting consumer preferences on TV viewing and rising delivery content through internet and smartphone applications is estimated to limit the growth of television broadcasting market. With world going through digital switchover, large consumer base still remain untapped with latest TV services such as VoD, e-learning etc., which offer huge market opportunities for the players involved in TV broadcasting market.On a global scale, North America is likely to dominate in terms of penetration and adoptability of modern-day television services. Further, cable and satellite content delivery models are expected to dominate this region. Furthermore, large part of the revenue is anticipated to be generated from subscription fees of the TV services. Additionally, countries from Western Europe such as the U.K., Spain, Germany and Italy is likely to dominate the growth of television broadcasting market in Europe region. However, with significant consumer base and improving broadcasting infrastructure; Asia Pacific is likely to see significant growth in coming years. By revenue channel, advertisement is likely to hold majority of market share in global TV broadcast market especially in Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa region. Furthermore, cable TV and satellite TV, contentment delivery method are expected to show significant growth during the forecast period.Request a PDF Sample for this Research Report @Some of the key TV broadcasting groups are American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), The National Broadcasting Company (NBC), The Fox Broadcasting Company, Manila Broadcasting Company, and Aereo, Inc.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth insights, understanding market evolution by tracking historical developments, and analyzing the present scenario and future projections based on optimistic and likely scenarios. Each research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology developments, types, applications, and the competitive landscape.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendationsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Pen Needles Market Overview, Growth, Share, Revenue and Forecast 2017-2024

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The research report Pen Needles Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia), Application Development Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2024, by Global Market Insights, Inc. says, Pen Needles Market size is projected to experience significant growth from 2017 to 2024.Increasing worldwide prevalence of diabetes and obesity will spur Pen Needles Market growth during the forecast period. As per International Diabetes Federation, the global prevalence of diabetes was 415 million in 2015 and expected to reach 642 million by 2040. Increasing obese population will accelerate the prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart diseases and stroke.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Rising awareness programs for administration of insulin using, technological advancements for developing novel devices to reduce pain and favorable reimbursement systems in developed countries should fuel the pen needles market size. Alternative drug delivery systems such as oral insulin, inhaled insulin and needle-free products coupled with inability to reuse may hamper the product demand during the forecast years.Based on product, the industry is bifurcated into standard and safety pen needles. Standard products hold the largest revenue share owing to routine usage by diabetic patient base. Safety pen needles market will witness lucrative growth over the coming years due to its benefits such as minimized patient anxiety and reduced needle stick injuries. 8mm needles market lead the overall revenue share owing to increased usage rates for insulin administration. 4mm needles will witness tremendous growth in the coming years due to its short length, comfort, and ease for administering insulin in the subcutaneous layer of the patients.Browse key industry insights from the report Pen Needles Market in detail along with the table of contents:Insulin market estimated to foresee lucrative growth due to rising awareness about product and self-administration of insulin coupled with favorable reimbursement policies. GLP-1 therapy will witness healthy growth in future due to its ability to minimize blood glucose level in patients with target disease. Homecare will be the major end user of the pen needles owing to self-administration of insulin on daily basis. Hospital segment is anticipated to witness healthy growth in the coming few years due to availability of highly-skilled professionals and the quality of patient care provided.Some of the prominent players in the pen needles market include Becton and Dickinson, Novo Nordisk, B.Braun Melsungen and Terumo. Key players are focusing on effective promotional and marketing techniques and rising R&D efforts to develop novel products and capture higher market share. Some of the other participants are Owen Mumford, HTL STREFA, Ultimed and Allison Medical. Collaborations, distribution agreements and product portfolio expansion are other growth strategies for the players to sustain the industry.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Some of the prominent industry players include Medtronic, B. Braun Melsungen, Becton Dickinson and Company, Abbott (St. Jude Medical), Stryker, Halyard Health and Boston Scientific. Key players are focusing on differentiated strategies such as acquisitions, agreements and R&D efforts to develop novel products to expand their product portfolio and capture higher market share. Some of the other participants are Baxter International, Neurotech, Smiths Medical, Hospira (Pfizer) and Codman & Shurtleff. Collaborations and geographic expansion are some other growth strategies adopted by key players to enhance their manufacturing capabilities and increase presence across the globe.Browse Related Reports:Drug-Eluting Bioabsorbable Stents Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Germany, UK, Italy, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa), Application Growth Potential, Competitive Market Growth & Forecast, 2016  2024About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market: Real Time Locating System Segment by Product Type Projected to Retain Its Dominance over the 2017-2027

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"The Report Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market: Real Time Locating System Segment by Product Type Projected to Retain Its Dominance over the Forecast Period: Europe Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About the ReportIn a new report titled Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market: Europe Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20172027, Future Market Insights has undertaken a comprehensive study of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market for a 10 year period from 2017-2027. We have studied the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market by taking several important metrics such as CAGR, Y-o-Y growth rate, absolute dollar opportunity and incremental dollar opportunity into consideration. Our analysts have given their expert opinion on where the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market is anticipated to reach at the end of the forecast period.As this is a regional report, we should start by identifying which countries in Europe we have focussed upon. The Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report has profiled the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux, and Nordic nations, Russia, Poland and the Rest of Europe. We have a dedicated chapter for each country in Europe wherein we have spoken at length about the market forecast on the basis of Product Type. We provide the Y-o-Y growth projections, absolute dollar opportunity and the market value forecast by Application Type as well as Mode for every individual nation. If you wish to target only one or two key countries in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market, you can refer to this informative section and finalise your decision.View Report @In another section of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report, we have provided a market analysis on the basis of Product Type. The Y-o-Y growth comparison, the absolute dollar opportunity and the Basis Point Share (BPS) analysis has been highlighted for our readers benefit. All these key metrics have been used to study the various product types in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. This is particularly helpful if you seek to target only one product type as opposed to a scattershot approach to the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.An important section of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report is the overview. In this, we have explained the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market in detail by providing the definition along with the market taxonomy. We then move onto the drivers, restraints, opportunities and trends that key stakeholders can expect in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. A market analysis that includes market size forecast in terms of value, the Y-o-Y growth projections and the absolute dollar opportunity in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market concludes this section.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @The executive summary at the beginning of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report is a brief yet succinct section that highlights important drivers, key companies, and a few major market trends. We have included a pie-chart representation of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market by Country and Product for your understanding. Lastly, our expert analysts have mentioned the geographies to target along with a differentiation strategy that may be adopted. You can safely make your strategic business decisions on the basis of our analyst recommendations of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.A competition analysis is absolutely critical if you wish to be successful in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. Our competition landscape section has been created to solely fulfil this purpose. We have profiled the most relevant players currently active in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. Important company details, a brief description, an overview of where the company is dominant, and key financials provide a complete picture. In addition to this, we have included a SWOT analysis along with major developments relevant to the particular company that would be invaluable for any organisation wishing to try their luck in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.Send An Enquiry Request @Industry-Leading Research MethodologyFuture Market Insights has pioneered a truly industry-leading research methodology to prepare the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report. Our analysts conduct thorough primary and secondary research at the outset. A market player list including all the important stakeholders across the value chain is developed and a questionnaire is prepared for every node within the chain to get the necessary market information. After the data has been gathered, we validate it using the triangulation method where primary data is combined with both secondary data and our expert analysis to deliver the final output. This is extensively scrutinised with proprietary tools to gain every possible qualitative and quantitative insight into the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.Table of Contents1. Executive Summary2. Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market Overview2.1. Introduction2.1.1. Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market Taxonomy2.1.2. Product Definition3. Market Dynamics3.1. Drivers3.2. Restraints3.3. Opportunity3.4. Trends4. Europe Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market Analysis4.1. Market Size (Value) Forecast4.1.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections4.1.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5. Europe Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market Analysis, By Product Type5.1. Introduction5.1.1. Y-o-Y Growth Comparison, By Product Type5.1.2. Basis Point Share (BPS) Analysis, By Product Type5.2. Market Forecast By Product Type5.2.1. Workflow Management Solution5.2.1.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections5.2.1.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5.2.1.3. Market Value Forecast By Application Type5.2.1.4. Market Value Forecast By Mode5.2.2. Asset Management Solution5.2.2.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections5.2.2.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5.2.2.3. Market Value Forecast By Application Type5.2.2.4. Market Value Forecast By Mode5.2.3. Bed Management Solution5.2.3.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections5.2.3.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5.2.3.3. Market Value Forecast By Application Type5.2.3.4. Market Value Forecast By Mode5.2.4. Quality Patient Care Solution5.2.4.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections5.2.4.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5.2.4.3. Market Value Forecast By Application Type5.2.4.4. Market Value Forecast By Mode5.2.5. Real Time Locating System5.2.5.1. Y-o-Y Growth Projections5.2.5.2. Absolute $ Opportunity5.2.5.3. Market Value Forecast By Application Type5.2.5.4. Market Value Forecast By Mode5.2.6. Event Driven Solutions5.2.6.1. Y-o-Y Growth ProjectionsAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketaState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Online Education 2017 Global Market Key Players  K12 Inc, Pearson, White Hat Management, Bettermarks, Scoyo, Languagenut  Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Online Education Market

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Online Education Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Online Education Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Online Education Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Online Education Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline and the financial health of the organization.Global Online Education market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer;The top key players including ;K12 IncPearsonWhite Hat ManagementGeorg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. KBettermarksScoyoLanguagenutBeness Holding, IncNew Oriental Education & TechnologyXUEDAAMBOXRSCDELIfdooYINGDINGYY IncRequest a Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Online Education in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoElementary Education(Grades 1-5)Junior High Education(Grades 6-8)Senior High Education(Grades 9-12)On the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingTeacherStudentParentsIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:Global Online Education Market Research Report 20171 Online Education Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Online Education1.2 Online Education Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Online Education Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Online Education Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Elementary Education(Grades 1-5)1.2.4 Junior High Education(Grades 6-8)1.2.5 Senior High Education(Grades 9-12)1.3 Global Online Education Segment by Application1.3.1 Online Education Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Teacher1.3.3 Student1.3.4 Parents1.4 Global Online Education Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Online Education Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Online Education (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Online Education Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Online Education Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022).7 Global Online Education Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 K12 Inc7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 K12 Inc Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Pearson7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Pearson Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 White Hat Managemen7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 White Hat Managemen Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. K7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. K Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Bettermarks7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Bettermarks Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Scoyo7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Scoyo Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Languagenut7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Languagenut Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Beness Holding, Inc7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Beness Holding, Inc Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 New Oriental Education & Technology7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 New Oriental Education & Technology Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 XUEDA7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Online Education Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 XUEDA Online Education Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business OverviewContinued.Buy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Heart Valves Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Heart Valves Market

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Heart valves are the medical devices which are used in the replacement of defective heart valve. Heart valves are majorly 2 types, they are biological or tissue and mechanical heart valves. Biological heart valves are made up of various tissues such as porcine, bovine and human tissues. Heart valves made from human tissues are known as homografts or allografts. The major advantage of tissue valves over mechanical valve is mechanical heart valves can cause bleeding and increase the chances of reoperations in geriatric people. Since the use of tissue heart valves in people of this age group lowers the risks of bleeding. Physicians are increasingly opting for this method as it able to reduce the use of oral anticoagulation drugs for the management of bleeding complications.The heart valves market is growing at a significant CAGR due to increase in geriatric population, and increase in the prevalence of heart valve diseases. The increase in demand for stentless tissue valves, implementation of MI procedures expected to fuel the growth of Heart valves market. Rising in preference for tissue heart valve replacement surgeries among the geriatric population is also boosting the growth of Heart valves market over the forecast period. However, lack of skilled professional, the risk of potential complications with tissue valves, and use of alternate products might hamper the growth of Heart valves market over the forecast period. Similarly, the stringent regulatory framework for product approvals expected to dampen the growth of Heart valves market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The heart valves market is segmented on the basis of product type, valve type, harvesting type, and end usersBased on product type, heart valves market has been segmented into the following: Stented tissue heart valves Stentless tissue heart valvesBased on valve type, heart valves market has been segmented into the following: Aortic tissue valves Mitral tissue valvesBased on the harvesting, heart valves market has been segmented into the following: Autograft Homograft HeterograftBased on end-user, heart valves market has been segmented into the following: Hospitals Clinics Ambulatory surgical centersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global heart valves market is increasing due to rise in the prevalence of cardiac disorders. The most commonly adopted strategies by industry players include new product launches with technological innovations, acquisitions & mergers, agreements, and collaborations to capture significant Heart valves market share. They acquire other companies to enhance their R&D capabilities for manufacturing innovative devices that meet consumer needs. Acquisition of other companies allows vendors access to the product portfolio of the acquired company. For instance, in December 2012, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation and Cook Biotech Incorporated, have collaborated into a technology licensing and supply agreements for the development of tissue-engineered heart valves and related cardiovascular implants.Need more information about this report @Geographically, heart valves market has been segmented into following regions Viz. North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to hold a dominant share in Heart valves market owing to increase in the prevalence of heart valve diseases, increasing research and development, favourable medical reimbursement policies increase the growth of Heart valves market in North America. Europe region holds second largest share attributed to increases in the prevalence of heart valve diseases because of changing lifestyle. Increasing government funding for R&D, technological advancements are expected to boost the growth of Heart valves market. Asia-pacific region is expected to hold the large share in forecast period due to increase in awareness regarding tissue valves, increasing geriatric population and rising opportunities in medical tourism.Some of the players in the heart valves market are Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (U.S.), LivaNova PLC (U.K.), Medtronic (U.S.), St. Jude Medical (Abbott Laboratories) (U.S.), Braile Biomedica (Brazil), CryoLife, Inc. (U.S.), and Laboratory Corporation of America (U.S.) to name a few.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 2NXEmail: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comToll Free (US):+1-866-598-1553Website @
Europe CBCT Dental Imaging Market In-Depth Analysis & Global Forecast to 2023

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Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market is expected to grow at the CAGR of ~ 11.41% during the forecast period and is estimated to reach USD 325.5 million by 2023. Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market has been segmented on the basis of type of detector which comprises of flat panel detector and image intensifier.Dental Cone Beam Computed Tomography or CBCT is a special type of X-ray equipment used when regular dental or facial X-rays are not sufficient. This technology is used to produce three dimensional (3-D) images of the teeth, soft tissues, nerve pathways, and bones in a single scan.Increasing funding for research is leading to new and innovative device development that is driving the market growth. Rapid adoption of advanced devices by dental professionals for accurate and effective diagnosis is also important for the market growth. The use of 3D radiographic imaging in orthodontics is growing rapidly which has fueled the market demand. Changing technology and healthcare practices also play major role in the growth of this market. Some other factors include growing aging population, rising awareness, investment made by hospitals for technology up gradation, increasing cases of gum diseases and sport injuries that are spurring the market growth.Government support to encourage research and development also plays an important role here. Academic and research institutes are leading new researches that are expanding the application of CBCT imaging devices. Increasing use of CBCT imaging in cosmetic dentistry treatments is another key driving force for the market.However, some factors are inhibiting the growth of Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market such as lack of awareness for the use of advanced technologies which results in slow adoption of advanced technologies in many European countries, risk of radiations in children and teens etc.CBCT dental imaging industry is growing rapidly and is expected to continue its growth during 2017-2023. Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market is expected to grow at the CAGR of ~ 11.41% during the forecast period and is estimated to reach USD 325.5 million by 2023.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key players for Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market: Carestream Health (US) Dentsply Sirona (US) FONA Dental S.R.O. (Slovak Republic) Gendex (Danaher Corporation) (US) Imaging Sciences International, LLC. (Danaher Corporation) (US) J.MORITA MFG.CORP (Japan) KaVo Dental GmbH (Danaher Corporation) (Germany) NewTom (Italy) Planmeca OY (Finland)Key Findings: France CBCT dental imaging market is expected to reach USD 4.5 million by 2023. Flat panel detector accounted for the largest market share in 2016, with a market value of USD 302.5 million by 2023. Orthodontics was the second-largest market by application and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.61% during 2017-2023.Segments:Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market has been segmented on the basis of type of detector which comprises of flat panel detector and image intensifier. Flat panel detector is sub-segmented into indirect conversion flat panel detectors and direct conversion flat panel detectors.On the basis of application, it is segmented into dental implants, orthodontics, endodontics, and others. Dental Implants is sub-segmented into endosteal implants and subperiosteal implants.On the basis of end user, this market is segmented into hospitals & dental clinics, academics and research institutes, and others.Browse Full Report Details @Regional analysis of Europe CBCT Dental Imaging market:Considering the scenario of the market, in 2016, Germany accounted for the largest market in Europe CBCT dental imaging market. The highest number of CBCT machines are sold each year in Germany among other European countries. Innovation and technologically advanced product development is leading the market growth. Germany is expected to reach 93.8 million by 2023. Some other factors such as growing aging population, funding for research, and availability of advanced imaging products are driving the market growth.Italy holds second position in Europe CBCT dental imaging market due to rapid adoption of advanced imaging devices and top class medical facilities. This market was valued around USD 29.0 million in 2016 and expected to continue its growth during the forecast period. Availability of advanced healthcare facilities, large amount of money invested for technology up gradation, and high awareness among the medical professional as well as people are spurring the market growth.UK is expected to grow at fastest CAGR of 11.89% during 2017-2023. Some major factors are driving the market growth such as government support to encourage research and new product development, growing aging population, increasing cases of various dental problems, increasing number of people suffering from gum problems etc.Rest of Europe is expected to grow slower than other European countries in this market and this lag can be attributed to slow adoption of advanced devices, low investment for research and technology up gradation, slow economic growth, traditional approach toward the healthcare etc.The report for Europe CBCT Dental Imaging Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain deeper insight to the market and industry performance. The report gives a clear picture of the current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regionsContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Europe CBCT Dental Imaging Market Research Report - Forecast till 2023 chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Head Protection Equipment Market to Reach US$ 6,841.3 Million by 2026, Globally - Industry Analysis

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Head Protection Equipment Market to Reach US$ 6,841.3 Million by 2026, Globally - Industry Analysis" to its huge collection of research reports.Increasing number of accidents and injuries is leading to the rising demand for personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, rising number of head injuries in various industries such as construction, mining, power line maintenance, etc., is driving the demand for head protection equipment. Hence, manufacturers are focusing on developing head protection equipment using better materials. With advancement in technology, manufacturers are adding new features, and also designing a product to provide safety and enhance comfort.Increasing use of helmets in various industries has also resulted in improving the design, adding padding to make it more comfortable to wear it all day long. This is being done to reduce fatigue in the neck and make the helmet lighter. The demand for smart head protection equipment, equipped with sensors is also rising across various industries. Manufacturers are creating new devices for active prevention of accidents.Global Head Protection Equipment Market: Scope of StudyThe report offers detailed insights into the factors driving and restraining the market growth, various trends and opportunities are also given, major advancements in technology and competition tracking is also provided in the report. The research also offers a comparative analysis and growth prospects of the various segments by analyzing year-over-year growth during the past period. The report provides information on the major factors impacting market growth and that of the regional markets. It also provides information on new technologies in the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report offers analysis of the overall head protection equipment market taking into account the various factors such as drivers, opportunities, restraints. Porters five force analysis, SWOT analysis, and market attractiveness analysis are also provided in the report. In addition, key industry developments have also been provided. These key industry developments consist of the major events that occurred in the past and events that are likely to take place in the future, which will affect the market. The report also provides detail on regulations in various countries for head protection equipment.Global Head Protection Equipment Market: Market SegmentationThe global head protection equipment market is segmented on the basis of product type, application, sales channel, and region. Based on the product type, the market is segmented into class A helmet, class B helmet, and class C helmet. On the basis of application, the market segments include manufacturing, construction, oil & gas, transportation, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food & beverages, mining, and others. By sales channel, the market is segmented into direct (B2B) sales and distributors.Browse TOC @On the basis of region, the global head protection equipment market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and The Middle East and Africa (MEA). The report also provides a country-wise forecast for each segment, along with the revenue share and CAGR percent for the forecast period 2017-2026.Global Head Protection Equipment Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report offers a detailed profile of some of the leading market players in the global head protection equipment market such as 3M, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Honeywell International Inc., Bullard, MSA, Lakeland Industries, Inc., Uvex Group, Centurion Safety EU, Pinnacle Protection Enterprises, and Cintas Corporation. The report also talks about some of the key strategies adopted by these companies in order to set their footprints in various regions. The companies are also entering into partnership in order to develop a technically advanced product with enhanced features.Table Of Content1. Global Head Protection Equipment Market - Executive Summary2. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Overview2.1. Introduction2.1.1. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Taxonomy2.1.2. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Definition2.2. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Size (US$ Mn) and Forecast, 2012-20262.2.1. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Y-o-Y Growth2.3. Global Head Protection Equipment Market Dynamics2.4. Parent Market Overview2.5. Key Regulations2.6. Patent Analysis2.7. Manufacturing Sector Overview2.8. Forecast Factors2.9. Scenario Forecast2.10. Supply Chain2.11. Product Life Cycle2.12. PESTL Analysis2.13. Service Provider List2.14. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By RegionAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Latest Report Details Of Nonstick Cookware Market Size & Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report"Nonstick Cookware Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025 "to its database.The objective of this report is to define, describe, and forecast the market on the basis of type, application, medical condition, and region. It provides detailed information regarding the major factors influencing the growth of the market. This report also tracks and analyzes competitive developments of the key players in terms of market developments, product portfolios, and financials.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @ The term nonstick refers to the surface which is coated with a synthetic polymer called polytetrafluoroetheylene (PTFE) which reduces the ability of other materials to stick to it. The term Teflon coating has become synonymous with nonstick coating in the market. Hence, the cookware is also addressed as Teflon coated cookware. Nonstick cookware includes sauce pans, fry pan, and stock pots. Nonstick cookware allows the browning of foods without letting the food stick to the pan.For a surface to become nonstick, the underlying layer is first roughened to support adhesion, and a number of layers of PTFE are sprayed or rolled on it. It is this number of layers and the quality of the material used in the coating which determine the quality and durability of the coating on the nonstick cookware.The better the quality of the materials used, the lesser the chances of the coating peeling off. The better quality helps in keeping the nonstick property of the cookware intact. In order to make anodized aluminum coated cookware, the aluminum is subjected to very high voltage and lower temperature in an electrolytic solution where aluminum is used as an Anode. This results in a hard and durable coating. In enamel coating, the substrate used for the cookware is coated with a porcelain material by firing the porcelain in powdered form on the substrates surface at a high temperatures which fuses into a smooth and durable coating on the surface. In seasoned cookware, the surface is coated with a very thin layer of oil and the oil is polymerized to the surface with the usage of high heat for a particular time period. This results in a nonstick coating on the surface of the cookware.The various advantages of nonstick cookware over traditional cookware which includes easy cleanup, and less amount of oil and fuel required for cooking is the primary driver for the growing demand for nonstick cookware. Also, due to the increased use of social media, many promotions, innovations, and recipes pertaining to cooking are available which is a driving factor for the use of nonstick cookware. People living in urban areas view kitchenware as a lifestyle accessory and hence they buy nonstick cookware as it is more premium compared to traditional cookware. The increasing number of cooking reality shows highlights high end cookware that influences the audience. All these factors are expected to propel the growth of the nonstick cookware market. However, nonstick cookware had been dubbed unsafe by some people which can hamper the growth of the market. However, experts from the United States Environmental Protection Agency cleared these doubts and declared it to be safe. Hence, the market is set to show positive growth.View Report @ The nonstick cookware market has been segmented on the basis of material used for coating, point of sale, and geography. Based on the material used for coating, the market is divided into Teflon coated, anodized aluminum coated, seasoned cookware, and enameled iron coated. On the basis of point of sale, the market is segmented into exclusive retail store, online channel, and multi branded retail outlets. Based on geography, the nonstick cookware market has been divided into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and South America.Some of the major players in the nonstick cookware market include Berndes, Scanpan, Le Creuset, Circulon, Calphalon, Moneta Cookware, Gibson, Farberware, Anolon, Cuisinart, T-fal, and All-Clad.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, and North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Request For Enquiry @ Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent marketImportant changes in market dynamicsMarket segmentation up to the second or third levelHistorical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volumeReporting and evaluation of recent industry developmentsMarket shares and strategies of key playersEmerging niche segments and regional marketsAn objective assessment of the trajectory of the marketRecommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact usMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Panama Oil and Gas Industry Market 2017- Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Research Report 2022

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SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Panama Midstream Oil and Gas Industry"Panama Midstream Oil and Gas Industry Outlook to 2022 - Market Forecasts for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Oil Storage and Pipelines", is a comprehensive report on midstream oil and gas industry in Panama. The report provides details such as name, type, operational status and operator for all active and planned (new build) LNG terminals, oil storage terminals and major trunk pipelines in Panama till 2022. Further, the report also offers recent developments, financial deals as well as latest contracts awarded in the countrys midstream sector.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Scope- Historic and forecast of natural gas data related to consumption and imports for the period 2010-2022- Updated information related to all active and planned LNG terminals, oil storage terminals and major trunk pipelines in the country, including operator and equity details- Key mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, private equity and initial public offerings in the countrys midstream oil and gas industry, where available- Latest developments, financial deals and awarded contracts related to midstream oil and gas industry in the countryKey points to buy- Gain a strong understanding of the countrys energy sector and midstream oil and gas industry- Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of production and capacity data- Assess your competitors major LNG terminals, oil storage terminals and major trunk pipelines in the country- Analyze the latest developments, financial deals and awarded contracts related to the countrys midstream oil and gas industry- Understand the countrys financial deals landscape by analyzing how competitors are financed, and the mergers and partnerships that have shaped the marketTable of Contents1 Table of Contents2. Introduction3. Panama LNG Industry4. Panama Oil Storage Industry5. Panama Oil and Gas Pipelines Industry6. Recent Contracts7. Financial Deals Landscape8. Recent Developments9. 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
Global Styrenic Block Copolymer (SBC) Market Forecasted To Show Higher CAGR Of 5.14% During The Period 2017 - 2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Styrenic Block Copolymer (SBC) Market Forecasted To Show Higher CAGR Of 5.14% During The Period 2017 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.Styrenic block copolymer is also known as SBC. They belong to the group of thermoplastic elastomers (TPE). TPE have rubber like properties and are processed as thermoplastics. SBC is used as an additive in various applications such as footwear, roofing, and adhesives. SBCs are categorized as per their ability to be processed as thermoplastic materials. They showcase good elastic qualities and good flexibility at lower temperatures. However, they are mostly used at a higher temperature, because of their low softening points.Technavios analysts forecast the global Styrenic Block Copolymer (SBC) market to grow at a CAGR of 5.14% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global Styrenic Block Copolymer (SBC) market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the sales of the volume is considered for product types global SBC market.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Styrenic Block Copolymer (SBC) 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 Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key vendorsChina Petrochemical CorporationDynasolLCY GroupPolyOneTSRCOther prominent vendorsZEON CHEMICALSLG ChemicalsChevron PhillipsEn Chuan ChemicalsJSR CorporationEastman ChemicalKumho petrochemicalsMarket driverGrowing infrastructure industry in ChinaFor a full, detailed list, view our reportBrowse TOC @Market challengeVolatility in raw materials pricesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendEmergence of bio-based alternatives of synthetic SBCsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market Estimated to Flourish by 2027

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Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication is the part of an intelligent transport system that enables the data transfer from one vehicle to another vehicle, this system helps in improving traffic management by allowing the driver to communicate with roadside infrastructures such as traffic lights sign boards and other passing by vehicles.This technology establishes V2V communication to avoid road accidents by allowing the driver to send car location and speed related data to other nearby vehicles over the ad-hoc mesh network. In addition to above, depending on driving and road traffic situations, the drivers may receive warning signals such as the risk of an accident, which alerts the driver and helps in taking precaution such as slowing down speed, etc.Request For Report Sample:To ensure safety while driving and to reduce the accidental rate are the factors driving the growth of the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market. Moreover, communication is the easy solution to avoid road traffic and channelize smooth driving, so to establish communication, the need for intelligent transport system are spurring, which is influencing the growth of the market in forthcoming years.Further, the need of transportation for goods and people coupled with emerging technology innovation is attributing to attract investors to Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market. On the other hand, data privacy and initial funding for setting new infrastructure are anticipated to be the major challenge, which may hinder the market growth over the forecast period.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market is segmented by offering, connectivity form factor, application, and region. By offering, the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market can be segmented into software, hardware, and serviceBy Connectivity Form Factor, the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market can be segmented into tethered, embedded, and integrated. By application, the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market can be segmented into commercial vehicles and domestic vehicles. By Region, the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market can be segmented into the Middle East and Africa, North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Japan, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific excluding Japan.North America is expected to capture largest market share regarding revenue owing to increase in demand for cars that are equipped with infotainment tools. In addition to above, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) sponsored intelligent transport system (ITS) which includes Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication. Thus the support of the government in sponsoring the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication is propelling the market growth.Owing to the increasing demand for navigation services and telematics applications in Asia Pacific Countries such as India and China are anticipated to drive the market over the forecast period. Further, the rising living standards and augmented tech-savvy youth population in Asia Pacific countries are piloting the industry growth.The major players in the Internet of Things Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Market are Ford Motor Company, Texas Instruments Inc., Audi AG, Intel Corporation, General Motors, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Apple Inc., TOMTOM N.V., Google Inc., IBM Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Cisco Systems Inc., Vodafone Group, Microsoft Corp., AT&T Inc., and Thales SA.Browse Premium Industry Research Report with Analysis:ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT US:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Crude Oil Carriers Market to become worth US$217 bn by 2024

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"The Latest Research Report Crude Oil Carriers Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"This research study analyzes the market for crude oil carriers both in terms of volume (units) and revenue (US$ Bn). The crude oil carriers market has been segmented on the basis of vessel type and geography. In terms of region, the market has been divided into four segments that comprise 10 countries, which are the major players in the global crude oil carriers market. For the research, 2015 has been taken as the base year, while all forecasts have been given for the period from 2016 to 2024. Market data for all the segments has been provided at the regional as well as country-specific level from 2016 to 2024. The report provides a broad competitive analysis of companies engaged in the crude oil shipping business. The report also includes the key market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the global crude oil shipping market. These market dynamics were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report with the help of supporting graphs and tables. The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of the global crude oil carriers market with the help of Porters Five Forces model. This analysis helps in understanding the five major forces that affect the market structure and market profitability. The forces analyzed are bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition.Get Sample copy of this Report @The high-level analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the crude oil shipping business globally. There are currently numerous drivers of the market. Some of the most prominent drivers are declining crude oil prices proving to be beneficial for the crude oil carriers market and world economy influencing the demand for crude oil transportation. Market attractiveness analysis was carried out for the crude oil carriers market on the basis of geography. Market attractiveness was estimated on the basis of common parameters that directly impact the crude oil carriers market in different regions. The parameters include shipping costs, government policies, crude oil demand, and applications such as automobile.Shipping of petroleum liquids such as crude oil comprises many different operations, each of which signifies a potential source of evaporation loss. Crude oil is transported from production facilities to refineries by crude oil carriers, rail tank cars, barges, pipelines, and tank trucks. Coastal tank vessel trades are functioned by crude carriers, tank barges, and product tankers. Crude carriers serve the West Alaska coast crude oil trades. Crude oil carriers are generally referred to as oil tankers, which transport crude oil from one location to another.The crude oil carriers market was segmented on the basis of vessel type (VLCC/ULCC, Suezmax, Aframax, and Panamax). The crude oil carriers market was analyzed across four geographies: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Regional data has been provided for each sub-segment of the crude oil carriers market. Key players in the crude oil carriers market include AET Tanker Holdings Sdn Bhd, The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri), China Shipping Development Corp (CSDC), Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., Euronav, Frontline Ltd., Maran Tankers Management Inc., National Iranian Tanker Company, NYK line, Ocean Tankers (pte) Ltd., OMAN SHIPPING COMPANY S.A.O.C., Overseas Shipholding Group (OSG), Sovcomflot Group, and Teekay Corporation. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details, business strategies, and recent developments.View Sample PDF @Crude Oil Carriers Market: By Vessel TypeVLCC/ULCCSuezmaxAframaxPanamaxCrude Oil Carriers Market: By RegionNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeGreeceBelgiumRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaSouth KoreaSingaporeJapanMalaysiaRest of Asia PacificRest of WorldIranSaudi ArabiaOthersSend An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentSection 1 PrefaceReport DescriptionMarket SegmentationResearch ScopeResearch MethodologySection 2 Executive SummaryExecutive SummarySection 3 Industry AnalysisIntroductionValue Chain AnalysisMarket DynamicsMarket DriversMarket RestrainsMarket OpportunitiesPorters Five Forces AnalysisBargaining Power of SuppliersBargaining Power of BuyersThreat of SubstitutesThreat of New EntrantsDegree of CompetitionCompany Market Share- Crude Oil Carriers Market, 2014Market Attractiveness Analysis- Crude Oil Carriers Market, By RegionSection 4 Global Crude Oil Carriers Market  Vessel Type, by Volume and Revenue, 2014  2024 (Units) (US$ Bn)OverviewVLCC/ULCCSuezmaxAframaxPanamaxSection 6 Global Crude Oil Carriers Market  Regional Analysis by Volume and Revenue, 2014  2024 (Units) (US$ Bn)Regional OverviewNorth AmericaOverviewCountriesU.S. Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentRest of North America Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentEuropeOverviewCountriesGreece Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentBelgium Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentRest of Europe Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentAsia PacificOverviewCountriesChina Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentSouth Korea Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentSingapore Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentJapan Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentMalaysia Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentRest of Asia Pacific Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentRest Of WorldOverviewCountriesIran Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentSaudi Arabia Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentOthers Crude Oil Carriers Market by Vessel Type SegmentBuy Now This Report From Here @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Off-grid Energy Storage Market in India Rising To Grow At A CAGR Of 15.17% Over The Forecast Period 2017  2021: Delta Electronics, Exide Industries & NEC Energy Solutions

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Off-grid Energy Storage Market in India Rising To Grow At A CAGR Of 15.17% Over The Forecast Period 2017  2021: Delta Electronics, Exide Industries & NEC Energy Solutions" to its huge collection of research reports.Energy storage systems store surplus electricity that can be used during power shortages, blackouts, and peak hours of demand. Off-grid energy storage systems are decentralized structures designed for standalone power and help consumers in remote locations. These systems complement diesel generators or intermittent renewables sources by providing backup during low voltage or power outages.Technavios analysts forecast the off-grid energy storage market in India to grow at a CAGR of 15.17% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the off-grid energy storage market in India for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the new installations and exclude aftermarket.Technavio's report, Off-Grid Energy storage market in India 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 vendorsDelta ElectronicsExide IndustriesNEC Energy SolutionsSu-Kam Power SystemsTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Other prominent vendorsABBAmara RajaLuminous Power TechnologiesPanasonic IndiaSaftSamsung SDISchneider ElectricTrojan Battery CompanyMarket driverNeed for electrificationFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHigh capital requirementFor a full, detailed list, view our reportBrowse TOC @Market trendNeed for reducing CO2 emissionsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Dental Software Market Ultimate Analysis & Global Forecast to 2027

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Market Research Future has a cooked research report on global dental software market. The global dental software market is expected to reach USD 4185.5 Million during the period 2015 to 2027 from USD 1662.1 Million in 2015.Globally Dental Software Market is expected to grow at 8.0% GAGR (2016-2027).The Global Dental Software market is expected to witness high growth in the coming years. The demand for dental software is dignified by the improving process quality, patient satisfaction, additionally speeding up the process for the diagnosis, research, and treatments provided by dental professionals, dental laboratories, dental academic, research institutes, and forensic laboratories.The global market for dental software is dominated by the North American countries, owing to factors such as immense investments in healthcare by government as well as private companies, growing geriatric population and rising unhealthy eating habits that are predominantly responsible for the market growth. In North America, the U.S. acquired major share of about 88.8% in 2015.Increasing incidence of dental disorders is creating immense scope for the dentists resulting high revenue. the pressure on the dental software market is increasing rapidly resulting new developments and emerging need of new software.The market has been segmented as practice management software, patient communication software, treatment planning software, patient education software, dental imaging software which is further segmented as dental image management software and software for dental instruments.Hospitals & clinics are holding the maximum shares for dental software globally, as it is used in various applications from data management to treatment planning. Increase in the arrival rate of dental patients in the clinics and hospitals are giving boost to the hospital and clinic segment to hold and keep more market share.Forecast indicators are categorized into four major heads that are drivers, opportunities, threats, and restraints. There are various factors and opportunities which help the dental software market to grow but there are some factors which are against the market and are hampering the growth and development of the industry as well. The restraints in the dental software market is the complexity of dental software which is not accessible by everyone, and the price of the dental software which is not affordable by all dentists, and dental clinics.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players for Global Dental Software MarketSome of the key players in this market are: Abeldent Inc., Dentimax llc., Carestream Health, Inc, Ace Dental Software, Datacon Dental Systems, Dexis, llc, Gendex Dental System, Henry Schein, Inc, Imageworks Corporation, Open Dental Software Inc, Planmeca Oy, Sirona Dental Systems, Inc, Consult-Pro, Patterson Dental, Medicloud and many others.SegmentationThe global dental software market has been segmented on the basis of types, application, end user, and deployment.Dental Software market has been segmented on the basis of types which comprises of practice management software, patient communication software, treatment planning software, patient education software, and dental imaging software. Whereas on the basis of application the market is segmented into clinical application and administrative. Furthermore on the basis of deployment the market is segmented into on-premise model, web-based/ cloud-based model. On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into hospitals & clinics, academics & research institutes.Key Findings The Dental Software global market is expected to reach $ 4,185.5 Million by 2027 Americas holds the largest market share of 48.35% of Dental Software market globally Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a fastest CAGR of 8.8% Clinical application segment hold 91.9% market share of global Dental Software market by applicationRegional AnalysisConsidering the global dental software market, there are four main regions North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle & Africa. North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle & Africa. The market is estimated at $1,662.1 million in 2015 and expected to reach at $4,185.5 million by 2027 at the rate of 8.0% from 2016-2027.North America holds 48.75% market share of Global Dental software market by application which is expected to reach $1,772.1 million by 2027.The European Dental software market is expected to expand continuously due to rising demand of cosmetic dentistry as well as its increasing awareness of treatment in the countries. The European dental software market expected growth for forecasted period at a CAGR of 8.4%.Globally, Asia Pacific Dental Software market is one of the fastest growing regions. The Asia Pacific market comprises of mainly two regions; Asia market and Pacific market. The Asian market includes countries like Japan, China, India, South Korea and rest of Asia Pacific.In Asia-Pacific there is wide range of opportunities for Dental Software market due to the presence of developing countries. The developing countries in this region are widely adopting newer technologies for ease of work. The Asian dental software market expected to be the fastest growing market at a CAGR of 8.8%Globally, the Middle East & Africa region for Dental Software market is developing with a steady pace, Africa dental software market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.3%.Get a Discount @ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Dental Software Market Research Report- Global Forecast till 2027 chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
North America Strain Gauges Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

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MarketResearchNest.com adds North America Strain Gauges Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 117 pages with table and figures in it.Strain Gauges, also called Strain Gages, are devices whose resistance changes under the application of force or strain. They can be used for measurement of force, strain, stress, pressure, displacement, acceleration etc.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Strain Gauges in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversVPG, HBM, Zemic, Yiling, HYCSYQ, NMB, KYOWA, LCT, Omega, TML, BCM, Piezo-Metrics, HualanhaiMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers United States Canada MexicoMarket Segment by Type, coversStress Analysis Type, Transducer Type, Other (for Special Applications)Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoElectronics and Measurement, Construction, Industrial, OtherRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Strain Gauges industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Cryogenic Tanks Market Is Expected To Reach US$1,433.0 mn by 2024

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"The Latest Research Report Cryogenic Tanks Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Global Cryogenic Tanks Market: Scope of the ReportThe global cryogenic tanks market report by Transparency Market Research provides in-depth analysis of the cryogenic tanks market globally. The report segments the market on the basis of product type, application, and geography. The report analyzes the global cryogenic tanks market in terms of both cryogenic tanks sales volume (Units) and revenue (US$ Mn) for the years 20162024. For this research study, the base year is 2015, whereas the forecast is from 2016 to 2024. The report provides a comprehensive competitive landscape and features companies manufacturing cryogenic tanks. This report includes the key dynamics affecting the cryogenic tanks market globally. The analysis in the report provides detailed insights of the global cryogenic tanks market. The drivers, opportunities, and restraints of the market were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report. The report also provides a detailed industry analysis of the global cryogenic tanks with the help of the Porters Five Forces Analysis model.Get Sample copy of this Report @Global Cryogenic Tanks Market: SegmentationThe research report is segmented into product type and application. Product type segment is further segmented into LNG, nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. Application segment is further segmented into storage and transportation (including distribution).The global cryogenic tanks market has been segmented geographically into five regions and further into sub-segmented 15 unique country sub-segments. The regional segments are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. The 15 countries which have been separately addressed in this report are the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, China, India, Japan, Australia, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Egypt, Brazil, and Mexico.On the basis of product type, LNG is the dominant product type segment which accounted for 37.3% market share in terms of cryogenic tanks sales revenue in 2015. Nitrogen product type segment held 30.9% market share of the global cryogenic tanks market In terms of cryogenic tanks sales revenue in 2015. Increasing production capacity, consumption rate, and trade volume of LNG are some of the factors likely to boost the demand for cryogenic tanks for LNG product type segment during the forecast period.On the basis of application, storage application dominated the global cryogenic tanks market with 85.5% market share. Cryogenic tanks are utilized for short term as well as long term storage of industrial gases and LNG among others. Increasing on-site production of industrial gases and planned (strategic) storage of LNG are some of the factors which are expected to boost storage application segment during the forecast period.View Sample PDF @Global Cryogenic Tanks Market: Geographical and Competitive LandscapeAsia Pacific dominated the global cryogenic tanks market in terms of cryogenic tanks sales volume and revenue, in 2015. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.4% and 7.3% from 2016 to 2024 in terms of cryogenic tanks sales volume and revenue respectively. North America followed Asia Pacific in terms of market share of the global cryogenic tanks market on the basis of cryogenic tanks sales volume and revenue, in 2015. Europe closely followed North America in terms of cryogenic tanks sales volume and revenue, in 2015. The market in Europe is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.6% and 7.8% from 2016 to 2024 in terms of cryogenic tanks sales volume and revenue respectively.Some of the key market participants in the global cryogenic tanks market are Cryogas Equipment Private Ltd., VRV S.p.A, Cryoquip Australia, Eden Cryogenics LLC, Cryofab Inc., FNF Gas Technology Products Private Ltd., Gardner Cryogenics, INOX India Pvt. Ltd., Linde AG, and Suretank Group Ltd. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details, business strategies, and SWOT analysis. The global cryogenic tanks market has been segmented as follows:Global Cryogenic Tanks Market: Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaEuropeThe U.K.GermanyFranceRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaRest of Asia PacificMiddle East & AfricaQatarOmanUAEEgyptRest of Middle East & AfricaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaGlobal Cryogenic Tanks Market: By Product TypeLiquefied Natural Gas (LNG)NitrogenOxygenArgonGlobal Cryogenic Tanks Market: By ApplicationStorageTransportationSend An Enquiry Request @Table Of Contents1. Preface1.1. Report Scope and Market Segmentation1.2. Research Highlights1.3. Research Objectives1.4. Key Questions Answered2. Assumptions and Research Methodology2.1. Report Assumptions2.2. Acronyms Used3. Executive Summary3.1. Global Cryogenic Tanks Market Size, By Market Value (US$ Mn) and Market Value Share, By Region3.2. Market Size, Indicative (US$ Mn)3.3. Top Trends4. Market Overview4.1. Product Overview4.2. Market Indicators5. Market Dynamics5.1. Drivers and Restraints Snapshot Analysis5.1.1. Drivers5.1.2. Restraints5.1.3. Opportunities5.2. Porters Analysis5.2.1. Threat of Substitutes5.2.2. Threat of Buyers5.2.3. Threat of New Entrants5.2.4. Threat of Suppliers5.2.5. Degree of Competition5.3. Value Chain Analysis5.4. Global Cryogenic Tanks Market OutlookBuy Now This Report From Here @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Digital Photography Market Key Growth Factors and Industry Analysis 2016-2024

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Global Digital Photography Market: OverviewDigital photography refers to a form of photography that uses devices containing arrays of light sensitive sensors to capture pictures focused by a lens. The captured pictures are in digital format and are stored as a computer file, which can be further processed for color corrections and resizing for viewing, publishing, or printing. Professional photographer apart, digital photography has been adopted by many amateur snapshot photographers in the recent times as it helps them with the convenience of sending images by email or uploading them on the World Wide Web. This extended demand from amateur photographers in the past decade is reflecting on the global digital photography market, which was estimated at US$82.6 bn in 2016, is projected for a healthy growth rate during the forecast period of 2016 to 2024.Download exclusive Sample of this report:The digital photography market includes complimentary products such as cameras, interchangeable lenses, storage cards, printers, photo editing software, camera cell phones, and digital photo frames. Collectively, the market for these complimentary products was valued at US$ 68.5bn, which makes it a highly lucrative opportunities for the players. This report on global digital photography market is comprehensive study of the market in its current scenario and based on prominent factors that are expected to influence the growth rate, figurative future has been evaluated. Another key aspect of the report is its section on company profiles which includes data on manufacturing base, capacity, product portfolio, marketing strategies, and other key developments.Global Digital Photography Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIn the recent past, digital media has revolutionized the face of digital photography with the emergence of photo sharing sites, networking sites, and blogging sites. This incremented participation of vast populations on the Internet is rated as the primary factor that is extending the demand in the global market for digital photography. Moreover, the key players in this market are constantly innovating and introducing new products to catch the attention of the consumers. For example, wireless cameras are expected to witness a surge in demand in the mature markets of the U.S., Japan, Europe, and other emerging economies in Asia Pacific. Digital and video cameras are expected to soon evolve into network devices, which will create new opportunities for the wireless operators and film suppliers. With digital cameras accessing personal computers and the Internet via wireless data connection, new levels of convenience for the consumers.Browse Market Research Report @The report observes that networking sites are constantly innovating their photo sharing section, which gives their consumers a rich and enhanced visual experience. This factor is expected to prompt a surge in demand for digital photography products, especially in the urban population across the globe. Additionally, digital photography finds applications in several industries such as medical, surgeries, automobiles, and manufacturing. Conversely, these digital photography complimentary products are expensive, sophisticated, and requires professional knowledge to operate. This factor is anticipated to hinder the growth rate of the market during the forecast period.The global market for digital photography can be segmented on the basis of products, application and geography. By products, the market can be divided into processing equipment, interchangeable lenses, and camera smartphones. By application, the market can be divided into photography software and photo processing.Global Digital Photography Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, North America and Europe contribute to the maximum demand in the global market, which is a reflection of high purchasing potential of the populations in those region, particularly in the countries of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, and Germany. However, with the exponential rise of the social media in the emerging economies in Asia Pacific, which has vastly populated countries such as India and India, are projected for a robust growth rate during the forecast period.Companies mentioned in the research reportSome of the key players currently operational in the global market for digital photography are Nikon, Sony, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Canon, and Samsung.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:
Aroma Ingredients Market Analysis, Forecast, and Assessment 2026

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Aroma chemical is a complex fusion of natural and/or synthetic ingredients that are added to various products in order to incorporate desired odor. These ingredients are widely used in consumer care and personal care products. Personal care industry is one of the major application industry for aroma ingredients market. The global aroma ingredients market has witnessed steady growth over the recent past owing to increasing demand for natural aroma ingredients. Soaps and detergent is estimated to account for a significant share in the global aroma ingredients market followed by cosmetics and toiletries applications. The global aroma ingredients market is expected to register a steady growth during forecast period.Request For Report Sample:Introduction of innovative and novel products especially in cosmetics, toiletries, and skin care and hair care products has driven the overall growth of the global aroma ingredients market. The increasing demand for natural ingredients coupled with change in consumer preferences are considered to be the important driver for global aroma ingredients market. Furthermore, significant technological advancements have also fuelled the growth of the market. Moreover, the increase in demand from the emerging and developing nations for natural fragrance due to health concerns related to synthetic chemicals is likely to act as an opportunity for the growth of the global aroma ingredients market. These factors are likely to drive the global aroma ingredients market during the forecast period. A key trend witnessed in global aroma chemicals market is that the key aroma chemical producers are responding to growing opportunities by expanding their global presence. One of the major factor that is likely to restrict growth in demand for natural aroma ingredients is high costs associated with switching from synthetic chemical to natural ingredients.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):On the basis of regions, Europe is expected to be a promising revenue generating region for the global aroma ingredients market and is expected to grow at steady growth rate during forecast period. Latin America and Asia Pacific are anticipated to witness relatively faster growth both in terms of value and in terms of volume. Potential opportunities in Asia Pacific and Latin America due to availability of labor and low cost of raw materials are expected to drive growth in these regions over the forecast period. North America and Middle East & Africa are also expected to show positive growth in the near future.Some of the key players identified in the global aroma ingredients market are as follows: BASF SE, Mane SA, International Flavors and Fragrances Inc., Givaudan SA, Fermenich International SA, Frutarom Industries Ltd., Symrise AG, Agilex Flavors and Fragrances, Inc., Hindustan Mint & Agro Products Pvt. Ltd.Browse Premium Industry Research Report with Analysis:ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT US:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Top Digital Marketing Company DCI Launches Infographic on Influencer Marketing

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Leading IT and digital marketing company Dot Com Infoway (DCI) has recently launched an infographic titled Why Influencer Marketing is the Next Big Thing where it brings industry insights to reveal how influencer marketing is becoming a preferred tool for marketers worldwide.We have been closely watching the influencer marketing space for some time now. DCI offers comprehensive influencer marketing services, and we have seen a spurt in demand for these services by brands around the world. We thought of sharing this emerging trend with everyone, and that is how the infographic took shape, revealed Mr Venkatesh C.R., Managing Director and CEO of DCI.The infographic uses fetching graphics and comprehensive charts and tables to showcase cutting-edge research on the topic. The research for the infographic has been sourced from Marketo, Traackr, Launch Metrics and Tomoson Blog.The infographic is highly useful for brands who are forever on a lookout for marketing trends that are working better than the existing one. The research shown in the infographic puts forward ample proof that the organizations around the world are increasingly opting for influencer marketing for better RoI, adds Mr Venkatesh.The infographic covers two important aspects related to influencer marketing; one, the hard facts proving that businesses worldwide are including influencer marketing in their core marketing strategy and two, the various benefits of adopting influencer marketing.Working on its core philosophy of sharing knowledge on new and emerging trends and concepts in a manner that is fun and easy to understand, DCI keeps releasing engaging infographics from time to time.The latest infographic will certainly inform businesses about the emerging trends in digital marketing as well as inspire them to explore how they can best optimize influencer marketing to ensure higher reach, enhanced sales and increased brand loyalty.For more details on the infographic, please check hereAbout Dot Com Infoway:Dot Com Infoway, a CMMI Level 3 multinational information technology company, is a pioneer in delivering software development, mobile application and internet marketing solutions and technologies to business.With offices in India, and United States, DCI is positioned to become a leader in delivering advanced IT services for your business. DCI provides enterprise solutions that include software solutions, web solutions, mobile application solutions, Internet marketing and a whole gamut of IT solutions and products to clients.Leveraging the innate offshore value advantage of our development centres in India, we provide customized, scalable and cost effective solutions to businesses. With well- structured development methodologies, Global Delivery Model and rigid QA systems, we deliver business-critical solutions on-time, within budgets and within desired levels of performance.Plot No 3, Vaigai Colony I FloorAnna NagarMadurai - 625020
Cable Mangement System Market: Structure and Overview of Key Market Forces Propelling Market

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The global market for cable management systems is likely to report a remarkable growth in the coming years. The opportunity that this market holds is expected to expand at CAGR of 9.80% during the period from 2016 to 2024 and rise from US$14.7 bn in 2015 to a value of US$33.9 bn by the end of 2024.The world is undergoing a period of rapid digitization, thanks to the emergence of fiber-optic and coaxial cables. The rise in wiring and cabling in devices as well as infrastructure is leading to increased incidence of cable spaghetti (a situation where cables are badly entangled), thereby accelerating the need for cable management systems across the world.Presently, information technology is witnessing a remarkable upsurge. A number of enterprises and institutions are increasingly becoming dependent of it that has required them to install high-performance cabling. This factor has fueled the demand for advanced cable management systems for data and communication applications remarkably across the world.Obtain Report Details @Cable Trays Find High Demand in Oil and Gas SectorMajor products available in the worldwide cable management system market are cable tray, raceway, cable ladder, cable trunking, cable connector, cable conduit, cable gland, cable lug and tools, cable chain and reel, and cable duct. Cable trays report the highest demand among all the cable system management products, accounting for a share of approximately 18% in the overall demand and a share of 14% in terms of revenue generated.The safety features, high-weight-holding capacity, compactness, cost-efficient design criteria, and maintenance-free deployment has increased the popularity of cable trays substantially, leading to their accelerated application in the oil and gas sector. The segment is expected to retain its dominance in the coming years.Request Sample @Promising Opportunities to Emerge in Asia PacificThe worldwide market for cable management systems is spread across Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Presently, the highest consumption of these systems is being reported in North America. In 2015, the region registered an opportunity worth US$4.34 bn in this market, which is likely to increase to US$10.22 bn by the end of 2024.Although North America will remain the leading regional market for cable management systems, Asia Pacific is projected to offer most attractive opportunities for market players over the next few years. The rapid urbanization in Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa is likely to propel construction activities, specifically in BRICS nations, attracting a significant demand for these systems in the near future.The presence of a number of companies demonstrates a fragmented structure of the global cable management system market. TE Connectivity Ltd., HellermannTyton Group PLC, Thomas & Betts Corp., Niedax Group, Marco Cable Management, Schneider Electric SE, Vantrunk Int., Allied Tube & Conduit, Panduit Corp., Chatsworth Products Inc., Leviton Manufacturing Co. Inc., Enduro Composites Inc., Cooper Wiring Devices, Legrand SA are the major manufacturers of cable management systems across the world.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:
Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market to See Incredible Growth During 2027

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Malignant Infantile osteopetrosis is also called as infantile autosomal recessive osteopetrosis. It is one of the rare skeletal dysplasia that is characterized using a radiographic pattern which shows increased bone density with involvement of the medullary portion. This type of disease typically manifests in infancy. Diagnosis of Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis is based on radiographic evaluation and clinical evaluation, that is further confirmed using gene analysis technique if required. Due to medullary canal eradication and bony expansion, cranial nerve compression, grave pancytopenia, and fractures may ensue. It condition of the patient becomes more critical if untreated for a longer time period. Defect in one or more genes that are involved in functioning, formation and development of cells leads to osteopetrosis. This diseased condition involves some significant symptoms viz. blurring of vision, bone fractures, low blood cells level and recurrent dental infection.Read Report Overview @The global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market is anticipated to register a significant CAGR over a forecast period. The increasing use of advanced diagnosis facilities such as DNA testing and bone marrow aspiration to diagnose the increasing prevalence of the osteopetrosis is the major factor, which anticipated to boost the growth of the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market. The developing medical infrastructure and diagnostics facilities in the emerging markets such as China and India, also propel the growth of the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market. The increasing research and development activities to bring the new diagnostic technologies and up-gradation, also expected to drives the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market over a forecast period. The increasing discretionary funding by the various governments and institutes for the research activities, also expected to boost the global market of the malignant infantile osteoporosis treatment and diagnosis over the forecast period.However, the higher cost associated with the diagnosis of the malignant infantile osteoporosis may hamper the diagnosis rate and restrain the growth of the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market. The low awareness about the malignant infantile osteoporosis and unavailability of advanced treatment in poorly developed economies, may also hamper the growth of the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market over a forecast period.Request Sample Report @On the basis of regional presence, the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Currently, North America is contributing the leading shares to the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market in terms of value and anticipated to register a significant CAGR over a forecast period. The Europe is also contributing the moderate shares to the market due to the availability of advanced diagnostic technologies in the region and the reimbursement policies. APAC is the most lucrative market for the malignant infantile osteoporosis diagnosis and expected to show a robust growth to the market due to increasing awareness about the malignant infantile osteoporosis and developing medical infrastructure. MEA is at a nascent stage to the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market and anticipated to register a decent growth to the market over a forecast period. Overall, the global Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market is expected to show significant growth over a forecast period.Buy Full Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market Report @Some of the major market players in Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis Market globally include GlaxoSmithKline plc., Pharmed Limited, Novartis International AG, Johnson & Johnson, Biocon Limited, InterMune, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Sanofi SA, Merck & Co., Inc. and many more.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:
South Africa Automotive Parts Die-Casting Market Report 2017, Trends, Analysis, Share, Estimates and Forecasts to 2022.

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The South Africa Automotive Parts Die-Casting report provides an in-depth analysis of the various market segments and its sub-segments.Products Covered: Pressure die-casting Vacuum die-casting Squeeze die-casting Semi-solid die-castingRaw Material Types Covered: Aluminium Zinc Magnesium OthersApplication Types Covered: Body assemblies Engine Parts Transmission parts OthersThe report focuses on current and upcoming market trends such as Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, and Challenges, technological advancements, Porters Five Forces analysis to assess the intensity of competition in the market. The market values are presented in the form of tables and graphs for better interpretation.For More, Please Visit:Market Size EstimationsThe market assessment is made by the core industry experts using our 360 research approach. The data is derived from the most reliable, authenticated data sources and is validated by the industry experts (Primary Research). Both top down and bottom up analysis are implemented to enhance the accuracy of the market figures. The market projections are calculated for the next 8 years using the actual market numbers of previous year as the base value.Company ProfilingThis section provides the overview of the key players that are leading in the industry, covering their business operations, financials, list of products & services, SWOT analysis, major developments such as mergers & acquisitions, agreements, partnerships, joint ventures, new product launch, expansions etc.Report Highlights:- Market share assessments for all the mentioned market segments and sub-segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 8 years for all the given segments- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping, mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsFor More, Please Visit:We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg,MD, 20877, USA
Produced Water Treatment Systems Market Segment Forecasts up to 2020, Research Reports | MRR.BIZ

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"The Latest Research Report Produced Water Treatment Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2012 - 2020 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Produced water is a blend of organic and inorganic compounds that are produced during the extraction of oil and gas. Produced water is usually generated in large quantities. Currently, there is no separation between oil management and produced water in terms of administrative divisions. There are, however, multiple stages within oil management that cater to the management of produced water.The primary aim of any oil management body is to minimize the amount of water produced in order to reduce the volume of water that is lifted and pumped and consequently reduce the volume of water being treated and disposed. Most conventional oil production scenarios witness an exponential proportion between the amount of oil extracted and the volume of water produced. Unconventional oil production methods show an inverse proportion between oil and water.Get Sample copy of this Report @This research report on the global produced water treatment market provides descriptive analysis of all the features that drive it as well as the obstacles that it faces currently. The report derives relevant and valuable data from a curated archive and presents it to the user in a format that applies to the current and future trends in the global produced water treatment market. The research is conducted in a segmented manner based on the various types of treatment, including membrane, physical, and others.The report provides a holistic study of the trends in the global produced water treatment market through the eyes of its top players, regions, and other categories. The report incorporates all the recent developments that have occurred in the global produced water treatment market, along with conclusive applications of top rated research methodologies such as Porters five force analysis and SWOT analysis.Overview of the Global Produced Water Treatment MarketThe global produced water treatment market is currently expected to grow at a steady rate. One of the major drivers of the global produced water treatment market is the increase in the rate of exploration of on-shore and off-shore oil and gas resources. Extraction procedures have scaled up in terms of number of installations as well as production volume, further propelled by a growing demand for oil and gas on a global level. The global produced water treatment market also benefits from the growing prevalence of fracking, or land gas drilling through the use of hydraulic fracturing. As the production rates of the oil industry increase, so will the demand from the global produced water treatment market.The market is also propelled by the constantly reducing supply of usable water in developing countries such as India and China, thereby increasing the demand for better water treatment solutions.View Sample PDF @The market is, however, restrained by the high installation costs and operation costs. Most top players in the oil and gas industry are concerned about the scaling of water treatment processes with their growing production of oil. They have also expressed concern regarding the high maintenance costs of operating large-scale water treatment equipment.Regional analysis of the global produced water treatment market reveals North America to have led in the recent past, owing to an increase in oil exploration and tightening government regulations over the release of treated and polluted water in larger water bodies.Companies Mentioned in the Research ReportThe key players in the global produced water treatment market are Siemens, Veolia, Cetco Energy Services, Baker Hughes Inc., Schlumberger, FMC Technologies, Ovivo, Halliburton, GE Water, and Enviro-Tech Systems.Table of Content1. Global Produced Water Treatment Systems Market  Executive Summary2. Global Produced Water Treatment Systems Market  Acronyms and Assumptions3. Global Produced Water Treatment Systems Market  Research Methodology4. Global Produced Water Treatment Systems Market Taxonomy5. Global GDP & Energy Demand Outlook5.1. Global GDP forecast5.2. Global Energy Demand by Source TypeSend An Enquiry Request @6. Global Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production Outlook6.1. Global Oil & Natural Gas Production Outlook6.1.1. Global Onshore and Offshore Crude Oil Production6.1.2. Global Onshore and Offshore Natural Gas Production Outlook6.2. Regional Oil & Natural Gas Production Outlook7. Produced Water Production Outlook7.1. What is Produced Water7.2. Water:Oil Ratio & Water:Natural Gas Ratio7.3. Global Produced Water Production7.4. Global Produced Water Production from Oil by Source7.4.1. Global Onshore Produced Water Production from Oil7.4.2. Global Offshore Produced Water Production from Oil7.5. Global Produced Water Production from Natural Gas by Source7.5.1. Global Onshore Produced Water Production from Natural Gas7.5.2. Global Offshore Produced Water Production from Natural Gas7.6. Global Produced Water Production by Region7.6.1. North America Produced Water Production Outlook7.6.2. Europe Produced Water Production Outlook7.6.3. Asia Pacific Produced Water Production Outlook7.6.4. MEA Produced Water Production Outlook7.6.5. Latin America Produced Water Production OutlookBuy Now This Report From Here @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Insulinoma Market Ultimate Analysis & Global Forecast to 2023

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Insulinoma is a rare form of tumour of the beta cells of pancreas resulting in an excessive secretion of insulin, leading to hypoglycaemia. Most insulinomas are benign, however a few metastasize. The symptoms of insulinoma are hypoglycaemia and associated symptoms such as blurred vision, lethargy, diplopia, light headedness, and convulsions, unconsciousness, which can also be life-threatening. Severe hypoglycemia may result in seizures, coma, and permanent neurological damage. Symptoms such as palpitations, tachycardia, sweating, hunger, anxiety etc. are caused by catecholaminergic response to hypoglycaemia triggered by insulinomas.The global insulinoma market is expected to reach USD 3.3 billion by 2023, and the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of ~ 3.3 % during the forecast period 2017-2023.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Insulinomas occur in people between the ages of 40 and 60 and grow slowly. The exact causes of insulinoma are unknown, however, patients with multiple endocrine neplasia type 1 syndrome or von Hippel-Landau syndrome are more at risk. According to a cancer research, 10% of insulinomas are cancerous and approximately 10% of patients diagnosed with insulinoma have more than one tumour. Insulinomas affect between up to five people out of one million each year.Surgery is the definitive treatment for insulinomas and 90% of patients are cured of the condition. However, surgery can cause diabetes if significant amount of the pancreas are removed. The development of minimal invasive surgery procedures such as laparoscopy has resulted in replacement of open pancreatomy which was once the gold standard of treatment. The market constraints are lack of awareness, misdiagnosis of the disease, risk of surgery, high cost of treatment etc.Key Players in the Global Insulinoma Market Abcam plc cironpharma Pfizer Plc. Entax Medical Olympus Boston Scientific Corporation Medtronic Cook Medical Cook Medical, Inc.Segments:The global insulinoma market has been segmented on the basis of type, diagnosis, treatment, and end user.Based on type, the market has been segmented as benign, and metastasize.Based on diagnosis, the market has been segmented as blood test, endoscopic ultrasound, Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and others.Based on treatment, the market has been segmented as surgery, drugs, radiofrequency ablation, chemotherapy and others.Based on the end user, the market has been segmented as hospitals & clinics, academic and research, and others.Browse Full Report Details @Regional AnalysisThe Americas account for a significant market share owing to extensive use of medications and high expenditure on the health care. Additionally, the fastest uptake of new products and surgical procedures in the US drives the insulinoma market. Also, concentration of major healthcare companies in the developed countries of this region coupled with the larger insurance penetration is adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, the US expend high on the healthcare, which accounts for 16% of GDP also cruises the sale of insulinoma treatment.Europe is the second largest market in the world due to high income and strong healthcare penetration. European market growth is led by countries such as Germany and France. The UK is expected to be the fastest growing market over the assessment period.Asia Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly and China and India are likely to lead this market due to fast growing healthcare sector and large unmet needs during the forecast period. South East Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia are projected to contribute highly to the market growth.Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. Other Middle East nations to watch out for will be Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. The African region is expected to witness a moderate growth owing to poor economic and political conditions and poor healthcare development. However, Africa has the highest unmet needs in the world and cost-effective products will be the key to dominate the African market.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Insulinoma Market Research Report- Global Forecast till 2023 chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Soldering Robot Market strategies and forecasts from 2017 to 2022 available in new report

Soldering Robot Market

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QY Research Groups has released a latest report based on thorough research on Soldering Robot Market. This in-depth report discusses this industrys market in forms of overview/definition, application, classification, predictions pertaining value and volume, and future predictions. It also prominently attributes the current situation and outlooks with industrial and financial aspect. Furthermore, it comprises of current events, latest market trends, schematic representation of the global companies with their prime developments, mergers & acquisitions, deals and agreements, expansions and investments, etc. Additionally, it talks about the vital prospects such as market restrains growth drivers, challenges and potential opportunities that may affect the overall Soldering Robot Market.Avail Sample Copy of this Report @Due to the constant altering business landscape, enhancements in the technology, the process of communication in several organizations have become intricate. Moreover, nowadays, customers demands have increased and expanded, this in return expects efficient and effective communication inside an organization. Escalated use of social networking websites, increased use of smartphones, and ascending demand for improved enterprise efficiency are the prime growth factors of the Soldering Robot Market. Enhanced technologies and several Information technology tools better the productivity of the business and escalate functional efficiency. Additionally, many services and solutions are put to use in various industrial verticals which includes banks, insurance (BFSI), public sector, travel & hospitality, healthcare, energy & utilities, education, IT & telecom, transportations and logistics, retail, many other industry sectors such as media and communications.The methodological analysis which is used to approximate and forecast the Soldering Robot Market starts with gathering data on vital vendors with the help of secondary research through various trusted sources that include news articles, presentations, journals and paid database. In addition, information which the vendors provide is also taken into consideration to analyze the segmentation of the market.Browse Detailed TOC, Tables, Figures, Charts and Companies Mentioned in Report at This extensive professional market research report renders an in-depth study of this markets industry along with growth prospects for the forecast period with exclusive focus on the size and characteristics of the market, major market manufacturers, present trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape for the predicted frame of time coupled with market restrains and prime success. Besides, this exclusive report cloaks the global Soldering Robot Market based on applications, regions, competitive landscape and products. The report enlists profiles of several companies of prime market players, market share, financial metrics, business strategies, and forecasts and predictions.The Soldering Robot Market report wraps: Industry summary with market definition, key elements such as market restrains, drivers, potential opportunities, challenges, trends in the market, etc. Market sectioning depending on product, application, geographical region, competitive market share Market size, approximates, forecasts for the said frame of time Distribution channel assessment Competitive analysis of crucial market manufacturers, trends, company profiles, strategies, etc. Factors accountable for the growth of the market Thorough assessment of prime market geographically Factual information, insights, market date backed by statistics and industryThe report is worth a buy because:This report on Soldering Robot Market assists in analyzing the condition and situation of the market in primary regions of the world. Apart from rendering an overview of product manufacturing processes, the research report also renders impeded strategy of the industry, latest technological developments, cost structures, product specifications, etc. Future predictions based on the development of this industry are also covered. The report also reviews micro and macro factors vital for the new entrants along with the current market players.Some points from TOC:-Global Soldering Robots Market Research Report 20171 Soldering Robots Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Soldering Robots1.2 Soldering Robots Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Soldering Robots Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Soldering Robots Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Soldering Robots1.2.4 Dispensing Robots1.2.5 Others1.3 Global Soldering Robots Segment by Application1.3.1 Soldering Robots Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Electronics Industry1.3.3 Semiconductor1.3.4 Repairing1.3.5 Construction1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Soldering Robots Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Soldering Robots Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Soldering Robots (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Soldering Robots Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Soldering Robots Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022).continuedDownload PDF Brochure of this Report @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:Sarah JEmail- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWebsite-
Mobile Advertising Market: Understanding the Key Product Segments and their Future

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Mobile advertising is a form of advertising using mobile devices. It is a subgroup of mobile marketing. Mobile advertising provides information/content developed/designed by advertisers intended for customers/mobile device users. The different types of advertising includes display advertising, In-app, In-game, rich media, search, sms/mms/P2P messaging and others.Mobile advertising provides a solution to advertisers to reach targeted users through various devices to deliver information about innovative tools and technology. Mobile advertising solutions enables advertisers to target users, such as advertising campaign solutions, in order to a reach defined set of goals which includes raising brand awareness, establishing brand and increase rate of conversions and so on.Obtain Report Details @Key factors driving the growth of the mobile advertising market include rising concerns about security, and privacy, deletion, and misuse/manipulation of data are some of the major fears that persist among online users.In Global Mobile Advertising Market by Devices, smartphone segment holds the largest share due to high penetration rate of smartphone devices across the world. The smartphone segment is also expected to be fastest growing segment in the forecast period due to increasing adoption rate of smartphones in the emerging economies such as India and Brazil.In 2014, the search advertising type was the largest segment in the global mobile advertising market. The search advertising type is majorly preferred by the sectors such as BFSI, telecommunication and IT, and FMCG. Search advertising offers an opportunity to place online advertisements on the webpage that shows results from search queries; however this type is majorly adopted by advertisers.Request Sample @In-App advertising is anticipated to be the fastest growing segment in the forecast period due to increasing number of mobile applications for various industries such as banking, logistics and retail.Advertisement Campaign solutions holds the largest share as political parties are using these solutions for attracting the attention of population in their region during different stages of elections which include local body to national level elections. The reporting & analytics solution is expected to be the fastest growing segment in the forecast period due to rising adoption of data analytics solutions in understanding the mindset of customers.In the mobile advertising market by region, North America is the major contributor for the revenue generated in the global mobile advertising market. The APAC region is anticipated to be the fastest-growing segment during the forecast period due to high growth in mobile innovation and high usage of Internet through by consumers in the region. The North America mobile advertising market revenue is mainly contributed by the government and BFSI sectors.mobile-advertising-marketThe growth of the mobile advertising market is mainly contributed by major players such as Amobee, Inc. (Singtel Limited), Apple, Inc. (iAd), Chartboost, Euclid Analytics, Facebook, Inc., Flurry (Yahoo, Inc.), Google, Inc. (Admob Ads), Inmobi, Microsoft Corporation, Millenial Media, Mopub Inc., and Tune Inc. (HasOffers).About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Bio-Medical Packaging Market has a Great Future Ahead

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Bio-Medical Packaging Market Research Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The global market for Bio-Medical Packaging is analyzed in a detailed market research report added to the extensive research report database of QYResearchReports.com. The report analyses the current state of the Bio-Medical Packaging market and forecasts the growth prospects of various elements of the market over the period of 2017-2022. The report utilizes industry-best primary and secondary research methodologies and numerous inputs from industry experts, making it an excellent market guide for business strategists and managers.The report includes a critical analysis of the key factors driving and limiting markets growth, key historic and current trends, along with a comprehensive study of impact of these factors on the future of the global Bio-Medical Packaging market. Along with this, the report also includes a thorough analysis of the trends of past and present years, which are expected to influence the market in the near future as well.Get Research Summary Of The Report:The report gives an in-depth account of the revenue generated by the market from historical sales across key regional markets. The net worth of the market is determined in the report based on the revenue generated by sales of Bio-Medical Packaging across key regions. An overview of growth opportunities, drivers, restraints, regulations, and current state of development of the Bio-Medical Packaging market across these regions is also included in the report.The report also presents an all-inclusive picture of the competitive landscape of the global Bio-Medical Packaging market. Along with the current state of the key businesses operating in the market, the report also throws light on the numerous opportunities for businesses, the various threats presented by market conditions and competitors, along with an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of key businesses operating in the market.View TOC (table of content) of the Report:List of Tables and FiguresFigure Europe Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Japan Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Southeast Asia Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure India Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Global Bio-Medical Packaging Revenue (Million USD) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Bio-Medical Packaging Capacity, Production (K Units) Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Figure Global Bio-Medical Packaging Major Players Product Capacity (K Units) (2012-2017)Table Global Bio-Medical Packaging Capacity (K Units) of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)Table Global Bio-Medical Packaging Capacity Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)About USQYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.Contact US1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Data Protection As A Service Dpaas Market: Up-to-Date Analysis of Market Trends and Technological Improvements

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The high demand for data protection to be more cost-effective is currently the key driver promoting the providers of data protection as a service. Coupled with the growing need for disaster recovery applications, players in the data protection as a service market are poised to become some of the more sought-after entities in the IT industry. Their ability to store critical data safely and remotely provides one of the better disaster recovery management methods.Additionally, providers of data protection as a service can currently offer these services at lower prices thanks to the falling costs of cloud-based data storage. The intensely competitive cloud computing scenario is allowing end users to avail quality services at lower prices than before, including DPaaS.Obtain Report Details @However, the key concern of questionable data security and privacy issues are still a key concern for individuals and companies seeking to avail data protection as a service models. This threat to the market is expected to fizzle out over time as stronger encryption methods and secure storage technologies come into the picture.The above factors, along with others, are responsible for the global market for data protection as a service to be projected at a whopping CAGR of 30.1% from 2016 to 2024. While currently at a relatively slower pace, the growth rate is expected to rise rapidly over time. By the end of 2016, the global DPaaS markets revenue is expected to reach US$5.66 bn and US$46.40 bn by the end of 2024.Key DPaaS Providers Focusing on APAC DemandThe demand for data protection as a service has always been very high in North America, owing to its advanced IT infrastructure and massive volumes of data that need to protected. By the end of 2024, the DPaaS market in North America is expected to generate US$14.07 bn in revenue.Additionally, there is a fast rate of increase in awareness of cloud computing applications and advantages in other sectors of North America, including private and public avenues such as hospitals and schools. North America also has a large platform for open source cloud platforms such as OpenStack, further promoting the use of hybrid clouds and related data protection as a service models.Asia Pacific on the other hand is showing a massive increase in the demand for data protection as a service. A key factor driving this demand for DPaaS is the currently fast rate of improvements in the implementation of high-speed internet and remote connectivity. There are a staggering number of companies that are currently entering the cloud computing market in this region, adding to the volume of storage that will be made available over the coming years.Request Sample @Near Equal Demand for DPaaS from Large Enterprises and SMEsWhile the disparity in the revenue generated by data protection as a service providers from large enterprises, and small and medium enterprises is noticeable currently, this gap is expected to fade out over the coming years owing to the greater demand for data protection as a service shown by SMEs. By the end of 2024, the revenue generated by data protection as a service companies from large enterprises is expected to reach US$23.46 bn.Enterprises with a low CAPEX are able to avail efficient data protection as a service at a much faster rate than before, due to the rapid reduction in costs of cloud computing applications. Their greater budget restrictions can now manage to fit in effective cloud computing solutions, including DPaaS.The key providers of data protection as a service (DPaaS) from a global perspective include EMC Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Inc., IBM Corporation, VMware, Inc., Quantum Corporation, Commvault Systems, Inc., Asigra, Inc., and HP Development Company, L.P.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:
Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market Share And Current Trends by 2022: by Technology - Inlet Fogging Systems and Wet Compression Systems

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"The Latest Research Report Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market by Technology - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Rising demand for energy is driving the construction of new power plants globally. Despite the prevailing economic slowdown, demand for power is expected to grow on account of urbanization and rise in population. The drop in plant efficiency during summer seasons raises concerns related to blackouts and power outages. The solution to such problems is capacity additions. However, capacity addition either through the construction of new power plants or addition of extra turbines is both capital-intensive and time-consuming. Restricted by both time and economic constraints, power companies and turbine manufacturers are now opting to install turbine inlet cooling systems. Turbine inlet cooling systems provide cost-effective power augmentation. Mechanical chillers and evaporative technologies, such as inlet fogging and wet compression systems, are widely adopted by power producers and turbine manufacturers to boost turbine capacities, especially during the summer seasons.Get Sample copy of this Report @The research study is designed to analyze and estimate the market for turbine inlet cooling systems globally both in terms of volume (Units) and revenue (USD Million). The global market for turbine inlet cooling systems has been broadly segmented on the basis of technology and geography. The market report only addresses three specific inlet cooling technologies: inlet fogging, mechanical chillers, and wet compression. These technologies are used to boost plant efficiency, especially in regions with hot climates. Utilization of inlet fogging technology reduces the inlet air temperature through spraying of small water droplets. Wet compression units are generally used in conjunction with other inlet cooling technologies to provide additional cooling to boost plant efficiency. Mechanical chillers can attain greater temperature reduction in inlet air than most of the other available technologies.In this research study, the turbine inlet cooling market has been segmented at a granular level, geographically. The global market has been segmented geographically into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Each of these regional segments has been further sub-divided into its constituent country-wise segments. A total of 12 sub-segments have been drawn from the four regions, which comprise eight unique country-specific analyses. The countries included under the scope of the report are China, Japan, and Australia in Asia Pacific; the U.S. in North America; Italy and Turkey in Europe; and Iran and GCC countries in RoW. The report features a detailed regional segmentation with market growth forecast for the 2014-2022 period. Similar detailed projections have also been provided for the technology segment. For this market study, 2013 has been taken as the base year, while all forecasts are for the 2014-2022 period.View Sample PDF @This report includes key market dynamics affecting the demand for turbine inlet cooling systems globally. As part of our market dynamics analysis, we have analyzed the market drivers, market restraints, and market opportunities. The report also provides a detailed analysis of the global turbine inlet cooling systems market with the help of Porters Five Forces model. The Porters Five Forces analysis aids in understanding the five major forces that affect the industry structure and demand for turbine inlet cooling systems globally. The forces analyzed are the bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition. The report also includes a glimpse of the global turbine inlet cooling systems value chain. The interaction and roles of various stakeholders starting from technology development and manufacturing to the deployment and final end-use have been elucidated in detail. The market attractiveness analysis involves benchmarking and ranking of each region on the basis of numerous parameters. The parameters selected are likely to have a pronounced effect on the demand for turbine inlet cooling systems in that region, both currently and in the near future.Key participants in the global turbine inlet cooling systems market include American Moistening Company Inc., Caldwell Energy Company Inc., Cat Pumps Inc., Humifrio S.L., Mee Industries Inc., Score Energy Limited, Siemens AG, UTC Technologies Company, Camfil AB, and Baltec IES Pty. Ltd. This report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial revenues, business strategies, and recent developmentsSend An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface1.1 Report Description1.2 Report Scope1.3 Market Segmentation1.4 Research MethodologyChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1 Global Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems MarketChapter 3 Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market  Industry Analysis3.1 Introduction3.2 Value Chain Analysis: Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market3.3 Market Drivers3.3.1 Economic and Environmental Benefits to Power Plant Owners through Higher Plant Efficiency3.3.2 Increasing Adoption of Gas-fired Power Plants3.3.2.1 Minimization of Power Outages During Peak Loads3.4 Market Restraints3.4.1 Shortcoming in Existing Turbine Inlet Cooling Technologies3.5 Market Opportunities3.5.1 Decentralization of Power Generation to Boost Demand for Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems3.6 Porters five forces analysis: Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market3.6.1 Bargaining power of suppliers3.6.2 Bargaining power of buyers3.6.3 Threat from new entrants3.6.4 Degree of competition3.6.5 Threat from substitutes3.7 Company Market Share Analysis3.7.1 Global Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market, Company Market Share Analysis, 20133.8 Market Attractiveness Analysis3.8.1 Market Attractiveness Analysis of Global Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market, by Region, 2013Chapter 4 Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market: Technology Analysis4.1 Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market: Technology Overview4.1.1 Global Turbine Inlet Cooling Systems Market, Volume Share by Technology, 2013 and 20224.2 Inlet Fogging Systems4.2.1 Global Inlet Fogging Market Estimates and Forecast, By Volume and Revenue, 2013  2022 (Units) (USD Million)4.3 Wet Compression4.3.1.1 Impact of Wet Compression on a GE Frame 6B Turbine4.3.2 Global Wet Compression Market Estimates and Forecast, By Volume and Revenue, 2013  2022 (Units) (USD Million)4.4 Mechanical Chillers4.4.1 Global Mechanical Chillers Market Estimates and Forecast, By Volume and Revenue, 2013  2022 (Units) (USD Million)Buy Now This Report From Here @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Oil and Gas Storage Service Global Market Trend, Research Approach, Data Analysis and Forecast to 2020

ReportsWeb

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Storage tank services are responsible for over 70% of the revenue in the market and include containers that hold liquids, compressed gases, or mediums used for short- or long-term storage. Typically, these tanks operate under no or very little pressure and can be spherical or cylindrical in shape. Based upon location and requirement, storage tanks come in varieties such as crude oil tankages, product and intermediate storage tankages, dispatch area tankages, and minitanks near production units of a refinery.Publisher's analysts forecast the global oil and gas storage service market to grow at a CAGR of 2.2% during the period 2016-2020.Request Sample Copy atCovered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global oil and gas storage service market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed profiling of the key market participants across the value chain of the market.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:-Americas-APAC-EMEAPublisher's report, Global Oil and Gas Storage Service Market 2016-2020, 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 vendors-Royal Vopak-Oiltanking-Magellan Midstream Partners-Buckeye Partners-VitolInquire before Buying atOther prominent vendors-Blueknight Energy Partners-CIM-CCMP Group-CLH Group-Dailan Port Company-Horizon Terminals Limited-International-Matex Tank Terminals (IMTT)-Kinder Morgan-NuStar Energy-OdfjellMarket driver-Geographical diversification of crude oil markets.-For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge-High operational costs and strategic locations for oil terminals.-For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend-Shift toward independent oil and gas storage service companies.-For a full, detailed list, view our reportFor more information about this report:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Testing, Inspection and Certification Market size & global sales share, growth factor 2022

Testing, Inspection and Certification Market

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The Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Research Report 2017 renders deep perception of the key regional market status of the Proteomics Reagents Industry on a global level that primarily aims the core regions which comprises of continents like Europe, North America, and Asia and the key countries such as United States, Germany, China and Japan.The report on Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Market is a professional report which provides thorough knowledge along with complete information pertaining to the Proteomics Reagents industry a propos classification, definitions, applications, industry chain summary, industry policies in addition to plans, product specifications, manufacturing processes, cost structures, etc.Avail Sample Copy of this Report @The potential of this industry segment has been rigorously investigated in conjunction with primary market challenges. The present market condition and future prospects of the segment has also been examined. Moreover, key strategies in the market that includes product developments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, etc., are discussed. Besides, upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also conducted.Report Includes:-The report cloaks the market analysis and projection of Testing, Inspection and Certification Market on a regional as well as global level. The report constitutes qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, first-hand data, assistance from industry experts along with their most recent verbatim and each industry manufacturers via the market value chain. The research experts have additionally assessed the in general sales and revenue generation of this particular market. In addition, this report also delivers widespread analysis of root market trends, several governing elements and macro-economic indicators, coupled with market improvements as per every segment. Furthermore, the report contains diverse profiles of primary market players of Proteomics Reagents Market.Top Players In Global Market-1. SGS Group2. Bureau Veritas3. Dekra Certification4. Intertek5. TUV SUD6. Eurofins Scientific7. DNV8. TUV Rheinland9. UL LLC10. ALS Limited11. TUV Nord Group12. Mistras Group13. SAI Global14. BSI Group15. Exova GroupAnd Many Others..Browse Detailed TOC, Tables, Figures, Charts and Companies Mentioned in Report at The report is generically segmented into six parts and every part aims on the overview of the Proteomics Reagents industry, present condition of the market, feasibleness of the investment along with several strategies and policies. Apart from the definition and classification, the report also discusses the analysis of import and export and describes a comparison of the market that is focused on the trends and development. Along with entire framework in addition to in-depth details, one can prepare and stay ahead of the competitors across the targeted locations. The fact that this market report renders details about the major market players along with their product development and current trends proves to be very beneficial for fresh entrants to comprehend and recognize the industry in an improved manner. The report also enlightens the productions, sales, supply, market condition, demand, growth, and forecast of the Proteomics Reagents industry in the global markets.Every regions market has been studied thoroughly in this report which deals with the precise information pertaining to the Marketing Channels and novel project investments so that the new entrants as well as the established market players conduct intricate research of trends and analysis in these regional markets. Acknowledging the status of the environment and products up gradation, the market report foretells each and every detail.So as to fabricate this report, complete key details, strategies and variables are examined so that entire useful information is amalgamated together for the understanding and studying the key facts pertaining the global Proteomics Reagents Industry. The production value and market share in conjunction with the SWOT analysis everything is integrated in this report.Some points from TOC:-Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Research Report 20171.1 Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Overview 11.1.1 Testing, Inspection and Certification Product Scope 11.1.2 Market Status and Outlook 11.2 Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2012-2017) 31.2.1 United States Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 41.2.2 EU Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 51.2.3 Japan Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 61.2.4 China Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 71.2.5 Korea Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 81.2.6 Australia Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Status and Outlook 91.2.7 Korea and Australia analysis / write-up of Testing, Inspection and Certification Market. 91.3 Testing, Inspection and Certification Market by End Users/Application 101.3.1 Consumer Product 121.3.2 Commodities 131.3.3 Industry 141.3.4 LFE 152 Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Competition Analysis by Players 162.1 Global Testing, Inspection and Certification Market Size by Players (2012-2017) 162.2 Competitive Status and Trend 192.2.1 Market Concentration Rate 192.2.2 New Entrants 19.continuedDownload PDF Brochure of this Report @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:Sarah JEmail- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWebsite-
Lithotripters Global Market Research Methodology, Research Scope Forecast 2020

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Lithotripter is a non-invasive device that helps in breaking the kidney stones by passing electromagnetic shock waves from outside the body. The device provides a non-surgical method of destroying/pulverizing stones into small pieces that are capable enough to excrete naturally through individual's urine. Very few lithotripsies are performed through MI procedures that expose individuals to a lower concentration of anesthesia.Publisher's analysts forecast the global lithotripters market to grow at a CAGR of 2.1% during the period 2016-2020.Request Sample Copy atCovered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global lithotripters market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of lithotripsy devices.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:-Americas-APAC-EMEAPublisher's report, Global Lithotripters Market 2016-2020, 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 vendors-Boston Scientific-Direx Group-Dornier MedTech-Siemens Healthcare-STORZ Medical-OlympusInquire before Buying atOther prominent vendors-Allengers Medical Systems-Aymed-CellSonic Medical-Convergent Laser Technologies-Cook Medical-Elmed Electronics & Medical Industry & Trade-EMD Medical Technologies-GEMMS-Gyrus ACMI-Jena Med Tech-Medispec-NOVAmedtek-Shenzhen Huikang (Wikkon) Medical Apparatus-Shenzhen Hyde Medical EquipmentMarket driver-Increasing incidence of urolithiasis-For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge-Complications associated with lithotripsy-For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend-Technological advancements in lithotripsy-For a full, detailed list, view our reportFor more information about this report:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
BYOD Security Market : Global Forecast over 2023

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Bring your own device (BYOD) refers to computing devices such as smartphones and tablets that employees bring to the workplace on the secure corporate networks. These mobile devices are prone to viruses and other potential risks such as cyber attacks. BYOD security solutions protect such devices from security threats that can harm the intellectual property of the organization. Additionally, these security solutions aid employees to take optimum advantage of mobile devices to efficiently perform their tasks at convenient locations.Read Report Overview @Business enterprises across the globe are promoting the use of BYOD devices, thereby allowing their employees to carry these portable mobile devices for work-related tasks at the convenient locations. BYOD concept permits employees to access data at real time, thereby helping them in making quick decisions. This in turn necessitates the deployment of effective BYOD security solutions to prevent unauthorized access to the companys data and in turn is fuelling the growth of BYOD security solutions market. Another key factor boosting the growth of BYOD security market is the increased demand for smartphones. Employees prefer to carry-out work-related tasks such as accessing and sending emails while on the move.This ensures employee productivity independent of their location. This for addressing all Increasing possible security threat is triggering the need for deploying effective BYOD security solutions. BYOD risk doesnt just arise from malicious hackers. Threats to data and security are hidden in the most innocuous seeming software applications that employees access over the enterprise network. Such apps can transmit user data to advertisers, access contacts lists, read SMS messages or even install packages on the phone. Mobile application management (MAM) solutions offer more security control than Mobile Device Management (MDM). Thus, the BYOD security market is seeing a paradigm shift from MDM approach to the app-centric MAM approach. Some of the recent solutions by are Citrix Systems, Inc such as XenMobile are a combination of MDM, MAM and enterprise-grade productivity apps.However, initial investment to deploy these solutions is a significant factor restraining the growth of the market making them unaffordable for start-up companies. Also, the lack of awareness among the end-users and the technical complexity involved in resolving the issues pertaining to theft of BYOD device is a critical factor affecting the adoption of BYOD security solutions. Due to these factors, certain mid-size business enterprises are reluctant to implement the use of BYOD devices and their security solutions, thereby adversely affecting the growth of this market.The BYOD security market is segmented on the basis of types of security solutions as mobile data security solutions, mobile data management solutions, mobile network security solutions, and mobile ID management solutions among others. The BYOD security market is dominant in North America. The growth is primarily attributed to advancements in security based technologies and stiff competition among the business enterprises to increase productivity and in turns revenues by focusing on employees comfort. Asia-Pacific is witnessing growth in BYOD security solutions due to the increasing foreign investment in India, China, Indonesia and Singapore among others. Proliferation in the usage of smartphones is also one of the key factors for the growth of BYOD devices and its security solutions in this region. However cost associated with the BYOD devices security solutions are high making it a hindrance in this market.Request to view Sample Report:Leading players in the market are investing in research and development in designing solutions with the goal to address the increasing number of security threats and lessen their impact. For instance, Fortinet Inc., one of the major players in the market recently detected 211G1 malware and developed advanced techniques in blocking this malware. Other leading players in the market include Citrix Systems, Inc., International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, VMware Inc., MobileIron, and Good Technology Corporation.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
North America Camping Coolers Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

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MarketResearchNest.com adds North America Camping Coolers Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 123 pages with table and figures in it."A portable cooler is a camping accessory, which is a sub-segment of the outdoor equipment and sporting goods industry. This report aims to inform the reader about the Camping cooler industry, with a specific focus on coolers in the global market.Note: Production value in this report was based on the camping coolers suppliers. And the revenue in this report represented the end user market."Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Camping Coolers in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversIgloo, Coleman (Esky), Rubbermaid, Grizzly, Engel, Bison Coolers, ORCA, Pelican, Polar Bear Coolers, YETI, K2 coolers,AO coolers, Stanley, OAGear, KoolatronMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers United States Canada MexicoMarket Segment by Type, coversMetal Coolers, Plastic Coolers, Fabric CoolersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoBackyard and Car Camping, RV Camping, BackpackingRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Camping Coolers industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Global Non-invasive Blood Pressure Monitors Market Size & Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report"Non-invasive Blood Pressure Monitors Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025 "to its database.The objective of this report is to define, describe, and forecast the market on the basis of type, application, medical condition, and region. It provides detailed information regarding the major factors influencing the growth of the market. This report also tracks and analyzes competitive developments of the key players in terms of market developments, product portfolios, and financials.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @ Blood pressure is the strength of the blood pushing against the sides of the blood vessels. When the pressure is high, it gives extra pressure to the arteries and this may lead to strokes and attacks. Blood pressure monitoring plays an important role in detecting the health problems of a patient. Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury. Every blood pressure reading consists of two numbers or levels. The first number is called systolic pressure and the second number is called diastolic pressure. The numeric difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure is called pulse pressure. High blood pressure and low blood pressure are the two types of blood pressure depending on pressure fluctuation. The higher the patients blood pressure, the higher the risk of health problems. Fluctuation of pressure in vital areas of the body may cause various chronic and acute diseases such as diabetes and cardiac arrest. The normal reading of a blood pressure is 120/80 mmHg.Based on product type, the global non-invasive blood pressure monitors market is divided into full automatic and semi automatic. The automatic segment is growing at a faster rate than the semi automatic segment due to technological advancement such as Smart logic technology, digital display, light weight, and built-in pulse measurement. Based on device, the market is segmented into wrist device and arm device. The arm device segment accounts for a significant market share due its accuracy for obese patient The arm device is strongly recommended by both the American Heart Association (AHA) and the European Society of Hypertension (ESH). In terms of end-user, the market is classified as hospital, in clinic, and home care. In clinics and home care, noninvasive blood pressure monitors devices segment have growing at significant rate due to ease in use, handy and their prices have sunk to an appropriate level. Increasing trend of inactive lifestyle and rising geriatric population with hypertension and obesity are factors that are likely to boost the market growth during the forecast period. However, factors such as measurement repeatability, misleading reading, low accuracy, and poor serviceability related to devices are expected to hamper the growth of the global market for non-invasive blood pressure monitors.View Report @Geographically, the market is distributed over North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to be the largest market for non-invasive blood pressure monitors globally. This is attributed to rising geriatric population and increasing awareness about diseases related to blood pressure such as stroke. Encouraging reimbursement policies, quick adaptability of innovative non-invasive blood pressure device, and rising incidence of hypertension and its awareness are boosting the growth of the market in Europe. The market in Asia Pacific is growing at a fast rate due to inadequate monitoring practice of hypertension, especially in geriatric population regions such as India where hypertension lead to several deaths every year. The Middle East & Africa market is characterized by a large proportion of young people. According to the World Health Organization in 2012, the average life expectancy of these young people was 70 years. The region has a high prevalence of obesity, diabetes mellitus, and smoking. Currently, the cardiovascular disease has emerged as one of the leading causes of death in this population and year after it was increasing and this are all associated with hypertension. So awareness of this disease, improved healthcare structure give boost to the market.Omron Corporation, Bokang Instruments Co. Ltd., American Diagnostic Corp., A&D Medical, and GE Healthcare Ltd. are key pharmaceutical companies operating in the global market for non-invasive blood pressure monitors.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.Request For Enquiry @ The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, and North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Check Discount @ Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent marketImportant changes in market dynamicsMarket segmentation up to the second or third levelHistorical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volumeReporting and evaluation of recent industry developmentsMarket shares and strategies of key playersEmerging niche segments and regional marketsAn objective assessment of the trajectory of the marketRecommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketAbout usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact usMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Methyl Paraben Sales Market Report: Rising Demand Leads to Sustained Growth during the Period 2017-2022

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The market for Global Methyl Paraben market has been undergoing a transitional phase over the recent past. The continual advancements in technologies and the swift increase in infrastructural development projects have influenced the demand for Global Methyl Paraben Sales Market Report 2017 substantially over the past few years. The swift rise in urbanization and the significant increase in the disposable income of people are likely to maintain the demand pace of Global Methyl Paraben market in the near future. The augmenting interest of investors, government funding, and the rising trend of automation are also projected to reflect positively on this market in the years to come.Request Free Sample Report@Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Methyl Paraben for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Methyl Paraben market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Methyl Paraben sales volume, Price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingUeno Fine Chemicals (Japan)Gujarat Organics (India)Sharon Laboratories (Israel)Zhejiang Shengxiao (China)Jiangsu BVCO (China)Shandong Ailitong (China)Hangzhou Top (China)Kunshan Shuangyou (China)On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoFood GradeCosmetics GradeOtherOn 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, includingFood PreservativesCosmetics PreservativesMedicine PreservativesOtherBrowse Full Report with TOC@Table of ContentsGlobal Methyl Paraben Sales Market Report 20171 Methyl Paraben Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Methyl Paraben1.2 Classification of Methyl Paraben by Product Category1.2.1 Global Methyl Paraben Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Methyl Paraben Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Food Grade1.2.4 Cosmetics Grade1.2.5 Other1.3 Global Methyl Paraben Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Methyl Paraben Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Food Preservatives1.3.3 Cosmetics Preservatives1.3.4 Medicine Preservatives1.3.5 Other1.4 Global Methyl Paraben Market by Region1.4.1 Global Methyl Paraben Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Methyl Paraben Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Methyl Paraben (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Methyl Paraben Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Methyl Paraben Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Continued.Enquire About this Report@About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: - 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email:- press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:-Read Industry News at :-
Integrated Cardiology Devices Market Top Key Player - Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, Johnson and Johnson and More In-depth

Integrated Cardiology Devices Market

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Integrated cardiology devices are equipment in which surgeons perform critical cardiac surgeries using multiple devices. Integrated cardiology devices are the future devices for human circulatory system. These modern devices are used for early diagnosis and better treatment of diseases. During last few years, sheer growth is observed in integrated cardiology devices due to increase in heart related problems. In recent times this is the most promising market. According to WHO 30% of the deaths caused globally is due to heart diseases and there were an estimated 17.5 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases worldwide in 2015 alone and the cost of readmissions for cardiovascular diseases is extremely high. The Integrated Cardiology Devices Market also favors small innovative players with proprietary novel technologies and strong intellectual property rights. The Global Integrated Cardiology Devices Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.4% during forecasted period 2017-2023.Get a Sample Report @The real main impetuses are expanding commonness of cardiovascular sicknesses, developing appropriation rates of insignificantly intrusive surgeries and innovative advances presented in this field. Moreover, the strength of heart related sicknesses are expanding because of unfortunate way of life propensities, for instance absence of physical exercises, high tobacco admission, and utilization of liquor. Moreover innovative headways, for example, scaling down, expanding viability and effectiveness of gadgets is a noteworthy driving variable. Hence a solid administrative condition and development nature is fundamental which will bring about more noteworthy speculation and prompt a solid future market.Absence of learning among individuals and costly treatment are the variables which limited the development of the market. The absence of foundation and forte healing centers in the creating and poor districts of the world is another ruining factor for the market.Competitive Analysis:Medtronic (US), Boston Scientific Corporation (US), Jude Medical (US), Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (US), Abbott Laboratories (US), Johnson and Johnson (US), Getinge (Sweden), Terumo Corporation (Japan), Lepumedical (Bejing), Acrostak (Switzerland), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), Athenahealth Inc. (U.S),others.Regional Analysis:The Americas accounts for a significant market share owing to high expenditure on the health care especially of the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, the greater number of cardiac surgeries procedures due to greater healthcare penetration in the U.S. and Canada drives the Integrated Cardiology Devices Industry. The high concentration of the major hospitals in the developed countries of this region coupled with good reimbursement rates is adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, the large share of cardiology devices and surgeries in the returns of hospitals favors the market. The large number of medical devices companies in the U.S. is also a cause for the faster development of integrated cardiology devices market in the US.Europe is the second largest market in the world due to growing medical devices industry and healthcare penetration. The European market growth is led by countries such as Germany and France. Germany is expected to be the fastest growing market over the assessment period due to its large medical devices industry.Asia Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly; China and India are likely to lead this market due to fast growing healthcare sector and large unmet needs over the forecast period. South East Asian countries such as China, India, and Malaysia are projected to contribute highly to the market growth. The growing penetration of healthcare industry in the Asia Pacific region is expected to drive the future integrated cardiology devices market in the region.Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. Other Middle East nations to watch out for are Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. The African region is expected to witness a poor growth owing to poor economic and political conditions, and poor healthcare development. Other regions are expected to be laggards due to poor social development and tribal identities such as sub Saharan Africa.Ask to Expert @Brief TOCReport PrologueMarket IntroductionResearch MethodologyMarket DynamicsMarket Factor AnalysisGlobal Integrated Cardiology Devices Market, By procedureGlobal Integrated Cardiology Devices Market, By device typeGlobal Integrated Cardiology Devices market by ApplicationsGlobal Integrated Cardiology Devices market by end userGlobal Integrated Cardiology Devices market by regionCompetitive LandscapeCompany ProfileAppendixAbout 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:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
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http://www.whitemushroomholidays.com/

White Mushroom is a vacation rental accommodation provider with a decent growth trajectory. From an unassuming presence to a chain of budget properties in the cities of Jaipur, Kasauli, Udaipur, Ranthambore, Manali, Wayanad, Rohanda and Mumbai respectively, White Mushroom has come of age. The vacation rental provider is now supporting the needs of corporate clients, such as, but not limited to, Accenture, Cap Gemini, Indus IND Bank and Zephyr. The meteoric rise in White Mushrooms outreach is fuelled by a quality focus and commitment to customer satisfaction.Replying to a query related to White Mushroom, one of its executives recently stated, White Mushroom is a story of growth in all its existence. We are offering top vacation rentals in 10 sought after tourist destinations across the country, while negotiations for further expansion are underway. Each of our budget properties maintains a steady flow of vacationers for its ideal location, modern amenities, heart-warming hospitality and professional service. We not only charge reasonably but also provide several money-saving perks to bring down the vacationing budget considerably. After all, vacationing need not come with a hefty price tag.White Mushroom is particular about the comfort and convenience of guests. Accordingly, it treats guests with professional room service, laundry & dry cleaning service, housekeeping, individually controlled air conditioning, free Wi-Fi high-speed internet, along with a set of other modern amenities. Efficient and fast ground handling support is also available to further the vacationing experience. White Mushroom properties also feature in-house restaurants serving delectable local and international cuisines in tranquil and relaxing settings. Thanks to the travel desk, which is yet another mutual element across all White Mushroom properties, guided local sightseeing and adventure tours are easily available.Offering information on the White Mushroom Manali, the executive further stated, White Mushroom Manali continues to serve the rental accommodation needs of domestic and overseas tourists with commitment and efficiency. Our property is essentially a stone and wooden structure set in the backdrop of the snow clad Himalayas. Guests can treat themselves to the mesmerizing views of the valley, night sky, and dawn and dusk from the comforts of their balconies. Located at a walking distance from the Volvo Bus Stand, we are accessible via taxi or even on foot.Typical of White Mushroom properties, White Mushroom Manali also offers top of the line accommodation at budget prices. The vacationer can look forward to a comfortable stay in any of the 7 beautifully appointed bedrooms available. Each bedroom is delightfully decorated, well appointed and comes with attached bathroom. Moreover, the vacation rental provider offers four types of accommodation plans, including Basic Plan, Economy Plan, Superior Plan and Grande Plan, for better suitability. White Mushroom Manali also offers top-notch service, making it one of the best places to stay in ManaliHeadquartered in New Delhi White Mushrooms is a vacation rental accommodation provider presently serving Jaipur, Kasauli, Udaipur, Ranthambore, Manali, Wayanad, Rohanda and Mumbai. It offers top quality accommodation with a promise of value for money. Lately, White Mushroom Kasauli is attracting the attention of vacationers looking for the best budget hotels in KasauliName = White Mushrooms Holidays Pvt. LtdAddress = Tribhuvan Complex, Ishwar Nagar 10/1 Km Mathura RoadNew Delhi-110065Phone = +91-782-782-4444Email = customercare@whitemushroomholidays.comWebsite =
Global Lizard Bag Market 2017 Industry Key Players -Hermes, Sinod, Bellestone, BOLIYA, GUCCI, Dior,..

Lizard Bag Market

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Lizard Bag Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Lizard Bag Market 2017 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2022reports to its database.Executive SummaryThis report studies Lizard Bag in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringHermesSinodBellestoneBOLIYAGUCCIDior...Request Sample Report @Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Lizard Bag in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoBagWalletSplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Lizard Bag in each application, can be divided intoMenWomenFor further information on this report, visit -Table of Content:Global Lizard Bag Market Research Report 20171 Lizard Bag Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Lizard Bag1.2 Lizard Bag Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Lizard Bag by Type in 20151.2.2 Bag1.2.3 Wallet1.3 Lizard Bag Segment by Application1.3.1 Lizard Bag Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Men1.3.3 Women1.4 Lizard Bag Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Lizard Bag (2012-2022)2 Global Lizard Bag Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Lizard Bag Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Lizard Bag Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Lizard Bag Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Lizard Bag Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Lizard Bag Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Lizard Bag Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Lizard Bag Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Lizard Bag Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Lizard Bag Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Lizard Bag Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.4 North America Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 Europe Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 China Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 Japan Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Southeast Asia Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 India Lizard Bag Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Lizard Bag Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)4.1 Global Lizard Bag Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)4.2 North America Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Southeast Asia Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 India Lizard Bag Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Lizard Bag Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Lizard Bag Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Lizard Bag Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Lizard Bag Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Lizard Bag Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Lizard Bag Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Lizard Bag Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Lizard Bag Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesContinuousBuy 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
Bookimed lands $ 500,000 round from AVentures Capital to digitalize the medical treatment option for patients globally

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AVentures Capital, a leading early stage venture fund backing teams with R&D in Ukraine and CEE, has announced a USD 500K lead investment into Bookimed. Bookimed connects patients and clinics globally with the goal of providing tailored medical solution. Ever since the service was founded in 2013, over 80K customers have received help from Bookimed.Having won the CIS market, the company aims to attain a leading position globally. Its team of 70 people, which includes 32 doctors, is endowed with the quality expertise to assist clients with the most complex health challenges.Eevgeniy Kozlov, Co-Founder of Bookimed: "We have already partnered with more than 260 leading clinics from 26 countries worldwide. Our current goal is to digitalize via our platform the process of selecting the right medical solution based on the individual needs of the patient. The received Investment will be used to strengthen the current R&D team, upgrade the platform to provide tailored recommendations for patients while taking into account the specifics of their health issues, recommended treatment methods, and service options at the receiving clinics where we send patients".While Bookimed deals with dozens of various diagnoses, the company primarily helps patients with serious issues in the areas of oncology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, and pediatrics. This is a distinctive feature of the service, since most competitors specialize in aesthetic surgery and dentistry, and do not provide full medical support to the clients.Yuliya Sychikova, Associate at AVentures Capital: "We are excited to lead this investment round in Bookimed. Apart from the rockstar result-oriented team, we are thrilled to back their mission of tackling the important problem in the treatment of patients and increasing the level of medical options awareness. Top 5 regions where people use Bookimed service include the CIS countries, Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom and the USA".AVentures CapitalFounded in 2012, AVentures Capital is a leading early stage Venture Capital fund focused on global companies that leverage R&D in Ukraine and CEE. The fund targets the following IT categories: software, e-commerce, cloud services, mobile technology, IoT and others. AVentures Capital has over 10 companies in its portfolio, including Augmented Pixels, nuPSYS, Petcube, Spinbackup, StarWind Software, Rallyware, VOX, Teamfusion and others. AVentures Capital co-invested with Almaz Capital, Y Combinator, Vegas fund, and the Hive and other widely recognized funds. Learn more:Bookimed is an independent search service for medical solutions around the world. Bookimed organizes diagnostics, treatment, rehabilitation and aesthetic procedures in 260 clinics from 26 countries. The service helps to choose the best treatment for a person considering given criteria. We support our patients at every step of their way from requesting Bookimed to returning home. More details:AVentures Capital,Kryvorizka str.11, Kyiv, Ukraine, 03118Natalia Piddubenkonp@aventurescapital.com
Application Delivery Controllers Market: Worldwide Industry Analysis and New Market Opportunities Explored

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Application delivery controllers (ADC) are parts of networking elements in a data center. Application delivery controllers help to perform various mutual tasks, such as those done by web sites and web servers. Additionally, this technology is adopting by various end use organizations, to enhance their networks and protocol services.Thus, application delivery controllers are the next generation of load balancers, and are naturally located among web server farms and firewall/routers. The application delivery controllers market is predicted to witness stable during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.Various medium and large size organizations are investing heavily in IT infrastructure development to ensure that workforces always have access to information and applications when needed. Application delivery controllers guarantee high availability of applications by providing seamless failover. This factor is projected to boost the growth of this product market during the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @The global application delivery controllers market is segmented on the basis of deployment, organization type, end use industry, and geography. Based on deployment type, the market is segregated into hardware based application delivery controllers and virtual application delivery controllers.Upcoming emerging technologies, which include software-defined networking and software-defined storage, are expected to drive application delivery controllers demand during the forecast period.Based on organization type, the global application delivery controllers market has been bifurcated into small, medium, and large organizations. An application delivery controller employs policies and algorithms to determine how inbound application traffic is circulated. Across the globe, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are focusing on changing from on premises to cloud platform. Increasing data traffic in cloud is expected to increase the use of application delivery controllers in the coming years. This in turn is likely to propel the demand for this product during the forecast period.On the basis of end use industry, the global application delivery controllers market has been segmented into Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), telecommunication and IT, government, healthcare, retail and manufacturing among others. application delivery controllers helps reduce risks associated with information technology related security and confirm compliance with privacy regulations and data security.This is attributed to the high market penetration of application delivery controllers in server firewalls and network security systems which is expected to trigger the demand for this product in the coming years.Request Sample @However, increasing network difficulty due to increasing adoption of cloud applications and rising government regulations are projected to hinder growth of the global application delivery controllers market in the coming years.Geographically, the global application delivery controllers market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America. Asia Pacific has emerged as the fastest growing region for application delivery controllers. This regions growth is mainly on account of increasing internet penetration and adoption of cloud based application by various end use industries. In 2016, Asia Pacific and North America were major contributors to the global application delivery controllers market.Moreover, several infrastructure development initiatives taken up by governments to improve the performance of services and web based applications are expected to increase the adoption of this product in the near future. With the help of application delivery controllers technology, organizations can increase their productivity, saving time & money, and decreasing stress. Thus, these new development technologies will continue to drive the demand for application delivery controllers across the globe in the near future.Some of the leading players operating in the global application delivery controllers market are Brocade Communications Systems (the U.S), Barracuda Networks (the U.S), Citrix Systems (the U.S), Array Networks, Inc.(the U.S), Dell Inc. (the U.S), Fortinet (the U.S), Hewlett-Packard Company (the U.S), KEMP Technologies, Inc.(the U.S), and VMware (the 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. 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:
Oil Free Air Compressor Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

Oil Free Air Compressor Trends

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MarketResearchNest.com adds North America Oil Free Air Compressor Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 123 pages with table and figures in it.An oil-free compressor is only one of several types of compressors available. It works the same way as a standard air compressor, and may even look very similar on the outside; internally, however, it contains special seals designed to keep the crucial lubricating oil away from the compressed air. The moving parts inside the compressor require lubrication to reduce the friction. Lubrication is essential in adequate amounts, regardless of the type of compressor, in order to prevent failure of the parts. The term oil-free refers to the air that the compressor produces, not the machine itself.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Oil Free Air Compressor in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversAtlas Copco, Ingersoll Rand, Sullair, KAESER, Gardner Denver, Fusheng, Kobelco, General Electric, Aerzen, Mitsui, Hitachi,Anest Iwata, Nanjing Compressor, OtherMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers United States Canada MexicoMarket Segment by Type, coversBelow 50 HP, 50-100 HP, Above 100Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoFood and Beverage, Electronics, Pharmaceuticals, Oil and Gas, OthersRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Oil Free Air Compressor industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Global CSP Market Poised to Touch US$8.67 bn by 2020

MRRSE

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https://www.mrrse.com/concentrated-solar-power-market

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine Concentrated Solar Power Market  is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Get Free Sample Report@The global concentrated solar power (CSP) market holds a huge opportunity to rise owing to the increasing implementation of heat storage systems as well as hybridization of concentrated solar power plants with traditional thermal plants. CSP technology is said to be immensely capital intensive in nature and it can be deployed at commercial scale without the requirement of support from financial and governmental institutions. The prominent players operating in the global CSP market are continuously flourishing due to the constantly rising energy demand and the growing concerns about clean energy within developing nations.The global CSP market stood at US$2.51 bn in 2013 and is poised to touch US$8.67 bn by 2020. The market is predicted to rise at a whopping 20.30% CAGR between 2014 and 2020. Factors such as the increasing awareness regarding global warming and the growing greenhouse gas emissions are driving the overall market for CSP. In addition, the increasing prices of traditional energy sources and the growing concerns on future supply of energy will further augment the development of the market for concentrated solar power. Furthermore, the incentives and support provided by government globally will further provide impetus to the development of the market in the coming years. Contrariwise, the soaring cost of electricity generation may come up as a roadblock in the growth of the global concentrated solar power market.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Parabolic Trough to Lead Concentrated Solar Power Market till 2020In terms of product, the report segments the global CSP market into dish stirling, linear freshnel, solar tower, and parabolic trough. Of these, parabolic trough is the most matured technology in the market and is extensively utilized at commercial level for the generation of power. This technology held a leading position in the market in 2013 and is poised to rise at the swiftest growth rate between 2014 and 2020. The segment of tower and fresnel trailed parabolic trough, respectively. Of these, the tower technology is expanding at an exponential rate owing to the integration of technology with traditional thermal power plants, while the technology of dish sterling is employed for pilot projects and demonstration.Europe Emerged as the Most Dominant Region in Global Concentrated Solar Power MarketOn the basis of geography, the market is categorized into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Of these, on the basis of CSP installed capacity, Europe came up as the top producer of power globally within the CSP technology and the production in this region is predicted to expand in the coming years. Although, due to the economic slowdown within Europe, this growth of the market in Europe has experienced a gradual degradation within the installation process, still the growth of the market in this region will rise from 2014 to 2020. North America and Asia Pacific trail Europe in terms of production. On the other hand, the concentrated solar power (CSP) market is also predicted to grow in Asia Pacific in the coming years. The prime players within the market are focusing on investing within Asia Pacific and North America concentrated solar power markets.The chief players dominant in the market are Concentrated Solar Power market include Abengoa Solar S.A., Ibereolica Group, GDF SUEZ, NextEra Energy Resources, LLC., and BrightSource Energy, Inc.Send an Enquiry @About MRRSEMarket 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:
Latest Development : Greek Yogurt Market Globally Grow at a CAGR of 8.85% by Revenue During the Period 2017-2021

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Albany, NY, 7th December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Global Greek Yogurt Market 2017-2021" globally.The thick and creamy consistency along with many health benefits have made the Greek yogurt quite popular in recent years.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Vendors market Greek yogurt as a natural food that offers nutritional value and as a healthy snack that can be consumed at any time of the day, either with meals or as a meal replacement. Health claims like higher protein content but relatively lower fat and sugar contents than conventional yogurt have enhanced the popularity of Greek yogurt. Since, this yogurt variety is manufactured by the repeated straining of the regular yogurt, most of the lactose (sugar) is eliminated.Technavios analysts forecast the global greek yogurt market to grow at a CAGR of 8.85% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global greek yogurt 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:AmericasAPACEMEAView Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Technavio's report, Global Greek Yogurt 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 vendorsChobaniDannonFAGEGeneral MillsOther prominent vendorsAlpina FoodsAuburn DairyBrown Cow (Stonyfield Farm)Delta Food (Vivartia)EasiYoEHRMANNEmmi GroupGleniskKalypso Farms DairyKRI KRIMEVGALMller UK & IrelandOLYMPUSSkotidakisSun Valley DairyWallaby Yogurt CoYeo ValleyMarket driverIncreasing utilization of Greek yogurt in various food and beverage productsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeAvailability of other yogurt varietiesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendDemand for fusion of flavors in Greek yogurtFor a full, detailed list, view our reportBrowse 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?ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Pet Insurance 2017 Global Industry Key Players - Nationwide , Petplan NorthAmerica(Allianz) , Hartville Group , Pethealth , Petfirst , Embrace Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

World Pet Insurance Market

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World Pet Insurance MarketExecutive SummaryPet Insurance market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Request a Sample Report @The Players mentioned in our reportPetplan UK (Allianz)NationwidePetplan NorthAmerica(Allianz)Hartville GroupPethealthPetfirstEmbraceRoyal & Sun Alliance (RSA)Direct Line GroupTrupanionAgriaPetsecurePetSureAnicom Holdingipet InsuranceJapan Animal ClubGlobal Pet Insurance Market: Product Segment AnalysisLifetime CoverNon-lifetime CoverAccident-onlyGlobal Pet Insurance Market: Application Segment AnalysisDogCatGlobal Pet Insurance Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSAEuropeJapanChinaIndiaSouth East AsiaTo enquire about this report visit @Table of Content-Key Points CoveredChapter 1 About the Pet Insurance Industry1.1 Industry Definition and Types1.1.1 Lifetime Cover1.1.2 Non-lifetime Cover1.1.3 Accident-only1.2 Main Market Activities1.3 Similar Industries1.4 Industry at a GlanceChapter 2 World Market Competition Landscape2.1 Pet Insurance Markets by Regions2.1.1 USAMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.1.2 EuropeMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.1.3 ChinaMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.1.4 IndiaMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.1.5 JapanMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.1.6 South East AsiaMarket Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate 2012-2022Sales and Growth Rate 2012-2022Major Players Revenue (M USD) in 20172.2 World Pet Insurance Market by TypesLifetime CoverNon-lifetime CoverAccident-only2.3 World Pet Insurance Market by ApplicationsDogCat2.4 World Pet Insurance Market Analysis2.4.1 World Pet Insurance Market Revenue and Growth Rate 2012-20172.4.2 World Pet Insurance Market Consumption and Growth rate 2012-20172.4.3 World Pet Insurance Market Price Analysis 2012-2017Chapter 3 World Pet Insurance Market share3.1 Major Production Market share by Players3.2 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share by Players3.3 Major Production Market share by Regions in 2017, Through 20223.4 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share By Regions in 2017, Through 2022Chapter 4 Supply Chain Analysis4.1 Industry Supply chain Analysis4.2 Raw material Market Analysis4.2.1 Raw material Prices Analysis 2012-20174.2.2 Raw material Supply Market Analysis4.2 Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers Analysis4.3 Production Process Analysis4.4 Production Cost Structure Benchmarks4.5 End users Market AnalysisContinued.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
Luggage Bags Market 2017 - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2022

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This report studies Luggage Bags in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSamsonite International S.A.RIMOVABriggs & Riley TravelwareVIP Industries Ltd.VF CorporationDELSEYFox Luggage Inc....Request a Sample Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoVertical typeHorizontal typeBy Application, the market can be split intoSpecialty StoresDepartmental Stores, hypermarkets and SupermarketsInternet SaleOthersBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaMake an enquiry of this Report @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Luggage Bags Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Luggage Bags1.1 Definition and Specifications of Luggage Bags1.1.1 Definition of Luggage Bags1.1.2 Specifications of Luggage Bags1.2 Classification of Luggage Bags1.2.1 Vertical type1.2.2 Horizontal type1.3 Applications of Luggage Bags1.3.1 Specialty Stores1.3.2 Departmental Stores, hypermarkets and Supermarkets1.3.3 Internet Sale1.3.4 Others1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Luggage Bags2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Luggage Bags2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Luggage Bags2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Luggage Bags3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Luggage Bags3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Luggage Bags Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Luggage Bags Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Luggage Bags Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Luggage Bags Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Luggage Bags Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Luggage Bags Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Luggage Bags Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Luggage Bags Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Luggage Bags Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Luggage Bags Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Luggage Bags Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Luggage Bags Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis5.2 China Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.2.1 China Luggage Bags Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe Luggage Bags Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis5.4 Southeast Asia Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.4.1 Southeast Asia Luggage Bags Market Overview5.4.2 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.4.3 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.4.4 Southeast Asia 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis5.5 Japan Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.5.1 Japan Luggage Bags Market Overview5.5.2 Japan 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.5.3 Japan 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.5.4 Japan 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis5.6 India Luggage Bags Market Analysis5.6.1 India Luggage Bags Market Overview5.6.2 India 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.6.3 India 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales Price Analysis5.6.4 India 2016 Luggage Bags Market Share Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Segment Market Analysis (by Type)6.1 Global 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Sales by Type6.2 Different Types of Luggage Bags Product Interview Price Analysis6.3 Different Types of Luggage Bags Product Driving Factors Analysis6.3.1 Vertical type of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.2 Horizontal type of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor Analysis7 Global 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Segment Market Analysis (by Application)7.1 Global 2012-2017E Luggage Bags Consumption by Application7.2 Different Application of Luggage Bags Product Interview Price Analysis7.3 Different Application of Luggage Bags Product Driving Factors Analysis7.3.1 Specialty Stores of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor Analysis7.3.2 Departmental Stores, hypermarkets and Supermarkets of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor Analysis7.3.3 Internet Sale of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor Analysis7.3.4 Others of Luggage Bags Growth Driving Factor AnalysisContinuedPurchase 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
Artificial Sweetener Market by Region, Demand, Analysis and Forecast to 2018-2023

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The global Artificial Sweetener 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 Artificial Sweetener 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:TruviaWhole Earth SweetenerSweetLeaf TGSMadhava SweetenersADMCargillImperial SugarTate&LyleHerbovedaMorita Kagaku KogyoAch FoodArlon GroupABF IngredientsEvolvaGalamOhlyEqualNutraSweetFor More Information About This Report:Application Coverage:Sodium CyclamateSaccharinAlitameAspartameTGSOthersProduct Type:Sodium CyclamateSaccharinAlitameAspartameTGSOthersRegion Coverage:North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaRequest Sample Copy At:Table of Content1 Industry Overview2 Industry Environment3 Artificial Sweetener Market by Type4 Major Companies List5 Market Competition6 Market Demand7 Region Operation8 Marketing & Price9 Research ConclusionInquire For This Report At:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Attendance Tracking Software Market: Quantitative Market Analysis, Current and Future Trends

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Attendance tracking software is a sort of business software or application that is designed to optimize and track the periods that the workers or employees spend on the job and preserve records of the salaries and wages paid. This is a common type of application used almost in business of all sizes. Attendance tracking software delivers management personnel with varied tools to aid minimize waste and maximize cash flow.The programs is likely to maintain, generate and archive important tax and payroll information. The records ascertain importance during the event of audit by taxing authorities. A good attendance software suite is likely continue to function correctly as an organization advances. It also aids to regulate labor costs by decreasing over-payments which are mostly triggered by paying employees for period that are not working, and reduces interpretation error, transcription error and intentional error.Obtain Report Details @Increasing need for employee efficiency and productivity is one of the primary factors driving the attendance tracking software market during the forecast period. Advanced analytical tools offers employers with enhanced understanding of the behavior of the employees. Such perceptions have impelled organizations to apply content analytics and predictive in improving operational efficiency. Increasing cloud based solution is also another important factor boosting the growth of the attendance tracking software market across the world.Switching to a cloud based software application helps in reducing money spent on installing, configuring and maintaining a system. It aids in accommodating organizations growth easily and have the access to the current updates easily. Apart from this benefits, it is easily accessible from anytime and from anywhere. Increasing emphasis on workforce optimization and mobile applications is also bolstering the demand of the global attendance tracking software market.Workforce optimization is likely to help improving productivity, service and reduces costs and risks. Increasing adoption of automation is also bolstering the demand of attendance tracking software market across the globe. Automation of the system is likely to increase the productivity of the workforce since it carries out the repetitive tasks thereby allowing the workforce to focus on other productive tasks. Furthermore, it also increases accuracy and reduces the cost of operation.Request Sample @Despite of numerous driving factors there are certain factors hindering the growth of the attendance tracking software market globally during the forecast period. Since the biometric system captures all the detail of an individuals such as fingerprints, that are possibly be compromised or hacked due to various security reasons. However, this factor is likely to have medium impact during the forecast period.Increasing adoption of attendance tracking software among the small and medium sized organizations is likely to create opportunities in the global market. Moreover, inclination towards human resource analytics is also an important opportunity in the global market.On the basis of types the global attendance tracking software market is bifurcated into proximity cards and biometrics. The proximity cards is further bifurcated into magnetic strips, connect less smart card and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).Moreover, the biometric has been further segmented into fingerprint, facial recognition, hand geometry and iris recognition. Based on deployment type, the attendance tracking software market has been bifurcated into cloud and on premises.In addition, the market has also been segregated on the basis of end users that encompasses banking and financial sectors, healthcare, logistics and transportation, IT and Telecom, Retail, Government offices and others. The geographic bifurcation of the market comprises North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.Some of the key companies in the attendance tracking software market includes International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Kronos, Inc. (U.S.), SAP SE (Germany), Automatic Data Processing LLC. (U.S.), Oracle Corporation (U.S.), Ultimate Software Group, Inc. (U.S.), Workday, Inc. (U.S.), Workforce Software, LLC. (U.S.), Reflexis Systems (U.S.), Inc. and RITEQ Pty Ltd. (Australia).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:
Anti-UAV System 2017 Global Key Players  Thales Group, Blighter Surveillance Systems Ltd., Lockheed Martin, Saab, Dedrone Inc., Raytheon Co., Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. Market Analysis And Forecast To 2022

Anti-UAV System Market

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Anti-UAV System Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Anti-UAV System -Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Manufacturers, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Description:In this report, the global Anti-UAV System 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 Anti-UAV System in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Anti-UAV System market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingThales GroupBlighter Surveillance Systems Ltd.Lockheed MartinSaabDedrone Inc.Raytheon Co.Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd.Security and Counterintelligence Group LLCDroneshield Ltd.Theiss Uav Solutions, LLCPrime Consulting & TechnologiesNorthrop Grumman Corp.Request for Sample Report@On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLaser SystemKinetic SystemElectronics SystemOn 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, includingMilitary & DefenseCommercialEnquiry before Buying @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of Contents:Global Anti-UAV System Market Research Report 20171 Anti-UAV System Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Anti-UAV System1.2 Anti-UAV System Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Anti-UAV System Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Anti-UAV System Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Laser System1.2.4 Kinetic System1.2.5 Electronics System1.3 Global Anti-UAV System Segment by Application1.3.1 Anti-UAV System Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Military & Defense1.3.3 Commercial1.4 Global Anti-UAV System Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Anti-UAV System Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Anti-UAV System (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Anti-UAV System Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Anti-UAV System Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Anti-UAV System Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Anti-UAV System Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Anti-UAV System Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Anti-UAV System Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Anti-UAV System Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Anti-UAV System Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Anti-UAV System Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Anti-UAV System Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion.7 Global Anti-UAV System Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Thales Group7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Thales Group Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Blighter Surveillance Systems Ltd.7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Blighter Surveillance Systems Ltd. Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Lockheed Martin7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Lockheed Martin Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Saab7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Saab Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Dedrone Inc.7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Dedrone Inc. Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Raytheon Co.7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Raytheon Co. Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd.7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Security and Counterintelligence Group LLC7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Security and Counterintelligence Group LLC Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Droneshield Ltd.7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Droneshield Ltd. Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Theiss Uav Solutions, LLC7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Anti-UAV System Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Theiss Uav Solutions, LLC Anti-UAV System Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Prime Consulting & Technologies7.12 Northrop Grumman Corp.Continued..Buy now @Contact US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd: Pune  411028: Maharashtra,: Ph: +91 841 198 5042
Personal Protective Equipment Market for Mining Industry Globally Grow at a CAGR of 4.14% by Revenue During the Period 2017-2021

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Albany, NY, 7th December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Global Personal Protective Equipment Market for Mining Industry 2017-2021" globally.Personal protective equipment (PPE) for mining is used in workplace to protect workers from occupational injuries that may occur due to hazards and potential threat due to handling of heavy and sharp materials, hoisting, sliding materials, sudden fall of a person, fall of debris and roof, and several other accidents.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @There are mainly eight types of protective equipment for mining, namely protective clothing, respiratory protection, eye and face protection, foot protection, fall protection, hand protection, head protection, and ear protection.Technavios analysts forecast the global personal protective equipment market for mining industry to grow at a CAGR of 4.14% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global personal protective equipment market for mining industry 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:AmericasAPACEMEAView Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Technavio's report, Global Personal Protective Equipment Market for Mining Industry 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 vendors3MAnsellHoneywell InternationalMSAOther prominent vendorsAJ Charnaud & CoCordova Safety ProductsCestusDuPontErgodyneMoldexMadGripNATIONAL SAFETY APPARELProtective Industrial ProductsSensearMarket driverRecovery of mining industryFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeMechanization and increasing adoption of automationFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendAutomation in mining industryFor a full, detailed list, view our reportBrowse 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?ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Global Limestone for Agriculture Market is Expected to Rake in revenues worth US$545.7 mn by 2025

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The global limestone for agriculture market is fragmented in nature on account of the presence of numerous local and international players. Manufacturers keen on bolstering their position in the market are seen expanding their production capacity in highly populated fast-expanding economies of China and India, where demand is high and labor and land is cheap. Well-established companies are also taking the inorganic route of mergers and acquisitions to increase their geographical outreach.Request For Sample @Some of the key players in the global limestone market for agriculture are Nordkalk Corporation, Minerals Technologies Inc., Leiths (Scotland) Ltd., and Sibelco.As per a report by Transparency Market Research, the global limestone market for agriculture will likely clock a CAGR of 6.1% during the period from 2017 to 2025. Rising at this pace, the market which was worth US$321.4 mn in 2016 is projected to become worth US$545.7 mn by 2025.The two main types of products in the limestone for agriculture market are powdered and granular or palletized. The powdered limestone, currently holds a leading share in the market since it can be broken down easily by dint of being small and spread easily on the soil. This in turn helps to initiate the neutralization process faster. Further, its swift uptake is also a result of its relatively lesser market price.Geographically, the key segments of the global market for limestone for agriculture are North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific, among them, dominates both in terms of revenue and growth rate on the back of large swaths of arable land and rising demand for food in the region. Clocking a maximum growth rate, the revenue in the market is expected to reach US$294.13 mn by 2025.Global Limestone Market for Agriculture RevenueAbility to Neutralize Acidity in Soil Drives their DemandLimestone, a form of sedimentary rock, is made up of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams, and molluscs. They also are formed through evaporation. Some of the major materials found in them are calcite and aragonite, which are a variant crystal form of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). About 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestone. Limestone, both powdered and granular, find application in construction, steel making, paper and pulp industry as well as agriculture.In agriculture, limestone can be either directly applied on the soil surface or can be mixed along with fertilizers and sprayed evenly on the soil surface. It helps to neutralize excess acidity in soil, which may be caused by acid rain and thus make the condition favorable for the growth of crops or plants. The neutralizing factor of limestone depends on the size and dimension of limestone used and the amount of calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate in the limestone molecule, adds the lead analyst of the report.Ever-growing World Population Benefits MarketOverall, a burgeoning world population leading to a pressing demand for food is at the forefront of driving sales of limestone for agriculture. Farmers prefer it over other chemicals since they are less harmful.Request For TOC @This review is based on the findings of a TMR report, titled, Limestone Market for Agriculture (Product  Normal and Granular/Palletized) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 20172025.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.Contact USTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Bookkeeper Software Market: Evolving Technology, Trends and Industry Analysis

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Bookkeeper software is a computer program that aids bookkeepers in reporting and recording a firms financial transactions. The functionality of the book keeper software varies from product to product. Smaller firms often opt for off the shelf products whereas larger firms opt for customized solutions that integrate a huge amount of data from various departments. This software is an important resource for modern businesses.It enables almost instantaneous reporting, analysis, and detailed tracking of financial transactions. Earlier these tasks were performed manually, using bulky transaction journals. Unplanned reporting was usually unfeasible since the labor involved in merging the manual entries. Bookkeeper software automates these tasks, decreasing the cost of accounting and facilitating improved financial decision making through timely reporting.The bookkeeper software market is primarily driven by the increasing demand to upgrade finance operations. Rising complexities in financial service firms and adoption of digital technologies are the reason forcing the upgrade of finance operations. Another important factor responsible for the growth of the bookkeeper market is the shift toward green IT. Green IT refers to the efficient usage of IT resources and computers with an environmental friendly approach.Obtain Report Details @Implementation of cloud based technology helps in achieving sustainability and energy efficiency. Emergence of business accounting mobile applications is also an important factor that is likely to bolster the demand for book keeper software during the forecast period. These mobile applications assist customers to control daily accounting tasks anytime from anywhere.It also helps with accounting processes like sending invoices, accepting payments, tracking receipts, logging expenses, and planning budgets. Majority of mobile accounting applications have basic features which includes expense and invoicing tracking. Advanced features in applications comprise bill reminders, mobile wallets, and bank transfers.Despite many positive indicators, there are some factors that are likely to restrain the market growth of bookkeeper software during the forecast period. Although cloud based software offers several advantages, there are few risks as well. Some of the important considerations include lack of physical control of the servers, potential of being affected by loopholes, and data transmission out of the office. There are chances of the software being exploited by malicious programs over the internet leading to data breach.New technologies like optical character recognition are likely to be an important opportunity in the global bookkeeper software market. Although it is not a new technology, it is gradually gaining popularity and is likely to create opportunities during the forecast period. This technology is used to convert images into editable and readable text. It aids in converting printed material into digital media.Request Sample @On the basis of deployment type, the bookkeeper software market has been bifurcated into on-premises and cloud. Based on end users, the market is segregated into large enterprises; and small and medium size enterprises.The geographical segregation of the market comprises North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America is expected to account for highest market revenue share throughout the forecast period. High demand for cloud based services and applications along with the increasing application and data users is fueling growth of Bookkeeper Software market in North America.The global bookkeeper software market is fragmented with the presence of various niche players as well as multinational companies. Competition is likely to increase with the rise in demand for bookkeeper software across industries like retail, banking, construction, and manufacturing.Some of the top players in the global bookkeeper software market encompass Intuit Inc. (U.S.), Pandle (U.K.), NCH Software (Australia), LessAccounting (U.S.), TaxSlayer LLC. (Georgia), FreshBooks (Canada), Zoho Corporation Pvt. Ltd. (U.S.), The Sage Group plc (U.K.), Acclivity Group LLC (U.S.), and Intacct Corporation (U.S.).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:
New Market Research Report Announced on Sanitary Food and Beverage Packaging Market ; Global Industry Analysis 2017  2022

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Albany, NY, 7th December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Global Sanitary Food and Beverage Packaging Market Professional Survey Report 2017" globally.This report studies Sanitary Food and Beverage Packaging in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringFP CorporationCrown Holdings, InKaira Can Company LimitedCanfab Packaging Inc.c.Ball CorporationSilgan Containers, LLCChuo Kagaku Co., Ltd.Karatzis S.A.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBy MaterialPaperboardGlassMetalRigid PlasticFlexible PlasticBy ProductBeverage CartonsBoards and TraysCups and Liquid Tight ContainersFolding Food ContainersOthersBy Application, the market can be split intoMilk and Dairy ProductsMeatFruits and VegetablesFish and SeafoodDesserts and SnacksCakes and Baked GoodsOtherBrowse Report @By Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaResearchMoz 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 :
Germany hot melt adhesives market should witness significant gains at over 4.5% by 2024

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The rising demand for automation has set the pace for the growth of humanoid robot market in recent times. Pertaining to the extensive requirement of computerized machines for a variety of end-use sectors, humanoid robots are being developed on a large scale to perform tasks that may perhaps be nearly impossible for humans to perform even under ordinary circumstances.Manufacturing companies have been deploying robotic arms for decades, however, in recent times, tech advancements have enabled preprogrammed robots to depict more than mere hand movements, giving rise to the widespread evolution of humanoid robot industry. Humanoid robots not only resemble the human body in structure and appearance, but they are also designed to carry out human tasks with futuristic precision combined with human intelligence, which has indeed been the driving force for humanoid robot market growth.Request for a Sample copy of this Report@It is imperative to mention that robotic process automation has been around for decades, but these robots mainly dominated the factory floor and did not remotely resemble the intricacies of human maneuver, that has now been fulfilled with the introduction of humanoid robots. Renowned tech firms, it is observed, have also been working in the direction of efficient bot manufacturing for numerous tasks, which would eventually drive humanoid robot industry trends. A renowned start-up, Moley Robotics for instance, has created an automated robot chef that has just two arms but can cook any recipe to perfection. The cooking automaton can apparently learn and cook a recipe to the letter and even follow instructions given by chefs. Leading companies such as Samsung and Foxconn have also been replacing employees with robots for improved performance, which would undeniably have an impact on humanoid robot market size.Humanoid robots, apart from the manufacturing sector, find crucial applications across the medical and military & defense sectors. The bots are being used to test weapons and weaponized drones are also being deployed in active war zones. They are also used to deactivate a bomb or search for hazardous objects in suspicious baggage in airports without potentially risking human lives, which would certainly impel humanoid robot industry size from military applications. According to a reliable estimate, 25% of the U.S. combat soldiers will be replaced by robots by the year 2030 to save human lives in combat and the ongoing war against terrorism. Besides, these robots are also being adopted by the Ministry of External Affairs as the government is deploying more robots for surveillance of busy areas.Inquiry before buying of this Report@Healthcare has emerged as a key arena for the expansion of humanoid robot market, as the field seen a surge of use in these machines in the form of surgical robots. Ultra-precise robot surgeons are being used for complicated surgeries like knee replacements or simple surgeries like removal of uterine fibroids with minimal blood loss and quick recovery time. Da Vinci for instance, is one of the many humanoid robot industry firms developing surgical robots that have already conducted more than two million procedures worldwide.Surgical robots however, are not here to replace human surgeons, as critical operations require the presence of a skilled medical expert. However, they would function as assistive robots, and considering the expansion in the field of healthcare, it is certain that humanoid robot market share from healthcare would soar great heights in the years ahead.Browse Report Summery@As per estimates, humanoid robot industry size is expected to surpass USD 5 billion by 2024. The business space however, is posed with a challenge to turn research notions into a physical product that can be mass produced for profit. It is forecast that businesses in the future would increasingly be deploying humanoid technology to enhance customer experience and increase productivity, which would impel humanoid robot market trends. The entry of new industry players and the prevalence of numerous R&D activities would also boost humanoid robot market.It may cost much less to install a $35000 robotic arm to bag French fries at McDonalds than to pay an inefficient employee $15 an hour to do the same job, however, to have a personalized humanoid assistant at home is still a matter of (not too distant) fiction. Efforts are being undertaken to reduce the high cost of production and limited mobility so that these robots can be conveniently adopted by major end-use verticals, which would augment the revenue graph of humanoid robot market in the years to come.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Social Media: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Global Cyclohexane Industry Beyond: What to Expect by 2022 ($Million)

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Cyclohexane Sales Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The global Cyclohexane market has been meticulously elaborated in this report with the help of cutting-edge primary and secondary research performed using the best of techniques and the best-in-class analysts. The report has arrived at important trends used to forecast the anticipated revenue to be achieved by the market in the coming years. For each of the different segmentation categories, the report has provided a near-accurate estimation of market growth and other significant figures. This could help industry players to gain a strong foothold in the market and ensure a durable rise in the near future.Request a sample free PDF of this research to evaluate more:Global Cyclohexane market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Cyclohexane sales volume, Price (USD/MT), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingChevron Phillips ChemicalExxonMobil CorporationDow Chemical CompanyFluorFlint Hills ResourcesGSFCCEPSAYufengThe demand in the global Cyclohexane market has been carefully analyzed as per different products and services and their adoption rate across geographies, end-user trend, annual revenue, number of units launched, and other vital factors. Using this study of the market demand, players have been expected to set the tone for a valuable growth in the industry. Information about various segments of the market has also been provided in a snapshot added to the comprehensive executive summary provided in the publication. The market overview section of the publication exposes some of the critical dynamics, including opportunities, restraints, and growth drivers.The market share analysis of leading players operating in the global Cyclohexane market has been offered in the publication to help readers gain a sound understanding of their position and status in the industry. Using the analysis, companies could plan powerful strategies to strengthen their position in the market. Moreover, they could become aware about the latest strategies adopted by other top players in the market.Readers have been predicted to explore the possible opportunities in different regions of the global Cyclohexane market with the help of the geographical analysis provided in the publication. Each region has been carefully researched by the analysts.Table of Contents1 Cyclohexane Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Cyclohexane1.2 Classification of Cyclohexane by Product Category1.3 Global Cyclohexane Market by Application/End Users1.4 Global Cyclohexane Market by Region1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Cyclohexane (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Cyclohexane Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Cyclohexane Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Read Complete Table of Content @2 Global Cyclohexane Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Cyclohexane Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Cyclohexane Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Cyclohexane Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Cyclohexane (Volume and Value) by Type2.3 Global Cyclohexane (Volume and Value) by Region2.4 Global Cyclohexane (Volume) by Application9 Global Cyclohexane Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data9.1 Chevron Phillips Chemical9.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.1.2 Cyclohexane Product Category, Application and Specification9.1.3 Chevron Phillips Chemical Cyclohexane Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.2 ExxonMobil Corporation9.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.2.2 Cyclohexane Product Category, Application and Specification9.2.3 ExxonMobil Corporation Cyclohexane Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.2.4 Main Business/Business OverviewList of Tables and FiguresFigure Product Picture of CyclohexaneFigure Global Cyclohexane Sales Volume Comparison (K MT) by Type (2012-2022)Figure Global Cyclohexane Sales Volume Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2016Figure Global Cyclohexane Sales Comparison (K MT) by Application (2012-2022)Figure Global Sales Market Share of Cyclohexane by Application in 2016Figure Global Cyclohexane Market Size (Million USD) by Regions (2012-2022)Figure United States Cyclohexane Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure China Cyclohexane Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Europe Cyclohexane Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)About UsQYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Business Travel Booking Trends Market 2017 - Opportunity, Driving Trends and deep study.

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Pune, India, 7th December 2017: WiseGuyReports announced addition of new report, titled Changing Trends in Business Travel Booking in 2017-2018.Summary"Changing Trends in Business Travel Booking in 2017-2018", report examines industry sentiment about the changing trends in business travel booking in 2017-2018. Furthermore, the report seeks to know travelers approach towards business travel, has it been impacted by recent political and economic events, important criteria for business travel booking, and the transport preferences and expenses incurred for business travel in 2017-2018.Over the past 12 months, business travel by air towards China and the United States has increased as a result of increased need to travel to that market. Recently the introduction of long-haul flights being offered by low cost carriers has not impacted the work travel plans of the respondents. Off the travelers when navigating around their destination for business trip, 36% of female respondents opt for public transport as compared to 21% of male respondents. When booking an overnight stay for business, the majority of the business travelers identify free Wi-Fi in rooms as an important consideration and the majority of them use physical copies to track their expenses when travelling for business.GET SAMPLE REPORT @What else does this report offer?- Most countries traveled by air on business: Analyses the countries traveled by air on business and how has this changed versus the previous 12 months- Recent political and economic events and its impact on business travel plans: Evaluates if the recent Introduction of long-haul flights has impacted the work travel plans of travelers or not- Mode of transport used: Identifies the mode of transport used while navigating around business destinations by business travelers- Booking an overnight stay for business: Highlights which are the important factors travelers look out for while booking an overnight stay for business- Business expense tracking: Identifies the most commonly used mode of tracking expenses by travelers when travelling for business- Frequency of corporate retreats by business travelers: Identifies how frequently business travelers visit residential stays / retreatsScope- When flying long-haul, 43% of respondents try to spend a few days at their destination, not working- Overall, work travel plans have not been affected by the introduction of long-haul flights being offered by low-cost carriers- In total, 26% of respondents in the age group 55-64 years stated that their business travel has been negatively impacted by recent political and economic events- When booking an overnight stay for business, 79% of respondents identify free Wi-Fi in rooms as important considerationReasons to buy- Helps travel agencies/organizations in understanding the travel patterns of business travelers and devise their business plans accordingly- Helps to alter the investment allocation by understanding travelers approach towards traveling to various countries; has it increased, remained the same or decreased- Organizations will be supported in business expansion decisions by providing information about transport preferences and expenses incurred by travelers on business tours- Helps organizations to make effective business strategy decisions by knowing the travelers opinions on recent political and economic events, and if it has hampered the travel plansTable of Content: Key PointsIntroductionProfile of travelers - overallKey findingsCountries traveled by air on businessCountries traveled by air on business - Has it increased, decreased or remained the same in the past 12 monthsRecent political and economic events and its impact on business travel plansIntroduction of long-haul flights and its impact on work travel plansHas the recent political and economic events impacted your work travel plansMode of transport used by business travelersMode of transport used while navigating around business destinationsImportant criteria for booking an overnight stay for businessMost important factors travelers look out for while booking an overnight stay for businessMode used by travelers to track their expensesMode of tracking expenses when travelling for businessTravelers satisfaction level with their current expense tracking processFrequency of corporate retreats by business travelersFrequency on corporate residential stays / retreatsTypes of corporate residential stays / retreats travelers usually attendContinuedACCESS 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
Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market 2017- Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Research Report 2021

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SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market in IsraelFemale Fragrances (Fragrances) Market in Israel - Outlook to 2021: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics is a broad level market review of Female Fragrances market in Israel.Female Fragrances - all "mass" and "prestige" fragrances marketed exclusively at women which are neither antiperspirants nor deodorants. Examples of "mass" female fragrances include Coty L'Aimant Parfum de Toilette Spray. Prestige fragrances carry the name of a prestige perfume or fashion house, for example, Hugo Boss Eau de Toilette Natural Spray For Women and Chanel No 5. Includes fragrance gift packsFemale Fragrances market in Israel registered a positive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.47% during the period 2011 to 2016 with a sales value of ILS 488.65 Million in 2016, an increase of 5.44% over 2015. The research handbook provides up-to-date market size data for period 2011-2016 and illustrative forecast to 2021 covering key market aspects like Sales Value and Volume for Female Fragrances and its variants Mass Female Fragrances and Premium Female Fragrances.Furthermore, the research handbook details out Sales Value for top brands for the year 2013 to 2016, Demographic Analytics and overall market sales by Distribution Channel (Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Convenience Stores, Department Stores, Dollar Stores, Variety Store, Cash & Carries and Warehouse clubs, eRetailers, Food & Drinks specialists, Drug stores & Pharmacies, Health & Beauty Stores, Other general retailers and others) where ever applicable.The research handbook acts as an essential tool for companies active or planning to venture in to Israel's Female Fragrances (Fragrances) market. The comprehensive statistics within the research handbook provides insight into the operating environment of the market and also ensures right business decision making based on historical trends and industry model based forecasting.Sales Values in the handbook are depicted in USD ($) and local currency of country and Volumes are represented in M Kilograms.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Scope- Overall Female Fragrances (Fragrances) market value and volume analytics with growth analysis from 2011 to 2021.- Value terms for the top brands.- Distribution channel sales analytics from 2013-2016.Key points to buy- Get access to authoritative and granular data on the Female Fragrances (Fragrances) market and fill in the gaps in understanding of trends and the components of change behind them.- Enhance your understanding of the market to update your strategic and tactical plans based on volume and value changes, brand dynamics and distribution trends.- Analyze the components of change in the market by looking at historic and future growth patterns.- Use the data to understand future patterns of the market trends from winners and losers to category dynamics and thereby quickly and easily identify the key areas in which you want to compete in the future.Table of Contents1 Female Fragrances Market Overview2 Israel Female Fragrances Market Analytics3 Israel Female Fragrances Market Analytics, by Segment4 Israel Female Fragrances Brand Analytics by Value5 Israel Female Fragrances Distribution Channel Analytics by Value6 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.Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market strategies, Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market Competitors, Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market analysis, Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market companies, Female Fragrances (Fragrances) Market outlook
Millimeter Wave Technology Worldwide Market, By Frequency Band & Data Validation, Analysis and Forecast 2022

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According to Publisher, the Global Millimeter Wave Technology market is accounted for $0.27 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $2.89 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 40.5%. Rapid increase in usage of Millimeter wave in small cell backhaul networks, demand for innovative applications in the radar and security applications, increasing demand for bandwidth intensive applications and consumer electronics applications are the major drivers for the market growth. However, environmental issues and limited range are the reasons hampering the market growth.For more information atMobile & Telecom segment in application is expected to dominate the market and Industrial segment is estimated to be the fastest growing segment on demand of millimeter wave technology for imaging applications, material research and process control. However, ferrite devices segment among components is expected to dominate the market on account of varied range of applications including; inductors, transformers, storage devices etc. Moreover, North America is estimated to dominate the market due to proliferating demand in mobile and telecom sector in U.S. In addition to that, Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market due to the developments in growing telecommunication sector.Some of the key players of the Millimeter Wave Technology market include Mi-Wave, Inc., AOptix, Aviat Networks, Inc., Bridgewave Communications, Inc., Ducommun, E-band communications, Elva-1, Farran Technology Ltd., Fujitsu, Hittite Microwave Corporation, Loea Corporation, Millimeter Wave Products Inc., Millitech, Inc., Quinstar Technology, Inc., Sage Millimeter, Inc., Siklu Communication, Ltd., Sivers IMA, Smiths Group Plc, Vubiq, Inc. and Wasa Millimeter Wave Ab.Products Covered:- MM Radar & Satellite Communication Systemso Satellite Communication Systemso Perimeter Surveillance Radaro Application-Specific Radar Systems- MM Telecommunication Equipmento Macrocell Equipmento Small Cell Equipment- MM Scanner Systemso Activeo Passive- Other ProductsApplications Covered:- Automotive- Consumer & Commercial- Defense- Security- Healthcare- Imaging- Industrial- Mobile & TelecomComponents Covered:- Amplifiers- Antennas & transceiver- Communication & networking components- Control Devices- Ferrite Devices- Frequency sources & related components- Imaging components- Interface components- Oscillators- Power & Battery Components- RF & Radio Components- Sensors- Other ComponentsRequest Sample Copy:Frequency Bands Covered:- Bands between 8 GHz and 57 GHz- Bands between 57 GHz and 86 GHzo V-Bando E-Band- Bands between 86 GHz and 300 GHzLicenses Covered:- Light Licensed Frequency MM Wave- Fully Licensed Frequency MM Wave- Unlicensed Frequency MM WaveRegions Covered:- North Americao USo Canadao Mexico- Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe- Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific- Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao Egypt12 Company Profiling12.1 Balyo12.2 Bastian Solutions, Inc.12.3 Daifuku Co., Ltd.12.4 Dematic GmbH & Co. Kg12.5 Egemin International NV12.6 Ek Automation12.7 Elettric 80 S.P.A.12.8 Frog AGV Systems B.V.12.9 Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.12.10 JBT Corporation12.11 KMH Systems, Inc.12.12 Kollmorgen12.13 Seegrid Corporation12.14 Swisslog Holding AG12.15 Toyota Industrial EquipmentMake an enquiry:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
BOLIVIA TELECOMMUNICATIONS- BOLIVIA Telecommunications Market 2017: Key Players Entel Bolivia, Tigo Bolivia, Viva Bolivia

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Pune, India, 7th December 2017: WiseGuyReports announced addition of new report, titled Bolivia: Country Intelligence Report.Summary"Bolivia: Country Intelligence Report", a new Country Intelligence Report provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Bolivia 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, mobile and pay-TV segments, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Bolivias telecom and pay-TV services market will grow from an estimated $1.4bn in 2017 to $1.6bn by 2022 at a CAGR of 2.9% (5.3% in Bs) over 2017-2022, driven by projected growth in mobile data, fixed broadband and pay-TV segments. Mobile voice will be the largest revenue-contributing segment in 2017. Mobile data revenue will expand at a CAGR of 9.4% (12.0% in Bs) over 2017-2022 reaching $491m (Bs3.8bn) by 2022, driven by growing smartphone penetration and growing adoption of 4G/LTE services.The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following -- Demographic and macroeconomic context in Bolivia.- 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, tariff regulation and more.- Telecom and pay-TV services market outlook: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, mobile data and pay-TV markets.- The competitive landscape: an examination of the positioning of leading players in the telecom and pay-TV services market as well as subscription market shares across segments.- Company snapshots: analysis of the financial position of leading service providers in the telecommunications and pay-TV markets.- Underlying assumptions behind our published base-case forecasts, as well as potential market developments that would alter, either positively or negatively, our base-case outlook.Scope- The overall telecom and pay-TV services revenue in Bolivia will grow at a CAGR of 2.9% (5.3% in Bs) during 2017-2022.- Although 3G will hold a majority of total mobile subscriptions in 2017, 4G share will surpass 3G in 2018 and account for more than 70% of total mobile subscriptions by 2022 as MNOs continue to expand their 4G/LTE network.- In the pay-TV market, IPTV service will see fastest growth in subscriptions over 2017-2022 as fiber broadband services expand in the coming years.Companies mentionedEntel BoliviaTigo BoliviaViva BoliviaMio MovilCotasComtecoCotelTigo StarReasons to buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Bolivias telecommunications markets, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies.- Accompanying Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Bolivias 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 Bolivia'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 Bolivia.Table of Content: Key PointsTable of contents 3Market highlights 4Demographic and macroeconomic context 6Regulatory context 8Telecom and pay-TV services market outlook 9Total telecom service revenue 10Mobile services market 12Fixed services market 18Pay-TV services market 22Competitive landscape and company snapshots 25Competitive landscape 27Entel Bolivia 28Tigo Bolivia 29Viva Bolivia 30ContinuedACCESS 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
Telecom Billing and Revenue Management Market Competitive Dynamics and Global Industry Outlook 2023

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The numbers of subscribers for the telecom services are increasing rapidly across the globe. Thus, problems such as fallout of services, and network congestion are increasing and resulting into a structural evolution in demand for the development of effective billing and revenue management solutions. These telecom billing and revenue management solutions are used by Communication Services Providers (CSPs) for increasing their revenue by optimizing telecom networks. These solutions also enable the telecom service providers in fraud detection and fraud management resulting into decreased operational costs in longer run. Moreover, these solutions helps telecom service providers in launching new services in the market along with improving customer experience with real time account recharging services. Providing billing and revenue management solutions using cloud Software-as-a Service (SaaS) is new trend being observed in this market.Read Report Overview @Every day new services are added into the offerings by the telecom service providers generating demand for efficient and effective billing and revenue management solutions. In addition, regions such as MEA and Latin America are emerging in terms of telecom infrastructure, resulting in increasing number of subscriber in these regions. These factors are driving the demand for telecom billing and revenue management software and services. Furthermore, with the increase in networks, services and solutions, telecom operators incur high operational costs. Thus, increasing operating costs are generating demand for advanced telecom billing and revenue management solutions. However, factors such as difference in telecom regulations across the world which lead to interoperability issues and legacy systems are hindering the growth of telecom billing and revenue management market.Legacy systems are present in large extent in telecom industry; replacing these legacy systems with advanced systems has been challenging, as the costs incurred are high. Legacy systems have integration issues with them restraining the use of new telecom billing revenue management solutions. The increasing demand for value added services provides significant growth opportunity for the players in this market. However, subscriber saturation is one of the major challenges faced by the telecom players in developed countries across the world.Global telecom billing and revenue management market is segmented on the basis of software type, service type, deployment type and geography. The market for telecom billing and revenue management includes various types of software used for various purposes. Thus, on the basis of software type this market is segmented into mediation software, revenue assurance software, billing and charging software, fraud management software, and partner and interconnects management software. Telecom industry caters to numerous other industries and includes various services required for proper operations of the telecom billing and revenue management. The market for telecom billing and revenue management is segmented on the basis of service into managed services, planning and consulting services, system integration services, and operations and maintenance services. On-premise deployment and cloud based deployment are the two types of deployment used in telecom billing and revenue management industry.Request to view Sample Report:Some of the key players in telecom billing and revenue management market include Accenture plc, L. M. Ericsson, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., NEC Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Alcatel-Lucent S.A., Amdocs Inc., Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company Comverse, Inc., and SAP AG.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Central Venous Catheter Market Poised to Rake in US$ 1,108.4 Mn by 2026

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the global central venous catheter market in its latest report titled, Global Central Venous Catheter Market: Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20162026. In terms of revenue, the global central venous catheter market is projected to register a CAGR of 5.1% over the forecast period owing to various factors, on which FMI offers detailed insights and forecasts.Growth of the global central venous catheter market is mainly driven by rising adoption and growing demand for antimicrobial coated catheters, coupled with socio-economic factors such as increasing disease incidences due to a growing geriatric population. Other prominent growth drivers are product innovations and increasing rates of hospitalisations. A key trend in the global central venous catheter market is the increasing usage of tip location devices for locating the tip of the catheter during central access procedure. Increasing number of oncologists are prescribing antimicrobial coated tunnelled catheters for chemotherapy regimens, which is another prominent trend in the global central venous catheter market.Segmentation highlightsThe market is segmented based on product type, design of the catheters, composition of the catheters, properties, end user and regions. Based on product type, the market has been segmented into tunnelled and non-tunnelled catheters.Read Report Overview@Non-tunnelled catheters are expected to exhibit the fastest CAGR, due to increase in the usage of these catheters by anaesthesiologists in the emergency room. The segment is expected to register a CAGR of 5.3% during the forecast period. However risk of catheter related blood stream infection with non-tunnelled catheters is expected to adversely affect demand for these central venous catheters over the forecast periodTo provide deeper insight into pattern of demand for central venous catheters, the market has been segmented based on the properties of the central venous catheters such as antimicrobial coated catheters and non-antimicrobial coated cathetersThe antimicrobial coated catheters property segment is expected to witness a highest CAGR of 6.0% over the forecast period. The market has also been segmented based on the composition of the catheter such as catheters made up of polyurethane, polyurethane/polycarbonate and silicon. Polyurethane CVCs are expected to exhibit the fastest CAGR during the forecast periodTo analyse the sales of central venous catheter further, the market has been segmented based on the design of the catheters such as single lumen catheters, double lumen catheters and multi lumen cathetersIn addition to this, the market has also been segmented by end users into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centres, and speciality clinics. The Hospital end user segment is expected to account for the highest demand for central venous catheter over the forecast period, registering a CAGR of 5.3%. Increasing patient admissions for major surgeries, trauma cases, accidents etc. is anticipated to push the demand for central venous catheters in hospitals over the forecast periodRequest Sample Report@Regional projectionsThis report assesses trends driving growth of each segment on the global as well as regional levels, and offers potential takeaways that could prove substantially useful to central venous catheters manufacturers looking to enter the market. North America has been estimated to dominate the global central venous catheter market with a maximum market share in 2015. North America and Western Europe have been collectively expected to account for around 50% of the total global central venous catheter market share in terms of value in 2015. Amongst the emerging markets, APEJ region is estimated to exhibit the highest CAGR of 6.2% over the forecast period, due to an increase in the number of patients admitted to hospitals.Vendor insightsSome key players in the global central venous catheter market identified in the report include AngioDynamics, C.R. Bard, Teleflex Incorporated, Kimal, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Vygon (UK) Ltd., Smiths Medical and Comed B.V. FMI has discussed individual strategies of these companies in terms of enhancing product portfolio, distribution partnerships, market consolidation and advanced R&D initiatives. In addition, the report also provides company share and competitive dashboard for players already present in the market.Buy Central Venous Catheter Market Research Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT: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 :
Advanced 3D Depth Sensor Market Trends, Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021)

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3D depth sensors, also known as 3D cameras or 3D scanners, generate depth information from a certain scene by measuring the distance between the sensor and objects in front of it. The technology has so far been used mainly for industrial applications, but many smartphone companies such as Apple is on the cusp of bringing it to the consumer market, potentially driving significant changes in how people interact with devices in daily life.Today, many smartphone companies introducing new camera technology called active depth sensing to enable AR/VR and other features in smartphones and many other devices. With depth-sensing technology, smartphones will instantly become hyper-aware of their immediate surroundings and can be used for everything from virtual reality applications to a version of Google maps with walking directions inside of buildings to enabling accurate sizing suggestions when purchasing clothing and shoes online.Get the sample copy of this report :The global 3D depth sensors market is set to experience favorable growth driven by factors such as growing smartphone market, rapid urbanization, accelerating economic growth, rising demand for 3D imaging technology and increased proliferation of gaming and video content. The major trends observed in this market include increasing dual camera adoption rate and technological advancements. However, growth of this market is constrained by challenges such as battery consumption issues and high cost burden.The report Global 3D Depth Sensors Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021) analyses the development of this market. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the market are discussed in detail in this report. The four major players: LG Innotek Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Company Ltd. and STMicroelectronics are being profiled along with their key financials and strategies for growth.Send an enquiry here :Table of Content1. Overview1.1 Introduction1.2 Technologies1.3 Applications2. Global Market Analysis2.1 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market2.1.1 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.2 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.3 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Value by Segments2.1.4 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.5 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.6 Samsung 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.7 Samsung 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.8 Other Android 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.9 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Shipment Volume2.1.10 Global 3D Depth Sensor Average Selling Price2.2 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market2.2.1 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Value2.2.2 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.3 Samsung 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.4 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.5 China 3D Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume3. Market Dynamics3.1 Growth Drivers3.1.1 Growing Smartphone Market3.1.2 Rapid Urbanization3.1.3 Accelerating Economic Growth3.1.4 Rising Adoption of 3D Imaging Technology3.1.5 Increased Proliferation of Gaming and Video Content3.2 Key Trends & Developments3.1.1 Increasing Dual Camera Adoption Rate3.2.2 Technological Advancements3.3 Challenges3.1.1 Battery Consumption Issues3.3.2 High Cost Burden3.1.3 Strong Barriers to Entry4. Competitive Landscape4.1 Global Market4.1.1 Revenue Comparison of Key Companies4.1.2 Market Cap Comparison of Key Companies4.1.3 3D Depth Sensors Market Share by Smartphone Company4.1.4 3D Sensing Component Elements Capability Comparison by Company5. Company Profiles5.1 LG Innotek Co. Ltd.5.1.1 Business Overview5.1.2 Financial Overview5.1.3 Business Strategies5.2 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd5.2.1 Business Overview5.2.2 Financial Overview5.2.3 Business Strategies5.3 Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Company Ltd.5.3.1 Business Overview5.3.2 Financial Overview5.3.3 Business Strategies5.4 STMicroelectronics5.4.1 Business Overview5.4.2 Financial Overview5.4.3 Business StrategiesMRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Shipbuilding Market Overview  Key Futuristic Trends and Opportunities 2022

Shipbuilding Market Overview  Key Futuristic Trends and Opportunities 2022

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The Global Shipbuilding Market Research Report 2017 renders deep perception of the key regional market status of the Shipbuilding Industry on a global level that primarily aims the core regions which comprises of continents like Europe, North America, and Asia and the key countries such as United States, Germany, China and Japan.The report on Global Shipbuilding Market is a professional report which provides thorough knowledge along with complete information pertaining to the Shipbuilding industry a propos classification, definitions, applications, industry chain summary, industry policies in addition to plans, product specifications, manufacturing processes, cost structures, etc.Avail Sample Copy of this Report @The potential of this industry segment has been rigorously investigated in conjunction with primary market challenges. The present market condition and future prospects of the segment has also been examined. Moreover, key strategies in the market that includes product developments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, etc., are discussed. Besides, upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also conducted.Report Includes:-The report cloaks the market analysis and projection of Shipbuilding Market on a regional as well as global level. The report constitutes qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, first-hand data, assistance from industry experts along with their most recent verbatim and each industry manufacturers via the market value chain. The research experts have additionally assessed the in general sales and revenue generation of this particular market. In addition, this report also delivers widespread analysis of root market trends, several governing elements and macro-economic indicators, coupled with market improvements as per every segment. Furthermore, the report contains diverse profiles of primary market players of Shipbuilding Market.Top Players In Global Market-1. Hyundai Heavy Industry2. Daewoo Shipbuilding3. Samsung Heavy Industry4. Hyundai Samho5. Mitsubishi Heavy Industry6. Tsuneishi shipbuilding7. Oshima Shipbuilding8. Hyundai Mipo9. Imabari Shipbuilding10. Shanghai WaigaoqiaoMany others..Browse Detailed TOC, Tables, Figures, Charts and Companies Mentioned in Report at The report is generically segmented into six parts and every part aims on the overview of the Shipbuilding industry, present condition of the market, feasibleness of the investment along with several strategies and policies. Apart from the definition and classification, the report also discusses the analysis of import and export and describes a comparison of the market that is focused on the trends and development. Along with entire framework in addition to in-depth details, one can prepare and stay ahead of the competitors across the targeted locations. The fact that this market report renders details about the major market players along with their product development and current trends proves to be very beneficial for fresh entrants to comprehend and recognize the industry in an improved manner. The report also enlightens the productions, sales, supply, market condition, demand, growth, and forecast of the Shipbuilding industry in the global markets.Every regions market has been studied thoroughly in this report which deals with the precise information pertaining to the Marketing Channels and novel project investments so that the new entrants as well as the established market players conduct intricate research of trends and analysis in these regional markets. Acknowledging the status of the environment and products up gradation, the market report foretells each and every detail.So as to fabricate this report, complete key details, strategies and variables are examined so that entire useful information is amalgamated together for the understanding and studying the key facts pertaining the global Shipbuilding Industry. The production value and market share in conjunction with the SWOT analysis everything is integrated in this report.Some points from TOC:-Global Shipbuilding Market Research Report 20211 Shipbuilding Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Shipbuilding1.2 Shipbuilding Segment by Types1.2.1 Asia Production Market Share of Shipbuilding by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I Overview and Price1.2.2.1 Type I Overview1.2.2.2 Type I Price List in 2015 and 20161.2.3 Type II1.2.3.1 Type I Overview1.2.3.2 Type I Price List in 2015 and 20161.2.4 Type III1.2.4.1 Type I Overview1.2.4.2 Type I Price List in 2015 and 20161.3 Shipbuilding Segment by Application1.3.1 Shipbuilding Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 1 and Major Clients (Buyers) List1.3.3 Application 2 and Major Clients (Buyers) List1.3.4 Application 3 and Major Clients (Buyers) List1.4 Shipbuilding Market by Region1.4.1 Korea Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Asia Other Status and Prospect (2011-2021)ContinuedDownload PDF Brochure of this Report @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:Sarah JEmail- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWebsite-
FRP Rebars Market from Asia Pacific will witness 8% growth up to 2024.

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Rising end-user preference for lightweight, anti-corrosive, non-abrasive, and robust reinforcements will upswing FRP Rebars Market development. Regional governments have been spending huge capital on construction & renovation activities. In addition, swift infrastructural developments to enhance the urban landscape and promote regional tourism will majorly boost FRP rebars industry trends. For instance, Japan invested more than USD 738 billion in construction projects in 2015, while China allotted funds of over 1.7 trillion for infrastructural growth during that year. According to Global Market Insights, Inc., Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars industry, worth USD 590 million in 2015, is expected to hit a targeted revenue of over USD 1.25 billion by 2024.FRP rebars industry revenue across water treatment plants sector, which was estimated at more than USD 50 million in 2015, is expected to witness a high surge over the coming years. Rise in the number of desalination plant projects and surge in the waste & water treatment plant constructions will impel the segment growth.Request for a Sample copy of this Report@FRP rebars find extensive applications in MRI rooms, bridges & buildings, marine structures & waterfronts, water treatment plants, and highways. FRP rebars market size in the marine structures & waterfronts sector is predicted to grow at a cumulative rate of more than 7% over the coming timeline. An increase in the number of projects for constructing waterfronts and ports near seas and rivers along with the development of waterways as an effective mode of goods transport facility will contribute toward the business expansion.Considering the geographical landscape, North America FRP rebars industry is anticipated to record a CAGR of more than 7% over the coming seven years. Escalated spending on building new structures along with beneficial legislations supporting infrastructure growth will enlarge the business scope across the region. U.S. FRP rebars industry, which contributed USD 270 million toward North America FRP rebars industry revenue in 2015, is expected to make notable contributions toward the regional share in the future. The country had spent more than USD 1 trillion on construction ventures during 2015.Inquiry Before Buying of this Report@Asia Pacific FRP rebars market is slated to grow at a rate of 8% over the years to come, owing to high product usage in the resistant edifice constructions along with the renovations of old structures. China, Japan, and India are likely to drive the regional revenue. MEA FRP rebars industry is projected to register an annual growth of 8.5% over 2016-2024, owing to strict regulatory compliances over the construction of new roads, railways, and airports as a result of growing safety concerns. Saudi Arabi and UAE are anticipated to be the major regional revenue pockets.Europe FRP rebars industry is projected to record a CAGR of more than 6.5% over the coming seven years. Growing renovation activities across the commercial and residential sectors along with high product applications in MRI rooms, cable ducts, radio frequency field, and high-voltage substations are expected to boost the industry size. UK and Germany are predicted to push the regional development.Browse Report Summery@Glass fiber composites, carbon fiber composites, basalt fiber composites, and aramid fiber composites are the main FRP rebar products. Basalt fiber composites FRP rebars industry is expected to record a CAGR of 9% during the duration from 2016 to 2024, subject to exceptional product features such as magnetic transparency and rust resistance along with abundant product availability. Carbon fiber composites FRP rebars market is projected to grow at a rate of more than 8% over 2016-2024, driven by high product demand in floor slabs, bridge constructions, parapets, parking, ad decks & railings. Glass fiber composites FRP rebars market, which dominated the product landscape in 2015, is foreseen to witness notable gains over the years ahead. The growth can be ascribed to the products prolific use by the consumers as a perfect substitute for stainless steel & galvanized reinforcements.FRP rebars are also used in various kinds of resins such as vinyl ester and polyester resins. Vinyl ester FRP rebars market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of more than 9% over the period of 2016-2024, due to the outstanding corrosion resisting and thermal insulating features of the product. Polyester resin FRP rebars industry, which collected a revenue of USD 460 million in 2015, is projected to witness a considerable development over the coming years. The business expansion can be attributed to the elevated product use as an adhesive in tarnished heritage structures along with its unique dimensional features and cost-effective nature.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Social Media: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Linear Actuators Market is Projected to Reach US$5,236.6 mn by 2024

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine Linear Actuators Market is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Get Free Sample Report@The North America market for linear actuators is chiefly driven by the rising adoption of automation across a number of industries, an increased focus on wastewater management, and the flourishing aerospace and defense industry. An exponential rise in shale gas exploration activities in the region is also expected to levy a significant positive impact on the markets overall development in the next few years.Market Research Reports estimates that the market will exhibit a promising 6.9% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024. At this rate, the market, which valued at US$2,893.5 mn in 2015, will reach a valuation of US$5,236.6 mn by 2024.Electric Actuators to Remain Most Promising Product VarietyOf the key varieties of linear actuators available in the North America market, the report examines hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, and mechanical linear actuators. Of these, the segment of electric linear actuators emerged as the most attractive segment, accounting for a 24% of the market in 2015. The rising adoption across industrial automation practices, better flexibility options, and the lower cost of ownership are some of the key factors that helped boost the consumption of electric linear actuators in the North America market. In the near future, the demand for actuators with high power efficiency and low weight will drive the demand for electric actuators.The demand for electric actuators has also considerably increased in the region owing to the several limitations of mechanical actuators. The rate of replacement of mechanical actuators has considerably increased in the past few years, stimulating the uptake of electric actuators in the region. The segment is also expected to remain the most promising product variety in the North America market in the near future, exhibiting a 7.2% CAGR from 2016 through 2024. Electric actuators are expected to account for a nearly 25% of the overall market by 2024. The manual and hybrid varieties of linear actuators are also expected to witness promising growth over the said period.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Linear Actuators Market in Mexico to Exhibit Strong GrowthFrom a geographical perspective, the North America linear actuators market is examined for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Of these, the U.S. accounted for over two-thirds of the markets overall revenue in 2015 and is expected to retain its top spot through 2024 as well. The high rate of adoption of industrial automation, the rising demand for wastewater management, and the boom in the shale gas and food and beverages industries have been boosting the application of linear actuators in the U.S. market. These factors will continue to drive the increased demand for linear actuators in the U.S., keeping the country at the top spot in the North America market.However, the market in Mexico will exhibit the most promising growth over the forecast period, registering a more than 8% CAGR. The rapid growth across the construction and manufacturing sectors witnessed over the past few years is expected to remain one of the key factors responsible for the robust development of the linear actuators market in the country in the near future. Furthermore, rising government investment aimed at improving power supply infrastructure, airports, and pipelines is also expected to boost the demand for linear actuators in Mexico over the forecast period.North America Linear Actuators Market: Competitive DynamicsThe competitive landscape of the North America linear actuators market is highly fragmented, with none of the top five players accounting for a share of over 5% in the overall market in 2015.Some of the leading players in the market are Kollmorgen, Tsubakimoto Chain, Co., DESTACO, Enerpac, Duff-Norton, Joyce Dayton Corporation, MOOG, Inc., PHD, Inc., General Electric, Co., NOOK Industries, Inc., Altra Industrial Motion, Corporation, Parker Hannifin Corporation, Festo Group, Tolomatic, Inc., Rockwell Automation, IAI America, Inc., Fortive Corporation, RACO International, L.P., and Curtiss-Wright Corporation.Send an Enquiry @About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Global Marine Fasteners Market 2017 by Players - Seastar Solutions, Fasco Fasteners, HandiMan Marine, Marine Fasteners

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Fior Markets Publish a New Market Research Report On - Marine Fasteners Market 2017 Global Analysis and Forecast to 2022. The Report Covers Industry Trends, Statistic, Segmentation, Growth, Market Share, Revenue, Leading Players, Region, Types and Application.Download Free Sample Report @Global Marine Fasteners Industry 2017 is an inclusive, adept report administering market research data that is pertinent for new market accepted players. The report emphasizes on global paramount dominant industry players with instruction such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information.The report, arranged by an extremely seasoned team of analysts and data experts, carries a formation of tables and graphs besides qualitative analyses. Commencing with a dialogue on the current state of the Marine Fasteners market, the report goes on to discuss the dynamics influencing each segment within it. Complete guidance about the chief segments of the market and their expansion likelihood are obtainable in the report. The combative landscape of the market showed in the study outlines the most eminent players in the market.The Marine Fasteners market research study has been unperturbed using key inputs from industry experts. Moreover, the comprehensive primary and secondary research data with which the report has been composed aids in delivering the chief statistical prediction, in terms of both revenue and volume. In addition to this, the trends and revenue analysis of the global Marine Fasteners market has been mentioned in this report. This will provide a explicit panorama to the readers how the Marine Fasteners market will succeed in globe.A basic overview of the Marine Fasteners market is provided to readers through the use of market definition, segmentation, applications, and value chain analysis. Various strategies and news are also involved in the Marine Fasteners Market report. The production procedure is inspected with respect to varied facets like, Manufacturing Plant Distribution, Capacity, Commercial production, R&D status, Raw material source and Technology source.Access Full Report @This report also depicts product Specification, Manufacturing process, and Product cost structure etc. Production is segregated by Regions, Technology and Applications. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, Equipment, Downstream client survey, Marketing channels, Industry Development Trend and proposals. In the end, the report incorporates Marine Fasteners new project SWOT analysis, Investment Feasibility Analysis, Investment Return Analysis, and Development Trend Analysis. In conclusion, it is a deep research report on Global Marine Fasteners Industry.The company profiles of the major participants operating in the global Marine Fasteners market have been reviewed in this study.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice-102, Sanskriti AspirationsBaner Road, Pune,MH 411045IndiaPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
New Study Reveals Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Market 2017

Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingKoninklijke Philips N.V.ADT Security ServicesBay Alarm MedicalVRI, Inc.Life Alert Emergency Response, Inc.TunstallMedical Guardian LLCAlertOne Services LLCGreatCallRescue AlertLogicMarkNortek Security and ControlOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLandline PERSMobile PERSStandalone PERSOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System for each application, includingHome-based UseNursing HomeAssisted Living FacilitiesHospicesGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Table of ContentsGlobal Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Market Report 20171 Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System1.2 Classification of Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System by Product Category1.2.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Landline PERS1.2.4 Mobile PERS1.2.5 Standalone PERS1.3 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Home-based Use1.3.3 Nursing Home1.3.4 Assisted Living Facilities1.3.5 Hospices1.4 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market by Region1.4.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4 Global Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume) by Application3 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Players3.3 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Application4 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Players4.3 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.4 China Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Application5 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Players5.3 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Application6 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Value (2012-2017)6.1.1 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.2 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.3 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)6.2 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Players6.3 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by Type6.4 Japan Personal Emergency Response System/Medical Alert System Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationContinue...Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Steep Slope Roofing Materials Market Is Forecasted To Reach A Figure Of About US$ 14,630 Mn In 2022 And Is Poised To Exhibit A CAGR Of 3.0%

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Steep Slope Roofing Materials Market: North America to Dominate the Market in Revenue Terms" to its huge collection of research reports.New Market Research delivers yet another unbiased, comprehensive and insightful report titled Steep Slope Roofing Materials Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012-2016) and Forecast (2017-2022). In this report, the global steep slope roofing materials market is explored in great detail, and the market dynamics of the global steep slope roofing materials market has been covered comprehensively, explaining to the report readers the drivers, restraints and trends operating in this highly competitive market. Also, analysis of the data over different parameters has been done in order to arrive at market numbers concerning the global steep slope roofing materials market. Besides, competition landscape of the global steep slope roofing materials market is also covered in this report, giving information about the key companies operating in the global steep slope roofing materials market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Report StructureIn the first part of the report, the executive summary and the introduction are given. The executive summary gives a summary of the global steep slope roofing materials market and gives the pertinent market numbers that are most significant, which include the historical CAGR growth from 2012 till 2016 and the forecasted CAGR from the year 2017 till the end of the forecast period in the year 2022. Information about lucrative markets from the point of view of leading revenue share and highest CAGR are also given in the executive summary.In the introduction section, the steep slope roofing materials market is defined in detail so that the report readers are clear about the scope of this market.The next section of the report gives information on the key dynamics of the steep slope roofing materials market. Key points covered in this section include the global economy, fiscal stimulus and bottom line of enterprises.In the subsequent section of the report, information is given on the cost structure analysis and pricing analysis of the global steep slope roofing materials market. An analysis on the market presence of key participants (intensity map) is also offered in this section.Market SegmentationThe next part of the report consists of the global steep slope roofing materials market analysis and forecast by material type, end market, form and region. This section of the report contains important market numbers in the form of year-on-year growth comparison, market share comparison and revenue comparison. The global steep slope roofing materials market is also analyzed across key regions- North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, APEJ and MEA.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Competition LandscapeThe last section of the report contains the competition landscape, where leading market players operating in the global steep slope roofing materials market are profiled in detail. This information is in the form of company overview, product overview, key financials and key developments pertaining to that particular company. The competition landscape also features the SWOT analysis of the selected companies, which gives the report readers information about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats that such companies operating in the global steep slope roofing materials market are facing. The competition landscape is an invaluable part of the report as it contains all the necessary information to study the leading companies operating in the global steep slope roofing materials market and how they implement their strategies and vision to stay in the pole position in this highly competitive market.Research MethodologyPersistence Market Research leverages a proven and tested research methodology to determine the revenue estimations of the global steep slope roofing materials market. In-depth secondary research is used to arrive at the overall market size and top industry players. A list of industry players (manufacturers), distributors, retailers, and industry experts is developed along with a comprehensive discussion guide for detailed and exhaustive primary interviews. Data thus obtained is validated using the triangulation method, where primary and secondary research along with Persistence Market Research analysis contribute to the final data. This data is then scrutinized using advanced tools to glean pertinent insights into the global steep slope roofing materials market.Market TaxonomyMaterial Type- Asphalt shingle- Tiles- Metal- Concrete- Slate- WoodEnd Market- New Construction- Re-roofingForm- Strips- Laminates- Heavy Weight LaminatesRegion- North America- Latin America- Europe- Japan- Asia Pacific excluding Japan- Middle East and AfricaMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Document Imaging Scanner Market to Observe Strong Development by 2023

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Document imaging or electronic imaging is a technology that enables users to scan hard copy documents into computer system and store them digitally. These technologies also enable the users to enter metadata into the system and utilize storage technology for saving the digital version of the document. Document imaging systems can be in several forms such as microfilm, printers, copiers, facsimile machines, document scanners, multifunction printers, archive writers and computer output microfilm (COM). It can also be used in the form of enterprise content management. Previously, the content management technology term or document imaging was used in swap with document image management as industries tried to separate themselves from reprographic and micrographic technologies. Imaging remains a major focal point for businesses as they modernize processes in search of speed, growth, and agility. Moreover, improved efficiencies also generate competitive advantage and better customer satisfaction.Read Report Overview @Distributed scanning is expected to gain market growth in the coming years as it provides several benefits to the organizations such as it reduces unit costs and the organization saves time as well as money for transporting documents to a particular centralized location. Also, the risks of losing or compromising documents are being reduced, and the digitized information is made available to the users much faster. The key factors that are driving the growth of document imaging scanner market include the adoption of compliance initiatives and the need for reduction in expenses which has led tohigh investment in improving document processing. Document imaging solutions generate substantial sales potential for the resellers, especially when it is considered as a standalone solution. To be more effective, the document imaging solutions are considered a part of larger infrastructure strategy. This solution supports other clients operations such as document storing, security, as well as market analytics.The increasing demand for network scanners has also been driving the growth of document imaging scanner market. The data captured with the help of document imaging solutions would become a major part of business analytics. The scanned documents are used in big data analytics, no matter if the content is being converted by optical character recognition or is an image.The cloud is significantly becoming an important and flexible extension to enterprises, for more data storage and accelerates workflows as a part of image capture. The image capture would considerably be used for storing as well as sharing business-critical documents and images as a part of the workflow. Furthermore, the document imaging solutions support common standards such as TWAIN and, HTML5, which makes it easier for sharing captured images across the applications and in between environments. The players in this market are focusing on developing new products in order to strengthen their market position. In February 2014, Newgen Software, Inc. launched the OmniScan 3.0 which was the latest version of its scanning software application. The new featured version consisted of connectors that allowed the user to scan the documents directly to SAP or SharePoint. OmniScan 3.0 also offered influential document quality analysis as well as image correction abilities.Request to view Sample Report:Some of the major participants in the document imaging scanner market include Epson America, Inc., Newgen Software, Inc., Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Hewlett Packard Company, Canon, Inc., and Eastman Kodak Company.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
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Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Industry in Europe Will Grow at 5.1% CAGR 2017-2027

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market: Real Time Locating System Segment by Product Type Projected to Retain Its Dominance over the Forecast Period: Europe Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027" to its huge collection of research reports.In a new report titled Hospital Capacity Management Solutions Market: Europe Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20172027, Future Market Insights has undertaken a comprehensive study of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market for a 10 year period from 2017-2027. We have studied the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market by taking several important metrics such as CAGR, Y-o-Y growth rate, absolute dollar opportunity and incremental dollar opportunity into consideration. Our analysts have given their expert opinion on where the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market is anticipated to reach at the end of the forecast period.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @As this is a regional report, we should start by identifying which countries in Europe we have focussed upon. The Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report has profiled the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux, and Nordic nations, Russia, Poland and the Rest of Europe. We have a dedicated chapter for each country in Europe wherein we have spoken at length about the market forecast on the basis of Product Type. We provide the Y-o-Y growth projections, absolute dollar opportunity and the market value forecast by Application Type as well as Mode for every individual nation. If you wish to target only one or two key countries in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market, you can refer to this informative section and finalise your decision.In another section of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report, we have provided a market analysis on the basis of Product Type. The Y-o-Y growth comparison, the absolute dollar opportunity and the Basis Point Share (BPS) analysis has been highlighted for our readers benefit. All these key metrics have been used to study the various product types in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. This is particularly helpful if you seek to target only one product type as opposed to a scattershot approach to the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.An important section of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report is the overview. In this, we have explained the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market in detail by providing the definition along with the market taxonomy. We then move onto the drivers, restraints, opportunities and trends that key stakeholders can expect in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. A market analysis that includes market size forecast in terms of value, the Y-o-Y growth projections and the absolute dollar opportunity in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market concludes this section.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @The executive summary at the beginning of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report is a brief yet succinct section that highlights important drivers, key companies, and a few major market trends. We have included a pie-chart representation of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market by Country and Product for your understanding. Lastly, our expert analysts have mentioned the geographies to target along with a differentiation strategy that may be adopted. You can safely make your strategic business decisions on the basis of our analyst recommendations of the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.A competition analysis is absolutely critical if you wish to be successful in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. Our competition landscape section has been created to solely fulfil this purpose. We have profiled the most relevant players currently active in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market. Important company details, a brief description, an overview of where the company is dominant, and key financials provide a complete picture. In addition to this, we have included a SWOT analysis along with major developments relevant to the particular company that would be invaluable for any organisation wishing to try their luck in the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.Industry-Leading Research MethodologyFuture Market Insights has pioneered a truly industry-leading research methodology to prepare the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market report. Our analysts conduct thorough primary and secondary research at the outset. A market player list including all the important stakeholders across the value chain is developed and a questionnaire is prepared for every node within the chain to get the necessary market information. After the data has been gathered, we validate it using the triangulation method where primary data is combined with both secondary data and our expert analysis to deliver the final output. This is extensively scrutinised with proprietary tools to gain every possible qualitative and quantitative insight into the Europe hospital capacity management solutions market.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Power Transformer Market to Hit USD 35 Billion by 2024: Analysis of Key Players, Trends, Drivers, & Challenges

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MarketStudyReport.com adds a new Power Transformer Market research report for the period of 2017-2024 focuses on the major drivers and restraints for the global key players providing analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market.Ongoing expansion of utility aided transmission & distribution networks to sustain the growing energy demand across the globe will drive the Power Transformer Market size. Rising investments to refurbish the existing grid infrastructure across developed regions further proliferate the product penetration. In addition, increasing demand for rural electrification coupled with favorable regulatory framework across emerging electricity market will further complement the business outlook.Request a sample copy of Power Transformer Market Research Report @Power transformer market size will exceed USD 35 billion by 2024; as per a new research report.China power transformer market is set to surpass 2,500 annual installation by 2024. Favorable government reforms subject to the establishment of a sustainable electricity infrastructure will positively influence the business growth. Rapid industrial expansion across the nation to cater volume manufacturing practices by industry participants will positively stimulate the product demand.Stringent energy efficiency compliance coupled with advancing smart transformer technologies will substantially augment the power transformer market growth. Ongoing auxiliary capacity addition across the globe with an aim to integrate a sustainable energy mix will boost the product penetration. Perpetual electrification programs subject to large scale renewable addition along with rapid expansion of utility based high tension electricity networks will further complement the industry outlook.> 800 MVA power transformer market on account of rapid industrial expansion across developing markets has witnessed a significant turnaround in the recent years. The product subject to ongoing expansion of utility aided grid networks to cater the exponentially rising energy demand will witness appreciable escalation over the forecast timeframe. Government initiatives to establish a sustainable grid network across developed regions will further stimulate the product penetration.Enquire about this report @Global shift towards energy conservation along with growing measures to provide safe and reliable electricity will foster the power transformer market. Energy efficiency measures coupled with briskly expanding smart-grid networks will further accelerate the product penetration. In 2017, in compliance to the smart grid agreement, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, and UK proposed investments worth USD 133.7 billion with an aim to sustain the rapid smart grid adoption across the region.The U.S. power transformer market will grow owing to ongoing investments toward refurbishment of existing electricity infrastructure. Expeditious expansion of infrastructure projects under the peninsula electrification program will fuel the product demand. In 2017, regulators across the U.S. proposed a funding worth USD 100 million to strengthen electricity infrastructure across the rail networks in California.Middle East & Africa power transformer market is set to witness sheer progression in line with ongoing deployment of decentralized generation units coupled with rapid expansion of micro-grid networks. Escalating infrastructural investments from institutions including the International Finance Corporation, and African Development Bank (ADB), across the region will positively impact the business landscape. In 2017, ADB declared investments over USD 12 billion to sustain the soaring electricity demand across Africa.Eminent participants in the power transformer market include GE, ABB, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Crompton Greaves, Mitsubishi Electric, Hyosung, Toshiba Corp., Hyundai Electric, Daihen, SPX Transformer, Celme, Kirloskar, and BHEL.Read full report description @Related Reports: -Global Power Transformer Market Outlook 2017-2022The report covers forecast and analysis for the, power transformer market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2012-2016 along with a forecast from 2017 to 2022 based on...About Us: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:
Global Counterfeit Money Detectors Market 2017 by Players - Glory, Cummins Allison, Innovative Technology, Fraud Fighter

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Global Counterfeit Money Detectors Market Research Report 2017 to 2022 provides an extraordinary tool for evaluating the market, highlighting opportunities, and supporting strategic and skillful decision-making. The competitive landscape and the geographical distribution of the Counterfeit Money Detectors market is the prime focus of the report. Major players in the market are profiled, including a SWOT analysis that reveals the potential trajectory the market leaders will experience.Download Free Sample Report @Fresh and trendy marketing information is very important to monitor performance and make critical decisions for growth and profitability in this rapidly-changing and developing environment. The report profiles a SWOT analysis of the market leaders, their business operations and financial structures are included in the report to explain the competitive landscape in the market and aid in formulating beneficial market strategies. It provides information on trends and developments, and focuses on markets and materials, capacities and technologies, and on the changing structure of the Counterfeit Money Detectors Market.Primary and secondary resources for top-line data and analysis covering including market size and segmentation data, textual and graphical analysis of market growth trends and leading companies were used in the research.Essential points covered in Global Counterfeit Money Detectors Market 2017 Research is:-What will the market size and the growth rate be in 2022?What are the key market trends affecting the growth of the Global Counterfeit Money Detectors market?Who are the leading vendors in the Global Counterfeit Money Detectors market?What are the major factors managing and operating the Global Counterfeit Money Detectors market?What are the different challenges and opportunities to market growth?Access Full Report @This report not only provides a whole picture of the overall condition of the Counterfeit Money Detectors market, but also boost the players knowledge in this market to create profitable market strategies in order to gain a competitive edge.The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the market. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.About Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerOffice-102, Sanskriti AspirationsBaner Road, Pune,MH 411045IndiaPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
Global Food Safety Testing Market Is Forecasted To Grow At A CAGR Of 7.31% During 2016-2021 | SGS SA, Intertek Group plc, Eurofins Scientific, Bureau Veritas S.A, Silliker, Inc., ALS Ltd.

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Food Safety Testing Market - By Technology, By Contaminant, By Food Tested, By Region, By Country: Opportunities and Forecasts (2016-2021) - (By Technology - Rapid, Traditional; By Contaminant - Pathogens, Pesticides, GMO, Toxins, Other Contaminants; By Food Tested - Meat & Poultry, Dairy Products, Processed Food, Fruits & Vegetables, Other Food Products; By Region - North America, Europe, APAC, ROW; By Country - US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, India, Brazil, South" to its huge collection of research reports.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 food safety testing market on the basis of By Technology (Rapid and Traditional), By Contaminant (Pathogens, Pesticides, GMO, Toxins and Other Contaminants), By Food Tested (Meat & Poultry, Dairy Products, Processed Food, Fruits & Vegetables and Other Food Products), By Region (North America, Europe, APAC and ROW), and By Country (US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, India, Brazil and South Africa).To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Food Safety Testing Market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 7.31% during 2016 2021. The strong growth in food safety testing market is driven by rise in global food trade, increase in cases of foodborne outbreaks, stringent regulations on food safety and easy access to new testing technologies. High number of food recalls is another major factor contributing to the growth in food safety testing industry.Pathogen testing holds the major percentage share in the total market and GMO testing is the fastest growing segment. Among the regions, North America holds the largest market share mainly due to growing regulations. However, APAC is expected to grow at a faster pace during forecasted period.According to Azoth Analytics research report, Global Food safety Testing Market - By Technology, By Contaminant, By Food Tested, By Region, By Country (2016-2021), Global Food Safety Testing Market is projected to exhibit a CAGR of over ~7.31% during 2016 - 2021. Global food safety testing market has been segmented on the basis of Technology (Rapid and Traditional), By Contaminant (Pathogens, Pesticides, GMO, Toxins and Other Contaminants), By Food Tested (Meat & Poultry, Dairy Products, Processed Food, Fruits & Vegetables and Other Food Products), Region (North America, Europe, APAC and ROW), Country(US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, India, Brazil and South Africa).Scope of the ReportThe report provides coverage by Type, Mode of Application and End User:By TechnologyRapidTraditionalGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @By ContaminantPathogensPesticidesGMOToxinsOther ContaminantsBy Food TestedMeat & PoultryDairy ProductsProcessed FoodFruits & VegetablesOther Food ProductsBy RegionEuropeNorth AmericaAPACROWBy CountryUSCanadaMexicoUKGermanySpainJapanChinaIndiaBrazilSouth AfricaReport Highlights:Primary Research: Interviews conducted with key management people to gain quality responses and deeper insights.Secondary Research: Data and insights from industry associations, annual reports, company presentations, premium journals and internal database.Actual Period: Historical and current market sizing (2012-2015)Forecast Period: Projected market sizing (2016E-2021F)Companies Covered: SGS SA, Intertek Group plc, Eurofins Scientific, Bureau Veritas S.A, Silliker, Inc., ALS Ltd., Asure Quality Limited, Microbac Laboratories, Inc., Covance Inc., DTS Food LaboratoriesStrategic RecommendationsMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Energy Storage Technologies Market Size to Grow Steadily during Forecast period 2016 - 2024

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Global Energy Storage Technologies Market: OverviewEnergy storage refers to a process of transfiguring energy from the traditional sources to a form that can be easily stored and then again converted back to the original state as per requirement. This process helps in storing energy that can be later used at peak demand and consumption periods, high generation costs, and low energy production. A robust rise in the demand for energy across the globe is expected to bode well for the growth of the global energy storage technologies market. Rising need to develop advanced low carbon energy technology is anticipated to drive the deployment of energy storage technologies across various industries. In addition, the mounting requirement for reliability and resiliency of the energy grid coupled with the integration of the available renewable energy resources is further expected to accelerate the progress of the global energy storage technologies market. Energy storage technologies are also anticipated to a play a prominent role in the energy industry in terms of de-carbonization by efficiently connecting electricity with heat networks. Energy storage technologies can shift the balance of supply and demand of energy for a short period of time. This helps in avoiding blackouts and also corrects load imbalances.The research report is an examination of the growth trajectory based on the historical, current, and future opportunities of the global energy storage technologies market. It provides an evaluation of the dynamics that are anticipated to affect the progress of the market and the predominant trends have also been stated in the study. The report also presents a diverse viewpoint on the competitive landscape of the market through the value chain and Porters five forces analysis. The report mentions the research and development projects, mergers and acquisitions, details on collaborations and licensing. The study provides insights into the marketing strategies, products, and shares of the key players operating in the global energy storage technologies market.Request For Report Sample@Global Energy Storage Technologies Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe growth of the global energy storage technologies market can be attributed to the growing demand for energy across the globe along with the rising need for low carbon emitting technologies. Energy storage technologies have application in cooling and heating networks, off-grid applications, and electricity grids. However, the most efficient and cost effective energy storage devices also face difficulties in terms of harsh regulatory and market conditions that are expected to hinder their deployment. Research and development may help in addressing these issues and are also likely to provide companies lucrative growth opportunities.Based on technology, the global energy storage technologies market has been segmented into solid state batteries, flow batteries, flywheels, compressed air energy storage, thermal energy storage, and hydro-power. Initial high investment and capital cost is further expected to restrict the growth of the market. In spite of the high cost, the pumped storage hydropower segment is likely to gain traction in the near future.Global Energy Storage Technologies Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global energy storage technologies market is classified into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. Among these, North America is expected to emerge as the potential consumer region owing to its technological diversity. With the introduction of high-end storage projects, Europe and Asia Pacific are also expected to follow the trail.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe key companies in the market are SEEO Inc., S&C Electric Company, Hawaiian Electric Company Inc., Eos Energy Storage, Convergent Energy + Power, General Electric, AES Corporation, ABB Ltd., and Alstom.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.Contact USState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Engineered Quartz Countertops Global Market Is Projected To Exhibit A CAGR Of Around 16.77% During 2016  2021 | Caesarstone Spot-Yam Ltd., Cambria, Silestone, Hanwha, Pokarna

Engineered Quartz (E-Quartz) Countertops Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Engineered Quartz (E-Quartz) Countertops Market - Insights and Analysis: Sizing, Growth and Forecasts (2016-2021) - (By Volume; By Value; By Sector - Residential, Commercial; By Region - North America, Europe, APAC, ROW; By Country - US, China, Canada, Australia; Key Players - Strategy, Financial Performance)" to its huge collection of research reports.The market is driven by a plethora of aesthetic qualities of engineered quartz in APAC region coupled with rapid surge in demand across the residential sector.Engineered Quartz Countertops Market has been growing at a swift pace over the last five years on account of Increasing production across various countries coupled with rapid expansion of production lines of the leading companies, boosting up of distribution centres in a bid to get a chunk of the leading markets across the world, increasing number of premium distributors along with K&B shops is backing the volume sales of the engineered quartz across the globe. During 2016-21, Engineered Quartz Countertops Market is anticipated to grow at a surged rate on the heels of Increasing application in kitchen, surging penetration across various regions coupled with the availability of a large variety of designs and colours is anticipated to drive the market for engineered quartz across the globe.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @According to Azoth Analytics research report, Global Engineered Quartz (E-Quartz) Countertops Market Insights and Analysis: Sizing, Growth and Forecasts (2016-2021)(By Volume; By Value; By Sector- Residential, Commercial; By Region -North America, Europe, APAC, ROW; By Country - US, China, Canada, Australia; Key Players Strategy, Financial Performance), Global Engineered Quartz Countertops Market is projected to exhibit a CAGR of around 16.77% during 2016 - 2021. Some of the leading companies operating in Global Engineered Quartz Countertops Market are Caesarstone Sdot Yam LTd. , Cosentino, Cambria, etc.Scope of the ReportThe report provides Coverage by SectorResidentialCommercialGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @The report provides coverage by RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificROWThe report provides coverage by CountryUnited StatesChinaCanadaAustraliaReport HighlightsPrimary Research: Interviews conducted with key management people to gain quality responses and deeper insights.Secondary Research: Data and insights from industry associations, annual reports, company presentations, premium journals and internal database.Actual Period: Historical and current market sizing in value and volume terms (2012-2015)Forecast Period: Projected market sizing in value and volume terms (2016E-2021F)Companies Covered: Caesarstone Spot-Yam Ltd., Cambria, Silestone, Hanwha, PokarnaStrategic RecommendationsMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
X-Ray Security Scanner Market 2017- ASE, LEIDOS, Autoclear, Pony, Vidisco, HAMAMATSU

X-Ray Security Scanner Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "X-Ray Security Scanner Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "X-Ray Security Scanner Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global X-Ray Security Scanner industry, and estimates the future trend of X-Ray Security Scanner market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "X-Ray Security Scanner Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportSmiths DetectionL3 CommunicationsAstrophysicsRapiscanASELEIDOSAutoclearPonyVidiscoHAMAMATSUThe market research report explores the X-Ray Security Scanner market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "X-Ray Security Scanner Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the X-Ray Security Scanner market based on major product types, application and end users industries of X-Ray Security Scanner. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for X-Ray Security Scanner market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for X-Ray Security Scanner is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, X-Ray Security Scanner market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the X-Ray Security Scanner market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The global X-Ray Security Scanner market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, X-Ray Security Scanner production volume, data pertaining to demand and X-Ray Security Scanner supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of X-Ray Security Scanner along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for X-Ray Security Scanner across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Nanoparticle Titanium Dioxide (Tio2) Market Size to Grow at a Steady Rate During Forecast Period 2016 - 2024

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Global Nanoparticle Titanium Dioxide (Tio2) Market: OverviewThe global nanoparticle titanium dioxide industry is a niche market and the demand for these materials is expected to gain a strong momentum in the coming years. The demand will especially arise from industries such as plastics, paints and pigments, printing inks, catalysts, paper, cosmetics, and glass. The demand for nanoparticle titanium dioxide is estimated to be more from Asia Pacific. A surge in the use of cosmetics is one of the drivers of the global Tio2 market. The growing use of plastic for the manufacturing of toys and various other objects will help drive the demand for nanoparticle titanium dioxide.The report is a comprehensive analysis of the Tio2 industry and includes an overview of the historical and present figures, with the help of which, the future estimates are made. The report highlights key segments of the global nanoparticle titanium dioxide market and states the leading and declining segments along with the reasons behind their market performance. The current market trends are discussed in the report and so are future opportunities that will enable the market to grow. The report also discusses the key driving and restraining factors of the market. The impact analysis of these factors are also elaborated upon.Request For Report Sample@Global Nanoparticle Titanium Dioxide (Tio2) Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe trend of light-weight vehicles is expected to benefit the global nanoparticle titanium dioxide market as the demand for polycarbonate is expected to increase in place of glass or metal. Titanium dioxide is extensively used to coat polycarbonate and thus, will drive the markets growth in the coming years. A surge in construction activities across countries will also bolster the demand for titanium dioxide. Growth in construction activities will drive the demand for paints and coatings, and this in turn will benefit the market for nanoparticle titanium dioxide.However, the global Tio2 industry is expected to be restrained by stringent regulations by various regulatory bodies with regards to carcinogenic properties. This is expected to hamper the growth of the market.Global Nanoparticle Titanium Dioxide (Tio2) Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global nanoparticle titanium dioxide market is segmented on the basis of geography into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the Rest of the World. It is anticipated that the demand will be high from Asia Pacific owing to an increased support from government for nanotechnology as well as the presence of a large number of companies that develop products and processes based on nanoparticles. China is expected to be a key contributor to the market. In addition to this, various other emerging nations are expected to witness a high growth in the Tio2 industry within the next few years. Moreover, high demand for cosmetics from countries such as the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, Brazil, and Germany is expected over the coming years, which will drive the demand for Tio2 in these areas. A higher spending power and increasing number of beauty conscious people in these countries will also help drive the market.Key Players Mentioned in the ReportThe global nanoparticle titanium dioxide market is fragmented and comprises several players such as Nanotechnologies IncMulti-Direction (Bionano) Co. Ltd., ., Advanced Nanotechnology Ltd., Altair Nanomaterials, Access Business Group, 20 MICRONS, Advance Syntex, American Elements, Reinste Nanoventures Pvt. Ltd., American Dye Source, US Research Nanomaterials Inc., Shanghai Xiaoxiang Chemicals Co. Ltd., Nano Science and technology Consortium, and Qingdao Mingyu Industry Ltd.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):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.Contact USState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Self-Driving Cars Industry Forecast and Revenue by Regions (2017-2022) - Published by MarketResearchNest.com

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MarketResearchNest.com adds North America Self-Driving Cars Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast To 2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in a 117 pages with table and figures in it."Automatic/Self Driving Car is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input. Autonomous vehicles feel their surroundings with such techniques as radar, lidar, GPS, Odometry, and computer vision. Advanced control systems interpret sensory information to identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as obstacles and relevant signage.Key technology and device used in Automatic/Self Driving Car will be discussed. Key players will be researched in this report."Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Self-Driving Cars in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Browse full table of contents and data tables atMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversToyota, BMW, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, AudiMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers United States Canada MexicoMarket Segment by Type, coversPassenger Vehicle, Commercial VehicleMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoHome Use, Commercial USDRequest a sample copy atReasons for Buying this Report: This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segments.Order a Purchase Report Copy atAbout Us:MarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on Self-Driving Cars industries, organizations, products, and trends.Contact UsMr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070(U.S)+44-20-3290-4151(U.K)Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Growing Industrialization will influence the Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) Market Growth 2016 - 2024

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DescriptionSolid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) produce electricity by the use of electrochemical conversions wherein fuels including biogas, natural gas, propane hydrogen, and other hydrocarbons are oxidized directly. The global solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) market is predicted to experience robust growth due to the increasing requirement for zero emission energy devices and alternative sources of energy. The strict regulations on emission of carbon such as Carbon Pollution Standards introduced in the U.S. by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will further provide impetus to the growth of the overall market.This study presents an extensive review of the global solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) market and elaborates on the extent of this market in different regions. The market sizing and forecast have also been presented with an extensive understanding of the factors driving and restraining the growth of this market. The prime players dominant in this market and their key contributions in the growth of the market have also been presented in detail.Request For Report Sample@Various analysis tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis have been employed in order to present an accurate understanding of the overall market. The competitive landscape section of the study provides insights into the prime players in the market. This section also presents a review on the micro and macro factors essential for the already present players and the emerging players looking to penetrate in this market.Overview of the Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) MarketSOFC refer to the devices that are utilized for the production of electricity by the use of electrochemical conversion. The fuel is oxidized directly within the cell in this type of device, which further makes it simpler to function and enables it to be used anywhere. The technology of SOFC is utilized in a number of areas such as military and transportation operations owing to its portable and smart design.A number of companies globally are engaged in research and development activities to enhance the class of solid oxide fuel cells. This has further increased the efficiency, stability, and flexibility of solid oxide fuel cells, thus increasing their demand globally. In addition, the low emission and economical cost related with the utilization of solid oxide fuels will positively impact the development of the overall market.Furthermore, solid oxide fuel cells are poised to be widely utilized for auxiliary and mobile power, thus providing a key growth opportunity in the market. However, soaring operating temperatures may impede the performance of solid oxide fuel cells, thus negatively impacting the development of this market. The soaring costs of catalysts and commercialization and the increasing complexity in the establishment of infrastructure of solid oxide fuel cells will also restrain the growth of the market.In terms of type, the report segments the global solid oxide fuel cells market into planar solid oxide fuel cells, tubular solid oxide fuel cells, and thin film solid oxide fuel cells. By application, the report categorizes the market into military, transport, portable products, generators, aircrafts, and others. Geographically, the report segments the market into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW).Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Key Players in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) MarketThe prominent players in the global solid oxide fuel cells market are Adaptive Materials, Inc., Altair Nanotechnologies Inc., The Babcock & Wilcox Co., SOFCpower, Chevron Technology, Delphi Automotive LLP, Protonex, NexTech Materials, Sunfire GmbH, Rolls-Royce plc., DDI Energy Inc., KERAFOL Keramische Folien GmbH, and Point Source Power, Inc. among others.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.Contact USState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
North America Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle Converters Market to Expand at US$3.47 bn by 2024

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According to TMR, the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market was valued at US$1.74 bn in 2015. It is expected to expand at a positive CAGR of 5.30% within a forecast period from 2016 to 2024, eventually reaching US$3.47 bn by the end of 2024.The three leading entities in this market  Mobility Ventures LLC., BraunAbility, and Vantage Mobility International  took up over 65% of the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market in 2015. According to Transparency Market Research in its recently published research report, the market featured a moderately fragmented competitive landscape for that year, and is likely to slowly grow more consolidated over time. A majority of the players in this market are highly reliant on bringing out newer and advanced products in the market as a core part of their strategic expansion plans. It is also likely for the leading players to change their focus towards mergers and acquisitions over the coming years.On the basis of the type of vehicle, the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market has so far been led by full size vehicles, in terms of revenue in 2015. This segment took up over 48% of the market for the year, thanks to a rise in the uptake of wheelchair accessible vehicles as a type of family vehicle. However, over the coming years the overall rise in demand for medium size vehicle is expected to be higher in North America.The U.S. dominated the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market in 2015 with a share of close to 95% and is expected to remain in the lead for the given forecast period. This might be achieved by the increasing presence of a disabled and geriatric population, the increasing demand for wheelchair accessible vehicles, and a rise in trauma and accident cases. The market growth rate is further enhanced by increased government funding and the rising number of awareness initiatives.Read Report Overview @Patients with Mobility Issues to Rise, Fueling DemandThe growth in the number of disabled patients is currently influencing the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market. In 2015, almost 3.3 mn wheelchair users were already present in North America, a number which is likely to rise over the coming years due to the growth in prevalence of disability of mobility among patients, states a TMR analyst. The massive geriatric population is a primary proponent of this demographic, followed by the obese and the trauma and accident victims. This, as a result, is likely to fuel the demand for wheelchair accessible vehicle converters further over the forecast period.The North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market is also being driven by the overall addition of these type of vehicles in the increasingly asked for user-friendly accessible vehicles category. The market is, however, currently being restrained by the high price of these vehicles and the essential components required.Request Sample Report @Advancements in Technology to Guide Markets FutureSide entry vehicles have so far been a widely demanded segment in the North America wheelchair accessible vehicle converters market. According to analysts, this segment is also likely to propel the market over the coming years, owing to the increased expenditure on them, fueling the development rate of manufacturers.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:
Symphony Solution Inc Listed Among Top Application Development Companies in Philadelphia

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Philadelphia  We are once again proud to share that Symphony Solution Inc. is now amongst the top 10 Application Development Companies in Philadelphia rated by clutch, the number 1 rating and review platform to find leading IT, Marketing and business Services Company.7 years young, Symphony Solution is a full-blown design, web, mobile app and custom software development firm providing custom based software solutions with fledged experience in enterprise mobility, cloud-based solutions, data Analytics, and digital marketing.Mr. Anish Desai, CEO Symphony Solution, loved to share, It is certainly our employees and our clients who have led us to be in top 10 service providers in the industry. With new processes and industry-specific services, we have focused primarily on customer service and believe we would be more successful with our customers success.He further added, We are working hard to be the first choice as a software development company with a 100% success track.You can check out the list of TOP APP DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES PHILADELPHIA 2017, by Clutch here -About Symphony SolutionSymphony Solution, Inc is a reputed software and mobile development company headquartered in NJ, USA and having an offshore development center in India. The company is indulged into various services like Enterprise Mobility Solutions, Android, iOS and Cross-Platform Mobile Development, E-commerce, Business Analytics, Software Consulting, Staff Augmentation and Digital Marketing services for businesses around the globe to expand their reach in the Digital World.Name: Anish DesaiCEO, Startup ConsultantEmail ID: anish@symphony-solution.comCity-fanwoodState-NJ141 South Avenue, Suite # 201Fanwood, NJ 07023, USA
VAT in the UAE  A Guide for Real Estate Investors

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Starting from 1st. of January 2018 and in line with other GCC countries, the UAE is to implement a Value Added Tax (VAT) amounting to 5% on most goods and services.Being an indirect tax on certain goods and services, Law No (8) of 2017, issued by Federal Decree in September 2017, defines the goods to be imposed with VAT as follows:The VAT Law has identified Goods to include physical property that can be supplied including real estate, water and all forms of energy as specified in the Executive Regulations to the VAT Law.However, although generally included, the law subsequently details the VAT treatment specifics subject to different property usage types and other specifics.Residential Property: Zero Rated vs. ExemptArticle 45 of the law enlists goods and services which are subject to a zero rate and includes residential buildings within three years of their completion, either trough sale or lease in whole or in part This holds true also with respect to properties that have been converted from a commercial to residential use.Also noteworthy is the fact that the law does not make a distinction as to whether the residential property is supplied to a natural person or a business entity.Article 46 mentions transactions that entail the application of a tax exemption. Exempt are  within the property context  the supply of bare land as well as all other supplies of residential buildings through sale or lease that do not qualify for the zero rating as stipulated by article 45 (zero rating).The rationale of the zero rating in this instance is that property developers can reclaim output VAT on their respective third-party factor input. That said, an absence of the zero rating provision would otherwise have led to a substantial increase of development cost, ultimately being charged to the end user.A detailed article covering also VAT treatment of commercial property and real estate held within business entities can be found under the following link:ABOUTThe author`s blog property-blog-dubai.com covers subjects related to Dubai`s property market and its trends and influences from an institutional investor`s perspective.The author has been actively engaged in the Dubai property market since 2005 and advises institutional investors pertaining to their overall investment strategy, ongoing asset management as well as the initiation and execution of property transactions.Property-blog-dubai.comChristian AtzertBusiness Center 4, Floor 8Ras Al Khaimah Free Trade ZoneTel: 00971-56-7786475Web:Mail: author@property-blog-dubai.com
Microbiological Testing of Water Global and United States Market In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022

Microbiological Testing of Water

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global and United States Microbiological Testing of Water In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The report is based on the market historical data from 2012 to 2016 and forecast the market trend from 2017 to 2022.This report focuses on the U.S. market and presents volume and value of market share by players, by regions, by product type, by consumers and also changes in prices. As an in-depth report, it covers all details inside analysis and opinions in Microbiological Testing of Water industry.Major Companies3M Company (U.S.)Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. (U.S.)Danaher Corporation (U.S.)Dhler GmbH (Germany)Agilent Technologies, Inc. (U.S.)Shimadzu Corporation (Japan)Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (U.S.)Perkinelmer, Inc. (U.S.)Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (U.S.)Idexx Laboratories Inc. (U.S.)MilliporeSigma (U.S.)Biosan Laboratories, Inc.? (US)Fuzhou Hedao Trade Co., Ltd. (China)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCaliforniaTexasNew YorkOthersCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsMicrobiological Testing of Water Market, by Pathogen TypeLegionellaColiformSalmonellaVibrioClostridiumMicrobiological Testing of Water Market, by Water TypeDrinking & bottled waterIndustrial waterMicrobiological Testing of Water Market, by Key ConsumersPharmaceuticalClinicalFoodEnergyChemicals & materialEnvironmentalGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Table of ContentsGlobal and United States Microbiological Testing of Water In-Depth Research Report 2017-2022Chapter One Global Microbiological Testing of Water Market Overview1.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20171.2 Microbiological Testing of Water, by Pathogen Type 2012-20171.2.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Pathogen Type 2012-20171.2.2 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Market Share by Pathogen Type 2012-20171.2.3 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Price by Pathogen Type 2012-20171.2.4 Legionella1.2.5 Coliform1.2.6 Salmonella1.2.7 Vibrio1.2.8 Clostridium1.3 Microbiological Testing of Water, by Water Type 2012-20171.3.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Water Type 2012-20171.3.2 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Market Share by Water Type 2012-20171.3.3 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Price by Water Type 2012-20171.3.4 Drinking & bottled water1.3.5 Industrial waterChapter Two United States Microbiological Testing of Water Market Overview2.1 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-20172.2 Microbiological Testing of Water, by Pathogen Type 2012-20172.2.1 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Pathogen Type 2012-20172.2.2 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Market Share by Pathogen Type 2012-20172.2.3 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Price by Pathogen Type 2012-20172.2.4 Legionella2.2.5 Coliform2.2.6 Salmonella2.2.7 Vibrio2.2.8 Clostridium2.3 Microbiological Testing of Water, by Water Type 2012-20172.3.1 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Water Type 2012-20172.3.2 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Market Share by Water Type 2012-20172.3.3 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Price by Water Type 2012-20172.3.4 Drinking & bottled water2.3.5 Industrial waterChapter Three Microbiological Testing of Water by Regions 2012-20173.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.2 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Market Share by Regions 2012-20173.3 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Price by Regions 2012-20173.4 North America3.4.1 United States3.4.1.1 California3.4.1.2 Texas3.4.1.3 New York3.4.1.4 Others in United States3.4.2 Canada3.5 Latin America3.5.1 Mexico3.5.2 Brazil3.5.3 Argentina3.5.4 Others in Latin America3.6 Europe3.6.1 Germany3.6.2 United Kingdom3.6.3 France3.6.4 Italy3.6.5 Spain3.6.6 Russia3.6.7 Netherland3.6.8 Others in Europe3.7 Asia & Pacific3.7.1 China3.7.2 Japan3.7.3 India3.7.4 Korea3.7.5 Australia3.7.6 Southeast Asia3.7.6.1 Indonesia3.7.6.2 Thailand3.7.6.3 Philippines3.7.6.4 Vietnam3.7.6.5 Singapore3.7.6.6 Malaysia3.7.6.7 Others in Southeast Asia3.8 Africa & Middle East3.8.1 South Africa3.8.2 Egypt3.8.3 Turkey3.8.4 Saudi Arabia3.8.5 Iran3.8.6 Others in Africa & Middle EastChapter Four Global Microbiological Testing of Water by Companies 2012-20174.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20174.2 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20174.3 Global Top Companies Microbiological Testing of Water Key Product Model and Market Performance4.4 Global Top Companies Microbiological Testing of Water Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Five United States Microbiological Testing of Water by Companies 2012-20175.1 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Volume Market Share by Companies 2012-20175.2 United States Microbiological Testing of Water Revenue Share by Companies 2012-20175.3 United States Top Companies Microbiological Testing of Water Key Product Model and Market Performance5.4 United States Top Companies Microbiological Testing of Water Key Target Consumers and Market PerformanceChapter Six Global Microbiological Testing of Water by Consumer 2012-20176.1 Global Microbiological Testing of Water Sales Market Share by Consumer 2012-20176.2 Pharmaceutical6.3 Clinical6.4 Food6.5 Energy6.6 Chemicals & material6.7 Environmental6.8 Consuming Habit and PreferenceContinue...Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Milk Packaging Market: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast

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Packaging is a procedure of using containers and components to protect, carry, identify and enable merchandising of products, and should be manufactured from materials best suited for the purpose. Besides enabling safe and hygienic packaging of products, it also enables one company to differentiate its products from that of competitors. Increasing demand for single serve packs of milk products is expected to significantly fuel growth of the global milk packaging market over the forecast period. Due to various nutritional and health-related benefits associated with milk, demand for milk has been increasing significantly in the recent past, which is in turn expected to drive growth of the global milk packaging market during the forecast period.Sample With Latest Advancements @Milk Packaging: Market DynamicsGrowth of the global milk packaging market is driven by factors such as increasing number of small households  due to which consumers prefer single serve packs of consumer goods  particularly for milk and other dairy products. Moreover, increasing number of health conscious consumers in various countries is driving demand for milk as a source of calcium, minerals, vitamin D, and protein. Availability of various flavoured milk products in the market is another factor expected to stimulate growth of the global milk packaging market during the forecast period. In addition, increasing population and per capita disposable income is expected to drive sales of packaged milk products in future. Moreover, various applications of milk for preparing food products is a factor expected to drive growth of the milk packaging market during the forecast period. However, price fluctuation of materials (aluminum, plastic, paper) used in milk packaging is expected to slightly hamper the sales of milk packaging. A significant trend gaining traction in the global milk packaging market is increasing awareness of eco-friendly materials. Among all material types used for milk packaging, paperboard segment is expected to account maximum growth in the near future, owing to its recyclable property.Browse Our Table of Content @Milk Packaging: Market SegmentationThe global milk packaging market is segmented on the basis of packaging type, and end-use industryBased on packaging type, the global milk packaging market is segmented into:Tubs & cupsBottlesCansPouchesOthersBased on material type, the global milk packaging market is segmented into:GlassPlasticMetalPaperboardOthersView Report @Milk Packaging Market: Regional outlookIn terms of regions, the global milk packaging market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific market is expected to witness relatively fast growth in terms of revenue during the forecast period as various developing countries such as India and China account for major production and consumption of milk.Milk Packaging Market: Key playersSome key players in the global milk packaging market are Amcor Limited, Tetra Pack, Evergreen Packaging, Indevco, Ball, Elopak, Blue Ridge Paper Products, Clondalkin Group Holdings, CKS Packaging, Crown Holdings, Essel Propack, Consolidated Container, Fabri-Kal, Exopack Holdings, Global Closure Systems and Graham Packaging etc. The global milk packaging market is not consolidated in nature owing to presence of various local and international manufacturers, but the unorganized players also have strong presence. In the global milk packaging market, key players are entering into agreements and mergers and acquisitions with local manufacturers of milk packaging in order to increase their product offerings, and penetrate emerging countries.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:
Social Employee Recognition Systems Market Will Grow Robustly at Value CAGR of 14.3% Over 2016-2026

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Various social media platforms are gaining adoption across the globe, and this has effectuated a considerable rise in employment of social networking analytic programs. Incidentally, such developments are favouring the use of social media applications in employee recognition software. Blending social media with corporate workforce analysis is being collectively identified as social employee recognition, and systems offering such services are gaining traction across multiple industrial verticals. Future Market Insights recent publication on the global social employee recognition system market reveals that by the end of 2016, more than US$ 5,150 Mn worth of revenues were amassed from around the world. The demand for social employee recognition solutions is, thus, anticipated to grow robustly, registering a value CAGR of 14.3%.By the end of 2026, the global market for social employee recognition solutions will be valued at an estimated US$ 19,586.2 Mn, according to the report. A striking factor that has propelled the adoption of social employee recognition solutions is increasing involvement of senior management in the development of their employees. Activities arranged for employee participation & performance are actively reviewed by senior leaders, and they are doing so in a very informal manner.Request for Sample @Big Companies Need Social Employee Recognition SolutionsSuch a collaborative approach is easily feasible in large companies and multinational conglomerates. Key excerpts of the report suggest that in 2017 and beyond, large enterprises will dominate the global social employee recognition systems market by closing in on a 70% value share. Revenues emanating from adoption of social employee recognition solutions in such corporate behemoths will surge at a staggering 15% CAGR. By the same token, the market is also anticipated to be dominated by on-premise deployment model, revenues from which are expected to surpass US$ 14,000 Mn by 2026-end.The report also states how creation of an internal marketing team leads to adoption of social employee recognition services. Such teams work towards communicating with employees in social settings and bestow praises through awards or bonus monetary allowances. A stumbling block for adoption of social employee recognition solutions, however, lies in high implementation costs, coupled with lack of outright employee participation. On the account of expensive implementation, the demand for social employee recognition solutions will lose traction among tight-budgeted small & medium enterprises (SMEs).Request for Table of Contents @Impact of BYOD Approach on Global Social Employee Recognition Systems MarketThrough 2026, retail & consumer goods will be identified as the largest end-user industry for social employee recognition solutions. Demand for such solutions is also expected to gain traction in IT & telecommunication business. Factors promoting the sales of social employee recognition solutions in such industrial verticals include growing acceptance for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach, and rising presence of enterprise social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, Convo and Yammer. Some of the leading companies participating in the global social employee recognition systems market include GloboForce Ltd., Reffind Ltd., Kudos, Inc., SalesForce.com, Madison, BI Worldwide, Jive Software, Inc., Achievers Corporation, Vmware Inc., and Recognize Services Inc.In the report, titled Social Employee Recognition Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, North America has been observed as a dominant region, procuring over one-third of global revenues by the end of forecast period. Adoption of social employee recognition systems will also be significantly high in Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region. Western Europes social employee recognition systems market is being anticipated to proliferate at more than 26% CAGR, indicating that by the end of 2026, the region will rake in revenues worth ten times its present market value. Japans social employee recognition system revenues will also soar at more than 20% CAGR, while the APEJ social employee recognition system market will record a gain of 30 BPS during the forecast period.Report Overview @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:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Sublingual Immunotherapy Market: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast

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Allergy is the harmful immune reaction produced by the body to a specific substance or allergen such as dust, pollen, mite, and food. Treatment of allergy generally consists of use of anti-allergy drugs and immunotherapy. These anti-allergy drugs or immunotherapy treatment reduces the allergic reaction caused due to an allergen by decreasing its sensitivity. Immunotherapy has become the most prominent treatment for various allergic diseases in the past few years. Immunotherapy acts by curing the root cause of allergy. This therapy effectively controls and manages the clinical symptoms, reduces or eliminates the need for medication, prevents the worsening of a disease, and reduces the degree of specific and nonspecific bronchial hyperactivity. Subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) and sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) are the two types of immunotherapy. Acceptance of immunotherapy is rising in developed as well as developing countries owing to its positive results.Sample With Latest Advancements @Sublingual immunotherapy exposes a patient to an allergic substance or an allergen repeatedly over a period of time to induce tolerance against that allergic substance. An allergen in the form of drops or a tablet is placed under the tongue. This therapy has been extensively used in Europe for the past 20 years to treat various allergies. Sublingual immunotherapy has several benefits. A major benefit is less risk of severe reactions to tablets or drops as compared to injections. Additionally, once the doctor has administered the first dose of SLIT, the patient can take the further doses by self at home. No more visits to the doctor or medical clinic are required for administration of the dose. Moreover, this therapy is simple, safe, and highly effective in treating allergies. These benefits are anticipated to boost the growth of the global sublingual immunotherapy market during the forecast period.Browse Our Table of Content @Sublingual immunotherapy, or allergy shots, is a long-term treatment for allergic disease such as allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, allergic conjunctivitis (eye allergy), or insect allergy. Immunotherapy is a next generation treatment for allergy and it can modify the natural course of a disease. Increase in prevalence of allergies is a key driver of the global sublingual immunotherapy market. In 2015, prevalence of allergic diseases globally was estimated to be 20% to 30% of the worlds population, which is about 1 billion people suffering from some kind of allergies. Allergic rhinitis affects most of the population across the world. According to the World Allergy Organization (WAO), about 400 million people worldwide are affected by allergic rhinitis. Sublingual immunotherapy therapy is highly used in the treatment of allergic rhinitis. Increase in environmental pollution contributes to the growth of the sublingual immunotherapy market.View Report @The global sublingual immunotherapy market can be segmented based on product type, distribution channel, and region. In terms of product type, the market can be categorized into drops and tablets. The U.S. Food Drug and Administration (FDA) has approved three allergy tablet products: Oralair, Grastek, and Ragwitek. Currently, there are no FDA-approved liquid drops available in the market. This provides an opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to invest and gain a foothold in the global sublingual immunotherapy drops market. Based on distribution channel, the market can be classified into hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies and drug stores, and online pharmacies.In terms of region, the global sublingual immunotherapy market can be segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominates the global market because of fast growing life science industry, rise in focus on research & new drug development, and increase in the number of pharmaceutical companies focusing on immunotherapy. Europe is the second largest market for sublingual immunotherapy. Most of the immunotherapy drugs are approved in Europe and adoption of the therapy is likely to increase rapidly during the forecast period. Asia Pacific is projected to be the most lucrative market for sublingual immunotherapy and is expected to expand at the highest growth rate from 2017 to 2025. Rise in government initiatives, grants, and funds; increase in life science R&D spending, especially in India, China, and Japan, and dedicated research commercial zones are attracting domestic and foreign players to invest and enter the lucrative research sector in Asia Pacific.Key players operating in the global sublingual immunotherapy market include Allergon AB (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.), HAL Allergy Group, Allergy Therapeutics, Stallergenes Greer, and ALK.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:
High-visibility Clothing Market: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast

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Global High-visibility Clothing Market: SnapshotThanks to the significant rise in the construction industry, the market for high-visibility clothing is witnessing a surge in its valuation across the world. The augmenting usage of green and ecofriendly materials and procedures in the production of high-visibility clothing is also propelling this market substantially. In addition to this, the increasing financial support from various governments, globally, is likely to boost this market considerably in the years to come. However, the increasing number of private labels of distributors may act as a restraint for this market over the next few years.The leading manufacturers of high visibility clothing are making use of resources derived from petrochemicals in an effort to reduce the wastage and, consequently, the cost of resources. The escalating demand for green products and eco-friendly procedures is expected to lead to technological improvements in high-visibility clothing solutions in the near future. With a number of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the global market for high visibility clothing demonstrates a partial fragmentation. The key players keep innovation and research and development on top priority and invest heavily in it. The market is anticipated to witness intensified competition in the years to come due to the continual entry of new players.Sample With Latest Advancements @High-visibility clothing is a sub-categoryof protective clothing in the personal protective equipment (PPE) industry. High-visibility clothing is used to make vehicle drivers and operators aware of the presence of workers in poor-visibility environment or low light. High-visibility clothing is mandatory when workers are working around moving vehicles such as trucks and cars and machinery such asbackhoes and forklifts. Human eye reacts effectively to fluorescentlights and bright colors. Therefore, high-visibility clothing employs fluorescent colors to improve the visibility of workers. Due to increase in the number of accidents and reports of unsafe working conditions, a lot of government bodies are imposing strict norms and regulations regarding employee safety, working conditions, and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).Some of the organizations also conduct safety inspections at workplaces to ensure safety. The highly traditional high-visibility clothing uses prismatic tapes and glass bead tapes, which have reflective properties. Even though jackets are effective during daytime, they are in effective at night. F-hoss technology helps in visibility during night with the help of battery-powered, prismatic, reflective tapes, and illuminated light source. Manufacturers of high-visibility clothing all over the world are struggling to improve the safety features of their products by incorporating upgraded technologies. The use of high-visibility clothing guarantees the maximum safety. Hence, steady demand for high-visibility clothing is expected during the forecast period.Browse Our Table of Content @Growth of the construction industry globally is one of the key factors driving the market for high-visibility clothing. Growing trend of use of green materials and processes in the manufacture of high-visibility clothing is raising the demand for high-visibility clothing. Increasing concerns about the environment are encouraging consumers to reduce the use of carbon footprints. Global manufacturers of high-visibility clothing have started applying eco-friendly processes and materials to reduce the environmental impact. Increase in the distributors private labels is a restraint for the high-visibility clothing market. Global manufacturers are using resources derived from petrochemicals in order to reduce the cost and wastage of resources. The increasing demand for greener products and clean processes is likely to lead to improvement in the technology used in high-visibility clothing.View Report @Geographically, the high-visibility clothing market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America accounted for a major share of the high-visibility clothing market in 2015 and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period. Economic development in the construction industry is one of the key driving factors for the market in the region. Growing concerns about workers safety at construction sites have led to the increase in demand for high-visibility clothing in North America. Boom in the extraction of shale gas in this region has fueled the demand for high-visibility clothing in the railroad construction. Increasing demand for innovative, high-visibility clothing has increased the demand for high-visibility clothingin Europe. Asia Pacific is one of the emerging markets for high-visibility clothing, owing to growth of the construction industry and concerns about workers safety at construction sites in the region. Latin America has witnessed an increase in demand for high-visibility clothing and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period. Brazil is one of the leading markets for high-visibility clothing, owing to expansion of the construction industry in the country.Middle East & Africa accounts for a considerable share of the global high-visibility clothing market.Major players in the global high-visibility clothing market include Honeywell, Ansell, Lakeland Industries, and 3M. Other leading manufacturers of high-visibility clothing are Bulwark, ASATEX, Kermel, National Safety Apparel, Ballyclare, OccuNomix, Nasco Industries, and True North Gear.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:
Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys Market to Witness Exponential Growth by 2026

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The Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys are those metals and alloys that are generally non-ferrous type or have only insignificant amount of metal used as an alloy. Major non-magnetic metals include aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc. Other non-ferrous metals include brass, titanium, beryllium and nickel. They are generally more expensive than ferrous metals in terms of mining and extraction. These non-magnetic metals & alloys are generally light in weight, have higher conductivity, has non-magnetic property and is resistance to corrosion and rust. The global non-magnetic metals & alloys market are 1,500 kilo tons in 2015 approximately in volume. Overall, the market is expanding at a decent CAGR of during the forecast period from 2016 to 2026.Global Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys Market DynamicsThe market of global non-magnetic metals & alloys is anticipated to be driven by the use of non-magnetic metals in different industries and their respective purposes. Due to growth of aviation industry and other transportation and structural materials, the global market of non-magnetic metals & alloys are growing in demand. In addition, the favorable Government initiatives such as The National Space policy of United States on June, 2010 and many others programmes help in the consumption of more non-magnetic metals & alloys over the years due to increased number to aircrafts and spaceships. Some of the non-magnetic metals & alloys are also used in building materials and also as a component of various metal alloys. Due to growth of the construction equipment, lead acid batteries, bullets and radiation protectors, the non-magnetic metals & alloys such as lead is highly used in demand of late.Request For Report Sample:The demand for corrosion chemically inert and corrosion resistant products in chemical processing industry is expected to drive the market growth over the predictable period. Also the non-magnetic metals & alloys are highly recyclable in nature which further encourages the growth of non-magnetic metals and alloys. The global non-magnetic metals & alloys market is characterized by continuous mergers, acquisitions and product innovations to gain market share and competitive edge which drives the demand for the product worldwide. The jewelry industry involving precious metals other than gold, is expected to drive the Non-Magnetic Metals market to some extent. The industry is expected to get advantage from the rising magnesium mining and growing extraction of other metals such as titanium, which are used as raw materials for the production of alloys.However, the global non-magnetic metals & alloys being costly as compared to magnetic metals and alloys does have a hindering effect on its market growth as well. On the mining operations front, the non-magnetic metals and alloys mining are currently experiencing a sluggish production rate.Global Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys Market SegmentationThe global non-magnetic metals & alloys market is segmented on the basis of product types such as non-ferrous metals, precious metals and exotic or rare metals. Ferrous metals further includes aluminum, lead, tin, zinc, copper, nickel, titanium and others. Precious metals constitutes gold, silver and platinum. Exotic or rare metals are cobalt, mercury, tungsten, beryllium, bismuth and cerium. On the basis of application, the global non-magnetic metals & alloys are divided into aerospace industry, industrial gas & turbine, industrial automotive, electrical &electronics, chemical industry, kitchen appliances, food & beverages industry and others.Global Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Global non-magnetic metals & alloys industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America holds the largest share in the global non-magnetic metals & alloys market. It is expected to witness a substantial growth at a CAGR of over 3.5% in the forecasted period of 2016-2026. Europe holds the second largest market in terms of global non-magnetic metals & alloys, followed by Japan, Asia-pacific, Middle-East Africa and then rest of the world. Asia Pacific is expected to witness above average growth rates over the next six to eight years owing to the growing aviation industry combined with increasing demand for high durability metals in gas turbines and electrical & electronics.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Global Non-Magnetic Metals & Alloys Market PlayersThe major players identified across the value chain of global non-magnetic metals & alloys market includes Saru Smelting Pvt Ltd., Lee Kee Group, James Coppell Lee, North Ferrous Cast Alloys Inc., Gravita India Ltd.,Australian Metals Pty Ltd., Nimax, Arcotech Ltd., AMPCO Metal Sa, Plansee Group and others. The companies are investing in their research & development sector to use more and more non-magnetic metals & alloys in aerospace industry. The companies are also focusing on different strategies in order to maintain the market share in the global non-magnetic metals & alloys market.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Air Oxygen Blender Market : Global Snapshot by 2025

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The air oxygen blender market is estimated to witness high growth during the forecast period due to their growing application in emergency situations to reduce the procedure time with their use and for faster recovery of patients. The market is also driven by technological advancements, increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic illnesses, and alarming rate of trauma and accident cases worldwide. Increase in the geriatric population vulnerable to chronic illnesses is also escalating the demand for surgical procedures globally, which in turn will drive the market for air oxygen blenders.Gas blending is the procedure of precise mixing of different gases for a medical or non-medical purpose in a controlled environment. Gas mixing or blending has extensive use in industrial and research procedures, food making and storage, and medical gases. The necessity of equipment that can enable the formation of a mixture of ambient air and oxygen in an easy, safe, non-toxic and controlled fashion in critical care units is becoming increasingly important. Air/oxygen blenders, also known as mixers or oxygen proportioners are special instruments that offer a simple, reliable, and accurate method of delivering gas to the patient. The air-oxygen blender is used to mix oxygen with ambient air for patient treatment. Air-oxygen blenders allow clinicians to form a precise mixture of oxygen, usually 21% to 100%. A typical air-oxygen blender has one or two low-flow or one high-flow output port. Oxygen-air blenders are generally fitted out with a pressure-regulating apparatus and connectors for the main gas source and the supply of the mixed gas. The mixed gas output can then be passed through a humidifier or nebulizer and provided to patients at flow-rate of 1 L/min to more than 100 L/min using endotracheal tubes, oxygen tents, tracheostomy tubes, oxygen hoods, or masks. The blender is connected to a ventilator system, respirator, or breathing machine to supply proper air pressure into the patients lungs.Report Overview and TOC:On the basis of product type, the air oxygen blender market can be segmented into low flow air/oxygen blender and high flow air/oxygen blender. Technological advancements such as MRI compatible models are expected to boost the air oxygen blender market during the forecast period. On the basis of end-user segment, the market can be fragmented into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, long-term care centers, and home-care settings. However, the air oxygen blender market is expected to face some restraints during the forecast period.Request brochure:Lack of skilled professionals in developing countries, hidden application cost, and unstable reimbursement regulations are hampering the growth of the air oxygen blender market in developing countries. Geographically, the market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. North America is anticipated to be the largest market for air oxygen blenders owing to the large number of patients, increase in geriatric population, and mounting trauma cases. Asia Pacific is the most promising market due to expanding health care expenditures, boost in economic status, and large population of underserved patient pool.Specific and Customized requirements@Key players in the global air oxygen blender market include Precision Medical, Inc., Inspiration Healthcare Group plc, Maxtec, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Bio-Med Devices, nice Neotech Medical Systems Pvt. Ltd., Ohio Medical, Sechrist, and Weyer 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:
Europe Foodservice Disposables Distribution Systems Market Value is US$ 2,225.2 Mn by 2022

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According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research, titled Europe Market Study on Foodservice Disposables Distribution Systems: Impelled By Increasing Number of On the Go Consumers, Coupled With Rapid Growth of the Quick Service Restaurants, Over the Forecast Period 2016 - 2022, the europe foodservice disposables distribution systems market is estimated to be valued at US$ 1,590.9 Mn by the end of 2015 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.9% over 2016 - 2022 in terms of value, to reach a market value of US$ 2,225.2 Mn by 2022.The Europe (U.K. Spain, France & Switzerland) foodservice disposables distribution systems market is driven by increasing adoption of the on the go lifestyle and increasing initiatives taken by the various food disposables manufacturers to introduce food disposables with creative designs. Moreover, collaboration of various distributors with manufacturers that offer foodservice disposable products is another key factor expected to drive market growth of the food service disposables market in the region over the forecast period.Request Sample Report @On the basis of type, the Europe foodservice disposables distribution market has been segmented into tableware disposables, finger food disposables, and durable plastic glasses. The tableware disposables segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 85.8% in 2015 and is projected to maintain its dominance through 2022. Increasing number of cafes and takeaway formats is supporting the segment growth in the foodservice disposable distribution system market. The tableware disposable segment is further sub-segmented into plates, bowls & tubs, cutlery, trays and containers, and cups and mugs. The plate segment accounted for the significant share in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 732.2 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.5% over 2016 - 2022.On the basis of end use, the market is segmented into hotel & other accommodation facilities, restaurants, cafe and bistros, bars & pubs, clubs, institutions, and foodservice providers/caterers. The restaurants segment is estimated to account for the highest value share by 2015 end and expected to remain the most dominant segment over the forecast period. The restaurants segment was valued at US$ 341.5 Mn in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 526.8 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.6% over 2016 - 2022.Request to view table of content @In terms of distribution channel, the market has been segmented into wholesalers, hypermarket/supermarkets, cash & carry, logistic providers, distributors, and online. The cash & carry segment is projected to exhibit the highest growth over 20162022. The cash & carry segment was valued at US$ 326.3 Mn in 2014 and is estimated to be valued at US$ 494.9 Mn by 2022, expanding at a CAGR of 5.3% over 20162022.The report provides in-depth information about the various trends driving each segment and provides analysis and insights about the foodservice disposables distribution system market in specific countries.The U.K. market accounted for the significant volume share of 42.6% of the Europe foodservice disposables market in 2014.Key players in Europe foodservice disposables distribution system market that are covered in the report include Dispo International, EFG Foodservice, First Pack, Go-Pak Group, ITP Imports Ltd. (Discount Wholesale), Mashers, MBS Wholesale Ltd, Party & Paper Solutions Ltd., Pattersons UK, and Sustainable Disposables Trading BV (SD Trading).Read Report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Connected Retail Market: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast

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Connected Retail Market:The market for connected retailing is expected to see a rapid expansion around the globe over the next few years. Looking at the pace at which traditional retailers are including connected retailing capacities to their consumer service practices, it can be said that connected retailing will soon be the new face of the retailing world.Connected retail refers to a variety of practices that align the digital world with the physical one by allowing consumers to make more use of the mobile devices to make their shopping experiences more exciting. It is the practice of connecting the consumer seamlessly to the physical store by virtue of smart mobile devices, giving them a more informed, personalized, digital shopping experience. It allows the use of a variety of payment options, and most importantly, use of the data collected about consumer preferences in helping the retail industry deliver a much better consumer experience.Sample With Latest Advancements @Retailers are rapidly realizing the benefits of connecting with consumers on their digital devices and giving them a more interactive and immersive shopping experience by consistently providing messaging, pricing, and product availability information, and consumer service across all consumer touch points.Connected Retail Market: OverviewOver half of the worlds population today has smart mobile computing devices combined with superfast Internet connectivity through broadband, 3G, and Wi-Fi. This group of tech-savvy, connected, and mobile-enabled consumers is driving a revolution in the retail industry. The revolution is not only the consumers shifting preference from traditional brick-and-mortar shops to online vendors, which are successfully luring consumers by offering personalized deals and bids that undercut the traditional retail world; it is also about the change in the way consumers prefer to shop. This mobile-driven change is both a threat and an opportunity for the next-generation retailer, to tackle which, the market for connected retail has come into existence.Browse Our Table of Content @The connected retail market can be segmented on the basis of type of solution, technology, and services. The type of connected retail solution has two prominent segments: hardware and software. The key technologies used in connected retail solutions include Bluetooth, near-field communication, and Wi-Fi. Some of the most popular services in the connected retail market comprised in the segments are managed services, real-time marketing, real-time tracking, inventory management, and many other professional services such as consumer data analytics.Connected Retail Market: Key Trends and OpportunitiesSome of the major driving forces for the global connected retail market are the rising amount of time the end user is spending on smartphones and a host of other mobile computing devices, the widespread availability of high-speed Internet, and the strengthening network of e-commerce service providers. The highly informed consumer has a host of shopping options and wants to buy things at the best prices, through a most convenient shopping medium and from places best suited to ones own time and priorities.View Report @While all these factors collectively threaten the very survival of the brick-and-mortar-based traditional retailing model, the emergence of omnichannel retailing, the place that offers a seamless and flexible channel for buyers by combining and aligning a variety of product browsing and ordering channels and revenue streams, is a great opportunity for the retail industry to cater to its consumers in a more informed and effective manner.Connected Retail Market: Region-wise OutlookFrom a global perspective, the connected retail market is expected to witness the highest growth in Asia Pacific, owing to the presence of major manufacturers in the retail industry in China. The vast consumer pool in the region due to the huge population, which is being increasingly digitized, is also expected to be a major driver for the global connected retail market in Asia Pacific.A large number of renowned IT companies, such as Cisco Systems, Inc., Verizon, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Google, Inc., IBM, Intel Corporation, Zebra Technologies Corporation, SAP AG, Microsoft Corporation, and Atmel Corporation, are venturing in the global connected retail market, making competition highly fierce.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Cloud Supply Chain Management Market - Industry segments and sub-segments Projection For 2025

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Supply chain management or SCM involves monitoring of materials, information as well as finances when products are moved from supplier to manufacturer and then passed from wholesaler to retailer finally reaching the consumers. The ultimate goal for an effective SCM system is managing and reducing inventory time assuming the products being available when needed. Different software solutions are used for maintaining the smooth flow of supply with cloud technology being a relatively newer concept to be used for effective supply chain management. Cloud based SCM allows tracking a specific product throughout its complete lifecycle. On an initial level, the cloud-based services will help in maintaining storage capacity over the internet along with using web-based environments that will be extremely crucial for application in tactical situations.Download Brochure@The global market for cloud based supply chain management has been segmented on the basis of solution, service, end use industry and geography. The solution areas based on which the global market has been segmented includes order management, inventory and warehouse management, procurement and sourcing, sales and operation planning and transportation management among others. On the basis of service the market has been segmented into training and consulting, support and maintenance and managed services. Healthcare, food & beverage, manufacturing among others form the different application areas based on which the global market has been segmented.Global cloud supply chain management market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.The cost effectiveness associated with the application of cloud supply chain management forms one of the major driver for this market. It is the proper management of goods along with providing a better range of customization through online markets that gives a cost advantage to the company from its competitors. Moreover, it is also the flexibility and integration of different designs providing enhanced IT based solutions that further helps in driving this market globally. Along with this, it is the effective managing of data redundancy and scalability associated with data that further contributes to some important factors that is positively impacting the market boosting the overall growth. With all these drivers there are also a few restraints that poses challenges to the market growth such as security that limits the market growth. Security issues involve threats related to the data being hacked or the misinterpretation of data that forms a major concern for the company using these services. Another major restraint for using these systems would be the dependency on the central access for monitoring data along with the risks related to the entire system being down that also has negative impacts on the overall market. The proactive nature of this technology allowing faster delivery of product information will likely provide opportunities for this market in the coming years.Geographically, North America formed a major region for this market followed by Europe where the cost effectiveness along with technological advancement in managing supply chains formed some major reasons for the growth of this market. Asia Pacific formed one of the fastest growing segment with China, India and Japan being some of the major countries contributing to the growth. The growing technological advancement in managing supply chain along with growth of online customization has been some important reasons for this growth in APAC region.Browse Report@Some of the key players that are operating in the global cloud supply chain management market include Oracle Corporation (The U.S.), JDA Software (The U.S.), Manhattan Associates, Inc. (The U.S.), Kewill, Inc. (The U.S.), Kinaxis, Inc. (The U.S.), CloudLogix (The U.S.), TECSYS, Inc. (The U.S.), HighJump (The U.S.), Logility, Inc.( The U.S.), Infor, Inc. (The U.S.), SAP SE (Germany) and Descartes Systems Group, Inc. (The U.S.), among others.About Us:-Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact Us:-State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Coconut Flour Market to Hit Grow at CAGR of 6.6% During 2017  2027 : Latest Research Insights

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Key excerpts from Future Market Insights latest report on the global coconut flour market projects that by the end of 2026, around 850.8 Thousand Tonnes of coconut flour is expected to be consumed across the globe. Increasing awareness amongst consumers about health benefits of coconut flour is expected to fuel its demand over the next couple of years. Moreover, coconut flour is gluten-free, making it consumable for those who are allergic to wheat or are sensitive to other similar gluten-based substances. Coconut flour has emerged as a good alternative for wheat flour. In recent past coconut flour has also seen a surge in its sales, owing to the rising demand for functional flour.Request for Sample @In terms of production, China is the leading producer of Coconut Flour followed by Poland, Germany, Chile and Austria. Production of coconut flour in Ukraine has also spiralled in last 3 years. Meanwhile, the Western Europe region holds the top position in terms of consumption followed by North America. Most European consumers value quality and prefer natural products that are healthy and carry no side effects, hence the demand for healthy food products such as coconut flour is significantly high in this region. In North America, the U.S. is a major importer of coconut flour and accounts for a sizeable share of the market.The FMI report titled Coconut Flour Market: Global Industry Analysis 2012  2016 and Opportunity Assessment 2017  2027 reveals that the global coconut flour market is set to expand at a CAGR of 6.6% to reach a valuation of 725.5 Mn by the end of forecast period. In 2017 and beyond, the market is expected to be governed by a number of trends, which include:Soaring popularity of coconut flour tortillas in several parts of the world. From an exotic food item, coconut flour tortillas are now turning into mainstream pantry food.Request for Table of Contents @In countries such as Japan and the U.S., people are trying to developing new products using coconut flour as a key ingredient. Tortilla chips made with coconut flour has been a great success and well appreciated by food lovers.Coconut flour is being increasingly used in manufacturing the nutritional bars, chocolate fillings, and other baking products such as pizza base, and bread.Growing demand for coconut flour based food products in the emerging countries such as China and India.Increased availability of coconut flour, owing to setting up of organised retail structures in both developed and developing regions.Celebs Coconut Corporation, Nutrisure Ltd., Nutiva, Inc, Bobs Red Mill Natural Foods, Primex Coco Products Inc., The Coconut Company, Connecticut Coconut Company, Van Amerongen & Son., Healthy Traditions and Smith Naturals are some of leading manufacturers of coconut flour profiled in the FMI report.Report Overview @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:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Anthracite Coal Mining Market to Discern Steadfast Expansion During 2013 - 2019

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Anthracite is a hard and compact variety of coal that has the highest content of carbon amongst all types of coals. With fewer impurities & highest calorific value there is a global increase in anthracites demand which is escalating the anthracite coal mining market. It accounts for only 1% of the total worlds coal reserves. Residue left over after the combustion of anthracite has fewer impurities with negligible smoke compared to other varieties of coal which makes it an efficient fuel. The global market for anthracite coal mining keeps on changing and evolving based on new partnerships, acquisitions or new players. There is a fundamental shift in the mineral resources market where the traditional producers and suppliers are diverting supplies to domestic consumers and are focusing on its imports.Anthracite is the most favored PCIs (pulverized coal injection products) and ULV (ultra low volatile products) that is directly fed into blast furnace in countries such as China and India. The use of coke has been reduced by anthracite, as it is a superior and cleaner substitute; moreover the worldwide shortage of coke and its relatively high price has strengthened the demand for ULV anthracite in future. The use of ULV is sought by steel mills as it provides superior performance due to higher carbon and energy content. This has immensely increased the market for anthracite coal mining. Mining is a risk prone task which destroys the land and emits harmful gases besides the anthracite mines are prone to danger that includes roof falls, explosions, mine fires and collapsing of mines. The miners fear many types of natural incidents that can be caused by properties of coal and underground atmosphere such as marsh gas and fire damp.A sample of this report is available upon request @Anthracite is classified in to three grades based on its carbon content and its mining is done based on the type of coal required. The segmentation of anthracite mining market is done on the basis of anthracite coal grades:Standard gradeHigh gradeUltra-high gradeThe segmentation of anthracite coal mining market can also be done on the basis of types of mining in anthracite fields as follows:Shaft mineDrift mineSlope mineSurface mineAnthracite can be extracted from the mountain forming areas where the metamorphosed anthracite coal deposits are found. The anthracite coal mining market is segmented in the basis of regions as:PennsylvaniaChinaVietnamNorth KoreaU.S.The end users of anthracite coal include sectors such as power industry, railway, coke producers, steel manufacturers and commercial users. Some of the other areas of application of anthracite include as a coke substitute in chemical industries, in building material production, sugar production and in production of plastics, sorbents & adsorbents.Some of the key players of this market include Bathurst Resources, Cokal, Attila resources, Carabella Resources, Tigers Realm, Jameson Resources, Aspire Mining. Other small users include Aberdeen Mining Company, Baker, Walter L, Anthracite Mine Rescue Inc. Barren Coal Co., Blaschak Coal Corporation, Jeddo Coal Company, Coal Contractors Inc., BD Mining Co Inc., Carbon Sales Inc., Hudson Anthracite and State Industries Inc.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @This research report analyzes this market depending on its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeRest of the WorldAbout 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
Cellulosic Ethanol Market to Witness Steady Expansion During 2016 - 2024

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Global Cellulosic Ethanol Market: OverviewCellulosic ethanol is a biofuel, which is manufactured using parts of plants, grasses, and wood. Cellulose, besides hemicelluloses and lignin, are mass of plants that are extracted from lignocellulose. Panicum virgatum, wood chips, and other byproducts of tree are the cellulosic materials that are used for the production of ethanol. The production of ethanol from lignocellulose has advantage of abundant raw materials as compared to other sources such as corn and sugar canes. The amount of processing time to provide microorganisms with sugar monomers that produce ethanol is another factor that has driven the production of cellulosic ethanol towards lignocellulose. In the recent times, switchgrass and miscanthus are studied as prospect raw materials for the production of ethanol as they have high productivity per acre.Gasification and fermentation are two processes to produce ethanol. While gasification transforms the lignocellulose raw material into gaseous carbon monoxide and hydrogen, cellulolysis process involves hydrolysis on pretreated lignocellulosic raw matherials with the help of enzymes, which break the complex cellulose into sugars such as glucose, followed by distillation and fermentation. The global market for cellulosic ethanol is projected for a healthy growth rate during the forecast period of 2016 to 2024. This report is a comprehensive study of the market and presents a figurative analysis of the future scenario.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Cellulosic Ethanol Market: Trends and OpportunitiesFor the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol, an infrastructure has to be built to carry out methods of turning cellulose containing organic matter into fuel. In the recent times, the global cellulosic ethanol market has witnessed considerable investments from some of the key players. For instance, companies such as POET, Abengoa, and logen are into the process of building refineries with functionality to process biomass and produce ethanol. Moreover, enzyme producing companies such as DuPont, Dyadic, Novozymers, and Diversa may also help in creating cellulosic ethanol during the forecast period.The growing usage of cellulosic ethanol also owing to the fact that it is a major source of sustainable energy. In a bid to decrease the CO2 emission caused by petroleum based fuels, many feedstocks such as corn cobs and woody biomass are now readily available and actively adopted. The report also observes that the commercialization of cellulosic biofuel industry is energizing the global economy and reaching up to the untapped market. Some of the other factors driving the global cellulosic ethanol market are: growing demand for biofuel due to its environmental benefits and the commercialization of cellulosic biofuels. The report also highlights some of the trends of the market, such as increase in government blending rate targets, decrease in enzyme costs, and increase in the number of deals in the market.Global Cellulosic Ethanol Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, the global market for cellulosic ethanol can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world. Currently, North America serves the maximum demand, which is primarily dominated by the country of the U.S. where the Federal Government is a keen promoter of cellulosic ethanol as an alternative to petroleum fuels. Various programs that are being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to research and develop ethanol fermenting organisms and cellulose hydrolysis enzymes. It also co-funds the ethanol from biomass production facilities, and thereby immensely help the market for the same in the region. Various national laboratories in the U.S. such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are currently involved in the research and development of cellulosic ethanol.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Companies Mentioned in the Research ReportSome of the key players in the global cellulosic ethanol market that have been profiled in this report are: British Petroleum, Novozymes, DuPont, INEOS and Blue Fire Renewables.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
Pecan Market Estimated to Flourish by 2024

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Pecans are edible tree-nut crop which is cultivated for its delicious and buttery yet rich flavour, which contains minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, and health beneficial nutrients. Pecan contains 690 calories/100g which makes them good source of energy, regular consumption of pecan helps to decrease cholesterol level in the blood. Pecan contain polyphenolic antioxidant ellagic acid, vitamin E, beta-carotene, lutein and zea-xanthin, which makes them rich source of many phyto-chemicals and helps to remove toxic like oxygen-free radicals that helps to decrease the risk of diseases like cancer as well as help to prevent body from various infections.Pecan mainly produced in Georgia, followed by New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. According to National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), in 2014, Georgia produced 76 million pounds of pecan. Whereas, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona produced 67 million pounds, 61 million pounds, 21 million pounds of pecan, which is 17% low from previous year for Georgia, and 7% for New Mexico and Arizona.Request Sample Report @According to FAS, in 2014, The U.S. exports of pecan increased by 28% in comparison to previous year. In 2014, the U.S. exports of pecan was valued more than US$ 445 million and imports are valued at US$ 370.6 million which is 52% higher than previous year. In 2014, Canada was largest market for shelled pecans valued at more than US$ 45 million. In 2015, Mexico produced 270,535.4 Mn pounds of pecan, which is 400,000 lbs higher than previous year.According to USDA's Economic Research Service, in 2014, per capita consumption of pecan was ranging from 0.3 pounds to 0.6 pounds.Request to view table of content @Global pecan market is segmented on the basis of application and region. Based on the application, global pecan market is segmented into bakery, snacks, beverages, confectionary, and others. Among the application segments bakery and confectionery products collectively contribute to more than 50.0% market share. On the basis of region, global pecan market is segmented into five regions, North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.Some of the key participating player in global pecan market are Pecan Producers International, Missouri Northern Pecan Growers, Linwood Nursery, Navarro Pecan Company Inc., The Green Valley Pecan Company, SA Pecans, Kalahari Desert Products (Pty) Ltd., Hudson Pecan Company, and others.Read Report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Cananga Odorata Flower Oil Market expected to Witness a Sustainable Growth over 2024

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Cananga odorata is also known as the cananga tree, is a large evergreen tropical tree originated in the rain forest of various Asian and South Pacific Islands such as Indonesia, Philippines, Polynesia, Sumatra, Java, and Comoro. The essential oil of Cananga odorata can be extracted by the steam distillation of its fresh flowers called ylang ylang. The essential flower oil has found wide usage in aromatherapy owing to its pleasing fragrance. Cananga odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil has emerged as an essential perfumery ingredient with strong demand in floral and oriental compositions. Ylang ylang flower oil is of high medicinal value due to its properties such as an antidepressant, antiseptic, antiseborrhoeic, hypotensive, aphrodisiac, nervine, and sedative substance. The high growth of cananga odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil is attributable to its perfumery and medicinal applications.The market of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil is expected to be driven by its high perfumery and medicinal values. Owing to its gentle fragrance, it has found wide application in the perfumes and aromatherapy treatments. It provides various health benefits such as relief from anxiety, stress, blood pressure and depression. The flower oil can also heal the wounds, and treated as a remedy in hair fall. Some of the macro-economic factors such as population growth, recovered GDP, and increased disposable income are fueling the growth of Cananga Odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil market during the reviewed period. Apart from this, rising demand of aromatic flavors in perfumes, shift from synthetic to natural products, and growing emphasis of preventive health care practices among health conscious consumers also propels the growth of Cananga Odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil.Request Sample Report @The segmentation of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market is based upon application, and geography. On the basis of application, Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market is segmented into food & beverages, medical, personal care, and others. Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil is used as a preservative and flavoring agent in the food and beverages application. The increasing health consciousness of consumers has escalated the demand of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil in the medical segment. The personal care segment is expected to grow at a rapid pace in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market owing to the rising demand of aromatic flavors as well as fragrances in personal care products such as perfumes and cosmetic products. Additionally, the increased demand of spa and relaxation applications due to the change in life-style is anticipated to fuel the market growth in upcoming years.Request to view table of content @On the basis of geography, Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market is segmented into five different regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa. The market size of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil is expected to be prominent in the European region owing to the rising awareness and increasing demand of cosmetics and beauty products, medicines, and nutraceuticals. Europe was followed by North America to emerge as the second major region in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market. Factors such as highly developed industries, increasing per capita income, subsidies and tax benefits from the government, contribute vitally to growth of the market in the North America region. Asia Pacific region is projected to be the fastest growing market owing to the change in life style and increased awareness about health benefits of the products derived from natural sources.The players in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market focuses upon the integration across the value chain to attain cost-benefit ratio in the longer run. Some of the key players in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market include Biolandes SAS, doTerra International, Sydney Essential Oils Co., The Lebermuth Co., Inc., Young Living Essential Oils, Farotti Essenze, and Essential Oils of New Zealand, among others.Read Report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Polymerase Chain Reaction Technologies Market, Growing $10,776 Million By 2023

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Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an important scientific technique in molecular biology that amplifies single or few copies of a piece of DNA. In addition, it is helpful in generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence and investigating diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, Lyme disease, and middle ear infections. The technology involves three major steps-denaturation, annealing, and extension. It is applicable in medical, research, clinical diagnostics, and forensics. It has been utilized since decades as a standard method for research on nucleic acids (RNA and DNA) in laboratories. PCR technologies available in market are real-time quantitative (qPCR), digital PCR (dPCR), inverse PCR, multiplex PCR, assembly PCR, and standard PCR. The need of effective diagnostic molecular technique in healthcare to detect diseases fuels the demand for the growth of the market. The global polymerase chain reaction technologies market was valued at $7,027 million in 2016, and is estimated to reach $10,776 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 6.2% from 2017 to 2023.For More Info, Get Sample :Rise in number of diagnostic centers and hospitals, completion of the human genome project, high prevalence of diseases, increase in the geriatric population, technological advancements, and high investments by private and public organizations drive the market. However, technical limitations related to qPCR and dPCR products and high cost of dPCR devices restraint the market growth. In addition, accurate and timely results for RT-PCR is a major challenge faced by the PCR market. Reduction in number of PCR processes makes the process less tedious and may open avenues of opportunities for the PCR market.The report segments the market by technology, product, end user, application, and geography. In terms of technology, it is segmented into real-time PCR, traditional PCR, and digital PCR. Based on product, it is classified into reagents & consumables, instruments, software, and services. Based on application, it is categorized into clinical, research, and forensic applications. Based on end user, it is divided into diagnostic centers & hospitals, biotech & pharma companies, and academic & research institutions. By region, the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.Healthcare giants have adopted product developments & commercialization, collaborations, partnerships, and agreements as their key strategic moves for the development of their portfolios. For instance, LGC Ltd. acquired Biosearch Technologies in 2015 to extend its expertise in qPCR market. Moreover, Sygnis AG launched SunScript one-step RT-qPCR kit in January 2016, which is useful in gene expression analysis. These developments by market giants have led to the market growth.KEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS This report offers a detailed quantitative analysis of the current market trends from 2016 to 2023 to identify the prevailing opportunities. The market estimations provided in this report are based on comprehensive analysis of the key developments in the industry. The global market is comprehensively analyzed with respect to technology, product, end user, application, and geography. In-depth analysis based on geography facilitates in analyzing the regional market to assist in strategic business planning. The development strategies adopted by key manufacturers are enlisted in the report to understand the competitive scenario of the market.Enquire About Report :KEY PLAYERS PROFILED Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Sygnis AG LGC Ltd. Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. Agilent Technologies, Inc. BioMerieux S.A. RainDance Technologies, Inc. Affymetrix Inc. Fluidigm Corporation Takara Bio Inc.KEY MARKET SEGMENTSBy Technology Real-time PCR Traditional PCR Digital PCRBy Product Reagents & Consumables Instruments Software ServicesAlso Request For Discount :By Application Clinical Research ForensicBy End Users Diagnostic Centers & Hospitals Biotech & Pharma Companies Academic & Research InstitutionsBy Region North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Spain Italy Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific Japan China Australia India South Korea TaiwanRest of Asia-Pacific LAMEA Brazil South Africa Saudi Arabia Rest of LAMEAThe other players of the polymerase chain reaction technologies market include (companies not profiled in the report): Beckman Coulter Becton, Dickinson and Company Cepheid Clontech Laboratories Eppendorf Fluidigm GE Healthcare Kapa Biosystems Maxim Biotech PerkinElmer Promega Siemens HealthcareTable Of Content CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3 MARKET OVERVIEW CHAPTER 4 POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TECHNOLOGIES MARKET, BY TECHNOLOGY CHAPTER 5 POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TECHNOLOGIES MARKET, BY PRODUCT CHAPTER 6 POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TECHNOLOGIES MARKET, BY APPLICATION CHAPTER 7 POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TECHNOLOGIES MARKET, BY END USERS CHAPTER 8 POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TECHNOLOGIES MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHY CHAPTER 9 COMPANY PROFILESAbout 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
Hospital Artificial Intelligence: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023

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Hospital care management can leverage augmented intelligence. Artificial intelligence is useful for providing highly tailored insights about individual patients or to work across an entire population. Artificial intelligence is useful for helping providers effectively address healthcare delivery."About Artificial intelligence MarketThe 2017 study has 90 pages, 35 tables and figures. Worldwide markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as the artificial intelligence software increases diagnostic excellence, saving lives and lowering care delivery costs.Hospital Artificial IntelligenceHospital care management can leverage augmented intelligence. Artificial intelligence is useful for providing highly tailored insights about individual patients or to work across an entire population. Artificial intelligence is useful for helping providers effectively address healthcare delivery.Get Sample copy of this Report @The intersection of healthcare and artificial intelligence represents a market opportunity. New strategies are being developed by companies to bring A.I. to healthcare. The business challenges around those efforts are being addressed collectively in partnerships and in forums to bring the technology into the market. Artificial intelligence has an impact on patients, doctors, hospitals, clinical facilities, and the healthcare industry overall.The ability of an intelligent system to learn from data without upfront human intervention brings significant change to the healthcare delivery system. It relies on the use of unsupervised and semi-supervised machine learning techniques. Segmentation, dimensionality reduction, anomaly detection and pattern recognition are replacing supervised manual techniques for diagnosis and care delivery.Major factors driving the market for artificial intelligence in hospitals include its ability to provide better diagnostic accuracy under a variety of testing conditions. The worldwide aging population creates demand for increased accuracy of early diagnosis. An increase in the number of people with end stage diabetes, cancer, and severe respiratory diseases creates need for advanced medical diagnostic capabilities that work earlier in the evolution of disease, creating the ability to implement therapies that are lifesaving.View Report @Partners HealthCare and GE Healthcare are launching a 10-year partnership to bring artificial intelligence into every area of hospital operations. IBM brings Watson to the hospital AI landscape in hospitals. Progress is demonstrated by the health care AI launch to the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Womens Hospital Center for Clinical Data Science (Partners). Multidisciplinary teams from Partners and GE Healthcare have worked to develop applications for AI in every step of the patient journey from the moment they are admitted to the hospital. Long-term, the goal is to develop applications that improve the way illnesses are diagnosed, change how treatment is developed, decrease unnecessary biopsies, streamline clinical workflows, and increase the amount of time clinicians spend with patients.Artificial Intelligence Market ForecastsHospital artificial intelligence market shipments at $19 billion in 2016 are forecast to reach $50 billion dollars, worldwide 2023. These represent a very specialized type of analytics systems able to address a wide range of issues that can be newly managed with digitization. Steady growth is anticipated because the AI units are offering breakthrough treatments and diagnostic capabilities.Companies ProfiledMarket LeadersGeneral ElectricIBMMarket ParticipantsAlphabet / GoogleGlaxoSmithKline (GSK)MerckPrognosQuest DiagnosticsSafeguard ScientificsZebraCompanies MentionedDrug discovery artificial intelligenceExscientiaBergNumeratetwoXARAtomwiseBenevolentAI.Send An Enquiry Request @Table of ContentsArtificial Intelligence for Hospitals Promises Vastly Improved Care Delivery with Declining Cost of Care 1Hospital Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Market Shares And Market Forecasts 9Hospital Artificial Intelligence (AI) Market Driving Forces 9Hospital Artificial Intelligence Market Shares: 11Hospital Artificial Intelligence Market Forecasts: 121. Hospital Artificial Intelligence Market Description And Market Dynamics: 141.1 Hospital Care Management Leverages Artificial Intelligence 141.2 Ability of AI Solutions To Discover Schemas in Large Databases 151.3 Pharmaceutical Companies Using Computers to Help Them Find New Medications 172. Hospital Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Market Shares And Market Forecasts 182.1 Hospital Artificial Intelligence (AI) Market Driving Forces 182.2 Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Market Shares: 212.3 Hospital Artificial Intelligence Market Forecasts: 222.3.1 Airplanes Utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Land Themselves 302.4 Hospital Artificial Intelligence (AI) Challenges 312.5 Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Software Prices: 412.6 Hospital Artificial Intelligence Regional Segments: 423. Hospital Artificial Intelligence Products: 443.1 Partners HealthCare, IBM, and GE Healthcare 443.2 IBM Watson 463.2.1 IBM Genomic And Immunotherapy Supercomputing for Patient Management 493.2.2 Mayo Clinic and IBM Watson 503.3 Googles AI subsidiary DeepMind is partnering with another UK hospital 513.4 Prognos 524. Hospital Artificial Intelligence Research And Technology: 534.1 Teslas Elon Musk 534.2 Research at Google 544.3 IBM AI Research 554.3.1 Neural Representation of Sketch Drawings 564.4 Superstar Companies That Are Able To Leverage IT to Achieve Growth 574.4.1 Using Digital Technology To Create Market Disruption 584.5 Google and Nvidia Artificial Intelligence 595. Hospital Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Companies 605.1 Alphabet / Google 605.1.1 Google Artificial Intelligence Subsidiary DeepMind Healthcare Initiative 605.2 General Electric (GE) 615.2.1 General Electric Revenue by Segment 615.2.2 GE Healthcare and Massachusetts General Artificial Intelligence 625.3 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 655.3.1 GlaxoSmithKline Deal For Artificial Intelligence With Privately Owned Exscientia 655.4 IBM 655.4.1 IBM Watson Genomics by Quest Diagnostics 675.4.2 IBM Watson Healthcare Revenue 685.4.3 IBM Watson Solutions Software Healthcare Revenue 695.5 Merck 705.6 Prognos 715.6.1 Coding Healthcare Datasets Full Of Unstructured Text 735.7 Quest Diagnostics 775.7.1 IBM Personalized Healthcare: Watson Genomics from Quest Diagnostics 785.7.2 Quest Diagnostics Revenue 795.8 Safeguard Scientifics Announces Second Quarter 2017 Financial Results 795.8.1 Safeguard Scientifics Prognos DxCloud 805.9 Zebra 80Buy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
UNESCO-Pearson Initiative for Literacy Highlights Khushi Baby's Work In Digital Healthcare

Udaipur, Dec 2017, Khushi Baby has made medical history wearable for efficient healthcare service. Government and district health officials are also supporting this initiative.We are proud to announce that Mobisoft Infotechs client Khushi Baby has been included in one of the case-studies by UNESCO-Pearson that highlight how digital solutions and technologies help people with low literacy level to improve their livelihood. The concept of wearable technology makes Khushi Baby project an interesting topic-of-discussion among big health-care brands.Khushi Baby is a platform that lets mothers and babies wear their digital health records as a necklace. It involves a mobile app for the community health workers to easily access the medical records of babies and mothers in the rural areas. These records can be accessed and maintained through the NFC-enabled mobile devices. The mission of Khushi Baby is to monitor the health care of children and mothers at the last mile.Ruchir Nagar, CEO and Co-founder of Khushi Baby said in an interview that, our assured promise is that, at the core, our system will be able to work independently of cellular connectivity. He further added we are currently working on 365 rural villages in Udaipur, India. Next year, we are aiming to 3x this number, which is more than 1000 villages. Our aim is to track the health of 50K-60K mothers and children.About Khushi Baby:Founded by Ruchit Nagar in March 2014, Khushi Baby has come up with a creative idea to integrate wearable NFC technology, mobile health and cloud computing for producing a complete platform to bridge the gap between worlds child and maternal health. Their goal is to be the digital key, integrating technology with tradition, connecting the last mile to health and social services.About Mobisoft Infotech:Mobisoft Infotech, a mobile application development firm, provides the total solution for mobile, web and the cloud and empowering startups throughout the product lifecycle. We have worked with 100+ global tech startups over 7 years, providing mobility solutions and aiming at shaping their technology business. The company has launched more than 100 startup products across the wide variety of different and important verticals.Mobisoft Infotech is Houston based smartphone application development company specialize in iOS, Android and HTMl5 app development and our portfolio comprises of more than 240+ applications delivered so far.1811 Bering Dr #200, Houston, TX 77057, USA
Cataract Surgery Devices Market, Evolutionary Growth $9,587 Million By 2023

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Cataract is a condition in which clouding of the lens occurs resulting in decreased vision. Cataract surgery is the removal of clouded natural lens, and involves implantation of artificial or intraocular lens. The medical devices such as intraocular lens, phacoemulsification systems, forceps, and balanced salt solution, which aid in cataract surgical procedure are called cataract surgery devices.For More Info, Get Sample :The cataract surgery devices are used for the treatment of cataract, without causing any damage to the cornea. Cataract surgery is a low-risk procedure with an excellent record of safety and success. If the disease is detected at an earlier stage, surgery becomes important or else cataract will grow and lead to loss of vision. There is an increased adoption of surgical procedures for treating cataract due to availability of advanced products such as intraocular lenses (IOLs) and ophthalmic viscoelastic devices, which include cohesive ophthalmic viscoelastic devices and dispersive ophthalmic viscoelastic devices. The global cataract surgery devices market was valued at $7,025 million in 2016, and is expected to reach at $9,587 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 4.3% from 2017 to 2023.Increase in geriatric population and advancements in technology in the healthcare industry drive the market. However, poor primary healthcare infrastructure and high cost incurred for cataract surgeries especially in developing economies impede the market growth. Moreover, initiatives taken by the government and many nonprofit organizations generate awareness among individuals regarding the benefits of cataract surgeries. Therefore, this creates more lucrative opportunities for many key market players.The global cataract surgery devices market is segmented based on product, type, end user, and region. Based on product, the market is divided into intraocular lens (IOL), ophthalmic viscoelastic device (OVD), and phacoemulsification equipment. Based on type, the market is bifurcated into equipment and consumables. Based on end user, the market is classified into hospitals, ophthalmology clinics, and ambulatory surgery centers.Based on region, it is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. North America accounted for the highest market share in 2016, and is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period. This is attributed to the high geriatric population and increase in prevalence of cataract diseases. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to emerge as a lucrative area for market players, due to an increase in population suffering from cataract disorders. For instance, according to WHO 18% of the worlds blind population affected form cataract comes from China.Enquire About Report :KEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS The study provides an in-depth analysis of the global cataract surgery devices market along with the current trends and future estimations to elucidate the imminent investment pockets. Comprehensive analyses of the factors that drive and restrict the market growth are provided in the report. Comprehensive quantitative analysis of the industry is provided from 2016 to 2023 to assist stakeholders to capitalize on the prevailing market opportunities. Extensive analysis of the key segments of the industry helps understand the trends in technologies and techniques used across the globe.Key market players and their strategies are provided to understand the competitive outlook of the industry.Cataract Surgery Devices Market Key Segments:By Product Intraocular Lens (IOL) Ophthalmic Viscoelastic Device (OVD) Phacoemulsification EquipmentBy Type Equipment ConsumablesBy End User Hospitals Ophthalmology Clinics Ambulatory Surgery CentersAlso Request For Discount :By Region North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany France UK Italy Spain Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific Japan China Australia India South Korea Rest of Asia-Pacific LAMEA Brazil South Africa Saudi Arabia Rest of LAMEATable Of Content CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3 MARKET OVERVIEW CHAPTER 4 CATARACT SURGERY DEVICES, BY PRODUCT CHAPTER 5 CATARACT SURGERY DEVICES MARKET, BY TYPE CHAPTER 6 CATARACT SURGERY DEVICES MARKET, BY TYPE OF SURGERY CHAPTER 7 CATARACT SURGERY DEVICES MARKET, BY END USER CHAPTER 8 CATARACT SURGERY DEVICES MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHYAbout 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
Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market 2017- Increasing Number of Craft Breweries Globally

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Professional Survey Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The global market for Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor is being molded by different factors and a complete assessment of those have been furnished in the report. The report begins with a brief description of the product and then goes onto study the various growth drivers and restraints in the market. Apart from that, the report also banks upon historical and current data to understand the trajectory of the market, its current and future size, and the pace at which it would expand in the years to come.The study on the global market for Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor applies market-leading analytical tools, namely SWOT analysis and Porters Five Forces to understand the prevalent opportunities and threats awaiting players. Such tools also helps it to throw light on the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers and how big a challenge substitutes and new entrants pose. All of these enable it to comprehend the degree of competition in the market.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @In order to stay ahead of the curve in an ever changing, always-on business environment, companies need to chart pertinent marketing strategies. The report offers them with just the information, facts, and figures on the global market for Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor so that they can take timely, useful decisions. The report is a repository of information on the Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor market.The report also scrutinizes the macro-fundamentals such as the recent-most international and domestic policies affecting the dynamics of the global market for Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor. It segments the market depending upon different parameters such as applications, products, and regions. Factors shaping the growth in the different segments have been examined thoroughly and attractiveness and drawbacks of each segment has been discussed so as to enable players to bet carefully on the market.Table of ContentsGlobal Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.1 Definition and Specifications of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.1.1 Definition of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.1.2 Specifications of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.2 Classification of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.2.1 Temperature1.2.2 Pressure1.2.3 Mass1.2.4 Torque1.2.5 Humidity1.2.6 Viscosity1.2.7 Chemical Vapor1.3 Applications of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor1.3.1 Automotive1.3.2 Military & Aerospace1.3.3 Consumer Electronics1.3.4 Healthcare1.3.5 IndustrialRead Complete Table of Content @2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Sales Analysis (Company Segment)5 Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Share Analysis5.2 China Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Analysis5.2.1 China Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) Sensor Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption AnalysisQYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Zika Virus Vaccines Market - Advanced Technologies & Growth Opportunities in Global Industry by 2025

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Global Zika Virus Vaccines Market: SnapshotWith the zika virus spreading at an alarming rate across the world, the global market for zika virus vaccines is likely to gain substantial momentum across the world. The recent outbreak of the viral infection in Latin America has caused a number of cases of viral transmission from an infected mother to her baby, leading to infants being born with microcephaly and several other related birth defects. As per Brazilian authorities, since 2014, over 1,638 babies have been born with microcephaly-related defects in the country but no medical treatment is available for these infants till now. This situation reveals the severity of the issue, pointing towards the dire need for vaccines for the prevention of the zika virus from spreading, which, in turn, is likely to encourage vaccine producers to develop zika virus vaccines at a high pace.In addition to this, the classification of zika virus infection by FDA as a public health emergency and the orders to evaluate these vaccines under priority review voucher, will accelerate their time to the market. Moreover, the exponential increase in the spreading rate of this virus is anticipate to augment the level of awareness among people, which will reflect on the uptake of zika vaccines across the world.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Zika Virus Vaccines Market: OverviewZika virus infection is primarily transmitted to people by an infected mosquito from the Aedes genus. The symptoms of Zika virus infection include fever, skin rash, general malaise, conjunctivitis, and muscle or joint pain. These symptoms are usually mild and in many cases, this infection is asymptomatic. Incessant research and development activities in the field are providing a significant boost to the growth of the global Zika virus vaccines market.This market intelligence report serves as a professional study of the global Zika virus vaccines market and its overlying industries. It includes a detailed description of all the important parameters of the market including its dynamics and competitive landscape. It offers invaluable insights into the statistics pertaining to the market at both regional and global levels. It profiles the prominent players in the market and presents information regarding their revenue generation, business strategies, market shares, contact information, and latest developments. It includes SWOT analysis that helps in deriving the potential growth trajectory that each key player will experience from 2017 to 2025.Global Zika Virus Vaccines Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing prevalence of active Zika virus infection is the foremost factor augmenting the global Zika virus vaccine market. The increasing incidence of Zika fever is fuelling the development of potent vaccines. Moreover, the rising awareness regarding the virus is stimulating the adoption of these vaccines.Request TOC of the Report @Furthermore, Zika virus infection can be transmitted from an infected mother to her fetus. In such a case, infants are born with microcephaly and other related birth defects. The Brazilian authorities state that since 2014, more than 1,638 babies in the country are born with microcephaly. Thus, the alarming rise of infection is creating a soaring need for vaccines for the prevention and treatment of Zika-linked birth defects. However, in November 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Zika virus infection is no longer an epidemic and is anticipated to be less prevalent in the near future, which in turn is limiting the global Zika virus vaccines market in realizing its utmost potential.Global Zika Virus Vaccines Market: Region-wise OutlookBased on geography, the segments methodically examined in the report are Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. The Rest of the World region will be a prominent market throughout the forecast period. The widening base of patients suffering from Zika virus infection is the primary factor driving the demand for their vaccines in the region. At present, Brazil is reported to have the highest number of infected individuals, closely trailed by Columbia and Venezuela.Request Discount of the Report @Asia Pacific is expected to register a significant CAGR during the same period. The high prevalence of mosquito-borne illness and the improving healthcare infrastructure are promoting the development of Zika virus vaccines. The increasing awareness among populace regarding the infection caused by the virus is also triggering the demand for these vaccines.Global Zika Virus Vaccines Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global Zika virus vaccines market is capital intensive nature and is, therefore, dominated by large pharmaceutical firms across the world. Some of the prominent players are Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Immunovaccine Inc., NewLink Genetics Co., Bharat Biotech International Ltd., GeneOne Life Science Inc., Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Sanofi S.A., GlaxoSmithKline Plc., and Hawaii Biotech Inc. These players are pouring hefty funds into the development of effective and reliable vaccines in order to expand their consumer base and stay relevant in the market.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Hyperscale Data Center Market : Growth Factors and Restraints Analysis 2025

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Hyperscale Data Center Market: SnapshotWith the increasing need for decline in operational expenditures and high application performance, the global market for hyperscale data center is displaying a significant increase in its size. The rise in the spending on data center technology is also boosting the growth of this market substantially. Additionally, the escalating number of users, adopting solutions, which assist them in scaling their infrastructure with the increasing demand, is likely to propel this market in the years to come.Cloud providers, enterprises, and colocation vendors have emerged as the main users of hyperscale data centers across the world. Since hyperscale data center is a vital commodity for the construction of a scalable and robust cloud, it is used by a large number of cloud service providers. Enterprises mostly have their hyperscale data centers within their premises; however, they, sometime, contract out it to colocation service vendors.Servers and networks are the main components of the global hyperscale data center market. As the increase in the operational complexities and the augment in the demand from end users has raised the requirement for technically advanced and more efficient hyperscale data centers, the need for cutting-edge hardware and networking component has also increased across the world.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Hyperscale Data Center Market: OverviewHyperscale data centers are created to provide a single, massively scalable compute architecture. The architecture is essentially comprised of small, separate servers, called nodes, which provide compute, storage, and networking. These nodes are then brought together and managed as a whole. Nodes are usually deployed from inexpensive, off the shelf servers.The primary objective of hyperscale architecture is to keep in the initial investment in check by starting on a small scale. Depending upon demand, new nodes can be added to the cluster resulting in an extension of the initial infrastructure. Hyperscale data centers, a part of the IT infrastructure domain, have been mostly leveraged by international internet giants, namely Google and Amazon. Going forward their market looks promising.A report by Transparency Market Research throws light on important facets of the global market for hyperscale data center. It furnishes a qualitative analysis of the growth drivers and restraints in the market and chronicles the prevalent trends in it. It also offers a detailed assessment of the competitive landscape and identifies key players contributing towards the growth of the global market for hyperscale data center. The report leverages market-leading analytical tools to gauge the opportunities and threats awaiting players in the market.Request TOC of the Report @Global Hyperscale Data Center Market: Trends and OpportunitiesEnergy efficiency, usefulness in a gamut of industries, open compute project, and lessened ownership cost are some of the unique perceived benefits of hyperscale data centers. Such advantages have driven their demand so far from consumers wanting to tackle the growing operational complexities that traditional data centers are unable to resolve. There are three types of hyperscale data centers  cloud providers, colocation providers, and enterprises.Based on application, the global hyperscale data center market can be segmented into IT and telecom, healthcare, banking, financial services, and insurance, government utilities, energy, and manufacturing, among others. A booming IT services industry has substantially upped the demand for hyperscale data centers in the IT and telecom industry. Depending upon the component again, the market can be categorized into server, networking, etc. Among them, the server segment leads the market and going forward too is slated to hold onto its dominant share.Factors serving as bottleneck to the growth in the global market for hyperscale data centers are power failures and generation of a lot of heat.Request Discount of the Report @Global Hyperscale Data Center Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the key segments in the global market for hyperscale data center management are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. Among them, Asia-Pacific is slated to gain most market share in the near future on account of the growing demand for cloud service from small, medium, and large enterprises and swift take-up of hyperscale data center architecture and technologies by various industries in the region. The IT and telecommunications industry has been generating the most revenue so far and in the near future the banking, financial services, and insurance segment will gross maximum revenue in Asia Pacific. Countries such as India, China, and Japan are at the forefront of driving demand in the Asia Pacific market.Companies Mentioned in the ReportTo assess the competition prevailing in the global market for hyperscale data center, the report profiles companies such as Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Nlyte Software, Sandisk Corporation, Cisco Systems, INC., Ericsson, and International Business Machines Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Global 3D Depth Sensor Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021)

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"The Report Global 3D Depth Sensor Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About 3D Depth Sensor Market3D depth sensors, also known as 3D cameras or 3D scanners, generate depth information from a certain scene by measuring the distance between the sensor and objects in front of it. The technology has so far been used mainly for industrial applications, but many smartphone companies such as Apple is on the cusp of bringing it to the consumer market, potentially driving significant changes in how people interact with devices in daily life.Get Sample copy of this Report @Today, many smartphone companies introducing new camera technology called active depth sensing to enable AR/VR and other features in smartphones and many other devices. With depth-sensing technology, smartphones will instantly become hyper-aware of their immediate surroundings and can be used for everything from virtual reality applications to a version of Google maps with walking directions inside of buildings to enabling accurate sizing suggestions when purchasing clothing and shoes online.The global 3D depth sensors market is set to experience favorable growth driven by factors such as growing smartphone market, rapid urbanization, accelerating economic growth, rising demand for 3D imaging technology and increased proliferation of gaming and video content. The major trends observed in this market include increasing dual camera adoption rate and technological advancements. However, growth of this market is constrained by challenges such as battery consumption issues and high cost burden.View Report @The report Global 3D Depth Sensors Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021) analyses the development of this market. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the market are discussed in detail in this report. The four major players: LG Innotek Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Company Ltd. and STMicroelectronics are being profiled along with their key financials and strategies for growth.Table of Content1. Overview1.1 Introduction1.2 Technologies1.3 Applications2. Global Market Analysis2.1 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market2.1.1 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.2 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.3 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Value by Segments2.1.4 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.5 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.6 Samsung 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.7 Samsung 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Penetration Rate2.1.8 Other Android 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Value2.1.9 Global 3D Depth Sensor Market Forecast by Shipment Volume2.1.10 Global 3D Depth Sensor Average Selling Price2.2 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market2.2.1 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Value2.2.2 Global 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.3 Samsung 3D/IR Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.4 Apple 3D Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by Volume2.2.5 China 3D Depth Sensor Smartphone Market Forecast by VolumeSend An Enquiry Request @3. Market Dynamics3.1 Growth Drivers3.1.1 Growing Smartphone Market3.1.2 Rapid Urbanization3.1.3 Accelerating Economic Growth3.1.4 Rising Adoption of 3D Imaging Technology3.1.5 Increased Proliferation of Gaming and Video Content3.2 Key Trends & Developments3.1.1 Increasing Dual Camera Adoption Rate3.2.2 Technological Advancements3.3 Challenges3.1.1 Battery Consumption Issues3.3.2 High Cost Burden3.1.3 Strong Barriers to Entry4. Competitive Landscape4.1 Global Market4.1.1 Revenue Comparison of Key Companies4.1.2 Market Cap Comparison of Key Companies4.1.3 3D Depth Sensors Market Share by Smartphone Company4.1.4 3D Sensing Component Elements Capability Comparison by Company5. Company Profiles5.1 LG Innotek Co. Ltd.5.1.1 Business Overview5.1.2 Financial Overview5.1.3 Business Strategies5.2 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd5.2.1 Business Overview5.2.2 Financial Overview5.2.3 Business Strategies5.3 Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Company Ltd.5.3.1 Business Overview5.3.2 Financial Overview5.3.3 Business Strategies5.4 STMicroelectronics5.4.1 Business Overview5.4.2 Financial Overview5.4.3 Business StrategiesBuy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Screw Compressor Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Strategies and Forecast to 2025

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Global Screw Compressor Market: SnapshotWith the augmenting demand for energy-effective screw compressors, the growth prospects in the global screw compressor market have increased significantly. The key factor behind this demand is the rising need for energy-efficient measures among consumers. Apart from this, the surge in the efforts from end users, such as the chemicals, petrochemicals, manufacturing, and the metallurgy and mining sectors, to improve the energy efficiency, is also projected to support this market substantially in the years to come.The shift in the trend from existing compressors to the modern technology-enabled screw compressors is another important factor, from which, the market is likely to gain considerably over the forthcoming years. However, the high power consumption, owing to the fast movement of the compressor, may limit its adoption among end user in the near future. It also creates a large amount of debris due to its high speed operation, which again, may create complexities in the growth of this market over the next few years.Screw compressors are basically gas compressors, however, equipped with two helical screws, which are called the rotors and their main function is to compress the air. These screws run continuously in order to avoid any sudden change in the flow as against the piston compressors.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Screw Compressor Market: OverviewThe global market for screw compressor is predicted to expand impressively in the years to come on account of the presence of global, regional, and local players competing with each other on the basis of product differentiation. No wonder then, vendors expend a lot of energy on product innovations to expand their outreach and increase the customer pool.Raw materials used to manufacture screw compressors are castings, aluminium, and steel. The components include bearings, crankshafts, switches, gauges, rotors, and housings. These components are then assembled by the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to form the final product of screw compressors. Leading end use segments of the screw compressor market are oil and gas, automotive, chemicals, mining and metals, power plants, and petrochemicals, among others.A report by TMR Research conveys in-depth and accurate information on the global market for screw compressor. It describes the scope of the market, segments it depending upon various parameters, and forecasts its growth trajectory. It furnishes a qualitative analysis of the prominent growth drivers and restraints in the market. The report also profiles important players in the market and analyses their strategies and market shares. Further, it leverages market leading analytical tools to gauge the current competitive dynamics.Request TOC of the Report @Global Screw Compressor Market: Trends and OpportunitiesScrew compressor is essentially a gas compressor that works on the mechanism of a rotary type positive displacement. Screw compressors steal a march over other compressors by delivering high quality compressed air. Besides, they have reduced maintenance and operational costs. The aforementioned factors has led to the swift uptake of screw compressors. Another factor slated to drive growth in the market in the years ahead is the rising demand for energy-efficient screw compressors on account of the increasing concern among end-users about the need for energy-efficiency measures.Depending upon type, the global screw compressor market can be classified into oil-injected compressor and oil-free compressor. A recent noticeable trend is the oil-injected compressors segment outshining the oil-free compressor segment in terms of market share.There is a growing demand for screw compressor in end-use industries such as mining and metals, automotive, and chemicals and petro chemicals industries. The segment that is generating maximum demand, however, is manufacturing. Fast-expanding developing economies such as India and the European Union too is driving growth in the global market.Request Discount of the Report @Global Screw Compressor Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the key segments of the global screw compressor market are Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and the Rest of the World. Among them, Europe is one of the key regions on account of the substantial demand generated from industries such as automotive, petrochemical, and chemical. Going forward, however, Asia-Pacific is predicted to expand at maximum pace due to the rapid industrialisation in the region. China is forecasted to be one of the dominant markets in the region on account of the massive urbanization and industrialization in the nation. India is another key market in Asia Pacific. Sensing opportunity in the emerging Asia Pacific economies, savvy players are leveraging different strategies to penetrate them and thereby improve their standing in the global market.Companies Mentioned in the ReportTo present a detailed analysis of the competition prevailing in the global market for screw compressor, the report profiles companies such as Atlas Copco AB, Ingersoll Rand PLC, GE Oil & Gas, Gardner Denver, Inc., and Siemens AG.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Industrial Protective Footwear Market, Top Research, Trends, Forecast 2023

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Industrial protective footwear are used in industries such as construction, manufacturing, chemical, pharmaceuticals, oil & gas, food, transportation, mining, others to ensure workers safety. Concerns for workplace safety is on a rise due to stringent regulations mandating high standards of worker safety across organizations.For More Info, Get Sample :Rapid industrial development, rise in number of accidents at workplace, and stringent government rules & regulations regarding workers safety are the major drivers that boost the growth of industrial protective footwear market. However, lack of awareness and low adoption in small and mid-sized industries is expected to hinder the market growth. Introduction of innovative products and expansion in untapped geographies are projected to offer new opportunities for the market in coming years.The report segments the global industrial protective footwear market on the basis of type, application, and geography. Based on type, the market is classified into waterproof, rubber, leather, and plastic footwear. By application, it is categorized into manufacturing, construction, mining, oil & gas, chemical, food, pharmaceuticals, and transportation.Geographically, the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. Key players operating in the market are Rahman Group, Honeywell Safety Products, Oftenrich Holdings Co. Ltd., COFRA Holding AG, Saina Corporation Co. Ltd., Jal Group, ELTEN GmbH, UVEX Safety Group, VF Corporation, and Rock Fall Ltd.KEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS The report provides quantitative as well as qualitative analysis about the current trend and opportunities during the forecast period (2016  2022). Region wise distribution of industrial protective footwear market is analyzed to identify the potential geographic markets. The report also explains about the various drivers, restraints, and opportunities of the global industrial protective footwear market. In-depth analysis about the key segments is provided in the report. Porters Five Force model examines the market competitiveness.Enquire About Report :MARKET SEGMENTATIONBY TYPE Waterproof Footwear Rubber Footwear Leather Footwear Plastic FootwearBY APPLICATION Manufacturing Construction Oil & Gas Chemical Food Mining Pharmaceuticals TransportationAlso Request For Discount :BY GEOGRAPHY North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Italy UK Germany France Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific Japan Australia China Rest of Asia-Pacific LAMEA Latin America Middle East AfricaKEY PLAYERS Rahman Group Honeywell Safety Products Oftenrich Holdings Co. Ltd. COFRA Holding AG Saina Corporation Co. Ltd. Jal Group ELTEN GmbH UVEX Safety Group VF Corporation Rock Fall Ltd.Table Of Content Chapter: 1 INTRODUCTION Chapter: 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Chapter: 3 MARKET OVERVIEW Chapter: 4 GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR MARKET, BY TYPE Chapter: 5 GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR MARKET, BY APPLICATION Chapter: 6 GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PPROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR MARKET, BY GEOGRAPHYAbout 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
Atmospheric Water Generator Market - Startup Strategy Resources, Business Plan, Manufacturers,Supply, Revenue 2025

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Atmospheric Water Generator Market: SnapshotAtmospheric water generators are witnessing a heightened demand from the oil and gas industry, paper, and steel industries. Technological advancements and innovations by market players are expected to have a positive impact on the development of this industry. Players in the market have developed technologies that result in higher water output and this is having a positive effect on the growth of the market and encouraging more industries to opt for these generators. Players in the market are pricing their products on the basis of application, efficiency of the generators, and quality. Thus, atmospheric water generators of varying prices can be found in the market and end users have a variety to choose from, as per their budget.One of the biggest factors deterring end users from installing atmospheric water generators is the amount of electricity consumed. The high energy consumption leads to an increased cost of operation and this is a major hurdle, deterring the growth of the global atmospheric water generator market. Players are therefore expected to invest in research and development and come up with solutions that are energy efficient. In the future, the use of solar panels and on-board power supply will open various growth opportunities for market players. Another factor posing a threat to the growth of this market is the large number of suppliers in the supply chain. This is leading to unwanted hold ups during the manufacturing process. High cost of atmospheric water generators and their high energy consumption will especially prevent the residential users to install these productsRequest Sample Copy of the Report @Global Atmospheric Water Generator Market: OverviewAtmospheric water generators are devices that extract water from humid ambient air, so as to condense the water vapor present in the air. These devices aim at rendering the water thus obtained potable. Cooling condensation and wet desiccation are the two techniques primarily used by these systems.The report furnishes key information about the recent developments, growth drivers, opportunities, and challenges in the global atmospheric water generator market, together with relevant statistical data, figures, and charts. In order to gauge the degree of competition between the major players, the report leverages Porters Five Force analysis. The market shares held by the prominent companies and their key business strategies have also been revealed in the report. The report also discusses value chain analysis, market attractiveness, supply and demand dynamics, and the leading segments of the global atmospheric water generator market in detail.Global Atmospheric Water Generator Market: Drivers and RestraintsAs the problem of water scarcity envelopes the world, the importance of fresh, drinkable water is being increasingly recognized. A host of undesirable human activities have been responsible for the changing global climate, which is one of the major factors affecting the quality and quantity of water. Therefore, several government institutions worldwide have been investing in the deployment of atmospheric water generators. This is one of the key growth drivers of the market.Request TOC of the Report @A large number of government bodies, banks, educational organizations and several municipal corporations have been deploying these systems. Armed forces of several nations such as India, Mexico, and the U.S. have been displaying great demand for these systems as atmospheric water generators produce pure water and can also be easily transported from one place to another. All the aforementioned factors have stoked the demand for atmospheric water generators, boosting the market growth.On the other hand, the market might experience delayed expansion owing to the exorbitant costs of these systems and their high energy consumption. Also, the presence of the existing water desalination techniques might restrict the growth of this market. However, several beneficial government policies, along with extensive R&D activities aimed at upgrading these technologies will help the market to overcome these barriers.The market will also receive significant encouragement from the wet desiccation segment, which has been witnessing increasing demand in both residential and commercial sectors. The wet desiccation segment is projected to make headway on account of its high productivity and relatively lower energy consumption. However, the cooling condensation segment might claim the majority of market shares over the coming period.Request Discount of the Report @Global Atmospheric Water Generator Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, the global market for atmospheric water generators has been segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and the Rest of the World.A major share of the demand witnessed in Asia Pacific will be exhibited by countries such as India and China due to the presence of dynamic industrial sectors, robust urbanization, and increasing awareness about the significance of these devices. Apart from Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is also expected to represent a major share among the regional segments because of the acute water shortage faced by in the region.Companies Mentioned in the ReportSome of the major companies transacting in the global market for atmospheric water generator are Dew Point Manufacturing, WaterMicronWorld, Ambient Water, WaterMaker India Pvt. Ltd., Fujian Yuxin Electronic Co., Air2Water LLC, and Island Sky Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Attapulgite Market : Recent Analysis of Industry Trends and Technological Improvements For 2017 - 2025

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Global Attapulgite Market: SnapshotAttapulgite is used extensively in the industrial sector and has been distinctively acknowledged as a clay mineral. It basically belongs the Fullers earth clay minerals family. Its unique porous feature and differentiating colloidal properties with high surface resistance and high concentration of electrolytes make it a favorable mineral for use in many industries. The global market for attapulgite is expected to witness exponential growth in the years ahead owing to the increasing demand for paints and coatings across the globe. Emerging countries are likely to be the focal point of the market players to capitalize on the opportunities arising from there.The rising number of drilling activities globally is expected to supplement the growth of the global attapulgite market. The advanced suspending qualities of attapulgite find it applications in the salt contaminated mud used for offshore drilling purposes. It is employed for reducing the weight of the slurry and at the same time increase its volume. However, strict mining commandments in the U.S. attached with environmental ideals, land strategies, waste discarding, and substance poisonousness are few of the aspects that are anticipated to restrict the growth of the market over the course of the forecast period.When seen from the aspect of geography, the market for attapulgite is expected to witness significant opportunities from North America and Asia Pacific owing to the rapid industrialization and the mounting activities relating to oil and gas drilling and exploration in the respective regions.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Attapulgite Market: OverviewAttapulgite has been extensively used in the industry for decades and is distinctively recognized as clay mineral. It belongs to the fullers earth family of minerals. It is highly porous and has distinguishing colloidal properties such as resistance to high surface area and higher concentration of electrolytes. Due to its unique properties, it finds application in various end user industries.Based on product, the market can be segmented into sorptive grade and colloidal grade. In terms of application, the market can be classified into oil and gas, medical and pharmaceutical, cat litter absorbent, paints and coatings, agriculture, and others.The report provides an inclusive outline of various factors contributing to the expansion of the global attapulgite market. It also offers insights into challenges that the market could face over the forecast period. The dominant trends in overall market operations are also studied in the report in detail.Request TOC of the Report @Global Attapulgite Market: Trends and ProspectsThe global attapulgite market is driven by numerous factors that are supplementing the demand growth. Increase in drilling activities across the world due to booming construction and oil & gas industries will largely benefit the market of attapulgite. Its superior suspending qualities finds usage in salt contaminated mud for offshore drilling activities. It is used to reduce the slurry weight, and increase the slurry volume. However, stringent mining laws in the U.S. coupled with environmental standards, land policies, waste disposal, and substance toxicities are few of the factors that might limit the growth of the market during forecast period.By product, the colloidal grade segment is expected to contribute largely to the market share, and is projected to score a high CAGR over the said period. Colloidal grades is extensively used in variety of products such as laundry washing powders, gelling agent and paint thickener, raw material for cat litter absorbents, polishes, adhesive viscosity control, and oil-well drilling. In terms of application, cat litter absorbent industry is likely to witness high growth in the forecast period. This segment is prospering mainly due to rising trend of petting cats globally. In addition, increasing responsiveness towards the feline family, development of eco- friendly and clay mineral based quick acting litter absorbents will positively impact the market growth.With increase in the amount of oil & gas drilling activities worldwide, the oil and gas segment of the market is set to witness a great deal of demand in the forecast period. Also, niche application of attapulgite in chemical, paper, and cosmetics are expected to boost the demand for the product, thereby driving the market growth over the forecast period.Request Discount of the Report @Global Attapulgite Market: Regional AnalysisThe global attapulgite market can be geographically segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. Owing to rich mineral deposits in the U.S. and readily available product as raw material for various end user industries, the market for attapugite in North America will continue to see a considerable growth over the forecast period.The market of Asia Pacific is steadily becoming attractive for attapulgite. Industrialization is the crucial factor for the growth of the market in this region. It is predicted that by the end of the forecast period, Asia Pacific will take over North America in terms of product demand.Global Attapulgite Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the leading players in the global attapulgite market are Oil-Dri Corporation of America KPL International, BASF SE, Halliburton, Hudson, Ashapura Group, Geohellas, Gujarat Minechem, Anhui Mingmei Minchem, Anhui Boshuo, Jaxon Filtration, Russell Finex, and Active Mineral International.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Personal Identity Management Market Advanced Technologies & Growth Opportunities in Global Industry

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Personal Identity Management (PIM) refers to the rules, standards and algorithms by which individuals and any organization controls share and use confidential information with other individuals and organizations. As the people are increasingly leaving their digital footmarks across various media and channels, the companies are able to leverage this data to as a part of their marketing strategy (for targeted marketing) or for verification and monitoring applications. This however violates the privacy and relevant rights of individuals, giving rise to demand for security solutions, which allow users/customers to manage the digital footprints created by them as part of daily internet based activities.Download exclusive Sample of this report:In personal identity management, people can create policies stating out to any organization commitment to storing only those data which is needed and trying to keep those data safe to the best of its ability. PIM opposes the third party user in gaining access to all the private data and information without the consent of the actual user. In this way it puts controls over the management of their identities.One of the main factors which are boosting the market growth is the cyber crime which is gradually increasing with the advanced communications in various information technology sectors. Companies are looking for various ways to stop the cyber crime which includes hacking, virus/worms, bank robbery, pornography, credit card frauds, etc. Governments too have framed laws and regulations pertaining to personal data security and cyber crime, which are playing prominent role in increasing the importance of this market in various sectors. The prime application of personal identity management can be seen in banking sector where the information of the account holder is the most important confidential thing that the banks have to keep secured. Also, this market is playing a key role in providing data management services to various firms who are in marketing field where commitment to data security is very important for gaining trust.Obtain Report Details @Personal identity management can be divided based on data type into behavioral data, individual identity data, derived data and self-identified data. Behavioral data comprises of web browsing history, transactional data and location data. Individual identity data has user full name, driving license number, credit card number, date of birth and IP address. Derived data consists of methodically modeled attributes such as credit score, propensity and personas. Self identified data includes user prepared data like product views, purchase intent, social media likes, LinkedIn groups and Quora responses. Geographically, this market has strong global presence, with Asia Pacific emerging as fast growing market whereas North America and Europe seeing relatively higher maturity due to developed regulatory and technical infrastructure.One of the major drawbacks in designing such kind of systems is their complex programming which needs professionals with high level of consumer intelligence in order to meet the desired level of safety of personal data and information. Further, the users have to remember various usernames and passwords in order to gain access to their own information while working on various applications. The opportunity of this market lies in various public complexes (hyper and super markets), tourist places, museum and education institutes and science labs which are vulnerable to terrorist attacks happening around the world. The key players of this market are Acxiom Inc., Azigo Inc., Bluekai Inc., Experian Inc., Merkle. Inc., Mydex Data Services.Inc., Signature Systems Inc., McAfee Inc., Quick Heal Technologies (P) Ltd., and Kaspersky Lab.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:
Quantum Computing Market to increase rapidly by 2025

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Optimization and management of information, harvested within an organization or from different parts of the world entails, entails the employment of efficient computing processes to handle ever-expanding data workloads. To achieve this, enterprises or government-backed organizations are adopting quantum computing, and processing data in qubits. Through quantum computing, companies can search files across large databases instantaneously, assessing data quicker than conventional computing.Persistence Market Researchs new study on global market for quantum computing emphasizes the monumental impact of rising need for high-level computing on the markets growth. In 2017, the global quantum computing market is anticipated to be valued at US$ 2.7 Bn. Governments of developed and developing countries are investing in quantum computing to accelerate their research operations, while commercialization of quantum computing is also gaining traction. On the grounds of such drivers, more than US$ 23 Bn revenues are anticipated to be reaped through adoption of quantum computing across the globe by the end of 2025. During this decadal forecast period, the global market for quantum computing is expected to expand exponentially at a stellar CAGR of 30.9%.Request to view Sample Report:Global Quantum Computing Market  Forecast HighlightsThe study on global quantum computing market has analyzed the market on the basis of components  hardware and software. With development of cloud-enabled quantum computing platform, new software are expected to transform the markets expansion even further. The demand for effective quantum computing hardware is also expected to witness lucrative boost, although manufacturers will be put to test while developing hardware with flexible computing abilities.While sales of quantum computing hardware are presently dominating the market with more than 90%, their global revenue share is expected to drop to 84% by the end of 2025The significant decline in quantum computing hardware will be balanced by surging adoption of quantum computing software, revenues from which are anticipated to reflect fastest CAGR of 42.3%Request to download and view full ToC @Top Players in Global Quantum Computing MarketAccording to the study, the competitive landscape of global quantum computing market is divided into two tiers of computing vendors. With more than 90% share, tier 1 quantum computing vendors are companies developing hardware, while the remaining 10% of the market is governed by developers of quantum computing software applications. The top five players in the global quantum computing market are profiled below:Intel Corporation,Microsoft Corporation,Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.),D-Wave Systems Inc., andIBM CorporationCompanies such as 1QB Information Technologies Inc., QC Ware Corp., and QbitLogic are observed to be leading developers of quantum computing software applications. Other key players in the global quantum computing market include Rigetti Computing., Anyon Systems Inc., Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd., IDQ, IonQ Inc., Quantum Circuits, Inc., Alibaba Quantum Computing Laboratory, Nokia Bell Labs, Hewlett Packard, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Toshiba Research Europe Ltd., USC Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center, , QuantumCTek Co., Ltd, SeeQC, SPARROWQUANTUM A/S, QxBranch, and Qubitekk, Tokyo Quantum Computing.View Report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Dental CAD-CAM Market Strategic Assessment of Emerging Technologies in - by 2026

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Dental computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, or CAD-CAM is the automation technology that helps in dental restoration. CAD/CAM supplements earlier technologies that were used for these dental resolutions by increasing the speed of design and manufacturing, increasing the suitability and easiness of the design, construction, and insertion procedures. This technology have made restorations possible that otherwise would have not been feasible. Other goals include sinking unit cost and making restorations affordable.Read Report Overview @The current surge in the demand for dental cosmetic surgeries is likely to drive the growth of the market during the forecast period. The expenditure on cosmetic dentistry has amplified since the past few years. Within this division, non-metallic inlays or onlays held a large share. Teeth whitening is the most pursued procedure, while tooth-colored crowns, tooth-colored inlays, veneers, tooth-colored onlays, and bonding are the prime contributors to the surgery segment. Development in the healthcare sector has led to the increase in life expectancy of the global population; hence, there is a growth in the aging population around the globe. This factor is likely to push the demand for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing into a positive growth trajectory.One of the major restraint of the market is the cost. Emergence of new technologies coupled with lack of skilled workforce are the major factors responsible for the high cost of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing. However, growth in intra-oral scanners and open architecture solutions will foster the overall market for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing. Moreover, growing awareness about health problems coupled with significant adoption of automation technology, will lead to high growth of the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing market in the coming years.The global market for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing can be segmented according to product type, end-users, and geography. Based on type, the market can be trifurcated into chair side CAD/CAM systems, digital imprisoning systems, and others. Chair side systems held a significant market share among the types, primarily due to ease of use of the system.On the basis of end-user, the global CAD/CAM market can be divided into dental clinics, dental hospitals, dental companies, and others. Among these, dental hospitals held the maximum market share. For undergoing surgery, dental patients perceive hospitals to be safer and well protected coupled with increased availability of doctors; hence, the high market share of the segment.Request Report Brochure @On the basis of region, the global computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing market can be segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. North America held a significant market share. This is mainly due to the US, which is the leading player in the global dental healthcare market. Moreover, higher incidences of dental caries, high patient awareness, and developed healthcare infrastructure in the US and Canada, will foster the overall growth of the market. Europe held the second largest share of the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing market. Asia Pacific is poised to grow at a considerable rate over the forecast period due to growth in the aging population, as well as rise in disposable income in this region.The competitive landscape in this market is likely to increase in the future due to the advancements in technology, rise in product extensions, and upsurge in the edentulous population. Moreover, increase in the elderly population across the globe will encourage new players to enter this market, thereby intensifying competition. Some of the key players in the market are Danaher, Align Technology, Zimmer-Biomet, Planmeca, Dentsply Sirona, and Hexagon. Other notable companies are CIMsystem, exocad, 3Shape, Dental Wings, Straumann, Amann Girrbach, Enhanced Geometry Solutions (EGS), Jensen Dental, Ivoclar Vivadent, and Schutz Dental.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 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:
Enterprise VSAT Market New Tech Developments and advancements to watch out for 2026

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Very small aperture terminal (VSAT) is a communication system that is operated through the satellite. It serves businesses and domestic users. The end-user of a VSAT requires a box that interfaces an outside antenna with the users computer with the help of a transceiver. The transceiver sends the received signal to a satellite transponder in the sky. The satellite receives and sends the signal that comes from the earths stations computer which acts as a core for the system. Each end-user is connected with the core station with the help of a satellite connected in the form of a star topology. For the end-users to connect with each other, each transmitted first goes to the hub station, which is then re-transmitted to the receiving end-users VSAT via the satellite. VSAT handles video, voice and data signals. With the help of VSAT, companies can have complete control of their communication systems, without depending on other IT companies. Domestic users and businesses also can get higher speed than regular telephone services.Read Report Overview @The global enterprise VSAT market has been segmented on the basis of categories, hardware & services, and geographies. On the basis of categories, the market has been segregated into products and services. The services segment accounted for a dominant market share in 2015. This is attributed to clinics and hospitals enabled with satellite broadband services, which help them maintain direct two-way data exchange and communication. In addition, satellite broadband services also help security agencies and intelligence services improve their data analysis systemsthat help them in deciphering the information more accurately.Government agencies as well as maritime and military sectors are major end-users of VSAT as a service. Therehas been continued demand from this segment, which is driving the market. On the basis of hardware & services, the global market for enterprise VSAT has been divided into ARUP VSAT terminals and ASP VSAT terminals.A major driverfor the growth of the global market for enterprise VSAT is the provision of practical, cost-effective solutions for individual end-users, who require a self-regulating communications network through which a number of remote sites are connected. In addition, the VSAT network offers satellite-based, value-added services such as voice/fax communication, LAN services, data transmission, and internet access along with public and private network communications. Emerging technologies such as high throughput satellite (HTS) technology is a major restraint to the growth of the global enterprise VSAT market. Service providers are likely to integrate their current operations with these emerging technologies.Geographically, the global market for enterprise VSAT has been segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America.North America held the dominant share of the global market in 2015.The market in the region is projected to witness steady growth during the forecast period. This is attributed to high adoption of satellite services for various applications such as inspection of historical monuments, vegetation identification, volcano monitoring, and disaster management in case of stormsand hurricanes. The market in Asia Pacific is estimated to witness speedy growth during the forecast period, owing to increase in government initiatives to connect schools and colleges in countries such as India, China, and Australia.Request Report Brochure @Major players operating in the global enterprise VSAT market include Gilat Satellite Networks(Petah Tikva, Israel), Hughes Communications (Maryland, the U.S.), SageNet (Oklahoma, the U.S.), ViaSat Inc. (California, the U.S.), VT iDirect (Virginia, the U.S.), Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (New York, the U.S.), Bharti Airtel (New Delhi, India), Embratel (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), ND SatCom GmbH (Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany), NewSat (Melbourne, Australia), Newtec (Sint-Niklaas,Belgium), Orion Satellite (Perth, Australia), Polarsat (Quebec, Canada), Primesys Solucoes Empresariais (Sao Paolo, Brazil), Signalhorn (Stuttgart, Germany), SpeedCast (Wanchai, Hong Kong), SkyCasters (Ohio, the U.S.), Tatanet Services (Mumbai, India), Telefonica, S.A (Madrid, Spain), and Telesat Holdings (Ontario, Canada).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 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:
Industrial Communication Market Growth Prospects, Key Opportunities, Trends And Forecast 2026

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The rapid developments in the field of science and technology are expected to aid the expansion of the global industrial communication market over the forecast period. Industrial communication systems allow us to integrate data networks that are highly futuristic.Read Report Overview @The report includes key information about the major trends, restraints, growth drivers, and opportunities in the global industrial communication market. The market forecasts, supply and demand ratio, Porters five force analysis, value chain analysis, and key segments of the market are discussed in the report. The report also reveals the prominent recent developments in the competitive landscape, the market shares held by the major firms, and the business strategies adopted by them.Global Industrial Communication Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIncreasing adoption of IoT, growing need for interconnectivity between various devices and sharing of data, necessity of increasing safety and productivity are some of the key growth drivers of the global industrial communication market. The increased adoption of the IoT is likely to make considerable changes in the way different products are manufactured, developed, transported, and distributed. Growing number of end-user industries such as aerospace, transportation and automotive, defense, paper, cement, electrical and electronics, energy and power, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, food and beverages, mining, glass, fabrication or engineering, water and wastewater, and chemicals and fertilizers will benefit the market for industrial communication.The key communication protocols such as industrial Ethernet, wireless communication, and Fieldbus can be the major segments of the industrial communication market. Of these, the Fieldbus protocol appears to present significant prospects, owing to its widespread adoption in key process industries. Fieldbus has a strong hold particularly in the emerging economies such as India, Japan, and China. It is likely to present extensive opportunities as they are able to integrate with wireless devices, increasing the level of efficiency.Besides Fieldbus, Ethernet is also expected to witness an upsurge in demand as it is steadily becoming popular due to its better performance outputs when compared to other systems. This can be attributed to the enhanced bandwidth capacity, increased network coverage, and increased transmission efficiency. The increasing deployment of this protocol in the industrial robot market is also responsible for the promised growth of this segment.The wireless protocol segment might also undergo tremendous growth during the forecast period, displaying a favorable CAGR. Increased usage of standardized wireless technologies such as Bluetooth technology and wireless WLAN will contribute towards growth.Request Report Brochure @Global Industrial Communication Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, the global market for industrial communication can be segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and the Rest of the World. The countries of Asia Pacific, being some of the major global producers of consumer electronics, are expected to drive the demand for industrial communication. Also, emerging economies such as India, China, and Japan have become hubs for large scale automotive production, boosting the growth further.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe major companies operating in the global Emerson Electric Company, Texas Instruments Incorporated, General Electric, Schneider Electric SE, TE Connectivity Ltd, Infineon Technologies AG, Siemens AG, and Rockwell Automation, Inc. Several market players are concentrating their energies on product development through increased investments in research and development activities.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 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:
Meditation And Mindfulness Can Dramatically Help Prisoners Improve Mental Health And Wellbeing Says Author Doug Carnine

Author Doug Carnine

http://feedkindness.com

An article in the British newspaper The Telegraph by Sophie Jamieson described how mindfulness and meditation training helped prisoners and prison guards control anger and reduce depression and anxiety. The same article also described how almost 200 MPs, peers, and staff received similar training following Labour MP Chris Ruane and Lord Richard Layard setting up a program in Westminster that called for.the role of mindfulness and mental wellbeing to be officially recognised and reflected in policy, including in healthcare, education and criminal justice."Doug Carnine, PhD., author of 'Saint Badass - Personal Transcendence In Tucker Max Hell,' is well aware of the life changing benefits meditation and mindfulness can produce for everyone, including those who are incarcerated in jails and prisons.Mindfulness improves our lives," Carnine stated. "Adding kindness to mindfulness transforms our lives. Scientists have found that being kind is as important to the well being of your body and mind as what you eat and how much you exercise. Moreover kindness, found in all religions, is also one of our four basic instincts, along with survival, success and reproduction. Modern society promotes success and sex. But how much do we hear about kindness? My job is to get the word out about the power of combining mindfulness and kindness.'Saint Badass - Personal Transcendence In Tucker Max Hell' is a story spanning seven years worth of letters and growing friendships between four prisoners and Carnine. Each prisoner faces various crises in prison including disabling illness, a brain tumor, a prison gang attack, family betrayal, medical abuse and harsh punishments for mild offenses. Each prisoner in his own way achieves transcendence through his crisis using mindfulness, meditation and the blessings of kindness. Readers are stunned to see the destructive forces of an abusive childhood, a criminal adulthood, and a life without parole in prison result in their incongruously continuous acts of kindness. Their voices are raw and honest, and at times inspiring.Another of his books, 'How Love Wins', follows in the same vein. Most of us recognize that being kinder and more present would not only improve our own lives and the lives of our loved ones, but also strengthen our communities. Numerous scientific studies have confirmed that both living mindfully and being kind to others offer a host of benefits -- from stronger relationships to longer life. Yet even if we truly care and are motivated to change, we find that old habits keep us from achieving our goal of increasing our kindness and improving our relationships.In 'How Love Wins', Carnine offers another path. In this simple but powerful guide, he leads the reader through a 12-step process of transformation, opening a toolbox of skills and techniques that anyone can use to live more fully in the moment and be more kind to themselves and others. A lay Buddhist minister who has worked with prisoners and hospice patients, Carnine provides a clear path that will enable almost everyone to build a mindfully kind life -- and make it stick.Carnine was recently chosen as a finalist in the 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Book Awards Contest. He was chosen from a field of hundreds of authors through a public voting process.Readers and reviewers have praised his work. Geri Larkin, Founding Teacher of Still Point Zen Buddhist Temple and author of 'Stumbling Toward Enlightenment' said, Saint Badass isnt simply about the transformative power of sincere spiritual practice. It demonstrates the impact of our practice on our environment and the people around us. These men have many reasons to be filled with hate, to be violent, and to be completely shut down given the lives they are leading in the bowels of the hell realm of our society, our prisons. And yet. They transform. One of them glows in the dark, I swear. Reading the book gave me hope.Duana Welch, PhD, author of 'Love Factually: 10 Proven Steps from I Wish to I Do' stated, This powerful book takes any of us from a life of 'me' to 'we,' from isolation to connection and love. In a world where kindness is so needed yet so little understood, How Love Wins is a must-read.Doug Carnine is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below, or by email at dcarnine@uoregon.edu. Both books are available at online retail book outlets. More information is available at his website.Douglas Carnine, a professor emeritus from the University of Oregon, began his pursuit of scientific research, instructional design, Buddhism and martial arts when he was 21. His academic career focused on teaching at-risk students and lead to him receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council for Exceptional Children.After retiring, working with men convicted of murder and serving as a hospice volunteer made him curious about the importance of kindness. After reviewing the research on kindness, he decided to devote his writing and his advocacy to making the importance of mindful kindness more prominent. The resulting project is his website Feedkindness.com along with his books How Love Wins and Saint Badass.PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
Automotive Brake System size and Key Trends in terms of volume and value 2015-2025

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The developing industry of automotive has largely emphasised on the development of the vehicles that are fast and safe. Brakes have become an important and crucial part of any vehicle so as to ensure the safety which becomes very essential when the demand of speed is increasing steadily. Being commonly used in different automobiles an automotive brake system comprises a brake device having different components (such as brake pads, brake shoes, brake drum, rotor, piston, calliper, master cylinder, and brake booster) which are used for decelerating a vehicle.The growth in automotiveindustry is anticipated to fuel the growth of global automotive brake system market along with the increasing concerns over safety and resulting government pressures that have upturned the OEMs towards the launching of higher technology content, thereby driving the demand for global automotive brake systems across the globe.Request for TOC @Automotive Brake System Market: Drivers & RestraintsEver-increasing demand and succeeding vehicle production is considered as one of the biggest driver for the increasing demand of the automotive brakes and global automotive brake system market penetration. Also the increasing governmental mandates for improving the vehicle safety has strongly contributed to the demand of the global automotive brake system market. The major restraint in the global automotive brake system market implies to be the higher cost of the newer technology of Electronic Brake Systems (EBS) when compared to the commonly used Hydraulic Brakes.Automotive Brake System Market: SegmentationOn the basis of product type, the global automotive brake system market is segmented as Disc Brakes and Drum Brakes.On the basis of applications the global automotive brake system market is segmented as Two Wheeler Motor Vehicles, Passenger Car Vehicles, and Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV).On the basis of technology the global automotive brake system market is segmented as Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), Traction Control System (TCS), and Electronic Stability Control (ESC) that comes under the electronic braking systems (EBS).Automotive Brake System Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global automotive brake system market is expected to register a favourable growth for the forecast period, 2015?2025. Asia-Pacific is projected to endure its control on the global automotive brake system market. The key countries in the mentioned region are projected to be India, South Korea, and China as an outcome of the increasing demand for commercial vehicles and passenger cars. Japan also contributes to the global automotive brake system market remarkably. China is expected to be the largest opportunity in terms of revenue of the industry. Europe is expected to be the second largest market in global automotive brake system market followed by North America.Make an Enquiry @Automotive Brake System: Key PlayersSome of the key market participants in global automotive brake system market are TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., Aisin-Seiki Co. Ltd., Continental AG, Akebono Brake Industry Co. Ltd., Brembo S.P.A., Halla Mando Corp., and others.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.Contact UsFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWeb:
Global Automotive Wiring Harness Market to Reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025

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Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025. According to the report, the global automotive wiring harness market was valued at US$ 36.82 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global automobile industry registered an annual growth rate of over 5.5% from 2010 to 2015, and is estimated to be valued at US$ 5.1 trillion by end of 2015. Consistent growth in the parent industry is expected to fuel demand for automotive wiring harness in the near future.Currently, increasing fuel costs and stringent government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are boosting demand for electric vehicles in regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.Governments across various geographies have mandated use of certain electronic safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other features in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Furthermore, rise in demand for high-end electronics and safety features in vehicles, particularly passenger cars, along with cost reduction and enhanced reliability is leading to increase in global demand for automotive wiring harnesses.Automotive Wiring Harness Market TrendsUse of automotive Ethernet by automotive OEMs represents a new trend in the external as well as internal electronics devices connectivity in an automobile. These automotive Ethernets minimise the use of complex wiring harness structures to a great extent and, thereby, may act as a restraint for growth of the global automotive wiring harness market in the coming years.Rise in technological developments is expected to create favourable growth opportunities in the market in the near future. Growing demand for connectivity and car digitisation, which not only helps establish connectivity within the integral parts of a vehicle but also enables communication with other vehicles through improved and intelligent roadway infrastructure, is an emerging trend in the market.Automotive Wiring Harness Market SegmentationRegion-wise, APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014, accounting for 38.3% value share of the overall market. Furthermore, APEJ is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR of 10.4% during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. Rise in automotive production and sustained economic growth are some of the factors driving the APEJ automotive wiring harness market currently.North America and Western Europe are expected to register high Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing demand for e-vehicles and e-bikes in these regions. Growth of the connected car market has resulted in rise in demand for multiple electronic devices in vehicles in North America and Western Europe.Japan is currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for e-bikes, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The Japan automotive wiring harness market is expected to register a sluggish CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period, due to the matured automotive industry in the country.Browse the full "Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025" market research report atOn the basis of vehicle type, the passenger vehicles segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. In terms of revenue, the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles segments are expected to register significant CAGR between 2015 and 2025, in view of the stringent government regulations and growing fuel prices globally.On the basis of application type, the chassis & safety segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, accounting for 40.8% share of the overall market. This segment is expected to lose its market share to the HVAC segment, which is projected to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. Furthermore, HVAC manufacturers are designing new eco-friendly devices in order to follow the environment standards along with introducing new innovating designs.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Key CompaniesKey market players covered in the report include YAZAKI Corporation, Aisin Seiki Co., Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG), Delphi Automotive PLC, Fujikura Ltd., Sumitomo electric Industries, Ltd., Lear Corporation, LEONI AG, Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and PKC Group PLC.Most players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.U.S. Office616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, ,
Electric Axle Drive Systems Market 2017: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, Forecast to 2023

Electric Axle Drive Systems Market 2017

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Electric Axle Drive Systems Market 2017Global Electric Axle Drive Systems Market Information Report, By System Type (Electric Systems, Hybrid Electric Systems), By Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Light Commercial Vehicles and Heavy Commercial Vehicles), and By Region - Global Forecast To 2023Market Synopsis of Electric Axle Drive Systems MarketElectric Axle Drive Systems are drive systems that are majorly used in the electrical and hybrid electric vehicles. These systems are developed for all vehicle segments and for both front and rear wheel drives. The use of Electric Axle Drive Systems enables high flexibility and adaptation to suit various engines and transmissions. The electric axle drives also incorporate several drive components which increases safety and enable smooth drivability of vehicles. The market is expected to reach USD 8,226.3 million by 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.31% during the forecast period.Global major automakers are increasingly speeding up the electrical vehicle production because of rise in demand for electric vehicles and the obligation to reduce the carbon emissions from vehicle operations. For the future mobility solutions of the electric vehicles, electric axle drive systems are considered as the way forward. The predominant driver for the market is the ability of electric drive systems to integrate wheel hub and all components required for drive such as drive and deceleration, driving safety into single a unit. Other major driver for the market is the ability of automakers to design and adapt the electric drive systems based on specific vehicle requirements such as for passenger cars and commercial vehicles.According to Automobile Association of America (AAA), lower gas prices have not inhibited enthusiasm for electric cars. As per the market research, the demand for electric car is likely to increase in the coming time. More than 30 million American are likely to buy electric car as their next vehicle. This trend in majorly influenced by compliance and people commitment towards environmental concern and carbon reduction. Heading towards APAC region, China has named itself as the leading market for electric vehicles. In terms of market development, China has sold more than 507,000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in 2016, which was around 53% rise from 2015.followed by US and Europe. Moreover, the key market players are more inclined towards focusing on electric vehicles and have started offering EV range for models including hatchbacks, superminis, sedans, large family cars, vans and others. Considering all these factors, the demand for electric axle drive system has also increased and the OEM have shifted more focus on increasing its production. However, the rising in the number of electric vehicles will directly increase the demand for electric axle drive system.Request For Sample Report @Key PlayersThe key players of global Electric Axle Drive Systems Market include-Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany)American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc.(U.S.)ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany)GKN Plc (U.K.)Magna International Inc. (Canada)Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG (Germany)Continental AG (Germany)Bonfiglioli Riduttori S.P.A. (Italy)Borgwarner Inc. (U.S.)Ziehl Abegg SE (Germany)The report for Global Electric Axle Drive Systems Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Complete Report Details @Table of Contents1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY3 MARKET DYNAMICS4 GLOBAL ELECTRIC AXLE DRIVE SYSTEMS MARKET, BY SYSTEM TYPE5 GLOBAL ELECTRIC AXLE DRIVE SYSTEMS MARKET, BY VEHICLE TYPE6 REGIONAL MARKET ANALYSIS7 COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS8 LIST OF TABLES9 LIST OF FIGURESContinued.About Us: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 the prime objective to provide optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies depending on products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments enables our clients to know more consequently do more, which gives them answer for their each and every important question. In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industryCONTACT US:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Silicon Anode Battery Market Manufacturers, Current & Upcoming Trends, Analysis 2024

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Silicon anode battery is a different kind of lithium ion battery where silicon nano tubes or anodes with silicon coating are used in place of normal anodes. Silicon anode batteries are used mostly because of its long life as well as high energy storage capacity. Use of silicon material in anodes increases the storage potential of the batteries which is comparatively useful than the lithium ion batteries. Expansion and contraction takes place as a result of lithium accumulation in the battery due to which the discharge cycle for normal silicon based anodes are generally kept short. Cylindrical cell, pouch and prismatic are the different types of silicon anode batteries by which silicon anode battery market is segmented globally. Other than this on the basis of capacity, the global market for silicon battery can be further segmented into capacity of less than 1500 mAh, 1500 to 2500 mAh and having capacity more than 2500 mAh. Silicon anode battery market has huge applications across different industry verticals globally which includes automobile, healthcare and consumer electronics among others.Read Report Overview @Use of silicon anode battery helps in storing more energy thereby increasing the potential of the battery. The high storage of energy helps automotive manufacturers to increase electric range of vehicles which helps in achieving the same range with less number of batteries. Use of silicon anodes further helps in reducing the cost of manufacturers. In addition to this silicon nano wires can be grown with carbon or graphite materials which further reduces the cost of the manufacturers. Further rise in demand for different type of electric vehicles would help in growth of silicon anode battery. Other than this silicon batteries are also used for usage in compatible power devices having limited space which further has a positive impact in the market for silicon batteries globally. Even though silicon anode batteries are hugely used across different industries still the huge expansion and contraction in silicon anode batteries brings in cracks. This diminishes the performance of the battery further leading to cell failure and short circuits making it one of the major reasons restraining the market for silicon anode batteries globally. Lower energy efficiency and irreversible capacity further leading to fracture of silicon anodes are some of the other challenges which are faced by the usage of silicon anode batteries. Higher energy efficiency further provides huge growth opportunities for the usage of silicon coated batteries in future.Global silicon anode battery market has been segmented geographically into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Geographically, North America holds the major market share for silicon anode battery market globally. Rising automotive and consumer goods market has been a major driver having a positive impact in the growth of silicon anode battery market in North America. This along with rise in demand for electric bikes and vehicles which uses silicon anode batteries will further help the silicon anode battery market in North America. Asia Pacific region is expected to witness the highest growth rate for silicon anode battery market because of its huge applications in automotive sector and other industry verticals. Higher efficiency, cost savings along with presence of a large number of production units in China and South Korea among others will further help in the growth of silicon anode batteries in Asia Pacific region.Request Report Brochure @Some of the major players operating in the global silicon anode battery market include Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Zeptor Corporation (U.S.), LG Chem (South Korea), Amprius, Inc. (U.S.), Samsung SDI (South Korea), Nanotek Instruments, Inc. (U.S.), California Lithium Battery Inc. (U.S.). Enevate Corporation (U.S.),XG Sciences (U.S.), and Los Angeles Clean tech Incubator (U.S) among others present in the market globally.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:
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) Market Report, 2005-2025

North America ABS demand-supply, Kilotons (2005-2025)

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Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is a thermoplastic resin manufactured by co-polymerizing acrylonitrile (AN), butadiene (BD) and styrene (S) monomers. ABS copolymers exhibit better toughness; temperature stability and solvent resistance properties in comparison to high impact polystyrene. ABS compounds are commercially available in many forms and grades including medium and high impact, high gloss, UV stabilized, flame retardant, heat resistant, low gloss, glass-fiber reinforced and transparent.ABS is one of the widely used engineering plastic and has witnessed a significant growth since 2005 on account of its increasing demand in major end-use industries such as automotive and electrical & electronics, especially in Asia-Pacific and other developing regions.Replacement of traditional materials like metals, inter polymer substitution, growth in purchasing power of developing economies are some of the key drivers for ABS demand.China is the largest market for ABS. The country is heavily dependent on imports and has also witnessed a number of capacity expansions since 2006.BS has been available since 1940s and undergone various capacity additions post commercialization. Due to oversupply scenario especially in Asia-Pacific region, global operating rate has been decreasing and has averaged to 70% in 2016. Total ABS consumption of North America was around 750 kilo tons in 2016. US is the major consumer in North America followed by Mexico. The country has witnessed growth rates in the range of 1-3% since the past few years.Significant demand of ABS is from emerging economies such as China and Brazil. Some New projects and capacity additions have been announced in the Middle East region. Jam Petrochemical is planning to bring its 200 Kilo tons Assaluyeh ABS plant online by 2019.The major players in the ABS market are LG Chemical, INEOS, Chi Mei, Formosa Chemicals & Fibers and SABIC. Other manufacturers of ABS include Bhansali Engineering Polymers Ltd., Trinseo, Styrolution, and IRPC.For further market information on ABS or other Engineering Plastics you can write to info@prismaneconsulting.com or visitPrismane Consulting is a unique global boutique consulting firm with an Indian origin. We present ourselves to the world outside providing management, economic and technical expertise to improve customer engagement, boost operational efficiency, reduce costs and achieve superior business results. Prismane Consulting serves leading businesses in the field of Chemicals, Petrochemicals, Polymers, Materials, Environment and Energy. We have been advising clients on their key strategic issues solving their toughest and most critical business problems.Prismane ConsultingOffice #519, Amanora Chambers, Amanora Park Town,Hadapsar-Magarpatta Road,Pune 411028India
Endoscopy Device Market Dynamics, Major Companies Analysis and Forecast 2023

Endoscopy Device Market

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The Global Endoscopy Device Market Research Report provides detailed analysis of the key regional market status of the Healthcare Industry.The global Endoscopy Device Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period 2017-2023.An endoscopy is a procedure that allows physicians or surgeons to look interior parts of the organ. The technique is used for both diagnostic and therapeutic purpose. To perform endoscopy a specialized instrument is used named as endoscope. Various types of endoscopes and adoption of endoscope depends upon the affected body organ, for instance, bronchoscopes are used for lungs related problem, arthroscopes are preferred for problems associated with joints, and many others. Other instruments required during an endoscopic procedure includes biopsy forceps, cytology brush, flexible forceps, trocar sleeves, etc. For therapeutic purpose, the endoscopes are either attached or passed through surgical instruments to perform particular surgery. Endoscopic surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgery in which an endoscope is inserted in the body through small incisions to examine the internal organs.Rising prevalence of chronic diseases, advancing endoscopy technology, and increasing funding and reimbursement towards screening and treatment with endoscopic techniques are promoting the growth of the global endoscopy devices market. Additionally, increasing popularity of minimally invasive surgery is also creating a huge scope for the growth of market.As per the study suggested by American Cancer Society, 90% colorectal cancer (CRC) cases are detected in individuals with over 50 years in the U.S and colonoscopy is the most effective and the most commonly adopted procedure for the diagnosis and screening of CRC in older population. Moreover, the increasing geriatric population across the globe has a direct impact on endoscopic devices market. As older adults are more vulnerable towards health issues such as ophthalmic diseases, gastrointestinal problems, orthopedic diseases, cancer, and many others due to lower immunity, which in turn, complicate the diagnostic and therapeutic options.According to the WHO, it is estimated that the worlds population aged over 60 years will nearly double from by 2050. In the U.S, more specifically, more than 20% of the total population will be aged 65 years or over by 2030However, on the other hand, infections and complications caused by endoscopy devices may hamper the market growth.Apply For Sample Report AtMajor Key Players: Cogentix Medical, Integrate Endoscopy, J&J services Inc, Shaili Endoscopy, Interscope Inc., Cantel Medical, Micro-Tech Endoscopy, Cognetix, Stryker, OLYMPUS, KARL STORZ Gmbh & Co. KG, FUJIFILM, PENTAX MEDICAL, and RICHARD WOLF.Key FindingsThe global endoscopy device market is expected to reach USD 42,342.4 million by 2023 at a CAGR of 6.3%Flexible endoscopes segment market is expected to command the largest market share about 28.2%. However capsule endoscopes is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR of 6.9% during the forecast period 2017-2023The Americas holds the largest share of the endoscopy device market and is expected to reach USD 15,186.1 million by 2023Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market, which is growing at a CAGR of 6.8% 2017-2023SegmentationThe global endoscopy device market is segmented on the basis of types, therapy, treatments & procedures, application, accessory & processors, and end user.On the basis of type, it is segmented into flexible endoscopes, rigid endoscopes, capsule endoscopes, surgical endoscopes, and robot-assisted endoscopes.On the basis of therapy, it is segmented into colonoscopy, gastroscopy, arthroscopy, laparoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreotography, ureteroscopy, and cystoscopyOn the basis of treatments & procedures, it is segmented into abdominal, gynecologic and pelvic organ conditions, joint and orthopedic conditions, lower gastrointestinal conditions, lung and airway conditions, upper gastrointestinal conditions, and urinary system conditions. Abdominal, gynecological, and pelvic organ conditions is further segmented into hernia repair, removal of the appendix, gallbladder, spleen, uterine fibroids, endometrial tissue, and ectopic pregnancy. Joint and orthopedic conditions is further segmented into repair of rotator cuff conditions, carpal tunnel syndrome, loose bone or cartilage, torn or damaged cartilage, tendons, and arthritis. A lower gastrointestinal condition is further segmented into removal of colon polyps, and treatment of bleeding from the colon. A lung and airway condition is further segmented into lung abscess, removal of a foreign object in the airway, and opening of a narrowed airway. Upper gastrointestinal conditions is further segmented into removal of polyps and foreign objects, widening of a narrowed esophagus, treatment of hypertensive lower esophageal sphincter, barrett's esophagus, and esophageal cancer. Urinary system conditions are further segmented into kidney stones.On the basis of applications, it is segmented into gastrointestinal endoscopy, arthroscopy, obstetrics/gynecology endoscopy, urology endoscopy, bronchoscopy, mediastinoscopy, and otoscopyOn the basis of accessory & processors, it is segmented into accessory and processorsOn the basis of technology, it is segmented into video and fiberOn the basis of end user, it is segmented into critical care, gastroenterologists, general and pediatric surgeons, obstetricians-gynecologists (ob/gyns), and orthopedic surgeons.Regional AnalysisThe Americas dominates the global endoscopy device market owing to the presence of strong economic condition, huge development in the healthcare domain, and focus of research institutions on updating technology for new and advanced diagnosis and treatment methods. Moreover, advanced hospitals infrastructures, and availability of skilled healthcare professional adding fuel to the growth of the market.Europe holds the second position in the market on the basis of increasing emphasis on rapid diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and gastrointestinal diseases, changing lifestyle, increasing prevalence of cancer among geriatric population. As per Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Germany spent 11% of the total GDP on healthcare in 2013, which was 10.8% in 2012, which drives the growth of the market in this region.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market owing to more number of developing nations present in this region, for instance, countries like India and china. These countries are encouraging the growth of the healthcare domain. Furthermore, increasing patient population of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases in developing countries will directly increase the demand for various diagnosis & treatment methods, which, in turn, will boost the growth of the market.The Middle East & Africa is expected to hold the least market share due to less availability of medical facilities, and less development in the healthcare domain. However, countries such as Qatar and Kuwait are focusing more on the healthcare domain and developing medical facilities, which will boost the market of this region.TABLE OF CONTENTS1 REPORT PROLOGUE2 MARKET INTRODUCTION2.1 Introduction 232.2 Scope Of The Study 232.2.1 Research Objective 232.2.2 Assumptions 232.2.3 Limitations 242.3 Market Structure 243 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY3.1.1 Primary Research Methodology 283.1.2 Secondary Research Methodology 293.1.3 Market Share Analysis 303.1.4 Trade Analysis 303.1.5 Market Pricing Approach 314 MARKET DYNAMICS4.1 Introduction 324.2 Drivers 334.2.1 Rise In Prevalence Rate Of Diseases Demanding Endoscopy ( Impact Weightage  35 %) 334.2.2 Development Of The Medical Devices Contract Manufacturing Industry (Impact Weightage  20% ) 344.2.3 Technological Advancement In Endoscopy ( Impact Weightage  30%) 354.2.4 Growing Geriatric Population Will Boost The Growth Of Endoscope Device Globally ( Impact Weightage  15%) 364.3 Restraints 374.3.1 Infections And Complications Caused By Endoscopes Is Hampering The Market ( Impact Weightage  60%) 374.3.2 Lack Of Skilled Physicians ( Impact Weightage  40%) 384.4 Opportunity 394.5 Megatrends 394.6 Macroeconomic Indicators 40ContinuedApply For Discount AtAbout 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
Global Orthopaedic Prosthetics Devices Market to Reach US$ 1.76 Bn in 2017

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine Orthopaedic Prosthetics Market is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Get Free Sample Report@Global demand for orthopaedic prosthetics devices market is projected to reach US$ 1.76 Bn in 2017, up from US$ 1.69 Bn in 2016. Demand for orthopaedic prosthetics devices will be fuelled by increasing baby boomers & geriatric population. Availability of advanced prosthetics that offer customisation and enhanced functionality will continue to witness increasing demand in developed markets. However, high cost and lack of favourable reimbursement policies will continue to pose challenges to wider adoption. North America will continue to remain the largest market for orthopaedic prosthetics devices, owing to strong demand in the U.S. Sales of orthopaedic prosthetics devices in the Western Europe  the second largest market globally  will remain concentrated in EU5.Other key factors expected to fuel demand for orthopaedic prosthetic devices include increase in the number of accidents, higher emphasis on physical sports, and increase in prevalence of conditions that require amputation. Replacement of older prosthetics with lighter, durable materials is also expected to complement demand during the forecast period.Report offers insights on the regulations on orthopaedic prosthetics devices in key markets of the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. In the U.S., orthopaedic prosthetics devices are regulated by U.S. FDA and Centre for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). In Europe, a majority of prosthetic and orthotic devices are class I with CE marking.Browse Complete Report with TOC @To provide a detailed analysis on the orthopaedic prosthetic market, FMIs report offers forecast and analysis on the basis of product type, technology, end-use, and region.Prosthetics Devices Market SegmentationBy product type, the key segments include lower extremity prosthetics, upper extremity prosthetics, liners, sockets, and modular components. Among these, lower extremity prosthetics account for the highest demand, followed by upper extremity prosthetics. All the aforementioned product types will lose market share to lower extremity prosthetics during the forecast period.By technology, electric powered prosthetic devices account for the highest demand and the trend is projected to remain unchanged during the forecast period. Electric powered prosthetic devices are expected to gain 467 BPS during the forecast period and account for over 50% revenue share of the market by 2026. Ease of operation is one of the key factors for high adoption of electric powered prosthetics devices.By end-use, prosthetic clinics accounted for the highest revenue share of the global market, followed by hospitals and rehabilitation centres. Prosthetic clinics will continue to remain the largest end-user segment during the forecast period, gaining 293 BPS between 2016 and 2026.North America is the largest market for prosthetics devices market, accounting for a significant share of global revenues. The U.S. is the leading market for prosthetics devices, accounting for over 78% share of the global market in 2016. The U.S. will continue to be the largest market for prosthetics devices during the forecast period.Leading players in the global prosthetics devices market include Hanger Inc., Blatchford Ltd., Otto Bock HealthCare GmbH Ossur, Touch Bionics Inc., and The Ohio Willow Wood Co.Send an Enquiry @About MRRSEMarket 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:
Detail Analysis Dupuytrens Contracture Market Worldwide Top Players and Forecasts by 2023

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The World DUPUYTRENS CONTRACTURE MARKET report provides segmentation by condition, diagnosis, treatment, end user, and its sub-segments. The report also provide a detailed analysis of global Dupuytrens Contracture market mainly based on Value Chain Analysis, Porters Five Forces, Price Analysis, and Supply Chain Analysis etc.The Dupuytrens Contracture market drivers increase in risk factors rising incomes, growing screening, increasing geriatric population etc. The market restraints are cost of Dupuytrens Contracture surgery, complications and risk of the surgery, invasive nature of treatment, and regression of the disease even after treatment etc.GET SAMPLE COPY @The Global Dupuytrens Contracture Market is expected to reach USD 5.5 billion by 2023, and the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of ~ 4.4 % during the forecast period 2017-2023.The Dupuytren's contracture is a condition in which there is difficulty in articulating fingers due to formation of tissue knots under the skin. In severe conditions, the fingers become permanently bent in a flexed position. Dupuytren's contracture is typically not painful and generally affects the ring finger followed by the little and middle fingers.Key Players in the Global Dupuytrens Contracture Market:Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co.,Fresenius Kabi AG,Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.,Pfizer Inc.,West-Ward Pharmaceuticals,Spear Pharmacueticals,Actiza Pharmaceutical Private Limited,Nantong Jinghua Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.,Endo International plc, andOthersThe exact causes of Dupuytren's contracture are unknown; however, the risk factors include alcoholism, smoking, thyroid problems, liver disease, diabetes, previous hand trauma, epilepsy, family history etc. Dupuytren's contracture has a higher rate in males over the age of 50. There is also a genetic propensity with Caucasians being affected more while it is rare among Asians and Africans. Dupuytren's contracture has a regress rate of approximately 10% of patients. The less severe forms of the disease are treated with steroid treatment and physiotherapy while surgery is usually performed when the metacarpophalangeal joint contracture exceeds 40 degrees or when the proximal interphalangeal joint contracture exceeds 20 degrees.Regional Analysis:US is the second largest market in the world due to high income and healthcare penetration. The presence of large healthcare players in the US benefits the market coupled with the high public expenditure on healthcare which comes to be approximately 16 % of the GDP. Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at a slower rate with China and India are likely to lead this market due to fast growing healthcare sector during the forecast period. The lower prevalence of Dupuytrens Contracture in the Asian populations acts as a drag on the market.Europe accounted for a significant market share owing to extensive use of medications and high expenditure on the health care. Additionally, the greater prevalence of Dupuytrens Contracture in Europe drives the Dupuytrens Contracture market. Also, concentration of major research companies in the developed countries of this region is adding fuel to the market growth. The highly developed healthcare system of the Scandinavian countries coupled with high expenditure on healthcare, cruises the sale of Dupuytrens Contracture treatment. Europe is led by countries such as Germany and France with Norway, expected to be the fastest growing market.ORDER A COPY @Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. The development of large hospitals such as the King Fahd hospital in Riyadh is driving the market. The African region is expected to witness a moderate growth owing to poor economic and political conditions and poor healthcare development. Also, the lower prevalence of Dupuytrens Contracture in the Asian populations acts as a drag on the market.Major Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Definition2 Scope of Study2.1 Research Objective2.2 Assumptions & Limitations2.2.1 Assumptions2.2.2 Limitations3 Market Structure2. Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3. Market dynamics3.1 Drivers3.2 Restraints3.3 Opportunities3.4 Macroeconomic IndicatorsContinuedASK 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
Vasectomy Market Top 10 Key Players Analysis by Revenue, Share, Demand and Forecasts Till 2023

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The Global Vasectomy Market is expected to reach USD 24.0 billion at a CAGR of ~ 7.1 % during the by the end of forecast period 2017-2023. The Vasectomy Market professional survey report 2017-2023 by reviewing the company profiles of the leading players functioning in this market. The market hierarchy has also been identified in this study by analyzing the current developments and future prospects of these players.Global Vasectomy Market Segments:The Global Vasectomy Market has been classified into type, drugs, end user, and patients,On the basis of type, the market has been segmented as conventional vasectomy, no-scalpel vasectomy, and minimally invasive vasectomy.Based on the drugs, the market has been segmented as anesthetics, painkillers, antibiotics, and others.Based on the patients, the market has been segmented as human and animals.Based on the end user, the market has been segmented as hospitals and clinics, research and academics, and others.Get Sample Copy @The Global Vasectomy Market report is an expert comprehensive research data from the well know key players as Pfizer, Inc., Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Sanofi S.A., Novartis AG, Bayer AG, Bristol Myers Squibb Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Inc., Accurate Surgical & Scientific Instruments Corporation, Sklar Surgical Instruments, Advanced Meditech International and others.Vasectomy Market Regional Analysis:The Americas account for a major share of the market owing to high expenditure on the health care, especially, of the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, the greater number of vasectomies due to greater male-female equality in the U.S. and Canada drives the vasectomy market. The high concentration of the major hospitals in the developed countries of this region coupled with good reimbursement rates is adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, the large share of surgeries in the returns of hospitals favors the market. Canada has a higher rate of people undergoing vasectomies than the U.S.Europe is the second largest market in the world due to growing the pharmaceutical and industrial base. The European market growth is led by countries such as Germany and France. Germany is expected to be the fastest growing market over the assessment period. Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland have a higher rate of people undergoing vasectomies than other nations of Europe.Asia Pacific region is expected to proliferate; China and India are likely to lead this market due to the fast-growing healthcare sector and large unmet needs over the forecast period. India was the first nation in the world to include population control as a national program way back in 1952. South East Asian countries such as China, India, and Malaysia are projected to contribute highly to the market growth. The growing penetration of healthcare industry in the Asia Pacific region is expected to drive the future vasectomy market in the region.Order Copy @Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. Other Middle East nations to watch out for are Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and Iran. The African region is expected to witness a poor growth owing to weak economic and political conditions, and inadequate healthcare development. Botswana and South Africa are expected to be the future markets with approximately 1% rate of people undergoing vasectomies. Other regions are projected to be laggards due to the poor social development and tribal identities such as sub-Saharan Africa.Major TOC for Vasectomy 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 Drivers3.2.1 Increasing Number of Dental care3.2.2 Increasing Per Capita Income In Emerging Markets3.2.3 Rising Dental Tourism3.2.4 Increasing Cosmetic dentistry treatments3.3 Restraint3.3.1 Cost of Dental Procedures3.3.2 Grey Market of Vasectomy3.3.3 Slow Adoption Of New Technology3.4 Opportunities3.5 Macroeconomic IndicatorsContinuedAsk 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
Hydropower in Chile Market Outlook to 2030

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ReportsWeb.com published Hydropower Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market."Hydropower (Large, Small and Pumped Storage) in Chile, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2017-Capacity, Generation, Regulations and Company Profiles", is the latest report from Publisher, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the hydropower market in Chile.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global hydropower market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Chile (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes hydro, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Chile hydropower market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to hydropower is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by Publisher's team of industry experts.For more information about this report atScope:The report analyses global renewable power market, global hydropower market, Chile power market, Chile renewable power market and Chile hydropower market. The scope of the research includes--A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.-An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2016 (unless specified) and forecast period 2017-2030.-Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.-Detailed overview of the global hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2016 and key owners information of various regions.-Power market scenario in Chile and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.-An overview on Chile renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2016.-Detailed overview of Chile hydropower market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming hydro projects.-Deal analysis of Chile hydropower market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).-Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and hydropower in particular.-Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Request a sample copy atCompanies Mentioned:Pacific Hydro Pty Ltd.HydroChile S.A.Hidroelectrica Guardia Vieja S.A.Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A.Duke Energy International, LLCColbun S.A.AES Gener S.A.Reasons to buy:-The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.-Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Chile hydropower market.-Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for hydropower market.-Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industry's growth potential.-Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.-Identify key partners and business development avenues.-Understand and respond to your competitors' business structure, strategy and prospects.Inquire 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 service and our customer support team 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
Nuclear Power in Russian Federation, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2017 -Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

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ReportsWeb.com published Nuclear Power Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market."Nuclear Power in Russian Federation, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2017 -Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles", is the latest report from Publisher, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the nuclear power market in Russian Federation.The report provides in depth analysis on global nuclear power market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Russian Federation (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro, pumped storage and renewables) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details nuclear power market outlook in the country and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Russian Federation nuclear power market. A detailed coverage of nuclear energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to nuclear is provided in the report. The research also provides details of active nuclear reactors in the country, market size of major equipment and company snapshot of some of the major market participants.Request a Sample Report@The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by Publisher's team of industry experts.Scope:-A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.-Historical period is during 2006-2016 (unless specified) and forecast period is for 2017-2030.-Overview on the global nuclear power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by region in 2016, installed capacity split by major nuclear power countries in 2016 and investment trends.-Power market scenario in Russian Federation provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewables) with forecasts up to 2030.-Details of Russian Federation nuclear power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity by reactor type, installed capacity share by contractor/owner and information on major active and upcoming projects.-Key policies and regulatory framework supporting nuclear power development.-Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Get Discount for Report@Reasons to buy:-The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.-Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Russian Federation nuclear power market.-Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for nuclear power market.-Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industry's growth potential.-Identify key partners and business development avenues.-Understand and respond to your competitors' business structure, strategy and prospects.Companies Mentioned:State Atomic Energy Corporation RosatomRosenergoatom ConcernAtomenergoproektBuy this Report@Table of Content:1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 41.2 List of Figures 52 Executive Summary 62.1 Global Carbon Emissions to Increase at a Lower rate During the Forecast Period 62.2 Nuclear Power to Grow at a Slower Pace than Other Power Generating Sources 62.3 Thermal Power is the Dominant Source in the Power Mix 62.4 PWR and LWGR are the most Prominent Technologies in Russian Federation 73 Introduction 93.1 Carbon Emissions, Global, 2001-2016 93.2 Primary Energy Consumption, Global, 2001-2030 113.3 Report Guidance 144 Nuclear Power Market, Global, 2006-2030 154.1 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Overview 154.2 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 164.2.1 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Installed Capacity Share by Region, 2016 and 2030 174.2.2 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Installed Capacity Share by Country, 2016 and 2030 184.3 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Power Generation, 2006-2030 214.3.1 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Generation Share by Region, 2016 and 2030 234.3.2 Nuclear Power Market, Global, Generation Share by Country, 2016 and 2030 244.4 Nuclear Market, Global, Investment Trends, 2016-2020 265 Power Market, Russian Federation, 2006-2030 285.1 Power Market, Russian Federation, Overview 285.2 Power Market, Russian Federation, Installed Capacity, 2006-2030 295.2.1 Power Market, Russian Federation, Cumulative Installed Capacity by Fuel Type, 2006-2030 295.2.2 Power Market, Russian Federation, Share in Cumulative Installed Capacity Split by Source Type, 2016 and 2030 325.2.3 Power Market, Russian Federation, Net Capacity Additions by Fuel Type, 2016 and 2030 345.2.4 Power Market, Russian Federation, Comparison of Technologies Based on Installed Capacity, 2016-2030 365.3 Power Market, Russian Federation, Power Generation, 2006-2030 385.3.1 Power Market, Russian Federation, Power Generation by Fuel Type, 2006-2030 385.3.2 Power Market, Russian Federation, Comparison of Technologies Based on Power Generation, 2016-2030 416 Nuclear Power Market, Russian Federation, 2006-2030 437 Power Market, Regulatory Scenario, Russian Federation 577.1 Renewable Energy Market, Overview 577.2 Decree No. 449 on the Mechanism for the Promotion of Renewable Energy on the Wholesale Electricity and Market 587.3 Russia Renewable Energy Program 607.4 Federal Program for Energy Savings and Energy Efficiency 607.5 Energy Strategy of Russia to 2030 607.6 State Policy Guidelines for Promoting Renewable Energy in the Power Sector 617.7 National Climate Doctrine 617.8 Premium and Certificates Scheme 617.9 Funding for Hydropower 617.10 Russia's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the Paris Agreement 618 Nuclear Power Market, Russian Federation, Company Profiles 629 Appendix 74For more information about this Report@About 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 service and our customer support team 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
Aortic Valve Replacement Market | Key Trends and Forecast Research Report 2024

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Aortic valve is one of the two main valves on the left side of the heart and is the outflow valve for the left ventricle. It opens and closes to regulate the blood flow and prevents the backward flow of the blood into the heart. Aortic valve replacement is done when the functioning of the aortic valve is affected. It is a procedure of replacing the non-functioning valve with an artificial heart valve. The prosthetic or artificial valve employed may be made of synthetic materials or from animal tissues. Heart diseases that lead to aortic valve replacement include aortic stenosis and aortic regurgitation. Aortic stenosis is the condition where the aortic valve is narrowed, obstructing the flow of blood. Aortic regurgitation is a condition where in the valve is leaky and allows the reverse flow of blood back into the heart. Aortic valve malfunctioning can result from the congenital abnormality or from an age-related acquired disease. The source of the artificial valve used, includes mechanical valves, which are created from man-made materials; and tissue valves, which are created from pig, cow, or human donors.The Aortic Valve Replacement Market can be segmented based on the type of surgery, product, end user, and geography. Based on the type of surgery done to replace the faulty aortic valve, the market can be segmented into open aortic valve surgery and minimally invasive aortic valve surgery. Minimally invasive surgeries include aortic valve balloon valvuloplasty, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), and sutureless aortic valve replacement, among others. On the basis of products, the market can be segmented as stented valves and stentless valve prostheses. Hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers and cardiac catheterization laboratories form the major end-users for the market. Geographically, the aortic valve replacement market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa.Request to view ToC of Report -Aortic stenosis is the most common type of valvular disease observed which is driving the aortic valve replacement market. In addition, changing lifestyles, leading to obesity; increasing cardiovascular diseases, growing health awareness, and increasing global geriatric population also contribute to the growth of the aortic valve replacement market. Furthermore, minimally invasive surgeries are driving the market, owing to their benefits such as low risk of infection, lesser need for blood transfusion, faster healing and recovery, reduced hospital stay, and less pain, among others. The increasing clinical trials that would lead to the introduction of new products in the market would also positively contribute to the market growth. The risks associated with the replacement procedures, high costs, and growing regulations related to product approvals, would negatively impact the aortic valve replacement market.TAVI, and aortic valve replacement employing a tissue valve, are the common techniques used for aortic valve replacement. In terms of geography, North America had the largest share in the aortic valve replacement market followed by Europe due to the increasing obesity and growing geriatric population in the region. The rising technological advances, growing clinical trials for the same, and government support are expected to contribute to the positive growth of aortic valve replacement market in these regions. The emerging markets in Asia Pacific are expected to record strong growth during the forecast period due to the growing healthcare industry, increase in the aging population, and growing healthcare awareness.Request to view Brochure of Report -The leading players in the aortic valve replacement market include Boston Scientific Corporation, CryoLife Inc., Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, LivaNova plc, Medtronic plc, St. Jude Medical, Inc., and Symetis SA, among other significant players worldwide.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:
Single Dose Therapy Market | Key Trends and Forecast Research Report 2024

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Single-dose therapy can be defined as single drug, or a combination of two or more active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) to be administered in a single dosage form. The drugs combined in the single dosage form contributes to the synergistic effects claimed by each of the drug. The number of doses of the single dose therapy can be increased or decreased, but the therapy does not involving altering of API proportion in the dosage form. These are administered in the form of a vial, capsules, tablets or patch.Single-Dose Therapy Market can be segmented based on disease indication, application, distribution channel, and geography. Based on disease indication, the market can be segmented into cancer, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, neurological disorders, psychological disorders, and microbial infections, among others. On the basis of application, single-dose therapy market can be segmented into human health and animal health. Hospitals, ambulatory centers, clinics, and pharmacies form the major distribution channels for the market. Based on geography, the market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa.Request to view ToC of Report -Increasing demand due to the synergistic effects provided by the combined fixed dose APIs administered as a single dose is the major driver for the single-dose therapy market. Further, the simpler treatment regime, convenience of administration, and the cost saving offered by single-dose therapy are also expected to drive the market growth. Additional benefits include the combined pharmacokinetics of the component drugs employed in the single dose, and enhanced medication compliance. However, the dosage of the APIs in the single-dose cannot be modified according to the patient requirements, which might negatively impact the growth of the market. In addition, the adverse side effects caused by the component drugs, the allergic reactions from any of the component drugs in the single dose therapy cannot be avoided, which might have an impact on the patient health, and a negative effect on the market growth. Also, the growing over-the-counter sale of various non-approved fixed dose combinations administered as single dose, would adversely affect the market.The increasing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and various forms of cancer in all the geographies would drive the demand for single-dose therapies and contribute to the growth of the market. Geographically, North America is the largest market for single-dose therapy, followed by Europe. The growing geriatric population, and increased focus on research and development of effective single dose therapies has been driving the use of single-dose therapies. In addition, the growing FDA approvals of new single-dose therapies would contribute to the growth of the market. For instance, in November 2015, the U.S. FDA approved Genvoya, a single dosage form of various combination drugs for the treatment of HIV-1 infection. Asia Pacific is expected to record significant growth during the forecast period, attributed to the growing economy in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific, growing awareness among people and the increasing geriatric population.Request to view Brochure of Report -The leading players in the single-dose therapy market include Allergan plc, AstraZeneca plc, Bayer AG, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Merck & Co., Novartis AG, Pfizer, Inc., and Sanofi S.A., among other significant global market players.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:
Industrial Microbiology Market | Industry Insights, Trends and Forecast up to 2024

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The Industrial Microbiology Market is large and growing owing to an increasing preference for automation. The rising emphasis on industrial food and safety is fueling the markets grow. Industrial microbiology has applications in agriculture, cosmetics, food and beverages, and pharmaceuticals. Since the demand for consumer products is growing with the rise in the population worldwide, the need for product quality and safety testing is also on the rise. Various public concerns and government regulations regarding the safety of products are expected to continue to offer an opportunity for the market to grow.Industrial microbiology deals with the screening, improvement, and management of microorganisms for the production of various end use products. Fast and accurate testing of pathogens can protect brand image, reduce industry costs, and speed up the outbreak investigation and response. Increasing product recalls and growing consumer concerns are driving the global industrial microbiology market. The fermentation of beer, wine, and cheese also require industrial microorganisms, thus driving the market.The report contains an overview of the industrial microbiology market, including its definition, key trends analysis, market dynamics, types of tests, and competitive landscape. The competitive landscape include the market positioning of key players and the competitive strategies adopted by them. The study segments the global industrial biology market on the basis of product type, test, application, and region. It includes Porters five forces analysis and market attractiveness analysis by countries.Request to view ToC of Report -Global Industrial Microbiology Market: Key Opportunities and ThreatsThe use of industrial microorganisms for syrup formulation, bioremediation process, preparing genetically modified food products, and manufacturing empty capsules will open new opportunities of growth in the market. On the other hand, maintaining compliance levels and lack of skilled professionals are major challenges faced by the industrial microbiology market.Global Industrial Microbiology Market: Region-wise OutlookOn the basis of geography, the global industrial microorganisms market is segmented into North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. North America is expected to be a key regional segment in the industrial microbiology market. The U.S. is expected to lead in the North America industrial microbiology market. Favorable reimbursements and patient policy and extensive drug research and development are behind the growth of the market in the U.S.Global Industrial Microbiology Market: Key SegmentsBy product, the market is segmented into equipment and systems, reaction consumables, and laboratory supplies. The reaction consumables product type segment is expected to lead in the market owing to the high use of reagents and media for conducting various research.On the basis of application, the global industrial microbiology market is segmented into cosmetics, food and beverage industry, pharmaceutical, and agriculture. Of these, the pharmaceutical segment is expected to be a key revenue generator in the coming years. The growth in the segment is owing to the presence of a large number of pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and developing novel drugs. The frequency of drug innovation and speedy drug approvals are also behind the growth of the segment.Request to view Brochure of Report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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:
Coccidiosis Treatment Market | Trends, Outlook and Opportunity Analysis 2024

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Coccidiosis is a parasitic disease, which is caused due to microscopic coccidian protozoa that mainly infect animal species. The coccidian infection is characterized by incursion of the intestinal wall of the animals that damages mucosal and sub-mucosal tissue of the intestine. This disease is prevalent in most of the animal species such as swine, cattle, poultry and companion animals while it is more prevalent in poultry. The coccidian infection can be prevented and treated with anti-coccidiosis drugs such as ionophore anticoccidials, antibiotic anticoccidials, and chemical derivative anticoccidials.Increasing incidences of coccidian diseases among poultry and companion animals have resulted in loss of millions of dollars for the treatment of coccidiosis. This factor is the major driver that compels the growth of the Coccidiosis Treatment Market globally. Moreover, this market is also driven by several other factors such as rising global population and per capita consumption of meat, increasing adoption of intensive farming methods, and rising demand for meat proteins which has further increased meat production especially in developed countries. In addition, increasing government spending on poultry in several countries of the world would impose a positive impact on the growth of this market. However, growth of the market can be restrained by factors such as food safety concerns and increasing meat prices globally, which hinders the consumption of meat.Request to view ToC of Report -The coccidiosis treatment market can be segmented based on the type of drugs, infected animal species, and geography. On the basis of drugs utilized for the treatment of coccidiosis, global market can be segmented into ionophore drugs, antibiotic drugs, and chemical derivative drugs. Antibiotic drugs are expected to be the key product for coccidiosis treatment due to the increased demand and usage of antibiotics and rising awareness about the benefits associated with these drugs.Based on infected animal forms the global market can be segmented into swine, poultry, companion animals, fish, and cattle. Poultry segment is expected to be the major contributor towards global market revenues due to increased demand for meat and rising awareness about various treatment options of coccidiosis that would further result in increased production of meat.Geographically, the coccidiosis treatment market can be segmented into five major regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Factors such as rising awareness about poultry and companion health in emerging economies, and increased investment opportunities in anti-coccidiosis pharmaceutical production would drive growth of this market in most of the regions of the world.North America was observed to be the largest coccidiosis treatment market especially due to huge demand for meat food and associated products and rising number of poultry and companion animals in the region. The U.S. was the major contributor towards North America coccidiosis treatment market revenues in 2015. The U.S. is characterized by a myriad of big players having their presence in antimicrobial pharmaceutical production as well as meat production. Europe was observed to be the second largest market in coccidiosis treatment market owing to increased demand for ionophore anticoccidials and antibiotic anticoccidials from countries such as Germany, U.K., and France.Request to view Brochure of Report -However, in upcoming years Asia Pacific and Latin America are expected to increase their share in the global market with increased adoption of coccidiosis treatment drugs. In addition, the emerging countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico and China are expected to increase their market share at a rapid pace during the forecast period. Coccidiosis treatment market in Middle East and Africa is not well established; hence, it contributes a very small share towards the global market.Some of the key players operating in this market include Bayer Animal Health, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc., Ceva Sante Animale, Elanco (an Eli Lilly company), Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Jurox Pty Ltd., Merck Animal Health, Merial (a Sanofi company), Vetoquinol S.A., Virbac S.A., and Zoetis, Inc. 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:
Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market | Trends, Outlook and Opportunity Analysis 2024

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An implantable cardioverter defibrillator is a device that monitors a person's heart rate post its implantation in patients with heart failure. The device continuously monitors your heartbeat and sends electrical pulses to repair a normal heart rhythm when necessary. Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) or automated implantable cardioverter defibrillators can save patients from arrhythmias by regulating the irregular heartbeats. The device is used in treating sudden cardiac arrest caused due to cardiac arrhythmias, particularly ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Invention of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator was started by Michel Mirowski in the late 1960s after one of his close friends death who was also his mentor and had been admitted to hospital with recurrent ventricular tachyarrhythmias.The most important factors driving The Global Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators Market are increasing incidences of cardiovascular disorders, increasing demand for implantable cardioverter defibrillator from emerging countries of Asia-Pacific and the Middle-East as cardiovascular disorders are increasing and awareness about the disease also increases in these countries, increasing number of training and awareness programs across the globe for Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators. These training and awareness programs are conducted for the patients as well as the surgeons by Mayo Clinic US.Request to view ToC of Report -The implantable cardioverter defibrillators governs the appropriate therapy for returning your heartbeat to a normal heart rhythm. Doctor programs the implantable cardioverter defibrillators to deliver functions such as anti-tachycardia pacing (ATP) and cardio. A series of small electrical impulses are delivered to the heart muscle to restore a normal heart rate and rhythm. In cardio, a low energy shock is delivered at the same time as your heartbeat to restore a normal heart rhythm. Defibrillation means when the heart is beating dangerously fast, a high-energy shock is delivered to the heart muscle to restore a normal rhythm. Bradycardia pacing means when the heart beats too slow, small electrical impulses are sent to stimulate the heart muscle to maintain a suitable heart rate.The American Heart Association recommends some guide lines for the person to be eligible for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. The arrhythmia in question must be life threatening and the correctable causes of arrhythmia (acute myocardial infarction, myocardial ischemia, electrolyte imbalance and drug toxicity) have been ruled out by doctors have ruled out correctable causes of the arrhythmia.Implantable cardioverter defibrillators market can be segmented by product types, by procedure type, and end user type. Implantable cardioverter defibrillator are categories into single chambered, dual chambered and biventricular implantable cardioverter defibrillators on product types. Based on implantation region ICDs are categorized into trans-venous implantable cardioverter defibrillators and subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillators.The subcutaneous ICD (S-ICD) is placed without inserting the leads inside the heart. The device is placed under the skin below the left axilla, or armpit along the rib cage, and not inserting in the standard location near the collarbone. The lead which is connected to the device is burrowed under the skin rather than inside the heart.The advantages of the S-ICD are that it do not show any of the immediate or long-term complications followed due to placing a lead into the heart, such as perforation of the heart and collapse of the lung. Subcutaneous Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators is the key driver for the ICD market as it have very less complications and easy implantable procedure. Based on end user type the ICDs are divided into hospital and super specialty hospitals, home users, cardiac catheterization laboratory users and electrophysiology laboratory users. Geographically, the market has been categorized in five main regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia pacific and the Middle East and Africa.Request to view Brochure of Report -The key implantable cardioverter defibrillators manufacturer companies include Boston Scientific Corporation, Imricor Medical Systems, Inc., LivaNova PLC Company, Mayo Clinic US, Medtronic plc, MicroPort Scientific Corporation, MRI Interventions, Inc., St. Jude Medical, Inc.,About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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:
Event Driven Patient Tracking Systems Market Key Developments with Forecast until 2024

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Patient tracking is a sophisticated process designed to monitor patients movements, outside conventional clinical settings such as hospitals, clinics, diagnostic center and laboratories. This increases the access to care, and minimizes health care costs. Many health care providers have started incorporating this method which has significantly lowered the personal costs of patients, reduced complications and improved quality of life of patients. Event driven patient tracking usually involves monitoring and maintenance of patients medical records, either manually by entering the details of patients locations, or by use of softwares (RLTS, RFID, GPS, etc.) and hardware components such as sensors, detectors and others. Manual entries are made by an authorized person, usually a doctor or a caregiver, who makes entries whenever an event takes place. Software and hardware use technology to track the patients whereabouts, triangulating their positions based on their last known locations. Previously, manual methods or approaches were adopted by healthcare providers for event driven patient tracking, but changing market dynamics, increasing focus on a patient centric approach, and rising financial and operational costs of hospitals, have shifted the trend towards sophisticated systems to monitor patients.Demand for bed capacity is projected to rise by 2024, and this is proving to be a challenge for hospitals and other healthcare settings, as physically increasing bed capacity is not a viable option, and hence healthcare settings are shifting their focus towards improving their ability to move patients through a treatment system, known as throughput. New technologies in event driven patient tracking systems, such as Real Time Locating System (RTLS), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Global Positioning System (GPS), and other technologies, allow caregivers to work efficiently by providing real-time information about the patient and improving the workflow. RTLS is adopted by major healthcare settings and hospitals, but smaller hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic centers mainly opt for RFID, GPS, and other systems, as RTLS is more costly, and affordability of this technology is a major issue for smaller healthcare settings.Request to view ToC of Report -The Global Event Driven Patient Tracking System is driven by factors such as adoption of patient centric approach by healthcare providers, seemingly increasing costs of healthcare services, which has led to adoption of new technologies and approaches by hospitals and other healthcare settings to reduce the pressure of increasing demands for bed capacity, and rising return on investment.Event driven patient tracking systems accounted for the largest share of the patient flow management solutions market, in 2024. Event driven patient tracking systems are segmented on the basis of product type, delivery mode, components, and geography. By product type, the market can be segmented into stand-alone devices, and integrated devices. By delivery mode, the market can be segmented into cloud-based delivery solutions, web-based delivery solutions, and premises based delivery solutions. Based on Components, the market can be segmented into hardware components, software components, and services. By geography, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa.Geographically, North America accounted for the largest share of the event driven patient tracking systems market owing to factors such as use of advanced technologies, and increasing emphasis on improving patient flow coupled with increased focus on reducing costs related to health care services. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a formidable CAGR, during the forecast period from 2016-2024, owing to its large population base, increasing gap between supply and demand of health care services, technological advancements in the field of cloud computing and web based services, and high scope of adoption of these systems owing to largely unorganized patient flow management.Request to view Brochure of Report -The major players having presence in the global event driven patient tracking systems market include, Epic Systems, McKesson Corporation, Allscripts, Cerner Corporation, Sonitor Technologies, Centrallogic Medworxx, and TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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:
Wind Power in Australia, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

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ReportsWeb.com published Wind Power Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market."Wind Power in Australia, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles" is the latest report from Global Data, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Australia.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global wind power market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Australia (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Australia wind power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to wind power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.Request a Sample Report@Report Scope:The report analyses global renewable power market, global wind power (Onshore and Offshore) market, Australia power market, Australia renewable power market and Australia wind power market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2015 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2030.- Renewable power sources include wind (both onshore and offshore), solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and geothermal.- Detailed overview of the global wind power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major hydropower countries in 2015 and key owners information of various regions.- Power market scenario in Australia and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.- An overview on Australia renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2015.- Detailed overview of Australia wind power market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming wind projects.- Deal analysis of Australia wind power market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and wind power in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Reasons to buy:- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Australia wind power market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for wind power market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industry's growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors' business structure, strategy and prospects.Inquire before Buying@Companies Mentioned:TrustPower LimitedMeridian Energy LimitedMalakoff Corporation BerhadInfigen Energy LimitedAcciona Energia, S.A.Table of Content:1.1 List of Tables 62 Executive Summary 83 Introduction 114 Renewable Power Market, Global, 2006-2030 195 Wind Power Market, Global, 2006-2030 336 Power Market, Australia, 2006-2030 497 Renewable Power Market, Australia, 2006-2030 568 Wind Power Market, Australia, 2006-2030 649 Power Market, Australia, Regulatory Scenario 7610 Wind Power Market, Australia, Company Profiles 8711 Appendix 117For more information about this report@About 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 service and our customer support team 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
Encephalomyelitis Market SWOT Analysis, Key Development Areas, Financial Overview and Forecasts Till 2023

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The Global Encephalomyelitis Market is majorly driven by the increasing prevalence of encephalomyelitis and rising number of patients suffering from autoimmune diseases & AIDS. According to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, in 2014, approximately 50 million people in the U.S. are suffering from autoimmune diseases. Additionally, during last decade, the number of patient suffering from AIDS in Asia Pacific region has elevated. Moreover, increasing geriatric population, government support and rapid developments in technology have fuelled the growth of the market. On the other hand, high cost of the treatment and unavailability of precise treatment may restrain the growth of the market.Exclusive Sample Copy @Encephalomyelitis is the condition of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord. The disease is caused by a number of factors including viral infection, bacteria and other. During last few years, the number of patients suffering from this disease is increasing due to which this disease has gained a considerable attention. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 4.3 million people across the globe are affected by encephalomyelitis. The initial phase of disease is characterized by symptoms such as headache, fever, confusion, which in severe condition can led to hallucinations, trouble in speaking, and memory loss. A number of different types of drugs and vaccines are available in the market for the treatment. The patients suffering from autoimmune diseases & AIDS are the most commonly affected by the disease due to weak immune system.Encephalomyelitis Market Segmentations:The global encephalomyelitis market is segmented on the basis of types, treatment and end users.On the basis of types, the market is segmented into acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, encephalomyelitis disseminata, antiMOG associated encephalomyelitis, equine encephalomyelitis, AIDS related encephalomyelitis and others.On the basis of treatment, the market is segmented into drug treatment, plasmapheresis, surgery, and others. Drug therapy is further segmented into antiviral medications, antibiotics, steroids, sedatives, NSAIDs, mood stabilizers, and others.On the basis of end users, the market is segmented into hospital, clinics and others.Order a Premium 85 Pages Copy Enables with Respective Tables and Figures @Major Regional Analysis:The Americas dominate the global encephalomyelitis market owing to the increasing prevalence of patients with encephalomyelitis, and autoimmune diseases. Due to rapidly increasing patient population, governments have started supporting the manufacturers for the development of new and better drugs. Additionally, well developed technology, high healthcare expenditure, and strong government support for research & development have fuelled the growth of the market in this region.Europe commands the second largest market for encephalomyelitis which is followed by Asia Pacific. Availability of funds, increasing need for better treatment options and strong government support drive the growth of the market in Europe. Germany, France & U.K holds the major share in the Europe market.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing encephalomyelitis market owing to the increasing number of patients suffering from autoimmune diseases and AIDS. Additionally, rapidly growing economies and increasing healthcare expenditure will fuel the growth of the market.On the other hand, the Middle East & Africa hold the least share of the market owing to less availability of funds, limited availability of medical facilities, and poor political conditions in Africa. The Middle East region holds the major share in the market owing to well developed technology, and high healthcare expenditure. On the other hand, Africa region shows the fastest growth due to availability of opportunities for the market growth.Some of key the players in the market are Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (U.S.), Sanofi (France), GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (U.K), Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. (U.S.), Amgen, Inc. (U.S.), Merck & Co., Inc. (U.S.), Bayer AG (Germany), Novartis AG (Switzerland), F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. (Switzerland), Eli Lilly and Company (U.S.), AstraZeneca Plc. (U.K), Janssen Biotech, Inc. (U.S.), AbbVie Inc. (U.S.), Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Japan), Immunomedics (U.S.), Pfizer, Inc. (U.S.), and Oncomed Pharmaceuticals (U.S.).Major TOC Encephalomyelitis Market:Chapter 1. Report PrologueChapter 2. Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 LimitationsChapter 3. Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary research3.4 Market Size EstimationChapter 4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & AssessmentContinuedAsk to Expertise @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
Human Capital Management SaaS Market Trends with Forecast up to 2024

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Human capital management (HCM) SaaS is a cloud-based human resource management software that offers integrated functionality for small and mid-sized companies. The human resource management functions offered by HCM SaaS include the management of staff profiles, attendance, training, performance and review, payroll and benefits, workforce directory and analytics, and networking among employees. Owing to these various integrated functions and solutions offered by the HCM SaaS software, it helps in streamlining of human resource functions, business intelligence functions, and various reporting activities, thereby improving the operational efficiency of a company. Compared to traditional alternatives, cloud-based HCM solutions do not require any hardware and can be remotely deployed. Additionally, remote access through the web and mobile from any place and at any time offer added advantages to users.Request to View ToC of Report -Lower deployment costs and maintenance expenses than traditional human resource management solutions are some of the major factors driving the growth of the HCM SaaS market. Additionally, the growing need to streamline human resource functions is fuelling the HCM SaaS market. With growing size of organizations and competition among adversaries, there is a budding need to predict an employees contribution and long-term growth in an organization, coupled with other strategic analyses of performance and achievements. This is fuelling the demand for the HCM solutions market. For small and mid-sized companies, HCM SaaS solutions are the preferred choice owing to their low cost, data mobility, and ease of access benefits. Additionally, increased adoption of cloud solutions and services is further aiding the growth of the market for HCM SaaS solutions. Furthermore, a rise in demand among organizations for the improvement of workforce management and creating talent mobility are aiding in the market growth of HCM SaaS solutions. However, lack of awareness regarding the existence of HCM SaaS solutions is a major hindrance toward the growth of the HCM SaaS market. Nonetheless, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and automation of functions are expected to present future growth opportunities for the HCM SaaS market.The global HCM SaaS market can be segmented on the basis of end-use industries and geography. On the basis of end-use industries, the market can be categorized into retail, manufacturing, health care, IT, banking and financial services, telecom, and others. In terms of geography, the market can be classified into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. The HCM SaaS market in North America is mainly driven by its developed state of IT and Internet penetration. Additionally, the market growth in Asia Pacific is mainly supported by the rising adoption of IT services in the region.Request to View Brochure of Report -Recent trends of acquisitions and mergers in the HCM SaaS space are expected to lead to a consolidated market space by the end of the forecast period, thus eliminating small firms from the industry. Some of the key players in the global HCM SaaS solutions market are Castlight Health, Zenefits, ADP LLC, Paycom Software Inc., Ascentis Software Corporation, Ultimate Software, Paylocity, Talentsoft, Oracle Corporation, Workday, Inc., FinancialForce.com, SAP SE, Electronic Commerce Inc., WorkForce Software LLC, Skillsoft Limited, LinkedIn Corporation, and Haufe Group.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:
USB Devices Market Key Growth Factors and Forecast up to 2024

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USB, short for universal serial bus, is an industry standard that defines the cable, connector, and communication protocols stated for connection, communication, and power supply between computers and other electronic devices. USB effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces such as serial and parallel ports as well as separate power chargers for portable devices. Another notable feature is the multitude of transfer modes it facilitates, which supports controlled, continuous, bulk, and isochronous transfers. They allow consumers to connect up to 127 devices, either directly or through the use of a USB hub. Moreover, these devices are much faster since they support data transfer rates of 12 Mbps for disk drives and other high-speed throughput and 1.5 Mbps for devices which need less bandwidth. Important benefits which have encouraged their mass adoption over the years include the ease with which they can be used, portability, convenience, widespread compatibility, higher read and write speed, interoperability across all platforms, and improvements in security in the form of password protection or encryption/decryption.The USB Device Market has been experiencing massive expansion in the recent years owing to the technologys numerous applications, ease of development, and manufacturing of custom products. Also, demand for better connectivity performance between electronic devices and advanced peripherals is boosting the sales of USB devices. In terms of technological advancements, the recent revision of USB standard USB 3.0 facilitates faster transfer rates, superior power management capabilities, and higher maximum bus power which has been a prominent contributing factor to this markets success. However, security issues and difficulties in replacing old USB standards with new ones is limiting the market. Several developments in this field and emerging markets in Asia are introducing new opportunities for industry participants/ manufacturers. Moreover, the launch of USB 3.1 standard and the ever-increasing need for wireless USB devices in the automotive industry are expected to drive the market in the future.Request to View ToC of Report -The global USB devices market is segmented based on its device standard type into the USB 1.0, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0 categories. Among these, USB 3.0 standard is dominating the market driven by its capability to provide data transfer rates of 1.25 Gbps to a maximum of 5 Gbps, which is over 10 times faster than the 480 Mbps speed offered by USB 2.0. Applications of the USB device include computer peripherals, laptops, mass storage devices, cameras, telephones, audio devices, and others. In terms of geography, the global market is distributed over Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Among these, Europe leads the market, due to the mounting demand for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication modules in the automotive telematics segment caused by telematics initiatives undertaken by OEM automakers and government-led programs in the region. Asia Pacific is predicted to experience swift growth in the next few years as well, due to the steady economic growth, escalating consumption of computing devices, proliferation of smartphones and tablets, and adoption of USB devices for storing, transferring, and sharing content in the region, particularly China and India.Request to View Brochure of Report -The global USB device market is highly competitive in nature and marked with the presence of several international and domestic key players. Top companies include Corsair Memory, Inc., ADATA Technology Co., Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Development Company, SanDisk Corporation, Kingston Technology Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Samsung Corporation, Micron Consumer Products Group Inc., Verbatim Americas LLC, Imation Corporation, and Transcend Information Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. 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:
Wireless Connectivity Market Value Chain Analysis and Forecast up to 2024

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Wireless connectivity is a technique used by homes, communication networks, and enterprise connections to reduce complex cable networks across buildings. Wireless connectivity equipment is deep rooted in many electrical device markets. WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS are becoming universal for certain devices such as smart phones and mobile phones. Besides this, wireless connectivity is also required in applications in Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from control devices and gateways to cloud. Wireless connectivity is used by IoT devices to enable an access point through which communication and data transfer between two devices can take place. Collaborations and partnerships is one of the major trends in The Wireless Connectivity Market. For instance, partnerships between ZigBee and other organizations such as EnOcean GmbH are anticipated to drive the self-powered energy harvesting internet-of-things devices in areas such as building automation and home automation.Major factors driving the global wireless connectivity market include rise in adoption of IoT and cloud computing, increase in demand for smart phones and other wireless technology devices such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, and WiFi, growth in connectivity of the Internet, and escalation of demand for low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks.However, lack of uniform communication principles is hampering the wireless connectivity market. Additionally, the intervention with other electromagnetic sources, layered structure, and physical object are also the key factors that adversely affect the evolution of wireless connectivity technology. Consequently, these factors act as restraints for the wireless connectivity market. Key challenges for the global wireless connectivity market include requirement of enhanced security of information and concession among features such as power consumption, data rates, and range for numerous wireless technologies.Request to View ToC of Report -Increase in need for cross domain applications could open up new opportunities for the wireless connectivity market. Additionally, rise in government subsidies for the development of IoT provided by countries such as India, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and South Korea is also estimated to offer new opportunities to the wireless connectivity market.The wireless connectivity market in Asia Pacific is in its promising stage; the region is projected to be among the major adopters of wireless connectivity devices. Rise in inclination of consumers toward advanced technological products is likely to boost the wireless connectivity market in Asia Pacific in the near future. Furthermore, government initiatives by countries such as Japan, China, India, and South Korea in the field of electronics and semiconductors are providing lucrative opportunities for electronics and semiconductor industries across Asia Pacific.North America consists of technologically advanced countries such as Canada and the U.S. The U.S. and Canada offer vast potential for the application of Internet of Things. This is expected to propel the market for wireless connectivity technologies. In turn, this is anticipated to augment the wireless connectivity market in the region.The global wireless connectivity market can be segmented in terms of technology and application. Based on technology, the wireless connectivity market can be segmented into WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, ZigBee, EnOcean, cellular technologies, and others. Based on application, the wireless connectivity market can be segmented into health care, wearable devices, automotive and transportation, and consumer electronics. Among these, the wearable devices segment is estimated to expand significantly during the forecast period owing to factors such as proliferation of IoT and rise in adoption of smart watches and activity trackers.Request to View Brochure of Report -Key players operating in the global wireless connectivity market include Qualcomm Incorporated, Intel Corporation, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Texas Instruments Inc., Nexcom International Co., Ltd., Stmicroelectronics N.V., Mediatek Inc., Enocean GmbH, Atmel Corporation, and Cypress Semiconductor 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:
Smart SIM Market Value Chain Analysis and Forecast up to 2024

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Smart SIM is an advanced version of the subscriber identification module (SIM). SIM is an integrated circuit used for managing the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and the key related to this number. SIM is used to authenticate and identify subscribers on mobile devices. Smart SIM cards are primarily used with global system for mobiles (GSM) phones. Code division multiple access (CDMA) phones use smart SIM cards for the new long-term evolution (LTE) service. Demand for smart SIM cards has increased tremendously, due to the growing adoption of smart phones worldwide. Smart SIM provides increased storage space, which also increases the size of phone book. With 64 KB of storage space, customers are able to store more phone numbers in their smart SIM cards. These cards can be used with all mobile phones that support the SIM toolkit technology. Using smart SIM cards, customers can easily activate the international calling functionality. Some smart SIM cards are available with a pre-activated international roaming functionality.Growth in the number of international travelers and globalized business activities are anticipated to drive the global smart SIM market during the forecast period.Furthermore, smart SIM cards are helpful in allowing banking transactions in a secured environment. These simplified transactions are protected with the help of personal identification number (PIN) and personal unblocking key (PUK). These codes help in establishing a secured connection with banks. Smart SIM cards are light in weight and have higher processing speed as compared to traditional smart cards. The encryption option available with smart SIM cards helps in secured storage of passwords and user identification codes.Request to View ToC of Report -Phone banking activities have increased recently due to smart SIMs, as these SIM cards enable customers to pay their bills from their bank account through phone. Easy installation and packaging of the smart SIM has enabled the customers to use it in three different forms viz. regular SIM, micro SIM, and nano SIM. Regular SIM is the largest SIM by size, while micro SIM and nano SIM are integrated in regular SIM. These SIM cards can be easily detached from each other and joined again. This flexibility helps the customers use a single SIM card in three variants in accordance with the mobile phone and the services they want to avail.Smart SIM cards can be used with data cards or specialty devices such as iPad. Smart SIM cards enable multi-operator agreements through a single card. This provides access to a large network of mobile virtual network operators (MVNO). In case of network outages, devices are quickly transferred to a different network having better connectivity. Due to the automated data connection detection and re-connection, devices are easily protected against data connection termination. The global smart SIM market has been divided into five geographic segments viz. North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America. Asia Pacific is anticipated to generate high demand for the smart SIM market with a growing smartphone subscriber base. However, managing all adapters of SIM cards can be difficult for customers, as they can easily get misplaced due to their small size. Biodegradable SIM manufacturing technology provides substantial opportunities for growth of the smart SIM market. New, paper-based SIM cards have evolved recently. These are made of recyclable and biodegradable wood fibers so as to maintain the environment clean with the reduced carbon footprint.Request to View Brochure of Report -Major players operating in the global smart SIM market include Oasis Smart SIM, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Group plc, Tata DoCoMo, Idea Cellular, Telefonica UK Limited, Sierra Wireless, Orange, Altel Communications Sdn Bhd, Oberthur Technologies, and Babilon-Mobile.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:
Data Center on Demand Market Estimated to Flourish by 2024

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The last decade witnessed prolific growth in the number of data centers around the world to cater to the needs of global and local enterprises. An increasing number of businesses have adopted data centers to be more competitive and reap greater benefits while producing vast amounts of data. In the past, enterprises often faced the downside of a slight latency in information being, retrieved thereby seeing their performance affected. Post 2012, a tremendous increase in Internet traffic, data volume, and storage requirement due to the increased adoption of cloud-based services, gave rise to a new set of data centers called edge data centers. These are integrated units that contain cooling systems, UPS, fire suppression systems, etc. and serve 50%75% traffic of the local users, There are many factors driving The Global Data Center On Demand (DCoD) Market.The growing demand for edge data centers, is expected to be one of the major drivers of the market. This growing demand for edge data centers is originating from enterprises due to their low cost of ownership and their ability to reduce data traffic in core networks and resolve latency issues. Such benefits are expected to propel the market. The growing number of vendors offering data center on demand solutions is also driving the market. This is owing to the fact that more large organizations entering the DCoD business to accommodate the customer needs for mobile data center and data center commission in a small span of time. Also, the requirements of complexity reduction of traditional data centers and the need for quick data center commissioning are some of the factors propelling the markets growth. Moreover, data center and carrier hotel providers are also expanding their edge network of the data center that is further expected to drive the market.Request to View ToC of Report -There are many restraints on the global DCoD market. Regardless of technical innovations, the high chances of operational failure of a DCoD as compared to a traditional data center is one of the major restraints on the global DCoD market. Moreover, DCoDs are vulnerable to single-point failure and security threats, which are expected to restrain the markets growth.The global DCoD market can be segmented on the basis of product, industry vertical, and region. On the basis of product, the market can be divided into facility containers, IT containers, and all-in-one containers. On the basis of industry vertical, the market can be divided into BFSI, government and defense, energy and oil & gas, IT, retail, and telecommunications & CSPs. On the basis of region, the market can be divided into North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Europe, and South America. Europe is expected to hold a substantial share of market and witness prominent growth. North America is anticipated to follow Europe in terms of market share and growth.Request to View Brochure of Report -Some of the major players in the global DCoD market are BladeRoom Group Ltd., Bull SAS, Cirrascale Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Commscope Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Elliptical Mobile Solutions, Emerson Network Power, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., IBM, Modular Data Centers Stockholm AB, Rittal Systems Ltd., Schneider Electric SE, and ZTE 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:
Auto Dealer Software Market 2017 Global Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022

Auto Dealer Software Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Auto Dealer Software Market 2017 Global Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022.This report studies the Auto Dealer Software market, automotive dealer software is a kind of software which is mainly used in the automotive aftermarket. The automotive dealer software can help dealers or distributors to increase sales and margins, make smarter and faster inventory decisions and reduce returns etc.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Auto Dealer Software 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.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversCox AutomotiveCDK GlobalReynolds and ReynoldsRouteOneDealerSocketInternet BrandsDominion EnterprisesWiproEpicorYonyouELEAD1ONETitleTecARI Network ServicesWHI SolutionsInfomediaMAM SoftwareMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversDSM SoftwareCRM SoftwareMarketing SoftwareOther SoftwareMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoWeb-based SoftwareInstalled SoftwareAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Auto Dealer Software Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 DSM Software1.2.2 CRM Software1.2.3 Marketing Software1.2.4 Other Software1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Web-based Software1.3.2 Installed Software1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Cox Automotive2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Cox Automotive Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 CDK Global2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 CDK Global Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 Reynolds and Reynolds2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Reynolds and Reynolds Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 RouteOne2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 RouteOne Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 DealerSocket2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 DealerSocket Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6 Internet Brands2.6.1 Business Overview2.6.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 Internet Brands Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7 Dominion Enterprises2.7.1 Business Overview2.7.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Dominion Enterprises Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.8 Wipro2.8.1 Business Overview2.8.2 Auto Dealer Software Type and Applications2.8.2.1 Type 12.8.2.2 Type 22.8.3 Wipro Auto Dealer Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. 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Holographic Display Market Poised to Expand at a Robust Pace Over 2024

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The Holographic Display Market is expected to report strong growth between 2016 and 2024. The increasing use of holographic displays in medical imaging is one of the chief drivers of the market. Besides this, the rising demand for holographic projections at events, fashion shows, conferences, product launch ceremonies, and product marketing events is also expected to help the market gain pace through the course of the forecast period.The holographic displays in general use components such as light modulator, scanner, lens, digital micrometer, and monitor. Currently, the commercial application of holographic displays has increased at a rapid pace. In addition, the market is also expected to witness increasing demand from consumer application, industrial application, medical application, and military and space application segments. Such rising areas of applications are indicative of potential opportunities promising high CAGR for the market in the near future. Furthermore, with the launch of the latest technologies, the growth exhibited by the global holographic display market is expected to remain high over the forthcoming years.For the purpose of the study, the global holographic display market is segmented based on various parameters. For instance, based on technology the global holographic display market can be segmented into touchable, plasma, laser, semi-transparency, and electro holographic segments. In terms of product, the market can be classified into kiosks, digital signage, notebooks, medical scanners, and others.The report presents in-depth insight into the factors supporting the markets growth across the aforementioned segments. Compiled with the intent of updating stakeholders about the prevailing market dynamics, the report includes exhaustive information obtained from trusted industrial sources. Supported by coherent graphs, tables, and statistics, information thus disclosed in the report, is intended to help the market participants, both existing and new entrants, create winning strategies for the future.Request to View ToC of Report -Global Holographic Display Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global holographic display market is driven by the increasing demand for advanced medical imaging. The changing consumer preference towards PCs, smartphones, and tablets is expected to have a significant influence on the market. As consumer spending on advanced electronic devices increase, the projected sales of holographic displays is also expected to spike higher. Currently, the market is witnessing rising demand from the emerging economies. As consumers therein increasingly use tablet and other smart handheld devices for personal use, the demand for holographic displays is likely to increase further.On the downside, the high cost of assembling holographic display devices are playing a sort of spoilsport. The process involves manufacturing and fabrication of new technologies, which might prove cost-intensive for smaller companies. Furthermore, the pricing might seem expensive for consumers across underdeveloped nations, limiting the markets growth therein. Furthermore, holographic displays are yet to be commercialized in developing economies, however, post which the holographic displays market will be able to gain pace, as predicted by the TMR report.Global Holographic Display Market: Regional OutlookNorth America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World are covered under the report as the leading regional segments in the global holographic display market. Overall the market is poised to exhibit robust growth with North America, which is expected to continue exhibiting the most lucrative prospects. Besides this, the global holographic display market is also expected to witness attractive opportunities in Asia Pacific. High growth witnessed in emerging economies such as India and China is expected help the holographic display market gain pace in Asia Pacific.Request to View Brochure of Report -Global Holographic Display Market: Vendor LandscapeThe research reports includes a detailed assessment of the prevailing vendor landscape. For the purpose of the study, it thus compiles some of the leading market participants. These include companies such as Eon Reality Inc. (U.S.), AV Concepts (U.S.), Zebra Imaging (U.S.), Konica Minolta Inc. (Japan), Provision Holdings Inc. (U.S.), Holoxica (U.S.), Qualcomm (U.S.), Realview Imaging Ltd. (Israel), Musion Das Hologram Ltd. (U.K.), and ViewSonic Corp. (U.S.).The strengths and weaknesses of the companies profiled are gauged using the industry-leading analytical tool  SWOT analysis. The study also helps identify the strengths and weaknesses that these companies are projected to witness overview the course of the reports forecast period. It thus compiles exhaustive information needed for both existing as well as new players gain pace amidst the competition prevalent in the global holographic display 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:
Selfie Accessories Market Set to Surge Significantly During 2024

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Selfie is the self-representing photograph taken from digital camera or smartphone. The trend is changed instead of using self-timer or any other similar tools; the selfie is taken by positioning camera or smartphone at arm's length or pointing at the mirror. Though these tactics give images but not satisfactorily, therefore, to have photograph clicked as per the requirement without bothering any third person selfie concept is generated. Mostly, selfies are taken to share on social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tweeter and much more. When it comes to taking self-portrait using smartphone or camera, many selfie accessories are available in the market, ranging from selfie sticks to many apps. Selfie is booming the era; there is now entire industry dedicated to making a range of accessories and apps. As technology evolves, chances of growth of selfie accessories industry are also encountered. To have a perfect selfie is a big challenge, people do not hesitate to go beyond their budget to have a perfect click; fancy lighting, high resolution add on lenses, wireless remotes are some of the gadgets which assist in making a selfie a perfect selfie while easing the clicking process.Request to View ToC of Report -Global Selfie Accessories Market: Drivers & RestraintskThe key factor that lifts the market growth of selfie accessories is the increase in disposable income and development in popularity of social networking sites in metropolitan areas. Also, rise in Internet penetration has boosted the online selling platform. However, the ever growing demand for photography and videos has enhanced the growth of Selfie accessories across the globe. Increasing tourism, business travels, urban lifestyle and concept of celebrating every occasion of life has raised the demand of capturing the moments. Rising demand for smartphone is another factor, and most of the selfie accessories are built for smartphone front end cameras.Although demand and necessity of Selfie accessories in the market can be seen broadly, some factors such as no clear market leader, competition on the basis of pricing. Due to this price war, low-quality selfie accessories available in the market affecting selfie stick market negatively impacting on their market growth. Consequently, to deal with the low-quality gadgets, many companies of North America and European countries have started to manufacture selfie accessories.Request to View Brochure of Report -Global Selfie Accessories Market: Regional OutlookBased on the geographies, selfie accessories market is segmented into seven regions - North America selfie accessories market, Latin America selfies accessories market, Eastern Europe selfie accessories market, Western Europe selfie accessories market, Asia Pacific excluding Japan selfie accessories market, Japan selfie accessories market and the Middle East & Africa selfie accessories market. Asia Pacific excluding Japan is an emerging region because of the growing habit of the smartphone in developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea. In addition presence of large number of selfie accessories manufacturers in China and availability of these gadget at the low price is another reason making APEJ dominate selfie accessories market globally. Whereas North and Latin America as well as Eastern and Western Europe accounts decent growth in selfie accessories market. Global Selfie Accessories Market: Key PlayersFew of the market players accounting on Selfie accessories market includes Fotopro, Anker, KobraTech, Momax, Kootek Looq Robotics, Fromm works, Apple Inc., Satechi, Xiaomi, Selfie on A Stick, Selfie Stick Gear, Mpow, Samsung Electronics Co., Panasonic Corporation, Sony Corporation, Senheiser Electronic GmbH & Co. KG, Ltd., BYD company Limited, JVC Kenwood Corporation Energizer Holdings, Inc., and 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:
Kiosks Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Types, Components and End-user Verticals

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The Insight Partners added World Kiosks Market Report 2017-2025 to its research database. The report is spread across 150 pages and supported by 15 company leaders.Kiosk machine are increasingly evolving from retail store to movie theaters, hotels and airports for delivering information on events, products, customer feedback. It is expected to witness growth due to the rising need of self service in several application for customer satisfaction. It helps in offering customer convenience. Kiosk is an automated standalone machine within public exhibit that helps in providing knowledge and information and used for making transaction, brand promotion, placing order and are placed in public places such as hotels, airports, hospitals and shopping mall. Kiosk can provide patient to access health system in public places. Kiosk complement the common area as well as offers visibility to merchandise display. Kiosk are being used in various end user industries such as reception platform, retail, BFSI, tourism, ticketing and job application. Kiosk includes some of the benefits such as increase customer base, improve customer experience, reduce the cost of business, job satisfaction and efficiency.One of the major driving factor fueling the growth of kiosk market is that Kiosks are becoming a key revenue growth channel as well as an attractive means of enhancing customer service as customer service is an important factor in current market. Retailers are adopting self-service technologies to improve quality of service. In addition to this there are several other factors fueling the growth of market such as significant usage of kiosk witness at public media for easy accessibility for users and the space required for kiosk setup is limited thereby saving the cost of enterprise. However, the factors hindering the growth of kiosk market are lack of absence of interactive transaction, due to rapid advancement in technology manufacturers are having difficulty to keep abreast with latest technology, cyber threat and rise in telecom sector offering services such as 3G, 4G LTE. Increasing use of vending machine resulting the development of retail industry. Retail industry is expected to boost the market over the forecasted period.Request a Sample Report atKiosk market is segmented on the basis of type which includes internet & Tele kiosk, photo kiosk, DVD vending kiosk, employment kiosk, ticketing kiosk, patient self-service kiosk, BFSI kiosk, information & building directory kiosk and restaurants kiosk and further the market is breakdown as component such as hardware, software and services. Similarly the market is further segmented on the basis of end user vertical as It & Telecom, hospitality, public sector, healthcare, retail, industrial, travel & transport and others (research, education, etc.).The market is segmented into major regions that include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM). The major countries included are considered in the scope of the study such as U.S, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, China, Japan, India, Australia, South Arabia, UAE, South Africa and Brazil. Some of the key players which dominate kiosk market are Maas International, Glory Ltd., Coin Acceptors Inc., Westomatic, Crane Merchandising Systems, Fuji Electric Retail Systems, Flextronics International Ltd., IER SAS, iKS Technologies Inc., Lucidiom Inc., Phoenix Kiosk Inc., Meridian Kiosks LLC, Rosenthal Concept Kiosk, and Slabb Inc.Reason to BuyHighlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Kiosks market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.View Complete Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.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
Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market : Global Key players are GE Healthcare , Qualcomm , Jawbone Inc. , Withings SA

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Real time health monitoring devices provide real time analysis of the patients health parameters. Patients are sharing their healthcare information in real time with their caregivers through these devices for flexible health monitoring and management. Internet of medical things is vastly improving the healthcare conditions of patients. Tracking patient monitoring and drug management has become possible because of the usage of the above Internet of Things (IOT) medical devices in the healthcare sector. Increasing ageing population, surging healthcare expenses and an increase in the occurrence of chronic diseases is driving healthcare stakeholders to follow remote health management and patient monitoring seriously.The global market for real time health monitoring devices is expected to reach USD 67,982.2 million by 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.29% during the forecast period 2016-2022.Sample Report Available atKey Players for Global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market:Some of the key players in this market are: GE Healthcare (U.K.), Qualcomm (U.S.), Jawbone Inc. (U.S.), Withings SA (France), Fitbit Inc. (U.S.), Garmin Ltd. (Switzerland) and others.Key Finding The global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices market and is expected to reach USD 67,982.2 million by 2022 By type, Wearable devices holds the largest market share of global real time health monitoring devices market and is expected to reach USD 16,192.9 million in 2015 By end user, hospitals holds the largest market share of global real time health monitoring devices market is expected to reach USD 8,785.7 million in 2015.Segments:Global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market has been segmented on the basis of type which comprises of wearable devices, home health medical devices. On the basis of end user the market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, ambulatory centers and homecare settings.Regional Analysis of Global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market:The global market for real time health monitoring devices is growing rapidly. The market for real time health monitoring devices is growing with the CAGR of 14.29% during the forecast period from 2016-2022. North America accounts for largest market share in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 9,423.8 million in 2015.Asia-Pacific region is the fastest growing market for real time health monitoring devices, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.64% during the forecast period from 2016 to 2022.The report for Global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regionsBrowse complete report atTable of contents1. Introduction1.1 Scope of Study 101.2 Research Objective 101.3 Assumptions & Limitations 111.3.1 Assumptions 111.3.2 Limitations 111.4 Market Structure 112. Research Methodology2.1 Primary Research 132.2 Secondary Research 133. Market dynamics3.1 Introduction 143.2 Drivers 153.2.1 Increasing use of Smartphones and wearable devices into healthcare 153.2.2 Cost effectiveness and Patients Convenience to use these devices 153.2.3 Increased Usage Of Smart Devices For Health Management 163.3 Restraints 173.3.1 Lack of Awareness about the possible applications of real time health monitoring devices 173.3.2 Reluctance to share information regarding the health 173.4 Opportunities 183.4.1 Growing partnership between the companies has become the entrance gateway for new firms 183.4.2 Introduction of real time health monitoring device in developing economies will boost the growth of these device 183.5 Challenges 193.5.1 Low rate of literacy and language barriers in low- and middle-income countries is a big challenge for the real time health monitoring device solutions 193.5.2 Potential risk of Hardware or Software failure will barred the growth of the market 19Get a discount at4. Market factor analysis4.1 Real Time Health Monitoring Device: Porters Five Force Analysis 204.1.1 Threat from a New Entrant 224.1.2 Bargaining Power of Supplier 224.1.3 Threat from substitute 224.1.4 Bargaining Power of Buyer 234.1.5 Intensity of Competitive Rivalry 234.2 Value Chain Analysis 244.2.1 Device Manufacturers 254.2.2 App Developers 254.2.3 Network providers/ Mobile operators 254.2.4 Healthcare providers and Pharmaceuticals 264.2.5 Patients 265. Global Real Time Health Monitoring Devices Market, by type5.1 Introduction 275.2 Wearable Devices 295.2.1 Fitness Bands 305.2.2 Head Bands 305.2.3 Smart Watch 315.2.4 Smart Clothing 315.2.5 Others 325.3 Home Health Medical Devices 335.3.1 Blood Pressure Monitors 355.3.2 Glucometers 355.3.3 Pulse Oximeters 365.3.4 Other Medical Devices 36About usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@Marketresearchfuture.ComWeb:
Car Polisher Market 2017 Global Analysis By Key Players  Milwaukee Tool, Makita, Festool, Stanley Black & Decker, Chervon, Bosch

Car Polisher Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Car Polisher Market 2017 Global Analysis By Key Players  Milwaukee Tool, Makita, Festool, Stanley Black & Decker, Chervon, Bosch.This report studies the Car Polisher market, Car Polisher can be used to tackle a very heavily deteriorated finish.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Car Polisher 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.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversMilwaukee ToolMakitaFestoolStanley Black & DeckerChervonBoschHitach KokiSHANGHAI KEN TOOLSMeguiar'sGriot's GarageNOBLEMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversElectrical PolisherPneumatic PolisherMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoAutomotive Repair ShopAutomotive Care ShopOthersAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Car Polisher Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Electrical Polisher1.2.2 Pneumatic Polisher1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Automotive Repair Shop1.3.2 Automotive Care Shop1.3.3 Others1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Milwaukee Tool2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Milwaukee Tool Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 Makita2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 Makita Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 Festool2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Festool Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 Stanley Black & Decker2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 Stanley Black & Decker Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 Chervon2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 Chervon Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6 Bosch2.6.1 Business Overview2.6.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 Bosch Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7 Hitach Koki2.7.1 Business Overview2.7.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Hitach Koki Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.8 SHANGHAI KEN TOOLS2.8.1 Business Overview2.8.2 Car Polisher Type and Applications2.8.2.1 Type 12.8.2.2 Type 22.8.3 SHANGHAI KEN TOOLS Car Polisher Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Data Center Security Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Solutions, Services, Data Center Size and End-user Verticals

The Insight Partners

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Data center security is gaining importance in the recent years. Data center security is increasing enormously as large enterprise are upgrading data center security to handle the massive waves of cyber-attacks. Data center security is considered as a resource for enterprise and needs dedicated security initiatives. Data security is an integral sources for business data, they will take the business data from the various places and store it for final use. Data center security purpose is to make sure that the data is less accessible to hackers. Data center security is a practice which makes a data center more secure from different kinds of threat and attacks.One of the major driving factor fueling the growth of market for data center security is rise in cyber threat because digitalization of business world is putting companies at risk of cyber-attacks, increasing sophisticated attacks used by cyber criminals. In addition this there are several other reasons driving the market such as data traffic over the networks have increased demand for data center security solutions by various organizations, increased demand for advanced security center and adoption of data big data analytics & cloud computing and center virtualization. However, the factors hindering the growth of data center security are availability of substitute software at low cost and lack of awareness. Initiation of advanced data security solutions may add opportunity in the market for data center security.Request a Sample Report atData Center Security market is segmented on the basis of services such as security consulting services, professional security services and managed security services and the market is further segmented as solution such as physical security solutions and logical security solutions and further by data center size as small-sized data centers, medium-sized data centers, large-sized data centers and others (mega data centers, portable data centers, etc.). Similarly, the market is further segmented on the basis of end user vertical as BFSI, IT & Telecom, government, energy & utility, healthcare, retail and others (research & education, etc.)The market is segmented into major regions that include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM). The major countries included are considered in the scope of the study such as U.S, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, China, Japan, India, Australia, South Arabia, UAE, South Africa and Brazil. Some of the key players which dominate data center security are Schneider Electric Infrastructure Ltd., HP Development Company, L.P., Point Software Technologies Ltd., IBM Corp., McAfee, Inc., Dell, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Fortinet, Inc., Symantec Corporation and Siemens AGReason to Buy- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Data Center Security market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long term strategies.- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentation and industry verticals.View Complete Report atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.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
Digital Printed Wallpaper 2017 Global Market - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts

Digital Printed Wallpaper Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Digital Printed Wallpaper 2017 Global Market - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts.Digital printed wallpaper refer to murals are printed by digital style, with ultimate scaleabilty and vast color range. Colors and backgrounds can be tweaked to customer specifications from solid color, wood grain, paint drips to camouflage.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Digital Printed Wallpaper 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.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversA.S. CreationFathead, LLC.KOROSEAL Interior ProductsAsheuYork WallcoveringsBrewsterHollywood MonsterFlavor PaperRoysons CorporationYulan WallcoveringsTopli Decorative MaterialsCoshareBest AdvertisingMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversNon-woven TypePure Paper TypeVinyl-based TypeOthersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoHouseholdCommercialAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Digital Printed Wallpaper Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Non-woven Type1.2.2 Pure Paper Type1.2.3 Vinyl-based Type1.2.4 Others1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Household1.3.2 Commercial1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 A.S. Creation2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 A.S. Creation Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 Fathead, LLC.2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 Fathead, LLC. Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 KOROSEAL Interior Products2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 KOROSEAL Interior Products Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 Asheu2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 Asheu Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 York Wallcoverings2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 York Wallcoverings Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6 Brewster2.6.1 Business Overview2.6.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 Brewster Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7 Hollywood Monster2.7.1 Business Overview2.7.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Hollywood Monster Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.8 Flavor Paper2.8.1 Business Overview2.8.2 Digital Printed Wallpaper Type and Applications2.8.2.1 Type 12.8.2.2 Type 22.8.3 Flavor Paper Digital Printed Wallpaper Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Geothermal Power in Indonesia, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles

ReportsWeb

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ReportsWeb.com published Geothermal Power Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market."Geothermal Power in Indonesia, Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2016 - Capacity, Generation, Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Investment Trends, Regulations and Company Profiles" is the latest report from Publisher, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the wind power market in Indonesia.The report provides in depth analysis on global renewable power market and global geothermal power market with forecasts up to 2030. The report analyzes the power market scenario in Indonesia (includes conventional thermal, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030. The research details renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030. The report highlights installed capacity and power generation trends from 2006 to 2030 in Indonesia geothermal power market. A detailed coverage of renewable energy policy framework governing the market with specific policies pertaining to geothermal power is provided in the report. The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants.The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by Publisher's team of industry experts.For more information about this report@Report Scope:The report analyses global renewable power market, global geothermal power market, Indonesia power market, Indonesia renewable power market and Indonesia geothermal market. The scope of the research includes -- A brief introduction on global carbon emissions and global primary energy consumption.- An overview on global renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends, generation trends and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources. The information is covered for the historical period 2006-2015 (unless specified) and forecast period 2015-2030.- Renewable power sources include geothermal, solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), small hydropower (SHP), biomass, biogas and wind.- Detailed overview of the global geothermal power market with installed capacity and generation trends, installed capacity split by major geothermal power countries in 2015.- Power market scenario in Indonesia and provides detailed market overview, installed capacity and power generation trends by various fuel types (includes thermal conventional, nuclear, large hydro and renewable energy sources) with forecasts up to 2030.- An overview on Indonesia renewable power market, highlighting installed capacity trends (2006-2030), generation trends(2006-2030) and installed capacity split by various renewable power sources in 2015.- Detailed overview of Indonesia geothermal power market with installed capacity and generation trends and major active and upcoming geothermal projects.Request a Sample Report@- Deal analysis of Indonesia geothermal power market. Deals are analyzed on the basis of mergers, acquisitions, partnership, asset finance, debt offering, equity offering, private equity (PE) and venture capitalists (VC).- Key policies and regulatory framework supporting the development of renewable power sources in general and geothermal power in particular.- Company snapshots of some of the major market participants in the country.Companies Mentioned:PT PLN (Persero)PT Pertamina Geothermal EnergyPT Geo Dipa EnergiChevron Geothermal Indonesia, Ltd.Reasons to buy:- The report will enhance your decision making capability in a more rapid and time sensitive manner.- Identify key growth and investment opportunities in Indonesia geothermal power market.- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data for geothermal power market.- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industry's growth potential.- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events.- Identify key partners and business development avenues.- Understand and respond to your competitors' business structure, strategy and prospects.Inquire before Buying@About 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 service and our customer support team 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
HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Market by Manufacturers,Types,Regions and Applications Research Report Forecast to 2022

HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Market by Manufacturers,Types,Regions and Applications Research Report Forecast to 2022.HMPE is comprised of extremely long molecules (chains) of polyethylene oriented in the same direction, which results in large areas of overlap between the molecules. This overlap greatly increases the bond between the molecules and thereby, the strength of the fibre is greatly increased. When rope is manufactured using this fibre, extremely high strengths can be achieved.Dyneema? is the premium brand for High Modulus Polyethylene fibre.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes 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.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversLankhorst (WireCo)SamsonBridonEnglish BraidsMarlow RopesKatradisSouthern RopesTaizhou HongdaJiangsu ShenyunHunan ZhongtaiNingbo DachengRope TechnologyJuli SlingMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers3 Strand8 Strand12 StrandOthersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoAviation and MilitaryIndustrialOceanLeisureOtherAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 3 Strand1.2.2 8 Strand1.2.3 12 Strand1.2.4 Others1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Aviation and Military1.3.2 Industrial1.3.3 Ocean1.3.4 Leisure1.3.5 Other1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Lankhorst (WireCo)2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Lankhorst (WireCo) HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 Samson2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 Samson HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 Bridon2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Bridon HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 English Braids2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 English Braids HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 Marlow Ropes2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 Marlow Ropes HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6 Katradis2.6.1 Business Overview2.6.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 Katradis HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7 Southern Ropes2.7.1 Business Overview2.7.2 HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Southern Ropes HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) Ropes Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Articulated Industrial Robots: Global Market 2016-2021

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ReportsWeb.com published Articulated Industrial Robots Market from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.As major forms of industrial robots, articulated robots take most of the share in global fast-growing industrial robots market. Both the unit shipment and the sales revenue of articulated robots are forecast to grow at two-digit CAGRs throughout 2016-2021. Strongest drivers of the rapid growth will be the automotive industry followed by the electronics industry. Emerging economics are contributing greatly to the growth and gaining an increasing share in global articulated industrial robots market.Articulated Industrial Robots: Global Market 2016-2021 examines the worldwide market of articulated robotics through a comprehensive review and analysis of reliable information sources. With a review of market environments in the world, this report provides an in-depth and detailed analysis of market structure, the major industrial players/vendors, end-users, geographical landscape, and market forces. In most analysis, historical statistics together with market outlook cover the 2014-2021 period.Request a Sample Report@Qualitative market analyses include identification and discussion of growth drivers, restraints and challenges, emerging market trends/opportunities, Porters Fiver Forces as well as M&A landscape and fundraising trend (IPO and VCI).Worldwide articulated robot markets by end-users compose of articulated robotic manufacturing solutions in Automotive Industry, Electrical and Electronics Industry, Metal, Machinery, Plastics & Chemicals, Food & Beverage, and other industrial sectors. Automotive and electrical/electronics manufacture have been so far attracting the majority of new installations while applications in other industrial manufactures are speeding up.Geographic sub-markets include regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific region, Latin America and the rest of world (RoW). Specific analysis and forecast over 2014-2021 have been covered for articulated robots market in important economics such as U.S., China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Mexico. Asia-Pacific region remains the largest market in global articulated industrial robots sector in terms of sales volume as well as annual revenue, followed by European market and North America region. APAC also holds the strongest growth potential for the future articulated robots market with China and Southeast Asian countries expected to be the driving engines for the growth.The market data and forecast trends are highlighted by 5 tables and 52 figures. Current competitive scenario and latest news about major vendors are included. The global leading vendors of articulated robots are studied and profiled.Inquire Before Buying@Table of Content:1 Introduction1.1 Industry Definition and Scope1.2 Research Methodology1.3 Executive Summary2 Market Environment2.1 Prospects for the World Economy in 201520162.2 Outlook of the World Economy to 20303 Market Overview and Qualitative Analysis3.1 Market Structure3.2 Market Overview3.3 Major Growth Drivers3.4 Market Restraints and Challenges3.5 Emerging Opportunities and Market Trends3.6 Porters Fiver Forces Analysis3.7 Key M&A Trends and Strategic Partnerships3.8 IPO and VCI in Global Industrial Robot Market4 Global Articulated Robots Market by End-user4.1 Applications of Articulated Robots by Industrial Sector4.2 Automotive Industry4.3 Electrical and Electronics Industry4.4 Machinery4.5 Metal Industry4.6 Rubber, Plastics & Chemicals4.7 Food & Beverage4.8 Articulated Robots in Other Industrial Sectors5 Global Articulated Robots Market by Region5.1 Geographic Overview of Global Articulated Robot Market 2015-20215.2 North America Articulated Robot Market 2014-20215.2.1 Overview of North America Market5.2.2 U.S. Market5.2.3 Canadian Market5.3 European Articulated Robot Market 2014-20215.3.1 Overview of European Market5.3.2 Germany5.3.3 Rest of European Market5.4 Asia-Pacific Articulated Robots Market 2014-20215.4.1 Overview of Asia-Pacific Market5.4.2 Japan Market5.4.3 China5.4.4 South Korea5.4.5 Rest of APAC Region5.5 Latin America Articulated Robots Market 2014-20215.5.1 Overview of Latin America Market5.5.2 Mexico5.5.3 Rest of Latin America5.6 Articulated Robots Market in Rest of World 2014-20215.7 Relative Availability of Industrial Robots by Country 2013-20146 Manufacturing Landscape of Articulated Robots6.1 Overview of Global Articulated Robots Manufacture6.2 Key News6.3 Company ProfilesFor more information about this report@About 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 service and our customer support team 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
Salon Software In North America Market 2017 Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022

Salon Software In North America 2017

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Salon Software In North America Market 2017 Share,Trend,Segmentation and Forecast to 2022.This report studies the Salon Software market. Professionals working in the salon industry are often so occupied with helping customers that, at times, it can be difficult for them to manage multiple customer appointments. This problem is exacerbated during peak hours.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Salon Software in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversRosyMillenniumBookerPhorest Salon SoftwareIntelligent Salon SoftwareSpaGuruAcuity SchedulingProSolutions SoftwareShortcuts SoftwareInsight Salon SoftwareSimpleSpaHiveSalon IrisMarket Segment by Countries, coveringUnited StatesCanadaMexicoMarket Segment by Type, coversMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoSmall Businesses and Individual ProfessionalsMidsize BusinessesLarge EnterprisesAsk Query @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Salon Software Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Small Businesses and Individual Professionals1.3.2 Midsize Businesses1.3.3 Large Enterprises1.4 Market Analysis by Countries1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Mexico Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Canada Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Rosy2.1.1 Profile2.1.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Rosy Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.1.4 Business Overview2.1.5 Rosy News2.2 Millennium2.2.1 Profile2.2.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 Millennium Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2.4 Business Overview2.2.5 Millennium News2.3 Booker2.3.1 Profile2.3.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Booker Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3.4 Business Overview2.3.5 Booker News2.4 Phorest Salon Software2.4.1 Profile2.4.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 Phorest Salon Software Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4.4 Business Overview2.4.5 Phorest Salon Software News2.5 Intelligent Salon Software2.5.1 Profile2.5.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 Intelligent Salon Software Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5.4 Business Overview2.5.5 Intelligent Salon Software News2.6 SpaGuru2.6.1 Profile2.6.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 SpaGuru Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6.4 Business Overview2.6.5 SpaGuru News2.7 Acuity Scheduling2.7.1 Profile2.7.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Acuity Scheduling Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7.4 Business Overview2.7.5 Acuity Scheduling News2.8 ProSolutions Software2.8.1 Profile2.8.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.8.2.1 Type 12.8.2.2 Type 22.8.3 ProSolutions Software Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.8.4 Business Overview2.8.5 ProSolutions Software News2.9 Shortcuts Software2.9.1 Profile2.9.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.9.2.1 Type 12.9.2.2 Type 22.9.3 Shortcuts Software Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.9.4 Business Overview2.9.5 Shortcuts Software News2.10 Insight Salon Software2.10.1 Profile2.10.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.10.2.1 Type 12.10.2.2 Type 22.10.3 Insight Salon Software Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.10.4 Business Overview2.10.5 Insight Salon Software News2.11 SimpleSpa2.11.1 Profile2.11.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.11.2.1 Type 12.11.2.2 Type 22.11.3 SimpleSpa Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.11.4 Business Overview2.11.5 SimpleSpa News2.12 Hive2.12.1 Profile2.12.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.12.2.1 Type 12.12.2.2 Type 22.12.3 Hive Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.12.4 Business Overview2.12.5 Hive News2.13 Salon Iris2.13.1 Profile2.13.2 Salon Software Type and Applications2.13.2.1 Type 12.13.2.2 Type 22.13.3 Salon Iris Salon Software Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.13.4 Business Overview2.13.5 Salon Iris NewsContinue.Buy 1-User PDF @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Wearable Sensors Market 2020 Top Key Players - InvenSense, Inc., Panasonic Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, STMicroelectronics And More

Wearable Sensors Market

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The Global Wearable Sensors Market is growing with the rapid pace; mainly due the burgeoning Healthcare Sector. According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global Wearable Sensors Market is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecast period.Wearable Sensors Market Information, by Types (Motion Sensors, Medical Based Sensors, Image sensors, Position Sensors, Pressure Sensors, Inertial Sensors and Others), by Application (Smart Wristwear, Smart Glasses, Smart Bodywears, Smart Footwear and Other Wearable Devices) by End User (Consumer, Healthcare, Enterprise and Industrial and Others) - Forecast to 2020Wearable sensors in this report refer to the sensors which are used in smart wearable devices. Global wearable sensors market is driven by increasing demand of wearables for infants and continuously evolving sensor technology. With increasing personal care and health consciousness, for tracking biometrics such as calories burnt, heart rate and others, the demand for wearable fitness trackers and other wearables is increasing. Rapid expansion of internet of things (IoT) is driving demand of wearable sensors devices in various application areas such as healthcare and fitness, consumer electronics and others.Request a Sample Report @Key Players for Wearable Sensors Market: InvenSense, Inc., Panasonic Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments Incorporated, KIONIX, INC. (ROHM Co., Ltd.), Measurement Specialties, Inc., Analog Devices, Inc., ZOLL Medical Corporation (Asahi Kasei Corporation), Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., Infineon Technologies AG.Key Findings:Global wearable sensors market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 46.6% in terms of value and 26.2% in terms of volume.North America captured the largest market share for the global wearable sensors market and is expected to reach significantly by 2020.European market is second largest market for wearable sensors.Asia-Pacific region is fastest growing market and expected to grow with healthy CAGR during the forecast periodRegional Analysis of Wearable Sensors Market:Considering the global scenario of the market, North America region is believed to be the largest market for wearable sensors. Moreover the European market is also growing and second largest market for wearable sensors. On the other hand, Asia-Pacific market is expected to grow at the fastest pace in the wearable sensors during the forecasted period. Rest of the World is likely to have a limited but steady growth in the market.TABLE OF CONTENTS1 RESEARCH SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY1.1 Market Definition 121.2 Market Breakdown By Type, Application And End Users 121.3 Market Breakdown By Geography 131.4 Research Methodology And Sources 132 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1 Key Findings 152.2 Research Summary 153 MARKET OUTLOOK3.1 Introduction 173.2 Wearable Sensors By Type 173.2.1 Motion Sensors 173.2.2 Medical Based Sensors 183.2.3 Image Sensors 193.2.4 Position Sensors 193.2.5 Pressure Sensors 193.2.6 Inertial Sensors 203.2.7 Other Sensors 203.3 Wearable Sensors By Application 213.3.1 Smart Wristwear 213.3.2 Smart Glasses 213.3.3 Smart Bodywears 223.3.4 Smart Footwear 223.3.5 Other Wearable Devices 233.4 Wearable Sensors By End User 233.4.1 Consumer Applications 233.4.2 Healthcare Applications 243.4.3 Enterprise And Industrial Applications 253.5 Trends In The Market 253.5.1 Usage Of Cloud Computing In Wearables 253.5.2 Integration Of Sensors And Sensor Innovations 263.6 Opportunities In The Market 263.6.1 Introduction Of Smart Textile In Wearable Electronics 263.6.2 Wearable Systems In Physiological Monitoring 273.7 Factors Driving The Market And Its Impact On Market Forecast 273.7.1 Rise In Wearable Sensors For Infants 273.7.2 Rise In Home And Remote Patient Monitoring 283.7.3 Rapid Innovations In Sensor Technology 283.7.4 Impact Analysis Of Drivers On Market Forecast 293.8 Factors Hindering The Market And Its Impact On Market Forecast 293.8.1 Privacy And Security Concerns 293.8.2 Higher Power Consumption 293.8.3 Thermal Considerations And Device Protection 303.8.4 Technical Difficulties (Hardware And Software Issues) 313.8.5 Impact Analysis Of Restraints On Market Forecast 324 GLOBAL MARKET SIZE AND FORECASTS (20112020)4.1 Global Market Breakdown By Type 354.2 Global Market Breakdown By Application 384.3 Global Market Breakdown By EndUser 414.4 Global Market Breakdown By Region 42ContinuedApply For Discount @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.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
Digital Remittance Market Growth | Global Major Key Players Analysis | Revenue, Business Planning and Forecast till 2022

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Global Digital Remittance Market Size, Status And Forecast 2022 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.According to the World Bank, global remittance market was valued at $ 575 billion in 2016, annually, several people send remittances worth thousands of billions of dollars to family, friends, or business associates in foreign countries. Cash-based operators facilitate the transfer of such huge remittance amount.This market knowledge report is an extensive investigation of the circumstance of Digital Remittance market. A definite examination of the past advance, display showcase situation, and future prospects has been offered in the report. It also gives accurate data of the main strategies, market share, and products of the leading companies in this market sector.Get Sample copy of this Report @:Companies Profiled in this report includes, Mobetize Corp., Remitly, Regalii, peerTransfer, Currency Cloud, Azimo, WorldRemit, TransferWise, Ripple, MoneyGramDigital remittance market is driven by rise in digitization & automation, reduced remittance cost & transfer time, and growth in adoption of banking & financial services. Furthermore, regulatory initiatives that encourage all financial institutions to become more transparent and nurture richer ecosystems of data & partners supplement the market growth. However, lack of awareness & guidance is a major factor that restrains people from opting for digital remittance transfer mode.Early Buyers will get 30% Discount on this Report @:Microeconomic and macroeconomic factors which affect the Digital Remittance market and its growth, both positive and negative, are also studied. The report features the impact of these factors on the ongoing market throughout the mentioned forecast period. The up and coming evolving patterns, factors driving and additionally confining the development of the market are specified.This study provides an evaluation of aspects that are expected to impact growth of market in an undesired or constructive method. The Digital Remittance market has been consistently examined with respect to the corresponding market fragments. Each year within the mentioned forecast period is concisely considered in terms of produce and worth in the regional as well as the global markets respectively.Access Complete Report @:Reasons to Access the Digital Remittance Market Research Report:This research report analyzes the global Digital Remittance market in a detailed manner by explaining the key aspects of the market that are expected to have a quantifiable influence on its developmental prospects over the forecast period. The report dissects the whole request and store network in the worldwide market and further investigations the different parts. Likewise, various investigation devices, for example, Porter's five powers examination and SWOT investigation have been utilized to give an exact comprehension of this market to the readers.Table of ContentsGlobal Digital Remittance Market Size, Status And Forecast 2022Chapter 1 Digital Remittance Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Digital Remittance Market ForecastAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr,Houston, TX, Pin  77064,+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com,
New Research on Liquid Natural Gas Market healthy growth rate profiling key players BG Group, Shell, Chevron, Total, Bechtel Corporation

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4:52 p.m.: This story has been updated with additional comments from Rodger Voelker, the lab director of OG Analytical.

An owner of a state-licensed cannabis testing business in Eugene said she has taken steps to sever ties to her company after local activists alleged she participates in neo-Nazi activites.

Bethany Sherman, listed in state records as managing member and CEO of OG Analytical, said Wednesday she is stepping down from the company she founded in 2013 and plans to sell the lab.

In a lengthy written response to Eugene Antifa's claims that she is associated with white power groups, the Eugene resident denied being a neo-Nazi and said her only "crime is a thought crime."

"I find it extremely disconcerting that it is admired and revered to have 'gay pride,' 'black pride,' 'Asian pride, or pride in any other cultural heritage, but if you have 'white pride' it automatically makes you a Nazi, and you are ostracized, attacked, and lynched by your community," she wrote in a statement issued to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "I admit, I am proud that I am white, and I'm not ashamed of my heritage. And I admit that I have been so conditioned to feel shame about this pride that I discreetly sought community where I could.

"Knowing the potential ramifications of my actions, I did my best to keep them incredibly discreet," she said, adding that she did not disclose her views to her coworkers.

She said the online community she discovered "was not the right community for me" and has withdrawn "all communication" from it.

Eugene Antifa alleged in a report this week that Sherman and Matthew L. Combs, also listed on state records as an owner of OG Analytical, are neo-Nazis and that Combs is an organizer for the American Patriots Brigade, which it said serves as a support group for the neo-Nazi gang American Front. It also alleges that Sherman has supplied food and support for neo-Nazi gatherings and operated a Twitter account under the handle, @14th_word. That account was inactive Wednesday morning, but activists with Eugene Antifa archived the tweets.

According to a screenshot Eugene Antifa took of the Twitter account, the bio says it belongs to a "#nationalist mommy. Our children deserve to be raised in a wholesome environment free of oppression against whites."

The Anti-Defamation League says "14 words" is a white supremacist slogan, meaning, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

Sherman did not respond to a text asking if she managed that Twitter account.

Eugene Antifa said it obtained access to a server for a chat app called Discord, which it mined for information about Sherman and Combs' connections to white power groups. The group said it reviewed messages detailing activities and interactions of various organizations with neo-Nazi beliefs.

Sherman has been active in the cannabis industry and served on a state subcommittee for marijuana lab rules. According to the company's website, she founded OG Analytical in 2013.

Sherman on Wednesday said Combs has not been active in the company since 2013. The two have a child but their relationship status was unclear Wednesday; Sherman declined to respond to multiple text messages asking about the couple's status.

Combs did not respond to multiple text messages about antifa's claims.

Rodger Voelker, lab director for OG Analytical, said Wednesday employees decided Tuesday that the company could not continue with Sherman as owner.

Voelker said he learned of the allegations for the first time this week, calling them "horrific" and "disgusting." He said he does not have a personal relationship with the couple outside of work and said he was flabbergasted by the claims.

"It blindsided all of us," he said. "It's unbelievable that you can work with people -- our relationship is purely professional. We don't share personal beliefs, religious, political or anything else. This is just unbelievable."

He said he wants to distance himself and the company, which has a dozen employees, from the explosive allegations.

"We were literally drug into this ugly, ugly swamp through no actions of our own," he said. "It's just by association. It's a really horrific situation."

He said he asked the couple directly about the claims. He declined to say how they responded.

The company experienced a swift backlash to the antifa report, said Voelker, who said business has come to a halt since the allegations were made public.

The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2015 hired OG Analytical to test hash oils for pesticide residue.

"We have already seen a 100 percent decline in our business," he said. "Nobody likes Nazis."

HiFi Farms on Wednesday announced it would stop doing business with OG Analytical in light of the information reported by Eugene Antifa.

Voelker said Sherman came to the lab Wednesday "in a moment of extreme distress" and blamed the staff for failing to support her when antifa's allegations became public.

"She came in and went off on us for not supporting her," said Voelker. "She was shocked we didn't stand up and support her and we said we can't support these beliefs."

Voelker said other employees angrily confronted Sherman about her views.

"She doesn't seem to get that those views are repugnant to most people," Voelker said.

Voelker said he's meeting with lawyers on Thursday to discuss his options. He said he plans to come into work to finish testing the samples the company agreed to test, but the company's future is grim.

"The brand is dead," he said. "It's over."

Here is Sherman's full response to the allegations:

December 6, 2017

An article was recently put out about me, my family, and my company by Eugene Antifa, a local chapter of an extremist, domestic terrorist organization. I would like to address these claims head-on. I am not, nor have I ever been, a "Neo-Nazi" or affiliated with any "Neo-Nazi" group or any other extremist organization.

The accusations made against me and my family are very upsetting to me, and I want to make it clear that this is not who we are. The contents of this article are very twisted in their portrayal of events.

My only crime is a thought crime, akin to 1984. I believe that the world is tapestry of beautiful colors, each one full of a wealth of cultural heritage, and that each culture has a right to be proud of their heritage, and an obligation to protect and preserve that culture. I believe that this tapestry is not exclusive of European Americans, and I find it extremely disconcerting that it is admired and revered to have "Gay Pride," "Black Pride," "Asian Pride," or pride in any other cultural heritage, but if you have "White Pride," it automatically makes you a Nazi, and you are ostracized, attacked, and lynched by your community. I admit, I am proud that I am white, and I'm not ashamed of my heritage. And I admit that I have been so conditioned to feel shame about this pride that I discreetly sought community where I could. Knowing the potential ramifications of my actions, I did my best to keep them incredibly discreet. I did not share this activity or my believes with anyone in my professional community. I further admit that I also quickly realized that this was not the supportive online community I had found was not the right community for me, and somewhere near half a year ago I withdrew all communication with that community. To be clear, this community was NOT any faction of ANY "Neo-Nazi" organization. The community I'm referring to is comprised of hard working, good-hearted people like you and like me, who are forced into secrecy because they share similar beliefs, which Eugene Antifa is now proving to be true: that being White and having pride in your cultural heritage will make you the victim of hate crimes. I learned a great deal from this experience, and have learned even more in the last 24 hours since this article was published.

My hiring practices, my business partnerships, and my friendships should say enough about the fact that neither myself, nor my company has in any way acted in a discriminatory fashion against anyone for their race, religion, politics, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, disability, or other. We just hosted our Company Christmas party and I gladly welcomed a wealth of diversity into the joyous occasion. I have donated thousands of dollars to support organizations like the Human Rights Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Red Cross, and The MS Society. I have created jobs for 15 people, I've volunteered hundreds of hours to organizations like Good Will, CALC, and The State of Oregon to help build and establish regulations. I have founded organizations whose aim to bring people together for the betterment of our communities. I am a human being, just like you, and I've worked very hard to give back and to create a safe and accessible industry for ALL Oregonians. I am the victim of a hate crime, perpetrated by an anonymous organization whose primary aim is to ruin other peoples' lives. I have never made any such attempts at hurting any other human being, in any way (including via defamatory articles or social media posts) for any reason, nor have I EVER made any discriminatory overtures. Let's be clear about this: Neither myself, nor my company, have ever, EVER practiced, preached, or recruited anyone to practice or preach hate or hateful rhetoric in ANY way. I hope that my community can find it within themselves to see beyond these hurtful claims at who I really am, at the work I've done in this community to help build it, and trust that these claims don't fit me; that I am a good, loving person, committed to my community, and that this commitment has no shred of hate or discrimination in it.

The remarks made in this article have had a devastating effect on not only me, but on each of my 14 hardworking employees who are completely unrelated to the contents of the aforementioned article. To be clear, I still have yet to receive a single dollar in profit from OG Analytical, instead diverting the company earnings to better support my employees for 4 years in a row. I am proud that we launched a full benefits program this year, including health, vision, dental, and vacation time, and have elected to payout employee bonuses each year instead of paying out profits to owners. My employees have been dedicated to our mission of building a sustainable cannabis testing industry, which, in odd contrast, requires that we remove all bias from the work we do. By boycotting OGA, you're not hurting me, you're hurting the 14 hardworking people unrelated to this accusation who rely on OGA for their living.

This being said, the devastating impacts of this article are clear, regardless of any statement I could possibly make about them. Abhorrent racial epithets have covered our social media pages to the point that I took them down to save my employees and clients from further harassment. I find it difficult for me to find a path forward with the company while salvaging the hard work each of my employees has put into OG Analytical. Without these people, I could not have accomplished all the successes this company has seen in the last 4 years. In effort to save my team from further harm, I am resigning as CEO of OG Analytical effective immediately, and offering up the company for sale.

-- Noelle Crombie

ncrombie@oregonian.com

503-276-7184

@noellecrombie
Bystanders rescue man from truck driven into Charlevoix's Round Lake

Several bystanders helped save the life of the driver who ended up in Round Lake in a Nov. 11 incident.
Brendon Rubie is the 2017 WSOP Sydney $5K Champion

December 07, 2017 Kim Yuhl Contributor

In last year's $5,000 Challenge at the World Series of Poker Circuit Sydney, Brendon Rubie had the title in his grasp. But as things went awry, as they often do in poker when you think you have things figured out, Rubie finished in second place to Luke Edwards. And redemption was on his mind as he maneuvered through a field of 229 entrants all wanting to claim their share of the $1,087,750 prize pool this time around.

Rubie wouldn't have it easy as he tried to earn his seat at back-to-back final tables. As you would expect with a $5k buy-in, the field was tough and littered with household-name pros including Randy 'nanonoko' Lew, Celina Lin and 2005 WSOP Main Event Champion Joe Hachem. Plenty of well-known local talent also made their way to the felt including Aussie pros Jarred Graham, Daniel Nielson, and Jonathan Karamalikis.

Unfortunately for Karamalikis, his tournament was cut short when he was eliminated on the bubble. He ran his into the of Steve Pappas. There was no queen in sight and Karamalikis found himself eliminated in 25th place, guaranteeing the remaining 24 players at least $10,039.

Once the bubble burst, the bustouts came at a furious pace and before anyone noticed, the tournament was down to its final ten players. And it was another big name that would bubble a milestone.

Playing for a seat at the official final table, Hachem moved all of his chips into the middle with a pair of kings and liked where he stood against the ace-king of Sam Higgs. At least until the board ran out that is. Higgs found what he needed when the board was dealt giving him a flush and sending Hachem home.

With Hachems elimination, the final table was set and Rubie was ready to claim victory. "This is just ridiculous," Rubie told the Star Poker Live Reporting Team. "To be here again after coming so close last year is amazing."

The Final Table

Seat Name Chips 1 Ray Liu 420,000 2 Ryan Pignatelli 240,000 3 Brendon Rubie 400,000 4 Andy Lee 690,000 5 Jordan Westmorland 450,000 6 Charbel Boustani 350,000 7 Sam Higgs 1,240,000 8 Antonis 'Toothpick Tony' Kambouroglou 335,000 9 Steve Pappas 250,000

With an overwhelming chip lead, one might expect that Higgs would be flexing his muscle at the final table. And he wasted no time in doing just that by eliminating Antonis 'Toothpick Tony Kambouroglou. Higgs effectively put Kambouroglou all in when he raised from UTG with . Kambouroglou made the call holding and his hopes were dashed when he saw the come on the flop. There was no runner-runner miracle and Toothpick Tony was eliminated in ninth-place taking $25,159 with him.

Higgs continued to collect chips and maintain pressure on his opponents. It was Ray Liu who next tried to tackle the beast when he moved all in with . Unfortunately for him, Higgs had an easy call tabling . There was no surprise ending here and Liu exited in eighth place with $31,544 to show for his efforts.

It was Steve Pappas who finally put a dent in Higgs' armor. After doubling through Higgs, Pappas claimed the next elimination when he snap-called the all in of Ryan Pignatelli. Pappas held , while Pignatelli showed . Pappas paired his ten on the turn and Pignatelli couldn't find an out on the river. Pignatelli racked up $40,137 for his seventh-place finish.

Rubie Takes the Lead

It was right about this time that Rubie started to make his move after calling the all in of Charbel Boustani. Boustani was ahead going into the flop with against Rubie's . The flop was a good one for Boustani and he felt a bit better after the was dealt on the turn. But the river was cruel, as it often is when it served up the sending Boustani home in sixth place with $51,831.

Higgs has pretty much been the table captain throughout the final table. Well, his reign was about to come to an end. Rubie raised to 55,000 preflop and Higgs made the call. Rubie continued for 60,000 on a flop of and once again, Higgs called. The turn revealed the and Rubie led for 125,000 and instead of calling this time, Higgs moved all in. Rubie made the call and Higgs show for two pair. It was Rubie, however, who held the lead with a better two pair when he showed . The river didn't change anything and the pot put Rubie above the 1 million chip mark.

Rubie wasted no time putting his chips to good use.Andy Lee was all in with against Rubie's . The flop looked to be in Lee's favor and then the turn was dealt. What's an all in without a sweat, right? Well, the river gives Rubie the miracle straight, sending Lee to the rail, $67,951 richer.

Rubie maintained the pressure on his opponents and Pappas was only left with one move when Rubie raised to 55,000 pre-flop. With all his chips in the middle and only a slight dog heading the flop, Pappas was hoping to pair one of his two over cards. But Rubie's held up and Pappas was sent home in fourth place with $90,468.

Three-Handed Chip Counts

Seat Name Chips 1 Brendon Rubie 2,400,000 2 Sam Higgs 1,700,000 3 Jordan Westmorland 400,000

It didn't take much time to get to heads up. Higgs moved all in on the river with the board reading and Jordan Westmorland made the call. Higgs showed for two pair. Westmorland tried to find something in his hand but ended up mucking it and his chance at a ring in the process. Westmorland leaves the tournament in third place with $122,328. Hopefully, his six-figure payday is a sufficient consolation prize for his two days of effort.

And it was just two hands later that 2017 WSOP Sydney $5K Champion was crowned. All the chips were in the middle preflop and the players tabled their hands.

Rubie:

Higgs:

After the flop was dealt, Higgs realized he would need a runner-runner to stay alive. The on the turn sealed his fate and the on the river officially eliminated Higgs in second place and solid $166,079 for a great run.

Final Table Results

Seat Name Chips 1 Brendon Rubie $271,952 2 Sam Higgs $166,079 3 Jordan Westmorland $122,328 4 Steve Pappas $90,468 5 Andy Lee $67,951 6 Charbel Boustani $51,831 7 Ryan Pignatelli $40,137 8 Ray Liu $31,544 9 Antonis 'Toothpick Tony' Kambouroglou $25,159

Rubie liked his chances from the beginning of the day, saying, "I knew from the start of Day 2 when there were 34 runners left that this tournament was mine to win. I had a good stack and I was playing well. I knew I could win but I was still really grateful. Making it to the final table is always such a luxury. I just keep trying to do my best, it was a really tough final table and it was great to get the win."

Rubie is comfortable playing in the Star Poker Room and always makes room in his hectic schedule to play some of the marquee events. "Because I travel a lot for different tournaments I only get to come (to the Star Poker Room) every few months," Rubie said. "But I think it is really fantastic here, they have done a great job with the place. I always make a point of telling people how good the room is because it is a really great poker room now. Definitely worth the visit."

There Is Still Plenty of Action Down Under

There is plenty more action to come at the 2017 WSOP Sydney Circuit. With some great events still to be played, including the Main Event, you can probably bet on the fact that Rubie will make another appearance. The tournament series is being held through December 18, 2017, and you can find the full schedule can be found on the StarPoker website.
What is pop music in the year 2017? Honestly, even pop music itself was unsure how to answer that question.

The 2016 Presidential Election lead to a hyper-polarized climate where everything was politics whether one liked it or not. Some people suggested that the coronation of Donald Trump would lead to some great protest music, but that astoundingly narrow-minded view negated the fact that such supposed art would come at the cost of people lost losing rights to travel and be in the military and seek sanctuary when its truly needed. While courts blocked some of those orders, their effects nonetheless affected an untold number of lives, leading to mass protests unlike any political movement in recent memory. No one was stopped from trying to articulate the populist rage on either side of the political spectrum through their art, but if were being honest here, no one has been able to pull it off successfully so far.

For evidence of this, look no further than staunch Hillary Clinton supporter Katy Perry. She finally unleashed her new album

Witness, which was lead by the vaporwave-indebted politically-minded single Chained to the Rhythm, and after unleashing a continuous succession of chart-topping singles, having the lead track from her new album stall at Number Four on the Billboard charts showed that Perry was whittling down her audience to the core, and the albums two followup singles didnt even break the Top 40.

Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus did a turn for country music as a move

to appease and court Trump supporters and show the world it was a better place (that album flopped, for the record). Conversely, planet-swallowing publicity machine Taylor Swift tried parlaying her recent dramas into confrontational dance music, but she instead got caught up in countless political narratives, from those condemning her for not condemning Trump to those claiming her music had become a rallying cry for American neo-Nazis everywhere. Even as recently as 2015, these kind of questions would never have entered the thoughtspace of any given pop idol.

So what is pop music in 2017? For some, its pure escapism: a way to escape the desperate headlines that dominate our everyday. For others, its standing up for causes that matter, which is why Logic broke through with his song 1-800-273-8255, a heartbreaking plea to not take your own life which lead to The National Suicide Prevention Hotline (whose number is the title of the song)

to reach historic levels of call volume. For others, it wasnt even escapism: there was music out that that just made you want to forget all of this heaviness and just dance your cares away.

No matter where your politics line up, at least we can all still rally together and celebrate some of the best pop releases of the year, whether it be a fiery new album from Betty Who, a long-anticipated new album from Haim, a surprisingly-sturdy debut release from former boy band frontman Harry Styles, the most accessible release to date from Portugals favorite pop-rock export The Gift to nothing of the countless unearthed and unheard of re-releases weve seen this year. There was an uncovered album from Dion, a re-issued classic from Paul Collins Beat, and king above them all was Prince, whose super-deluxe reissue of

Purple Rain pulled out all the stops and gave us enough unheard and oft-bootlegged tracks to qualify itself as the greatest Prince album never released.

So sit back, relax (for once), and enjoy the most joyous and surprising pop releases weve had the pleasure of spending time with during this monumental year.

15. House of Feelings  Last Chance EP (Infinite Best)



From its clattering saxophone wails to its emotional and joyous Shamir cameo, Matty Fasano positively announced himself to the world with the debut release under the guise House of Feelings, a dancey little ball of fire that covers a lot of genres in its scant eight songs. At times it feels like the best basement rave youve ever been to, at times it sounds like a bedroom pop stoner-party masterpiece, but no matter how you splice it, its a damn fun, often weird little album, with distorted voices asking if you remember how we met on Twitter. In many ways, theres no rhyme or reason to the House of Feelings aesthetic, but therein lies the appeal: even in a short EPs length, you will find yourself giddy with all of HoFs possibilities.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-chance-ep target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha.. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha..&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha.. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha..&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Last Chance EP by House of Feelings&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-chance-ep target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha.. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha..&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha.. target=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://houseoffeelings.bandcamp.com/album/last-cha..&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Last Chance EP by House of Feelings&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

14. Dune Rats  The Kids Will Know Its Bullshit (Dine Alone)

Danny Beausa and BC Michaels make this look easy: the hooks are immediate, the attitude is bratty, and this Brisbane punk-pop grab-bag can sometimes get away with lyrics where they suddenly, outside of rhyme scheme, just say blah blah blah. It may sound casual or even tossed-off, but thats the point: for the second Dune Rats full length, the group sing about free love and a guy who owes them money to score LSD, but its all presented with such intensity and sense of purpose that its hard not to want to join in on their sweaty, drug-fueled party. Scott Green will go down as an all-time indie-punk classic, but that song anchors an album of unrelenting energy, their lyrics filled with disaffection thats been curbed with clouds of weed smoke. Its trashy. Its fun. Its addictive. So go on: give in. This is peer pressure that you can handle, wimp.

13. Jessie Ware  Glasshouse (Interscope)



Jessie Wares debut album came out five years ago, but it already feels like shes been a member of the pop music firmament for so much longer, as her beguiling voice has given and shape and form to songs that feel truly timeless, beaming in the light of the new even as it feels like theyve been around for decades. With Glasshouse, Ware has stripped things down considerably, going for songs with bare instrumentation, which in turn forces her voice and lyrics to be the center of the show. Its a gambit that pays off in stellar fashion, as lead single Midnight sounds like a modern-day soul standard, albeit on her own terms. Ware continues to take risks at every turn: First Time is built off a choir of her own multi-tracked vocals, while Stay Awake, Wait for Me has the lightest touches of country classicism painted over its sparse verses. With all these distinct detours, Glasshouse may not have been the Jessie Ware album we were expecting, but it points to all the directions her stylish and sophisticated pop sonic will be going. Were just lucky to be along for the ride.

12. Miami Horror  The Shapes EP (self-released)

Is it weird to think of an EP as the greatest distillation of an artists essence? It doesnt happen very often (some would still point to TV on the Radios opening salvo as their finest offering), but for Australias finest 80s-pop aficionados  already two full-length albums into their career  they really gave this short, concise six-song EP everything they got. As an opening salvo, Sign of The Times uses Miami Horrors group vocals to a stunningly emotional effect, while Trapeze feels like the best ripoff of the beat to Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime weve ever heard. Azimba (a knock of I Zimbra perhaps?) realizes its African-indebted polyrhythms can lead to some good-ol-fashioned rump-shakin, and all of this, in a scant 23 minutes, results in one of the best dance parties youre likely to have all year. The great thing about an EP this short? Once its over, youre left wanting more, which just means youll have to put it on again.

11. LANY- LANY (Interscope)



This full-length has been a long time coming, as the trio that is LANY (short for Los Angeles New York) have been dropping EPs full of millennial sweet-talk since 2014. Their last offering, 2016s

kinda, showed them finally honing in on the spoke-sung smooth blog-pop sound that would become the core of their musical identity, and their eponymous debut album carries on in that vein perfectly. Every chorus is punctuated with a too-catchy-for-its-own-good keyboard riff that only serves to drive the groups overly romantic (and sometimes borderline creepy) lyrics home. Its a daring little album, full of heartbreaks and breakbeats, obsessions and confessions. Keep an eye on their fans this whole time, because those who fall in love with it dont just like it: they become fixated with it  and for good reason.

10. Mack Keane  2107 EP (MasonMack)

One listen to I Would, the stunning horn-centric slice of soul that sits at the heart of NYC-bred Mack Keanes

2107 EP, and its obvious that beyond some obvious blue-eyed soul comparisons, Keane means what he sings, continuing on Jamie Lidells electronic/R&B hybrid experiments to its logical conclusion. From the midnight bedroom sleekness of Unconventional to the stuttering Benny and the Jets-aping piano bounce of Model Behavior, Keane establishes his pop credentials firmly on this seven-track sampler of his skills, seemingly stuck between genres but never once sounding out of place. He masters any style of song thrown his way without succumbing to mere chamelonisms, his vibrant warble finding its place within the songs but never showboating just for the sake of it. No matter which way you slice it, this is an absolutely thrilling debut.

9. !!!  Shake the Shudder (Warp)



Lets pour one out for !!!, shall we? It seems that no matter how brilliant and propulsive their shuddering brand of dance-rock gets, people just kind of expect this level of quality from Nic Offer at this point, almost to the point of dismissal. Its a real shame too, because

Shake the Shudder marks yet another high watermark for the band, mixing hard grooves with weird lyrics and this time out featuring some of the groups synthiest excursions yet. The One 2 tussles with drum-and-bass for the first time ever, but the humorous lounge groove of Imaginary Interviews shows that no matter how (or how little) press !!! receives these days, Offer isnt without a great sense of humor. Jokes on us though: !!! are just going to keep getting better whether we give them the time of day or not. Would write more about this album but cant: too busy dancing.

8. Amelia Airhorn  Amelia Airhorn (self-released)



Release for free due to the sheer number of samples used here that would be too expensive to license, this glorious mixtape matches up the sleek dance music kings The Knocks with the creator of

PopMatters 2015 Best Pop Album Skylar Spence, and the melding of minds results in a project that doesnt even try to hide how much it sounds like The Avalanches, which is just  great. Songs are built out of scraps and pieces, meaning you hear a bit of a pitch-shifted Jay-Z verse here, the Friends TV theme song there, a crazy drum break underscoring all of that. The two Street Performers are custom-made for getting crazy on the dance floor and NY Is Red Hot grinds and boogies with horns blaring out the lead melody lines, but its that solo pop single that is Miracle that truly captivates, the first new lick of Skylar Spence music weve heard in some time. Its a barn-stormer of a banger, rife with sampled disco strings, Daft Punk-aping synth work underneath, and a feeling of euphoria that washes over you before the song even ends. The whole album may have been conceived as a one-off goof of a collaboration, but these songs will stick with us for years to come.

7. Lorde  Melodrama (Lava)



Its hard to know what we were expecting for Lordes second full-length, cos as dominating and intriguing as her sparse-beats-meets-hyperspecific-lyrics mindset was, her debut album came out when she was only 16 years old. Impressive as it was, a lot can change during your teenage years, so when she took four years until the release of

Melodrama, we didnt know certain things, like how she had snuck off to make the album with go-to pop music producer Jack Antonoff, whose piano-based pop leanings seemed like a natural fit for everyones favorite New Zealand diva. The end result was still surprising though, as her songs were more fully musically realized, more fleshed out. Her lyrics, however, were as cutting as ever, and songs like Homemade Dynamite and Supercut showed off her biting view towards romance, later dropping casual swears in the midst of otherwise soundtrack-ready songs like Perfect Places because why not? Lordes been offered a lot of freedom in a very short amount of time, and shes using every inch of it to lay out a very specific vision  were all just lucky to bear witness.

6. St. Vincent  MASSEDUCTION (Loma Vista)



St. Vincent wasnt in need of saving: she switched to the major label system for 2014s self-titled effort, and it turned into her highest-charting record yet despite the fact that it was arguably her weirdest record to date.. Yet the St. Vincent we get on

MASSEDUCTION cant turn off what turns it on, and even with some Jack Antonoff pop overtones, it somehow manages to out-weird even its predecessor, layering the guitar parts and over-elaborate production to the point where it feels like the album is an alien machine that spits out nothing but sex jams for robots that can feel. Yet as lusty and lovely as the whole affair is, Annie Clark still found time to write her most concise and unadorned pop songs to date, leaving New York as a true blue classic that sits outside of her eccentricities yet is born from them regardless. Its a stunning work from one of indie rocks most daring artists, a pop record thats recognizable in structure but gloriously foreign in the details that could only come from St. Vincent and no one else.

5. Dan Auerbach  Waiting on a Song (Nonesuch)

After the bedroom-acoustic effort that was Dan Auerbachs first solo album outside of The Black Keys, few wouldve guessed that for a followup, our bearded hero would go full ELO? Yet summoning the spirit of Jeff Lynne was exactly what Waiting on a Song set out to do, lead single Shine on Me brilliantly playing like a track that shouldve been on Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 2. Elsewhere, the strings and horns that ride along during Malibu Man drench the surrounding song in a lovely hue of 70s AM gold, leaving the rest of the album perfectly fit for Starlord, Groot, and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy to sing along to. Theres imitation and then theres inhabiting the spirit of your idols, and Waiting on a Song pulls off the latter category in spectacular fashion.

4. Niteshifters  Hard Disco (Delimusic)

People refer to modern record as disco-inspired all the time, but few really capture the essence, the opulence that made disco the movement that it was. For the London-based Niteshifters, theyre absolutely tuned in to every horn stab, soaring string section, high-hat gallop, and diva histrionics that make disco what it is. For their sensational, shimmy-inducing debut, the band re-creates the Studio 54 sound without even a trace of irony, vocal cuts melding with instrumental takes and live band workouts boogieing next to keyboard driven affairs in equal measure. You cant achieve this level of kitsch without having a deep-seated love of the material youre trying to work with, and

Hard Disco as big a mirrorball love letter as ever existed.

3. White Sea  Tropical Odds (Crepuscule)

Although she was a songwriting force on some of M83s most heralded albums, Morgan Kibby truly broke out into her own under the guise of White Sea with her 2014 debut

In Cold Blood. The hooks were immediate and the lyrics werent afraid to walk through walls and gut your fish. Initially conceived a series of singles before Kibby finally relented and put it out as an album, Tropical Odds is a moodier flipside of White Seas mid-tempo sound, her stoned thoughts putting a gloriously overcast sky on her lyrics, her music, and her whole aesthetic. She confronts her fears regarding intimacy, the meaningless of life, and so much more  but all of it is wrapped in memorable hooks, ascending synth lines, and her perfectly curated vocal takes that let the emotion breathe through without once overpowering the songs in question. Its an underappreciated gem that may very well articulate your own gloomy year perfectly. Pour yourself a glass of red wine: Morgans here for you.

2. Jens Lekman  Life Will See You Now (Secretly Canadian)

Its not that

I Know What Love Isnt, the 2012 release from everyones favorite Swedish pop jester Jens Lekman, was a letdown so much as it was an acknowledgment that even with all of the genre jumping that Lekman puts all his quirky songs against, sometimes its nice to sit back with a tight band and not worry about turning a new musical trick with every track. Life Will See You Now, his first new full-length in five years, dismisses Isnts thesis entirely by positively exploding with color, his confidence beaming even more than before. Whether it be the breakdown in his spectacular single Whats That Perfume That You Wear? or the quiet mandolin plucking on the sweet How Can I Tell Him or the sweet minimalist tell-off from his 2015 singles project Postcard #17, there is no shortage of joys or surprises to be found on one of the most diverse and stunning pop events this side of Shugo Tokomaru record.

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1. Kesha  Rainbow (RCA)

Following the too-public, drawn-out, heartbreaking legal battles that Kesha had with her former producer  and the record contract clauses that prevented her from releasing any new music under her own terms  the eventual comeback of a singer who shot to fame with ludicrously crunk numbers like Tik Tok couldve taken most any form, and as the emotional, Ryan Lewis-produced single Praying showed us,

Rainbow couldve easily been a mournful, empowering record about overcoming some of lifes most rendering challenges.

What a true shock it was to instead find that

Rainbow contained a variety of moods as kaleidoscopic as its title, moving from celebratory to reflective to downright goofy, each song feeling like it belonged on a greatest hits compilation. There was no fiercer declaration of independence this year than the on the horn-driven Woman, no charging punk-pop hybrid as relentlessly nonsensical as Boogie Feet, and no off-the-cuff acoustic number as sly and sweet as Godzilla. No other record in 2017 managed to balance pathos with pure fun as deftly and effortlessly as Rainbow, and by the time Dolly Parton shows up to cover an old standard of hers  which Keshas mom wrote back in the late 70s  there is a sense of unity and warmth contained on that recording track that cannot be replicated with a budget ten times the size. One cant dismiss the narrative of redemption that lead Kesha to this moment, but Rainbow doesnt shy away from it either: it embraces it, plays with it, and turns it into what is unquestionably the best pop album of the year.
Michael Sims opens his book Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseurs Collection of Victorian Science Fiction with a quote that is probably as true now as it was in 1818: Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

The quote comes from Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein (and not surprisingly comes from the monster who arguably has more common sense than does his creator).

Whether or not Frankenstein is the very first work of science fiction is debatable. That said, it is arguably the book that opens the modern era of science fiction and introduces many of the archetypes found in more current science fiction (most notably the idea of the mad scientist and as a cautionary tale about the powers and dangers of scientific discoveries). A complicated and mythic bookits almost hard to imagine it was written by a teenager.

For these reasons and others (including, as Sims notes, the enduring popularity of the story) Frankenstein is a perfect starting point for this bookan anthology that is both meant to celebrate the genre of science fiction and to chronicle how Western civilization responded to the dizzying new discoveries of the nineteenth century.

There is much to celebrate in terms of 19th century science fiction. Most likely even the most tepid sci-fi fan is already familiar with the contributions H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jules Verne made to the genre. Other familiar names, but names not necessarily connected with science fiction include Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Some namessuch as E. Nesbit and Grant Allenmay be less familiar but their contributions are no less notable.

Sims includes a lot of great stories (as well as excerpts from longer works such as Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). They, along with the brief introduction Sims provides for each, are fun to read. Stillwhat might be most interesting, though, is reading them as a collection and attempting to see whats changedand what hasnt.

One thing that has changed is that most contemporary science fiction isnt mistaken for newstoday fake news seems much more about politics rather than whether or not someone spied life on the moon or has been mesmerized. As Sims notes, Poes The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, a story that focuses on mesmerism, was often mistaken for an actual case history.

Some of the science has changedwe dont see many science fiction stories about traveling to the moon or discoveries that allow us to hear the past. Other times, though, the science seems much more modern, such as with Alice W. Fullers A Wife Manufactured to Order which, as the title suggests, shows a world where someone can purchase a pleasant albeit robotic companion for life for a few hundred dollars. Many of the somewhat mad scientists found in the book along with things like the genetic manipulations found in Monsters Manufactured also dont seem that far removed from the science fiction of the 20th (or even the 21st) century.

E. Nesbit (the E stands for Edith) seems somewhat ahead of her time with Lucilla, a character in The Five Senses, who apparently breaks things off with her scientist fiance because of their differing opinions on animal testing: Theyre all Gods creatures Lucilla tells him. Even after he relates Spencer Wells, that operation he perfected, its restored thousands of women to their husbandssaved thousands of women for their children, Lucilla simply responds with a sentiment that would resonate with many today: I dont care what hes done  its wrong if its done that [by torturing rabbits] way.

Amazons adaptation of Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle has perhaps brought attention back to the alternative history genre of science fiction, and Sims includes a sampling from this area as well. Edward Page Mitchells The Senators Daughter is a story that casually envisions an America in which the Chinese have won a war with the United States and characters communicate by personal radio, travel from New York to Washington, D.C., via fast pneumatic tubes, dine on pills of condensed nutrition and argue the virtues of the Mongol-Vegetarian political party.

Sims definitely achieves his goal: to chronicle how Western civilization responded to the dizzying new discoveries of the nineteenth century. This goal, however, leads to a question: How did Western civilization respond? Granted, all we have here is a sampling (although a very nice sampling) from the 19th century, but using this collection as a guide, it appears they responded to these new discoveries with wit, thought, a lot of good writing and often not a lot of scientific detail.

Did the Victorians deal with their rapidly changing society better than civilization today is dealing with equally new dizzying discoveries? Thats a hard question to answer, but perhaps its somewhat comforting to know that those living in the 21st century arent the first ones (and most likely wont be the last) to struggle with new technologies and discoveries.
How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful.  Stefan Zweig

This year marked the emergence of a clandestine German act known as ROPE SECT. PopMatters has been bewitched by their music all year longa catchy, lively, yet atmospherically portentous sound that will appeal to fans of metal, rock, post-punk, goth, and darkwave alike. So much so that we had to contact the band, whose members wish to remain anonymous, to find out more about whats going on behind their mortuary drape.

Were not holding back information for the sake of creating a pseudo-mystery or becoming another cryptic act, a nameless ROPE SECT member emails when asked about the importance of maintaining a level of secrecy in a digital age when most information is just a click away. ROPE SECT is a conceptual project thats supposed to be defined by its music, lyrics and art. Private details, names or related bands are simply irrelevant. When people come across new bands, one of the first steps is looking up their members, origin and other projects, so theyre kind of biased or at least create a certain connection, which is fine and understandable. However, we want to focus on the core that can be discovered by paying attention to the actual records.

Such reluctance to reveal identities is not unusual in underground metal, as ROPE SECT allude to above, since many bands hide behind black hoods and cloaks and only provide members initials in order to maintain separation. Hell, one of metals most successful artists in recent times, Ghost, a band ROPE SECT share some musical commonalities with, made their name off the back of being elusive. Unlike Ghost, however, whose odes to Lucifer come with a forked tongue firmly planted in cheek, there seems to be a genuine occult energy around ROPE SECTs music. However, the band claim that the term occult has become overused and that they wish to distance themselves from acts included in the occult rock revival of recent years.

We dont see ourselves as a part of any revival and dont refer to any specific form of occultism, the band confirms matter-of-factly. As you wrote yourself, every detail is just a click away nowadays and people tend to constantly make use of clicking, presenting and unveiling rather than pondering, allowing thoughts to rest or simply being content without results. Imaginations and ideas of whats behind particular phenomena or events get destroyed once theyve been revealed. Revelation means an increase of certainty and decrease of unease to most human beings. Its not always about explaining everything entirely; keeping a feeling of suspense and insecurity is far more intriguing sometimes.

Given the style of music ROPE SECT play on their intoxicating Personae Ingratae EP and 7-inch titled Proselytes, another unexpected disclosure comes when the German bands anonymous conduit states that none of the members are from post-punk, death-rock or goth backgrounds, nor were they inspired by the Neue Deutsche Welle scene of their homeland.

For us, its surprising that were compared with those bands to a great extent because I dont see so many similarities with the likes of the Sisters of Mercy, to be honest, the writer tells us. I also wouldnt label our music as gothic or death-rock, but thats up to the respective listener. Personally, my interest in those genres has increasingly developed in the last couple of years. As for Rope Sect, musically, the first Pink Turns Blue record was quite important to me as well as Beastmilk and early Pink Floyd. Visually, the films of Ingmar Bergman and Bela Tarr certainly left artistic marks as well.

Its interesting ROPE SECT mention being inspired by Beastmilks anthemic music since the Finland-based metallic post-punk band, now known as Grave Pleasures, are probably the closest peer they havemusically, thematically and aesthetically-speaking. In fact, the admiration is mutual, as Grave Pleasures crooner Mat Kvohst McNerney also feels a strong kinship with ROPE SECT.

After we continued our apocalyptic post-punk style from Beastmilk into Grave Pleasures, I think there were a lot of people expecting a scene to start happening in reaction to that, Mat reflects. When [Beastmilks 2013 album] Climax hit, it felt like the start of something new. We were the first of a new wave and it was exciting when ROPE SECT came out with their own approach in mixing those sound-clashes of black metal and post-punk. They were obviously inspired by the way we opened this thing up but they werent doing another version of our music. I mean, for me, its reactionary musicthats what both bands are doing. Its really brave to strike out into a no mans land where you dont have the confines of a friendly scene where you fit in amongst all the other bands with the same logos and same make-up, etc. Something other than Bathory or Sabbath worship or rehashing the [music of the] 1970s.

Unlike some of the bands that the labels are trying to build up as the next Grave Pleasures, Rope Sect have their own style and their own way of writing, Mat continues. Their songs are really strong and catchy but their sound is very unique. I think thats why the underground has embraced them so fervently this year. I think they hear the same sense of sound rebellion from them as they do with usthe same genre-clashes. I truly believe that theyll go on to be a really successful band. Im happy that we allied with them so early on, as I wanted to send a message to people of what were about: Were not part of any scene but our own.

The Grave Pleasures frontmans belief in ROPE SECTs music was so strong that he personally reached out to the band to secure them as support for the German leg of his bands most recent European tour.

It was a great surprise when Mat got in touch and asked us to support [Grave Pleasures] live, ROPE SECTs emailer recalls. We absolutely wanted to make this happen and luckily managed to do so. I can tell that all of us enjoy their output and you can definitely find similarities in our music. They are brilliant songwriters, and I immediately had an affinity for Mats darkly appealing and Cold War-esque lyrics on the first Beastmilk EP.

The first song from ROPE SECTs EP, Fallen Nation, starts with a soundbite which roughly translate from German to English as smash the mouths of the rabble with a hammer. According to the band, this violent quote, synonymous with the German actor Klaus Kinski, ties into the all-encompassing thematic concept of their music, which were told revolves around an isolated rope sect living in the woods in order to solemnly face the worlds downfall. Outside this sect, societys members tag people who refuse to fit in or have escaped modern civilizationlike the members of the rope sectas outcasts and a threat to their way of life. Thus, we have the labelling of personae ingratae on both sides, and the samplewhich is not the version spoken by Kinski, by the wayserves as a figurative and drastic expression of these recriminations.

ROPE SECTs lyrical themes are an essential part of the music and some rather dark, vivid images are painted on standout hook-heavy tracks such as King of the Night and Tarantista delectable dichotomy.

In ROPE SECT there is an intentional contrast between catchy music and sombre lyrics reflecting the dance near the abyss, the band explains. The world is about to end while the rope sect is celebrating with a sardonic grin. The King of the Night seals the sects self-chosen fate and declares deliverance from societys constraints. Yet despite the celebrating character, every member has to follow the rules and take part in the hierarchy. If not, the gallows awaits. Meanwhile, Tarantist is about the downfall scenario in relation to reactions: the sect feels the urge to dance in the face of doomsday, whereas panic spreads among the people outside the cult who try to save themselves and seek shelter. In vain. Eventually, death prevails and leaves a grand silence; the most grievous denouement for society, the ultimate salvation for the sect.

Throughout their thought-provoking apocalyptic concept there is an underlying obsession with Eleutheromania (a frantic zeal for freedom). What is it that ROPE SECT want to be free from?

The bands chosen spokesperson illuminates us: I was sent an essay from 1925 by [Austrian author] Stefan Zweig recently containing a sentence that really hits home: The greatest achievement of the intellectual individual is always freedom; freedom from human beings, from opinions, from things and freedom for oneself. These ideals partly arise from a desire to retreat from all kinds of preposterous developments going on and to look upon some absurd events from an outside perspective while being aware that we all have to bear the consequences for the actions of others. It is necessary to keep your own freedom and independence in this frantic world, to a certain degree at least. However, in the rope sect, the members freed themselves from their old life while entering a new one that, despite its celebrating and seemingly unfettered character, includes new rules and obedience, which in turn creates inconsistency. Most members arent free at all; they just relocated their dependence. Hence, the only fulfilment of freedom is death.

The artwork for both of their releases this year display very stark and striking designs and complimentary colour palettes. Along with the concept, this is another aspect of the bands aesthetic used to entice the listener. ROPE SECT confirm they will continue with the same kind of minimalistic artwork going forward since the project is to function as a whole and each release is bound together (no pun intended): Alterations cannot be ruled out, but the common thread and the rope as the basic motif, being the symbol for the sects essence and its greatest fear at the same time, will not change. The guy on the Proselytes EP cover allegedly survived a hanging that he was doomed to but carried the stigma on his neck for the rest of his life. This relates to the EPs lyrical theme about ensnaring novices, watching over their step and punishing them by hanging in the case of violation or disobedience.

Originally, the Personae Ingratae EP was a tape-only release through Caligari Records, an underground metal label specialising in mysterious sounds. The reason for this choice of medium was down to the fact that the band are strong supporters of cassette releases and prefer them over CDs, but also because of the limited financial risk for the label/band if the tape failed to cause a stir.

Im not keen on pressing loads of LPs at an early stage of an unknown band before knowing if there is demand, the bands unnamed economist explains, instead I prefer to offer a tape for a reasonable price and if people like it, one can take it from there. By now, we have three different versions of our first EP and a re-press in the making, which seems a bit ironic, but according to the reactions and the labels sales, the demand is there, so why not?

The interest is indeed there, as shortly after the tape release, the reputable extreme metal label Iron Bonehead Productions swooped in to put out the bands music on vinyla sensible relationship for ROPE SECT given the German labels notoriety amongst metal fans and also since their signing will make the enigmatic act stand out from this labels more extreme entities.

We got in touch during the tape release and as [Iron Bonehead Productions owner] Patrick [Kremer] liked the material, we exchanged a few emails and agreed on putting out the LP version with two bonus tracks, explains the band of how the relationship with IBP came about. Its a very reliable label and although theyre focused on more extreme entities as you put it, you have out of the ordinary artists like Light of the Morning Star or Lisa Cuthbert putting out their works, too. I agree that were slightly different or far less extreme than most IBP bands; still, a lot of people seem to enjoy and buy the stuff, which I think is due to a certain aura of gloom and rawness that appeals to listeners of extreme metal, even if the songs are catchy and almost danceable.

Their music caught me upon first listen and I like the actual fact the band has a lyrical concept that goes hand in hand with the music, says IBP boss Patrick when asked what drew him to ROPE SECT. I havent listened to that kind of music for quite a while, so it was a welcome surprise those guys come up with an old sound which still sounds fresh. I didnt think about what dynamic the band would bring to the label, if it would sell or not, or if the ordinary war metal guy would call out IBP [for working with ROPE SECT]. I just released it because I enjoy it and believe in the bands future.

Surely the future of ROPE SECT is a bright one should they continue to build their cult following as naturally as they have to date. However, their Proselytes 7-inch comes with a rather worrying cryptic message: Old lives are fading, a new one is dawning. A second skin. The beginning of the end. Does ROPE SECT believe this release is the beginning of a new bloom or a step towards their demise?

Both, is the reply. The EP deals with proselytes that are being ensnared and whose former lives will be replaced by new ones as members of the rope sect. We all know how this is gonna end, so its a new bloom that is just about to fade and die forever.

Lets hope this new bloom lasts for a few more years, because ROPE SECT have great potential to crossover to more mainstream rock/metal audiences a la Ghost. Judging by the response when we ask whether such success would be welcomed by the band, it appears as though those kind of thoughts are far from their mindeither that or theyre just keen to keep their ambitions close to their chest for now.

Well, honestly, we dont really care about that and dont think about addressing ourselves to any audience when writing the music at all, the bands rep writes. Also, who am I to judge who is supposed to listen to our music? We all have quite a diverse taste in music, so why should this not apply to the listener as well? The songs might be mainstream-compatible despite the garage production, and weve also heard the Ghost comparison a couple of times now, but who cares? It is appreciated when people really take their time to delve into our records, whether they mainly listen to underground black metal or synth-y pop.

Both of ROPE SECTs fascinating 2017 releases have been joined to form a compilation CD, which is out now. The band confirm that this compilation is not meant to be regarded as ROPE SECTs first album, however, and that they are currently working on their full-length debut, set for released in the first half of 2018 through IBP.

Im not a fan of fuelling expectations and praising new material as the most sublime to date, the unidentified ROPE SECT member stresses in closing, so at this point, Im only saying what you cannot expect and that is, a major musical and lyrical change as well as a polished production. Rock n Rope needs to be a bit ragged!
The Shape of Water is ostensibly a love story between a solitary woman and a merman. But the true object of the movies affection is its star character, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), and rightly so. Elisa is just about the fiercest woman on screen right now; a less complicated but no less determined heroine than Frances McDormands blowtorch vigilante Mildred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A mute cleaning woman who lives above a grand old movie palace, she has a closely-followed a litany of daily habits that are treated more like chiming celebrations than rote compulsiveness.

Guillermo del Toro follows with exulting care Elisas routine of boiling eggs, vigorously pleasuring herself in the bathtub, brushing one of her many pairs of shoes, stopping in with her next-door neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), napping on the bus, and dashing into work where her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) is holding a place in the timecard-punch line. Its all shot with a skip and a bounce, choreographed like a dance routine, that suggests something improbably and irritatingly twee. But then Elisa gets a new co-worker in the form of Michael Shannon, its clear that were headed for grimmer territory.

Shannon plays Richard, a dust-dry and not-so-secretly perverse black-suited company man whos part of a web of secret agency and military personnel who run the sprawling facility that Zelda and Elisa work at. Hes theoretically responsible for the capture and study of an actual humanoid amphibian whom he wheels into work one day, having captured him in the Amazon where, he says, the natives treated the creature like a god. But Richards reptilian glare and the fond way he fondles his cattle prod makes it obvious that his true mission is the elimination of anything that doesnt fit his narrow definition of what is good and proper, and if he can do it in a way that causes maximum pain, all the better.

With his anonymous suits, shiny Cadillac, tract home in the suburbs, and fanatic devotion to his job, Richard is the dark demiurge of 50s America, the sadist in suburbia. To him, outsiders like Zelda and Elisa barely rate his attentionin the mens world of the Cold War, cleaning women are essentially invisiblewhile human-like creatures and other things beyond the pale are mutations worthy only of destruction. Set against Richards tightly-wound cruelty is just about everything else in the movie, which is a celebration of the beautifully unusual. The production design alone, a mix of sleek postwar chromes and lavishly baroque flourishes that can best be described as atomic age steampunkas though Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed Hairspraymakes for a cinematic misfits playground.

In other words, its certain once we see Elisa mooning about the mermans cell with her crookedly wistful smile and thoughtful repose, feeding him eggs and teaching him sign language, that at some point a ragtag rescue mission is going to take place. Whats more surprising is not that Elisa falls in love with the merman, stories of the fantastic frequently deal with impossible romances of this kind, but that del Toro has her pursue this cross-species lovemaking with such puckishly aggressive desire.

There are so many superlatives that you can throw at such a rapturously alive fantasia like The Shape of Water that its difficult to come to grips with the movies failings. Like much of del Toros work, the issue lies mostly with the script (he co-wrote this with Vanessa Taylor). While theres nothing wrong with drawing a bright line between good and evil, particularly in a fairytale world like this one, the conflict between the forces of military industrial evil (Richard and his uniformed henchmen) and those of the raggedly assembled outsiders is established with so little ambiguity so early on that it doesnt leave the story much runway after the first half hour or so.

Del Toro misses no opportunity to hammer home a point, whether its having Richard dig his fingers into the mouth of a man he just shot through the face or having Giles not only be rejected in homophobic rage by the counter clerk hes attracted to but witness that same clerk throwing two black customers out of the store for good measure. That simplistic approach to story also sneaks into Elisas attraction for the merman, which cant help but read as borderline creepy the more it becomes clear just how limited his communication is. The darker thrills of del Toros masterpieces like Pans Labyrinth come in large part from their shadowy natures. Theres a lot to love in a movie as redolent with cinematic pleasures as The Shape of Water. But a little more mystery would have pushed it toward greatness.
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
Assistant Columbia bureau chief

Adcox returned to The Post and Courier in October 2017 after 12 years covering the Statehouse for The Associated Press. She previously covered education for The P&C. She has also worked for The AP in Albany, N.Y., and for The Herald in Rock Hill.
State Circuit Judge DeAndrea Benjamin appears poised to join a powerful federal appeals court bench following a U.S. Senate hearing in which Republicans repeatedly questioned her handling of two cases out of thousands she'd handled in South Carolina over two decades. Read moreSC Judge Benjamin praised by Clyburn, questioned by Republicans during US Senate hearing
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The Asia Pacific Feed Additives Market was worth $9.52 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 5.1%, to reach $12.29 billion by 2021.The Asia-Pacific feed additives market is evolving at a significant rate due to the surge in the livestock population for meat consumption as a source of protein.Feed additives are used in animal nutrition to lift the quality and properties of animal fodder to augment features such as palatability preservation, overall gut health/digestive performance, and others. They have gained reputation internationally, as they further the general health of the animal, in turn improving the quality and quantity of meat produced from them. For example, poultry feed additives are used to enhance the birds egg-laying capacity, disease prevention, and feed utilization.To view full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-feed-additives-market-319/ The growth of the Asia-Pacific Feed Additives market is majorly driven by factors such as the increase in meat consumption, industrialization of the livestock industry, and the threat of diseases in livestock. Increasing cost of raw materials is a key factor hindering the growth of the market in the Asia-Pacific region.The Asia-Pacific feed additives market is segmented based on type and livestock. The market for feed additives, on the basis of type, is classified into Antibiotics, Antioxidants, Amino Acids, Enzymes, Vitamins, Mycotoxin Detoxifiers, Prebiotics, Acidifiers, Probiotics, Feed Pigments, Feed Binders, Flavours and Sweeteners, Feed Minerals and each is further classified into subgroups. On the basis of livestock, the Asia-Pacific feed additives market is segmented into poultry, cattle, swine, aquatic animals, and others. By livestock, the poultry segment leads the feed additives market in this region. Amino Acids, antibiotics, acidifiers, and vitamins are the major sectors accounting for almost 50% of the entire feed additives market. Feed antioxidant is another high growth segment in this market owing to ramped-up efforts of manufacturers to avoid feed spoilage and wastage.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-feed-additives-market-319/request-sample The Asia-Pacific region is geographically segmented into China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This region offers significant opportunities for the feed additives market, with China and India being the most populous countries in this region contributing to the increasing demand. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to offer lucrative growth opportunities, owing to the considerable increase in feed production and increasing awareness among the consumers about the quality of meat products and due to the rise in disposable incomes in developing economies, primarily in China and India. China is the major feed additives manufacturer in the world and accounts for around half the production of feed additives in the Asia-Pacific region.Some of the major companies dominating this market in this region are BASF SE, Alltech, Inc., Novozymes A/S,Cargill, Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Company, Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited,Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Evonik Industries AG, Adisseo France SAS, andNutreco N.V,.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
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Bow Energy Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Calgary, Alberta (FSCWire) - Bow Energy Ltd. (TSX Venture:ONG). has issued a press release with the following headline:Bow Energy Signs Definitive Agreement with Petrolia EnergyTo 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 Bow Energy Ltd., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Bow Energy Ltd.Source: Bow Energy Ltd. (TSX Venture: ONG)Date: December 07, 2017Time: 3:49 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Bow Energy Ltd. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Tartisan Resources Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Toronto, Ontario (FSCWire) - Tartisan Resources Corp. (CSE:TTC). has issued a press release with the following headline:Canadian Arrow Obtains Interim Order for Plan of ArrangementTo 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 Tartisan 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/Tartisan Resources Corp.Source: Tartisan Resources Corp. (CSE: TTC, TSX Venture: CRO)Date: December 07, 2017Time: 1:34 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Tartisan 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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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Canyon Copper Corp--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Canyon Copper Corp (TSX Venture:CNC). has issued a press release with the following headline:Canyon Copper Announces Non-Brokered Flow-Through Private PlacementTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Canyon Copper 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/Canyon Copper CorpSource: Canyon Copper Corp (TSX Venture: CNC)Date: December 07, 2017Time: 2:00 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Canyon Copper 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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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Cielo Waste Solutions Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Surrey, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. (CSE:CMC). has issued a press release with the following headline:Cielo Waste Solutions Inc. Becomes a Member of the 8020 CommunityTo 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 Cielo Waste Solutions 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/Cielo Waste Solutions Corp.Source: Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. (CSE: CMC, FWB: C36, WKN: A1W4AC, ISIN: CA17178G1046)Date: December 07, 2017Time: 3:55 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Cielo Waste Solutions 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.)
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

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 12:40:42

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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 fieldFrom 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).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
Global Cervical Dystonia Management Market

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The major driving factors for the market for cervical dystonia market is increase in aging population across the globe. Females are more likely to be get affected by cervical dystonia. Besides this increase in treatment for cervical dystonia and improvement in infrastructure provided fuel for the growth of the market. Furthermore, low and increase in cost of treatment is the major cause for restraining the growth of cervical dystonia market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Cervical Dystonia Management Market segmented on the basis of cervical dystonia type, route of administration, drug class, distribution channel, and region.Based on the route of administration, it is segmented as: Oral IntravenousBased on the drug class, it is segmented as: Dopaminergic drugs Anti-cholinergic drugs GABA Agonists Anti ConvulsantsBased on the distribution channel, it is segmented as: Hospital pharmacies Retail pharmacies OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @According to the Association of neurological American Surgeons about 250,000 people are having cervical dystonia every year. According to National organization for rare diseases (NORD) it is anticipated that around 60,000 individuals in US are suffering with cervical dystoniaOn a regional basis, global cervical dystonia market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. The market is dominated by North America due to developed infrastructure, governmental initiatives, and increase in demand for the better treatment of cervical dystonia driving factor in North America. Furthermore, increase in aging population in Canada fuelling the growth of North America cervical dystonia market. Europe and Asia-Pacific accounts to have significant market share. However, Asia-Pacific expected to dominate the market in the forecast period due to continuous development and increase in cervical dystonia treatment procedures. Furthermore, large patient pool in Asia-Pacific region contributes significant growth for cervical dystonia market.Need more information about this report @Some of the players in cervical dystonia management market are ALLERGAN (Ireland), US WorldMeds (U.S.), Ipsen (France), Addex Therapeutics (Switzerland), and Revance Therapeutics 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.Precision Business Insights mission is to provide high-quality market research reports and generate key insights to our clients. PBIs approachable strategies are to help clients to make key decisions for business growth.Precision Business Insights vision is to become most valued partner to fortune 500 companies by providing agile, accurate, and actionable market insightsContact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXEmail: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com Toll Free (US): +1-866-598-1553Website @ https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com
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PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 12:30:06

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The Latin America Feed Additives Market was worth $2.77 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 4.6%, to reach $3.47 billion by 2021The Latin America feed additives market is developing at a significant rate due to the increase in the livestock population for meat consumption as a source of protein.To view full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-feed-additives-market-320/ Feed additives are used in animal nutrition to boost the quality and properties of animal fodder to enhance features such as palatability preservation, overall gut health/digestive performance, and others. They have gained reputation globally, as they further the overall health of the animal, in turn enhancing the quality and quantity of meat produced from them. For example, poultry feed additives are used to enhance the birds egg-laying capacity, disease prevention, and feed utilization.The growth of the Latin America Feed Additives market is mainly due to the rise in meat consumption, industrialization of the livestock industry, and the threat of diseases in livestock. Increase in the cost of raw materials for feed additives is a key challenge for the companies in the Latin America market.The Latin America feed additives market is segmented based on type and livestock. The market for feed additives, on the basis of type, is classified into Antibiotics, Antioxidants, Amino Acids, Enzymes, Vitamins, Mycotoxin Detoxifiers, Prebiotics, Acidifiers, Probiotics, Feed Pigments, Feed Binders, Flavours and Sweeteners, Feed Minerals and each is further classified into subgroups.On the basis of livestock, the Latin America feed additives market is segmented into poultry, cattle, swine, aquatic animals, and others. By livestock, the poultry segment leads the feed additives market in this region. Amino Acids, antibiotics, acidifiers, and vitamins are the major sectors accounting for almost 50% of the entire feed additives market. Feed antioxidant is another high growth segment in this market owing to ramped-up efforts of manufacturers to avoid feed spoilage and wastage.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-feed-additives-market-320/request-sample The Latin America market is one of the fastest growing markets for feed additives market. South America is an emerging market with huge potential and strong growth rates. Brazil accounts for the largest market share in the region with more than 55% of the market and is expected to lead the market during the forecast period. Argentina offers an opportunity to the manufacturers as the administration is fixated on increasing the beef exports of the country.Some of the major companies dominating this market in this region are BASF SE, Cargill, Inc., Inc., Novozymes A/S,Alltech, Archer Daniels Midland Company,Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Nutreco N.V., Evonik Industries AG,Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited, and Adisseo France SAS.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
Asia Pacific Rum Market By Region - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Forecasts (20162021)

Asia Pacific Rum Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 06:46:57

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The Asia Pacific Rum Market was worth USD xx billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of xx%, to reach USD xx billion by 2021. Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage produced from sugarcane by-products, like molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice, through fermentation and distillation. The distillate, a clear liquid, is then commonly aged in oak barrels. Increased Demand for Premium Brands and Popularity of Cocktail Culture are the primary drivers of this market. High Competition from Non-alcoholic Beverages is the major challenge from this market.View full report @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-rum-market-3921/ Rums are manufactured in several grades. Light rums are usually used in cocktails, whereas "golden" and "dark" rums are usually consumed straight or neat, on the rocks, or used for cooking, but these days are consumed with mixers. Premium rums are produced to be consumed either straight or iced. Segmenting rum into meaningful groupings is difficult because no single standard exists for what constitutes rum. Therefore, rum is defined by the varying rules and laws of the nations manufacturing the spirit. The differences in definitions are issues such as spirit proof, minimum aging, and even naming standards. The grades and variations utilized for describing rum depend on the location of its production.In spite of these variations, the following terms are commonly used to describe different types of rum - Dark rums, Flavoured rums, Gold rums, Light rums, over proof rums, Premium rums, and Spiced rums. Super and ultra-premium rum segments are "still growing robustly". Nonetheless, rum continues to underperform in contrast to rival spirits segments, for example, Scotch whisky and Cognac, with the super and ultra-premium price categories accounting for less than 0.5% of sales.Download free sample @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-rum-market-3921/request-sample On the basis of geography the market is classified into India, China, Korea, Japan and others. Rum is also produced in India, Mauritius, Thailand, and Japan. However, India will see a fall of more than 2m cases, while volumes in the Philippines are predicted to decline by 3.8m cases.Major players in this market are Bacardi, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Tanduay, Amrut Distilleries, Beam Suntory, Gruppo Campari, Matusalem, Mohan Meakin, Patron Spirits, Pusser's, Radico Khaitan, Ron Bermudez, Ron Edmundo Dantes etc.Market Segmentation1)Geography Introduction North America Latin America Europe Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Geography Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Geography Market Share Analysis, By GeographyInquire before buying @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-rum-market-3921/inquire 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 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, economic 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 analyzing 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 areas of market research, business intelligence and consulting. We have rich experience in research and consulting for various business domains to cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. A few key business areas that we handle with excellence include business process improvement, corporate financing and decision making based on market research, assisting in developing appropriate strategy and providing consultancy based on extensive research.Contact us Abhishek Shukla Sales Manager (International Business Development) Market Data Forecast Direct Line: +1-888-702-9626 Mobile: +91 998 555 0206 Mail: 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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The Middle East and Africa Baby Food Market was worth $5.88 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 6.09%, to reach $7.91 billion by 2021.Baby foods are either a soft, liquid paste or an effortlessly chewed food as babies lack developed teeth and muscles to effectively chew. Babies usually opt for baby food when nursing or formula is not enough for the child's appetite. The major consumers of baby food, normally meets or considerably surpasses the recommended amount of macronutrients.To view full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/middle-east-and-africa-baby-food-market-1061/ The demand for the baby food in Middle East and Africa has traced a remarkable growth over the years, as the parents become increasingly aware about the significance of baby food in the nutritional necessity of their child. Baby food market has been endorsing fast growth due to rise in number of working women and skillfully made baby food has facilitated working women to manage their time. Deteriorating in birth rates and milk intolerance in babies may cause severe challenge for baby food market.Middle East and Africa market for Baby Food is segmented by health benefits into Immune system, Brain and Eye development, Muscular growth, Bones and Teeth development, Blood Enhancement, Nervous System, Vascular System and Body Energy. Based on ingredients the market is divided among Cereals, Milk Products, Fruits, Vegetables and Meat Products. Further, cereals segment is sub divided into Oatmeal, Rice, Barley and Mixed. Milk Products segment is bifurcated into Animal Milk and Yogurt. Milk Products segment developed as the largest provider to the baby food market in terms of revenue, primarily driven by the rising awareness towards baby nutrition and a reduction in breast feeding among the working women population.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/middle-east-and-africa-baby-food-market-1061/request-sample Geographically the market is segmented into Middle East and Africa. Middle East is predicted to grow at highest CAGR in the forecast period while Africa dominates the regions market.New food technological advancement has been enabling market players to propose good quality products with nutritional benefits. Nestle SA has been dominating the baby food market. Danone, H.J. Heinz, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Nutrition, Plasmon, Baby Organix, Beech Nut, Fasska, SMA Nutrition, Stonyfield Farm, Babynat and Hero are some other key market players in baby food market.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
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PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 13:02:30

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The Middle East and Africa Feed Additives Market was worth $3.45 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 3.96%, to reach $4.19 billion by 2021.The Middle East and Africa feed additives market is developing at a significant rate due to the increase in the livestock population for meat consumption as a source of protein.Feed additives are used in animal nutrition to boost the quality and properties of animal fodder to enhance features such as palatability preservation, overall gut health/digestive performance, and others. They have gained reputation globally, as they further the overall health of the animal, in turn enhancing the quality and quantity of meat produced from them. For example, poultry feed additives are used to enhance the birds egg-laying capacity, disease prevention, and feed utilization.To view full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/middle-east-and-africa-feed-additives-market-321/ The growth of the Middle East and Africa Feed Additives market is majorly driven by factors such as the rise in meat consumption, industrialization of the livestock industry, and danger of diseases in livestock. Increase in the cost of raw materials for feed additives is a key challenge for the companies in the Middle East and Africa market.The Middle East and Africa feed additives market is segmented based on type and livestock. The market for feed additives, on the basis of type, is classified into Antibiotics, Antioxidants, Amino Acids, Enzymes, Vitamins, Mycotoxin Detoxifiers, Prebiotics, Acidifiers, Probiotics, Feed Pigments, Feed Binders, Flavours and Sweeteners, Feed Minerals and each is further classified into subgroups. On the basis of livestock, the Middle East and Africa feed additives market is segmented into poultry, cattle, swine, aquatic animals, and others. By livestock, the poultry segment leads the feed additives market in this region. Amino Acids, antibiotics, acidifiers, and vitamins are the major sectors accounting for almost 50% of the entire feed additives market. Feed antioxidant is another high growth segment in this market owing to ramped-up efforts of manufacturers to avoid feed spoilage and wastage.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/middle-east-and-africa-feed-additives-market-321/request-sample The market has been geographically segmented into Middle East and Africa and is projected to be the fastest-growing market for feed additives market. In terms of revenue, South Africa leads the market in this region. This region is expected to offer lucrative growth opportunities, owing to the considerable increase in feed production and increasing awareness among the consumers about the quality of meat products and due to the rise in disposable incomes in developing economies, primarily in South Africa. The emphasis in the Middle East has moved to animal husbandry due to the water shortages and water exhaustive crop production techniques such as animal fodder is gradually being phased out creating new openings for international players.Some of the major companies dominating this market in this region are BASF SE, Cargill, Inc., Alltech, Inc., Novozymes A/S, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited, Nutreco N.V., Evonik Industries AG, and Adisseo France SAS.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: 2017-12-07 06:00:20

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Start-ups, e-tailing and Chinese mainland opportunities on Forum agendaHONG KONG, Dec 5, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - Asia's newest business opportunities are in focus at the 18th Hong Kong Forum which opened today at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Co-organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and the Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations Worldwide, the event has attracted more than 350 business leaders from 29 countries and regions. Key topics at this year's Forum include start-ups, electronic retailing (e-tailing) and business opportunities on the Chinese mainland.This year's Forum is participated by representatives from the Chinese mainland as well as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungry, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.Bay Area and ASEAN trade agreement creating opportunitiesAt the Forum this morning, HKTDC Executive Director Margaret Fong called 2017 a year of changes. Noting that amid a volatile global political and economic environment, Hong Kong has once again been named the world's freest economy, underscoring the city's standing as a world-leading hub for financial, trade and professional services. Hong Kong's close ties with the mainland have also strengthened its unique role on the world stage.Fong added that the HKTDC is committed to helping SMEs develop opportunities brought about by the Belt and Road Initiative, which was a focus of last year's Forum. In addition to organising missions to countries and regions along the Belt and Road, the HKTDC is actively building new business networks related to the Initiative."This year, China has put forward the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area Initiative," said Ms Fong. "The Bay Area will be a world-class city cluster with international competitiveness. It will propel Hong Kong's innovation and technology development, which will make it a leading economic growth engine." Ms Fong added that the free trade agreement recently signed between Hong Kong and ASEAN will further promote Hong Kong's trade. The HKTDC will continue to develop connections with different markets.Hong Kong: Cradle for start-upsIn recent years, many Hong Kong start-ups have successfully ventured into global markets. At the first seminar this morning, speakers discussed the challenges and opportunities for young entrepreneurs. Jason Chiu, CEO of cherrypicks, Eric Chen, Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Vitargent (International) Biotechnology Limited, and Wesley Ng, CEO and Co-founder, Casetify, examined how Hong Kong's distinctive business environment can help start-ups succeed.They also shared their entrepreneurial experience. Jason Chiu said Hong Kong offers many favourable conditions for start-ups to develop, and encouraged young entrepreneurs to stay true to their style, think globally and not be afraid of failure. He said he is optimistic about the prospects for AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality) and eLearning, and hopes to develop enhanced technical solutions to create a better interactive learning experience for students.Leveraging Hong Kong's unique advantages to "go out"With the Belt and Road and Bay Area development expected to generate tremendous opportunities, Hong Kong will see a strengthening of its role as a launch pad for enterprises aspiring to go global. In the second seminar in the morning, the leaders of several renowned mainland enterprises, including Wang Tian Yi, General Manager of China Everbright International Limited, and Shen Weizhong, Director and Executive Vice President of China Mobile International Ltd, examined how mainland companies can leverage Hong Kong's professional services platform to capture market opportunities and to succeed in international markets.Wang Tian Yi said green industries are playing a more and more important role as China's economy transitions into a "new normal", and that Hong Kong's advantages in professional services can facilitate the development of related industries in the Chinese mainland. He added that Hong Kong is just starting to focus on innovation and technology, and more resources are needed to increase the city's competitiveness in the area.Shen Weizhong said Hong Kong, with its international talent pool, favourable business environment, low tax rates and sound legal system, is the ideal platform for mainland companies to tap into global markets. He said the company will continue to leverage Hong Kong's advantages to support its business expansion worldwide.Carrying on entrepreneurial acumenEach year, heavyweight speakers invited to the Forum's luncheon share their views and insights. Today's Luncheon Dialogue with Dreamcatchers invited two young business leaders - Winnie Chiu, President and Executive Director of Dorsett Hospitality International, and Bosco Law, Deputy Chairman & CEO of LAWSGROUP - to share their keys to success and how they have leveraged the experience and wisdom of older generations to sustain development of their family businesses.Mrs Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR, will be the speaker at the keynote luncheon tomorrow (6 December). She will introduce Hong Kong's latest developments and business policies to participants from around the world. She will also explain how Hong Kong will establish closer cooperative relationships with regional partners to capture the opportunities presented by the new global economic order together.New Asian e-tailing landscapeThe inaugural Asian E-tailing Summit will be held tomorrow (6 December). The event will feature star speakers to comprehensively examine the latest e-tailing developments and trends. Speakers include Dai Feng Jun, General Manager of Hong Kong Suning Commerce Co., Ltd, Yang Tao, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kilimall International Ltd, Giulio Xiloyannis, Managing Director of ZALORA, and Kiril Popov, Senior Analyst of Fung Global Retail and Technology. The event provides a platform for industry professionals and event participants to explore Asian business opportunities.Chongqing: Important logistics hubChongqing is one of China's major industrial bases, serving as a hub for the automotive, military, iron and steel and aluminium industries. The city has been actively developing modern and high-tech industries in recent years. It is also home to factories operated by many major manufacturers of computers and related products, including Taiwan's Foxconn and Inventec, and boasts immense market potential.From 7-9 December, Iris Wong, HKTDC's Director of Belt and Road and External Relations, will lead a business delegation to Chongqing to survey the city's investment environment and development prospects. The delegation will include nearly 40 representatives from chambers of commerce from Belt and Road countries, as well as from Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States.The group will meet senior Chongqing officials, as well as visit the Lifan Group, the Hong Kong Industrial Park in Chongqing, the Chongqing Logistics City and the Chongqing Tiandi. They will also meet with Hong Kong entrepreneurs in Chongqing and explore cooperation opportunities between Chongqing, Hong Kong and overseas enterprises.The two-day (5-6 December) Hong Kong Forum is an annual flagship event of the Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations Worldwide. The Federation was set up in 2000 and has a membership of more than 13,000 businesspeople. It has 42 association members from 31 countries and regions around the world. Chile is the new member association joining this year.
North America Biosimilars Market by type, by Technology, by Application (Oncology and Blood Diseases, Growth hormone deficiencies and others), by Region - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (20162021)

North America Biosimilars market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 08:53:57

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According to the report North America Biosimilars, published by Market Data Forecast, the market is projected to reach USD 6.32 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 12.4% from 2017 to 2022.The duplicate versions of authentic biologics whose license of patent has been exhausted are called Biosimilars. The development of Biosimilars and the confirmation of its authenticity with the original biologics is a highly important part. Rules for the development of such biosimilars are vital in sustaining the proper amount of referential and biosimilar products. There are several authorities which monitor this process.Get a comprehensive overview of the North America Biosimilars: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-biosimilars-market-1143/ North America Biosimilars: Drivers & RestraintsThe increasing amount of incurable diseases, like diabetes, the demand for variety of pharmaceutical treatments is driving the market growth. Anyhow, the market growth is challenged by the fact that expensive procedure of duplicating the original is reflected upon patients treatment cost thus decreasing popularity of the product.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the North America Biosimilars. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-biosimilars-market-1143/request-sample North America Biosimilars: SegmentationBiosimilars Market, by Product Recombinant Non-glycosylated Proteinso Insulino Recombinant Human Growth Hormoneso Granulocyte Colony-stimulating Factoro Interferons Recombinant Glycosylated Proteinso Erythropoietino Monoclonal Antibodieso Follitropin Recombinant Peptideso Glucagono CalcitoninBiosimilars Market, by Manufacturing Type In-house Manufacturing Contract Manufacturing OrganizationsBiosimilars Market, by Application Oncology Blood Disorders Chronic & Autoimmune Diseases Growth Hormone Deficiency Infectious Diseases Other ApplicationsFrom 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/north-america-biosimilars-market-1143/customize-report North America Biosimilars: OverviewMany companies have approval of their biosimilar product, owing to absence of the required lawful cooperation and opposition from the original producers. Also, the consumer inclinations and the advisory pattern of clinicians in the United States favours the original products.Progression of technology in healthcare department will render North America the largest market just as it is, as declared in 2017.North America Biosimilars: Key PlayersMylan, Inc., Sandoz International GmbH, Roche Diagnostics, Wockhardt Ltd, Zydus Cadila, Hospira, Inc., Dr. Reddys Laboratories, Biocon Limited, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Celltrion Inc., and Cipla Ltd.are the major players of this market.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
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The North America Feed Additives Market was worth $3.02 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 3.71%, to reach $3.85 billion by 2021.The North America feed additives market is developing at a significant rate due to the increase in the livestock population for meat consumption as a source of protein. Feed additives are vital in animal nutrition, as they enhance the quality of feed, and thereby enrich the animals performance and health. They also subsequently enhance the yield and quality of food from animal origin.To view full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-feed-additives-market-317/ Feed additives are used in animal nutrition to boost the quality and properties of animal fodder to enhance features such as palatability preservation, overall gut health/digestive performance, and others. They have gained reputation globally, as they further the overall health of the animal, in turn enhancing the quality and quantity of meat produced from them.The growth of the North America Feed Additives market is mainly driven the demand for low-cost meat with superior nutritional value throughout this region. Technology innovations are also playing a crucial role in the advancement of this industry. Different regulatory structures, increasing cost of raw materials and operations are the key restraining factors for the market.The North America feed additives market is segmented based on type and livestock. The market for feed additives, on the basis of type, is classified into Antibiotics, Amino Acids, Enzymes, Antioxidants, Vitamins, Prebiotics, Acidifiers, Probiotics, Mycotoxin Detoxifiers, Feed Pigments, Flavours and Sweeteners, Feed Minerals, Feed Binders, and each is further classified into subgroups. On the basis of livestock, the North America feed additives market is segmented into poultry, cattle, swine, aquatic animals, and others. By livestock, the poultry segment leads the feed additives market in this region.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-feed-additives-market-317/request-sample The North America market, which has the largest consumer base in the world, has been geographically segmented into USA and Canada. The USA leads the market in this region. The poultry segment is developing as a leading livestock segment for the consumption of feed additives, 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 region are BASF SE, Cargill, Inc., Alltech, Inc., Novozymes A/S, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited, Nutreco N.V., Evonik Industries AG, and Adisseo France SAS.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
Organ Transplant Market

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Organ transplantation is the surgical operation in which a healthy organ is removed from one person and transplanted to another person whose organ is failed or damaged. In the organ transplantation, the donated organ may be from living donor, deceased donor, or from an animal. Whereas in some cases an artificial organ is used in the transplantation procedure. Organ transplantation gives new life to the individual with damaged or failed organ. The most common organ transplant includes kidney, heart, liver, pancreas, lung, and intestine. Double organ transplantation is also possible such as kidney and pancreas transplant, and heart and lungs tran splant. A Kidney transplant is the most common type of organ transplant whereas intestine transplant is the least common type of the organ transplant. Vascularized Composite Allografts (VCA) which includes hand and face transplantation is also possible due to the advancements in the organ transplantation area.Request For Sample Copy@Growing population with organ failure is the important factor driving the growth of organ transplant marketAccording to WHO Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation in 2014, approximately 119,873 organs were transplanted annually and that was 1.81% observed increase over 2013. Moreover, increase in chronic diseases which are leading to the organ failure, rise in injurious habits such as smoking and drinking further leading to organ disability or failure are the other factors contributing to the growth of organ transplant market. The data given by National Kidney Foundation, U.S in 2016, there are around 121,678 people waiting for an organ transplant, among which 100,791 people are waiting for kidney transplant. The rising population awaiting for organ transplant and increase in mortality rate due to the inadequate organ for transplantation might create opportunities in the organ transplant market. Some other factors owing to the growth of organ transplant market includes refinement and improvement in surgical techniques and treatment strategies that are helping to increase survival rates, and the launch of new anti-infective and immunosuppression techniques contributing to the lower risk of organ rejection after transplantation, and the development of organ preservation and organ procurements. However, the high cost of transplantation, stringent ethical policies, and lack of reimbursement, organ trafficking and low supply of organs are some restraints that are hindering the growth of organ transplant market.Kidney transplant holds the maximum share of organ transplant market due to rising renal diseases patientsOn the basis of organ type, the organ transplant market is segmented intoKidney,Heart,Lungs,Liver,Intestine,OthersTechnological advantages and established healthcare sector fueling to the domination of major region in organ transplant marketRegional segmentation of organ transplant market by Coherent Market Insights comprises of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa, and Middle East. North America and Europe region holds the maximum share in the organ transplant market due to the growing success of organ transplant surgeries, technological advancements, and the drug discovery that is important for transplantation. Well established healthcare infrastructure is also contributing to the domination of these regions in the organ transplant market.Growing awareness about organ donation is expected to help the business players to progress in the organ transplant marketKey industry players operating the organ transplant market includes Organogenesis Incorporated, Terumo Co., OrganOX, Transplant Biomedical, Preservation solution, TransMedic, WorldHeart Co., Waters Medical systems, and Jarvik Heart Incorporated. The industry players of organ transplant market relies on organ donation which further collected, stored, and distributed by them. The increase in awareness about the organ donation is expected to create opportunities for the industry players. Whereas factors such as, proximity to key suppliers, understand the government policies and get access to volunteer labor are important for the business players to sustain in the organ transplant market.Ask For the Discount@About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit Coherent Market Insights Blog @ https://blog.coherentmarketinsights.com Connect with us on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/company/coherent-market-insights
Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market By Conditions (Peripartum Cardiomyopathy, Congenital Heart Disease, Inherited Arrhythmias)

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-07 11:44:29

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531/MIG-II, Rd Number 1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Kukatpally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500072.Sales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market size was around USD XX billion in 2017. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of XX% to reach USD XX billion by 2022. Wearable cardioverter defibrillator is a gadget that is non-invasive it is utilized to prevent sudden heart attack. It has two parts: A light weight jacket which is worn under regular clothes and a small mobile unit which includes recorder and generator. Sudden heart attack occurs when the heart's electrical system malfunctions. It directs the heart to relax and contract. Those conditions where there is abnormal rhythm in the ventricles of the heart is known as Ventricular Fibrillation. When VF occurs, a WCD sends an electrical current to the heart that is used to revive a normal heart rhythm. Defibrillators are used for the treatment of life-threatening ventricular fibrillation, heart dysrhythmias, and ventricular tachycardia.Get a comprehensive overview of the Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/wearable-cardioverter-defibrillator-market-4565/ Rising prevalence of diseases, increasing geriatric population, growing number of training and awareness among the population base and, technological advancements are the primary drivers of the market.On the other hand, factors like problems related to the use of wearable cardioverter defibrillator devices, inadequate knowledge regarding sudden cardiac arrest, and the wearable cardioverter defibrillator does not monitor atrial arrhythmias thus this hinders the growth of the market.Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market segmentation by Conditions and by End User. By Conditions it is segmented into Peripartum Cardiomyopathy, Congenital Heart Disease, and Inherited Arrhythmias. By End User the market is segmented into Hospitals, Home Care Settings, and Cardiology Clinics.Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/wearable-cardioverter-defibrillator-market-4565/ Market Segmentation5.1 Conditions5.1.1 Introduction5.1.2 Peripartum Cardiomyopathy5.1.3 Congenital Heart Disease5.1.4 Inherited Arrhythmias5.1.5 Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Conditions5.1.6 Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Conditions5.1.7 Market Share Analysis, By Conditions5.2 End User5.2.1 Introduction5.2.2 Hospitals5.2.3 Home Care Settings5.2.4 Cardiology Clinics5.2.5 Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By End User5.2.6 Market Attractiveness Analysis, By End User5.2.7 Market Share Analysis, By End UserWearable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market geographical segmentation by Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. North America commands the largest market share of the overall industry and is likely to keep ruling the business sector due to growing incidence of diseases, enhancement in healthcare industry and extended growth. US and Canada contribute highest to the overall market in the region because of the awareness regarding the sudden cardiac arrest and defibrillators. Europe is the second largest market. The Market is majorly driven by rise in demand from developing economies in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions, where more workstations and business environments are introducing advancement in defibrillators. It is projected to benefit the defibrillators market in the aforementioned forecast period.Inquire Before Buying: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/wearable-cardioverter-defibrillator-market-4565/inquire The major Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator Market leaders are LivaNova PLC (U.K.), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), ZOLL Medical Corporation (U.S.), Cardiac Science Corporation (U.S.), Physio-Control, Inc. (U.S.), Medtronic PLC (Ireland), St. Jude Medical, Inc. (U.S.), Boston Scientific Corporation (U.S.), BIOTRONIK SE & Co. KG (Germany), and Nihon Kohden Corporation (Japan)About Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and sksillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.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
The Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, says it has sealed off over 3,000 properties in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja for failing to file annual tax returns.

The Chairman of FIRS, Babatunde Fowler, disclosed this at a one-day media sensitization workshop on Voluntary Assets & Income Declaration Scheme, VAIDS, on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr. Fowler, who represented the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said the affected properties, which belong to individuals and corporate organisations, were sealed off since the VAIDS tax amnesty policy programme was launched last July.

We have waited for the owners of these properties to come forward and regularize their records. Very soon we would be going to court to seek permission to dispose of these properties. Whatever is realized would be to make up for the outstanding liabilities. If any change is left we give it to the owners, Mr. Fowler said.

Besides, he said there were properties built and owned in the country under corporate names, without those organizations paying appropriate taxes to government. All those properties, including empty land or properties are currently being reviewed.

He said, by law, if owners of such corporate organisations do not file revenue returns or pay corporate tax, the FIRS has adopted a policy of calculating tax returns on 20 per cent of the companys annual turnover.

For a company to own a property, there must be that money came from some source. For an individual, it also works the same way. An individual who earns N10 million annual salary, but owns property valued at N100 million will have to pay tax on the difference in amount, because the excess money must have come from somewhere, the FIRS Chairman explained.

On the impact of the recent government policy to invite to privileged Nigerians to voluntarily regularize their tax statuses, Mr. Fowler said about N17 billion had been realized from five companies, with additional N6 billion expected to be paid before the end of December.

He urged Nigerians to take advantage of the nine months amnesty window to regularize their tax status and avoid the fine that would follow after the March 2018 deadline.

Those who do not take advantage of the opportunity would be made to pay a fine at the expiration of the amnesty window, because there must be an incentive for those who come forward to pay voluntarily, he said.

Part of the incentives include that government would not investigate or prosecute those who willingly embraced the VAIDS programme, so far as the FIRS was convinced what they declared were truthful and genuine.

Although he said the VAIDS programme had recorded significant progress since it began, the FIRS boss said it still has not met a crucial number as was expected.

He solicited the cooperation of judges in the prosecution of the tax cases in court to be brought before them, not just because they are Nigerians, but because their rulings would help enforce and uphold the rule of law.

The FIRS is not trying to pull the judges to government side, just because we want to increase tax revenue, but to ensure that every taxpayer sees that as long we do our job the right way, we will certain win our cases, he said.

To sensitize the judges, he said the FIRS had some legal information, it believes, if they apply would help them discharge their obligations effectively.

A member of the Presidential Committee on the VAIDS, who is also a consultant to FIRS and Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, Albert Florunsho, said the tax amnesty programme was not introducing any new tax policy in the country, but to encourage tax payers comply with existing tax laws.

Mr. Florunsho, who made a presentation on VAIDS: A Tax Amnesty Programme in Action, said although the programme was not asking religious organizations to pay tax, it did not also grant exemptions to such people who earn incomes and involve in businesses that earn income from tax.

No clergyman or church is asked to come and pay tax. But, if any of them is engaged in business, the income from the business would be liable to tax. There is no exemption in the tax law for clergymen and religious leaders.

This not a call for churches to begin to pay tax from their tithes and offerings. But, if they have a school, depending on how it is set up, or any other such business, outside its religious ecclesiastical activities, like printing press that does printing for other members of the public, and not of a public character, is liable to income tax, Mr. Florunsho said.

The Executive Secretary, Joint Tax Board, JTB, Oseni Elamah, in his contribution said government was concerned that corporate organizations, particularly media houses, were not remitting tax deductions from their workers to the tax authorities.

He said government was considering a policy that would not allow corporate organization to be cleared to make their annual returns, if there were no records that tax deductions from their workers have been remitted to the relevant tax authorities and tax certificates issued.
Femi Kuti, son of Afrobeat icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti has said it took him about a decade to gain the acceptance of music fans.

The 55-year-old musician made the revelation in a tell-it-all interview on Wazobia Max in Lagos on Thursday. In the chat, Femi explained how he struggled to get out of his fathers shadow to make a name for himself.

He said,For like a decade nobody wanted to listen to my music. And so I decided to make a name in France, Switzerland, and Germany. Then I broke into America before Wonder Wonder became a hit in Nigeria and people wanted to listen to my music. So, it took eight to ten years before people gave me a chance.

He explained that he was never christened Femi as his first name was actually Olufela.

He revealed that his mother changed his name to Femi so as, not to be put in the shadow of Fela. He also revealed the steps he took to create a name for himself stressing that he can never be Fela Kuti because he is Femi Kuti.

Femi also spoke about his experience performing in his fathers Egypt 80 band, before eventually leaving to kick off his own music career. According to him, the transition took place in an era when his father reigned supreme.

Obviously tired of constantly being compared to his father during his time in the Egypt 80 band, Femi said he had to make the bold move.

Playing in my fathers band, he took me everywhere. I knew I could never be him. As Felas son, I was loved and appreciated but some people always looked at it like a challenge. And I didnt see that way; all I saw was the man I loved, adored and respected so much. So I didnt see the competition. But everyone expected, I wanted to be like him and I was constantly being told I couldnt be like him but it wasnt my aim. I wanted to find myself in the chaos surrounding me.

Femi, who started playing the saxophone at age 15 before he became a member of his fathers band, noted, I can never be Fela Kuti but I can be Femi Kuti.

With this in mind, I decided I was not going to turn up for rehearsals anymore. My father was very angry. Everyone was scared for my fate but I knew that this journey would be tough. Even if it meant going through a brick wall, I didnt know how I was going to do it, but I knew I had to start then before it was too late. So I closed my eyes and mind and did it.

On his early music influences, Femi said, I think it is very important to understand why and how I decided music. I started out listening to jazz. My father introduced me to jazz and I hated the genre in the beginning. When I understood the nitty-gritty of Jazz music, I knew I could be either be Charlie Parker, Myles Davies or I could just be Femi Kuti.

Watch the full video below:
Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni says he supports extending a presidents term to seven years from five but one critic said any such move would help enable one of Africas longest serving leaders to rule for life.

Mr. Museveni did not directly propose that term limits be stretched in Uganda but instead said extending the time between elections would give African leaders more opportunity to promote development because they would not be distracted by politics.

For these countries with all these problems  five years is just a joke, a statement from the presidency quoted Mr. Museveni as saying.

Leaders in Africa have much more to do and need adequate time (between elections) to develop the continent.

Mr. Museveni fought his way to power in 1986 and has won a series of elections, the most recent of which was in 2016.

His opponents say the government uses repression to stay in power and rigs elections.

The rapid fall of Zimbabwes leader Robert Mugabe in November after 37 years in power has highlighted the potential vulnerability of the small group of African leaders who have ruled for decades.

The government has proposed a change to the constitution that would enable the 73-year-old leader to stand in 2021 by scrapping a limit on the age of a presidential candidate.

There is no current bill to extend the presidential term but Mr. Musevenis comments make such a proposal more likely.

Security forces have detained opponents of the constitutional change and also used live bullets and teargas to quash demonstrations.

Andrew Karamagi, a rights activist and critic of Mr. Museveni said the presidents comments are: an insult to our intelligence.

To invent a fresh bogeyman, particularly by the same person who said that Africas problem is leaders who stay too long in power, is unfortunate.

If five years are so few  can he show us what he has done in 31 years, he told Reuters.

Mr. Museveni has won praise for sending troops to join an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia and for maintaining stability at home in a region that has been beset by conflicts.

His critics say prolonging his tenure is his central objective.(Reuters/NAN)
The Nigerian government took a step in enforcing the global ban on illegal ivory trade as it seized dozens of elephant tusks illegally imported into the country.

Every year, hundreds of African elephants and rhinoceros are poached and killed for their tusks in the illegal multi-million dollar trade, with most shipped to Asian and Western countries, which endangers African elephants.

Last week, European and American conservation leaders called on governments worldwide to support African nations to put an end to the trade in elephant ivory.

At the 69th meeting of CITES ( the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in Geneva, ivory trade was a major topic.

On Wednesday, the Nigeria Customs Service confirmed the seizure of about 55 calibre of elephant tusks along the Nigeria-Cameroon boarder.

Francis Adetoye, the Area Controller in charge of Adamawa and Taraba Commands, made the disclosure at a press briefing in Yola.

Mr. Adetoye said that the success was recorded following a joint anti-smuggling and drugs patrol in collaboration with sister agencies in the state.

On November 20, the commands anti-smuggling team successfully seized 55 huge size of elephant tusks being smuggling into Nigeria from a neighbouring country, he said.

It is not clear if Nigeria was the final destination of the ivory or just a transit point. Mr. Adetoye did not also indicate if the importers were arrested and what will happen to the seized tusks.

The official also spoke on other seizures made by the Customs.

From January to November, the command recorded 43 seizures with the total Duty Paid Value of N119.77 million naira.

The seizures include, foreign rice, fairly used vehicles and other used textiles, he said.

He emphasised that the command has given special focus on seizure of rice with the aim of reinforcing federal governments commitment toward encouraging local production of the commodity.
The Inspector General of Police has ordered an investigation into an allegation of extortion against the public relations officer of the Kwara State Police Command, Ajayi Okesanmi, PREMIUM TIMES can reveal.

Mr. Okesanmi confirmed the investigation to PREMIUM TIMES when contacted on phone.

The IG has ordered for an investigation and I might not want to disclose anything about it because of the investigation. We received a letter this morning. The investigation will reveal whether money was collected from the guy or not, Mr Okesanmi he said.

The allegation against Mr Okesanmi came to light following the viral online campaign for the scrapping of the polices Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, due to reports of the units brutality, rights abuses and extra-judicial killings.

As Nigerians recounted their mostly bitter ordeals in the hands of the SARS on social media, one Michael Asiwaju with the Twitter handle @Asiwaju_Limited posted a tweet about how Mr. Okesanmi allegedly extorted $2,000 cash from him, forced him to transfer N155,000 to one of his subordinates and seized his Samsung smartphone.

On Friday July 7th, the PPRO of the Kwara State police command took 2000$ cash from me and forced me to transfer 115k to one of his boys account, and he also seize (sic) my Samsung phone He threatened to send me to jail if I tell anyone about the case, he tweeted.

Attached to the tweet were the photographs of the Mr Okesanmi and a partly redacted copy of a bank debit slip. He did not, however, state what offence he was arrested for before the alleged extortion.

Mr. Okesanmi denied he extorted money from Mr. Asiwaju. He told PREMIUM TIMES he arrested Mr. Asiwaju after he was accused of blackmail and rape by a female student of the University of Ilorin.

He said Mr Asiwaju was arrested at Bovina Hotel, Ilorin at about 1 a.m. and brought to the state police headquarters where the case was assigned one of his subordinates, a sergeant. He said he soon left the office as he needed to rush home to freshen up for an event he was billed to attend alongside the state commissioner of police that morning.

The spokesperson said to his utter shock when he returned to the state police headquarters later that day, the sergeant who was assigned to investigated the case told him Mr Asiwaju had escaped while he was being led to search his hotel room.

We took his statement and he confessed to the crime. We also took his phone because it contained the videos and picture he was blackmailing the student with. He escaped while he was being led to search his room in the hotel where he was staying. The incident led to some punishment being meted out to the police man.

We started looking for him. We wanted to blow up the incident but the girl, fearing that her image would be tarnished, pleaded that we should soft-pedal. We have travelled to Lagos to the addresses he wrote to get him arrested but we have been unable to arrest him, he said.

He added that he did not collect any money from Mr. Asiwaju and did not spend an extended time with him.

It is not in my character to do that. I never did that before and I will not do it. I will not even come low as doing that with a petty criminal like that.

He added that the investigation will reveal whether the sergeant, identified simply as Sunday, collected money from Mr. Asiwaju or not.

He, however, said if Mr Asiwaju was sure that he transferred the money to him or gave him any cash he should come out and prove his allegation.

The matter is now in the public space he should be confident enough to come out, he added.

Mr Asiwaju did not respond to PREMIUM TIMES request to be interviewed, but he has been relentlessly tweeting about what he claimed happened on the night he was arrested.

The PPRO of Kwara State Police Command was the one that took 2,000 dollars from me and he was the one that told me to transfer 115k into Sundays account. PPRO shouldnt try and put everything on Sunday, he wrote in one tweet.

The PPRO of said I run and left my phone in hotel and he later said he checked my phone and later said the phone was on passwordhow did u check the phone on password? And later said he couldnt check the phone because it was on password he wrote in another tweet.

BLACKMAIL AND RAPE

While Messrs. Okesanmi and Asiwaju trade blame about what transpired on the night of July 7, the lady, who will be identified here by a pseudonym, Linda, because she does not want her real name used fearing that her parents would disown her and kick her out of the house if they found out what happened, told PREMIUM TIMES how she was caught in a web of blackmail and an alleged rape after she met Mr Asiwaju on Instagram.

The 21-year-old 400-level student said after she met Mr Asiwaju on Instagram, they stated hanging out sometime in 2016 while she was doing her industrial attachment in Lagos.

When I met him, he told me he wanted a relationship but he confessed that he has a son. He was a very nice person and we talked and we laughed a lot, she said.

Linda said she stopped talking with Mr Asiwaju for a while until he contacted her and asked that she should visit him at his house in the Lekki area of Lagos. She agreed to follow him to his house because she claimed she was beginning to like him and wanted to know him better. But just before she was to visit him, Mr Asiwaju changed his mind and asked that they should meet at a hotel, instead, she said.

When she arrived at the hotel, she claimed that Mr. Asiwaju wanted to have sex with her; but she refused explaining that she was on her menstrual cycle. They left the hotel and nothing happened between them. She said he promised to give her some money and in fact, transferred the money into her account but later withdrew the money from a Diamond Bank ATM.

The second time they met was at a hotel at Igando, in the Ojo area of Lagos, she said. While they were together, she claimed, Mr. Asiwaju transferred N15,000 to her account and demanded to have sex with her. He subsequently asked an employee of the hotel to fetch him a packet of condom. But she told him she could not have sex with him. That was when Mr. Asiwaju got angry and asked that she should refund the money he transferred to her moments earlier. She asked to be excused so she could go fetch the money for him from a bank but he refused.

At this stage, Mr Asiwaju had already taken off most of what he was wearing. As they argued, the hotel staff he asked to fetch the condoms returned. Linda said as Mr Asiwaju went to open the door to collect the condoms, she stood behind and was gesturing to the hotel employee not to leave her alone with him. But he collected the condoms and tried to slam the door shut. That was when she started screaming for help. But Mr. Asiwaju was not deterred and told her he was going to have sex with her whether she wanted it or not, she said.

Linda said her scream attracted other occupants of the hotel. Things got so loud that the management of the hotel threatened to arrest and throw them out of the place. But a soldier who was at the hotel at the time intervened and even slapped Mr. Asiwaju as he acted uncontrollably, she said.

At the end, it was agreed that she should refund the N15,000 to Mr Asiwaju but he insisted that he would keep her phone until she paid back the money. Linda said she returned the money the next day and collected her phone from Mr. Asiwaju. But unknown to her someone had made a video of the furore at the hotel the previous day and had given it to Mr Asiwaju, who also had copied her fathers number from her phone.

She said he later contacted her and threatened to send the video to her father if she continued to resist his demand to sleep with her. She said she was scared and agreed to have sex with him. But unknown to her Mr Asiwaju was recording a video of their sexual act together.

Then the blackmail intensified, she claimed. He would consistently demand sex from her and threaten to send the video to her father through WhatsApp. She said there was a little respite when she returned to Ilorin to continue her studies. But he did not stop.

By this time, I could not have sex with him again. All that was on my mind was to commit suicide. I told him I will kill myself if it would make him happy since all you want to do is embarrass me Id rather kill myself than have you embarrass my father, she wept over the phone.

I did not know that blackmailing was crime. If I knew I would have reported him the first time, she continued.

So, when in July Mr Asiwaju contacted her and asked that she should come to Lagos, she felt she had had enough and narrated her ordeal to her pastor. She said it was her pastor who reported the case to Mr Okesanmi, who attends the same church with her.

The police spokesperson advised her to play along but to tell Mr Asiwaju that she was busy with examination in school and that he should come to Ilorin if he really wanted to have sex with her. Predictably, he agreed and came to Ilorin and was nabbed at Bovina Hotel by undercover police officers.

VICTIM CONTRADICTS POLICE CLAIM

The next morning, when she called the police to ask how the case would proceed, Mr. Okesanmi told her not to worry that Mr. Asiwaju would not threaten her again, she said.

The police told me he was released to get guarantors in Lagos. They said he will never threaten me again. But that same day Asiwaju sent me the transfer slip of the money he paid to the police and threatened that he will make me pay for it, she said.

Lindas statement of what Mr. Okesanmi and the police told her the morning after the arrest appears to contradict what the police spokesperson said about the suspect escaping. But the spokesperson insisted on his stance of how Mr. Asiwaju escaped.

Linda said Mr. Asiwaju sent her several threatening messages afterward and eventually sent the video to her father. But luckily, her younger brother was with her fathers phone at the time and promptly deleted the video.

I blame myself for everything. It was my fault. I should have reported him to the police the first time he tried to blackmail me. But I was scared and I didnt know blackmail was a crime.

I am still afraid. Asiwaju is connected. He has threatened to deal with me. I dont know what to do. I just dont know what to do. I am scared, she wept.

Mr. Okesanmi, had earlier promised PREMIUM TIMES that he would fetch the sergeant who handled to case to explain what happened and how Mr Asiwaju escaped. But When this reporter called back to speak with the sergeant, Mr. Okesanmi said he would rather not want to say anything more since the matter is now under investigation.
A Federal High Court Court Judge, Adeniyi Ademola, accused of corruption and acquitted by the court, has left office.

The judge voluntarily retired on Wednesday after submitting his letter to the Chief Justice of the Federal High Court in Abuja, the News Agency of Nigeria reported Thursday.

The judge was due for statutory retirement in March 2018, but he suddenly turned in his letter of voluntary retirement dated Dec. 6, 2017.

The one-paragraph letter, submitted to the Office of the Acting Chief Judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja, said his retirement took effect from Wednesday.

The judge did not state the reason for tendering his letter ahead of the anticipated date.

The spokesperson for the National Judicial Council, Soji Oye, could not be immediately reached.

Mr. Ademola was among seven judges accused of corruption in October 2016.

The judge was charged alongside his wife and a senior advocate of Nigeria, Joe Agi, at an Abuja Division of the Federal Capital Territory High Court.

The three accused were however later cleared of all corruption charges.
President Muhammadu Buhari says his government has found corruption more difficult to fight than insecurity.

Mr. Buhari spoke at a town hall meeting in Kano on the final day of his two-day visit to the state.

The power of the corrupt Nigerians is so enormous but we are determined to deal with the situation headlong. This is as been adjudged by what is happening today on ground, he said.

Responding to comments made at the town hall meeting, he said the democratic environment has made the fight against corruption even more difficult because of the power of corrupt Nigerians.

As Head of State I arrested some corrupt politicians. But shortly after I was arrested after my government been truncated, all the houses that I confiscated were returned back to the owners,

He said that was why in the current fight against corruption, after confiscating properties from the corrupt Nigerians, we ordered that they should be sold and the money be deposited at the treasury.

To show our seriousness in this fight today, among those being investigated was a high court judge whose house was searched and several foreign currencies were found and some international passports.

President Buhari said the fight against corruption requires zeal, courage and full determination to succeed, saying his government has all these attributes to achieve the success.

On the war against insurgency, he said the success so far recorded is a victory for the entire nation, adding that already, the fight was tilting towards final victory.

Let me say, while linking the war against insurgency vis a vis the issue of smuggling as being raised, we have a duty to keep sound relationship with our neighbours, a reason why I went to Chad and Cameroon immediately after assuming office.

But in spite of continued smuggling, he said the ban on the importation of rice had been achieved by 90 per cent and that Nigerian farmers are the greatest beneficiaries of the ban.
The Charge dAffaires of Nigeria in Libya, Illiya Fachano, says some Nigerians in Libya have refused to be repatriated inspite of the unfavourable situations .

Mr. Fachano told the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday: not all of them want to come back home.

Before you can assist them, they will have to sign a consent form, after which emergency travel certificates are issued.

I want the public to know that we have some Nigerians who are not willing to return inspite of the unfavourable situations and the fact is that we cant get them on the flight without their consent.

Migration is natural and has always happened but becomes an issue when there are people migrating illegally meaning the migrants arrive without proper documentations and conceal their identity.

What we do is identify the Nigerians in the camps, register them then issue them an emergency travel certificate but those who happen to be sick get medical treatments before being confirmed to fly.

The Internationl Organisation for Migration (IOM) has rallied support of the European nations and particularly Italy for the Libyan Coast Guards who are particularly ordered to prevent boats that smuggle migrants and refugees from Libya to Europe.

The fact that the coast guards at the Mediterranean Sea are professionally trained and well funded by the EU, they have captured many people who are trying to illegally cross to Europe and returned them to Libya.

Unfortunately, we have noticed that in every batch of people brought back to Libya from Europe or the Mediterranean Sea, a larger number of the migrants come from Nigeria because of our population, he said.

Mr. Fachano added that there were challenges in extracting Nigerians from Libya which required the assistance of the government.

I can confirm that the stories of Africans being bought as slaves in general is true, however, we discovered other people who were bought and sold by their fellow Nigerians living in Europe, he said.

The charge daffaires said it is worrisome that with all the efforts of the government to rescue stranded migrants, more Nigerians are still trying to go to these places hoping that they will be lucky in achieving their European dream.

The Federal Government said, Wednesday, that it has so far identified 2,778 Nigerians trapped in the Libyan detention camps.

Of this figure, the government said 250 were repatriated on Dec. 5.

So far the government said 3,250 have so far returned from the Libyan enclave.

The government said it would continue to engage the legitimate government in Libya to address the plight of Nigerian migrants in that country.

(NAN)
The Kano state chapter of the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, on Thursday adopted President Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate for the 2019 general elections.

The leadership of the party and other prominent members also expressed their commitment and support to Governor Abdullahi Ganduje as their sole candidate for 2019.

According to Mr. Buharis spokesperson, Garba Shehu, in a statement, the president did not say he accepted, neither did he decline, even after the party leaders promised to procure the nomination forms for him and threatened to sue if he declined the said endorsement.

President Buhari merely beamed with smiles and went on to underscore the need for unity in the party and among the diverse peoples of Nigeria, the statement said.

The APC leaders meeting, held on the margins of the presidents state visit to Kano, was attended by Governor Ganduje, his deputy, Hafizu Abubakar, the state Chairman and the members of the state executive committee and members of the national executive committee of the party from Kano State.

Also in attendance were two of the states senators; members of the House of Representatives from the state; the Speaker and 34 of the 40 members of the Kano State House of Assembly and the 44 party Chairmen, their deputies and the Local Government Area secretaries of the APC.

Others are Governor Muhammed Abubakar of Jigawa and other leaders of the party in the state.

According to the statement, the state chairman of the APC, Inuwa Abbas, hinged the partys endorsement of the president on his achievements in the last two years especially in the fields of security, the war against corruption and the restructuring of the economy.

Security is important for everyone, not just for Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

It even more so for us as a commercial and industrial state. We are convinced that you are best for these times when the country has begun to muster energy and resources to develop agriculture, infrastructure and empower the younger citizens, Mr. Abbas said.

Speaking in a humorous note, Governor Ganduje said the party was prepared to drag the president to court to force his acceptance of the second term ticket.

In his response, Mr. Buhari said he understood the clamour by the ordinary people on the streets who raised four fingers on each hand, meaning four-plus-four years.

He, however, stressed the need to sanitise party politics by ridding it of vote buying and violence.

What I saw in the elections in Kogi, Bayelsa and Rivers, the use of money and those headless bodies really upset me. I dont wish to see that anywhere. I would not have won if money and killing was the modus of operation. That is my view of politics, the president said.
A judge of the Federal High Court, Adeniyi Ademola, who resigned from his position on Thursday did not do so voluntarily, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt.

Mr. Ademola was accused of corrupt enrichment by the EFCC but was controversially discharged by the high court. The anti-graft agency indicated its intention to appeal the ruling.

A reliable source told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr. Ademola was recommended for sack by the National Judicial Council, NJC.

Our source said the NJC forwarded its recommendation for Mr. Ademolas compulsory retirement to President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, but that the judge got wind of it and decided to submit his letter of voluntary retirement on Thursday.

The true situation is that the NJC recommended his compulsory retirement to the president c-in-c on Wednesday; the info was leaked to him which led him to quickly send in a resignation letter, the source said.

In an official statement, the NJC confirmed what the source said.

The NJC spokesperson said the purported voluntary retirement is clearly an afterthought as Council had taken action before his decision to forward any voluntary retirement letter.

He said the NJC under Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen at a meeting on Wednesday recommended the compulsory retirement from office of Mr. Ademola and another judge, O. Tokode.

Read the full NJC statement below.

The National Judicial Council, under the chairmanship of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, at its 84th Meeting which was held on December 6, 2017, recommended the compulsory retirement from office of Justice A. F. A. Ademola and Justice O. O. Tokode both of the Federal High Court for misconduct.

Mr. Ademola who had forwarded his notice of retirement on 10th October, 2017 to the Council against 9th April, 2018, when he will attain the mandatory retirement age of 65 years was recommended for compulsory retirement from office to President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, pursuant to the findings by the Council on the allegation contained in the petition written against His Lordship by a group of 8 persons under the name of Committee of Anambra State PDP House of Representatives Members-Elect alleging His Lordship of the following:-

 that His Lordship heard their Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/177/2015 which was adjourned for judgement on March 25, 2015;

 that on the adjourned date, His Lordship did not deliver the judgement but adjourned the case sine die, to await the decision of the Supreme Court on another matter on the same issue, on is the list of PDP candidates for Anambra State for the General Elections of 2015;

 that His Lordship speedily heard and delivered judgement in another case in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/254/2015 filed later on the same issues, with intent to confer undue advantage on the Plaintiff who is from a family with which the Respondent has relationship;

 that the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the judgement ultimately given to the petitioners contained a paragraph that was not read in open Court by the Hon. Judge and that a phrase was altered, all to address an issue raised in the appeal that had already been filed by the Petitioner before the issuance of Certified True Copy (C T C);

 that some of the reasoning and conclusions of the Hon. Judge were summersaults;

 that the Respondent finally delivered judgement in the case on 8th July, 2016, five (5) months after the Supreme Court delivered the judgement he was awaiting contrary to the Constitutional provisions that judgements should be delivered within a period of 90 days.

 Though the Petitioners withdrew their petitions in accordance with to Regulation 16 of the National Judicial Council Judicial Discipline Regulations of 9th March, 2017, Council viewed His Lordships action of non-delivery of judgement within the stipulated time as misconduct contrary to Section 292 (1) (b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended and Rules 1.3 and 3.7 of the 2016 Revised Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The public is hereby informed to disregard news circulating on some news media that Mr. Ademola has voluntarily retired. The purported voluntary retirement is clearly an afterthought as Council had taken action before his decision to forward any voluntary retirement letter.

Justice O. O. Tokode of the same Federal High Court was also recommended to President Muhammadu Buhari for compulsory retirement from office with immediate effect sequel to the findings of Council on the allegation contained in petitions forwarded by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and Abimbola Awogboro.

The Petitioners accused the Hon. Judge of misleading the Federal Judicial Service Commission and the National Judicial Council, by submitting six judgements he claimed to have personally conducted while practising as a lawyer; a pre-requisite for his application for appointment as a Judicial Officer, and was so appointed.

The Investigation Committee of Council however found that the Hon. Judge personally conducted only one of the six cases submitted. Therefore, Council decided to recommend his compulsory retirement and the refund of all salaries and allowances he earned since his purported appointment to the position of a Judge to the coffers of the Judiciary.

In the interim, the National Judicial Council in exercise of its power under paragraph 21 sub-paragraph (d) of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended, has suspended Justices A. F. A. Ademola and O. O. Tokode from office with immediate effect.

The Council also issued serious warning letters to Justice A. N. Ubaka of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria for failure to deliver Ruling in Suit No. NICN/BEN/51/2014 within the time specified time by law.

The council did not accept the reasons given for failure to deliver the ruling within time.

The judge has also been placed on watch-list of the Council for the next one year.

Council also gave a warning letter to Justice Zainab Aliyu Sadat of the High Court of Niger State and placed her on the watch-list for three years for claiming that the Defendant in Suit No: NHSC/MN/46/2016 failed to make available authority cited by them after submission of the argument to her.

Council at the Meeting also decided to dismiss the petition written by Ali Modu Sheriff alleging that Justice A. Liman of the Federal High Court of corruption for his failure to honour the invitation of the Investigation Committee on the three occasions that he sat to investigate the matter.

Council exonerated Justice Simon Akpah Amogeda of the Federal High Court from corruption allegation by Ernest J. Henry, who could not substantiate his allegation.

The Council decided to write the Petitioner a warning letter for maligning the name of the Hon. Judge.

In addition, Council exonerated Justice F. I. Kola-Olalere of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria from any misconduct in the petition written against him by Samuel Atotuomah. Justice B. B. Kanyip of the same court was also exonerated of allegation of corruption written against him by Adebayo Jegede, who did not attend the Investigation Committee Panel to defend his allegation.

The Council decided to report him to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) for the unfounded allegation of corruption and the use of crude and insultive language against the Hon. Judge in his petition.

The Petitions written against Justice Adama Iyayi-Laminkara, Chief Judge, Rivers State, Justice Maria Zukogi, Chief Judge, Niger State, Justice Eyo Effiom Ita, High Court, Cross River State, Justices S. A. Orugboyo and R. I. B. Adebiyi, High Court, Lagos State, were dismissed by the Council as all the petitioners withdrew them and Council found no serious issues for further consideration in the allegations.

Justice A. M. Lawal of Lagos State High Court was also issued a warning letter and placed on watch-list for one year by the Council for unnecessary delay in delivering his ruling and giving his personal phone number to parties.

The petition written against Kadi Al-Hafis M. Abubakar of the Katsina State Sharia Court of Appeal by Ibrahim Mukhtar Mashi was dismissed by the Council for lack of merit.

Council also directed Justice Linda Amina Yarosi of the Customary Court of Appeal to resume duty from her sick leave immediately and placed her on watch-list for 3 months.

All Judicial Officers placed on watch-list of the Council will not be elevated or considered for special assignments during the period they are on the list.

Within that period, Council reserves the right to consider their suitability or otherwise to continue as Judicial Officers based on their performance.
Talks are underway for Peoples Democratic Party chairmanship contenders from the South-west to settle on a single candidate, one of the aspirants told PREMIUM TIMES Thursday.

Rashidi Ladoja, a former governor of Oyo State, said northern delegates from the PDP have resolved to back a candidate from the South-west, but only if the region could rally behind an individual first.

Weve started a process to reduce the number of aspirants to one in the South-west, Mr. Ladoja said while emerging from a meeting with a former governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel.

Messrs. Ladoja and Daniel met to resolve on a candidate, but it was not immediately clear who would step down for the other.

Bode George, Rasheed Ladoja, Segun Aderemi, Taoheed Adedoja, Gbenga Daniel and Jimi Agbaje are the six Yoruba politicians eyeing the PDP chairmanship, and none of them has backed down as at Thursday evening, barely two days to the convention.

The PDP zoned the chairmanship to the south, paving the way for other politicians like Raymond Dokpesi and Uche Secondus who are running from the South-south.

Mr. Ladoja, who recently returned to the PDP and subsequently picked a form to be the partys chairman, said he was confident that a Yoruba will emerge as chairman.

South-west will produce the next chairman, Mr. Ladoja said. Its going to be a collective decision of all of us.

The PDP scheduled the convention for December 9 after the Ahmed Makarfi faction of the party won its lengthy legal battle with the Ali Sheriff faction at the Supreme Court in July.

The party resolved to give the slot for chairmanship position to the south and reserved the presidential ticket for the north.

The battle for the chairmanship position is particularly heightened between the South-west and South-south.because of the vice-presidential slot.

If the South-west produces the chairman at the convention this weekend, the vice-presidential slot is expected to go to the South-south or the South-east in 2019.

But if the chairman emerges from the South-south, then a running mate is expected to be chosen from the South-west, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal party arrangement.

South-west politicians are holding consultations because they found the office of the chairman more consequential than a vice-presidential slot, said political analyst Tola Adetukasi.

Mr. Adetukasi said the South-west politicians risk losing the chairmanship to the South-south, specifically to Mr. Secondus, who is backed by Governor Nyesom Wike.

The earlier for them, the better, the analyst added.

Mr. Ladoja said the South-west deliberations for a consensus candidate may drag well unto the convention ground, but assured that only one candidate will contest from the South-west at the convention.

Convention decisions are taken between 48 and zero hour, so this is now an issue, he told PREMIUM TIMES.

Messrs. Agbaje, Adeniran and George did not immediately respond to PREMIUM TIMES requests seeking their comments about the consultations Thursday evening.
The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Suleiman Kazaure, has warned corps members against engaging in night parties in their areas of posting.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the NYSC Director General gave the warning on Wednesday when he visited the Ekiti State Orientation Camp in Ise/Orun/Emure-Ekiti.

Mr. Kazaure also warned Corps members against involvement in sharp practices like Advanced Fee Fraud also known as 419 and Internet scam otherwise known as Yahoo-yahoo.

He also warned female corps members against indecent dressing.

Mr. Kazaure, a brigadier general, advised corps members to key into the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) policy of the agency.

He said the SAED programme was put in place to empower corps members to be job creators rather than job seekers.

He enjoined corps members to respect the culture of their host communities and shun unauthorized journeys.

Earlier in her address, the State NYSC Coordinator, Nwanno Ukagha, said the Batch B Stream 1 corps members had depicted good behaviour and were performing well in the camp.

(NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday in Kano reaffirmed the commitment of his administration to the fight against insurgency in the country.

Mr. Buhari, who made the remark when he paid a courtesy visit to the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, said the federal government was also committed to the fight against corruption.

NAN reports that Mr. Buhari is on a two-day official visit to Kano State.

According to him, Kano was the commercial hub of northern Nigeria, adding that commercial activities in the state had been paralysed by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Before the insurgency, dozens of articulated vehicles,from different states in the north trooped into Kano to buy goods.

The activities of the insurgents have really paralysed the socio-economic activities of the state, he said.

Mr. Buhari, however, said that with the steps taken of his administration towards decimating Boko Haram insurgency, the state would soon restore its commercial glory.

Our administration is committed to pursuing the three-point agenda: the fight against corruption, insurgency and restoring the economy.

Security is one of my top priorities. We cant measure the loss caused by Boko Haram to the North-east region and by extension to Kano State.

But we are now on top of the situation. As you can witness that peace is being restored in the North-eastern region and other areas in the north, he said.

Mr. Buhari, who, described Kano State as his support base since he ventured into politics in 2002, said he was proud of the state for its unflinching support to him.

In his remarks, the emir commended Mr. Buhari for the visit and assured him of the Emirates continuous support to his administration.

He restated the commitment of the emirate council to continue to give useful and meaningful advice to the presidency through a proper channel.

(NAN)
Pope Francis has said the Roman Catholic Church should adopt a better translation of the phrase lead us not into temptation in the Our Father, the best known prayer in Christianity.

That is not a good translation, the pope said in a television interview on Wednesday night.

Francis said the Catholic Church in France had decided to use the phrase do not let us fall into temptation as an alternative and indicated that it or something similar should be applied worldwide.

The prayer, also called The Lords Prayer, is part of Christian liturgical culture and memorized from childhood by billions of Christians.

It is a translation from the Latin vulgate, which was translated from ancient Greek, which was in turn translated from Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

Liturgical translations are usually done by local Churches in coordination with the Vatican.

(Reuters/NAN)
Private Universities produce more First Class Degree holders because of the lower rate of distractions and the quest for excellence, the Vice-Chancellor, Crawford University, Olurotimi Ajayi, has said.

Mr. Ajayi said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) after a news conference heralding the activities marking the 9th Convocation of the university.

NAN reports that the faith-based Crawford University, Igbesa, Ogun, was established in 2015, by the Apostolic Faith Church Mission.

Mr. Ajayi said that private universities had been able to churn out more students on the first class level because of various factors which range from lack of distractions to low social life.

When we consider the academic atmosphere in private universities and public ones, we can see a wide range of difference because at the private universities we dont tolerate distractions.

There is more deliberate dedication to academic excellence than all the side attractions that pervades the public institutions. There are differences.

Activities such as social functions, student activism in public institutions may tend to make some students lose focus, but in the private universities they are at the lowest ebb.

It is not the case that students in the private universities dont socialise, they do, but their academic pursuit comes first, no time for excessive partying.

In private universities, we dont allow for idleness of any kind; it is strictly business and students themselves know this right from the point of entry, he said.

Mr. Ajayi said that part of the distractions was industrial unrests that sometimes distort the academic calendar which was absent in the private universities.

Sometimes, public universities face serious industrial unrests which tamper with the academic calendar; with this, students tend to lose focus.

One of the great disadvantages is industrial action by public universities lecturers, they can be on strike for two or three months even more than that in some cases.

Strikes are not healthy for academic development because the students will have to start again from where they left it. In private universities it is a smooth sail for academic calendar.

Also, we dont allow student to be idle, they are actively engaged and closely monitored except those that are unwilling to learn, he said.

Mr. Ajayi said that academic excellence was the hallmark of the private institutions since they had it at the back of their mind that they have competitors who were also in pursuit of the same goal.

Our vision at the private universities is academic excellence because we compete within ourselves which I think is a healthy rivalry. We strive to produce the best students.

In private universities, lecturers know what they must do and that they must not miss any lecture. It is impossible to do that. We dont tolerate it at all.

Students themselves are aware of these standards; so, on their part, no skipping of lectures, what excuse will they give? They are in the school for full academic pursuit; others are secondary.

The lecturers know that marks given must be defended, so extra caution are made when marking because they must not be caught wanting; we have standards, he said.

The vice-chancellor said that other reasons were the financial implication on the part of the students because they pay higher fees than their public institution counterparts.

Lets also consider how much the parents of these students cough out for their tuition fees and others; who will not be serious with that?

They know what they are here for and the parents themselves would have warned them of toying with their investments.

Private universities are not cheap, so the students are also wary of coming out with a lesser results. Suffice it to say that they study harder than their public institution counterparts.

Go to our libraries in the dead of the nights, you will be amazed to see them filled to capacities with students who are ready for knowledge; we just dont award marks, we reward excellence, he said.

NAN reports that at its 9th Convocation, Crawford University will graduate 230 students who will be awarded First Degrees, while 40 are to be awarded Postgraduate Diplomas.

A further breakdown of the graduates shows that 78 are from the College of Natural and Applied Science, while 152 will be from the College of Business and Social Sciences.

Twenty-two students got first class, while 88 graduates have Second Class Upper Division, 83 finished wthSecond Class Lower Division, while 37 had Third Class.

The convocation ceremony comes up on Dec. 13 at the Universitys Hall, Igbesa, Ogun.

(NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari has instructed law enforcement agencies to deal decisively with all those who import, distribute and sell illicit drugs in the country.

Speaking at an interactive meeting with religious leaders in Kano, on Thursday, in the course of his two-day visit, the president expressed concern about the growing problem of drugs abuse in the country.

He strongly assured the religious leaders that his administration was determined to do something urgent to deal with the narcotics challenge facing the country.

The Customs is already doing a good job and Im happy that I got someone who is efficient, strong and trusted to lead it in the person of Hameed Ali, a former governor of Kaduna State.

I have charged them and other law enforcement agencies to go after those trafficking in illicit drugs that are causing much harm especially among young people, he said.

Mr. Buhari also assured the religious leaders that the war against corruption will be prosecuted with the highest regards to due process and respect for human rights.

He asked Nigerians to be patient on the issue, saying that as an elected president he was bound to follow the constitution.

When I came in uniform as military Head of State, we locked every suspect in Kirikiri prisons until they proved that they were not guilty.

Under the constitution, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. That is the constitution and we will abide by it, he said.

Reaffirming his strong support for the proposed anti-corruption courts, the President said to strengthen judicial integrity and the rule of law, such courts must be manned by incorruptible judges.

President Buhari used the occasion to counsel leaders to rise to the challenge of the countrys growing youth population.

Leaders at every level must pay attention to this. We must give everything we have including education, vocational skills and training for our large youth population so that they can grow to be responsible citizens, he said.

On the provision of infrastructure, the President restated that his administration will ensure increased investment in infrastructure across the country to stimulate the economy and job creation.

He praised the Chinese government for proving the funds for some ongoing projects in the country including railways, roads and the Mambilla hydro-power project.

The president welcomed the suggestion from some of the religious leaders for the setting up of a religious advisory committee made up of Muslim and Christian leaders to meet periodically to advise the government.
The federal government has identified 5,000 more Nigerians trapped in Libyan detention camps.

The Charge dAffaires of Nigeria in Libya, Illiya Fachano, told the News Agency of Nigeria there is a camp with 5000 Nigerians and we need the diplomatic police to escort us to extract them.

There are various camps in the regions of South, West and East of Libya.

The UN-backed Libyan Government is in the western region which is where Tripoli is.

Camps in the other regions are known but inaccessible camps due to the challenges of going into these camps as a communication chain is required before we can reach them, he said.

He said that the Nigerian government has been in talks with the recognised government in Tripoli on how to reach some of the camps to extract its nationals.

Mr. Fachano called for the provision of a bigger aircraft to evacuate Nigerians who has have agreed to come back home.

We need the Nigerian government to better fund its embassy in Libya and send the aircraft.

We have made our request for that.

He called on the UN to help out by sponsoring repatriation flights, provide food and health materials for the migrants.

He said the federal government has so far repatriated 3250 from Libya in recent times.

This is even as 300 other Nigerians are to be repatriated from Libya every week.

Mr. Fachano said the government would continue to make efforts to save Nigerians that are trapped in Libya.

We, the embassy of Nigeria in Tripoli, Libya, have been doing our best to register Nigerians.

We have visited the detention camps, and also collaborated with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to repatriate migrants weekly.

We also ensure that we are up to date with the number of Nigerians in specific detention camps.

I want it to be clear that the mission and Nigerian government have been doing this long before the CNN report.

We have asked the Nigerian presidency to provide us with an extra airplane to assist with quick repatriation of registered Nigerians who are willing to return.

I want the public to know that we have some Nigerians who are not willing to return despite the unfavourable situations and the fact is that we cant get them on the flight without their consent.

Mr. Fachano said that the repatriation exercise would be a continuous exercise.

He also said 3250 Nigerians have so far been repatriated from Libya in recent times, while 300 other Nigerians are to be repatriated from Libya every week.

We, the embassy of Nigeria in Tripoli, Libya, have been doing our best to register Nigerians.

We have visited the detention camps, and also collaborated with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to repatriate migrants weekly.

We also ensure that we are up to date with the number of Nigerians in specific detention camps.

I want it to be clear that the mission and Nigerian government have been doing this long before the CNN report.

He said that the government would continue to engage the legitimate government in Libya and other stakeholders in addressing the plight of Nigerian migrants in that country.

NAN reports that the Foreign Ministry has urged citizens to reach the Nigerian Embassy in Libya for assistance through these emergency numbers: +218910144487, +218925099384 and +218917953365.

The contact email addresses for the embassy and the ministry are: nigeria@nigeriantripoli.org and help@foreignaffairs.gov.ng.

The ministry said that the embassy had received requests for intervention from some relations of the victims based in Nigeria through these contacts.

(NAN)
Pastor Enoch Adeboye, general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) was ambushed during an early morning prayer walk on Wednesday.

The story, narrated by him on Wednesday night, was one of the many highlights of the third day of Congress, holding at the Redemption Camp of the church, along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

According to the pastor, he was trying to look for a quiet place in the Camp, which is fast becoming a big town, at about 4am, when some people ambushed him for blessing.

The high demand for meeting the pastor has often denied him privacy.

If you see a man of over 75 years old walking alone at night, you must know that he is doing that on a purpose, but the people wont let me, he recounted. I tried to veer along a path into the bush, and was relieved to be alone to pray, but they traced me there.

He said finally, he was able to be alone with God, who assured him during the Wednesday programme every yoke of bondage would be broken.

He did not explain how he was able to free himself from the people who were following him, but the deliverance service later that day and early Thursday, was attended by millions of people.

Another major highlight of the day was the demographics of attendance, which confirmed the spread of the church around the world  now in 196 countries- and the popularity of the Congress.

There were delegates from several African countries and many representatives from the Europe and the Americas.

The congregation shouted with joy when representatives from countries like Mongolia, Macao, Bangladesh, Thailand, Bahrain, and Peru were announced.

So also was the congregation excited by the recognition and praises of RCCG by some of the foreign delegates and representatives.

Pastor Mensah Otabil, a renowned Bible teacher, whose powerful ministration was another highpoint of the night, described Pastor Adeboye as, the foremost Christian influence in the world at the moment, and praised for his integrity, holiness and leadership qualities.

Much later, the Senior Pastor of the Family of God Church in Indonesia, who led a delegation of 21 from that country to the Congress, said through an interpreter that God directed them to come and see the great work he is doing in RCCG, which he described as the peoples church of the world.

He hopes to catch the annointing of Pastor Adeboye and the church that makes the impossible, possible.

In another goodwill message, Apostle Omobude, leader of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, congratulated RCCG for the Congress and its other achievements.

Mr. Otabil, noted for the depth of his messages, was cheered by the congregation as mounted the pulpit. Ministering, he said the greatest restorer is Jesus Christ, who like in the example of Zachaeus, does not only save a person but also restore that which was lost.

He explained that what one loses in the sinful world is the glory of God, which Jesus came to restore. Glory, he said, has weight, it is the presence of God and the manisfestion of his power.

Then citing the incidence on the Mount of Transfiguration , where the glory of God so transformed Jesus, that Peter and John could not look at him, he glory brightness the individual, even his clothes and his environment.

He made the point that before the cruxifiction of Jesus, he was able to transfer the glory he carried to others, such that anyone who worshipped and obeyed God could receive His glory.

The deliverance

Pastor Adeboyes turn, the last of the day, which is also the highest point came after testimonies by people who had been blessed by God.

A youngman, John Odega, fulfilled his promise to God by rolling seven times on the stage over the cure of prostate cancer, after he sat on a bed Pastor Adeboye had used which is on display at the Open Heavens International at the Camp.

Many couple testified about how God blessed them with babies after many years of waiting.

Pastor Adeboye described his session as a serious one because people were going to fight for their freedom from bondage. He explains that fighting the devil, who attacks at many points, is complicated by the fact he is an invisible enemy, who could even deceive an individual into thinking that they are invincible, while he (the devil) attacks the persons relations.

He likened life in bondage to a person with hands and legs bound in prison, a situation which restricts his coast and limits his progress.

But he said with deliverance, Gods glory with all its power is restored for a turnaround and progress; enemies become disappointed , some disappear and some others become servants.

He listed seven reasons why he believed people were going be delivered that night.

After that he made an altar call to enable sinners in the congregation to receive salvation before leading a prayer session he described as warfare, which was preceded with praise singing for God to arise.

The session ended at about 12.40 am, as people went away singing songs of victory.
The non-academic university workers have described as insensitive and laughable the threat by the Nigerian government to apply the no work, no pay employment clause over the current strike by the workers.

The minister of labour, Chris Ngige had warned the three striking unions, NASU, SSANU and NAAT, to stop teleguidng their members to confront the government via the industrial action.

Mr. Ngige had also warned the workers not to push the government to invoke the clause as it would adversely affect the workers spending power during the Yuletide.

The spokesperson of SSANU, Abdussobur Salaam criticised the ministers position on Wednesday in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr. Salaam also said none of the items in the Memorandum of Terms of Settlement the unions had with the government has been resolved.

He said Mr. Ngiges arguments lacked merit because he could not justify the methods and framework used in sharing the earned allowances recently released by the government..

We no longer call it allocations because allocations follow guidelines. What we have seen is that this process did not follow guidelines and the templates were discarded. We wrote demanding explanations since 14th November and only went on strike on 1st December. Was that not enough time for government to respond? As far as we are concerned, government must hold itself liable for this strike, he said.

He also said the minister should avail the unions a copy of the service wide circular from the National Salaries and Wages Commission which gave specific directives in respect of the university staff schools.

As chief conciliator, one would have expected him to invite us and listen to our grievances first, before making a position, that is if it is necessary for him to do so. To threaten us would imply that he assumed that we just love going on strike. Does he assume that we go on strike for the fun of it? If there is no reason, would we go on strike?

The letter from Salaries and Wages was to be issued within four weeks. Till today, almost two thousand of our members from the university schools are still languishing and waiting for a letter that would reabsorb them and include their names in the universitys budget in line with the National Industrial Court judgement, he said.

According to him, December 5 marks exactly one year that the judgement was given.

Isnt it a shame that a government that prides itself to be run under the rule of law can still be prevaricating after a judgement of court has been issued? We insist that those who seek to embarrass this government are from within. We have no less than two thousand of staff who have not been paid salaries since 2014 and yet, the minister can be pontificate about no work, no pay.

Speaking on the allegation of union leaders misleading their members, Mr. Salaam said the members had independent minds of their own capable of making decisions without cohesion by their leaders.

As far back as two weeks ago, universities such as UI and Ife had reacted spontaneously to the allocations made in their respect. Our people are not fools or illiterates who cannot recognise injustices when meted out to them. As leaders, we tried to quell their angers but they turned against us, he said.

For us, until this matter is resolved, no work no pay notwithstanding, it is a case of no retreat no surrender! The government should not test our resolve because our members have been pushed to the wall. We have been deceived by government and have totally lost confidence in its ability to ensure peace in the university system. We stand by our position and will not back down, regardless of any proclamation of no work no pay, he said.

Meanwhile, the minister of education, Adamu Adamu, in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES state house correspondent after the Federal Executive Committee, FEC, meeting on Wednesday insisted the issues between the unions and federal government have been resolved.

As far as I am concerned, these things had been addressed before I left and the formula that was used to share the money was agreed by them. They sat down with the officials in the Ministry of Education and agreed. So the money was not for ASUU alone, it was for all the unions, Mr Adamu said despite the repeated public stance of the non-academic staff that that claim was false.

According to the minister, the shortfall in payment of salaries is being addressed but the issue of the teachers in university staff schools will take sometime.

Government has accepted the Court verdict that says they should be reinstated and they will be reinstated. I think the only issue before I left was that they will be in salary relevant to what they are doing. They are not university staff, so they will just be receiving normal salaries, he said.

The three unions commenced an indefinite strike on Monday, accusing the government of violating an earlier agreement on the sharing pattern of earned allowances recently disbursed by it.
Governors of southwest states on Tuesday announced their decision to take uniform stance on various issues proposed for deliberation in the constitutional amendment as they affect the Yoruba nation.

The governors made their position known after a meeting in Ibadan, Oyo State, on Tuesday.

Present at the meeting are governors Abiola Ajimobi (Oyo), Akinwumi Ambode (Lagos), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun); Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo) and Ayodele Fayose (Ekiti).

The Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, was represented at the meeting by the deputy governor, Yetunde Onanuga.

The governors, who met to ratify their common stance on all the issues billed for amendment, said the Yoruba nation is one with same destiny.

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues after the meeting, Ondo State Governor, Mr. Akeredolu, said party politics would not be allowed to divide them on such issues that collectively affect the people of the region.

As you can see, all of us are one from Oduduwa. All of us, being brothers, are presenting the same position on matters that are of common interest of all of us and we are doing it together, he said.

If you are talking about specific issues, one of the issues that we tried to look at is the issue of constitution (amendment). There are many things that we have endorsed, but it is so clear to us that there is more on the issue of amendment of the constitution.

And as expected, we know what will be our interest.

So, we want to send a common position to our Houses of Assembly and other stakeholders who we believe can come along with us on the issues that we have agreed on, that we believe that are of our common interest.

Mr. Akeredolu, however, did not disclose the position taken by the governors on the issues to be amended.

President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged that he will be willing to assent the Constitution Amendment Bill whenever it is transmitted to him by the legislature.

Earlier, the National Assembly had transmitted the items it is proposing for amendments to the state houses of Assembly.

Two-thirds of the 36 Assemblies of the federation must concur on any particular issue before it could be accepted as amended, after which the National Assembly will then transmit such items to Mr. Buhari for assent into laws.
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), on Thursday, said the Federal Government had concluded plans to enroll all NYSC members in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

The NYSC Director- General (D-G), Sule Kazaure, made this disclosure while addressing youth corps members at the Osun NYSC permanent orientation camp, Ede.

Mr. Kazuaure disclosed that he had received a call that the president had approved the enrollment of all NYSC members in the NHIS programme.

I have been informed that the president had approved the enrollment of all my children (corps members) into the National Health Insurance Scheme.

In fact, I was impressed when they called me last night that very soon, they would finish with the whole process.

I am sure that by next week, everything would have been finalised, he said.

The D-G also advised the corps members on the need for all Nigerians to live in peace and unity, urging them

to be agents of change wherever they found themselves.

There is the need for you to be agents of change and make impact wherever you are posted to go for your primary assignments.

The NYSC programme is all about integration of Nigeria and therefore, you must stay united; you must work as a team during the period of your service year, he said.

Also, Emmanuel Attah, the State Coordinator, NYSC, Osun, lauded the NYSC D-G for visiting the orientation camp.

Mr. Attah said that it had not been easy keeping things working and running smoothly in the camp.

With the cooperation and determination of the members of staff, we have been able to make the camp habitable for corps members.

I am grateful for the wonderful way the Batch A Stream One corps members in the camp have behaved; I am proud of them.

I also wish the D-G can visit us again on Saturday, to show us his dancing skills, as the camp management will be bringing a famous hip-hop artist, Q-Dot to entertain the corps members, he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the DG inspected some facilities in the camp to ascertain how well they were working.

Some of the facilities included, the CCTV unit, skills acquisition centre, camp clinic, kitchen and hostels.

The D-G also inaugurated a newly built and equipped medical laboratory building in the camp, which was donated by Atanda Eyiowu-Awi of Eyiowu-Awi Pharmaceutical Ltd.

The NHIS was established in 2004 to provide quality and affordable access to health care.

(NAN)
A judge of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, Rilwan Aikawa, has ordered a Congo-based businessman to forfeit $700,000 out of the $1.9 million he allegedly laundered to the Federal Government.

Paulinus Ani, who initially claimed to be a Congolese, entered into a plea bargain arrangement with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after the anti-graft agency charged him with money laundering.

The judge had on October 25, ordered Mr. Anis arrest for refusing to appear in court after the EFCC filed a two count-charge marked, FHC/L/161c/2014, against the businessman over his failure to declare the sum of $1, 909,140, which he allegedly laundered from the Republic of Congo to the men of the Nigerian Customs Service.

However, at the resumed hearing of the matter on Wednesday, the accused person owned up to the alleged offence after entering into a plea bargain agreement with the EFCC.

Reviewing the fact of the case after Mr. Anis guilty plea, EFCCs lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo, said the defendant was handed over to the commission following his arrest on February 23, 2014, with $1, 909,140 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport by men of the Nigeria Customs Service.

He said the defendant disclosed in his statement that the money was given to him by one Ikechukwu Frank for delivery to one Jude Okoye.

The lawyer added that the businessman was arrested by men of the NCS while attempting to deliver the money without going through any financial institution.

Mr. Oyedepo also displayed a letter from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showing that the money is in its custody. He also revealed that the Commission had signed a plea bargain agreement dated December 4, 2017, with the accused person.

He subsequently urged the court to convict the defendant in view of his plea and overwhelming evidence against him.

Sentencing the accused person, the judge ordered that the businessman should forfeit $700, 000 to the Federal Government out of the seized money.

A breakdown of the money to be forfeited by the defendant showed that he was given an option of fine of $50, 000 while he is also to forfeit $650, 000 to the Federal Government.

According to the judge, the money which is to be paid from the recovered $1, 909,140, that was kept in the safe custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is to be credited to the consolidated fund of the federation.

The remaining sum of $1, 209, 140 should be released to the defendant through a designated financial institution in strict compliance with the provisions of Section 1 (a) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011, as amended.

The defendant shall within seven days after the payment of the fine imposed by the court, enter into a bond with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) never to be involved in economic and financial crimes within and outside the shores of Nigeria, Justice Aikawa held.

The two count charge against the accused person reads: That you, Ani Paulinus Onyeka, on or before February 10, 2014, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this court, while transporting in cash the sum of $1, 909,140, from Republic of Congo to Nigeria, failed to declare the said sum of $1.909,140, to Nigerian Customs Services (NCS), as required under Section 12 of the Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act Cap. F34, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and Section 2(5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 2(5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012.

That you, Ani Paulinus Onyeka, on or before February 10, 2014, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court, transported the cash sum of $1, 909,140, from Republic of Congo to Nigeria, with intent to carry out specified unlawful activity to wit: avoiding lawful transaction under the law through financial institution in respect of the sum of N1, 909,140 and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 4(5) of the Advance Fee Fraud and other related Offences Act, 2006.
The abductors of the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in Plateau State, Damishi Sango, have demanded a ransom of N100 million to free him.

Mr. Sango, who was a Minister of Sport under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was kidnapped on Wednesday alongside his son and two others.

A close family associate who asked not to be named, told PREMIUM TIMES on telephone on Thursday of the ransom demand.

The Publicity Secretary of the PDP in Plateau State, John Akans, confirmed the demand.

Yes, its true, the abductors of Hon Damhi T. Sango are demanding a ransom of 100 million naira, Mr. Akans told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr. Sango was abducted alongside a one-time factional state chairman of the PDP in Pateau State, Emmanuel Mangni.

The other victims apart from Mr. Sangos son were his personal driver and his police orderly.

The victims were on their way from Jos to Abuja to submit the list of delegates from the state to the partys National Secretariat, preparatory to the National Convention of the PDP slated for Saturday.
PENGASSAN has issued a seven-day ultimatum to the federal government to address injustice and lawlessness in the oil and gas sector companies or face a nationwide strike from December 18.

This is separate from the ongoing fuel scarcity across the country which the petroleum minister, Ibe Kachikwu, said on Thursday was based on inadequate supply.

Lumumba Okugbawa, General Secretary, Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, gave the ultimatum in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr. Okugbawa said this was imperative in order to address anti-labour issues and lawlessness by some indigenous oil and gas companies and marginal field operators by relevant agencies of government.

He said if this was not addressed properly, it would culminate into the shutting down of all oil and gas installations, including disruptions to fuel supply and distribution across the country.

The unionist said the anti-labour practice includes the termination of employment of any worker who indicated willingness to belong to the union.

Those that are threatened and compelled to disown the union are then treated as slave workers within their own country.

The case of Neconde Energy Ltd (of Nestoil Group of companies) is particularly worrisome as the issue of dignity in labour and infringement on workers rights to Freedom of Association is foreign to them.

This has led to mass sack of workers that joined the union and dehumanisation of some in total disregard to rule of engagement and the laws of the land.

The actions of companies such as Neconde in mass sack of Nigerian workers contribute in no small measure to the unending militancy in the Niger Delta.

He said Neconde had not only conducted itself as being above the provisions of extant laws and regulations guiding the operations of oil and gas companies in Nigeria, but also severally boasted that no government agency would call it to order.

Having explored all options without getting the necessary understanding, and an apparent failure of relevant authorities of government to call to order these recalcitrant organisations especially Neconde, we are giving the federal government and its relevant agencies seven-days notice to embark on nationwide strike effective December 18.

If government fails to direct the management of Neconde and other companies to recall our sacked members, as the only option to address this injustice and lawlessness.

PENGASSAN appeals to all Nigerians to show understanding and to use this window to stockpile adequate quantity of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) and other petroleum products that will last them during the period as this strike will be indefinite.

(NAN)
The Federal, States and Local Government in October shared N532.7 billion which shows a decline of N25.3 billion when compared to what they shared in September.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mahmoud Isa-Dutse, said this on Thursday in Abuja while briefing journalists on the outcome of the monthly Federal Account Allocation Committee, FAAC.

Mr. Isa-Dutse attributed the decline to the decrease in revenue from export sales of $42.94 million due to a decrease in crude oil production by 1.25 million barrels.

He said even though the average price of crude oil increased from $46.29 per barrel to $48.66 per barrel, it was not enough to make up for the loss in production.

Some of the issues that impacted negatively on crude oil production were attributed to ageing facilities which resulted to shut-ins and shut-downs of pipelines at various terminals for repairs and maintenance.

Petroleum Profit Tax increased significantly while Import Duty and Value Added Tax improved only significantly.

Companies Income Tax and Oil Royalty recorded slight decreases in the month under review, he said.

In summary, Mr. Isa-Dutse said after deductions as cost of collection by FIRS, Customs and DPR, the federal government received N205.7 billion, representing 52.68 per cent; states and N104.3 billion, representing 26.72 per cent.

The local governments, he said, received N80.4 billion, amounting to 20.60 per cent of the amount distributed.

Mr. Isa-Dutse announced that N40.8 billion representing 13 per cent derivation revenue was also shared among the oil producing states.

He said that the country generated N317.2 billion as mineral revenue and N124.4 billion as non-mineral revenue.

He said this showed an increase of N41.6 billion from what the country generated as mineral revenue and a decrease of N23.5 billion in non-mineral revenue from what was generated in the month of September.

Meanwhile the Chairman, Commissioners of Finance Forum, Mahmoud Yunusa, has apologised for the lateness in holding the meeting, which was supposed to have taken place on November 23.

He said the meeting was cancelled by the state governors due to discrepancies found in revenue figures presented by some of the revenue generating agencies.

Mr. Yunusa confirmed that the NNPC had increased what they had initially presented to FAAC as what they had generated after the states showed their displeasure.

He said that to avoid such occurrence, the states as a major stakeholder in NNPC, would henceforth keep an eagle eye on the affairs of the NNPC.

Going forward we will be fully involved in what the NNPC does to avoid this kind of errors in future. We will scrutinise their books, he said.

(NAN)
The Police in Plateau state have comfirmed the abduction of the chairman, Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Plateau state chapter, Damishi Sango.

A spokesman of the police command, Terna Tyopev, in a telephone interview Thursday, in Jos, Tyopev said, some unknown gunmen kidnapped Mr. Sango along Jere-Abuja-Kaduna road.

Similarly, the state publicity secretary of the party, John Akans, also confirmed the incident.

The official condemned the act and called on security agencies to ensure the unconditional and safe release of the party stalwart.

It was learnt that the incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Sango is a former minister of sports.

Family sources said Mr. Sango left Jos around 2 p.m. to Abuja for the partys national convention slated to hold this Saturday.
The Cross River State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC has described the proposed 2018, N1.3 trillion budget submitted to the State House of Assembly by Governor Ben Ayade as an academic exercise in futility.

It also accused the state lawmakers of collecting bribes from the governor to pass the mammoth budget.

The party accused the state assembly of being a rubber stamp to the governor adding that the legislators had allegedly been bribed with N10 million each to pass the budget.

In his usual evasive fraudulent ways, he could not expose the states budget documents to the public nor do his dishonorable assembly RUBBER STAMP members have copies. They instead compromised by receiving N10 million each for ease of passage of Ayades naked, corrupt and fraudulent budget.

The party while stating this in a statement signed by the State Publicity Secretary, Mens Ikpeme challenged the Governor to tell Cross Riverians the clear source of funding for the budget.

The APC explained further that Mr. Ayade did not make distinctions between his modes of expenditure but merely went to the Cross River Assembly to lecture them on academic budget rather than present the states budget.

The budget Gov. Ayade had just done is an academic exercise in futility. He has not made distinctions between his modes of expenditure. He merely went to the Cross River Assembly to lecture them on academic budget rather than present the states budget. He made the state budget an intellectual paper and not a financial working document, the statement reads in part.

The party added that Gov. Ben Ayade announced budget of N 1.3 trillion without sources of funding, He said funding shall come from revenue generated from tolls made from Superhighway and Deep Sea Port. The deaf and dumb know that the aforementioned projects are not realistic.These are projects that shall not see the light of day as legal documentations like environmental impact assessment documentations has not been perfected.

Cross River State budget is the highest in Nigeria. Richer states like Lagos with overflowing revenue base do not have this type of huge budget expenditure.

Cross River State will never balance their budget on annual basis neither would it reflect on the state expenditure base. That means, Cross River States spending next year shall exceed her non existent revenue income, the party said.

When contacted, the governors chief press secretary, Christian Ita and the spokesman of the assembly, Mathew Olory both denied the bribery allegations.

They said the accusations by the opposition party in the state was laughable as the governor could not be seen bribing lawmakers to carry out their constitutional duties.

Why would the Governor bribe them? Is it not their constitutional responsibility to work on the budget? The claim is laughable, its only typical of APC in Cross River State. We dont take them seriously because they are a group of jesters and comic characters trying to distract the government, Mr. Ita said.

Also Mr. Olory said the allegations were false.

It is not true. We cant subject the Governor to that situation. This is not the first budget we are receiving, the budget was supposed to be submitted earlier but we got a message from the SA budget that some MDAs were not ready so when the Governor came we received the budget. Theres nothing like that. If APC wants to make any case, they should talk with facts and figures and be able to prove their case, he said.

The state recently presented N1.3 trillion budget for the 2018 fiscal year to the state assembly for deliberation and passage.

The budget is the largest for a single state in Nigerias history.

Lagos state held the record with its N812 billion budget for 2017. The state (Lagos) has indicated its 2018 budget may also hit N1 trillion.

Most states in Nigeria propose budgets at average N150 billion to N300 billion.

The biggest annual spenders are Lagos, Rivers and Akwa Ibom. The entire federal budget for 2018 is a little above N8 trillion.

Mr. Ayade, who presented the budget on Thursday in Calabar, said the proposal was designed to add value to the socio-economic development and well being of the people of the state.

Mr. Ayade, who tagged the budget as Budget of Kinetic Crystallisation, said it was meant to crystallise what the state had achieved in the past two years of his administration.
Pensioners in Abia on Thursday staged a protest round the major streets of Umuahia, the state capital, calling on Governor Okezie Ikpeazu to pay their 18 years pension arrears.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the senior citizens, numbering at least 1,000, drove round the town in hired buses, beginning from their office on Abam Street, Umuahia, to Government House and State House of Assembly complex.

Operating under the aegis of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, the protesters expressed disappointment over the inability of the government to pay their pensions and gratuities.

They accused the government of being insensitive to their plight.

Speaking at the Government House, the chairman of the union, Chukwuma Udensi, said that the nine months arrears were inherited from the past administration, adding that they were paid last by the present administration in February.

He said that the governors plea that they should exercise patience until the Federal Government disbursed the next tranche of Paris Club refund is unacceptable to us.

Mr. Udensi recalled that they had exercised enough patience, adding that they showed solidarity for about the two years Mr. Ikpeazus election was being challenged in court.

Today, we feel betrayed by the same administration which bluntly refused to grant us audience for dialogue on the pension/gratuity matters, in spite of our many calls.

He described governments action as sheer insensitivity to the well-being of the pensioners whom, he said, have been dying in their numbers.

He said that pensioners in the state had continued to groan in penury and silence for the past two years and that many could no longer afford to pay rent and their childrens school fees.

According to him, many of them had been ejected from their rented apartments by their landlords, while their children had been compelled to drop out of school.

We are tired and dehumanised; we are gradually being exterminated out of existence while our children are being forced into all sorts of slave labour.

Mr. Udensi said that the leadership had at different fora advised the government to devise an easy means of clearing the backlog of gratuity by setting aside N100 million monthly to no avail.

He recalled that the union, in November, issued a 14-day ultimatum and another seven-day ultimatum to the government to pay their pensions and gratuity and expressed regret that both lapsed and government refused to respond.

On the unions next plan should government continue to ignore them, he said Then we will show them our nuisance value.

Meanwhile, the state Head of Service, Vivian Uma, who received the pensioners, appealed to them to exercise restraint.

Mr. Uma assured them that their message would be conveyed to the governor for necessary action.

NAN reports that the protesters carried placards some of which read, Abia Government is wicked to Abia pensioners, Pensioners are dying daily for lack of food and medical care, and Is it a crime to be a pensioner?

(NAN)
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.




BRENTWOOD, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AAC Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AAC) announced that Michael Nanko, Ph.D, will become AAC's President and Chief Operating Officer, effective January 15, 2018.

Mr. Nanko has served as President of Behavioral Health Services (BHS) for HCA, Inc. since July 2016 and previously as Chief Operating Officer of BHS from August 2015 to July 2016. The HCA behavioral service line includes 66 inpatient facilities, 40 facilities with outpatient services across the enterprise, several access centers serving HCA emergency departments and acute care hospitals utilizing extensive telepsychiatric services.

Commenting on the announcement, Michael Cartwright, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AAC Holdings, Inc., said, "We have made measurable strides in improving the operations at our facilities, call center and corporate office in the past year with an intense focus on clinical quality and execution on our strategic and financial objectives. The addition of Michael and his deep experience in behavioral health aligns with our continued emphasis on acute care opportunities such as Laguna Treatment Hospital, Townsend Recovery Center New Orleans and AdCare and brings proven operational skills that have contributed to the success of HCA's behavioral business."

Before joining HCA, Mr. Nanko served as Vice President of Kaiser Permanente Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals in Northern California, where he held a dual role in health plan and operations with responsibilities across the continuum of care. Prior to that experience, Mr. Nanko held a variety of positions in healthcare and nonprofit management, including as Vice President of Psychiatry and Continuing Care Services at Cedar Sinai Medical Center and Health System in Los Angeles, California, which included inpatient and outpatient addiction services, and as Vice President of Mercy Healthcare Arizona/Catholic Healthcare West (now Dignity Health) near Phoenix, Arizona. Some of his earliest exposure and experiences with addiction services occurred when he was CEO of Sierra Vista Hospital in Sacramento, California and later as COO for a large not for profit mental health and addictions services agency in Los Angeles County, California. Mr. Nanko's educational background includes a BA, MA and Ph.D in Psychology.

About American Addiction Centers

American Addiction Centers is a leading provider of inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment services. We treat clients who are struggling with drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and co-occurring mental/behavioral health issues. We currently operate substance abuse treatment facilities located throughout the United States. These facilities are focused on delivering effective clinical care and treatment solutions. For more information, please find us at AmericanAddictionCenters.org or follow us on Twitter @AAC_Tweet.

Forward Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "anticipates," "believes," "could," "estimates," "expects," "may," "potential," "predicts," "projects," "should," "will," "would," and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements may include information concerning AAC Holdings, Inc.'s (collectively with its subsidiaries; "AAC Holdings" or the "Company") possible or assumed future results of operations, including descriptions of AAC Holdings' revenues, profitability, outlook and overall business strategy. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results and performance to be materially different from the information contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, without limitation: (i) our inability to operate our facilities; (ii) our reliance on our sales and marketing program to continuously attract and enroll clients; (iii) a reduction in reimbursement rates by certain third-party payors for inpatient and outpatient services and point-of-care and definitive lab testing; (iv) an increase in our provision for doubtful accounts based on the aging of receivables; (v) our failure to successfully achieve growth through acquisitions and de novo projects; (vi) uncertainties regarding the timing of the closing of acquisitions, including the acquisition of AdCare, Inc. ("AdCare"); (vii) the possibility that a governmental entity may prohibit, delay or refuse to grant approval for the consummation of an acquisition, including the AdCare acquisition; (viii) our failure to achieve anticipated financial results from contemplated and prior acquisitions; (ix) a disruption in our ability to perform clinical diagnostic laboratory services; (x) maintaining compliance with applicable regulatory authorities, licensure and permits to operate our facilities and lab; (xi) a disruption in our business and reputation and potential economic consequences with the civil securities claims brought by shareholders; (xii) our inability to meet our covenants in the loan documents; (xiii) our inability to integrate newly acquired facilities; and (xiv) general economic conditions, as well as other risks discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result of these factors, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this release will prove to be accurate. Investors should not place undue reliance upon forward looking statements.

SOURCE American Addiction Centers

Related Links

http://AmericanAddictionCenters.org


WARSAW, Poland, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC Central Europe, together with the University of Warsaw's Center for Research on Prejudice, cosponsored a seminar on "Antisemitism in Poland: Diagnosis, Consequences, and Methods of Prevention."

The seminar took place amidst a rise in hate crimes targeting ethnic and religious minorities in Poland. In 2016, according to data collected by Poland's national police, there were more than 700 incidents of religiously and racially motivated hate crimes, 10 percent of them anti-Semitic.

In addition, a study by the Center for Research on Prejudice found that almost 30 percent of Poles said they would not accept a Jew as a co-worker and would prefer not to have a Jewish neighbor. More than half would not agree to a family member marrying a person of Jewish origin.

"Due to the unique heritage and historical trauma in Poland, we have a special duty to be alarmed when the demons of anti-Semitism raise their head," said AJC Central Europe Director Agnieszka Markiewicz. "The manner in which anti-Semitism is addressed is a litmus test of our democracy and public institutions. Anti-Semitism is a problem for all of Polish society, not just for Jews."

Seminar participants discussed an updated assessment of anti-Semitism in Poland and the effectiveness of countermeasures.

One key conclusion was the need for Poland to officially adopt the Working Definition of anti-Semitism that was adopted last year by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Poland is a member of the IHRA. To date, the definition has been adopted by the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Romania, and Bulgaria. "The working definition is an important tool in identifying and fighting anti-Semitism, especially for law enforcement agencies and the judiciary," said Markiewicz.

"Poles today are more willing to express discriminatory views, and many of them are indifferent to verbal and physical violence," said Micha Bilewicz, Director of the Center for Research on Prejudice. "With anti-Jewish hatred on the internet increasing, people have become less sensitive to anti-Semitism."

Seminar participants represented diverse public, religious, and academic institutions, as well as NGOs.

Professor Magdalena Gawin, Undersecretary of State at Poland's Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, stressed the importance of discussing outlawing extremist organizations such as ONR (National Radical Camp) and the left-wing Antifa. "It is impossible to eradicate anti-Semitism with law enforcement alone. It is most of all a matter of proper education, on both the national and local levels," said Gawin.

Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland, stressed that the very fact of holding the seminar was very important. He emphasized that to fight anti-Semitism one cannot rely on emotions, but must also know the facts and follow the results of research. Schudrich also noted that many Poles are "anti-anti-Semites," which, he added, "gives me hope."



A significant part of the day's discussion centered on the institutions that represent the Jewish community and the bodies that shape Poland's public sphere  the Parliament, the police, and the Catholic Church.

Ombudsman Adam Bodnar said that recent anti-Semitic incidents in Poland "raise a question of state policy consistency." He pointed out the lack of immediate reaction to racist slogans and banners at the March of Independence and called President Andrzej Duda's condemnation of racism "very important."



Agreeing with Dr. Bodnar was Mieczysaw Ciso, former President of the Council for Religious Dialogue and the Committee for Dialogue with Judaism at the Episcopal Conference of Poland. Cislo stressed that anti-Semitism must be publicly condemned. "The Catholic Church denounces all forms of racism and anti-Semitism," he said.

Assistant Inspector Gerard Bah, Human Rights Protection Representative of the Voivodeship Police Commissioner in Kielce, stressed that people are afraid to report incidents of hate speech because they do not want to be ridiculed. He also said that as a society, Poles have a problem with the radicalization of the younger generation. "Teachers must tell pupils patriotism, yes -- nationalism, no," he said.



Among others attending the seminar were Chief Commissioner Magdalena Kroll, National Coordinator for Hate Crime, National Police Headquarters; and MP Micha Szczerba, head of the Polish-Israeli Parliamentary Group.

Seminar participants agreed that:

Legal steps need to be taken against fringe right-wing groups that will lead to disbanding them.

Any time anti-Semitism is preached in public or Jews experience violence, state authorities should act swiftly and unequivocally condemn those responsible.

Civil society organizations should continue to appeal to government officials to pursue a consistent policy against the spread of xenophobia.

The seminar will be followed up by meetings of smaller groups of experts, which will produce a multidimensional report that includes the results of earlier studies as well as guidelines for state and local authorities on how to effectively identify and react to anti-Semitic acts, and take preventive measures.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160513/367297LOGO )

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616532/Alimentaria_Logo.jpg )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616533/Alimentaria_Hub.jpg )



With a net exhibition space of over 100,000 sq. m, the joint organisation of the show with Hostelco, the International Exhibition of Equipment for Restaurants, Hotels and Mass Catering, offers both the retail and HoReCa sectors the most comprehensive and cross-cutting offering to date. Some 4,500 exhibiting firms and more than 150,000 professional visitors are expected.

During the last edition of the show, 11% of the International visitors were coming from USA and for Alimentaria 2018 the organisation expects to increase this number, considering that this country is the main external market for Spanish products after the EU zone, with 1,5 billion in 2016, the 6% of the purchases, according to the Spanish Federation of Food and Drink Industries (FIAB). Olive oil, wine and olives are the most exported goods. On the other hand, Canada -with 195 million spent in Spanish food products- is becoming a very attractive market as it experienced a growth of 19% in its purchases from Spain, especially wines, followed by olives and pork meat.

Gastronomic and innovative Excellence

Boosting innovation and gastronomic quality remain two major hallmarks of Alimentaria. Consequently the show's activities are geared towards identifying the main trends and enhancing the connections between the food, gastronomic and tourist industries. Thus, in the area The Alimentaria Experience over 200 workshops, tastings and cooking shows will take place, with a selected group of chefs that own close to 40 Michelin stars (Carme Ruscalleda or Andoni Luis Aduriz, among others), while top international wine experts such as Jancis Robinson, Nick Lander and Eric Asimov will participate in the Vinorum Think event. The area The Alimentaria Hub will become a knowledge, innovation and business centre, in which some 11,200 professional meetings between buyers and exhibiting companies from more than 70 countries will be developed.

SOURCE Fira de Barcelona
HOUSTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of alliantgroup's recent Technology, Economic, Legislative & Policy Summit, the firm hosted an executive roundtable featuring a number of respected industry alliance heads and some of the foremost thought leaders in the area of technology and economic policy. During this open "town hall" style forum, executives from around the country were given the opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues facing their industries and the American economy.

During the event, a reoccurring theme highlighted by the panel and echoed by those in attendance was the nation's emerging skills gap in the area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and its long-term economic consequences. Drawing a link between decreased economic growth and productivity to the current shortage of technical talent in the workforce, the panel questioned how the U.S. could remain competitive if the labor pool lacked the skills needed to compete in an increasingly technology-centered economy.

"Talent is one of the handful of the most critical issues that CEOs and boards consider as they think about how to strategically position their company for the future," said Rick Lazio, former U.S. Congressman and alliantgroup Senior Vice President. "It's a big deal, both in terms of the people who develop products and have the technical and scientific background to do (the work) and how people get things to market."

In order to ensure sustainable economic growth, the panel agreed that major policy reforms are needed to train the next generation of American workers. However, the role that government should play in addressing this issue was a key theme debated throughout the session. Some attendees advocated for greater federal support while others, such as former Alabama Governor Bob Riley, argued that even though a degree of government assistance might be impactful, ultimately the private sector should take the lead in training (and in many instances, retraining) workers. Innovative U.S. businesses are the entities that are creating these new jobs, and as such, it would follow that they would be the most qualified to lead the training processbe it through private-public apprenticeships or other relevant industry training programs.

During the session, the heads of various industry organizations elaborated on their own challenges in finding, recruiting and training qualified technical workers. In particular, Chuck Wilson, the Executive Director of the National Systems Contractors Association, highlighted NSCA's Ignite initiative, a program that focuses on sparking interest in technology at a young ageparticularly in fields such as automation, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and integrationareas that will be vital to the future of the American economy. In particular, Wilson highlighted Ignite's outreach initiatives to public schools as well as NSCA's broader efforts in spreading the word on these high-paying jobs.

"We actually decided to quit talking about how underserved we are with talent coming into the industry and to do something about it," said Wilson. "The people that are posting these jobs now are doing well finding talented people from other adjacent technology systems."

While such private sector and industry based initiatives will serve as vital recruiting tools going forward, the panel recognized that the technical talent shortage will only ultimately be addressed by making significant reforms in the education system. Specifically, the panel emphasized the necessity in making STEM-based education a priority in primary education and at American colleges and universities. With technology becoming more a part of the very fabric of our offices and facilities, the need for STEM-based skills will only increase in the future-and the U.S. at the moment is lagging behind other countries in teaching these skills to our youth. During the roundtable, alliantgroup CEO Dhaval Jadav noted that the United States graduates only around 70,000 engineers a year, a number that lags behind the 600,000 and 300,000 China and India graduate respectively on an annual basis. In order for the U.S. to remain competitive, the nation will need to reform the education system to combat this trend. According to those in attendance, this would include not only increasing the emphasis placed on STEM education, but also encouraging students to attend two year technical programs and other alternatives to a traditional four year college.

To illustrate his firm's commitment to advancing STEM at home, Jadav discussed alliantgroup's various charitable endeavors centered around the company's non-profit charitythe Blue Heart Fund. Through the fund, alliantgroup has been reaching out to school districts across Houston to ensure students are exposed to STEM at a young age, even going so far as to take students from a local elementary school to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. In addition to promoting STEM education in K-12 schools, the firm recently announced that it would be handing out 20 $10,000 scholarships to the children of alliantgroup's CPA and industry partners interested in pursuing a career in STEM.

"My passion for STEM runs deep," said alliantgroup CEO Dhaval Jadav. "The only way we can create a better future for our kids is by making sure they learn the skills needed to be successful in the emerging economy. That will ultimately be the key in ensuring economic progress and prosperity for future generations."

alliantgroup is a leading tax consultancy and the nation's premier provider of specialty tax services. The firm assists U.S. businesses and their CPA advisors in properly identifying and claiming all federal and state tax incentives that were designed for their benefit. These incentive programs were created to help American businesses grow and remain competitive in an increasingly global economy. To date, alliantgroup has helped 12,000 U.S. businesses claim over $6 billion in tax savings. For more information on alliantgroup, please follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

SOURCE alliantgroup

Related Links

http://www.alliantgroup.com


ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

American Energy Partners, Inc. (OTC: AEPT) (the "Company", "American Energy" or "AEPT"), a diversified energy company, today announces that it has promoted Josh Hickman to the role of Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Hickman will remain as President of Gilbert Oil & Gas Company, LLC.

Mr. Hickman has seventeen years' experience in the oil and gas industry, with ten of those years in unconventional shale development. Four of those years has been spent in the role of an executive building shareholder value. Prior to his role at AEPT, Mr. Hickman was the CEO of Dahlmont Energy Resources, a private oil & gas company and Chief Geologist for EdgeMarc Energy Holdings. "As AEPT continues to acquire assets, I am excited to focus on operational excellence. I also look forward to building a culture of environmental stewardship and clean energy operations across the AEPT brand," said Mr. Hickman.

American Energy Partners, Inc. (AEPT)



AEPT and its group of companies focus on providing solutions in markets where energy production and water meet technology. Collectively, the subsidiaries are engaged in the energy sector as well as the design, construction and operation of regional water treatment facilities that serve the industrial, energy and government sectors.

Hydration Corporation of PA, LLC ("HCPA") is engaged in the businesses of water exploration, water augmentation, and the treatment of impacted waters. Notably, its intellectual property delivers one of the highest energy yields from a broad range of water-bearing assets, with one of the lowest capital expenditures of any other known water processes. American Energy Solutions, LLC provides treatment technologies that contribute to HCPA's business model of low-cost treatment and distribution. As a provider of design, this subsidiary is capable of repeatable and synergistic services across the value chain. Gilbert Oil & Gas Company is leveraging broad industry valuation experience to source drilling, operating, and partnership opportunities in the upstream oil and gas space. It is positioned to become a strong customer of AEPT's other subsidiaries while providing them with the foundation to attract other customers and enter new markets.

For additional information, visit: http://americanenergy-inc.com.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements, particularly as related to, among other things, the business plans of AEPT, statements relating to goals, plans and projections regarding AEPT's financial position and business strategy. The words or phrases "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "may result," "are expected to," "will continue," "anticipates," "expects," "estimate," "project," "indicate," "could," "potentially," "should," "believe," "think", "considers" or similar expressions are intended to identify "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements fall within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 and are subject to the safe harbor created by these sections. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions or orders that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of global economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, our ability to obtain financing, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in our periodic reports and on documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements made herein are as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date. AEPT cautions readers not to place undue reliance on such statements. AEPT does not undertake, and AEPT specifically disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect occurrences, developments, unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statement. Actual results may differ materially from AEPT's expectations and estimates.



Company Contact:

[email protected]

+1-610-217-3275



SOURCE American Energy Partners, Inc.
VENTURA, Calif., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As fires continue to rage throughout Southern California, Annenberg Foundation has quickly responded and pledged $400,000 to United Way of Ventura County's Thomas Fire Fund. It is the largest gift to date for the victims and first responder fund that has generated attention online and throughout the country.

"Annenberg Foundation's commitment is an incredibly timely and compassionate gift to the residents of Ventura County in their time of need," said Eric Harrison, President and CEO of United Way of Ventura County. "As the lead gift to the Thomas Fire Fund, Annenberg Foundation's generosity will help us reach our goal of raising $1 million for the vital resources and recovery efforts our community needs immediately."

"These are heartbreaking days for Southern California, especially as the holidays approach. As wildfires continue to rage across greater Los Angeles  destroying property, upending families, and claiming lives  it's a powerful reminder of how fragile and vulnerable we all are," said Wallis Annenberg, Chairman, CEO & President of Annenberg Foundation. "I believe it is a call to arms as well  for us to band together and stand as one against immense hardship. That's why the trustees of the Annenberg Foundation  Charles Weingarten, Gregory Weingarten, Lauren Bon, and I  have all together decided to give in this timely fashion to the Ventura County United Way's Thomas Fire Fund and welcome others to do the same. Let's make these days a model of community action together."

Shortly after the fire began, United Way of Ventura County set up the Thomas Fire Fund and a text-to-give campaign. 100% of the donations will support those in the community affected by the wildfires. Donations can be made by texting UWVC to 41444, online at www.vcunitedway.org or calling 805-485-6288. Checks may be sent to the United Way office at 702 County Square Drive, Suite 100, Ventura, CA 93003. Please write "Thomas Fire Fund" in the memo.

The Thomas Fire continues to threaten lives and property throughout Ventura County, scorching more than 96,000 acres so far and forcing thousands of residents to flee.

To respond, United Way of Ventura County, the American Red Cross of Ventura County, and the Ventura County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services have formed a strategic partnership that will be vital in helping the community recover. Notably, the residents of the 150 homes and several apartment buildings that have already been destroyed  and the estimated 600 people who are being temporarily housed at the fairgrounds  will need our support and resources. If you know anyone affected by the fires, please call 2-1-1 or text thomasfire to 898-211 to get connected and get answers.

In the aftermath of spontaneous disasters, many generous community members step up to help those in need around them. One of the challenges after a catastrophe strikes is mobilizing those caring citizens so they can effectively help their neighbors and neighborhoods. In order to best engage spontaneous volunteers during a disaster, United Way, the Red Cross, and the Sheriff's Department are collaborating so that community members can volunteer easily and be directed to the City and County departments  or community-based organizations  where their volunteering will have the most impact.

The Thomas Fire is still out of control and continues to expand, threatening lives and homes in Ventura County. United Way, the American Red Cross, and the Sheriff's Office will continue to work closely together to meet the evolving needs in our community.

Staff and volunteers from the Office of Emergency Services, United Way, Red Cross, Volunteer Agencies Active in Disaster (VOAD), Lutheran Social Services, and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief have an agreement on how best to implement and manage the wildfire relief fund. These partners determined that United Way will manage the disaster fund, accept contributions, make distributions, promote the fund, and be responsible for providing a report to the community on how the funds were used. After the wildfire is contained, a committee of representatives from community- and faith-based organizations will be convened to assess needs and allocate money from the fund. Committee participation will be driven by the communities affected and the services needed in response to the disaster.

Annenberg Foundation

Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. Since 1989, it has generously funded programs in education and youth development; arts, culture and humanities; civic and community life; health and human services; and animal services and the environment. In addition, the Foundation and its Board of Directors are directly involved in the community with innovative projects that further its mission of advancing a better tomorrow through visionary leadership today. Among them are Annenberg Alchemy, Annenberg Learner, Annenberg Space for Photography, explore, GRoW @ Annenberg and the Metabolic Studio. The Foundation encourages the development of effective ways to communicate by sharing ideas and knowledge.

United Way of Ventura County

In the aftermath of a disaster, United Way's Ventura County Volunteer Center will serve as an online, call, and walk-in center for spontaneous volunteers. The Volunteer Center will register volunteers and coordinate with the Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services to place them where they can do the most good for the community. 2-1-1 Ventura County will also be available 24/7 to register volunteers, answer questions, and connect those in need with the resources to help them.

SOURCE The Annenberg Foundation

Related Links

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org


EVANSTON, Ill., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Aptinyx Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing transformative therapies for challenging neurologic disorders, today announced the appointment of Andy Kidd, B.M. B.Ch., as chief commercial officer to support the continued advancement of Aptinyx's robust pipeline of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor modulating therapies in clinical development.

Andy's appointment aligns with Aptinyx's recent progress, including early- and mid-stage clinical studies of drug candidates NYX-783 and NYX-2925 in post-traumatic stress disorder and neuropathic pain, respectively. As Aptinyx continues to expand and advance its pipeline and build a multi-product biopharmaceutical company, Andy's experience will be instrumental in achieving and leveraging anticipated milestones, including progression of existing clinical programs into late-stage development, advancement of additional pipeline programs into the clinic, and delivery of novel and meaningful therapies to patients in need.

"We are thrilled to have an industry veteran of Andy's caliber join our executive team," said Norbert Riedel, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Aptinyx. "This important addition will bolster our experience and commercial capabilities, which will help us fully realize the potential of our novel and diverse drug discovery platform and bring significant therapeutic improvements to patients suffering from various CNS disorders."

The addition of Mr. Kidd as Aptinyx's chief commercial officer brings to the company an entrepreneurial leader with more than 15 years of commercial, corporate, and business development experience in the life sciences. Prior to joining Aptinyx, Mr. Kidd served in various roles at Baxter International for over 10 years, most recently as senior vice president of strategy and business development. Prior, he held a number of commercial leadership positions, including general manager of Baxter Canada, global franchise head for surgical care, as well as general manager of the company's U.S. anesthesia and cardiovascular franchises. Before joining Baxter, Mr. Kidd worked as a pharmaceutical and healthcare consultant for The Boston Consulting Group in both London and Chicago. Mr. Kidd received his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees (B.M. B.Ch.) from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor of Arts in medical sciences from the University of Cambridge.

About Aptinyx

Aptinyx Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing transformative therapies for challenging disorders of the brain and nervous system. Aptinyx has a proven platform for discovery of novel compounds that work through a unique mechanism to modulate  rather than block or over-activate  NMDA receptors and enhance synaptic plasticity, the foundation of neural cell communication. Drugs that modulate NMDA receptors in this distinct way have both robust efficacy and exceptionally favorable safety. The company's lead drug candidate, NYX-2925, is in Phase 2 clinical development as a therapy for neuropathic pain and its second drug candidate, NYX-783, is in Phase 1 clinical development for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Both programs have received Fast Track designation by the FDA. Aptinyx is also advancing additional compounds from its proprietary chemistry platform, which continues to generate a rich and diverse pipeline of small-molecule NMDA receptor modulators with the potential to treat an array of neurologic disorders. For more information, visit www.aptinyx.com.

SOURCE Aptinyx Inc.

Related Links

http://www.aptinyx.com


ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) today announced the acquisition of Glenview, Illinois-based SouthCap Brokerage Group, LLC. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2010, SouthCap Brokerage Group, LLC is a life insurance general agency that assists wealth managers, financial advisors and insurance professionals with their clients' advanced life insurance and estate planning needs. Services include expert policy portfolio analysis and construction, underwriting advocacy and advanced case design. Luke Kaplan, James Kavanaugh (Kav) Tucker and their associates will relocate to Gallagher offices in Rolling Meadows, Illinois and Atlanta, Georgia under the direction of John Neumaier, head of Gallagher's Great Lakes employee benefits consulting and brokerage operations.

"Gallagher has been focused on expanding our executive and wholesale life capabilities, and our team already has a strong working relationship with the principals of SouthCap," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "I'm thrilled to welcome Luke, Kav and their associates to our growing Gallagher family of professionals."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an international insurance brokerage and risk management services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, has operations in 34 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP  Investor Relations VP  Corporate Communications 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 630-285-4009/ [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com


TOKYO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- istyle Inc. (TSE First Section, Company Code: 3660), a Tokyo-based operator of @cosme, one of Asia's largest beauty information and review sites, announced "@cosme THE BEST COSMETICS AWARDS 2017" on December 7, 2017. The awards reflect Japan's beauty trends of 2017.

(Image1: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/img/201712068742-O4-8m5W35Li)

About @cosme:

@cosme is one of Asia's largest beauty information websites, with a loyal user base of Japanese women. The information and reviews posted on @cosme are useful for women's daily beauty care, earning widespread support.

(Image2: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/img/201712068742-O5-RU29yKv8)

About the @cosme Best Cosmetics Awards:

The awards cover cosmetics and beauty products that have gained the most support from consumers, based on reviews written in 2017 by members of @cosme who have actually used the products. The winners of the awards were selected according to product rankings. The lineup of award-winning products, which reflects the opinions of ordinary consumers, has drawn attention from a wide range of parties from users to officials in the beauty industry.

OPERA's "Lip Tint" wins Grand Prize:

The 2017 Grand Prize went to "LIP TINT," produced by OPERA, which received the most favorable response from users on @cosme.

(Image3: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/img/201712068742-O3-669uQS0p)

Please refer to the following websites for more information.

Japanese

http://www.cosme.net/bestcosme/2017/

English

http://us.cosme.net/bestcosmeRankings

Traditional Chinese

http://tw.cosme.net/bestcosmeRankings

Simplified Chinese

http://cn.cosme.net/bestcosmeRankings

Korean

http://kr.cosme.net/bestcosmeRankings

istyle Inc. announced similar rankings, "2017 UrCosme(@cosme TAIWAN) THE BEST COSMETICS AWARDS," that reflect Taiwan's beauty trends of 2017 the same day on its group site "UrCosme(@cosmeTAIWAN)," which is a beauty information and review site in Taiwan. These awards are based on the rankings of products which have gained the most support from consumers. This year, the UrCosme(@cosmeTAIWAN) Grand Prize went to REVLON's "Super Lustrous Lipstick."

Please refer to the following websites for more information.

Traditional Chinese only

https://www.urcosme.com/beauty-awards/2017/annual_index

SOURCE istyle Inc.
On December 7 th the Association of Celebrity Personal Assistants (ACPA) will be making sure its own are duly recognized and feted as the organization celebrates its 25 th Silver Anniversary. This time it's the assistants who will be receiving the gifts, gourmet food and expensive wine to enjoy, all donated by sponsors who understand the value of exposure to this unique group of individuals.

ACPA was founded in 1992 by Jonathan Holiff, who was Alan Thicke's assistant at the time, with the assistance of Rita Tateel, president of The Celebrity Source, whose Rolodex helped fuel the first recruits. This ultra-exclusive organization has strict guidelines for inclusion, requiring current employment with a celebrity, full-time for at least one year.

But being a personal assistant to a celebrity is not about the glitz and glamour that most people imagine the job to be. It's hard, stressful work. According to a survey conducted by the ACPA 45% of assistants are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 36% work 10 hours or more a day.

It's also not a job for the uneducated or new college grads. 62% have a Bachelor's degree or higher and 97% are 30 years of age or older -- which according to current ACPA president Wilda Bennett, indicates that "Celebrities want personal assistants with life experience, beyond what most millennials have."

Ask any celebrity about the value their assistant brings, and they will likely say that their assistant is the glue that keeps their lives and careers together. According to television host and author Tavis Smiley, whose assistant Kimberly McFarland is the immediate past president of the ACPA, "A good assistant is like a GPS, they keep you on the right track."

For more information about the ACPA visit https://acpa-la.com/ or email [email protected].

PRESS CONTACT : Rita Tateel, [email protected] M. 213-369-8040

SOURCE ACPA

Related Links

http://acpa-la.com


LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of Brexit Britain, Attest has carried out research to find out about consumer perception of British brands and products. Does a 'Made in Britain' label make a difference to consumer brand perception?

Attest, a brand intelligence and consumer insights platform, surveyed 2,000 British and 2,000 American people, and these are some of the findings:

1 in 3 Americans admit they don't know any British brands. However, nearly 40 percent of Americans find 'Made in Britain ' products 'desirable'

' products 'desirable' 39 percent of Brits feel more positively toward British brands and products post-Brexit

3 in 4 people are more likely to buy a product with a 'Made in Britain ' label

' label 'Quality' is the most associated term with 'Made in Britain ', followed by 'stylish', though 46 percent of people expect British-made products to be expensive

When asked to list their favorite British brands, Cadbury and M&S had the best brand perception for British participants, while Burberry came out on top as the favorite in the U.S.

View the full infographic here and additional assets on Dropbox.

"Britain's reputation for style and quality, both within the UK and overseas, is evident in our findings", says Mark Walker, Marketing Director at Attest. "Rather than Brexit diminishing Britain's reputation for consumer brands on the world stage, it appears to be presenting an opportunity to redefine 'Made in Britain' both at home and abroad."

John Noble, Director of the British Brands Group says: "British brands are a strong source of pride, but also of our international competitiveness, and it is encouraging to see this reflected in this research. British brands help shape perceptions of the UK around the world, with the Nation Brand Index rating the country 3rd out of 50 for the strength of its image and reputation. Strong brands will play a key role in our future success."

About Attest

Attest is a Market and Brand Intelligence platform, helping connect businesses to a network of 70 million consumers across 80 different countries. They work with brands including Deliveroo, Fever-Tree, Twitter, Uber and Unilever to help them measure, manage and maximise their brand equity, get closer to customers, and win market share. They are backed by leading venture capital firms including Oxford Capital and Episode 1. Learn more at: www.askattest.com

For media inquiries and further information, please contact:

Maria Hughes

Media Relations Manager

BlueGlass

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +4420 7242 0142

SOURCE Attest

Related Links

http://www.askattest.com


NEW YORK and LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Avature, a provider of innovative cloud applications for CRM and Human Capital Management, announced today the general availability of its Contingent Workforce solution, designed to allow companies to leverage the gig economy more efficiently. The solution, in combination with Avature's CRM, ATS and Internal Mobility solutions, allows organizations to fully integrate contingent workforce development with existing talent acquisition and talent management practices. This allows customers to develop a total talent management (TTM) perspective of their organization.

Avature Contingent Workforce was conceived so that HR organizations can quickly deploy on-demand talent to support the increasing need for agility. This responsiveness helps continue a HR organizations transformation from "back office" payroll processors to strategic "front office" business service providers to the rest of the organization.

"HR leaders and purchasing managers have expressed a desire to align contingent hires with the organization's overall talent and workforce initiatives and we are responding accordingly," said Nina Jaksic, Avature's Product Manager for the solution. "We are combining bespoke processing capabilities with comprehensive analytics to generate a real-time view of workforce readiness across the entire organization."

This new solution includes Avature's industry leading sourcing tools, talent communities and advanced communication capabilities for attracting and engaging with the contingent workforce. Fine-grained segmentation coupled with advanced database search gives organizations clear visibility into their talent networks and also gives them the ability to find the best candidate based on specific criteria such as availability, skillset, performance ratings and more. Using Avature's highly configurable workflow engine, workflows can be deployed to support a wide variety of on-boarding and off-boarding processes that comply with stringent procurement controls and complex regulatory requirements. Avature's advanced document management and customizable forms functionality can support a wide variety of SOWs, and Avature's Enterprise Service Bus supports easy integration into financial systems.

"Our customers want to better engage the contingent worker," said Dimitri Boylan, CEO of Avature. "Our social CRM features can dramatically improve the contractor experience so that our customers can stay connected with the dependable high performing, independent contractors that know how to work inside their organization. There is no doubt that replacing old systems that silo data with a single platform that supports web and mobile apps will speed deployment of critical resources and boost company performance."

Avature Contingent Workforce has been in production use with a small number of customers since August of this year. Agustin Donati, Avature's Director of Product Marketing, expands on the company's plans. "Customer-driven enhancements will be made through a series of 18 additional releases over the next year. Among other things, key enhancements will include contract-specific document parsing and smart tagging developed by Avature's Natural Language Processing AI team, as well as a financial transaction ledger that can be easily exported to the financial system of record."

Avature Contingent Workforce can be delivered as a stand-alone solution or as an integrated component of a complete talent suite on the Avature platform.

About Avature

Avature is a highly configurable enterprise SaaS platform for Talent Acquisition and Talent Management and the leading provider of CRM technology for recruiting globally. Founded by Dimitri Boylan, co-founder and former CEO of HotJobs.com, Avature brings consumer-grade internet technology and innovation to HCM software. Avature solutions include shared services sourcing, applicant tracking, campus & events recruiting, employee referral management, social on-boarding, branded employee engagement, employee mobility and workforce optimization, and performance management. Used by 101 of the Fortune 500 in more than 100 countries and 17 languages, Avature delivers its services from its private cloud, located in data centers in the US, Europe, and Asia. Avature has offices in Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Munich, New York, and Shenzhen. Learn more at www.avature.net or follow @Avature.

SOURCE Avature

Related Links

http://www.avature.net


DETROIT, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) announced today that BlackBerry Executive Chairman & CEO, John Chen, will deliver a keynote at AutoMobili-D. Chen will deliver his company's announcement at 2:10  3:05 p.m. ET, Monday January 15, in Cobo Center's Atrium.

"Cybersecurity is a topic of extreme importance as the vehicles of tomorrow become more and more connected," said Ryan LaFontaine, 2018 NAIAS Chairman. "From global automakers and suppliers, to leading technology providers like BlackBerry, our show brings together key media and industry executives to experience and showcase innovations in automotive."

As vehicles become increasingly connected and the future of self-driving cars becomes a reality, the importance of automotive security is the number one priority for manufacturers, suppliers, policy makers and customers.

Chen's keynote will address BlackBerry's transformation into a world leader in cybersecurity solutions and why the company is one of the most trusted partners in the automotive industry. Chen will also unveil a BlackBerry product that will help to shape and secure the future of connected and self-driving cars.

AutoMobili-D will run from Sunday-Sunday January 14-21, 2018, and encompass over 150,000 sq ft in 2018. BlackBerry will have a display located in the "eMobility" community within AutoMobili-D where they will showcaes their automotive technologies.

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.

About the North American International Auto Show

Now in its 30th year as an international event, the NAIAS is among the most prestigious auto shows in the world, providing unparalleled access to the automotive products, technologies, people and ideas that matter most  up close and in one place. Administered by executive director Rod Alberts, the NAIAS is one of the largest media events in North America, and the only auto show in the United States to earn an annual distinguished sanction of the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles, the Paris-based alliance of automotive trade associations and manufacturers from around the world. For more information, visit naias.com.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for highlights and updates.

2018 NAIAS Dates:

The Gallery  Saturday, January 13, 2018

AutoMobili-D  Sunday-Sunday, January 14-21, 2018

Press Preview  Sunday-Tuesday, January 14-16, 2018

Industry Preview  Wednesday-Thursday, January 17-18, 2018

Charity Preview  Friday, January 19, 2018

Public Show  Saturday-Sunday, January 20-28, 2018

SOURCE North American International Auto Show

Related Links

www.dada.org


AMSTERDAM, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dutch researchers demonstrated a strong relationship between compression pressure in mammography and breast cancer screening performance. Involving more than 130,000 mammograms from the Dutch Breast Screening Program and Volpara software, the study showed that very high pressure is linked with reduced sensitivity and very low pressure translates to low specificity.

The study, "Influence of breast compression pressure on the performance of population-based mammography screening," was published in the current issue of Breast Cancer Research (DOI 10.1186/s13058-017-0917-3). In this study, the data are adjusted for volumetric density and breast volume when evaluating the impact of pressure on screening performance. Katherina Holland, Nico Karssemeijer and researchers from Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, Netherlands, measured mean compression pressure for 132,776 digital mammograms. Volumetric breast density and pressure was measured using Volpara software. The data was subdivided into five quintiles of mean pressure and the number of screen-detected cancers, interval cancers, false positives, and true negatives were available for each group.

The results bolster a growing body of research that suggest that mean compression pressure is related to screening performance, with compression pressures in lower ranges lead to a higher recall rate and a higher false positives fraction and compression pressures in the higher ranges reduce detectability of breast cancer. These findings are consistent with results from the Norwegian Breast Screening Program recently published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

"Lack of consistent guidelines for mammographic compression can lead to a wide variation in execution. The study shows that adequate compression pressure is crucial for obtaining high quality exams. Both very high and very low mean compression pressure can adversely affect mammography quality. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that standardizing to an intermediate compression pressure may lead to better screening outcomes and a better patient experience," said Prof. Karssemeijer.

About Sigmascreening

Sigmascreening is a medical device company focusing on the development of new innovative products in the area of digital mammography and breast cancer screening. The Sensitive Sigma Paddle is our CE-certified product, based on our patented technology preventing over- and under-compression. We aim to introduce new products that will improve mammography and the compliance to screening programs, both contribute to the early detection of cancer which ultimately can save lives.

Media Contact:

Chris K. Joseph

510/435-4031

[email protected]

SOURCE Sigmascreening
The plaintiffs  Patagonia Works, Utah Dine Bikeyah, Friends of Cedar Mesa, Archaeology Southwest, Conservation Lands Foundation, Access Fund, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation  filed the complaint in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Sixteen presidents have used the Antiquities Act to designate 157 national monuments since 1906 to preserve our unique and treasured places from destruction. President Trump's proclamation is the first time any president has attempted to abolish a monument established by a previous president and amounts to the largest elimination of protected areas in American history. By revoking national monument status for 85% of the area protected by the Bears Ears National Monument, President Trump has removed legal protections for many well-known and widely-revered historic, scientific, and cultural areas.

The President made the decision without visiting Bears Ears or meeting with tribal leaders. Despite his claim that his decision represents the will of the people, the decision only advances the interests of a few, at the expense of many. The Administration received over 3 million public comments this summer, and over 98% of those comments favored keeping the Bears Ears National Monument intact.

Reactions from Coalition Members:

Mary Benally, of Utah Dine Bikeyah: "President Trump has literally dismembered our sacred Bears Ears monument that five Tribes have worked tirelessly for many years to protect in order to preserve our culture and way of life. I heard yesterday someone say, 'it is as if he took a whole person, slashed it, and left us with a couple of limbs,' that is how I feel, too."

Josh Ewing, Executive Director of Friends of Cedar Mesa: "With more than 100,000 archaeological sites, 75% of which were erased from the National Monument by President Trump, the Bears Ears landscape is unquestionably the kind of place the Antiquities Act was meant to protect. Our organization has never before been involved with litigation. Yet this extreme and unprecedented effort by the President to erase National Monument protections for even the most uncontroversial and world-renowned areas, like Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch, leaves us no choice but to pursue our legal rights in the American system of justice."

Brian Sybert, Executive Director of the Conservation Lands Foundation: "This is as bad as we expected, based on the lies and misrepresentations that we have heard throughout Secretary Zinke's sham 'review.' This administration will stop at nothing to ensure that their private industry cronies can profit from the destruction of even our most highly valued public lands, to the point of undoing protections that have been in place for two decades. We look forward to fighting this indefensible and illegal order in the courtswhere facts still matter."

Rose Marcario, President and CEO of Patagonia: "Americans have overwhelmingly spoken out against the Trump Administration's unprecedented attempt to shut down our national monuments. The Administration's unlawful actions betray our shared responsibility to protect iconic places for future generations and represent the largest elimination of protected land in American history. We've fought to protect these places since we were founded and now we'll continue that fight in the courts."

Stephanie K. Meeks, President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation: "Bears Ears National Monument tells the story of human civilization in North America thousands of years before the arrival of the first Europeans, and our nation cannot afford to have this sacred place opened to looting, vandalism or destructive oil and gas development. Shrinking the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument is a direct assault on the Antiquities Act, one of America's bedrock conservation and preservation laws that has helped to ensure the protection of many irreplaceable cultural landscapes across the United States. This unprecedented action does not represent the will of the American people, and is, in fact, destructive to all we hold dear as a nation. We look forward to defending Bears Ears, the Antiquities Act, and America's unparalleled system of public lands."

David Polly, President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology: "Paleontology literally uncovers the history of life on Earth, a heritage that belongs to us all. Bears Ears protects fascinating episodes in that history. Some of the first vertebrates to walk on land have been found in the Valley of the Gods region, and packrat middens that reveal the climatic history of the west are scattered across the entire Monument. Many of these irreplaceable sites have been looted in recent years. By slashing boundaries, Zinke and Trump have failed their charge to preserve and protect."

Brady Robinson, Executive Director of Access Fund: "Bears Ears is a critical battle in the larger fight for America's public lands. The current Administration is mounting a systematic attack on public lands through a larger, frenetic signing of executive orders, proclamations, and the repeal of environmental protectionsall with no legal footing or well-reasoned basis. This free-wheeling approach is unprecedented and highly troubling."

William H. Doelle, Ph.D., President and CEO of Archaeology Southwest: "Just compare the two proclamations and that will speak volumes. Indeed, one is more voluminous than the other. President Trump's proclamation will not withstand legal scrutiny."

About the Coalition

The coalition members are Patagonia Works, Utah Dine Bikeyah, Friends of Cedar Mesa, Archaeology Southwest, the Conservation Lands Foundation, Access Fund, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, Patagonia is an outdoor company based in Ventura, California. A Certified B Corp, Patagonia's mission is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. Contact : Corley Kenna, 202-320-3921, [email protected]

Utah Dine Bikeyah is a Native American-led organization, focused on Native American traditional and cultural knowledge that operates at the intersection between culture and conservation by promoting land protection.

Contact : Gavin Noyes, 801-521-7398, [email protected]

Friends of Cedar Mesa was founded in 2010 by a former BLM employee to provide stewardship that ensures the public lands of San Juan County, with all their natural and cultural resources, are respected and protected.

Contact : Josh Ewing, 801-410-0773, [email protected]

Archaeology Southwest is a non-profit organization that undertakes preserving cultural landscapes, archaeological sites, artifact collections, and archives using a holistic, conservation-based approach to exploring the places of the past.

Contact : William H. Doelle, 520-240-7546, [email protected]

The Conservation Lands Foundation is the only non-profit organization in the country dedicated solely to protecting, restoring and expanding the National Conservation Lands so they will endure from generation to generation. The National Conservation Lands are 36 million acres of protected public lands, rivers and trails managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Contact : Brian Sybert, (406) 438-5185, [email protected]

Access Fund is a non-profit organization that encourages and promotes environmental stewardship within the nation's rock climbing community and also engages in specific land management issues that threaten to affect the environmental quality of the nation's climbing areas.

Contact : Brady Robinson, 303-408-6316, [email protected]

The Society for Vertebrate Paleontology is a diverse organization of scientists, students, artists, preparators, advocates, writers and scholars across the globe, who are dedicated to the study, discovery, interpretation and preservation of vertebrate fossils.

Contact : P. David Polly, 812-272-2945, [email protected]

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private charitable, educational, non-profit corporation chartered by Congress in 1949 to protect and defend America's historic resources, to further the historic preservation policy of the United States, and to facilitate public participation in the preservation of our nation's heritage.

Contact: Virgil McDill, 202-294-9187, [email protected]

SOURCE Patagonia, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.patagonia.com


"As a proud Montclair State alumnus, I understand the value of an effective education teaching entrepreneurism for success in today's competitive business world," Khubani says. "It is with great pleasure that I continue the tradition of supporting student inventors through the BulbHead.com Inventors Day for Aspiring Entrepreneurs through 2022 with a gift of $500,000. These funds will assure that young minds at the University continue to have the opportunity to pursue their consumer product outreach dreams."

Montclair State officially announced Khubani's gift and invited students to participate in the contest at an event at the Feliciano School of Business in which over 150 were in attendance. With its annual prize pool of $80,000 ($50,000 for first place, $20,000 for second place and $10,000 for third place), the "BulbHead.com Inventors Day for Aspiring Entrepreneurs" is now New Jersey's largest collegiate pitch contest.

"We know there are lots of potential student entrepreneurs around campus, who are serious about developing and launching their ideas," says Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship Director Dennis Bone. "The new prizes should ratchet up entrepreneurial activity and move the entrepreneurial needle across campus."

The BulbHead.com pitch contest serves as a validating launch pad for student innovators. Last May, Team Fit B members Selena Alvarez and Jamie Wisniewski won the $10,000 first prize for their customized bra business.

A pioneer in the direct response industry, current BulbHead.com brands include Red Copper Cookware, Star Shower holiday lights, Hurricane Spin, Pocket Hose and Atomic Beam. The company has been a thought-leader in the industry for over three decades, bringing award-winning, affordable, and practical products to consumers in over 120 countries around the globe. Visit www.BulbHead.com.

To find out how to enter the 2018 BulbHead.com Inventors Day for Aspiring Entrepreneurs, visit: http://www.montclair.edu/entrepreneur/blog/

Contact Information:

Andrea Pass

Marketing Maven

646-661-2203

[email protected]

SOURCE BulbHead.com

Related Links

http://www.BulbHead.com


MANILA, Philippines, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- To meet increasing demand from medium and large livestock farms and feed millers in the Philippines and Southeast Asian countries, Cargill today opened its first animal nutrition premix plant in the Philippines. Cargill invested US$12 million to open the plant, where 50 local employees will produce animal nutrition premix solutions, made available to customers under the Provimi brand. An opening ceremony was held today at the plant, located in First Bulacan Industrial Park in Malolos, Bulacan.

"The Philippines and Southeast Asian countries are seeing increased consumer demand for meat products, especially pork and chicken. This is great news for the growth potential of local livestock farms and feed millers," said Noel Kim, general manager of Cargill Provimi, Philippines. "At our premix plant, Cargill can now manufacture the animal nutrition products these producers need to sustainably deliver high quality, safe, affordable meat to consumers."

Malolos City Mayor Christian Natividad praised Cargill's presence in the area as a boon for the local community. "The City of Malolos is appreciative of Cargill's presence, a big boost to our cities' economic and employment opportunities. We hope to reciprocate by providing all the needed assistance and better business ambience to make Cargill's project a success," Mayor Natividad said.

Chuck Warta, president, Cargill Premix and Nutrition said, "Cargill is committed to the Philippines and Southeast Asia. With the population and income growth driving demand for animal protein in the region, Cargill knows how important it is to invest here, supporting local farmers and creating additional job opportunities as a result of our growth."

For his part, Ralph Bean, Agricultural Counselor at USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, commended the investment. He said, "This plant is one of Cargill's, and one of US Agriculture's many investments in Philippine Agriculture, and it heralds a strong partnership and a bright future for all going forward. The plant will provide products that will enable Philippine farmers to ensure greater productivity, reliability, and quality in the end products that go onto Philippine dinner tables."

The premix plant is one of two important plant openings for Cargill in the Philippines this week, as the company also announced the opening of a poultry processing facility, which is a joint venture with Jollibee in Batangas. The two plants strengthen the company's presence in Asia Pacific, where Cargill employs 54,000 employees across 16 countries.

About Cargill

Cargill provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services to the world. Together with farmers, customers, governments and communities, we help people thrive by applying our insights and over 150 years of experience. We have 155,000 employees in 70 countries who are committed to feeding the world in a responsible way, reducing environmental impact and improving the communities where we live and work. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center.

SOURCE Cargill

Related Links

https://www.cargill.com/


"Pro Digital Keyboard Line of the year was a hotly contested category this year. Casio snuck by the competition, though, taking home the 2017 MMR Dealers' Choice Award trophy as dealers pointed to the company's commitment to innovation and value as the main reasons," said Christian Wissmuller, Executive Editor, MMR . "If you still think of those fun little keyboards from the '80s when someone says 'Casio,' it's time to update your reality. These days the company is producing some of the finest, feature-rich keyboard consoles out there and both consumers and MI retailers have been taking notice for years."

Casio's Privia and CELVIANO lines are the hallmarks of its digital piano offerings. The popular Privia line includes modern home pianos and professional stage instruments, while Casio's CELVIANO line of digital pianos  in particular, its series of Grand Hybrid Pianos combine the advantages of both digital and acoustic pianos while delivering the performance of a grand piano in tone, keyboard quality and playing response.

"This award means so much to us at Casio. To be honored by our dealers means that we are delivering on our commitment to develop products that meet the needs of today's musicians," said Stephen Schmidt, Vice President of Casio's Electronic Musical Instrument Division. "We want to thank everyone who chose Casio for this honor, and rest assured that we will continue to raise the bar for digital piano technology and create instruments that musicians of any experience level will love."

For 25 years, readers of MMR have selected the top instruments across an array of categories, honoring those companies which have designed, produced, and marketed gear that has resonated most with end-users and generated sales and profit for retailers. Winners of the MMR Dealers Choice Award are highlighted in the December 2017 issue of MMR. Additionally, Casio will be presented an award for this outstanding win at its booth during the 2018 Winter NAMM show.

To learn more about Casio's full portfolio of electronic musical instruments, please visit www.casiomusicgear.com.

About Casio America, Inc.

Casio America, Inc., Dover, N.J., is the U.S. subsidiary of Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and business equipment solutions. Established in 1957, Casio America, Inc. markets calculators, keyboards, digital cameras, mobile presentation devices, disc title and label printers, watches, cash registers and other consumer electronic products. Casio has strived to fulfill its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. For more information, visit www.casiousa.com.

SOURCE Casio America, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.casiousa.com


THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CB&I (NYSE:CBI) today announced it has been awarded a contract for more than $95 million by Saudi Aramco Shell Refinery (SASREF). The scope of work includes the engineering, procurement and construction management for SASREF's modernization and expansion of its existing refinery in Al-Jubail city, Saudi Arabia.

"The relationship between CB&I and SASREF extends back for more than a decade, and we have been collaborating successfully during this time," said Duncan Wigney, CB&I's Executive Vice President of Engineering & Construction. "This award demonstrates CB&I's ability to deliver value to SASREF and our other customers in the Middle East. It also enhances CB&I's position in the region as a leading provider of energy infrastructure solutions, from conceptual design to fabrication to EPC delivery."

CB&I has completed the conceptual design and FEED phases of the project, while working with SASREF to optimize investment on the new refinery configuration. CB&I's integrated solutions will give SASREF the operating flexibility needed to generate maximum returns through sustainable fuels production, which meets Euro V regulations for cleaner emissions.

About CB&I

CB&I (NYSE:CBI) is a leading provider of technology and infrastructure for the energy industry. With more than 125 years of experience, CB&I provides reliable solutions to our customers around the world while maintaining a relentless focus on safety and an uncompromising standard of quality. For more information, visit www.CBI.com.

About SASREF

SASREF is a joint venture company of Saudi Aramco and Shell, two of the biggest oil and Gas Company in the world SASREF aspires to be the best petroleum refinery company not only in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also in Asia and Middle East. We are embarking upon a very exciting journey into the future, with aspiring vision to outperform our past best performance in order to meet the growth opportunities that lie ahead. For more info, visit www.SASREF.com.sa

Important Information For Investors And Shareholders

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding CB&I and represents our expectations and beliefs concerning future events. These forward-looking statements are intended to be covered by the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. When considering any statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or use or contain words, terms, phrases or expressions such as "achieve," "forecast," "plan," "propose," "strategy," "envision," "hope," "will," "continue," "potential," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "project," "estimate," "predict," "intend," "should," "could," "may," "might" or similar forward-looking statements, we refer you to the cautionary statements concerning risk factors and "Forward-Looking Statements" described under "Risk Factors" in Item 1A of our Annual Report filed on Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31, 2016, and any updates to those risk factors or "Forward-Looking Statements" included in our subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC, which cautionary statements are incorporated herein by reference.

Investors: Scott Lamb, +1 832 513 1068, [email protected]

Media: Gentry Brann, +1 832 513 1031, [email protected]

SOURCE CB&I

Related Links

http://www.cbi.com


DALLAS, CHANTILLY, Va., and NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CenseoHealth ("Censeo") and Advance Health ("Advance"), technology-enabled payer service providers, today announced an investment and recapitalization from New Mountain Capital, LLC ("New Mountain"), a growth-oriented investment firm that currently manages over $20 billion in assets. New Mountain will acquire a majority ownership interest in both Censeo and Advance Health. The transaction is currently anticipated to close before the year end 2017, subject to customary closing conditions. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The combined company, through a deep network of physicians and nurse practitioners, will provide technology-enabled in-home health assessments nationwide. In addition, the company will provide high acuity health plan members with a range of chronic care management and care coordination services.

"Our partnership with New Mountain and Advance will continue to expand Censeo's participation in the in-home health assessment and care management space. We look forward to our partnership with proven leaders in healthcare," said Kevin McNamara, CEO of CenseoHealth.

"Bringing Censeo and Advance together with New Mountain will accelerate innovation and allow us to serve our customers in new value-added ways," added Brian Wise, CEO of Advance Health.

Matt Holt, Managing Director at New Mountain Capital added, "We have been working to establish a new and better platform in the technology-enabled payer services industry, with a focus on enabling low-cost, high quality value-based care. By offering patients a comprehensive in-home health assessment, coupled with a range of chronic care management and care coordination services, the combined company will enable health plans and providers to reduce member costs, increase care quality, and reduce readmissions."

New Mountain invests in the highest quality leaders in carefully selected defensive growth industries and then partners with management in continued business-building efforts. New Mountain identified Censeo and Advance through its long-standing efforts in technology-enabled payer services, including its investments in Equian and Convey.

"Censeo and Advance have a tremendous track-record of delivering value to all constituents of the healthcare system, including patients, payers, and healthcare providers that are facing increasing pressure to improve outcomes and efficiency while reducing costs," said Vignesh Aier, Managing Director of New Mountain Capital. "We are very proud to partner with the Censeo and Advance teams, and we plan to commit substantial resources behind the combined company to invest in new products, services, and technology for the benefit of our customers."

Goldman Sachs served as financial advisor to Censeo and Bass, Berry & Sims PLC served as legal advisor to Censeo. TripleTree served as financial advisor to Advance Health and Ballard Spahr LLP served as legal advisor to Advance Health. Deutsche Bank served as financial advisor to New Mountain Capital and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to New Mountain Capital.

About CenseoHealth

Headquartered in Dallas, TX, Censeo Health, LLC is a leading provider of prospective health assessments for health plans and healthcare delivery organizations. The company's contracted network of nearly 7,500 licensed physicians performs comprehensive, Annual Wellness Visit-compliant assessments with members in their homes, at network physician offices and in community settings. By capturing complete health and social welfare assessments of health plan members to drive better clinical outcomes through care management referrals and return-to-care recommendations, CenseoHealth's insights help enhance member engagement, improve quality ratings and reduce overall healthcare costs. For more information please visit www.censeohealth.com.

About Advance Health

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Chantilly, VA, Advance Health is a leading provider of prospective health assessments. Advance Health offers in-home and facility-based health assessments and chronic care management services for health plans. Advance Health employs a network of employed Nurse Practitioners to provide its services. The company has developed a proprietary technology platform that providers use at the point of care. To date, the company has completed hundreds of thousands of assessments for many of the largest Medicare Advantage programs in the United States. Visit Advance Health at www.advancehealth.com to learn more.

About New Mountain Capital

New Mountain Capital is a New York-based investment firm that emphasizes business building and growth, rather than debt, as it pursues long-term capital appreciation. The firm currently manages private equity, public equity, and credit funds with over $20 billion in aggregate capital commitments. New Mountain seeks out what it believes to be the highest quality growth leaders in carefully selected industry sectors and then works intensively with management to build the value of these companies. For more information on New Mountain Capital, please visit www.newmountaincapital.com.

Contacts:

CenseoHealth

Nathan Goldstein

Chief Revenue Officer

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (202) 390-2258

Advance Health

Brian Wise

Chief Executive Officer

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (571) 449-2928

SOURCE CenseoHealth

Related Links

http://www.censeohealth.com


SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Century Communities, a publicly traded homebuilder with operations in Texas, expands its regional presence with the addition of two new communities in the San Antonio market. Through land acquisitions in San Antonio and New Braunfels, the homebuilder adds 471 home sites to its offerings for San Antonio homebuyers, supporting local demand for high-quality, entry level housing.

The homebuilder's growth in San Antonio is just beginning and Century Communities is thrilled to broaden their footprint in the market. The growth in San Antonio has contributed to its recent recognition in Fortune's Fastest Growing Companies list, ranked 26th nationally. Century Communities' national reach now extends to 10 states and 107 communities as of September 30, 2017.

Highlights of new communities in San Antonio:

Millican Grove : Century Communities is anticipating a late fall opening for this new community in San Antonio , delivering 387 single family with prices starting in the $170's. Century Communities will be handling all aspects of this community from land development to home building. Homes will range in size from 1,200 to 2,400 square feet and include 3 to 5 bedrooms and 2 to 4 bathrooms. Millican Grove is located near Randolph Air Force Base and has easy access to Interstate 10.

Century Communities is anticipating a late fall opening for this new community in , delivering 387 single family with prices starting in the $170's. Century Communities will be handling all aspects of this community from land development to home building. Homes will range in size from 1,200 to 2,400 square feet and include 3 to 5 bedrooms and 2 to 4 bathrooms. is located near Air Force Base and has easy access to Interstate 10. Solms Preserve: Century Communities is thrilled to offer San Antonio homebuyers this new community in highly desirable New Braunfels . Solms Preseve will be delivering 84 single family homes with prices starting in the $170's. Like Millican Grove , homes will range in size from 1,200 to 2,400 square feet and include 3 to 5 bedrooms and 2 to 4 bathrooms. Solms Preserve offers homebuyers plenty of walking trails and a playscape area for children. The community is also close to plenty of shopping, dining and entertainment options. Solms Preserve is anticipated to open late summer of 2018.

"We are elated for our continued expansion in San Antonio and look forward to growing our footprint in 2018. San Antonio is a great place to live and we are proud to meet the needs of our homebuyers by offering affordable, high-quality housing in the market," said Jason Battistoni, San Antonio Division President for Century Communities. "We're proud to be part of the San Antonio community and look forward to becoming an important part of its growth for generations to come.

Century Communities currently has 7 other new home communities in San Antonio with prices ranging from the $200 to $400's.

About Century Communities:

Century Communities, Inc. (NYSE: CCS) is one of the nation's largest U.S. homebuilders, engaged in all aspects of homebuilding, including the acquisition, entitlement and development of land and the construction, marketing and sale of quality homes designed to appeal to a wide range of homebuyers. The Colorado-based Company operates in 10 states across the West, Mountain, Texas and Southeast Regions and offers title and lending services in select markets through its Parkway Title and Inspire Home Loan subsidiaries. To learn more about Century Communities please visit www.centurycommunities.com.

SOURCE Century Communities

Related Links

http://www.centurycommunities.com


"Our strong ties with CH2M are seen all over our campus, at Merryfield Hall, the CH2M HILL Alumni Center and the CH2M HILL Auditorium in Kearney Hall," said Scott Ashford, Kearney Professor and dean of OSU's College of Engineering, who worked at CH2M for 10 years. "These endowed funds will provide critical support for the College of Engineering's best and brightest faculty who are leading by example through research and innovation, transformational education and inclusivity and collaboration."

CH2M was born at OSU. In the 1930s, three students (Holly Cornell, James Howland and T. Burke Hayes) and their civil engineering professor, Fred Merryfield, began dreaming of starting an engineering company. After completing their military service in World War II, the four men launched a consulting business in January 1946 in Corvallis, Oregon, and named the company after their initials, CH2M. In 1971, CH2M added "HILL" to its name after merging with a company founded by another former OSU studentClair A. Hill and Associates after 15 years of collaboration on projects in California. The combined company would provide a diverse range of environmental and engineering consulting services around the world.

Decades of close connection and partnership between CH2M and OSU followeda mutually beneficial relationship that has allowed both institutions to advance their efforts to build a better world. Many generations of OSU graduates have chosen CH2M as their employer, and many of those OSU alumni advanced into leadership positions in the company. Ralph Peterson, CH2M's president and CEO from 1991 to 2008, began working at CH2M when he was still an OSU student. OSU faculty serve as consultants on CH2M projects, while CH2M employees return to OSU as adjunct faculty, mentoring the next generation of engineers.

This gift, the CH2M HILL Professorship in Civil Engineering Fund, commemorates CH2M, its cofounders and its positive impact on the world. The name "CH2M HILL" will live in perpetuity through this endowed professorship. The dean of the College of Engineering will appoint an endowed professor for a term of 3 to 5 years.

"I will always be grateful to our founders from OSU for starting this purpose-driven company," said Jacqueline Hinman, chairman and CEO of CH2M. "By fully engaging employees in our success, CH2M has grown from a professor and his three students in Corvallis, Oregon to an innovative, sustainable industry leader in communities we serve, providing the best opportunities for engineering students who are motivated to make a positive difference in the world."

Named faculty endowments honor and support faculty who are nationally known as scholars, educators, researchers and leaders in their fields. These endowments enable OSU to attract and support world-class faculty who bring the university's programs to national prominence.

"This gift underscores CH2M's continued commitment to strategically investing in the future workforce of our critical industry and supports the talent pipeline of our clients, as well," said Ellen Sandberg, vice president of community investment and executive director of the CH2M Foundation. "We are honored to preserve CH2M's legacy at OSU, where our company was born."

On August 2, CH2M and Jacobs announced a planned business combination that, upon completion, will create a new chapter for the combined companies.

About CH2M

CH2M leads the professional services industry delivering sustainable solutions benefiting societal, environmental and economic outcomes with the development of infrastructure and industry. In this way, CH2Mers make a positive difference providing consulting, design, engineering and management services for clients in water; environment and nuclear; transportation; energy and industrial markets, from iconic infrastructure to global programs like the Olympic Games. Ranked among the World's Most Ethical Companies and top firms in environmental consulting and program management, CH2M in 2016 became the first professional services firm honored with the World Environment Center Gold Medal Award for efforts advancing sustainable development. Connect with CH2M at www.ch2m.com; LinkedIn; Twitter; and Facebook.

About the College of Engineering at Oregon State University

The OSU College of Engineering is among the nation's largest and most productive engineering programs. Since 1999, the college has increased its research expenditures to $55.6 million by emphasizing highly collaborative research and innovation that solve global problems. It's a leader in signature research areas, including precision health, clean energy, resilient infrastructure and advanced manufacturing; and targeted strategic areas, including robotics, materials research and clean water.

Contact: Brian Morandi

CH2M, Corporate Marketing and Communications

720.286.0719 office

[email protected]

SOURCE CH2M

Related Links

http://www.ch2m.com


CHENGDU, China, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Amid a concrete jungle of steel and glass office towers, hotels, and apartment buildings, people relax under the myriad spots of shade. Many park their public bicycles neatly in a row. They're starting a day of work at the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, a joint venture established by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) -- an American semiconductor company -- and its Chinese partner. It is located in the eponymous Chengdu, the frenetic capital of China's southwestern Sichuan province.

Today, the Chengdu branch of AMD is currently busy at work developing a brand new type of chip. And according to experts, this kind of domestically produced chip will eventually replace counterparts from foreign manufacturers. It will enable Chinese super computers to operate with even more functions than previously imagined, introducing higher compatibility with more software and platforms.

Chengdu Tianfu Software Park is the fastest-growing professional software industry park in China today. It opened its doors in 2005 and has since attracted nearly 250 tenants that include major corporations, of which foreign-funded enterprises account for 40 per cent of the total. Companies that are now operating there include IBM, SAP, NEC, GE, NCSI, Huawei, Alibaba, Maersk, Siemens, Ericsson, Tencent, WIPRO, and DHL.

Chengdu is an advantageous location for these companies because it has for a long time been a hub for science and technology innovation. International med-tech giant Medtronic and automotive behemoth Volvo are also jumping on the bandwagon.

In October this year, Medtronic announced the decision to construct its Centers for Therapeutic Innovation in Chengdu -- which is the company's third major project there. Medtronic has built more centers in Chengdu than anywhere else in China. Swedish car-maker Volvo plans to set up a factory in Chengdu to manufacture Polestar, its new generation of electric vehicles.

Science and technology are changing the fabric of Chengdu -- the city is increasingly becoming a more central part of the Chinese economy. Chengdu's development follows the phenomenon of the so-called new economy, when economic transformation is driven by hi-tech industries under the backdrop of globalization.

Fresh data from the government show that Chengdu is home to 24,369 science and technology enterprises, 965 research and development facilities of all kinds, and 31 potential unicorn companies. Last year, Chengdu's new economy industries were on track to grow by more than 10 per cent, while the value of hi-tech industries reached RMB 844.6 billion -- making it the city's pillar industry.

Major leaders of Chengdu Municipal Party Committee believe that other than emphasizing growth through developing hi-tech industry and innovation, the new economy should also stress partnerships between the government, academia, and enterprises. The government especially wants collaborations between academia and enterprises in research and development, to thoroughly transform the advantage of human resources advantage into the advantage of human capital.

Chengdu is home to 56 institutions of higher education, more than 30 national-level scientific research institutes, and 318 military industry companies and organizations. It has a rich reserve of human resource that includes nearly 5 million scientific and technological innovation talents.

According to information from a relevant official at the Chengdu Science and Technology Bureau, Chengdu has already signed strategic cooperation agreements with 13 higher education institutions. The institutions are both within and outside Sichuan province -- such as Peking University in Beijing and Sichuan University -- in order to foster entrepreneurship, incubate new projects, and reach new key research achievements.

The government member said that capital investment from higher education institutions and private funding has reached more than RMB 875 million. The government member also said that the area for innovation and incubation spaces now exceeds 500,000 square meters, and over 1,000 scientific and technological achievements from higher education institutions have been either transferred or commercialized.

Since reforms in household registration policies for talents rolled out in July, Chengdu has attracted more than 87,000 master's degree or otherwise secondary degree holders. It is estimated that about 15 per cent of those degrees are from Ivy League schools in the United States.

According to the 2017 Returned Chinese Employment and Entrepreneurship Survey Report, Chengdu has climbed its way to the number three spot for the most preferred cities for employment and entrepreneurship among Chinese who study or work abroad and then return to the country. It comes just after Beijing and Shanghai.

The Chinese government's active steps in attracting funding -- continual assembling distinguished talents, and putting innovation and entrepreneurship first -- along with relatively lower land and labor costs compared with cities like Beijing and Shanghai, are all crucial factors that may propel Chengdu forward as China's most ideal city for cultivating the new economy.

SOURCE Chengdu Science and Technology Bureau
HONG KONG, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China Cord Blood Corporation (NYSE: CO) ("CCBC" or the "Company"), China's leading provider of cord blood collection, laboratory testing, hematopoietic stem cell processing, and stem cell storage services, today announced the results of its 2017 Annual General Meeting, which was held on December 7, 2017, in Hong Kong S.A.R., China.

At the Annual General Meeting, shareholders

ratified the re-appointment of KPMG Huazhen LLP as auditors of the Company for the financial year ending March 31, 2018 and authorized any duly formed committee of the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditors; and

re-elected Ms. Ting Zheng and Dr. Ken Lu as Class B directors of the Company until the 2020 annual general meeting of the Company or until their respective successors are duly appointed and qualified.

About China Cord Blood Corporation

China Cord Blood Corporation is the first and largest umbilical cord blood banking operator in China in terms of geographical coverage and the only cord blood banking operator with multiple licenses. Under current PRC government regulations, only one licensed cord blood banking operator is permitted to operate in each licensed region and no new licenses will be granted before 2020 in addition to the seven licenses authorized as of today. China Cord Blood Corporation provides cord blood collection, laboratory testing, hematopoietic stem cell processing and stem cell storage services. For more information, please visit the Company's website at http://www.chinacordbloodcorp.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events, performance and results of operations, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, product and service demand and acceptance, changes in technology, economic conditions, the impact of competition and pricing, government regulation, and other risks contained in statements filed from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All such forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, and whether made by or on behalf of the Company, are expressly qualified by the cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. In addition, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

For more information, please contact:

China Cord Blood Corporation

Investor Relations Department

Tel: (+852) 3605-8180

Email: [email protected]

ICR, Inc.

Mr. William Zima

Tel: (+86) 10-6583-7511 (China) or (+1) 646-405-5185 (U.S.)

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE China Cord Blood Corporation

Related Links

http://www.chinacordbloodcorp.com


LAS VEGAS, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Clark County, Nevada filed a lawsuit Wednesday afternoon against opioid distributors and manufacturers as Clark County residents deal with this ongoing opioid epidemic. In a 46-page complaint, District Attorney Steve Wolfson filed suit in the Eighth Judicial District Court and the County Commission voted to approve such suit. The widespread use of opioid drugs has resulted in a national epidemic of opioid deaths and addictions. Local governments including Clark County have been strained to the breaking point by this public health crisis.

The Clark County District Attorney's Office will work in association with the local law firm of Eglet Prince. Eglet Prince has a reputation for handling large cases in Nevada judiciary and is known for obtaining some of the largest verdicts in the United States (2010 & 2013). They were the only law firm in America to twice obtain the largest injury verdict.

In announcing this association, District Attorney Steve Wolfson stated, "This is a welcome effort and I am honored and pleased to be co-counsel with the law firm Eglet Prince. Opioid addiction impacts all people, regardless of race, gender, socio-economic background or political affiliation. The mortality rate from opioid overdoses in Clark County was almost 70 % higher than the national average. Apart from the toll on human life, the crisis has financially strained the services Clark County provides its residents and employees. Human services, social services, court services, hospital, emergency and ambulatory services, have all been severely impacted by this crisis," concluded Wolfson.

Clark County Commission Chair, Steve Sisolak, said "Our citizens are dying. This public nuisance has caused and continues to cause significant harm to our community, and the harm inflicted outweighs any offsetting benefit. The staggering rates of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use and the abdication by these companies' and gate-keeping duties has caused harm to the entire community. This must stop. Drug addiction and opioids are ravaging our community and will only get worse unless action is taken. The nationwide opioid crisis is having a devastating effect on individuals, families and communities and is imposing enormous financial costs on federal, state, and local governments. I am delighted that Clark County is moving forward with this litigation," said Sisolak.

Robert Eglet added "Drug companies have placed their desire for profits above the health and well-being of their customers and the communities where those customers live. Nevada has the fourth highest drug overdose mortality rate in the United States. The public nuisance created by the Defendants' actions is substantial and unreasonable. It has caused, and continues to cause, significant harm to the community. Clark County has incurred substantial costs including: law enforcement action for opioid-related crimes, addiction treatment, and other services necessary for the treatment of people addicted to prescription opioids. These drug companies knew or should have known that the marketing of opioids would create a public nuisance. We plan to force these companies to pay for all the damage they did to our community, and force the drug companies to change the way they do business," Eglet said.

Historically, opioids were considered too addictive for treatment of chronic pain (migraines, back pain, arthritis). And they were used only to treat short term acute pain or for palliative end of life care. In the late 1990's, and continuing today, opioids have been prescribed for chronic pain because of aggressive marketing campaigns by drug companies.

Contact: Tom Letizia

702-545-8777 or

[email protected]

SOURCE Eglet Prince
HACKENSACK, N.J., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) is pleased to announce that it has received the maximum six-year accreditation as a provider of Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE). As a jointly accredited provider, CMSC can now offer education and CE credits to physicians, nurses, and pharmacists together or separately through the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE).

CMSC is a Top Tier Multiple Sclerosis Education Provider

Maximum six-year accreditation signifies that CMSC has achieved 100% of the criteria for Joint Accreditation and is among the top tier of continuing healthcare education providers in the United States.

According to national continuing medical education advisor Steve Passin, President of Steve Passin & Associates, "Through their extensive documentation of compliance with the criteria for Joint Accreditation, The Consortium has demonstrated that its CE program is by and for the healthcare team. CMSC's team-based approach to education promotes skills and strategies for its members that yield better outcomes for patients and their families."

Joint Accreditation offers organizations the opportunity to be simultaneously accredited to provide medicine, pharmacy, and nursing continuing education activities through a single, unified set of accreditation standards. Joint Accreditation promotes IPCE activities specifically designed to improve interprofessional collaborative practice in health care delivery to achieve a common goal of improving patient care. Joint Accreditation signifies to clinicians and to the public that continuing healthcare education activities provided by CMSC meet the high standards for commercial support of Joint Accreditation.

The Joint Accreditation process rigorously evaluates the overall continuing healthcare education programs of institutions according to standards adopted by all three sponsoring organizations. CMSC's continuing education program is now part of a group of elite organizations in the United Statesincluding major medical schools, national medical associations, hospitals and other medical education organizationsthat have been awarded this accreditation status.

"This acknowledgement of the high quality of our performance-in-practice further empowers our core vision to be "the pre-eminent organization of MS healthcare professionals improving the lives of all those affected by multiple sclerosis," said June Halper, APN-C, CEO of CMSC.

CMSC also provides CE credits to psychologists, social workers and other professions for their educational activities at their annual meeting and in other live and enduring programs and materials throughout the year.

CMSC's educational programming ultimately serves all those affected by multiple sclerosis worldwide as their healthcare providers avail themselves of the curricula offered by The Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers. For more information about CMSC's award-winning CE program, visit: www.cmscscholar.org

ABOUT THE CONSORTIUM OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS CENTERS (CMSC)

CMSC, the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers, is the leading educational, training, and networking organization for MS healthcare professionals and researchers. The CMSC mission is to promote high quality MS care through educational programming and accreditation including live and online events, research grants, technical journals and papers, and targeted advocacy efforts. The CMSC member network includes more than 11,000 international healthcare clinicians and scientists committed to MS care as well as more than 60 Veterans Administration MS Programs and 225 MS Centers in the US, Canada, and Europe. The 32nd CMSC Annual Meeting, the largest gathering of MS professionals in North America, will take place May 30  June 2, 2018, in Nashville, TN. For more information visit: www.mscare.org. Follow CMSC on Twitter: @mscare.org and Facebook: CMSCmscare.

Media Contact: Annie Scully, [email protected], 201-310-9252

Related Images

image1.png

IPCE logo

image2.jpg

CMSC Logo

Related Links

CMSC Medical Education

MS Resource for Healthcare Professionals

SOURCE Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC)

Related Links

http://www.mscare.org


BOSTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent study ranked John Hancock Investments as one of the top five firms for brand strength among retirement plan advisors. The Retirement Plan Advisor Trends study by Market Strategies International found that retirement expertise and broader product consideration gave five asset managers, including John Hancock Investments, an edge among plan advisors.

With specialization in target-date funds and retirement income products, John Hancock Investments, the study found, had a more formidable brand presence in the defined contribution investment only (DCIO) market than in the broader retail advisory market.

Established and emerging DC advisors ranked John Hancock Investments 4th in unaided consideration of the top DC investment managers. While John Hancock ranks 13th in brand equity in the mutual fund retail market, Cogent ranked the firm 5th among DC investment managers.

"Instead of striving to be all things to all advisors, these five firms are doing an excellent job playing to their strengths and offering competitive solutions for the workplace retirement market," said Sonia Sharigian, product director at Market Strategies and author of the report. "A closer look at consideration by product reveals these firms are carving out a distinct advantage within the target-date funds and retirement income categories."

"To receive this recognition is very gratifying, as we've worked hard over the past several years to ensure that our target-date funds are well positioned for the DC market," said Andrew G. Arnott, president and CEO of John Hancock Investments. "We offer multiple glide paths to suit the differing needs of shareholders, we've renamed our fund series to make clear the fact that they're multimanaged, and we've lowered fees to ensure our funds are competitively priced."

"Our target-date fund sales have more than doubled in 2017, reflecting our efforts to provide innovative retirement income solutions for advisors and their clients," said Todd J. Cassler, president of Financial Institutions and Advisory Solutions for John Hancock Investments.

About Retirement Plan Advisor Trends

Cogent Reports conducted an online survey of a representative cross section of 514 plan advisors July through August 2017. Survey participants were required to have an active book of business of at least $5 million and be actively managing DC plans. Strict quotas were set during the data collection period, and postfielding statistical weighting (where necessary) was applied. The data has a margin of error of 4.32% at the 95% confidence level. Market Strategies will supply the exact wording of any survey questions on request. Please call 734-542-7600.

About John Hancock Investments

John Hancock has helped individuals and institutions build and protect wealth since 1862. Today, we are one of the strongest and most-recognized financial brands. We serve investors globally through a unique multimanager approach: We search the world to find proven portfolio teams with specialized expertise for every strategy we offer, then we apply robust investment oversight to ensure they continue to meet our uncompromising standards and serve the best interests of our shareholders. Our approach to asset management has led to a diverse set of investments deeply rooted in investor needs, along with strong risk-adjusted returns across asset classes.

About John Hancock and Manulife

John Hancock is a division of Manulife Financial Corporation, a leading international financial services group that helps people achieve their dreams and aspirations by putting customers' needs first and providing the right advice and solutions. We operate primarily as John Hancock in the United States, and Manulife elsewhere. We provide financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups, and institutions. Assets under management and administration by Manulife and its subsidiaries were over CAD$1 trillion (US$806 billion) as of September 30, 2017. Manulife Financial Corporation trades as MFC on the TSX, NYSE, and PSE, and under 945 on the SEHK. Manulife can be found at manulife.com.

One of the largest life insurers in the United States, John Hancock supports approximately 10 million Americans with a broad range of financial products, including life insurance, annuities, investments, 401(k) plans, and college savings plans. We also offer advice through Signator, a network of independent financial advisors. Additional information about John Hancock may be found at johnhancock.com.

Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.

Clients should carefully consider a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses before investing. To request a prospectus or summary prospectus with this and other important information, call us at 800-225-6020, or visit us at jhinvestments.com.

NOT FDIC INSURED. MAY LOSE VALUE. NO BANK GUARANTEE. NOT INSURED BY ANY GOVERNMENT AGENCY.

John Hancock Funds, LLC, Boston, MA, member FINRA, SIPC

MF417924

PR-2017-91

SOURCE John Hancock Investments
Lymphedema is the build-up of extracellular lymph fluid resulting in the swelling of an arm or leg due to impairment in the lymphatic system. This usually occurs after the removal or irradiation of the lymph nodes during cancer-related treatment; lymphedema can lead to pain, infection, reduced mobility and overall impaired function.

SOZO uses ImpediMed's patented BIS technology to gather and retain thousands of unique data points related to fluid and tissue status. Then, it applies indication-specific algorithms to produce accurate, detailed and actionable results in 20 seconds. SOZO identifies opportunities for early interventions that can prevent certain conditions and slow the progression of others, resulting in better health and quality of life.

"SOZO readings make earlier detection, simpler intervention and better management of lymphedema after cancer treatment possible," said Richard Carreon, Managing Director and CEO of ImpediMed. "Immediately upon a diagnosis of cancer, medical professionals will be able to easily take baseline measurements for lymphedema and then monitor patients for the disease after cancer treatment. They'll also have instant access to patient data through SOZO's interactive web-based platform."

ImpediMed and its subsidiaries pioneered the use of bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS), producing the first commercially available BIS devices in 1990. Studies have shown that with ImpediMed's patented BIS technology, healthcare providers are able to clinically assess a patient and detect lymphedema as much as 4-10 months earlier than other methods.3 ImpediMed's patented BIS technology in SOZO is clinically proven and measures impedance at 256 different points over a full spectrum of frequencies from 3 kHz to 1000 kHz, allowing precise measurement and analysis of extracellular fluid, intracellular fluid and total body water.

Although other bioimpedance systems do exist, these methods are often a single frequency approach. Such approaches rely on population-specific data to create an estimated reading of the patient's fluid levels in comparison to a true individual assessment derived through BIS. BIS does not depend on population-specific algorithms, making it a more precise measurement of fluid. Additionally, BIS can replace more traditional means of testing for lymphedema (e.g., circumference measurement [tape measure], water displacement and perometer methods, etc.) as a quantitative measurement that can detect the disease subclinically.

SOZO also includes the following features:

Easy Integration  Does not require gel electrodes, a separate testing room or elaborate instructions, making it easy to incorporate into routine clinic visits or check-ups.

 Does not require gel electrodes, a separate testing room or elaborate instructions, making it easy to incorporate into routine clinic visits or check-ups. Quick Results  Application-based software takes a measurement and displays results quickly.

 Application-based software takes a measurement and displays results quickly. User Friendly  Interface is built around patients and physicians to ensure information is received in the quickest and easiest way.

 Interface is built around patients and physicians to ensure information is received in the quickest and easiest way. Connectivity  Allows physicians to track and manage patients, easily and efficiently, at any time.

"SOZO's rapid and non-invasive measurement enables pre-emptive rather than reactive care of cancer-related lymphedema, helping both physicians and patients take control of their health," says Carreon.

SOZO is currently only available for medical professionals. For more information on SOZO for the early clinical assessment of unilateral lymphedema, patients and physicians may visit www.hellosozo.com or call toll-free 877-247-0111.

References:

Hayes S, Cornish B, Newman B. Comparison of methods to diagnose lymphedema among breast cancer survivors: 6-month follow up. Breast Cancer Res Treat Feb; 89 (3):221-6,2005 Czerniec S, Kilbreath SL, Ward LC, Beith JM, Refshauge KM, Lee MJ, York S. Assessment of lymphedema using measurement tools and self-report. 7th National Lymphedema Network Conference, Nashville , USA , 2006 Cornish BH, Chapman M, Hirst C, Mirolo BR, Bunce IH, Ward LC, Thomas BJ. Early Diagnosis of Lymphedema Using Multiple Frequency Bioimpedance. Lymphology 34, 2-11, 2001. Casely-Smith JR, Casely Smith JR. Physical therapy for lymphedema. Med J Aust 15:542-3,1989.

About ImpediMed

Founded and headquartered in Brisbane, Australia with U.S. offices in Carlsbad, Calif. and Bloomington, Minn., and a European office in Thessaloniki, Greece, ImpediMed is the world leader in the design and manufacture of medical devices employing bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) technologies for use in the non-invasive clinical assessment and monitoring of tissue composition and fluid status.

ImpediMed was the first company to receive FDA clearance in the U.S. to aid healthcare professionals to clinically assess unilateral lymphedema of the arm and leg in women and the leg in men, for its L-Dex device. In addition, ImpediMed produces a family of FDA cleared and CE Marked medical devices, including SOZOTM, sold in select markets globally. For additional information, visit www.impedimed.com.

SOURCE ImpediMed Limited

Related Links

http://www.impedimed.com


LONDON, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

CRU announces its CRU's Global Graphite Electrode Market Outlook to 2027, providing subscribers to the service with a medium-term market analysis of the recently spotlighted graphite electrode markets.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/536199/CRU_Logo.jpg )



"Graphite electrodes are a key component of many metal producing processes," says Lynn Lupori, CRU's Head of Metals Consulting in North America and the Project Director. "Given the state of turmoil that the market is in currently, CRU is looking to provide a comprehensive view of the market and its outlook to subscribers in its upcoming Graphite Electrode Market Outlook. This Outlook, prepared by our industry experts, will provide some clarity in this volatile market."

Graphite electrodes are a key input for electric arc steel-making and ladle refinement of steel, as well as play an important role in other metals industries, and their market shortage has created huge uncertainty in the global steel industry in recent months. Significant price escalation and material shortages have occurred due to a number of factors such as raw material supply and increased demand. Consumers have reported price escalations of 10 times usual prices, as well as changes in payment terms and overall availability of materials.



CRU's Global Graphite Electrode Market Outlook service will outline:

The current market conditions for graphite electrodes and key raw material inputs (particularly needle coke)

An outlook for prices and availability over the next 12-24 months

A longer term view of price trends and supply / demand dynamics which will likely impact the market over the next 10 years

This service is produced by CRU's team of experts in London, Pittsburgh, Mumbai and Beijing to provide an independent and detailed outlook to support industry participants in their market activity and strategic planning.

Join our webinar

CRU is hosting a complimentary webinar, Deciphering the graphite electrode markets, on 13 December 2017 to address introductory topics surrounding graphite electrode markets. Registration can be completed on CRU's website.

Read the full story: http://bit.ly/2BFv2nY

Read more about CRU: http://bit.ly/About_CRU

About CRU

CRU offers unrivalled business intelligence on the global metals, mining and fertilizer industries through market analysis, price assessments, consultancy and events.

Since our foundation by Robert Perlman in 1969, we have consistently invested in primary research and robust methodologies, and developed expert teams in key locations worldwide, including in hard-to-reach markets such as China.

CRU employs over 260 experts and has more than 10 offices around the world, in Europe, the Americas, China, Asia and Australia - our office in Beijing opened in 2004.

When facing critical business decisions, you can rely on our first-hand knowledge to give you a complete view of a commodity market. And you can engage with our experts directly, for the full picture and a personalised response.

CRU - big enough to deliver a high quality service, small enough to care about all of our customers.

SOURCE CRU
E&P is a leading manufacturer of professional levelling system solutions for caravans, motorhomes and light commercial vehicles. Since its founding more than 10 years ago, E&P has become a highly dynamic and innovative company, making a major contribution to the success of lifting support systems in the leisure vehicle market. With this acquisition, AL-KO will bundle all competencies in levelling systems. Reisemobil-Service Fischer in Elsdorf will be expanded into the Customer Service Center West, through which AL-KO will sell its core products in the future.

E&P's three owners  Eric Klinkenberg and Pierre Blom (E&P Netherlands) and Kay Fischer (E&P Germany / Reisemobil-Service Fischer)  will retain their key functions as a management team under the wings of AL-KO Vehicle Technology. The E&P brand will also be continued in its existing form as a product brand under the AL-KO umbrella brand.

Fred Bentley, CEO at DexKo Global said: "We are delighted that E&P is joining the DexKo family. E&P is known for its high quality products and strong customer focus and enjoys a very high reputation in our industry, which makes it an ideal fit within DexKo. We continue to see opportunities to improve our product offering and service levels through the type of value-added acquisitions that we have recently announced."

Harald Hiller, President of AL-KO Vehicle Technology, emphasized the significance of this transaction: "By integrating E&P we are strengthening and expanding the portfolio of our core business. I am particularly pleased that the E&P leadership team will be retained in its existing form and will support us in the future with their extensive know-how and expertise."

Eric Klinkenberg and Pierre Blom stated that this combination offers great opportunities for the future. "We are looking forward to becoming part of AL-KO Vehicle Technology. This opens up additional development potential and further access to international markets". Kay Fischer added: "Finding a strong and reliable partner in AL-KO was very important to us as this will enable us to continue on our growth track".

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

DexKo Global is a portfolio company of KPS Capital Partners, LP ("KPS"). KPS is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of investment funds with approximately $5.2 billion of assets under management.

KPS Capital Partners, LP

KPS is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of investment funds with approximately $5.2 billion of assets under management. For over two decades, the Partners of KPS have worked exclusively to realize significant capital appreciation by making controlling equity investments in manufacturing and industrial companies across a diverse array of industries, including basic materials, branded consumer, healthcare and luxury products, automotive parts, capital equipment and general manufacturing. KPS creates value for its investors by working constructively with talented management teams to make businesses better, and generates investment returns by structurally improving the strategic position, competitiveness and profitability of its portfolio companies, rather than primarily relying on financial leverage. The KPS Funds' Portfolio Companies have aggregate annual revenues of over $6.6 billion, operate 162 manufacturing facilities in 30 countries, and employ approximately 49,000 associates, directly and through joint ventures worldwide. The KPS investment strategy and portfolio companies are described in detail at www.kpsfund.com.

DexKo Global Inc.

DexKo Global is the leading global supplier of highly engineered running gear technology, chassis assemblies and related components with over 130 years of trailer and caravan componentry experience. DexKo Global was formed at the end of 2015 through the combination of Dexter and AL-KO Vehicle Technology. The Company is headquartered in Novi, Michigan and employs over 4,500 employees with 39 manufacturing facilities and 25 distribution. DexKo Global Inc. has a turnover of more than US$ 1 billion.

ALOIS KOBER GMBH

Founded in 1931, AL-KO Vehicle Technology is now a global technology company with sites in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia. A supplier of high quality chassis components for trailers, leisure vehicles and light commercial vehicles, AL-KO is synonymous with ergonomic and functional excellence, superb comfort as well as innovations to enhance road safety. The company specialises in sophisticated innovation processes and has received many awards for this.

E&P Hydraulics

Over the past decade E&P Hydraulics has developed into one of the leading manufacturers of professional hydraulic levelling system solutions for motorhomes and caravans. Headquartered in the Netherlands, E&P Hydraulics markets and sells its products worldwide. E&P Hydraulics Germany is the general importer for Germany with the associated Service Center for leisure vehicles Reisemobil-Service Fischer in Elsdorf near Cologne.

Please send enquiries to: ALOIS KOBER GMBH Thomas Lutzel

Phone: +49 8221 97-8239 Ichenhauser Str. 14 Mobile: +49 170 9252099 89359 Kotz [email protected]



AL-KO online: www.alko-tech.com

SOURCE DexKo Global Inc.

Related Links

http://www.dexteraxle.com


Dr. Chatterjee is well-known for his expertise. His success in treating patients has made him highly esteemed among his peers in the field. He is focused on preventive medical care but he still performs invasive procedures when necessary.

The Growth and Success of Dr. Chatterjee's Practice

Dr. Chatterjee is originally from India and first came to the United States to do kidney disease research at Northwestern University in California and at the University of Chicago in Illinois. After a year back in India, he returned to the US and was able to secure a residency in Internal Medicine at Wright State University in Ohio, and later was able to do a fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Since southern Kentucky was one of the areas where the incidence of heart disease was very high, Dr. Chatterjee decided to settle in London where he could start his solo practice and help as many people as he can with his expertise. Looking back at his decision, he says this was the best one he had ever made.

Heart catheterization was a new procedure in 1988 and Dr. Chatterjee was the first one to perform it in the area. This wonderful beginning has helped him develop great relationships with his colleagues from various hospitals and has allowed him to serve as one of the best cardiologists in the country.

There is one occasion in his life, though, that has caused him some problems. In 1994, he and some family members were involved in a vehicular accident. He suffered three broken limbs from this unfortunate event. But instead of allowing his misfortune to cripple his will, the good doctor continued his practice "on crutches." This however limited him to non-invasive cardiovascular procedures.

Starting out his practice by himself was difficult. In the span of two decades, however, Dr. Chatterjee has grown his practice to include 14 cardiologists. In 2014, he opened the very first vein disease treatment center in the area. When asked in an interview what makes him successful, Dr. Chatterjee attributed it all to his concern for the health of his patients.

Healthgrades

Richard Garcia

PR

NP Agency

6062240659

[email protected]

This release was issued through WebWire(R). For more information, visit http://www.webwire.com.

SOURCE Dr. Satyabrata Chatterjee
NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dashlane, the award-winning password manager, and one of the world's most trusted digital security companies, today announced its second annual list of the "Worst Password Offenders." The rankings highlight the high-profile people and organizations that suffered the most significant password-related blunders of 2017.

While the violators on this list vary, they all showcase that common password mistakes can cause great embarrassment and economic loss, and that the aftermath of a breach can often be prevented. Most people make the same simple errors that these offenders made, such as using weak passwords or reusing passwords for multiple accounts. And, now that Equifax has exposed the data of nearly 150 million people, using a unique password for every account has become the duty of every person and business using the Internet.

Learn how to prevent common hacks here: http://blog.dashlane.com/year-of-the-hack

Dashlane's "Worst Password Offenders" of 2017, in order of rank:

1. Donald Trump: The President tops this year's list of offenders, and for good reason. As a person who has continually lamented the cybersecurity woes of his opponents, and trumpeted his own, his leadership in this area leaves much to be desired.

For starters, a January investigation by UK outlet Channel 4 News exposed that many of the top staff members Trump handpicked, including multiple cabinet secretaries, senior policy directors  even cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani  were reusing unsecure, simple passwords. These passwords were used across multiple websites, as well as for their personal email accounts, and were believed to have been part of a slew of breaches that occurred between 2012 and 2016.

This revelation is not to be taken lightly, and signals that a president who touts his cybersecurity prowess may have added numerous cyber vulnerabilities to the nation's highest office. Trump also has direct connections to three of our other Top 10 offenders (Republican Party, Paul Manafort, Sean Spicer), which suggests he has never implemented proper cybersecurity protocols in any of his positions. Lastly, numerous Trump Organization websites were hacked this year, and a multitude of leading security experts questioned the security of his Twitter devices and accounts.

2. Equifax: The Equifax breaches of 2017 allowed cybercriminals to access the personal information of nearly 150 million people in the US, UK, and Canada. Pouring salt in the wound was the additional discovery by security researcher Brian Krebs that the company was using the username/password combination "admin/admin" for some of its online portals. Although the cause(s) of the breaches are still unknown, it's clear that Equifax's egregious password practices put the personal information of millions around the world at risk.

3. UK Government: A June investigation by The Times found that Russian hackers were trading thousands of passwords belonging UK government officials. Affected parties included MPs, parliamentary staff, and officials in the Foreign Office, including the head of IT. Most of the passwords were stolen from previous breaches, and because they remained unchanged after the breaches, the Russian hackers had easy access to their accounts. Perhaps the most concerning element of the report was that the most popular password for these officials wasyou guessed it: "password."

In an unrelated December incident, multiple MP's Tweeted that they routinely share their passwords. They were defending a colleague they believe was falsely accused of an offense, but as security researcher Troy Hunt stated, the incident," illustrates a fundamental lack of privacy and security education." Non-secure password sharing increases infosec risks and undoubtedly leaves these MP's, as well as Parliament, susceptible to a variety of cyber dangers.

4. Department of Defense: Defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton left the Pentagon severely exposed by leaving critical files on a non-password protected Amazon server. Included in the exposed data were several unencrypted passwords that could have been used to access classified D.O.D. information.

5. Republican Party: One of the GOP's data analytics firms accidentally leaked the personal details of 198 million Americans  roughly the entire voting-age population. One cybersecurity expert described the leak as a "gold mine for anyone looking to target and manipulate voters." Much like the Pentagon hack, the firm was storing data on a non-password protected server.

6. Google: A wide-scale phishing attack in May compromised an unknown number of Google users' login credentials. The attack sent users to a real Google sign-in screen and captured their credentials when the user gave permission to a third-party app. Although Google swiftly resolved the issue, it highlights the password-related dangers that come with phishing attacks, as well as the need for extra vigilance by both users and companies regarding app access.

7. HBO: Your favorite Sunday night lineup provider was hit by a variety of hacks and breaches in 2017. These ranged from the leaks of episodes and stars' personal information, to the network's social media accounts getting hacked. Spoiler alert: HBO was treating cybersecurity lightly. After the litany of incidents, employees came forward with reports of terrible cybersecurity practices, including the reuse of passwords for personal and work accounts.

8. Imgur: The cause of this recent breach is still unknown, but the company admitted that at the time of the hack it was using an outdated algorithm to encrypt its users' passwords. Although it updated its encryption last year, the damage was already done as 1.7 million user passwords were potentially compromised.

9. Paul Manafort: Donald Trump's recently indicted campaign manager appears to be to a James Bond fan, as he was using 'Bond007' as his password for multiple personal accounts, including Dropbox and Adobe. The dangers of password re-use are real, and the fact that he and so many Trump associates are on this list is unsettling.

10. Sean Spicer: Remember him? The least critical incident on our list is still of note, as the former Press Secretary sent numerous Tweets of what appeared to be his very own passwords. His copying and pasting mistakes highlight the need for password managers that can automatically log you in, leaving no data stuck on the clipboard. Or podium.

Avoid Your Own Dishonorable Mention

It may seem easy to call out the unhealthy habits of public figures, but if you've found yourself committing any of the same cybersecurity sins as the offenders on our list, you are at risk too.

Here are the top three lessons to learn from the 2017 incidents:

1. Actually Use Passwords: This one seems obvious, but as our list shows, it's not always followed. Whether on a server, in an email account, or in an app, you should always secure your data with passwords as they're the first, and often only, line of defense between hackers and your personal information.

2. Use Strong Passwords: Never use passwords that are easy to guess, or that contain names, proper nouns, or things people can easily research about you. All of your passwords should be longer than eight characters and include a mix of random letters, numbers, and symbols. Use a password generator to think of them for you.

3. Never Reuse Passwords: Each and every one of your accounts needs a unique password. As our offenders underscored, the risk in password reuse is that hackers can use passwords from compromised accounts to easily access other accounts. The only protection against this is to have a different password for every account.

Password managers like Dashlane can help protect you on any device. In addition to creating unique strong passwords for all of your accounts, Dashlane ensures you're not reusing passwords for multiple accounts, alerts you when breaches occur, and lets you change your passwords automatically in one-click.

To learn more, visit dashlane.com.

About Dashlane

Dashlane, one of the world's most trusted digital security companies, takes the pain out of passwords with its password manager and secure digital wallet app. Dashlane allows users to securely manage passwords, credit cards, IDs, and other important information via advanced encryption and local storage.

With so many devices, the line between home and work no longer exists. Thankfully, Dashlane works everywhere, for everyone. The company has helped 9 million consumers manage and secure their digital identity and enabled over $10 billion in e-commerce transactions. Dashlane Business is trusted by 7,000+ companies to create, enforce, and track effective access management, and features the only patented security architecture in the industry.

The Dashlane app is available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has won critical acclaim by top publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today. Dashlane is free to use on your favorite device for life, and costs $39.99/year to sync between an unlimited number of devices.

Dashlane was founded by Bernard Liautaud and co-founders Alexis Fogel, Guillaume Maron and Jean Guillou. The company has offices in New York City and Paris, and has received $52.5 million in funding from TransUnion, Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. Learn more at Dashlane.com.

SOURCE Dashlane

Related Links

http:///www.dashlane.com


DETROIT, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The DTE Energy (NYSE: DTE) Board of Directors today announced that its 2018 Annual Meeting of Common Stock Shareholders will be Thursday, May 3.

Shareholders of record at the close of business March 6, 2018 are eligible to vote at the meeting. Shareholders interested in proposing business from the floor or nominating a person for the position of director from the floor must give notice and certain information to the DTE Energy corporate secretary by the close of business on Jan. 4, 2018.

About DTE Energy

DTE Energy (NYSE:DTE) is a Detroit-based diversified energy company involved in the development and management of energy-related businesses and services nationwide. Its operating units include an electric utility serving 2.2 million customers in Southeastern Michigan and a natural gas utility serving 1.3 million customers in Michigan. The DTE Energy portfolio includes non-utility energy businesses focused on power and industrial projects, natural gas pipelines, gathering and storage, and energy marketing and trading. As one of Michigan's leading corporate citizens, DTE Energy is a force for growth and prosperity in the 450 Michigan communities it serves in a variety of ways, including philanthropy, volunteerism and economic progress. Information about DTE Energy is available at dteenergy.com, twitter.com/dte_energy and facebook.com/dteenergy.

SOURCE DTE Energy

Related Links

http://www.dteenergy.com


SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Traditionally, soft-skills training has been most effective when delivered by an instructor standing in front of a class leading them through a series of exercises and role-plays. For over 30 years, that's how Effective Training Associates, Inc. conducted their corporate onsite and public training courses in the United States.

But after successfully leading a series of live, instructor-led webinar-based trainings for a large 75-billion-dollar telecommunication company, Effective Training today announced general availability of their instructor-led live webinar series for companies wishing to train their engineers, developers and managers in people skills.

"Our classroom-based training programs have been successful because we made sure that they were not just a theoretical transfer of information, but rather were experiential, participant-centered, interactive training events," said Sue Smith, founder and CEO of Effective Training. "Our instructors don't even use slide decks in most of our courses! Our biggest challenge was making sure that professionals attending our live webinars had a similar interactive learning experience."

Smith led a team of Instructional Designers and Courseware Developers and redesigned their flagship offering, "Management Essentials," from a two-day classroom program to a four-session two-hour interactive live webinar series. Experts in utilizing live webinar tools and technologies were consulted in redesigning the content to maximize the teaching potential of the powerful medium, while instructors were trained in delivering the content via those same tools.

"We had 150% attendance on our events," said Laura Hickerson, VP Sales and the Key Account Manager of this telecommunication giant, "and the engagement level was over 95%which means over 95% of the attendees stayed on till the end of the webinar course." After the initial success of the webinar series, Effective Training has now received a contract from the company to deliver over 40 webinars for a worldwide audience.

Based on this success and the demand they saw in the learning and development market, Effective Training has now announced over 50 new courses which will be delivered globally through the live webinar instructor-led format. These courses are on a variety of topics like Transitioning to be a Manager, Conflict Resolution, Communication Skills, Leadership, etc. For a detailed list of courses, please visit effectivetraining.com and click on the Live Webinars link on the top.

About Effective Training Associates, Inc.  In 1986 Sue Smith formed Effective Training Associates with the aim of providing people skills training to engineers and managers. Over the last 30 years, Effective Training has been the premier soft-skills training company in Silicon Valley and has trained 1000s of professionals in locations all over the world. For more information, please contact:

Abhijeet Vaidya

Effective Training Associates, Inc., 1754 Technology Drive, Suite 145, San Jose, CA 95110

 Telephone: 408-441-8881

 Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Effective Training Associates, Inc.
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Winners of the 2017 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards were announced, recognizing the best companies, products and people in today's electronics industry. Recipients of the awards, presented in partnership with EE Times and EDN, were honored during a ceremony held in conjunction with Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) Silicon Valley and BIOMEDevice San Jose. 20 leading organizations and individuals were awarded within a range of categories spanning trending new products, design teams, executives, and more. To learn more about the 2017 ACE Awards, please visit: ubm-ace.com

"We are honored to recognize some of the brightest minds in the electronics industry for their impeccable achievements at the 2017 ACE Awards," said Nina Brown, vice president of events, UBM. "This is an industry that is continually on the cutting-edge of innovation and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to fully identify the impact that they are having on the world."

The 2017 ACE Awards Winners are:

Company of the Year

Achronix Semiconductor Corporation

Executive of the Year

Sam Heidari- Quantenna

Design Team of the Year

NEO Tech - NEO Tech Design Services

Internet of Things Product of the Year

Analog Devices - SmartMesh IP with Virtual Manager

Tomorrow's Reality

Bedrock Automation - Bedrock Open Secure Automation System with Cybershield 2.0

Ultimate Products Category Winners:

Analog ICs

Analog Devices - LTC2947

Automotive

Maxim Integrated - MAX2175 Remote Tuner Solution

Development Kits

Nordic Semiconductor - Nordic Thingy:52

LEDs and Lighting

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors - IR OSLON - SFH 4735

Logic/Interface/Memory

Marvell Technology Group - Marvell 88NV1160 DRAM-less SSD controller

Passive, Interconnects and Electromechanical

Vishay Intertechnology - T59 Polymer Surface-Mount Chip Capacitors

Power

Maxwell Technologies - Maxwell Technologies Generator Starting Solutions (GSS)

Processors (CPUs, MPUs, MCUs, SoC, FPGAs)

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation  PsoC 6

Sensors

Texas Instruments, Inc - mmWave

Software

Jungo Connectivity Ltd. - CoDriver

Test and Measurement Systems and Boards

Tektronix - 5 Series MSO

Wireless/RF

Maja Systems - 60Ghz CMOS Single Chip Transceiver

The ACE Awards also honored Ajay Bhatt, Former Chief Architect at Intel and co-creator of USB, with the Lifetime Achievement Award; Jacob Beningo, Embedded Software Consultant, Beningo Embedded Group, with the Jim Williams Innovation and Education Award; and Daniel Beeker, principal engineer, NXP Semiconductor, with the ESC Speaker of the Year Award.

Connect with the ACE Awards: #ubmACEawards

About Advanced Manufacturing Expos & Conferences

UBM's Advanced Manufacturing portfolio is the leading B-to-B event producer, publisher, and digital media business for the world's $3 trillion advanced, technology-based manufacturing industry. Our print and electronic products deliver trusted information to the advanced manufacturing market and leverage our proprietary 1.3 million name database to connect suppliers with buyers and purchase influencers. We produce more than 50 events and conferences in a dozen countries, connecting manufacturing professionals from around the globe. The Advanced Manufacturing portfolio is organized by UBM plc. UBM is the largest pure-play B2B Events organizer in the world. Our 3,750+ people, based in more than 20 countries, serve more than 50 different sectors. Our deep knowledge and passion for these sectors allow us to create valuable experiences which enable our customers to succeed. Please visit www.ubm.com for the latest news and information about UBM.

SOURCE Advanced Manufacturing Expos & Conferences
EROAD Embraces Supply Chain Transparency By Facilitating Seamless Data Sharing Between its Carrier Customers and Shippers

CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FourKites, the market leader in end-to-end supply chain visibility for shippers and 3PLs, today announced that EROAD has joined the FourKites ELD Certification Program, an initiative to encourage business practices that facilitate supply chain data transparency.

EROAD is an intuitive, driver-friendly ELD designed to capture accurate data automatically, receive real-time notifications and reports, and manage IFTA reporting with ease  all from one platform. EROAD enables customers to achieve FMCSA compliance with the ELD mandate, run a safer and more efficient fleet, and reduce the burdens and costs associated with manual paperwork.

"EROAD is committed to setting the standard for simple, intuitive ELD compliance that puts the customer first," said Norm Ellis, President of EROAD North America. "We're excited to be recognized for providing quality, accessible data and exceptional value to our customers as they transition from paper logs to ELDs."

FourKites believes that certifying trusted ELD providers to its Partner Program will encourage shippers and 3PLs to help their carriers select ELD providers that comply with industry standards and support direct data sharing. That, in turn, helps those carriers fulfill mandatory visibility requirements in the most effective and efficient way.

"FourKites is pleased to recognize EROAD for its leadership in making supply chains run more efficiently through its open architecture platform," said Craig Fiander, Senior Vice President, Global Business Development for FourKites. "Data transparency has become foundational for any ELD provider that is delivering maximum customer satisfaction and compliance.

FourKites certifies ELD providers based on four categories:

Data quality  provides secure and continuously updated real-time flow of, at a minimum, location information

Data accessibility  enables customers to access high-quality data without paying add-on integration, support or other fees

Operational integrity  values integrity in practices around customer data

Customer value  prioritizes customer success and works collaboratively to help customers achieve maximum value

To verify if an ELD provider is FourKites-certified, or to become a FourKites-certified ELD provider, visit http://go.fourkites.com/program/eldcertification.

About EROAD

EROAD offers flexible technology solutions that help the transportation sector respond to the ever-evolving needs of business, government and communities worldwide. Founded in New Zealand in 2000, EROAD develops technology-based solutions to modernize paper-based road tax systems. EROAD offers flexible technology solutions that help the transportation sector respond to the ever-evolving needs of business, government and communities worldwide.

About FourKites

FourKites is the real-time supply chain visibility and predictive analytics platform that Fortune 500 companies and 3PLs trust to track shipment location and temperature and proactively manage exceptions. Using a proprietary predictive algorithm to calculate shipment arrival times, FourKites enables customers to lower their operating costs, improve on-time performance, and strengthen their end-customer relationships.

With a network of more than four million GPS/ELD devices, FourKites covers all modes, including ocean, rail, parcel, and over-the-road. The platform is optimized for mobile and equipped with market-leading end-to-end security. To learn more, visit www.fourkites.com.

CONTACT: Dan Baker, [email protected], 312 329 3980

SOURCE FourKites

Related Links

https://www.fourkites.com


ATLANTA, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FieldEdge has been honored with the Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award, recognizing the business as one of America's Best Small-to-Mid Sized Companies to Work for in 2018! The Employees' Choice Awards program, now in its 10th year, reviews over 700,000 company profiles before selecting the top 200 places to work based solely on the input of anonymous employee feedback. The final list is compiled based on Glassdoor's proprietary algorithm, and takes into account the quantity, quality, and consistency of reviews.

"We are especially proud of this award because the win was purely based on the feedback from those that know our company best  the employees. This is a testament to our unwavering commitment to create a positive, stimulating, and fun work environment that our employees love," said FieldEdge Co-CEO, Rameez Ansari. "It is truly our people that make FieldEdge a special place and we are honored to receive this recognition," said FieldEdge Co-CEO Steve Lau.

For the complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work in 2018, please visit this link.

About FieldEdge

FieldEdge is the leading vertical SaaS business that enables contractors to run their small businesses with ease, save time and make more money through targeted marketing and improved resource utilization. FieldEdge has helped thousands of service-based organizations increase sales performance and overall workforce productivity by managing all aspects of their daily operations since 1980. FieldEdge is a hyper-growth software company with a startup culture that is backed by 35 years of industry-leading knowledge. FieldEdge has offices in Fort Myers, Atlanta, and Toronto. To learn more visit www.fieldedge.com or click here to visit their Glassdoor page.

SOURCE FieldEdge

Related Links

http://www.fieldedge.com


SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fingerpaint Marketing, an independent, full-service nationwide marketing agency, proudly announces human resources industry veteran, Nicole Holland, as the new Head of People & Culture. She will lead a bustling human resources group that will develop and implement Fingerpaint's strategic HR Operating Plan to include recruiting, hiring, employee development, employee relations, retention, performance management, compensation, legal compliance, and more. Holland brings decades of experience to the title-free marketing agency, where she will help drive and expand Fingerpaint's presence.

"Nicole is a true leader with nearly 20 years of deep advertising agency and HR expertise with such powerhouses as Saatchi + Saatchi, Ogilvy and the YES Network," said Ed Mitzen, Founder of Fingerpaint Marketing. "As we have grown, we recognize that there are key strategic areas that we need to strengthen, including career progression planning, training and development and national recruiting. We are confident in Nicole's skills to enhance these key areas and are excited to welcome her into our Fingerpaint family."

Holland joins Fingerpaint from Universal Music Group where she served as Senior Director, Human Resources, managing all aspects of human resources across music labels for 800+ employees. Prior to Universal Music Group, Holland operated as VP of Human Resources where she served as a strategic advisor to department leads on growth and change initiatives and as Human Resources Director, North America for advertising giant, Ogilvy, for eight years.

"Joining this forward thinking, powerhouse agency is going to be an incredible next chapter in my career," said Nicole Holland, Head of People & Culture for Fingerpaint Marketing. "Ed and his leadership team are true visionaries in promoting a progressive work environment and creating innovative, game changing client work. I look forward to implementing ground-breaking processes to increase the agency's awareness among the country's elite talent."

To learn more about Fingerpaint, its trailblazing work and inclusive company culture, please visit www.FingerpaintMarketing.com.

About Fingerpaint

Reset your expectations of a marketing agency. Independent by design, with integrated talent across Saratoga Springs, New York; Conshohocken, Pennsylvania; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Columbus, Ohio, Fingerpaint is committed to creating and executing meaningful brand experiences that are never paint by number.

In the last 2 years, Fingerpaint received 14 American Advertising Awards (formerly the ADDYs); was named 2014 Agency of the Year and a 2017 finalist by Med Ad News; was named Advertising Agency of the Year by PM360 in 2015; has been named to Inc. Magazine's list of the 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies for the past 4 years; was selected a Best Place to Work by the Albany and Philadelphia Business Journals; and won Business Intelligence Group's PR & Marketing Agency of the Year in 2017. Founder Ed Mitzen was honored as 2016's Industry Person of the Year by Med Ad News. Visit us at fingerpaintmarketing.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

MEDIA CONTACT

JONESWORKS

Daniel Giametta

212-839-0111

[email protected]

SOURCE Fingerpaint Marketing

Related Links

http://www.FingerpaintMarketing.com


Anticipating the longer-term strategic sales and marketing needs, CEO Imhoff recently hired two new employees, Michael Webb and Charlsey Baumeier. Michael Webb is National Sales Director and will work with new and existing FFR advisors as well as the company's B2B relationships through the network of insurance carrier wholesalers. Charlsey Baumeier is a Specialized National Sales Director. Her focus is wealth, estate and tax planning. Baumeier will help pair FFR member advisors with legal professionals drawing from a strategic, nationwide network of attorneys.

"We are known for our club-like exclusivity, 'go-direct, keep control' business model and sense of community. It attracts some of the top financial advisors in the country to membership. Bringing on experienced team members as we grow helps us preserve our business model and culture," Imhoff articulates.

About First Financial Resources

First Financial Resources (FFR) is a producer group founded in 1987 and solely owned by its member advisors and based in Newport Beach, California. FFR provides its member advisors with access to insurance-based products, tools and resources for the high net worth and/or business client. As an invitation-only, 100% member-owned organization, FFR focuses on a "go-direct, keep control" business model. It gives FFR financial advisors direct access to its core insurance carriers. That way, the FFR advisor keeps control over which product and/or underwriting offer best fits a client's needs. FFR also focuses expertise, resources and training to elevate the professional knowledge of the advisor's staff. To learn more about FFR, please visit www.ffrmembers.com.

For Press Inquiries, contact Susan Hart, (949)223-2169 or [email protected]

SOURCE First Financial Resources

Related Links

http://www.ffrmembers.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has ordered a Tumwater, Washington-based trucking company, Even Flo Logistics, LLC, USDOT No. 2948660, to immediately cease all interstate and intrastate operations after investigators found the company to pose an imminent hazard to public safety.

A separate imminent hazard order was also served by FMCSA to Even Flo Logistics' truck driver Shawn Roberts, a state of Washington commercial driver's license (CDL) holder. The federal order prohibits Roberts from operating any commercial motor vehicle (CMV) in interstate commerce.

In August 2017, the Washington State Patrol's Motor Carrier Safety Division conducted a compliance investigation of Even Flo Logistics following roadside inspections occurring in multiple states since January 2017 that revealed repeated serious safety violations requiring that its truck driver Shawn Roberts be placed out-of-service at rate more than 13 times the national average.

Numerous serious violations of federal safety statutes and regulations were discovered, including:

Failing to comply with certain driver qualification requirements, including ensuring that its drivers were properly licensed to operate a CMV. Investigators discovered that on at least two occasions when Roberts possessed a CDL learner's permit only, the company allowed him to operate a truck without a licensed CDL driver with him as required. During October 2017 when Roberts' CDL had been suspended and/or withdrawn by the State of Washington , Even Flo Logistics allowed Roberts on at least one occasion to operate a truck in interstate commerce.





when Roberts' CDL had been suspended and/or withdrawn by the , Even Flo Logistics allowed Roberts on at least one occasion to operate a truck in interstate commerce. Failing to properly monitor its drivers to ensure compliance with maximum hours-of-service (HOS) requirements prohibiting fatigued operation of CMVs. Since January 2017 , Even Flo Logistics' driver Roberts has been subjected to 12 roadside inspections. Roberts was cited for HOS violations in 10 of these inspections.





, Even Flo Logistics' driver Roberts has been subjected to 12 roadside inspections. Roberts was cited for HOS violations in 10 of these inspections. Failing to ensure it has negative pre-employment controlled substances/alcohol tests results prior to allowing drivers to operate CMVs; failing to ensure its drivers are tested within the required period when selected for controlled substances/alcohol random testing; failing to require post-accident controlled substances/alcohol testing of its driver.

Based on the violations discovered during the Washington State Patrol investigation, the motor carrier was issued a final federal safety rating of "Unsatisfactory" and ordered to cease operations effective October 10, 2017. The motor carrier subsequently operated on at least two occasions in violation of this federal order.

The FMCSA imminent hazard out-of-service order to Even Flo Logistics stated that the carrier's ongoing noncompliance with federal safety regulations, combined with the company's demonstrated lack of safety management controls "significantly increases the likelihood of serious injury or death to its drivers and the motoring public and establishes an imminent hazard."

Among other driver violations of federal safety regulations, Shawn Roberts has been cited for operating a CMV in violation of conditions of his CDL learner's permit; operating a CMV without a valid CDL; being on-duty while under the influence of a narcotic drug/amphetamine, and; possession of an intoxicating beverage while on-duty or driving. Roberts is also facing drug-related criminal charges in both Arizona and Wyoming. Since January 2017, while operating a CMV, Roberts has been involved in four crashes. In May 2017, Roberts reportedly posted a photograph on social media of a 12-year-old operating a CMV. In July 2017, Roberts reportedly posted a photograph on social media of a clamp attached to the gas pedal along with the caption, "When your cruise control brakes [sic] the fix."

The FMCSA imminent hazard out-of-service order to Roberts stated that his ". blatant disregard of [federal safety regulations] and continued disregard for the safety of the motoring public . substantially increases the likelihood of serious injury or death to you and/or to the motoring public."

Even Flo logistics may be assessed civil penalties of up to $26,126 for each violation of the out-of-service order. The carrier may also be assessed civil penalties of not less than $10,000 for providing transportation requiring federal operating authority registration and up to $14,739 for operating a commercial vehicle in interstate commerce without necessary USDOT registration. If violations are determined to be willful, criminal penalties may be imposed, including a fine of up to $25,000 and imprisonment for a term not to exceed one year.

Separately, Roberts may be assessed civil penalties of up to $1,811 for each violation of operating a commercial motor vehicle in violation of the imminent hazard order. Knowing and/or willful violation of the order may also result in criminal penalties.

Stay connected with FMCSA via:

FMCSA.dot.gov | FMCSA on Facebook | FMCSA on Twitter

SOURCE Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

Related Links

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov


SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Funding Circle, the world's leading lending platform for small businesses, today announced that investors have lent more than $5 billion globally to small businesses through the Funding Circle platform. This has supported a network of 40,000 businesses across the UK, USA, Germany and the Netherlands and helped to create more than 100,000 new jobs.*

Today's news follows a record November for Funding Circle globally with the business facilitating more than $260 million of lending, including $175 million in the UK (130m), $70 million in the US and $15 million in Continental Europe (14.5m). Together this has helped thousands of business owners to access fast, transparent finance to grow their businesses, and will lead to an estimated 7,500 new jobs.

With US businesses now having accessed more than $1 billion in funding through the platform, Funding Circle becomes the first lending platform anywhere in the world to have facilitated more than $1 billion across two markets. Since 2014, Funding Circle has helped approximately 6,700 US businesses access financing. In a recent survey of US business owners who have borrowed through Funding Circle, 92% said they would come back to Funding Circle for their future business financing needs,** 85% said their experience was faster than their previous borrowing experience, and 73% said it was more transparent.

Samir Desai, CEO and co-founder of Funding Circle said: "Today's milestones now make Funding Circle the world's largest small business lending platform by loans outstanding and new monthly originations. We are proud to see that Funding Circle is quickly becoming the first choice for finance for small businesses globally. With revenues growing 80% in 2017 and our UK business cashflow positive, we look forward to continuing to build on the strong foundations we have put in place this year and helping many more thousands of businesses in 2018."

Speaking about the success of the US business, Sam Hodges, co-founder and US managing director of Funding Circle said: "Small businesses are responsible for most net new jobs in America***. Yet too many of them can't expand because of difficulty obtaining an affordable loan. Our platform enables growth in the real economy, by more efficiently connecting this unmet credit demand to credit supply in the form of fixed-income investors."

Launched in 2010, the Funding Circle model has opened up small business lending to a wide range of investors, including 70,000 individuals, local and national government, the European Investment Bank and financial institutions such as pension funds. By improving competition in the market and reducing dependency on bank lending, Funding Circle is helping small businesses to boost their local economies and communities through much-needed job creation.

By bringing together industry-leading risk management and cutting-edge technology, creditworthy businesses typically access the capital they need in days rather than months.

About Funding Circle

Funding Circle (www.fundingcircle.com) is the world's leading lending platform for small businesses, matching investors to businesses who want to grow in the UK, U.S. and Europe. Since launching in 2010, investors at Funding Circle  including 70,000 individuals, local and national government and financial institutions  have now lent $5 billion to more than 40,000 businesses globally. Approximately 10% of investor money now comes from government sources, including the British Business Bank, European Investment Bank, KfW, the German government-owned development bank, and local councils across the UK. The business has raised 250m in equity capital from the same investors that backed Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb.

* 'Small Business, Big Impact' research commissioned by Funding Circle from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, August 2016.

** Based on an online survey of US Funding Circle borrowers. A total of 216 business owners completed the survey between Oct. 10-30, 2017.

*** U.S. Small Business Administration. August 2017: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Whats-New-w-Small-Business-2017.pdf

SOURCE Funding Circle

Related Links

http://www.fundingcircle.com


(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140911/647229 )

Rise in demand for business analytics software and increase in consumer awareness about the benefits of business analytics software such as easy access to vital business metrics, useful insight on customer behavior, increased revenue, improved efficiency, and others drive the growth of the market. However, factors such as high implementation cost and shortage of skilled workforce hamper the business analytics software market growth to a certain extent.

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Others industry vertical segment dominated the global market in 2016, and is expected to remain dominant during the forecast period, owing to surge in adoption of the software by numerous industries. Furthermore, retail is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

The global business analytics software market was led by the customer analytics segment in 2016, and the segment is projected to maintain its dominance during the forecast period. However, the others segment is expected to witness the highest growth, owing to increase in adoption of business analytics software by many small- & medium-sized businesses for different applications.

In 2016, the global market was dominated by the cloud segment, and is expected to continue this trend during the forecast period. However, the segment is also expected to witness the highest growth, owing to increase in deployment of cloud-based software by multiple organizations.

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KEY FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

The others segment is expected to exhibit significant increase in the global business analytics software market during the forecast period.

In 2016, the North America region accounted for the highest revenue among the other regions.

region accounted for the highest revenue among the other regions. Customer analytics segment generated the highest revenue in 2016.

Cloud segment is anticipated to exhibit substantial growth during the forecast period.

Some of the key players operating in the business analytics software market that are profiled in the report include Oracle Corporation, SAS Institute Inc., SAP SE, International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Tableau Software., Salesforce.com, Inc., QlikTech International AB, and Fair Isaac Corporation.

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We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
TORONTO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In a strong showing in the Canadian cannabis market, Tikun Olam's world-renowned proprietary strains took top prizes at last week's Canadian Cannabis Awards. Tikun strains took First place in three categories: Top High THC Flower (Eran Almog), Top High CBD Flower (Avidekel), and Top High CDB Oil (Avidekel), and placed Second in Top Hybrid Flower (Midnight).

Tikun strains are grown, processed and distributed in Canada through a licensing agreement with MedReleaf, which was named Top Licensed Producer at this year's Awards.

Tikun Olam's premium cannabis products are backed by years of peer-reviewed scientific research and unprecedented clinical data collection, which has shown to deliver symptomatic relief to those suffering from specific conditions such as cancer, PTSD, epilepsy, Crohn's Disease/Colitis, chronic pain and neuropathy, to name a few.

About Tikun Olam

Tikun Olam ("repair the world" in Hebrew) is the world's leading cannabis brand and globally recognized as the pioneer of modern medical cannabis. Operating as a commercial venture for over 10 years, Tikun Olam's products have been used since 2010 in ongoing clinical trials in Israel's regulated medical cannabis market, treating over 10,000 patients for a variety of symptoms of medical conditions such as Cancer, PTSD, AIDS, epilepsy, Crohn's Disease/Colitis, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, chronic pain and neuropathy. Through this access to patients, medical personnel and data collection, Tikun Olam has developed multiple proprietary strains, including the first-ever, high-CBD, "high-less" strain Avidekel, its popular high-THC strain Alaska, and its "one-to-one" CBD/THC strain Midnight. Tikun Olam's U.S. operations, established in 2015 as T.O. Global LLC, is a joint venture with Tikun Olam Ltd. (Israel). Tikun Olam also operates similar partnerships in Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and South Africa, all in support of its global mission to educate the traditional medical community and its patients on the applications of cannabis as a scientifically proven wellness product. Visit www.tikunolamusa.com, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.



CONTACTS:

SOURCE Tikun Olam

Related Links

http://tikunolamusa.com


VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

"Glass Tempering System Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012-2016) And Opportunity Assessment (2017-2027)" is a new report of Future Market Insights that tracks the performance of the market for the projected period of 10 years i.e. between 2017 and 2027. The global glass tempering system market is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period, expanding at a CAGR of 3.7% during the projected period. Growth in the global glass tempering system market can be attributed to huge investments in R&D, increasing use of hybrid guide plates, solar control glazing for automotive and building glasses, growing use of lightweight glazing glass, and increasing usage of advanced nanotechnology in glass manufacturing. According to this report, North America and APEJ are the key regions for glass tempering system market participants. In North America, the United States is investing in tempering activities, which is creating immense opportunities for glass tempering system manufacturers. Product development and establishment of long-term relationships with tempered glass OEMs is also a key to success in this market. The global market for glass tempering system is expected to be valued at US$ 94.5 Mn by 2017 end and is estimated to reach US$ 135.6 Mn by 2027 end.

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Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents and Figures: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3855

Global Glass Tempering System Market Drivers:

Shift towards renewable solar energy will accelerate the growth of the market

Improving construction sector especially in Latin America is fuelling the growth of the global market

is fuelling the growth of the global market Construction of energy efficient buildings and renovation of existing infrastructure is another key market driver

Global Glass Tempering System Market: Forecast by Tempering Technology

On the basis of tempering technology, the global glass tempering system market is segmented into controlled heating and quenching equipment and chemical treatment. Controlled heating and quenching equipment is further segmented into standard configuration and advanced configuration. In terms of value, the controlled heating and quenching equipment segment is anticipated to be valued at US$ 89.0 Mn by 2017 end, which is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.7% and reach a value of US$ 127.8 Mn by the end of 2027.

Global Glass Tempering System Market: Forecast by Application

The application segment consists of flat, bent and combined flat and bent segments. Flat segment is further segmented into continuous and oscillating segments. Oscillating type segment is expected to emerge as the most attractive segment by application over the forecast period. Combined flat and bent segment is anticipated to create incremental $ opportunity worth US$ 4.2 Mn over the forecast period.

Preview Analysis on Global Glass Tempering System Market Segmentation By Tempering Technology- Controlled Heating and Quenching Equipment: Standard Configuration, Advanced Configuration, Chemical Treatment; Application- Flat: Continuous, Oscillating, Bent, Combined Flat and Bent, End Use- Automotive Windows, Architectural: Windows and Doors, Mirror and Partitions, Furniture, Electronics: Smartphone, Appliances, Solar Applications, Others: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/glass-tempering-systems-market

Global Glass Tempering System Market: Forecast by End Use

By end use the market is categorized into automotive windows, architectural, electronics, solar applications and others. Architectural segment is sub-segmented into windows and doors, mirror and partitions and furniture, while electronics segment is sub-segmented into smartphone and appliances. The solar applications segment is estimated to reach US$ 1.6 Mn in 2027 from US$ 1.3 Mn in 2017. The segment is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 2.4% during the forecast period.

Global Glass Tempering System Market: Forecast by Region

Seven regions have been covered in this report and they are North America, Latin America, APEJ, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Japan and MEA. China is expected to remain a strong market for glass tempering systems. Most of the APEJ, Eastern Europe, and Latin America buyers import glass tempering lines from China with standard configuration, due to investment constraints. North America is also projected to hold a significant share of the global glass tempering system market over the forecast period.

Our advisory services are aimed at helping you with specific, customised insights that are relevant to your specific challenges. Let us know about your challenges and our trusted advisors will connect with you: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/glass-tempering-systems-market

Global Glass Tempering System Market: Key Vendors

Glaston OYJ Abp, Luoyang Landglass Technology Co. Ltd., LiSEC Austria GmbH, Luoyang North Glass Technology Co., Ltd., Glasstech Industries (India) Private Limited, Keraglass Industries Srl, CoolTemper Ltd., HHH Tempering Resources Inc., Ratnesh International, North East Machines, Meta Therm Furnace Pvt. Ltd., Mappi International, EFCO, Saint-Gobain S.A., IGE Glass Technologies, Inc., Lambert GT Services Ltd. are some of the glass tempering system market companies profiled in the report.

More from FMI's Industrial Automation & Equipment Intelligence:

Industrial Robots Market Segmentation Product Type- Articulated Robots, SCARA Robots, Parallel Robots, Cartesian Robots, Cylindrical Robots, Others; End Use- Automotive, Electrical & Electronics, Metals & Machinery, Chemicals, Plastic & Rubber, Food & Beverages, Healthcare, Construction, Others; Applications- Material Handling, Welding & Soldering, Assembly & Disassembly, Painting & Dispensing, Others: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/industrial-robots-market

Marine Radar Market Segmentation Product Type- X Band Radar, S Band Radar; Application- Merchant Marine, Fishing Vessel, Yacht/Recreational, Military Naval: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/marine-radar-market

Environment Testing, Inspection, and Certification Market Segmentation Product type- testing, inspection and certification; End user- construction industry, agriculture industry, industrial product manufacturer, government institutes and R&D laboratories and other end users; Sample type- water testing, air testing, soil testing, building materials, waste testing and fuel/oil testing; Test type- toxins, chemicals, pathogens, physical properties, metal, organic matter, nutrient/elements/mineral: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/environment-testing-inspection-and-certification-market

About Us

Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.

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VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

A lamella clarifier is a type of settler designed to remove particulates from liquids. It is often used in primary water treatment in place of conventional settling tanks. The working principle of a Lamella Clarifier is based on the settling under the gravity, which provides a series of inclined plates to give a large projected surface area with comparatively smaller footprint than other types of clarifiers (circular and rectangular). Lamella Clarifiers find application in various end-use industries such as paper and pulp, food and beverage etc.

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Future Market Insights' new report gives a clear overview of the global lamella clarifier market. The report is titled 'Lamella Clarifier Market: Global Industry Analysis 2012 - 2016 and Opportunity Assessment 2017 - 2027'. The report depicts the overall performance of the market and individual analysis of the various segments. According to the report, the global market is expected to hold a value of over US$ 420 Mn in 2017, reaching a valuation in excess of US$ 620 Mn by the end of 2027. The global lamella clarifier market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.1% during the forecast period. The report also suggests that there is a strong focus on research and development activities to introduce a new range of lamella clarifiers while maintaining the quality and efficiency of the product.

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Global Lamella Clarifier Market: Dynamics

A lot of factors are responsible for influencing the growth of the global lamella clarifier market. One of the major factors contributing to the growth of market is a rapid industrialisation and urbanisation across the globe that have helped the market improve in a lot of ways including technologically. Also the increase in the number of industries all over the world have helped fuel the application of lamella clarifiers, in turn helping the global lamella clarifier market to witness steady growth.

However the market is expected to face certain restraints as the increase in the number of industries is likely to magnify the competition levels in the global market and therefore, may narrow the profit margin of the companies. There is also an increase in demand for used clarifiers, which has limited the demand for new lamella clarifiers and this can restrict the revenue growth of the global lamella clarifier market.

Global Lamella Clarifier Market: Segmental Highlights

To give the research a holistic view, the global lamella clarifier market is segmented on the basis of application and region. On the basis of application the segments include industrial segment and municipal segment. On the basis of region, North America, Latin America, APEJ, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, MEA, Japan are studied in this report.

Preview Analysis on Global Lamella Clarifier Market Segmentation by Application- Industrial: Paper and Pulp Industry, Food and Beverage Industry, Oil and Gas Industry, Chemical and Fertilizer, Mining and Metals, Power Industry, Municipal: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/lamella-clarifiers-market

Here are some key highlights from the analysis of these segments:

Among the application segments, industrial segment is expected to lead the market with a market value of over US$ 260 Mn in 2017. This includes the chemical and fertilizer segment as the maximum contributing sub-segment with a market share of over US$ 52 Mn in 2017.

Among the regions, Asia Pacific excluding Japan is expected to hold the maximum value in the global market of over US$ 130 Mn in 2017, growing at a CAGR of 3.9% during the forecast period. However in terms of CAGR, North America dominates the global market with a CAGR of 4.8% during the forecast period.

Our advisory services are aimed at helping you with specific, customised insights that are relevant to your specific challenges. Request for Methodology: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1784

Global Lamella Clarifier Market: Competitive Dynamics

The research report by FMI, also consists of a section on the competitive scenario of the global market, which highlights the complete profiles of the leading companies in the market. Some of the top companies mentioned in the report are Metso Corporation, Westech Engineering Inc., Ion Exchange (India) Ltd, ENEXIO Germany GmbH, Aes Arabia Ltd, Parkson Corporation, Nordic Water Products AB, Jorsun etc.

More from FMI's Industrial Automation & Equipment Market Intelligence:

Centrifugal Pump Market Segmentation product type - Single-stage pump, Multi-stage pumps, Axial & mixed flow pumps, Submersible pumps, Sealless & circulator pumps; pump capacity - Small Capacity Pumps, Medium Capacity Pumps, High Capacity Pumps; end use - Industrial(Chemical, Water & wastewater, Oil & gas, Power, Pharmaceutical, Food & beverages, Others), Agricultural, Domestic:

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/centrifugal-pumps-market-102017

Fire Extinguisher Market Segmentation By Product Type - Water(Air-Pressurized Water, Water Mist), Foam(Aqueous film-forming foam, Compressed air foam system, Others (Alcohol-resistant aqueous film-forming foam etc.)), Wet Chemical(Potassium Acetate, Potassium Carbonate, Potassium Citrate), Dry Powder, Carbon Dioxide, Dry Chemical, Others (Clean Agents); By Fire Type - Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D, Class K; By End Use - Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Public Areas, Others:

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/fire-extinguisher-market

Retail Printers and Consumables Market Segmentation By Printer Type - Desktop Printer, Industrial Printer, Mobile Printer, Others; By Printing Technology - Label Printer(Thermal Transfer, Direct Thermal, Inkjet, Laser), Paper Printer(Thermal Transfer, Direct Thermal, Impact, Inkjet); By Application - Departmental Stores, Warehouse Retailers, Mom & Pop Stores, E-Commerce, Supermarkets, Others:

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/retail-printers-and-consumables-market

About Us

Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.

Browse More Industrial Automation & Equipment Market Insights

Contact Us

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SOURCE Future Market Insights
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GlobeNet, a wholesale provider of telecom infrastructure in the Americas, announces today that it has been named the Best Regional Wholesale Operator at the 2017 World Communication Awards. Established in 1999, the awards recognize excellence among global telecom operators.

"We couldn't be happier to come away with the Best Regional Wholesale Operator award," says Eduardo Falzoni, CEO at GlobeNet. "Since the start of the year, we have been investing continuously in both infrastructure upgrades and in training our people to ensure individuals are equipped with the knowledge and skills to assure we can meet the quality requests and growing demands of businesses across the Americas. Our win cements our position as a trusted business partner that is dedicated to giving our clients the solutions they need to access new markets successfully."

According to the judgement panel, GlobeNet received the award thanks to its "faultless support for hundreds of millions watching the Rio 2016 Olympic Games." From the company's detailed case study submissions, the panel concluded that "GlobeNet provides a high-capacity, independent and open platform across the Americas that delivers the highest redundancy levels in the region."

Most recently, the company celebrated the inauguration of its new, Tier III data center in Barranquilla, Colombia. GlobeNet undertook its investment in new infrastructure as a response to growing Latin American demand for IaaS, IP transit and secure data services.

The Best Regional Wholesale Operator award highlights GlobeNet's steadfast quest to provide quality services in the Americas.

To find out more about GlobeNet, please visit www.globenet.com.

About GlobeNet:

GlobeNet connects the Americas with an integrated and competitive portfolio of services (Network, IP, IaaS and Security) supported by their award-winning, lowest latency and most resilient 23,500 kilometer subsea infrastructure that is complemented by an extensive experience and operational know-how.

With leading customer service, GlobeNet helps ensure your business is always ready for the challenges ahead. GlobeNet is a portfolio company of BTG Pactual's Infrastructure Fund II. To learn more about GlobeNet visit http://www.globenet.com.

Contact: Jaymie Scotto & Associates at [email protected]

SOURCE GlobeNet
PHILADELPHIA and LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Graduway, the leading provider of alumni software, announced today that it has raised $12.7 million in growth funding from Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE), representing the company's single largest investment to date. Existing investors include Gigi Levy, Massa Innovations and SaaS Capital.

"We are delighted to be working with Susquehanna Growth Equity to continue our transformation of the alumni software market," said Daniel Cohen, Founder and CEO of Graduway. "This new growth funding will enable Graduway to accelerate our clear strategy of developing cutting-edge alumni software and deepening our relationships with customers, increasing our market share and reaching new markets and geographies."

''Institutions around the world struggle with the same challenge of maintaining and fostering meaningful relationships with their alumni," said Chris Marshall, President of Graduway North America and former Managing Director of Grenzebach Glier and Associates (GG+A) and former Associate Vice President for Alumni Affairs at Cornell University. "Investing in education technology is the single most effective way to nurture and deepen these relationships which leads to greater overall engagement, mentorships, enrollment and donations."

Headquartered in the U.K. with operations in the U.S. and Israel, Graduway is trusted by 500+ education institutions and non-profits, including UCLA, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford, to manage their online alumni career communities. The company's SaaS platform is simple to set up, available on all devices, easy to manage, and truly engages alumni. With the anchor investment from SGE, the company plans to invest in product development, expand its U.S. office and make significant hires across every business function.

"This investment is aligned with our strategy of backing fast growing companies with talented leadership. Graduway is a unique software company and the preeminent thought leaders on alumni relations. As a result they have developed a world-class software and relationships with hundreds of customers globally," said Jonathan Klahr, Managing Director at Susquehanna Growth Equity. "Graduway are already the experts in alumni engagement and with their understanding of the challenges facing alumni offices together with our support, they will undoubtedly be able to better serve the needs of alumni offices around the world."

About Graduway

Graduway is a leading provider of alumni software. Founded in 2013, Graduway's software provides an easy and simple way for institutions to engage their alumni, students, and supporters through a powerful platform  enabling them to connect with each other. Graduway is also recognized as a thought leader in alumni relations through its conferences, blogs, and books. Graduway has 500+ clients and operates in more than 40 countries. Visit www.graduway.com to learn more.

About Susquehanna Growth Equity

Susquehanna Growth Equity, LLC (SGE) invests in growth stage technology companies in the software, information services, internet and financial technology sectors. SGE was founded in 2006 and is backed by a unique and patient source of capital, which enables the firm to give management teams and entrepreneurs freedom and flexibility to maximize growth. The firm has invested in over 40 companies, and has portfolio companies across the US, Canada, EU, and Israel. To learn more, please visit us at www.sgep.com.

Contact Information

Oriane Morley,

Mail: [email protected]

Graduway:

David Whitefield, CFO, Graduway

Mail: [email protected]

SOURCE GRADUWAY

Related Links

https://graduway.com


BEIJING, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hantile, Hanergy's recently launched product combining highly efficient thin-film solar panels with traditional roof tiles, has received SGS-TUV certification, certifying that it meets the highest safety standards and is fit to be sold to partners in Europe as well as China.

The SGS-TUV certification is awarded by SGS TUV Saar, a German company that is a worldwide leader in testing, auditing, verifying and certifying. The company conducts certification across a variety of fields, from industrial to automotive to environmental. In terms of solar energy, the SGS-TUV certificate is one of the mostly widely accepted safety standards in Europe.

"Being awarded SGS-TUV certification demonstrates Hantile's strength as a world-class product ideal for use in a range of applications," said Hanergy. "We believe this certification represents a milestone in Hantile's acceptance by customers globally."

Compared with traditional tiles, Hantile has outstanding features in terms of thermal insulation, water proofing, heat preservation, fire prevention, infiltration prevention and hail protection. Its waterproofing performance is particularly strong due to its special design utilizing glass material, U-type weather bars and F-type slots. Even under extreme weather conditions, such as heavy thunderstorms, Hantile can still operate normally and safely. Furthermore, Hantile is able to generate power at temperatures ranging from -40 degrees Celsius to 85 degrees Celsius. Beyond TUV certification, Hantile has also received the China Compulsory Certification and the China Quality Certification, ensuring that it meets all industrial requirements in term of product quality and safety.

Aside from the launch of Hantile, Hanergy has made significant progress in 2017 in both the construction and transportation industries. Hanergy's thin film solar technology has been deployed throughout China, including being installed on the new headquarters of China's State Power Investment Corporation. Furthermore, Hanergy's US subsidiary Alta Devices began work with German car maker Audi to integrate solar cells into panoramic glass automobile roofs. Hanergy has also entered agreements with major bike sharing companies, including Mobike, 99 Bicycle and MTBike to integrate thin-film solar panels into the bodies of more than 15 million bicycles over the next three years.

Media contact

Danning Wang

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +86 (10) 83914567 ext 3118

SOURCE Hanergy Holding Group Ltd.
NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- For online publishers looking to drive more revenue with less effort, it's a milestone worth breaking out the bubbly. PowerInbox, the trusted email monetization partner for marketers, agencies and publishers, joined dozens of its publisher customers today in marking the first anniversary of PowerInbox's AdServer for Email debut.

The only CPM-based email monetization solution of its kind that integrates directly with ad server for web platforms, AdServer for Email has driven outstanding success for publishers over the last year, including:

Four times higher revenue than conventional flat-rate billing

20 percent increase in profitability for email newsletters

Hundreds of millions of CPM-billable ad impressions

Countless hours of time and hassle saved by eliminating manual management of online and email advertising in separate, siloed systems.

So far, several dozen publishers have already signed on to the AdServer for Email system, driving 267 percent customer growth since Q1 of this year. And, volume on the platform is up 1,500 percent over the year.

"AdServer for Email is clearly filling a void in the industry," said Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of PowerInbox. "While other ad server platforms can manage and measure either online ad views or ads within emails, ours is the only one that handles both seamlessly in one familiar system, allowing publishers to maximize the revenue-earning potential of their newsletters while minimizing the time and effort required to manage them, for an outstanding ROI."

These innovative publishers can now leverage AdServer for Email's ability to interact with their existing web ad server platforms through direct integration. This not only offers a streamlined user experience to manage ad programs across web properties and emails together, but also allows integrated, detailed campaign tracking for complete and accurate CPM-based measurement and billing. This drives a direct increase in profit for publishers.

"In Q2 year-over-year, we saw a 20 percent increase in profit with our move to AdServer for Email," said Steve Werkmeister, director of marketing for Salem Publishing.

"Email is our main channel of contact with users, so it plays a major role in driving revenue for our company," said Brice Agamemnon, campaign manager for Regit. "AdServer for Email's integration with ad server for web is a massive plus for our program, and the cost is very competitive. In just the first quarter of using it, email is already generating 6 percent of our revenue and growing."

Blake Bobit, director of digital sales for Bobit Media, has seen similar results. "We now make nearly four times as much money by selling CPM through AdServer for Email than we would selling at flat rate. It's actually a much better deal for advertisers, and for us," he said. Bobit, who experienced some technical issues with a previous attempt at CPM ad placement in email using another provider, also noted the PowerInbox solution is reliable, which means less hassle in dealing with advertisers who are unhappy that their ads didn't run or ran with incorrect URLs. "It's totally carefreeit just works without any issues at all, and it's provided peace of mind."

With AdServer for Email, publishers can deliver their own direct-sold ads, leveraging existing sales programs and insertion orders to expand online programs into email. Or, they can tap into the PowerInbox RevenueStripe platform to insert hyper-targeted, dynamic, live-on-the-open content from over 175 categories, delivering the freshest, relevant advertisements in every email. For added simplicity, publishers can even choose to backfill ad inventory once ad server caps have been met from the PowerInbox advertiser network to ensure monetization of every email sent.

Consolidated billing for ads served both online and email streamlines tracking, budgeting and payment for both publishers and advertisers, and provides insight into which ads are working best across each platform. Publishers can change ad content on the fly, and new creative populates instantly across the email network, with no delays.

PowerInbox works with all existing email programs, operating systems and platforms, supporting over 10 billion emails a month from leading publishers.

For more information, or to get started monetizing your email program today, visit PowerInbox.com or contact us.

About PowerInbox

PowerInbox provides marketers, agencies and publishers with dynamic, real-time and personalized email solutions that increase email engagement and revenue. RevenueStripe is an email based, personalized content recommendation solution that increases reader engagement while providing incremental revenue for email publishers. DynamicMail enables sending real-time, dynamic content optimized on the open including tickers, forms, video, scrolling images, animation and more. Clients enjoy 30 percent higher engagement rates and four times ROI. PowerInbox is venture backed and works with all existing email programs, supporting over 5 billion emails a month from leading marketers, publishers and agencies including the NFL, Hearst, Weight Watchers, Sephora and Barnes and Noble. For more information about PowerInbox, please visit, www.powerinbox.com.

Contact

Kate Weckerly

[email protected]

(719) 581-7102

SOURCE PowerInbox

Related Links

http://www.powerinbox.com


KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthStar LLC, a healthcare software company focused on electronic visit verification (EVV) systems, is delighted to announce the formation of its advisory board and the appointment of its first member, Daniel Walpole. As a leader in Verizon's Internet of Things (IoT) Resale Business Group, Walpole devoted countless hours to learning from key industry leaders and innovators. Along the way, he built partnerships that helped create a $200 million business pipeline for the telecom giant in just a few short years.

A leader in Verizon's Internet of Things (IoT) Resale Business Group, Daniel Walpole joins HealthStar's advisory board as its first member.

To HealthStar, Daniel will bring his industry knowledge, experience, and connections to pursue new, diversified vertical markets and forge partnerships within and beyond the healthcare sector. His focus is helping businesses transform massive data lakes into controlled and actionable intelligence that not only delivers value to customers, but also drives sustainable and profitable growth.

Walpole's strategy also includes expanding digital transformation directly to consumers. As people across the globe spend more and more time on their mobile devices, it is crucial to perfect the technology that connects them to the things that matter most in their lives. In doing so, businesses empower consumers to use that technology when and how they choose.

About HealthStar LLC:

HealthStar was founded in Knoxville, Tennessee by Dr. Ed Breazeale. For nearly a decade, Breazeale has pursued technology solutions for the mitigation of fraud, waste, and abuse in the home health industry. Nearly $3.6 billion in personal care services were paid improperly in 2015, as estimated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

To reduce fraud and eliminate guesswork in Medicaid reimbursement, Breazeale designed HealthStar Visit, the first EVV solution of its kind. Unlike other systems, HealthStar Visit uses real-time verification and GPS technology to ensure complete transparency. In August 2017, Breazeale earned a patent for HealthStar's unique features and innovative approach to EVV. Launched two years ago in Tennessee, HealthStar Visit is now available in Delaware and Iowa as well. "In the outpatient world, nobody's watching," Breazeale recently explained to the Knoxville News Sentinel. "If you're cheating the patient or you're not doing what you're supposed to do, you're not only cheating the patient. You're cheating the system."

How HealthStar's patented technology works:

When a provider arrives at a patient's home, they check in on the designated device and confirm their location. The software installed on the device contains the details of each patient's prescribed care plan and which services are meant to be rendered. Each service has a specific, assigned time frame to ensure the provider does not skip a service. After completing the care plan, the provider checks out and a claim is created. Should the provider attempt to leave the residence and confirm services elsewhere, HealthStar's built-in GPS technology will flag and reject the claim. In addition to off-location check-ins, HealthStar Visit's real-time verification technology safeguards against the common practice of providers "rounding up" the amount of time spent rendering services. If a patient's care plan is supposed to take three hours and a provider attempts to check out after one hour, the claim will be flagged for failing to meet the visit's criteria. The result? A significant reduction in fraudulent claims and improper payments, decreasing overall health plan costs.

For more information about HealthStar LLC, its advisory board, and its patented EVV solution, please visit myhealthstar.com or call 865-357-8960.

Agency Contact:

Chuck Morris

Morris Creative Group LLC

865-637-9869

[email protected]

Company Contact:

Elizabeth Wright, VP of Finance

[email protected]

http://myhealthstar.com

SOURCE HealthStar LLC

Related Links

http://myhealthstar.com


"This year's #Heineken100 campaign brings together two brands with global ubiquity, whose consumers have a taste for luxury and innovation," said Raul Esquer Lopez, Heineken USA Brand Manager. "We're thrilled to partner with BAPE, an iconic brand that shares a history of inventiveness through creating highly-aspirational imports for the man of the world."

The 2017 #Heineken100 collection comprises a limited-edition, four-piece capsule collection:

BAPE x #Heineken100 Half-Zip Pullover Sha rk Hoodie ($399.00)  The iconic BAPE shark hoodie comes in a half-zip design with a kangaroo pouch. The hoodie features Heineken-green accents and a black-on-black #Heineken100 crest on the sleeve.

 The iconic BAPE shark hoodie comes in a half-zip design with a kangaroo pouch. The hoodie features Heineken-green accents and a black-on-black #Heineken100 crest on the sleeve. BAPE x #Heineken100 Camo Coach Jacket ($413.00)  The coach's jacket features the BAPE signature camo print on the exterior with a Heineken-green camo lining. The BAPE logo is on the front of the jacket with the #Heineken100 seal on the wrist.

 The coach's jacket features the BAPE signature camo print on the exterior with a Heineken-green camo lining. The BAPE logo is on the front of the jacket with the #Heineken100 seal on the wrist. BAPE x #Heineken100 T-Shirt ($112.00)  A classic screen-printed logo T-shirt with Heineken-green accents and limited-edition #Heineken100 seal.

 A classic screen-printed logo T-shirt with Heineken-green accents and limited-edition #Heineken100 seal. BAPE x #Heineken100 Six-Pack Bottle Carrier ($115.00)  The six-bottle co-branded carrying case features BAPE camo print and both brand logos.

"We're excited to partner with Heineken on a program that shares our aesthetic visions and sphere of active cultural influence," said Kevin Le, Marketing Supervisor, USAPE. "Much like BAPE, the #Heineken100 collection brings luxury and quality products to consumers throughout the world."

Limited quantities of the #Heineken100 collection will be available for purchase to consumers 21 and older at a one-day-only pop-up shop at Japanese gastropub Izakaya on Tuesday, December 12th from 11:00AM to 4:00PM. Izakaya is located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan at 326 East 6th St, New York, NY 10003.

"The goal of the #Heineken100 program has always been to connect the brand with people who drive culture forward," said Coltrane Curtis, Founder & Managing Partner of Team Epiphany, the marketing agency behind the initiative. "This year, we listened to the fans. By opening up #Heineken100 to New Yorkers, we're able to directly engage with consumers in one of the most influential cities in the world."

The 2017 #Heineken100 program continues the brand's legacy of seeking out synergistic, taste-making partners across the world. Last year, Heineken collaborated with luggage brand TUMI to create a series of essential travel products. Previous #Heineken100 partners include Public School, Garrett Leight, Union Los Angeles, Parabellum, Mark McNairy, KITH and Neighborhood Japan, among others.

For more information, follow the #Heineken100 or #BAPE hashtag on Instagram at @Heineken_US or @BAPE_US.

About HEINEKEN USA

HEINEKEN USA Inc., the nation's leading high end beer importer, is a subsidiary of HEINEKEN International NV, the world's most international brewer. Key brands imported into the U.S. are Heineken, the world's most international beer brand, the Dos Equis Franchise, the Tecate Franchise and Strongbow Hard Apple Ciders. HEINEKEN USA also imports Amstel Light, Amstel Xlight, Indio, Carta Blanca and Bohemia brands. For the latest information on our company and brands, follow us on Twitter @HeinekenUSACorp, or visit HEINEKENUSA.com.

About A BATHING APE (BAPE)

Situated in the heart of Tokyo, one of the leading fashion hubs of the world, Nowhere Co., Ltd. strives to introduce Japanese fashion culture to the world. Since the brand's establishment in 1993, it has remained as a symbol of street fashion for more than 24 years. Thus far, it has produced iconic design items, original patterns and characters such as "APE HEAD", "BAPE CAMO", "BAPE STA", "SHARK HOODIE" and "BABY MILO" etc. It has now expanded into Men's, Ladies' and Kids' line and is carried throughout stores in Japan and also sold in US, France, Hong Kong and China, has cemented its place as a global street wear legend and has garnered the support of fashionistas.

#bape, @bape_us, or visit us.bape.com

SOURCE Heineken

Related Links

http://HEINEKENUSA.com


BEIJING, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SenseTime, China's leading artificial intelligence company, announced today they have signed a long-term development agreement with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to build smart AI cars with autonomous driving. The partnership will leverage Honda's vehicle control system with SenseTime's AI algorithms to jointly create an autonomous driving solution. The two companies also announced they will work together to develop robot technology.

Rooted in computer vision technologies, autonomous driving solutions can be deployed even in the absence of high-resolution maps, allowing them to cover an even wider array of driving conditions. When a vehicle is driving without a detailed map covering its trajectory, for example, it will still be able to use the self-driving function. This autonomous driving solution offers great advantages to a variety of passenger vehicle scenarios and will also lower transducer manufacturing costs.

SenseTime Japan CEO Lao Shihong said, "Safety is the utmost priority when it comes to driving, and it also constitutes the core of our autonomous driving solution. By combining SenseTime's strengths in computer vision technologies with Honda's superior vehicle control technologies, we will together enable a safe and pleasant autonomous driving experience. Moreover, the fact that SenseTime provides core technology to a global enterprise like Honda marks a milestone."

A fast up-and-coming field, autonomous driving is levying new, extremely high standards on AI algorithms and development platforms as it requires extraordinary technologies to deliver such a solution. SenseTime, with a set of core technologies and patents for autonomous driving, has also developed chips and embedded systems for smart AI cars. The partnership between SenseTime and Honda is expected to accelerate the research of developement of smart AI cars.

About SenseTime

SenseTime is a leading Chinese artificial intelligence company focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies. Besides from its technological strengths, SenseTime has achieved commercial successes. It has powered many industries such as finance, security, smart phone, mobile Internet, robotics, and automobile with core computer vision technologies including face recognition, video analysis, character recognition, and autonomous driving. SenseTime boasts more than 400 leading customers and strategic partners including Qualcomm, NVIDIA, China Mobile, UnionPay, HNA, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Weibo, and iFLYTEK.

Following its latest US$410 million series B round of financing (which set the then-record for a single round of funding in the AI field), SenseTime has allocated more resources to developing autonomous driving, intelligent medical treatment, and deep learning computer chips.

With offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Kyoto, and Tokyo, SenseTime has attracted top talents around the world to build a world-leading technology company  from China, for the world. For more information, please visit SenseTime's website, WeChat and Weibo.

About Honda



Honda is a global company with a high level of know-how and skills on mobility, including automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, power products and robotics as businesses.

SOURCE SenseTime
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For millions of Americans, animals are not just their best friends, but their heroes. Whether they are lending eyes to the unsighted, ears to the deaf, protection to the sleeping family and the soldier, or providing a welcoming kiss at the end of a hard day, animals affect us in so many different ways. And behind almost every hero pet (and millions more animals) is a hero veterinarian or hero veterinary nurse or technician. These benefactors save and improve the lives of our two- and four-legged best friends in many ways, and for the past four years, one awards ceremony has honored the tremendous achievements of America's veterinarians and veterinary nurses.

American Humane, the country's first national humane organization, recognizes the hard work these professionals put in day-in and day-out in the name of helping animals, and is pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the fifth annual American Humane Hero Veterinarian and Hero Veterinary Nurse Awards, sponsored by Zoetis. Pet owners and animal lovers alike are invited to visit www.herovetawards.org between now and February 8, 2018 to nominate their favorite veterinary professionals who are dedicated to the betterment of the health and welfare of animals and the promotion of the human-animal bond. The winning veterinarian and veterinary nurse will be flown to Los Angeles to be honored as part of the eighth annual American Humane Hero Dog Awards on September 29, 2018, which will air nationwide as a two-hour special on Hallmark Channel next fall.

These awards are not limited to companion animal veterinarians. Professionals from all fields of veterinary medicine are eligible for entry including, but not limited to, those who work in: research, emergency services, shelters, and those who work with large and exotic animals. The five finalists in the American Hero Veterinarian and American Hero Veterinary Nurse categories will be selected by a special blue-ribbon panel of judges consisting of celebrities, veterinary professionals, and animal care professionals. Beginning May 3, the American public will be invited to vote online for their favorite veterinarian and veterinary nurse.

"Zoetis is proud and honored to support America's veterinary community, and the American Humane Hero Veterinarian and Hero Veterinary Nurse Awards are our way of saying 'thank you' to these tireless individuals," said J. Michael McFarland, DVM, DABVP, Executive Director, U.S. Companion Animal Marketing at Zoetis. "They are at the forefront of the effort to keep America's animals happy and healthy, and they deserve recognition from a grateful nation."

"The world's animals depend on veterinarians and veterinary nurses, and we thank Zoetis, the exclusive sponsor of the Hero Veterinarian and Hero Veterinary Nurse Awards and official Corporate Presenting Sponsor of the 2018 Hero Dog Awards, for helping recognize their achievements in saving lives, conducting groundbreaking research, and working on the front lines of animal welfare," said Dr. Robin Ganzert, American Humane's president and CEO. "To us, all vets and vet nurses are heroes and these awards help us shine a bright spotlight on the best of the best."

Key dates for the 2018 American Humane Hero Veterinarian and Hero Veterinary Nurse Awards contest include:

Nominations Period: December 7, 2017 - February 8, 2018

- Voting Round 1 (judges' panel): March 1 - April 12, 2018

Voting Round 2 (public): May 3 - August 2, 2018

September 29 : Winning Hero Veterinarian and Hero Veterinary Nurse announced at 2018 Hero Dog Awards in Los Angeles

*All rounds open and close at 12pm Pacific Time

To nominate a veterinarian or veterinary nurse between now and February 8, and for complete contest rules, please visit www.herovetawards.org. To nominate a Hero Dog in your life for the 2018 American Humane Hero Dog Awards, please visit www.herodogawards.org between now and February 7.

About American Humane

American Humane is the country's first national humane organization. For more information please visit www.americanhumane.org today.

About Zoetis

Zoetis is the leading animal health company, dedicated to supporting its customers and their businesses. Building on more than 60 years of experience in animal health, Zoetis discovers, develops, manufactures and markets veterinary vaccines and medicines, complemented by diagnostic products, genetic tests, biodevices and a range of services. Zoetis serves veterinarians, livestock producers and people who raise and care for farm and companion animals with sales of its products in more than 100 countries. In 2016, the company generated annual revenue of $4.9 billion with approximately 9,000 employees. For more information, visit www.zoetis.com.

SOURCE American Humane

Related Links

http://www.americanhumane.org


When it comes to what social savvy travelers are bragging about on their trips, food snaps (44%) is up there. Travel braggers show off their #foodporn to those stuck at home with their avocado toast, posting weird and wonderful dishes from across the globe. Fried spider anyone?

Being a generation of filter-loving, selfie-stick addicts, two out of three American (66%) 18-29-year-olds admit they would rather upload a selfie than a picture with their loved ones (62%) on holiday #savage. Not only that, 60% of US young travelers admitted to uploading pictures, checking in at cool locations (39%) and tracking the amount of interaction on their posts (32%) for bragging purposes while on vacation.

The new global research has also proven the long-debated theory that romance really is dead, with 14% admitting they would rather travel with their smartphone than their partner. Travelers even get more anxious when their phone runs out of battery (15%) than if they argue with their partner on a trip (8%).

The research, commissioned by Hotels.com identifies new trends in how mobile technology is used during travel, as it launches its second annual Mobile Travel Tracker Report.

"At Hotels.com we know that 28% of people wouldn't enjoy their holiday without their smartphone in their hand - how could they possibly capture the best selfie or show off to their friends at home without it! Not only that, we also know that getting the perfect picture plays an even bigger role with 14% of travelers admitting they would pose anywhere for that flawless selfie, often putting selfies ahead of safety", said Daniel Craig, VP of Mobile at Hotels.com brand.

"With a third of travelers refusing to book a hotel that doesn't offer free Wi-Fi, there is a clear demand for travelers to be connected at all times. At Hotels.com, we have so many great places to stay, all bookable at the click of a button on our mobile app, that we're confident selfie-lovers will have plenty of opportunities to snap the ideal #nofilter photo for Instagram, perfect to #TravelBrag with."

Start your next adventure by downloading the Hotels.com mobile app to choose from hundreds of thousands of places to #TravelBrag around the world.

For further information, please contact;

Alex Lee

Phone: (214) 613 0025

Email: [email protected]

Notes to Editors

*Mobile Travel Tracker research conducted by One Poll in November 2017. Data based on 9,000 respondents across 30 countries.

About Hotels.com

Hotels.com L.P. operates Hotels.com, a leading online accommodation booking website with properties ranging from international chains and all-inclusive resorts to local favorites and bed & breakfasts, together with all the information needed to book the perfect stay. Customers get instant savings *** with Secret Prices through our mobile booking app and when logged into the booking website. Hotels.com Rewards members can earn and redeem free**** nights at thousands of properties worldwide. The Hotels.com Mobile Concierge on iPhone is like having a local expert in the palm of your hand, offering fast access to services such as transportation, on-demand food delivery, restaurant reservations and activities.

***Instant savings are only available on select, participating properties.

**** Free nights are only available on select, participating properties. Maximum value of the free night is the average of daily rate of the 10 paid nights and doesn't include taxes or fees. See site for details.

Secret Prices are available to Hotels.com app users, Hotels.com Rewards members and individuals who unlock Secret Prices on the website by subscribing to Hotels.com by email. Secret Prices will be shown where the "Your Secret Prices" banner is displayed on your search results. Available on select hotels and select dates only. Subject to full terms and conditions.

 2017 Hotels.com, LP. Hotels.com, Hotels.com Rewards and the Hotels.com logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Hotels.com, LP in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. CST #2083949-50

SOURCE Hotels.com

Related Links

http://www.hotels.com


MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Luxury Miami Beach real estate brokerage Howard Chase Real Estate is known for providing the finest in Miami and Miami Beach real estate services. HCRE specializes in luxury real estate sales in Miami, Miami Beach, South Beach, Downtown Miami, Brickell, Surfside, Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles, Normandy Isle, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables and other high demand areas of South Florida.

Headquartered in South Beach at 1354 Washington Avenue Miami Beach, FL, Howard Chase Real Estate just inked a new lease for a second location in the heart of North Beach at 700 71 Street Miami Beach, FL. The lease is five years plus an option for three. Howard Chase, broker and owner of HCRE states, "Howard Chase Real Estate continues to grow in size, stature and market share and our second office is a representation and a continuation of that growth." Chase continues, "We are a team of the best and brightest in the business. This second office will enhance our ability to service current and future clients in the most comprehensive way possible."

HCRE is taking over the corner space where 71 Street meets Indian Creek Drive and Dickens Avenue. The corner is widely considered to be the most prized real estate in North Beach at the entrance to Normandy Isle and adjacent to the famed North Beach fountain.

Last month, Miami Beach voters adopted an ordinance increasing the FAR (floor area ratio) in the town center zoning district which will pave the way for new development and increased walkability, and will upgrade North Beach with new public spaces, dining and retail. Mid-rise building will be allowed up to 125 ft, doubling the estimated total building density. Howard Chase Real Estate anticipated the ordinance and the North Miami Beach expansion and as a result is positioned to be a key player in the renaissance of North Beach.

About Howard Chase Real Estate

Founded in 2007 by broker Howard Chase, Howard Chase Real Estate specializes in the sale of luxury property, luxury home marketing and high-end negotiation techniques. For real estate services in Miami, Miami Beach and the surrounding areas, call Howard Chase Real Estate at 305-532-7470 or visit www.howardchaserealestate.com.

Visit: http://www.HowardChaseRealEstate.com

Follow us: http://www.Facebook.com/HowardChaseRealEstate

https://twitter.com/HCRE

Instagram: @HowardChaseRealEstate

Contact:

Mariu Emmons

786-514-7899

SOURCE Howard Chase Real Estate

Related Links

http://www.howardchaserealestate.com/


BEIJING, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 21, 2017, the 4th Hunan Online Facebook Activity themed "Hunan Loves Fall" lasting 21 days officially came to an end. This event has attracted participants from all over the world, who expressed their strong desires to join while also ensuring the world was aware of all that Hunan has to offer.

The theme of the event was selected due to the beauty of fall in Hunan. This event initiated an online photo contest by uploading the beautiful fall pictures cities with the event posting forwarded and then was open to voting. Contestants were entered into a chance to win a sweater with a Hunan fall scene. By connecting fall in Hunan and other places across the world and attracting a large number of fans, the activity helped enhance the impression of Hunan. To enhance the promotion, two KOL were invited to participate in the event.

Hunan's Facebook page saw more than 500 million visits during the promotion with over 150,000 interactions, covering more than 3 million fans. The activity not only allowed fans to enjoy the beauty of Hunan in fall but also increased the interactions with Hunan's Facebook page. Moreover, it enhanced the presence of Hunan's online image, which will support Hunan's tourism on an international forum.

Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed in South Central China, Hunan is named for its location "south of Lake Dongting". Hunan is well known for the abundance of lotus throughout the province. Changshang, Fenghua and Zhangjiajie are some of the most well known places to visit in Hunan.

SOURCE China Hunan Provincial Tourism Development Commission
TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ICL (NYSE: ICL)(TASE: ICL), a leading global specialty minerals and specialty chemicals company, announced that it has agreed to sell its fire safety and oil additives (P 2 S 5 or phosphorus pentasulfide) business units (the "Business") to SK Capital, a private investment firm focused on specialty materials, chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors, for an aggregate amount of approximately $1 billion. The business is part of ICL Specialty Solutions' Advanced Additives business line and has operations in North and South America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

The sale is expected to close in the first half of 2018, subject to the fulfillment of customary closing conditions specified in the sale agreement, including receipt of approvals by the competent authorities.

ICL's major research and development capabilities in specialty chemicals as well as its ability to identify business opportunities, have transformed the Company into a global leader in several core and non-core businesses. The Business became part of ICL in 2005 and was transformed into a global leader through organic growth and complementary acquisitions. ICL's fire safety business unit is a leading supplier of chemicals and services for fighting wild fires, and class A&B foams to extinguish fires. ICL's oil additives business unit products are used in the manufacture of lubrication oil additives, mining chemicals and pesticides. During 2016, the Business contributed approximately $245 million to ICL's sales and approximately $79 million to ICL's operating income. During the twelve months ended September 30, 2017, and mainly as a result of an unusually high wild fire season in North America, the Business contributed approximately $294 million to ICL's sales and approximately $112 million to ICL's operating income.

While the Business has become a global leader, with advanced technologies and state-of-the-art service operations, it has low synergies with ICL's core mineral chains. The decision to divest the Business is in line with ICL's previously announced strategy to divest low synergy businesses to focus the Company's operations on its mineral chains, reduce debt and generate funds for growth initiatives. As part of this strategy, ICL is also currently working to complete the previously announced sale of its 50% stake in IDE Technologies, a desalination and water treatment company.

ICL's Executive Chairman, Mr. Johanan Locker, stated, "This sale constitutes another step towards fulfilling the targets of focusing ICL's businesses and selling low synergy assets. The divestment will reduce debt leverage, and provide flexibility for the development of innovation and growth in ICL's specialty products and in precision agriculture".

Mr. Asher Grinbaum, ICL's Acting CEO, added, "The sale is yet another important milestone, as part of our efforts to streamline our business and solidify our capital structure. During the past year, we continued to grow our specialty businesses while carefully managing our capital allocation. These measures were reflected in our financial results, which have demonstrated how ICL benefits from its unique business model. We are confident the fire safety and the oil additives businesses will continue to grow and prosper under SK Capital, and we wish the management team and our long-time employees much success in the future."

BofA Merrill Lynch acted as exclusive financial advisor to ICL and Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal counsel to ICL

About ICL

ICL is a global manufacturer of products based on specialty minerals that fulfill humanity's essential needs primarily in three markets: agriculture, food and engineered materials. ICL shares are dual listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (NYSE and TASE: ICL). The company employs approximately 13,000 people worldwide, and its sales in 2016 totaled US$5.4 billion. For more information, visit the company's website at www.icl-group.com.

PRESS CONTACT

Maya Avishai

Head of Global External Communications

+972-3-684-4471

[email protected]



INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT

Limor Gruber

Head of Investor Relations

+972-3-684-4471

[email protected]





SOURCE ICL

Related Links

http://www.icl-group.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., a nonprofit educational organization honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals and encouraging youth to pursue their dreams through higher education, today announced that multi-media entertainer and entrepreneur Reba McEntire has been selected for membership in this prestigious organization. Ms. McEntire joins 11 other esteemed business, civic and cultural leaders from across North America in receiving 2018 honors. For more than 70 years, the Horatio Alger Award has been annually bestowed upon admired leaders who have succeeded despite facing adversities, and who have remained committed to higher education and charitable efforts in their local communities.

Ms. McEntire, the third in a family of four children, grew up on a cattle ranch in the small, rural town of Chockie, Oklahoma. Her father expected all the children to work on the ranch and Ms. McEntire began riding horses at the age of three. By the time she was seven, she was gathering cattle from before daylight until after dark. In what little spare time she had, McEntire also competed in rodeos as a barrel racera sport she continued until she was 21. As a child, Ms. McEntire's mother taught her and her three siblings how to sing and harmonize as they traveled to and from their father's rodeo performances. While in high school, Ms. McEntire and her siblings formed their own group, The Singing McEntires, and performed frequently at rodeos, clubs, and dance halls. Ms. McEntire attended Southeastern Oklahoma State University, graduating with a major in elementary education and a minor in music. She continued to work on her father's ranch to help pay her tuition. While the more predictable career paths for Ms. McEntire would have been to become a teacher or barrel racer, she was determined to pursue her dream of becoming a country music artist. Ms. McEntire got her first break singing the national anthem at a rodeo in 1974, which resulted in an invitation to move to Nashville and ultimately a deal with Polygram Mercury Records.

Although her first recordings were not an immediate success, Ms. McEntire worked diligently, releasing a series of increasingly popular albums and winning the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award four years in a row, from 1984 to 1987. As the only country female solo act to have a No. 1 hit in four straight decades, Reba has achieved a rare pinnacle with 35 No. 1 singles and over 56 million albums sold worldwide often prompting her to be called the "queen of country music." The Country Music Hall of Fame and Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame member has won 15 American Music Awards, 13 ACM Awards, nine People's Choice Awards, seven CMA Awards, two GRAMMY Awards, an ACM Career Achievement Honor and the National Artistic Achievement Award from the U.S. Congress, in addition to other leadership and philanthropic accolades. With SING IT NOW: SONGS OF FAITH AND HOPE (Nash Icon Records / Capitol Christian Music Group), which topped both the Billboard Country and Christian/Gospel charts for multiple weeks and marked her thirteenth summit, Ms. McEntire won her first GMA Dove Awards for Bluegrass/Country/Roots Album of the Year as well as a GRAMMY Awards nomination for Best Roots Gospel Album to be broadcast live on January 28, 2018 on CBS.

Her creative and entrepreneurial endeavors have established her as a household name across music, television, film, theater and retail. Proving her business acumen, Ms. McEntire has expanded her brand to include lines with Dillard's and Justin Boots. She wrote her autobiography, Reba: My Story, in 1994, and a second book, Comfort from a Country Quilt, in 1999. Ms. McEntire is also an acclaimed actress with 11 movie credits, a lead role on Broadway and starred in her own six-season television sitcom "Reba," for which she received a Golden Globe nomination in 2004.

"The Horatio Alger Association stands for integrity, honesty and resilience  qualities that Reba certainly exemplifies," said Matthew Rose, president, Horatio Alger Association and 2013 Horatio Alger Award recipient. "She has faced numerous challenges in both her early career and personal tragedies, with admirable strength and grace. Reba inspires us all with her tenacity and always upbeat attitude. Her positive outlook is contagious and she will serve as an excellent role model for our Scholars. For these reasons and more, we are proud to recognize her as a 2018 Horatio Alger Member."

Ms. McEntire is also well-known for her charitable efforts, working with organizations such as The Salvation Army, Texoma Medical Center, Children's Medical Research, Habitat for Humanity, Outnumber Hunger and more. The Texoma Medical Center in Denison, Texas, is home to the Reba McEntire Rehabilitation Center, Reba's Ranch House, and the TMC Reba Mobile Mammography Unit. In recognition of her philanthropic efforts, Ms. McEntire has received the Salvation Army Award, the Home Depot Humanitarian Award and Minnie Pearl Humanitarian Award.

"I always say that you need three things to succeed in life: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone. These qualities have served me well in every part of my life, and I have no doubt my fellow honorees would agree," said Ms. McEntire. "I am honored to be inducted into the Horatio Alger Association, and I can't wait to meet our 2018 Scholars and help them in any way I can to reach their own dreams."

Through its Members, Horatio Alger Association aims to educate young people about the limitless opportunities afforded to them by the free-enterprise system. To further this mission, the organization awards scholarships to outstanding high school students who are committed to pursuing higher education and giving back to their communities. Like Association Members, Horatio Alger Scholars have faced significant adversities, but have also displayed unmatched resilience in overcoming their challenges. Since the scholarship program was established in 1984, Horatio Alger Association has provided more than $125 million to students in need, all of which has been funded solely through the generosity of Association Members and friends.

Ms. McEntire and the Member Class of 2018 will be formally inducted into the Association on April 5-7, 2018, during the Association's 71st Horatio Alger Award Induction Ceremonies in Washington, D.C. The annual three-day event honors the achievements of both Members and National Scholars, affording both groups the opportunity to meet and interact, exchanging stories of hardships and triumphs.

For more information about Horatio Alger Association and its Member Class of 2018, please visit www.horatioalger.org and/or follow the organization on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #HoratioAlgerAward.

About Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans:

Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc. is dedicated to the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles. The Association honors the achievements of outstanding leaders who have accomplished remarkable successes in spite of adversity by bestowing upon them the Horatio Alger Award and inducting them as lifetime Members. Horatio Alger Members support promising young people with the resources and confidence needed to overcome adversity in pursuit of their dreams through higher education. Through the generosity of its Members and friends, in 2017, the Association awarded more than $18 million in undergraduate and graduate need-based scholarships across the United States and Canada, and also provided college support and mentoring services to its Scholars. Since 1984, the Association has awarded more than $125 million in college scholarships to more than 25,000 deserving young people. For more information, please visit www.horatioalger.org.

CONTACT:

McKenna Young

484-385-2913 (office)

[email protected]

SOURCE Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.horatioalger.org


VICTORIA, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - IMMUNOPRECISE ANTIBODIES LTD. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: IPA)(OTC PINK: IPATF) announces that it has signed a binding letter of intent with ModiQuest Research BV ("ModiQuest") whereby the Company has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of ModiQuest (the "Transaction").

The Transaction continues to realize on the Board's commitment to grow globally through strategic acquisitions. It allows IPA to become a single source provider of services across the full antibody discovery value chain (antigen design, hit generation, lead selection, lead optimization and lead characterization) and to offer the full spectrum of antibody production methodologies (library based technologies, hybridoma methods, transgenic animal based platforms and single B cell based technology). Furthermore, the acquisition enhances the Company's capacity for generating human antibodies.

"In acquiring ModiQuest Research B.V., IPA becomes a leading integrated antibody solutions company with global reach," said Dr. James Kuo, Chairman, Interim President of the Company.

ModiQuest

ModiQuest is a privately held company based in Oss, The Netherlands that specializes in the generation of monoclonal antibodies against difficult target antigens. ModiQuest applies proprietary technologies to all aspects of the antibody discovery process in research and development, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Using its proprietary ModiFuse (hybridoma electrofusion), ModiSelect (B-cell selection) and ModiPhage (phage display) technologies, ModiQuest can generate very large panels of monoclonal antibodies from various backgrounds including mouse, rat, rabbit, chicken, llama and human, as well as transgenic animals harboring the human antibody gene repertoire. ModiQuest serves clients in Europe, the US, Asia and Russia. During its year-ended 2016, ModiQuest had revenues of 2,009,374 (CAD $3,037,249) and earnings of 671,799 (CAD $1,015,451).

The Transaction is accretive in both revenue and earnings and brings additional scientific and management capacity.

Terms of Transaction with ModiQuest

Under the binding letter of intent, the Company and ModiQuest have agreed to negotiate a definitive agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") whereby the Company will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of ModiQuest for 7,000,000 (CAD$10,570,000) (the "Purchase Price"), of which (A) 2,500,000 (CAD$3,775,000) will be paid in cash on closing, (B) 2,500,000 (CAD$3,775,000) will be satisfied by the issuance of approximately 6,622,807 common shares of the Company on closing, and (C) 2,000,000 (CAD$3,020,000) in deferred payments over a three year period (the "Deferred Payments"). The Deferred Payments will be made in three equal installments of cash and equity totaling 666,666 (CAD$1,006,665) on each anniversary date following closing of the transaction. The Deferred Payments will be prorated if the EBITDA of ModiQuest fails to equal the average EBITDA from the previous two years. ImmunoPrecise expects to finance the cash portion of the purchase price using a convertible debt instrument.

The letter of intent also requires that Jos Raats, a principal of ModiQuest, to enter into a three year management contract, which will include non-solicitation and non-competition clauses, and Mr. Raats will provide a minimum of 60% of full time employment to ModiQuest under the management contract. The Company has also agreed to appoint one of the principal shareholders of ModiQuest to its board of directors.

The parties will be entitled to carry out due diligence of each other until February 15, 2018. Upon the parties completing due diligence to their reasonable satisfaction, the parties will enter into the Definitive Agreement setting forth the terms and conditions of the Transaction by February 28, 2018. Completion of any transaction with ModiQuest 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, the availability of financing on terms acceptable to the Company, and receipt of any required regulatory and shareholder 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 ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

The Company provides custom antibody development and production services and protein expression to support research and development programs at leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as academic research laboratories. Antibodies are naturally occurring proteins capable of binding to specific target molecules, or antigens. They have been used very widely in research assays, diagnostics, purification, biologics and therapeutics.

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains statements that, to the extent they are not recitations of historical fact, may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. The Company uses words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "expect", "believe", "intend" and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by the Company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. However, whether actual results and developments will conform to the Company's expectations and predictions is subject to any number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. Such factors include, among other things, the Company closing its acquisition of ModiQuest, and such risks and uncertainties described in the Company's Filing Statement dated December 13, 2016 which can be accessed at www.sedar.com . The "forward-looking statements" contained herein speak only as of the date of this press release and, unless required by applicable law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise such information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

Related Links

www.immunoprecise.com


"Disney's call regarding Star Wars was completely unexpected and surprised me. But I like surprises and this one particularly intrigued me! At first sight, the Star Wars universe and mine seemed far away from one another but when I saw the pictures of the red planet Crait, I instantly understood where it connected and why they had thought of me. Strong ideas and images spontaneously came to my mind," said Christian Louboutin.

Debuting at the film's premiere in Los Angeles, the showpiece shoe takes inspiration from the franchise, as well as styles in Christian Louboutin's collection and a boundary-pushing art piece from the archives, the Ballerina Ultima, which boasts a breathtaking 6" heel. To complement the showpiece shoe, Christian Louboutin has created four exclusive custom shoe styles epitomizing the spirit of four of the film's heroines: Rey (Daisy Ridley), Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern), Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).

Rey ( Daisy Ridley ) is portrayed by an ankle-strap leather sandal inspired by the character's costumes including the harnesses that strap her body, while translucent PVC reflects her Jedi powers and the Force she embodies. The style is finished with a blue strass heel evoking the color of her lightsaber.

Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo's ( Laura Dern's ) pumps are the natural extension of her costume, directly inspired by her draped burgundy cape and the strong, reserved and empowered character she portrays.

Captain Phasma's ( Gwendoline Christie's ) shoe is evoked by the curves of her armor, represented by silver specchio leather yokes, reflecting her strict and authoritative character.

Rose Tico ( Kelly Marie Tran ) is represented through a utilitarian sandal imagined by Christian Louboutin, depicting a technical, engineering-driven individual. The strong heel protects an inner stiletto, reflecting the shell safeguarding her resilient spirit.

Each style is embellished with a bespoke glimmering jewel inspired by the Tie Fighter.

"Christian Louboutin's shoes are truly functional works of art and it was such a pleasure to collaborate with him on the Nomad Shoemaker. The designs I create for films are meant to be experienced cinematically, while Christian's have an intimate tangible relationship with their wearers. With this collaboration he has masterfully infused Star Wars into his magnificent, one-of-a-kind creations," said Doug Chiang.

The Nomad Shoemaker's story will continue with the unveiling of this unique showpiece shoe, created by Christian Louboutin and ILM, guarded by a set of glossy red members of the Praetorian Guard, on the red carpet of the film's world premiere in Los Angeles on December 9. The custom display for the shoe will feature a hyper-realistic holographic installation. For the designer, the use of a hologram was the best way to express his vision: a combination of creativity, enchanted by magic, enriched by technology. To him, the hologram is the most iconic visual effect of the franchise. This is how the story of the Nomad Shoemaker will be brought to life, inside a unique red crystal showcase, blurring the lines between reality and 3D animation. In this custom-made cabinet will be featured the story of Christian's avatartransforming a shredded chiffon pump, symbolic of Couture tradition into a spectacular, futuristic Ballerina Ultima-inspired-spaceship, to convoy the designer around the galaxy.

The commemorative styleseach signed by the designer, as well as the actress who portrays each character the style was created forwill be auctioned on charitybuzz.com/StarWars from December 7 - December 20, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting Starlight Children's Foundation on behalf of Star Wars: Force for Change. The showpiece shoe, unveiled at the premiere on December 9, will be added to the auction after its much-anticipated reveal. Star Wars: Force for Change, a charitable initiative from Lucasfilm and Disney, harnesses the strength of Star Wars to empower and improve the lives of children around the world. Starlight Children's Foundation creates moments of joy and comfort for hospitalized kids and their families.

ABOUT STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI:

In Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Skywalker saga continues as the heroes of The Force Awakens join the galactic legends in an epic adventure that unlocks age-old mysteries of the Force and shocking revelations of the past.

The film stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is written and directed by Rian Johnson and produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman. J.J. Abrams, Tom Karnowski and Jason McGatlin are the executive producers. Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens in U.S. theaters on December 15, 2017.

ABOUT STAR WARS: FORCE FOR CHANGE

Star Wars: Force for Change, a charitable initiative from Lucasfilm and Disney, harnesses the strength of Star Wars to empower and improve the lives of children around the world. Since 2014, it was inspired by Star Wars fans, and the countless hours they have dedicated to philanthropy over the past four decades. To date, over $16 million has been raised for charitable causes around the world on behalf of Star Wars: Force for Change. With a bright future ahead, and new Star Wars stories to be told, Force for Change aims to continue collaborating with causes and encouraging others to be forces for change in their own community. To learn more, please visit ForceForChange.com.

ABOUT STARLIGHT CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION

Starlight creates moments of joy and comfort for hospitalized kids and their families. For 35 years, Starlight's programs have positively impacted more than 60 million critically, chronically and terminally ill or injured children in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. With your help, more kids and their families will enjoy Starlight Brave Gowns, Starlight Fun Centers and other Starlight programs at a children's hospital or facility near you. Support Starlight's work by visiting www.starlight.org.

ABOUT CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

Christian Louboutin established his business in the First Arrondissement of Paris in 1992. An artist and craftsman with a passion for shoes, his designs for both women and men are unique and recognizable thanks to their signature: the red lacquered soles, and his collections combine wit, glamour, elegance and technical proficiency like none other.

A woman's natural beauty has always been at the centre of the designer's inspiration, and 2014 welcomed the launch of Christian Louboutin Beaute with its first nail colour, Rouge Louboutin. Since, the designer has released a range of lipsticks, an eye collection and three fragrances for women: Bikini Questa Sera, Tornade Blonde & Trouble in Heaven.

With a prolific collection of women's and men's shoes, handbags and small leather goods, Christian Louboutin now counts more than 135 boutiques around the world.

SOURCE Walt Disney Studios
LONDON, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management (ITPM) has today announced a significant addition to their global trading operation: Hedge Fund Advisor and Equities Analyst Anthony Iser has joined the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management as a Senior Trading Mentor, covering the Asia Pacific region.

Anthony has 18 years' experience as an Investment Banking and Hedge Fund Professional in the Financial Markets having worked at Investment Banks and Hedge Funds in both Australia and Asia.

While completing a degree in Finance from Swinburne University, Anthony joined JPMorgan in Melbourne and soon joined the Wealth Management division specializing in Derivatives. In 2000, Anthony joined the Investment Banking division where he worked in the Equities Trading and Sales division whilst completing the CFA program.

In 2004, he was promoted to a senior role with JPMorgan in Singapore where he advised Equity Funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds and Hedge Funds on their Equity investments in Australia. During his time in Singapore, Anthony was ranked top 3 in Asia for Australian Market Advisory by AsiaMoney.

In 2006, Anthony was recruited by UBS to work in Equity Advisory and continued to advise Funds in Singapore until 2010 when he took a break from the industry to take time off with his family. In his time at UBS, Anthony's portfolio was ranked in the top 25 out of 1000 globally. In 2012, he joined Tantallon Capital as an Investment Analyst providing idea generation in the Asia Pacific markets.

From 2014 to 2016, Anthony was headhunted back into UBS, this time advising the largest Hedge Funds in Asia and the World on their Equity investments in Asia. Specifically, he provided Equity Advisory services to Hedge Funds from Australia, throughout Asia and the US. During this time, Anthony was top 3 ranked again by AsiaMoney for Equity Advisory Services to Hedge Funds across all of Asia.

From 2016, Anthony has been managing his own private investments in start-up companies across a range of industries including telecoms, healthcare and apparel. In 2017, Anthony joined the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management as a Senior Trading Mentor. Anthony's role at the Institute involves Mentoring Institute Traders on the official Institute Mentoring Programme helping them to realise their objectives in becoming consistently profitable long-term and to help build their track records. Anthony also helps manage the Institute's global portfolio in allocating capital to profitable students/traders.

Commenting on today's announcement, Institute Managing Partner Anton Kreil made the following statement: "Anthony has had an amazing career and is renowned in the Hedge Fund industry as one of the best trade idea generators globally of the last 20 years. We are a perfect fit for each other, mainly due to our global community of over 400 Retail Traders who often struggle with process and idea generation in the beginning of their development as traders. He will be a great Mentor for the students to learn from and he will be adding a lot of value to our organisation."

For more information about ITPM, please click the following links:

Institute Mentoring Program with Ross Williams



ALL Institute Mentoring Programs



Institute Online Educational Video Series Information



Institute FAQs



For Press Enquiries, use this contact form: https://www.itpm.com/contact

SOURCE Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management
"Our team is dedicated to giving back to the community as well as to serving our clients and customers, and we are excited to be able to support the food bank's great work during the holidays," said CEO Richard Drach.

International Management Partners specializes in outsourced sales and marketing, offering the client face-to-face marketing solutions to increase their customer base and market share. The company builds relationships with the client and the customers. The award-winning team at International Management Partners delivers results with integrity, going above and beyond client expectations.

At International Management Partners, professional and personal development are promoted in an environment where hard work and dedication are valued. The company also believes in giving back to the community through involvement with nonprofits such as Food Bank for the Heartland, Operation Smile, and more.

Like International Management Partners on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

About International Management Partners

International Management Partners is a privately owned sales and marketing firm based in Omaha, Nebraska, that works to increase the clients' market share and customer base. The company provides high-quality consulting for their customers and growth opportunities for their team. For more information, call 402-505-3732 or contact them at http://www.internationalmanagementpartners.net/.

Contact: Richard Drach

402-505-3732

SOURCE International Management Partners

Related Links

http://www.internationalmanagementpartners.net


The IoT Live Slam 2018 conference builds on the hugely successful inaugural 2017 event that took place last year at the Research Triangle Park, and represents an unparalleled platform for both established and emerging IoT practitioners, business leaders and executive management across healthcare, retail, consumer product goods, finance, industrial, commercial and public sector industries, - looking for opportunities to leverage, innovate, disrupt and transform society, using IoT, machine learning and cognitive techniques - to meet and learn from the IoT elite in an open, friendly, give to give environment.

The IoT Slam Live conference will once again host distinguished delegates and showcase innovative IoT use cases, technologies and companies in a tried and tested hybrid conference delivery format; consisting of an in-person live conference, taking place in North Carolina June 21-22, and a real-time virtual broadcast of key proceedings to members of the Internet of Things Community - who can tune in live to the stream globally via the internet and interact with speakers and attendees.



"We are excited to announce our second annual IoT Slam Live conference, which will again bring together leading members from the Internet of Things Community." said Bill Mortimer, Executive Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Spirent Communications, and Chairman of the IoT Slam Conference and IoT Community. "Building on the successes of the inaugural conference, we expect to shape the IoT narrative, harvesting the very best IoT thought leadership from our IoT Community. We look forward to welcoming and hosting members in RTP, where we will continue to provide a platform for IoT thought leaders to collaborate and partner to fulfil the promise of the IoT."

Oliver Schabenberger, current SAS Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer as of Jan. 1, 2018, and a keynote speaker at the 2018 IoT SLAM Conference said, "Those who will attend this event already know they must be prepared for large quantities and disparate types of data in the world of IoT. A data-driven, analytic culture is key to driving value in IoT applications. Volume and velocity of IoT data requires increasing automation and machine intelligence. I am eager to participate in compelling conversations about driving value from IoT data with other business innovators."

David Hill, Executive Director of the Internet of Things Community (IoT Community) said, "We are excited to unveil our second in-person IoT Slam Live event that will again showcase a world class line-up of IoT thought leaders and practitioners, coming together to present customer successes and best practices. As we predicted, 2017 was a defining year for the IoT Community and we look forward to raising the bar even further in 2018. IoT Slam Live will illustrate leading-edge best practices and customer use-cases and provide a forum for business and technology leaders to meet and learn more about how the next generation of technology through the Internet of Things will enable growth and innovation. We encourage enterprises and IoT providers to submit a speaker proposal to demonstrate how they are using the Internet of Things to transform business, culture and society."

Core themes being covered at IoT Slam Live include (not limited to):

User applications & business use-cases for IoT

Vertical industry alignment (Healthcare, Retail, Automotive)

Security, privacy & trust

Analytics and big data

Connectivity and infrastructure

IoT architectures

Application of machine learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Call for Papers

Since its inception in 2015, IoT Slam has been a no-pay-to-speak event, enabling the very best IoT minds, contributions and thought leadership to be garnered and shared amongst the broader IoT ecosystem. IoT practitioners interested in presenting a session in-line to above topics at IoT Live Slam'18 either in-person or virtually have until February 28th 2018 to submit a session proposal. Visit here http://iotslam.com/submit-paper for full details on the submission process and to submit a paper.

Important Dates & Milestones:

February 28, 2018  Call for papers Closes

March 15, 2018  Speakers Notified of Acceptance

March 30th 2018 - Final Agenda Published

June 21-22 2018  IoT Live Slam Commences

Free Access to Virtual Broadcast

New for 2018: Members of the IoT Community can get free access to the real-time virtual broadcast. For full registration details and to register now, visit http://www.iotslam.com/register

Corporate Membership, Collaboration and Media Opportunities

IoT solution providers seeking to explore Corporate membership to the Internet of Things Community, Event Sponsorship, and / or collaboration opportunities should email [email protected]

Media organizations interested in covering the event should email [email protected]

About IoT Slam Live

IoT Slam Live 2018 is the Internet of Things Community's second annual in-person IoT conference and its sixth international conference overall, covering a horizontal industry perspective, across the entire spectrum of IoT. IoT Slam Live take place June 21-22, 2018 at the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. For more information, visit www.iotslam.com. IoT Slam Live delivers the best in class IoT Strategy, Leadership, Advisory and Methodology  (SLAM).

About Internet of Things Community

The Internet of Things Community - IoT Community is the world's largest and longest standing CxO community of senior business leaders and IoT practitioners consisting of 22,000+ members. For more information about the Internet of Things community, or to apply for free individual membership, please visit http://iotslam.com/community.

Keep up to date on Twitter by following@IoTChannel or using the hashtag #IoTSlam.



Contact

David Hill

Executive Director

[email protected]

Tel: +44(0)7879881438





SOURCE Internet of Things Community (IoT Community)

Related Links

http://www.iotslam.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- 2017 was the year that IRH Press USA (www.okawabooks.com) created a successful United States and Canadian brand for the founder of the worldwide Happy Science movement in the U.S. trade book market. Its growing synergistic relationship with Japan mirrors what one United States Administration called the "Asian pivot." President Trump has established a new and stronger relationship with Japan. The country's global visionary, renowned spiritual leader and best-selling Japanese author, Master Ryuho Okawa  who has sold over 100 million copies of books worldwide that are currently translated into 29 languages  is now taking the United States book market by storm with the assistance of IRH Press USA. His work to date includes 2,200 book publications and 26 consecutive years as a best-selling author in Japan. Okawa has a simple goal he is bringing to the United States and Canada: to help people find true happiness and create a better world.

Okawa's books cover religious, spiritual, and self-development teachings such as how our thoughts influence reality, the nature of love, and the path to enlightenment. He also writes on the interrelationship between religion and international relations, domestic politics and the global economy and business/leadership. Distribution into United States brick and mortar, online outlets and through major wholesalers has soared.

"There is a hunger in the United States and Canada for Eastern ideas," said Rocky Uchimura, the director of IRH Press USA. "We have translated Master Okawa's extraordinary success worldwide into a North America program that remains consistent with our international editorial, production and marketing quality."

"The results in 2017 indicate that Ryuho Okawa's teachings are spreading to new readers everyday," added Uchimura. "2018 promises to be groundbreaking once again in terms of our publishing program."

In the last 18 months, IRH Press USA has released Okawa's "Messages from Heaven," "Invitation to Happiness," "Think Big," "Heart of Work," "Laws of Justice," "Essence of Buddha," "Miracle of Meditation," "Life of Triumph," "Laws of Success," "Unhappiness Syndrome," "Healing from Within," "Laws Mission," "Invincible Thinking" and "Starting Point to Happiness." This January, IRH Press releases its first business book, "The Laws of Invincible Leadership" and in the Spring of 2018, IRH Press USA will release "Laws of Faith," "Strong Mind," and "My Journey to the Spirit World." In the Fall of 2018, IRH Press USA will re-release in paperback the international best-seller "Laws of the Sun" with a major North American marketing roll-out.

United States and Canadian chain and independent stores are carrying both of Okawa's recent releases but simultaneously modeling a significant number of back-list titles. Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Indigo, Hudson News, Vroman's, and numerous other bookstores have stocked thousands of Okawa's books.

IRH Press USA also has dedicated significant resources to co-op placement, publicity and advertising in broadcast, print, online and social media venues to support both front-list and back-list titles. Included in this marketing effort was radio interviews on over 1,000 radio stations by IRH Press USA spokespeople, advertorials in the Weekly Standard, the National Review, the Economist, and advertisements in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Newsweek, Spirituality and Health Magazine, Mindful Magazine and Tricycle. Two 8-part infomercials have aired on WNYW Fox 5 in New York, WAGA-TV Atlanta, KTVU-TV San Francisco, and KTLA-TV Los Angeles. Okawa's books have also launched an Amazon advertising campaign and been featured on www.okawabooks.com and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram platforms which provide content for over 50,000 followers. Ryuho Okawa visited the United States in October 2016 and addressed a sold-out crowd of his followers and readers in New York City. Bookstore events occur monthly at chain and independent stores.

"United States and Canadian media have embraced Ryuho Okawa's books and messages," said Bob Newman, IRH Press USA's Publicist. "Not only has Okawa's United States spokespeople been staples on talk radio and with major Podcasts but major print and online publications are now preparing features, reviews, mentions and authored pieces featuring the content of IRH Press USA books."

IRH Press USA is distributed by Continental Sales and NBN Canada. Since joining with Continental two years ago, distribution in the United States has increased significantly. IRH Press USA is represented by Newman Communications for publicity, marketing and sales coordination.

In 1986, Okawa founded Happy Science as a spiritual movement dedicated to bringing greater happiness to humankind by uniting religions and cultures to live in harmony. Today he is the CEO of Happy Science. Happy Science has grown rapidly from its beginnings in Japan to a worldwide organization with centers in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Canada and over 12 million followers. The spiritual workshops Happy Science offers are open to people of all faiths and walks of life and are rooted in the same simple principles of happiness that inspired Okawa's own spiritual awakening. Okawa is compassionately committed to the spiritual growth of others. In addition to writing and publishing books, he continues to give lectures around the world. In addition to promoting spiritual growth, Okawa has also dedicated himself to improving society and creating a better world. As affiliates of the Happy Science Group, he has founded various institutions including boarding schools, a higher education institution, a preschool education institution, as well as a publishing company, a political party, a talent agency, and a talent school.

Happy Science maintains United States Temples in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Tampa, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

SOURCE IRH Press USA

Related Links

http://www.okawabooks.com


ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Horizon Solutions LLC, today announced that John Kerkhove, current Vice President of Global Sales at Eaton Crouse-Hinds, has been named President and CEO, effective January 3, 2018. Mike Herrmann, current President and CEO, will continue as the Chief Financial Officer after the transition. In addition, Karen Baker, Executive Vice President of Sales Operations, Products, and Services Management, was promoted to Chief Operating Officer effective December 5, 2017. Today's leadership announcements are the result of a succession plan overseen by the Horizon Solutions Board of Directors since 2013.

John Kerkhove, Horizon Solutions, President & CEO Karen Baker, Horizon Solutions, Chief Operating Officer

"John is exceptionally well qualified to lead the Company. For nearly three decades, John has built an impressive track record of strategic, operational, and business development accomplishments. He has proven to be a successful and trusted leader and brings a respected reputation for developing people and inspiring teams," said Mike Herrmann, President and CEO. "John shares our values and our focus on innovation and he places the same strong emphasis as we do on the customer experience. The Board unanimously agreed that John's leadership experience, coupled with his strategic thinking and proven ability to deliver results, make him the right person to help execute Horizon Solutions' strategic priorities and drive sustainable growth. John encompasses everything we stand for and I could not be more pleased about his appointment to this critical role," said Herrmann.

Kerkhove began his career in 1986 as Sales Engineer at Square D and subsequently served in sales and marketing positions across the company. Transitioning to Eaton Crouse-Hinds in 2005, he was promoted to Vice President of Sales North America, in 2011, and to Vice President of Global Sales, in 2015. Kerkhove earned a bachelor's degree in Engineering from Purdue University.

"I have long admired Horizon Solutions and I am profoundly honored to join their team and be part of their continued success. I look forward to working with the staff, many who have been with the company for years. And I am excited for the future and the opportunity that lies ahead of us," said John Kerkhove.

ABOUT HORIZON SOLUTIONS

Horizon Solutions helps improve our customers' efficiency, productivity and safety through expertise in Electrical, Automation, Industrial, Energy, and Safety products and services. We seek to understand our customers' needs and apply solutions that solve their most demanding challenges. Our customers include Industrial End-Users, Electrical Contractors, Equipment Manufacturers, and Commercial, Institutional and Municipal facilities across New England and Upstate New York. Additional information is available on the Company's website at https://hs-e.com/.

SOURCE Horizon Solutions LLC

Related Links

https://hs-e.com


RYE BROOK, N.Y., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "If you had a chance to support research that is saving livesWhat would you do?" asks John Quinones in a new public service announcement for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, titled "I Live." The ABC News correspondent and host of the popular television series, What Would You Do? is featured in the compelling segments, joined by a group of children and one adult who are all blood cancer survivors.

Quinones begins the :30 version of the "I Live" PSA stating, "Thanks to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, what was once impossible is happening today for thousands of patients with blood cancer," followed by quick cuts of an adult and five inspirational child cancer survivors. The survivors each confirm, "I Live" or "She Lives," underscoring the progress being made in treatments for patients because of the research supported by LLS. They are:

Bella Mazuca , diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at 2 years old;

, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at 2 years old; Claire Montwille, diagnosed with ALL at 2  year old;

Aidan Love , diagnosed with acute T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma in 2014;

, diagnosed with acute T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma in 2014; Victoria Young , diagnosed with ALL one day before her sixth birthday;

, diagnosed with ALL one day before her sixth birthday; Aida Cordeau , diagnosed with ALL when she was in kindergarten (Aida's twin sister Kalli says "She Lives"); and

, diagnosed with ALL when she was in kindergarten (Aida's twin sister Kalli says "She Lives"); and Amanda Ramirez , diagnosed in early 2016 with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), concludes they all live "because of the research supported by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society."

The :15, :30 and :60 versions of the PSA drive home the urgent need to raise funds for research to advance blood cancer therapies to save lives. Boom TV is handling the PSA distribution.

"John Quinones's What Would You Do? series is about doing the right thing," said Louis J. DeGennaro, Ph.D., president and CEO, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. "He exemplifies this goal in his commitment to raising awareness of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's goal to find cures for blood cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma, and improve the quality of life for patients and their families."

Quinones generously donated his time to create the PSA, as well as participating in other LLS fundraising events, including emceeing a San Antonio chapter 'Models of Courage' Fashion Show fundraiser, where all the models are blood cancer survivors, and participating in a 'Dinner with John' fundraiser.

"I Live" was written, directed and produced in San Antonio by Irez Productions' Bryan Anthony Ramirez and Amanda Ramirez, the adult leukemia survivor featured in the spot. The Ramirez's donated their talent and services to create the PSAs on behalf of LLS.

About The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is the world's largest voluntary health agency dedicated to blood cancer. The LLS mission: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. LLS funds lifesaving blood cancer research around the world, provides free information and support services, and is the voice for all blood cancer patients seeking access to quality, affordable, coordinated care.

Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Rye Brook, NY, LLS has chapters throughout the United States and Canada. To learn more, visit LLS.org. Patients should contact the Information Resource Center at (800) 955-4572, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET.

Contact:

Linda Heaney

[email protected]

914.821.8208

SOURCE The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Related Links

http://www.LLS.org


CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Keeper Security, Inc., the world's leading password manager and secure digital vault, today announced the opening of its first European office at 9 Parliament St., Cork T12 NY99, Ireland. The office will provide local management, enterprise sales and engineering support for Keeper's growing EMEA business customer base.

The new office in the Cork capitol building will staff 50 employees over the next 2 years. This team will include a Sales Director, Office Manager, Training and Pre-Sales Engineer, and Sales Representatives to support the UK, Ireland, Northern Europe, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and the Middle East.

Welcoming the new project, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys TD said, "This decision by Keeper Security to open its first European office in Cork with the creation of 50 new quality jobs, is a very exciting project. The ICT Sector has made extraordinary advances in recent years but these advances bring their own challenges, and password protection and encryption are becoming very significant issues. Keeper is at the forefront of technologies to combat crime in this area and the Government warmly welcomes investing companies who have expertise in new high-tech niche areas of the ICT sector."

"I am delighted to be leading the Keeper Security sales team for EMEA," said John Maher, Director of Sales. "Our focus will be to choose the right people and provide the right environment to significantly grow the business into Europe in 2018."

"John and the European team will be a vital connection to our customers overseas," said Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. "They will be responsible for adding 20 percent to our total revenue and provide support to the many businesses that need password and data protection. More than 80 percent of data breaches are due to weak or poor password management and Keeper Security plans to be the first line of defense to protect thousands of businesses across EMEA over the next several years."

Martin Shanahan, CEO of IDA Ireland said, "Keeper Security adds to the dynamic cluster of cyber security companies choosing to serve their customers in the EMEA market from Ireland. Cork, in particular, already has an established cluster of online security firms in place. The city's tech infrastructure, talent pool and supportive academic network have created a compelling business environment which will continue to attract investment from companies operating in this space."

Passwords represent the greatest security risk to businesses today. With Keeper, employees have on-demand access to encrypted passwords, websites and applications, increasing their productivity while protecting them with best-in-class security. Keeper goes beyond serving as a password management tool and works as a digital vault to store an organization's most sensitive digital assets.

Keeper for business is a multi-tenant version of Keeper's consumer application, which utilizes zero-knowledge security, is unified across all platforms and leverages Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) & Active Directory (AD) integration as well as Single Sign-On (SSO) integration. With Keeper for business, employees only have to remember one master password and the system will create military-grade passwords for other sites. To learn more, please visit https://keepersecurity.com/business.html.

ABOUT KEEPER SECURITY, INC.

Keeper Security is transforming the way businesses and individuals protect their passwords and sensitive digital assets to significantly reduce cyber theft. As the leading password manager and digital vault, Keeper helps millions of people and thousands of businesses substantially mitigate the risk of a data breach. Keeper is SOC-2 Certified and utilizes best-in-class encryption to safeguard its customers. Keeper protects businesses of all sizes across every major industry sector. Keeper partners with global OEMs and mobile operators to preload Keeper on smartphones and tablets. Learn more at https://keepersecurity.com.

SOURCE Keeper Security, Inc.

Related Links

http://keepersecurity.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimmeridge Energy Management Company, LLC ("Kimmeridge" or the "Firm"), an energy private equity firm focused on making direct investments in unconventional oil and gas assets in the U.S., today announced the final closing of Kimmeridge Energy Fund IV (the "Fund" or "Fund IV) at its $400 million hard cap. In conjunction with co-investments alongside the Fund, Kimmeridge has raised total capital commitments of $650 million to invest in upstream oil and gas opportunities. Inclusive of Fund IV, its related co-investments, and a $350 million Permian-focused minerals fund, Kimmeridge has raised over $1 billion of limited partner commitments in 2017, and approximately $1.7 billion since the firm's founding in 2012.

Fund IV is focused on directly acquiring and developing unconventional assets in top-tier basins that sit at the front end of the U.S. cost curve and are positioned to outperform through the commodity price cycle. Fund IV is currently 58% deployed.

Ben Dell, Founder and Managing Partner of Kimmeridge, said, "We are pleased with the Fund's reception and would like to thank our limited partners for their support. We have already made several compelling Fund IV investments and identified a number of exciting oil and gas opportunities that we believe will create significant value for our investors."

Led by founders Ben Dell, Dr. Neil McMahon and Henry Makansi, the Kimmeridge team has deep industry, investment and operating expertise. Kimmeridge maintains a fully-staffed, in-house operating team, with experience across all major upstream functions and disciplines. This structure empowers the Fund to directly identify, develop and monetize promising assets, in contrast to the more traditional private equity energy model in which fund sponsors recruit management teams and outsource oversight of investments. With Kimmeridge's direct model, more of the investment return accrues to limited partners.

The Fund received support from a diversified base of existing and new investors, including university endowments, foundations, family offices, public pension funds and a sovereign wealth fund.

A Sidley Austin LLP team, led by David Kreisler, served as fund counsel. Kimmeridge did not use a placement agent.

About Kimmeridge Energy

Founded in 2012 by Ben Dell, Dr. Neil McMahon and Henry Makansi, Kimmeridge is an energy private equity firm focused on making direct investments in unconventional oil and gas assets in the U.S. Rather than partner with separate management teams, Kimmeridge identifies, owns and operates each of its assets directly, maintaining an in-house geology and operating team with experience across all major E&P functions.

Kimmeridge Contact:

Matthew Zales

646.517.7258

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Daniel Yunger

Kekst

212.521.4800

[email protected]

SOURCE Kimmeridge Energy
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Herb Scannell, the recently appointed CEO of mitu, the leading digital media brand for Latino millennials, today announced a new long-form development, production and talent team to be led by accomplished creative executive David Ortiz. Ortiz will report to Beatriz Acevedo, mitu's President and co-founder.

As head of mitu's newly restructured team, Ortiz oversees mitu's scripted and unscripted content strategy, development slate and talent partnerships. Previously, Ortiz served as an SVP at EndemolShine USA where he developed scripted, unscripted and digital content, most notably three successful seasons of "Pitbull's New Year's Eve Special" on Fox. Prior to that, he oversaw development at Vin Diesel's One Race Films, and worked as a development executive at Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Highlights in his career include co-developing "Fast & Furious," "Hellboy 2," "Syriana," "Role Models" and "Riddick."

"I'm excited to join mitu at a time when Latinos are becoming the leading edge in America," Ortiz said. "Our insights and ability to attract and mobilize a massive audience have created a demand for us to double down on investments in original series and character IP. Young Latinos want to see their stories being told and mitu is uniquely positioned to become the voice of this generation."

In addition to Ortiz, mitu expanded its production and talent teams to include the following executives.

Ernie Martinez , a former 10-year Director of On Air Programming at Disney, joins mitu as Vice President of Talent Partnerships and will be responsible for developing a roster of A-list and emerging talent.

, a former 10-year Director of On Air Programming at Disney, joins mitu as Vice President of Talent Partnerships and will be responsible for developing a roster of A-list and emerging talent. Raul Celaya , a 20-year production executive joins mitu as SVP of Content Operations and Production. Previously he was head of production at Astronauts Wanted and Studio 71.

"Beatriz and I are extremely excited to begin building a robust long-form and scripted content pipeline that solidifies our place as the voice of Latino youth in America," said Herb Scannell. "The addition of these talented executives to Beatriz's team is just the first step in that process. Our goal is to bring to life the rich 'stories of us' that are not being told by mainstream media today."

Added Acevedo: "Latinos are the new American mainstream, yet we represent less than six percent of speaking roles in media. It's baffling that we are so invisible in this country, even when our contributions to its economy and culture are so tangible. At mitu, we are committed to supporting and empowering the next generation of Latino content creators, to tell our stories and put us where we belong, front and center in American pop culture."

About mitu

At mitu, we elevate and celebrate Latino stories, audiences and talent to their rightful place, front and center in American pop culture. We are the leader in connecting brands and creators to young Latinos, the most influential demographic in the U.S. Our stories reach over 91 million Americans every month.

mitu's investors include Upfront Ventures, WPP, AwesomenessTV, and Verizon Ventures. mitu is headquartered in Downtown Los Angeles and has operations in New York, Chicago, and Bogota, Colombia. For more information, visit www.wearemitu.com.

SOURCE mitu

Related Links

http://www.wearemitu.com


Liaison's Data-Inspired Future Scholarship is designed to encourage promising students to pursue careers in data and use information to positively impact the world. Sheill, a National AP Scholar who scored a perfect 800 on the mathematics portion of the SAT, plans to use the scholarship from Liaison to major in computer science when she enters college next year.

"I'm honored to receive this scholarship from Liaison  it's perfect for my future field of study," Sheill said. "Artificial intelligence is changing the world, and data is driving amazing new breakthroughs every day. I'm incredibly excited about the possibilities, and I'm grateful to Liaison for this award, which will help me achieve my academic goals in a data-driven future."

Although she's still in high school, Sheill has an impressive list of achievements already. She successfully completed a paid internship at Microsoft, where she created a browser extension that extracts webpage metadata to save research citations. Sheill is currently interning at Pioneer Square Labs in Seattle, where she is building a machine learning classifier.

Sheill's application for the Data-Inspired Future Scholarship stood out because of her impressive academic credentials, work experience, philanthropic activities and a 60-second video she created. The video emphasizes data's importance in driving AI breakthroughs, highlighting Sheill's work using open source software libraries for deep learning models and a project to automate test question generation using natural language processing. View Sheill's video here.

"As employees of a company that exists to help customers integrate and manage data to unlock its many insights, the Liaison team understands the centrality of data to innovation and efficiency," said Pamela Osborne, Liaison's director of human resources. "With a clear vision of how data can drive change and unleash creativity, Zoe is an ideal candidate for our Data-Inspired Future Scholarship, and we wish her all the best in her academic pursuits and her career."

A talented flutist, Sheill is a member of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra and Principal Flutist in the All Northwest 6-State Band. She performed a concerto for flute with the Seattle Symphony. Sheill is president of Instruments for Change, a nonprofit organization that raises money to purchase instruments for low-income students in the Seattle area. Sheill also founded the Homeless Education and Living Project to raise money and collect goods for people in need.

High school or college students who are interested in applying for next fall's Data-Inspired Future Scholarship can submit applications by May 31, 2018. For more information on scholarship eligibility and details on how to apply, please visit www.liaison.com/scholarship. The winner of the next round will be notified by June 30, 2018.

Liaison's award-winning ALLOY Platform was designed from the ground up to solve increasingly complex data integration and management challenges. ALLOY recognizes all patterns of data, making it ideal to handle information from a proliferating number of sources. ALLOY helps companies eliminate data silos, reduce integration complexity and drive innovation and efficiencies more effectively. To learn more, please visit www.liaison.com/liaison-alloy-platform.

About Liaison Technologies

Liaison Technologies provides integration and data management solutions to help customers unlock the power of a data-centric approach to their business. Liaison's cloud-based approach breaks down the barriers between data silos to tap into the valuable information needed to make better decisions, faster. Tailored to solve complex data problems today while building a robust foundation for tomorrow's unforeseen challenges, Liaison fosters a seamless flow of information securely and at scale. Founded in 2000, Liaison serves more than 7,000 customers in 46 countries, with offices in the United States, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Singapore. For more information, visit http://www.liaison.com/ and connect with Liaison on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Amy Dardinger

SSPR

(847) 415-9321

[email protected]

SOURCE Liaison Technologies

Related Links

http://www.liaison.com


Most recently, Carrie led brand, marketing and communications strategy for BGRS, a global provider of human resources and talent mobility services for Fortune 500 companies. During her time there, she drove enhanced awareness and preference for the BGRS brand and capabilities, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in new annualized revenue for the company.

Prior to joining BGRS, Carrie provided corporate marketing and communications leadership and management for Navigant, a publicly traded (NYSE), leading, global, management consulting and dispute advisory firm. During her ten years at Navigant, she built an integrated marketing function, designed a firm-wide thought leadership strategy and platform, and introduced and operationalized emerging media and approaches into the marketing mix, including web, social and content marketing.

In addition to her extensive professional services experience, Carrie spent six years providing marketing and communications program management and employee communications consulting for some of the world's most recognized brands including Allstate Insurance Co., the McDonald's Corporation and Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. The latter two organizations were clients served during her tenure at Golin, a global strategic communications firm.

While also working at Golin, Carrie earned her Master of Science in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in both communications and English from Purdue University.

Jim Lawson, Global Co-CEO and Chairman, stated, "With our continuing growth in revenues, people, product lines and industry expertise, we decided that now was the time to invest in both marketing capability and leadership. After an extensive search, we are very fortunate to have Carrie join Lincoln International as our Chief Marketing Officer. Carrie brings a wealth of knowledge and experience having successfully led multi-faceted global marketing efforts in support of strategic and financial growth. We are looking forward to embarking on our next phase of success and enhancing our global platform with her leadership, partnership and integrated thinking."

About Lincoln International

Lincoln International specializes in merger and acquisition advisory services, debt advisory services, private capital raising and restructuring advice on mid-market transactions. Lincoln International also provides fairness opinions, valuations and joint ventures and partnering advisory services on a wide range of transaction sizes. With nineteen offices in the Americas, Asia and Europe, Lincoln International has strong local knowledge and contacts in key global economies. The firm provides clients with senior-level attention, in-depth industry expertise and integrated resources. By being focused and independent, Lincoln International serves its clients without conflicts of interest.

More information about Lincoln International can be obtained at www.lincolninternational.com

Media Contact: Heidi Becker

[email protected]

+1 (312) 506-2739

SOURCE Lincoln International LLC

Related Links

http://www.lincolninternational.com


Thanks to generous donors, WWP is able to serve warriors by connecting them with one another and their communities and empowering them to live life on their terms.



"I knew about the Schei family's story through Mary Tallouzi and Ed Tyke, who I used to fundraise with for Wounded Warrior Project," Doug said. "They told me about the family, Erik's service, what happened, and how his parents must provide Erik with care pretty much 24/7. I thought to myself, 'how can we help one of New Mexico's own local warriors?' That scale of injury isn't something you hear a lot about in New Mexico."

Erik was wounded in 2005 by an insurgent sniper  the bullet pierced his helmet and brain, near his right ear. By the time his parents arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland, he was lying in a hospital bed with his skull partially removed. Today, Erik relies on the full-time care of his parents, Gordon and Christine, who live at home with him.

"When Ed, Mary, and I visited the Scheis, it was evident that even though the house was retrofitted for ADA, it did not work for Erik," Doug said. "Erik's wheelchair is bigger than most and does not typically fit through doors. We saw the door trim was banged up."

The home's renovation needs were extensive. The new layout allows Erik to more easily maneuver his electric wheelchair into his bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen without hitting the walls or other furniture.

To read the rest of this article, visit http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/highlights?item=30919.

About Wounded Warrior Project

Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) connects, serves, and empowers wounded warriors. Read more at http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/about-us.

SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project

Related Links

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org


FORT WORTH, Texas, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lon Smith Roofing today saluted a Fort Worth-area veteran by installing a new roof at no charge. Fred Hebb served 16 and  years in the Air Force and was chosen as the winner of the quarterly Roof for Vets program.

"Our veterans face many challenges when they return home," said Scott Hamilton of Lon Smith Roofing. "Challenges of life after the military  challenges of employment  challenges of re-adjusting to civilian life. Our veterans have fought for us  it's up to us to fight for them. And at Lon Smith Roofing, we created the Roof for Vets program to do just that. "

Each quarter of the year, the Lon Smith Roof for Vets program identifies a worthy veteran in need of a new roof. After the selection has been made, the company then builds a new roof free of charge as a way of saying thank you.

"Today, we are honored to present a new roof to Fred Hebb," Hamilton said in front of Mr. Hebb's house in Bedford. "Mr. Hebb served in the Air Force for 16 and  years. As a trained pilot, he served in a number of units including Bomber, Training Command and Strategic Air Command. He needs a new roof. And today, he is getting one."

Mr. Hebb is the fourth veteran to receive a roof this year as part of the program. To learn more about the Roof for Vets program and about Lon Smith Roofing, visit lonsmith.com

SOURCE Lon Smith Roofing

Related Links

http://www.lonsmith.com


RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being released by the Claims Administrator for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Immigration Stops and Detention Compensation Fund on behalf of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office ("MCSO") and the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") of Arizona about the lawsuit Ortega Melendres v. Penzone (previously Arpaio), Case No.: CV-07-2513-PHX-GMS.

A federal court ordered Maricopa County to establish a $500,000 fund (the "Compensation Fund") to pay people ("Victims") who were stopped or held improperly by MCSO officers between December 23, 2011, and May 24, 2013, based on their suspected immigration status. Victims stopped or held improperly for more than 20 minutes will receive at least $500 and can receive up to $10,000 depending on how long they were stopped or held. Additionally, Victims can receive even more money if, because of their MCSO stop, they were also detained by federal authorities or suffered physical harm, severe emotional distress, or loss of wages or property. Lawful immigration status is not required to receive these payments.

The court ordered Maricopa County to create the Compensation Fund because it determined that MCSO violated a preliminary injunction that prohibited MCSO deputies from detaining a person solely on the basis that MCSO personnel believed the person was in the U.S. without authorization. A detention occurs whenever an individual is not free to leave law enforcement custody. Detention for the purposes of the Compensation Fund may include being transported in a motor vehicle by an MCSO deputy or other law enforcement officer, held at the side of the road by an MCSO deputy, or placed in a cell.

To receive payment, a Victim must file a complete and valid claim by December 3, 2018 and must agree to release any claims he or she may have resulting from the same detention. Claims may be filed easily and quickly online at www.MaricopaSheriffCompensationFund.org or www.fondodecompensaciondelsheriffdemaricopa.org.

More information about the Compensation Fund is available at www.MaricopaSheriffCompensationFund.org or www.FondoDeCompensacionDelSheriffDeMaricopa.org and by calling 1-844-500-6327.

SOURCE MCSO Immigration Stops and Detention Compensation Fund Claims Administrator

Related Links

https://www.maricopasheriffcompensationfund.org


SAN DIEGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Metacrine, Inc., an innovative biotechnology company focused on drug development, today announced it has closed a $22M Series B financing led by new investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA), along with participation from existing investors ARCH, Polaris, venBio, and Alexandria Venture Investments. As part of the new financing, Carol Gallagher, Pharm D, Partner at NEA, will join the company's board of directors. With the new financing, Metacrine has raised approximately $60M since it began operations in early 2015.

Over the course of the past year, Metacrine has advanced its lead asset, MET409, an oral non-bile acid FXR agonist, into late stage IND-enabling studies. First-in-human studies of MET409 are planned to be initiated in the first half of 2018 and completed by year end. Based on extensive profiling and benchmarking against other FXR agonists in development, MET409 has been purposefully designed to have a differentiated profile to position it as best-in-class for efficacy and safety. FXR has been clinically validated to be a key target in hepatobiliary diseases such as primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

"We have had a keen interest in new therapeutics for patients with NASH. We look forward to working with the experienced management team at Metacrine to support their mission to discover and development innovative medicines," said Dr. Gallagher.

In addition to advancing MET409 into clinical development, the Series B proceeds will also be used to fund drug discovery efforts against novel targets in liver inflammation and fibrosis. Metacrine is also advancing a FGF1 program, a first-in-class insulin sensitizer, in collaboration with Novo Nordisk.

"We are thrilled to have NEA as a new investor along with the addition of Dr. Gallagher to our board," said Ken Song, MD, President and CEO of Metacrine. "NASH represents one of the largest unmet medical needs in medicine today. We believe FXR is a compelling NASH target and that our program addresses the gaps in delivering a best-in-class molecule. In addition to NASH, we have outlined a strategy to pursue FXR in other clinical indications."

About Metacrine

Metacrine is a privately held biotechnology company headquartered in San Diego, CA. The company is focused on efficiently developing innovative drugs that materially benefit patients with metabolic disease. For more information, visit www.metacrine.com.

Contact:

Julie Rathbun

Rathbun Communications

[email protected]

206.769.9219

SOURCE Metacrine, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.metacrine.com


MIAMI, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Miami faces growing challenges of inclusion and affordability. According to a new analysis by the FIU | Miami Urban Future Initiative, the Miami metropolitan area ranks sixth among large U.S. metros on the New Urban Crisis Index, a composite measure of economic inequality, economic segregation, and housing unaffordability.

The Miami Urban Future Initiative is a joint effort between the Creative Class Group and Florida International University's College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts (CARTA), funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to develop new research for building a stronger and more inclusive economy in Miami.

MUFI's latest report on "Miami's New Urban Crisis"written by Richard Florida, author of The New Urban Crisis and Visiting FIU Fellowevaluates Miami's economic development challenges compared to 52 large U.S. metros with more than one million people. The report examines dimensions of urban stress, including economic inequality, housing unaffordability, and middle class decline. "There is a downside to Miami's urban revival," writes Florida. "Its recent economic boom has generated a New Urban Crisis born from its very success."

Miami's rankings on the various equity metrics include:

Income Inequality. Miami ranks second among large U.S. metros in terms of income inequality.

ranks second among large U.S. metros in terms of income inequality. Wealth Segregation. Miami ranks tenth among large U.S. metros according to its segregation of the wealthy, a measure of the residential segregation of households with incomes of $200,000 or more.

ranks tenth among large U.S. metros according to its segregation of the wealthy, a measure of the residential segregation of households with incomes of or more. Overall Segregation. Miami ranks sixteenth among large U.S. metros on the Segregation Inequality Index, a combined measure of economic segregation and both wage and income inequality.

ranks sixteenth among large U.S. metros on the Segregation Inequality Index, a combined measure of economic segregation and both wage and income inequality. Housing Unaffordability. Miami ranks among the twenty least-affordable metros in the world in terms of its "median multiple," or ratio of median housing prices to median household income.

ranks among the twenty least-affordable metros in the world in terms of its "median multiple," or ratio of median housing prices to median household income. Concentrated Poverty. 14 percent of Greater Miami households and one in five families with children lived below the poverty line.

14 percent of households and one in five families with children lived below the poverty line. Middle Class Decline. In Miami , the middle-class share of population declined from 51 percent in 2000 to 48.5 percent in 2014.

"Like Miami's urban revival, the shift toward inclusive prosperity will not take place overnight," explains Florida. "It begins with local leaders viewing equity and economic development as a mutual goal."

The full report is available here.

Contact: Steven Pedigo, [email protected]

SOURCE Creative Class Group
HOUSTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael Baker International, a global leader in engineering, planning and consulting services, today announced that Cory Wilder has been appointed to Senior Vice President and Office Executive of the Houston, Texas, office. To meet the increased infrastructure demands throughout the state of Texas, Mr. Wilder will position the Houston office for growth by leveraging his extensive background in oil and gas as well as his diverse experience in other areas, such as highways.

With more than 23 years working for Michael Baker International, Mr. Wilder brings a deep background in operations, proven project management expertise and strong leadership experience to his new role that will be well-served in enhancing client relationships, driving growth and creating opportunities for team members. Mr. Wilder previously served as a Senior Vice President and National Pipeline Engineering Practice Lead. In his previous role, Mr. Wilder was responsible for technical oversight and execution of pipeline projects throughout the continental United States, Alaska and Canada.

"Cory's familiarity and previous roles with Michael Baker International, coupled with his deep professional network in the industry, will serve as great assets in his new role as we expand our presence in Southeast Texas," said Juan Contreras, P.E., Regional Director for Michael Baker International's Gulf Coast Region. "As Texas continues to rapidly develop, I am confident that Cory will effectively manage and grow our client relationships to demonstrate how We Make a Difference for our clients and the communities we serve."

Mr. Wilder added, "The City of Houston, as well as the larger surrounding Harris County, is currently recovering from the effects of Hurricane Harvey, and Michael Baker International is a valued partner to assist in the ongoing recovery efforts. Moving forward, we will continue to deliver innovative solutions to our clients to help solve some of the region's most complex and pressing challenges, including floodplain management and transportation mobility."

Mr. Wilder brings a varied portfolio of experience to his new role, including civil, pipeline and transportation engineering. His civil engineering experience includes project management, planning, permitting, design, estimating, specifications, construction planning and construction management. He has a wide range of project experience including transportation and drainage structures, natural gas pipelines, border security infrastructure and superload transports. Mr. Wilder has also conducted planning, permitting, design, route selection, directionally drilled crossings, structural analysis, and management of complex multi-disciplined projects as part of his work in pipeline engineering. He also has performed analyses of highway structures for oversize and overweight loads, design and estimating for structure selection of highway bridges, design of bridges, design of retaining walls and noise walls, bridge inspection, design of storm drains and project management.

Mr. Wilder earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and his Master of Science degree in Arctic Engineering from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

About Michael Baker International

Michael Baker International is a leading global provider of engineering and consulting services, which include planning, architectural, environmental, construction, program management, and full life-cycle support services as well as information technology and communications services and solutions. The company provides its comprehensive range of services and solutions in support of U.S. federal, state, and municipal governments, foreign allied governments, and a wide range of commercial clients. Michael Baker International has more than 6,000 employees in more than 90 locations across the U.S. and internationally. To learn more, visit www.mbakerintl.com.

SOURCE Michael Baker International

Related Links

http://www.mbakercorp.com


DALLAS, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- America's missing in action troops and buried unknown soldiers are the focus of a new alliance between Texas military museums and a team of global researchers. Today, the Sons of Liberty Museum, the Army Air Corps Library and Museum, and the MIA Recovery Network announced a strategic partnership to help in researching and locating American military personnel who were lost in combat.

A final resting place for America's servicemen and women, Arlington National Cemetery.

Leveraging a global organization of researchers, the MIA Recovery Network has accumulated an enormous amount of information about missing service men and women, as well as the "Buried Unknowns" from World War II. The Sons of Liberty and Army Air Corps Museum are providing a robust technological platform for the accumulation and mining of current and future data. This critical data is being published on the SOLM and AACLM websites.

The information on each MIA or Unidentified soldier has been placed on an individual web page and as of today, more than 22,000 web pages of information have been created. This outstanding collection of material furthers the joint mission of the museums to provide historical education as well as public access to unique reference materials.

This addition to the museums' collective internet platform means that more than 215,000 web pages of unique content are viewable to the public. Cross-referencing of serial numbers has revealed that the museums' already had some material relating to awards that these MIAs received. This provides another data point to the file on each MIA and publishing will enable historians, researchers and family members to view and augment this material.

To provide some historical context: on this anniversary of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor there remain over 1500 unknown soldiers buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, known as the Punchbowl. As of today, there are approximately 78,000 American soldiers still missing in action from World War II.

To view the information on MIA or Unidentified soldiers, please visit:

http://www.sonsoflibertymuseum.org/missing-in-action/

http://www.sonsoflibertymuseum.org/buried-unknowns/

http://www.armyaircorpsmuseum.org/missing-in-action/

http://www.armyaircorpsmuseum.org/buried-unknowns/

The museums are based in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. Contact Robert Coalter at 214-957-1393 for more information.

Sons of Liberty Museum

www.sonsoflibertymuseum.org

Army Air Corps Library and Museum

www.armyaircorpsmuseum.org

KIA Recovery Network

miarecoverynetwork.com

The Sons of Liberty Museum, Army Air Corps Library and Museum and the MIA Recovery Network are 501(c)(3) non-profit entities.

SOURCE Sons of Liberty Museum

Related Links

http://www.sonsoflibertymuseum.org


COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Napatech (OSLO: NAPA.OL), the leading provider of reconfigurable computing platforms, today announced a key design win in APAC as TOYO Corporation's ICT business unit has chosen Napatech's FPGA SmartNIC and software for its capture and replay solution. Synesis is a high-speed, streaming-to-disk capture system from TOYO Corporation that provides lossless traffic capture at up to 100G Ethernet speeds.

With network operators rapidly upgrading their infrastructure to 100 Gigabit Ethernet to account for the hyper-scale performance requirements of cloud, 5G mobile and IoT services, the time is right for the Synesis 100G capture and replay solution. The solution offers telecom and data center operators the ability to capture traffic without any packet loss and replay it as received on the network. Napatech SmartNICs offer nanosecond-precision timestamping, which allows the packets to be replayed with the same interframe gap and timing as when they were captured.

Click to Tweet: [email protected]_US's Solution for Test and Measurement Now with @Napatech's 100G Replay: https://tinyurl.com/y8xe462t #pcap

Benefits of the 100G traffic capture and replay solution:

Performance measurement at 100G: With this solution, users can now capture and replay IP traffic to measure end-to-end performance and Quality of Service for network speeds of up to 100G.

With this solution, users can now capture and replay IP traffic to measure end-to-end performance and Quality of Service for network speeds of up to 100G. Faster, cost-efficient testing: Napatech's ability to perform precision timestamping makes deployment of large-scale test setups with real traffic extremely fast and cost efficient. Furthermore, Napatech is based on open and standard computing that involves low deployment costs, making it cheaper than building a custom piece of hardware.

Napatech's ability to perform precision timestamping makes deployment of large-scale test setups with real traffic extremely fast and cost efficient. Furthermore, Napatech is based on open and standard computing that involves low deployment costs, making it cheaper than building a custom piece of hardware. Robust infrastructure: By simulating and replaying different traffic setups based on worst-case scenarios, the infrastructure can be made more robust.

Yoshiyuki Saitoh, CIO, TOYO, said: "We believe that 100G replay will be key for future trouble-shooting solutions. Of course, it is always a challenge for us to provide 100G or higher speed solutions with high reliability, but with our continuing collaboration with our reliable partner Napatech, we can overcome this challenge and continue to innovate."

Ken Way, Chief Sales Officer, Napatech said: "TOYO Corporation is a recognized leader among many Japanese engineering firms. Their Synesis products are sought-after tools by network engineers building the most advanced datacenter and mobile networks. We are pleased that our FPGA-based SmartNIC software and hardware solutions are helping them to provide the latest breakthroughs in test and measurement for the most sophisticated networks in the world."

About Napatech

Napatech helps companies to reimagine their business by bringing hyperscale computing benefits to IT organizations of every size. We enhance open and standard virtualized servers to boost innovation and release valuable computing resources that improve services and increase revenue. Our reconfigurable computing platform is based on a broad set of FPGA software for leading IT compute, network and security applications that are supported on a wide array of FPGA hardware designs. Additional information is available at: www.napatech.com

About TOYO Corporation

TOYO Corporation is one of Japan's pre-eminent specialists in the allcritical area of measurement, providing comprehensive and integrated support in the core triad of hardware, software and education. Our aim is to provide our customers and clients with thoroughgoing and all-embracing services, while engaging in constant and ongoing feedback with our suppliers and developers. It is our ultimate objective that we serve as an effective interface in all our endeavors, then contribute to paving the future for industry and research ends. For more information please visit TOYO Corporation's website: https://www.toyo.co.jp/english/

No Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements which are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors, including but not limited to, business conditions, trends in the industry and markets, global economic and geopolitical conditions, macro-economic factors, and other risks and uncertainties set forth in Napatech's reports. The matter discussed in this release is based on current expectations and maybe subject to change. Napatech will not necessarily update this information. For details, visit us at www.napatech.com.

Media Investor Relations Shannon Tierney, Nadel Phelan Christina Bastius Thomsen +1.831.440.2409 +45.2363.8844 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Napatech

Related Links

http://www.napatech.com


TULSA, Okla., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Appointments are now available at the new Aspen Dental-branded practice at 7920 E. 71st St. scheduled to open on Thursday, Dec. 14. The office will be open Monday through Wednesday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Friday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. as well as select Saturdays. Walk-in and emergency patients are welcome.

Located near the Woodland Hills shopping center, the new dental office is led by Dr. Bruce Sharpe, who received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Sharpe and his team will provide dental services ranging from dentures and denture repairs, to preventive care, general dentistry and restoration.



The new office, located in Tulsa County, is one of 15 Aspen Dental practices in Oklahoma, a state where 73 of the 77 counties, including Tulsa, are designated as dental health professional shortage areas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

According to a study conducted by Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management, each new Aspen Dental practice supports local community growth by contributing more than $1.3 million in positive economic impact through job creation and capital investment.

The new Aspen Dental office offers patient-friendly programs and services to make it easier for patients to get the dental care they need, including:

Personalized treatment and friendly service. Each patient will receive a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment plan designed by the dentist with long-term oral and overall health in mind. Available services include hygiene, treatment of gum disease, extractions, fillings, oral surgery, whitening, and crown and bridge work.

Affordable dental care. Aspen Dental practices are committed to keeping prices fair so that patients can get the care they need. The Woodland Hills practice will work with insurance providers and handle the paperwork to save patients time and hassle, and offer free new-patient exams and X-rays to those who do not have insurance. The practice also offers clear, detailed estimates on the cost of treatment to give patients peace of mind as well as a variety of financing options.

On-site denture lab and a Denture Money Back Guarantee. The practice is equipped with an on-site denture laboratory, which helps facilitate quick turnaround for denture repairs, relines or adjustments. The practice will offer seven styles of full and partial dentures so patients can be reassured that Dr. Sharpe and his team will go above and beyond to ensure proper fit and comfort of their custom-crafted dentures. Getting used to dentures takes some time, but if patients are dissatisfied with their dentures for any reason  the practice will refund the cost of the dentures when patients return them within 90 days. The practice repairs all dentures, not just those purchased at Aspen Dental.

To make an appointment, patients can simply go to www.aspendental.com and click on Schedule a New Patient Appointment. Patients can also call (918) 505-4715 or 800-ASPEN DENTAL (800-277-3633).

About Aspen Dental Offices

Aspen Dental-branded practices are committed to breaking down the barriers to better dental care, better smiles and better lives by making dentistry easier for patients. With more than 650 offices in 36 states, Aspen Dental practices provide a wide range of general dentistry and denture-related services and offer patient-friendly programs and services that help thousands of people every day get the dental care they need, including convenient locations, onsite labs, extended hours, and acceptance of most dental insurance. Together, Aspen Dental practices cared for more than 1.5 million patients in 2016. To learn more about how Aspen Dental practices make it simply easier for patients to get the care they need, visit AspenDental.com.

About Aspen Dental Management Inc.

With an innovative model that takes non-clinical business and administrative services out of the dental office so that dentists are free to focus on patient care, the team at ADMI is driven by one overarching purpose: To care for the people who care for the patients. ADMI makes it easier for dentists to have the careers they've always dreamed of, delivering care to their patients with the support of a team of experienced business professionals who are committed to making their practices a success. Support provided by ADMI includes services and recommendations related to finding the right locations, leasing, acquiring equipment, accounting and marketing.

SOURCE Aspen Dental

Related Links

http://www.aspendental.com


One of seven in the world and one of two in the United States, KEC LAX opened its doors at 8955 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood on December 5, 2017 and offers consumers and design professionals a truly elevated brand experience. KEC LAX also serves as a dynamic art exhibition space for select pieces from the permanent collection of Kohler Co. and its Arts/Industry Program which fosters the intersection of art and the industrial process and allows artists to explore the use of industrial technologies in the creation of new bodies of work.

"Building vibrant, healthy communities through the arts is an integral part of Kohler Co., rooted in the value placed on design, innovation and craftsmanship," comments Laura Kohler, Senior Vice President-Human Resources & Stewardship at Kohler Co. "Artists are invited to expand their imaginations in Kohler factories, fostering the intersection of creative practice and industrial designtransforming the lives of both artist and craftsman."

KEC LAX inaugurates its new exhibition space with the unveiling of Ghost School (2015), a piece from the Kohler Co. permanent collection by renowned Washington State-based sculpture artist and two-time Kohler artist-in-residence David Franklin. The installation, crafted from clay during Franklin's 2015 residency, celebrates life on the water while giving form to the artist's continued concern of the ocean environment where he frequently spends time.

Trained in wood-carving, Franklin first worked with clay during his Arts/Industry Pottery residency in 2012. Franklin learned to love the medium and used it to create Ghost School during his second Arts/Industry residency in 2015. Ghost School captures the dense cloud-like swarm that bait fish form when threatened by larger fish. While staying at Kohler, Franklin learned that people fished for salmon in nearby Lake Michigan. Knowing this made him feel at home and led him to envision Ghost School.

"The work by David represents the exploration many artists experience within the Arts/Industry residency program," said Kristin Plucar, Arts/Industry program manager with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. "Prior to his residency, David didn't have exposure to or experience working with clay. The Kohler Co. factory is an environment singularly suited to support artists in the creation of works they may not be able to accomplish in their home studios. The KEC will showcase the work that results from the extraordinary collaboration between the artists and the program, and the Arts Center deeply appreciates this demonstration of Kohler Co.'s ongoing commitment to the creative arts."

Arts/Industry is a world-renowned artist-in-residence program managed by John Michael Kohler Arts Center and hosted/funded by Kohler Co. Participating artists receive travel, housing, a stipend, featured exhibitions at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and 24/7 access to studios in the Kohler Co. Foundry and Pottery facilities in Kohler, Wis. Residencies typically last from two to six months.

About KEC

The KOHLER Experience Center is a new global retail concept created to serve the fast-growing segment of architecture and interior design professionals working on projects around the world and to offer consumers on-site product immersion making it easier than ever to experience and buy KOHLER products. Kohler Co. plans to launch a total of 10 KECs in 2017 and 2018 to meet global demand. In addition to New York and Los Angeles, Kohler has also opened KECs in London, Singapore, Taipei, New Delhi, and Bangkok; Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Dubai will soon follow. Each KEC will showcase a piece from the Kohler Arts Industry Program.

More information about Arts/Industry can be found at jmkac.org/artsindustry.

KOHLER Experience (KEC LAX) is located at 8955 W. Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood, CA, 90048 in Los Angeles.

Contact:

Stephen Maliszewski

Kohler Co.

[email protected]

M: 920-226-7216

Magda Grigorian

Sharp Communications

[email protected]

(212) 829-0002 x 107

SOURCE Kohler Co.

Related Links

http://www.kohlerco.com


Most oncologists (51 percent) see CAR T-cell therapy as a game-changing approach to cancer treatment, but barriers such as cost, toxicity and complex administration could lead to slow uptake.

As more biosimilars enter the U.S. market, oncologists are open to prescribing them in place of their reference products  and most (66 percent) have high expectations about the cost savings biosimilars will deliver for their practices.

With three targeted therapies recently approved for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), most oncologists (85 percent) are routinely prescribing genetic tests for AML patients  and a growing number (31 percent) are now referring AML patients to academic medical centers for treatment.

"This has been a landmark year for FDA approvals with the emergence of several innovative targeted therapies, new biosimilars, and the first two CAR T-cell therapies," said Joe DePinto, president of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions. "Some of these advances have the potential to fundamentally alter how cancer will be treated. As more novel drugs come to market in the year ahead, understanding the changing views of oncologists and the potential barriers to adoption for new therapies will be critical for all stakeholders."

The findings in Oncology Insights are based on research conducted at four Cardinal Health Oncology Summits earlier this year. In total, the summits brought together more than 200 U.S oncologists, representing a diverse mix of community and hospital-based practices. The report also includes viewpoints from Chief Medical Officers Chadi Nabhan, MD, MBA, FACP, and Bruce Feinberg, DO.

Request a copy of the Oncology Insights report at www.cardinalhealth.com/oncologyinsights.

For media: to request an advance copy of the report, please contact Courtney Tobin at (614) 553-3539 or [email protected].

About Cardinal Health

Cardinal Health, Inc. is a global, integrated healthcare services and products company, providing customized solutions for hospitals, healthcare systems, pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories and physician offices worldwide. The company provides clinically proven medical products and pharmaceuticals and cost-effective solutions that enhance supply chain efficiency from hospital to home. Cardinal Health connects patients, providers, payers, pharmacists and manufacturers for integrated care coordination and better patient management. Because Cardinal Health helps ensure pharmacists and the consumers they serve have access to medications they need while working to help prevent prescription drug diversion, the company and its education partners created Generation Rx, a national program to help prevent the misuse of prescription medications. Backed by nearly 100 years of experience, with approximately 50,000 employees in nearly 60 countries, Cardinal Health ranks #15 on the Fortune 500. For more information, visit cardinalhealth.com, follow @CardinalHealth on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/ company/cardinal-health.

SOURCE Cardinal Health

Related Links

http://www.cardinalhealth.com


(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160228/338238LOGO )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/617118/Salvator_Mundi.jpg )



The arrangements for the acquisition of the Da Vinci masterpiece correspond perfectly to the Museum Industry model that Artprice conceptualized in 2005 and has taught ever since.

According to thierry Ehrmann, All the of the world's major museums hold accounts with Artprice, including of course the Louvre. The United Arab Emirates, with its capital Abu Dhabi, is one of the top 10 most active countries accessing Artprice's databases..."

Here's the deal: the Paris Louvre sells a "Louvre" franchise to Abu Dhabi until 2037. The latter pays a total of 400 million euros to the Paris Louvre for the right to use the Louvre name. The latter, accompanied by 13 French museums, convenants to lend artworks to Abu Dhabi - 10 museums have already lent more than 350 artworks.

These arrangements shows the Museum Industry collaborating within a network, using investment vehicles and complex legal structures.

They unambiguously prove the emergence in the twenty-first century of a new economic sector - the Museum Industry - exactly as Artprice described it back in 2005.

In short, we have a classic business model with inflows (ticketing and derivative income) and outflows - operating license costs plus acquisition costs in this case, the price of Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, a price predicted by Artprice three months prior to its sale.

The 450 million dollars paid for the painting is the result of an intelligent investment decision based on the Louvre museum's annual operating income (ebitda) and not on some wild extravagance. Those who believe it is the latter have failed to understand that the Museum Industry is now the principal structure of the global art market.

This structure is driving art prices up by creating scarcity on the three principal segments of the Art Market: Old Masters, Modern Art and Contemporary Art, and we see that within this industry configuration, the resale of a "major tangible asset" can have an immediate impact on ticket revenue.

Artprice - which will be launching its own museum ranking index (Artmuseum100) in early 2018 - highlights the transformation of museums, whose clientele has grown tenfold in the last 30 years.

Artprice and its econometrics department has been collaborating with Twitter for two years on a giant sample of 39 million identified followers with links to the world's 100 principal Fine Art museums.

According to thierry Ehrmann, This massive expansion of the global Museum Industry goes hand-in-hand with a major soft-power competition between the world's nations, particularly its major powers (China / US) and the Gulf States. Indeed, soft-power rivalry is leading the art market inexorably towards spectacular new auction results. In our well-documented view, we are likely to see results around the billion dollar threshold by 2020.

As the world leader in Art Market information, Artprice can only benefit from this growth of the Art Market, driven essentially by the increasing power of the Museum Industry.

For a reminder of the Museum Industry conceptualized by Artprice, please read this press release: https://www.actusnews.com/fr/ARTPRICE/cp/2017/11/19/artprice-the-auction-record-for-salvator-mundi-by-leonardo-da-vinci-proves-that-the-museum-industry-reg-is-completely

http://www.artprice.com Copyright thierry Ehrmann 1987/2017

About Artprice:

Artprice celebrates its 20th birthday, editorial by thierry Ehrmann, founder and CEO of Artprice. https://www.actusnews.com/fr/ARTPRICE/cp/2017/10/04/artprice-celebrates-its-20th-birthday-editorial-by-thierry-ehrmann-founder-and-ceo-of-artprice

Artprice is listed on the Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.

Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index databanks. It has over 30 million indices and auction results covering more than 700,000 artists. Artprice Images(R) gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of 126 million images or prints of artworks from the year 1700 to the present day, along with comments by Artprice's art historians.

Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information from 6,300 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and approximately 7,200 international press publications. For its 4,500,000 members, Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace for buying and selling art. Artprice is preparing its blockchain for the Art Market. It is BPI-labelled (scientific national French label).

Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report for 2016 published last March 2017: http://imgpublic.artprice.com/pdf/rama2016_en.pdf

Artprice's Contemporary Art Market Annual Report for 2016 - free access at https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2016

The text presented hereafter is a translation of Arte Creative's online presentation: ARTE: A gigantic Christmas tree in the guise of a butt plug, a machine that defecates five-star meals, an icon immersed in urine and staged corpses - subversive, trash, provocative or insulting? Thierry Ehrmann, the man behind The Abode of Chaos dixit "The New York Times", an artist and the founder of Artprice, is the mouthpiece for scandal and discloses the workings of the most striking controversies in contemporary art. And scandal sells. 9 episodes are online: http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/weekly-highlight

Artprice's press releases: http://serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/pressreleaseen.htm and https://twitter.com/artpricedotcom

News Artmarket:

http://twitter.com/artpricedotcom https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom

https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom

https://plus.google.com/+Artpricedotcom/posts

http://artmarketinsight.wordpress.com/

Discover the Alchemy and the universe of Artprice http://web.artprice.com/video, which headquarters are the famous Museum of Contemporary Art, the Abode of Chaos http://goo.gl/zJssdhttps ://vimeo.com/124643720

The Contemporary Art Museum The Abode of Chaos on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999

The Abode of Chaos/Demeure du Chaos Contemporary Art Museum by thierry Ehrmann,author, sculptor, artist, photograph https://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/sets/72157

Contact: thierry Ehrmann - e-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Artprice.com
"It can be refreshing to spend winters in a warmer environment, but it's important to remember that your home will stay behind in the cold," said Mike Nicholson, owner of Nicholson Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning. "Taking care to prepare your home to properly withstand the long absence is important during what could be a severe winter. The last thing you want to do is come back from vacation to a home that is flooded because of a broken supply line or appliance malfunction."

Nicholson offers the following as important steps toward winterizing a home:

Save electrical energy  Make sure that all electronics remaining behind such as televisions are not only turned off but are unplugged with any power strips being disconnected as well. This will eliminate any trickle charges and consumption that can add up over long periods. Large appliances, when possible, should be unplugged as well as small appliances such as coffee pots and toasters. Take a walk around the home to inspect the windows and doorframes, searching for any gaps in seals or deteriorated weather stripping that could allow warmth to escape. Finally, figure out what temperature setting will walk the line best between saving money and keeping the home at a safe temperature. A programmable thermostat is a great solution for maintaining the proper temperature within the home.

Prevent potential sanitary issues  Any perishable food items left on counters or inside the refrigerator should be used immediately, taken with, or properly disposed of outside the home. Do not leave behind unemptied trash bins, especially containing food, as these can attract any pests that may infiltrate the home to stay. Flushing out sink traps and disposals is a great way to avoid finding terrible odors upon returning.

Protect the plumbing  Shut off the water at the main valve, and open all faucets to allow them to drain. Leaving faucets open, especially outdoor spigots, will give more room for possible expansion from freezing and may prevent bursting. Make sure to shut off outdoor spigots and protect them with proper insulated covers. Don't forget to disconnect the supply hoses from the washing machine, and drain the water heater and water softener if one is present. Enlisting the aid of a home service professional may be useful if the lines need to be blown out or if there is worry that ancillary items like a sprinkler system may not be properly winterized.

Play it safe  Make sure the home seems occupied throughout extended absences. Forward the mail or ask a friend or relative to pick it up and check in on the home periodically. Arrange in advance to have driveway plowed in the event of snow or ice to create an occupied appearance. Another great tip is to set a couple of lights, preferably visible to the entrances, on timers so that they will turn on for periods of time and give the illusion of occupancy.

"We want all of our neighbors who live the snowbird lifestyle to do so in the safest manner possible," Nicholson said. "Beyond simply plumbing and water supply preparation, we want to share the best whole-home advice we can to ensure you save money on energy and your investment is kept safe during your absence."

For more information on winterizing your home, call Nicholson Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning at (508) 881-1500 or visit www.nicholson-hvac.com/.

About Nicholson Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning

Based in Holliston, Massachusetts, Nicholson is a family-owned, full-service residential plumbing, heating, and air conditioning company proudly serving all of the MetroWest area and beyond. Nicholson takes an all-encompassing approach to ensure clients reach the highest possible level of comfort, while staying within their budget. Nicholson was recently honored with the 2016 Carrier DCNE Outstanding Performance Award. The company offers a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee and Solid Warranty. Nicholson is an Angie's List "Super Service Award" recipient. For more information, visit Nicholson at http://www.nicholson-hvac.com/.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

865-977-1973

[email protected]

SOURCE Nicholson Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning

Related Links

http://www.nicholson-hvac.com


EAST HANOVER, N.J., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis announced today the initiation of the ASLeap trial in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), evaluating the effect of changing to a higher dose (300 mg) of Cosentyx (secukinumab) in patients who do not achieve symptom remission after treatment with Cosentyx 150 mg for 16 weeks. The primary endpoint of ASLeap is to determine the difference between Cosentyx 300 mg and Cosentyx 150 mg at Week 52 based on the proportion of subjects achieving inactive disease status based on the Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS).1

"An important goal of ankylosing spondylitis treatment is to provide as much symptom relief as possible for patients living with this debilitating disease," said Marcia Kayath, Head US Clinical Development and Medical Affairs, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. "While Cosentyx 150 mg has shown clinically significant results in treating a majority of patients with AS, we want to investigate whether some patients may benefit from a higher dose. We hope that the results of the ASLeap study will help provide physicians with important information about how best to manage these patients."

An exploratory analysis will also assess sleep disturbance and daytime activity in patients with AS, as measured by the use of a wearable motion biosensor, an Actiwatch* device, which is a medical device resembling a wristwatch used to collect detailed information on sleep and physical activity. Patients with AS report chronic and extensive sleep disturbance due to pain and stiffness during the night.2 In AS patients, poor quality sleep is strongly correlated with increased pain, fatigue, lower quality of life, higher depressed mood, higher disease activity and reduced physical function.3

The study is expected to begin enrollment in January 2018 and aims to enroll approximately 270 patients at 70 centers in the United States. More information can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov.

About the ASLeap Study

The ASLeap study design includes an initial 16 week open-label period (Treatment Period 1), followed by a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group period (Treatment Period 2). During the initial 16 weeks of the trial, all patients will receive open-label 150 mg Cosentyx. At Week 16, based on whether patients have met the definition of ASDAS inactive disease, patients will be placed into one of the following three groups for the remaining 36 weeks of the trial: Responders, patients who achieve ASDAS inactive disease (total score <1.3) at both Week 12 and Week 16, will enter Treatment Period 2 and continue receiving blinded Cosentyx 150 mg through Week 48. Inadequate Responders, patients who are not in inactive disease status, defined as an ASDAS total score of 1.3, at both Week 12 and Week 16, will enter Treatment Period 2 and be randomized (1:1, double-blinded) to Cosentyx 300 mg or Cosentyx 150 mg through Week 48. Non-responders, patients who exhibit no change or an increase (worsening) from baseline in total ASDAS score at either Week 12 or Week 16, will complete the study at Week 16.

The study population will consist of male and female patients, 18 years of age with a clinical diagnosis of moderate to severe AS fulfilling the Modified New York criteria for AS despite previous or current NSAIDs/non-biologic DMARDs and/or anti-TNF therapy. Patients must have active AS, as measured by the following: total BASDAI 4 on a scale of 0-10 at baseline, spinal pain as measured by BASDAI question #2 4 on a scale of 0-10 at baseline, and total back pain as measured by visual analog scale (VAS) 40mm (0-100 mm) at baseline. 1

About ankylosing spondylitis (AS)

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a painful and often progressively debilitating disease, caused by spine inflammation that can result in irreversible damage.4 Up to 70% of patients who go on to develop severe AS will form spinal fusions (where the bones grow together) over 10 to 15 years, which significantly reduces mobility.5 People in their teens and twenties, particularly males, are affected most often. Family members of those with AS are at higher risk.4,6 Approximately 20-40% of patients do not respond well to standard of care biologic medicines, and there have been few therapeutic options for those people.7

About Cosentyx (secukinumab) and interleukin-17A (IL-17A)

Cosentyx is a fully human monoclonal antibody (mAB) that selectively binds to the interleukin-17A (IL-17A) cytokine and inhibits its interaction with the IL-17 receptor.8,9

Cosentyx is the only IL-17a antagonist approved for the treatment of adults with active ankylosing spondylitis. Cosentyx is approved in more than 70 countries, which includes the European Union countries and the US. Cosentyx is also approved for the treatment of PsA and pustular psoriasis in Japan.10

In addition, Cosentyx is approved in more than 75 countries for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, which includes the European Union countries, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, the US and Canada. In Europe, Cosentyx is approved for the first-line systemic treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adult patients.11 In the US, Cosentyx is approved as a treatment for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adult patients who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy (light therapy).9

To date, more than 100,000 patients worldwide have been prescribed Cosentyx in the post-marketing setting across all indications.12 In addition, 2017 marks 10 years since the first patient visit in a clinical trial with Cosentyx.12

INDICATIONS

Cosentyx is a human interleukin-17A antagonist indicated for the treatment of:

moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adult patients who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy

adults with active psoriatic arthritis (PsA)

adults with active ankylosing spondylitis (AS)

The approved dosage for the treatment of AS is 150 mg.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Do not use Cosentyx if you have had a severe allergic reaction to secukinumab or any of the other ingredients in Cosentyx. See the Medication Guide for a complete list of ingredients.

Cosentyx is a medicine that affects your immune system. Cosentyx may increase your risk of having serious side effects such as:

Infections

Cosentyx may lower the ability of your immune system to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections.

Your doctor should check you for tuberculosis (TB) before starting treatment with Cosentyx.

If your doctor feels that you are at risk for TB, you may be treated with medicine for TB before you begin treatment with Cosentyx and during treatment with Cosentyx.

Your doctor should watch you closely for signs and symptoms of TB during treatment with Cosentyx. Do not take Cosentyx if you have an active TB infection.

Before starting Cosentyx, tell your doctor if you:

are being treated for an infection

have an infection that does not go away or that keeps coming back

have TB or have been in close contact with someone with TB

think you have an infection or have symptoms of an infection such as:



- fevers, sweats, or chills - warm, red, or painful skin or

- muscle aches sores on your body

- cough - diarrhea or stomach pain

- shortness of breath - burning when you urinate

- blood in your phlegm or urinate more often than

- weight loss normal

After starting Cosentyx, call your doctor right away if you have any signs of infection listed above. Do not use Cosentyx if you have any signs of infection unless you are instructed to by your doctor.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease

New cases of inflammatory bowel disease or "flare-ups" can happen with Cosentyx, and can sometimes be serious. If you have inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease), tell your doctor if you have worsening disease symptoms during treatment with Cosentyx or develop new symptoms of stomach pain or diarrhea.

Serious Allergic Reactions

Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get emergency medical help right away if you get any of the following symptoms: feeling faint; swelling of your face, eyelids, lips, mouth, tongue, or throat; trouble breathing or throat tightness; chest tightness; or skin rash. If you have a severe allergic reaction, do not give another injection of Cosentyx.

Before starting Cosentyx, tell your doctor if you:

have any of the conditions or symptoms listed above for infections

have inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis)

are allergic to latex. The needle caps contain latex.

have recently received or are scheduled to receive an immunization (vaccine). People who take Cosentyx should not receive live vaccines.

receive live vaccines. have any other medical conditions

are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if Cosentyx can harm your unborn baby. You and your doctor should decide if you will use Cosentyx.

are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if Cosentyx passes into your breast milk.

Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of your medicines to show your doctor and pharmacist when you get a new medicine.

How should I use Cosentyx?

See the detailed Instructions for Use that comes with your Cosentyx for information on how to prepare and inject a dose of Cosentyx, and how to properly throw away (dispose of) used Cosentyx Sensoready pens and prefilled syringes.

Use Cosentyx exactly as prescribed by your doctor.

If your doctor decides that you or a caregiver may give your injections of Cosentyx at home, you should receive training on the right way to prepare and inject Cosentyx. Do not try to inject Cosentyx yourself, until you or your caregiver has been shown how to inject Cosentyx by your doctor or nurse.

The most common side effects of Cosentyx include: cold symptoms, diarrhea, and upper respiratory infections. These are not all of the possible side effects of Cosentyx. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects.





You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see accompanying full Prescribing Information, including Medication Guide.

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "expect," "anticipate," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures; general economic and industry conditions, including the effects of the persistently weak economic and financial environment in many countries; safety, quality or manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Located in East Hanover, NJ Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation is an affiliate of Novartis which provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, cost-saving generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals and eye care. Novartis has leading positions globally in each of these areas. In 2016, the Group achieved net sales of USD 48.5 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.0 billion. Novartis Group companies employ approximately 121,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are sold in approximately 155 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis

For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.novartis.com/news/media-library

For questions about the site or required registration, please contact [email protected]

* Actiwatch is a registered trademark of Mini-Mitter Co. Inc.

References

Novartis Data on file. Clinical Trial Protocol CAIN457FUS06. November 2017 . Leverment S, Clarke E, Wadeley A, Sengupta R. Prevalence and factors associated with disturbed sleep in patients with ankylosing spondylitis and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis: a systematic review. Rheumatology International. 2016;37(2):257-271. Batmaz I, Saryldz MA, Dilek B, Bez Y, Karakoc M, Cevik R. Sleep quality and associated factors in ankylosing spondylitis: relationship with disease parameters, psychological status and quality of life. Rheumatology International. 2012;33(4):1039-1045. Schett et al. Structural damage in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis: traditional views, novel insights gained from TNF blockade, and concepts for the future. Arthritis Res Ther. 2011;13:S4. Barkham N, Kong K O, Tennant A, et al. The unmet need for anti-tumour necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy in ankylosing spondylitis. Rheumatology. 2005;44:12771281. Dean LE, Jones GT, MacDonald AG, et al. Global prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2014;53(4):650-7. Dougados M, Baeten D. Spondyloarthritis. Lancet. 2011; 377(9783):2127-37. McInnes, IB, Mease, PJ, Kirkham, B, et al. Secukinumab, a human anti-interleukin-17A monoclonal antibody, in patients with psoriatic arthritis (FUTURE 2): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial. The Lancet. 2015; 386, No. 9999; p11371146. Cosentyx [prescribing information]. East Hanover, NJ : Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp; 2017 Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency. Review Report. Available at: http://www.pmda.go.jp/files/000216877.pdf . Accessed August 10, 2017 . Cosentyx Summary of Product Characteristics. Novartis Europharm Limited. Available at: http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/medicines/human/medicines/003729/human_med_001832.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058001d124. Last accessed August 2017 . Novartis Data on file. Number of Patients Prescribed Cosentyx. May 2017 .

Novartis Media Relations

Central media line: +41 61 324 2200

E-mail: [email protected]

Eric Althoff Jeannie Neufeld Novartis Global Media Relations Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation +41 61 324 7999 (direct) +1 862 778 2104 (direct) +41 79 593 4202 (mobile) +1 201 650 2728 (mobile) [email protected] [email protected]

Novartis Investor Relations

Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944

E-mail: [email protected]

Central

North America

Samir Shah +41 61 324 7944 Richard Pulik +1 212 830 2448 Pierre-Michel Bringer +41 61 324 1065 Cory Twining +1 212 830 2417 Thomas Hungerbuehler +41 61 324 8425



Isabella Zinck +41 61 324 7188





SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation

Related Links

http://www.novartis.com


VANCOUVER, British Columbia, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

NRG Metals Inc. ("NRG" or the "Company") (TSX-V: NGZ) (OTCQB: NRGMF) (Frankfurt: OGPN), is pleased to announce the discovery of lithium at the Salar Escondido Lithium Project, Catamarca Province, Argentina. Consistent with the Company's geophysical data and geological model, the target zone of sediments saturated with brine that could contain lithium was intersected, and the first lithium values from near the top of the brine are very encouraging as shown in the following table.

Li Mg B K Sample number From / To mg/L mg/L mg/L mg/L 172 --198 m (26 SE -- 003 m) 189 868 217 3,170 183 --198 m (15 SE -- 004 m) 229 1,033 265 3,990

The samples, which were collected with a single packer, were analyzed by the Alex Stewart laboratory in Jujuy, Argentina. Alex Stewart employed Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry ("ICP-OES") as the analytical technique for the primary constituents of interest, including those shown in the table.

Adrian Hobkirk, CEO of NRG, commented, "We are very excited with the initial results from near the top of the brine zone at Salar Escondido. These results prove the concept that there is a buried salar that contains lithium at Salar Escondido. Furthermore, the Mg/Li ratio is relatively low at 4.6, which is very encouraging. We are hopeful that lithium grades will increase at deeper levels, which is the case in many salars in Argentina. We look forward to continuing the exploration at Salar Escondido to fully assess and delineate this discovery."

The drill hole has intersected weakly consolidated sandstone and unconsolidated sand horizons with occasional conglomerate and clay layers from a depth of 113 meters to 176 meters, and predominately poorly consolidated conglomerate with occasional clay layers below 176 meters. Saline brine is present below a depth of 140 meters. As of December 5, 2017, the hole had reached a depth of 221 meters, and the Company is planning to extend the hole to a depth of 350 meters.

The Salar Escondido is a large basin, roughly 20 by 40 kilometers in size, which is mostly covered by a series of overlapping alluvial fans. NRG's technical team believes that a large salar with an area of at least 700 km[2] had developed in the basin approximately two million years ago. After the salar was formed, it was buried by coalescing alluvial fans, and it is thus considered to be a "paleo-salar," hence the name Salar Escondido, which means "hidden salar" in Spanish.

About the Company

NRG Metals Inc. is an exploration stage company focused on the advancement of lithium brine projects in Argentina. In addition to the Salar Escondido lithium project, the Company is evaluating the 3,287 hectare Hombre Muerto North lithium project ("HMN") in the province of Salta. HMN is located at the northern end of the prolific Hombre Muerto Salar, adjacent to FMC's producing Fenix mine and Galaxy Resources' Sal de Vida development stage project. The Company has filed an Environmental Impact Study and applied for permits to drill HMN, and approval is pending. A National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101) technical report on HMN was filed on SEDAR on October 16, 2017.

The Company currently has approximately 105 million shares issued and outstanding, and trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol NGZ, on the OTCQB Market under the symbol, NRGMF, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol, OGPN.

Onsite quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) was supervised by Mr. William Feyerabend, a Certified Professional Geologist and a Qualified Person under NI 43-101. All samples were collected in 500 ml plastic bottles with samples numbers clearly identified, and NRG personnel transported the samples to the Alex Stewart laboratory. Measurements in the field included pH, conductivity, temperature and density, and the field measurements were consistent with the same measurements made in the laboratory by Alex Stewart. Duplicate and blank samples were inserted into the sample batch, and the results were satisfactory. Mr. Feyerabend supervised and approves the scientific and technical disclosure contained in this press release.

On behalf of the board of directors of NRG Metals Inc.:

Adrian F.C. Hobkirk

President and C.E.O.

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed the content of this news release and therefore does not accept responsibility or liability for the adequacy or accuracy of the contents of this news release.

This news release contains certain "forward- looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the United States Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Except for statements of historical fact relating to the Company, certain information contained herein constitutes forward- looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based upon 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 which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The transaction described in this news release is subject to a variety of conditions and risks which include but are not limited to: regulatory approval, shareholder approval, market conditions, legal due diligence for claim validity, financing, political risk, security risks at the property locations and other risks. As such, the reader is cautioned that there can be no guarantee that this transaction will complete as described in this news release. We seek safe harbour.

Media Contact:

T: Investors / Shareholders Call 855-415-8100 / Direct to Adrian Hobkirk 714-316-3272

E: [email protected]



W: http://www.nrgmetalsinc.com

SOURCE NRG Metals Inc.
John McDonough, Head of Global Distribution and Marketing, OppenheimerFunds, stated, "We've been building our European client base from afar for a number of years, and this appointment further demonstrates our commitment to extend the reach of our global investment solutions to investors throughout the Nordic and Benelux regions."

Silfverling joins OppenheimerFunds from Franklin Templeton, where he was Director and Head of the Nordics region responsible for developing relationships with investors and distributors throughout the region across all client segments.

"Expanding our presence with clients in key wealth centers across the Nordics and Benelux is critical to building a truly successful asset management franchise in Europe," said Stewart. "Patrik's trusted industry relationships and deep multi-asset product expertise will be a significant asset to help lead our business in these important markets going forward."

Silfverling's hire is the latest piece of the firm's continuing buildout of its EMEA platform, following the recent hiring of Dicken Watson as EMEA COO and the opening of its new European headquarters in London.

At the same time, the firm continues to expand its range of UCITS investment strategies on OppenheimerFunds ICAV, an Ireland-domiciled UCITS platform, with the launch of its Emerging Markets Local Debt Fund. The funds on the UCITS platform provide greater flexibility for global investors looking to access these investment strategies.

About OppenheimerFunds

OppenheimerFunds, Inc., a leader in global asset management, is dedicated to providing solutions for its partners and end investors. OppenheimerFunds, including its subsidiaries, manages more than $246 billion in assets for over 13 million shareholder accounts, including sub-accounts, as of November 30, 2017.

Founded in 1959, OppenheimerFunds is an asset manager with a history of providing innovative strategies to its investors. The firm's 16 investment management teams specialize in equity, fixed income, alternative, multi-asset, and factor and revenue-weighted-ETF strategies, including ESG offerings, and is a signatory of the UN PRI. OppenheimerFunds and its subsidiaries offer a broad array of products and services to clients, who range from endowments and sovereigns to financial advisors and individual investors. OppenheimerFunds and certain of its subsidiaries provide advisory services to the Oppenheimer family of funds, and OFI Global Asset Management offers solutions to institutions. The firm is also active through its Philanthropy & Community initiative: 10,000 Kids by 2020, reaching children with introductions to math literacy programs.

Web: oppenheimerfunds.com/international

Tweets: twitter.com/OppFunds

Podcasts: oppenheimerfunds.com/advisors/podcasts

Note to Editors:

OppenheimerFunds growing UCITS fund platform includes:

Shares of Oppenheimer funds are not deposits or obligations of any bank, are not guaranteed by any bank, are not insured by the FDIC or any other agency, and involve investment risks, including the possible loss of the principal amount invested.

Before investing in any of the Oppenheimer funds, investors should carefully consider a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Fund prospectuses and summary prospectuses contain this and other information about the funds, and may be obtained by asking your financial advisor, visiting oppenheimerfunds.com or calling 1.800.CALL OPP (225.5677). Read prospectuses and summary prospectuses carefully before investing.

Oppenheimer funds are distributed by OppenheimerFunds Distributor, Inc.

225 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281-1008

 2017 OppenheimerFunds, Inc. All rights reserved.

SOURCE OppenheimerFunds

Related Links

http://www.oppenheimerfunds.com


SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Orion Acquisition, a premier outsourced sales and marketing company headquartered in Saskatoon, announced it had been honored for excellent quarterly results on behalf of a leading telecommunications client during Q3 of this year.

For the fourth consecutive quarter, Orion Acquisition, led by President Marcus Giesbrecht, outperformed other offices across the country working on the same program, achieving top marks measured by quality and in sales and level of service.

"The consistent results that we've been able to achieve over a full calendar year are a testament to each individual's commitment to our mission," said Giesbrecht, praising his team's united effort. "I look for us to continue in this tradition of excellence."

Dedicated to increasing brand awareness, market share, and customer loyalty, Orion Acquisition works with clients across multiple industries to deliver sales and marketing solutions, with a focus on face-to-face customer acquisition.

Orion Acquisition promotes a culture that emphasizes leadership, integrity, a student mentality, and finally, a strong work ethic. Orion Acquisition also offers team members an array of opportunities to grow personally and succeed professionally in a merit-based atmosphere.

Like Orion Acquisition on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

About Orion Acquisition

Based in Saskatoon, Orion Acquisition is a leading marketing and sales firm specializing in direct marketing and sales solutions. The highly trained team at Orion Acquisition works with respected companies in the energy, telecommunications, office supply, and merchant processing industries to acquire and retain customers, thereby increase the client's brand awareness and reach. For more information, call 306-979-5887 or go to www.orionacquisition.com.

Contact: Marcus Giesbrecht

306-979-5887

SOURCE Orion Acquisition

Related Links

http://www.orionacquisition.com


READING, England, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Orthoconnections are celebrating a successful first month of business on their brand new website, an online platform dedicated to connecting orthopaedic distributors with manufacturers.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616303/Orthoconnections_Logo.jpg )



Since its launch, the company has seen a significant increase in visitors and online activity.

Company director, Matt Woods, commented:

"Over the last two years we have listened carefully to feedback from Orthoconnections' members and developed the website and the services we offer accordingly. The initial success of the new website has been fantastic.

We have seen new members coming in from all 7 continents, and have welcomed big name companies to the site, such as Exactech, Paragon28, and Citieffe."

"Orthoconnections has been extremely successful at finding distributors, solving one of the biggest issues in the medical device industry today," Matt continued.

"With the new website we're now able to communicate with industry members across the globe at the click of a button, making connections happen quicker, and easier, than ever."

The new Orthoconnections.com already has over 70 manufacturer company profiles to view.

There are also over 50 distributor opportunity adverts live onsite, with new adverts posted every week by orthopaedic and spine companies. The previous week has seen new opportunities posted by Step-On International, Orthogem, Bojin Europe and Buddy Healthcare Ltd.

Members of the orthopaedic industry are invited to join the new Orthoconnections website, free of charge, where they can advertise business requirements, find new leads and new contacts, build business and grow sales channels - all in one place.

For more information about Orthoconnections, please visit their website.

About Orthoconnections

Founded in 2011, Orthoconnections is the easiest way for orthopaedic manufacturers and distributors to connect.

The company provides orthopaedic and spine companies with a platform to advertise their business needs, find new leads and contacts, and grow their sales channels.

Join today to see how Orthoconnections can help you build your business www.orthoconnections.com

Media Contact:

Matt Woods

+44-(0)-7500-555508

[email protected]



SOURCE Orthoconnections
MONTREAL, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Payment Rails, an API-first payout platform, today announced the official launch of the first truly global payout platform for sending payments to 220+ countries in 135+ currencies. Through a single simplified integration, businesses and platforms can now access global banking, payment and real-time networks around the world in a fully compliant and regulated environment. The Payment Rails platform has no setup fees, monthly minimums or long-term contracts.

"Payment Rails is re-wiring how business payments are sent around the world," said Tim Nixon, co-founder and CEO. "With our API, businesses can now seamlessly send payments to over 220 countries for as little as $1 per transaction, with live foreign exchange rates, and delivering funds direct to bank accounts as opposed to a recipient's e-wallet. Our clients are looking for an easy to use payout platform where they own the full customer relationship and UX instead of handing off their customers to an e-wallet removed from their core payment process."

Payment Rails' white-label payment infrastructure allows businesses to effectively run their own in-house global payout solution without needing to build or manage it themselves, allowing them to focus on their core business. Key features of the white-label payout platform include:

Global bank account validation

Recipient Widget for capturing bank account details

Automated white-label emails to recipients

White-label recipient bank statement descriptors

Automated returned payment handling

"Businesses are simply looking for more from their banks and are not getting the additional services they need to automate their processes," states Ferhan Patel, Payment Rails' co-founder and Chief Product Officer. Many of our clients are migrating off their core banks' treasury service and leveraging Payment Rails' payout platform because we offer automation and REST API connectivity. Our platform provides the same level of treasury services you'd expect from your bank, but with a fintech level focus on the user experience. We also offer a disruptive way to send international payments, by bypassing costly bank wires, offering access to local banking and real-time payment networks, which can significantly reduce transactional costs by up to 80%."

With an API-first approach, Payment Rails' payout infrastructure enables developers to seamlessly add international payments to their platform, website or apps, giving them access to global markets.

Payment Rails, which launched into public beta in earlier 2017, has been working with businesses with diverse and complex payout requirements, including online marketplaces, share economy, affiliate networks and influencer platforms.

"Influencer marketing is the very definition of what a global business is," explains Vivien Garnes, co-founder and CEO at Upfluence. "Issuing monthly payouts to literally every corner of the globe was costing us a disproportionate amount of time and money. When searching for an effective global payout solution, we looked at some of the other platforms out there, but because their solutions were limited to a few currencies or only a handful of countries, that meant that we would still need to rely on costly bank wires and third-party e-wallets for the rest. And then we found Payment Rails. Since we've integrated, we have freed up the time and money previously spent on payouts to focus on our core business. 2018 will be a banner year for us as we can now scale-up faster, thanks to the Payment Rails team."

Payment Rails' infrastructure leverages Blockchain and Ripple to optimize treasury and liquidity management, and allows businesses to send payments domestically and internationally through real-time networks, faster payment systems, international ACH, and global banking networks. The platform utilizes AI and machine learning to optimize payment routing based on speed, cost and FX rates. Payment Rails also incorporates AI and fuzzy logic for AML watchlist screening, and machine learning for fraud detection to deliver one of the world's most advanced payment platforms for businesses.

To learn how your business can simply your payout process, contact Payment Rails for a demo: https://www.paymentrails.com

About Payment Rails

Payment Rails is the next-generation API-first payouts platform that enables businesses to send payments to any individual or company in over 220 countries, in any currency and to any payment method. Through its powerful API, businesses can access Payment Rails' global banking, international ACH, faster payment systems and real-time networks, on a pay-as-you-go basis with no setup costs.

Payment Rails simplifies global mass payouts for online marketplaces, on-demand and share economy platforms, influencer platforms, ad networks, affiliate platforms, app stores, and growing businesses with international payout needs. For more information, visit www.paymentrails.com, read our blog, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Media Contact

Pola Hallquist

Apothecary Communications for Payment Rails

[email protected]

1-866-213-9210 x801

SOURCE Payment Rails

Related Links

https://www.paymentrails.com


"We are proud to partner with the United Nations to provide critical technology that will protect and assist our United Nations peace keeping personnel" said Anthony LaSure, president and CEO of PPI. "This award is a great example of the innovative solutions offered by an American company to provide a value added solution that will ultimately save lives."

PPI submitted its proposal in October 2016 and entered a competitive United Nations Procurement evaluation process. The thorough evaluation process included review of technical and quality requirements specified in the solicitation, financial and commercial requirements against prevailing market conditions, and full supplier evaluation. PPI was approved for the award by the United Nations Headquarters Committee on Contracts. Notification to PPI was made on September 25, 2017. PPI is now in the final stages of contract negotiation for mutually agreeable terms and conditions to provide service to the United Nations.

"Pentagon Performance is at the forefront of the rapidly developing UAS industry and we're excited that they selected Millville Executive Airport to be their base of operations," said Thomas Cook, Executive Director of the DRBA. "PPI's contract with the United Nations is expected to create more than 20 high tech and administrative jobs at the Millville facility and their increasing footprint in the UAS industry sets the stage for the Millville Airport and the South Jersey region to become a hub for UAS innovation and manufacturing."

Headquartered in Millville, New Jersey, PPI has partnered with the Delaware River and Bay Authority, the Cumberland/Salem/Cape May Workforce Development Board, and Cumberland County Economic Development to help grow the UAS industry at the Millville Airport. PPI's contract with the United Nations accelerates PPI growth and will create an immediate need for high-tech and administrative support jobs throughout the South Jersey area. PPI is a rapidly growing registered minority owned Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE), certified Veteran Owned Business (VOB), and Small Business Enterprise (SBE).

About Pentagon Performance, Inc.

Pentagon Performance, Inc. (PPI) provides global precision solutions, focused on a continued partnership with its clients to address their most significant challenges. PPI consists of five divisions: Unmanned Systems, Satellite Communications, Air Traffic Management, Data Management and Training. PPI has earned a reputation as a trusted partner to military, civilian, commercial, and industry clients through its responsiveness, efficient management structure and consistent performance. As a founding member of the Mid Atlantic Aviation Partnership UAS Test Site and a member of FAA UAS Center of Excellence PPI is an active participant in the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System. For more information, please visit www.pentagonperformance.net

About the Delaware River and Bay Authority

The DRBA, a bi-state governmental agency created by Compact in 1962, owns and operates the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the Cape May- Lewes Ferry, and the Forts Ferry Crossing. The DRBA also manages corporate and aviation properties through its economic development powers - two airports in New Jersey (Millville Airport and Cape May Airport) and three in Delaware (New Castle Airport, Civil Air Terminal and Delaware Airpark). All DRBA operating revenues are generated through the bridge, ferry and airport facilities. For more information, visit www.drba.net

SOURCE Delaware River and Bay Authority

Related Links

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PURCHASE, N.Y., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo, Inc. today announced that, effective January 1, 2018, Mike Spanos, currently President, PepsiCo Greater China Region, will become Chief Executive Officer, Asia, Middle East and North Africa (AMENA), and Sanjeev Chadha, currently Chief Executive Officer of AMENA, will become Chairman of AMENA through the end of Q1 2018. Both Spanos and Chadha will report to PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi.

"We have a strong bench of senior executives, and we are thrilled to promote Mike, one of our most seasoned and proven leaders, into this important role," said Nooyi. "Most recently, Mike has led our business in China through unprecedented change, growing our foods and beverage businesses and investing in our nutrition portfolio."

Nooyi continued, "On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank Sanjeev for his exemplary career at PepsiCo over the last 27 years and his extraordinary commitment to our company. His continued support as Chairman of AMENA until his retirement at the end of March will ensure a smooth transition."

Spanos has had a notable career at PepsiCo, spanning 24 years with posts in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Prior to leading PepsiCo's China business, he led the sales organization across PepsiCo's North America Beverages portfolio, and served as SVP and General Manager for the West Business Unit of the company's beverage operations. Previously, Spanos held various sales and GM roles, including Country Manager for Turkey and VP of Sales and Food Service for The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc. He began his PepsiCo career as a frontline territory development manager in beverages.

The following moves are also effective January 1, 2018:

Ram Krishnan, currently Senior Vice President and General Manager of the global PepsiCo Walmart business, will become President, Greater China Region (GCR), succeeding Spanos. In his new role, he will be responsible for PepsiCo's China business across beverages, foods and nutrition, working closely with the GCR leadership team and partners across AMENA to advance the company's growth in China . He will be based in Shanghai and report to Spanos.



Krishnan brings more than a decade of experience at PepsiCo, where he has served in a number of senior leadership roles across brand and shopper marketing. In his current role, he leads the team that oversees the company's partnership with Walmart, bolstering PepsiCo's position as one of Walmart's leading suppliers. Previously, he served as Frito-Lay North America's (FLNA) Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.





business across beverages, foods and nutrition, working closely with the GCR leadership team and partners across AMENA to advance the company's growth in . He will be based in and report to Spanos. Krishnan brings more than a decade of experience at PepsiCo, where he has served in a number of senior leadership roles across brand and shopper marketing. In his current role, he leads the team that oversees the company's partnership with Walmart, bolstering PepsiCo's position as one of Walmart's leading suppliers. Previously, he served as (FLNA) Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. Chris Turner , currently Senior Vice President of Transformation for Frito-Lay North America , will become Senior Vice President and General Manager of the global PepsiCo Walmart business, reporting to Al Carey , Chief Executive Officer for North America .



Turner joined PepsiCo almost two years ago, and is currently responsible for FLNA's Go-To-Market (GTM) organization in addition to leading the sector's transformation initiatives. Prior to joining PepsiCo, he was a Partner in the Dallas office of McKinsey & Company.

"At PepsiCo, we are fortunate to have the best talent in the industry, from our frontline associates to our senior executives," Nooyi added. "Both Ram and Chris are highly respected leaders with proven track records of success, and we are pleased when the opportunity presents itself to elevate our senior executives into new roles in support of personal and professional growth, while also enabling the success of PepsiCo."

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated approximately $63 billion in net revenue in 2016, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.

At the heart of PepsiCo is Performance with Purpose  our fundamental belief that the success of our company is inextricably linked to the sustainability of the world around us. We believe that continuously improving the products we sell, operating responsibly to protect our planet and empowering people around the world enable PepsiCo to run a successful global company that creates long-term value for society and our shareholders. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.

Cautionary Statement

Statements in this release that are "forward-looking statements" are based on currently available information, operating plans and projections about future events and trends. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties. For information on certain factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from our expectations, please see PepsiCo's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. PepsiCo undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE PepsiCo, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.pepsico.com


SAN DIEGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CureMatch Co-Founders Igor F. Tsigelny, Ph.D. and Razelle Kurzrock, M.D. along with colleagues from UC San Diego and University of Bergen have authored a personalized cancer medicine study examining activation of protein complexes utilizing an innovative 4D approach. "Proteins Flexibility as a Criterion for Elucidation of Activating Mutants" is a chapter in the book1 newly published by Springer to include the best presentations at the 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications.

This important study describes a new method for the prediction of a possible activating mutation in the binding region of two proteins leading to cancer development. This method is built on the concept that the binding process is not only based on the three-dimensional structure of binding proteins but also on the four-dimensional set of possible conformations adopted by means of the flexible regions of the involved proteins. The authors assert that a flexibility increase in the binding regions produced stronger binding energies and eventually lead to the possible increase of carcinogenicity of the protein complex. Doctors Sadakatsu Ikeda and Razelle Kurzrock used this theoretical finding for treatment of a cancer patient and achieved a significant improvement of his conditions.

Lead researcher, Dr. Igor Tsigelny, states, "Until now, only static information of mutations has been used to predict functional changes of proteins. We propose to move to the next level and add flexibility criteria for a 4D approach."

It is imperative that personalized medicine clarify the functional effect of genomic variations at the protein level, decipher the molecular determinants of drug-specific sensitivity in tumors and, finally, predict the outcomes of patients treated by molecular-driven therapies. This study offers an approach to determining protein activity changes that occur due to these mutations using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The flexibility of binding sites in protein-protein complexes can be used to estimate the possible functional impact of mutations of amino acids located in these sites.

Researchers such as Tsigelny and Kurzrock are on the forefront of advances in intelligent systems and computing as applied to oncology. The implications of the molecular basis of cancer is extremely important to physicians making decisions on proper tumor treatment. Better cancer survival rates are the result of personalized medicine developments.

"Less than 20% of the papers submitted to the International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications were selected for publication," stated Stephane Richard Ph.D., CureMatch President and COO. "CureMatch is honored to have some of the world's leading scientists and physicians as part of our team to establish standards for personalized cancer medicine."

CureMatch is a digital health company which assists physicians with personalized treatment decisions. Actionable intelligence is generated via proprietary algorithms scouring evidence-based, custom-curated databases. The best Personalized Combination Therapy options are ranked for each individual patient by factoring proteomics and genomics information and scoring millions of potential combinations of cancer drugs in massive clinical and pharmacological knowledge databases.

Specific molecular alterations can be targeted with therapies uncovered by data-driven reports generated by CureMatch's Decision Support System. Physicians recommend patient treatment plans based on the most current precision medicine. Improved outcomes are the result of matching treatments at the molecular level.

The study, "Proteins Flexibility as a Criterion for Elucidation of Activating Mutants" is authored by CureMatch co-founders Igor F. Tsigelny, Ph.D., San Diego Supercomputer Center, UCSD Moores Cancer Center and Department of Neurosciences and Razelle Kurzrock, M.D., UCSD Moores Cancer Center. Co-authors include Age Aleksander Skjevik, Valentina L. Kouznetsova, Amelie Boichard, and Sadakatsu Ikeda.

The Advances in Intelligent Systems in Computing proceedings book reports on new and innovative solutions regarding methodologies and applications of modeling and simulation. It includes a set of selected, extended papers from the 6th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH), held in Lisbon, Portugal, from July 29-31, 2016. The conference brought together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in methodologies and applications of modeling and simulation. SIMULTECH 2016 received 76 submissions from 35 countries and all continents. After a double-blind paper review performed by the Program Committee, 18% were accepted as full papers. A further selection was made after the conference, based also on the assessment of presentation quality and audience interest, so that the book includes the extended and revised versions of the very best papers from SIMULTECH 2016.

Book Reference

1 Springer International Publishing AG 2018

M.S. Obaidat et al. (eds.), Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 676,

http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319698311

About CureMatch

CureMatch, Inc. is a San Diego-based digital health company focused on personalized medicine and combination therapy in oncology. CureMatch's Decision Support System guides oncologists in the selection of cancer drugs that are customized for individual patients based on their molecular tumor profile. CureMatch enables oncologists to become experts in personalized medicine by providing them with actionable intelligence towards advanced cancer treatment options. www.curematch.com.

SOURCE CureMatch

Related Links

http://www.curematch.com


LIMA, Peru, Dec. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The following release is issued on behalf of the Agrarian Debt Bondholders Association (ABDA):

On December 3, 2017, we sent a letter to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria. Our letter was signed by multiple non-profit bondholder groups representing families of Peruvian heritage that continue to await fair payment for the expropriation of their land by the government of Peru. Our letter addressed the longstanding default of the agrarian reform bonds we hold, and Peru's lack of transparency on the matter. In response, yesterday, Prime Minister Mercedez Araoz stated that a U.S. fund manager sent that letter, and that such U.S. fund manager is "playing dirty" and "continuously threatens Peru to frustrate [Peru's] access to the OECD."

Prime Minister Araoz's statements, however, are completely false and misleading. Our letter of December 3, 2017  which enclosed Dr. Blommestein's report  was executed by a large number of Peruvian bondholders' associations representing thousands of Peruvians. Prime Minister Araoz deliberately attempted to mislead on this very important fact.



In substance, Prime Minister Araoz's statements are only a futile attempt to confuse the OECD and distract its attention from the real issue: Peru's selective default of its sovereign debt and the complete lack of transparency with which it has handled this issue for the last three decades  but most significantly over the last four years. Simply put, Peru continues to be in default and has taken no serious effort to resolve this longstanding debt or to adhere to common expectations of transparency from a sovereign entity. Moreover, in order to avoid full payment of this debt, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has  as fully explained in our letter  relied on a forged decision from Peru's Constitutional Tribunal which has given rise to ongoing criminal investigations.



Finally, Prime Minister Araoz's statements are just another example of how Peru has, over the course of decades, completely ignored Peruvian bondholders and managed to get away with it. Notably, neither Prime Minister Araoz nor Peru have even attempted to address the five basic questions in our letter. Instead, Prime Minister Araoz suggests that alerting the OECD to a decision forged by Peru's highest court is a "dirty trick." In our view, forging and relying on such decision is the true "dirty trick."

By attempting to distract the OECD and making this simply about a U.S. fund, instead of taking a responsible and serious stance, Peru is showing its true colors as a country that only pays the debts it wants to pay, when and how it wishes to pay them. That posture should be completely unacceptable for a democratic country that supposedly respects the rule of law. Such a reckless and disrespectful attitude towards its own creditors is completely incompatible with the OECD's core values and mission.

Until Peru begins to act like a responsible sovereign and own up to its duties as a fair and reliable debtor, we continue to believe the country is not ready to receive an invitation for accession to such an organization as the OECD.

Ramon Remolina  ABDA

Alfredo Adrianzen  ADAEPRA

Luis Huguet Nicolini - ADAEPRA

SOURCE Agrarian Debt Bondholders Association (ABDA)
"The establishment of Raytheon Emirates is a strong step forward in our longstanding alliance with the United Arab Emirates," said Thomas A. Kennedy, Raytheon Company Chairman and CEO. "Through partnerships with government, industry and academia, Raytheon is committed to helping the UAE achieve its economic goals while providing trusted, innovative solutions that support the nation's defense and security requirements."

The new subsidiary will oversee Raytheon's operations in the Emirates by leveraging capabilities and resources in the fields of cybersecurity, effectors, air defense and sustainment, and advanced technology, and by applying Raytheon expertise, processes and systems to the development of human capital and locally based suppliers.

"We are focused on expanding the capabilities of Raytheon and its business partners in the UAE by emphasizing local hiring and talent development, cultivating a strong supplier base, and developing new technology solutions," said John Brauneis, who was named chief executive of Raytheon Emirates.

Raytheon Emirates is incorporated on Al Maryah Island, and plans are underway to establish operational branches in other areas of Abu Dhabi.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2016 sales of $24 billion and 63,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 95 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5ITM products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Follow us on Twitter.

www.raytheon.com

Media Contact

Dave Desilets

+1.781.522.5855

[email protected]

SOURCE Raytheon Company

Related Links

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WOBURN, Mass., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- During this season of giving, Resolution Development Services Inc., a leading provider of product development services to the medical, life science and consumer markets, today announced an end of the year promotion that awards one individual a new iPad and more importantly, supports Boston Children's Hospital.

Participating in the program is simple. Individuals that download Resolution Development Services' whitepaper, "Bridging the Chasm: How Product Development Services Connects Design and Manufacturing" featured on the Resolution Development Services Website will be entered into a drawing for a new iPad. The whitepaper illustrates the differences between product design and manufacturing and the critical role product development plays connecting the two disciplines to create high-quality products.

To support Boston Children's Hospital, for every person that downloads the whitepaper, $1.00 will be donated to support children's health services. A comprehensive center for pediatric health care and one of the largest pediatric medical centers in the United States, Boston Children's offers a complete range of healthcare services for children.

"As the founder and CEO of Resolution Development Services (RDS), I am committed to supporting worthy causes. We work closely with companies that provide life-saving pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and diagnostics and understand the importance of supporting these endeavors," said Leo Carayannopoulos, CEO of Resolution. "We created this end of year program as a fun way to engage our community and give to a worthy cause. Even if you have an iPad, download the whitepaper to support continuing care for children."

The promotion ends on Dec. 31, with the winner notified on Wednesday, Jan. 3.

To participate, visit www.resolutiondev.com and select the whitepaper download.

About Resolution Development Services:

With offices just outside of Boston, Resolution Development Services provides best in class hardware, software, mechanical, machine vision, and systems engineering outsourced services to clients in the United States, Canada, and Asia. Our regulatory compliant quality system makes Resolution the best choice for complex development programs.

To learn more about Resolution Development Services offerings, our charitable giving, and other partnerships, visit www.resolutiondev.com.

Contact:

Leo Carayannopoulos

[email protected]

SOURCE Resolution Development Services

Related Links

http://www.resolutiondev.com


SPARKS, Nevada, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

RESTANCE, Inc. (USOTC: ANCE) today announced an online presentation detailing the company's global brand name partnership strategy for implementing highly profitable, socially responsible development projects in Africa. The presentation explains how its contract to manufacture condoms in Africa under the Playboy brand name, starting first in Kenya, is a model for an expanded pipeline of development projects in Africa.

RESTANCE recently announced a contract to manufacture condoms with the Playboy brand name and bunny head logo for distribution starting in Kenya. RESTANCE is participating in the highly profitable and socially responsible enterprise designed to contribute to the United Nations goal of ending the AIDS Epidemic. The profitability offers a sustainable solution to implement a socially responsible program that can solve real problems facing the global community. RESTANCE will manufacture condoms for the #DoIt4Africa buy-one-give-one campaign where an anticipated $20 million in condoms will be sold in North American and for every condom sold, a condom will be manufactured in Africa and given away in Africa.

The presentation on the company's website with the presentation narrative included in its entirety below, details plans for other globally recognized brand name partnerships RESTANCE plans to bring to additional highly profitable, socially responsible projects in Africa.

Marrying Globally Recognized Brand Names With Socially Responsible Enterprises:

RESTANCE recently introduced a new business in Africa that will be manufacturing condoms. Per capita condom use in Africa is one of the highest in the world, yet next to no condoms are manufactured in Africa. What a great business opportunity, right? Typical reactions to business opportunities in Africa range from, "but the political corruption is so high," to "the per capita income is so low that the consumer market is not viable." First, let's take pause here in the United States to ask ourselves if we're in any position to judge any other country's political corruption. Then, let's move on to how highly profitable results can be achieved delivering goods and services in a low per capita income market.

Socially Responsible Is Just A Good Business Practice

One might call the strategy to succeeding in a low per capita income market "socially responsible." We certainly don't mind the good feeling we get from building socially responsible businesses, but the truth is that it's just good business. Africa already has a high per capita consumption of condoms and we're going to serve that existing consumption rate with a locally sourced and therefore, more competitively priced condoms - not to mention higher quality condoms. We're fighting disease and that's socially responsible, but it's just good business to deliver a better product to an existing market. We're creating jobs which is sonically responsible, and at the same time, we're contributing to an increase in per capita income which serves us in the long-run by improving the corresponding per capita spending potential on consumer products. Social responsibility is just good business.

In a low per capita income market, an obvious question arises. How can per capita consumption of anything be one of the highest in the world when per capita spending potential is low? Simple answer, the majority of condoms in Africa are given away. Organizations such as the United Nations, purchase the condoms and give them away. Certainly, locally sourced condoms will be better priced than those shipped in from overseas, and RESTANCE will be in a good position to displace current condom producers selling through charitable organizations. However, tapping directly into a consumer market without going through a third party to facilitate a consumer transaction would be much more efficient and profitable.

Tapping Into The Power Of Globally Recognized Brands

Disney is one of the most, if not actually the most globally recognized brand in the world. Wear a Mickey Mouse watch anywhere in the world - Nigeria, Nepal, North Dakota or the Netherlands - and everyone you meet will know it's a Disney product and not just some random animated mouse. Disney's success selling to consumers in markets where consumers have the disposable income to afford Disney products fuels demand for Disney products in markets where consumers can't afford Disney products. Wouldn't it be nice to tap into the profit potential of a global brand like Disney in a market were the brand is not yet generating revenue?

RESTANCE is introducing the Playboy brand in Africa. In a strategy to optimize the consumer condom market opportunity for condoms, RESTANCE will produce condoms with a globally recognized brand. In addition to having locally and more efficiently produced condoms, RESTANCE will also have a globally recognized brand on the condoms. But this still doesn't overcome the low per capita buying power.

Linking Microeconomic Opportunity

Economists often discuss the macroeconomic linking of overall national economies. A depression in one major economy does not bode well for the major economies with which the depressed nation trades. If OPEC increases the price of its oil, gas prices at the pump go up everywhere in the world. Economists mostly overlook the microeconomic linking between one geographic region and another . How can demand and sales of Mickey Mouse watches in the United States impact demand and sales of Mickey Mouse watches in Uganda? RESTANCE intends to implement global brand strategies that link microeconomic opportunities between developed and developing economic regions.

The #DoIt4Africa campaign where condoms are marketed in the United States in a socially responsible campaign that includes another condom being manufactured in Africa and given away in Africa links the developed microeconomic enterprise of selling condoms in a developed economic region to the distribution of condoms in a developing economic region. Bringing a globally recognized brand like Playboy into the mix provides the conduit between the two economies that can make the linked enterprises successful. By incentivizing purchases in the United States with not just the socially responsible aspect of making a purchase that makes a difference, but adding to the socially responsible incentive, the benefit of all the Playboy brand has to offer - like a Playboy Pajama Party at the State University, or a trip to the Playboy Mansion - now you really have a formula that can seize the yet to harvested consumer market in the developing economic regions of the world.

Beyond Condoms

On June 1, 2017, RESTANCE acquired East African Development Partners LLC. Randy Torno is the founder of East African Development Partners and now the CEO of RESTANCE. He has years of experience living and working in several regions in Africa on both government and commercial projects. Mr. Torno has earned a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economics at the University of Texas. East African Development Partners and now, RESTANCE are developing opportunities in the region including initiatives in technology and systems integration services, utility support services, affordable housing and health products manufacturing. Expect to see more global brand partnerships from RESTANCE in conjunction with additional development projects in East Africa.

Learn more about the RESTANCE operations in Africa on the Company's website: http://www.restanceinc.com

Disclaimer/Safe Harbor:

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.

Randell Torno

[email protected]

+1-800-834-5792

SOURCE RESTANCE, Inc.
ARLINGTON, Va., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations reiterated the industry's strong record of investing in and implementing innovative technologies to improve safety on the nation's highways.

"J.B. Hunt and many ATA members are early adopters of emerging safety technologies," Greer Woodruff, senior vice president of safety, security and driver personnel at J.B. Hunt, said on behalf of ATA at a congressional roundtable hosted by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. "In fact the trucking industry spends over $9 billion annually on safety including technology enhancements to help ensure that drivers and passengers of all vehicles make it safely to their destination."

Woodruff also pressed lawmakers to include commercial vehicles in automated vehicle legislation under consideration in Congress to ensure that state and federal laws do not conflict or impede the safety and efficiency of interstate commerce.

A leading expert on transportation safety, Woodruff serves on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Safety Advisory Committee. His remarks, as prepared for delivery can be read here.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


SODERTALJE, Sweden, Dec 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Scania now completes its new truck generation. Following the introduction of trucks for long-haulage and construction, the focus is now on urban and additional low-carbon transport solutions.

"With today's release, Scania comprehensively sets the stage for the necessary shift towards sustainable transport, offering tailored low-carbon trucks for all transport applications," says Christian Levin, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing.

The new fuel-efficient future-oriented trucks all feature the widely acclaimed styling and product characteristics of the new truck generation. Among these are enhanced driveability as well as improved visibility, increased safety, ergonomics and comfort. With the new generation trucks, Scania is taking major steps in providing customer-adapted trucks for even better total operating economy.

Scania extends its urban range

With the introduction of the lighter trucks powered by the new 7-litre engine, Scania offers urban transporters a new level of transport efficiency with fuel savings of up to 10 percent. With its more compact dimensions, the new P-series cab can feature a lower engine tunnel, which opens up a more spacious cab interior. Drivers will enjoy the best driving conditions in the industry in vehicles that excel in handling, steering and driveability  all of which are essential in challenging urban traffic.

Low entry for higher efficiency

The L-series is Scania's newly developed cab series for urban transport, such as distribution, refuse collection and maintenance. Drivers will benefit from vastly improved direct vision of the surroundings. Drivers will also be at the same height as other road users, with the added advantage of improved working conditions when repeatedly entering and exiting the cab. The Scania L-series features a kneeling mode and lower boarding steps on both sides of the cab. Drivers can also take advantage of the space in front of the engine tunnel to exit on the passenger side, thereby avoiding oncoming traffic.

Keeping an eye on safety

In addition to the better view over surrounding traffic, Scania introduces the City Safe Window. Drivers will thereby have better opportunities to detect nearby pedestrians and cyclists. The window on the passenger side door is available for all P- and L-series cabs, those most common in urban transport, as well as for the CrewCab.

Scania CrewCab  protecting those that protect

Since Scania's new CrewCab will mainly be used by firefighters, it has been specifically tailored for emergency assignments, keeping both ergonomics and safety in mind. For extra safety, there is an option for up to four roll over side-curtain airbags. The CrewCab accommodates up to eight passengers with a high level of safety and comfort, which includes a separate climate system with its own heating for the crew area.

Breakthrough for gas-fuelled long-haulage operations

Scania already offers the broadest range of trucks for renewable fuels, including ethanol, biodiesel, HVO as well as hybrid technology.

With Scania's introduction of a six-cylinder 13-litre gas engine specifically designed for regional and long-haulage operations, climate-conscious hauliers now have a strong alternative to conventional fossil fuels. For a 40-tonne truck-and-trailer combination with tanks for liquefied gas, the range has been extended to 1,100 kilometres. In parallel, Scania also releases a 9-litre gas engine for the new truck generation.

Increased uptime with flexible plans

Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans is now also made available for the gas engine range.Significantly greater maintenance precision can be achieved on the basis of the vehicle's actual usage pattern as continuously monitored through connectivity. The solution ensures that every single truck gets exactly the right maintenance at exactly the right time, thereby reducing time in the workshop and increasing uptime.

"With the new generation trucks, Scania is taking major steps in improved safety, driver comfort and fuel economy. The released models have been universally praised and awarded for their innovative features and overall performance and we are certain that the new urban range will be equally successful," says Levin.

More information available on www.scania.com/group/en/section/pressroom/presskit/.

For further information, please contact:

Henrik Eng

Product Director, Urban, Scania Trucks

Phone: + 46-70-658-98-29

email: [email protected]

Orjan Aslund

Head of Product Affairs, Scania Trucks

Phone: +46-70-289-83-78

email: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/scania/r/scania-unveils-future-oriented-city-trucks,c2409320

The following files are available for download:

http://mb.cision.com/Main/209/2409320/763714.pdf N17028EN Scania unveils future-oriented city trucks http://news.cision.com/scania/i/17289-001,c2298329 17289-001

SOURCE Scania

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SAN DIEGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wall Street Journal has recognized Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE) as the top company in the utilities sector in the Journal's first "Management Top 250" ranking, a new report that examines the overall effectiveness of U.S. businesses. Sempra Energy was ranked No. 68 overall, out of the 250 best-managed companies.

The Wall Street Journal said it compiled the report, which was released yesterday, using a holistic methodology from the Drucker Institute focused on five areas integral to effective management: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength. Data from third-party sources was used to score companies on each of the five dimensions.

The Drucker Institute is a think tank based at Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management in California that promotes the ideas and philosophy of late business and management expert, Peter Drucker.

Last month, Sempra Energy also was recognized as a 2017 Top 100 Global Energy Leader by Thomson Reuters, the multinational mass media firm. The first-time study reviewed more than 1,600 energy businesses to recognize those that excel in a complex business environment by balancing financial demands with regulatory, legal, social and environmental needs.

Sempra Energy includes San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Gas Co., Sempra South American Utilities, Sempra Mexico, Sempra Renewables and Sempra LNG & Midstream.

Sempra Energy, based in San Diego, is a Fortune 500 energy services holding company with 2016 revenues of more than $10 billion. The Sempra Energy companies' more than 16,000 employees serve approximately 32 million consumers worldwide.

Sempra South American Utilities, Sempra Infrastructure, Sempra LNG & Midstream, Sempra Renewables, Sempra Mexico and Infraestructura Energetica Nova, S.A.B. de C.V. (IEnova) are not the same as the California Utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) or Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), and are not regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission.

SOURCE Sempra Energy

Related Links

http://www.sempra.com


LOS ANGELES, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

USA News Group - While several states made the decision to vote in favor of cannabis legalization last year, the feds lead by the Attorney General are still wrestling with the legal terms. In a positive step, AG Jeff Sessions released a statement that the DOJ is looking at what he called a 'rational policy' toward marijuana.

This news sent positive signals to the legal cannabis industry, which is already seeing huge demand as states move into various legalization phases in 2018 led by California.

Companies impacted in the grower and producer category include Aphria (TSX: APH) (OTCQB: APHQF), Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTC: CNBX), AmeriCann, Inc. (OTC: ACAN) and MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF).

Based on the softening attitudes towards legalization and growth in demand, marijuana stocks have been trending higher over the entire year. Data shows that of the dozen largest pot stocks by market cap, the average marijuana stock is up well in excess of 100% - some Canadian based companies even more.

Leaders in the producer group include Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: CNBX), Aphria (TSX: APH) (OTC: APHQF) and AmeriCann, Inc (OTCQB: ACAN). These companies are already licensed legal growers of cannabis and are rapidly expanding their growing capacity to accommodate demands from new markets.

Several of the cannabis Licensed Producers (or LPs) are in the grower end of the business and combining their efforts with product development, sales and distribution. MYM Nutraceuticals Inc. (CSE: MYM) (OTC: MYMMF), is a unique example of a developer of three sizeable growing operations that is broadly diversified into multi-brand development and product distribution.

California is preparing for legal sales of recreational marijuana to begin on January 1, 2018.

Nevada followed Oregon's model, allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to adults 21 and older while they prepare by licensing and regulating new cannabis businesses. Authorities in California, Maine and Massachusetts all decided to wait until 2018 to begin sales of recreational pot.

SESSIONS TAKES A MORE REASONABLE POSITION

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week that the Justice Department is examining ways to work toward a 'rational' marijuana policy. He did not provide details, such as whether the DOJ will crack down on states where the drug has been legalized.

"We're looking very hard on that right now. In fact, we had meetings yesterday and talked about it at some length," Sessions said about the department's stance toward marijuana during an announcement on new funding and tools to combat the opioid crisis. He did not provide further details.

The attorney general says that he views pot as 'detrimental' and noted that consumption is still a federal violation.

"I don't want to suggest in any way that this department in any way believes that marijuana is harmless, people should avoid it," he said.

However, this new language by Sessions signals a softer, more reasonable approach to the larger issue.

Sessions holds the power over the federal enforcement arm of criminal laws, such as the Controlled Substances Act.

The marijuana industry is governed by a legal memorandum issued by the Justice Department in 2013 that adopted a policy of non-interference with marijuana-friendly state laws, so long as they don't threaten other federal priorities. That would include things like preventing the distribution of the drug to minors, supporting cartels or other illegal activities.

That memorandum is open to modification by the Justice Department under Sessions.

CALIFORNIA FIRST TO FEEL THE NEWS

Much like Canada, which has been a front runner in the push to legalize marijuana, California is poised to be the first state to have a fully functional legal recreational cannabis market open for business. This puts California right in the crosshairs.

The state is clearly getting ready; the Bureau of Cannabis Control put their proposed regulations up for review in September in Long Beach, Fresno, and Sacramento.

All this is pushing up the numbers for cannabis.

Cannabis sales are expected to reach $3.8 billion in 2018, and up to $6.6 billion by 2025, according to projections from New Frontier Data.

Based on these numbers, this could increase nationwide sales of the plant to $24.1 billion by 2025 - a number is going to continue to grow as more states enter the legal cannabis market in the coming years.

The X factor in this mix is Canada, which is expected legalize recreational use in mid-2018. The added demand for weed there is creating a real boom -one that could easily create a shortfall in as little as a year from now.

It's important to note that Medical marijuana has been legal in Canada since 2001. According to their national health agency, the number of eligible registered medical patients is increasing by about 10% a month.

The rapid growth in medical-cannabis customers and the now forecast legalization demand has cannabis producers in that country working to expand their production capacity at a breakneck pace.

MYM NUTRACEUTICALS MOVING UP THE RANKS

A perfect example of the efforts to increase supplies is MYM Nutraceuticals - a junior company quickly vaulting itself up the ranks of the major legal producers in Canada.

MYM Nutraceuticals is moving full speed on three planned facilities; a grow operation in Laval, Quebec to be completed this year, a joint-venture for a 1 million square foot facility in Casino, Australia and the flagship facility; a 1.5 million square foot greenhouse facility in Weedon, Quebec.

Weedon will be a massive marijuana operation -one of the largest grow operations on the planet. It will house the potential to produce over 150,000 kg of cannabis per year worth a staggering $750 million.

MYM Nutraceuticals is also diversifying; besides growing and cultivation at Laval, Casino and Weedon, MYM is advancing formulation and production to support branding and distribution of its entities Joshua Tree, MyHemp Skin Therapy, and HempMed offerings.

These subsidiaries develop and sell a variety of cannabis based natural products including custom-made cannabis products with tailored CBD chemistries along with tinctures, concentrates and oils, edibles, vape products and pet care products.

As the industry matures and seeks more sophisticated solutions from leading suppliers, this model is likely to become more common in states like California too.

CALIFORNIA A GOOD TEST CASE

Since California already has the oldest and most profitable medical marijuana market in the country, it's likely that they will have one of the most successful recreational markets as well.

California lawmakers have been working diligently to stick to a one-year plan to get the new market up and running, while Massachusetts and Maine have to pause until later in 2018.

If, as the numbers suggest, the industry will experience an aggregate of 300% growth in legal U.S. sales between 2016 and 2021, Cannabis sales will easily reach the expected $17 billion mark.

Those are some massive numbers that put pressure on legislators to 'do the right thing'.

And while Canadian cannabis companies may have set the standard for sales growth and early profits, California's model is about to test the boundaries with a need for much greater supplies.

If legalized on time as envisioned, and taken with a 'rational' approach, companies in the production, product development and distribution and their investors now could be the biggest benefactors of this new national attitude.

POTENTIAL COMPARABLES

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: CNBX)

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals announced recently that it has received a new research license from the Israeli Ministry of Health for the Characterization of anti-tumor activity of cannabinoids. The new license will enable the company to continue our vision of developing an ecosystem for creation of diagnostic tools and bringing to the market diagnostic services for cancer patients who are medicated with cannabis. Our forward looking plan encompasses a synergy between HTS (High Throughput Screening), CTCs (Circulating Tumor Cells), Drug Efficacy, and Genomic Data to provide therapists and their patients with personalized supportive data for their treatment.

Aphria (TSX: APH.TO) (OTC: APHQF)

Aphria Inc., boasts itself as one of Canada's lowest cost producers, that produces, supplies and sells medical cannabis. Located in the greenhouse capital of Canada, Leamington, Ontario, Aphria provides pharma-grade medical cannabis, and quality patient care. Aphria was the first public LP to report positive cash flow from operations, and the first to report positive earnings in consecutive quarters.

AmeriCann, Inc. (OTCQB: ACAN)

AmeriCann, Inc. develops, owns and supports advanced medical cannabis cultivation and processing facilities nationwide. The Company has a multi-market portfolio of over 1,000,000 square feet of sustainable cannabis production infrastructure in various stages of development. To support local businesses that seek to serve cannabis patients in their communities the company initiated the AmeriCann Preferred Partner Program. Through this program they provide an essential set of resources including advance cultivation facilities, access to a team of experts and in certain cases, capital for our partner's businesses. In addition, AmeriCann's team has been instrumental in winning cannabis licenses in competitive application processes throughout the country.

For a more in-depth look into MYM you can view the in-depth report at USA News Group: http://usanewsgroup.com/2017/12/04/billionaire-founder-of-virgin-group-richard-branson-is-pro-cannabis-and-for-good-reason/

Article Source:

http://usanewsgroup.com

[email protected]

Legal Disclaimer/Disclosure: This piece is an advertorial and has been paid for. This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. No information in this Report should be construed as individualized investment advice. A licensed financial advisor should be consulted prior to making any investment decision. We make no guarantee, representation or warranty and accept no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of USA News Group only and are subject to change without notice.USA News Group 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.



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SOURCE USA News Group
Today, Sixt is pleased to announce it has been recognized by Expedia Media Solutions, the advertising arm of Expedia, Inc., as a winner of its annual 2017 Partner Awards program, which honors innovative marketing campaigns from partners across the globe. Presented at the annual Expedia Partner Conference, the awards acknowledge partner campaigns that demonstrate innovation, creativity and achievement in travel marketing.

"Sixt is a well-established, iconic mobility brand in Europe and around the globe, but we've only been here in the U.S. market since 2011. That's why we work hard every day to introduce ourselves to American consumers, communicating our values and unique offering as a company. We're relentless in looking for fresh and creative ways to share and spread that message, and that's why we so deeply appreciate partnering with Expedia," said Daniel Florence, Sixt USA Co-President. "We've had great success collaborating with their team, which has been a key to Sixt's rising to become the 5th largest car rental company in the U.S. in such a short period of time. We're grateful to receive this award, and will continue to push the envelope and move forward with this successful partnership."

Sixt worked with Expedia Media Solutions to create an integrated campaign to reach travelers across Expedia's U.S. network of brands including Expedia.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, CheapTickets and Hotwire. The integrated campaign included display media targeting shoppers that were searching for destinations in the U.S. and Europe, and led them to a dedicated car rental page that was compatible with multiple devices. The campaign leveraged first-party travel behavior insights and strategic targeting, which allowed Sixt to reach more travelers than ever before. The return on ad spend (ROAS) across all the branded ROAS reached 10:1. The campaign also realized click through rates as high as 2.5 percent.

Sixt was one of twelve brands recognized by Expedia Media Solutions at this year's Partner Conference. Read Expedia's Blog Post on Sixt here, and go here to see more information about the awards.

Helpful Links:

Forbes on Sixt https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2017/11/20/the-biggest-car-rental-firm-youve-never-heard-of-german-magnate-erich-sixt-plans-major-u-s-push/

on Sixt https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2017/11/20/the-biggest-car-rental-firm-youve-never-heard-of-german-magnate-erich-sixt-plans-major-u-s-push/ Website https://www.sixt.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sixt.rentacar.usa/

Twitter https://twitter.com/SixtUSA

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sixtusa/

About Sixt:

Sixt SE has its registered headquarters in Pullach near Munich and is a leading international provider of high-quality mobility services for business and corporate customers as well as private travelers. With representations in over 100 countries worldwide Sixt is continually expanding its presence. The Company's strengths lie in the high proportion of premium cars in the vehicle fleet, its employees' consistent service orientation and a good price-performance ratio. Taken together these strengths have given Company an excellent market position. Sixt was founded in 1912 and maintains alliances with renowned brands in the hotel industry, well-known airlines and numerous prominent service providers in the tourism sector. The Sixt Group generates revenues of EUR 2.4 billion (2016). http://about.sixt.com/

SOURCE Sixt Rent-a-Car

Related Links

https://www.sixt.com


The new Advanced Clinical Spa opens in Longmont, Colorado with esteemed reconstructive surgeon Dr. Peter Schmid. Dr. Schmid is locally and nationally recognized as a respected leader in the facial plastic, cosmetic, reconstructive and surgical industry. With unrivaled expertise, integrity and true artistry, Dr. Schmid is dedicated to creating natural looking aesthetic results while maintaining the highest standards of individualized, compassionate care in a safe, private environment.

"Beauty is about celebrating individuality and feeling your best at every age," says Dr. Schmid. "We believe that aesthetic procedures integrated with SkinCeuticals science-based skin care and regular clinical skincare treatments are the keys to maximizing and maintaining optimal results and preserving the long-term health of your skin."

Dr. Schmid continues, "To protect skin against damaging free radicals and UVA/UVB rays, I always recommend my patients incorporate an antioxidant like C E Ferulic into their skincare regimen. C E Ferulic not only delivers advanced environmental protection, but it also helps to speed recovery time and reduce visible scars post-surgery."

Explicitly formulated for use before, during and after in-office procedures, SkinCeuticals offers clinical skincare products that have both immediate and long-term benefits. Of the partnership, Matthew Curtis, SkinCeuticals Director of Business Development, says, "We are so excited to partner with the Institute of Aesthetic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr. Schmid's dedication to providing each patient with the best results and achieving optimal skin aligns perfectly with SkinCeuticals' goals to ensure that all in-office treatments' results are maximized with at-home skincare products."

ABOUT SKINCEUTICALS

Founded in Dallas, TX in 1997, SkinCeuticals discovers, develops, and delivers an advanced line of scientifically backed cosmeceutical treatments. As leaders in antioxidant and sun protection technology, SkinCeuticals products have been shown to dramatically improve skin health by protecting skin from environmental damage and visibly improving skin clarity, tone, and texture to minimize the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. For more information, visit the brand on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or at www.skinceuticals.com.

Contact: Laura Cummins at SkinCeuticals: (212) 984-4907 / [email protected]

SOURCE SkinCeuticals

Related Links

http://www.skinceuticals.com


SAN DIEGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SunPower by Stellar Solar, San Diego's oldest SunPower dealer and one of two Master Dealers in San Diego County, has released the fourth episode of their popular YouTube series Solar Cribs. It features the story of the Harris family in Encinitas, California. The Harris's  parents Gregory and Liliana and their children Sunshine and Daniel, had already implemented several sustainable living practices in their home. Daniel takes his efforts even further as part of his school's Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP). They agreed as a family that going solar would not only contribute significantly to their overall efforts, it saves the family money that would otherwise be paid to the utility.

The Harris family solar installation in Encinitas, CA. The Harris family went solar in Encinitas, CA with SunPower by Stellar Solar. From left Liliana, Sunshine, Daniel and Gregory.

Click here to view this episode



Gregory Harris, who made the final decision to go with SunPower by Stellar Solar, owns and operates Local Computer Pros, a San Diego based IT consulting firm. Besides the environmental and financial benefits of going solar, he was excited about the system monitoring technology that was included with his SunPower system. "I'm a techie at heart and the SunPower monitoring that shows what my system is producing is very cool. I can keep track of total production, usage, and estimated savings from anywhere. I check it several times a day and show off the results to my friends and clients." Son Daniel, a 6th grade student at El Camino Creek Elementary in Encinitas and whose involvement with SWPPP has started him on an early path to walking the talk when it comes to a sustainable lifestyle, had this to say about going solar. "Since I work with SWPPP, I was excited about my family going solar. It's cool to think that the sun is producing more than enough electricity to power our home. My friends think it's pretty cool too."

SunPower by Stellar Solar produces Solar Cribs in collaboration with their agency ArtichokeCreative. They offer quick, no-pressure solar quotes to home and business owners throughout Southern California.

About SunPower by Stellar Solar

SunPower by Stellar Solar is a leading California residential and commercial PV solar design and installation company, based in San Diego since 1998 with over 6,000+ installations across Southern California including notable commercial installations on The Salk Institute, US Foods, Cedars Sinai Hospital and more. Readers of the Union Tribune have voted them best solar panel company again in 2017 marking the third year in a row and fourth time in 5 years winning the award. Their 5 Star Reviews on Yelp, A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and high customer ratings on Angie's list are further testament to their standing as the leading solar provider to homes, businesses and faith based organizations in San Diego County. Learn more at www.stellarsolar.net

About Artichoke Creative

Artichoke Creative is an integrated marketing agency founded in 2003 with locations in San Diego and Detroit. They are storytellers well versed in the art of creating a marketing mix that makes sense for their clients, works within their budget, and helps them sell more stuff. More at www.artichoke-creative.com

Media Contact:

David Boylan

858.395.6905

[email protected]

SOURCE SunPower by Stellar Solar

Related Links

http://www.stellarsolar.net


ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SVM, LP, the leader in gift card fulfillment serving businesses for more than twenty years, has unveiled an enhancement to its self-service, online purchasing portal, SVMdirect.com. The platform now allows its customers to purchase eGift cards on-line and then have those cards delivered to individual recipients.

SVMDirect.com, launched in the spring of 2016 has seen steady growth in both users and orders. This new individual delivery option, in addition to the existing bulk delivery option, allows the thousands of customers using the platform to select gift card brands and denominations, then checkout using a credit card, check or wire payment. During checkout, the customer simply uploads a list of recipients and individually customized messages, and SVM takes care of the rest, delivering the cards to the intended end-users. The new feature simplifies fulfillment for the customer, keeping eGift cards more secure and saving time.

"Our customers have raved about the ease of use of the portal since its launch, but when informally surveyed they also let us know that they wanted this enhancement, first and foremost," explained John Cullen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "We pride ourselves on having the right technology to support the needs of our vast customer base and providing individual delivery for eGift was the next logical enhancement for SVMdirect.com."

SVM can offer eGift delivery for the most popular brands used in the loyalty, award, employee and sales channels.

"We strive to be the most reliable provider of gift cards for business and with the growing popularity of digital gift cards, we've addressed a need expressed by our portal customers," commented Kristy Reddington, Director of Digital Products.

In addition to SVMdirect.com, SVM also offers an API for delivery of eGift products. SVM's API solution is a perfect fit for consumer, loyalty, sales and employee channel programs, and offers a customizable solution to reinforce your brand all backed by the leader in business-to-business gift card services.

Contact:

Media and Public Relations: Steve Owen, 847-553-9169, [email protected]

About SVM

Founded in 1997, SVM is a global leader in providing innovative gift card solutions for businesses. SVM is the only company that offers gasoline gift cards from every major oil company in America, as well as over 250 of the most popular retail brands, restaurants, service companies, hotels, and prepaid cards. SVM's products are used by leading incentive, rewards, loyalty and other companies to incent and reward their customers, employees, and prospects. For more information on SVM, please visit www.svmcards.com

SOURCE SVM, LP

Related Links

http://www.svmcards.com


SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- EBCoin, an international cryptocurrency venture, is launching both a digital coin and a currency exchange platform to appeal to tourists. Short for Eximbay Coin, this venture focuses specifically on tourists traveling between Korea, Japan, and China, but has the potential to enhance tourism all over the world.

EBCoin seeks to address the expensive obstacles that tourists currently face when shopping abroad. Chief among these is consumption taxes. In theory, tourists can recoup the costs of these taxes through refunds, but the complexity and high cost of the refund system means that most travelers regain, at most, a fraction of the money they lost. Combined with the cost of exchanging currencies, this limits both the number of people who are willing to travel in the first place and the amount that those who do travel are willing to purchase.

By providing a decentralized platform for claiming tax refunds, EBCoin allows tourists to recoup most of the money they lose through consumption taxes. Releasing a new coin that can be exchanged for multiple other fiat and digital currencies, along with a decentralized exchange platform, further saves tourists money by reducing the cost of exchanging their money. These efforts should make it substantially easier for Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and other citizens to travel and shop across the globe.

Addressing the Limits of Tax Refunds

One of the most important factors that affects how much tourists spend when visiting other countries is those countries' taxes. Consumption taxes often make up a large portion of national, provincial, and local government budgets. This is particularly true in European countries, where such taxes can account for upwards of 15 percent of the cost of retail goods. While consumption taxes are generally accepted as fair by citizens, who benefit directly from the services that they pay for, they are an unqualified loss to tourists. For this reason, many countries offer foreign visitors refunds on the consumption taxes they pay while in the country.

While refunds have the potential to attract more tourists, in practice, they are of limited effectiveness. This is because the system for reimbursement is so difficult. To claim a refund, tourists must record their purchase histories and present them to customs authorities in airports and other designated locations. But because there are only so many of these locations, this tends to require waiting in long lines. Combined with the complexity of filling out the necessary paperwork and making sure that their refunds are the correct sizes, this leads many tourists not to bother to claim tax refunds. As a result, roughly USD $24 billion in refunds goes unclaimed.

Even when tourists do claim their refunds, they often do not receive the full value that they deserve. The current system for processing refunds is highly expensive, consuming as much as 30 percent of the total value of tax reimbursements. This makes it less worthwhile for tourists to seek refunds in the first place.

In order to simplify refunds and lower administrative fees, EBCoin provides an app where tourists can enter all the relevant information on their own. Users must scan their passports and enter the information into the app; this confirms their identity and their country of citizenship. They can then scan the receipts from different items they buy during the trip, creating a reliable purchase history that can be used to calculate the total amount of consumption taxes they've paid. The platform uses this information to claim the user's refund, which it pays to them in its own digital currency.

Because the EBCoin platform is highly decentralized, there are no intermediaries who charge fees for processing refunds. There is also no need for users to stand in line at airports or go through a complicated process of recording and verifying their purchases. More users are thus likely to claim their rightful refunds, and in doing so, they will receive close to the total value of those refunds. This has the potential to put billions of dollars back in the pockets of tourists, giving them an incentive to travel more and make more purchases abroad.

Currency Exchange & the Eximbay Coin

Besides allowing users to claim tax refunds, the EBCoin platform is releasing its own digital currency. These Eximbay coins (EBC) are backed by the Korean payment services firm KRP, which serves more than 6,000 businesses across Japan, China, Korea, and other parts of East and Southeast Asia. Many of these businesses are likely to begin accepting the coins for purchases, allowing tourists to use EBC rather than having to obtain the local currency. The EBCoin platform also allows users to exchange the coins for local currency, their home countries' money, or other national and digital currencies.

As with refund processing, EBCoin offers a decentralized means of exchanging its own and other currencies. This eliminates intermediary fees and other currency exchange charges, lowering the cost of traveling and shopping abroad. Releasing its own currency also provides EBCoin users a standard against which to measure the value of other currencies, making it easier for them to make sure they are getting a good deal on exchanges.

EBCoin plans to create 1.5 billion of these coins, exactly half of which will be issued to the public through token sales. The platform will release 150 million of these coins during a pre-sale in December of 2017, and will then distribute 375 million during an ICO in January of 2018. The coins will initially be pegged at a value of 6,000 EBC for one ETH. This value will likely change as the platform grows in popularity and demand for Eximbay coins increases.

SOURCE EBCoin

Related Links

http://ebcoin.io/


DALLAS, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC is proud to announce the company's top-selling Theradome has garnered a prestigious award from THE Aesthetic Guide. The Theradome has been honored with THE Aesthetic Industry Award in 2017 for Best Hair Restoration Device.

"THE Aesthetic Guide is honoring those companies that have developed pioneering products and technologies in medical aesthetics via THE Aesthetic Industry Awards," per the popular industry publication. "Celebrating a field that continues to push the envelope with state-of-the-art innovations, winners were chosen by an esteemed panel of judges in a wide range of treatment categories."

The Theradome distributed by Eclipse offers the world's most advanced technology for hair restoration that can even be utilized from the comfort of one's own home. This is not like Light Emitting Diodes (LED) devices. Theradome's laser light targets the stem cells at the base of hair follicles. This action allows the formation of a new photonic pathway that can restore hair to a healthy state. The advanced, proprietary laser technology delivers maximum energy (> 440 joules per treatment) and penetrates the scalp at a wavelength optimized for clinical hair restoration (678  8 nm). With its 80 high-efficiency lasers, it delivers therapeutic power while providing a maximum scalp coverage of 582 cm and generating less than 1 C of heat per a 20-minute session (used twice a week).

"Being selected as the best hair restoration device for 2017 is a great honor," said Tom O'Brien, CEO and Founder of Eclipse Aesthetics. "The Theradome popularity, reliability and clinical efficacy has proven to be a standard of care for many of our customers."

"We look forward to bringing many new offerings to market," Mr. O'Brien added. "We are confident these products shall advance hair restoration to the next level in the days ahead."

About Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC

Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC. manufactures and distributes medical and aesthetic supplies to practices in the United States and internationally. Based out of the United States, Eclipse boasts a large sales force with experience representatives located in every area of the country to provide hands-on support. We believe in proving products and procedures that are simple to implement, easy to use and are highly effective in providing extraordinary results for both patients and practices. To learn more about the aesthetic sales leader and how to Eclipse the competition, visit www.EclipseMed.com.

Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC

SOURCE Eclipse Aesthetics, LLC

Related Links

http://www.eclipsemed.com


WESTMINSTER, England, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Professor Chris Imafidon, renowned government and presidential adviser, scholar, and educator was honoured alongside popular BBC actress, Ms. Ellen Thomas; Dr. Josephine Ojiambo, Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth; and Philanthropist and Chair, of the Labour party, Dr. Mike Omotosho yesterday at the British parliament in the palace of Westminster in central London.

Other people named at the occasion were Jake McLeod of UNICEF; President and founder of the European School of Economics, President Elio D'Anna; prominent persons of African origin who were celebrated in rare ceremony in the palace of Westminster in London.

Speaking, Prof. Chris Imafidon, who chairs, The ExcellenceinEducation.org.uk program, in characteristic modesty said, "Personally I am not deserving of such a huge honour, it is my students and scholars that did all the work, therefore, I dedicate this award to them, and thank the Almighty God, my grandparents and the organizers for this day. A big shout out to the staff and management of http://www.excellenceineducation.org.uk/ program. This is more fuel for us to do more and pursue our philosophy that there is a genius in everyone. Hence my book entitled The Genius in You." Prof. Imafidon disagreed with popular press and experts who described his family as the world's smartest and gave proof that everyone has a genius or greatness in them. "You may be a suppressed genius, oppressed genius or an expressed genius, you are a genius in some ways."

Dr. Mike Omotosho, who heads his own foundation, said during his speech that philanthropy must be universal and the girl child deserves more educational support that any government is doing. Dr. Josephine Ojiambo noted the progress that has been made in education for females but said that more needed to be done.

This Award ceremony has been rated by FORBES Magazine as one of the most prestigious award Ceremonies of its type. The notable Individuals and organisations who have been honored at this prestigious Awards Ceremony include Arch. Bishop Desmond Tutu, H.E. Jakaya Kikwete Republic of Tanzania, Mr. John Momoh, Dr. Mathews Phosa, Kofi Anan Foundation,The Justina Mutale Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The African Development Bank etc.

More Info - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmmRXX1AeQk&t=7s

Media Contact:

Hannah Rivers

07968285848

[email protected]

Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/12679693

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Excellence in Education.org.uk

Related Links

http://www.excellenceineducation.org.uk/


PLANO, Texas, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Toyota Financial Services (TFS) announced today that it is offering payment relief options to its customers affected by the recent southern California wildfires. This broad outreach includes all Toyota Financial Services (TFS) or Lexus Financial Services (LFS) customers in the designated disaster areas and follows the company's recent payment relief programs for customers affected by the devastating California wildfires of just a few months ago as well as Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Maria.

Toyota Financial Services cares about the safety and well-being of its customers and wants to help those affected by the fires. Lease and finance customers residing in the devastated areas may be eligible to take advantage of several payment relief options, some of which include:

extensions or deferred payments

redirecting billing statements

arranging phone or online payments

Toyota Financial Services will proactively attempt to contact customers in the affected areas to assess their needs and inform customers of the options available to them.

Customers who would like to discuss their account options are encouraged to contact TFS or LFS:

Toyota Financial Services customers may call (800) 874-8822 or contact TFS via email using the Mail Center function after logging into ToyotaFinancial.com.

Lexus Financial Services customers may call 800-874-7050 or contact LFS via email using the Mail Center function after logging into LexusFinancial.com.

We extend our heartfelt thoughts to those affected by the natural disaster.

About Toyota Financial Services

Toyota Financial Services (TFS) is the finance and insurance brand for Toyota in the United States, offering retail auto financing and leasing through Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (TMCC) and Toyota Lease Trust. TFS also offers extended service contracts through Toyota Motor Insurance Services (TMIS). The company services Lexus dealers and customers using the Lexus Financial Services brand. TFS currently employs approximately 3,100 associates nationwide, and has assets totaling over $120 billion. It is part of a worldwide network of comprehensive financial services offered by Toyota Financial Services Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation. We announce material financial information using the investor relations section of our website (www.toyotafinancial.com) and SEC filings. We use these channels, press releases, and social media to communicate about our company, our services and other issues. While not all information we post on social media is of a material nature, some information could be material. Therefore, we encourage those interested in our company to review our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/toyotafinancial.

Points of Light has named TFS one of its Civic 50, which recognizes the most community-minded companies in the nation. For more information about the company's support of financial literacy, youth development programs, and other community initiatives, please visit www.tfsinthecommunity.com.

SOURCE Toyota Financial Services

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CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- United Airlines today announced Kate Gebo has been named executive vice president Human Resources and Labor Relations, replacing Mike Bonds, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

"I could not be prouder or more confident in the selection of Kate for this important role," said Oscar Munoz, CEO of United. "Her track record clearly demonstrates her proven ability to build and enhance strong partnerships with our union leaders, her understanding of the importance of establishing human connections between employees and the customers they serve and an obvious talent for building and developing successful teams throughout the company. Those qualities and experiences will put her in an excellent position as she sets to work engaging our employees and putting customer service at the center of everything we do."

Gebo will report directly to Munoz. Gebo currently serves as senior vice president and chief customer officer, where she oversees all of United's customer-facing teams from booking to landing. Gebo has more than 20 years of airline experience, working in several functions at United, including leading the real estate function to work with airports worldwide to improve the overall customer experience through new facilities and services.

United will name Gebo's replacement in the coming days.

Gebo has her bachelor's degree in finance from DePaul University and her MBA from Loyola University of Chicago.

About United

United Airlines and United Express operate approximately 4,500 flights a day to 337 airports across five continents. In 2016, United and United Express operated more than 1.6 million flights carrying more than 143 million customers. United is proud to have the world's most comprehensive route network, including U.S. mainland hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark/New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. United operates 751 mainline aircraft and the airline's United Express carriers operate 489 regional aircraft. The airline is a founding member of Star Alliance, which provides service to more than 190 countries via 28 member airlines. For more information, visit united.com, follow @United on Twitter or connect on Facebook. The common stock of United's parent, United Continental Holdings, Inc., is traded on the NYSE under the symbol "UAL".

SOURCE United Airlines

Related Links

http://www.united.com


IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation's largest multi-sourced property database, today released its Q3 2017 U.S. Home Flipping Report, which shows that single family homes and condos flipped in the third quarter yielded an average gross flipping profit of $66,448 per flip, representing an average 47.7 percent return on investment for flippers  down from 48.7 percent in the previous quarter and down from 51.2 percent in Q3 2016 to the lowest average gross flipping ROI since Q2 2015.

The report also shows that 48,685 single family homes and condos were flipped nationwide in the third quarter, a home flipping rate of 5.1 percent  down from 5.6 percent in the previous quarter and unchanged from a year ago. Year-to-date through the third quarter of 2017 a total of 153,727 single family homes and condos nationwide have been flipped, nearly equal with the 153,854 flipped through the first three quarters of 2016, when the number of homes flipped increased to a 10-year high.

"Home flipping profits continue to be squeezed by a dwindling inventory of distressed properties available to purchase at a discount and increasing competition from fair-weather home flippers often willing to operate on thinner margins," said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. "A more than nine-year low in the ratio of flips per investor is evidence of this increased competition, which is pushing many investors to new metro areas that often have weaker market fundamentals but also come with a bigger supply of discounted distressed properties to flip."

Home flipping rate increases in 47 percent of markets

The Q3 2017 home flipping rate increased from a year ago in 44 of the 93 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report (47 percent), led by Baton Rouge, Louisiana (up 140 percent); Winston-Salem, North Carolina (up 58 percent); Salem, Oregon (up 51 percent); Indianapolis, Indiana (up 51 percent); and Buffalo, New York (up 47 percent).

Along with Indianapolis and Buffalo, metro areas with a population of 1 million or more that posted a year-over-year increase in home flipping rates of at least 10 percent were Louisville, Kentucky (up 22 percent); San Antonio, Texas (up 22 percent); New York, New York (up 21 percent); Cleveland, Ohio (up 17 percent); Birmingham, Alabama (up 17 percent) and Charlotte, North Carolina (up 15 percent).

"Across Southern California, investors are finding home flips for investment purchases to be a challenge due to an aging housing inventory requiring greater repair cost coupled with higher acquisition costs due to low available inventory," said Michael Mahon, president at First Team Real Estate, covering the Southern California housing market. "That equates to increased risk for return on investment that is keeping many potential investors on the sidelines."

Other major markets where the Q3 2017 home flipping rate decreased from a year ago included Seattle (down 8 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (down 18 percent); Tampa-St. Petersburg (down 9 percent); Baltimore (down 2 percent); and Denver (down 2 percent).

"Although the number of flips in the Seattle market dropped back to levels not seen since early 2016, they are still well above the levels seen before the recession. I anticipate that the number of flips will continue to fall as home price growth eats into profits, which have been on the decline since 2013," said Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, covering the Seattle market. "The Seattle region housing market remains very tight in terms of inventory and this has put substantial upward pressure on prices. Flippers can function to exacerbate this issue, so the sooner we see the number of flips drop back to pre-recession levels, the better."

Home flipping returns increase in 37 percent of markets, counter to national trend

Counter to the national trend, average gross home flipping ROI in Q3 2017 increased from a year ago in 34 of the 93 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report (37 percent), led by Baton Rouge, Louisiana (up 116 percent); Spokane, Washington (up 46 percent) and Indianapolis, Indiana (up 35 percent).

Read full report and methodology.

About ATTOM Data Solutions

ATTOM Data Solutions is the curator of the ATTOM Data Warehouse, a multi-sourced national property database that blends property tax, deed, mortgage, foreclosure, environmental risk, natural hazard, health hazards, neighborhood characteristics and other property characteristic data for more than 150 million U.S. residential and commercial properties. The ATTOM Data Warehouse delivers actionable data to businesses, consumers, government agencies, universities, policymakers and the media in multiple ways, including bulk file licenses, APIs and customized reports.

Media Contact:

Jennifer von Pohlmann

949.502.8300

[email protected]

Data Licensing & Custom Reports

949.502.8313

[email protected]

SOURCE ATTOM Data Solutions

Related Links

http://www.attomdata.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled today that the U.S. lumber industry is materially injured by Canadian government subsidies of their softwood lumber industry. Voting 4-0 in favor of the U.S. lumber industry, the ITC ruling follows a U.S. Department of Commerce determination that imports of softwood lumber from Canada are sold in the United States at less than fair value and subsidized by the government of Canada.

"The U.S. Lumber Coalition fully supports the enforcement of America's trade laws. The evidence presented to the ITC was clear - the massive subsidies that the Canadian government provides to its lumber industry and the dumping of lumber products into the U.S. market by Canadian companies cause real harm to U.S. producers and workers," said U.S. Lumber Coalition Co-Chair and Co-President of Pleasant River Lumber Company, Jason Brochu. "Now, with a level playing field, the U.S. lumber industry, and the 350,000 hardworking men and women who support it, can have the chance to compete fairly."

"With the enforcement of U.S. trade laws, lumber mills across the country will be able to make important investments in employees and mill operations so we can expand production to meet demand," added Joe Patton, U.S. Lumber Coalition Co-Chair and Vice President of Wood Products at The Westervelt Company.

Additional information and background:

In November 2016, the Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations (COALITION) petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission to restore the conditions of fair trade in softwood lumber between the United States and Canada.

In November 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced its final determination that Canada subsidizes softwood lumber production and that exporters from Canada have sold softwood lumber to the United States at less than fair value, distorting the U.S. softwood lumber market to the detriment of U.S. sawmills, their employees and communities. The antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber products into the United States, and the U.S. Lumber Coalition's statement can be found here.

About the U.S. Lumber Coalition

The U.S. Lumber Coalition is an alliance of large and small lumber producers from around the country, joined by hundreds of thousands of their employees, and tens of thousands of woodland owners. The Coalition is united in opposition to Canada's unfair lumbertrade practices, including the gross underpricing of timber on governmentowned lands. For more information, please visit the Coalition's website at www.uslumbercoalition.org.

SOURCE U.S. Lumber Coalition

Related Links

http://www.uslumbercoalition.org


SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the latest projects with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) that Legrand, North & Central America has completed is the MSK Monmouth outpatient facility in Middletown, New Jersey. This 285,000 square feet facility, opened in December 2016, provides residents in the Jersey Shore area with expert cancer care through personalized medicine and cutting-edge clinical trials. It is MSK's first facility outside of Manhattan to offer outpatient surgery.

Overall, the lighting design focused on controls that would be easy-to-use for patients and visitors, as well as meet the level of interactivity for nurses and other professional staff. In the infusion suite, patients and their caregivers can adjust the lighting and other settings, such as temperature and seating.

Patient integration was one of the most important pieces in the lighting design. The lighting controls also needed to work with the Rauland Responder 5 nurse call system, which added new complexities in terms of sequence of operations and integration.

To address complexities associated with this project, Wattstopper lighting controls  an innovative combination of Digital Lighting Management (DLM) and Architectural Dimming solutions  were utilized. These solutions, including the Lighting Control and Automation Panel (LCAP) series of lighting control panels, support the entire facility including 30 exam rooms, 60 patient infusion rooms, administration offices, and nurse call operations and integration locations.

To manage the complexities of the nurse call system and panel, Legrand developed a new solution for this project, the LMOR-102 low voltage dual relay accessory device. This solution enables a local DLM switch button to provide a low voltage dry contact input that could be aggregated into a larger system and remotely managed from the Rauland Responder 5 nurse call system. It includes two relays for on/off control of devices that require a contact closure on a voltage signal ranging from 0-24V AC/DC. This one device solved the challenges around sequence of operations and integration, as well as eliminating a line voltage to low voltage interface in the room.

Additional Resources:

About Wattstopper

Wattstopper, a product line of Legrand, offers the most comprehensive line of simple, scalable, and flexible energy-efficient lighting controls and solutions for commercial and residential applications. The Wattstopper range of products, programs, and services has been helping customers save energy, meet green initiatives, and comply with energy codes for more than 30 years. www.legrand.us/wattstopper.

About Legrand and Legrand, North and Central America

Legrand is a global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. Its comprehensive offering of solutions for use in commercial, industrial, and residential markets makes it a benchmark for customers worldwide. Innovation for a steady flow of new products with high added value is a prime vector for growth, including, in particular, connected devices stemming from Legrand's globalEliot (Electricity and IoT) program. Legrand reported sales of $5.6 billion in 2016. Legrand has a strong presence in North and Central America, with a portfolio of well-known market brands and product lines that includes AFCO Systems, C2G, Cablofil, Chief, Da-Lite, Electrorack, Finelite, Luxul, Middle Atlantic Products, Nuvo, OCL, On-Q, Ortronics, Pass & Seymour, Pinnacle, QMotion, Quiktron, Raritan, Sanus, Solarfective, Vaddio, Vantage, Wattstopper, and Wiremold. Legrand is listed on Euronext Paris and is a component stock of indexes including the CAC40, FTSE4Good, MSCI World, ASPI, Corporate Oekom Rating, and DJSI (ISIN code FR0010307819) www.legrand.us.

Media Contact:

Mary Placido, Legrand Building Control Systems

415-218-3627 [email protected]

SOURCE Legrand, North & Central America

Related Links

https://www.legrand.us


NEWARK, N.J., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS)the leading non-profit organization geared towards aligning individuals from underserved communities with transformative career opportunitieshosted its annual holiday celebration to further support its various mentoring and training programs and initiatives designed to create career pathways for individuals who face barriers to education and employment.

On December 6th, over 200 business leaders, supporters, and WOS program participants gathered at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, New Jersey to reflect on the organization's continued progress and commitment towards helping people from underrepresented groups launch and excel in their careers.

The evening kicked off with a cocktail reception and was followed by opening remarks from Dr. Art Langer, Chairman & Founder, Workforce Opportunity Services. During his speech, Dr. Langer highlighted how his personal experiences while coming of age in the Bronx inspired him to create an organization like WOS. While reflecting on the strides that the organization has madeincluding serving over 1,800 individuals and establishing programs in over 40 locations throughout the countryhe also took the opportunity to address the growing need for workforce development programs.

Gerald Goodfellow, United States Air Force Brigadier General and WOS Board member, delivered a poignant keynote address where he spoke about the importance of having business leaders use their platform to advocate and create opportunities for underserved individuals. As an active member in the military, he encouraged business leaders to look past the stereotypes and unconscious bias surrounding veterans and the importance of being more open to a talent pool of those who have served.

The eventwhich was sponsored by Prudential, Chubb, Johnson & Johnson and other companies wrapped up with a brief panel of individuals who have benefited from WOS' programs. They candidly shared their stories of adversity and illustrated how our programs helped them launch their professional careers. Tanika Miller, a young woman from New Jersey who had to drop out of college due to financial setbacks, shared how WOS not only aligned her with a life-changing career opportunity as a business analyst at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, but empowered her to thrive in the position where she has been awarded for her performance.

The entire evening was a true testament to how impactful a combined effort between nonprofits, major corporations, and educational institutions can be in the lives of those from underserved communities.

About Workforce Opportunity Services

Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) is a next-generation 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that transforms early career professionals by cultivating their talents. We connect leading companies all over the world with a network of thousands of ready-to-work professionals who reflect diverse communities and customers. Our partners rely on us to recruit, educate, and train employees with the highest potential who will remain committed to their work over the long term.

Every day, we promote upward mobility, professional success, financial independence, and lifelong learning. We are experts in helping companies identify and assimilate the skills of veterans and underserved jobseekers. We offer hands-on support services to ensure that promising employees stay on a steady career path.

Based at Columbia University in New York City, our scientifically-based program offers cutting-edge research and analytics in partnership with top-tier academic institutions. Since our founding in 2005, we have partnered with more than 50 corporations in 35+ locations around the world. For more information, visit wforce.org.

Media Contact:

Brandee Sanders

212.870.2247

[email protected]

SOURCE Workforce Opportunity Services

Related Links

http://www.wforce.org


COLUMBIA FALLS, Maine, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wreaths Across America (WAA) today announced that is has accepted with gratitude a contribution of $20,000 from the Pittsburgh Steelers. The donation will ensure that all 9,600 veterans buried at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies will receive a remembrance wreath this year as part of WAA's National Wreaths Across America Day on December 16, 2017.

Each December, WAA honors fallen military services members across the United States with wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and more than 1,300 other locations as part of its National Wreaths Across America Day. The contribution from the Pittsburgh Steelers will allow WAA to place wreaths on every single fallen military service member's headstone at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Bridgeville, Penn., in honor of the service and sacrifices they made for our freedoms, with each name said aloud during the ceremonies.

"The Pittsburgh Steelers are honored to be a part of National Wreaths Across America Day this December," said Art Rooney II, president, Pittsburgh Steelers. "Our donation honors our fellow Pennsylvanians who gave their lives for our freedom, a sacrifice that will always be remembered with gratitude and reverence."

"Each year, the number of wreath remembrances and volunteers for National Wreaths Across America Day grows," said Karen Worcester, executive director, Wreaths Across America. "This is a testament to the good will and sense of community that the event fosters in each town that participates. It is especially wonderful to see an organization like the Pittsburgh Steelers give back to their local community and help ensure that all veterans and their families will be honored this December at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Bridgeville."

On this year's National Wreaths Across America Day, Americans from all walks of life join together, in thanks to Remember, Honor and Teach. Ceremonies at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies and other participating cemeteries will begin at noon on December 16, 2017, and the local community is invited to join in the placement of wreaths. No registration is required.

National Wreaths Across America Day is a free event and open to all people. For more information, visit www.wreathsacrossamerica.org.

About Wreaths Across America

Wreaths Across America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded to continue and expand the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery begun by Maine businessman Morrill Worcester in 1992. The organization's mission  Remember, Honor, Teach  is carried out in part each year by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies in December at Arlington, as well as at hundreds of veterans' cemeteries and other locations in all 50 states and beyond. For more information or to sponsor a wreath please visit www.wreathsacrossamerica.org.

SOURCE Wreaths Across America

Related Links

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Just because the Sydney premium is currently above the long-term average for most cities, this doesnt necessarily mean that we will see a reversion to those long term averages.

We acknowledge that dwelling values are beginning to fall in Sydney after a substantial increase over recent years. Assuming these falls continue, the premium relative to the other capital cities is likely to decline.

Across most capital cities the current Sydney dwelling value premium is similarly large to what it was late in 2002 after a significant period of growth for the city. Following that growth phase, Sydney values peaked in December 2002 and then fell by 8.2% and didnt eclipse the previous peak until October 2007. Mr Kusher said, It is reasonable that we could see similar falls over the coming year(s) which would in-turn narrow the gap between the value of housing in other capital cities relative to Sydney.
Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, will officially launch the start of construction of City West Housings latest affordable housing development today.

The development is part of the Cowper Street Glebe redevelopment precinct.



The apartment complex, located on the corner of Wentworth and Bay Street in Glebe, is the latest development in City West Housings offering of affordable housing in the Sydney LGA.



The new development will offer 99 affordable housing units in a mix of one, two and three-bedroom configurations. The project is due for completion in mid-2019.



The development will feature basement car park facilities and bike storage, ground floor commercial premises and two large communal areas including a lush communal roof terrace.

The roof terrace has been designed as an open environment for communal gathering, with the views from the terrace reinforcing the connection to Wentworth Park and the Sydney city skyline.

The NSW Government vested the land to City West Housing.

The City of Sydney Council has also demonstrated its commitment to the project through ongoing support of City West Housings development activity.



Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the cost of housing is at crisis point across metropolitan Sydney and especially in inner Sydney.

"We are committed to tackling this crisis with every mechanism available to us, particularly in partnership with housing providers like City West Housing as well as state and federal governments.



This development in the Cowper Street precinct, Glebe, will provide long term affordable rental housing to city workers who would otherwise be unable to live close to their place of work.

"Identified in our long-term strategy Sustainable Sydney 2030, the Cowper Street development represents a good case study of a cooperative approach between the City, State Government and community housing providers like City West Housing, that will deliver direct social benefits, increase the supply of market housing and provide a diversity of housing options.

Leonie King, CEO of City West Housing, welcomed the commencement of this project.

The team at City West Housing is extremely pleased to launch construction for our latest affordable housing development within the Sydney LGA.

Kane Construction is leading the development of the complex, with work beginning after the official sod turning.
The final sales of the year in the Millers Point Property NSW government sell off brought in nearly $23 million last night.

The total, $22,901,000, was spread across seven properties (below). The biggest sale of the night was an 1820 Argyle Place landmark (above) that fetched $6.3 million. It had a $5 million to $5.5 million guide.

The selloff has now seen McGrath sell over $441 million worth of Millers Point properties since August 2014. They've had a 100 percent clearance rate across the 144 dwellings.

McGrath executive director John McGrath spoke on the continual strong results.

Last night was a very strong result for the Millers Point portfolio which highlights how demand for high quality property continues, despite the residential market levelling off this year.

"Our 100% auction clearance rate to date is an amazing result and a testament to the hard work of the entire team.

Millers Point is fast becoming Sydneys most desirable address and will continue to rise in value from here into the future.

"With Barangaroo, Sydney Harbour and the CBD as its neighbours plus the Sydney Theatre Company and Opera House in its backyard, it now sits amongst the best addresses in the world.

The properties were marketed by Lorraine Crawford, Peter Starr and Andrew Stewart of McGrath Edgecliff.

46-48 Argyle Place had healthy bidding from two buyers who appreciated the heritage significance and the potential for it to be a grand home with parking on a large block in the beautiful suburb of Millers Point.

Throughout 2017 McGrath sold 41 properties as part of the Millers Point Sales Program, comprising several blocks of units, terraces and apartments.
GUEST OBSERVER

When Katherine Hunts dad asked her whether or not he should invest in Bitcoin, alarm bells rang, first she thought hes a musician.

Hunt is a lecturer in accounting at the Griffith Business School, and as someone who knows the five stages of a bubble and crash, she was worried when it seemed everyone was thinking they needed to get in on Bitcoin.

The stock market is a manifestation of the psychology of everyone who is investing, so of course there is going to be these crazy stages, Hunt says.

There is a boom, as momentum behind a new stock or asset speeds up and the media starts to cover it, fuelling its price rise.

Then the euphoria sets in, the value of the asset skyrockets and people start to make a profit. But looming around the corner is the panic.

Investors feel the last phase of a crash far more than they do the elation of the price rising, Hunt says. Panic breeds more panic and the price falls.

Hunt is seeing this pattern play out with the stocks of the more well known gig economy businesses like Airbnb and Uber. These businesses now enjoy the privilege of being the only, or one of a few of their kind, in the marketplace. But Hunt says this cant last.

In an open market thats not the case at all, theres always going to be competition and these companies will fall. Its just probably that theyll fall in 30 or 40 years, not necessarily tomorrow, she says.

Of course this is all easier to see in hindsight.

Remembering the global financial crisis

John Crosby, now a senior lecturer in finance at the University of Technology Sydney, was once working as an investment banker at Lloyds of London in 2007 when he noticed a news story on losses financial services company HSBC was reporting from its subprime mortgages.

I thought, that could be quite bad, Crosby recalls.

At the time volatility was low and it seemed like everything was going along fine. But Crosby overheard a coworker who looked after the banks various branches asking people to move any sums to deposit to London.

That wasnt normal right? It was perfectly normal that you did business with anybody you wanted to, unless there was a real credit risk issue with the bank, he says.

Crosby realises now that his coworker knew other banks were carrying toxic debt that would eventually kick off the global financial crisis.

When it came to 2008 the real problems became clear and it was more of a question of which bank would fall next, he says.

People were way too complacent before the crisis and then during the crisis its one of blind panic, thinking everyday things are going to get worse. Whereas in reality there was light at the end of the tunnel, Crosby says.

By then Crosby was working at financial services company UBS and thousands of people were being laid off. In 2009 the company decided to hire half of those employees back.

Past theories about what causes crashes

The benefit of hindsight also shows what sort of speculation leads to market crashes. Before crashes were well understood, economists had to grapple with what they thought might be causing a crash.

In the 19th century, economist William Stanley Jevons believed that sunspots (hyperactive radiation on the sun) could be the key to understanding crashes.

He was interested to find out that the cycle of sunspots was very similaras the trade cycle back on earth, says Simon Ville, a professor of economic and business history at the University of Wollongong.

Of course this theory was later discredited, but there have been bubbles over some very ordinary assets in the past.

Ville explains that tulips were at the centre of the first market bubble and crash in recorded history. Tulips became high fashion in the Netherlands, in the early 17th century, but because it took a while for these plants to grow it was very much like the future markets we see today in modern finance.

That inevitably creates a sense of uncertainty and a sense of speculation, what are you actually buying? Will you get the full value of what youre paying for?, Ville says.

Of course people started paying more and more for tulips, until it took someones life savings to buy one bulb. Ultimately there was a point where euphoria turned to panic and the climate changed from optimism to pessimism. This is when the price crashed, and the bubble burst.

Callum Halliday, Editorial Intern, The Conversation.

Eleanor Harrison-Dengate, Editorial intern, The Conversation.

Jenni Henderson, Section Editor: Business + Economy, The Conversation.

Josh Nicholas, Deputy Editor: Business + Economy, The Conversation.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
GUEST OBSERVER

The 30% of Australians who live outside a capital city are experiencing a period of rapid change. A new era of food and crop production prosperity is being driven by technological disruption and farm business consolidation. This is occurring alongside ballooning unemployment, poorer health outcomes, and social dislocation in regional communities. We need to find long-lasting solutions to this disparity.

Last financial year, agriculture was the largest contributor to Australias GDP growth and the fastest-growing sector in the nation. Meanwhile, in October 2017, youth unemployment in outback Queensland hit 59.2% at a time when employment rates in inner Brisbane for 15-24 year-olds were hovering at 6%. Youth unemployment sits around the 20% mark in many regional areas across Australia.

The challenges facing regional Australia will not be solved by a single new mine, a quick job-creation scheme, or a flurry of bus tickets to the city. Instead, we need sustainable solutions that give regional Australians the chance to leave welfare behind, transform their job prospects and contribute to society as skilled workers. The best first step would be to give regional Australians better access to tertiary education.

A problem for everyone

The majority of Australias 40 universities operate regional campuses. From Broome to Burnie to Bundaberg, 25 Australian universities have them. There are 68 regional campuses in total, located in every state and territory, with the exception of the ACT. Most of these campuses undertake research in areas like precision agriculture, organics, aquaculture, medicinal cannabis production, plant genetics and plant science. Theyre building expertise relevant to our agriculture-driven economic prosperity. Yet the people living around those campuses dont all benefit from them.

Australias regional campuses educate 20% of the nations tertiary students  more than 280,000 people. They could enrol many more, but proposed federal government policies would shut the door on many promising students. For example, proposals to make students pay for enabling places would act as a strong disincentive to take up study in the first place.

The goal of providing university access to 40% of the population has largely been met in metropolitan centres. But most regional areas are well below that participation target. Often, they are barely halfway there.

Since budget loadings, benefitting all regional campuses, were introduced in 2004, reviews have recommended extra funding for students enrolled at a regional university. This was proposed in recognition of the extra costs of delivering appropriate learning and teaching and the need to deliver career opportunities to regional people. These loadings were applied but have been successively wound back since that time.

The whittling away of regional loadings means such universities are at a substantial disadvantage. The current tertiary funding formula is too uniform. Students receive the same base level of funding for their degree in almost every case. This may suit a university with 50,000 students in a capital city. But it simply doesnt cover the cost of many courses on much smaller campuses outside urban areas.

Regional universities also find it hard to attract international students, who provide important additional revenue to many metropolitan universities.

These factors mean its essential to prioritise the promise of economic sustainability and opportunity over the notion of higher education policy equality. Regional students merit more specific, targeted support across a range of degrees.

A new regional deal

A new approach to regional higher education would address many of these problems. Based on our research at Southern Cross University, Ive suggested such an approach to the current federal government review into regional, rural and remote education. It would include:

10,000 Commonwealth supported enabling places for regional Australians, distributed according to regional need and demand

$50 million per year for four years to help all 25 universities with regional campuses catch up

a new regional loading, in recognition of the higher costs of regional education delivery.

As the Regional Universities Network (the RUN group) has advocated, regional university campuses need a new policy approach. Only regional universities can provide education at a reasonable cost without forcing people to face the upheaval of moving hundreds of kilometres, leaving family members behind and competing in the unaffordable housing markets of Sydney and Melbourne.

Local start-ups, local businesses, local health providers, and local arts performers all deserve a chance to thrive. A new funding approach will empower regional campuses to create more opportunities for the people they serve. It will help reduce inter-generational welfare dependence among a significant cohort of families, and bring additional income into communities. It will enable regional universities to educate more teachers, nurses, engineers and small business-people to work productively in their own backyards. Above all, it will translate that talent in the backyard to the front yard and then to the rest of the world.

Adam Shoemaker, Vice Chancellor, Southern Cross University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
With this article, Childrens Bookshelf launches an occasional feature that will focus on literacy organizations and the work they do to promote reading within their communities.

Seven years ago, Emily Moberly was fresh out of college and teaching bilingual high school juniors and seniors in Honduras, when she had a life-changing realization. While the students were working on in-class essays, Moberly had been re-reading her favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird. As a student handed in a paper, she asked Moberly why she was reading. Youre the teacher, she said. You could be doing anything. More of her students shared their thoughts about reading: almost none of them had ever read a book for enjoyment, and couldnt understand why anyone would.

Moberly thought about her own childhood: Growing up, we didnt have a lot of money, but my childhood was so rich because of reading, she said. She decided that day to do her best to inspire a love of reading in her students; when she came back to her home in San Diego over the holidays that year, she filled up a suitcase with books and brought them back with her. She marveled at how quickly and powerfully the books impacted the students lives.

Following her time in Honduras, Moberly moved back to San Diego and onto other fields of work, but she would often hear from those students, many of whom had become lifelong readers. It was so rewarding to know that she had been influential, and she missed that feeling. Moberlys friends also recognized that she had a calling; in fact, they encouraged her to start a literacy-related nonprofit. In 2009, her friends were able to help Moberly raise the money she needed to file the paperwork to kick off her 501(c)3, and Traveling Stories was born in 2010. The groups official mission is to empower kids to outsmart poverty by providing the literacy and money management skills they need to be productive members of society.

Seven years later, the San Diego-based nonprofit is going strong, though the organizations focus has somewhat shifted. Initially, Moberly explained, she worked on opening libraries in international communities, doing so in South Sudan, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Those libraries are now largely self-sufficient. But back in San Diego, Moberly began to see a need for the same type of direct action within her own community. Rather than establishing libraries, however, she designed a different model of literacy promotion: What if we brought our service to where kids are already hanging out? she reasoned.

In 2011, Moberly established the first StoryTent in a San Diego farmers market. Since then, locations have expanded to include skateboarding and art festivals, comic book stores, libraries, and other public areas. The organization is now looking into establishing tents in Wal-Mart locations. The tents, which are set up to be cozy and welcoming, provide books geared toward readers ages two to 12. Though it is always okay for readers to take home books, the organization doesnt hold as many outright book giveaways as it did in the beginning. Years of experience have taught Moberly that kids tend to value taking home a book a lot more if they see it as a special treat.

An important component of the StoryTents are book bucks. Readers earn a book buck for every book they read or have read to them; they can then use their book bucks to get prizes like mechanical pencils, play dough, gift cards, and even something big like an Easy-Bake Oven. Many of the readers who first stop by the tents are not frequent readers and are primarily incentivized by these prizesbut over and over, Moberly has seen something wonderful happen as the kids return to the tents each week: many of them fall in love with reading for its own sake.

Rewarding kids for reading with book bucks has another benefit: Kids learn money management skills, Moberly said. They are even invited to negotiate for more book bucks if, for example, a book they read was especially challenging. Another perk of the very popular book bucks: Moberly and her team dont generally need to do a lot of marketing outreachkids take care of that by spreading the word themselves amongst their friends and family. The StoryTents in San Diego now each draw between 40 to 60 readers a week. The organization has a small San Diego-based staff and relies heavily on volunteers to help with the day-to-day operations.

Traveling Stories acquires its selection of books from both individual donors and publishers. The group also networks with schools, libraries, after-school programs, the YMCA, and other literacy and nonprofit organizations within the community. However, Traveling Stories is purposefully independent from educational settings, because their aim is for kids to develop positive associations with reading outside of their schools and on their own terms. The kids who come to the Story Tents are there by choice, Moberly said.

For Moberly, the mission behind Traveling Stories is as critical today as ever before: Literacy rates in the U.S. are shockingly low. While poverty and hunger may be more apparent to the eye than illiteracy, the value of learning to read has a resounding impact on a childs life: Reading is one of the most powerful tools needed to become independent and to break the cycle of poverty, she said.

The success of the Traveling Stories model has caught on and the program has expanded to satellite locations in Turlock, Calif., Toronto, and Nashville. At home in San Diego, Traveling Stories is focusing on its budget needs for the next year. On Giving Tuesday, it launched an end-of-year fundraiser, with the goal of raising $50,000 by December 31. In order to ensure that the StoryTents stay for another year, San Diego children have taken it upon themselves to help with the fundraisingby donating their own book bucks. Now, organizations are matching the book buck donations from the kids with real money.

When she launched Traveling Stories, Moberly didnt know that readers would also be learning about and practicing civic engagementand she couldnt be happier about it: Thats what the world needs now: to think of others and to care about our communities, she said.

Do you know of a literacy organization that you think should be included in this feature? Please send pitches to Matia Burnett.
The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) wrapped up its nine-day run on December 3 and attendance was even with 2016, holding steady at 815,000 people. The event includes two professional days, but is otherwise a cultural event focused on the public. A total of 20,748 professionals attended the event, said the organizers. A burgeoning rights center sold 125 tables and the keynote for the professional program was given by Carlo Feltrinelli, CEO of Italys Gruppo Feltrinelli

Among the hot topics at this years FIL was the introduction of Nielsens BookScan to Mexico, the first such list tracking sales for any country in Spanish-speaking Latin America. (Nielsen has offered Bookscan in Brazil since 2013). To coincide with the BookScan announcement, Nielsen released its first bestseller lists in the categories of fiction, nonfiction and childrens books. The top titles were Origin by Dan Brown (Paneta) in fiction; Mexico Bizzarro by Alejandro Rosas and Julio Patan (Planeta) in non-fiction; and Gravity Falls  Journal 3 by Alex Hirch and Rob Renzetti (Planeta). The rankings are based on sales from October 30 to November 12.

We need information [to] measure what sells, when, where and in what quantities, said Silvia Matute, president of Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial USA (PRHGE), based in Miami. Having quantitative information about the market and specific numbers is a game changer."

The bestseller list was compiled from the sales of various chains such as Walmart, Aurrera, and Soriana as well as bookstores such as Gandhi, Gonvill, Sanborns, El Sotano, El Pendulo and Educal. David Peman, Bookscan Manager at Nielsen Mexico, said the company is looking to expand to further Latin American markets in coming years.

Another hot issue was the relationship between the U.S.and the Latin American markets, in particular the potential impact of the Trump administrations threats to re-negotiate NAFTA. The overall tenor of the various panels on the topic was one of wariness and even distrust of the American president and the suggestion that any change to NAFTA could potentially curtail the availability of Spanish-language books in the U.S. many of which are imported.

NAFTA re-negotiations could have a significant impact on the fair itself, which this year attracted 170 US librarians who come to buy books. In addition, several publishers invest heavily to sell their books in Mexico. Jenny Lizarraga, director and founder of Cinco Books, a Miami-based Spanish-language book distributor, told PW that they invest in marketing before, during, and after FIL in order to reach more buyers. She said Cinco Books sold approximately $250,000 to $300,000 worth of books at this year's fair, 40% more than in 2016.

For Spanish-language publishers from further afield, attending Guadalajara remains a top priority. This is one of the most important events in our calendar that we cant miss, said Georgina Segurra Ros, sales director of Gemser Publishing in Barcelona. Its one place where we can meet all the publishers from different Latin American countries like Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile."

This year, the fair featured the city of Madrid as its guest of honor, hosted authors that included Paul Auster, Azar Nafisi, Emmanuel Carrere, among others and offered a new hall focusing on comics and graphic novels.

Portugal will be the guest of honor at the 2018 fair, which will take place from November 24 to December 2.
Dakar Rally

Peru  Bolivia  Argentina

6-20 January, 2018

Ouredniceks lucky number

Every November, Dakar community is looking forward to dive into the entry lists to check whos going to have which number at the upcoming Dakar Rally. During the 2018 edition, on the Ford Ranger of Tomas Ourednicek and David Kripal we will see #340, with that the driver is absolutely delighted, since this number has a very special meaning for him

Lets turn back time to the first edition of Dakar Rally in South America, in January 2009. Back then, a small private team from Czech Republic was preparing for the start, with a very experienced driver, Miroslav Zapletal, and his co-driver, a very excited rookie called Tomas Ourednicek. For him practically everything was new, since the Dakar was only his fourth motorsport event as competitor altogether! The two worked so well together that at the finish line in Buenos Aires they celebrated a 7th place (still best result for a Czech crew in cars) overall and 3rd in their category. And the number on the door? Well, that was #340

November 2017. Another Czech crew is preparing for the Dakar, an experienced driver called Tomas Ourednicek and a rookie co-driver, who started his racing career in April with a victory in Morocco Desert Challenge: David Kripal. And the number on the door? Well, that will be #340

No one knows what will await Tomas and David in the dunes of Peru in the first week of the Dakar. No one knows what will happen in the high altitude stages of Bolivia. No one knows what will the tracks of Argentina hold for them. All we know is that they have prepared for this challenge all season long and will do their best in all those 14 stages. The rest is a matter of luck, as always in the Dakar, but having this memorable number again can certainly be taken as a good omen.

South Racing Central Europe is supported by the following partners: LIQUI MOLY, MANN FILTER, FORD HLOUCH, AV MEDIA, AGADOS, XTline, Honiton, EuroOil, ALUTEC KK, NICEBOY, MUSICDATA, Dvorak Trucks, Adventure Menu, iSUV, Glenowell

Team website: www.southracing.cz

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SouthRacingCE

About the team

Racing career of Tomas Ourednicek started back in 2008 when he became the co-driver of Miroslav Zapletal. The crew finished in a superb 7th position (3rd in category T1.1) in their first Dakar together and went on to win the Hungarian and the Czech Championship title as well as some excellent results in the World Cup in the next months. Despite suffering a big crash during the 2010 edition of the Dakar Rally they worked their way back to the elite, finishing 4th in the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies in 2011.

After starting (and finishing) in trucks in the 2012 edition of the Dakar and a short break in 2013, Ourednicek decided to return to the tracks for the 2014 season, but this time at the steering wheel. As vehicle, he opted for a Hummer H3 EVO and he finished second in the FIA Central European Zone Championship right in his debut year. Two years (and as many category championship titles) later, he decided to take another step forward, and from the beginning of the 2017 season, he drives a Ford Ranger Dakar under the flag of South Racing Central Europe.

With his new co-driver David Kripal they scored a victory in their first ever race together, Morocco Desert Challenge, the biggest rally-raid event in Africa, in April 2017. Due to an accident of Kripal, the crew couldnt take part in as many World Cup events as they wanted, but still they were able to finish 8th in HunGarian Baja and be among the best 15 in the two biggest events of the World Cup, Baja Aragon and Rallye OiLibya du Maroc.
An injunction request to overturn the decision to fire former MBC chief Kim Jang-kyom by the board of the South Korean public broadcaster has been rejected by a court in Seoul.





The court said it did not agree that the decision-making process at MBC had been "greatly infringed by the board's move that led to the dismissal of the president, as ... claimed.It is also hard to accept the argument that the dismissal came from a decision that was made without a thorough and fair review and that it was based on the opinion of a particular interest group, the court said.The injunction request came from some board officials at The Foundation for Broadcast Culture (FBC), the controlling shareholder of MBC.Union members of MBCs workforce  along with those at fellow public broadcaster KBS  began a strike in September, demanding the resignation of both companies presidents and independence from political interference. Although MBCs president Kim Jang-kyom was removed from office in November , KBS chief Koh Dae-young remains in place.
Marking its first international production, UK-based distribution and rights management specialist Magnify Media has gained a licence for its 6x30 series True Selfie from Dutch public service broadcaster BNN VARAs channel NPO3.





Produced originally for NRK in Norway by design, commercial PR and production company Anti, True Selfie was hailed as a cultural classic when it aired this spring. The show is produced by Endemol Shine-owned Simpel Media and follows the therapy process of eight young people with mental health issues from two perspectives: their self-filmed video diaries and group therapy sessions.True Selfie has been optioned by a range of international producers such as Bristow Global Media in English-speaking Canada and through French-speaking Canada by Trio Orange; in Sweden with Elk; in Finland by ITV Studios; and in Denmark with United Productions with whom it has now been commissioned for a second series.Commenting on the new deal, Magnify Media CEO Andrea Jackson said: True Selfie was the first format that I acquired when setting up Magnify Media and represents the type of programming that we are very proud to distribute . I have always believed deeply in its powerful message that tackles issues around mental health and self-image in a world dominated by technology.Added Birgitte Bruusgaard, Anti executive producer and head of TV and content: We are so happy that True Selfie is about to be discovered and aired first in the Netherlands and then hopefully around the world. Magnify has done a great job and really believes in the importance of True Selfie and the difference the show can make to mental health issues amongst young people.
Christian multimedia network Sonlife Broadcasting Network has renewed its capacity agreement with SES to continue broadcasting the SBN TV channel across Europe.





Under the multi-year agreement, Sonlife Broadcasting Network will take capacity on the ASTRA 1L craft based at the key video neighbourhood at 19.2 degrees East. With four satellites at this orbital slot, SES Video broadcasts more than 900 channels to over 110 million TV households.We have been working with Sonlife Broadcasting Network for many years, and we are very pleased to continue to provide them with our services, remarked Norbert Holzle, senior vice president, commercial Europe, at SES Video . This extension agreement reaffirms their confidence in our ability to deliver highly-reliable broadcasting services.The SonLife Broadcasting Network is operated by Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. Our partnership with SES Video offers millions of viewers throughout Europe the opportunity to hear and receive the gospel through SBN , and we couldnt be more pleased with these results, added Reverend Swaggart.
Few are likely to mourn the assassination of Yemen's former dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh. His rule over Yemen presided over decades of failure to deal with his country's desperate levels of poverty and its steadily growing problems with overpopulation, a lack of water, and a dependence on Qata drug so unrewarding that the only country that would import it was the even poorer nation of Somalia.

The UN warned as early as 2002 that Yemen was one of several Arab states whose population growth and economic problems were critical. Its population had already increased from 4.8 million in 1950 to 23.9 million in 2011. It is 28 million today and will rise to 46 million by 2050. Saleh did nothing meaningful to address this population growth or its impacts. Long before the war, Yemen was critically dependent on food imports and foreign remittances. It was rapidly depleting its fossil water, was underfunding education and medical services, had critical unemployment problems, and had one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world.

Moreover, Saleh's failures to govern left Yemen vulnerable to Al Qaida and ISIS, led to serious tension and some fighting between his government and the Yemenis who were part of the former separate state of South Yemen, and laid the ground work for much of the misery in Yemen.

As for Saleh, he already was largely a spent force when he was killed. He had given up power in 2011, and then tried to recover it by shifting from an alliance with the Saudis to one with the Iranian-backed Houthi. He was outmaneuvered by the Houthi, however, and they steadily gained power relative to Saleh and the remnants of Yemen's military forces who remained loyal to him. A man who had once kept power by the kind of political maneuvering that he described as "dancing on the head of snakes," now found the snakes dancing on him.

The end result was that Saleh's alliance with the Houthi collapsed. The Saleh faction and Houthis began to fight, and Saleh turned back to the Saudis and UAE. This seemed to offer some hope that the civil war in Yemen could be resolved, but it was the Houthis that were winning, and the Houthis that killed him. Unless his surviving supporters are much stronger than now seems likely, the end result has left the Houthis without any strong internal challenges in the region they control and locked into the same grinding war of attrition with the Saudis and UAE that they have been fighting for months.

If there is any tragedy in Saleh's death, it is that it will make it even harder to put an end to the conflict and negotiate a meaningful settlement. This is a remarkably brutal war, and one where both sides have had a major impact in putting civilians at risk.

There has been a tendency to blame Saudi Arabia and the UAEthe backers of the Hadi government recognized by the UN and most outside states except Iranfor Yemen's current level of suffering. Some of this blame is legitimate. Saudi Arabia and the UAE did launch an air and land campaign that made far too optimistic assumptions about the effectiveness of air power and the limited use of Saudi and UAE land forces. This campaign did score some initial victories, but for months, the result has been a stalemate on the land.

As a result, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have focused on the use of air power. However, their air attacks have not yet dramatically altered the course of the fighting. What they have produced is serious civilian casualties and collateral damage, and Saudi and UAE efforts to seal off the few major ports open to the Houthiswho control key portions of the most populated areas of the countryhave made things worse. A lack of food, medicine, and other critical supplies has sharply increased civilian suffering and disease.

At the same time, these impacts must be kept in perspective. Saleh's death makes it even more important to properly assign the blame and put pressure on both sides to resolve the conflict. Yemen was an economic basket case before the air campaign and embargo with extreme poverty, poor medical and education facilities, and serious malnutrition problems. The Hadi government was at least nominally electedalbeit in a one-candidate electionand had broad international recognition.

The Houthis have done much to divide Yemen along sectarian and regional lines, have been closely linked to Iran, and have done little to either show they can govern effectively or make any coherent efforts to negotiate. They have been all too willing to keep fighting regardless of the human consequences. They have not shown they have any plans or capabilities to govern in ways than can help Yemen develop or break out of its grind cycle of growing poverty, or that they offer Yemen any credible future if they win.

It also makes little sense to blame the Saudis and the UAE for the bulk of the casualties in fighting when there are no credible sources of such casualty estimates, and some estimates only attempt to guess at the casualties coming from the air (without seriously trying to estimate the impact of the fighting on the ground).

War is inherently brutal, and stalemates and embargoes do immense damage to the civilian economy over time. But, this is a two-sided war, and putting excessive blame on one side seems more likely to extend the conflict by reducing the incentive to negotiate. Far too much reporting on the air war seems to ignore the actual ways in which the Saudis and UAE actually manage the air war.

A visit to the Saudi command center in Riyadh is almost like visiting the U.S. Combined Air Command Center in Qatar. The Saudis, UAE, and other Arab air forces use virtually the same targeting tactics and rules of engagement to limit civilian casualties from air strikes as the U.S. and its allies use in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Saudi command also uses the same advanced command and control displays to warn where civilians are present, to limit strikes on civilian facilities, and to place the same emphasis on precision strikes and the careful review of strike plansas well as damage assessment.

The key difference between the wars is that the Saudis and UAE are far more dependent on airpower, while the U.S. could rely on Iraqi and Afghan ground forces for a major part of the fighting. This does mean that Saudi and UAE air attacks inflict a larger portion of the total civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Yet, the Houthi unwillingness to negotiate and determination to prolong the war is equally destructive. Any valid analysis of the air war also needs to address the fact that the Houthis use tactics that rely heavily on human shields, and use exaggerated claims of civil casualties as a key propaganda weapons. It needs to take a hard look at how the Houthis deal with governance, the management of their resources, and allocation of aid. And, it needs to take a hard look at the role of Iran as it seeks influence over Yemen, in providing missiles and arms, and supporting another war that does so much human damage.

Most important, Saleh's death is a warning that both sides can keep fighting indefinitely. In this war, it is unclear that either side can hope to quickly win by defeating the other. Unless both sides can be persuaded to negotiate, what is clear is that the losers will be the Yemeni people.
This fall, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie was in Paris for a meeting of the Council of Ambassadors of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD. While Argentina is not a member, or even a candidate, Faurie was ubiquitous, marketing his government as a future member of the worlds most elite club.

The Argentine government is desperate for a shot at OECD membership, and in Paris, Faurie assured members that Argentina had embarked on a confidence-building process. That confidence will be critical, given Argentinas tumultuous history of whipsawing between growth and recession, between statism and open markets. Sure President Mauricio Macri is a multimillionaire and a Davos regular, but his predecessor was a pro-Russia firebrand hostile to investors. So while Macris agenda has raised expectations worldwide, investors are understandably skeptical that Argentina will stick to this path.

But it is precisely Argentinas volatile history that should have made it appealing to OECD members when they gathered Friday for yet another inconclusive discussion on possible expansion. After all, its pursuit of membership -- a lengthy process that has all the charm of a colonoscopy -- is designed to cement Macris transformative policies, including the elimination of capital controls and export taxes. For that reason, and given the size of the Argentine economy and its influence in Latin America, the OECD should allow Argentina to begin the process for membership.

The OECD was founded in 1961 to share lessons learned during the Marshall Plan about running an open-market economy and a liberal democracy. It has grown to include 35 members across five continents, and its principal goal is to "promote policies that will improve the economic and social wellbeing of people around the world." Sometimes referred to as the developed countries club, it spreads the gospel of sound economic policy and good governance. The United States in particular has found it to be an important channel for advancing U.S. values and policies and creating a level playing field for U.S. businesses.

But the OECD has a second, equally important job: solidifying its recommended policies in its own member countries. The national policies of members are regularly judged against OECD standards for compliance. That is why after the Cold War, OECD membership expanded to Eastern European nations that wanted to fortify their transitions to market economies. That bet paid off; these former Soviet republics have sustained their economic models for two decades.

The OECD could offer Argentina the same service it performed with Eastern Europe. The organisations peer review mechanisms could help make Macris transformative economic reforms permanent -- all the more if OECD membership gives Argentinas economy a boost.

Unfortunately, the OECD is harder than ever to join. Discussions on potential invitations to six countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Peru, and Romania -- are stalled in Paris as members grapple with the character of these governments and the potential challenges of preparing new candidates for membership. The Europeans have demanded a new European member for every non-European candidate. For its part, the United States is cautious about expanding too quickly, given the OECDs reliance upon consensus for decision-making and what Washington sees as poor leadership by Secretary General Angel Gurria.



There are Argentina-specific concerns, too, primarily that it might swing back to the populist and protectionist model that voters jettisoned when they elected Macri in 2015 and rejected again in midterm elections in October. One only needs to recall the spoiler role Argentina played in the G-20 under the Kirchners to recognize the danger of how disruptive a single member can be when its values are not aligned with the rest.

The potential for a policy reversal in Argentina is indeed worrisome, but before writing off Argentine candidacy, OECD members should consider the example of Mexico. When the OECD admitted Mexico in 1994, the country had only recently ratified NAFTA, and Zapatista guerrillas were still marauding around Mexico's south. OECD membership helped institutionalize Mexicos new fiscal policies and other difficult economic reforms. Today, even a victory by the far-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not reverse Mexicos pro-trade orientation.

The United States is on board with Argentinas candidacy; U.S. President Donald Trump promised Macri Washingtons support when the two met in the Oval Office in April, and Vice President Mike Pence repeated that commitment during his August trip to Buenos Aires. Behind the scenes, the United States has been reasonably successful in pushing its European partners to consider Argentinas candidacy, but less so in getting them to withdraw demands for a matching European candidate. Importantly, candidacy is not the same as membership. All Argentina is asking for is to start a multi-year audition, during which it would demonstrate its credentials in the hopes that the OECD helps preserve its historic advances.

Benjamin N. Gedan is a former South American director on the National Security Council and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Council on Foreign Relations. William Schuette is a research assistant at the Wilson Center. The views expressed are the authors' own.
Soheyla Amirian was on the phone with her sister when their call was cut short by the 7.3 magnitude earthquake shaking the border between Iran and Iraq.
How many steps will it take to walk off Thanksgiving dinner?
Hungarian prosecutors have filed charges against a Hungarian member of the European Parliament for allegedly spying for Russia.

Bela Kovacs, a member of Hungary's radical nationalist Jobbik party, is accused of "spying against EU institutions" and "engaging in espionage in the interests of a foreign state," prosecutors said in a statement on December 6.

The charges filed in a Budapest court also include fiscal fraud and falsification of documents leading to substantial financial losses to the European Parliament institutions, the statement said.

The prosecutors' office confirmed to Reuters that Russia was the "foreign state" named.

Kovacs is a frequent visitor to Moscow and has been suspected by prosecutors of regularly meeting covertly with Russian diplomats.

For more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, Kovacs lived in Moscow. He returned to Budapest in 2003, and two years later joined Jobbik, then a nascent political movement. He has been in the European Parliament since 2010.

If convicted of spying, Kovacs, 57, could face a prison sentence of between two and eight years.

In 2015, the European Parliament voted to lift his parliamentary immunity, allowing the Hungarian probe to begin.

Kovacs has consistently denied the allegations, which were first made by Hungarian authorities in 2014.

Kovacs on December 6 said the case against him is "fantasy" and he expects to exonerate himself in court. No date has been announced for the trial.

Kovacs said he is stepping down from Jobbik to prevent the case from damaging the party. He claimed that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing party Fidesz was "using" the case against him to attack Jobbik.

A Fidesz spokesman said the charges are a "serious European-level affair" and have been made against Kovacs "as a Jobbik politician."

Support for Jobbik has grown in Hungary since Orban, who has been criticized himself for his friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was re-elected for a second term in 2014.

It is now Hungary's second most popular party after Fidesz, according to opinion polls.

Jobbik has been supportive of Russia's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimeam Peninsula as well as efforts by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine to gain independence. It is also known for its anti-EU positions.

Jobbik said in a statement it "welcomes" the charges against Kovacs "after the case had been dragged out for three and a half years by the Fidesz state machinery."

The party said Kovacs should finally be able to prove if he is "the victim of a political show trial" or not..

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters


Former White House adviser Michael Flynn sent a text during U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration speech saying that a planned nuclear power project with Russia that would require the lifting of U.S. sanctions was "good to go," a whistle-blower has told U.S. lawmakers.

The witness's account was made public on December 6 by Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Cummings said the unidentified whistle-blower's allegations raise concerns that Flynn intended to improperly aid the nuclear project during his brief stint as White House national security adviser, including possibly by suspending or ending U.S. sanctions against doing business with Russia that were imposed after Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014.

Flynn last week pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and he is now cooperating with U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a key witness in Mueller's investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

According Cummings' account provided in a December 6 letter to his committee's chairman, the whistle-blower attended an inaugural event on January 20, 2017, during which he met the business associate of Flynn who received Flynn's text message saying their joint project with Russian nuclear power companies "was a go" and he should start to "put things in place."

The whistle-blower said the businessman, Alex Copson, who is a managing director at ACU Strategic Partners, the company promoting the nuclear power project, was elated because he had just received Flynn's text, calling it "the best day of my life."

The whistle-blower, who Cummings described as "authentic, credible, and reliable," said Copson showed him Flynn's text message, which he noted was sent at around noon on January 20 when Trump was delivering his inaugural address.

Copson then told the whistleblower: "Mike has been putting everything in place for us" and "This is going to make a lot of very wealthy people," according to Cummings' account.

Copson also told the whistle-blower that Flynn would see to it that sanctions on Moscow were "ripped up" as one of his first orders of business at the White House, to ensure money started flowing to the project, according to Cummings' account.

Within days of the inauguration, Flynn started circulating the power project plan at the White House, according to media reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn discussed the project with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and a close friend of the president, Thomas Barrack.

Copson had promoted a succession of nuclear projects designed to include Russian participation dating back to the 1990s. In an earlier note to the committee, Copson said his firm had provided Flynn with a $25,000 check -- left uncashed -- to pay for Flynn's June 2015 trip to the Mideast as a security consultant for the project.

Attorneys for Flynn and Copson did not immediately return e-mail and phone requests for comment. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment on the allegations.

The ACU plan involved building some two dozen nuclear power plants around the Middle East, to be developed jointly by the United States and Russia.

The key to the plan's success was ending economic sanctions on Russia, which was to supply the reactors under the proposed arrangement. The project never came to fruition after Flynn was fired from his White House post in February.

Cummings detailed the whistle-blower's allegations in a letter to Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the oversight committee, and called on the panel to subpoena Flynn to testify.

"Our committee has credible allegations that President Trump's national security adviser sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners," said Cummings.

Cummings also demanded that the committee subpoena Copson, Barrack, and other officials linked to the proposed nuclear project.

Cummings offered to produce the whistle-blower for Gowdy to interview. Gowdy had no immediate response.

Cummings said he was first contacted by the whistle-blower in June, but the informant's account remained under wraps while Mueller was developing a criminal case against Flynn.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after a recent meeting of foreign ministers from the Caspian Sea littoral states that after more than 20 years of talks, an agreement on the legal status of the Caspian was "practically ready" for signing.

Lavrov met in Moscow with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan on December 4-5.

After the meeting ended, Lavrov told reporters: "I am pleased to tell you that we have found solutions to all outstanding key issues linked with this document. The text of the convention is practically ready."

Lavrov said the text of the draft agreement was being translated into the national languages of all the littoral states and added that "each of our countries will carry out domestic procedures to prepare for the signing of this convention by the leaders."

The fifth Caspian summit is expected to take place next year in Kazakhstan.

Lavrov did not provide any details about the draft agreement or comment on how the five parties were able to reach consensus after more than two decades of talks.

Lavrov's announcement is not a total surprise.

He met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov at the end of October in Baku. Mammadyarov said after that meeting that "Russia has made a very good proposal concerning the determination of the Caspian Sea status."

Back on August 9, during a visit by Turkmenistan's president to Baku, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said joint work on the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea was almost complete, and he added that "the convention is expected to be signed at the next high-level meeting of littoral states."

A Sea Or A Lake?

The Caspian Sea's legal status has been a contentious issue between the five countries. The issue is whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake. If the Caspian is designated a lake, it would mean the littoral states would adopt a "condominium" approach that would divide up the wealth equally among the five countries.

Such a designation would be detrimental to Kazakhstan, which has the largest sector of the Caspian and, so far as is known currently, the largest amount of oil and natural gas.

Iran would benefit from the Caspian being designated a lake since its sector of the Caspian is the smallest (about 13 percent). Iran is still exploring its section of the Caspian, but so far it seems to have the least amount of oil and gas and is also the part of the Caspian with the highest salt content in the water, meaning Iran would need more expensive equipment to extract hydrocarbons from the seabed of its sector.

If the Caspian is designated a sea, it frees up all five states to exploit the resources in the maritime sectors as they wish.

Such an arrangement is de facto already in effect since Kazakhstan has been working on its Kashaghan oil and gas field for years (production finally started in earnest last year).

For more than a decade, Azerbaijan has also pressed ahead with development of some of its offshore Caspian fields, notably the Shah Deniz fields.

Looking For A Pipeline

However, the lack of an agreed legal status has been one of the factors that has prevented construction of the Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP) to carry some 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas across the Caspian seabed to Azerbaijan, where it could be loaded into pipeline networks leading to Europe.

In the short time since Lavrov's comments on December 5, there has already been talk the impending agreement clears the way for the TCP.

But Russia may have already headed off the realization of the pipeline.

When Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov was in Moscow at the start of October, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said Russia and Turkmenistan were discussing cooperation in the "production and sale of Turkmen gas."

Myrat Archaev, the head of state gas company Turkmengaz, said on November 2 that Turkmenistan was looking into the possibility of shipping gas via Russian pipelines to countries in the CIS and Eastern Europe. Such a possibility had not been mentioned for more than a decade, so it was not clear what prompted Archaev to raise the topic.

So it is possible Russia has already been talking to Turkmenistan about a deal that might avoid the need for construction of TCP.

The cash-strapped Turkmen government needs new sources of revenue quickly and might be willing to trade use of Russian pipelines for gas exports now in exchange for a promise not to build the TCP later.

In any case, the TCP could not be constructed and start pumping gas for several years and there are questions about extra capacity in the pipeline networks from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Europe. Currently, those pipelines could not accommodate 30 bcm of Turkmen gas, meaning other new pipelines would need to be built.

And with Nord Stream-1 built, and Nord Stream-2 and Turkish Stream under construction, Russia is already looking at the ability to ship up to 141.5 bcm to Europe. Turkmenistan's 30 bcm would be appreciated in Europe but could not displace Russian gas exports.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
Moscow on December 6 accused U.S. intelligence services of trying to recruit Russian journalists working in the United States.

"Recently Russian journalists, including those in the United States, have come under great pressure from the special services, notably through attempts at recruitment," Russian news agencies quoted Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

"This is an aggression. An aggression in terms of intelligence not only towards Russia, but also an encroachment on freedom of expression throughout the world," she was quoted as saying.

Zakharova claimed that one Russian journalist in the United States, who she did not name, was pressured to cooperate with U.S. intelligence agencies through bribes and psychological tactics.

When those did not work, she said U.S. agents directly threatened the journalist and tried to contact his family.

Her accusations came the same day Russian lawmakers voted to ban U.S. media that Moscow has labelled as "foreign agents" from entering the lower house of parliament.

The ban was a reaction to a recent move by the U.S. Congressional Press Gallery to strip Russian state-controlled television network RT of its credentials.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's website said there are around 20 American media outlets accredited to work in Russia, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and RFE/RL affiliated services.

Those branded "foreign agents" have to present themselves as such on all paperwork and submit to intense scrutiny of their staffing and finances.

Based on reporting by AFP, Interfax, and TASS


Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Egypt on December 11 to discuss expanding ties between the two countries.

The Egyptian presidency said on December 7 that Putin will hold talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on ways to "further advancing frameworks of bilateral cooperation across various areas, particularly political, economic, and trade relations."

"The visit comes within the framework of the two countries' commitment to strengthening the historic and strategic relations between them," a statement said.

The Kremlin said the two presidents will also discuss issues related to stability and security in the Middle East and North Africa.

Putin visited Egypt in February 2015, and Sisi met with him in Moscow six months later.

But Russia suspended commercial flights with Egypt after a Russian passenger plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board, mostly Russian tourists.

The downing was claimed by an affiliate of the extremist group Islamic State (IS) based in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Russian and Egyptian officials have held talks on boosting airport security and resuming air travel, but no deal has been reached so far.

However, the Russian government announced last week that Moscow and Cairo have drafted an agreement to allow each country's military to use the other's air bases.

On a visit to Cairo on November 29, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu praised what he called the "positive dynamics in the military-technical sphere" and emphasized the need to strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism.

Cairo has also signed an agreement with Moscow to build and finance Egypt's first nuclear power plant.

Russia raised its profile in the Middle East in September 2015, when it launched an air campaign to bolster embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war.

With reporting by AP, dpa, and TASS
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the biggest problem preventing a warming of U.S.-Russian relations is Russia's aggression in Ukraine.

Speaking at a meeting with European foreign ministers in Vienna on December 7, Tillerson said the United States will not lift sanctions against Russia until it pulls its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

"The issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," Tillerson said at a news conference after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ministers meeting.

"We can have differences in other arenas.... But when one country invades another, that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile," he said.

"And we've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning: That we must address Ukraine, it stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing relations."

After Tillerson's strong statement on Ukraine, a face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart appeared to produced no breakthroughs on points of tension between the two countries.

"I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get. We get progress, that's what we get," Tillerson said in the Austrian capital on December 7 following his talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"We get dialogue, we get cooperation, we don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting," he added.

The United States and European Union are pushing Moscow to allow a robust United Nations peacekeeping force to be deployed to eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatist militia are fighting government forces in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people since it started in April 2014.

Lavrov said he told Tillerson that Moscow was "concerned about attempts to turn our initiative about a deployment of UN guards to ensure OSCE [Special Monitoring] Mission's security upside-down."

Conflict In Ukraine

Moscow and Washington disagree over the mandate that the proposed UN force would have.

The Kremlin says the UN mission should have the powers to protect OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine.

But Western powers fear President Vladimir Putin wants to limit the forces mandate in a way that any cease-fire would merely consolidate the gains of Russia-backed separatists.

Tillerson has said Washington wants the proposed UN force to have additional peacekeeping powers. That could include the authority to disarm Russia-backed separatist militias in eastern Ukraine.

In his speech at the OSCE foreign ministers meeting, Tillerson said on December 7 that the United States "will never accept Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea."

He said U.S. sanctions that were imposed after Moscow's illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014 "will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine."

"In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from [separatist-held parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions] and meets its Minsk commitments," Tillerson added.

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.

Referring to cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine, Tillerson said, "We should be clear about the source of this violence."

"Russia is arming, leading, training, and fighting alongside antigovernment forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation, and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission," he also said.

WATCH: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said sanctions against Moscow will remain in place until Russia withdraws from Ukraine. (Reuters)

Lavrov told the OSCE meeting that "all the responsibility is with Ukraine" as far as violence in the east was concerned.

The Russian foreign minister also said that Russia supported the OSCE settlement plan and its Special Monitoring Mission in eastern Ukraine.

"Both OSCE functions should be aimed at direct dialogue between Kyiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk as stipulated in the Minsk package of measures to which there is no alternative," Lavrov said.

Ahead of the meeting between Tillerson and Lavrov, Tillerson met on the sidelines of the OSCE summit with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.

Klimkin told Russia's Interfax news agency that they discussed "joint work on the UN peacekeeping mission" in eastern Ukraine, "energy security," and "U.S. support for an efficient and independent anticorruption system in Ukraine."

Klimkin also held talks with Lavrov late in the day for what was described as their first face-to-face meeting since the Ukrainian minister took office in June 2014.

Ukraine's foreign minister said in a Twitter message that an exchange of prisoners between the separatists and Kyiv was discussed at the meeting.

"We should pull it off in the coming weeks because it's about people and their loved ones," Klimkin wrote.

On December 6, a day before the start of the two-day Vienna conference, Tillerson said at NATO headquarters in Brussels that "Russias aggression in Ukraine remains the biggest threat to European security."

"We prioritize ending the violence," Tillerson said. "Thats our first priority, and to seek to do that we need to put a peacekeeping force in place."

The OSCE has deployed 600 unarmed monitors in eastern Ukraine to investigate and discourage cease-fire violations. They often come under fire from the warring factions.

With reporting by dpa, Interfax, Reuters, AP, TASS, and Interfax
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Palestinian factions have called for a "day of rage" on December 8, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital prompted a wave of protests and Palestinian clashes with the Israeli army.

The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising or "intifada" to protest Trump's move.

On December 7, more than 30 Palestinians reportedly were injured in clashes with the Israeli army in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Protests also broke out in Jordan, Tunisia, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

In the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, medics were quoted as saying that at least 31 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets. One of them was said to be in critical condition.

Reports said some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted, "Death to America!"

The Israeli military said an Israeli tank and an aircraft "targeted two terror posts" in the Gaza Strip after rockets were launched at Israel. It said one of the rockets exploded inside southern Israel, while the others fell short.

A militant group in Gaza claimed responsibility for the launches.

The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops in the West Bank.

Jordanian media reported that students and academics gathered at several universities chanting slogans pointing to the "Arab and Islamic identity" of Jerusalem, which is considered holy by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

In the Tunisian capital of Tunis and elsewhere in the country, protesters waved the Palestinian flag and posters depicting Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, the German dpa news agency reported.

In Pakistan, dozens of supporters of the banned radical religious group Jamaat-ud-Dawa demonstrated in the northwestern city of Peshawar against the U.S. decision, RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal reported. The protesters burned U.S. and Israeli flags.

In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, another protest was organized by the group known as Difa-e Pakistan, an umbrella organization of various religious groups.

WATCH: Muslim activists in Pakistan gathered to protest U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal)

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians regard it as the capital of their future state. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and declared all of the city as its capital, a move never recognized by the international community. Most countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv.

In his announcement, Trump said he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move experts say could take three to four years.

He said the decision would "finally acknowledge the obvious -- that Jerusalem is Israel's capital" and that he still intends "to do everything in my power to help force" a peace agreement acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians.

U.S. allies from Germany and Saudi Arabia to Britain and the European Union condemned Trumps decision and said it would make negotiating peace in the region more difficult.

Saudi Arabia said it was "irresponsible" and would cause a "drastic regression in the efforts to move the peace process forward."

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called it an "about-face" that "is already a big problem" and will likely throw "fuel on the fire" and escalate the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed "serious concern" about the U.S. administration's move, warning that it could destabilize the region.

'Reprehensible' Decision

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said the United States can no longer play the role of peace broker in light of what he called Trump's "reprehensible" decision, which he said "undermines all peace efforts."

In Iraq, an Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia that fought alongside Iraqi government forces against Islamic State (IS) militants said Trump's decision "makes it legitimate to strike the American forces in Iraq."

Eight members of the UN Security Council -- mostly U.S. allies including Britain, France, Egypt, Italy, and Sweden -- called for an emergency meeting on December 8 to discuss the move.

"I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, dpa, and RFE/RLs Radio Mashaal
Donald Trump Jr. has refused to tell U.S. lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a 2016 meeting he held with several Russians at Trump Tower, a top congressional Democrat said.

Trump Jr. spoke to the House of Representatives intelligence committee behind closed doors on December 6 as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump Jr. said that he did not tell the president about the June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians, including lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya, and he declined to say what he told his father after the meeting was disclosed to the public this year.

Representative Adam Schiff, the committee's top Democrat, said that Trump Jr. told the committee he couldn't speak about the conversations with his father because of "attorney-client privilege," explaining that a lawyer was present when he spoke to his father about the June 2016 meeting and the e-mails that led up to it.

But Schiff questioned whether that was a valid reason to not tell Congress about the conversations.

"In my view, there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son," Schiff said.

The Trump Tower meeting is also being investigated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russians under the impression that they might receive damaging information about Trump's rival, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Mueller has also shown interest in the White House response to the meeting once it became public. The White House has said the president was involved in drafting an early statement saying the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program.

But e-mails released by Trump Jr. showed that he enthusiastically agreed to the sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others after he was promised dirt on Clinton.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters


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
KYIV -- Ukrainian activists and reformist lawmakers worked tirelessly overnight to remove a bill from parliamentary consideration that they say would "destroy" the country's only independent investigative body by dismissing its chief.

By the morning of December 7, after hours of frantic calls to Western allies for support, they had won a small victory in a battle that looks set to continue: The legislation was not on the Verkhovna Radas agenda for that day.

The highly controversial bill, which would see Artem Sytnyk removed as the head of the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) of Ukraine, was authored by lawmakers from the parties of President Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Critics, including former officials who have quit the government in frustration or been dismissed, have accused Poroshenko of blocking reform efforts.

Activists and lawmakers said the bill had seemed certain to pass until Ukraine's Western backers, concerned by recent backsliding on reform efforts, stepped in.

IMF, World Bank 'Deeply Concerned'

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank both said late on December 6 that they were worried about attacks on Ukrainian anticorruption institutions.

"We are deeply concerned by recent events in Ukraine that could roll back progress that has been made in setting up independent institutions to tackle high-level corruption," IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in a statement on December 6.

The World Bank's office in Ukraine expressed its concern in a separate statement, saying attacks on anticorruption bodies "threaten their ability to fight corruption and recover stolen assets."

The two institutions are among financial contributors that have provided a $40 billion bailout package to help Ukraine reform its economy after the Euromaidan protests pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014.

But billions of dollars in IMF loans have been delayed due to what is seen as backtracking on reform commitments, even as Kyiv -- amid an ongoing war with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine -- has sought closer integration with the EU and increased foreign investment.

'Undermining Public Trust'

The IMF and World Bank concerns echoed those aired by U.S. and European Union officials who have warned Ukraine this week against moves that would hinder its fight against entrenched corruption, something Western governments say is crucial to Kyiv's efforts to resist Russian efforts to destabilize the country.

"It serves no purpose for Ukraine to fight for its body in Donbas if it loses its soul to corruption," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was quoted as saying in a statement on December 4, referring to the conflict with the Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of two eastern provinces. "Anticorruption institutions must be supported, resourced, and defended."

The State Department said on December 4 that concerns about Ukraines commitment to fight corruption were raised by actions that "appear to be part of an effort to undermine independent anticorruption institutions," adding that such moves undermine public trust and risk eroding international support for Ukraine."

Viral Campaign

Activists and lawmakers who oppose the bill credited each others efforts and a fast-moving, viral social-media campaign for getting it removed from the parliamentary agenda. They mobilized online using the hashtags #savenabu, #supportnabu, and #standfornabu.

They suffered a setback later on December 7, however, when the Verkhovna Rada voted separately to dismiss the head of its Anticorruption Committee, Yehor Sobolyev.

Among those who took notice of the bill was Michael Carpenter, senior director at the U.S.-based Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

"If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all US government assistance to #Ukraine, including security assistance. This is a disgrace," he tweeted.

The Canadian ambassador to Kyiv, Roman Waschuk, wrote on Twitter that if the bill passed there would be consequences in terms of international economic support.

Vitaly Sych, editor in chief of Novaya Vremya, a top Ukrainian news magazine, said that "never over the last three years have the Ukrainian authorities fought anticorruption efforts so openly as today."

'Long-Standing Conflict'

The creation of NABU has been hailed as one of the crowning achievements of the Euromaidan movement. NABU's supporters say its demise would mean the end of true anticorruption reform.

The legislation was drafted as the long-standing conflict between NABU and the Prosecutor-General's Office deepened.

Last week, Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko unmasked an undercover NABU agent who had been involved in operations to take down allegedly corrupt officials and members of parliament and foiled a seven-month sting operation being carried out by the bureau to curb suspected corruption in the State Migration Service.

Lutsenko claimed NABU had exceeded its legal authority.

After the bill was removed from consideration in parliament, NABU issued a statement thanking Ukraine's international allies and backers for their support in the fight against corruption.

"Looks like this specific battle for anticorruption is won. Though this is definitely not the end," said Olena Halushka from the Anticorruption Action Center.

With reporting by Reuters
KYIV -- The adventures of Mikheil Saakashvili reached new heights this week when masked Ukrainian security agents broke down his apartment door and eventually apprehended him on the building's rooftop, where he screamed insults about onetime ally President Petro Poroshenko to supporters on the street below.

The agents hauled the Tbilisi-born Saakashvili into a police van but couldn't get him out of the scrum as hundreds of Saakashvili supporters rushed to the scene to prevent them from taking the onetime Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine's Odesa region away. The van only made it as far as the corner before it was forced to stop near a Catholic church and about 100 meters from the capital's European Square.

Scuffling ensued, with Saakashvili supporters clashing with police in riot gear as they tried to free him. Saakashvili eventually emerged, triumphantly raising a hand with handcuffs still attached to his wrist to offer a "victory" sign to the jubilant crowd.

Later in the day, Saakashvili vowed at a tent city of supporters outside parliament to fight corruption and "remove a criminal group from power and impeach it." By nightfall on December 5, Ukrainian prosecutors had charged Saakashvili with a crime and police had placed him on the national wanted list.

He was a fugitive.

WATCH: Ukrainian security forces arrested former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on suspicion of assisting a criminal organization but he later escaped from custody in Kyiv with help from his supporters. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)

Tensions persisted, with clashes between Saakashvili supporters and police and a December 6 deadline expiring for Saakashvili to turn himself in. He has suggested he will only meet with the authorities at the tent city, which appeared quiet around midday on December 7.

Even by the standards of Saakashvili -- whose political career has been peppered with dramatic and controversial events -- it has been a remarkable several days.

But how did Ukrainian officials and Saakashvili find themselves in this situation, and how far could it lead?

Does this risk blowing up?

Some analysts are convinced that the whole thing could have severe consequences for the country, not to mention Saakashvili.

Ukraine's prosecutor-general suggested later on December 5 that the man who as Georgia's president led an ill-fated, five-day war against Russia over two breakaway Georgian regions has -- wittingly or not -- become a stooge for a Russia-based "organized crime" group allegedly led by exiled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Adrian Karatnycky, senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, argues that the "sensational charges leveled against Mikheil Saakashvili by the Ukrainian procuracy [prosecutors] have the potential to reshuffle the entire political deck in Ukraine."

If prosecutors are proven correct, then Saakashvili will have been shown to have "colluded" with and accepted money from elements friendly to Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in 2014.

"This is an either-or situation," Karatnycky says, highlighting how tricky it might be to find middle ground. "Either Saakashvili was playing footsie with exiled members of the former Yanukovych team, or the Ukrainian procuracy and security services have perpetrated the fraud of the century and Saakashvili is an innocent victim of trumped-up charges not seen since the Stalin era."

And beyond any threat to Poroshenko's popularity among Ukrainians, the clampdown on Saakashvili risks denting the Ukrainian administration's international support. Sudden, dramatic events of this sort generally don't sit well with Kyiv's Western allies, and frustration was already mounting.

The day before the botched arrest, the U.S. State Department raised "concerns" about signs that Kyiv might be backsliding on its commitment to fight corruption. The statement appeared to be a response to a bitter feud pitting Ukraine's independent National Anticorruption Agency (NABU) against the Prosecutor-General's Office and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), both of which are headed by presidential appointees.

After the rooftop raid, the U.S. Embassy and the European Union mission in Kyiv each called on all sides to deescalate the situation and urged the authorities to conduct a fair investigation in accordance with the law.

Why is Saakashvili in legal hot water in Ukraine anyway?

Ukrainian authorities provided little explanation when they announced that they had withdrawn Saakashvili's citizenship in July, raising a minor international stir and prompting Saakashvili's defiant reentry into Ukrainian territory in September despite warnings that he could face arrest.

But more recently, Saakashvili this week was accused by Ukrainian authorities of links to criminal elements around the exiled Yanukovych and other Russia-based plotters. If found guilty, Saakashvili could face up to 10 years in prison.

Saakashvili has called the charge political and the evidence against him -- which includes an alleged wiretapped conversation between him and Serhiy Kurchenko, a mercurial billionaire ally of Yanukovych -- "fake." He says Poroshenko is trying to eliminate him as a political opponent. He has claimed that Ukrainian rivals would like to extradite him to his native Georgia to face what he says are politically motivated abuse-of office-charges stemming from his presidency there, or else cut a deal that would allow him to avoid the charges against him in Ukraine in exchange for leaving the country.

Poroshenko did not initially respond directly to any of the accusations, but he said on December 6 that Saakashvili's actions were aimed at destabilizing the situation inside the war-torn country.

A legal assessment prepared by Saakashvili's lawyer, Ruslan Chornolutsky, that was obtained by RFE/RL on December 7 alleged, "The case against Mikheil Saakashvili is purely political and represents an act of political terror against Ukraine's key opposition leader." It went on to accuse the Ukrainian government, through its actions, of having "taken a step toward authoritarianism, using terror tactics against its own citizens."

The assessment also alleged that the Prosecutor-General's Office's actions, by publicly incriminating Saakashvili, "violated the presumption of innocence, illegally, disclosed alleged details of the investigation, and violated the principle of investigative secrecy in criminal cases."

WATCH: Dozens of Ukrainian police raided a protest camp outside the parliament building in Kyiv early on December 6 in a failed attempt to detain Mikheil Saakashvili. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)

How did Saakashvili end up a Ukrainian politician?

To understand how Saakashvili got here, one needs to go back some ways. Less than two years after completing his second presidential term in Georgia's fiercely polarized political atmosphere, he arrived in Ukraine in the wake of the Euromaidan unrest and with Kyiv at war with Russia-backed separatists.

After giving up his Georgian citizenship and being granted Ukrainian citizenship, in mid-2015 he was appointed by Poroshenko to govern the notoriously corrupt southern region of Odesa. The idea was reportedly Poroshenko's own -- bringing in his former university pal and battle-tested reformer to clean things up. (Saakashvili had ushered in considerable institutional and economic reforms in Georgia before his allies' thumping at the polls in 2012.)

But after a stint that included occasionally dramatic acts of political theater, the Ukrainian plan went awry and Saakashvili quit in November 2016, publicly accusing Poroshenko of blocking his reform efforts. He announced the launch of his own opposition party, called Movement of New Forces, and began campaigning against his former ally.

With only marginal public support, Saakashvili had mostly fallen off the map until Poroshenko's decree in July -- while the ex-governor was visiting the United States -- that stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship and voided his passport. No justification was publicly stated.

"Everybody would have forgotten Saakashvili. Nobody was really paying attention to his words," political analyst Taras Berezovets says, adding of Poroshenko's citizenship maneuver, "Then after this, he was quoted in all international media."

The news gave Saakashvili a much-needed if short-lived PR boost that he used to rally supporters to the Ukrainian-Polish border, where they helped him break through a guard post and reenter the country. While illegal, the authorities let him off with a fine.

Why the dramatic scenes and legions of police on December 5? Was it overkill?

Some say the Ukrainian authorities' massive law enforcement operation this week signaled Poroshenko's overwhelming desire to see Saakashvili taken out of the picture in a highly public manner.

Since his return to Ukraine, Saakashvili has set his sights on campaigning for early presidential and parliamentary elections. (Presidential and legislative elections are not otherwise slated to take place until 2019.) His message has been antigovernment and specifically anti-Poroshenko, which observers say may have gotten under the president's skin.

"This seems like a personal rivalry...a battle of egos" between Poroshenko and Saakashvili, according to Kateryna Zarembo, deputy director at the Kyiv-based New Europe Center, a think tank. "It's kind of similar to Yanukovych and [former Prime Minister and eventually failed presidential candidate Yulia] Tymoshenko."

But the strength and apparent dedication demonstrated by Saakashvili's supporters this week suggest it could require a sizable contingent of police to take him into custody. In this case, it seems the authorities seriously miscalculated.

...But how could they just let him get away?

Some observers have noted that -- with the Euromaidan violence still fresh in the minds of Ukrainians -- police may be less inclined to use force against protesters.

The authorities certainly seem to have seriously miscalculated the determination of Saakashvili's followers.

But the operation itself appears to have been hastily planned. Conducting it in daylight and at Saakashvili's apartment -- on a narrow one-way street in the capital's busy center during morning rush hour -- probably reduced the odds of an efficient extraction.

How widespread is support for Saakashvili among Ukrainians?

Many Ukrainians say Saakashvili has Poroshenko to thank for his recent publicity. In fact, for months opinion polls have shown Saakashvili polling at somewhere between 1-2 percent popularity. That has many political observers scratching their heads about the authorities' tireless pursuit of him.

Like his summertime breakthrough at the Ukraine-Poland border, Saakashvili's breakout from the police van on December 5 is likely to boost his political profile, if only briefly.

With reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy, and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov will testify as witnesses for prosecution at the treason trial in absentia of former President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Obolon district court ruled on December 7 that former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov, and other current and former officials will also be summoned to testify.

The trial resumed on December 4 after a more than one-month break, and the next hearing is scheduled for December 11.

On October 26, Judge Vladyslav Devyatko granted a request by Yanukovych's new state-appointed lawyer, Ihor Lyashenko, for additional time to get acquainted with the case.

Yanukovych abandoned office in late February 2014 and fled to Russia in the face of protests triggered by his decision to scrap plans for a landmark deal with the European Union and improve trade ties with Moscow instead.

Dozens of people were killed when his government attempted to clamp down on the pro-European protests known as the Euromaidan.

Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for Yanukovych, who is accused of treason, violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and abetting Russian aggression.

After he fled, Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and fomented opposition to the central government in eastern Ukraine, where the ensuing war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people.

Based on reporting by UNIAN and Un.ua
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has signed a decree ordering what state media outlets called the first mass pardoning of convicts in the Central Asian country's history.

A total of 2,700 convicts were pardoned under the decree signed on December 7, and 956 of them will be released from prison, state media reports said.

Others were serving suspended sentences or were not in prison for other reasons.

Mirziyoev's decree was timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the constitution Uzbekistan adopted on December 8, 1992, months after it gained independence in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The media reports said that the decree differed from previous presidential amnesties because a commission was created in September to determine convicts eligible for pardons.

Several jailed journalists, politicians, and others seen by rights groups as political prisoners have been released since Mirziyoev came to power in September 2016, after the death of longtime autocrat Islam Karimov.

In October, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Uzbek authorities had taken "some positive steps" during Mirziyoevs first year in office and called for "sustainable" improvements in human rights.


WASHINGTON  The U.S. capitals city council took up legislation to rename a public square located in front of Russias Embassy in memory of the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

The effort is the latest push by Nemstovs relatives and supporters, a move that has irked Moscow.

This not about blame, this is not about poking anyone in the eye, this is about honoring the memory of our great compatriot, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a longtime Nemtsov aide, told a city council hearing December 6.

A former deputy prime minister and longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge just meters from the Kremlin walls on February 27, 2015.

His slaying drew international condemnation and highlighted the dangers faced by Russians who oppose the Kremlin.

Nemtsovs supporters have repeatedly sought to get permission for a formal plaque or monument to be placed at the site of his killing, but Moscow city officials have denied permission. Other supporters have on numerous occasions laid flowers at the site in makeshift memorials that are dismantled and taken away with unusual speed.

In July, a Moscow court found five men from Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya guilty of the murder and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms.

A similar bill was introduced earlier this year in the U.S. Senate by Republican Marco Rubio; Washingtons federal status gives Congress more direct oversight of some aspects of the citys management.

But that bill languished, and activists turned to the city council to push the effort.

Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized the effort, accusing U.S. lawmakers of "manipulating" the slain politician's name.

The council will have a second hearing in the coming weeks before a formal vote will be held, expected in early 2018.


Calling the collapse of the Soviet Union one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century, he has built his formidable popularity on the idea that Russia should restore its natural destiny as a superpower, an equal to the United States in military might and global influence. Pursuing this goal, he decided annexation of Crimea in 2014. Election day was moved to March 18, the fourth anniversary of that annexation, as a pointed reminder to voters.



Kremlin

Russians experienced instability and poverty after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. After assuming the presidency in 2000, Mr. Putin brought stability and an extended period of prosperity, with Russians gaining more household income in the first eight years of his term.. Now, opposition figures get little or no access to national television, and there are countless hurdles to registering as a candidate. Some analysts said however that Russians will not accept a president for life. Putin was born Oct. 7, 1952, to factory-worker parents in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, a city pervaded by memories of the horrific suffering of the nearly 900-day Nazi siege in World War II.
At the British High Commission in New Delhi earlier today, the all new Range Rover Velar was launched in India. It is the fourth member of the British SUV specialists flagship brand, which made its debut at 2017 Geneva Motor Show earlier last year. Velar slots between the ample void that existed in Land Rovers portfolio between Evoque and Range Rover Sport. The car has now been launched in India, at a starting price of Rs 78.83 lakhs.

At first glance, Velar is essentially a design amalgamation of the flagship Range Rover and the compact Evoque. The sporty front fascia features brilliantly detailed matrix-laser headlights, an instantly recognizable Range Rover grille, and an aggressive bumper with brushed metal chin and burnished copper-finished gills.

The new luxury SUV is bestowed with a gently tapering roofline with contrast finish, oversized rear quarter glass panel, bulging wheel arches, and stance-enhancing 22-inch wheels. Wraparound LED taillights which are bridged by a logo-carrying black insert, a prominent black diffuser with twin exhaust pipes constitute the rear fascia. Interior adopts an uncluttered design with light color themes. Noteworthy features include a fully digital instrument console and Touch Pro Duo infotainment system which employs two 10-inch displays.

Like all the latest JLR products, Range Rover Velar is underpinned by an aluminium intensive platform. In India, customers can choose from a range of 3 engine options  a 2.0 l 4-cylinder 132 kW (177 hp) diesel, a 2.0 l 4-cylinder 184 kW (246 hp) petrol and a 3.0 l V6 221 kW (296 hp) diesel.

In India, the SUV is sold with three engine options. These are 2.0 liter petrol turbo generating 247 bhp and 365 Nm of torque, a 2.0 liter diesel turbo generating 177 bhp and 430 Nm and a top of the line 3.0 liter diesel V6 generating 297 bhp and 700 Nm.

The SUV comes packed with a plethora of safety, dynamic and comfort features such as air suspension (standard on all 6-cylinder models), adaptive dynamics, optional active locking rear differential, Terrain Response 2, All Terrain Progress Control, Hill Descent Control, Low Traction Launch, and Gradient Release Control, Reverse Traffic Detection, Autonomous Emergency Braking, Driver Condition Monitoring, etc.

Range Rover Velar 2.0L Diesel Price and Variants

Variant Price (Rs lakh) 2.0 l Diesel (D180) 78.83 2.0 l Diesel (D180) R-Dynamic 80.76 2.0 l Diesel (D180) S 83.25 2.0 l Diesel (D180) R-Dynamic S 85.18 2.0 l Diesel (D180) SE 85.21 2.0 l Diesel (D180) R-Dynamic SE 87.14 2.0 l Diesel (D180) HSE 89.93 2.0 l Diesel (D180) R-Dynamic HSE 91.86

Range Rover Velar 2.0L Petrol Price and Variants

Variant Price (Rs lakh) 2.0 l Petrol (P250) 78.83 2.0 l Petrol (P250) R-Dynamic 80.76 2.0 l Petrol (P250) S 83.25 2.0 l Petrol (P250) R-Dynamic S 85.18 2.0 l Petrol (P250) SE 85.21 2.0 l Petrol (P250) R-Dynamic SE 87.14 2.0 l Petrol (P250) HSE 89.93 2.0 l Petrol (P250) R-Dynamic HSE 91.86

Range Rover Velar 3.0L Diesel Price and Variants

Variant Price (Rs lakh) 3.0 l Diesel (D300) 110.66 3.0 l Diesel (D300) R-Dynamic 113.01 3.0 l Diesel (D300) S 116.04 3.0 l Diesel (D300) R-Dynamic S 118.39 3.0 l Diesel (D300) SE 118.43 3.0 l Diesel (D300) R-Dynamic SE 120.78 3.0 l Diesel (D300) HSE 124.18 3.0 l Diesel (D300) R-Dynamic HSE 126.53 3.0 l Diesel (D300) First Edition 137.53

All prices above are ex-showroom.

News Release
TVS Apache RR 310, the much anticipated Apache 310cc model, was launched earlier today. The BMW G310R-based model shares a few specifications with the Beemer and looks much sharper due to the full fairing. The RR 310 debuted at the Auto Expo 2016, where it was shown as the Akula 310 concept. The most powerful and the fastest TVS motorcycle is now on sale at exclusive showrooms across India. New TVS Apache RR 310 price starts from Rs 2.05 lakh (ex-showroom). Read on for all the available details on this highly promising motorcycle.

In India, the new Apache becomes the first-ever motorcycle that is related to the BMW Motorrad. We say this as the motorcycle shares a lot with the G310R. While the latter will also launch in India, the TVS motorcycle has its own unique identity due to the very racy looks and a sportier nature.

Though engineered 100% by BMW Motorrad, both the motorcycles are produced by TVS Motor Company at its production facility in Hosur. The new full fairing Apache gets a 313cc, single-cylinder engine that comes from the BMW G310R. Of course, it is tweaked for the new RR 310 to suit a sportier nature. The motor comes mated to a six-speed manual transmission that sends power to the rear wheel thru a chain drive. The new TVS flagship gets upside-down front forks, trellis frame, dual-channel ABS, anti back lift, rear monoshockand dual projector headlamps.

TVS Apache RR 310 Walkaround

TVS Apache 310 RR First Look New TVS Apache 310 RR First Look Posted by RushLane on Wednesday, 6 December 2017

TVS Apache RR 310 Price in India

The fastest TVS motorcycle ever is also the most expensive one yet. The TVS Apache RR310 price is Rs 2.05 lakh (ex-showroom). The new bike is the most performance-oriented TVS production motorcycle. It is not only more powerful and faster than the RTR200 4V, but also the sportiest one on a race track. Hence, all the price premium it commands over the 200cc model is completely justified.

TVS Apache RR 310 Images

As you can see in the TVS Apache RR 310 images we have here, the new motorcycle looks a lot like the Akula 310 concept. That said, it does miss out on the sporty exhaust and the carbon-fibre body panels. Plus, it gains a dual headlamp setup.

TVS Apache RR 310 Specs

Engine DOHC 1 cyl cc 312.2 FI Yes Cooling Liquid Power 34 hp at 9,700 rpm Torque 27.3 Nm at 7,700 rpm ABS Dual Channel (not disengageable) Front Brake 300 mm single disc Rear Brake 240 mm single disc Front Tyre 110/70 R17 Rear Tyre 150/60 R17 Tyres Michelin Pilot Street Alloys 5 spoke, same as G310R Colours Red & Black Front Suspension KYB USD forks Rear Suspension adjustable monoshock

TVS Apache RR 310 Exhaust Note

TVS Apache 310 Exhaust Note TVS Apache 310 Exhaust Note Posted by RushLane on Wednesday, 6 December 2017

The new Apache RR 310 is powered by the same 313cc, single-cylinder, liquid-cooled, fuel-injected engine that powers the BMW G310R. For the new RR310 Apache, however, this engine has been re-tuned to suit the bikes racing pedigree. This engine has a rear-inclined mounting and is capable of outputting a max. power of 34.2bhp at 9,700 RPM and a peak torque of 27.3 Nm at 7,700 RPM (G310R delivers 34 PS peak power at 9,500 rpm and 28 Nm peak torque at 7,500 rpm). The Apache RR 310 comes with a 6-speed Manual Transmission that will send power to the rear wheels via a chain drive. The new motorcycle gets golden-painted upside-down telescopic forks at the front along with a monoshock at the rear. It is built around a lightweight trellis frame. Dual Channel ABS and Anti Back Lift makes the new bike safer.

TVS Apache RR 310 Features

Trellis Frame

Liquid cooled with OWHE (Oil water heat exchanger)

DOHC

Fuel Injection

300 hours of wind tunnel testing

1365mm wheelbase (9 mm shorter than the G310R)

Kayaba USD shocks at front

Kayaba Monoshock at rear

Mutli-information Digital Speedo Console

72-point Fuel Gauge

Lap Timer

Top Speed Recorder

Real Time Mileage Display

Average Mileage Display

Gear-shift Indicator

Temperature Display

Hazard Lights

Dual LED Projector Headlamps

BMW G310R-like Exhaust End-can

Michelin Soft-compound radial Tires

Dual channel ABS (not disengageable)

Anti Back Lift

300 mm single disc in the front

240mm single dis at rear

Ride by wire and slipper clutch is NOT on offer

Michelin Pilot Street Tyres

Front 110/70 R17

Rear 150/60 R17

TVS Apache RR 310 or KTM RC 390  Vote

Red or Orange? Why? Posted by RushLane on Wednesday, 6 December 2017

TVS Apache RR 310 Top Speed and 0 to 60 KMPH

The new motorcycle from TVS can accelerate from 0 to 60 kmph in just 2.93 seconds and go on to hit a top speed of 160 kmph. This makes the new RR 310 one of the quickest and the fastest bikes in its category.

TVS Apache RR 310 Mileage

Mileage KMPL City 25 Highwy 30 Overall 27

The RR 310 Apache full fairing motorcycle will offer a mileage of up to 25 kmpl in city and up to 30 kmpl on the highway. While the buyers of such motorcycles give performance a higher priority than fuel efficiency, the new flagship strikes a decent balance between the two aspects.

Making of TVS Apache RR 310

The making of TVS Apache RR 310 The making of TVS Apache RR 310 Posted by RushLane on Wednesday, 6 December 2017

TVS Apache RR 310 Design Review

As you can yourself make out in the TVS Apache RR 310 images we have on this page, the new model looks a lot like the Akula concept that made its debut at the last Auto Expo. The biggest differences, however, arise out of a different exhaust end-can and lack of carbon fibre panels on the production bike. Also, the RR 310 gets a dual LED headlamp setup instead of the no headlight full fairing of the Akula concept. The new Apache flagship indeed looks very sporty, which is majorly due to a full fairing, dual LED headlamps, upside down front shocks, split seats, and adjustable clip-on handlebars.

The new Apache RR 310 gets a full fairing at front, which is flanked by a huge windshield and a dual LED headlamp setup. A unique thing about the headlamps is that both the lamps light up even when on low beam. This bike comes with a cast alloy swingarm to, of course, improve handling but it also lends a touch of sophistication to the design. The Upside Down front forks have a golden finish.

The posterior flaunts a devils horn taillamp. The LED fixtures in the taillamp and the turn indicators lend a premium look to the new bike. The exhaust end-can comes from the BMW G310R. The adjustable clip-ons along with the raised rear seat further gives a racy touch to the bikes visual appeal. We really cant find a fault with the way this motorcycle looks. We are really happy the production version looks a lot like the Akula and the new Apache flagship is actually a really very attractive-looking motorcycle.

Watch this space for more on the RR 310. Also, whats your take on the TVS Apache RR 310 price range? Do you think the new bike justifies its price tag?

News Release


U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Litigation Release No. 24004 / December 6, 2017 Securities and Exchange Commission v. Zachary S. Berkey, et al. Civil Action No. 17-cv-09552 (S.D.N.Y., filed December 6, 2017) SEC Charges Brokers Defrauding Customers The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed a civil injunctive action, charging two New York-based brokers with making unsuitable trades that were costly for customers and lucrative for the brokers. The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Zachary S. Berkey, of Centereach, New York, and Daniel T. Fischer, of Greenwich, Connecticut, conducted in-and-out trading that was almost certain to lose money for customers while yielding commissions for themselves. According to the complaint, ten customers of Four Points Capital Partners LLC, where Berkey and Fischer previously worked, lost a total of $573,867, while Berkey and Fischer received approximately $106,000 and $175,000, respectively, in commissions. According to the SEC's complaint, since the customers incurred significant costs with every transaction and the securities were held briefly, the price of the securities had to rise significantly for customers to realize even a minimal profit. The complaint also alleges that Berkey and Fischer churned customer accounts and concealed material information from their customers, namely that the costs associated with their recommendations, including commissions and fees, would almost certainly exceed any potential gains on the trades. The complaint further alleges that Fischer engaged in unauthorized trading. The SEC's complaint alleges that Berkey and Fischer violated Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The complaint seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement plus prejudgment interest and civil monetary penalties against the defendants. Without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, Fischer consented to a final judgment that, subject to court approval, permanently enjoins him from similar violations in the future and orders him to return his allegedly ill-gotten gains with interest and pay a $160,000 penalty. The SEC's litigation against Berkey will proceed in federal district court. The SEC's investigation was conducted by Hane L. Kim, Karen Lee, David Stoelting, and Gerald A. Gross. Mr. Stoelting, Ms. Kim, and Ms. Lee will lead the litigation. The case is being supervised by Mr. Wadhwa. The SEC examination that led to the investigation was conducted by Rosanne R. Smith, Terrence P. Bohan, William D. Ostrow, and Doreen Piccirillo. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Office of Montana State Auditor, Commissioner of Securities and Insurance. SEC Complaint https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2017/lr24004.htm

Modified: 12/06/2017
OJAI, Ventura County  As devastating Santa Ana winds picked up Thursday, thousands of firefighters dug in for an extended battle to halt the spread of the biggest wildfire in Southern California before it rampages over dry hills into Santa Barbara.

Howling gusts continued to usher on the 115,000-acre Thomas Fire, which had destroyed 439 structures in Ventura County and was threatening 15,000 more amid an unusual late-season storm of blazes that closed freeways and spurred mass evacuations all over the region.

It was one of a half dozen fires that left a smoky reddish halo stretching from chic Bel-Air and wooded Ventura almost all the way to San Diego, a kaleidoscope of trouble that residents arent likely to forget. Bay Area officials warned that smoke from the fires was drifting into the region and that some people in the Santa Cruz Mountains were smelling the smoke on Thursday.

By late Thursday, the Thomas Fire, which started Monday evening, burned into Santa Barbara County and was within 15 miles of the coastal city of nearly 100,000 people that draws tourists from around the world.

The blaze burned as well into the backyards of homes in the sleepy city of Ojai, in Ventura County, but firefighters pushed the flames west toward Carpinteria after a hell of a firefight, said Janet Upton, deputy director of the states Cal Fire agency.

The problem, she said, was that the sporadic winds were launching embers ahead of the conflagration, igniting spot fires.

One of the silver linings about the Santa Ana winds is that we do know the direction they are going to blow, Upton said. They are going from east to west, so we can make a plan.

The plan was to use air tankers, helicopters and as many as 70 strike teams to try to corral the stubborn flames as they blackened rugged areas surrounding McDonald Canyon, northwest of Ojai, through acres of avocado groves in a path toward the sea.

Upton said firefighters were removing brush from dozens of old fire lines built on Labor Day 2006, when the Day Fire burned through the area. Bulldozers were also carving new lines well ahead of the fires front edge, where crews hoped to pound the racing flames with retardant from the air.

Were in the thick of the worst in terms of weather conditions, Upton said. The wind will lessen over the weekend, but its really just a lesser evil because the winds will still be present.

Highway 101 between Santa Barbara and Ventura counties was closed for several hours as the flames licked up against the road. CHP officers escorted motorists through heavy smoke during the morning commute.

Drew Peterson, a National Weather Service forecaster, estimated that wind speeds at lower elevations would approach 40 mph late Thursday and early Friday, and climb up to 60 mph at higher elevations. That, combined with relative humidities that Upton described as lower than kiln-dried wood, made for a perilous situation.

Were seeing this wind event now that is very, very dangerous, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, said Thursday. These winds are going to be very severe in the next 24 to 48 hours.

The weather service issued a red-flag warning for high winds and extreme fire conditions through 8 p.m. Sunday evening.

As the fires spread, a woman was found dead after what appeared to be a solo vehicle accident in Wheeler Canyon between Santa Paula and Ojai, possibly as she attempted to flee the fire, said Deputy Tim Lohman of the Ventura County Sheriffs Department.

In northern Ojai, Cameron Carlson, 56, said he spent Wednesday night defending his home from flames despite mandatory evacuation orders. He brushed dry leaves off the roof, flicked on the sprinklers and sprayed water around the perimeter.

Early Thursday morning, he said, the Thomas Fire blazed closer, growling like a jet plane and sucking wind into the center of the inferno. We could see the fire coming, he said. Then it was here.

The flames fanned down the mountainside in Carlsons backyard and barreled through a riverbed overgrown with dry vegetation.

I literally prayed in that moment, and it seemed like God answered, Carlson said. My fear turned into energy. I wanted to run but needed to stay.

A parade of fire engines blared down the road, extinguishing the flames and saving a row of homes, including Carlsons. But on Thursday, the onslaught still wasnt over. Fire crews continued to stage in his backyard, while hot spots puffed smoke.

It cannot be overemphasized the weather conditions we are in right now, said Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott. We are a long way from being out of this weather event. In some cases the worst could be yet to come.

To the south, two other fires erupted Thursday.

The Lilac Fire badly damaged a training facility for elite thoroughbred horses and, by evening, it had blackened 4,100 acres along Old Highway 395 in the town of Bonsall, 45 miles north of San Diego. Homes in the area as well as Sullivan Middle School and Bonsall High School were evacuated.

The fire, which broke out at 11:15 a.m., prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency in San Diego County.

Hundreds of elite thoroughbred race horses sprinted away from flames as the fire tore through the San Luis Rey Downs training center near Bonsall.

The animals, some of which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, were set free and encouraged to run away as flames engulfed the center.

Not all made it. Trainers estimated that at least a dozen had died, possibly far more.

The Liberty Fire also blackened 220 acres near the city of Murrieta, in Riverside County.

The Creek Fire, near Sylmar and Lakeview Terrace in Los Angeles County, was only 20 percent contained by late Thursday after destroying 15 structures . Two firefighters sustained minor injuries in the fire, which had burned 15,323 acres and was threatening 2,500 homes.

Four homes were ruined and 12 others were damaged in the Skirball Fire in the ritzy Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, which by Thursday had blackened 475 acres and was 20 percent contained. One firefighter was treated for burns on the neck as the blaze raced near the Getty Center and UCLA, where classes were canceled.

The Getty Center, which was saved, was being used Thursday as a base for out-of-town fire crews that need a place to rest, eat and sleep.

The No. 1 priority is that people do not lose their lives, said Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas. Referring to the 44 lives lost during fires that swept through Wine Country in October, he said, Weve seen up north how that can occur.

Terrazas said his department planned to fly drones over burned areas of Los Angeles County in an attempt to get a full accounting of the damage. He urged people to heed evacuation orders.

We can replace the house, he said. We cant replace people.

The Rye Fire in Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County was 25 percent contained Thursday morning and had not grown overnight from 7,000 acres.

The disaster overtook the lives of many in Southern California. Samantha Lawhon drove her parents back to their home in Ojai on Thursday afternoon, the day after it was saved by firefighters.

The trio stood on the road next to a grove of avocado trees, watching the Thomas Fire inch along the hillside. The hollow thud of propane tanks exploding could be heard in the distance. Cyprus trees burned one by one.

Days before, Lawhon had to evacuate her own home in Ventura. She and her husband drove their RV to a Target parking lot with their dogs, cats and six fish stored in a water pitcher. When their evacuation order was lifted, her parents joined her in Ventura.

The fire is burning way up there, Lawhon said. Weve gotta get moving again.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lizzie Johnson, Steve Rubenstein, Sophie Haigney and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: ljohnson@sfchornicle.com, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, sophie.haigney@sfchronicle.com, pfimrite@sfchronicle.com
Man facing murder charge given 10 years for unrelated fatal crash

Travis Logan was given 10 years in prison this week for his role in a fatal Mishawaka crash from 2020. He still faces a murder charge from 2021.
A drop-in held Nov. 30 at Andrews High School gave citizens an opportunity to ask DHEC representatives questions about a proposed mine near Andrews and learn about the process.
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Brad Morris Column: Don't be afraid to ask for help
WASHINGTON  Officials in the Trump administration have been known to ignore advice from experts. But this White House should listen to what a group of space analysts and scholars have to say, asserts a white paper released Tuesday.

The United States needs a "national space policy" that looks broadly at issues like space traffic management, small satellites, proximity operations, orbital debris, counter-space threats and norms of behavior, says a report titled "Major Policy Issues in Evolving Global Space Operations," by The Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy.

James Vedda, of The Aerospace Corporation, and Peter Hays, of the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, wrote the report based on a survey of 30 U.S. and international experts. [From Ike to Trump: Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]

There is a "proliferation of capabilities" in space coming from the private sector, the military and civilian agencies, Vedda said at a Capitol Hill event hosted by the Air Force Association. "We are in a great transition period for national security, civil and commercial space," he said. There is a need for the government to get more involved in policy-making and help sort things out. With this study, said Vedda, "We wanted not just to tee up the issues but say, 'Here's how key thinkers are feeling about these issues and please take this to heart.'"

Some of the key messages in the study:

Roles need to be clarified among the government, commercial and international sector

Emerging technologies should be embraced, not obstructed, even if their proliferation carries some risk

The United States should be less secretive about space operations and facilitate international and commercial collaboration

International agreements should be approached with caution and patience.

"We're hoping that a study like this will give the Trump administration appreciation for what the experts have to offer," Vedda said.

National security is an overarching concern, but the conversation can't just be about "threats, threats, threats," he said. "That's the drumbeat that is going on. But we should also try to refocus the discussion on what are we going to build? What should we build in space that enables lots of other activities that generate value and increase safety and security?"

Jamie Morin, executive director of the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, said the study was not funded by any government organization and not driven by any political agenda.

Space experts said they would like to see the administration provide more transparent guidance on how the government should work with the booming private sector. In 2016, commercial space activities generated $253 billion in global space activity, while governments spent about $76 billion on space projects.

"The challenge is getting the government to move forward and capitalize on these opportunities," said Hays, who works as an adviser to the Defense Department but noted that he was not speaking on behalf of the government.

The government should decide what space activities it will retain and which ones it plans to share with the private sector or with international partners, said Hays. Some areas like nuclear command and control are obviously "inherently governmental," but others  such as space debris removal and satellite tracking  could be outsourced or shared with allies. In the field of environmental monitoring, for instance, the U.S. government doesn't have a lot of programs in the works.

The administration should be "more intentional and more transparent" about this, Hays said. With commercial services becoming widely available for most space activities, this the "best opportunity in a generation" for the government to decide how to work with the private sector, he said. Satellite-based communications services from commercial firms are just as secure and reliable as government-owned systems, he said. "Not so many years ago it would not have been possible to do this," he said. "There are exciting possibilities but the challenge is for the government to seize that opportunity in a transparent manner and make it clear what our position is."

Federal agencies have talked about this a lot, but decisions on what it makes sense to outsource have not been settled, and the pendulum has swung back and forth. "If we keep churning it every two to three years it will be counterproductive," Hays said.

The White House National Space Council is "well positioned" to take the lead on this, he said. "I am hopeful they will take on that challenge."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
A NASA manager says Boeing and SpaceX should be able to achieve, or come close to, safety requirements established by NASA for their commercial crew spacecraft.

WASHINGTON  As the two companies developing commercial crew vehicles prepare for test flights in the next 12 months, a NASA official said the agency expects those companies to be able to meet, or come close to, stringent safety requirements for those spacecraft.

At a Nov. 29 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's human exploration and operations committee, Lisa Colloredo, deputy program manager for NASA's commercial crew program, said Boeing and SpaceX were making good progress towards achieving a "loss of crew", or LOC, requirement established by NASA at the beginning of the program.

The LOC requirement states that the odds of an accident killing or causing serious injury to a crewmember be no more than 1 in 270 flights for a 210-day mission at the International Space Station. That covers all aspects of the mission, including launch and re-entry.

"We have a very difficult LOC requirement to meet, and we knew that when we going in," Colloredo said. The 1-in-270 LOC requirement for commercial crew is more stringent than the 1-in-90 value at the end of the shuttle program. "I would say that we've made a lot of progress, and the providers have both done a lot of redesign work to improve their LOC numbers."

Those changes, she said, include "more robustness" to the thermal protection systems on the spacecraft and additional parachute testing. "It's served its purpose of getting the right look at the top drivers for LOC," she said, including making design changes to improve those values.

Colloredo said she expected that both companies would meet the 1-in-270 LOC requirement, or come close enough that NASA would be willing to accept the vehicles as safe enough for its astronauts. "It's pretty likely in the end that SpaceX and Boeing will come in with their evidence that they meet the requirement or close to it," she said. Ultimately, she said, it will require NASA due diligence to either confirm they meet the requirement or be willing to accept a variance from the requirement in a specific area.

Another NASA committee has also monitored the ability of Boeing and SpaceX to meet the LOC requirement. At the October meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), committee members discussed the progress both companies were making on addressing key risk issues for their systems.

"The ASAP believes that NASA is judiciously continuing to address the risk drivers with the providers for the most serious scenarios through continued analysis, modeling, testing, and design development. It remains challenging," the panel noted in the minutes from that meeting. "Nevertheless, the focus on worst case scenarios has driven positive design decisions for both providers, as well as other aspects such as increases in systems testing for some of the systems that carry notable risks."

The biggest challenge, ASAP reported, was meeting micrometeoroid and orbital debris protection requirements. NASA was working to improve the modeling of the risks posed to those spacecraft from micrometeoroids and orbital debris through experiments mounted on the station as well as on Dragon cargo spacecraft.

At the NASA Advisory Council committee meeting, Colloredo said the LOC requirement was the biggest programmatic issue facing the overall program, but not the only one. She said NASA was assessing if it had included all the costs of various government-provided services for commercial crew missions. It was also working to ensure that search and rescue training for Air Force personnel supporting commercial crew launches would be ready in time for the first missions.

Both companies are working to schedules that call for both uncrewed and crewed test flights in 2018, although later in the year than previously planned. SpaceX is planning an uncrewed test of its Crew Dragon in April, previously scheduled for February. The crewed test flight is now planned for August, instead of June. Between the two flights will be an in-flight abort test.

Boeing's uncrewed test flight of its CST-100 Starliner is now scheduled for August, two months later than previously planned. The crewed test flight has shifted from August to November, although the company said earlier this fall that the crewed test flight might slip into early 2019.

"We're making a lot of progress with the providers," Colloredo said. "We're getting prepared for flight and we acknowledge that we have a lot of work ahead of us."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
An Iridium flare shines above the white dome of the Isaac Newton Telescope in this photo by astrophotographer Miguel Claro.

Miguel Claro is a Lisbon, Portugal-based professional photographer, author and science communicator who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect Earth and the night sky. Join him here as he takes us through his photograph "Moonlight Iridium Flare Above the Isaac Newton Telescope."

A starry scene captured from the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, one of Spain's Canary Islands, shows an Iridium flare gleaming in the sky above the dome of the Isaac Newton Telescope on the 50th anniversary of its inauguration. Situated on the rim of a volcano, the observatory overlooks a blanket of fluffy cloud tops illuminated by the glow of the rising moon.

Iridium flares are glints of light that appear briefly in the sky when sunlight reflects off any of the 66 Iridium Communications satellites currently orbiting 485 miles (780 kilometers) above Earth. These flares last anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds and can appear almost 20 times brighter than Venus, the brightest planet in the night sky. [The Brightest Planets in December's Night Sky: How to See Them (and When)]

In this long-exposure shot of an Iridium flare seen from the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT), the satellite resembles a "shooting star" as it passes in front of a backdrop of short star trails.

The INT was originally constructed in the 1960s at Herstmonceux Estate in East Sussex, United Kingdom, which became the new site of the Royal Greenwich Observatory as light pollution in Greenwich drove astronomers to relocate to darker skies. The 100-inch (2.5 meters) telescope achieved first light in 1965 and was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II on Dec. 1, 1967.

But after just a few years of observations, officials at the Royal Greenwich Observatory decided that the telescope would be more useful somewhere with better weather conditions.

After visiting the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, where the Cumbre Vieja volcano rises above the cloud tops, they decided to move the telescope to the rim of that volcano. The telescope resumed operations at the new location in 1984.

Over the years, the INT has made many important contributions to astrophysics research, including the first-ever discovery of a black hole. The telescope has also observed quasars (extremely bright galactic nuclei), exploding stars known as supernovas, galaxies, nebulas and more.

To see more of Claro's amazing astrophotography, visit his website, miguelclaro.com.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520. "False-colored" maps show the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter.

Dark matter is the elusive, invisible substance that appears to make up more than 80 percent of the total mass in the universe  far more than accounted for by the "regular" matter that makes up things like stars, planets and everything astronomers can directly observe. A new study makes the bold claim, however, that perhaps dark matter doesn't exist at all.

But scientists aren't convinced that the study holds water.

Hints of the existence of dark matter appeared as early as the 1930s, but the real discovery took place in 1978, when astrophysicist Vera Rubin concluded that the observable motions of galaxies couldn't be explained by the laws of Newtonian physics alone. Due to the speed of the galaxies' rotation, the stars on their edges would fly away if the only thing holding them in place were the visible matter.

Rubin estimated that the galaxies must contain about six times more mass than what could be observed with existing instruments. Forty years later, despite extensive efforts, scientists haven't found a fundamental dark-matter particle or any evidence of what makes up the mysterious substance. Swiss astrophysicist Andre Maeder, author of the new study, has proposed that the mysterious effects attributed to dark matter could have another explanation. [Related: The Matter with Dark Matter]

Alternative to Einstein

The hypothesis at the heart of the new theory s that "empty space is scale-invariant," Maeder, a researcher and honorary professor at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva, told Space.com. "That means that if we make dilatation of [empty space] or contraction of it, its properties should not change, which seems rather reasonable."

"When [scale invariance] is introduced into the equations, this leads to a new small force, which is opposed to gravitation. But this force only appears at very low densities," he said.

On Earth, such a force would be a million or billion times smaller than the force of gravity, so it's not something that could be easily measured, he said. On the galactic scale, however, this force would be powerful enough to help hold the rotating galaxies together even without the presence of dark matter.

But the scale invariance of space is not part of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, which introduced the concept of a universal fabric called space-time, and provides the most precise description of gravity available. Time after time, general relativity has stood up to new tests, and new observations have confirmed the theory.

Rather than modifying that well-accepted theory, Maeder works with an alternative concept called the cotensor analysis, which, unlike general relativity, allows him to work with scale invariance.

"There are many observations which would better fit with this theory," said Maeder. "I have about 10 positive observational facts, and this is satisfactory. But there is still more work to do to fully confirm that."

Among those 10 items, which are cited in the new paper, Maeder said that his model provides an explanation for the rotation rate of individual galaxies, which has previously been attributed to dark matter. His model also fits with observations of the surprisingly high velocities of galaxies in galaxy clusters, he said.

Scale invariance of empty space and the resulting effects, Maeder said, could also account for the accelerating expansion of the universe, which scientists can't yet explain. This acceleration is generally attributed to a mysterious effect called dark energy.

The case for dark matter

Astronomers know more about what dark matter is not than what it actually is. See what scientists know about dark matter in this Space.com infographic (Image credit: Karl Tate, Space.com Infographics Artist)

However, other experts who talked with Space.com said they don't find Maeder's conclusions persuasive.

"Any model that will replace general relativity will have to fit all of our observational cosmology data," said David Spergel, professor of astrophysics at Princeton University. And Maeder's hypothesis fails to explain some important observations as well as dark matter does, Spergel said.

In particular, the "cleanest" evidence for the existence of dark matter, Spergel said, comes from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a faint glow that fills the entire universe and can be observed in every direction. The CMB is cooled-down radiation that is left over from the very early universe, shortly after the Big Bang.

According to Pat Scott, an astroparticle phenomenologist at Imperial College London, the temperature fluctuations observed in the cosmic microwave background can't be explained without the existence of dark matter.

"You need to have some additional component of matter that doesn't interact with regular matter via the electromagnetic force," he said (meaning dark matter has no interaction with light). Scott said observations suggest that "there must be a lot of matter in the universe that is dark.

Maeder's ideas fail to offer an alternative explanation for those observations, Spergel said.

"While the cold dark matter models fit the microwave background data remarkably well, Maeder's alternative theory does not fit the data," Spergel said. (There are multiple models that attempt to explain what dark matter is and how it behaves, and the cold dark matter models constitute one category of those.)

Scott also said that Maeder's hypothesis would likely be unable to explain gravitational lensing  the bending of light in the vicinity of massive objects such as large galaxies and black holes. Observations have shown that the strength of gravitational lensing around some galaxies and clusters cannot be explained without the presence of additional, dark mass.

"The fact that the lensing happens at all means that there is some additional mass there, which has to be dark matter," said Scott.

Maeder said he plans to continue his research and hopes to provide further observational data to support his model in the near future. The paper was published on Nov. 22 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Apollo 17 Prime Crew

NASA

On Dec. 7, 1972, NASA launched its last Apollo mission to the moon: Apollo 17. See photos from that historic mission, which landed astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on the moon while Ron Evans orbited above. Shown Here: This official NASA image shows the prime crewmen for the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission in the Lunar Roving Vehicle trainer. In the background is the Apollo 17 Saturn V space vehicle standing on the Launch Complex 39 Pad A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Apollo 17 Saturn V

NASA

Near Pad A at Launch Complex 39, the Apollo 17 Saturn V space vehicle stands tall, riding atop a gigantic crawler transporter.

Training for the Moon

NASA

At the Kennedy Space Center, astronaut Eugene A. Cernan (on the left) and Harrison H. Schmitt  the prime crew for the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission  participate in an extravehicular activity training simulating lunar sample collection.

Training for Space

NASA

Apollo 17 mission command module pilot astronaut Ronald E. Evans prepares for extravehicular activity training in a Building 5 water tank.

Lunar Driver's School

NASA

Two of the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission prime crew ride in a LRV trainer at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Inspecting the Rocks

NASA

On Sept. 6, 1972, two Apollo 17 lunar landing prime crew members  astronauts Eugene A. Cernan (right) and Harrison H. Schmitt  examine rock specimens during an EVA simulation.

Learning the Ropes

NASA

At the Flight Crew Training Building at Kennedy Space Center, astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt prepare a LRV trainer as it is removed from a Lunar Module trainer.

H2O as Trainer

NASA

On Sept. 29, 1972, astronaut Ronald E. Evans of the Apollo 17 lunar landing mission, practices for a trans-Earth EVA as the craft leaves lunar orbit heading for Earth.

Electrical Experiments

NASA

One experiment included on the Apollo 17 mission is the Surface Electrical Properties Experiment. Here the Receiver-Recorder portion is in deployment configuration. This experiment is designed to collect data about the electromagnetic energy transmission, absorption and reflection qualities of the lunar surface.

About the Surface

NASA

Once the Apollo 17 crew reach the surface at the Taurus-Littrow landing site, the Surface Electrical Properties Experiment will be deployed. Here the transmitter for this experiment is deployed. The experiment will determine lunar surface layering, water presence and electrical properties of lunar materials.

Gravity Tests

NASA

At the Taurus-Littrow landing site, the Apollo 17 crew will utilize the Traverse Gravimeter Experiment, seen above with the cover removed, to create a high accuracy relative survey of the lunar gravitational field and relate it to the Earth's gravity.
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket sits on the launchpad at the company's launch facility in New Zealand, ahead of a test flight. The launch window opens Dec. 8, 2017.

Update 12/14: Rocket Lab delayed the launch of its Electron rocket again, this time because a power fault was detected during ground checkouts. Company representatives say they will work to resolve the issue tomorrow (Dec. 15), then determine when they will try to launch again.

Update 12/13: Rocket Lab has once again delayed the launch of its Electron rocket due to weather. Company representatives say they will try again tomorrow (Thursday Dec. 14 in the U.S./Friday Dec. 15 in New Zealand).

Update 12/11: The skies are clear for Rocket Lab to attempt the second test launch of it's Electron rocket. You can watch the launch in the window above, courtesy of Rocket Lab. Check the company's Twitter account for the most recent updates.

Update 12/10: Rocket Lab has once again delayed the second test launch of its Electron rocket, citing weather and "orbital traffic." Representatives said on Twitter they will try again tomorrow (Dec. 11 in the U.S., Dec. 12 in New Zealand), during the same time frame.

Update 12/10: Rocket Lab will attempt its second test launch of an Electron rocket today. The launch window opens at 2:30 p.m. New Zealand time on Dec. 11, which is 8:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, Dec. 10. The launch window is four hours long. You can watch the launch via the YouTube page above, courtesy of Rocket Lab.

Update 12/8: The Dec. 7 test launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket was scrubbed due to weather. Rocket Lab representatives said today on Twitter that they plan to launch no earlier than 2:30 p.m. New Zealand Time on Monday, Dec. 11, which is 8:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, Dec. 10.

The small-rocket startup Rocket Lab will attempt to launch its first customer payloads into orbit from New Zealand tonight (Dec. 7), and you have a chance to watch it live online.

Rocket Lab's Electron rocket is scheduled to lift off from the company's private launch range in New Zealand. The 4-hour launch window that begins at 8:30 p.m. EST, which is 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 8 New Zealand Time. The company will provide a livestream of the launch on their website here, starting about 15 minutes before the rocket's anticipated launch. That same launch window will remain open for 10 days, and company representatives have said delays are likely, given the rocket is still in a testing phase.

"We're expecting to scrub multiple times as we wait for perfect conditions and make sure everything on the vehicle is performing as it should," said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, in a statement.

If the Electron performs as expected, it will deploy three customer satellites. One is a bread loaf-size, Earth-imaging Dove satellite from the private company Planet (formerly Planet Labs). The other two are both Lemur-2 satellites for the private company Spire, which could be used for tracking ship traffic or mapping weather.

This will be the second test flight of Electron. The first test flight, which took place May 25, didn't go exactly as planned. After liftoff was delayed several days due to poor weather, the third stage of the rocket didn't attain its intended altitude of 310 miles (500 kilometers).

In August, Rocket Lab issued a statement saying that a review of the May 25 attempt "found the launch had to be terminated due to an independent contractor's ground equipment issue, rather than an issue with the rocket."

The launch  titled "Still Testing"  is the second of three planned test launches of the Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand. But if this second launch goes to plan, the company's "commercial phase may be accelerated," Rocket Lab officials said in a statement.

Electron stands about 55 feet (17 meters) tall and can carry up to about 500 lbs. (225 kilograms). Unlike most traditional rockets, Electron is designed primarily to send small payloads into space, Beck told Space.com last year. The rocket is intended to give customers more flexibility regarding when their payloads launch and how often, instead of being subject to the scheduling demands of larger payloads.

The company has a few competitors in the small-rocket business, including Virgin Orbit (formerly part of Virgin Galactic, but now a separate entity in the Virgin Group), which is planning test flights of its LauncherOne small-satellite launch system in 2018. Commercial flights may start before 2019. Another is Vector Space Systems, whose Vector-R rocket performed a low-altitude test flight earlier this year.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Harrison "Jack" Schmitt was the lunar module pilot on the sixth and final human landing on the moon, NASA's Apollo 17 mission, which launched 45 years ago today (Dec. 7). He is eager to see a rebirth of the zeal for U.S. human space exploration that boosted Schmitt and Apollo 17 Cmdr. Eugene Cernan onto the lunar surface while Ronald Evans circled that airless world as command module pilot.

Apollo 17 broke several human-spaceflight records, including the longest crewed lunar landing flight (301 hours and 51 minutes), the longest lunar surface extravehicular activities (22 hours and 4 minutes), the largest lunar sample return (an estimated 249 lbs., or 113 kilograms) and the longest time in lunar orbit (147 hours and 48 minutes).

A professional geologist, Schmitt is a member of an elite club, one of the "dusty dozen" to have strolled across the lunar landscape. Schmitt logged 301 hours and 51 minutes in space  of which 22 hours and 4 minutes were spent in lunar surface exploration. [Apollo 17: The Last Apollo Moon Landing in Pictures]

Geologist and astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, during NASA's final lunar landing mission in the Apollo series. (Image credit: NASA)

Schmitt retired from NASA in August 1975 to run for the U.S. Senate. He was elected to that post and represented the people of New Mexico in the Senate for a six-year term.

Schmitt is the author of the book "Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space" (Copernicus, 2006). He advocates a private, investor-based approach to returning humans to the moon  to extract helium-3 for energy production, to use the moon as a platform for science and manufacturing, and to establish permanent human outposts, furthering our sense of destiny as explorers.

Space.com caught up with Schmitt recently to discuss the Apollo program and the future of American deep-space exploration.

Space.com: How does Apollo resonate today in putting America on a new space trajectory?

Jack Schmitt: If the president proposes a major new initiative in the human exploration of deep space to Congress, such as a return to the moon as a cornerstone of missions to Mars and beyond, Congress and the administration should evaluate the successful implementation of a comparable space effort, namely Apollo.

Apollo 17's Harrison "Jack" Schmitt brought his geologist talents to the moon in December 1972. (Image credit: NASA)

We actually are in a much better technical and knowledge position today to undertake a moon-Mars initiative than we were just prior to the start of Apollo. Our ability to manage a large, milestone-driven program, however, will need to be greatly enhanced.

Space.com: What were the hallmarks that ensured the success of the Apollo program?

Schmitt: The keys to the success of the Apollo program included the existence of several elements  specifically, a sufficient base of technology, as well as a large reservoir of patriotic young engineers and skilled workers. President Eisenhower's initiative to begin Saturn V launch vehicle development in January of 1960 was a major element in making President Kennedy's challenge achievable. Also, there was a pervasive environment of national unease, particularly stemming from the catalytic event of the Soviet Union's flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in April 1961  the first human to orbit the Earth. [Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]

Project Apollo also succeeded thanks to an articulate, persuasive and patriotic president and Congress, and commitment of roughly a 100 percent management reserve of funding. Lastly, there were tough, competent, disciplined and courageous managers setting their sights on a goal that could be accomplished in a decade, and a working environment of liberty.

Space.com: Do you sense any other elements that are needed to further a new U.S. space agenda?

Schmitt: All these keys to success must accompany a moon-Mars-deep-space program with several additions, fueled by a permanent national commitment to deep-space exploration. There also needs to be improved education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills, and critical thinking. Another factor is maintenance of an average workforce age of less than 30 years. One bottom line I'll add is elimination of the political aversion to taking necessary risks. A focused Apollo-style management system will be needed. This system must "stay young, stay lean, stay risk takers."

Space.com: How does the moon play into your vision of the future?

Schmitt: A return to the moon appears to be essential to increasing significantly the probability of success of a Mars landing and exploration program and to maximizing the scientific return from such a program. Consideration of missions to Mars should include the value of returning to the moon as a means of dealing with many of the new technical and operational challenges Mars presents.

Space.com: Your thought on the role commercial space can play in moving space exploration forward?

Schmitt: Unlike the 1960s, the private sector is well positioned to support, as well as partner with, the government. It is time to move forward sooner rather than later. [Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of Human Spaceflight]

With current progress in the development of NASA's Space Launch System [rocket], the Orion spacecraft, as well as the landing design work done during the Constellation Program under President George W. Bush, the potential for partnership in lunar resource production has been greatly enhanced since my book, "Return to the Moon," was published.

Space.com: Can the moon be viewed as a private-sector opportunity with NASA spending research and development dollars in technology to send humans to Mars?

Schmitt: Yes, I think right now, it is fairly clear-cut. What it will be 100 years from now, I can't tell you. But if the private sector were successful in developing a supply of helium-3 from the moon, it would mean that a great deal of the technological capability to do Mars would have been developed. Once you have helium-3 going, I have always thought of the so-called consumables  oxygen, water, you name it. Those are a byproduct of the helium-3 operation.

You've got to have a space infrastructure that creates a demand for the oxygen and water. But it's not something that can support an investor-base business, unless the space facilities are there and the infrastructure is in place to use those resources.

Jack Schmitt details his Apollo 17 lunar exploration adventure at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held March 20 to 24, 2017, in The Woodlands, Texas. (Image credit: Barbara David)

Space.com: Any closing thoughts?

Schmitt: Let me make clear that America's return to deep-space exploration requires the unequivocal and sustained commitment of the nation, even more so than was required for the Apollo program because of the multidecadal nature of the effort.

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The race to Mars is on, it seems, and Boeing's CEO believes the megarocket his company his helping to build for NASA will deliver astronauts to the Red Planet before billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX.

According to Fortune, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was speaking on CNBC today when host Jim Cramer asked whether Boeing or SpaceX would "get a man on Mars first."

"Eventually we're going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket," Muilenburg said, according to Fortune.

Boeing is the main contractor for the first stage of NASA's giant Space Launch System , which is designed to launch astronauts on deep-space missions using the space agency's new Orion spacecraft. (United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne are also SLS contractors.) NASA hopes to build a "Deep Space Gateway" near the moon before using SLS and Orion vehicles to send explorers to Mars. The first test launch is scheduled for 2019.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, has long aimed to build a colony on Mars using SpaceX rockets. The company is developing a reusable megarocket called the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR  that would fly astronauts to Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations. SpaceX also aims to launch a new heavy-lift rocket, the Falcon Heavy, in January. Last week, Musk announced on Twitter that the Falcon Heavy's first test flight will launch his own Tesla Roadster into space. Its destination? Mars orbit.

So the Mars gauntlet appears to be thrown.

In reponse to a Fortune Twitter post citing Muilenburg's Mars claim, Musk replied simply: "Do it."

The folks at Boeing then rose to that challenge: "Game on!" they answered back.

So what do you think? Will Team Boeing help send astronauts to Mars before SpaceX? Or will Elon Musk's Team SpaceX be first to walk on Mars?

We can't wait to find out!

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
On Sept. 10, 1770, the skies above China, Korea and Japan turned an eerie red, and for eight more nights these glowing red auroras lingered.

For nearly three centuries, this mysterious event was lost to history.

Now, researchers poring through palace diaries and other historical documents from East Asia have rediscovered the bizarre phenomenon, and have proposed a likely cause: A giant magnetic storm that rivaled the most powerful one on record, the so-called Carrington Event of 1859. (Geomagnetic storms occur when solar eruptions hit Earth's magnetosphere, the shell of electrically charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field.)

If a similarly massive magnetic storm hit Earth now, it could wreak havoc on power grids around the planet, researchers said. [The Sun's Wrath: The Worst Solar Storms in History]

Mysterious event rediscovered

To rediscover this cryptic event, Hisashi Hayakawa, a historian and astronomer at Osaka University in Japan, and his colleagues investigated historical records from China, Korea and Japan from the 18th century, looking for mentions of auroras. (Auroras, the radiant displays of colors in the sky known as the northern or southern lights, result from solar particles striking Earth's magnetosphere. They are usually most visible near the planet's magnetic poles, but when they occur at lower latitudes, far from Earth's poles, they can reveal evidence of geomagnetic storm activity.)

These types of "historical documents can let us trace back solar activity for millennia," Hayakawa told Live Science. For instance, records of auroras can be found in Babylonian astronomical diaries from 567 B.C., he said.

The team also examined sunspot drawings from the same period by amateur German astronomer Johann Caspar Staudacher, as well as records from Capt. James Cook's missions on the HMS Endeavour.

After studying 111 historical documents, the scientists found evidence of red auroras seen throughout East Asia from Sept. 10 to 19, 1770. These long-lasting auroras were noticed at low latitudes, suggesting a powerful geomagnetic storm caused them.

The researchers also found these auroras were documented farther south by crew members aboard the HMS Endeavour near Timor Island in Southeast Asia. These findings are among the earliest known records of simultaneous auroral observations in both hemispheres.

"Considering this event was so large, it would be reasonable to find more events not only in East Asia but also in other low-latitude areas," Hayakawa said. As a result, the team is extending its archival surveys to areas as distant as the Middle East, Hayakawa added.

The team also scoured historical records for drawings of sunspots, which often co-occur with geomagnetic storms. These drawings suggested that sunspots during the 1770 event were twice as large in area as those seen during the Carrington Event, suggesting they were at least comparable in strength. During the notorious Carrington Event, electrical currents in the atmosphere zapped telegraph wires and caused paper from the devices to catch fire.

The research suggested the 1770 event affected at least as much of the globe as the Carrington Event. Moreover, the 1770 event's auroras were seen across nine nights, while the Carrington Event's were seen on just four nights.

"The events in 1770 lasted much longer," Hayakawa said.

As a result, scientists may need to rethink how frequently such powerful storms occur, the researchers said.

"Now we know the Carrington event was not a special one," study co-author Hiroaki Isobe, a solar physician at Kyoto University in Japan, told Live Science. "Such event occurs from time to time, roughly about once in 100 years."

Potentially catastrophic event

Given how dependent on electricity the world has become since the Carrington Event, if a similarly powerful geomagnetic storm were to hit now, unprecedented damage would result.

For instance, in 1989, a geomagnetic storm blacked out Quebec in 90 seconds, leaving 6 million customers in the dark for 9 hours, damaging transformers as far away as New Jersey, and nearly taking down U.S. power grids from the Eastern Seaboard to the Pacific Northwest. However, the Quebec event may have packed just one-tenth the power of the Carrington Event, prior work suggested.

A 2013 study from Lloyd's of London estimated a $2.6 trillion cost for North America if a Carrington-level storm happened now, and predicted "a Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future."

"We believe we need to expect even more economic and social impacts for this kind of extreme and long-lasting magnetic storm," Hayakawa said.

The researchers are now looking for other historical examples of powerful magnetic storms. "We have already found another 1770-class event," Hayakawa said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 29 in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Original article on Live Science.
Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dec 06, 2017 (SPS) - The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), participates in the second meeting of experts from African Union countries on gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The meeting held in the Ethiopian capital between December 4 and 8, aims to address the Declaration of the African Union on Gender Equality of 2016, and ways to channel its application.

The meeting is also expected to take the decision to revitalize the Organization of African Women, as well as the Maputo Protocol on Women.

The SADR is represented by Mamiha Chej Bachir, an expert on gender equality, and members of the SADR's permanent mission in the African Union.

The meeting is expected to culminate with the Summit of Ministers on December 7 and 8. SPS

125/090/TRA
Ghost Supplements has announced that its line of products has shipped and is officially on the way down under to Australia and New Zealand. The lifestyle brand has partnered with the major distributor in the area Nutrition Systems, who takes care of a lot of big names such as Muscletech, MusclePharm, and Grenade.

By the looks of things, Ghost will be hitting the countries with the majority of its six-piece lineup. Some of the supplements we can confirm for the brands Australia and New Zealand launch include its Stack3d Certified protein Ghost Whey, Ghost Amino, and the powerful evolution of creatine, Ghost Size.

Stores are expected to start teasing the arrival of Ghost Supplements as early as this month, although the line isnt due to arrive in Australia and New Zealand for another few weeks.
A BT executive at the centre of an investigation into an accounting scandal in Italy has been handed 1.8 million (1.6 million) in damages for wrongful dismissal.

In a decision the telecom giant found extremely disappointing, Gianluca Cimini heard an Italian labour tribunal rule that his firing was illegitimate and unfounded.

Cimini was ousted last year when a whistleblower alerted BT to what turned into 530 million of accounting irregularities. BT shares crashed by a fifth on the day it revealed the news and have struggled to recover.

Both Cimini and Stefania Truzzoli, his number two at BT Italia, are under investigation over allegations of double billing, inflated revenues, fake contract renewals and other offences. The company said: Were extremely disappointed with this decision.

It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this stage as were awaiting the full judgment and reasoning from the court.

Full reasons for the ruling will be issued within 15 days. Ciminis lawyer, Angelo Zambelli, said of the ruling: Thats a courageous sentence which leaves us fully satisfied and which I believe will reinstate Mr Ciminis reputation and professional decorum that was taken away from him a year ago.

BT suspended and later fired Cimini and some other managers late last year after an internal inquiry into bullying. In the criminal complaint filed in March, BT accused several former Italy executives, including Cimini, and other employees of breaking company rules and unlawful conduct. BT at first booked a 145 million charge related to the Italian issues.

An investigation by KPMG later expanded that to 530 million. Under-pressure chief Gavin Patterson has been given the backing of new chairman Jan du Plessis.
F inding a good builder when you need one is a tough job at the best of times. So pity London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who needs to find enough to build 65,000 homes a year.

A week after Khan unveils his London Plan  building on back gardens and all  trust the building industry to go and pour cold water on it. But the Home Builders Federations extensive survey should serve as a warning for any authority with serious ambitions for scaling up the pace of delivery for new homes.

It conducted interviews with more than 37,000 workers on over 1000 of its members sites in what must be one of the biggest exercises of its kind. Coming during a week when yet more humiliation has been heaped on Theresa Mays Brexit negotiations  and the status of European Union workers in this country is not yet settled  the results are an eye-opener.

On London building sites, 56.3% of all our workers are from overseas, with 49.5% of the capitals construction workforce hailing from the EU. Among those EU nationals virtually half come from Romania, with Bulgarian and Polish workers in second and third place. And the breakdown of individual trades also shows the alarming reliance on those workers by our housebuilders, particularly in the capital.

In London, 70% of carpenters are from the EU, along with 61% of all labourers and 44% of all bricklayers. Finding a good painter and decorator might also be a struggle in future as more than half  around 54%  come from our soon to be ex-partners in Europe.

By dint of its size and economic dominance as a magnet for workers, London depends on those EU builders much more than the rest of the country; for example just 15% of carpenters across the country overall come from the Continent. And in regions such as Yorkshire & the Humber, less than 2% of building workers are from overseas.

The other huge problem is demographics. Even before the Brexit vote, there was a twofold crisis in attracting new recruits as well as the gradual ageing of the present workforce. The accession of the eastern European countries in 2004 helped a short-termist industry paper over the cracks.

Construction industry expert Mark Farmers report for the Government  published a year ago under the stark title of Modernise or Die  predicted a demographic timebomb which could see a 20% to 25% decline in the available labour force within a decade.

The HBFs industry census underlines that warning. The overseas workforce tends to be younger than UK builders as well: overseas workers are much more likely to be in their twenties or thirties than their UK counterparts; 90% of workers above the age of 50 are UK nationals. Many builders are hiring  retraining army veterans in housebuilding skills for example  but thats barely scratching the surface regarding the labour required.

It isnt as if the building industry doesnt have enough issues. Farmers report last year highlighted a dysfunctional training model  the Construction Industry Training Board has just unveiled a major restructuring in response  as well as a lack of innovation, and non-existent research and development, which in turn fosters a low-productivity culture.

Chancellor Philip Hammonds budget talked about encouraging modern methods of construction  off-site factory manufacturing, for example  through government procurement. But its a fledging sector which needs its own skilled workers and in all likelihood a more proactive stance from the public sector to fly.

There are a few silver linings in the federations census; for example, less than 10% of overseas workers surveyed say they plan to leave the UK industry (assuming, that is, that theyre allowed to stay). But that doesnt tackle the potential threat of restrictions on future arrivals; hence the industry urgently needs to find another pool of labour. That could be through the outreach programme to schools recommended by Modernise or Die, although the Government ducked the reports call for a levy on the developers who rely on the industry to help pay for skills.

Losing the ability to deliver on infrastructure is up there with the biggest Brexit threats, despite all the acres given to City risks; but most alarmingly of all, there are no housebuilding roles on the official shortage occupation list.

At the very least, that should keep Khan awake at night.
V ernon Hill discusses his career and Metro Bank, which he founded in 2010...

What do you do?

I founded Metro Bank. This is my fifth new bank from scratch. Im not the CEO  my job was to create the model, install the model, instil the model, enforce the model and improve the model.

Im picking new store sites, looking at marketing, looking at executives to hire theres a lot of big things and little things.

What do you enjoy?

Its great building a business from scratch. Whats fun is that I get to attack the big five banks every day. We call ourselves a disruptor model and I love to disrupt.

What do the big five do badly?

They all know what they do badly. They are disliked by their customers, the press, the government. They claim we are the first new retail bank since 1840 and we see ourselves as the first real choice. My book talks about building fans. My experience is that fans join your brand, stay loyal and bring their friends.

Do people like bankers again yet?

They like us.

Will interest rates rising affect you?

When I started Commerce Bank there were 23,000 separate banks in America. When we sold out in 2007 we were the 18th-largest bank without acquiring anybody of size and we went through lots of interest-rate cycles. 100% its going to work.

What other business interests do you have?

Im chairman of Petplan. Were teaching Americans how to insure their pets. I have a real estate development business. Im chairman of a bank in Philadelphia called Republic bank. Im a Burger King franchisee. And Ive got a couple more, I forgot.

My most interesting company, Seguso Vetri DArte, is a 600-year-old glass master in Murano, one of the Venetian islands. My wife and I invested a few years back to try to build a world-class brand.

What are your biggest challenges?

Every business has a different problem. In the fast-food business its the competition primarily, and the government doing something stupid is an overriding concern in everything.

What led you to where you are now?

I went to Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Trump was at Wharton too, although I didnt know him then. I worked in a bank before and during university. But I was not going to get rich working in a bank back then so I went into the real-estate development business.

McDonalds was my first client and I actually drove [former chief executive] Ray Kroc around to approve some sites. And then for some reason they gave me a banking licence at the age of 26.

Was that daunting, at 26, getting your banking licence?

Thats a British question. Of course it was daunting but the American culture is, lets just get on and do it and see what works out.

The board forced you out of Commerce bank. Was that your biggest setback?

You can say thats a setback but it wouldnt have happened unless I wanted it to happen. I was fighting with the government about some stuff. They turned out to be wrong but I just didnt want to fight with them any more.

Other than that incident, its been great. I left, I had nothing to do for a week, then Metro started.

How was starting the business?

I started the process in early 2008. I raised 75 million and I was flying back to America with the money committed and Lehman [Brothers] collapsed and we had to start all over again. So the challenges were, could you get a bank licence, could you raise the money, could you put in an affordable modern IT system and get Brits on board with this model. Before we went public we raised 1 billion of private money, 90% American.

How do you juggle your work and home life?

My wife does the store architecture here so shes here. Me and my wife and my dog are commuters across the Atlantic. I live on Hyde Park. I come to the office, I work on stuff.

Any tips?

When I talk to students, which feels like every hour, I say people who are stars in life understand their unique talent and match their vocation to it. I was lucky enough that I liked banking and changing it into a retail business, so I found the right path.
E uro-denominated corporate banking will have to quit London in the wake of Brexit, warns the boss of Standard Chartered.

Bill Winters says the vote to leave the EU has already cost the bank tens of millions in contingency planning, money he would rather flush down the toilet if he could just carry on as before.

A restriction on student visas has already cut the talent pool entering London.

He told the BBC: Thats already a problem. Some of the best talent that we can have in the UK marketplace is coming from students that have chosen to study here and then stayed for some extended period afterwards Weve noticed thats been impacted already.

Winters is battling to turn around the bank. Since he joined in June 2015, the shares have fallen from around 1000p to 753p today.

Although headquartered in the UK, StanChart has an Asian focus. He said he is hoping for the best from Brexit, but preparing for the worst.

The UK-headquartered bank is turning its Frankfurt branch into a subsidiary requiring additional capital, licences and staff.

He said this was inconvenient and expensive and will damage London.

London will take hits in the context of Brexit I think big parts of the euro-denominated corporate banking business will be forced into Europe.
I know its immature  especially for someone two years short of 60  but Ive always got a kick out of doing things when Im not supposed to do them, especially drinking.

I turn my nose up at weekend boozing and scorn New Years Eve as Amateur Night; this being the case, I was always going to be a sucker for lunch. Let others wait until the working day has been virtuously completed and only then turn to Bacchus as a succour for giving of their best to the boss-man; me, Ive chosen to squander my best lines (both types, the tail end of the Golden Age of Expense Account Luncheon felicitously coinciding with my most extreme cocaine capers) in the smash-and-grab sunshine. Theres a reason why daylight robbery sounds the most exciting.

To think there was a time when I didnt even know lunch existed! Born into an immaculately blue-collar household, I had dinner at noon and tea after school. My parents were by no means killjoys, but the idea of people, not prostitutes or criminals, going out deliberately to carouse on a weekday would have rendered them speechless with stink eye  thus I saw eating in places away from home as What Other People Did, like A levels or scatology.

When my family went to Butlins for the first time, I surveyed the wondrous spectacle of dozens of unrelated humans eating together in the huge canteen after being served by strangers with all the wide-eyed wonder of an urchin surveying a Versailles banquet in full swing. When I went to work at the New Musical Express as a teenager, I could hardly contain my shock upon discovering that people from record companies were queueing up to take one out to restaurants IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY! But as a punk Roundhead, I took pleasure in denying them their cavalier requests, preferring to sulk over a soupcon of amphetamine sulphate and a snarky sandwich at my desk, sneering at my colleagues who would sell out for a sniff of The Mans scallops.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

Luckily I had no such scruples left when, after a few years of being married alive in the provinces, I was lucky enough to arrive back in London halfway through the 1980s. These were the last days of disco for both newspapers and publishing, and I found myself young, hot and courted by both; a time of bold advances to quote a line from the Mel & Kim song Respectable which, along with West End Girls, played on a loop in our sumptuously sleazy playpen of choice  the revivified Soho, which was always about chancers extracting cash in return for the promise of a thrill, now translated into realms beyond the sexual. Everywhere you went there were people with money dangling it in front of people with none, and a lunch lasting anywhere between three and 13 hours was a good time to do it.

Its hard for millennials who have grown up after the 2005 scrapping of limited drinking hours to get their soft little heads around, but us ancient ravers still remember living under the Defence of the Realm Act of 1914, one section of which restricted the hours of licensed premises from 12.00 to 14.40 and 18.30 to 21.30. In the late 1980s the licensing laws were relaxed, and suddenly you could slake your thirst in a public place from 11 in the morning until 11 at night.

Them were the days  a bottle of Bolly, a gram of coke and a Caesar salad at the Cafe Pelican. Bouncing around from Kettners to the Gay Hussar to the Soho Brasserie, always bumping into Jeffrey Bernard hiding from one of the publishers he owed the same book to and living off six separate advances (try that these days!), it was hard for a shallow young hotshot not to recall that line from F Scott Fitzs Early Success: Never again as during that all too short period when the fulfilled future and the wistful past were mingled in a single gorgeous moment  when life was literally a dream.

In my somewhat theoretical capacity as political columnist at The Mail On Sunday, I was lunched by the good (Bill Deedes), the bad (Alan Clark) and the ugly (Jeffrey Archer), often reflecting that the road to L  LEpicure, LEscargot and LEquipe  was paved with good intentions. My wedding ring and my reputation as a brawler protected me from unwanted advances, but my single, gentler contemporaries were not so lucky; Those were the days when a blow job was the dessert! a broad I know recalled. The Labour politician she succumbed to was particularly persistent with journalistes over lunch, reprimanding another friend when she turned down his reptilian advances: Your loss  Im like a broom handle in the morning!

I always preferred lunching with my mates and picking up the bill rather than being paid for by rich men, and I always favoured a liquid lunch over the lumpy kind. The writer Suzanne Moore remembers, We were lunching at the top of Harvey Nichols and you ordered cappuccino, Coca-Cola, champagne and vodka and then said sweetly to the surprised waitress, I am a water sign  I need a lot of fluid! Then came the dreadful day when my favourite posh publishing girl walked into the Criterion looking as if her dog had died; Shes eating a SANDWICH at her DESK! she wailed of Gail Rebuck, whose publishing company had recently gobbled up her own imprint. We ate a hearty lunch, but we knew the party was over.

Luckily, halfway up the 1990s, I moved to Brighton, where the spree never ends, and I like to think Ive done my bit to keep the spirit of the 1980s alive. A male pal of mine once complained, Cant you ever meet a mate for a cup of coffee without making the whole thing into a hen party? after I suggested that a quick espresso might be improved by adding alcohol, lunch and eight additional people  and I suppose the answer is: Not if I can help it! My idea of heaven is a big table in a warm restaurant, the table shimmering with the laughter of friends and me picking up the tab. My favourite 1980s lunch companion, Peter York, liked to say, The clever one talks and the rich one pays! and now Im both  no longer the shy, impoverished little counter-jumper wondering which knife to use.

And, looking back, I cant recall the actual food at all  just the wonderful company. Thats what lunch means to me: a moveable feast of friendship, where the wine always flows and the bill never arrives.
W hat has Brexit meant for restaurants?

a) More good old-fashioned meat and two veg, solid plates of proper English grub. Rule Britannia!

b) My avo toast is getting more expensive.

c) Total disaster: a slowdown in openings, rising food costs and crippling staff shortages across the industry.

Potato ravioli with egg yolk and gravy is:

a) Something that youd cook at 3am after a night out on the lash.

b) Sounds quite disrespectful to traditional Italian food  and thats a scary amount of carbs.

c) A madly brilliant dish, great with a Prosecco slushie and much loved by that Nigella.

What kind of food do you expect from an art gallery?

a) Overpriced, probably.

b) A slice of gluten-free carrot cake and a skinny almond latte from Peyton and Byrne make for a super-cute Insta shot #culture.

c) Rillettes on toast, pheasant and trotter pie and a cracking negroni.

What is Pickle and Toast?

a) Branston and well-browned Hovis.

b) Ooh, is it a Scandi cafe? I adore Scandi food. So hygge.

c) A logic-defying cheese toastie shop that took two and a half years to open despite astronomical Soho rents.

What could you eat on Selfridges rooftop in 2017?

a) Why would you want to eat on a shop roof on Oxford Street?

b) Ooh, love a rooftop. Artisan cheese toasties and giant cocktails?

c) Whole cod heads, kale trees and Krug champagne #wastED

How spicy do you like your food?

a) Plain-ish with a side of lemon and herb for chip-dipping.

b) Ill break a sweat after nibbling a Rosas Thai green curry.

c) Authentically mouth-numbing so that Im left authentically blind and authentically speechless as I slurp my authentic imported lager or salted lassi.

Roganic is:

a) Organic food is such a rip-off.

b) Is it a new brunch spot? Love me my #avotoast!

c) The hugely innovative Noma-esque pop-up from Simon Rogan, soon to return permanently in Marylebone.

Fancy a white port and tonic?

a) Only if its cheaper than a Carlsberg.

b) Sounds fusty, Ill stick with frose.

c) Love Bar Douro  reminds me of eating red prawns at Cervejaria Ramiro.

An all-woman kitchen is:

a) Unremarkable.

b) Really amazing #yougogirls.

c) I adore Asma Khans food but the patronising praise of her talent shows that big change is still needed in a sexist industry.

There appears to be a penis on your glass:

a) Gross.

b) Lol!!! Wait, do that thing with your wrist again while I take a picture.

c) Obviously childish but Tony Cs drinks are delicious and the Japanese food is inspired.

Fancy some tofu?

a) F*** off.

b) Ive tried it fried in coconut oil a couple of times on #MeatFreeMondays but secretly, contrary to my Instagram post, it tasted like foot.

c) Only at Xu and A Wong. If you know, you know.

Lets have dinner in Mayfair tonight:

a) Do I look like Im made of money?

b) Eek, expensive, but we could have a cocktail at Sexy Fish (below).

c) Magpie or Neo Bistro? Psyched for Sabor next year.

Thoughts on bottomless brunch?

a) Good value, although I dont really get why theres this sriracha stuff on everything.

b) OMG so much fun! I adore mimosas. And a hilarious way to get binned on a Saturday before going to Infernos!

c) So 2015.

Tottenham is:

a) Home to Spurs.

b) Pretty dodgy  you would never visit the uni friends who moved there. They were always a bit wild for my liking anyway.

c) Fast becoming a great place to eat  have you been to Torshi yet?

Answers: what type of gourmet are you?

Mostly A

You really could not care less about food, could you? Masa fried chicken and sourdough and rare-breed British charcuterie do not cross your path and youve never taken a photo of your food. You know what you like and you like what you know, and youve said those words without irony multiple times. Your total lack of concern for the fuel you masticate and digest is quite laudable, really  presumably you spend your time curing the sick, solving global poverty or re-reading Ulysses.

Mostly B

You would probably describe yourself as a bit of a foodie, but youre a little behind the times. You were over the moon when the avocado emoji was created and not a Sunday goes by without a brunch date. The As and Cs might sneer at you, but youre probably happier than them. You enjoy the simple pleasures of life (although maybe cut down on the avocado a bit).

Mostly C

God, you care about food. So. Much. But you balance your gastro geekery with constant sardonic social media banter about it with your fellow metropolitan elite foodies. Youre mates with the chefs of at least three zone 2 seasonal small plate restaurants; you holiday exclusively in places a respected food critic has visited, eating in every restaurant theyve Instagrammed so you can @ them in your own posts (love me!); you know every restaurant opening six months before your less obsessed friends, and like to inform them. Theyre bored of pretending to care.
A young man has been stabbed to death in a knife attack in a north-east London street.

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene of the incident in Hackney at about 4.45pm on Thursday.

Officers had received reports of a man suffering a stab injury on Christie Road at the junction with Cassland Road.

Londons Air Ambulance was also scrambled but the man, believed to be aged in his late 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene at 5.20pm.

No arrests have been made, Scotland Yard said.

A Met Police spokesman said: His next of kin have been informed. Formal identification awaits. A post-mortem examination will be held in due course.

The Homicide and Major Crime Command has been informed.

Road closures have been put in place as an investigation is carried out by detectives.
A n Oxford University student who was spared jail after stabbing her boyfriend with a bread knife is to appeal against her suspended sentence.

Lavinia Woodward, 24, was handed a 10-month suspended prison sentence in September after she pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding.

Judge Ian Pringle QC said a jail sentence may be too severe for Woodward because it could ruin her medical career.

She has now applied for permission to take her case to the Court of Appeal.

Lavinia Woodward was described by the judge as a "highly-intelligent individual" / PA

The aspiring heart surgeon admitted knifing Cambridge student Thomas Fairclough in the leg as well as throwing a glass, a jam jar and a laptop at him at Christ Church College.

However Judge Pringle found that she was "an extraordinarily able young lady" and ruled not to send her to prison to give her a chance to prove she was no longer addicted to drugs and alcohol.

He said her actions appeared to be a complete one-off, but the case has prompted a debate about inequality in the criminal justice system.

Woodward is now appealing against her suspended sentence / Facebook

At the sentencing, Judge Pringle said: "There are many mitigating features in your case.

"Principally, at the age of 24 you have no previous convictions of any nature whatsoever.

"Secondly, I find that you were genuinely remorseful following this event and, indeed, it was against your bail conditions, you contacted your partner to fully confess your guilt and your deep sorrow for what happened.

"Thirdly, whilst you are a clearly highly-intelligent individual, you had an immaturity about you which was not commensurate for someone of your age."

Judge Pringle went on: "Fourthly, as the reports from the experts make clear, you suffer from an emotionally-unstable personality disorder, a severe eating disorder and alcohol drug dependence.

"Finally, and most significantly, you have demonstrated over the last nine months that you are determined to rid yourself of your alcohol and drug addiction and have undergone extensive treatment including counselling to address the many issues that you face.

Oxford Crown Court heard Woodward attacked Mr Fairclough, who was her then boyfriend after the pair met on dating app Tinder, while he was visiting her in December 2016.
T his is the first picture of a young woman killed after being hit by a car at a busy junction in south-east London.

Laura Keyes, 19, was struck in Creek Road, at the junction with Deptford Church Street, last Thursday.

Paramedics battled to save her but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Emergency services rushed to the scene in the Greenwich area at 10.15pm.

The driver of the BMW, a 21-year-old man, stopped at the scene and was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, police said.

He was taken to a south London police station and bailed until mid-December pending further enquiries.

A Met Police spokesman said: Her next of kin have been informed.

A post-mortem examination was held at Greenwich Mortuary on Wednesday, December 6. We await its findings.

Detectives from the Met's Road and Transport Policing Command are investigating.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the witness appeal line at Catford Traffic Garage on 020 8285 1574 - alternatively call police via 101 or tweet information @MetCC.
P olice are extremely concerned for the safety of a missing mother and baby with temperatures set to plummet.

Taiwo Martins and her four-month old boy have been missing from the Leyton area since Tuesday, November 7.

Scotland Yard and Waltham Forest Council say there is real concern for their wellbeing as cold weather is forecast.

Detective Inspector Karen Knibbs, said: "We are keen to make contact with Taiwo to make sure that she and her four-month-old son, who is yet to be registered are health, well and safe.

"With the temperature set to drop over the next few weeks, we really want to find both Taiwo and her son and bring them home safely."

Ms Martins is described a black female with short dark hair. She is around 5ft 6in tall, and of slim build. She may be wearing a traditional Nigerian head-dress, known as gele, and robes.

At the time of her disappearance, she had a black and maroon coloured baby buggy with her.

She is known to frequent the Walthamstow area.

Police are urging anyone with information on their whereabouts to call police on 101 or Missing People on 116000.
T he London borough of Richmond upon Thames has the highest healthy life expectancy in the UK for men, new figures reveal.

Men in the borough are expected to live for 69.9 years in good health, while Richmond also has the highest healthy life expectancy (70 years) for women in the capital.

Nationally, the figures show that healthy life expectancy differs by as much as 18 years across parts of the UK, from statistics collated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The variation across different areas of the UK amounted to "stark contrasts" in the number of years people can expect to live in good health, the ONS said.

Kensington Palace Gardens is also among the top five London boroughs for healthy life expectancy / Getty Images

Of the 32 London boroughs, Kingston upon Thames, Bromley, and Kensington and Chelsea are also in the top five between 2014 and 2016 for both men and women.

The borough with the lowest healthy life expectancy for men in London is Barking and Dagenham, of 58.2 years, and for women is Tower Hamlets, of 55.6 years.

Longest healthy life expectancy Men top five: Richmond upon Thames - 69.9 years Kingston upon Thames - 69.0 Bromley - 66.8 Harrow - 66.6 Kensington and Chelsea - 66.4 Women top five: Richmond upon Thames - 70.0 years Kingston upon Thames 69.7 Bromley 69.6 Barnet 67.1 Kensington and Chelsea 66.9

For men, Lambeth, Hackney, Greenwich and Islington make up the bottom five boroughs, while Greenwich, Newham, Barking and Dagenham and Ealing are the worst boroughs for women.

By contrast, Dundee saw the lowest healthy life expectancy for men (54.3 years), and Manchester for women (54.6 years).

In the whole of the UK, the borough of Camden saw the fastest improvement in life expectancy between 2001/03 and 2014/16 in the country for both males (7.5 years) and females (5.8 years).

Only 26 areas of the country recorded a significant jump in life expectancy for males between 2011/13 and 2014/16, compared with 203 areas between 2001/03 and 2004/06.

Tower Hamlets had the lowest healthy life expectancy for women / Corbis via Getty Images

The equivalent number for females has fallen from 128 areas to 17.

And though life expectancy is continuing to increase in all parts of the UK, there is big variation between areas.

Lowest healthy life expectancy Men bottom five: Barking and Dagenham - 58.2 years Lambeth - 58.4 Hackney - 59.1 Greenwich - 60.7 Islington - 60.8 Women bottom five: Tower Hamlets - 55.6 years Greenwich - 58.5 Newham - 60.6 Barking and Dagenham - 60.7 Ealing - 60.9

Denbighshire in north Wales saw the slowest improvement for males (1.4 years), while Hull recorded the smallest improvement for females (0.7 years).

The figures show the overall rate of improvement in life expectancy at birth during the first half of this decade was 75.3 per cent lower for males and 82.7 per cent lower for females when compared with the first half of the previous decade.

Chris White, principal researcher at the ONS, said further studies would be needed to understand what is driving the slowdown in improvement.

He said: "We have seen a trend of a levelling-off of gains in life expectancy, that has been reported in a lot of research reports since around 2011.

"There is quite an intense debate at the moment about what is driving that: some people point to provisions in social care or health epidemics and other factors affecting older people, so there is a lot going on.

"Some of it is really just related to the ageing of a modern population but the trend in the data is definitely pointing to a thaw in the rate of improvement and it does require further research to unpick what is driving it."

The ONS will be producing further studies next year on what ages are most affecting the improvement rates, and what causes of death might be driving the slowdown, he added.

Chief executive of the older people's charity Independent Age, Janet Morrison, said there were "deep-rooted health inequalities" contributing to the slowdown in gains across the country.

She said: "It is deeply concerning that people in some parts of the country can still expect to have over fifteen years more good health than people living elsewhere, while overall increases in life expectancy are slowing down.

"It is imperative that the reasons for these persistent health inequalities are understood and addressed, to ensure that older age is not just about living longer, but having a good quality of life in older age, no matter where in the UK you live."
W olf whistling or making sexist remarks on Londons streets could become a hate crime.

The Metropolitan Police today revealed it is speaking with other UK forces to assess whether it is worth cracking down on gender-based hate crimes after a pilot scheme was launched in the East Midlands last year.

The trial, led by Nottinghamshire Police, saw sexist incidents like street harassment, verbal abuse and taking photos without consent recorded as hate crimes, carrying tougher penalties for offenders.

Police chiefs are now considering rolling out the idea elsewhere in the UK, suggesting a harsher stance on everyday sexism could stop it escalating into sexual harassment or assault.

Harrassment Uncovered - Woman is harrassed on street

Police believe halting misogynistic remarks could go towards lowering serious sexual violence crimes overall.

A Scotland Yard spokesman told the Standard: We have been speaking to other forces about their experiences of the practicalities of recording gender based hate crime and will use this, along with feedback from our partners, to inform any future changes to MPS policy.

Women at a march against sexual harassment in Los Angeles last month. / Damian Dovarganes/AP

Earlier this week the National Police Chiefs Council head of hate crime told the Commons women and equalities committee that the current policing debate surrounds whether to take action on sexism earlier on.

Assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton told MPs: Issues such as on street behaviour that people feel should be accepted as part of the interaction of daily life actually has a detrimental and damaging impact.

Sexual harassment of a woman or a girl at a bus stop by a male might be some things that some women feel they are just going to have to accept, that no ones going to do anything about it.

The debate in policing now is moving much more to identify those issues in the same way as we would other types of incident or crime, establishing if a crime has been committed or not.

But even if a crime hasnt been committed the debate now is similar to hate crime incidents.

Assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton, chief of the NPCC, speaking to MPs on Wednesday. / Parliament TV

Should we be taking action of some variety to address the behaviour before it escalates into a crime and also most importantly to try and restore some confidence to the victim and make them feel that what happened to them is being addressed somewhere.

Dozens of women reported misogynistic crimes to Nottingham Police in the first few months of the pilot scheme, the force said. Sexist offences were reported at a similar rate to other hate crimes.

A hate crime is considered to be any incident where someone is targeted because of their identity  whether it be race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or an alternative sub-culture like being a goth.
S adiq Khan told a BBC News reporter who asked him if a visit to Pakistan felt like "coming home" that his home "is south London mate."

The mayor of London, who was born in Tooting, quipped back at BBC reporter Karl Mercer in the ironic exchange during his visit to Pakistan and India.

The moment was shown on BBC News when the reporter could be heard asking: Does it feel like coming home?

The Mayor of Lahore had just welcomed Mr Khan over the border with the words Welcome home. Later, the Chief Minister of the Punjab described the Mayors visit as a home-coming.

The mayor elaborated: Its good to be in Pakistan, its good to come from India, home of my parents and grandparents. Obviously theres an emotional connection for me, bearing in mind my connections to this great part of the world.

Mr Khan's parents moved to London from Pakistan in the 1960s.

This week Mr Khan became the first Western politician of his generation to cross the Wagah border between the historic enemies of India and Pakistan, which were partitioned by the British in 1947.

The visit had personal value for the Labour mayor whose Muslim Indian parents were among the millions of people who moved from India to Pakistan during partition.

Sadiq Khan crosses at the Wagah border crossing from India into Pakistan / PA

Journalist Dan Hodges called his reply "magnificent" while Carol Jones tweeted: "Sadiq Khan represents everything which is good about his home. South London mate, we're proud of you."

"Go on Sadiq," someone else tweeted while another person said: "You tell 'em Sadiq brother."

Defending Mercers question, a BBC spokesman said: Our reporter asked the mayor a question in the context of the trip being referred to by senior politicians in the region as a homecoming.

"The full answer the mayor gave shows he understood the context of the question.

When the British divided up their Indian empire in 1947, they created two new countries by drawing a line between Amritsar and Lahore.

Nearly 15 million people fled in the face of rising violence as villages were set alight, women subjected to horrific sexual violence and massacres. More than one million men, women and children were killed.

Most Muslims went to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs went to India.
J eremy Corbyns Left-wing Momentum group today faced an investigation into whether it broke election spending rules.

The Electoral Commission announced an inquiry into the general election campaigning by the activist movement, which is loyal to the Labour leader.

The independent watchdog said questions about Momentums role risk causing harm to voters confidence in elections.

Supporters of Mr Corbyn have boasted that the group played a critical role in dozens of key marginal seats by shipping in busloads of young activists.

It is largely credited with mobilising grassroots support for Labour, which led to the party exceeding expectations in London and elsewhere in Junes snap election.

It declared election expenditure to the Commission amounting to 38,000.

The watchdog said the investigation will focus on whether Momentum, founded and led by veteran Left-winger Jon Lansman, over-spent during the campaign and whether it failed to return accurate donation information to the Commission.

Bob Posner, the Electoral Commissions director of political finance and regulation and legal counsel, said: Momentum are a high-profile active campaigning body.

Questions over their compliance with the campaign finance rules at Junes general election risk causing harm to voters confidence in elections. There is significant public interest in us investigating Momentum to establish the facts in this matter and whether there have been any offences.

Once complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its enforcement policy.

The Electoral Commissions auditing of the data it received from Momentum triggered the investigation.

A Momentum spokesman said: Much of the Electoral Commission investigation refers to a series of administrative errors that can be easily rectified.

"Momentum put a lot of effort and resources into detailed budgeting and financial procedures during the election to ensure full compliance.

Our election campaign was delivered on a low budget because it tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of volunteers.

"We have a good working relationship with the Electoral Commission, and will fully comply with the investigation.

As a non-party campaigning organisation Momentum could carry out targeted spending of up to 31,000 in England, 3,540 in Scotland; 2,400 in Wales; and 1,080 in Northern Ireland between June 9, 2016, and June 8 this year, the day of the election. It could spend above this limit if Labour give it permission. This would count towards the partys national spending limit.

Momentums social media strategy, which included videos, is said to have been largely responsible for securing votes among young people. It also flooded London constituencies to get Labour MPs elected.

The group also sent activists to campaign for Corbyn critics Wes Streeting in Ilford North and Neil Coyle in Bermondsey & Old Southwark and in both seats their majorities soared.

The party saw vast increases in the majorities of senior figures, including Mr Corbyn and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott.

Responding to todays news, Mr Coyle said: This is another reason why Momentum should affiliate properly with Labour and not continue as a separate company run by one man.

Last month, the Electoral Commission noted that Momentum had submitted spending details of 38,743.

The investigation comes as calls were made today for Labours general secretary to investigate the alleged take -over of Haringey council by Momentum activists.

Moderate councillors were deselected en masse in a month-long battle and replaced with candidates backed by the group.

This could pave the way for the first Momentum-backed council in the country. Local party member Nora Mulready has written to General Secretary Iain McNicol to say that he must save the party from a take-over by the hard-Left.
T heresa May was warned by senior Tories to make up her mind over the future shape of Brexit today.

MPs for a soft Brexit said more and more backbenchers were joining their campaign to keep Britain in the single market, the worlds biggest trading bloc. And a leading Brexit-backer warned Mrs May that failing to decide was no longer an option.

In a hard-hitting attack, senior MEP Daniel Hannan said policy was being carried out in a spirit of damage limitation and led by officials who opposed Brexit and now have little sense of where to go with it.

We can aim for Efta [European Free Trade Association], working as closely as possible with our European allies, he wrote on Conservative Home. Or we can aim for Singapore: a low-tax entrepot flourishing next to an over-regulated federation. A case can be made for either. But no case can be made for failing to decide.

The warning came as Government officials confirmed that the Cabinet is to hold its first formal discussion about future relations with the EU before Christmas.

David Davis has admitted the Government has not assessed the impact of Brexit on Britains economy

Several Right-wing Conservatives have urged Mrs May to consider leaving without a deal in recent days, including former leader Iain Duncan Smith.

But 19 Tory MPs backing a close trade deal fought back with a letter to Mrs May condemning highly irresponsible calls to walk out of talks.

Thousands of anti-Brexit activists march to Parliament in protest 1 /16 Thousands of anti-Brexit activists march to Parliament in protest Demonstrators head towards Parliament Square. REUTERS Signs include 'I love EU' REUTERS The pro-EU march began in Hyde Park Corner. Si Carrington 'NHS? Brexit Wrexit' Oliver Day The march took protesters through the streets of London. Oliver Day One protester brought along a papier mache Queen, in reference to the blue and yellow hat she wore at the State Opening of Parliament. Peter Bailey 'Exit Brexit' Jonathan Hawley The September sun shone as activists marched through the streets. Martin Tod Roads were blocked during the protest. Maggie Jones The campaigners set off shortly after 11am from Hyde Park Corner. Maggie Jones The rally saw the activists march through the streets of central London. Johann Ketel EU colours of blue and yellow were seen throughout the march. Judi Conner

Nicky Morgan, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee who coordinated the letter, said support for a strong trade relationship with Europe was growing. More MPs are contacting me privately to say they have contacted whips to say they support the content and tone [of the letter], she said.

Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General who is co-ordinating moves to put Parliament in charge of the final Brexit terms, said: More colleagues are coming up to me and saying, You were right about this. For the first time you are getting a sense that the penny is dropping among large numbers of our own party.

Mrs May was in a race against time to break the deadlock over the Irish border that threatens her hopes of starting trade talks next week. Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, has given her until the weekend, although Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has indicated he would be willing to wait until the eve of a summit starting in a week.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, one of the Cabinets main Brexiteers, said: I remain absolutely optimistic we will reach a successful point, we will move on to the trade talks, because ultimately it is in everybodys interests for that to happen.


T heresa May has criticised Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, claiming it is unhelpful for peace in the war-torn region.

The Prime Minister said she disagrees with the president's unprecedented move and reiterated Britain's view that the city should be the shared capital of Israel and Palestine in a future two-state solution.

In a White House speech, Mr Trump said his move "marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians". He ordered the start of the multi-year process to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In a statement, the PM said: "We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

Donald Trump announced the controversial move in a speech at the White House / AP

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it.

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.

"In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Donald Trump: It's time to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also described Mr Trump's move as "reckless".

He tweeted: "Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, including occupied Palestinian territory, is a reckless threat to peace.

"The British Government must condemn this dangerous act and work for a just and viable settlement of the conflict."

Mrs May said Britain shares Mr Trump's desire to end the Israel-Palestine conflict and welcomed his commitment to a negotiated two state solution.

She also "noted the importance" of his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including the sovereign boundaries within the city, should be subject to negotiations.

"We encourage the US administration to now bring forward detailed proposals for an Israel-Palestinian settlement," she added.

"To have the best chances of success, the peace process must be conducted in an atmosphere free from violence. We call on all parties to work together to maintain calm."

Palestinians see Mr Trump's move as a decision to side with Israel on one of the most sensitive issues in the conflict.

They see east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967, as their capital.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Mr Trump has destroyed his credibility as a Middle East peace broker, describing his decision as "a declaration of withdrawal from the role it (the US) has played in the peace process".

But Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country "profoundly grateful", adding that Mr Trump's announcement marks a "historic day" and is an "important step towards peace".

Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City on December 6. / AFP/Getty Images

He said his country "will continue to work with the president and his team to make that dream of peace come true".

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised "unilateral measures" that jeopardise the prospect for peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

He said the issue of Jerusalem must be resolved through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr Guterres told reporters: "In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B."

A view of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, some of the holiest sites for Jews and Muslims. / AP

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the militant group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip, said Palestinians "know how to respond properly to the disregard of their feelings and sanctuaries".

Earlier reports of Mr Trump's plan sparked security warnings on Tuesday, with US personnel and their families ordered to avoid visiting Jerusalem's Old City or the West Bank.

The US has never previously endorsed the Jewish state's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, insisting its status must be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.
T heresa May and Jean Claude Juncker have struck a deal on the Irish border and rights of EU citizens living in the UK after a long night of crucial Brexit talks.

The pair struck a deal that confirmed both Britain and Brussels wanted to avoid a hard border with Ireland and secured the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.

However it was quickly noted that the deal does not make clear how this is to be achieved.

The deal followed talks which continued into the early hours between the Prime Minister and Democratic Unionist Party, Arlene Foster, whose party scuppered a deal at the eleventh hour on Monday.

Mrs Foster said that "substantial changes" to the text rejected on Monday would mean there was "no red line down the Irish Sea" in the form of a customs barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES FROM BRUSSELS HERE

Mr Juncker said that the decision on whether to move forward to talks on trade and the transition to a post-Brexit relationship was in the hands of the leaders of the 27 other EU nations, meeting in Brussels at a European Council summit on Thursday, but said he was "confident" they would do so.

The Commission president said: "I will always be sad about this development, but now we must start looking to the future, a future in which the UK will remain a close friend and ally."

Mrs May said that intensive talks over the past few days had delivered "a hard-won agreement in all our interests".

The Prime Minister said that the agreement would guarantee the rights of three million EU citizens in the UK "enshrined in UK law and enforced by British courts".

She said that it included a financial settlement which was "fair to the British taxpayer" and a guarantee that there will be "no hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic, preserving the "constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom".

She said that the agreement between the UK and the Commission, being published in a joint report, would offer "welcome certainty" to businesses.

Jeremy Corbyn labels Government's Brexit approach 'a shambles'

The publication of the joint report makes it all but certain that EU27 leaders will approve this step on Thursday, marking a significant step forward in the process leading towards UK withdrawal in March 2019.

It eases pressure on Mrs May, who was facing the prospect of businesses activating contingency plans to move staff and activities out of the UK if no progress had been made by the end of the year.

Mr Juncker cautioned: "The joint report is not the withdrawal agreement. That agreement needs to be drafted by the negotiators on the basis we have agreed yesterday and today and then approved by the Council and ratified by the UK Parliament and European Parliament."

He said that he and Mrs May had discussed the need for a transition period following the formal date of Brexit, and shared "a joint vision of a deep and close partnership".

"It is crucial for us all that we continue working closely together on issues such as trade, research, security and others," he said.

"We will take things one step at a time, starting with next week's European Council, but today I am hopeful that we are all moving towards the second phase of these challenging negotiations and we can do this jointly on the basis of renewed trust, determination and with the perspective of a renewed friendship."

Mrs May said that the negotiation process "hasn't been easy for either side".

"When we met on Monday, we said a deal was within reach," said Mrs May. "What we have arrived at today represents a significant improvement."

She added: "The deal we've struck will guarantee the rights of more than three million EU citizens living in the UK and of a million UK citizens living in the EU.

"EU citizens living in the UK will have their rights enshrined in UK law and enforced by British courts. They will be able to go on living their lives as before."

On the issue of the UK's so-called "divorce bill", which is expected to total up to 50 billion, Mrs May said that in her landmark speech in Florence in September she had made clear the UK was "a country that honours our obligations".

She said: "After some tough conversations, we've now agreed a settlement that is fair to the British taxpayer. It means that in future we will be able to invest more in our priorities at home, such as housing, schools and the NHS."

And on the Irish issue, she said the UK would "guarantee there is no hard border and uphold the Belfast Agreement, and in doing so, we will continue to preserve the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom".

The Government's chief whip Julian Smith sent a series of tweets on Thursday night which hinted at potential movement in the negotiations.

He wrote: "@theresa-may has worked tirelessly this week to try to move EU negotiations onto the next stage in the National Interest", and added: "@theresa-may has led very challenging negotiations this week with energy, persistence & drive."

He went on to say: "I will continue to do everything I can to ensure that the views of @Conservatives MPs are fully reflected in phase 2."

Earlier, Ireland's deputy premier Simon Coveney said the Dublin government would consider alternative proposals from London but stressed it would not countenance anything that fell short of the assurances it needs over the shape of the border post Brexit.

Mr Coveney said: "We are in a position where we still need to find a way forward but, let me be very clear, the core issues that Ireland got agreement on at the start of this week are not changing."
A irBnB is addressing privacy concerns after several customers found secret cameras in their accommodation.

The company received complaints from guests who stayed in rented properties who found hidden cameras or disguised recording devices.

The company said that there was no place in its community for this kind of behaviour.

Although AirBnB has a strict privacy policy which requests that hosts disclose to guests before their stay if they have cameras on their property, it is not able to ensure that hosts will abide by these rules.

Meghan Hilden told CBS News that she discovered a mobile phone under the sink in the bathroom at a property she and her friend were renting in Switzerland.

"We saw that the phone was filming and we were whispering and trying to be very quiet. We weren't sure if it was being live streamed," Ms Hilden said.

Ms Hilden and her friend also found an iPad recording in the property. They quickly left and reported the incident to AirBnB who refunded them for their stay in Switzerland and reimbursed her for her travel expenses.

However, Ms Hilden said that she felt that this was not enough: I think that that was probably the bare minimum of what they could have done to help us out. For all we know he still has the videos that were on the iPad," she said.

There have been similar incidences where individuals have reported to have found cameras in their rented properties.

In November, activist and filmmaker Jason Scott tweeted that his colleague found a camera disguised in a motion detector at an Airbnb.

AirBnB responded by saying that the incident was incredibly rare and banned the host.

In October, Derek Starnes from Indiana rented a property in Longboat Key, Florida.

The couple found a hidden camera in a smoke detector in the master bedroom and alerted the police.

The host, 56-year-old Wayne Natt was arrested and charged with video voyeurism.

AirBnB told the Standard: There have been over 260 million guest arrivals in Airbnb listings and egregious incidents like this are incredibly rare. Airbnb takes privacy extremely seriously and there is absolutely no place in our community for this kind of behavior.

"When we are made aware of a report we permanently ban the bad actor from our platform, fully support those affected, and work with law enforcement to help ensure justice will be served. Cameras are never allowed in bathrooms or bedrooms. Any other cameras must be properly disclosed to guests ahead of time."

It also offered some safety tips for its customers who are concerned about the reports of hidden cameras. The company advised guests to get to know their host online before staying in a property, read previous reviews about the property on the site and always communicate through the site platform.

Alongside this the company urged anyone who feels like something isn't right when they stay a property to report it to them.

It said: "If a guest arrives at a listing and its not as advertised, they should immediately reach out to our global Customer Service team for help. They are standing by 24/7 in 11 languages with rebooking assistance, refunds, and/or reimbursements to help make things right in the rare event that things dont go as planned."
A n airline has apologised after being accused of racism by two black musicians who claimed they were downgraded to make way for a white woman when her seat broke.

Music duo Black Motion said they were escorted from their business class seats on a flight in South Africa because a white female passenger needed to use them.

They said they were told to move because their business class tickets were worth less and described the incident as blatant racism.

Comair, which operates under British Airways branding in South Africa, has since apologised for the incident and said it is launching a full investigation.

The pair, whose real names are Thabo Mabogwane and Bongani Mohosana were travelling in business class on the Comair flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

In a post on their Instagram, Mabogwane said he and Mohosana happened to be the only two young black men in the British Airlines business class during the flight on Monday.

We were embarrassed and removed from business class just because a white lady complained about her broken seat, he added.

When they asked staff why they were being downgraded, an air hostess reportedly said they were becoming aggressive and the captain decided to remove them from the plane completely.

The groups manager Tshiamo Kodisang described the incident as blatant racism, the Citizen reported.

The airline has since apologised to the passengers and said that they had been asked to downgrade because they had been using discounted tickets.

The situation arose as two damaged business class seats were not removed from the check-in system, as should have happened, a statement said.

As a result two customers were checked-in and allocated seats in which they could not fly. These customers were both silver card frequent flyer members, who are prioritised as a matter of global policy.

In considering who could be asked to downgrade, the airport staff then identified non-frequent flyers travelling on discounted business class fares. This is common airline practice on rare occasions when downgrades occur. It was on this basis that two other customers in business class were approached.

International Women's Day: EasyJet's first flight staffed only by women

It said the airline will not tolerate racism and is interviewing staff to carry out a full investigation into the complaint.

The crew was under pressure because the flight was already delayed, but should have handled the situation better, it added.

We have taken the allegations very seriously and [have] investigated swiftly and thoroughly. We have asked the customers if they would like the investigation independently reviewed.

Comairs CEO has also written to the pair to apologise unreservedly for the hurt this incident caused.
B oris Johnson is set to visit Iran this weekend in a bid to secure the release of a British mother who has been jailed there for nearly two years, according to reports.

The Foreign Secretary is planning to make his first visit Tehran to negotiate the freedom of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested at the airport in 2016.

The trip would be the third by a UK Foreign Secretary since 2003 and comes at a time of tension in the Middle East over Donald Trump's announcement that he is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The dual Iranian-British citizen, who lives in north London, is serving a five-year sentence over allegations, which she denies, of plotting to overthrow the Tehran government.

Negotiations: Boris met with Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin / Stefan Rousseau/PA

She was arrested during a holiday visit to show her baby daughter Gabriella, now two, to her parents.

The 38-year-old is facing a further court appearance this month, following threats to increase her sentence by five years as a result of a gaffe by Mr Johnson.

Emma Thompson demands Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is brought home

Mr Johnson wrongly told a parliamentary committee that she had been in Iran to train journalists and was criticised for potentially increasing her sentence.He later acknowledged that this was not the case.

Details of the trip, which has not been confirmed by the Foreign Officer, were reported in the Guardian which said Mr Johnson would be meeting with senior Iranian officials.

Amnesty International UKs Director, Kate Allen, said: Were cautiously hopeful that this could be the light at the end of the tunnel for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

As weve been saying over and over, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a charity worker whos been jailed for five years after enduring solitary confinement and a deeply unfair trial.

Three-year-old Gabriella Ratcliffe has been living with her grandparents ever since

The Iranian authorities have a record of toying with the fate of prisoners being held for political reasons, so its still very hard to feel confident that her release is imminent.

We fervently hope the Foreign Secretarys visit can secure her speedy release, but if it doesnt well go on campaigning. This is a gross injustice and it must be set right.
P rotests have erupted in the Middle East after Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the official capital of Israel in a deeply contentious move.

The top leader of Islamic militant group Hamas called for a fresh uprising to make the US "regret this decision" amid fierce condemnation from international leaders.

Moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city threatens to reignite tensions in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and jeopardise future hopes for peace in the Middle East.

In the hours after Mr Trump's speech on Wednesday, protests broke out in the Middle East. Shops and schools in Jerusalem shut on Thursday as Palestinians called a general strike and marches were planned for midday.

Follow our live updates here:
H amas has warned Donald Trumps decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital opens the gates of hell.

The militant political group  which runs Gaza  called for a Palestinian day of rage in response to the US Presidents unprecedented and highly controversial move.

Trumps decision on Jerusalem will not succeed in changing the fact that Jerusalem is an Arab Muslim land, said a spokesman for Hamas, seen by many as a terrorist organisation.

"The youth and the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank need to respond with all means available to the US decision that harms our Jerusalem," they added. Hamas has previously launched rockets into Israel during several wars in the long-running dispute over the Gaza Strip.

Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision 1 /62 Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Israeli forces take position during clashes with Palestinian protestors near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP AFP/Getty Images Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, during a protest against the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City AP Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protestors outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad, Pakistan AP Palestinian protestors set fire to a picture of US president Donald J. Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Smoke billows from burning tyres as Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Jordanian police stand guard near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan REUTERS Palestinian demonstrators clash with Israeli troops during protests in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem, West Bank EPA Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against the United States and Israel, in Lahore, Pakistan AP A supporter of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) an Islamic organization burns US flags Reuters A view from Armon Hanaziv promenade on the old city of Jerusalem, EPA Palestinian protesters chant angry slogans as one burns a representation of the American flag AP Palestinian protestors shout slogans against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty Images Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S.President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Baghdad, Iraq Reuters Children stand on U.S. and Israeli flags during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Islamabad, Pakistan Reuters Protests erupt in Middle East after Donald Trump declares Jerusalem capital of Israel AP Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City Reuters Protesters chant anti-American slogans in Gaza city AP Young Palestinians wave flags in protest at Mr Trump's decision in Gaza EPA People gather in protest to wave flags and chant in Gaza EPA Protesters pray in the street outside the US Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Christmas tree in front of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity had its lights turned off in protest EPA Protesters burn posters of Donald Trump in Manger Square, Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images A demonstration against the US and Israel at Fatih Mosque in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters wave Palestinian and Turkish flags during a demonstration in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters burn the Israeli flag in Cairo, Egypt EPA Pro-Palestinian protesters in Berlin, Germany EPA Palestinians burn Israeli and US flags and posters of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during protest against the US intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip EPA Protesters wave flags and shout slogans outside the U.S. Consulate on December 6, 2017 in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Hamas organization's top leader Sheikh Ismaeil Haneiya (C) attends a protest against the US decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City, Gaza Strip EPA US President Donald J. Trump signs his proclamation about his controversial decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his plan to relocate the US embassy to that city, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, DC EPA The US and Israeli flags hang at the entrance of Jerusalem Municipality building following US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise the city as the capital of Israel AFP/Getty Images Christian worshipers carry a wooden cross through an alley of Jerusalem's old city EPA Israeli policemen scuffle with a Palestinian man during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses an international conference on digital diplomacy at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem AFP/Getty Images Palestinians shout slogans during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Protesters chant slogans and wave Palestinian flags during a demonstration against the US and Israel in front of the US consulate in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Palestinians take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images A wounded Palestinian protester is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the border with Israel in the southern Gaza Strip Reuters Israel policemen stand guard at the Damascus gate of Jerusalem's old city EPA Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images

A day of Palestinian strikes and rallies is planned on Thursday, after protests broke out across the West Bank, Gaza and around the Middle East following Mr Trumps speech on Wednesday.

Palestinians burned flags and pictures of the US president while chanting anti-American slogans in Gaza and the West Bank. Similar protests were also held in Istanbul, Amman and Cairo, while Saudi Arabia has officially condemned the US change of stance.

In his bombshell speech, President Trump said the US would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although he set no timetable.

"We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past," Mr Trump said, brushing aside the appeals for caution from around the world.

Harsh objections came from a wide array of presidents and prime ministers, who feel the US is risking the fragile peace process in the highly combustible region.

Donald Trump: It's time to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital

From the Middle East to Europe and beyond, leaders cautioned Mr Trump that any sudden change on an issue as sensitive as Jerusalem not only risks blowing up the new Arab-Israeli peace initiative led by Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, but could lead to new violence in the region.

No government beyond Israel spoke up in praise of Mr Trump or suggested it would follow his lead.

Israelis and Palestinians reacted in starkly different terms.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Mr Trump's announcement as an "important step towards peace", and Israeli opposition leaders echoed his praise.

However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Mr Trump's shift serves extremist groups that want religious war and signals US withdrawal from being a peace mediator.

Protesters in Gaza burned American and Israeli flags.

Protesters gather in Gaza following President Trump's speech / AP

Mr Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a powerfully symbolic statement about a city that houses many of the world's holiest sites.

He cited several: the Western Wall that surrounded the Jews' ancient Temple, the Stations of the Cross that depict Jesus along his crucifixion path, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Muslims say their Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

And there are major ramifications over who should control the territory.

An Israeli flag is burned during a demonstration in Cairo, Egypt, in the wake of the US' change of stance / EPA

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish state's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has seen the city's future as indelibly linked to the "deal of the century" between Israel and the Palestinians that Mr Trump believes he can reach.

Beyond Mr Kushner, Mr Trump has dispatched other top emissaries to the region in recent months in hopes of advancing new negotiations.

Mr Trump said he was not delivering any verdict about where an Israeli-Palestinian border should lie.

Instead, he described his Jerusalem declaration as recognising the reality that most of Israel's government already operates from the city, and he suggested the US ally should be rewarded for creating a successful democracy where "people of all faiths are free to live and worship".

"Today we finally acknowledge the obvious," he said, emphasising that he would not follow past presidents who tiptoed around Jerusalem out of diplomatic caution.

US embassies and consulates around the world were put on high alert.

Across the Middle East and Europe, they issued warnings to Americans to watch out for violent protests.

In Jordan, home to a large Palestinian population, the US said it would close its embassy to the public on Thursday and urged children of diplomats there to stay home from school.
J erusalems West Bank is on lockdown amid fears a planned protest by Palestinians could turn violent following Donald Trumps decision to recognise the city as Israels capital.

Schools locked their doors and shops were boarded up as political groups called on people to march against Trump in Jerusalem.

Political groups called on protesters to march on parts of the city at noon today.

Meanwhile, Militant political group Hamas  which runs Gaza  called for a Palestinian day of rage in response to the US Presidents unprecedented and highly controversial move.

Follow the latest on this story LIVE here

Palestinians burned flags and pictures of of the US president while chanting anti-American slogans in Gaza and the West Bank following his speech on Wednesday.

Palestinian protesters burn tires as they wave flags during a rally in Gaza City on Wednesday. / AP

Similar protests were also held in Istanbul, Amman and Cairo, while Saudi Arabia has officially condemned the US change of stance.

In his bombshell speech, President Trump said the US would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although he set no timetable.

Hamas leader Sheikh Ismaeil Haneiya joins a protest against the US / EPA

"We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past," Mr Trump said, brushing aside the appeals for caution from around the world.

Harsh objections came from a wide array of presidents and prime ministers, who feel the US is risking the fragile peace process in the highly combustible region.

Palestinians burn Israeli and US flags and posters of Mr Trump in Rafah, southern Gaza strip. / EPA

Meanwhile, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" with his decision on the holy city.

Mr Erdogan also compared Mr Trump to a "blender" that is stirring up trouble in the region.

Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision 1 /62 Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Israeli forces take position during clashes with Palestinian protestors near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP AFP/Getty Images Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, during a protest against the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City AP Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protestors outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad, Pakistan AP Palestinian protestors set fire to a picture of US president Donald J. Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Smoke billows from burning tyres as Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Jordanian police stand guard near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan REUTERS Palestinian demonstrators clash with Israeli troops during protests in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem, West Bank EPA Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against the United States and Israel, in Lahore, Pakistan AP A supporter of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) an Islamic organization burns US flags Reuters A view from Armon Hanaziv promenade on the old city of Jerusalem, EPA Palestinian protesters chant angry slogans as one burns a representation of the American flag AP Palestinian protestors shout slogans against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty Images Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S.President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Baghdad, Iraq Reuters Children stand on U.S. and Israeli flags during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Islamabad, Pakistan Reuters Protests erupt in Middle East after Donald Trump declares Jerusalem capital of Israel AP Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City Reuters Protesters chant anti-American slogans in Gaza city AP Young Palestinians wave flags in protest at Mr Trump's decision in Gaza EPA People gather in protest to wave flags and chant in Gaza EPA Protesters pray in the street outside the US Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Christmas tree in front of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity had its lights turned off in protest EPA Protesters burn posters of Donald Trump in Manger Square, Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images A demonstration against the US and Israel at Fatih Mosque in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters wave Palestinian and Turkish flags during a demonstration in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters burn the Israeli flag in Cairo, Egypt EPA Pro-Palestinian protesters in Berlin, Germany EPA Palestinians burn Israeli and US flags and posters of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during protest against the US intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip EPA Protesters wave flags and shout slogans outside the U.S. Consulate on December 6, 2017 in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Hamas organization's top leader Sheikh Ismaeil Haneiya (C) attends a protest against the US decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City, Gaza Strip EPA US President Donald J. Trump signs his proclamation about his controversial decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his plan to relocate the US embassy to that city, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, DC EPA The US and Israeli flags hang at the entrance of Jerusalem Municipality building following US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise the city as the capital of Israel AFP/Getty Images Christian worshipers carry a wooden cross through an alley of Jerusalem's old city EPA Israeli policemen scuffle with a Palestinian man during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses an international conference on digital diplomacy at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem AFP/Getty Images Palestinians shout slogans during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Protesters chant slogans and wave Palestinian flags during a demonstration against the US and Israel in front of the US consulate in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Palestinians take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images A wounded Palestinian protester is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the border with Israel in the southern Gaza Strip Reuters Israel policemen stand guard at the Damascus gate of Jerusalem's old city EPA Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images

The Turkish leader said, addressing Mr Trump: "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it."

Mr Erdogan added that "political leaders exist not to stir things up, but to make peace".

He also said: "If Trump says 'I am strong therefore I am right', he is mistaken."

Donald Trump: It's time to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Mr Erdogan spoke to a group of workers on Thursday who had gathered at Ankara's airport, before he departed for an official visit to Greece.

Mr Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a powerfully symbolic statement about a city that houses many of the world's holiest sites.

Commentary: Politically crass move that isolates both Israel and US For the enemies of Israel and Donald Trump, the decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital is a casual or deliberate provocation. Since Israel declared independence in 1948, the US has declined to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, maintaining its embassy in Tel Aviv even after Israeli forces captured the whole of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967. Mr Trump had promised to recognise Jerusalem and move the embassy there in his election campaign last year. The question is why he decided to make the announcement now. While it has been welcomed by Israels prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for many Arabs, Muslims and Christians across the region, it looks historically insensitive and politically crass. It will not help any attempt to resuscitate the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Some fear that it will provoke another round of Palestinian unrest  a fourth Intifada. Jerusalem is sacred to all three religions of the Book  Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is the site of the Temple of Solomon, and the place of Christs crucifixion. For Muslims, the Haram al Sharif (Dome of the Rock) is where Mohammed ascended to heaven, a holy place below only Mecca and Medina. Palestinians seeking to create their own state have always claimed Jerusalem as their capital. Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, declared Trumps move the total abandonment of agreements signed between Palestinians and Israelis. For Mr Trump, the declaration is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. Jerusalem has been one of the five key issues in the negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis for more than 20 years  and the thorniest, ahead of the recognition of borders, security concerns, resources and refugee rights. No significant American in Europe and beyond has backed the presidents move  some declaring it provocative and a blow to finding a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute. It has alienated Muslim countries, including major players Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It is seen as giving a huge propaganda gift to the clerical hardliners in Iran, which at times has threatened Israel with oblivion. In the casual manner and timing of his intervention, Mr Trump seems to have made matters a lot worse. The immediate, doubtless unintended effect of his sudden announcement is to isolate both Israel and America to an alarming degree. Robert Fox, Defence Editor

He cited several: the Western Wall that surrounded the Jews' ancient Temple, the Stations of the Cross that depict Jesus along his crucifixion path, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Muslims say their Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

And there are major ramifications over who should control the territory.

Boris Johnson: Trump's Jerusalem intervention is 'not helpful'

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish state's claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has seen the city's future as indelibly linked to the "deal of the century" between Israel and the Palestinians that Mr Trump believes he can reach.

Beyond Mr Kushner, Mr Trump has dispatched other top emissaries to the region in recent months in hopes of advancing new negotiations.

Mr Trump said he was not delivering any verdict about where an Israeli-Palestinian border should lie.

Instead, he described his Jerusalem declaration as recognising the reality that most of Israel's government already operates from the city, and he suggested the US ally should be rewarded for creating a successful democracy where "people of all faiths are free to live and worship".

"Today we finally acknowledge the obvious," he said, emphasising that he would not follow past presidents who tiptoed around Jerusalem out of diplomatic caution.

US embassies and consulates around the world were put on high alert.

Across the Middle East and Europe, they issued warnings to Americans to watch out for violent protests.

In Jordan, home to a large Palestinian population, the US said it would close its embassy to the public on Thursday and urged children of diplomats there to stay home from school.
P rotests have erupted across the Middle East after Donald Trump made the historic and highly controversial move to officially recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

In a ground-breaking speech at the White House, the president ended decades of US neutrality on Jerusalem and promised to relocate the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

The move sparked fury among Palestinians, who immediately took to the streets in protest at a decision that they claim shatters hopes for peace in the war-torn region.

Jerusalem is regarded as a capital by both Israel and Palestine, making it the highly combustible centre of the decades-long Israeli-Arab conflict.

Palestinian protesters burn tyres in the main square in Gaza city following the president's announcement / AP

Defying worldwide warnings, Mr Trump insisted that after repeated peace failures it was time for a new approach.

"We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past," he said.

Donald Trump Makes A Statement On Jerusalem

Following the speech, Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem  areas occupied by Israel  began protests by burning flags, pictures and chanting anti-American slogans.

In Gaza - the thin coastal strip cut off by Israel - groups were also pictured setting fire to American flags.

Protesters take to the streets in Istanbul, Turkey / Getty Images

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Christmas tree lights were switched off in protest outside the Church of the Nativity, seen by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus.

Protesters also took to the streets in Amman, the capital of neighbouring Jordan, where Palestinian refugees in the Baqqa refugee camp denounced Mr Trumps actions. Similar displays were seen in Egypt's capital Cairo.

Meanwhile, Palestinian factions agreed to a general strike and midday rallies on Thursday.

The Palestinian education ministry declared a day off and urged teachers as well as high school and university students to take part in the planned rallies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas in Jerusalem.

Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out in praise of Mr Trumps speech, but no other world government lent its support.

Protesters gather in Gaza city / EPA

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US shift is a boost for extremist groups that want religious war and signals American withdrawal from being a peace mediator.

Theresa May she disagreed with the move and described Mr Trumps actions as unhelpful.

She said: "Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.

Demonstrators burn Israeli flags in Egypt's capital Cairo / EPA

Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: "Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, including occupied Palestinian territory, is a reckless threat to peace.

"The British Government must condemn this dangerous act and work for a just and viable settlement of the conflict."
A wealthy Saudi prince was today identified as the mystery buyer of the worlds most expensive painting.

The name of the anonymous buyer emerged as the Louvres new outpost in Abu Dhabi said Leonardo Da Vincis lost masterpiece Salvator Mundi would now be heading to the museum.

According to The New York Times, the painting was bought by Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, said to be a close friend of Saudi Arabias powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

The newspaper said it had seen documents confirming that Prince Bader bought the work when it sold at auction in New York for a record-breaking $450 million (336m) last month.

The little-known royal is not known to be an art collector and it is understood he had to provide a $100 million deposit to qualify for the auction at Christies. He is said to now be paying for the piece in six instalments.

Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud

The 1billion Louvre Abu Dhabi opened last month in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron, who described the new museum as a bridge between civilizations.

It announced its coup on Twitter, writing: Da Vincis Salvator Mundi is coming to #LouvreAbuDhabi, alongside an image of the 500-year-old work.

The painting went on public display at the National Gallery in 2011 after being declared the first newly discovered Da Vinci painting in a century.

It had sold for just 45 in 1958, when it was thought to have been a copy, and was lost until resurfacing at a regional auction in 2005.

Bidding in New York started at $100 million and crept up in $5 million instalments, eventually clinching the record price to audible gasps in the auction room.

A spokeswoman for Christies said it did not comment on the identities of any buyers or sellers without their permission


S adiq Khan joined forces with the Pakistani Government today to condemn Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The Mayor of London waded into the diplomatic crisis as he met with the emerging superpowers prime minister during a high profile visit to Islamabad.

He attacked the US Presidents actions as deliberately unhelpful and warned that he had made peace in the Middle East less, rather than more, likely.

The Pakistanis warned the highly provocative move would add fuel to the fire to conflicts across the wider region.

The Mayor met with Pakistani PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

Mr Khan highlighted the concerns, frustrations and anger that were felt about the symbolic issue of Jerusalems status across the Muslim world.

The Mayor met with Pakistani PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and foreign secretary Khawaja Muhammad Asif on his six-day trade mission to India and Pakistan.

Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags in Pakistan. / REUTERS

The visit represents his most high-level foray into global politics yet.

Although he has received a warm welcome in Pakistan with his family background helping to open doors, it is unclear how the intervention will go down with the Government back home.

He has already crossed the border from India on foot against the advice of Foreign Office officials.

Palestinian protesters chant slogans during a rally in Gaza City on Wednesday night. / AP

Mr Khan said the Pakistanis were very unhappy with the US decision, which represents a reversal of decades of US foreign policy.

The countrys foreign secretary told reporters accompanying the Mayor that it was an appalling move.

It is an affront to Muslims what has been done last night. I hope the American government can explain to the Muslim world why they have done this thing

Palestinian protestors burn tires as they wave national flags during a protest at the main Square in Gaza City / AP

At this juncture when there is a lot of disturbance and turmoil and almost for the last more than a decade with Iraq and Syria and Libya and Afghanistan.

There are no solutions to these problems but they have added fuel to the fire.

Mr Khan agreed there would be a ripple effect, not just in the Middle East, but right across the world.

Thats why youve seen world leaders expressing their concern and disappointment and anger at what President Trump has done.

Ahead of his series of high profile political meetings Mr Khan had shared his own concerns about the Jerusalem announcement.

Anybody who understands the history about that part of the Middle East will find it astonishing because it makes peace less likely not more likely, he said.

Id far prefer to see the President of the US bringing people together and being a bridge-builder, rather than seeking to divide communities.
V iolent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops erupted across the West Bank after Donald Trump moved to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

It came as demonstrators in Gaza burned Israeli and American flags during a widespread show of anger over the US President's move.

Islamic militant group Hamas called for a day of rage and a new armed uprising after Mr Trump on Wednesday ended decades of US neutrality on Jerusalem and promised to relocate the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem threatens to reignite tensions in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and jeopardise future hopes for peace in the Middle East.

Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision 1 /62 Protests erupt after Trump's Jerusalem decision Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Israeli forces take position during clashes with Palestinian protestors near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP AFP/Getty Images Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, during a protest against the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Gaza City AP Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protestors outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad, Pakistan AP Palestinian protestors set fire to a picture of US president Donald J. Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Smoke billows from burning tyres as Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Images Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Jordanian police stand guard near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan REUTERS Palestinian demonstrators clash with Israeli troops during protests in the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem, West Bank EPA Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against the United States and Israel, in Lahore, Pakistan AP A supporter of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) an Islamic organization burns US flags Reuters A view from Armon Hanaziv promenade on the old city of Jerusalem, EPA Palestinian protesters chant angry slogans as one burns a representation of the American flag AP Palestinian protestors shout slogans against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty Images Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S.President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Baghdad, Iraq Reuters Children stand on U.S. and Israeli flags during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Islamabad, Pakistan Reuters Protests erupt in Middle East after Donald Trump declares Jerusalem capital of Israel AP Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh gestures as he delivers a speech over U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City Reuters Protesters chant anti-American slogans in Gaza city AP Young Palestinians wave flags in protest at Mr Trump's decision in Gaza EPA People gather in protest to wave flags and chant in Gaza EPA Protesters pray in the street outside the US Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Christmas tree in front of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity had its lights turned off in protest EPA Protesters burn posters of Donald Trump in Manger Square, Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images A demonstration against the US and Israel at Fatih Mosque in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters wave Palestinian and Turkish flags during a demonstration in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Protesters burn the Israeli flag in Cairo, Egypt EPA Pro-Palestinian protesters in Berlin, Germany EPA Palestinians burn Israeli and US flags and posters of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during protest against the US intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip EPA Protesters wave flags and shout slogans outside the U.S. Consulate on December 6, 2017 in Istanbul, Turkey Getty Images The Hamas organization's top leader Sheikh Ismaeil Haneiya (C) attends a protest against the US decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City, Gaza Strip EPA US President Donald J. Trump signs his proclamation about his controversial decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his plan to relocate the US embassy to that city, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, DC EPA The US and Israeli flags hang at the entrance of Jerusalem Municipality building following US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise the city as the capital of Israel AFP/Getty Images Christian worshipers carry a wooden cross through an alley of Jerusalem's old city EPA Israeli policemen scuffle with a Palestinian man during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses an international conference on digital diplomacy at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem AFP/Getty Images Palestinians shout slogans during a protest following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Reuters Protesters chant slogans and wave Palestinian flags during a demonstration against the US and Israel in front of the US consulate in Istanbul AFP/Getty Images Palestinians take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images A wounded Palestinian protester is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the border with Israel in the southern Gaza Strip Reuters Israel policemen stand guard at the Damascus gate of Jerusalem's old city EPA Palestinian youths take part in a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images

Dramatic images showed masked demonstrators clash with military police in the streets of Jerusalem and Gaza.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tyres on fire and threw stones at anti-riot troops.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus's birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tyres on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Campaigners set fire to US flags and effigies of Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while others hurled burning missiles.

A masked demonstrator marches on Jerusalem's West Bank / AFP/Getty Images

Thick plumes of black smoke rose from burning pyres into the sky.

Shops and schools in Jerusalem barricaded their doors and windows in a bid to lessen the impact of angry protests as young children and pensioners also took to the streets in the fight against the move.

There were no serious casualties reported in Thursday's clashes.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

Masked demonstrators clash with troops / AFP/Getty Images

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders".

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s.

But the group's capabilities are more limited now.

Gaza, Hamas's stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested.

Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tyres, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments".

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Mr Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Mr Trump's decision.

FOLLOW OUR LIVE COVERAGE HERE

But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

Mr Trumps bold move sparked widespread backlash from across the globe.

Demonstrators clash with Israeli troops / AFP/Getty Images

Russia is set to criticise his stance at the UN Security Council, the country's foreign minister has reportedly said.

Meanwhile French President Emmanuel Macron said: "I don't share in this decision, and I disapprove."

Palestinian protesters demonstrate against Donald Trump's decision in Jerusalem's West Bank / EPA

He added the "question of Jerusalem is a question of international security".

The EU's foreign policy chief said the bloc believes "the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both".

Donald Trump: It's time to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The Afghan Taliban said President Trump's decision will "fan the flames" of conflict in the whole world - especially the Middle East.

A statement from the group said the US has "declared enmity toward Islam as well as support for policy of occupation and colonisation of Muslim lands".

Demonstrators clash with Israeli troops / AFP/Getty Images

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" with his decision on the holy city.

Mr Erdogan also compared Mr Trump to a "blender" that is stirring up trouble in the region.

The Turkish leader said, addressing Mr Trump: "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it."

Troops clash with protesters / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Erdogan added that "political leaders exist not to stir things up, but to make peace".

He also said: "If Trump says 'I am strong therefore I am right', he is mistaken."

Smoke bombs are thrown into the air during clashes / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Trump has dispatched other top emissaries to Israel in recent months in the hope of advancing new negotiations.

Mr Trump said he was not delivering any verdict about where an Israeli-Palestinian border should lie.

Protesters march on Jerusalem's West Bank / AP

Instead, he described his Jerusalem declaration as recognising the reality that most of Israel's government already operates from the city, and he suggested the US ally should be rewarded for creating a successful democracy where "people of all faiths are free to live and worship".

"Today we finally acknowledge the obvious," he said on Wednesday, emphasising that he would not follow past presidents who tiptoed around Jerusalem out of diplomatic caution.

US embassies and consulates around the world were put on high alert.

Across the Middle East and Europe, they issued warnings to Americans to watch out for violent protests.

In Jordan, home to a large Palestinian population, the US said it would close its embassy to the public on Thursday and urged children of diplomats there to stay home from school.
A couple who were matched on season eight of First Dates have announced their engagement on Twitter.

Greig Fairweather and Shaun Smith were paired on episode 10 of the season, which aired on June 20, and are now set to wed.

Smith shared the news on Twitter: I have some absolutely fantastic news for you all, sorry if I havent managed to speak to you over the weekend in person. Last week, I asked Mr. Greig Fairweather to marry me.

And he said yes! Beyond thrilled, happy and excited. Havent stopped smiling!

He later posted another tweet to thank the First Dates restaurant staff: Hey @FirstDates @fredsirieix1 @CiCi_Coleman @austinventour. Remember seeing us earlier this year? Well last week I asked Greig to marry me, and he said yes! Can't thank you enough for everything! Shaun. #FirstDates

The staff of the First Dates restaurant shared their congratulations on Twitter.

Waiter Austin Ventour replied, Congrats!, and maitre d Fred Sirieix shared several clapping hands emojis.

Fellow waiter CiCi Coleman responded, YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!! congratulations!!!! Sooooo happy to hear this.

The road to true love never did run smooth  Fairweather previously appeared on season eight, episode eight of First Dates, which aired on June 6.

His date was fellow Scot John, a pub landlord and rugby player from Kilmarnock. It did not take long for things to turn from bad to worse for Fairweather, who hails from Falkirk.

Before the main course had even arrived, John bluntly told Fairweather, It sounds really bad, but I dont find you attractive. Youre a really genuine guy. We seem to get on, but I just dont have that connection with you. Whats the point in staying?

A stunned Fairweather asked, Do you want to cancel the main course?, and made a swift departure, while John stayed to dine  alone.

Celebrity First Dates 2016 - the line-up 1 /18 Celebrity First Dates 2016 - the line-up TOWIE's Jess Wright, and her date Tom Channel 4 / Dave King Made in Chelsea's Jess Woodley, and her date Luke Channel 4 / Dave King Model Jo Wood, and her date Ernet Channel 4 / Dave King Rugby player Keegan Hirst, and his date Paddy Channel 4 / Dave King Educating Yorkshire's Musharaf Asghar, and his date Salina Channel 4 / Dave King Atomic Kitten Natasha Hamilton, and her date Gary Channel 4 / Dave King Ordinary Boys singer Preston, and his date Nichole Channel 4 / Dave King Gogglebox's Scarlett Moffatt, and her date Tommy Channel 4 / Dave King Weather presenter Sian Lloyd, and her date Max Channel 4 / Dave King Paralympian Will Bayley, and his date Jessica Channel 4 / Dave King Britain's Got Talent's Asleigh Butler, and her date Elliot Channel 4 / Dave King Comedian Bernie Clifton, and his date Carol Channel 4 / Dave King The Vamps' Brad Simpson, and his date Isobel Channel 4 / Dave King Esther Rantzen, and her date John Channel 4 / Dave King

Two weeks later, Fairweather met Smith on the show. Smith described his ideal man as an ordinary bloke who likes the simple things in life.

The end credits informed us that Fairweather and Smith had started dating and had booked a holiday to Turkey together.

Now, six months on, they are engaged  with no sign of either of them walking out.
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The death toll from Boko Haram violence is way down in 2017, with fewer than 400 civilians killed. About half of those were from a few major suicide bomb attacks in August and November. Meanwhile the aggressive efforts by Moslem Fulani raiders against largely Christian farmers in Central Nigeria (mainly Plateau, Jos, Kaduna, Benue and Nassarawa states) keeps getting worse and this year spread to Adamawa state where Boko Haram was also active (but not as much as next door in Borno State). In 2016 the Fulani violence left 2,500 dead and that intensity continued into 2017. The Fulani herders have become more deadly than Boko Haram but that has not become a major issue because the Fulani problem has been around for centuries and is not as organized and media savvy as Islamic terror groups like Boko Haram.

The government is under growing pressure from the Christian community (half of all Nigerians) to recognize the growing (since 2010) threat in central Nigeria from the Fulani herders moving south. While these attacks often trigger reprisals by local militias the Fulani keep attacking. Most of the victims of the Fulani violence are Christian. To make matters worse the raiders have also been attacking soldiers or police who intervene. This has the desired effect and in many areas the police and soldiers only go through the motions of trying to disarm or arrest the guilty Fulani. Both sides Fulani and their victims blame the government of taking sides but in general the government officials are mainly interested in looking out for themselves.

Attempts to negotiate peace deals with the Fulani generally fail. Tribal violence in this area has been a problem for generations because Moslem and Christian tribes do not get along and, according to many Moslem clerics and religious teachers, never will. There were over a thousand casualties a year since 2013 and as it got worse in 2016 and 2017. The prompted officials from both states to meet with Moslem and Christian tribal leaders to work out a peace deal. That has not worked, at least not for long. There are always factions among the Fulani who are willing to violate a peace deal. Sometimes this is done because a group of Fulani join an Islamic terror group, which has become fashionable and easier since the 1990s with the growth of al Qaeda in Africa and the Islamic terrorists often depending on smuggling to cover their expenses. Nigeria is not astride any of the most lucrative smuggling routes so local Islamic terrorists have to find other sources of income. That usually means looting and driving people from their land and taking over.

Nigerian Fulani are also in touch with Fulani in nearby Mali where many young Fulani have joined JNIM (Jamaah Nusrah al Islam wal Muslimin, or Group for the support of Islam and Moslems). This al Qaeda affiliated group avoids northern Mali, where the French counter-terror operations are concentrated and where Tuareg tribes predominate. The Tuareg and Fulani have never got along well and both groups have a long history of feuding over grazing land and water sources for their herds and north of the Niger River the Tuareg will usually prevail.

Cattle thefts continue mainly by Tuareg gangs against Fulani herds. In Mali there is another factor. While the Tuareg have mainly sought autonomy in the north, the Fulani have a reputation for violence, a sense of entitlement and preference for violent solutions wherever they are. Thus the Fulani have been trouble throughout central Africa where they live, usually as herders. Currently the main Fulani trouble spots are in Nigeria (where they clash with Christian farmers), Niger (cattle again) and Mali (long standing feuds with Moslem farmers and Tuareg cattle thieves). The Fulani have been prominent (but not always dominant) when it comes to Islamic terror organizations. Thus they showed up in Boko Haram in Nigeria as well as various Islamic terror groups in Niger where they were involved in a recent (October 4) clash with American military advisors that left four Americans dead. Religion or tribal affiliation is not the major factor for the Fulani, its mainly about the money and for Fulani cattle are wealth and historically if Fulani have fewer cattle they were less likely to survive. Simple as that. The Fulani population is growing but the land and water available for herds is not. So the Fulani attack. For them, retreat is not an option because most see that as suicide. A growing number of Fulani are turning to farming or jobs in the cities. A minority of Fulani (mainly in Nigeria) converted to Christianity as well as non-pastoral (herding) occupations.

While the Fulani violence is growing the Boko Haram activity in the northeast (mainly Borno state) has proved impossible to eliminate entirely because unemployed young men find that they can turn to banditry and justify it by declaring themselves defenders of Islam (Boko Haram). This enables the Boko Haram bandits to cooperate and exchange tips on how to survive. For example troops regularly raid suspected Boko Haram camps and often find weapons, ammo and equipment (as well as hostages) but the Islamic terrorists themselves generally get away by using lookouts and knowing that the troops will be delayed by the need to check out the captives (to ensure that none are Boko Haram pretending to be hostages) and make sure there are no landmines or other traps along the escape path. Unlike the Fulani Boko Haram have no herds to protect or need to occupy land for grazing. Given the always dire state of the economy in the northeast there is not likely to be any alternative employment available and the corruption that justified the original (2005) Boko Haram uprising is still present.

Promises

Meanwhile the national GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the third quarter. This was partly due to increased oil production (2.03 million BPD versus 1.87 million the previous quarter) but also because of continued progress in reducing corruption and increasing the efficiency of government. The current president, despite health problems, has actually delivered on the usual presidential promises to reduce corruption and poverty. President Buhari is a Moslem and retired army officer so he understands many of the fundamental problems. For example the further south you go in Nigeria the more water, jobs, oil and Christians you encounter. What has kept Nigeria united for so long is sharing the oil wealth found in the Christian south. Despite that another thing Christian and Moslem politicians have in common is their ability to steal most of the oil income. But there has been more entrepreneur activity in the south and that is where most of the industrial and non-agricultural economic activity is. The Moslem politicians often blame the Christians and threaten civil war but that threat is hollow as southern Nigeria is where most of the modern military might is found along with all the oil and access to the sea. Separatism appeals to some in the south but most Nigerians realize it is in their mutual best interests to make a united Nigeria work and that means reducing corruption and expanding the rule of law.

This can be seen happening in the south, where Niger Delta rebels have united in demanding that the federal government do something about the continued corruption in the Delta and do it by January 15th 2018 or the attacks on the oil infrastructure will resume. That would be a major defeat for the government because in late 2017 Nigerian oil production was rising to levels not seen since early 2016. Actual production in July was 2.o1 million barrels per day (BPD). Back in August it was believed to be higher but it takes months to get the actual and final figure. Total July production was 62.46 million barrels. At the same time actual oil income was less than expected because world oil prices remain low. That has been the trend for most of 2017 because the new government had negotiated a peace deal with the local rebels (against corruption and bad treatment of locals in general). Production rose and is on the way to the goal of 2.5 million BPD by 2020. Peace and more oil production is unlikely to be achieved much less sustained unless there are some fundamental economic and political changes in the Niger River Delta oil fields. That is happening, but at a glacial pace because so many of the local politicians and government officials have gotten rich from corrupt practices and are still opposing change.

The federal government has done something about the rising crime along the coast. In part this was because piracy and all sorts of maritime misbehavior often result in unfavorable foreign media attention. The piracy in particular drove up insurance rates for commercial shipping entering Nigerian waters and that meant higher prices for Nigerians. So the security forces, especially the navy, have been particularly active and effective in 2017 and reduced the incidence (or at least the profitability) of oil theft and smuggling along the coast. In doing that the growing piracy activity was reduced. The pirates are based in coastal areas and the security forces offered rewards and amnesty for information about pirates and turned piracy into a high-risk activity. By the end of the year there were still pirates along the coast but most of their attacks failed and often resulted in the capture of the pirates.

December 4, 2017: In the northeast (Adamawa state) Fulani gunmen ambushed police and killed six of them. The police were trying to halt the growing violence between Fulani herders and largely Christian farmers in the area.

December 3, 2017: In the last week both Britain and the United States have warned their citizens to be careful if visiting Nigeria during the Christmas/New Year holiday season. Most dangerous areas were in the northeast, the national capital and some areas of the Niger River Delta.

December 2, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) two Boko Haram suicide bombers attacked a food distribution center 90 kilometers northeast of the state capital. The attack, by two teenage girls, left at least 13 others dead and dozens wounded.

November 30, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) Boko Haram raided an army checkpoint east of the state capital. The raiders killed one soldier, wounded three others and briefly took control of the checkpoint as the troops and local defense volunteers retreated. The Boko Haram grabbed weapons and ammo and then fled into the bush.

November 29, 2017: In the northeast (Adamawa state) a Boko Haram attack on a village caused several hundred civilians to flee while the Islamic terrorists burned down most structures and stole cattle and items that could be carried. Five villagers were killed during the attack and many more wounded. The Islamic terrorists were mainly interested in loot.

November 28, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) security forces killed 14 Boko Haram gunmen and captured another as eight rural villages were cleared of Islamic terrorist control. In doing that a lot of weapons and equipment was captured and 30 captive civilians freed.

November 25, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) Boko Haram raided the town of Magumeri 50 kilometers from the state capital. This happened at night and residents fled as the soldiers and local defense volunteers defeated the attack inside the town. Nine defenders were killed along with three civilians and an unknown number of attackers, who fled in the darkness taking their dead and wounded with them. Troops could not pursue until daylight and by then the Boko Haram had dispersed to remote camps. The attack was meant to obtain supplies but the Boko Haram force apparently had little opportunity to grab much as they retreated.

November 21, 2017: In the northeast (Adamawa state) a Boko Haram attack on the Mubi mosque (using two suicide bombers) left over 50 dead and many more wounded.

November 20, 2017: In the northeast (Adamawa state) Christian farmers attacked four camps established by Moslem (Fulani) herders and killed at least 30 of the Fulani. This was in retaliation for recent Fulani raids on Christian villages (including those of Fulani Christians).

November 19, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) at least seven Boko Haram gunmen on motorbikes attacked a group of farmers on a road near the state capital and killed six of them before speeding away.

November 15, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) four Boko Haram suicide bombers (two male and two female) attacked crowds in the state capital and killed 14 and wounded 29.

November 10, 2017: In the northeast (Borno state) troops captured a Boko Haram camp near the Cameroon and freed 387 Cameroonians who had been captured in Cameroon last year and eventually marched across the border. Elsewhere in Borno (near the Sambisa forest) Boko Haram ambushed an army patrol killing three soldiers and a local tracker.
Officials in Puntland (north of Somalia) and Kenya (south of Somalia) both report that Islamic terrorists are showing up complaining they are fleeing increased American airstrikes in Somalia. The Kenyan al Shabaab men complained that many of them had been falsely accused of supplying target information for the Americans. This was because the air strikes were suddenly hitting camps long hidden in the Boni forest along the Kenyan border. Several of those camps had housed several hundred al Shabaab men for years. Spies may have been at work but it was also likely that al Shabaab had gotten sloppy about protecting the location of the Boni camps. Or it might have been the fact that the Americans have been doing more surveillance of the Boni forest lately and are known to have pattern analysis software that can sort through a lot of video and find previously unnoticed information. Then there is the possibility of surveillance using new sensors. Yet al Shabaab leaders focused on their Kenyan recruits, which may indicate that Kenyan intelligence is having some success (real or imagined) getting agents into al Shabaab.

The al Shabaab men fleeing to Puntland and Kenya are actually the victims of much increased aerial surveillance (visual and electronic) of al Shabaab operations in Somalia this year. With all that additional information you often dont need a computer to note things about al Shabaab that were previously unknown or uncertain. Operations against al Shabaab in Puntland, Somalia and Kenya are suddenly more frequent and successful. The paranoia within the al Shabaab leadership is a bonus, and a valuable one. Innocent (of spying) al Shabaab men have been executed by al Shabaab and because of that there are more desertions and fewer new recruits. An additional bonus is that many of the al Shabaab deserters are actually defectors who are joining the growing number of hard core al Shabaab men who joined the local ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) faction.

Since 2015 ISIL has been trying to take advantage of local (Puntland and Galmudug) clan feuds to establish a presence in Puntland. This began in October 2015 when an al Shabaab faction declared itself the local branch of ISIL. The ISIL members up there were largely former al Shabaab men who wanted more violence or whatever. ISIL was more daring and dangerous than mainstream Islamic terror groups like al Qaeda (which al Shabaab associates with) but is also self-destructive as ISIL considers any other Islamic terror group a potential enemy (if the other group does not recognize ISIL as the leader). Because of this ISIL self-destructive tendency in 2016 al Shabaab again become the most deadly Islamic terror group in Africa. For three years (2014-15) Boko Haram in Nigeria and (after 2013) ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) were killing more people in Africa. But in 2016 Boko Haram was much weaker after a massive counterattack by a coalition of Nigerian troops, local volunteers and soldiers from neighboring countries. By 2017 Boko Haram was killing about one person for every ten al Shabaab murdered in 2016. While the al Shabaab body count is down in 2017 it is still much higher than Boko Haram or ISIL. In 2016 al Shabaab related violence led to about 4,200 deaths compared to 3,500 for Boko Haram and even fewer for ISIL. So in 2017 a lot of the American counter-terror resources long devoted to ISIL have shifted to Somalia. For ISIL being number one comes at a price because it means you have more people out to get you. So while ISIL will gain a few new recruits as al Shabaab comes apart they will not be able to replace higher losses.

Dirty Money

Corruption continues to be the largest problem in Somalia and even infects peacekeepers. For months the UN has been pressuring Kenya to deal with evidence UN investigators compiled (and is common knowledge in the areas inv9lved) that Kenyan peacekeeper commanders in southern Somalia continue to take bribes to allow al Shabaab controlled charcoal production and exporting to Dubai. Since al Shabaab lost control of the southern port of Kismayo in 2014 it has seen its income plummet by more than half. Since then al Shabaab has established other income sources, mainly smuggling in areas it controls, along with extortion and anything else it can get away with. The charcoal operations is worth about $10 million a year to al Shabaab, which comprises about half of the income that currently keeps the al Shabaab going. So far Kenya has been reluctant to crack down, apparently because some prominent Kenyan families are involved. At least that is usually the main reason for ignoring clear evidence of corruption.

December 6, 2017: Some 130 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu several al Shabaab men were killed by a UAV missile attack on a vehicle locals said was used by al Shabaab to transport weapons. So far in 2017 there have been about 32 of these airstrikes in Somalia (including Puntland) against Islamic terrorists, mainly al Shabaab.

December 4, 2017: After years of local and international pressure the Somali government allowed, for the first time since the 1970s, the formation and operation of political parties that were not simply fronts for clan based groups. Some of the current political parties had been quietly violating the old law for years and there was growing pressure to recognize the fact that Somali politics had become mature enough to handle this. On the first day of the new policy seven parties registered.

December 1, 2017: In Hiran (200 kilometers north of Mogadishu) Al Shabaab ambushed a convoy and were driven off by the military escort. Two soldiers and twelve Islamic terrorists were killed.

November 28, 2017: In the southwest (across the border in Kenya) al Shabaab killed two police officers and wounded two others near the coastal town of Lamu. The police were escorting a convoy of six busses carrying civilians (most of them Moslem) who required protection from the frequent al Shabaab robberies oon country roads. In this case the al Shabaab attack failed and the Islamic terrorists withdrew into the bush taking their casualties with them. Since early 2017 an al Shabaab force of up to a hundred gunmen has been attempting to establish a permanent presence near the coast and the Somali border. Some of the al Shabaab men are Kenyans (ethnic Somalis) who were trained in al Shabaab camps across the border in the Boni forest (which is currently under heavy attack).

November 27, 2017: In northeast Somalia (Puntland) an American UAV missile attack against an ISIL target left at least one Islamic terrorist dead.

November 23, 2017: For the first time since 2014 the international anti-piracy patrol arrested six Somali pirates who were caught firing on and trying to board ships off the Somali coast. The accused Somalis were sent them to the Seychelles Islands for prosecution. In 2010 the EU (European Union) made a deal with the tiny (85,000 population) nation of Seychelles (islands, 1,500 kilometers east of Somalia) to prosecute pirates captured by the anti-piracy patrol off Somalia. The European nations that bring in pirates for prosecution agreed to pick up the expenses, as well as imprison convicted pirates back in Europe. First, the Seychelles had to spend half a million dollars, and several months, to build a jail for (up to 40) pirates who were being tried. Seychelles has an economy dependent on fishing and tourists, and doesn't have much crime so never needed many jail cells. The EU contract, and a small American military presence (to maintain UAVs and other American military aircraft operating from the main Seychelles airport) has helped the local economy as has the near total absence of Somali pirates that had been common in Seychelles coastal waters until 2012. For a while Somali pirates operated off the Seychelles, sometimes attacking local fishing boats, and that hurt the local economy.

November 21, 2017: Some 200 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu over a hundred al Shabaab men were killed by American UAVs using missiles.

November 14, 2017: Some 96 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu American UAVs using missiles killed several al Shabaab gunmen in support of an operation by security forces to clear the Islamic terrorists out of an area.
At its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii earlier this week, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 845, but the only details it released was that the chip would appear in Xiaomi's Mi 7. Now, the company has given us the full rundown of its next-generation SoC, which will power 2018's flagship handsets.

The Snapdragon 845, which is built on Samsung's second-gen 10nm LPP process, features a Kryo 385 CPU---an upgrade from the 835's Kryo 280. There are still eight cores, but the four performance cores are now running at up to 2.8GHz while the four efficient cores can reach 1.80GHz. That represents a 30 percent improvement in high-power cores, with the low-power cores about 15 percent quicker than those in the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm promises a 25 percent "performance uplift" over the Snapdragon 835, as well as 30 percent better power-efficiency when it comes to intensive tasks such as video capture, games, and mixed reality.

The previous gen's Adreno 540 graphics core is replaced with a new Adreno 630 GPU, which again brings a 30 percent performance increase.

One of the most interesting elements of the Snapdragon 845 is its Spectra 280 image signal processor. The ISP can capture images at up to 16 MP at 60 images per second, as well as high-definition slow-motion video at 480FPS. As for its high-dynamic-range capabilities, the Spectra 280 can record 4K HDR video at 60FPS---a smartphone first---and capture 64 times more HDR color information compared to the Snapdragon 835.

When it comes to security, Qualcomm has built a "secure vault" within the Snapdragon 845. This "secure processing unit" is an isolated core with its own CPU, embedded private RAM, crypto engine, random number generator and power supply, bringing improved biometric support and encryption.

An X20 LTE modem replaces the 835's X16, bringing support for 5x Carrier Aggregation and peak speeds of 1.2Gbps. It also has support for dual-SIM connectivity.

Some other notable features include support for Quick Charge 4+, which enables a 50 percent charge in 15 minutes, an increased focus on AR and VR technologies, and improved AI through the third-gen Hexagon Vector DSP.

Here's Qualcomm's list of the Snapdragon 845's features:

Qualcomm Spectra 280 ISP

Ultra HD premium capture

Qualcomm Spectra Module Program, featuring Active Depth Sensing

MCTF video capture

Multi-frame noise reduction

High performance capture up to 16MP @60FPS

Slow motion video capture (720p @480 fps)

ImMotion computational photography

Adreno 630 Visual Processing Subsystem

30% improved graphics/video rendering and power reduction compared to previous generation

Room-scale 6 DoF with SLAM

Adreno foveation, featuring tile rendering, eye tracking, multiView rendering, fine grain preemption

2K x 2K @ 120Hz, for 2.5x faster display throughput

Improved 6DoF with hand-tracking and controller support

Qualcomm Hexagon 685 DSP

3 rd Generation Hexagon Vector DSP (HVX) for AI and imaging

Generation Hexagon Vector DSP (HVX) for AI and imaging 3 rd Generation Qualcomm All-Ways Aware TM Sensor Hub

Generation Qualcomm All-Ways Aware Sensor Hub Hexagon scalar DSP for audio

Snapdragon X20 LTE Modem

Support for 1.2 Gbps Gigabit LTE Category 18

License Assisted Access (LAA)

Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) shared radio spectrum

Dual SIM-Dual VoLTE (DSDV)

Connectivity

Multigigabit 11ad Wi-Fi with diversity module

Integrated 2x2 11ac Wi-Fi with Dual Band Simultaneous (DBS) support

11k/r/v: Carrier Wi-Fi enhanced mobility, fast acquisition and congestion mitigation

Bluetooth 5 with proprietary enhancements for ultra-low power wireless ear bud support and direct audio broadcast to multiple devices

Secure Processing Unit

Biometric authentication (fingerprint, iris, voice, face)

User and app data protection

Integrated use-cases such as integrated SIM, Payments, and more

Qualcomm Aqstic Audio

Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec(WCD934x):

Playback:

Dynamic range: 130dB, THD+N: -109dB

Native DSD support (DSD64/DSD128), PCM up to 384kHz/32bit

Low power voice activation: 0.65mA

Record:

Dynamic range: 109dB, THD+N: -103dB

Sampling: Up to 192kHz/24bit

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+

Kryo 385 CPU

Four performance cores up to 2.8GHz (25 percent performance uplift compared to previous generation)

Four efficiency cores up to 1.8GHz

2MB shared L3 cache (new)

3MB system cache (new)

10-nanometer (nm) LPP FinFET process technology
The bizarre case of the invisible attacks that took place at the US embassy in Cuba earlier this year has become even stranger. Doctors treating the victims have discovered abnormalities in their brains' white matter as they search for an explanation behind their hearing, vision, balance, and memory damage.

The findings cast more doubt over original claims that the 24 government officials and spouses were attacked by a "sonic weapon."

The attacks, which had been ongoing for months and took place in homes and hotels, often consisted of "a deafeningly loud sound similar to the buzzing created by insects or metal scraping." Sometimes, the sounds were audible in certain parts of rooms but inaudible just a few feet away. On other occasions, the attacks were complete imperceptible. You can listen to an alleged recording of the noise here.

In addition to problems such as dizziness, nausea, headaches, tinnitus, permanent hearing loss, and speech and vision problems, the Associated Press reports that changes to the white matter tracts, which allow different parts of the brain to communicate, are another symptom of the attacks. Officials wouldn't say how many of the 24 victims displayed the abnormalities.

Exactly how these attacks were carried out, and who was behind them and why, is still a mystery, though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday he's "convinced these were targeted attacks."

The new information means the chances a sonic weapon was used are even lower, as they have never been shown to alter the brain's white matter tracts.

While similar white matter damage has been found in the brains of Iraq and Vietnam war veterans who survived explosions and other damage, none of the Cuba victims reported any explosions.

Cuba has denied any knowledge of the attacks, but it seems that Tillerson is skeptical of its claims. "What we've said to the Cubans is: small island. You've got a sophisticated intelligence apparatus. You probably know who's doing it. You can stop it. It's as simple as that," he said.
Over the last months, global financial markets showed volatility, with strong adjustments in asset prices due to inflation and monetary policies. | Read More
The logo in question. Photo: Courtesy of Instagram/dairyair_icecream_co

Its a tale as old as time: a small idyllic suburb with tensions running high over a hyperlocal issue. In this case, we bring you to the town of Montclair, New Jersey, where an ice cream stores sexy cow logo is causing a whole lot of drama.

The logo in question belongs to the recently opened Dairy Air Ice Cream Co. (get it?) and would frankly make a furry blush. It features a cartoon ice-cream-eating cow with blond braids, earrings, a beret (?), and a human ass (???). She looks like the Skinny Cows more, uh, adventurous cousin.

Its the human ass part in particular thats upsetting residents. NorthJersey.com reports that Amy Tingle posted a now-private open letter on Facebook criticizing the ice cream shops choice. It is offensive and sickening. A hyper-sexualized, obviously female cow with her ass upended and poking through a circle, tail raised up, waiting for what? Im not sure, but I do know that I am repulsed and offended, she wrote. This kind of marketing scheme is the reason we currently have a sexual predator in the White House.

Tingle and her partner, Maya Stein, co-own a local business called The Creativity Caravan  a studio, gallery, and imaginarium. While Dairy Airs owner, Anthony Tortoriello, hasnt commented on the issue publicly, Stein said that he stopped by their store to argue that the logo wasnt sexualized.

The stores manager, Natalie DeRose, took to Facebook to say her piece as well. We have heard the complaints, she wrote. We take them very seriously and we are acting to change the cow to be more fun and less sexy. Our goal was always fun and not sexy.

Dairy Airs exterior storefront does not feature the cow logo, opting instead for a graphic of an ice cream sandwich that is, in this writers opinion, neither fun nor sexy.

There have reportedly been mixed reactions to Tingles statement, with some calling it an overreaction, while others praised her for speaking up. Others still have complained elsewhere that their issue with Dairy Air is that they charge $9 for ice cream.

On Saturday, Tingle and Stein are opening up their business for anyone who wants to come to a community meeting to further discuss the issue. I hope people get quiet enough to listen to each others pain without trying to rationalize it or trying to tell this person, How could you be in pain? Stein told NorthJersey.com You cant tell somebody what to be in pain over.

Meanwhile, Dairy Air has since made their Instagram private  and only time will tell what will happen to the sexy ice cream cow.
David Ermold. Photo: David Ermold/Facebook

In June of 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage. Months later, Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis refused to grant David Ermold a marriage license to wed his partner David Moore.

At the time Davis cited Gods authority, and went to jail for five days for contempt of court.

Now Ermold is running for her job, the AP reports.

Ermold, an English professor at the University of Pikeville, was eventually able to marry his partner, David Moore, in 2015 Rowan County. (A judge also recently ruled Ermold, and other couples affected by Davis, could sue her for damages.)

But Ermold says there is still more to be done.

I think we need to deal with the circumstances and the consequences of what happened, Ermold told the AP.

I dont think the other candidates are looking at a larger message. I have an obligation here, really, to do this and to set things right.
Lorin Stein. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The Paris Review editor Lorin Stein resigned on Wednesday, as it was revealed the literary publication was conducting an internal investigation into his alleged inappropriate behavior toward female employees and writers, the New York Times reports. A spokesperson for book publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux told Publishers Marketplace that it had also accepted Steins resignation on Wednesday afternoon.

The Times notes that The Paris Reviews board began an investigation into the conduct of Stein  who had edited the publication since 2010  in October after he informed them that his name had appeared on a list (entitled SHITTY MEDIA MEN) circulating online with anonymous allegations of harassment and misconduct by men in media. Both a subcommittee and lawyers for The Paris Review spoke with current and former female employees, and received complaints from at least two female writers about Stein.

The board had been planning to meet on Thursday and had not yet decided what action to take on the matter. Early on Wednesday, Stein sent an email to the board suggesting he wouldnt make the same mistakes again. Per the Times:

He acknowledged dating and expressing interest in women with whom he professional connections, including interns and writers for the magazine, conduct that he acknowledged was an abuse of my position. He told the board that he had occasionally engaged in sexual behavior in the office after hours, but said that in all instances, the sexual contact was consensual and had happened when he was single. Mr. Stein was married in 2015.

He later apologized for his behavior in a Wednesday afternoon letter of resignation to board. At times in the past, I blurred the personal and the professional in ways that were, I now recognize, disrespectful of my colleagues and our contributors, and that made them feel uncomfortable or demeaned, Stein wrote. I am very sorry for any hurt I caused them.

Steins resignation serves a testament to the power of naming and shaming the so-called Harvey Weinsteins of the workplace  whether its through public forums, word of mouth, or even sly kickers in longer reports.

Lorin Stein just resigned as editor of the Paris Review after admitting inappropriately pursuing writers + interns. He was previously featured in the kicker of @irin + @AmyJBrittain's story on Charlie Rose's behavior: https://t.co/t8EI8Hin1X pic.twitter.com/m3jGnRhPGQ  Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) December 6, 2017
Elisabeth Moss in The Handmaids Tale. Photo: Hulu

On Tuesday night, dozens of women in Fairhope, Alabama, put on bright red Margaret Atwoodinspired capes and bonnets and dressed up as handmaids to protest outside a campaign rally for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, news station WKRG reports.

(In Atwoods The Handmaids Tale, women are kept for reproductive purposes and forced to dress in a uniform to designate their place in society.)

The women held signs that said, We want a senator not a predator, and Prey to end child molestation.

I dont think someone like him is a true reflection of all the good people in Alabama, one woman told WKRG. We want the world to know the women are telling the truth, another said.

The protesters reportedly tried to enter the campaign event but were turned away, and some were removed from the property.

These protests come as President Trump endorsed Moore this week, and the GOP reinstated its support for Moore. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon was also in Alabama on Tuesday to campaign for Moore.

Watch their protest below:
6-Year-Old Boy With Cancer Passes Away, Fulfills His Final Wish

A 6-year-old boy from Hiram, Georgia, recently lost his battle with cancerbut he got his final wish fulfilled.

Brantley Dobbs died Wednesday, Dec. 6, from a tumor on his brain stem that could not be removed or stopped. But through it all, he was smiling and in good spirits.

When people met Brantley or heard about him they just felt something so special, his mom, Jamie Dobbs told NBC affiliate Alive11.

According to Fox5 Brantley lived well past most children with the diagnosed disease. He lived with the tumor for a total of 20 months.

His story soon went viral. The Dobbs family wanted to experience the joy of the festive season together before Christmas. It would make such a dim time for our family so much brighter, she told Alive11. By Halloween, the house was decked out in red and green.

The family had a wish hoping for a few people to send Christmas ornaments to Brantley to cheer him upthe response they got was nothing short of amazing.

As kind people from around the world heard the wish, they gave hope to the familyone ornament at a time.

Just after a week of the story going public, the house was starting to fill up with cards and gifts. Ornaments arrived from nearly every state in the United States including a card from Vietnam, messages from Japan students, and even ornaments from London and Paris.

Kind strangers brought so much joy to the house. Brantley would laugh and smile as he helped the family open the huge stacks of boxes. He told Alive11 that he could feel the love behind each of the items.

I love all of them, Brantley told Alive11.

Nurses and staff from the Hospice Atlanta helped sort the thousands of packages and delivered them to Brantleys home.

The mother said everyones kindness showed how there is still goodness in people around the world.

It showed us how Brantley touched so many lives and that means more than we can say. She told Alive11, So many people sent love our way when we needed it most, thank you.

Following Brantleys passing, the hospice released this following statement obtained by Fox5.

Brantleys family sends their heartfelt gratitude for all of the love and support sent their way. The death of a child, especially at this time of year, is incredibly daunting. Please continue sending them love and light thru your thoughts and prayers.

The Dobbs family wants to continue the love as they plan to share the ornaments with other sick children in Brantleys honor.

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Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson arrives at Downing Street for the Inner Brexit Cabinet meeting on November 20, 2017 in London, England. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Britons Who Join ISIS Should Be Hunted and Killed: Defence Minister

LONDONBritons who have joined the ISIS terrorist group in Syria and Iraq should be hunted down and killed, Britains new defence minister said.

Gavin Williamson said that Britons who had gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS hated what Britain stands for, and that air strikes could be used against the estimated 270 British citizens who are still out there.

Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist cant cause any harm to Britain, Williamson told the Daily Mail in an interview published late on Wednesday.

We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat, he said, adding that he believed any British fighters who joined ISIS should never be allowed to return to the United Kingdom.

Williamson, 41, has been defence minister for little over a month, replacing Michael Fallon after he quit in a sexual harassment scandal.

Prominent British militants such as Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, and Sally Jones, have been reportedly killed by British or U.S. forces since travelling to fight for Islamic State.

After the death of Jones, who was known as the White Widow, Fallon said that British nationals who chose to leave the UK and fight for ISIS were a legitimate target.
China Prepares Refugee Camps at Border with North Korea

The day after a rather unusual Chinese news article was published about how citizens can better protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack, a document circulating online has revealed the Chinese authorities plans to take in North Korean refugees in the event of a war.

The document, an internal memo from the Baishan City branch office of China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company, showed that Changbai County in Jilin Provincelocated just across the border with North Koreahad plans to set up five shelters for North Korean refugees, according to Hong Kong media HK01. The county government asked China Mobile to guarantee that areas surrounding the five shelters would have telecommunications signals. The company had finished conducting signal testing on December 2.

Changbai County, also known as the Changbai Korean Autonomous County, is under the administration of Baishan City. Located in southern Jilin Provinceright across from North Koreas Hyesan CityChangbai County shares a 260-kilometer (about 162 miles) border with North Korea.

On Dec. 6, the state-run Jilin Daily ran a full page article with detailed information about nuclear weapons, their explosion and after-effects, and how one can better survive an attack. Neither the Jilin provincial government nor the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang confirmed the article was to prepare citizens for a nuclear explosion in the Korean Peninsula, but the timing amid North Koreas continued nuclear tests has led many to draw that conclusion.

As tensions between North Korea and the United States have escalated, the relationship between China and North Korea has not been on good terms recently. Chinas special envoy, Song Tao, the head of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) International Liaison Department, reportedly did not meet with Kim Jong-un, head of the North Korean regime, when he visited Pyongyang. Days after the envoys return, China closed a key bridge between Dandong City in Heilongjiang Province, China and Sinuiju in North Korea.

Chinas attempts to act as a mediator between the United States and North Korea seem to have hit rock bottom, according to an article by Global Times, Chinas nationalistic state-run newspaper. The article stated that China had already done its best since it couldnt convince North Korea or the United States. While China would continue to strive to ease the situation, it would make preparation for the worst-case scenarios.

Recently, reports also emerged of Chinese military activities. At the end of November, Chinas 78th Group Army, one of the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army)s Northern Theater Command conducted a live artillery exercise in Inner Mongolia, Chinas northernmost province, which borders Jilin, according to the Chinese regimes mouthpiece Xinhua.
DEA Clamps Down on Deadly Fentanyl Distribution

But over-prescription of pills is still fueling the opioid crisis

WASHINGTONTaking further steps to slow the rate of deaths from opioids, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is placing all fentanyl-related substances under emergency Schedule I controls.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.

The substance is manufactured primarily in China and shipped to the United States. It is being mixed with heroin or pressed into fake painkiller pills made to look like real prescription drugs. Fentanyl was originally developed for use in hospitals as a painkiller during surgeries.

In addition to the 16 fentanyl analogues that we have already sought to control, weve notified our Health and Human Service colleagues of our intent to place emergency Schedule I controls on the entire class of fentanyl-related substances, said Robert Patterson, acting DEA administrator, on Nov. 29.

This scheduling action is critical  because our investigations reveal efforts by some traffickers to change the molecular structure of fentanyl in an attempt to thwart law enforcement and evade prosecution in the United States.

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, according to the DEA.

Examples include heroin, LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, and peyote. Most opioid prescription painkillerssuch as Vicodin, Dilaudid, and OxyContinare classified as Schedule II controlled substances.

The widespread introduction of fentanyl into Americas illicit drug market has pushed overdose deaths to an all-time high. More than 64,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2016, according to preliminary numbers. Drug overdose is now the leading cause of death for those under the age of 50.

The death toll so far in 2017 is even higher, mostly due to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Regulating Prescriptions

But the opioid crisis began with prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin. Eighty percent of new heroin users start their habit with prescription opioids. When the prescription pills run out or become too expensive on the street, the new addict replaces them with heroin and, more recently, fentanyl.

It is an insidious epidemic created in large part by the over-prescribing of potent opioids, Patterson said. This has resulted in a new generation of opioid abusers, presently estimated at 12 million Americans.

Anyone who dispenses controlled substances, such as opioid painkillers, must register for approval through the DEA, which falls under the Justice Department.

Patterson said there are currently 1.7 million registrants handling prescription drugs in the United States.

The DEAs diversion control program operates to stop medical practitioners from making illicit sales of prescription pills.

On Nov. 20, Dr. Robert Gene Rand in Reno, Nevada, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter of a patient and unlawful distribution of oxycodone, according to the DEA.

Previously, only long-acting opioidsabout 10 percent of opioid prescriptionswere subject to strict regulation.

Despite warnings by another doctor and the patients mother, Rand continued to prescribe oxycodone to the patient, leading to the patients overdose and death in October 2015, the DEA said.

Rand also admitted that from March 2011 to April 2016, he prescribed a total of 23,645 oxycodone 30-milligram pills without a legitimate medical purpose to a second patient.

The DEA also investigates pharmacies that fill exceptionally high numbers of oxycodone prescriptions, customers who make excessive or frequent opioid purchases, multiple customers with identical addresses, or customers traveling extreme distances to specific pharmacies despite access to more convenient options.

More recently, weve seen a downturn in the overall number of opioid prescriptions, but there remains more work, Patterson said.

President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency on Oct. 26. The declaration included ways to increase access to treatment and imposed stricter requirements on opioid prescriptions.

Previously, only long-acting opioidsabout 10 percent of opioid prescriptionswere subject to strict regulation. Recently, that was expanded to include immediate-release opioids. The new requirements will make all opioids that are manufactured subject to the same strict regulations.

New Justice Department Initiatives

On Nov. 29, Patterson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced three initiatives to help tighten the net around the illicit distribution of opioids and other drugs.

In the first new plan, the Justice Department is sending more than $12 million in grants to state and local law enforcement agencies to take heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, and other illicit drugs off our streets, Sessions said. He didnt elaborate on how local law enforcement agencies would spend the money.

Second, a new field division within the DEA will open in Louisville, serving Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee. The move is aimed to align DEA efforts in the Appalachian mountain region, and the new division is the first in almost 20 years.

These three states combined are problematic in the Appalachian region and very specific to the opioid crisis, said Patterson.

Third, all U.S. Attorney offices in the country must appoint an opioid coordinator, who will convene a task force of state, federal, and local law enforcement and help determine which cases to take federal, Sessions said.

We will not slow down for one day or even one instant. With one American dying of a drug overdose every nine minutes, enforcing our drug laws is more important than ever.
Dying Road Rage Victim Tells Mom: Dont let my kids forget about me

After struggling for 16 months, the victim of a road rage incident succumbed to the multiple injuries she sustained.

She spent the last moments of her life thinking of her children.

Her last two words before they put her on the vent [ventilator, a breathing machine] was, Please dont let them forget about me, Mom. Dont let my kids forget about me, her mother, Lisa Barlow told WFAA.

Jennifer Russell was seriously injured in a road rage incident in July 2016. She endured more than two dozen surgeries and lost her right leg. She was broken and depressed, but she refused to give up.

Ten months after the incident, Russel took her first steps. It looked like she might recover fully, but her body was too broken.

She tried hard, said Barlow. She was pretty much sick every day since the accident.

Russell died on the morning of Dec. 4. Her four-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son were at her bedside.

She said the worst thing they could have done to her was take her ability away to be that mother for her children, Barlow told WFAA after her daughter passed away.

A few days earlier, Russell used the last of her energy to buy Christmas gifts for her children.

She went out on Black Friday in her wheelchair and fought the crowds to make sure she could get them all she could get them, Barlow said.

Russell then decorated the familys Christmas tree. A few days later she was back in the hospitalfor the last time.

Her family says they believe that God kept Russell alive for so long so she could prepare her children for her passing.

Argument Escalates to Lethal Levels

Jennifer Russell was riding with her fiance, James McGree, on FM 691 near La Cima Road in Denison, Texas, on July 29, 2016, when a driver in a white Hyundai Tiburon cut them off.

McGree pulled up next to the other car and exchanged words with the driver. During the course of the exchange, McGree spat on the other drivers car.

I wish I had handled myself differently, he told WFAA News after the incident.

After a while McGree saw the same white Hyundai in his rearview mirror, closely followed by a black Ford truck. McGree tried to drive away.

I was running for my life. I didnt know what they were going to do, he told WFAA.

McGree says they two forced his car into oncoming traffic. A pickup truck slammed into the passenger side of McGrees car. The car flipped and rolled.

Russell, then 28 years old, was severely injured. She was rushed to Intensive Care Unit at the Medical Center of Plano, where she remained for 95 days, enduring more than two dozen surgeries, including the amputation of her right leg and part of her hip.

Damage and Pain and a Hope for Justice

At the time she was so injured and in so much pain, she didnt want to live. In an interview with WFAA on Nov. 16, she said, I wanted to die today. I told my mom I used to be scared of the afterlife but now Im more scared of living.

I really shouldnt be alive, but some things are meant to be, she added.

For a while, Russell was motivated by a desire to see the men who crippled her brought to justice.

In June 2017, Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested 20-year-old Joshua Haliburton and 19-year-old Tripp Bird, the drivers in the other two vehicles.

Russell read a statement shed written when she heard they had been caught.

It hurt a lot waiting for this and now its like a big sigh of relief, she read. Ill always be severely damaged, I know that. But Ill never have to know what its like to nearly kill someone and just leave them there like they dont matter.

Barlow told KXII, I feel like Tripp and Joshua have given us a life sentence, too, of pain and agony, because I will spend the rest of my life taking care of her, shell need that.

I want the end result for them to get the maximum punishable by law for what theyve done to my daughter, she added.

Haliburton and Bird were each charged with causing an accident involving serious bodily injury or death, and two counts each of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. With Russells death, more charges could be added, said Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown.

We potentially have manslaughter charges but its not going to be a murder case because there is no evidence of intent, said Brown, according to KXII-TV. Murder is when you intentionally take the life of somebody.

The evidence is not going to change. What they did is not going to change. But now a jury will be able to consider that what they did caused a death.

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Extremism Stems From Repressive States, Not Western Policy, Says UKs Johnson

LONDONRepressive states are to blame for breeding terrorism, Britains foreign minister Boris Johnson will say on Thursday, Dec. 7, in a speech defending Western foreign policy and denouncing Islamic extremism.

Britain suffered four deadly attacks in London and Manchester between March and June this year that killed 36 people, and on Wednesday, Dec. 6, a man appeared in court accused of plotting to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Speaking to diplomats and experts at the Foreign Office in London, Johnson will call for better engagement with Muslim populations worldwide and argue that blaming Western intervention for the rise of Islamist extremism plays into the jihadi narrative, according to a briefing note issued by the Foreign Office.

To assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples  Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh  with no such history in the region, he will say according to advanced extracts of his speech.

By William James
FBI Closing In on Border Patrol Agent Murder Suspects

The FBI is getting closer to finding the suspects involved in the death of Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez and the injury of his partner in El Paso on Nov. 18.

Martinez and his Big Bend Sector partner were responding to activity while on patrol near Interstate 10, in the Van Horn Station area, late on Nov. 18, according to a press release by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Agent Martinezs partner reported that they were both injured and in need of assistance, the release said. Both agents sustained traumatic head injuries, along with other miscellaneous physical injuries. Martinez died early the next morning, on Nov. 19.

An FBI search warrant for a car states that there is probable cause to believe the vehicle contains trace evidence associated with the murder of Martinez and injury of his partner, as well as alien smuggling and drug trafficking.

The warrant suggests the two agents were assaulted by illegal aliens with rocks.

#CBP mourns the loss of #USBP Agent Rogelio Martinez who passed away this morning. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and fellow Agents during this difficult time. #HonorFirst https://t.co/ALpQ30thVk pic.twitter.com/wLcPzEXtKs  CBP (@CustomsBorder) November 19, 2017

The warrant was filed by FBI Special Agent Jeff Rosenquist and signed by a judge in Albuquerque on Dec. 2, according to a copy obtained by KTSM-TV.

The car is a silver 2004 Pontiac Grand Am registered to a person in Portales, New Mexico, and is currently in the custody of the FBI.

This affidavit is based upon my conversations with other law enforcement officers involved in the investigation, and my review of documents, including the interviews of cooperating witnesses, Rosenquist stated in the document.

I am informed that a source of information (SOI) provided information to the Border Patrol about the likely perpetrators of the assault, Rosenquist said.

SOI, who is familiar with individuals engaged in the illegal transportation of aliens across the U.S./Mexico border, known as coyotes, told a CBP agent that one such coyote recently smuggled a group of persons across the US/Mexico border. Individuals in that group, whose names were unknown to the coyote, discussed their assaults of the agents.

The SOI told agents that one of the suspects was located in Odessa, Texas, and the other was in Portales, new Mexico.

FBI agents interviewed two brothers on Nov. 28 in relation to the death and assaults of the Border Patrol agents, according to the affidavit. One of the brothers admitted to driving the Pontiac to Presidio, Texas, on Nov. 20 to pick someone up on the side of a road. The car was used to smuggle drugs, including methamphetamine and heroin, according to an unidentified female witness.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the resolution of this case.
Her Excellency Shinkai Karokhail, Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada, addresses the Ottawa Treaty 20th anniversary conference in Ottawa on Dec. 4, 2017. (Susan Korah)

Fighting Landmines: Progress Made, but More Funding Needed, Say NGOs

20th anniversary conference on anti-landmine treaty highlights need for sustained commitment

OTTAWAAn anniversary celebration conference on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, garnered high praise for Canadas stellar role in convincing 122 countries to sign it 20 years ago.

On Dec. 4, landmine activists from around the world gathered in Ottawa to mark the anniversary of the signing ceremony on Dec. 3, 1997.

The Ottawa Treaty is working, and Canada is one of the top ten donors to the work of de-mining and of rehabilitating people injured by these deadly weapons, said Chris Loughran, director of policy and evaluation with Mines Advisory Group, an international NGO that removes and destroys landmines around the world.

Representatives of some other NGOs involved in de-mining operations, however, were less enthusiastic about Canadas ongoing commitment.

A funding announcement by Global Affairs Canada drew a mixed response. Keynote speaker Matt DeCourcey, Parliamentary Secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, said he has allocated $12 million for the rehabilitation and re-integration of mine explosion survivors into their communities.

Erin Hunt, program officer with Mines Action Canada of Ottawa, expressed disappointment with the amount. The 12 million announced today is a slight increase in Canadas contribution, but its still not sufficient, she said.

Canadian funding should increase to previous levels of $1 per Canadian per year which would place Canada in the top five global donors to mine actions, said Paul Hannon, executive director of Mines Action Canada.

Major-General James Cowan, CEO of Halo Trust, the worlds largest humanitarian mine clearance organization, said 80 percent of Halo Trusts funding comes from governments.

The U.S., U.K., and Canada have been generous in the past, but now theres uncertainty around that, he said.

Christoph Harnisch, leader of the delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross, echoed the theme of sustained commitment.

Countries like Colombia would need 30-40 years engagement to end de-mining operations, he said.

Harnisch noted, however, that this should not be entirely the responsibility of traditional donor governments, and that those who were engaged in the conflict should also be held accountable.

Women, girls disproportionately impacted

All signatories of the Ottawa Treaty (now 162 countries) are obligated to not only clear landmines and destroy stockpiles but also to assist victimsmany of whom are women and girls.

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by landmines and other explosive remnants of war, said Paul Hannon, executive director of Mines Action Canada. Its significant that the movement to ban landmines has been led by women since the 1990s.

Liberal MP Pam Damoff called attention to the Elsie Initiative on Women in Peace Operations that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced recently. The initiative, named after Canadian womens rights pioneer Elsie MacGill (1905-1980), aims at supporting more women to become engaged in peace processes.

When women become part of conflict resolution, peace becomes more durable, she said.

Shinkai Karokhail, Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada, said that while donating to de-mining in her countrysaid to be the most landmine-infested in the worldCanada must ensure that some funds are specifically allocated for women victims. This is particularly necessary in a country where women seldom have any voice in decision-making, she noted.

Survivors share experiences

Two landmine victims, one from Colombia and the other from Sri Lanka, shared their stories, both emphasizing the need for sustained funding and for specific assistance to women victims.

Aide Rocio Arias, 23, an indigenous woman from a remote community in Colombia, lost both legs in a landmine accident when she was 13 years old. This required blood transfusions, amputations, prolonged treatment, prosthetics, and rehabilitation, all of which her family could only afford with the assistance of Handicap International and the Red Cross.

Since then Arias has been trained as a counsellor to support similar victims. She also has had a son. Hes my greatest reason to keep going, she said with a broad smile.

Krishnaveni Kaneshan, a Sri Lankan who lost many male family members in her countrys civil war, initially worked as a hands-on de-miner and is now a trainer for Halo Trust. She praised the organization for employing female staff in a country where women often have to resort to illegal activities to support their families.

Susan Korah is a freelance journalist based in Ottawa. She has a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University and writes on Canadian and international politics as well as travel and lifestyle.
Florida Couple Left Boy Alone in Trailer for 2 Months, Police Say

A Florida couple is accused of leaving a minor alone in a trailer without any furniture for two months and often without any food, according to local reports.

The Pensacola News-Journal reported that 34-year-old Jennifer Nichols and 32-year-old Joshua Sanders were arrested and charged on Nov. 30 with child neglect.

Police didnt list the age of the boy, but the News-Journal reported that he is a juvenile.

The Escambia County Sheriffs Office said that the boy was left inside a trailer that they rented. A witness who reported the alleged neglect said she rented the trailer to Sanders and Nichols since the start of September.

The child said that he was living there for two months, and he did speak with Nichols and Sanders on occasion. They would give him some money and one or two meals. However, he said he wasnt able to contact them often, according to the News-Journal.

The child also said that he hadnt been to school for several months, adding that he had merely clothes and shoes in the trailerno furniture.

Sanders reportedly told police that hes not responsible for the child, saying he was emancipated. The child, however, said otherwise, WTSP reported.

The child was taken into Florida Department of Children and Families custody.

Sanders and Nichols are being held on $250,000 and $150,000 bond, respectively.

Its unclear if they have an attorney.

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Florida Man Attempted to Kill Ex-Girlfriend After She Refused Marriage Proposal, Police Say

A Florida man attempted to kill his former girlfriend after she refused his marriage proposal last week, CBS News reports.

The woman told police that she broke up with Gordon Kovie five years ago, but on Nov. 30 he proposed marriage. She refused.

Kovie, 48, forced a ring onto her finger, but she took it off and left it in his car, according to an arrest warrant.

The woman received several threatening text messages the next day, the warrant alleged.

You dont deserve to be (expletive) love (sic) and dont ever threaten me with the police dont ever threaten me with the cops I will do something (expletive) crazy go ahead and try me, one text message state, according to the report.

The rejected suitor then repeatedly asked the victim to return his ring, $60, and a dress he bought for her. The woman told him that he can find the ring in his car.

The story turned violent on Dec. 1 when Kovie banged on the door of a mobile home where the victim was with her friend. Surveillance video from a local business shows Kovie reaching out of the drivers side window with a gun.

A deputy told CBS that the video then shows muzzle flashes can be seen as Kovie fired several rounds at the mobile home.

Crime scene investigators found 11 spent bullet casing on the ground. Several bullets struck the mobile home and one made it inside and hit a refrigerator.

Police arrested Kovie and a 16-year-old suspect when the found Kovies car at the scene of an unrelated drug overdose.

Police charge Kovie with first-degree attempted murder, aggravated stalking, shooting into an occupied dwelling, and felon in possession of a firearm. He did not enter a plea.

Gordon lived at 4084 Aster Ct in Lake Worth, Florida, according to his booking card.

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From NTD.tv
Florida Mayor Arrested for Using Dead Peoples Handicap Permits

The mayor of a Florida town was arrested for using handicapped parking permits that belonged to deceased people.

Davenport Mayor Darlene Bradley was arrested on felony charges for using the identification of a deceased person. She was also arrested for possessing an altered or counterfeit decal, according to the Bradenton Herald.

The 60-year-old has been Davenports mayor since 2015.

JUST IN: #Davenport Mayor Teresa Bradley arrested by @PolkCoSheriff for using 2 different handicapped placards not belonging to her. 1 belonged to someone who was deceased. @FOX13News pic.twitter.com/yACFn1szrd  Lucas Bogg (@LucasBoggPhotog) December 6, 2017

Officials said that Bradley was seen placing a handicap placard on her rearview mirror before she left her car. When she returned to her vehicle, she removed it.

Officials said she used the placard when she parked in front of City Hall.

Polk County Sheriffs deputies found two handicapped placards that were issued to two different people who had died. One died in 2012 and the other in 2015, the Herald reported.

We expect our elected officials to set the proper example. She not only violated the law, she embarrassed the citizens of Davenport with her illegal conduct, Sheriff Grady Judd said.

The Polk County Sheriffs Office said it got a tip last month that she was parking in handicap spots, and she was not known to be handicapped or have a placard issued to her, according to their press release.

Video footage captured Bradley exiting the video with no assistance, removing a large wheeled brief/suitcase from the trunk and walking into the City Hall meeting without assistance, according to Fox.

She was released on $2,250 bond.

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Four Children Kidnapped by Cult Found in Bizarre Locations

Four missing girls kidnapped by members of a cult were found safe Sunday hidden in bizarre locations near a Utah ghost town.

Lily Shaffer, 7, and Hattie Coltharp, 4, were found hiding in 50-gallon plastic water barrels in the middle of a tumbleweed Utah desert one mile west of Lund, an unincorporated ghost town with an official population of one.

Hours later, a law enforcement search party followed a tip to find Dinah Coltharp, 8, and Samantha Shaffer, 5, hidden in an abandoned trailer.

All four of the girls spent 24 hours in freezing temperatures by the time they were discovered.

Had we not received that tip today, these girls probably would not have been alive in the morning, Lt. Del Schlosser from the Iron County Sheriffs office told CBS Denver.



(L-R) Dinah Coltharp, 8; William Coltharp, 7; Haddie Coltharp, 4; and Seth Coltharp, 6. (Facebook)

The two Coltharp girls and their two brothers vanished from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, three months ago. Their mother believed that they were kidnapped by their estranged father, John Coltharp, after he lost custody of the children.

The childrens mother, Micha Soble, told police that John Coltharp was a member of the Knights of the Crystal Blade cult, according to an Iron County Sheriff press release. Coltharp traveled to Utah to live with Samuel Shaffer, the cults prophet and father of Samantha and Lily.

Utah law enforcement followed a tip from Sobles court documents that stated that her four biological children may be located near Beryl junction about 30 miles west of Cedar City. Police did not find the children there, but received a tip two days later on Dec. 3 that led them to a compound made up of shipping containers 1 mile west of Lund where Shaffer and Coltharp are believed to have lived.

Deputies pulled over a car near the compound and spoke to Keith Colthart, John Coltharts father. The interview led them to the compound where the found the missing Colthart boys, Seth and William.



John Coltharp (Facebook)



Keith Coltharp

But the Coltharp girls were missing and so was Shaffer. Investigators learned that Shaffer walked out into the desert with Dinah, Haddie and his own two daughters on Sunday night.

A search commenced with more than 20 law enforcement personnel, a helicopter and an ambulance. Two hours later, police received a tip about a man walking alone matching Shaffers description.

Shaffer was arrested, questioned and eventually revealed the locations of the four girls in the barrels and the trailer.

The four Coltharp children were reunited with their mother. She started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help the children cope with the trauma they suffered.

The amount of heartache and fear this family has gone through, is unimaginable, Soble, the mother, wrote. This is but the beginning of a long road of getting their lives back together and their extended family is asking for help for this tough road ahead.

From NTD.tv
Mercurys toxic properties have been apparent for centuries. Nonetheless, from the time of the first Emperor of China on, doctors have been fascinated with the metals purported curative properties. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, health practitioners blithely used mercury as a medical treatment for everything from syphilis to teething discomfort to dysentery.

As early as the 1820s, some healers began to object to the practice of giving poison as medicine, but, in many branches of medicine, physicians remained enthusiastic. In the late 1890s, for example, the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet published case studies broadcasting doctors seemingly successful use of mercury for the treatment of heart disease. Referring to a mercurous chloride compound called calomel (also called the blue pill), Dr. Arthur Foxwell in Birmingham praised, in September 1895, mercurys unique virtues as a cardiac tonic capable of freeing a sluggish heart of half its labour.

Although many researchers have focused heavily on mercurys neurotoxicity in children, others acknowledge that, in adults, the cardiovascular system may be exquisitely vulnerable to mercurys toxic effects.

Over a century later, the medical perspective on mercury and heart disease has come to look quite different. Although many researchers have focused heavily on mercurys neurotoxicity in children, others acknowledge that, in adults, the cardiovascular system may be exquisitely vulnerable to mercurys toxic effects. A simple search using the terms mercury and heart disease in PubMed (the National Institutes of Health database) pulls up ample documentation detailing a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease in individuals who have higher blood levels of mercury. Mercury damages the cardiovascular system even at low concentrations of exposure.

Effects of Mercury on the Heart

Researchers who acknowledge that mercury exposure increases cardiovascular risk often profess ignorance about the underlying cellular mechanisms of harm. However, a trio of relatively recent articles makes it apparent that scientists actually know quite a bit about how mercury exerts its cardiotoxic effects. Two of the reports, published in 2011 in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension and in 2014 in the Journal of Cardiovascular Diseases & Diagnosis, are authored by Vanderbilt University professor and hypertension expert Mark Houston, who has published extensively on hypertension and heart disease since the 1980s. Dr. Houston began turning his attention to the ramifications of mercury exposure for heart disease a decade ago. A newer study, a review by Italian researcher Giuseppe Genchi and colleagues that appeared in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2017, also reviews mercurys overall toxicity and specific cardiovascular effects.

the clinical consequences of these and other pathophysiologic mechanisms explain the wide variety of cardiovascular diseases caused by mercury.

It should not be surprising that many of the biological mechanisms that explain mercurys deleterious impacts on the brain (recently summarized here by World Mercury Project) likewise create problems for the heart. Dr. Houstons two articles list 22 different vascular biological effects of mercury that he further distills into the eight categories shown in the table below. According to Houston, the clinical consequences of these and other pathophysiologic mechanisms explain the wide variety of cardiovascular diseases caused by mercury. These conditions include: hypertension, diastolic dysfunction, generalized atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, cardiac arrhythmias, reduced heart rate variability, sudden cardiac death, cerebrovascular accidents, carotid artery obstruction and left ventricular hypertrophy.

Vascular Biologic Effects of Mercury:

 Increased oxidative stress

 Vascular inflammation

 Thrombosis

 Vascular smooth muscle proliferation and migration

 Endothelial dysfunction

 Dyslipidemia (oxidation of high-density lipoprotein and paraxonase)

 Immune dysfunction

 Mitochondrial dysfunction

SOURCES: Houston 2011 and Houston 2014

Increased oxidative stress: Mercury prompts increased production of free radicals (a type of reactive oxygen species or ROS) and also inactivates antioxidant defenses, including compromising the activity of the important antioxidant glutathione. Oxidative stress is the term used to describe these disturbances in ROS equilibrium. As Genchi and coauthors observe, Glutathioneis the most potent intracellular and mitochondrial antioxidant for protecting against oxidative stress, inflammation and cardiovascular diseases. In fact, clinicians consider increased oxidative stress as a predictive biomarkerfor cardiac pathology: When the finely regulated signaling pathways of [ROS] molecules become uninhibited, it may lead to the initiation and progression of atherosclerotic disease.

Vascular inflammation: Among its many inflammatory effects, mercury alters arachidonic acid metabolism. Arachidonic acid metabolites are a type of fatty acid compound. With mercury-induced inflammation, these metabolites make the vascular endotheliumwhich plays a central role in vascular homeostasismore leaky.

Thrombosis: Mercury induces thrombosis (blood clotting), in part, by promoting abnormal coagulation and clumping of platelets as well as changes in platelet shape. Back in 1946, clinicians who tested the suitability of mercury-containing gelatin solutions as plasma substitutes in 39 patients initially were baffled to observe thrombosis of the injected veins as a significant and frequent untoward effect. The physicians stated, Because of the high incidence and considerable extent of venous thrombosis it seemed likely that the [gelatin] solutions contained a thrombosing substance; they ultimately concluded that the mercurial preservatives in the gelatin solutions were the probable cause.

Changes in vascular smooth muscle cells: Mercury stimulates proliferation and changes in the size of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), versatile cells that line the walls of arteries and veins. VSMCs play a role in all the physiological functions in the vascular wall, including regulation of blood pressure. VSMCs are also the main cellular determinants of arterial wall pathology. Genchi et al. point out that exposure to mercury compounds correlates strongly with hypertension. Mercurys effects on VSMCs have prompted calls to explicitly consider mercury as an environmental risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Endothelial dysfunction: The vascular endothelium is indispensable for the regulation of vascular tone and the maintenance of vascular homeostasis. Even at very low levels of exposure, mercury promotes endothelial dysfunction. When the vascular endothelium stops working properly, it loses its ability to regulate vascular tone and perform other essential jobs. Clinicians consider endothelial dysfunction as an independent predictor of cardiac events because it represents a key early step in the development of atherosclerosis andplaque progression and the occurrence of atherosclerotic complications.

Dyslipidemia: Heart disease experts have long viewed dyslipidemia (abnormal lipid profiles) as closely related to coronary heart disease as well as metabolic syndrome. Recent studies have confirmed that chronic exposure to organic mercury induces dyslipidemia and contributes to the development of atherosclerotic plaques. According to Dr. Houston and Genchis team, mercury disrupts lipids, in part, by inactivating paraoxonase, an antioxidative enzyme that plays an important role in preventing cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis. Paraoxonase is a major component of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and mercury-induced inactivation of paraoxonase, makes HDL cholesterol dysfunctional.

Immune dysfunction: Macrophages (a type of immune system cell called phagocytes) play a key role in innate immunity by swallowing, killing and digesting invaders. Exposure to mercury lowers immune function in part by reducing phagocytic activity. Where cardiovascular disease is concerned, macrophages play a role in both the progression and regression of inflammation in atherosclerotic lesions. Researchers recently have noted the importance of understanding how pathological factors such as mercury exposure affect macrophage activity so as to improve cardiovascular disease outcomes. A 2016 study by a group of European researchers, which found an association between a heart condition called Takotsubo syndrome (TS) and hypersensitivity to mercury and other metals, noted that TS patients displayed pathological immune reactivity.

Mitochondrial dysfunction: Scientists have extensively documented mercurys adverse effects on the mitochondria. Toxicologists have shown that normal human brain cells, for example, preferentially take up organic ethylmercury, damaging the cells mitochondria and setting off a cascade that leads to cell death. The maladaptive mitochondrial responses triggered by mercury also play a major role in the development of abnormalities related to cardiovascular disease, including dyslipidemia, hypertension and various cardiac pathologies.

Chelation Therapy: At the close of their article, Genchi and coauthors recommend chelation therapy as a strategy to get rid of mercury and thereby avoid further distribution and penetration [of mercury] in tissues. Chelating agents bind to unwanted metals and minerals in the blood and enable urinary excretion. Clinicians started trying out the synthetic amino acid EDTA for the treatment of angina and other forms of atherosclerotic disease beginning in the 1950s, after they observed that EDTA not only chelated lead effectively but also improved and stabilized cardiovascular function.

From 20032012, the National Institutes of Health funded the first large-scale study of EDTA chelation therapythe Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT)to examine its safety and efficacy in individuals who had experienced prior heart attacks. Using a rigorous randomized placebo-controlled, double-blind study design, TACT found that EDTA infusions safely reduced the risk of subsequent cardiac events, with particularly pronounced therapeutic benefits in individuals with diabetes. Commenting on what made the TACT study unique, investigators noted that whereas the association of metals with cardiovascular disease is not newthis knowledge has been held in [discipline-specific] silos[that] the cardiologist does not often visit. They added that the TACT results have unveiled an exciting area of newresearch with the underlying concept that xenobiotic metals may be a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

The evidence base for EDTA is most substantial for lead and cadmium. Genchi and coauthors describe other synthetic chelating agents, including DMSA and DMPS, that can chelate and immobilize organic and inorganic forms of mercury, specifically. However, dental expert Dr. Hal Huggins and cardiologist Dr. Thomas Levy (who coauthored the book Uninformed Consent: The Hidden Dangers in Dental Care) discourage use of DMPS, which they describe as a sledge hammer to the immune system. On the other hand, Huggins and Levy view oral DMSA as acceptable, if used appropriately.

Studies have reported that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also can benefit from DMSA chelation therapy, which is not surprising given mercurys role in contributing to ASD. One study carried out with 65 ASD children in the U.S. found that a single round of DMSA had significant behavioral effects that correlated with increased excretion of mercury and other toxic metals as well as changes in glutathione status. Another studyinvolving 44 Egyptian children with ASD generated similar results. Some autism expertshave urged caution in using overly aggressive synthetic chelation agents, however.

Taking Mercury Seriously

Dr. Houston and Genchis team both comment on the sizeable body burden of mercury that is accumulating in humans of our time (13 milligrams in the average 165-pound individual). In light of the myriad intake pathways of mercury (via air, water, food, vaccines, other pharmaceuticals and cosmetics), it behooves the public health community to take seriously the relationship between mercury exposure and cardiovascular disease risks, particularly because cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and around the world. At a minimum, it is vital that clinicians evaluate mercury toxicity in any patient with hypertension, coronary heart disease, cerebral vascular disease, or other vascular diseases and in patients who have a clinical history of exposure or clinical evidence on examination of mercury overload.

By the World Mercury Project Team. Visit worldmercuryproject.org for more information.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
In Hunan Province, Anti-Corruption Campaign Takes Down the Flies

Officials at lowest level of the Party break the law to enrich themselves

The warning came in August, when the anti-corruption watchdog agency in Chinas Hunan Province asked local public officials to voluntarily give up their illegal business dealings. They had until Sept. 30 to come clean and cease their involvement.

Apparently, they didnt heed the warning. On Dec. 6, Chinas Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the central anti-corruption authorities, announced that 13 public officials have received either a warning or punishment, in violation of Hunans public official guidelines that forbid public officials, their spouses, and children from involvement in six different sectors, including mining, sand and gravel, fishing, hydropower, firecrackers, and dangerous chemicals.

The rule was made to discourage nepotism. Retired officials and those who have quit their public posts need to wait three years before they can be involved in businesses in these sectors.

Deng Jianming, an inspection team leader for the Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Resources Bureau in Kaifa District in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, teamed up with family members and spent 1.2 million yuan ($181,404) to buy a transport ship. They operated the ship to carry sand and gravel for companies. Using his government position, he pocketed a huge sum of money when he sold the sand and gravel materials at a price higher than the market rate, according to the CCDI. Deng was given a severe warning in October.

Dengs colleagues also profited in the sand and gravel sector. Ouyang Yinong, who worked at the Highway Management Bureau in Heshan District located in neighboring Yiyang City, and He Genghui, who worked in the Heshan Highway Bureau, each spent 200,000 yuan ($30,234) to buy shares at a local gravel yard. They each had gained a profit of 100,000 yuan ($15,117) by the end of 2016. In August, they both were stripped of their party membership and sent to the judicial system for prosecution.

Jiang Yimin, a staff member working at the cultural tourism service center in Taojinping Village in Xupu County, Hunan, received a Party record of demerit in November when he was found to have invested a total of 1.75 million yuan ($264,495) at a stone quarry run by his friend.

In Simen County, Hunan, ten public officials, including Tan Xijun, who worked in the water bureau in the Simen County government, and Hou Manli, a member of a political advisory body in Hunan known as the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), purchased shares in a hydropower company in Simen. In November, both Tan and Hou received Party warnings for discipline.

These officials are considered flies, Party jargon for low-ranking Party officials, as opposed to the more powerful high-ranking officials, known as tigers. The widespread corruption in Hunan illustrates how Party officials often mix business, work, and personal relationships and use their power to benefit themselves.

This kind of corruption is especially prevalent in state-owned sectors like mining, banking, telecommunications, and oil. The current anti-corruption campaign, which started in 2012 when Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power, has cleaned up many tigers and flies in these party-controlled sectors.

While the sacking of tigers often grabs the headlines, the number of flies that have been purged is staggering. According to statistics released by CCDI in October, over 1.34 million party officials with a township-level or lower position have received Party punishment as of June 2017, among them about 640,000 held a village-level position or lower (village is lower ranked than township).

A quote on the CCPs main website sums up the corruption endemic at the lowest levels of the Party. The website says there is a common saying among some Chinese officials: You fight your way to become a village chief. You drink your way up to a town chief. And you bribe your way to be a county chief, according to the CCPs main official website.

The CCPs website explained that some village chiefs were the heads of local gangs, who bossed around local citizens while the chiefs family controlled everything in the village. Ma Demai, the former party secretary in Suihua City in Heilongjiang Province was listed as an example. He was sentenced to death with reprieve in 2005 for selling government positions for money, totaling 6.03 million yuan (about $911,374).
People gather on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris to celebrate the New Year, late on December 31, 2012. AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA (Photo credit should read MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images)

ISIS Threatens Terror Attacks on New Years Day

The ISIS terrorist group has threatened attacks on New Years Day in a new propaganda poster.

The poster shows crowds of people on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. An ISIS insignia and a hand holding a bloodied chefs knife have been added to the picture together with writing saying, We will make New Years Day hell, The Daily Mail reported.

ISIS has previously threatened to attack Christmas markets in Europe but with a change of strategy. In December 2016, an ISIS terrorist plowed a truck through Berlins Breitscheidplatz Christmas market, killing 12.

To prevent such attacks, Germany started to install roadblocks at events to prevent vehicular attacks. In response, ISIS incited its followers to attack on foot.

If you put barriers to cars in front of markets, you will not prevent people entering them on foot, stated another propaganda poster.

ISIS has specifically threatened the UK with a poster showing a London street with Christmas decorations and a text soon on your holidays.

BlackOps Cyber, a darknet intelligence company, obtained the image on Nov. 21 and provided it exclusively to The Epoch Times on the same day six alleged ISIS plotters were arrested in Germany. The men, originally from Syria, were believed to have been plotting an attack on a Christmas market involving weapons and explosives.

ISIS has been continually losing control of territory in both Iraq and Syria.

Daeshs loss of Mosul [in Iraq] and now Raqqah [in Syria] are turning points for the terrorist organization, whose leaders grow ever more distant from a dwindling number of terrorist adherents, stated an Oct. 20 press release issued by Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition mission to defeat ISIS, which it calls Daesh, a derogatory play on the groups name that is hated by ISIS. Daesh means to crush.

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Joshua Philipp, John Smithies contributed to this report.
Record-breaking "Jeopardy" game show champion and former college professor Stephanie Jass has been charged with two cybercrime felonies. (Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

Jeopardy! Winner Charged With Cybercrime Felonies

A record-breaking Jeopardy game show champion and former Adrian College history professor has been charged with two cybercrime-related felonies.

Stephanie Jass, 47, faced arraignment on Tuesday, Dec. 5, in Lenawee County District Court in southern Michigan, mlive.com reports, on charges of unauthorized access to a college computer, and using a computer to commit a crime.

The court appearance follows an investigation by the Michigan State Police Cyber Command Center after staff at Adrian College accused Jass of accessing email accounts without proper authorization.

If convicted of the more serious of the two chargesusing a computer without authorization for fraudulent purposesJass could face a fine of $10,000 and five years in prison.

It is not known when Jass allegedly accessed the emails nor whose accounts may have been affected. Investigators have confirmed that an extensive forensic examination of the digital evidence has been carried out, but have declined to provide further details, reports mlive.com.

The accused is no longer an employee of Adrian College, and mlive.com obtained a statement from its representative highlighting the colleges commitment to privacy rights.

Adrian College wants to sincerely thank the Michigan State Police and the Lenawee County Prosecutors Office for their thorough investigation and for ultimately bringing charges in this crime, reads the statement. Privacy rights are a fundamental principle of our American democracy and Adrian College stands with those who protect these rights.

The college was notified on Tuesday, Dec. 5, of Jasss arrest. The accused is out on a personal bond of $20,000.

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Man Gets Into Argument With 3 Friends, Police Then Find Their Bodies

Arkansas police arrested a man on Wednesday morning in connection with a triple homicide, KATV reported.

Garland County Sheriffs Deputies responded to a call on Tuesday, Dec. 5, from a man who said he had information about a murder. The deputies spoke to a man in Hot Springs, Arkansas who said that 34-year-old Nicholas Matthew Lewondowski visited his home on Monday with three friends.

Nicholas Matthew Lewondowski (Facebook)

Lewondowski got into an argument with the three friends about some stolen property, the deputies learned. Lewondowski lost his cool and left the home with his friends to go to another location, according to the arrest affidavit.

Lewondowski then returned to the mans home the next day, the affidavit states, and told him that he had killed the three friends. Lewondowski asked for help in covering up the murders.

Nicholas Matthew Lewondowski (Facebook)

The man then went to help Lewondowski move vehicles near a home on Nevada Street. Lewondowski told the man that they would probably just burn the residence down.

After hearing the mans report, the officers went to 208 Nevada St. in Hot Springs and found three bodies inside the unlocked house.

Lewondowski was charged with three counts of capital murder, according to the Garland County Sheriffs inmate roster. His next court appearance is set for Dec. 19.

From NTD.tv
Vehicles pass beside a wall of flames on the 101 highway as it reaches the coast during the Thomas wildfire near Ventura, Calif., on Dec. 6, 2017. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Man Pulls Over to Save Wild Rabbit From California Wildfire, Becomes Viral Hero

With wildfires engulfing southern California, one man made the brave decision to rescue a rabbit he spotted on the side of the road.

In widely shared footage broadcast by KABC, the manwho refused an interviewcan be seen in distress by the side of Highway 1 in Ventura County.

It can be seen that he has spotted something but its not clear what it is.

Then he picks up a small rabbit and cradles it in his arms, rescuing it from the nearby flames.

Although the identity of the man is unknown, his actions have been praised by many on social media.

A Twitter user called myordinarylife.org wrote: And just like that my faith in humanity is restored. Were definitely broken right now but THIS? This means were going to be okay.

Thanks, young man, for being a good person. Our world needs a lot more people like you.

One Reddit comment said: Almost made me cry. Such a beautiful act of kindness and decency.

The wildfires have so far forced tens of thousands to flee their homes around Los Angeles.

Another widely shared video showed a perilous drive to work in of front flame-covered hillsides.

High winds have created a further danger for residents.

We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event, Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the Los Angeles Times. There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds.

So far, no civilian casualties have been reported, according to Reuters, although three firefighters have been injured.

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Li Cunxinthe man known in popular culture as Maos Last Dancerwill return to the ballet stage this weekend after an absence of nearly two decades.

After months of training, Li will make a one-off performance with the Queensland Ballet performing in the role of Drosselmeyer in the Nutcracker, reports the ABC.

The Nutcracker would have to be one of my favourite ballets. Its the very first ballet I danced when I went to the West, Li said in an interview with the ABC.

Mao's Last Dancer Li Cunxin makes ballet return after 18 years https://t.co/6cDT5PnNn2 pic.twitter.com/3ZSgFMv3yV  ABC News (@abcnews) December 7, 2017

Readying his body for this one-off comeback has been grueling, said the 56-year-old.

The journey to this point has been incredibly challenging to tell the truth, Li said.

Mentally, I think you have this knowledge, I have all these wonderful memories of what I can do and what I am capable of doing, he said.

But then once I got into pushing my body, what I didnt count on was some of the old injuries, professional injuries that I had sustained over the years, like my back and my toes, calf muscles.

I thought after an 18-year break those muscles would be healed so I could come back with a fresh new body and with no pain.

But unfortunately those injuries are still there and that is whats really challenging, to push through that kind of pain threshold all over again.

Thats Li Cunxin (in the grey) practicing for The Nutcracker this weekend  his first performance in 18 years @abcbrisbane pic.twitter.com/9nHLDrzXsc  Patrick Williams (@PatrickWilliams) December 7, 2017

Lis life story was told in his memoir and then the film, Maos Last Dancer which was directed by Bruce Beresford. Some of the films footage was secretly shot in China.

Born in communist-run China in 1961, Li grew up in grinding poverty.

Watching my mother, my father, working so hard just to make sure none of their seven children died of hunger, or died of freezing weather, Li said.

They are just, absolutely, the hardest working people in my life.

The harshness of his early life instilled in him a discipline that helped him later push forward through adversity, but he told ABC that his life in Australia is so far detached from his childhood struggle to survive.

Sometimes I have to truly pinch myself so hard, thinking: Is that really my life, is this really a journey Ive lived through, is this the success Ive achieved?' he said.

It is a truly beautiful dream and if it is truly a dream, dont wake me up.

One of the world's most renowned ballet dancers, Li Cunxin, has taken to the stage for the first time in 18 years. #7News pic.twitter.com/RPrH9KM0WD  7 News Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) November 16, 2017

At age of 11, Li was selected to join the Beijing Dance Academy and then as an adult he was chosen as a visiting exchange artist to the Houston Ballet which ended up with him defecting to the U.S. in 1981. In the 90s he moved to Australia with his wife, Mary McKendry, a fellow dancer.

In 1995, Li joined the Australian Ballet as a principal artist but retired from dancing four years later to become a stock broker.

It was really a career transition to ensure my familys security, Li said

It was my dream to change my familys fate in China, because life there was so tough.

Coming very soon to the Museum of Brisbane! Mao's Last Dancer | The Exhibition: A Portrait of Li Cunxin. Featuring never-before-seen interviews, performance footage and personal artefacts in an intimate portrait of a contemporary Australian icon. Tickets: https://t.co/ijl1il0JjK pic.twitter.com/LFt2wsGUlv  Museum of Brisbane (@MuseumofBris) November 22, 2017

In the coming performance Li will also dance with his wife.

I think its going to make it a really special for this particular performance, too, because my long-time partner, my favourite dance partner happened to be my wife Mary McKendry, Lin said.

The last time we performed together, as the sugarplum fairy and the prince, was in precisely this same production 26 years ago. She retired after that performance, he said.

Their two daughters will also watch them perform. They will watch Li dance for the first time ever.

Mao's Last Dancer | The Exhibition open Friday 1 Dec 2017  29 April 2018! Come and visit this extraordinary collection of costumes, videos, images and objects from Li Cunxin's incredible journey. Tickets are available online: https://t.co/Dbr5JcBuyB pic.twitter.com/CFVBKfUqrW  Museum of Brisbane (@MuseumofBris) December 5, 2017

Lis return to the stage has likewise been highly anticipated by dancers at Queensland Ballet where he is also the artistic director.

When I knew that Li was making a comeback I was super excited, said principal dancer Alex Idaszak.

To be able to dance alongside Li is possibly one of my biggest dreams.

Li is also the subject of a major photographic exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane which opened this week. The exhibition runs through till April 29, 2018.

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From NTD.tv
Police Have Another Update in the Mariah Woods Case

Officials have positively identified the remains of missing 3-year-old girl Mariah Woods in North Carolina, according to local media reports.

Mariahs body was found in a creek about 25 miles from her home in Jacksonville, N.C. Her mother said that she last saw the girl at around 11 p.m. on Nov. 26, WNCN reported.

Divers find the body of missing three-year-old Mariah Woods at the bottom of a remote creek 25 miles from her home https://t.co/uKAGKWwFpJ pic.twitter.com/0q7Lf8rh5q  Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) December 3, 2017

Her mothers live-in boyfriend, 32-year-old Earl Kimrey, was charged with withholding information about her death and is being held on $1 million bond.

When she went missing, a large search effort was mounted involving state and local law enforcement as well as the FBI. Hundreds of volunteers also took part in the search.

The men and women of the FBI who worked around the clock with the Onslow County Sheriff's Office to search for Mariah Woods offer our deepest condolences to her family and community. #RIPMariah pic.twitter.com/9FYvKmKBuf  FBI Charlotte (@FBICharlotte) December 3, 2017

Kimrey was charged with hiding the body and obstruction of justice.

Authorities have not revealed how the girl died, but prosecutors have said that more charges are possible, WNCN reported.

According to the New York Daily News, citing court documents, Mariah was abused by Kimrey. Her two brothers were also allegedly abused by the suspect, the documents said.

Mariahs father, Alex Woods, previously NewsChannel 12 that he was not convinced that of his ex-partners story that Mariah was abducted.

Someone just walked right up in there, grabbed the 3-year-old out of the bed and she didnt cry, she didnt scream? Woods told the news station.

Nobody heard anything? Four people in the housetwo adults and two kidssomeone just comes up and snatches the baby and walks out? he added.

He told the news station that he was given legal custody of Mariah and her two brothers last year while child protection services investigated an incident involving their mother. He said he has not seen them since.

.@FBICharlotte is asking for the public's assistance to locate 3-year-old Mariah Woods, missing since November 27, 2017: https://t.co/MuJOfZH2rR #FBI pic.twitter.com/UVcz2P6gQj  FBI Most Wanted (@FBIMostWanted) November 28, 2017

With reporting by Janita Kan.

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This 2004 file photo shows a communist New People's Army (NPA) guerrilla unit marching in formation during a press visit to their jungle camp in the rebel's mountain stronghold in southern Mindanao. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has classified the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing the NPA as a terrorist organization. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

Philippine Government Classifies Communists as Terrorists

Following the termination of peace talks last month, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing has been classified a terrorist organization by the Filipino government.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who in the past showed sympathy to the communists, signed a proclamation announcing the classification on Tuesday, Dec. 6.

The proclamation declares the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New Peoples Army (NPA) as a designated terrorist organization, said presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, reported Nikkei.

Roque said that the edict will outlaw the financing of the CPP and the NPA. Under a 2012 terrorism financing prevention and suppression act, the proclamation allows for the freezing and forfeiture of property or funds of persons or organizations identified as designated persons or organizations, reported Philstar.

Duterte to order mass arrest of communists https://t.co/SIpqXyzCW4 pic.twitter.com/nvzSdYihgz  The Philippine Star (@PhilippineStar) December 6, 2017

The classification comes after Duterte officially terminated peace talks with the communists and affiliated groups last month. Roque said the CPP, failed to show their sincerity and commitment in pursuing genuine and meaningful peaceful negotiations.

The U.S. classified the CPP-NPA as a terrorist organization in 2002, a stance reconfirmed earlier this year. However, the Philippine government, hoping to form a peace deal with the communists, had not previously used such a label, reported Nikkei.

The Philippine military has welcomed the classification.

This proclamation clearly classifies and labels the group for what they really are, said army spokesperson Major General Restituto Padilla in a statement.

We can now address without any hesitation, and with all the means and resources available to us, the increasing criminal and economic sabotage activities of these terrorists, he said.

Upon coming to power last year, Duterte offered two cabinet positions to left-wing activists endorsed by the CPP and ordered the release of top communist advisers from jail.

The moves were seen as part of his effort to bring to an end an insurgency that is one of the longest in Asia. Since 1969, the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, reported Reuters.

Duterte orders release of 14 convicted communists  Philippine Star https://t.co/Q8amRlXbMn #news pic.twitter.com/2jAw8YDIsQ  News JS Philippines (@newsjsph) May 14, 2017

After coming to power, Dutertes relationship with the communists has soured.

In May, and he ordered the scrapping of formal peace talks after the countrys military said the communists military wing had increased offensive actions, violating a ceasefire.

The two communist-backed leftists were ousted from Dutertes cabinet last month. Communist advisers released from jail to participate in peace talks are set be rearrested, according to recent reports.

Current memberships for the CPP is believed to be about 4,000, down from the 20,000 plus during the 1980s, reported Nikkei.

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The Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, S-42, docked before a mission. The sub has been missing since Nov. 15. (Wikimedia commons)

Picture of Missing Argentine Submarine Moments Before Her Last Dive has Emerged

A photo showing the missing Argentine submarine departing on its final voyage on Nov. 13 has emerged almost three weeks after the submarine disappeared.

The photo, which was tweeted by a Falkland Islands account, shows the ARA San Juan dipping into the waters surface after it left the port for the final time, reported Daily Mail.

According to the newspaper, the photograph was taken from the Aerolineas Argentinas 737 flight near Ushuaia, at the countrys southerly tip.

#ARASanJuan as she left port for the last time on Monday, Nov 13. pic.twitter.com/ulMFCrMJQ6  Falkland Islands (@falklands_utd) December 4, 2017

The Argentinian submarine was traveling in the South Atlantic with a crew of 44 and last transmitted a signal on Nov. 15.

The search for the vessel was called off by the Argentine Navy on Nov. 30 after all hope of finding the crew alive faded. Experts said the crew only had sufficient oxygen to last 7 to 10 days.

In its last message, the submarines captain reported water had leaked into the ventilation system of the subs snorkel which reached a battery connection tray in the prow causing a short-circuit and the beginning of a fire, or smoke without flame.

The captain later reported that the incident had been contained by sailing using an alternative battery circuit, according to an Argentine spokesperson.

The Argentine Navy had reported that an explosion was detected in the location where the submarine had vanished from. The crews families were informed that all aboard were dead following the explosion, which occurred 600 to 3,000 feet under water.

Families of the Argentine submarine crew are demanding that Argentinas navy reverses its decision to stop looking for survivors, reported the Daily Mail.

Weve had 28 ships, nine aircraft, 4,000 people involved, 18 countries supporting, Captain Enrique Balbi, a spokesperson for the Argentine Navy, told reporters in a press conference on Nov. 30.

Despite the magnitude of these efforts, weve been unable to find the submarine, he added.

The Argentine Navy said it no longer considers the search a rescue mission but is willing to continue looking for the missing submarine and recover the wreckage of the vessel.

Ships from the United States and Russia will join the other five vessels from Argentina and Chile to search an area of about 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers), where sonar detected three unidentified objects on the seabed.

Balbi said that Russian ship Yantar, an oceanographic research ship, arrived on Dec. 5 while the American ship, U.S. Atlantis, will arrive a few days later on Saturday.

#ARASanJuan Yantar has arrived and she is setting up shop a little southeast of Cabo Raso. She is immediately going to depths not scanned by other vessels. pic.twitter.com/dMOhwIVUbT  Mike Chillit (@MikeChillit) December 5, 2017

These ships are equipped with deep submergence vehicles that allow them to examine undersea areas nearly 20,000 feet deep (6,000 meters), reported the Daily Mail.

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FedEx workers sort through a pile of boxes at the FedEx sort facility at Oakland International Airport Dec. 18, 2006, in Oakland, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Police Arrest Grinch Who Stole Holiday Packages

Police have caught and arrested a real-life Grinch suspected of preying on people ordering Christmas gifts.

Residents of Nassau County, Long Island, had been getting nasty surprises when they opened packages delivered to their porches.

Instead of the gifts for loved ones, the boxes contained old shoes, clothes, and trashcourtesy of a local Grinch, who was swapping these useless packages for the original ones.

Local police call such thieves porch pirates.

Malverne Police announced on Dec. 7 the arrest of Peter Lee Dunbar of Jamaica Queens for the theft of the packages from numerous Nassau communities.

A week earlier the police department had warned residents to be careful after a spate of thefts in the area.

"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch!" @MalvernePD captured Peter Dunbar of Queens who is accused of stealing packages and replacing them with boxes full of trash. Good news- @MalvernePD was able to return some of those stolen packages. @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/TKN0f7xQd8  Candace McCowan (@CandaceMcCowan7) December 7, 2017

The subject carries a package with him to the front door that is filled with old clothes, shoes or other trash and leaves that package there while removing the homeowners delivery, wrote the Malverne Police in a statement.

We had some last year but not to this level, said Malverne Police Chief John Aresta, according to Newsday.

The police provided a description of the suspect, eventually catching up with him when he was arrested and stopped for operating a vehicle without a front license plate and was unable to produce a valid NYS drivers license.

Subsequent investigation by Malverne police officers led to the discovery of property that had been previously reported stolen in the van, said the police in a statement.

[epoch_social_embed]

Missing a package in Nassau County? Police might have found it! @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/NeoI8oi9VH  Candace McCowan (@CandaceMcCowan7) December 7, 2017

Dunbar has been connected to other larcenies in the surrounding communities, said the police.

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Police: Father Arrested after 1-year-old Hospitalized for Overdosing on His Heroin

A 1-year-old girl from the Bronx was rushed to the hospital on Saturday, Dec. 2, after she ingested an almost fatal dose of heroin left on her fathers bed, police report.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, her father, 20-year-old Edgardo Rodriguez from York, Pennsylvania, said he was doing heroin on the bed when some of it spilled on the comforter. Both his 1-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son were in the bed with him.

My kids were there. Some of it spilled onto the bed. It made a mess. I went to sleep, he said, according to court documents. I dont know how my daughter got in contact with the residue on the bed because I was high, Pix11 reports.

Maybe parents need to lock their heroin in this box. The NYPD says two Bronx toddlers just overdosed. Last week I reported ACS plans to distribute this lockbox to parents to safely store their Rx opioids. A Staten Island baby died this way WATCH: https://t.co/XdSw0VDtT8 pic.twitter.com/FE07zc9K67  Melissa Russo (@MelissaRusso4NY) December 6, 2017

Rodriguez woke up around 5 a.m. when his daughter started crying, court records say, but instead seeing what she was fussing about, he went back to sleep, the New York Daily News reports.

At about 8 a.m., both Rodriguez and his mother noticed the baby was having trouble breathing. By the time they got her to St. Barnabas Hospital about an hour later, she was unresponsive.

She was given three doses of opiate antidote naloxone and put on a Narcan drip. She was later transferred to Montefiore Medical Center, where she was in critical condition as of Tuesday.

Police found a white powdery substance on the bed in the apartment, court records say, and at the hospital, Rodriguez handed over a bag of what he told police was heroin, Pix11 reported.

He was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, and reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. He was arrested and held on $5,000 bail, the Daily News reported.

Another Bronx 1-year-old was taken to the hospital just two days later for a similar heroin overdose.

Her parents said they were walking on East 181st St. near Monterey Ave. at a little before midnight on Sunday, Dec. 3, when the 1-year-old picked up a plastic bag and put it in her mouth.

They said they noticed a white substance around her mouth, and a short time later, her face turning a greenish color. Later, she had a seizure.

They rushed her to St. Barnabas where she was given a dose of naloxone.

Like the other 1-year-old, she was transferred to Montefiore, where she remained Tuesday, the Daily News reports.

Both the NYPD and the city Administration for Childrens Services (ACS) were investigating the circumstances, but no arrests were made.

Both children are expected to survive, ABC7 reports.

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A Popeyes restaurant is seen in Miami, Florida on Feb. 21, 2017. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Police: Father Shot Man Who Robbed, Pointed Gun at His Children

Police say a father shot and killed a man that threatened and harassed his family inside a Texas Popeyes restaurant on the night of Wednesday, Dec. 6.

According to police, an as-of-yet unidentified man walked into Popeyes and approached the fathers family to attempt to rob them around 8:30 p.m, ABC13 reported.

The altercation took place at the 800 block of Southeast Military Drive in San Antonio, Texas.

Then the robber pointed his gun at the fathers children, according to ABC affiliate KVUE.

It was at that point that the fatherwho is also not named as of writingpulled out his own gun and shot the robber in the middle of the restaurants dining area.

Police told ABC13 that the father is a licensed carrier of firearms. Authorities said he will not be facing any charges and that the fathers actions prevented the loss of several lives.

According to KVUE, the staff at the restaurant locked the doors after the shooting until law enforcement arrived on the scene.

On Tuesday, Dec. 5, another robbery took place in a Nashville home invasion that turned deadly after a teenager stood up to a pair of armed home invaders, according to police. The intruders shot the teenager in the chest, killing him.

The shooting took place around midnight at a home in the 1000 block of Capitol Point, reported WKRN, in the John Henry Hale Apartments in Nashville, Tennessee.

Police said two suspects kicked down the front door of the house just before midnight and began pulling the occupants out of their beds and into a hallway, demanding money. Asleep inside the home at the time of the forced entry were 17-year-old JaDonte Thompson, his mother, stepfather, and grandfather.

Police said Thompson likely challenged the perpetrators after which a scuffle ensued and Thomson was shot in the chest. The boys stepfather was also pistol-whipped by the intruders before they left empty-handed.

The teen was transported to Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Thompson attended Hillsboro High School, a spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools told USA Today affiliate Tennessean.com. The following statement was released by Metro Schools in regards to Thompsons murder:

MNPS is sad to learn the 17-year-old killed last night was a current Hillsboro student. The district is providing grief counselors and has implemented the student death response protocol to support the students and faculty of Hillsboro HS. Our thoughts go out to that community and we will support them through this process.

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.

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Pregnant Mom of Twins Goes Missing in NYC

A pregnant mom with twins went missing as she was going to the bank earlier this week in Queens, New York.

Amarjit Kaur, 34, of Ozone Park, who is seven weeks pregnant, left their 128th Street home for the bank around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5, CBS New York reported. She parked her vehicle at 114th Street and Liberty Avenue and then walked two blocks to a Chase Bank where she deposited a check.

The woman didnt make it back to her car, and she didnt arrive to pick her two twin boys up from school.

The school had called. She never went to pick up the kids, then I got worried and started calling, husband Lakhwinder Multani told CBS. Im feeling very bad, kids feeling very bad. Were waiting for her.

Kaurs cell phone was inside the car, NBC New York reported.

Investigators shared surveillance footage showing her walking on the sidewalk alone before she went missing.

She was seen last wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and yellow pants, and officials said shes about 5 feet, 4 inches tall.
Santa Barbara Police Find the 1993 Recording About Corey Feldmans Hollywood Pedophiles

Santa Barbara police found a recording of the 1993 interview in which Corey Feldman supposedly mentions the names of sexual predators in Hollywood.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Office Public Information Officer confirmed to Fox News that they recovered a recording of the interview, which was among the files in a Michael Jackson molestation case.

Feldman has long complained about the interview, saying that police ignored his claims of sexual abuse in Hollywood and ignored the names of the people he mentioned. The Santa Barbara Police Department also earlier denied that Feldman made any specific mention of pedophiles.

We are aware of the statements that Mr. Feldman is making regarding an investigation in 1993. Our records do not indicate that he named any suspects, said the Santa Barbara police, after an inquiry by Fox News in October.

Since finding the recording, Santa Barbara Police told Fox News they will hand it over to the Los Angeles Police. They said they cannot mention the contents of the recording since it is a case involving the sexual abuse of a minor.

Feldman has so far publicly confirmed the names of three men as Hollywood pedophiles. He confirmed Jon Grissom as one of his abusers while on The Dr. Oz Show last month, when Oz contacted Los Angeles Police on air to see if Feldman could initiate a new case on the matter.

He also mentioned the name Marty Weiss, a Hollywood child talent agent, when he was interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Today, around the same time as the Oz interview. He told Kelly he had already revealed Weiss in his 2013 book Coreyography. Both men have convictions of child sex abuse, as revealed during these interviews and the 2014 film An Open Secret.

Another name he confirmed was Alphy Hoffman, in a subsequent interview with Oz. Hoffman threw parties for young actors that were aimed at connecting pedophiles with their victims.

Feldman is still running his crowdfunding campaign so he can make a movie about his experiences being abused as a child actor in Hollywood. He was earlier seeking to raise $10 million but is now only seeking $1 million to make a small budget version of his original concept, according to his Indiegogo campaign page.

His page indicates he lowered the funding goal after none of his wealthy friends contributed. He also mentioned in an interview with Matt Lauer that his peers who know about the pedophiles he wants to expose are not showing him much support, and openly questioned why the burden to expose them rests on him.

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Shooting at New Mexico High School

UPDATE: 3 are dead

UPDATE: At least three people have died in the shooting, according to CBS. New Mexico police report that the shooter is among the deceased.

Updated information: 1 suspect shooter is deceased. 2 students are deceased. No other injuries reported. The school has been evacuated. #Aztecschoolshooting  NMSP (@NMStatePolice) December 7, 2017

A shooting was reported at Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico, leaving several people injured, according to reports.

A gunman opened fire at the northern New Mexico school Thursday morning, Dec. 7, law enforcement said, Fox News reported.

Families and friends of students of Aztec High School are gathered outside city hall, following a shooting at the school@KOB4 pic.twitter.com/7kjG7ZNITV  Meg Hilling (@meghilling) December 7, 2017

There are at least a dozen reported injuries at this time, a spokesperson for the sheriffs department told Fox.

My cousins daughter goes to Aztec High School. This is part of a text between her and her mom this morning, can you imagine your child going thru that? ? #schoolshooting #prayforaztec pic.twitter.com/hwy6C5oKCB  Tara Borisow (@borisowt) December 7, 2017

The San Juan County Sheriffs Office confirmed reports of an active shooter at around 9 a.m. local time. They said the Aztec High School was put on lockdown. Aztec High School is locked down and being evacuated. Please avoid the area. Parents can stage at 516 and Mesa Verde near the church to pick up their kids. We will update this as we learn more, the San Juan Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

The school is located near Navajo Nation and is located about 180 miles north of Albuquerque.

Aztec High School in Northern #NewMexico The shooter is in custody, it is not known how many people have been wounded pic.twitter.com/9TDuvNZCzc  srb news (@srbnews0) December 7, 2017

Farmington Municipal Schools said in a statement that all schools in the district went on a lockdown due to the incident.

We have no reason to think there is any threat in Farmington at this time, but we are taking this advance action in order to secure all of our schools. Your students safety is our primary concern, the statement read.

Bloomfield police said local schools were also lockdown as a preventative measure, officials said.

Two people shot at New Mexico high school, Aztec Police Department says; police say the suspected shooter is "down." https://t.co/6nZ94VMoON  ABC News (@ABC) December 7, 2017

And while youre here 

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L: South Korean soldiers during an exercise in Pohang, on South Korea's southeast coast, on March 12, 2016. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images) R: A 'Mikado' reconnaissance drone of the German armed forces. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)

South Korean Weaponized Drones Unit Will Be a Game Changer

South Korea will have a military unit operating weaponized drones capable of conducting missions into North Korea and launching attacks by next year.

The countrys army is creating a combat unit of weaponized drones  called dronebots  to help counter North Koreas threats, an unnamed military official said Tuesday, Dec. 5, reported the Yonhap News Agency.

The Army plans to set up a special organization to lead the development of dronebots, establish a standard platform and expand the dronebot program by function, said the official who requested anonymity. To begin with, we will launch a dronebot combat unit next year and use it as a game changer in warfare.

S. Korean Army to form weaponized drone unit next year https://t.co/gFcRHGzBkv  Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) December 5, 2017

The team plans to use the drones on reconnaissance missions against North Korean targets such as nuclear and missile sites, reported Yonhap.

In case of a contingency, swarms of dronebots could be used to launch attacks on enemy forces.

As part of their consideration, the official said that they are looking at how the Israeli military created a similar unit in 2010.

While drones have been used in war conflict situations around the world for some time, emerging artificial intelligence technology will allow individual units to link up with others to create swarms, reported the Financial Times.

South Korea has reached a level of consensus on swarm technology, but adoption will take a while, said a person familiar with the military developments, reported the Financial Times. The army is facing [political] pressure to reduce its forces, so it has to come up with new ideas.

Proponents of swarm technology say swarms of cheaply made drones could thwart area access by bunching around and blocking ships or aircraft.

Bong Young-shik, an expert on North Korean military developments at Yonsei University, backs the idea.

Some of us in the field proposed the Republic of Korea military should take advantage of this superiority against North Korea, Bong told the Financial Times. Although it is unlikely, if the South Korean military wants, these drones can carry bombs as the nation is no longer bound by payload limits, he added, referring to a recent U.S. decision to lift restrictions on South Korean munitions.

The talk about plans of drone warfare use against the North Korean threat comes during heightened tensions on the peninsular over Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programs.

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before departing the White House for New York in Washington, U.S., Dec. 2, 2017. (Reuters/James Lawler Duggan)

Trump Asks Saudi Arabia to Allow Immediate Aid to Yemen

WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump called for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, Dec. 6, to immediately allow humanitarian aid to reach the Yemeni people, suggesting Washington had run out patience with a Saudi-led blockade that has been condemned by relief organizations.

The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned armed Houthi movement in Yemens civil war started a blockade of ports a month ago after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh from Yemen.

Although the blockade later eased and showed signs of breaking on Wednesday, Yemens situation remained dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria.

I have directed officials in my administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it, Trump said in a statement, without elaborating.

This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately, Trump said.

In response to escalating violence in #Yemen, international humanitarian agencies there are urgently calling for an immediate ceasefire: https://t.co/NHoEgKYTFr #YemenCantWait #Sanaa pic.twitter.com/gFkddPLDuK  Oxfam International (@Oxfam) December 6, 2017

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said the first food and fuel had arrived in Hodeidah and Saleef ports, but supplies were at a trickle compared to what was needed, since Yemens population of 27 million was almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine.

Oxfam International applauded Trumps statement, calling it long overdue but hugely important. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who has called for restrictions on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, said he expected the Kingdom to heed Trumps call.

Trumps brief, one-paragraph statement is one of the clearest signs of U.S. concern over aspects of Saudi Arabias foreign policy. Saudi Arabia has also split with Trump over his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Warmer Ties

Publicly, Trump, his top aides, and senior Saudi officials have hailed what they say is a major improvement in U.S.-Saudi ties compared with relations under former President Barack Obama, who upset the Saudis by sealing a nuclear deal with their arch-foe Iran.

Even as ties improve, however, U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts privately express anxiety over some of the more hawkish actions by Saudi Arabias crown prince, especially toward Yemen and Lebanon, as Saudi Arabia seeks to contain Iranian influence.

In turn, Saudi Arabia has been unusually public about its concerns over U.S. policy on Jerusalem.

King Salman told Trump ahead of his Jerusalem announcement on Wednesday that any decision on the status of Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement was reached would harm peace talks and increase tensions in the area, according to Saudi state-owned media.

A White House official said Trumps statement on aid to Yemen did not represent retaliation for the Saudi position on Jerusalem.

It has to do with the fact that there is a serious humanitarian issue in Yemen and the Saudis should and can do more, the official said.

The fuel shortages caused by the blockade have meant that areas hardest hit by war, malnutrition and cholera lack functioning hospital generators, cooking fuel and water pumps. It also makes it harder to move food and medical aid around the country.

The Saudi-led military coalition stepped up air strikes on Yemens Houthis on Wednesday as the armed movement tightened its grip on Sanaa a day after the son of slain former president Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed revenge for his fathers death.

Saleh, who was killed in an attack on his convoy, plunged Yemen deeper into turmoil last week by switching allegiance after years helping the Houthis win control of much of northern Yemen, including the capital.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the killing of Saleh would likely worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the country in the short term.

This is where weve all got to roll up our sleeves and figure out what youre going to do about medicine and food and clean water, cholera, Mattis said.

By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart

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Wisconsin Governor Wants to Drug-Test Food Stamp Applicants

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is pushing ahead with a plan to require drug testing of some food stamp applicants despite the fact that federal law currently prohibits it.

Walker has submitted a plan to the state legislature which would require able-bodied applicants to the states Food Share program to pass drug tests. The legislature has to object within 120 days or the plan will become law, according to the Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, adding that actual testing wouldnt begin for another year.

When the governor first proposed this plan in January of this year, the federal official overseeing food stamp programs said that such testing was not legal.

The law clearly does not allow it, said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary at the federal Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Concannon added, we consulted the legal counsels here and the law absolutely does not allow it.

In his 2017 state of the state speech, delivered on Jan. 10, Walker told the legislature, Over and over again, employers are telling us of their dramatic needs for people who are ready to work and able to pass a drug test. We can find a job for everyone.

Drug testing Foodshare Employment and Training recipients will provide rehabilitation to those who need it so they can get healthy, it reassures potential employers, and it helps people enter the workforce and achieve the dignity that comes from work! #RewardingWork pic.twitter.com/jJKSrOBVuw  Governor Walker (@GovWalker) December 4, 2017

Walker also said, I am happy to report that we now require adults on public assistance, who are able to work, and do not have children at home, to be employed or enrolled in our job training programs, looking for work at least five times a week, and be able to pass a drug test. If someone fails the test, we help them with rehabilitation, so they can get healthy and ready to enter the workforce.

The main difference between the two programspublic assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, (TANF) colloquially called welfare) and Food Shareis that Food Share money generally goes to people with dependent children.

Our welfare reforms are about providing a hand up, not a handout. #RewardingWork https://t.co/3xtKHOv3G3  Governor Walker (@GovWalker) December 5, 2017

The legislature already approved a similar plan two years ago, but the plan didnt move forward because it conflicted with federal laws prohibiting states from imposing additional eligibility criteria on food stamp recipients.

Federal law takes precedence in this case because Wisconsins Food Share program is, in reality, the states name for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Wisconsin oversees the program within the state but the money comes from the federal government.

Florida tried a similar program in 2014, but a federal appeals court ruled that it violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.

Georgia tried a similar measure in 2014 but was also told by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that creating additional eligibility requirements is illegal.

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Iranian Instagram sensation Sahar Tabar, claimed by media to have undergone 50 surgeries said it's all Photoshop and makeup. (Instagram / Sahar Tabar / Photo of Jolie by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for HFA)

Zombified Angelina Jolie Lookalike Confesses: Im a Total Fraud

Infamous Iranian Instagram starlet Sahar Tabar, widely reported by media recently to have had 50 plastic operations to look like her idol Angelina Jolie, but equally widely mocked by commentators that the botched surgeries made her look like Corpse Bride, has finally come right out and said it.

It is Photoshop and makeup, Tabar told RIA correspondent Anush Dolukhanyan, according to Sputnik. It is my way of self expression, a kind of art.

Post udostepniony przez Francisco Campelo ? (@colunadocampelooficial) 1 Gru, 2017 o 4:01 PST

The Epoch Times recently reported that Tabar had made a similar revelation on her Instagram page, and said more. She said shes going to be world famous, and not for botched surgeries.

The name of Sahar Tabar, unlike what you think, will become known in the world [in a good way], Tabar posted on Instagram.

Post udostepniony przez !?? (@sahartabar_afficilalll) 9 Lis, 2017 o 3:09 PST

Tabar also went on to blast critics and what she considers is biased media coverage, The Epoch Times reported.

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.

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.

And now Tabar is adding to her own narrative. She said that shes not at all trying to look like Angelina Jolie nor Corpse Bride, but that she wants to forge her own, unique look.

I understand that I do have some similarities with them, but I am my own muse and I did not want to look like anyone, Tabar told Sputnik, That was not my aim.

Post udostepniony przez !?? (@sahartabar_afficilalll) 21 Lis, 2017 o 1:41 PST

Numerous media reported on Tabar recently, alleging that she had undergone 50 plastic surgeries to look like Angelina Jolie but botched the job and resembles a zombie.

Post udostepniony przez !?? (@sahartabar_afficilalll) 1 Gru, 2017 o 8:05 PST

Tabar told Sputnik the details of the operations that shes had done.

Rhinoplasty, Botox for lips and liposuction operations.

<iframe width=640 height=340 src=https://www.youtube.com/embed/oQAdWEzGHdQ frameborder=0 gesture=media allow=encrypted-media allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Epoch Times also previously reported that Tabar had taken modification of her image 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 headress.

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, said another.

Post udostepniony przez sahartabar_ (@sahartabar_) 14 Sty, 2017 o 1:05 PST

Share this article with your friends and tell them what you think of this Iranian Instagrammer.
The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides various property and casualty insurance products and services in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Commercial Lines, Personal Lines, and Other. The Commercial Lines segment offers commercial multiple peril, commercial automobile, and workers' compensation insurance products, as well as management and professional liability, marine, specialty industrial and commercial property, monoline general liability, surety, umbrella, fidelity, crime, and other commercial coverages. The Personal Lines segment provides personal automobile and homeowner's coverages, as well as other personal coverages, such as personal umbrella, inland marine, fire, personal watercraft, personal cyber, and other miscellaneous coverages. The Other segment markets investment management services to institutions, pension funds, and other organizations. The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. markets its products and services through independent agents and brokers. The company was formerly known as Allmerica Financial Corp. and changed its name to The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. in December 2005. The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Sixteen people fined during Phuket beach inspections

PHUKET: Army officers, police and municipality officials inspected beaches at Kata, Karon and Patong yesterday (Dec 4) fined a total of 16 beach management offenders under the orders of Col Santi Sakuntanark, Commander of the 25th Infantry Regiment and the highest-ranking army officer stationed in Phuket.

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By Premkamon Ketsara

Tuesday 5 December 2017, 03:39PM

Officials carry out their inspection along one of Phuket's popular west coast beaches. Photo: Army 25th Infantry Regiment

Col Sanya Thongsawat, Chief of Karon Police Station and the officers first inspected Kata Yai Beach and parking spaces at 10am, along with Karon Municipality officials and Karon Police.

A surfboard rental group of four were fined for operating their business on the beach without approval from the government, Col Santi told The Phuket News sister publication Khao Phuket.

At 11:30am the team of officers then inspected Karon Beach, at which Col Santi reported one person was fined for illegally operating a surfboard rental business.

At 2:30 pm, the officials inspected the Patong Beach area for general organisation including illegal parking, beach vendors and operators on pavements, umbrella beds, Thai massage, and all beach operators working outside of the 10% zone.

Six tourists were fined for parking in areas not permitted for parking, two jet-ski operators were fined for parking on footpaths, and two vendors with sidecars operating from the sidewalk were also fined.

One umbrella rental operator was also fined for parking their car on the beach.

All 11 on Patong Beach have been notified and fined according to the municipalitys policy, said Col Santi.

Its a beach investigation according to the projects that we have while were taking care of this island. Its just our normal routine, checking if everything is OK, said Col Santi.
Swiss tourist fined in Phuket for encroaching a National Park protected zone

PHUKET: A Swiss tourist was fined yesterday (Dec 6) for encroaching on a National Park protected zone after he drove a jet-ski from Naka Island to Ao Phang Nga National Park.

crimeenvironmentnatural-resourcespollutiontourismtransportmarine

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Thursday 7 December 2017, 01:03PM

The two tourists had driven the jet-ski from Naka Island to Hong Island at some point encroaching on a protected zone. Photo: Ao Phang Nga National Park

An official from Ao Phang Nga National Park, who declined to be named, said, We saw that the tourist was driving a jet-ski in a protected area close to Hong Island off Phang Nga National Park at 4:20pm yesterday so we had to call him and ask him to stop.

There were two men on the jet-ski, both from Switzerland, but the driver was Sandre Diener, 45. He drove the jet-ski from Naka Island to Hong Island, which is about 10 kilometres, the official said.

They appeared not to know that they had done something wrong, so we explained to them that this area is a protected under the National Park Conservation Act.

Jet-skis and other personal watercraft are banned from the area. Only those who have been given permission by the National Park Office can bring watercraft into the area.

Diener was fined B1,000 and given information about the law for this area. I also warned the jet-ski owner, who runs a rental shop, about the tourists behaviour.

I also told the owner to show tourists a map prior to him renting out jet-skis so this problem does not happen again.

The official added, Please be reminded not to drive jet-skis or watercraft in National Park zones. Rental shops should be obligated to warn tourists about situations such as this.
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.
With the shopping season looming and bankruptcy proceedings underway in federal court, Toys R Us went to its creditors in November with an unorthodox request. To boost holiday sales, the insolvent company asked, let us pay out millions of dollars in bonuses to our top executives.

On Tuesday, a bankruptcy judge approved the proposal.

Under the plan, Toys R Us will pay 17 executives some $14 million in incentive bonuses, as long as the company hits its target of $550 million in earnings. It must hit a minimum of $484 million in adjusted earnings before any bonuses are awarded, as USA Today reported.

Attorneys for the company argued in court papers that the bonuses would help encourage executives to focus on driving up sales as the holidays approach.

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Timing, of course, is everything, they wrote in a Nov. 14 filing. Now more than ever the senior management team must be properly motivated and incentivized to handle the panoply of responsibilities attendant to their two full-time jobs of leading the Debtors through this restructuring and, at the same time, implementing a worldwide strategy to increase sales following a near shutdown of operations just eight short weeks ago. The task at hand cannot be underestimated.

But Judy Robbins, a Department of Justice attorney representing the interests of creditors, contended that the bonuses were excessive given the companys financial situation.

It defies logic and wisdom, not to mention the Bankruptcy Code, that a bankrupt company would now propose further multimillion dollar bonuses for the senior leadership of a company that began the year with employee layoffs and concludes it in the midst of the holiday season in bankruptcy, she wrote.

Apparently, this Christmas, Toys R Us intends to deliver not only children their biggest smiles of the year but the insiders, too, her Nov. 28 objection read. She added later that some executives already receive other perks, including personal drivers and private planes.

In court, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips noted that none of the companys creditors or lenders had raised objections  a silence he said he found particularly striking, according to USA Today.

On the contrary, I see the committee and any creditors who have addressed this court are asking the court to approve this plan and I think thats telling, he said. He gave the bonus plan the green light after a five-hour hearing in Richmond.

The companys attorney, Joshua Sussberg, assured the judge that the company was laser-focused on the holidays, according to Reuters. There was still time, he said, to spur shoppers to buy as much as they can.

Sussberg also argued that the financial goals were challenging. These are not layups, he said, according to USA Today. These are half-court, backwards, with a blindfold.

Toys R Us, headquartered in Wayne, N.J., has 1,600 stores globally and about 64,000 emplooyes. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September with plans to restructure $5 billion in long-term debt. It bought out one of its biggest competitors, FAO Schwarz, in 2006.

Sussberg, the companys attorney, said the retailer hopes to ready a business plan by next July, and aimed to be out of bankruptcy by the 2018 holiday season.

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Canadas softwood lumber industry suffered another blow after the U.S. International Trade Commission unanimously voted Thursday that its imports have harmed the American lumber industry.

In a 4-0 vote, the agency sided with the U.S. lumber coalition.

The U.S. Commerce Department last month lowered preliminary duties. Most Canadian producers will pay a combined countervailing and anti-dumping rate of 20.83 per cent, down from 26.75 per cent in the preliminary determinations issued earlier this year.

The duties have driven up the price of lumber, adding to the cost of building a home in the United States. Canadian unions and lumber companies fear the issue will eventually cause layoffs.

West Fraser Timber pays the highest duties at 23.7 per cent. Canfor is next at 22.13, followed by Tolko at 22.07, Resolute Forest Products at 17.9 per cent and J.D. Irving at 9.92 per cent.

Read more:

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U.S. reduces softwood lumber duties for all but 2 Canadian producers

U.S. duties on softwood lumber brings price surge, profit to Canada

The vote means $500 million in deposits for the duties paid by Canadian producers thus far wont be returned as the industry had hoped.

A Resolute Forest Products spokesperson said the U.S. will now hold large industry deposits as ransom in hope of pushing the Canadian government to sign a bad deal.

Sorry U.S., thats not going to happen. Canada is not going to be bullied into submission, Seth Kursman said in an interview from Washington, D.C.

He added that the financial health of American firms is clear evidence that no injury has been suffered.

The U.S. industry has been crowing about its prosperity for over a year. It is making more money than at any previous time in history.

The BC Lumber Trade Council said the ruling, while not unexpected, is completely without merit.

Council president Susan Yurkovich said the process is biased in favour of the U.S. industry.

We are confident that this latest decision by the ITC will again be reversed, she said in a news release.

International Trade Commission (ITC) decisions in the two previous softwood lumber trade disputes didnt survive appeals, Yurkovich noted.

Canada is challenging the duties under both the North American Free Trade Agreement and at the World Trade Organization. The NAFTA dispute panel has to make a ruling by next fall. The WTO process could take years.

Between 2001 and 2006, when the last softwood lumber dispute took place, its believed about 15,000 jobs disappeared in the softwood industry.

Yurkovich said the U.S. Lumber Coalitions claims of injury ring particularly hollow given the strong financial performance the U.S. industry is facing and Canadian imports are lower than in 2006 when imports were deemed non-injurious.

The coalition, which launched a petition nearly a year ago, applauded the vote.

The evidence presented to the ITC was clear  the massive subsidies that the Canadian government provides to its lumber industry and the dumping of lumber products into the U.S. market by Canadian companies cause real harm to U.S. producers and workers, stated co-chairman Jason Brochu.

Now, with a level playing field, the U.S. lumber industry, and the 350,000 hardworking men and women who support it, can have the chance to compete fairly.

Fellow co-chairman Joe Patton added U.S. lumber mills will be able to make investments to expand production to meet demand.

Reasons supporting the vote are expected to be released in two weeks.

Trade data from the United States Department of Agriculture show the amount of Canadian softwood imported was down 8 per cent for the first nine months of 2017, compared with the same period in 2016.

Trade data from Statistics Canada show British Columbia producers are bearing the brunt of the drop, with softwood exports to the U.S. down about 33 per cent. The value of those exports was down 28 per cent.

British Columbias wildfires last summer cut exports in July and August to about half what they were a year earlier.

Quebec exports to the U.S. actually went up 3 per cent and Ontario exports are up 11 per cent so far this year.

Quebec and Ontario rely almost exclusively on U.S. markets for their wood, with 99 per cent of Ontario shipments of softwood and 98 per cent of Quebecs going to the United States.

In 2016, about 81 per cent of B.C. softwood was exported to the United States, while in 2017 that fell to 63 per cent.

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Bitcoin surged past $16,000 (U.S.) for the first time on Thursday, with frenzied demand to trade the cryptocurrency buckling one of the largest exchanges just days before the first U.S. futures contracts begin trading.

Bitcoins rally of more than $3,000 in the past 24 hours continues to defy its legions of skeptics, as mainstream demand for the worlds largest cryptocurrency explodes. Investors flocking to open new accounts or place orders Thursday left Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, warning of outages and slow transactions.

Bitcoin listed at $16,395 as of 1:15 p.m. in Bloomberg pricing that is a composite of exchanges. That takes its rally this year past 1,500 per cent and its market capitalization is now at $274 billion. On Thursday it topped out at $16,777.08 after starting the day at $13,363.25.

Read more:

Bitcoins run at $10,000 a sign of investment growth like no other

Bitcoin soars toward $10,000 U.S. mark despite hedge-fund firms warning its a fad

This is irrational exuberance, Royal Bank of Scotland Chairman Howard John Davies said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Thursday. This is a very, very unusual market, that shows were not in a normal two-way trading market.

Davies agreed with the brokerages concerns that exchanges which are set to offer bitcoin futures and options have failed to get enough feedback from market participants on margin levels, trading limits, stress tests and clearing. Those warnings were laid out in an open letter via the Futures Industry Association on Wednesday.

Daily price swings of that magnitude and weakness at the exchanges underscored concerns raised Wednesday by some of the worlds biggest brokerages, who told regulators the contracts have been rushed to market without enough due diligence. The new bitcoin derivatives products are slated to begin trading this month and are expected to boost mainstream demand. On a day such as Thursday, trading wouldve paused under proposed daily price-swing limitations.

At the same time, there are fresh concerns about the security of bitcoin and other virtual currencies after NiceHash, a company that mines bitcoins on behalf of customers, said it is investigating a breach that may have resulted in the theft of bitcoin valued at about $70 million.

Research company Coindesk said that a wallet address referred to by NiceHash users indicates that about 4,700 bitcoins had been stolen. NiceHash said it will stop operating for 24 hours while it verifies how many bitcoins were taken. Wallet is a nickname for an online account.

There was no immediate response from NiceHash to an emailed request for more details.

The incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency, it said. The statement urged users to change their online passwords.

Slovenian police are investigating the case together with authorities in other states, spokesperson Bostjan Lindav said, without providing details.

The hack occurred just as the trading community prepares for bitcoin to start trading on two established U.S. exchanges. Futures for bitcoin will start trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange on Sunday evening and on crosstown rival CME Groups platforms later in the month.

Bitcoin is the worlds most popular virtual currency. Such currencies are not tied to a bank or government and allow users to spend money anonymously. They are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they are traded.

A debate is raging on the merits of such currencies. Some say they serve merely to facilitate money laundering and illicit, anonymous payments. Others say they can be helpful methods of payment, such as in crisis situations where national currencies have collapsed.

Miners of bitcoins and other virtual currencies help keep the systems honest by having their computers keep a global running tally of transactions. That prevents cheaters from spending the same digital coin twice.

Online security is a vital concern for such dealings.

In Japan, following the failure of a bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox, new laws were enacted to regulate bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Mt. Gox shut down in February 2014, saying it lost about 850,000 bitcoins, possibly to hackers.

With files from the Associated Press

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OTTAWAThe pilot of an Air Canada jet was left with blurred vision when someone aimed a laser at the aircraft during its approach to Pearson International Airport.

The incident  one of a spate of laser strikes last month involving flights into Pearson  is yet another reminder of the dangers of these devices, federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau told the Star.

The Air Canada Rouge Airbus A319 with 113 passengers onboard was lined up for landing following a flight from Panama City, Panama when it was struck by a green laser.

The first officer was looking at a tablet mounted by the side cockpit window when the aircraft was hit a second time by the laser.

The first officer experienced a direct hit in the eyes by the laser, and experienced blurred vision and discomfort lasting for 10-15 minutes, said a preliminary Transport Canada report.

The captain continued the approach to a safe landing. A report was filed with Peel Regional Police.

Its not known if the pilot suffered lasting injuries. Air Canada did not respond to requests for information about the incident.

Several other aircraft also reported laser strikes at the same point in their approach to runways 23 and 24 Right that night and the following night, according to the Transport Canada report. The laser was reported to be coming from individuals in a park near Albion Rd. and Islington Ave.

A spokesperson for Toronto police said they responded to two calls about lasers and aircraft last month and while officers did investigate, no arrests were made.

While the number of laser strikes is starting to drop, Garneau said it is still far too high.

We still have work to do to sensitize people to the fact that pointing a laser at the cockpit of an aircraft, particularly when the pilot is focused on coming in to land or taking off, can be catastrophic, Garneau said.

I cant say that enough times and people need to realize how serious an offence this is, he said.

The small, hand-held lasers have become a big safety concern for pilots. The concentrated beam of light can cause temporary blindness and even permanent eye damage.

Since mid-November, there have been 23 laser strikes on commercial jets in the Toronto-area, happening often as the aircraft are just 400 metres above the ground during the descent for landing,

Laser strikes can be very disruptive during both take off and approach. These are critical phases of flight, and a laser strike, especially during these sensitive operations, has the potential for catastrophic consequences, said Christopher Praught, spokesperson for the Air Canada Pilots Association.

There were almost 600 laser strikes reported to Transport Canada in 2016 and 2015, up from 502 incidents in 2014. So far this year, Transport Canada has logged about 381 laser strikes nationwide.

Garneau earlier this year launched an awareness campaign to highlight the dangers of pointing lasers at aircraft. He also reminded people about the legal consequences, if caught pointing a laser at an aircraft, which includes up to $100,000 in fines and five years in prison.

The Air Canada Pilots Association says these lasers should be prohibited weapons and wants tougher fines and stiffer sentences for those caught using them against aircraft. We do not believe there is a practical application for these devices, Praught said in an email.

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OTTAWADisabilities Minister Kent Hehr admitted to sometimes being brash and inappropriate after a fresh complaint of disrespect surfaced Thursday  this one from a Calgary woman engaged in a class-action lawsuit against the federal government.

Jennifer McCrea, who has been fighting on behalf of a group of mothers who say they were denied benefits while on maternity leave, contacted Hehrs office in October 2016 after being encouraged to speak to local Liberal MPs about her case.

Hehr, who was shuffled into the Sport and Disabilities portfolios by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this past summer, was veterans affairs minister at the time.

Read more: Thalidomide victims say federal government has broken promises of full support

(He was) very condescending, McCrea said of the October 2016 interaction, noting she was able to secure less than two minutes of his time.

She asked him pointedly why Ottawa continues to fight sick women  a loaded question to which he allegedly replied, Well, Ms. McCrea, that is the old question, like asking ... When did you stop beating your wife? 

I didnt respond (with) anything because my jaw was on the floor, McCrea recalled.

I had never really actually heard of the term that it is a loaded question ... I was just literally (wondering), Who talks like that, let alone ... a minister or a member of Parliament?

McCrea said she decided to come forward about Hehrs comments after hearing a group of thalidomide survivors describe earlier this week how they felt belittled by Hehrs bedside manner during a meeting earlier this year.

Hehr needs to be more sensitive in his interactions, McCrea said  a sentiment with which the minister appeared to agree when asked about the issue Thursday during question period.

When speaking to people I tend to be very straightforward; however, I understand my comments can be brash and sometimes even inappropriate, Hehr said as he read a written statement.

I regret my comments and I sincerely apologize. As Ive said before, Im committed to taking steps to better myself.

Hehr also apologized earlier this week after the thalidomide controversy erupted, Hehr although he described some of his comments as having been misconstrued.

As someone with a disability myself, it was certainly not my intention to offend anyone, he said at the time.

Conservative MP Rachael Harder, her partys status of women critic, suggested Hehr needs to consider how better to interact with his constituents.

There is clearly a disturbing pattern here of victim blaming, said Harder, who also questioned the minister directly in the House.

I think certainly he needs to reflect on his actions ... I would expect his behaviour to change.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh appeared genuinely taken aback by the remark.

He cant be talking about violence against women like that, he said. We need our leaders to be denouncing violence against women and in no way making light of it.

Stephen Moreau, a lawyer who is representing McCreas group of mothers, said disclosing the comments in 2016 would have distracted from efforts to get the Liberal government to take action on the question of maternity benefits.

But since nothing has yet happened on that file, the two issues may be related, he suggested.

Were seeing a comment that is consistent with the pattern that we are seeing of this government in terms of fighting the litigation tooth and nail, Moreau said.

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GUANGZHOU, CHINAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau capped off his trip to China with a parting shot on the importance of the free press, praising the essential role of journalism that challenges politicians and informs a countrys citizens.

Trudeau made the remarks Thursday in response to a question about an editorial in Chinas Global Times, an English-language tabloid that is sometimes seen as a mouthpiece for the countrys ruling Communist Party. Published Wednesday, the piece attacked the superiority and narcissism of the Canadian media for focusing on Chinas ideology in the context of exploratory talks on launching trade negotiations.

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Trade, not human rights, is top of mind as Trudeau visits China

You play an essential role, a challenge function, an information function, and its not easy at the best of times, Trudeau said at a press conference on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum, an elite business summit taking place in the sprawling cityscape of southern Chinas Pearl River Delta.

Its an essential role that you play in the success of a society. That is my perspective, that is a perspective shared by many, and its one that Im very happy to repeat today.

Trudeaus praise came at the conclusion of a four-day visit to China that saw him meet with the countrys most powerful leaders in Beijing before travelling south to Guangzhou to pitch Canada as an investment destination for hundreds of business executives.

But while his trip has focused heavily on the still-unsuccessful push to launch trade negotiations with China, human rights campaigners in Canada have called on Trudeau to raise concerns about the authoritarian governments limits on freedom of expression and other political liberties that are upheld in Western democracies.

Earlier this week in Beijing, Trudeau said that he is promoting human rights in China simply by holding press conferences in a country where the media and government are closely linked. This is something I demonstrate all over the world, he added.

The prime minister also said he raised human rights issues in discussions with Chinas President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang this week. He said that he also pressed Xi on the cases of Canadian citizens who are imprisoned in China, including the case of John Chang, a wine seller from British Columbia who was jailed last year on allegations of smuggling. Changs wife, Allison Lu, has been barred from leaving the country.

The prime minister says pursuing free trade with China and preserving NAFTA are part of Canadas mission to combat rising populism and nationalism. Justin Trudeau made the comments during his four-day state visit to China. (The Canadian Press)

Other Canadians jailed in China include Sun Qian, a practitioner of the outlawed Falun Gong religious movement who was arrested this year. And Huseyin Celil, a Uighur refugee and father of four who used to deliver pizzas in Hamilton, has been jailed since 2006 for alleged terrorist offences in China.

Ive ensured that consular cases of Canadians in difficulty overseas are followed much more closely by the Prime Ministers Office than has been done in the past, Trudeau said. I am much more active in my exchanges with global leaders to address and seek to resolve consular cases.

At the same time, Trudeau was careful to avoid any direct criticism of the Chinese government. His first stop on the current trip to China, for instance, was an event at the headquarters of Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media company. Under President Xi, China has underscored a policy of internet sovereignty where traffic is tightly controlled and foreign sites like Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter are banned in the country.

As Canadians know, our responsibility as a government is to engage constructively and productively with countries around the world that have different ways of doing things, Trudeau said when asked Thursday for his thoughts on Chinas Internet clampdown.

At the same time, Im always clear about standing up for Canadian values, and Canadian interests and things we stand for, and I do it in a respectful way. Obviously in Canada we have a different history and a different approach on a broad range of things, and we will continue to stand for the way we do things and work with people who do things differently, he said.

Gloria Nafziger, a campaigner with Amnesty International, said she was heartened to hear reports that consular cases involved jailed Canadians in China were raised by Trudeau and others during the four-day trip to China. Even so, she called for assurances that any future trade agreement between China and Canada would not overshadow concerns about a lack of political rights in China.

The wider human rights reality in China continues to be dismal, with crackdowns against human rights defenders, democracy activists, Tibetan and Uyghur minorities and practitioners of Falun Gong, Nafziger said.

We still have no clear indication from the government as to what steps will be taken to ensure human rights considerations are given concrete and meaningful attention in any expanding economic relationship between our two countries.

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For the first time, members of the Indigenous community performed a smudging ceremony and drum circle at council Wednesday, to cleanse minds of negative energy.

And to find clarity and strength and to speak the truth, said Tasunke Sugar, a member of Cree First Nations, to the chamber.

The ritual was followed by another first  council unanimously voted in favour of the city establishing a permanent Indigenous Affairs Office, which the Indigenous community has been requesting for more than 20 years, said city staff.

This is a huge step in the right direction and I am honoured to be a part of this and to witness history, Sugar said after participating in the drum circle.

For the office to become a reality, however, council has to approve it in its 2018 budget. Currently unfunded, the office would require four staff and one external consultant, costing $520,000 a year, said a staff report.

The office is needed to strengthen the relationship between the city and Indigenous communities, develop a reconciliation strategy for the city, and work with other departments to incorporate Indigenous views into plans and policy-making, according to the Aboriginal affairs committee that endorsed the proposal in November.

Across its divisions and agencies, the city currently has 22 staff providing services and programs to the Indigenous community, said the report. Thats in a city with more than 46,000 Indigenous residents, according to the 2016 census.

Councillor John Campbell said he is disappointed with the lack of breadth in the report and that it explained little if anything.

Before he voted in favour of establishing the office, he said, I have great difficulty supporting the addition of five staff. I wouldnt have a problem reassigning staff to get this underway.

City staff said a standalone office with dedicated employees to fulfill the citys pledge to honour eight calls to action from among 94 in the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Report.

Frankly, its not so much about the very specific outcomes because this is a relatively small office, said Peter Wallace, city manager who will oversee it. Its more about ensuring that we are true to the reconciliation principles and we use this office to embed those principles into broader activities of city staff.

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York police have arrested a Scarborough man they allege posed as an officer online to ask for money.

Police starting looking into the case on Nov. 18 after receiving a report that a man was posing as a York Regional Police officer on the internet and asking those he befriended on social media for money.

The investigation revealed that the suspect was posting images of police equipment and paraphernalia as well as pictures of himself in a police uniform, said York police in a news release Thursday.

On Wednesday, police arrested a suspect in Toronto. Investigators found items consistent with impersonation of a police officer while executing a search warrant on his Scarborough-area home, York police said.

Di Yu, also known as Jason, 32, now faces two charges of impersonating a peace officer.

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A bid to find out whether the Scarborough subway is good value for money has again failed at city council.

On Wednesday, a motion from Councillor Josh Matlow asking his colleagues to direct the auditor general to include a cost-benefits comparison of the $3.35 billion one-stop subway extension and the light-rail alternative in her 2018 work plan failed 13-27.

Before we invest billions of dollars, we should have the most relevant, basic facts in front of us about whether or not there is value for every dollar invested. Also that we are providing the kind of service that residents need, Matlow said on the council floor. We are elected to not only represent our communities but represent the people of Toronto and be responsible with every dollar that were entrusted with.

Those backing the subway plan claimed Matlows motion was simply an attempt to delay the subway.

This is an ongoing attempt to delay, to waffle, to stop this vital transit extension, said Councillor James Pasternak, a member of Torys executive committee.

Council earlier voted to advance the design of a one-stop subway that will extend the Bloor-Danforth line from Kennedy Station to a new stop at the Scarborough Town Centre  tunneling 6.2 kilometres.

Council still has to vote in 2019 whether to move forward with building the subway once a more accurate cost estimate is provided by city and TTC staff who are currently working to advance the subway to 30 per cent design.

Matlows motion asked for a report back from the auditor general in the second quarter of 2018.

Senior city staff have repeatedly confirmed that kind of analysis has never been requested and therefore never produced. The motion needed 30 votes to pass.

This week, outgoing TTC CEO Andy Byford told CBCs Matt Galloway he had no objection to the study being done.

And former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat tweeting Wednesday morning: For a capital project of $3.56B that continues to see cost escalations, there is a tipping point at which the cost-benefit analysis becomes questionable. Responsible government would continually, honestly assess this question and have alternatives in hand.

The subway would replace the aging Scarborough RT. But that wasnt always the plan.

Council originally approved a seven-stop LRT to replace the SRT, which would have connected Scarborough Town Centre, and Centennial College and Malvern to a rapid transit stop for the first time.

That LRT was part of a master agreement with the province signed in 2012, and was fully funded by the province. That agreement is still signed today.

In 2013, under former mayor Rob Ford  and at the urging of Scarborough Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who was facing re-election, and former TTC Chair Councillor Karen Stintz, who was planning to run for the mayors chair  council scrapped the LRT in favour of the subway, then estimated to cost $2 billion more.

Council approved raising property taxes to pay for the more expensive line  $910 million in total  which the city started collecting in 2014 and will continue collecting for at least the next 30 years.

Councillor Gord Perks questioned why his colleagues would not want to know whether the subway is good value for money when compared to the alternatives.

The plain fact remains, by voting no to what Councillor Matlow is doing, effectively what you are doing is saying We don't want to know.

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Through the window, Maqsood saw soldiers coming towards his house. He quickly gathered his two daughters, his toddler son, and his wife who was 6 months pregnant. Holding their hands, he rushed them towards the back door of their house in Rakhine, Burma. But the soldiers were already there.

They grabbed his two daughters and took them into the surrounding forest. Maqsood couldnt help them, he just ran with his wife and son, away from the screams of his two young girls. They ran for two days and one night.

When they reached the bank of the river between Burma and Bangladesh, his wife stopped. She couldnt breathe. In a split second, a landmine exploded near her, destroying into fragments her body, and with her, their unborn child.

Somehow, Maqsood crossed the border with his almost two-year-old son into Coxs Bazaar, Bangladesh, now home to over one million Rohingya refugees.

Dr. Nasir Uddin is telling Maqsoods story this week in a lecture circuit that takes him to the Asian Institute at University of Torontos Munk School of Global Affairs, the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and Wilfred Laurier University.

For the last three months, Uddin, a professor of anthropology at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh, has recorded the stories of over 500 Rohingya refugees that have fled to the city he was born and raised in. He asked them where they lived, what situations they left their home in, how they crossed the border, and why they fled.

Each time the answer was the same: We were going to be killed.

Every story Uddin heard, every memory that was recalled for him, was filled with instances of unimaginable trauma. The 500 narratives became difficult to carry for the man who has worked with Rohingya refugees for two decades. In the process he became sicka persistent headache, fever, vomiting. He spent two days in the hospital.

As a global society, weve taken belonging to state for granted, said Uddin, who laments that the stateless population has been displaced more rapidly in the last three months than it has in waves of displacement that happened previously in the early 1980s.

There are two official refugee camps set up in Coxs Bazaar; two unofficial camps have emerged to accommodate the 620,000 people that have arrived since Aug. 25, almost half of whom are children under the age of 15.

These camps are emerging under immense stress to the local population, said Uddin. What once used to be a hilly land inhabited by local farmers and fishermen is now a giant tent suburb. Local people, mostly low-income, have lost the land that was a main source of income or a home.

On both sides of every street, there are only people, he said, Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, international organizations, thousands of journalists, just people. Local ecosystems have been destroyed.

Its unprecedented, said Uddin. Rohingya refugees are caught between an overpopulated country questioning how long they can host over a million new people, and another not letting them return to the land they are indigenous to.

This is 2017. said Uddin. This is the twenty-first century, this is not Middle Agesand were not doing anything substantial to solve the problem.

Uddin has been a part of this discussion since he was an elementary school student when he watched the first Rohingya refugees settle at Coxs Bazaar. In junior high school, he was a member of the schools debating society, where one of the topics was whether Bangladesh should support Rohingya or not.

The first time he visited the camp was during a school trip. He describes it as poultry farm. I realized then that this is a people that cant decide their own destiny, he said.

Uddin is calling on the international community, including Canada to move beyond discussions of humanitarian aid and assistance. The international community should come and stand beside Rohingya people, he said. We have to demand they can go back to their home with social safety, human dignity, and legal recognition.

Its not time to express sympathy, to provide food or money or donations, said Uddin. We need to make space for them. It is our duty.

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A Toronto music teacher is suing her principal, vice-principal and the public school board for defamation after the administrators sent an email to the school community apologizing that a well-known folk song  Land of the Silver Birch  was performed at a school concert, calling it inappropriate and racist.

In her statement of claim, Violet Shearer, the music teacher at High Park Alternative Public School, said the email effectively suggested that it was her professional judgment and conduct that were inappropriate and racist.

Shearer taught the song to her classes at the school and it was performed at a school concert she organized in May 2016, according to her claim.

She is now seeking $75,000 in damages and an unequivocal apology from the administrators and the school board.

The schools principal, Nancy Keenan, vice-principal Edita Tahirovic, and the Toronto District School Board deny in their statement of defence that Shearer suffered any damage to her reputation and said the email was factual and fair comment.

None of the allegations outlined in this story has been proven in court and none of those involved agreed to be interviewed.

According to Shearers statement of claim, Keenan and Tahirovic sent an email to the school community two weeks after the concert following concerns from parents about the song, which they say is based on a poem by Pauline Johnson.

While its lyrics are not overtly racist . . . the historical context of the song is racist, the email said.

E. Pauline Johnson, while Indigenous, largely performed for non-native audiences, and performed in a style that was popular at the time, that depicted Native civilization to be replaced by a superior western civilization.

(The song) romanticizes native people and culture as being pre-modern and connected to nature, while at the same time justifying colonization and the superiority of western culture, it said.

Shearer, who is representing herself, said the administrators didnt have sufficient facts to support their characterization of the song performance as inappropriate and racist.

Such characterization is incorrect and false, she said, adding that the email has reduced her professional standing in the community.

The Star spoke with a professor, a poet and an activist  all of whom are familiar with Johnsons work  about the case, and while their perspectives on the song varied, they all agreed the administrators description of Johnson was unfair.

Johnson was born in the mid-1800s in Six Nations, her father was a Mohawk chief and her mother was English.

A lot of Johnsons work was extremely subversive, very political, especially for the time, said Terri Monture, a Haudenosaunee activist from Six Nations and a relative of Johnsons.

While some of Johnsons work was more simplistic, she was trying to make a living to support her mother and sister by writing what was popular at the time, Monture said.

I dont think its fair to judge her by the necessity of having to put food on the table with our ideas of what constitutes racism, she said.

Bonita Lawrence, a professor of Indigenous Studies at York University who is Mikmaq, said its patently false to suggest Johnson replicated colonial ideas in her work.

Johnson was a complex writer and was certainly trying on different ideas about how Indigenous peoples could find a way to survive in Canada, but she certainly never depicted that native civilization was to be replaced by a so called superior civilization,  she said in an email.

Rather, said Janet Rogers, a Haudenosaunee poet from Six Nations based in B.C., Johnson saw it as part of her responsibility . . . to comment on the realities of Indigenous life and the injustices of that life in context to the relationship with the rest of Canada.

As for the school performance of Land of the Silver Birch, which to Rogers knowledge was inspired by Johnsons work, Rogers said while the use of the word wigwam is culturally inaccurate  she explained that Haudenosaunee dont build wigwams  she doesnt see anything in the song to be very concerned about.

If people are so enthusiastic about speaking on behalf of native people and what is racist and what isnt then please take that as an opportunity to go deeper because this is a little superficial to me, she said.

If youre going to address Indigenous issues, go deeper, go to the water issue, go to the mould in the housing issue. Theres a lot more you could do to help Indigenous people rather than just pick on a lyric or two.

The lyric Rogers referred to reads: High on a rocky ledge, Ill build my wigwam. Close by the waters edge, silent and still.

Though Monture said Land of the Silver Birch is simplistic and presents romanticized ideas of the land that at the same time erases Indigenous people, she agreed calling it racist was overblown.

However, she noted, performing one of Johnsons deeper works would have been a better choice.

I totally get it, settlers are going to get it wrong . . . but thats part of reconciliation, it shouldnt be easy, it shouldnt be comfortable, it should put people in a place where they have to examine stuff . . . but I think that their reaction was a little too much, she said.

Lawrence also said the song doesnt relate to Johnsons work and is another example of colonialism.

The song encapsulates a history of what author Philip Deloria has characterized as playing Indian,  she said.

While native peoples were dispossessed of land, and were forbidden to express language and identity in residential school, white men appropriated Indianness and pretended to be part of their idea of what native cultures were, as a means of asserting a national identity, or asserting their attachment to the land.

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Emergency naloxone kits to prevent opioid overdoses will be available for all police and fire services in Ontario, and the province has secured federal permission to allow more supervised injection sites such as the one in Torontos Moss Park.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins said Thursday the measures are desperately needed to tackle a public health crisis that is claiming more and more lives each month.

Were dealing with a grave situation, Hoskins told reporters at Queens Park.

From May to July of this year, there were 336 opioid-related deaths in the province of Ontario. That is up from 201 deaths from the same period, May to July, of last year, said the minister, who is also a doctor.

This represents a 68-per-cent increase in opioid-related deaths. Each and every one of these numbers is a person: someone who was loved by their family, someone who wont be coming home this holiday season.

Hoskins has received an exemption for temporary overdose prevention centres from federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor to ensure nurses and others working at the sites are not criminally prosecuted.

This new ability would strengthen Ontarios harm reduction efforts in communities and protect the courageous front-line workers at these sites from federal prosecution, Hoskins said, praising efforts at Moss Park, which he visited with Premier Kathleen Wynne in October.

In Ottawa, Petitpas Taylor said she was concerned and saddened by the latest data on opioid-related overdose deaths from Ontario.

The current crisis is worsening, despite our collective efforts to date, she warned, but said these overdose prevention sites are one step in what has been and will continue to be a concerted and urgent response to this crisis.

Its not yet clear where any new safe injection facilities would be located in the province, as details still must be worked out with municipalities.

Queens Park is spending more than $222 million over the next three years on fighting the opioid crisis, including hiring more health staff and improving access to addiction treatment.

Between July and September, there were 2,449 emergency department visits related to opioid overdoses in Ontario.

Thats a 29-per-cent increase from the 1,896 such visits in the previous three months and a staggering 115-per-cent hike from the same time period a year earlier.

Dr. Dirk Huyer, Ontarios chief coroner, said the alarming statistics are available thanks to improved tracking of opioid-related overdoses.

Its unfortunate that were here to say that the news is not good, Huyer said. This is incredibly significant and an incredibly large number. This is a phenomenally big issue.

Huyer said the data revealed the mean age of the deaths was 41, and 51 per cent of the deaths occurred in those between the ages of 25 and 44.

Its a terrible tragedy from that perspective, he said, noting a skyrocketing amount of fentanyl found in overdose victims.

In 2015, it was 19 per cent; 2016, it was 41 per cent; and in the three months  of our snapshot (for 2017) it was 67 per cent of the time fentanyl was detected.

Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Marie-France Lalonde said naloxone kits, which are used to revive drug users after overdoses until they can receive hospital treatment, will be offered to all of Ontarios 61 police services as well as all 447 fire services.

Lalonde said adopting the kits would be voluntary for emergency services.

Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Bryan Larkin, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said that by making naloxone kits available to our officers, police personnel will be better equipped to save lives and protect themselves.

Our police officers have been on the front line from the start in dealing with the opioid crisis and worked closely with our government, health and first responder partners, said Larkin.

Huntsville Fire Department Chief Steve Hernen, president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, said: Equipping firefighters as well as our police colleagues with naloxone kits gives us one more tool to use in potentially saving someones life during an emergency situation.

Progressive Conservative MPP Jeff Yurek (Elgin-Middlesex-London), who has been pressing the Liberal government to act, said the measures announced are part of the solution.

But Yurek, who is a pharmacist, said it shouldnt take months of opposition pressure and public outcry for a government to make a sensible decision that could save lives.

New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo (ParkdaleHigh Park) said theres so much more they could do.

Theres no question the government hasnt done enough, DiNovo said.

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ALGIERS, ALGERIA  French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Algeria on Wednesday for a one-day working visit aimed at boosting security and economic co-operation.

Macron also hopes to reshape the troubled relationship between Algeria and France, complicated by the countries shared history. Algeria lived under French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962, a period that ended after an eight-year war.

Macron laid a wreath at the Martyrs Memorial, a monument commemorating the Algerian war for independence.

The French president then walked in a street in Algiers city centre, exchanging a few words and shaking hands with many young Algerians. One of them called on the French president for a visa, visa.

Macron then planned to make a stop at Algiers most prestigious bookshop.

In the afternoon, he met with Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

They were to discuss the situation in Algerias troubled neighbour, Libya, as well as co-operation on the fight against extremism in the Sahel region, according to the French presidency.

During a visit to Algeria last February, then-presidential candidate Macron raised the topic of Frances troubled relationship with Algeria, calling the colonization of Algeria a crime against humanity.

The comments prompted controversy in France where the topic is still a source of tension. At the time, protests were organized by people with ties to Christian and Jewish families who moved to French colonies in North Africa before being expelled when those countries became independent.

I now wish we can look together toward the future, with respect to our history, 39-year-old Macron said in an interview to Algerian daily El Watan, stressing he is from a generation which hasnt known the colonial period.

Before the visit, the minister of war veterans, Tayed Zitouni, said relations between France and Algeria will never be quite normal. Its a legitimate claim to call for excuses for colonial crimes.

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LONDONThe U.K. government acknowledged Wednesday that it has made no detailed assessment of the economic impact of leaving the European Union, as its lack of preparation for a momentous break became clear.

David Davis, the official shepherding Britains departure from the 28-nation bloc, said the nation should be prepared for a profound shift in the way the economy operates on a scale similar to that of the 2008 financial crisis.

He told a parliamentary committee that since Britain must prepare for a paradigm change, in the economy, any assessment in the automotive, aerospace financial services or other sectors would fail to be informative.

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The House of Commons Brexit committees chair, Hilary Benn, described the decision as rather strange given the historic decisions at hand and since authorities wish to start renegotiating Britains trade relations with the rest of Europe within weeks.

You have said there are no impact assessments, Benn said. You were hoping that, at the October (European) Council, the door would be open to phase two of the negotiations, where the question would be asked What does the U.K. government want?

Are you actually telling us that the government hadnt at that point  and still hasnt  undertaken the assessment? Benn asked.

Davis told the committee he didnt need a formal impact assessment.

Im not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong, Davis said. When you have a paradigm change  as happened in 2008 with the financial crisis  all the models were wrong.

But as the day wore on, the governments last minute-planning became more evident.

Treasury chief Philip Hammond revealed that Prime Minister Theresa Mays closest advisers in her Cabinet had not yet had a full discussion of the end state position, the status the U.K. would aim to have once it leaves the EU. In testimony before the House of Commons Treasury Committee, Hammond said it was too soon to have such talks.

He said that would happen once the EU accepts to move the Brexit talks on from the divorce issues to the question of future relations, like trade.

We are not yet at that stage and it would have been premature to have that discussion before we reach that stage, he said.

Britain and the EU on Monday came close to agreeing on key divorce terms, including how to maintain an open Irish border after the U.K.  including Northern Ireland  leaves the EU.

But the agreement was scuttled at the last minute when the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Mays minority government, warned it wouldnt support a deal it saw as undermining Northern Irelands place in the United Kingdom.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that a solution to the issue can only be discovered in the context of discussions on the end state of the U.K.s relations with the rest of the EU.

We are going to take back control of our borders, of our laws and of U.K. cash contributions and thats the way forward, he added.

May was expected to hold talks with top EU officials later this week.

Britain and the EU have only days to clinch a deal on the divorce terms  the Irish border, Britains financial exit bill and the rights of citizens hit by Brexit  before a Dec. 14-15 EU summit that will decide whether Brexit talks can move on to future relations and 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, and heightened fears that Mays government could collapse.

Business leaders in particular are expressing alarm at the lack of certainty in the process. The chief executive of manufacturers organization EEF, Stephen Phipson, warned that inability to secure a transition deal before Christmas would be costly.

While international companies appreciate the nuances of complex negotiations, they will assess the situation based on the facts at hand and all they will be able to see is the probability of a cliff edge looming on the horizon, he said.

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JERUSALEMThousands of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, demonstrators in the Gaza Strip burned U.S. flags and pictures of U.S. President Donald Trump, and a top Palestinian official said Vice-President Mike Pence would not be welcome in the West Bank, in a show of rage Thursday over the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Israeli forces were bracing for the possibility of even stronger violence on Friday, when tens of thousands of Palestinians attend weekly prayers at Jerusalems Al Aqsa Mosque, the citys most sacred Islamic site. In Gaza, the supreme leader of the Hamas militant group called on Palestinians to launch a new uprising against Israel.

The Palestinians were blindsided by Trumps move to depart from decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem and upend long-standing international assurances that the fate of the city would be determined in negotiations.

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The Palestinians seek East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. Israel claims the entire city, including East Jerusalem, home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, as its undivided capital. The opposing claims lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have often spilled over into deadly violence.

The Palestinians declared three days of rage, shuttering schools and businesses, and staging angry demonstrations at Damascus Gate, one of the entrances to Jerusalems Old City, and cities across the West Bank and Gaza.

We are here. We believe in our rights and one day it (will) become Jerusalem, the capital for the Palestinian people, declared Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

The Israeli military reported demonstrations in some 30 locations across the West Bank on Thursday, saying Palestinians had hurled stones and firebombs at troops. A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity under briefing guidelines, said troops were instructed to use minimal force and avoid live fire to avoid escalating tensions.

In the West Bank, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in Bethlehem, the biblical town of Jesus birth, just weeks before thousands of foreign tourists are expected to visit for Christmas celebrations. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending thick plumes of black smoke over the city.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were slightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Spontaneous protests also took place in Gaza, with angry youths burning tires, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

A senior Palestinian official said the Palestinians would not meet with Pence during his visit to the region later this month when Pence is expected to visit Israel and make a stop in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. We will not receive him in the Palestinian territories, said the official, Jibril Rajoub.

However, a White House official said Pence still plans to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as scheduled and said it would be counterproductive to cancel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss upcoming plans.

Israeli security officials were preparing for more unrest on Friday. In a pre-emptive move, the military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank, while other troops were put on alert.

Israeli officials said Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, along with the expected unrest in the West Bank, would set the tone for the coming days.

Palestinian officials in the West Bank said they had no interest in bloody violence but warned that individual attacks were possible.

Israeli police were considering whether to impose age restrictions on worshippers at Fridays prayers, but as of Thursday evening, had made no changes.

In Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas supreme leader, called on Palestinians to launch a new uprising. We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he is recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the United States will be moving it's embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Trump made the announcement on Dec. 6 at the White House.

Hamas, which seeks Israels destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. However, the Islamic militant group, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, has been weakened by a decade-long Israeli blockade and three painful wars with Israel.

Nonetheless, it still has cells in the West Bank and possesses a large arsenal of rockets in its Gaza stronghold. Late Thursday, Israeli tanks and aircraft attacked two military posts in Gaza, following a series of rocket attacks, including one that landed in southern Israel. There were no reports of casualties on either side.

Trumps decision had no immediate impact on daily life in Jerusalem, which already is the seat of Israels government.

While Trump insisted that the move was meant to acknowledge the current reality, and not prejudge negotiations on Jerusalems status, it carried deep symbolic meaning and was seen by the Palestinians as siding with Israel.

And even if Trumps move cannot single-handedly determine Jerusalems status, policies of the U.S., the lead mediator for over two decades of unsuccessful peace talks, carry special weight.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump bound himself forever to the history of Jerusalem and maintained other countries were already interested in following suit.

Abbas suggested that Trumps move disqualified the United States from continuing as an exclusive broker. He met with his closest Arab ally, Jordans King Abdullah II, in Amman on Thursday, saying that he was rallying international opposition to Trumps move, which he called an unacceptable crime.

The king could play an important role. He is one of Washingtons most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region, and his country is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making him an influential player.

Abbas said he was also speaking to countries in Europe and Africa. International opposition has been widespread, including Americas closest allies in Europe. Fortunately, there was a positive response from all the countries in the world, Abbas said.

On Thursday, the Palestinians asked the Security Council to take urgent action and demand that Trumps decision be rescinded. The council scheduled an emergency meeting on Friday.

Meanwhile, anger at the U.S. rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia condemned Trumps decision in a rare public rebuke by the U.S. ally. The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said it had warned against the step and continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administrations decision, calling it unjustified and irresponsible.

The Arab League, which represents most states in the Middle East and North Africa, was to meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

Despite the verbal support, Palestinian officials are concerned the Arabs will not provide the sustained backing Abbas needs. While quick to condemn Trumps decision, Arab leaders have not threatened to reduce ties or take any other action against the U.S. or Israel.

There were also feelings of resignation from many in the region who said they have long given up on their leaders standing up to either Israel or the United States.

Preoccupied with their own tribulations, there were barely any protests in capitals like Beirut, Baghdad or Damascus.

People are tired, exhausted. Personally I feel that we are doomed anyway and nothing we do makes a difference, said Ghinwa Barakat, a 43-year-old shopper in Beirut. Whos going to support the Palestinians? Syria is destroyed, Iraq is destroyed. The Gulf countries are fighting each other and competing over who will normalize relations with Israel first. So, who?

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OJAI, CALIF.The biggest and most destructive of the windblown fires raking Southern California shut down one of the regions busiest freeways Thursday and threatened Ojai, a scenic mountain town dubbed Shangri-La and known for its boutique hotels and New Age spiritual retreats.

Most of Ojais 7,000 residents were warned to clear out late Wednesday and patients unable to walk were moved from the Ojai Valley Community Hospital because of unprecedented, hurricane-force Santa Ana winds in the overnight forecast.

The winds turned out to be less fierce than expected, but firefighters still had to contend with gusts that fanned the fire to 388 square kilometres and put thousands of homes in jeopardy.

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Two people were burned in the blaze that destroyed five buildings and threatened 1,000 others around Bonsall, a small picturesque hilly community known for its equestrian facilities.

Along the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara, tiny beach communities were under siege as fire leapt from steep hillsides across U.S. Hwy. 101.

We drove through a wall of flames, Wendy Frank said, describing her ordeal after evacuating her horses from Ojai on Wednesday night. I didnt know if wed make it. I just put the accelerator down. I know we were going over 100 mph (160 km/h), we could have been going much more, and just hoped for the best.

The largest of the wildfires  the Thomas Fire  surrounded Ojai on Thursday morning, officials said, endangering the popular winter retreat that is normally home to about 8,000 people. Most of the Ojai Valley was under a mandatory evacuation order.

The Thomas Fire continues to burn actively with extreme rates of spread, officials said Thursday morning. The blaze prompted officials to shut down the 101 Freeway north of Ventura, leaving no way to travel between Ventura and Santa Barbara, the sheriffs office said. Officials said they had evacuated more than 50,000 people from 15,000 homes, and some 2,500 personnel were responding to the fire.

Down along the coast, fires flared along U.S. Hwy. 101, forcing an evacuation of the tiny community of Faria Beach.

Anyone in your homes still, you need to leave now, a California Highway Patrol officer said through a loudspeaker while driving down a smoke-shrouded street. The fire is here, you need to leave.

Joseph Ruffner, who left earlier in the week, said he was staying put.

This morning there was a wall of fire back right over here, he said. I didnt think it was no big deal, but its coming back to burn what it didnt burn yesterday.

The highway, which runs the length of the state and is a major commuter corridor to Los Angeles, was closed intermittently along the 45-kilometre stretch between Ventura and Santa Barbara.

The Ventura County blaze and three other major fires burning in the Los Angeles area have put tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders and destroyed nearly 200 homes and buildings, a figure almost certain to rise.

A woman was found dead in a wrecked car in an evacuation zone near the city of Santa Paula, where the Ventura County blaze began Monday night, but officials could not immediately say whether the accident was fire-related.

In Ojai, the normally bustling town was practically vacant as smoke hung along the surrounding hillsides. Known as Shangri-La, both for its role as the stand-in for a Himalayan utopia in the 1937 Frank Capra movie Lost Horizon and for the magical vibe it is said to have, the town has attracted artists, hippies and spiritual thinkers for generations.

It is a popular getaway some 96 km northwest of Los Angeles for visitors looking for tranquil hikes, farm-to-table dining and spa treatments that include aromatherapy and a modern-day sweat lodge.

Like many of the places that have seen repeated catastrophic fires, such as Malibu or Bel-Air, which continued to smoulder from a fire that destroyed four homes Wednesday, it is an alluring place to live but one that is also prone to burn.

Part of it is the natural beauty of the area, said Ventura County Fire Capt. Brendan Ripley. The brush-covered hills, the rock formations, the steep terrain ... all of that helps to promote very active fire behaviour.

Ojais downtown burned 100 years ago and it has been skirted by two of the biggest fires in California history: one in 1932 and another in 1985.

The town is typically sheltered from the strong Santa Ana winds that blow in from the desert. But it is surrounded by dry brush that hasnt burned in years.

In tiny Faria Beach, homeowner Steve Andruszkewicz and his wife used a garden hose to spray palm trees to keep them from burning.

Were leaving, he said. Weve been packed up since Tuesday. We left Tuesday night and stayed down at our sons house. We came back yesterday, stayed the night, but this has got me worrying because of the blowing embers.

Southern California has been hit hard by four major fires that have put tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders and destroyed nearly 200 homes and buildings, a figure that is almost certain to grow.

Melissa Rosenzweig, 47, was briefly back home Wednesday after evacuating from her Ventura house, which has been spared so far while most on her street had burned in the largest and most destructive of the regions fires. She and her husband were about to evacuate again, hoping they will get lucky twice as the new winds arrive.

Heck yeah Im still worried, Rosenzweig said. Were very grateful but I know were not out of the woods.

In the exclusive Bel Air section of Los Angeles, where multimillion-dollar houses give the rich and famous sweeping views, authorities tallied four homes destroyed and 11 damaged by a fire that erupted before dawn Wednesday. Firefighters watched for remaining hot spots Thursday.

Flames there also burned a wine storage shed at media mogul Rupert Murdochs 6.5-hectare Moraga Vineyards estate and appeared to have damaged about 2.8 hectares of vines, a spokesperson said.

Across the wide Interstate 405 freeway from the Bel Air fire, the Getty Center art complex was closed to protect its collection from smoke damage. Many schools across Los Angeles were closed because of poor air quality and classes were cancelled at 265 schools Thursday.

Total damage tallies for all of the wildfires have lagged as fire agencies have focused on battling the flames. Early on, authorities in Ventura County said 150 structures were destroyed there, but that number was expected to increase substantially.

Damage assessments also remained incomplete for two fires in northern Los Angeles County. Losses from one of those fires included more than two dozen horses that became trapped in a barn in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles.

With files from Bloomberg

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Imagine your current country, possibly the only one youve ever known, forcibly kicking you out; your home country is unstable and perilous; and upon arrival at your prospect country, youre arrested, detained, and turned away. To be Haitian is to be trapped in a never-ending game of migrant roulette.

Last month, Donald Trump announced he will be rescinding the temporary protection status (TPS) for Haitians living in the United States. Under TPS, Haitians whose entire worlds were destroyed by the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, and that displaced over 1.5 million people were provided protection and status in the U.S.

This move will result in the deportation of 60,000 people back to an unstable country still recovering from environmental and political assaults; a country many do not know. Many are left with no choice but to emigrate en masse out of the U.S. There are thousands of families, parents, and children crossing the border into Canada, desperate for a home, and just to be met with immigration detention, arrest and deportation.

As with many Trump policies, Canadians are quick to condemn. However, Trumps assault on the Haitian diaspora is not unlike Trudeaus actions within our borders. Despite claiming itself as a safe haven for refugees, the Canadian government has arrested more than 3,000 Haitians trying to gain asylum in Canada. Canada too, has turned its back on Haitian refugees looking for safety.

Canadians have an ethical obligation to provide refuge and a home for Haitian refugees fleeing persecution from the U.S. government. After all, Canada has played an active role in the destabilization of the Haitian government by repeatedly infringing on its sovereignty. Haitian politicians, such as Jean-Charles Moise, and Haitian newspapers, like Haiti Progres, have attributed the ousting of Jean-Bernard Aristide as a significant moment.

In 2003, the federal Liberal government organized an assembly of Canadian, American and French leaders to discuss the state of Haiti  with no actual Haitian officials present. There, they decided to stage a coup-detat, and forcibly oust Haitis first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Days later, thousands of troops were deployed into Haiti under a false pretense of regional stabilization. This coup would lead to thousands of deaths of Haitian civilians as collateral damage in the name of Canadian peacekeeping.

The Canadian government has a history of utilizing military intervention  often backed by the United Nations  to meddle in Haitis political climate. Canadas imperial fingerprints can be traced through law enforcement and foreign aid. Following the coup, Canada actively remilitarized the Haitian police. Following the earthquake, Canada deployed 2,000 troops to the island initially sent as search and rescue, but overstayed their welcome and actively impeded on Haitian peoples ability to live life freely.

As foreign nations interests in Haiti increases, the country destabilizes. Since the 1970s, Haitis unstable climate has created several waves of mass migration of Haitians into the U.S. and Canada. My family experienced both ends of the migration route, first landing in the U.S. and later relocating to Canada. For more than 50 years, families have been forced to migrate, endure decades-long family separation, and navigate varying precarious immigration status. To be Haitian is to feel stateless.

The impacts of Canadas imperial relationship with Haiti are long lasting. We must grapple with the reality that our foreign policy and military interests have contributed to Haitis political and economic instability. It is time for Canadians to take responsibility for our complicity and its impacts on Haitians living in Haiti and the diaspora. It is time for Canadians to welcome Haitian migrants seeking refuge here with open arms; after all, we never extended that courtesy when we barged in and occupied their land.

In less than 19 months, thousands will suddenly lose their legal status and likely targeted, detained, and forcibly removed from the U.S. As the inevitable panic sets in, more will attempt to come to Canada. From January to September this year alone, 6,360 Haitians applied for asylum in Canada; with only 10 per cent being approved for status. Canada should live by its promise to being a welcoming space for refugees and open its door to the tens of thousands fleeing Trumps persecution.

Pascale Diverlus is a journalist, organizer and one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter-Toronto.

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Free trade with China has been the focal point of the prime ministers recent trip there, generating most of the debate and media coverage. But we urgently need to look past the possibility of a future bilateral agreement to the impact that Chinas direct investment in our country is already having on our economy, our workers and our future.

Trade is essential to Canada. Thats why we are now back at the bargaining table fighting for the future North American free trade and the investment and jobs that come with it.

Even without a free-trade agreement, Chinas encroachment on Canadas economy is accelerating. Total investment from China now exceeds that of the U.S. and the strategic nature of those investments is disturbing.

Most recently, CCCI, a construction company owned by the Chinese government, has made a $1.45-billion bid for one of Canadas largest infrastructure employers, Aecon Construction.

CCCI has a troubling history when it comes to upholding the labour standards and their enforcement for which our unions have fought for generations. Even as the global economy has changed, the principles of safety, fairness and respect can never be compromised.

Chinas egregious record on workers right speaks for itself. As a state-owned enterprise, CCCI is an agent of that blatant disregard. From its high number of workplace fatalities in China, to the installation of asbestos in an Australian childrens hospital to the unjust termination of HIV positive workers in Uganda, CCCI has fallen short in protecting its employees and their rights.

Not only that, but the timing of the Aecon takeover ensures the Chinese government will directly benefit from the $125 billion to be spent on revitalizing the roads, bridges and public structures that will shape our country for years to come. It also means muting the significant economic multiplier effect of infrastructure investment that leads to rises in good jobs, real wages and a higher standard of living.

The Infrastructure Banks formal mandate is to contribute to our long-term economic growth and support the creation of good, well-paying jobs for the middle class. These investments will also help us achieve our goals of lowering GHG emissions and building communities that are socially inclusive. Yet, CCCI has a record of proven corruption so egregious that it was sanctioned by the World Bank for a bid-rigging scheme in the Philippines.

This is just the most recent evidence of the need for an informed, national conversation about matching our social and economic priorities with our actions and the messages we send to other countries.

Earlier this year, in the face of widespread public criticism that included the U.S., Hytera won approval to acquire Norsat, a satellite equipment company and military supplier. The approval, granted without a full national security review under the Investment Canada Act, was also a setback for the domestic innovation agenda.

The Liberal government also revisited and approved O-Net Communications takeover of another homegrown innovator, ITF Technologies of Montreal. Although the previous Conservative government rejected the same transaction in 2015, approval was granted despite O-Net being 25 per cent-owned by a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Anbang Insurances takeover of Retirement Concepts, which operates retirement homes in British Columbia, Calgary and Montreal, was also quickly approved as a net benefit to Canada. Anbang has faced questions in the U.S. relating to its ownership structure and ties to the government of China.

Where do we draw the line as a nation and a civil society?

These recent deals represent a pattern of accommodation with the Chinese government that borders on appeasement at any cost. They are part of a broader narrative about a country that needs to decide whether it is confident and secure enough to forge its own path, based on its own standards of fairness and social justice. Or is it a country that casts those values aside every time it finds itself across the table from a bigger  but not necessarily better  partner whose interests and values have very little in common with our own.

Jerry Dias is the national president of Unifor.

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NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE  Canadians shake their heads in disbelief as they look around the world and see bad governments make decisions that dont represent the interests of the people theyre supposed to serve.

Yet here, in what is arguably Canadas most beautiful town, a relatively obscure government body  the local school board  is doing just that.

The District School Board of Niagara (DSBN) has been making a series of terrible decisions that threaten to undermine the entire community.

The school board has already ended public education in the towns historic heart. Now it is working hard  defying local residents and the provincial government  to destroy any hope of using the school property it closed as a community hub.

It should be simple. With some 600 closed or underused public schools across Ontario, community use of surplus schools is an idea the provincial government supports and encourages. In many places, the province, local school boards and communities are having success in setting up community hubs.

Not this public school board in this town  in fact, theyve been closing schools across Niagara, showing little concern for the long-term effects on communities.

Its easy to see this dispute as a local tempest in a teacup. But it raises larger questions.

If Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario government truly support the community use of surplus schools, shouldnt they do more to compel Niagaras school board to stop it from opposing residents wishes?

Who oversees the decisions of these school trustees?

The DSBN supports the community hub concept, says board Chair Dale Robinson.

Not true when it comes to Niagara-on-the-Lake. The board has shown this time after time.

In 2015, over residents objections, the DSBN shuttered 75-year-old Parliament Oak Elementary School in the historic Old Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The four-acre property, with a building in excellent condition, is now an ideal site for a hub, and there are lots of community groups that want to move in.

They include the prestigious Shaw Theatre Festival, the Music Niagara classical festival, a childrens theatre group, a nursery and more. Residents formed a not-for-profit community hub group, gained widespread support and asked to negotiate to acquire the abandoned school.

The board has other ideas  selling the land to a developer who could put up ugly condos and a parking lot, maybe a casino?

The town council offered to buy the property with a multi-million-dollar bid, over the asking price, to help create a community hub.

The school board rejected this. The town tried again. The board added conditions that it claimed the province wanted in any deal. To her credit, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter fired back a letter.

No conditions of sale were mandated by the province. I encourage you to redouble your efforts to find a solution that is best for the community, the minister said.

The province also offered the services of one of its most experienced facilitators to help the board discuss the community hub with the town.

The boards answer? Nope.

It unanimously rejected the offer to meet the facilitator  in effect, telling the province and the entire community to buzz off.

It seems the school board has mistaken its mandate, which is to provide the best possible public education, with a desire to squeeze as much profit as possible out of its old school property, regardless of how this affects the people it is supposed to serve.

There are long-term implications for a community like Niagara-on-the-Lake.

A study commissioned by the town several years ago found that, to be viable, the community needs a better demographic mix, not just retirees but families with kids. Families move to places where there are schools and services that serve the whole community  like a hub.

Its hard enough to encourage this when the school board has closed the old towns only public school; harder still when the board acts like its hell-bent on preventing neighbours from using the building.

In Ontario, should a school board, even an elected one, have so much sway over planning and property that it can destroy the aspirations of a community?

And if school boards like Niagaras act to damage public education and public policy, shouldnt Ontarians start asking: why do we even have school boards?

David Israelson is a Niagara-on-the-Lake resident who serves as an unpaid volunteer in the not-for-profit group seeking to establish a community hub.

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Donald Trump has decided to bring his delicate touch to the most inflammatory region of the world, the Middle East. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, is the answer. The presidents declaration that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there is one of the most reckless moves of his administration.

Theres a good reason why 86 countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel (including Canada) have their embassies in Tel Aviv. Exactly none has an embassy in Jerusalem.

The final status of Jerusalem is the trickiest issue that must be resolved in any eventual peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, however remote that possibility seems now.

Both sides insist that Jerusalem must be their capital. Somehow, they must figure out a way to share it if their perpetual state of semi-warfare is ever to give way to true peace. The most common proposal is that West Jerusalem be the capital of Israel, and East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

But to get anywhere near that point will involve reviving the moribund peace process, despite all the failures of past decades. By putting the United States firmly on the Israeli side in this intractable dispute, Trump is making it all the more difficult for Washington to act as a useful partner in figuring out a path toward co-existence.

True, he did hedge his words on Wednesday by saying that the U.S. was not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. But that is a slender reed; overall, his actions amount to a ringing endorsement of the policies of the Israeli government and a hard slap to the Palestinians.

Canada has stepped into this tangled thicket before. Back in 1979, then-prime minister Joe Clark promised to move our embassy to Jerusalem, only to back off quickly once the incendiary implications became clear.

Since then, Canadian governments of all stripes (including even the most pro-Israeli one of them all, under Stephen Harper) have maintained the policy of keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv. The Trudeau government, quite correctly, reiterated that stance in the face of Trumps announcement by saying the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

None of this takes away from the obvious fact that Jerusalem is, in reality, the capital of Israel  home to its parliament, Supreme Court, government ministries, and the residences of its president and prime minister.

Nor does it contradict the fact that Jews have a sacred connection to the city that goes back some 3,000 years and has continued through the ages in the face of occupation, war and exile.

Its not clear why Trump is doing this now, other than to fulfil a campaign promise and to curry favour with his base, including Christian evangelicals who are determinedly pro-Israel.

His announcement on Jerusalem was not linked to any wider peace initiative. All he did was to repeat in general terms Washingtons traditional support for a two-state solution.

But if he does eventually propose some new formulation for peace, his actions on Wednesday will only serve to push that elusive goal even farther from reach.

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Many Torontonians likely prefer anonymity over all else, Teitel, Dec. 6

Emma Teitel writes, Unfortunately for (Saint John, N.B. Mayor Don) Darling, what many Torontonians love even more than short commute times and fresh air is not knowing our neighbours.

Emma Teitel is wrong. Toronto is a city that loves to know its neighbours.

I grew up in Minto, N.B., until the age of 7, when my father moved us to Chipman, N.B. Then, when I was 17, my father moved us to Ontario.

People told me then, Ontario is cold. I replied, I will warm it up.

The most common thing I heard from my teachers in New Brunswick was, If you want to be successful, move to Ontario. The first thing my Ontario teachers told me was, If you want to be successful, move to the United States. I decided I would succeed in this country and on my own terms.

The thing I most liked about growing up in small-town New Brunswick was that folks said hello on the streets. When I arrived in Toronto in the mid 1960s, I brought nothing with me but friendliness. I have lived in various parts of the city. The first thing I do is make friends with my neighbours.

The second thing my Ontario teachers told me was that the standard of education in New Brunswick was lower, so I should not be ashamed when I failed. I passed with honours. We Maritimers come from tougher stock.

People learn best by example. I am setting the example. Perhaps Saint John could use a Reg Hartt.

Reg Hartt, Toronto

Torontonians also prefer their anonymity when it comes to the plodding destruction of one of Canadas great and traditional main streets. The well-to-do residents east and west of Yonge St. seem to be sitting idly by as high-rise towers sweep north from Yonge and Eglington, bringing guaranteed future congestion and loss of natural sunlight on what used to be a great walking street.

I was shocked to see the amount of tower madness taking place on Yonge these days, especially the immense project planned for the former Restoration Hardware lot. The city is being ruined by these out-of-scale structures, especially when there is little room for more density in a city being strangled by traffic.

Whos to say when this fascination with big-city life will wane and people will realize that smaller cities like Saint John have a lot to offer. Then what Toronto?

Greg Prince, Toronto

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Ontarios auditor general generally gives good value for money. Like clockwork, Bonnie Lysyk uses her annual reports to expose government waste and incompetence, providing endless fodder for damning reports in this newspaper and other media.

She calls out teachers for calling in sick in droves. Catches out the Liberal government for high prescription prices. And demands greater scrutiny of hydro costs.

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But just as columnists need editors, so do auditors. All that fine print, brimming with outsized numbers, adds up to a whopping 1,119 pages in two volumes.

Her introductory chapter is titled, Reflections  as if our auditor general has become our philosopher general. In her chapter critiquing government finances, Lysyk strays from her non-partisan, value-for-money mandate by inserting her own values about borrowed money.

The auditor suggests the governments deficit and debt are too high, normally the purview of independent economists, partisan politicians, and opinionated columnists  not auditors. Which is why a good auditor needs a good editor, the better to watch over the watchdog.

Left to her own devices, what sticks out about Lysyks latest report is what she leaves out. Like, for example, the other side of the story.

By tradition, the annual report leaves space for a government response to any specific findings. Call it professional fair play, or best practices.

But Lysyk does it her way: She has her say  and then, in section after section, truncates the governments written response into a single terse sentence that reads, Treasury Board Secretariat does not agree with the recommendation.

At first, one assumes these repetitively terse official responses to be a fit of pique by a government being passive-aggressive-churlish in its uncharacteristic brevity. But the giveaway comes later in the report, in the space normally allotted to the government: The response from the Treasury Board Secretariat did not address the (auditors) recommendation.

Ah. Put another way, the auditor disagreed with the governments disagreement  and unilaterally decided not to print any of it.

Throughout the reports most contentious chapter, Lysyk takes several pages to critique the governments finances. Public servants rebut her conclusions, but note diplomatically that The government is open to continue to discuss the matter in the hopes of resolving this matter. Yet Lysyk deletes those words, and the rest of the rebuttal, printing instead just this one-sentence summary in her own (six) words: Treasury Board Secretariat does not agree.

The ordinary reader has no idea of the governments position (unless you are a columnist who happens to have obtained the correspondence received by Lysyk, which she believes no one should see, having also rejected previous Access to Information requests).

Ah, you might well say, shes just editing out Liberal press lines to save space  notwithstanding the 1,119 pages she takes to make her points. In fact, the governments responses are put together by non-political civil servants who interact with the supposedly non-partisan auditor general.

Its no secret theyve had a long-running professional disagreement about accounting standards. Deadlocked, the government brought in an outside panel of experts last year who heard the auditor out, then threw her conclusions out. Lysyk responded by withholding final approval of the governments books.

In a burst of melodrama, she writes that the government uses these incorrect accounting treatments to claim it has balanced the books, but in reality, legislators (and) the financial community . . . will be misled as to the true condition of the provinces finances.

News flash: MPPs have already drawn their own conclusions, depending on their partisan affiliations. Bay Street analysts who have read all those warnings from the auditor who cries wolf are still lining up to buy government bonds with minimal risk premiums.

Yet this ancient and arcane accounting dispute refuses to go away, because it has a bearing on the books going forward: The Liberals now claim to have eliminated the deficit, whereas Lysyk insists they (and everyone else) must be wrong  that the current deficit is actually $4.5 billion.

This is where it gets interesting, because Lysyk has suddenly become the odd auditor out. For it turns out that not only the government but the opposition Progressive Conservatives are going by the books  the Liberal books.

In their election platform released late last month, the PCs pointedly adopted the Liberal budgetary framework as their starting point  assuming, in other words (but not other numbers), that the budget is balanced. Asked again Wednesday, opposition finance critic Vic Fedeli declined to embrace the auditors deficit numbers, which would saddle his party with an even higher burden should they win power next year.

In fact, the Tory platform calls for a deficit of their own making that adds up to $2.8 billion next year  which, when added to the auditors putative number of $4.5 billion, would suggest a PC deficit of more than $7.3 billion.

This accounting dispute will escalate into a political clash in the months leading up to next Junes provincial election. Under legislation brought in by the Liberals after they toppled the Tories in 2003 (and the then-auditor discovered a hidden deficit of $5 billion), Lysyk  alone among Canadian public auditors  is empowered to evaluate the governments pre-election budget next spring, which will have implications for the PC platforms assumptions, too.

It is a tall order for any auditor, with or without a good editor. It will prove especially challenging for someone who has so strained credulity and credibility in recent years.

Martin Regg Cohn's political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

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When I got married last summer, my wifes seven-year-old cousin decided, with some delight, to celebrate the event by sticking his entire hand into the double-decker masterpiece at the dessert table with our names on it. This is one way to sabotage a gay wedding cake. Another, less messy way, is to refuse to bake it in the first place. This is the preferred method of Colorado baker turned hero of the religious right, Jack Phillips.

You may have heard of him. In 2012, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig tried to order a custom cake for their upcoming wedding from Phillips bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, he refused to take the order, stating that baking a custom cake for a same-sex wedding would go against his Christian beliefs. Phillips could make the betrothed something else  a birthday cake, a batch of cookies, a confection crudely moulded into the shape of an acoustic guitar (a specialty item I saw for sale on the Masterpiece Cakeshop website). But a custom cake for a same-sex wedding? Forget about it. Unfortunately for Phillips, Mullins and Craig didnt. They took him to court instead.

Read more:

U.S. Supreme Court takes on case of baker who refused to make wedding cake for same-sex couple

Washington fundraiser supports gay marriage at cake party in lead up to U.S. Supreme Court case

Americas next landmark gay rights ruling hinges on a surprising question: Do wedding cakes qualify as art?

Fast forward five years, and Phillips refusal to provide a service to gays that he regularly provided heterosexuals is the subject of a United States Supreme Court case being debated this week. So far media reports suggest that SCOTUS is divided on the case, a division that raises an important question: if you rule in favour of Phillips religious freedom to refuse a specific service to gays, whats to stop a slew of other businesses from discriminating against minorities on the same grounds?

In other words, anyone, regardless of personal bias, would probably be compelled to agree that Phillips vs. Gay Wedding Cakes is a case whose ultimate ruling will have consequences that reach far beyond a single bakery. But not everyone is anyone. In a recent column titled How Not to Advance Gay Marriage New York Times columnist David Brooks, who supports SSM, makes the remarkable argument that Mullins and Craig shouldnt have taken Phillips to court at all. This is because the court system, a la Brooks, is dehumanizing. It ends persuasion and relies on the threat of state coercion. It is elitist. It takes a situation that could be addressed concretely on the ground and throws it up, as this one now has been, to the Supreme Court, where it will be decided by a group of Harvard and Yale law grads.

Sort of makes sense, right? Thats what I thought the first time I read it. Then I thought, wait, you know whats dehumanizing? Being refused a service because the person across the counter thinks your relationship is an abomination. But Brooks isnt finished yet. What does he think Mullins and Craig  those uppity gays  should have done instead of seeking help from the state? They should have taken the neighbourly approach.

The neighborly approach, Brooks writes, would be to say: Fine, we wont compel you to do something you believe violates your sacred principles. But we would like to hire you to bake other cakes for us. We would like to invite you into our home for dinner and bake with you, so you can see our marital love, and so we can understand your values. You still may not agree with us, after all this, but at least well understand each other better and we can live more fully in our community.

First of all, a couple planning a wedding, gay or straight, does not have time to host a lets-reform-the-bigot-next-door dinner. There are invitations to send, flowers to arrange, and yes, cakes to order. Second of all, would Brooks be advocating neighbourly outreach in place of legal intervention if the wronged party was an interracial couple, or even for that matter, a Jewish one.

Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Farber, we cant bake this cake for your sons Bar Mitzvah. We only bake cakes for religious events that recognize the gospel of Jesus Christ.

No problem, neighbour. Why dont you come to my house for Shabbat dinner. Once you try our mouth watering brisket and feel the warmth around the table, Im sure you will change your mind.

As if.

A person like Phillips, who is willing to fight a lengthy court battle and collect donations from like-minded Americans to defend his right to refuse a service to gays, is not going to shed his prejudice as the result of an evening of queer hospitality.

This doesnt mean that reaching out, i.e. meeting people where theyre at as the cliche goes, isnt a valuable approach to  as that other cliche goes  changing hearts and minds. I think meeting people where theyre at and changing hearts and minds is important work. But its exhausting work. And furthermore, its activism. Its not the work of a couple planning a wedding.

The year, for Gods sake, is 2017, not 1997, or even 2007. People have had quite a while to get used to the idea of gay marriage and its fallout  that is, none. If you dont want to bake wedding cakes for gays, dont bake wedding cakes. If you dont want to sell something to gay people, or Black people, or Jewish people, sell nothing.

But whats really insidious, under the reasonable wistfulness of Brooks column, is the suggestion that what transpired at Masterpiece Cakeshop was a misunderstanding between people of otherwise good will, who could and should have worked out their differences among themselves.

But there were not two parties of equivalent good will involved. One party thought they should be treated the same as everyone else. The other party thought not. This is why a small altercation involving three people and a cake should be debated in the supreme court, as opposed to somebodys living room or bakery, just as same sex marriage itself should be debated in a court, rather than decided by popular vote: to protect minorities from the whims of their neighbours.

Thats reasonable.

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The Liberal government has repeatedly said, A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. What about the children who never even got a chance?

Abdoul Abdis situation is one that dozens of people find themselves in. They fall through the cracks of the various systems that do not work in the interests of Black, racialized and poor people.

Abdi arrived in Nova Scotia in mid 2000 with his sister, and two aunts. The family was granted permanent residency under a sponsored refugee program. Within a year of arriving, he and he sister were apprehended by childrens services. By the age of nine, he had become a permanent ward of the state.

Abdi was never adopted. Instead, he had, according to his lawyer, 20 different placements over the years. In one foster home, he lived with a foster family that he considered abusive.

Around this time, he starts to have conflicts with the law as many children in care do, said Benjamin Perryman, who is representing Abdi.

At the National Black Canadian Summit in Toronto, activists presented Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed Hussen with a letter about the case.

It read, The Minister could issue a warning letter to Abdoul, but instead continues to seek deportation, even though this would violate Canadas international human rights obligations.

Children of African descent are overrepresented in the child welfare system. In Toronto, for example, Black children represent 40.8 per cent of children in care despite representing only 8.5 per cent of the Toronto population. The apprehension of Black children is both a present problem and a relic of the past.

The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children operated for the early part of the 20th century. Black children were placed in it because other public institutions would not take them. There they faced horrific abuses resulting in an apology, a settlement and an inquiry. A preliminary report from that inquiry states that African Nova Scotian children remain vastly overrepresented in the child welfare system.

This overrepresentation further harms children, such as Abdi, who arrived as non-citizens.

In so many cases, people did not know they werent citizens because theyve been here since they were children or didnt know they could be removed to a country the didnt know at all, said Julie Chamagne, executive director of the Halifax Refugee Clinic.

Until recently, children could not apply for citizenship of their own, said Perryman, so when Abdoul became a ward of the state, he could not do that. For reasons that are unclear, childrens services did not do that.

Through a freedom of information request, Perryman discovered that Nova Scotia childrens services does not have a policy for non-citizen children in their care.

In Abdis case, not only was his application never made but the child welfare system in Nova Scotia actively prevented his aunts from applying for him because they no longer had guardianship.

Says Perryman, If he had become a citizen, he wouldnt be at the risk he faces today.

Underserved by the state, Abdi, like many children who are taken into care, has lived a precarious life; at one point, he was homeless. In 2014, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer with a car, theft of a motor vehicle, and dangerous driving and is currently serving a four-year sentence

No reasonable person makes excuses for his criminal actions. Instead, it is essential to understand the conditions that led him up to them.

The child welfare system separated him from his family, deprived him of a stable home and subjected him to abuse in at least one of the 20 homes he lived in. Where he sits now  in a medium-security prison, fearing deportation back to a country he has never known  is the result of an institutional cruelty that non-citizen children face, and that repeatedly criminalizes Black youth.

The intersections of anti-Blackness, hostility to migrants, and the criminalization of Black, especially Somali, youth is now meeting one more: the unthinking, unfeeling bureaucracy of our immigration system.

The power to grant a warning letter resides with Ralph Goodale, the Minister for Public Safety. Should he want to understand the factors that shaped Abdis life, Goodale would issue the letter, allowing Abdi to stay in the country by preventing his case from going before the Immigration Appeal Division, which would automatically seek his removal on the basis of criminal inadmissibility.

Abdoul Abdi is a young man living out the consequence of a system that didnt care about him and is ready to punish him for its cruelty.

Vicky Mochama is a co-host of the podcast, Safe Space. Her column appears every second Thursday. She also writes a triweekly column for Metro News that mixes politics, news and humour.

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Updated from 9:29 a.m. to include commentary from analyst Carolina Milanesi.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Apple (AAPL) - Get Free Report is in talks to partner with Alibaba (BABA) - Get Free Report on mobile payments, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Xinhua that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is speaking to both Alibaba and Chinese banks to bring its mobile payment system to China.

"We very much want to get Apple Pay in China," Cook told Xinhua.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

Alibaba currently operates a mobile payment system of its own called Alipay via its affiliate Ant Financial. Apple Pay would seemingly pose some competition for Alipay, but Ant Financial seems to believe the two can work in tandem.

"Ant Financial is open to work with various partners in order to provide secure, efficient and convenient online and mobile payment services for over 300 million Alipay users," a representative for Ant Financial Services Group said.

Apple Pay was launched in the U.S. last September and it is now accepted at more than 220,000 retail locations. The payment system seems to be gaining traction, claiming more than 50% of tap-to-pay purchases at McDonald's (MCD) - Get Free Report and about 1% of all Whole Foods (WFM) transactions.

There is potential for the two services to benefit each other, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Gil Luria.

"Apple is more interested in how sticky Apple Pay makes its iPhone, and Alibaba can still have Alipay as the payment method," Luria said. "Apple Pay can compete with Alipay in some implementations, especially if it is linked to a China Union Pay card, but Alibaba does not have to implement it that way."

It's a "win-win" situation, says Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

At the WSJD Live global technology conference in October, Alibaba founder Jack Ma said that he hoped Apple and Alibaba could "do something together" when asked about any potential partnership between Alipay and Apple Pay.

Alibaba declined to add any comment beyond Ma's October speech.

In December, Alibaba took the first step towards a partnership by integrating Alipay with the iPhone's fingerprint sensor, allowing its users to opt for fingerprint authentication instead of a password.

China is already Apple's second-largest market in terms of revenue and accounts for more iPhone sales than the U.S., so it makes sense that the company would look to bring its mobile payment system into the market.

However, any future partnership still has to overcome one large obstacle: China's financial regulators, who would have to approve any relationships involving Chinese banks.

For instance, Apple will likely have to pay a fee to one entity that regulates all payments using near field communication (NFC), the technology that powers Apple Pay and enables consumers to tap a terminal to pay. Alipay uses a bar code technology for in-store payments to avoid having to pay these fees.

"The Chinese market is very specific and there are some boundaries and limitations from the government for Westerners to make business in China," Milanesi said. "You need to do business their way."
Here are three things you must know at midday on Thursday, Dec. 7:

1. -- Bitcoin is either the future or the madness over the cryptocurrency is getting out of control.

At last check, one bitcoin was trading at $16,582, according to CoinDesk, but another website had it as high as $18,000 on Thursday, Dec. 7.

In fact, one expert asked by TheStreet on how high bitcoin can rise said six digits wasn't out of the question.

A second expert, Chris Miglino, CEO of Social Reality Inc. (SRAX) - Get Free Report , said that while many consider bitcoin a bubble, it's not going to pop in the traditional sense. According to Miglino, the reason bitcoin's price will at some point down the road sharply decline is because another digital currency will dethrone it.

2. -- General Electric Co. (GE) - Get Free Report shares rose 1.6% in midday trading after the struggling industrial conglomerate said it would cut 12,000 jobs from its power business.

The company said Thursday it would axe more than 2,000 jobs in Europe as part of a worldwide reduction in its workforce that could reach 12,000 in an effort to cut costs by around $3.5 billion over the next two years.

"This decision was painful but necessary for GE Power to respond to the disruption in the power market, which is driving significantly lower volumes in products and services," said GE Power CEO Russell Stokes. "Power will remain a work in progress in 2018. We expect market challenges to continue, but this plan will position us for 2019 and beyond."

General Electric is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells GE? Learn more now.

3. -- Ford Motor Co. (F) - Get Free Reportreversed an earlier decision to produce electric vehicles at its plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, and said instead it move production to Mexico beginning in 2020.

Ford announced earlier this year that it would make the vehicles at the suburban Detroit plant, but the company plans to use that plant to produce driverless cars, a company executive told The Wall Street Journal.

Ford also announced Thursday it reached an agreement with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) - Get Free Report that would see Asia's second-largest company sell cars through its online retail platform in the world's fastest-growing market.

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Influential investor advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services on Wednesday, Dec. 6, said it is recommending that shareholders support three dissident director candidates nominated by activist Mick McGuire at Deckers Outdoor Corp. (DECK) - Get Free Report , in a reversal that came after the insurgent manager canceled his effort to take over the entire board of the UGG bootsmaker.

The ISS recommendation, a major boost to McGuire's efforts, came after the insurgent investor on Dec. 4 cut back significantly on the number of directors he was seeking to install onto the company's board from a change-of-control nine dissidents to a minority slate of three.

"The board's apparent lack of urgency in addressing the company's pronounced, long-term underperformance and the valid governance concerns raised by the dissidents are large contributors to the assessment that direct dissident support is now warranted," ISS said in a report obtained by The Deal.

The ISS recommendation came after it had initially urged shareholders on Dec. 1 to oppose McGuire's nominees. However, at the time the proxy advisory firm also said it was recommending to "withhold" votes on the management's card for three incumbent directors who are the longest serving board members "in light of the long-term trajectory of the company's relative underperformance."

McGuire had been pushing to have the company cut costs, close retail stores and auction itself or at least sell some smaller brands if a full sale fails. The insurgent fund owns about 9% of Deckers and is the company's second-largest investor. However, his campaign will likely be decided by the vote of a few big long-term institutional investors who own big stakes. BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Ltd. and Dimensional Fund Advisers own 9.5%, 8.2%, and 8.8% respectively, according to FactSet Research Systems Inc.

Nevertheless, McGuire won't have nearly as much influence if he succeeds at installing three directors onto Deckers board than had he won a contest to take over the board and company. The three dissident candidates, Kirsten J. Feldman, Steve Fuller, and Anne Waterman, are outside nominees unaffiliated with McGuire's fund, Marcato Capital Management LLC.

Feldman was previously at Morgan Stanley (MS) - Get Free Report , where she served as the head of the company's global retail group. Fuller was the chief marketing officer for L.L. Bean Inc. between 2004 and 2016. Waterman spent 15 years at Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. (KORS) . Matthew Helper, a partner at Marcato, was originally up for a dissident director slot. He would likely have given the insurgent fund manager the most influence. However, he was dropped from McGuire's nominee list.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Deal , our sister publication that offers sophisticated insight and analysis on all types of deals, from inception to integration. Click here for a free trial.

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General Electric Co. (GE) - Get Free Report is cutting 12,000 jobs in its power division as the industrial conglomerate works to make itself leaner and achieve $1 billion in cost savings in 2018.

The cuts announced on Thursday are driven by challenges in the power market worldwide, GE said in a statement. The company noted that traditional power markets, including gas and coal, have softened and "volumes are down significantly in products and services driven by overcapacity, lower utilization, fewer outages, an increase in steam plant retirements and overall growth in renewables."

The Boston-based industrial conglomerate has told employees in Germany that about 1,600 people will be laid off, along with about 1,200 in Switzerland. The global figure may reach 12,000, GE said, a figure that would equate to almost a fifth of the GE Power workforce.

GE shares rose to $17.71 on Thursday. The stock was moving slightly higher in pre-market trading to $17.81.

The jobs cuts show that GE is "focused on achieving $1 billion cost savings targeted to be realized in 2018," said Nick Heymann, an analyst at William Blair & Co. Heymann noted, however, that GE's operational restructuring will persist into 2019 for the power division, and that this workforce reduction "does not include 2019 cost cuts."

William Blair has an "Outperform" rating on the stock. Heymann noted that he has included 10 cents for restructuring in his fourth-quarter earnings per share estimate of 27 cents. "I believe the only incremental restructuring costs that are likely could come from non-cash write-downs and provisions related to the $20 billion of assets that GE expects to exit over the next 12 to 24 months," he said.

"General Electric's poor earnings, cash flow and stock performance bring a need to lower complexity, yet CEO John Flannery's strategic plan falls short with $20 billion asset sales and $1 billion in additional cost cuts," said Bloomberg Intelligence senior industry analyst Karen Ubelhart. "Cost reduction of $1 billion in Power, its largest unit and where much of the restructuring is focused, including 18% workforce cuts are positive steps and could be a sign GE will move swiftly."

"Given the challenges within the global power markets, today's announcement represents an obvious next step in reducing headcount and footprint in order to improve margins and cash flow within the struggling business," McCarthy continued. The firm maintained its "Hold" rating on GE stock with a $20 price target.

GE said that its power unit will remain a work in progress in 2018. "We expect market challenges to continue, but this plan will position us for 2019 and beyond," the company said.

"The business of power has collapsed," TheStreet's Jim Cramer said on CNBC. "It's fossil fuel -- the world is rapidly going against fossil fuels, we do not need more [power] plants."

Notably, GE leads U.S. companies in announcing the most job cuts this year, according to Bloomberg. The company has eliminated a total of 19,242 jobs in 2017, ahead of General Motors Inc. (GM) - Get Free Report and Macy's Inc. (M) - Get Free Report .

Cramer, who holds GE in his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS, said that he intends to buy more of GE, somewhere below $18.

General Electric is holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells GE? Learn more now.

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RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. provides reinsurance and insurance products around the world. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Bermuda with offices in Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US.

The company operates through two segments that include multiple underlying businesses and investment vehicles. The two main segments are Property and Casualty & Specialty. The company operates through intermediaries that include DaVinci Resinsurance Inc, Top Layer Reinsurance LTD, and RennaisanceRe Syndicate 1458 among others.

Top Layer Re is the first major venture and was started in 1999. It is a joint venture with State Farm targeting high layers of the US reinsurance business. DaVinci Re was formed in the wake of 9/11 to assist with capacity and it was given added capacity in the wake of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Medici was formed in 2009 and is an open-ended fund intended to spur investment in the catastrophe bond market.

The Property segment writes catastrophic insurance policies to insure insurance and reinsurance companies against natural and man-made catastrophes. These include but are not limited to hurricanes, floods, freezes, and terrorism.

The Casualty & Specialty segment provides a wide range of consumer products including business insurance, malpractice insurance, liability insurance, workers' compensation, mortgage insurance, and health insurance among others.

Among RenaissanceRes Specialty businesses is capital management. The firm offers 6 investment vehicles and has more than $11 billion under management making it the #1 ILS or insurance-linked asset manager in the US. In regards to its credit ratings, the firm and all of its vehicles carry an A or better rating from every credit rating agency.
The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Premier Plan MMAI Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Illinois Inc., Aetna Better Health of Indiana Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Tennessee Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Insurance Company of New York, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Insurance Company of Connecticut, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Ex Pat LLC, Aetna International LLC, Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L., CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Cabot Holdings Inc., CVS Cabot Holdings Inc.  Coram Clinical Trials Inc. 99.72%/Aetna Inc. .28%, CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Applications LLC, CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Health Ventures Fund GP LLC, CVS Health Ventures Fund LP, CVS Health Ventures Management LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Management Support LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS Pharmacy Overseas Online LLC, CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS Shaw Holdings Inc., CVS Shaw Holdings Inc.  Coram Clinical Trials Inc. 99.72%/Aetna Inc. .28%, CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Austin LLC, CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Los Angeles LLC, CVS-SHC Kidney Care Home Dialysis of Philadelphia LLC, CVS-SHC Renal Holdings LLC, Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc.  CVS Pharmacy Inc. 75%/Aetna Life Insurance Company 25%, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., Credentials Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California LLC, Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., First Choice of the Midwest LLC, First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Main Street Pharmacy L.L.C., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arkansas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Colorado LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services of Texas Association, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky LLC, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services LLC, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare LLC, Omnicare LLC  Aetna Inc 0.28%/CVS Cabot Holdings Inc. 49.86%/CVS Shaw Holdings Inc. 49.86%, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare LLC, Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Better Financial Services GmbH, Better Payment Germany GmbH, Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., Chapel Funding, China Recovery Fund LLC, Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Cartera de lnmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Impact Investment Fund I. LP., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Limited, DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Jersey) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios lnteractivos Agrupacicm de lnteres Econemico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB Print GmbH, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services (Jersey) Limited, DB Services Americas. Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB US Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a. r.l., DB Value S.a.r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita SA., DB lmmobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG i.L., DB lo LP, DBAH Capital. LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management 18 Ltd., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a. r.l., DBX Advisers LLC, DEBEKO lmmobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK AS., DI Deutsche lmmobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Shanghai Private Equity Fund Management Limited, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anenima lnstitucien Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico. S.A., Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank Polska Spelka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Societe per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank. Sociedad Anenima Espanola, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur lmmobilien-Leasing mit beschrenkter Haftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.El r.l., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche India Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a. r.|., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities SA. de C.V.. Casla de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Services (Cl) Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. SA., Deutsche lmmobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsches lnstitut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.l., Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, European Value Added I (Alternate GP.) LLP, Fiduciaria Sant Andrea S.r.l., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., German American Capital Corporation, Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer LandstraBe GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Miesbaden LuisenstraBe/Kirchgasse GbR, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF l Manager S.a.r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul lnkasso GmbH, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo lll Initial GP Limited, MEF I Manager. S. a r.|., MIT Holdings Inc., Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgagelT Inc., MortgagelT Securities Corp., OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentIe", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, PADUS Grundstcks-VermietungsgeseIlschaft mbH, PB Factoring GmbH, PB Spezial-lnvestmentaktiengesellschatt mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Plantation Bay. Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank lmmobilien GmbH, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, RREEF, RREEF America LLC., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisers Private Limited, RREEF Management LLC., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables. LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermielungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sharps SP l LLC, Stelvio lmmobiliare S.r.l., Suddeutsche Vermeigensvewvaitung Gesellschaft mit beschrenkter Haftung, TELO Beleiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Umited, VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., lmmobilienfonds BuroCenter Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, lmmobilienfonds Wohn- und Gescheftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, and norisbank GmbH.

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American Homes 4 Rent is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on the US rental industry. The company is a leader in the single-family home rental industry and "American Homes 4 Rent" is fast becoming a nationally recognized brand. The company is known for high-quality rental homes, providing good value and tenant satisfaction while generating profits for investors. The primary investment objective is to provide attractive risk-adjusted returns through dividends and capital appreciation.

The company plans to achieve its objective through the disciplined acquisition of new properties, by expanding its own construction and neighborhood building efforts, growing its geographically diverse portfolio, efficient property management, building a strong brand, and maintaining a sound capital structure.

The company was founded in 2011 by David Singelyn and his partner. Mr. Singelyn has served as a Trustee and CEO since 2012. The company began by acquiring homes in underserved areas and remodeling them to modern standards. The firm has since expanded its operations to construction and now builds planned communities tailored to different lifestyles as well. The company went public in 2013 and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

American Homes 4 Rent is an internally managed Maryland real estate investment trust focused on acquiring, developing, renovating, leasing, and operating attractive, single-family homes as rental properties. The company operates through a network of offices and the website AH4R.com. The company owns more than 55,000 properties across 22 states featuring move-in-ready and pet-friendly homes for individuals and families of all sizes.

All previously used properties have been renovated to a high Certified Property standard that brings them to a like-new condition. Interested parties can view listings by area on the website and even use the site to fill out applications and sign leases. Properties are located in communities that fit a variety of lifestyle needs including fences, marble countertops, and even attached 2 and 3-car garages. The communities are located in hand-picked neighborhoods with features including access to commerce, schools, and amenities like lawn care, pools, trails, and fitness centers.

Tenants are afforded many benefits by renting through American Homes 4 Rent. The first and most obvious is the freedom and flexibility of a mortgage-free lifestyle. On top of that, tenants can pay rent or schedule maintenance on their homes through the website, and dedicated service representatives are available 24/7.
Nabors Industries Ltd. provides drilling and drilling-related services for land-based and offshore oil and natural gas wells. The company operates through five segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. It provides tubular running, wellbore placement, directional drilling, measurement-while-drilling (MWD), equipment manufacturing, and rig instrumentation services; and logging-while-drilling systems and services, as well as drilling optimization software. The company also offers REVit, an automated real time stick-slip mitigation system; ROCKit, a directional steering control system; SmartNAV, a collaborative guidance and advisory platform; SmartSLIDE, an advanced directional steering control system; and RigCLOUD, which provides the tools and infrastructure to integrate applications to deliver real-time insight into operations across the rig fleet. In addition, it manufactures and sells top drives, catwalks, wrenches, drawworks, and other drilling related equipment, such as robotic systems and downhole tools; and provides aftermarket sales and services for the installed base of its equipment. As of December 31, 2021, the company marketed approximately 301 rigs for land-based drilling operations in the United States, Canada, and in 20 other countries worldwide; and 29 rigs for offshore platform drilling operations in the United States and internationally. Nabors Industries Ltd. was founded in 1952 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.
Mountain lion captured in Springfield doing well at rescue shelter

The cougar roamed through areas on the west side of Springfield before he was captured Oct. 28.
Qualcomm may have taken the wraps off its Snapdragon 845 mobile processing platform in December, but we're learning more about the new chip, especially now that it's arrived in Samsung's Galaxy S9, with more phones on the horizon. In addition to the usual performance gains you'd expect from a new generation of mobile processor, the Snapdragon 845 impacts everything from your future phone's camera to how quickly you can download movies off a cellular network.

(Image credit: Snapdragon 845 (Credit: Qualcomm))

We've had a chance to benchmark the Snapdragon 845, first using a reference design device and then with the Galaxy S9+, and it's certainly a faster performer than last year's Snapdragon 835 (though it still lags behind the A11 Bionic chip powering Apple's latest iPhones in some aspects). You can also expect improved power management in the Snapdragon 845. From what Qualcomm has outlined, though, the most intriguing changes introduced by the Snapdragon 845 involve its image signal processor, its modem and the way it will handle technologies like virtual reality.



Our sister site AnandTech drills down into the nitty-gritty details about the Snapdragon 845 and how it's designed. But here's an overview of some of the changes Qualcomm's new mobile processing platform will introduce when it arrives later this year.

How Fast Will the New Processor Be?

The Snapdragon 845 features an 8-core Kryo 385 CPU running at up to 2.8GHz. An Adreno 630 serves as the graphics processor for the new system-on-chip.

MORE: Here Are the 10 Best Phones Available Now



Qualcomm promises a 25 percent improvement in what it calls "performance uplift" over the Snapdragon 835. That should mean faster app launches and smoother performance in processor-intensive apps. Look for a 30 percent improvement in graphics performance from the new GPU.

Now that we've had to benchmark a reference device powered by the Snapdragon 845 as well as the Galaxy S9+, we can confirm you'll see improved performance over phones running Qualcomm's last top-of-the-line mobile processor. The Galaxy S9+ scored 8,295 on the Geekbench 4 general performance test, which is a 32 percent improvement on the Galaxy S8's score on that same test. Released last year, the Galaxy S8 runs on the last-generation Snapdragon 835. The Kirin 970-powered Mate 10 Pro from Huawei is one of the fastest Android phones we've recently tested, and the Galaxy S9+ smoked its 6,784 score, too.

But the Snapdragon 845 inside the S9+ only closes some speed gap with Apple's latest iPhones, which feature the blazing-fast A11 Bionic processor. The iPhone X scored 10,357 in GeekBench 4  much faster than the result we got from either the S9+ or our Snapdragon 845 reference device. The same was true in our real-word test where we convert a 4K video to 1080p. The Galaxy S9+ pulled off that task in 2 minutes, 32 seconds  much better than the 4:08 it took the Galaxy S8, but not nearly as fast as the iPhone X's 42 seconds.

It's worth noting that the Snapdragon finds itself on much more even footing with Apple's chip when it comes to graphics. The Galaxy S9+ actually finished ahead of the iPhone X in 3DMark's Sling Shot test, though the iPhone X had the better score in Sling Shot Unlimited.

This added power from the Snapdragon 845 comes with more efficient performance. Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 845 can improve power efficiency by 30 percent for tasks like games, video capture and mixed reality experiences. We haven't had a chance to test this for ourselves, but we did see a demo at Qualcomm headquarters where two phones (one with a Snapdragon 845 inside, the other with a Snapdragon 835) streamed the same 4K video at 60 frames per second. The 845-powered device consumed 20 percent less power while performing this task.

In the real world, that power savings has proven more elusive. The Galaxy S9+ lasted 10 hours, 59 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over an LTE network. That's in line with the 11:04 time the Galaxy S8+ turned in. In a sense, that's not surprising  both phones have a 3,500 mAh battery  but you might have hoped to see the 845-powered S9+ squeeze out more life from a full charge.

What About the Camera Capabilities?

The Snapdragon 845 includes a Spectra 280 image signal processor. It's capable of capturing images at up to 16 megapixels at 60 images per second, and it can capture HD slow-motion video at 480 frames per second.

Qualcomm sounds particularly proud of the ISP's HDR prowess, claiming the Spectra 280 can capture 64x more high-dynamic range color information compared to its predecessor. The inclusion of multi-frame noise reduction, the same technology Google employs in its HDR+ mode, should make low-light photos look better as well.



When Qualcomm was previewing the new Spectra ISP in the summer of 2017, it talked about three new modules that support iris authentication as well as active and passive depth sensing. The iris scanning will help with phone unlocking features while depth sensing can assist with everything from more realistic blur effects on portrait photos to improved performance for mixed reality apps.

Depth sensing will also enable Face ID-like facial recognition, if companies choose to use it. It could be more precise than what Apple's achieved too; whereas the iPhone X uses a web of 30,000 infrared dots for mapping purposes, Qualcomm's system uses 50,000.

What Modem Will the Snapdragon 845 Use?

A key component of the Snapdragon 845 is the new mobile processor's X20 modem. Like its predecessor, the X16, this new modem can deliver Gigabit LTE speeds of 1,000 Mbps  at least on cellular networks that are optimized to support it.



We got a taste of Gigabit LTE in late 2017, albeit with a Snapdragon 835 and an X16 modem on T-Mobile's network. In that demo, a Galaxy Note 8 reached speeds of 673 Mbps on Ookla's Speedtest app. The X20 figures to continue that faster connectivity, which should help with real-world activities like rapidly pulling files off a cloud server, downloading multi-gigabyte movies in minutes and seamlessly streaming data-rich virtual reality content.

What About Wireless Accessories?

Snapdragon 845 will bring multi-device broadcasting to Bluetooth 5, which is good news for smartphone owners forced to invest in wireless headphones because the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack has gone bye-bye. As more flagship phones arrive without a headphone jack, the improvement of Bluetooth will be incredibly crucial going forward.

New phones will be able to stream media to multiple connected devices simultaneously, which should greatly improve playback. Previous Bluetooth formats couldn't achieve this, which specifically complicated things for wireless earbuds: content had to be sent to one bud exclusively before being relayed to the second of the pair, leading to a slight delay.

What Other Features Can We Expect?

Other noteworthy additions in the Snapdragon 845 include a secure processing unit that Qualcomm says can add vault-like features to its existing security offerings for improved biometric support and encryption. This subprocessor is virtually sandboxed from the rest of the chip, and even has its own memory and power supply.

(Image credit: Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845, dime not included (Image Credit: Philip Michaels/Tom's Guide))

The new processing platform also supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge 4+ fast-charging technology, for delivering a 50 percent charge in 15 minutes. (We didn't see that with the Galaxy S9+, which got up to a 38 percent charge after half-an-hour.) A third-generation Hexagon Vector DSP promises improvements to artificial intelligence, potentially boosting the performance voice-powered digital assistants. And Qualcomm's Aqstic voice technology enables both improved keyword detection and lower-power voice processing on the Snapdragon 845, according to Qualcomm.

Additionally, smarter AI will allow for portrait mode shots without the need for a second lens, like how the Pixel 2 achieves the effect. Qualcomm reps demonstrated this capability for us, using a reference design device running on a Snapdragon 845. The blurred background effects appeared in real time on the device's display, allowing us to see what the shot would look like before we captured it.

Finally, if you need to run dual SIM cards in your smartphone of choice, the Snapdragon 845 will make your life a little easier. Currently, phones with two SIM cards on-board can only use LTE on one of them at a time, while the other is relegated to 3G. The new chipset will change that, allowing for LTE and Ultra HD Voice on both simultaneously.

When Will the Snapdragon 845 Arrive?

It's already here. And it's coming to more phone soon.

The first phone to include Qualcomm's new chip is the Galaxy S9 from Samsung. Unveiled last month at Mobile World Congress, Samsung's latest flagship goes on sale March 16, though you can order it now.

MORE: Top 10 Galaxy S9 Features

The S9 is the first device to feature the Snapdragon 845 in the U.S., just as last year's Galaxy S8 was the first to include a Snapdragon 835 processor. But other phones will include the mobile processor, too. One of the next devices to ship with the updated processor will be Sony's latest flagships, the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact. Those phones are slated for a global release on April 6. The ZenFone 5Z will include a Snapdragon 845, too, and that phone's expected to cost less than $500 when it ships in June. We expect other smartphone makers to add the processor to their phones, too.

Editors' Note: This article originally ran on Dec. 7 when Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 845; we've updated it with the latest news on benchmarks and features.
Senior officials from Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo Group and Hyster recently met in Bahrain to discuss their exclusive 57-year partnership in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.



The management teams discussed future plans, ranging from providing tough trucks, materials handling and port operations in the UAE.



This meeting will enhance the relationship and strengthen co-operation between our two corporations, we believe we will be able to build stronger relations on the foundation we have laid out together over the last 57 years. Our partnership with Hyster has always been a competitive and profitable endeavour and we strive to always supply top-quality machinery to the region, YBA Kanoo Group CEO Patrick Chenel said.



Established for more than 125 years, covering Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman, YBA Kanoo started as a trading and shipping enterprise. It later successfully branched into construction and materials handling equipment supply, becoming part of the global network of trusted Hyster distribution partners. Hyster is one of the leading global brands of materials handling equipment, offering over 140 models of counterbalance, warehouse and container handling trucks.



Hyster and YBA Kanoo Group have benefitted from a strong partnership for more than half a century, said Hyster-Yale Group Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) managing director Harry Sands.



We are committed to continuing to work together, with shared values of understanding customer requirements, and acting as a trusted advisor to provide the right solutions.



YBA Kanoo Group has been recognised for its quality of service, achieving the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award and the Dubai Quality Award. With a target of providing 100 per cent uptime for customers, quality service is delivered by a team of more than 100 trained and qualified staff across YBA Kanoo Groups branches. With high parts availability, mobile service technicians, and fully fitted service vehicles, YBA Kanoo Group provides support for Hyster trucks anywhere in the Gulf, minimising downtime.



Earlier this year, YBA Kanoo Group and Hyster collaborated on the launch of the new Hyster RS45 ReachStacker, designed to meet the needs of growing markets. YBA Kanoo Group revealed the new truck, which is available exclusively to customers with Stage IIIA/Tier 3 emissions regulations, to its customers at a special event at the Meydan Racecourse in Dubai.  TradeArabia News Service
In Harare today: Finance and Economic Planning minister Patrick Chinamasa presented the first budget in the post-Robert Mugabe era. Previews from NewsDay, Bloomberg. Access the full budget statement.

Ambassador Albert Muchangas presentation on the CFTA, prepared for the Afreximbanks Cairo seminar, is now available for download (courtesy of Afreximbank).

Featured trade policy commentaries: Shawn Donnan: Barack Obama saw the WTO as a strategic tool for dealing with China. Donald Trump instead sees the WTO as a strategic target; Robert McDougall: The search for solutions to save the WTO Appellate body

AfDBs Regional Integration Strategy: update

Integrate Africa, the fourth of the AfDBs five strategic development priorities, the High 5s, was the central theme of discussions with regional stakeholders in Abidjan. Welcoming over 50 participants at the meeting, AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina set the tone of the deliberations, saying that integrating Africa would help achieve the High 5 objectives in a coherent way. Today, we are here primarily to discuss Integrate Africa, to bring down the tariff and non-tariff barriers that have marginalized and impoverished so many economies and prevented us from capitalizing on our physical and human capital resource base, he said noting that The lack of integration amounts to Africas own Beggar-Thy-Neighbour policy, adding: It must stop.

Presenting the 2018-2025 Regional Integration Strategy, Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, Khaled Sherif, explained that the document proposes measures and mechanisms to address issues related to building larger and more attractive subregional markets, including linking landlocked countries to African regional trade points. Ultimately, the strategy aims to improve the business environment for private sector investment. Other expected effects include a substantial increase in income and a real impact on human development due to the free movement of people, ideas and cultures, skills building, knowledge exchange and information.

Africa takes a seat in the Made in China workshop (Caixin)

The native of Chinas Shandong province added that Twyford is also moving beyond Kenya, with another plant opening in Ghana earlier this year and a third under construction in Tanzania. Twyford is one of a new generation of Chinese companies setting up shop in Africa, laying the foundation for what experts believe will become a major economic engine for the continent. Unlike previous generations of Chinese investment in the continent that were at least partly politically motivated, this latest is coming largely from Chinas young private sector looking for growth opportunities and to escape rising costs at home. What they are doing is similar in many ways to what Westerners did in China back in the 1980s and 1990s, when many came to the country to make basic products that could take advantage of the low Chinese labor costs. Unlike earlier investors that were mostly state-owned giants backed by Beijing money and political agendas, most of the latest investors are simply moving production offshore to escape rising costs at home and avoid Africas high import tariffs. Twyford exemplifies the group, estimating its products are 30% cheaper when produced locally than comparable ones shipped from China.

Djiboutis quest for inclusive growth (IMF)

Djiboutis progress toward middle-income economy status can be tracked against several comparator countries. Useful comparators are countries that have already achieved and sustained high growth rates in the past 20 years, have at least tripled their per capita GDP, or have succeeded in specific reform areas of direct interest to Djibouti. International experience applied to Djibouti suggests that a healthy business environment is one of the most critical factors for growth. In the case of Djibouti, other significant variables that explain growthsuch as the investment ratio and real exports growthare less critical. Given the areas where Djibouti underperforms relative to its average DB rank, reforms should target in particular the energy sector, getting credit, taxation, investor protection, and property rights.

Egypt pays $4 billion dollars of debt to African Export-Import Bank (Ahram)

Egypts state-run news agency MENA reported on Monday that the central bank recently paid back $2bn to the African Export-Import Bank out of a $3.2bn short-term loan. The central bank will repay the remaining $1.2bn by the end of December, the central banks Assistant Sub-Governor for the markets sector, Ramy Ahmed Adel Abol Naga, was quoted by MENA as saying. On Tuesday, Governor of the Egyptian Central Bank Tarek Amer told the Egyptian financial newspaper El-Borsa that the bank had also paid back $2bn under a repurchase agreement, reducing the total debt to to the bank to $5.2bn.

World Intellectual Property Indicators  2017: China tops patent, trademark, design filings in 2016 (WIPO)

Worldwide filings for patents, trademarks and industrial designs reached record heights in 2016 amid soaring demand in China, which received more patent applications than the combined total for the United States of America, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the European Patent Office. Innovators around the world filed 3.1 million patent applications in 2016, up 8.3% in a seventh straight yearly increase, according to WIPOs annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report. China received about 236,600 of the nearly 240,600 additional patent filings, accounting for 98% of total growth. Trademark applications jumped by 16.4% to about 7 million, and worldwide industrial design applications grew by 10.4% to almost 1 million  both also driven by growth in China.

Digital China: powering the economy to global competitiveness (McKinsey)

In this report, the McKinsey Global Institute assesses the strengths of Chinas digital system, the degree of digitization of industries, and the scope for value shift and creation. Part 1 looks at Chinas position in the global digital landscape. Part 2 introduces the MGI Industry Digitization Index for China, which reveals large variations among sectors in terms of their digitization. Part 3 takes a more detailed look at how three digital forces (disintermediation, disaggregation, and dematerialization) can restructure value chains and increase the magnitude of disruption in four sectors (consumer and retail; automotive and mobility; healthcare; and freight and logistics) and discusses how much scope there is for digitization to shift (and create) value. In Part 4, we look at what policy makers can do to encourage Chinas digital economy, and, finally, in Part 5, we discuss what choices companies can make to prepare for the impending wave of change and why digital strategy matters more in China.

Trade and Development in Numbers: UNCTADs Handbook of Statistics

For example, this years handbook reveals that 2016 was a difficult year of African economies. This was particularly evident in merchandise exports, which fell by 10.5%. Decreasing volumes of goods loaded in seaports for international shipment (-1.3%) and falling foreign direct investment receipts (-3.5%) also illustrated the challenges. Nevertheless, for the region, GDP grew by a modest 1.7%. Several factors contributed to this picture: Africas exports remain characterized by low product diversification (see figure 1) and a high dependency on raw materials compared with other regions of the world.

The handbook also illustrates the importance of trans-continental and intra-region trade and how they vary across continents. In 2016, the exchange of goods between China, the United States of America and Germany amounted to almost US$1 trillion - 6% of world merchandise trade (see figure 3). In 2016, 69% of the European exports remained within Europe and 59% of the Asian exports, in Asia. By contrast, for Northern America, Latin America and the Caribbean and for Africa, most exports were delivered to economies in other continents than that of the exporter (see figure 4). Extracts (pdf):

How important is trade for economies? Over the last ten years, the importance of trade in goods relative to domestic economic output has declined significantly in developing and transition economies. In developing economies, trade openness, measured as the ratio between the average of exports and imports of goods to GDP, fell from 31% in 2006 to 22% in 2016. In transition economies the rate decreased from 27 to 22%. Trade openness of developed economies has been comparatively low. After a peak around the year 2011, in 2016 the rate amounted to 19%, the same level as in 2006.

Global trends in 2016: The stagnation of global trade in total services in 2016 (see section 2.1) masks notable changes at the level of individual service categories. Telecommunications, computer and information services showed a relatively strong increase (4.5%). Exports of intellectual property and other business services as well as of personal, cultural and recreational services recorded positive growth rates, ranging between 2 and 3%. Travel receipts increased by modest 1.8%. Meanwhile, trade in international transport (-4.3%) and in insurance, pension and financial services (-2.6%), two service groups strongly linked with merchandise trade, declined. 2016 was a particularly unfavorable year for trade in construction, recording a drop of 8.7%.
Vacation Agent Magazine

A version of this article appears in print in the December 2017 issue of Vacation Agent Magazine. Subscribe
But there's a catch...

I've noticed "electrify everything" becoming a mantra among many clean tech observers.

And it makes sense.

As battery costs come down, and as our power grids get cleaner, the idea of everything from home heating to personal transportation going electric holds considerably more appeal. Still, I had assumed that we'd be using liquid fuels in many applications for decades, even centuries, to come. Yet recently, news headlines have started to challenge that assumption.

Whether it's commercial electric flight, 100% battery electric bus fleets or 500-mile range electric trucks, the list of vehicles going electric seems to be growing steadily.

Now we can add another vehicle to that list. Cleantechnica reports that Guangzhou Shipyard International in China has built the world's first 100% battery electric cargo ship. Just as commercial flight will go electric first on short haul flights, electric cargo ships are likely to first be deployed on short distance, fixed coastal routes.

In this case, the ship will carry about 2,200 tons of cargo a distance of 50 milestraveling at up to 8 miles an houralong the Pearl River. Unfortunately, the cargo it will be carrying is coal. That's right: The world's first "zero emission" cargo ship will be hopping from power station to power station, delivering one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet to keep those power stations in operation andpresumablyit will be charging up with that same dirty electricity as it does so. (Charging time for the 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery is said to be two hours.)

Still, I do see this as an encouraging step forward. Carbon and soot emissions from cargo ships have long been a concern for environmentalists. So building ships that have the potential to run on clean, renewable energy is a major step forward.

Now we just have to clean the grids that power them, and then find the coal-carrying electric cargo ships of this world something more productive to do.

Here's some footage of the new ship:
I can see why you would come back year after year.

I can see why you would come back year after year.

I've been to several All-Inclusives in Mexico - both coasts. I've also been to Punta Cana (Bavaro Beach) but this was my first trip to Jamaica (Negril). I can't imagine wanting to go anywhere else.

We stayed at Sandy Haven. We loved the hotel. There were some things that could be improved upon but overall we had a great time. The staff, the room, the location - it was all good.

We ate at Chances, Sunbeach Bar, Marley's by the Sea, Le Vendome, Best of the West, Alfreds, Ivan's, Cafe Goa. We were all over but I'm sure we didn't even touch the surface which is why we will be back sooner than later.

What a great place to vacation! Thank you for all your posts/questions/suggestions...I love travel forums as it helps to get to know the area before you actually go.
Hi, i have some questions about the bus trajects possibilities.

1. Is the best way to go from monteverde to Nosara by the shuttle bus?

2. How do i travel from Nosara to Samara or from Nosara to santa teresa/Montezuma?

Can i do all that by bus (without too much bus changes...)

3. My entire trip will last 30 days, do you think this itinerary is possible? or i should cut the nosara/samara part?

-Monteverde

-La fortuna/Arenal

- Nosara

-Samara

-Santa Teresa

-Montezuma

- Manuel Antonio

I would like my trip not to be too expensive.

Thank you!!!!
Hi I'm planning a trip to japan beginning of March 2018. I'm planning 7 days in Tokyo (1 day trip to Nikko) and 7 days in Kyoto (day trip each to Nara, Kobe and Osaka) and 1 night in Tokyo before travelling back home (Total 16 days). I would like to use Tokyo and Kyoto as my home base. I'm travelling from Canada (with my sister, 2 girls) so we do have luggage. Sorry for the many questions but what is:

1. Best way to travel from Narita Airport to Higashi-Shinjuku Station (airbnb) and not too expensive?

2. How do I get from Higashi-Shinjuku Station to Kyoto? How much does it cost?

3. Should I get a JR pass?

4. my sister has lots of tattoos is that okay?

5. Is it safe for us to try a capsule hotel the last night in Tokyo before our flight?

6. Any other day trips worth taking?

Thank you in advance for the help.
Hi, I'm going to Japan next Feb for one week (five solid days plus two days in transit in and out of Japan). I'll start with Osaka and then end with Hiroshima. I have been to Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto before and I like Kyoto very much. Near Hiroshima, I would also like to visit Miyajima, or possibly Matsuyama (for Dogo Onsen). Given that I only have five days to fit all these in, my questions are:

1. For first timer like me, how many days do you think would be sufficient to cover the major attractions in both Hiroshima and Miyajima?

2. Is it easy to go from Hiroshima to Matsuyama and spend a day there?

3. Is there a place between Osaka and Hiroshima that would be worth stopping by to spend a day or two in?

Any input would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!
We are planning a trip to Japan with our 14 month old and finalizing our itinerary and booking hotels. Does anyone have experience using hotel provided cribs? We are trying to call hotels to make sure they have cribs and also want to make sure they are similar to an American style travel crib. (One hotel we just called said their crib could only accommodate a child that isnt standing). Would it be better to bring our pack n play so our baby can sleep in a familiar place and not have to worry about hotel provided cribs? Lastly, one night is planned in a Ryokan in Hakone. Should we plan anything different for these accommodations?

Current planned itinerary:

3 nights Tokyo

1 night Hakone - Ryokan

5 nights Kyoto

1 night Hiroshima

1 night Tokyo
This will be my first time in Costa Rica and my partner and I are planning to mainly go for surfing. We are beginners but would also like to do other things as well while we are there especially since I think we would only be surfing a couple of hours a day.

We are arriving Wed, Jan. 24th in Liberia airport and then departing Liberia Jan. 31 so realistically speaking, 6 full days if you add in traveling time for days of arrival and departure.

My plan originally was the following:

Wed, 1/24 ---- Playa Grande (arriving late afternoon)

Thu, 1/25 ---- Playa Grande

Fri, 1/26 ---- Playa Grande

Sat, 1/27 ---- Nosara

Sun, 1/28 ---- Nosara

Mon, 1/29 ---- Nosara

Tue, 1/30 ---- Nosara

Wed, 1/31 ---- Leaving for Liberia

My question is if you think I should remove 2 nights by the beach and add one or 2 nights at the end to visit Tenorio Volcano National Park for some hiking? Or possibly just do day trips from Nosara and drive to Monte Alto Reserve National Park? (I would really love to see a sloth.)

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated!

Thank you!!
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No Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in hostilities in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at a press briefing on Wednesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"No Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in combat actions over the last day, Motuzianyk said.

He added that Russian-backed militants continued to attack the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces using weapons prohibited under the Minsk agreements.

"But due to successful counter-measures, the Ukrainian army fully controls the situation in the ATO zone," Motuzianyk added.

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By training Ukrainian troops, Canada is adopting modern practices of countering hybrid aggression.

Commander of Joint Task Force-Ukraine Lieutenant-Colonel Kristopher Reeves said this in an interview with the Ukrainian ICTV channel.

"We gain new knowledge every day as we witness modern military actions that Russia is conducting here in Ukraine, the so-called hybrid war. Therefore, we adopt practices of the Ukrainian military," Reeves said.

He added that the gained knowledge allowed Canada to better prepare for action in similar situation.

"We are improving our understanding of how a large technologically advanced state of NATO can more effectively act in such an environment," the Lieutenant-Colonel said.

According to him, Canadian instructors are making more efforts to improve not so much immediate combat skills as general principles of managing the military units.

"You might think that the basic knowledge we impart is the effective use of anti-tank weapons or improved target shooting skills. In fact, as a NATO member state, we work to improve the decision-making processes, combining a variety of military tools so that Ukrainians could act more effectively on the battlefield and restrain Russian aggression in the east," Reeves explained.

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The State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine and the NEFCO corporation have started negotiations on creation of a joint venture to produce energy-efficient equipment and materials using European technologies.

This is reported by the Governmental portal.

"The State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine and the NEFCO corporation considered the prospects for creating green projects with participation of the Finnish business in Ukraine," the statement reads.

The signing of the agreement between the Finnish Foreign Ministry and the NEFCO on establishment of a fund for financing green projects in Ukraine stimulated the interest of Finnish companies in the Ukrainian market, experts said.

In this connection, chairman of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine Serhiy Savchuk held a working meeting with chief investment adviser of NEFCO in Ukraine Yulis Shevchuk and executive director of the Representative Office of the Finnish Water Forum in Central Asia of the Kaukointernational Central Asia company Volodymyr Oleshchenko. The parties discussed the peculiarities of establishment and functioning of the future Finnish-Ukrainian trust fund.

The chairman of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine noted: "Ukraine and Finland are partners in the development of renewable energy. The establishment of a joint fund for supporting green projects will strengthen bilateral cooperation and activate both Finnish and Ukrainian businesses in this area. The main thing is to prepare for implementation the qualitative "bankable" projects which in future will find their investor and facilitate reducing the country's energy dependence."

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At todays OSCE Ministerial Council meeting, the delegations of twelve countries, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, the UK and others, advocate increasing pressure on the Russian Federation due to violation of human rights in the occupied Crimea.

"The United States, Canada, Sweden, Turkey, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Norway, the United Kingdom, Denmark [say there is a need] to increase pressure on the Russian Federation," Spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine Mariana Betsa tweeted.

In particular, Betsa informed that representatives of the US delegation stated that the United States fully supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine and will never recognize the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia.

Betsa also reported that the delegation of Canada declared full solidarity with the Crimean Tatars, support for Ukraine and condemnation of the actions of the Russian Federation.

As reported, the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council has started in Vienna today. The delegation of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine together with Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov holds an event on human rights situation in the occupied Crimea.

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The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has advised Ukrainian citizens to refrain from traveling to the Indian capital New Delhi due to the heavy pollution there.

The Foreign Ministry reported this on Twitter with a reference of the Ukrainian Embassy in the Republic of India.

Despite the efforts of local authorities, the environmental situation associated with heavy air pollution remains complicated in the Indian capital New Delhi. In this regard, the Ukrainian citizens are advised to consider the mentioned environmental situation when planning a trip to New Delhi, as well as during their stay in the Indian capital, reads a report.

The embassy informed that according to official data, air pollution levels are 6-8 above the maximum safe limit.

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Ukraine, having adopted a new law on education, has violated its NATO commitments and therefore should withdraw the law.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said this at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, December 6, the Yevropeiska Pravda media outlet reported, citing the press service of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

"By seriously violating minority rights and adopting the new Education Act, in addition to contravening its commitments towards the European Union, Ukraine has also failed to fulfil its NATO commitments," the minister said.

He reiterated that Hungary is not prepared to sacrifice the interests of the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia region on the altar of any kind of geopolitical game. According to him, Ukraine itself is to blame for the current situation.

"If it is important to Ukraine to restore its cooperation with NATO, then it must withdraw the Education Act. And if there are other countries for which it is important for dialogue to be re-established, then they should convince Ukraine to conform to its international commitments," Szijjarto said.

"If Ukraine retracts the legislation, Hungary will once again be one of the loudest proponents of Ukraine's European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations," he said.

As reported, 11 NATO member states, including Germany, expressed disagreement with Hungary's actions to block Euro-Atlantic initiatives of Ukraine due to the law on education.

Several weeks ago, Szijjarto said that his country had vetoed the convening of a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission in December.

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The United States on Wednesday said it will block entry to Cambodians whom Washington deems are undermining democracy in Cambodia and called on Phnom Penh to reverse an anti-democratic crackdown on the opposition.

Cambodias Supreme Court ordered the countrys main opposition, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, dissolved last month and banned more than 100 of its officials from politics for five years. It accused the party of trying to overthrow the government.

The order from the court, which is staffed by ruling Cambodian Peoples Party members and supporters, was the culmination of months of political crisis that saw the CNRP President Kem Sokha jailed on treason charges, media outlets shuttered, journalists jailed and civil society targeted.

The State Department declined to name which Cambodians had been specifically targeted by the visa ban.

In direct response to the Cambodian governments series of anti-democratic actions, we announce the Secretary of State will restrict entry into the United States of those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia, it said in a statement.

Family members of those individuals will also be subjected to visa restrictions, according to the statement.

The US repeated its call on the Cambodian government to reverse course by reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities.

Such actions could lead to a lifting of these travel restrictions and increase the potential for Cambodias 2018 electoral process to regain legitimacy, a State Department spokeswoman said.

The CNRP welcomed the decision.

I hope that every step the US has taken will make the Cambodian government reconsider its action and tries to find a solution so that Cambodia can move forward without any other sanctions, said Kem Monovithya, the CNRPs deputy director general for Public Affairs and Sokhas daughter.

The Cambodian Embassy in Washington, DC, said it regretted the decision, adding it was expected.

This decision is not based on facts and reality that were using to protect the peoples rights and law enforcement, Cambodian Ambassador Chum Bunrong said.

A Cambodian government spokesman said the U.S. action was intended to destroy the good relations between the two countries and added that complying with the request would mean opposing the rule of law in Cambodia.

Monovithya added that she hoped the U.S. would go further and impose asset freezes on the individuals concerned.
Cambodias official election body has rejected criticism over its neutrality after it reallocated the parliamentary seats of the countrys main opposition, which was disbanded by a court order last month.

Following the court decision, three of the National Election Committees members, Kouy Bunreoun, Rong Chhun and Te Manirong, resigned in protest. They had all joined the NEC as part of an agreement between Prime Minister Hun Sens ruling Cambodian Peoples Party and the now-defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party to end a political stalemate following the 2013 election.

Three new NEC candidates were approved on Tuesday to replace the three who resigned: Nuth Sokhom, a Funcinpec party member, Dim Sovannarom, head of public affairs at the Khmer Rouge tribunal and Hel Sarath of the Cambodian Nationality Party (CNP). Both Funcinpec and the CNP assumed seats vacated by the CNRP after the court decision last month.

The NEC, however, in a statement on Saturday said it took a solid stance on law and justice and was not subject to outside interference. Despite this claim, it went on to repeat dubious government assertions that Cambodia was the subject of a plot to engineer a color revolution to overthrow Hun Sen.

To understand color revolutions is not difficult, the statement read. We will obtain enough information regarding those who are the masterminds, theorists, as well as through means to implement color revolution. Then we will see whether what happened recently in Cambodia was similar to those events or not.

Yoeung Sotheara, a legal officer with local election watchdog Comfrel, said the appointment of three government-friendly members to the NEC was a cause for concern. If we talk about the balance of power, it seems to be gone in parliament, and it will be no different in the NEC.

Chhun, one of the NEC resignees, said that unless the decision to ban the CNRP was reversed, the election would not be recognized internationally as being free and fair. That doesnt represent the will of the people, he said.

Hang Puthea, NEC spokesman, could not be reached for comment, and Tep Nytha, NEC secretary, declined to comment on the developments.

The CNRP leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested in September and charged with allegedly conspiring with the United States to overthrow Hun Sen, charges he denies.

On Monday, Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a regional grouping of MPs, issued a statement calling for his release.

Kem Sokhas detention is clearly politically motivated, and the government has presented no credible evidence of the absurd charges levied against him. His arrest came in the midst of a heavy-handed crackdown on free media and civil society, and, combined with the subsequent dissolution of his party, represents nothing more than an attempt by the ruling party to eliminate all opposition before next years national elections, the statement reads.

Hun Sen over the weekend led prayers for harmony at a religious ceremony in the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat.

Phay Siphan, government spokesman, blamed criticism of the governments actions on opposition lobbying and said the decision to ban the CNRP and charge Sokha was a legal decision outside of political interference.

Speaking to supporters in the United States on Sunday, former CNRP lawmaker Eng Chhai Eang said: The stance of the CNRP is to not acknowledge the verdict or ruling of the Supreme Court and the structure of our party remains the same. Lawmakers and commune councilors are still the legitimate representatives of the people he said.
Ung Dara Rath Moni spent the morning watering his plants.



In his sixties, Ung spends a lot time taking care of his tropical plants, including mango, banana and bird of paradise flowers.



He lives in a compound known as 100 Houses, a residential area in Phnom Penhs Teuk Tla designed by renowned architect Vann Molyvann, who died in late September.



In his t-shirt and shorts, the 60-something Ung sits on the ground under his wooden house and tells VOA about how he moved to the area.



I knew that it was one of his [Vann Molyvanns] legacies since I was young. And since I love vintage things and also appreciated his legacy, I decided to buy that house, Ung said. He bought his first house in 1997, then purchased the house next door a few years later.

He merged the two houses into the same property. Though much has been changed in the first house, he tried to keep the second house as close to the original design as possible. He kept the stairs, windows, tiles, and roof in its original form. He said he wants the next generation to see Molyvanns legacy.



I know that people these days will not keep it that way. They love new things, and they change even the tiles. If I don't keep it, it will be gone, Ung added.



100 Houses was built between 1965 and 1967. The National Bank of Cambodia chose Vann Molyvann to work on a private project to build 100 identical houses on a plot for their workers in Teuk Tla, near Phnom Penh International Airport.

The layout is based on the traditional style of Khmer wooden housing. It consists of a small bedroom and a large living room. The extension is separated by a small terrace, with a kitchen and restroom.



The roof juts out past the walls to protect them from rain and sunlight. The stilts lift the house high off the ground, preventing flooding and creating a shaded space below the house.



In each house, a pond was dug either in the front or behind the house. This is for both storing water from rain and to cool down the house. Though, the majority of the ponds have been filled in.



Ung is now increasingly concerned about the lack of conservation of the houses. The loss is unavoidable, he said.



Many of the houses are in an advanced state of decay, and many have been significantly altered or completely destroyed.



Villagers say they would like to renovate if they can find the money.

Hak Bopha, 54, a resident of 100 Houses, says she bought the house in 1979 after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. She said the air circulation is ingenious and not found in most modern housing.



I only renovated the lower part of the house, and keep the remaining upper level intact. I changed the window because the wood was decayed. The roof is still in its original layout, Hak said.



However, she plans to build a new house on the land when she saves enough money. It can't be kept that long. Many parts are decaying, it is not strong at all. Now the trend here is to demolish and then build a new house.

Another resident, Mom Sinat, who also moved here in 1979, is also worried about rotten timber. Though the house is still in fairly good condition, she also plans to build entirely new house as soon as she can afford to do so.



I also want to build a new house if I have money. The concrete is degrading, Mom said.

In a 2001 interview with the Institute of Art and Culture Reyum, Molyvann said each of his buildings took inspiration from traditional Khmer architecture.



For example, in the 100 Houses, I took the idea from Khmer houses, but I learned and improvised. For example, Khmer houses windows are quite small, so I widened the windows in 100 Houses, which makes the air flow better. Also, Khmer houses' columns are made out of wood, which is decays easily. Instead, I changed to concrete to make it last longer.

Like many in his profession, Hor Daro, a 25-year-old architect, has huge admiration of Molyvann's works. As an architecture tour guide, he regularly visits the 100 Houses project.



This work is great because it relates to the way of Khmer people live. The project got inspiration from Khmer houses. It really responded to the Khmer context of living, he said, adding that the project was also a vision of sustainable living.



While Daro admits that old buildings will eventually be replaced as development continues apace, he urged Cambodians to see value in preserving such iconic pieces of architecture.



Any country could face this problem. However, it is a matter of how we give the value, to conserve, to maintain for the next generation. So they can see, understand and learn from the legacy, because New Khmer Architecture was created by Cambodians, and it really fit the Khmer context.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday said that while many powerful countries across the world were concerned by North Koreas successful missile test last week, but Cambodia, he said, was not a potential target.

Speaking to a group of boy scouts at their annual general meeting in Phnom Penh, he said: Everyone is so scared, really scared because now North Korean missiles can reach far.

In late November, North Korea announced it had successfully tested a Hwsong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, which it claimed could carry a super-large heavy warhead capable of striking the entire mainland United States.

The U.S. and South Korea held a five-day military drill in the aftermath of the test.

Hun Sen wrote on Facebook on Tuesday that he hoped the tensions on the Korean peninsula would ease. I hope the world will be calm through a constructive dialogue and perhaps a small country like Cambodia is not a target for nuclear attack from North Korea or terrorism. I hope so, he said.

Cambodia has maintained relatively strong diplomatic relations with Pyongyang since the reign of King Norodom Sihanouk, but in recent years, since the death of Sihanouk in 2012, relations have become less cozy.

VOA Khmer could not contact the North Korean embassy in Cambodia or the foreign ministry for comment.

In September, Prak Sokhon, a foreign minister, told VOA Khmer Cambodia was not happy with aggressive action taken by North Korea and that Cambodia had rejected a request for a North Korean delegation to visit the country.
Most children in sub-Saharan Africa are taught in a common colonial language instead of their mother tongue. Proponents say teaching in an international language is advantageous, but others argue that this can confuse children and affect learning. Some want local languages integrated into the standard French curriculum.

In Alieu Samb primary school, in a working-class section of Dakar, second-graders are learning to read, in French.

Like most children in sub-Saharan Africa, they are taught in their countrys common colonial language rather than in their mother tongue.

Linguistics professor Mbacke Diagne of Dakars Cheikh Anta Diop University wants to integrate local languages into the standard teaching curriculum.

He says most children entering primary school in Senegal have been functioning in Wolof for at least seven years beforehand.

They have structured their world in this language, he says, but as soon as they get to school, all this knowledge is set aside in order to impose French.

Diagne and others believe this slows the learning process and can discourage children from pursuing education.

According to Education Policy and Data Center statistics, Senegals youth literacy rate is lower than the average for other lower middle income countries, and more than half of secondary school-age children are out of school.

Organizations such as the Associates in Research and Education for Development have been piloting bilingual teaching programs in Senegalese primary schools. Awa Ka Dia is the ARED Program Director.

She explains that children start simultaneously learning French and building literacy skills in either Wolof or Pulaar, which are later used as a base to read in French.

ARED currently operates in 98 primary schools spread between Dakar, the northern city of Saint-Louis, and the town of Kaolack. The pilot program ends this year, and Dia hopes results will encourage the government to fund an extended version, covering more regions and incorporating other local languages.

Mixed feelings

But in Alieu Samb school, headmaster Meissa Dieng has mixed feeling about teaching in Wolof.

Speaking French in school will allow children to really master the language, he says, but then there is the psychological impact of deconstructing a thinking process that has already been established.

And parents are often the first to oppose the idea.

Literacy and education expert Chris Darby is with SIL, a nonprofit serving language communities around the world. He says for six years he struggled with community resistance to a multi-lingual education project in rural Senegal.

A lot of the resistance comes from parents, as well as teachers, and right up the hierarchy. But parents are very keen, I think, for children to succeed. And they tend to think of success, as far as what a school can do, in terms of delivering an international language, Darby said.

Other countries also are delving into local languages. In 2014, the Ethiopian government and USAID launched a reading curriculum in seven Ethiopian languages to improve reading skills. And in 2015, Tanzania introduced a policy to remove English as a medium of instruction and teach entirely in Kiswahili.

But for Barbara Trudell, director of Research and Advocacy for SIL Africa, favoring local languages in a multi-lingual context can be complicated.

As soon as you move from an international language down into an African national language, choosing one over the other, the rivalries are instantly there. At least that is the thing about French, English, Portuguese, theyre sort of seen to be on a different level, Trudell said.

In Senegal, Wolof is spoken by more than 80 percent of the population, but there are more than 20 national languages recognized by the government.

In this context, this may be the greatest challenge to teaching in local languages.
President Donald Trumps decision Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been welcomed by a majority of the top U.S. organizations representing American Jews, a community that overwhelmingly voted for his rival, Hillary Clinton, in last years presidential election.

Seven of the most prominent U.S. Jewish organizations issued statements supporting Trumps move within hours of him announcing it in a Wednesday speech at the White House. Two other organizations were critical of it, while a third had not issued any reaction by Wednesday evening in Washington.

The Pew Research Centers exit polling for the 2016 U.S. presidential election showed only 24 percent of respondents identifying as Jewish saying they voted for Trump, while 71 percent said they voted for Clinton, his Democratic Party rival.

View decision positively

More than a year later, most of the American Jewish religious and advocacy groups supporting the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem used relatively strong language in their statements, such as saying they applaud the decision, consider it historic or express gratitude for it.

Those organizations, which range from politically conservative to centrist, include the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).

The seventh supportive group, the centrist Anti-Defamation League (ADL), used the more moderate term welcome to describe its reaction to Trumps announcement.

The strongest criticism of Trump from a major American Jewish organization was from J Street, a politically liberal American Jewish group that advocates for what it calls a pro-Israel, pro-peace U.S. foreign policy. Its statement issued Wednesday used language calling the Jerusalem recognition unhelpful and damaging. The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which represents the largest Jewish denominational movement in the U.S., described the move as ill-timed and all but certain to exacerbate the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A 2013 Pew study, A Portrait of Jewish Americans, found that 35 percent of all U.S. Jews identify with the Reform movement.

'Absent a comprehensive plan'

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said, While we share the presidents belief that the U.S. Embassy should, at the right time, be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, we cannot support his decision to begin preparing that move now, absent a comprehensive plan for a peace process.

Additionally, any relocation of the American embassy to West Jerusalem should be conceived and executed in the broader context reflecting Jerusalems status as a city holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike," Jacobs said.

The Pew study also found Conservative Judaism to be the second-largest Jewish denomination in the United States, with 18 percent of respondents affiliating with it.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), which adopts more liberal political and religious positions than Orthodox Judaism, had not issued an immediate statement on the Jerusalem move. USCJ CEO Rabbi Steven Wernick told VOA Persian via Twitter that he would not be making any comment Wednesday.

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, also known as the Orthodox Union, represents about 10 percent of American Jews, according to the Pew study.

In an interview with VOA Persian, its director of public policy Nathan Diament said a majority of American Jewish organizations have had a mainstream consensus view  for decades that the U.S. should recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. The fact that there are a few groups on the left who are reacting (in a critical) way is unfortunate, Diament said.

Diament said the Orthodox Union believes the Jerusalem recognition will help U.S. credibility and stature around the world by acknowledging historical and current reality and by showing that the U.S. is standing close with its ally, Israel.

'Contradicts' bipartisan policy

In its statement, J Street said Trumps announcement contradicts decades of bipartisan presidential policy. It does nothing to advance, and could seriously undermine, the administrations stated commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while potentially threatening Israels security and alienating Arab regional partners, it said.

J Street said U.S. Jewish communal leaders who are concerned about Israels security and future should not support what it called this misguided and damaging decision.
Virginia Delegate John Bell politely greets people at a town hall meeting, asking them about their concerns, which range from local road repairs to womens rights to affordable health care. His focus in the Virginia General Assembly, however, has been battling the opioid addiction crisis that has been sweeping the nation.

It all started when his son, Josh, became an addict.

He was in a car accident seven years ago and in the car accident he injured his neck, Bell said. And when he came out of the emergency room, he came out with an opioid prescription for 90 days, with five refills. By the time his son finished the first prescription, he was addicted.

WATCH: For American Politician, Opioid Issue is Personal

Unlikely addict

Josh, who lives in Texas, says unscrupulous caregivers helped fuel his addiction.

The doctors never took an X-ray or a CAT scan ... all they did was the doctor looked at my neck for a second and then he gave me some Vicodin.

I remember when I got home that night and I took it  its like the first time experiencing love.

Thats when Josh developed an opioid addiction, which quickly turned from expensive pain pills to heroin.

Heroin at that point saved me so much money, and the high was so powerful, I felt like I felt early in my addiction. It just got terrible from there.

Josh says his addiction became so bad, I was just doing whatever I needed to support my habit.

The 32-year-olds life started to crumble. His wife left him and he lost his job.

I couldnt enjoy anything because all I cared about was trying to get heroin, he said.

Pill mills

Josh sought help at pain management clinics, but says it was a deeply disappointing experience.

The doctors spent very little time with us as patients, he recalled. We never talked about recovery, we never talked about therapy. ... There were no warnings; they never told me that this was going to be leading to something greater than this or that Im going to keep wanting more.

They made me feel bad whenever I asked questions. So it was a pill mill is basically what it was, he said.

Josh remembers the huge waiting area where he was surrounded by others struggling with addiction.

Everyone was just sitting there hurting, and by the time you had the prescription in your hands, you were already experiencing a high ((because)) you know you are about to get back into your addiction full force, he said.

During his entire ordeal, Joshs family was unaware of what he was going through.

Looking back, his father said, we didnt really understand the addiction and we didnt know what signs to look for to know he was addicted during this period. But when he did find out, Josh says his father literally flew down to Texas that day and thats when my road to recovery started.

A family disease

When I visited him and he explained to me what had been going on, the first thing I told him is that I loved him and I supported him, the elder Bell said. Drug addiction or any addiction is commonly called a family disease. And I think thats an accurate description because its not just the person whos addicted who suffers, its the whole family, he added.

Josh was lucky. Many who misuse opioids lack family or other support systems to help them deal with their addiction.

Opioid overdoses killed about 64,000 people in the United States in 2016, making it the leading cause of death for Americans younger than 50. And opioid addiction is rising.

Thats why having a support network in place is so important, John Bell said.

Once someone becomes addicted to a drug  and with many opioids it can happen in a matter of five to seven days  there no longer is a choice; its a disease, he said.

Bell and his wife, Margaret, found help and support to deal with their sons disease from Nar-Anon. Known officially as Nar-Anon Family Groups, the organization is a 12-step program for friends and family members who are affected by someone elses addiction.

Along with the emotional cost and social stigma associated with addiction  families are often reluctant to talk about the issue with others  they struggle with the high cost of treatment. While there are programs that provide assistance, it simply isnt enough, John Bell said. He and his family spent thousands of dollars for Josh, but acknowledges not all families are as fortunate. He wants more programs for low-income families.

Effective legislation

As a state lawmaker, Bell has tried to use his experience and position to bring about change, often working with experts in the legal and medical professions.

We put in a limit on how many pain pills can be prescribed for acute pain at the emergency room, he said. They also put in money into Narcan, a nasal mist spray that, if administered quickly, reverses the effect of an opioid overdose. So $2.4 million was put towards that so we make sure all of our first responders have the ability to provide that life-saving drug, he said.

Life-saving measures

Those efforts are already having an impact.

Fatal heroin overdoses in Bells district of Loudoun County, Virginia, decreased 27 percent compared with the same time last year. And nonfatal overdoses decreased 14 percent over the same time period, according to Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman.

Bell, who recently won reelection in his district, says hes just getting started.

Because this is a problem that spans age groups, he said. I have met 13-year-old children who are addicted; I met a 78-year-old grandmother who is addicted, and everything in between.

Im no one special, Bell said. Im just someone who has a son who suffers from addiction. And there are so many people like me. And the more we can share this story, the more we can take this out of the shadows and get it out into a place where we can do some good with it and help those who are struggling.

Josh Bell has been sober for nine months and is eager to use his experience to help others.

All we want to do is once we find recovery is help someone else find recovery because we know how dark it was, and how good it feels not to live a lie anymore, he said.
Islamist parties are using the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital as a rallying cry that likely will resound in upcoming election campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

U.S. President Donald Trumps announcement on Wednesday sparked protests in a number of countries, with clashes breaking out with security forces in Palestinian territories. More crowds are expected from Indonesia to Turkey after Friday prayers.

Its unclear how deep and lasting the outbreak of anti-American sentiment will be, and whether it may include terror attacks or other violence as some world leaders predicted. Trumps earlier actions this year, including a ban on visas from several Muslim-majority countries, have fueled suspicions that America is becoming increasingly hostile to Muslims.

One key country to watch is Pakistan, which has seen growing religious conservatism and has bristled at U.S. pressure to oust extremist groups that have been blamed for attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.

Islamabad, which doesnt recognize the existence of Israel as a state, has denied providing terror groups with safe havens.

Islamist leader Hafiz Saeed, who has been accused of masterminding terrorist attacks in India, was released from house arrest last week. He quickly announced that his Jamaat-ud-Dawa group, which has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, plans to run in national elections in May and could benefit from further fomenting anti-U.S. sentiment.

The countrys major religious party Jamaat-e-Islami has called for nationwide protests Friday and urged Muslim leaders to sort out a joint strategy against Trumps policy on Jerusalem.

Some U.S. allies have also denounced Trumps change in longstanding U.S. policy, although dependence on U.S. aid is unlikely to prevent them from completely severing ties.

A spokesman for Afghanistans presidential palace said the action jeopardizes the peace process in the Middle East and that any unilateral action in this regard without Palestines participation and the solution of an independent state will not result in a positive outcome and a permanent solution.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina agreed.

Theres a U.N. resolution on this and no one will accept the announcement disregarding it, she told a news conference, although Trump has repeatedly shrugged off criticism of his policies.

The reaction to the decision is liable to be tempered by the fact that many Muslim countries are preoccupied with other issues.

Saudi Arabia is engaged in an increasingly bitter regional rivalry with Iran, even as its youthful crown prince seeks to push through major political and social reforms. That rivalry has contributed to a devastating civil war in Yemen, a struggle for power and control in areas vacated by the battlefield defeat of the islamic State extremist group and a trade embargo against Qatar, which several of its neighbors have accused of supporting terrorism.

Terrorist reaction

Even in defeat, Islamic State remains a menace in the region, with some of its fighters believed to have gone into hiding in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

While official reaction to Trump's announcement was tempered, terrorist organizations did not mince words when declaring their opposition to the declaration. SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks online activity jihadist organizations, reported several threats from terrorist groups around the world.

The Kashmir-based jihadi group Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind called on Muslims all over the world to attack U.S. and Israeli embassies, and harm corporate and financial interests of both countries. A statement released by the group said it is a "duty" for Muslims to urgently act and "do everything that is needed to stop the madman sitting in White House and stop him from dishonoring the sacred land of Bait al-Maqdis," referring to Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

In Gaza, an Islamist militant group called the Al-Tawheed Brigades took responsibility for rockets fired at Israel on Thursday in what it declared was its "first response" to the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The pro-Islamic State media group Tarjuman al-Asawirti declared that "terrorism is the solution" and called for increased terrorist attacks on the West. The U.S. "only understands the language of bullets, car bombs, IEDs, and slitting of the throats," it said.

Regional branches of al-Qaida also condemned the United States. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) expressed solidarity with Muslims on the issue and urged all fighters to make the liberation of Palestine their "central cause."

Al-Qaida Central (AQC) called on Muslims to strike the "vital" interests of America and its allies. It called Trump's declaration a "blatant aggression" and called on its allies to retaliate: "Crusader allies everywhere. This is a simple equation; just as you kill us, you shall be killed; just as you bomb us, you, too, shall be bombed, and the one who initiates hostilities shoulders the blame."

VOA's Dari, Urdu, Deewa, Turkish and Indonesian services contributed to this report
At 6 p.m., the place was still empty, and only one person had trickled in.

Two hours later, seven people were crammed around a table meant for four, with newspapers, cups of tea and food items littering the wooden top.

The authentic Bangladeshi restaurant on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. seemed more like a family room than a restaurant. It draws people together from Bangladesh and India that share the Bengali ethnicity but whose countries have been separated by conflict since 1947.

Delicious Bengali dishes like hilsa fish, or goat biryani made their way to the tables occupied by members of the Bengali diaspora, their camaraderie overshadowing the chicken, fish or beef. Hilsa  called the queen of fishes is a Bangladeshi delicacy and in danger of being overfished. Biryani is a South Asian mix of rice, vegetable and meat.

From the outside, Gharer Khabar -- which means homemade food in Bengali -- looks like many other narrow restaurants with plate-glass front windows in northern Virginia. Operated and owned by Nasima Shahreen and Ashraful Siddique, a Bangladeshi immigrant couple, it sits in a strip mall on busy Lee Highway.

But inside, Gharer Khabar turns the restaurant into a place where homemade food comes from a kitchen of love.

My goal was that, said Nasima Shahreen, co-owner and head cook of Gharer Khabar. Homemade food with affection, with love.

Shahreen and her husband, Ashraful, both from Bangladeshs capital city of Dhaka, emigrated to the U.S. at the end of 2003.

The couple worked as sales representatives before starting a part-time catering business in Bengali food. When the first order came nearly 12 years ago, the couple had never imagined owning a restaurant of their own.

They only dreamt of it.

Till now, I am not a trained cook. I dont know how it happened, so I just cook like for passion, Shahreen said. But it happened.

Their first order came from an immigrant Bengali family from Kolkata, India, who needed help after the birth of their child. They read an advertisement about homemade catered food in a Bengali community website.

We prepared some fish, vegetables and rice, Siddique recalled. We gave it to them. They liked it.

Next week, an order came in to feed 30 people, Siddique said.

And then, word spread among the Bengali diaspora in the Washington metropolitan area. Approximately 10,000 Bangladesh-born residents live there, according to a 2014 Migration Policy Institute report. And, at least 2,500 to 3,000 Bengalis from India are said to reside in the area, according to Somin Mukherji, who retired from the World Bank in 2014 and is a longtime Washington resident from Kolkata.

Bengali-Indians also come to Gharer Khabar to bond with immigrants from Bangladesh because of familiar language, food and culture.

The union of Bengalis are poignant because the province of Bengal was divided along religious lines in 1947. West Bengal lies on the India side of the line with a majority Hindu population. On the other side in Bangladesh is a majority Muslim population, which was East Pakistan until 1971. But most people from both those regions are ethnic Bengali and speak Bengali, despite practicing different religions.

See, like here, they are from Calcutta (Kolkata), and they are from Bangladesh, Siddique said, pointing to customers in the restaurant. We have lots of people who come from Calcutta (Kolkata), and we feel like since we have the same language, our food taste is 80 percent is the same, we can connect (with) each other very easily.

The business grew with constant requests from the diaspora for Bengali cooking, which obliged the couple to open Gharer Khabar at the end of 2011.

Every evening around 8 p.m., Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh and India gather for social and political conversations, play games such as chess and lodo (a board and dice game), and eat Bengali snacks with tea, Shahreen said.

One of them is Nusrat Rabbee.

Rabbee is an immigrant from Dhaka and came to the U.S. in 1981 for her undergraduate degree in computer science and economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She moved to Washington from northern California in August to teach at the University of Maryland.

Since coming to Washington, Rabbee has been to Gharer Khabar almost every week, she said.

Drawn to its authentic Bangladeshi food, Rabbee was initially shy. She quietly ate her food and left, she said.

But, now thats changed. The hospitality of the owners and the vibrant community of Gharer Khabar has empowered her to join the discussions of others.

Gharer Khabar is a community center for all of us, Rabbee told VOA StudentU. When I enter, it feels like the sitcom Cheers, where everyone knows your name.

They know what you like to eat.

This wasnt the case in northern California, Rabbee said. Even though similar communities existed, a class divide remained, wherein political and social intellectual exchanges referred to as adda in Bengali were constrained among the educated elites.

Such is not the case at Gharer Khabar, Rabbee said.

Conversations dont revolve around reminiscing Bangladesh, Rabbee said. They, instead revolve around art, politics and social issues.

One compelling debate Rabbee participated in was on whether publication of animal slaughter pictures from Eid-ul-Adha on Facebook should be acceptable. Eid-ul-Adha is a a holy Muslim festival, also called the Sacrifice Feast, and is observed, among other rituals though the sacrifice of a sheep, cow, goat, buffalo or camel.

In that discussion, "women's voices were audible, Rabbee told VOAStudentU. I liked that.

Tell us about it in the Comments and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, thanks!
They ran for their lives by the thousands when the devastating wildfires raced across a huge swath of brush-covered Southern California hillsides, and they survived.

But hundreds had to flee so quickly they left everything behind.

On Wednesday, heartbroken people began to take stock of everything they lost in a manner of minutes, from their beloved four-legged companions, who got separated from them during the chaos, to a lifetime of memories encapsulated in photos, jewelry and other keepsakes.

'Everything burned'

Everything burned, Marolyn Romero-Sim said as she sat on a cot weeping at an evacuation center at the sprawling Ventura County Fairgrounds. Everything is ashes. Everything. We dont have a place to live. We lost stuff we cant get back. Baby pictures. They were on a hard drive.

She said her husband, Hugo Romero-Rodriguez, was racked with guilt that he couldnt get inside the modest RV his family called home to rescue anything  including their beloved little dog, Coqueta. She was trapped in a crate inside when the vehicle erupted in flames. Romero-Rodriguez suffered cuts on his leg and hand and a burn on his arm trying to get to inside to save Coqueta.

He was sitting there in the drivers seat and he couldnt move, Romero-Sim said, recalling how she, her husband and their 9-year-old daughter, Milagros, sat in their truck, watching the RV burn before finally realizing they had to flee.

He just kept watching and he feels so guilty that he couldnt save it, she continued. I told him he did everything he could and he did what he had to save our lives.

Only the clothes on their backs

Lisa Kermode and her family were immersed in similar anguish after returning to their home in the hills above Ventura on Tuesday to discover it had burned to the ground. They had barely escaped the flames the night before, leaving so quickly that Kermodes children had no time to change out of their pajamas.

I was telling the boys, at the time the decision we made was to get out of here as fast as possible to keep ourselves safe, Kermode said. Now that were back here, maybe were thinking about some of the stuff weve lost. ... It really changes your perspective.

Lost pet hurts most

For Romer-Sim and her family the loss was particularly devastating. They lived in the RV they parked near Venturas water purification plant in the hills just north of downtown. They couldnt move it because the starter stopped working and her husband had planned to replace it that day.

Romero-Rodriguez makes a modest living as a jewelry salesman and he lost the pearls, earrings, bracelets and watches that made up his inventory.

But losing the 1-year-old snow-white teacup poodle the family called Coqueta (Spanish for flirt) was particularly painful.

We spoiled her. She had a slipper as a bed. It was a big pink slipper and it said Princess and it had a crown in gold. And inside it was fuzzy. We would buy little baby clothes for her, Romer-Sim said while her husband visited with a counselor.

Four major fires

Four major fires stretching from the edge of Los Angeles to the beachfront city of Ventura 60 miles (97 kilometers) north have prompted the evacuation of about 200,000 people and destroyed more than 150 homes.

The flames also prompted the evacuation of thousands of pets: dogs and cats, also horses, goats, alpacas and other large livestock.

The edges of both Los Angeles and Ventura are dotted with horse-keeping properties, and when flames roared in people barely had time to get their animals to their own evacuation centers.

Were full, weve taken in over 450 horses and four goats, Heidi Allyn, a stable assistant at the sprawling Los Angeles Equestrian Center, said Wednesday.

Some people fled so quickly that they led their frightened horses down smoke-filled, traffic-choked streets. Allyn said a few horses suffered burns and were taken to a veterinary facility at the Ventura County Fairgrounds for treatment.

Nearly 30 horses didnt make it out of a ranch in Los Angeles semi-rural Sunland-Tujunga area and died there.

Firefighters help animals as they can

Firefighters will do what they can to help any animals separated from their owners, said Chris Harvey, a spokesman for the crews fighting the Ventura blaze.

Theyll leave food out for dogs and cats that flee the flames on their own, hoping theyll return later looking for their owners. They also help large animals like horses when they can.

Sometimes theyre able to feed livestock or try and call in to get them evacuated if they can do so without having to suspend their firefighting operations, he said.
The Cambodian government has so far offered a largely muted response to travel restrictions the U.S. has said it will impose on senior officials in direct response to what the U.S. says are anti-democratic actions taken by the government in Phnom Penh.

Certain Cambodian government officials, and in some cases their family members, will be banned from traveling to the United States in the strongest reaction yet to what critics say is a backslide toward outright dictatorship in the nominally democratic country.



Outside of the National Assembly, Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng said Thursday the U.S. government had the right to act as it pleased.



That is the right of the United States. [We] dont know what to do and I dont know what to say, he said.



The State Department said the travel restrictions were In direct response to the Cambodian governments series of anti-democratic actions which have included jailing opposition leader Kem Sokha, dissolving his party and banning more than 100 of its members from politics for five years.



Observers say the new U.S. restrictions fulfill a pledge the White House made to take a series of concrete actions against Prime Minister Hun Sens government after the Cambodian Supreme Court dissolved Sokhas Cambodia National Rescue Party on November 16.



Immediately after the dissolution, the U.S. suspended funding to Cambodias National Election Committee.



U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will enforce the restrictions against "individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement.



The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh declined to give details on how widely the restriction would be applied and embassy officials did not say whether American diplomats had spoken with Cambodian government representatives yet.



Many Cambodian government officials have family members living in the Khmer diaspora communities in the United States and American universities are popular among the children of the elite.



The move is likely to further raise tensions between Cambodia and the United States, which Hun Sen has accused of fomenting a color revolution ahead of elections next year.



Council of Ministers spokesperson Phay Siphan said in a Facebook post that Nauerts statement appeared to be further evidence of a U.S. conspiracy to topple Hun Sens government.



The statement is showing the real intention to destroy the good relations and U.S.-Cambodian cooperation, the spokesman wrote. And the matter of forcing Cambodia to oppose the court, the parliament, is an act to antagonize the rule of law which is contradicting the will of Cambodia that makes effort to strengthen everyday, he said.



Government mouthpiece FreshNews - which has penned regular vitriolic attacks against the U.S. in recent months - reported the news of the restrictions, including the full State Department statement, while official government news outlet Agence Kampuchea Presse ignored the story completely.



Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Chum Sunry did not answer telephone calls, but reports said he told FreshNews the ministry was preparing a response.



Former CNRP deputy leader Mu Sochua, who was lobbying the Australian government this week to take similar action, said her party was very satisfied with the restrictions.



The United States is listening to us and is going toward the right direction and giving Mr Hun Sen the time to listen to and be reasonable with the recommendations that we are taking so that we have time to prepare elections. What we want is free and fair and inclusive elections in 2018, Sochua said.



We have asked for targeted sanctions with a ban on high ranking officials in Cambodia. This is the warning and its now coming to reality. We are very satisfied with the concrete actions taken by the United States and by any other government such as Swedish government to cut aid to the government of Cambodia, she said.



Last month, Sweden - a significant donor to Cambodia - announced it was halting any new government-to-government aid to the kingdom except in the areas of education and research.



Sochua said the European Union was also poised to take punitive actions in response, though she declined to give specific details.



In an interview with VOA last week, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Heidt stressed his focus was on developing the local economy through sectors such as technology while lamenting the deterioration in the relationship.



"Since I came here, let's be honest, the Cambodian government has taken a lot of steps against the government of the United States," Heidt said.



"They cut our military exercises, they threw [a] detachment out of the country, they made all of those accusations against us related to the political situation, he said, adding he felt there had never been an honest desire by the Cambodian government to have good relationship with the U.S.



Shortly afterward he was lambasted in an editorial from FreshNews.

Hul Reaksmey and Sok Khemara contributed to this report.
Cameroon's military has taken over two villages held hostage by separatists whom the government called terrorists.

The separatists had been collecting taxes, rendering justice in their courts and imposing prison sentences on people who refused to collaborate with them.

The separatists have killed at least eight soldiers and policemen over the past month in their campaign to break from francophone Cameroon and form a separate anglophone state called Ambazonia. They also aim to loosen President Paul Biya's long grip on power.

In the southwestern village of Bafia, one of those retaken, hundreds of people have returned, nearly two months after they fled.

Resident Enow Basile, 31, said he and about 100 villagers were arrested by the armed groups and detained at a local government school, where a man calling himself General Amstrong, leader of the group, had installed his headquarters.

"When you come, they tie your eye, they beat you up," he said. "If you don't have from 100 thousand francs ($180) and above, they promise to take your life, so people were paying." More than 100 people complied, he said.

"And they always attacked trucks that were transporting cocoa to Douala," Basile added. "They attack them, each pay 50 thousand francs ($90) to pay a pass, but if you don't pay, you will not pass. You don't take cocoa to Douala."

Muyenge, 10 kilometers from Bafia, was the other occupied village. Resident Ayuk Lucas said the invaders were sanctioning anyone who did not respect them.

"They even create a court. Everything. A whole government where they send to come and collect somebody and ask you to pay some money to them," he said.

Last week, Cameroon's military arrested 20 members of the armed group.

But the U.N. Committee Against Torture expressed concern Wednesday, demanding an investigation into the deaths of at least 17 people killed in October 1 clashes between the security forces and those seeking a separate state. It said more than 500 people had been arrested, some of them from the hospital in the wake of the unrest, and it criticized Yaounde for not responding to several demands seeking information on those still being held.

Muyenge resident Ebune Francis said the armed separatists were expressing anger about what he described as the Cameroon government's neglect of English-speaking regions. He said he did not support secessionists but did support demands made by teachers and lawyers when they began a strike more than a year ago that later degenerated.

"We had been supporting the government, supporting the government. Nothing is coming, so we all are annoyed," Francis said. "We are abandoned by the government. We don't have water, sometimes we don't have electricity. You want us to be happy with the government? No."

The government has assured the population of the English-speaking regions that it will assure their safety.

Schools have been closed in most of the English-speaking northwest and southwest since November last year, when the lawyers and teachers called for a strike to stop what they said was the overuse of the French language.
Amid growing signs that special counsel Robert Mueller may be building an obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump, one of the presidents lawyers has set legal experts buzzing with a controversial theory that because he is the nations chief law enforcement officer, nothing the president does can be considered obstruction of justice.

The argument has few defenders among American legal experts, including those who do not believe there is yet sufficient evidence to support an obstruction case against the president. But the U.S. Constitution does grant the holder of the nations highest office great latitude in law enforcement matters, including broad powers to direct investigations and pardon offenders.

While of considerable interest to scholars, the question whether a president can be guilty of obstruction of justice is more than academic.

Remark on Twitter

The case for an obstruction charge against Trump gained strength over the weekend when the president remarked in a tweet that he had fired his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, partly because he had lied to the FBI.

Trump had said that hed dismissed former FBI Director James Comey over the bureaus probe into his campaigns links to Russia; if Trump knew Flynn had committed a crime by lying to the FBI when he fired Comey in May, that would bolster the case for obstruction.

Trump lawyer John Dowd appeared to be trying to pre-empt any such step when he told the Axios website Monday that 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.

Trump has said hes not under investigation by the special counsel. Muellers office has declined to comment.

That the president has legal authority to order an end to an investigation is hardly controversial; as head of the executive branch, he is the countrys nominal chief law officer and enjoys broad prosecutorial discretion.

Among other things, the president has the authority to decide who should be investigated, though in practice presidents rarely interfere in criminal investigations.

But the presidents legal authority has limitations.

The law that makes it a crime to obstruct justice, or in legal lingo, hinder an official proceeding, doesnt exclude the president. The charge requires proof of bribery or corrupt intent.

Outright bribery

John Culhane, a professor at the Delaware Law School, said outright bribery by a president to stop an investigation would constitute obstruction of justice.

It seems obvious that the president, like anyone else, could engage in action that wed all think, well, yah, that obstructed justice, Culhane said.

Even those who believe there is no case for obstruction of justice against Trump would not go so far as suggesting that a president is above the law.

Controversial Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who frequently defends Trumps policies on television, said he disagreed with the presidents lawyer that a president can never be charged with obstruction of justice.

Instead, he wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill on Tuesday, a president cannot be charged with the crime if his only actions were constitutionally authorized.

Former President George H. W. Bush pardoned five senior members of his predecessors administration, removing potential witnesses that could implicate him in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Yet no one suggested President Bush be charged with obstruction of justice, Dershowitz noted.

Andrew McCarthy, a fellow at the conservative National Review Institute, said Dowds comments were a muddled statement of otherwise sound constitutional principles.

He framed that clumsily because if his position is that the president cant obstruct justice, that would be absurd, and I dont think hes an absurd man, McCarthy said.

Intent is harder to determine than bribery. In Trumps case, investigators would have to establish that Trump corruptly intended to stop the FBIs investigation into Flynns contacts with Russias ambassador to Washington.

Misconduct

Simply urging Comey to show leniency toward Flynn doesnt meet the legal standard for obstruction of justice, McCarthy said.

On the other hand, if the president were to say, Im afraid Mike Flynn knows too much about my misconduct so Id like the case dismissed against him, so that they cant pressure him to testify about me, that is corrupt and that is something that Congress can address by impeachment, McCarthy said.

But the question whether a president can be charged with obstruction of justice is somewhat moot; no sitting American president has been indicted in history, and the consensus among legal scholars is that presidents are immune from prosecution while in office.

Remedy rests with Congress

Ultimately, the remedy for dealing with presidential malfeasance rests with Congress. The U.S. Constitution allows for impeachment of the president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The impeachable offenses have never been defined, but there is historic precedent to impeach a sitting president for obstruction of justice.

Former President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, in part for obstruction of justice, while one of three articles of impeachment brought against Richard Nixon in 1974 alleged obstruction of justice.

So there is a template, or precedent, that could be used if Congress decided the issue was sufficiently serious to go in that direction, Delaware law professor Culhane said.

As a senator in 1999, Jeff Sessions, now the current attorney general, argued strongly in favor of convicting Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice.

The facts are disturbing and compelling on the presidents intent to obstruct justice, Sessions said at the time.
An opposition alliance in Mexico wants to launch a universal basic wage to combat the poverty that blights the lives of almost half the population, touting an experimental reform discussed globally as a solution to job losses from automation.

The center-right National Action Party and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution are running on a joint ticket with the leftist Citizens Movement (MC) for next Julys presidential election, and the income plan is a key part of their manifesto.

Details are still in works

Officials inside the alliance say details of the plan are still being worked out, though its contours are emerging.

A basic income of 10,000 pesos ($537) per year for everyone, including children, could be provided by consolidating funds from federal, state and municipal welfare programs, Jorge Alvarez, an MC congressman working on the plan told Reuters in a recent interview.

If you multiply that by four or five, which is the typical size of a Mexican family, you get an annual income of 40,000 to 50,000 pesos per family, Alvarez said, adding that providing the income to children could be conditional on school enrollment.

Home to the richest man in Latin America, Carlos Slim, Mexico is laden with oil and minerals, boasts a large manufacturing base and has the world's 15th biggest economy. But poverty has remained stubbornly stuck above 40 percent of the population for decades.

Extra taxes needed?

Government social development agency Coneval defines poverty as a person living on no more than 2,925 pesos a month in cities and 1,892 pesos in rural areas. The agency also takes into account other factors like healthcare and education.

Getting to 40,000 or 50,000 pesos per family could be achieved without increasing taxes, Alvarez said.

Still, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argues that providing an unconditional basic income to everyone of working age would do little to combat poverty if not funded by extra taxes.

The idea of universal basic income has gained currency due to the increasing robotization of the workforce. Finland is running a pilot project to test whether unconditional payments could serve as a plausible alternative welfare model.

Robots taking jobs

Mexico has seen job growth in recent years thanks to a manufacturing boom, and could face a smaller workforce as robots take over more tasks.

Swiss voters rejected a basic income plan in a referendum last year, while the defeated Socialist candidate in France's presidential election this year, Benoit Hamon, championed it, saying it would be funded by a tax on robots that replace human labor.

Mexican gross domestic product was worth $1.046 trillion in 2016, according to the World Bank, but some 53.4 million Mexicans, or 43.6 percent of the population, live below the poverty line, according to Coneval.
Sinopec USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese oil and gas conglomerate, has sued Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA in a U.S. court, claiming it never received full payment for an order of steel rebar.

The lawsuit asks for $23.7 million for breach of contract and conspiracy to defraud. The legal action signals a split with another of Venezuela's biggest backers as the cash-strapped country seeks to restructure some $60 billion in debt in a landscape of low oil prices and production.

The complaint suggests "patience is getting really thin at this point," said Mark Weidemaier, law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on international debt disputes. "This is a further sign of frostiness in the Chinese-Venezuelan relations."

PDVSA declined to comment.

China, which has loaned Venezuela more than $50 billion over the past decade, recently has been reluctant to involve itself more deeply in the South American country's debt crisis. It has curtailed its credit to Venezuela in the last 22 months because of chronic payment delays, troubles with joint venture projects, and crime faced by Chinese firms operating in the country.

In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston on Nov. 27, Sinopec said PDVSA paid half of a 2012 purchase order for 45,000 tons of steel rebar, which is used in oil rigs, by its fully owned subsidiary Bariven.

It accused the Venezuelan oil company of using Bariven "as a sham to perpetrate fraud against Sinopec," and called the PDVSA subsidiary an "undercapitalized shell with the sole purpose of preventing Sinopec from having a remedy."

Any solution to Venezuela's financial crisis will need the involvement of the Chinese and Russian governments, which are owed a substantial amount from the country. A Russian state-owned shipping company, Sovcomflot, also brought suit last year against PDVSA over $30 million in unpaid shipping fees.

PDVSA is in talks with a handful of European companies to obtain credit for oil and gas projects in a bid to reverse a slump in output to an almost 30-year low, and has been seeking financing from China and Russia.

But kidnappings and thefts in Caracas have prompted some Chinese executives working in the country to move to Colombia to escape the problems, sources have said. Chinese-run infrastructure projects also have faced delays.

Carmakers and small grocery stores that flourished under late president Hugo Chavez due to preferential currency exchange terms have either closed or downsized. Current president Nicolas Maduro no longer offers the same preferential terms for Chinese businesses to have access to cheap imports.

"The Chinese don't have a whole lot to show for their loans," a Western diplomat in Caracas said.
Chinese state media predict a sweeping backlash to President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in what is being characterized in Beijing as a risky and unwise decision.

Some editorials even warn the decision could lead to more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, hurt the American economy and fray relations between Washington and its allies in the Middle East.

The story was a lead item on state broadcaster CCTV throughout the day as lengthy reports highlighted Palestinian objection to the move and how few support the decision, including U.S. allies in Europe. Reports also highlighted the instability and uncertainty the decision is expected to bring to the Middle East.

China editorial

A scathing editorial in Chinas Global Times entitled Trump Kicks the Hornets Nest, Again predicted that as Arabic and Islamic nations rebuild, the outcomes (from the decision) will be drastic adding that it would provide radical extremists with a rare opportunity.

The editorial said that through the decision Trump has proven that he is a daring president but noted that that also raises questions about what the president might do next.

The suspense carries weight. It seems that he will decidedly apply the power of the U.S. and forcefully reform those places in the world that dissatisfy him, the article said.

The article said such places could include North Korea.

If Pyongyang refuses to stop its nuclear and missile tests, the possibility of Trump resorting to armed force is higher, it said.

An opinion piece in the overseas edition of the Communist Party backed Peoples Daily warned the decision could have an impact on U.S. ties with the Arab world and turn the Organization of Islamic Cooperation into a cooperation only in name.

Trumps decision will increase contention between Israel and the Arab world and further strain relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the piece said, adding that it could spark another wave of anti-Jewish, Israeli and American sentiment among religious extremist groups and nationalists.

On social media, the warnings and concern about risks were even more intense and varied. Some argued that Trumps decision was dangerous and destined to only re-ignite tensions in the Middle East and Jerusalem.

One user on Weibo said the decision was like lighting a match next to a powder keg, another that it had opened the Gates of Hell in the Middle East.

Some wondered whether there was a connection between the decision and Trump's tax plan. Others asked that with the U.S. already busy with North Korea, how could it handle trouble with the Middle East too.

Not all oppose move

Some agreed with the Trump administrations position that after so many years of doing the same thing it was time to try something new.

Be it North Korea or the Middle East, Trumps logic is correct, one user wrote.

Another user called Trump a courageous leader who dares to speak the truth, suggesting that the move had opened up a "New Era for peace in the Middle East." That user added, however, that the world was counting on Israel to make sure that happens.

While there has been widespread criticism of Trumps decision, some analysts have argued the move could prod Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. In the past, U.S. presidents left the status of Jerusalem  which is home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions  to be decided in negotiations between the two sides.

For its part, the Chinese government has voiced its concern about the possible escalation of conflict in the Middle East and its support for a peaceful resolution of the dispute.

At a regular press briefing on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China would continue to support the Middle East peace process, calling for an early resumption of talks.

Geng also re-iterated China's support for the Palestinian people to establish an independent state that enjoys full sovereignty based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Brian Kopczynski contributed to this report
Vulnerable communities uprooted by climate change are being left out of a voluntary pact to deal with migration, campaigners said, after the United States pulled out of the global deal.

Although people within low-lying states are being forced to relocate because of worsening storms and rising seas, they will not be recognized in U.N. migration pact talks next year, putting lives at risk, campaigners said.

"Many of the situations we find ourselves in, here in the Pacific, are not caused by us. We continue to ask, 'Where is the justice?' Those of us who are least responsible, continue to bear the brunt," said Emele Duituturaga, head of the Pacific Islands Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (PIANGO).

Hoping for acceptance

"We hope that there will be an openness and an acceptance that climate-induced migration is one that the world community has to be responsible for," she said on the sidelines of a conference co-hosted by PIANGO in Fiji's capital, Suva.

With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September 2016 in which it also agreed to spend two years negotiating a pact on safe, orderly and regular migration.

U.S. President Donald Trump this week withdrew from negotiations because the global approach to the issue was "simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February.

Unique heritage

Climate displacement is already a reality for Telstar Jimmy, a student from the Bank Islands in northern Vanuatu.

Her family has relocated several times because of worsening cyclones and flooding, as rising seas slowly wash away ancestral homelands and burial sites.

"The foundations of our unique heritage were taken," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Relocation just meant safety and continuing to exist. But now the question is: Safe and existing for how much longer?"

Worldwide, sea levels have risen 26 centimeters (10 inches) since the late 19th century, driven up by melting ice and a natural expansion of water in the oceans as they warm, U.N. data show. Seas could rise by up to a meter by 2100.

'It's only going to get worse'

"With climate-induced displacement, we know that there are already people, communities and countries at risk," said Danny Sriskandarajah, head of the rights group CIVICUS, co-hosting the Fiji conference. "It's only going to get worse [and] we need to come up with ways to manage those flows."

PIANGO and CIVICUS are among campaign groups drafting a declaration that calls on the United Nations to recognize climate change as a key driver of migration.

The 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes that people fleeing persecution, war and conflict have the right to protection, but not those forced out by climate change.

Trump also plans to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century with a radical shift to cleaner energies to curb heat waves, downpours, floods and rising sea levels.

The deal aims to hold the global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and try to limit the rise even further, to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The U.S. is the only country that is not part of the climate pact after Syria and Nicaragua joined this year.

"I'm a bit nervous because other countries may also pull out with the U.S., and that's going to be a bigger issue for us, especially at a time when we're trying to battle climate change," said Vanuatu local Jimmy. "Whatever each country does will impact the lives of other people around the whole globe."
Croatia on Thursday raised its minimum wage by 5 percent and increased the number of licenses for foreign workers in 2018 in a bid to boost the competitiveness of one of the weakest economies in the European Union.

The government also slashed contributions employers have to pay on net minimum wages by 50 percent to reduce salary costs.

"These measures are going to favor both employers and workers," Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a cabinet session.

The net minimum wage will from next year stand at 2,752 kuna ($429.63), while its gross value will be 3,439 kuna. This represents 43 percent of an average gross wage that in September amounted to 7,989 kuna.

"Our goal is to increase over time the minimum wage to 50 percent of an average gross wage," Labor Minister Marko Pavic said at the cabinet session. Some 75,000 people in Croatia receive minimum wages.

The government also increased to 31,000 from this year's 9,000 the number of licenses for foreign workers, most notably needed in construction, tourism, shipbuilding and metal processing.

Over the last few years, those industries have suffered from shortage of workers on the domestic market. Croatia's unemployment rate is 11.6 percent, or some 180,000 people. Its population is 4.3 million.

Most foreign workers come from European countries outside the European Union.

"These measures cannot solve the structural problems which hamper stronger economic growth, like Croatia lagging behind in modernizing its industrial sectors," said economic analyst Damir Novotny.

Croatia's economy is expected to grow a bit over 3 percent this year. Analysts say its longer-term growth prospects are at between 1-2 percent unless the country significantly improves the investment climate and public sector efficiency.
1 Members of the Pizzaioli Acrobats Coldiretti perform "twirling" pizza to celebrate the Unesco decision to make the art of Neapolitan "Pizzaiuolo" an "intangible heritage" in Naples.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday there is a need to update a 1923 treaty that among other things established Turkey's boarders with its neighbors.

He spoke during a televised meeting with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos at the start of a two-day visit.

Pavlopoulos rejected Erdogan's suggestion, saying the Treaty of Lausanne was in need "neither of revision nor of updating."

Erdogan raised the issue of ethnic Turks living in Greece, pointing to minority Muslims in Thrace province and questioning whether they have the freedom to exercise their religion.

The Turkish leader is due to visit Thrace on Friday.

He is the first Turkish president to make an official visit to Greece in decades.
The white former policeman caught on video shooting an unarmed black man in the back after a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison, with a federal judge ruling that the killing amounted to murder.

The decision came a year after Michael Slager's state murder trial for the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott ended with a deadlocked jury. Slager, 36, is one of the few police officers in recent years in the United States to receive prison time for an on-duty shooting.

"Everyone recognizes that this was a tragedy," U.S. District Judge David Norton told a Charleston courtroom packed with members of both men's families.

"What's just for the Scott family is not necessarily just for the Slager family, and what's just for the Slager family is not necessarily just for the Scott family," he said. "It's a zero-sum game."

Slager was a patrolman in North Charleston when he pulled over Scott, a father of four, for a broken brake light on April 4, 2015. He said he opened fire because he felt threatened after the motorist tried to take his stun gun during a struggle.

Yet he pleaded guilty in May to violating Scott's civil rights by using excessive force, a charge that carried a possible lifetime prison sentence. Slager shot at Scott eight times, hitting him five times.

State prosecutors dropped the murder charge in exchange for the federal plea.

On Thursday, Slager expressed remorse.

"I wish this never would have happened," said Slager, jailed since his plea and dressed in an inmate's gray and white jumpsuit. "I wish I could go back and change events, but I can't and I am very sorry for that."

A bystander's cellphone video of the shooting drew national attention to the case, renewing concerns about police treatment of minorities.

The footage was a centerpiece of the four-day sentence hearing, with both prosecutors and defense lawyers arguing it bolstered their cases.

Norton sided with the government, finding that Slager had committed second-degree murder and obstructed justice by lying to investigators about Scott trying to grab his Taser.

The judge rejected the defense argument that Slager was provoked or acted in the heat of passion.

Scott's relatives and their lawyers said the punishment marked a historic moment for justice. They called on law enforcement to rethink the use of deadly force.

Before court ended, several family members told Slager they had forgiven him. But their pain has not diminished.

"We will never be the same again," said Anthony Scott, the motorist's older brother. "How could someone shoot someone in the back like that as they were running away?"
At the summit of one of Iceland's most dangerous volcanoes, a 72-foot (22-meter) depression in the snow is the only visible sign of an alarming development.



The Oraefajokull volcano, dormant since its last eruption in 1727-1728, has seen a recent increase in seismic activity and geothermal water leakage that has worried scientists. With the snow hole on Iceland's highest peak deepening 18 inches (45 centimeters) each day, authorities have raised the volcano's alert safety code to yellow.



Experts at Iceland's Meteorological Office have detected 160 earthquakes in the region in the past week alone as they step up their monitoring of the volcano. The earthquakes are mostly small but their sheer number is exceptionally high.



"Oraefajokull is one of the most dangerous volcanos in Iceland. It's a volcano for which we need to be very careful,'' said Sara Barsotti, Coordinator for Volcanic Hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.



What worries scientists the most is the devastating potential impact of an eruption at Oraefajokull.



Located in southeast Iceland about 320 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital, Reykjavik, the volcano lies under the Vatnajokull glacier, the largest glacier in Europe. Its 1362 eruption was the most explosive since the island was populated, even more explosive that the eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that destroyed the city of Pompei.



Adding to the danger is the lack of historical data that could help scientists predict the volcano's behavior.



"It's not one of the best-known volcanos,'' Barsotti said. "One of the most dangerous things is to have volcanos for which we know that there is potential for big eruptions but with not that much historical data.''



Iceland is home to 32 active volcanic sites, and its history is punctuated with eruptions, some of them catastrophic. The 1783 eruption of Laki spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands of people and sparking famine when crops failed. Some historians cite it as a contributing factor to the French Revolution.



The Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in April 2010, prompting aviation authorities to close much of Europe's airspace for five days out of fear that its volcanic ash could damage jet engines. Millions of travelers were stranded by the move.

To remedy the lack of data for Oraefajokull, scientists are rushing to install new equipment on and around the volcano. Those include ultra-sensitive GPS sensors that can detect even the slightest tremors, webcams for real-time imagery of the volcano and sensors in the rivers that drain the volcano's glaciers to measure the chemical composition of the water.



Associated Press journalists last week visited scientists working near the mouth of the Kvia River, where the stench of sulfur was strong and the water was murky, clear signs that geothermal water was draining from the caldera.



"The most plausible explanation is that new magma is on the move deep below the surface,'' said Magnus Gudmundsson, professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Reykjavik.



But what happens next is anyone's guess. In the most benign scenario, the phenomenon could simply cease. More concerning would be the development of a subglacial lake that could lead to massive flooding. At the far end of the spectrum of consequences would be a full eruption.



With such high-risk developments at stake, authorities are taking precautions. Police inspector Adolf Arnason now is patrolling the road around the volcano, which will be used for any evacuation, and residents have received evacuation briefings.



"Some farmers have only 20 minutes (to leave),'' he said, pulling up to a small farm on the flank of the mountain.

If an evacuation is ordered, everyone in the area will receive a text message and the radio will broadcast updates. Police are confident that Oraefi's 200 residents will know how to react, but their biggest concern is contacting tourists.



Iceland has seen a huge boom in tourism since the 2010 eruption  a record 2.4 million people are expected to visit this year and about 2,000 tourists travel through Oraefi every day. While some stay in hotels that could alert their guests, others spend the night in camper vans spread across the remote area.



"The locals know what to do. They know every plan and how to react. But the tourists, they don't,'' said Police Chief superintendent Sveinn Runarsson. "That's our worst nightmare.''
A Saudi Arabian being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has admitted to helping with flights and finances for seven of the 19 men who hijacked planes in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., one of his interrogators testified at his trial.

Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, now facing a war crimes tribunal, spoke to interrogators over four days in January 2004 as they showed him evidence of his involvement in the terrorist attack.

"He indicated he was very happy to have been able to support the brothers who carried out the attack," retired FBI Agent Abigail Perkins testified Wednesday, providing the most detailed account so far of evidence prosecutors intend to use in a case that has unfolded incrementally over nearly six years.

The agent described the conversation as cordial, professional and nonthreatening. But defense attorneys say the confessions were not voluntary, but rather the result of brutal treatment at the hands of the CIA between his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 and when he was taken to Guantanamo in September 2006.

Perkins testified that al-Hawsawi told her he considered the attack a legitimate retaliation for U.S. troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia. "He indicated that he was very happy to have been able to support the brothers who carried out the attack," she recalled.

In all, 2,976 people were killed on 9/11 in the attacks using planes that crashed in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field. Five men are charged at Guantanamo as co-conspirators in the attack, and they could be executed if they are convicted.
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday offered a sharp defense of the bureau against strident criticism leveled by President Donald Trump, saying FBI employees are respected and appreciated by law enforcement agencies around the country and the world.

Wrays comments, made during testimony before a congressional panel, came in response to a tweet by Trump on Sunday that former FBI Director James Comey had left the bureaus reputation in tatters.

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 tweeted.

WATCH: FBI Chief Defends Agency Following Sharp Criticism by Trump

Impassioned defense

While not directly refuting the tweet, Wray responded with an impassioned defense of the bureau whose employees are working their tails off to keep Americans safe from terrorism and other threats.

The FBI that I see is tens of thousands of brave men and women who are working as hard as they can to keep people that they will never know safe from harm, Wray told members of the House Judiciary Committee.

The FBI that I see is respected and appreciated by our partners in federal, state and local law enforcement, in the intelligence community, by our foreign counterparts, both law enforcement and national security, and something like 200 countries around the globe, he said.

Wrays testimony before the judiciary committee marked his first congressional appearance since he was sworn in as FBI director in August. Trump named Wray to the position after firing Comey in May over the bureaus investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reacting to Wrays comments, sought to play down Trumps latest assault on the FBI, saying the presidents issues are with the political leaders in the FBI under former director Comey, particularly those that played politics with the Hillary Clinton email probe.

Mueller removes agent from team

Trumps tweet came after the disclosure over the weekend that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had removed a senior FBI investigator from his team because of a series of anti-Trump text messages.

Wray confirmed that the FBI in coordination with Muellers office had withdrawn Peter Strzok from the Special Counsels team of investigators and reassigned him to the bureaus human resources department. Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant FBI director for counterintelligence, has led key bureau investigations.

As part of the FBIs 2016 investigation into Clintons use of a private email server, he interviewed Clinton and reportedly changed the language in a statement exonerating Clinton. After joining Muellers team this year, he oversaw interviews with Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI.

The FBIs handling of the Clinton email server investigation is being examined by the Justice Departments Inspector General.

Agents rebuke Trump

Trump and his Republican allies seized on the news as yet another piece of evidence that Mueller is leading a politically biased probe by a team of anti-Trump prosecutors. Mueller is a registered Republican but several key members of his team have made donations to the campaigns of Democratic candidates.

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense! Trump tweeted on Sunday.

Trumps criticism of the FBI drew sharp rebuke from current and former FBI agents.

FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false, Thomas OConnor, president of the FBI Agents Association, said in a statement on Sunday.

Former Special Agent David Gomez said many agents saw Trumps tweet as an assault on their integrity.

The fact that one agent may have engaged in behavior that was detrimental to the reputation of the FBI does not indict the entire population of agents, Gomez said.

Republicans support Trump

The brewing controversy over Strzok overshadowed much of Wrays testimony.

Republican members of the panel said they agreed with Trumps assessment of the FBI, saying the bureaus handling of the Clinton email investigation and a series of missteps by Comey had inflicted severe damage to its reputation.

While some will take umbrage with President Trumps assertion, it does appear to me that, at the very least, the FBIs reputation as an impartial, non-political agency has been called into question recently, said Bob Goodlatte, the committees Republican chairman.

But Democrats took Wray to task for not standing up to Trump.

In this moment, Director Wray, your responsibility is not only to defend the bureau, but to push back against the president when he is clearly wrong, both on the facts and as a matter of principle, said Jerold Nadler, the committees ranking Democratic member.
Opioid addiction has become a crisis in America. Opioid overdoses killed about 64,000 people in the U.S. last year, making it the leading cause of death for Americans younger than 50. As more and more Americans succumb to addiction, politicians are seeking ways to address this growing epidemic. One Virginia lawmaker is making it the central issue of his agenda because for him, it's personal. VOA's Julie Taboh has more.
Sen. Dick Durbin says he is supporting sanctions against the Myanmar military for what the U.S. describes as ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population. In an interview with VOA Contributor Greta Van Susteren, Durbin said he saw a prison camp in Myanmar where some 4,000 Rohingya men, women and children are confined behind barbed wire, with armed guards preventing them to leave.
The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would make it easier for gun owners to legally carry concealed weapons across state lines, the first significant action on guns in Congress since mass shootings in Nevada and Texas killed more than 80 people.

The 231-198 vote split largely along party lines. Six Democrats voted yes, while 14 Republicans voted no.

The measure would allow gun owners with a state-issued concealed-carry permit to carry a handgun in any state that allows concealed weapons. It now goes to the Senate.

Republicans said the reciprocity measure, a top priority of the National Rifle Association, would allow gun owners to travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting state laws or civil suits.

Opponents, mostly Democrats, said the bill could endanger public safety by overriding state laws that place strict limits on guns.

Representative Elizabeth Esty, a Connecticut Democrat, called the bill an attempt to undermine states' rights, "hamstring law enforcement and allow dangerous criminals to walk around with hidden guns anywhere and at any time. It's unspeakable that this is Congress' response to the worst gun tragedies in American history."

Esty represents Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 first-graders and six educators were fatally shot in 2012.

No time for 'cowardice'

Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, who was shot in the head in 2011, denounced the House action.

"I'm angry that when this country is begging for courage from our leaders, they are responding with cowardice," she said in a statement.

The NRA applauded the vote. The concealed-carry bill "is the culmination of a 30-year movement recognizing the right of all law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their loved ones, including when they cross state lines," said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the group's political and lobbying arm.

The House vote came as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said his agency expects to regulate bump-stock devices and could end up banning them. Thomas Brandon told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the ATF and Justice Department would not have initiated the review "if [banning them] wasn't a possibility at the end."

The Justice Department announced this week it is reviewing whether weapons using bump stocks should be considered illegal machine guns under federal law. The review comes after a Las Vegas gunman used the device during an October rampage that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more.

Bump stocks allow semiautomatic rifles to fire nearly as fast as an automatic rifle.

A woman who survived the Las Vegas shooting said she remained beside one of the victims as he died, even though she had never met him.

Heather Gooze, a bartender at the country music festival where the shooting occurred, said she didn't want Jordan McIldoon, 23, to be a "John Doe," unnamed and alone.

"His death mattered, and I wanted him to be remembered," Gooze told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

State requirements differ

Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, said during House debate that his state forces gun owners to meet an array of conditions before obtaining a concealed-carry permit  in contrast to some states where "if you're 21 and have a pulse" you can get a gun permit.

Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said those who carry concealed handguns not only are better prepared to defend themselves but also can help others. He cited a 2015 incident in which an Uber driver shot and wounded a gunman who was firing into a crowd of people in Chicago.

"Without this citizen's quick thinking and actions, who knows how many could have fallen victim to this shooter?" Goodlatte asked.

He and other Republicans compared the concealed-carry permit to a driver's license that is valid in any state.

Representative Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat, scoffed at that notion. "Georgia has no business, no right, to tell Colorado what its laws should be," he said.

"If more guns made people safer, we'd be the safest country on Earth," said Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat. "We're far from it."

Democrats also criticized Republicans for including in the concealed-carry legislation a measure that would strengthen the FBI database of prohibited gun buyers. The action followed the failure by the Air Force to report the criminal history of the gunman who slaughtered more than two dozen people at a Texas church last month.

The Air Force has acknowledged that the Texas shooter, Devin Kelley, should have had his name and domestic violence conviction submitted to the National Criminal Information Center database. The Air Force has discovered several dozen other such reporting omissions since the November 5 shooting.

Cynicism seen

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the background-check provision "actually would save lives and should not be tethered" to the concealed-carry reciprocity bill. He called it a cynical maneuver to force Democrats to cast a politically unpopular vote against background checks.

The legislation also would order the Justice Department to study bump stocks, including how often they are used in a crime.

Brandon, the ATF director, told the Senate that the ongoing federal review may find the government doesn't have authority to ban bump stocks. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Judiciary panel's top-ranking Democrat, said the uncertainty demands that Congress quickly approve legislation "to ban these dangerous devices."

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill bolstering the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

While he supports the concealed-carry measure, "I think it's a mistake to try to combine this with the 'Fix NICS' background check," Cornyn told reporters.
Indonesia strongly criticized U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a symbolic and controversial move that is seen as showing partisan bias for Israel since both Israel and the Palestinians claim the holy city as their capital.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi showed up at a democracy conference in Jakarta Thursday morning in a black-and-white keffiyeh scarf, a symbol of solidarity with Palestine, and did not mince words.

We condemn this recognition, she said, in her opening speech to the Bali Democracy Forum. I stand here wearing the Palestinian scarf to show the strong commitment of Indonesia, of the people of Indonesia, to always be with the Palestinian people, for their rights, Indonesia will always stand with Palestine.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo also addressed the press from Bogor Palace on Thursday.

"Indonesia strongly condemns the United States unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and asks the U.S. to reconsider the decision," said Jokowi. This unilateral recognition violates various resolutions from the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council, of which the United States is a permanent member, and can upset global security and stability.

Unusually Strong Language

The swift denunciation, particularly from the typically reticent Jokowi, was a much stronger reaction than Indonesia has displayed to other controversial decisions by the Trump administration, including the so-called Muslim ban against travel from seven Muslim-majority countries in early 2017. Back then, Jokowi suggested that Indonesians remain quiet about the policy because they were not directly affected by it.

Indonesia is the worlds largest Muslim country and has long expressed solidarity with the Palestinian state, which has an unofficial ambassador in Jakarta. Israel does not have an Indonesian embassy or vice versa, and the two countries have no formal diplomatic ties, although they have quietly cooperated on trade and security for years.

In 2005, Indonesias then-foreign minister said that full diplomatic ties with Israel would only be possible after the Palestine issue was resolved.

Neighboring Malaysia, another Muslim-majority nation, also denounced the move.

"I call on all Muslims across the world to let your voices be heard, make it clear that we strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital for all time," said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in Kuala Lumpur.

It's not a surprise that President Trump had elicited condemnation from Indonesia, said Andreas Harsono, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in Jakarta. The heart of the problem is that Israel claims to treat Jerusalem as a unified city, but the reality is effectively one set of rules for Jews and another for Palestinians Israel has been pushing occupied Jerusalems Palestinian residents to leave their homes through a policy of systematic transfer that violates international law.

Anti-Israel sentiment mixed with anti-Semitisim

A darker aspect to Indonesians affinity for Palestine, which is shared across much of the Muslim world, is a deep current of anti-Semitism in Indonesian society.

A lot of people identify with the Palestinian cause but honestly also hate Jews, said Yohanes Sulaiman, a defense expert at General Achmad Yani University. Even if they have never met a Jewish person in real life.

Jews are another bogeyman in Indonesia, he said, like Communists and LGBT people. There is a popular narrative of an apocalyptic battle between the good Muslims of Palestine and the evil Israelis, Sulaiman said. Its a no brainer for Jokowi to come out strong on this issue.

Just last month there was a controversial selfie exhibit with a wax statue of Adolf Hitler in front of an illustration of the Auschwitz concentration camp that was forced to shut down in Yogyakarta. Earlier this year, a Nazi-themed cafe in Bandung finally closed its doors.
The collapse of Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant group's ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday.

The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center.

"Unfortunately, we don't see ISIS' loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks," she told a U.S. Senate committee.

"ISIS' capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs," Shiao said, using the government's acronym for homegrown violent extremists.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014.

ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say "the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight."

Yet "the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations," said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict.

As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire "stray dog" attacks by vulnerable people.

Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists.

"This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace," said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS' ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process.

The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In a possible reference to Trump's use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, "Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS?"

The answer was no.
The trial of Kurdish opposition party leader Selahattin Demirtas has started in Ankara. Demirtas is charged with terrorism and has been held for more than a year in pretrial detention. The case is drawing growing international criticism.

Supporters of the jailed Kurdish leader gathered outside Ankaras Sincan prison, where the Kurdish leaders trial began Thursday.

In a 500 page indictment, Demirtas is accused of leading a terrorist organization, spreading terrorist propaganda, and inciting hate and crime.

Controversy surrounds the case over the decision to hold the trial in a prison and to allocate a court room that allows only 20 people to watch.

Hasip Kaplan a former parliamentary deputy of Demirtass HDP party, speaking outside the prison, voiced anger over the handling of the hearing.

"I have one thing to say to those who had unlawfully lifted the immunity of our political leader and who now cannot even bring him to a court near the parliament, but instead try him, within barbed fences after 399 days of detention," Kaplan said.

Tried in absentia



The Kurdish leader is being tried in absentia after the court denied his right to attend, insisting he use a video link from the prison in which he is being held  an option he refused.

The trial has become a focal point of criticism over the governments crackdown after last years failed coup and the introduction of emergency rule. Demirtas is widely seen as one of the most charismatic and effective political opponents to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the past year, more than 11,000 HDP officials have been detained, including dozens of elected mayors and nine parliamentary deputies. Party co-leader Figen Yuksekdag appeared in court Wednesday on similar terrorism charges.

Rights groups criticize move



Human rights groups nationally and internationally claim there is little evidence to justify the case against Demirtas.

Senior researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S. based Human Rights Watch says the case is alarming .

"In general, we do not see any evidence of criminal activity. It is all about his speeches, and for this he faces multi charges," she said. "The sentence altogether when you stack up all the charges comes to around 142 years."

Ankara also has faced heavy criticism over the Kurdish leader being held for more than a year in pre-trial detention.

But the Turkish government strongly defends the prosecution and judiciary, claiming the HDP, Turkey's second largest opposition party, is a terrorist organization linked to Kurdish insurgent group the PKK.

Demirtas denies all charges against him. The trial has adjourned until February and the judges ruled Demirtas will remain in prison.
Palestinians shuttered schools and shops and called for protests in West Bank towns Thursday, in a show of anger at President Donald Trumps recognition of bitterly contested Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Trumps dramatic break Wednesday with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Saudis condemn decision

Saudi Arabias royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administrations decision in a rare public rebuke by the U.S. ally.

Saudi Arabia, a regional powerhouse that could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said Thursday the kingdom had warned against this step and continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administrations decision, describing it unjustified and irresponsible.

Trumps move puts the Sunni nation in a bind. The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Trumps efforts to restart Mideast peace talks.

U.S. Embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Trumps move.

Siding with Israel?

In recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital, Trump was seen as siding with Israels hard-line government, which says it will not give up any part of the city.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that the United States disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations on setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The talks, stalled in recent years, have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. In parallel, Israel has steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate a deal.

Trumps claim Wednesday that he still wants to pursue what he has called the ultimate Mideast deal was met by mounting skepticism.

With its decision, the U.S. has isolated itself and Israel, and has pushed the area into a dangerous situation and stopped the peace process, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Abbas aid. Without a doubt, this decision will not help at all in solving the problems in the area, but rather strengthen the extremists.

Abbas to Jordan

Abbas has not said what steps he would take, if any. Later Thursday, he is to meet with his closest Arab ally, Jordans King Abdullah II, to coordinate positions.

Jordan plays a central role in the mounting controversy and, alongside other U.S. allies in the region, has slammed Trumps decision on Jerusalem.

The king is seen as one of Washingtons most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role in Jerusalem, as religious guardian of a key Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem. Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The consultations between the monarch and Abbas will kick off a series of meetings in the Arab and Muslim world on how to respond to Trump.

Disbelief in Turkey

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Trump of throwing the Middle East into a ring of fire and said his motives were difficult to fathom.

Its not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it, Erdogan said, referring to Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankaras airport.

Political leaders exist not to stir things up, but to make peace, Erdogan said. If Trump says I am strong therefore I am right, he is mistaken.

WATCH: Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Capital of Israel

Defying dire, worldwide warnings, Trump insisted that after repeated peace failures it was past time for a new approach, starting with what he said was his decision merely based on reality to recognize Jerusalem as the seat of Israels government. He also said the U.S. would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, though he set no timetable.

We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past, Trump said, brushing aside the appeals for caution from around the world.
Millions of voters in Nepal are heading to the polls in a historic election that completes the troubled country's transition to full democracy.

Thursday's vote is the second and final phase of elections that will formally establish seven provincial assemblies, as well as elect members to the 275-member parliament. About 12 million voters in southern Nepal will cast their ballots in Thursday's second round, with the North having voted on Nov. 26. The newly elected assemblies will name their provinces and draft provincial laws.

Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed at voting centers to prevent a repeat of violence ahead of the first round, which left one person dead and dozens wounded.

Political analysts say the alliance between the main group of Maoist former rebels and the opposition Communist UML party is widely expected to emerge as the winner.

Nepal has been on a long road to democracy since protesters forced the king to give up the monarchy in 2006, which also marked the end of a decade-long civil war. The centuries-old monarchy was formally abolished two years later.

The impoverished Himalayan nation's constitution, which established a federal system of government, was not adopted until 2015, held up by bickering among political parties and deadly ethnic clashes. Nepal is also struggling to recover from a massive earthquake that same year that killed 9,000 people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he has no doubt other countries will follow the United States in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that once the U.S. Embassy moves to the city others will relocate there as well.

Netanyahu said his government is in contact with other countries, but did not name them as he delivered a speech at Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Israel's military announced the deployment of extra troops in the occupied West Bank as part of what it called its "readiness to possible developments."

WATCH: Trump on why he made the decision

The decision by U.S. Donald Trump to reverse decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem and set in motion the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv drew sharp criticism from Palestinian leaders.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trumps plan is tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh called for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel beginning Friday.

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," Haniyeh said in a Thursday speech in Gaza.

Watch: Nethanyahu thanks Trump's decision

Trump announced the decision in a highly anticipated speech Wednesday from the White House Diplomatic Room.

"Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality," Trump said.

"It is also the right thing to do. Its something that has to be done. That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," he said in the internationally televised 11-minute speech.

However, the president said, the move "is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement."

Trump added, "We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved."

The president called on all sides to "maintain the status quo at Jerusalems holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul."

World react



Word of the decision has roiled the Arab world, raising the prospect of violence.



Even some of Washingtons allies in the region and elsewhere voiced grave concerns about the shift in U.S. policy.

Al-Jazeera television quoted Qatars foreign minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, as saying the embassy move would be a dangerous escalation and death sentence for all who seek peace.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jordans King Abdullah, meeting in Ankara Wednesday, called for an emergency meeting of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Moving the U.S. embassy would dynamite the ground for peace, igniting new tensions and clashes, Erdogan said. He has threatened to break ties with Israel if Trump recognizes Jerusalem as its capital.



King Abdullah, underlining Jordans role as guardian of Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, said ignoring the Palestinians and Christian rights in Jerusalem would only fuel further extremism."



It is imperative now to work fast to reach a final status solution and a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and this must allow the Palestinians to establish their independent state side-by-side with Israel and its capital in East Jerusalem, Abdullah said.



Pope Francis issued a statement calling for the status quo for Jerusalem and urging "wisdom and prudence" to avoid bloodshed.

WATCH: In Controversial Announcement, Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Capital of Israel

US political impact

The announcement follows Trump's campaign pledges to move the embassy to Jerusalem, a proposal backed by some of his Jewish and evangelical Christian supporters.



Aaron David Miller, who has served as a Middle East adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents, expressed puzzlement at the timing of the decision. Speaking to VOA, Miller said it is hard to see the political benefits for Trump or the United States. I can identify not a single U.S. national interest that is served, and serious downsides that are incurred by this move to relocate the embassy.



Miller, now a vice-president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said Trumps decision is a textbook example of how to provoke fury in the Arab and Muslim world.

Its fair to say that if you wanted to create an issue in a laboratory that was designed to motivate violence, to play to passions, hatred and anger, Jerusalem would be the issue, Miller told VOA.



Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Rand Corps Center for Middle East Public Policy told VOA it should come as no surprise that Trumps decision would be broadly condemned. Once again the United States is isolated globally with no clear strategic gain, she said. And it risks inflaming regional tension and increasing anti-American sentiment. The result is a boon for extremist forces and countries like Iran unfortunately.

Embassy move logistics, security



Trump gave few details of the embassy move, saying only that architects were being directed to make the facility a magnificent tribute to peace. But officials have said it would likely take years to build.



Under a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, the embassy must be relocated to Jerusalem unless the president signs a waiver every six months stating that moving the embassy would threaten U.S. national security. Every president since Clinton has signed the waiver, including Trump, who signed another extension Wednesday.

Given the potential for a violent backlash against Israel and American interests in the region, the U.S. Consulate General is restricting American government workers and their families from personal travel in Jerusalem's Old City and West Bank, including Bethlehem and Jericho, amid widespread calls for demonstrations.

In a statement following Trump's announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the safety of Americans is the State Departments highest priority.

WATCH: Trump Administration Maintains Commitment to Middle East Peace Amid Criticism of Jerusalem Decision

"And in concert with other federal agencies, weve implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions," he said.

Jerusalem is home to the Mosque of Al Aqsa, the third holiest place in Islam. It is also the site of several important Christian sacred places. For Jews, it is the Temple Mount, the holiest site of all.
Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.



Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrix's "Both Sides of the Sky'' on March 9, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.



Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar hero's archive. "Valleys of Neptune'' was released in 2010, followed by "People, Hell and Angels,'' released in 2013.



Eddie Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made during the artist's life, said in an interview that 1969 was "a very experimental year'' for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked on the new album.



"The first thing is you put the tape on and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of your neck and you go, `Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible,'' said Kramer. "It's an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we are and I'm listening to these tapes going, 'Oh my God, that's an amazing performance.'''



Many of the album's tracks were recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrix's trio with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: "$20 Fine'' and "Woodstock.''



"It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except it's on acid, you know,'' Kramer, laughing, said of "$20 Fine.''



"Jimi is just rocking it,'' he added. "It's an amazing thing.''



Johnny Winter appears on "Things I Used to Do''; original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on "Hear My Train A Comin'''; and Lonnie Youngblood is on "Georgia Blues.''



Kramer produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the legend's sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though "Both Sides of the Sky'' is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.



He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.



"It was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks off the thought process  it goes through his brain through his heart and through his hands and onto the guitar, and it's a seamless process,'' Kramer said. "It's like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same time, and it's scary. There's never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least in my mind.''
The killing Monday of Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh by Iran-backed rebel Houthis, his uneasy allies-turned-foes, has plunged the war-torn country into further uncertainty and violence, prompting some of the fiercest fighting since the start of a multiparty conflict three years ago.

Following Saleh's death at the hands of the Houthis, either in a gunbattle or execution, the rebels have set about consolidating their grip on Sanaa.

They have seized more than 40 media workers, including staff of Yemen Today, a television broadcaster affiliated with Saleh, who switched sides during the war to align with the Houthis.

Deterioration seen

Meanwhile, Saudi-led warplanes intensified airstrikes Wednesday on Yemen.

"The situation for the innocent people there, the humanitarian side, is most likely to [get] worse in the short term," U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said Tuesday.

Most analysts agree there's little chance in the near future of some kind of negotiated settlement being worked out and the slaughter halted.

For some, there had been a glimmer of hope when, two days before his death, Saleh reached out to Saudi Arabia, which is leading a military coalition against the Houthis, to say he'd engage in peace talks if the Saudis lifted a blockade on Yemen's ports and airports and allowed more humanitarian aid to enter the country, which is suffering from mass starvation.

Saleh's public overture had been preceded by weeks of behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering as a rift developed between Saleh and the Houthis, whom the former president had helped in their rise to power, part of his effort to engineer a deal that would see him restored to the office he was ousted from in 2011.

His fighters started clashing with the Houthis in southern districts of the Yemeni capital, and the Saudis began to drop their designation of Saleh as a "deposed dictator" and began speaking of him as "the former president."

Analysts said this doomed his unlikely alliance with the Houthis, which was founded on mutual need.

The Houthis, strong militarily but weak in governance skills, needed the expertise of Saleh and his General People's Congress party to reach deals with tribal leaders and administer the territory they control in the north of the country, while Saleh and his followers couldn't match the Houthis' firepower.

Gerald Feierstein, an analyst at the Middle East Institute, said Saleh's absence from the scene "deprives the Houthis of an important symbolic presence that gave them some credibility as a broad-based movement" in their fight against the internationally recognized government of Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi, who is backed by the Saudis.

Support seen sliding

Without Saleh, "the Houthis will be perceived more nakedly as a pro-Iranian, sectarian Shiite movement with millenarian aspirations" and they are likely to suffer a further decline in their popular support, already waning as a result of the never-ending conflict and their violence against civilians, Feierstein said.

"The big question is whether this new reality will force them back to the negotiating table or lead to their further intransigence," he said.

There are no signs the Saudis and Hadi, who lives in self-exile in Riyadh, are in any mood for negotiations.

Following Saleh's death, Hadi delivered a belligerent speech broadcast by Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya TV, urging Yemenis to rise up against the Houthis. "Let's put our hands together to end the control of these criminal gangs and build a new united Yemen," he said.

Saleh's son, Ahmed Abdullah, now in Riyadh, has vowed to avenge his father's killing.

"I will lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen," he said. "The blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran."

Vengeance and airstrikes, though, are unlikely to prove effective in shifting the balance of power and ending the military stalemate, analysts said.

"You need an international intervention to stop this war," Mamoun Abu Nowar, a military analyst and retired Jordanian Air Force general, said.

"The former president was a divisive figure, but he was also the person most likely to be able to broker some kind of settlement," Peter Salisbury, an analyst with Britain's Chatham House, said. "Without his deal-making skills, the civil war he helped to spark and the devastating humanitarian crisis it caused are only likely to get worse."

Said Salisbury, "With Saleh dead and his allied forces apparently crumbling in the face of a Houthi onslaught, the future of Yemen's conflict looks grim."
Within seconds of pulling out of the station parking lot, Major Mike Will gets his first call to respond to a crisis. Wills switches on his lights and siren and picks up the pace.

A thirty-year veteran of the Louisville's emergency medical services, he has witnessed the explosion in opioid overdoses that have ravaged the city over the past two-years.

"The information we have right now is a 52-year old adult male who is unconscious, CPR in progress. And it look like an overdose," he tells us.

The epidemic is taking a toll on Louisville's first responders who field an average of over 20 overdose calls a day.

"When I first started, we could anticipate making narcotic or opioid overdose calls maybe five times a year," he says. "And in the past year or two we have several of our crews that are making five in a 12 or 16 hour shift."

As overdoses have steadily risen in cities and small towns across the country, officials have been searching for answers. Louisville reached a crisis point last August, with 151 overdoses over a span of four days.

Doctor on the front lines

Dr. Robert Couch, an emergency room physician and medical director at Louisville's Norton Audubon Hospital, was on call at that time. He saw nine overdoses in five hours.

"We have been seeing heroin overdoses for a long time. But what was unusual about this overdose experience was it was taking larger and larger doses of the antidote Naloxone to reverse the effects of it," he says. "So we knew that it wasn't just heroin."

Couch had learned of a similar spike in overdose cases in Ohio and West Virginia several weeks earlier. According to toxicology reports, those cases were caused by heroin mixed with Carfentanil, an opioid derivative often known as "the elephant tranquilizer," that is 5,000 times more powerful than heroin.

"It is toxic in microgram quantities," says Couch. "And so I suspected what other communities had seen was moving into Louisville at that time."

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Fentanyl and Carfentanil are synthetic opioids predominantly manufactured in underground laboratories in China. Often sold as research chemicals, they can be bought on the dark web.

Cheaper to produce than heroin, they are often delivered to the U.S. through the mail. Dealers then mix the synthetics with their heroin to boost profits. The results are often deadly.

"Unfortunately, users don't know what they are getting," says Couch. "Heroin is toxic enough as it is. These other derivatives can cause death almost immediately through respiratory depression."

Fentanyl and its derivatives have forced emergency rooms across the country to change their protocols for overdose patients.

"A couple of years ago we would start with a very small dose, say 0.4 milligrams of Naloxone and that would be effective," Couch tells us. "That dose has increased to about 2 milligrams and now we are using 4 milligrams of Naloxone just to restore breathing initially."

Naloxone can suppress opioids in the body for about 30 minutes, which is long enough to treat a typical heroin overdose. The Fentanyl derivatives are so potent emergency rooms are having to re-dose patients as the Naloxone wears off.

"People can re-sedate and be right back in the throes of their overdose even though they have been administered the reversal agent," Couch says.

Fear on the streets

As overdoses have risen, so has fear on the street among drug users.

"To find a bag of heroin is pretty rare  that is just heroin," says Mathew LaRocco, who runs the Louisville Metro Needle Exchange out of the first floor of a city government building. The exchange provides clean needles and other supplies to 400 drug users a week.

Studies have shown that drug users who frequent needle exchanges are 5 times more likely to seek treatment and less likely to contract HIV, hepatitis, and other health problems associated with intravenous drug use.

LaRocco works closely with the drug-using community in metro Louisville and says people are legitimately scared.

"There is a lot more respect for the product that is on the street," he says. "People are realizing just how dangerous this is."

LaRocco says several years ago when Fentanyl first came on the scene there was a small subset of users  usually young male users  who had the attitude that it would never happen to them.

"You don't see that anymore," he says. "You are seeing a volatility to the drug where people who used to inject five times a day are now injecting 15 times a day. They are still using the same amount of drug throughout the day, they are just breaking it up into smaller doses because they don't want to die."

He says Fentanyl and its derivatives are also showing up in other street drugs like methamphetamine.

"I have a client that only shoots methamphetamine," says LaRocco. "He doesn't shoot anything else. He was drug-screened and there was Fentanyl in his screen."

LaRocco says even with the fear on the streets it is still difficult for an addict to overcome their irrational cravings.

"That still doesn't change the fact that when someone overdoses on a bag of dope, everybody want to figure out where they got that bag of dope from. Because they know it is going to get them high," he told us.

Lucky man

Major Mike Will arrives on the scene and pulls up behind a fire truck parked in a middle-class, suburban neighborhood lined with sidewalks. Two police officers are standing in the yard of a modest house with a brick front porch. Inside, paramedics are administering Naloxone, the opioid antidote, and the patient begins to regain consciousness.

"The transport unit was right on top of the run," says Will. "So that gives this individual a much better chance because the first responders were so close. Apparently we had a two minute response time."

A few minutes later, a white man with graying hair walks out under his own power and lays on a gurney waiting for him in the front yard  cheating certain death. Major Wills says he's one of the lucky ones.

"You know these people we are bringing back with Naloxone, it's giving them a second chance," he says. "And it is frustrating to see these folks doing it over and over again. But I mean, you know, addiction is a sickness. And these people are addicted."
Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops and street protests erupted Thursday in the West Bank and Gaza on the day after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.



In the West Bank, crowds of demonstrators threw stones at the Israeli forces and set tires afire in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, where a thick plume of black smoke hovered over the city. Dozens sustained minor injuries in the skirmishes.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, troops fired water cannons and tear gas at protesters, while in Gaza, demonstrators burned posters of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and set U.S. and Israeli flags on fire.

Palestinians closed shops and schools in a general strike, while Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas militant group that runs Gaza, called for a third Palestinian armed uprising against the Israelis. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, said all Mideast peace negotiations should be halted until Trump reverses his Jerusalem decision.

Heightened security



Fearing an escalation, Israel has been beefing up security forces in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and along the Gaza border.

Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital also sparked anger across the Arab and Muslim world and consternation from U.S. allies.

WATCH: Trump on Jerusalem decision



Jerusalem is home to the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, the third holiest place in Islam, and Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. Many countries throughout the world have long thought that the city's ultimate status would only be decided through Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, but Palestinian officials said Trump's decision has disqualified the U.S. as an honest broker in the peace process.

For Israel, however, the Al-Aqsa compound is known as the Temple Mount, the site of the two biblical Temples and the holiest place in Judaism. Netanyahu said, "The presidents decision is an important step towards peace, for there is no peace that doesnt include Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel.

Islamist rallies



Hundreds of Islamists rallied in major Pakistani cities, condemning Trump's decision. The al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab urged "all Muslims to raise arms and defend the blessed Al-Aqsa from the Zionist occupiers supported by America, because what was taken by force can only be restored by force."



Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a U.S. ally, said Trump should "retreat from that decision in order to stop a dangerous escalation that leads to extremism and creates an atmosphere which helps terrorism."

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Trump's decision "has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the one we are already living in."

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both said the status of Jerusalem should be part of Israeli-Palestinian talks and rebuffed Trump.

"I don't share in this decision, and I disapprove," Macron said.



Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said, "God is weeping over President Donald Trump's inflammatory and discriminatory recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

But U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended the decision on a visit to Vienna.

"As the president said in his remarks, recognition of Jerusalem is a recognition of reality," Tillerson said. "All of Israel's government offices are largely in Jerusalem already so the U.S. is just recognizing the reality of that. I think it's important though in the context of those remarks the president also said the U.S. would support a two-state solution if that is the desire of the two parties and he also said this does not in any way finalize the status of Jerusalem."

"That's still left to the parties to discuss," the top U.S. diplomat added. "I think the president was very clear in that regard. We're very committed to a peace process still. It's what I know the whole world wants, and we still believe there is an opportunity for peace."
The dramatic U.S. policy shift on contested Jerusalem is seen by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership as a dangerous betrayal and game changer that is bound to propel them into a risky confrontation with the U.S. and Israel on the global stage.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas hasn't decided yet whether to formally abandon U.S.-led negotiations with Israel, a troubled process that after two decades has failed to bring the Palestinians closer to statehood. However, those close to Abbas say the long era of stop-and-go negotiations and Washington's monopoly as mediator is now over.

Here is a look at what could come next.

Why Jerusalem matters

Trump's recognition Wednesday of Jerusalem as Israel's capital contradicts longstanding international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the holy city will be determined in negotiations. With Trump's sharp pivot, the U.S. is seen as siding with Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem, including the Israeli-annexed eastern sector the Palestinians seek as a future capital.

The dispute over Jerusalem forms the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but transcends a mere real estate argument. The city, home to Judaism's holiest site, is also sacred to billions of Muslims and Christians worldwide, and perceived slights to their claims have triggered major protests or violence in the past.

Abbas' response so far

Abbas has been trying to rally international support, reaching out to leaders from Pope Francis to the EU foreign policy chief and Arab leaders. He warned Trump in a phone call that the U.S. shift will rock the region and threaten Washington's plans for a Mideast peace deal.

In a speech after Trump's announcement, Abbas said the U.S. has effectively removed itself from any role as a Mideast broker, but he did not say what immediate steps, if any, the Palestinians plan to take.

Abbas is to hold internal consultations with officials from the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah party. On Thursday, he met with his closest Arab ally, King Abdullah II of Jordan.

A moment of truth

The crisis over Jerusalem may push Abbas, the most steadfast Palestinian champion of seeking statehood through negotiations, to a point he avoided for so long  acknowledgment that the "peace process'' isn't working, at least in its current format.

Critics have argued that endless negotiations mainly serve Israel by providing diplomatic cover for its expansion of settlements on war-won lands. Abbas also derived some political legitimacy from the process, positioning himself as the only leader with a shot at delivering statehood.

Trump says he remains committed to brokering a Mideast deal, despite the Jerusalem pivot. However, those close to Abbas say it's time to look for alternatives.

Any talks with U.S. officials are now "superfluous and irrelevant,'' said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO official. "The peace process is finished.''

Abbas has warned in the past that a failure to achieve a so-called two-state solution could prompt Palestinians to pursue a single state for two peoples, a prospect most Israelis reject.

The Palestinian leader may be reluctant to break away from his longstanding policies or lack the political courage to do so, but not shifting course now would be worse, said analyst Bassem Zbaidi.

"It's time for the Palestinians to say no before coming under pressure to accept'' future U.S. proposals that could fall far short of their minimal demands, he said.

Other options?

Some PLO and Fatah officials suggested shifting from cooperation with the U.S. and avoidance of conflict with Israel to a more confrontational approach.

Fatah supports halting contacts with the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, closing the PLO office in Washington and filing a complaint against the U.S. at the U.N. Security Council over plans to start a multi-year process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, said senior Fatah official Nasser al-Kidwa.

The Palestinians could also try to press prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes, including over settlement building, others said.

Abbas has refrained from such a step until now, under apparent U.S. pressure.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor is currently conducting a preliminary examination of the situation in the Palestinian territories, but this is a more open-ended review and could take years. The probe was triggered by "Palestine'' becoming a member state of the court. The status change, in turn, was made possible by the 2012 U.N. General Assembly recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

Help from Europe?

The Palestinians are increasingly looking to Europe for help, encouraged by the harsh criticism of Trump's Jerusalem policy by European leaders.

European states in the past were relegated by Washington to the role of paymaster, sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to support the Palestinian self-rule government and help manage the long-running conflict.

European states often take a more critical view of Israeli policies than the U.S, especially on settlements, but have failed to challenge Washington's monopoly as mediator.

Palestinians now hope the growing rift between European leaders and the U.S. over Jerusalem will earn them diplomatic points. An immediate goal is to persuade influential Western European countries to recognize a state of Palestine.

Risk or opportunity?

For Palestinians, Trump's policy shift offers both risk and opportunity.

Jerusalem has repeatedly been a flashpoint for violence, and Palestinian protest marches planned later this week could lead to clashes with Israeli troops.

Such confrontations can spin out of control, as they did more than a decade ago when they escalated into an armed uprising. Abbas staunchly opposes violence as counterproductive, but he may not be able to contain widespread public anger.

Some say Trump's policy shift may create a moment of clarity and help end years of paralysis  by making it impossible to perpetuate the idea that statehood is possible under the old paradigm.
Poland is ready to defend its decision in the European Union's top court to refuse to accept migrants from Africa and the Middle East under an EU plan to redistribute them, Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski said.

He spoke after the EU executive sued Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the European Court of Justice on Thursday for their refusal to host these migrants.

"Poland is ready to defend its position in the Court," Szymanski told state news agency PAP. "No one will lift the duty of providing public safety from the Polish government."

The government of Poland's right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party has said it will not admit migrants, citing security concerns amid deadly Islamist attacks in western Europe and problems with ascertaining the identify of migrants.

The Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it had signed a deal with the European Investment Bank to give 50 million euros to help countries and territories affected by the migration crisis, mainly Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said that Poland  a country of 38 million  is already hosting migrants as it had issued more than a million work permits for people from neighboring Ukraine last year alone.
Poland's ruling conservatives named Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as the country's new prime minister on Thursday as they gear up for a series of elections in the coming years.



Morawiecki, who has also been a deputy prime minister, will replace the largely popular Beata Szydlo in a move marking the midpoint of the parliamentary term and in what is the beginning of a broader government reshuffle.



Sources told Reuters this week that Morawiecki, 49, was the most likely candidate to replace Szydlo, 54, to prepare the party  led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's paramount politician  for elections due in the next three years.



Local elections will be held in 2018, parliamentary in 2019 and presidential in 2020.



Morawiecki, 49, an ex-banker, is broadly favored by Kaczynski, while Szydlo lacked the full trust of the party's chairman, analysts say.



"[The party] nominated the candidacy of Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki," Beata Mazurek, the spokeswoman for the Law and Justice (PiS) party said, adding that Szydlo had tendered her resignation.



Since the eurosceptic PiS won power two years ago, Szydlo has overseen sweeping changes to state institutions in Poland, which critics in the European Union and Washington say have subverted democracy and the rule of law.



Despite the criticism, her conservative government was one of the most popular in Poland since the 1989 collapse of communism, largely due to low unemployment, increases in public spending and a focus on traditional Catholic values in public life.



"The last two years  it was an extraordinary time for me and the service to Poland and Poles was an honor," Szydlo said on Twitter.



Reporting by Pawel Sobczak; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Alison Williams.
A prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer has won a European prize for her work representing political prisoners and torture victims as well as advocating for women's rights.

Ragia Omran was chosen from among 15 rights defenders from around the world to receive the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. The German and French embassies in Cairo announced the award earlier this week, and will present it to Omran on Dec. 10.

Several Egyptian rights activists have been recognized in recent months for their work amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.

Since the military overthrew an elected Islamist president in 2013, Egypt has jailed tens of thousands of dissidents, banned all unauthorized protests, restricted civil society groups and blocked hundreds of websites.
Russia's military said Thursday that its mission to oust the Islamic State group in Syria had been accomplished and that the country was "completely liberated" from the group.

"The Russian armed forces' goal to defeat armed groups of the ISIL terrorist organization in Syria has been accomplished," Sergei Rudskoi, in charge of the general staff's main operations department, told reporters, using an alternative acronym for the group.

"There is not a single village or district in Syria under the control of ISIL. The territory of Syria has been completely liberated from fighters of this terrorist organization," Rudskoi said.

He added that the IS defeat was made possible by "unprecedented" actions by Russia's air force and special forces in the country.

"The final stage of the defeat of the terrorists was accompanied by the unprecedented deployment of Russia's air force," Rudskoi said.

He said that in coordination with the air force, which conducted 100 sorties and staged up to 250 strikes daily, the Russian special forces were able to eliminate a number of the "most odious" IS leaders in various places under the group's control.

Independent organizations, however, disputed the Russian claim that Syria had been "completely liberated" from IS.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday that IS still controlled about 3 percent of the Syrian territory.

IS still has a presence in the Yarmouk Camp neighborhood near Damascus, according to the rights group. The militants also dwell in the eastern countryside of central Homs province and in the northeastern countryside of Hama province in a number of villages.

The rights group said IS fighters existed in eastern Deir el-Zour province, as well.

The Russian general said Russian forces in Syria now would be focused on restoring peace in the war-torn country.

Moscow began its pro-Syrian regime military campaign in September 2015 and since then, along with Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, it has helped the government of President Bashar al-Assad regain strength and territory lost to rebel groups.

Russia's involvement in the Syrian war has been seen by the international community as controversial. Russian forces have been accused of targeting moderate opposition groups that fight to oust Assad.

Analysts say Moscow is attempting to "reinvent" its Syrian intervention as if it had been about fighting IS rather than about propping up Assad.
Opinion polls show Vladimir Putin is already a shoo-in to win a fourth presidential term. But a ban on Russia taking part in the Winter Olympics is likely to make support for him even stronger, by uniting voters around his message: The world is against us.

Putin announced on Wednesday that he would run for re-election in Marchs presidential vote, setting the stage for him to extend his dominance of Russias political landscape into a third decade.

With ties between the Kremlin and the West at their lowest point for years, the International Olympic Committees decision to bar Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games over doping is seen in Moscow as a humiliating and politically tinged act.

Putin, echoing his familiar refrain that his country is facing a treacherous Western campaign to hold it back, said he had no doubt that the IOCs decision was absolutely orchestrated and politically-motivated.

Russia will continue moving forwards, and nobody will ever be able to stop this forward movement, Putin said.

Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the upper house of parliaments foreign affairs committee, had been among the first to cast the move as part of a Western plot against Russia, which sees sport as a barometer of geopolitical influence.

They are targeting our national honor ... our reputation ... and our interests. They (the West) bought out the traitors ... and orchestrated media hysteria, Kosachyov wrote on social media.

The IOC ruling is also seen by many in Russia as a personal affront to Putin, who was re-elected president in 2012 after spending four years as prime minister because the constitution barred him from a third consecutive term as head of state.

The sport-loving leader cast his hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, at which the IOC says there was unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system, as a symbol of Russia's success under his rule.

But Putin has often extracted political benefit from crises, and turned international setbacks into domestic triumphs, by accusing the West of gunning for Russia and using this to inspire Russians to unite.

Outside pressure on Russia, understood as politically motivated and orchestrated from the U.S., leads to more national cohesion, Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said on Wednesday.

Various sanctions are being turned into instruments of nation-building.

Putins popularity, supported by state television, is already high. Opinion polls regularly give him an approval rating of around 80 percent.

But casting the IOC ban as a Western plot to hurt Russia, something he did when Russian athletes were banned from last years Summer Olympics in Rio over doping, could help him mobilize the electorate.

Public anger over the IOC move could help Putin overcome signs of voter apathy and ensure a high turnout which, in the tightly controlled limits of the Russian political system, is seen as conferring legitimacy.

There were early signs that fury over the IOCs decision was duly stirring patriotic fervor.

Russia is a superpower, Alexander Kudrashov, a member of the Russian Military Historical Society, told Reuters on Moscows Red Square after the IOC ruling.

Without Russia, he said, the Olympics would not be valid. He linked the decision to a Western anti-Russian campaign which many Russians believe took hold after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

Choosing between the people in Crimea, who wept when the Russian flag was run up and who were doomed to genocide, and sportspeople taking first place on the podium, I choose the people who couldn't defend themselves, Kudrashov said.

'We soak it up and survive'

Blaming the West is an approach the Kremlin has often used before when faced with international allegations of wrongdoing  over Crimea's annexation, the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and charges of meddling in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists rebelled against rule from Kiev after Crimea was annexed.

The tactic taps into Russians patriotism and makes Putin almost bullet-proof when it comes to scandal. The 65-year-old former KGB agent is regarded by many voters as a tsar-like father-of-the-nation figure who has brought their country back from the brink of collapse.

When at the start of the year it seemed there was a window to repair relations with the West after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he wanted better ties, the narrative of Russia versus the world was muted.

But when it became clear that U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in Trumps election precluded any rapprochement, Putin doubled down on the narrative. In October, he launched a stinging critique of U.S. policy, listing what he called the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations.

Sources close to the Russian government say the IOC ban, along with continued Western sanctions over Ukraine and the prospect of new sanctions, will help the authorities rally voters around the banner of national unity which Putin embodies.

Outside pressure just makes us stronger, said one such source who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, set the tone on social media in comments that found ready support from many Russians.

What havent we been forced to suffer from our partners in the course of our history, she wrote. But they just cant bring us down. Not via a world war, the collapse of the Soviet Union or sanctions ... We soak it up and survive.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has interviewed "well over a hundred" people as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election, with more interviews still to come.

Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, praised what he described Wednesday as "unprecedented access to individuals and to intelligence," but refused to predict when the investigation might end.

"I know exactly how many [people] I've got on the deck to interview, I know how many interviews can be done in a week, in a month, so I could project today when I finish those," he said. "I can't tell you how many people might get on the deck between now and that time that we didn't know about."

Burr admitted to The New York Times late last month that President Donald Trump had asked him to wrap up his investigation "as quickly as possible."

But speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, he said he stood by what he told Trump about the investigation having to run its course.

"That's the answer I'd give you," Burr said. "When we have interviewed everybody that needs to be interviewed, and we feel like we have answered every question that the committee jurisdictionally should, we will finish."

Lessons for next elections

While Burr refused to say when the Intelligence Committee's already 11-month-old investigation might be done, he did say the goal was to at least be able to share lessons learned in time to help bolster security for the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

"If we're not to a point that we can write a final report with sufficient time for states to be able to handle their primaries this year, then we will probably make a joint decision to release our recommendations on election security by itself so that states can at least have the blueprint that we suggest," Burr said.

Burr said most of the recommendations involve "common sense" precautions and would not require new laws or help from the federal government.

The Intelligence Committee chair also said he was not bothered by Trump's apparent reluctance to talk about Russia's activities in the same way he has addressed Iran and North Korea.

"I think in many cases that's his art of negotiating," Burr said. He said he thought the president's intent in any such discussions was to keep the other side from knowing "where he's coming from."

"It is uncomfortable sometimes for members of Congress," Burr said. "It is uncomfortable sometimes for the American people. It is his style. I don't think it's going to change."
A federal judge in Michigan has sentenced a former high-level Volkswagen manager to seven years in prison for his part in the scheme to cheat emissions tests and defraud consumers.

Oliver Schmidt has also been fined $400,000. He pleaded guilty in August to charges that included defrauding the United States and violating the Clean Air Act.

This sentence reflects how seriously we take environmental crime, Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch said Wednesday. Protecting national resources is a priority of this office. Corporations and individuals acting on behalf of corporations will be brought to justice for harming our environment.

Schmidt was the general manager of Volkswagens U.S. Environment and Engineering office. He admitted knowing about and agreeing with engineers to carry out a scheme to install a device on certain VW diesel vehicles that would switch on for emissions tests, but switch off during normal driving.

Customers bought the cars believing they were environmentally friendly when in fact the cars were polluting as much as 30 times higher than U.S. standards.

Federal courts have ordered Volkswagen to spend more than $1 billion to buy back or repair the affected cars.
South Africa plans to push ahead with its nuclear expansion plan but will do so at a slower pace because there has been a fall in demand for electricity owing to a struggling economy, energy minister David Mahlobo said Thursday.

South Africa has the continent's only nuclear power station and is seeking to expand its nuclear, wind, solar and coal power capacity in the coming decades.

Energy analysts have said the 9,600 MW plan was ambitious on timescale and unnecessary, while opponents of President Jacob Zuma raised concerns about a lack of transparency in deals which could cost tens of billions of dollars.

Mahlobo did not disclose how much Africa's most industrialized nation would aim to add to its nuclear fleet.

"The economy is not in good shape. We are all cognizant, that's why we chose a mantra: pace, scale, affordability and environmental responsiveness," he told reporters.

"What is changing is the scale, the volumes. We will no longer do 9.6, when you talk about nuclear. It has come down."

Later asked by Reuters how much additional nuclear power South Africa wanted to build, Mahlobo said he would say next year. "Next year is for implementation."

He said South Africa wanted to increase share of its power that comes from nuclear to 20 percent from 5 percent at present, without giving a time frame.
South Sudanese refugees in Uganda's Adjumani district want to see a federal system of government introduced in South Sudan. They said federalism can put an end to conflicts resulting from unequal distribution of power and resources.

Hundreds of refugees from the districts of Amoru, Moyo and Adjumani participated in last week's meeting with a team from the national dialogue's subcommittee on refugees and international outreach.

Participant Martin Idro from the Maaji settlement said many refugees have demanded the country be split into three federal states.

"That is Greater Upper Nile, Greater Bahr el Ghazal and Greater Equatoria. So if we want peace or if we want the future of South Sudan  the system of governance has to be brought into federal system of governance," Idro told South Sudan in Focus.

Kaliso Duku is a refugee leader from the Pagirinya camp, which hosts nearly 40,000 South Sudanese refugees. Duku told South Sudan in Focus that the people he represented at the meeting unanimously want a federal system of government to prevent a few ethnic groups from dominating political life in South Sudan.

"It should be a federal state that will actually determine the economics of that place, and policy of that place should be by the people of that area," Duku said.

Deng Dau, chairperson of the dialogue's subcommittee on refugees and outreach, confirmed refugees want a federal system of governance but said they are not united on what type of federalism they want.

"There are some of them who talked about [a] federal system as the answer to the current crisis, particularly issues that are related to pastoralist communities and farmers, issues of resource allocations, issues of employment. But others have been also saying South Sudan should return to three former states of Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile," Dau told VOA.

Martin Korcu, who represented the Agojo camp at the meeting, said some participants broke down in tears when describing how they fled South Sudan's conflict and their life in the refugee camps.

"We are  suffering too much. That suffering led our children to get malnourished, and then children are not going to school. A lot of suffering," Korcu said.

Fear first for refugees

Idro said the meeting was the first opportunity for many refugees to meet with officials from Juba since they fled to Uganda more than a year ago. Idro said many were initially reluctant to share their opinions.

"In fact, almost all the leaders were afraid because in South Sudan, there was no freedom," Idro told VOA.

But Dau said as the meeting progressed, the refugees loosened up.

"They were open, they were honest and they were also attacking what they think has not been done well by the government," Dau said.

Duku says most refugees were caught off guard because the dialogue team from Juba mobilized the refugees without telling them what the meeting was about.

"We were told to go for a meeting in Adjumani. We did not have an idea and we did not prepare even. But on the ground, we found different things," Duku said.

Certain conditions must be met before the refugees would return to the country, Korku said.

"We want to see a total peace and accountability for what has been done. And the government, what they are doing bad, is destruction, raping.  A lot of things there need to be accounted for," he said.

The refugees say they want to see tangible reforms in the security and economic sectors, and an end to impunity for those who committed war crimes.
Thursday was the fourth day of devastating wildfires in Southern California, and a new blaze erupted north of San Diego and spread quickly.

Fire officials said Thursday evening a wildfire north of Los Angeles has destroyed 439 homes and buildings.

Officials say the regions infamous Santa Ana winds have increased the four biggest fires, extending from Los Angeles up the Pacific Coast to Santa Barbara County.

The CAL Fire state agency said the hot dry winds from the California desert and the extremely low humidity conditions are expected to continue through Sunday.

Let me be clear, no amount of resources can keep up with the predicted conditions, CAL Fire Director Ken Pimlott said.

The state fire agency said on Twitter: Prepare now to ensure if evacuated you and your family are ready to GO!

With wind gusts of up to 145 kilometers per hour (90 mph) expected to continue through Friday afternoon, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby warned people to remain alert as he and other officials urged the public to evacuate at the first sign of danger.

The biggest fire is the Thomas Fire, about 90 kilometers northwest of the city of Los Angeles It has burned more than 47,000 hectares.



A fire Wednesday in the upscale Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles temporarily shut down several highways and the Getty Center art complex was closed to protect the art collection from smoke damage.

A fire in 1961 burned 500 homes in the tony neighborhood, some belonging to Hollywood stars.

Several hundred Los Angeles schools were closed Thursday.

A fire north of San Diego expanded in just a few hours Thursday from 4 hectares to 1,012 hectares.

Fires are not uncommon in Southern California this time of year before the winter rains set in, when the vegetation is tinder dry and winds blast the region.

This year has been a particularly bad year for California fires. Just weeks ago, wildfires broke out in Northern California, killing 44 people and destroying 8,900 homes and other buildings.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Tuesday wildfires have burned more than 400,000 hectares so far this year. The data does not take into account the fires currently burning.
U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura says he will assess progress in the Syrian peace talks next week and decide whether it is worth continuing the political process or whether it has run its course for now.

De Mistura says he has been informed by the Syrian government delegation that it will rejoin the peace negotiations on Sunday. The delegation quit the talks Friday to, as it said, consult and refresh with Damascus.

But before leaving, the head of the Syrian delegation said he would not return unless the opposition withdrew its objection to Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad playing a role in a future government of transition.

De Mistura says he expects the government and opposition sides to negotiate in good faith and with no preconditions on several issues, including a post-war constitution and U.N.-supervised presidential and parliamentary elections.

Based on that, we will be then assessing whether there is any serious intention, not only in Geneva, but what goes wrong in Geneva is a very bad sign for any other initiative elsewhere, De Mistura said.

The current round of talks began November 28, and is slated to continue until December 15.

The war in Syria, which is in its seventh year reportedly has killed more than one-quarter million people and displaced more than 11 million inside and outside the country.

Meanwhile, a U.N. Humanitarian task force is reporting continued obstruction by the Syrian government of the delivery of life-saving aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Most serious of all, the United Nations reports the government still refuses to permit the medical evacuation of nearly 500 critically ill and wounded people from Eastern Ghouta, a besieged suburb of Damascus. It warns many of these people could die if they do not receive urgent medical treatment.


Donald Trump Jr. refused to answer questions from lawmakers Wednesday about conversations he had with his father, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, about his controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives in June 2016.

Trump Jr. avoided reporters and entered the Capitol through a back door before facing more than eight hours of questions from the House Intelligence Committee.

The committee is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Attorney-client privilege cited

The committees top Democrat, Californias Adam Schiff, said the younger Trump answered most of their questions, but claimed attorney-client privilege when declining to comment about the meeting he had with the Russians.

Trump Jr. said there was a lawyer present when he talked to his father.

Schiff said he does not believe the Trumps conversation is privileged information.

Others at Wednesdays questioning said Trump Jr. claimed he did not remember things the lawmakers wanted to know, including details about the meeting with the Russians.

Trump Jr. met with the Russians at his fathers office tower in June 2016, when a Russian lawyer promised dirt on Donald Trumps rival for the White House, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr. said he did not tell his father about the meeting when it happened, but did talk about it after emails about the gathering became public.

The emails showed the younger Trump jumped at the chance to get something incriminating on Clinton, including her fitness character and qualifications to be president. Such dirt never materialized.

This was the second time Trump Jr. faced grilling from lawmakers about the Russian meeting. The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned him in September.

Mueller likely interested

Special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to have a keen interest in the Capitol Hill questioning and the Russian meeting.

Mueller is investigating whether where was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won, and whether Trump himself obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, who was also investigating alleged collusion.

Trump has labeled the allegations with one of his favorite phrases  fake news. Trump Jr. also denies the charges.

Moscow has called Muellers investigation a bag of smoke.
U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has met with criticism in the Arab world as well as in Europe and elsewhere. In a speech Wednesday, Trump described the move as a "long overdue step" after his predecessors failed to abide by the 22-year-old U.S. pledge to Israel. But the status of Jerusalem is a contentious issue many believe should be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.
At least two teenagers were killed in a shooting at a high school in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico, local officials said Thursday.

The assailant was also killed, police said, though it was not immediately clear whether the shooter was a student.

The deadly incident took place at Aztec High School, which has been evacuated, according to New Mexico state police.

Other schools in the area were also put in lockdown - which local police said could last up to four hours.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could launch a public debate about climate change as soon as January, administrator Scott Pruitt said on Thursday, as the agency continued to unwind Obama-era initiatives to fight global warming.

The agency had been working over the last several months to set up a red team, blue team debate on the science relating to manmade climate change to give the public a real-time review of questions and answers around this issue of CO2, Pruitt said.

We may be able to get there as early as January next year, he told the House energy and commerce committee during his first Congressional hearing since taking office.

Pruitt, others cast doubt

Pruitt and other senior members of President Donald Trumps administration have repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide (CO2) from human consumption of fossil fuels is driving climate change, triggering rising sea levels, droughts, and more frequent, powerful storms.

In June, Trump pulled the United States out of a global pact to fight climate change, saying the deal was too costly to the U.S. economy and would hurt the oil drilling and coal mining industries.

Pruitt is reportedly vetting a list of scientists that have expressed doubts over climate change to take part in the upcoming debates, including some that have been recommended by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation.

An EPA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the selection of scientists.

Skeptics pressure Pruitt

The debate would come as the EPA proposes to rescind the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obamas main climate change regulation that was aimed at reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

On Thursday, Pruitt said the agency plans to propose a replacement for the Obama-era rule. He previously only committed to considering a replacement.

But Pruitt has also been under pressure from conservative climate change skeptics in Congress to go further and upend the scientific finding that CO2 endangers human health, which underpins all carbon regulation.

'Breach of process'

At the hearing, Pruitt said there was a breach of process under the Obama administration when it wrote its 2009 endangerment finding on CO2, because it cited the research of the United Nations climate science body.

They took work from the U.N. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) ... and adopted that as the core of the finding, Pruitt said.

He did not say whether he plans to try to undo the finding, which legal experts have said would be legally complex.

Pruitt told Reuters in July the debate could be televised.
The U.S. House of Representatives condemned the "ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya" on Wednesday, passing a resolution (423-3) by a two-thirds voice vote "calling for an end to the attacks" against the Muslim minority in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The resolution is the first step in congressional action that could eventually include a stand-alone sanctions bill aimed at putting financial pressure on the Burmese military and providing U.S. economic assistance for the resettlement of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh back to Myanmar.



This is a moral issue and a national security issue, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, said on the House floor Tuesday. No one is secure when extremism and instability is growing in this part of the world.

Hundreds of thousands flee



An estimated 600,000 Rohingya have been displaced in recent months, fleeing into Bangladesh and creating a humanitarian crisis.



Hundreds have been killed, Royce said as he described the scope of the crisis. At least 200 villages have been burned to the ground, landmines have been placed inside Burmas border with Bangladesh, maiming refugees who are seeking safe haven. There are reports of rapes and all types of violence committed against the Rohingya.



The bipartisan resolution - co-sponsored by Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley of New York and Republican Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio - calls for an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma.

The resolution also calls on Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of Myanmar's government, and the Burmese military to work together to implement humanitarian aid and reconciliation.

"The Burmese military's widespread brutality toward Rohingya civilians over the last few months and its attempts to drive them out of the country are deeply disturbing. Chabot told VOA in a statement on the passage of the resolution. "That is why Congressman Crowley and I introduced H.Con.Res. 90, to condemn this ethnic cleansing and show the American peoples outrage at these attacks.

"This resolution calls on Burmese authorities to work with the international community to resolve the crisis while also calling on Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to impose sanctions on those responsible for human rights abuses," Chabot added.



Tillerson shifted the U.S. approach to the crisis last month when he deemed the violence against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, saying, This violence must stop, this persecution must stop.



Sanctions effort

A bipartisan sanctions bill introduced last month by New York Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and by Chabot would end U.S. military ties with Myanmar while imposing harsh sanctions on industries that fund the Burmese military.

If passed, the bill also would reimpose sanctions on the lucrative Burmese gem trade that were lifted last year by then-president Barack Obama in an executive order.

A companion bill in the U.S. Senate is sponsored by Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Todd Young of Indiana, and Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ben Cardin of Maryland.



If they want to go back to the bad old days when we had all sorts of restrictions on them  economic restrictions, trade restrictions, political restrictions  then were forced to go back to those bad old days because if theyre going to perpetuate ethnic cleansing, we dont want to be complicit, Engel told VOA in an interview last month.



Chabot told VOA the sanctions bill also provides key economic funding for Rohingya refugees returning to Myanmar.



The goal here is to get those who have been displaced and in general have gone to Bangladesh to allow them to return to Burma to return to their homes, although a lot of those homes have been burned to the ground by the military, so theres an awful lot of economic development thats going to be necessary, Chabot said.



A source on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told VOA there is strong bipartisan interest in the bill, but that it is still undergoing refinements with outside groups as it collects cosponsors.



With just six working days left in the House legislative calendar and a full congressional agenda that includes funding the government, the bill is highly unlikely to move forward until next year.



But passage of the resolution is a key first step for the U.S. Congress.



The United States certainly cannot solve every problem in the world, resolution co-sponsor Crowley said Tuesday. But there are some things that we can, and that we must do. And imposing sanctions against the perpetrators of atrocities in Burma is one of the things that we must do. Doing so will send an important signal that we are watching, and we are not standing by idly.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday it will restrict visas for Cambodians undermining democracy in the Southeast Asian nation following the dissolution of the main opposition party and a crackdown on independent media.

The State Department said it was a direct response to anti-democratic actions by the Cambodian government but did not disclose which individuals would be affected. It said visa records are confidential under U.S. law.

Spokeswoman Heather Nauert called on the Cambodian government to reinstate the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by Supreme Court order last month, and free its leader Kem Sokha, imprisoned since September. She also urged Cambodia to allow civil society and media to operate freely.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has held power for more than three decades, has sought to neutralize political opponents and silence critics ahead of national elections next year. Kem Sokha has been charged with trying to topple the government with U.S. support, which Washington has said is a baseless accusation.

Nauert said Cambodia's actions run counter to the Paris Peace Agreements of 1991. The United States and 18 other governments signed the accords, which ushered in democracy after the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s, then occupation by Vietnam and civil war.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will restrict entry into the United States of those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia, Nauert said in a statement, adding that in certain circumstances, family members of those individuals will also be subject to visa restrictions. The department cited a provision of U.S. immigration law under which individuals can be denied entry if the secretary determines it would have adverse foreign policy consequences.

The White House has already terminated U.S. support of Cambodias national election committee, saying last month that the July 2018 vote will not be legitimate, free or fair.

We will continue to monitor the situation and take additional steps as necessary, while maintaining our close and enduring ties with the people of Cambodia, Nauert said.

Monovithya Kem, an opposition spokeswoman currently in the U.S., welcomed the visa restrictions and called for targeted financial sanctions on senior officials in Hun Sen's government. Kem, who is the daughter of Kem Sokha, urged the U.S., Japan, Australia and the European Union to coordinate responses to the crisis in Cambodia and help win her father's freedom.

Like many prominent opposition figures, Kem has fled Cambodia as she fears arrest.

Hun Sen has been in office since 1985 and has held a tight grip on power since ousting a co-prime minister in a bloody 1997 coup.

In recent months, the government has intensified restrictions on civil society groups and independent media outlets. In September, it shut down the English-language Cambodia Daily. Authorities have shuttered radio stations that aired programming from U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, whose reports they allege are biased.

The government also expelled the U.S. National Democratic Institute, which helped train political parties and election monitors, accusing it of colluding with its opponents.

Hun Sen has moved Cambodia closer to China in recent years and become increasingly critical of Washington. However, hes been complimentary of President Donald Trump.

Speaking at Asian leaders summit attended by Trump last month, Hun Sen praised the U.S. leader for non-interference in affairs of other nations, but complained the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia was not adhering to the policy.
The State Department has issued security warnings at scores of U.S. embassies around the world, bracing for protests or violence from President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. At the United Nations, American diplomats are preparing for a meeting Friday called by eight of the 15 Security Council members, including close U.S. allies Britain, Italy and France.

Reaction around the world has been almost universally critical of the decision, which marks a break from decades of U.S. policy.

France, Germany, Italy and Britain have all sharply criticized the decision, saying the status of Jerusalem should be negotiated within the framework of the final stages of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have been suspended for the past three years.

In Vienna on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended the president's announcement, saying recognizing Jerusalem is simply a recognition of reality.

"The reality is Israel's government, its courts, its prime minister's office is all in Jerusalem today, so it is just an acknowledgment of what is the reality on the ground," he said.

Critics say that even though Israel's government treats the city as the country's capital, the U.S. decision to recognize it preempts peace talks for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians want an independent country with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Tillerson said the U.S. designation should not affect those negotiations.

"We think that the final status of Jerusalem should be a result of direct negotiations between two parties there, and I think we should do anything possible to avoid further escalation in the region," he said.

Tillerson sought to reassure those opposed to moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that there would be no hasty action.

"As to the move of the embassy, the president has directed me and the State Department to undertake the process to begin an effort to move the embassy," he said. "We are not going to be doing that quickly. We have to acquire a site. We have to develop building plans. We'll have to construct the building. So this is not something that will happen overnight."

Violence, protests

Violent clashes erupted Thursday in the West Bank and Gaza between hundreds of Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops and street protests.

Fearing more violent protests, the State Department took the unusual step of updating a worldwide caution to U.S. citizens abroad:

"As terrorist attacks, political upheaval, and violence often take place without any warning, U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness when traveling."

The caution said U.S. government facilities worldwide remain in a heightened state of alert, and warned they may temporarily close or suspend public services. The U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, has temporarily suspended routine public services.

U.S. embassies in countries across the world issued similar security warnings.

The U.S. has asked Israeli officials, who have heartily welcomed the decision as historic, to moderate their public reactions. A senior aide to Tillerson, R.C. Hammond, said Tillerson had asked the president to allow for time for the State Department to prepare before an announcement on Jerusalem was made, adding safety is always a top consideration.

That tweet led to this Twitter exchange between Hammond and former Obama administration State Department spokesperson John Kirby, who said the U.S. usually has to boost its embassy security in response to what other countries are doing and deciding, and not due to a White House announcement:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday the United States will not lift sanctions against Russia until Moscow withdraws its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.



"Russia is arming, leading, training, and fighting alongside anti-government forces," said Tillerson in Vienna during a meeting with foreign ministers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) countries.



The OSCE ministerial gathering came at a moment of tense relations between Washington and Moscow, where Russia is accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential election and being behind a wave of destructive cyber attacks.Moscow has denied both allegations.

"We call for full implementation of the Minsk agreements.We will never accept Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea.Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine," said Tillerson.



Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told foreign ministers at the OSCE meeting that "all the responsibility is with Ukraine" as far as violence in the east was concerned.



A 2015 deal signed in the Belarusian capital of Minsk called for a cease-fire between Russian-backed separatists fighting Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has left more than 10,000 dead.The deal has been often violated.



The top U.S. diplomat's remarks came after his earlier comments that blamed Russia's activities in Ukraine for "the single most difficult obstacle" to normalize bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow.



Tillerson met with Lavrov on the sidelines of OSCE ministerial, where the Russian diplomat refused to answer a shouted question from an American reporter.



The two met in a small conference room, with a large array of Russian camera crews and correspondents said to be present.



An American reporter shouted out to Lavrov: "What do you think of President Trump's Jerusalem decision?"



Lavrov told her to shout louder, and she did.



"I can't hear you," said Lavrov while other reporters said the question was clearly audible even at the back of the small room.



In a separate meeting with members of the OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine, Tillerson said the United States is working with Russia about the U.N. peacekeeping proposal.



"We are. I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get, but we get progress, that's what we get," said Tillerson, "We get dialogue, we get cooperation. We don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting."



While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment.
The dramatic U.S. policy shift on contested Jerusalem is seen by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership as a dangerous betrayal and game changer that is bound to propel them into a risky confrontation with the U.S. and Israel on the global stage.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas hasnt decided yet whether to formally abandon U.S.-led negotiations with Israel, a troubled process that after two decades has failed to bring the Palestinians closer to statehood. However, those close to Abbas say a Mideast era of stop-and-go negotiations and Washingtons monopoly as mediator is now over.

Here is a look at what could come next.

Why Jerusalem matters

Trumps recognition Wednesday of Jerusalem as Israels capital contradicts longstanding international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the holy city will be determined in negotiations. With Trumps sharp pivot, the U.S. is seen as siding with Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem, including the Israeli-annexed eastern sector the Palestinians seek as a future capital.

The dispute over Jerusalem forms the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but transcends a mere real estate argument. The city, home to Judaisms holiest site, is also sacred to billions of Muslims and Christians worldwide, and perceived slights to their claims have triggered major protests or violence in the past.

Abbas response so far

Abbas has been trying to rally international support, reaching out to leaders from Pope Francis to the EU foreign policy chief and Arab leaders. He warned Trump in a phone call that the U.S. shift will rock the region and threaten Washingtons plans for a Mideast peace deal.

In a speech after Trumps announcement, Abbas said the U.S. has effectively removed itself from any role as a Mideast broker, but he did not say what immediate steps, if any, the Palestinians plan to take.

Abbas is to hold internal consultations with officials from the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah party, and plans to meet Thursday with his closest Arab ally, King Abdullah II of Jordan.

A moment of truth?

The crisis over Jerusalem may push Abbas, the most steadfast Palestinian champion of seeking statehood through negotiations, to a point he avoided for so long  acknowledgment that the peace process isnt working, at least in its current format.

Critics have argued that endless negotiations mainly serve Israel by providing diplomatic cover for its expansion of settlements on war-won lands. Abbas also derived some political legitimacy from the process, positioning himself as the only leader with a shot at delivering statehood.

Trump says he remains committed to brokering a Mideast deal, despite the Jerusalem pivot. However, those close to Abbas say its time to look for alternatives.

Any talks with U.S. officials are now superfluous and irrelevant, said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO official. The peace process is finished.

Abbas has warned in the past that a failure to achieve a so-called two-state solution could prompt Palestinians to pursue a single state for two peoples, a prospect most Israelis reject.

The Palestinian leader may be reluctant to break away from his longstanding policies or lack the political courage to do so, but not shifting course now would be worse, said analyst Bassem Zbaidi.

Its time for the Palestinians to say no before coming under pressure to accept future U.S. proposals that could fall far short of their minimal demands, he said.

Other options?

Some PLO and Fatah officials suggested shifting from cooperation with the U.S. and avoidance of conflict with Israel to a more confrontational approach.

Fatah supports halting contacts with the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, closing the PLO office in Washington and filing a complaint against the U.S. at the U.N. Security Council over plans to start a multiyear process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, said senior Fatah official Nasser al-Kidwa.

The Palestinians could also try to press prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes, including over settlement building, others said.

Abbas has refrained from such a step until now, under apparent U.S. pressure.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor is currently conducting a preliminary examination of the situation in the Palestinian territories, but this is a more open-ended review and could take years. The probe was triggered by Palestine becoming a member state of the court. The status change, in turn, was made possible by the 2012 U.N. General Assembly recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

WATCH: In Controversial Announcement, Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Capital of Israel

Help from Europe?

The Palestinians are increasingly looking to Europe for help, encouraged by the harsh criticism of Trumps Jerusalem policy by European leaders.

European states in the past were relegated by Washington to the role of paymaster, sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to support the Palestinian self-rule government and help manage the long-running conflict.

European states often take a more critical view of Israeli policies than the U.S, especially on settlements, but have failed to challenge Washingtons monopoly as mediator.

Palestinians now hope the growing rift between European leaders and the U.S. over Jerusalem will earn them diplomatic points. An immediate goal is to persuade influential Western European countries to recognize a state of Palestine.

Risk or opportunity?

For Palestinians, Trumps policy shift offers both risk and opportunity.

Jerusalem has repeatedly been a flashpoint for violence, and Palestinian protest marches planned later this week could lead to clashes with Israeli troops.

Such confrontations can spin out of control, as they did more than a decade ago when they escalated into an armed uprising. Abbas staunchly opposes violence as counterproductive, but he may not be able to contain widespread public anger.

Some say Trumps policy shift may create a moment of clarity and help end years of paralysis by making it impossible to perpetuate the idea that statehood is possible under the old paradigm.

That option is now off the table and thats a good thing, said Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser of the Palestinian self-rule government. This had really held us up for so many years.
Donald Trump was just 11 minutes into his presidency last January when his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, texted a former business associate from the steps of the Capitol that an American plan to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East with Russia was "good to go," a whistleblower's account says.

Flynn, according to the whistleblower, assured the former associate that sanctions imposed by former President Barack Obama in response to Moscow's meddling in the 2016 election would immediately be "ripped up."

The account, divulged Wednesday by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the lead Democrat on the House oversight committee, came less than a week after Flynn pleaded guilty of lying to federal investigators when they questioned him just days after Trump was inaugurated about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington in the weeks before Trump assumed power.

Meeting with associate

Cummings did not name the whistleblower. But in a detailed account, Cummings said the whistleblower later on Inauguration Day, January 20, attended an event where he met with Alex Copson, managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners and the business associate Flynn had purportedly texted from the seats behind Trump as he gave his inaugural address.

The whistleblower, according to Cummings's account, asked Copson how he was doing, and quoted Copson as saying, "I couldn't be better. This is the best day of my life."

Copson told the whistleblower that he had gotten a text from Flynn that the nuclear project that Copson had "been working on for years" was "good to go" and to tell their business associates to "let them know to put things in place," Cummings wrote in a letter to the House oversight panel's chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

Copson showed the whistleblower his cellphone with the purported Flynn text, although he did not read it. But the whistleblower said he saw that the time stamp was 12:11 p.m., 11 minutes after Trump was sworn in as the country's 45th president.

Copson told the whistleblower, according to the Cummings account, "Mike has been putting everything in place for us. I am going to celebrate today. This is going to make a lot of very wealthy people."

Cummings said that after he met with the whistleblower, he found him "to be authentic, credible and reliable."

Lies cited in firing

Trump fired Flynn 24 days into his service as national security adviser after wiretaps showed he had discussed the sanctions with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials about the nature of his conversations with Moscow's envoy.

As it turned out, the Obama sanctions  the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and closure of two Russian facilities in the U.S.  were never lifted. Months later, Russia retaliated by ordering the U.S. to cut 755 of its 1,200 workers at several U.S. outposts in Russia, who in many instances were Russians.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is in the midst of a criminal investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded the Russian meddling was personally directed by President Vladimir Putin, aimed at undermining U.S. democracy and helping the Republican Trump defeat his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Putin has denied Russian interference, while Trump has repeatedly railed against congressional investigations and the Mueller probe into Russia links to his campaign as excuses by Democrats to explain his upset victory over Clinton.

As part of his guilty plea, Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.
The White House is encouraging members of the U.S. House of Representatives to sign off on a temporary spending bill that would avert a partial government shutdown.

Congress faces a deadline of Friday to pass spending legislation that would fund the government through Dec. 22. If they fail, parts of the federal government could be forced to shut down until a spending plan is approved.

The White House released a statement Wednesday saying President Donald Trump would sign the bill the House is considering, if they can pass it.

The current plan for most federal spending is set to expire Saturday.

If passed, the temporary measure would extend government funding at their current levels without changes to immigration policy or defense spending, two of the points at issue in the long-running negotiations. It would also fund the Childrens Health Insurance Program through December.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump warned that a government shutdown could happen and blamed the Democrats for their demands on immigration.

They want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime. Tremendous amounts of crime, Trump said.

We dont have to have that. We want to have a great, beautiful, crime-free country. And we want people to coming into our country, but we want them to come on our basis.

The president is expected to meet Thursday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to discuss a spending deal.
Before it became the worst day of her life, Allison Norland spread a blanket on the grass outside her father-inlaw's house so her infant daughter could crawl on the soft ground. New to motherhood, her first child was a surprise. "I found out when I was six and a half months pregnant, which was unbelievable for me," she said. "Then I went to the hospital, found out I was in labor, obviously still using."

The daughter of an alcoholic, Allison says she has a highly addictive personality. Her drug use started with marijuana when she was 18. "I would start kind of hanging out with my sister and the older crowd and drink, and then the coke [cocaine] started. I was actually dating a man at the time who was selling weed and cocaine. So, easy access I guess," she told us.

At 19, she met the man she would eventually marry. He introduced her to Oxycodone, a commonly prescribed, but highly addictive, semi-synthetic opioid.

"We started using when we would go out of town to visit his friends and then it kind of proceeded to [finding] some people down where we live who were selling [Oxycodone] and it kind of became more common place," she said.

After two back-to-back car accidents while driving high, she was sent to a pain doctor for her injuries. "It was straight to 30 milligrams of Oxycodone. I was getting 90 pills a month. That doctor shut down and I went to another doctor and proceeded to 150 pills a month," she said. "I was using every day."

Pain medication

She says the doctors never asked her if she had a history of illegal drug use or had ever abused opioids. Estimates are six out of 10 heroin users on the street started out with pain medication prescribed by a doctor. As the opioid crisis has exploded across the country, the medical community has come under scrutiny for the way they treat pain, and addiction specialists often point a finger directly at the conduct of the medical community.

Allison developed what she described as an intense addiction. The birth of her daughter was her wake-up call. Her obvious drug use was called to the attention of child protective services in Miami-Dade County where she lived. She says they almost took her newborn from her.

"I was so guilty and so ashamed that I had let that go on as long as I did. But I had her, she was healthy, no withdrawal symptoms, no anything," she said.

She stayed clean for seven months. Then tragedy struck. As Allison watched her daughter play on the blanket that day in the back yard, her father-in-law accidentally drove his car off the driveway, striking and killing the little girl.

After seeing her daughter in the hospital for the last time, Allison drove straight to where she knew she could get pills. She says she used every day for the next year.

"Every day I pushed the limit further and further because I didn't know how to be anymore, and what to be anymore. To go from being a mom and loving this thing so much, so much more than I love myself, to having her gone and this absence in my heart, it was really hard," she said.

The incident left Allison with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and depression. The years passed in a fog. After an arrest, and time at another rehabilitation facility, Allison was ordered by the court to go to The Village, in Miami Florida, one of several residential and outpatient rehab centers run by Westcare, a non-profit healthcare corporation that specializes in addiction services.

Treating addiction

At first, she was hostile toward being at The Village, a renovated old Florida motel-style complex a few blocks from Biscayne Bay in the Edgewater neighborhood north of downtown Miami. Now 28, Allison sat with us in the room she shares with two other women, the walls lined with metal bunk beds and cabinets decorated with family pictures.

"I snuck in phones [which are forbidden]. I would get caught smoking on the facility, but then again I fought a lot. I fought in here, I fought out there. I just fought. I was so angry and broken down that I couldn't be that person anymore," she said.



Allison was initially ordered to stay at the facility for 90 days. She has chosen to stay longer. Now in her fourth month, she has slowly begun to unravel the threads of her addiction. The problems were not socio-economic. "I didn't grow up on the streets," she told us. "My family was upper middle-class."

For decades, opioid abuse predominantly affected people of color in poverty-wracked inner cities. Today's crisis has moved into the white middle-class suburbs and spread to small towns across the country.

When we asked her what an addict loses, she said "everything." At the core of her loss were the morals and values she grew up with.

"To learn to look people in the eye and tell the truth because that is a big part of addiction  lying. I have to learn how to look people in the eye. I have to learn how to stand up straight. I have to learn how to love myself. That is what I lost most of all," she said.

The Village uses a combination of medication, and individual and group therapy to treat its clients.

Patients are given Suboxone, a synthetic opioid strip that dissolves under the tongue. There has been some controversy with treating opioid addiction with opioids, but The Village says it has used Suboxone with great success. Delivered in small doses, the strips can eliminate withdrawal symptoms in 15 minutes. Suboxone also eliminates the cravings for opioids with limited side effects. Clients continue on the drug for months.

"With medication, we can begin to have an effect on your cravings for drugs and keep you engaged in your recovery," says Frank Rabbito, senior vice president for Westcare, which runs The Village. "Medication keeps you away from illegal drugs and gives you an opportunity to engage in your recovery, be monitored by us for a period of time, and move toward a greater independent lifestyle."

Therapy sessions

Allison credits the relationship and trust she has built with her therapist for her turnaround. Like many substance abusers, she has a history of physical, mental and sexual abuse going back to her childhood.

"I would say 80 percent of substance users have trauma in their past," said Alexandra Kirkland, a therapist who works with patients at The Village. "And it causes them to have depressive symptoms. So when they flash back and think about the trauma, it breaks into their daily functioning, and many times they use substances as an escape to deal with the trauma."

"My therapist has been incredible and has helped me through things I have done in the dark that I never thought would come to light," Allison told us. "There are things that happened to me that I never wanted to talk about I have talked about with her. And it is because I know she can understand."

The sessions have helped her confront some painful realities, such as using drugs while pregnant.

"I put my daughter in harm's way for a pill. I put my life in danger for a pill. I was risking everything for this drug. And that is it  chasing a high that was never going to be enough, "she said.

It's hard to reconcile the darkness she describes with the person in front of us; she now carries herself with an air of happiness and confidence, and can flash a smile that lights up the room. Allison wants to stay even longer at the The Village and further her recovery.

The odds are against her. Researchers estimate a mere three percent of addicts stay clean for life. Allison is not deterred. She now wants to become an addiction specialist.

"That is my goal," she says, brimming with energy. "It is exciting to work toward something. That is a huge thing. I want to help people. People like me."
The United Nations is appealing for $187 million to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to 2.3 million of the most vulnerable Ukrainians who, it says, have reached the limits of their endurance after four years of conflict.

Most people view the ongoing fighting between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebels in Eastern Ukraine as a political crisis. But U.N. Resident Coordinator in Ukraine, Neal Walker, views it as a forgotten humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe.

While the existing problems directly affect the people in Ukraine, he warns the potential spillover effect into neighboring countries is powerful and worrisome.

"Just one simple example: increases in the number of cases of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV, as well as issues of immunization, even an isolated case of polio. All of this in the heart of Europe. Whether these people are immigrating away from the conflict going east, north or west, the spillover implications are quite severe," Walker said.

After four years of war, people have exhausted their savings and their ability to cope. Aid workers say people cannot afford to buy food or medicine, to pay for shelter or heating or their children's education. In addition, they say millions of women, children and elderly are at daily risk of shelling, intensive fighting and other hostilities.

On top of that, Walker says U.N. agencies are unable to get funding for humanitarian support.

"We can say definitively that the humanitarian situation today, and going into this winter, is significantly worse than it has been since the onset of this conflict in 2014," he said. "Despite that, we are not getting the funding that we need to deal with it."

The United Nations received only 30 percent of its multimillion-dollar 2017 appeal, according to Walker.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, which is closing after 24 years, drew praise Wednesday from its president, the U.S. and many Security Council members, but not from Russia, which called it biased and anti-Serb.

The council established the tribunal in 1993 to deal with atrocities during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s. It was the first international court to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide since the tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II.

At a council meeting before the tribunal ends operations Dec. 31, its president, Judge Carmel Aguis, said the court proved to be a bold and innovative response to conflict that has written a very important page in the history of international justice and the fight against impunity.

He expressed hope that the tribunals legacy and judgments wont be undermined by the dramatic death of Croat ex-general Slobodan Praljak, who took poison Nov. 29 after judges at the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed his 20-year-sentence for war crimes in Bosnia.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison said the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia established key precedents in international criminal law and has created a legacy of the greatest importance.

Russia calls court one-sided

Russias deputy ambassador, Petr Iliichev, disagreed. He said the court was based on a one-sided, anti-Serb interpretation of the tragic events of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia and didnt play an impartial and independent role.

We are convinced that a whole range of its decisions have discredited the very idea of international justice, Iliichev said.

According to the court, it indicted 161 people and concluded proceedings for all of them, convicting and sentencing 90, acquitting 19, referring 13 to national courts, and sending two to be retried by a residual court that is wrapping up the tribunals work. It said 37 people either died or their indictments were withdrawn.

Iliichev complained that more than 60 percent of the convictions dealt with Serbs whose sentences totaled more than 1,000 years while the other parties to the conflict, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, often received a range of non-guilty sentences.

Sison highlighted the Nov. 22 conviction of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces rained shells and snipers bullets on Sarajevo and carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II at Srebrenica. He was convicted of genocide and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

Iliichev called Mladics sentence a continuation of the politicized and biased line against Serbs.

Croatia satisfied

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said her country shares the assessments that it greatly lived up to the expectations of the international community by fighting against impunity and ensuring accountability for war crimes.

Equally important is the tribunals role in giving voice to over 100,000 victims of horrific crimes, she said.

Serbias justice minister, Nela Kuburovic, noted that Serbs accounted for 109 of the 161 people indicted by the tribunal.

These numbers speak tellingly about the selective justice of the tribunal, especially in the context of its mandate to establish the truth about the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and bring about reconciliation, she said.

Serge Brammertz, a prosecutor for the court, said reconciliation in the Balkans remains a significant challenge, noting that convicted war criminals continue to be seen by many as heroes, while victims and survivors are ignored and dismissed.

The reality is that there is still no true will within the region to accept the immense wrongdoings of the past and move forward, sadly most of all among the political leadership, he said.
Zimbabwes Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Thursday presented a $5,1 billion national budget in parliament proposing to scrap some provisions of the countrys feared indigenization law in an effort to promote foreign direct investment.

The minister, who was reappointed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to the finance portfolio after he was sacked by former president Robert Mugabe, said the government is also expected to sack at least 3,700 Zanu PF youth working for the government.

In his budget statement for the 2018 fiscal year, Chinamasa told parliament that government has introduced the Finance Bill designed to amend the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act.

He said the move is meant to reboot the nations comatose economy.

The regulations being crafted and set to be introduced in April 2018, are expected to still restrict ownership thresholds in the mining of diamonds and platinum.

INDIGENIZATION THRESHOLD

Accordingly, the proposed amendments will confine the 51/49 indigenisation threshold to only the two minerals, namely diamonds and platinum, in the extractive sector. The 51/49 threshold will not apply to the rest of the extractive sector, nor will it apply to the other sectors of the economy, which will be open to any investor regardless of nationality.

Many foreign investors have over the years expressed concern over the indigenization law, saying it did not protect their investments in Zimbabwe.

He said there will be a reserved sector for Zimbabweans. The Reserved sector is only for Zimbabwean citizens, and for non-Zimbabweans, entry into the Reserved sector will only be by special dispensation granted by Government, if the proposed business creates employment, affords the opportunity for the transfers of skills and technology for the benefit of the people of Zimbabwe, promotes the creation of sustainable value chains and meets the prescribed socially and economically desirable objectives.

EASE OF DOING BUSINESS

He said it is currently not easy for investors to open businesses in Zimbabwe due to some rigid regulations.

Zimbabwes ranking with regards to the ease of doing business remains unacceptably poor, with its ranking only moving from 161 out of 190 countries in 2016 to 159 in 2017. 237. Government is, therefore, seized with the need to implement a much broader array of Ease of Doing Business Reforms.

He said President Mnangagwa wants the country to be in a position of opening up space for local and international investors.

 The president has also pronounced himself over measures to address the ease and cost of doing business. Hence, the thrust of Government will be to make Ease of Doing Business reforms more practical and administratively accessible for actual day to day transaction processes to the ordinary Zimbabwean and foreigner intending to undertake business or investment.

ZANU PF YOUTH

At the same time, Chinamasa said the government will get rid of unqualified youth working in the government who are affiliated with the ruling Zanu PF party.

The Cabinet decision to abolish the Youth Officer posts under the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation & Empowerment and transfer the roles and function to the Ward Development Coordinators in the Ministry of Women, Gender and Community Development is being implemented with immediate effect. This will rationalise the total Youth Officers and Ward Development Coordinators establishment down by 3,739 from 7,269 to 3,530, translating to savings of US$1.6 million per month and US$19.3 million per annum.

The government is also proposing to remove other unqualified and aged civil servants. Furthermore, 528 members of the Public Service without the requisite qualifications in terms of Section 18(4) e (ii) of the Public Service Regulations are being retired. The retirement of the above members will entail payment of a severance package estimated at US$8.7 million.

He commended President Mnangagwa for trimming his government ministers from 27 to 21, saying efforts are underway to get rid of redundant staff through combining some ministries.

PROJECTED GROWTH

Chinamasa said the Zimbabwe economy is on track to realise the projected 3.7 growth rate for 2017, adding that revenues have out-performed targets this year and by year end revenue totals are expected to reach $3.9 billion.

He noted that the economy in 2018 is expected to record significant growth compared to 2017.

The formulation of the 2018 Budget is against the background of projected positive GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth of 3.7% for 2017, against a target of 1.7%, and up from 0.7% during 2016.

Notwithstanding the growth being experienced, the economy faces some strong headwinds and challenges  The global upswing in economic activity, which started in the second half of 2016 is strengthening, and is projected to rise to 3.6% in 2017 and to 3.7 % in 2018.

Chinamasa said agriculture is estimated to grow by 15.9% in 2017, on the back of government coordinated interventions in partnership with the private sector.

In addition, the expanded Command Agriculture Programme, to include soya beans and livestock production, is expected to sustain growth of the sector.

DIPOMATIC MISSIONS

The finance minister noted that the government is expected to reduce diplomatic missions and staff in various nations in order to cut down its expenditure.

It will also reduce the number of people accompanying state officials on foreign trips unlike former president Mugabe who used to travel with family members, Cabinet ministers and bloated security personnel.

The government will allocate $132 million for conducting the 2018 general elections set for 2018.

In terms of ministerial budget allocations, the Ministry of Education received the biggest chunk of the budget.

Chinamasa says the ministry will get at least $905 million in the 2018 financial year.
New legislation proposed Wednesday would prevent companies from keeping sexual harassment complaints from employees in private arbitration, where accusations are kept confidential and companies can influence who adjudicates the case.

The bipartisan bill would allow victims of sexual harassment or gender discrimination in the workplace to take their claims to court instead.

If you have been subjected to sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace, we think you, not the employer, should have the right to choose to go to court, said Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who introduced the bill. No more telling women they have to put up with harassment and stay silent any longer.

In a year of broken silence about sexual harassment, the bill offered a reminder that accusers quest for resolution is often complicated or kept out of reach by legal restrictions beyond their control. Forced-arbitration agreements have been repeatedly cited this year as a barrier for women seeking to name perpetrators of sexual misconduct.

Bustos said that she was inspired to pursue the legislation by a class-action case involving Signet Jewelers, the parent company of Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, Kay Jewelers and Sterling Jewelers, whose workers must sign forced-arbitration agreements as a condition of their employment.

Roughly 250 former Sterling employees filed sworn statements as part of a class-action arbitration case alleging that female workers in the late 1990s and 2000s were routinely groped, underpaid and pressured to cater to their bosses sexual demands in order to stay employed. Sterling has disputed the allegations.

The arbitration was first filed in 2008 by more than a dozen women who accused the company of widespread gender discrimination. The class-action case is still unresolved and now includes 69,000 women who are current and former employees of the company, which operates about 1,500 stores across the United States. One of the original women who brought the case, lawyers involved in the hearing said, died in 2014 as proceedings dragged on without resolution.

Heather Ballou, a class member in the lawsuit and a former Kay employee who said she was pressured into having sex with a district manager promising to help her transfer to a better store, said she was encouraged by the legislation and hoped that it would make it easier for women to break their silence.

[Hundreds allege sex harassment, discrimination at Kay and Jared jewelry company]

Thats the whole reason I didnt come forward and a lot of women havent come forward, Ballou said in an interview. You go to arbitration, and its a black hole of nothing. Why would anyone do that when, in the process of that, you are getting fired, youre ruining your reputation, youre getting blackballed by the industry, youre ruining your life  and nothing comes of it?

David Bouffard, Signets vice president of corporate affairs, said in a statement: We are currently reviewing the legislation and therefore cannot comment further on any specifics. Signet is committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive workplace, and we remain confident that the systems and practices in place for filing grievances are fully compliant with legal requirements.

A trial in the private arbitration is scheduled for next year.

Ballou, who left the company in 2009 and is studying to become a nurse, said it has been difficult to watch the recent months of high-profile sexual-harassment cases, sparked by numerous women accusing movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

While perpetrators in several cases were exposed and quickly vilified, she feels frustrated by the arbitrations private proceedings and long-running limits on her ability to speak openly about the case.

It felt empowering in one hand that we arent the only ones, but it scares me a little bit. All of these celebrities have come out, and it makes me feel like the little people like me are going to get tossed aside, Ballou said.

I didnt have Harvey Weinstein, she added, but I had my district manager, people in power above me, do those things to me.

Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who accused the networks late chairman Roger Ailes of punishing her for rejecting his sexual demands, was prevented by an arbitration agreement from suing the company. Instead, she sued Ailes directly and received a $20 million settlement.

Carlson, speaking alongside lawmakers at the Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, called forced arbitration un-American and a harassers best friend.

A growing number of U.S. companies require new workers to sign employment agreements forcing them to resolve disputes through arbitration, a private legal system in which companies often have the upper hand, labor advocates say.

[Sterling discrimination case highlights differences between arbitration, litigation]

About 56 percent of private-sector nonunion employees, or more than 60 million workers, are subject to forced-arbitration agreements, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

Lawyers and labor advocates say companies use the agreements as a way to prevent workers from joining together in legal action or discussing their cases publicly. Companies and arbitration associations say the private legal system provides a quicker and more efficient way to resolve employee disputes.

[Signet Jewelers CEO, at center of gender-discrimination case, retires for health reasons]

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a co-sponsor of the bill, said he hoped that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and other business-community leaders would speak out against forced-arbitration clauses, which he said provided companies an unfair advantage over employees. It may be good business now, Graham said, but were going to make it bad business.

A Chamber of Commerce representative said: While no senator has yet reached out to the Chamber about this legislation, we will review it carefully. The Chamber will work with anyone to make sure appropriate steps are taken to combat sexual harassment.

A Business Roundtable spokeswoman said the group is "analyzing the legislation closely" and "agrees that workplaces should be free from harassment of any kind."
RETAIL

Its official: Wal-Mart will now be Walmart

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is getting a new name: Walmart.

The change, which will be official in February, is part of a years-long effort by the worlds largest retailer to get customers to think beyond its 11,600 stores. The company has spent billions buying up websites like Jet.com and Bonobos, and is encouraging customers to shop online and through devices like Google Home.

We felt it was best to have a name that was consistent with the idea that you can shop us however you like as a customer, Doug McMillon, the companys president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Roughly 95 percent of Walmarts sales are generated in its stores, but executives say there are signs that is changing. The company has invested heavily in online grocery and same-day delivery programs, and says online sales rose 50 percent in the most recent quarters.

Abha Bhattarai

AUTO INDUSTRY

VW exec sentenced to 7 years in scandal

A Volkswagen senior manager was sentenced Wednesday in federal court to seven years in prison for concealing software used to evade pollution limits on nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles.

Lawyers spent roughly 90 minutes giving arguments about Oliver Schmidts culpability in the scandal. But U.S. District Judge Sean Cox in Detroit sided with prosecutors, calling Schmidt a key conspirator who saw the coverup as an opportunity to climb the corporate ladder.

Schmidt led VWs engineering and environmental office in Michigan from 2012 to 2015. Prosecutors said he misled investigators and destroyed documents.

Associated Press

Also in Business

Luxury goods companies may ban sales of their products on online platforms like Amazon to preserve their aura of exclusivity, the European Union's top court said Wednesday. The Court of Justice ruled in favor of the German branch of luxury cosmetics group Coty, whose brands include Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs, which sought to keep its products from selling on nonauthorized digital sales platforms. The court said Coty's effort "is appropriate to preserve the luxury image of those goods."

American businesses added a robust 190,000 jobs in November, according to a private survey, a sign that hiring is strong enough to reduce an already-low unemployment rate. Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that last month's hiring followed an even larger gain of 235,000 in October. Manufacturers helped drive the increase, adding 40,000 jobs, the largest gain this year, ADP said. Health care added 31,000 positions, and a category that includes restaurants and hotels hired 25,000.

U.S. worker productivity rose 3 percent in the third quarter, the best showing in three years, while labor costs fell for a second straight quarter, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The increase in productivity in the July-September period rose from the 1.5 percent increase in the second quarter and a scant 0.1 percent rise in the first three months of the year. Labor costs fell 0.2 percent after an even bigger 1.2 percent decline in the second quarter.

From news reports

Coming today

8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims.

10 a.m.: Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates.

3 p.m.: Federal Reserve releases consumer credit data for October.
Are disciples of Benjamin Graham throwing in the towel in Asia?

According to Ronald Chan, founder and chief investment officer of Chartwell Capital Ltd., value investors have become powerless in the face of a tidal wave of liquidity. Since January, mutual funds and ETFs have poured $116 billion into Asian equities, with much of that flowing to blue-chips. Receiving particular attention have been the so-called dragon heads, stocks investors believe are likely to benefit from a broad-based economic recovery. Small and medium caps are being left behind.

Even in mainland China, where small growth stocks have typically dominated, the Beautiful 50, a term for the 50 most influential companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, were defying gravity until state-owned Xinhua News Agency called out the exponential rise of liquor maker Kweichow Moutai Co.

All this makes a terrible environment for value funds. One way for them to stay relevant is to mutate and adapt to the new environment, a topic of much discussion at Thursday's annual Asia Value Investor Conference in Hong Kong.

It was a bit surprising to hear Moutai and fellow distiller Wuliangye Yibin Co., whose shares are up 91 percent this year, described as value stocks. The duo trade at just over 16 times earnings, 25 percent cheaper than Diageo Plc.

Another firm highlighted was PC Partner Group Ltd. The Hong Kong-based firm designs and develops video-graphics cards and has caught onto the cryptocurrency craze, helping to send its shares up 57 percent since January. Is that expensive, though? Not if compared with Nvidia Corp., which has risen 77 percent.

Pitting a Chinese high-end liquor brand with a dominant market position against a diversified spirits maker like Diageo, or putting a small-cap stock up against a large one, may not be fair. As I wrote in October, Moutai deserves a valuation discount because of political risk. A 750ml bottle can cost more than $200, well beyond the reach of many ordinary Chinese households. Guizhou, one of China's poorest provinces where Moutai is based, could ask the company to contribute more to local-government revenue. Moutai is state-owned, after all.

Unless you're Elliott Management Corp., with the muscle to stage public battles against powerful conglomerates, smaller funds have no choice but to adapt. One fund manager at the conference talked about his success with Japan's Aichi Electric Co., whose shares have gained 59 percent this year. But because Aichi Electric is a small stock with less than $100,000 in trades each day, it took him two years to accumulate his stake.

Kweichow Moutai shares, YTD

+85%

And what's value without growth? Qingling Motors Co., which produces light-duty trucks in China, seems a good income play with a 7.5 percent dividend yield. Michael Liang, chief investment officer of Foundation Asset Management, however, considers it a prime example of why investors can't just copy and paste value-investing techniques to China. Qingling Motors hasn't seen any top-line growth, so its year-to-date return of 12.4 percent pales next to the spectacular rally of, say, Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. Hard for any fund manager to justify such a position in his or her regular newsletter to investors.

If the Hang Seng Index were to dip below its 50-day moving average, that needn't be too much cause for concern. But when value investors start to capitulate, then it's time to worry.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering Asian markets. She previously wrote on markets for Barron's, following a career as an investment banker, and is a CFA charterholder.

To contact the author of this story: Shuli Ren in Hong Kong at sren38@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net.

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
Stewart McLaurin, 58, is the president of the White House Historical Association, which was founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.

Whats the mission of the White House Historical Association?

A lot of people who have been in Washington a long time know us one-dimensionally. They know us as the White House Christmas ornament people. And as wonderful as that ornament has been to support our work, thats not our mission. Our mission is to provide support to the White House for conservation, restoration and preservation of the state rooms and to acquire art and furnishings for the permanent White House collection. But we also have a mission  and this was important to Mrs. Kennedy  and that is to teach and tell the story of the White House and its history. I love the ornament, but theres a lot of things in life besides the ornament.

The White House is kind of a fortress now, but that wasnt always the case.

The first fence was added by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, and the fences have had an evolution over time to what they are today. Even though security is a priority, its still important that the house is seen and you can walk right up to the fence. The White House visitors office does a terrific job of keeping the White House accessible. About 500,000 people a year have the opportunity to go through it.

Which occupant has caused the most damage?

The most damage? Well, unfortunately, under James Madison is when the British came and burned the house, so you cant get more damage than that. But I think every single president has taken pride in the house and in some way left their mark or contribution.

How much of the White House was built by people who were slaves?

There were enslaved persons who worked on the White House. We dont have a full list of their names because they were hired through their owners, and they were not slaves to the White House. The White House didnt own the slaves. There was a percentage of enslaved workers, but there were also freed African American workers who worked on the house, and there were other immigrant laborers who worked on the house.

Is there any kind of memorial or notice of that in the White House?

Not that Im aware of.

What is a fact about the White House that everyone gets wrong?

I think most people are surprised with how small the footprint of the real estate is. Although it's situated on 18 acres, the house itself is rather small. We think of it as grand because billions of people around the world know that house is a symbol of American freedom and democracy.

Have there ever been efforts to move the White House?

Sure, after the War of 1812 and at other times during the Civil War, when there were concerns about the president's safety. There were efforts to move it up into Rock Creek Park and to Meridian Hill, but those were always resisted.

Whats the most interesting thing youve learned about the White House?

Well, the thing that I love about my job is that I could work here for the rest of my life and not know everything there is to know. So I learn something new each and every day in unexpected ways, whether its something about a work of art or something that happened or about one of the presidents pets. Its not any one thing, but its the magnitude of history that has taken place within the walls of that house.

More Just Asking

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(Illustration by Mikel Jaso)

The Baltimore Art, Antique & Jewelry Show in late August had the air of a flea market that had gone to finishing school. Sure, there were down-home items like a $75 glossy photo of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, signed by ol' Possum himself. But there were also rare Jane Austen first editions, 300-year-old oil paintings and a $5,800 fiberglass rhinoceros that could probably squash your Smart car.

At one end of the giant hall in the Baltimore Convention Center was the booth of New York art dealer Howard Rehs, a specialist in the more traditional strains of 19th- and 20th-century painting. He explained why the golden-framed work behind him depicting a young woman polishing an urn on a table outdoors was worth $210,000. It had to do with the artist, Daniel Ridgway Knight, an American expat academic painter; the subject matter; sale prices for comparable works; and when it was completed. Rehs said he could place a painting within a year or two of when it was made because Ive seen so much.

The study it takes to acquire such knowledge may sound tedious, but that discerning eye is worth more than a cameo on Antiques Roadshow. Each year, bequests and donations of art generate tens of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue. But to be accurately taxed, an artwork needs to be accurately valued, and the owner who has to pay the tax cant be expected to provide the last word. When an artwork is sold outright, the Internal Revenue Service needs no help in determining how much to tax; it has the purchase price and the sale price and it knows how to subtract. (The maximum federal tax rate on profits from the sale of art and collectibles is 28 percent, higher than the 15 to 20 percent for stocks.) Things get trickier, however, when an artwork passes to an heir or is given to a museum. The agency still needs to know, as of the date of death or donation, how much the art is worth, but without a current sale price that figure can be debatable.

So the IRS turns to a secretive, little-known body called the Art Advisory Panel  on which Rehs serves without pay  to figure out the value of works of art. The group, consisting of up to 25 members, includes curators from such well-known institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. They volunteer their valuable time and expertise to help our tax system function fairly for all, says Donna Hansberry, chief of IRS appeals, which handles disputes with taxpayers.

Some art experts welcome sitting on the panel as a patriotic service despite a heavy workload and nonexistent compensation. I think its my obligation, I truly do, as a citizen to give back. Its a kind of community service on the federal level, says works-on-paper specialist David Tunick, the longest-serving member of the panel, now going into his 27th year. But it can also be a chore to serve. Douglas Baxter, president of the international powerhouse Pace Gallery and a panel member from 1998 to 2014, says he enjoyed its nice collegial feeling and the opportunity to speak with people he might not otherwise run into, but he wished theyd had more time to prepare for the meetings. Some people might think its prestigious, he says. And other people might think, Suckaaa! 



Created in 1880 (originally called "The Poet") by Auguste Rodin (born 1840, died 1917) this iconic sculpture now graces parks and gardens around the world as well as bookends and paperweights by the millions. This photo is of my own 1/4 scale replica of this popular statue, shot in my studio with lighting control not possible with outdoor or museum copies of The Thinker. (Illustration by Mikel Jaso)

An IRS official called Rehs out of the blue in 2008 and asked him about serving on the panel. He said he was happy to do it. After a bevy of background checks (obviously, tax delinquents can't be panelists) and a mountain of paperwork, he was ready to start attending the twice yearly meetings  one in New York and one in Washington  that last a day or two.

Cases that go before Rehs and his colleagues reach them one of two ways. Sometimes the owners of an artwork want an estimate of what they owe Uncle Sam before they file their tax returns. Other times, the owners have already filed and are either challenging their tax bill or have been audited by the IRS. These cases are routed first to the IRSs Art Appraisal Services division. That office then decides which ones require the expert eyes of the Art Advisory Panel. The panel generally considers works of art worth at least $50,000.

The panel can accept a taxpayers assessment of a works value or adjust it up or down. As might be expected, recipients of estates, who have to pay taxes, tend to undervalue artworks, while donors, who are looking for a tax deduction, tend to overvalue them. In fiscal year 2016, the panel reviewed more than 500 works. Their total value, according to taxpayers, exceeded half a billion dollars. The panel recommended a net adjustment upward of about $100 million.

To figure out how much artwork is worth, members get piles and piles of appraisals in a carton or two before each meeting, Tunick explains. Some may enlist their gallery assistants to highlight works most relevant to the members expertise and to conduct preliminary research into the sales of comparable works.

The panels meeting room is something of a black box; deliberations are a closely held secret, for the simple reason that tax returns are private. Panelists and IRS employees are forbidden from disclosing the particulars of individual cases. And to keep panelists honest, the documents they receive are carefully redacted. Were not told who the taxpayer is, were not told who the appraiser is, were not told if its donation or for an estate, says Tunick. Its really a well-done methodology that they follow.

Works are considered in alphabetical order by artist, which ensures that multiple works from a single taxpayer are still considered on an individual basis. The panelists with the most expertise in the relevant area take the lead, soon bringing the room into consensus. According to Joseph Bothwell, who from 1978 to 2011 rose through the ranks of Art Appraisal Services,the proceedings move with the speed of an auction. The panel could get through about 600 items in a day, he says.

They rely mostly on reproductions provided by the taxpayer. On rare and especially contentious occasions, a field trip to a residence or warehouse is necessary. Art tax attorney Ralph E. Lerner told me he once invited the panel to see an oil painting whose condition issues didnt show up well in photographs. After seeing the painting up close, the panel reduced its appraisal. Sometimes an in-person viewing can uncover potential fraud. Former Art Appraisal Services head Karen Carolan recalls a case where the taxpayer was seeking a tax deduction, but the panel thought there was something funny about the painting. And when they went to see it, it was actually in two or three pieces, and [the taxpayer] had just pushed it together to take the photograph, Lerner says. The panel disallowed the charitable donation.

Another responsibility of the panel is to suggest new members. The ideal panelist is close enough to the action to know the field, but not so close as to present obvious conflicts of interest. This isnt always easy in a profession where the price of expertise can be measured in air kisses. Depending on the work under consideration, it can be tricky to ensure anonymity. Despite the IRSs best efforts to conceal the identity of the owners, panelists may still recognize them based on what is being appraised. And they may have their own history with those owners, be they collectors, artists or heirs.

You try to be fair, Baxter notes, though hes willing to consider the theoretical bases for bias. Do you like or dislike the work of Jeff Koons? Is he known to be a nice guy or is he known to be a ... He cuts himself off. Are you a dealer who once showed Jeff Koons and he left you for another dealer? In the last case, recusal would clearly be in order. But if you happen to be aware of an artists temperament? The contemporary art world is altogether too cozy a place to avoid such knowledge.



One of the thorniest cases to come before the Art Appraisal Panel involved "Canyon," by Robert Rauschenberg. It features a stuffed bald eagle, which is illegal to sell. (Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The splashiest case to come before the panel in recent years involved the estate of blue-chip art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, whose resume included shows by such cornerstone figures as pop prince Andy Warhol, minimalist mage Donald Judd, performance pioneer Vito Acconci and globally diversified corporate entity Koons. When Sonnabend died in October 2007, there were estate taxes to pay on her personal collection, which included a piece called "Canyon." The work  one of Robert Rauschenberg's "combines"  featured a stuffed bald eagle projecting out from the canvas. At the time, the piece was on long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The panel initially appraised "Canyon" at $15 million. The heirs argued to the IRS it was worth nothing because they could not legally sell it due to the presence of the eagle, which is no longer on the endangered species list but still has the benefit of heavy federal protections. At least two federal laws forbade the sale of the stuffed bird; museums longed to have the work, but auction houses wouldn't touch it. The heirs had three appraisals that supported their estimated value of zero, and they went back to the IRS, which kicked it back to the panel. The panel then actually raised the value to $65 million. In the media, Lerner, the Sonnabend heirs' lawyer, said the panel's appraisal was based on a far-fetched scenario in which the work was smuggled into the arms of some unknown Dr. No. "The IRS Invents a Chinese Billionaire" read the headline in Forbes. (When I asked about Lerner's view of the situation, Bothwell turned cryptic. "I think it's best that I not talk about anything further on that," he said.)

The Sonnabend estate was hardly hurting for cash or unwilling to pay what it owed. Already, it had liquidated enough art to pay $471 million in federal and state taxes. But to an observer untrained in the niceties of tax law, it verged on the Kafkaesque for the IRS to assess $40.9 million in taxes and penalties for Canyon when it was illegal to sell it to settle the bill. In 2012, as part of a deal with the IRS, the Sonnabend family agreed to donate the work to the Museum of Modern Art. No estate taxes would be levied, and no deduction would be claimed for the gift. The eagle had landed.

Baxter shrugs off the issues surrounding the case as arcane, saying, The Rauschenberg was completely unique. I dont know of another work where a bald eagle or ... endangered species was involved. For his part, Rehs wryly dismisses the works precarious legal perch. I dont know. If I owned the piece, what would I do? Take the bird off! he says. Ill donate it to you after. Ill give you the bird after, right?

Despite the occasional dust-up with the panel, Lerner hails its role in administering a part of the tax code that provides an incentive for collectors to share art with the public. If Congress were to repeal the estate tax, Canyon would not be at a museum, he says, but passed down to grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

The Canyon case may be exotic, but it sheds light on countless other negotiations that never become public. And so, the next time youre in a museum, gazing at a masterpiece, consider that the IRSs secretive art panel may have helped to put it there.

Glenn Dixon is a writer in Silver Spring, Md. To comment on this story, email wpmagazine@washpost.com.

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Its been quite a year, and television has seen us through it all  sometimes offering an escape and other times capturing our fractured culture. This list of standout TV episodes highlights both approaches. (Add your favorites in the comments.)



Lena Waithe in the Thanksgiving episode of "Master of None." (Netflix)

Master of None: Thanksgiving

Aziz Ansari and Lena Waithe added to TVs memorable canon of Thanksgiving episodes with this funny, heartwarming installment that followed their characters, Dev and Denise, over holiday dinners with Denises mother (Angela Bassett), grandmother (Venida Evans) and aunt (Kym Whitley).

Thanksgiving shed light on the pairs close bond and chronicled an important milestone in Denises life: coming out to her family. Its a story that could only be told by Ansari and Waithe, who loosely based the episode on her own experience and became the first black woman to win an Emmy for best comedy series writing in the process.

Also consider: Religion.

[Master of None offers a brilliant spin on the Thanksgiving episode]



Anthony Anderson as Andre Johnson in the Lemons episode of ABCs Blackish. (Richard Cartwright/ABC)

Blackish: Lemons

Now in its fourth season, Blackish has tackled a number of serious topics  including police brutality and postpartum depression  without sacrificing its trademark brand of humor. So, it wasnt surprising that the ABC sitcom would join the cascade of shows grappling with Donald Trumps unexpected presidential victory.

The compassionate and entertaining Lemons, which aired a week before Trumps inauguration, dealt with the elephant in the room by presenting multiple perspectives, including the powerful monologue Dre (Anthony Anderson) gives about loving America despite its racist legacy.

Also consider: Juneteenth.

[Blackish dissects Trumps win and finds the humanity in our political discord]



Ron Cephas Jones and Sterling K. Brown in the "Memphis" episode of NBC's "This Is Us." (Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

This Is Us: Memphis

Memphis follows Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and his cancer-stricken biological father, William (Ron Cephas Jones), on a trip to Williams home town. The drama bids William an inevitable and heart-wrenching goodbye, but the episode  and intimate portrait of a hard-won father-son relationship  prepares us for our grief with standout performances by Brown, Cephas Jones and Jermel Nakia, who plays William as a young man. Atlantas Brian Tyree Henry, who guests as Williams estranged cousin Ricky, also performs a soul-stirring musical number that necessitates nearby tissues.

Also consider: A Fathers Advice



Issa Rae, left, and Y'lan Noel in season 2 of "Insecure." (Justina Mintz/HBO)

Insecure: Hella L.A.

A few missteps aside, Issa Raes HBO comedy really came into its own in its second season. The fourth episode, Hella L.A., is the show at its absolute best (not to mention rewatchable). Issa and her ex-boyfriend Lawrence are throwing themselves into the single life  or attempting to, anyway. Lawrence is racially fetishized during an impromptu threesome with two nonblack women he meets at a grocery store. The scene is as subtle as it is scathing.

Meanwhile, Issa and her friends mingle at a party dubbed Kiss-n-Grind, where she spots Daniel, the other point of the love triangle that upended her life in Season 1. The episode is a sharp representation of dating in your 20s. On the surface everyone is living their best single life. In reality, its all an awkward hot mess.

Also consider: Hella Perspective

[In a better world, wed be talking about Insecure as much as we talked about Girls]



Princess Carolyn (voiced by Amy Sedaris) in the "Ruthie" episode of Netflix's "BoJack Horseman." (Netflix)

BoJack Horseman: Ruthie

This animated Netflix comedy, about a depressed horse living among other anthropomorphic animals in a version of Hollywood, somehow explores the depth of human emotion in a way that few other shows do. This Season 4 episode takes the focus largely off BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) and puts the spotlight on his former lover/agent, Princess Carolyn (voiced by Amy Sedaris).

Ruthie refers to Princess Carolyns great-great-great-granddaughter who  in a futuristic time jump  details an awful day in her ancestors life during a presentation to her middle school classmates. Theres a twist at the end, and the reality hits like a poignant punch to the gut.

Also consider: The Old Sugarman Place

[BoJack Horseman returns with its most emotional season yet]



Marque Richardson as Reggie in the Chapter V episode of "Dear White People." (Adam Rose/Netflix)

Dear White People: Chapter V

Justin Simien brilliantly adapted his film directorial debut into a Netflix series and tapped Moonlights Barry Jenkins to helm this emotional episode. It takes place amid increasingly strained race relations at the fictional Winchester University. Reggie (Marque Richardson) agrees to go to a frat party to take his mind off the tension but ends up getting into an altercation when a white friend repeatedly drops the n-word while rapping along to song lyrics.

When campus police arrive to investigate the disturbance, the incident plays out much differently for Reggie than it does for his white classmate. He is asked to show identification proving that he attends the school, despite the chorus of coeds vouching for him. Richardson is outstanding in the episodes final minutes, as Reggie sits against the door of his dorm room, quietly sobbing.

Also consider: Chapter IV

[Netflixs Dear White People is even better than the movie]



Alexis Bledel as Ofglen in the Late episdoe of The Handmaids Tale. (George Kraychyk/Hulu)

The Handmaids Tale: Late

The third episode of Hulus Emmy-winning adaptation of Margaret Atwoods novel weaves several heartbreaking threads. In flashbacks, we see Gileads ominous beginnings as June (Elisabeth Moss), her best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) and other women inexplicably lose their jobs and financial access, giving way to the patriarchal system that eventually enslaves them.

The real star of Late is Alexis Bledel, whose character Ofglen has been taken into custody by the regime. Bledel gives a powerful but largely silent performance since Ofglen spends much of the episode muzzled as she stands trial for her crime  a romantic relationship with another woman. Ofglens distraught screams punctuate the episodes haunting final scene.

Also consider: Offred

[The Handmaids Tale isnt just timely, its essential viewing for our fractured culture]



From left, Judy Davis as Hedda Hopper, Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford and Stanley Tucci as Jack Warner in the You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? episode of Feud: Bette and Joan. (Suzanne Tenner/FX)

Feud: Bette and Joan: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?

This delectable eight-episode drama, which launched Ryan Murphys latest anthology series, focused on the notorious rivalry between screen legends Joan Crawford and Bette Davis but never failed to show their humanity amid the catty remarks and backstabbing. The final episode perfectly encapsulates this balance, showing Bette and Joans decidedly less glamorous lives, a decade removed from the filming of their 1962 cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon bring their A-game as Crawford and Davis, respectively, in the episodes most ambitious scene. A dying Crawford imagines attending a dinner party with gossip queen Hedda Hopper, studio exec Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci) and her longtime nemesis, with whom she finally makes peace. The reveal that its a complete figment is both cathartic and cruel.

Also consider: And the Winner Is . . .

[FXs Feud: Bette and Joan: Another total knockdown, drag-out hit from Ryan Murphy]



Nicole Kidman in the "You Get What You Need" episode of HBO's "Big Little Lies." (Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/HBO)

Big Little Lies: You Get What You Need

Its hard to pick just one episode from this consistently good miniseries starring (and produced by) Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. But Im going with the finale, which brought the murder mystery to a thrilling and satisfying end. The episode takes place at a ritzy school fundraiser, where the major players are dressed up as various iterations of Elvis and Audrey Hepburn.

The ending is just open-ended enough to make us wonder what happens next, but, no, that doesnt mean the show needs a second season.

Also consider: Once Bitten

[How HBOs Big Little Lies transcends the usual rich-mommies drama]



Ted Danson in the "Michael's Gambit" episode of NBC's "The Good Place." (Vivian Zink/NBC)

The Good Place: Michaels Gambit

Michael Schurs afterlife comedy gave us one of the best plot twists of the year in its Season 1 finale, which we wont spoil here. Instead, well praise the shows ensemble cast  led by Kristen Bell, who plays unlikely Good Place resident Eleanor Shellstrop, and Ted Danson, who plays immortal architect Michael.

Michaels Gambit is charming, funny and daring. If you werent hooked on the series before, you will be after watching it.

Also consider: Everything Is Great!


Danish company LuggageHero is now offering short-term luggage storage in New York City, connecting travelers with more than 100 businesses that offer the service. (IR_Stone/Getty Images)

Pulling a suitcase through the overstuffed sidewalks of New York City can feel like searching for a berth in an urban game of Frogger. A Danish company called LuggageHero is now offering travelers a short-term berth by connecting them with more than 100 city businesses that offer baggage storage for a small fee.

LuggageHero founder and chief executive Jannik Lawaetz says that the concept was inspired by that mother of invention  necessity  and Airbnb. A couple of years ago, he and his girlfriend rented an apartment in Barcelona via the home-share service. They had a later flight on their day of departure and wanted to continue exploring the city, but didn't want to lug their suitcases around. Had they been staying in a hotel, they could have left bags at the reception desk, but at a vacation rental, that's rarely an option. Their host was unable to store anything because a new guest was coming and the apartment needed to be cleaned. He suggested that they should take the bags to a corner shop, as other guests had done, and request to pick them up later.

Lawaetz felt a little goofy asking the shopkeeper for the favor, but it was worth it for a day without lugging luggage. He took a photograph of the bags at the shop (just in case) and, six hours later, returned and collected them, leaving a tip as thanks. Not long after, Lawaetz put his own Copenhagen apartment up on Airbnb while he was traveling and noticed a trend: Nearly everyone who stayed at his place requested to either drop their luggage off early or pick it up late. I was really desperate trying to help these people, and I was really flexible, but it kind of ruined my day to be that flexible, he says.

[Ready to go it alone? Tips for easing into solo travel.]

His mind went back to the shop in Barcelona. He began talking to area businesses and building a structured luggage-storage network in Denmarks capital. LuggageHero launched last year in Copenhagen, where it has a web of more than 50 businesses. Soon, it expanded to London, where it works with nearly 100 enterprises. The New York City launch added 108 additional businesses when it went live Dec. 1. Drop-off points include pubs, coffee shops, hotels, cafes, shoe stores, liquor stores, bicycle rental locations and even, yes, a luggage store.



LuggageHero founder and chief executive Jannik Lawaetz says the concept of offering luggage storage was inspired by a trip to Barcelona and his experiences renting his own apartment via Airbnb. (LuggageHero.com)

To reserve a storage spot, users visit the LuggageHero website and enter an address. Similar to the Airbnb setup, they can see photos of the location and user reviews, and can reserve a spot online. (That reservation can be canceled at any time with no charge.) Upon arrival, the bag is bound with a protective seal and stored. For the first month in New York City, the cost will be $1 per hour per bag as a promotional rate; it will rise to $2 per hour per bag, with a maximum fee of $15 per day. Each bag is insured up to $2,000. Lawaetz says that he is looking into other U.S. cities and plans to continue expanding.

Not all cities are a logical fit for the service. To be useful, there ought to be a walkable city center, a large supply of vacation-rental options (in New York City, Airbnb lists about 50,000 units) and reliable public transportation  otherwise your rental cars trunk can serve the purpose just fine. That could explain why its easier to find luggage-storage networks in major European cities than in the United States, although LuggageHero is far from the lone option. Vertoe has offered a similar service in New York City since 2016, and lists 35 locations with rates starting at $5.95 per bag. Rome-based BAGBNB works with a network of more than 20 businesses in New York City, and is also testing the waters in other American cities, including Chicago and San Francisco. With that service, storage costs $6 per bag per day and bags are insured for up to $200.

BAGBNBs highest concentration of storage locations is in Italy, numbering more than 200 spots in more than a dozen cities, and it also has a hold in a number of other major cities including London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Budapest, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Lisbon and Porto, Portugal.

BAGBNB chief executive Giacomo Piva is quick to say that its not just travelers who benefit from the service. The businesses, which get a portion of the storage fee, also gain access to a new audience looking for local experiences.

Around 70 percent of BAGBNB customers end up buying something in these venues, he says. If a business owner is smart, they are easy to convert to their customers.

Silver is a writer based in Chicago. Find her on Twitter: @K8Silver.


The Foyer at Claridges Hotel has been hosting afternoon tea for 150 years on striped china in its signature color palette of sea green and white. (Nancy Nathan/For The Washington Post)

The Duchess of Bedford was hungry. It had been hours since the lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria had eaten breakfast at Belvoir Castle, and dinner  as always  would be served at 8. What was a famished functionary to do? She called for tea and a light repast to be served in her chambers, and the enduring English custom of afternoon tea soon became the rage.

What could be more perfect for the traveler than a relaxing pause (anytime from 11:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m., depending on the tea salon) with enough sandwiches, scones and pastries to substitute for lunch or dinner?

During a recent two weeks in London, I was by myself; tea for one just hit the spot. I reserved months ahead and wove afternoon teas through my stay as a ribbon of gloriously relaxed interludes.

Once again, I was reminded that its true that you get what you pay for. Although every one of my teas was superb, some were even more so, and the most expensive ones were at the top. Generally, afternoon tea at a lovely place like Kensington Palaces Orangery will cost close to $40, and the very best will cost about twice that.



The first course at Claridges is a variety of tea sandwiches, including Cotswold roast chicken, Scottish salmon and Clarence Court duck egg salad. (Nancy Nathan/For The Washington Post)

My favorite was, indeed, among the most expensive, at about $79. The Foyer at Claridges has been hosting afternoon tea for 150 years, and certainly has it perfected.

The high-ceilinged tearoom is all cozy and colorful in its signature Claridges sea-green and white, from the beautiful carpet and striped china to the cushy upholstered tub chairs and pillows. A gorgeously sculptured, twisted and knotted glass chandelier hangs over the towering centerpiece of green and white flowers.

The pianist and cellist were playing Cheek to Cheek as I was ushered to a round, white-clothed table with a bouquet in the center. My waiter, in a crisp, white jacket and Claridges green bow tie, presented the menus of teas and delectables with a flourish.

Let me tell you how we make the perfect cup, he said, and assured me that he would return with a second cup if I decided to switch from Assam. I settled in to people-watch. As the piano and cello played on, I surveyed couples of several vintages: a group of elegant women in hijabs, a mother and young daughter with a big bow in her hair.

Perfect little tea sandwiches came quickly, lined up like crop rows  as they were at each of the tea spots I tried. Claridges version of the usual sandwich varieties are the best. Their Cotswold roast chicken, layered with asparagus and avocado in creme fraiche on rye, and the Scottish salmon, with dill and rock samphire mayonnaise on malt bread, are superb.

I tried to pace myself, knowing from experience  this was the fifth of the eight afternoon teas during my stay  that the scones and pastries were still ahead. By now, the duos music and the tea I had chosen had me in dreamland.

As with nearly all of the tea spots, Claridges serves plain and raisin scones with clotted cream and jam (including its secret recipe for Marco Polo gelee, a variation on strawberry jam). Many places also offer lemon curd. All you can eat  if you dare.

Although my waiter never stopped trying to convince me to switch teas, he kept bringing fresh pots of Assam. Like the other high-end spots I tried, Claridges tea menu recommends different varieties for different dishes, like wine pairings.

The piano and cello were on to Tea for Two and I was sinking back into my comfy chair, loving the scene.



Afternoon tea at the Thames Foyer at the Savoy Hotel, alongside a glass cupola that dates to 1904. (Nancy Nathan/For The Washington Post)

Nearby, on one side, was a group of six Americans talking politics. On the other, three women speaking Arabic. All very hushed. Not a jarring sound to be heard. Gorgeous.

I rallied as my waiter presented a platter of pastries that included the lightest strawberry cream tart with tiny streusel crumbles, the lightest lime-cream macaroon and the lightest chocolate cream with caramel on a crispy bottom. And finally, I took his advice to try an infusion to accompany the desserts and enjoyed a light lemon grass herbal tea.



Afternoon tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace is a convenient stop while touring the palace or shopping on nearby Portobello Road. (Nancy Nathan/For The Washington Post)

It was 6:30 p.m., and the lights dimmed as a bass took the cellos place for There Will Never Be Another You. There could never be another tea like this one, for sure.

None of the afternoon tea spots rushed me. I spent an hour and a half to two hours at each. And the hosts and waiters didnt bat an eyelash about giving a onesome a nice perch from which to savor the experience.

Here are some high points of the other afternoon teas during my two-week survey.

Overall runner-up: The Savoy Hotel, where the scones are supremely soft and doughy, better than Claridge's, and the setting gorgeous, with its 1904 glass cupola.

Best for an intimate, quiet setting: Brown's Hotel, where the tearoom is oak-paneled and low-ceilinged. Top hint: a fromage blanc lime and ginger tart.

Best if you prefer stylish dress and a strict men's dress code: The Ritz Hotel, the only one I visited that is still requiring a coat and tie for men.

Best for a view: Aqua Shard, on the 31st floor of Britain's tallest skyscraper, where the glass-walled restaurant is contemporary, you can see for miles up and down the Thames and the food is great.

Best for a world-class, encyclopedic selection of teas: The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at Fortnum & Mason, grocer to the queen.

Best for quicker, less expensive teas (three-way tie): The Wolseley, which seems to host more London ladies for tea; the Orangery at Kensington Palace, noisier, with slate floors and where kids seem more commonplace; the Portrait, atop the National Portrait Gallery, convenient at Trafalgar Square.

Nathan is a writer based in Bethesda, Md.

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Patrons stand in line at the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. Aeromexico is offering sale fares for travel through March 15. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)

This weeks best travel bargains around the globe.

Land

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Snowmass ski resort in Colorado is selling lift ticket s for the same price as on opening day. To score the 1967 price of $6.50, book at least one night at a Stay Aspen Snowmass property. Prices vary. For example, a Viceroy Snowmass studio that sleeps two costs $559 per night, with taxes. Valid only on Dec. 15. Ski tickets normally start at $155. In addition, several bars and restaurants are offering $19.67 and $50 prix-fixe menus. Info: stayaspensnowmass.com/specials/celebrate-snowmass-50th-anniversary.

The Emerson Resort & Spa, in New York's Catskills, has winter packages with a free third night, spa credit and discounted lift tickets. The Ski, Spa & Stay Midweek starts at $595 for three nights for two guests and includes a free third night, $100 spa credit, discounted Belleayre lift ticket vouchers for $32 each ($56 if purchased at ski resort), Hunter lift ticket vouchers for $50 each (normally $75) and taxes. Valid Sunday-Thursday as long as the ski mountains are open. The Ski, Spa & Stay Weekends deal starts at $540, a savings of 20 percent, and includes two nights' lodging, $100 spa voucher, Belleayre lift ticket for $47 (vs. $68), Hunter lift ticket for $64 (vs. $85) and taxes. Stay Friday-Saturday through December. Blackout holiday dates apply. Info: 845-688-2828, emersonresort.com.

Ski resorts in 19 states are offering special deals in January to celebrate Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month. For example, on every Tuesday, Jack Frost/Big Boulder in Blakeslee, Pa., is offering a Learn to Ski/Ride Package for participants ages 13 and older for $25. The package, which includes lesson, equipment rental and beginner lift ticket, usually is $80. Info: skiandsnowboardmonth.org/special-programs/special-offers.

Sea

Paul Gauguin Cruises is offering shipboard credits of up to $500 for select staterooms on its 2018 and 2019 South Pacific sailings. For example, a category C or D stateroom on a seven-night Tahiti & Society Islands cruise qualifies for a $250 credit; a category B or above stateroom on a 10-night Society Islands & Tuamotus voyage receives $500. Prices vary. For example, a balcony stateroom on the seven-night Tahiti & Society Islands cruise departing May 12 starts at $7,195 per person double (plus $139 port charges); price includes round-trip airfare from Los Angeles. Book by Dec. 31. Info: 800-848-6172, pgcruises.com/BGE2017.

Air

Aeromexico has sale fares from Washington Dulles to Mexico City starting at $406 round trip. Travel through March 15. Other airlines are matching. Seven-day minimum stay required. Book by Dec. 10 at aeromexico.com.

Alaska Airlines has a sale on flights from Washington to the West Coast. For example, round-trip air from Reagan National to Los Angeles starts at $276; air from Washington Dulles to Seattle starts at $316, including taxes. Book by Dec. 11 at alaskaair.com; 21-day advance purchase required. Travel Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays from Jan. 9-Feb. 14. Other airlines are matching.

Package

Monograms is discounting four March departures of a six-night trip to Italy by more than $400 per person. The package now starts at $1,699 per person double and includes round-trip air from Washington to Rome, with return from Venice; two nights at NH Collection Giustiniano in Rome; two nights at the Athenaeum Personal Hotel in Rome; two nights at Hotel Abbazia in Venice; high-speed train from Rome to Florence and from Florence to Venice; breakfasts; several tours; airport transfers; and taxes. Book by Dec. 31. Info: 866-270-9841, www.monograms.com/Booking/Monograms/Wanderlist.aspx.

Carol Sottili, Andrea Sachs

Prices were verified at press time Thursday, but deals sell out and availability is not guaranteed. Some restrictions may apply.
Demonstrators are seen through a banner with an image of the U.S. Capitol as they take part in the Our Immigrant Communities rally at Upper Senate Park on Wednesday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Nearly 200 protesters were arrested Wednesday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol after thousands gathered to demand legislation protecting young, undocumented immigrants whose work permits are being revoked by the Trump administration.

Those arrested after refusing to disperse included at least two lawmakers from Montgomery County: County Council President Hans Riemer (D-At Large) and state Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery). State Del. Jimmy Tarlau (D-Prince George's) and Mount Rainier Councilwoman Celina Benitez were also arrested.

Coordinated by local and national immigrant rights groups, the protest was the latest effort to pressure U.S. lawmakers to find a way to replace Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that allowed some 690,000 immigrants brought to this country as children to receive two-year renewal work permits and shielded them from deportation.

The work permits will expire starting March 5.

In the House and Senate, at least four pieces of legislation have been proposed that could protect the "dreamers" from deportation and allow them to remain in this country permanently. But lawmakers are divided over tactics and substance, including whether to include tougher border protection and other enforcement as part of any bill that is approved. An unprecedented 35 members of the House GOP caucus spoke out Tuesday to urge legislative action by the end of the year.



Christian Mijango, 19, joins the Our Immigrant Communities rally at Upper Senate Park on Wednesday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Hoisting signs, raising their fists and chanting in unison, demonstrators on Wednesday denounced President Trumps immigration policies and Congresss sluggishness in addressing the DACA repeal.

Speakers  including DACA recipients, members of Congress and community leaders  called on lawmakers to reject what they called the administrations hostility to immigrant groups. Riemer said it was an urgent local issue because of the thousands of DACA recipients who live in Montgomery, Marylands most populous jurisdiction.

Theres a lot of people living in Montgomery County who really couldnt join the protest or get arrested for fear of their status, Riemer said. I felt like those of us who can be arrested without fear of deportation need to stand up and have a voice for people.

Karina Ruiz, 33, traveled from Phoenix to join the rally. Ruiz emigrated from Mexico City in 1999 at age 15 and has since had three children, all of them American citizens born in the United States.

The day after Trumps election, Ruiz said, her children  ages 5 to 15  asked her whether she was going to be sent back to Mexico. Her DACA status expires in one year.

Theyre at an age when they still need me, Ruiz said.

Members of Congress who spoke included Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)  both of whom were arrested around 2 p.m.  as well as Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.).

Event organizers said they arranged with U.S. Capitol Police in advance that the roughly 200 protesters who refused to leave the Capitol steps would not be detained but would pay a $50 fee.

Although protesters focused mostly on protecting DACA recipients and other immigrants with temporary protected status that could be revoked by the administration, they also used the moment to call attention to other administration policies they say discriminate against immigrants and refugees.

Specifically, demonstrators decried Trump's travel ban  which the Supreme Court said this week could be fully enforced while legal challenges continue  and policies restricting the number of refugees who can enter the United States.

History is going to judge us on this issue, Harris yelled to the crowd. History will judge where you stood at this moment in time.
THE REGION

Bald eagle has lead poisoning

Animal experts could tell there was something off with the adult bald eagle when it was brought in to City Wildlife, a rehabilitation center in Northwest Washington.

The bird wasnt flying and wasnt using its legs properly. It was also feisty.

All signs, experts said, pointed to lead poisoning, and a blood test confirmed that the eagle had high levels of lead, said Paula Goldberg, executive director of City Wildlife.

There was clearly something wrong with the bald eagle, Goldberg said. It was found by an officer with the Maryland Natural Resources Police in Nanjemoy, in Southern Maryland.

Raptors are susceptible to lead poisoning because they often eat dead animals that have been hunted with ammunition that contains lead. Goldberg said she thinks the eagle will live, and her staff is transferring it to a wildlife refuge center for further care.

 Dana Hedgpeth

MARYLAND

Frosh endorses Baker in bid for governor

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh on Wednesday became the second high-profile Democrat from Montgomery County to endorse Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III in his bid for Maryland governor.

"Just look at what he did in Prince George's County, and I think it tells you what he can do for the state," Frosh said of Baker in a video released by the campaign. "When he took office, the county was struggling. Crime was up, foreclosures were at a record high, and the county was engulfed in a scandal. The county is now thriving."

Frosh's endorsement follows that of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who announced his support of Baker (D) last month. The endorsements are expected to boost Baker's name recognition across the state before the crowded June 26 primary and help Baker solidify his profile in voter-rich Montgomery County.

They also could be a blow to state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D), the only gubernatorial candidate from Montgomery.

 Ovetta Wiggins

Montgomery man, 28, dies after truck crash

A 28-year-old man died Wednesday morning after his pickup truck crashed into another pickup along Georgia Avenue in Aspen Hill, officials said.

The crash prompted police to close part of Georgia Avenue during the morning rush hour.

Montgomery County police said Mario Adalberto Montoya Flores of Gaithersburg died after the pickups collided just before 2 a.m. at Georgia and Hewitt avenues.

Police said Flores and the driver of the other pickup were taken to a hospital, where Flores died. The driver of the Toyota suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, officials said.

 Dana Hedgpeth

VIRGINIA

State panel postpones power lines decision

The Virginia State Corporation Commission will hold new hearings on a Dominion Energy proposal for power lines in Prince William County, postponing a decision on a project opposed by nearby residents for nearly two years.

Dominion wants to install 230,000-volt lines between Haymarket and Gainesville to serve a computer data center complex.

The commission earlier ruled the route could go through a historic African American enclave.

After officials refused to grant permission for the utility to use county-owned land, Dominion said the route was no longer feasible.

A hearing examiner will take new testimony from Dominion and groups opposed to the project, then submit a report to the commission so it can make its decision.
A man died after he was found injured on a sidewalk Wednesday night in Southwest Washingtons Bellevue neighborhood, according to D.C. police.

The incident occurred shortly before 11 p.m. in the first block of Forrester Street SW, near the southern tip of the District close to the Maryland line, in front of a strip of apartment buildings.

Police said they had not been able to identify the victim as of Thursday morning. He died a short time after arriving at an area hospital, police said.

Police were called to the block to assist a man lying unconscious on a street. A police report says he had a puncture wound to the chest, but it was unclear if he had been shot or was injured in another way.

A cause of death is pending an autopsy later Thursday.
Father Aloysius H. Schmitt, who was aboard the USS Oklahoma when it sank during the attack on Pearl Harbor. His body was never found, but his prayer book and chalice were. (N/A)

Seventy-six years after he died at Pearl Harbor, a Navy chaplain who helped sailors escape from a sinking battleship is scheduled to be honored with the Silver Star medal Thursday in a ceremony at his alma mater in Iowa.

Lt. j.g. Aloysius H. Schmitt, a Catholic priest from St. Lucas, Iowa, will posthumously receive the third-highest decoration for valor in combat during a ceremony at Loras College, in Dubuque.

The Navys chief of chaplains, Rear Adm. Margaret Kibben, will present the medal to family members during a ceremony on the campus

Schmitt was buried in a special crypt there after his remains were identified last year by experts with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

He had been aboard the USS Oklahoma when it was torpedoed and capsized during the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. His remains were not accounted for at first, because the bodies of most of the sailors and Marines recovered from the ship were too jumbled and decomposed to be identified.



The USS Oklahoma was sunk by several bombs and torpedoes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A total of 429 crew died when the ship capsized. (National Archives and Records Administration)

[Identifying the dead from a sunken Pearl Harbor battleship]

Father Schmitt, 32, had just celebrated Mass that Sunday morning when the Oklahoma was hit by at least nine Japanese torpedoes.

The battleship, with its complement of 1,300, quickly rolled over in 50 feet of water, trapping hundreds of men below decks.

Thirty-two were saved by rescue crews who heard them banging for help, cut into the hull and made their way through a maze of darkened, flooded compartments to reach them.

Others managed to escape by swimming underwater to find their way out. Some trapped sailors tried to stem the rushing water with rags and even the board from a game. One distraught man tried to drown himself.

A few managed to escape through portholes  saved by brave comrades such as Schmitt, who is said to have helped as many as 12 sailors get out of a small compartment.

In 1942, he was honored with the noncombat Navy and Marine Corps Medal. But after recent appeals by supporters and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the Navy conducted a review and in October upgraded the medal to the combat award.

The citation details his bravery.

When the ship capsized, he and other members of the crew, became trapped in a compartment where only a small porthole provided outlet for escape.

With unselfish disregard for his own plight, he assisted his shipmates through the aperture. When they in turn were in the process of rescuing him, his body became tightly wedged in the narrow opening.

Realizing that other men had come into the compartment seeking a way out, [he] . . . insisted he be pushed back into the ship so the others might escape. Calmly urging them on with . . . his blessing, he remained behind while his shipmates crawled out to safety. In so doing, he gallantly gave up his life for his country.

The Oklahomas loss of life  a total of 429 sailors and Marines  was second only to the 1,100 lost on the USS Arizona. The attack at Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II.

Most of the Oklahomas dead were found in the wreckage during the months-long salvage operation and were buried as unknowns in a cemetery in Hawaii.

In 2015, the Pentagon exhumed the remains of what are believed to be 388 of them. With the help of enhanced technology and techniques, experts have been gradually making identifications. Schmitt was identified with the help of DNA retrieved from a skull bone and matched with that of a relative. Last week, the DPAA announced that it had identified its 100th person from the Oklahoma.

Its been 76 years, Steve Sloan, a great-nephew of Schmitts, said Wednesday from Dubuque. Its pretty overwhelming.

As for Father Al, Sloan said, I suspect he wouldnt want any of this attention. . . . He was a common guy . . . an eastern Iowa farm boy.
Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov speaks at a rally in Moscow in 2009. He was gunned down in February 2015 while walking across a heavily guarded bridge in front of the Kremlin. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

Russian dissidents urged the D.C. Council on Wednesday to rename the street in front of the Russian Embassy to honor a prominent opposition leader assassinated in Moscow.

They said the symbolic renaming of the street for Boris Nemtsov, who was slain in 2015, would send a strong signal to the world that the United States stands for democracy and freedom.

The current Russian political regime wants to eradicate the memory of my father, since it believes  correctly  that symbols are important and can potentially facilitate and inspire change, said Nemtsovs daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova, who flew from Germany to testify before the D.C. Council.

The legislation, introduced in October, would designate Wisconsin Avenue NW between Edmunds and Davis streets as Boris Nemtsov Plaza. The name would appear beneath the existing Wisconsin Avenue street sign, and addresses on that block would not change.

The Russian Embassy does not have a say in whether the street name is changed.

[D.C. leaders want to rename the street in front of the Russian Embassy after an assassinated, anti-Putin dissident]

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who co-sponsored the bill, said he expects the council to approve the legislation early next year. But if approved, it could trigger concerns in the White House and on Capitol Hill, which both have the power to quash local D.C. laws.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) originally co-sponsored Senate legislation to rename the street in February, with bipartisan support from eight other senators, including Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). The legislation was blocked, and, according to council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), Rubio and Coons met with city leaders about passing the bill in the D.C. Council.

Cheh said she believes in the symbolism of the legislation and thinks local laws should pass through local chambers, not Congress. She said the timing of the legislation is unrelated to current U.S. politics surrounding Russia or the 2016 election.

We are the nations capital, and we celebrate the principles of democratic governance, she said.

Nemtsov was elected to regional positions in the Russian government during the 1990s and later became deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin. When President Vladimir Putin rose to power, Nemtsov became an outspoken and prominent critic, amassing a large following. He was gunned down in February 2015 while walking across a heavily guarded bridge in front of the Kremlin.

Five people were convicted of being paid to kill Nemtsov, although the person who paid them never was identified. Nemtsovs family has criticized the trial.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and an outspoken Putin critic, testified that supporters of Nemtsov have tried to push for plaques and memorials in Russia in his honor but with no success. Kara-Murza said supporters often leave flowers for Nemtsov where he was gunned down, but then government workers throw them away at night.

Kara-Murza brought his children to the hearing, including his young daughter, who was Nemtsovs goddaughter.

The [street sign] is also a message and a reminder to Russian democrats that our fight is not ignored or forgotten, and to Americans that Russia is not only about Putins autocracy, and that there are honorable Russians, like Boris Nemtsov, who are standing up for dignity and justice, Kara-Murza said.

A District Department of Transportation official said it would take three to four weeks to create and install the signage.

About a half-dozen people spoke Wednesday in favor of changing the street name. D.C. resident Jeremy Bigwood was the lone person who spoke in opposition to the legislation, although Mendelson said he has received emails asking him to oppose the bill from those who say there is no evidence that Putin or his supporters are connected to Nemtsovs killing.

This bill is a bad idea, said Bigwood, a freelance archival researcher. This will look like Washington, D.C., is sticking up a middle finger to the Russian Embassy.

The Senate and the D.C. Council have used street names in the past as a way to rebuke the government of a nearby embassy. In 1984, the Senate renamed the street in front of the previous Russian Embassy on 16th Street NW after Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov.

And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is trying to rename the street outside the Chinese Embassy after Liu Xiaobo, a pro-democracy dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner who died this year in a Chinese prison. Cruz pushed a bill through the Senate in 2016, but President Barack Obama said he would veto it, and the bill died.

The D.C. Council plans to vote on the new bill, which requires two votes, Dec. 19 and Jan. 10. In that final action, council members will vote concurrently on an identical emergency version of the bill, speeding up the legislative process to allow for signage in time for the third anniversary of Nemtsovs death Feb. 27.

Emergency resolutions are good for 90 days and avoid a 30-day congressional review process. The permanent legislation still would have to go through the review process.
Republican Senatorial candidate Corey Stewart holds a news conference Nov. 8 to give his views of the 2017 Virginia elections. Virginia GOP leaders are trying to find alternative candidates to Stewart. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

As Virginia Republicans gather Friday for their annual retreat, party leaders are alarmed at the possibility of fielding Corey Stewart as next years U.S. Senate nominee and, with help from the national GOP, they are maneuvering to recruit someone else to be the face of the party.

Stewart, who narrowly lost the GOP nomination for governor in June on a platform of Trumpism and what he called Confederate heritage, has promised a vicious campaign in 2018 against Sen. Tim Kaine (D), a popular former governor who is seeking a second term in a state that he helped Hillary Clinton carry by five points as her running mate in the 2016 presidential election.

[After near miss in governors race, Stewart promises vicious campaign against Kaine]

Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, recently summoned former governor James S. Gilmore III to Washington to ask him to run, while Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) met with Del. Nick Freitas (Culpeper) to advise him on a likely campaign.

Stewart dismissed national Republicans working against him as Mitch McConnells bozos, referring to the Senate majority leader.

Republicans of all stripes will collide this weekend at the state GOPs mountain retreat  dubbed the Advance  where activists will regroup after a bruising nine-point loss in last months governors race and an unexpected shellacking in House of Delegates contests.

Republicans retain power in the lower chamber by a hair. They hold a two-seat majority, with recounts scheduled in three races and expected in a fourth.

For many party leaders, the message from voters was clear: A Republican who cant appeal to all wings of the party as well as independents has no chance in a state where polls show Democrats are so unhappy with President Trump that theyll punish anyone with an R next to their name.

State GOP Chairman John Whitbeck plans a closed-door session at the retreat to discuss how to recover from Novembers devastating losses, a repeat of a similar all-day event he held for invited activists and elected officials on Dec. 2.

Im not going to sugarcoat it, he said on WAMU radio last week. It was bad  it was a really bad loss for us, something we need to learn from very, very quickly.

He said it would be foolish not to realize that the party needs a better message, particularly in Northern Virginia and parts of Richmond.

Besides nominating the strongest possible candidate to face Kaine, the party must defend seven congressional seats.

Republicans have not won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009  a fact not lost on Bill Bolling, a former Republican lieutenant governor and longtime critic of the partys rapid move to the right.

At some point, the GOP has to begin the process of repairing its image, he said, and theyre not going to do that with candidates like Corey Stewart.

The criticism only emboldens Stewart, who boasted that his style will turn out voters.

They keep nominating moderate, establishment losers, and they dont want me because they think Im too conservative to win in Northern Virginia, said Stewart, who is serving his fourth term on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors. But the irony is, Im the only one whos been able to win in Northern Virginia.

Ed Gillespie, who narrowly won the GOP nomination for governor this year and went on to lose to Democrat Ralph Northam by a wide margin, could have beaten Northam if he had fully embraced Trump, Stewart said. The president tweeted a similar message on election night before all the votes had even been counted.

The party, the grass roots  everybody needs to coalesce around the only serious, Trumpesque, populist conservative candidate to take down Tim Kaine, said Jack Morgan, Trumps Southwest Virginia field director and a political consultant.

During the gubernatorial primary, Stewart gave away an assault-style rifle, pledged to hunt down illegal immigrants and led an early protest in front of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, which later became the site of a violent demonstration of white nationalists that stunned the nation and left three dead, including two state troopers killed in a helicopter crash.

If Stewart becomes the nominee, it says that the Republican Party in Virginia hasnt adjusted to the reality of Virginia today, said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Donald Trump is very unpopular in Virginia.

Election exit polls showed 57 percent of Virginia voters disapproved of Trump, 40 percent approved.

The nomination of Stewart, who Skelley said has embraced a populist, neo-Confederate approach, would also give national Democrats fodder to hammer the GOP and could have a cascading effect down the ballot.

[After Virginia blowout, Comstocks road to reelection grows steeper]

Nobody can question that Corey Stewart has a strong base and that he is very, very effective at messaging and social media, said Martha Boneta, an activist and owner of Liberty Farm in Fauquier County. Hes not afraid to ruffle feathers.

But Republicans need a candidate who can unite voters, not divide them, she said.

I just dont think Corey appeals to a broad enough base of voters, said Mark Hile, who with his wife, Anita, helped found the Henrico Tea Party.

Boneta and Hile both like Freitas, a two-term delegate and former head of the Culpeper GOP who served 11 years active duty in the military and two tours in Iraq.

Stewart has been lining up support from some leading figures in the Trump movement. Former Trump chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon declared himself a fan of Stewart, and earlier this week, Stewart won the endorsement of Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University.

[Bannon credits Stewart for pushing Gillespie toward Trump]

But the expected entry into the race of evangelical pastor E.W. Jackson complicates Stewarts path to the nomination, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and Trumps Virginia campaign chair after Stewart was fired from the post for being too extreme.

[E.W. Jackson is running for U.S. Senate, aide says]

E.W. Jackson is Corey Stewarts biggest nightmare, he said. The day after he gets in the race, almost the entire Republican evangelical base will move from Stewart to Jackson almost overnight. And that becomes an issue. Therein lies Freitass path to victory.

Waverly Woods, a Virginia Beach activist and Stewart supporter, said she resents the anybody-but-Stewart sentiment among some party leaders.

The typical, usual never-Trumpers, never-Corey Stewarts are the ones who are pumping him [Freitas] to run, she said. I like Nick Freitas. [But] hes not running to beat Tim Kaine. Hes running to beat Corey Stewart.

Freitas, who has met with Paul and Lee to seek advice, declined to comment on speculation that hes the alternative to Stewart. I dont like the fact that politics has devolved into these various personalities battling each other. I really think it should be about ideas, he said.

[Gilmore raises national profile, wont rule out 2016 presidential bid]

Gardner, the NRSC chair, asked Gilmore to run, fearful that having Stewart at the top of the ticket would make it harder for GOP congressional incumbents to hold onto their seats, according to two Republicans familiar with the discussions and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.

Gilmore, who was governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002 and has been flirting with a Senate bid for months, confirmed that he recently met with Gardner. He said that if he decides to run, his goal will be not merely to win the nomination, but to beat Kaine.

I know what it takes to win, and its not an amateur matter, he said.

National party leaders say:  We dont care if we can beat Kaine or not. [Stewart is] an embarrassment,  said one Republican familiar with the thinking at the NRSC.

Stewart said any effort to nudge him out will just help him with voters angry with the status quo.

Its a badge of honor, this anybody-but-Corey approach, he said. Digging people up. I mean, and look, I like Jim Gilmore. As an amateur historian, I respect the fact that he was governor. . . . But the Republican Party has to start nominating some proven winners who also know how to stimulate the base, which Ive clearly been able to do.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
Members of the Virginia House of Delegates vote in the State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. (Bob Brown/AP)

Local election officials across Virginia will conduct recounts of four House of Delegates races this month that will determine whether Republicans retain control of the chamber.

Currently Republicans hold 51 seats while Democrats hold 49, but several of those races were squeakers. In preliminary hearings this week, judges set dates for three of the four races heading to recount, according to spokesmen for both House Republicans and House Democrats.

The first recount will be Dec. 13 and 14 in Fairfax and Prince William counties for the 40th District, where incumbent Del. Tim Hugo (R) narrowly won reelection by a 106-vote margin over Democrat Donte Tanner.

The closest race heading to recount is the 94th District in Newport News, where Del. David E. Yancey (R) beat Shelly Simonds by 10 votes. That recount will be held Dec. 19.

[Future of Virginia politics could rest in a race where the Republican won by 10 votes]

The next day, Richmond-area officials will conduct a recount requested by Del. G. Manoli Loupassi (R-Richmond), who lost to Democrat Dawn Adams by 336 votes.

A preliminary hearing that would determine the date for a recount in the 28th District has not yet been held. In that race, Republican Bob Thomas leads Democrat Joshua Cole by 82 votes in the contest to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford). More than 100 voters in the 28th District and neighboring 88th District were given the wrong ballots, state elections officials say.

In the 88th District, Del. Mark Cole (R-Fredericksburg)  no relation to Joshua Cole  beat Democrat Steve Aycock by more than 4,000 votes. No one is questioning the outcome of that race, even with the misassigned ballots, because the margin was so wide.

Democrats and Republicans both say they expect the recount for the 28th District will be held Dec. 21.

On Nov. 7, Virginians voted with paper ballots scanned by electronic machines. Recounts consider ballots that were deemed illegible, but where the voter intent may be clear, even if they did not follow the proper instructions for marking their choice.

The state pays for recounts in races where the candidates are separated by less than half of a percentage point. The Loupassi-Adams race did not fall within that margin, and Loupassi must bear the costs.

If Adams prevails in a recount and Democrats flip two of the other Republican-held seats after a recount, Democrats will take control of the chamber for the first time since 2000. If Adams prevails and Democrats pick up one seat, the chamber will be split 50-50 with no tiebreaking mechanism and the parties must negotiate a power-sharing agreement.

Gov-elect. Ralph Northam is a Democrat, and Republicans hold a narrow 21-19 majority in the state Senate.
CAPITOL27 by Mike Shear, on Metro's weekend budget: virginia has now committed to spending $118 million on the renovation of aging state capitol building, and several other historic buildings in capitol square. we go on a tour of the nightmarish conditions of the building...going through the tunnels, on the roof, etc.PICTURED, The State Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia will undergo renovation. ORG XMIT: josephm 141186 (MARVIN JOSEPH/The Washington Post)

Democrats seeking to take control of Virginia's House of Delegates have asked a federal judge to order a new election to rectify a delegate's race tainted by mix-ups over district lines.

Republican Robert Thomas beat Democrat Joshua Cole by 82 votes on Nov. 7 in a contest to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford). But the outcome, which could affect which party leads the chamber, is in dispute because of errors that led 147 voters to cast ballots in the wrong race.

Democrats on Wednesday filed an amended complaint, updating a lawsuit filed Nov. 21 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

The original suit, filed on behalf of three voters who were denied the chance to vote in the proper race, sought a temporary restraining order to stop Virginias Board of Elections from certifying the results of 28th District House race. U.S. Judge T.S. Ellis III denied that request but did not dismiss the suit, allowing for Wednesdays filing.

[Federal judge rejects Democrats request to block certification of Va. races]

The elections board certified the results last week. Members said they were required by state law to certify the results despite irregularities and were powerless to require any available remedies, such as ordering a new election. They also said that certification was necessary before other challenges, such as a recount, could begin.

The amended complaint asks the judge to order the state to decertify the election and to block Thomas from being seated as a delegate when the General Assembly convenes in January. It also asks the judge to issue an order providing for a new election to determine the representative of District 28 in the House of Delegates.

It is imperative that every voter is allowed to vote in the district they were properly assigned, House Minority Leader David J. Toscano (D-Charlottesville) and Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Charniele L. Herring (D-Alexandria) said in a written statement jointly issued to announce the filing. Having a new election where mistakes are corrected will allow voters to trust the system and be assured that their Delegate was duly elected. Democrats remain committed to ensuring the accuracy of our elections.

Parker Slaybaugh, spokesman for Del. M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights), who is in line to become speaker if Republicans hold the majority, said House Republicans were dismayed by the filing.

We are disappointed that Democrats continue to pursue unnecessary litigation in federal court, Slaybaugh said in a written statement. As Judge Ellis has already ruled, there is a clear state process that should be followed. We will continue to follow that process in good faith.

[Democrats make historic gains in the Va. House]

Cole also has filed for a recount  one of three that Democrats are pursuing in tight races they lost, including one with a margin of just 10 votes. A date for that recount has not been officially set but Democrats and Republicans say it is likely to take place Dec. 21.

[Future of Virginia politics could rest on a race the Republican won by 10 votes]

Republicans are seeking a fourth recount, in the race that Del. G. Manoli Loupassi (R-Richmond) lost to Democrat Dawn Adams by 336 votes. That recount is scheduled for Dec. 20.

[Dates set for Virginia House of Delegate recounts that will determine majority]

Before the election, Republicans enjoyed a 66-to-34 majority in the House. Now the count is 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans. Democrats, who also swept statewide offices for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, need one more House win to force a power-sharing deal with Republicans and two more to take control of the chamber for the first time since 2000.


Rancher Cliven Bundy looks out over his 160-acre ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., in May 2014. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Fifteen years before Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff against federal agents near his arid desert ranch, the practicing Mormon combed through Latter-day Saints scripture and writings with his neighbor, another rancher upset about how the government regulates the public land around them.

The pair found support for their beliefs, and they have since passed their findings on to others who continue to challenge what they consider federal overreach and a collapse of the U.S. Constitution.

They compiled the works, highlighted and annotated, into an anthology called The Nay Book, named for rancher Keith Nay, Bundys late neighbor. The nearly 200-page booklet starts with a letter from Bundy outlining the documents central question: What is the Constitutional duty of a member of the Lords church? Bundy found answers in the scripture that he believed directed and justified him in defending my rights and my ranch against the federal governments tyrannical usurpation of his land.

The Nay Book is a document rarely found outside Bundys inner circle, and it appears to lay a religious foundation for the ranchers strong and consistent views that the federal government has been trampling his rights. More than an issue of the control of public land and federal taxation, it shows that Bundy and those close to him tie a unique interpretation of Mormon tenets to fundamental American governance and believe that defending their land is both a political and a religious necessity.

[Three years after Nevada ranch standoff, Bundy federal trial begins in Las Vegas]

An illustration of Betsy Ross stitching an American flag is on the book's cover, the words "Freedom, Liberty, for God We Stand" hanging over her head. The book explores what the Nay and Bundy families believe Mormon prophets have said from the beginning about the Constitution  that it is a sacred document but that American society is on the "brink of ruin" because its meanings have eroded. It includes references to scripture and writings from church leaders, and Bundy, in his introductory letter, urges readers to think about what they read and come to their own conclusions about it.



Cliven Bundy wrote this letter as part of The Nay Book anthology he and his neighbors put together in the 1990s. The booklet highlights Mormon literature in a push to defend the U.S. Constitution. (Excerpt from The Nay Book)

Bundy family supporters have discussed the book in recent days outside the federal courthouse in Las Vegas, where Bundy  along with his sons Ryan and Ammon, and a Montana militiaman named Ryan Payne  are on trial for a standoff at the Bundy Ranch near Bunkerville, Nev., in April 2014. In a livestream from the courthouse in November, Shawna Cox, who has said in the past that she is Bundys personal secretary, read aloud from The Nay Book.

"The book is phenomenal," she said to a huddle of people around her, noting that it has given the Bundy family strength. "Cliven has been pushing, pushing, pushing to get everybody to understand this book. . . . They know why they're here. They know that they have to stand."

She offered to make a copy of the book for those who wanted one.

[The long fight between the Bundys and the federal government, from 1989 to today]

Carol Bundy, Clivens wife, confirmed that Nay did most of the research and compilation for the book, but she said it affirms what her family believes about the Constitution. Cliven Bundy, who has been granted release while facing prosecution but refuses to leave jail, did not respond to requests for comment. Bret Whipple, a lawyer who represents Bundy, also declined to comment; Whipple said he hasnt seen the book.

Its a book of things weve compiled of things written by other people that explain why we believe what we do and what our stand is, Carol Bundy said. Its our belief. Its where we get our strength. Its things weve gathered from teachings of our prophets, our scriptures. Its why we believe so strongly in that the Constitution is a divinely inspired document.



Rancher Cliven Bundy poses at his home in Bunkerville in April 2014. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

Latter-day Saints scholars who read a copy of the booklet obtained by The Washington Post said the brand of Mormonism that appears to be at the heart of Bundys anti-government activities is an interpretation of the uniquely American faith that centers on defending the Constitution at any cost.

"This document absolutely represents a fringe ideology within the church," said Matthew Bowman, a history professor at Henderson State University and the author of "The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith." He said it is not representative of what the mainstream church teaches and is the kind of thinking that has been used to legitimize notorious fights with the U.S. government. "They are the kinds of ideas that can be held by people in dangerous confrontations with authorities, as we saw at Ruby Ridge, at Waco, at Bundy Ranch."

Kathleen Flake, a professor of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia, called the booklet an example of radical libertarian dogma.

The LDS Church has never supported the Bundy cause. In early 2016, the church condemned Ammon and Ryan Bundys armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge  a bird sanctuary  in Oregon, noting at the time that church leaders were deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles. This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis.

Eric Hawkins, a spokesman for the church, said he was unfamiliar with The Nay Book but said trying to base standoffs such as Malheur on scripture is wrong.

Bundy, a 71-year-old melon farmer who owns a 160-acre ranch in a remote area of southern Nevada, made national headlines in 2014 when he called in armed militias from across the nation to square off with Bureau of Land Management employees who had rounded up his cattle. Bundy allegedly had been illegally trespassing his herd on public land since 1993, when authorities say he stopped paying a $1.30-per-cow fee to graze on that land, allowing his cattle to wander over 587,000 acres of desert filled with native petroglyphs and endangered species, including the desert tortoise.

Bundys struggle had been playing out in court for two decades before his ranch standoff. During that time, Bundy defied court orders and wrote several letters in which he talked about his situation having the potential to be the next Waco or Ruby Ridge, two deadly federal sieges of private compounds in Texas and Idaho in the early 1990s.

The Bundy standoff in Nevada culminated in a dusty wash under Interstate 15, where federal employees were vastly outnumbered by men and women on horseback, militiamen carrying semiautomatic weapons and Bundy supporters positioned on a freeway overpass with sniper rifles. The federal agents backed away slowly as Bundys cattle were freed, and his supporters claimed victory.



Ammon Bundy embraces his children outside the federal courthouse in Las Vegas after being released from custody on Nov. 30, as part of a house arrest agreement. Cliven Bundy refused the offer to leave and remains in custody. (Joel Angel Juarez/Associated Press)

In a Las Vegas courtroom, the trial has often steered toward Bundy's firmly held belief that the land the government holds belongs to him. Bundy has long echoed the statements of western Sagebrush rebels, telling newspapers that he became tired of being told what to do. In a Reno Gazette-Journal article on April 4, 1995, Bundy and Nay complained about an increasing number of restrictions being put on ranchers who graze their cattle on public land.

"I'm not being regulated to death anymore," Bundy said. Nay agreed: "The federal government just wants to control us. But I'm not going to be controlled."

The Nay Book cites passages in Mormon doctrine that support the fight. Following a letter from Bundy dated February 1999, and a note from Nays widow, Marilyn Nay (now Marilyn Cattoor), the book includes a color-coded index for the photocopied scriptures that follow: Yellow is for mentions of the Constitution as a sacred document, pink is for references to calls to save and maintain the Constitution.



An excerpt from the index of The Nay Book anthology shows annotations and highlights indicating which passages support larger themes, such as The Constitution is a sacred document inspired by God. (The Nay Book/Excerpt from the "Nay Book")

Melissa Laughter, a former Bundy supporter who is Mormon, criticized The Nay Book as an adulteration of her religion. She thinks it could be used to manipulate people toward the Bundy cause. This is how incorrect teachings spread, she said. It becomes a cancer to society. And it becomes a cancer to all of us.

She says The Nay Book has been distributed among Bundy supporters, and she considers it the Bundy familys manifesto.

The booklet also includes writings from Ezra Taft Benson, who served as agriculture secretary during the Eisenhower administration from 1953 to 1961 and later as president of the LDS Church. Benson also had strong ties to the John Birch Society, an organization that adheres to "extreme anti-government doctrines," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Nays widow, Cattoor, 80, says she recalls assembling the book to help people understand the Constitution.

Our government is upside-down. We tried to educate other people. Slowly theyre coming around, but until it hits you on the head, it doesnt matter, she said, noting that she simply believes in the Constitution, as did her late husband. It should be a guide for us.



Marilyn Nay  now Marilyn Cattoor  wrote this letter as part of The Nay Book anthology that she, her late husband and Cliven Bundy put together. (The Nay Book)

Cattoor, who has known Cliven Bundy since they were children, says that the version of America that protected ranchers like her and Bundy has dissolved, and that she feels many were forced to go out of business. But "Cliven is a Bundy, and they make a stand," she said. "Right is right and wrong is wrong. And there's a lot of wrong going on."

If Cliven could win, he wins for all of us the right to hike, the right to four-wheel, the right to mine, Cattoor said. Its the Constitution that gives us the rights, and theyre getting away from it. Theyre trampling the Constitution, and it needs to get back to the basics.

Bowman said that many Mormons accept the notion that the Constitution is a divinely inspired document, but he also said that Nay and Bundy have put a twist on that concept.

"A lot of Mormons will tell you the Constitution was inspired in order to create religious liberty so sufficient so our church could be founded in this country," he said. "If you asked Bundy . . . they would say the Constitution was created in order to create a very small government that respects the rights of its citizens."

Flake agrees that the Constitution is a document that Mormons hold dear because it promises religious freedom, a theme she said is reflected in "The Nay Book."

"You get that theme in this book: Mormons are the defenders because we know what it's like to not have the liberty promised in the Constitution," she said, referencing persecution of Mormons in the mid- to late 1800s. "The Constitution is the symbol of the nation. In this vein, people like Bundy become the saviors of the nation. And that's how they talk about themselves. They wrap themselves in the flag. . . . Symbolic battles can be more fierce than other battles because there's no concrete way to solve them."

Bowman says the Bundys' belief that they need to defend and uphold the Constitution potentially indicates that they view their fight with the federal government as akin to a holy war. LDS members believe in the idea of "free agency," he said, and attempts to destroy free agency are considered works of Satan.

Benson believed "big government is Satan's plan," Bowman said. "What we're doing on Earth is . . . a continuation of this war in heaven when Satan was going to restrict all of our freedoms."

And that's something that speaks to people far beyond the boundaries of Mormonism, Flake said. "They're organizing people around a political issue, not a religious issue," she said. "That's why you have all these other people joining them."
TEXAS

Focus on 2 brothers in border agents death

FBI agents investigating the unexplained death of a Border Patrol agent have turned their attention to two brothers who may be suspects, one of whom has been taken into federal custody on an immigration violation, according to court documents filed this week in New Mexico.

Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinezs death last month was quickly seized upon by President Trump to reaffirm his case for a wall along the border with Mexico. But the FBI has said only that it is treating Martinezs death as a potential attack and had yet to determine the circumstances of his death or whether it was an accident.

The documents released this week are the strongest sign yet that investigators believe that Martinez was the victim of a Nov. 18 roadside beating.

The 36-year-old agent was found with severe head injuries and broken bones at the bottom of a culvert along Interstate 10 in West Texas. He died at an El Paso hospital hours later.

Another agent, whom court documents identified for the first time as Stephen Garland, was found near Martinez with serious injuries and no memory of what happened. Neither officer drew his weapon, initially casting doubt on the possibility that the agents came under attack.

In the court filings, the FBI refers to the brothers, Antonio and Jesus Munoz, as the likely perpetrators of the assault.

On Sunday, investigators found fabric with red stains and other discolored clothing after obtaining a warrant to search a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am that transported Antonio Munoz, and another brother, Daniel Munoz, on or around Nov. 20.

The brothers denied having a role in the incident or knowledge of what happened to the agents.

Antonio Munoz was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Nov. 30 after admitting to entering the United States illegally.

 Robert Moore and Nick Miroff

NEW YORK

Ex-congressman fired after harassment claim

Morgan Stanley fired former congressman Harold Ford Jr. on Thursday amid allegations of misconduct.

HuffPost reported that a woman alleged that Ford forcibly grabbed her one evening in Manhattan and that he engaged in harassment and intimidation.

The incident took place several years ago and emails confirm the interaction, HuffPost reported.

He has been terminated for conduct inconsistent with our values and in violation of our policies, Morgan Stanley said in a statement.

In a tweet, Ford denied the allegations. This simply did not happen. I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life, Ford wrote.

Ford joined Morgan Stanley in 2011 as a managing director. He was a Democratic congressman for Tennessee from 1997 to 2007.

 Associated Press

NEW MEXICO

Two students, gunman dead at high school

Two students were killed after gunfire erupted Thursday at a New Mexico high school, according to law enforcement authorities.

The San Juan County Sheriffs Office said the person believed to have opened fire at Aztec High, a school of about 1,000 students near the Colorado border, is also dead. No one else was hurt, the sheriffs office said. The Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, which oversees territory not far from the school, had previously released a statement saying 15 people were wounded.

Police shuttled students away from the school and to a nearby park, where they were to be reunited with their families.

The police department in nearby Bloomfield locked down school buildings as a precaution.

 Moriah Balingit
NHK News(OKINAWA, Japan) -- The 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, a unit of the U.S. Marine Corps, is investigating reports that an object from a U.S. military aircraft fell onto the roof of the Midorigaoka Nursery School in Okinawa, Japan, Thursday morning.



A staff member at the school told NHK, a Japanese public broadcasting company, that a cylindrical object fell on the roof right after an American military aircraft passed over. The nursery school is located about 2.5 miles from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.



Local police said the clear plastic tube-like object is about 4-inches long and 3-inches wide. A label on the object says in English to remove before flight.



Sixty-one children and 10 staff members were at the school when the object fell, Takehiro Kamiya, the school's director, told NHK. No one was injured, he said.



In a statement to ABC News, a United States Marine Corps spokesperson said, We take this report very seriously and are investigating this incident working closely with local authorities. We care deeply about the safety of our friends and neighbors in the communities around which we live and operate. We will provide more information as it becomes available.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
SYRIA

21 reported killed in airstrikes on village

Russian airstrikes killed 21 people in a village on the eastern side of the Euphrates River in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday.

The strikes in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour were in support of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are fighting the Islamic State militant group, the war monitor said. The Islamic State reportedly had attempted to launch an attack on the town earlier this week.

Russia has been carrying out airstrikes in the province mainly to back up the Syrian army, which, alongside allied militias, has been waging its own assault against the Islamic State on the western side of the Euphrates.

The separate offensives have advanced along opposite sides of the river  which bisects oil-rich Deir al-Zour  mostly staying out of each others way.

The U.S.-led coalition and the Russian military have held deconfliction meetings to prevent clashes between the two sides.

The Britain-based Observatory also reported Wednesday that the Syrian army and its allied forces had finished the presence of the Islamic State on the western bank of the river.

On Sunday, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the SDF, announced that it had fully captured Deir al-Zours eastern countryside from the Islamic State.

 Reuters

ITALY

Neo-fascists target left-leaning newspaper

A neo-fascist party attacked the headquarters of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper on Wednesday and declared war against its publisher, the latest incident involving extremist, far-right and anti-immigrant activists in Italy in recent times.

A dozen masked Forza Nuova supporters, dressed in black and carrying the party's flag, threw flares at the office housing

La Repubblica; its publisher, L'Espresso Group; and a weekly magazine bearing the same name.

La Repubblica has reported regularly on an escalation of incidents involving Forza Nuova and other right-wing and skinhead movements targeting migrants. The papers editorial line has favored proposed legislation to accelerate citizenship for children born in Italy to immigrants.

In a statement on its Facebook page, Forza Nuova said it was declaring war on La Repubblica and LEspresso, accusing them of carrying out the genocide of the Italian people by supporting the citizenship legislation.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has been rising in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, amid the influx of would-be refugees of many nationalities arriving on boats from Libya. Tensions have grown more acute as Italy heads into a general election next year.

 Associated Press

BOLIVIA

Lawmakers vote to ease some limits on abortion

Lawmakers voted Wednesday to ease Bolivias tight restrictions on abortions, shrugging aside opposition from religious groups.

The Plurinational Legislative Assembly vote will allow students, adolescents or girls to have abortions up to the eighth week of pregnancy. The measure does not specify ages, but it appears to apply to girls who are 17 or younger, as well as older students who still depend on their parents or guardians.

As of today, abortion in Bolivia is allowed only when the womans life is in danger, in the case of a malformed fetus or in cases of rape or incest. Illegal abortions carry prison terms of up to three years.

President Evo Morales has said he will sign the measure, despite opposition from Catholic and evangelical churches in the country.

Health Minister Ariana Campero said abortion is the third-leading cause of maternal death in Bolivia, and the government has estimated that more than 80,000 clandestine abortions occur each year.

 Associated Press

Honduran leader open to review of disputed vote: Honduras's president said he is open to a review of a disputed vote count in his bid for reelection that has plunged the country into a crisis. Juan Orlando Hernandez called for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to reexamine all the votes in the Nov. 26 election. He said he would accept that "because the people deserve respect." Opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla is urging a recount and has called for a repeat of the entire vote. With all the votes counted, Hernandez leads Nasralla 43 percent to 41.4 percent.

Nigeria replaces commander in fight against Boko Haram: Nigeria is replacing the military commander leading the fight against Boko Haram, an army spokesman said, after a string of attacks despite years of official claims that the Islamist militant group has almost been defeated. The conflict with Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria is in its ninth year, fueling doubts about the government's ability to retain sovereign integrity in that region.

 From news services
I can always tell when one of my arguments hits home: My opponents deliberately distort what I said, create a straw man, then knock it down. That is precisely what The Post did in its reporting that a "Dershowitz-Dowd theory" says the president cannot obstruct justice because he is the nation's chief law enforcement official ["Lawyer for Trump posits legal immunity," front page, Dec. 5].

I have repeatedly made precisely the opposite point: A president can't be charged with obstruction of justice for merely exercising his constitutional authority under Article II of the Constitution. Presidents Richard Nixon's and Bill Clinton's impeachment articles included obstruction of justice because they allegedly told witnesses to lie. Nixon's White House also paid hush money and destroyed evidence. These independent and unlawful acts can be the basis for obstruction of justice.

But a president's decision to pardon a witness  as President George H.W. Bush did with Caspar W. Weinberger  cannot alone be the basis for an obstruction-of-justice charge.

Nor can a presidents decision to fire any official in the executive department. There is no Dershowitz-Dowd argument, because I disagree with John Dowd, President Trumps personal lawyer, on his broad point that a president can never be guilty of obstruction of justice. Before attacking my arguments, please present them accurately. Then feel free to attack them on their merits and demerits.

Alan M. Dershowitz, Miami Beach

The writer is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.
PRESIDENT TRUMP'S decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has a certain amount of common sense on its side. As a practical matter, West Jerusalem has been the seat of Israeli government since 1949, and no conceivable formula for Palestinian statehood would change that. Political leaders and diplomats from around the world already visit government offices there, even if their embassies remain in Tel Aviv. As Mr. Trump put it, for the United States finally to accept that the Jewish state has its capital in Jerusalem is "nothing more or less than a recognition of reality."

At the same time, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had good reasons for holding back on such a move, even though they, like Mr. Trump, had promised while on the campaign trail to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. They calculated that what amounted to a mostly symbolic step could undermine U.S. policy across the Middle East as well as their hopes of brokering an Israeli-Palestinian settlement  and possibly trigger violence, including against Americans.

Mr. Trump cast himself as setting aside failed conventional wisdom  he pointed out there has been no peace deal  and of offering a fresh approach. Thats a stance that may play well with his domestic political base and with many Israelis. But Mr. Trump is implicitly betting that previous presidents were wrong to worry about blowback in the Middle East and beyond. Thats a big risk to take for the scoring of political points.

So far, the president's decision has been rejected by every major U.S. ally in Europe and the Middle East, including Britain, France, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It will put considerable pressure on Jordan, Israel's fragile neighbor, whose King Abdullah II sees himself as a protector of Jerusalem's holy Muslim sites. It will probably make it harder to promote a tacit alliance between Israel and Sunni Arab states against Iran, as Tehran will surely exploit the Jerusalem issue. It will also virtually ensure that Palestinian leaders respond unfavorably to the peace initiative the Trump administration says it is preparing. If violence erupts in Jerusalem or elsewhere in the Middle East  and extremists will do their best to make that happen  Mr. Trump will be blamed.

Mr. Trump made some effort to mitigate such damage. He said his administration was not taking a position [on] any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, words that leave room for an eventual settlement in which a Palestinian state would have its capital on Jerusalems eastern side. He did not refer to the united Jerusalem promoted by Israeli leaders, who aspire to maintain permanent control over neighborhoods where some 300,000 Palestinians live. He called for maintenance of the status quo at the citys holy sites, including Muslim holy places that are currently controlled by Muslim authorities.

Nevertheless, those caveats had the ring of boilerplate inserted by the presidents advisers. The heart of Mr. Trumps speech was his boast that while previous presidents . . . failed to deliver on their campaign promises about Jerusalem, I am delivering. Those who genuinely hope for peace in the Middle East can only hope that this preening display will, as the president predicted, produce positive rather than negative results.
Contributing columnist

A recent whim prompted me to reread Stephen Ambrose's "To America," a collection of reflections on the historian's craft and many of the topics and individuals Ambrose wrote about during his prolific career. The book might have been titled "Second Thoughts," because virtually every chapter describes some significant issue on which the author changed his mind over the years: his estimation of presidents such as U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon; Harry Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb; the "robber barons" who built the transcontinental railroad; the reality of Soviet tyranny; and several more.

In many cases Ambrose relates how he came to dispute conclusions that his university professors and advisers peddled to him in his younger years. Elsewhere, he takes issue with his own previous views. But in each instance, he explains the evolution of his thinking, and the grounds for it, without defensiveness or embarrassment.

When the book appeared, early in this century, one would not have found such admissions especially noteworthy. In 2017, they take on a more striking cast, because ours is an era when it seems no one ever confesses to being wrong. Moreover, everyone is so emphatically right that those who disagree are not merely in error but irredeemably so, candidates not for persuasion but for castigation and ostracism.

Social historians will need some time and perspective to determine exactly what led to the new closed-mindedness, but some of the causes seem plain. One is the effect of narrowcasting, in which people find the sources of information (or the sources algorithms find them) that fortify their existing viewpoints and prejudices. Confirmation bias has mutated from a hazard of academic research to a menacing political and social phenomenon.

Meanwhile, those institutions of higher learning  the adjective now almost needs quotation marks  that should cultivate and model openness to debate and refutation too often have become bastions of conformity and thought control.

John Maynard Keynes is frequently credited with the aphorism "When I find I'm wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?" Today, the problem may less be an attitude of stubbornness than that fewer people than ever recognize their mistakes in the first place.

In a well-documented fashion, steady doses of viewpoint reinforcement lead not only to a resistance to alternative positions but also to a more entrenched and passionate way in which thoughts are held and expressed. When those expressions are launched in the impersonal or even anonymous channels of todays social  or is it antisocial?  media, vitriol often becomes the currency of discourse and second thoughts a form of tribal desertion or defeat. Things people would not say face to face are all too easy to post in bouts of blogger or tweeter one-upmanship.

So honest admissions of error are more eye-catching these days. In recent years, The Post's Bob Woodward has recounted how, a quarter-century later, he had come to a very different interpretation of Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. And how he wasn't the only one; Sen. Ted Kennedy, who excoriated Ford at the time of his decision, joined Woodward in that assessment, and conferred an award for political courage for the act they had once deemed a corrupt bargain.

A few months back, the world lost Jay Keyworth, nuclear scientist and presidential science adviser to Ronald Reagan. Keyworth had assembled the evidence to advocate an anti-ballistic- missile (ABM) system, which establishment opinion of the time relentlessly derided as "Star Wars"  a fanciful and impractical notion, and one in conflict with the then-sacred doctrine of mutual assured destruction.

Now, with one rogue nation perfecting both weapons and rocketry capable of annihilating U.S. targets, and another perhaps only years from joining it, the conversation is all about the effectiveness of our ABM system and why the heck the government hasnt made our national safety more certain. Were still waiting for that conversation to include Thanks, Jay. You were right, and we werent.

Ambrose wrote his book near the end of his life. In fact, it is dedicated to his cancer doctor and nurses. Maybe such honest introspection comes more readily under the imminence of the great event. But our everyday exchanges, and indeed the life of our republic, would be greatly improved by the more common utterance of those three magical little words: I was wrong.
PRESIDENT TRUMP entered the Oval Office an avowed enemy of environmental protection. This week the degree of his shortsightedness became clearer, with announcements suggesting he will aggressively undermine the measures his predecessors took to preserve precious lands and resources.

In Salt Lake City on Monday, Mr. Trump withdrew some 2 million acres of spectacular landscape from two national monuments in southern Utah: Bears Ears National Monument, which President Barack Obama declared late last year, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which has enjoyed protection from drilling and other disturbances for two decades. This single move constituted the largest ever reduction in protected federal lands. Then on Tuesday it emerged that Ryan Zinke, Mr. Trump's fox-in-henhouse interior secretary, will recommend paring back or loosening restrictions on 10 more national monuments around the country.

Several environmental and Native American groups immediately filed suit over Mr. Trump's withdrawal, claiming that, while the president can unilaterally preserve land by creating or expanding national monuments, the White House cannot on its own withdraw acreage from existing monuments. The question has not been tested in court. But the groups face an uphill fight, considering that the law is extremely deferential to the president and stipulates that monuments should be only as large as is necessary to protect objects of interest requiring preservation. The administration will argue that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama each abused their authorities, setting aside vastly more federal property than necessary to preserve American treasures, such as the ruins scattered around Bears Ears and the geological wonders in Grand Staircase.

Yet while the legality of Mr. Trumps move is debatable, its ill wisdom is less so. In general, public lands and waters should be open to development, including drilling, so that the nations resources can drive national growth, enable all sorts of recreation and benefit nearby towns and cities. But the federal government owns some lands that are simply too precious to permanently sully in pursuit of temporary economic gains. Bears Ears, with its spectacular canyons, buttes and unspoiled archaeological sites, is one such place. Grand Staircase, a natural wonderland of ancient topology and fossilized prehistory, is another. When administering such unique places, the government must err on the side of conservation.

Even as Utah ran an expensive national ad campaign encouraging Americans to visit the state's natural treasures, its congressional delegation fought Bears Ears and they have cheered Mr. Trump's announcement. Yet even for them, the reduction in size was radical. Utah officials had previously proposed protecting an area much larger than the truncated Bears Ears that Mr. Trump left as he departed Salt Lake City. Now it is their responsibility to fill the conservation gaps that the president has left.
Columnist

Just how disordered have our politics become? And how off-the-rails is the Republican Party?

The good people of Alabama will help answer these questions in next Tuesday's special election for the U.S. Senate. The whole world will be watching them decide whether party and ideology top decency and moderation; whether there is simply no end to the extremism Republican voters are willing to tolerate in their ranks; and whether a majority in their state believe that being a credibly accused sexual predator is better than being a Democrat.

They will also be telling us what they think the word Christian means.

The outcome is likely to be determined by the consciences of conservatives, and of a specific kind: those who see Mitt Romney and Republicans like him as far more reflective of their moral sense than is Judge Roy Moore, the GOP's ethically defective nominee whose indifference to the law led him to be removed from Alabama's Supreme Court twice .

Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump Svengali who proudly peddles the ideological wares of the extreme right, inadvertently clarified the stakes at a Moore rally in south Alabama on Tuesday night with a malicious and spiteful attack on Romney. The former Massachusetts governor tweeted this week that having Moore in the Senate "would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation."



Alabama GOP senate candidate Roy Moore is welcomed to the stage by Steve Bannon. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Bannon's response? "Judge Roy Moore has more honor and integrity in that pinkie finger than your entire family has in its whole DNA."

Yes, he really said that.

For good measure, Bannon not only accused Romney of avoiding service in Vietnam. He also trafficked in the anti-Mormon sentiments common among some evangelical Christians.

"You hid behind your religion," Bannon said of Romney. "You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam. Do not talk to me about honor and integrity." (And never mind that "while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam," the president whom Bannon served also avoided the war, courtesy of five draft deferments.)

Bannon is many things, but a fool he is not. Its no accident he linked his Vietnam attack to Romneys missionary work, which underscored the 2012 Republican nominees deep commitment to Mormonism.

Thanks to Bannon, we now know that this is no longer just a race between Moore and Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who, depending on the poll, is either slightly behind or slightly ahead. It is, in very large part, a decision by Republicans about who they are.

It is also an important choice for devoted Christians. Do they really want their faith defined by those who tried to justify Moore's alleged relationships with young teenagers by invoking the Holy Family and saying that Joseph was older than Mary (which, besides being absurd, is biblically unfounded)? Or by arguing that an interest in young girls might be explained by a desire for "a large family," as a professor at Ouachita Baptist University wrote?

Do those saying such things not realize that they are helping to discredit the very tradition they claim to be defending? No atheist could inflict this much damage to the faith.

This is how haywire politics has gone in the age of Trump.

Party loyalty can, its true, be honorable if it is about the defense of principles, and Moores backers say they are sticking with him to oppose abortion and multiply conservative judges.

But these rationales ring hollow given Moore's utterly unconservative claims as a judge that his theological predilections overrode the law and his lies about not profiting from his private charity, which suggest he is a charlatan exploiting the beliefs of his supporters for his own purposes.

Both Moore and President Trump play on the feelings of marginalization experienced by many cultural conservatives. It would be salutary for such voters to declare that there are limits to how much they will allow themselves to be used by politicians whose words and deeds are so often at odds. If Moore is not the limiting case, there are no limits.

Moores promoters, including Bannon, want to convince Alabama Republicans that since a Jones triumph will be taken as a rebuke to Trump, they have an obligation to fall into line. But the long-term harm to the GOP from a Moore victory will be far greater than from one lost Senate seat. Bannon is right to cast the election as being about honor and integrity. When it comes to these virtues, it is not a close call.

Read more from E.J. Dionne's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Philip Allen Lacovara, a former U.S. deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, served as counsel to Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski.

As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III racks up indictments and guilty pleas, and President Trump continues to dig himself further into a potential obstruction-of-justice charge, a question lingering since Muellers appointment comes front and center: May a sitting president be indicted for a federal crime?

I believe the answer is yes. When I was counsel to the Watergate special prosecutors, one of the issues that we had to address during the investigation of President Richard Nixon was whether the president was subject to indictment for his role in the Watergate coverup. As we later informed the Supreme Court in briefing the Nixon tapes case, we concluded that a president may be indicted while still in office. The Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel has taken a different position, first under Nixon and later under the administration of President Bill Clinton.

The principal argument in favor of presidential immunity is that the president, as chief executive, is the officer ultimately responsible to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Therefore, for the government to pursue a criminal indictment of the president would be like the president prosecuting himself.

The argument is misguided. In England, it used to be said that "the king can do no wrong." Indeed, when the Colonies declared independence, English prosecutions were in the name of the king  Rex v. Smith, for example. But the Founders rejected the tradition of royal supremacy. In writing the Constitution, they created a limited immunity for members of Congress protecting them against  but only against  prosecution for "speeches or debates" during congressional proceedings. By contrast, the Constitution is silent on any comparable immunity for the president.

In fact, in the Nixon tapes case, the Supreme Court rejected essentially the same point that Trump supporters are making. There Nixon argued that, as chief executive overseeing enforcement of the federal laws, he was not subject to demands by the special prosecutor that the president produce evidence sought by the prosecutor. The court unanimously upheld the fundamental constitutional principle that no person is above the law, and even the president is subject to the ordinary obligations and prohibitions of federal law applicable to everyone else. The caption of the case says it all: United States v. Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States.

Another major argument for presidential immunity is that the burden of defending against a criminal charge would distract an incumbent president from performing his important public duties. That argument, too, did not convince the Supreme Court when President Bill Clinton claimed immunity from having to defend against the civil sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones. The court emphasized that a president acquires no special immunity from being held accountable for personal misconduct and explained that trial courts are capable of managing legal proceedings in a way that minimizes the impact of a trial on the performance of presidential duties.

Finally, the Constitution does not specify or even imply that no prosecution of a president may occur unless he is impeached and removed from office first. The text simply notes that impeachment does not foreclose later prosecution.

Most significant, the argument proves too much. A single section in Article II of the Constitution specifies, without distinction, that the president, vice president, and all civil officers may be impeached by the House and may be removed upon conviction by the Senate of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution does not distinguish between treatment of the president on the one hand and the vice president and other civil officers on the other. History has demonstrated, however, that hundreds of civil officers, as well as vice president Spiro Agnew, have been prosecuted for federal offenses without having been impeached and removed from office.

In addition, criminal prosecution and impeachment are fundamentally different. Impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate represent a political judgment that an official is unfit for office. By contrast, the federal criminal code includes many offenses of a nonpolitical nature, and these offenses are pursued by grand juries, conducted by professional prosecutors and ultimately tried before civil courts and juries.

Whether Mueller and a grand jury conclude that Trump has violated the federal criminal law against obstruction of justice is a complex matter. There may be reasons of prosecutorial discretion not to pursue a criminal charge, even if one is otherwise justified. But the president and his supporters are claiming an immunity from criminal culpability that our constitutional system of justice does not and should not tolerate.
Sherry Turkle is a professor of the social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. She has been studying children and computers since 1978 and the release of Merlin and Simon, the first electronic toys and games.

Eugene & Louise for The Washington Post

Jibo the robot swivels around when it hears its name and tilts its touchscreen face upward, expectantly. I am a robot, but I am not just a machine, it says. I have a heart. Well, not a real heart. But feelings. Well, not human feelings. You know what I mean.

Actually, I'm not sure we do. And that's what unsettles me about the wave of "sociable robots" that are coming online. The new releases include Jibo, Cozmo, Kuri and M.A.X. Although they bear some resemblance to assistants such as Apple's Siri, Google Home and Amazon's Alexa (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post), these robots come with an added dose of personality. They are designed to win us over not with their smarts but with their sociability. They are marketed as companions. And they do more than engage us in conversation  they feign emotion and empathy.

This can be disconcerting. Time magazine, which featured Jibo on the cover of its "25 Best Inventions of 2017 " issue last month, hailed the robot as seeming "human in a way that his predecessors do not," in a way that "could fundamentally reshape how we interact with machines." Reviewers are accepting these robots as "he" or "she" rather than "it." "He told us that blue is his favorite color and that the shape of macaroni pleases him more than any other," Jeffrey Van Camp wrote about Jibo for Wired. "Just the other day, he told me how much fun, yet scary it would be to ride on top of a lightning bolt. Somewhere along the way, learning these things, we began to think of him more like a person than an appliance." Van Camp described feeling guilty for leaving Jibo at home alone all day and wondering if Jibo hated him.

But whereas adults may be able to catch themselves in such thoughts and remind themselves that sociable robots are, in fact, appliances, children tend to struggle with that distinction. They are especially susceptible to these robots pre-programmed bids for attachment.

So, before adding a sociable robot to the holiday gift list, parents may want to pause to consider what they would be inviting into their homes. These machines are seductive and offer the wrong payoff: the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship, the illusion of connection without the reciprocity of a mutual relationship. And interacting with these empathy machines may get in the way of childrens ability to develop a capacity for empathy themselves.

Jibo's creator, Cynthia Breazeal, is a friend and colleague of mine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We've debated the ethics of sociable robots for years  on panels, over dinner, in classes we've taught together. She's excited about the potential for robots that communicate the way people do to enrich our daily lives. I'm concerned about the ways those robots exploit our vulnerabilities and bring us into relationships that diminish our humanity.

In 2001, Breazeal and I did a study together  along with Yale robotics pioneer Brian Scassellati and Olivia Daste, who develops robots for the elderly  looking at the emotional impact of sociable robots on children. We introduced 60 children, ages 8 to 13, to two early sociable robots: Kismet, built by Breazeal, and Cog, a project on which Scassellati was a principal designer. I found the encounters worrisome.

The children saw the robots as sort of alive  alive enough to have thoughts and emotions, alive enough to care about you, alive enough that their feelings for you mattered. The children tended to describe the robots as gendered. They asked the robots: Are you happy? Do you love me? As one 11-year-old girl put it: Its not like a toy, because you cant teach a toy, its like something thats part of you, you know, something you love, kind of, like another person, like a baby.

You can hear echoes of that sentiment in how children are relating to the sociable robots now on the market. "Cozmo's no way our pet," the 7-year-old son of a Guardian contributor said. "And he's not our robot. He's our child." Similarly, Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler observed a 3-year-old girl trying to talk to Jibo, teach it things and bring it toys. "He is a baby," the girl determined.

In our study, the children were so invested in their relationships with Kismet and Cog that they insisted on understanding the robots as living beings, even when the roboticists explained how the machines worked or when the robots were temporarily broken. Breazeal talked to an 8-year-old boy about what Kismet was made of and how long it took to build, and still that child thought the robot wasnt broken, but sleeping with his eyes open, just like my dad does. After a quick assessment of the out-of-order machine, the boy declared, He will make a good friend.

The children took the robots behavior to signify feelings. When the robots interacted with them, the children interpreted this as evidence that the robots liked them. And when the robots didnt work on cue, the children likewise took it personally. Their relationships with the robots affected their state of mind and self-esteem. Some children viewed the robots as creatures in need of their care and instruction. They caressed the robots and gently coaxed them with urgings such as, Dont be scared. Some children became angry. A 12-year-old boy, frustrated that he couldnt get Kismet to respond to him, forced his pen into the robots mouth, commanding: Here! Eat this pen! Other children felt the pain of rejection. An 8-year-old boy concluded that Kismet stopped talking to him because the robot liked his brothers better. We were led to wonder whether a broken robot can break a child.

[The danger of giving your child smart toys]

Kids are central to the sociable-robot project, because its agenda is to make people more comfortable with robots in roles normally reserved for humans, and robotics companies know that children are vulnerable consumers who can bring the whole family along. As Fowler noted, "Kids, of course, are the most open to making new friends, so that's where bot-makers are focused for now." Kuri's website features photos of the robot listening to a little girl read a book and capturing video of another child dressed as a fairy princess. M.A.X.'s site advertises, "With a multitude of features, kids will want to bring their new friend everywhere!" Jibo is programmed to scan a room for monsters and report, "No monsters anywhere in sight."

So far, the main objection to sociable robots for kids has been over privacy. The privacy policies for these robots tend to be squishy, allowing companies to share the information their devices collect  recorded conversations, photos, videos and other data  with vaguely defined service providers and vendors. That's generating pushback. In October, Mattel scrapped plans for Aristotle  a kind of Alexa for the nursery, designed to accompany children as they progress from lullabies and bedtime stories through high school homework  after lawmakers and child advocacy groups argued that the data the device collected about children could be misused by Mattel, marketers, hackers and other third parties. I was part of that campaign: There is something deeply unsettling about encouraging children to confide in machines that are in turn sharing their conversations with countless others.

Privacy, though, should not be our only concern. Recently, I opened my MIT mail and found a call for subjects for a study involving sociable robots that will engage children in conversation to elicit empathy. What will these children be empathizing with, exactly? Empathy is a capacity that allows us to put ourselves in the place of others, to know what they are feeling. Robots, however, have no emotions to share. And they cannot put themselves in our place.

What they can do is push our buttons. When they make eye contact and gesture toward us, they predispose us to view them as thinking and caring. They are designed to be cute, to provoke a nurturing response. And when it comes to sociable AI, nurturance is the killer app: We nurture what we love, and we love what we nurture. If a computational object or robot asks for our help, asks us to teach it or tend to it, we attach. That is our human vulnerability. And that is the vulnerability sociable robots exploit with every interaction. The more we interact, the more we help them, the more we think we are in a mutual relationship.

But we are not. No matter what robotic creatures say or squeak, no matter how expressive or sympathetic their Pixar-inspired faces, digital companions dont understand our emotional lives. They present themselves as empathy machines, but they are missing the essential equipment: They have not known the arc of a life. They have not been born; they dont know pain, or mortality, or fear. Simulated thinking may be thinking, but simulated feeling is never feeling, and simulated love is never love.



MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal and Jibo. (Matthew Cavanaugh/For The Washington Post)

Breazeal's position is this: People have relationships with many classes of things. They have relationships with children and with adults, with animals and with machines. People, even very little people, are good at this. Now, we are going to add robots to the list of things with which we can have relationships. More powerful than with pets. Less powerful than with people. We'll figure it out.

To support their argument, roboticists sometimes point to how children deal with toy dolls. Children animate dolls and turn them into imaginary friends. Jibo, in a sense, will be one more imaginary friend  and arguably a more intelligent and fun one. Why make such a fuss?

Ive been comparing how children play with traditional dolls and how children relate to robots since Tamagotchis were released in the United States in 1997 as the first computational playmates that asked you to take care of them. The nature of the attachments to dolls and sociable machines is different. When children play with dolls, they project thoughts and emotions onto them. A girl who has broken her mothers crystal will put her Barbies into detention and use them to work on her feelings of guilt. The dolls take the role she needs them to take.

Sociable machines, by contrast, have their own agenda. Playing with robots is not about the psychology of projection but the psychology of engagement. Children try to meet the robots needs, to understand the robots unique nature and wants. There is an attempt to build a mutual relationship. I saw this even with the (relatively) primitive Furby in the early 2000s. A 9-year-old boy summed up the difference between Furbies and action figures: You dont play with the Furby, you sort of hang out with it. You do try to get power over it, but it has power over you, too. Todays robots are even more powerful, telling children flat-out that they have emotions, friendships, even dreams to share.

Some people might consider that a good thing: encouraging children to think beyond their own needs and goals. Except the whole commercial program is an exercise in emotional deception.

For instance, Cozmo the robot needs to be fed, repaired and played with. Boris Sofman, the chief executive of Anki, the company behind Cozmo, says that the idea is to create "a deeper and deeper emotional connection. . . . And if you neglect him, you feel the pain of that."

You feel the pain of that. What is the point of this exercise, exactly? What does it mean to feel the pain of neglecting something that feels no pain at being neglected? Or to feel anguish at being neglected by something that has no moral sense that it is neglecting you? What will this do to children's capacity for empathy, for care, for relationships?

When adults imagine ourselves to be the objects of robots' affection, we play a pretend game. We might wink at the idea on Jibo's website that "he loves to be around people and engage with people, and the relationships he forms are the single most important thing to him." But when we offer these robots as pretend friends to our children, it's not so clear they can wink with us. We embark on an experiment in which our children are the human subjects.

Mattel's chief products officer, Robb Fujioka, concedes that this is new territory. Talking about Aristotle, he told Bloomberg Businessweek: "If we're successful, kids will form some emotional ties to this. Hopefully, it will be the right types of emotional ties."

But it is hard to imagine what those right types of ties might be. These robots cant be in a two-way relationship with a child. They are machines whose art is to put children in a position of pretend empathy. And if we put our children in that position, we shouldnt expect them to understand what empathy is. If we give them pretend relationships, we shouldnt expect them to learn how real relationships  messy relationships  work. On the contrary. They will learn something superficial and inauthentic, but mistake it for real connection.

When the messy becomes tidy, we can learn to enjoy that. Ive heard young children describe how robot dogs have advantages over real ones: They are less temperamental, you dont have to clean up after them, they never get sick. Similarly, Ive watched people shift from thinking that robotic friends might be good for lonely, elderly people to thinking that robots  offering constant companionship with no fear of loss  may be better than anything human life can provide. In the process, we can forget what is most central to our humanity: truly understanding each other.

For so long, we dreamed of artificial intelligence offering us not only instrumental help but the simple salvations of conversation and care. But now that our fantasy is becoming reality, it is time to confront the emotional downside of living with the robots of our dreams.

Twitter: @STurkle

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Donald Trump Jr. met behind closed doors for roughly seven hours Wednesday with the House Intelligence committee, fielding extensive questioning about contacts he had with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Committee members queried President Trump's eldest son about a June 2016 meeting he held with a Russian lawyer after he was told she would provide damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He was also asked about his contact with WikiLeaks in October 2016, around the time the group was releasing hacked Democratic emails, according to people familiar with the session.

Trump Jr. told the committee that he had not informed his father about his meeting with the Russian lawyer at the time it took place. He also said he had not told Trump that he exchanged private messages with the WikiLeaks Twitter account, according to the people.

His day-long interview came as multiple investigations into Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election focus on members of Trumps inner circle.

Trump Jr. had met with investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, but that session took place before prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III filed criminal charges against former Trump advisers.



Donald Trump Jr. smiles as he waits for the arrival of President Trump before the 95th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony near the White House on Nov. 30. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

His Wednesday session with the House committee was longer and more expansive, and was the first opportunity elected lawmakers have had to ask Trump Jr. questions directly, instead of leaving that to investigative staff.

Trump Jr. told the committee that he did not speak to the president directly in July 2017 as the New York Times prepared to report his meeting with the Russian lawyer for the first time. Instead, he told the committee he had communicated only with Trump communications director Hope Hicks to discuss how to respond to the Timess inquiries.

At the time, Hicks was on board Air Force One with Trump, returning home from the Group of 20 Summit in Germany.

The Washington Post has reported that the president dictated the statement Trump Jr. released that day about the meeting. The statement omitted key facts about the session with the Russian lawyer, indicating it was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by American families.

[Donald Trump Jr. communicated with WikiLeaks during 2016 campaign]

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that Trump Jr. told the committee he did speak with his father about the Trump Tower meeting several days later, after emails showing he had accepted the meeting after being offered dirt on Clinton were made public. However, Trump Jr. declined to detail the conversation to the committee, indicating a lawyer had been present and he believed it was subject to attorney-client privilege.

In my view there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son, Schiff said, adding he intended to follow up with Trump Jr.s attorneys, who had asked for more time to deliberate on the claim.

View Graphic Team Trumps ties to Russian interests

This particular discussion revolves around a pivotal meeting, Schiff said, noting it was a central issue that we need to fully investigate.

Trump Jr. also told the committee he had been unaware that national security adviser-designate Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions during phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. At the time, Trump Jr. served on the transition teams executive committee.

Flynn last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Kislyak.

Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is leading the House investigation, told reporters after the session concluded that Trump Jr. had answered all of the committees questions.

Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Trump Jr., declined to comment.

While the 39-year-old held no official role with his fathers campaign, he was closely involved in internal discussions and served as a prominent surrogate for Trump.

Trump Jr. also interacted at least twice with Russians who had showed interest in Trumps campaign  encounters that are of keen interest to investigators.

In addition to the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer, Trump Jr. also exchanged greetings at a dinner during a May 2016 National Rifle Association convention with a former Russian senator named Alexander Torshin, who is now the deputy head of the Central Bank of Russia.

Trump Jr. told the committee he had been introduced to Torshin by a friend, but said he could not recall which one.

Since the election, Trump Jr. has been helping run the Trump Organization in his fathers absence, while also traveling the country delivering paid speeches.

He has reacted to the scrutiny of his Russian contacts with defiance, taunting critics online. "Keep coming at me guys!!!" he wrote on Instagram after his messages with WikiLeaks became public, declaring the handful of notes to be "nothing burgers" advanced as part of a "false narrative."

Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
In the secretive system that governs most sexual-harassment settlements in the House, no single lawmaker or committee has a full picture of how many complaints were settled or how much public money was spent to resolve them.

Neither the speaker of the House nor party leaders are briefed on how many offices each year settle harassment complaints, which members are involved or how much they pay.

Neither are leaders of the House Ethics Committee, the body charged with enforcing a high standard of conduct among lawmakers.

The secrecy surrounding Capitol Hill is mandated under a law that shapes how workplace complaints are handled. Confidentiality agreements are routinely signed as part of the arrangements.

While settling cases does not in itself indicate wrongdoing, the lack of disclosure keeps congressional leaders in the dark about behavior by members or staff that might be stopped with earlier intervention.

There is no transparency, said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit focused on government ethics. How would you even know there was a pattern of misbehavior, by either a member or a staffer?

Issues with the 20-year-old Congressional Accountability Act, which sets up Congress's process for handling complaints, will come into focus Thursday at a House hearing on ways to improve the system. Several members have proposed bills that would rewrite parts of the law, responding to a public outcry over sexual harassment and use of taxpayer funds in resolving complaints.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Administration Committee, said he wants to improve the process for handling sexual harassment and discrimination.

Real reforms have not been made to this law since it was established in 1995, and our Committee believes reforms are long overdue, Harper said in a statement.

Questions about the process have been building for weeks since the congressional Office of Compliance said that it had paid out more than $17 million in settlements through a Treasury Department fund set up to handle disbursements for harassment and other workplace complaints on Capitol Hill. But the payments were hardly a full accounting of money used to deal with harassment.

Last month, BuzzFeed reported that Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) had used his office budget to settle with a former female aide who accused him of inappropriate touching and unwanted advances. His office disguised the $27,000 settlement in his office payroll. Conyers, who resigned this week, has denied wrongdoing in that case and other similar ones.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in 2015 settled a hostile work environment complaint for more than $48,000 out of the operating budget of a committee he oversaw, according to a report in the Washington Times. Asked for comment, a committee spokesman pointed to an op-ed piece in which he wrote that the womans claims about his office were untrue. The two signed a nondisclosure agreement that prevents him from describing the situation further, he wrote.

Both lawmakers have said they acted on advice from the Office of House Employment Counsel, which provides confidential legal advice and representation to lawmakers.

Victims advocates and lawmakers pushing to overhaul the system say there is no systematic tracking of how often lawmakers pay employees in exchange for silence about workplace complaints.

Settlements that come through the federal Office of Compliance must then get sign-offs from leaders of the Committee on House Administration, a panel that oversees the chambers operations.

The committees top Republican and Democrat members are presented with descriptions of each case, without names of the accused or accuser. They review the legal and financial recommendations for each settlement, and weigh how further litigation could pose risks to the House.

A request to pay Conyerss 2015 settlement was apparently rejected by then-Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.), who led the Committee on House Administration from 2013 through 2016 and remembers reviewing a settlement for about $27,000.

Miller said she rejected three or four proposed sexual-harassment settlements during her tenure as chairwoman.

If members settlements are denied and they decide to pay accusers through their office budgets, committee leaders are not notified, Miller said.

My posture on that was pretty consistent, which was: You have got to be kidding. You seriously think were going to use taxpayer money to cover up these behaviors of Congress?  Miller said. She said she did approve settlements involving other workplace claims, such as age or disability discrimination.

Miller said she once inadvertently discovered the identity of a member whose settlement she had rejected. The members aide followed one of her staffers into a bathroom to urge a change of mind. Miller would not identify the member to The Washington Post and could not recall specific details of the case.

We werent supposed to know who it was, so they didnt tell us who it was, she said.

The few individuals who know the details and names in each case are taxpayer-funded House attorneys. They negotiate formal and informal settlements on behalf of the member offices, and say they are duty-bound to keep details confidential under attorney-client relationships with each office they represent. But as the recent cases show, lawmakers can waive their client protection and disclose their payments publicly.

Lynne Bernabei, an employment lawyer who has represented congressional employees, said the majority of her cases involving the House were resolved long before her client filed a formal complaint with the Office of Compliance, the office that carries out the required counseling and mediation process for accusers.

In most cases, Bernabei said, the settlements came directly out of the lawmakers office budget, known officially as the Members Representational Allowance (MRA).

They were resolved before getting to the official House stage, she said of the complaints.

The most detail offered by the Office of Compliance comes in its semiannual reports to House and Senate administrative and appropriations committees. But those documents provide little clarity. In its May 2017 semiannual report, obtained by The Post, the office stated that miscellaneous public funds were paid for awards, without specifying who received the money or which members were involved.

The speaker has made clear that any report of harassment is deeply troubling, as all House of Representatives employees have the right to feel safe in the workplace, said AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

Democratic lawmakers are debating provisions in a wide-ranging bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), that aims to increase transparency, including by making public the names of member offices that reach settlements and requiring lawmakers to pay settlements out of their own pockets.

But victims advocates have warned that eliminating public funds could decrease the amount of money available to recompense those harmed. Federal agencies, for example, also use public funds in their budgets to pay for settlements, awards or damages.

The proposal aims to prohibit one-sided agreements that can bind only the accuser to silence. But it also aims to allow accusers to request confidentiality if they want their cases to remain private.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) believes there should be significantly more transparency in this area, and the Congress is finally engaging in significant discussions about how to provide it, keeping the privacy concerns of the victims in mind, said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi.

Too much disclosure could reveal the identities of victims who prefer to be anonymous or lawmakers who are falsely accused, exposing them to unfair consequences, government ethics experts and former committee aides said.

Attempts to crack down on severance settlements could also jeopardize the broad authority lawmakers have historically exercised over their office budgets, experts said.
Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican who is among the most conservative members of the House, said he would resign his seat after House officials learned that he had asked two female employees to bear his child as a surrogate.

Frankss announcement came as the House Ethics Committee said it would create a special subcommittee to investigate Franks for conduct that constitutes sexual harassment and/or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment.

His resignation, which Franks said is effective Jan. 31, will end the ethics investigation.

Franks said in his statement that the investigation concerns his discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable.

While Franks's statement left the circumstances of the "discussion" murky, three Republicans familiar with the allegations said that he had asked the staffers, who worked for him at the time but have since left his office, if they would serve as a surrogate mother for his child. A spokesman for Franks did not respond to a request for comment on that claim.

In his statement, Franks said he never physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.

However, I do want to take full and personal responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals uncomfortable, Franks said, adding, I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.

Franks explained in his statement that he and his wife have long struggled with infertility. After having twins with a surrogate, the couple sought additional children, he said.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryans office said in a statement Thursday that Ryan (R-Wis.) had been briefed on credible claims of misconduct by Franks last week, after the House general counsel was contacted about the allegations and investigated them.

Franks did not deny the allegations when Ryan confronted him, according to the speakers statement. Ryan told Franks he should resign, and said he would refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee, his statement said.

The speaker takes seriously his obligation to ensure a safe workplace in the House, the statement said.

The Franks revelations came on the same day that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) resigned his seat after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and as the House Ethics Committee opened a separate probe into Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.).

The committee initially launched an investigation into Farenthold in September 2015, but it was significantly delayed because the committee could not get key witnesses other than Representative Farenthold to testify, according to the committees statement.

Farentholds former communications director, Lauren Greene, accused Farenthold in 2014 of making sexually charged comments designed to gauge whether she was interested in a sexual relationship. Greene filed suit through the formal complaint process with Congresss Office of Compliance.

It was revealed last week that Farenthold used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settle the lawsuit. Farenthold has denied wrongdoing in the case.

This week, Greene spoke publicly about her experience for the first time since making the accusation. In interviews with CNN and Politico, she described the significant professional backlash she faced after filing a lawsuit against Farenthold.

The House Ethics Committee has requested Greene to cooperate with the investigation and appear before the panel. Prior to coming forward, Greene had declined, wanting to move on from the matter. But she has now agreed to cooperate with the investigation, said her attorney, Les Alderman.

Were trying to get that done before the holidays, over the next few weeks, Alderman said.

Farenthold said in a statement Thursday that he is relieved the House Ethics Committee will continue investigating the matter, saying he is confident this matter will once and for all be settled and resolved.

Franks has served in the House since 2003 and is known as a fierce opponent of legal abortion, recently sponsoring a bill banning abortions after 20-week gestation that passed the House. He is also an outspoken critic of the Senates filibuster rule, blaming it for blocking conservative bills.

Franks is also a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right faction that has often clashed with Republican leaders.

He considered a run for Senate in 2012 but dropped out suddenly. He continued as chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee and as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

While Franks was on the floor Thursday voting on a stopgap funding bill and other measures, he appeared to be consoled by a number of fellow Republicans. At one point, Franks and four colleagues locked arms and bowed their heads in an apparent prayer.

Franks said he was compelled to resign after concluding that he would be unable to endure the ethics probe before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation.

Rather than allow a sensationalized trial by media [to] damage those things I love most, this morning I notified House leadership that I will be leaving Congress as of January 31st, 2018, he said. It is with the greatest sadness, that for the sake of the causes I deeply love, I must now step back from the battle I have spent over three decades fighting.

Arizonas 8th Congressional District, which stretches northwest of Phoenix, leans Republican by 13 points, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. President Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the district by 21 points last year; Franks did not face a Democratic opponent.

Under Arizona state law, a special election must be called if there is a vacancy more than six months before a regularly scheduled election.

Names of potential Republican successors include Kimberly Yee, the state Senate majority leader currently running for state treasurer, and Phil Lovas, a former state representative, according to multiple Arizona GOP operatives.

Ed OKeefe contributed to this report.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced that he will resign after multiple allegations that he sexually harassed women. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

Senate lawmakers are stepping up their scrutiny of congressional sexual harassment complaints and taxpayer-funded settlements as pressure mounts on Congress to disclose information about the alleged misconduct of lawmakers.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Thursday joined two Senate committees in seeking records of complaints and settlements from the Office of Compliance, which carries out the required counseling and mediation process for legislative employees filing workplace claims. Kaine said he would publicly release any data he receives.

His request came as Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced he is resigning after multiple allegations that he sexually harassed women. Franken is one of several members of Congress who have been accused of inappropriate behavior.

In the past week, the House started releasing limited data on claims and settlements, without identifying any accusers or the lawmakers said to be involved. Even less is known about the number of workplace complaints involving Senate offices and how much public money was used to resolve them.

In a Dec. 6 letter to Susan Tsui Grundmann, executive director of the Office of Compliance, Kaine requested records from 2007 to 2017 showing the number of sexual harassment claims filed against members and their aides, the number of claims that were resolved, and the total amount paid to resolve the claims.

In the interest of transparency, I plan to publicly disclose this information because I believe it will provide some insight into the scope of the problem and help determine solutions for preventing and addressing future incidents, Kaine wrote in the letter.

Last week, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which has oversight authority over the Office of Compliance on the Senate side, requested a breakdown of settlements from the office. The Senate Ethics Committee then requested similar data regarding claims involving current senators and aides.

Its unclear whether the Office of Compliance will provide any information in response to Kaines request. On Thursday, the office sent a letter to Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), the top two members of the Senate Ethics Committee, saying it is not in possession of any record that fits within the narrow statutory exception to confidentiality contained in the law.

[Al Franken announces he will resign from the Senate]

In his letter to the Office of Compliance, Kaine said the information he is seeking should not breach any confidentiality agreement between the parties or the identities of the survivors and the accused.

More than $17 million in settlements and awards have been paid through a Treasury Department account set up to handle disbursements for harassment and other workplace complaints on Capitol Hill.

The Office of Compliance last week released a breakdown of the House settlements and claims since 2013 to the Committee on House Administration at the request of the committee, which oversees daily operations in the House.

In total, the Treasury account paid $359,450 for claims against House members' offices since 2013, the data shows. Only one settlement involved a sexual harassment claim: a complaint filed against Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), which was settled in 2015 for $84,000.

In the House, lawmakers are debating changes to the Congressional Accountability Act, which established the current rules that govern how most sexual harassment settlements are reached through formal channels.

During a House Administration Committee hearing on Thursday, the Office of Compliance asked the panel for legislative changes to allow the office to investigate claims of sexual harassment, better represent employees who bring the charges and release more information about settlements paid with public funds.


Pete McElroy at McElroy's Auto Repair Shop in Jackson, Miss., on Dec. 7. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

JACKSON, Miss.  The president is coming to Americas poorest, blackest state to open a civil rights museum on Saturday, and people in the neighborhoods surrounding that gleaming tribute to the past would rather have Donald Trump visit their present.

Its hostile now, more hostile than in a long, long time, said Pete McElroy, who employs three men at the auto repair shop that has been his familys business for three generations. People almost boast about it: We got our man in the White House, and this is the way the balls going to roll now. 

Three miles from the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, over rutted roads, past littered lots, abandoned houses, and shuttered plants and warehouses, McElroy, 69, and other black residents of this struggling capital city say that after nearly a year of the Trump presidency, they have a definitive answer to the question candidate Trump posed when he spoke at a rally in Jackson in August last year.

What do you have to lose? Trump asked, making a quixotic and ultimately failed bid for black votes to a nearly all-white crowd.

Were losing a lot, McElroy said here this week. Losing Obamacare. Where are people going to go? Losing money. Hes making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Mostly, were losing respect. No way you can evade that. The way he speaks, the racists feel like they can say anything they want to us.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R)  an early and avid supporter of Trumps  had invited the president to attend the opening months ago, but few here thought he would actually come. Except for crises such as hurricanes and oil spills, no president had set foot in small, poor, reliably Republican Mississippi for more than a decade.



The Black Empowerment exhibit at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Trumps down-to-the-wire decision to attend the opening seemed to change everything. Suddenly, the focus shifted from the elderly Mississippians who had stood up to police and merchants and employers to demand their rights half a century ago. The president with a knack for dominating conversation had succeeded again. In the local news, at beauty salons and auto repair shops, even in the halls of the new museum, the talk was now about Trump: Why was he coming? What would he say? Would celebration morph into protest and controversy?

[Trump should skip Civil Rights Museum opening, NAACP says]

On Thursday, Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat who is one of the last surviving leaders of the civil rights movement, canceled his commitment to give the keynote address at the opening. Lewis, who had refused to attend Trumps inauguration because he considered him an illegitimate president, joined with Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in announcing that they will not attend because Trump is coming.

President Trumps attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum, they said in a statement.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called their decision unfortunate, adding that Trump hopes others will join him in recognizing that the movement was about removing barriers and unifying Americans of all backgrounds.

On the cusp of the divisive Senate election in neighboring Alabama, Trump has triggered a frenzy of preparation and trepidation. On Thursday, Secret Service agents and state and local police combed every corner of the downtown site where Trump will join aging veterans of the civil rights movement and local politicians for the opening of two museums  one on the states history, the other a strikingly challenging look at the cruelties of race from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Along the streets of Jackson, even people who had no idea that a civil rights museum had just been built with $90 million in state money knew that Trump was coming.

[In Mississippi, a racists rifle tells a chilling story. But will Trump overshadow it?]

Its okay hes coming, but they should take him to the hood, said Quinton King, a 22-year-old mechanic at a tire shop on Martin Luther King Drive. Let him see we living paycheck to paycheck, cant get no credit card. Its like theyre trying to keep everything for themselves up there, and here, we aint got nothing. Tell Trump to look around  houses abandoned, streets with holes, power lines hanging down in the street.



A mural of Freedom Riders mug shots at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

King had not heard of any new museum in town. Not really my style, he said. And he saw no reason to learn about the people who had risked their lives to win him the right to vote and to live where he pleased. We didnt touch on any history real heavy in school, King said. It was all about trying to get you to pass the exit test.

But although there are no plans for Trump to see any of Jackson beyond the museum, even a quick breeze through its galleries will confront him with a view of American history more complicated than the simple message sent by his Make America Great Again slogan.

I Question America, reads the banner over one of the museums galleries. A panel headlined Savage Beating depicts how police in the 1960s, charged with enforcing the law, instead often brutalized black Mississippians.

The museum presents a searing catalogue of bombings, small daily terrors, grinding humiliations, and rousing odes to the power of community organizing. Five towering black monoliths list the names of those who were lynched  more than in any other state  along with the purported rationale for their deaths: lawlessness, even mistaken identity.

[Trump replies MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN to tweet about his attacks on African American]

It is purposely a challenging view of a time that no one would want to go back to, said Katie Blount, director of the state Department of Archives and History, which built the museum. You cant understand anything about Mississippi or the nation today without understanding this history, she said.

Mississippians are divided about whether Trump should have been invited to the opening. Some of his supporters, thrilled by news of a presidential visit, have announced plans to attend the opening, which has some veterans of the civil rights movement worrying that celebration might change into confrontation.



Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Marshall Ramsey, the cartoonist for the local newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, tweeted his hope that Trump wont say, as he did after the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August, that you also had some very fine people on both sides.

Its unfortunate that this president, who has created a climate of racial insensitivity and has embraced white supremacists, would choose to use this celebration of civil rights heroes as a photo op, said Derrick Johnson, who recently moved from head of the Mississippi NAACP to the presidency of the national organization. Theres just profound disappointment and sadness that after all these years, Mississippi is finally recognizing the heroes of the movement and this president chooses to be a distraction and an affront.

Some blacks in Jackson see the museum, however, not as a reconciliation but as another in a long series of slights. I wont ever set foot in it, said Burrell Brooks, a taxi driver who views the museum as an effort by whites to excuse the crimes of the past and the inequalities of the present.

Its getting worse, not better, not just for black Americans but for poor whites, too, Brooks said. You see the Confederate banner back up, the whole Confederate monuments thing. This country is going back to more segregation, and a museum makes people think thats all history, thats all fixed.

[In feud with John Lewis, Donald Trump attacked one of the most respected people in America]

The first thing many African Americans in Jackson mention about the museum is the admission price, which is $8. They charge us to see our own history, Brooks said.

Dont holler about Trump coming, said Dorothy Benford, 75, a retired teacher who as a young college student worked with civil rights activists in Jackson. Let him come. Maybe hell learn something. If youre going to holler, holler about the fee, making black people pay to see our own people kidnapped, hung, beaten, killed. Holler about what we have to lose  medical care, day care. Holler about the racist things people are saying about blacks that you did not hear before Trump.

Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour (R), one of the most fervent advocates for the civil rights museum, rejects the idea that Trump has unleashed a new era of racial confrontation. I dont hear that, he said. The vast majority of Mississippians  black, white, red or yellow  think our state has made as much progress or more than any other state in the last 50 years.

Even if Trump hasnt exactly been a symbol of racial reconciliation, he said, its good for our state that the president, whoever he is, is tipping his hat to Mississippi, coming here knowing that there are things in this museum that we do not want to see repeated. The purpose of this museum was to be honest, open, to be candid about things that were indefensible.

Jacksons longest-serving city councilman, Kenneth Stokes, isnt buying that. He drives through his center-city ward and pronounces that he will never enter the museum. Its a statement of white control of history, he said. In the blackest state in the United States of America, you dont have one black elected official statewide. Look at these houses, gutted, falling down, its like its a hundred years ago. How can you have a museum that says this is in the past? Its not a museum for poor black people, not if theyre charging that high fee. Its for whites to make themselves feel better.

[For Trump, fighting with athletes is a political sport]

Inside the museum, Blount, who is white, nods. She has heard these doubts many times, and she doesnt expect blacks who are skeptical about state power to embrace the museum right away. We are a state agency and so was the Sovereignty Commission, which Mississippi created in 1956 to do battle with federal efforts to integrate schools and voting rolls. Only the reality of the museum can chip away at its critics objections, she said.



City Councilman Kenneth Stokes outside City Hall in Jackson, Miss. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

A harsh voice shouts, Get off the sidewalk. Dont you know your place? A visitor at the museum has crossed a line on the gallery floor, triggering a recorded reminder of the racial hierarchy that was codified in law and deed in Jim Crow Mississippi in the years before the civil rights movement.

Two miles away from the museum, as Priscilla Sterling recalled, a tense white man cornered her daughter on a street in Jackson. Would you ever date a skinhead? he asked, and its 2017 and she doesnt know what she can say.

"White men following me, intimidating my daughter  this is the craziest time I've ever seen," said Sterling, 49, a Jackson resident and a cousin of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after a white woman accused him of flirting with her at her family's grocery store.

I used to say I could never have lived in the 1950s or 60s, that I couldnt have taken the pressure, Sterling said. Now its 2017 and Ive had people follow me and threaten me with vitriol. Its vitriol like I never heard before Trump.
A majority of Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for the resignation of Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) after determining that they could no longer tolerate his presence in their midst as a growing number of women accused him of sexual harassment.

They turned on one of their partys most popular figures with stunning swiftness, led by the Senates Democratic women, who were joined in short order by more than half of the Democratic caucus.

Enough is enough, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference. We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go.

Frankens office said he would make an announcement about his future on Thursday. Minnesota Public Radio reported Wednesday afternoon that Franken planned to resign, but Frankens office quickly denied it on Twitter. Not accurate, the tweet stated. No final decision has been made and the Senator is still talking with his family.

If he steps down soon, a replacement would be appointed by Minnesotas Democratic governor to serve until the 2018 election.

The drive to purge Franken, coming a day after Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) resigned under pressure in the House, was a dramatic indication of the political toxicity that has grown around the issue of sexual harassment in recent months.

It also stood as a stark  and deliberate  contrast with how the Republicans are handling a parallel situation in Alabama, where Roy Moore, their candidate for U.S. Senate in next weeks special election, is accused by women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

Although most of the alleged actions took place before he was a senator, Franken was becoming a growing liability to his party, and Republicans had seized upon the allegations against him.

At Moores Tuesday night rally, conservative pundit Gina Loudon declared that Republicans did not need lectures on morality from Democrats who had struggled with their own sex scandals, and cited both Conyers and Franken.

President Trump, himself the target of multiple allegations of sexual assault, has enthusiastically endorsed Moore, and the Republican Party is once again pouring money into the race after pulling back. Leading Senate Republicans have also toned down their negative comments about Moore, saying his fate should be up to the voters of Alabama and  if he is elected  the Senate Ethics Committee.

Im looking for where are the Republican voices? Where is their outrage? Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said on CNN.

Republican leaders remained quiet amid the developments.

Asked about Franken, Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn (Tex.) said he would leave it up to [Democrats] to deal with members of their own party.

The move by Senate Democrats to oust Franken marked a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the onetime Saturday Night Live star. The senator from Minnesota had emerged as one of the Trump administrations sharpest foils on Capitol Hill  and as a potential 2020 presidential contender.



Sen. Al Franken D-Minn.) stood in front of journalists outside his Capitol Hill office on Nov. 27 to comment on the sexual harassment allegations against him. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Over the past three weeks, more than a half-dozen women have accused Franken of unwanted advances and touching. He apologized, saying in some cases that he had not intended to give offense and in others that he did not recall events as the women did.

The latest allegation against Franken came in a report published Wednesday by Politico. A former congressional aide whose name was withheld by the publication claimed that Franken had tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, two years before his election to the Senate.

The woman claimed that Franken had told her, Its my right as an entertainer.

Frankens alleged offenses were arguably less serious than those attributed to Moore, or to Conyers, the longest-serving member of Congress, who was accused of demanding sexual favors from the women who worked for him. Until late last week, it appeared that Frankens fellow Democrats would allow his case to work its way through the Senate Ethics Committee, a process that would take months and perhaps years to reach a resolution.

As recently as Nov. 26, Sen Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senates second-ranking Democrat, had argued on CNN: Al Franken has acknowledged what he did was wrong, and it was wrong. He has also submitted his whole case to the Senate Ethics Committee. I think that was the right thing to do. Lets have a hearing, an investigation. Lets let this really reach whatever conclusion it is going to reach, but through a due process.

But on Wednesday, Durbin expressed no such forbearance. Senator Frankens conduct was wrong. He has admitted to it. And he should resign from the Senate.

Even as Senate Democrats expressed support publicly for leaving Frankens fate in the hands of the Ethics Committee, his female colleagues were increasingly unsettled as new accusers went public.

People were at the edge of their patience with this. Theyd had enough. One more allegation was going to be it, said one senior aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.

Another said female Democratic senators had been discussing it among themselves on the Senate floor, even in the ladies room.

Many people have been talking about this for some time, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said. It wasnt coordinated. It just happened.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has served in the Senate longer than most of her female colleagues, said it was significant that the women on his side of the aisle led the way and added that she believed the latest allegation was in some ways the final straw for people.



Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer D-N.Y.), joined at left by Sen. Sherrod Brown D-Ohio), meets reporters following a closed-door strategy session on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who had stood by his friend in the wake of the allegations, called Franken after the Politico story broke early Wednesday and told him directly he had to resign, according to a person familiar with the call, who added that this came before other senators began calling for him to step down.

Schumer also met with Franken and his wife at the leaders apartment early afternoon to discuss resigning. The session ended without a firm commitment from Franken to do so, said the source, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the private exchange.

In recent days  before Wednesdays report  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has known Franken for nearly two decades, had also told Franken he needed to step down, aides familiar with their discussions said. On Wednesday, Warren issued a short public statement, saying, I think he should resign.

Franken had staved off public calls for his ouster last week, according to a person who has been in touch with the senator and his staff in recent days.

There was a mad rush last week to call on Franken to resign when more allegations surfaced, said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about private discussions. I think that people were talked off the ledge at that point and wanted to recollect and figure out if the Senate Ethics investigation should just move forward.

But, Im pretty sure that Al should have known that if there was another story that came out that thered be a mass exodus away from him.

Outside the chamber, growing numbers of Democrats had been making the case that it was untenable for Franken to remain in the Senate if their party hoped to maintain the high ground on the issue.

Among those calling for Franken to step down was Doug Jones, Moores Democratic opponent in Alabama.

And though she did not mention Franken by name, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had declared a policy of zero tolerance when she called last week for Conyers to leave the House. On Wednesday, Pelosi declared that she was very proud of the fact that people are taking this matter head on and are trusting women who come forward, what they have to say.

More and more lawmakers are saying their concern over sexual harassment allegations should not be overridden by politics, or by the respect they have for each others records and their shared positions on important policy matters.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted on Tuesday that her own efforts as a civil rights and immigration rights activist could not have succeeded without the early work of Conyers.

Despite that legacy, I also hope that we can be clear about what our standard is for sexual harassment and make it very, very clear to every woman who is out there that you do not have to put up with this. It is not right, and most of us as women  I can tell you  know exactly what this has all been about, she said. Weve all been through various forms of this and I think its essential that if people come to work in this body that they know that they have a safe environment. We have to be clear about that, whether its a Republican, a Democrat, someone we love or someone we find distasteful.

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), seen as a future caucus leader in the House, said this weeks actions should serve as a warning to those who have been or may be accused of sexual wrongdoing.

If you are a sexual harasser, go away. We dont want you, we dont want you as our colleague, she said Wednesday. Our interns dont deserve that, our staff doesnt deserve it. The women members of Congress dont deserve it.

Everybodys got to speak for themselves, she added later, but this is not a place to be a sexual harasser.

David Weigel in Mobile, Ala., and Sean Sullivan in Washington contributed to this article.

Read more at PowerPost
Congress passed a short-term spending deal Thursday, sending to President Trump a bill to avert a partial government shutdown and setting up a heated budget fight later this month.

Trump has indicated that he will sign the deal, preventing a government stoppage that had been set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The deal does not resolve numerous debates over domestic spending, immigration and funding for the military that brought the government to the brink of partial closure, leaving party leaders with a new Dec. 22 deadline to keep the government open.

There are clear obstacles to any longer-term deal, and leaders of both parties are demanding concessions in exchange for their members support. Democrats are pushing for the next government funding bill to include increased domestic spending, legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children and other party priorities. Some Republicans are pushing for increased defense spending, while others have made shrinking the government their top objective.

Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress, but they cannot pass spending bills alone. In the Senate, a 60-vote supermajority is required to pass most major legislation, and Republicans control 52 seats. That means negotiating with Democrats, who have pushed to maintain their own domestic spending priorities, as well as policy initiatives on immigration, health care and more.



House Speaker Paul D. Ryan R-Wis.) (Susan Walsh/AP)

Trump himself cast doubt Wednesday about the prospects for a deal, telling reporters that Democrats want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime. A shutdown over the issue, he said, could happen.

The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-line conservatives who have bucked GOP leaders on past government spending bills, warned that any bipartisan deal on spending risked a Republican revolt later this month.

It takes two bodies to put something into law, and the presidents agreement to a caps deal does not mean that it is fiscally the best thing for the country, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said. I want to avoid a headline that says President Trumps administration just passed the highest spending levels in U.S. history.

The short-term measure passed the Senate 81 to 14 and passed the House 235 to 193.

Congressional leaders of both parties went to the White House on Thursday afternoon to begin talks with Trump on a long-term spending pact.

[Trump again elevates shutdown threat, even as tensions ease on Capitol Hill]

Were all here today as a very friendly, well-unified group, well-knit-together group of people, Trump said at the start of the Oval Office meeting. We hope that were going to make some great progress for our country. I think that will happen, and well appreciate it very much.

The meeting broke up without any specific deal reached, but the parties said in separate statements that discussions would continue in the coming weeks.

The Republican leaders said immigration should be a separate process and not used to hold hostage funding for our men and women in uniform, while Democrats said they would continue to press for action on the urgent, bipartisan priorities before Congress, including domestic spending and immigration.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) laid out a host of Democratic demands, including funding for veterans, resources to fight the opioid crisis and the passage of a bill granting legal status to hundreds of thousands of dreamers  immigrants brought without documentation to the United States as children.

[Congress confronts jam-packed December with shutdown deadline looming]

Pelosi sent mixed signals on how far Democrats would go to secure their priorities, saying on one hand that Democrats are not willing to shut government down but on the other that they will not leave Washington for the holidays without a fix for dreamers.

The main source of the Democrats leverage, however, is the Republicans desire to increase military spending to more than $600 billion in 2018.

Under a 10-year budget deal struck in 2011, Congress may appropriate a maximum of $549 billion for defense programs and $516 billion for nondefense programs next year. Republican leaders have floated a $54 billion boost in defense next year and a $37 billion increase in nondefense spending. Democrats have thus far demanded equivalent increases for both.

We need a strong national defense, but we also need a strong domestic budget, Pelosi said Thursday.

Among those joining the White House meeting Thursday were Vice President Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and senior adviser Stephen Miller.

Mattis and Mulvaney are seen on Capitol Hill as pivotal figures in a clash within the Trump administration over whether to cut a deal with Democrats to raise domestic spending to secure an increase in the military budget. Mattis has pushed internally to work with Democrats to secure a bigger military budget, while Mulvaney has argued for pursuing a harder line. Miller, meanwhile, is considered the strongest advocate in the White House for tougher immigration policies and argued Thursday for new strictures as part of any dreamer deal, according to a congressional aide briefed on the meeting.

The stopgap bill Congress passed Thursday does not change existing spending levels, and defense hawks have resisted calls to pass temporary bills into the new year, arguing that the military needs a boost.

But conservatives see it differently: They want to provoke a confrontation with Democrats and break a cycle of bipartisan deals that has led both military and nondefense discretionary spending to rise in lockstep. They are also wary of a year-end spending bill becoming a legislative Christmas tree that could include relief for dreamers and other Democratic priorities.

That, Meadows said, would be not only problematic, but it will be met with such resistance that we havent seen on the Hill for many, many years.

Meadows said he is pushing House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to do short-term spending until we break the defense-nondefense connection. He said GOP leaders have expressed openness to drafting a funding bill this month that funds the military through the remainder of the fiscal year while leaving the remainder of the federal bureaucracy subject to a weeks-long extension.

Ryan declined Thursday to confirm any such deal; Pelosi said it would be a nonstarter for Democrats. Were the House to pass such a bill, the Senate would be likely to send back a bipartisan measure that would include provisions that conservatives dislike. But that could win votes from House Democrats, sidelining the conservatives.

Were going to take the speaker at his word that hes going to fight, Meadows said, adding, If all we do is pass a bill and watch the Senate change it, and then agree to higher spending, that is not a fight.

Read more at PowerPost
Erik Prince, founder of the former Blackwater security firm, heads for a closed meeting of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Nov. 30, 2017. (Reynold/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock)

Erik Prince, a supporter of the Trump campaign and the former head of the security firm Blackwater, told congressional investigators that he discussed trade relations and countering terrorism with a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in the Seychelles early this year, according to a newly released transcript of the interview.

Prince told investigators last week that Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, told him during the Jan. 11 meeting that he wished trade would resume with the United States in a normal way.

Prince responded by telling Dmitriev that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, certainly the United States could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism.

The meeting in the Seychelles has drawn scrutiny as one of several interactions Trump associates had with Russian officials during the presidential campaign and transition.

Prince told congressional investigators that he was a donor to Trump's campaign who later submitted policy papers to members of the president-elect's transition team.

As head of Russias sovereign wealth fund, Dmitriev reports to Putin.

Prince said his meeting with Dmitriev came up at the last minute and at the suggestion of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who Prince said invited him to the Seychelles  although he said he could not remember when or who from Zayeds staff extended the invitation. The crown prince is widely known as MBZ.

Prince also said he did not remember when or where he had a conversation with White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, during which Bannon told Prince he had met MBZ in New York in December, just weeks before Prince traveled to the Seychelles. Prince said Bannon vouched for MBZ during the conversation, calling him a great guy.

Prince said he never told Bannon about meeting Dmitriev .

The Washington Post in April reported Princes meeting in the Seychelles with an unidentified Russian close to Putin.

[Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel]

In the House Intelligence Committee interview, Prince alleged that The Post was leaked U.S. intelligence about the meeting and claimed that he was improperly unmasked by former officials. The Post attributed its April story to U.S., European and Arab officials. Prince refused during the interview to identify those who he claimed told him that he had been unmasked.

The committees top Democrat, California Rep. Adam B. Schiff, complained in a statement that Prince was less than forthcoming with information, concluding that committee Republicans must compel Prince to testify on these matters  particularly because the GOP has been acutely focused on finding the source of government leaks.

Read more at PowerPost
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Thursday announced that he will resign amid multiple allegations that he touched women inappropriately, a stunning political fall at a time when the issue of sexual harassment has exploded on Capitol Hill and enveloped both parties.

Yielding to pressure from other Democrats, Franken will now prepare to end a career that seemed just to be hitting its stride as he was emerging as a potent voice challenging the Trump administration  and was being seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020.

Also Thursday, Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona announced he was resigning after House officials learned that he had asked two staffers to bear his child as a surrogate. And the House Ethics Committee announced it has established an investigative subcommittee to further probe allegations that Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) sexually harassed a former aide and then retaliated against her after she filed a complaint.

All of this came just two days after Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the longest-serving member of Congress, became the first lawmaker facing harassment allegations to step down.

The resignations could increase pressure on other accused offenders in the House, including Farenthold and Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.).

Farenthold, who settled with a former aide who accused him of sexual harassment in 2014, has denied wrongdoing. And Kihuen apologized after his former campaign finance director accused him of unwanted touching and advances last week. So far, he has defied calls from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to step aside.

The mounting pressure on Franken to leave the Senate reflected an effort by Democrats to gain the higher ground on the harassment issue as they seek to capitalize on allegations of misconduct against President Trump and Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore.

The political risks for Democrats came into focus this week in Alabama, where voters will cast ballots next week. Supporters of Moore, who is accused of pursuing romantic relationships with teenage girls while in his 30s, began to argue that Democrats could not decry his alleged misconduct given the scandals plaguing their own party.

In a defiant Senate floor speech Thursday, Franken noted that neither Moore nor Trump has been forced to step aside despite facing arguably more serious allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior.

There is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party, Franken said.

Franken in his speech denied recent allegations that he groped and made unwanted advances toward more than a half-dozen women, most of whom said the episodes took place before Franken joined the Senate.

I know theres been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am, he said, adding, I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator  nothing  has brought dishonor on this institution.

National reckoning

Frankens departure from Capitol Hill is perhaps the strongest example yet from the world of politics of the reckoning over sexual harassment and misconduct taking place around the country. As women have come forward over the past two months to accuse powerful men of improper conduct, the standards of behavior tolerated in parts of government and the private sector have undergone sudden, sometimes unpredictable changes.

Before this week, Capitol Hill faced criticism for not punishing accused offenders as quickly as the private sector. On Thursday, as Democrats began to bid farewell to Franken, many affirmed the necessity of applying stricter standards to members of Congress, even those considered friends.

In every workplace in America, including the U.S. Senate, we must confront the challenges of harassment and misconduct, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a close friend of Frankens, said in a statement. Nothing is easy or pleasant about this, but we all must recognize that our workplace cultures  and the way we treat each other as human beings  must change.

Franken entered the Senate in 2009 after a bitter recount battle in which he won his first election by 312 votes.

At first, Franken avoided speaking engagements and national political reporters, seeking to shed his reputation as a Saturday Night Live comic and radio talk show host for that of a serious policymaker. He took an interest in telecommunications policy, opposing major corporate mergers and becoming an advocate for net neutrality, an Obama-era policy to bar Internet providers from blocking or hampering certain websites.

Donald Trumps presidency raised Frankens national profile. He became popular among many Democrats for clashing with Trump Cabinet nominees, including Betsy DeVos, now education secretary, and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), now attorney general.

Franken is expected to make his resignation effective at the end of the month, according to a person familiar with his decision-making. This timetable could allow him to cast several consequential votes on the Republican tax bill, funding the government and possibly the fate of many immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Once Franken officially resigns, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) will pick a replacement to serve until a November 2018 special election. Another election for the seat will take place in 2020, the end of Frankens current Senate term.

The Minnesota senator suggested Thursday that his replacement would be a woman, lending credence to expectations that Dayton will name Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, State Auditor Rebecca Otto, or state Reps. Tina Liebling or Erin Murphy to the seat. Dayton, in a statement, said he has not yet chosen who will fill the vacancy.

Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day, Franken said in his floor speech.



Sen. Al Franken D-Minn.) stood in front of journalists outside his Capitol Hill office on Nov. 27 to comment on the sexual harassment allegations against him. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The latest allegation against Franken had come in a report published Wednesday morning by Politico. According to a former congressional aide, whose name was withheld by the publication, Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The woman claimed that Franken had told her, Its my right as an entertainer. He denied these allegations outright, and said Thursday he was shocked and upset by womens allegations against him.

Franken, who did not issue another apology in his floor speech, also said his previous apologies had been misinterpreted.

I wanted to be respectful of that broader [national] conversation, because all women deserve to be heard and their experience taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do, he said. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things I hadnt done.

Line in the sand

Until Wednesday, no Senate Democrat had called for Franken to vacate his seat. Some said they were waiting for the conclusion of an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee, which had Frankens cooperation.

But after the most recent allegation surfaced, Senate Democratic women who had been privately discussing Frankens need to resign said enough was enough.

We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told reporters at a news conference.

She rejected arguments that the Ethics Committee ought to finish its investigation before Frankens fate was sealed.

I think it would be better for the country for [Franken] to offer that clear message that he values women, that we value women and that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, she said.

On Thursday, Democrats said they agreed with Frankens decision and quickly pivoted to demanding Republicans reject members of their party who face similar allegations.

Republicans must join Democrats in holding their own accountable, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement. The American people should take notice of national Republicans support for a morally degraded Senate candidate in Alabama and a president in the Oval Office facing equally credible charges.

It was an emotional scene Thursday on the Senate floor as Franken announced his plans.

More than 20 members of the Democratic caucus sat watching his speech, including many who had called for him to resign.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), sitting just behind Franken, removed her glasses twice to wipe tears from her eyes.

In the visitors gallery, Frankens wife, Franni, sat with a group of friends, family and consultants, including Klobuchars husband, John Bessler, and Frankens top political aide, Mandy Grunwald. Some clasped tissues; others held their heads in their hands.

When Franken concluded, several senators approached and hugged him. They included Klobuchar and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who slapped him on the back as they tightly embraced.

Franken then turned to the 26 aides seated behind him, shaking each of their hands and giving hugs. The final aide he greeted, a young woman, laughed and cried as they spoke.

But despite the warmth evident on the Senate floor, it became clear as the minutes passed that no senator would speak in tribute to Franken. None did.

Paul Kane and Ben Terris contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
Many analysts think a recent increase in North Korean ghost ships washing ashore in Japan is a reflection of food shortages, which in turn are a result of tougher sanctions imposed to punish the regime for its continued nuclear defiance. (Kyodo News/AP)

Three more empty boats were found along Japan's west coast on Thursday, a day when the snow and the rain made sure the temperature never really rose above freezing. Two bodies reduced to skeletons were found near one, which was upturned on the shore near the city of Oga.

Another boat, much bigger, was found not far away. And the third, bearing Korean writing, was caught in fishing nets near Sado Island, just off the west coast.

The previous day, an equally freezing Wednesday, a rickety old wooden boat that also bore a sign in Korean was found bucking around in the rough seas. Discovered nearby: two bodies.

Another body, mostly just bones, was found up the coast in Akita prefecture Tuesday. Before that, three bodies were recovered near a wooden boat  two of them wearing pins showing the face of Kim Il Sung, the eternal president of North Korea.

Almost every day for the past month, grisly discoveries like these have been made all along Japans western coastline, across the sea from North Korea. One boat even had a slogan in Korean declaring: September is a boat accident prevention month.

North Korean ghost ships had previously washed ashore from time to time, but the sudden spike over the past month  a record 28 in November, compared with four the previous November, according to the coast guard  has many people here wondering what is going on. And, they ask, does it tell us something about the state of North Korea?

As with so many things about North Korea, it is difficult to know for sure. But many analysts think it's a reflection of food shortages, which in turn are the result of tougher sanctions on North Korea imposed to punish the regime for its continued nuclear defiance.

North Korean fishermen have to work harder than ever before, and they have to go farther out into the sea, but they dont have new boats, said Atsuhito Isozaki, associate professor of North Korean studies at Keio University.

[ Photos from North Koreas east coast show how tough life is away from the capital ]

Most of the boats washed up in Japan are about 32 feet long and wooden, so they have trouble withstanding the rough winter seas. Many of the bodies are decomposed or just skeletons, likely a reflection of the storms and difficult seas in the area in October.

Plus, North Korea doesnt have enough gasoline anymore, so theyre running out of fuel, Isozaki said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been aggressively promoting fishing as a growth industry and started this year by ordering a dynamic drive for catching fish with modern fishing vessels.

Fishing boats are like warships, protecting the people and the motherland. Fish are like bullets and artillery shells, the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers Party, wrote in an editorial last month. Winter fishing was an important battle to meet annual seafood quotas, the paper said.

North Koreas seafood exports to China grew by a whopping 75 percent between 2015 and 2016, hitting $190 million last year, according to figures from the Souths trade promotion agency. This made it one of North Koreas biggest sources of revenue.

But in August, in response to the launch of North Korea's first intercontinental ballistic missiles, the U.N. Security Council banned seafood exports from the rogue state. The following month, it slapped limits on the amount of refined petroleum products that could be exported to North Korea, all part of a strategy to make the regime think twice about pursuing nuclear weapons.

While it is still too early to see the full effect of those sanctions  and the extent to which neighboring China is implementing them  analysts said they do appear to be causing North Korea pain already.

Fishermen usually have a set quota, and they used to sell the seafood to China, said Toshimitsu Shigemura, emeritus professor at Waseda University. Now with the new sanctions, they cant sell the seafood overseas, but the quota still exists, so fishermen need to go fishing. They probably stay out too long to catch more fish.

[ Kim Jong Uns North Korea: Life inside the totalitarian state ]

North Korea is reported to have sold the fishing rights along its coast to China. Now, to meet their quotas, North Koreans appear to be fishing illegally in the Yamato shallows, a rich fishing ground inside Japans exclusive economic zone. If they run out of fuel, the strong northwesterly winds from China will blow them toward the Japanese coast.

Other analysts say the increasing number of fishermen washing up in Japan might be evidence of food shortages in North Korea, with fishermen pushing themselves to extremes in search of a good catch.

The food situation is getting worse, so fishing is encouraged in order to fulfill peoples needs, said Sotetsu Ri, a North Korea expert at Ryukoku University. Fishing is one way to deal with the economic situation.

The Mainichi Shimbun, a left-leaning Japanese newspaper, said the sudden spurt in ghost ships showed the tyranny of the North Korean regime.

"The Kim administration says that its policy focus is on nuclear development and improving the lives of its citizens," it wrote in an editorial this week. "But in reality, the administration's policy of nuclear and missile development has led to the deterioration of the lives of the North Korean public, forcing them to undertake ill-advised fishing excursions."

Not all the boats have contained corpses. A total of 42 men have been found alive, with one boatload of eight telling Japanese authorities they were looking for squid when their engine failed.

In another incident, 10 North Korean men sought shelter in a hut on an uninhabited islet in northern Japan. But after they broke in, they stole a TV, refrigerator and rice cooker. When Japans coast guard spotted their wooden boat, the men dumped the appliances into the sea.

All of the men found in recent weeks have asked to be returned to North Korea, and the Japanese government is in the process of sending them back.

[ North Koreas latest missile launch appears to put U.S. capital in range ]

The arrival of North Koreans is causing jitters along the coastline, the same stretch of land from which Japanese citizens were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

It doesnt really make us feel great, said Kazuhiro Asai, head of the Oga branch office of the Akita Fisheries Cooperative Association, located near where eight men were found alive recently.

In the past, there was a case where North Koreans came to kidnap someone nearby, and that was scary. I guess these guys arent out to kidnap, but we dont know what theyre here for, and that makes me worried.

For others along the coast, where North Korea has been landing many of its missiles in the water, this is another unwelcome encroachment from a hostile neighbor.

We have an uneasy feeling, said Sakari Nishimura of Yamagata Prefectural Fisheries Cooperative Association. These days, we not only need to watch out for missiles falling from the sky; now we have to watch out on the sea, too.

Yuki Oda contributed to this report.

Read more:

North Korean soldiers survival is truly a miracle, says American rescue crew

China province near North Korea warns about the dangers of nuclear war

U.S. calls on all nations to completely sever ties with North Korea

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Secretary of Stae Rex Tillerson, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, R, hold bilateral talks Thursday during a meeting of the the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna. (Hans Punz/AFP/Getty Images)

The gulf between the United States and Russia showed no signs of narrowing Thursday, as top diplomats from the two countries faced off over a proposed U.N. peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson vowed that there will be no easing of sanctions on Russia or warming of relations until Moscow stops supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine and abandons the apparent annexation of Crimea.

We can have differences in other areas, but when one country invades another, that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile, Tillerson told reporters at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a group created during the Cold War to encourage dialogue between East and West.

And weve made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine, he said. It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us re-normalizing a relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do.

[A surge of violence in Ukraine may be Trumps first test with Putin]

The 57-member OSCE is one of the few regional organizations in which both the United States and Russia are members. U.S. officials had hoped it would provide a venue to discuss modifications to a Russian proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine. Since 2014, more than 10,000 people have died in the war between Ukraine's government and Russian-backed separatists.

The United States and its allies want peacekeepers to have a broad mission to protect about 600 OSCE monitors currently on the ground and investigate cease-fire violations throughout eastern Ukraine.

They worry that a more limited mission of just protecting the monitors, as Russia has proposed, would effectively lock in territorial gains by the Russian-speaking separatists, who want to break away from Ukraine.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a long and grievance-filled speech to the OSCE, said an expanded mandate would be akin to an occupation.

It is deeply troubling to try to wrap up the substantive consideration of the Russian draft Security Council resolution on the establishment of a U.N. mission to promote and protect the observers in strict accordance with their mandate, Lavrov said. In return, ideas are proposed that are equivalent to the introduction of an occupation administration in the Donbas to bury the measures approved by the Security Council and resolve the issue by force. He was referring to the Donets Basin region of eastern Ukraine.

[Putins Ukraine proposal seen as another trap for Trump]

In his own speech to the OSCE, Tillerson said civilian deaths and cease-fire violations have risen dramatically over the past year. He noted that an American OSCE paramedic working with an observer group was killed in a land-mine explosion in April.

His words about Russia were unstinting.

We should be clear about the source of this violence, Tillerson said. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces.

We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission, he added.

Tillerson said the United States is focusing its diplomatic efforts on eastern Ukraine because thats where civilians are dying. But that does not mean the United States acknowledges that Crimea is now a part of Russia, which annexed the peninsula in early 2014 before the conflict expanded into eastern Ukraine around the Donbas region.

We will never accept Russias occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, Tillerson said. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine. In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbas.

[Trump administration stalled on whether to arm Ukraine]

Lavrov used the OSCE meeting to lambaste the United States and NATO. He accused the NATO countries and the United States of undermining security in Eastern Europe.

The building of NATOs potential on the eastern flank, the course toward the unconditional expansion of the alliance, the deployment of U.S. missile defenses in Europe, significantly undermines the principles of indivisibility and security, Lavrov said.

He also made a clear reference to accusations that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other elections throughout Europe  charges that Russia has consistently denied. He called for confidence-building measures to ensure cybersecurity, rather than shaking the air with unsubstantiated allegations, without a single fact.

Both Tillerson and Lavrov made their sharp remarks before they sat down to meet in the late afternoon. Neither said anything to reporters, beyond Lavrovs claim to a reporter who shouted questions loudly and clearly, I cant hear you.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Social Democratic Party, SPD, chairman Martin Schulz, first row left, sits with other party leaders on the podium during the party's convention in Berlinon Thursday. (Markus Schreiber/AP)

Germany's main center-left party on Thursday offered Chancellor Angela Merkel a way out of the country's months-long political stalemate while signaling that its price may be a radically different vision of Europe.

The Social Democrats (SPD) had repeatedly insisted they would not join Merkels conservatives in another grand coalition following an inconclusive September election. But on Thursday, delegates to a party conference in Berlin voted to allow talks to go ahead despite deep internal misgivings.

The reversal came weeks after Merkel's first attempt at forging a coalition collapsed, and a rerun of the alliance between Germany's two largest parties emerged as the only viable path to avoid another election.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a former SPD foreign minister, has been busy trying to bring the parties around on the idea of a renewed partnership ever since.

With Thursdays vote, SPD delegates cleared the way for party leader Martin Schulz to begin negotiations with Merkel as soon as next week. Her partys general secretary, Klaus Schuler, welcomed the decision as a step toward a reliable and stable government.

But the talks are not expected to yield agreement any time soon, with analysts suggesting that Germany may not have a new government until March. And the negotiations could still fail, given the array of issues on which the SPD and Merkel's conservatives disagree, including asylum policy, climate goals and pension reform.

Schulz on Thursday appeared to widen the gap between himself and Merkel in one critical area, Europe, by proposing a far more integrated club that mirrors another union across the Atlantic.

I want a new constitutional treaty to establish the United States of Europe, Schulz said.

The treaty, he said, would go into effect by 2025. European Union members that dont accept the new agreement would be forced to leave the bloc, which currently stands at 28 members and is due to shrink to 27 with Britains scheduled exit in 2019.

The proposal by the former speaker of the European parliament represents a far more dramatic vision of European integration than any he had pitched during the German election campaign.

It is also sharply at odds with the cautious approach Merkel has taken toward reform at a time when skepticism about the European project is rampant across the continent and voters show little appetite for a vastly more powerful Brussels.

But Schulzs push could add impetus to reform efforts being advanced by French President Emmanuel Macron. While he has not gone nearly as far as Schulz, Macron has detailed a far-reaching plan to more tightly bind users of the euro currency through a common finance minister and budget.

Macron had been expected to work with Germany on the proposal. But the uncharacteristic political uncertainty in Berlin has left the French president, at least temporarily, without a partner.

Schulz, who guided his party to its worst result of the postwar era in the September vote, on Thursday took responsibility for what he described as a bitter defeat.

In the hours after the election, Schulz had vowed that the SPD would go into opposition to more clearly distinguish itself from Merkels Christian Democratic Union.

But he was forced into an embarrassing about-face after Merkel's plans for a deal among her bloc, the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmentalists Greens fell apart.

Despite the fact that he leads a struggling and deeply divided party, Schulz was reelected as SPD leader on Thursday with 82 percent of the vote.

Luisa Beck contributed to this report.

Read more

As Germany struggles to form a government, asylum rules emerge as a key dividing line

German mayor stabbed in neck for pro-refugee stance, saved by kebab shop owner

In shadow of Germanys climate conference, a village disappears to make way for coal

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers clashed Thursday in Jerusalem, Ramallah and other places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with some demonstrators burning American flags and posters of President Trump a day after he sided with Israel by announcing U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

But at nightfall, after the skirmishes died down, the region was bracing for worse.

More than 100 people were injured Thursday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent, despite the deployment of several extra battalions of Israeli troops. The critical test comes Friday, when larger demonstrations are expected as crowds leave mosques after the weekly noon prayers.

In Gaza, the Islamist movement Hamas urged its followers to ignite a third intifada, or uprising, against Israel. The Palestinian Authority called for a general strike. Shops were shuttered in Jerusalems Old City.

Trumps announcement on Wednesday that he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his declaration that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israels capital reversed a decades-old U.S. policy. But the status of the city  holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews and struggled over for millennia  is a deeply charged issue that resonates beyond the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

[For Trump, Jerusalem is an extension of a global culture war]

The backlash rippled across the wider region, with hundreds of demonstrators gathering outside the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Jordan holding placards reading Decision Rejected and No to U.S. arrogance. Criticisms continued to flow in from governments in the Middle East, Europe and beyond, with U.S. friends and adversaries alike voicing disapproval and alarm.

Turkeys president predicted that the region would ignite in a ring of fire, while European leaders reiterated their opposition to the policy, and 86-year-old Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu declared, God is weeping.

In Israel, the decision has been widely welcomed by politicians, who see it as long-overdue recognition of reality and of their historic claim to the city. Palestinians say it is a dangerous breach of U.N. resolutions and international law that ignores their right to a future capital in East Jerusalem.

On the edge of the Palestinian city of Ramallah on Thursday, Israeli forces fired dozens of rounds of tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of Palestinian protesters airing their anger over Trumps statement, moving quickly to disperse the crowd.

This will be bad, said an ambulance driver in Ramallah as young men burned tires and pelted the soldiers with stones. Emergency vehicles ferried the injured away.

In some places, notably Gaza, protesters set fire to images of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to U.S. and Israeli flags.

Donald Trump said Jerusalem is for Israel, and I tell him, No way, go to hell,  said a 43-year-old woman in the crowd, a traditional Palestinian scarf wrapped around her face. Jerusalem is for Palestine, forever, said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Trump made the wrong decision, said Sarah Louay, 15, who was making her way toward the demonstration carrying a Palestinian flag. We will raise our voices for Jerusalem.

Clashes also erupted in East Jerusalem and at the border fence between Israel and Gaza. In Bethlehem, tear gas filled streets that were strung with festive lights for Christmas. At one of the main checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah, soldiers fired sponge bullets at children throwing stones from behind metal trash containers.

The Israeli military reported that at least three projectiles were fired at its territory Thursday from Gaza but that two fell short and the third caused no damage.

In response, Israeli jets and tanks struck two Hamas military sites in Gaza, the Israeli army said in a statement. The army holds Hamas responsible for hostile activity . . . against Israel from the Gaza Strip, the statement said.

How long the demonstrations will last remains unclear. Some Palestinians said they felt emboldened after a perceived victory last summer that followed two weeks of protests over metal detectors installed at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalems Old City.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called for a new uprising in the Palestinian territories and declared Friday a day of rage.

Tomorrow should be a day of rage and the beginning of a broad movement for an uprising that I call the intifada of freedom of Jerusalem, he said.

[Where would a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem actually go?]

He called on the Palestinian Authority to halt security coordination with Israel and enable the resistance in the occupied West Bank to respond to this blatant aggression.

Israels army said it was preparing for an increase in violence in the coming days and had increased its strength in the West Bank, reinforcing its combat intelligence and territorial defense units. Israeli police said three people were arrested in connection with disturbances near Damascus Gate, a main portal for Jerusalems Old City.

U.S. institutions in the region were also preparing for possible violent fallout. Reuters reported that the State Department sent a note to diplomats at the embassy in Tel Aviv with talking points to convey to Israeli officials.

While I recognize that you will publicly welcome this news, I ask that you restrain your official response, Reuters quoted the document, dated Dec. 6, as saying. We expect there to be resistance to this news in the Middle East and around the world. We are still judging the impact this decision will have on U.S. facilities and personnel overseas.

The State Department restricted travel for U.S. government employees in Jerusalem and the West Bank, warning U.S. citizens to avoid crowded areas.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the U.S. move would galvanize the Palestinian struggle for independence.

After Trumps announcement, Abbas said the United States could no longer be a fair mediator in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. Eight of the U.N. Security Councils 15 member countries called for an emergency meeting Friday on the matter.

Despite the note of caution from the State Department, the mood in Israel was buoyant, with government ministers and pundits declaring a diplomatic victory for the Jewish state and for Netanyahu.

Speaking at a Foreign Ministry conference in Jerusalem on Thursday, the prime minister heralded Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as a historic statement.

President Trump has always linked himself to the history of our capital, he said. His name will now float along with other names in the context of the glorious history of Jerusalem and our people.

Netanyahu said he has been in contact with other countries that are also ready to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

I have no doubt that as soon as the American Embassy moves to Jerusalem, and even before that, many embassies will move to Jerusalem, he said. Its about time.

Eglash reported from Jerusalem. Hazem Balousha in Gaza and Taylor Luck in Amman, Jordan contributed to this report.

Read more:

U.S. allies reject Trumps Jerusalem pronouncement as very dangerous and catastrophic

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Protesters wave signs and chant during a demonstration against President Trump's travel ban outside a federal courthouse in Seattle on on May 17, 2017. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments on the latest iteration of the ban Wednesday. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments Wednesday on the latest iteration of President Trumps travel ban, pressing the government and those challenging the directive on the limits of the presidents power to implement the measure and their own authority to review his decisions.

The Supreme Court this week allowed the ban to fully take effect while the challenges to it make their way through the legal process. A final decision almost certainly will run through the justices.

[Supreme Court allows full enforcement of Trump travel ban while legal challenges continue]

Attorneys for the state of Hawaii, which is suing over the ban, and the Justice Department, which is defending it, attempted to make their case Wednesday to Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald M. Gould and Richard A. Paez, the 9th Circuit judges appointed by President Bill Clinton, who are considering one of the legal challenges.

Neal Katyal, an attorney for the challengers, argued that among the legal problems of the unprecedented and sweeping directive was that the president had not made findings  as the law required  that people entering from the banned countries would be detrimental to the United States.

Justice Department attorney Hashim Mooppan argued that ban was crafted after an extensive, worldwide review of information that foreign governments provide the United States about their travelers, and it was necessary both to nudge countries to give the United States more data and to keep out those who might want to do the country harm.

The ban, the third version that Trump has put forward, affects various types of travelers from eight countries  Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Federal judges in two states had blocked the administration from fully implementing the measure until the Supreme Court intervened this week.

The Supreme Court, which has yet to decide the case on the merits, indicated it expected the appeals court to render its decision with appropriate dispatch. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is also weighing a separate challenge to the ban, and oral arguments are scheduled in that case for Friday.

The 9th Circuit had ruled against a previous version of Trumps travel ban, although from the judges questions Wednesday, it was not obvious that they were leaning toward doing so again. Hawkins said of the latest ban, This is a little bit different, isnt it? and pointed to the governments process to develop it. Paez asked at one point if the court was too demanding of the government in its opinion on a prior version of the ban.

Gould said the judges will try to get an opinion out as soon as practical.
Pallbearers carry Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez into Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in El Paso for a funeral Mass on Nov. 25. (Mark Lambie/The El Paso Times via AP)

FBI agents investigating the unexplained death of a Border Patrol agent have turned their attention to two brothers who may be suspects in the case, one of whom has been taken into federal custody on an immigration violation, according to court documents filed this week in New Mexico.

Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez's death last month was quickly seized upon by President Trump to reaffirm his case for a wall along the border with Mexico. But the FBI has only said it is treating Martinez's death as a "potential attack" and had yet to determine whether he had died in an accident or under other circumstances.

The documents released this week are the strongest sign yet investigators believe that Martinez was the victim of a roadside beating on Nov. 18. The 36-year-old agent was found with severe head injuries and broken bones at the bottom of a culvert along Interstate 10 in West Texas. He died at an El Paso hospital hours later.

Another agent, whom court documents identified for the first time as Stephan Garland, was found near Martinez with serious injuries and no memory of what happened. Neither officer drew his weapon, initially casting doubt on the possibility the agents came under attack.

Jeanette Harper, spokeswoman for the FBI in El Paso, which is leading the investigation, said officials could say little about the latest court filings because the probe is ongoing.

We are still in the beginning stages to see if these people are connected to this incident, Harper said in an interview.

But in the court filings, the FBI refers to the brothers, Antonio and Jesus Munoz, as the likely perpetrators of the assault.

[FBI investigating Border Agents death as potential assault]

On Sunday, investigators found fabric with red stains and other discolored clothing after obtaining a warrant to search a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am that transported Antonio Munoz, and another brother, Daniel Munoz, on or around Nov. 20.

The brothers denied having a role in the incident and knowledge of what happened to the agents.

Martinezs autopsy report has not yet been completed, the El Paso County Medical Examiners Office said Wednesday.

Antonio Munoz was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Nov. 30 after admitting to entering the United States illegally. The U.S. attorneys office for New Mexico on Tuesday assigned one of its top prosecutors to Munozs immigration case, but its unclear whether the government plans to file additional charges.

According to the FBI affidavit, an informant told Border Patrol agents that the Munoz brothers were part of a group that may have assaulted the officers with rocks.

A woman who traveled in the Pontiac with the brothers told investigators she overheard Antonio Munoz speaking to someone about crossing into the United States with drugs including methamphetamine and heroin.

The FBI affidavit states that Antonio Munoz was likely a drug courier. Court filings show he was deported in 2015. He was taken into custody in Portales, N.M., 280 miles from the site where the injured Border Patrol agents were found, near Van Horn, Tex.

Munoz is being represented in his immigration case by federal public defender Kari Converse of Albuquerque. She could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.

Munoz was ordered detained without bond Wednesday by U.S. Magistrate Steven C. Yarbrough of Albuquerque, federal court records show. Munoz waived his rights to a preliminary hearing and a detention hearing.

Yarbrough is the same magistrate who issued the search warrant. Munoz initially appeared before a federal magistrate in Roswell, N.M., following his arrest on immigration charges Nov. 30. His case was moved to Yarbroughs court in Albuquerque that same day, records show.

The new court filings were first reported by Albuquerque TV station KRQE.

Harper said the FBI continues to investigate leads brought forward by the public and that the agency doubled its reward offer to $50,000 this week.
In her first move as Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen announced a plan to create an office focused on countering weapons of mass destruction. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Department of Homeland Security officials said Thursday they will establish an office to better protect the United States from potential large-scale terrorist attacks.

Newly confirmed DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was sworn in Wednesday, said the goal of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Office will be to elevate and streamline DHS efforts to prevent terrorists and other national security threat actors from using harmful agents, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material and devices to harm Americans and U.S. interests.

The CWMD office will be led by James F. McDonnell, a former Navy officer appointed by President Trump last summer to head DHSs Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

[Senate confirms Kirstjen Nielsen to lead Homeland Security]

In a statement Thursday, Nielsen said McDonnell will oversee a consolidation of the 240,000-employee agency's efforts to plan for and protect the nation from major attacks.

The United States faces rising danger from terrorist groups and rogue nation states, Nielsen said.

Thats why DHS is moving towards a more integrated approach, she added. As terrorism evolves, we must stay ahead of the enemy and the establishment of this office is an important part of our efforts to do so.

Several of the 22 sub-agencies at DHS are central to U.S. counterterrorism efforts, including the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Nielsen, who has a background in cybersecurity and disaster preparation, was picked for the job by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who was DHS secretary from January to July. Nielsen worked as Kellys chief of staff at DHS and then as his deputy at the White House.

Kelly stood beside her as she took the oath of office in a White House ceremony Wednesday.

On Tuesday, senators voted 67 to 32 confirming Nielsen as the sixth DHS secretary. The agency was created in the aftermath of 9/11.

In its statement Thursday, DHS cited intelligence indicating terrorist groups continue to seek weapons of mass destruction, while using battlefield environments to test them. The groups may be seeking to deploy those tactics in ways we have not seen previously, the statement added.

Although DHS did not mention specific threats, U.S. lawmakers have increasingly raised concern about the ability of would-be terrorists to arm aerial drones with explosives or other weapons. Inexpensive drones have been deployed widely and lethally by Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.

The new DHS office will centralize the agencys efforts to protect the country against the potential use of a nuclear device or other powerful weapon, according to Thursdays announcement.

Certain weapons of mass destruction, once viewed as out-of-reach for all but nation states, are now closer to being attained by non-state actors, the DHS statement said. A terrorist attack using such a weapon against the United States would have a profound and potentially catastrophic impact on our nation and the world.
Republican activists and lawmakers are engaged in a multi-front attack on special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs probe of possible connections between associates of President Trump and Russian agents, trying to stop or curtail the investigation as it moves further into Trumps inner circle.

For months, the president and his allies have been seizing on any whiff of possible impropriety by Muellers team or the FBI to argue that the Russia probe is stacked against Trump  potentially building the political support needed to dismiss the special counsel.

Several law enforcement officials said they are concerned that the constant drumbeat of conservative criticism seems designed to erode Muellers credibility, making it more politically palatable to remove, restrict or simply ignore his recommendations as his investigation progresses.

Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, one of the presidents informal advisers as well as one of his most vociferous defenders, on Tuesday night called Mueller a disgrace to the American justice system and said his team is corrupt, abusively biased and political.

Several conservative lawmakers held a news conference Wednesday demanding more details of how the FBI proceeded last year in its probes of Hillary Clintons use of personal email and Russian election interference. This week, the conservative group Judicial Watch released an internal Justice Department email that, the group said, showed political bias against Trump by one of Muellers senior prosecutors.

Fresh ammunition came this weekend, when it was revealed that Peter Strzok, the top FBI agent on Mueller's team, had been removed over politically charged texts he'd exchanged with another former member of the Mueller team, senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The texts appeared to favor Clinton and disparage Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

[Top Mueller FBI agent removed amid probe into politically charged texts]

The question really is, if Mueller was doing such a great job on investigating the Russian collusion, why could he have not found the conflict of interest within their own agency? Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) asked at the news conference. Meadows, leader of the Freedom Caucus, cited a litany of other issues that he said show bias on the part of the FBI and Mueller, including past political donations by lawyers on Muellers team.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

Accusations of bias against Mueller from conservatives have become commonplace in the public debate about the president and the Russia probe, and Republicans are expected to grill FBI Director Christopher A. Wray about those matters when he testifies Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee.

The chairman of that committee has been pressing the Justice Department to appoint a second special counsel  one to probe Clinton, as well as the FBIs handling of past Clinton-related probes. Law enforcement officials also expect Wray will be pressed on that issue again Thursday in the wake of the Strzok-Page revelations, which are being investigated by the Justice Departments inspector general.

Mueller did get a public vote of confidence Wednesday from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the senior Justice Department official overseeing the Russia probe  though Rosenstein did not address the Strzok inquiry. In an interview with NBC, Rosenstein was asked whether he was satisfied with what he had seen so far from the special counsels office, and he said yes and noted that some public charges had been filed. Were not in a position to talk about anything else that may be going on, he said.

View Graphic Team Trumps ties to Russian interests

Mueller first became aware in late July of text messages exchanged between Page and Strzok, who had been engaged in an affair, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Strzok was removed from the job immediately and transferred to the FBIs human resources division, which was widely understood by his colleagues to be a demotion. Officials have said Page left the Mueller team two weeks earlier for unrelated reasons.

Trump tweeted this weekend that the FBIs reputation was in Tatters.

[Law enforcement officials warily eye White House]

Strzok was a major player in both the Clinton and Russia probes, taking part in key interviews, including those of Clinton and Trumps former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI during that January questioning.

On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) signed letters to the Justice Department and FBI demanding more information about Strzoks communications.

Strzoks behavior and involvement in these two politically-sensitive cases raises new concerns of inappropriate political influence in the work of the FBI, Grassley wrote in one of the letters.

Matthew Miller, a Democrat and former Justice Department spokesman, said Grassley is part of a Republican effort to undermine Muellers credibility over the long run.

First, they want to kick up dust about Hillary Clinton so the conservative press has something to talk about that isnt Trumps misdeeds, Miller said. The eventual goal, though, is to delegitimize Mueller in such a way that he can either be fired or can be ignored if he concludes the president broke the law.

A Grassley spokesman called Millers comment a baseless charge from a Democratic operative and said the senator has a three-decade record of government oversight across administrations.

Grassley also called Mueller an honorable person whose investigation should be allowed to play out.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, has called for the Mueller probe to be shut down, saying his prosecutors are simply too biased against the president to conduct a credible investigation.

Fitton said the Justice Department and FBI covered up the Strzok issue for months. Thats a scandal, he said. Rosenstein needs to explain what he was doing, what he knew and when, and Mueller needs to explain himself as well. I think Mueller has fewer and fewer supporters in the Republican establishment, because of what he allowed to happen.

The email released by Judicial Watch this week was sent by Andrew Weissmann, now on the Mueller team, back in January, when he was a senior Justice Department official in the criminal division. After then-acting attorney general Sally Yates was fired for instructing department employees not to defend Trumps first travel ban in court, Weissmann sent her a note saying he was so proud and in awe of her. Judicial Watch said the email shows Weissmann is biased against the president.

In Congress, an effort by a Republican lawmaker to ensure Mueller could not be abruptly fired has lost steam.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who in August unveiled legislation to prevent Trump from firing Mueller without cause, said Wednesday that he felt no urgency for the Senate to take it up.

Based on whats occurred with Flynn and some of the reports over the past week, Im not overly concerned that we have to move quickly, Tillis said. He called his bill a good governance measure that lawmakers will continue to discuss.

Tillis offered a mixed review of the Mueller probe.

Some of the questions raised about some of the people in the FBI and their behavior and possible biases make you want to go back and look at the role that they played and whether or not there was any bias that was woven into any results or observations they made, Tillis said. But on the whole, Im satisfied with the way its progressing.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), one of his partys most outspoken Trump critics, said he couldnt envision the president firing Mueller.

I cant imagine him being terminated, Corker said. To me, that would be a step too far.

As for the way the Mueller investigation is proceeding, Corker declined to opine. I have almost no knowledge as to how its proceeding, he said.
During a visit to his Mar-a-

Lago resort in March, President Trump approached legal scholar Alan Dershowitz to talk about the Middle East.

While Trump questioned Dershowitz, a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about the region, the president seemed certain about one thing: where he stood on the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

What he said to me was, Im going to do it. Every other president has promised, and all of them didnt keep their promises,  Dershowitz said, referring to a controversial proposal to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He said there would be criticism of him but that he wanted to keep his promise.

In the weeks leading up to his announcement Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing decades of U.S. policy, Trump heard entreaties for and against the proposed move from advisers inside and outside the White House.

The decision to shake off warnings from senior officials such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and align himself instead with prominent proponents of the move, including Vice President Pence and major donor Sheldon Adelson, underscored the presidents determination to break with past policy and keep a key campaign pledge  despite the potential risks to U.S. interests in the region and the goal of Middle East peace.

[Trump recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel in reversal of longtime U.S. policy]

Announcing his decision at the White House, Trump said that an eventual embassy move to Jerusalem would protect American interests. Most important, he said, it would acknowledge the obvious reality that Israelis have made Jerusalem their political seat, despite the Palestinians hope to someday claim East Jerusalem as their own capital.

Today, I am delivering, he said.

For two decades, U.S. presidents had promised to do what Trump did Wednesday, but they ultimately issued repeated waivers to a law requiring relocation of the embassy. They said they were postponing the issue in hopes that it could be addressed in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

This summer, Trump made clear that he wasnt thrilled when he signed a waiver of his own, according to a senior administration official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. That decision was made with advice from the State and Defense departments. At the time, an initiative to forge a new Israeli-Arab peace deal, led by White House aides Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, was just getting underway.

At that point, Jason and Jared convinced him that they were just at the beginning of building relationships in the region and that if we do this now, we wont have any relationships to fall back on, the official said.

That decision reset the clock to the next twice-yearly waiver deadline, which fell this week.

1 of 83 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Scenes from Trumps second six months in office View Photos A look at the second half of the presidents first year in the White House. Caption A look at the second half of the presidents first year in the White House. Jonathan Ernst Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

Within the administration,

key voices of support came from Pence, Kushner and Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador at the United Nations.

Kushner, the presidents son-in-law, had supported the move from early in Trumps candidacy, and Pence, who is to visit Israel this month, told Trump that his base would love the decision, something the president liked to hear.

An important outside voice advising Trump to make the leap was Adelsons, according to several people familiar with the two mens conversations. At a White House dinner earlier this year, Adelson made the issue a main topic, one person said. In the months that followed, Adelson periodically asked others close to Trump what was causing the delay and expressed frustration, these people said.

[Inside the Trump administration debate over Jerusalem]

At the same time, other Trump advisers were making their case against the move. Most prominent among them were Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Tillerson, mindful of the death of four Americans in militant attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, pushed back vocally, one White House official said. Already at odds with Trump over other aspects of the presidents approach to the Middle East, Tillerson argued that the move could unleash a dangerous chain reaction across the region.

R.C. Hammond, a Tillerson adviser, said Tillerson and Mattis requested time to evaluate U.S. outposts and fortify them if necessary.

Some outside confidants, including billionaire Tom Barrack, urged Trump to hold off, worried that the move would deepen regional tensions caused by Saudi Arabia's political shake-up and Iran's growing reach.

Its insane. Were all resistant, said one Trump confidant who recently spoke to the president about it. He doesnt realize what all he could trigger by doing this.

While Trump appeared to have made up his mind, he continued to solicit input, two White House officials said, even asking random acquaintances about the Middle East in recent months.

Several advisers said he did not seem to have a full understanding of the issue and instead appeared to be focused on seeming pro-Israel, in the words of one, and making a deal, in the words of another.

Once Trump indicated 10 days ago that he would not sign a second waiver, national security adviser H.R. McMaster began putting together options that officials assessed would result in the least damage.

[Its catastrophic: U.S. allies reject Trumps Jerusalem pronouncement]

The debate came to a head at a White House meeting Nov. 27 to hash out the waiver issue. According to people briefed on the meeting, Trump repeated his earlier assertions that he had to follow through on his campaign pledge, seemingly irritated by objections over security and the break with previous policy.

The decision wasnt driven by the peace process, one senior official said. The decision was driven by his campaign promise.

Chief regional allies including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt  where senior government officials have said they still have little sense of the parameters of the broader peace plan being fashioned by the Kushner-led team  were not told definitively that the decision had been made until late last week. All have described the Jerusalem decision as a step backward in the peace process.

When Trump made contact with Arab allies ahead of his announcement, it was to notify them, not to discuss the matter.

According to Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Trump just went on saying he had to do it, despite the Palestinian leaders fervent objections.

Trump also notified Jordanian King Abdullah II, a stalwart ally, in a similar call. "It was a one-

sided conversation, with the president saying, 'This is what we are going to do,' " said a Washington-based official briefed on details of the call. Trump said his administration was still pushing forward on a peace deal but gave no details.

In the wake of Wednesdays statement, U.S. officials say they expect a cooling-off period with the Palestinians before any discussion of the peace process can resume. But they are betting that Abbass team cannot afford to walk away, and Kushner, in particular, is trying to assure others that a deal is still possible. White House officials say a key test will come later this month: whether Abbas cancels his planned meeting with Pence.

Even officials with misgivings sought to look on the bright side Wednesday, saying that Trumps statement did nothing to change any of the components being considered by the administration as parts of a comprehensive peace agreement.

They repeatedly emphasized what had not changed after the president's announcement, rather than what had. Trump's statement, according to several officials, was carefully constructed not to touch on any of the "final-status" issues of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, including the possibility of two states, with borders yet to be determined, and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Kushner and his team are expected to continue forming their plan  which officials say is now more than just a blueprint.

The president provided a preview of this weeks decision to major donors last weekend at a fundraiser at the Manhattan home of Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman. After being showered with praise by billionaire Ronald Lauder for being more pro-Israel than past presidents, Trump promised that within days he would declare Jerusalem the capital and begin the process of moving the embassy.

When another donor criticized the timing of the decision, Trump seemed taken aback.

No, this is important to do now, Trump said, according to someone who attended the event. This has gone on long enough. Other presidents have put it off, put it off. Were not going to put it off.

He added that building an embassy in Jerusalem might take three or four years.

Carol Morello in Vienna, Anne Gearan in Berlin and Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.
Allies and adversaries of the United States found common ground Thursday in rejecting President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move reckless and likely to reignite violence in the region.

Criticism of the move, which breaks with decades of U.S. policy, was particularly sharp across the Middle East, with officials, religious leaders and activists of many political persuasions issuing statements of condemnation.

Turkey's president said it would plunge the region into a "ring of fire," and Lebanon's Hezbollah called it "malicious aggression." Late Wednesday, Egypt said the decision would inflame anger in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The grand imam of Egypt's al-Azhar, the premier seat of Sunni learning, also rejected the move, accusing Trump of denying Palestinians their right to Jerusalem.

This administration does not respect the dignity or values of others, Hezbollahs secretary general, Hasan Nasrallah, said in a televised address Thursday night. He urged Palestinians and other Arab nations to withdraw from peace talks until the decision was reversed and advocated protests in the streets and on social media.

Iran, which backs Hezbollah, also weighed in, with its army chief calling Trumps decision unwise and a clear violation of international law, Irans state news agency reported. If conflict follows, he said, it will be the fault of the United States and Israel.



Demonstrators wave Turkish and Palestinian flags outside the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, on Dec. 7 to protest the Trump administrations plan to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and to recognize the city as Israels capital. (Umit Bektas/Reuters)

Even stalwart U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates  otherwise admirers of Trumps presidency  criticized the administration over the new policy.

The Saudi government described the decision as an irresponsible and unwarranted step, according to the state-run news agency. Qatar, too, warned of serious repercussions for stability in the region.

Jerusalem, although divided, is considered holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and Palestinians envision the eastern part of the city as the capital of any future Palestinian state. Israelis, for their part, see Jerusalem as their own eternal, undivided capital.

Previous U.S. administrations kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, pending a final peace agreement that would determine Jerusalems status.

[This will be bad: Clashes break out in West Bank after Trump speech]

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has partnered closely with the United States in the fight against the Islamic State, said the move could lead to dangerous escalation in the region.

"The U.S. administration must reverse this unjust decision," Abadi said Thursday. Iraq's Foreign Ministry also said it had summoned U.S. Ambassador Douglas Silliman to receive a formal letter of protest.

In Turkey, where relations with Washington were already strained over U.S. support for Kurdish militias in Syria, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim likened Trumps recognition of Jerusalem to pulling the pin on a bomb ready to blow in the region.

Speaking at a conference in the capital, Ankara, Yildirim said that Turkey, a NATO member, would not recognize the decision, Reuters news agency reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara urged Americans to stay away from planned protests outside the embassy, as well as from consulates in Istanbul and Adana.

At the U.S. Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Thursday, protesters denounced the United States, chanting against the decision and holding signs that read: No to U.S. arrogance.

Before, the U.S. was a partner in peace to solve the problem in Palestine. Now, Jordanians see the U.S. as part of the problem, said 60-year-old Hafeth Khawaja.

All of the moderates in this region that stood by America and put their faith in America for so many years now look like fools, he said. We have been betrayed.

Beyond the region, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday restated her opposition to the policy. It is clear that in the framework of negotiating a two-state solution the status of Jerusalem also needs to be dealt with, the Associated Press quoted her as saying. In that context, we disagree with the decision yesterday.

Merkels remarks were in line with critical statements earlier from other major European allies of the United States such as Britain, France and the Netherlands.

[Its catastrophic: U.S. allies reject Trumps Jerusalem decision]

In Pakistan, Islamists protested in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi called the move a serious setback to the rule of law and against international norms.

He urged the United States to "revisit its decision as soon as possible in order to avoid the potentially grave repercussions in the region and beyond."

And in Johannesburg, ailing Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said in a rare public statement: God is weeping over President Donald Trumps inflammatory and discriminatory recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The 86-year-old retired archbishop added, It is our responsibility to tell Mr. Trump that he is wrong, the AP reported.

Elsewhere, militants who have fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq took the opportunity to condemn both Israel and the United States.

Akram al-Kaabi, head of the Iran-backed Nujaba militia in Iraq, called Trumps decision foolish and predicted that it would spark an uprising. He added that the move legitimizes attacks on U.S. forces, of which there are thousands in Iraq.

Moqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shiite cleric who has long opposed the United States, said governments should expel Israeli diplomats and temporarily close American embassies.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman said in an emailed statement that the decision will fan the flames of conflict in the entire world.

Trump, the spokesman said, has exposed U.S. support for a policy of occupation and colonization of Muslim lands.

El-Ghobashy reported from Baghdad. Mustafa Salim in Baghdad, Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul, Taylor Luck in Amman, Louisa Loveluck in Beirut and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Read more:

For Trump, Jerusalem is part of a global cultural war

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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A federal judge on Thursday indicted former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on treason charges and sought her arrest over allegations that she covered up possible Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

In court documents, Judge Claudio Bonadio accused Fernandez of obfuscating the Iranian role in the attack, which killed 85 people, in exchange for a potentially lucrative trade deal. The court requested the lifting of her immunity from prosecution, a protection she enjoys as a sitting senator.

Underscoring the seriousness of the charges, authorities conducted raids linked to the case on Thursday, arresting three of Fernandezs former aides and associates. Hector Timerman, her former foreign minister, was placed under house arrest.

[Argentina pursues Iran in 1994 blast as neighbors court Ahmadinejad]

The charges stem from an investigation initially conducted by Alberto Nisman, a crusading prosecutor who accused Fernandez of a coverup in 2015 and was later found dead in the bathroom of his apartment with a bullet in his right temple.

Though rare, the lifting of parliamentary protection is not unprecedented. In October, Congress voted to lift the protection afforded to her former planning minister, Julio De Vido, who was facing charges of fraud and corruption.

Fernandez, a Peronist, served as president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and once formed part of a cadre of left-leaning leaders in Latin America, including Venezuelas late Hugo Chavez. She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing while in office, and on Thursday she lashed out at the fresh charges.

This has nothing to do with justice or democracy, Fernandez told reporters in Buenos Aires. Theres no cause, no crime, no motive. There was a judgment without cause. God knows it, the government knows it, President [Mauricio] Macri knows it, too.

There is little precedent for prosecuting treason in Argentina. Local media has reported that the countrys only previously applied charge of treason dates to 1936, when Maj. Guillermo Mac Hannaford was accused of selling information to Bolivia and Paraguay.

And while Fernandez has only about a dozen hardcore supporters in the Senate, observers say it doesnt look probable that the chamber will revoke her immunity. Some argue that such a move could risk turning her into a political martyr for a left-wing Peronist movement that has been losing traction in the country since Macri took office in 2015.

The charges come a month after a new police report reignited the Nisman case, which has captivated Argentina. His mysterious death came only days after he alleged that Fernandez and Timerman had colluded to shield Irans role in the car-bomb attack on the AMIA jewish community center. In 2005, Nisman concluded that Ibrahim Hussein Berro, a Hezbollah operative from Lebanon with Iranian backing, had carried out the act of terrorism.

An initial report concluded that Nisman had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But a new police report obtained by the Associated Press in November listed key evidence that suggested foul play. Nismans nasal septum, for instance, was broken and he had suffered blows to his hip and elsewhere. A strong anesthetic was found in his body.

Before his death, Nisman reportedly wiretapped officials and uncovered information in connection to a Memorandum of Understanding that Argentina signed with Iran on January 27, 2013, in Ethiopia. He argued that it outlined a plan to collaborate with Iran on its goal to accelerate and support nuclear development in exchange for an oil-for-grain trade deal and a finding by Argentina that the Iranians were innocent in the 1994 attack, official court documents said.

However, the timing of Fernandezs indictment also focuses the spotlight on Bonadio, the judge. He is under investigation over allegations of money laundering and illicit enrichment, with some critics suggesting that he may be targeting Fernandez as a smokescreen.

The higher his profile, the more involved he is in politically sensitive cases and the less able anyone will be to bring him down for corruption, said Mark Jones, a fellow of political science at Rice Universitys Baker Institute. Hell be able to deflect them as being politically motivated.

Faiola reported from Miami.

Read more

Argentina denies news report that Trump sought personal favors

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Sky is the limit for Saoirse team as they display their colourful creations in Gorey Library
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/12/2017 (1806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Liz Neely is working in the Design Lab at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), surrounded by luminous clouds of fibre optic fabric.

Watch this, she says.

When she activates the LED lights that wind through the fabric, it glows green. The effect looks strikingly similar to the Northern Lights.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Liz Neely's wearable social media dress will react to hashtags at the upcoming Rights of Passage: Canada at 150 exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Neely is an expert in the use of digital technology at museums, and works with the American Alliance of Museums in Washington, D.C. Shes in Winnipeg to create a wearable social media dress for the CMHRs upcoming exhibit Rights of Passage: Canada at 150, which opens Sunday, Dec. 10. The interactive exhibit highlights some key human rights events in four time periods, ranging from 1867 to today, and examines how the evolution in communications technology  from the printing press to TV and radio to Twitter  has shaped those conversations.

Neelys dress will react to three different hashtags  #equality, #reconciliation, #environment  that will be projected onto the ground in the gallery.

We call it a natural user interface, Neely explains. You dont use a phone, you dont have to type anything.

All you have to do is step on the hashtag and the dress, which employs almost 700 LED lights, will light up.

For #equality, the dress will explode into a rainbow, representing freedom of self-expression. I wanted it to be a party in a dress, she says. For #environment, she went green, and wanted to give a visual sense of roots. For #reconciliation, the dress will glow red. Neely was inspired by The REDress Project, a public art installation by Winnipeg artist Jaime Black in which hundreds of red dresses, symbolizing missing and murdered Indigenous women, are hung up in public spaces.

I wanted the lights to pulse like a heartbeat, she says.

Neely has made a social media dress before. Five years ago, she made  and actually wore  a Twitter dress to a conference that lit up, made bird sounds and flapped when people tweeted at her. (Unlike her original dress, the CMHR dress will not be hooked up to the internet, although it could be.)

I thought my relationships on Twitter were so real and sometimes they werent treated as real, so I wanted to bring them back out into the physical world, she explains.

When we think about wearable tech, we often think about utilitarian gadgets such as fitness trackers and watches  not necessarily beautiful dresses. Neelys social media dress looks like an actual dress, which was intentional.

I wanted it to be something that felt like you could wear, she says. I wanted to keep it fun and not too fancy, so that it feels like its something that could be in your future.

Indeed, Neelys dresses also highlight the possibilities that exist in wearable technology. Her dresses feel, in many ways, like a logical progression of fashion  which, of course, is already a form of self expression and communication. Fashion also already influences human rights conversations; 2017, for example, has been the year of the political slogan T-shirt, thanks to the proliferation of shirts bearing phrases such as Resist, Nasty Woman, Nevertheless, She Persisted and The Future is Female.

Perhaps the future of slogan T-shirts is digital, and hashtag activism will be brought out into the physical world via our clothing.

Its that hybrid of virtual and physical that Neely is interested in. A big focus in her day-to-day work is how integrated technology and media can help museums better tell stories.

(The CMHR) is a museum thats about digital and story first, but for all of our museums: how do we tell the stories that surround an object, but also allow multiple stories to be told? In the old days, a certain expert would write about this item and it would be one storyline. But we all know that there are stories that were left out, and some significant stories were left out. Using technology can help museums tell stories without necessarily relying on physical artifacts.

But one of the biggest advantages of including digital technology in museums, Neely says, is that it allows for interaction.

Its a facilitator for making the museum more of a hub of society.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 07/12/2017 (1806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, nearly one-third of Manitobans said theyd be less likely to vacation in the U.S. because of the political climate there.

A year later, it turns out theyve followed through on their self-imposed travel ban, a new Winnipeg Free Press/Probe Research survey suggests.

When asked late last year if they had cancelled or decided against a trip to the United States in the past six months because of the political climate, 29 per cent of Manitobans who took part in the survey said they would be less likely to vacation south of the border. A followup survey this year found about one-third (32 per cent) of respondents did cancel or reconsider travel plans to the United States in recent months because of the political climate.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files A recent Probe Research survey has found that the number of Manitobans travelling to the U.S. is down significantly since the election of U.S. President, Donald Trump.

When we did the initial poll question last year, I had some questions about whether or not people would follow through, Probe Research associate Mary Agnes Welch said Wednesday. It appears that a significant number of Manitobans said, Yes, we reconsidered our travel plans in the U.S. because of the political atmosphere.

Only Manitobans who live outside Winnipeg were more likely to report they had not reconsidered vacationing in the United States in recent months. While one-third of Manitobans said they stuck to their guns and followed through on their pledge not to vacation in the U.S., most surveyed said Trumps influence wouldnt stop them from having a holiday south of the border.

Half said, Heck no  Im still going to the States, Welch said. Thats a pretty big number.

Statistics available on the North Dakota Tourism website show a four per cent decrease in the number of Canadian border crossings in the first quarter of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier. The decrease follows a general decline thats been linked to a weaker Canadian dollar.

In 2016, the number of Canadians travelling to the U.S. fell for the third consecutive year, down 7.7 per cent, Statistics Canada reported earlier this year.

The Canadian dollar, which is trading at around US$0.76, hasnt been at par with the American dollar since 2013. Since then, the number of Canadians travelling to the U.S. by car fell by 31.3 per cent to 31.8 million in 2016, Statistics Canada said.

The U.S. is still the top international destination for Canadians, making up about 75 per cent of their trips abroad.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/12/2017 (1807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Backlash from LGBTTQ* community members has pushed Pride Winnipeg into reversing its decision to change the date of its annual festival.

Pride Winnipeg previously announced it would move the event from nine days starting May 25 to nine days starting July 20, in an effort to give the growing festival more space and accommodate more attendees.

However, community members raised concerns about the change, Jonathan Niemczak, president of Pride Winnipegs board of directors, said when reached by phone Wednesday morning. One issue raised was the impact on high school students ability to attend both the parade and the festival, he said.

JEN DOERKSEN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Thousands of Winnipeggers rallied, danced and marched in the 30th annual Pride Parade on Sunday, June 4, 2017.

We apologize to those who were upset by the lack of community consultation, Niemczak wrote in a prepared statement Wednesday.

On social media, the community reaction to the date reversal was warm. Victory to the community on this one! read one comment.

In previous years, the Pride festival would run right before the start of the Winnipeg International Childrens Festival, limiting how much space organizers could take up at The Forks for the two-day event that caps 10 days of local Pride celebration. Last year, the number of attendees reached about 5,000, organizers said.

Typically, KidsFest planners begin building on The Forks site while Pride Winnipeg is up and running.

Niemczak said the KidsFest typically takes up three-quarters of the available space onsite, with the Pride festival using the remainder.

Pride organizers will instead look for ways to expand the 2018 festival within the May-to-June time frame, he said.

Niemczak said any such expansion could mean working more closely with Winnipeg International Childrens Festival organizers, in order to share the available space at The Forks. He said organizers may also be looking at expanding the festival beyond The Forks, pointing out the Cube in the Exchange District as a venue option.

Pride Winnipeg is mulling an open-house meeting in the spring to discuss its plans for expansion, said Niemczak, adding at previous town hall meetings, the LBGTTQ* community brought up the need for transparency from Pride Winnipeg organizers.

If no such plans are in the works, there will be no need for such a meeting, he said, adding the board of directors is developing an action plan based on issues the LGBTTQ* community raised about Pride Winnipeg, but nothing has been released yet.

In 2020, Pride Winnipeg will expand its festival to play host to the Fierte Canada Pride Festival. The national association of Canadian Pride event is scheduled for July  and so were the Winnipeg OutGames, an event that has since been cancelled.

Niemczak said local organizers may look at changing the date of the 2020 national celebration to coincide with the Pride Winnipeg events in late May/early June.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/12/2017 (1807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba is proposing to extend whistleblower protection to school divisions and interested municipalities while strengthening safeguards to those who come forward and disclose potential wrongdoing.

The provincial government introduced legislation Wednesday to amend the 11-year-old Public Interest Disclosure Act.

Bill 5 would extend protections under the Act to school divisions and school districts and their employees. It would allow municipal governments, such as the City of Winnipeg, to be covered under the Act at their discretion and would authorize the provincial ombudsman to receive and investigate complaints about reprisals against whistleblowers, and to make recommendations to address threats and reprisals.

JASON HALSTEAD / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Manitoba Finance Minister Cameron Friesen.

We believe that these amendments are reasonable. We believe that theyre needed, said Finance Minister Cameron Friesen. These protections, we believe, will benefit all Manitobans.

The Act currently applies to provincial government departments, Crown corporations, boards and commissions, child and family services authorities and agencies, regional health authorities, personal care homes, hospitals, universities and colleges, independent offices of the legislative assembly, and some other organizations that receive at least 50 per cent of their operating costs from government.

In a statement, Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said he was pleased to see the amendments, which would provide civic employees with whistleblower protection similar to those afforded to provincial civil servants.

This change was requested quite some time ago of the previous government but wasnt implemented, the mayor said. I am grateful the current government has included our request in the amendments being proposed today.

The proposed amendments were developed in consultation with the auditor generals office and the ombudsmans office, Friesen said. The legislation also springs, in part, from the results of a review done by Dianna Scarth, former executive director of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission.

I am very pleased to see these amendments to the legislation have been introduced, Manitobas ombudsman, Charlene Paquin, said in an email to the Free Press. My office has been supportive of many of the proposed changes for some time and feel they will strengthen the legislation and enhance the process.

The proposed amendments would also strengthen protection for whistleblowers by prohibiting disclosure of the whistleblowers identify in a civil court proceeding or a proceeding of an administrative tribunal.

Bill 5 would also ensure that a review of the Act is done every five years.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 06/12/2017 (1807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As he sentenced two sisters to prison for drunkenly killing a woman theyd known almost their entire adult lives, a provincial court judge offered veiled criticism of Manitobas method of assessing the public safety risks posed by Indigenous offenders.

Although he stopped short of saying so outright, Judge Rocky Pollack suggested Wednesday the risk assessments used by probation officers in Manitoba conflict with legislation aimed to reduce disproportionate rates of Indigenous people in Canadas prisons.

A cynic might say that the application of LS/CMI (a risk-assessment tool) to Indigenous offenders in Manitoba means that offenders with prominent Gladue factors will inevitably be classified in a higher-risk category, Pollack said.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Cynthia Huntinghawk was killed at this William Avenue house in 2016. Sisters Candice and Vanessa Nepinak were sentenced Wednesday.

Gladue reports are meant to detail personal histories and trauma experienced by Indigenous people so courts can take them into account during sentencing. But when probation officers compile risk assessments, those same Gladue factors  such as having criminally-involved friends or a lack of family support  can ratchet up the offenders perceived risk.

The apparent chasm between how Gladue factors were intended and how theyre being interpreted by probation officers has long been criticized by defence lawyers, including the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association (Manitoba). But Pollacks remarks came in light of a case in which the attackers  and the victims  had all experienced the fallout of decades of trauma and substance abuse.

Candice Nepinak, 33, and her sister, Vanessa Nepinak, 37, were sentenced to seven and six years, respectively, in prison for manslaughter in the killing of 35-year-old Cynthia Huntinghawk and an attack on her sister, Charlotte Huntinghawk, in a West Alexander rooming house on Jan. 12, 2016.

Vanessa Nepinak had been with the Huntinghawk sisters that evening, drinking intoxicants such as hand sanitizer, hairspray and mouthwash, when they threw her out, falsely accusing her of having HIV, court heard. Vanessa Nepinak, having been beaten, dragged down the stairs of the rooming house and left with two black eyes, went to Candice Nepinaks residence threatening revenge.

In a plan to seek vengeance, they decided that each of them would beat one of the Huntinghawk sisters, Pollack said in his decision Wednesday.

The Nepinak sisters were both drunk, and Candice Nepinak had a small kitchen knife. They kicked down the door at the rooming house and attacked Charlotte Huntinghawk, who managed to escape and call 911 from a payphone.

Cynthia Huntinghawk was unconscious in a chair and didnt resist as she was dragged down the stairs by her hair and stabbed six times in the side of her face. The stab wounds were relatively minor, court heard, but Cynthias level of intoxication made the effect of the injuries much worse, and she ultimately died. When police arrested the Nepinak sisters shortly after Charlotte Huntinghawks call for help, they found them both highly intoxicated.

Because of their intoxication, Pollack said, they couldnt have had the intention to kill that a murder charge requires.

Why the sisters were originally charged with murder was not explained to me, but it is clear that they were always prepared to admit causing Cynthias death by an unlawful act, the judge said.

Pollack acknowledged the Huntinghawk sisters had experienced much of the same kinds of trauma as the Nepinak sisters, all of which led to substance abuse. But the probation officers reports for the Nepinaks listed their addictions as risk factors, he said.

Perhaps there is some criminological reason to deny that substance abuse leads to crime, but more importantly, it seems to me that the risk factors enumerated reflect  in the case of each offender  the offenders Gladue factors, Pollack said, noting the fact Vanessa Nepinak had a long-term relationship with a man involved in crime and Candice Nepinaks friends were homeless or not doing well, also seemed to increase their risk.

Both Nepinak sisters were designated as high risk to reoffend and the probation officers concluded they couldnt be safely supervised in the community.

Its clear that community supervision is out of the question at this time, Pollack said, imposing a higher sentence for Candice Nepinak because of her more troublesome criminal record. But he said Vanessa Nepinaks recent record indicates a struggle for survival on the streets by a helpless addict, without causing particular harm to others, although she was convicted of assaulting a police officer in 2000.

Neither had the opportunity through the years, in sobriety, without concern for food, clothing and shelter, to access rehabilitation opportunities, Pollack said, adding he believes rehabilitation is possible for the Nepinak sisters.

Their older sister, Tanya Nepinak, has been counted among Canadas missing and murdered Indigenous women, though her body hasnt been found. She went missing from Winnipegs West End in 2011.

Convicted killer Shawn Lamb was charged in her death, but those charges were later dropped.

As Pollack delivered his decision, Charlotte Huntinghawk sobbed in the courtroom, surrounded by family.

With credit for the time theyve already spent in custody, Candice Nepinak and Vanessa Nepinak have four years and three years, respectively, left to serve.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
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This article was published 07/12/2017 (1806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

President Donald Trump ignored worldwide warnings Wednesday by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, sparking polarized responses internationally and in Winnipeg.

Jerusalem, a sacrosanct site for the religious traditions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, is claimed by both the Israelis and the Palestinians as their capital. The ancient city lies at the centre of the long-standing territorial conflict between the two groups.

In Winnipeg, Trumps announcement was lauded by Jewish organizations and denounced by the Palestinian-Canadian community.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, in Washington. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I think it goes to reinforce the fact that Israel has the upper hand. The U.S. just affirmed its support for one of the longest standing military occupations in the world and the subjugation of one people by another, said Idris Elbakri, a Palestinian-Canadian.

Elbakri, a Winnipeg doctor, is the past president of the Manitoba Islamic Association, but made clear he was speaking only for himself.

He feels the decision was a disappointment for the Palestinian people and all who hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

What it will do is embolden the Israeli authority in their subjugation of the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, who by international law are under military occupation. Their suffering will increase.

However, for Joel Lazer, chair of the community relations committee for the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg, the announcement was not only welcome, but a potential step towards Canada following suit.

Its third party validation for what Israel and the Jewish community have maintained for a long, long time. Its recognition of fact, as Trump said in his speech, Lazer said.

It was King David who made Jerusalem the capital of Israel. This is not new. It is the home of the government. It is the home of the parliament. My preference would be that Canada recognizes it as well.

Critics say the decision will heighten tension between the Israelis and Palestinians, as well as stir up resentment throughout the region  with some fearing renewed violence in the long-standing conflict. Three days of rage  called for by Palestinian factions  have been declared, beginning Wednesday.

For Elbakri, it is inevitable people will die over the announcement.

Palestinians will take to the streets to express their rejection of this step. This will lead to clashes and people will die, he said.

The occupation will continue to do harm to the Palestinian community. The reality is that the Israeli authority has absolute control over the lives of the Palestinians.

Lazer said its unsettling the announcement could spark increased violence, adding he hopes it will not be used by Palestinian leadership to incite young people into senseless acts.

When asked if he was concerned the news could lead to anti-Semitic attacks in Canada, he said, I suppose thats certainly a possibility, although its something that hadnt crossed my mind.

We have a climate of increased anti-Semitism and increased hate, period. This just might assist those with that tendency to be a bit more bold.

He went on to say he hopes the announcement is a precursor to a meaningful and lasting peace settlement that will provide protection and safety for all.

Elbakri is far more pessimistic about what this means for the conflict, admitting that while people pay lip service to a peace process, none actually exists.

Sadly, I dont think there is a peace process. Its been dead, perhaps now its officially so. I dont think there have been any genuine efforts for a peace process in years, he said, adding any talks would necessitate the status of Jerusalem being negotiated.

If we really want to see peace, and I hope we do, then the rights of all people must be upheld. I dont see that happening now or in the near future, Im sad to say, he continued.

Today I feel the bane of my people. But I will ensure my children will grow up to love and enjoy the city and understand the injustices committed against their people. Our narrative will live on.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 07/12/2017 (1806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Along with many others on the front lines, Winnipegs West Central Womens Resource Centre has been advocating for a long-term plan to address the crisis caused by a lack of affordable, safe and appropriate housing. The federal governments national housing strategy could go a long way toward meeting the housing needs of the low-income women and families we work with. The government has made an effort to address the needs of women and girls, but many questions remain.

A gendered lens is essential for an inclusive housing strategy. Housing-insecure or homeless women experience unique barriers. Women experiencing homelessness play a real-life game of would you rather: either stay in shelters, which are unfamiliar and often violent, or stay with someone you often barely know or who is abusive. They tend to opt for the latter, and these couch-surfing women become the hidden homeless whose needs are not considered by most policies and programs. The federal governments definition of homeless must include these women.

We applaud the strategys commitment to women and children escaping gender-based violence. By earmarking 25 per cent of investments to housing women and girls, we hope the plan will see fewer fall through the cracks.

Chris Young / The Canadian Press Files Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits a housing development in Toronto's Lawrence Heights neighbourhood before the announcement of the National Housing Strategy in November.

However, while there are shelters for women escaping violence, there is not a single women-only homeless shelter in Winnipeg. With a commitment to spend $2.2 billion on homelessness supports, we hope this will change.

We are concerned that shelters are one of the only areas of the strategy without a clear goal for new spaces. The language in the strategy is create or repair 7,000 spaces. While repairs are desperately needed, the lack of new beds is a crisis. We need hard numbers.

Women often need housing that accommodates many generations, including children, grandparents, siblings, etc. Women are usually a familys hub, and work hard to keep their families together. But larger, affordable units are often unavailable. Too many vulnerable mothers avoid shelters and other programs because they fear contact with public services might result in their childrens apprehension.

They need safe, stable and affordable housing options. The strategys commitment to 100,000 new housing units must include units for larger families, and there must be more supports for families to stay together.

Women also fall through the cracks because they tend to face more complex, multi-layered issues. Definitions of family violence, homelessness, mental health and addictions must reflect this experience. For example, domestic violence shelters often wont take women who are also homeless or living with active addictions. We are optimistic that the strategys prioritization for people facing mental-health issues and addictions will mean funds for housing with wraparound supports.

An inclusive and broad definition of family violence must go beyond intimate-partner violence, to include women who have a history of chronic family violence who are not currently being abused, as well as women without kids or with adult children, and at risk of violence from ex-partners.

We are impressed by the strategys clear commitments to consult people with lived experience, such as the community-based tenant initiative, and hope this will provide an understanding of the complexity of experiences and needs.

There is little in the plan about supportive or transitional housing. Funding supportive housing is a challenge, because its not perceived as a permanent solution. But supportive housing is essential for women transitioning out of violence or addiction. These women are also often located in communities where women were experiencing homelessness. We have seen many women leave housing because it was too far from their networks and supports.

The strategys success depends on a full commitment from provinces. The Manitoba government must be an active partner that provides the matching funds and resources necessary to see meaningful results in our province. The opportunity to leverage additional dollars for housing in Manitoba cannot be missed. For example, the new Canada Housing Benefit must not be used to claw back Manitobas Rent Assist benefit. Instead, it must build on Rent Assist to further narrow the affordability gap low-income families face in the private housing market.

The West Central Womens Resource Centre looks forward to working with all levels of government to end homelessness and insecure housing. We are developing a strategy to end gender-based homelessness in Winnipeg, funded by Status of Women Canada, which will be implemented within Winnipegs 10-year plan to end homelessness. It will be based on the lived experience of women, trans, two-spirit and gender non-conforming individuals. It will also set targets and timelines for closing gendered systemic gaps, and recommend supports for those leaving womens shelters and correctional institutions.

With the support of the federal and, we hope, provincial government, the next decade could be historic in the journey to equality, dignity and safety for all.

Kirsten Bernas is director of housing for the West Central Womens Resource Centre and an active member of Right to Housing.
Opinion

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This article was published 06/12/2017 (1807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Governments in Canada have been playing politics with marijuana for some time now. The promise to legalize cannabis helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberals achieve a majority government in 2015, and now provincial governments across the country are coming to grips with legalization according to their own political principles.

Some provincial governments (Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick) are creating Crown corporations to be the new, legal marijuana dealers. Others (Manitoba, Alberta, Newfoundland) are letting the private sector run the stores. British Columbia just announced a retail solution that will include both the public and private sectors.

The governments of Quebec and Alberta will let citizens access weed at the age of 18, while Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, B.C., and now Manitoba are opting for 19.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Justice Minister Heather Stefanson with at left, Blaine Pedersen, Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister and Jeff Wharton, Municipal Relations Minister at the news conference in the Manitoba Legislative building Tuesday.

The difference is, Manitobas age of majority for cannabis is one year older than the age of majority for alcohol  unlike any other province that has unveiled its cannabis plans so far.

To hear Manitobas Progressive Conservatives tell it, the new Safe and Responsible Retailing of Cannabis Act sets the minimum age at 19 in order to protect the developing brains of young Manitobans.

Theres enough evidence that shows that (cannabis) can cause brain damage in people under the age of 25, and so we need to take into consideration the scientific evidence of that, Justice Minister Heather Stefanson told reporters Tuesday.

Politicians love protecting the youth because its an easy win  no one in their right mind would ever argue against keeping kids safe. But the provincial governments logic here doesnt quite hold water.

The federal governments Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation recommended 18 as the federal minimum age for purchasing cannabis, while acknowledging the right of provinces and territories to harmonize it with their minimum age of purchase of alcohol.

The task force also considered a minimum age of 21, as some U.S. jurisdictions where cannabis is legal have done, and a minimum age of 25, which was recommended by some public health professionals. Ultimately, the task force decided setting the minimum age at 25 would be unrealistic because it would leave much of the illicit market intact. (Thats because young Canadians are most likely to use marijuana in the first place, and theyre going to get it from somewhere, regardless of the law.)

After this law passes, an 18-year-old Manitoban will still be able to stroll into a liquor store and buy enough alcohol to drink themselves to death. But theyll have to wait one more year to legally buy a joint.

That yearlong wait, this law implies, will somehow protect young people from the harms of cannabis. The public health experts would likely say thats nonsense, and reiterate the call to delay cannabis use until the age of 25. But since the Progressive Conservatives arent going that far, why pretend setting the age at 19 will make any difference beyond political optics?

More importantly, why pretend setting the age at 19 will keep 18-year-old Manitobans away from marijuana in the first place? Instead of buying their weed from federally regulated producers with quality control and potency labelling, those 18-year-olds will just spend another year getting their weed from the opaque black-market gangs that have this government so worried in the first place.

Then theres the other head-scratcher in this bill: the ban on home growing of cannabis plants.

To be clear, its well within the Pallister governments political rights to do so, even if the federal government believes Canadians should be allowed to grow up to four plants at home. Nor are the Manitoba PCs alone in this; Quebecs Liberal government has also decided to ban home cultivation.

That doesnt mean its a good idea, even if the Manitoba Real Estate Association is thrilled their realtors wont have to deal with legal liabilities related to selling houses where cannabis has been grown.

After this law passes, an 18-year-old Manitoban will still be able to stroll into a liquor store and buy enough alcohol to drink themselves to death. But theyll have to wait one more year to legally buy a joint.

On Tuesday, MREAs Lorne Weiss described the risks of home growing to reporters as follows:

Depending on the size of the number of plants that are being grown, and the method thats being used to grow them, that can have implications in terms of the structural integrity of the home also health consequences in terms of mould and impacting on the structure of the home as well if modifications have been made to improve the quality or the speed of the grow.

The ramshackle, mouldy grow-op depicted by Weiss sounds like a much, much bigger setup than the four plants that Ottawa wants to allow. Generally speaking, people arent interested in making their own homes unlivable just to grow marijuana  thats the realm of criminals, who might fill a house up with hundreds of plants, grow as much as they can, and then move on before getting caught.

That kind of home grow-op will remain illegal after federal legalization. It seems highly unlikely that letting Manitobans grow as many as four plants in their homes would lead to the real estate market being flooded with a wave of rotting, decrepit drug dens.

After legalization becomes a reality next summer, some small percentage of Manitobans will want to try cultivating their own cannabis in their own homes. And why shouldnt they, if the plant is legal for adults to use under federal and provincial law? Dont think for a minute that banning home growing in Manitoba will keep people from growing, either. If Manitobans are already growing cannabis illegally, which they most certainly are, theyre not going to quit now.

The Progressive Conservatives may score political points with their base by banning home cultivation and setting a higher minimum age to use cannabis. But they could score points with everyone else by treating Manitoba adults as, well adults.

Solomon Israel is the cannabis reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press and its new online cannabis publication, The Leaf News. Read more at TheLeafNews.com.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

@sol_israel
Opinion

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This article was published 07/12/2017 (1806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was, by most conventional measurements, an unusual speech.

Premier Brian Pallisters annual State of the Province address to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce was awkward, amusing and, ultimately, puzzling.

The awkward part came when he started off his address by thanking chamber chairwoman Johanna Hurme, a renowned Winnipeg architect, for dressing up and for those heels. Perhaps sensing the inappropriateness, the premier moved quickly to a medley of his greatest anecdotes and sayings.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Premier Brian Pallister delivers his State of the Province at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce luncheon in the RBC Convention Centre Thursday.

The speech was delivered without script or teleprompter. Think of it as Pallister unplugged.

There were some laughs, and some tender moments, particularly when he thanked his wife Esther for helping him through difficult times following his well-publicized hike-in-the-desert-gone-wrong in New Mexico at the same time that she was grieving the death of her own mother. There is no doubt, it has been a tough fall for the Pallister family.

However, even though he was clearly traumatized by the New Mexican mishap, and continues to deal with the pain and discomfort of not having his left hand available for simple tasks, Pallister has lost nothing of the bombast that has distinguished his first two years in government.

The rest of his speech was a torrent of unverifiable hyperbole, grand political and economic claims, and an often repeated, ambitious-to-a-fault pledge that he is on a mission to make Manitoba the most improved province in Canada. Whatever that means.

There was some news but it was muted. Pallister called on two business leaders  Dave Angus and Barb Gamey  to lead the governments efforts to craft a bold and modern approach to economic development that will address todays challenges and take advantage of tomorrows opportunities.

This sounds a lot like the mandate of the Premiers Enterprise Team, a group of business leaders brought together shortly after the Tories won the 2016 election to, as a news release noted at the time, provide advice and recommendations for job creation and economic development across Manitoba. Pallister insisted the enterprise team was only advisory while the new two-person task force will be focused on coming up with specific actions.

Its hard not to ask: if the enterprise team isnt focused on coming up with specific actions for the government to improve economic development, what was heck is it doing?

This announcement is a prime example of the great weakness of the Pallister government: a propensity to take small, almost insignificant events or issues and blow them up into either the greatest or worst things of all time. Most of these claims are impossible to prove in empirical terms; journalists have come to greet them as things the premier believes in spite of an inability to prove them.

The chamber of commerce speech did establish one incontrovertible fact: the premiers harrowing experience in New Mexico has not changed his world view or his attitude towards his current job. He remains as hyperbolic and fiercely stubborn as he was before he launched out into the desert.

Case in point. Last week, the premier managed to wade again into the political maelstrom surrounding his Costa Rican vacation property and the amount of time he spends there.

In annual conflict of interest filings required of every MLA, Pallister included details of two corporations he owns in Costa Rica, one of which owns his home and the other that owns vehicles he uses when in Central America. The details were included in an appendix labelled voluntary disclosure.

This was necessary because Pallister insists that he has no legal obligation to provide this information, even though he did confirm publicly his ownership of the two entities. His insistence on including them as voluntary disclosures  a device the premier created to drive home his point  is a trimph of stubborness over political pragmatism.

Largely as a result of the spectre of impropriety stirred up by the opposition NDP, Pallister has dramatically reduced his trips to Costa Rica. Yes, its largely much ado about nothing, but its also something the premier should avoid having to discuss at all costs.

Costa Rica, and in particular his past decisions to mislead people about when and for how long he was out of the country, has become code for concerns about the premiers work ethic and his personal integrity. Pallister may believe the voluntary label is some sort of moral victory, but all it has done in this instance was guarantee he had to answer more questions about his getaways in tropical paradise.

Pallisters speech came on the last day of the current sitting of the Manitoba Legislature. MLAs will not gather again until next spring, at which time the provincial budget will be tabled. Without a note of exaggeration, that will be the moment the rubber (brags, outrageous claims and unprovable assertions) meet a certain degree of reality.

The books should show modest but important progress in reducing the deficit. It wont be enough to set the stage for Pallisters pledge to reduce the PST by one point in 2020, but it certainly will be a step towards a balanced budget. And at this time, in this economy, that will be no small accomplishment. However, there will be a cost to this progress. Government revenues are still soft, and Pallister continues to embrace austerity as his sole path to fiscal salvation. That means Manitobans are going to get less government, a condition that will be celebrated by some, lamented by others.

Its been a helluva fall for the premier and his family. He deserves some rest and relaxation  at a location of the premiers choosing, of course  before he has to get back to work. Because when he does return, the job is only going to get tougher.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Sen. Al Franken is discussing with his family whether to resign from his office, but no decision has been made, his office told TheWrap.

Frankens team also denied a Minnesota Public Radio report that Franken will resign Thursday. Although Franken does plan to make a statement, no decision has been made on whether he will resign, the office said.

A dozen of Frankens fellow Democrats have called on him to resign in response to seven women accusing him of unwanted groping or other sexual contact. Six female Demcoratic senators held a news conference on Wednesday saying he should step aside.

I do not feel that he should continue to serve, said New Yorks Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Everyone will make their own judgment.

After the publication of this story, Franken made the following statement:

Senator Franken is talking with his family at this time and plans to make an announcement in D.C. tomorrow. Any reports of a final decision are inaccurate.  Sen. Al Franken (@SenFranken) December 6, 2017

On Wednesday, Politico published the latest accusation against Franken: a former Democratic Congressional aide said Franken tried to forcibly kiss her back in 2006 after a taping of his radio show, before he won his Senate seat.

Franken denied the accusation.

Six other women have also accused him of unwanted contact. The first was radio host Leeann Tweeden, who wrote last month that Franken kissed her against her will, and later posted a photo of him groping her, while they were on a 2006 USO tour. She said it was taken while she slept, and that she only learned of the groping and photo later.

Franken said he remembered the kiss differently, but apologized.
Towards the end of his speech on Israel Wednesday, Donald Trump noticeably slurred his words, prompting many to come up with theories about why the commander-in-chief suddenly had a lisp.

The most popular theory was that the president could be wearing dentures or other dental prosthetics, and the countrys late-night hosts, including Trevor Noah and James Corden, did not brush off the speculations during their monologues Wedneday.

The Daily Shows Noah had #DentureDonald trending on social media after tweeting, Trump announces that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and all hell breaks loose between his tongue and teeth. #DentureDonald.

Noah, 33, told viewers: We all know whats going on here. President Donald Trump is wearing dentures, people. This used to happen to my grandfather all the time. His dentures would start falling out and he wouldnt be able to finish his sentence. Think about it: Have you seen Trump eat an apple or a pear? Or fruits and vegetables of any kind? Think about it. Fake teeth, fake hair, fake tan. Theres no part of his body thats real.

Meanwhile, Corden described his own interpretation of Trumps slurred speech on The Late Late Show.

I knew he had a screw loose, I didnt know he had a tooth loose, he said.

Trump announces that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and all hell breaks loose between his tongue and teeth. #DentureDonald

Full episode: https://t.co/DJZoI9j8Yo pic.twitter.com/nCciSWuJJ1  The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 7, 2017

Shout out to the WH employee who watered down #DentureDonald's polident glue today. ????



Welcome to the resistance. ?? https://t.co/wkF4lHAEjw  Hillary Still BAE ???? (@Hillary16IsBAE) December 7, 2017

Actor Neil Patrick Harris, who guest hosted for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, mentioned Trumps speaking impediment, saying, Im not going to make fun of his politics, Im not going to pick apart his policies on healthcare or taxes. Ill let others do that. I am, however, going to make fun of the super-weird way he spoke during a press conference this morning.

Story continues

Trump trying to say United States. pic.twitter.com/hJsJ0p9Thh  The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) December 7, 2017

Late Show host Stephen Colbert also poked fun at Trumps inability to pronounce United States correctly in his monologue.

Social media, particularly Twitter, had an absolute field day about the probabilities of Trumps teeth being his own.

Trump trying to keep his awful teeth in his mouth is whatever the opposite of ASMR is. pic.twitter.com/UcYp9H3g5b  chris person (@Papapishu) December 6, 2017

Even Trumps teeth are trying to distance themselves from him.  Duane Goad (@DuaneGoad) December 6, 2017

ICYMI:



Trumps dentures have joined #TheResistance ????

His teeth fell out during his #Jerusalem speech.

God blesh the United Shesh???? pic.twitter.com/RWwBrmfUzT  ??????????????????????????????? (@HeyNikki1) December 6, 2017

OK. In re the weird Trump mush-mouth thing.



Does he wear dentures? I've never seen a reference to that.  Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 6, 2017

Trumps entire speech regarding Israel was live-streamed on Periscope and has been viewed by over a million users.

This isnt the presidents first time hes been ridiculed mid-speech.

In an awkward moment during a November address, Trump paused in the middle of a live speech at the White House to search for a drink of water. After checking under his lectern and coming up empty-handed, Trump was directed to a small table nearby stocked with Fiji water bottles. He then picked up a bottle with both hands and took a sip  a gesture that quickly captured the internets attention.
UPDATED: Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) faced calls for his resignation from fellow Democratic colleagues on Wednesday, after a new allegation surfaced of inappropriate conduct.

His office said that he would make an announcement on Thursday. Minnesota Public Radio reported that he planned to resign, but his office put out a statement saying not accurate.

No final decision has been made and the Senator is still talking with his family, his office said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, I consider a Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was the first to demand Frankens resignation.

As elected officials, we should be held to the highest standardsnot the lowest, she wrote in a Facebook post. The allegations against Sen. Franken describe behavior that cannot be tolerated. While hes entitled to an Ethics Committee hearing, I believe he should step aside to let someone else serve.

Her calls for him to step aside were followed by a cascade of other lawmakers who said that it was time for Franken to step down. By mid-afternoon, more than 20 other Senate Democrats called on him to step aside, along with Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Among the lawmakers calling for him to resign were Californias two senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that a former Democratic congressional aide said Franken made an unwanted sexual advance at her doing his radio show in 2006. That was before he became a senator in 2009.

He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like Wait, what is happening? the woman told Politico, which did not publish her identity. But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked. I was really startled by it and I just sort of booked it towards the door and he said, Its my right as an entertainer.

Story continues

Franken denied the claim, saying that it was categorically not true. He said he would cooperate with an ethics investigation.

Later on Thursday, another woman, Tina Dupuy, a writer and commentator based in Manhattan, posted her account of being groped by Franken as they posed for a photo at a party during the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama.

The womans accusation came after a number of other women have alleged inappropriate conduct. Leeann Tweeden, a newscaster for KABC radio in Los Angeles, said Franken groped her while they were on a USO tour in 2006. Franken apologized, but also said he had a different recollection of the events. Five other women have accused Franken of inappropriate sexual conduct.

On Thanksgiving, Franken issued a statement in which he said he crossed a line for some women, and apologized. He vowed to regain the trust of the states voters. He returned to the Senate after the holiday weekend, and even spoke on the Senate floor last Friday against the Republican tax reform legislation.

But his fate has been in doubt, particularly with new allegations surfacing and because House Democrats also have called for some of their colleagues who have been accused of sexual harassment to step aside. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned on Tuesday in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct made by multiple women.

Franken was seated as a senator in 2009, after a narrow win over incumbent Norm Coleman, a Republican, in the previous years election forced a recount. After his career as a comedy writer, Saturday Night Live staffer and radio host, he spent much of his first term downplaying his celebrity to emphasize his seriousness in representing the state. He was reelected in 2014.

The states governor, Mark Dayton, a Democrat, would be able to appoint Frankens successor, who would serve until the next scheduled statewide election, in November, 2018. That new senator could run for the rest of Frankens term, which runs through 2020. The states other senator, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), also is up for reelection next year.

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Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), the svelte and smoldering middle-aged British fashion designer at the heart of Paul Thomas Andersons Phantom Thread, is a man who seems to have everything he wants. He lives in a splendid five-story London townhouse with walls the color of cream, and he works there too, starting early, sitting with his tea and pastries as he does the days sketches, already possessed by his reverent labor. Hes a dressmaker who works with the fervor of an artist  dreaming, obsessing, perfecting. At night he sips martinis at parties and restaurants, rubbing shoulders with the countesses and wealthy London ladies who are his clients, and hes also a devoted serial womanizer who falls for  and discards  one comely model muse after another. (As the film opens, his current flame is flickering out.) Phantom Thread is set in 1955, but Reynolds, in his posh and pampered upper-crust way, has the air of a highly contempo bachelor hedonist. The world is his oyster, and its also his man-cave.

One weekend, he drives his sporty maroon roadster  at top speed, of course  out to his country getaway, arriving at dawn and ordering breakfast in the restaurant of a seaside hotel. The young woman who waits on him, Alma (Vickey Krieps), has a melting warm smile, come-hither eyes locked in a glow of adoration, and a mild accent. (Its never specified where shes from, but the 34-year-old actress Vicky Krieps hails from Luxembourg.) As soon as she takes his order for Welsh rarebit with a poached egg on top, a pot of lapsang tea, jam (not strawberry!), and an order of sausages, she can tell that this is a man whose appetite for life matches her own.

Daniel Day-Lewis has spent enough time behind the facade of concocted voices and elaborate hair that its always a bit of an ironic shock to see him head back into the skin of his own look and personality. In the early scenes of Phantom Thread, hes urbane and inviting and demurely British, with his black-and-gray hair swept back just so; hes gentlemanly in his flirtation in a way that reminds you of someone like George Martin. After having dinner with Alma, Reynolds drives her over to his country studio, where she models for him, and he makes her a dress. Its love at first stitch.

But, of course, were all too aware that something ominous has to be lurking in the shadows. There wouldnt be a movie otherwise, and the plangent pull of Jonny Greenwoods musical score, rapturous with longing and anxiety, summons an unmistakable 50s-Hitchcock vibe. So does Andersons meticulous filmmaking. Reynolds is presented as a feverish artisan of fashion, sketching and sewing his way to a vision of the feminine ideal. He courts Alma by using her as a human mannequin, and its therefore hard not to get intimations of a movie like Vertigo, or maybe a super-kinky Pygmalion. Will Phantom Thread turn out to be the story of a man who falls for his fetishistic design of a woman?

The films dilemma, as it happens, isnt nearly that spectacularly perverse. Reynolds comes under Almas spell, and since hes a severely handsome and well-known designer, and shes an expatriate nobody waiting tables in a country hotel, it doesnt take higher math to see where this power imbalance is heading. Alma returns to London with Reynolds and becomes his new model and muse. He moves her into the bedroom upstairs  right next to his, as if conferring some great privilege, though it already sounds like hes talking about a birdcage.

Do they sleep together? The movie doesnt show that kind of thing (the oblique implication is yes), but their problems start at breakfast, where Alma butters her toast, and pours her tea, in a disarmingly noisy manner, which skews Reynolds train of thought. A little later, she makes the mistake of challenging one of his choices of fabrics, which leads to a back-and-forth verbal volley worthy of a screwball comedy, only Reynolds doesnt want feisty rejoinders  he wants to be obeyed. (Just when the exchange is starting to sizzle, he shouts, Enough!) Did I mention that Reynolds sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), is sitting there during every one of these encounters? Shes his business partner, and also, apparently, his eternal companion (along with the ghost of his dead mother). Reynolds and Cyril are close in a way that suggests something warm, loyal, and a little unseemly. Shes like the housekeeper in Hitchcocks Rebecca, creepy and a touch macabre, always hovering, except that the great Lesley Manville, her eyes like black lasers, her hair piled into a short stacked do, plays her like the Judi Dench version of a John Waters character: a badass in dowagers clothing.

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Anderson, who didnt just write and direct Phantom Thread but shot it himself (uncredited), stages the movie as a lavishly suspenseful piece of wealth porn. His camera travels up and down the stairways of the townhouse, and he lingers on Reynolds work as a designer, swathing us in the physicality of the fabrics  the 16th-century Flemish lace out of which he makes Alma a gorgeous lavender dress, or a stunning royal silky number with pink diamonds on the breast. Anderson, in making the film, drew on the careers of several British designers of the period (like Charles James), and the essential exotic element for the audience is that this is the pre-couture world, where fashion, at least in Britain, had yet to enter its postmodern dream phase. That was just starting in France, and Reynolds, at one point, spits out the word chic as if it were a vile obscenity.

For all the attention it lavishes on Reynolds designs, and on the daily swirl of his existence, where hes surrounded by a flurry of seamstresses, Phantom Thread isnt, at heart, a tale of artistic passion. Its a parable of toxic masculinity. Reynolds last name, Woodcock, can sound like it was invented to reduce Beavis and Butt-Head to a state of grunting hysterics  but, in fact, the meaning of the name is exactly that. Day-Lewiss Woodcock is a stiff, a hard virile puppet of a man  a selfish vessel of male desire. He has invited Alma to fall in love with him, and she does, but all that means to Reynolds is that he wants to go on with his life as is (the work, the parties, the routine), with Alma as the girl utensil he takes down from the shelf whenever he feels like it. The movie is constructed as a kind of suspenseful showdown: Will Reynolds the elegant tyrant of fake romance, with his Woodcock coldness, break her down? Or will she turn the tables?

Phantom Thread is seductive and absorbing, but its also emotionally remote. The film is framed as a love story, but it never swoons, and its enough to make you wonder: Why does Anderson, whose work back in the late 90s (the transcendent Boogie Nights, the enraptured Magnolia) pulsated with off-kilter humanity, now make dramas that are essentially didactic studies of fantastically cold brutes? He remains a filmmaking wizard, and Phantom Thread sweeps you up and carries you along, much more, to my mind, than The Master did. Yet its a thesis movie: the story of a bullying narcissist who lacks the ability to have a relationship, and the outrageous way hes schooled into becoming a human being. Its the story of a control freak made by a control freak.

Did all of this start with Raging Bull? In Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis, who has declared that this will be his last screen performance, seems to be relishing the chance to play another flamboyant emotional fascist, and the movie asks the audience to chortle along, notably in the sequence where Alma tries to assert her place in the scheme of things by making an intimate dinner for herself and Reynolds. She has to shoo everyone out of the townhouse as if she were clearing Buckingham Palace, and when Reynolds walks in, he acts like hes been ambushed. Will he eat his asparagus with butter the way shes prepared it? Why should he? He likes them with oil and salt!

The sequence plays like the Masterpiece Theatre version of There Will Be Blood, with Krieps, as Alma, asserting her radiant devotion in the face of Reynolds stone-cold rejection. Its at that moment that she decides to go to extremes  a twist out of a thriller thats also a dark joke. It certainly plays (at least the first time), but its hard to shake the feeling that Day-Lewis, along with Anderson, has confused misanthropy with art. The actor plays Reynolds with a winning puckish gleam that turns sinister, but I cant say that he goes out with a great performance.

Phantom Thread comes on, for a good long stretch, like Andersons sprawling version of Rebecca or Suspicion: a romantic suspense thriller coursing with dread. I wish it had stayed on that track, but Anderson isnt content to make a black-hearted retro genre film. Hes too ambitious, and once Alma exacts her revenge, the movie does something a little bizarre: It goes back to square one, so that Reynolds, even after proposing to Alma, turns out to be the same old dick he always was. The film, in what should have been its culminating passages, loses steams and grows repetitive, building toward the scene in which Reynolds eats an omelette, colluding  knowingly  in his own punishment and reform. Its supposed to be the films capstone of perversity: toxic masculinity toxifying itself. But it just made me wish that Paul Thomas Anderson would stop making movies about people who are so stunted that he cant help adoring them for it.

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Jennifer Lawrence is opening up about her relationship with Harvey Weinstein, saying the disgraced mogul had been like a father figure to her.

Just speaking for myself, I had known him since I was 20, and he had only ever been nice to me  except for the moments that he wasnt, and then I called him an a-hole, and we moved on, she told Oprah Winfrey in a new interview for The Hollywood Reporter. He was paternal to me. So I needed a moment to process everything because I thought I knew this guy, and then hes being accused of rape. We all knew he was a dog, we knew that he was a  tough guy, a brute, a tough guy to negotiate with.

The Oscar winner added, I didnt know that he was a rapist. And its so widespread, the abuse, from so many different people  its directors, its producers  that I think everybody needed to [process it]. Everybody needs to deal with this in their own way; everybody needs to heal.

Lawrence, who won an Oscar for the Weinstein-produced Silver Linings Playbook, initially said she was deeply disturbed to hear of the allegations against the Hollywood mogul in a statement to PEOPLE.

Jennifer Lawrence

I worked with Harvey five years ago and I did not experience any form of harassment personally, nor did I know about any of these allegations, she said at the time. This kind of abuse is inexcusable and absolutely upsetting.

She continued: My heart goes out to all of the women affected by these gross actions. And I want to thank them for their bravery to come forward.

After TheNew York Times and TheNew Yorker published articles detailing decades of Weinsteins alleged abuses in October, Lawrence, 27, says she and other actors were pressured to speak out.

There was this moment when all of this broke out and everybody was silent, and then all of a sudden, every actress Twitter was blowing up with, You need to come forward and you need to say something and you need to condemn! Which is true: We do have a responsibility to say something; weve all worked with him, but everybody needed a moment.

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The Oscar-winning producer has been accused of sexual misconduct by over 50 women since TheNew York Times and TheNew Yorker stories were published in October.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Weinsteins attorneys, Berk and Brafman, said: Mr. Weinstein has never at any time committed an act of sexual assault, and it is wrong and irresponsible to conflate claims of impolitic behavior or consensual sexual contact later regretted, with an untrue claim of criminal conduct. There is a wide canyon between mere allegation and truth, and we are confident that any sober calculation of the facts will prove no legal wrongdoing occurred.

Jennifer Lawrence

Lawrence has previously spoken out about her own experience with inappropriate behavior on a film set, revealing she was once asked to lose 15 pounds for a role and was subjected to a naked lineup with other actresses to have her body critique.

On that movie, I called my agent, and I called everybody. Its like, theres not really anything anybody can do because the behavior is so normalized, and then you become more powerful, and people start fking with you less, she said.

How can there be rules in place where there are certain ways that you just cannot treat people? Or a commission, somebody that they can call? If every A-list actor decides to join this commission, we know everybody in the industry. I know every studio head in town. If Im on this commission, and [if] I get an email about somebody being treated badly on a set, I can send an email, she added.

We have to all put our heads together and figure out how to not let this moment go, not just be like, Oh, well, that was crazy. Something has to really get done.

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Jennifer Lawrence has a message for President Donald Trump  and shes planned out the dramatic way she would end it.

In a sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey for The Hollywood Reporter, the 27-year-old actress reveals that she hasnt met the president  but she has a few things to say if they do cross paths.

Ive got a pretty good speech. And it ends with a martini to the face, she said with a laugh.

Winfrey asked if Lawrence would be prepared if the chance to chat did come.

Oh, I would, definitely. Oh, my God, Ive been waiting for this moment, she replied. Ill give you a hint  its not nice. You wouldnt want me to say it to you.

The Oscar winner also said she would have some choice words for other unnamed politicians who upset her.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence

Lawrence, who has spoken out about getting paid less than her male costars, also addressed the wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations in Hollywood. They began with Harvey Weinstein, and Lawrence was immediately called on to speak out against him, saying at the time that she was deeply disturbed but did not experience any form of harassment personally.

There was this moment when all of this broke out and everybody was silent, and then all of a sudden, every actress Twitter was blowing up with, You need to come forward and you need to say something and you need to condemn! Which is true: We do have a responsibility to say something; weve all worked with him, but everybody needed a moment, she explained to Winfrey.

Just speaking for myself, I had known him since I was 20, and he had only ever been nice to me  except for the moments that he wasnt, and then I called him an asshole, and we moved on, she continued. He was paternal to me. So I needed a moment to process everything because I thought I knew this guy, and then hes being accused of rape.

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She added, We all knew he was a dog, we knew that he was a 

A brute? Winfrey suggested.

Lawrence continued, A tough guy, a brute, a tough guy to negotiate with. I didnt know that he was a rapist. And its so widespread, the abuse, from so many different people  its directors, its producers  that I think everybody needed to [process it]. Everybody needs to deal with this in their own way; everybody needs to heal.

The mother! star, who recently split from the films director, Darren Aronofsky, hopes that social change comes from all the victims coming forward.

Men need more social awareness, she said. But this comes down to equality, and until all women in every job are paid equally for the same amount of work, how are we ever going to be thought of as equals? As long as there is one group of humans that is overruling another one, theres going to be abuse, [and] why would we be thought of as equals?

Lawrence continued, My political passion has almost turned into an obsession. I mean, I dont think you ever do feel settled, [but] as soon as you feel settled with your home and your personal life, youre looking at the world and going, How in the hell do I fix this? What do we do? 
Screenwriter Ed Soloman shared a heartwarming story on Tuesday about the time Star Wars star Mark Hamill made a sick childs wish come true.

When a friends son (who was, so tragically, dying from an incurable illness) made a wish: to meet Luke Skywalker, it fell on me  the only person the dad knew who worked in the film business  to make a call, Solomon wrote in a series of tweets. Not knowing Mark, I called his agent and explained that this lovely boy watched Star Wars every day and wanted to meet NOT Mark Hammill, but, rather, the actual CHARACTER that he played.

The writer, whose credits include Men in Black, Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure and the HBO series Mosaic, explained that the boys illness had progressed to the stage where he could no longer separate fiction from reality. He also said in a later tweet that the boy was almost entirely blind.

Also Read: 'Star Wars,' 'Thor,' 'Planet of the Apes' Advance in Oscar Visual Effects Race

The agent begrudgingly said hed call Mark, but also said not to get my hopes up. 90 seconds later I got a call from [Hamill], who immediately said yes and gave me his home address, Solomon wrote. He not only met with the boy, but spent hours answering question after question (sometimes the same ones repeatedly), AS Luke. 

The story was met with kind words from Twitter users who saying the story was a welcome change of pace from the recent flood of bad news, particularly about the behavior of men in Hollywood.

Even posting this now makes me teary, he wrote. He was compassionate, kind, and patient. And it literally meant the world to this kid and his family.

Also Read: Daisy Ridley Clarifies Comments That She's Done With 'Star Wars' Franchise After Episode IX

Hamill is set to reprise his role as Luke Skywalker on the big screen when Star Wars: The Last Jedi hits theaters next week.

WHY I WILL LOVE @HamillHimself FOREVER (THREAD OF 4): When a friend's son (who was, so tragically, dying from an incurable illness) made a wish: to meet Luke Skywalker, it fell on me  the only person the dad knew who worked in the film business  to make a call. 1/4  Ed Solomon (@ed_solomon) December 4, 2017

Not knowing Mark, I called his agent and explained that this lovely boy watched Star Wars every day and wanted to meet NOT Mark Hammill, but, rather, the actual CHARACTER that he played (the boys own mental state had devolved past the point of being able to grok that 2/4  Ed Solomon (@ed_solomon) December 4, 2017

..Luke was fictional). The agent begrudgingly said hed call Mark, but also said not to get my hopes up. 90 seconds later I got a call from @HamillHimself, who immediately said yes and gave me his home address. 3/4  Ed Solomon (@ed_solomon) December 4, 2017

He not only met with the boy, but spent hours answering question after question (sometimes the same ones repeatedly), AS Luke. Even posting this now makes me teary. He was compassionate, kind, and patient. And it literally meant the world to this kid and his family. 4/4  Ed Solomon (@ed_solomon) December 4, 2017

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In the wake of his firing, Matt Lauer and his wife of 19 years, Annette Roque, are no longer wearing their wedding rings, PEOPLE has learned.

But according to a source, the couple are still under one roof and together: Theyre taking it day by day right now, says the source. His focus is on his family.

Today show anchor Lauer, 59, was fired by NBC News last week after the network received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior, with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.

A source later told PEOPLE that Lauer was let go due to sexual misconduct throughout 2014 with the woman who made the complaint, including at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Another source with knowledge of the situation said Lauer had viewed this relationship as consensual and was dumbfounded by the accusation.

Women have also anonymously accused him of sexual harassment and assault in reports published by Variety and The New York Times.

In the wake of his firing, several insiders have told PEOPLE that the veteran morning host was allegedly often unfaithful to Roque, whom he wed in 1998 after meeting on a blind date. (Lauer was previously married to television producer Nancy Alspaugh from 1981-88.)

Lauer and Roque share three children: son Jack, 16, daughter Romy, 14, and son Thijs, 11.

From left: Jack Lauer, Romy Lauer, Thijs Lauer and Matt Lauer on Jan. 18, 2016

Roque briefly filed for divorce in 2006. In court documents obtained by the National Enquirer, Roque claimed Lauer committed cruel and inhumane acts against her, demonstrating extreme anger and hostility that endangered her mental and physical wellbeing as well as repeatedly criticized her parenting skills.

Despite the allegations, Roque withdrew the court papers three weeks after filing them.

On Wednesday, the former Dutch model was photographed for the first time since news broke of Lauers firing. In photos obtained by the Daily Mail, Roque was spotted picking up breakfast in Sag Harbor, New York, after dropping off her children at school. Lauer was also spotted without his ring, despite wearing it in photos last week.

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Matt Lauer and Annette Roque on Aug. 12

Lauer, who joined NBC in 1992 as a newsreader on Today, had been co-anchor of the morning show since January 1997 and reportedly signed a $20 million dollar contract last year. The longtime anchor broke his silence on the allegations in a statement read on Nov. 30 by his former co-hosts on-air.

There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions, he said. To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry. As I am writing this, I realize the depth of the damage and disappointment I have left behind at home and at NBC.

Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed. I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly, he continued. Repairing the damage will take a lot of time and soul searching, and Im committed to beginning that effort. It is now my full time job. The last two days have forced me to take a very hard look at my own troubling flaws. Its been humbling. I am blessed to be surrounded by people I love. I thank them for their patience and grace.

One of Lauers former Today show colleagues told PEOPLE the ousted anchor is still reeling over the situation.

He is weak and broken and ashamed by his own admission, said the colleague.

But, the colleague added, He is my friend. He is human, and he is flawed. But is he going to use his power to be a predator on women? Until I see solid evidence of that, I just cant believe it. We dont know the details.

Another Today staffer told PEOPLE that most employees inside Rockefeller Center are heartbroken over whats transpired and torn between the man they knew and the Lauer portrayed by his accusers.

The reason people are so upset and people are crying on our staff, which is like 80 percent women, is because he was really loved and treated people really well, said the staffer. And its shocking to think that there could be this side.
Naya Rivera Refiles for Divorce From Ryan Dorsey Following Domestic Battery Arrest The former 'Glee' star filed to dismiss her divorce request in October, before she was arrested late last month for domestic battery.

Naya Rivera's divorce is back on.

The former Glee star refiled to divorce husband Ryan Dorsey, according to court documents obtained by ET. Rivera cites irreconcilable differences as the reason for divorce and is asking for joint custody of the couple's 2-year-old son Josey, as well as for neither party to have to pay child support.

The 30-year-old actress initially filed for divorce in Nov. 2016, after two years of marriage. However, in Oct. 2017, Rivera filed to dismiss the divorce. However, on Nov. 25, Rivera was arrested in Kanawha County, West Virginia, and charged with domestic battery against her husband, a spokesperson for the Kanawha County Sheriffs Office told ET.

While her original divorce filing listed the date of separation as "TBD," in her new filing, the separation date is listed as Nov. 24, one day before the alleged incident with her now-ex took place.

ET has previously reached out to Rivera's rep for comment.

Watch the video below for more on Rivera's arrest.

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One brave man has become a viral hero after witnesses captured him coming extremely close to danger himself while rescuing a rabbit from the wildfires ravaging California.

The unidentified man pulled over on Highway 1 in southern California as the massive Thomas Fire raged along the side of the road to save the terrified creature, witnesses told ABC News. However, the rabbit darted into the burning bush.

As he searched for the animal, the man began anxiously jumping up and down and putting his hands on his head until the rabbit reappeared and ran from the flames. The man then scooped up the animal and appeared to walk with it to a safer spot.

Dude! You just restored my faith in humanity. May you be forever blessed, wrote one commenter on Facebook.

Another added, I see in this a young human, overwhelmed by the destruction he can not control. Saving this tiny, scared creature gave him a thread to hold on to when all around him was dying.

Since Monday, at least 180 structures have been destroyed by raging wildfires across Los Angeles and Ventura County. More than 90,000 acres have burned as of Wednesday night, and L.A.s notoriously traffic-dense freeways have either been shut down or clogged with cars as residents evacuate. More than 1,700 firefighters are on duty in Ventura County to contain the flames, but many arent able to enter the area due to the intensity of the fire.

One person died in a rollover crash while trying to evacuate Ventura County as thousands attempted to escape in the dark, CNN reported.

On Wednesday morning, firefighters were faced with a new blaze in Bel Air, a wealthy neighborhood famous for being home to many celebrities. As of now, the homes of Jennifer Aniston, Elon Musk, Beyonce and JAY-Z are under threat of being affected by the fires. Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Harrison Ford have homes that may also be in danger if the flames spread.

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California wildfires

California wildfires

Many celebrities and their families taken to social media to announce their evacuations as high winds from Santa Ana are expected to fuel the flames this week. Lionel Richie went on Twitter to announce he was canceling a scheduled performance Wednesday to move his family to a safer place to escape the fire.

Chelsea Handler tweeted early Wednesday morning to announce she was evacuating her Los Angeles-area home, and also took the opportunity to make a dig at President Trump.

Just evacuated my house, she wrote. Its like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times.

Ariana Grandes mother and brother Frankie, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Adrienne Maloof and Paris Hilton also detailed their evacuations.
Eminem and Beyonces brand-new song, Walk on Water, uses a very dated word: retarded.

The pairs song, which was released in November, will be featured on the rappers ninth album, titled Revival, and features Bey singing the hook, I walk on water, but I aint no Jesus/ I walk on water, but only when it freezes.

Eminem then launches into a tirade about the pressures of fame, which includes the following lyric:

Gods given me all this, still I feel no different regardless

Kids look to me as a God, this is retarded

If only they knew, its a facade and its exhaustive.

The lyric has not been a hit on social media  and Beyonce isnt off the hook.

Honestly shocked and appalled that @Beyonce agreed to record a song with @Eminem in which he refers to something he doesnt like as retarded seriously bey?  garbage mouth (@thebaeofallbaes) November 28, 2017

@Eminem I really need you to listen to this. Your song expresses many good ideas, but the word retarded was offensive to many. This young man we love expresses eloquently why. https://t.co/eNOohVtUkq  ResistaSista (@debiowens) November 22, 2017

WHY did Eminem have to use the word retarded like he did in Walk On Water  Ally (@AllyJanelle) November 22, 2017

@Eminem Using the word retarded in a song is disrespectful to people with disabilities. My child is not your punchline. pic.twitter.com/6bY7ylR3Nd  Allison Wohl (@amhwohl) November 20, 2017

@Eminem it is 2017, did you seriously use the word 'retarded' in one of your songs?? And then sing it on live television? You should know better! https://t.co/gtDqM3AxVd  Kelly Schiess (@Kelly_Schiess) November 19, 2017

The controversial rapper has used the word in the past  in 1997, he released the song 4 Verses with the lyric:

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Met a retarded kid named Greg, with a wooden leg

Snatched it off and beat him over the f***ing head with the peg

And Eminem isnt the only one  rappers Tyler the Creator, Wiz Khalifa, and Future have all sung it.

The word retard is derived from the former diagnostic term mental retardation, now defined as intellectual disability, according to Margaret Nygren, the executive director and CEO of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

The word retard is a slur and used to describe people without dignity, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Over time, as language evolved and we gained a better understanding of the human condition, we named it intellectual disability, the term now recognized on a federal and state level.

For a person to have an intellectual disability, that individual must meet three criteria. There have to be substantial limitations in intellectual functioning (which we assess using an IQ test) and adaptive functioning, which means feeding, clothing, and generally keeping yourself safe, says Nygren. The limitations also must be present during the developmental years of childhood or prenatally.

Theres not one clear source for intellectual disability but rather a variety: genetics, exposure to toxins in the environment or the womb, birth injuries such as a loss of oxygen, or social deprivations, for example, a highly restrictive childhood.

The best course of treatment for people with an intellectual disability is intervention from a young age and educational and social support. With that, people can lead high-quality lives, says Nygren. Mocking them doesnt contribute to the ideals of society.

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Earl Kimrey arrested for death of Mariah Woods, allegedly sexually abused the 3-year-old

The father whose 3-year-old daughter was found dead Saturday shared documents from Child Protection Services that allege she suffered some disturbing abuse.

Shared with Crime Stories, the documents describe the sexual abuse Mariah Woods went through and the physical abuse her 10-year-old brother suffered at the hands of their mothers boyfriend, Earl Kimrey.

Mariahs brother claims he saw Kimrey put his penis in the mouth of his sister Mariah.

The documents also stated that the brother said Mariahs mother, Kristy Hunter, knew about the sexual abuse the toddler was being subjected to.

She was also aware that Kimrey abused substances including marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine.

RELATED: New Details About Missing 3-Year-Old Mariah Woods  And Why Her Dad Doesn't Believe She Was Kidnapped From Her Bed Like Her Mom Said

The day the young girl went missing, Kimrey allegedly struck Mariahs brother in the face which caused his nose to bleed. Again, he claims the mother knew of this and did nothing to stop it.

This has all come to light after Mariahs body was found in a creek on Saturday. Kimrey was arrested right before they found the girls remains.

Mariah was reported missing by her mother around 6 a.m. on November 27. She and her live-in boyfriend Kimrey told law enforcement that Kimrey checked on Mariah at 11 p.m. the night before and when Hunter woke up, she was gone.

An Amber Alert was issued by Sheriff Hans Miller and the search for the girl began.

Mariahs biological father, Alex Woods, didn't believe Hunters story and thought his ex-wife and her boyfriend had something to do with it.

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? the girls dad asked while talking to WCTI News Channel 12. Nobody heard anything? Four people in the house, two adults and two kids someone just comes up and snatches the baby and walks out?

Sadly, he was right.

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RELATED: New Details About The Murder Of 3-Year-Old Mariah Woods  And Why Her Mother's Boyfriend Has Been Arrested

Mariahs body was found by dive teams on Saturday around 5:30 p.m. in a creek just 25 miles from her home. That was not the place of her death, though, according to the FBI.

Kimrey was arrested hours before the girls body was discovered for concealing her death and hiding the remains. Kimrey, who has a criminal history that dates back to 2005, is also being charged with obstruction of justice, second-degree burglary, felony larceny and possession of stolen property.

He is being held at the Onslow County Detention Center and his bond is set at $1,010,000.

Kimrey went before a judge on Monday and is scheduled to appear in court again on December 18.

This investigation continues, said Ernie Lee, district attorney for district 4.

A candlelight vigil was held for the deceased girl Tuesday. The event, which was organized by Linda Cledenin, ended up being much larger than expected.

Hundreds of stuffed animals were brought to honor Mariah, and items were even received from places all over the world, including Japan and the United Kingdom. Signs were set up where people could write a message. Her father wrote, Daddy loves you Mariah.

"There's just something about Mariah that just got to me," Cledenin said. "It's just heart-wrenching. And this child didn't deserve this and I just feel it deep down.

RELATED: Horrific New Details Released About WHY A Mother Let Her Boyfriend And His Cousin Rape And Murder Her 10-Year-Old Daughter While She Watched

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How the tax bill just made it significantly more dangerous to be a woman in America

Much like everything else Congress is doing these days, the new tax bill makes it more dangerous to be a woman in so many obvious ways that its going to be hard to take any single representative or senator that voted for it seriously the next time they pretend to care about women. Last week, both the House of Representatives and Senate passed their versions of a tax reform bill, which means that this week, the two chambers of Congress are putting their heads together and working out the details to merge the two bills. Theyll then pass it on over to Donald Trump, who is essentially salivating for any real legislation to sign.

Republicans, especially party leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, are clamoring to get something done before the holidays so they can point to something they actually completed  anything, really  and further legitimize Trumps presidency. This is precisely why both bills are being rushed through Congress. On Friday night, for example, the Senate got a nearly 500-page draft of the bill with handwritten notes in it to vote on, passing it at a shady 2 a.m. Saturday morning, with very little likelihood that anyone had read through it all. This, friends, is not normal.

The Republican tax plan is a big step closer to success. The sweeping overhaul passed the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday on a party-line vote. That vote followed another Capitol Hill visit from the president. https://t.co/fgpLoqSihE pic.twitter.com/9WyRStbn53  CBS News (@CBSNews) November 29, 2017

What is normal, sadly, is the very routine way the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act chips away at womens rights and livelihoods. Youd think this would get less infuriating with time, but it doesnt. Since theyre still working it all out, theres time to call your representatives and shut this thing down. Here are just a few of the ways the tax bill hurts women, though really, when you factor in the gender wage gap and the fact that most families hovering at and around the poverty line are run by women, literally every single rule hurts women.

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1. The tax credits mean nothing to regular people.

Helpful @washingtonpost Analysis | Here are 7 differences Republicans must resolve between their tax bills https://t.co/UbNtqatbf0, including this on #ChildTaxCredit boost (spoiler: low-income families left out!) pic.twitter.com/LcySPcWIpb  Meredith Dodson (@dodsonadvocate) December 4, 2017

There are tax cuts across all income levels in both bills that are being reconciled this week, however, most of the cuts benefit millionaires and billionaires. The cuts that could potentially help the middle class are so small that they wont really matter  and they all expire somewhere between 2019 and 2026 anyway.

Take the Child Tax Credit (CTC), for example. The money that people can get deducted just for having a kid and keeping it alive will theoretically increase, but even this benefits wealthier people. While hashing things out this weekend, GOP leaders, like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, had the chance to fight for an even larger child tax credit  by just one teeny tiny percent  so that more people would benefit from it, but instead they voted for a smaller CTC increase so that corporations could keep the proposed 20 percent tax rate, even if it means helping out families with children.

FACT: Under the Republican plan, a single mother making minimum wage with two kids would get only a $75 tax credit. Meanwhile, a family making $500k with two kids would get a $4,000 tax credit. #TaxDebate  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 29, 2017

According to the left-leaning Center for American Progress:

 Compared with current law, a single mother with two children earning just $14,500 per year [which is equivalent to a minimum wage job] would see a $75 increase if the bill were enacted, while a married couple with two children earning $500,000 per year would get a $4,000 increase.

Also, any cuts for actual humans expires by 2026, although tax cuts for corporations will remain permanent, so its nothing to get excited about.

2. The bill repeals a vital part of the Affordable Care Act.

If senators repeal critical parts of the #ACA in their tax plan, insurance will become less affordable  with average premiums expected to rise by 10%.



Stop this bill and make the call: https://t.co/lyIN17dwmw pic.twitter.com/VwyroWslOW  Planned Parenthood (@PPact) November 30, 2017

Both the House and Senate tax bill guts the individual mandate part of the ACA, which means that people wont be forced, via a tax penalty, to get health insurance. This means that millions of people will likely leave the health insurance market, thus driving premiums up. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums will rise 10 percent every year. Doing the math, any kind of CTC or personal exemption in the new law wouldnt necessarily be enough for single women or low-income families to actually to cover the rise in a monthly insurance premium. Its like saving $50 by not going out one Friday and then your landlord emails that theyre raising your rent by $300 a month.

The CBO also agrees that low-income families would hurt the most under this plan, since they likely have part-time jobs or unstable work that doesnt guarantee them employer-backed health insurance, leaving them to pay out of pocket.

3. It lets religious groups who hate birth control play in politics.

This is actually one of the scariest things about the House version of the bill, and it could change once they have to reconcile it with the Senate bill. But the fact that representatives were totally fine with getting rid of the Johnson Amendment shows just how powerful conservative lobbies are in Congress. (Trump campaigned on repealing it, BTW, so he might have some say in whether this gets reconciled or not.)

As it stands, a religious organization is totally exempt from paying taxes. In return for this financial gift, they cant endorse political parties or policies. In the House version of the tax bill, these groups could push their conservative, often anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ rights, anti-womens health care agendas by endorsing candidates  and still not pay any taxes at all.

4. Programs women use will eventually suffer.

Sen Manchin: The tax bill was not what I was told, I dont think leadership ever had any intention of making this a bipartisan bill https://t.co/3pDKSHBH1I  The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) December 4, 2017

By giving huge corporations a huge tax cut, Congress will increase the national deficit by $1.7 trillion, which is already supposed to be totally out of bounds by procedural rules. Giving corporations this tax cut is so important to the GOP that they will do it at any cost  its why cuts for families and certain tax credits are so small. They have to make up that trillion dollars somehow. They could eventually do this by putting other social programs, like Medicaid, social security, even food benefit programs are on the proverbial chopping block.

In addition to the possible cuts to these programs, both tax bills float the idea of getting rid of local and state deductions, which means people can no longer write off the money they pay locally on their federal tax returns, thus lowering the incentive to keep up on those bills in the first place. That means that public schools, which run on state and local taxes, and other social services wont be securely funded if the bill passes.

5. Its a total fake out for parental leave.

This tax bill will affect the lives of everyone. Your parents. Your grandparents. Children. And its is being rewritten in secret, on the same day they want to bring it to a vote. This is no way to govern.  Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 1, 2017

There is a tax credit that employers can take if they give parental leave to employees. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, The proposal would offer small tax credits to employers who voluntarily offer paid family and medical leave to certain employees, but it would do nothing to put paid leave within reach for the millions of working people who have not won the boss lottery.'

Only 13 percent of workers actually have the ability to take parental leave  people working lower income gigs or part-time work wont benefit from this at all. The credit also expires in 2019, which means its a fleeting little clause put in the bill to make people think the GOP has the best interests of women and families at heart.

This tax bill is messed up on so many levels, but the way it targets women, especially women with kids or in lower income brackets, is particularly offensive.
Amid accusations of sexual misconduct from at least eight women, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced Thursday that he plans to resign.

It will be up to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) to appoint Frankens replacement. The appointee would join Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and serve until November 2018.

More than 20 Democratic members of the Senate had publicly called for Frankens resignation, along with several progressive organizations like NARAL Pro-Choice America, CREDO and UltraViolet  some of which called for a progressive woman to take Frankens place.

Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet, told HuffPost, Gov. Mark Dayton should strongly consider replacing him with a progressive woman, preferably a progressive woman of color.

STATEMENT: Sexual harassment & assault have no place in the progressive movement or in our society. @SenFranken had the chance to take full responsibility & he failed. Sen. Franken should resign from the Senate. @GovMarkDayton should appoint a progressive woman to replace him. pic.twitter.com/bgSvmwi9Td  CREDO Mobile (@CREDOMobile) November 20, 2017

We agree. Senator Franken should step aside. We support and believe the women who are coming forward with their stories. We need to immediately work towards systemic change so that behavior like this is not tolerated in the United States Congress or anywhere else. https://t.co/D3Mur6TICu  NARAL (@NARAL) December 6, 2017

We've said it once, and we'll say it again.



We believe women. We believe the now seven women who have accused Sen. Al Franken of sexual assault and harassment.



Senator Franken should have resigned weeks ago.https://t.co/2K3jllOZOO  UltraViolet (@UltraViolet) December 6, 2017

A likely pick for Dayton is Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith. However, she's not expected to run in 2018, which would set up a wide-open Democratic primary.

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Here are some potential candidates who could take Frankens place.

Minnesota State Attorney General Lori Swanson

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson was among the state attorneys general to take on President Donald Trump over the travel ban. (Photo: Minnesota Attorney General)

Swanson, the states first woman to be elected attorney general, has served in the position since 2006. Before that, she was the states solicitor general after four years as deputy attorney general.

Swansons tenure as attorney general has been defined largely by consumer protection, by taking on for-profit colleges and recovering millions of dollars from insurance companies who targeted the elderly. She also joined fellow attorneys general from Washington, New York, Virginia and Massachusetts in taking legal action against the Trump administration earlier this year, after the announcement of the travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries.

The executive order that imposes blanket entry restrictions to the United States for people from certain countries is unconstitutional, Swanson said in a statement in February.

It does not pass constitutional muster, is inconsistent with our history as a nation, and undermines our national security, she wrote. America can keep its people safe without sacrificing bedrock constitutional principles.

House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman

Melissa Hortman called out her white male colleagues in the Minnesota state House for failing to show up for speeches by women of color. (Photo: YouTube)

Hortman made national news in April when she called out her white male colleagues in the Minnesota House of Representatives for skipping important speeches from their female colleagues, particularly women of color.

In a hearing for a public safety bill that would increase punishment for protesters who block traffic, Hortman noticed that her white male colleagues were absent.

I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate, she said. After she offended many of the men she was calling out, she was asked to apologize.

Im really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So, Im not sorry, she said.

Hortman is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and has served as a state representative since 2004. She represents the states District 36B.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges

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Betsy Hodges at a "We Stand United" rally in New York City the day before Trump's inauguration. (Photo: D Dipasupil via Getty Images)

Hodges was elected mayor of Minneapolis in 2014. Prior to her election, she spent eight years on the Minneapolis City Council.

After her decade-long career in public service in Minneapolis, Hodges has faced controversy in 2017. In July, after Minneapolis police shot and killed an unarmed Australian woman, Justine Damond, members of the public called for Hodges to step down for not addressing seriously the issue of police violence.

Hodges also campaigned for re-election as Minneapolis mayor but lost to fellow Democrat Jacob Frey, who will take office in January 2018.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison

Keith Ellison speaks out against Trump's travel ban in Washington, D.C., in February. (Photo: Alex Wong via Getty Images)

Ellison, a Democrat, was elected to Congress in 2006 after serving in the Minnesota state House for four years. In 2017, he was appointed deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee under former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.

On Monday, Ellison would not say whether he thinks Franken and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who is also accused of sexual harassment, should resign. He told Democracy Now that he thinks all members of Congress should look inside their conscience and ask themselves just a few questions.

Can you be effective? Ellison said. If you stood up your whole life to stand up for the rights of people  and both of them have  is it not a moment now where you apply some standards to yourself that you have asked others to live by?

Conyers has since announced his retirement.

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) speaks to the media after prayers at the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, in 2015. (Photo: Bill Clark via Getty Images)

McCollum was elected to represent Minnesotas 4th District in 2000, becoming only the second woman to win a congressional election in the state.

Prior to her congressional election, McCollum, a Democrat, served four terms in the Minnesota state House of Representatives.

In November, as more and more women began speaking out against workplace sexual harassment, McCollum said she once had to use a rolled-up newspaper to fend off unwanted physical contact from a male lawmaker.

State Rep. Ilhan Omar

Ilhan Omar delivers her acceptance speech on Nov. 8, 2016, after being elected to the Minnesota state House of Representatives. (Photo: STEPHEN MATUREN/AFP/Getty Images)

Omar made history on Nov. 8, 2016, by becoming the first Somali-American Muslim legislator to be elected for public office in the United States. It was a particularly meaningful accomplishment during an election cycle that saw a huge increase in Islamophobic rhetoric and hate crimes, due in large part to Donald Trumps Republican presidential campaign.

Omar, a refugee born in Mogadishu, fled to Kenya with her family when civil war broke out in Somalia. They immigrated to Arlington, Virginia, in 1995 and later settled in Minneapolis, where she began her career in public service.

Omar currently serves as assistant minority leader in the Minnesota House.

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith

Tina Smith, shown here on a visit to Cuba in June, is a former vice president of the Midwest regional Planned Parenthood. (Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa/LatinContent via Getty Images)

Prior to her role as lieutenant governor to Dayton, Smith worked as Daytons chief of staff  a position she had held for former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback as well.

Smiths career began with her marketing firm in Minneapolis, as well as serving as vice president of Planned Parenthoods Midwest region. When Dayton chose her as his running mate in 2014, he said, Tina Smith is quite simply the very best  the very best public administrator Ive ever seen.

MinnPost wrote last year that Minnesotas never had a lieutenant governor like Tina Smith. Smith is known for refusing to take a marginal role in Daytons administration and is reportedly in constant contact with the governor, making sure that she actually has real responsibilities.

Also on HuffPost

Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.)

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.)

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.)

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.)

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio)

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.)

Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.)

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)

Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.)

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.)

Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.)

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.)

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.)

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.)

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.)

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.)

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.)

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.)

Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.)

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.)

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)

Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.)

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.)

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.)

Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.)

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., announced his plans to resign following a series of allegations from women accusing him of sexual harassment and misconduct.

Franken said that while he believes an ethics committee investigation would find him innocent, he didnt feel he could continue to serve and would be stepping down in the coming weeks. He contended that some of the allegations were not true and others he remembered differently.

This decision is not about me, Franken said Thursday. It is about the people of Minnesota.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.  one of the first lawmakers to ask Franken to resign  took her glasses off and wiped tears from her eyes several times during his speech. More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers, including McCaskill, hugged Franken at the conclusion of his address. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., was the only Republican senator on the floor during the announcement, which included a shot at the GOP.

There is some irony that I am leaving while a man who bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who preyed on young girls runs for Senate with the full support of his party, said Franken, referencing President Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., leaves the Capitol after speaking on the Senate floor, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Franken said he will resign from the Senate in coming weeks following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations and a collapse of support from his Democratic colleagues, a swift political fall for a once-rising Democratic star. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

Frankens replacement will be selected by Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Dayton is expected to choose Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, who will hold the seat until a special election is held in November 2018. Dayton said he expects to make his decision in the next couple of days.

On Wednesday morning, after Politico published the story of a woman who said Franken tried to kiss her after a 2006 radio show, Democratic senators began to call for his resignation. (Franken denied the allegation.) Over the course of a few hours, more than half the caucus called for the second-term senator to step down.

The first allegation against Franken came on November 16 , when radio anchor Leeann Tweeden said that she had been forcibly kissed while rehearsing on a USO tour in 2006. She also included a photo of Franken mimicking groping her breasts while she slept on a flight during the same tour. Franken apologized, but said he did not remember the kiss in the same way. In all, eight women have accused Franken of harassment or misconduct.

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After a career in comedy, writing, activism and talk radio, Franken first won election to the Senate in 2008, winning by just over 300 votes in a tight three-way race. He won reelection in 2014 by ten points, and was being put forth by some as a potential candidate for president in 2020.

Liz Goodwin contributed to the reporting of this story.

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A young woman dubbed the Corpse Bride, who reportedly underwent 50 surgeries to resemble Angelina Jolie, has confessed that it was all a prank, thanks to elaborate makeup and computer tricks.

Sahar Tabar came clean about claims that she had undergone plastic surgery to resemble Angelina Jolie. (Photo: Getty Images)

Now I can see that I have something in common with [Angelina Jolie], but I amuse myself, and to look like someone is not my goal, Sahar Tabar, a young Iranian woman, told Russian news outlet Sputnik, as translated by the U.K.s the Sun. Over time I post a photo, I make my face more fun and funny, she said. It is a form of self-expression, a kind of art. My fans know that this is not my real face.

Befor and after #sahartabar#angelinajolie #iran A post shared by sahartabar_official   (@sahartabar.original) on Dec 2, 2017 at 3:32pm PST

Last week, Tabar (whose age has been reported as both 19 and 22) abruptly went viral for shocking photos that showed her with exaggerated facial features, cheek piercings, and a gaunt frame.

According to Newsweek, after an avalanche of follower requests and more media coverage than shed bargained for, Tabar deleted her Instagram photos, made her account private, and changed her handle to Parisa Amiri.

Hi friends of friends who are not from Iran, she wrote Saturday in a now-deleted message, per Newsweek. Im upset and I just want the Iranians to follow my page. People of the foreign countries dont follow me please. I only accept Iranian requests.

According to the Daily Mail, Tabar underwent surgeries for a nose job, enlarged mouth and liposuction and wears blue contact lenses, but the rest is an illusion. This is Photoshop and makeup, she said.

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(NEW YORK)  Lena Dunham claims that she warned Hillary Clintons communications director about Harvey Weinsteins behavior, the New York Times reported in an expose that includes new details about the lengths Weinstein went to cover-up his alleged behavior. The details led the powerful Hollywood talent agency C.A.A. to apologize for its role in the scandal.

Dunham told the Times that when she worked with the Clinton presidential campaign last year, she tried to warn them about rape allegations against the mogul. Dunham said she also told Clinton spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod about Weinstein.

I just want to let you know that Harveys a rapist, and this is going to come out at some point, Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the campaigns deputy communications director. I think its a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because its an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.

Magazine editor Tina Brown also said she cautioned the Clinton campaign about Weinstein.

Representatives for Dunham didnt immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Clintons communications director Nick Merrill told the paper that only (Dunham) can answer why she would tell them instead of those who could stop him.

Weinstein was a significant contributor to Democratic candidates and helped fund-raise for Clinton.

Weinstein attorneys Blair Berk and Ben Brafman reiterated Weinsteins denials in a statement Wednesday.

Mr. Weinstein has never at any time committed an act of sexual assault, and it is wrong and irresponsible to conflate claims of impolitic behavior or consensual sexual contact later regretted, with an untrue claim of criminal conduct, said the attorneys. There is a wide canyon between mere allegation and truth, and we are confident that any sober calculation of the facts will prove no legal wrongdoing occurred. Nonetheless, to those offended by Mr. Weinsteins behavior, he remains deeply apologetic.

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A Weinstein spokesperson also said the producer also contributed to Republican candidates, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and said Weinstein had never had any discussions with any politicians about his personal conduct.

The Times report published online Tuesday night was followed Wednesday with a lawsuit filed by six women in federal court in New York against Weinstein, claiming his actions to cover up assaults amounted to civil racketeering. The lawsuit, which seeks to represent a class of dozens, if not hundreds of women who say they were assaulted by Weinstein, claims that a coalition of companies and people became part of the growing Weinstein Sexual Enterprise and that they worked with Weinstein to conceal his widespread sexual harassment and assaults.

Weinstein is currently under investigation for sexual assault in four cities. He has apologized for his behavior with women but denied having non-consensual sex.

The latest New York Times report, titled Weinsteins Complicity Machine, further illustrated how Weinstein leveraged his power and connections to keep his alleged crimes hidden, and detailed how those who enabled Weinstein allowed his actions to go unchecked.

The Times reported that at least eight C.A.A. agents were aware of Weinsteins pattern of harassment. Gwyneth Paltrow, who is among the dozens of actresses who earlier came forward to claim sexual harassment by Weinstein, said she told her own C.A.A. agent, Rick Kurtzman, about being harassed by Weinstein. (Paltrow continued to star in several movies produced by Weinstein.)

Canadian actress Mia Kirshner also said C.A.A. set up a meeting with Weinstein in New York to discuss a film. But his actual purpose was to exchange sex for career opportunity, the Times reported.

C.A.A. declined to discuss individual cases but responded with a broad apology.

We want to make clear to clients and colleagues that even one of our clients being harassed over the companys 42 years is one too many, the agency said in a statement. We are here to serve, fight for, and protect our clients. We apologize to any person the agency let down for not meeting the high expectations we place on ourselves, as individuals and as a company.
Prevention is the best medicine, doctors say, and nowhere is that truer than in cancer. Picking up early signs of disease is the best way to prevent cancer from taking root, so doctors have urged people get screened for all types of cancer on a regular basis. The assumption is that screening will save them from developing advanced cancer, which is less treatable and deadlier.

That was the reason behind a worldwide push to have every woman get regular mammogram screenings. The idea was to lower the rates of advanced cancers and ultimately deaths from the disease. But in a new study published in BMJ, researchers show that mammography did little to reduce either deaths or advanced breast cancer over a period of 23 years in the Netherlands. Instead, they found that the X-ray based test designed to pick up tumors led to overdiagnoses 60% of the time.

MORE: The Case for Annual Mammograms Is More Complicated Than Ever

The study involved all Dutch women who were screened with mammograms every other year between 1989 and 2012about 8 million women in all. The researchers, led by Dr. Philippe Autier from the University of Strathclyde Institute of Global Public Health, wanted to see if the screening affected the number of advanced breast cancers recorded over that time, as well as deaths from the disease. A previous study using some of the same data had found decreases in the incidence of some advanced breast cancers from 1989 to 1997, hinting that widespread mammography was effective.

However, over the longer time period, the scientists failed to find the same reduction. In fact, from 1989-2012, there was no significant decrease in the incidence of stage 2 to stage 4 breast cancers. On the other hand, incidence of early stage in situ cancers, in which the tumor hasnt spread to surrounding tissues, increased by 4% each year. And Autier calculated that 59% of lesions detected by mammograms were overdiagnosed, meaning they didnt necessarily need treatment.

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Mammography doesnt actually pick up tumors but rather the changed breast tissue surrounding tumors; its possible that many advanced cancers are growing without significantly changing breast tissue, and therefore not getting picked up by mammograms in time.

The findings support a growing number of other population-based studies from the U.S., Australia, and Norway that have also shown that since mammograms were recommended in the 1970s, rates of advanced breast cancer have not dropped dramatically. While deaths from breast cancer have been declining in the U.S., experts say that better treatments, rather than a reduction in advanced cases picked up by mammograms, may be responsible.

Based on such accumulating data, in 2009, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that most women begin regular screening at age 50 instead of age 40, and receive the test once every two years instead of every year.

MORE: New Clarity on Who Needs Mammograms, When

I dont think the accumulating data shows that continuing mammography screening is a good solution, says Autier, essentially because the price to pay by women in terms of overdiagnosis is enormous. Previous studies have documented that overdiagnosis of breast cancer can lead to additional biopsies and even treatments that expose women to side effects, without necessarily protecting them from cancer.

Autier says that he was a champion of mammogram screening in previous decades, believing that the benefits for women in detecting cancer outweighed the harms of developing advanced cancer. However, he says the evidence no longer supports that position. We, and I include myself in the we, promoted mammography screening for plenty of good reasons then, he says. I am not glad at all that we found [in this study] that mammography is probably not the ideal solution for protecting women from breast cancer. There is no good evidence that mammography makes a difference in mortality and if it does, its probably marginal. But the overdiagnosis toll is enormous.

MORE: High-Tech 3D Mammograms Probably Saved This Womans Life

Not everyone agrees with his conclusion. Robert Smith, vice president of cancer screening at the American Cancer Society, notes that not all women eligible and invited to have mammograms received them, and of those that did, not all continued to get them regularly. That means that while 80% of women attended screening, as Autier says, this does not mean that women were getting screening consistently every other year. Attendance rates also tend to decline over time, says Smith. In addition, Smith says the study could not account for an overall increasing incidence of breast cancer (due to changing environmental exposures, for example), and different rates of the disease in different age groups. If breast cancer rates overall were rising in the study period, then little change in the diagnosis of advanced cancer could still mean that rates of advanced disease were declining, since more cancers were being reported.

Autier says he is not against screening for cancer, but says that based on his findings, mammography is likely not the ideal way to detect breast cancer. In contrast, he says, screening for cervical cancer and colon cancer are extremely effective; those methods have been linked to a 70% to 80% drop in deaths from those cancers.

He argues that his findings support the need for a more effective way to detect breast cancer, which other researchers are currently developing. While mammography isnt an ideal tool, it is the best available technology for now. All women, and especially those at high risk of developing breast cancer because of a family history of the disease, should discuss with their doctors the benefits and risks of screening and decide if they should continue screening, and if so, how frequently and for how long.

MORE: Mammogram Guidelines Get an OverhaulAgain

Doctors need to be more upfront in discussing the pros and cons of mammography with their patients, he says, and informing them that data suggests the test may not be as effective as doctors once thought. Based on their own personal risk for breast cancer, he says, women should then make their own decisions about whether they should get regular screening.
Selma Blair performs in a piece by Tara Subkoff at Art Basel Miami. Blair accused director James Toback of sexual harassment, and said she feared he would kill her if she ever referred to it publicly. (Photo: Getty Images)

In case TIME Magazines Person of the Year wasnt indication enough, the deluge of sexual harassment and abuse allegations from women across many industries has washed over everything from Hollywood to technology. In the latest example of the fallout, actual tears washed over Art Basel Miami.

During the weeklong international art fair, known for its lavish shows and parties, came perhaps the most sobering moment, on Tuesday, in the form of actress-turned-designer-turned-artist Tara Subkoffs performance piece, called Synaptic Fatigue/Dear in the Headlights, featuring actresses Selma Blair and Caroline Vreeland.

The handful of women, in black leotards and tights, stood for an hour in front of a car with its headlights trained upon them, as their weeping formed a Greek chorus. According to Subkoff, the performance is both confrontational and cathartic for women who have suffered from sexual misconduct at the hands of powerful men, like the director James Toback (according to Blairs allegation) and Harvey Weinstein, who allegedly harassed Subkoff, as reported by Variety, among many others.

Actresses Selma Blair and Caroline Vreeland perform in Subkoffs piece. (Photo: Getty Images)

I did think of my experience with James Toback and how shaming that was and how angry I was to have to be silent for so long because I was afraid, Blair told W Magazine. But then I also thought of the wonder of this moment, that women are finally able to express things publicly that they hadnt felt they would ever tell a soul  even though I never wanted to tell my story publicly. I just wanted him to stop.

The performance serves as a strong contrast to the goings-on during Art Basel. The event started as an international art fair in Switzerland in the 1970s and debuted in Miami in the early 2000s, and has since become a contest over which art houses, fashion labels, and lifestyle brands can throw the biggest beach bash (it is Miami, after all).

Subkoff, who organized the performance, is known for her work as a director and actress, as well as a fashion designer for the line Imitation of Christ. While Subkoffs own experience with sexual harassment was in Hollywood, many are left wondering when the fashion worlds reckoning against sexual predators will come. Photographers Terry Richardson and Bruce Weber have both been publicly accused of sexual harassment, though fashion insiders are still waiting for the other shoe to fall for others.

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Fashion month is around the corner yet again, and if its anything like Art Basel Miami, the runway shows and extravagant parties will be tempered by the knowledge that the industry has long protected its biggest villains.

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By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and France called on Russia on Wednesday to deliver the delegation of President Bashar al-Assad to Syria peace talks in Geneva after discussions on ending the six-year war resumed with no sign of the government attending. The eighth round of negotiations began last week and after a few days with little apparent progress, U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said the government delegation, led by Bashar al-Ja'afari, was returning to Damascus to "consult and refresh". De Mistura expected talks to resume "around Tuesday" Dec. 5, but Ja'afari left Geneva on Saturday and said he might not come back because the opposition had stated that Assad could not play a role in a future interim government. A source close to the Syrian government's negotiating team told Reuters the delegation was still in Damascus on Wednesday. "We have said to the Russians it is important that the Syrian regime be at the table and be part of these negotiations and part of the discussion," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a news conference in Brussels. "We have left it to the Russians to deliver them to table." A diplomat in Geneva said it was likely, but not confirmed, that the delegation would return to Geneva on Friday. Russia's RIA news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying they would arrive on Sunday or Monday. Syrian officials have not said if Ja'afari will return to the talks but opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi said on Monday a government boycott would be "an embarrassment to Russia", which is keen to see a negotiated end to the war. The opposition negotiating team arrived at the U.N. offices in Geneva on Wednesday morning to resume talks with de Mistura, who declined to comment late on Tuesday when asked about the absence of Ja'afari's negotiators. "It takes two to Tango, but at the same time you need to talk to the other party," Aridi told reporters on Wednesday. "If they are quite serious about bringing peace to Syria, well they should show up." France, a key backer of the Syrian opposition, accused the government of blocking the U.N.-led effort and refusing to engage in good faith to achieve a political solution. "This refusal highlights the obstruction strategy of the political process carried out by the Damascus regime, which is responsible for the absence of progress in the negotiations," French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Alexandre Georgini told reporters. He also said that Russia, as one of Assad's main supporters, needed to assume its responsibilities so that the Syrian government finally entered the negotiations. The Russian mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to requests for comment. During last week's sessions, de Mistura shuttled between representatives of the warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15. (Reporting by Issam Abdullah in Geneva, Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Jack Stubbs in Moscow, and John Irish in Paris; Writing by John Irish; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Former president Barack Obama has jokingly thanked himself in a speech outlining the economic achievements of his administration.

Obama drew attention to the Paris Climate Agreement, the international climate accord he helped forge during his presidency, which his successor President Donald Trump has now withdrawn the US from.

During a speech at the North American Climate Summit in Chicago on Tuesday, the ex-president said: We met resistance every step of the way.

He continued: There were sceptics who said these actions would kill jobs and depress growth. As we took these actions, we saw the US economy grow consistently.

We saw the longest streak of job creation in American history by far. A streak that still continues, by the way.

Thanks, Obama, he added, prompting laughter and applause from the audience.

This was an apparent nod to the Thanks Obama meme which was started by conservatives on Twitter in 2009 and 2010 to thank Obama for their frustrations with his presidency such as healthcare reform.

But the meme was re-appropriated after the 2010 midterm election to sarcastically blame Obama for every mishap imaginable, including everything from a man spilling food to the power going out at the Super Bowl in 2013.

Obama also used the speech to address President Trumps decision to withdraw the US from the landmark climate agreement, saying it was difficult to defend.

But the good news is that the Paris agreement was never going to solve the climate crisis on its own. It was going to be up to all of us, he said.

President Trump announced he would be withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement in June, making the US the only country in the world not to get behind the framework deal to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama did not explicitly mention Mr Trump by name during the 14-minute speech but made a plea for officials who were there to persevere with efforts to tackle climate change in spite of the Trump administrations attitude to the planet warming.

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He applauded American mayors, academics and business leaders as being the new face of American leadership on climate change.

The accord was signed by nearly 200 countries in December 2015 in an attempt to restrict global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to within two degrees Celsius.

In this environment right now, it's easy sometimes to feel discouraged, and feel as if people are talking past each other, Obama said.

"This is where the particular talents of mayors come in. Because first of all, you are used to dealing with folks who can sometimes be unreasonable. You are accustomed to having to deal with the realities in front of you and take action, not just talk about it.

Syria, the last nation outside the pact, became a signatory of the Paris climate agreement last month.
Belfast (AFP) - Demonstrators in Belfast on Wednesday backed a call by Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein against a hard Irish border after Brexit, a key point in Britain's divorce talks with the EU.

Braving heavy rain, the roughly 100 protesters carried placards demanding that there be "no border" between the British province and its southern neighbour the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the bloc.

"The north voted to remain within the EU and that mandate must be respected and acted upon," said John Finucane, a member of Sinn Fein, which organised the protest.

Demonstrators unveiled a poster calling for the province to receive "special status" and urging Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to use his veto to prevent Brussels from moving to the next phase of negotiations with London unless his demands for no post-Brexit border were met.

"If you put a hard border, there will be guns again, even if it takes 10 years," said an anonymous protester, referring to Northern Ireland's dark days of sectarian bloodshed.

An agreement on the border seemed imminent Monday, with Britain promising no difference in regulations between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland after Brexit in order to avoid the reintroduction of a physical border to check goods.

The border disappeared after the signing of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, which ended decades of bloody clashes between nationalists who want a united Ireland and Northern Ireland unionists loyal to Britain.

But Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party that props up Britain's Conservative government, rejected the plan, saying "we will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom."

"The DUP position is ridiculous, outrageous," said 41-year-old protester Louise McManus, a health worker.

"The DUP defends more the union with Great Britain than people's livelihoods".

The event was the first of a series of rallies that Sinn Fein plans to hold in Northern Ireland.

Theresa May insisted Wednesday that negotiations on the exit agreement were still progressing.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said that President Trump should consider resigning over the various sexual assault allegations against him.

On Thursday morning, during an appearance on CBS This Morning, Sanders was asked to weigh in on the sexual misconduct controversies embroiling the Senate right now. Democratic lawmakers were calling on Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to resign over allegations that he groped and forcibly kissed women. Meanwhile, Roy Moore, who is accused of sexually assaulting teenaged girls, is running for Senate in Alabama. Trump and other prominent Republicans still support his candidacy.

Well, let me take it a step further, Sanders said on the morning show. We have a president of the United States who acknowledged on a tape widely seen all over the country that he assaulted women. So I would hope maybe the president of the United States might pay attention to whats going on and also think about resigning.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Trump (Photos: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was referencing the infamous Access Hollywood tape that rattled but did not destroy Trumps presidential campaign. He had boasted that his celebrity status allows him to just start kissing beautiful women and grab them by the pussy. Trump later dismissed these comments as locker room talk, but they were a driving force behind the popular Womens March and related pussyhats.

Sanders told CBS This Morning co-anchor Gayle King that she is absolutely right in assuming that the problem goes beyond Franken.

On Wednesday, Sanders released a statement saying that American culture is at a crossroads and that Franken should resign.

The way we treat women in our country has been abysmal in almost every way. We are finally addressing the issue of sexual harassment, and we need to get it right, Sanders said. But the conversation we are having now is only the tip of the iceberg. It needs to be an ongoing movement of women and men that includes a national discussion about sexism, sexual harassment, objectification, inequality and abuse of power.

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Franken announced that he is resigning in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. Shortly after, Sanders reiterated his point about Trump on Twitter.

We have a president who acknowledged on tape that he assaulted women. I would hope that he pays attention to what's going on and think about resigning.  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 7, 2017

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Doctors should be having more detailed discussions with women before prescribing them birth control, say researchers who have been studying the risks and benefits of hormone-based contraceptives.

In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Ojvind Lidegaard from the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues found a 20% higher risk of developing breast cancer among women currently or recently using hormonal contraceptives. The longer women used contraceptives, the higher their risk; it increased from about 9% for women using it for less than a year to 38% for those using them for 10 years or more.

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The study was based on a unique health registry in Denmark, where all filled prescriptions are required to be recorded by law. The prescription information was matched with a cancer registry to document any associations between contraceptives and breast cancer. Lidegaard and his team tracked all hormonal contraceptives, which include oral birth control pills, patches, vaginal rings, hormone-releasing IUDs, injections and the so-called morning after emergency birth control. The highest associated risk occurred with users of the emergency birth control levonorgestrel, or Plan B, compared to women not using contraception.

Ledegaard points out that the increasing breast cancer risk associated with longer use of hormonal contraceptives strongly suggests a connection between the contraceptives and cancer. The fact that we can demonstrate such a linear effect to the length of use makes a causal inference more likely, he says.

MORE: A Brief History of Birth Control

The results come on the heels of another study Lidegaard and his team published in November, which found a correlation between hormonal contraceptives and an increased risk of suicide attempts and suicide. Previous studies have also linked oral contraceptives to a risk of breast cancer, as well as to blood clots.

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Taken together, he says, its time to re-evaluate hormonal contraceptives and remind doctors that they should be discussing the risks and benefits of the drugs before prescribing them. Too often, he says, doctors dont follow up on women taking them because overall, they are safe. He says that the absolute risk of mood disorders and cancer is still small, but enough to warrant deeper back and forth with women about their individual risk. Women with a history of mood disorders and depression, for example, or a family history of these conditions, should be evaluated more closely after being prescribed a hormonal contraceptive.

MORE: Which Birth Control Works Best? (Hint: Its Not the Pill)

The same should apply to women at higher risk of breast cancer because of a family history of the disease. Lidegaard uses a trial period when prescribing hormonal contraceptives, carefully evaluating women for about three months after they first start on the medications. Women understand that whatever they do carries risk, and hormonal contraceptives are no exception, he says. We should make individual assessments of the risks and benefits. For some women it will still be a good choice to take these products for some years. For other women, for example women with a tendency toward depression, we really need to think twice about whether we give them a product that can deteriorate their mental status. The same applies with women who have a genetic predisposition to breast cancer with BRCA genes.
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Bitcoin is in decline. Not its price, which has increased 900% this year and (at the time of writing) stands at over US$12,000 per unit, but its actual use as a currency. And this makes its rapid appreciation all the more puzzling.

A few years ago, enthusiasts triumphantly shared announcements from businesses that had started accepting Bitcoin. Over the last couple of years, such announcements have become scarce. Instead, businesses that once accepted the currency have begun to drop it.

The BBC contacted ten businesses in London that once advertised accepting Bitcoin. Four no longer accepted it, and two that did said they hardly ever received payments in Bitcoin. The same is even true online. The Wall Street Journal, citing a report by Morgan Stanley, recently reported that Bitcoin is now accepted by just three of the top 500 global online merchants, down from five last year.

If growing adoption as a currency cant justify Bitcoins rapid appreciation, what can? Many enthusiasts have started to promote the idea of Bitcoin as a store of value. In economics, this is usually defined along the lines of an item that people can use to transfer purchasing power from the present to the future. In simple terms, its somewhere safe to invest your wealth that wont lose its worth over time.

Apples can be used to barter services from a neighbour while theyre still fresh, but their purchasing power will disappear as they rot. The purchasing power can be retained into the future by exchanging the apples for money, gold, government bonds or some other store of value.

Some items have attributes that make them better stores of value than others, whether we are talking about physical items or digital objects. Gold is a good store of value because its durable. Electronic bond certificates are also durable as long as banks systems dont fail, and have the added benefit of being easier to secure than physical valuables. Money, both physical currency and digital bank money, has the advantage of being very liquid, so its easy to convert into a purchase when needed.

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Bitcoin does share many of these attributes of a good store of value. It also offers potentially high levels of financial privacy, somewhat similarly to the offshore banking system. This is an important attribute of a store of value for some people, although it also creates a lack of accountability and the potential for tax evasion.

But the most important attribute of a store of value is that its valuable. Gold is valuable because it has many industrial and decorative uses. Its price can fluctuate because of speculation on financial markets, but it can never fall to zero. There will always be someone willing to accept gold because its a useful commodity.

Similarly, US government bonds are ultimately valuable because they entitle the owner to a relatively secure flow of interest payments. Dollars and euros are valuable because they are widely accepted as a means of payment, and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. In contrast, the future acceptability of the Venezuelan bolivar is in doubt, so people are desperately trying to exchange it to better stores of value.

Is Bitcoin valuable? It has no industrial or decorative uses, and it doesnt entitle the holder to receive interest. It was intended to be valuable as a currency that is accepted the world over, but that doesnt seem to be happening. The only major value that Bitcoin has now is its exchange value. Many people are willing to pay a lot of money today to get hold of some Bitcoin.

But what they are getting for their money is simply the hope that another buyer down the line will pay even more money for the coins. Once the music stops, there is no fundamental value to prevent the coins price from falling close to zero, save for their tenuous position as the currency of choice in the online drug trade and grey-area gambling.

Beanie Babies lessons

The idea that Bitcoin is valuable because its a store of value is upside down. In reality, something becomes a store of value because its valuable. In the 1990s, people started to trade Beanie Babies on eBay. Prices of these limited-edition plush toys rose to thousands of dollars, and by 1997 they made up 6.6% of the entire sites transaction volume.

Some people invested their life savings into Beanie Babies, fully expecting their value to be preserved and more. But eventually people came to their senses and the market bombed. Beanie Babies are useful as toys and collectables, but that doesnt justify thousand-dollar valuations.

My advice to individuals and institutions tempted by the headlines is to keep their savings away from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs). I know serious blockchain developers wont mind me saying this, because they see speculative bubbles and bursts as a distraction. For Bitcoin to truly function as a store of value, it first has to gain acceptance as a currency.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Vili Lehdonvirta is the Principal Investigator of the research project "Distributed Ledger Technologies and Structural Change in Financial and Cultural Services", funded by the Alan Turing Institute, Infosys Finacle and DACS.
As the United States marks National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day on Thursday  76 years after the attack that drove American involvement in World War II  annual observances will once again ensure that Dec. 7, 1941, remains a date that lives in infamy. As veterans, officials and others gather on Oahu to remember Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, the ranks of those who can summon a personal memory of the attack continues, of necessity, to dwindle.

As of the 75th anniversary commemorations last year, one estimate found that there were fewer than one million living American World War II vets total, and, though there is no precise count of living survivors who were specifically present at Pearl Harbor on that day, that number is likely in the range of several thousand; it was estimated in 2011 that 8,000 survivors remained and most of them were already at least octogenarians at that point. In any case, the number who make it to Hawaii for commemorations is relatively small.

Thats just one reason why Lt. Jim Downing will attend the event for Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day on Thursday, and why he feels strongly about attending for as many years as he can. Downing was 28 at the time of the attack  which makes him one of the oldest living Pearl Harbor veterans. At the time, Downing was a member of the Navy for nearly a decade, and was serving on the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, though he happened to be off the ship on that fateful morning. By the time he raced back to his ship, it was already on fire.

Im 104 and I have no complaints, he told TIME, laughing, by phone from Hawaii in the days before Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Downings experience of the attack on Pearl Harbor formed the basis of LIFE VRs immersive virtual-reality experience, Remembering Pearl Harbor. Its been so long that many of [the survivors] are not able to travel. I think itll be not very well attended this year but that makes it all the more important for those of us who do come.

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Downing says that he believes that an event like Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is not only a matter of history. To him, the mission of keeping the memory alive is very much a matter of the present. As he sees it, there is no better way to avoid a future sneak attack of the type inflicted by Japan in 1941 than to always keep in mind the possibility of such an event. Now, nearly eight decades later, though his days of access to military intelligence are over, he does believe that the United States has remained vigilant and strong  thanks in part to the efforts of those who are dedicated to commemorating Pearl Harbor.

I believe that we have the smartest scientists in the world, the best leaders, and they do everything well, he says. I believe that were prepared to repel any aggressor.

But, as enormous as that mission of memory may be, its not the only reason why Downing continues to make the lengthy trip from his home in Colorado to Hawaii on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Such events are also a chance to immerse himself in the community of survivors, an experience that becomes more precious with every year. In the wake of the attack, the survivors inevitably asked themselves why they had survived as more than 2,000 others died. That question never fades, he says  and getting to speak with others who know that feeling, who know exactly what he means when he describes what he saw that day, is invaluable no matter how many years have passed.

Theres a camaraderie between us that doesnt exist with anybody else like this, he says. The fact that we fought together and survived together, theres a bond between us that will never be broken and will never be exhausted.

Remembering Pearl Harbor is available on Viveport for the HTC Vive, and a 360 edition of the experience can be viewed in the LIFE VR app for iOS and Android.


Brussels (AFP) - EU, British and Irish negotiators were to work through the night Thursday in search of a Brexit divorce deal, with the European Commission saying some "progress" had been made.

British Prime Minister Theresa May may rush to Brussels in the early hours of Friday to meet commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to seal an accord although EU officials said they were "not there yet."

Despite frantic telephone diplomacy on Thursday May's office was more cautious about the chances, having been stung already this week when a Northern Irish party rejected a first attempt at a deal.

The frenetic talks come ahead of a Sunday deadline for Britain to finalise its divorce terms from the European Union so they can be approved by member states in time for an EU leaders' summit on December 14-15.

"We are making progress but not fully there yet. Talks are continuing through the night," Juncker's spokesman Margaritis Schinas said on Twitter.

"Tonight more than ever, stay tuned."

European Council President Donald Tusk was also set to make a statement giving a "situational update" on Brexit at 0650 GMT on Friday, before heading to Hungary, adding to the fevered speculation about a deal.

Juncker spoke first with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar then May on Thursday night in a bid to break a deadlock over the wording of a deal on future arrangements for the Irish border.

- 'Not there yet' -

The EU insists on making sufficient progress on the Irish border, on Britain's divorce bill, and on the rights of European citizens in Britain before unlocking the second phase of negotiations.

Those would deal with a transition period for around two years after Britain leaves the bloc on March 29, 2019, and a future EU-UK trade deal.

But talks between May and Juncker in Brussels on Monday broke up without a deal after the pro-British DUP party in Northern Ireland that props up the British leader's government objected to a clause in the deal.

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The wording had said that British-ruled Northern Ireland would be in "alignment" with EU rules to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, as Dublin insists.

"Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing," a spokesman for May's Downing Street office said, while a government source added: "We're not there yet."

DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson said: "Discussions are ongoing."

The European Commission had earlier Thursday set a deadline of Sunday for May to reach a deal on divorce terms so they can be approved by member states in time for the summit.

- 'Totally and utterly incompetent' -

Earlier Thursday, Schinas dismissed British newspaper reports that the Sunday deadline could be extended into next week as "not correct"

But EU sources have said it was still possible that European leaders could agree at the summit next week that there had been "sufficient progress", in order to give May a win.

Scotland's nationalist leader showed little patience, accusing the British government of being "totally and utterly incompetent" on Brexit.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said "the real lesson" of the past week was that Scotland "will always be at the mercy of reckless decisions taken by Tory governments at Westminster" unless it becomes independent.

"The sooner we are in control over our own future here in Scotland the better, and this week has proved it," she added.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem offered some calming words, saying Britain's City of London financial hub centre "will not fall apart" after Brexit even if it loses the right to allow banks to trade freely across the bloc

Dijsselbloem, the Netherlands finance minister who chairs meetings of his counterparts in the 19-country eurozone, said that some businesses would nevertheless have to relocate.

"I don't believe that the City will fall apart and that everyone will flee. I don't think that's how it's going to work," he told a European Parliament committee.

His reassurances come at a time when Britain's finance sector is anxious about losing the "passporting" rights which allow large international banks to trade throughout the EU while being based in Britain.
Phnom Penh (AFP) - Cambodia has seized nearly a tonne of ivory hidden in hollowed-out logs and discovered inside an abandoned shipping container, an official said Wednesday.

The country has become a key regional transit point for the illicit wildlife trade.

Nearly 280 pieces of ivory -- full and partial elephant tusks -- were found in the container at the southwestern port of Sihanoukville after sitting there for a year.

The shipment, owned by a company based in Mozambique, left Ivory Coast and arrived in Cambodia in December 2016, an official said.

"When the containers arrived at the port we found strange objects in the scanners," said Lim Bun Heng, deputy prosecutor for Preah Sihanouk province.

"We requested the company owner to open the containers but no one showed up," he said, adding that eventually authorities seized the shipment.

An inspection uncovered the ivory, some of it hidden in logs.

Cambodia's elephant population is small but demand for ivory in China and Vietnam -- and in the smaller domestic market -- has made it a hub in recent years for the banned trade in wildlife parts.

Corruptible officials and weak law enforcement are an attractive mix for wildlife smugglers, more so as neighbouring Thailand tries to improve its reputation as the regional centre for the trade in endangered species.

Ivory is prized for its beauty while demand for traditional medicine has led to the smuggling of rhino horn and pangolin scales.

Chinese demand has driven a decade-long rise in elephant poaching, especially in Africa. China has pledged to phase out ivory sales by the end of the year.

In December last year Cambodian authorities found 1.5 tonnes of mostly ivory and pangolin parts in containers on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, also originating from Mozambique.

Local media reported earlier this year that the government had decided to keep ivory stockpiles instead of destroying them, sparking criticism from conservation groups.
Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's upcoming legalization of recreational-use cannabis provoked tensions Thursday between Ottawa and regional governments which fear being saddled with the high costs of setting up distribution networks and enforcement.

Leaders of the 10 provinces and three Arctic territories said it was unfair that they must incur these "significant expenses" while having to split taxes on marijuana sales with the federal government.

In a statement, they demanded "adequate resources to support the legalization of cannabis," which is scheduled for July 1, 2018.

Ottawa last month said it expects a 10 percent excise tax on recreational-use cannabis plus a sales tax of up to 15 percent -- which varies from province to province -- could bring up to Can$1 billion (US$778 million) annually into government coffers.

It proposed splitting the proceeds 50-50 with the provinces, which have announced a patchwork of public and private sector retail sales of cannabis.

"Considerable progress" has been made toward setting up production and distribution networks, said provincial leaders.

But they say they need more money to prepare police forces to deal with drug-impaired driving and crack down on illegal pot sales outside of the regulated regime.

The regional governments also warned of insufficient supplies of cannabis, and urged the federal government to grant more grower licenses in order to meet the expected strong demand.

One of the major considerations in the country's cannabis taxation policy is to keep costs low enough to undercut the illicit pot market.

Cannabis is currently legally available in Canada for medicinal use with a prescription.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

WASHINGTON  A group of bipartisan lawmakers appointed to the Senate and House conference committee on tax reform will have a host of issues to iron out when they have their first meeting early next week  from calls to raise the corporate tax rate to delivering on a health care deal to win over a key swing vote in the Senate.

President Trump recently called the conference committee a mixer in which lawmakers will combine the House and Senate tax reform bills and come out with something thats perfecto. He expects that bill to land on his desk before Christmas.

The mixing is likely to be a messy process, however, as many differences remain between the two pieces of legislation, and House and Senate Republicans face distinct political pressures.

Some House conservatives are bristling at a deal made between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that both the House and Senate would pass two bills to shore up the Affordable Care Acts individual markets in order for her to back tax reform. One of the bills would restore billions of dollars in subsidies to insurance companies that lower premiums for lower-income customers while the other would allow states to form high-risk pools for sicker customers.

Collins made the deal because the Senate bill would repeal Obamacares individual mandate, and she believes these two stabilizing bills are needed to help offset negative effects on customers premiums from that repeal. (The Congressional Budget Office estimates that premiums would rise if the individual mandate is repealed.)

Collins, a moderate who voted for the Senates bill last week but against the GOPs Obamacare-repeal plans, said she believes her agreement with McConnell covers the House, as well. The negotiations are going well and I remain confident despite your skepticism, Collins told reporters Thursday.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, with Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., left, and Sen. Luther Strange R-Ala. (Photo: Susan Walsh/AP)

House Speaker Paul Ryan sounded positive about this deal in a press conference, though he said he was not involved in the discussions. Shes put some very productive solutions on the table, Ryan said of Collins. Our members are looking at the same kind of solutions.

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But not everyone is on board yet.

I am not bound by some deal that a few senators make, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., told Yahoo News. I dont work for the United States Senate  nobody else does around here, either.

Our members wince at voting to sustain a system that none of them supported, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., told the New York Times.

Meanwhile, lawmakers will also have to address complaints over the bills treatment of state and local income and property taxes. The House and Senate bills allow taxpayers to deduct $10,000 in state and local property taxes, eliminating income tax deductions and deductions for more expensive properties. House members on both sides of the aisle from high tax states such as New Jersey and California have complained that eliminating these deductions will raise taxes on their constituents. Critics have argued that the bill intentionally distributes some of its pain to Democratic states, which tend to have higher local taxes.

McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday he was open to changing the bill so that the $10,000 could be used for deducting either property taxes or income taxes, opening up the reduced deduction to more people. That sounds like a kind of reasonable idea, McConnell said.

President Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

Meanwhile, the president opened the door to giving corporations a slightly less generous tax rate of 22 percent instead of the 20 percent currently in the legislation. (The current tax code levies a 35 percent rate on businesses.)

Some Republican senators have jumped on this idea, hoping that the extra revenue could fund a more generous child tax credit or be used to repeal another tax on corporations, the alternative minimum tax.

But resistance remains.

Im likely to advocate on keeping it where it is, said Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a member of the conference committee.

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Ex-congresswoman Gabby Giffords attacks the bill, which passed by 231 to 197 and removes states power to control who can carry concealed, loaded handguns

Mourners hold signs during a solidarity vigil in memory of victims of the Las Vegas shooting, in Newtown, Connecticut. Photograph: Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters

On the day of an annual vigil in Washington DC that honors the victims of American gun violence, congressional Republicans passed a Trump-endorsed bill that would eviscerate local gun restrictions, removing states power to control who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded handgun in their streets.

The bill passed the House of Representatives by a margin of 231-197. Fourteen Republicans voted against while six Democrats voted for it.

Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived being shot in the head in a 2011 mass shooting, called the vote unthinkable.

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would let almost anyone carry loaded, concealed firearms almost anywhere in the United States, Giffords said in an email to gun control supporters.

Officials in New York and Los Angeles warn that the legislation would allow an unknown numbers of tourists  perhaps hundreds of thousands each year  to carry concealed handguns into Americas densest urban areas, including Times Square and the New York City subway. Big city police chiefs across the county have spoken out against the bill, calling it a law enforcement nightmare.

The bill, which is the National Rifle Associations number one legislative priority has prompted a renewed battle over states rights, with Democrats for once arguing against the power of the federal government, and Republicans hoping to use that federal power to undermine local control.



Its so transparently hypocritical. Republicans spend all day talking about states rights, except when it comes to guns. When it comes to guns, they want to take away states ability to make decisions for themselves, Senator Chris Murphy, a leading gun control advocate who represents Newtown, Connecticut, said on Tuesday, in advance of the vote.



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The NRA called the vote a watershed moment, one more step in what the groups chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, described as a 30-year movement to ensure that Americans can carry their self-defense weapons across state lines.

Despite an easy victory in the House, the bill faces a much more uphill battle in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass. Right now, theres no indication that the Senate Republicans want to take this legislation up. In fact, the opposite, Murphy said. My suspicion is there are not 60 votes for a national concealed weapons bill [in the Senate], he said.

Americans have a constitutional right to own guns in their home for self-defense. But America's 50 states have dramatically different laws when it comes to carrying guns in public, which all states allow in some form.

Twelve conservative states now generally do not require any permit or training for an adult to carry a loaded handgun in public, a policy called "constitutional carry."

In contrast, seven more liberal states issue permits sparingly and require citizens to demonstrate a justifiable need for carrying a concealed weapon. These tougher laws mean that few residents of cities Los Angeles or New York are given permits to carry concealed guns.

There is also wide variation in training requirements  from states that require applicants to demonstrate actual proficiency in firing a gun, to Virginia, which requires only an online safety training course.

Under current law, states do not have to recognize carry permits issued by other states, creating a confusing patchwork of regulations on whether gun owners from one state can carry their concealed weapon in another state. For years, the NRA has been trying to pass a federal law to require every state to recognize every other state's gun-carrying permits  which would make it as easy to carry a concealed gun across the country as it is to drive a car. Donald Trump has endorsed the legislation.

Law enforcement officials from the nation's largest cities say this legislation would be a public safety disaster, gutting the tough restrictions in states like New York and California to and forcing them to recognize gun carry permits from all states, no matter how weak those state's laws.



The NRA-backed legislation would force all states to recognize gun-carrying permits from any other state, including the dozen states that generally do not require any training or permit to carry a gun, a policy called constitutional carry.

West Virginias choice to allow constitutional carry of concealed handguns might be fine for West Virginia, but its not fine for New York City, said Cy Vance, Manhattans district attorney. I wouldnt presume to tell West Virginia, as a New Yorker, what West Virginias laws should be with regard to gun possession. Can you imagine how mad theyd be?

Donald Trump endorsed the legislation during his campaign last year. Its passage came the same day that gun violence survivors, including residents of Newtown, Connecticut, were visiting congressional offices to ask politicians, once again, to take some action on gun control.

Nearly five years after the 2012 Newtown school shooting, which left 26 children and educators dead, Congress has yet to pass any gun control laws.

Its not (just) about the money. So far this year, the NRA has spent $4.1m on lobbying  more than the $3.1m it spent in all of 2016. But for comparison, the dairy industry has spent $4.4m in the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). The National Association of Realtors, one of the biggest spenders, has paid out $32.2m lobbying on housing issues.

The NRA has plenty of cash to spend. It bet big on the 2016 US elections, pouring $14.4m into supporting 44 candidates who won and $34.4m opposing 19 candidates who lost, according to CRP.

But the real source of its power, I believe, comes from voters, said Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor of constitutional law.

The 145-year-old organization claims 5 million active members, that number is disputed, but whatever its actual size, membership is a powerful tool, said Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland.

They have a very powerful ability to mobilize a grassroots support and to engage in politics when most Americans can barely be bothered to vote, he said. And because so few Americans do those things, if you get a bunch of people in a locality who are all prepared to go out to a meeting they can have a big effect." Read more

We have nothing but heartache and compassion for the victims of Sandy Hook, but concealed carry reciprocity has nothing to do with this tragedy, said Tatum Gibson, a spokeswoman for Richard Hudson, the North Carolina Republican congressman who introduced the legislation, said in a statement when asked about the timing of the vote.

I dont know that putting the NRAs agenda on the floor of the House is the right way to mark five years since Sandy Hook, Murphy told the Guardian. It is heartbreaking to think as we come up to the fifth anniversary of Newtown, Republicans in the House are pushing through a bill to make our country less safe.

At the same time, Murphy argued, the political maneuvering over the bill could be seen as a sign of the growing strength of the gun control movement.

Before the House vote, Republicans combined the controversial NRA-backed Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act with a modest measure to make sure the military and other federal agencies are reporting records to the nations gun background check system. The Sutherland Springs mass shooting last month revealed that the air force had failed to submit to the background checks system dozens of records that should have disqualified dangerous people from gun ownership, including the domestic violence conviction of the man who went on to murder 26 people at a small Baptist church in Texas.

It says something really interesting about the vulnerability that Republicans feel on guns today, Murphy said. Republicans are increasingly worried about the optics of pushing the NRA agenda, and thats why theyre trying to add on some anti-gun violence legislation.

Republicans attempt to tear down local restrictions on gun carrying comes just weeks after two of Americas deadliest mass shootings, at a country music concert in Las Vegas and a tiny church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The move highlights the stark divide in Americans opinions on guns, with some conservatives seeing increased civilian gun carrying as a way to prevent or lessen the toll of mass shootings, even as many other Americans are trying to fight against Americas gun-carrying culture and get guns off the street.



A girl lays flowers at a memorial site for victims killed in a mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on 12 November 2017. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Under current law, states have dramatically different standards for who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded weapon. A handful of more liberal states give law enforcement officials discretion when granting a carry permit and some require that applicants demonstrate a specific need for self-defense. But the majority of states make it easy for citizens to get a carry license. While some states require that permit holders demonstrate proficiency with a gun at a firing range, others only require some kind of gun safety course. In Virginia, applicants dont even need to leave the house: its possible to get a concealed carry license after taking a gun safety course online.

Many states currently recognize each others carry permits, in the same way states recognize each others drivers licenses, but some states pick and choose which licenses they will honor, and a few states, including New York, recognize no outside permits at all.

Gun rights advocates say the current patchwork of state laws governing gun carrying is confusing for law-abiding gun owners, and that American states and cities with the toughest gun control laws are violating Americans constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense.

The House speaker, Paul Ryan, hailed the bills passage in a statement saying the truth is that concealed carry laws save lives.

Opponents of the legislation say the right way to fix the confusion over differing regulations is to create a uniform national standard for training and eligibility, not simply force the states with the toughest gun control regulations to allow the most untrained, unvetted gun carriers to walk their streets.

Adam Winkler, a gun law expert at the University of California Los Angeles, said the legislation the House is currently considering would also allow local residents in cites with tough restrictions to do an end run around local laws, and get their permit to carry a gun from another state with weaker laws. One of the proposed Democratic amendments to the bill would close that loophole.

An estimated three million Americans report carrying a loaded handgun on a daily basis, and an estimated nine million report doing so on a monthly basis, according to a recent study based on a survey conducted by Harvard and Northeastern researchers.
My announcement marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict

Palestinian president says US has abdicated its role as mediator

Donald Trump has defied overwhelming global opposition by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but insisted that the highly controversial move would not derail his own administrations bid to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a short speech delivered at the White House, Trump directed the state department to start making arrangements to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem  a process that officials say will take at least three years.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

Trump said: My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The presidents announcement provoked condemnation from US allies, and a furious reaction from Palestinian leaders and the Muslim world. Within minutes of Trumps announcement, US embassies in Turkey, Jordan, Germany and Britain issued security alerts urging Americans to exercise caution.

The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the move, after a request by eight countries on the 15-member body, including the UK, Italy and France.

Trump stressed that he was not stipulating how much of Jerusalem should be considered Israels capital. Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their own future state, and Trump did not rule out a future division of the city.



We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved, the president said.

The peace process has been at deaths door since the former secretary of state John Kerrys peace mission ended in failure in 2014. But the international community  apart from the US  is united in saying recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is disastrous for any hopes of reviving meaningful talks. The status of Jerusalem is one of the pivotal issues that diplomats and peacemakers have said must be agreed between the two parties in negotiations.

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Palestinians will see Trumps announcement as the end of their hopes and demands for East Jerusalem as a capital of a future independent state. While few want a return to violence, many will feel diplomatic efforts have got them no closer to a state of their own.

The Israeli government will be thrilled. Ever since it captured (and later annexed) East Jerusalem in the 1967 six-day war, Israel has claimed the city as its eternal and undivided capital, and has longed for international recognition. Some 200,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements will also celebrate.

But the move marks a break with years of US precedent  and with general global opinion, which sees the fate of Jerusalem as a matter for comprehensive final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

British prime minister Theresa May said Trumps announcement was unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region, and said the UK did not intend to follow suit. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also condemned the move.

Israels government rushed to congratulate Trump for the speech, which the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described as an important step toward peace.

But the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that the US had effectively abdicated its role as a mediator in the region. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said: President Trump just destroyed any policy of a two-state solution.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday criticised the decision, calling the move unjustified and irresponsible. The move was also condemned by Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.

In a social club in the heart of Jerusalems Shuafat refugee camp, young Palestinian men grew increasingly angry as they watched the speech translated into Arabic on a Palestinian television channel.

This is shit! shouted a man called Abu Atya. Hes just said Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. This speech is going to cause big trouble.

Another man, Hamdi Dyab, grew incredulous and agitated as he watched the speech.

Hes saying hes going to move the embassy, he said. This is very dangerous speech. Things dont look good. We are calling for a new intifada.

Trumps speech on TV in Gaza City. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Trump argued that continually delaying recognition and the embassy move by signing waivers, as his predecessors had done, had not brought peace any closer.

After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Trump presented his decision as the recognition of the obvious and the right thing to do.

Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli supreme court, he said. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

The president suggested that the acknowledgement of Jerusalems role in the state of Israel would actually have a positive effect on negotiations.

This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement, Trump said, but he did not explain how it would help negotiations in the face of such an angry reaction from Palestinians and their supporters.

Some observers have suggested Trumps announcement represented a political gift to his close ally Netanyahu, in the expectation of future concessions at the negotiating table  but it was unclear what Netanyahu would offer in return and why the US move was made in advance of substantive talks.

After announcing his order for the state department to start work on moving the US embassy, Trump sat down at a table in the White House diplomatic reception room and did something that seemingly had the opposite effect: signing another presidential waiver on the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which ordered the transfer of the diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv.

White House officials said there was no contradiction, and that the waiver signing was necessary to prevent a cut in state department funding stipulated by the act until the new embassy is actually opened. They said previous presidents had used the waiver to stop any progress on moving the embassy, while Trump was directing practical work to start.

In his speech, Trump said: This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

Vice-president Mike Pence stood behind Trump as he delivered his address, symbolising the support of Christian conservatives that Pence represents, but it was unclear how the move squared with the efforts of Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his special representative on international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, to engineer a peace proposal with the support of the Israelis, Palestinians and regional powers like Saudi Arabia.



Peter Welch, a Democratic congressman who has organised briefings with Greenblatt on Capitol Hill, said he was mystified by Trumps move, as the Kushner-Greenblatt initiative appeared to have been showing promise.

I thought a trust-building process was underway that was having positive impacts, Welch told the Guardian after the speech. But the president woke up and with this provocative announcement threatens to undo everything his administration had been doing to build trust and make progress.

The president has been going over there establishing good ties with the Sunni states, he obviously has close relationships with the Israeli government, he was making progress even with the sceptics in the Palestinian Authority, and with a single announcement he blows it all up.
(WASHINGTON)  Doctors treating the U.S. Embassy victims of mysterious, invisible attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain the hearing, vision, balance and memory damage, The Associated Press has learned.

Its the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.

Loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing had led investigators to suspect sonic attacks. But officials are now carefully avoiding that term. The sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage, said three U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. They werent authorized to discuss it publicly and demanded anonymity.

Physicians, FBI investigators and U.S. intelligence agencies have spent months trying to piece together the puzzle in Havana, where the U.S. says 24 U.S. government officials and spouses fell ill starting last year in homes and later in some hotels. The United States refers to specific attacks but says it doesnt know whos behind them. A few Canadian Embassy staffers also got sick.

Doctors still dont know how victims ended up with the white matter changes, nor how exactly those changes might relate to their symptoms. U.S. officials wouldnt say whether the changes were found in all 24 patients.

But acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brains white matter tracts, said Elisa Konofagou, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia University who is not involved in the governments investigation.

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I would be very surprised, Konofagou said, adding that ultrasound in the brain is used frequently in modern medicine. We never see white matter tract problems.

Cuba has adamantly denied involvement, and calls the Trump administrations claims that U.S. workers were attacked deliberate lies. The new medical details may help the U.S. counter Havanas complaint that Washington hasnt presented any evidence.

The case has plunged the U.S. medical community into uncharted territory. Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness. After extensive testing and trial therapies, theyre developing the first protocols to screen cases and identify the best treatments  even as the FBI investigation struggles to identify a culprit, method and motive.

Doctors treating the victims wouldnt speak to the AP, yet their findings are expected to be discussed in an article being submitted to the Journal of the American Medical Association, U.S. officials said. Physicians at the University of Miami and the University of Pennsylvania who have treated the Cuba victims are writing it, with input from the State Departments medical unit and other government doctors.

But the article wont speculate about what technology might have harmed the workers or who would have wanted to target Americans in Cuba. If investigators are any closer to solving those questions, their findings wont be made public.

The AP first reported in August that U.S. workers reported sounds audible in parts of rooms but inaudible just a few feet away  unlike normal sound, which disperses in all directions. Doctors have now come up with a term for such incidents: directional acoustic phenomena.

Most patients have fully recovered, some after rehabilitation and other treatment, officials said. Many are back at work. About one-quarter had symptoms that persisted for long periods or remain to this day.

Earlier this year, the U.S. said doctors found patients had suffered concussions, known as mild traumatic brain injury, but were uncertain beyond that what had happened in their brains. Concussions are often diagnosed based solely on symptoms.

Studies have found both concussions and white matter damage in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who survived explosions yet had no other physical damage. But those injuries were attributed mostly to shock waves from explosions. No Havana patients reported explosions or blows to the head.

Outside medical experts said that when the sample of patients is so small, its difficult to establish cause and effect.

The thing you have to wonder anytime you see something on a scan: Is it due to the episode in question, or was it something pre-existing and unrelated to what happened? said Dr. Gerard Gianoli, an ear and brain specialist in Louisiana.

As Cuba works to limit damage to its reputation and economy, its government has produced TV specials and an online summit about its own investigation. Cubas experts have concluded that the Americans allegations are scientifically impossible.

The Cubans have urged the U.S. to release information about what its found. FBI investigators have spent months comparing cases to pinpoint what factors overlap.

U.S. officials told the AP that investigators have now determined:

 The most frequently reported sound patients heard was a high-pitched chirp or grating metal. Fewer recalled a low-pitched noise, like a hum.

 Some were asleep and awakened by the sound, even as others sleeping in the same bed or room heard nothing.

 Vibrations sometimes accompanied the sound. Victims told investigators these felt similar to the rapid flutter of air when windows of a car are partially rolled down.

 Those worst off knew right away something was affecting their bodies. Some developed visual symptoms within 24 hours, including trouble focusing on a computer screen.

The U.S. has not identified any specific precautions it believes can mitigate the risk for diplomats in Havana, three officials said, although an attack hasnt been reported since late August. Since the Americans started falling ill last year, the State Department has adopted a new protocol for workers before they go to Cuba that includes bloodwork and other baseline tests. If they later show symptoms, doctors can retest and compare.

Doctors still dont know the long-term medical consequences and expect that epidemiologists, who track disease patterns in populations, will monitor the 24 Americans for life. Consultations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are underway.
Donald Trumps abandonment of decades of US policy has set him at odds with the rest of the world and could have far-reaching consequences

Palestinians watch a televised broadcast of Trump announcing US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Jerusalems Old City. Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters

In a move condemned by most of the world, Donald Trump has announced the US will recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. What does his move mean for the key players?



The peace process

This has been in effect at deaths door since the former secretary of state John Kerrys peace mission ended in failure in 2014. But the international community  apart from the US  is united in saying recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is disastrous for any hopes of reviving meaningful talks. The status of Jerusalem is one of the pivotal issues that diplomats and peacemakers have said must be agreed between the two parties in negotiations.



The Palestinians

They will see Trumps announcement as the end of their hopes and demands for East Jerusalem as a capital of a future independent Palestinian state. Although few Palestinians want a return to violence, many will feel that diplomatic efforts have got them no closer to a state of their own and will see little alternative to direct action.



The state of Israel

The Israeli government will be thrilled. Ever since it captured (and later annexed) East Jerusalem in the 1967 six-day war, Israel has claimed the city as its eternal and undivided capital, and has longed for international recognition. Trumps decision will reinforce the view of many Israeli politicians that there is little to be gained by negotiating with the Palestinians. Some 200,000 Israelis living in settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, illegal under international law, will also celebrate.



The region

Trumps move will further destabilise an already volatile region. The powerful Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the US was plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight. Turkey hinted it might cut diplomatic ties with Israel if the plan goes ahead. Saudi Arabia  an important ally of the US in the region  believe the move damages Riyadhs continuing efforts to rekindle a peace deal. The Arab countries that border Israel  Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria  have all condemned the move.



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Europe

Most western European countries will be deeply alarmed by US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital. But a key question is whether the EU will take action, such as robustly enforcing bans on imports from West Bank settlements and refusing to deal with Israeli businesses operating in occupied territory, setting itself on a clearly differentiated course from that of the US.



Christians in the Holy Land

Patriarch Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate, widely seen as the most senior Christian figure in Jerusalem, and a dozen other church leaders in the Holy Land sent a letter to Trump on Wednesday warning of irreparable harm. His move will yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division, they said. Church leaders will be anxious to protect Christian sites.



The city itself

In 2015, Palestinians made up 37% of the citys population of about 850,000. Many live in overcrowded homes and neighbourhoods, unable to get permits to build or extend buildings. Three-quarters live below the poverty line and 25% live in neighbourhoods cut off from the rest of the city by the separation barrier. It is hard to see how Trumps move will improve conditions for them. Nir Barkat, the citys mayor, said on Wednesday: Here in Jerusalem and Israel we applaud the president, and if people became violent, they will pay a heavy price.


Donald Trump would effectively be declaring war in the Middle East if he recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Palestinians' chief representative to Britain has warned.

Manuel Hassassian said it would be the "kiss of death" to the peace process.

"If he says what he is intending to say about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, it means a kiss of death to the two state solution," Mr Hassassian said in a BBC radio interview.

"He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims [and] hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel," he added.

His comments were echoed by the adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who said if Mr Trump was to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel it would amount to a "complete destruction of the peace process."

Speaking in Mr Abbas' presence, Mahmoud Habash said "the world will pay the price" for any change in Jerusalem's status.

Mr Trump is expected to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital in a speech on Wednesday, and set in motion the relocation of the American embassy to the holy city.
Supporters of Shiite Houthi rebels attend a rally in Sanaa, Yemen on 5 December 2017: AP Photo/Hani Mohammed

US President Donald Trump has called on Saudi Arabia to end its Yemen blockade immediately, citing humanitarian concerns.

Mr Trump said in a statement that he has directed US officials to call Saudi Arabian leaders and request they "completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people."

He said Yemenis "desperately need it."

A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting to defeat the Iran-backed Houthis and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's forces in Yemen since March 2015 with the aim of reinstating the internationally recognized government of Mr Saleh's successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The US has been supporting the coalition through weapons sales, some intelligence sharing, and refuelling capabilities for air operations.

Since the conflict began, at least 10,000 people have died as a result and 40,000 have been wounded, Al Jazeera reported.

Mr Saleh was killed earlier this week after moving to switch allegiances in the bloody conflict, making the situation in the country unpredictable according to experts.

Unverified footage circulated by Yemeni social media users appeared to a show corpse resembling Mr Saleh.

Armed militiamen unfurled a blanket containing the body and shouted, "praised God!".

However, Mr Saleh's party has denied his death.

They claim 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.

The Saudi-led coalition had imposed a blockade on the country last month after Houthi rebels fired a missile on the Saudi capital of Riyadh. It responded by sending a slew of missiles into Yemen's capital Sanaa.

The blockade was partially lifted at the Hudaya port of the international airport in Sanaa and the first aid shipments were allowed to enter the country just last week. In the meantime, aid groups were forced to buy their own fuel in order to assist with relief work.

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The country is on the "brink of famine" according to David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Programme.

Mr Beasley told CBS: " "I don't think there's any question the Saudi-led coalition, along with the Houthis and all of those involved, are using food as a weapon."

UN head of humanitarian affairs Mark Lowcock had said last month: "it will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year, where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011. It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims."

The World Health Organisation has also confirmed that the country is facing a massive cholera outbreak, particularly affecting children; nearly a million reported cases are expected by the end of the year.
- AFP or licensors

Donald Trump said he was casting aside the failed strategies of the past as he upended 70 years of US foreign policy and forged ahead with his controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The US president's move was condemned by Saudi Arabia, which described it as "unjustified and irresponsible".

The announcement from the White House was met with celebrations by Israel and immediate fury from the Palestinians, who accused him of destroying any hope of a peace deal.

We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past, Mr Trump said. It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Defying warnings from around leaders around the world, Mr Trump said he judged this course of action to be in the best interest of the US and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He announced that America would become the only country in the world to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making good on a campaign promise important to many evangelical Christian and right-wing Jewish voters.

People stage a demonstration against the US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, in Gaza Cit Credit: Getty

The Palestinians insist there can be no peace deal unless they are able to have east Jerusalem as the capital of their own independent state and said Mr Trumps unilateral move had disqualified the US as peace broker.

These condemned and unacceptable measures are a deliberate undermining of all efforts exerted to achieve peace and represent a declaration of the United Statess withdrawal from undertaking the role it has played over the past decades in sponsoring the peace process, said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Security warning for US citizens abroad

Hamas, the Islamist militant group which controls the Gaza strip, accused Mr Trump of flagrant aggression and called for Muslims across the Middle East to rise up against US interests.

US embassies across the Middle East have bolstered their security arrangements in anticipation of potentially violent protests.

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The State Department issued an updated "Worldwide Caution" to US citizens abroad, advising travellers to "be alert to the possibility of political unrest, violence, demonstrations, and criminal activities."

Mr Trump's decision was hailed by Israel and Jerusalems mayor ordered the American flag to be beamed in lights against the walls of the Old City in celebration.

This is a historic day, said Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister. We are profoundly grateful to the president for his courageous and just decision."

Mr Trump tried to placate Palestinian anger by saying his decision did not rule out the possibility of a two-state solution, where Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and an independent Palestinian state.

It will take years to relocate the US embassy, which is currently in Tel Aviv Credit: AFP

We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested issues, Mr Trump said. The US would support a two state solution if agreed to by both sides.

He called for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail.

Move is 'a stab in the back'

Mr Trump's speech left little solace for Palestinians as it did not firmly commit to the idea of an independent Palestine, nor make any mention of their major concerns like the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

US President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in May Credit: EPA

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Palestinian leaders insist there is no hope for a peace agreement unless they are able to set up their own capital in East Jerusalem. Israel claims the entire city as its "eternal and undivided capital".

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinians' chief delegate to Washington, said recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a "stab in the back".

Mr Trump says he is delivering where previous presidents have "failed".

With Mike Pence, the US vice president, standing by his side, Mr Trump reminded American voters that both Bill Clinton and George W Bush had promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem but had reneged once in office. They failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering, he said.

Saudi Arabia leads global condemnation

Saudi Arabia slammed Mr's Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "irresponsible", state media reported citing the royal court.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the royal court was quoted as saying.

Theresa May said the UK "disagrees" with Mr Trump's decision.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region," she said. "The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it."

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, tweeted a letter from heads of churches in Jerusalem that warned his move would "yield hatred, conflict, violence and suffering:"

Letter from heads of churches in Jerusalem to President @realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/bBNEZrSeNi  Justin Welby  (@JustinWelby) December 6, 2017

"The status quo of the City of Jerusalem is one of the few stable elements of hope for peace and reconciliation for Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Holy Lands. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," the Archbishop said.

The Pope earlier said he had deep concern about the situation in Jerusalem and urged Mr Trump not to move ahead.

I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city, in conformity with the pertinent resolutions of the United Nations, he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the decision was "regrettable" and called for calm across the region.

"This decision is a regrettable decision that France does not approve of and goes against international law and all the resolutions of the UN Security Council," he told reporters.

The Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest shrine Credit: AFP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she "does not support" Mr Trump's position on Jerusalem. The German government does not support this position, because the status of Jerusalem is to be resolved in the framework of a two-state solution, she said.

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said that Jerusalem was a final-status issue that should be resolved through direct talks.

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution," Mr Guterres said.

About | The two-state solution

About | The two-state solution

"There is no Plan B. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations."

Reaction was muted from some of Americas other Arab allies in the region, many of whom have either official or covert relationships with Israel.

But reaction was fierce from Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried to present himself as a global Islamic leader and a champion of the Palestinians.

People stage a demonstration against the US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, in Gaza Cit Credit: Getty

Turkeys deputy prime minister, Bekir Bozdag, warned that Mr Trump was plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight. Mr Erdogan called for a summit of Muslim leaders next week in Istanbul to discuss the situation.

Iran and Egypt's governments also issued statements rejecting the move.

Shortly after Mr Trump's speech, the Czech Republic became the first country to follow suit and announced it was recognising west Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It said it also considered Jerusalem to be the "future capital" of Palestine.

Diplomatic positions on Jerusalem

The streets of Jerusalems Old City were quiet as residents sheltered from biting winter rains and there was no sign of the Day of Rage called for Palestinian political factions.

The reaction of ordinary Palestinians ranged from anger to apathy. This is a symbolic step, because Trump need to achieve a victory, shrugged Sami Ibrahim, an Old City merchant. He has achieved a victory on the weakest people, the Palestinians.
By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could launch a public debate about climate change as soon as January, Administrator Scott Pruitt said on Thursday, as the agency unwinds Obama-era initiatives to fight global warming. The agency had been working over the past several months to set up a "red team, blue team" debate on the science relating to man-made climate change to give the public a "real-time review of questions and answers around this issue of CO2," Pruitt said. "We may be able to get there as early as January next year," he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee during his first congressional hearing since taking office. Pruitt and other senior members of President Donald Trump's administration have repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide (CO2) from human consumption of fossil fuels is driving climate change, triggering rising sea levels, droughts, and more frequent, powerful storms. He has also moved to bar scientists from serving on independent agency advisory boards who have previous won EPA grants, a move critics say favors scientists who work with regulated industries. [L2N1N61SV] "EPA has all the signs of an agency captured by industry," U.S. Representative Paul Tonko of New York, the top Democrat on the House energy panel, said at the hearing. An EPA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the selection of scientists. The debate would come as the EPA proposes to rescind the Clean Power Plan, former Democratic President Barack Obama's main climate change regulation that was aimed at reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. On Thursday, Pruitt said the agency planned to propose a "replacement" for the Obama-era rule. He previously only committed to considering a replacement. But Pruitt has been under pressure from conservative climate change skeptics in Congress to go further and upend the scientific finding that CO2 endangers human health, which underpins all carbon regulation. At the hearing, Pruitt said there was a "breach of process" under the Obama administration when it wrote its 2009 "endangerment finding" on CO2, because it cited the research of the United Nations climate science body. "They took work from the U.N. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] ... and adopted that as the core of the finding," Pruitt said. He did not say whether he planned to try to undo the finding, which legal experts have said would be legally complex. Pruitt told Reuters in July the debate could be televised. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Peter Cooney)
Brussels (AFP) - EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini called Wednesday for Palestinian "restraint" over an expected announcement by US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In a phone call with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Mogherini reiterated European Union's commitment to a two-state solution, and its stance that the status of Jerusalem should be settled by negotiations.

"Federica Mogherini called for restraint in any reaction to the expected announcement and welcomed the commitment by President Abbas to call for any demonstrations to remain peaceful," an EU statement said.

Mogherini invited Abbas to Brussels to meet EU foreign ministers, the statement said.

The move by Trump, set to come in a speech later Wednesday, would upend decades of careful US policy and ignore dire warnings of a historic misstep that could trigger a surge of violence in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, Mogherini made a pointed warning about the situation at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as he was visiting Brussels for talks with the EU and NATO.

"We believe that any action that would undermine this effort must absolutely be avoided," she said.
Brussels (AFP) - EU President Donald Tusk will give a "situational update" on Friday on Brexit, officials said, amid speculation British Prime Minister Theresa May could return to Brussels to seal a Brexit divorce deal.

"President Tusk will make a press statement on Brexit tomorrow at 7:50 am. Further details will follow," the European Council said on Twitter Thursday.

An EU source later told AFP that former Polish premier Tusk was due to fly to Hungary for an awards ceremony on Friday and would give the statement before then.

Tusk will speak one week before a crucial EU summit in Brussels when Britain hopes to unlock the next phase of Brexit talks, focusing on trade and a transition period.

"Less than a week to EUCO (European Council), so Tusk will make a situational update of the Brexit situation in that context, whatever it is tomorrow morning," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The European Commission earlier Thursday set a deadline of Sunday for May to reach a deal on divorce terms so they can be approved by member states in time for the summit, adding that there was "no white smoke" yet from London.

Talks between May and Juncker broke up on Monday without a deal after a pro-British party in Northern Ireland that props up the British leader's government objected to a clause about future arrangements for the Irish border.
By Greg Lacour

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - A white former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man fleeing a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina could learn as soon as Thursday whether he will spend the rest of his life in prison for violating the motorist's civil rights.

Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty in May to the federal charge spurred by the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott.

At Slager's sentencing hearing in Charleston this week, prosecutors said the shooting was calculated, while the defense said the patrolman had felt threatened after Scott tried to take his stun gun during a struggle.

The defendant shot Walter Scott in the back eight times as he was running away, prosecutor Jared Fishman said during his closing argument late Wednesday. It is time to call the shooting of Walter Scott what it was: It was a murder.

The case drew national attention after a bystander's video of the shooting became public, fueling fresh concerns about how minorities are treated by police in the United States.

A state murder trial ended last December with a hung jury, and state prosecutors dropped the murder case in exchange for the plea in federal court.

Slager, who has been in jail since his plea, had pulled Scott over for a broken brake light in April 2015.

Slagers attorneys argued on Wednesday that his essential crime was not murder but voluntary manslaughter, which carries a lesser sentence.

Defense lawyer Andy Savage told U.S. District Judge David Norton that Slager had no way of knowing whether Scott was armed when Slager shot him, and that his flight from the officer made it reasonable to assume that Scott might be carrying a weapon.

"Our position is that the reasonableness of Mr. Slagers actions were appropriate until they werent, Savage said. Ill let the court make that decision.

Earlier on Wednesday, Scott's 17-year-old son made an emotional plea for the judge to sentence Slager to the maximum punishment of life in prison.

"My dad will never see my future kids, his grandchildren, and I know he would have loved them as much as he loved me, Miles Scott said in a slow, soft voice. I still cant believe hes gone.

(Reporting by Greg Lacour; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lisa Shumaker)
By Greg Lacour

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - The white former policeman caught on video shooting an unarmed black man in the back after a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison, with a federal judge ruling that the killing amounted to murder.

The decision came a year after Michael Slager's state murder trial for the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott ended with a deadlocked jury. Slager, 36, is one of the few police officers in recent years in the United States to receive prison time for an on-duty shooting.

"Everyone recognizes that this was a tragedy," U.S. District Judge David Norton told a Charleston courtroom packed with members of both men's families.

"Whats just for the Scott family is not necessarily just for the Slager family, and whats just for the Slager family is not necessarily just for the Scott family," he said. "Its a zero-sum game."

Slager was a patrolman in North Charleston when he pulled over Scott, a father of four, for a broken brake light on April 4, 2015. He said he opened fire because he felt threatened after the motorist tried to take his stun gun during a struggle.

Yet he pleaded guilty in May to violating Scott's civil rights by using excessive force, a charge that carried a possible lifetime prison sentence. Slager shot at Scott eight times, hitting him five times.

State prosecutors dropped the murder charge in exchange for the federal plea.

On Thursday, Slager expressed remorse.

"I wish this never would have happened," said Slager, jailed since his plea and dressed in an inmate's gray and white jumpsuit. "I wish I could go back and change events, but I cant and I am very sorry for that."

A bystander's cellphone video of the shooting drew national attention to the case, renewing concerns about police treatment of minorities.

The footage was a centerpiece of the four-day sentence hearing, with both prosecutors and defense lawyers arguing it bolstered their cases.

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Norton sided with the government, finding that Slager had committed second-degree murder and obstructed justice by lying to investigators about Scott trying to grab his Taser.

The judge rejected the defense argument that Slager was provoked or acted in the heat of passion.

Scott's relatives and their lawyers said the punishment marked a historic moment for justice. They called on law enforcement to rethink the use of deadly force.

Before court ended, several family members told Slager they had forgiven him. But their pain has not diminished.

"We will never be the same again," said Anthony Scott, the motorist's older brother. "How could someone shoot someone in the back like that as they were running away?"

(Reporting by Greg Lacour; writing by Colleen Jenkins; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama)
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.)  A federal judge heard wildly conflicting stories Tuesday about a prominent Florida eye doctor convicted in a $100 million Medicare fraud scheme. Some former patients said Dr. Salomon Melgen restored their sight for free, while others described painful and unnecessary treatments that left them blind.

Melgen, 63, is facing a possible life sentence after being found guilty of 67 counts, including health care fraud, submitting false claims and falsifying records in patients files. Evidence presented during his trial earlier this year showed he subjected patients to unnecessary procedures, including sticking needles in their eyes and burning their retinas with lasers.

Melgen also stands accused in a separate federal case of bribing Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey in exchange for favors including visas for his foreign mistresses.

As Melgens three-day sentencing hearing began, some patients and former employees told U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra that the Dominican-born, Harvard-trained doctor was an exceptional and giving doctor who often restored sight when the case seemed hopeless. Melgen listened quietly at the defense table, wearing a blue prison uniform, his legs shackled.

Bonnie Illsley, his former office manager, told the judge she never saw any evidence of fraud. Instead, she said she saw a kind, generous man who would give you the shirt off his back.

She said he would often meet emergency patients at his office at night or on weekends rather than send them to the emergency room, because he could provide better treatment.

Nestor Garcia said he suddenly lost his sight in 2009. Three doctors told him it was a lost cause, but Melgen restored some sight and treated him for free when his insurance company wouldnt pay.

He told me, Nestor, I have already started treating you. I dont care if your insurance pays me or not. I am with you to the end.

Dr. Adam Berger, a central Florida retinal specialist, testified for the prosecution that many of the tests and treatments Melgen performed on Medicare patients were reckless, exposing the patients to potential infections and other risks. He called the 1-in-13 infection rate prosecutors found among a sample of Melgens injected patients astronomically high. He said the normal rate is 1-in-3,300 injected patients.

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Anna Borgia told the judge that Melgen subjected her to painful injections and laser treatments for glaucoma and diabetes-related sight loss and then botched a surgery that left her nearly blind. She said she is now confined to her home listening to the television and depending on paid drivers to take her to the grocery store.

I love dancing but what man wants to take a blind woman dancing? she told the judge. He ruined me. I hope the Dear Lord hears me when I pray at night that he gets life in jail and suffers the way I suffer.

Randy Frick had his attorney read a letter saying Melgen convinced his 90-year-old mother to undergo laser treatments and injections that he later learned were unnecessary because his mother has no eye disease. He said he feels complicit because he would drive his mother to her treatments.

She underwent systemic torture at the hands of Melgen, Frick wrote. I feel so guilty I have nightmares.

Marra could give Melgen a life sentence, but he has wide discretion. Prosecutors are asking for 30 years. The defense argues he should spend no more than 10 years in a minimum-security prison camp.

Melgens lawyers argued in court documents that prosecutors are exaggerating Medicares loss. Attorneys Kirk Ogrosky and Matthew Menchel say a 30-year or life sentence, comparable to what terrorists get, is irrational on its face. Because of Melgens age and poor health, any lengthy sentence would be equivalent to a life term, they say.

They also say a sentence of 30 years or more would result in Melgen being housed in a maximum security prison, which they called an unnecessary burden on the taxpayers, given his lack of criminal history. They want him sent to a minimum security camp, which they say would require a sentence of less than 10 years. Prosecutors dispute that, saying the federal Bureau of Prisons would decide his placement regardless.

Melgen has been in custody since his April 28 conviction.

Separately, a federal jury in New Jersey hung last month after prosecutors there tried to prove Melgens gifts to Menendez were actually bribes. In return, they say, Menendez obtained visas for Melgens foreign mistresses, interceded with Medicare officials investigating his practice and pressured the State Department to intervene in a business dispute he had with the Dominican government.

Menendez and Melgen have denied wrongdoing in that case. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry them.
Washington (AFP) - FBI Director Christopher Wray defended his agency Thursday against President Donald Trump's criticisms, amid a mounting Republican push aimed at discrediting the probe into alleged collusion between the US leader's campaign and Russia in last year's election.

Trump laid into the Federal Bureau of Investigation last weekend, accusing its agents of political bias and Wray's predecessor James Comey, whom Trump fired in May, of lying.

"Its reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History," Trump wrote on Twitter of the FBI, at the end of series of posts about a senior agent who allegedly supported Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Wray responded Thursday in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee: "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good."

"The agents, analysts and staff of the FBI are big boys and girls. We understand that we will take criticism from all corners. We're accustomed to that," he said.

But Republicans on the committee pressed Wray hard over allegations that pro-Clinton, anti-Trump FBI investigators and lawyers controlled both last year's probe into Clinton's use of classified material on a private email server, and special prosecutor Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow to tilt the White House race.

Trump and Republicans appear to be building such a case to undermine the Mueller probe, which has already unleashed charges against four former Trump aides and increasingly menaces the White House and Trump's family.

They focused their attacks on the high-level involvement in both the Clinton and Mueller probes of FBI agent Peter Strzok.

News reports last weekend said Strzok had been fired by Mueller as lead investigator in August over pro-Clinton text messages he sent to a Justice Department lawyer.

According to reports, he also had a major role in Comey's decision in July 2016 -- in the middle of a tense election campaign -- to clear Clinton of any crime related to her email use.

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Trump seized on the reports about Strzok in his weekend anti-FBI, anti-Comey tweetstorm.

"Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

- Republicans press over investigation 'bias' -

Since then, Republicans in Congress have latched on to the Strzok case as they pressed the FBI and the Justice Department over the independence of their investigations.

In a letter to Wray on Tuesday, Senator Charles Grassley demanded information on Strzok's role in Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton, his role in the early Russian collusion investigation, and any communications he made with negative statements about Trump or positive ones on Clinton.

In Thursday's hearing, Republicans alleged that Muller, after taking on the Russia probe in May, assembled a team of largely Democratic lawyers and investigators.

"If you kicked everybody off Mueller's team who are anti-Trump, I don't think there would be anybody left," said Republican Congressman Jim Jordan.

Asked Thursday whether Trump truly believes the FBI under Wray is in "tatters," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders stressed Trump's problem was with former director Comey and people involved in the Clinton probe.

"We certainly felt like some of the political leadership at the FBI was problematic. We are glad that Director Wray is there. We feel he's going to clean up some of the messes left behind by his predecessor," she said.
WASHINGTON  Days after President Donald Trump attacked the FBI, the man he appointed to head the nations premier law enforcement agency told members of Congress there is no finer institution than the FBI.

FBI Director Chris Wray, who took over the bureau in August, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing on Thursday. In his opening statement, he said there were no finer people than the men and women who work at the FBI, calling them its very beating heart.

Wrays remarks followed Trumps attack on the FBI in a tweet on Sunday, when the president wrote that the bureaus reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!

Under questioning from House Judiciary Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Wray responded directly to Trumps tweet, saying there was no shortage of opinions out there. He then described the FBI he knows: a bureau full of tens of thousands of brave men and women working hard to keep Americans safe from harm from threats like gang violence, child predators and terrorists. He spoke of being inspired by the recent graduates of FBI academy in Quantico, and of the response teams the FBI sends into harms way.

Now, do we make mistakes? You bet we make mistakes, just like everybody who is human makes mistakes, Wray testified. And when we make mistakes, there are independent processes like that of the outside, independent inspector general that will drive and dive deep into the facts surrounding those mistakes. And when that independent fact-finding is complete, will we hold our folks accountable if thats appropriate.

Wray also said Trump never asked him to sidestep the chain of command or to pledge his loyalty to the president.

Later, Wray said FBI agents are big boys and girls who understand theyll take criticism from all corners, and can handle it.

The FBI director this week sent a message to bureau employees that seemed to respond to the presidents tweets, but he hadnt made a public comment about the attack until Thursday.

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Trump has lashed out at the FBI as the special counsel investigation run by former FBI Director Bob Mueller has led to indictments or guilty pleas of four Trump campaign officials, including the presidents former national security adviser.

Ryan Reilly is HuffPosts senior justice reporter, covering criminal justice, federal law enforcement and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261.

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Former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. has been fired for misconduct by Morgan Stanley after facing a human resources investigation into allegations of misconduct, a company spokeswoman confirmed.

He has been terminated for conduct inconsistent with our values and in violation of our policies, a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley told HuffPost in an email.

At least one woman, who is not a Morgan Stanley employee but interacted with Ford in a professional capacity, was interviewed by Morgan Stanleys HR department as part of the investigation.

In two interviews with HuffPost, the woman alleged that Ford engaged in harassment, intimidation, and forcibly grabbed her one evening in Manhattan, leading her to seek aid from a building security guard. The incident took place several years ago when Ford and the woman were supposed to be meeting for professional reasons. Ford continued to contact her after the encounter until she wrote an email asking him to cease contact.

The email, which was reviewed by HuffPost, shows that the woman emailed Ford after he repeatedly asked her to drinks. She asked him not to contact her anymore, citing his inappropriate conduct the evening where he forcibly grabbed and harassed her.

Ford replied to the email by apologizing and agreeing not to contact her. Hey very sorry. Meant no harm, the email reads. And I apologize for whatever I may have said or what was said. And my overtures are strictly professional. Again I apologize didnt mean to be inappropriate at all. Sorry that impression was left.

HuffPost is not identifying the woman at her request but has reviewed emails that confirm her interactions with Ford and spoke to two people whom the woman confided in about the incident. One woman heard from Fords accuser the night of the incident and described her as distraught, shocked, and frightened, and said that she was concerned about any career ramifications should she report the incident.

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In a statement provided to HuffPost, Ford denied the allegations: This simply did not happen. I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life. Having drinks and dinner for work is part of my job, and all of my outreach to the news reporter making these false allegations was professional and at the direction of my firm for business purposes. I support and have tremendous respect for the brave women now speaking out in this important national dialogue. False claims like this undermine the real silence breakers. I will now be bringing legal action against the reporter who has made these false claims about me as well as Morgan Stanley for improper termination.

John Singer, Fords employment counsel with the firm Singer Deutsch LLP, said Morgan Stanley has still not told Harold directly of his termination, and unlike every other circumstance Ive been in the company has refused provide me with a reason.

He added: This all demonstrates how this was a matter of convenience during a hyper-sensitive time and not based on real facts.

Ford comes from a prominent political family in Tennessee. His father, Harold Ford Sr., held a congressional seat for 12 terms before retiring, leaving his son to run for the seat, a race which he won handily. Ford served in the House for nearly 10 years before deciding to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Republican Bill Frist. Ford lost that hotly contested 2006 race by fewer than three points to current Republican Sen. Bob Corker.

Since leaving Congress in 2007, Ford has worked for two financial services companies, first for Merrill Lynch and then Morgan Stanley, which he joined in 2011 as a managing director.

At the time Morgan Stanley announced the hire, The New York Times described Fords role as a rainmaker of sorts: Mr. Ford will be responsible for building business opportunities for clients, Morgan Stanley said. He will manage relationships with corporate directors, senior executives and institutional investors, as well as private clients.

Ford also serves as a paid on-air political analyst for NBC/MSNBC and regularly appears on the MSNBC program Morning Joe.

This story has been updated to include statements from Ford and Singer.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Paris (AFP) - Gay marriage, legalised on Thursday in Australia in a parliamentary vote, is now recognised in more than 25 countries, of which 16 are in Europe.

Here is a breakdown.

- European pioneers -

In April 2001 the Netherlands became the first country in the world to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in a civil ceremony.

Fifteen European countries have followed: Austria, Belgium, Britain (but not Northern Ireland, which only accepts civil partnerships), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Some European countries only allow same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships including Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.

In October 2014, Estonia became the first former Soviet republic to authorise this type of civil union.

Many eastern European countries -- including Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia -- deny homosexuals the right to marry or enter into unions.

In December 2015, Slovenians rejected in a referendum a proposal by their parliament to legalise gay marriage.

About 15 western European countries allow same-sex couples to adopt children, whether within marriage or civil partnerships. They include Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

Finland and Slovenia allow gay people to adopt their partner's children.

- Progress in the Americas -

Canada led the way in North America, authorising same-sex marriage and adoptions in June 2005.

In the United States, a Supreme Court decision in June 2015 legalised gay marriage nationwide, at a time when it was illegal in 14 states.

Mexico's federal capital was the pioneer in Latin America, authorising civil unions in 2007 and marriages in 2009 as well as adoption.

Same-sex marriages and adoptions are also legal in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay.

Chile's socialist President Michelle Bachelet in August sent to congress a bill to authorise gay marriages and adoptions, after having legalised same-sex civil unions in 2015.

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In Haiti, the Senate voted that same month to ban gay marriage.

- Rare in Africa, Asia, Middle East -

On the African continent, where around 30 countries ban homosexuality, gays can only legally marry and adopt children in South Africa.

In the Middle East, Israel leads in terms of respect for homosexual rights, recognising gay marriages performed elsewhere although such unions are not allowed in the country itself. Gay couples can adopt children.

In the Asia-Pacific region Taiwan is set to legalise same-sex unions after its highest court in May ordered parliament to amend relevant laws within two years.

New Zealand passed a law in April 2013 legalising gay marriage and adoptions.

And on Thursday Australia's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly voted in favour of gay marriage, which can take place early next year. Gay adoption is allowed.
The moment that Georges St-Pierre won the middleweight title against Michael Bisping at UFC 217, skeptics were concerned that the former welterweight champion may not stay in the division long enough to defend the title.

It appears that those skeptics may have been spot on with their assessment.

St-Pierre talked about his future as a 185-pound fighter on TSN and is clearly having second thoughts about defending the title he won from Bisping after a four-year hiatus from the sport.

Well talk about it, but Im not sure if I compete I will go back at 185, St-Pierre said. I dont think so.

Many assumed that the only reason GSP decided to compete in a higher weight class was because he saw a vulnerable champion that he could beat. If St-Pierre were to defend the title, hed have to face the heavy handed interim champion Robert Whittaker, who has been extremely impressive with an eight-fight winning streak. The future of the middleweight champion is up in the air after Dana White announced that GSP was suffering from colitis and was unsure when hed return to the Octagon. St-Pierre suggested that the illness might be linked to how he prepared to move up in weight.

Georges St-Pierre won the middleweight title at UFC 217. (Getty)

But if you ask former middleweight champion Luke Rockhold, GSPs plan all along was to beat the easiest middleweight he could find and avoid everyone else.

Hes not fighting any of us, Rockhold said on The MMA Hour. Hes too small. Guys like me would feast on Georges. He wont last here. He had his opportunity, he got his belt, good for you. Just move along and let us handle our business here.

Rockhold wouldnt completely discount that St-Pierre was dealing with an illness, but believes that it only aides the champions plan to depart the division and head back to 170.

If youre sick youre sick, but the fact is, you dont want to fight in the division, Rockhold said.

As a result, there are reports that a possible showdown between Rockhold and Whittaker could take place in early 2018. If St-Pierre decides to vacate his title, that fight could determine who the new champion of the division would be.

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But St-Pierre has yet to commit to departing the division as of right now and is still mulling over his future. As for Rockholds comments, St-Pierre isnt taking any of what he said to heart..

Its not a fake diagnosis, I have the paper of the doctor and everything to prove it, St-Pierre said. When youre on top, everybody want to have what you got and its not new for me, Im used to that kind of stuff, I dont take it personal. Ive talked to Luke, hes a good guy. Hes just a hungry guy and he wants to be champion again and I wish him the best.

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By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) leader will try on Thursday to convince a reluctant party that it has a duty to discuss forming a government under conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, for the sake of German and European stability. Germany, Europe's political and economic powerhouse, has been struggling to build a new government since a Sept. 24 national election in which Merkel's conservative bloc and the SPD both lost support, while an anti-immigrant party surged into parliament, complicating the potential coalition combinations. Merkel, her own political future on the line after 12 years at the helm, is making overtures to the center-left SPD - her partner in government over the past four years - after her bid to form a three-way coalition with two smaller parties failed. SPD leader Martin Schulz, who first announced that the party would go into opposition after seeing its time in a Merkel-led "grand coalition" rewarded with bruising losses at the polls, must now convince his party to revisit that decision. An outspoken advocate of deeper European integration, Schulz also wants to push Germany toward embracing French President Emmanuel Macron's ideas for closer cooperation on defense, migration and euro zone governance. The party's leadership wants exploratory talks on supporting a conservative-led government, which could fall short of a formal coalition, but Schulz, himself up for re-election at the congress, must win his party's backing. Party rank-and-file, licking its wounds after the defeat, is expected to want the SPD to demand that Merkel pay a high price in return for its support. "A renewed Grand Coalition is not a possible outcome of the talks," a motion submitted to the congress by the SPD's youth wing said, adding that voters' withdrawal of support from both parties could not be seen as a mandate for its continuation. The SPD had a "historical responsibility" not to enter government since the far-right Alternative for Germany party would become the official opposition if they did so, the youth wing added. On the divisive issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel's first effort, the SPD opposes a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers. But SPD vice-president Aydan Ozoguz warned against "repeated skirmishes" over refugee rights, saying that Germany was no longer receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East as it had in 2015. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Alexander Smith)
(Getty Images)

The holidays are an expensive time for travel, but thankfully with a little bit of planning and saving, you can make your loyalty points work for you.

North Americans use loyalty programs to book countless trips and can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. During the holidays, however, it can be a challenge to navigate blackout periods and ensure you have enough points to book flights, hotels or other travel related expenses. There are ways, however, to plan a great trip during the holiday season without blowing either your cash or loyalty point budget. We spoke to Jennifer Corwin, Associate Practice Leader at J.D. Power Global Travel & Hospitality, for her suggestions on navigating your points and planning a seamless travel experience.

Plan for the blackout dates

Blackout dates can pose a special challenge to travelers who want to book trips during peak seasons like the holidays. The key is to understand your program and plan ahead  something many program members dont do. In fact, the recent J.D. Power 2017 Hotel Loyalty Program Satisfaction Study found that nearly half of loyalty program members indicate a less-than-clear understanding of how to earn their points, and only half know how to redeem them.

Be aware of when the blackout periods are, says Corwin. Its not that you cant travel, but you need to have enough points. If you know when youll be travelling and want to save some money, plan accordingly and prepare for that.

The good news is that the industry appears to be moving away from the true blackout period, so be sure to check the rules of your particular program or choose a program that better suits your needs.

Points arent just for hotels

The J.D. Power survey found that frequent travelers want to use their points on more than just hotel stays. Satisfaction was higher for redemptions involving product purchases, special events, car rentals and dining.

If you are planning to use your points to save money during the holidays, research the different categories where you can really maximize your points. You might have to pay a premium for a hotel stay, for instance, but other areas like car rentals might come at a discount during the same period. Look and see where your points can give you the best return per dollar and use them to get the best savings.

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Shop around for the program that suits your needs

Each program is different, so shop around for the program that works best for you and your lifestyle. If you plan to do the majority of your travel during the holidays and do not want to deal with blackout dates, read the fine print and choose a program that doesnt have them. If you want variety beyond hotel stays, look into the different redemption options available. Finally, service is key so do your research and choose a program that has a strong customer service rating.

Traveling during the holidays can be a fun, relaxing way to wrap up a busy year. Travel rewards can help make the experience easy on your wallet too. Plan ahead, budget your points and enjoy a well-deserved getaway.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.




By Renee Maltezou and Orhan Coskun ATHENS/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayip Erdogan will make a historic visit to Greece this week, a sign that relations between the two countries are improving, although a long list of grievances remains on both sides. Erdogan visited Greece as prime minister, in 2004 and 2010, but he will be the first Turkish head of state to visit Athens since Celal Bayar in 1952. He is also scheduled to visit Thrace in northern Greece, home to a large Muslim community. Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war as recently as 1996, but tensions have eased since. The two now cooperate in a deal brokered between Ankara and the European Union on stemming mass migration to Europe through Greece. Turkey's ties with some other European Union governments are strained, however, so Erdogan's visit on Dec. 7-8 will be important for Athens. It will help to ensure that communication continues over the migrant crisis and other bilateral issues. "Issues that concern the two countries will be on the agenda of talks - tensions in the Aegean Sea, the refugee crisis, economic relations with a focus on energy, trade and transport," Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said. "What we anticipate is a substantive upgrade of our relationship with Turkey ... We expect very constructive talks." In Turkey, a government official said: "This will be a visit from which we expect solution to problems. I think Erdogan and (Greek Prime Minister Alexis) Tsipras will show a common will for the solution of some of the problems." LONG LIST OF GRIEVANCES At odds over everything from uninhabited islets, airspace and the boundaries of Greece's continental shelf to the ethnically divided island of Cyprus, differences between the two countries have outlived the Cold War. None of those issues has ever been resolved. The fallout of a failed coup attempt against Erdogan in 2016 has also tested their relations; while the coup unfolded, eight Turkish commandos flew into Greece to evade capture. The Turkish government regards them as coup plotters and wants Athens to hand them over. Greek courts have blocked their extradition. The senior Turkish official said terror groups were crossing into Greece from Turkey. "The prevention of this is critical for Turkey," the official said. "Erdogan will ask for the extradition of these people, starting with the ones that fled there with a helicopter following the coup attempt." Greek police last week arrested nine suspected members of DHKP-C, a militant Marxist group which has claimed responsibility for attacks in Turkey since 1990, including suicide bombings. TIP-TOE AROUND CYPRUS Thursday's visit takes place months after Cyprus peace talks broke down in July. The talks are led by the two Cypriot communities, but Greece and Turkey need to agree to future security arrangements for the island. "When the talks broke up there was a lot of ill feeling, so I was a bit surprised to hear about this visit. Positively surprised," said James Ker-Lindsay, professor of politics and policy at St. Mary's University in London. Cyprus remains divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living on either side of a U.N.-monitored ceasefire line. It's unclear whether peace talks between them will resume. Greek Cypriot presidential elections are scheduled for January 2018, and nothing will happen before then. "I think that in terms of the symbolism of Erdogan in Athens, its a good sign. Whether we are going to get anything out of it, I'm not sure. I don't want to overplay it too much," Ker-Lindsay told Reuters. (Writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Larry King)
(Reuters) - A suspected shooter opened fire at a high school in New Mexico on Thursday, killing two students before being killed, according to police and officials from the nearby Navajo Nation.

Few other details were immediately available about the incident at Aztec High School in the city of Aztec, about 200 miles (322 km) northwest of Santa Fe, including whether the shooter was a student or if the shooter was killed by police.

The New Mexico State Police said no other injuries were reported, that the school was evacuated, and families of the victims were notified. Police said there were no other credible threats to students.

Garrett Parker, a sophomore at Aztec High School, told Hearst news affiliate KOAT, that he initially thought the gunshots were other kids banging on locker doors.

"As it got closer and louder and it was obvious it was gunshots. All I could think of was that definitely, this is it today, if whoever it is comes in then Im probably done," Parker said. "Thankfully our teacher always locked his door. When they called over the intercom that this was not a drill, we went over to the corner to the classroom out of sight of the door and just started hiding."

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said in a statement that all schools in the area were placed on preventative lockdown as a precaution.

"It's tragic when our children are harmed in violent ways especially on school campuses," Begaye said in the statement.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Additional reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Andrew Hay)
By Desire Thompson

The election for Atlantas next mayor had plenty of talking points, with race being one of them. Newley elected mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is the second black woman holding the position since Shirley Franklin in 2002 while her opponent Mary Norwood couldve been the first white mayor in 40 years.

Georgia, a red state, has a long tradition of electing African-American mayors. This didnt made the race easy for Bottoms since she lacked local Democratic endorsements. Norwood, a conservative-leaning independent, had plenty of support from LGBTQ communities as well as a wave of bipartisan co-signs like Atlanta Chief Operating Officer Peter Aman, Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and ironically, Shirley Franklin.

But one unlikely co-sign helped bring new life into Bottoms campaign. In the months leading up to elections day (Dec. 5), Atlantas hip-hop community showed their support to Bottoms through social media. Acts like Killer Mike and T.I. broke down Bottoms initiatives while social media cool kids like Mr. Hot Spot aligned his positive-vibe agenda to her campaign.

#voteforkeisha @troubleman31 A post shared by Hotspot (@mr_hotspot) on Nov 30, 2017 at 3:42pm PST

Hollywood also showed up with their support by sharing Bottoms plans to improve education for Atlantas children. Others not connected to a certain issue like Usher and industry great Chaka Zulu used their hometown status to discuss factors like inclusion for all residents. NBC News reports Atlanta has experienced a new wave of residents moving into the city, creating more lavish properties but less methods of integration.

For lack of a better words, gentrification has hit Atlanta.

The white community now is different, former mayor Andrew Young said. Weve grown so fast, and weve been so successful, that we havent worked on integration with the new people.

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It could also be why so many famous faces decided to use their platforms to led support to Bottoms.

@usher #GoVote #staywoke #standwithkeisha #standwithatlanta #keepatlantamovingforward #bethe700 A post shared by Councilmember Keisha Bottoms (@keishabottoms) on Dec 5, 2017 at 10:56am PST

A post shared by DJ Toomp (@dj_toomp) on Dec 4, 2017 at 9:31pm PST

Cmon Atlanta! Go vote tomorrow! We cannot loose greatness that your city has worked so hard to obtain. Im more than confident that @keishabottoms can continue to push Atlanta forward. #standwithkeisha A post shared by Common (@common) on Dec 4, 2017 at 9:12pm PST

Prolific African-American politicians like Democratic Maxine Waters, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were great co-signs for Bottoms, but hip-hops top leaders proved that strength really does come in numbers. Barack Obama may have introduced this practice during his legendary presidential election, but its interesting to see it executed at the local level.

This post Hip-Hop Made Sure Atlanta Continued Their Tradition Of Black Mayors By Backing Keisha Bottoms first appeared on Vibe.
By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in U.S. House of Representatives began staking out their positions on final tax legislation on Tuesday, days ahead of talks with the Senate to shape the tax package lawmakers hope to send to President Donald Trump by year end. While lawmakers expect a smooth reconciliation of rival House and Senate tax bills, House Republicans have taken issue with several items in the Senate's legislation - from a one-year delay in cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent to the sunsetting of individual tax cuts after 2025. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said lawmakers are determined to eliminate the alternative minimum taxes (AMTs) on corporations and individuals that the Senate bill retained. "House members ... feel strongly that the House position should be to repeal permanently both the individual and the corporate," said Brady, who is expected to chair the House-Senate negotiations that could begin next week. The corporate and individual AMTs are designed to limit the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to reduce their payments through tax breaks and credits. But jettisoning them could require tough decisions on how to keep the legislation below a $1.5 trillion ceiling on revenue losses. Republicans must also bridge differences on taxes for corporate and pass-through businesses, top earners, inheritances, individual tax brackets and repeal of the Obamacare individual health insurance mandate. Republicans hope to approve a final bill and deliver it to Trump's desk before Christmas. If they succeed, it will be the first major U.S. tax overhaul in 31 years and the first big Republican legislative victory since Trump took office in January. The House voted to go to conference with the Senate on Monday, and Republicans named nine conference delegates. Senate Republicans could name delegates as early as Wednesday. "My hope is that we're done with this within 10 days to two weeks," said Representative Kristi Noem, a Republican conference delegate and member of Brady's committee. House Republicans are also considering a new approach to the deduction for state and local taxes. Both the House and Senate bills eliminate deductions for income and sales taxes but retain one for $10,000 in property taxes. Republicans from high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey, have been angered by the change. But Brady said Republicans are considering the possibility of giving taxpayers an option to deduct $10,000 in state and local property taxes, income taxes or sales taxes. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) - A female Indiana police officer suspended after calling out a fellow officer for "white male privilege" during a transgender awareness training session may learn her job status on Thursday.

A Plainfield, Indiana police commission on Thursday will hear the disciplinary case for police Captain Carri Weber, city officials said, after she was placed on leave following an incident posted online that drew national attention.

Reuters could not reach either of the police officers in the video, both of whom were identified by city officials.

During a Nov. 1 police training seminar, a man can be heard on a video obtained by local media and posted online questioning figures suggesting that transgender people faced a higher risk of police violence, WRTV reported.

"Most of the people that I know have never been, accused the police of violence. So I guess I don't get where that statistic comes from," a man can be heard saying.

"'Cause your white male privilege, so you wouldn't know," said a woman's voice, which local media identified as Weber.

The comment caused an uproar in the room and led to a complaint from an unnamed officer against Weber. It alleged the officer was "racially and sexistly slurred" by Weber and that she held "discriminatory views," WRTV reported.

Police in Plainfield, located outside of Indianapolis, referred questions to Tony Perona, deputy town manager, who sent a statement to Reuters saying Weber and Captain Scott Arndt were the officers involved in the training dispute. Both are white.

Arndt was suspended for two days without pay for conduct unbecoming an officer, the statement said.

"Captain Weber has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation for conduct unbecoming an officer, regarding not only this incident but her disciplinary history in the last six months, as per the police department's progressive disciplinary process," the city statement said.

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City officials did not disclose further details. Weber was suspended previously for violating policies including driving her squad car within eight hours of drinking alcohol, WISH-TV reported.

After Weber's comment, an uproar can be heard on the video as men say "Wow" and "I'm sorry?" before a voice asked the police chief if he would let someone "get away with that."

"Seriously? I'm asking a legitimate question here ... Are you serious? I find that extremely offensive," a male officer says in the video.

A group called "Don't Sleep" on Facebook invited supporters to wear Black Lives Matter attire at Thursday's meeting.

(Reporting by Chris Kenning; Editing by Susan Thomas)
A high school cheerleader is turning heads with her flawless attempt of the latest craze sweeping social media  the invisible box challenge."

Participants appear to walk on air as they step onto and over an invisible box. Most people who try the new fad fail miserably.

Texas high school cheerleader Ariel Olivar perfected the stunt and video of her performance has gone viral after it was posted to Twitter Saturday.

The 11th grader from Manvel High School makes it look so easy.

The junior even came to New York City to show Inside Edition how it's done.

First, you've got to show them there's nothing there, she said. Now, you're gonna pat about a foot off the ground. Remember where your hand is, and put your foot there.

She says you have to keep the foot that is "on the box in the same spot the entire time, and the other foot must go above it when you make the jump.

The key is to have the core strength and the leg strength to get this foot over the box, she added.

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By Robin Emmott and Padraic Halpin BRUSSELS/DUBLIN (Reuters) - The United Kingdom and Ireland could reach agreement in hours on how to run their post-Brexit Irish land border, paving the way for a deal that would remove the last obstacle to opening free-trade talks with the European Union. A carefully choreographed attempt to showcase the progress of Brexit talks collapsed at the last minute on Dec. 4 when the Northern Irish party which props up Prime Minister Theresa May's government vetoed a draft deal already agreed with Ireland. Since then, May has been scrambling to clinch a deal on the new UK-EU land border in Ireland that is acceptable to the European Union, Dublin, her own lawmakers and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which keeps her government in power. May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker could meet early on Friday to seal a border deal, the European Commission's chief spokesman said. "We are making progress but not yet fully there," Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. "Talks are continuing throughout the night. Early morning meeting possible." A spokesman for PM May said Brexit discussions were ongoing while a senior Irish official said talks were moving swiftly and that a deal was possible in hours. "It is moving quite quickly at the moment," the Irish official told a British Irish Chamber of Commerce event in Brussels. "I think we are going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK government to close this off. I say hours because I think we are very close." Later on Thursday, the political editor of the BBC said the leadership of the DUP in Belfast had not signed off on the border deal, meaning it could yet stumble, but May continued to plan to meet Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk early on Friday in Brussels to finalize the agreement. The political editor of Sky News, quoting a DUP source, said the party would continue to work on the border issue on Friday. Moving to talks about trade and a Brexit transition are crucial for the future of May's premiership, and to keep trade flowing between the worlds biggest trading bloc and its sixth largest national economy after Britain leaves on March 29, 2019. But the EU will only move to trade talks if there is enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU; rights for EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU; and how to avoid a hard border with Ireland. BREXIT DEAL? As speculation swirled about whether London, Dublin and Brussels were about to clinch a border deal, European Council President Donald Tusk's office said he would brief reporters at 0650 GMT on Friday before departing for Hungary. The EU says May has an effective deadline of Sunday night if she wants to seal a deal and hope to have agreement on trade talks in time for the EU summit on Dec. 14-15. All sides say they want to avoid a return to a hard border between EU member Ireland and the British-ruled province of Northern Ireland, which might upset the peace established after decades of violence. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) insists that Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, must leave the EU in the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom. To clinch a deal, though, May must ensure she has the support of the DUP, whose leader told her bluntly on Monday that it would not support her minority government's legislation unless the Irish border draft deal was changed. She must also convince her divided Conservative Party that the deal she makes is acceptable. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leader of the Brexit campaign, insisted the whole of the United Kingdom must "take back control" when it left the EU. "Whatever way we devise for getting onto the body of the (Brexit) talks, it's got to be consistent with the whole of the United Kingdom taking back control of our laws, of our borders and of our cash," Johnson told reporters. (Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Roche and Lisa Shumaker)
Jerusalem (AFP) - The Israeli military said on Thursday it was deploying hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"Upon the conclusion of the general staff's situation assessment, it was decided that a number of battalions will reinforce in the area of (the West Bank), as well as combat intelligence and territorial defence," the military said in a statement.

"In addition, more standby forces were defined, as part of the (military's) readiness to possible developments."

Large numbers of Israeli troops were preparing at the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and the northern West Bank on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported.

The deployments come amid uncertainty over the fallout from Trump's speech on Wednesday recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip, called for a new intifada over the announcement, while protests were planned for the West Bank.

Palestinians also held a general strike on Thursday in protest of Trump's move, with schools and shops closed.
A Palestinian protester takes cover during clashes with Israeli troops near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah December 7 - REUTERS

Israeli forces clashed with young Palestinians in street battles across the occupied West Bank yesterday as Hamas called for a new intifada in response to Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The Israeli military called up reinforcements in anticipation of larger clashes on Friday as thousands of young men are expected to take to the streets in protest after traditional Friday prayers.

The UN Security Council will also gather to discuss the inflamed situation in the Middle East after Britain and seven other states requested an emergency meeting in response to Mr Trumps announcement.

Aftershocks of the US decision were also felt far beyond the region. In Amsterdam, a man with a Palestinian flag attacked a Jewish kosher restaurant in Amsterdam and demonstrators protested in cities across Pakistan.

Around 50 Palestinians suffered minor injuries during clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Young men hurled stones and set tyres alight to block roads while Israeli troops fired teargas and rubber bullets in response.

In Bethlehem wafts of smoke rose among the Christmas decorations which already been hung in the streets leading to the Church of the Nativity, the site where Jesus Christ is said to have been born.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said two rockets were fired from Gaza on Thursday evening but both projectiles crashed to the ground within Gaza before reaching Israel. The rockets are believed to have been fired by a smaller Salafist group and not Hamas.

"This Zionist policy supported by the US cannot be confronted unless we ignite a new intifada, said Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, during a speech in Gaza. "The US decision is an aggression, a declaration of war on us, on the best Muslim and Christian shrines in the heart of Palestine, Jerusalem."

Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Bethelem on December 7 Credit: AFP

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group supported by Iran, said he supported the call for a new Palestinian intifada soon after the Hamas speech.

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Both Hizbollah and Hamas have considerable arsenals but neither group said that they planned to turn them on Israel in retaliation for Mr Trumps announcement.

Israeli intelligence has said in the past that it believes neither Hamas nor Hizbollah is eager for a direct military confrontation with Israeli forces but both would like to incite a mass uprising by ordinary Palestinians.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, during a speech in Gaza Credit: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The move was met with broad condemnation from the US's allies in the West and the Middle East. Boris Johnson on Thursday said the move was "not helpful". EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini yesterday said the move could "send us backwards to even darker times".

The Palestinian leadership said they were still formulating their response to the US decision and did not announce any concrete steps in response.

Mike Pence, the US vice president, is due to visit Bethlehem in ten days time but Muhammad Shtayyeh, a senior official in the governing Fatah party, said the Palestinians were weighing whether to withdraw their invitation.

Small clashes ongoing in Bethlehem between young Palestinians and Israeli troops pic.twitter.com/8Zt6PCYmEI  Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) December 7, 2017

President Trump has made the US totally irrelevant when it comes to the peace process, Dr Shtayyeh said.

The US embassy in Jordan suspended services after facing protests in the capital of Amman. US diplomatic posts across the Muslim world are expecting protests on Friday and warned US citizens that some of the demonstrations have the potential to become violent."

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Jerusalem - Israel

Israelis continued to celebrate the US recognition of Jerusalem as their capital and headline Thank You, Mr President was splashed across the front of the Israel Hayom newspaper, which is owned by Sheldon Adelson, a pro-Israel US casino mogul who urged Mr Trump to make the move.

The Israeli city of Kiryat Yam announced that it would name a park after Mr Trump as a sign of its gratitude for his decision. "Donald Trump proved to the entire world that Jerusalem is in his heart and we will prove to him in this way that he is in our hearts," said David Even Zur, the citys mayor.

The Czech Republic announced Wednesday it was partially following the US lead and would recognise west Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said he had been contacted by other countries which will issue a similar recognition.

Israeli media reported that both the Philippines and Hungary - which are both led by authoritarian leaders who admire Mr Trump - were also considering moving their embassies.
By Ori Lewis and Ali Sawafta JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Israel hailed U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as its capital on Wednesday, but the Palestinians condemned the move and said it diminished Washington's role as a peace mediator. In a landmark speech in Washington, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risked creating further unrest in the Middle East. Past U.S. presidents have insisted that the status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions - must be decided in negotiations between the two sides. Palestinian factions called a general strike on Thursday throughout the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and for rallies to be held at midday (1000 GMT) in protest at Trump's move, raising the chances of violent clashes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that Trump's decision had made for a "historic day" and was "an important step toward peace". He added that any peace deal with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israel's capital and he urged other countries to follow the U.S. lead by also moving their embassies to the city. He said there would be no change to access to Jerusalem's holy sites. "Israel will always ensure freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike." But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trump's move was "tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator" and declared Jerusalem as the "eternal capital of the State of Palestine". Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state which they want to establish in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. "With this announcement, the American administration has chosen to violate all international and bilateral agreements and resolutions and it has chosen to violate international consensus," Abbas said. The move, he said, would serve "the extremist groups which try to turn the conflict in our region into a religious war that will drag the region ... into international conflicts and endless wars." Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since 2014. Trump's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is leading Trump's efforts to restart them but those efforts have shown little progress. Israel's West Bank settlement building has been one of the main obstacles. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, said Trump's move was "flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people" and urged Arabs and Muslims to "undermine the U.S.'s interests in the region" and to "shun Israel." (Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Miriam Berger in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Andrew Heavens and James Dalgleish)
Jerusalem (AFP) - US President Donald Trump was set to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital later Wednesday in a move that would upturn decades of precedent and run counter to international consensus.

The city is revered by three major faiths but mired in political, as well as religious, disputes. Its status is one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

- Whose capital? -

Jewish Israelis consider Jerusalem to be their 3,000-year-old capital and the inalienable birthright of Jews everywhere. Since the destruction in ancient times of two separate Jewish temples in the city and the exile of the Holy Land's surviving Hebrews, Judaism has looked for a return of its people to their biblical home. According to scripture, King David made Jerusalem the capital of a unified kingdom of Israel around 1000 BC.

The city's heavily visited Western Wall is among the last remnants of the second Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

The Palestinians, who make up about a third of the modern city's population of some 882,000, claim east Jerusalem as the capital of the state to which they aspire. It also has great religious significance for Muslims as it houses the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, Islam's third-holiest site, and the emblematic gold-topped Dome of the Rock.

While Palestinians have been divided in recent years between president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah and Islamist movement Hamas, Jerusalem remains one of their most powerful rallying points for both religious and nationalistic reasons.

The city is also home to the holiest sites in Christianity, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where most Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.

- City of controversy -

A 1947 United Nations plan prescribed partitioning British-run Palestine into three separate entities: a Jewish state, an Arab state and a separate enclave, or "corpus separatum", consisting of Jerusalem, nearby Bethlehem and holy places in the vicinity to be under UN control. The proposal was accepted by Zionist leaders but rejected by the Arabs.

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Following the departure of the British in 1948, the Jews declared an independent state of Israel, followed by fighting with Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states.

At the end of the war, east Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands while the new Jewish state set up its capital in the west.

The two sides were divided by barbed wire, sandbags and machinegun emplacements until the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel seized and occupied the eastern zone.

It declared the whole city its eternal and united capital and in 1980 annexed east Jerusalem, a move never recognised by the international community.

- Capital without embassies -

Until the annexation, 13 countries maintained their embassies in Jerusalem: Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, The Netherlands, Panama, Uruguay and Venezuela.

They all relocated to Tel Aviv, where other states had their legations.

Costa Rica and El Salvador returned to the city in 1984 but headed back to Tel Aviv in 2006.

- US policy on holy city -

In 1995, the US Congress passed an act stating "Jerusalem should be recognised as the capital of the State of Israel and the United States embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999."

Since then, implementation has been blocked by succesive US presidents.

Trump vowed during his election campaign to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to recognise the disputed city as Israel's capital.

He is due to partially fulfil that pledge on Wednesday, declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital, but only declaring his intent to move the embassy there, which could take years.

The traditional US position on the city has been that Jerusalem's status must be negotiated between the two sides.
Rep. John Conyers said Tuesday that he is retiring from the U.S. Congress amid allegations that he sexually harassed former members of his staff.

In an appearance on a Detroit radio show, Conyers expressed gratitude for the support hes received and again denied the veracity of the harassment allegations.

I am retiring today and I want everyone to know how much I appreciate the support  incredible undiminished support Ive received across the years, not only in my district but across the country as well, Conyers told Praise 102.7 host Mildred Gaddis.

Conyers also announced that he was endorsing his son, John Conyers III, to replace him in Congress. That endorsement came in the wake of a New York Times report that suggested another relative of the 88-year-old Democrat would run for his seat.

My legacy cant be compromised or diminished in any way by what were going through now. This too shall pass, the long-serving Congressman said. My legacy will continue through my children. I have a great family here, especially in my oldest boy, John Conyers III, who I endorse to replace me in my seat in Congress. He continued, Were all working together.

The announcement from Conyers comes after conflicting calls on what the veteran Representative should do. While supporters in his hometown of Detroit have said Conyers should stay the course, his colleagues back in Washington have urged him to immediately resign.

On Monday, according to BuzzFeed News, many of Conyers supporters who came to a rally to support the Democrat felt that he had been unfairly judged. You have a right to respond to your accuser and you have the right to have an independent body make a determination, Wayne County executive Warren Evans said, according to the report. Until that happens theyve got nothing and this is wrong.

Last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called for Conyers to resign just days after citing the Congressmans legacy on Meet the Press. She faced backlash for those remarks and later issued a statement saying that legacy should not excuse harassment.

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The allegations against Congressman Conyers, as we have learned more since Sunday are serious, disappointing and very credible, the California Democrat said last week. Its very sad and the brave women who came forward are owed justice. I will pray for Congressman Conyers and his family, and wish them well. However Congressman Conyers should resign.

She added, No matter how great a legacy theres no license to harass or discriminate. In fact it makes it even more disappointing.

When asked about the harassment allegations on the radio show on Tuesday, Conyers said: Whatever they are, they are not accurate. They are not true. I think they are something that I cant explain where they came from.

Earlier in November, BuzzFeed News reported that the Congressman had paid a $27,000 settlement to a former employee who had accused him of sexual harassment.The longtime Democrat has admitted to paying the settlement, but denies sexually harassing anyone. Last week, his accuser went against the terms of a non-disclosure agreement and broke her silence about the allegations. Some of the things that he did ? it was sexual harassment, violating my body  propositioning me for sex, Conyers former staff member Marion Brown said on NBCs Today. He has touched me in different ways and it was very uncomfortable and very unprofessional.

Others have also accused the Congressman of sexual harassment, including an ethics attorney who told the Washington Post he once summoned her to his office wearing only underwear. I was pretty taken aback to see my boss half-dressed, said Melanie Sloan. I turned on my heel and I left.

The allegations against Conyers have come at a moment of reckoning for the United States Congress. Congressional leadership has taken steps to show that they are taking the issue seriously, most recently mandating that every member and their staff undergo regular anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training. A bipartisan bill that would change the way complaints are handled has been introduced in both Houses. And a hearing on reforms has been scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 7.

Yet while allegations of sexual harassment have taken down celebrities, media executives, and others, members of Congress have not been similarly forced out. In an interview with TIME, Rep. Jackie Speier, who has introduced the Me Too Congress Act, said that should change. When CEOs are fired because theyve sexually harassed an employee, the board of directors doesnt say, well, well leave it until the shareholders meeting,' she said. They take action and weve got to do the same thing.

Conyers is currently being hospitalized in Detroit and spoke to the Mildred Gaddis Show from an undisclosed hospital. When asked if information about sexual harassment settlements that have paid by other members offices should be made public, Conyers said: I think there should be a complete disclosure and revealing to all of the citizens of the country of what your federal legislators are doing or not doing.
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan on Wednesday rejected the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, calling it legally "null" because it consolidated Israel's occupation of the eastern sector of the contested city. Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told state news agency Petra that the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump violated long-standing U.N. Security Council resolutions that "stipulated the non-recognition of the Israeli occupation" of the city's eastern sector and the adjacent West Bank. The staunch U.S. ally considered "all unilateral moves that seek to create new facts on the ground as null and void", the spokesman added. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said later in a tweet that the move "frustrated" peace efforts, adding that the status of Jerusalem must be "determined in direct negotiations" between the Palestinians and Israelis. "Jordan rejects the decision and all its implications and will continue to work for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital," Safadi added. Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the 1967 war and says the city's fate should only be decided at the end of a final settlement. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of a future state. Israel regards Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. Jordan's King Abdullah warned of the repercussions of Trump's expected move in talks last week in Washington with top administration officials and warned of a backlash across the Middle East. The king's Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Jordan sensitive to any changes in the status of the city. A government source said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was due to hold talks with the monarch on Thursday in a stepped-up diplomatic offensive to counter Trump's plan. Several protests broke out in areas of Jordan's capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to Trump's announcement. Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city's outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan's government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. "Down with America. America is the mother of terror," they chanted. Jordanian deputies in a special parliamentary session on Wednesday condemned the move and urged the government to expel the U.S. ambassador and boycott U.S. goods. A dozen activists staged a sit-in near the gates of the U.S. embassy. Many people in Jordan are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. Jordan's powerful mainstream Islamist movement, the country's largest political party and opposition group, said it would stage several major rallies across the country in the next few days and after Friday prayers. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Peter Cooney)
If Gal Gadot should ever need a day off from acting, Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live would make one hilarious substitute.

Recalling her time with the Wonder Woman star on SNL this season, McKinnon busted out a spot-on impression of Gadot on The Tonight Show Tuesday night.

Everything she says is like a prophecy, McKinnon told host Jimmy Fallon. She then channeled the Israeli star to describe a day at the beach that sounds far more interesting than it normally would be.

Watch above.

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Actress Priyanka Chopra and Jimmy Fallon bob for apples on September 21, 2016.

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Host Jimmy Fallon as Sara and musician Miley Cyrus during the 'Ew!' sketch on September 19, 2016.

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Jimmy Fallon as Steve Harrington, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Millie Bobby Brown as Jane 'Eleven' Ives, and A.D. Miles as Barb during the 'Stranger Things' parody on August 31, 2016.

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Singer Meghan Trainor during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon on August 29, 2016.

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Actress Jennifer Lawrence and host Jimmy Fallon during the 'Come Dance with Us' sketch on November 18, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Singer Alanis Morissette, Singer Meghan Trainor, host Jimmy Fallon, and Chris Tartaro during the 'Chickeneers' sketch on November 3, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Kristen Wiig

Kristen Wiig and host Jimmy Fallon on April 29, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Gabrielle Union

Actress Gabrielle Union and host Jimmy Fallon during the 'Morning Announcements' sketch on October 12, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Personal trainer David Kirsch and comedian Dion Flynn during a 'Suggestion Box' sketch on January 20, 2016 -- (Photo by: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Kate Hudson

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Jimmy Fallon and Channing Tatum arm wrestle on June 6, 2014. (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Tina Fey during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon on March 3, 2014 -- (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Ray Romano

Actor Ray Romano and host Jimmy Fallon during Explain This Photo on January 15, 2016 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Actress Kristen Wiig during an interview with Jimmy Fallon on February 18, 2014 -- (Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Television personality Khloe Kardashian, actor Danny DeVito, host Jimmy Fallon, and actor Norman Reedus play Charades on January 13, 2016 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC)

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Actress Kirsten Dunst, Actor Will Smith, Tariq ?Black Thought? Trotter, and host Jimmy Fallon play Catchphrase. (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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Buenos Aires (AFP) - In the two years since she left office, fiery ex-president Cristina Kirchner has been hit by a series of legal setbacks that threaten to derail her promised political comeback and put her where her enemies say she belongs -- in jail.

The most serious legal blow came Thursday when a judge ordered her arrest for treason, for her role in covering up Iran's alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

The 64-year-old former president has dismissed all the charges against her as "political persecution" by the enemies she accumulated during the 12 years she dominated Argentine politics with her husband Nestor.

The key difference this time is that judge Claudio Bonadio also requested that she be stripped of her immunity.

The Senate will now have to consider the judge's request to vote on lifting her immunity, which requires a two-thirds majority.

The ex-president crowned her political comeback and theoretically made herself untouchable to prosecutors -- serving members can't be jailed if convicted -- when she won a Senate seat last month. The lower house is due to convene on December 10.

The former president is accused of a cover-up by signing a 2012 deal with Tehran to allow Iranian officials suspected of ordering the Buenos Aires bombing to be investigated in their own country rather than Argentina.

Nobody has been charged for the attack, which killed 85 people and injured some 300.

Kirchner is accused in a slew of other corruption cases stemming from her time as president. One involves a construction magnate friend, Lazaro Baez, whom she is accused of favoring for public contracts in Patagonia, her southern political bastion.

To her working-class base, Kirchner and her husband are saviors who salvaged Argentina after a 2001 economic crisis and stood up for the little guy.

To her generally better-off opponents, she is an uncompromising bully who steered the economy back into recession and embarrassed the country with nasty attacks against her favorite foes.

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They included the old Falklands War enemy Britain, big media conglomerates whose empires she sought to dismantle, and "vulture" fund capitalists who sued Argentina over its defaulted debt.

- Sidelined? -

Kirchner took office in 2007, vowing to continue the work started by her husband and predecessor.

Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) had inherited an economy in shambles after what was then the largest sovereign debt default in history.

But he turned it around thanks to booming demand for Argentine agricultural exports and his tough negotiations to restructure most of the country's $100 billion in privately held debt.

He and his wife were widely expected to continue their term-for-term tango, but he died of a heart attack in 2010.

Cristina Kirchner, a former senator and experienced politician in her own right, defended his legacy all the more combatively and won re-election in 2011.

She stood down in 2015 -- when term limits barred her from running again -- with an approval rating of more than 50 percent. But she failed to get her chosen successor elected.

Argentines voted for the center-right businessman Mauricio Macri instead.

Kirchner now accuses his camp of trumping up charges against her to sideline her from the political scene.

- Power couple -

Born in La Plata, near Buenos Aires, Kirchner met Nestor as a 20-year-old student and married him six months later.

They got their start in national politics in Santa Cruz province in Patagonia, where Nestor became governor and Cristina a senator.

Kirchner has sought to channel the legacy of Eva Peron, the adored first lady of the populist president Juan Peron in the 1940s and 50s.

But while many Argentines worship Evita, Kirchner's legacy is darker.

She also stands accused of ordering the central bank to sell dollar futures at artificially low prices, causing Argentina to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, some supporters already tout Kirchner as a presidential candidate for 2019.

Asked last year how he thought she would spend her post-presidential life, her former chief of staff Anibal Fernandez said she "won't just stay home picking roses or taking care of the grandkids."

Kirchner has two children: Maximo, a congressman, and Florencia, who are co-defendants in one of her corruption trials.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under a month-long crisis triggered when he announced from Riyadh that he was stepping down and remained outside Lebanon for weeks. His coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. Hariri's Saudi allies accuse Hezbollah of waging war across the Middle East as agents of Iran. Hariri's shock resignation had thrust Lebanon to the forefront of the regional quarrel between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has been played out on battlefields in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Lebanese officials said Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time Saudi ally, into resigning and put him under effective house arrest until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri have denied this. President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, refused to accept his resignation while he remained abroad. Saudi concern over the influence wielded by Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah in other Arab states had been widely seen as the root cause of the crisis, which raised fears for Lebanon's economic and political stability. The Lebanese policy of "dissociation" was declared in 2012 to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Despite the policy, Hezbollah is heavily involved there, sending thousands of fighters to help President Bashar al-Assad. In its first meeting since Hariri's resignation, the cabinet on Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to the policy. "All (the government's) political components decide to dissociate themselves from all conflicts, disputes, wars or the internal affairs of brother Arab countries, in order to preserve Lebanon's economic and political relations," Hariri said. PARIS MEETING Lebanon, where Sunni Muslim, Shi'ite, Christian and Druze groups fought a civil war from 1975-1990, has a governing system designed to share power among sectarian groups. Hariri, a wealthy Sunni businessman with long ties to the kingdom, had denounced Iran during his resignation speech and said he was outside Lebanon because he feared for his family's safety. His father, an ex-prime minister, was assassinated in 2005. In a speech during the cabinet session, Hariri warned that the tensions in the region could easily drag Lebanon down a dangerous route, and the issues which had led to the crisis could not be ignored. "Developments in the region suggest a new wave of conflict ... Perhaps the conflict is nearing the end, and Lebanon cannot be plunged into chaos on the finish line. "If we are rejecting interference by any state in Lebanese affairs, it cannot be that we accept that any Lebanese side interferes in the affairs of Arab states," Hariri said, an apparent reference to Hezbollah. "We have to address this issue, and take a decision announcing our disassociation, in words and deeds," he said. Hariri's resignation was accompanied by a sharp escalation in Saudi statements targeting the Lebanese state, with Riyadh at one point accusing the Beirut government of declaring war against it. Western governments, including the United States, stressed their support for Hariri and Lebanon. Hariri will be in Paris on Friday for a 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. The meeting, to be opened by French President Emmanuel Macron, aims in part to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran to desist from interference in Lebanon, diplomats said. (This version of the story re-inserts the word "not" in paragraph 13) (Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Ellen Francis in Beirut, John Irish in Paris; editing by Mark Heinrich, Larry King)
LAMA DI RENO (Italy) (AFP) - From forced labour in Libya to a job as a founding member of an Italian fashion start-up, Bassirou has come a long way in two years, thanks to his skills with scissors.

The 26-year-old Burkina Faso native is the star student of a novel project aimed at training asylum seekers in one of Italy's most emblematic crafts: making leather handbags

And after a 15-month apprenticeship, Bassirou has just become the first employee of a small company set up with the aim of turning the project into a self-sustaining venture.

"It is a great opportunity," he says of his new career move. "I had done a bit of cutting and sewing back home but that was with cloth, not leather.

"It wasn't easy at the start, every little thing seemed difficult, but after a certain point, you get the hang of it."

Bassirou left Burkina Faso in west Africa, and a partner then pregnant with his now two-year-old daughter, in 2015.

He says he fled because he feared for his life in the tumultuous aftermath of yet another military coup in the impoverished former French colony.

Now he is awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Italy and is one of some 400 recently-arrived immigrants being looked after by Lai-Momo, a social cooperative that runs the EU-funded leather skills project in the small town of Lama Di Reno near Bologna.

The decision to leave home was not an easy one, Bassirou says, and it is one he might have reconsidered had he known of the horrors that awaited him in Libya, the jumping off point for most Africans trying to get to Europe.

- 'It's slavery' -

Shocking recent images of slave auctions in the troubled north African state came as no surprise.

"These are things that are really happening in Libya," Bassirou told AFPTV.

"I had a bit of a taste of it. They put us in a prison. At any time they could come and get us to do forced labour, all sorts of jobs. They never gave us enough to eat.

Story continues

"All that, it's slavery," he said.

Bassirou endured these conditions for four months before the traffickers controlling his fate finally put him onto an inflatable dinghy packed with over 100 others.

After many fraught hours at sea, mostly spent praying it would not sink, the overcrowded dinghy was spotted by a British ship.

"At the moment we were rescued there was a bit of a stampede to get off and the boat started taking on water. In the end they got everyone off."

The date, March 20, 2016, is etched permanently in his memory. "These are things you don't forget easily," he says.

Now he dreams of being able to open his own shop, but the future path of his life remains uncertain, as is the case for tens of thousands like him in overcrowded reception centres across Italy.

Few of them will benefit from the kind of support that has helped Bassirou pursue his education to Italian high school level, or the distraction from the stress that comes with living in limbo.

"Doing this (working), you are going to have positive rather than negative thoughts, you're thinking that when you're finished, you'll have a trade," he says.

- 'Return issue not easy' -

A total of 15 migrants have completed the first round of training and another 18 have just started, including Bassirou's compatriot, Issa.

The 21-year-old recounts a similar tale about his time in Libya. "I have friends who are still there in slave camps,"Issa says.

Having made it to Italy, he is now relieved to have escaped the frustrated boredom that is the lot of many asylum seekers.

"Before I came here, I was in another house, just sleeping all the time, doing nothing," he says.

"Now I feel much more relaxed. I have contact with (local) people and I'm beginning to learn the language."

Not all the apprentices can realistically aspire to the proficiency Bassirou has attained.

As some have limited literacy and numeracy, lessons in cutting have to be preceded by an introduction to basic concepts of measuring and geometry.

"The objective is to provide people with the ability and skills they need to enter the labour market here in Italy, but also in the event of a possible return to their country of origin," said Lai-Momo's president, Andrea Marchesini Reggiani.

The Lama Di Reno project is part of a wider programme overseen by the Ethical Fashion Initiative run by the United Nations and WTO-backed International Trade Centre with the aim of creating new economic opportunities in developing countries to help curb irregular migration.

People like Bassirou say going home is not an option they can contemplate, for now. And Marchesini Reggiani admits that the emphasis on voluntary repatriations can be problematic, given the risks, sacrifices and struggles involved in many migrants' journeys to Europe.

"For sure, it is not an easy thing to address the issue of return," he says. "For us the important thing is to give people skills. Whether they can use them here or whether they are refused the right to stay, they are being given an opportunity, let's say a plus.

"It is clear though that, after the journeys they have made, the ideal solution is to stay here and that's why we believe giving people the skills to work and integrate is so important."
Editor's note: This story contains details that may be disturbing for some readers. GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan -- McKayla Maroney had planned to be in a federal courtroom Thursday to deliver a victim-impact statement in open court in the case of Larry Nassar, the disgraced former doctor for Team USA who, Maroney says, sexually abused her for six years. Instead, Maroney's testimony will come in the form of letters written by her, which have been made public, and her mother, which were obtained by Outside the Lines, to the federal judge presiding over the case.
Tegucigalpa (AFP) - Thousands of supporters of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez marched on Thursday to back his claim of victory in a strangely drawn-out election that the opposition says was rigged.

But his leftwing rival, former TV president Salvador Nasralla, maintained he won the November 26 poll and is demanding a full recount supervised by foreign officials from the Organization of American States or the European Union.

Nasralla supporters blocked some access roads in the capital to press their candidate's case.

The country's electoral authority has still not declared a winner, even though the final count was given as 42.98 percent for Hernandez and 41.38 percent for Nasralla. It says it is waiting to see if any appeals are lodged before the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the small Central American nation of 10 million remains under a state of emergency to quell anti-Hernandez protests that turned violent, with at least one death reported.

Police who briefly refused to enforce the state of emergency's nighttime curfew are back on the job after a one-day strike that finished Tuesday. But they say they won't repress legitimate protesters demonstrating against Hernandez.

- Poll irregularities -

"Four more years," yelled some of the supporters backing the president in Tegucigalpa. Media estimates put the crowd size at 10,000 people.

Some said they wanted Hernandez, 49, to get another term because they saw him as being tough on gangs that are rampant in the country, and because he somewhat rolled back the crime rate.

Hernandez addressed the supporters, telling them he wanted to see "healing" after the election.

International observers have expressed reservations over the poll, which the Organization for American States said was marred by irregularities that cloud the results.

Returns from 1,000 polling stations have been recounted, but that falls far short of the opposition's initial demand for a recount of ballots from at least 5,100 polling stations, later upped to include results from all 18,000 polling stations.

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Nasralla, 64, who refuses to recognize the current results, told his supporters that "we want to save Honduras from tyranny."

- US travel warning -

Hernandez's re-election bid was made amid controversy. He and his conservative National Party argued that a Supreme Court ruling in 2015 allowed him to stand again -- despite a constitutional ban on more than one term for presidents.

He had implicit backing from the United States, however, which is pouring millions of dollars into Honduras and neighboring Guatemala and El Salvador to improve security conditions there. Those three countries -- collectively known as Central America's Northern Triangle -- are the biggest source of undocumented migrants heading to the United States.

The US State Department previously said it was monitoring the situation in Honduras very closely.

On Wednesday, it also issued an alert to US citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the country, citing "volatile and dangerous" demonstrations, rioting and looting in the wake of the election.
(WASHINGTON)  A whistleblower has told House Democrats that during President Donald Trumps inauguration speech, national security adviser Michael Flynn texted a former business associate to say a private nuclear reactor plan Flynn had lobbied for would also have his support in the White House.

As the whistleblower chatted with Flynns associate at an Inauguration Day celebration on Jan. 20, Flynn sent text messages saying the associates nuclear proposal was good to go, the whistleblower said. According to the whistleblower, Flynn also informed the associate that his business partners could move forward with their project, which aimed to construct a network of nuclear reactors across the Mideast with support from Russian and other international interests.

While Flynns agreement last week to plead guilty and cooperate with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation largely insulates the retired lieutenant general from further legal jeopardy, the whistleblowers allegations raise new concerns about the extent to which Flynn may have blurred his private and public interests during his brief stint inside the White House. Trump fired Flynn in February, saying he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russias ambassador to the U.S.

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday that the whistleblowers allegations raise concerns that Flynn improperly aided the nuclear project after joining the White House as one of Trumps top national security officials. The project has yet to get off the ground.

Cummings detailed the whistleblowers allegations in a letter to House Oversight chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, and urged Gowdy to authorize subpoenas to Flynn and his business associates to learn more about his efforts to aid the proposal. Gowdy did not immediately respond to Associated Press requests for comment but previously has referred letters from House Democrats about Flynn to Muellers inquiry.

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Flynn had been a paid consultant for the venture before he joined the Trump campaign last year. The plan, backed by a group of investors, nuclear power adherents and former U.S. military officers, was to construct dozens of nuclear reactors across the Mideast working with Russian and other international private interests.

House Democrats noted that a federal ethics law requires White House officials to refrain for a year from dealing with any outside interests they had previously worked with on private business matters.

Our committee has credible allegations that President Trumps national security adviser sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners, Cummings said.

The whistleblower told House Democrats that while Trump spoke in January, Flynn texted from his seat on the Capitol steps to Alex Copson, the managing director of ACU Strategic Partners and the nuclear projects main promoter. The whistleblower, whose identity was not revealed in Cummings letter, said during a conversation, Copson described his messages with Flynn and briefly flashed one of the texts, which appeared to have been sent 10 minutes after Trump began speaking.

Mike has been putting everything in place for us, Copson said, according to the whistleblower. Copson added that this is going to make a lot of very wealthy people. The whistleblower also said that Copson intimated that U.S. financial sanctions hobbling the nuclear project were going to be ripped up.

Attorneys for Flynn and Copson did not immediately return email and phone requests for comment.

In Flynns agreement last week to plead guilty to one count of making false statements, prosecutors said that Flynn lied to FBI agents about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition.

Copson had promoted a succession of nuclear projects designed to include Russian participation dating back to the 1990s. In an earlier note to the committee, Copson said his firm had provided Flynn with a $25,000 check  left uncashed  and paid for Flynns June 2015 trip to the Mideast as a security consultant for the project.

Flynns financial disclosure did not cite those payments, but he did report that until December 2016, he worked as an adviser to two other companies that partnered with Copsons firm. That consortium, X-Co Dynamics Inc. and Iron Bridge Group, initially worked with ACU but later pushed a separate nuclear proposal for the Mideast.
Mohamed Hadid, the Palestinian father of two supermodels, used Instagram on Wednesdayto express his distress over PresidentDonald Trumps controversial decision torecognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Hadid, father of models Bella and Gigi, was born in Nazareth during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War andfled to Syria with his familywhen he was 18 months old. Hadid, now a Los Angeles real estate developer, denounced Trumps decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Hadid shared a photo of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The saddest day of my life as an American-Palestinian .. and to all the Palestinians that have endured the Israeli occupation of our fathers and great grandfathers Land, Hadid wrote on Instagram. Now Mr president Trump with a simple signature gave with no return Our beloved holy land Jerusalem to the Israelis as their capital.

Jerusalem has been under Israels control since 1967, despite both Israelis and Palestinians claiming it as their own.

A post shared by Mohamedhadid (@mohamedhadid)on Dec 6, 2017 at 10:25am PST

Most countries of the United Nations have recognized Jerusalem as an international city and holy site. Previous U.S. policy regarding the dispute over the city has been to let Israeli and Palestinian leaders negotiate between themselves.

World leaders such as Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macronhave condemned Trumps breakfrom decades of international consensus.

The Hadid family has been open in sharing theirPalestinian and Muslim rootsin interviews andon social media. Hadid often shares his story through photos on Instagram. With his account of how his family fled, he included the photo they presented for a Palestinian refugee card.

Gigi Hadid posed for thevery first cover of Vogue Arabia this year, quicklyfollowed by her sister Bella. Bella has spoken about how her fathers refugee status has influenced her to protest Trump in interviews.

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I come from a really diverse background. Ive had incredible experiences all over the world ... and Ive learned that were all just people, and we all deserve respect and kindness,Bella told Elle in February.We shouldnt treat people as if they dont deserve kindness just because of their ethnicities. Its just not right. And that message  to be compassionate whenever possible  thats so important to me.

A post shared by Mohamedhadid (@mohamedhadid)on Dec 19, 2015 at 4:15pm PST

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Actress Naya Rivera and husband Ryan Dorsey are calling it quits for the second time.

The Glee star re-filed for divorce on Tuesday, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason behind the split, according to documents obtained byThe Blast. She is asking for joint legal and physical custody of the couples 2-year-old son, Josey, and requested that the court not grant spousal support to either party.

Rivera lists the couples separation date as Nov. 24. The day before, the actress wasarrested and charged with misdemeanor batteryfollowing an altercation with Dorsey. He says the she struck him on the lip and head in front of their son during an outing in West Virginia.

According to a police report, deputies said they noticed minor injuries consistent with his statement. Rivera was arraigned in court and later released on a $1,000 bond.

A post shared by Naya Rivera (@nayarivera)on Oct 3, 2017 at 10:32pm PDT

A post shared by Naya Rivera (@nayarivera)on Aug 26, 2014 at 10:15pm PDT

This is a difficult time for everyone in the family especially for Naya and I, Dorsey shared on Twitter after the incident. This isnt some reality show, this is our life, and I ask that everyone especially the media please respect our privacy and treat us/this situation how you would want a loved one to be treated.

Rivera has yet to publicly comment on the matter. A rep for the actress did not immediately return a request for comment.

Naya Rivera and Ryan Dorsey pictured together in July 2016.

The two somewhat unexpectedly tied the knotin 2014 just months after Riveras engagement to rapper Big Sean ended. More than a year later, the couple welcomed their son together.

The Sorry Not Sorry author thenfiled for divorce in November 2016and released a joint statement with Dorsey emphasizing their commitment to continue to be great co-parenting partners.

The pair officially reconciled in October 2017, with Rivera filing a request for dismissal of the divorce paperwork.

It is what it is, but Im glad that my family is together, she told People at the time. [It was] a personal decision.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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
A US Air Force B-1B Lancer bomber, the same type which will fly over the Korean peninsula on Wednesday: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Jacob Skovo/Handout via REUTERS

American bombers will fly over the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday, according to South Koreas Yonhap news agency, a move likely to antagonise North Korea.

Pyongyang has regularly denounced joint military drills between the United States and South Korea as acts of aggression, characterising them as preludes to an invasion.

North Korea warned that a mass air force drill this week would push the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Just as this is not the first time North Korea has threatened retaliation for military exercises, it's not unique for America to deploy sophisticated aircraft amid North Korean belligerence.

Earlier this summer, with Pyongyang vowing to destroy the US territory of Guam after Donald Trump threatened North Korea with fire and fury, B1-Bs conducted joint drills with Japan in airspace near the Korean peninsula.

The latest assertion of military might contrasts with a diplomatic effort unfolding on the Korean Peninsula this week, as United Nations envoy Jeffrey Feltman pays a rare visit to the increasingly isolated nation.

Mr Feltmans visit follows North Koreas latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The projectile soared higher than any previous attempt, according to military experts, before crashing into the sea near Japan.

North Korea claimed it now has the power to strike anywhere in the United States.

Global condemnation followed, with Trump administration officials reiterating that they were prepared to take military action if diplomacy failed.

After urging other nations to sever all ties with North Korea, Americas ambassador to the United Nations, Hikki Haley, warned that the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed in the event of war.

China, seen as crucial to dampening the Korean threat because of its geographic proximity and trading ties with the North, has discouraged such bellicose talk, saying both sides are increasing the risk of conflict.

Chinese officials have urged America to suspend joint military drills as a condition of a peace deal.
By Soyoung Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - Large military drills being carried out by the United States and South Korea and U.S. threats of a preemptive war against Pyongyang have made the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula "an established fact", North Korea's foreign ministry said.

A spokesman for the North's foreign ministry also blamed "confrontational warmongering" remarks by U.S. officials for pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.

"The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?" the spokesman said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency.

"We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it," he said.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Korea's latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of international pressure and United Nations resolutions.

North Korea said last week it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, which was capable of reaching the United States.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the weekend the possibility of war with North Korea was "increasing every day".

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving U.S. military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close.

On Wednesday, a U.S. B-1B bomber joined the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which are called "Vigilant Ace" and will run until Friday.

North Korea, which regularly threatens South Korea, the United States and their allies, has denounced the exercises.

"Recently, as the U.S. is conducting the largest-ever joint aerial drill on the Korean peninsula targeting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its high-level politicians are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said, using North Korea's official name.

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"These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula," he said.

The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Guk met Feltman in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Wednesday and discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, KCNA said.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim in Seoul; Editing by James Dalgleish and Paul Tait)
Tegucigalpa (AFP) - Supporters of President Juan Orlando Hernandez were preparing for a public show of support Thursday, as his rival Salvador Nasralla called for foreign help in a presidential vote recount amid widespread claims of rigging.

The Central American nation of 10 million has plunged into uncertainty punctuated with clashes since the November 26 election pitting Hernandez against leftwing former TV presenter Nasralla, with both sides claiming victory.

Hernandez ordered a state of emergency on Friday to curb protests and pillaging, but at least three deaths have been reported in clashes since election day.

The president said he welcomed an opposition demand to re-open ballot boxes.

However the opposition has not filed a formal request -- and Nasralla on Wednesday, showing deep mistrust for local authorities, called on international observers to carry out the review.

Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and five other Latin American countries said they would support the review. In a joint statement they urged Hondurans to "peacefully await" the results.

In the first hours after the late November vote Nasralla seemed heading for a comfortable win.

But then ballot counting was delayed multiple times, with election authorities speaking of computer malfunctions, before results trickled out that credited Hernandez with a slight lead.

The Supreme Electoral Authority said Hernandez won 42.98 percent, against 41.39 percent for Nasralla -- but refused to name a winner, saying appeals might challenge the result.

After days of unrest the capital Tegucigalpa was slowly returning to normal, with schools and universities opening their doors again on Wednesday.

Clashes however may break out when the president's supporters march Thursday in support of his re-election, a demonstration that follows days of anti-government protests.

A violinist in a threadbare suit playing Christmas music in the busy downtown area had a strong opinion about the election.

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"Everyone knows that there was fraud," he said, complaining that the Electoral Authority "has the country upside down."

For activist Carmen Castro the result was simple: "We're the laughingstock of the world," she said.

Hernandez's authority appeared fragile as hundreds of police officers refused to enforce a nighttime curfew late Monday. Officers returned to work Tuesday on condition that the government would not force them to repress protesters.
Paris (AFP) - Donald Trump's decision Wednesday to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital has drawn sharp criticism, with the significant exception of Israel.

Here are key reactions from around the world:

- Israel salutes 'historic' day -

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's recognition as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision".

Netanyahu also pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

- 'Undermining peace' -

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the US could no longer play the role of peace broker after Trump's decision.

"These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts," Abbas said in a speech.

- 'Destroys two-state solution' -

The secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said Trump had destroyed any hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"He destroyed the two-state solution," Saeb Erekat, who long served as the Palestinians' top negotiator, told journalists.

- 'Open gates of hell' -

Hamas said Trump's decision would "open the gates of hell" on US interests in the region.

"This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region," Ismail Radwan, an official with the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, told journalists.

- 'New intifada' -

Iran condemned the US move, saying it threatened a "new intifada", or uprising, against Israel.

"The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," the foreign ministry said on its website.

- UN against 'unilateral measures' -

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres implicitly criticised Trump's announcement, warning that Jerusalem's status must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

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"From day one as secretary general of the United-Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardise the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said.

- 'Palestinian cause' -

The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed Trump's move, saying in a statement it would not dim the "Palestinian cause".

"The future of Jerusalem is not set by a state or a president, but by its history, will, and the determination of those loyal to the Palestinian cause which will stay alive in the conscience of the Arab homeland until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," it said.

- 'Rejected by Arab world' -

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed his country's "highest degrees of solidarity with the Palestinian people and its right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".

"The American decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the embassy there is a step that is rejected by the Arab world and risks spilling dangers over into the region," he said.

- 'Violation of international law' -

Jordan condemned Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as amounting to a violation of international law and the UN charter.

"The decision of the American president to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of the US embassy to this city constitutes a violation of decisions of international law and the United Nations charter," said government spokesman Mohammed Momani.

- 'Irresponsible, illegal' -

Turkey slammed Trump's Jerusalem announcement.

"We condemn the irresponsible statement of the US administration... the decision is against international law and relevant UN resolutions," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter.

- 'Unhelpful for peace' -

Prime Minister Theresa May said the British government disagreed with Trump's decision, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts.

"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement. "We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region".

- 'Avoid violence' -

French President Emmanuel Macron branded Trump's stance as "regrettable" and called for efforts to "avoid violence at all costs".

Macron affirmed "the attachment of France and Europe to the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states."

- Merkel 'does not support' -

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said through her spokesman that she "does not support" Trump's reversal of decades of US policy.

"The status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter.

- 'Serious concern' -

The European Union's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced "serious concern" at Trump's new stance on Jerusalem.

"The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states," Mogherini said, referring to Israelis and Palestinians.
The growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers calling on Sen. Al Franken to step down Wednesday opened up a dramatic partisan divide in how the two major parties are responding to their members and candidates accused of sexual harassment or abuse.

By the days end, 30 lawmakers  and well over half the Democratic Senate Caucus  had weighed in to say that Franken should resign. The comedian turned senator from Minnesota announced hed hold a press conference Thursday morning and was widely expected to announce he was leaving his seat.

The pressure on Franken to step aside has an element of political calculation, as Democrats seek to create a contrast with support by President Trump and the Republican National Committee for Alabamas Roy Moore, who has refused to give up his bid for the Senate despite allegations by numerous women that he sexually pursued or even molested them when they were in their teens. But its also because Democratic and independent voters take seriously sexual harassment accusations while Republican voters, according to surveys, are more skeptical of their importance.

A Quinnipiac survey released Tuesday found a 26-point gap between the parties on this issue. Asked if an elected official should resign if accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault by multiple people, 77 percent of registered Democrats but only 51 percent of registered Republicans (and 60 percent of independents) said yes.

That gap in part reflects the gender gap in party identification. Women are more likely to be Democrats, and Quinnipiac found that 74 percent of women but only 54 percent of men say that elected officials accused by multiple women should step down.

Eight women have accused Sen. Al Franken of groping or trying to cadge unwanted kisses. Multiple women also accused Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., of pressuring them for sexual favors in the workplace and work-related settings. Conyers, the only member of the House of Representatives whose tenure dates back to the 1960s, on Tuesday became the first federally elected official to step down in the recent wave of allegations. Freshman Rep. Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, a protege of former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, also has been accused of harassing his 25-year-old campaign finance director; despite calls from Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to step aside, hes indicated he has no plans to resign.

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Senate candidate Roy Moore kisses his wife, Kayla Moore, after he speaks at a campaign rally this week in Fairhope, Ala. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)

Franken is entitled to the Senate ethics investigation process, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told reporters Wednesday, kicking off the days cascade of calls for his resignation from senators, but it would be better for the country for him to offer that clear message that he values women, that we value women, and that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.

Congress itself as an institution was, she said, ill-equipped to do the kind of accountability the American people are searching for.

Public service demands higher standards  standards we choose to live by the moment we enter public life, said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the third-ranking Democratic leader in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Moore pressed on with his campaign, this week drawing the robust support of Donald Trump and the renewed support of the Republican National Committee, which had cut ties to him after the charges first surfaced. The president made that decision and he decided it was better to have somebody support his agenda than a Democrat that doesnt, said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Tuesday, explaining Trumps reasoning.

A CBS News poll in the state found 71 percent of Republicans believed the allegations against Moore were false, with most blaming them on Democrats and the media. Alabama Republican supporters of Moore also backed Trump, who has himself been accused of unwanted sexual advances or assault by multiple women, at the rate of 96 percent.

And in the House, Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold, who reached an $84,000 settlement with former staffer Lauren Greene after she filed a sexual harassment and discrimination complaint in 2014, shows no signs of going anywhere. His now 30-year-old accuser, in contrast, has lost her job and is working $15 an hour temporary gigs and babysitting to meet ends meet.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., speaks to the media last month on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have spoken out on the issue before today. I had hoped that Judge Moore would resign, in other words, withdraw from the race. That obviously is not going to happen. If he were to be elected, I think he would immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday. Earlier he had suggested the Senate might not seat Moore, should he win.

In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan announced mandatory sexual harassment training for staffers and members in mid-November, not only to raise awareness, but also make abundantly clear that harassment in any form has no place in this institution. The Senate passed a resolution in early November mandating the same training for all members, staffers and interns. Rep. Jackie Speier and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have introduced legislation seeking to overhaul how harassment complaints are handled.

After first calling him an icon, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi changed her mind and called on Conyers to resign. No matter how great the legacy, it is no license to harass or discriminate, she said after he stepped down.

Read more from Yahoo News:
One of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history was caused by aftershocks of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and its still being debated today.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese military forces attacked the United States base in Hawaii without warning. More than 2,000 Americans died in the attack, and a united Congress answered President Franklin Roosevelts request for war.

In early 1942, President Roosevelt issued Presidential Executive Order 9066, after fears generated by the Japanese attack made the safety of America's West Coast a priority.

The order started a process that gave the military power to exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry from regions called military areas.

Under another provision, called Exclusion Order No. 34, a Japanese-American citizen named Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was arrested for going into hiding in Northern California after refusing to go to an internment camp.

There were 10 camps set up nationally, and about 120,000 people were interned in the camps during the war. About two-thirds of them were Japanese-Americans who were born in the United States.

Korematsu appealed his conviction through the legal system, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in late 1944. The court had heard a similar case in 1943, Hirabayashi v. United States, and decided that Gordon Hirabayashi, a college student, was guilty of violating a curfew order.

The Korematsu v. U.S. case in 1944 decision referenced the Hirabayashi case, but it also ruled on the ability of the military, in times of war, to exclude and intern minority groups.

The court ruled by a 6 to 3 vote that the government had the power to arrest and intern Korematsu. Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, included a paragraph that is still debated today:

It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can, Black said.

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Later in the decision, Black argued the necessity of the militarys decision.

Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, he said.

In subsequent years, the American internment policy has been met with harsh criticism.

One 1948 law provided reimbursement for property losses incurred by interned Japanese-Americans. In 1988, Congress awarded restitution payments of $20,000 to each survivor of the 10 camps.

As part of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Congress apologized "on behalf of the people of the United States for the evacuation, relocation, and internment of such citizens and permanent resident aliens."

President Bill Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Korematsu in 1998, and President Barack Obama bestowed the same honor on Hirabayashi in 2012. During the 1999 ceremony, Clinton said, "In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls--Plessy, Brown, Parks. To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."

President Obama has awarded the medal posthumously to Hirabayashi. Federal courts also overturned the original convictions of Hirabayashi and Korematsu.
Surprise, surprise, Piers Morgan has rubbed Good Morning Britain viewers up the wrong way again.

This time, the outspoken television presenter has ruffled the publics feathers over the way he addressed Ariel Olivar, a Texas-based cheerleader on the show to talk about The Invisible Box Challenge (#InvisibleBoxChallenge).

For anyone not in-the-know, The Invisible Box Challenge is the latest internet craze whereby people, through the power of their leg strength and pure skill, look like theyre stepping over an invisible box.

Heres a video to better explain it

In awe, co-host Susanna Reid even asked Ariel, How strong are your legs?

But Piers, as usual, wasnt having any of it.

I mean, I do cross fit and cheer so I guess pretty strong, the youngster replied, before Morgan butted in with, What is the point of this other than making people look ridiculous?

The atmosphere swiftly changed, as Ariel look visibly uncomfortable with the comment, before Susanna came to the rescue. Its a bit of fun Piers, she intervened.

Piers Morgan is known for his inflammatory comments on GMB and social media. (Credit: ITV)

And, as she so often does, Susanna continued to hit back at Piers. Theres no technique other than a very strong, powerful woman.

The pair are known for their on-air spats and love-hate relationship, which makes them so interesting to watch.

Suffice to say Twitter wasnt happy with Piers behaviour

Memo to @piersmorgan on @GMB The Invisible Box challenge is just a bit of fun unlike you Piers, you are more miserable than The Grinch on a wet Wednesday  The Christmas Robin (@RobinDiNero2) December 6, 2017

Piers Morgan on this morning asking what the point is in this invisible box is like my inner self asking what the point in life is  Palpy (@PomegranateO_o) December 6, 2017

@piersmorgan give the invisible box girl a break.  Jason Robinson (@JasonR400) December 6, 2017

I never watch morning TV and @piersmorgan you are the reason why! You have given me a headache already.Everyone has the right to an opinion. Pipe down its Christmas you Scrooge bag and you just look a fool! Also. So rude speaking over someone.  NickolaAnn (@MinnieMarnell) December 6, 2017

As usual, Morgan enjoyed the backlash, before moving swiftly on to talking about model and actor Emily Ratajkowskis latest feminist video for Love magazine  which he wholeheartedly criticised.

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Follow Yahoo Celeb UK on Twitter and Instagram for all of the latest celebrity news!

Read more:

[ Rita Ora causes a stir after date night tweet with Connor McGregor ]

[ Im A Celeb: Iain Lee reveals the tragic real reason hes in the jungle ]

[ Reggie Yates parts ways with BBC after anti-Semitic comment ]




Washington (AFP) - Qualcomm chief executive Steve Mollenkopf on Thursday reaffirmed his opposition to a hostile takeover bid from computer chip rival Broadcom, saying the deal offers "no real path to value."

The comments came days after Singapore-based Broadcom escalated its efforts on a $130 billion bid by proposing a slate of directors to unseat the Qualcomm board of directors.

Mollenkopf, speaking at an event hosted by The Economic Club of Washington, said that "we always have discussions" on potential tie-ups but that Qualcomm's future is well-positioned as an independent company.

He added that "we didn't think the offer was in the ballpark of value," and that "there is a lot of uncertainty" on whether the merger -- which would be the largest ever in the technology sector -- could pass regulatory muster.

"There's no real path to value that we see in terms of offers now in terms of an alternative" to remaining independent, he said.

Mollenkopf maintained that Qualcomm, the leading global supplier of smartphone chips, is well-positioned for emerging technologies for connected devices and 5G, or the fifth generation of wireless networks.

"We're probably the best positioned company for 5G and the connected world," he said.

He noted that the company is "in a momentary spot where our revenue is a little difficult to model" because of a series of legal disputes, including with Apple, but predicted that "those will get resolved."

Mollenkopf also said he expects Qualcomm to finalize later the year or early in 2018 a $47 billion acquisition of Dutch rival NXP, a deal that is the subject of a European Union anti-trust probe.

Broadcom's announcement on Monday sets the stage for a fight at the Qualcomm shareholder's meeting in March, by proposing a slate of directors likely to press for the merger or replace management.

If completed the deal would be the largest-ever in the tech sector and create a powerful player in the booming sector fueled by growth in smartphones and an array of connected devices from cars to wearables.

Any merger deal would need to pass muster with Qualcomm shareholders and could face regulatory scrutiny in the United States and other markets.

Broadcom's November 6 proposal followed a visit by its CEO Hock Tan to the White House, where he met President Donald Trump and announced plans to move the tech company back to the United States from Singapore.
Warning: This recap of the Chapter Twenty-One: House of the Devil episode of Riverdale contains spoilers.

Biker gangs are weird. One minute you and your fellow biker gang members are wearing your cutest matching leather jackets and riding your motor-bicycles around town instilling fear in the middle-class neighborhoods on the correct side of the tracks, the next youre at your favorite sleazy biker joint watching teenagers sing karaoke at your retirement party. Where does the time go? Nobody ever said that a lifetime spent in a biker gang was the best option, but sometimes you just gotta do you.

Chapter Twenty-One: House of the Devil was an odd episode, both compelling and slightly maddening. The main point of it seemed to be getting BOTH main couples to break up, and in both cases the breakups didnt make much sense. But what this episode lacked in logic it made up for in Archie stepping out of the shower! In other words, Riverdale remains great. Lets talk about it!

We began in the worlds scariest biker bar, which now doubled as a cozy writing nook.

Jughead was still working on his great American novel, and this week the novel involved Edgar Allan Poe allusions to explain why Jugheads friends had started doing tons of sin and sex in order to take a stand against the Black Hood.

Specifically, Archie and Veronica could not stop taking their clothes off and touching foreheads and being a perfect couple that does sex while playing guitar.

Take THAT, you judgmental serial-sometimes-killer!

But then one night while they were rolling around nude on a bearskin rug, Archie had to go and make things weird. Yes, it was time for the whole I love you-spoken-too-soon plot line, and even though weve seen this one million times through the centuries, I cant help it  it was still fun and heartache-y to behold.

As you can imagine, not only did Veronica NOT say I love you back to him, but her refusal to say it turned what had been a white-hot situation into something as cold as the Arctic. White cold. They both noticed the slight and attempted to pretend that it hadnt happened, but for the rest of the episode they both stressed about what it all meant. Nothing! But also everything. Ugh, feelings are horrible.

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And then for reasons that werent totally clear, Betty and Jughead tagged OUT of investigating the Black Hood and straight-up requested that Archie and Veronica take over for a bit. Looking at old files, stalking through abandoned homes It was their turn to freak themselves out. But since Archie and Veronica needed a diversion from their Do we love each other? journey, they agreed!

I am not sure if Cheryl is just trying to be a loyal friend to the woman whod helped prevent her sexual assault, or if she is honestly horny and crushing on Josie, but this impromptu locker room shoulder rub was erotic and sensual and so, so weird. This guy knows what Im talking about:

Yes, after being featured VERY prominently in last weeks episode, the mysterious janitor was back in the mix. But who was he, and did he own green contact lenses? Stay tuned, folks.

Apparently, Veronicas parents and dozens of other prominent families had all received threatening letters from the Black Hood. This dude was officially ambitious as h*ck, but fortunately nobody seemed too bothered by it. In any other reality the Lodges would have responded by hiring a New York City hit man to take this dude out, but instead they kept living their mimosas-all-day existence. Also, their advice to Veronica to be safe involved just keeping Archie around a lot, which necessitated a cutaway for us to see what Archie was up to at that very moment:

He was up to important things!

Again, this episodes devotion to making sure we knew anytime Archie was stepping out of a shower or removing his top made it a good one by any definition. Anyway, here was another important moment, Archie receiving a text:

So yeah, Veronicas parents were very wise and cared deeply about their daughter, which was touching.

Oh, then Jugheads dad, Skeet Ulrich (as himself), got out of jail! Even though he had helped a man murder his son and then assisted in disposing of the body and then lied under oath about it, his time had been served. He was now a free man!

His first order of business was to eat brunch with Alice Cooper for some reason, then he went on a motor-bicycle ride with his son (in matching leather outfits), and then he went and got a job at Pops! And even though he looked incredible in his starched white apron, his son Jughead was embarrassed for his old man. But it sure beat whatever it was this lady was trying to sign him and Jughead up for:

Yeah, Skeet Ulrich was in the middle of quitting the South Side Serpents, so he needed to stay away from this snake ladys schemes. Pops it was!

Following last weeks tip that the Black Hood might be connected to the Riverdale Reaper, Archie and Veronica found themselves stalking through the same abandoned house Betty had been drawn to by the Black Hood a few episodes back. This was where a man murdered an entire family with a shotgun (which we saw in artfully edited flashbacks). Conveniently, this otherwise abandoned house contained a bunch of the original police files and newspaper clippings related to the incident, so Archie and Veronica barely had to do anything to discover that the murdered family had had another, surviving child, and that child was now the damn JANITOR at the high school. But dont worry, the janitor could not be the killer, due to the fact that his eyes were not candy-apple green. Also, just so were on the same page here, nobody  I mean, absolutely nobody  still suspects Sheriff Keller. He is simply having an affair with the mayor, and they both share an affinity for people behaving themselves. Hes definitely NOT the Black Hood  get real.

Then it was time for Skeet Ulrichs retirement party from the South Side Serpents, and if you were wondering whether retiring from a street gang was even a thing, yes its a thing, and its a lot like retiring from an office job. Your co-workers halfheartedly show up for happy hour, and maybe two teenagers attempt to sing Mad World from Donnie Darko before abruptly breaking up and running offstage. But at least Alice Cooper showed up in her best leather outfit and demanded tequila shots! What a lady.

Yeah, anyway, Archie and Veronica were both plagued by Veronicas inability to say I love you, and at least she had realized it was because she had never heard her parents say that phrase to each other. This had darker implications for her, but to Archies credit he simply retracted the line and apologized, and things shouldve been fine. But then I guess the lyrics to Mad World got Veronica all in her feelings, and she had no choice but to run away. If you can believe it, the dozens of gang members forced to watch this performance expressed their disapproval vocally! So it was up to Betty to take the stage and finish the song the only way she knew how.

By STRIPPING. OK, this was, um, strange. Earlier in the episode we learned that the girlfriends of South Side Serpents are supposed to prove their allegiance to the gang by jumping on the pole, so I guess Betty decided to do that here? It was honestly not a great moment for this show. I didnt really get it or understand this character choice at all. And I guess I wasnt alone!

As it turned out, Jughead was NOT happy to see his girlfriends impromptu striptease in front of his gang and also Bettys mother. Maybe he was even worried about her mental health at this point. Unclear!

Also, this was the moment when Skeet Ulrich decided to announce to the bar that he was NOT retiring after all. You know a retirement party is bad when by the end of it youre like, Nah, never mind. Anyway, Skeet Ulrich explained to Jughead that he couldnt retire anymore due to Jughead getting mixed up with Penny, and that this was all Jugheads fault. Harsh!

Then it was time for Riverdales annual Dump-Fiesta 2K17, and it began out behind the bar, where Veronica decided she had to dump Archie because  well, Im not exactly sure why. Because she liked him too much and her inability to say I love you meant she needed time apart from him? That is definitely a real-life problem we can all relate to.

Similarly, Jughead had to dump Betty because her striptease moment had led him to believe that his gang activities had been a bad influence on her. This I could sort of understand, as she had weirdly begun embracing a community hed been actively trying to escape from. But yeah. Both couples were dunzo, it seemed!

But as millions of Riverdale shippers would soon discover, when one ship sinks, another is, like, dredged up from the ocean floor and dragged to a nearby harbor by a tugboat.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, Archie and Betty were now sexily looking at each other through their bedroom windows again!

Uh-oh! This was too soon! But sometimes when your heart is confused, it wants a sure thing, and sometimes a sure thing lives right next door. Will they be getting together, or was this just Riverdales way of keeping us on our toes before the couples begin reassembling, T-1000 style? Its a good question.

Chapter Twenty-One: House of the Devil was a sometimes-clumsy operation, but it brought us both teen melodrama and extremely good Archie objectification, so at least it knew how to push all our buttons. And while it was nice getting a few more tidbits and info nuggets related to the Black Hood, I think were officially getting into OK, tell us who it is already territory. Because tell us who it is already! Is Sheriff Keller working alone or with the mayor? And how is his workout routine going  is he making progress? Please answer our questions, show! Also, sure, let us know how these couples are doing. Especially Josie and Cheryl. Rooting for them.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
As more allegations of sexual misconduct aimed at Sen. Al Franken continue to emerge, Democratic senators and officials came out in droves on Wednesday calling for their party colleague's resignation.

A group of seven female Democratic leaders seemingly led the charge on Wednesday morning with a series of statements released in succession. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was the first to publish a post on social media titled "Al Franken Should Resign."

"I have been shocked and disappointed to learn over the last few weeks that a colleague I am fond of personally has engaged in behavior towards women that is unacceptable," Gillibrand wrote. "Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them."

An avalanche of statements followed, with over 20 Democratic senators now calling on the Minnesota senator to step aside.

Click through to see the running list of the Democratic lawmakers calling for their Senate colleague's resignation:


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that North Korea wants direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security from Washington, Russian news agencies reported.

Lavrov said he had passed on Pyongyang's desire for direct talks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the two men met on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on Thursday, the agencies reported.

"We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations," Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.

"Our American colleagues, (including) Rex Tillerson, have heard this."

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn NIZHNY NOVGOROD/MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin confirmed Russia's worst kept political secret on Wednesday, saying he would run for re-election in March 2018 - a contest he seems sure to win comfortably and extend his grip on power into a third decade. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000, longer than veteran Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and outstripped only by dictator Josef Stalin. If he wins what would be a fourth presidential term, he will be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Backed by state TV, Putin regularly enjoys approval ratings of around 80 percent, and his decision to run for re-election -- which he announced at a car-making factory in the Volga river city of Nizhny Novgorod -- was widely expected. "I will put forward my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation," Putin said, in answer to a question from a factory worker who told the Russian leader that "everyone without exception" in the hall supported him. "There's no better place or opportunity to make this announcement," said Putin. "I'm sure that everything will work out for us." The workers then broke into a chant of "Russia!" Allies laud Putin as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow's global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. Critics accuse him of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine's Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is unlikely to be allowed to run against Putin due to what he says is a trumped up criminal conviction, said Putin was overstaying his welcome. "He wants to be in power for 21 years," Navalny wrote on social media. "To my mind, that's too long. I suggest we don't agree." Despite the Central Election Commission ruling him ineligible to stand, Navalny has organized mass protests and set up campaign headquarters across the country, hoping he can pressure the authorities into allowing him to stand. NO OBVIOUS SUCCESSOR The challenge for Putin though is not other candidates -- nobody, including Navalny, looks capable of unseating him. Instead, his toughest task will be to mobilize an electorate showing signs of apathy to ensure a high turnout which in the tightly-controlled limits of the Russian political system is seen as conferring legitimacy. Whilst next year's election in March is devoid of real suspense about who will win, what follows is more unpredictable as attention will turn to what happens after Putin's final term - under the current constitution - ends. There is no obvious successor. Many investors say the lack of a clear succession plan, and likely jockeying for position among Russian elites for dominance in the post-Putin era, is becoming the biggest political risk. Putin, once re-elected, will have to choose whether to leave Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, or to appoint someone else. That decision will trigger a round of intrigue over the succession, as whoever holds the prime minister's post is often viewed as the president's heir apparent. In the meantime, perhaps the Kremlin's biggest task will be to make it look as if Putin faces real electoral competition. In a move critics suspect is a Kremlin ploy to split the liberal opposition vote while injecting a patina of interest, TV celebrity Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin's political mentor, is standing against him, offering voters unhappy with his rule someone to back. A political ingenue, Sobchak has scant chance of winning. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied her candidacy is a Kremlin ploy. Sobchak said on Wednesday that Putin would probably win "as always," but that she still planned to run to represent people who wanted change. Otherwise, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, 73, and nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 71, - both political retreads - are likely to run. They are broadly supportive of the Kremlin's policies and have repeatedly run for president, behavior critics say is a ruse to create the illusion of genuine political choice. Putin draws much of his support from outside the two biggest cities -- Moscow and St Petersburg -- where many credit him with raising their living standards despite an economic crisis Russia is only now recovering from. State TV, where many Russians still get their news, affords Putin blanket and uncritical coverage while ignoring or denigrating his opponents. (Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Christian Lowe, Jack Stubbs and Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Christian Lowe and Richard Balmforth)
CAIRO (Reuters) - The kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Saudi Royal Court issued a statement saying that the kingdom followed "with deep sorrow" Trump's decision and warned of "dangerous consequences of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem". The statement also urged the U.S. administration to reverse its decision and adhere to international will. Saudi Arabia described the decision as an "unjustified and irresponsible step" and said it represents "a bias against rights of Palestinian people". Saudi Arabia also said the move represents "a big step back in efforts to advance the peace process" and said it was "a violation of the U.S. Neutral position regarding Jerusalem". (Reporting by Hesham Hajali; Editing by Sandra Maler)
DAKAR (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has pledged $100 million to a new regional military force battling jihadist groups in West Africa's Sahel region, force member Mali said on Monday. The contribution would be a major boost to the cash-strapped force and bring pledged commitments to more than half the roughly $500 million the G5 Sahel says it needs for its first year of operations. The G5 Sahel - composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - launched its first military campaign in October amid growing unrest in the Sahel, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State. Those groups have stepped up attacks on civilian and military targets, including tourist attractions in regional capitals, raising fears the zone will become a new breeding ground for militants. Mali's foreign ministry said Saudi Arabian authorities made the pledge during a visit to the kingdom late last month by Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop. Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Sunni Muslim kingdom is competing with its main rival, Shi'ite power Iran, for influence across West Africa and other parts of the Muslim world. Donors from both countries have given money to mosques and other causes there. France, the G5's most vocal foreign backer, has pressed Saudi Arabia to take concrete actions to fight Islamist militants. French President Emmanuel Macron asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to contribute to the G5 when he saw him in Riyadh last month. The European Union, France, the United States and each of the G5 countries have also promised to fund the force. (Reporting By Aaron Ross; Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump's choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a post that opened after John Kelly became Trump's chief of staff earlier this year. Senators voted 62-37 to confirm Kirstjen Nielsen, formerly Kelly's deputy in the White House and his chief of staff when he led DHS. She is considered a cyber security expert and previously served in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush. Nielsen, 45, will take the reins of a department with more than 240,000 employees responsible for immigration enforcement, U.S. border and airport security, disaster response, and protecting U.S. infrastructure from cyber attacks. The agency is at the center of Trump's efforts to enact broad changes to the U.S. immigration system. Elaine Duke, a civil servant and the DHS deputy secretary, had been serving as acting secretary since Kelly's departure for the White House in July. In the last five months she ha been responsible for several controversial DHS decisions, including the end of temporary protected status for thousands of immigrants living in the United States. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a DHS entity, came under criticism for its response to the humanitarian disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria when it struck Puerto Rico in September. In a statement, Duke said she looked forward to working as Nielsen's deputy, and said Nielsen has "a deep understanding of the issues facing the Department." Eleven Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans to confirm Nielsen. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander did not vote, and no Republicans voted against her confirmation. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, said in a statement that Nielsen would bring "the expertise and leadership needed to successfully run the Department." Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said in a statement that Nielsen had not yet shown "she has the ability to lead a workforce of 240,000 while keeping the country safe and secure," and said DHS had so far been used as a "political tool of the White House." (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Rick Cowan in WashingtonEditing by Sandra Maler)
Diass (Senegal) (AFP) - Senegal's president opened a flagship new airport on Thursday seen as the central plank of government plans to boost the economy and create a west African regional hub.

President Macky Sall toured the brand-new Blaise Diagne International Airport in the town of Diass, 47 kilometres (29 miles) from the capital of Dakar, while the first international flight arrived from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in the afternoon.

"Senegal is taking flight," Sall declared to an audience of dignitaries on the tarmac including the presidents of Gabon, The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, while supporters gathered in their thousands to celebrate the opening, banging drums and chanting slogans outside.

Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro ($767 million) airport under former president Abdoulaye Wade, but unforeseen problems and a change of construction company have repeatedly delayed the project and doubled anticipated costs.

Blaise Diagne -- named after the Senegalese MP who was the first African elected to France's parliament -- is at the heart of Sall's "Emerging Senegal" plan, which includes the construction of a new city, Diamniadio, close to the site in Diass.

The airport will be a key test of Senegal's economic fortunes as the president seeks re-election in 2019, and forms part of a suite of plans to relieve the congested capital with a recently constructed conference centre, housing and planned stadium.

As the country invests more heavily in tourism, Senegal is also betting on the facility's strategic position close to several beach resorts that are already heavily frequented by European holidaymakers.

The airport services at the site will contribute to the development of the special economic zone nearby, Sall said. "We need quality infrastructure which facilitates connectivity, creates jobs and contributes to economic transformation," the president explained.

With a capacity of three million passengers, Blaise Diagne will still rank far below the busiest African airports and a long way off challenging Nigeria in the west African region, though plans for up to 10 million travellers are in the pipeline, according to officials.

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- Uncertainty for new airline -

Passenger numbers have increased in recent years at Dakar's current airport in the middle of the city, leading to long waits at security and contributing to chronic traffic jams.

The Leopold Sedar Senghor airport will become a military airfield from Friday.

The new airport boasts six footbridges direct to flight cabins, and will be able to service a range of aircraft including Airbus's massive A380s.

Work was completed on the 4,500-hectare site -- with 2,000 hectares unused in case of required expansion -- by Turkish consortium Summa-Limak after a disagreement with Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden construction derailed the final stage of preparations.

Summa-Limak will operate the airport for the next 25 years, furthering ever-closer economic ties between Ankara and Dakar.

A train linking the airport with the city is not expected to open until 2021, leaving taxi drivers in pocket but ordinary travellers nervous of arriving on time for flights in a city with unpredictable traffic.

Backed by loans from France's development agency the African Development Bank (ADB), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and Islamic lender the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), officials are celebrating the airport's completion -- but the future of Senegal's new airline is less certain.

Air Senegal still does not have all the licences required to begin commercial flights and has a fleet of just two ATR 72-600s, but Aviation Minister Maimouna Ndoye Seck said international ambitions for the airport meant a well-performing national airline was "a necessity".
Washington (AFP) - US Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered courts Wednesday to speed up illegal immigrant cases, as a surge in arrests since President Donald Trump took office has jammed up the courts.

Immigration courts are facing a backlog of some 650,000 cases, Sessions said.

Despite a crackdown on border-crossers and the addition of 50 judges since the start of the year, he said, "we nevertheless face a steady stream of criticism that we are overwhelmed, that the backlog is intractable."

"I strongly disagree -- this challenge is not insurmountable, but it does require a concerted effort to address it."

In a report on progress in meeting Trump's election campaign promise to end illegal immigration and expel millions of illegal aliens, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that arrests had risen 40 percent to over 110,000 people since Trump took office.

But expulsions have fallen, signalling the backlog of cases.

Sessions said speeding up cases "serves the national interest," and urged deciding them quickly, either to expel the person or grant them protection from removal.

He said the government would add another 60 immigration court judges.

According to TRAC Immigration, a database at Syracuse University, the average time to complete an immigration case is now 691 days, after a steady climb up from 430 days in 2009.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The South African author of a book critical of President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday he had been summoned by police, but no reason had been given for the meeting. "The President's Keepers - Those keeping Zuma in power and out of prison" by journalist Jacques Pauw alleges millions of dollars in taxpayers' money flowed into the bank accounts of spies and members of Zuma's government. The president's office has denied the accusations in the book. Pauw confirmed in an interview with eNCA television that his attorney had received a request for him to meet with police on Monday or Tuesday. "We don't know what the meeting is about. Anyway, we are going to cooperate," Pauw said. South Africa's State Security Agency said last month it had made a criminal complaint against Pauw relating to the contravention of several sections of the Intelligence Services Act. (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Toby Chopra)
One army official claims that drone combat could be a game changer in warfare on the Korean peninsula - Bloomberg

The South Korean army plans to create a combat unit of weaponised drones next year that would be capable of swarming nuclear-armed North Korea in the event of a conflict.

The new defence asset has already been nicknamed the dronebot, according to South Korean newswire, Yonhap.

The army team operating the drones would primarily focus on reconnaissance operations against strategic North Korean military sites, amid growing tensions over Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programme.

But the unit could be mobilised to launch swarm attacks if necessary, with an army official claiming that drone combat would be a game changer in warfare on the Korean peninsula.

The army plans to set up a special organisation to lead the development of dronebots, establish a standard platform and expand the dronebot programme, he said.

The Norths detonation of a sixth nuclear test and the launch of two new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) this year has increased pressure on South Korean President Moon Jae-in to shore up his nations defences.

S. Korean Army to form weaponized drone unit next year https://t.co/gFcRHGzBkv  Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) December 5, 2017

Earlier this year Mr Moon was forced to backtrack on his reluctance to allow the US-operated Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile shield, known as Thaad, to deploy on South Korean soil.

He also secured an agreement with the US to allow South Korea to increase the payload of its missiles.

On Wednesday, Seoul said it would increase its annual military budget by seven percent next year, in the biggest jump since 2009, reflecting the increasingly precarious security position on the peninsula.

The move to develop weaponised drones indicates the government is heeding calls from Western allies to improve its advanced surveillance systems.

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The new combat unit will reportedly be modelled on Israeli technology, but several governments, including the US, Russia and China are developing drone swarm capabilities as a formidable new battlefield tactic of the future.

New developments in artificial intelligence mean that drones will increasingly be able to communicate and coordinate their movements as a group, to defeat conventional weaponry.

North Korea has also used drones against its neighbour in the past. Last year South Korean troops fired warning shots at a surveillance drone flying near the demilitarised zone on the border.

The military believes that the drone was launched by Pyongyang to try to identify South Korean troop positions. In June, North Korea also used a drone to spy on the deployment of the Thaad anti-missile system.
Https%3a%2f%2fvdist.aws.mashable.com%2fcms%2f2017%2f12%2f46fd6c70 1817 69e4%2fthumb%2f00001

Starbucks is releasing a Christmas Tree Frappuccino, and don't you dare say it isn't Christmas-y enough. DON'T YOU DARE!

The festive drink starts with a Peppermint Mocha Creme Frappuccino, and is then topped with Matcha whipped cream, which is supposed to look like a Christmas tree. The tree is "decorated" with caramel drizzle for garland, candied cranberries as ornaments, and is topped with a strawberry.

SEE ALSO: Crap, I forgot to get furious about the Starbucks holiday cup this year

Image: starbucks

The limited-edition drink will only be available for a few days, starting Dec. 7 through Dec. 11 at participating stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Starbucks has been the center of a faux "war on Christmas" in recent years, which started through a series of trolls and digital pitchforks on social media, was later fueled by a call for boycott from then candidate Donald Trump, and highlighted by the viral media, Mashable included.

People said that Stabrucks' new holiday cups were not "Christmas-y" enough in 2015. This controversy followed into 2016, and finally, this year, people alleged that its cup pushed the "gay agenda" thanks to a BuzzFeed post that included a handful of tweets.

While the whole Starbucks Christmas controversy can seem silly and troll-y to some, it comes at a time of extreme media scrutiny, and puts a spotlight on a major issue that can sometimes go overlooked in viral media.

Rounding up a handful of tweets from a few trolls and extremists can shift public perception, and create a dialogue that is not only inaccurate, but incredibly irresponsible. Additionally, sarcasm isn't always translated well through text, and readers often look at a headline and do not commit to the reading the entire piece.

Starbucks' war on Christmas is a perfect example of how the media can pick out a snappy headline, creating an entirely new story for years to come.

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While the cups controversy may seem like a small issue, situations like this can escalate quickly, and can ruin people's lives or careers. Earlier this week MSNBC fired contributor Sam Seder for a sarcastic tweet from years earlier after pressure from a few alt-right trolls.
(FAIRHOPE, Ala.)  Populist firebrand Steve Bannon savaged national Republican leaders in a fiery call to rally voters behind embattled Senate candidate Roy Moore as the battle for the GOPs soul spilled into a dirt-floor barn deep in rural Alabama.

Bannon, known best for his former role as President Donald Trumps chief strategist, called GOP leaders in Congress cowards Tuesday night and attacked the partys 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a draft dodger as he defended Moore, who is fighting several allegations of sexual misconduct and a Washington establishment that wants him to lose the Dec. 12 election.

The days of taking it silently are over, Bannon declared at a rally that drew hundreds of Moore supporters to a local farm in the southwestern corner of the state.

They want to destroy Judge Roy Moore. You know why? They want to take your voice away, Bannon said as Moore looked on. If they can destroy Roy Moore, they can destroy you.

Even if he isnt well-known in this heavily Republican county, Bannons appearance was a welcome development for Moore, who has been shunned by the Republican Partys biggest stars. Trump himself agreed to campaign later in the week in nearby Florida, but many national GOP leaders say the allegations against Moore are credible and he shouldnt serve in the Senate.

Earlier in the day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Moore, if elected on Dec. 12, would immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee  a process that could lead to his ultimate expulsion from the Senate. Some Republicans, including Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, have already promised expulsion.

Another Republican, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, sent a $100 check to Moores Democratic opponent, Doug Jones on Tuesday. He tweeted a picture of the check and the words, Country over party.

And Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said this week that Moore would be a stain on the GOP and the nation. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity, Romney tweeted.

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Bannon was most aggressive Tuesday night with Romney, charging that Moore had more integrity and honor than Romneys entire family. He noted that Moore graduated from the United States Military Academy, while Romney received a draft deferment for his missionary work in France.

You hid behind your religion, Bannon said. Do not talk to me about honor and integrity.

Moore, 70, is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including accusations that he molested two teenage girls and pursued romantic relationships with several others while in his 30s. He has denied the allegations.

Outside the event, about three dozen protesters, some dressed as handmaidens to symbolize Moores accusers, chanted, We want a senator, not a predator.

Many gathered inside Oak Hollow Farms barn have dismissed the allegations as fake. Some didnt seem to mind them, even if true.

What girl hasnt been kissed at 17 years old? asked Diane Myrick, 69, of nearby Bon Secour. I know a girl who got married at 14.

Moore didnt address the allegations directly Tuesday night. Instead, he cast himself as a political outsider fighting the establishment in both parties, just like Trump did one year ago. He also reminded Alabama voters of his focus on Christian conservative values.

I know we do not need transgender in our military, Moore said. If Im in a foxhole, I dont want to know whether this guy next to me is wondering if hes a woman or a man.

Bannons presence had less to do with Moores religious convictions than with their shared disdain for Washington Republicans.

Moore was twice removed from his state Supreme Court position, once for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building and later for urging state probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage.

Bannon is far more focused on economic populism and immigration. But, like Bannon, Moore has promised to stand up to McConnell, a Republican who is deeply unpopular among many diehard Trump supporters.

They dont want somebody up there with an independent mind, Moore said.

While Bannon is hardly a household name in Alabama  some rally attendees barely knew who he was  he served as Trumps chief strategist during the final months of his presidential campaign and in the early months of his presidency. He was pushed out of the White House in August.

Bannon has resumed his leadership role at the pro-Trump Breitbart News and launched a broad campaign to take down establishment Republicans across the nation.

What Steve does is he motivates base voters to turn out, which is the entire key to this election, said Andy Surabian, senior adviser to the outside group Great America Alliance, which sometimes works with Bannon.

Moore may get a bigger boost Friday when Trump hosts a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, which is less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Alabama border. The Republican president formally endorsed Moore on Monday and directed the Republican National Committee to send some financial assistance after withdrawing roughly a dozen staffers last month.

The RNC made two transfers to the Alabama GOP this week designed to benefit Moores campaign  one of $50,000 and another of $120,000  according to one RNC official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Earlier in the day, roughly 250 miles (more than 400 kilometers) to the north, Moores Democratic opponent called Moore an embarrassment who would be a disaster for Alabama in Washington.

I damn sure believe that I have done my part to ensure that men who hurt little girls should go to jail and not the United States Senate, Jones said during a campaign stop in Birmingham, referring to his own record as a former federal prosecutor.

But some in Alabama welcomed Moores hardline devotion to Christian conservative values and attacks on the Republican establishment.

Frank Blakeman, a former history teacher from nearby Foley, Ala., described Moore as a continuation of Trumps conservative movement.

There has been a tug in this country overall to one side, Blakeman said before the rally. I think Roy Moore represents the wish and desire of the other half of the country to pull that back across. Is he extreme in some of his views? Yes, I think he is. Since politics is a tug of war, you need people to pull to at least get it back somewhere in the middle.
The faces of five women, including celebrities Taylor Swift and Ashley Judd, appear on TIMEs 2017 Person of the Year cover, representing the The Silence Breakers  the thousands of people across the world who have come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

But on the lower right-hand corner of the cover, theres simply an arm, cropped at the shoulder. It belongs to an anonymous young hospital worker from Texas  a sexual harassment victim who fears that disclosing her identity would negatively impact her family.

She is faceless on the cover and remains nameless inside TIMEs red borders, but her appearance is an act of solidarity, representing all those who are not yet able to come forward and reveal their identities.

The worker, who made a sexual harassment complaint anonymously, told TIME she remembers vivid details about what happened to her, and she couldnt stop wondering whether she could have prevented the encounter. She said: I thought, What just happened? Why didnt I react? I kept thinking, Did I do something, did I say something, did I look a certain way to make him think that was O.K.?

Along with Swift and Judd, the anonymous sixth woman is pictured in the company of former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, lobbyist Adama Iwu, and Isabel Pascual, who is a strawberry picker and an immigrant from Mexico whose name was changed to protect her identity.

Every year since 1927, TIME editors name a Person of the Year, recognizing the person or group of people who most influenced the news during the past year, for better or for worse.
A 28-year-old teacher has been arrested and fired from her job in connection with allegations she had sex with a 16-year-old student at a Pennsylvania nature preserve earlier this year after sending him salacious social media messages.

Alyssia Reddy is accused of sexually assaulting one of her male high school students while she was employed as an English teacher at the Pennington School, a private Methodist-based college-preparatory institution in New Jersey, according to officials with the Solebury Township Police Department in Pennsylvania.

The alleged relationship between Reddy and the teen began in early December, according to a police affidavit obtained by PEOPLE. The student told investigators thats when Reddy allegedly gave him her phone number. She later allegedly added him on Snapchat and sent him messages, including stating that she was attracted to him.

In one message, Reddy wrote, I want your hands on me, the affidavit alleges.

Authorities believe the relationship continued from there: The student said he was at a friends house one day earlier this year when Reddy allegedly showed up unexpectedly and took him to a nearby parking lot at a local nature preserve, where she climbed on top of the student and pulled down her pants and they had sex, according to the affidavit.

Reddy was arrested Friday on charges of institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communication facility and corruption of a minor, according to authorities.

Solebury police said they were alerted to the alleged relationship on Nov. 20. The affidavit states the alleged sexual assault occurred between December and May 1.

Reddy taught at Pennington from August 2013 to August 2017. She moved to Maryland this year to begin a teaching job at a school there, St. Pauls School for Girls, police said.

She is being detained in Maryland while awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania and could not be immediately reached.

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Its unclear if she has a lawyer who could comment on her behalf.

School: This News Is Deeply Disturbing

Reddy was terminated from St. Pauls after her arrest last week and is banned from the campus, according to school head Penny Evins. Its unclear which subject Reddy taught at St. Pauls.

This news is deeply disturbing to all of us and saddens us, Evins said in a letter to the school community, which was provided by St. Pauls School for Girls. Before today, we had no information suggesting any prior improper conduct by Mrs. Reddy.

In a letter to the community of its own, the Pennington School said it reported the alleged inappropriate relationship between Reddy and the student to authorities after being recently made aware of it.

The School has a strong ongoing commitment to the safety, health, and wellness of all students, officials said in the letter.

This article originally appeared on People.com
Around 27,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes in Ventura County, California, on December 5, as a rapidly spreading brush fire grew to 31,000 acres and destroyed 150 structures, the Ventura County Fire Department said.

Local media reported that one person had died as a result of the blaze, known as the Thomas Fire. The Ventura County Fire Department also said one firefighter had also been injured in the blaze.

The Thomas Fire was first reported at around 6:25 pm and was said to be moving at a rapid rate, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.

Strong winds in the area, recorded at 43 mph with gusts over 60 mph, fueled the fire. Credit: Instagram/boostedbosslady via Storyful
Theres one thing standing in the way of normal U.S.-Russia relations, says Americas top diplomat: Ukraine.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking in Vienna on Thursday, said President Donald Trumps administration badly wants to repair ties with Moscow, which have sunk to their lowest level since the Cold War. But the biggest roadblock, Tillerson said, is the Kremlins ongoing role in the war in Ukraine.

The issue that stands in the way is Ukraine, Tillerson said, speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Vienna, where he also met privately with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia is arming, leading, training, and fighting alongside anti-government forces, he said, in some of the harshest comments on Russia and Ukraine from any Trump administration official.

Tillerson did not discuss other bilateral sources of tension  including, notably, the unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Relations between Moscow and most of the West have been severely strained since early 2014, when Russia threw military support behind separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, sparking fighting that has killed some 10,000 and displaced some 1.7 million so far. In March 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, a part of Ukraine  the first such cross-border land grab in Europe since the bloody wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.

We can have differences in other arenas, in Syria, we can have differences in other areas but when one country invades another, that is a difference that is hard to look past or reconcile, Tillerson said. It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us re-normalizing a relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do, he added.

There is another potential obstacle to normalized ties: the drumbeat of revelations of the Kremlins meddling in last years U.S. election. That includes organizing the release of hacked material harmful to the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton and the creation of fake social media accounts to spread false news stories that sowed division in the United States.

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Most recently, Trumps disgraced former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI agents about his efforts to carry out freelance diplomacy with Russia as a private citizen during the presidential transition.

Tillerson has said for months that normalizing relations with Russia has been one of Trumps top foreign-policy priorities. He has broached the topic of Russian election interference, but not with the rhetoric he leveled against Moscow on Ukraine.

There is clear evidence of Russia meddling in democratic elections in the U.S. and Europe, Tillerson said said at a speech in Washington on Nov. 28. We, together with our friends in Europe, recognize the active threat of a recently resurgent Russia. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly contradicted U.S. intelligence agencies to belittle their conclusions that Russia interfered in the election.

Tillerson was in Vienna during a five-day trip through Europe, which includes stops in Brussels, Vienna, and Paris. Throughout, he has had to grapple with growing frustration from European allies over Trumps handling of foreign-policy issues, including the diplomatic fallout from Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. He is also dogged by continual rumors that Trump is preparing to fire him.

Tillerson said those rumors keep cropping up every six weeks. You all need to get some new sources, he told reporters when asked about the issue on Wednesday. Your story keeps being wrong.
Actor Tom Holland, aka Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, has lent his fame and his face to charity. On Good Morning Britain, Holland visited with James Dunn, who suffers from a rare condition called epidermolysis bullosa. Dunn, whose passion is photography, took a picture of Holland that will be auctioned off  in a limited release of the photos  to help fund a cure for his illness.

Holland said, Im lucky I get to travel the world and meet some of the most prolific photographers in the world, and I think this is one of my favorite pictures, James.

Dunn remarked, I was just honored to be given the chance to take a picture with Tom. Ive only just started off as a photographer and Im already taking pictures of celebrities and A-listers.

Sometimes, for those in need of support, it doesnt hurt to get a visit from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Watch: Patti LaBelle says Luther Vandross never came out because he didnt want to upset the world

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(ATLANTA)  The race for mayor in Atlanta early Wednesday was too close to call, with one candidate declaring herself the citys new leader and the other vowing to request a recount.

The margin was razor-thin, with several hundred votes separating Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood.

Bottoms spoke early Wednesday at an Atlanta hotel, saying near the end of her speech that I am just in awe of what God is able to do.

Im so honored to be your 60th mayor, she told her cheering supporters.

But Norwood took the podium at her own rally and said that absentee ballots from military members were yet to figure in the totals, and that she believes that some ballots have yet to be tabulated.

We will be asking for a recount, Norwood said.

Just 759 votes separated the candidates early Wednesday morning, Norwood told supporters.

Bottoms led Norwood by a margin of less than 1%, which is the threshold where the second-place finisher can request a recount under state law.

The contest between Bottoms, who is black, and Norwood, who is white, was seen as a test of the staying power of a long-dominant black political machine amid profound demographic and economic changes.

Both women are Atlanta city council members.

Norwood, who calls herself an independent, and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the chosen successor of outgoing Mayor Kasim Reed.

A victory for Bottoms, 47, would continue a run of African-American mayors that began with Maynard Jackson in the mid-1970s.

A win for Norwood, 65, would give Atlanta its first-ever white female mayor, and end the Democratic Partys hold on an office it has held without interruption since 1879.

A half-century after white flight led to sprawl that fueled legendary traffic jams, Atlanta is booming economically and growing at a breakneck pace, with townhouses and apartments going up in vacant lots all over town. Parts of the city are more diverse, younger and wealthier than they have been in years.

Political analysts have said African-American voters will ultimately determine the outcome, but many of the citys most formidable challenges transcend race. Everyone seems to care about transportation, public safety and affordable housing. As rents and home prices soar, some longtime residents struggle to stay in their neighborhoods, and face no easy commutes if they move out.

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Were behind the times in terms of having a modern transportation system compared to what you see in New York or Washington, said Kendra A. King Momon, professor of politics at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.

It impacts quality of life because most of us dont know what were going to run into when we head into the city, she said of Atlantas notorious traffic jams. Thats a huge issue that we have to address.

A big question is whether an ongoing federal probe of corruption in city contracting under Reeds watch will encourage voters to take a fresh look at Norwood, despite fears that as an independent who lives in the upscale Buckhead area of the city, shell turn out to be a stealth Republican who will serve up City Hall to Georgias deep-red political apparatus.

As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, none spoke openly of race.

Just listening to Keisha and comparing what she said to the words of Ms. Norwood, I felt like she shared my values more, said Barbara McFarlin, a 50-year-old black woman who lives in the southwest Atlanta district Bottoms has represented on the city council.

James Parson, a 49-year-old black man who also lives in Bottoms district, said hes been friends with Norwood for three decades and appreciates how shes made herself available to constituents all over the city as an at-large council member.

I love that Mary is connected to most of the communities in Atlanta, if not all of them, he said. Shes approachable. She has been here. Shes no Johnny-come-lately.

Atlantas last white mayor, Sam Massell, left office in 1974 and was succeeded by five African-American mayors in the next four decades: Jackson, Andrew Young, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin and Reed. Regardless of who wins, Atlanta will have its second female mayor, following Franklin who left office in 2010.

Jeffrey Brower, 45, a white man who lives in the East Atlanta neighborhood, said he voted for Norwood, but that his vote was more a vote against Bottoms and Reed. Bottoms is too close to Reed and would be like an extension of the current administration, he said.

Kasim seemed to be more about whats best for Kasim than whats best for the city, Brower said.
Ankara (AFP) - The co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party went on trial in Ankara Thursday on charges of links to outlawed Kurdish militants, after over a year behind bars in a case supporters say is politically motivated, his party said.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the second largest opposition bloc the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was detained in November 2016 and is charged with "managing a terror organisation" and "making propaganda for a terror group".

He faces up to 142 years in prison if convicted of links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organisation outlawed by Turkey and its Western allies. The party says the accusations are politically motivated.

His trial got under way at Sincan prison complex in Ankara province, an HDP official told AFP, adding Demirtas was not present for the hearing.

The MP is being held in prison in the northwestern region of Edirne. The party has previously accused the justice ministry of preventing any court appearances by Demirtas.

Prior to his arrest, Demirtas was considered one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's major rivals, with oratory skills matching the firebrand Turkish head of state.

He led his party to success in June 2015 polls and surpassed the 10 percent threshold needed to enter parliament through winning not just support from Kurds but also liberals and the Turkish left. He repeated the success in snap polls of November of that year but with fewer MPs.

A dozen HDP MPs were detained at the same time as him but now nine remain in prison including Demirtas and former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag.
A veteran Republican strategist has claimed Donald Trump is closer to impeachment than most people think.

Alex Castellanos, a consultant for seven Republican Presidential bids  including the George W Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns  discussed the latest developments in the Russia probe on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

The consultant started by expressing scepticism that special counsel Robert Muellers investigation alone could bring Mr Trump down. Mr Mueller is investigating possible Trump team collusion with Russia, and possible obstruction of justice by the President himself.

All we have seen is charges for tax evasion and lying to the FBI, Mr Castellanos said of the probe thus far. You know, only in Washington is it an industry that people go to jail for covering up crimes they dont commit as a standard procedure.

Mr Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been charged with tax fraud and various other financial crimes. Two of his former campaign members  George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn  have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contact with Russian sources.

Mr Trump, however, told reporters he was very happy about Mr Flynns plea, claiming it did not prove collusion. He even tweeted in defence of his former national security adviser, writing: "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, he added. There was nothing to hide!"

But Mr Castellanos warned that the Russia probe may become more problematic for the President if Senate candidate Roy Moore wins in a seat Alabama. The candidate has been accused of sexually abusing minors, and is unpopular even among fellow Republicans in Washington. If Mr Moore wins the election, Mr Castellanos said, he could hurt Republican candidates in the 2018 midterm elections.

"Roy Moore [is] coming to the Senate possibly in a week, he said. And he becomes the face of the Republican Party for the next year, when were already in danger of losing the House. Its likely well do that without him, lose the House. Trump gets impeached."

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He added: "Were closer to impeachment now than we think.

Impeachment requires a majority vote in the House, and a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Democrats would have to win 24 more seats in the House and three more in the Senate to win back the majority in both chambers.
The presidents foolish move in recognising the city as the capital of Israel will have negative consequences impossible to predict

Palestinians in Rafah protest on 6 December against US plans to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Every time it seems Donald Trump cannot outdo himself, he does it again. Now he has announced that his administration will recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, reversing nearly seven decades of American policy. This step will have multiple negative ramifications, many impossible to predict.

Jerusalem is the most important of the so-called final status issues that have been repeatedly deferred during the Israel-Palestine negotiations because of their extreme sensitivity. Trump has ploughed into this imbroglio like a bull in a china shop, zeroing in on the most complex and emotional issue of all those connected to Palestine.

The peace process has been at deaths door since the former secretary of state John Kerrys peace mission ended in failure in 2014. But the international community  apart from the US  is united in saying recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is disastrous for any hopes of reviving meaningful talks. The status of Jerusalem is one of the pivotal issues that diplomats and peacemakers have said must be agreed between the two parties in negotiations.

Palestinians will see Trumps announcement as the end of their hopes and demands for East Jerusalem as a capital of a future independent state. While few want a return to violence, many will feel diplomatic efforts have got them no closer to a state of their own.

The Israeli government will be thrilled. Ever since it captured (and later annexed) East Jerusalem in the 1967 six-day war, Israel has claimed the city as its eternal and undivided capital, and has longed for international recognition. Some 200,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements will also celebrate.

Jerusalem is undoubtedly the most important aspect of the entire Palestine question. It has been central to the identity of Palestinian Muslims and Christians as far back as the founding moments of both religions, and has become even more so as the conflict over Palestine has become fiercer.

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The rivalry over this holy city is exacerbated by the fact that the same site  the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, the Temple Mount to Jews  is sacred to both. Because of its explosive nature, this is an issue that no Palestinian politician, and few Arab leaders, would dare to trifle with.

For someone such as me, whose family has lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, Trumps announcement does not just mean that the US has adopted the Israeli position that Jerusalem belongs exclusively to Israel. He has also retroactively legitimised Israels seizure and military occupation of Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, and its imposition of discriminatory laws on hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there. The damage he has done will be permanent: the US cannot undo this recognition.

This act completely disqualifies the US from its longstanding role as broker, a position that Washington has monopolised for itself. So much for the pitiful peace plan that Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner was cooking up and hoping to impose on the Palestinians.

Trumps action signals disdain for the opinion of the whole Arab world. Whatever Arab dictators and absolute monarchs may tell the Americans they depend on, the Arab peoples are unanimous in supporting the Palestinian position on Jerusalem. Their inevitable reactions to this move will impinge on vital US interests all over the region. As secretary of defense James Mattis noted in 2013: I paid a military security price every day as a commander of [Central Command] because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel.

For someone like me, Trump's announcement has also legitimised Israel's 1967 seizure of Arab East Jerusalem

This latest diplomatic fiasco is another instance of the administration showing utter contempt for the views of the rest of the world. Not one country recognises Jerusalem as Israels capital. There is a global consensus that until a settlement is achieved, it is illegitimate to prejudge or predetermine the outcome of negotiations. The US formally assured the Palestinians on this score in inviting them to the 1991 Madrid peace conference.

Of course, there is a lengthy American track record of bias in favour of Israel. No one should have expected fairness on this issue from them or from their boss.

It is now hard to see how a sustainable Palestinian-Israeli agreement is possible. True to Trump form, this is an entirely self-inflicted wound that will long echo in the annals of diplomacy. It will further diminish the already reduced standing of the US, complicating relations with allies, with Muslims and Arabs  and with people of common sense the world over.

Trump, who was warned against this step by Arab, Middle Eastern and European leaders, has now made resolving the conflict over Palestine much harder, even as he has brought joy to his friends, and to their dangerous, extremist soulmates in Israel. Far from ushering in the deal of the century, as he boasted, with this foolish move Trump may usher in the debacle of the century. This is a sad day for international law, for Palestine, and for everyone who cares about peace in the Middle East.

 Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University
NEW YORK  As one of the presidents lawyers argues that his office grants him immunity from obstructing justice in the Russia investigation, Trumps legal team is trying a similar tactic against one of the women who accused him of sexual harassment.

President Donald Trumps longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, stood in state Supreme Court on Tuesday, arguing that Justice Jennifer Schecter didnt have the authority to push forward a defamation suit brought against the president by sexual harassment accuser Summer Zervos.

In other words, Trump is above the law.

Though the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in Clinton v. Jones established that a sitting president could be sued for private actions occurring before they take office, Trumps camp has argued that this case does not apply because its being held in state rather than federal court.

Summer Zervos is in state Supreme Court with Gloria Allred today. Arguments to decide whether her defamation suit against Trump will go forward. If it does, he could be forced to appear pic.twitter.com/DEYkgFl6av  Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) December 5, 2017

The president is a unique officer in the Executive Branch, Kasowitz said in court, as Zervos and her attorneys looked on.

Are you saying that Im not constitutionally responsible for state court cases or controversies that come before me? Schecter asked.

Not with regard to the president, your honor, Kasowitz responded.

Zervos attorney, Mariann Wang, contended that theres never been a court decision that state courts dont have jurisdiction in cases like these.

Of course, Trumps camp feels it has every reason to try and shut the case down  not least because it has broad implications for both his presidency and others to come. If the case proceeds, some of Trumps past could be made public by Zervos attorneys, and Trump could be called to testify, according to The Washington Post.

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Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, whos also representing Zervos, wouldnt say after the hearing whether shed try to depose the president if the case went forward.

Zervos, who in October 2016 accused Trump of grabbing her breast and forcing kisses on her among other allegations, filed suit in January after Trump publicly called her a liar. Trump filed a motion to dismiss or delay the case  a tactic former President Bill Clinton used before he was impeached  and Tuesdays hearing was set to discuss that option.

Judge Schecter said shed make a decision at a later date. If it does go forward, the case will likely be drawn out and ugly. Kasowitz argued again on Tuesday that Zervos accusation was a political move, and that Trumps tweets calling her and other accusers liars are protected speech.

(Photo: Andrew Kelly / Reuters)

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President Donald Trumps administration has taken aim at yet another workplace regulation put in place by the Obama White House, this time seeking to undo a protection for restaurant servers that annoyed the industrys lobby.

In plans detailed Monday, the Labor Department said it intends to roll back whats known as the tip pooling rule, which limits the scenarios in which tipped workers can be forced to share their gratuities with other employees. If the rule is done away with, it will be easier for management to divvy up the tips that flow to front-of-the-house restaurant and bar staff as it pleases.

The restaurant lobby claims the change would steer more money from gratuities into the pockets of back-of-the-house employees like cooks and dishwashers, who do unseen work and dont get tipped by patrons. But worker advocates say the way the proposal is written, nothing would stop management from simply keeping the servers tips for the house, rather than dispersing them among staff.

The National Restaurant Association, an industry lobby, said in a statement it applauds the Trump administrations decision to rework the tip-pooling regulation. The group sued the Obama administration over its rule, arguing that the regulation was illegal. A federal appeals court upheld the rule, and the Supreme Court is now considering whether to review the case.

On Tuesday, the worker advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Center United urged its allies to file public comments against the Trump proposal, calling it just another attempt to keep workers wages low and let customers make up the difference.

Groups like ROC United generally dont like the idea of required tip sharing, arguing that it forces one worker to subsidize the pay of another. If cooks deserve more money, they argue, then the restaurant owner should pay them more  rather than shift a servers tips their way.

Under President Barack Obamas regulation, servers tips could never be funneled to non-tipped workers. The new proposal would allow it in restaurants that pay employees the full minimum wage and dont claim whats known as a tip credit. The tip credit lets employers pay a reduced minimum wage  in some states, as little as $2.13 per hour  and have the rest of the wages come in the form of gratuities. Tip-pooling still wouldnt be allowed in those situations.

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Employment lawyer Randi Kochman said the restaurant industry has balked at the limits on tip pools imposed by the Obama administration. Tip pools are popular, she told HuffPost. Its something that the industry likes, it allows them to attract good people, and to hedge against morale problems. [The Obama regulation] was not well received.

If youre in the hospitality world, she said, the rules rollback is a big deal.

The Labor Department claimed that the change by Trump officials would help decrease wage disparities between those who work for tips and those who dont. These back-of-the-house employees contribute to the overall customer experience, but may receive less compensation than their traditionally tipped co-workers, the agency said in a statement.

But the proposed rule as published does not explicitly require that the tips stay among the workers. Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Departments former top economist under Obama, said she expects that at least some restaurant owners would appropriate the tips for themselves if the letter of the law allows it.

Under the administrations proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips, Shierholz, now a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post.

Hard to see how workers benefit when employers are allowed to keep their tips. DOL is trying to hide that fact but a careful read of the NPRM makes clear that employers will have the option to steal tips. https://t.co/aaJM6e5BsP  Sharon Block (@sharblock) December 4, 2017

Rules like the tip-pooling regulation undergo a period of public comments before they are finalized by regulators. The Labor Department is offering a relatively short comment period  30 days  before it proceeds with revamping the regulation.

Loosening the rule is right in line with Trumps assault on regulations since he took office. As HuffPost previously reported, many of the changes his administration has pursued have benefited lower-wage employers like retail and restaurant chains. Trump has already shelved reforms to the overtime pay system Obama had sought, which would have affected millions of workers, and shied away from the minimum wage hike his predecessor championed.

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By Steve Holland and Maayan Lubell WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions. The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark," but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts, and Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called for a general strike and rallies on Thursday to protest. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Trump's decision fulfills a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support. "I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said in a speech at the White House. "While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering." Trump's decision risks further inflaming a region already grappling with conflict in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Protests broke out in areas of Jordan's capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees, and several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to Trump's announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Netanyahu said any peace deal with Palestinians must include Jerusalem as Israels capital. That would be a non-starter for Palestinians in any negotiations if it meant the entire city would be under Israeli control. For a graphic on possible Jerusalem U.S. Embassy sites, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2jIXIoq PALESTINIANS UPSET Abbas on Wednesday called the city "the eternal capital of the state of Palestine." He said Trumps decision was tantamount to the United States abdicating its peace mediator role. Jordan said Trump's decision was "legally null." "I think it's pretty catastrophic, frankly," said Hussein Ibish at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, adding that "Trump did not distinguish in any meaningful sense between West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem." Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused Trump of a "flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people." Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus' traditional birthplace in Bethlehem on Wednesday night to protest Trump's move. Trump has tilted U.S. policy toward Israel since taking office in January. He cannot expect to side entirely with Israel on the most sensitive and complex issues in the process, and yet expect the Palestinians to see the United States as an honest broker, said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer. Pope Francis called for Jerusalem's status quo to be respected. China and Russia expressed concern the move could aggravate Middle East hostilities. A statement from the Saudi Royal Court said the Saudi government had expressed "condemnation and deep regret" about the move. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May called the U.S. decision "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region." The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday over Trump's decision, diplomats said on Wednesday. Trump said his move was not intended to tip the scale in favor of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties. He insisted he was not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders." REFUGEES, SETTLEMENTS AMONG DISPUTES Other key disputes between the two sides include the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements built on occupied land. Trump made no mention of settlements. He said he remained committed to the two-state solution if the parties want one. The president called on the region to take his message calmly. "There will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement but we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a place of greater understanding and cooperation," Trump said. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, a pro-Israel Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who is often critical of Trumps foreign policy, said: This decision is long overdue and helps correct a decades-long indignity. Trump acted under a 1995 law that requires the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. His predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, consistently put off that decision. Trump ordered a delay to any embassy move from Tel Aviv since the United States does not have an embassy in Jerusalem to move into. A senior administration official said it could take three to four years to build one. The Jerusalem decision has raised doubts about the Trump administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. There was no indication Trump asked Netanyahu for anything in return when he notified the Israeli leader of his Jerusalem decision on Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter said. But Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said Trump, who has long touted himself as a master negotiator, might be setting the stage for seeking Israeli concessions later. This might be the case where Trump applies a little honey now to show the Israelis hes the most pro-Israel president ever, and then applies a little vinegar later, he said. (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Arshad Mohammed, Phil Stewart, Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiacu, David Alexander, Makini Brice, Maria Caspani and Yara Bayoumy in Washington, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
[caption id="attachment_5093" align="alignnone" width="620"]

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Photo: Shutterstock.com[/caption] Less than a year after leaving his New York law firm to join the Trump administration, David Friedman can boast a remarkable achievement: helping to guide presidents historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and to move the U.S. embassy there. Along with Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, a real estate lawyer who was chief legal officer to Trumps companies and now serves as an informal Middle East envoy, Friedman has been credited with steering the administrations controversial move Wednesday. [caption id="attachment_5094" align="alignright" width="199"]

David Friedman

David Friedman[/caption] A bankruptcy law specialist who represented Trump as a businessman, Friedman formally became U.S. ambassador to Israel in May after resigning as a name partner at the firm now known as Kasowitz Benson Friedman. His former partner Marc Kasowitz continues to represent the president. Friedman cheered Wednesdays foreign policy announcement in a tweet. Today.@POTUS displayed the ultimate test of leadership and courage by standing up for what's just and true, even in the face of stiff opposition. Jerusalem is Israels capital today as it was 3000 years ago. Congratulations to .@realDonaldTrump for this historic decision. Greenblatt was also celebrating. POTUS' courageous speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital today reflects current and historic reality. No matter how certain parties react, we will continue to be hard at work putting together our peace plan to benefit all parties, he tweeted. Meanwhile, amid fierce debates over the administration's about-face on Jerusalem, some have taken time to question the credentials of Kushner, Friedman and Rosenblatt to be conducting U.S.-Israel policy. A bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything, is how Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban described the team to Kushner during a question and answer session at a Brookings Institution forum in Washington, D.C. this week. The team has an entrepreneuryoua real-estate lawyer, a bankruptcy lawyer. I dont know how youve lasted eight months in this line-up. Theres not a Middle East macher in this group, Saban said, using the Yiddish word for bigwig. Kushner, the event's keynote speaker, responded that while the team was not conventional it was perfectly qualified. He then described Friedman as one of the most brilliant bankruptcy lawyers and a close friend of mine and the president. Haim noted that the situation in the Middle East had indeed been "bankrupt". You can argue, why have they never had a bankruptcy lawyer working on this before, Kushner agreed. He and Haim also agreed that a real estate lawyer could also help the Middle East, since the disputes there are chiefly about land holdings.
By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday again raised the possibility of a U.S. government shutdown - blaming Democrats for that possible outcome - one day before he is due to host Republican and Democratic congressional leaders for talks on spending bills. Trump and Congress are facing a deadline of Friday at midnight to pass fresh spending legislation. If they cannot agree on the terms, parts of the federal government could shut down. Late on Wednesday, a bill advanced in the House of Representatives to extend current federal funding through Dec. 22, with the chamber expected to take up the bill on Thursday. If that measure clears the House and Senate, as expected, major fights are in the offing over the next funding bill, which could fund the government until sometime in January. Trump's warning about a shutdown came as conservative House members pushed for increases in military spending along with either a freeze or reduction in domestic programs. Their bid is likely to be rejected by Democrats, who make up a minority in Congress, and could further complicate months of behind-the-scenes negotiations by congressional leaders aimed at figuring out government spending through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2018. While the House potentially could pass upcoming spending bills without any Democratic support, that tactic would not work in the Senate where procedural rules give Democrats bargaining power. As a condition of backing new spending, many Democrats have demanded legislative protections for the nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as children. Trump pushed back, saying it could set the stage for impasse. "The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country," Trump told reporters at the White House. "They are looking at shutting down." House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi countered in a tweet: "President Trump is the only person talking about a government shutdown. Democrats are hopeful the president will be open to an agreement to address the urgent needs of the American people and keep government open." The infighting came as Republican congressional leaders labored to demonstrate that they can govern and spare the country the chaos of a government shutdown at Christmas time that likely would not sit well with voters. 63 PERCENT AGAINST SHUTDOWN A partial government shutdown would leave "essential" services operating, but could disrupt programs ranging from the operation of national parks to educational programs and scientific research. A Politico/Morning Consult opinion poll found that 63 percent of voters want Congress to avoid any shutdown, with 18 percent in favor if it helps lawmakers achieve policy goals. In October 2013, conservative Republicans used the need to pass a funding bill to try to force repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. They failed but in the process forced a 17-day disruption of many federal agency activities. The end-of-year fight over appropriations, which should have been settled nine weeks ago, is attracting a series of controversial add-ons from both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want to add as much as tens of billions of dollars to military spending this year and impose new work requirements for some recipients of Medicaid benefits, the healthcare program for the poor and disabled. Democrats want to attach the immigration measure and a restoration of Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people that Trump terminated. Both parties seek additional disaster aid for Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and other states. Republican Representatives Mark Meadows, who heads the House Freedom Caucus, and Representative Mark Walker, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, are touting the effort to pump up Pentagon spending without any increases to non-defense programs. But Democrats have argued that inaction on the non-defense side of the ledger would usher in a new round of automatic spending cuts for those programs next month, short-changing programs that fight opioid addiction, fund medical research, veterans programs and an array of other activities. (Reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., declined to discuss with lawmakers on Wednesday a conversation he had with his father about emails related to a June 2016 meeting he attended with Trump associates and Russians, a congressional panel member said. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigating allegations of Russian interference in last year's U.S. election, said Trump Jr. answered the "overwhelming majority" of questions from committee members in his hours of testimony. But Trump Jr. claimed attorney-client privilege in declining to respond to queries about that discussion with his father because a lawyer was in the room when it took place. The discussion between then-Republican candidate Trump and his son took place after the emails became public, Schiff said. Trump Jr. released the emails in July. "In my view there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son," Schiff told reporters after the closed-door testimony had ended. "We will be following up with his counsel," Schiff said. Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the investigation, said Trump Jr. had answered all of his questions. "Mr Trump was cooperative at all times," Conaway said. Trump Jr. arrived and left without being seen by reporters. Lawmakers said they want to question him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York at which he had said he hoped to get information about the "fitness, character and qualifications" of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who was his father's presidential election opponent. It was at least the second time Trump Jr. has testified to a congressional committee investigating any Russian meddling in the election and possible collusion with Moscow by the Trump campaign. He arrived shortly before 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and was questioned for most of the next eight hours by members of the intelligence panel. A person familiar with knowledge of Trump Jr's testimony said Trump had said repeatedly he did not remember things he was asked about, including some details about information provided by Russians during the Trump Tower meeting. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating. He has announced the first charges of Trump associates, and Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. The House intelligence panel also released on Wednesday a transcript of testimony last week of Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and founder of the Blackwater military contractor. A focus of that testimony was a report that Prince tried to set up a "back channel" for communications between Trump associates and Russia. Prince denied such a plan. REPUBLICANS CRITICIZE PROBES Trump Jr.'s appearance coincided with criticism of the Russia probes from some of his father's fellow Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and accuse investigators of bias against Trump. Other lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, say the goal of the investigations is to guarantee the integrity of U.S. elections, not to target Trump and his associates. Trump Jr., like his father, denies collusion with Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 campaign to boost Trump's chances of defeating Clinton. Moscow denies any such effort. Some Republicans criticized Mueller, the FBI and the Department of Justice at a news conference on Wednesday, ahead of congressional testimony on Thursday by the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray. Republican House members accused the Justice Department and the FBI of bias against the president and having been too easy on Clinton during the investigation of her use of a private email server while leading the State Department. However, Clinton has made no secret of her belief that then-FBI Director James Comey's announcement just before the election that the bureau was investigating potential new evidence in the lengthy email probe cost her the White House. Also on Wednesday, Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced a hearing next week with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, citing "serious concerns" about reports on the political motives of staff on Mueller's team. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
By Christine Kim and Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. B-1B bomber on Wednesday joined large-scale U.S.-South Korean military exercises that North Korea has denounced as pushing the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, as tension mounts between the North and the United States. The bomber flew from the Pacific U.S.-administered territory of Guam and joined U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters in the annual exercises, which run until Friday. 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 program that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation. Asked about the bomber's flight, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing in Beijing: "We hope relevant parties can maintain restraint and not do anything to add tensions on the Korean peninsula." North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan. Its official KCNA state news agency said at the weekend that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was "begging for nuclear war" by staging the drills. It also labeled Trump, who has threatened to destroy North Korea if the United States is threatened, "insane". KCNA said on Tuesday that the exercises in which the bomber took part are "simulating an all-out war", including drills to "strike the state leadership and nuclear and ballistic rocket bases, air fields, naval bases and other major objects..." U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday urged the Pentagon to start moving U.S. military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close. The U.S.-South Korea drills coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Guk met Feltman on Wednesday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, KCNA said. Feltman, a former senior U.S. State Department official, is the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012. The State Department said on Tuesday he was not carrying any message from Washington. South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit China next Wednesday for a summit with his counterpart Xi Jinping, Seoul's presidential Blue House said. North Korea's increasing nuclear and missile capability would top the agenda, it said. The military exercises, called "Vigilant Ace", are designed to enhance joint readiness and operational capability of U.S. extended deterrence, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. North Korea has vehemently criticized the drills since the weekend, saying the exercise precipitates U.S. and South Korean "self-destruction". 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. China is North Korea's lone major ally and fears widespread instability on its border. Russia also has communication channels open with North Korea and is ready to exert its influence, the RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov as saying on Tuesday. North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles, two of which flew over Japan, and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September. It says its weapons programs are a necessary defense 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. (Reporting by Christine Kim and Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS, Arshad Mohammed and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON, Vladimir Soldatkin in MOSCOW, and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Nick Macfie)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S. plans to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem are a sign of incompetence and failure, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, breaking with longtime U.S. policy and potentially stirring unrest. "That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure," Khamenei said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem, according to his official website. He made the remarks to a group of top Iranian officials, regional officials and religious figures attending a conference in Tehran. Iran has long supported a number of Palestinian militant groups opposed to Israel. "The issue of Palestine today is at the top of the political issues for Muslims and everyone is obligated to work and struggle for the freedom and salvation of the people of Palestine," Khamenei said. At the same gathering, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said, "Quds belongs to Islam, Muslims and the Palestinians, and there is no place for new adventurism by global oppressors," according to Mizan, the news site for the Iranian judiciary. Iran wants "peace and stability" in the region but will not tolerate the violation of Islamic holy sites, Rouhani said. "No Muslim population, including Iran, will tolerate the violation of oppressors and Zionists against Islamic holy sites," Rouhani said, according to Mizan. The United States has not been able to reach its goals and seeks to destabilize the region, Khamenei said. "On the issue of Palestine, (U.S.) hands are tied and they cannot advance their goals," Khamenei said, saying the Palestinian people would be victorious. "American government officials have said themselves that we have to start a war in the region to protect the security of the Zionist regime (Israel)," Khamenei said. Certain rulers in the region are "dancing to America's tune" Khamenei said, an indirect reference to Iran's main regional rival Saudi Arabia. "Whatever America wants, they'll work against Islam to accomplish it," he said. (Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh, editing by Larry King)
By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation defended his employees on Thursday against a growing chorus of accusations by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, that its agents were allowing political bias to seep into their investigations. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray said he believed the reputation of the FBI was not, as Trump recently wrote on Twitter, "in tatters." "The agents, analysts and staff of the FBI are big boys and girls. We understand we will take criticism from all corners," Wray said. "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good." Republicans had in recent weeks stepped up criticism of the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump campaign aides had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The move is widely seen as a tactic to undermine Mueller's investigation, which has so far led to criminal charges against four people from Trump's inner circle. It comes as Republicans prepare to head into a potentially challenging midterm 2018 congressional election cycle. Republicans have sought to re-litigate questions relating to the FBI's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and questioned whether Justice Department officials gave her preferential treatment in their decision not to charge her with a crime. They have criticized former FBI Director James Comey for publicly announcing a decision not to refer Clinton for prosecution and asked whether the decision-making was politically tainted. Wray took over the helm of the FBI after Trump abruptly fired Comey earlier this year. 'REASSIGNED, NOT DISCIPLINED' Most recently, Republicans got fresh ammunition against Mueller and the FBI, after media reports said FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from the Russia probe because he had exchanged private text messages that disparaged Trump and supported Clinton. Strzok was involved in both the Clinton email and Russia investigations. Wray acknowledged Thursday that Strzok was removed from Mueller's investigation, but said he was reassigned, not disciplined. We cannot afford for the FBI - which has traditionally been dubbed the premier law enforcement agency in the world - to become tainted by politicization or the perception of a lack of even-handedness," Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said. Wray repeatedly refused to weigh in on how his predecessor handled the Clinton matter, and deferred to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting a wide-ranging review into the topic. Horowitz recently told lawmakers he expects his review to be complete by late winter or early spring. "When those findings come to me, I will take appropriate action if necessary," Wray said. Democrats, meanwhile, urged Wray to stand up against bullying by the president. "Your job requires you to have the courage to stand up to the president, Mr. Director," said the committee's Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler. "There are real consequences for allowing the President to continue unchecked in this manner." (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Nations envoy Jeffrey Feltman, a former high-level U.S. State Department official, is not carrying any message from the U.S. government while visiting North Korea for talks on behalf of the world body, the State Department said on Tuesday. Feltman is currently the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs. Previously he served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. "We're certainly aware of his travels under the auspices of his role with the United Nations to North Korea," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters. "He's not traveling on behalf of the U.S. government and he's not traveling -I want to make this clear - with any kind of message from the U.S. government." (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by Lisa Lambert)
The U.N. has issued its strongest rebuke yet of Myanmars persecution of the Rohingya, a mostly stateless Muslim minority, with the bodys top human rights official suggesting that recent military operations in Myanmars western Rakhine State could include elements of genocide.

Addressing a special session of the Human Rights Council on Dec. 5, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein described widespread, systematic and shockingly brutal attacks against the Rohingya community that deliberately and massively targeted civilians, and enumerated actions warranting the attention of the International Criminal Court that have been perpetrated against the Rohingya by Myanmars security forces and local militia.

The U.N.s 47-member Human Rights Council also adopted a rare resolution, albeit with slightly weaker language, saying Myanmars military campaign very likely included crimes against humanity, the Associated Press reports. China, the Philippines and Burundi voted against the resolution, while nine countries abstained. Heres what it means:

What Happened?

More than 626,000 Rohingya have been displaced from Myanmars Rakhine State into Bangladesh since late August, according to U.N. estimates, the majority of them women and children. The Rohingya, a persecuted minority, fled a campaign of violence by Myanmars military, which was launched in response to a series of deadly attacks on security posts by a Muslim armed group on Aug. 25.

While Myanmar claims that its clearance operations are intended to root out terrorists, displaced Rohingya say that the military is indiscriminately targeting civilians, including children, with human rights groups documenting accounts of extrajudicial killings, arson, and sexual violence. International bodies, including the U.N. and U.S., increasingly agree  Zeid said the operations appear to have deliberately and massively targeted civilians.

Read more: Myanmars Crisis, Bangladeshs Burden: Among the Rohingya Refugees Waiting for a Miracle

Story continues

Is Genocide Occurring?

Zeids latest statement is the strongest language yet from the U.N. on the crisis in Myanmar, suggesting that a total lack of access to the conflict zone raises serious questions about what transpired. The High Commissioner recounted a list of recent allegations against Myanmar security forces, including killing by random firing of bullets serious bodily or mental harm inflicted various forms of torture or ill-treatment, and widespread sexual violence. Given all of this, can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present? he asked. Last month, experts at the the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and human rights watchdog Fortify Rights warned of mounting evidence that genocide is being committed against the Rohingya.

Read more: Myanmars Attempt to Destroy Rohingya Muslims

The U.N. defines genocide as an international crime committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. But individuals are infrequently charged with genocide, and component crimes, including murder, forced deportation, torture, and sexual violence, can also be classified as ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, which have not been specifically defined under international law and therefore arent prosecutable.

In September, Zeid called the crisis a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a stern condemnation last month after traveling to Myanmar, saying that the campaign constitutes ethnic cleansing and those who perpetrated atrocities must be held accountable.

What Happens Next?

Rights groups widely hailed the resolution. Human Rights Watch said the Council sent a strong message that the global community will not avert its gaze from the plight of the Rohingya.

The U.N. resolution makes clear that the international community retains a watchful eye over the plight of the Rohingya and demands action. But it needs to ensure that its rhetoric is matched by its will to prevent further mistreatment, forced returns, and assaults to the human rights and dignity of the Rohingya, Laila Matar, HRWs senior U.N. advocate said in a statement.

Myanmar and Bangladesh reached a tentative agreement in late November to begin repatriating Rohingya within two months, but experts and rights groups have raised concerns that Rohingya could suffer further violence in Rakhine or face apartheid in camps like those that have existed in the central part of the state since riots in 2012.

Zeid also rejected a repatriation scheme, which he called hasty window-dressing of these shocking atrocities, without sustained human rights monitoring on the ground. Rights groups and independent media have been barred from northern Rakhine since violence in October 2016, except for a few government-staged press tours. But with no clear diplomatic or humanitarian solution, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are waiting in overcrowded displacement camps, where supplies are stretched thin.

Zeid also called for a new impartial and independent mechanism to facilitate criminal prosecutions, which he acknowledged are extremely rare in Myanmar. In March 2017, the U.N. set up a fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of rights abuses, but its members have not been granted visas to the country. The commission interviewed Rohingya in Bangladesh instead in October, where they heard many accounts that point to a consistent, methodical pattern of actions resulting in gross human rights violations, according to a statement.
By Michelle Nichols and David Brunnstrom UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday for a rare visit that some analysts and diplomats hope could spark a U.N.-led effort to defuse rising tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. The former senior U.S. State Department official is the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012. During a four-day visit he is due to meet Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho to discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern." "This is broadly a policy dialogue with (North Korea). I think we have to wait and see what comes out," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday. "All key member states ... were informed and briefed of the visit." U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russia, Japan, the United States, China and North and South Korea in August he was available to help broker talks. So-called six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program stalled in 2008. A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described expectations for Feltman's visit as "modest and high at the same time, meaning that they depend on what our hosts are thinking as well." "We need to find a way to scale back tensions," the official said. "I don't think we will have a major breakthrough being announced at the end of this trip. But the visit could serve as a step to build a framework for engagement." Suzanne DiMaggio of the New America Foundation think tank, a participant in recent unofficial talks with North Korea, said Feltman could propose during his visit to Pyongyang that Guterres play a mediation role. "I do think that the Trump administration would like to explore talks about talks at this stage. I think the North Koreans are assessing the timing of when to do that," she told a seminar in Washington on North Korea. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Feltman was not traveling on behalf of the U.S. government. "And he's not traveling - I want to make this clear - with any kind of message from the U.S. government ... He's going on behalf of the U.N., not the U.S. government," she told a regular news briefing. Nauert said Washington remained open to talks if North Korea showed it was serious about giving up its nuclear weapons, but added: "The activities they have been engaged in recently have shown that they are not interested, they are not serious about sitting down and having conversations." North Korea has been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States in defiance of U.N. sanctions. It conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September and last week tested a missile capable of reaching anywhere in America. Feltman told the 15-member Security Council last week that its unity "creates an opportunity for sustained diplomatic engagement  an opportunity that must be seized in these dangerous times to seek off-ramps and work to create conditions for negotiations." In September, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia urged a return to dialogue, including "by leveraging mediation efforts" by Guterres. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said on Tuesday that Pyongyang was seeking dialogue with Washington on its nuclear program, according to RIA news agency. Morgulov, at a conference in Berlin, was quoted as saying Russia had communication channels with North Korea open and was ready to exert its influence on Pyongyang. Sweden's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Carl Skau told reporters he hoped Guterres could mediate in "probably the largest threat to international peace and security at the moment." Britain's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Allen said Feltman had "our backing and I think he goes to represent the U.N. family as a whole." (Reporting by Michelle Nichols)
By Aidan Lewis TUNIS (Reuters) - The United Nations migration agency is stepping up the rate at which it flies migrants home from Libya, aiming to evacuate up to 15,000 in the final month of the year. The acceleration of returns is an attempt to ease severe overcrowding in detention centres, where numbers swelled after boat departures for Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha were largely blocked this year. It also followed a CNN report showing migrants being sold for slave labour in Libya, sparking an international outcry and calls for migrants to be given safe passage from the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has already flown back more than 14,500 migrants to their countries of origin so far this year as part of its voluntary returns programme. Nigeria, Guinea, Gambia, Mali and Senegal have seen the highest numbers of returns. Migrant flows through Libya surged from 2014. More than 600,000 crossing the central Mediterranean to Italy over the past three years, but departures from Libya's coast dropped sharply in July when armed groups in Sabratha began preventing boats from leaving. After clashes in the western city in September, thousands of migrants who had been held near the coast surfaced and were transferred to detention centres under the nominal control of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. Numbers in about 16 centres rose to nearly 20,000, from 5,000-7,000 previously, leading to a worsening of already poor conditions. "We are seeing an increasing number of migrants wishing to return home especially after what happened in Sabratha, it's all linked to Sabratha," said Ashraf Hassan, head of the IOM returns programme. In the aftermath of the CNN report and an African Union visit to Libya, some countries of origin have begun accepting charter flights returning migrants from Libya for the first time. The IOM has shortened procedures for screening migrants Libya, collecting less statistical data and focussing on trying to ensure that migrants will not be put at risk by returning, Hassan said. The agency hopes to have three charter flights leaving per day by Dec. 11, increasing that to five flights by Dec. 15. On Tuesday nearly 400 migrants were flown back to Nigeria on two flights from Tripoli, the capital, and from the western city of Misrata. (Writing by Aidan Lewis)
By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday there could be no normal relations with Russia until Moscow ended its support for separatists in Ukraine and returned Crimea, in comments likely to reassure Western allies. Speaking after a dinner where he discussed Russia with NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday, Tillerson took a tougher stance than U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said last month after meeting Putin in Vietnam that he believed Putin's denial of accusations that Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. That was despite U.S. intelligence agencies' evidence of Russian interference. At NATO, Tillerson criticized "Russia's continued use of hybrid warfare" and its attempts "to undermine Western institutions" in a reference to the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies' intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West. "This stands as a significant obstacle to normalizing our relations," Tillerson told reporters. At the NATO dinner with ministers, Tillerson also blamed Russia for interfering in the U.S. election, said a diplomat who was present. Russia has denied meddling. Trump, whose former aides are being investigated after accusations that Putin influenced the election that brought him to the White House, has repeatedly emphasized that it would be better if Russia and the United States could work together. Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, has spent much of his time as secretary of state trying to smooth the "America First" foreign policy that has alarmed Trump's allies, but the president has publicly undercut the secretary of state's diplomatic initiatives. His trip to Europe this week was partly overshadowed by reports the White House had a plan to replace him, which Tillerson denied on Wednesday. [L8N1O63LC] U.N. PEACEKEEPERS Tillerson stressed to ministers that the Ukraine crisis, which was sparked by Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea, was the central issue that blocked better U.S.-Russia ties because seizing sovereign territory was unacceptable, according to a second diplomat present. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters. "People are still dying every day from that violence," Tillerson said. Tillerson, who in 2013 as head of Exxon Mobil was awarded the Order of Friendship by Putin, a Russian state honor, said he hoped to agree to deploy U.N. troops to eastern Ukraine, an idea the Russian president floated in September. With an internationally-agreed ceasefire long broken and efforts to revive a 2015 peace deal stalled, peacekeepers could end hostilities and allow trade to resume between Russia and Ukraine. But Tillerson warned there was still a "significant difference between the mandate that a peacekeeping force would be given and the scope of their mandate". "We hope we can close those gaps," Tillerson said. Russia is keen to see the end of Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis but European officials fear U.N. peacekeepers would freeze the conflict rather than solving it. Tillerson also cautioned against treating Russia as a partner, saying all meetings with Moscow should be based on issues, not agreed on the basis of a calendar, quashing any hopes of a detente in Moscow's relations with Washington. "I think there is broad consensus among all the NATO members that there is no normalization of dialogue with Russia today," he said. (Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Toby Chopra)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Trent Franks said on Thursday he will resign after two former staff members complained about discussions he had with them about efforts to find a surrogate mother. Franks, an Arizona Republican who has served in Congress since 2003, said he recently learned the House Ethics Committee had opened an investigation of the complaints. "I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress," he said in a statement. (Reporting by Eric Beech)
Travelers looking to use their fancy new smart luggage may soon face a hard time getting the bags on a plane due to safety concerns about their batteries. According to CNN, American, Delta and Alaska Airlines have all announced that starting January 15th, passengers checking smart luggage will have to remove the lithium-ion batteries (or keep them powered down if traveling in the cabin). The site also says that United Continental and Southwest Airlines both plan to announce similar policies soon. That's 80 percent of the US air traffic, according to CNN.

The report also mentions Bluesmart, a smart bag maker that says it's compliant with current regulations, but whose lithium batteries cannot be removed. "We are saddened by these latest changes to some airline regulations and feel it is a step back not only for travel technology, but that it also presents an obstacle to streamlining and improving the way we all travel," the company said in a statement given to CNN. Safety around lithium-ion batteries has been a topic of concern lately, with the FAA recently proposing a ban on laptops in checked baggage. Researchers continue to try and find safer alternatives, though none have come to market just yet.
Vienna (AFP) - The United States warned Russia on Thursday that its ties with the West can never recover until it pulls its forces out of Ukraine, as OSCE foreign ministers met in Vienna.

Diplomats had hoped that meetings on the sidelines of the 57-nation body would make progress on agreeing terms for a UN peacekeeping force for war-torn Ukraine.

But the major powers in the dispute are still far apart, and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went so far as to declare that the stand-off over Ukraine was the single most important obstacle to warmer US relations with Moscow.

Tillerson met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov behind closed doors, but when they had addressed the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) council earlier in the day, they traded allegations about interference in Ukraine and there appeared little room for compromise.

At a news conference with OSCE host Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, Tillerson recalled that US President Donald Trump had been clear during his campaign last year that he wanted better relations with Russia.

"But the issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," Tillerson stressed.

"We can have differences in other arenas... but when one country invades another that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile," he warned.

"And we've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning: That we must address Ukraine, it stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing relations."

After the meeting later with Lavrov, Tillerson would not be drawn on what had been said but suggested that he was receiving unspecified commitments from the Russians.

"We are. I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get, but we get progress, that's what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation. We don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting," Tillerson said.

- Blue helmets -

The conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kiev's government forces and Russian-backed separatists has already left 10,000 dead since 2014.

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Neal Walker, UN humanitarian coordinator, said in Geneva on Thursday that the humanitarian situation was "worse than it has never been".

People "are now forced to make impossible choices between food, medicine, shelter, heating or their children's education. Millions of women, children and the elderly are daily at risk of shelling, intensive fighting and other hostilities," he said.

In principle, both Moscow and Washington have now expressed support for the idea of a UN peacekeeping mission.

But Russia envisions a limited force to simply protect the existing 600-strong group of unarmed OSCE observers, who are struggling to monitor a shaky ceasefire.

Washington, in contrast, has in mind a much more robust UN mission that would police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine, building the conditions for lasting peace.

Western powers fear that a limited United Nations mission would serve to create a frozen conflict that would lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine.

But Lavrov, in his opening remarks to the OSCE ministerial council, argued that the bigger mission idea could become "an occupational administration" and be tantamount to attempting "to solve this problem by force".

- 'Vexing' situation -

Tillerson did not directly address the peacekeeping issue in his remarks, but was strident in his condemnation of the threat he said Russia poses to the existing unarmed OSCE mission.

"Of all the challenges confronting the OSCE today, none is more challenging nor vexing than the situation in Ukraine," he warned, stressing the US will never lift sanctions until Russia returns control of Crimea and the disputed Donbass region to Ukraine.

Tillerson noted that more civilians were killed this year in eastern Ukraine than in 2016, and that ceasefire violations are up 60 percent.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces," he said.

"We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission," he demanded.

Tillerson also paid tribute to an American paramedic killed in April when his OSCE patrol hit a landmine, and met a handful of other monitors, including one injured by a hand grenade, in Vienna.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Utah Republicans on Wednesday rallied around Mitt Romney, their party's former presidential nominee, a day after former senior White House aide Steve Bannon accused him of having used his Mormon religion to avoid military service. Bannon's attack on Romney's character came in a fiery speech in Alabama where the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump was campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. "You avoided service, brother ... you hid behind your religion," Bannon said at the rally, adding that Romney's sons had also not served in the military and pointing to Moore's service during the Vietnam War. The war of words was the latest episode highlighting the schism in the Republican party between establishment conservatives and the rise of Trump and his one-time strategist Bannon. Romney, 70, a former governor of Massachusetts who later moved to Utah, has mulled a run for the seat of Utah Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, 83, who is deciding whether to retire. Hatch was among Utah Republicans who came to Romney's defense. "Bannon's attacks ... are disappointing and unjustified," said Hatch, a fellow Mormon like many in the state. Utah Governor Gary Herbert, in a tweet, praised Romney and his family as honorable and said "Utahns reject the ugly politics and tactics of @SteveKBannon. #stayout." "You cant credibly call into question his patriotism or moral characterespecially on the basis of his religious beliefs or his outstanding service as a missionary," U.S. Senator Mike Lee also said, calling Romney "a good man." Romney, who lost the 2012 election to Democratic former president Barack Obama, has been a vocal critic of Trump as well as Bannon's politics. Trump has fired back and criticized Romney's failed presidential run. Tensions between Trump and Romney have lingered even though Trump once considered him for secretary of state. On Monday, Trump told reporters he wanted Hatch to seek re-election. A day later, he called Romney, according to White House officials. "It was a good and positive conversation, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. A source close to Romney confirmed the conversation, describing it as "a courtesy call." (Reporting by Steve Holland and Maria Caspani; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Andrew Hay)
Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (2), AP

Finally, Americans are going to get that massive corporate tax cut theyve been clamoring for.

OK, not really  voters dont put taxes high on the list of issues that keep them up at night, and the bill now careening through Congress is even less popular than the president, which is saying something. But Republicans are finally going to get the elusive legislative victory they can talk about in their districts over the winter break, and thats why theyre hurrying to pass a bill theyve barely had time to read.

A lots been said about this tax bill and the motives that underlay it. Critics charge that its really just payback for the corporations and contributors who have invested so heavily in Republican campaigns. They say Republicans who voted for the plan know full well that their economic program wont magically pay for itself, and that the bill is a political weapon, designed to punish urban states.

My experience, though, has been that most politicians who espouse an economic philosophy actually believe in it, or think they do. So lets just dispense for the moment with all the talk about Republican corruption and subterfuge, and lets instead take the bill  and its backers  at face value.

Because it seems to me that if youre looking to understand where we are as a country right now, the substantive theory behind this bill may tell you more than the political chicanery surrounding it.

For the last four decades or so, going back to Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been guided by a single tenet when it comes to growth: the alluring conceit of supply-side economics. What this means, essentially, is that lowering taxes puts more money into the hands of businesses and affluent consumers, which leads to more capital investment and spending, which leads to accelerated growth and ultimately higher revenues.

And, the theory holds, since businesses are the ones who hire working-class Americans and pay their wages, and since wealthy consumers are the ones who buy the most stuff, the additional wealth created by tax cuts inevitably trickles down to everyone else.

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Liberals have always derided this entire theory (as did no less a Republican than George H.W. Bush, who called it voodoo economics when he ran for president in 1980). But all these many years and multiple tax cuts later, we should at least put Reagans program into some kind of larger context.

When Reagan came into office, at the height of a brutal recession, the top marginal tax rate was a whopping 70 percent; he immediately cut it to 50 percent. In 1986, Reagan and the Democratic majorities in Congress agreed to slash those taxes again, but they also raised the rate on capital gains. (Thats what actual tax reform looks like, by the way  some rates go down while others go up.)

You can certainly argue about how much of the economic recovery during the 1980s (and the recession that followed) can be attributed to Reagans policies. But its reasonable to assume that Reagans supply-side program had both positive and negative effects.

Putting all that money back into the pockets of business and the affluent probably did help spur some investment and hiring. But the tax cuts didnt pay for themselves with added revenues, and even as Reagan agreed to raise other taxes a few dozen times during his presidency, the federal debt continued to grow.

A few decades after Reagan first cut taxes, George W. Bush pursued his own version of the same program, pushing through two huge tax cuts totaling about $1.5 trillion  or about as much as the Republicans current proposal. Again, those cuts (like all tax cuts, by definition) mostly accrued to the wealthy, on the theory that more money for job creators would ultimately trickle down, as Reagan promised.

But heres the thing: A lot had begun to change in the structure of the economy  and in the structure of the entire society, really  in the years between Reagan and the second Bush. And that change has accelerated rapidly in the last decade or so, to the point where a theory that seemed at least plausible in 1980 should now be viewed as recklessly out of date.

Corporations today, as you might have heard, are doing business in a global marketplace that barely existed in 1980. Theyre judged almost entirely by their stock prices from one quarter to the next, which means their imperative is to cut costs today, rather than invest for the next decade.

American capital drifts overseas, where labor is cheap. And manufacturers who do invest here are taking full advantage of a revolution in automation; go to any auto or steel plant, and what you will see are acres of robots, with a fraction of the workers who would have been needed in Reagans day.

That trend is about to remake the job landscape again. According to a nice roundup of the current research in last weeks New York Times, artificial intelligence will likely displace tens of millions of jobs in the next few decades, although new career paths may arise, too. The imminent takeover by automated cars could, by itself, overturn entire industries.

What this means, practically speaking, is that however hopeful the trickle-down idea may have been in the 1980s, its just specious now. The critical link between the fortunes of big employers and the American workforce has been all but severed; whats good for the stock price (and stocks have been soaring these last few weeks) is no longer an especially useful indicator of whats good for you.

And, yes, the additional trillion bucks in federal debt that will pile up as a result of this bill will add even more pressure, inevitably, to cut social programs that primarily benefit lower-income Americans. In effect, theyll lose twice: once when the tax cut fails to create all kinds of new jobs or thriving communities, and again when the programs on which they rely turn out to be unsustainable.

All of which may add to a feeling of moral superiority among the presidents critics  but it shouldnt, really, and this gets to my larger point about the generational failure that pervades Washington.

The populist lefts alternative answer to the transforming economy  to create all kinds of new federal giveaways while punishing the rich with pre-Reagan tax rates  seems just as nostalgic and futile as the one were about to see enacted. Neither approach gets to the core challenge we face, which is how to reconnect the fortunes of businesses and workers, so that the success of one doesnt have to come at the expense of the other.

There are some promising ideas along these lines, though you probably havent heard much about them. Mark Warner, the Virginia senator and a tech millionaire himself, has been pushing, among other things, tax incentives that would reward corporate investment and a series of metrics to judge companies on their commitment to workers.

The think tank Third Way, which occupies the lonely center in the Democratic Party, has a couple of intriguing proposals. These include a guaranteed private retirement account for every worker on top of their Social Security, funded in part by employers, and the elimination of all payroll taxes for the poorest workers, which ought to have bipartisan appeal.

But theres no real constituency in Washington for modernizing government. There are only constituencies for going back and doing what we did in one or another golden age when the economy looked completely different.

The main failing of this tax bill isnt the crazy, one-sided process, or the little provisions dropped in for contributors, or the contempt for blue state voters  although all of these are flat-out disgraceful. The main failing is that the entire policy is based on a played-out intellectual theory, aimed squarely at the problems of an America we hold in our memories.

The supply of outdated ideas is endless, but our moment demands something better.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Nairobi (AFP) - The world's nations vowed Wednesday to curb plastic and chemical contamination of the air, soil, rivers and oceans, requiring a complete overhaul in the way goods are produced and consumed.

Changing the behaviour of producers and buyers would be key to achieving the vision of a "pollution-free planet" outlined in a political declaration adopted at the third UN Environment Assembly (UNEA).

"Pollution is cutting short the lives of millions of people every year," said the call to action issued by government ministers in Nairobi at the world's highest-level decision-making forum on environmental issues.

"Every day, nine out of 10 of us breathe air that exceeds WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines for air quality and more than 17,000 people will die prematurely because of it," the declaration added.

It committed governments to promoting "sustainable economic productivity", and to encouraging more "sustainable lifestyles" by making it easier to reuse and recycle products, thus reducing waste.

"What we need to do next is to move concretely to a plan of action," UN Environment Programme deputy head Ibrahim Thiaw told journalists on the final day of the December 4-6 pollution-themed gathering.

All 193 UN states are members of the UNEA.

"Some of the actions will have to do with the way we produce and the way we consume," Thiaw said.

"Our models of production and consumption will have to change. We do not have to have models of production and consumption that harm the environment and keep killing us."

This would require "very clear policies" from governments at the national and local level, said Thiaw, such as banning single-use plastic shopping bags.

Mobile phones could be upgraded and reused instead of being replaced every few years, and plastic straws prohibited, for example.

- Biggest human killer -

"Every year we dump 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans and generate over 40 million tonnes of electronic waste," the ministerial declaration said.

Story continues

The UN Environment Programme said it had received 2.5 million anti-pollution pledges, including from national governments, municipalities, businesses and individuals by Wednesday.

They include commitments, which are non-binding, to ban plastic bags, curb air pollution, or green public transport.

Some 88,000 individuals also made pledges, undertaking to switch to less-polluting fuel, for example, or to use less plastic and recycle more.

Taken together, if all the commitments by governments, businesses and civil society are honoured, they would lead to 1.4 billion people breathing clean air, said Jacqueline McGlade, who co-authored a pollution report for the assembly.

Furthermore, 480,000 kilometres (almost 300,000 miles) -- a third of the world's coastlines -- will be unpolluted, and $18.6 billion dollars (15.7 billion euros) will be invested in anti-pollution research and innovation.

The assembly heard this week that pollution has become the biggest killer of humans, claiming nine million human lives every year -- one in six deaths worldwide.

Of the annual tally, nearly seven million people succumb from inhaling toxins in the air -- from car exhaust fumes, factory emissions and indoor cooking with wood and coal, according to a recent report by The Lancet medical journal.

- 'Tide of plastic keeps growing' -

Lead in paint alone causes brain damage in more than half-a-million children every year.

The assembly adopted a dozen pollution-curbing resolutions -- urging governments to ban the use of lead in paint, step up "actions" to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds by 2025, and urging member states to set ambitious air quality standards.

The president of the UNEA meeting, Costa Rica's environment minister Edgar Gutierrez, lamented Wednesday that humans "haven't done a good job" managing Earth's natural bounty.

"The room we have for making more mistakes is very narrow," he warned.

Environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the assembly outcome, stressing the resolutions must now be put into action.

"Whilst leaders talk, the tide of plastic, chemicals and air pollution keeps growing," Greenpeace East Asia campaigner Cheng Qian said in a statement.

"The decisions made here must be actioned, implemented and accelerated if we are to stand a chance of restoring the health of our planet."
Dubai (AFP) - Human Rights Watch said Thursday it was concerned that Yemen's Huthi rebels were carrying out "abusive practices" against former allies -- loyalists of slain ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh -- and civilians.

The Huthis gunned down Saleh on Monday, and the Iran-backed insurgents have since consolidated their grip on the capital.

"The Huthis should remember that the killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh does not negate their obligations under international law, nor to civilians in areas under their control," HRW's Yemen researcher Kristine Beckerle told AFP.

Beckerle said the actions of the Huthis fit a pattern -- documented by HRW since the group took over Sanaa in 2014 -- of arbitrary detentions and forcible disappearances against critical voices, notably activists and journalists.

"Troubling reports from Sanaa over the last few days indicate the Huthis are again engaging in these abusive practices," she said.

A three-year alliance between the Huthis and pro-Saleh forces has degenerated into open warfare in Sanaa since last week, leaving at least 234 people dead and 400 wounded, according to the Red Cross.

The Huthis seized near total control of the capital after Saleh's death but even as the violence subsided, rivals of the insurgents have reported a massive crackdown.

Members of Saleh's political party said the Huthis have rounded up hundreds of suspected loyalists, including his family members.

Reports of summary executions could not immediately be confirmed.

Tribal chiefs in at least four provinces have been summoned to pledge allegiance to the Huthis, and the crackdown has also targeted local journalists.

On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists as well as Reporters Without Borders urged the Huthis to immediately release 41 staff of Yemen Today, a pro-Saleh television station.

Yemen's Sanaa-based national syndicate of journalists said the Huthis had posted the names of employees of media viewed as hostile at checkpoints around the capital.
Police say the suspect is in his early 20s, approximately 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighing 150 to 165 pounds with an athletic build, light skin and a brown goatee. He was last seen wearing a black hat, black sunglasses, a red bandana around his neck, a black hoodie with a large white Nike swoosh on the chest, light blue jeans and dark colored shoes, according to a Granger Police Department news release.
About a year after being rushed to hospital in serious condition following a stroke, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltzconsidered one of the greatest minds of our generation in Israel and worldwideis still recovering.

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In honor of his 80th birthday, the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, which he founded in 1965, is opening up its archives and bringing to light his extensive correspondence with top Israeli leaders throughout the generations, as well as scholars and statesmen from around the world, revealing a little of Israeli history.

Rabbi Steinsaltz with late President Peres. A quality stamp on the Jewish peoples ways of life

Organized in chronological order, the letters uncover the rabbis comprehensive relationship with different people who supported his lifes workthe Talmuds translation into Hebrew, which received the name The Steinsaltz Talmud," the Lubavitcher Rebbe, prime ministers (from David Ben-Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu), international figures (like former French President Jacques Chirac) and intellectuals and religious figures (like Nobel Prize Laureate Shmuel Agnon, Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and others).

In fact, the impressive gallery of names includes almost every significant Israeli public figure (as well as international figures). The correspondences point to different leaders deep appreciation of the 80-year-old rabbis work over the years.

Ben-Gurion on the spirit of Judaism

Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz was born to a secular family in Jerusalem in 1937. As a teenager, he decided to become religious and joined the Chabad movement. After studying chemistry and physics at the Hebrew University, he worked as a school principal. He holds a degree in mathematics too.

New York Mayor Rudy Giulianis letter to Rabbi Steinsaltz in 1994

Later on, the rabbi decided to focus on writing many diverse books on Judaism. The highlight was The Steinsaltz Edition, a Hebrew translation and commentaries on the 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud. His comprehensive work won him the Israel Prize for Jewish studies in 1988, as well as the Presidents Prize in 2012.

He gained international recognition too. Time Magazine referred to him as A once-in-a-millennium scholar, and he was considered to have a particularly close relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was the subject of his book My Rebbe." A moment before completing his monumental commentary of the Bible, which will be published soon by Koren Publishers, he suffered a stroke, which he is still recovering from.

A letter from Israels first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, in 1962. The partition between religious and secular is artificial

At the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, which is now headed by his son, Rabbi Menachem Even-Israel, I received a plastic folder which encompasses a glorious history. It starts with a simple notebook page on which David Ben-Gurion, Israels first prime minister, wrote his opinion on contemporary Israeli Judaism in 1962: We must foster more mutual tolerance among our people, and accept the fact (which isnt new, but has existed in my opinion since our very first day) that there are different opinions on spiritual matters, and bestow upon the entire young generation the recognition of the history of our people and its creation in all stages of its development.

As for the division between religious and secular, he added that this distinction between Jews is not, as far as I know, part of the spirit of Judaism.

Parroting back information

The collection includes documents pointing to tight relationships on both sides of the Israeli political spectrum, with letters from late Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin lying side by side.

In his letter, Rabin wrote: The interpreted Talmud opens the gates of Talmud to anyone wishing to study. He expressed his hope that this work will expand and deepen the unity among the Jewish people in Israel and in the Diaspora.

With the Lubavitcher Rebbe

President Shimon Peres wrote, I would like to congratulate you for the publication of the 25th volume of the Babylonian Talmud. You belong to a handful of people who, through their actions, place a stamp of quality on the Jewish peoples way of life.

In the minutes from his institutes foundation in 1965, Rabbi Steinsaltz presented his doctrine to the advisory committee members, explaining that the goal of the project was not just to translate and understand the Talmud, but also to impart the Talmudic ways of thinking.

As he put it, The problem of studying the Talmud is not in parroting back information studied by others. The essence of the matter is that a person enters what is called the sea of Talmud and learns how to swim in it. In other words, the Talmud requires a familiar type of identification with the course of events, with the lines in it, with its ways of thinking, of taking the road of negotiations.

With late President Zalman Shazar and late Knesset Speaker Kadish Luz

Late Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who headed the institute during his time in office, even asked other public figures, activists and intellectuals to join. In his letter, he stated that the punctuated text with the full translation from Aramaic, with his commentaries and scientific explanations, are all an important asset for the textbooks of the Jewish peoples writings. Such a publication can facilitate in bringing people closer and attracting anyone interested in these treasures.

A valuable asset and a treasure trove

While the initiative was highly appreciated by the religious and secular public, the ultra-Orthodox sector reacted with a public boycott and even slurs. One of the main opponents was Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach, the unshakable leader of the Lithuanian-Haredi community.

Eventually, however, the Haredim gave in and began creating their own versions of the Talmud with translations and interpretations. In fact, they introduced as many as 16 different imitation versions making the Talmudic text more accessible to those who are unfamiliar with it, but the boycott on the rabbi and his work remained unchanged.

French President Jacques Chirac expressed his admiration for the rabbi in a letter from 1994

Below the surface, however, the exchange of letters indicates he had close friendships with people in the Haredi public as well, like Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and other prominent rabbis, whose letters offer a different narrative. Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, for example, referred to the translation volumes as a valuable asset and a treasure trove.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol hoped to turn the rabbis work into an Israeli asset

Israels former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau had a lot of appreciation for the rabbi too, as did Rabbi Mordechai Yehudah Leib Sachs, who rushed to issue a letter of support in response to the resistance in the Lithuanian circles. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who was considered the greatest posek (a legal scholar who decides the Halacha) in the United States, expressed his public support for the translation project in several letters.

Its better to be agnostic than ignorant

"The general motto of Fathers entire lifes work was very clear, says Rabbi Menachem Even-Israel. Its more important for people to know what theyre doing than how they do it. The goal is knowledge.

With late Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti

Today people talk about religionization and all that. An organization like ours should have taken the lead on that issue. The goal wasnt to make people become religious, but to make the Jewish world of knowledge more accessible. Father took a book like the Talmud and made it accessible.

I would like to quote my grandfather, who said it was better to be agnostic than ignorant. This is a state with a Jewish character, lets say even pluralistic, but what does that actually mean? What is the meaning of this identity? They will tell you to your face: I dont know.

Rabbi Menachem Even-Israel with his father. Get to know your culture

Rabbi Even-Israel advises all those who are against instilling Jewish knowledge to simply learn, without being afraid that the child will become religious tomorrow morning. The Jewish folklore, the Sacrifice of Isaac story, is not a religious story. At least get to know your culture.

I was in Rome a couple of weeks ago, and everyone knows where the Colosseum or the Vatican are. Ask an Israeli for the Western Walls location, and hell tell you its in Jerusalem. But have you been there? And where is the Valley of Megiddo, do you know? Its an amazing place, filled with important events. Knowledge is an important thing, and in the new generation of Israelis its super important, because the question being asked is why am I here? And many people simply dont have an answer. Why, actually?
The following is the text of an address made by President Donald Trump announcing the recognition by the United States of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

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US President Donald Trump:

Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the worlds challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

US President Trump declares Jerusalem is Israel's capital, US embassy move (: )

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In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that cityand so importantlyis Israels capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the laws waiver, refusing to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital city.

Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.





US President Trump making the Jerusalem decleration (Photo: AFP)

While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

Ive judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace.

It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalemthe capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.

Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. Its something that has to be done.

That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.

Trump showing his signature on the presidential decree postponing the US embassy move to Jerusalem (Photo: Reuters)

In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalems holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.

Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With todays action, I reaffirm my administrations longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region.

There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation.

This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach.

So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.

I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud, and diverse, vibrant and strong. But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance, and terror.

Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.

Trump and VP Mike Pence (Photo: AP)

It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations, and people, to respond to disagreement with reasoned debatenot violence.

And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities. And finally, I ask the leaders of the regionpolitical and religious; Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish and Christian and Muslimto join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians. And God bless the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Eight countries opposed to US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital have asked for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council this week.

Sweden's UN Mission says the eight nations have asked Japan, this month's council president, to have Secretary-General Antonio Guterres brief the 15 council members.

The eight council nations that requested the meeting are Bolivia, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, United Kingdom and Uruguay.

Guterres said after Trump's announcement that the issue must be resolved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and warned that "unilateral measures" can jeopardize prospects for peace.

In a resolution adopted last December the council said it "will not recognize any changes to the June 4, 1967, lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations."
I was born in Jerusalem more than 70 years ago, but it always feels to me that I have known her for more than 200 years.

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The Jerusalem I was born into was small and intimate, but also frightened and hesitant. A city that is under British Occupation, a city where there was constant fear of the unknown. The "Wall of Tears" was located on an end of a narrow street, hidden and ashamed.

When the Jewish quarter fell in the hands of the Jordanian Legion, during the Israel War of Independence, our hearts stopped beating. We didn't have the strength to imagine a Jerusalem that is outside the walls without the Jerusalem inside the walls.

Rivlin welcomes Trump to the President's Residence in Jerusalem (Photo: AFP)

And then came the Six Days War. I was the intelligence officer of the Jerusalem Brigade. I still can't forget the sense of joy and relief that came with the news of the liberation of the city. Like my forefathers, I felt as if I were a part of the history of Jerusalem.

50 years have passed since Jerusalem was liberated and she still needs its lovers and those who bear her secrets. This city needs those who know and understand, simply and without poetic phrases, that Zionism without Zion is an empty shell. That Jerusalem is the microcosm of all our existence here in the land of Israel.

The declaration of President Trump was the "obvious" that should have been said. Apparently, even the obvious can sometimes be deeply moving.

I believe there is no better or more beautiful present for the state of Israel on its 70th year of independence. While we are celebrating 50 years of unification of the city, the time has come to bring peace to Jerusalem and cultivate hope in the capital of Israel, a place for pilgrims from all around the world.

Each and every one of us has their own Jerusalem. For thousands of years, the Jewish people had looked up to Jerusalem, prayed for it and dreamed of it. Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, along with moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, are pivotal landmarks in the right of the Jewish people for its land and its quest for peace.

Jerusalem is not, and will never be, an obstacle for those who seek peace. Jerusalem exists beyond all considerations: tactical or political. Some relationships are eternal and stand above all negotiations or the test of time.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palace (Psalms 122).
Israeli security forces arrested 20 Palestinians from the village of Qusra overnight Wednesday suspected of being involved in the attack on a group of Israeli children hiking in the area and in the violent rioting that ensued following the incident.

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During their raid, the forces found equipment stolen from the Israeli hikers. Among the suspects arrested were two minors.

Israeli forces arrest Palestinians in connection with Qusra attack

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Last Thursday, a group of Palestinian rioters hurled stones at a group of 13-year-old Israeli children who were hiking in the area as part of a bar mitzvah trip.

One of the parents accompanying the group opened fire at the attacking Palestinians, killing one of them.

IDF forces in Qusra overnight (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

After the incident, the father who shot the Palestinian was questioned 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.

Earlier this week, Israeli settlers who returned to the scene of the attack clashed with Palestinians, with one Israeli shooting and seriously wounding one of the Palestinians.

Dozens of Palestinians pelted the Israeli group with rocks, as IDF soldiers subsequently attempted to calm tensions by barring the activists from entering the area.

During the overnight raid Wednesday, IDF, Border Police, Israel Police and Civil Administration forces also arrested Palestinians suspected of inciting to terrorism. They were taken for questioning by the Israel Police.
US President Donald Trump reportedly invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to visit the White House during their phone conversation on Tuesday, a senior American source told the Al-Hayat newspaper.

The date for the visit has not yet been set, the official said.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday at the request of eight states on the 15-member body over US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel , diplomats said on Wednesday.

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The request for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the Security Council meeting was made by France, Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay, said diplomats.

Trump reversed decades of US policy on Wednesday, generating outrage from Palestinians and defying warnings of Middle East unrest. Trump also plans to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

File photo: UN Security Council meeting (Photo: Reuters)

Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally.

"The UN has given Jerusalem a special legal and political status, which the Security Council has called upon the international community to respect. That is why we believe the Council needs to address this issue with urgency," Deputy Swedish UN Ambassador Carl Skau said on Wednesday.

A UN Security Council resolution adopted in December last year "underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (Photo: AFP)

That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former US President Barack Obama's administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump for Washington to wield its veto.

After Trump spoke on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: "I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," he said. "I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations."

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised Trump's decision as "the just and right thing to do."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday Israel is holding initial talks with other friendly nations in an effort to get them to follow US President Donald Trump's lead in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

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"I would like to announce that we are already in contact with other countries which will issue a similar recognition," Netanyahu said in a speech at the Foreign Ministry without naming any of these countries.

"I have no doubt that the moment the American Embassy moves to Jerusalem, and even before then, there will be a movement of many embassies to Jerusalem. The time has come," Netanyahu said.

Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: Eli Mendelbaum)

The prime minister added that "President Trump has immortalized himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people."

In his speech on Wednesday, Trump said acknowledging Jerusalem is the capital of Israel "is a necessary condition for achieving peace," and expressed support of the two-state solutionif both sides wish it.

Following the declaration, Netanyahu called on other countries to follow the US's lead.



The Czech Republic said Wednesday night it "recognizes Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967."

The Czech parliament passed a decision in May calling on the Czech government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In a statement following Trump's declaration, by the Czech Foreign Ministry said "The Czech Republic together with other EU member states, following the EU Foreign Affairs Council Conclusions, considers Jerusalem to be future capital of both states, meaning the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine."

"The Ministry can start considering moving of the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world," the statement added.

US President Donald Trump announcing embassy move to Jerusalem (Photo: AP)

Meanwhile, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel's embassies abroad have already began putting out feelers to see if other nations were willing to follow suit and recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, as well as move their embassies to the holy city.

Among the nations approached there will likely be several Christian countries in Africa amid recent warming of ties following Netanyahu's visit to the continent. Israeli officials also hope Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte will follow Trump's leader.
The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat told Ynet on Thursday that "US President Donald Trump disqualified himself and his country from taking part in the peace process."

"There can be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital. Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the Palestinian people," he added.
Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, while the IDF decided to send reinforcements to the West Bank.

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"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

"The American decision is a declaration of war," Haniyeh added, "aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries."

Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh (Photo: Reuters)

Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful.

Protests so far have been scattered and largely non-violent.

But dozens of Palestinians gathered at two points on the Gaza border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side.

One Palestinian was wounded by army fire, Palestinian medics said.

In cities inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" and burning tyres

Meanwhile, the IDF said it would deploy several new battalions, while other forces are being put on standby, calling the measures "part of the IDF's readiness for possible developments."

Protests in Gaza against Trump's declaration (Photo: AFP)

Haniyeh said all of Hamas's men and its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were instructed to be on high alert.



"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," said Haniyeh.

He called for a "day of rage" on Friday, saying "Let December 8 be the first day of the intifada against the occupier."

Protests in Gaza against Trump's declaration (Photo: Reuters)

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," Haniyeh said. Prime Minister Netanyahu "will have no escape from the rage of the Arab and Muslim nation," he added.

"Jerusalem is being seized and robbed of its Arab and Islamic space," he warned. "United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine."

Protests in Gaza against Trump's declaration (Photo: Reuters)

The Hamas leader called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration.

"It should be announced that the so-called peace agreement was buried, once and for all, and that there is nothing called a partner for the Palestinians in peace," he said. "There's no such thing as the deal of the century, not the quarter century nor the half century."

He went on to say that "This decision buried Oslo and the diplomatic process. I call on the Palestinian Authority to announce it is abandoning the Oslo Accords."

Protests in Gaza against Trump's declaration (Photo: AFP)

"We're facing a historic turning point. Trump's support of Israel and the satanic alliance between them shows Jerusalem is unitedit has no east and west," Haniyeh added. "This decision means the end of one diplomatic stage and the beginning of another."

He also called on Arab nations to unite against the decision and boycott the American administration. "The Arab nation is required to support the struggle of the Palestinian people, the intifada of the Palestinian people. If Jerusalem is lost, you will have no honor."

Protests in Gaza against Trump's declaration (Photo: Reuters)

Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called a general strike and midday rallies to protest Trump's decision.

Answering the call for strike on Thursday, the Palestinian education ministry declared a day off and urged teachers as well as high school and university students to take part in the planned rallies in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad's spokesman Daud Shihab called on Arab nations "to stop persecuting the resistance and to trying to undermine its legitimacy by categorizing it as terrorism. Instead, they must increase the boycott campaign."

The spokesman of the Iranian military Massoud Jazayeri stressed that "The Israeli occupiers will never enjoy stability. The occupation's only choices are to abandon the Palestinian territories, or destruction."
Chairman of the Opposition Isaac Herzog on Thursday called US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital an "important achievement for Zionism and Israel."

In an interview with Ynet, Herzog stressed that the declaration "requires us to do everything possible to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. I hope that Trump will propose a brave and groundbreaking political outline to end the conflict."
Some 250 Israeli rabbis, including Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, sent a thank you letter to US President Donald Trump praising him for his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

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The letter, intiated by the Safed's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and delivered by Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council, told the American president, "You have a rare privilege to be the first president to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the State of Israel."

Chief Rabbi Yosef and Trump (Photo: EPA, Alex Kolomoisky)

"We are privileged to be living in a generation that is repeatedly witnessing the words of the prophets coming true," said the rabbis, "Jews have made aliyah and are continuing to come to the land of Israel from all corners of the world. Israel triumphs over its enemies time after time, the mountains of Israel offer generous bounty and the economy is booming."

'You will be remembered in the history of the Jews people'

"We are privileged to be seeing the rebuilding of Jerusalem," wrote the rabbis. "'Children play in its streets' (Zechariah 8:4) and we are confident in the fulfillment of all the prophecies. The United States is privileged to be one of the first nations to support the establishment of the State of Israel. US presidents have had the privilege of being at Israel's side and being a partner in the fulfillment of the vision of the prophets regarding the return to Zion and the establishment of the State of Israel."

Trump at Western Wall (Photo: Reuters)

They continued, "We are confident that you will be remembered in the history of the Jewish people as one who stood at the forefront fearlessly. May it be His will that God's promise to Joshua (1:9) should be fulfilled in you: 'Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go'amen, amen."

The letter was signed by rabbis of a wide range of communities, including rabbinical judges and yeshiva heads. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, national religious leader Rabbi Haim Drukman, the Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu and Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of the Samaria region are some of the prominent signatories.

"The American people recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel," said Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council. "We commend the president in his decision, but we ought to remember that Israel is an independent state and only it can make decisions for itself."

The letter

"With this recognition, we see the fulfillment of another step in the completion of the prophecy of Isaiah that the nations of the world will recognize the centrality of Jerusalem," said Rabbi Eliyahu. "'For Zions sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalems sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. The nations will see your vindication' (Isaiah 62:1). We hope that other enlightened and believing nations will follow in the footsteps of the United States."

Satmar cautious about opposingTrump

Rabbis of a sub-sect of the anti-Zionist Hassidic sect of Satmar have called on the American president not to move the embassy to Jerusalem because it can endanger Jews in Israel and all over the world who "will pay a price for the misdeeds of the Zionists."

"Jerusalem is a holy city from a religious and spiritual, but not political, perspective," claimed the ultra-Orthodox rabbis. They pointed out that after the UN recognition of Israel the rabbis of the Orthodox Council of Jerusalem requested that the holy city remain under international sovereignty.

In ads they published in the American media, they said that Israel cannot declare Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews "since the capital of American Jews is Washington; the capital of Russian Jews is Moscow; the capital of French Jews is Paris; the capital of British Jews is London and the capital of Iranian Jews is Tehran, Jerusalem however is a holy, and not a political, city."

The official Satmar court was ambivalent about how to respond to Trump. On the one hand, they oppose Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. On the other hand, the reasoning behind their opposition to Zionism is the exile mentality that there is a religious obligation to refrain from provoking and antagonizing the nations of the world and maintain a controversial Jewish state.

Accordingly, criticism of the White House, itself a form of provocation of the government under which Jews reside, is an unviable position. Therefore, the Satmar Rebbe, the leader of the community, has remained silent on the matter and it is being handled by smaller sub-sect.
While Trump had long pledged to move the embassy, the Republican presidents conservative Christian advisers repeatedly pressed the case in regular meetings at the White House, the conservative activists said.

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I have no doubt that evangelicals played a meaningful role in this decision, said Johnnie Moore, a California pastor who serves as a spokesman for a council of leading evangelicals that advises the White House. I dont believe it would have happened without them.

Trump (Photo: AFP)

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Many US evangelicals have expressed strong solidarity with conservatives in Israel and feel a connection rooted in the Bible to the Jewish state.

Conservative Christians have long argued that formally recognizing Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions, was long overdue following a 1995 congressional mandate to move the embassy from Tel Aviv. In Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, they found their most sympathetic audience.

Letter sent by Christians to Trump

Activists efforts included an email campaign launched by the group My Faith Votes. The group is chaired by Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential candidate and father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.

The group posted a form on its website and urged people to contact the White House to press for recognition of Jerusalem as the capital.

Another evangelical group, American Christian Leaders for Israel, which includes conservative activists Gary Bauer and Penny Nance, sent a letter to Trump warning that time was of the essence in moving the embassy.

Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital was criticized by Palestinian leaders and others in the international community, who fear it will spark unrest in the region. Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.

In June, Trump, like Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, signed a waiver delaying the embassy move to Jerusalem in the hope of boosting his nascent efforts at brokering a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

Gravely concerned

With a deadline approaching for another such waiver, evangelical advocates saw a window to increase the pressure.

American Christian Leaders for Israel, in the letter to Trump posted on its website, said they were gravely concerned that with every passing day it will become more difficult to move the embassy and if you do not do it now, it may never happen.

Trump first convened a circle of evangelical advisers during his presidential campaign, and he was the overwhelming favorite of white evangelical voters in last years election.

Moore, a member of the evangelical group advising the administration, said a prominent Christian conservative was in the White House just about every day. Much of the access comes through the Office of Public Liaison and its deputy director, Jennifer Korn, whose portfolio includes faith groups.

Ive sat in many meetings with evangelicals in the White House since the administration began, and I can tell you this issue came up again and again and again, Moore said. He said evangelicals made it clear to the White House that it was a priority of theirs and they wanted action soon.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and a close Trump adviser, said he had never talked to the president about the issue but had received emails from other leading evangelicals in the past several days asking me to support this or tweet that, and try to get the word out.

The faith community has talked to the administration for months and months about the need to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, said Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas and an evangelical adviser to Trump.

But the fact is, we didnt have to do any convincing of this administration. This was a campaign promise that President Trump was happy to keep because he feels that way, Jeffress said in a telephone interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
BAGHDAD - Iraq's senior shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned on Thursday US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. ''This decision is condemned and decried, it hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims,'' said a statement from Sistani's office.

''But it won't change the reality that Jerusalem is an occupied land which should return to the sovereignty of its Palestinian owners no matter how long it takes,'' it said, calling on the ''Umma'', or Islamic nation, ''to combine its efforts that purpose.''
Dozens of Palestinians heeded Hamas's call for an intifada, gathering Thursday at two points on the Gaza border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side.

One Palestinian was wounded by army fire, Palestinian medics said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was checking the report.

In cities inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" and burning tyres.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson responded to criticism over President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital by saying on Thursday that the US president is merely recognizing reality.

Tillerson defended Trump's move on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference in Vienna. Foreign ministers from the OSCE nations are roundly condemning the decision.

Tillerson said the United States would still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "if that's the desire of the two parties." He noted Jerusalem's final status is still for Israelis and Palestinians to work out.

Tillerson added "the whole world" wants a peace process and the US still believes there's an opportunity.
Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state, the EU's foreign policy chief said on Thursday in response to US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a news conference.

Mogherini said she would meet Jordan's foreign minister on Friday, while she and EU foreign ministers would discuss Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels on Monday.
Hundreds of Palestinians are protesting in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The demonstrators are burning posters of Trump and of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as American and Israeli flags. Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters were reported at several locations.

Rallies were underway on Thursday in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem. A demonstration was also being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

Palestinians have called a general strike on Thursday and are preparing for more mass protests on Friday.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets on Thursday to protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

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At least 31 Palestinians were wounded in the clashe with Israeli security forces, the Palestinians reported. Eleven protesters were hit by live fire and another 20 by rubber bullets, medics said.

A IDF spokeswoman said soldiers had used riot-dispersal gear against hundreds of rock-throwers.

Clashes in Jersualem (:  ) X

Hundreds of Palestinians protested at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, carrying Palestinian flags. Among other things, protesters called out "We will sacrifice our lives for al-Aqsa." Some protesters had minor clashes with the large Israeli security forces on the scene. Clashes at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: Reuters) In the afternoon, dozens of Palestinians blocked a road near the Damascus Gate, shouted invectives and hurled water bottles and other objects at security forces. Three Palestinians were arrested.

"Trump shot himself in the foot," said Ali Mahmoud from east Jerusalem. "He doesn't get to decide anything. We're the residents here and this is our land. Trump's declaration will not change anything in our position and struggle. Al-Quds (Jerusalem's Arab name) is the capital of Palestine. Trump is better off looking for a game elsewhere, and far away from us. We've known for a while that he is a stupid person, and in the end he will lose and this will cost him."

Clashes at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: Reuters)

A schoolgirl from east Jerusalem expressed disappointment of the lack of response among the Israeli Arab sector. "I won't be calm unless we fight against Trump's decision. After reading the condemnations on Facebook yesterday, I thought there was going to be war today, but unfortunately there is almost no response here," she said. "Me and many other students just want to be on the ground. If it's too difficult for the men, then us women have the strength to do a lot of things that would lead us to a right and just struggle, and not just talk."

Clashes at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Clashes at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Another east Jerusalem resident also criticized the Israeli Arab leadership. "We've had enough of slogans. Come to Jerusalem and head the demonstrations. Don't fear for your jobs, otherwise you'll lose the (trust) of the Arab citizens," he warned.

Protest in Nablus (Photo: AFP)

In the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians protested in several different cities, including Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Beitunia, Tulkarm, Qalandiya and Nabi Salih. Protesters hurled stones at Israeli security forces, who responded with crowd dispersal measures.

Four people were wounded by live gunfire and another 20 were hit by rubber bullets, Palestinian health officials said.

Clashes in Ramallah (Photo: AFP)

In the afternoon, the Gilboa border crossing, north of Jenin, was closed due to violent rioting there.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Clashes in Ramallah (Photo: AFP)

Clashes in Ramallah (Photo: AFP)

Protest in Ramallah

Hebron thousands of demonstrators rallied with chants of "Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine." Israeli security forces arrested six Palestinian rioters, while two other Palestinians were hurt.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth.

Protest in Nablus

Protest in Bethlehem

Protests and rioting were also ongoing in the Gaza Strip, where dozens of Palestinians gathered at two points on the southern Gaza border fence and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. The troops responded with crowd dispersal measures and at some instances with live fire as well.

Seven protesters were wounded by live fire, one was in a critical condition, the Hamas health ministry said.

Clashes on the southern Gaza border (Photo: Reuters)

In cities inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" and burning tires.

Demonstrators also burned posters of Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israeli and US flags.

Clashes in Gaza (Photo: Reuters)

Spontaneous protests also sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tires, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called a general strike and rallies as part of three "days of rage" to protest Trump's decision.

Answering the call for strike, the Palestinian education ministry declared a day off and urged teachers as well as high school and university students to take part in the planned rallies in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas in Jerusalem.

Member of armed groups including from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, appeared at a news conference in Gaza, their faces hidden by masks and called for a resumption of armed resistance in the West Bank.

Abbas travelled to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to meet King Abdullah where he updated him on the latest developments, the Wafa news agency said.
Likud MK Oren Hazan was indicted on Thursday for assaulting a public servant and misconduct at a public place.

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Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit made the decision to indict after consulting with the State Attorney's Office and after Hazan's defense arguments at a hearing were rejected.

The incident took place before Hazan was elected to the Knesset. According to the indictment, Hazan assaulted Ariel municipality director-general Avi Ezer in October 2014 after the MK's mother's bank account was frozen after the mortgage on the family business "Baba Grill" went into foreclosure.

MK Hazan (Photo: Amir Meiri)

Hazan came to the municipality building and went from office to office trying to find out who instructed that the account be foreclosed. When he found out it was the director-general, he confronted him at his office with shouts and slurs.

Hazan also pushed him up against a wall and then followed him into a meeting room, where he turned around and locked the door declaring: "nobody is leaving here."

The harassment continued in the room until Hazan was removed from the premises. Hazan then barged into the mayor's office and began shouting and cursing him. The mayor demanded that Hazan leave his office, but the MK refused while continuing to threaten him.

MK Hazan's response: "I gave up my Knesset immunity, and I request a public trial to be broadcast live on Facebook, so that I can demonstrate the mayor's outrageous behavior and poor conduct, which violate the natural sense of justice. I will also show that the claims against me are baseless, similar to thousands of cases which are routinely closed, as mine should have been. It is strictly a political witch-hunt!"
A man with a Palestinian flag yelling "God is great" was detained by police in the Netherlands on Thursday after smashing the windows of a kosher Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam.

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The violent outburst came a day after US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that reversed decades of US foreign policy, angered much of the Muslim world and was widely rejected by Western leaders.

  

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The assailant, who was wearing a black-and-white-checkered head scarf, smashed several windows of the restaurant HaCarmel before he was pushed to the ground and hand-cuffed by police, a video of the incident posted on local media websites showed.

Muslim attacks Amsterdam Kosher store

"We are disgusted," the Organization of Jewish Communities in The Netherlands said in a statement. The attack was "an act of revenge, meant to instil fear, and is no less than an act of terror."

The restaurant proprietor, Sami Baron, told Ynet "I am lucky that I was not present at the time, and that the flag has been replaced."
BEIRUT - A private French school in Lebanon has issued an apology following complaints from the parents of a fourth grader that a map in geography class shows Israeland not Palestineas the country's southern neighbor, violating the law.

Lebanon is technically at war with Israel, and Lebanese laws ban dealing with or recognizing Israel, including showing it on maps.

The private school issued an urgent statement late Wednesday, saying it respects Lebanon's sovereignty and government school programs. The incident came to public attention when the father of a 9-year-old girl posted the map on his Facebook page, saying "this is what my fourth grade daughter learned in class today."
The Jerusalem District Police's investigation into the shooting incident that killed a Palestinian near the West Bank village of Qusra last week is still ongoing, but sources close to the investigation said Thursday findings so far point to the shooter acting in self defense.

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The shooter , a father who accompanied a children's bar mitzvah that passed near the village, discharged almost an entire clip of his weapon when his group was attacked by Palestinians who threw stones at them. The father's shots hit, and later killed, Mahmoud Odeh.

The police sources said they were taking the investigation extremely seriously and explained they will take all necessary measures to ascertain the exact circumstances of the deadly shooting.

The Qusra incident is still being investigated by police (Photo: EPA)

"All involved have already been interrogated or will be in the future," the sources said. Speaking about the shooter, suspected of involuntary manslaughter , they said, "We realize their lives were in danger. The father emptied almost an entire clip in self defense."

The father accompanied the young boys through an area he knew well, the sources said, adding the group was attacked from above with rocks when they reached a point below the Palestinian village.

The parents and children could not see who was throwing the stones at them, said the sources, and therefore decided to leave the children in a cave with one of the parents supervising them.

The person accompanying the hike gave his weapon to the parent who remained with the children in the cave and tried to scare off the Palestinian rioters. The father claimed during his interrogation that he fired several shots in the air, which evidently hit Qusra resident Odeh. He also attempted to reach higher ground above the cave to guard the boys, but was hit on the head with a rock and fell down.

IDF forces deployed in the area near Qusra following the shooting (Photo: Ido Erez)

The father contacted the sector's brigade commander

The father then again resumed firing in the air, he told investigators, in order to keep back the mob. While the event was ongoing, several parents attempted to contact the Samaria emergency call center and notified them of what was transpiring.

Realizing the event was escalating, the father directly contacted the sector's brigade commander, who rushed to the scene in his vehicle. Cooler heads prevailed once army forces began arriving to the scene and the group was extracted.

Head of the Shomron Regional Council Yossi Dagan then arrived as well, at the behest of the father who called him for assistance in pressing charges.

The father has been questioned under caution once since the incident, but has maintained in constant communication with police investigators. He reconstructed the events on the scene with the brigade commander and is expected to do the same with police in the coming days.

Investigators may also collect testimony from the children who attended the hike. Regardless, the father is expected to be questioned again by police, notwithstanding the preliminary conclusion the shooting was indeed justified as both the adults' and children's lives were at real risk.

Security forces carried out arrests in Qusra

X

The Honenu legal defense organization, which represents the father, demanded the creation of a special investigative team to find the Palestinian rioters and prosecute them.

Pursuant to the same effort, security forces arrested 20 Qusra residents overnight on suspicion of attacking the Israeli hikers in last week's incident and participating in violent disturbances over the past few days.

The detainees, who include two minors, have played a central role in the riots as well as in inciting others to throw rocks at IDF forces, security sources said. Some of them are also suspected of rolling rocks down at far-right Otzma Yehudit activists who were in the area this past Monday.
An Argentine judge on Thursday ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead and hundreds wounded, according to a judicial source.

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The order also removes the judicial immunity of Kirchner, who served as president from 2007-2015 and is now a senator.

Kirchner, who is facing trial in several other cases involving corruption and money-laundering stemming from her years as president, has previously called the case an "absurdity."

Cristina Kirchner (Photo: AFP)

"As happens regularly in Argentina, the news was first leaked to the press and Cristina has not yet been notified," an aide to the former president told AFP.

Judge Claudio Bonadio is backing an assertion by former prosecutor Alberto Nisman that a 2013 agreement with Iran, which was portrayed as a joint attempt to solve the case, in reality ensured that the Iranians involved would never be prosecuted. The deal was approved by Congress, but was later declared unconstitutional by the courts.

Kirchner, 64, who had two four-year terms in office, is due to take her seat in the Senate next week after her election victory in October crowned a political comeback and granted her immunity from imprisonment in several corruption cases.

Jewish Argentine man treading through the wreckage of the bombing (Photo: AFP)

The judge asked lawmakers to remove Kirchner's immunity from arrest. He also ordered the arrest of several aides and allies of Kirchner, including former presidency Secretary Carlos Zannini and activist Luis D'Elia on the same charges. Former Foreign Minister Hector Timerman was ordered held under house arrest due to health issues.

Additionally, the ex-head of the Federal Intelligence Agency, Oscar Parrilli, was ordered not to leave the country.

Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano said the charge of treason carries a potential prison sentence of 10 to 25 years while aggravated cover-up has a six-year penalty. A vote of two thirds of the Senate would be required to remove Kirchner's immunity from prosecution.

Argentina's top criminal court last year accepted a request by a coalition of Jewish associations to re-examine the charge against Kirchner, Timerman and other officials originally made by Nisman on January 14, 2015.

Judge Bonadio took over the case four days later when, in a sinister turn of events, Nisman was mysteriously found dead in his home with a gunshot to the head.

The initial police reports and autopsies found no sign anyone else had been present when Nisman died, and federal police said the prosecutor shot himself.

But Taiano said in November that a re-examination of the evidence showed that Nisman was murdered.

Alberto Nisman (Photo: AFP)

Kirchner and the other defendants have repeatedly denied wrongdoing or involvement in any cover-up involving Argentina's worst terror attack, the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AIMA) center in Buenos Aires. Investigators have linked former Iranian officials to the attack, but Iran has denied any connection with the attack and declined to turn over suspects.

Several prominent members of Kirchner's former government have been detained on corruption charges in recent weeks, including ex-public works minister Julio De Vido and Amado Boudou, her vice-president from 2011-2015.
Senior Hamas and Fatah officials met in the Gaza Strip Thursday to denounce President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and transfer the US Embassy there.

The parties called Trump's decision "belligerence against the rights of the Palestinian people" and called for a widespread popular uprising and expressions of rage in the West Bank.

The delegates also welcomed protests voiced both by the Palestinians and internationally and added, "Arabs, Muslims and all free men of the world must come together on the Jerusalem issue."
The Nazareth District Court convicted five residents of the village of Ghajar near Israel's border with Lebanon for committing security offenses.

The father of one of the men convicted is said to have collaborated with Hezbollah terrorists to throw an explosive device for the purposes of committing a terror attack, a device later caught and hidden by his son, who was convicted in Israel.

The remaining defendants were convicted of assisting him, as well as drug-related offenses.
The EU's top diplomat pledged on Thursday to reinvigorate diplomacy with Russia, the United States, Jordan and others to ensure Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem after President Donald Trump recognized the city as Israel's capital.

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The European Union, a member of the Middle East Quartet along with the United States, the United Nations and Russia, believes it has a duty to make its voice heard as the Palestinians' biggest aid donor and Israel's top trade partner.

"The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a news conference.

EU senior foreign policy chief Mogherini (R) said Jerusalem should be a capital for PA President Abbas as well (Photo: EPA)

She said she would meet Jordan's foreign minister on Friday, while she and EU foreign ministers would discuss Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels on Monday.

"The European Union will engage even more with the parties and with our regional and international partners. We will keep working with the Middle East Quartet, possibly in an enlarged format," said Mogherini, citing Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Norway. "We remain convinced that the role of the United States ... is crucial," she said.

Mogherini said King Abdullah of Jordan was 'a very wise man' who should be listened to on matters relating to Jerusalem (Photo: AFP)

Mogherini, who also spoke to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, threw her weight behind Jordan's King Abdullah , saying he was "a very wise man" that everyone should listen to as the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

Trump's decision stirred outrage across the Arab and Muslim world and alarm among US allies and Russia because of Jerusalem's internationally disputed status, and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel.

Mogherini stressed all 28 EU governments were united on the issue of Jerusalem and seeking a solution envisaging a Palestinian state on land Israel took in the Six Day War, but policy divisions within the bloc have weakened its influence.

Mogherini opposed President Trump's stance on Jerusalem, saying it should be the capital of both Israel and Palestine (Photo: Reuters)

"This is the consolidated European Union position," she said, saying EU foreign ministers made that clear to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday in Brussels.

Hurdles for the EU include its range of positions, ranging from Germany's strong support for Israel to Sweden's 2014 decision to officially recognize the state of Palestine.

The EU is also perceived by some in Israel as being too pro-Palestinian, partly because of the EU's long-held opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, diplomats say.
ANKARA  Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call on Thursday that the US decision on Jerusalem will negatively impact the region's peace and stability, sources in Erdogan's office said.

"President Erdogan emphasized that the latest move by the US government would negatively impact the peace and stability in the region. Russian President Putin stated he shared the same views," the sources said.

Earlier on Thursday, Turkish presidential sources said Erdogan and Pope Francis had agreed in a phone call that any attempts to change Jerusalem's status should be avoided, after President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of US policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The Lebanese Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah said on Thursday it supported calls for a new Palestinian uprising in response to the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and urged support for "resistance" against the move.

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"We support the call for a new Palestinian intifada (uprising) and escalating the resistance which is the biggest, most important and gravest response to the American decision," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised speech.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in his televised address

"The Israeli enemy and its leaders do not respect international resolutions, it is proven," Nasrallah began, claiming all Israel cares about is the approval of the United States.

"For decades, successive Israeli governments have tried to Judaize Jerusalem and expropriate it in all aspects," he continued, warning that Trump's move could now lead to Palestinian in the city living under an even worse form of occupation, and further embolden Israel to build in Palestinian-claimed territories.

"What will be the fate of east Jerusalem residents after the American decision?" he pondered. "Will they be deported? Will they be forced to carry Israeli identity cards? What will be the fate of Palestinian property in Jerusalem? Will it be expropriated? Destroyed?

"We will witness Israeli construction without restraint. Jerusalem may expand into the West Bank. What will happen to the Islamic and Christian assets, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the fate of the Palestinian issue as a whole?"

Clashes in Ramallah over Trump's declaration (Photo: Reuters)

"I call on everyone to take part in a mass popular demonstration to protest and denounce this American aggression and this unjust... decision," Nasrallah said.

The demonstration is to be held on Monday in Beirut's southern suburbs, a bastion of Nasrallah's Shiite movement.

"I am calling on men, women, young and old, the southern suburbs, Beirut and all those who wish to join in from across Lebanon," he said, also inviting residents of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

Nasrallah concluded by saying that all Mideast negotiations must be halted until US President Donald Trump walks back his declaration, which the Hezbollah leader said was an "undisguised American aggression" against the Palestinian people.

Protest in Amman over the move

Meanwhile, Hezbollah lawmakers said US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital constituted an aggression against Palestine and resistance was the only way to recover lost rights.

Trumps decision marks the "worst and most dangerous" to come from any American administration, Lebanese Hezbollahs parliamentary bloc said.

The Hezbollah parliamentary bloc "calls on Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims ... to move swiftly and efficiently," lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said in a televised statement.

"The only way to recover rights is the way of resistance", and Trumps declaration has eliminated negotiation as a method, the statement said, adding the US decision would have "catastrophic repercussions that threaten regional and international security and stability."

Clashes in Bethlehem (Photo: AFP)

It "represents a treacherous and wicked aggression against Palestine, its people, Islamic and Christian shrines, and the Arab and Islamic worlds".

Palestinian factions called for a "Day of Rage" on Friday, and Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon negotiations and launch a new uprising against Israel.

Israel views Iran-backed Hezbollah as the biggest threat on its borders. The Shiite political and military movement has sent arms to the Palestinian territories, its leader Nasrallah said last month.
Japan's UN ambassador says the UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Friday on President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Eight countries opposed to the US move requested an emergency council meeting and Japan's Ambassador, Koro Bessho, told reporters Thursday that an open session would take place late Friday morning after previously scheduled briefings.

The eight council nationsBolivia, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Uruguayrequested that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres brief the 15-member council.

But UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Thursday that UN Mideast envoy, Nikolay Mladenov, will address Friday's meeting by videoconference because he is "the lead expert on the ground."

Guterres said after Trump's announcement Wednesday that the issue of Jerusalem must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Haq said Thursday "we've always been concerned about ensuring that the status quo in the city of Jerusalem is preserved and hope that all sides will exercise calm and restraint."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took part in President Donald Trump's decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, with the pair speaking three times over the past ten days alone.

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In his talks with the president, Netanyahu is said to have stressed the historic importance of such a statement coming from the leader of the United States. "you are about to make history," Netanyahu said he told Trump. The prime minister also assured the president the status quo in Jerusalem will be maintained.

In the wake of Trump's controversial speech, Israel has been analyzing international responses. Those coming in from Arab, central and eastern European countries have been predictable and measured. Those coming in from Western Europe, however, have been more problematic for Israel, with the European Union stating Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine as well as Israel.

PM Netanyahu (L) and President Trump spoke often before the latter's speech (Photo: AP)

Asia and Africa to promote its agenda.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to travel to Brussels next week to meet the European Union's foreign ministers. An Israeli premier last visited the Union's headquarters 22 years ago.

The EU's top diplomat Federica Mogherini responded to the American decision by saying she feared it could send the region back "to darker times."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs countered by saying, "Insisting on denying Jerusalem is Israel's capital is disavowing an undisputable historical fact. Any denial of this simple truth distances peace by creating expectations detached from reality in Palestinians."

EU senior foreign policy chief Mogherini (R) said Jerusalem should be a capital for PA President Abbas as well (Photo: EPA)

Once again congratulating Trump on his decision, Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page that "There are certain great moments in the history of Zionism: the Balfour declaration, the state's founding, the liberation of Jerusalem and(Wednesday)Trump's declaration. I told him, 'Mr. President, you're about to make history.' And he made history."

"It's an uplifting and uniting moment: for the right and the left, the religious and the secular. We're making Jerusalem our pride and joy," Netanyahu declared.
GAZA  A senior Palestinian official in President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah party said on Thursday that Vice President Mike Pence, due to visit the region later this month, "is unwelcome in Palestine".

"In the name of Fatah I say that we will not welcome Trump's deputy in the Palestinian Territories. He asked to meet (Abbas) on the 19th of this month in Bethlehem, such a meeting will not take place," Jibril Rajoub said.

Aides for Abbas were not immediately available for comment.
Palestinian terrorists launched two rockets at Israel Thursday evening, causing a Code Red alert to sound in Sderot and the Hof Ashkelon and Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Councils. The rockets reportedly landed within the Gaza Strip itself.

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The alarm sounded near 6:15 pm in several communities, prompting security forces to conduct scans in the area. The rockets were later found to have detonated outside Israeli territory.

The IDF said a tank and aircraft struck two terrorist posts in Gaza. The military added considered Hamas responsible for any fire emanating from the Gaza Strip.

Anti-Israeli demonstrations in Gaza culminated in two rockets being launched at Israel

IDF artillery fire rained down on a Hamas observatory post in the center of the strip, Palestinian reports said.

Last Thursday mortars were launched at an IDF outpost in near northern Gaza, in the vicinity of the Erez kibbutz. There were no casualties. In retaliation, IDF tanks and fighter jets attacked four Hamas and Islamic Jihad lookout positions near Beit Hanoun on the northeast edge of the strip.

10 mortars in all were launched, all falling in open land near the outpost.

IDF sources the mortar shell fire was targeting the army's outpost and nearby construction work on the Gaza obstacle project, which were stopped immediately thereafter.

Iron Dome batteries were deployed in central Israel in response to heightened tensions (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

The IDF said Islamic Jihad was behind the attack, which was revenge for the destruction of their border-crossing tunnel a month prior.

Since the tunnel was destroyed, tensions have been mounting on Israel's southern frontier with suspicion the Gaza terrorist organizations may retaliate. Iron Dome batteries have therefore been deployed in central Israel.

Code Red alarms have been triggered on several instances in different places around the Gaza Strip recently, but eventually were found out to be false alarms.
TUNIS  Thousands of Tunisians protested in several cities on Thursday against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and decision to move the US Embassy there, residents said.

Labor unions and other groups have called for even bigger protests in the capital Tunis and other cities in the North African country after Friday prayers.

Thursday's demonstrations went peacefully with several hundreds alone gathering in central Tunis, holding up Palestinian flags and banners, residents said. Protesters burned a US flag and others stepped on images of Israeli flags.

Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemning the US decision, saying it undermined Palestinian rights, officials said.
Czech President Milos Zeman commented on President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his decision to move the US Embassy there, saying, "It made me very happy. In my visit to Israel four years ago I said I supported moving the Czech embassy to Jerusalem. We may follow the US's lead sooner or later."

"Every country has the right to decide which city is to serve as its capital," Zeman added.
By Benjamin Jumbe:

President Yoweri Museveni has expressed optimism that Ugandas economy will grow sustainably.

The President was speaking at the opening and review of the 5th phase of the Presidential Investors Round Table that took place at State House, Entebbe.

President Museveni said that after many years of trial and error, government had been able to identify 10 strategic bottlenecks which include wrong ideology and infrastructure among others

Museveni told the meeting that those critiquing government that the country is producing a lot of electricity should stand warned as he would not compromise and allow that kind of confusion.

President Museveni said that the other bottlenecks that need to be addressed include supporting the private sector and the fragmented market, caused by colonialism.

He said when there are low costs of production, such as transport and electricity; many investors will set up industries and help reduce the population that is stuck in subsistence farming.
By Benjamin Jumbe:

Opposition members of parliament on the legal and parliamentary affairs committee have described President Yoweri Musevenis remarks on the age limit as diversionary.

While meeting members of the committee on Tuesday night, the president said that having age limits for any elective office goes against Article 1 of the 1995 Constitution, which says Power belongs to the people.

Citing cases of the US, China, Russia and Israel, among others, President Museveni explained that many of these countries, in their push to develop and transform, had been guided by leaders who were of advanced age and led the countries for decades.

However speaking to KFM, Masaka Municipality MP Matthias Mpuuga who is also a member of the committee but snubbed the meeting, said the president cannot compare Uganda to those countries because the history of these countries is different.

He adds that together with other colleagues who snubbed the Entebbe meet, they plan to present a minority report.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Snow showers will become more widely scattered for the afternoon. Temps nearly steady around 30. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%..

Tonight

A few clouds. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 22F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph.
The Jackson County Sheriffs Department arrested three people Wednesday morning after officers found 16.7 grams of crystal methamphetamine in their vehicle.

Andrew Young, 30, of White Bear Lake, Minn., Adriana Panek, 18, of Virginia, Minn., and Jonathan Lambert, 20, of Nett Lake, Minn., were charged with possession with intent to deliver along with other drug-related offenses.

Jackson County Sheriffs Department deputies were dispatched to the Comfort Inn and Suites in the town of Brockway near Black River Falls at 3:03 a.m. Hotel employees had reported that Young, Panek and Lambert were acting suspiciously in the lobby and were refused service by staff according to the report.

The deputies then conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle after they discovered that one of the subjects had extraditable warrants from Minnesota.

During the traffic stop, a deputy and police dog conducted a sniff of their vehicle prompting a search to be conducted. According to the report, crystal methamphetamine, scales and packaging material were found in the vehicle.
Fourteen months after breaking ground, Colgan Air Services will celebrate its new Customer Welcome Center with a grand opening Friday, Dec. 15, being held in conjunction with the facilitys 25th anniversary.

Colgan Air Services, owned and operated by CEO Tim, a former corporate pilot, and wife Deborah Colgan, with son Christopher and daughter Kelly Colgan-Hammen, opened in 1992 next to the La Crosse Municipal Airport, and serves as the areas largest fixed-base operator, offering aircraft rental, maintenance and management as well as flight training and charter services. In June, the building received its first major upgrade in over two decades, with the completion of the 3,240-square-foot Customer Welcome Center.

This is an exciting new addition for us, said Colgan Hammen, president of Colgan Air Services. Its more spacious, more open, with lots of natural light.

IF YOU GO WHAT: Colgan Air Services Customer Welcome Center grand opening WHEN: 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15 WHERE: Colgan Air, 2709 Fanta Reed Road

The addition, constructed by Kirchner Custom Builders, boasts floor-to-ceiling windows offering a full view of the runway and the Minnesota bluffs along with comfortable lounge seating, a fireplace, widescreen TV and spacious conference room for press conferences, government visits, meetings and seminars. Colgan Air Services sees around 30 visitors a day, and Colgan Hammen says the Customer Welcome Center has received compliments all around.

Customers, clients and community members will have an opportunity to tour the addition during the grand opening, which will commence with a ribbon cutting by the Chamber of Commerce at 4 p.m. Appetizers, beverages and holiday treats will be served.

Were proud to have a new center for visitors, Colgan Hammen said. The modern, up-to-date building gives visitors a glimpse into the rest of the great things La Crosse has to offer.
An Onalaska woman caught with $60,000 worth of methamphetamine was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison.

Sandy Xiong, 27, also will spend four years on extended supervision under the sentence issued by La Crosse County Judge Ramona Gonzalez.

Police arrested Xiong at a La Crosse hotel where she delivered about  ounces of meth to a police informant on June 5, according to court documents. A search of her car and hotel room recovered a total of about 1 pounds of the drug, along with a digital scale.

According to the complaint, investigators had been tipped off that Xiong was trafficking large amounts of meth to the area from Minnesota.

Xiong pleaded guilty in September to delivery of methamphetamine, and prosecutors dismissed a more serious charge of possession with intent to deliver more than 50 grams.

Assistant District Attorney John Kellis said Xiong was a substantial for-profit dealer.

She was selling ounces at a time, Kellis said, adding that the nearly 682 grams she had when arrested was an even more egregious violation given the scourge of drugs on the community.

A pound-and-a-half, your honor.

Kellis also said police had been tipped off that Xiong, who was free on bond, may have hidden drugs in her body in anticipation of being taken into custody, and investigators were waiting outside the courtroom to search her.

When given a chance to address the court, Xiong sobbed quietly until Gonzalez told her to go to the bathroom to wash her face and collect herself.

Xiong returned about eight minutes later and apologized for her crimes.

Im very sorry for what I did, she said. I know I shouldnt have contributed to this ongoing problem.

Xiong, who was on probation at the time of her arrest for 2016 child abuse charge, said she wants to change and be a good mother. She asked for probation.

Gonzalez said the large amount of drugs and Xiongs pattern of bond violations since entering her plea compelled her to send Xiong to prison.

There are certain things, Ms. Xiong, that you cannot just erase away, Gonzalez said.
Five years after the Oak Creek Sikh temple shooting, a former white supremacist and the son of one of the shootings victims will come together at a Madison event Sunday to promote unity.

The nonprofit United Against Hate, founded by Masood Akhtar, is hosting the Moving Past Hate event at Monona Terrace. The free-to-the-public event runs from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., but doors open at 1 p.m.

Akhtar said he hopes people will learn more about peaceful reconciliation after hearing the story of how Arno Arr Michaelis IV, who formerly espoused white supremacist values, and Pardeep Kaleka, whose father was killed in the shooting, overcame their differences.

Engagement is so critical in this kind of environment of hate, racism, bigotry, Akhtar said.

Michaelis was a founding member of the hate group called the Northern Hammerskins and formerly sang in a hate-metal band called Centurion. Since the birth of his daughter, Michaelis has reversed his ways and wrote My Life After Hate, documenting his experience.

In the wake of the shooting that left six dead and four injured, Kaleka founded the group Serve2Unite, which engages young people of all backgrounds to value humanity and the aspiration of living a genuine, honest life as a peacemaker, according to the organizations website. Kaleka is a psychotherapist and a former Milwaukee police officer.

A documentary on the shooting in Oak Creek and a question and answer session will follow the panelists remarks.

Among others, the event is sponsored by the Republican and Democratic parties of Dane County.

That to me in itself is a great starting point where people with different perspectives and ideologies are finally coming together, at least at a Dane County level here, Akhtar said. I think that will itself send a very positive message to our people that we are heading in the right direction.
Attorney General Brad Schimel is supporting the position of state legislative leaders to keep records related to sexual harassment in the state Legislature private.

Schimel, in a wide-ranging interview with the Wisconsin State Journal this week, said releasing records of complaints and investigations could make sexual harassment or misconduct victims relive the harm done to them  a concern that outweighs taxpayers right to know whether public officials are engaging in harassing or even criminal behavior at work.

When you get the leadership of both parties agreeing on something being the right thing to do, I think that speaks loudly because a lot of times they are just sniping at each other. And I think they hit the right balance here. You cannot disempower a victim. Then the system is just re-victimizing them, Schimel said. There are compelling interests on both sides but I think first  that the survivor who came forward and said something  they hold the trump card.

But in 2016 at least, Schimels Department of Justice released records related to sexual harassment complaints filed in his department to The Associated Press.

Republican leaders in the Senate and the Assembly have said they will not release records or information related to complaints of sexual harassment, misconduct or assault, saying doing so would have a chilling effect on victims feeling comfortable coming forward with their experiences. Democratic leaders say they support that stand.

The position was taken after media outlets sought records of complaints and investigations after an avalanche of recent accusations of sexual harassment, misconduct and assault against powerful men in Hollywood, politics and media.

Were seeing many individuals come forward now to report that persons in power have abused or harassed them and I think its great that they are coming forward, Schimel said. They are finding they are having the courage to start saying something but what I think is even better about all this is that America as a society is not starting by rejecting them  they are starting by believing.

When asked whether keeping private records of taxpayer-funded settlements to resolve sexual harassment complaints that can sometimes include non-disclosure agreements could prevent opportunities to encourage other victims to come forward, Schimel said victims benefit from non-disclosure agreements, too, though he acknowledged the accused are often the ones seeking them.

Were going to grow as a nation now that were shedding the light on more of this ... but theres a benefit of the non-disclosure (agreement) for the survivor, too, because they get some accountability for the person committing the acts but they dont become an unwilling poster child, he said. Every time they relive it, its another catharsis  its another tough moment. I dont think you can take that control away from them.

Schimel, who would represent the Legislature in a lawsuit over releasing records of sexual harassment, said he believes the records law is on the Legislatures side.

I do believe their position is on good legal grounds, he said.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said he appreciates Schimels concern about victims, but believes it may be misplaced.

He said if anonymity is a concern, it should be possible to redact victim information.

But the substance of the complaint and the response should be released, he added. The public has a right to know who is being accused of misconduct and whether the Legislature has responded appropriately. My guess is that it hasnt, and that all of this talk about protecting victims is just a smokescreen for covering that up.

Lawyers who represent workplace sexual harassment victims have made a similar argument.

Ian Henderson, of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said privacy is a paramount concern for victims, as is their right to make decisions about what information about their situation is made public.

However, that must be balanced by institutional transparency in responding to and preventing sexual harassment as well as accountability for those individuals who engage in sexual harassment and sexual assault, Henderson said. Perpetrators can manipulate systems and often cultivate secrecy as a means to avoid detection.

He added that one-size-fits-all approaches are often ineffective as they fail to account for individual survivor needs.

Chase Tarrier, public policy coordinator for End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, said his organization encourages Schimel and legislative leaders to continue examining both their internal and external policies for handling instances of misconduct to ensure that the process provides justice in a way that empowers victims to make these critical decisions about their lives.
It appears that Congress will pass a tax bill that the president will sign into law.

This legislation promises to substantially increase our national debt. This will ultimately result in the need to cut expenditures.

What benefits of good governance can be done away with? What goods for our national community are not worthy of being paid for?

What benefits can people who govern themselves give up? Clean and safe drinking water? It's essential.

Transportation systems and safe roads available to all? Not discretionary.

Twenty-first century access to broadband and open internet? Must have.

Good education through college for all children and respect for their teachers? A fundamental need for every society.

Advancement of science and research? Needed for sure.

Health care for all? An absolute benefit.

Old-age security and a tranquil life for our elders? It's only fair.

Care for our mother earth and our environment? We need to do this for those who will follow us.

We cannot give up these things, and there is no need to do so. But these benefits of good governance are not free. They must be paid for. And there is no reason for us to do so on credit.

Good governance of the people, by the people and for the people is able to do all of these things and more. We choose for ourselves because we govern ourselves.

Mark Neumann, La Crosse
A 27-year-old Sparta man was referred to the Monroe County District Attorney for drug and weapons charges after a Nov. 28 traffic stop.

Shortly after 10 p.m., police identified a Dodge Stratus as registered to a person with a suspended drivers license. Police followed the vehicle on Highway 12-16 until initiating a traffic stop near Greyhound Road. The driver was identified as Randy Alan Seekamp, who police recognized from previous contacts. The report says Seekamp had scabs and sores on his face consistent with methamphetamine use.

A search of Seekamp produced a pair of brass knuckles in his back pocket, according to the report. Police deployed a K-9 sniff of the vehicle, which reportedly led police to two small baggies with a white crystal substance, a small baggie with white residue and a syringe.

Seekamp was referred for possession of methamphetamine and carrying a concealed weapon.

In other Tomah Police Department news:

Walter Glen Casey, 41, Tomah, was referred to the district attorney for multiple charges after a Nov. 30 disturbance on Lakeview Drive.

Police were notified that an intoxicated Casey left a residence shortly after 1 p.m. and was walking toward Tomah Memorial Hospital. A woman told Tomah police that Casey wanted to return to his family in South Carolina and asked for a ride to a pawn shop and then the bus depot. She said Casey changed his mind while at the pawn shop and asked for a ride to a liquor store.

The woman said she and Casey argued on the way back home and that he threw a cell phone against the dashboard and broke it and accused her of infidelity. She also said Casey slapped her in the neck with an open hand. A cab driver summoned to the residence described Casey as a powder keg and heard him tell the woman, When I come back, youll be sorry. The cab driver refused service due to Caseys aggressive demeanor.

The woman reportedly produced a note in which Casey called her a whore and said I will spend the rest of my life tracking you and uncovering the truth.

Casey was located on the sidewalk near the hospital a short time later. He reportedly told police that he and the woman yelled at each other but nothing else happened. A preliminary breath test recorded a blood-alcohol level of .13.

Casey was referred for disorderly conduct, battery and intimidation of a witness.

Adam James Horton, 32, Tomah, was referred to the district attorney for operating after revocation/drunk driving-related. He was pulled over Nov. 30 after he was identified as one of two people involved in an argument at Taco Bell. He left before police arrived at the restaurant but was pulled over a short time later near Walmart.

Shea Alan Foster, 31, Taylor, was referred to the district attorney for theft. He is accused of leaving Walmart Oct. 7 with a cart of merchandise valued at $2,200 without paying. The report says he was able to leave the parking lot without being apprehended.

Matthew Sanmann, 34, Tomah, was referred to the district attorney for multiple charges stemming from a Dec. 2 incident at a View Street residence.

Police were called shortly before 6 a.m. after a report of two people arguing in a garage. A woman told police she and Sanmann were arguing about his drinking. She said nothing physical had happened between them that day but that Sanmann kicked her and punched a hole in a wall Nov. 23. Police arrested Sanmann for the Nov. 23 incident.

A search of Sanmann allegedly uncovered a small straw with a piece of yellow plastic inside containing white residue. He was referred for criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia. Sanmann was later referred for bail jumping for allegedly violating a 72-hour no-contact order with the woman Dec. 3.
Norwalk Public Library has joined the Digital Dash.

Throughout the rest of this year, the library is participating in OverDrives Digital Dash contest. If the library hits 4,347,351 digital checkouts by the end of the year, it will be eligible to win additional funds to buy more ebooks and audiobooks for its OverDrive collection.

While the library offered ebooks and digital audiobooks to the community through its partnership with OverDrive for 12 years, many people are still surprised to learn their library card gives them access to over 71,000 free digital titles, said library director Jeanne Rice.

I think its a wonderful way to get more books in our Wisconsin Digital Library if we win the contest, so e-read and e-listen on Wisconsin, Rice said.

The librarys digital books are free for anyone with a valid library card.

Rice said popular titles include Small Great Things, The Zookeepers Wife, and The Whistler. Users can borrow bestsellers and classic ebooks and digital audiobooks to enjoy on smart phones, tablets, Kindles and other eReaders, MP3 players and computers.

Wisconsins Digital Library also offers a dedicated space for younger readers, with a variety of juvenile and young adult titles. There are never late fees with digital titles, as they return automatically at the end of the lending period.

Readers can access the librarys digital collection 24/7 by visiting https://wplc.overdrive.com or by downloading the Libby app from their devices app store.

OverDrive is a digital reading platform for libraries and schools. Founded in 1986, OverDrive is based in Cleveland and is owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten. Its website is overdrive.com.
In November, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue lowered a Kewaunee County landowners property taxes because of proximity to a large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. The Department of Revenue reviewed three years of data from home sales in the county and found that on average, homes within a quarter mile of a large CAFO sold for 13 percent less than their assessed value, and homes between a quarter of a mile and one mile from a large CAFO sold for eight percent less than their assessed value. The Department of Revenue defined a large CAFO as 4,000 or more animal units.

Of course it is devastating for a homeowner to see the value of their most valuable asset  their home  slip away. Its also frustrating for CAFO owners to find yet again that simply following state law is not enough to protect their neighbors. Loss in property values due to the growth of large CAFOs also puts local governments in a tough spot. The Wisconsin state legislature has made such significant cuts to local government aid over the past six years that local governments are leaning more and more on property taxes to fund important services like roads, law enforcement, county extension and the local health department. Having to increase someone elses property taxes due to declining property values near CAFOs is sure to be met with consternation from taxpayers.

Ideally local governments would be able to take action on their own to protect local property values and prevent these conflicts. However, the state livestock siting rules actually pre-empt local governments from taking such action in the case of CAFOs. For example, local governments are not allowed to require setbacks for CAFOs that are greater than the state guidelines, even if greater setbacks would protect neighboring property values. The state is dealing local governments a tough one-two punch, making them increasingly reliant on property taxes due to loss of state aid but not giving them the tools or the latitude to protect the local property values on which they must rely.

Thats why Wisconsin Farmers Union has called on the state Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection to move forward with its proposed revisions to ATCP 51, the state livestock siting rules. DATCPs draft changes are not perfect, but they would be a good start, including increasing the setbacks for CAFOs to avoid precisely the situation that is transpiring in Kewaunee County, where neighbors property values are diminished due to insufficient setbacks. The current livestock siting standards were enacted in 2006 and have never been updated since. In 2006, a 1,000-cow operation was a big deal. Now we have operations with 4,000, 7,000 and 10,000 animal units, and were still using standards that are over a decade old. The industry has moved forward. Our standards need to do so as well.

When the livestock siting rules were first enacted in 2006, one of the stated goals was to reduce the acrimony of bitter local fights about regulation of large livestock facilities. Unfortunately, the rules have not lived up to their promise. As this months events have shown, CAFO owners can dutifully follow the state standards and still have negative spillover effects that reduce their neighbors property values. This situation is not fair to any of the parties involved. Its not fair to the neighbor who loses property value, and its not fair to the CAFO that gets blamed even though it is following the standards. Its also not fair to the local government that would like to step up and create better standards, but is pre-empted from doing so by the state.

The state is not doing right by CAFOs, their neighbors, or local governments by leaving this flawed set of rules in place.

Kara OConnor is the Wisconsin Farmers Union government relations director.
HARPERS FERRY, Iowa  On a blue-skied August afternoon, I lost all sense of time aboard a strangers flat-bottom boat on the Mississippi River.

We were about 150 miles upstream of the Quad-Cities in Jon Stravers 17-footer.

"I don't keep track of stuff very well, unless it's a bird," he said, only half joking.

A well-known ornithologist in the Hawkeye State, Stravers boat was cluttered with notes about the migratory birds he records along miles of meandering waterways.

When I told renowned river rat, Chad Pregracke, about the Quad-City Times hunt for Mississippi River stories, he suggested I contact Stravers, whom Pregracke referred to as Hawk.

Most people call him that or "Hawkman"  nicknames he earned for his considerable research on red-shouldered hawks in the region known as the Driftless Area. The ruggedly scenic stretch encompasses parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. Its rolling hills, steep-sided valleys and high bluffs were spared when others were flattened by glaciers.

This is my domain, Stravers said of the waters dividing northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin.

As a Madison, Wisconsin, native who has been living for eight years in the Quad-Cities, I knew that many people feel a personal connection to the Mississippi River.

And now I have mine.

Intimately connected

We had our assignment: Comb the 400-mile section of the Upper Mississippi River Valley that spans the entire eastern border of Iowa and neighboring towns in southwest Wisconsin and northwest Illinois.

We were to go mining for interesting people and their stories and bring them, along with thousands of photographs, back to the Quad-Cities to share with readers.

We found riverboat captains, wildlife biologists, commercial fishermen and women, artists, bikers, campground hosts and dozens of others who have been drawn to the river.

Our journeys now are documented in The Great River: 400 miles of the Mississippi, a 152-page coffee table book that takes readers along to the places we discovered. The book is sponsored by the Quad-Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau and contains 10 of my stories and hundreds of photos by Quad-City Times photo editor Kevin Schmidt and photographer Andy Abeyta.

For three months, Schmidt covered the area from New Albin, Iowa, to Keokuk.

Abeyta took the other side of the river  from Victory, Wisconsin, to Hamilton, Illinois.

The potential was endless, said Schmidt. For a river town, it just is a natural thing to go and cover, whether its the river itself or the people drawn to it.

Joe Taylor, president and CEO of the Quad-Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, hopes the book will help slow us down and encourage people to do their own exploring.

The river is so intimately connected to the Quad-Cities and vice versa, he said. It made the book seem like a natural marketing mechanism for the Quad-Cities.

The experience produced several firsts for our trio, including an understanding and appreciation for the Mississippi River and those who connected with it before us.

The river chooses you

As we approached the Allamakee County boat landing, Stravers was pleased to spot his friend and fellow river rat, Robert Vavra.

A burly man with a mustache, Vavra operates the Maiden Voyage. He described it as the last working eco-tourism (for-profit) boat on the Mississippi between St. Louis and Winona, Minnesota.

I do everything from bachelorette parties to nursing facilities, he said.

In Allamakee County, the Mississippi River borders to the east, and Minnesota borders north. The population of the whole county is about 14,000, and Vavra said he got hooked on the area 40 years ago.

The river chooses you, he said. Thats a fact.

Some people come out here their whole life and think, Nah, its a place to drink beer, and they dont really make that huge connection. And then other people like Hawk came over here to do a bird survey and never left.

After graduating from Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids, Vavra worked as a fisherman, primarily catching and selling buffalo, carp and catfish. He also worked as a clammer, diving and digging for mussels between the river towns of Lansing, Iowa, and Dubuque. But that career didnt last.

I knew I had to eat, he said. It wasnt going to be something that you could hitch your wagon to as a young guy and be able to have a family.

Vavras story is representative of many we encountered  resilient folks who have made it their mission to earn a living on the river.

Tens of thousands of men did it, he said, referring to the peak of the commercial fishing and clamming industry on the Mississippi. And today, its down to virtually nothing.

Since 1987, the number of Mississippi River commercial fishing licenses issued by Iowa has declined 53 percent, the Department of Natural Resources reports. Thirty years ago, there were 193 people catching fish for a living; this year, there were 91.

Relying on the river

The Mohn family has been running a fish market on Great River Road in Harpers Ferry for 35 years.

Asked about female figures in the area, Vavra mentioned Vickie Jones, the daughter of Ralph and Diane Mohn.

She (Jones) can skin a catfish faster than you can breathe, he said.

We stopped by Mohn Fish Market  about 3 miles upriver from Vavras place  just in time to watch Jones unload her fresh haul from the Mississippi. Once a week, the family delivers about 5,000 pounds of fish, alive and processed, to Asian food stores in the Minneapolis area. They sell to grocers and restaurants closer to home, too.

In 1987, Iowa's commercial fishermen reported harvesting slightly more than 3.1 million pounds of fish from the Mississippi. Last year, that number dropped by nearly a third to 1.2 million pounds.

But fish remain a central character in some Iowa river towns.

The week before we met Vavra, thousands of cyclists on the final day of the Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, RAGRAI, stopped at Harpers Ferry for the first time. Volunteers in the stoplight-free town prepared about 1,600 pounds of fried catfish and 800 pies, he said.

We showcased our little community to planet earth, he said.

Paying homage to history

In June, photographers Schmidt and Abeyta paddled a 17-foot wooden canoe from the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi, the same route French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet traveled in June of 1673.

To navigate the confluence, Schmidt, an experienced paddler, positioned himself in the stern (the rear), and Abeyta manned the bow. As they approached a buoy marking the main channel of the Mississippi, Schmidt instructed Abeyta to stop paddling and swap his oar for his camera.

Schmidt, whose late uncle built the canoe and taught him how to use it, wanted to own the moment  a historical reenactment.

I literally felt the current of the Mississippi take over, he said. I mean, it hit my paddle, and I was like, Oh, this is it; were in the Mississippi now.

On that voyage 344 years ago, Marquette and Joliet became the first Europeans to step foot in what now is Iowa.

Off the beaten path

Over the summer, Abeyta, a native of Oregon, came to appreciate the Upper Midwest landscape.

I expected to find beauty in the people and the stories, he said. But I didnt expect as much physical beauty as I found.

After a hike at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Harpers Ferry, Abeyta posted a photo to Snapchat to prove to his friends on the West Coast that not all of Iowa is flat.

The National Park Service manages the 2,500-plus-acre preserve, which contains nearly 200 American Indian mounds.

While parks and other natural areas in northeast Iowa get a lot of attention, the river towns south of the Quad-Cities are worth exploring, too.

One of the prettier, less-celebrated sections is the 12-plus miles of riverfront between the Illinois towns of Nauvoo and Hamilton, across the Mississippi from Montrose, Iowa, and Keokuk, respectively.

The book project introduced us to several particularly special places within two to three hours of the Quad-Cities that we might otherwise have never visited.

In Guttenberg, Iowa, for example, Schmidt turned off Great River Road onto Hideaway Lane. Down a steep and narrow gravel road, he happened upon a secluded riverfront campground called Camp Hide-Away.

Lee Fischer, the grizzly bearded property owner, soon approached.

I turned around and there was this scraggly guy just staring at me, said Schmidt, who introduced himself and eventually interviewed the former fisherman and clammer.

You know when you meet some people youre not sure about at first and then they turn out to be the most interesting characters? Schmidt said. Well, he was one of those guys.

I later stopped by, too, learning that Fischer intends to spend the rest of his life right where he is. Standing on the sandy shoreline at Camp Hide-Away on an 80-degree day in August, I couldn't resist taking a quick dip in the Mississippi.

Across from Dubuque, Schmidt came upon another treasure: Eagle Point Fishing Barge, just south of Lock & Dam No. 11 near Hazel Green, Wisconsin. The 24-hour floating hangout is popular among anglers, beer drinkers and card players.

He took pictures, later urging Abeyta and I to check it out, too.

We learned that barkeeper Carlton Hanson has for 25 years been charging anglers $3 a day or $25 per year to fish off the barge. Beer costs $2.25 and soda, water, chips and candy bars go for a buck. Beginning Jan. 1, 2018, the fishing fees will jump to $5 and $50, respectively, to help pay for a replacement barge that was delivered in early November.

During Abeyta's visit, the regulars acknowledged him, but they mostly kept to themselves, allowing the photojournalist to go to work.

The farther you get from the city, the more you stand out with a bunch of cameras, Abeyta said. But, at Eagle Point Fishing Barge, They forgot that I didnt necessarily belong there, which is exactly what I want.

The result was that Abeyta was free to observe and photograph river culture at its best.

They cared more about fishing than they did seeing what I was doing, he said. It just felt really genuine.

More than a passing glance

Some Quad-City commuters regard the Mississippi River a hassle and a hurdle.

When driving one of the area's five busy bridges, it's easy to take for granted the mighty resource that rushes below.

When you live in the city, you need to get away to really appreciate it, said Bruce Blair, a forester for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources at Yellow River State Forest, 150 miles upriver from Davenport.

In fact, taking pictures here at home was the biggest challenge for Abeyta.

For one, I know the area, so nothing stood out to me, he said. There are exceptions to this, but overall, people dont pay attention to the river here.

Taylor, of the Quad-Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, agreed, saying, We really dont look or take the time to see what we have right here in our own region. The river takes a certain level of engagement to understand."

For Schmidt, our project was an opportunity to re-engage.

A lot of times, you dismiss whats right next to you, he said. You dont have to go far to see something thats really historical, natural and interesting.

For me, personal perspective already was beginning to change as the summer arrived. I moved in the spring to the shores of the Rock River, less than 10 miles from its confluence with the Mississippi. I instantly felt invited to mount my stand-up paddleboard at sunset and bike along the riverfront path.

I don't doubt the boat captain, Vavra, had it right when he said, "The river chooses you."
The following accidents were reported by the Vernon County Sheriffs Department for the week ending Dec. 4.

11-27 William Pelkey, Sparta, was traveling north on Hwy. 131, town of Whitestown. Pelkey was approaching the intersection of Hwy. 131/Heisel Road when he swerved to avoid striking a deer. The vehicle went through the intersection, and struck a stop sign, guardrail and arrow sign. Pelkey was not injured and reported the accident the next day.

11-27 Jerome Hanson, Viola, reported his vehicle was hit while parked in the Liberty Bar parking lot, town of Liberty. This case remains under investigation.

11-28 Arlean Knight, Westby, was traveling east on Hwy. 14, town of Franklin, and observed deer crossing the roadway. Knight swerved to avoid striking the deer. The vehicle struck the end of the guardrail at the intersection of Green Acres Road. The vehicle came to rest in the ditch. No injuries occurred.

12-3 James Buros, Viola, was driving a 5-axle bulk milk truck northbound on Hwy. O, town of Harmony. The right front corner of the truck struck a cow owned by Kevin Parr. The impact forced the truck into a right turn, and the truck proceeded off the road into the ditch. The truck slid across a hayfield. The stainless steel 5,800 bulk milk tank was loaded with approximately 3,500 pounds of milk. The milk was compromised. No injuries were sustained. The cow did not survive.

12-4 There were 10 reportable car/deer crashes: Daniel Eick, Soldiers Grove, on Hwy. 27, town of Franklin; Kimberly Pufahl, Mauston, on Hwy. 33, town of Hillsboro; Paul Krause, Ontario, on Hwy. 14, town of Franklin; Anna Cousineau, Viola, on Hwy. 56, town of Liberty; Shea Bounds, Coon Valley, on Hwy. 14, town of Christiana; Ronald Stetzer, La Crosse, on Hwy. 14, town of Viroqua; Margaret Davidson, Soldiers Grove, on Hwy. 14, town of Coon; Lori Egge, Westby, on Hwy. P, town of Clinton; Brian Lincoln, Seaside, California, on Hwy. 35, town of Wheatland; Paul Kabat, Westby, on Hwy. 14, town of Coon.
Thursday, December 7, 2017

I came across a terrible story told in a decision of the Montana Supreme Court affirming an order allowing a criminal defendant to withdraw his guilty plea.

The case involved highly-charged allegations of child sex abuse

David and Sunnshine Welton are both dentists and owned Montana Family Dentistry in Lewistown, Montana. They have two children: a girl, L.W. and a boy, M.W. Dana and Jason Terronez are nurses and worked at Central Montana Medical Center in Lewistown. They have four children: three girls and one boy. Dana and Terronez were patients at the Weltons dental clinic and the families became close friendssharing meals, weekend gatherings, and holidays.

Sunnshine was sexually abused as a child, which made her apprehensive about letting her children participate in sleepovers with other families. She described herself as a paranoid mom who is hypersensitive about sexual abuse issues. As a precaution, Sunnshine educated her children about good touch and bad touch and initiated such conversations with them every six months. However, she trusted Terronez and Dana, and had permitted her daughter, five-year-old L.W., to sleep over at the Terronez household prior to the incident in question. On March 7, 2015, she again allowed L.W. to sleep over at the Terronez residence. L.W. watched a movie with Terronez and his three girls, including Terronez oldest daughter, nine-year-old A.T. Dana was in and out of the living room while the others watched the movie, during which Terronez was seated next to L.W. After the movie, Dana asked L.W. if she wanted to go home, and L.W. said she wanted to stay at the Terronez household.

The alleged abuse took place that night.

The case was a great burden for the young defense attorney

Terronez was initially represented by attorney Craig Buehler, but on April 6, a notice of substitution of counsel was filed indicating that Jeffry Foster had assumed representation of Terronez. Foster filed a motion for change of venue, arguing a reasonable apprehension existed that Terronez could not receive a fair trial in Fergus County because of: (1) the small size of the Fergus County jury pool; (2) the heinous nature of the crime; (3) both families relationships and standing in the community; (4) statements about the case made by the Weltons to others in person and on social media; and (5) concerns expressed by court staff and law enforcement about Terronez safety. The District Court denied the motion, but stated the matter would be reconsidered if concerns arose during voir dire.

Foster suffered a verbal "tongue lashing" from Sunnshine and things got worse

On Friday, September 25, at another in-chambers conference with the same parties, Officer Jenness reported to the court that, sometime during the previous evening, a large chunk of concrete had been thrown through the windshield of Fosters vehicle while it was parked outside the Terronez household.

And worse

On Monday, September 28, the court held a conference in-chambers with Terronez, Foster, Adams, County Attorney Thomas Meissner (substituting for Boettger), Undersheriff Vaughn, Officer Jenness, and Sheriff Troy Eades. The purpose of the conference was for law enforcement to provide an update on security measures and concerns. Eades commented on the concrete block thrown through Fosters windshield, indicating in his years securing several trials in this county, he had not seen anything like this and noted that tensions were relatively high. He suggested Terronez and Foster wear bulletproof vests, and advised the parties they would be required to submit to a metal-detector wand inspection prior to entering the courtroom. Sheriff Eades also updated the court on security measures at the Terronez household. The court cautioned everyone to be vigilant, and to pay attention to the people that are coming and going. That evening, although Foster had checked into the Yogo Hotel and rented a new vehicle to avoid detection from the Weltons, the Weltons encountered Foster in the hotels restaurant.

The defendant then took the plea in this atmosphere and

Prior to the change of plea hearing, Deputies and Lewistown Police officers cleared the courthouse and were posted in plainclothes and in uniform throughout the building. During the hearing, the court informed Terronez of the rights he was giving up and Terronez confirmed verbally and in writing that he was giving a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent plea. Terronez apologized to L.W. in accordance with the plea agreement and the proceeding concluded. Foster drove back to the Yogo Hotel with a police escort. Tragically, in the early hours of the next morning, Foster committed suicide in his hotel room.

The defendant with new counsel sought to withdraw the plea and the motion was granted

Although the District Court primarily based its decision on ineffective assistance of counsel, it also based its decision on a pervasive air of fear surrounding the trial that had impacted the proceedings and Fosters performance, highlighting the incident of the concrete block thrown though Fosters windshield, as well as several alleged incidents of the Weltons threats, stalking, and confrontations. The court observed that these events objectively appeared to have a serious deleterious effect on [Foster], who appeared disheveled and overly anxious (sweating profusely, running his fingers through his hair stammering, pacing, repeating himself, etc.). This behavior was, from the courts perspective, very uncharacteristic of counsel, and led the court to have serious doubts about his effectiveness at trial and up to and including the Defendants guilty plea. Similarly, the court noted Foster was uncharacteristically deficient in cross-examination, and did not mitigate the harmful effects of witness testimony. The court also noted that Foster appeared indecisive on strategy decisions, and described his demeanor after the concrete block incident and before the plea agreement was reached:

[C]ounsel appeared visibly distraught and fearful for himself as well as the Defendant and the Defendants family. His behavior became somewhat erratic. For example, the defense had made it known early on that they would be presenting a full defense including evidence of the Defendants good character and would be calling numerous character witnesses in that regard. The defense also notified the Court and counsel that it would be calling the Defendants wife and children to testify regarding the alleged assault. Then, suddenly and rather unexpectedly and in the midst of trial, former counsel flatly told the Court and counsel that the defense was abandoning its good character defense and would not be calling the Terronez children to testify. A short while later, counsel returned from lunch and promptly announced once again that the defense would be presenting a full defense including evidence of the Defendants good character. Mere moments later, the parties notified the Court that they had reached a plea agreement.

Based on ineffective assistance and the threatening atmosphere surrounding the proceedings, the court concluded that good cause was established for allowing Terronez to withdraw his plea. The State appeals.

The court did not find ineffective assistance but

...we affirm the District Courts finding that good cause existed for withdrawal of Terronez plea on alternative grounds discussed in the District Courts order, based on the extreme events that occurred during the proceeding.

The District Court, referencing Sherwoods affidavit, summarized the facts supporting its determination that there existed a pervasive air of fear in the proceeding, including, but not limited to: (1) Davids confrontation with Judge Oldenburg; (2) Davids threat of suicide, and discharge of a weapon; (3) David tailgating Terronez; (4) Dana asking for a protective order against the Weltons; (5) Foster stating he feared for his safety to a mental health counselor; (6) Fosters attempt to avoid the Weltons by checking into a hotel and switching vehicles, only to encounter the Weltons at that hotel; (7) the Weltons attempt to video record Terronez arrest; and (8) Officers being posted inside and outside the courtroom and conducting meetings on safety measures. These occurrences were in addition to the events reported during the trial, including the concrete block thrown through Fosters windshield. The District Court observed the stressful impact of these events upon Foster.

Result

The District Court made the factual determination that Foster was personally impacted and his performance was affected by the threatening behaviors from the outset of this case. These findings were not clearly erroneous. Through Foster, Terronez was impacted and his plea was at least partially induced by these events. If any doubt exists on the basis of the evidence presented regarding whether a guilty plea was voluntarily and intelligently made, the doubt must be resolved in favor of the defendant.

Great Falls Tribune had the story of the attorney's death. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/12/i-came-across-a-terrible-story-told-in-a-reversal-of-a-criminal-conviction-by-the-montana-supreme-court-the-case-involved-h.html
When you think of holiday movies, your mind probably goes to Christmas. But amid all that Yuletide cheer, Thanksgiving shouldn't be forgotten.
The Willamette Valley Ag Expo is set for Tuesday through Thursday, Nov. 15 through 17, at the Linn County Expo Center, 3700 Knox Butte Road E. in Albany.
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BOISE  The 63rd annual meeting of the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association is coming up in Boise. The event is held at the Riverside Hotel, 2900 W. Chinden Blvd., Boise. Jayme Moye, an outdoor journalist who wrote an expose about sexual harassment in the river-guiding industry in Colorado, will be the lunch speaker on Dec. 14.

Clearly, the river-guiding industry is a male-dominated business, Bob Volpert, co-owner of Salmons Idaho River Journeys, said in a statement. Moye will speak about her investigative stories on sexual harassment in the river-guiding business on Colorado rivers; I think shell say its just the tip of the iceberg, and its probably happening on Idaho rivers as well. I think her talk is going to get people stirred up about the issue. Hopefully, itll lead to some positive discussions.

In November 2016, Volpert  past president and member of the Middle Fork Outfitters Association  and others drafted a policy statement about sexual harassment in the river workplace and provided suggested guidelines for outfitters to adopt to be proactive about the issue.

The IOGA meeting will also feature a number of other presentations  including an update from David Brown with the American Outdoors Association and a presentation on how science can inform the recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest. As of Nov. 27, the number of steelhead passing by Lower Granite Dam was 68,000  with 11,400 wild fish  compared to a 10-year average of 165,000, according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. The low numbers caused the IDFG to close steelhead fishing seasons statewide in the fall; since that time, seasons have been opened on the Salmon, Snake and Clearwater Rivers with smaller bag limits than normal, plus size limitations on the Clearwater River.

The situation is pretty grim, Dr. Rick Williams, who will give an overview of the salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia and Snake River Basins, said in a statement. The numbers of fish we had returning to Idaho this year were similar to the lows we had in the early 1990s when the fish were first listed under the Endangered Species Act. Williams said he will emphasize the importance of preserving wild steelhead and wild Chinook salmon in Idaho. Theyre the foundation for the long-term sustainability of those fish runs.

The IOGA meeting culminates with the Thaw Fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. on the final evening  a banquet with silent/live auctions. Donated silent auction items include outdoor gear, outdoor books and cookbooks, fishing trips, trail rides, rafting day-trips, knives, bags and clothing items.

More information: see the blog post at ioga.org.
For Thanksgiving this year I closed a chapter in my life as a father, helping my youngest son take his first whitetail buck in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, something Id done two seasons before with his older brother.

Were blessed living in Idaho with numerous hunting opportunities, most of which I enjoy, but there is nothing I like more than whitetail hunting on national forest land in late November during the rut.

Over the past two decades, we have made a tradition out of Thanksgiving deer camp, starting out when I was but a 20-something kid myself, with various friends and family joining us over the years for a week of camaraderie, hunting and Thanksgiving free of the distractions of civilization. Not that its always easy or the most pleasant of weather, being late November in the mountains of Idaho. Weve had years with mud to our knees, subzero temperatures that question your sanity or windstorms that makes you wonder if your camp will survive the night.

While I used to look forward to chasing the big one each fall, starting four years ago, it became about guiding my sons and passing on what I have learned over my years of hunting.

Now when it comes to hunting whitetail bucks, there is plenty of expert opinion and information out there for anyone who wishes to read through it. Most of it is from hunters better than I, and most all of it is true. But most all of it is wrong for Idaho. A lot of what you read in magazines about whitetail hunting private ground in the Midwest doesnt apply to the rugged mountains and thick forests of Idaho. Mountain whitetail bucks are a very elusive creature, mostly nocturnal and hard to hunt.

During the rut, however, when they focus on passing on their DNA to the next generation, the bucks lose some of their elusiveness and can be more easily taken. But thats also always dependent upon the weather, moon phase, hunting pressure, predators in the area, food sources, snow depths and countless other factors that are always changing and causing you frustration when you think you have finally figured it all out, only to be reminded you havent. And there lies the addicting factor of deer hunting for those who enjoy a challenge.

Now Im not going to offer tips on deer hunting in this column. Thats been done a hundred times over. And theres no way Im telling you where my favorite hunting spots are. Go find your own. But over the past four years as my boys became hunters, it has come to light just how much they learn from deer hunting and our week in the woods. Its not just about hunting. It includes life skills, things that are better learned by doing and not just by reading about it in a book or online.

So for those other parents needing to win the argument of why their kid needs to skip a day of school to go hunting, or maybe just to help those of you who dont hunt understand some of the positive aspects of hunting, here is a list of educational observations I have made note of while taking my own kids into the field.

First and foremost, responsibility. Theres nothing more serious than the business of safely handling a firearm. There is no room for mistakes or errors. It is something that has to be done right 100 percent of the time. It is a growing experience for your child to do something in life where there is no goofing around, where they have to be focused and responsible. You will start to catch glimpses of the adult they will become when teaching and entrusting them with this kind of responsibility. Start them young with a BB gun and build from there, so by the time they are of hunting age, gun safety is second nature.

Meteorology and astronomy. A hunter is always concerned about the weather. Will it snow? Will it rain? When will the next storm arrive? When will it clear? The weather, along with the brightness of the moon, can play into how the hunting will besomething my kids quickly learned by listening to me rant about the weather all the time during deer season.

Biology. The deer hunter is a student of biology, the breeding cycles of deer, their habitat and basic daily life cycles. Most children get to dissect the random frog or fish in school, but a young hunter gets a firsthand field study of the anatomy of a deer. This starts with knowing where to shootthe location of the heart and vital organsthen with the gutting of the internal organs and the cutting and care of the meat that fills the freezer with healthy meals for the year.

Physics. The accurate use of a firearm or even a bow is a field study in physics. Shot placement is key for a quick, clean kill, so a hunter must have a good understanding of their projectile velocity, drop at various ranges because of gravity, kinetic energy upon impact and other environmental factors.

Engineering and construction. From setting up tents to hanging meat poles, a young hunter will always be busy tying knots, using axes, saws and shovels as they learn through trial and error how to survive in the woods and shape the environment around them.

Patience. One of the keys in leading a happy and successful life is patience, and nothing can test your patience more than deer hunting. The ability to sit still and quietly for extended periods of time is not something easy for an energetic youngster to do, but it is a great life skill for them to master. This quiet time also allows a child to be lost in their thoughts, a healthy and often lacking thing for young minds these days, with the constant stream of digital information being thrown their way.

Preparedness. Starting at a young age I had my boys packing their own clothes and gear for our adventures in the outdoors. I, of course, usually double-check that they have the necessities, but its amazing how quickly they learn to bring what they will need when you let them suffer a little with wet socks because they only brought one pair, for example. This may seem a little hard, but the wilds of Idaho can be hard, and it also can kill you in its extremes if you are unprepared. Preparedness is a good lesson to learn while dad is still there with a hidden pair of dry socks, rather than when you are 20 and out on your own in subzero mountains with no dad to bail you out.

Teamwork and people skills. Nothing builds bonds like overcoming adversity with others. Learning to work with others, to rely on them and, more importantly, have people be able to rely upon you. All of this comes into play while hunting with friends and family. There is nothing easy about packing out a deer from miles back in the timber, but it definitely can be made easier when you have the right group of people there to help you.

Im sure I could come up with countless other things learned as a young hunter, and Im sure there are plenty Ive overlooked. But in summary, taking a kid deer hunting isnt just about killing a deer, its about teaching them numerous hands-on life lessons and skills, along with the workings of the world they and the deer both inhabit.
TWIN FALLS  American Idol finalist Colton Dixon will perform a concert for the price of a new toy at 7 p.m. this Friday at Amazing Grace Christian Fellowship, 1061 Eastland Dr. N., Twin Falls. He will be singing Christmas favorites, as well as some of his own songs.

Admission is one new toy per person  to be distributed through the Salvation Army to children across the Magic Valley.

During the Christmas season, 400 to 500 families will request the Salvation Army to help to make a merry Christmas for their children, Lieutenant Troy Cook of the Twin Falls Salvation Army said in a statement.
TWIN FALLS  The monthly meeting of the Chapter 1959 National Association of Retired and Employed Federal Employees will be held at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Dec. 11, at the Loong Hing Restaurant, 1719 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls. All individuals who are under the federal employee category are invited to attend.

The group will have a short meeting followed by the annual Christmas party. Those attending should bring canned food donations to deliver to the Salvation Army, and also bring a $10 gift for the Christmas drawing.

Also bring a friend who is a federal employee or retired federal employee. This is an opportunity to visit with your peers and discuss items regarding benefits.

Information: 208-732-0360.
Volunteers  St Lukes Home Health and Hospice is looking for new volunteers to join its team to share compassion and increase the quality of life for patients and their families. This program is designed to offer companionship and socialization to patients as well as respite and support for the caregivers. Information: Marie Sharp, 208-814-7603 or sharpm@slhs.org.

Volunteers  Horizon Home Health and Hospice is looking for volunteers to join their team to provide quality compassionate care to patients through the following activities: companionship, socialization, respite, and support for patients and families and much more. Information: Cynthia Nixon, 208-800-8085 or cnixon@horizonhh.com.

Volunteers  Idaho Home Health and Hospice needs volunteers who will bring compassion, support and dignity to those facing a serious, life-limiting illness and their families. Volunteers can choose between offering respite to family caregivers or provide support with administrative tasks. Information: Heidi Walker, 208-734-4064 or Heidi.Walker@LHCgroup.com.

Drivers  The American Cancer Society is looking for volunteer drivers for its Road to Recovery program. Volunteers are needed to drive cancer patients to and from medical treatment facilities, especially for appointments in Twin Falls. The Cancer Society trains volunteer drivers and schedules rides for patients for free. Drivers must have a current and valid drivers license, a good driving record, a reliable car, and proof of car insurance. Volunteer drivers donate their time and the use of their vehicles. The program is flexible for volunteers to provide as many rides as they want. Information: 1-800-227-2345.

Volunteers  Community volunteers are needed to become CASA volunteer advocates to represent the best interest of abused children during the court process. Volunteer candidates must pass a background check and receive training and continued support as they speak up and make the difference in the lives of abused children. The program covers all eight counties in south-central Idaho. Information: Tahna Barton, 208-735-1177.

Volunteers  Pomerelle Place Senior Living in Burley is looking for volunteers to play bingo, games and cards with the residents, complete crafts, cook, or help paint fingernails for the ladies. Information: Carla Thompson at Pomerelle Place, 208-677-8212.

Volunteers  The Twin Falls County Historical Society is seeking volunteers for various programs and general support. Volunteers are needed to clean or work on docent projects and fundraising. No minimum amount of hours, commitment is flexible. Fill out an application at the Twin Falls County Historical Museum (Union School at Curry), open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Information: 208-736-4675.

Volunteers  The Jerome County Historical Society is looking for volunteers to help at the Depot Museum with duties to include answering the phone, some filing, and showing visitors the artifacts. Volunteers will receive training on duties. To volunteer, call 208-324-5641 from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Volunteers  The Twin Falls Senior Centers Crazy Quilters ladies group is looking for individuals to put finishing touches on quilts. The group meets from 9 a.m. to noon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. All quilt project proceeds are given to the Twin Falls Senior Center. Information: 208-734-5084.

Volunteers  The AARP Foundation Tax-Aide program needs volunteers to provide tax assistance and preparation services for seniors and low-income taxpayers from Feb. 1 through April 15. Volunteers with good computer skills are needed to assist with electronic filing tax returns in Glenns Ferry, Gooding, Hagerman, Hailey, Jerome, Shoshone, and Twin Falls which has a need for at least 12 volunteers. Free tax law and computer training, followed by completion of an IRS Certification Test for volunteers, is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, Jan. 2 to Jan. 12, at the CSI Evergreen Building, Room C93. Evening and Saturday classes will be scheduled for those working but willing to volunteer Saturdays during tax season. Preregister so sufficient training materials can be provided. Register at www.aarp.org/taxaide or www.aarp.org/giving-back. Information: Jim Simpson, 208-733-1808 or simpsonjim@cableone.net.
TWIN FALLS  It was a coding activity in eighth-grade that sparked Jacob Buschers interest in computer science. Four years later, the Twin Falls 17-year-old is operating his own software development company.

On Wednesday, he helped out classmates with Hour of Code activities at Twin Falls High School. Across the Magic Valley, many school campuses are also getting involved as part of Computer Science Education Week.

The purpose is to encourage more students to get interested in computer science as a possible career. Theres a huge demand for employees and a growing number of high-paying jobs.

Theres a massive deficit of people to fill jobs in this industry, especially around here, Jacob said.

In an increasingly technology-reliant era, coding is becoming more crucial. Its used, for example, to create computer software, websites and mobile applications.

Just about everything is run using coding, Jacob said, but many people dont understand how it works. With the worldwide Hour of Code, its getting (students) a little bit more knowledge of how it runs.

For those who are knowledgeable and skilled at computer programming, there are huge benefits. Here in Idaho, software developers and computer systems employees rank number one on the Idaho Department of Labors hot jobs list. The number of jobs is expected to grow nearly 37 percent between 2014 and 2024, with an estimated 259 openings each year. Jobs typically require a bachelors degree and the median hourly wage is $39.52.

To help address the nationwide shortage and expose more students to coding, the nonprofit Code.org provides free online tutorials. Twin Falls High and other schools across the Magic Valley are using the tutorials this week for the Hour of Code. Some tutorials are even based on popular movies and games, such as Minecraft and Star Wars.

Its the fourth year Jacob has volunteered to help his peers during the Hour of Code.

All eight science teachers at Twin Falls High gave up an instructional day Wednesday to accommodate the lesson.

Were trying to hit every student at every level, computer science teacher Sarah LaMarche said.

Students could stick with a basic coding tutorial, she said, or move on to more advanced lessons.

In the Jerome School District, all three elementary schools  Summit, Horizon and Jefferson  are doing Hour of Code activities this week during computer lab time, curriculum director Janet Avery said.

Some classes at Jerome Middle School and Jerome High School are also participating.

For Jacob, the Hour of Code is what led to his interest in computer science. Its taken off since then, he said.

Jacob has found work writing code, including for a publishing company. And as a high school sophomore, he created his own company called BF Innovative Technologies.

In October, he filed as a limited liability company with the help of his parents, who run Business Techs.

As for Hour of Code, a focus this year at Twin Falls High was showing students the basics of algorithms  the actual code that goes into creating a program  and its real-life applications, Jacob said.

Coding may seem intimidating when looking at the whole picture. But when you break down programs into algorithms, he said, its not complicated at all.
TWIN FALLS  The Magic Valley YMCAs new chief executive officer will share his plans for improving the nonprofit at a community meeting next week.

The meeting is 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday at the Y, 1751 Elizabeth Blvd. in Twin Falls.

Randy Wastradowski started as the new CEO in September. He replaces Gary Ettenger, who resigned in March 2016 amidst financial problems.

Wastradowski has 27 years of experience with the YMCA and was previously CEO of two YMCAs in Indiana.

Most recently, he was a branch manager of the YMCA of El Paso in Texas for eight years.
Those who were there remembered it clearly. The buzz of incoming planes. The metallic taste of adrenaline. The shouts and screams of their friends. Friday marks the 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. While we believe there are no more living local survivors of the attack, their memories live on through interviews done with the Times-News over the past several decades.

They told us the sights they saw and the nightmares they had. In 1996, former Rupert resident Ralph Graham told the paper he thought the attack was a drill. But then he saw them.

(The bomber) was close enough to me that I probably could have hit it with a rock, he said. I could see the crew sitting in there with their eyes on the bombing sights.

They also shared their humor: Pearl Harbor was nothing compared to being married to a redhead for 60 years, Dave Bettencourt told us in 2001.

Here are pictures and memories of eight other local Pearl Harbor veterans:

They were screaming at you for help. They were screaming for their father and mother or calling for God.

William Bridges, Twin Falls

We were ready for them.

Gale Donald Mohlenbrink, Buhl

I spent 3 hours in the water with sharks and burning fuel oil, he said in 2001. It gave me a little perspective on the rest of the war.

Pearl Harbor was just the beginning. For those of us who were in the fighting for the rest of the war, there were a lot of bad days.

There were movies made about Pearl Harbor, Jack White said in 2011. But they dont tell you anything.

David Ray Roessler, Gooding

Rushing across a bare field to report to duty, he emptied his .45-caliber handgun at a Japanese plane 50 feet above him.

You knew it wouldnt do any good, he said. But it made you feel better.

Richard Hansing, Twin Falls

I worked eight days burying our shipmates and comrades. We worked cemetery detail from 7 oclock in the morning until 7 at night.

Ralph Eaton, Twin Falls

I knew it wasnt target practiceit was the real McCoy, he said in 2006. I thought, Oh my God, were at war.

My buddy shook my hand and said, Ralph, if I dont see you again, good luck. Its been nice being shipmates with you.

Leroy Kohntopp, Filer, Aug. 9

I got off the Maryland just a few weeks before it went off to fight the Battle of the Philippine Sea, said Leroy Kohntopp of Filer, who served on a gun battery aboard the big battleship during the Pearl Harbor attack. It was just at the time when the Japanese were beginning to fly kamikaze strikes, and the battery where I would have been serving was hit by one of the first kamikazes.

Everyone was killed. I would have been killed too.

Magic Valleys Pearl Harbor survivors:

Ralph J. Graham, formerly of Rupert, died April 9, 2016, at a Nampa hospital. He was 94.

Marion Gale Wood, Gooding, born near Bethel, Mo., Oct. 25, 1918, died Feb. 4, 2015.

Gale Donald Mohlenbrink, Buhl, born in Lovell, Wyo., on Feb. 23, 1924, died July 7, 2013

Ray Roessler, Gooding, born in Shoshone on June 17, 1921, died March 21, 2013

Joseph Flood, Twin Falls, born in Montgomery, Mo., on March 4, 1916, died Nov. 23, 2012

John Jack White, Twin Falls, born in Cleveland, Ohio, on Dec. 1, 1921, died July 10, 2012

Leroy Kohntopp, Filer, born in Kansas City, Mo., on Aug. 9, 1917, Died April 8, 2011

Richard Hansing, Twin Falls, born in Perry, Okla., on Jan. 20, 1920, died Aug. 5, 2010

Tony Sabala, Jerome, born May 20, 1919 in Shoshone, died June 17, 2007

Ralph Eaton, Twin Falls, born in Rock Creek, Idaho, on June 25, 1919, died Jan. 2, 2007

Dave Bettencourt, Twin Falls, born in Caruthers, Calif. on Oct. 1, 1921, died Feb. 16, 2003

O.C. Kelley, Twin Falls, born in Bennington, Okla. on Oct. 14, 1920, died June 27, 2002

Ray Helms, Oakley, was on the Navy battleship Tennessee in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Helms died July 8, 1996 in Burley.

Theodore Ted Anderson, Twin Falls, born in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 28, 1920, died Aug. 19, 1993.
THE Libyan Charge d Affaires Ahmed Eddeb on Thursday called on the Philippine government to re-evaluate the security risk in his country and lift the deployment ban so it could hire new Filipino professionals.

He stressed majority of hospitals in Libya were in greatlneed of nurses, technicians, construction workers, among others.

In a press briefing, Eddeb urged Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano to visit Libya, check the security situation, and downgrade the Crisis Alert Level for Libya from 2 (Restriction Phase) to 1 (Precautionary Phase).

There is a great need of (sic) Filipino nurses in Libya, Eddeb said, citing majority of hospitals were requesting for Filipino medical practitioners.

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The problem we are facing now [is] plenty of job orders in Libya, the Filipinos are very well-respected workers in Libya, and because of the [employment] ban, companies could not hire new contract workers, he lamented.

He said he has been sending diplomatic letter to the the Department of Foreign Affairs addressed to the Secretary like almost every day since 2016 but up until now the agency had yet to send Security Assessment Team to Tripoli and check the security situation.

We did our best in contacting the official to lift the ban. We understand that they are very worried about the safety of the Filipinos and the situation in Libya, Eddeb said.

But we ask the Philippine government, particularly Secretary Cayetano to try to re-evaluate the security situation in Libya, he said.

He added that there was an open invitation for Cayetano to personally visit Tripoli and see how safe the country now that the conflict had been settled.

The situation is normal now. We value the Filipino peoplewe care about the Filipino people. We cannot risk their lives, he stressed.

In 2011 there were 26,000 Filipino professionals, comprising nurses, engineers, technicians, employees in the oil sites, working in every part of Libya.

However, due to the extreme political and security change in 2011 during the Arab Spring movement that toppled the 40-year dictatorship of Muammad Gaddafi, the Philippines has implemented a mandatory repatriation and sent 10,000 Filipinos back home.

When another political conflict arose in 2014, the Philippines repatriated another 4,000.

Eddeb said several Filipino workers could not immediately renew their contract and come back to Libya due to deployment ban imposed.

Some Filipinos have found other jobs abroad and that only 9,000 Filipino workers who were able to come back to Libya.

In September 2016, the DFA lowered the Crisis Alert Level for Libya from 4 (Mandatory Repatriation or Evacuation) to 2 (Restriction Phase).

Alert Level 2 is issued when there are threats to the life, security, and property of Filipinos arising from internal disturbances, instability, and/or external threat.

Under this Alert Level, Filipinos are instructed to restrict non-essential movements, avoid public places, and prepare for evacuation.

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PHNOM PENHCambodias government on Thursday laughed off the efforts by Donald Trumps administration to punish it over a clampdown on democracy and human rights, as the kingdom effectively becomes a one-party state under strongman Hun Sen.

The State Department said Wednesday it would bar Cambodian officials deemed to have been undermining democracy from entry to the US.

That came after Cambodias Supreme Court last month dissolved the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and redistributed its seats to factions allied with Hun Sens ruling party.

The dissolution followed the arrest of CNRP leader Kem Sokha for treason. Dozens of other party members have fled the country in a snowballing crackdown on the critics of the prime minister.

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The State Department said its move was a direct response to the Cambodian governments series of anti-democratic actions.

Hun Sen, one of the worlds longest serving leaders, has used the kingdoms pliant judiciary to smother his critics as the elections loom.

The ties between the two nations have withered in recent months with Hun Sen preferring Beijings no-questions-asked offer of loans and investment to Washingtons opprobrium on rights as he looks to extend his 32-year grip on power.

If Cambodian people cannot go to US, it is ok, it is not a problem, government spokesman Sok Eysan said, shrugging off the State Department threats.

If we can not join any meetings in the US, there are many other meetings outside the US that we can join.

The State Department did not disclose which Cambodian ruling party officials would be affected by the restrictions but said in certain instances, their relatives could be also be barred from entering the US.

Huy Vannak, an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, called the move a desperate measure that unpicks President Trumps policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Cambodias relations with the US have gone into deep freeze in recent months.

Hun Sens government has singled out US-funded media outlets critical of the regime, limiting access to Voice of America and forcing Radio Free Asia to shutter.

Two former RFA journalists have been arrested and charged with espionage.

At the same time, Cambodia has moved into a closer orbit of China.

Its economy is growing fast thanks to Chinese investment and soft loans that come without directions on human rights or democracy.

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The Food and Drug Administration has ordered the recall of Dengvaxia, the worlds first anti-dengue vaccine, over concerns that it might put at risk those who do not have a history of dengue.

That is to be expected. Imagine 733,00 schoolchildren who have been immunized are all in danger after former President Benigno Aquino III and his health secretary, Janette Garin, went on a buying spree toward the end of the previous administration.

The recall of the drug should not make us complacent. The impact of this fiasco is so overwhelming.

We cannot rely on what the Sanofi representatives are saying. They are playing down the impact of the issue.

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The Duterte administration should look into why and how this fiasco even happened. Those responsible should be made accountable.

Records show that Aquino met representatives of Sanofi Pasteur in Paris, twice. Soon enough, a deal was in place. Maybe Aquino wanted to show the people that he was doing something for the people. At that time, the 2016 election was looming large.

My gulay, thats just criminal!

The drug was never certified by the World Health Organization. Now Sanofi tells us there are risks. This is just unacceptable!

The Duterte administration is now saying that in the wake of investigations scheduled by Congress and the Department of Justice, together with the National Bureau of Investigation, a refund of the P3.5 billion spent for the program should be sought. Parents of the children should file a class suit.

Considering the fact that it was BS Aquino who negotiated this deal that was later implemented by Garin, what must be done is as clear as day. And let us not forget former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad who released the money.

I am truly passionate about holding these people accountable for what they did. I am so worried about those children.

* * *

President Duterte has signed a proclamation declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army as a terrorist organization. This means all who are allied with them are considered terrorists.

What about the political arm of the communist movementthe National Democratic Front of the Philippines? Why arent JoMa Sison and Luis Jalandoni not included as terrorists? Doesnt the NPA get orders to attack government forces from these two?

Earlier, the President ordered the arrest of all NDFP consultants whom he had ordered freed as a sign of goodwill. These consultants have of course disappeared.

From the start, I have doubted the sincerity of the communists to talk peace with the government. All these years, they have been imposing impossible conditions  freeing all prisoners, for instance, or forming a coalition government.

Santa Banana, how many times has the government across several administrationsheld peace talks with the Reds? How many times have these negotiations failed?

The truth of the matter is that the NPA is no longer a monolithic group. Some of course still pursue an ideology to overthrow the government. But many just want to extort money from those in the countryside.

They are in fact assisted by their political fronts in the guise of party-list members of Congress. The irony of it all is that we, taxpayers, pay for the salaries of these lawmakers!

* * *

The government expects a tremendous lift in tax collection once the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) is enacted into law.

The bill has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate. After the bicameral conference committee is through with it, it will be submitted to the President for approval possibly before the end of the month.

Even before the law takes effect, however, the new leadership of the Bureau of Customs has been scrambling to increase revenue collection. Newly installed BOC Commissioner Isidro Lapena said the agency recorded collections of P4.87 billion last monththe highest monthly take of import duties and other taxes.

Lapena said the bureau achieved the feat despite the fact that Customs only had 18 working days last month. I hope they will not be lulled into complacency.

Reliable sources tell me that before the month is over, two notorious smugglers will be bringing in Ferrari luxury cars with a total value of P300 million to P500 million!

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King Mohammed VI of Morocco has called the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to intercede with the US Administration to convince them to refrain from taking any action concerning the city of Jerusalem, given the serious implications that might entail for the future of peace and security in the region.

In a message he sent Wednesday to the UN Chief, King Mohammed VI voiced his concerns regarding the persistent news of the US Administrations intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and to transfer the Embassy of the United States of America to the holy city.

The King warned that infringement of the internationally recognized legal and historical status of Jerusalem means one runs the risk of hurling the issue into the quagmire of religious and ideological conflict.

Such a decision would also frustrate international efforts aimed at bringing about an atmosphere conducive to a resumption of peace negotiations and would ultimately lead to increased strife and tension and undermine all opportunities for peace, not to mention fuel violence and extremism, the monarch stated.

My vision and that of all peace-lovers and peace-advocates around the world is based on safeguarding the status of Jerusalem as a city of peace and tolerance  one that is open to the followers of all revealed religions; in effect, a model of coexistence and of living together, he pointed out.

The Monarch recalled that Jerusalem is a question that concerns the Palestinians  since it is part of their occupied land  as much as it does the Arab and Muslim world, given the fact that it is home to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, the First of the Two Qiblas and the Third Holiest Mosque. In fact, it is a just cause for all peace-loving people since the city stands as a symbol for tolerance and inter-faith coexistence.

Last July, the Moroccan King, in his capacity as Chairman of Al Quds Committee, an offshoot of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which comprises 57 countries representing over one billion citizens, had sent a letter to the UN Secretary General, drawing his attention to the Israeli authorities continuing and systematic violations in al-Quds and in al-Aqsa Mosque designed to impose new facts on the ground.

He had then called for swift measures to be taken to compel the Israeli government to respect the legal and historical status of al-Quds and the holy sites, and warned against the perils of turning the Palestinian-Israeli political dispute into a religious conflict.

On Tuesday, King Mohammed VI sent a message to President Donald Trump voicing his deep concern and that of Arab and Muslim countries over the U.S. administration plans regarding Jerusalem, an important city not only to the parties to the conflict, but also to the followers of the three revealed religions.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita Wednesday summoned the ambassadors of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. During the meeting that was attended by the ambassador of Palestine Jamal Choubki, Bourita insisted on the need for the Security Council permanent members to shoulder their full responsibility in preserving the legal and political status of Al-Quds and avoiding anything that might stir up conflicts and undermine stability in the region.

Bourita also recalled the initiatives and contacts undertaken by the King since the announcement of the US plans, and reiterated Moroccos unwavering support for the Palestinian people so that they can recover their legitimate rights to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Tunisia, UAE and Bahrain have featured among the 17 countries included in the EUs tax heaven blacklist. The EUs financial minister drew up the list explaining that 47 countries were put on a grey list to be monitored until they are fully committed to reforms.

The EU said those blacklisted had refused to cooperate and change their way after almost one year of consultations.

The blacklist also includes South Korea, Mongolia, Namibia, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, Grenada, St. Lucia as well as Guam, the US territory in the Pacific, and the UK dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

The blacklist will be linked to EU legislation so that jurisdictions implicated will not be eligible for funds from the bloc except where it is to aid development.

Developed countries on the grey list have until the end of 2018 to deliver on their commitments to reform while developing countries have been given an additional year before they will be put on the blacklist.
Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron and his Qatari host Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani have overseen this Thursday the signing of 11-billion package of contracts including acquisition by the Emirate of 50 A321 neo and 12 Rafales.

The French President arrived in the Qatari capital Wednesday for a state visit, part of Pariss endeavor to try to defuse the diplomatic spate between the small emirate and its neighbors led by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain plus Egypt on June 5 severed ties with Doha accusing it of sponsoring terrorism. They busted sea, land and air links with Qatar.

The visit laid the ground for sizeable contracts ranging from railway transport, aerial transport to defense.

Qatar under an agreement with the French government will purchase 12 Rafales for a total of 1.1 billion on top of 24 already signed up for in April 2015. Doha also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for extra 36 fighter jets.

Aside from the military aircrafts, France under another MoU will supply the Qatari military with 490 armored infantry vehicle (VBCI), Nexter type. The contract is estimated at 1.5 billion. It could reach 3.2 billion depending on the equipment to be mounted on the vehicles, reports say.

Frances SNCF and RATP will work with Qatars Hamad Group for the maintenance of Doha subway and the tramway project in the city of Lusail, 20 km from Doha. Both contracts are estimated at over 3 billion. The agreement will run for 20 years.

The other major deal consists in the purchase of 50 A321 neos by Qatar to the tune of 5.5 billion. The gas-rich country has abandoned the acquisition of 50 A320 wide body aircraft that it ticked off in 2011.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) will hold an emergency meeting Friday on the status of the city of Jerusalem at the request of eight states after President Trump Wednesday defied international warnings and declared the old city capital of Israel.

The Arab League Ministerial Council will, on its part, hold an emergency meeting Saturday in Cairo at the request of Palestine and Jordan with Moroccos support.

The UN has given Jerusalem a special legal and political status, which the Security Council has called upon the international community to respect. That is why we believe the Council needs to address this issue with urgency, Deputy Swedish UN Ambassador Carl Skau said on Wednesday.

Sweden, France, Senegal, Bolivia, Egypt, Britain and Uruguay called the emergency meeting.

The Arab League Ministerial Council will review developments regarding the US presidents announcement of his countrys recognition of the city of Al Quds as the capital of the Israeli occupying state.

President Trump in an address Wednesday materialized an electoral promise declaring Jerusalem capital of Israel and announcing transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed city, which has been enjoying special status since June 1967.

Trumps decision breaks years of US foreign policy that remained consistent with the UN SCs stance on the old city.

Speaking a little while following Trump declaration, UN Chief Antonio Guterres noted that the status of the city can only be changed by Palestinians and Israelis through negotiation.

In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations, he said.

The UN Chief is invited to open the Security Council meeting.

The Bolivian envoy Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz slammed Trumps decision calling it reckless and dangerous which flies in the face of the international law and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Protests broke out few hours across the Middle East, Muslims and Arabs from Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan to Turkey took to the streets to condemn the univocal move.

These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.

Several Palestinian figures have called for ending any cooperation with the Trump Administration and for withdrawal from Oslo accord.
Saudi Arabia has promised up to $100 million to support the Joint counterterrorism force, set up by the Group of Five Sahel States, known as G5-Sahel.

The force, which was authorized by the African Union Peace and Security Council in April 2017 and strengthened by UN Security Council Resolution 2359 in June, needs roughly $500 million for its first operations.

The G5 force launched its first military campaign in October amid growing unrest in the Sahel, a hotbed of lawlessness, insecurity and impoverishment, and where porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State.

The force, set up by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, with Frances support, also aims at countering radicalization and human trafficking, two major threats to stability and security in the impoverished Sahel region, where Al Qaeda and associated groups have a significant presence.

According to press reports, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to contribute to the G5 when he saw him in Riyadh last month. Meanwhile, Malis foreign ministry said Saudi authorities made the pledge during a visit to the kingdom late last month by Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop.

The Saudi contribution would be a major boost to the force and bring pledged commitments, analysts say.

The five African countries have collectively pledged $57m between them, while the European Union offered to match that amount. In October, the US pledged an additional $60m.

Brussels hopes that the migration streams from the region will be reduced when the underlying causes for regional instability are assertively tackled.
Moroccos foreign minister Nasser Bourita summoned US charge daffair Stephanie Miley in Rabat in a meeting attended by the Ambassadors of the four other permanent UN Security Council members as well as the Ambassador of Palestine.

During this meeting, ordered by King Mohammed VI, in his quality as Chairman of the Al Quds Committee, Bourita expressed Moroccos rejection of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel and handed a written message from the Moroccan Monarch to President Trump.

In the message, the King expressed deep concern about the US decision regarding Al Quds (Jerusalem) and rejected any attempt aiming at violating the status of the holy city.

At the same meeting, Bourita informed the ambassadors of the message sent by the King to the UN Secretary General.

In this message, King Mohammed VI warned that infringement of the internationally recognized legal and historical status of Jerusalem means one runs the risk of hurling the issue into the quagmire of religious and ideological conflict.

He also warned that such a decision would frustrate international efforts aimed at bringing about an atmosphere conducive to a resumption of peace negotiations and would ultimately lead to increased strife and tension and undermine all opportunities for peace, not to mention fuel violence and extremism.

Bourita called on the permanent members of the Security Council to uphold their full responsibility in preserving the legal status of Al Quds and averting anything that may instigate conflicts or undermine stability in the region.

On the same occasion, the Minister reiterated Moroccos firm stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in support of their legitimate rights, chief among which the right to an independent state with Al Quds as its capital.
According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Major League Baseball is investigating whether conversations between the New York Mets and New...
@NewsbySmiley

The race to win Miamis elections is over.

The race to run City Hall is on.

Coming into office with a specific set of plans in his first year as mayor, Francis Suarez wants to install a city manager of his choosing next week to oversee Miamis billion-dollar city government. The mayor announced Wednesday that hes nominating Emilio Gonzalez, former director of Miami International Airport, to fill the post, which will oversee more than 4,000 employees and handle the launch of a $400 million general obligation bond programthat voters just approved, among many responsibilities.

But Suarez may not get what he wants.

In order to hire someone, the mayor needs three of the citys five commissioners to ratify his appointment. And newly elected Commissioner Joe Carollo has other plans.

To read more click here.
@alextdaugherty

South Florida Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Ted Deutch rarely agree with President Donald Trump, but the pair supported his decision on Wednesday to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital along with moving the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

My longstanding view is that Jerusalem is and will remain the undivided capital of Israel, and it should remain a city accessible to people of all faiths, Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said in a statement. We must work toward a day where the entire world recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that can be achieved through final status negotiations. I remain as committed as ever to safeguarding Israels future as a Jewish and democratic state, at peace with its neighbors, with Jerusalem as its undisputed capital.

Deutch, D-Boca Raton, issued a joint statement supporting the move with Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The two are the highest ranking members on the House Foreign Affairs Middle East subcommittee.

There is no debate that the Jewish people have a deep-rooted religious, cultural and historic tie to Jerusalem, and todays decision reaffirms that connection, Deutch and Ros-Lehtinen said.

Deutch and Wasserman Schultz represent districts with large Jewish populations and are seen as supporters of Israel in Congress.

South Florida Republicans uniformly praised Trumps decision on Wednesday, including Sen. Marco Rubio and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo.

I commend President Trump for following U.S. law and recognizing Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, Rubio said in a statement. Todays announcement is an important step in the right direction. Unequivocal recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital will be complete when the U.S. embassy is officially relocated there.

But some of Trumps top Cabinet officials reportedly opposed the decision, arguing that the move to recognize Jerusalem would needlessly inflame tensions between Israel and Palestinians and potentially put people in danger.

Read more here.
@NewsbySmiley

In one of his first acts as Miami's District 3 city commissioner, Joe Carollo plans to undo one of his brother's last.

Carollo, who won an election last month to occupy the position being vacated by his term-limited younger brother, wants to reclaim $171,800 moved out of a discretionary office account by Frank Carollo in order to keep his former office staff employed at their existing salaries by the city for up to a full year while they hunt for new jobs.

The money was allowed to be moved into a special human resources account by a vote of the city commission last month because city policy only guarantees city commission staffers three months of employment in temporary positions at a wage of $15-an-hour after their bosses leave office. Carollo, who stepped down Saturday to make way for his older brother, wanted to ensure his employees had at least a full year of employment without enduring any cuts to their pay.

But in supporting the request, commissioners stripped Joe Carollo of a significant chunk of money for his office. And he wants the funds returned.

"I have made it no secret the importance of my staff to me. My brother assured me -- face to face -- that my staff would be ok," Frank Carollo wrote in a text message. "[Joe Carollo's proposal] does not appear to be in line with that assurance, however, I will let it play out instead of assuming."

It's debatable how much commissioners helped Frank Carollo's staff by setting aside the money, considering that administrators are required to help former commission staffers apply for new, full-time positions at the city when their bosses leave office. Once those employees transfer, the city plans to continue paying their salaries with the money taken from the District 3 office instead of otherwise paying them out of general fund coffers -- which Joe Carollo said is a poor use of district money.

"I wasn't going to let monies that should be used by this office go to waste," he said, adding that he made the decision to ask for the return of the money after talking to Miami's city manager about the likely use of the funds in his brother's special account. "I said, if that's what you're going to do, I'm going to ask that the rest of the money be returned."

Carollo said he is leaving some money in the special account to ensure one of his brother's higher-paid staffers isn't forced to take a big pay cut over the next three months. But otherwise, he said his office needs the money, and argued that the city should keep a practice of following its policies.

"Otherwise," he said, "what's the use of policies and guidelines?"
@MaryEllenKlas

Miami Democrat Sen. Annette Taddeo, the Florida Senate's newest member, said #MeToo Wednesday that she had been "subjected to inappropriate behavior" in her past and then joined the growing chorus of lawmakers saying it's time for Sen. Jack Latvala to resign.

Latvala, R-Clearwater, under a Senate investigation for sexual harassment by a Senate legislative aide, has denied the allegations. Most senators have refrained from publicly indicating whether he is guilty but Taddeo joined Sens. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, Travis Hutson, R-Palm Coast, and called for him to step down. House Speaker Richard Corcoran, a Latvala foe, has also called for him to resign.

"While speaking out is never easy, I know in my heart I cannot stay silent any longer. Without going into details, I have been subjected to inappropriate behavior as a young woman by a religious leader,'' Taddeo said in a statement. "While I did not speak out publicly then, I know today, I have an opportunity to add my voice to a movement that I hope reshapes our society. We cannot tolerate anything less than respect from any individual- period.

I was proud to be elected to serve in the Florida Senate this sall because of the opportunities to advance meaningful policies that make families lives better. Sadly, the recent controversy surrounding Sen. Jack Latvala has all but derailed our focus on policy discussions and continues to consume the Legislature.

The hostile environment and the continued harassment of employees is simply wrong and must end. To do that, I firmly believe Sen. Jack Latvala must resign as the mounting news accounts and ongoing details surrounding his circumstances without a doubt have created a distraction from representing his constituents.

I believe Sen. Jack Latvala has an opportunity to put service and people first- and that starts by resigning his seat so we can get back to the business of Floridians.

Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, filed a Senate Rules complaint against Latvala on Tuesday, accusing him of attempting to intimidate witnesses and undermine the credibility of his accuser, Rachel Perrin Rogers. Book stopped short of calling for his resignation.

Read more: Senator files complaint against Latvala for interfering in investigation

Sen. Bill Galvano said he expects the investigation to be complete some time next week.
CONRAD  A Montana sheriff has reached a plea agreement for abusing his son that recommends he not be allowed to carry a firearm for a year.

The Great Falls Tribune reports a Department of Justice spokesman says Pondera County Sheriff Carl Suta still will be able to serve as sheriff.

Prosecutors set the conditions of the agreement filed in the domestic abuse case against Suta in which Suta agrees to plead no contest to kicking his son in February.

Suta is charged with partner or family member assault.

The plea agreement would require Suta spend 23 hours in jail or three days under house arrest.

Suta's change of plea hearing is on Dec. 22.

Suta also will fight Monday against the legal standing of a petition to recall him from office.
Where have the deficit hawks flown to? Are their heads in the clouds?

If you look at the tax plan that just passed the Senate, its clear they have flown away from Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, some folks in Congress turned their back on future generations and passed a so-called tax reform bill that sells off the futures of our kids and grandkids in exchange for tax giveaways to wealthy out-of-staters.

These tax giveaways to the ultra-rich will saddle future generations of hardworking Montanans with crushing debt by adding nearly $1.5 trillion to the national deficit.

The national debt is already a hefty $20 trillion and climbing, and every man, woman and child in the United States of America owes a $63,000 share of that.

Montana small-business owners know that sometimes you have to borrow money to survive the bad years, but in the good years, you pay off that debt.

Our economy is in pretty good shape right now. We shouldnt be taking on more crushing debt that will have to be paid off down the road. That is not how you pass down the country to the next generation.

I have long supported cutting taxes for working families and small businesses, simplifying the tax code, and cutting our national debt.

But this disastrous plan fails Montanans, and it fails our future leaders.

This tax giveaway to the wealthy not only saddles future generations with more debt, it also raises taxes on Montana families, forces cuts to Medicare, and eliminates important deductions that allow Montanans to keep more of their hard-earned money in their wallets.

This all takes place while corporate tax cuts remain permanent, inflating the bank accounts of big business and leaving the folks who do the hard work with smaller paychecks.

Furthermore, folks in the Senate voted on this bill without knowing everything that is in it.

The 479-page bill wasnt released to the public, or to me, until a couple of hours before votes were scheduled to take place.

This secret bill had handwritten notes scribbled in the margins, as well as pet projects and sweetheart deals that were snuck into the legislation at the last minute in order to hide them from taxpayers.

It didnt have to be this way, and Montanans didnt have to end up on the losing side of this scheme.

There is a desperate need for real tax reform in this country, and the Senates leaders should have listened.

Montanans need tax reform that gives a break to working-class families and small businesses, without adding to our debt.

But politicians in Washington decided to ram this through with no public input, no transparency and no analysis of how it will impact folks outside of the swamp.

This is Washington, D.C., at its worst.

That is why we are stuck with a partisan gimmick that makes the rich even richer while the rest of us pay their bill.

Montanans deserve better. Hard-working families deserve better. Our kids and our grandkids deserve better.

Like all Montanans, I care deeply about the future of our Montana and I will relentlessly keep fighting bad proposals coming out of Washington, D.C., that hurt Montanans, threaten our future and load our kids with debt at the expense of wealthy out-of-state interests.
Dear friends,

The news is hard to read these days, because little of it seems good.

Some of the institutions Ive believed in since I was a kid growing up on Second Street in Missoula seem to be crumbling. Gargantuan egos, cowardice, downright meanness seem to rule most days in the White House and halls of Congress. The majority of our Montana Legislature seems content to follow rather than lead, leaving lots of our friends and neighbors suffering as a consequence of inaction or deliberate effort. Pretty gloomy.

But, in the wake of running a local campaign that was nastier than any in my experience, and winning, I have hope. I think that when people support good candidates who put service above themselves, things can change. Government can be effective. We can lift each other up. Our better selves can prevail.

Ill give you an example: Jon Tester. Senator Tester, while currently in the minority party in Washington, D.C., continues to work effectively to enact laws that make lives better for Montanans and for folks all over this country. Hes tough, smart, practical, hard-working and understands that his job is more about service and less about the spotlight. Hes a bit old-fashioned in all of the right ways.

But this letter isnt about the senator. Its about Grant Kier, who shares the strength of character that makes leaders like Jon Tester effective. Grant is a friend. Ive worked closely for years with Grant as we put community conservation values to work in Missoula and around western Montana. Ive known Grant to sit at a kitchen table with a landowner whose political views may have been 180 degrees from his own and have a practical conversation that produced a winning solution for everyone.

It aint about ego for Grant Kier. Its about service. Its about working to ensure the place he loves gets better for all of us and for generations to come. Its about compassion for those who need it, equity for folks of all walks of life, fairness, common sense and hard work. Its about the stuff we value as Missoulians, Montanans, and citizens of the United States.

Grant wants to replace Greg Gianforte in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I believe he should. And can.

I just dont buy the notion that a Democrat from Missoula doesnt have a chance in a statewide election. I didnt buy it when folks said a farmer from Big Sandy couldnt beat Conrad Burns.

Turns out Montanans are smart, and when they know enough about a candidate, they make independent choices based on the facts. The facts are on Grant Kiers side. Hell work harder to win this election so he can serve us better than anyone I know. With our help, he can give Montanans a clear, better choice than a rich bully with a dangerous agenda.

Im asking you to join me in giving Grant all the support you can by funding his campaign, volunteering to make calls on his behalf, hosting listening sessions with him, telling your friends about him and, ultimately, voting for him.

Good people can still win elections in Montana. And they can provide the visionary leadership that often goes missing in the places where we need it. As corny as it may sound, Grant gives me hope for the future of Montana. He helps me see through the gloom.

Thanks for all youve done for me. Now, lets do something for all of us by supporting Grant Kier for Congress.
Regarding the Dec. 3 article about Lake County's need for a new jail, the following information is provided to clarify the comments made by County Commissioner Dave Stipe, who asserted that Lake County was solely bearing the costs of legal jurisdiction ("one horse pulling a four-horse wagon").

In FY 2013 the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes managed law enforcement and criminal justice system operations for a total of $2.4 million federal funds and just under $1.6 million of tribal funds. These dollars provided law enforcement, detention, prosecution, criminal defense, civil advocacy, court disposition, probation and juvenile detention for misdemeanor criminal and civil jurisdiction of the Indian population on the Flathead Reservation.

A total of 2,650 total offenses were responded to by tribal law enforcement for misdemeanor criminal and traffic offenses (these are offenses only; the total calls responded to are not included). A total of 5,171 court cases were disposed. A total of $153,645.18 was received for court fees and fines.

In FY 2017 the tribes expended the same amount of federal funds and tribal funds for law enforcement and judicial system operations. Statistics for offenses and court cases are not available.

Who's all pulling the wagon?

Ruth Swaney,

Pablo
Thursday, Dec. 7

WINTER CONCERT

The Butte High School choir winter concert starts at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium. The choir is directed by Ted Farabee.

DAR ANNIVERSARY

The Silver Bow Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution will celebrate the 120th anniversary of the chapter with an open house at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, 17 W. Quartz St., at 2 p.m.

LADIES NIGHT OUT

Ladies Night Out will be at 6 p.m. at the Anaconda Elks, sponsored by Copper Village Museum & Art Center. The cost is $8 plus a food item for the food bank, or a gift to be auctioned can also be used as your entry fee.

DANCES WITH WORDS

Author Caroline Patterson will visit the University of Montana Western for a reading as part of the "Dances with Words" series at 7:30 p.m. at The Cup, Montana Western's coffeehouse located below the library on campus. . Details: Alan Weltzien at alan.weltzien@umwestern.edu or 406-683-7431.

RALLY FOR ROTARY

The Rotary Club of Butte will conduct a "Rally for Rotary" at noon at the Butte Country Club. Details, call 406-490-9154. To RSVP, email rolom817@gmail.com.

OPENING RECEPTION

The University of Montana Western's Fine Arts Gallery has scheduled an opening reception of the new contemporary exhibit in the Corr Gallery titled "Vocabulary of the Self" by sculptor Crista Ann Ames from 6 to 7 p.m. The opening will be preceded by Ames's artist's talk in Main Hall, room 309, from 5 to 6 p.m.

JUDGING CLINIC

A judging clinic will be held at 6 p.m. in Butte Central High School's library. Volunteer judges are needed for the speech and debate meet on Saturday. Details, David Stonehocker at david.stonehocker@buttecentralschools.org or 406-593-1614.

GEOLOGY LECTURE

"Unraveling the Late Proterozoic-Cambrian Transition in the Pioneer Mountains" is the focus of a free lecture by Katie McDonald at 4 p.m. in Montana Tech's Natural Resources Building, room 128.

OGT RADIO PLAY

The Orphan Girl Children's Theatre presents an Orphan Girl Community Theatre production of "A Christmas Carol: A Live Radio Play," directed by Jackie Freeman. Shows are 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

CLUBS AND MEETINGS

BUTTE

Duplicate bridge is played at 1 p.m. at the Hawthorne Community Center, 3500 Whiteway (enter through the back).

Rotary Club of Butte meets at noon at the Butte Country Club.

Montana Independent Living Project is hosting a group for women with disabilities. This group meets from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at 3475 Monroe Ave., suite 103.

Gamblers Anonymous meets at 7:30 p.m. at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 1621 Thornton Ave.

ANACONDA

Chapter T, PEO, will meet at 6 p.m. at Jen Anderson's home.
MUSCATINE  While summer is typically the prime time for shopping at farmers markets throughout Iowa, leaders of the Muscatine Area Farmers Market are preparing for their busiest annual event this weekend.

Saturday, the Muscatine Area Farmers Market will host its 4th annual Handcrafted Christmas event at the Muscatine Mall, according to Market Manager Jennifer DeFosse. Around 55 local vendors will set up shop along the mall's corridors to sell handcrafted gifts, pieces of art and baked goods.

The farmers market's regular season is May through October each year, when local farmers and business owners line up along 3rd and Cedar streets to sell produce and other goods. But, DeFosse said she wanted the event to have a presence in Muscatine year-round.

"It got started because, frankly, it made me sad when at the end of October, we'd have to [say] 'see you next year,'" she said. "We didn't want to wait until the next year so we decided to do something about that."

While dozens shop at the farmers market each weekend throughout the summer and early fall, the organizers' Handcrafted Christmas market has become the biggest event since its inception, DeFosse said.

"An interesting fact is every single year we fill the market parking lot to capacity with shoppers, so that's really fun," she said. "It's very special that so many people are so enchanted by something so simple."

Produce, DeFosse said, is usually the biggest draw for customers during the regular farmers market, but the Christmas market will mostly include handmade gifts. The rules, however, remain the same: "You can't bring it unless you've grown it or made it yourself," she said.

"I think it's because it's Christmas, everyone wants something a little more special to give as a gift, and maybe a little old fashioned," DeFosse said. "And that's what we have. It's incredible ... and the skill set is unbelievable."

She said vendors at the Christmas market include bakers, soap makers, wood carvers, leather workers and more.

"We have a lady who takes old broken down furniture and transforms it into beautiful pieces of art," she said. "You can't believe she's not in a professional gallery."

And the success of the Christmas event has also boosted attendance at the regular farmers market, which was held for the 24th year this season, according to DeFosse.

The market started off with a few farmers and bakers gathering together in Muscatine, she said, and now, around 40 vendors participate each year.

"Iowa is bucking the national trend," she said. "Farmers markets have nationally started to slow down, but we have not, and in Iowa, we haven't yet."

Attendance has grown at the market in recent years, she said, adding that heirloom produce is now one of the biggest draws. And, DeFosse said this was the third year the Muscatine Area Farmers Market has been named the top farmers market in the state of Iowa, according to an annual poll sponsored by American Farmland Trust's Farmers Market Celebration.

But for DeFosse, the market is more than a way to celebrate healthy living and Muscatine County farmers. She believes the Muscatine Area Farmers Market is one of the best ways to support the local economy and connect with neighbors.

"The farmers market is an essential part of the community," she said. "Most things nowadays, like heirloom produce and organics, you can get at a grocery store, but the farmers market is a community. It's a place to visit with your neighbors. It's a place to engage and be a part of something special."

The Handcrafted Christmas market will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Muscatine Mall, 1903 Park Ave. The event will also include live music, DeFosse said.

For more information, visit the Facebook page.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
A downtown Napa house being restored to its appearance from the citys earliest days will remain under historic protection under a deal between its owner and the city.

The agreement lowers property taxes for Karen Wesson, owner of the Judge Johnson Horrell house that has stood at 554 Randolph St. since the 1850s. In exchange, Wesson agreed to keep the Gothic Revival building, which is listed in Napas historic resource registry, in its historic state under a 10-year contract that will renew itself every decade unless the owner or Napa opts out.

Napa's share of annual property tax on the site could be reduced from the current $1,492 per year to about $448, city senior planner Michael Walker said in a memorandum to the City Council.

Tax-breaks-for-preservation trades like the one the council approved Tuesday with Wesson are authorized by the Mills Act, which California passed in 1972 to encourage more property owners to restore old landmarks rather than demolish them for new development.

City staff described the agreement, which will reduce Wessons annual property tax, as a reward for her work reviving the historic house after decades of neglect and damage inflicted by the 2014 earthquake.

The Randolph Street site consists of a two-story main house built within a few years of Californias promotion to statehood in 1850, and a smaller, shingled home known as the Luther T. Hayman Cottage, added around 1905. The original residence  the first to be built on its block  is one of the oldest surviving single-family houses in the city, Napa County Landmarks said in a September letter to Napa officials.

Born in 1796 in Pennsylvania, Horrell, a lawyer, had lived in Ohio and Indiana before taking his wife and daughter to California in 1849 and settling in Napa the following year, according to the Landmarks group. Soon after arriving in Napa, he began a three-year term as the citys second-ever justice of the peace after the towns first judge, S.H. Sellers, was stabbed to death by a man Sellers had ruled against in a lawsuit.

Horrell originally built his namesake home on Division Street and lived there until his death in 1867, Landmarks officials wrote. A later owner, Thomas W. Mather, moved the structure to Randolph Street in 1890, then traded homes in 1895 with Luther Hayman, a Civil War veteran and Napa Register business manager who added the one-bedroom companion cottage about a decade later.

Over the next century, the Johnson property was resold seven times and divided into six rental units, then sold again after the 2014 quake.

Wesson, the current owner, has overseen its conversion back into a single-family home as well as the return of key design elements like the front portico, roof finials, original-style windows and shutters, and the redwood siding. The Hayman cottage also has received original-style shingling and wood-frame windows, along with a period-correct door, porch and gutters.

This story has been amended since first posting to clarify the financial impact on the city.
Nuclear holocaust is the least likely outcome of North Korea's latest leap forward in offensive capabilities. And if it were it to occur, it would probably be the result of shoot-from-the-lip bluster from President Trump rather than a calculated U.S. or North Korean strategy. Our biggest worry isn't the future toll of a dubious war, but the toll bad leadership is already taking on our standing in the world.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in indirectly captured this point when, in response to this week's successful test of a long-range missile by North Korea, he said, "We must stop a situation where North Korea miscalculates and threatens us with nuclear weapons or where the United States considers a pre-emptive strike."

Precisely at the moment South Korea would be expected to be most dependent on, and solicitous of, the United States, its president is instead considering how to counter an American move. That speaks volumes, as does Trump's primary response to the launch: seeking the intervention of the Chinese in putting pressure on Pyongyang.

As great as the risk of nuclear war seems, common sense and self-interest are likely to prevail because that is what most often happens in international affairs. But it is shocking to realize that we are looking not to Washington but other actors in the drama -- including the North Koreans and China -- to be the source of reason in this crisis.

To understand what will happen next, we need to consider the comparatively rational reasons behind the North Koreans' nuclear program. It is not about global aggression. Kim Jong Un and his generals know that using such weapons would result in the end of North Korea. Rather, their drive to join the nuclear club is designed to make an outside attack on the country, or a foreign effort to depose the Kim regime, less likely. Perversely, for North Korea, gaining weapons of mass destruction is an existential choice.

Kim recognizes that no nation, not even one breathing "fire and fury," has the power to take his weapons away. Military force is not a realistic option. There are no scenarios for an attack on North Korea that do not produce horrific casualties in the South. And now, with the possible destruction of one or more U.S. cities on the table, it is even more certain we wouldn't undertake the risk.

Economic pressure also won't work -- the North Korean state has shown complete indifference to its people's suffering. Besides, China, North Korea's main trading partner, has no interest in pushing its neighbor into complete collapse. It would trigger unrest on its border and weaken a useful ally.

Realistically, there are three possible outcomes to the Pyongyang-Washington duel. One is accidental war, the consequences of which would be so grave that it must be avoided at all costs. Another is that the North Koreans will continue to grow their nuclear weapons program indefinitely. Or, if the regime can be persuaded to freeze the program, the threat can be contained and, as we did with the Soviets, we can patiently seek collapse of the system from within.

Containment and patience is where this will end. It's what China and Russia will lobby for; not, as Trump thinks, because they want to help us, but because they believe we will give up power to make it happen. China, although central to a deal, is not our "partner;" its interests diverge from ours. Along with the North Koreans, the Chinese have the most leverage in this situation, and they will likely get the best of the negotiations unless the U.S. is very skillful.

That. of course, would require a functioning, well-staffed State Department. But we don't have one of those. Its ranks have been decimated by the Trump administration. In the end, even if the flawed temperament and deficient skills of America's president do not get us all killed, the actions of his administration will lead to the long-term weakening of the U.S. position in Asia and beyond. Already, our allies trust us less.

We may one day look back on 2017 and note not just the nightmarish fears sparked by the words of an unhinged American president, but a disruption in world order, the first big international crises since 1945 in which the United States was no longer the most influential actor.
On this 76th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, were looking back in our archives to get the accounts of Napa residents who were there. In 2001, Register reporter Gary Brady-Herndon spoke with five local veterans on the occasion of the release of the movie Pearl Harbor.

These are their stories as told to us back then.

Lloyd La Brie

Lloyd La Brie was assigned to Bellows Field where he worked as an aviation ordnance man.

The first planes came in low, he said, strafing the area with machine gun fire as they made their initial fly over. When he arrived at the hangar, he was given a .30-caliber machine gun and told to set up a gun station on the runway. His orders were to engage the marauding Japanese planes as they came in steady waves, shooting and bombing as they flew over the field.

We were all just kids. I said to myself Ill never live through this day, La Brie recalled. For six weeks after the attack, we had air raid warnings every night, so we slept out back away from the barracks, La Brie remembered.

Wayne McClure

Wayne McClure was asleep on the USS Case, a destroyer in port for repairs. When the first bombs exploded, he ran topside.

The officer of the deck told me that we had crew members on the shore waiting to be picked up and brought back to the ship. He told me and another sailor to take a motor launch and go bring them back, McClure said.

They spent the rest of the day ferrying sailors back to those ships not yet abandoned from damage inflicted by the bombs.

The waves (of planes) didnt last longer than 20 minutes at a time, but you didnt know when the next wave was coming  they seemed to last forever, McClure said.

McClure noted the general response to the attack that evening and the days that followed was predictable.

We were fighting mad  so many killed  it was a tragic sight. There was a feeling of anger (over) the surprise of it all, McClure said. It created conditions where we could win, McClure said emphatically.

Nathaniel Clark Firestone

Nathaniel Clark Firestone served on the USS Medusa, a floating workshop to repair damaged combat vessels. When the bombs started falling, he immediately went to his duty station. It was over by 10 a.m.  roughly  dont really know the exact time. We had been lead to believe that a battleship wouldnt sink, but we passed (destroyed) battleship after battleship. I was scared to death, he said. They (the American commanders) were expecting attacks all night long, he said, even at times, mistakenly shooting at American planes. They (the Japanese) werent really after everything  just the battleships. They did a pretty good job.

In the days that followed, Firestone said, morale grew every day as those left alive tended to the surviving personnel and ships,

It was Lets go get em he said. We started doing our job  repairing ships. The attack brought us together  thats my theory. We used to wonder when it was going to start. Where it would begin. We found out the hard way.

Joe Hendrickson

Joe Hendrickson was standing on a dock waiting for his day to begin when he saw the first planes.

I looked over at the number six hangar and saw a plane diving at the building. I remember thinking those fools are going to hurt somebody. The first plane dropped a bomb that missed the hangar and exploded on the side of the building. I thought at first that they were dummy bombs and the pilots were playing a joke, Hendrickson said

The next plane he saw, however, released a bomb that hit the hangar. The result was a massive explosion. Reacting to the sound of another plane, Hendrickson turned to see a two-man torpedo plane flying down the middle of the channel. He saw the pilot hunched over the controls concentrating on his attack. In the rear seat, a machine gunner sat waiting patiently.

They flew so close to me that the machine gunner and I made eye contact, Hendrickson said. I found out later that the machine gunner was under strict orders not to fire until after the torpedoes were dropped so as not to break the pilots concentration. Im here today because of that, Hendrickson said.

I dont think you saw any cowards that day, but we were bewildered. We thought before the attack we could beat them with one hand tied behind our backs. After the attack, we found out they were pretty good, Hendrickson said.

Robert Gorman

The final Pearl Harbor veteran gave a different account of the events that transpired on that fateful Sunday. Telling his story with the aid of longtime friend, Bob Richardson, Robert Gorman related his experience as seen from the destroyer USS Ward.

Hours before the attack Gorman sat at his sonar station as the Ward patrolled the mouth of Pearl Harbor. Designated as a no sub zone, the Wards responsibility was to destroy unwanted intruders who might stray into the area.

Approximately 45 minutes before the attack began, Gorman detected the noise of a two-man submarine just outside the harbor entrance. The captain ordered the submarine sunk. He planned to ram the sub, but later ordered the Wards three inch guns to fire on the ship. The sinking of the two-man sub marked the first blow by an American vessel against the Japanese

Later in the afternoon, the Ward steamed into the harbor amid the wreckage and destruction. Gorman told Anderson, a cheer went up as they passed the crippled ships from the crews coping with the destruction caused by the raid.

At that point, the Ward was one of the few U. S. ships left sailing, and the sight of an American vessel, Gorman believes, gave hope to the sailors battling the effects of the morning bombing raid.

While filmmakers strive for authenticity and the right blend of human interest between the actors on stage and the horrors of war, the end result will always be only a representation of the stories of the true heroes of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Men like La Brie, Mc Clure, Firestone, Hendrickson and Gorman tell the story as it should be told, through the eyes and memories of those who served there.
Its not every day you find a Napa Valley vintner serving visitors a nice pot of tea, but thats what Lauren Ackerman was doing on last Sunday afternoon in Napa.

It was all in the spirit of the holidays and of the Ackerman Heritage House, the Queen Anne Victorian in Napa that she purchased in 2010.

Restored to its lavish Victorian splendor, the historic home gets an extra dazzle at the holidays, bedecked with swags of greenery on the stairs, angels on the mantel, and ribbons, and ornaments everywhere. It needed only Charles Dickens, sitting on a velvet settee and spinning out a tale or two.

The holiday tea parties are only some of the events being held at the historic Napa house since Ackerman reopened it. Private dinners, tours, receptions, and weddings are on the books, and, yes, even wine tastings.

Its part of Ackermans plan to make her meticulously restored masterpiece self-supporting. When I am gone  and I hope this is a long time away  I plan to donate it to the city, as a living museum, she told the tea party guests as she led a tour, upstairs and down, and described the adventures she encountered after she fell under the spell of a 110-year-old Victorian that had come onto the Napa market.

I purchased it very naively, she said, but only after nine months of negotiations and repeated assessments for the home that had about 50 years of deferred maintenance.

She subsequently plunged into a five-year course on restoration, during which she learned about stained glass windows (the house has 17), redwood floors (the desirable Napa imprint on redwood in the 1880s meant it had been milled in Napa and was of superior quality) and life in Victorian Napa. She also took a summer course on period architecture at Oxford.

It was my first restoration, said Ackerman, who spent more than $2 million renovating and refurnishing the house. Along the way, she researched its history. The house, long known in Napa as the Gifford House, was actually built by an heiress named Sarah Hayman, Ackerman said.

Designed by local architect Luther Turton, it was built between 1884 and 1888 for Hayman and her husband, Luther Turnbull Hayman, a real estate tycoon and partner of George M. Francis, a former owner of the Napa Valley Register. The Haymans lived there for only two years before moving to another home in Napa. The Gifford family bought the house in 1904 and lived in it for next 45 years.

Ackerman solved the question of who it should be named for by rechristening it the Ackerman Heritage House.

Eighty percent of the furnishings, I found on eBay, Ackerman said. Others came from the home of her mother, an antique enthusiast, or from local finds like the glittering chandelier in a luxurious upstairs bathroom in the houses round tower. Its off the bedroom Ackerman calls Sarahs room, which is furnished with a grand canopy bed, a find eBay.

She broke with Victorian tradition by installing two other bathrooms upstairs (there would have been only one, possibly without a chandelier over the tub). One is what had been the maids bedrooms, the other, a half-bath is in a nook that was once a sewing room at the head of the servants staircase.

On the other hand, she created a tribute to the Victorian spirit with a study in a former upstairs bedroom that reflects the interests of a Victorian gentleman artifacts from New Guinea, a stuffed peacock, a state-of-the-Victorian art victrola, and a magnificent English desk at which this Victorian gentleman could contemplate the progress of science. Here, also she has two framed prints she found on eBay, purchased as a set, an Americana poster, and a family tree. It was only after the prints arrived that she discovered the name on the family tree: Ackerman.

There have been other interesting coincidences, she said.

Ackerman was 45 days away from completing the restoration when the 2014 Napa earthquake hit, and set the schedule back as they repaired fallen plaster. Ackerman remained committed, however, noting only that it was good they had already restored and reinforced the irreplaceable stained-glass windows. They wouldnt have survived, she said.

Descendants of the families who lived in the house have come to see her work, including Lulu Hayman, Sarahs daughter.

And although no one lives in the house, during the recent wildfires, Ackerman, evacuated from her Coombsville home, stayed in the Victorian when she said she got a distinct sense that she might be sharing the space with ghostly residents. There have been deaths, births and weddings here, she said. There has been a lot of life.

And where does wine come in?

First, as part of Napas history. Napas first winery was not far away, Ackerman said. John Patchett built it in the town of Napa. Working for Patchett was Charles Krug, who went on to build Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, now the valleys oldest winery.

Wine is also part of her present-day plan to maintain and preserve her work. Realizing that maintaining an historic house is a never-ending project  Its like owning an old ship, she said  Ackerman got permission from the city to create a tasting room for her wines in the adjacent carriage house. Now called the Aviary, the space can host up to 12 people for tastings of the wines from Ackerman Family Vineyards in the Coombsville appellation.

On Sunday, however, it was all about tea. Two more holiday teas are planned for Dec. 17, at noon and 2:30 p.m. and monthly tea parties will continue in 2018.

I want this house to go on in perpetuity, Ackerman said, so that our children and grandchildren can come here and step back in time.

For information about the Ackerman Heritiage House, visit www.ackermanheritagehouse.com. To reserve a place at an upcoming tea party, email Mollie Towey at mollytowey@sbcglobal.net.
The rationale for the Goldwater Rule  which prohibits psychiatrists from publicly commenting on the mental health of public figures they have not examined in person  does not hold up to current scientific scrutiny, a new analysis finds.



Perspectives on Psychological Science is publishing the analysis, which concludes that the Goldwater Rule is not well-supported scientifically and is outdated in todays media-saturated environment. A preprint of the article is available online.



We reviewed a large body of published scientific literature and it clearly showed that examining someone directly is often not necessary if you compile other valid sources of information, says Scott Lilienfeld, lead author of the analysis and a professor of psychology at Emory University.



As examples of those sources, the authors cite interviews with family members, friends and others who know a person well, and extensive public records such as media interviews, biographies, YouTube videos, social media accounts and other material that may reveal a persons longstanding behavioral patterns. The authors also report that direct interviews are subject to a host of biasing factors that are difficult to eliminate, including efforts on the part of interviewees to create positive impressions.



Even though it is often possible to make a reasonably valid psychiatric diagnosis at a distance, that doesnt necessarily mean that a mental health professional should, Lilienfeld cautions. Such a diagnosis should only be made with great discretion and after a thorough investigation.



The Goldwater Rule, implemented in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), gained new attention after Donald Trump entered the political arena. Some mental health professionals have expressed serious concerns about Trumps mental health, most notably in the new book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
- Israeli PM Netanyahu expects more countries to recognise Jerusalem as capital city.





- U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced the U.S. would move its embassy to Jerusalem.





- Czech Republic also recognises Jerusalem as Capital of Israel.

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that he expects more countries to follow the footsteps of the United States of America who recently announced their intention to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and also move their embassy to the controversial city.





Despite warnings from across the world, U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to expedite plans to go ahead with its intentions.





"I want to tell you that we are in touch with other countries that will make a similar recognition. And I have no doubt that the minute the US Embassy is moved to Jerusalem, and even beforehand, there will be a move of many embassies to Jerusalem. It is time," said Netanyahu, addressing foreign diplomats at the Israeli foreign ministry on Thursday.





He did not name any countries that had indicated they would make such a move.





On Wednesday, the Czech foreign ministry indicated that it recognised Jerusalem "to be in fact the capital of Israel", in a statement posted on its website.





"The Czech Republic currently, before the peace between Israel and Palestine is signed, recognises Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967," said the statement, adding that it considered Jerusalem to be the future capital of both Israel and Palestine in the future.





"The ministry can start considering moving of the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-06 20:02:51|Editor: liuxin

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COLOMBO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Wednesday laid the foundation stone for a state-of-the-art kidney hospital, which will be constructed in the island's North-Central Province with Chinese assistance.

The Sri Lankan government said the hospital in Polonnaruwa will provide medical assistance to thousands of patients suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease in the island country.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, President Sirisena said the hospital was a symbol of strong friendship between China and Sri Lanka.

"Sri Lanka and China have been friends since ancient times. This year marks the 60th anniversary of our bilateral relations and within these past 60 years, China has always helped Sri Lanka's development program," Sirisena said.

He said the hospital would help the Sri Lankan people especially the patients who were suffering from kidney diseases to get medical help.

Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said the kidney hospital would be the first of its kind to be constructed in Sri Lanka, and would immensely help strengthen the health sector of the country.

Senaratne added many Sri Lankans, especially farmers, were suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease in several districts and steps had been taken to ban harmful fertilizers and import more dialysis machines for the patients.

Chinese Ambassador Yi Xianliang said the hospital was being built following consultations between the leaders of both countries as kidney disease had become a major issue of concern in the island country.

The ambassador said China had assisted many rural schools and would do more to help strengthen other sectors.

The Polonaruwa Kidney Hospital, located close to the Polonnaruwa General Hospital, will serve not only the kidney patients in the North-Central Province, but also all kidney patients in the country.

The hospital includes kidney transplant surgeries, blood dialysis services, clinical service, laboratory service and counselling service.

It consists of a Basic Treatment Unit, Out Patients' Department, Wards with 200 beds to treat residential patients, 100 blood dialysis beds, surgeries with modern technology, two Intensive Care Units and a blood bank.

Around 6,500 kidney patients from the Polonnaruwa district and another 13,000 kidney patients from the Anuradhapura district undergo dialysis or require facilities for dialysis.
All Muslims are very angry with the U.S. decision on recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital, said an Islamic organ. (AFP Photo)

RABAT, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) warned Wednesday against the disastrous implications over U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital.

The U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The organization stated in a statement that such step will trigger angry reactions from Muslims who consider it as a provocation of their religious sentiments and a total bias in favor of the occupation in Palestinian territories.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 04:16:12|Editor: Jiaxin

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reads a statement at the UN headquarters in New York, on Dec. 6, 2017. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he was "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians." He made the remarks immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."

"From day one as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," the UN chief told reporters immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said.

"I understand the deep attachment that Jerusalem holds in the hearts of so many people. It has been so for centuries and it will always be," he said. "In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B."

"It is only by realizing the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace, security and mutual recognition, with Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Palestine, and all final status issues resolved permanently through negotiations, that the legitimate aspirations of both peoples will be achieved," the UN chief stressed.

"For my part as the United Nations Secretary-General, I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations and to realize this vision of a lasting peace for both people," he concluded.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump formally announced his Jerusalem decision, despite warnings from Arab countries and the European Union against such a move that would inflame tensions and fuel violence in the Middle East.

Ahead of the move, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned of "dangerous consequences" on the peace process, security and stability in the Middle East region and the world.

China said on Wednesday that the status of Jerusalem is sensitive and complicated, and urged all parties concerned to "exercise caution" for peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks when asked to comment on U.S. intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 04:46:24|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- As the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) closes its doors, the quest for justice for victims of the Bosnian War in the 1990s should continue, said Judge Carmel Agius, president of the tribunal, on Wednesday.

"The achievements of the ICTY do not begin and end in The Hague," he said, referring to the seat of the tribunal. "The completion of our work, and of our restricted mandate as a court of law, does not mean that the job is done."

"It is with a heavy heart that I leave the tribunal, deeply disturbed by the huge numbers of crimes yet to be prosecuted before domestic courts in the former Yugoslavia, and by the thousands of victims who continue to cry for justice," he told the UN Security Council.

After 24 years of work, the ICTY will close its doors at the end of the year.

While it is commendable to see that many cases have been adjudicated through special war crimes courts, and that specialized war crimes prosecutors continue to investigate and bring charges against perpetrators, much more needs to be done, he said, asking the United Nations to continue to support the relevant institutions and actors on the ground.

He warned that the rise of revisionism and nationalism throughout the region cannot be ignored. "Do not delude yourselves; the absence of war does not mean peace -- particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where political conflict and unrest reign."

"I therefore urge the international community to assure those of all ethnicities throughout the region that they will not be abandoned after the tribunal's closure, and to keep to that promise," said Agius.

He further stressed that the work to end impunity for mass crimes is not the preserve of any one institution, but rather a common goal and aspiration for the whole mankind. "We at the tribunal have made our contribution, and indeed the tribunal spurred on the creation of other courts and tribunals. However, the international community must take steps to ensure that the contributions of these institutions are not undermined, or even reversed, by a lack of political support, and that their legacies are preserved."

He lauded the ICTY as a success story. "Despite all the skeptics, the naysayers, the deniers who, from the very beginning, embarked on a campaign against the tribunal and have been at pains to question our legitimacy and integrity, and portray a doomsday scenario, I am proud to appear before this esteemed council today and say: mission accomplished."

The setting up of the ICTY was a powerful signal that the international community would not stand idly by and watch while barbaric acts were perpetrated far away in the former Yugoslavia, he said. "You, the members of this organization, decided that heinous crimes such as rape, torture, ethnic cleansing, and the wanton killing of civilians affect each and every one of us, simply because they imperil the great principles of civilization, as protected by the rule of law and enshrined in internationally recognized standards of human rights and humanitarian law."

The ICTY was established by a Security Council resolution in 1993. In the past 24 years, 161 persons were indicted. After the closure of the ICTY by yearend, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals will take over the residual functions of the tribunal such as oversight of sentences and consideration of appeal proceedings.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 04:46:25|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam is among 10 cities across the world which won the 2017 cities for mobility award in recognition of its Dar Rapid Transit (DART) project, organizers said on Wednesday.

"A new bus rapid transit system serving 200,000 people every day and adding new, lower-carbon engines to the city's fleet was the secret behind the recognition of Dar es Salaam city," said a statement by the organizers of the award, the C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards 2017.

The C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards are granted annually in five categories and provides global recognition for cities that are demonstrating climate action leadership.

Since 2013, C40 has recognized more than 40 of the world's boldest projects, highlighting the critical role cities play as a leading force for climate action.

The statement said Dar es Salaam has been honored among the 10 cities with sustainable projects that represent most ambitious and innovative efforts to shape the world's future.

The award was presented on Tuesday at the C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards 2017, which took place at the North American Climate Summit in Chicago, said the statement.

DART in tackling traffic congestion and high levels of air pollution in Dar es Salaam with over 4 million people, said the statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 05:01:27|Editor: Lifang

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Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron attends a news conference in Algiers, Algeria, on Dec. 6, 2017. Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that France does not support U.S. President Donald Trump's "unilateral" decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. "The decision is unilateral and regrettable, and France does not support it," Macron told a news conference in Algiers after his one-day visit to the North African nation. (Xinhua)

ALGIERS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Visiting French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that France does not support U.S. President Donald Trump's "unilateral" decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"The decision is unilateral and regrettable, and France does not support it," Macron told a news conference in Algiers after his one-day visit to the North African nation.

He said that the U.S. decision would complicate the situation in the Palestinian territories and the Middle East.

In a speech from the White House on Wednesday, Trump announced the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered to start immediately the process of relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Trump's controversial move is expected to enrage the Muslim world, which has already warned of serious consequences.

While Israel took over East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and declared the whole city as its eternal indivisible capital in 1980, it has not been recognized by the international community.

The Palestinians insist that they should establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the final settlement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 05:06:29|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Libya's eastern-based parliament on Wednesday urged the UN Support Mission in Libya to clarify its position on the parliament's amendment of the political agreement.

The parliament threatens to take unilateral action if the mission cannot secure position.

The parliament addressed the UN mission and demanded it to determine position on the parliament-approved amendment.

It also asked for the mission's commitment to actions in case the other party continues to reject the initiative.

The parliament did not reveal the possible measures it would take in case its initiative was rejected by the rival Tripoli-based Higher Council of State.

The parliament approved two weeks ago a UN-proposed amendment formula to the current political agreement. However, the Higher Council of State rejected the amendment, and announced possibility of holding early elections within six months.

Following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime, Libya has been struggling to make a democratic transition amid insecurity and political division.

The UN Mission has recently sponsored dialogue meetings in Tunisia between representatives of the Libyan political parties in order to amend the political agreement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 05:36:41|Editor: Lu Hui

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Despite global opposition and protests, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday fulfilled one of his major campaign promises by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and demanded the State Department to develop a plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Experts argued that Trump's decision, a bold step that could change the status quo in a highly sensitive region, is likely to draw rage and revenge, and more importantly, dampen the peace prospect in the Middle East.

"RECOGNITION OF REALITY"

In a televised speech, Trump announced he is "determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

"This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement," Trump said, arguing his announcement is just a "recognition of reality," and is "not intended in any way to reflect a departure" from the U.S. commitment to a lasting peace agreement "acceptable to both sides" in the Middle East.

"We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders," he said. "Those questions are up to the parties involved."

Earlier, the Palestinian authorities have reiterated their stance that there will be no sovereign state of Palestine without East Jerusalem as its capital.

Speaking of the moving of the U.S. embassy, Trump said the State Department will immediately begin to hire architects and engineers, so as to make the new embassy "a magnificent tribute to peace" when completed.

He also announced that Vice President Mike Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to "reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism."

POLITICALIZED MOTIVES

Analysts said that Trump took a hardline stand mostly because that appeals to the religious wing of his conservative base.

Daniel Serwer, director of Conflict Management at the Johns Hopkins University, told Xinhua that Trump's main motive seems to "be satisfying a domestic political constituency that wants the administration to be as pro-Israel as possible."

Secondly, Trump came into office with promises to stop terrorism, which means a closer relationship with Israel, since Israel is the U.S. only true ally in the Middle East, said analysts.

Moreover, the disruptive moves by the Trump administration may "reshuffle the deck" and somehow make the Israeli-Palestinian problem easier to solve.

"That isn't likely to be the case however," Serwer noted. "Any announcement changing existing U.S. policy without being even-handed will reduce the likelihood of an agreed peace."

"The U.S. has always been pro-Israel, but until now it has not necessarily been perceived as anti-Palestine. This will make it hard for many, including me, to believe that the administration supports a two-state solution, which many of us regard as the only outcome that will lead to stability," he added.

Dan Mahaffee, vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency, also told Xinhua that Trump's decision to move the embassy reflects a willingness of his administration to "shake up the peace process" and the push to make a deal, "despite the offense to Arab nations and the risk of inciting further violence in the region."

BACKFIRING CONSEQUENCES

In the eyes of Darrell West, a senior fellow at think-tank Brookings Institution, Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem will upset Palestinians because it unilaterally changes the status quo in favor of Israel without providing any benefits for them.

"There likely will be considerable unrest after that decision is publicly announced," he noted.

Serwer also said Trump's move "is not unexpected but is unwise."

"It is just as much a mistake now as it was months ago," he said. "If the Palestinians get nothing, it will be hard for them to return to the negotiating table. It may also cause widespread protests."

Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution was quoted by media as saying that "the move would go against the very priorities that the administration has set for itself in the Middle East: fighting Islamist militancy and confronting Iranian influence."

"Jerusalem is the perfect issue for Iran and Islamist militants to use to mobilize support against the United States and those who endorse its policies," he added.

When asked about the possible security risks of the U.S. citizens and agencies in consequence of Trump's decision, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a Tuesday briefing that the agency has "put out information to not only our personnel but also the American public through some of our embassy websites."

"We take the situation seriously and we're closely watching it," she added.

Speaking of the possible benefits that the decision could bring to the United States, Serwer noted that Trump's announcement "will make the U.S. even more of an Israeli ally than it already is."

MESSY MIDDLE EAST POLICY

When asked to comment on the Trump administration's Middle East policy, Serwer said "the strategy seems to be yes to Israel, no to Iran, and kill the Islamic State."

Or maybe Trump is serious about engaging in achieving the lasting peace in the Middle East. However, in the eyes of Ilan Goldenberg at the Center for a New American Security, "if you're about to launch a major peace plan, the last thing you want to do is to take this highly sensitive question of Jerusalem and just throw it into the mix."

Related:

Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israeli capital, instructs embassy relocation process

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Full story

Spotlight: U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital stirs sentiments of Islamic world

CAIRO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital drew strong condemnation from the Arab states and the Islamic world, despite Israel hailing the move as "courageous and just decision." Full story

UN chief opposes any unilateral measures jeopardizing peace prospect for Israelis, Palestinians

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians." Full story

Commentary: Trump's controversial move on Jerusalem risks inflaming tensions in Mideast, could backfire
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 07:12:07|Editor: Xiang Bo

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OXFORD, Britain, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Outside the historic Sheldonian Theatre in the University of Oxford amid drizzles in a typical British late afternoon, the queue seemed unusually long.

More than 500 students and academicians, undeterred by the coldness and darkness of winter, were waiting to listen to a keynote speech by Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong who is on a four-day visit to Britain.

"What I am most interested in is the political and economic development of China in the next 10 to 15 years and how China can continue its growth and offers opportunities to others," said Logan Graham, a student in Oxford studying artificial intelligence.

"It is deeply important that we understand China and potentially vice versa as well,"said Graham who plans to seek his career opportunities in Shanghai after finishing his PhD.

Liu, the first high-level Chinese official visiting Britain since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October this year, delivered a speech themed "Deepening People to People Exchange and Boosting the Development of the Golden Era."

During her speech, Liu expounded China's development goals and targets put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping as China strives to become a moderately prosperous society by 2020 and a modernized socialist country by 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic of China.

"China is embarking on a new journey in pursuit of growth with higher quality, more efficiency and equality," said Liu, adding that a strong, open and innovative China is offering new opportunities for international students and youths.

On China-Britain ties, Liu said this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Britain.

China-Britain relations, with highly integrated interests, stand at a new historic point and people-to-people exchanges serve as the social and civil foundation of the bilateral ties.

During her trip, Liu will chair on Thursday, jointly with British Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, the fifth annual UK-China High-Level People-to-People Dialogue, which is the highest-level bilateral dialogue held in Britain this year.

Liu proposed in her speech that the two sides should continue to expand people-to-people exchanges in such field as health, education and science and technology, to enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples as substantial results have been achieved since the mechanism was launched five years ago.

The Chinese vice premier on Wednesday witnessed the inauguration of Oxford Institute of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS), a landmark cooperative project between CAMS and University of Oxford, seen as a milestone of cooperation in medical studies between the two countries.

During her speech, Liu suggested universities from both countries step up cooperation in such fields as medical studies and health, artificial intelligence, digital economy, creative industries and renewable energy etc.

Graham, who clearly sees his career opportunity in China and plans to study Mandarin soon, said "China offers the great opportunity in the next 20 years, and my dream might be there."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 07:17:09|Editor: Jiaxin

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SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Severe, cyclical drought has led the coastal Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba to turn to an abundant though unlikely resource: seawater.

About 20 kilometers inland from Cuba's second-largest city, home to nearly half a million people, a modern desalination plant is in the trial stages.

Experts are making adjustments to the facility and verifying the quality of the processed water, which is intended to supply some 34,000 residents at a rate of 50 liters per second.

The 20 million U.S. dollar plant, situated on the foothills of eastern Cuba's Sierra Maestra Mountains, at the entrance to Cabanas Cove, was funded by the Cuban government and built with Italian technology.

The decision to build the plant came after one of five dams that supply the region was nearly depleted, forcing authorities to rely on a hydraulic circuit located west of town to pump water to households. They were only partially successful.

"Due to the severity of the drought, some parts of the city were supplied every 22 days," says hydraulic engineer Janet Triana of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH), the state-run water utility.

The area has seen below average rainfall for the past 40 years.

Triana, 43, was put in charge of the water supply system in Santiago de Cuba province in May 2013.

The new plant has four wells 16 to 18 meters deep that take in seawater and put it through a process of filtering and reverse osmosis that lasts barely 20 seconds. The result is water with a high degree of purity.

To preserve the environment, the brine is flushed out to sea some 620 meters away from shore, where the continental shelf begins.

The potable water is pumped to Parada, a water treatment plant 11 kilometers away, where it is mixed with water processed at the site before entering the supply system.

Officials are also taking other measures to counter the drought, says engineer Leti Domenech, who is in charge of foreign cooperation at the INRH.

"Right now, we are carrying out three projects in our province, through international collaboration, to help us tackle the drought," said Domenech.

Next to the plant, another built with Spanish technology aims to guarantee water for the nearby Antonio Maceo Thermoelectric Plant, which supplies electricity to much of eastern Cuba, including Santiago de Cuba.

The European Union, World Food Program (WFP), United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UNICEF are all involved in programs to help residents cope with drought, including building small water treatment plants, providing equipment to measure water flow and quality, or supplying drought-resistant seeds.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 07:37:20|Editor: Jiaxin

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OTTAWA, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland Wednesday said Canada's longstanding position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

"We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel," Freeland said in a statement after U.S. President Trump announced to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and demanded the State Department to develop a plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

She said the Canadian embassy will remain in Tel Aviv and its policy on Jerusalem won't change. The city's status can only be determined as part of peace talks.

"We call for calm and continue to support the building of conditions necessary for the parties to find a solution," added the Canadian foreign minister in the statement.

Despite urgent appeals from Arab and European leaders and the risk of anti-American protests and violence, Trump Wednesday declared it was time for a new approach to Mideast peace after decades of failure. Calling Jerusalem Israel's capital, he said, was merely recognizing the obvious.

The Canadian media reported that Freeland has been briefed on the announcement in a call Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The U.S. policy change "is a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process," said Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Ahead of Trump's announcement, Arab and Muslim leaders spoke about the potential for violence. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian protesters burned American and Israeli flags. They also waved Palestinian flags and banners proclaiming Jerusalem as their "eternal capital."
SU-30 SM fighter aircrafts perform during the International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS-2017 in Zhukovsky, Russia, July 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Bai Xueqi)

MOSCOW, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Russia's fifth-generation stealth fighter Su-57, formerly known as T-50, completed its first test flight with a new-generation engine, Tass news agency reported Wednesday.

The 17-minute maiden flight took off Tuesday from the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, a suburb 40 km southeast of the Russian capital.

The Sukhoi Company, which developed the stealth fighter, has since 2010 tested nine prototypes.

Flight, a London-based website providing information on aviation and aerospace industries, quoted unnamed Russian government officials as saying the new engine "will provide more thrust and fuel efficiency, with reduced weight and maintenance requirements."

The second-stage engines are slated for production this year, ahead of the aircraft's planned mass production and delivery in 2018.

"The successful test of the new engine will give an additional boost to the fifth-generation fighter jet program, which proves the high potential of the Russian aircraft industry," Denis Manturov, Russian Trade and Industry Minister, told Tass.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 08:02:26|Editor: Jiaxin

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CHICAGO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- A former Volkswagen executive was sentenced on Wednesday to seven years in prison and fined 400,000 U.S. dollars for his role in emissions fraud.

A U.S. District Court in Detroit, Michigan State, gave Oliver Schmidt the maximum sentence and fine for the his role in the automaker's diesel emissions cheating scandal in the U.S. market, the Detroit News reported.

The German national had pleaded guilty in August to two charges following the disclosure of a scheme by Volkswagen to rig some half million diesel cars to evade U.S. emission standards.

"This crime ... attacks and destroys the very foundation of our economic system: that is trust," federal judge Sean Cox was quoted as saying.

Schmidt was Volkswagen's former manager in charge of emissions compliance for the United States.

Volkswagen had already been fined 2.8 billion U.S. dollars after pleading guilty to three criminal charges related to its decade-long conspiracy to evade U.S. emission standards.

The German automaker also reached a 14.7 billion dollars civil agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency called on Volkswagen to spend 10 more billion dollars to buy back or repair the rigged diesel cars it sold in the U.S. market.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 08:12:31|Editor: Xiang Bo

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BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- A distinguished delegation of Chinese writers traveled Wednesday to Buenos Aires for a joint discussion with their Argentine counterparts on the importance of conserving cultural identity, and promoting mutual learning, in an era of globalization.

The delegates, who gathered at the National Library -- home to the Jorge Luis Borges Study and Documentation Center -- found many points of agreement, particularly on the need for greater cultural exchange.

Gabriel Rojze, a writer, teacher and adviser to the Federal System of Public Media, said "these types of encounters are very important, because they bring different personalities from the cultural sector together and open the doors to exchange."

That exchange can clear away certain doubts and misconceptions, and lead to greater common ground, he noted.

"We don't really have an idea of what China is, just as I think the Chinese have only a borderline idea of what Argentina is," said Rojze.

"There will always be experts who delve deeper, but at the level of popular knowledge, of the people, the things ... we imagine the other culture to be, are probably not right," added Rojze.

"There is a world to discover, even more so in a culture as millenary and extensive as China's," he said.

The Chinese delegation toured the library and saw the desk Borges, Argentina's most famed author, used to write at.

Among the Chinese writers was Chen Yan, who has written plays and soap operas, and won the Cao Yu Theater Literature Prize on three occasions. He currently serves as vice president of the Federation of Artistic and Literary Circles of Shaanxi province.

Also participating was Wang Qiang -- a member of China's Association of Writers since 2002, and a member of China's Association of Television Artists -- whose book on how technology is revolutionizing the arts was nominated for a National Book Prize.

Participating as well were Yao An, deputy general director of the National Center for Traditional Cultures and author of a book on protecting Beijing's intangible cultural heritage; and actress Zhang Kaili, who starred in this year's popular TV series "In the name of the people," which highlights the war on corruption.

In recent years, a number of Chinese writers have traveled to Argentina to bolster bilateral cultural ties, as have artists in other fields, musicians and performers, such as celebrated pianist Lang Lang.

In addition, the South American country annually celebrates China Week, and holds Chinese Bridge contests to recognize accomplishments in Chinese language learning.

Among the Argentine writers who took part in the encounter were poet Alejandro Vaccaro, president of the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) for 2015-2019; and writers Vicente Battista and Juan Villafane.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 08:17:33|Editor: Jiaxin

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MEXICO CITY, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's Foreign Affairs Ministry on Wednesday said it will not be moving its embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel to Jerusalem, despite a U.S. decision to do so.

"Given the decision by the United States government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Mexico's government... announces that it will maintain its embassy in Tel Aviv, as is the case so far with all countries with diplomatic ties to Israel," the ministry said.

Mexico's decision is "in keeping with" United Nations resolutions on the status of Jerusalem, the ministry added.

Earlier in the day, U.S. President Donald Trump reversed decades of diplomatic policy by announcing the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and instructs the State Department to move its embassy there.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries base their embassies in the city.

"Mexico reiterates its firm belief that a political and peaceful solution to the conflict must derive from direct negotiations ... between the parties to resolve substantive problems, including the definitive status of Jerusalem," the ministry said.

Countries on the UN Security Council have called for an emergency meeting on the U.S. announcement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 09:54:24|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Students from Hebei University of Engineering look at the "a corner of the park" made of waste paper in Handan, north China's Hebei Province, Dec. 5, 2017. The university held a waste innovative designing competition to advocate eco-friendly life concept. (Xinhua/Hao Qunying)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 09:42:48|Editor: Jiaxin

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KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Malaysian government on Thursday expressed "extreme concern" and urged the United States to reconsider its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Malaysia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country is "extremely concerned" over the U.S. announcement, saying that the decision would "put to an end all efforts made towards a resolution of Palestinian question."

"It would have grave repercussions not only towards the security and stability of the region, but would inflame sentiments, making efforts to combat terrorism all the more difficult," said the statement.

Any attempts to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, establishing or transferring any diplomatic mission to the city are considered aggression against the Arab and Islamic Ummah (Islamic community), infringements on the rights of Muslims and Christians alike and on the Palestinian people's national rights, as well as a grave breach of the international law along with the UN Security Council's relevant resolutions, said the Malaysia Foreign Ministry.

Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is not a recognition of the reality on the ground but an expression of support for Israeli policies, the statement added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 10:12:59|Editor: Jiaxin

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TUNIS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday denounced an earlier decision by the European Union (EU) to add the North African country to a "blacklist" of tax havens.

The ministry said the newly revised list, which included 17 non-European economies, "does not reflect the efforts of Tunisia in terms of global tax transparency."

European finance ministers released the blacklist on Tuesday amid its crackdown on aggressive tax avoidance. The entities on the list, labeled "non-compliant jurisdictions" by the EU, are regarded by the bloc as not doing enough to tackle offshore tax evasion schemes.

According to a report by the Financial Times on Tuesday, Tunisia could have been removed from the list but "its reform proposal came too late."

Members of the Assembly of People's Representatives, Tunisia's parliament, expressed fears about the harmful effects the blacklist will bring to their country.

Believing that Tunisia's business and investment environment will be harmed by the latest move, the deputies urged a rapid diplomatic reaction to "save what remains to be saved." They were gathered to review the country's 2018 Financial Act.

Zied Laadhari, Tunisian minister of investment and international cooperation, told the press that the inclusion of Tunisia in the blacklist could damage "the credibility and transparency" of the Tunisian economy, vowing that his country will be wiped out from the list as soon as possible.

The EU remains the largest trade partner of Tunisia as trade between the pair amount to over 70 percent of the North African country's total external trade.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 10:53:11|Editor: Jiaxin

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations (UN) Security Council will convene an emergency session Friday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, according to the French mission to the UN.

"France, together with Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, UK & Uruguay, has requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council on #Jerusalem," the French mission to the UN tweeted on Wednesday.

Aymeric Chuzeville, spokesman for the French delegation, confirmed in a separate tweet that the meeting was scheduled for Friday morning.

The Bolivian mission to the UN also confirmed the request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

France is a staunch opponent of U.S. decision on Jerusalem, which was announced by Trump earlier Wednesday. The French Foreign Ministry quoted President Emmanuel Macron as saying that Paris supports the two-state solution that calls on Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security, with Jerusalem being the capital of both states.

"We must prefer appeasement and dialogue," the president was quoted as saying.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. permanent representative to the UN, hailed Trump's decision as "courageous and historic."

"For 22 years, there has been an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to its rightful place in the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem. Today, the president took a courageous and historic step that was long overdue," the envoy said in a statement.

"Across the globe, America has its embassy in the capital city of the host country. Israel will now be no different. It is the just and right thing to do," she added.

The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Palestinians regard East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, as the capital of their future state.

The status of Jerusalem as a whole has long remained an unresolved issue. It is feared that Trump's decision may trigger violence in the Middle East.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 11:03:15|Editor: Lu Hui

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and instructed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move triggered wide criticism and concerns around the world.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions," the UN chief told reporters immediately after Trump announced the decision.

Shortly after Trump's announcement, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned and rejected the U.S. decision in a speech aired live on the official Palestinian television, saying the declaration will not give any legitimacy to Israel in this matter.

He said the United States is ignoring and contradicting "the international consensus expressed by the positions of various countries of the world."

Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat also slammed the move, saying "the destiny of Jerusalem is not determined by the U.S. president."

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang on Wednesday said that the status of Jerusalem is sensitive and complicated, urging all parties concerned to exercise caution for peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

He said all parties concerned should exercise caution and avoid rocking the basis for the settlement of the Palestinian issue, which may trigger new regional confrontation.

China firmly supports the Middle East peace process and the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate rights and interests, said Geng.

The European Union on Wednesday expressed "serious concern" over Trump's announcement.

Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief, reiterated in a statement that the EU backs a two-state solution and this stance remains unchanged.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday in a statement that Britain disagreed to the U.S. decision and "it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states ...," she said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that France does not support Trump's "unilateral" decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"The decision is unilateral and regrettable, and France does not support it," Macron told a news conference in Algiers after his one-day visit to the North African nation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that Germany does not support Trump's decision.

"The Federal Government does not support this attitude because the status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesperson Steffen Seibert said on Twitter on behalf of Merkel.

Turkey condemned the U.S. decision as "irresponsible," saying it bears the risk of completely destroying the ground for peace.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also called on the U.S. administration to reconsider this faulty decision and avoid harming the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani slammed the move as "illegal" and would further destabilize the Middle East, holding Israel "responsible for all the insecurity and instability" in the region.

During a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Rouhani called on Islamic states to join hands in opposing the "dangerous" move.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry said that such a unilateral decision violates the international legitimacy, adding the decision will not change the legal status of Jerusalem as an occupied city.

Cuba's Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Wednesday that the U.S.unilateral move was "a serious and flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, of International Law and pertinent resolutions by the United Nations."

The Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministry on Wednesday expressed the government's "strongest rejection and condemnation of the arbitrary decision by the United States government to recognize the city of Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel, as the capital of the state of Israel."

Algeria on Wednesday condemned the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it was "a flagrant violation of the relevant Security Council regulations and international legitimacy that would undermine the possibility of resuming the long-stalled peace process."

The Tunisian Foreign Ministry said in an official statement on Wednesday that Tunisia was deeply concerned about the decision of the Trump administration, noting "the historical and regulatory status" of Jerusalem "is threatened especially as it contradicts the United Nations resolutions and agreements between Palestinians and Israelis."

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump's decision as "historic", saying that it showed U.S. commitment to "an ancient but enduring truth."

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries base their embassies in the city.

Related:

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Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israeli capital, instructs embassy relocation process

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Full story

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Commentary: Trump's controversial move on Jerusalem risks inflaming tensions in Mideast, could backfire
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 11:13:18|Editor: Jiaxin

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YANGON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar has expressed its opposition against a resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with regard to the Rakhine issue, but pledged efforts to address the challenges of Rakhine state.

Official media on Thursday published a statement of Myanmar Permanent Representative to UN U Htin Lynn in response to a draft resolution submitted to a special session of the UNHRC on Myanmar.

The resolution tabled on Tuesday was entitled "Situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar."

The special session of the UNHRC was held in Geneva at the request of the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The statement said Myanmar opposes any country's specific resolution which gives rise to polarization, division and confrontation, and it does not reflect the principles of the UNHRC such as impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity.

The draft resolution was focusing on a particular group of people belonging to a particular faith. The promotion and protection of human rights should be for all people of the globe irrespective of race, religion and gender, he said in the statement.

He pointed out that "some elements in the draft resolution are infringing on the state sovereignty of Myanmar. Allegation without sufficient and concrete evidence are also incorporated in the text."

"International assistance should be part of the solution, not part of the problem," he said, complaining that it fails to condemn the attacks of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army extremist terrorists launched fresh attacks on police outposts in Rakhine on Aug. 25, displacing residents from a number of areas in Rakhine state.

The statement said the Myanmar government has been exerting efforts to resolve the issue of Rakhine internally as well as through cooperation with Bangladesh.

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement on Nov. 23 on the return of displaced Rohingya people who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 11:13:19|Editor: Xiang Bo

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CHENGDU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's military Thursday voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the intrusion of an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) into China's airspace.

The Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang said.

"We will fulfill our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he noted.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 11:38:25|Editor: Xiang Bo

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SYDNEY, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The partnership between the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) and China's Guangdong province was further strengthened on Thursday, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NSW Health and the Guangdong Health and Family Planning Commission.

On the final day of their three-day trade mission to China, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Minister for Health Brad Hazzard inked the agreement with Guangdong to bolster innovation and cultural ties in the healthcare sector.

"This year marks the 38th year of the NSW Sister-State relationship with Guangdong province and this agreement once again shows just how important Guangdong is to our State," Berejiklian said in a statement.

The MoU will provide greater opportunity for two-way trade and professional healthcare development for many NSW organizations and businesses in the future, the statement said.

Among those organizations attempting to establish a presence in China on the back of the agreement is non-profit early parenting service Tresillian, who travelled with the delegation during the visit.

"Our universal goal is helping children and families, which we will look to also now do in China," Tresillian CEO Robert Mills said.

"Our second goal will be to generate additional revenue so we can help more families back in NSW."

In the financial year to 2017, NSW goods and services exports to China totalled more than 5.4 billion U.S. dollars.

Berejiklian believes the new agreement in healthcare will enhance that figure even further.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 12:38:39|Editor: Xiang Bo

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NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Confucius Institute for Global Finance, the first of its kind in the United States, was launched on Wednesday in New York City.

The institute is an extra-curricular, non-degree educational collaboration between Baruch College, Shanghai International Studies University and China's Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban).

It aims to further U.S. students' and business executives' understanding of China and the integral role it plays in the worldwide financial system. It will also provide Chinese students and business people with a better understanding of the United States and global financial markets.

Mitchel B. Wallerstein, president of Baruch College, said there is a growing need among U.S. students and businessmen for Chinese language and culture learning as China rises.

"China is an important political and economic power - not just in Asia but throughout the world," said Wallerstein.

He added that with the establishment of the Confucius Institute, the college wishes to provide all its students with a global perspective on world affairs and a critical awareness of the political and ethical issues the world faces today.

Beginning in the spring of 2018, the institute will offer Chinese language classes, cultural workshops, and global finance seminars. Plans are underway to expand the programs to alumni and New York city residents in the near future.

Jiang Feng, chairman of Shanghai International Studies University Council, said the newly-launched institute will be a great platform for both colleges to deepen cooperation and further academic exchanges.

The Confucius Institute program began in 2004. There are currently 110 Confucius Institutes in the United States. The first one was established at the University of Maryland. By the end of 2016, China has set up more than 500 Confucius Institutes in about 130 countries and regions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:03:44|Editor: Jiaxin

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HAVANA, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- One year after his election victory, U.S. President Donald Trump gained "antipathy and rejection" in Latin America due to his military threats as well as anti-immigrant and segregation policies, said a renowned Cuban analyst.

Iroel Sanchez, an academic and former president of the Cuban Book Institute, said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the American head of state has reversed his predecessor's policies with several Latin American nations and even confronted Washington's allies in the region.

"Trump is a perfect creator of enemies in Latin America," said the expert.

Sanchez said that even governments that feel a close ideological affinity with the United States, such as Mexico, have had to face Trump's tough immigration enforcement.

In August, Trump said he was mulling a range of scenarios for Venezuela, "including a possible military option if necessary." In response, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered his armed forces to carry out a national exercise.

"The military threat to Venezuela created great tension," said Sanchez, who is also professor at the University of Havana, adding that "even one of their strongest allies, President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos distanced himself from that statement and rejected it."

In the case of Cuba, he said, Trump rolled back the historic opening with the island that put an end to political confrontation which lasted over half a century.

"Washington reversed its Cuba policy only to please the most extremist and minority sectors of the Cuban exile community, controlled by politicians who have benefited from the hostility of the White House towards Havana," he added.

Cuban President Raul Castro and U.S. former President Barack Obama shook hands at the Summit of the Americas in 2015, the first substantive meeting between a Cuban leader and an American leader since the 1950s, which was interpreted as a signal of hope and anticipation about the thawing of bilateral relations. Next year, Peru will host the eighth Summit.

"It was a hemispheric claim that Cuba should participate in the summit," said the expert, "It remains to be seen if Trump will attend or not, and what the presidents or heads of state will tell him."

"I believe left-wing governments can have a great future in Latin America because it is still the region of the world with the greatest inequality and there are just causes to fight for," Sanchez said.

Regarding Cuba, the academic said the island is currently in a process of general elections that will lead to a generational change of leadership in the country.

"It has been said transparently by President Raul Castro himself that he will not continue to be the country's president. There are representatives of other generations in the National Assembly and the government that will continue and assume leadership in the country," he said.

"Cuba will continue to be a socialist and independent nation. It will continue to do what its people want, not what the United States wishes," said Sanchez. "That is going to be a bit difficult for them to understand."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:13:46|Editor: Jiaxin

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CHANGCHUN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The civil air defense authority in northeast China's Jilin Province suggest that a newspaper advisory on nuclear awareness is an ordinary educational article which should not be over-interpreted.

On Dec. 6, state-run newspaper Jilin Daily, published a full-page article titled "Knowledge about and protection from nuclear weapons," drawing widespread concern.

The provincial civil air defense office said it is its duty to spread disaster prevention and reduction knowledge, including that of protection from nuclear and chemical attacks, to the public.

The article on Jilin Daily is part of the office's routine work of popularizing national defense knowldege, and there is no need to read too much into it, the office said.

Officials with the newspaper told Xinhua it was an "ordinary" and "routine" article published by Jilin civil air defense office to increase knowledge about national defense.

The advisory is one of a series of articles on national defense the office has published in the newspaper since the beginning of this year, the newspaper said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:18:48|Editor: Jiaxin

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YANGON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's Universities of Foreign Languages (UFL) in Yangon and Mandalay regions host 243 foreign students learning Myanmar language as of Nov. 30 this year.

From 1974 to 2016-2017 academic year, a total of 1,727 foreign students attended the Myanmar language proficiency courses in UFL Yangon so far.

They are scholarship holders, army officers, diplomats, businessmen and those trying to learn about Theravada Buddhism.

Most students are from China, Japan and Thailand, according to the official from the UFL Yangon.

Meanwhile, Myanmar's Education Ministry has signed agreements with 147 universities and international organizations for educational cooperation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:33:53|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Danzeng Langjie (R), vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, meets with U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen in Washington Dec. 5, 2017. A National People's Congress (NPC) delegation of legislators from Tibet Autonomous Region on Wednesday wrapped up its five-day visit to the United States. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- A National People's Congress (NPC) delegation of legislators from China's Tibet Autonomous Region on Wednesday wrapped up its five-day visit to the United States.

The delegation, led by Danzeng Langjie, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region, visited Boston and Washington, where they met U.S. Congress members, Chinese students studying overseas and U.S. scholars.

During the visit, the delegation had talks with the U.S side on topics covering Tibet's social and economic progress achieved after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and its prospect after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China which was held in October.

The Belt and Road Initiative, Tibet's economic development, religious and cultural protection, local people's life and China's preferential policies for Tibet's development were also among issues mentioned during the visit.

At a press conference held in Washington Tuesday afternoon, the delegation answered media questions about Tibet's poverty alleviation efforts and the protection and development of its traditional culture.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:43:57|Editor: Lifang

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HANGZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Downloading a 6-gigabyte file in less than two seconds using 5G technology is not a far stretch, as China is preparing for the commercialization of the next generation of mobile communication technology.

During the Fourth World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, this week, Huawei shared the honors with other tech giants such as Apple, Alibaba, Baidu and Microsoft at the World Leading Internet Scientific and Technological Achievement awards.

Huawei will launch a smartphone which supports 5G communication in 2019 with a self-developed chip, according to Xu Zhijun, rotating CEO of the company.

Currently, 5G standards are still under development by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Last October, Huawei achieved a speed of 27Gbps in 5G field tests using polar codes for channel coding. Huawei's polar coding was approved as part of the global standards for 5G.

As well as Chinese high-tech companies, its telecom operators are also eager to participate in formulating 5G global standards and promote commercialization.

Bi Qi, chief technical officer at the China Telecom Research Institute, said Chinese telecom carriers have invested heavily in 5G, carrying out tests in several major cities.

China Mobile, the world's largest telecom carrier by subscribers, has been devoted to developing 5G technology, and plans to launch a fully commercialized 5G network in 2020. ( The company will also begin a pre-commercial 5G service next year and deploy more than 10,000 5G base stations by 2020, according to Sha Yuejia, vice president of China Mobile.

The world's largest 5G test field with about 30 telecom base stations has already been established in Beijing's Huairou District. China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE as well as a number of foreign companies have completed China's second phase of 5G testing.

China is expected to be the world's largest 5G market by 2025, according to a report by GSMA Intelligence, a global mobile think tank, and China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

The CAICT predicted that 5G will drive 6.3 trillion yuan (946.8 billion U.S. dollars) of economic output in China by 2030.

Wen Ku, director of the telecom development department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said China has started its third phase of 5G technical tests, and will increase efforts on network planning, systems, chips and other products to get pre-commercial 5G service ready as soon as possible.

Global telecom carriers will invest 3.3 trillion yuan in mobile infrastructure by 2020, said John Hoffman, CEO and director of GSMA, adding that up to 500 billion yuan will come from China.

According to a Qualcomm report, the emerging 5G mobile communications technology is expected to generate 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars of output and 22 million jobs in the global telecom industry by 2035.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 13:54:00|Editor: Lifang

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JINAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Police in east China's Shandong Province on Thursday confirmed that Kim Jae Won, a Korean museum curator, died of accidental suffocation while on business trip in Jinan, provincial capital of Shandong.

Kim, curator of the National Hangeul Museum in Seoul, was found dead in his hotel room in Jinan at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Police investigation verified that he died of asphyxiation after his airway was blocked internally.

Police have contacted the Korean consulate in Qingdao. Kim's relatives are expected to arrive in Jinan on Thursday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 14:44:09|Editor: Jiaxin

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BOGOR, Indonesia, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Thursday strongly condemned the decision of the U.S. government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel which may disturb the world's stability.

"Indonesia strongly condemns the United States' unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel," President Widodo said at the presidential palace.

Indonesia asked the United States to reconsider the decision as it is against the United Nations' resolution and could disturb the world's security stability said Widodo.

President Widodo stressed that he and the Indonesian people have been consistent to continuously supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 15:14:14|Editor: liuxin

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KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia on Thursday voiced opposition and urged the United States to reconsider its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In a speech delivered at the annual gathering of the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO), Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said:"We strongly reject the suggestion forever to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel."

Malaysia's Foreign Ministry said in the latest statement that the country is "extremely concerned" over the U.S. announcement, saying that the decision would "jeopardize all efforts made towards finding a comprehensive and lasting resolution of Palestinian question."

"It has grave repercussions not only towards the security and stability of the region, but also inflame Muslim sentiments worldwide, hence making efforts to address violent extremism and radicalization narrative all the more difficult," said the statement.

Any attempts to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, establishing or transferring any diplomatic mission to the city are considered aggression against the Arab and Islamic Ummah (Islamic community), infringements on the rights of Muslims and Christians alike and on the Palestinian people's national rights, as well as a grave breach of the international law along with the UN Security Council's relevant resolutions, said the Malaysian Foreign Ministry.

"Malaysia urges the United States to reconsider its decision," it said.

Shahriman Lockman, Senior Analyst at Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said Donald Trump's decision would have repercussions beyond the Middle East.

In Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Indonesia, which are two Muslim-majority countries, there will be considerable public pressure to keep a distance from the United States.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 15:14:15|Editor: liuxin

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TEHRAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to move his country's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, state TV reported on Thursday.

Washington's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a "blatant violation of international resolutions," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has always stressed that the most important reason behind instability and insecurity in the Middle East is (Israel's) continued occupation," the statement said.

"The U.S.'s relentless support for the Zionist regime (of Israel) and denying the oppressed Palestinian nation the right to establish an independent state with al-Quds (Jerusalem) as it capital" would also destabilize the region," the statement said.

Describing the U.S. move as "provocative and unwise," the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned that "recognizing al-Quds as the Israeli regime's capital" will "provoke Muslims and inflame a new Intifada and intensify extremism and violent behavior for which the United States and the Israeli regime will be responsible."

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"I am determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said Trump, adding he has judged that "this cause of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

"This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement," Trump argued, saying his announcement is just a "recognition of reality."
Emmerson Mnangagwa (L front) attends his inauguration ceremony in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Chen Yaqin)

HARARE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday agreed to provide Zimbabwe with a funding of about 213 million U.S. dollars for infrastructure development projects.

The funding includes those for the expansion and upgrading of the country's flagship airport, the Harare Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, construction of a new Zimbabwe parliament building and the second phase of the high-performance com putin g center, the third fastest computing center in Africa.

The financing agreements are the first to be signed by Zimbabwean President Emmersen Mnangagwa's new administration and are a fulfillment of some of the projects agreed between Zimbabwe and China during Chinese President Xi Jinping 's visit in 2015.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Huang Ping said China will continue to support the Zimbabwean government in its economic revival and social development efforts.

"The agreements we have signed today are just a testimony of our efforts and our friendship that withstands the test of time.

"As Zimbabwe's all-weather friend, the Chinese government has been committed to assisting our good friend and brother in its development path through thick and thin ever since Zimbabwe's liberation struggle," Huang said.

He said China was pleased to be lending financial support to Zimbabwe at "this new juncture of Zimbabwe's social and economic development."

Zimbabwean finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said China's financial support was testimony to the lasting friendship that exists between Zimbabwe and China.

"I want to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude and appreciation to China for the support that they have availed," Chinamasa said.

He said the infrastructure development projects were significant in that they will help create jobs for local people and boost business for local suppliers of construction materials.

He said upgrading of the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport will entail expansion of the terminal building, rehabilitation of the runway, installation of the communication system, refurbishment of the fire station and new satellite station, among other works.

Financing of the project will be administered by China Export-Import Bank.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 15:39:23|Editor: liuxin

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RIYADH, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia denounced on Thursday a decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The Royal Court, in a statement, warned of serious consequences of such an irresponsible and unwarranted step, including further complicating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and instructed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The decision represents a great bias against the historic and permanent rights of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, which have been affirmed by international resolutions and recognized and supported by the international community, the Saudi statement said.

Calling the decision a pivot from the "historically impartial position" of Washington in regard to the issue of Jerusalem, the statement said the decision exemplifies a drastic regress in efforts to move the peace process forward.

Saudi Arabia calls on the U.S. administration to reverse this action, and support the international will to enable the Palestinian people to regain their legitimate rights.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries base their embassies in the city.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 15:44:25|Editor: liuxin

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A year after the Islamic State (IS) lost the city of Sirte, its former stronghold in Libya, remaining terrorists are moving in desert areas near the city in an attempt to regroup.

Forces of the Libyan UN-backed government announced last year taking control of the entire city of Sirte, some 450 km east the capital Tripoli, following an eight-month war against IS affiliates that killed more than 700 army soldiers and injured 3,000 others.

Taha Hadid, a spokesman for Sirte's Security Force, said the city is recovering greatly, but there is fear that IS is regrouping while continuing to recruit new members.

"We know very well that head of the IS immigration bureau, Khabib Al-Darnawi, is still recruiting new members. He is a wanted man who is still moving with the remaining fighters in Sirte and Jufra desert," Hadid told Xinhua.

"We found IS belongings and clothes of African migrants in the valley and desert areas of Sirte. This is evidence that IS is exploiting these simple people and persuading them to join," Hadid added.

Hadid pointed that the remaining IS fighters moving in desert areas near Sirte are no more than 100 members. "They are constantly moving over fear of being targeted by U.S. air forces or confrontation with our forces. They are weak and lack equipment. Confrontation with us can lead to eliminating them completely."

Hadid also warned of the risk of underestimating the terrorists' ability to launch sudden attacks on any military forces present in Sirte, in an attempt to cause more losses and give themselves a moral victory after their defeat last year.

He also demanded continued financial and logistical support from the government to eliminate any future IS threats in Sirte or other Libyan cities.

Sirte's Security Force was formed by the Government of National Accord in March, following declaration of liberation of Sirte from IS. Consisting of 3,000 members, its task is to protect and secure Sirte and its suburbs by ongoing patrols.

The desert of the city of Sirte is one of the IS most active areas, given its rugged valley terrain. The remaining terrorists are also moving in southern Libya, given the vast area, which makes it difficult to monitor their movement.

Military sources this week revealed that IS is preparing to regroup in southern Sirte, in an attempt to launch new attacks on its former stronghold.

The Libyan eastern-based army, led by General Khalifa Haftar, in November launched air strikes on IS sites and ammunition depots in the Crescent oil region, specifically the desert road leading to the town Harawah, 70 km east of Sirte.

The army's raids destroyed IS positions and killed dozens of them.

Mohamed Al-Khoja, a Libyan researcher on Islamic groups, said that "fears of IS regrouping are real and they must be dealt with even if the threat is limited."

"Everyone knows that IS does not have great popular sympathy in Libya, however, the group continues to recruit foreign members. Thus, it tries to strengthen its human front to increase the number of its members they describe as immigrants. They often have a more bloody and hateful ideology. It is easy for them to blow up themselves, in order to make a psychological impact in the areas where they move," Al-Khoja explained.

Khoja stressed the seriousness of IS movements and exploitation of the desert "as a safe passage to finance its operations and attract new members from the southern border of Libya, where it is difficult to monitor due to the vast geographical nature and rugged desert."

Khalid Farjani, a primary school teacher, believes that the biggest challenge, along with the risk of IS return, is rebuilding government institutions, especially destroyed schools, health centers and homes.

"The school semester began more than a month ago, and more than half of the city's schools are destroyed or not equipped for students, in addition to the destruction of almost every neighborhood or street in Sirte," Farjani told Xinhua.

"We have been promised reconstruction and provision of basic services in the city, such as drinking water, electricity and sanitation. Today, more than half of the city's residents are displaced because their houses are destroyed, especially in the Giza neighborhood, which is almost completely destroyed," Farjani said.

"Sirte suffers from an environmental disaster, where hundreds of IS bodies are under the rubble. They were not recovered despite ongoing appeals," Farjani added.

Spokesman for the Municipal Council of Sirte, Mohamed El-Eimel, confirmed that the services and homes in Sirte are almost completely destroyed because of the fighting that took place in the city.

"Unfortunately, more than 2,000 homes have been completely destroyed. Thousands of other houses have been damaged by the war. Also, educational and health facilities have been destroyed," Eimel said.

Eimel pointed that the support from the government is "very slow, which prevented more than 3,000 families from returning to Sirte because of the lack of maintenance of their homes and the poor government services."

He said that the Municipal Council depended on international aids provided by the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross, which continuously delivers food and medical supplies.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), under cooperation agreement with Sirte's Municipal Council, carried maintenance for 12 schools with a total cost of over 2 million U.S. dollars.
Emmerson Mnangagwa (L front) attends his inauguration ceremony in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, Nov. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Chen Yaqin)

HARARE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday agreed to provide Zimbabwe with a funding of about 213 million U.S. dollars for infrastructure development projects.

The funding includes those for the expansion and upgrading of the country's flagship airport, the Harare Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, construction of a new Zimbabwe parliament building and the second phase of the high-performance computing center, the third fastest computing center in Africa.

The financing agreements are the first to be signed by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa's new administration and are a fulfillment of some of the projects agreed between Zimbabwe and China during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit in 2015.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Huang Ping said China will continue to support the Zimbabwean government in its economic revival and social development efforts.

"The agreements we have signed today are just a testimony of our efforts and our friendship that withstands the test of time.

"As Zimbabwe's all-weather friend, the Chinese government has been committed to assisting our good friend and brother in its development path through thick and thin ever since Zimbabwe's liberation struggle," Huang said.

He said China was pleased to be lending financial support to Zimbabwe at "this new juncture of Zimbabwe's social and economic development."

Zimbabwean finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said China's financial support was testimony to the lasting friendship that exists between Zimbabwe and China.

"I want to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude and appreciation to China for the support that they have availed," Chinamasa said.

He said the infrastructure development projects were significant in that they will help create jobs for local people and boost business for local suppliers of construction materials.

He said upgrading of the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport will entail expansion of the terminal building, rehabilitation of the runway, installation of the communication system, refurbishment of the fire station and new satellite station, among other works.

Financing of the project will be administered by China Export-Import Bank.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 15:54:28|Editor: pengying

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KUNMING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Although there are currently no tourists in Liyuan Village in southwest China's Yunnan Province, guesthouses and restaurants along the paths stand ready to welcome guests.

The village, on the shore of Cibi Lake, the origin of the well-known Erhai Lake in the city of Dali, has been blamed for discharging waste water into the lake. Since March this year, 18 guesthouses have been closed and will only be allowed to reopen after installing a sewage treatment system.

"I didn't understand the closure at first, as we are still in the middle of our house loan. Government representatives came to talk to us several times," said Yang Xiaoli, a guesthouse owner.

"Now I understand. Although there are no tourists at the moment, in the long term, it will protect the environment which will attract more visitors," said Yang.

According to the report delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October this year, China will adopt a holistic approach to preserving its mountains, rivers, forests, farmland, lakes, and grasslands, implement the strictest possible systems for environmental protection, and develop eco-friendly growth models and ways of life.

China will speed up prevention and control of water pollution, and take comprehensive measures to improve river basins and offshore areas, the report said.

Local government figures showed that the total discharge of waste water into Erhai Lake and its tributaries in 2016 increased by more than 50 percent from that of 2004. Among the main pollutants, those caused by restaurants and guesthouses grew at the fastest speed.

In March this year, Dali closed nearly 2,000 guesthouses and restaurants in a core area around Erhai Lake, showing the government's strong will to deal with water pollution.

Li Peijun, deputy head of Eryuan County which oversees Liyuan Village, said that as of April, a total of 589 guesthouses had been closed, and 221 of them in non-core areas had reopened to the public after a water discharge inspection.

Li said that waste water mainly comes from daily and agricultural use. It will be collected and processed by a purification system, then stored in a reservoir to be used for irrigating dry farm land and surrounding mountains.

In Dali's Gusheng Village, all 439 households have installed a sewage treatment system.

In the beginning, villagers disliked the system but later began to understand and support it, said Party chief of the village, He Qiaokun, adding that the technical knowledge was provided by the municipal government and experts from Shanghai's Tongji University.

"Residents of Liyuan Village have increased their environmental protection awareness, stopped barbecues around the lake and littering," said Yang. "I hope I can reopen my guesthouse soon with the new sewage treatment system."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:04:33|Editor: liuxin

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DUBAI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) urged on Thursday the Arab and Islamic countries to unite and demonstrate a "common position" over the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, made the remarks on twitter, warning that the Arab and Islamic world is facing a "serious challenge" as U.S. President Donald Trump announced recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

He noted that a "common position and hard work" are necessary to "achieve results" instead of "deepening the wounds."

The UAE does not recognize the state of Israel. However, Israel has a presence at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, as it is one of the 180 member states of IRENA whose headquarters are based in Abu Dhabi.

Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and instructed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that triggered wide criticism and concerns around the world.

Trump said in a televised speech that his decision is based on The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, a public law of the United States passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:09:36|Editor: liuxin

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KHARTOUM, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Sudan rejected on Wednesday night the U.S. decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses Sudan's complete rejection to the decision by the U.S. President Donald Trump recognizing Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel together with the U.S. plan to move its embassy to Al-Quds," said the Foreign Ministry in a statement.

It described the decision as "a flagrant violation of the decision of international legitimacy and of the rights of the Palestinian people."

"The decision is a threat to international peace and security and will have serious implications on the security and stability of the region," it noted.

The ministry further reiterated Sudan's rejection to violation of the legal and political status of the holy city.

"This announcement is against the international decisions which confirm the right of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state and destroys the peace process in the Middle East," said the ministry.

It renewed Sudan's solidarity with the Palestinian people in their fair cause and legal right to establish their Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and instructed to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:19:42|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Former Nepali Prime Minister K.P Sharma Oli casts his vote at a polling station in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Dec. 7, 2017. The second and final phase of the parliamentary elections is being held in Nepal on Thursday, seen as a crucial step to implement the landmark new constitution promulgated in September 2015. Voters are also voting on the same day to elect 330 candidates to form provincial assemblies in seven provinces, while another 220 provincial lawmakers will be elected later. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)

KATHMANDU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The second and final phase of the parliamentary elections is being held in Nepal on Thursday, seen as a crucial step to implement the landmark new constitution promulgated in September 2015.

The one-day polling began at 7 a.m. (0115 GMT) and concludes at 5 p.m. (1115 GMT) on Thursday.

Over 12 million people are eligible to vote in the historic elections in 45 districts of the southern plains and low hill areas including Kathmandu, to elect 128 lawmakers.

In the first phase of elections on Nov. 26, 65 percent of over 3 million eligible voters cast votes to elect 37 lawmakers in 32 mountainous districts.

The 165 directly-elected lawmakers will enter Nepal's 275-member parliament, with the remaining 110 lawmakers to be selected later with proportion depending on the percentage of votes each political party wins.

Voters are also voting on the same day to elect 330 candidates to form provincial assemblies in seven provinces, while another 220 provincial lawmakers will be elected later.

The Nepalese army and police are guarding the polling centers while public and private vehicles were banned from the streets. Voters are seen walking to the polling centers in their respective localities on Thursday.

As many as 702 candidates are contesting in the two phased general elections. Vote counting is expected to begin from Thursday evening.

Many in Nepal have high hopes that their country would usher in political stability after holding these crucial elections as they are believed as important steps towards implementing the new constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly for the first time in Nepal's history.

This is the first time Nepal is holding a parliamentary and provincial assembly elections after the South Asian Himalayan nation became a federal democratic republic in 2008 after overthrowing the 240-year Monarchy.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:19:44|Editor: pengying

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JINAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese internet giant Alibaba said Thursday that it has nominated 2,100 new "Taobao Villages" with e-commerce centers appearing in many of China's rural areas for the first time this year.

These Taobao Villages are rural e-commerce centers that feature Alibaba's logistics, service and training to encourage farmers to become involved in online retailing.

To be nominated as a Taobao Village, Alibaba requires total annual e-commerce transactions of over 10 million yuan (1.5 million U.S. dollars) and more than 100 online stores located in the village.

Alibaba said Thursday at the National Forum on Taobao Villages held in Heze, east China's Shandong Province, that Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces boast the highest numbers of Taobao Villages, jointly amounting to 68 percent of the total.

In 2017, Taobao Villages appeared for the first time in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Chongqing Municipality, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as well as Guizhou, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces.

Gao Hongbing, vice president of Alibaba, said there are 100 Taobao Villages in the rural area administered by the city of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, the largest cluster of Taobao Villages in the country.

The development of Taobao Villages has helped lift many rural areas out of poverty through encouraging online sales of farm produce and local specialties. Along with the development, Alibaba and local authorities have improved roads, broadband internet services, power supply and logistics to support farmers in setting up their online stores.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:29:52|Editor: pengying

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HANGZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Wenzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province has stepped up its fight against telecom and internet fraud this year and frozen over 100 million yuan (15 million U.S. dollars) involved in these crimes, data from a local anti-fraud center showed Thursday.

The biggest amount of money frozen in a single case was 5.8 million euros. More than 37 million yuan has been returned to victims, the center added.

More than 10,600 telecom and internet fraud cases have been reported in Wenzhou this year, down 25.2 percent from a year ago. The amount of money involved also fell 25.5 percent to 168 million yuan.

Telecom fraud is a growing crime in China. Swindlers often trick victims into transferring money to their accounts via ATM, or cheat them out of money by posing as police officers or officials. In some cases, money that has been transferred can be frozen if victims call the police in time.

China has been strengthening its forces for combating telecom and internet fraud in recent years. A total of 32 provincial anti-fraud centers and 206 city-level anti-fraud centers had been established as of May this year, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

Last year, Chinese police solved 83,000 cases of telecom and Internet fraud, up 49.6 percent year on year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:34:57|Editor: liuxin

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MANILA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government's spending on infrastructure and other outlays for October amounts to 51.5 billion pesos (1.02 billion U.S. dollars), increasing 17.8 percent year-on-year, a government statement said.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said on Wednesday the October figure is 17.8 percent higher than the 43.7 billion pesos (861.6 million U.S. dollars) recorded in October 2016.

"The boost in infrastructure spending was primarily due to the public work projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) such as road construction and flood control rehabilitation or improvements," the DBM said in a report.

It said the acquisition of transport and other equipment of the Department of Interior and Local Government -- Philippine National Police (DILG-PNP) under its capability enhancement program, as well as the payment for various communication, navigational and air traffic management system projects also contributed to the higher infrastructure and other capital spending.

Altogether, the DBM said national government disbursements posted a 28.2 percent increase in October, the highest growth recorded so far in the year, as spending reached 226.9 billion pesos (4.5 billion U.S. dollars).

From January to October this year, the government spent 442.7 billion pesos (8.7 billion U.S. dollars) on infrastructure and capital outlays, which expanded by 11.8 percent compared to the 395.8 billion pesos (7.8 billion U.S. dollars) recorded in the same period for 2016.

"The significant growth in government disbursements for the month of October is encouraging news in view of our expansionary fiscal policy," said Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno.

He said the DBM, in coordination with the implementing agencies, will continue to monitor and improve spending performance.

"We expect government disbursements to ramp up further in the last two months of the year, especially with the one-year validity of the 2017 appropriations," he said. The government is committed to its full-year disbursement target of 2.909 trillion pesos (57.35 billion U.S. dollars), he added.
People pose with panda mascots outside the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 5, 2017. The 2017 China-Denmark Tourism Year wrapped up with a gala closing ceremony in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Shi Shouhe)

by Wu Bo

COPENHAGEN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The 2017 China-Denmark Tourism Year wrapped up with a gala closing ceremony in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen on Tuesday.

Some 1,000 people, including Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik, Chairman of China National Tourism Administration Li Jinzao, and Chinese Ambassador to Denmark Deng Ying attended the closing ceremony at the Royal Theater's Old Stage in downtown Copenhagen.

Officially launched in Beijing in February this year, the program aimed to boost travel and tourism between China and Denmark, which is the first country in Europe to celebrate a Tourism Year with China.

During the Tourism Year, a host of tourism exchange and cooperation events were staged, including "Lighten up Copenhagen", the promotion of the Tea Road, "Panda's Tour in Denmark" and China-Denmark Forum on Tourism Cooperation.

Speaking at the closing ceremony, Crown Prince Frederik said the event throughout the Tourism Year stand as a testimony to the strong relations between China and Denmark.

"The China-Denmark Tourism Year has created a great platform for meetings and exchanges at all levels of society," Frederik said, adding that "the new partnership established during the year is a strong indication of the continuous positive development in the relationship between China and Denmark."

In May this year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen in China, where a plan was unveiled to deepen cooperation from 2017 to 2020 and agreed to expand two-way trade and investment.

Both sides identified agriculture, fisheries, food security, health and tourism as major areas for cooperation.

According to Li Jinzao, the Tourism Year has delivered the strong commitment made by the leadership of the two countries and has very pragmatic contents that also facilitate the cooperation of airlines, culture exchanges and financial development.

"Tourism is not only a culture exchange activity, but also an industry that connects people with destination countries and help the development of local economic growth, job creation and the improving of local people's livelihood," Li said.

For her part, Ambassador Deng said tourism is a bridge that links different cultures and enhances understanding between peoples.

She also quoted a Chinese saying that "One who travels knows far more," adding Danish author H.C. Andersen also had much the same feeling that translates into "To travel is to live".

Over the past few years, Denmark has witnessed a growing number of Chinese tourists. Figures show that Chinese tourists to Denmark quadrupled to about 200,000 in 2015 from only 50,000 in 2010.

"China-Denmark relationship is an important part of overall China-EU relationship... The successful conclusion of 'China-Denmark Tourism Year' is a new starting point to boost China-Denmark and China-EU cultural interactions," Deng said.

A Chinese folk concert was also staged after the closing remarks that features solo performances and folk music with various traditional Chinese musical instruments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:40:00|Editor: liuxin

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KABUL, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 17 insurgents including six Islamic States (IS) fighters were killed and three others injured during the airstrikes conducted by Afghan air forces in Nangarhar province, east of Afghanistan on Wednesday, Afghan Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

"Air forces conducted air raids in Achin, Hisarak and Deh Bala districts of Nangarhar province on Wednesday, killing 17 armed militants including six IS fighters and injuring three others," the ministry statement said.

During the strikes, two hideouts of the insurgents were completely destroyed, the statement added.

Neither the Taliban nor IS militants have made comment on the report so far.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:40:01|Editor: pengying

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GUIZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's top alcohol brand Kweichow Moutai announced Wednesday evening that it will embark on a major production expansion in 2018.

The Shanghai-listed distiller said that it will build new production facilities in Maotai Township to add 5,152 tonnes of liquor output annually.

The company said that the construction, with a total investment of 3.56 billion yuan (538 million U.S. dollars), will be completed in May 2020.

It also plans to build warehouses with a capacity of 26,000 tonnes, and add facilities to make 7,168 tonnes of distiller's yeast.

Distilled in the town of Maotai in southwest China's Guizhou Province, Moutai is considered the country's national liquor.

The company said that by 2020, its gross liquor output would reach 120,000 tonnes a year, of which 50,000 tonnes are Moutai brand liquor. By then, its annual revenue would register 100 billion yuan.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:40:02|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to the opening of the first "South-South Human Rights Forum" on Thursday.

The following is a translated version of the full text of his message:

Congratulatory Message from President Xi Jinping to the "South-South Human Rights Forum"

Today, as delegates from different parts of the world gather in Beijing for the first "South-South Human Rights Forum" to discuss the promotion of human rights in developing countries and the world, I wish to extend warm congratulations on the convening of this forum.

It is the lofty ideal of mankind that everyone enjoys human rights to the full. Since modern times, people in the developing world have fought long and hard for national liberation and independence, for freedom and equality, for dignity and happiness, and for peace and development. By doing so, they have also contributed significantly to the progress of human rights in the world.

Following a people-centered development philosophy, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government have all along placed people's interests above all else, and worked hard to meet people's desire for a better life and improve respect for and protection of the fundamental rights of the Chinese people. The 19th CPC National Congress convened not long ago outlined an ambitious blueprint for China's development, which will give a strong boost to human rights development in China and make new and even greater contribution to the progress of mankind.

The development of human rights worldwide cannot be achieved without the joint efforts of developing countries, which account for more than 80% of the world's population. In the meantime, human rights must and can only be promoted in light of specific national conditions and people's needs. Developing countries should uphold both the universality and particularity of human rights and steadily raise the level of human rights protection. It is important for the international community to respect and reflect the will of the people in developing countries in the spirit of justice, fairness, openness and inclusiveness. The Chinese people would like to work in concert with people in other developing countries and beyond to advance development through cooperation, promote human rights through development, and build a community with a shared future for human beings.

The theme of this forum "Building a Community of Shared Future for Human Beings: New Opportunity for South-South Human Rights Development" is highly relevant as it reflects the trend of the world toward greater development. I hope you will engage in in-depth discussions and contribute your insights on how to help people in developing countries enjoy human rights more fully and to achieve common prosperity and development for mankind.

I wish the forum a complete success.

Xi Jinping

President

The People's Republic of China

7 December 2017
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:45:04|Editor: liuxin

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KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak Thursday urged his ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) to be ready for the upcoming general elections which he said would be critical for his country.

Speaking at UMNO's annual general assembly, the last one before the general elections due mid-2018, Najib urged UNMO members to be united to fight in the upcoming poll.

Najib warned against the risk of country falling into the wrong and irresponsible hands.

"In our hand is the choice that would decide the fate of this nation," he said.

Najib, as the president of UMNO and the head of the ruling coalition, listed the government's achievements since he became prime minister in 2009.

UMNO has led a multi-party coalition to govern Malaysia since its independence in 1957. However, the opposition has steadily gained ground in the past two general elections, depriving the ruling coalition of its long-held two-third majority in the parliament.

Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's longest serving prime minister and Najib's former mentor, has quitted UMNO to join the opposition in a bid to unseat the incumbent government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:50:06|Editor: liuxin

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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. law enforcement authorities have brought back a man from Guatemala who was accused of shooting his girlfriend to death in Oakland, west California in 2012, a media report said Wednesday.

The 31-year-old man, identified as Federico Martinez, was charged with killing Greysi Cordon, 18, on Nov. 24, 2012, at her apartment in Oakland, east of San Francisco, a major tourist city on the U.S. west coast.

Court documents showed that Martinez and Cordon, who had a son together, had maintained a violent relationship. Cordon was threatened by Martinez on numerous occasions including the night before she was killed.

After the couple separated, Martinez was served a restraining order banning him from getting close to Cordon, the court records said.

On the night when Cordon was killed, eyewitnesses heard gun shots being fired and saw Martinez fleeing the scene, which the police said had helped them quickly determine Martinez was a suspect.

A formal warrant for his arrest was issued in November 2016, the report said.

The United States and Guatemala signed an extradition treaty in 1903 to assist each other in extraditing fugitives from justice.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 16:50:09|Editor: liuxin

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DUBAI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. defense and technology firm Raytheon Company said on Thursday that it has formed Raytheon Emirates, a new and wholly-owned subsidiary headquartered in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

New York-stock listed Raytheon said Raytheon Emirates will employ local workforce and contribute to the Gulf state's economic diversification.

"The establishment of Raytheon Emirates is a strong step forward in our long standing alliance with UAE," said Thomas Kennedy, Raytheon Company Chairman and CEO.

He added that "through partnerships with government, industry and academia, Raytheon is committed to helping the UAE achieve its economic goals while providing trusted, innovative solutions that support the nation's defense and security requirements."

Kennedy met on Wednesday Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and discussed ways to enhance cooperation between Raytheon and UAE companies.

The new subsidiary will oversee Raytheon's operations in the UAE by leveraging capabilities and resources in the fields of cyber security, effectors, air defense and sustainment, and advanced technology.

"We focus on expanding the capabilities of Raytheon and its business partners in the UAE by emphasizing local hiring and talent development, cultivating a strong supplier base, and developing new technology solutions," said John Brauneis, the chief executive of Raytheon Emirates.

Raytheon Emirates is based in Al Maryah Island, and plans are underway to establish operational branches in other areas of Abu Dhabi.

The UAE Armed Forces traditionally rely mostly on western defense technology.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 17:00:16|Editor: pengying

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets with Suriname Foreign Minister Yldiz Pollack-Beighle, who is here to attend the first South-South Human Rights Forum, in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Thursday said China hopes to cooperate with developing countries including Suriname to promote south-south human rights development.

Wang made the remarks when meeting with Suriname Foreign Minister Yldiz Pollack-Beighle, who is in Beijing to attend the first South-South Human Rights Forum.

Wang said China appreciates Suriname's firm support on issues concerning China's core interests and major concerns, and hopes that Suriname will play a more active role in China-Latin America relations.

According to Wang, China welcomes Suriname to join the Belt and Road Initiative and will do what it can to help the Latin American country's economic and social development.

For her part, Pollack-Beighle said the government and ruling party of Suriname attach great importance to relations with China and will continue to firmly adhere to the one-China policy.

Suriname is grateful for China's aid for its economy, education, health and infrastructure, she said.

Suriname hopes to join the Belt and Road Initiative, she said, voicing support of the construction of a community with shared future for mankind.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 17:00:17|Editor: Zhou Xin

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People protest near the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, on Dec. 7, 2017. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Xinhua/Mustafa Kaya)

ANKARA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday criticized his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump's decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Addressing his supporters at Ankara airport prior to his historic visit to Greece, Erdogan said the move was "throwing the region into a circle of fire."

He added that political leaders should seek to achieve peace rather than stirring up destabilization.

Erdogan said he planned to talk with Pope Francis and leaders of Russia, France, Germany, Britain and Spain on this issue.

Erdogan also reiterated that leaders of the members of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an international organization of 57 Muslim countries, would meet in Istanbul next week to display joint action over Jerusalem.

Late Wednesday, thousands of people handing flags of Palestine demonstrated in front of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, protesting against the Jerusalem decision made by Trump.

Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and instructed to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 17:10:20|Editor: ZD

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JAKARTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Teaming up with a prominent Indian travel agency, the Indonesian government is to hold a two-day tourism promotion event in the Indian capital of New Delhi from Dec. 9 to 10, to tap more potentialities from the Indian tourism market.

The Indonesian Tourism Ministry would partner with India's MakeMyTrip traveling app to hold the upcoming event at New Delhi's Ambience Mall, Deputy Minister for International Marketing Development at the ministry I Gde Pitana said.

"India is part of the ultimate tourism markets for Indonesia. Not only Bali, we would also promote other destinations across Indonesia for potential Indian tourists throughout the event," Pitana said.

According to Pitana, the arrival figures of Indian tourists to Indonesia have grown significantly to 357,522 in the first nine months of this year, or 31.07 percent higher than the figure in the same period of last year.

MakeMyTrip has a very long traveling business experience since its establishment in 2000, and now handles 25 percent of Indian travelers' traveling plans, including flight and hotel bookings, that makes it a highly potential partner to Indonesia's tourism, the deputy minister said.

The upcoming tourism promotion event in New Delhi is expected to help the Indonesian government to achieve its target of 456,000 Indian tourists this year, Pitana added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 17:35:26|Editor: ZD

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DOHA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Qatari emir warned of serious repercussions of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to move his country's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the state-run Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported Thursday.

Such a move would complicate the situation in the Middle East and negatively affect the security and stability in the region, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said during a telephone conversation with Trump on Wednesday.

Qatar reiterates its position on the Palestinian issue on the basis of the resolutions of international legitimacy and the Arab peace initiative based on the two-state solution, al-Thani said.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Trump reversed decades of U.S. Policy and announced his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, the decision which has angered the Muslim world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 17:50:28|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Yok Mu-ming, chairman of Taiwan's New Party, will lead a delegation to visit the Chinese mainland from Dec. 9 to Dec. 16, a mainland spokesperson said Thursday.

Yok will visit Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai, said An Fengshan, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.

The visit aims to promote peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, and advance the process toward the peaceful reunification of China and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, An said.
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past the Raytheon exhibition during the Australian International Airshow in Melbourne March 2, 2011. (REUTERS PHOTO)

DUBAI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. defense and technology firm Raytheon Company said on Thursday that it has formed Raytheon Emirates, a new and wholly-owned subsidiary headquartered in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

New York-stock listed Raytheon said Raytheon Emirates will employ local workforce and contribute to the Gulf state's economic diversification.

"The establishment of Raytheon Emirates is a strong step forward in our long standing alliance with UAE," said Thomas Kennedy, Raytheon Company Chairman and CEO.

He added that "through partnerships with government, industry and academia, Raytheon is committed to helping the UAE achieve its economic goals while providing trusted, innovative solutions that support the nation's defense and security requirements."

Kennedy met on Wednesday Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and discussed ways to enhance cooperation between Raytheon and UAE companies.

The new subsidiary will oversee Raytheon's operations in the UAE by leveraging capabilities and resources in the fields of cyber security, effectors, air defense and sustainment, and advanced technology.

"We focus on expanding the capabilities of Raytheon and its business partners in the UAE by emphasizing local hiring and talent development, cultivating a strong supplier base, and developing new technology solutions," said John Brauneis, the chief executive of Raytheon Emirates.

Raytheon Emirates is based in Al Maryah Island, and plans are underway to establish operational branches in other areas of Abu Dhabi.

The UAE Armed Forces traditionally rely mostly on western defense technology. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:00:32|Editor: ZD

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JAKARTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. embassy to Indonesia on Thursday published a security message for its citizens following the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The recognition may spark protests, some of which have the potential to become violence, according to a statement from the embassy.

"The U.S. embassy in Jakarta reminds U.S. citizens of the need for caution and awareness of personal security," the statement said.

The message asks the U.S. citizen to review their personal security plans, remain aware of their surrounding, including local events, and monitor local news for updates.

"Maintain a high-level of vigilance, take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security and follow instructions of local authorities. Avoid areas of demonstrations, and exercise caution if in the vicinity of any large gatherings, protests of demonstrations," it said.

The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Indonesia strongly condemned the decision and asked the U.S. government to reconsider it.
British Prime Minister Theresa May (R) meets with visiting Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong in London Dec. 5, 2017. Both sides pledged to strengthen people-to-people and cultural exchanges to enhance the social foundation of bilateral relations. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

OXFORD, Britain, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Outside the historic Sheldonian Theatre in the University of Oxford amid drizzles in a typical British late afternoon, the queue seemed unusually long.

More than 500 students and academicians, undeterred by the coldness and darkness of winter, were waiting to listen to a keynote speech by Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong who is on a four-day visit to Britain.

"What I am most interested in is the political and economic development of China in the next 10 to 15 years and how China can continue its growth and offers opportunities to others," said Logan Graham, a student in Oxford studying artificial intelligence.

"It is deeply important that we understand China and potentially vice versa as well,"said Graham who plans to seek his career opportunities in Shanghai after finishing his PhD.

Liu, the first high-level Chinese official visiting Britain since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October this year, delivered a speech themed "Deepening People to People Exchange and Boosting the Development of the Golden Era."

During her speech, Liu expounded China's development goals and targets put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping as China strives to become a moderately prosperous society by 2020 and a modernized socialist country by 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic of China.

"China is embarking on a new journey in pursuit of growth with higher quality, more efficiency and equality," said Liu, adding that a strong, open and innovative China is offering new opportunities for international students and youths.

On China-Britain ties, Liu said this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Britain.

China-Britain relations, with highly integrated interests, stand at a new historic point and people-to-people exchanges serve as the social and civil foundation of the bilateral ties.

During her trip, Liu will chair on Thursday, jointly with British Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, the fifth annual UK-China High-Level People-to-People Dialogue, which is the highest-level bilateral dialogue held in Britain this year.

Liu proposed in her speech that the two sides should continue to expand people-to-people exchanges in such field as health, education and science and technology, to enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples as substantial results have been achieved since the mechanism was launched five years ago.

The Chinese vice premier on Wednesday witnessed the inauguration of Oxford Institute of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS), a landmark cooperative project between CAMS and University of Oxford, seen as a milestone of cooperation in medical studies between the two countries.

During her speech, Liu suggested universities from both countries step up cooperation in such fields as medical studies and health, artificial intelligence, digital economy, creative industries and renewable energy etc.

Graham, who clearly sees his career opportunity in China and plans to study Mandarin soon, said "China offers the great opportunity in the next 20 years, and my dream might be there."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:05:36|Editor: ZD

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HANOI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese and foreign experts and businesses agreed here on Thursday that Vietnam should maintain a stable regulatory environment to become a competitive and attractive destination for investors.

At a workshop held by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Vietnam's Foreign Investment Agency and the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Director of Vietnam Trade Facilitation Alliance Herbert Cochran stated that frequent regulatory changes will make Vietnam become more risky destination for foreign investors.

The proposed increase of value added tax from 10 percent to 12 percent and the imposition of excise tax of 10 percent on certain sweet beverage will hurt investors in the beverage industry and consumers, he said.

Vietnamese lawyer Le Net said some documents such as a decree on guiding the implementation of the Law on Pharmacy includes provisions that are inconsistent with the law and World Trade Organization commitments.

The decree would force some current foreign-invested enterprises to close their fully licensed warehousing and transport services or change their business model, the lawyer stated.

Adam Sitkoff, executive director of AmCham in Hanoi, said: "We are concerned with recent changes in policy and regulations, which are not consistent with international best practices. These changes expose many foreign investors to considerable risks and obstacles in executing their investments."

Vietnam attracted roughly 33.1 billion U.S. dollars in foreign investment in the first 11 months of this year, up 82.8 percent on-year, the Foreign Investment Agency said, noting that 19.8 billion dollars was poured into 2,293 new projects, nearly 8 billion dollars into 1,100 operational ones, and roughly 5.3 billion dollars into buying shares of companies.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:20:39|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's natural gas import is expected to rise as new cross-border gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals will be put into use, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said Thursday.

"China supports domestic enterprises to increase natural gas output and at the same time to diversify imports of the resource," said spokesperson Gao Feng at a regular press conference.

Calling imports "a significant source" of China's natural gas supply, Gao attributed increasing imports to rising domestic demand and the improvement of infrastructure facilities.

Statistics from China's customs showed that from January to October of this year, China's natural gas imports rose 24.9 percent year on year to 54.165 million tonnes.

Of the figure, liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports surged 47.7 percent to a record high of 29.092 million tonnes, Gao replied in response to a question on the ongoing natural gas shortage in northern China.

As millions of households have changed to gas instead of coal for heating this winter to help combat air pollution, there has been a sudden surge in the demand of natural gas.

Since winter heating began on November 15, the factory prices of LNG has increased by 200 yuan to 300 yuan on average per day. On December 1, the figure in some LNG plants even rose to a record high of 9,000 yuan (1,360 U.S. dollars) a tonne, according to an industry report.

The Development and Reform Commission of Hebei Province has activated a second-level alert over natural gas supply, indicating that the province's natural gas supply is 10 to 20 percent lower than its total demand.

To remedy the situation, consumption for industrial and commercial use has been restricted. Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia also reported shortages.

Xu Bo, a senior analyst with China National Petroleum Corporation's (CNPC) Economics and Technology Research Institute, estimated that natural gas use was expected to reach 230 billion cubic meters this year with 20 billion cubic meters coming from the coal-to-gas transition.

Xu projected a growth rate of 17 percent for the natural gas consumption this year, compared to seven percent last year.

From January to September, China's LNG consumption has rose to 167.6 billion cubic meters, up 16.6 percent year on year.` To ensure gas supply, China's state-owned oil firms, including CNPC and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), are maximizing production at domestic gas fields and the National Development and Reform Commission has urged companies to be self-disciplined in pricing.

The ultimate solution lies in encouraging competitiveness of companies and improving infrastructure construction, said Jing Chunmei, a researcher with China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

More social capital should be encouraged in the creation or expansion of infrastructure like pipelines, ports with suitable terminals, storage facilities and transportation networks to lower costs through competition, said Jing.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:30:44|Editor: liuxin

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SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Five militants loyal to the Islamic State (IS) group were killed and 10 others injured as government forces aircrafts targeted the armed outfit's hideouts in Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, spokesman for provincial government Reza Ghafori said Thursday.

The security forces aircrafts, according to the official, attacked a hideout of IS militants in Darzab district on Wednesday evening killing five insurgents on the spot and injuring 10 others.

Islamic State militants who are in control of parts of Darzab and Qush Tepa districts haven't commented.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:35:46|Editor: Yurou

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JAKARTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The provincial administration of Aceh, Indonesia will carry out an international sail covering three major tourist destinations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand next year, provincial tourism chief said on Thursday.

The golden triangle regata sail will enroute from Sabang of Indonesia, Phuket of Thailand and Langkawi of Malaysia, head of tourism department of Aceh province Reza Pahlevi said.

The event is expected to promote tourism in the northern tip of Sumatra Island of Indonesia, he said.

"Hope God willing, the golden triangle regata sail, connecting Sabang, Phuket, and Langkawi will be held next year," he was quoted by Merdeka media as saying in Aceh province.

The local administration has been undertaking preparation for the event to better serve the international participants, said Reza.

"Preparation includes infrastructure, services, promotion. We work hard along with all stake holders here," he said.

Indonesia is a vast archipelagic nation home to over 17,500 islands.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:50:51|Editor: liuxin

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MANILA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have recommended to President Rodrigo Duterte to extend martial law in the southern Philippine Mindanao region for another year, a military official said on Thursday.

A highly-placed military officer who requested anonymity told reporters the AFP high command wants Duterte to extend martial law until December 2018.

According to the officer, the ground commanders' recommendation to AFP chief of staff Gen. Rey Leonardo Guerrero is to extend the martial law.

"Most of them (ground commanders) said they need martial law at this time," the officer said, adding that it would be easier to neutralize the terrorists if the region is under martial rule.

Moreover, the officer said martial law is needed "to finally end" the problem of terrorism and violent extremism in that region.

The officer added that pro-Islamic State (IS) groups have continued to recruit members even after the Marawi siege has ended.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has not made any statement regarding the AFP recommendation. Spokesman for the defense department Arsenio Andolong said he has not yet seen the recommendation.

President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a 60-day martial law in the southern region in May when Islamist extremists laid siege to Marawi City, triggering a five month war between government security forces and pro-IS militants.

Fierce fighting broke out as Philippine forces retake the city from the clutches of the militants, prompting Duterte to ask Congress in July to extend the military rule to Dec. 31, 2017.

Philippine legislators voted overwhelmingly to extend the martial law until Dec. 31, 2017 to give more time to crush the insurgents and destroy their terror network that plans to establish a caliphate in the southern Philippine region.

The government finally gained control of Marawi in October. More than 1,200 people were killed in the battle to retake the city, reducing the city into rubbles.

Duterte plans to ask Congress to extend the martial rule when the government reconstructs and rehabilitates the ruined city.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:50:52|Editor: liuxin

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NEW DELHI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least four people were killed and 17 others injured Thursday after a passenger bus collided with a goods truck in northern Indian state of Punjab, police said.

The accident took place at Singhwala village in Moga district, about 185 km west of Chandigarh, the capital city of Punjab.

"Today a private sleeper bus carrying passengers rammed into a truck near the national power grid at Singhwala village on the Moga-Kotkapura road here, killing four people and injuring 17 others," a police official said.

Preliminary investigation revealed the ill-fated bus coming from Jaipur (Rajasthan) and was on its way to Jammu city of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The injured were immediately taken to medical facility at Moga.

Police have registered a case and ordered investigations to ascertain the cause of accident.

"The exact cause of the accident is being ascertained," the police official said. "It is believed foggy weather conditions prevalent in the area could be one of the reasons behind the collision."

Deadly road accidents are common in India often caused by overloading, bad condition of roads and reckless driving.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 18:50:53|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China said Thursday it is concerned about the European Union's new anti-dumping methodology, calling on the bloc to avoid abusing trade remedies.

The Council of the European Union earlier this week approved a new anti-dumping legal framework that removes the former distinction between "market and non-market economies" for calculating dumping. Instead, it requires proving the existence of a "significant market distortion" between a product's sale price and its production cost.

The removal of the so-called "non-market economy list," which included China, was an effort by the EU to fulfill its international obligations as an important World Trade Organization (WTO) member, said Gao Feng, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce.

However, the notion of "significant market distortion" makes it possible for the EU to continue the surrogate country approach, Gao told a press conference.

"We are worried over the possible abuse of this notion in the EU's future legal practice," he told reporters.

This move lacks support from WTO rules and weakens the authority of the WTO anti-dumping legal system, he noted.

The surrogate country approach allows WTO members to use costs of production in a third country to calculate the value of products from countries on the "non-market economy" list.

In accordance with China's WTO accession protocol, this approach expired on Dec. 11, 2016.

Gao said China hopes the EU will strictly abide by WTO rules, fulfill its duty in a well-intentioned and comprehensive way, and avoid the abuse of trade remedies.

The country reserves its rights under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and will take necessary measures to protect its legitimate interests, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:00:57|Editor: liuxin

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AMMAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of students in several Jordanian universities held protests condemning U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In a sit-in at the University of Jordan, students voiced their condemnation of the decision and said it is a violation of all international laws and only serves extremists and fuels violence.

Similar protests were held in public and private universities in Irbid, Karak and Zarqa universities.

"We will not accept the U.S. decision which is provocative. Jerusalem is not for the U.S. to grant to the Zionist entity," several banners carried by the students during the protests indicated.

They called on the international community to honor its pledges and resolutions that state that the issue of Jerusalem is to be decided via negotiated settlement.

Several political parties, including the Islamic movement in Jordan, announced plans for protests across Jordanian cities after Fridays' prayers.

The Jordanian government rejected the U.S. decision and said it will continue efforts to find a solution.

On Wednesday, Trump announced that the U.S. formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he intends to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which experts warned that it would unleash upheaval and chaos in the Middle East.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:00:59|Editor: liuxin

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NEW DELHI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 10 people were killed and five others injured when a passenger van collided with a stationary truck in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, police said Thursday.

The accident occurred on a national highway at Thuvarankurichi near Trichy district, more than 300 km from state capital Chennai.

"The van carrying 15 people rammed into the truck which was parked on one side of the road. The impact of the collision was such that nine people, including three children and two women, died on the spot," a senior police official said.

Those injured have been admitted to the state-run district hospital in Trichy where one succumbed to his injuries later in the day, he said. "The condition of one more passenger is said to be critical and he is battling for his life in the hospital."

The victims were going to the temple town of Tirupati from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country, when the accident happened.

Preliminary probe by police has revealed that the driver of the van had failed to spot the stationary truck as he was probably busy listening to songs using a head phone, which led to the accident. "However, a thorough investigation has been ordered into the incident," he said.

"The driver of the truck has fled the spot after the accident and we will book him for negligence as he had parked his vehicle without switching on the parking lights that would have alerted drivers of other vehicles on the highway," the official added.

India has the highest number of road fatalities in the world. Road accidents occur mostly due to poor driving or badly maintained roads and vehicles.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:06:02|Editor: liuxin

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CAIRO, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's Giza Criminal Court ordered on Thursday the execution of 13 convicts from a disbanded militant group over charges of launching terrorist attacks against security forces, official MENA news agency reported.

The 13 defendants belong to a militant group referring to itself as Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), which is charged with installing explosive devices, targeting various venues including checkpoints, police stations, vital institutions and public properties as well as murdering policemen and citizens.

On Oct. 8, Giza Criminal Court referred the files of the 13 defendants to the country's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding Islamic legal opinion on their execution.

The case started in July 2014 and it includes 44 defendants in total.

Thursday's execution verdict comes about two weeks after a terrorist attack against a mosque in North Sinai killed at least 310 Muslim worshippers and wounded over 120 others, which is the deadliest terror operation and the first against a Muslim mosque in Egypt's modern history.

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 blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt focused on targeting police and military men in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Ajnad Misr pledged allegiance to the IS in 2014, a year before its founder was killed as announced by the Egyptian police in April 2015.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military and police have killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war declared by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's removal.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:36:40|Editor: pengying

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Competitor Liu Xin (R) weighs the croissant during a qualification match for the 7th world bread competition in Shanghai, east China, Dec. 7, 2017. The qualification match was held to decide the participants from China for the 7th world bread competition in France in 2019. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:51:17|Editor: liuxin

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JAKARTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo is scheduled to attend the extraordinary leaders' summit of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) over the issue of Jerusalem, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said here on Thursday.

"The OIC was scheduled to hold a summit on Dec. 13. Indonesian president has expressed his clear statement. By God's willing the president would be there," the minister said during the 10th Bali Democracy Forum (BDF) held in a western Jakarta convention center.

The minister said she had coordinated with her counterparts in OIC member countries, adding that all of them rejected the recognition of U.S. President Donald Trump over Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The upcoming summit scheduled in Istanbul would reaffirm the stance of OIC countries over the recent development in Jerusalem and steps that would be taken by OIC to respond to Trump's action.

Washington recognized the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday, and planned to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Widodo has condemned the U.S. plan to do so as it would further create instability in the Middle East.

Indonesia is a relentless supporter to Palestine, repeatedly called for the two-state solution that allows the two states of Palestine and Israel to live together side by side in peace and harmony, Marsudi said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:56:20|Editor: Zhou Xin

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by Matt Goss

CANBERRA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Australia has legalized same-sex marriage after hundreds of hours of debate in the nation's parliament.

The House of Representatives, the lower house of Australia's parliament, overwhelmingly voted to legalize same-sex marriage on Thursday evening with only four Members of Parliament (MPs) opposing the bill.

It came after 61.6 percent of the 12.7 million respondents Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey voted "yes" to changing the law to allow same-sex marriage couples to marry.

Upon the result of the vote being read out, MPs and members of the public gallery, many of whom arrived on Thursday morning to ensure they would witness the historic moment firsthand, broke out into applause.

"What a day. What a day for love, for equality, for respect," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said.

"Australia has done it. Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it," Turnbull said.

"This is Australia: fair diverse, loving and filled with respect. This is a great day."

Bill Shorten, leader of the Opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), echoed Turnbull's sentiment moments before the final vote, calling on all Australians to celebrate the historic achievement regardless of whether they voted yes or no in the survey.

"Australia we are going to make marriage equality a reality in minutes," Shorten said.

"When this bill is passed we should declare we are no longer a nation who voted no or yes, we are simply Australians all," Shorten said.

Due to the postal survey being non-binding, legislation still had to be passed through both houses of parliaments to legalize the practice.

Earlier on Thursday, a series of conservative MPs tried to make amendments to the bill which would allow employees and businesses in the wedding service sector to refuse to supply same-sex weddings on religious grounds but all amendments were easily defeated in both houses of parliament.

Government MP Trent Zimmerman was the first-ever openly gay member of the lower house and on Thursday told the house that all of Australia had been touched by a three-word slogan.

"Love is love, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that's something we can all agree on," he said.

Addressing the public gallery, sat in which were notable gay Australians such as Olympian Ian Thorpe, Deputy ALP leader Tanya Plibersek said, "By the end of today, Australia will be a better, kinder, fairer place for all of us."

"Love will prevail. It will be your victory, and I hope you enjoy it," she said.

Under the bill that was passed, although celebrants such as priests will be able to refuse to marry same-sex couples due to their religion, civil celebrants will not be able to do so.

Queensland MPs Bob Katter, Keith Pitt and David Littleproud alongside Victoria's Russell Broadbent were the only MPs to vote against the bill.

A number of other MPs, including former PM Tony Abbott, who were opposed to same-sex marriage but whose electorates voted in favor in the postal survey abstained from the vote.

A month's notice of intent to marry must be given in Australia meaning same-sex marriages will be allowed to take place from mid-January onward.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 19:56:21|Editor: pengying

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NANCHANG, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Police in the city of Nanchang in eastern China's Jiangxi Province said Thursday that they had seized 94 kilograms of methamphetamine, detaining seven suspects.

In May 2016, local police received a report that drug dealers in Nanchang had been traveling to Myanmar via Yunnan Province, buying methamphetamine and magu, a stimulant composed of methamphetamine and caffeine, and selling it on their return to Nanchang.

On July 25, 2017, police arrested two drug dealers transporting drugs, seizing their drugs and vehicle. Four more suspects were seized in Xin'gan county later the same day. A further suspect was captured in Yunnan Province in October .

More than 10 drug users were caught at the same time.

Further investigation is ongoing.
Palestinian protestors shout slogans against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Nablus, on December 7, 2017. (AFP PHOTO)

GAZA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said Thursday that United States can not be a peace sponsor anymore after U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel.

"We won't accept you anymore as a sponsor to the peace process in the Middle East," Hamdallah told a news conference he held in Gaza after arriving from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip for internal reconciliation talks.

Hamdallah's position is a reaction to Trump's declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel, which sparked a large Palestinian outrage all over the Palestinian territories.

"We will tell you from Gaza that we will confront you with national unity and Palestine will return on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital," said Hamdallah.

"We will devote to reconciliation, but if we fail, we will rise again to face together the biggest challenge, the Israeli occupation," the prime minister said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:01:28|Editor: Lifang

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Photo taken on Dec. 7, 2017 shows local residents gathering near a boat accident site in Thatta, Pakistan. At least 13 people were killed after a boat carrying over 50 pilgrims overturned off Pakistan's southern district of Thatta in Sindh province on Thursday, an official said. (Xinhua)

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 13 people were killed after a boat carrying over 50 pilgrims overturned off Pakistan's southern district of Thatta in Sindh province on Thursday, an official said.

"At least 20 others have been rescued so far," Deputy Commissioner of Thatta Mirza Nasir Baig said, adding that more than 50 pilgrims were on their way to partake in an annual festival of a local saint whose shrine is located on an small island in the Arabian Sea near Thatta district in the province.

Following the incident, police, rescue teams and local residents have rushed to the area and shifted the bodies to the Sheikh Zayed Sakro Hospital in Thatta.

According to the Dawn News, efforts are underway to rescue the remaining passengers, including women and children.

According to police, the accident occurred due to strong winds and the boat was already overloaded.

Chief Minister of Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah took notice of the incident and sought report from the concerned authorities. He also directed the rescue administration to complete the rescue operation before getting dark.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:06:29|Editor: ZD

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Chief of the Islamic Hamas movement Ismail Haniyeh delivers a speech over the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City on Dec. 7, 2017. Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is a "turning point" for the region. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)

GAZA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic Hamas movement called on Thursday for a Palestinian "popular uprising" against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The call comes amid mass demonstrations sweeping across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

"Tomorrow will be a day of public anger and the launching of an uprising under the name of Intifada of Jerusalem Freedom," said Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh during a public speech.

He reaffirmed that Friday would be "the beginning of a new movement" to fight Israel's plan of occupation of West Bank and Jerusalem.

"Trump will regret this decision," said Haniyeh, stressing "the integrity of Jerusalem instead of Eastern or Western Jerusalem."

Meanwhile, Haniyeh also called for a general Palestinian meeting to discuss the current situation and to reach an agreement on future Palestinian politics.

Describing Trump's recognition as "a turning point in the history of the Palestinian cause," the Hamas leader stressed that Jerusalem "has always been the source of victory, the beginning of revolutions and the starting point of uprisings."

He further reiterated that Hamas would never recognize the legitimacy of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

On Wednesday, Trump officially announced his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his intention of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump's declaration triggered a wave of popular anger and outrage among the Palestinians.

The Palestinian factions and political powers declared a general strike in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, while some protestors set fire to U.S. flags and pictures of Trump in Gaza.

Shops were closed and the business of local markets was substantially affected by the comprehensive strike.

Head of the Federation of Palestinian Chambers of Commerce Khalil Rizk said that the general strike was an expression of protest against the U.S. president's decision.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education announced a suspension of schools on Thursday, urging teachers and students to participate in the demonstrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Demonstrations, rallies and protests erupted mainly in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, East Jerusalem as well as in the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of youths expressed anger over Trump's move by setting tires on fire for hours at night in various parts of Gaza.

Also in Gaza, medical sources said that three Palestinians were injured during clashes between angry Palestinian protestors and Israeli soldiers stationed on the borders between southeastern Gaza and Israel.
Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City on December 6, 2017. (AFP PHPTO)

GAZA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic Hamas movement called on Thursday for a Palestinian "popular uprising" against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The call comes amid mass demonstrations sweeping across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

"Tomorrow will be a day of public anger and the launching of an uprising under the name of Intifada of Jerusalem Freedom," said Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh during a public speech.

He reaffirmed that Friday would be "the beginning of a new movement" to fight Israel's plan of occupation of West Bank and Jerusalem.

"Trump will regret this decision," said Haniyeh, stressing "the integrity of Jerusalem instead of Eastern or Western Jerusalem."

Meanwhile, Haniyeh also called for a general Palestinian meeting to discuss the current situation and to reach an agreement on future Palestinian politics.

Describing Trump's recognition as "a turning point in the history of the Palestinian cause," the Hamas leader stressed that Jerusalem "has always been the source of victory, the beginning of revolutions and the starting point of uprisings."

He further reiterated that Hamas would never recognize the legitimacy of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

On Wednesday, Trump officially announced his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his intention of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump's declaration triggered a wave of popular anger and outrage among the Palestinians.

The Palestinian factions and political powers declared a general strike in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, while some protestors set fire to U.S. flags and pictures of Trump in Gaza.

Shops were closed and the business of local markets was substantially affected by the comprehensive strike.

Head of the Federation of Palestinian Chambers of Commerce Khalil Rizk said that the general strike was an expression of protest against the U.S. president's decision.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education announced a suspension of schools on Thursday, urging teachers and students to participate in the demonstrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Demonstrations, rallies and protests erupted mainly in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, East Jerusalem as well as in the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of youths expressed anger over Trump's move by setting tires on fire for hours at night in various parts of Gaza.

Also in Gaza, medical sources said that three Palestinians were injured during clashes between angry Palestinian protestors and Israeli soldiers stationed on the borders between southeastern Gaza and Israel.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:26:33|Editor: liuxin

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ASADABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least five local police personnel were killed as a roadside bomb struck a police van in Kunar province, east of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, a local official said on Thursday.

"A roadside bomb planted by the enemies in Naray district of Kunar province struck a police vehicle late Wednesday, killing five local police," Juma Gul Hemmat, Kunar police chief, told Xinhua.

The police van was also destroyed as the result of the blast, he added.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast so far.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:31:36|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China and Canada have "basically finished a feasibility study on a free trade agreement," after more than a year of effort, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said Thursday.

"Both sides have extended willing to sign the agreement," said spokesperson Gao Feng at a press conference.

Gao said progress had been made on the issue during Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to China from Sunday to Thursday.

Gao said China was willing to work together with Canada for an early start to talks on the deal.

The two countries opened the feasibility study in September last year.

Recent years have witnessed robust momentum in bilateral cooperation, which has brought benefits to both peoples and sent positive signals to the international community, Trudeau said during the visit. Canada is committed to deepening relations with China on the basis of mutual respect and mutual trust, boosting cooperation on economy, trade and people-to-people exchanges and intensifying coordination on major global and regional issues, he said.

China is Canada's second largest trade partner.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:41:40|Editor: liuxin

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DOHA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Qatar has signed a deal with France to buy 12 French Rafale fighter jets, local media reported on Thursday.

The deal was among many contracts signed between the two countries during the state visit to Qatar of French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.

It was also announced that the two sides were negotiating over the purchase of 300 VBCI armored vehicles from French firm Nexter and a contract worth some 3 billion euros (3.54 billion U.S. dollars) over the management of the Doha metro for 20 years.

The total value of the deals was 12 billion euros (14.14 billion U.S. dollars).

Qatar has been suffering from an ongoing blockade imposed on it since June 5 by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

The tiny Gulf state is trying to overcome the impacts of the siege by strengthening military ties with and purchasing arms from the United States, Russia and Britain.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:41:40|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China said Thursday that the United States had put its own standards above international law by opposing the granting of market economy status to China in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The U.S. opposition is only based on domestic standards, while WTO rules are international trade laws that should be followed by all members, said Gao Feng, spokesperson with China's Commerce Ministry, at a press conference Thursday. "We hope the U.S. opposition is not disregarding international rules."

The United States last week 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, which came just days before a hearing on the case.

Gao said he hoped that experts at the hearing would make an impartial judgement in accordance with international law.

China has filed dispute cases at the WTO both against the United States and the EU regarding the surrogate country approach, which allowed WTO members to use costs of production in a third country to calculate the value of products from countries on their "non-market economy" list.

The surrogate country approach on Chinese exports expires on Dec. 11, 2016.

"We urge some WTO members, including the United States, to fulfil their WTO obligations fully and effectively," Gao said. "China will earnestly fulfill its WTO obligations, but it should at the same time enjoy its rights as a member of the organization."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:56:46|Editor: liuxin

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BRUSSELS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Thursday decided to haul the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland before the Court of Justice of the EU, in the latest legal action against them for not taking in refugees.

The Commission has launched legal action against the three member states earlier this year, sending them a "Letter of Formal Notice" in June and a "Reasoned Opinion" in July.

But, "the replies received were again found not satisfactory and the three countries have given no indication that they will contribute to the implementation of the relocation decision," the Commission said in a statement.

According to the Commission, Poland and Hungary haven't taken in any refugees since September 2015, when EU member states pledged to relocate a total of 160,000 migrants from overstretched Greece and Italy within two years.

The Czech Republic has not relocated anyone since August 2016 and not made any new pledges for over a year.

The three countries insisted that their national security is more important than "reckless decisions" on refugees made by EU institutions.

The two-year relocation scheme has relocated some 32,000 refugees from Greece and Italy to other EU member states.

There are still a few thousand eligible applicants in Italy and Greece waiting to be relocated, Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the Commission, disclosed Thursday at a press conference at the Commission headquarter.

Under the EU law, the Commission has the power to take legal action against a member state which is not respecting its obligations.

The infringement procedure begins with sending member states concerned a "Letter of Formal Notice" and then a "Reasoned Opinion", both of which must be answered within a specified period, usually two months.

If the member state still refuses to comply, the Commission may then decide to refer the case to the Court of Justice.

The Commission can propose that the Court imposes financial penalties on the member state.

At the press conference, Timmermans unveiled the Commission's political roadmap to reach a comprehensive agreement among member states by June 2018 on how to pursue a "stable and future-proof" migration policy.

The roadmap recommends leaders of member states press on reforming the EU's Common European Asylum System, strengthening partnerships with third countries, continuing to open legal pathways to Europe and securing adequate funding for the future.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 20:56:48|Editor: pengying

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HANGZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A joint venture between U.S. auto maker Ford and its Chinese counterpart Zotye is expected to manufacture full electric vehicles by September 2019.

The joint venture, with an investment of 5 billion yuan (755 million U.S. dollars), will be based in the Jinhua development zone in east China's Zhejiang Province, according to an agreement signed on Thursday between the firm and the zone.

Ford and Zotye will each hold half of the joint venture's stake. The new facility is expected to produce 100,000 vehicles a year.

Peter Fleet, Ford's Asia-Pacific president, said electric cars will take a big share of China's auto market, and the joint venture hopes to become a leader in the field.

Statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that 517,000 new energy vehicles, including full electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, were manufactured and 490,000 were sold between January and October, both up over 45 percent year-on-year.

In October alone, 77,000 full electric vehicles were manufactured and an equal number of them were sold, up more than 76 percent and 95 percent respectively.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 21:11:54|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The third Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) foreign ministers' meeting will be held on Dec. 15 in Dali, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Thursday.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn will co-chair the meeting, Geng told a press briefing.

Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith, Union Minister for International Cooperation of Myanmar U Kyaw Tin, Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai and Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh will also attend the meeting.

The six countries along the Mekong (known as Lancang in the Chinese stretch) officially started the LMC process in March 2016.

"The LMC is a new type of sub-regional cooperation platform established by the six countries along the Mekong River," Geng said.

The LMC is committed to deepening good neighborliness and pragmatic cooperation among the six countries, promoting the economic and social development of sub-regional countries, building a community with shared future of peace and prosperity among Lancang-Mekong countries, to help boost ASEAN community building and regional integration, he said.

He said China hopes the third LMC foreign ministers' meeting could consolidate previous outcomes, summarize previous experiences and exchange views on future development, to make preparations for the second Lancang-Mekong Leaders' Meeting next year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 21:11:55|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai will travel to France next Tuesday to attend the One Planet Summit, an event to discuss finance in fighting climate change.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang made the announcement at a daily press briefing Thursday.

At the joint invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Ma will attend the summit on Dec. 12 in Paris as a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Geng said.

During the summit, Ma will deliver a speech Tuesday afternoon at a high-level meeting, Geng said, adding that the vice premier will reiterate China's support for the Paris Agreement and positive attitude toward participating in international cooperation to address climate change.

Ma will also elaborate on China's position on climate funding and showcase China's success in developing green finance and pursuing a transition to a low-carbon economy, said the spokesperson.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 21:11:56|Editor: liuxin

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PARIS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A Thursday release of an annual study of the French National Supervisory Body on Crime and Punishment (ONDRP) showed that terror risks have topped France's priorities for the first time in a decade.

"Terrorism is now the main source of concern for the French, ahead of unemployment and precarious employment, health, environment, delinquency, poverty, road safety, racism and discrimination," the ONDRP said.

One out of three people saw terrorism and attacks as the most worrying problem for today's French society, which is "almost non-existent before the attacks of Jan. 7 and 9, 2015 and the Bataclan bombing in November 2015," it added.

For this year, 32 percent of the French, or 16.4 million, said they were mainly concerned about terrorism, which has taken precedence over the 23 percent who are worried about being jobless.

In 2016, concerns for terrorism and unemployment were at 31 percent respectively, while only 3 percent of French citizens were worried about terrorism in 2014.

France has become a major target of frequent terrorist attacks following its military operations in Syria, Iraq and the Sahel region.

On Jan. 7, 2015, the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, was attacked by heavily armed men. Twelve people were killed, including the chief-editor of the newspaper. On Jan. 9, at least two people were killed and one injured in the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis in East Paris.

On Nov. 13, 2015, about seven simultaneous shootings and fresh explosions rocked central Paris during the evening. One of the shootings resulted in a hostage taking crisis at the Bataclan theater and concert hall, killing at least 140 people and wounding many.

France had imposed emergency security rules in the wake of the attacks, since which, the country has been overwhelmed again by another wave of attacks, with the bloodiest at Rivera city of Nice where a man drove his truck into a crowd on Bastille Day in 2016, killing 86 people.

In October, French President Emmanuel Macron signed the anti-terrorism law which he said was necessary to ramp up security at home to combat high terrorism menace.

The bill enshrines emergency security rules into ordinary law which empowers the police to search or arrest criminals without prior judicial approval and restrict people's movements or gatherings.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 21:32:03|Editor: liuxin

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DOHA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Qatar emir met with visiting French president here on Thursday and inked cooperation deals despite ongoing Gulf crisis, Qatari-based Al Jazeera reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who arrived in Doha on Thursday, and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani held a joint press conference following their meeting, and announced the signing of agreements and deals worth 12 billion euros (14.14 billion U.S. dollars), including the purchase of 12 French-made Dassault Rafale fighter jets.

Commenting on the Gulf crisis, Macron said it was especially disappointing that neighboring states had cut off ties with Qatar during the holy month of Ramadan in June.

"The dignity and the sovereignty of Qatar are above everything. If our brothers want to resolve this crisis, then we are ready on a basis that is clear and feasible to everyone," the French president said.

During his one-day trip in Qatar, Macron will also visit the French troops stationed in the country at the Al-Udeid air base, which is also the home to some 10,000 U.S. troops.

On June 5, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates started their boycott, severing diplomatic ties with Qatar and accusing Doha of supporting extremists and maintaining too close relations with Iran.

Qatar denies all the allegations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 21:52:07|Editor: pengying

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HONG KONG, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor met here Thursday with Prince Carl Philip of Sweden at the Government House, encouraging more Swedish companies to do business in Hong Kong.

Lam welcomed the prince's visit to Hong Kong to launch the first edition of #SwedenTalks_HK, an event that promotes cooperation and exchanges in innovation, creativity, design, culture and social values.

Lam said the event focuses on the promotion of Sweden's creative design, and education and learning technology, which coincide with the areas of information and technology and creative industries she is keen to develop as announced in her maiden policy address.

The chief executive thanked Sweden for participating in Business of Design Week 2017 and for its support for the event over the years which has helped make it a flagship design event in Asia.

Given Sweden's leading position in the world in various aspects, including innovation and technology, Lam expressed the hope to strengthen exchanges between the two places so Hong Kong can learn from Sweden's experience.

She encouraged more Swedish companies, including startups, to do business and invest in Hong Kong to leverage on its advantage as the gateway to the vast market of the Chinese mainland and to explore more business opportunities together.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:02:11|Editor: liuxin

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MOGADISHU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations said on Thursday that it will spend 12.3 million U.S. dollars in famine prevention efforts in 2018 in Somalia.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the funds will be disbursed by Somalia Human Fund (SHF), a multi-donor country-based pooled fund established in 2010 to support the timely allocation and disbursement of donor resources to address the most urgent humanitarian needs.

Peter de Clercq, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said the critical funds, part of the SHF Second 2017 Standard Allocation, will support 30 famine prevention projects in some of the worst-affected areas across Somalia.

"These SHF funds will allow humanitarian partners to continue their enhanced famine prevention response from January 1, 2018," de Clercq said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

He said almost two-thirds of funds are geared towards the integrated multi-sectorial response -- providing food, clean water and life-saving health, nutrition and sanitation and hygiene services in areas where needs are the greatest.

De Clercq said the amount is only a small fraction of what will be required to sustain famine prevention efforts in 2018.

"Donors are urged to provide funding for the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan, which was part of the global launch on Dec. 1," he said.

According to the OCHA, this standard allocation round, focusing primarily on national and international non-governmental partners (98 percent of funds), brings SHF funding for famine prevention response in 2017 to more than 57 million dollars.

It said over 37 percent of these funds have been channeled directly through local NGOs as part of the Grand Bargain commitment from the World Humanitarian Summit to support localization of aid.

According to the OCHA, poverty, marginalization, armed violence, insecurity, political instability, natural disasters and a lack of economic development have driven up humanitarian needs for decades in Somalia.

The OCHA said a lack of access to basic services, especially in the areas of education and livelihoods opportunities, can also easily tip residents into the vulnerable category in terms of relief needs, as well as encouraging outward migration in search of employment and increased susceptibility to recruitment by militant groups.

The UN relief agency said famine prevention efforts need to be sustained into 2018, alongside scaling up of livelihoods support to prevent populations at risk from sliding deeper into food insecurity.

"Early funding in 2018, including through the SHF, will be critical to enable humanitarian partners to sustain the current life-saving efforts," said the OCHA.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:22:19|Editor: liuxin

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KIGALI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda on Thursday organized a national children's summit to advocate positive parenting and protect young people's rights.

About 488 children from across the country convened at the Rwanda parliamentary buildings in the country's capital Kigali to participate in the 12th National Children's Summit dubbed "Positive Parenting: Foundation of the Rwanda we want."

The annual children's summit is a consultative forum which brings together children's delegates from across the country to exchange views and ideas on the issues at hand.

Addressing the summit, Rwandan prime minister Edouard Ngirente cautioned parents on irresponsible parenting which has resulted into drug abuse, alcoholism and teenage pregnancies among young people.

"Rwandan parents must groom their children to be responsible citizens for the better future of our country. The family is the foundation of the whole society where children should learn and inherit a legacy of cultural values which they will preserve and protect," he said.

Ngirente urged young people to refrain from negative society influence that would drive them into drug abuse, alcoholism and teenage pregnancies.

The meeting highlighted positive parenting as the bedrock for the well-being of the Rwandan children into families by reflecting parents' responsibilities toward caring for their children.

Claudine Uwera Kanyamanza, executive secretary of the Rwanda National Commission for Children, said that failing to intervene and invest in positive parenting of children carries a heavy burden for any society.

"It is very important to punish a child when needed. But this must be done in a way that doesn't traumatize them. Children also have a responsibility to respect their parents," she noted.

Among the issues that dominated the conference include positive parenting, child labor, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, alcoholism and school dropout.

At the summit, children requested the government of Rwanda to implement laws punishing parents who don't take care of their children and ramp up campaigns about positive parenting.

Later in the day, children, parents, development partners and government officials participated in a walk for children's advocacy from the parliament to Petit Stade stadium in the capital Kigali.

The children's summit was first organized in 2004 with the aim of creating rights awareness among children and educating them on their obligations as well.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:22:20|Editor: pengying

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China said Thursday that the United States had put its own standards above international law by opposing the granting of market economy status to China in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The U.S. opposition is only based on domestic standards, while WTO rules are international trade laws that should be followed by all members, said Gao Feng, spokesperson with China's Commerce Ministry, at a press conference Thursday. "We hope the U.S. opposition is not disregarding international rules."

The United States last week 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, which came just days before a hearing on the case.

Gao said he hoped that experts at the hearing would make an impartial judgement in accordance with international law.

China has filed dispute cases at the WTO both against the United States and the EU regarding the surrogate country approach, which allowed WTO members to use costs of production in a third country to calculate the value of products from countries on their "non-market economy" list.

The surrogate country approach on Chinese exports expired on Dec. 11, 2016.

"We urge some WTO members, including the United States, to fulfil their WTO obligations fully and effectively," Gao said. "China will earnestly fulfill its WTO obligations, but it should at the same time enjoy its rights as a member of the organization."

Gao said China had always valued a stable and predictable business and trade environment between the two countries, and had been making firm efforts to ensure this.

"The recent U.S. trade investigations into Chinese products have sent 'negative messages' that caused concern among enterprises from both countries, especially U.S. enterprises willing to cooperate with and explore the Chinese market," he said.

Gao said China considered the U.S. investigations "unconstructive" and hoped the United States was protecting its businesses' interests long-term.

"Exercising trade protectionism is just like quenching a thirst with poison," he said.

"We always believe that the core of China-U.S. trade ties is mutually beneficial," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:27:23|Editor: liuxin

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NAIROBI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Members of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) said on Thursday that they are adopting environmentally friendly business practice geared toward green economy.

"Our members have started introducing innovative solutions that are aimed at protecting the environment," Peter Oloo, CEO of Social Enterprise Society of Kenya, which is a member of KEPSA, said in Nairobi during a conference on Kenya's pathway to a green economy.

Oloo observed that KEPSA members have no option but to embrace environmentally friendly business practice to boost Kenyan firms' profits.

He said the private sector was keen at preserving the environment and driving sustainable economic growth, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Kenya stepped up measures towards the promotion of sustainable business practices including the banning of plastic bags use in the country.

The country has also launched a Green Economy Strategy, outlining the steps that the country plans to take in reducing production of carbon emissions.

Oloo noted that KEPSA has stepped up measures to boost private sector participation in environmental protection, such as the plastic bags ban earlier in the year.

He said the private sector are fully engaged in minimizing the ecological foot print by embracing innovative environmentally friendly options.

German and Kenyan experts have been discussing how businesses in Kenya can boost environmental protection and have identified opportunities for partnerships between new business environments and the established private sector.

"Climate change and the recent resolutions at the just ended Third Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly can only be achieved through green economy," said Michael Derus, Deputy Ambassador and Head of Economic Affairs at the Germany embassy in Kenya.

Derus said there is need to create awareness on environmental conservation in order to meet the global demand in meeting climate change and ending pollution.

"The country requires sustainable initiatives that support policy dialogues for both public and private sector to promote sustainable growth," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:47:36|Editor: Zhou Xin

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KAMPALA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of Ugandan peacekeeping troops withdrawing from Somalia have arrived home, a military spokesman said here on Thursday.

Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, Ugandan deputy army spokesman, told Xinhua in an interview that the troops who have been serving under African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) began trickling back home in small batches on Wednesday.

"The troops are coming in batches and rotational exercise. We expect the exercise to be complete in about two to three weeks time," said Akiiki.

Uganda on Monday announced the withdrawal of 281 peacekeepers as part of condition-based drawdown of its over 6,000 troops deployed in the Horn of Africa country.

Uganda's phased withdrawal of its peacekeepers from the 22,000 strong regional force is in compliance with the African Union and United Nations approved reduction of 1,000 uniformed personnel of AMISOM by the Dec. 31 deadline.

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.

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.

AMISOM is comprised of troops drawn from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

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| 2017-12-07 22:52:40|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China and the Maldives agreed to strengthen cooperation on tourism, as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with the Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom in Beijing Thursday.

"China has been the Maldives' biggest source of tourists for seven consecutive years, and there is huge potential for more cooperation," Li said.

He said he hoped that the Maldives would offer more conveniences to Chinese tourists, and that both countries could discuss cooperation and share their experiences in developing tourism.

"Chinese people see the Maldives as a travel destination, and we support that since it will promote people-to-people exchanges and consolidate the two peoples' friendship," Li said.

He also called for stronger cooperation on infrastructure, civilian aviation, economy and trade, maritime research and climate change.

"China is pleased to see an increasing number of outcomes that the Maldives achieved through aligning the two countries' development strategies," the premier said.

Li spoke highly of the relations between the two countries, which was elevated to a forward-looking, comprehensive and friendly partnership of cooperation in 2014.

"China supports the Maldives' efforts in safeguarding its independence of sovereignty and its development rights and interests, and is willing to step up high-level exchanges, deepen all-round cooperation, and further boost ties, on the basis of mutual respect and equality," Li said.

Yameen said he was grateful for China's assistance to his country's economic and social development, and praised China's efforts to cope with climate change.

He said the two countries have had a very close and friendly relationship since bilateral diplomatic ties were established 45 years ago. Praising bilateral relationship as a "model" of country-to-country relations, he said bilateral ties have developed even rapidly in recent years.

"The Maldives is willing to respect China's core interests, strengthen cooperation with China in tourism, civil aviation and infrastructure, and expand people-to-people exchanges to further strengthen ties on the basis of equality and mutual respect," Yameen said.
Armed militants belonging to Fatah hold their weapons as they take part in a protest against a possible move by the U.S. to change the status quo of Jerusalem in Gaza City, Dec. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations (UN) Security Council will convene an emergency session Friday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, according to the French mission to the UN.

"France, together with Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, UK & Uruguay, has requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council on #Jerusalem," the French mission to the UN tweeted on Wednesday.

Aymeric Chuzeville, spokesman for the French delegation, confirmed in a separate tweet that the meeting was scheduled for Friday morning.

The Bolivian mission to the UN also confirmed the request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

France is a staunch opponent of U.S. decision on Jerusalem, which was announced by Trump earlier Wednesday. The French Foreign Ministry quoted President Emmanuel Macron as saying that Paris supports the two-state solution that calls on Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security, with Jerusalem being the capital of both states.

"We must prefer appeasement and dialogue," the president was quoted as saying.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. permanent representative to the UN, hailed Trump's decision as "courageous and historic."

"For 22 years, there has been an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to its rightful place in the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem. Today, the president took a courageous and historic step that was long overdue," the envoy said in a statement.

"Across the globe, America has its embassy in the capital city of the host country. Israel will now be no different. It is the just and right thing to do," she added.

The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Palestinians regard East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, as the capital of their future state.

The status of Jerusalem as a whole has long remained an unresolved issue. It is feared that Trump's decision may trigger violence in the Middle East.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 22:57:43|Editor: yan

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ADEN, Yemen, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Forces loyal to Yemen's internationally-backed government militarily advanced on Thursday and seized a Red Sea district from the Shiite Houthi rebels in the western port city of Hodeidah, an army commander told Xinhua.

The government forces covered by airstrikes from the Saudi-led warplanes entered the Khokha district on the Red Sea coast, 122km south of Hodeidah province for the first time since the eruption of the war in the country.

According to the army commander, who declined to be named, warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition heavily backed the anti-Houthi forces during their advancement on the ground and launched a series of airstrikes on the rebels' locations.

The source said that more than 31 fighters of the Iranian-backed Houthi militias were caught by the government forces, and 20 others were killed during the ongoing military offensive in Khokha district.

Fighters of the anti-Houthi southern resistance were involved in the all-out military campaign in Khokha in addition to the joining of two battalions of the Republican Guard Forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who was killed by Houthis on Monday.

Yemeni activists posted several videos and pictures on social media and claimed that the pro-government forces managed to take control of Khokha this morning.

A military expert told Xinhua that the government forces are apparently determined to liberate all the areas of the strategic port province of Hodeidah from the control of the Houthi militias in the next days.

In recent days, the Houthi rebels are facing a huge pressure after losing their powerful ally Saleh. Saleh's forces will no longer engage in battles with Houthis, but they will be part of the Saudi-backed Yemeni troops.

Three days ago, Yemen's Saudi-backed President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi ordered the newly-recruited armed forces to prepare a military plan and advance into the Houthi-controlled capital of Sanaa.

Yemen's Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr announced that President Hadi will issue a general pardon to all those who participated in the Houthis and then cut their ties.

A number of battalions of the elite Republican Guard Forces started to join with Saudi-backed government forces and vowed to engage in the fighting against Houthis to take revenge for their late leader Saleh.

Ferocious street fightings took place between the two former allies in Yemen, the Houthis and the forces of Saleh, killing and injuring hundreds of people in Sanaa.

The Houthis declared victory after killing Saleh along with a number of high-ranking politicians of his party (the General People's Congress GPC) in addition to arresting hundreds of commanders allied with Saleh.

The new round of fighting caused an aggravation of the world's worst humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Arab country.

Around 23 million out of 27 million Yemenis now live in the Houthi-run northern regions. Many fear that the fighting result in massive civilian casualties in Sanaa.

Yemen, which is also plagued by a severe cholera epidemic, is now coping with the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe as more than two thirds of the population need humanitarian assistance, the UN says.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:02:47|Editor: yan

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ZHENGZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-one people have been jailed for their roles in a fire at a private nursing home in central China's Henan Province that killed 39 elderly people.

Three courts in Pingdingshan city, including Lushan County People's Court, gave their rulings Thursday.

Fan Huazhi, legal representative of the Kangleyuan Nursing Home in Lushan County, which had been illegally extended, received a prison term of nine years, according to court verdict.

Contractor Feng Chunjie, who did not have the appropriate work certificate and used flammable materials on the extension, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

The other defendants, including nursing home managers, firefighting officers and related government workers, received jail terms ranging from two-and-a-half to eight years.

The fire broke out at the nursing home on May 25, 2015, killing 39 and injuring another six. Direct economic losses reached 20.6 million yuan (3.11 million U.S. dollars).
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:17:52|Editor: yan

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SOFIA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A high-level conference on the regional integration of the Western Balkans was held on Thursday, organized by Bulgaria and the World Bank in a bid to tap the economic potential of this European region.

"All Balkan countries should be like the fingers of the hands -- every finger is important, no matter how big it is," Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said at a joint press conference during the event.

"We have to be together," Borissov said.

The countries in the region had to convince Brussels that they could bring prosperity, not problems, added Borissov, whose country will chair the Council of the European Union (EU) in the first half of 2018.

Political leaders such as Montenegrin president and the prime ministers of Albania, Serbia, and Macedonia attended the conference.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said that the leaders of the countries in the region were on the right track to prove that the Balkans can look and work much differently from the past.

"I think that the region is coming together in a way that has not been seen in the past. It is very positive," she said.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama echoed that just three years ago, this process of regional cooperation in the spirit and vision of the European model had seemed impossible.

European aspiration of their peoples has brought together all the leaders of the Western Balkans in this process of standing together for integration and interacting together for common challenges and goals, Rama said.

Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank chief executive officer, said that there was enormous potential in the integration of the Western Balkans.

With regard to transport links, the movement of goods and people in the Balkans should be accelerated by building a quality infrastructure and the implementation of smart technologies, Georgieva said.

The World Bank in particular was ready to finance a trade and transport project worth 150 to 200 million U.S. dollars that would help the countries in the region to remove the existing obstacles, she said.

EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn, who also attended the event, said that in the last 10 years, trade between countries of the region and the EU had doubled, but the trade within the region hadn't increased.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:27:57|Editor: yan

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HONG KONG, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong launched its annual Business of Design Week (BODW) on Thursday to promote itself as a "launching pad" for international design in the promising Asian market.

"Hong Kong could be a very good platform for Swedish design, and a launching pad for Swedish design in this part of the world," Yau Tang-wah, secretary for commerce and economic development of the government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), said as he, together with Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, revealed the Swedish pavilion at the BODW.

The BODW, an annual international event held by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council since 2004, "demonstrates that Hong Kong is in fact very eager to present ourselves not just as a center of design but also as the marketplace and the international center for design ideas," Yau said.

"We need meeting of ideas and concepts in a conducive environment that could promote the crystalization of ideas, so nothing is better than having the international (design) community being present in Hong Kong."

About a dozen design companies exhibited their works or products at the Swedish pavilion, which was described by Prince Carl Philip as a showcase of "the very best that Sweden has to offer".

"Sweden has a long and proud tradition in design, in everything from daily products to industrial design. Hong Kong is one of the major design centers globally, with BODW being one of the world's foremost design events," the prince said, hoping "the pavilion would be the meeting place and starting point for further cooperation between Hong Kong and Sweden."

Besides Sweden, several more countries that are good at design, including Italy, Japan and Australia, were also present at the event, displaying their latest works and products.

Hong Kong is a "super good place for business (because) it's easy to connect here," one of the exhibitor, Jenny Myrberg Gip, told Xinhua.

The partner of Swedish company Soderberg Agentur, who moved to Hong Kong three years ago and expanded her business here, said she regards Asia as "the new future" for the design industry.

"The Scadinavian market has not yet understood that, because we have very much focused on the United States... but from now on I think we start to understand that Asia is the future. We have to focus more on that."

Ulrika Cederskog-Sundling, executive vice president of Business Sweden, also pointed out that Asia, with a population of over 4 billion, a fast-growing middle class and its GDP as a large portion of the global total, means huge business opportunities for the international design industry, while Hong Kong plays the role of a gateway to this promising area.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:38:01|Editor: yan

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MADRID, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The cabinet of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Thursday confirmed Supreme Court Judge Julian Sanchez Melgar as the new attorney general to succeed Jose Manuel Masa, who died on Nov. 18 on a visit to Buenos Aires.

Melgar will take up office on Monday after receiving the necessary paperwork, a government spokesman said following Thursday's cabinet meeting.

Melgar, 62, is considered to be a conservative and was part of the body of judges that accepted the denouncement of the Catalan regional assembly made by his predecessor for permitting a vote on a unilateral declaration of independence for the region.

He has promised a "serene, yet proportionate response" if "acts of disobedience to the courts or against the Spanish Constitution" are repeated in Catalonia.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:43:03|Editor: Lifang

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Chinese PresidentXi Jinping(2nd R) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st R) pose for group photos with Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom (2nd L) and his wife at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 7, 2017. Xi held talks with Yameen in Beijing on Thursday. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China and the Maldives Thursday agreed to jointly promote the Belt and Road Initiative to energize bilateral ties.

The consensus was reached during talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives, held at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

The two presidents witnessed the signing of 12 agreements, including a memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road construction, a free trade agreement and agreements on the economy, human resources, oceans, environment, health care and finance.

Xi told Yameen that the Belt and Road Initiative squares with the development strategies of the Maldives.

He said China regards the Maldives as an important partner in the construction of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

"China is willing to dovetail the development strategies with the Maldives and share opportunities to realize common prosperity," Xi said.

Proposed by Xi in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Yameen is the first president of an Asian country to visit China since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in October.

Xi said the bilateral relationship has entered a fast-track in recent years as the two countries established a comprehensive forward-looking partnership.

He called for senior contact and policy communication to develop bilateral ties.

The Chinese president also encouraged the two sides to share their experience in state governance and promote exchanges between government departments, political parties, legislative bodies and judicial organs.

He said the two countries should jointly crack down on crime, terrorism and drug trafficking, while expanding exchanges and cooperation in tourism, culture, education, health care and at local levels.

"China stands ready to work with the Maldives to jointly deal with climate change to realize green, low-carbon and sustainable development," Xi said.

He said he hoped the Maldives would continue to support China's cooperation with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

Yameen congratulated Xi on the success of the 19th CPC National Congress and his re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

He said he believed that the Chinese people will achieve their two centennial goals.

Yameen said the Maldives viewed China as "amongst our closest friends, most trusted and most dependable partners."

He said Xi's visit to the Maldives in 2014 brought bilateral ties to a new level and that he appreciated China for its strong support.

"The Belt and Road Initiative has greatly helped the development of many small and medium countries," he said.

Yameen said the Maldives adhered to the one-China policy.

"On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of forging diplomatic ties, the Maldives is willing to deepen friendship and consolidate bilateral cooperation on infrastructure construction and in areas important to people's livelihood," Yameen said. "The Maldives looks forward to seeing China play a bigger role in international affairs and is ready to enhance coordination with China in this area."

Prior to the talks, Xi held a red-carpet welcoming ceremony for Yameen, who is here for a state visit from Wednesday to Saturday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:43:04|Editor: Zhou Xin

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WINDHOEK, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Namibia has condemned the decision by the Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital city and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Namibian International relations minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah on Thursday described the move as a big step backwards on the two-state solution which is the only viable option in the pursuit of peace between Palestine, Israel and the entire region.

Nandi-Ndaitwah also said Namibia "unequivocally reaffirms its unflinching support for the U.N General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions, 181 (1947) and 242 (1967) that recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of both Palestine and Israel based on the 1967 lines."

"The recognition by the Trump Administration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is a flagrant violation of the 1993 Oslo Agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the State of Israel," the minister said.

Furthermore, the minister said that the U.S. administration's move undermines the prospects of a viable two-state solution and can ignite the conflict that had ravaged the Palestinian and Israeli peoples since 1948 when the State of Israel was created.

She reiterated Namibia's position that Jerusalem remains the internationally recognized capital of the two states, and that freedom of access to the holy sites should be protected and assured.

"Jerusalem is the most sensitive place in Palestine. The holy sites that are sacred to billions of people of different faiths around the world must remain accessible to all," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:48:06|Editor: yan

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by Osama Radi, Emad Drimly

RAMALLAH, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian political analysts agreed that the United States had ended its role of sponsor in the Mideast peace process, after U.S. President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump announced on Wednesday the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his intention of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The declaration serves "the interest of the United States and the peace between Israel and the Palestinians," said the U.S. president.

Following his speech, Trump signed a presidential decree to transfer the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move the Palestinians strongly rejected.

"The decree represents a declaration that the United States will withdraw from its role of sponsoring peace," said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The U.S. decision demonstrated Washington's lack of integrity and its biased stand in favor of Israel in the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli issue, agreed the experts.

On the other hand, the U.S. announcement provided an opportunity to break the historical "monopoly of sponsorship of the Palestinian-Israeli resolution," they added.

"Trump's speech showed that his administration no longer adheres to the U.S. traditional position on the Palestinian-Israeli issue," said Hani al-Masri, a Ramallah-based writer and political analyst.

He said that Trump's administration witnessed a shift of the U.S. role from a traditional ally of Israel to Israeli "full accomplice" in terms of the occupation of the Palestinian territories and "colonization of the Palestinian people."

The U.S. move would not change the "international legitimacy of Jerusalem as occupied territory," but would trigger fierce reactions from the Palestinians and the Arab and Islamic world, he added.

Masri also said that the Palestinians wanted to "create a new path different from the one they had followed before the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993, with their ceiling already low, which is based on a path that depends on the Palestinian people and the justice of their cause."

The political analyst stressed that the United States must "withdraw from being a mediator and a sponsor of the so-called peace process," calling on the Palestinian mission to retreat from Washington before Trump takes back the decision.

He also suggested the Palestinians complain to the UN Security Council to veto against the U.S. move which violated the international law and the UN resolutions.

The Palestinians have long been eager to establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as their capital, while Israel insists that Jerusalem is its eternal capital.

The international community does not recognize the holy city as the capital of Israel and has condemned Israel's occupation of the city.

Jerusalem is one of the ultimate questions for the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which had been stalled since 2014 after nine months of U.S.-sponsored talks without generating any tangible results.

Muhammad Abdul Hamid, another Ramallah-based political analyst, said that Trump's decision on Jerusalem was a turning point in the Mideast peace process.

"Trump's position undermines any actual U.S. balance in favor of the peace process because it recognized the occupation and annexation of Jerusalem and there is no point of establishing a Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

He pointed out that "the origin of Trump's position is the U.S. Congress resolution of 1995, which called for the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a resolution lacking any legal justification."

"He ignored the legal basis of dozens of international resolutions that no country has the right to occupy the territory of others forcibly, and the right to transfer its population to it, and it has no right to change its features, annex it or steal its resources," Abdul Hamid added.

Trump, who took office early this year, pledged to continue his country's sponsorship of the peace process, but has yet to announce any practical mechanisms for such a move and failed to stick to the traditional position on a two-state solution.

"The U.S. decision on Jerusalem eliminated any opportunity to find a peace process sponsored by Washington, and confirms that the U.S. ideas, prepared for several months, do not work," said Ghassan al-Khatib, a political science professor at Birzeit University in Ramallah.

Khatib stressed that it was natural that any initiative in the peace process proposed under bias would fail, to relocate the U.S. embassy and to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel's capital are to prejudge one of the ultimate questions of the issue.

The Palestinian academic called for the internationalization of the peace process and the involvement of other players such as Russia and the European Union, in an attempt to push for a real solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to establish peace and security in the Middle East.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:53:08|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Libya's eastern-based House of Representatives (parliament) on Thursday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's decision of recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital and moving U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The House of Representatives strongly condemns the announcement of U.S. President Donald Trump regarding recognizing the occupied Jerusalem as capital of the Zionist entity and moving his country's embassy to the Arab Jerusalem, thus violating all international conventions and efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue," the parliament said in a statement.

"The parliament stresses the importance of preserving holy places and keenness not to undermine efforts for calm and peace in the region and the whole world. The parliament also rejects all that damages feelings of Muslims in the world, and (confirms) the historic right that proves that Jerusalem is Arabic," the statement added.

It demanded the UN and the international community to "reject this decision, in respect of the United Nations charters and international laws and norms."

In a speech from the White House on Wednesday, Trump announced the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered to start immediately the process of relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Trump's controversial move is expected to enrage the Muslim world, which has already warned of serious consequences.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:53:09|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan judiciary on Thursday welcomed the election of Justice Solomy Balungi Bossa to serve at the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague, Netherlands

Justice Mike Chibita, Director of Public Prosecutions, told Xinhua in an interview that the Tuesday election of Balungi elevates Uganda's status in international law and confidence on its judiciary.

Balungi was elected at the ongoing 16th session of the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

"It is a vote of confidence in the Ugandan judiciary and a recognition of the professionalism and role in ICC and international law in general," said Chibita.

Balungi joins other five new judges from Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Western Europe elected on Tuesday to fill vacancies on the 18-member ICC.

The candidates to serve at the court are required to have "established competence" in criminal law and procedures or in areas of international law, such as human rights law and humanitarian law.

Uganda in February nominated Justice Balungi whose judicial and legal work spans almost three decades for being a highly accomplished judge at the national, regional and international level.

The ICC was created by the 2002 Rome Statute as an independent and permanent court to try persons accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:58:12|Editor: Zhou Xin

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BANGKOK, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank on Thursday called for a policy agenda for inclusive growth that can constitute a new social contract for governments across the region.

In its latest report "Riding the Wave: an East Asian miracle for the 21st century", the World Bank classifies China and Vietnam as "Out-of-Poverty-into Prosperity", Malaysia and Thailand as "Progressive Prosperity", Indonesia, the Philippines, and Cambodia as "Out-of-Extreme-Poverty", while Laos and Papua New Guinea as "lagging progress" countries with still high levels of poverty.

The report recommended "Growth that is inclusive - one that reduces poverty while providing upward mobility and economic security for all - will require countries to go beyond its successful "growth with equity" model.

"Prospects for upward mobility are seen as increasingly elusive, reflecting a sense that income and wealth are becoming more concentrated while access to basic social services remains limited and often of poor quality," the report said.

"Achieving economic security for all is more difficult, particularly as the region faces newer challenges: rapid aging, less certain growth prospects, and greater urbanization."

However, "Inequality" remains a growing concern as stated in the report. "In Indonesia, almost 90 percent of the population thinks it is urgent to address inequality, while eight in 10 urban residents of Vietnam worry about disparities in living standards."

The World Bank report suggested three pillars that can underpin the policy agenda including fostering economic mobility, providing greater economic security and strengthening institutions.

Sudhir Shetty, World Bank chief economist for the East Asia and Pacific region, suggested that the economic miracle in China over the past 20 years can be emulated by regions in the Asia Pacific.

"China's biggest resource has always been in its people, the size of its population and the massive land space China has," said Sudhir. "The one thing that other countries may want to learn from China's economic success is China's exports, and the government's ability to put all exporters at equal footings."

The report suggested that measures to alleviate extreme poverty in Laos and Papua New Guinea will require investing in basic education and promoting financial inclusion while also strengthening social assistance and resilience.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-07 23:58:14|Editor: yan

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VIENNA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said here on Thursday that President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital follows the will of the Americans.

"The president is simply carrying out the will of the American people," Rex Tillerson told a news conference with Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz in Vienna.

Tillerson started his 3-day trips in Europe, joining the OSCE ministerial conference held in Vienna.

However, EU leaders and diplomats have said that Jerusalem's status should be decided through talks.

Sebastian Kurz said concerned parties should do everything possible to prevent escalation of the situation.

President Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Although the U.S. Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former U.S. presidents consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.

The Palestinian authorities have reiterated their stance that there will be no sovereign state of Palestine without East Jerusalem as its capital.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries base their embassies in the city.

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 its united capital.

The move was never recognized by the international community, including Israel's closest ally, the United States. The Palestinians see eastern Jerusalem as the future capital of their state.

Jerusalem is home to sites holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, making it a focal point for many people around the globe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 00:08:17|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Thursday expressed grave concern about reports of migrants being sold into slavery in Libya.

"The Security Council condemns such actions as heinous abuses of human rights which may also amount to crimes against humanity," said a statement of the council president.

The Security Council called on all relevant authorities to investigate such activities without delay to bring the perpetrators to justice and hold those responsible to account, said the statement.

The council also reiterated concern about the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons and welcomed the work of the UN Support Mission in Libya in coordinating and supporting the provision of humanitarian assistance for refugees and migrants.

The council emphasized that all migrants should be treated with humanity and dignity and that their rights should be fully respected, and urged the Libyan authorities and all UN member states to comply with their obligations under international law, including international human rights law and international refugee law.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 00:23:21|Editor: ZD

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Security personnel stand guard as officials from election commission count votes, a day after the final round of the parliamentary and provincial elections in Kathmandu, Nepal, Dec. 8, 2017. The second and the final phase of the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections were held in Nepal on Thursday, a crucial step to implement the milestone new constitution promulgated in September 2015. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)

KATHMANDU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The second and the final phase of the parliamentary and provincial assembly elections were held in Nepal on Thursday, a crucial step to implement the milestone new constitution promulgated in September 2015.

Over 12 million Nepalese took part in the one-day election held in 45 districts of the southern plains and low hill areas including Kathmandu to elect 128 lawmakers.

Voters' turnout in Thursday's election was around 67 percent, according to the Election Commission.

"We are happy to note that the second and the final round of parliament and provincial assembly elections were held successfully in a very peaceful manner with the encouraging number of people who voted for their candidates with full of enthusiasm," Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav told media here.

The 165 directly-elected lawmakers will enter Nepal's 275-member parliament, with the remaining 110 lawmakers to be selected later with the proportion depending on the percentage of votes each political party wins.

Nepalese on Thursday also voted to elect 330 candidates to form provincial assemblies in seven provinces, while another 220 provincial lawmakers will be elected later.

The Nepalese army and police guarded the polling centers while public and private vehicles were banned from the streets during the polling.

As many as 702 candidates contested in the two-phase elections. Vote counting started in most of the parts from Thursday evening.

Sharma Oli, CPN UML chairman and also former prime minister, told Xinhua after casting his vote in Bhaktapur "This election is very important for the Nepalese politics, particularly to ending transitional phase, bringing stability and moving toward the direction of economic development and prosperity".
(From L to R) Mitchel B. Wallerstein, president of Baruch College, Jiang Feng, chairman of Shanghai International Studies University Council, Xinwei Sun, Chinese director of Confucius Institute for Global Finance, and Matthew LePere, American Director of Confucius Institute for Global Finance, pose for photos during the launching ceremony of Confucius Institute for Global Finance in Baruch College in New York, the United States, Dec. 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Confucius Institute for Global Finance, the first of its kind in the United States, was launched on Wednesday in New York City.

The institute is an extra-curricular, non-degree educational collaboration between Baruch College, Shanghai International Studies University and China's Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban).

It aims to further U.S. students' and business executives' understanding of China and the integral role it plays in the worldwide financial system. It will also provide Chinese students and business people with a better understanding of the United States and global financial markets.

Mitchel B. Wallerstein, president of Baruch College, said there is a growing need among U.S. students and businessmen for Chinese language and culture learning as China rises.

"China is an important political and economic power - not just in Asia but throughout the world," said Wallerstein.

He added that with the establishment of the Confucius Institute, the college wishes to provide all its students with a global perspective on world affairs and a critical awareness of the political and ethical issues the world faces today.

Beginning in the spring of 2018, the institute will offer Chinese language classes, cultural workshops, and global finance seminars. Plans are underway to expand the programs to alumni and New York city residents in the near future.

Jiang Feng, chairman of Shanghai International Studies University Council, said the newly-launched institute will be a great platform for both colleges to deepen cooperation and further academic exchanges.

The Confucius Institute program began in 2004. There are currently 110 Confucius Institutes in the United States. The first one was established at the University of Maryland. By the end of 2016, China has set up more than 500 Confucius Institutes in about 130 countries and regions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 00:53:30|Editor: yan

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THE HAGUE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Elion Resources Group, a UN-awarded Chinese leading actor in ecological restoration, and Verhoeve Environment & Water, a Dutch leading company in soil and water quality care, signed an acquisition agreement on Thursday to join hands in building a healthier environment.

Elion will become the largest shareholder of Verhoeve and the deal will be materialized in coming months. Both companies refused to disclose details of the acquisition agreement.

"Verhoeve has world-leading technologies in soil and water restoration, which are highly needed in the Chinese market. I'm confident that our joining hands will help meet environmental challenges facing China, and also contribute to global efforts on building a more sustainable earth," said Wang Wenbiao, president of Elion.

Elion has won global reputation for its three-decade long efforts at tackling environmental degradation and boosting livelihoods in Inner Mongolia's Kubuqi Desert, around 18,600 sq km of sand dunes that plunge south in an arc from China's Yellow River.

In 2013 Elion won the Global Dryland Champion Award, a prize given out by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Earlier this week, Wang was honoured the Champion of the Earth award during the UN Environment Assembly.

Verhoeve is an Dutch innovative contractor founded in 1987. "Based on our experience on soil remediation and water treatment we would like to explore the Chinese market better, with help from Elion," Art Lobs, its general director told Xinhua.

"This cooperation is a first stage to explore each other and to explore markets, maybe it can grow to something more," he added.

With some 60 employees, Verhoeve accomplishes 50 to 60 projects every year. In one of its latest ambitious projects, the company teams with Royal Dutch Gunpowder Factory to restore an abandoned woodland containing many inheritances in the soil of the industrial past since the late 19th century where powders and explosives were produced.

On the same day, Elion announced the setup of its European platform in the Netherlands. This "ecological innovative center" will focus on learning from European advanced technology and innovation in ecological sector and seeking opportunities of investment and cooperation, according to Elion.

Jaap Smit, Governor of the Province of Zuid-Holland, and Wu Ken, China's Ambassador to the Netherlands, attended the signing ceremony.

"Half a year ago I had the opportunity to visit Elion in China, and I have to say I am still impressed. Elion Resources Group is a strong and innovative company working on sustainability and making this world a better place to live in. I am glad that you have decided to open Elion European Centre in South-Holland. This will broaden and deepen the cooperation between Elion and Dutch companies," said Smit.

The Chinese ambassador also hailed the Elion-Verhoeve deal as a "new case of win-win cooperation between Chinese and Dutch enterprises."

"China will not close its door to the world; we will only become more and more open," Wu stressed. "I wish that more Dutch entrepreneurs will seize the opportunities, keep pace with China's all-around opening and the international cooperation along the 'Belt and Road', and grow together the promising future of China and the Netherlands."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:03:35|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Martin Schulz, the party leader of the German Social Democrats (SPD), on Thursday called for the transformation of the European Union into a "United States of Europe" by 2025 with a common constitution.

"Europe is our life insurance," Schulz told an SPD party convention in Berlin.

Speaking before 600 delegates, Schulz has outlined a bold vision of European reform at the start of the three-day party conference of SPD.

He called for transforming the current European Union (EU) into the "United States of Europe" by 2025 and mechanisms to automatically exclude member states which failed to agree to a corresponding federal constitution.

"Let us finally muster the courage to advance the cause of Europe", Schulz urged.

"Our continent cannot afford another four years of German European policy a la Wolfgang Schaeuble", the former president of the European Parliament added.

According to Schulz, the SPD was tasked with proving itself as a political force which was capable of improving peoples' lives. Given the trans-national character of issues confronting policymakers, many of the necessary measures to achieve that objective could no longer be taken in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) or Chancellery alone.

"This is why we must strengthen Europe. Because it is Europe that can establish rules in globalization", Schulz said as he seconded proposals by French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission for the creation of an EU Finance Minister.

"People, Europe is our life insurance", the SPD leader added. The unabashedly pro-European comments are likely to be welcomed in Paris, where President Macron is counting on German support to advance his EU reform agenda.

Schulz opened his speech by personally-apologizing for his party's "bitter defeat" in September's federal elections. Slumping to a voter share of 20.5 percent, the SPD had achieved its worst ever electoral result in post-war Germany. The SPD leader asked for forgiveness from all those had placed their hopes in the party, only for these to be dashed.

However, Schulz also pointed out that September's elections already marked the fourth consecutive time that the SPD had shed voter support. He consequently demanded an "unsparing" examination of the party's trajectory over the past 20 years and a comprehensive re-haul of its strategy.

"We must develop a vision which enthrals people, a grand design for the country to demonstrate what social democracy stands for in the 21st century," The SPD leader told his delegates.

Schulz conciliatory words were reflective of his desire to secure backing from the SPD base for another term at its helm later today (CET). While he could not turn back the clock, he now wanted to "make a contribution as party leader" to ensure that the SPD improved its performance in the future and promised to attract more members to the party.

In spite of Schulz' emotional appeal on Thursday, the subjects of his own fate within the party and EU reform are widely-anticipated to be overshadowed by heated internal debate over whether the SPD should join the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) in a renewed "grand coalition" under the leadership of veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

Schulz had originally vowed to return with his party to the Bundestag's opposition benches but has since softened his stance in response to a dramatic intervention by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier following the collapse of "Jamaica" coalition negotiations.

While the SPD leadership already gave its seal of approval to exploratory talks over the formation of a new government with the CDU/CSU on Monday, it is still up to the party base to approve this recommendation at the ongoing Berlin conference.

Schulz praised the leadership resolution on Thursday as "leaving all options on the table and leaving all paths open." He voiced the opinion that the key question was not whether the SPD wanted to govern or not as a matter of principle, but what it could achieve in office.

Although the SPD had to "rise to its responsibility towards the next generation", Schulz gave his "guarantee" that there would be "no automatism" concerning how to move ahead. Some senior SPD members prefer lending their party's support to a minority government lead by CDU/CSU over the prospects of joining a coalition or re-elections.

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

Efforts to overcome such resistance will require a concerted effort by the party leadership surrounding Schulz and constitute a critical pre-condition to any realistic progress in European integration.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:03:37|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Six Al-Shabaab militants on Thursday surrendered to Somali forces following an increasing assault by the militants in southern regions of the country.

Al-Shabaab militants and their top officials are on the run from their hideouts after Somali National Army (SNA) backed by African Union peacekeeping forces and international partners have intensified the military operations against the group.

The militants, who were armed, surrendered to Somali national army and state forces in Dinsor district in Somalia's Bay region, which is located in the south west of the country.

"The six armed militants had weapons and one technical. They had travelled from Arabow where Al-Shabaab militants are hiding themselves," Dinsor Commissioner Ibrahim Mohamed Shigshigow told journalists.

Somali forces backed by African Union troops have been conducting operations in Lower Shabelle region pushing the militants from their main strongholds.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:08:38|Editor: yan

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by Mahmoud Fouly, Zheng Kailun

CAIRO, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's giant Huawei corporation is helping promote innovation, digital transformation and Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based solutions that address most pressing problems in developing states including Egypt and North African countries.

At the Cairo ICT 2017 exposition concluded on Wednesday, Huawei attracted visitors and potential business partners alike with its innovated ICT solutions like "OpenLab" that cooperates with local markets and provides industry solutions to better meet business demands, and "Smart City" that pursues the conditions of the whole city through a large monitor to facilitate controlling and dealing with traffic congestions, crimes, accidents, etc.

The Chinese corporation also showcased at the exposition different creative applications related to e-learning and smart education, which are unconventional learning methods in the developing world in general and in the North African region in particular.

Ni Zheng, President of Huawei Northern Africa Region Enterprise Business group, said that Huawei cooperates with its partners through OpenLab to provide solution-development platform for industries of safe city, smart government, smart grid, smart education and so on.

"Based on the hardware platform, a soft service ability has been formed, aiming to providing industry solutions, integrating and verifying for solutions, deepening cooperation with channel and partners, and providing more training and cooperation resources to market," Ni told Xinhua on the sidelines of the Cairo ICT 2017, where Huawei announced launching OpenLab as a regional springboard in the Egyptian capital city.

"We plan to build Huawei Northern Africa OpenLab in northern region. We set up the OpenLab in Cairo, so that we can get some convenient conditions from Egypt and serve for the whole Northern Africa region," Ni added, noting that the ICT industry market in Egypt is relatively mature and Egypt is at its peak in industry digital transformation.

Huawei invests 2 million U.S. dollars in office space and equipment construction of OpenLab in an initial stage with a total area to reach over 1,000 square meters, starting in December with 400 square meters in the first phase to be open to customers and partners.

After operation of the OpenLab, more than 250 persons will receive ICT training and more than 60 persons will finish professional certification every year.

In July, a batch of 15 Egyptian students have graduated from Huawei's first ICT Academy in Egypt through a non-profit program that seeks to train ICT talents and promote the development and dissemination of ICT technologies.

"Huawei has been working in Egypt for over 18 years and we are dedicated to one single goal: create value for our customers and the society. We have comprehensive cooperations with all the four major telecommunications services providers, through which we help Egypt update its telecommunications infrastructure," said Liu Dazhou, Huawei Egypt CEO.

Liu thinks that Egypt will be the hub for Huawei North African region, noting that Egypt's under-construction administrative capital city can be a good host of digital platform as a model for Egypt, which can be extended to other newly built cities nationwide, benefiting the government, the society and businesses.

"Digital transformation is underway in Egypt. Each government organization and company has its own plan and vision for it. As a multinational corporation, Huawei has gained plenty of expertise and solutions by working with partners in over 170 countries, which will be the most valuable thing we could offer Egypt," he told Xinhua while Huawei is opening its Northern Africa Innovation Day in Cairo.

Liu noted that most of Huawei's partners have recently started to provide the current generation of 4G services, which will be the cornerstone for the overall updating of Egypt's ICT industry.

One of Huawei's North African partners is Waycon, a Tunisian company offering innovative products in the field of electronic security and networks, whose business expanded beyond the Tunisian borders to operate in nearby Algeria and Morocco, with an eye on Egypt in the near future.

Karim Elleuch, Waycon owner, said that his company has been collaborating with Huewei for about three years, mixing his Waycon's software, expertise of the local market needs with Huawei's hardware solution to handle joint projects in Tunisia.

"Huawei is a giant, great technology company while we're a local company aware of our market and the areas that really need all these great ICT-based products created by Huawei. So, together we're really extremely complimentary, doing complete solutions that are very specific to the needs of the customers," Elleuch told Xinhua in Cairo.

As all advanced societies are moving toward digital transformation to improve services, save money and effort and generally changing people's life via smart ICT solutions varying from mobile payments to digital administration of entire cities, Africa and most developing states are still behind.

Huawei offers Egypt and Africa states cooperation to stay abreast of the latest smart city trends and technology, providing solutions to connect the digital and physical worlds across city administration, public services and industries, which are designed to benefit city residents and businesses in almost every aspect including transportation, education, healthcare, public security and more.

Abdoulkarim Soumaila, Secretary-General of the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), said that his union is privileged to be part of that innovation imitative launched by Huawei in the light of the ATU role to ensure the development of ICT in Africa.

"Innovation is the source of growth," ATU chief said during Huawei Northern Africa Innovation Day in Cairo, noting that improving ICT in Africa has various, very unique impacts on peoples' lives and businesses, becomes a source of inspiration for African young ICT talents and contributes to socioeconomic development in the continent.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:18:43|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A government report has found that the number of homeless people across the United States increased for the first time since 2010.

According to a recently-released report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there were roughly 554,000 homeless people across the country during local tallies conducted in January, up a little under 1 percent from 2010.

That put to an end six straight years of decline from 2010, when 637,000 Americans were homeless.

Of the latest count, 193,000 people had no access to nightly shelter and instead they were staying in vehicles, tents, the streets and other places defined as uninhabitable. The number of unsheltered population is up by nearly 10 percent compared to two years ago.

It also showed that the number of chronically homeless individuals, those who have been without home for at least a year, rose for the first time since 2008, which was over 12 percent higher than that of last year.

Homelessness went down in 30 states around the country, according to the report. But some states saw big increases in homeless population, including North Dakota, California, New Mexico and Vermont.

At least 10 city and county governments in the West Coast declared states of emergency in response to the explosion in homelessness. Much of that increases was attributed to soaring rents in places like Los Angeles and North Dakota.

"In many high-cost areas of our country, especially along the West Coast, the severe shortage of affordable housing is manifesting itself on our streets," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement.

"With rents rising faster than incomes, we need to bring everybody to the table to produce more affordable housing and ease the pressure that is forcing too many of our neighbors into our shelters and onto our streets," Carson suggested.

The overall homeless population in west states of California, Oregon and Washington increased by 14 percent over the past two years, of which the part considered unsheltered jumped by 23 percent to approach 110,000. A shortage of affordable housing was partially responsible.

In fast-growing Seattle, the unsheltered population grew by 44 percent to nearly 5,500 over the past two years.

One of the major consequences of the homeless explosion in the West Coast is a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that prompted California officials to declare a state of emergency two months ago.

Besides, in major cities, homelessness jumped by 5 percent in the last year, according to the HUD report.

In contrast, the HUD report revealed a long-running decline in homelessness continuing in most other regions.

The overall homeless figure was down by 13 percent on a national scale since 2010 and the unsheltered number has dropped by 17 percent over that seven-year span, although some changes in methodology and definitions over the years can affect comparisons.

Those places that saw a dwindling homelessness included Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami, the Denver area and Hawaii.

The annual HUD study is a point-in-time survey based on counts at shelters and on the streets. It does not take into account families and individuals who might experience homelessness at other times during the year.

Those who work regularly with the homeless said it is certainly an undercount, although many advocates and officials argued that the result correctly identifies trend lines.

The report, submitted to Congress, is used by government agencies as a factor in distributing resources for what's needed to address the crisis.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:18:44|Editor: yan

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PARIS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- France will host a ministerial meeting of the international support group for Lebanon on Dec. 8 as part of Paris diplomatic initiative to avoid a fresh political crisis in the country where a balance between minorities is already fragile, the foreign ministry announced on Thursday.

France, a traditional ally of Lebanon, invited the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the United Kingdom, China, Russia and the United States, in addition to representatives of the European Union, the Arab League, Italy and Germany, the Quai d'Orsay said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri will also attend the meeting. His resignation, last month, triggered a political crisis in Beirut that put the stability in the country and the whole region at risk.

"The purpose of this meeting is to allow the international community to reaffirm its support for Lebanon, its sovereignty, its stability and its security," the Quai d'Orsay added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:28:46|Editor: Chengcheng

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Palestinians take part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Dec. 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Stringer)

by Keren Setton, Chen Wenxian

JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian protestors in the West Bank clashed with Israeli soldiers on Thursday just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his country recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Clashes also erupted on the southern border with the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian residents who approached the fence with Israel were met with riot dispersals.

Israeli media reported dozens of Palestinians injured in those clashes.

A day before the weekly Muslim prayers on Friday, tensions are running high.

Israeli Channel 10 news said Thursday was just a "preview" for tomorrow, calling Friday "the big test."

The Israeli military announced it would be sending a number of battalions to the West Bank in order to increase the army presence in the area as part of "the readiness to possible developments."

The Israeli police was also expected to beef up its presence in the city, according to media reports.

Jerusalem's Old City, home to holy sites of Jews, Muslims and Christians, is expected to be the focal point of demonstrations.

Around 40 percent of the city's population are Palestinian residents without full rights under Israeli law.

In an interview with Xinhua, Raghad, a 21-year-old Palestinian girl who was one of the leaders in the protest in front of the Damascus Gate of the Old City, said Jerusalem belongs to Palestine and Palestinians would never accept this recognition.

Nardeen Mohammad, another young Palestinian activist who took part in the protests, also expressed his fury at Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"This is considered a defiance of all international laws that recognize Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories are under occupation. Making changes to it is considered a war crime," he said.

Speaking at a foreign ministry conference on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump, saying "it's about time" the U.S. embassy and others move to Jerusalem.

Israel is "already in contacts with other countries that will declare similar recognition," he added.

After his statement on Wednesday, Trump signed a waiver deferring the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem for another six months. The actual relocation is only planned in the coming years.

In response to his statement, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader in Gaza, called earlier on Thursday for a renewed armed uprising against Israel.

"Tomorrow will be a day of public anger and the launching of an uprising under the name of Intifada of Jerusalem Freedom," said Haniyeh.

Hamas is a militant organization responsible for many attacks which have killed hundreds of Israelis in recent years.

Meanwhile, there is a large consensus within Israel, both on the left and right sections of the political landscape, on the status of Jerusalem as the country's capital.

Yair Lapid, leader of Israel's opposition Yesh Atid Party, also endorsed Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in a rare speech supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.

"Policies should not be dictated by threats and intimidation. If violence is the only argument against moving the embassy to Jerusalem, then it only proves it is the right thing to do," he said.

Palestinians, however, see East Jerusalem as the future capital of their independent state. Trump's announcement is perceived as a major setback for their cause.

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council is expected to hold a discussion on the U.S. Jerusalem decision. This will largely be a symbolic move, as the U.S. is able to veto any resolution on the table.

According to several existing UN resolutions, the status of Jerusalem is to be determined by both Israelis and Palestinians through negotiations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:33:47|Editor: yan

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VIENNA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The differences between the United States and Russia are still great over the Ukrainian issue, as top diplomats from both countries kept their tough positions in a meeting here on Thursday.

During an OSCE ministerial meeting, U.S. State Secretary Rex Tillerson said Ukraine was the key obstacle in improving U.S. and Russia relations, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the violence in the eastern part of the state was entirely Ukraine's responsibility.

"It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us re-normalizing the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do," Tillerson said in a press meeting.

The U.S. top diplomat also said that the United States would not lift sanctions against Russia over the issue until the control of Crimea and Donbass region is returned to Kiev.

There was also a bilateral meeting between the two sides in Vienna, however, no progress was reported over the issue, nor was a joint statement from the two countries expected.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:38:49|Editor: yan

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PARIS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife will participate on Saturday in "a popular homage" to Johnny Hallyday, also called the "French Elvis" who died on Wednesday at 74, the president's office said on Thursday.

"The family and friends of Johnny Hallyday and the President have agreed that as a part of the popular homage," said the Elysee.

Hallyday died at the age of 74. He announced in March that he had been receiving treatment for cancer.

Influenced by Elvis Presley and the 1950s rock and roll revolution, Hallyday issued his first album in 1959 and became famous in the 1960s after performing local versions of rock standards and bringing U.S. music to the French public.

Over 1 million copies of his first album "Let's Twist again" have been sold and it was awarded a gold disc. Since then, he has sold more than 100 million albums over the decades.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:38:50|Editor: yan

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LONDON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A high-ranking British government official has voiced on Thursday his support for the building of UK's first public memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC).

It has been announced Thursday at a press conference that the memorial, launched by Ensuring We Remember campaign three years ago to pay tribute to the 96,000 Chinese labours who participated in the first World War in Europe, is to be constructed at a new business district on the northern side of the Royal Albert Dock in Newham, east London.

The 9.6-meter high monument is scheduled to be unveiled on Sept. 6, 2018.

Lord Bourne, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Faith, said at the press conference that he is delighted to see many people in Britain and China are contributing to the project.

"I couldn't be more pleased, on behalf of the government, to be welcoming and looking forward to seeing the monument to be built and opened soon next year," he told Xinhua.

He praised the Ensuring We Remember campaign as a great effort for the long overdue memorial to "the brave men who served in Chinese Labour Corps".

"They formed the largest contingent of workers recruited for the war effort, but too little is known of the dangerous yet essential work they carried out on the Western Front. They came to Britain's aid in her hour of need, so it's right that we remember and honour their contribution and within a year we will see what promises to be a magnificent addition to London's diverse cultural heritage sites," he noted.

Wholehearted support has also been received from Stephen Timms, local MP for East Ham, in which the memorial is now to be built. He has tabled on Thursday a motion in Parliament noting that the contribution made by the Chinese has yet to be fully recognised, and welcoming the building of the memorial at the Royal Albert Dock.

"It is regrettable that their toil and sacrifice were largely overlooked after the Great War, and have never properly been commemorated. A better tribute should be paid to their extraordinary contribution; their sacrifices helped deliver Britain's victory. I warmly welcome the planned permanent memorial in Royal Albert Dock," Timms said.

At the press conference, the Ensuring We Remember campaign signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese development company ABP London, who has set aside 100,000-pound budget to support the memorial's design, landscaping, lighting, foundation construction planning and licensing.

The monument, named Huabiao in Chinese, will face due east, directly towards Jinan, capital of Shandong Province from where the majority of labourers originated. At its base four photographs will be made into bas-relief carvings, depicting the journey, work and sacrifices of the Chinese workers.

Thomas Chan, who heads the campaign fundraising appeal, said,"After a hundred years it is time for all of us, young, old and from all backgrounds, to remember how these young men volunteered to come from China to assist Britain and her allies, and were part of the reason that peace was secured in Europe and the world."
Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz reacts as he delivers a speech at the headquarters of SPD in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 24, 2017.(Xinhua/Shan Yuqi)

BERLIN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Martin Schulz, the party leader of the German Social Democrats (SPD), on Thursday called for the transformation of the European Union into a "United States of Europe" by 2025 with a common constitution.

"Europe is our life insurance," Schulz told an SPD party convention in Berlin.

Speaking before 600 delegates, Schulz has outlined a bold vision of European reform at the start of the three-day party conference of SPD.

He called for transforming the current European Union (EU) into the "United States of Europe" by 2025 and mechanisms to automatically exclude member states which failed to agree to a corresponding federal constitution.

"Let us finally muster the courage to advance the cause of Europe", Schulz urged.

"Our continent cannot afford another four years of German European policy a la Wolfgang Schaeuble", the former president of the European Parliament added.

According to Schulz, the SPD was tasked with proving itself as a political force which was capable of improving peoples' lives. Given the trans-national character of issues confronting policymakers, many of the necessary measures to achieve that objective could no longer be taken in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) or Chancellery alone.

"This is why we must strengthen Europe. Because it is Europe that can establish rules in globalization," Schulz said as he seconded proposals by French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission for the creation of an EU Finance Minister.

"People, Europe is our life insurance," the SPD leader added. The unabashedly pro-European comments are likely to be welcomed in Paris, where President Macron is counting on German support to advance his EU reform agenda.

Schulz opened his speech by personally-apologizing for his party's "bitter defeat" in September's federal elections. Slumping to a voter share of 20.5 percent, the SPD had achieved its worst ever electoral result in post-war Germany. The SPD leader asked for forgiveness from all those had placed their hopes in the party, only for these to be dashed.

However, Schulz also pointed out that September's elections already marked the fourth consecutive time that the SPD had shed voter support. He consequently demanded an "unsparing" examination of the party's trajectory over the past 20 years and a comprehensive re-haul of its strategy.

"We must develop a vision which enthrals people, a grand design for the country to demonstrate what social democracy stands for in the 21st century," The SPD leader told his delegates.

Schulz conciliatory words were reflective of his desire to secure backing from the SPD base for another term at its helm later today (CET). While he could not turn back the clock, he now wanted to "make a contribution as party leader" to ensure that the SPD improved its performance in the future and promised to attract more members to the party.

In spite of Schulz' emotional appeal on Thursday, the subjects of his own fate within the party and EU reform are widely-anticipated to be overshadowed by heated internal debate over whether the SPD should join the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) in a renewed "grand coalition" under the leadership of veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

Schulz had originally vowed to return with his party to the Bundestag's opposition benches but has since softened his stance in response to a dramatic intervention by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier following the collapse of "Jamaica" coalition negotiations.

While the SPD leadership already gave its seal of approval to exploratory talks over the formation of a new government with the CDU/CSU on Monday, it is still up to the party base to approve this recommendation at the ongoing Berlin conference.

Schulz praised the leadership resolution on Thursday as "leaving all options on the table and leaving all paths open". He voiced the opinion that the key question was not whether the SPD wanted to govern or not as a matter of principle, but what it could achieve in office.

Although the SPD had to "rise to its responsibility towards the next generation", Schulz gave his "guarantee" that there would be "no automatism" concerning how to move ahead. Some senior SPD members prefer lending their party's support to a minority government lead by CDU/CSU over the prospects of joining a coalition or re-elections.

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

Efforts to overcome such resistance will require a concerted effort by the party leadership surrounding Schulz and constitute a critical pre-condition to any realistic progress in European integration.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:48:54|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital puts into question the credibility of the Middle East peace process, said the Swedish ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday.

That is why Sweden and seven other members of the Security Council have requested an emergency council meeting to discuss the issue, Olof Skoog, Sweden's permanent representative to the United Nations, told reporters.

"It would be very strange if the Security Council did not address it given the reactions that have come around the world," he said.

"To make this decision yesterday puts the credibility of that peace process a little bit into question. That is why we wanted to raise this in the Security Council to make sure we put it all back on track," he said.

The timing and the substance of the Trump decision is "very unfortunate," especially when tensions in the region are already high, said the ambassador.

A Security Council meeting with a briefing by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could help to clarify issues and put into context a renewed effort to find a peaceful solution and a two-state solution, he said.

Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, together with Bolivia, Egypt, Senegal and Uruguay, requested the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, which was scheduled for Friday.

Jonathan Allen, Britain's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said his country had urged the United States to bring forward its proposals on the Middle East peace process as soon as possible after Trump's announcement.

London has made it clear that it does not agree with the Trump decision, which is not a helpful move at this stage, Allen told reporters.

Trump's announcement on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital has triggered widespread criticism and worries across the world as it is generally believed that the move would destabilize the region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 01:53:57|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani said on Thursday that the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has crossed the "red line."

The status quo of the holy city is "a red line that cannot be crossed," El Othmani said during the weekly cabinet meeting, adding that the U.S. decision goes "against resolutions of international legitimacy."

He also reaffirmed his country's robust support for the Palestinian cause of establishing an independent state.

Morocco "has been and will always be a defender of the rights of the Palestinian people in their struggle to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as the capital," the prime minister said.

According to El Othmani, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, in his capacity as the chairman of the Al-Quds Committee (Jerusalem Committee), had sent a message to U.S. President Donald Trump to warn against the serious consequences of his decision on Jerusalem.

The Moroccan foreign ministry summoned U.S. charge d'affaires and the ambassadors of Russia, China, France and Britain to inform them of Morocco's stance on the issue of Jerusalem, in the presence of Palestine's ambassador to Morocco, El Othmani noted.

This approach, he said, reflects the commitment of the kingdom to supporting the Palestinian people in establishing an independent state with Jerusalem as the capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:04:02|Editor: yan

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LONDON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- One of Britain's leading public schools, Westminster School, unveiled Thursday plans to open six branch schools in China by 2028.

The school signed the agreement Thursday with a Hong Kong education group called HKMETG. The two parts agreed to create branches in six major Chinese cities, with the first to open in Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, in 2020.

According to the school spokeswoman, the new bilingual schools in China will teach pupils aged six to 15 China's national curriculum rather than an international syllabus, but "augmented by aspects of a Westminster curriculum".

For 16 to 18-year-old students, the new schools in China would offer English curriculum to prepare the pupils for the international GCSE examinations as well as English A-levels.

"The reason for opening the schools is that we're quite excited about being able to influence education of Chinese pupils in China," the spokeswoman for Westminster school was quoted by the Financial Times as saying.

Westminster's head, Patrick Derham, said the partnership with China would deepen a "cultural collaboration."

British media called this move "one of the biggest expansions of a UK school brand into China," as a number of other private schools have opened schools in China, including Harrow, Dulwich College, Malvern and Wellington College.

Westminster says the income from the Chinese deal will fund bursaries for disadvantaged students in London.

Westminster School was founded in 1179. Its notable former pupils include many Nobel Prize winners, well-known authors, artists and politicians.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:09:07|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Embassy to Morocco warned Thursday American citizens of potential demonstrations in the country after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel a day ago.

In a statement posted on its website, the embassy said the decision "may spark protests, some of which have the potential to become violent."

The embassy also reminded U.S. citizens of the need for caution and awareness of personal security, and to avoid areas of demonstrations.

Some Moroccan non-government organizations have called for a national rally on Sunday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:09:08|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 9.7 million tourists visited Morocco between January and October 2017, up 9 percent compared to a year earlier, according to the statistics released by Tourism Ministry on Thursday.

International tourist arrivals jumped 14 percent, while Moroccans living abroad visiting their homeland rose 5 percent, the ministry said.

Arrivals from the traditional European markets showed an increase of 14 percent in German tourists, 8 percent in Dutch tourists and 7 percent in French tourists.

The increase was also driven by the surge in the emerging tourist markets, especially China and Brazil. Chinese arrivals jumped 203 percent, while Brazilian visitors rose 51 percent.

A total of 10.3 million tourists visited Morocco in 2016, up 1.5 percent from 2015.

Morocco expects tourist arrivals to grow at least 6 percent in 2017.
Photo taken on May 12, 2017 shows a finished office building in the Belarus-China industrial park Great Stone near Minsk, capital of Belarus. (Xinhua/Wei Zhongjie)

MINSK, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank forecasts Belarus' economy growth at 2.1 percent in 2018, World Bank experts told local media on Wednesday.

This was announced on Wednesday during the presentation of the World Bank Economic Update on Belarus.

World Bank experts said the recovery of the Russian economy contributes to the restoration of economic growth in Belarus in 2017, thanks to which the Belarus' exports begin to grow.

The experts said preserving the status quo in the Belarusian economy will not ensure its steady growth and increase in incomes of the population. Long-term growth is possible after the removal of structural shortcomings, the World Bank added.

In order to improve welfare, Belarus should continue the policy aimed at improving the environment for private enterprise, analysts said.

The World Bank strongly recommends paying attention to inefficient state enterprises in terms of competitiveness, corporate governance, procurement and provision of credit resources.

The analysts of the bank stressed that the priority for Belarus is to improve economic productivity.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:19:11|Editor: yan

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ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Commission (AU) questioned the United State's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital city and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, notes with deep concern the decision of the United States Government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel," AU indicated in a statement released on Thursday.

According to the statement, the decision "will only increase tensions in the region and beyond and further complicate the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"The Chairperson of the Commission reiterates the solidarity of the African Union with the Palestinian people and its support to their legitimate quest for an independent and sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital," the statement added.

The chairperson further called for renewed international efforts to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict, "based on the existence of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security, within the framework of relevant African Union and United Nations pronouncements."

U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital drew strong condemnation from the Arab states and the Islamic world, despite Israel hailing the move as "courageous and just decision."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:24:13|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Thursday expressed grave concern about reports of migrants being sold into slavery in Libya and called for justice for the victims.

"The Security Council condemns such actions as heinous abuses of human rights which may also amount to crimes against humanity," said a statement of the council president.

The Security Council called upon all relevant authorities to investigate such activities without delay to bring the perpetrators to justice and hold those responsible to account, said the statement.

The council reiterated concern about the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons and welcomed the work of the UN Support Mission in Libya in coordinating and supporting the provision of humanitarian assistance for refugees and migrants.

The council emphasized that all migrants should be treated with humanity and dignity and that their rights should be fully respected, and urged the Libyan authorities and all UN member states to comply with their obligations under international law, including international human rights law and international refugee law.

It stressed the need to transfer detainees to state authorities and encouraged the Libyan authorities to reinforce their cooperation with international organizations and UN agencies and to ensure humanitarian access to detention centers.

The Security Council also reiterated concern about the implications for regional stability posed by transnational organized crime and illicit activities such as human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants.

It called upon member states to step up their efforts to investigate, disrupt and dismantle networks engaging in human trafficking in areas affected by armed conflict and to take all appropriate measures to collect, preserve and store evidence of human trafficking to help hold those responsible accountable, and assist victims of human trafficking.

The Security Council encouraged cooperation between the European Union, the African Union and the United Nations to protect the lives of migrants and refugees along migration routes and in particular inside Libya.

It further reiterated the need to place prevention and protection of victims of trafficking at the center of the national and international response.

It also encouraged member states, especially transit and destination states, to develop and use early warning and early screening frameworks.

The council further underlined the need for coordination of efforts to tackle the root causes of large movements of people, including forced displacement, unmanaged migration and human trafficking, in a comprehensive and holistic manner, to prevent exploitation of refugees and migrants by smugglers and human traffickers.

The council stressed the importance of a comprehensive response for all migrants in Libya and strengthened international cooperation with the Libyan authorities.

It welcomed ongoing efforts by members states and regional organisations to assist Libya in building capacity including to secure its borders and to prevent, investigate and prosecute acts of smuggling of migrants and human trafficking through its territory and in its territorial seas.

A CNN report last month that included video footage of a slave auction in October outside the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where about a dozen migrants were sold as slaves in a matter of minutes, triggered international outcry.

Since the uprising in Libya that overthrew longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya's coast has became a hub for human trafficking and smuggling. Most of the migrants in Libya are fleeing sub-Saharan Africa on their way to Europe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:24:14|Editor: yan

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Riga, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Most companies in Latvia expect their turnover to grow next year, a SEB survey of Baltic companies' CFOs reveals.

The Baltic-wide survey shows that turnover growth in 2018 is anticipated by 67 percent of large companies in Latvia as compared to 70 percent in Estonia and 59 percent in Lithuania.

The results of survey suggest that business optimism has now reached its highest point since 2014.

At the same time, entrepreneurs' pessimism has hit the lowest point, with just 5 percent of CFOs in Latvia expecting their companies' turnover to decline next year. A similar forecast was made by 10 percent of respondents in Lithuania and 11 percent in Estonia.

Ints Krasts, a management board member at Latvia's SEB Banka, said: "The large companies are feeling confident and their outlook on next year's business opportunities are upbeat. The Baltic states' economic growth has accelerated to the fastest pace in six years, and all indications suggest that the positive trends will continue also next year."

Despite the expectation for turnover growth, most of the large companies say they are not planning to employ more people.

"This suggests that the companies see possibilities to improve their productivity, for instance, by automating some of their operations," the SEB Banka representative said.

SEB conducts the CFO Survey in the Baltic countries once in a year, inquiring companies' chief financial officers about their outlook on the business environment, key challenges, employment plans and other issues.

The latest survey was carried out in September 2017 polling CFOs at 190 companies generating over 20 million euros in annual turnover.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:34:17|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday it has successfully concluded the second oral cholera vaccination campaign in high-risk district in Banadir region of south Somalia.

The WHO said the campaign was implemented using the house-to-house vaccination strategy and mobilizing a total of 29 supervisors, over 20 monitors, and 196 social mobilizers from the UN health agency and the Somali health ministry.

"As an integrated part of the current outbreak response strategy, WHO mobilized more than 2 million doses of oral cholera vaccines to be administered to vulnerable population in 11 districts in Somalia determined to be at high risk for further spread of the disease," the UN agency said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

The Horn of Africa nation has been experiencing cholera outbreaks since a decade ago.

The WHO said as of November, cumulative suspected cases of acute watery diarrhea (AWD)/cholera stood at 78,596, including 1,159 deaths, compared to 15,621 cases, including 531 deaths, for the same period of 2016, in 55 districts in 19 regions of Somalia.

The WHO said a strong social mobilization and community engagement were powerful tools that enabled the implementation of the vaccination campaign in the 11 targeted districts of the region.

It said 149 trained vaccination teams of four members each were also deployed in target areas to administer the vaccine to the population.

To protect an individual from acquiring cholera, the WHO said, two doses of the vaccine were required to be given on two rounds separated by a minimum 14-day interval to complete the vaccination cycle.

It said the demand and acceptability for the oral cholera vaccine in Banadir Region have been overwhelming, especially in camps for the internally displaced and in slums.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 02:34:18|Editor: yan

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LONDON, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Boris Johnson is expected to travel to Tehran this weekend in his first trip to Iran as British foreign secretary in a bid to win the release of the jailed British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, local media reported Thursday.

During his upcoming two-day visit, Johnson is also expected to seek to put British-Iranian relations on a new footing, pointing to Britain's strong defense of the Iranian nuclear deal signed in 2015.

Johnson has played down expectations of an immediate breakthrough in the case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in a Tehran jail for nearly two years.

In a sign that an immediate breakthrough is not imminent, Johnson said on Thursday her case was extremely difficult. Iran does not recognize dual national status, so Britain has a problem at the outset lobbying on her behalf.

Johnson has insisted the second set of charges laid against her are not related to his error last month in telling the foreign affairs select committee that she had been in Iran to train journalists.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was arrested at Tehran airport two years ago with her daughter who has stayed in Tehran with her grandmother.

Johnson's Iran visit is also to take place at a time when major global banks are reluctant to build financial links with Iran due to the U.S. government's policies.

Iran believes the nuclear deal has not led to the flourishing of trade, or interconnection with the Western banking system as promised.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in early November that the United States could not formally certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear accord. Washington has also demanded inspections of Iran's military sites, which Tehran has rejected.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 03:09:34|Editor: yan

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by Alex Osei-Boateng

ACCRA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ghana's Minister for Defense Dominic Nitiwul on Thursday said the government would retool the security agencies, particularly the Armed Forces, to be adequately prepared to counter emerging threats, both globally and in the sub-region.

He said the dynamics in global threats and the ever-increasing role of non-state actors in conflict situations required the dedicated officers and men to live up to expectation.

Addressing the media in Accra, Nitiwul said so far Ghanaian troops had demonstrated the resilience, mental stamina and robustness and preparedness to deal with any of such threats, warding off arguments that spending on the Armed Forces would be a waste of resources as Ghanaians were so peaceful.

"The threat of terrorism is real. At least, we have seen the terrorist attacks in some of our nearby countries and we must be worried of its likely spread to this country.

"We therefore need to retool and modernize the Ghana Armed Forces in terms of equipment, vehicles, vessels and aircraft to meet the demands for security in the wake of the government's accelerated drive to develop our country," said Nitiwul.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 03:19:37|Editor: Zhou Xin

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King Abdullah II of Jordan (R) meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) in Amman, Jordan, on Dec. 7, 2017. King Abdullah II of Jordan on Thursday voiced the country's full support to the Palestinians in their efforts to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, state-owned Petra news agency reported. (Xinhua)

AMMAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- King Abdullah II of Jordan on Thursday voiced the country's full support to the Palestinians in their efforts to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, state-owned Petra news agency reported.

He made the remarks at his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the capital Amman, where the Jordanian king accused the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital of a violation of the international law and international legitimacy resolutions.

He highlighted the need to intensify Arab, Islamic and international efforts to safeguard the rights of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in Jerusalem which is key to achieving peace and stability in the region.

For his part, Abbas warned of threats facing Jerusalem as well as the repercussions of the U.S. decision on the future of the peace process as well as on the security and stability of the region and the world.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that his country has formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he intends to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 03:19:37|Editor: yan

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VALLETTA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Maltese citizens were among the most satisfied with their country and general quality of life in 2016, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, quoting a European survey published on Thursday.

The survey by Eurofound, an EU research agency, was aimed at gaining an insight into the quality of life of European citizens.

A vast range of topics were studied, with questions ranging from satisfaction with the government and the quality of public services, to whether or not people used online banking.

Among the categories highlighted by Muscat was whether respondents were worried about losing their job, where Malta had the lowest proportion of concerned citizens.

The Maltese showed the fourth highest level of trust in their government and their satisfaction with public services and the second highest level of satisfaction with the economy and the quality of education.

Maltese citizens were most likely to say they were satisfied with childcare, the quality of health and long-term care.

Muscat also pointed out that satisfaction with public transport was the eighth-lowest in the union, but noted that Malta had risen six places since the last survey.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 03:24:40|Editor: yan

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TEHRAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, state TV reported Thursday.

Washington's recognition is a "blatant violation of international resolutions," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has always stressed that the most important reason behind instability and insecurity in the Middle East is (Israel's) continued occupation," the statement added.

"The U.S. relentless support for the Zionist regime (of Israel) and denying the oppressed Palestinian nation the right to establish an independent state with al-Quds (Jerusalem) as it capital would destabilize the region," it noted.

Describing the U.S. move as "provocative and unwise," the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned that "recognizing al-Quds as the Israeli regime's capital" will "provoke Muslims and inflame a new Intifada and intensify extremism and violent behavior for which the United States and the Israeli regime will be responsible."

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"I am determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said Trump, adding he has judged that "this cause of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and Palestinians."

"This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement," Trump argued, saying his announcement is just a "recognition of reality."

On Wednesday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Muslim world to stand against the U.S. "plot" to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"Palestine today tops the political issues facing the Islamic Ummah (people) and everyone is duty-bound to make endeavors toward its freedom and salvage," Khamenei was quoted by Press TV as saying.

Khamenei made the remarks in an address to state officials, ambassadors of Muslim countries and participants of the 31st International Islamic Unity Conference held in Tehran.

The enemies' plan to recognize Jerusalem as the "capital" of Israel stems from their "incompetence and despair," the top Iranian leader said.

"The Muslim world would undoubtedly stand against this conspiracy, and the Zionists (Israelis) will be dealt a heavy blow with this move. Dear Palestine will at last be liberated without doubt," he added.

Also on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is illegal and would further destabilize Palestine and the Middle East.

During a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rouhani called on Islamic states to join hands in opposing the "dangerous" move by the Trump Administration.

"We believe, given the current conditions, all Islamic nations must become united and take a serious step in countering this wrong, illegal, provocative and gravely dangerous move by the U.S.," Rouhani said.

He added that Israel is "responsible for all the insecurity and instability" in the region.

On Thursday, Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri condemned in a statement Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"Holy Quds (Jerusalem) belongs to the Palestine and the Islamic world," Baqeri said. "Muslims will never allow part of Islamic world to be separated from its body."

Baqeri stressed that Arab and Islamic states are facing "a historical test."

"The unwise decision of Trump is a clear violation of Palestinian rights and contrary to international laws," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 03:34:44|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga on Thursday slammed the United States and other Western countries who are against his swearing in next week as "People's President."

Odinga, who vowed that his Dec. 12 inauguration will continue as scheduled, accused Western countries of overstepping their mandate, saying the Western powers have been silent on police excesses against its supporters.

The opposition leader's remarks came a day after Washington urged Kenyan the Opposition to pursue electoral reforms within the country's laws and to avoid extra-constitutional actions such as the proposed "inauguration ceremony" slated for Dec. 12.

"The United States urges opposition leaders to work within Kenya's laws to pursue the reforms they seek and to avoid extra-constitutional actions such as the proposed 'inauguration ceremony' on Dec. 12," the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

The statement was issued at the conclusion of a three-day visit by U.S. acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto who had held talks with the civil society, the Opposition and government officials.

But the opposition leader said his swearing-in and the establishment of peoples' assemblies is to protest electoral injustices that have taken place in Kenya.

Odinga who vowed he will never recognize the victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta said the police have killed 215 since August and demanded an apology from the government.

The police have however denied the figure saying a few people died during the clashes between security officers and opposition supporters in Nairobi and in Western Kenya.

Odinga withdrew from the repeat presidential poll on Oct. 26 despite taking part in the Aug. 26 ballot in which President Kenyatta was declared the victor.

He had argued that the mistakes that brought about the annulment of the Aug. 8 vote was most likely to be repeated because reforms have not been taken at the electoral body including the resignations of staffers who bungled the Aug. 8 general elections.

The opposition leader later urged the IEBC to postpone the repeat polls in light of the ongoing political turmoil and disagreements among the stakeholders, urging his support to stay away from the repeat exercise.

He has since announced the formation of a national resistance movement that is exerting pressure on the government to promote rule of law, electoral reforms and human rights.

Odinga said economic boycott, picketing and formation of a grassroots movement will underpin his quest for justice in the electoral system as well as political inclusivity.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Githu Muigai said Thursday the controversial swearing in of Odinga amounts to high treason and warned that persons that will facilitate or be involved in the event will face the full wrath of the law.

"The constitution of Kenya provides in clear terms in Article 2 (2) that no person may claim state authority except as authorized by the constitution. A swearing-in of any other person not declared to have lawfully won an election by IEBC and administered by the Chief Justice is high treason in respect of the person involved and any other facilitating that process," Muigai told journalists in Nairobi.

Muigai has warned that treason is punishable by death. "The criminal law of the Republic of Kenya, in Article 40 of the penal code provides or stipulates that that sort of process, is high treason," he noted.

He termed as illegitimate, the formation of People's Assemblies by various County Assemblies which he said do not possess such powers.

"The People's Assembly is an institution totally unknown to the constitution of Kenya and totally unknown to the County Governments Act. Parliament has not delegated any such power and the consequence for that is that those institutions are unconstitutional, illegal and are null and void," he said.
Chinese President XiJinping (R) and his Swiss counterpart Doris Leuthard pose for photos during a launching ceremony of the China-Switzerland Year of Tourism in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 17, 2017. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

BEIJING, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to the closing ceremony of the China-Switzerland Year of Tourism held on Thursday in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In his message, Xi said he made the decision to launch the China-Switzerland Year of Tourism together with his Swiss counterpart, Doris Leuthard.

Taking this opportunity, China and Switzerland held exchange activities and expanded personnel exchanges during the year, which enhanced mutual understanding between the two peoples and promoted bilateral communication and cooperation in such areas as culture, economy and trade, injecting fresh impetus to the development of China-Switzerland relations, he said.

The Chinese president stressed that people's involvement and support have been important foundation for the development of China-Switzerland relations.

He called on both sides to strengthen people-to-people exchanges and enhance practical cooperation, so as to keep consolidating the public foundation for the development of bilateral ties.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 04:10:03|Editor: Yang Yi

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NICOSIA, Dec 7 (Xinhua) -- Cyprus was disappointed by the results of the visit by Turk President Tayyip Erdogan to Greece, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said on Thursday.

"From what I learned, the visit did not produce anything new for Cyprus," Kasoulides told Antenna television station at the end of the official part of Erdogan's visit.

But Kasoulides said that Cyprus wants to restart negotiations to end its 43-year long partition as soon as presidential elections are over early 2018 despite the disappointing results of Erdogan's visit.

"Having a vacuum without any negotiations would be a dangerous situation," Kasoulides said.

Erdogan's visit was designed to improve Greece-Turkey relations and the prospects of a solution putting an end to the Cyprus problem.

Kasoulides said that any agreement on Cyprus has to come out of negotiations.

"In any way, it is much better to have negotiations without any results than having no negotiations at all," Kasoulides said.

The latest round of negotiations on Cyprus collapsed in July amid trading of accusations between the two sides.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 04:10:03|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The top UN official for humanitarian aid has warned that the humanitarian situation in South Sudan is dire and humanitarian access remains impeded.

The number of severely food insecure people has steadily increased each year. Some 1.25 million people are in emergency phase of food insecurity, one step away from famine, Mark Lowcock, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told the Security Council on Thursday.

The number of South Sudanese in emergency phase of food insecurity almost doubled over a year. In early 2018, half of the population will be reliant on emergency food, said Lowcock.

Seven million people inside the country -- almost two-thirds of the remaining population -- still need humanitarian assistance. About 1.9 million people are internally displaced, of whom some 210,000 seek safety in protection sites located on premises of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, he said.

Only one in 10 people has access to basic sanitation which helps prevent deadly diseases. Only half of the country's schools are functioning and 2 million children are currently out of school. In every other household, a woman or girl experienced gender-based violence in the past year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Reported rates of violence against women and girls in South Sudan are double the global average and among the highest in the world.

Allowing and facilitating rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access for civilians in need is an obligation for all parties and essential for humanitarian relief organizations to effectively save lives, he said. But the government, opposition forces and non-state armed actors have continued to interfere with the delivery of humanitarian assistance in recent weeks. Ongoing fighting also prevents aid delivery.

With the beginning of the dry season, military offenses have further intensified in the past days, forcing civilians to flee, he said.

At least 95 humanitarian workers have been killed in line of duty since the start of the conflict in late 2013, and at least 28 this year alone.

Lowcock indicated that the tragedy in South Sudan is purely man-made. The suffering faced by civilians is primarily the result of actions by the parties in their conduct of the conflict.

The alarming level of food insecurity, for example, is directly linked to restrictions on people's freedom of movement, their access to humanitarian assistance and their ability to plant or harvest, said Lowcock. The impact of conflict on agriculture is particularly severe in the Greater Equatorias, which was typically a surplus-producing area before the conflict, but is now seeing production deficits due to insecurity and related access challenges. Most farmers from the most productive area along the border with Uganda are now in refugee camps inside Uganda, he said.

Despite the many challenges, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners have reached 5 million people, said Lowcock.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 04:40:16|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Photo taken on Dec. 7, 2017 shows a ceremony celebrating the 11th Tourism and Shopping Festival in Port Sudan, eastern Sudan's Red Sea State. The festival will be held from Dec. 7, 2017 to Feb. 7, 2018. The festival is the largest touristic event in Sudan as well as an opportunity to exhibit the Red Sea State's cultural heritage in eastern Sudan. (Xinhua/Mohamed Khidir)

PORT SUDAN, Sudan, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's First Vice President and National Prime Minister, Bakri Hassan Saleh, on Thursday inaugurated the 11th Tourism and Shopping Festival in eastern Sudan's Red Sea State, amid wide international participation.

Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, Indonesia and China take part in the festival's current session.

The program of the festival, to continue from Dec. 7, 2017 until Feb. 7, 2018, includes many activities, on top of which there will be a tourism exhibition in which 50 international tourism companies and 70 local tourism and shopping companies are taking part.

The festival organizers believe that it has become an international event and one of the most important mechanisms for informing with Sudan's tourist potentialities.

"There is a wide participation for many countries in this session of the festival, which gives it an international nature," Mohammed Abu Zaid Mustafa, Sudan's Tourism Minister, told Xinhua.

"After ten sessions, the festival shifted from a local festival to be an international one. We are looking forward that the coming sessions would witness further international participation," he noted.

He stressed that the festival constitutes one of the most important mechanisms to inform with tourism in Sudan, saying "We are concerned to expand the tourist activity with the focus on such festivals and provide the necessary infrastructures for the tourism sector."

The festival is the largest touristic event in Sudan as well as an opportunity to exhibit the Red Sea State's cultural heritage in eastern Sudan.

To this end, Gen. Abdul-Khair Abdalla Nasir, Chairman of the festival's Higher Committee, told Xinhua that the festival program comprises many activities including an international tourist exhibition, lectures, seminars, and exhibitions reflecting heritage of Sudan's different areas.

"With this session, we shift with the festival from the regional level to international levels as many friendly and brotherly countries are participating with us. We welcome them all," he said.

He expressed hope that the current session of the festival would achieve its objectives in relation to informing with Sudan's tourist potentialities, attracting foreign tourists and building partnerships with foreign companies in field of tourism and shopping.

Sudan has been working to revive the tourism sector to embrace its natural position as an important resource for the country which has faced economic difficulties following South Sudan's separation in 2011, eliminating around 70 percent of Sudan's oil revenues.

According to the latest statistics from Sudan's tourism ministry, tourism revenues for 2015 amounted to 930 million U.S. dollars, with the number of tourists rising to 700,000.

Sudan's Red Sea State, 870 km east of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, is Sudan's number one tourist resort, with distinguished tourism venues including its beach which is one of the purest in the world, besides sea islands and nature reserves.

Furthermore, the Red Sea resorts enjoy a variety of marine life, coral reefs and tourism-related activities such as diving, underwater photography and fishing.

The coastal city of Port Sudan lies on the western coast of the Red Sea, two meters above sea level, and it is Sudan's main sea port as well as the capital of the Red Sea State.

Port Sudan's population amounts to around 579,942 people according to 2011 statistics and is considered Sudan's eastern gate.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:15:25|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Despite strong global food supply, localized drought, flooding and protracted conflicts have intensified and perpetuated food insecurity, said a report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Thursday.

The new edition of the FAO's Crop Prospects and Food situation report revealed that some 37 countries, 29 of which are in Africa, require external food assistance.

"Ongoing conflicts continue to be a key driver of severe food insecurity, having triggered near-famine conditions in northern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as widespread hunger in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria," FAO stated.

The report also said that conflict impedes productive activities, hinders access to food and significantly intensifies the numbers of internally displaced people.

In Africa, the report details that urgently in need of food assistance are about 1.1 million people in the Central Africa Republic; some 7.7 million in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which hosts more than 200,000 refugees and 4 million internally displaced persons; over 3 million in northern Nigeria; some 4.8 million in South Sudan; and 3.1 million in Somalia, a number that has tripled over the past year.

Moreover, in Yemen, 17 million, or 60 percent of the population, are believed to require urgent humanitarian assistance.

The report also flags concerns in Bangladesh, where three episodes of flash floods this year caused substantial damage to the rice crop.

A severe summer drought has also cut Mongolia's wheat harvest by almost half.

Despite local negative trends, the report points out that, overall, global food production is booming. In addition, production gains are being recorded in many low-income food-deficient countries, where the aggregate cereal output is forecast to grow by 2 percent this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:30:33|Editor: yan

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GABORONE, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The government of Botswana on Thursday expressed its regret about the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel.

"This decision is condemned in that it is contrary to the strong international consensus which affirms that the status of Jerusalem should be determined through a negotiation process between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine," said the statement released by the Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation.

According to the statement, the government wishes to note that Jerusalem is being claimed by both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine as their Capital city.

It also urged the U.S. to reconsider its decision in the interest of preserving peace process in the Middle East.

U.S. President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday, which sparked violent clashes in the Middle East region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:35:34|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Morocco said on Thursday that the parliament will hold a meeting to show solidarity with Palestinian people on Monday.

"The two houses of parliament will hold next Monday a plenary joint session in solidarity with the Palestinian people, following the dangerous latest developments regarding the situation in Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem)," the two houses said in a statement.

Hakim Benchamach, the speaker of the house of advisors, warned during an extraordinary meeting of the house against the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

He called the decision "one of the most dangerous decisions" on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the last decade.

Earlier in the day, Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani said the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has crossed the "red line."

The status quo of the holy city is "a red line that cannot be crossed," El Othmani said during the weekly cabinet meeting, adding that the U.S. decision goes "against resolutions of international legitimacy."

On the civil front, several non-government organizations have called for a massive demonstration on Sunday in the capital Rabat.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:35:35|Editor: yan

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OSLO, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Several institutions in Norway have appeared on the attack list of the international hacktivist network Anonymous because of the country's whaling activities, newspaper Aftenposten reported Thursday.

"As a result of whaling, several groups have targeted Norway," said Lone Charlotte Pettersen, head of the Internet-related investigation support at the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos).

Anonymous, activists and other organizations annually organize several operations aimed at Norway, Iceland, Japan and the Faroe Islands. The operations are not motivated by money or desire to commit crimes but by stopping whaling, the report said.

People behind the operations have openly published lists of several Norwegian websites that they would like to be attacked.

The lists indicate, among other things, what type of server the site uses and the IP address. The Norwegian government, Visit Norway and Mathallen in Oslo, a market place of food courts, are among the institutions whose websites are on the list.

Banks and media, tourism and academic institutions are also among the targets of so-called "hacktivists".

Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries confirmed to Aftenposten that it experienced attacks in May this year and has since introduced measures to prevent this.

"They want to attack Norway. Anyone could therefore be affected. As long as they can do a damage, they are satisfied," Pettersen said. "Here we should wish we had better control. This is generally a challenge for Kripos and the police."

Although the extent of hacktivism was confirmed low in Norway last year, the National Security Authority has seen an increasing trend in recent years.

At the same time, the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries increased the whaling quota to 999 this year. In Iceland, it was recommended to catch up to 224 whales from 2016 to 2018, while Japan's whaling quota is 333 whales a year. No other country performs whaling.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:45:37|Editor: yan

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KIEV, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine and Belarus have developed an action plan to deepen their cooperation on food safety, the Ukrainian government press service said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the statement, the cooperation roadmap was developed during a meeting in Kiev between the representatives of Ukraine's State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection and the food safety departments of the Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry.

The document envisages that Ukraine and Belarus will strengthen their cooperation in the fields of veterinary medicine and food safety practices.

Besides, the two countries will launch an active dialogue on each other's veterinary and sanitary norms to facilitate trade.

In the first half of 2017, the overall trade turnover between Ukraine and Belarus increased by 21.4 percent to 2.073 billion U.S. dollars.

Belarus ranked Ukraine's sixth-largest trading partner after Russia, Germany, China, Poland and the United States.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:45:38|Editor: Zhou Xin

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BERLIN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Germany's SPD Party on Thursday voted to enter into exploratory talks for the formation of a new government coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Conservatives Union.

About 600 SPD members on Thursday gathered for the federal party congress and voted with a large majority by raising their arms to enter exploratory talks that could eventually end Germany's political crisis.

The SPD motion said the "open-ended" talks will start next week and would lead to three options: a new grand coalition, the acceptance of a minority government led by Merkel, or snap elections if no government can be formed.

SPD Chairman Martin Schulz called for talks with the Union before the motion was submitted to the congress for vote.

"We do not have to rule at all costs. But we must not want to reign at any cost," he said in his speech.

SPD's stance is of great importance after the so-called "Jamaica coalition" talks between the Union, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens failed. Merkel is facing the worst political crisis as no new government could be formed for the time being since the Sept. 24 German federal elections.

Suffering the lowest vote rates since 1949, SPD had repeatedly ruled out a grand coalition again with the Union after the current one, but it faced increasing pressure from the public after the collapse of the Jamaica coalition exploratory talks last month.

The motion that delegates voted for stipulates several demands to be put to the Conservatives Union, which is comprised with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian sister party Christian Social Union (CSU), including stricter climate targets, an abolition of private health insurance and a reform to combat poverty among pensioners.

The motion also includes a demand of ending a ban on some family reunions of asylum seekers, which is clearly opposed by CSU.

Despite the approval, many SPD delegates delivered their speeches against joining the Union again and criticizing Schulz. The SPD youth wing launched a signature campaign outside the conference hall against the grand coalition.

SPD's decision was welcomed by the Union.

CDU federal manager Klaus Schueler said after the vote that the aim of the CDU/CSU is to form a reliable and stable government for our country, adding that the CDU will now discuss the next steps at a meeting of the federal executive committee on Sunday and Monday.

In an election later, Schulz was re-elected as SPD's party leader with a total of 81.9 percent of the vote, down from the 100 percent he received in March when he was elected as SPD Chairman.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 05:55:40|Editor: yan

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HAVANA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Raul Castro arrived in Antigua and Barbuda on Thursday, along with other leaders and heads of state of Caribbean countries, to chair the VI Cuba-CARICOM summit which begins Friday.

According to Cuban state television, Castro landed in Saint John's, capital of Antigua and Barbuda, just before midday local time and was received by Prime Minister Gaston Browne.

The Cuban leader is also paying a formal state visit to this island country and will participate in a meeting of member nations of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).

The summit in Antigua will serve to structure a common agenda that advocates for a new fair international order, solidarity, integration and trade.

Sources from the Cuban foreign ministry recently affirmed that Havana will make clear its will to promote integration, cooperation and development in the meeting with the other 14 Caribbean states.

The signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Caribbean Emergency Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) and the Cuban Civil Defense Agency is expected to provide the opportunity for closer collaboration, especially after the devastating impact in the region of major hurricanes in September.

Commercial relations between the two sides were strengthened last November with the signing of the Second Protocol of the CARICOM-Cuba Trade Agreement.

The protocol expands reciprocal access to a duty-free market for more than 320 items, including meat, fish, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, beer, rum, cement, soap and clothing.

The 45th anniversary of relations between CARICOM and Cuba was celebrated in Havana on Wednesday with a political event.

On December 8, 1972, the leaders of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago made the decision to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba and create a formal cooperation mechanism with Cuba that would focus on common concerns of developing nations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 06:05:43|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HAVANA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Cuban entrepreneurs on Thursday urged U.S. Senator Marco Rubio to visit Havana to understand with first-hand that economic development has slowed down due to new U.S. sanctions.

A letter to Rubio signed by several private business owners, which Xinhua had obtained, stated to Rubio, the main architect of the Cuba rollback, that regulations to limit individual trips by U.S. citizens to the Caribbean nation means less possibilities of economic expansion for the country's emerging private sector.

"We have been affected by your recent efforts to increasingly limit the capabilities of Cuban entrepreneurs, restricting individual trips by Americans to the island," said the letter signed by a number of restaurant owners in Havana.

According to Cuban entrepreneurs, more and more Cubans join the private sector in recent years and they exhorted Rubio to visit the island just as former president Barack Obama did in March 2016.

"Come and see Cuba and see how Cubans have increased their businesses and how we have become more attractive to American entrepreneurs," the letter said.

It also indicated that Cuban entrepreneurs are the "big losers" from this new policy as they have offered different services to hundreds of thousands of Americans since the historic opening initiated in 2015 by Obama.

Rubio, a Cuban-American politician who supports the trade embargo, has advised President Donald Trump to limit Washington's ties with the island nation.

The new measures published last month limit U.S. citizens' trips to the island and prohibit them from doing business with some 180 companies managed by the Cuban military.

According to official data, some 285,000 Americans visited Cuba in 2016, while this year the number is expected to surpass 400,000.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-08 06:10:46|Editor: yan

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QUITO, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ecuador and Uruguay on Thursday joined the chorus of Latin American countries to criticize a White House decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"The United States declaration undermines the international efforts to seek a negotiated, fair and lasting solution in the region to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Ecuador's Ministry of Foreign Relations said in a statement.

Ecuador also warned of the "negative impacts" the decision may have on reviving flagging peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

"Ecuador reiterates its call for the international community to support a definitive and just solution in the region founded on the existence of both states, Palestine and Israel, with the pre-1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, as the only path to peace and stability in the Middle East," the ministry said.

In Montevideo, Uruguay's Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement expressing "its concern and disagreement" with the U.S. move.

Uruguay also reiterated its backing of a two-state solution, in keeping with a 1947 United Nations resolution on the issue.

On Wednesday, Cuba and Venezuela condemned the White House announcement, while Mexico made clear it would not be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the White House intends.

The UN Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the development which threatens to inflame a new wave of violence in the region.
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A group of European companies and academic and research organizations are collaborating to develop a low cost solution for automatic and remote fiber management. The effort, called SwIFT, is a project of the EUs 7th Framework Programme for Information and Communications Technology ICT. And the EU has provided 1.85 million Euros in funding for the project.





SwIFT aims to leverage microfluidics and silicon photonics to create solutions that enable network operators to employ software to patch and repatch cables on their fiber networks. The FP7 notes these technologies are used today in e-readers.

The FP7 works to achieve the goals of EU initiatives related to competitiveness, employment, and growth. Those involved in this effort include Belgium-based research and development firm Imec; German company Bartels Mikrotechnik, which specializes in microsystem technologies used in consumer goods, mechanical engineering, and medical technology industries; Technische Universitat Ilmenau in Germany; Irelands Tyndall National Institute, which focuses on research related to micro and nano systems and photonics; TDC of Denmark, the parent company of such brands as Blockbuster, plenti, and broadband and content provider GET; Fundico out of Belgium; and CommScope, a multinational company out of North Carolina that offers a variety of technology solutions and brands.

Combining micro fluidics and silicon photonics could give us information in a blink of an eye, said Jan Watte, SwIFT project coordinator and group leader of strategic engineering and research & development in Europe for CommScope. Dramatic energy savings, reduced floor occupation in the central office and redesigned closures could create a paradigm shift for network operators. The SwIFT concept findings lay the groundwork for further development of industry specifications  we see a huge opportunity for the telecommunications industry, especially for network and data centre operators.

Peter Merlo, vice president of strategic engineering at CommScope, added: After four years of research, we are a step closer to a concept that has the potential to reduce operational expenses associated with installing, provisioning and maintaining the embedded fibre plant and optical connections.

The global fiber optic connector market is expected to see compound annual growth of 9.65 percent between 2016 and 2020, according to ReportsnReports.com.

Edited by Mandi Nowitz
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US President Donald Trump has formally recognized Jerusalem and ordered the setting up of a plan to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city for the three monotheistic religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

The decision triggered a wave of condemnations worldwide and warnings that it would actually destroy all prospects of a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a speech in the White House, Trump sugarcoated the decision as the right thing to do, saying ironically that it is a long overdue step to advance the peace process.

Yet, without even mentioning it, Trump signed the same national security waiver signed by his predecessors, from Barack Obama to George W. Bush to Bill Clinton, which will allow the administration to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for an additional six months.

Trumps recognition of Jerusalem further isolates the US on the middle east peace process and destroys the credibility of US mediation efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The decision has been met with outrage in Palestine. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to acknowledge Trumps contentious move, asserting that the city is the eternal capital of the state of Palestine.

This is a reward to Israel, Abbas said in a televised address, adding that Trumps move encouraged Israels continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In the Muslim world, leaders condemned the US decision, which is tantamount to destroying the already fragile peace process.

King Mohammed VI, Chairman of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) committee, expressed deep concern regarding Trumps decision. In a letter to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, the King said that altering the status of Al Quds is an Infringement of the internationally recognized legal and historical status of Jerusalem, adding that this runs the risk of hurling the issue into the quagmire of religious and ideological conflict.

Other Muslim countries warned that recognizing Jerusalem as a capital of the Jewish State will trigger backlash and dire consequences on peace in the region. Jordan and Egypt, two countries maintaining diplomatic ties with Israel, voiced their outright rejection of Trumps decision.

Jordan stresses the need for the United States to play its role as a neutral intermediary to resolve the conflict and achieve peace on the basis of the two-state solution, which the world has agreed is the only way to resolve the conflict and achieve lasting peace, the Jordanian spokesman said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used even stronger language calling the move a red line for Muslims, saying that Turkey will cut its ties with Israel due to Trumps move.

The same condemnations were echoed by World leaders. Pope Francis called for the preservation of Jerusalems identity in the wake of Trumps decision. My thoughts go to Jerusalem and I cannot keep silent my deep concern for the situation that has been created in the past days, the pontiff said during the weekly General Audience at the Vatican.

Federica Mogherini, vice president of the European Commission, also said the EU expresses serious concern while maintaining that the EU position remains unchanged in stressing that the aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm that the announcement would provoke new tensions in the Holy City, which is revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims.

The French, UK and German governments all joined their voice to global condemnations of Trumps decision stressing the need for a consensual solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jerusalem was envisaged in the 1947 UN partition plan as an international city. After the end of the 1949 war, Israel took the western part and Jordan the eastern part of the city. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem. Since then, the entire city has been under Israels authority.

In July 1980, Israel passed a law that declared Jerusalem the united capital of Israel. The United Nations Security Council responded with a resolution condemning Israels annexation of East Jerusalem and declared it a violation of international law.

In 1995, the US Congress passed a law requiring America to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Proponents said the US should respect Israels choice of Jerusalem as its capital, and recognize it as such.

Every president since 1995  Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama  has declined to move the embassy, citing national security interests. Every six months, the President has used the presidential waiver to circumvent the embassy move.
Nick Birnback, a spokesman for United Nations peacekeeping, paid tribute to Moroccos commitment to peace keeping saying that the country is the 14th largest contributor with 1,610 military, police and civilian personnel deployed in UN Peace keeping operations.

We are grateful to Morocco for its continued contribution to the maintenance of the United Nations peace and its commitment to contribute to preserving peace and security, said Birnback in an interview with Moroccos news agency, MAP.

He noted that Moroccan peacekeepers have shown commitment and dedication in performing the lofty duties assigned to them in conflict-stricken countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

Furthermore, the UN spokesman pointed out that the Moroccan contingent in the Central African Republic is deployed in some of the most difficult areas of the country and is now in the south-east of the CAR, namely Bangassou, Zemio, Rafai and Obo.

Last October, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited the headquarters of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) where he paid tribute to the sacrifices made by uniformed personnel in the service of peace, including the Moroccan contingent, which lost some of its members in the line of duty.

Morocco is contributing 1470 peacekeepers in MINUSCA, which has a total of 12,870 uniformed personnel including 10,750 military personnel and 2,080 police personnel.

MINUSCA has been tasked to protect the civilian population from threat of physical violence, support the political transition process and the efforts seeking to address root causes of the conflict and establish lasting peace and security in the CAR.
President Jacob Zuma has made a volte-face that bodes well for relations between South Africa and Morocco. Following the talks he had with King Mohammed VI in Abidjan on the sidelines of the AU-EU summit, Zuma continues to talk about promising prospects for ties with Morocco making allusions that Moroccos absence from the African Union (AU) gave the floor to the Algerian-backed separatists.

In an interview with South African news outlet City Press, Zuma said that he agreed with King Mohammed VI to upgrade the diplomatic ties to the ambassadorial level after the frost that has characterized relations between them due to Pretorias recognition of the Algerian-sponsored SADR republic.

He explained that Moroccos return to the African Union is bridging points of views about the Sahara issue. Because they had left the OAU [Organization of African Unity, predecessor of the AU], we [the current government] did not have a chance to meet with them.

Zuma also paid tribute to Morocco for its critical military support to President Nelson Mandela in the 1960s, adding that The kings grandfather once met Mandela when he was out of the country in 1962. He was traveling around the world, looking for countries that could train Umkhonto weSizwe soldiers. They helped us a great deal. That is why, when Mandela was released from prison, he felt it was important for him to go to Morocco and say thank you to them, notwithstanding the fact that they had left the OAU.

He also said that he discussed the origins of the Sahara dispute with the King during the meeting in Abidjan, setting the tone of a change in South Africas policy towards separatism in north Africa by saying they know their history better.
The Libyan High National Elections Commission (HNEC) announced Wednesday the beginning of the voter registration process in view of preparing next year crucial elections said to mark the end of the transitional government and make room for elected institutions.

UN Special Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame has tendered to the UN Security Council an action plan, which will enable Libyans to go to the polls late next year to elect new leaders who will take charge of the country and restore its prestige.

Last time Libyans went to polls was 2014 but the electoral process further divided the country.

At a meeting with Salame, HNEC Head, Emad Alsayah noted that the process will take two months but could be extended as required.

Libyans abroad are also expected to take part in the electoral process and can start registering from February 1.

Less than one million and half Libyans, according to the UN Envoy, currently feature in the voter register against real number of potential voters put at beyond four million and half.

We must have elections that can represent as many Libyans as possible and this needs HNEC systems to be upgraded, he said.

The HNEC has started campaigning for the process. Libyans can register by telephone by sending a text message featuring their ID number and place of residence.

Several countries have moved to support the electoral process.

France on Monday donated 200,000 to the UN Program Promoting Elections for the People of Libya (PEPOL). Late last month, the Dutch government set the tone for foreign assistance by committing 1.6 billion for the success of the crucial process.

Salame however noted that the elections are contingent on a number of issues including security and suitable legislations.
James OKeefe. Photo: Stewart F. House/Getty Images

James OKeefe, the inept right-wing activist whos fresh off a failed attempt to smear the Washington Post in an effort to defend Roy Moore, received an award for going above and beyond in defense of liberty on Wednesday.

The award, given to him by the conservative group United for Purpose, was presented by Ginni Thomas, the groups president and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Naturally, the event took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The heroes honored by United for Purpose had to meet certain criteria laid out on the website for the Impact Awards. These are people who show tenacity, courage and perseverance even under hostile attacks and are respected among their peers, among other things. OKeefe, who just made a fool of himself in an attempt to stick up for a sexual predator, apparently meets that criteria in the eyes of right-wing activists.

OKeefe wasnt the only one exemplar of conservative principles to be honored. Sean Hannity received the Outstanding Impact Award and delivered the keynote speech. We the people are going to work harder than ever to get the government back into the hands of American citizens, where it belongs, said Hannity, inside a hotel from which president continues to profit.

Several other less-notable conservative figures also received awards. Not among them was the former sheriff David Clarke, who was nevertheless in attendance.
Im not a lawyer, but I play one in congressional hearings. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this week, Donald Trumps lawyer argued it doesnt matter that his client may have obstructed justice on 19 occasions, because as the nations top law-enforcement officer, the president is incapable of obstructing justice. Many legal experts disagreed with this assertion, yet on Wednesday the Trump team decided to try out another creative legal claim.

During a full day of closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Donald Trump Jr. refused to discuss a phone call he had with his father in July after news broke that he and other Trump officials met with Kremlin-connected individuals in June 2016. Though neither he nor his father are lawyers, Trump Jr. said the conversation was protected by attorney-client privilege because their attorneys were on the call.

I dont believe you can shield communications between individuals merely by having an attorney present, said Representative Adam Schiff, the committees top Democrat, on Wednesday evening. Thats not the purpose of attorney-client privilege.

Trump Jr. did discuss conversations about how to respond to the New York Times story, but he disputed reports that the president crafted his initial misleading statement about the meeting. He said he spoke about the statement with only with Hope Hicks, who is now White House communications director, as they were flying back from Germany on Air Force One.

The original statement suggested the meeting was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by Americans (which means Russia sanctions). The statement was revised multiple times, and later Trump Jr. posted emails that revealed hed taken the meeting after a Russian associate promised incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

Earlier this week Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump Jr. asked if she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation. She said when it became clear that she did not have damaging information about Clinton, Trump Jr. seemed to lose interest.

Trump Jr. said he hadnt told his father about the meeting when it took place, or let him know that he was exchanging Twitter DMs with WikiLeaks.

Emails show that just before the Russia meeting, which was set up by a publicist linked to Russian real-estate mogul Aras Agalarov, Trump Jr. had two brief phone calls with Agalarovs son Emin. In between he placed or received a call to another person whose number was blocked. Trump Jr. said he couldnt recall who he talked to.

Representative Jackie Speier told CNN that she found him pretty nonresponsive throughout the day. My takeaway is he has a very serious case of amnesia, Speier said.

He was pretty nonresponsive on a lot of issues that, frankly, you would have a recollection of, considering it was just a year ago that many of these events took place when Donald Trump was the candidate, Speier added. He was by his fathers side; he was campaigning with his father. And you get the impression in listening to him that he didnt spend much time talking to his father.

Representative Eric Swalwell agreed with Speiers assessment, and said Democrats plan to challenge Trump Jr.s lawyer on his claim that attorney-client privilege applied. But they may not get the chance, as its up to the Republicans whether or not to call him back, according to Swalwell.

Republicans said they felt Trump Jr. was forthcoming. A lot of questions were asked and answered, and from my perspective all of our questions were answered, said Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the committees Russia investigation.
Trump only hires the best people. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images

When former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn retired from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, he was hailed as the best intelligence officer of the past 20 years. Three years later, he has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and appears to be at the center of Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe.

No one could have predicted Flynns fall from brilliant military tactician to ex-national security adviser who lied too much for even Donald Trumps administration. However, Flynn had long had iconoclastic tendencies, and his 33-year military career ended when he was pushed out by the Obama administration. In a hacked email, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Flynn was ousted because he was abusive with staff, didnt listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc., adding that hes been right-wing nutty ever since.

A short time later, Flynn was advising the Trump campaign, leading a chant of Lock her up! at the Republican National Convention, and finding himself embroiled in so many scandals that its hard to keep track. Heres the refresher on all the questionable behavior Flynn has been accused of, from his infractions at DIA to this weeks revelation about his inauguration texting. He denies much of it, and well surely learn more as Muellers probe unfolds. But if even a third is true, it seems Flynn received quite the deal.

Inappropriately Sharing Classified Intelligence

2009-2010

While serving as General Stanley McChrystals top intelligence official in Afghanistan, Flynn angered superiors by sharing intelligence with other countries. The Washington Post reports:

Former U.S. officials said he was scolded after traveling to Pakistan in 2009 or early 2010 and revealing to Pakistani officials sensitive U.S. intelligence on the militant Haqqani network accused of staging attacks on American forces. U.S. officials said that the move was aimed at prodding Pakistan to crack down on the militant group, but that Flynn exposed U.S. intelligence capabilities that only helped Pakistan protect an organization it used as a proxy ally.

Flynn also came under investigation by the Pentagon because of an allegation that he had inappropriately shared highly classified intelligence with Australian and British forces. Im proud of that one, Flynn said in an interview. Accuse me of sharing intelligence in combat with our closest allies. Please!

Delivering an Awkwardly Timed Address to Russias Intelligence Agency

June 2013

During the 2016 campaign, Flynn was critical of Trumps praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he called a a totalitarian dictator and a thug who does not have our interests in mind. But he said he agreed that the U.S. should try new approaches to dealing with Russia. Hed done so several years earlier while serving as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Per The New Yorker:

In 2013, Flynn arranged a trip to Moscow to speak to a group of officers from the G.R.U., Russias intelligence agency, about leadership development. His decision to go was a controversial one. Flynn believed that there were opportunities to find common ground with Russia. But Steven Hall, the C.I.A.s chief of Russia operations at the time, was skeptical. He wanted to build a relationship with his counterparts in the G.R.U., which seemed, at best, quaint and naive, Hall told me. Every time we have tried to have some sort of meaningful cooperation with the Russians, its almost always been manipulated and turned back against us.

Several months later, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea. Flynn still tried to invite senior G.R.U. officer to the U.S., but he was shut down by his superiors.

Failing to Disclose a Trip to Promote a Russian Power-Plant Deal

June 2015

After retiring from the military Flynn formed a consulting company, Flynn Intel Group. Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees have accused Flynn of failing to disclose a trip to Egypt and Israel in June 2015 on behalf of a U.S. company he was representing. His mission was to gauge interest in a joint U.S.-Russian program (financed by Saudis) to build more than two dozen power plants in the region. Flynn remained involved in the project through the end of 2016, as he was working for the Trump campaign and transition, and sitting in on his classified briefings.

Attending an RT Gala With Putin

December 2015

RT, the state-sponsored Russian TV network, paid Flynn more than $45,000 to speak at its 10th anniversary gala, where he was seated at Putins table. Members of Congress said that by accepting money from a foreign government, Flynn might have violated the Constitutions emoluments clause.

As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else, former House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz said in April. And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for the violation of law.

Flynn also failed report the payment on his application to renew his security clearance in February 2016. He said he had received no income from foreign companies and had only insubstantial contact with foreign nationals, according to Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Contacting Russians During the Campaign

April 2016 to November 2016

Flynn and other Trump advisers reportedly contacted Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the campaign. People with knowledge of the House and Senate Russia probes told Reuters in May that they had yet to uncover evidence of collusion, but the Trump administration had initially denied having any contacts with Russians during that time.

CNN reported around the same time that Russian officials bragged in intercepted communications that they had cultivated strong ties with Flynn and could use him to influence Trump.

Failing to Disclose That He Was Lobbying for Turkey

August 2016 - November 2016

As he was heavily involved in the final months of Trumps presidential campaign, Flynn signed a contract with a Dutch company owned by the Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, who is close to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Flynns work centered on discrediting Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. Erdogan had accused Gulen of orchestrating Turkeys failed coup attempt against him the previous summer.

During an unrelated meeting, Flynns business partner, Bijan Kian, urged a representative of the House Homeland Security Committee to hold hearings about Gulen. Flynn also published an op-ed in The Hill on Election Day that called Gulen a radical cleric and said the U.S. should not provide him a safe haven.

Flynn initially failed to register with the Justice Department as an American representing a foreign entity. Thats a felony, though its seldom enforced. Flynn retroactively registered as a foreign agent in March 2017, disclosing that his firm was paid $530,000 for lobbying that could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.

Plotting to Kidnap a Muslim Cleric

September 2016 - December 2016

Flynn and his son were allegedly offered up to $15 million to help kidnap Gulen and send him back to Turkey to face charges. The Wall Street Journal reported that several people have been questioned about a mid-December meeting in New Yorks 21 Club where Flynn and Turkish representatives discussed how to transport Gulen from Pennsylvania on a private jet to the Turkish prison island of Imrali.

Last spring former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey told CNN that in September 2016 he walked in on another meeting where it appeared Flynn and Turkish government representatives were discussing how to get Gulen back to Turkey.

Flynns lawyers released a statement denying the outrageous story. An international kidnapping plot could result in a 20-year sentence for the Flynns.

Telling Russia the Trump Team Wanted a Secret Backchannel to Russia

December 1, 2016

Flynn and Jared Kushner, Trumps adviser/son-in-law, met with Sergey Kislyak, Russias ambassador to the U.S., at Trump Tower on December 1, and inquired about setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin, possibly using Russian facilities in the U.S.

In a statement to congressional committees in July, Kushner said Kislyak told them he wanted to pass along information from his generals about U.S. policy in Syria.

I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn, Kushner said. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration,

Asking Russia to Intervene in a U.N. Vote During the Transition

December 22, 2016

Documents made public after Flynn pleaded guilty last week revealed that a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team (according to multiple reports Jared Kushner) directed Flynn to call members of the United Nations Security Council and implore them to block a resolution condemning Israels settlements. Flynn then called Sergey Kislyak, who was then Russias ambassador to the U.S., at the time, and asked him to delay a vote on or defeat the resolution.

At the time the Obama administration was preparing to abstain from the vote, allowing it to go through. Flynn and Kushners actions could violate the obscure Logan Act, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign government.

Discussing New Sanctions With the Russian Ambassador

December 29, 2016

The Flynn court documents also confirmed that on the day President Obama announced new sanctions against Russia for its election interference, Flynn conferred with a senior official in the presidential transition team (former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, according to reports) then immediately called Kislyak. Flynn requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner, suggesting relations would be improved under the Trump administration.

On December 31 Kislyak called Flynn back and said Russia had agreed not to retaliate. President Trump applauded Putins move on Twitter:

Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016

Possibly Lying to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence

January 2017

While many doubt that Pence, who led the transition, was actually unaware of what Flynn discussed with Kislyak, thats what the White House has claimed from the start. Pence was asked about Flynns interactions with Kislyak on January 15, days after the Washington Posts David Ignatius first reported the potential Logan Act violation.

What I can confirm, having spoken to him about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions, Pence told Face the Nation.

A day after Flynn was fired Sean Spicer, then White House press secretary, said it was over lying to Pence. We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue, where a level of trust between the president and General Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change. The president was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others.

Foiling U.S. Military Plan That Turkey Opposed

January 10, 2017

Ten days before the inauguration, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, consulted with Flynn about a plan to retake Raqqa from ISIS with help from Syrian Kurdish forces. Obamas team decided to seek Trumps approval since the operation would be carried out under his administration. Flynn told Rice to hold off.

Flynns motivation remains unclear, but his decision happened to comply with the wishes of Turkey, which opposed the U.S. teaming up with Kurdish forces. Trump eventually approved the plan, several weeks after Flynn was fired.

Texting About Sanctions at the Inauguration

January 20, 2017

Flynn texted a former business partner to say that Obamas sanctions against Russia would be ripped up as his was watching Trump deliver his inauguration speech, according to a report released by congressional Democrats this week. The business partner, Alex Copson, wanted to work with Russia on the plan to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East. Flynn reportedly texted that they were good to go.

A whistleblower told Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings in June that he ran into Copson on Inauguration Day and he boasted Mike has been putting everything in place for us. Cummings said he kept the claim quiet at Muellers request, but was cleared to make it public this week.

Lying to the FBI

January 24, 2017

Two days after he was sworn in as national security adviser, Flynn gave a voluntary interview to FBI investigators looking into Russias election interference. On Friday, December 1, 2017, he pleaded guilty to lying in that interview. It appears this was some kind of plea deal with Muellers team, but what that means for the ongoing investigation is unclear.

What we do know is that Flynn admitted to lying about calls he made regarding the U.N. resolution, and whether he asked Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation after Obama imposed new sanctions. That carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, but court documents suggest hes probably facing zero to six months in prison.
Michael Flynn. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Michael Flynn promised a former business partner that Obama-era sanctions against Russia would be ripped up once the Trump administration assumed power, according to a whistle-blower whose account was released Wednesday by congressional Democrats.

Minutes into Trumps inauguration speech, Flynn also texted the ex-partner, who wanted to work with Russia to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East, that the plan, threatened by Obamas sanctions, was good to go.

These statements from Flynn to Alex Copson, managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners, reveal Flynns attempt to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners, Democratic representative Elijah Cummings wrote in a letter Wednesday. The whistle-blower came to Cummings in June, he writes in the letter, but the congressman kept quiet about the claims at the request of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

With the clearance of Muellers office, Cummings writes that hes now making the whistle-blowers story public.

According to the account, the unnamed whistle-blower ran into Copson at a party in Washington, D.C., on inauguration day. Copson, who had previously employed Flynn to advise on the deal to build nuclear power plants with Russia, told the whistle-blower that it was the best day of my life.

Mike has been putting everything in place for us, the whistle-blower claims Copson said. Now Cummings wants to look into the matter. In his letter, he asked Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to subpoena the White House for all documents  including emails and text messages sent on personal devices related to Flynns foreign contacts.

Among other things, the whistleblowers story may reveal something about how Flynn is cooperating with Mueller. When the retired lieutenant general pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI Friday, some suggested that Muellers willingness to let Flynn cop to a relatively minor charge meant that hes rolling over on the Trump administration to save his hide. If we assume Mueller let Flynn off the hook for this, then we can also assume that Flynn isnt just rolling over, hes sitting, barking, and playing fetch too.
The new face of the GOP. Photo: Nicole Craine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: Roy Moore and the Alabama Senate race, the repercussions of Weinsteins fall, and Trumps calculus on Jerusalem.

Though the Republican National Committee has restored funding for Alabamas Roy Moore, Republican members of Congress  and even the committees own officials  are keeping their distance from party support. Is it better for the GOP if Moore wins or if he loses?

Even The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which sold its soul to Donald Trump after the election, said this morning that you have to believe in magic to think this is going to end well for Republicans. Anticipating the resignation of Al Franken, the editorial pleaded with its party, from Trump down, to disown Moore  if only because the departures of both Franken and John Conyers rendered moot the GOPs main talking point to deflect any questions about the partys embrace of Moore. But while the Democrats resignations have now ripped away that moral fig leaf, theres zero chance the GOP will ditch Moore. Sure, some Republicans in Washington, including Mitch McConnell, have denounced Moore. But many of them have previously disowned Trump on multiple occasions  including, most pertinently, after the release of the Access Hollywood tape  only to fold soon after. The RNCs renewed funding of Moores campaign tells you all you need to know about the Vichy Republicans. Thats an action that speaks louder than words. The GOP wants to add another vote to its slender Senate majority and will swallow anything required to get it.

The Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Predators. Maybe it always was: Do recall the histories of such GOP congressional leaders as Denny Hastert and Mark Foley. It should also be noted that a tolerance for sexual predation may be well on its way to becoming a majority plank among the GOP rank and file. While a new Quinnipiac poll finds that 77 percent of Democrats believe elected officials should resign in the face of multiple sexual harassment accusations, only 51 percent of Republicans do.

Moore has the wholehearted support of the Republican president, and if he is elected on Tuesday in Alabama (the likely outcome, Id guess), the Senate will seat him no matter the posturing to the contrary. Among Republican elites, the only naysayers to Trump are either out of power (Mitt Romney) or not likely to face another election. In that latter category, even John McCain violated his professed principles about deficits and a regular legislative process to sign on to the tax bill that extravagantly rewards Republican donors. He and his colleagues will shed crocodile tears about the new sexual miscreant in the Senate chamber all the way to the bank.

According to the Times latest Harvey Weinstein reporting, the moguls reign of sexual harassment and assault relied not just on his own lawyers and investigators, but on a complicity machine of lower-level enablers that included the National Enquirer, agents at Creative Artists Agency, executives and assistants at Weinsteins companies, and a wide web of managers, journalists, and business partners all incentivized to look the other way. Can the repercussions of Weinsteins fall break up these kinds of networks, or is this just the way of doing business in Hollywood?This is the way of doing business not just in Hollywood but at every workplace where sexual harassment (and worse) is committed, tolerated, and covered up, from Congress to Fox News to NBC to The New Republic. The Times piece is a must-read, depressing as it is, because of its granular reporting of how sexual predators with power so easily enlist their own colleagues to enable their behavior, even when it rises to the level of the criminal. And not just colleagues, but prominent politicians (the Clintons), attorneys (David Boies), and corporate entities like C.A.A. and Disney. This is a story that is only just beginning to unravel, and until these kinds of networks are fully exposed, change will be incremental at best.

As I have written before, we still dont know how NBC management can purport to have been ignorant of Matt Lauers behavior when it was clearly an open secret in its corporate ranks (and beyond). There has been no independent investigation of what went on  a step that even Fox News finally took to learn more about the sexual predation of Roger Ailes and Bill OReilly. Nor has NBC explained satisfactorily why it passed on airing the Trump Access Hollywood tape or Ronan Farrows findings about Weinstein; nor has it explained why it wont lean on the producer Mark Burnett to release Apprentice outtakes that may contain additional evidence of the serial sexual assaults already confessed to by the man who is now president. What we do know  courtesy of ThinkProgress this week  is that NBC-Universal and its parent company, Comcast, have contributed at least $100,000 to the RNC so far for the 201718 election cycle, money that is now helping elect Roy Moore.

NBC is hardly alone. Congress owes us an accounting of every taxpayer-funded settlement in sexual-harassment cases beyond the two that have now surfaced (the Texas Republican congressman Blake Farenthold as well as Conyers). It doesnt pass the smell test that no one in management at House of Cards knew about Kevin Spaceys behavior. ABC News has remained silent on how its management somehow missed all the signs about Mark Halperin while he was in its employ.

Looking at the larger culture, we can see that this reckoning has only just begun and will take a long time. Imagine the harassment that is tolerated and covered up at less elite workplaces where the predators are not celebrities and the victims are working women or men, many of them minorities, with even less power than the victims at a Fox News or Miramax or NBC.

Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital yesterday, upending nearly 70 years of U.S. policy. Critics of the decision include the Pope, some of the most powerful U.S. allies, and, reportedly, Rex Tillerson and James Mattis. What does Trump gain here?

Trumps most incendiary presidential actions are generally prompted by one or all of three underlying motives: (1) to pander to the one third of the country that is his unfailingly loyal base; (2) to distract from the Mueller investigation and all its attendant story lines; (3) to enable the kleptocratic enrichment of himself, his family, and Trump business enterprises. At the very least (1) and (2) are at work here.

As reporting on the decision has made clear, a major component of the Trump base, the Evangelical right, led by its in-house representative Mike Pence, was the driver here. Evangelical Christians want to ensure that Jews remain in power in Jerusalem as a step toward the Second Coming. They see the provocative move of the American embassy as furthering that goal (which may prove to be far from the case). It tells you all you need to know about these lovely people that they clamor for an American embassy in Jerusalem, but back at home remain silent when Trump calls the alt-right stormtroopers of Charlottesville very fine people after theyve chanted that Jews will not replace us.

Of course the announcement of the embassy move would fall on the day that Donald Trump Jr. was stonewalling investigators behind closed doors at the House Intelligence Committee. By coincidence, the Jerusalem announcement also served as a convenient distraction from the burning of Los Angeles, yet another example of the apocalyptic price America will pay for the Trump administration and GOPs refusal to recognize or battle climate change.

Much was made by Republicans, not without reason, when Bill Clinton went on television to announce the American bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan at the height of the Lewinsky scandal. But how puny that Wag the Dog moment looks now when we have a president who thinks nothing of engulfing the world in war and environmental calamity to save himself from potential legal culpability on multiple fronts, from obstruction of justice and collusion with Russia to sexual assault.
Jared Kushner will solve all of this. Photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

One of the central points of contention in the Israel-Palestine conflict is the status of Jerusalem. The eastern part of the city lies outside of Israels original borders, and only became a part of the Jewish state after the Israeli military captured and annexed it in 1967. The ancient municipality is, of course, home to sites sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. Thus, the Palestinian leadership would like the city to be divided  and for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a future Palestinian state. The Israeli government would prefer to maintain sovereignty over the whole thing.

For decades, the White House has refused to take a side in this dispute, so as to maintain the (obviously false) pretense that it is a neutral arbiter in the conflict. Therefore, the U.S. has refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv.

But on Wednesday, President Trump decided to dispense with this policy. While refusing to declare Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel  and thus, taking no official stance on the underlying point of contention  Trump nevertheless opted to defy the entire international community, and to risk triggering violent unrest, so as to deliver a purely symbolic victory to a small (but influential) constituency within his party.

Riots and rocket fire ensued.

Palestinian protesters in Gaza took to the streets in sporadic protests against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. https://t.co/pdvZMMPEk9 pic.twitter.com/bxZir3t9zX  ABC News (@ABC) December 7, 2017

When Trump made his gesture Wednesday, he tossed a lit match onto a large pile of kindling. In the West Bank, Israel has subjected Palestinians to an ethnically discriminatory form of military rule for half a century. In Gaza, the Netanyahu government has maintained a decade-long blockade, a policy aimed at forcing the Islamist terror group Hamas from power over the region. The blockade has produced recurrent shortages of basic necessities. This humanitarian emergency has been exacerbated by a political crisis within Palestinian society: In hopes of toppling the Hamas government in Gaza, the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas cut funding for electricity to the area earlier this year. This has left Gazans bereft of reliable access to power, clean water, and medical supplies.

In response to the presidents announcement, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called for a new uprising (or intifada) against Israel. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Al-Bireh Thursday, chanting, Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine, Haaretz reports. Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza left at least 19 Palestinians wounded.

Meanwhile, multiple rockets were fired from Gaza toward southern Israel, according to reports from Israeli media. Most of these did not make it across the Israeli border  but one did, according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In response, an IDF tank and aircraft attacked two so-called terror posts in central Gaza. The Israeli government holds Hamas responsible for the rocket attacks. As of this writing, it is unclear how many people were killed or injured in those strikes.
Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of Trump in Nablus. Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images

Protesters across the West Bank and Gaza Strip took to the streets Thursday in opposition to President Trumps announcement that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Clashes between demonstrators and Israeli forces left at least 31 injured, according to medics, who say some were hit with live fire and others with rubber bullets. The Israel Defense Forces used riot-dispersal gear, a spokesperson said. That included water cannons and tear gas.

A protester catches fire during clashes with Israeli troops. Photo: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

While some protesters focused their anger on the IDF, many turned their attention to Trump himself.

Protesters burned photos of Trump and American flags. In the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinians torched an effigy of Trump, and near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem they chanted a message to him, in English.

WATCH: Palestinians chanting in English: "Trump Trump you will see - Palestine will be free" pic.twitter.com/MrV0KKvPrM  Udi Shaham (@udi_shaham) December 7, 2017

It is not up to Trump to decide the future of east Jerusalem, activist Daud Abu-Libdeh told the Jerusalem Post. It is up to us  the residents  to decide upon our future.

As people took to the streets, the leader of Hamas called for an uprising by Palestinians. Tomorrow should be a day of rage and the beginning of a broad movement for an uprising that I call the intifada of freedom of Jerusalem, Ismail Haniyeh said.

The White House meanwhile is hopeful that the anger felt by so many Palestinians will pass. We know there will be short-term pain, an anonymous the official told the Jerusalem Post, but in the long term, this action will help with those conversations.
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call; Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

When news surfaced at the beginning of the year that British intelligence agent turned private investigator Christopher Steele had compiled a report on Donald Trumps ties to Russia, news reports immediately treated its findings as radioactive. The implications of Steeles reporting were spy-movie-unreal: Trump was the subject of Russian financial and even sexual blackmail, and he and his advisers had been openly colluding with Moscow.

What Trump Has Actually Said Publicly About His Putin Relationship

Two details in particular made the dossier seem suspect. First, its report that Trump had paid Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed that had been used by Barack Obama. And second, the report alleged that Michael Cohen, a Trump crony with Russian contacts, had met in Prague with Russian intelligence officials. The golden-showers detail, while unconfirmed, seemed too bizarre to be plausible. And Cohen shot down the Prague allegation forcefully. The report of his meeting was totally fake, totally inaccurate, Cohen said, Im telling you emphatically that Ive not been to Prague, Ive never been to Czech [Republic], Ive not been to Russia.

Cohens denials helped shape skeptical coverage of the dossier. Here, for instance, in a New York Times story on the dossier, is the entire passage addressing its veracity:

There has been no public corroboration of the salacious allegations against Mr. Trump, nor of the specific claims about coordination between his associates and the Russians. In fact, some of those claims have been challenged with supporting evidence. For instance, Mr. Trumps longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, produced his passport to rebut the dossiers claim that he had secret meetings in Prague with a Russian official last year.

But this hardly settles the question. A congressional investigation is digging into whether Cohen is telling the truth about the alleged visit to Prague. Cohens passport would not show any record of a visit to Prague if he entered the EU through Italy, traveled to the Czech Republic, and then returned to his point of EU entry, reports Politico, in a passage thats received less attention than merited. A congressional official said the issue is still active for investigators.

Most reporters have treated the say-so of Cohen, a Trump hanger-on laden with extremely shady associations, as implicitly more credible than the reporting of a British intelligence agent with years of expertise. That is probably a mistake.

And what about the bit about the prostitutes? The detail has been endlessly described as salacious, placing it in the category of National Enquirertype gossip of dubious veracity. We dont have any idea whether that detail is true. However, Brian Beutler made a fairly persuasive case that Trump has displayed during his presidency the exact same kind of pathological, self-destructive jealousy of Barack Obama (who had publicly humiliated Trump two years before the alleged incident).

As time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out. In general, there is a split between the credibility afforded the dossier by the mainstream media and by intelligence professionals. The former treat it is gossip; the latter take it seriously. Unverified private reporting should not be taken as gospel truth, and no doubt some of the tips Steele picked up are false. But we should probably be giving far more weight to the possibility that the darkest interpretation of Trumps relations with Russia is actually true.
Senate Democrats have decided to try to force Al Franken from their ranks. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Al Franken is now under enormous pressure from his Senate colleagues (at first a series of women, but then men, and finally the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) to resign over seven separate allegations of sexual harassment and/or inappropriate behavior towards women. Franken has called a press conference for tomorrow to respond, and its not entirely clear what he will do.

But if Senate Democrats do succeed in forcing Franken from office, they need to get ready to answer some questions about the standards they are applying to his case, and the precedent they might be setting for similar situations in the future, which might not be very far down the road given the explosion of revelations that are arising about the piggishness of powerful men.

1. What was the tipping point in Frankens case? As recently as last week, it looked like Franken might survive at least until the Senate Ethics Committee could look into the allegations against him. That changed today after a seventh accuser came forward, alleging that Franken had forcibly kissed her without warning or invitation in 2006. So was this allegation decisive, and if so, why? Was it the sheer volume, the evidence of an incorrigible pattern of behavior, or the fear that new allegations would inevitably arise (sure enough, today an eighth woman  a columnist at that  went public with a claim of unwelcome squeezing by Franken at a 2009 inaugural event)? It would be helpful to hear more about how many or what type of allegations are just too much to defer to some future investigation.

2. How germane is pre-senatorial misconduct? In Frankens case, the allegations included both pre- and post-senatorial misconduct (the latest allegedly occurred when Franken was a senator-elect). But in the case that will inevitably be compared to Frankens, that of Roy Moore, all the misconduct (so far as we know) was in the fairly distant past. Moore could soon be knocking on the door of the Senate seeking access to one of Alabamas two seats. It is entirely possible that Democrats moved decisively to push Franken out in order to prepare themselves to deal with Moore, either before or after next weeks special election. But they need to be clear about when the timing of incidents matters and when it doesnt matter. They could take the position that pre-senatorial misconduct is not grounds for expulsion, but is grounds for public shaming, pressure to resign, and is furthermore a terrible reflection on the Republicans that supported him.

3. Is the nature of the specific misconduct crucial? One of the allegations against Moore (coerced sex with a minor who had been taken to a secluded location) involves felony criminal behavior. Most of the allegations against Franken involve actions that would amount to simple battery  a crime and a cause for a civil lawsuit, but no felony. Both men would also likely be subject to charges of sexual harassment according to current standards. But like the grounds for impeachment of presidents, the grounds for exclusion from the Senate (by forced resignation or expulsion) are mostly subjective. Since such allegations could proliferate in the future, however, a reasonably clear standard of intolerable behavior would be helpful.

4. Is the partisan identity of Frankens replacement an acceptable factor in his case? In Roy Moores case, more than a few Republicans, including the president of the United States, have suggested that otherwise unacceptable conduct might be tolerated to avoid the horror of that other party obtaining a Senate seat. If Franken resigns, his successor (at least until the November 2018 elections) will be chosen by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton. Will Democrats cheerfully admit theyd feel differently about Franken if a Republican was poised to name his replacement? Or are they willing to establish the precedent that the partisan consequences in such cases dont matter?

5. Should Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard in cases of sexual abuse of women, or does that make them chumps? While most people in both parties profess to deplore sexual harassment, abuse, or assaults, its no secret that the Democratic Party is the political home of most feminists. Indeed, hostility to feminism  and hostility to politically correct standards of behavior  is a hallmark of Donald Trumps Republican Party, punctuated by his own dismissal of his own crude boasts about sexual assault as locker-room talk. So should Democrats explicitly police themselves more vigorously than Trumps party does in such cases? Some Democrats think that places their party at a disastrous disadvantage:

I am sitting here shaking with rage and frustration on the point of tears wondering why Democrats will call for Franken's resignation but won't call for Trump to step down for much greater crimes. Why won't our side fight? What is wrong with you?  Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) December 6, 2017

The obvious answer is that Democrats have significantly less leverage over Trump than over one of their own. But clearly some people think Democrats shouldnt unilaterally disarm by disciplining a grabby senator when a grabber of a different order is allowed to run the country. Thats an argument Democrats must squarely confront.

It would be good if they could get it all straight overnight.
Owing to state pressure, the management of Top Radio and Top TV has banned opposition politicians and other voices critical of government from all its shows and programs.

Also, banned are callers considered to be critical of government. As such, the management of Top radio and Top TV, owned by Pastor Jackson Ssenyonga of the Christian Life Church in Bwaise on the outskirts of Kampala, have had an overhaul of their daily political talk shows.

For instance, panelists on Negwozadde program that were perceived to be critical of the government have been replaced with those that toe the government line. This followed a management decision communicated in an internal memo warning all staff against hosting opposition politicians on any of their programs.

Panelists on the Negwozadde program have been replaced

This memo serves to inform all presenters on both Top radio and Top TV that hosting of opposition politicians and other voices that are critical of the government has been banned, the November 1 memo partly reads.

The two stations' staff were also stopped from discussing negative political sentiments. The presenters are also not supposed to allow callers to attack the government, breach of which will lead to automatic dismissal the memo warned.

The Observer understands that the directive was enforced after back-and-forth meetings between the management at Top Radio with Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) officials. This comes against a backdrop of increased violations of media freedoms and crackdowns on media and journalists perceived to be critical of government.

UCC has over the last months, directed various media houses to suspend programs or dismiss presenters/hosts considered critical of government.

Since the tabling of the Constitutional Amendment bill (No.2) 2017 that seeks, among other things, to amend Article 102(b) to scrap the presidential age limits, several radio stations have been subjected to investigations by UCC - with threats of having their licenses revoked over alleged breach of the minimum broadcasting standards.

UCC even banned live coverage of a parliament plenary session in which members of parliament were debating the bill and the nascent protests against the bill allover the country. The ban was only lifted a few weeks later.

Further south in Mbarara, a radio presenter on Endigyito FM James Kasirivu, aka Kasirivu The Great, was sacked last month on directives of UCC executive director Godfrey Mutabazi.

In a November 21 letter to the radios managing director Nulu Byamukama, Mutabazi claimed that the regulatory body had received numerous complaints regarding Kasirivus current affairs show World Express which aired daily from 1pm to 3pm.

Endigyito radio shall recall that the commission has previously warned your station and the particular presenter over broadcasting content that breaches the minimum broadcasting standards as provided in Section 31 of the [UCC] Act, 2013, Mutabazi wrote.

In his letter, Mutabazi asked the radio management to submit recording of Kasirivus show for the period November 1-20, and also directed that Kasirivu be immediately suspended.

Mutabazis directive caused panic at the radio station owned by Byamukama, the former Kitagwenda MP who was also instrumental in popularising former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazis unsuccessful presidential bid.

Kasirivu was later summoned to the UCC headquarters in Kampala on December 1 and was told that his show had become problematic since it offers a platform to opposition politicians to speak against the age limit bill.

Mutabazi did not attend this particular meeting which, according to Kasirivu, was chaired by a one Paul Mukasa and attended by other officials at UCC who insisted that he explains why he hosts opposition politicians.

"My show is a current affairs program that looks at the topical issues in the news. I don't host anyone. I only speak about the issues in the news before opening the phone lines for the listeners to have their say," Kasirivu told The Observer.

After bringing this out and embarrassing his accusers in the process, UCC asked Kasirivu to excuse himself from issues happening in Uganda.

"They told me that I should instead speak about issues in countries like China," he said.

Eight Red Pepper directors and editors are currently under detention in Luzira prison over a story that run on November 20 titled; 'M7 plotting to overthrow Kagame - Rwanda'.

They were arrested on November 21 and are facing seven counts including; publication of information prejudicial to security, libel and offensive communication.

Previously, Pearl FM had its presenter Sulaiman Kasule suspended. He was presenting a current affairs show called Inside Story. Amama Mbabazis Kinkizi FM had a presenter suspended too.

sadabkk@observer.ug
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) have written a letter to President Museveni and Police boss Kale Kayihura over dwindling media freedoms in the country.



In a letter dated, December 4, WAN-IFRA and WEF who represent over 18,000 publications and 15,000 online sites in over 120 countries, are particularly concerned about the recent treatment of eight Red Pepper directors and editors over a November 20 story.

The story that alleged that Uganda President Yoweri with the help of his brother Gen Salim Saleh and security minister Lt.Gen Henry Tumukunde were plotting to overthrow Rwandas Paul Kagame.

Red Peppers editors and directors in court

The editors were arrested on November 21 and their offices closed and have since been charged with publication of information prejudicial to security, libel and offensive communication.



If the government believes that the editors indeed committed a crime in publishing details of this story, then we respectfully remind the relevant authorities that the rule of law exists in Uganda and that due procedure therefore should have been followed.

Furthermore, detaining the eight at Nalufenya Police Detention Centre, a location used by the police to hold individuals suspected of capital offences such as terrorism and treason, would appear to serve no other purpose than to intimidate the Red Pepper staff.

Such actions risk unleashing a chilling effect throughout the media profession in Uganda, letter in part the two-page letter signed by WAN-IFRA president Michael Golden and WEF president David Callaway.



Narrowing media space



We take this opportunity to express our growing unease at the way media is being treated in Uganda. Editors from media houses such as Monitor Publications Ltd and Vision Group have recently been summoned to the Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Directorate regarding stories they have published.



Although they have not been officially charged in court, this trend of summoning and interrogating editors is likely to instil further concern among journalists across the country. Such actions will likely lead to an increase in self-censorship and an understandable reluctance to pursue future stories for fear of recrimination or legal harassment, WAN-IFRA and WEF wrote.



In the interests of a free and democratic Uganda, we therefore call on your office to cease such methods of intimidation, to reprimand the tactics of intimidation deployed by the police, and to do everything in your power to show civic leadership in calling for greater respect for the profession of journalism.



Similarly, journalists under the Foreign Correspondents Association of Uganda (FCAU) have also condemned governments move of arresting and harassing media practitioners with the aim of silencing them.



Speaking at the Uganda Press Photo Award (UPPA) book launch yesterday, Micheal OHagan, the co-chair of FCAU, described the attack as a move that undermine good journalism. He expressed that FCAU would continue to encourage, criticize and support the journalists and it stood in solidarity with the jailed journalists.



Whether we like or disagree with the content the Red Pepper publishes, this attack on free press undermines the freedom of all journalists to report the facts. The government of Uganda must stop using arrests and prosecutions as a means of intimidating journalists, cautioned OHagan at the evening event held at The Square in Kampala.



Further, OHagan urged journalists to always uphold strong journalistic standards and ethics and to always hold themselves to account when they fall short of best practices.



Explaining that it was through pictures that people get to know about the events, the FCAU co-chair thanked the shortlisted journalists whose works were showcased in the UPPA album for their great work.



Deborah Malac, the US ambassador, described the press attacks as troubling and disturbing and called on for action from everyone. She replicated her governments message by maintaining that there was need to for an independent media because it is an essential element of strong democracy.



She observed that despite Ugandas Constitution guarantying the freedom of the press, attack on the media continue with the most recent being the attack on Red Pepper for simply for publishing an article.



In circumstances where government believes false information has been published, she urged, it would be prudent if it thought other avenues like courts instead of arrests and harassments.



Countries thrive when their citizens are well informed, and the citizens can only be well informed when theres a professional independent media, she said. Adding; Tonight, we renew the call we have made to the government of Uganda to safe guard the freedom of the press.



Malac further commended all journalists for their bravery to tell stories with the aim of ensuring that Ugandans get the information they deserve.



The UPPA album is a compilation of award winning works from photojournalists who have excelled and consists of works since 2012 when the photo accolade was launched. It features works from award winning journalists like The Observers Nicholas Bamulanzeeki, and Daily Monitors Abubaker Lubowa, among others.
On November 18, I arrived in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak  one of the 13 states that make up the Malaysian federation.

I was in Kuching to attend the annual World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) at the Borneo Convention Centre. This event usually attracts about 3,000 participants from all over the world to discuss halal travel, food, business, Islamic banking, etc.

Malaysian Prime Minister Hajji Mohammad Najib presided over the opening ceremony also attended by six heads of state or their representatives.

I think the reason they took us to Kuching, a two-hour flight from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, was to expose this beautiful and attractive beach city to the world. And beautiful it is: clean, well-planned and with modest prices. But of course most attractive to me was not the architecture, but the focus of the countrys leaders.

Malaysia is ranked the 6th most competitive economy in Asia after Singapore, Qatar, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Japan. It is the 23rd most competitive country in the world. There are 195 countries in the world, including Palestine.

With 31 million people, Malaysia is ranked the 35th largest economy in the world with GDP of approximately $922 billion and $27,267 GDP per capital. Only 3.4 per cent of its people are unemployed.

In fact, in Sarawak where I was, they were pleading with Indonesia to give them more workers in their palm oil industry.

Just 11 per cent of the population is in agriculture, 36 per cent in industry and 53 per cent in the services industry. Their exports include vehicles, agricultural products, technology, etc. In his address to the World Islamic Economic Forum delegates, Najib said their target as a country is to join the club of the 20 wealthiest nations in the world.

Mind you, this is a $922 billion-economy. Ugandas is $27 billion. Our population is now nearing 40 million people and Malaysia has 31 million people. What is their target that their prime minister is driving toward? To ensure that Malaysia, which got independence in 1957, joins the top 20 richest countries in the world.

And what is the immediate target of our leaders in Uganda? To ensure that the Constitution is changed and a provision that stops people above 75 years from standing for president is removed!

Those are the comparisons that keep running in my head each time I travel out of the country. There have been more cabinet meetings to discuss how the article that stops Gen Museveni from contesting for president in 2021 can be removed than on any other issue.

A cabinet sub-committee headed by Dr Ruhakana Rugunda was appointed to push for the removal of age limits. Top ruling NRM leaders were grouped into sub-regional committees to canvass support for this constitutional change.

And the loyal Dr Rugunda has just concluded touring Kigezi sub-region begging people to allow Mzee Museveni his childhood dream of dying in office.

I have been told by a senior minister that Museveni recently convened some members of his cabinet at State House Entebbe and analyzed how each NRM MP will vote.

Currently, parliament has about 450 MPs. Museveni needs about 300 MPs to be present and vote yes for his life-president project. At the moment, he is sure of about 305 MPs, according to those who have seen his security analysis list.

What he is not sure is whether public pressure wont diminish his numbers. That is why he is even slow on pushing parliament to process this satanic Constitution Amendment (No 2) Bill. He had initially wanted it passed by the end of November. We are now in December and the way I see things, this matter will be discussed next year.

That is how we are ending the year 2017. Of course there are other major undertakings by Museveni and his group such as the oil pipeline, oil refinery, power dams, airport expansion, railway and roads. But all these are affected by political decisions.

Currently, our public debt is more than $10 billion without the refinery and pipeline money. All the major infrastructure projects are funded by borrowed money because the revenue we locally collect is now being used as pocket money to rent support.

It is the reason power generated using local revenue in Jinja is sold at just about three US cents while that from private supplier Aga Khan is sold at about 13 US cents.

Financing Musevenis stay in power has become very expensive and the discipline of his family members with whom he is running the state is worsening by the day.

That is why he cant sack his in-law Sam Kutesa who is accused of soliciting bribes of half a million dollars and found it easy to sack Henry Kabafunzaki for soliciting a Shs 5 million bribe.



semugs@yahoo.com



The author is Kira Municipality MP and opposition chief whip in parliament.
Data analytics is now a $204 billion industry, according to Forbes. In India, it's expected to cross 16 billion mark by 2025 from the current $2 billion. Riding high on the boom sentiment, companies like Apple, Google are employing data analytics by the hordes. So much so that we have all started believing that scientific data analysis and predictive behavior are a must-have capabilities that lead to better business decisions, huge service improvements and product innovation.

In the words of Roger L. Martin and Tony Golsby-Smith, writing for Harvard Business Review, "When we face a context in which things cannot be other than they are, we can and should use the scientific method to understand immutable world faster and more thoroughly than any of our competition."

But is it really so?

Aren't there situations where reality is very different from its surface appearance? When a consumer says one things and implies quite the opposite? When initial fads fizz and fade out quickly from consumer consciousness. In such situations, predictive science, especially one dealing with human flirtations with brands, fails the litmus test of being an exact science. Data science may be telling one story, while the actual shopping behavior betrays another.

I once spoke to over a dozen-odd senior executives of large organizations.

The consensus that emerged is that behavioral analytics is emerging as a popular science but human behavior is very dynamic and non-predictable. Complete and total reliance on an analytical approach may not give us deep insights into human behavior, where intuitive intelligence must also come into play. Even in our social interactions, we depend a lot on intuitive intelligence in articulating and crystalizing our impressions of others, and accordingly, framing our thoughts. This is not possible will data-driven decision-making that's singularly devoid of intuitive intelligence.

Scientific methods are purposefully designed to understand natural phenomenon, where cause and effect are usually fixed elements of the equation. When cause changes, effect changes in the same proportion, and both are controllable variables, dependent on each other. But with human beings things are a little more complicated and baffling. A same cause can produce same effect, multiple effects, or no effect at all, as the case may be!

Time and other extraneous conditions also play a big role in who this effect gets manifested in human beings, in a manner that often defies scientific logic. Data is an outcome of "cause and effect" effected by external factors. Data is rooted in evidence and logic. In my opinion, this factor is the biggest impediment for big data analytics.

In my long career, I've personally experienced that most innovative and disruptive movements spring from the tendency not to accept the evidence which looks evident. Big milestone in business start with a gut feeling. Because you believe strongly in an idea, innovation happens.

Brain is the power center which moves in mysterious ways. Brain functioning is still one of the biggest and the most mysterious, unsolved riddle, a magic powerhouse, which uses all imaginative and seemingly impossible ways to reach a decision, and then, all of a sudden, for no apparent rhyme or reason discard and dump that same reasoning!

In my considered view, Big Data Analytics is undoubtedly a growing business and an evolving discipline. It presents a fresh, new way to approach an issue or demystify complex consumer behavior. But it's not an exact science and it can't altogether replace, what I like to call 'Gut Science.' Feeling in science is coming back in management with much bigger respect viz. 'Emotional Intelligence.'

Roger Martin in HBR argues that innovators often employ science in their new creations, but real genius lies in their ability to imagine products or processes that never existed before!

Research is cognitive science. But it's proven beyond doubt that the engine of creative synthesis is "associative fluency" viz. the mental ability to connect two concepts that are not usually linked and to forge them into a new idea. That's an act of genius!

That kind of genius, I think comes from gut feeling. Roger explains it very succinctly in his article. If an element cannot be changed in the initial hypothesis, then an executive needs to ask what laws of nature suggest this? If the cause and effect relationship of the hypothesis is very compelling, then data analytics tools may be used to drive choices. But in all other cases, I would rather go with my gut feeling.
Oscar Bartoli

About Me Avvocato, giornalista pubblicista, collabora con molti media italiani. Risiede negli Stati Uniti dal 1994 e vive tra Washington D.C., Veracruz e Bangalore (India). Consigliere comunale per il Partito Liberale a Palazzo Vecchio (Firenze) porta ancora addosso i segni delle percosse che i 'compagni' comunisti di allora gli hanno dato per essere andato a parlare nelle piazze dove comandava solo il PCI. Ha lavorato per molti anni nel gruppo SMI,leader europeo nel settore metalli non ferrosi, successivamente nell'IRI come responsabile dei contatti con i media e in seguito direttore IRI USA. Ha insegnato per dieci anni alla scuola di giornalismo della Luiss e per due anni alla Catholic University di Washington DC. Tiene un corso sulla comunicazione nel Master di Relazioni Internazionali dello IULM di Milano. Rotariano da decenni ha contribuito a creare due Club a Roma, e' stato presidente del Cassia Romana ed attualmente fa parte del Washington Rotary Club. Da giovane, per pagarsi gli studi ma, soprattutto, perche' gli piaceva, ha lavorato come chitarrista - cantante suonando nelle case del popolo, circoli cattolici, night clubs, radio e televisione.

Da non perdere - "Lei non sa chi sono io" Oscar Bartoli- Prefazione Romano Prodi- Editore Ciuffa

-"E anche questa e' America", prefazione di Walter Veltroni - Luiss University Press

- "Massoneria FAQ. Elogio della conoscenza (e dell'informazione)" di Oscar Bartoli e Stefano Bisi Betti Editrice

- "Mezzogiorno di Fuoco: duello all'ultimo spot" di Oscar Bartoli - Editore goWare

- "W.D.C (sotto traccia)" di Oscar Bartoli, Editore Luca Betti

- "DC Undercover"

(Scarith Books/New Academia Publishing 2013)

- "Borgo Pinti, storia di una famiglia fiorentina" by Oscar Bartoli editore Mauro Bonanno

Blog Archive
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan arrived in Lahore

LAHORE: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan arrived in Lahore via the Wagah border on an official visit on Wednesday, with the message that many Indians wanted good relations with Pakistan.



This is the first time a mayor of London has visited Lahore. Mr Khan is on a six-day mission to India and Pakistan to strengthen cultural and economic ties with the British capital. He had earlier stayed in India for three days where he met politicians and other important personages in Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar.



Accompanied by a delegation of investors and officials, Londons mayor was received warmly at the Wagah border by Mayor of Lahore retired Col Mubashar Javed and senior officials of the Punjab government.



Earlier in the day, while visiting the Golden Temple at Amritsar in India, Mr Khan called on the British government on Wednesday to make a formal apology for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which nearly 400 people were shot dead by British Indian army soldiers. He called the massacre one of the most horrific events in Indian history. It is wrong that successive British governments have fallen short of delivering a formal apology to the families of those who were killed, he said.



Mr Khan later called on Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif at the latters Model Town residence and attended a luncheon there. British High Commissioner Thomas Drew was also present on the occasion. The delegation included Londons Deputy Mayor for Business Rajesh Agrawal, Turkish Consul General Serder Deniz and US Consul General Elizabeth Kennedy.



Prior to Mr Khans arrival in the city, CM Sharif had tweeted: We welcome Mayor Sadiq Khan from the historic city of London to the historic city of Lahore. Mr Khan had a one-on-one meeting with the chief minister and later visited the Badshahi Mosque and the Lahore Fort, before attending a dialogue at Alhamra.



According to a spokesperson for the Punjab government, Mr Sharif said that Pakistan accorded great importance to its relations with the UK. A large number of Pakistanis were settled in London, playing an important role in enhancing bilateral relations between the two countries, he said, adding that promoting cordial relations between the UK and Punjab was the need of the hour.



The chief minister was quoted as saying that Pakistan had achieved great success in its war on terrorism, and would win it by introducing various socio-economic reforms. The government, in collaboration with the Department for International Development of the UK, had already introduced far-reaching reforms in education, healthcare and skills development sectors. We appreciate the cooperation of British people, he said.



Earlier while meeting CM Sharif, the delegation of British investors had expressed interest in investing in projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The chief minister said that the CPEC had opened new avenues of foreign investment in Pakistan and British investors should fully avail the opportunity.



Mr Khan said that the cities of London and Lahore enjoyed good relations and expressed the desire to enhance cooperation and investment with Lahore in various sectors.



Speaking at a dinner reception given by the mayor of Lahore, Mr Khan said he was impressed by the hospitality of the people of Lahore. He was happy to note that Pakistan and its society were progressing. I am happy to know that Pakistans economy is growing, he said, while thanking the mayor for according him a warm welcome. I found Lahore as I had heard of it. It is the heart of Pakistan and is certainly the hub of Pakistani culture, he said.



Lahores mayor thanked Mr Khan for visiting and shared that he wished to strengthen social and cultural ties with London.
Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israeli capital

In a much controversial move, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and announced to shift the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.



I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the US leader said in a speech from the White House. It's the right thing to do.



US President Trump announced his decision amid severe global criticism and warnings that the move would jeopardise the regional peace and create unrest among the Muslim block of the world.



He said his decision marked the start of a new approach to solving the thorny conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump also for the first time personally endorsed the concept of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, provided both sides agree to it.

Trump signs a memorandum after he delivered a statement on Jerusalem. AFP



This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality, he said in a White House address, calling it overdue and in the best interests of the United States.



The US president maintained that his decision would not compromise the city's geographic and political borders, which will still be determined by Israel and the Palestinians.



Since 1995 it has been the 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.



Trump's announcement plunges the United States into a decades-long dispute over a city considered holy by Jews, Muslims and Christians, and flies in the face of warnings from US allies and leaders across the Middle East.



The US president was expected to stop short of moving the embassy to Jerusalem outright  a central campaign pledge which his administration has postponed once already. Trump was due to decide the matter on last Monday but his administration decided to delay the move till today, probably because of global criticism.



So far, all foreign embassies are located in Tel Aviv with consular representation in Jerusalem. The status of Jerusalem is a key issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both Israelis and Palestinians claiming the city as their capital.



Ahead of Trump's speech, Arab and Muslim leaders spoke about the potential for violence. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian protesters burned American and Israeli flags. They also waved Palestinian flags and banners proclaiming Jerusalem as their eternal capital, language that Israelis similarly use for their nation.



Even America's closest allies in Europe questioned the wisdom of Trump's radical departure from the past US position, which was studiously neutral over the sovereignty of the city.



Moving the US embassy will probably take years to implement, but the repercussions of Trump's decision are likely to be swift.



Hundreds of Palestinians burned US and Israeli flags as well as pictures of Trump in the Gaza Strip, while relatively small clashes erupted near the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron.



The Palestinian armed movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new "intifada," or uprising. Palestinians called for three days of protests  or "days of rage"  starting on Wednesday.



Anticipating protests, US government officials and their families were ordered to avoid Jerusalem's Old City and the West Bank, though the situation remained largely calm on Wednesday.



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the main pan-Islamic body, in Istanbul on December 13 "to display joint action among Islamic countries" over Jerusalem.
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
Can American victims of terrorism seize and sell ancient Persian antiquities located at the University of Chicago to satisfy a court judgment against Iran? That's the question the United States Supreme Court considered on Monday in the case of Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, a case examining

the mechanics of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).
Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.
Just about all the journalists I know take ethics very seriously.

They believe in being fair, impartial and avoiding conflicts of interest at all costs. Its a code we live by.

A number of years ago when I was on the board of directors for the American Society of News Editors, it came to my attention that The Post-Star did not have a formal code of ethics.

Rather than crafting our own, I decided we should adopt ASNEs Statement of Principles. On Wednesday, I reminded our newsroom staff this is the code we live by and posted it on the bulletin board.

Here it is:

ASNE STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

PREAMBLE

The First Amendment, protecting freedom of expression from abridgment by any law, guarantees to the people through their press a constitutional right, and thereby places on news people a particular responsibility. Thus journalism demands of its practitioners not only industry and knowledge but also the pursuit of a standard of integrity proportionate to the journalist's singular obligation. To this end the American Society of News Editors sets forth this Statement of Principles as a standard encouraging the highest ethical and professional performance.

ARTICLE I - Responsibility

The primary purpose of gathering and distributing news and opinion is to serve the general welfare by informing the people and enabling them to make judgments on the issues of the time. Newsmen and women who abuse the power of their professional role for selfish motives or unworthy purposes are faithless to that public trust. The American press was made free not just to inform or just to serve as a forum for debate but also to bring an independent scrutiny to bear on the forces of power in the society, including the conduct of official power at all levels of government.

ARTICLE II - Freedom of the Press

Freedom of the press belongs to the people. It must be defended against encroachment or assault from any quarter, public or private. Journalists must be constantly alert to see that the public's business is conducted in public. They must be vigilant against all who would exploit the press for selfish purposes.

ARTICLE III - Independence

Journalists must avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety as well as any conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict. They should neither accept anything nor pursue any activity that might compromise or seem to compromise their integrity.

ARTICLE IV - Truth and Accuracy

Good faith with the reader is the foundation of good journalism. Every effort must be made to assure that the news content is accurate, free from bias and in context, and that all sides are presented fairly. Editorials, analytical articles and commentary should be held to the same standards of accuracy with respect to facts as news reports. Significant errors of fact, as well as errors of omission, should be corrected promptly and prominently.

ARTICLE V - Impartiality

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These principles are intended to preserve, protect and strengthen the bond of trust and respect between American journalists and the American people, a bond that is essential to sustain the grant of freedom entrusted to both by the nation's founders.
GLENS FALLS  Four people were arrested on drug-related charges Wednesday morning after a police raid at a home two doors away from Glens Falls High School, police said.

The search of 1 Cortland St. came as police investigated allegations that heroin and cocaine were being sold from the home, authorities said.

A search led to the seizure of cocaine and drug paraphernalia, and felony and misdemeanor charges against the man who lives at the home, according to Glens Falls Police.

The school complex, located just across Sherman Avenue from the home, and adjacent church were notified ahead of the raid that there would be police activity in the area, and that they should lock their doors, Glens Falls Police Detective Lt. Peter Casertino said.

As a precaution, we contacted the school and church so they could go into lockdown, he said.

According to police, charged were:

Jacob G. Liebig, 25, who lives at 1 Cortland. He was charged with felony criminal nuisance and misdemeanor counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminally using drug paraphernalia. Police said he had cocaine and a scale to weigh it, and the felony charge accuses him of allowing his home to be used for drug activity.

Brodice Lawson, 35, of Utica, charged with misdemeanor counts of loitering and criminal possession of a controlled substance, and jailed on a parole violation warrant. He was pulled over in a car moments after he drove away from the home, and is a three-time felon with convictions in central New York for drug, weapons and robbery counts, state corrections records show.

Timothy E. Pohl, 39, of Queensbury, charged with misdemeanor counts of loitering and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Shania E. Holden, 22, of Fort Ann, charged with misdemeanor counts of loitering and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Lawson was sent to Warren County Jail, while the other three suspects were released pending prosecution in Glens Falls City Court.

Additional charges are likely.
Lana M. Senecal, 28, of Middle Grove, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny for the theft of more than $1,000 in property last Dec. 16 in Malta.

She was also charged with felony drug counts at the time of her arrest, but they were dropped as part of a plea deal. Saratoga County Judge James Murphy put her on interim probation for a year, with a requirement she participate in the county's felony drug treatment court.
GLENS FALLS  Glens Falls Hospital is leasing space in the 14 Hudson Ave. building, which means that Sonny Bonacios mixed-use project is filling up.

EDC Warren County President Ed Bartholomew said Thursday the hospital has entered into a lease agreement to use the back section of the commercial space off School Street. He did not say what the hospital will do with the space.

Glens Falls Hospital spokesman Katelyn Cinzio confirmed the hospital has signed an agreement with Bonacio Construction to lease about 30,000 square feet in the building. Hospital officials have not finished their plans for the space.

We are developing exciting plans to improve accessibility and quality of care through an expansion of specialty services on and off campus, she said in an email. We are still finalizing the details around relocation of services, as well as new services, and look forward to providing the community with additional information in the next few months.

The hospitals move means much of the commercial space is reserved, according to Bartholomew.

Theres going to be basically about 5,000 to 7,000 square feet left, he said.

SUNY Adirondack will be taking up much of the first floor with its culinary arts program. It is going to spend $1.42 million to fit up about 8,100 square feet of space and buy equipment. The project is being funded by grants, donations, state funding and capital chargebacks, which is the money the college receives when students from outside the area attend the college.

Getting the culinary arts program downtown was a priority project for the citys Downtown Revitalization Initiative.

College officials are in the process of awarding construction bids, according to Bartholomew. They had indicated previously they hoped to be in the new space sometime in March.

Among the residential units, 70 out of 87 are leased, Bartholomew said.
FORT EDWARD  The Hudson Falls man who allegedly set his home on fire, killing his girlfriend, is scheduled to appear in court on Friday for a possible guilty plea.

Derrick M. Guilder is mulling a plea deal offer that would require him to plead guilty to second-degree murder and result in a state prison sentence of 22-years-to-life for the Sept. 6 fire that killed 18-year-old Ashley Coltrain.

The Washington County Court calendar for Friday lists Guilder for a possible plea before Judge Kelly McKeighan at 1:30 p.m.

Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan acknowledged Thursday that a court appearance had been scheduled, and plea discussions had been held. He declined to elaborate.

Guilders lawyer, Theresa Suozzi, did not return a phone call for comment Thursday.

She filed a notice last month, indicating the defense may pursue a psychiatric defense in the case, but that effort would be rendered moot by a guilty plea.

Suozzi said at Guilders Oct. 13 arraignment that he has a prior psychological history and had been on suicide watch in Washington County Jail.

Guilder was upset because it appeared their romantic relationship may have been ending, and Coltrain may have begun seeing someone else.

Guilder, 22, faces second-degree murder, first-degree arson and second-degree criminal mischief charges, all felonies. The maximum prison term he faces is 25-to-life.

He suffered smoke inhalation and was arrested the day after the fire as he was released from Glens Falls Hospital.

Police said he confessed to setting the fire by torching papers on a couch at the 11 North St., Hudson Falls, home, telling investigators that he initially planned to kill Coltrain and himself. But he panicked and fled the burning house, leaving Coltrain in their smoke-filled second-floor bedroom.

She called 911 to report the fire but did not escape in time. Guilder was rescued from a porch roof by police and firefighters.

Coltrain was a 2016 graduate of Hudson Falls High School who worked for two years at Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom amusement park and had been enrolled at SUNY Adirondack. Friends described her as happy and upbeat. Her family had endured another tragedy days earlier, when her 40-year-old mother died of heart problems on Aug. 27.

Guilder is being held in Washington County Jail without bail.

If Guilder does not plead guilty, a psychiatric defense could be pursued along two different avenues. Guilder could allege he suffered from extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the fire, which, if successful, could result in a conviction for a lesser charge of manslaughter.

He also could pursue an insanity defense, which could result in a jury finding that Redden was not guilty of the crimes because he lacked the capacity to know or appreciate either the nature and consequences of his actions or that they were wrong.

He would be confined to a secure mental institution indefinitely if found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
FORT EDWARD  A Hudson Falls man who was put on probation for a felony sex offense after a mistrial was declared in his case was jailed in recent days for violating the terms of probation by not reporting social media use, officials said.

Lawrence Ox Loveday, 40, was jailed on a violation of probation count after the Washington County Probation Department determined he had not reported his social media accounts or an email account as required, according to Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan.

He was required to disclose those, Jordan said.

Loveday is on probation for a first-degree sexual abuse conviction that stemmed from an incident where he fondled a 7-year-old child in 2015. Hudson Falls Police arrested him in September 2016, after the girl disclosed the abuse.

Loveday went to trial in the case last January.

But he got a favorable plea deal during his trial, after a juror in the case was found to have had lunch with a court staff member the first two days of proceedings, after the juror failed to disclose she knew the staffer. A standard question during jury selection is whether a prospective juror knows anyone who works in the court or criminal justice systems.

That prompted a mistrial motion by his defense lawyers with the Washington County Public Defenders Office. Loveday had been offered a deal with a state prison sentence before trial. But in light of the mistrial, the offer was instead modified to include 10 years of probation, as the victim had already testified and prosecutors did not want to make her endure that a second time.

Washington County Probation Director Anthony White said he could not comment on a pending case.

Loveday is not listed on the states public sex offender registry, though he is required to regiser as part of the terms of probation. The public registry includes Level 2 and Level 3 offenders.

Loveday is due back in court before Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan on Friday. He could face up to 7 years in state prison if McKeighan upholds the probation violation and opts to end probation.
Thank you for drawing attention to the dangerous Concealed Carry Reciprocity (CCR) bill making its way through Congress. As you mentioned, the NRA has been pushing this legislation, which would gut New Yorks strong gun laws. CCR would force our state to accept anyone who can carry a hidden, loaded gun in another state, even if that state has much weaker or no standards at all.

Indeed, 12 states dont require a permit or background check, and still others allow domestic abusers or people convicted of violent misdemeanors to concealed carry. CCR faces stiff opposition from people who realize that it would make us less safe, that it would take away states rights to set their own laws for who can carry a hidden weapon, and that it would make the job of law enforcement harder. Thats why the NRAs friends in Congress have now combined this radical legislation with a different bill, a bipartisan proposal to improve our national background check system. This is a cynical attempt to force unpopular and unsafe legislation through by hiding it inside a more popular bill. We must not allow the gun lobbys extremist agenda to be snuck into law this way.
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On December 6, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and the Taiwan International Ports Corporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding to begin a collaborative investigation into the development of areas of the Taichung harbor in Taiwan for the Offshore wind business.

The non-binding MoU covers investigations of a potential manufacturing site for offshore wind components, office facilities, and staging areas including storage, pre-assembly, and quayside load-out.

"Signing the MoU demonstrates our strong desire to contribute to the development of offshore wind in Taiwan. We fully believe in the potential of this emerging market, and wish to support it with our vast knowledge as an industry leader," states Andreas Nauen, CEO Offshore, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.

A timeline has not been set for finalization of the cooperation agreement.

Furthermore, SGRE opened a new office location in Taipei, aimed at increasing offshore wind customer responsiveness in APAC excluding mainland China. The office will act as the offshore wind regional hub, and together with other regional offices in Japan and Korea, it will deliver the latest offshore wind and service portfolios.

"The offshore wind industry in Taiwan is today looking at over 10 GW of projects under planning according to official information. During 2017, strong supportive signs were shown by the Taiwanese government, with detailed grid capacity planning, and an increase of the long term ambitions. Similarly, significant milestones have been completed in the rest of the region. Japan is developing the first utility-scale projects, and Korea has now commissioned their first commercial-sized offshore wind power plant. We look forward to helping ensure that the right infrastructure is in place, as well as maintaining efforts towards further cost reductions," Nauen continues.

In 2016, Siemens Gamesa installed Taiwan's first offshore wind power plant, the 8 MW Formosa Phase 1 demonstration project.
Now that John Conyers (D), Roy Moore (R) and Al Franken (D) have been accused of sexual misconduct, Democrats are salivating to revisit the allegations of sexual misconduct made prior to the election against then-candidate Donald Trump.

Walking talking-points, the likes of Eugene Robinson, bray, "If Congress is going to probe the conduct of Conyers and Franken, it must also investigate the multiple, believable allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump."

But why?

Six Democratic congressmen, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago, want to impeach President Trump. But are they willing to add to their so-called articles of impeachment charges of sexual misconduct?

If so, are they willing to bring similar charges against Conyers and Franken? Members of the House and Senate are not subject to impeachment. Rather, under Article I, Section 5, "Each house ... with the concurrence of two thirds, can expel a member."

Or is the rule, only Republicans should be impeached.

Indeed if candidate Roy Moore has to go based on 40 year-old allegations, why shouldn't Conyers and Franken be cashiered for their more recent "misdemeanors?"

Are there photos of Moore's alleged misconduct? Of Franken's?

Article II of the U.S. Constitution provides "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Article 1 provides that the House has sole power to bring charges of impeachment. If charges brought pursuant to a majority House vote, the Senate must try all impeachments, "and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two- thirds of the members present."

The question really is, "what is a high crime or misdemeanor?" During the attempted impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (one of the court's great justices) U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford gave a very practical definition: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be."

It was on that basis, that President Bill Clinton (quite wrongfully, in my opinion) was impeached, but not convicted. But Ford's understanding is not what the framers understood or intended.

The framers borrowed the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" from English experience and history. Parliament had impeached for the misuse of public funds, abuse of political (not sexual) power, neglect of duty, corruption, and encroachment upon the prerogatives of the legislature.

For example, English Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon, was impeached for corruption and taking gratuities - "bribes" - from litigants. Charles I was charged with treason for waging war against Parliament, and the people therein represented, and for abuse of power- for encroaching on the prerogatives of Parliament, according to "The Enduring Constitution," by Jethro Koller Lieberman.

American President Andrew Johnson (1867), Justices Samuel Chase (1804) and William O. Douglas were charged with acts done while they held office. Richard Nixon also would have been, had he not resigned.

To revisit charges of sexual misconduct against Mr. Trump before the election, or to examine additional charges that could have been leveled at that time, which weren't, would be a gross abuse of the power of impeachment.

In an impeachment, the Senate acts as the jury. But the charges against Mr. Trump - made before the election - have already been passed upon by another jury - the ultimate jury - the people of the United States, voting in the 2016 presidential election.

The voters were fully aware of the allegations. They had been relentlessly broadcast by the press, Democratic politicians, and anti-Trumpists across TV, cable, radio, newspapers and the internet. And the voters elected Mr. Trump.

There is something utterly undemocratic about 67 Senators nullifying a presidential election - the considered will of the American people.

(I am not saying that the Senate could not convict a president of a pre-election "high crime or misdemeanor" that was unknown to the voters on the day of elections that only comes to light later).

Mr. Lieberman writes, "Disapproval of presidential policies was not made a ground for impeachment, and it is generally agreed that the House abused its power in impeaching President Andrew Johnson in 1867 because it disliked his policies."
DES MOINES  Two high-ranking Republicans told an Iowa business group last week that they expect state lawmakers will make serious efforts next session to provide relief to business and individual income taxpayers and bolster programs that will enhance the skills of Iowa's workforce.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, told members of the Iowa Chamber Alliance he believes "Chapter Two" of the bold changes Republicans  who control the Statehouse  plan to achieve next year will include "real tax relief," not necessarily reform, that will help Iowa businesses grow and create more jobs.

"Reform implies that it might be a moving of chairs on the deck and that's not what we should be pursuing," Dix told members of a non-partisan coalition representing the 16 largest chambers of commerce and economic development organizations in Iowa. "We should be looking at how we become less reliant on the income tax and motivated by one reason and one reason only  to grow our economy and to have more taxpayers.

"It needs to be real tax relief that attracts and allows for more taxpayers and an increase in the tax base, and recognizes that money can walk," Dix added.

Rep. Jake Highfill, R-Johnston, said Republicans in the House and Senate will caucus on taxes and other issues after the state Revenue Estimating Conference convenes Monday to set tax collection projections that will form the basis for budgeting in the 2018 session. He said corporate and personal income taxes "are on the table" and right now "there are about 15 ideas out there on how to do it and how to get it done."

While there are many ideas about how to improve Iowa's tax climate, the consistent theme in the discussions has been "we're going to have a real cut," Highfill noted. "I think the important thing is to make sure it's a cut, make sure Iowans are fairly represented and have a lower tax bracket."

"I believe it's going to happen," he added. "All the stars have aligned."

The discussion on taxes came during a legislative luncheon held after the alliance issued its legislative priorities for the 2018 session. Priorities focused on tax reform and continued support for economic development programs the group sees as essential for growth.

Along with tax-code changes, the alliance advocated comprehensive investment in developing and retaining world-class talent in the workforce through broad support of Gov. Kim Reynolds' Future Ready Iowa initiative; support for high-quality K-12 education to prepare graduates with career-ready skills or post-secondary education; " fiscal prudence and spending restraint" across all levels of government; long-term infrastructure planning and resources to fund critical, capital-intensive projects; and a predictable and responsive regulatory environment.

"The 2018 legislative session will allow the Iowa Chamber Alliance the distinct opportunity to improve Iowa's economic landscape," said Chris McGowan, 2018 ICA chair and president of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. "This year the Alliance will focus its efforts on improving Iowa's overly complex and burdensome tax structure while advocating for the economic development tools we utilize to encourage capital investment, create quality jobs and wages, and enhance our quality of life."

Sen. Chaz Allen, D-Newton, who also participated in the legislative panel with Rep. Mary Gaskill, D-Ottumwa, stressed that a state's tax code is among about nine elements that prospective businesses look at when making location decisions. At the top of the list is skilled labor along with highway accessibility and quality of life for employees, Allen noted, in pushing for a balanced effort to promote growth, economic development and jobs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley is not backing away from his comment about raising the cap on the estate tax and using the federal tax system to encourage savings.

Death should not be an incident of taxation, the Iowa Republican said Wednesday, calling that a matter of principle.

Grassley ignited a firestorm of satire and derision with comments he made to reporters last week explaining his position that the estate tax  or death tax, as he sometimes calls it  is a form of double taxation that doesnt recognize the value of risk-taking, saving and investment.

I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, Grassley said in that weekly conference call. As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether its on booze or women or movies.

His comments have been lampooned by opinion writers and late night television hosts and prompted his detractors to leave empty liquor bottles outside his Iowa offices and design T-shirts apologizing for the senator Iowans have elected seven times.

Grassley said again Wednesday that his comments were taken out of context.

I put out a statement, (and) I think Ill stand by my statement of correction, Grassley said.

In that statement, Grassley said the government shouldnt seize the fruits of someones lifetime of labor after they die.

The question is one of basic fairness and working to create a tax code that doesnt penalize frugality, saving and investment, the statement continued. Thats as true for family farmers who have to break up their operations to pay the IRS following the death of a loved one as it is for parents saving for their childrens college education or working families investing and saving for their retirement.

Grassley estimated the estate tax is levied on about 2 percent to 3 percent of estates, those passing on assets of more than $5.5 million for individuals and $11 million for married couples. The current tax on estates is 40 percent of an individuals wealth at death.

Last week, the Senate approved raising that to $11 million per individual and $22 million per couple. The House tax reform plan would end the estate tax in 2024.

Grassleys position is that income ought to be taxed just once.

Think of the farmland bought for $1,000 and now its worth $10,000 an acre, he said. You dont plan on selling it because you want the kid to farm it and the next grandkid to farm it.

The estate tax, he said, doesnt recognize the value of people who create businesses and jobs, who build something to leave to their families, who invest in their communities.

Not having the estate tax recognizes the people who are investing, he said.
A Davenport woman is accused of helping to bilk more than $35,000 out of the grandparent of a prison inmate by pretending to be an employee of a law firm representing the inmate, Davenport police said.

Audrey Elaine Slyter, 30, of 1805 N. Elsie Ave., is charged with one count of on-going criminal activity, first-degree theft and conspiracy to commit a non-forcible felony.

On-going criminal activity is a Class B felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

First-degree theft is a Class C felony that carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence, while the conspiracy charge is a Class D felony that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.

According to the arrest affidavits filed by Davenport Police Detective Jason Gillaspie, from Feb. 14 through June 23, Slyter and at least two other co-defendants presented themselves as employees of a law firm representing a current Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.

Slyter and her accomplices told the inmates grandparent that money was needed for attorneys fees and for the inmates medical needs that required payment, according to the affidavits.

During the four months of the scam, Slyter and her co-conspirators received 20 checks totaling $35,875.87 from the victim, according to the affidavits.

Neither Slyter nor her accomplices are members of any law firm, and none of the funds obtained were used for the victims grandson.

Police are working on filing charges against Slyters co-defendants.

Slyter was arrested early Wednesday by Davenport police.

She was being held Wednesday night in the Scott County Jail on $40,000 bond cash or surety.
In a solemn procession, four members of Davenport American Legion Post 26 Color Guard marched Wednesday onto the stage at Central High School for the Fallen Warrior Ceremony.

All veterans, the guards stood at attention as some 100 cadets in the Central ROTC Blue Devil Battalion stood to recognize the contributions of 44 members of the military from Central and Davenport high schools, killed in action.

The annual event featured guest speakers, including Col. Kenneth J. Tauke, garrison commander at the Rock Island Arsenal, and Christopher Hickey, retired from the Marine Corps and assistant director of the National Cemetery in Rock Island. Central Principal Jon Flynn also spoke, reminiscing on former Davenport students, Brad Korthaus and Jason Pautsch, who were killed in the Middle East.

It was a honor to speak at the ceremony, Tauke said, adding those who died for their country were not much older than the high school students in Kahler Auditorium.

"Our nation has deep gratitude for service members willing to go forward," Tauke said, calling the U.S. Army the greatest army, in the greatest nation of the world.

Rock Island's National Cemetery traces its roots to 1863, during the Civil War, Hickey said. There are 800 burials each year at the site, he said, including some killed in action.

Hickey cited the words of President Abraham Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address: "... that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ..."

For his part, Flynn said he is not a soldier and the closest he came to combat is hunting deer. But, his wife was a neighbor to Korthaus, who he described as "rambunctious." Korthaus, who died in Iraq in 2003, was a graduate of Davenport Assumption High School.

When Flynn worked at Davenport North High School, he also knew Jason Pautsch, killed in Iraq in 2009, the victim of a suicide bombing. In high school Pautsch was "over-the-top energetic" and graduated early in order to join the U.S. Army.

"So I do understand loss," Flynn said, adding that the sacrifice of young men like Korthaus and Pautsch allow him to live the life he's chosen, in his hometown.

Cadet Major Rebecca VanVooren and Cadet Lt. Col. Samuel Reynolds read the names of 44 from Central who are the schools' "fallen warriors." The reading of the names was followed by a moment of silence.

Reynolds said he appreciates his time at Central, and has not forgotten the warriors who walked in the same hallways he does.

A rendition of "Taps" ended the ceremony.

Cody Stephenson, a senior, is commander of Alpha Company in the ROTC corps at Central and said the Fallen Soldiers Ceremony is important.

"I think every school should do this," he said, adding that fallen soldiers do not get enough recognition, except on Veterans Day.
With the rise in juvenile crime, the Davenport City Council wants local legislators to support the first Juvenile Assessment Center in Iowa.

The City Council will vote to approve its legislative strategies next week. During a management meeting Tuesday, Police Chief Paul Sikorski said a group  including but not limited to Juvenile Court Services, Department of Human Services, local judges, Scott County Sheriff's Office and the Bettendorf Police Department  have been meeting and are supportive of the concept.

"We do have a lot of services in our area, but it's very fragmented and they change from time to time depending on funding sources," Sikorksi said. "The other thing this could potentially do  as seen around the nation  is relieve some of the congestion in the juvenile court system."

Sikorski said the assessment center is not a lockup, but rather a 365-day a year central location that incorporates both law and community services so youths can get the assistance they need.

"It would be the main contact where they develop a plan for these kids," Sikorski said.

Within Scott County, there were 254 youthful offenders admitted to the Juvenile Detention Center in 2016, representing an increase of 25 percent since 2011.

Research from the Justice Policy Institute indicates similar facilities decrease recidivism by 22 percent and yield $13 in benefits to public safety for every dollar spent.

With state agencies involved in service delivery, the city is seeking participation and monetary support from the state.

"There has been some good success around the nation in different areas that have tried things like this," Sikorski said. "It's certainly something all of the partners are interested in doing."

Two of the partners are state agencies, so "they really need to be on-board for this to successful," Sikorski said.

The council discussed other legislative priorities including commercial backfill, economic development and traffic cameras.

In looking at the legislative priorities laid out and the makeup of current representation, Alderman Mike Matson, 7th Ward, said the city would need to cultivate bi-partisan support to have favorable results during the next legislative session.

"Most of ours are Democrats and if we don't have a strong other side to do that, it's going to be a very strong session against the stuff we've been advocating for again," Matson said. "We need to find someone who will help us."
Despite filing a notice of appeal challenging the reinstatement of its former fire chief, the city of Davenport remains silent on whether or not it will follow through with legal action.

The Davenport City Council adjourned its committee-of-the-whole meeting Wednesday to enter into executive session in its 2nd-floor conference room "for the purpose of discussing litigation."

The litigation turned out to be discussing whether or not the city will keep its appeal of the Civil Service Commission's order to reinstate Lynn Washburn as district chief following her dismissal as chief on July 27.

After the executive session concluded, discussion spilled out into the hallway and down the elevator, but neither the mayor nor members of the City Council would comment as to whether they will challenge the order or not.

"I can say that we discussed pending litigation with our attorneys, but not anymore because it was an executive session," Mayor Frank Klipsch said.

Washburn was placed on administrative leave July 24 and fired three days later after she informed City Administrator Corri Spiegel that she would not be able to attend a pre-disciplinary meeting.

Since Washburn's termination, city officials and staff have remained tight-lipped about her dismissal due to the city policy of not speaking out about personnel matters.

The only documentation that is public record is a memorandum from Spiegel in which she stated: "During my tenure, due to actions on her part including, but not limited to, those of today and the past several days, she demonstrated that she is unsuitable or unfit for continued employment."

Washburn successfully appealed to the Civil Service Commission that she had the right to stay in the department because, under Iowa Code 400.13, a police or fire chief may remain in the department commensurate with the person's civil service status.

The crux of the issue was whether civil service status was transferable since Washburn became chief of the Davenport Fire Department after 29 years at the Rockford (Illinois) Fire Department.

The commission voted 3-1 to return her to the department as a district chief.

Notice of appeal was mailed out to Washburn's attorney Mike Carroll on Nov. 22 and filed in Scott County District Court on Nov. 28.

In the court document, assistant city attorney Brian Heyer wrote that Washburn's "return to the fire department would greatly raise the potential for irreparable harm to the department if the stay is not granted."

He also wrote since she has been away from the department since July, it would not cause any harm to her.

The filing appeared to surprise members of the City Council according to an email that was sent on Dec. 1 because they intended to discuss it during a planned executive session.

After the Quad-City Times first reported the notice of appeal, Alderman Mike Matson, 7th Ward, emailed Klipsch, members of the Council, City Attorney Tom Warner and Spiegel after a few members of the community contacted him about the appeal.

"Who decided this?" Matson wrote. "We are/ we're to talk about this in executive session Wed? Who moved this ahead of our executive discussion?"
A ministry seeking to create a faith-based boarding house for formerly incarcerated women in Davenport has withdrawn its petition for rezoning.

Women in Spiritual Hope, or WISH, Ministries notified the city of its decision to withdraw a petition for 5210 N. Division St. during this week's committee-of-the-whole meeting. The Council had previously approved two considerations of an ordinance to approve its request.

WISH Ministries had intended to purchase the duplex to create a boarding house for women who had served time in prison for nonviolent crimes.

Tenants would go through an application process and voluntarily sign a one-year agreement in which they would each pay $100 per week to live in the facility, ministry officials had told the Council.

Lynn Johnson, executive director and co-founder of the ministry, said while conducting jail ministries in Scott and Rock Island counties, she found women often had nowhere to go, which suggested a need for this type of service.

She described the boarding house as "hope for the hopeless"  providing services and programming to the women as they try to get back on their feet.

In describing the concept to the Council in previous weeks, Johnson said the women would be required to check-in and check-out of the home each week and could not leave without being accompanied by a friend or staff person.

The ministry is modeled after the book "Miss Brenda and the Loveladies," which was based upon a successful boarding house in Birmingham, Alabama.

While the current zoning, R-4 Moderate Density Dwelling District, could have fulfilled the ministry's intent, rezoning to R-5 Medium Density Dwelling District was sought to increase the maximum number of tenants to six, plus a housemother.

The Council had expressed concerns about the safety of the building and requested an inspection prior to the next discussion of the proposal. The inspection was to be conducted before Tuesday's meeting.

Public Works Director Nicole Gleason said a rental inspection was completed last week, as is the normal protocol, after the ministry and the city encountered some initial troubles.

During the Council's Nov. 21 meeting, Johnson said inspectors would be unable to gain access to the building, but said the owners were committed to any necessary inspections before renovations began.

"The owner lives in California and has an estate person out of Muscatine," Johnson said. "It has gone into foreclosure and so the bank, PennyMac, has taken over and taken her locks off and put their locks on at this time."

Before last week's inspection, a rental inspection had been completed in 2015, but only the lower floor could be accessed. At the time, the owner was inhabiting the top unit and renting the lower unit.

Neither Johnson nor Brett Marshall, the ministry's legal counsel, responded to questions about the reason for withdrawing the request.

During Tuesday's management update meeting, City Attorney Tom Warner said with the rezoning request withdrawn, the property would be treated as a rental moving forward because it is not owner-occupied.
The federal historic tax credits that spurred the redevelopment of downtown Davenport would still be available under the tax reform bill passed by the Senate, but are eliminated in the House bill.

Both versions of the tax reform bill are now in a House and Senate Conference Committee charged with reconciling the two versions.

At present, a developer can be allocated tax credits amounting to 20 percent of qualified rehab project costs to help finance renovation of historic buildings.

Developers can use the tax credits themselves or, as is usually the case, they can sell them to investors to generate equity (money) to finance the redevelopment. Tax credits are attractive to investors because they provide a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the investor's federal tax liability on ordinary income.

At present, the 20 percent credit may be used in one year. Under the Senate bill, the credits would be spread out over five years, or at a rate of 4 percent per year.

This is not ideal for tax credit boosters because it could have the effect of reducing investor interest, Davenport Alderman Marion Meginnis, 3rd Ward, said.

Meginnis is a strong supporter of historic tax credits because she has seen all the redevelopment they have spurred  and could continue to spur  in Davenport and communities throughout the country.

"Investors ... are looking for a way to reduce their tax liability," she said. With a smaller annual reduction available, they might not want to buy the credits. This, in turn, may cause developers to shy away from historic rehabs, she said.

Still, the Senate version is better than elimination, she said.

The Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce, various private developers, including Economic Growth, a nonprofit developer based in Rock Island, Landmarks Illinois, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and other entities, have spoken in favor of the credits that were first enacted by the Reagan Administration in 1981.
Tax Reform for American Farmers and Agriculture

By Senator Chuck Grassley

Its been more than three decades since Congress passed significant tax reform legislation. Since then, the tax code has become overwhelming in both its size and complexity, burdening working families and small businesses across the country. At this point, its clear an outdated and over-complicated code is keeping the nation, including American agriculture, from realizing its full economic potential. Reform is long overdue.

Passing tax reform would be a big win for Americans of every income level and walk of life. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowers rates, doubles the child tax credit and simplifies the filing process. It would help raise workers wages and bring back and create new jobs by making the United States more competitive with other countries. Tax reform will help rural America, much of which has been struggling economically for far too long.

As one of only three Republican senators on both the Finance and Agriculture Committees, Ive made it a priority to represent agriculture and the family farmer throughout the tax reform debate. This legislation is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make real and long-lasting reforms for farmers, ranchers and every American working in our agriculture industries.

Broadly speaking, across-the-board rate reductions will let Americans keep more of their own money. This would afford farmers the opportunity to reinvest in their operations instead of sending that financial capital to politicians in Washington.

Tax reform legislation expands Section 179 of the tax code, which helps farmers finance overhead costs. It enables farmers to deduct more expenses in the year they are incurred, and also expands the availability of cash accounting to more farmers in Iowa and throughout the country. These provisions will allow farmers to invest in the equipment necessary to do the job of feeding the nation and the world.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowers taxes on capital investments and includes a business income deduction, which will help level the playing field between farms that file as corporations and those that file as individuals. More than 94 percent of farms are taxed under IRS provisions affecting individual taxpayers. The bulk of agricultural producers who operate outside the corporate tax code deserve basic fairness. This legislation makes sure that those taxed under the individual and corporate tax codes are treated similarly.

One of the most frequently discussed issues in the tax reform discussion is the estate tax, which can force family farms to break up their operations to pay the IRS following the death of a family member. I support a full repeal of this unfair tax, and the Senates legislation makes significant progress by doubling the estate tax exemption. This substantial change would let more family farmers pass their hard-earned lifes work on to their children, paving the way for the next generation of family farmers.

Ive long advocated for these commonsense measures because they will help Iowa and the Midwest and will make life easier for middle class Americans. Farmers hard work provides the healthy and affordable food that we so often take for granted. We should do everything in our power to support them and create an environment where these small businesses and hardworking families can thrive and prosper. Thats what tax reform will do for farmers, for Iowans and for all Americans.
Most northern Panhandle juniors appear to have scored well on the ACT as part of the states move toward using the college entry test as its statewide assessment for juniors.

The Nebraska Department of Education released results to the schools earlier this month but is only now releasing the data to the public. Most high schools in Dawes, Sheridan and Sioux county exceeded the statewide average scores in two or more content areas.

Under the new system, students are ranked as either developing, on track or at ACT benchmark. Developing students likely need additional courses before they would be able to access credit-bearing courses at Nebraska colleges. On track students are approaching college readiness and may be able to take college level courses without remediation at some institutions. Meeting the ACT benchmark means a student is equipped to succeed in first-year college classes and have a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better.

To be considered proficient, a student must earn an ACT score that puts them in the on track or ACT benchmark rankings.

Statewide, Nebraska juniors scored an average of 17.8 in English/language arts, and 19 in both math and science. Fifty-two percent of juniors across the state are considered proficient in English, while those percentages are 50 and 54 for math and science.

Chadron juniors outperformed the state in all three content areas by two points on the assessments 36-point scale. The districts average scores were 19.9 in English, 21.7 in math and 21.1 in science. Sixty-seven percent of the juniors are considered proficient in both English and science, while 75 percent rank that way in math. The composite average for CHS juniors was 20.9, compared to 19.3 for the state, and more than half are proficient in both English and math.

Chadron High Principal Jerry Mack said even with all of the changes that have taken place in statewide assessments over the years, the ACT scores show that Chadron students continue to perform well. Looking at data from 12 other Panhandle schools that are large enough to have their ACT results released publicly, Chadron still is among the best. According to Macks blog on the CHS website, Chadron outranks those 12 schools in math and is at or near the top in English and science.

Depsite an Associated Press report that says less than a third of Nebraskas juniors are ready for first year college courses, Mack isnt discouraged by the data. Nationally, only 64 percent of students choose to take the ACT and only 26 percent meet the ACT benchmarks in all subjects. For nearly a third of Nebraskas juniors, who still have a year of high school left, to meet those marks is a positive thing in Macks eyes.

At Hay Springs, juniors also exceeded statewide scores in all three content areas, scoring an average of 19.5 in English, 19.6 in math and 20.6 in science. The districts percentage of students who are considered proficient are masked due to small class sizes.

Crawford juniors performed best in math and science, scoring an average 19.5 in each subject to exceed the statewide average. Fifty-seven percent of the schools students are proficient in science, while 52 percent rank that way in math. Twenty-nine percent of the districts juniors are considered proficient in every subject.

Crawford High School Principal Chris Geary was pleased to see the district outperformed the state in two of the three content areas, noting that going forward the school will need to work on aligning its curriculum, especially in English, with the ACT. Thats a move he believes the state must look at in terms of statewide standards, too.

Its important as we move forward that we examine the fidelity between the state standards and the ACT test, he said. Im eager for that.

Crawford juniors were behind the curve in English, trailing the statewide average by a point, with 48 percent of them considered proficient in the subject. Geary said a significant portion of the ACT test deals with grammar, a topic that isnt necessarily as prominent in Nebraskas curriculum standards.

Overall, the move to the ACT for junior assessments is one Geary is positive about.

I think there may be some students for whom the ACT doesnt fit for an assessment, but overall Im happy about the ACT. In my opinion its better than the former test, so I think were making steps in the right direction, he said, pointing out that the juniors who took the test in April scored higher than the seniors who graduated in May.

Still, caution is required, he added. Small schools across the state, including those in the northern Panhandle, are testing a small sample size of students.

We need to be cautious when interpreting these scores because one score can really impact these averages in small schools, Geary said.

Sioux Countys scores and proficiency percentages are masked due to small class sizes, but Superintendent Dr. Brett Gies said hes pleased with the results, even though he cant share them publicly.

Im confident that our students are well prepared for college, he said. They are all on target to do well.

Gies is another administrator in favor of the move to the ACT for assessing students. Students headed to college have to take the test anyway, and the districts standards and teaching are already aligned to the ACT. In general, the districts students who have taken the ACT on their own in previous years have scored higher than state averages, Gies said.

Gordon-Rushville fell behind the curve in two content areas and just beat the statewide average in the third. Juniors there scored an average of 17.9 in English, 18.7 in math and 18.2 in science. Fifty-five percent of the districts students are considered proficient in English, while 49 percent are proficient in math and 53 percent in science.

Four of the five regional schools had 100 percent participation rate. Gordon-Rushville is the only school that did not test every junior in the district; the school tested 98 percent.

For more information on statewide assessments, including the ACT and NeSA tests, visit nep.education.ne.gov.
Of the ships and service craft moored at Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, one had connections to South Dakota.

The minelayer USS Oglala was the flagship of the Pacific Fleet Mine Force. A flagship is the ship that carries the commander of a fleet and flies the commanders flag. A minelayer is a naval vessel for laying underwater mines.

The Oglala had started life as a coastal passenger vessel, carrying people between Boston and New York. The vessel was built in 1906 or 1907 by the William Cramp Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia with the name Massachusetts. The vessel was taken over by the Navy in World War I and converted to a minelayer with the name USS Shawmut. At the end of the war, the Shawmut was converted to a seaplane tender. On Jan. 1, 1928, the ship was again converted into a minelayer and renamed the USS Oglala.

This name was selected by President (Calvin) Coolidge in recognition of the honor paid him by the Oglala Tribe in making him a chieftain, wrote J.V. Ogan, Captain, U.S. Navy, Commanding, in a 1950 letter to a boarding school at Pine Ridge.

Coolidge and his wife, Grace, spent the summer of 1927 in the Black Hills. While in South Dakota, the president was adopted as an honorary member of the Sioux tribe in recognition of his support for the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, granting full U.S. citizenship to American Indians and permitting them to retain tribal land and cultural rights.

On a Sunday morning 76 years ago, the Oglala was moored alongside the cruiser USS Helena at Pier Ten-Ten in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard near Honolulu, Hawaii. Among those on board were Rear Adm. William R. Furlong, commander of the minecraft battle force, and Seaman First Class Loren Bailey.

Bailey had eaten breakfast in the mess hall and was about to complain that one of his records was being played on the record player with a scratchy needle when he heard that a fire had been spotted at nearby Ford Island. General quarters sounded, calling all on board to go to battle stations as quickly as possible. This was about 7:57 a.m.

As I started down the starboard side (right-hand side as one faces forward) of the ship, I noticed three airplanes. I paid no attention to em because there was all so much activity. I thought it was just planes off an aircraft carrier. I saw the red insignia and it never dawned on me, Bailey said in an oral history interview conducted on Dec, 3, 1986, by the National Park Service.

Bailey said he saw one of the planes in what would be the first wave of Japanese torpedo planes to reach Pearl Harbor drop a torpedo, which passed under the Oglala and slammed into the USS Helena. The pressure from the explosion ruptured the lower port (left) plating abreast of the Oglalas fireroom, and the minelayer rapidly took on water.

By this time, the planes were starting to drop torpedoes on the battleships, Bailey recalled. He crossed the gangplank onto the Helena, where he passed ammunition for the Helenas guns during the attack.

Smoke was everywhere around him, and Japanese planes were flying over the top of a nearby Navy yard building.

I did not see the Arizona blow up, but I saw it burning profusely. I did see a lot of explosions near Ford Island. I observed them. And the battleship Nevada got underway, Bailey said. I cant actually say I was scared. I was probably more surprised and amazed. We couldnt comprehend the thing, it probably soaked in like two or three days later.

Right after the attack, Bailey was put on a motor launch to pick up wounded and the dead. He was reassigned to a destroyer, the USS Tucker.

None of the crew of the Oglala were killed in the attack, although three were injured.

When it became clear that the Oglala might sink, Furlong ordered that the minelayer be moved away from the Helena so it would not pin the cruiser against the dock. About two hours after receiving the initial damage, the Oglala sank.

Initially evaluated as a total loss, the Oglala became the object of a prolonged and ultimately successful salvage effort.

The Oglala was returned to service in 1944 and sailed to the South Pacific for duty. The Oglala was decommissioned in 1946 and transferred to the Maritime Commission. It remained with the mothball fleet for almost two decades before being sold for scrap in 1965.

This moment in South Dakota history is provided by the South Dakota Historical Society Foundation, the nonprofit fundraising partner of the South Dakota State Historical Society at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre. Find us on the web at www.sdhsf.org. Contact us at info@sdhsf.org to submit a story idea.
An Air Force base just outside of Oklahoma City is not the first place youd expect to find someone serving in the Navy. Nevertheless, thats exactly where youll find Hot Springs Native Petty Officer 3rd Class Percy Cline.

Cline, a Logistics Specialist, supports a crucial Navy mission which likely isnt as well-known as its importance would lead one to believe.

His unit supports a fleet of Navy E-6B Mercury aircraft stationed out of Tinker AFB. The E-6B, which is built on the chassis of a Boeing 707, is nicknamed The Doomsday Plane, and is operated as part of the TACAMO (Take Charge And Move Out) mission which provides a survivable communication link between top civilian leadership and our nations nuclear weapons.

According to an article by Lt. Lauryn Dempsey of the Navy Office of Community Outreach, the Commander-in-Chief issues orders to members of the military who operate nuclear weapons aboard submarines, aircraft, or in land-based missile silos, and the TACAMO mission ensures that if needed, the lines of communication to give those orders are open and available.

Cline, who in his youth spent time between Hot Springs and Trinidad, Colorado, is one of 1,200 active duty sailors engaged in support of the aircraft. As the Operation Target Financial Manager his focus is obtaining funds from big Navy sources and allocating them to the necessary places for the purchase of fuel, aircraft parts, flight hours, etc.; an important facet of operations for a nuclear deterrence mission that operates 24 hours a day.

He joined the Navy in 2012, about a year and a half after having graduated from Custer High School, and was stationed first in Virginia at Naval Air Station Oceana where he performed duties similar to those he has now, but for VFA-106 an F/A-18 Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Fleet Replacement Squadron, known as the Gladiators, with a mission of training both Navy and Marine replacement Pilots and Weapon Systems Officers.

Now at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, Cline, the most recent VQ3 Sailor of the Quarter, has high praise for his latest placement. Its an awesome command, you can go anywhere [from here]. Its a very powerful command career-wise, Cline says.

That kind of opportunity for advancement is partially why he chose the Logistics Specialist (LS) rating. A positive thing about being in LS is you have so many opportunities if you decide to leave the military, he says.

According to him, even without a degree, the experience and training involved in LS allows a sailor to obtain a good civilian career if the sailor does choose to leave, which is not always the case with other military job specialties.

Even though the work of an LS may sound a bit regular guy to some of us civilians, theres a lot involved in keeping a squadron of aircraft flying day in and day out. There are times where youre logging 70-80 hours a week to get your job done, says Cline, and you have to be able to take it, and be able to do that without complaining.

The 24-hour a day nature of TACAMOs mission necessitates that there are always unit members working, often nine-and-a-half hours a day and at least once or twice a month sharing long weekend shifts. On top of his LS duties, Cline is also part of the Auxiliary Security Forces which augments the permanent security forces of the Air Force base.

It can be a stressful job, he says, One thing that I like to tell people is to make sure you join for the right reasons, because there are people who do join for the wrong reasons.

Cline says Navy life has made him a better person as a whole, and that its taught him respect and how to present himself. Im a completely different person than before I joined. I used to be a little kid with an afro, he says, laughing, and Im not saying I was ever disrespectful, but now Im completely different. Ive got the military haircut [now] and Im very respectful to people.

But more than just offering a change to a tidier hairstyle, Cline believes that military life teaches a person how to live properly, and offers a bevy of benefits.

If youre unsure what you want to do in your life and you want a good building block to start with, the military is the spot, he says. According to Cline even though the pay may not be fantastic and the hours might be long, the benefits, including experience and free college tuition, have far outweighed any negative aspects of his Navy service. They really take care of you, whether you want to stay in for four years, or 20 years and get a retirement check, and start a new career when youre only 38. Its really awesome.
A man accused of trying to entice a 14-year-old boy into sex is countering that he actually wanted to help the boy navigate the hardships of being gay.

The first day evidence was presented in Andries Snymans trial Wednesday, the prosecution and defense took turns highlighting various messages he sent the boy on Aug. 5, 2016. The pair met that day on a social media app designed for gay men, exchanged messages, and by nightfall, Snyman was in handcuffs.

Snyman, 43, is facing a federal charge of attempted enticement of a minor using the internet, an offense punishable by 10 years to life in prison. A South African who was then working at a ranch in Isabel, Snyman was arrested in an annual Sturgis rally sex sting where law enforcement officers pose as minors.

Defense attorney Tom Diggins said Snyman had no thoughts about sex once he found out he was chatting with a 14-year-old. Instead, as an older gay man, Snyman wanted to offer the boy advice on how to face the difficulties of being in a sexual minority group.

Being gay is not a choice, and being gay is not easy, Diggins said in his opening statement at the Rapid City federal courthouse Wednesday, mentioning Snymans experience being a victim of violence and hate crimes. He wanted to help this teenager, and the evidence will bear this out.

The prosecutor, on the other hand, said the evidence will show that Snymans intention was to have sex with the boy. Snyman quickly turned their conversation to sexual activity, asked for details about the boys body and kept pushing to meet him alone late that day, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Collins.

At no point will you see he had any concern for this boy, Collins said in her opening statement. Thank goodness, it wasnt a little boy.

Diggins challenged this supposed lack of concern during his cross-examination of the first witness, Pennington County Sheriffs Office Investigator Brian Freeouf, who posed as the 14-year-old boy.

Diggins zoomed into several screenshots of Snymans messages, including one where he told the boy he was curious to talk to him. Just hope you are careful who you meet on here, some weird guys around, the federal public defender read the text message out loud.

Collins earlier underscored the explicit sexual terms Snyman had used, such as in explaining to the boy what two males can do together.

In a recorded police interrogation played in court, Snyman said he discussed sexual activity with the boy to get him curious enough for a face-to-face meeting. Otherwise, Snyman said, the boy would check out and move on to the next man he met on the app Grindr.

Snyman, dressed in a light blue collared shirt and gray trousers, sat expressionless beside Diggins during the proceedings Wednesday. He occasionally passed notes to his lawyer and put on earphones to listen in on the multiple bench conferences, which usually followed a prosecution or defense objection. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Jeffrey Viken is presiding over the trial.

Of the 36 men arrested and charged in the Sturgis sex stings since 2013, 23 have been convicted, one has died and the rest of the cases are still ongoing. Only two other defendants have gone to trial, and both were found guilty.

Snymans trial, scheduled to continue till Friday, is expected to include testimony from a defense expert on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population. Snyman is detained at the Pennington County Jail.
Pennington County Jail deputies didnt waste any time putting their new inmate body scanner to use last weekend.

And the first use of the new $163,400 scanner paid off during a shakedown at the jail, detecting meth and other illegal items among some of the approximately 560 inmates in the jails general population, according to Pennington County Chief Deputy Brian Mueller.

The discovery of any amount of meth  less than one ounce in this case  is significant, Mueller said, with the smuggling of drugs pandemic in the nations corrections system.

Any amount of drugs in our system is too much by our standards, Mueller said. Any amount of drugs we can stop coming into our facility is a victory.

The scanner was purchased with $75,000 from the state Department of Corrections and the South Dakota Drug Control Fund, with the remainder coming from the county jail annual budget.

The scanner joins pat-downs and strip searches as an additional tool jailers can use to help stop smuggling by inmates willing to go to the extreme of placing drugs and even weapons and cellphones inside their bodies.

We have a lot of different measures and techniques in place to catch people, but if theyre willing to bring things in their body cavity, were really challenged to really stop that flow of illegal contraband, particularly illegal drugs," Mueller said.

Jail commander Rob Yantis said the scanner, similar, yet more precise than what airline passengers face at airport security checkpoints, is an effective way to control the introduction, possession and movement of contraband in the jail, which processes about 12,000 inmates annually.

Body scanning will replace most, but not all, strip searches and can be used whenever a problem is detected and for random searches, he said.

Yantis said jailers went cell block by cell block during the weekend shakedown, thoroughly searching individual cells and scanning the majority of the jails general population.

There is only so much we can catch with our other searches, so this is going to be a pretty substantial increase in what we can see, Yantis said.

Mueller said there are five such scanners in use in the state, including one at a minimum security prison facility elsewhere in Rapid City. Others are in use at the state womens prison in Pierre and at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls. He believes Pennington County is the first county jail in the state to have a body scanner.

Anyone brought to the jails booking area and slated to be admitted to the jails general population is subject to a head-to-toe body scan. It involves the inmate standing on a platform, which slowly passes through a door-sized rectangular opening, then back. The scanner emits about the same radiation as a medical X-ray.

Those expected to be quickly released on bond after an appearance before a judge and jail visitors, such as attorneys, are not subject to a scanner search, Mueller said.

Deputies are aware of people with outstanding warrants turning themselves in and being used as mules to bring drugs and other illegal items into the jail, Mueller said.

Our message to the public is that we now have right tool in place to prevent those items from coming into our secure facility, he said.
State Board of Regents members decided Wednesday they want a new plan for maintenance and repairs developed for all of South Dakotas public universities.

They directed the central offices staff to bring the plan to the March 27-29 meeting at Black Hills State University in Spearfish.

The regents meanwhile intend to ask the Legislature to approve new buildings at several campuses during the 2018 session that starts Jan. 9. They want to tell legislators the projects would have maintenance and repairs coverage.

But those details werent clear Wednesday.

The regents already are funding maintenance and repairs at less than their policy goal of 2 percent of the appraised value of each academic or administration building.

They were stalled at approximately 1.1 percent for many years. They finally reached 2 percent during the budget year that ended June 30.

But they are back at 1.9 percent this budget year. They expect to slip back to 1.6 percent next budget year, in part because state governments Office of Risk Management now conducts the appraisal rather than the regent central office.

The regents govern the traditional state-university campuses in Aberdeen, Brookings, Madison, Rapid City, Spearfish and Vermillion. They also oversee university centers in Sioux Falls, Pierre and Rapid City.

At the regents meeting in October, board president Bob Sutton of Sioux Falls said the maintenance and repair issue should be put on a meeting agenda in the future.

Monte Kramer, the regent systems vice president for finance and administration, delivered a report Wednesday as the regents met at School for the Deaf in Sioux Falls.

He said the industry standard is 2 percent as a minimum and many organizations budget 3 to 4 percent.

Kramer said the easiest approach might be charging two dollars more per credit hour and using the additional money for maintenance and repairs. But University of South Dakota president James Abbott sent the discussion into uncertain territory when he told the regents that changing the rules in one swoop wouldnt be right.

Abbott said his university at Vermillion consistently put more of its tuition into the South Dakota Health and Education Facilities Fund than it gets back.

Currently about 11.5 percent of student tuition goes to the HEFF account. The regents spread the money back to the campuses for various projects and for maintenance and repairs. It just doesnt seem appropriate or fair, Abbott said about the disparity.

Supposedly none of the university presidents had contacted any regent about the matter until Abbott came forward.

You knew this was on the agenda, and it would be voted on today," Sutton replied to Abbott.

Regent Kevin Schieffer of Sioux Falls however said Abbott was right. He suggested an exemption for compelling situations.

South Dakota State University president Barry Dunn took the guest microphone and agreed with Abbott. He said there was a lengthy discussion at the Council of Presidents meeting a few weeks ago.

I do think its a matter of fairness, Dunn said.

A precision-agriculture center on the SDSU campus at Brookings is one of the projects lawmakers will consider in 2018. The new buildings are larger. They are more complex, Dunn said.

Regent John Bastian of Belle Fourche wondered whether taking action Wednesday would put several campuses at a disadvantage when legislators consider their projects in 2018.

Among them are Northern State University in Aberdeen and Dakota State University in Madison.

Im thinking that we might do more harm than good, Bastian said.

The situation seemed to be unraveling. Regent Pam Roberts of Pierre reversed course. I think we should step back, she said.

The Legislature needs to know the regents are working on a plan, Roberts said. She called for the staff to bring a recommendation to the March meeting.

Sutton agreed. We need presidents involved in that discussion," he said. "We need regents involved in that discussion. And we need staff."
Police are investigating a robbery that occurred early this morning at a casino on the northeast side of Rapid City.

At around 2 a.m., an employee at the Jackpot Casino Too, 1415 N. Lacrosse St., was closing up the business when a man approached him with a knife and demanded money, according to a news release from the Rapid City Police Department.

The man then left the casino with an undisclosed amount of money. He was described as white, 30 to 40 years old, with brown eyes and a deep voice. He was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, black gloves and white sneakers.

Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call Detective Steve Neavill at 394-4134 or send an anonymous tip by texting "RCPD" and the information to 847411.
When Alberton angler Mike Dominick netted the next Montana state record smallmouth bass this fall, word of the catch spread across social media like a hooked Missouri River brown trout taking a reel-ripping run.

Before days end, photos of the 7.51-pound lunker sprang up on the Montana Fishing Addicts Facebook page, with information about the angler, the catch and a string of questions and congratulatory comments running down the page.

When Townsend angler Jake Updike landed what is likely the largest northern pike taken on rod and reel in Canyon Ferry Reservoir, Townsend/Canyon Ferry Lake KOAs Facebook shared the photos, getting more than 100 shares the first day. That photo also found a home on Montana Fishing Addicts and the 34-pound, 47-inch giant quickly began popping up in social media feeds.

Its been really surprising for me and Jeffrey Mack, because when we started the page we thought itd be a local-to-Bozeman-type of group, said Troy Warburton of Bozeman. Now we have about 3,600 members including from other states and Canada.

Montana Fishing Addicts launched as Montana Hardwater Addicts last year. Warburton says they wanted a discussion group focused on a positive approach to information sharing for ice fishing. They changed the name as summer approached and wanted to keep momentum going.

Some of the other pages, there can be some big egos and people arent willing to share info, he said. We wanted the opposite of that.

Page administrators do not censor posts, but have had to remove some who refuse to follow the rules.

Were all adults and you can disagree with someone, but you need to do it like an adult, he said.

Montana Fishing Addicts has morphed into a mixture of memes, fishing reports and grip-and-grin photos. Warburton believes the memes provide some comedic relief that keeps the page fresh, and are a big reason why the page has grown so fast.

Interest in the page comes in waves, he said, with 10 to 15 requests per day to join over the summer. Administrators do have to wade through spam requests, but for the most part it is fun and rewarding to run the page.

Ive made a few friends just because of the page and a few that weve gotten together to fish, he said. We get a lot of messages from people that say theyre impressed with the page and grateful for the admins because were all about helping people out.

Warburton has both offered information  such as tips for Canyon Ferry  and received information  like advice on Tongue River Reservoir  that has turned fishing trips around.

He acknowledges the immediacy that social media provides for anglers, and that some may not like it. Concerns about fishing pressure mean not everyone wants to give up secrets, and talk once reserved for tackle shops and boat launches is now available with a few clicks.

You go to Sportsmans Warehouse and those boards might be good for the day they were written, but we all know those conditions change so fast, he said. With social media you can ask the question and get an answer, so I think it lets people have a better trip.

Warburton sees some potential in Montana Fishing Addicts being recognized as a brand, but beyond considering some logoed apparel, he wants the page to continue to grow and stay a place to share stories and tips. The page will also offer occasional drawings for gear from local businesses, he said.

Montana Fishing Addicts is not the only angling resource available through Facebook.

Montana Hunting, Fishing and Outdoor Group boasts 1,700 members in an online classified setting.

Montana Ice Fishings 4,400 members share angling photos and offer answers for those seeking information on ice conditions and techniques.

Whether geographic or species specific, numerous other pages cater to a handful of anglers to a few hundred.

I started the page on Dec. 17 last year, and I basically felt like there are a lot of people here in Montana that are trout and walleye fishermen, but you dont really see much on pike, said Ronald Miller of Great Falls, who launched the Facebook Page Montana Pike and Tiger Muskie Fishing.

Miller has enjoyed the aggressiveness of pike and muskies ever since he was 13, and his dad bought him an 8-inch pike bait for Christmas. That summer he caught eight of the toothy predators in Tiber Reservoir while attending the Walleyes Unlimited Kids Fishing Camp, and he has enjoyed chasing them ever since.

I love catching them, but there just wasnt much out there on the topic so I decided to start the page, he said.

As it turned out, a lot of Montana anglers craved a forum to talk pike and muskie fishing. Nearly 1,800 members now share reports and photos from Montana and beyond.

At first I didnt really know how to get it out there to get people to join, but once I shared it to a couple of fishing and hunting groups, all of a sudden I had 500 requests to join in the first three hours, Miller said. They were just like me, looking for something to do with pike here in Montana.
MOSCOW, Idaho  Authorities say a 60-year-old northern Idaho man is recovering after being shot in the buttocks with a .50-caliber muzzleloader rifle by his hunting partner who mistook him for an elk.

The Latah County Sheriff's Office tells the Moscow-Pullman Daily News that the Moscow man was shot Monday near Dreary by a 72-year-old Potlatch man.

Officials say the injured man was transported to a hospital and was in stable condition Tuesday.

Names haven't been released.
Two more deer have tested positive for chronic wasting disease in south-central Montanas Carbon County, the results coming just a day before the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission will decide the parameters of a hunt to determine how far the sickness has spread in the area.

A mule deer doe killed near Belfry and a mule deer buck shot close to Warren, along with last weeks detection of the disease in a whitetail doe killed east of Joliet, has prompted Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to recommend expanding its proposed special hunting zone, along with other changes.

Things are evolving so fast, said Bob Gibson, FWPs Region 5 information officer in Billings. Thirty things changed in a conference call this morning.

Special hunt

FWP will recommend the first-of-its-kind special hunt be expanded north to the Yellowstone River, roughly following the Carbon County border south all the way to Wyoming. The hunt would also now include more of Hunting District 510, east to Crooked Creek, to account for detection of the disease in the buck killed near Warren.

Another proposed change would alter the initially proposed split season to a single season, running from Dec. 15 to Feb. 15. Fewer tags would be issued for mule deer but more tags overall would be available. The proposal is for 600 tags for each species with that allotment being split between 100 whitetail either-sex tags, 500 whitetail doe tags and 100 either-sex mule deer tags and 500 mule deer doe licenses.

At first FWP was proposing 500 tags each for two separate seasons for mule deer only, but the fast-moving nature of detections continues to force the agency to alter its proposal while positive disease test results come in. The cost of the licenses is $10 for residents, $20 for nonresidents. Up to six of the B licenses can be purchased unless the hunter has already obtained other B licenses during the general season. Apprentice hunters cannot take part.

The Montana Wildlife Federation is encouraging FWP to expand its testing and hunting to elk in the region during the late shoulder season, which runs to Jan. 1 in many Region 5 hunting districts.

Theres no reason not to take advantage of those harvested animals, said Nick Gevock, MWFs conservation director. If needed, they should issue more licenses for elk.

Gibson said theres been no discussion to expand the hunt to include elk since shoulder seasons are already underway.

Statistics

So far this hunting season, 1,300 deer have been tested in south-central Montana with only five testing positive. The strategy behind the special hunt is to try and determine disease prevalence.

We still dont have a good geographic distribution for it, Gibson said. Below 5 percent is what wed like to see.

The tests so far havent been extensive enough to assess prevalence, he added, since not everyone hunting in Carbon County had their animal tested. Thats why all hunters who kill deer in the special hunt will be required to provide their deers tissue for sampling.

This will be a more statistically sound hunt, Gibson said, with FWP expecting roughly 30 percent of hunters to be successful.

Gevock said FWP needs to consider being even more aggressive during these early stages of CWD detection. The Montana Wildlife Federation is backing eradication of the disease, not just containing it at low levels in wildlife.

Its serious, he said. This is a Frankenstein disease.

He said MWF is also advocating a working group with bordering states and Canadian provinces to provide a more unified fight, especially now that a deer shot north of Chester along the Montana Hi-Line tested positive for CWD.

Its clear its coming in from all directions, Gevock said. Thats very disconcerting.

Other changes

The new CWD detections have also prompted FWP to propose moving its check station north to Joliet, instead of just outside of Bridger. All deer harvested during the hunt must be tested to create a statistically valid sample to assess the spread of the disease in the countys deer herds. Hunters will also have the option of dropping off their harvested deers head at the FWP office in Billings.

We anticipate a lot of people will be hunting from Bridger and Belfry, Gibson said, meaning those folks will have to travel farther to have their deer tested.

The brains or spines of harvested deer, elk or moose are not allowed to be taken outside a travel restriction zone that includes Carbon and Yellowstone counties, so deer from the special hunt must either be boned or taken to a processor before leaving the counties.

Were trying hard to keep from spreading diseased deer pieces around the state, Gibson said.

Interest

FWP has been fielding numerous calls about the proposed season from hunters anxious to get back out in the field to those with meat already in the freezer wondering if they can still have their steaks and burger tested. (They cant unless they still have the animals intact head.) Out-of-state hunters are also calling to see how they can secure an either-sex tag in hopes of shooting a trophy buck at a minimal cost.

Block Management Areas will only be open to hunters if the cooperator agrees. Wardens are working with other landowners in the area to allow some hunting access. FWP is also discussing whether to ask BMA cooperators to extend their contracts to cover the rest of the special season.

Landowners are being amazingly cooperative, Gibson said. They dont want CWD on their land. We havent talked to as many in the Rock Creek area, where the lots are smaller, its more residential and a lot of it is posted (no hunting) for safety reasons.
Hamilton-area associate brokers earned international awards recently by EXIT Realty Corporation International.

Jani Summers with EXIT Realty Bitterroot Valley was honored with the Gold Award for closing more than 75 real estate transactions during the production year, which ran from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017.

I feel very proud  it is quite an honor, Summers said. I owe it all to the work ethic I learned as a child.

EXIT Realty Bitterroot Valley owner Max Coleman said Summers is in the top 1 percent of realtors in North America and number 36 in production companywide.

Associate brokers Nicole Jones and Craig Siphers were honored with the Bronze Award by EXIT Realty Corp. International for closing more than 25 real estate transaction sides during the same time.

The bronze awards put them in the top three percentile, Coleman said. What were doing out here is phenomenal. We just keep eating up the market share. Were on track for $100 million in sales this year.

EXIT Realty Bitterroot Valley has been in operation for 12 years and has locations now in Darby, Hamilton and Stevensville with 33 associates. Max and Tina Coleman own the brokerage and are the regional owners for Montana and Idaho.

We sell the franchises and are in the process of selling to every major area in the state of Montana right now, Max Coleman said. We have a really good team of people  long-term agents. It takes boots on the ground to dominate the market share.

Tami Bonnell, CEO of EXIT Realty Corp. International, said EXIT Realty Bitterroot Valley sets the bar high.

"It takes hard work, skill, and determination to achieve the upper echelons of any profession, Bonnell said. These exceptional real estate professionals are among the top in our industry and we salute them.

Steve Morris, founder and chairman of EXIT Realty Corp. International, said the company is growing.

"EXIT Realty is enjoying tremendous growth across both Canada and the U.S., he said. We are delighted that these individuals are helping to drive that growth and we extend our warmest congratulations to them on their great achievement.
The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree that was shipped from far northwestern Montana is all dressed up and ready for this afternoons lighting ceremony.

Bozeman sixth-grader Ridley Brandmayr will be helping in a 30-minute ceremony set to start at 3 p.m. Montana time on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building. Brandmyer will be joined by U.S. Senator Jon Tester of Montana and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

You can watch a live stream of the event here:

Tester chose the 11-year-old Brandmayr for the honors after the sixth-grader from Sacajawea Middle School in Bozeman lost all the fingers on his right hand in a kitchen accident on June 30.

The 79-foot tree, an Engelmann spruce, was trucked some 3,500 miles from the Yaak Valley in the Kootenai National Forest. Larry Spiekermeier of Plains, a two-time Montana Motor Carriers driver of the year, was behind the wheel.

Montana also sent 77 smaller Christmas trees to Washington D.C. to decorate the halls of Congress, the U.S. Forest Service, and other federal office building across the nations capital. Thousands of handmade skirts and ornaments from Montana also made the trip.
KALISPELL  Two Flathead County residents over the age of 65 have died due to complications from influenza.

The state Department of Public Health and Human Services says the deaths reported by the Flathead City-County Health Department on Wednesday are the first two flu-related deaths reported in the state this season.

Last year, the flu contributed to 56 deaths in Montana.

Health officials urge anyone ages 6 months or older to be vaccinated against influenza, a highly contagious virus whose symptoms include fever, chills, congestion, runny nose, sore throat, headache, muscle ache and fatigue. Vaccines are especially recommended for people ages 65 or older, young children and people with chronic health conditions or weakened immune systems.

It takes about two weeks after receiving a flu shot to develop antibodies against the virus.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday allowing concealed carry gun permits to be valid in any state that issues permits.

There are 10 states that do not recognize out-of-state concealed carry permits. Most of those states have a higher level of requirements for the issue of permits. Permit holders in California, for example, must demonstrate a specific need for a concealed carry permit for local law enforcement officials.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act cleared the House with a 231-198 vote, including a vote in favor cast by Montanas lone congressman, Rep. Greg Gianforte, who is also one of the bills 213 co-sponsors.

Montana requires concealed carry permit holders to have some type of firearms training such as a hunters safety course, and to undergo a background check performed by county sheriff's offices. Permits from 43 states are recognized in Montana, including all 10 states that do not recognize any out-of-state permits. Vermont does not issue concealed carry permits.

According to the Montana Office of the Attorney Generals website, several states  Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia  do not require background checks for concealed carry permit applicants. Those permits are not recognized in Montana.

Montanas concealed carry permits are not recognized by eight states in addition to the 10 that do not accept out-of-state concealed carry permits.

I will always defend Montanans Second Amendment rights, and I am proud to have co-sponsored the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act," Gianforte said in a press statement. "The bill ensures that law-abiding Montanans keep their right to bear arms when they cross state lines.

He encouraged Senate members to pass the bill. Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines is one of 39 co-sponsors of the Senate version of the bill.

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox joined 22 other attorneys general in a letter to Congressional leadership supporting the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act last week.

Foxs office is charged with determining whether out-of-state permits adhere to Montana legal requirements for reciprocity. He endorsed the House bill that would allow the carrying of firearms in Montana by permit holders from the five states without reciprocity and the District of Columbia.

Individuals who obtain concealed carry permits are, by and large, the most responsible gun owners in our communities, said Fox in an emailed statement. Self-defense is the primary reason to obtain a concealed carry permit, and is a central component of the Second Amendment.

"Nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry permits would provide our nations most responsible gun owners the assurance that their right to self-defense under the Second Amendment is recognized, regardless of which state they are in," he added.

In some areas of Montana the number of concealed carry permit applications has fallen in recent years. The number of permits issued in Yellowstone County peaked in 2016 at 2,053. As of November 2017, 1,323 permit applications had been processed, according to Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder.

Linder is confident in the background checks performed in Montana. He has some concerns with the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.

I dont think its a good idea for Montana, simply because I dont know what kind of background checks are done in other states, he said.
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sacw.net - 7 December 2017

JOINT STATEMENT OF ORGANISATIONS IN RAJASTHAN

Jaipur

7th December, 2017

THE RAJSAMAND HATE CRIME IS CONDEMNED BY US STRONGLY, NOT ACCEPTABLE AT ALL

CM Vasundhara Raje Resign NOW

Home Minister Gulah Chand Kataria, Resign NOW

Prime Minister unambiguously condemn this attack

Stop the Culture of Violence and Hate and giving impunity to killers of hate crimes.

Press Note

All organisations of Rajasthan are shocked at the recent developments of what is happening in the State in terms of lynching of Muslims, the latest one being carried out on the 25th anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition, a murder in cold blood of Mohammed Afrazul a 48 year old migrant from West Bengal in Rajsamand, Rajasthan. There is only one demand that Vasundhara Raje, should resign now. She does not deserve to hold on to the post even for a day in the context of the absolute impunity provided to these killers and their supporters. The Home Minister of Rajasthan Gulab Chand Kataria, has proved his incompetency in controlling these crimes which has left the Muslim Community even more insecure. The Prime Minister and the Chief Minister need to unambiguously condemn this crime.

The latest killing of Mohammed Afrazul from West Bengal is very disturbing. The attack leading to the murder was shot by a mobile along with the confessions of the murderer Shambhu Lal Regar, appealing to the people of Mewar aa..that the people with Islamic Vichardhara are all over in black clothes outside Masjids, in public places and around, they are a threat to our cultural heritage and destroying it. Just like Maharana Pratap had decided to fight Islamic Jehad, So do we, have to eliminate the present Islamic Jehad. So I have done it, it may be good or bad, but I have done it. Because I felt that I have to do it. I am a law abiding citizen, but you die only once, so why not eliminate them and then die. Why should we be killed them. That is why I did it. 25 years ago the Babri Masjid was demolished but even that has not changed anything, So I am going to surrender tomorrow in the Rajsamand Mahadev temple. All the Bhai and Behen, the people of Mewar support me, I am surrendering in front of you. Jai Mewar, Jai Bharat, Jai Hinda . In the video where he is seen to kill the man, he is also talking of ending love jehad

Both the videos of the killing and the confession along with photos of the charred body have gone viral on social media. Although the police have arrested the murderer Shambhu Lal Regar and the nephew who had shot the video, but it is important to reach the people who motivated him to carry out this murder.

This is not the first such killing that is happening. Itas the fourth in the last nine months, showing absolute impunity to the killers of Muslims. We would also like to state that there have been many incidents where Muslims have been attacked as part of hate crimes and not been killed so the number of incidents are huge. The killings in the last nine months are as follows:

The first one being that of Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer and cattle rearer who died on the 3rd of April, after being attacked by a crowd of so called Gau Rakshaks in Behror, Alwar on the 1st of April. The killers named by him were not even arrested, instead 7 others have been arrested and are all out on bail.

The second killing happened on 16th June in the name of Swach Bharat Abhiyan of comrade Zafar Khan, the Municipality chairperson and other Safai Karmachari beat him to death in Pratapgarh town, when he was opposing their naming and shaming policy as part of making Pratapgarh open defecation free. The police has not arrested anybody, claiming that he died of a heart attack, completely protecting the municipality people.

The third killing happened on the 10th of November, 2017, in the early hours, when Umair Khan and his colleagues were transporting cows and were shot by so called Gau Rakshaks in Govindgarh Tehsil, Alwar district. The killers carried the body to a railway track 15 kms away and tried to destroy all evidence of the face and the body. Out of the seven killers only two were arrested and instead, the victims of the firing, Tahir and Javed are now behind bars.

What happened yesterday in Rajsamand on the 6th of December is the 4th killing.

Our demands are

Clear and unambiguous condemnation of this and other hate attacks by the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister.

CM Vasundhara Raje resign now.

Immediate arrest of all the killers and attackers in hate crimes in Rajasthan.

Provide absolute security to all the Muslims in the State.

Stop this culture of hate and violence against Muslims as it will seep into every dimension of our lives and it will be difficult to stop it.

The BJP party which is in power with 160 MLA out of 200 needs to stop giving protection to these killers.

The RSS hate programme needs to be banned.

We are,

Peoplesa Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangatha, Rajasthan Nagrik Manch, Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch, National Federation of Indian Women, All India Democratic Womenas Association, Jan Vichar Manch, Dr. Ambedkar Vichar Manch, Welfare Party, Jamait

Islami Hind, Zari Handloom Work Union, SIO, Rajasthan Samagra Sewa Sangh, Akhil Bhartiya Kisan Sabha, SFI, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Suchna evam Rozgar Adhikar Manch, Dalit Adhikar Kendra, National Muslim Women Welfare Society, Vividha, Mahila, Punarvas Samooh, NAPM, SDPI, Samta Gyan Vigyan Samiti, RUWA, Pink City Zari Handloom Work Mazdoor Union, Aaritari Zardoz Ekta Sangathan, HRLN, Zamayte Ulema Hind, JDU, Samajwadi Party,, Rajasthan Kacchi Basti Federation, Jaipur Kacchi Basti Maha Sangh, Jaipur district unit of CPIM, CPI, CPI ML, Liberation, MCPI, Banjara Yuva Shakti Sangathan, AIDMAM, Rajasthan Mahila Kamgaar Union.
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 VW executive gets seven years in federal prison for emissions fraud | Main | "The Effects of Aging on Recidivism Among Federal Offenders" 

December 6, 2017

Notable state and federal developments in the Garcia Zarate/Kate Steinle case

Last week, I blogged here about the California state court verdict in a high-profile homicide case, asking in the title of my post "Can, should and will AG Sessions seek a federal prosecution of Garcia Zarate after 'disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case'?." As noted below, we already have an answer to this question, though there is also state prosecution news we should cover first.

Specifically, as reported here, the "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." Here is more:

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.

Because I am not well versed in California's law of possession, I cannot provide an informed assessment of whether this defense claim provides a compelling basis to reverse the one state conviction the state jury brought back against Garcia Zarate. But I can provide a link to and excerpt from this press release from the US Department of Justice highlighting why federal possession law is now of great import to Garcia Zarate:

A federal grand jury indicted Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate today for being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, and for being an illegally present alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition, announced United States Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions; United States Attorney Brian J. Stretch from the Northern District of California; and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent in Charge Jill Snyder. According to the indictment, on July 1, 2015, Garcia-Zarate, a citizen of Mexico who reportedly is 47 years old, possessed a semi-automatic pistol and multiple rounds of ammunition in violation of 18 U.S.C.  922(g)(1) (felon in possession of a firearm) and 18 U.S.C.  922(g)(5) (unlawfully present alien in possession of a firearm). An indictment merely alleges that a crime has been committed and Garcia-Zarate, like all defendants, is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Garcia-Zarate currently is in state custody on other charges. If convicted of either violation of 18 U.S.C.  922(g), Garcia-Zarate faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison. However, any sentence 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.

Prior related post:

December 6, 2017 at 09:30 PM | Permalink

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At the conference, the leaders discussed on the bilateral cooperation relations between the two countries, regional and international issues of mutual interest.Minister Pham Binh Minh suggested the Government of Laos to continue creating favorable business conditions for Vietnamese community in the country; especially naturalization, a long-term residence permit for Vietnamese people, reducing the procedure fees as well as capital standards for Vietnamese enterprises in Laos.Laotian minister Saleumxay Kommasith agreed with appreciation of Vietnam about the nations cooperation relations in the previous years as well as solutions and suggestions of Vietnam to deepen the bilateral relationships, focusing on big projects.Party and State of Laos will create more favorable conditions for overseas Vietnamese, employees and Vietnamese enterprises; make more efforts to tighten the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.

BY THANH NAM- Translated by Huyen Huong
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City Police are investigating a robbery and a kidnapping attempt that occurred Wednesday night.

At approximately 11:54 p.m. an officer attempted to stop a vehicle near 27th and Jennings Streets. The vehicle fled and suspects allegedly threw a gun out of the window.

The vehicle was later located unoccupied in the 2600 block of Douglas Street.

Shortly thereafter, an individual flagged down officers. He told them he had been robbed and kidnapped at gunpoint from his home. Investigators determined the individual was forced into the vehicle. When officers attempted to stop the vehicle, he was able to escape.

Officers subsequently learned that two people were injured during the robbery that took place at a home in the 2700 block of Virginia Street. One of the victims required medical attention. The victim was treated and released from a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Police said the investigation into this case is ongoing and no further information is available at this time.

Anyone with information on this case is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 258-TIPS (8477). Callers can remain anonymous.
ORANGE CITY, Iowa | A former teacher charged with having sexual contact with more than a dozen children has been released from custody.

Curtis Van Dam posted 10 percent of his $150,000 bond Tuesday and bonded out of the Sioux County Jail. The bond was secured through Lederman Bail Bonds.

Van Dam, 36, of Sioux Center, Iowa, has pleaded not guilty in Sioux County District Court to 146 charges related to sexual contact with at least 13 children between August 2014 and this past October. He is scheduled to stand trial March 6.

As part of his bond release, Van Dam promises to appear for future court hearings.

District Judge Patrick Tott on Monday had continued Van Dam's bond at $150,000. As part of the order, Tott said that if Van Dam bonded out of jail he must wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle and be supervised by the Department of Correctional Services.

Other conditions of release include:

-- He must not go within 100 yards of a child care or educational facility.

-- He may have no contact with any child under age 15 except for his own children or the children of family members if supervised by another adult.

-- He may not leave Iowa without permission of his pretrial supervision officer. He may travel to Spirit Lake, Iowa, to meet with his attorney, Edward Bjornstad.

Van Dam was arrested Oct. 23 after a complaint was filed against him for inappropriate contact with a student. Administrators at Sioux Center Christian School removed Van Dam, who taught fifth grade, from the school after the complaint was filed. As Sioux Center police investigated the complaint, they filed additional charges related to incidents with other children, and Van Dam was fired.

Police have said the incidents took place at various locations, including the school, where Van Dam taught for nine years. Court documents and police have not revealed the gender of the alleged victims.

Some or all of the children were under age 12 or 13. Van Dam is accused of sexually abusing or having inappropriate contact with some of the children on at least 24 separate occasions over several months.

Van Dam is accused of having children fully or partially undress in front of him, permitting children to touch his genitals and exposing himself to some of the children.
SAC CITY, Iowa | A Schaller, Iowa, woman who was charged along with her son for growing marijuana in their home has been placed on probation.

Glenda Turnquist, 58, entered an Alford plea Wednesday in Sac County District Court to one count of manufacturing a controlled substance. In an Alford plea, the defendant admits no guilt, but a guilty plea is entered into the court record.

District Associate Judge Joseph McCarville gave Turnquist a deferred judgment on the conviction and placed Turnquist on probation for one year. A deferred judgment allows Turnquist's conviction to be expunged from her record if she successfully completes probation.

Turnquist and her son, Keegan Cross, were arrested March 30 after Sac County Sheriff's deputies executed a search warrant at a home in the 500 block of Perth Street in Schaller and found 80 marijuana plants, growing lamps, watering pumps, potting soil and fertilizer.

Cross, 35, previously pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. His five-year prison sentence was suspended and he was placed on three years probation.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | Three South Sioux City homeowners have sued the city and Big Ox Energy for more than $2.2 million in damages, claiming odors and hazardous gases from the bioenergy plant have made their property worthless and damaged their health.

Jonathan and Betty Goodier, David and Maria DeLeon and Michael and Jacqueline Klassen all filed suits within the past week in Dakota County District Court, saying that their homes near the plant have been "reduced to waste because of fowl, offensive and deleterious and dangerous chemicals and chemical odors pervading it and permanently destroying it."

All three lawsuits said that Big Ox and the city failed to maintain, operate and modify wastewater treatment facilities and sewer systems to handle waste from the plant and prevent the release of hydrogen sulfate and other toxic gases.

All three families said that as a result of those gases and odors, they suffer from health problems including respiratory illnesses, headaches, nausea, sleep disturbances, anxiety and emotional distress.

The lawsuits allege that Big Ox and the city knew or should have known after initial tests of the plant's operations in August 2016 that the municipal sewer system "would be overwhelmed and unable to handle the pressures and substances forced into it." As a result, the lawsuits say, gases escaped through manholes and into residences near the plant.

Big Ox denies the allegations and will defend itself against the claims, the company said in a released statement.

"Big Ox Energy has proactively worked with all interrelated federal, state and local agencies and with the residents and leadership of South Sioux City to ensure that its highly regulated operations have not and will not cause any adverse impacts to the safety or health of the local community," the company said in the statement.

The company complies with all regulations included in its air and water permits and said the lawsuits' claims that it concealed the contents of the released gases are "unequivocally false."

The three owners are seeking damages to reimburse for loss of use of their homes, demolition and reconstruction of their houses and loss of furnishings ruined by odors.

The Goodiers estimate property damages at $800,000, the Klassens list damages at $799,500 and the DeLeons' damages total $658,250. Costs continue to accrue, the lawsuits said.

Big Ox Energy's more than $30 million plant uses an anaerobic digestion process to extract organic nutrients from animal, grain and other waste to create methane, which is then sold into the natural gas pipeline. The plant went online Sept. 2, 2016, in the Roth Industrial Park.

Residents began reporting putrid odors from the plant in mid-October, when sewer gas permeated some homes in a five-block area of Red Bird Lane and Le Mesa Way, along 39th Street, both indoors and outdoors.

Many residents blamed the plant for causing the issues in the line the residents and the plant, at the time, shared.

The families were displaced from their homes for months because of the odors, and some families have yet to return home. The city and Big Ox have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover displaced homeowners' relocation and living expenses while living in temporary housing. The city in August filed a federal lawsuit against two insurance companies that have not covered the claims filed by homeowners. That suit is pending.

Big Ox maintains that faulty plumbing, not wastewater, was the primary cause of the odor issues in South Sioux City, citing a study that showed hydrogen sulfide had generally not entered homes that had plumbing systems in compliance with building codes.

The city has since spent more than $1.5 million on sewer upgrades and modifications.

In May, 16 families and one business filed political subdivision tort claims against the city, detailing $35 million in alleged property damages and personal injuries resulting from exposure to the potentially deadly fumes. State law required them to wait at least six months to sue the city.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that Big Ox will pay nearly $50,000 as part of a settlement for alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act. That action related to the release of chemical gases that led to the hospitalization of an employee who was injured at the plant in December.

The EPA on Tuesday said that hydrogen sulfide associated with the plant entered the city sewer system, leading to the displacement of 26 households last fall. A company representative said the EPA has not alleged in its settlement with the Denmark-Wisconsin-based company that hydrogen sulfide gas infiltrated the homes.

The company also was fined more than $60,000 earlier this year after settling three citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that detailed a lack of protection, education and safety practices for employees, which at times left employees vulnerable to hazardous gases inside the facility.
SIOUX CITY | The University of South Dakota in Vermillion will offer first-year and transfer students from the state of Nebraska the opportunity to pay the in-state tuition amount.

The pilot program for Nebraska students was approved by the South Dakota Board of Regents, according to a USD press release Thursday.

Nebraska enrollment continues to be an important part of USDs enrollment given that we are only seven miles from the Nebraska border," said Scott Pohlson, vice president of enrollment, marketing and university relations.

This decision by the Board of Regents supports our goal of keeping USD competitive in Nebraska now and into the future.

Pohlson said a similar pilot program has worked well in drawing Iowa students. He said USD officials want to offer a "quality education at an affordable price."

"With tuition, fees, room and board at $16,000 per year, I think the message is starting to resonate, which is great for USDs future both in Iowa and hopefully Nebraska as well, Pohlson said.

Scores of Northwest Iowa students have seized the opportunity to save several thousand dollars by enrolling at USD over the last two years.

Starting with the 2016-2017 school year, the South Dakota Board of Regents has allowed new freshmen and transfer students from Iowa to be eligible for the same tuition rate as South Dakota residents at USD and three other public universities.

The added incentive contributed to a 67 percent increase in Iowans attending USD. The number jumped from 244 in the 2016-17 academic year to 311 this fall.

Overall, USD's total enrollment rose 2.2 percent to 10,261 students, the second-highest mark for the fall semester in college history.

With its proximity, USD has long attracted students from Northwest Iowa to its main campus in Vermillion, about a 10-minute drive to the border for the two states. But the number of Iowans enrolling at USD had dropped off in recent years as Iowa's three public universities heightened their focus on keeping more students in the state.

Excluding room and board, USD's tuition and fees for South Dakotans and new Iowa students is $8,772 for the 2017-18 school year, about $3,200 less than out-of-state tuition.
WASHINGTON -- 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 for his own circumstances than ever. 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 one-time 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.

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 Obama was in office, conservatives waxed hysterical about the horrors of deficits by way of limiting government's 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 world's 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 billionaire's 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, it's 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 Mueller 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 don't 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.
Why Woodbury County Supervisor Matthew Ung proposed the county board discuss with an outside law firm the board's practice of holding a moment of silence before its meetings last week became clear this week.

He wanted to hold a discussion about the moment of silence before meetings as background for a discussion he planned to open about public prayer before meetings.

Last week, Ung recommended the board meet with a representative of First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based law firm which describes itself as "the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious liberty for all Americans," in closed session about the legal implications of holding a moment of silence before board meetings. Supervisors Jeremy Taylor, Keith Radig, Marty Pottebaum and Rocky De Witt voted against such a closed-door discussion, so Ung's proposal died.

On Tuesday, Ung proposed a resolution allowing - on a rotation basis - an individual board member to lead a public prayer in place of the moment of silence. The resolution failed, 4 to 1.

We do not criticize board dialogue about either a moment of silence or prayer. We do, however, find fault with Ung's proposal to talk about a moment of silence in closed session.

Under Iowa's open meetings law, a government body may hold a closed session "To discuss strategy with counsel in matters that are presently in litigation or where litigation is imminent where its disclosure would be likely to prejudice or disadvantage the position of the governmental body in that litigation."

Due to lack of existing litigation and no evidence to suggest "imminent" legal action against Woodbury County over the moment of silence observed by the county board before its meetings, sufficient reason did not exist for a closed discussion with an attorney from First Liberty, in our view.

In the end, board discussion about a moment of silence last week (and prayer this week) took place as it should have - in the sunshine of open, public discourse.

We give credit to Taylor, Radig, Pottebaum and De Witt for that.
There are occasions when the time is right, and the opportunity exists, to support a candidate who has the background, knowledge and commitment to provide a positive influence in our State Legislature. That opportunity is now, and that candidate is Todd Wendt - candidate for Iowa Senate District 3.

At a time when communities and businesses are calling for skilled employees to fill higher paying jobs, our state leaders have found it challenging to commit the resources to provide these training opportunities. A good education is the cornerstone to uplifting individual lives, strengthening businesses and developing progressive communities. Todd Wendt has spent his professional life in education, and is a strong advocate for adequate funding to ensure that the opportunity exists for a quality education for all.

I have known Todd Wendt for years, and have served with him on various boards and committees. Todd Wendt has always demonstrated an ability to lead by inclusion - listening to and learning from individuals on both sides of a discussion. The result is better decisions being made and a more balanced approach to the future.

As you think about the future, take this opportunity to vote for a proven leader who strives to represent everyone. Vote for Dr. Todd Wendt. - Neal Adler, Le Mars, Iowa
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
HOLLYWOOD, Md.

(December 7, 2017)A project proposed near the intersection of Route 5 and Great Mills Road is returning to the county's planning commission Dec. 11.The new name for the project is J.F. Taylor Engineering and Integration Facility but it first came before the planning commission as Cecil's Mill Business Park.The new concept site plan up for approval by the planning commission consists of a 28,736 square-foot, two-story office building including a one-story assembly warehouse that is 54,000 square feet in size.The project was delayed when mistakes were found in the zoning map pertaining to the property on which the project would be built; the developer also left off the project to deal with other business concerns but planned to revisit it.The family-owned company works closely with the defense industry, particularly in avionics, flight testing and unmanned systems.The property is nearly 25 acres in size and the original plans for the project included a residential development.The nearby residents, already weary of heavy traffic and long delays at the intersection of Great Mills Road and Route 5, have expressed opposition to the project because they believe it will further exacerbate traffic jams.
Alexander Scott Campbell, age 23, of Leonardtown Ashley Nicole Young, age 30, of Great Mills Brian Christopher Hancock, age 38, of Leonardtown Gary Victor Shubrooks, Jr., age 26, of St. Inigoes Gina Marie Krouse Boswell, age 33, of Prince Frederick James Leroy Dorsey, age 34, of Lexington Park Jerome Anthony Hicks, age 49, of Leonardtown Jerome Daniels, age 40, no fixed address Joseph Aloysius Swales, age 44, of California Katherine Margaret Teacher, age 36, of Port Republic Lance Allan Jones, age 29, of Mechanicsville Michael Lewis Johnson, Sr., age 55, of Mechanicsville Rashaun Montgomery Peebles, age 38, of Forestville Richard Clayton Hewitt, age 41, of Lexington Park Robert Anthony Robinson, age 49, of Callaway Roy Christopher Adams, age 51, of Lexington Park Sandra Louise Birch, age 45, of Ridge Shawn Edward Pizza, age 37, of Mechanicsville Previous Next

LEONARDTOWN, 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 7, 2017)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office released the following warrant arrest reports.10/20/2017:, was charged with Burglary 1st Degree, Theft, Trespassing, and Rogue and Vagabond by Cpl. Foor# 235. CASE# 55559-17.10/20/2017:, was charged with FTA/Bad Check by Cpl. Nelson# 202. CASE# 55498-17.10/20/2017:, was charged with FTA/Theft , by Cpl. Flerlage# 241 CASE# 55467-17.10/21/2017:, was charged with Theft by Cpl. Foor# 235. CASE# 55715-17.10/21/2017:, was charged with Trespass: Private Property by DFC. Potter# 255. CASE# 55588-17.10/22/2017:, was charged with Violation of Protective Order, by Cpl. Reppel# 141. CASE# 49230-17.10/22/2017:, was charged with Violation of Probation/Theft, and Theft Scheme, by Dep. Sidorowicz# 328. CASE# 55748-17.10/23/2017:, was charged with Threat of Arson, Assault 2nd Degree, Trespassing, and Property Destruction by DFC. Potter# 255. CASE# 55888-17.10/24/2017:, was charged with FTA/Contempt of Court by Cpl. J. Davis# 197. CASE# 56129-17.10/24/2017:, was charged with Theft by Dep. Bowie# 317. CASE# 56155-17.10/24/2017:, was charged with FTA/Bad Check by Cpl. Worrey# 152. CASE# 56163-17.10/25/2017:, was charged with Violation of Probation/Theft/Fraud and False Statement by DFC. Steinbach# 268. CASE# 56300-17.10/25/2017:, was charged with Assault 2nd Degree by DFC. Potter# 255. CASE# 56371-17.10/25/2017:, was charged with Violation of Probation/Driving without a License by Dep. C. Beyer# 246. CASE# 56329-17.10/26/2017:, was charged with CDS: Obtain by Fraud, Obtain Drug by Fraud, and Issue Forged Prescription by Dep. Bare. CASE# 57445-17.10/26/2017:, was charged with FTA: Driving on Suspended License by Dep. Muschette# 303. CASE# 56491-17.10/28/2017:, was charged with Theft by Dep. Budd# 325. CASE# 56857-17.10/29/2017:, was charged with Failure to Appear by Dep. Ball# 315. CASE# 57082-17.10/29/2017:, was charged with Failure to Appear by Dep. Ball# 315. CASE# 57082-17.
Danielle Lynette Miranda, age 33, from Washington, DC David Arthur Johnson, age 25, of Hollywood Francis Xavier Hill, Jr., age 21, of Lexington Park Heather Marie Garner, age 29, of Hollywood Jackie Lorraine McKeever, age 33, of Mechanicsville John Antonio Proctor, age 26, of Lexington Park John Otha Dickens, age 28, of Lexington Park Jorge Oivares Esparza, age 37, with no fixed address Joseph Louis Dumpson, age 30, of Park Hall Kanard Javon Bishop, age 19, of Leonardtown Patrick Wayne Brooks, age 30, of Mechanicsville Paulette Michele Johnson, age 27, of Lexington Park Robert Doral Harrod, age 29, of Lexington Park Romaine Antonio Bailey, age 27, of Mechanicsville Scott Nathaniel Brown, age 22, of Great Mills Shatara Shanille Bowen age 23, of Lexington Park Stephen William Sonntag, age 27, of Leonardtown Terrance Scorpio Henderson, age 20, of Prince Frederick Walead Othman, age 50, of Lexington Park Previous Next

LEONARDTOWN, 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.

(Dec. 7, 2017)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office released the following arrest reports.10/20/2017 ASSAULT: Cpl. Foor responded to the 21000 block of Great Mills Road, in Lexington Park, for a reported assault. Investigation revealed Suspect, assaulted the victim resulting in the victim sustaining a laceration. Othman was charged with Assault 1st and Assault 2nd Degree. CASE# 55580-17.10/21/2017 ASSAULT: Dep. McClure responded to the 46000 block of Orchid Lane, in Park Hall, for a reported disturbance. Investigation revealed Suspect, assaulted the victim, causing injury. Dumpson was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. CASE# 55646-17.10/21/2017 ASSAULT: Dep. Sidorowicz responded to the 23000 block of Winterberry Lane, in California, for a reported assault. Investigation revealed Suspect, assaulted the victim by punching and choking the victim. Sparshott was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. CASE# 55594-17.10/21/2017 WEAPON VIOLATION: DFC. McCuen was conducting security at the 42000 block of Fairgrounds Road, in Leonardtown, when he made contact with Suspect. It was discovered Sonntag was in possession of a set of brass knuckles. Sonntag was arrested and charged with Possession of a Concealed Dangerous Weapon. CASE# 55676-17.10/22/2017 ASSAULT: Cpl. Kirkner responded to the 28000 block of Three Notch Road, in Mechanicsville, for a reported assault. Investigation revealed Suspect, assaulted the victim, causing injury. McKeever was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. CASE# 55831-17.10/22/2017 ASSAULT: Dep. Bare responded to the 46000 block of South Shangri-La Drive, in Lexington Park, for a reported assault. Investigation revealed Suspect, bit and struck the victim, causing injury. Bowen was arrested and charged with Assault 2nd Degree. CASE# 55737-17.10/22/2017 BURGLARY: Dep. Muschette responded to the 43000 block of Riverside Drive, in Hollywood, for a reported burglary. Investigation revealed Suspect, forced entry into the victim's residence and removed property. Johnson was arrested and charged with Burglary 1st Degree, Burglary 4th Degree, and Destruction of Property. CASE# 55793-17.10/22/2017 VIOLATION OF PROTECTIVE ORDER: Dep. Sidorowicz responded to the 21000 block of Manon Way, in Lexington Park, for a reported violation of a protective order. Suspect, was located on scene in direct violation of the order; Proctor was placed under arrest. CASE# 55771-17.10/25/2017 INDECENT EXPOSURE: Dep. M. Beyer responded to the 45000 block of Miramar Way, in California, for a report of an individual exposing himself in public. Contact was made with Suspect. Esparza was arrested and charged with Indecent Exposure. CASE# 56372-17.10/25/2017 THEFT: DFC. Potter# 255, responded to the 21000 block of Pt. Lookout Road, in Great Mills, for a reported theft. Suspect, was located and charged with Theft. CASE# 56401-17.10/26/2017 DISORDERLY CONDUCT: Cpl. Foor responded to the 22000 block of Three Notch Road, in California, in reference to a disturbance. Upon arriving on scene Cpl. Foor could hear Suspect, yelling at customers and creating a loud disturbance inside an establishment. Brown was placed under arrest and charged with Disturbing the Peace, Disorderly Conduct, and Intoxicated/Public Disturbance. CASE# 56535-17.10/26/2017 DRUG ARREST: Suspect, was discovered to have a controlled dangerous substance on her person during a traffic stop. Garner was arrested and charged with CDS: Possession-Not Marihuana by DFC. Potter. CASE# 56551-17.10/26/2017 THREATS OF ARSON: Dep. M. Beyer# 319 responded to the 22000 block of Briarwood Court, in Lexington Park, in reference to a disturbance. Contact was made with the victim who advised the suspect, made threats to blow up the residence and burn the victim. Johnson was arrested and charged with Threat of Arson. CASE# 56557-17.10/27/2017 ALTERING DRUG/ALCOHOL TEST:, was charged with Altering Drug/Alcohol Test, by Cpl. J. Davis. CASE# 56696-17.10/30/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Dep. Muschette. CASE# 57164-17.10/30/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Dep. Muschette. CASE# 57164-17.10/30/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Dep. Muschette. CASE# 57164-17.10/30/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Dep. Muschette. CASE# 57164-17.10/30/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Dep. Muschette. CASE# 57164-17.10/31/2017 POSSESS CONTRABAND AT PLACE/CONFINEMENT:, was charged with Possess Contraband at Place/Confinement by Cpl. Kirkner. CASE# 57355-17.11/01/2017 BURGLARY:, was charged with Burglary by Dep. Bare. CASE# 57524-17.
Finally  your holiday shopping is DONE.

Well, except for um, and for. and okay, youre not really done. Everybody, you included, has that one certain person on the gift list whos hard to buy for and another certain person whos really fussy, and a Grandma who has everything. You know who they are, so see if some of these great books might be matches for your list, or books to reward you, Holiday Shopper, at the end of a long, stressful day.

FICTION

Mystery fans who know their A-B-Cs obviously know Sue Grafton. This years Kinsey Millhone mystery, Y is for Yesterday begins with a nearly-40-year-old crime and a former criminal who may not be so former after all. Wrap this book up for the biggest smile next to the tree. Also look for Odd Child Out by Gilly Macmillan. Its the story of two best friends and one possible murder.

The person on your list who often says shed like to chuck it all and run away will love reading The Runaway Midwife by Patricia Harman. Its the story of a midwife who does just that  she leaves behind a life, friends, and trouble and heads to Canada to start over. But its difficult to always be on-guard, especially when you know you cant hide forever. Wrap it up with The Art of Keeping Secrets by Rachael Johns, a novel of friendship, being yourself, trust, and knowing when to keep quiet sometimes.

Who loves a good gaslighter? Your giftee, thats who, and How I Lost You by Jenny Blackhurst is a great book to wrap. Its the tale of a woman who killed her infant son  or did she? Once shes released from psychiatric treatment, she has reason to wonder wrap it up with Without Merit by Colleen Hoover, a novel of secrets, truth, and its consequences.

For the person who loves novels of international intrigue, Act of Betrayal by Matthew Dunn may make a great gift. This thriller involves assassination, conspiracy, CIA operatives, need I say more?

For the romantic on your list, Lilac Lane by Sherryl Woods will be the best gift this year. Its the story of a grieving woman and the townspeople that wrap their arms around her. Is it possible to find love again? Wrap it up with I, Eliza Hamilton by Susan Holloway Scott, a romance-y novel set in historical times.

If youve got a novel lover on your list, The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain will make her smile. Its the story of a woman stuck in a loveless marriage to a man who everyone loves but few know him, obviously, as well as she does. But how well does she know her husband, really? Wrap it up with Savage Country by Robert Olmstead, a brutal novel of legacy and hardship, set in 1873.

BUSINESS

Your business-minded friends will love unwrapping Defined by Design by Kathryn H. Anthony. Why are we attracted to the things we buy? Does that extend to the buildings we inhabit, the clothes we wear, or the places we eat? Design is everything and this year, your giftee will learn that. Wrap it up with Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths by Scott Keller and Mary Meaney, a book with classic answers for leaders in any industry.

If youve got a creative type on your gift list, then wrap up Things Are What You Make of Them by Adam J. Kurtz. Its a book of thought-starters and work-pokers that could help open someones creative doors. Wrap it up with The Line by Keri Smith, author of Wreck this Journal and a pack of flashy new pens for the best gift ever.

For the person whose dream is big  REALLY big  then wrap up Becoming Facebook by Michael Hoefflinger. Its a book about the 10 Challenges that the internet behemoth has overcome and how those challenges have changed the world and the world of business.

If your gift list includes a woman with her eye on high places, then The Unspoken Code by Marja Norris is a great gift. Its a kind of a guideline for female CEOs, complete with worksheets and extra advice. Wrap it up with This is How We Rise by Claudia Chan, a book about potential and leadership. I also like Unscrewed by Jaclyn Friedman, about getting what you deserve in life and business.

LGBT AUTHORS / ISSUES

The love  and troubles  between mother and son is at the heart of Outside is the Ocean by Matthew Lansburgh, a new short story collection that has a common arc. Its about a mother with a troubled life, who believes her gay son has forgotten her. Its about family, and love. Pair it with Trans Gendent: The Years Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, edited by Bogi Takacs. Its full of collected tales of fantasy, horror, and just plain weirdness.

Why do we even need genders? If thats a question your giftee asks often, then look for Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? by Heath Fogg Davis. This book takes a good look at why we have genders and the four particular places in everyday life where we should think about abolishing any mention of differences.

If your giftee loves his books a bit on the spiritual side, then Owls Dont Have to Mean Death by Chip Livingston is the book to wrap. Its the story of a Florida Creek man who learns many lessons from his ancestors, but will that help him when illness strikes someone he loves?

For someone whos on the journey to understanding and acceptance, Gay Gringo: A Memoir by Roy Langridge may be a great choice. Just be aware, before wrapping it, that this book includes some steamy scenes.

Also look for Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea by Melinda M. Ponder, a book about the woman who wrote America the Beautiful, her life, and times.

PETS AND ANIMALS

Yes, theres an animal lover on your gift list, and you cant find a better gift than Talking to Animals by Jon Katz. Its a look at how we can better communicate with our pets and with wildlife, and its part of an ongoing story of Katzs farm and his beloved animals. Wrap it up with Raised by Animals by Jennifer L. Verdolin, PhD, a book about how animals raise their young, and what humans can take away from their lessons to use with our own children.

As pet lovers know, dogs can serve in the military. As veterans know, dogs can serve outside, too, as your giftee will see in Tuesdays Promise by Luis Carlos Montalvan and Ellis Henican. Its the continuing story of Tuesday, the golden retriever who changed one veterans life and the work shes done. Wrap it up with A Dog Called Hope by Jason Morgan and Samien Lewis, another wonderful book about a dog and his soldier.

No dog-lover can resist Wills Red Coat by Tom Ryan. Its the story of an unloved, angry, ailing, mistreated dog and his reformation at the hands of a loving man with infinite patience. Wrap it up with tissues, and with Rescuing Penny Jane by Amy Sutherland, a book about dog shelters and those who work to find strays their forever homes.

The cat-lover in your life will want to curl up with Iris Grace, by Arabella Carter-Johnson. Its the story of a little girl with autism and the cat who was more healer than kitty. Wrap it up with The Inner Life of Cats by Thomas McNamee for the purrrrrfect holiday!

If theres a horse-lover on your gift list this year, The Age of the Horse by Susanna Forrest should grace their gift pile, for sure. This is a wide-ranging look at horses throughout history, from evolution onward. Cant miss this one.

For the giftee with a soft spot in their heart for wildlife, Wolf Nation by Brenda Peterson will thrill them. This is a book about the history of wolves in America, why theyve so often been targeted for removal, and what the future holds.

History buffs who also love animals will love The Zoo by Isobel Charman, the story of the making of the London Zoo. Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my, but also a nice cast of real people are featured in this fascinating book.

And now the housekeeping: some of these titles may not be available, or you might have to order them. Release dates change, titles change, and if thats confusing or if you need more ideas, be sure to ASK the friendly, all-knowing, super-intelligent booksellers. Theres actually a good reason theyre standing in your local bookstore (hint: its to help you finish your shopping!)

Seasons Readings!
There is still time left to enroll in a health care plan that includes the HIV prevention method known as PrEP.

Community AIDS Network has navigators to assist people with getting health coverage for 2018. Headquartered in Sarasota, CAN is an HIV/AIDS service organization with clinics throughout Florida. Patrick Whiteside, a PrEP navigator, spoke to SFGN via telephone from his Miami office.

If someone wants PrEP and insurance for 2018 this is a fantastic opportunity because were going to pay the monthly premiums, said Whiteside.

PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a treatment where a person takes a daily dose of the medication Truvada in order to prevent HIV infection.

Its new, innovative and extremely proactive, Whiteside said of PrEP.

The deadline to enroll in the healthcare marketplace is Dec. 15. To qualify for a federal health insurance plan, you must be a U.S. citizen or legal resident (green card). The enrollment deadline for affordable care plans may be extended with a life changing event, such as marriage, divorce or job change, said Whiteside.

Its pretty simple, he added. We are working with an ACA navigator to sign up new and existing PrEP clients with PrEP friendly Florida Blue health insurance plans. Those are defined as any plan that has a reasonable deductible, pays for the initial and quarterly office visits, covers Truvada for PrEP and covers the cost of the initial and quarterly lab work required under PrEP protocol.

Plans do not take effect until Jan. 1, but enrollees can start receiving prescriptions and undergo testing before the end of the year.

To learn more or enroll, call Whiteside at 305-514-0813, ext. 19201.
A meeting between Pennsylvania lawmakers to discuss a land-use bill became awkward when one lawmaker objected to a male colleague touching his arm.

According to FOX 43, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler County), chairman of the State Government Committee, was not pleased when Democrat Matt Bradford tapped him during their meeting together.

Im a heterosexual. I have a wife. I love my wife. I dont like men as you might so stop touching me all the time. Keep your hands to yourself. If you want to touch somebody, you have people on your side of the aisle that might like it. I dont, Metcalfe told Bradford.

Bradford, who was shocked by the Republican representatives comments, explained that he was simply trying to beg for permission for 30 seconds.

Metcalfe responded coldly stating, Then beg. Dont touch.

Bradford, a father of four and devoted husband, asked for the meeting to be postponed and relayed that Metcalfes commentary was out of control. .

Metcalfe has a history of being offensive and racist, with several Pennsylvania Democrats calling for his resignation.

Following the incident on Monday, the party released a statement revealing the lawmakers discriminatory and bigoted past.

State Representative Daryl Metcalfe has always been a problem in Harrisburg. He has invited white supremacists to the capitol testify on behalf of his positions, defended white nationalists, and refused to condemn racist violence, the party stated on their website. In addition to being racist, Metcalfe is homophobic. He has silenced gay lawmakers, held up non-discrimination laws and, just today, went on a random homophobic tirade directed at one of his colleagues.

Check out the video below.
Astronomical Signs IAU

The first international comparative list of astronomical words in sign languages is now available.

As part of this proposal, the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Astronomy for Sign Languages has been translated into English and Spanish and is now available online. This is the result of a long-term project developed by the IAU Commission C1 Education and Development of Astronomy and its WG3 Astronomy for Equity and Inclusion. The new list currently includes 47 words most commonly used in education.

During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, an encyclopedic dictionary of astronomy for French Sign Language, entitled Hands in the Stars, was published under the direction of Dominique Proust [1]. This dictionary contains approximately 300 signs describing several classical celestial bodies such as planets, asteroids, galaxies and quasars, as well as technical terms such as telescope, spectrograph and photometry. In 2016-2017, a large project led by the IAU Commission for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion (IAU Division C, Commission C1 WG3), with funding from the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, translated Prousts dictionary into English (by Lawrence Augustin Orchard) and Spanish (by Maria Roser Garcia and Amelia Ortiz-Gil). The dictionary can be accessed from the website of the Commission through these links: French, English and Spanish.

Based on this previous experience, the Commission recently embarked on a long-term project to collect the different signs in several languages, starting with a selection of 47 words that the experts of the Commission agree are amongst the most commonly used in astronomy education and outreach. The languages involved include German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Polish, among others.

Sign language is now officially practised in almost every country, but diverse heritages and different cultures independently developed specific signs to designate common objects or identical situations. A Universal Sign Language is gradually being developed, mainly to designate objects and situations related to contemporary technology or events. Nevertheless, there will always be differences between signs in each country that need to be noted, as countries have developed its own signs through time, says Dominique Proust [2].

Many astronomical words have no equivalent hand sign in any sign language. The signs presented in this list represent a collaboration between deaf communities, educators, and astronomers all over the world. The suggested signs are meant to engage the deaf community in scientific discussion.

The compilation of 47 terms is also available online here. Its main goal is to help to reflect on the differences between the various languages, perhaps even helping communities to develop their own sign if they did not yet have one for a particular term. The work is a joint ongoing effort between many individuals and organisations [3]. Signs in some of the languages have been retrieved from the Spread the Sign project.

The group working on this task is also analysing the case of words without a sign in some countries. One alternative could be to suggest the use of the sign of a closely related language, for example, Spanish for the Italian community.

The Commission is also considering the possibility of studying each sign in order to determine the similarities and differences between different languages and suggest, if possible, a common and unique sign for each word for every country. This may be an impossible task, but it is one worth exploring.

Notes

[1] In France, the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Astronomy for the French Sign Language was published in 2009 under the direction of Dominique Proust, in collaboration with Daniel Abbou, Nasro Chab, Yves Delaporte, Carole Marion and Blandine Proust, in Burillier, in the framework of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) and with the support of the Paris Observatory.

[2] Sign language has its own vocabulary and grammar and is expressed in all communication registers. Large numbers (such as millions and billions) have their own signs, as do operators. All mathematical quantities have equivalent signs, including weight, area, volume and distance. The Pythagorean theorem is expressed in a similar way to its oral version, except that the hypotenuse is signed the side facing the right angle. The geometry exposes itself in an identical way, the hands describing previously a line, a plane or a volume. The origin of a coordinate system is precisely indicated.

Physics includes a set of very explicit signs for each topic. The constants are designated by the same letters: c is the speed of light (SPEED sign + LIGHT sign) with c = 300 000 km/s. Electricity is signed with the fists facing each other, curved index fingers pointing upwards like electrodes.

Nuclear energy includes two signs, the first being the generic sign for all forms of energy and the second symbolising the power of nuclear energy. In chemistry, the elements are signed either specifically or by their symbol.

Astronomy is one of the fields where the expression in sign language is both rigorous and poetic. The signs attributed to the various planets of the Solar System make use of their own characteristics: Mercury is very close to the Sun, Mars is red, Jupiter is represented by the famous red spot, and Saturn is characterised by its rings. The representation of the sky is easy since the majority of the constellations evoke animals or objects that already have a sign: bear (large or small), swan, fish, whale, etc. The mythological names respect the legendary traditions. Thus, Orion is a hunter, and the Centaur is a man mounted on a horses body.

Scientific technology can also be expressed in sign language, including different types of computers (PC, laptops, etc.). In the same way, the fields of medicine and biology have a very complete and very technical vocabulary.

[3] The collaborators of the project are:

France

Dominique Proust, Astrophysicist, Paris Observatory

Daniel Abbou, deaf, teacher, pedagogue, co-producer and presenter of the weekly programme The Eye and the Hand on Channel 5

Nasro Chab, deaf, is responsible for LSF conferences at the Arts et Metiers Museum and at the Palais de la Decouverte

Yves Delaporte, hearer, ethnologist, emeritus research director at the CNRS

Carole Marion, deaf, professional artist, a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, teacher of LSF at the Institut Gustave Baguer at Asnieres

Blandine Proust, hearer, has studied at the French Academy of Sign Language

Spain

Fundacion CNSE Para la supresion de las Barreras de Comunicacion

Amelia Ortiz-Gil, Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia

USA

American Sign Language (ASL)

Constance Gartner, Wisconsin School for the Deaf

Christopher Rawlings, Wisconsin Educational Service Program for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Italy

Nicoletta Lanciano, Sapienza Universita di Roma

Stefania Varano, Sapienza Universita di Roma

Dania Malerba, PhD student at Sapienza Universita di Roma

Japan

Yukie Fujita, Inagi City Hall

Akiko Hasegawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Ayana Hirose, Saitama Sakado School for the Deaf

Takateru Iizuka, Sea-horse Star Meeting for the Deaf

Haruki Kasuga, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Masami Kitamura, Tsukuba Barrier-free Learning Consortium

Iku Koyano, JTB

Shin Mineshige, Kyoto University

Shiomi Nemoto, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Katsuhiro Nishioka, TANSEISHA Co., Ltd.

Tomohiro Okada, SOKENDAI: The Graduate University for Advanced Studies

Hideo Shinohara, Saitama Prefectural Soka-higashi High School

Masaya Shinohara, Ishikawa Prefectural School for Students with Special Needs

Haruka Sudo

Noriko Takabatake, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Keiko Ueda, Japanese sign language interpreter

Kumiko Usuda-Sato, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Misa Wada, Japanese sign language interpreter

Lina Canas, IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach

Argentina

Lengua de Senas Argentina (LSA)

Miguel Angel Medrano, Federacion Nacional de Interpretes de Lengua de Senas Argentina

Luis Enrique Pinto Yohann, deaf, instructor of LSA, Miembro de la Asociacion de Sordos de Mendoza

Silvina Perez Alvarez, TeDA, CNEA-CONICET, UNSAM)

Beatriz Garcia, TeDA, CNEA-CONICET, UNSAM and National Tech University, Faculty Mendoza

Canada-Quebec

Langue des signes quebecoise (LSQ)

Pierre Chastenay, professor of didactics of science, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Sonia Dube, specialised trainer in bilingual education, Ecole Gadbois et Polyvalente Lucien-Page, Commission scolaire de Montreal

Laurence Gagnon, masters student in linguistics, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Michael Lelievre, teacher, Ecole Gadbois, Commission scolaire de Montreal

Anne-Marie Parisot, linguistics teacher, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Darren Saunders, PhD student in linguistics, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

UK-Scotland

Audrey Cameron, Science in BSL Glossary Project, Scottish Sensory Centre, University of Edinburgh

Gary Quinn, Science in BSL Glossary Project, Heriot-Watt University

Tania Johnston, ESO

Other Countries

From the website of the project Spread the Sign, we retrieved the available signs for: English-UK, English-India, Bulgarian, Croatian, Chinese, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, German-Austria, German-Germany, Greek, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese-Portugal, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian-Russia, Russian-Belarus, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian.

In preparation:

Indonesia

Yudhiakto Pramudya, Universitas Ahmad Dahlan Yogyakarta

More information

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is an international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 10 000 professional astronomers from almost 100 countries. Its mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the worlds largest professional body for astronomers.

The IAU Working Group for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion (IAU Division C, commission C1 WG3) seeks to build new strategies, tools and resources in Astronomy that will facilitate the access to Astronomical resources and careers for people with special intellectual or physical needs, or to those who might be excluded for the particular race or gender.

Links

C1-WG for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion

IAU-Commission 1, Education and Development of Astronomy

IAU

Contacts

Dominique Proust

Paris Meudon Observatory

France

Email: dominique.proust@obspm.fr

Beatriz Garcia

ITeDA (CNEA, CONICET, UNSAM)

Argentina

Email: beatriz.garcia@iteda.cnea.gov.ar

Amelia Ortiz-Gil

Universidad de Valencia

Spain

Email: amelia.ortiz@uv.es

Lars Lindberg Christensen

IAU Press Officer

Garching bei Munchen, Germany

Tel: +49 89 320 06 761

Cell: +49 173 38 72 621

Email: lars@eso.org
NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 5 December 2017 - New Cargo Launch Date Set. NASA

SpaceX has delayed the launch of its next Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station to no earlier than Dec. 12. Back on orbit, the Cygnus cargo craft is getting ready to leave the orbital lab and an experimental module has its stay in space extended for at least another three years.

NASA and our commercial cargo provider SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Dec. 12 at 11:46 a.m. EST for their 13th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. This new launch date takes into account pad readiness, requirements for science payloads, space station crew availability, and orbital mechanics. Carrying about 4,800 pounds of cargo including critical science and research, the Dragon spacecraft will spend a month attached to the space station.

The Cygnus cargo craft from Orbital ATK is leaving the station tomorrow after 22 days at the orbital lab. Astronauts Randy Bresnik, Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba closed its hatches today and disconnected its station power systems.

Ground controllers uninstalled Cygnus from the Unity module Tuesday morning with the Canadarm2 and are conducting a series of communications tests to assist NASAs Commercial Crew Program. Next, Vande Hei and Acaba will command the Canadarm2 to release Cygnus back into Earth orbit tomorrow at 8:10 a.m. EST where it will stay until Dec. 18.

BEAM, formally known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, is staying attached to the station for another three years with a potential to stay an extra year after that. While BEAM transitions to its new role as a cargo hold, engineers will continue studying its ability to resist radiation, space debris and microbes. Bigelow Aerospace and NASA signed the contract extension in November to continue demonstrating the reliability of expandable habitat technologies in space.

On-Orbit Status Report

Cygnus unberth: This morning, the crew egressed Cygnus. They then configured the vestibule and prepared to depressurize the vestibule. Ground teams identified EMI as the cause of the pressure probe anomaly and successfully depressurized the vestibule. Later, the Cygnus vehicle was unberthed and positioned it for the GPS shadowing (photobomb) Developmental Test Objective (DTO). Cygnus will be held in that position overnight and then repositioned for release tomorrow. Cygnus arrived at the ISS on the 14th of November carrying supplies, and is now departing with hardware and trash for disposal.

Earth Imagery from ISS Target Operations: Today the crew captured images of the Iberian peninsula. 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.

Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) Configuration for Cell Science Validation: The crew set up the Life Science Ancillary Hardware (LSAH) in the MSG today to prepare for the Cell Science Validation activities. They installed the Decontamination System, Rear Standoff and Life Science filters. This flight of the Bioculture System is to validate the hardware by testing and checking out its engineering and operational capability to maintain cell cultures for a long duration in the space flight environment on the ISS. The new enabling capabilities and procedures to manually conduct experiments with the specimens cultured in the Bioculture System will also be demonstrated. The validation of the Bioculture System performance in the space flight environment is a critical step to insure the success of future space bioscience experiments that will be conducted on ISS using this facility.

51S Descent Drill: 51S crewmembers participated in onboard training to rehearse their upcoming descent and landing, planned for December 14th.

EHS SSK MAS analysis: Today the crew analyzed microbial samples which were taken on GMT day 334 (November 30) and incubated until today. This information gives medical personnel a gauge of microbial growth in the air and on surfaces of the ISS.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

ARED Self-Monitoring Reminder

MORZE. Log Entry of Liquid and Food (Medicine) Intake

Cygnus Cargo Closeout

Cygnus-Node1 Vestibule Depressurization: Part1

JEM Cobalt Brick power Off and On

Actiwatch Spectrum HRF1 Setup

KENTAVR fit check

Cygnus Hatch Thermal Blanket Final Stow

??? maintenance

Cygnus Egress

Liquid condensate sampling up to ???  end

Prep for Central Post Computer 2 (???2) Test (r/g review, equipment gathering).

CBM Controller Panel Assembly Rotation and Closeout

Central Post Computer 2 (???2) testing with MSG cartriges swapping.

Sampling condensate water [???] upstream of ???-?2? ??? (Water Purification Column Unit)  configuration set up, installing sampler

Cygnus/Node 1 Vestibule Configuration for Demate  Part 1

Pre-pack cargo items for return or disposal on Soyuz 736

Photo/TV (P/TV) Station Support Computer (SSC) Video Viewer Activation

Exercise ARED Self-Monitoring Day 2

Collecting condensate water samples [???] to [???-?2?] ???, sampler replacement

Cygnus/Node 1 Vestibule Configuration for Demate  Part 2

ICrew Departure Prep

Cygnus-Node1 Vestibule Depressurization: Part 2

Lyophilization Sample Tray and Chamber Stow

LBNP Exercise (PRELIMINARY)

Actiwatch Spectrum HRF1 Stow

Columbus HD-VCA2 R&R

Deactivate VCA2

Cygnus-Node1 Vestibule Depressurization: Part 3

Earth Imagery from ISS Nikon Target Operations

ISS HAM Video Power Down

Cygnus-Node1 Vestibule Depressurization: Part4

Transfer Operations  Prepack of US items to be loaded into Soyuz

Soyuz 736 Descent OBT. Tagup with specialists

MORZE. Psycho-physiological Evaluation: Cattells Test

Cell Science Validation MSG LSAH Setup

Glacier Desiccant Swap

MORZE. Psycho-physiological Evaluation: Strelau Test

Station Support Computer (SSC) ARED Conclude

Photo T/V (P/TV) Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) Exercise Video Stow

EIISS Crew Preference RED Camera Target Operations

Progress 436 [AO] Stowage for Disposal and IMS Ops

Cygnus-Node1 Vestibule Depressurization: Part 5

PCS Laptop Relocate

Sampling condensate water [???] upstream of ????-2? ???, removing sampler, equipment disassembly

Dragon Cargo Prep

IMS Update

Ghost camera setup in Cupola

MORZE. Experiment setup

Crew Departure Preparations for Return to Earth

Environmental Health System (EHS)  Surface Sampler Kit (SSK) and Microbial Air Sampler (MAS) Analysis T + 5

Restow Vestibule Outfitting Kit (VOK)

Cygnus/Node 1 Vestibule Depress Teardown

Telescience Resource Kit Laptop Setup

Completed Task List Activities

Take contingency GSC and CDM reading

Payload Hardware Relocate

Ground Activities

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

OA-8 demate and translate to DTO position.

Standard commanding.

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Wednesday, 12/06: Cygnus Departure, 51S Prepack, CQ Cleaning, Eye Ultrasound, Microscope Setup, Winscat, JEM Return Grill Clean, EVA Helmet Swap

Thursday, 12/07: PEPS Inspection, CQ Cleaning, Eye exams, ELF, EIISS, Crew Handover

Friday, 12/08: Soyuz OBT, Dragon OBT, RAM Retrieve, NASA Platform2, Arthrospira

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[???] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  Off

[???] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  On

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)  Process

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)  Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Full Up

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Off
Enhance Your Mind showed why she was the Dover Downs Horse of the Meet last season, turning back seven adversaries in 1:51.2 to win Wednesdays (Dec. 6) $25,000 Mares Open pace.

With regular driver Vic Kirby at the controls, Enhance Your Mind raced to the front at the half and then held off a strong challenge from Sweet Bobbie (Art Stafford, Jr.) before pulling off to her ninth win of the year for owner-trainer Bryan Truitt. She now has won three of her last five races. Jag Out (Tony Morgan) took the early lead and later closed to finish second. Sweet Bobbie was third.

Enhance Your Mind is a five-year-old daughter of forgotten stallion Riggins from the dam Enhance The Night. She has now earned $138,020 in 2017.

Take Em overcame starting from post 8 to score a 1:52 triumph in a $15,000 distaff semi-feature. It was the third win on the card for Corey Callahan, who drove for trainer Bob Reeser and owner Shirley Le Vin. Roselily (Stafford) was runner-up. Cocktail Time (Morgan) came on for third.

Ross Wolfenden guided Empress Deo to a 1:52.3 victory in a $13,000 distaff sub-feature, holding off a strong stretch bid from Hold It Hanover (Callahan). Wayne Givens trains the Rocknroll Hanover-Little Miss K mare for Legacy Racing of Delaware. A winner of three of her last five races, Empress Deo has now banked $110,240 this campaign.

Callahan, the track's defending driving champion, won three times to move into second place in the standings with 32 wins. Tony Morgan, now only 23 wins shy of number 16,000 in his career, had two wins, as did Wolfenden and Allan Davis.

The usually outstanding Thursday card is headed by a $30,000 Preferred pace, featuring Mel Mara and Christen Me N, and a $25,000 Open with Bag To Riches seeking a second straight win.

(Dover Downs)
Robert Shepherd earned his 3,000th career driving win on Wednesday evening (Dec. 6) at Flamboro Downs, teaming up with Jared Bothwells Open Skies ($4.30) in the cards final race.

The four-year-old Skydancer Hanover mare bottomed out the field of $7,000 distaff claiming pacers, controlling fractions of :28, :57.2, and 1:26.2 while leaving pocket rival Gangnam Style (Colin Kelly) well in her wake. While Warrawee Speedy (Aaron Byron) emerged out of third to make steady ground up the far side on the second occasion, Open Skies had amassed enough clearance to protect a half-length victory despite decelerating to the end of a 1:58.1 mile. Shesaroyal Cowgirl (Travis Cullen) likewise gained belatedly to take third, another length back.



Robert Shepherd is honoured trackside following his milestone win at Flamboro Robert Shepherd is honoured trackside following his milestone win at Flamboro

The 37-year-old Shepherd, who calls Flamborough, Ont. his home, began his driving career in his native Prince Edward Island in 1999 before a stint in Alberta and permanent relocation to Ontario in 2006. Since then, he has amassed over $1 million in purses earned in 10 of the last 11 seasons.

Pollar Hall Cruises In Featured Trot

After odds-on favourite Emmalulu broke on the first turn, Pollar Hall ($11.00) was able to make easy work of a mid-race challenge from Tiki Taka en route to a 1:58.2 victory in the featured $9,000 top-level trotting event.

Emmalulu (Alfie Carroll) left most strongly from midpack to outsprint Zorgwijk Queen (Scott Young) and P C Cantore (Curtis Clements) to the apex of the first turn, but broke immediately upon clearing the lead to join Ionia (Nick Steward)who broke at races outsetat the tail of the field early on. When Zorgwijk Queen also broke an eighth of a mile in after assuming control, Pollar Hall inherited third spot behind P C Cantore, who fell into the lead nearing a :29.4 first quarter.

Phil Hudon sent the four-year-old Amigo Hall gelding to the fore nearing the far turn on the first occasion, and after clearing, the pair kept a sustained first-over challenge from Tiki Taka (Louis-Philippe Roy) well at bay through middle splits of :59.2 and 1:28.1 before drawing away on the final turn. Pollar Hall shook free nearing the eighth pole, and was driven out to win by 4-1/4 lengths in 1:58.2. Tiki Taka held second over P C Cantore, who chased in vain at the pegs after being left behind on the final turn.

Pollar Hall, a Kevin Davidson homebred, earned his ninth career win and his first since October 5.

The $8,100 sub-featured trotting event saw Bred For Greatness ($2.50) waltz to a 4-1/4-length victory over Irenes Love, stopping the clock in 1:59.2 with Bob McClure aboard for trainer Ben Baillargeon.

To view Wednesdays harness racing results, click the following link: Wednesday Results  Flamboro Downs.
Trot Insider has learned that William Bill' Taylor, former chief of security (Standardbred division) for the Ontario Jockey Club, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, December 5 at Etobicoke General Hospital at the age of 95.

Predeceased by his beloved wife Valerie (1999). Loving father of Donald (Lois) and dear grandfather of Jonathan (Carolyn) and Matthew. Bill served his country during WWII in the Royal Canadian Navy. He was the proprietor of Taylors Meat Market on Dundas St. in Etobicoke from 1946 to 1965. He was chief of security for the former Ontario Jockey Club, Standardbred Division during the 1970s and 80s.

Bill will be missed by many, including caring neighbours from the Lions Gate community (where he lived from 1981 to 2015), and his special friends from the Dorking, Ont. area.

Many thanks to the wonderful and loving staff of Westside Long Term Care, where Bill lived for the last two-plus years of his life.

Friends are invited to a Celebration of Bills life, which will take place on Tuesday, December 12 at 2:00 p.m. in the lower hall at St. Giles Kingsway Presbyterian Church, which is located at 15 Lambeth Road, Etobicoke, M9A 2Y6 (416-233-8591). Please enter the church through the parking lot side doors and proceed down stairs.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Bill Taylor.
FDA Discloses Truth to Senator Charles Grassley(IA), Regarding the Experimental Device Tested in Patients

Press Conference to be held in Chicago, December 7, 2017 at 12:00 noon at Corvita, 1006 S. Michigan Ave, Suite 500 Chicago, IL 60605



Contact: Nalini M. Rajamannan, 312-498-9496



CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Dr. Rajamannan's new edition to the Myxo Files reveals confirmation by the FDA to Senator Charles Grassley(IA) that the device, model 5100, is considered experimental and needed an investigational device exemption. Senator Ron Johnson of homeland security is working with the OIG and Congressman Glenn Grothman is working with the FDA on the newly discovered evidence.



wgntv.com/2017/11/27/former-cardiologist-resurrects-malpractice-claims-against-northwestern-hospital/



The FDA has now determined that the Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring is not covered under any 510(k) clearance. A significant risk device such as the Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring that is not cleared or approved would be required to be studied under an investigational device exemption (IDE). Edwards has not yet received 510(k) clearance or IDE approval for Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring. The sponsor came in for a regulatory meeting with CDRH's OC on October 14, 2008. At this meeting, the sponsor stated that their firm had discontinued distribution of the device. Shortly thereafter Edwards Submitted the 510(K) on October 29, 2008. Edwards also stated publicly in October 2008 that the firm discontinued distribution of the device.



The FDA has confirmed in a news conference in September 2017 that they are relying upon Northwestern University to inform the patients of the experimental nature of the device as the Myxo ETlogix is still classified as experimental.



Edwards Lifesciences received a 510(k) for the Detlogix in April 2009, which is a new device.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=X00NFQJqQHI



FDA Congressional office to Senator Charles Grassley(IA) after three congressional oversight investigations of the FDA, Edwards Lifesciences and the clinical studies related to the device.



www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/grassley-seeks-answers-about-the-use-of-a-heart-device-in-clinical-research



www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-seeks-documents-northwestern-university-heart-valve-device



www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/continues-press-northwestern-university-heart-valve-disclosures



Dr. Rajamannan and a patient will be available tomorrow at noon, Corvita on Michigan Ave to review the updated FDA statement and the truth surrounding the devices placed in 667 patients from Chicago and across the United States of America.


Mira Costa became the first team this season to win a set against Cathedral Catholic, but the Mustangs eventually fell in four sets in the CIF SoCal Regional final Tuesday night.
Columbia County has received a $1.2 million grant from the State of Oregon Criminal Justice Commission that officials say will improve the countys probation program for jail inmates.

The grant will pay for a new deputy district attorney, sheriffs deputy and a probation officer, according to a press release from Columbia County District Attorney Jeff Auxier and Sheriff Jeff Dickerson. The deputy also will receive a patrol car. This trio of new positions will become a team that identifies the best candidates for probation sentences while simultaneously stepping-up enforcement of probation violators.

This new program will help make sure that we give probation to defendants who actually deserve it, and that probation violators will face swift sanctions, Auxier said in a prepared statement.

Beginning in January, the probation team will identify defendants who have the most potential to succeed on probation. The sheriffs deputy will focus his or her patrol efforts on these particular offenders to make sure they are following probation rules.

In the press release, Sheriff Dickerson added, this program will enhance our enforcement efforts to conserve the peace in our County and expand the jails potential for holding violators of that peace accountable.
Southwest Washington Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler will hold an hour-long live telephone town hall meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

All residents of Southwest Washingtons 3rd District can join the conversation about tax cuts, bridge tolling or any issue they like, Herrera Beutlers office announced Wednesday.

Southwest Washington residents can sign up to receive a call to join the meeting by visiting http://bit.ly/2poQEyG and entering their contact information. They also make arrangements to participate by calling Herrera Beutlers Vancouver office at (360) 695-6292.

Residents can also call in to join the telephone town hall at any point during the event by calling 1-877-229-8493 and using the passcode 116365.

During the live telephone town hall, Herrera Beutler will give a brief update about her work in Congress, then take questions.
Investigators remain optimistic they can solve a year-old homicide case of a Woodland man who was found dead inside his burning house in November last year, saying Thursday that some people are close on our radar.

Cowlitz County Chief Criminal Deputy Charlie Rosenzweig held a press conference about developments in the case early Thursday afternoon, where he expressed confidence in detectives abilities to find the attacker or attackers.

We are very, very optimistic about this case, he said. We feel like were close to solving it. Weve got a lot of good leads.

Between 4 and 5 a.m. on Nov. 22, 2016, firefighters were called to the 2100 block of Dahlia Street in Woodland to put out a fire. After the fire was out, they found the body of Donald Donny Howard, who was 63 at the time of death. The coroners office determined shortly afterward that Howards death was a homicide and that he died from blunt force trauma.

It was obvious to anybody in that room that this was a violent murder, Rosenzweig said Thursday.

Rosenzweig said investigators believe there are likely multiple suspects, but hes still open to the idea of one person attacking Howard. He added that detectives are willing to follow any leads. Asked if Howard was killed in the course of a burglary, Rosenzweig said his office is open to all possibilities.

We have some people that were very interested in, theres some people that are close on (our) radar, he said. Thats encouraging to us. It doesnt mean were close-minded about any new leads that may come in. We will go and they will go where the evidence suggests we go.

Detectives from Woodland police and the sheriffs office noticed that much of Howards stolen property was eagle-themed memorabilia. These items include a golden eagle earring and a golden eagle necklace pendant on a gold chain. There were also multiple knives, watches, and many other items taken. (A photo gallery of items resembling Howards stolen memorabilia will accompany the online version of this story on TDN.com.)

Although none of the stolen items have resurfaced, according to Rosenzweig, detectives are still checking pawn shops and talking with jewelers to track down the missing memorabilia.

(Finding those items) could be the key for this case, he said. That could be what breaks this case open. Some of these items are pretty unique, and if anybody sees this eagle memorabilia, call us. Please call us.

Rosenzweig said the Washington State Crime Labs mobile team visited the scene for a couple days during the investigation and have tested more than 170 different items for DNA, fingerprints and other forensic evidence. Theres still 40 items left to be tested, according to Rosenzweig.

Howards family, which includes a son and an estranged wife who live in Southwest Washington, declined to attend the press conference. Still, Rosenzweig said the family has cooperated and is confused by what the motive of the killing may have been.

Theyre as much perplexed by this as anybody is, he said. Nobody has any belief that Donny Howard had any enemies. Thats not the case at all.

Rosenzweig described Howard as an avid angler who took time to pick up cans near his fishing hole and was generally liked in the community.

People got along with him well, Rosenzweig said of Howard. Hes had some minor skirmishes in the past, but honestly nothing significant. Nothing that we believe would justify this or even be an indication as to why this would have happened.

Howard also suffered from an on-the-job injury about 20 years age that left him with some disabilities,according to Rosenzweig.

What Rosenzweig stressed in the press conference more than anything else is that detectives really need the publics assistance in solving the crimes.

We know theres people out there who know about this case, he said. There are people there that might see this story and have valuable information, and they just havent, for whatever reason, been willing to talk. Thats the people we want to talk to.

The Woodland Police Department is offering a $3,000 reward to anyone who can provide information about Howards killing, but Rosenzweig said it has the right to decide how that money would be divided if multiple people provide information.

Rosenzweig encouraged anyone with information to call the Sheriffs Office at (360) 577-3092, or leave an anonymous tip by sending a text to 847411 (the text has to begin with CCSOTIP) or using the TIP411 app.
Love Overwhelming got the green light to open a temporary cold weather shelter at 7 p.m. Wednesday after getting permission from the city of Longvew.

The shelter will be located at 618 14th Ave. LO received a permit following the citys determination of a severe weather event for the next few days, when overnight temperatures are expected to dip to about the freezing level.

Love Overwhelming also is cooperating with the Kelso United Methodist Presbyterian Church to offer a temporary cold weather shelter at the church, which is located at 206 Cowlitz Way in Kelso.

Both shelters are requesting donations of blankets, socks, feminine hygiene products, paper products and warm winter gear such as gloves and hats.
Mayor Don Jensen and two councilmen have threatened to fire the entire Longview Housing Authority board, saying the agency hasnt done enough to address Longviews housing crisis and spends too much on projects in other cities.

A Nov. 17 email from Councilman Mike Wallin to the council and city administrative staff indicated that the mayor intended to ask for resignations from all six Housing Authority board members. It went on to say that the board members who did not resign might be charged with inefficiency at either Thursdays council meeting or the following meeting on Dec. 21.

Jensen has the authority to appoint and remove the board members. But in an interview this week, Jensen backed off and said he doesnt expect to take any action until after the New Year.

Were talking to the people who are on the board, and we may come to some sort of an agreement. But at this point we havent put anything on the (City Council) agenda, nor do we have a date that we intend to put anything on the agenda, Jensen said Monday.

The force of the complaints stunned Housing Authority Executive Director Chris Pegg and board member Bruce Fischer, who said a sudden shake-up would jeopardize funding for projects that are already in progress.

If we want to talk about some kind of plan that would protect the assets of the organization, Im open to that, but to have the entire board resign is irresponsible, Fischer said. I was appointed to be responsible, and to resign would be irresponsible for the community.

The Housing Authority provides subsidized housing for about 1,500 low-income families in Cowlitz, Wahkiakum, Lewis and Pacific Counties. About 1,100 of those families are in Cowlitz County, and 863 live in Longview.

Mayor Pro-tem Mike Wallin said he sent the email as part of the councils no surprise rule requiring members to give each other a heads-up before taking action. Wallin was dismayed that someone leaked the email before any formal action took place.

The email states, The Mayor and I (Wallin) are meeting with the appointed board members of the Longview Housing Authority and we will be asking each for their resignations of their Mayor-Appointed positions effective immediately.

The mayor said he will replace Housing Authority Vice Chair Linda Brigham Thursday, whose term ends on Dec. 31, with Allan Rudberg. None of the five other positions are up for reappointment this year.

However, Fischer said he confronted Wallin with the email during a coffee meeting on Nov. 21 and was told that he would be expected to resign.

(Wallin) hasnt explained it other than he wants a change on the board, Fischer said. I havent heard anything official yet about any actual charges.  He said inefficiencies is the charge that has been discussed. Whatever that means.

Pegg said she was surprised to hear about Jensens meetings with board members.

The Housing Authority was created in 1975 and weve operated well with the city since that time, so this is a new and troubling aspect to our relationship, and something thats catching us totally off guard, Pegg said.

Councilwoman Mary Jane Melink, who leaves office at the end of the month, said she was taken aback to receive the email from Wallin and wrote an editorial in TDN last week praising the Housing Authority.

It seemed heavy-handed, Melink said. I felt compelled to try to bring to light all the great things that the Housing Authority does around Longview and Southwest Washington.

Councilman Ken Botero agreed with Melink, but Councilman Scott Vydra said he saw the authoritys work in other cities as mission creep and was frustrated that the organization recently changed its official name to Housing Opportunities of Southwest Washington.

Mayor Jensen seemed to agree.

(The authoritys) duty is to do whatever they feel is best for the city. Thats the problem. I dont think Longview is getting preferential treatment, and I think it should, he said.

Wallin said he did not want to go into detail about each board members inefficiencies until a public process begins. But he did say addressing Longviews lack of housing was one of the councils priorities.

We have severe scarcity of rental property for low- and moderate-income people, Wallin said. We have many at risk of homelessness ... and we need to be providing more housing opportunities in Longview. And thats a concern shared by everyone.

Both Jensen and Vydra said they were concerned that some revenue from the sale of Blackstone Apartments on 20th Avenue and Louisiana Street in Longview went towards building the Lilac Place low-income housing project in Woodland.

Pegg acknowledged that a small portion of the $7 million project came from the Blackstone sale, but she said that Blackstone was originally purchased with tax-exempt housing revenue bonds, not City of Longview money. (Pegg said many of the applicants at Lilac Place  there is a waiting list of more than 400 people  are from Longview.)

She added that the Housing Authority can only build or buy housing where grants specify. The authority is primarily funded with the housing trust fund and low-income housing tax credits.

As the funding has become more competitive, certain areas sometimes get preference depending on how many low-income people are in the area, Pegg said. All funding sources have priorities for funding, (so) when we decide what project to build, we have to make sure the project meets those priorities if we have any hope of getting funded at all.

The City Council held a workshop this summer with Pegg and many of the board members to discuss the authoritys role and projects. It seems to have resulted in confusion and frustration on both sides.

Pegg said she reached out to the Council following the workshop but did not get a response. Jensen said the Council is not allowed to tell the authority how to operate.

We can create it and we can end it, but nothing in between, Jensen said. Thats a problem with having two groups who arent talking to each other. They dont know what were thinking and we dont know what theyre thinking, so it causes a problem.

Pegg and Fischer warned that a wholesale turnover of Housing Authority leadership would threaten money for Longview projects currently in the works, including an 85-unit development. The authority already purchased 4.3 acres for the project.

As a businessman, I would never put any money towards an organization that lost an entire board at one time, Fischer said.

Jensen agreed that a complete changeover could create turmoil, but it might be worth it in the long run.

There would be a time of those new members learning how (the authority) works, he said. Im sure it would not be good, but what would the end result be? Would it be that we would have those people looking more at the city and not expanding so much at our cost?

Vydra said many of the Housing Authority commissioners have served a long time and new blood might be useful.

Fischer, a commissioner for 10 years, said it has taken him much of that time to understand the authoritys complicated processes. He said he does not plan to resign.

Jensen said he plans to continue discussions with the board members to find a solution.

If this thing can get solved, I would much rather keep the board members that are there than start all over again. ... I dont take this lightly at all.
Rashi Peripherals has won the prestigious Indywood IT Excellence Award 2017. The distribution power-house was conferred the Most Valued Distributor of 2017 award for its exemplary contribution in the growth of the Indian IT industry.

The Indywood IT Excellence Award 2017 honored remarkable contribution of IT organizations and individuals in development of IT products and services. Mr. Mohammed Ibrahim Al Qahtani, senior advisor to Saudi Aramco presented the award to Rashi Peripherals at glittering ceremony concluded at Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad on 1st December 2017.

Headquarter in Mumbai, Rashi Peripherals is Indias leading IT and Mobile distribution company having a presence in over 750 districts, through its wide network of 50 branches, 50 service centers and a robust ecosystem of 9000 + partners. The company was honored for its contribution and efforts towards the development of the distribution and channel ecosystem in the country.

Commenting on the award, Mr. M. G. Prasad, Branch Head, Telangana at Rashi Peripherals said, We are honored to receive the Indywood IT Excellence Award. Started journey 28 years ago, we are today known among the top 5 IT distribution houses, growing consistently at 25% CAGR yoy. We have worked extensively towards building brands and nourishing the channel ecosystem in India. We are thankful the organizers and the government of Telangana and for recognizing our efforts and we will keep contributing the best to the industry.

Among the top five IT distribution companies, Rashi Peripherals is one of the fastest growing distributors, aspires to become a one-stop shop for all the IT requirements of Indian consumers. The company has the most diverse portfolio of Components, Peripherals, PC, Networking and Mobile business and has a strategic tie-up with world-renowned PC and Mobile brands such as Apple, Google, HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Intel, AMD, Logitech, ECS to name a few.

Value addition has always been a major thrust at Rashi Peripherals. The company is known in the industry for its value-add support and unique channel initiatives. Its initiatives such as Promotion of Personalized PCs and Channel Business Forum (CBF) were highly applauded among the channel. The companys continuous efforts towards channel development fetched Rashi Peripherals the Most Channel Friendly company by GFK in FY 2014. The company has also won several prestigious awards from vendors and media publications.

The Indywood IT Excellence Award 2017 is a part of Project Indywood, a US$10 Billion Project to be initiated by a consortium of 2000 Indian corporate and Multi-Millionaires. The award was bestowed upon enterprises to recognize their efforts that have made a huge impact onto the industry. The event was supported by the Government of Telangana, Ramoji Film City, and All Lights Film Society.

@Technuter.com News Service
Zahangir Aloms The Uncaged

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :

Zahangir Aloms paintings delineate the blossoming beauty and diversity of nature. As with blossoming flowers to the sun, the artworks depict a certain emblematic intercession, a solemn prayer to espouse eternity. An ardent disciple of nature, the artist observes his thinking with both sight and insight. He tries to capture the multifarious expressions, moods and soulful ballads of nature in, for example, his series of paintings titled Mystic Romance of the Woods.

Through this observation, the artist finds himself in the midst of a fantastical mystery that captivates him and fuels him.

He also becomes fascinated by the mythical nuances and the effortless grace of Bangladesh.

The solo painting exhibition titled The Uncaged by artist Zahangir Alom is going on at La Galerie of Alliance Alliance Francaise de Dhaka (AFD) in the citys Dhanmondi area.

The inaugural ceremony of the exhibition was held on first day of December.

Prof Rafiqun Nabi, eminent artist graced the occasion as the chief guest, while Prof Nisar Hossain, Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of University of Dhaka, Mahfuz Anam, Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star also attended the opening ceremony. Curator's speech was given by Dr Malay Bala, Associate Professor and Chairman of Department of Oriental Art of University of Dhaka. Bruno Plasse, Director of AFD gave welcome speech on the occasion.

As an enthusiast of Baulism and Vaishnavism, artist Zahangir depicts the union of souls in a passionate way. Using watercolour he has come up with a language of his own.

Each of his paintings is a testament to that. Along with his works with oil and acrylic, his art evokes an integrated form of oriental art as well as contemporary approaches.

The closing ceremony of the exhibition is scheduled to be held on December 15 with music and dance performance.


Bangladesh entering Nuclear Club

Monaem Sarker :

Building a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh was proposed in 1961. Since then a number of reports have affirmed the technical and economic feasibility. The Rooppur site in Pabna district about 160 km northwest of Dhaka was selected in 1963 and land was acquired. The government gave formal approval for a succession of plant proposals, then after independence a 125 MWe nuclear power plant proposal was approved in 1980 but not built.

With growth in demand and grid capacity since then, a much larger plant looked feasible, and the Awami League government in 1999 expressed its firm commitment to build this Rooppur plant. In 2001 it adopted a national Nuclear Power Action.

Russia, China and South Korea had earlier offered financial and technical help to establish nuclear power, and in March 2009 Russia made a formal proposal to build a nuclear power plant in the country. In May 2009 a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement was signed with Russia. In April 2009 the government approved the Russian proposal to build a 1000 MWe AES-92 nuclear plant at Rooppur for about $2 billion, and a year later this had become two such reactors by 2017. A nuclear energy bill was introduced into parliament in May 2012, with work to begin in 2013, and setting up a Bangladesh Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority. Parliament was told that 5000 MWe of nuclear capacity was envisaged by 2030, and a second plant would be built in the south once Rooppur is operating.

In May 2010 an intergovernmental agreement was signed with Russia, providing a legal basis for nuclear cooperation in areas such as siting, design, construction and operation of power and research nuclear reactors, water desalination plants, and elementary particle accelerators. Other areas covered included fuel supply and wastes- Russia will manage wastes and decommissioning.

An agreement with ROSATOM was signed in February 2011 for two 1000 MWe-class reactors to be built at Rooppur for the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC). Rooppur is close to a HVDC link with India and on the route of a planned 600 kV HVDC link running up the western side of the country. Another intergovernmental agreement was signed in November 2011 for the project to be built by AtomStroyExport. In 2014 Moscow AEP said that the plant would be an AES-2006 with a version of its V-392M reactors, with Novovoronezh II being the reference plant. Turbine generators (high speed) are expected to be from Power Machines.

Planned nuclear power reactors

An intergovernmental agreement for provision of a $500 million Russian loan to finance engineering surveys on the site, project development and personnel training was signed in January 2013. The $500 million loan will be repaid in 12 years with five years' grace period. In June and October 2013, AtomStroyExport signed contracts with BAEC to prepare documentation related to the construction and environmental impact assessment for the Rooppur plant, as well as providing for necessary engineering studies, including site preparation and detailed design documentation. AtomStroyExport said that this represented a transition to long-term cooperation. A $190 million agreement for major site works to prepare for first concrete was signed in June 2014, and BAEC authorized this in September, to be completed by 2016.

All we need to know about Rooppur Nuclear Power Programme



Design of the containment building to be used at Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant.

source: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant Project Brochure

Bangladesh has been maintaining robust growth over the last two decades. The present government is committed to elevate the country to the status of a middle income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041. For this vision to be materialised a huge supply of energy in the form of electricity will be required in a secured and affordable manner. Our indigenous resource of primary energy would be inadequate to meet the entire demand.

Globally, nuclear power is considered to be one of the cheapest and reliable sources of electricity. Virtually, it emits no greenhouse gases. Considering international experience, Bangladesh has decided to develop its own nuclear power programme. The government has plans to generate at least 4000MW electricity from nuclear sources by 2030.

Over the last several years, Bangladesh has made a significant progress in development of the power sector. Presently, Bangladesh is implementing a master plan to produce 24,000 MW, 40,000 MW and 60,000 MW in the year 2021. 2030 and 2041, respectively. The Power System Master Plan (PSMP), 2016 aims to ensure supply of electricity to all citizen and economic sectors at affordable costs at all times through a well-balanced power generation environment that maximizes the respective advantages of different types of power generation methods, including nuclear power, thermal power, hydropower generation and will be covered by coal and gas and the remaining 30% will be by nuclear power, hydropower generation, renewables and power imports from neighboring countries. Nuclear power is considered as the base load energy and the share of nuclear electricity generation beyond 2030 will be about 10% of the total power generation.

On November 30, the ceremony of first concrete pouring by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina into the reactor building foundation has taken place at Rooppur NPP. This event marks the start of construction of the country's first nuclear power plant under Sheikh Hasina's govt.

Bangladesh will have the safest and most environmentally friendly nuclear power plant, which will provide a quality solution to country's ever increasing power demand boost scientific and technological growth, create new job opportunities and facilitate socio-economic development.

Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant will be equipped with two units, each of 1200 MW capacity. In project construction, will be used the most advanced 3+ generation technology, which complies with the latest safety requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This type of reactor with the unique combination of active and passive safety systems was first commissioned in Russia's Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant in March 2016. The power unit made the list of top three awardees of Power Awards 2017 in the Best Power Plant category according to POWER Magazine (USA). The Russian WER 1200 brought home the award in the Top Plant nomination.

Today, ROSATOM is the global leader in terms of the number of simultaneously implemented nuclear reactor construction projects at various stages, 8 in Russia and 34 in 12 other countries. ROSATOM offering all-encompassing solutions for Bangladesh and other partners, which include support at every stage of national nuclear power program. ROSATOM, other than implementing the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plan project is extending its support and cooperation to Bangladesh in development of national nuclear infrastructure and human resources, management of spent nuclear fuel as well as developing of local industry among many others. There will encouraging and trying to ensure maximum participation of local companies in the process.

The IAEA has been supporting Bangladesh from its early phase of nuclear power programme. The Agency (IAEA) has been organizing training courses, workshops, fellowship and scientific visit programmes, educational seminars and with access to accumulated expertise in nuclear power to develop human resources of our country. The Agency's Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) mission, conducted in 2011 recognized that Bangladesh is on progress in building its first NPP. The INIR mission team concluded that Bangladesh reached Milestone 1, having 'made a knowledgeable decision' regarding its nuclear power program and the country has stepped into Phase-2, in the stage of preparation to negotiate the agreement(s)/ contract(s) with the selected NPP vendor. The INIR mission provided recommendations and suggestions on how to make further improvements. An Integrated Work Plan (IWP) for Bangladesh infrastructure development was developed through collaboration of the IAEA for the period 2012-2015 that provided a framework for the IAEA assistance to Bangladesh. Bangladesh had initiated its actions responding to all recommendations and suggestions provided by the 2011 INIR mission.

The construction of this NPP is going to enhance the development of social and economic, scientific and technological potential of the country and promoting Bangladesh to become a member of the elite 'Nuclear Club' of countries, which have nuclear technologies for power generation. The Rooppur NPP project is the largest infrastructure project in Bangladesh. Bangladesh started preparatory construction activities in 2013. Now the nation is celebrating the first concrete pouring of the unit 1 of Rooppur NPP on 30 November. Hopefully, the two units of Rooppur NPP will go into operation by 2023 and in 2024 respectively. Rooppur NPP will play an important role in providing a stable base load and ensuring energy security of our nation. For 60 years, our country has had a dream of building its own NPP. We all are happy that we are proceeding steadily towards fulfilling our dream.

I have the pleasure to mentioned here that I was the First Secretary of Science & Technology department of Awami League Central Committee in 1990. There was no such post in Awami League before. In technology & Research also Bangladesh has developed, we have built NOVO THEATRE, SATELLITE will be placed in Space in near future. Due to Research in different sectors Rice, (Jute, Fishery, poultry & different vegetable items we have achieved grand success.)
Shame on RU for assault on female students

LEADERS of the ruling part affiliated student front (BCL) at Rajshahi University (RU) mounted physical attack on female students on Wednesday and attempted to sexually abuse some of them in broad-day light. They threatened for gang rape. Media reports on Thursday said the miscreants assaulted five female students of the Institute of Health Technology (IHT) and following the incident the authorities have shut the institute sine die.







The action taken by the institute is enough to show the lawlessness in the campus and people wonder what the members of law enforcement agencies are doing instead of arresting the culprits and put them under the bar. The society is witnessing a total break down where physical safety of women is under open threat. Let there be no laxity, every such criminals must be held under bar.







It is unimaginable that the miscreants had pushed at least five female students to the ground and dragged and assaulted them in front of police and the Principal of IHT. A group of BCL men led by President of the institute unit attacked them when they were returning to their dorm with the principal. The victims left the Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, where the institute is located, in a hurry fearing further attacks. The victims even did not agree to give names fearing reprisal.







The assault followed other incidents over the last three days, following refusal of female students to take part in a human chain on the campus. Female students wanted to hold the program in the city's Zero Point area. The BCL leaders went inside the women's dorm and threatened the resident students with gang-rape if them don't agree to join their human chain. The fact is that female students now fear vulnerability at small failure because student leaders make open attempt to abuse them ignoring all civility and decencies.





Not this time alone. Earlier this year, the institute remained shut for over a month after a brawl between rivaling groups of BCL men. That incident on December 28 last year took place over establishing supremacy on the campus. The shut down this time will also cost academic teaching. BCL-men are blamed for unleashing a reign of terror on many campuses of public educational institutions across the country and for killing dozens of students. Lack of police action and legal impunity are making reckless. Needless to say female students are always victims in such situation if they venture at wrong place or at wrong time.







We must say the ruling party leaders must tighten control over their cadres and make sure disciplinary measures to save female students from sexual assault. Female members also come from their families. So every one must take every step to ensure honor and dignity of womenfolk at all cost at all places.






Don't include Sec 57 in other acts in any form: TIB

Staff Reporter :

Executive Director of Transparency International, Bangladesh [TIB] Dr Iftekheruzzaman has cautioned the authorities concerned not to include most controversial Section 57 of the ICT Act in any form in Digital Security Act or other such acts.

Welcoming Information Minister Hasanul Haque Inu's recent assurance about annulment of Section 57, he said, "The government must not introduce any act which could be conflicting with the freedom of expression and other such international laws."

Dr Iftekheruzzaman was addressing a dialogue organized by TIB marking an award giving programme titled "Investigative Journalism Awards-2017" organized at its Dhanmondi office in the city on Thursday.

Prime Minister's International Affairs Adviser Gowher Rizvi attended the dialogue as the Chief Guest.

The dialogue was a part of TIB's week-long programmes on the eve of UN declared International Anti-Corruption Day on December 9.

Presided over by TIB's Trustee Board member Dr ATM Shamshul Huda, the occasion was also addressed by M Hafizuddin Khan, Prof Dr Sumaiya Khaiyer, Executive Editor of Daily Samakal Mustafiz Shafi, News Editor of Bangla Vision Sharmeen Rinvi and Senior Reporter of Prothom Alo Iftekhar Mahmood, among others.

Earlier different organizations, including Amnesty International, had criticised the Section 57 of ICT Act saying the act is often used by the Bangladeshi authorities to target, harass and imprison critics. They said under this draconian law, an individual can face up to 14 years in jail for 'publishing fake, obscene or defaming information in electronic form' or information which 'prejudices the image of the state or person.'

Meanwhile, pointing the obstacles over freedom of expression, most of the speakers chorused that an uneasy situation has been prevailing in the country where the government has to lose its image due to irregularities of some corrupted people.

In this situation, they alleged, the media cannot play positive role by publishing corruption news despite obtaining enough information and documents in their hands.

Taking part in the dialogue, Dr Gowher Rizvi urged all to stay alert against the corrupted persons in the government.

"If there is corruption, it is impossible to alleviate poverty from a country. So therefore, we have to stay alert against the corrupted people as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has directed to alleviate poverty from the country," he said.

Dr Rizvi said, "The persons, who create obstacles for investigative journalism, do so for their self interests There is no directive from the government in this regard."

ATM Shamsul Huda, also former Chief Election, said there is no friendly environment in the country to facilitate investigative journalism. "It is very difficult for a journalist to work on an investigative report," he opined.


Dhaka concerned over US declaration recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Bangladesh has expressed deep concern at the recent announcement by the United States recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Bangladesh stressed on preserving the legal status of Jerusalem within the framework of relevant UN resolutions, according to a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry here on Thursday.

Bangladesh reaffirmed its position in favour of establishing the State of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. Bangladesh urged all parties concerned to take a pragmatic approach to the Middle East Peace Process in reaching a two state solution for peace and stability in the region.
No need of Army deployment, says CEC

Staff Reporter :

The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), KM Nurul Huda, on Thursday said that there is no need of Army deployment in the forthcoming Rangpur City Corporation polls.

"The election in Rangpur City Corporation will be held in a free, fair and credible manner. We see that there is a festive mood in the election. There is no need of Army deployment in the polls," he said.

The CEC was talking to a group of journalists after a meeting with the various law enforcement agencies, and local government and election commission officials at the Divisional Commissioner's office in Rangpur.

He also said currently mobile court is operating under the leadership of 22 magistrates and from tomorrow there will be a mobile court in every ward.

The CEC said also that if anyone violates electoral rule of law, then action would be taken against him or her immediately.

He ensured that the EC would take all sort of measures to hold a free and fair election. He said that four-tier security measures would be taken during the day.

The CEC said that Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) would be used in one polling station but it depends on the local people. "If voters want the EVM, then it will be used, otherwise not," he said.

On the other hand, the BNP yesterday alleged that no level playing field has been created ahead of the Rangpur city polls.

"The ruling party candidate is showing muscle every moment ahead of Rangpur City polls. We are demanding Army deployment during the polls for free and fair polls," said BNP Senior Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi while addressing a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan office on the day.
Call for new intifada

Growing chorus condemning Trump's stand on Jerusalem status: UNSC to meet today: Arabs, Europe reject decision

A masked Palestinian takes part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump\'s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday. Internet photo

Traditional US allies are among a growing chorus condemning President Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Saudi Arabia called it "unjustified and irresponsible", while France and the UK said they did not support the decision. But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu hailed it as "historic" and said he was sure more countries would follow suit. President Trump's move reversed decades of US policy on one of the thorniest issues between Israel and Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party said it would complain to the UN about what Mr Abbas called a "deplorable" decision, while Islamist group Hamas has called for a new intifada, or uprising. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are due to hold a day of strikes and protests on Thursday. The UN Security Council is to discuss the issue on Friday after eight of the 15 member nations called for an emergency session. The Arab League is to meet on Saturday. The US president said on Wednesday that he had "determined it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians," he said. He said he was directing the US state department to begin preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Despite warnings of regional unrest over any such move, the decision fulfils a campaign promise and appeals to Mr Trump's right-wing base. Recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital was "nothing more or less than a recognition of reality", he added. "It is also the right thing to do." He said the US would support a two-state solution to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if approved by both sides, which would essentially see the creation of an independent Palestinian state living alongside Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was profoundly grateful to Mr Trump, who had "bound himself forever with the history of the capital". He also said Israel was "in touch with other countries to follow suit. I have no doubt other embassies will move to Jerusalem - the time has come." He did not name any of these countries, although the Philippines and the Czech Republic have been singled out in Israeli media.The Republican Jewish Coalition thanked the president in a New York Times ad.

The mood was very different on the Palestinian side, with a day of strikes and protests planned.

Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas which runs the Gaza Strip, has called for a "day of rage" on Friday and said it should "be the first day of the intifada against the occupier". "We have given instructions to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger," he said in a speech in Gaza. Meanwhile, Fatah is seeking to protest through diplomatic means, by filing a complaint to the UN Security Council and pushing for a strong stance by the Arab League.

"We are going to declare the United States disqualified as co-sponsor of any peace process or political process," spokesman Dr Nasser Al-Kidwa said. "In our mind, it has lost its ability to do or perform any efforts in this regard." The Arab and the wider Muslim world - including a number of US allies - condemned Mr Trump's announcement. Demonstrations broke out outside the US consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and in Jordan's capital Amman. Palestinians turned off Christmas lights in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Mr Trump was "throwing the region into a ring of fire". "What do you want to do Mr Trump? What kind of an approach is this? Political leaders exist not to create struggles but to make peace," he said. Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said the move "hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims".

The Saudi royal court said it "represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem".

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it was "a moment of great anxiety". He said "there is no alternative to the two-state solution".

Mr Trump's announcement puts the US at odds with the rest of the international community's view on Jerusalem's status.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, its final status is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks.

Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem has never been recognised internationally, and all countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem contains sites sacred to the three major monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, was annexed by Israel after the Six Day War of 1967, but before now it has not been internationally recognised as part of Israel.
US lawmakers deny Democrat's bid to impeach Donald Trump

Green accused Trump of white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, or neo-Nazism.

AFP, Washington :

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a congressman's motion Wednesday to impeach President Trump, as Democratic Party leaders argued that now was not the time to pursue the effort.

Lawmakers voted 364 to 58 in rejection of liberal Democrat Al Green's resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against the Republican president. The vote was not on the articles of impeachment themselves but on tabling the proposal.

Green had used a so-called privileged motion to force a vote on the issue. All Republicans opposed the motion, along with 126 Democrats.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that while Trump has made several statements and taken actions "that are beyond the pale for most Americans," it was important to allow congressional committees probing Russian meddling in the US election and possible Trump campaign collusion to proceed with their work.

"The special counsel's investigation is moving forward as well, and those inquiries should be allowed to continue," she added, referring to Robert Mueller.

"Now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment."

Green first introduced impeachment proceedings in October, but forced the vote on Wednesday.

"I love my country. For this reason I will bring articles of impeachment to a vote in the House of Representatives," Green wrote in a letter to colleagues.

In the resolution, Green argues that Trump has sown discord among Americans "by associating the majesty and dignity of the presidency with causes rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, or neo-Nazism."

Two other House Democrats have introduced impeachment articles, but they have not reached the floor.

Democrats have debated the political merits of pressing for impeachment, and some have cautioned that an aggressive stance could provoke a backlash by Trump's conservative base at the ballot box.
World AIDS Day observed

BSS, Chittagong :

The World AIDS Day was observed yesterday in the port city as elsewhere in the division.To mark the day, rallies and discussions were organized by District Civil Surgeon Office, Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) and Health Directorate of Chittagong and other organizations.

Addressing the discussions, the speakers stressed the need for raising public awareness, avoiding unsafe sexual contact and unsafe blood transfusion for controlling the disease.They urged all to abide by the social and religious norms to remain free from the disease.

A discussion was held at Chittagong Civil Surgeon Office with Civil Surgeon Dr Azizur Rahman Siddique in the chair. Deputy Director of family planning Chittagong Dr Uk Sing Boby addressed the function as chief guest. Earlier, Chittagong Civil Surgeon Office brought a rally from Chittagong press club premises led by Civil Surgeon Dr Azizur Rahman Siddique. Doctors, social elite and NGO representatives were participated in the rally.

The rally concluded at Andarkillah Chittagong Civil Surgeon Office premises after parading different important city streets. The speakers said young people should be made aware of the disease on priority basis and be given effective guidelines on safe health practices as the segment of the population is more vulnerable than others to be affected with HIV/AIDS.
Trump is exploiting disunity of Muslims to advance his anti-Muslim agenda

President Donald Trumps announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the instruction to his administration to move US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has come as the biggest blow to the Palestinian peace process based on two state solutions. The moribund US brokered process was indeed dead for many years but Mr Trumps decision laid the last nail in the coffin.



There is no doubt the US President is playing foul with the fate of the Palestinian people because the Muslim world has no effective and united leadership to stand up and protect the interest of the Muslim Ummah.



They have no self-respect now within their country to claim respect and being counted by outside powers. Most Muslim countries are fighting factional war or sectarian conflicts. Some have already foregone Palestinian cause to protect them from fear of internal dismantling.



It is no secret that Mr Trump is using this disunity to promote the interest of Israel and his own anti-Muslim policies.



The weak angry reaction coming from the Muslim world is not enough to face challenge to the Palestinian statehood. Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 but the international community recognized it as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The international community has not recognised whole of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



Reaction from world leaders was however quick to Mr Trumps announcement. As soon as Mr Trump ended his statement in Washington recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is one first who in a public statement from New York quickly denounced Mr Trumps decision. He voiced his anguish over his mad move.



Mr Trump is indeed an imbalanced person and psychopath and anxious to undermine world peace. He is deal maker and peace wrecker. It is feared that his recklessness and lack of understanding the world of politics may plunge the world into a nuclear war. Sensible people in America are trying hard to save America and the world from his sick mental condition.



His position as president is now very shaky as his Russia connection in 2016 election is quickly unfolding. So he is stirring support of anti-Muslim ultra-nationalist groups and Jewish lobbies to feel safe and divert US politics to new direction.



His America First slogan has already become Israel First policy, a commentator said although it costs the US its global leadership role. He is an Israeli agent now working for greater Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rightly said the US has lost its acceptance as peace broker as Mr Trump has now openly sided with Israel. It is an open betrayal to Palestinian cause.



The UN Secretary General has reiterated the stance of the UN Security Council and General Assembly on the Palestinian conflict; which said among other things the final status of Jerusalem will be decided by end negotiation to the peace process. Trump has no right to make such unilateral decision. It is a breach of international law. The Secretary General has called a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday to discuss the latest situation as it posed imminent threat to the region.



Germany, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and host of other countries have already denounced the move blaming Mr Trump for ignoring warning of world leaders that such step will not be good for world peace. Mr Trump is now abandoned in global politics while the USA is weathering shame and disgrace it never experienced before.



Mere angry denunciation of President Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem belonging to Israel as its capital or isolated violence here and there will have no impact. Almost all the leaders of the world find President Trump being unsound and wrong on the issue of Jerusalem. The leaders of Muslim countries must learn to act together to take advantage of the world support for the Palestinians. They must show their strength where they are strong and act unitedly for the peace process though now broken.




2 BCL men killed in M`bazar `infighting`

Our Correspondent :

Two activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) were killed in a factional clash in Moulvibazar town on Thursday evening, police said.

The deceased were identified as Shahbab Rahman, 23, son of one Abu Bakar Siddique, resident of old hospital road in the town and Mahi Ahmed, 18, son of one Billal Hossain of Durlabpur village of sadar upazila.

Shahbab was an eleventh grade student of Moulvibazar Govt College and Mahi was an SSC examinee.

The deceased were activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League, Mohammad Shahjalal, Superintendent of Police in Moulvibazar, said our local correspondent quoting police.

The incident took place in front of Moulvibazar Government High School hostel around 6:30pm.

Miscreants hacked the duos to death over factional clash, said Moulvibazar Model Police Station's Officer-in-Charge (OC) Suhel Ahmed.

They were rushed to Sadar Hospital where on-duty physician declared them dead on arrival.

"The killing might have been committed due to factional clash. The matter is being investigated," added Suhel Ahmed.




HC upholds death sentence of two accused

Staff Reporter :

The High Court (HC) on Thursday upheld the death sentence awarded to two accused in the sensational Kamrul Islam Momin murder case.

Momin, 22, a student of Dhaka Commerce College, was shot dead near his

Ibrahimpur residence in the capital city on September 13, 2005.

The two death accused are Shakhawat Hossain Jewel and Tareq alias Zia. They are absconding.

But on Wednesday, the HC abated the then Officer-in-Charge of Motijheel Police Station A K M Rafiqul Islam, who was also awarded death sentence by the lower court, from the case as he had already died.

The High Court also upheld the life term imprisonment delivered to six other accused in the case. They are Monir Howlader, Hasibul Haque Johnny, Jafar Ahmed, Sharif Uddin, Habibur Rahman Taj and Thoth Ucha Babu. Among the six, Habibur and Babu are in jail and the others are on the run.

The High Court bench of Justice Bhabani Prasad Singha and Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam pronounced the judgement after hearing the death reference of the case and the appeals filed by Habibur and Babu.

Assistant Attorney General Bashir Ahmed told the journalists that the High Court affirmed the conviction and sentences as the allegations brought against them have been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

A gang of criminals shot Momin dead on his way to college on September 13 in 2005. He was a 3rd year student of the department of Management at Dhaka Commerce College and Vice-President of pro-JSD Chhatra League, Dhaka city unit.

Momin's father Abdur Razzak filed a case with the Kafrul Police Station against 26 accused, including the then Officer-in-Charge of Motijheel Police Station A K M Rafiqul Islam. OC Rafiqul, however, died on December 22 in 2015 in jail.

Charge sheet was submitted against nine accused on November 11 in 2008. The court framed the charge on October 5 in 2009. It was done again on January 2 in 2011. The Speedy Tribunal-4 of Dhaka delivered the judgement on July 20 in 2011. The court awarded death sentence to three accused and life imprisonment to six others.

After the lower court's verdict, the death references came to the High Court for confirmation. In the mean time, two accused also appealed against their life imprisonment sentence. The HC declared the judgement after hearing those death references and appeals.

Deputy Attorney General Bashir Ahmed and Syeda Shabnam Mushtari took part in the hearing on behalf of the State, while Advocate Yousuf Hossen Humayun and Sheikh Baharul Islam stood for the defense. Advocated Shafiqur Rahman took part in the hearing on behalf of the two absconing death row as state appointed lawyer.
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Claflin University honored more than 200 individuals who had made gifts to the university at the leadership level of $1,000 and above at the annual Leadership Giving Luncheon last month. The program has been a tradition at Claflin since 1996.

Each year at the luncheon, donors are given thank-you gifts and recognized by their categories of giving. Leadership gifts this year totaled more than $726,000.

The special honorees at this year's luncheon were President Henry N. Tisdale and First Lady Alice Carson Tisdale. The Tisdales' tenure at Claflin has been nothing short of remarkable and exemplary. Closing in on 24 years of service at the first historically black college or university in South Carolina, the Tisdales have led a transformation that has propelled Claflin to prominence in higher education for academic excellence and an uncompromising commitment to student success.

Upon his return to lead his alma mater in 1994, President Tisdale set in motion his vision that Claflin be recognized as a leading 21st Century institution of higher education that develops a diverse and inclusive community of globally engaged visionary leaders. Claflin is well on its way to achieving that vision. To illustrate that assertion, Tisdale doubled student enrollment and added several new academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Claflin consistently has been ranked among the nation's Top Ten HBCUs by U.S. News and World Report.

Under the president's, Claflin's historic campus has improved with the construction of new buildings, including the Kleist Living and Learning Center, the Student Residential Center, the University Dining Center, the University Music Center, the Molecular Science Research Center, the James and Dorothy Z. Elmore Chapel and Claflin Commons. Through his tireless and strategic visionary leadership, Tisdale has earned the well-deserved reputation as a transformative leader among his contemporaries in higher education.

Moreover, Tisdale, in partnership with Claflin's Board of Trustees and the Division of Institutional Advancement, led the most successful Capital Campaign in the history of the university, a fundraising effort that raised more than $105 million and surpassed its initial goal of $96.4 million.

First Lady Alice Carson Tisdale has been exceptional in her own right. It was no accident that in 1996, Mrs. Tisdale was honored by the Claflin University Board of Trustees by the renaming of the university's honors program, The Alice Carson Tisdale Honors College. The honor provided a platform for the First Lady to make a difference in the lives of many students selected for the Honors College. Under her direction, the Alice Carson Tisdale Honors College has been strengthened and expanded to reflect Claflin's commitment to cultivating academically outstanding students. Admission standards were raised and measures taken to enhance the honors students' experience on every level to prepare them for success in graduate and professional schools, and as leaders in their professions and society.

Mrs. Tisdale's support and influence go beyond the walls of Claflin University. She has a ubiquitous presence on a slate of community boards and organizations. She serves on the Governor's Mansion and Lace House Commission. She also served as past national president and secretary/treasurer of the National Association of African American Honors Programs; past board chair of the Orangeburg County Salvation Army and past board chair of the Orangeburg County Community of Character. She is a member and co-founder/director of the "Praise Kids" Children's Christian Theater at Trinity United Methodist Church. She is a very popular motivational speaker for children and people of all ages.

Understanding the need for strengthening Claflin's academic profile in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines, the Tisdales established the Henry N. and Alice Carson Tisdale Endowed Professorship in STEM. The creation of this positon supports the growing reputation Claflin has earned for producing graduates from STEM programs. Claflin is one of the region's leading liberal arts universities, and its emphasis on STEM aligns with career opportunities in today's workplace.

The Tisdales have also established endowed scholarship funds. The Henry N. Tisdale Endowed Scholarship Fund assists students from Williamsburg County who are freshmen pursuing careers in STEM. The Alice Carson Tisdale Endowed Scholarship Fund assists students who are freshmen with a minimum high school GPA of 3.25 pursuing a career in elementary, middle or secondary education.

Having a keen eye for aesthetics, the Tisdales were instrumental in putting one of the final touches in the James and Dorothy Z. Elmore Chapel. The rose window above the choir loft was a gift from them in honor of their parents, Walter and Willa M. Tisdale and Charles C. and Virginia L. Carson. The rose window was the last of the stained glass windows installed in the chapel during the 2007 fall semester. The window was created by nationally-renowned artist and Claflin graduate Dr. Leo Twiggs (class of 1956) at the request of President Tisdale. The colorful, artistic design of the window is a reflection of Twiggs' inspiration of the Tisdales' ability to complement each other in a very special way.
A celebration-of-life ceremony will be held at Claflin University for alumnus Ernest A. Finney Jr., who was the first African-American chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Finney died Sunday. He was 86.

He will be remembered in Claflins James and Dorothy Z. Elmore Chapel from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

Born in 1931 in Smithfield, Va., Finney graduated from Claflin with a bachelors degree in 1952. In 1954, he received a law degree from South Carolina State University.

Upon graduation, he taught in Conway's public school system for five years before setting up his law practice in Sumter.

In 1961, Finney represented the Friendship 9, a group of black college students who were arrested for trying to desegregate a lunch counter in Rock Hill. Two years later, Finney was appointed as chairman of the S.C. Commission on Civil Rights.

Finney was elected to the S.C. House of Representatives in 1972 and was the first AfricanAmerican to serve on the House Judiciary Committee since the Reconstruction era. In the House, Finney was a co-founder of the Legislative Black Caucus and served as its first chairman.

The Claflin alumnus was elected as a judge to the S.C. 3rd Circuit Court in July 1976, becoming the Palmetto State's first African-American Circuit Court judge in the process. Nine years later, he was appointed to the S.C. Supreme Court, later becoming the chief justice. He held that position until he retired in March 2000.

In 2002, he was the interim president of South Carolina State University, a post which he held for one year.

Finney served on Claflin's Board of Trustees for two decades and was elected as its chairman in 1986. In 2003, the university granted him the status of trustee emeritus.

The Finney remembrance schedule includes:

 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday -- Lying in repose at the South Carolina Supreme Court, 1231 Gervais St., Columbia.

 3-7 p.m. Thursday  Public viewing, Palmer Memorial Chapel, 1200 Fontaine Place, Columbia.

 4-5 p.m. Friday -- Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. Omega ceremony, Morris College, Neal-Jones Auditorium, 100 West College St., Sumter

 4-7 p.m. Friday  Visitation, Morris College, Neal-Jones Auditorium.
Orangeburg

County

Sheriffs Office

A Second Avenue woman said she stabbed her boyfriend after he allegedly grabbed her by the throat and punched her on Tuesday night, according to a sheriffs office incident report.

When deputies arrived at the home at 11:13 p.m., they saw the woman standing in the roadway with blood on her shirt.

She and her boyfriend of three years had an argument about his alleged drug use and possible infidelity, the report said. The woman packed up her boyfriends belongings and put them outside of the residence.

Later, she heard her boyfriend knocking on the front door and back door.

When she refused to let him inside, he allegedly kicked in the back door and gained entry.

He then argued with the woman about why she placed his items outside of the residence and used his fist to punch her several times in the face, the report said.

Ultimately, she fell to the floor and he allegedly continued kicking her.

Her boyfriend then allegedly grabbed her by her throat and punched her in her face several times. She said he also threatened to kill her.

After she grabbed her boyfriend in his private area, she got up and grabbed a steak knife that was in the kitchen.

She said that when her boyfriend ran toward her, she stabbed him in the chest, the report said.

He then told her to call his mother.

The boyfriend left the residence on foot toward the dead end of Second Avenue.

Multiple deputies arrived at the residence to search for her injured boyfriend, but werent able to find him there or in the vicinity.

Orangeburg County EMS arrived to check the womans injuries. She had a bloodshot eye and a bruised lip.

The woman declined to go to the Regional Medical Center and victims services.

She also claimed this wasnt the first time he physically assaulted her.

The incident remains under investigation.

A Morninghill Drive man reported Tuesday morning that someone stole his 2018 Nissan Sentra.

He told deputies that he left his vehicle unlocked with the motor running while he returned to his apartment unit to retrieve his cellphone.

When he returned to his vehicle about two minutes later, someone had stolen it.

The vehicle is valued at $19,000.

Video surveillance cameras captured the theft of several pieces of outdoor equipment from the Orangeburg County Roads and Bridges office on Neeses Camp Road in Neeses on Monday morning.

A supervisor called deputies when he arrived at the site and discovered a Poland pole saw and three Husqvarna chainsaws were missing.

The value of the tools is $2,200.
"Remember Pearl Harbor."

The words are the rallying cry that took the United States into World War II a day after the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base in Hawaii. The date: Dec. 7, 1941.

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other military bases on Oahu lasted two hours and left 21 U.S. ships heavily damaged, 323 aircraft damaged or destroyed, and 2,390 people dead and 1,178 wounded. A bomb ripped open the USS Arizona, sinking the ship at its mooring along Battleship Row in nine minutes. It remains an underwater tomb for more than 900 of its 1,177 crewmen.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, the Pearl Harbor attack was the most deadly ever launched against America on our nation's soil. It remains America's "Day of Infamy," so named by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt in seeking and obtaining a declaration of war against Japan on Dec. 8, 1941.

Pearl Harbor and World War II must not be forgotten even as subsequent generations continue dealing with the reality of another surprise attack.

It's been more than 15 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Many are the parallels between the events of the Day of Infamy in 1941 and the modern-day infamy of Sept. 11, 2001.

The attacks of Sept. 11 in Washington and New York took twice the number of lives. The attacks opened the eyes of generations unaccustomed to war. Our president then, like Roosevelt in 1941, promised a war to save our way of life. George W. Bush said it would be a long, protracted war against terrorism.

He was right. American involvement in post 9-11 wars have produced conflicts longer than U.S. involvement in World War II.

Some doubt American unity in the war on terrorism because it is a different kind of struggle than World War II: no armies to defeat nor surrenders to be signed. No one knows where the next attack will come, where the next battle will have to be fought against extremists bent on destroying western civilization and the freedoms it embodies.

Not to be forgotten on Pearl Harbor Day: We are all Americans. As divided as our nation is politically, all Americans can and should be proud that ours is land where discord is accepted and expected, debate and division are not trampled by a dictatorial government, free speech and free religion are foundations of society.

We're all in this together.

As Japanese attackers and American survivors of Dec. 7, 1941, met in 2001 at Pearl Harbor, this time as friends harboring no bitterness, the assessment of a Japanese pilot from World War II sent a message to the world.

Kunio Iwashita told The Associated Press it was not until Sept. 11, 2001, that he realized how Americans felt in 1941.

"I was very impressed with all the flags on buildings and cars, with the patriotism Americans showed after Sept. 11," said Iwashita, who was visiting relatives in Boston on 9-11. "I realized what a big, strong country America is. I had no idea about that" in 1941.

Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001: The lessons of those painful days must never be forgotten.
By Trend





Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have prepared a "road map" to expand trade and economic cooperation, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov said.

Shahbazov made the remarks during the 14th meeting of the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation in Baku on December 7.

The minister added that the commission has carried out professional, constructive, complex and fruitful work over the past two days.

"In particular, a roadmap for trade and economic cooperation was prepared between the countries for 2018-2020, which includes an action plan and aims at increasing the trade turnover between the countries and strengthening economic cooperation," he said. Following the meeting, a protocol will be signed and a road map will be adopted.

The minister said that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 3.7 percent and amounted to $102.5 million over the three quarters of this year.

In particular, export from Azerbaijan increased by 7.3 percent and amounted to $21.8 million, while import from Kazakhstan increased by 2.7 percent and amounted to $80.7 million.

"Relations between our countries have long history, the minister said. The countries have close political and economic ties. Moreover, the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan has been marked this year.

Our countries were developing rapidly, very dynamically over these years, he said. Both countries have rich natural resources and have been able to attract foreign companies for cooperation."

The minister added that both countries have favorable geographic location, the minister said, adding that as a result, the countries successfully implement transport projects.

SOCAR Trading company transported 835,100 tons of Kazakh oil in 2016 and 3,500 tons of Kazakh oil for 10 months of this year.
Two Way Street Albuquerque

I was standing in the yellow cast of streetlights on Central Avenue with several members of Two Way Street, a community newspaper whose objective is to allow the city's low-income and homeless communities an opportunity for entrepreneurship and creativity, when a passerby stopped to shake David M. Ellis' hand. Ellis is a hip-hop artist, poet and a street vendor for the paper who regularly performs Downtown on Fourth Street and Central. The young man who stopped had seen Ellis rap and it had left an impression. In his unabashedly kind way, Ellis obliged with another impromptu performance. At a second's notice, he floored us all with a freestyle that was so quick witted and clever I could barely keep up. It's with earnest generosity that Ellis shares his work with people on the streets of Albuquerque. Despite his brilliance with words, and that he offers them up for nothing, Ellis said that he works way too hard just to get a listen.

People walk past and I'm saying, 'Can I offer you a poem, can I offer you a hip-hop verse?' And they just say, 'I don't got nothing.' You don't got what? He asked. We live in a world that has praised homeless peopleJesus Christ, Mohammad, Gandhi, Buddha, Mother Theresathey all hit the stage of homelessness. We praise them. Yet, Saturday night, we'll walk past that homeless person.  People will shrug me off before giving me the opportunity to offer them something. And what Ellis has to offer is not just artistic talent, but also tremendous insights into our city that have been, at times, hard-won, and knowledge of resources that could benefit so many if his voice could just be amplified.

It hasn't been easy at all to be a homeless artist in Albuquerque, Annabelle Marge Taylor agreed. I've been arrested for vandalism; I've been ticketed. Taylor's life reads like a bookand in fact she has written a book (send an email to roundtortillas@gmail. com to get your hands on a copy of itI Don't Make Round Tortillas). I went to Venice Beach, San Francisco, San Diego, Slab City, everywhere I could to learn how to be an artist from street artists. The hard part was, I didn't realize that people were going to scream at me, throw things at me, business owners are going to run me off. Taylor creates murals in chalk and does street installation work. She is also a writer and poet. Her art beautifies and lends greater value to the otherwise gray city blocks.

Through Two Way Street, Ellis, Taylor and others, have found a broader platform for their work, and, armed with press credentials, vendor licenses, and under the umbrella of a (soon-to-be-official 501(c)3) nonprofit, they're getting the community's ear more easily. This paper gave me validity as a member of the community, Taylor said. I always had it, but it wasn't recognized. Now it is. This paper gave us a voice.

Two Way Street was born out of editor Jeff Hertz' master's thesis work at UNM. I originally started researching how street papers were helping marginalized individuals overcome public perception through market-based strategies, he explained. This was around the time that the mayor's office started their Better Way Van program, offering work picking up weeds and litter in parts of the city that were typically outside the public eye as an alternative to panhandling. Even though [this effort] was working on getting people 'off the street,' it was doing so in a way that wasn't addressing the biggest issue at hand: Helping these individuals engage in meaningful face-to-face interactions that help them socially reintegrate back into their community.  At that point, I realized that Albuquerque needed another street paperyes, another one, Hertz explained, pointing out that from 1990 to 1999 we had Albuquerque Street News, a paper that eventually sunk.

Here's how Two Way Street worksstreet vendors work as independent contractors, hired with minimal barriers in placeyou don't need an ID, or a criminal background check to begin work. Each vendor receives five donated copies of the paper, which are then sold for a dollar or more each. Vendors can come back with their earnings and buy more copies of the paper for 25 cents each, and hit the street again in an effort that has the potential to become a bonafide small business. People going through hard times can generate income on their own terms, applying their own vision and skills to support themselves.

The hard copy is the most important thing, Ellis said. You can go online and check it out, but you don't get to meet the people.  If you work in any community, live in any community, you should know your surroundings, good, bad or indifferent. You should know who your neighbor is. Chair of the Street Vendor Community, April Parrish echoed that, underlining the importance of simply talking with each other, These kind of direct experiences are the only thing that are going to revolutionize the perception  so that there's a body of direct experience that completely dispels these misperceptions about our folks out there struggling for resources and opportunities.

The reason for these problems in the first place is the disconnect between our public spaces and ourselves. We don't activate our public spaces  in addition to activating these public spaces and connecting people to these stories, giving the opportunity for face-to-face interaction, it's also an opportunity to legitimize the interactions of our most vulnerable people. Its an opportunity to get these voices out, contributor Nick Vottero offered. Another writer for the paper, George Christopher Moreno deepened that thought by pointing out that each of us have a responsibility to be a force of positivity in our city. It's absurd that we treat each other so poorly. We don't pay attention; we don't listen. We let each other off too easy. We want people to read this and to learn things, and not only to learn things, but to have resources. I think the paper is operating on many meaningful levels. I can't wait to see it all happen. Those of us invested in the success of our cityand that should be all of uscan't wait to see it happen, either.

Find out more about how you can get involved with, support or buy a copy of Two Way Street at twowaystreetabq.org, and keep an eye out for vendors all over the city with a copy in hand.
By Azernews





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.
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

Conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine should be given more attention, said George Tsereteli, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on December 7.

He made the remarks while addressing foreign ministers at the OSCEs 24th Ministerial Council in Vienna.

As President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I am equally concerned by all conflicts around the OSCE area, he said.

Tsereteli added that increasingly intense hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh are a cause for deep concern.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, in turn, also touched upon the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict while addressing the Ministerial Council.

Unresolved conflicts in Moldova, Ukraine and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict impede the strengthening of security in the region, he said.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Until now, Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
Apollon Limassol vs Everton

Thursday, 7 December, 2017



Match Preview

Everton's disastrous Europa League campaign comes to a close this evening in Cyprus as they take on Apollon Limassol in a genuine dead rubber in Group E.

Both teams have already been eliminated from the competition and with nothing riding on the outcome, new Blues boss Sam Allardyce is expected to take the opportunity to blood some youth players and hand opportunities to impress to the senior side's fringe players.

The manager himself will remain in England because of a pre-arranged medical appointment. Craig Shakespeare and Duncan Ferguson will travel instead with the bulk of the first team with Allardyce, assistant Sammy Lee and the rest of the players using the time to prepare for Sunday's Merseyside derby against Liverpool.

The squad named for the final group game includes eight players from the Under-23s setup: Nathan Broadhead, Harry Charsley, Michael Collins, Alex Denny, Stephen Duke-McKenna, Anthony Gordon, Fraser Hornby, and Shayne Lavery.

Article continues below video content

The Liverpool Echo have been speculating that along with Morgan Feeney, who came on against Atalanta in the last European fixture, Charsley could be handed his first senior appearance with a place in the starting XI.

Davy Klaassen and Muhamed Besic, meanwhile, are also set to start as they press for greater inclusion under the new regime but Sandro Ramirez suffered an injury in training and won't play. It was hoped that James McCarthy would be fit but he is not match ready but Kevin Mirallas and Morgan Schneiderlin are likely starters.

Kick-off: 6pm, Thursday, 7 December, 2017

Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer

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Leading experts and specialists in the field of construction and sustainability from across the globe were at the 12th edition of the Middle East Drymix Conference held in Sharjah, UAE, recently.



Sponsored by the University of Sharjah, the summit was held under the For the Sustainability of Construction and Building Materials slogan.



The event saw experts discuss several key issues, ideas, initiatives, and proposals aimed at improving the world of construction and its sustainability.



Dr Hamid Majul Al Nuaimi, chancellor of the University of Sharjah, said: "Experts and specialists in this field sat together and discussed, within the objectives and domains of this conference, drymix mortar as compared to current materials used in building and construction, for which billions of dollars are spent in the country annually."



"This is in addition to the billions spent on such for maintenance and restoration as confirmed by national statistics," he added.



Prof Mufid Al Samarai, a senior advisor at Sharjah Research Academy Government of Sharjah and the chairman of the Drymix Middle East, said: "We took an opportunity at this conference to utilise it as a key platform for sustainable construction issues."



"The UAE has a leading role in this context in the region since the institutions, the bodies, and the officials are keen to apply the highest standards and practices of sustainability," he added.



Al Samarai pointed out that the conference had different sessions, on several issues in the field of construction and building materials; taking into consideration the sustainability issue, the environment, and the climate in the region.



This included humidity and high temperature, and how to deal with such matters at various levels and fields, in order to ensure longer stability and sustainability of construction, he added.



The panels discussed various aspects such as energy efficiency and durable construction, enabled by strong toolbox of chemistries by Dr Margarita Perello.



Another session focused on fire protection through ettringite materials by Dr Gautam Bhattacharya.

Other panels explored important studies and research, such as Dr Michael Monzs session on improving the flexibility of the cementitious mortars by using lightweight aggregates, said the organisers.



Additionally, Rajit Kumar spoke about the sustainable premix render as an economic way to protect the buildings, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
More than 200 Indian property developers across 14 states and 60 cities assembled at the Credais Indian Property Show that opened to public today (December 7) in Dubai.



The popular exhibition, featuring thousands of residential and commercial projects, has sparked further interest among property buyers following the recent reforms to promote transparency in the Indian real-estate sector, said the event organisers.



The event was inaugurated by Sultan Butti bin Mejren, the director general of Dubai Land Department (DLD); Vipul, Indian consul general to the UAE; Dr Arathi Krishna, deputy chairman, NRI Forum Karnataka, and Arbaaz Khan, Bollywood actor, producer and Indian Property Show brand ambassador in the presence of top Credai dignitaries.



The three-day property expo, which is open to all, is being held at Halls 7 & 8, Dubai World Trade Centre from 12noon to 8pm till December 9.



Besides property retail, visitors can also avail of offers for on spot purchase, flat discounts, free home through lucky draw on booking a property at the exhibition, complimentary tickets to global destinations.



Credai will also host Smart India Realty Meet & Awards veremony to acknowledge the leading developers and government institutions in UAE and India, banks, Dubai Land Department and UAE channel partners



Commenting on the sectors growth, Jaxay Shah, the president of Credai, National, said: "This is a good time to invest in real estate in India keeping in view that the average rate of growth in prices has been more than 20 per cent per annum historically and likely to rise to as high as 30 per cent every year."

"Markets like Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore enjoyed appreciation in prices of around 15 per cent over the last one year. There is good news from smaller towns as well. Kochi is witnessing appreciation of more than 25 per cent annually as we speak," observed Shah.



Reiterating the sentiment, Shub Ganguly, senior VP, sales at Prestige Group, said: "Going forward, factors like rapid urbanisation, increased migration to cosmopolitan and Tier 1 cities, and the governments focus on infrastructure and affordable housing will give the required impetus and push to the real estate sector."



"With transparency, uniformity in the sector, greater accountability and financial discipline for the developer, a uniform tax structure across the country and stable prices in the sector, there cannot be a better time to buy than now," he added.



The Indian property witnessed a wave of optimism following the implementation of Real Estate Regulation and Development Act, 2016 (Rera) and Goods and Services Tax (GST), giving buyers the confidence to invest in an industry that is now more organized.



For developers, too, the move ensures a cleansing of dubious elements, giving way to more quality projects and a proper framework to operate on.



On the reforms, Getamber Anand, the chairman and managing director at ATS Infrastructure Limited, said: "GST is to bring consolidation in the supply chain, promising to facilitate seamless and fast transfer of goods across the country, thus increasing the working capital availability. Rera, on the other hand, has made the realty sector safe for buyers."



"Now all the states and union territories in India will take their property records and registration online. This would ease the documentation process which usually requires multiple visits to the government offices. Since properties bought by NRIs are highly susceptible to property frauds, by taking property records online, NRI investors would be able to keep track of their property without any hassle," he added.



The optimism on the back of the reforms has infused trust in the sector among NRI realty buyers and we foresee a prolific growth in the industry in the long run, remarked R. Srividya, the general manager, Indian Property Show.



"NRIs, particularly in the UAE, have been steady buyers of Indian real-estate, and the development will give it further boost. Were also seeing an impressive number of developers from across India reaching out to expats, as evident by the turn out at the property show," she added.



The expo aims to display more than 1000 projects in a first ever large international exhibition where properties starting from 15 lakhs and above will be showcased.-TradeArabia News Service
Raytheon Company marked its 30-year anniversary of partnership with the UAE by announcing the formation of Raytheon Emirates, a new, wholly owned subsidiary incorporated and headquartered in Abu Dhabi.



Raytheon Company is a technology and innovation leader specialising in defence and cybersecurity solutions.



The creation of Raytheon Emirates supports the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 by forming an aerospace and defence business that fosters cyber-secure digital transformation, contributes to the nation's economic diversification, and employs a highly skilled, highly productive Emirati workforce.



Thomas A Kennedy, chairman and CEO, Raytheon Company, said: The establishment of Raytheon Emirates is a strong step forward in our longstanding alliance with the UAE.



Through partnerships with government, industry and academia, Raytheon is committed to helping the UAE achieve its economic goals while providing trusted, innovative solutions that support the nation's defence and security requirements, he said.



The new subsidiary will oversee Raytheon's operations in the Emirates by leveraging capabilities and resources in the fields of cybersecurity, effectors, air defence and sustainment, and advanced technology, and by applying Raytheon expertise, processes and systems to the development of human capital and locally based suppliers.



John Brauneis, chief executive of Raytheon Emirates, said: We are focused on expanding the capabilities of our company and its business partners in the UAE by emphasising local hiring and talent development, cultivating a strong supplier base, and developing new technology solutions.



Raytheon Emirates is incorporated on Al Maryah Island, and plans are underway to establish operational branches in other areas of Abu Dhabi.  TradeArabia News Service
The UAE Embassy in India launched a mobile application dubbed "UAE Embassy in New Delhi" to help Emiratis travelling to India or residing in this country as well as Indian citizens with interests in the UAE.



Dr Ahmed Al Banna, UAEs Ambassador to India unveiled the application during a press conference held on Wednesday in New Delhi, reported Emirati news agency Wam.



The user-friendly application has "many features and information which address their queries and requirements", he said.



This will considerably facilitate procedures, consular services and all services provided by the embassy, as users will need to neither visit nor call the embassy in order to obtain comprehensive information. The bilingual user interface allows for easy access to information in both Arabic and English.



Emirati nationals visiting India to guide UAE nationals can register their presence in the missions jurisdiction by clicking on the "Twajudi" icon (Arabic for "My Location"). It will also include travel advisories issued by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.



"The application functions like a map showing key destinations and locations, providing its users with proper guidance to help process requests and resolve any issues, explained Al Banna.



It offers detailed information on the location and respective jurisdictions of UAE Embassies and Consulates in Indian cities and provides relevant visa information to Indian nationals including details on visa procedures and the types of visas for travel to the UAE.



"Our key goal is to ensure proper guidance is accessible at all times, concluded Ambassador Al Banna.
Russia-based oil and gas major Gazprom Neft has launched the commercial operation of a 1.6 billion cubic metres capacity gas processing plant at its Badra field in Iraq.



Alexander Novak, Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, was present at the opening ceremony for the new facility, together with the Minister of Oil of the Republic of Iraq, Jabbar al-Luaibi, and Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov.



Dry feed gas, processed at the Badra field, is transported via a 100-km pipeline to the Az-Zubaidiya power station, supplying electric power not just to provinces throughout Iraq, but also to the capital city of Bagdad. In addition to this, gas will be used to meet the Badra projects own needs as fuel for the gas-turbine power plant.



Five gas turbines are able to produce a total 123.5 MW of electric power, supplying oil and gas processing facilities, drilling rigs and oil-producing wells. A 10-MW overhead power line will soon begin feeding into the Gazprom Nefts subsidiary Gazprom Neft Badra accommodation complex, as well as into the town of Badra and neighbouring population centres.



Natural gas liquids (NGLs) produced at the Badra projects gas processing plant will be used to produce LPG to be supplied to the Iraqi state-owned Gas Filling Company. The plant also includes facilities for sulphur production and granulation.



Alexander Dyukov said: Gazprom Neft is continuing its development of the Badra field, in strict adherence to the field development plan. Today sees the full-cycle gas plant  built by our company using the most cutting-edge technologies available on the world market  going into commercial production. This is a unique enterprise for the region, at which Gazprom Neft has, since starting work, been able to monetize all of the hydrocarbons produced here, ensuring associated-petroleum-gas (APG) utilisation of at least 95 per cent.



The Badra oilfield is located in the Wasit Province, Eastern Iraq. Preliminary estimates indicate total oil in place at the Badra field to be in the order of three billion barrels. The contract for development of the field is expected to run for 20 years, with potential for extension by a further five.



The contract was signed with the Government of Iraq in January 2010, on behalf of a consortium comprising Gazprom Neft (operator), Kogas (Korea), Petronas (Malaysia), and TPAO (Turkey). Gazprom Nefts share in the project is 30 per cent, that of Kogas is 22.5 per cent, Petronas is 15 per cent and TPAOs is 7.5 per cent. The share of the Iraqi government, represented by the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company (OEC), is 25 per cent.  TradeArabia News Service
Rolls-Royce Abu Dhabi Motors  recognised as the worlds best Bespoke dealership for the past nine years  has revealed the top Bespoke models commissioned this year.

About 99 per cent of cars ordered in 2017 were entirely Bespoke, with the content per model costing an additional $25,000 on average, a statement said.

Over the years, we have specialised in delivering some of the finest Rolls-Royce motor cars in the world. In creating our Bespoke collections and limited-edition vehicles we take inspiration from a variety of sources. 2017 has seen a unique vehicle delivered by Abu Dhabi models, carefully curated to reflect the UAE rich heritage, talented local artists, international fashion trends as well as Bespoke motor cars designed to embody the passions, taste and lifestyle of our distinguished customers, said Joseph Tayar, brand manager for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Abu Dhabi.

The top Bespoke models of 2017 include:

 Phantom Zenith Collection

 Wisdom collection

 Ghost Oasis edition

 Dawn inspired by Fashion

 Last of last Phantom Drophead Coupe

 Mohammed Kazem Wraith

 First Bespoke Dawn Black Badge

 Wraith in Blushing Pink

 Spirit of the Union Wraith

 Wraith inspired by Manchester City Football Club

With 19 Global Awards in 13 Years, Abu Dhabi Motors is the most successful Rolls-Royce Motor Cars dealer worldwide. Its most notable awards include the Global Dealer of the Year (2008, 2012, 2013, 2015) and Global Sales Leader (2013, 2014, 2015), the statement said.  TradeArabia News Service
Next year likely will see global oil demand expand again by 1.5 million barrels per day and US supply rise by 870,000 barrels per day  although Opec likely will at best maintain the cuts implemented in 2017, resulting in a balanced market, a report said.



On these assumptions, Brent crude should average $56 per barrel in 2018 and hit a high point of $70 per barrel at the peak of the US driving season, added the Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) 2018 Energy Outlook.



Brent to average $56 in 2018



The global oil market experienced a clear turning point in 2017, with balances tightening on the back of robust 1.5 million barrels per day (b/d) growth in demand and an Opec/non-Opec supply cut deal of 1.8 million b/d. As a result, the global oil market may register a 230,000 b/d deficit in 2017. The picture for 2018 has some similarities and some differences. On the one hand, global oil demand will likely expand again by 1.5 million b/d and US supply may rise by 870,000 b/d, compared to 500,000 b/d in 2017.



On the other, Opec will likely at best maintain the cuts implemented in 2017, so we see a balanced market. Still, we expect Saudi Arabia and Russia to engineer an extension of the output cut deal through the end of 2018, and also to lay out a clear exit strategy before 2Q2018, the report said.



Global crude oil prices, particularly Brent, have firmed up more than we expected and we see Brent crude oil averaging $60 in 4Q17 and $56.50/bbl in 1H18, compared our previous forecasts of $54 and $52.50/bbl, respectively.



We also adjust WTI to average $54 this quarter and $52.50/bbl in 1H18E, against previous forecasts of $49 and $48.50/bbl, respectively. Our revised global oil supply and demand forecasts point to a sizeable deficit in 2017 of -230 thousand b/d and a more balanced market in 2018. Our projections also reflect the idea that global oil markets are more balanced than the US crude market, BofAML said in the report.



Geopolitical concerns



Iraq, the second largest producer within Opec, seems the more imminent geopolitical concern to the oil market. Production at two disputed fields in Kirkuk (280,000 b/d) completely collapsed as Baghdad took over control of the assets from the Kurdistan government, which had been in charge of the area since 2014.



While oil field disruptions are likely to be temporary, shipments through the Kurdish export pipeline, which normally pumps 600,000 b/d of oil mainly from Kirkuk as well as fields in Northern Kurdistan to Turkey's Ceyhan port, remains at around 200,000-300,000 b/d. Even then, given the existing Opec cuts, we would expect Iraq to make up some of the volumes through increased exports from Southern fields to the port of Basrah.



Crude output has increased to 3.8 million b/d since the oil sanctions were lifted, while exports are now as high as 2.2 million b/d. So the risk of a geopolitical disruption in Iran led by a more combative US stance is considerable. Following a recovery in output, Iran's crude oil barrels are now flowing freely to China, Europe, India, Japan, and Korea. With US Congress now on notice and President Trump having made his position very clear, the risk of an escalation in US-Iran tensions has grown.



However, a more balanced market is not necessarily a godsend for all producers. It is crucial to understand that even if spot prices have risen meaningfully, forward prices in 2020 for both Brent and WTI have remained rather low. On the one hand, the rapid rotation from contango into backwardation in the Brent crude oil market has effectively helped increase Opec revenues.



On the other, falling forward prices have reduced the margin that US shale producers can achieve for fully hedged production. In short, Opec has achieved its goal of pushing the global oil market into backwardation, a shift that will likely discourage new investment.



Inventory draw points to a global deficit



As the oil market shifts into deficit and Opec forces global crude oil markets into backwardation through deep supply cuts, we project OECD total oil inventories to decrease meaningfully over the next few months to 2.9 billion barrels, BofAML said.



The decline in stocks is already very visible at the petroleum product level and even at the international crude oil market level. However, bloated crude oil inventories in North America likely will remain the Achilles heel of the oil market, negatively impacting WTI. Specifically, the WTI crude oil market remains in contango and will likely remain so for the time being.



World oil consumption likely will expand fast again in 2018



The success of Opec's efforts to rebalance the global crude oil market depends heavily on continued oil consumption growth. On our estimates, global oil demand will grow by 1.5 million b/d in 2017 and 1.5 million b/d in 2018, providing support to oil prices in the months ahead. However, we believe that supply and demand will remain finely tuned, with quarterly surpluses and deficits likely staying below 0.5 million b/d for the next five quarters.



According to BofAML, improving cyclical conditions and a recovery in economic growth will support oil consumption in 2018, and we believe there is enough flexibility on the supply side to keep prices steady.



Extension of the Opec deal through 2018



Arguably, some of the uplift in global Brent crude oil prices has come on the back of Saudi export cuts this summer. As Saudi Arabia has turned more serious about addressing high inventory levels, Opec compliance with the December 2016 deal has started to exceed market expectations.



According to BofAML, the Saudi position directly reflects the cartel's dilemma: deeper cuts push up prices, and in turn higher prices lead to higher US shale oil production. With shale output looking set to grow in 2018E faster than we expected in June, we now project limited Opec supply growth in 2018, and we implicitly expect the deal to be extended in some form until the end of 2018,it said.



Electric vehicles concerns will discourage investment



But the key point is that this lack of investment in refining capacity around the world is not going to be easily resolved. BofAML recently revised up its electric vehicle (EV) estimates to 34 per cent of sales by 2030. Of course, the uncertainties created by the rapid introduction of EVs into the global car fleet are an existential problem for the refining industry.



Should EV sales get to our analysts' projected level on the projected timeframe, oil demand growth could collapse as soon as 2022/23E. Why invest billions of dollars in refining capacity that will come on stream in 2022 just as EVs hit the road? Instead, many refiners may opt to minimize short-term investment, maximize short-term profitability, and run refineries as terminal value assets, according to BofAML.  TradeArabia News Service
AccorHotels has appointed Ayman Gharib as managing director for Raffles Dubai and Sofitel Dubai Wafi.



In his new role, Gharib will oversee two of the groups Dubai-based flagship properties which are part of the AccorHotels Luxury Brands portfolio. He will continue to lead the iconic Raffles Dubai where he oversees the propertys overall performance and strategic direction in addition to being tasked with the opening of Sofitels largest property in the Middle East, which is scheduled to open in 2019.



Sami Nasser, chief operating officer, Luxury Brands, Middle East, said: I am confident that Aymans expertise will be inspirational for the opening of Sofitel Dubai Wafi, as well as successfully continuing the next chapter of Raffles Dubai, following its milestone 10-year anniversary. Aymans charismatic and forward thinking leadership approach enables the hotel to set industry wide benchmarks across all performance indicators and measures.



Gharib brings over 20 years of luxury hospitality experience in the Middle East to the role. Prior to joining Raffles, he worked for Ritz Carlton as executive assistant manager, Sharq Village & Spa in Doha, and later relocated to Dubai assuming a similar role for the pre-opening of The Address Dubai Mall by Emaar Hospitality Group in 2008. Gharib joined Raffles Dubai as hotel manager in 2011 and three years later he was promoted to general manager, a role he has successfully served for a further three years with great passion and dedication. - TradeArabia News Service


Boeing and Turkish Airlines celebrated the delivery today of the airline's first 777 Freighter, the world's longest-range twin-engine freighter. The airplane and a second freighter on order will help the airline expand its cargo business.



"The delivery of our first 777 Freighter is a milestone event in our cargo business," said Ilker Ayc, chairman of the board and the executive committee, Turkish Airlines. "As a prominent sub-brand of Turkish Airlines, Turkish Cargo increased its freighter destinations served from 55 to 73 from the beginning of this year, reaching approximately one million tons of cargo with a 29 per cent increase. It is surely beyond doubt that this is a remarkable success. We're sure that this significant delivery, which will bring great value to our rapidly growing cargo operations, will also enable our leading sub-brand to further compete, expand and reach new short and long-range destinations from our hub in Istanbul."



"We are honoured to deliver the 777 Freighter to Turkish Airlines," said Marty Bentrott, senior vice president of sales, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Central Asia and Africa, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "This aircraft's range capability, combined with its enhanced cargo capacity, makes it a perfect airplane for Turkish Airlines to continue to profitably grow its global cargo service."



The 777 Freighter is based on the 777-200LR (Longer Range) passenger airplane and can fly 4,900 nautical miles (9,070 kilometers) with a full payload of 112 tons (102 metric tonnes or 102,000 kg).



Based in Istanbul, Turkish Airlines is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world. It carries over 60 million passengers a year, with direct flights to 300 destinations in 120 countries. The airline made its first domestic flight in 1933 and the first international flight in 1947. Turkish Airlines was founded in 1933 with a fleet of five airplanes that carried a total of 28 passengers, expanding to 329 aircraft today. - TradeArabia News Service
Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
Gillette will have a chance to weigh in on the fate of the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday.

The Obama-era attempt to cut carbon emissions from the utility sector could have had an outsized impact on Wyoming, potentially cutting coal production by one quarter to one half of what it was before the recent downturn.

The dates for the listening sessions, which will also take place in San Francisco and Kansas City, Missouri, have not been announced.

The EPA was criticized in recent weeks for holding just a single listening session on the proposed repeal of the CPP given the widespread controversy of the plan and its impact to the coal sector and climate change. The meeting took place over two days in West Virginia last month.

Sen. John Barrasso applauded the announcement and thanked EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in a statement released by the EPA Wednesday.

The Trump administration is listening to the people of Wyoming, he said.

The Clean Power Plan was passed in 2015 to address concerns about climate change, but was quickly tangled up in the courts. It was the only regulation expected to bring the U.S. close to its handshake commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as part of the Paris Climate Accord.
CHEYENNE  If lawmakers in Wyoming are to consider a wind energy tax increase in 2018, it wont come from the Wyoming Legislatures Joint Revenue Committee.

That committee killed a motion on Tuesday to reintroduce a proposal that would increase taxes on wind energy production in the state.

Leading up to that decision, Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, had moved to reconsider his previously struck down proposal to increase the wind tax by 400 percent, from $1 per megawatt hour to $5.

Wyoming is home to one of the best on-shore wind resource locations in the U.S., and economists estimate revenue potential for investment at around $10 billion in coming years. It could be a game changer for places such as Carbon County, where developers have massive wind farm plans in the works. And while developers and others argue increased taxes on wind energy production could drive away investment, Case said Tuesday hes not buying it.

Given the placement of power grids in the eastern and western U.S., Case said Wyoming is uniquely situated to yield the best wind energy product for customers in western states. As more transmission infrastructure becomes available, he argued Wyoming would be irresistible to developers. Additionally, Wyoming doesnt have a corporate income tax, so Case said the state would still have a more appealing tax climate for investors with his proposed increase.

Though the states revenue picture has improved in 2017, Wyoming is still struggling through its latest economic downturn tied to the mineral industries. Those industries account for around 70 percent of its revenue, resulting in a repeating boom-and-bust cycle. Because of how the state taxes mineral exports, Wyoming taxpayers receive a disproportionate level of services to their own burden.

Case said the wind production tax would work much in the same way, where the burden would be passed to customers out of state. The committee punted on unpopular sales and property tax proposals Monday, so it stands to reason it could be an appealing argument.

Thats why we need to put this tax back on the table and have it be considered, Case said. This exhausting interim, Mr. Chairman, where weve killed proposals or kicked the can down the road and not allowed this to be on table to be debated for the people of Wyoming, it would be a mistake.

But it just wasnt enough for the committees support, as a vast majority voted against the motion to reconsider. In less than 15 minutes, it was over.

Roxane Perruso, vice president and general counsel for Power Company of Wyoming LLC, said she was pleased with the committees vote. Power Company of Wyoming LLC is the developer of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project. Kara Choquette, communications director for Power Company of Wyoming, cited an estimated $846.5 million in Wyoming property taxes, sales and use taxes and generation taxes over the Choke Cherry and Sierra Madre projects initial economic life of 20 years.

Thats an average of $42 million a year, she said. The wind project also will bring important new employment opportunities, development of a rail facility in Carbon County, economic diversification for Wyoming and other related benefits.

With wind projects in motion in the state, Sen. Affie Ellis, R-Cheyenne, said she was concerned about how a tax increase could affect those developments.

A lot of countiesparticularly Carbon Countyare relying on the jobs that will flow from those projects moving forward, she said. Im just really concerned how that would affect projects that are in the works.

Ellis said she doesnt love looking at windmills in Wyomings viewsheds and doesnt expect the state will move on from its breadbasket mineral commodities. However, with an ever-increasing demand for energy, she said she sees wind as a part of the states portfolio.

Case said he wasnt surprised with how the vote turned out Tuesday. Though he wished the committees co-chairmen would have allowed for public comment, Case said he understood why they didnt want to get bogged down in lengthy discussions about a bill lawmakers previously voted to strike down.

Was it unexpected? Eh, Case shrugged. Sure, I would have loved it to pass, but Im in this for the really long haul, and you know that.

For Case, the long haul involves making sure the bill is introduced in the Houseall revenue raising measures must come from the Houseduring the 2018 session. If it fails the two-thirds vote it needs for the Legislatures consideration, Case said he plans to begin work on a citizens initiative that could bring the wind tax to a ballot.

Case said he was still feeling good about his proposal even after the failed vote. He said he feels momentum building as hes able to educate lawmakers and citizens about his reasoning for the tax.

People hearing it for the first time are looking at it differently, he said.
The University of Wyoming and its police department pressured student journalists to name their source for a story alleging sexual assaults by an unnamed resident assistant, prompting a lawyer to get involved and the school to consider changing its reporting policies.

On Nov. 3, the UW student paper, the Branding Iron, published a report headlined Number of sexual assault reports increases. The article begins with an allegation that an unnamed resident assistant had been accused of sexually assaulting girls in a dorm during the spring and fall 2017 semesters.

The report does not provide sources for that claim, nor does it offer details about who the resident assistant is or in what dorm the assaults allegedly took place.

Chad Baldwin, a spokesman for the university, said Tuesday that the University of Wyoming Police Department had concluded that the claim was false.

Its a baseless report, he said.

Taylor Hannon, the editor in chief of the Branding Iron and a UW student, said the newspaper was working on completing the story to further investigate.

She said she and the other editors felt the story was appropriately backed up and wouldnt have run it otherwise.

In any case, authorities did not know that the story was apparently rumor at the time it was posted. After its publication, a University of Wyoming Police Department detective contacted its author, according to a letter sent to the university by Bruce Moats, an attorney retained by the newspapers advisor. Moats also represents the Star-Tribune on some legal matters.

The detective spoke with the storys author, a freshman, in what Hannon described as a setting that was like an interrogation. The author felt very pressured to give the detective information, Hannon said.

The journalist told the detective that she heard the story from another staff member, who told the detective that shed overheard the rumor from another student in a class, according to Moats letter.

The reporter was told to go find that student and get her name and number, Moats wrote in his letter to Tara Evans, the general counsel for UW. The reporter did so, but the student refused. The reporter informed police of the refusal and was told to try again or to give the source the offices number.

In a Dec. 1 editorial calling for more protection for journalists, the Branding Iron said the detective continued to pressure another staff writer, calling her personal cell several times demanding information regarding a source that (the detective) should have obtained herself as a detective.

The editorial calls for a statewide shield law. Generally, such laws protect journalists from having to give up sources in court or to authorities.

In addition to the law enforcement contact, Nycole Courtney  the interim dean of students  emailed the newspapers advisor, Cary Berry-Smith, to tell her that the students are to give up (their) sources, according to the editorial.

Hannon said the reporters have a right to protect their sources. But she added that she was not sure if any source had been granted anonymity or confidentiality in the reporting of the Nov. 3 report.

The university and police were apparently pressuring the paper not only out of a desire to investigate the alleged assault but also because they believed the Branding Iron staff were mandatory reporters, meaning that they were required to report campus sexual assault to the appropriate authorities.

In his letter, Moats wrote that UWs interpretation was incorrect: Quoting the university policy, he said that every administrative officer, dean, director, department head, supervisor, and all instructional personnel qualified as mandatory reporters. Students and unlisted employees appear to be excluded.

Baldwin said he would defer to Moats interpretation. The universitys 2015-2016 student code of conduct identifies mandatory reporters as university officials, then refers to the list included in Moats letter.

The university was working to create an exception within its policy for journalists, Baldwin added.

Yes, there is a qualified privilege for reporters that we need to honor, he said. But also that  understand when it comes to the health and safety of our campus, were going to be pretty aggressive.

Hannon said she was unaware of the proposed changes to the policy until she read it in media reports on Tuesday.

UWPD Chief Mike Samp told the Star-Tribune that there was no threat of punishment or arrest toward the reporters. Nor did they invoke any First Amendment protections, he said.

Of course were going to check into that. Our only source of information at the time were those reporters, Samp said. The conversations from a law enforcement perspective, in my opinion, is they were courteous, they were respectful. Not coercion, not demanding.

Baldwin said that perhaps the university went too far in this case but that officials took the report seriously. He noted that authorities neither arrested nor threatened any other legal action against the newspaper or its reporters.

Perhaps we erred on the side of being too rigid there perhaps in this case, but the intent was, Listen, lets get to the bottom of what was reported here, he said.

In his letter, Moats wrote that the universitys response to the original article has already had a negative impact on the Branding Irons coverage. When a sexual assault was reported on campus last month, no reporter for the Branding Iron would do the story for fear of being subjected to heavy-handed treatment like the two reporters here had endured, he wrote.

The newspaper instead appeared to copy and paste the universitys own release about the assault and publish it on their website. The author of the article is given only as the Branding Iron.
Natrona County has the third-most students at the University of Wyomings Laramie campus of the states 23 counties and is home to the third-most employees of the school, according to data released Wednesday.

Five hundred and sixty Natrona County natives attend the main campus of the states sole four-year public school, according to UW data. One hundred and ninety non-student university employees live in the county. Another 90 students work for the university and also live here, also the third-highest total in the state.

Laramie and Albany counties top the list in all three categories. Laramie County has 1,108 students at the universitys main campus and has 242 UW employees living in the county, plus 213 student workers. Albany has 1,078 students at the university and has 3,762 non-student and 2,429 student residents working for UW.

There are also 118 Natrona County-native students attending UW-Casper.

Natrona, Laramie and Albany counties are home to three of the largest five school districts in the state. There are 327 UW students from Campbell County, site of the third-largest district in Wyoming.

The Natrona County-based student and non-student employees earn $332,340 and $8,096,867 in payroll, respectively, according to the universitys data.

Those numbers are slight changes from last year, when there were 546 Natrona County students attending the Laramie campus and 152 at UW-Casper. There were more nonstudent employees  197  earning a little more than $100,000.

Niobrara County had the lowest number of students at the Laramie campus, with 19. Next came Hot Springs with 37, Weston with 46 and Crook with 51.

Elsewhere in the data, Natrona County had:

197 distance learners;

3,179 high school students contacted by UWs admissions office;

86 women in the STEM conference;

7,169 UW alumni.
Wyomings Code of the West and doing the right thing are more than abstract expressions on the Thunder Basin National Grassland. They are the basis of a long-standing argument about how to manage prairie dogs. Its just that doing the right thing has a different meaning to ranchers and conservationists involved in the prairie dog debate.

Thunder Basin National Grassland is 550,000 acres of federal grassland in northeastern Wyoming, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. This landscape abounds with prairie wildlife and provides forage for livestock. Management is complex because the federal lands are intermingled with private and state lands.

Some ranchers say, doing the right thing means putting ranching interests first on these federal lands because they were set aside for agriculture in the first half of the 20th century, and grazing helps support their livelihoods, with cattle helping feed America.

For conservationists, doing the right thing means conserving wildlife resources and restoring the grasslands natural balance. As a keystone species, prairie dogs need to be maintained on a large enough area to also maintain the many species that depend on them for habitat, food and shelter, including mountain plovers, swift fox, ferruginous hawks, black-footed ferrets, burrowing owls and other species.

Despite the controversies, cattle and prairie dogs can and do coexist, and these seemingly disparate interests are not mutually exclusive.

There is a lot at stake on Thunder Basin National Grassland. It is one of the best locations for maintaining a fully-functioning complex of prairie dog colonies, an important but largely missing part of a fully-functioning Great Plains ecosystem. Prairie vestiges such as these have become too few and isolated from each other, which has contributed to significant loss of wildlife. With less than 10 percent of the grassland designated as locations where prairie dog habitat is the priority, there is also ample room for livestock grazing.

Conserving our natural heritage is as important as maintaining our agricultural history in the rural West; combined, they create a unique sense of place. There are folks in Wyomings agricultural community who are concerned that saving the prairie dog ecosystem comes at a cost to their way of life. For their part, the conservation partners involved in this issue remain concerned that livestock management comes at a cost to the health of the environment. Both sides make valid arguments. Yet, there really is room for both; our Code of the West challenge is to make it work.

One approach gaining traction in this debate is for the conservationists to begin walking in the cowboy boots of ranchers, and for ranchers to walk in the hiking boots of conservationists. By having a better understanding of the perspectives of the other stakeholders, we are hopeful that an improved dialogue will take shape and create a path forward for long-term solutions.

The question remains though, just what exactly is the balance we need to strike on the Thunder Basin? For our organizations and members across Wyoming and the nation, we are hopeful that the U.S. Forest Service will listen to those who are working toward collaboration rather than appeal to those wanting to force a fix in their favor. This means sticking with the promises and compromises made in the past on prairie dog management and working together on positive solutions moving forward.
The number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise in Wyoming even as the energy sector recovers from the bust.

During the night of Jan. 27, volunteers counted 873 homeless people across the Cowboy State, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The number of people experiencing homelessness in the state has increased each year since 2014. In 2016, a similar measure counted 857 people.

Of those people experiencing homelessness, 41 percent were unsheltered, meaning they were staying in a public or private place not meant to accommodate a sleeping person, like a park bench or a car.

On a January night each year, staff from aid organizations and volunteers scour communities across the country and count the number of people living on the streets, in shelters or in temporary housing. While the data, known as the annual point-in-time count, is not all-encompassing and can be affected by the number of available shelter beds and weather, it is a starting point to gauge the extent of homelessness in a community.

The number of homeless people living in Wyoming spiked in 2011 and 2012, with a high count of 1,813 in 2012. The number dropped significantly in the following years, but has never returned to the lower numbers seen before 2011.

Lyle Konkol, HUD Wyoming field office director, said he couldnt explain why the homeless population has steadily grown over the past few years despite moderate economic growth.

There were improvements in the numbers, however. The number of homeless families, chronically homeless individuals and homeless veterans showed a decrease from 2016.

I think were making progress, he said. Its a tough business, its very hard to operate on little money.

Nationally, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 1 percent from 2016 following seven years of steady improvement. On that one January night, 553,742 people were homeless  17 for every 10,000 people who live in the U.S. Officials with Department of Housing and Urban Development attributed much of that national growth to sharp rises in a handful of cities where the cost of living is rising, especially along the West Coast.

In Wyoming, service providers have been making extra efforts to help homeless veterans and the chronically homeless into housing as efficiently as possible, Konkol said. By HUD standards, a person qualifies as chronically homeless if he or she has a disability and has been continuously homeless at least a year or has experienced multiple episodes of homelessness in the last three years where the combined length of time is at least 12 months.

Wyoming workers counted 14 people who qualified as chronically homeless in 2017. That is the lowest number ever counted in Wyoming and is a significant decrease from the 91 chronically homeless individuals counted in 2016.

Similarly, workers counted 63 homeless veterans this year, the lowest number since 2008. Outside of 2012, when workers counted 311 homeless veterans, the number has ranged between 83 and 137 in the past decade.

Konkol attributed some of that success to an increased number of HUD vouchers that subsidize rent for homeless veterans allocated to the state and a program that minimizes wait times for homeless vets.

Despite the improvements, Konkol said Wyoming programs to combat homelessness are underfunded by the federal government. Each year, the states HUD office receives about $300,000 for its homeless programs. The funding levels are calculated based on a number of factors, including a states population, level of poverty and the point-in-time counts. The lack of federal funding means many programs have to spend more time applying for grants or seeking partnerships with the state or local governments.

Our funding is tragically low compared to other states, he said.

In Casper, workers at the Wyoming Rescue Mission have noticed an increase in the number of homeless people as well. But the shelter has also served a growing number of people who are not homeless but come to meals because they cant afford to buy their own food, said Michael Cavalier, the missions communications and events coordinator.

Those clients wont show up on the annual point-in-time count, he said, but reflect the economic reality in Casper.

He noted that the shelter has also served an increasing number of women who are homeless, but said that he could not pinpoint why.

The reasons people are homeless varies person to person, he said. Theres nothing to say heres the problem or here are the sets of problems.
The Tucson Airport Authority on Wednesday marked the completion of a solar-energy array over its hourly and daily parking lots.

The solar array will offset upwards of 50 percent of energy needs for Tucson International Airports terminal.

The $14.3 million project, funded mainly by grants from the Federal Aviation Administration, is expected to save the airport about $35,000 a month on its energy bills.

The project was started in 2013 with a first phase of 1 megawatt (AC) of photovoltaic panels going up in an arced array that shades hundreds of hourly and daily parking spaces in from of the terminal.

A second phase added another 1.5MW of capacity for a total of 2.5 MW.

Steel-mesh trellises line the walkways and, as climbing plants begin to fill, are expected to create a cooler micro-climate in a parking area.

Perhaps just as important as the energy savings, speakers at a ribbon-cutting ceremony said the array symbolizes Tucsons commitment to technology and renewable energy.

Its one of those iconic projects for Tucson  its the first thing people will see when they arrive in Tucson and the last thing they see when they leave, said Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, citing Tucsons recognition in the U.S. Department of Energys Solar America Cities program.

And the shade the large solar panels make is a pleasant bonus, Rothschild added: In Tucson, we love solar. In the summer, we love covered parking.

TAA President and CEO Bonnie Allin said the solar project wouldnt have been possible without grants from the FAA, which funded 91 percent of the work, along with funds from the Arizona Department of Transportation with a matching contribution by TAA.

Mark McClardy, FAA airports division manager for the Western-Pacific region, said his agency has helped fund many airport solar arrays, but Tucsons stands out.

It takes a vision to do this, it doesnt happen by osmosis and now its part of the passenger experience, McClardy said.

Overall, the airport solar project will carry environmental benefits equal to a reduction of 25,000 gallons of gas burned and 245 tons of carbon dioxide per month, the airport said.

The mostly-local design and engineering team included Tucson-based Monrad Engineering Inc. for the electrical design; DOWL HKM, civil engineering; Herzog Associates, architectural; Schneider Structural Engineers, structural engineering; Wheat Design Group, landscape architect; and Sturgeon Electric, general contractor.

Chris Monrad, principal and vice president of Monrad Engineering, said the arced layout of the solar array was trickier than straight-row designs normally used for solar farms.
Saguaro Christian Church, 8302 E. Broadway, will host a multi-faith night of storytelling and song 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10.

The Winters Light Storytelling Concert brings together storytellers of Muslim, Christian, Native American, Baha'i and Sikh traditions. The vocal group Reverb, a subset of Reveille Men's Chorus, will perform, according to press materials.

Each storyteller will discuss how their faith brought light into a season of darkness.

The concert is free and will include refreshments but bring a non-perishable food item to donate to the churchs food pantry.
Pielstick hasnt seen a lot of collaboration between the various Buddhist groups in town, though he and others are making efforts to change that.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Dec. 7 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 minimum custody prison inmate from Pima County who walked off a supervised work crew Wednesday near Safford was captured Thursday, officials said.

Juan C. Nunley was convicted of theft and trafficking in stolen property in Pima County in 2014 and was sentenced to seven years in prison, Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman Andrew Wilder said in a news release.

Nunley was found Thursday afternoon hiding in a drainage ditch in Safford, according to a news release from the DOC. He was taken into custody without incident and will face charges for escaping, the release said.

Nunley was being housed at ASPC-Safford and was last seen at the 11 a.m. count while he was assigned to a work crew near the prison's sewage pond, Wilder said.
Members of Southern Arizonas congressional delegation were split along party lines in their reaction to President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and to relocate the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Two-term U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, who represents District 2, applauded the announcement, saying the embassy should be moved to the Israeli capital in the next two years. The retired Air Force colonel said it finally makes good on a promise made by Congress in 1995 to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

By relocating our embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump is doing what our country should have done two decades ago: fulfill our promise to our ally and formally recognize the Jewish State of Israels undivided capital, the Tucson Republican said. I applaud the Presidents decision, which sends a strong and clear message to the international community that we are beginning a new chapter in our alliance, one in which America keeps our promises towards Israel and doesnt waffle about where our true allegiance lies.

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, who represents District 3, called the announcement by the Trump administration a provocation that will serve as a roadblock to the Mideast peace process.

This approach is opposite of moving toward a solution for peace between Israel and Palestine, and only serves as an act of provocation, fueling an already dangerous situation in the Middle East, the Tucson Democrat said. His decision harms decades of work to make Israel and the region more secure and should be immediately reversed.

U.S. Rep. Tom OHalleran, who represents District 1, said the decision could lead to renewed violence in the Mideast.

I am concerned that the hasty decision made by the President will make long-term peace in the region more difficult to achieve, and the threat of increased violence is real, said the Sedona Democrat, whose vast district includes a northern portion of Pima County. I encourage President Trump and Secretary Tillerson to engage our international partners in this discussion.

McSally, along with U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, who represent Arizonas District 8, are cosponsors on legislation that would require the United States to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem by 2019.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican, said while he agrees with the President that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, moving the embassy is a mistake until a lasting peace deal can be reached.

I have long believed that Jerusalem is the true capital of Israel. However, issues surrounding the final and permanent status of Jerusalem must ultimately be resolved by Israelis and Palestinians as part of an internationally supported peace process, McCain said. That is why todays policy announcement, as well as any future relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, should be part of a comprehensive diplomatic strategy in coordination with regional partners to achieve peace and security between Israelis and Palestinians.

Sen. Jeff Flakes office did not return calls seeking comment on the decision.
PHOENIX  Arizona taxpayers could be on the hook for up to $18,000 to pay the legal fees of lawmakers accused of ethics violations.

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard authorized up to 20 hours of legal work on behalf of Reps. Don Shooter, R-Yuma; Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale; and Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix. Each attorney is allowed to charge up to $300 an hour.

The three lawmakers were named in complaints and became the subjects of a current internal probe to see if there is evidence against them, the first step to determine if any House rules were violated and whether lawmakers should face a disciplinary hearing.

One of the complaints was thrown out late Wednesday. The chairman of the House Ethics Committee dismissed the complaint against Rios, which was filed by her fellow Democrat Ray Martinez of Phoenix.

In a letter to Martinez, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said complaints of violations of House ethics rules need to be based on facts within the personal knowledge of the individual making the complaint. But Farnsworth told Martinez his complaint that Rios had inappropriate relationships, including one with someone who was a House staffer at the time, appears largely based upon information you have overhead from others.

Farnsworth said even if Martinez did have such firsthand knowledge, nothing he accused her of doing violates any law, rule or House policy.

It was not immediately known how much Rios lawyer had run up in legal fees authorized by the House speaker.

The most serious of the allegations are against Shooter. Nine women  three lawmakers, three lobbyists, the publisher of the Arizona Republic, a businesswoman and a newspaper intern  accuse him of inappropriate comments and harassment.

These include a claim by Ugenti-Rita that he commented about her breasts and sought a sexual relationship.

Shooter responded by filing his own complaint against Ugenti-Rita, saying she entered into a romantic relationship with a House staffer. Farnsworths conclusion in the Rios case could be good news for Ugenti-Rita on that allegation. Shooter also complained that Ugenti-Rita made a comment during a committee hearing about masturbation.

None of the lawmakers has issued specific responses to the allegations against them.

Mesnard, a Chandler Republican, defended letting them use state dollars to get legal help.

He said if any lawmaker were under investigation it would be the obligation of the House of Representatives, as their employer, to provide legal assistance. But with all the House lawyers now tied up doing the internal probe, Mesnard said that left outside counsel as the only option.

Not everyone agrees.

I believe it is wholly inappropriate for the taxpayers to have to provide for a defense that has nothing to do with the business of the people, said Majority Whip Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa. I oppose this idea and hope that the decision is reversed immediately.

The potential $18,000 for legal fees for the legislators could prove to be the least expensive part of the probe.

Mesnard responded to all the complaints by naming a committee of House staffers, including attorneys from both political parties, to take a closer look. That panel, in turn, hired a private lawyer, Craig Morgan, to do some of the digging.

Morgans contract says he will be paid what he called a discounted rate of $325 an hour, with other members of the firm who get involved in the probe billing at $400 an hour. The contract does not specify a maximum amount.

The speaker said he hopes to have the entire inquiry wrapped up  including any hearings of the Ethics Committee if it comes to that  before the Legislature returns for its regular session on Jan. 8. He conceded that may not be possible.

Right now you have member-to-member accusations flying fast and furious, Mesnard said. But at this point, thats all they are, so he said the lawmakers are entitled to at least some legal advice on the investigative process at this stage.

The alternative would be me saying, Sorry, Im investigating you, now youve got to go come up with money out of your pocket because of an accusation,  he said.

Any organization, if it has folks within the organization accusing others of misconduct, I think theyre going to follow a very similar process, Mesnard said. Theyre going to do their own investigation. Its going to involve the attorneys of the business.

Only if and when the inquiry by the business finds reason to believe someone acted improperly would the obligation to provide legal help to the employee be cut off, he said.

Theres something else behind his decision, as well. Im trying to make sure that, on the other side, Im not liable if they come back and say, You investigated me, you need to pay for my attorneys, you didnt pay, and now youre on the hook for the whole thing,  Mesnard said.

The speaker conceded that the inquiry into Shooter, who faces allegations beyond those filed by fellow legislators, complicates things a bit. But he said he still believes the best course of action is to provide the 20 hours of legal help to him, too.
On the brink of war with North Korea and we decide to conduct war games in their backyard. We know that the leader is not stable, and realize that threats to an unstable person is not logical but we continue to do it. Allies that could help calm the situation are ignored or put down.

The Middle East conflict has been calmer in recent days, and we decide to make an announcement that we want to move our people to Jerusalem. Why now?

Could it be that our egotistical leader would like to shift the attention of the world off of him? Who but a total egotist could think the stirring world disorder would be justified if it took the attention off of his behavior?

Mike Ullery

Midtown
Senator McCain : Please do not continue support of this horrible Tax Bill! All of the backdoor BS you called out on health care is exactly what you voted for in this bill. Please examine your impact on selling out your constituency. The Arctic drilling, gutting medical coverage, the corporate welfare for your rich friends and big business while abandoning the best interests of the people you are trusted to protect! The AMA, AARP these people oppose this bill. Stop this abuse and backward thinking! Redeem yourself. Public service must come ahead of personal gain. It's your job. Listen to us. This bill is catastrophic to most of the people you have been elected to protect. Stop this bill which in no way has any hope of advancing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the population of this country.
Re: the Dec. 6 column "Politicians manipulate deficit label for their own benefit."

The Democrat's argument that the tax plan explodes the deficit is a smokescreen, their real fear is that the tax cut will actually work because Americans always vote their pocketbook. Jonah Goldberg's column addressed how politicians manipulate the deficit discussion but the Dems have exposed the elephant in the room  entitlements. The 2017 Trustees Report to Congress on Social Security and Medicare are sobering and scary.

These annual reviews provide the best estimates, based on current factors, of the future health of these programs. Combined with Medicaid, these mandatory social safety nets constitute over 50 percent of the federal budget and trust reserves will be depleted by 2030.

EVERYONE, including the 45 percent who pay no federal income tax, should hope that these tax cuts work to boost economic growth, otherwise, the only way to feed the elephant is through higher payroll taxes, cuts in benefits or a combination of both.

Tom Gensler

Foothills
Help India!

By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

Never expect a dull moment in Banaras Hindu University. The University, which has over the past few years been almost always in the news (and mostly for the wrong reasons) stumped the students of MA in Political Science by asking a series of rather weird questions.

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The question paper on the subject Indian Political System: Theoretical and Structural Aspects starts with the students needing to answer What do you understand by secularism? in 50 words. While there is nothing controversial in this question, the same cannot be said of other questions.

The same paper  with the subject code MP 104  asks the question Write an essay on Bharatiya Janata Party. Making the particular section even more interesting for the students, the question put up as the alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party question is In two era of Coalition Government in India, discuss the nature of Federalism.

The strangeness of question paper continues in the next question paper of the subject Social and Political Thought of Ancient and Medieval India, the subject of which is MP 105.

This particular question paper asks about the Saptang Theory of Manu and then goes on to ask the students to Write an essay on Nature of GST in Kautilya Arthshastra.

And as an alternative to the same question Manu is the first Indian Thinker of Globalisation. Discuss is put forth the students to answer.

The students of the department have alleged that these topics  over which the questions are based  are not listed in the syllabus, and for many of the students, the question became unanswerable.

One of the students of MA political science told TwoCircles.net, Professor KK Mishra specifically made us wrote down the answers on this particular topic during our classes. He even told us that he would put these topics in the question paper also.

Prof Kaushal Kishor Mishra, who has been in the limelight since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, has always been a mysterious person on the campus. Soon after Modi adopted Jayapur for the model village scheme, Mishra appointed one of his research scholars for a research project on Jayapur village.

While talking to TwoCircles.net, Mishra, a professor at the social sciences faculty at BHU and a member of the RSS told the media, I suppose there is nothing wrong in asking students to write an essay on BJP. We have been asking them to write essays on Congress or left parties, why there is so much problem when we ask them to write on BJP?

Contrary to Mishras claims, students and previous years papers show that BHU used to ask about socialism culture in Congress and similar sort of focused questions, but as one student said, Now we have to write an essay on BJP without a definite focus on the topic.

Mishra denied the claims that he had told the students that he might ask the students about the BJP essay, Kautilya and GST or Manu as a global leader. He said, India is a country of fools. Fools here know nothing about the Kautilya and his taxation system. These liberal and leftists have corrupted the academics, and they do not know that one nation-one tax theory was proposed by Kautilya for the very first time.

Mishra has his PhD on Manusmriti mein Rajtantra and strongly believes in the ideology of Manu. He said, Manu, along with Kautilya, is the person who has shaped the modern India. But everyone failed to recognise him as the person behind their foreign agendas, he added.
Help India!

By M. Burhanuddin Qasmi for TwoCircles.net

On December 5, the Supreme Court delivered one of the most important judgements in recent times, declaring that certificates issued by Gram Panchayat (GP) or executive magistrate can be used as supporting or linkage documents for claiming citizenship by a person in Assam during NRC (National Registration of Citizenship) process.

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The Apex Court has set aside the order of Gauhati high court dated February 28, 2017, by which it had invalidated these certificates for linking citizenship of an applicant to her or his Indian parent before 1971, the cut-off year in the Assam Accord 1985.

This sincere move of the Apex court is historic and a massive booster for millions who have been living in fear and uncertainty. This is surely going to bring relief to lakhs of women and men in the state who used this document to establish linkage with their fathers and husbands. This Supreme Court verdict is also a major setback for present BJP-led Assams state and Delhis central governments.

In the meantime, the apex court has also put an end to the undemocratic and maliciously marked division of Indian citizens into original inhabitants (OI) and non-original inhabitants in the NRC list. This OI and other symbols were created by the state government within the final NRC list were bound to create rifts within Assamese society as some super citizens and other ordinary or second-class citizens.

Thanks to the Supreme Court wisdom, it rightly struck in the heart of the issue and demolished the divisive politicking in Assam against poor minority peasants and Adivasis. It rightly observed that NRC is to prepare a list of Indian citizens and the constitution of India doesnt make any distinction among its citizens. It was one more heavy blow to the present BJP governments both in Assam and in the Centre.

However, the leading petition under case No. 20858 of 2017 was filed by Rupajan Begum of Nogaon district and Monowara Bewa of Dhubri district in Assam. They had been marked as doubtful or D-voter by their respective local election authorities, and are yet to get complete relief. Their run to courts continues.

The foreigner tribunal court in Assam had discarded their documents, so they were unable to prove their citizenship. The GP certificates were important documents to establish their citizenship and linkage with parental families.

In the first stage, the foreigner tribunal and later the Gauhati high court rejected the GP certificate and termed it as a private document. Harassed, they knocked the door of the Supreme Court with backing from All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) president and Dhubri MP Maulana Badruddin Ajmal led Assam State Jamiat Ulema-e Hind. Now the apex court has restored the applicability of the GP documents in establishing the linkage to other documents that prove citizenship.

Rupajan and Monowara have simply won a part of their long and painstaking struggle only. Their counsel and lawyers said that the appeal against their being detected as a foreigner by the foreigner tribunal has not yet been decided.

This will, hopefully, be decided positively in the days to come by the tribunal because the parental linkage document of their citizenship is now validated by the Supreme Court. But to avail this they will have to walk to the foreigner tribunal once more.

Many in Assam and elsewhere in India may find the apex court verdict a means to full-on celebrations and congratulating each other. Here the real victims, the two poor women, have yet to feel complete relief. Their run to the court or tribunal and their fear will not be over unless they are declared Indian citizens and the insulting tag D-Voter is struck off from their names in the electoral register and NRC list.

The author is editor of Eastern Crescent Magazine. He is based out of Mumbai and a native of Assam.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

The gruesome murder of Mohammed Afrajul Khan, alias Mohammed Bhatta Shaikh in Rajasthans Rajsamand district has shaken the entire country. In line with the recent attacks on minorities across the country at the hands of Hindu extremists, this incident was also recorded on camera and spread across social media.

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The accused, Shambunath Raigar, is an unemployed 36-year-old resident of the same district. Raigar not only recorded the video of killing Shaikh, he also tried to justify his act as an endeavour to save a girl from love jihad. The act of Raigar, who is currently in Police custody, has only added more fuel to the entire controversy over Love Jihad, an issue that is of special interest and concern to the right-wing Hindu extremists.

As per locals of Rajsamand, the incident has left them scared and worried. A local journalist who spoke with TwoCircles.net said that Shaikh was one of the hundreds of Bengali labourers who worked in the region, mostly as masons, carpenters and unskilled labourers. They (Bengalis) keep to themselvesalmost all are Muslims, and barely speak any Hindi. Shaikh was one of the more experienced workers from Bengal and had been living here for more than 12 years. I did not know him, but the local police confirmed that Shaikh had been a peaceful citizen and there are no cases against him, he said.

The journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the whole angle of Love Jihad had been presented only by the accused without providing much evidence. I am not sure why media houses are also referring to this as a case of Love Jihad. The accused said so in his video, but apart from that, there is no evidence to suggest that Shaikh had an affair with any women, Hindu or Muslim, he said. Some people are spreading lies that Muslim labourers in this region are scared after this attack..I can assure that this is not the case. Other labourers went to work today as usual and while people are of course saddened and angry at the incident, there is no panic.

The family and friends of Mohammed Afrajul Khan have been left in shock over the incident. Gulbar Bibi, the wife of the deceased, said to local media that her husband had no affair and demanded strictest punishment for the accused. Gulbar and Afrajul have three daughters, of which two are married and one is currently in school.

At the time of filing this report, the deceaseds body was en route to his village in Malda district of West Bengal.
4chan, the online chatroom has proved to be quite a divisive message board. Some people describe it as a haven for white supremacists, while others view it simply as a refuge for pranksters and trolls. I think both can be true, there is a particularly nasty and overtly racist element that does frequent the 4chan message boards, but there is also another member of the 4chan community. 4chan is visited by trolls and pranksters whose sole purpose in life is to "trigger" the left-wing 'SJW' or social justice warrior community at all costs. Sometimes with hilarious results!

Sabotaging Shia LaBeouf's anti-Trump protest

One of 4chan's greatest victories in this regard was the attack on the Transformers actor Shia LaBeouf and his 'He Will Not Divide Us' performance artwork which begun in response to the election victory of Donald Trump in January. In its original format, Shia Labeouf stood in front of a camera which was placed in New York City and repeatedly chanted "He will not divide us," and invited others to participate. Soon after its launch, 4chaners made it their life's ambition to sabotage the work, prompting many to come out and say provocative things into the camera, "triggering" Shia as a result!

Shia LaBeouf has reinvented the work several times and moved it from its original New York location.

One of the formats of the artwork was a white 'He Will Not Divide Us' flag that was placed in a remote field in Tennessee and a camera was left monitoring the location. 4chaners were not deterred by this, after some frankly ingenious investigative work, 4chaners found the flag and replaced it with a 'Kekistan' flag! Kekistan is a symbol that is used in alt-right memes and is intended to represent an ironic sense of nationalism.

Prank provokes desired effect

4chan has a reputation for pulling pranks that is designed to provoke a reaction. The latest work to be spawned from the site is the 'It's okay to be white' posters. A 4chaner wrote on the website Squawker that the "operation" was designed to elicit an extreme response from members of the SJW community and to turn the politically centred or "normies" as they are referred to in the online community against the SJW community.

4chaners wasted no time and got to work distributing the posters in locations in the United States, Canada and Britain. The prank appears to have provoked the desired effect within days of them being posted. On Social Media there has been a fierce backlash to the posters, one Twitter user wrote: "I'm the b that will write not in between the It's okay." Thousands of pictures have been shared online showing the posters being taken down, which have mainly been distributed on college campuses. The poster controversy has been described as racist by one newspaper in Edmonton, Canada.

Noticeable anti-white rhetoric

These posters, however reactionary they may be, do speak to a larger problem that is occurring in America right now.

There has been a noticeable uptick in anti-white rhetoric emanating from college campuses in the United States. The recent case of University professor Brett Weinstein being forced to leave his college campus due to threats he received for saying that a proposed ban on white people from his University was racist in itself is a testament to this growing problem on college campuses.

4chan can provoke outrage at times, at times rightfully so, as there is a nasty element that does hold disgusting racist views that lurks in the shadows of the message board. But as this latest prank shows, it can shed light on something that is being rarely talked about. The left is always quick to point the finger towards the right when it comes to the accusation of racism, but the left has its own issues to deal with in regards to racism.

In no way am I comparing this wave of anti-white discrimination to the historical and present-day struggles of people of colour, it would be factually inaccurate of me to do so. But to anyone who is offended by a seemingly benign statement like "Its okay to be white" has to ask themselves what their own issues are regarding the contentious topic of race.
Democratic candidate for the governor's seat, Ralph Northam has won the Virginia Governors race, beating his Republican rival Ed Gillespie in a bitterly fought campaign. The race was called at about 20:15 E.T. The Republican governor's candidate Ed Gillespie ran on a campaign that mirrored the ideological philosophies of "Trumpism" so to speak. Ed Gillespie has echoed many sentiments that have been shared by the President, he campaigned to stop the removal of Confederate statues in the state and has attacked his Democratic rival on the issue of immigration.

This was seen by some as an attempt to appeal to a growing hard-line contingent within the Republican party.

The Dems could not afford to lose.

The Democratic party has been in a state of perceived crisis since the loss of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, almost a year to the day of the so-called "gubernatorial" race in the state of Virginia. The campaign has seen some particularly controversial tactics used by both sides. The Latino Victory fund released a campaign ad which seemed to hint that Ed Gillespie was a white supremacist. In the frankly tasteless ad, a pickup truck, donned with a Confederate flag and an Ed Gillespie sticker, was being driven by a white man who attempted to run over several Latino, Muslim and Black children.

The state of Virginia has dealt with the impact of this type of racialized violence already this year after a man drove a car into a crowd of protestors at a rally called "Unite the Right" in Charlottesville after the rally attracted a large contingent of White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis.

The Gillespie campaign has also brought the matter of immigration into the debate, with Ed Gillespie accusing his counterpart of being soft on the feared criminal gang MS-13.

The Democratic party had to win this election, as this was being viewed as a real litmus test on how the country was feeling in regards to Donald Trump. Ralph Northam told U.S.A Today that a victory for the Democrats would be a "repudiation" of Trump. Whether that is the case it remains to be seen, the state if Virginia is viewed as a state that is more traditionally Blue than Red, but this victory for the Democrats could pose some interesting questions regarding the countries view of the embattled President Trump.

Donald Trump did not attend Virginia to campaign for Ed Gillespie but he did send out a few tweets of support.

A loss for the Republicans in this race may not be as damaging as some on the Left may believe it to be. Ralph Northam was predicted to take the Governorship in what was predicted to be a tight race, but one thing is for certain, nothing less than a win for the Democrats would have been devastating. The Democratic party is still in a shaky place after last November's shock loss, the party is trying to reconcile the far-left progressive wing of the party with the more centrist wing, but with the win of Ralph Northam, the Democrats may live to fight another day. Bring on the mid-terms!
On the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump decided to tweet about the occasion. In return, their critics didn't waste anytime giving their thoughts on the matter, with many pointing out their blunders in posting the wrong date for the Pearl Harbor attack.

Trump on Pearl Harbor

At 8 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, the United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack resulted in the deaths over 2,400 Americans, with close to 1,000 being left injured. Hundreds of aircrafts and almost two dozen naval vessels were also destroyed in what set off the events that led to the United States entering World War 2.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in response, the Pearl Harbor attack on that Sunday morning was a "date that will live in infamy." The United States went on to join with the Allies and fought over the next four years before winning the war following the defeat of the Axis, which included Japan and Germany. Beginning in 1994, Congress voted to declare December 7 as "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day," as a way to commemorate the date. As seen on their Twitter accounts on December 7, Donald and Melania Trump both sent out their own messages for Pearl Harbor Day.

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day - A day that will live in infamy! December 7, 1941  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2017

Taking to his Twitter account on Thursday morning, Donald Trump brought attention to the attack that thrust the United States into World War 2.

"Today, our entire nation pauses to REMEMBER PEARL HARBORand the brave warriors who on that day stood tall and fought for America," Trump tweeted. in another tweet, Trump misquoted President Roosevelt, tweeting, "A day that will live in infamy!" when it should be "date" not "day"

Today we honor Pearl Harbor Heroes. 12/7/1941

Thank you to all military for your courage and sacrifice! pic.twitter.com/fuxvoaXAno  Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 7, 2017

(Melania's corrected tweet)

In another tweet, Melania Trump gave her thoughts.

"Today we honor Pearl Harbor Heroes," Melania tweeted, while showing a picture of herself and the president at the Pearl Harbor memorial. "Thank you to all military for your courage and sacrifice!" she concluded. Melania's tweet was her second of the day after originally posting the wrong date, first claiming that the attack on Pearl Harbor took place in November.

Quick shots

Within minutes of the first couple sending out their tweets, those who oppose the administration decided to fire back. "I'm glad you fixed your Dentures this time," one tweet read in reference to Donald Trump's recent slurred speech.

Theres going to be a ww3 coming soon. Im sorry but President Trump is responsible for it. If it happens. WWIII  Julie Bir (@juliebir) December 7, 2017

You got the quote wrong in your last tweet and your wife got the date wrong.  Tuxedo Mask (@TheLoveBel0w) December 7, 2017

Those Americans didn't fight for an America that would ultimately be overrun by a dictator and his Russian friend.  Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) December 7, 2017

"Im just reading this in slur.

God bless the uninisaighs," another tweet added. "...brave warriors... Unlike liddle bone spurs boy," a tweet read. "Theres going to be a WW3 coming soon. Im sorry but President Trump is responsible for it. If it happens," yet another tweet stated.

LMFAO  sorry chief (@Jezu_XD) December 7, 2017

Unbelievable 

They get everything wrong !!  Sandra Lower (@EatonRifles1) December 7, 2017

"What happened to 11/7/1941? That was a bigly day! I miss the old tweet!" one tweet read in mockery of Melania Trump's blunder. "Waiting for when 9/11 comes around and we remember 8/11," another sarcastic tweet stated. The negative reaction continued as the first couple remained a target for many Americans.
Over the last 48 hours, wildfires have spread though Southern California, causing immeasurable damage and destruction. After First Lady Melania Trump tweeted out her thoughts, critics of the administration wasted no time lashing out.

Melania on wildfires

On Monday night in Santa Paula, California, large wildfires started and have only escalated ever since. In the last two days, five separate fires have occurred. One, known as the Thomas Fire, began in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, and has been the largest to date. In addition, fires have also broken out in and around north of downtown LA, close to Santa Clarita, San Bernardino, and the latest by the Skirball Cultural Center, which is located to the west of Los Angeles.

According to the USA Today, close to 90,000 acres have been burnt down, resulting in as many as 200,000 people being forced to evacuate from the impacted areas. Over 1,000 firefighters have been dispatched to attempt to contain the blaze, which is still ongoing as of press time. In response to the news, Melania Trump used her Twitter account on December 6 to offer her thoughts and well wishes.

Thoughts & prayers to those affected by the wildfires in California. Thank you to all first responders for their heroic efforts.  Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 6, 2017

Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, Melania Trump brought attention to the growing wildfires in California. "Thoughts & prayers to those affected by the Wildfires In California," Melania tweeted out, before adding, "Thank you to all first responders for their heroic efforts." While the first lady's post was innocent in nature, it didn't go over well with some.

Southern California wildfires: What we know now https://t.co/JPBx5AGIT8  USA TODAY (@USATODAY) December 6, 2017

Instant reaction

Not long after Melania Trump sent out her tweet, many were quick to fire back despite the message's innocent details. "Thoughts and prayers dont work, Ive been thinking and praying your husband would resign for almost a yr," one tweet read.

Actually, I can laugh at cartoons. #45 and his stripper wife, not so much  jean (@jean_bawstin1) December 6, 2017

Thoughts and prayers dont work, Ive been thinking and praying your husband would resign for almost a yr.  Mark  (@MarknMd) December 6, 2017

"Thought and prayers don't work. Help them. Not the way you helped PR, or Texas.

U should be ashamed," a Twitter user wrote. "Soooo...WHO ACTUALLY MAKES THESE TWEETS UP?," another tweet wondered. "Thoughts and prayers to the women who were harassed by your husband @realDonaldTrump but beat him for his ego-imagined title, Person of the Year," yet another social media user posted.

Thoughts and prayers to the women who were harassed by your husband @realDonaldTrump but beat him for his ego-imagined title, Person of the Year.  Alan CordleSS (@AlanCordleSS) December 6, 2017

How about some thoughts and prayer for the women your husband abused including his first and second wives and probably #youtoo  Barbara Burkhardt (@Barbatt) December 6, 2017

"How about some thoughts and prayer for the women your husband abused including his first and second wives and probably you too," an additional tweet stated. The negative reaction to Melania Trump's tweet continued to pour in as the opposition to the White House showed no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
During the entire 2016 election, Donald Trump often brought up how he would help veterans if he were to be elected president . After nearly a year in office and it appears that the president is making a critical cut to a key veterans program.

Trump on vets

When Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for president back in the summer of 2015, he had several talking points that he knew would play well with the conservative base. Trump made sure to push hard for immigration and tax reform, as well as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Another area that Trump dialed in on was veterans, often speaking out in praise of the military during his campaign events.

A long-time Republican position, Trump vowed to be the best commander in chief for veterans, despite often finding himself in controversial situations, including his insulting remarks about Arizona Sen. John McCain not being a war hero because he was captured and made a POW during the Vietnam War. Fast forward to present day and the former host of "The Apprentice" has been in office for nearly 11 months, but little has been done in the way for veterans and current members of the military. As reported by The Hill on December 6, Trump has decided to slash nearly a half a billion dollars from a veterans program designed to help homeless vets find housing.

JUST IN: Trump VA slashes funding for program that helps homeless veterans obtain housing: report https://t.co/Gl2dd9VfN3 pic.twitter.com/Nxoog8b6js  The Hill (@thehill) December 7, 2017

First reported by Politico on Wednesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced on a conference call that they were cutting a program used to help get Homeless Veterans off the street and into housing.

According VA Secretary David Schulkin, the program's $460 million budget will all but be eliminated, with some of the funds being allocated to VA hospitals who will then be allowed to use the money in other ways.

On the conference call was Elisha Harig-Blaine of the National League of Cities who warned that cutting the funding to the group in question would be "putting at risk the lives of men and women whove served this country." Democrat Sen.

Patty Murray also gave her thoughts, blasting Donald Trump and the administration, saying it was a "new low" for the White House.

Quick shots

Responding to the cuts to the veterans program, critics of Donald Trump made sure to hit back. "As a Vet, this makes me want to punch everyone associated with @realDonaldTrump even more," one Twitter user wrote.

Scam artist.  Craig (@BlakCraig) December 7, 2017

Thank you for your service.

You deserve better.  Lulu Says (@lulu_says2) December 7, 2017

Low life draft dodging greedy individual only interested in enriching himself and family with tax breaks.  Out Of This World (@50Trek) December 7, 2017

"Can't have those people who served our country actually living here. Thanks Trump," one sarcastic tweet read. "Trump is a fraud," another tweet read, with an additional calling the president a "scam artist." "Not content with just insulting POWs and Gold Star families I guess," a social media user stated.

I hope his choppers fall on the floor and mike Pence steps on them. What a bum. We're better off attacking trump on his record, not so much his ethics.  Rico 81 (@reesetheone1) December 7, 2017

Everyone please retweet what he is doing to our beloved veterans I am pissed off!   Phoenix 747 (@Mamacita5K1) December 7, 2017

Exactly what I was thinking.  Lisa Hall (@lisahall823) December 7, 2017

"Everyone please retweet what he is doing to our beloved veterans I am pissed off!" a follow-up tweet noted.

"I hope his choppers fall on the floor and Mike Pence steps on them. What a bum. We're better off attacking Trump on his record, not so much his ethics," another post noted. The backlash to Donald Trump showed no signs of ending after less than a year in office.
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is a popular weekend getaway spot on the East Coast, and with good reason. Just an hour from Boston, MA, the peninsula offers beautiful beaches, colorful sunsets, restaurants, a diverse choice of outdoor activities, picture-perfect lighthouses, and unique historic attractions. Kid-friendly bays beckon families to relax in the sun, play in the water and dine on fresh seafood caught in the local waters. Here are the best things to do in Cape Cod, Massachusetts on your weekend getaway or day trip.

We recommend that you call the attractions and restaurants ahead of your visit to confirm current opening times.

1. Wellfleet Bay  Courtesy of Yevgenia Gorbulsky - Fotolia.com

Wellfleet Bay is a pristine 900-acre sanctuary along the coast of Cape Cod. The bays protected shoreline and waters are home to an array of marine flora and fauna. Overlooking Wellfleet Harbor, the sanctuary features an incredible diversity of landscapes from sandy beaches and salt marshes to dense pine woodlands. Myriad nature trails make for ideal walking, hiking, and wildlife-watching while the sanctuarys award-winning Eco Visitors Center presents informative aquarium exhibits. Highlights of this magnificent sanctuary include salt marshes teeming with fiddler crabs and green herons fishing in Goose Pond. Wildlife cruises and tours in Nauset Marsh and the Wellfleet Harbor include hands-on activities. The sanctuary offers summer camp programs for all ages as well as year-round research and conservation projects focused on threatened species such as horseshoe crabs, terrapins, and sea turtles.

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2. Cape Cod National Seashore  Courtesy of Chee-Onn Leong/Fotolia

Home to some of the worlds most beautiful beaches, the Cape Cod National Seashore stretches for 40 miles in the Outer Cape Cod region and features pristine sandy beaches, marshes and ponds, lighthouses, and stunning landscapes. Forming part of the 600-mile Cape Cod Coastline, this exquisite strip of shoreline offers an array of outdoor activities from swimming, sunbathing, and beachcombing to hiking, kayaking, snorkeling, and sailing. There are over 60 magnificent beaches to explore. Resting between the Wood End and Race Point Lighthouses is the gorgeous Herring Cove Beach, which provides ample parking, showers, restrooms, and food stalls. Beech Forest offers excellent walking and biking trails. Cape Cod National Seashore is one of the top Cape Cod attractions. The Salt Pond Visitor Center is Cape Cod National Seashore's main visitor facility and features a comprehensive museum, a well-stocked bookstore and an indoor theatre showing orientation movies. The museum showcases the Cape's complex natural composition with realistic exhibits on the surrounding ecosystems and displays artwork by prominent artists. The center is conveniently located near the famous Nauset Bicycle Trail, the Nauset Marsh Trail and the multi-sensory Buttonbush Trail, complete with a guide rope and text panels. The Province Lands Visitor Center is located at the northern end of Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown and features an observation deck with breathtaking 360-degree views of the Province Lands dunes, the Outer Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The center also features an indoor theater which screens short films on a daily basis.

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3. Nauset Lighthouse, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Courtesy of CE Photography - Fotolia.com

The Nauset Lighthouse is a historic lighthouse and landmark in Eastham on Cape Cod. The lighthouse is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in Chatham in 1877 and later moved to Eastham, where it was placed just 200 feet from the keeper's house. Erosion proved to be a serious problem in that spot, and the lighthouse was recently rescued from the edge of a sixty-foot-high cliff and relocated to a new location 300 feet away. The lighthouse has been providing guidance to mariners traveling along the treacherous Cape Cod coastline for over 73 years, and public tours of the Nauset Lighthouse and the oil house take place on Sundays, May through late October. If you are wondering what to do in Cape Cod for couples, this is a great place to visit. Nauset Lighthouse, Nauset Light Beach, Massachusetts, Phone: 508-240-2612



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4. Bay Spirit Tours, Cape Cod, MA  Courtesy of Brian Scantlebury - Fotolia.com



The 63' catamaran Bay Spirit takes visitors on a variety of water excursions and sunset tours. Bay Spirit is captained by the Kohl's, a father (captain Bob) and son (Jake) team that provides vacationers with a safe and fantastic time out on the water. The 75-minute Lighthouse Harbor Tour takes visitors to the south end of Great Island to view Point Gammon, Bishops and Clerks lighthouses. The next stop on the tour is Hyannisport where passengers hear about the history of Hyannis Harbor Light and the Kennedy Compound. Those looking for something a little different can watch the sunset and sip champagne on a romantic Sunset Cruise in Hyannisport. Wine Tasting Tours are another hit: guests sample a variety of wines while enjoying the calm waters of Lewis Bay.

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5. Pilgrim Bark Park - Top Dog Park in Provincetown  Halfpoint/stock.adobe.com

Owned and operated by a non-profit organization, the Pilgrim Bark Park is a super space for dogs and their owners in Provincetown. If youre looking for a fun day out with your dog, this is a great place to be. Pilgrim Bark Park is an acre of land that is fully gated off and secure for dogs to run freely and interact with each other. There's a general dog section of the park and a separate part for smaller dogs (25 pounds or less) in order to keep all breeds and sizes safe. Various benches, fire hydrants, sculptures, and art installations can be found around the park to make it a pleasant place for every visitor. Pilgrim Bark Park is situated at the intersection between Shank Painter Road and Route 6 and is open year-round. provincetowndogpark.org



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6. Things to Do in Cape Cod: Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch  Courtesy of niradj - Fotolia.com

Dolphin Fleets Whale Watch tours are an unforgettable experience with the giants of the deep. An adventure company like no other, Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch offers whale-watching trips that go beyond just watching the whales. They include a variety of educational tools designed not only to enhance the experience, but to educate visitors on the importance of marine conservation and the ecosystems in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Specially designed for whale-watching and comfort, each Dolphin Fleet vessel seats over 100 passengers and has a centrally heated and air-cooled cabin, vast sundeck and walk-out platform for exceptional views off the bow. Tours begin with an introductory presentation and are guided by experienced naturalists who share their knowledge and answer questions (Phone: 508) 240-3636).



7. Cape Cod Lavender Farm  Courtesy of Laszlo - Fotolia.com

Located on 20 acres overlooking Island Pond in Harwich and boasting over 14,000 lavender plants, Cape Cod Lavender Farm is one of the largest lavender farms on the East Coast. Home to owners Cynthia and Matthew Sutphin, the farm produces a variety of lavender-based products including home decor, culinary items, and mind-body-spirit goodies. The farm welcomes more than 10,000 visitors per year who come not only to join in the harvest (late June through early July), but also to explore the beautiful grounds. The farm is surrounded by over 60 acres of dense woodlands with myriad walking trails. After a pleasant walk through the fragrant fields, visitors can stock up on a variety of lavender products such as bath salts, body butter, essential oils, soaps and lavender lemonade. Off Weston Woods Rd, Harwich, Massachusetts 02645, Phone: 508-432-8397

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8. Gerardi's Cafe, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Gerardi's Cafe

Gerardi's Cafe in South Yarmouth has been serving authentic Sicilian-Italian cuisine to Cape Cod for over 15 years. Owned by Diego & Sasha Gerardi, this authentic Sicilian restaurant boasts a beautiful 55-seat dining room with a cozy brick fireplace and an elegant full-service bar. Gerardis menu features Italian favorites such as lasagna and meatballs, seafood marinara, pasta with piccata and marsala sauce, and chicken parmigiana. For dessert, Gerardis serves mouthwatering tiramisu and ice cream. Superb local and international wines, exotic cocktails, and a range of spirits complement the beautiful food. 902 Route 28, South Yarmouth, Massachusetts 02664, Phone: 508-394-3111



9. Things to Do in Cape Cod: Nickerson State Park  Courtesy of Pakhnyushchyy - Fotolia.com

The beauty of Nickerson State Park is a world away from the sand dunes and salt marshes of Cape Cod. The park is a landscape of undulating rolling hills, dense pine woodlands, and crystal-clear freshwater ponds. These ponds, known as kettle ponds, were formed by retreating glaciers over 10,000 years ago and are entirely dependent on precipitation and groundwater. Spanning 1,900 acres, Nickerson features over 400 campsites, including yurt camping, as well as an open-air amphitheater and a network of roads, hiking trails and bike paths that connect to the renowned Cape Cod Rail Trail. Visitors can swim or kayak in Flax Pond, catch-and-release fish year-round in the trout-stocked ponds, or enjoy hours of bird- and wildlife- watching throughout the park.

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10. Crosby Mansion, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Courtesy of florence110 - Fotolia.com

The Crosby Mansion, with its spectacular sweeping views over Cape Cod Bay, stands as a testament to a bygone era of opulence, grandeur and romance. Once the home of Albert Crosby, who made a fortune producing distilled alcohol and built the mansion for the love of his life, the three-story abode is a monument to unrivaled craftsmanship. Built in the grand style of Chicagos Gold Coast Mansions and completed in 1888, the 35-room estate features hand-carved mahogany and oak walls, 15 fireplaces decorated with imported tiles, marble sinks and floors in the bathrooms. The estate is open to the public and offers guided tours on certain dates during the year. 163 Crosby Lane, Brewster, Massachusetts 02631, Phone: 508-896-1744 More beach vacation ideas: Best Things to Do on Nantucket.



11. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)  Courtesy of Paul Brierley - Fotolia.com

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) is the world's largest oceanographic research institution and has been a global leader in the study and exploration of the ocean for nearly a century. The WHOI features a variety of exhibits that educate visitors about the Institution's oceanographic research, the vessels and tools used for the research, and the importance of scientific study in the fight to save the environment. Visitors can experience the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic, witness a day in the life of the deep submersible Alvin by stepping inside a full-size model of the inner sphere, and watch mind-boggling footage taken at deep-sea hydrothermal vent sites. Free walking tours through the WHOI dock area and other restricted village facilities are available during the summer months. Expert guides share the fascinating history of the WHOI and the important research done there. 86 Water St, Falmouth, MA 02543



12. Cape Cod Rail Trail, Cape Cod, MA  Courtesy of mmphoto - Fotolia.com



The Cape Cod Rail Trail is an immaculate paved pathway that winds its way along a former railroad through several towns. Stretching for 22 miles, the paved trail is perfect for cycling and has a broad, unpaved shoulder on one side for walkers, runners, and horseback riders. The trail offers many opportunities to explore the surrounding areas and provides access to various beaches as well as food and water facilities and plenty of rest stops. Nickerson State Park, Salt Pond Visitors Center at Cape Cod National Seashore, and the National Seashore Headquarters are along the way and have public restrooms. Bike rentals are available along the route. Family getaways: 25 Best Family Beach Vacations on the East Coast.

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13. Pizza Barbone, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Pizza Barbone



Pizza Barbone came from humble beginnings: owner Jason OToole took a mobile pizza oven to markets and festivals, serving delicious wood-fired pizzas. Pizza Barbone has since put down roots in Hyannis, but Jason and his wife Ali still take their mobile pizza oven to special events. Center stage at the Italian pizzeria is the custom-made Stefano Ferrara wood-fired oven, handcrafted out of rock and ash from Mt. Vesuvius in Naples. Pizza Barbones menu features a variety of authentic Italian fare made from seasonal ingredients, sourced locally where possible and put together with passion and flair. Barbone makes its pizza dough with the high-quality Caputo 00 (double-zero) flour, widely used in Italy, which creates the superior super-thin crust for which Italian pizza is famous. 390 Main St, Hyannis, Massachusetts 02601, Phone: 508-957-2377



14. Island Queen  Courtesy of Christopher Seufert - Fotolia.com



Visitors can travel in style with a relaxing ferry trip aboard the Island Queen. The Island Queen sails daily from Falmouth to the island of Martha's Vineyard, taking just 35 minutes across the Vineyard Sound, and is the only cruise ship that regularly sails between Falmouth Harbor and Oak Bluffs. The fast and reliable Island Queen sails from late May through mid-October and is fully equipped with comfortable seating, space to roam around, and state-of-the-art safety equipment. Travelers will find plenty of parking near the boarding area at Falmouth and can bring along their bikes to explore the beautiful island of Marthas Vineyard on two wheels.

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15. Chatham Orpheum Theater  Courtesy of davidsonlentz - Fotolia.com



The Chatham Orpheum Theater is a non-profit cinema housed in a state-of-the-art movie theater on Main Street in Chatham. When it opened in 1916, the Orpheum Theater was Chathams first and only movie house; however, after 72 years of business, the theater was bought out and had to close its doors. After a recent renovation, the Chatham Orpheum Theater is back with a bang and is now one of Chathams best-loved gems. The beautiful interior is tastefully designed in traditional Cape Cod style, and the theaters spectacular vaulted lobby houses a number of works by notable local artists, including Hans de Castellanes signature mural The After Party. The cinema features two screens, 6.1 Surround Sound audio, 3-D capability, widely-spaced aisles, comfortable seating, and traditional concessions. Before the movie, patrons can enjoy a glass of wine or a light meal at Vers at the Orpheum. This satellite location of local Dutch restaurant Vers serves a delicious menu of contemporary seasonal dishes. 637 Main Street, Chatham, Massachusetts 02633, Phone: 508-945-0874



16. Far Land Provisions, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Far Land Provisions



Far Land Provisions is a specialty foods store and deli/bakery in Provincetown. Rustic and charming, Far Lands offers delicious fare from freshly made sandwiches and picnic provisions to salmon cakes and creamy mac 'n' cheese. All of Far Lands deli and bakery goods are made from scratch on the premises. The deli also sells gourmet sauces, chutneys and salad dressings to add a unique touch to any meal. Fresh-baked brownies, cookies, and pies hot from the oven make a perfect treat paired with a cup of specialty coffee. 150 Bradford St, Provincetown, Massachusetts 02657, Phone: 508-487-0045

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17. The Edward Gorey House, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  The Edward Gorey House



The Edward Gorey House, also known as the Elephant House, is a beautifully preserved 200-year-old home on Yarmouth Port Common. The house was once the home of American author, illustrator, playwright, and set and costume designer Edward Gorey. Today, the house is a public museum dedicated to Goreys life, work, and devotion to animal welfare. The museum introduces the public to Gorey and his distinct personality, which was so evident in his extraordinary work, as well as his passion and concern for animals. The management aims to raise awareness about animal welfare among those who visit the museum. The Edward Gorey House participates in Fun Free Fridays, when museums are free to the public, and hosts the annual Fantastagorey, a special one-day children's event featuring fun activities all afternoon. 8 Strawberry Lane, Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts 02675, Phone: 508-362-3909



18. Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum  Courtesy of haveseen - Fotolia.com



Dating back to 1892, the Pilgrim Monument was built by the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association to honor the Provincetown landing of the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620. During their time on Cape Cod, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, establishing laws for the new land. President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the monument in 1907. In 1910, President William Howard Taft dedicated the finished 252-foot tower. A museum was built that year and opened at the base of the monument to inspire and educate the public about Provincetowns role in American history. The Pilgrim Monument is the tallest granite structure in America. Walking up the 60 ramps and 116 steps to the apex takes about ten minutes and is worth it for the views from the top. 1 High Pole Hill Rd, Provincetown, Massachusetts 02657, Phone: 508-487-1310



19. Things to Do in Cape Cod: Highfield Hall and Gardens  Courtesy of YAROSHIK - Fotolia.com



Highfield Hall and Gardens is an exquisitely restored historic estate in the heart of Falmouth. The estate has become a cultural center and community gathering place for Cape Cod. Once the home of the Beebe family, the 1878 mansion was saved from the wrecking ball in the early 90s and lovingly restored to become the renowned landmark and museum it is today. Surrounded by acres of public woodlands and spectacular gardens, Highfield is home to a variety of cultural and artistic exhibitions, events and programs. Art exhibitions showcasing well-known artists are held throughout the year in addition to concerts, lectures, cooking classes, garden presentations, and guided tours and nature walks. 56 Highfield Dr, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540, Phone: 508-495-1878

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20. Cape Cod Museum of Natural History  Courtesy of Bettapoggi - Fotolia.com A short drive west from the heart of Brewster, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History is a spacious museum set on 80 acres of beautiful grounds. The museum was founded in 1954 and aims to inspire, educate and encourage an understanding of the natural environment through an array of outstanding exhibits. Permanent exhibits at the museum include a working beehive and a pond- and a sea-life room with live specimens. There are several interactive exhibits specially designed for children and a small aquarium with turtles, fish, frogs, mollusks, and crustaceans. Educational programs for children, lectures, and workshops on natural history topics take place year-round. The museum also offers guided walks along the several nature trails that wind their way through the woodlands, salt marshes and coastline surrounding the museum grounds. 869 Route 6A, Brewster, Massachusetts 02631, Phone: 508-896-3867



21. Pirate's Cove, Cape Cod, Massachusetts  Courtesy of Christopher Nolan - Fotolia.com Pirates Cove Adventure Golf is the place to go for family fun. This award-winning theme park brings the adventures of infamous pirates and privateers to life. Mini-golfers travel over footbridges and under cascading waterfalls, around rocky outcrops and through caves on a fun-filled golfing pirate adventure. Putting for Patriots, an annual fundraising event held each May, supports three pre-screened charities that serve American military service members wounded in combat.



22. Heritage Museums and Gardens, Cape Cod, MA  Courtesy of onepony - Fotolia.com Located in historic Sandwich, Massachusetts, Heritage Museums and Gardens is a collection of museums and gardens that are open to the public for exploration and education. The estate is made up of three museums and an expanse of beautiful gardens featuring spectacular rhododendron displays. The museum galleries feature an exhibit of American Folk Art with a still-working carousel from 1908, a Special Exhibitions Gallery whose traveling exhibitions feature local and international artists, and a collection of rare automobiles. The American Folk Art collection includes a large selection of New England folk art, military miniatures, and other rare artifacts. The Automobile Gallery features an impressive collection of vehicles housed in a replica of the Shaker Round Barn. The Special Exhibitions Gallery is in a replica of the Temple of Virtue and features a variety of special exhibitions and displays. 67 Grove Street, Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563, Phone: 508-888-3300



20 Best Things to Do on Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Attraction Spotlight: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The world's waters are of paramount importance to all life as we know it. The ocean covers over 2/3 of our planet's surface, and vast parts of it remain totally unexplored, but the world's waters are also being harmed and polluted, with estimations suggesting that by 2050, more plastic than fish could be found in the ocean.

Clearly, more needs to be done to educate people on the importance of the ocean and how vital it is to preserve and protect our waters for future generations. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution aims to do this.

What Does the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Do?

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded back in 1930, so can boast of close to a century of existence as one of the world's leading non-profit organizations dedicated entirely to ocean research, exploration, and education.

Based out of the small Massachusetts town of Woods hole, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is 100% focused on studying the ocean, sharing its findings with the world at large, and generating positive change and meaningful action to protect and preserve the world's waters. Researchers, ocean science leaders, and experts from a wide range of additional fields make up the institution

The work of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is vast and varied, spread out across three main categories: Education, Exploration, and Understanding.

- Education - Education is a vital part of the efforts of the WHOI. The future of mankind and the fate of the world as we know it depends on the ocean, and it's absolutely vital for future generations and present generations alike to be aware of the ocean's importance. Offering a huge range of educational programs for everyone from young children and high school students to undergrads and postdoctoral researchers, WHOI is helping to pave the path towards a brighter future, inspiring countless people to learn and discover more about the ocean.

- Exploration - So much of the ocean has yet to be explored, but the WHOI is changing that, little by little. The institution strongly believes that in order to truly understand the ocean and work for its improvement, we have to explore it, getting out on the waves and beneath the surface, right down to the very depths, gathering data and pursuing research projects of all kinds. The WHOI provides ships and underwater vehicles for expeditions, as well as tools and instruments used by researchers and scientists in their explorations.

- Understanding - Research and discovery are key elements of what the WHOI stands for. The organization itself was founded out of a desire for mankind to develop a stronger and better understanding of the ocean, so constant research efforts are ongoing at the WHOI across a wide range of fields and areas. WHOI scientists and engineers are asking the big questions, tackling the major problems, and seeking out more and more knowledge and understanding of the ocean and the role it has to play in the modern world.

Getting Involved with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is doing vital work and wants as many people to get involved as possible. Here are just a few ways you can do so:

- Events and Tours - The WHOI constantly organizes a range of special events like science chats, talks, research seminars, interactive activity sessions for kids, and even walking tours around the WHOI dock in the summer months. You can visit the WHOI site to learn all about upcoming events and get involved today.

- The Visitor Center - To really see and understand what's going on at the WHOI, the best thing to do is visit the Visitor Center at 93 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543. This center is where you'll learn all about the work of the institution, meeting the staff and volunteers, asking questions, reading through maps and brochures, or even grabbing a cope of the institution's in-house Oceanus magazine.

- Ocean Science Discovery Center & Gift Shop - Along with the visitor center, be sure to stop off at the Ocean Science Discovery Center & Gift Shop, located at 15 School St, just down the road from the visitor center. Here, you can learn about the WHOI's research projects and the various vessels and tools being used by its scientists and engineers every day, listen to recordings of real marine mammals, discover more about natural phenomena like red tide, and even learn all about the Titanic too, as well as being able to buy some great ocean-related items at the gift shop and show your support to the WHOI.

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In the shul that I serve, two editions of the Torah are tucked into the seats in our sanctuary. One is The Torah: A Modern Commentary, ed. by Gunther Plaut -- the standard (male-authored) commentary that appears in most Reform congregations. The other is The Torah: A Women's Commentary, ed. Eskenazi and Weiss, which came out ten years ago featuring entirely the commentary and voices of women.

I attended a session celebrating the book at the URJ Biennial featuring Rabbi Dr. Andrea Weiss, associate professor of Bible at the NY campus of HUC-JIR (also responsible for American Values and Voices) who served as associate editor of this book.

Rabbi Dr. Weiss began by explaining that the story of this volume started 25 years ago. Cantor Sarah Sager was invited to be the scholar-in-residence at a district biennial in Albany, and as she prepared her d'var Torah on Vayera she started to think about Sarah and asked a question that 25 years ago was a novel one: where was Sarah when Abraham took their son up the mountain?

She researched this, and discovered that she wasn't the first to ask the question, and that in fact people were beginning then to work in diverse fields to uncover and recover a more complex picture of women than the pshat (surface) Torah narrative suggests. But there was no organized, cohesive way to access this work. She ended her d'var Torah with the charge to commission the first feminist commentary to the Torah.

The leaders of the Women of Reform Judaism established a commentary committee that brought together rabbis, scholars, WRJ leaders and others. (We see a slide depicting the agenda for that gathering, including items like "Discussion of 'feminism, 'womanism' and other related terms." Wow.) The next step was a pilot project called Beginning the Journey: A Women's Commentary on Torah, edited by Rabbi Emily H. Feigenson, featuring the voices of HUC-JIR graduates. That book made clear, Rabbi Dr. Weiss says, that the way to move forward was to focus seriously on scholarship: women scholars in Bible, rabbinics, and other fields.

The editors were named; an editorial board was established (and oh, wow is it a "who's who" of amazing women in Biblical scholarship!); and they came up with the vision of a multivocal edition. For each Torah portion they would feature the Hebrew text, translation, commentary, a section called "another view" that offers another voice on the parsha, a post-Biblical piece, a contemporary reflection, and a section called "voices" which collects poetry and other creative responses. The intention was for the book to be definitively Jewish and definitively feminist, modeled in some way after Mikraot Gedolot which is always printed in editions that feature text surrounded by commentary.

Rabbi Dr. Weiss spoke about the diversity of the book's readership, and the extent to which it's been embraced across the denominations. She offers us a quote from Blu Greenberg:

Here are the voices of women from across the entire spectrum of Jewish life... although this work was initiated, funded, shepherded, overseen, edited, and largely produced by two extraordinary Reform Jewish scholars... it does not have the feeling of being owned by any one group, which explains why it has become the property of the whole Jewish people, as indeed any good commentary should.

It sounds like the book's creators have a sense now that what they did was historic -- in a way that wasn't entirely clear to them at the time. Rabbi Dr. Weiss says now that "The book translates feminist Biblical scholarship into a format that's useful for...laypeople and clergy of all genders." I agree.

Rabbi Dr. Weiss shared with us also an excerpt from this article by Rabbi Hara Person, Why Womens Torah Commentary Matters Today More Than Ever Before. Rabbi Person writes:

The publication of The Torah: A Womens Commentary was historic because when women become scholars and commentators of Torah, we take our rightful place in the sacred dialogue of text study, fulfilling the age-old Jewish responsibility of creating ongoing Jewish engagement and meaning. When women create a Torah commentary, we declare that the lives and experiences of the women of the Torah matter, and thus that the lives and concerns of contemporary women matter, too. This commentary stakes a claim for women in the narrative of our tradition and the sacred endeavors of our community, and in so doing, women are empowered to share their voices both within the Jewish community and in greater society.

I was also excited to hear from Dr. Ruhama Weiss (no relation to Rabbi Dr. Andrea Weiss!) that the book is now being translated both into Hebrew and into an Israeli women's culture idiom. There are plans afoot for an Israeli women's commentary that will feature some of what's in this book and also some of what's happening in Israeli women's commentary now.

Dr. (Ruhama) Weiss led us in a study of a poem by Nurit Zarchi called "She Is Joseph," touching on questions of feminist interpretation and women's representation in the Bible, and explored how our male sages responded to the story wherein Joseph resisted the advances of Potiphar's wife (and what their responses say about their own anxieties about masculinity and gender) -- a fabulous exploration, and the kind of Torah study that reminds me why I'm grateful this book exists.
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HA NOI  The Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development of Viet Nam (Agribank) and Bao Viet Holdings signed a co-operation agreement on Wednesday.

Under the co-operation agreement, Agribank and Bao Viet have committed to prioritise the use of products and services of each other and exploit the strengths and potential of each party to raise efficiency and competitiveness for deeper and further integration.

Tiet Van Thanh, general director of Agribank, said through the co-operation with Bao Viet, a leading financial-insurance group in Viet Nam, Agribank hopes that it will successfully implement the Partys resolutions and the Governments policy on promoting the leading role of State corporations and enterprises in supporting each other to develop sustainably, reach out to the world and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.

At the signing ceremony, Nguyen Quang Phi, Bao Viet general director, said Bao Viet and Agribank have many similarities in size, network and fields of operation. Through the co-operation agreement, the commitment to use each others products and services will help the two maximise their potential and strengths, he said.  VNS
Trucks carrying goods to China waiting for customs clearance before crossing the Na Nua Border Gate in Trang inh District in the northern province of Lang Son  VNA/VNS Photo Thai Thuan

HCM CITY  Businesses in Beijing and Tianjin and Hebei provinces in China want to promote investment and trade with Vietnamese partners, according to the Tianjin Foreign Economic and Trade Promotion Association.

Speaking at the trade and investment promotion conference between Viet Nam and Chinas Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei provinces in HCM City yesterday, Geng Wei, the association chairman, said Viet Nam is a promising market.

Nguyen Thi Huyen Ngoc of the Investment Promotion Centre for southern Viet Nam, said China currently ranks eighth out of 120 countries and territories investing in Viet Nam with $12 billion in 1,784 projects.

Chinese firms invest mainly in manufacturing, production and distribution of power, gas and water, real estate, hospitality, construction, and mining, she said.

Vo Tan Thanh, director of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industrys HCM City office, said Viet Nam and China have good relations, especially in commerce.

China is Viet Nams largest trade partner and Viet Nam is that countrys largest trading partner in Asean and ninth largest in the world, he said.

Last year their trade was worth US$72 billion, with Viet Nams imports being worth $52 billion, he said.

But according to Chinese customs statistics, trade was actually worth $98 billion last year if cross-border trade is considered, he said.

This year trade is expected to top $100 billion, a target the two sides had set only for 2020.

Viet Nams main exports are telephones, crude oil, coal, rubber, rice, fruits and vegetables and seafood and imports include feedstock for manufacturing garment and textiles and steel and agricultural produce.

In recent years China has increased investment in Viet Nam, and this is expected to continue in the future, Thanh said.

Ngoc said the processing and manufacturing sectors are expected to attract more Chinese investment.

With its stable political situation, rapid economic growth, clear and transparent investment policies, large workforce, improved infrastructure, and regional and global economic integration, Viet Nam is an attractive investment destination, including for Chinese investors, she said.

She also spoke about investment procedures in Viet Nam, tax breaks offered to priority sectors and projects that are soliciting investment.

Viet Nam has 324 industrial parks, of which 34 have foreign investors.

It currently focuses on calling for investments in high value-added projects, hi-tech and environment-friendly projects, large-scale projects, IT and bio-technology serving modern agriculture, infrastructure development in the form of PPP, and modern services as well as encouraging a gradual switch from sub-contracting to production, she said.

Thanh said Chinese businesses could find a lot of opportunities in Viet Nam including HCM City.

The conference is a good opportunity for businesses from the two countries to understand each others markets and enhance investment and trade ties, he added.

Organised by Vinexad and the VCCI in collaboration with other organisations, the conference was part of the 2017 Vietnam Expo that is being held at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre in HCM City from December 6 to 9.

More than 150 exhibitors from Chinas three provinces are participating in the trade fair to study Vietnamese market and seek business opportunities here, Geng said.

At the conference, Geng also called on Vietnamese businesses to come to Tianjin to explore investment opportunities there.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nams Housing Development Bank (HD Bank) will be the fifth bank to list its shares on the countrys stock exchanges after VIB, Kienlongbank, VPBank and LienVietPostBank.

The HCM Stock Exchange (HoSE) announced that it had on Monday received the banks application to list on the bourse.

Accordingly, HD Bank will officially list nearly 883 million shares, equal to its charter capital of VN8.83 trillion (US$388.9 million), on HoSE after it completes a share sale to foreign investors. The Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI) is the adviser for the listing.

Previously, HD Bank announced that it will offer 20 per cent of its shares to foreign investors. The initial public offering (IPO), or pre-listing share sale, is expected to raise $300 million for the bank.

Assessing on the HD Banks IPO plan, Moodys Investors Service has said that the banks upcoming $300 million IPO will strengthen its capitalisation and loss-absorbing buffers amid rapid credit growth and prompt more banks to follow suit.

Similar to other Vietnamese banks, Moodys believes that rapid loan growth and dividend payments to shareholders are exerting pressure on HDBanks capital buffers. The banks large dividend payout in 2016 against strong loan growth of 45 per cent, well beyond the industry average of 26 per cent, led to an approximately one percentage-point drop in its Tier 1 ratio to 10.8 per cent at the end of 2016 from 11.8 per cent a year earlier.

This capital ratio is modest in the context of the banks asset quality challenges and modest loan-loss reserves, Moodys noted.

Using HD Banks capital as at December 31, 2016, Moodys estimated that the capital increase will raise its Tier 1 ratio by nearly four percentage points to 14.8 per cent, thereby becoming one of the best capitalised banks among the Vietnamese banks the credit ratings agency rates. The additional capital will support the banks solvency amid continued balance sheet expansion.

HDBanks Deputy CEO Le Thanh Trung said with a plan to list on the HoSE, the banks profit is expected to grow about 25 per cent annually in the coming years.

HDBank currently has 4.5 million individual customers and around 25,000 SME clients, Trung said, adding that the bank has access to a pool of 20 million people that are clients of Vietjet Air and HD Saison, its customer finance joint venture with Japans Credit Saison Co.

The bank expects pre-tax profit of VN2.4 trillion this year, an increase of nearly 110 per cent against 2016.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam is seeing a wave of digitalisation in the retail banking industry, driven by industry 4.0 technologies.

At Viet Nam Retail Banking 2017 Forum on Wednesday, Nguyen Toan Thang, general secretary of the Viet Nam Banks Association, said banks were making positive moves towards new technologies.

A transition from traditional banking to digital banking was taking place along with a transformation in the business model to enhance customer experience with new products and solutions developed from the application of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.

Industry 4.0 would create impetus for the development of retail banking, especially in the application of technologies to meet demand of technology-savvy customers, he said.

According to Ha Huy Tuan, deputy chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Committee, Industry 4.0 with technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, automation, Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data was significantly changing many sectors and posed both opportunities and challenges for the banking sector.

Digitalisation was the solution to avoid being left behind, Tuan said.

A report about banking services of IDG Vietnam, member of the International Data Group, found that e-banking was gaining popularity in the country thanks to its convenience with 81 per cent using e-banking services compared with 21 per cent in 2015.

Financial technology (fintech) solutions were also growing, the report said.

However, there were still problems such as high transaction fees, technical errors and inadequate customer care.

Financial expert Can Van Luc said Viet Nams retail banking had significant potential for development in Industry 4.0, given the high ratio of internet coverage and rapid e-commerce development.

He cited statistics that 54 per cent of population used the internet and 62 per cent of internet users did online shopping. In addition, payments through QR code were also booming with an increase of 120 per cent in the January-September period. From 2018, 50,000 points would accept QR code payment compared with the current 5,000 points.

Luc forecast that revenue from retail banking would be accounted from 44 per cent of banks revenue.

However, Luc said Viet Nam should pay attention to developing human resources, improving the digital infrastructure system and completing legal framework for the development of digital banking.

Legal framework was of significant importance, Luc said. For example, Viet Nam was slow in issuing regulations for managing cryptocurrencies, especially the bitcoin, although they were booming globally

Industry 4.0 is coming rapidly and it will not wait for anyone. Early boarding will lead to competitiveness, Luc said.

According to Nghiem Thanh Son, deputy director of the State Bank of Viet Nams Payment Department, as of the end of September, 97 credit institutions were providing payment services in Viet Nam, including ATM, POS, internet and mobile banking.

There were 127 million banking cards with 66.6 million individual accounts.

The fintech ecosystem was also developing in the country, Son said, adding that the number of e-wallet users had increased by 1.5 times compared with 2016 to reach 9.6 million.

Son said Viet Nam had potential to develop new payment channels, especially internet and mobile banking, with more than 60 per cent of the population under 35 and adaptive to new technologies.

Son said the central bank would review legal framework and raise regulations about new payment methods, such as e-wallet and cryptocurrencies, next year.

The central bank would also consider the issuance of standards for cards, QR code payment, as well as conditions for licensing payment services for non-bank institutions. - VNS

First fully digital bank in VN

Bloomberg on Wednesday reported that CIMB Group Holdings Bhd will launch its first fully digital bank in Viet Nam in January, followed by the Philippines.

Bank Chief Executive Officer Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz was quoted by the news agency as saying that digital retail banking would allow lenders to reduce their cost-to-income ratio to 20-30 per cent from some 50 per cent once such operations gain size and momentum in 5-10 years.

This is a push towards digital banking in Southeast Asia by Malaysias second-largest bank by assets.  VNS
HA NOI  During just one short century, Finland has re-invented itself  and we are still at it. Our national character and northern heritage have boosted us to the top of all kinds of country rankings from quality of life to freedom of speech.

The theme for the celebratory year is Together, showing that everyone  Finns and friends of Finns  are welcome to take part in creating the society.

As Finns, we are always looking for practical solutions  turning setbacks into steps forward. Were pragmatic and focused on functionality  making sure that things work and keep on working. Our unique relationship with nature means sustainable thinking comes naturally to us.

In Viet Nam, Finland is considered to be an old friend. We are known for our long-term commitment to the development of Viet Nam. We have been especially acknowledged as a country of high-level and equal education, environmentally sustainable solutions and as a leader in innovation.

For example in northern Viet Nam, Finland is best known as the first development partner to support securing water supplies. The large northern cities of Ha Noi and Hai Phong built their water-supply systems with technical and financial support from Finland.

During my stay in Viet Nam, I have found many similarities between our two countries. We are citizens of the same globalised village. Our fundamental values and objectives are the same. We cherish education as the best guarantee of durable progress. In the academic year 2016-2017, Vietnamese students were the second biggest foreign student group in Finland and we also have a big community of Vietnamese whom have migrated to Finland and adjusted there well.

Natural: Finlands unique relationship with nature means sustainable thinking comes naturally to its people. Photo taken by Hannes Becker.

Family, homestead, self-respect and optimism in the search for a better future also unite us. Protection of the environment and respect of the beauty of nature are important for both the Vietnamese and Finnish people. We also share a common view of history. We have learned to find strength and vision from our historical heritage.

The centenary year culminates in an independence reception with many Finnish alumni, Finnish leading companies and Friends of Finland in Viet Nam among the invitees.

Many small steps that led to the development of Finland as a modern welfare state are also described in the two newly translated books: Nhung Sang Kien Phan Lan (100 Social Innovations From Finland) and Lua Troi uoi Cao: 100 Cau Chuyen Phan Lan (100 Stories About Finland). We hope that through these books we can introduce more of the wonders of our beloved country to the people of Viet Nam.

After the 100th National Day of Finland, our eyes are on the future. Today Finland is a prosperous and solid welfare state, a country that is considered to be the least failed state in the world. Our identity is demonstrated through our values and achievements, and by our identification to both the Nordic community and values.

As both of our countries are continuously changing to survive in an ever-changing world, I believe we can succeed by working together.

Finland remains a trustworthy and solid partner for the developing Viet Nam into a modern, prosperous and regionally integrated country.  VNS
HA NOI - You press the button, we do the rest.

An advertising slogan coined by George Eastman, founder of Kodak, sounds obvious to most of us in the modern world but in Nguyen Minh Chaus case, every snapshot hides a great effort.

Her ambitious idea of teaching photography and cinematography to people with disabilities has now blossomed into a successful photo-voice exhibition on December 3 in Ha Noi.

As a person with restricted growth, Chau, more than anyone, understands how to improve social awareness around people with disabilities and help them approach better policies of assistance.

Back in 2016, I had a five-week study trip to the US. The exposure to local social organisations made me realise that there were hundreds of ways to raise awareness about issues concerning disabled people, far beyond the traditional distribution of leaflets and propaganda, she said.

The initiative of an internet-based communication course for people with disabilities, entitled Lang kinh nguoi khuyet tat (Lens for people with disabilities), was quickly approved and funded by the US Embassy in Ha Noi in 2017.

The two-month course offers participants the opportunity to learn basic photographic skills. Under the guidance of well-known bloggers and photojournalists from international news agencies, they are expected to broaden the existing outlook on people with disabilities.

Moreover, since she worked with disabled people in development projects at the charity World Vision, Chau understands the barriers that disabled people face.

Therefore, the project aims to encourage disabled people to engage in communication campaigns and share their experiences online, she said.

The projects sustainability is guaranteed with all 20 trainees nominated by the Ha Noi Disabled People Association (DP Ha Noi). These young advocates, in spite of the different types of disability they have, demonstrate a firm commitment to advocating for the rights of disabled people.

Nguyen Van Cuong from Phu Xuyen District Disabled People Association said that the training course contributes to improving the quality of awareness campaigns.

With only one hand, I worried whether I could take a good picture which can tell a story and meet the high standards that Chau and other trainers had set. Thanks to the course, I can apply these practical skills to my job at the association, he said.

Practice makes perfect, Chau said, emphasising the professionalism of the course. This event is proposed and developed completely by trainees, she added.

The mentioned event was a celebration on International Day of People with Disabilities, December 3.

Not only does the exhibition with photos taken by trainees reflect the passions of disabled people, participants can also experience using a wheelchair or shooting photos while wearing a blindfold.

Undertaking those activities, Friday Nwaigwe, UNICEF Viet Nams Head of Child Survival and Development, expressed his strong feelings.

This is difficult and I need support. It takes time to take a picture. I think we should do more activities like this to include disabled people in our lives, he said.

Journey of self-discovery

Le Huong Giang, student of Ha Noi University of Social Sciences and Humanity, recalled her first experience with a camera.

The trainer wondered how a person with visual impairment like me could take a picture. However, thanks to the serious training, after five weeks, I can handle the basic skills of photography, Giang said.

To estimate the distance between her lens and her subjects, she was trained to listen to them carefully and stabilise the camera before pressing the shutter. With an object, a flower for example, Giang practiced to use her hand to feel it and apply the basic rule of thirds in photography to get good picture.

Inspired by Giang, Pham Quang Khoat, another trainee from Hoang Mai District Disabled People Association, presented his picture of Giang practicing photographic skills at the exhibition.

At first, I could not imagine how visually impaired people could take a picture. Therefore, this course helped us have a better understanding of different types of disabilities and of each other, he said.

Nguyen Ho Phuong Trinh, a volunteer from the National Economics University, said that the project provided her with opportunities to see people with disabilities from a different perspective.

All the trainees are so cooperative and helpful. They inspired me to study sign language, she said.

Empathy is an important part of solving social issues, Chau suggested.

Mutual understanding is essential to encourage peoples engagement in any advocacy campaign. Once we have the empathy, I believe every problem can be solved, she added.

Huong Giang, on other hand, highlighted the projects distinct nature.

Almost all current awareness-raising campaigns on the rights of people with disabilities are initiated by non-disabled people. Therefore, I hope that we will have more opportunities to partake in activities like this to share genuine experiences as disabled people and provide profound insights on our issues, Giang explained.

Viet Nam has witnessed positive changes on the issue of disabled people, with the appearance of disabled-friendly public transportation as well as changes in policies and assistance.

However, to Chau, there are more obstacles to overcome.

Considered a vulnerable group, we have to face several difficulties including education, employment and healthcare. Using the internet as a foundation, we want to spread our messages for the rights and opportunities of disabled people, added Chau.

The road ahead is long but to some trainees, Huong Giang for example, the artistic enjoyment is also important.

It is exciting that I can now capture memorable moments and share them with my friends on social networks, she said.  VNS
Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of Viet Nams mission to the UN attends the plenary meeting of the UN General Assemblys 72nd session.  Photo thethaovanhoa.vn

NEW YORK  The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is universal and unified, stated Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of Viet Nams mission to the UN.

She made the remark at a plenary meeting of the UN General Assemblys 72nd session which convened in New York on Wednesday (local time) to discuss item 77 on the UN agenda regarding oceans and the law of the sea.

Nga urged countries to respect and implement their duties to ensure peace, stability, and sustainable development of oceans and marine resources for people worldwide, including future generations.

Concerning the East Sea (South China Sea) issue, the diplomat said Viet Nam calls on parties involved to restrain themselves and settle conflicts by peaceful measures in line with international law, including the 1982 UNCLOS, to respect diplomatic and legal processes, and to continue their full implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea.

Viet Nam welcomes the adoption of the framework for a code of conduct (COC) in the East Sea of ASEAN and China, Nga noted, suggesting the sides build a feasible and legally-binding COC in accordance with the 1982 UNCLOS.

At the meeting, participants also stressed the importance of the UNCLOS, which, they said, regulates activities at sea and serves as a comprehensive legal framework to manage and use marine resources in a sustainable and fair manner, and to resolve disputes peacefully.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc receives Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith during their meeting in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Viet Nam always give top priority to special solidarity with Laos, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith during their meeting in Ha Noi yesterday.

Kommasith is in Viet Nam for the annual consultation between the foreign ministries of the countries.

Prime Minister Phuc said such consultations have proven effective in enhancing co-operation between the two ministries.

He urged the two ministries to collaborate via the Intergovernmental Committee of Cooperation to address problems in a timely fashion.

The PM lauded the efforts made by the two ministries to boosting the two nations relations, contributing to consolidating co-operative ties over the years.

Kommasith briefed Phuc on the outcomes of his working visit to Viet Nam, saying the two ministries reviewed agreements signed between leaders of the two parties, states, ministries, sectors and localities.

He stressed that the two sides acknowledged existing problems in bilateral co-operation and agreed on solutions to said problems.

Ministerial consultation

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and his Lao counterpart Lao Kommasith co-chaired the fourth Viet Nam-Laos ministerial-level consultation in Ha Noi on the same day.

Both sides expressed their delight at the extensive and effective development of bilateral ties, saying that high-level agreements and the plan on co-operation between the two governments for 2017 have been basically completed, laying a foundation for the implementation of the Viet Nam-Laos Bilateral Co-operation Agreement for 2016-2020.

The two countries also completed a project on increasing and upgrading markers along their border, stepped up strategic economic connectivity, especially key transport projects, and improved the efficiency of the education-training partnership.

The two foreign ministries will push the implementation of high-level agreements while making preparations for a Viet Nam visit by Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Vorachith, a meeting between the two Politburos and the 40th meeting of the Viet Nam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee in early 2018.

On the occasion, the two ministers exchanged the Protocol on Viet Nam-Laos borderline and border markers and the Agreement on Viet Nam-Laos border and border checkpoint management regulations, which took effect on September 5, 2017 on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties.

Minh asked the Lao government to continue providing support for Vietnamese nationals living in the country, especially in procedures on naturalisation, issuance of long-term residence cards and business registration.

Kommasith, agreed with solutions proposed by Viet Nam to deepen bilateral ties in the future and promised to create favourable conditions for Vietnamese nationals, workers and firms in Laos.

Laos will do its best to promote the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive co-operation with Viet Nam, he said.

On regional and global issues of shared concern, the two sides agreed to work closely together at regional and global forums, offer mutual consultation via bilateral and multilateral channels and at all levels, contributing to further tightening bilateral ties in external relations.

The two ministries also held the fourth exchange between their units.

Kommasith presented Laoss Labour Order, first class, to former Vietnamese Ambassador to Laos Nguyen Manh Hung.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) receives Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc committed all possible support to businesses from Canadas Ontario to do business in Viet Nam during a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne.

The PM said bilateral trade with Ontario was US$3 billion out of the total $4 billion trade between Viet Nam and Canada last year.

Phuc expressed his wish that two-way trade will grow at least 10-15 per cent in the future.

With potential for partnerships in mining, manufacturing, national defence-security, he called on more Canadian firms to invest in Viet Nam, noting that many Canadian investors have succeeded in the Southeast Asian country.

Wynne informed the host that Ontario is the first state to implement the Viet Nam-Canada co-operation agreement following the Viet Nam visit by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, adding that as home to a number of big corporations, Ontario contributes 40 per cent of the gross domestic product of Canada.

She said the business delegation accompanying her in the visit comprises representatives from nearly 50 enterprises seeking business opportunities in infrastructure, education, clean industry and health care.

Many non-profit organisations are also ready to assist Viet Nam in climate change response and environment protection, she said.

Agreeing with the hosts stance on free trade promotion, she said Ontario is actively pushing the Canadian administration on Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City Peoples Committee has issued new land division regulations which allow large plots of land to be divided into smaller plots, including land plots that have been part of delayed plans that have yet to be implemented.

The new regulations take effect on January 1.

Under the new Decision 60, which was issued on December 5, the criteria for the area and minimum width will vary depending on three zones.

For zone 1 (inner city), including districts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, Go Vap, Binh Thanh, Phu Nhuan, Tan Binh and Tan Phu, the divided land plots must each have a minimum area of 36 sq.m and width of at least three metres long.

For Zone 2, (districts experiencing fast urbanisation), including district 2, 7, 9, 12, Binh Tan and Thu uc, the divided land plots must each have a minimum area of 50 sq.m and width of at least four metres long.

For Zone 3 (outlying districts), including districts Binh Chanh, Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Nha Be and Can Gio, the land plots must have a minimum area of 80 sq.m and width of at least five metres.

The new regulations on land division require a minimum area of 500 sq .m for a plot of farmland with annual crops, and at least 1,000 sq.m for farmland used for industrial plants, aquaculture and salt-marsh.

Under the new regulations, land users have the power over land, as stipulated in the Land Law 2014, for plots in areas not suited for agricultural production and for plots in areas that will not be restored under zoning plans.

With the new regulations, people in HCM City, especially those living on land plots that have been part of long-delayed plans, can now legally divide their land plots into smaller plots, which they were not allowed to do in the past because of planned projects on that land (which have been delayed).

According to Decision 60, if there is no plan to develop the land after three years, residents living on land under delayed projects can move on to divide their land plots.

People in Hoang ao Thuy Street in An Phu Tay Commune in outlying Binh Chanh District, for example, which have been waiting for 24 years for plans to be developed on their land, will now be allowed to divide their land plots.

We now can divide land plots for our children for them to build temporary houses to live while waiting for the planning to be carried out, said Cao Thanh Bui, 50, of Binh Chanh District.

The new regulations replace Decision 33 which was issued by HCM City Peoples Committee in 2014. Under the latter, each new plot of land had to be at least 50 sq.m and four metres wide.  VNS

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A NANG  The Government Inspectorate of Viet Nam (GIV) will begin inspection on the controversial a Phuoc International Urban project, along with all investment and construction projects on the protected Son Tra Peninsula.

The inspection will consider land use and land management practices and forest and environmental protection on the peninsula, 10km from the city.

At a working session with the citys peoples committee yesterday, it was revealed that the inspection would be carried out in 45 days on instructions from Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh.

The 17-member inspection team will verify land management and land use practices of investment and construction projects on the peninsula, and inspect the growth of the a Phuoc Urban project in a Nang over the 2003-16 period.

The inspection of projects in a Nang was spurred by public concerns over mass development of buildings, hotels, resorts and villas on the Son Tra Nature Reserve on the peninsula.

Members of the public also called for a halt of the tourism master plan, which had aimed to build 1,920 villas, 24 bungalows and 1,600 luxury hotel rooms by 2030 on the 4,439ha Son Tra Nature Reserve.

In August, the Prime Minister asked the a Nang City s Peoples Committee to clear up the Son Tra Master Plan and ensure it fully complied with laws on forest and environmental protection, biodiversity conservation, defence and security.

But the city administration failed to comply with the Prime Ministers request for detailed plans to resolve the clash between the need to preserve the Son Tra Nature Reserve and the desire to accelerate tourism development at the site.

According to a 2004 law on forest protection and a 2008 law on biodiversity conservation, all land-use changes and forest land encroachment in the nature reserve are banned. Any change of land-use purpose in the Son Tra forest must be decided by the Prime Minister.

Up to now, 18 out of 25 planned hotels and resorts on the Son Tra Mountain have been approved by the city on a total of 1,220ha, while 137 private villas, of which more than 20 villas have already been built, are planned on 2.4ha in the reserve.

The reserve is unique in Viet Nam and the world. Its biodiversity ranges from primary forests to ocean dunes, with more than 1,000 plants and 370 animal species.

More than 1,300 red-shanked douc langurs (Pygathryx nemaeus), which are critically endangered and found only in east-central Laos and Viet Nam, live in the Son Tra Nature Reserve.

Last month, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued an official warning to a Nang City s Peoples Committee Chairman Huynh uc Tho over joint responsibility for violations and shortcomings in land and urban management.

The developing a Phuoc International Urban Project was suspended in April when the citys construction department deemed the projects environmental assessment report incomplete and uncovered and the use of illegal sand for sea embankments for the project.  VNS
HCM CITY  The Vietnam Vaccine Joint-Stock Co yesterday opened a new vaccination centre in HCM Citys Phu Nhuan District to serve the demands of parents and their children.

The centre has 30 healthcare rooms and other areas such as a small playground for children.

The centre provides vaccines for children and adults, including the five-in-one Pentaxim vaccine that protects infants against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and hepatitis B, as well as Haemophilus influenza Type B.

They also offer the six-in-one Infanrix Hexa against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, poliomyelitis, and diseases caused by Haemophilis influenzae type b, and pneumococcal Synflorix, and other vaccines.

In June the company opened a centre in Ha Noi.

Dr Tran ac Phu, head of the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health, said the ministry was encouraging the private sector to open more vaccination centres in other cities.

Phu said that only 12 vaccines are provided free under the National Expanded Programme on Immunization because of limited state funds.

He instructed the vaccination centres to ensure safety when they provide vaccines.  VNS
CAN THO CITY  Student leaders from 30 member countries are taking part in the 6th annual ASEAN Student Leaders Forum (ASLF) and the 2nd ASEAN University Network  Student Affairs Network Meeting (AUN-SAN) held in HCM City and Can Tho City from Dec 5-9.

The event, co-hosted by the Viet Nam National University HCM City (VNUHCM) and Can Tho University, seeks commitments toward a prosperous ASEAN Community.

While ASLF serves as a platform for student leaders in ASEAN to share experiences and opinions pertinent to student organisations and youth in general, AUN-SAN is a supportive and planning platform that will pave the way to the execution of the proposed programmes that student leaders discuss during ASLF, said Choltis Dhirathiti, executive director of the AUN.

Huynh Thanh at, president of the Viet Nam National University HCM City, said: The event helps participants identify and discuss the opportunities and challenges of labor mobility within the ASEAN community, thereby identifying necessary preparation for students from universities in AUN.

In addition to keynote sessions on students opportunities, challenges and skills in labour mobility in ASEAN, participants will travel to Can Tho City to tour a museum and water puppet show and take part in a cultural camp, among other historical and cultural activities.

The president of the HCM City Peace and Development Foundation, Ton Nu Thi Ninh, and chairman of the AUN Student Affairs Network Secretariat, Abdul Malek Abdul Karin, among other officials, attended the opening ceremony yesterday. VNS
HA NOI - A national hotline for child protection at 111 was launched yesterday morning in Ha Noi by National Committee for Children under Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA).

The hotline was launched to replace the children and consultation hotline 18001567 which has been used for more than 13 years.

The hotline is a special public service which receives information, notifications and denunciations related to child abuse and violence from organisations, agencies, educational institutions, families and individuals, ao Ngoc Dung, Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs said at the launching ceremony.

It also provides information, legal consultations, policies, knowledge and skills related to childrens rights observation and psychological consultation for children and families.

Dung, also vice president of National Committee for Children, said that every year in Viet Nam there are thousands of child fatalities, mostly due to drowning and abuse. Recent cases of murder and abuse of children have stirred public outrage.

It is time to not only stop at calling for sharing but also to require every organisation, agency, parent, child caregiver to take action to promptly prevent and handle violations, Dung said.

He said that with the efforts of MOLISA, the Ministry of Information and Communications along with telecoms firms, the national hotline will always be an accompanying friend of children and everyone who is concerned with childrens rights protection.

He called on organisations, agencies and individuals to use the hotline to report and denounce all violence or abuse against children.

MOLISA also announced an action plan which focuses on links among ministries, agencies and localities in implementing goals of children projects in 2016-2020. The plan looks to create a healthy environment for children growth and realize their basic rights.

The committee will launch activities to prevent drowning among children and combat violence and sexual abuse against children.

Creches in industrial parks

The Government will speed up surveys of provinces with many industrial parks like ong Nai to come up with incentives for setting up creches for immigrant workers, visiting Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am told ong Nai Province leaders at a meeting on Tuesday.

The current policies related to creches are obsolete and need to be changed to meet the increasing demand.

He said a circular from the Ministry of Education and Training stipulating that any creche with over 50 children must be upgraded into a school needs be reviewed and amended.

Relevant authorities must sit together to amend the Land Law so that land owners do not need to convert their land into education land for setting up kindergartens.

Nguyen Hoa Hiep, deputy chairwoman of the ong Nai Peoples Committee told the meeting, The Government should issue regulations requiring investors and businesses in industrial and processing parks to build kindergartens for their workers children.

The Government should offer incentives related to land, investment and taxes to encourage non-public kindergartens in industrial and processing parks.

ong Nai has 32 industrial and processing parks along with 27 industrial clusters, and they have over a million workers, 70 per cent of them from other provinces.

The province has 324 public and private kindergartens along with over 1,000 private creches.

Hiep said: Public kindergartens only admit local children and they should be aged at least 24 months. Most workers children go to private creches that are expensive but have low-quality infrastructure and education.

She also said that most violence by teachers on children occurs in unlicensed private creches with the victims mostly being children of migrant workers.

In HCM City, deputy chairman of the Peoples Committee, Le Thanh Liem, has signed a decision to investigate the activities of private creches by January 30 next year.

Authorities will check the infrastructure, quality of staff and quality of childrens care and education.

All violations will be severely penalised, and kindergartens will even be shut down if needed, the letter said.

It also instructed local authorities to strengthen oversight of creches and said it is their responsibility to prevent violence against children by teachers.

It encourages installation of cameras in private creches.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City Peoples Council held the last working day of its sixth session yesterday, with measures to curb child abuse at child care facilities among the top issues under discussion.

At the morning session, deputies continued questioning director of the citys Department of Education and Training Le Hong Son and chairman of the District 12s Peoples Committee Le Truong Hai Hieu about recent child abuse in Mam Xanh Private Kindergarten in District 12.

Deputy Nguyen Thi To Tram questioned the responsibilities of authorised agencies for repeated child torture cases in the city and the procedures for licensing private child care facilities.

Tram said many pre-school teachers received degrees after only a few months of study. She suggested that teachers be required to undergo psychological tests, to determine their ability to withstand pressure and their love for children before working.

Deputy Nguyen Thi Nga said cheap private childcare facilities posed high risk of child torture, but low-income earners such as workers in industrial zones had no other choice. She asked about the citys policy to build more pre-schools and train pre-school teachers.

The citys Department of Education and Training director Son affirmed that the department had fulfilled its responsibilities in shutting illegal or violating childcare facilities. Ward/communes authorities are responsible for managing private kindergartens in their localities, he said.

Currently, there are 1,845 private childcare groups with between 8-30 children in each.

In reply to questions on child abuse in Mam Xanh Private Kindergarten, chairman of District 12s Peoples Committee Hieu said all information on local childcare groups had been given to parents for quality assessment. The district has proposed the city install cameras in all schools.

The city plans to loan VN4.3 trillion ($629 million) to build 81 schools to meet the high demand for facilities. Currently, public pre-schools only house 45 per cent of total children.

E-commerce tax collection was also discussed. Head of the citys Taxation Department Tran Ngoc Tam admitted that it was difficult to collect tax from foreign websites, especially Facebook.

HCM City had more than 13,760 unregistered Facebook accounts that performed transactions but did not pay tax.

Tam suggested that who made transactions of more than VN 5 million ($220) should be required to pay via card instead of in cash to avoid losses.

Also yesterday, the fifth session of the 15th Ha Noi Peoples Council focused on pavement management and urban security in the city.

Chairman of the citys Peoples Committee Nguyen uc Chung said the paving of sidewalks had been conducted carelessly recently. The city has asked inspectors to supervise the work and fine violators.

During Tuesdays session, Ha Noi has approved a master plan to turn Hoa Lac Urban Area into a super satellite city by 2030 in two districts of Thach That and Quoc Oai and Son Tay Town. The plan calls for the area to become a high-tech scientific research centre, a hub of universities and vocational colleges and a medical centre for treatment and nursing.

The committee also planned to carry out its largest payroll reduction, cutting the total number of staff and officers at ministries, localities and Government agencies on the State payroll by 8,700. This years figure was 1,260.

The proposal was submitted to the city Peoples Council for approval.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has agreed to increase the monthly basic salary for civil servants from VN1.3 million (US$57.2) to VN1.39 million ($61.16), or a one per cent increase, starting from 2018 July.

The basic salary applies to officials and public employees working in agencies, civil-service providers in the Viet Nam Communist Party or the Government, State-funded socio-political organisations and the armed forces.

Meanwhile, the minimum wage  or in reality, the regional minimum wage, which differs if the region is urban or rural, developed or less developed  is meant as a starting point for negotiations by labourers in the private sector.

The minimum wage is usually adjusted on a yearly basis. There is no predicting when the next change in the basic salary will take place as it depends on the capacity of the State budget.

The Prime Minister also asked all public sector organisations, from the central to local level, to plan their expenditure ahead based on this basic salary gauge. The Government also asked them to strive for increased revenue and promote workforce streamlining to ensure a balanced budget when the rise in salary starts to take effect.

In addition, according to the Government Office, to cover this increase in salaries and wages, the budget will be sourced from the 10 per cent saving from the Governments regular expenses (except salaries for its workforce), a 50 per cent increase in collected local revenue and unused budget money from the 2017 reform process, if any.

The increase in the basic salary was approved by the National Assembly in November. It was aimed at addressing complaints related to the low and stagnant wages.

The Government has been prudent about the increases as it currently employs about three million workers, not to mention the vast number of other beneficiaries, such as pensioners and social benefit recipients.

The Government has often re-affirmed its commitment to implementing measures to trim excesses in the public workforce, frequently condemned as too large and not efficient enough.

The increase in the basic salary is part of the Governments State budget estimate plan for 2018, which ministries, ministry-level agencies, Government agencies, State-owned enterprises and directly-controlled municipalities are supposed to execute.

According to this plan, the Ministry of Finance has the job of funnelling 100 per cent of VAT and special tax on oil and gas products from the State-owned Nghi Son to the State budget and 72 per cent of Viet Nams share from the Viet Nam-Russia joint ventures 2018 profits to the State budget, while the remaining (28 per cent) goes towards State-owned PetroVietnam (PVN) as re-investment.

Provinces in the northern region, central region and Central Highlands are expected to spend 60 per cent and the Mekong Delta region and southwestern localities will spend 50 per cent of the revenues from the national lottery on education, training and healthcare development.

All localities have also been told to allocate at least 10 per cent of their revenue to achieve national targets on new rural development.  VNS
KHANH HOA  All clinics in the central coastal province of Khanh Hoas Nha Trang City have deteriorated with underdeveloped tools and machines, Le Phan, director of the Nha Trang Medical Centre, said.

On average, each doctor at a clinic examines some 100 patients per day, three times higher than the health sectors regulations.

Phan said the city has a total of five clinics all of which were built more than 10 years ago, with limited scope.

Although there are enough machines, they are outdated, according to the official.

Typically, clinic No 3 was built more than 15 years ago and has not been upgraded even once. The walls have peeled off and are mouldy.

At Clinic No 2, the examination room was also used as the waiting room due to a lack of space, Phan said.

The shortage of modern machines at the clinics has forced many patients to be moved to central hospitals.

Besides this, Damrey Typhoon, which occurred at the beginning of last month, caused further damage to the clinics.

Each clinic has 5-6 doctors, however, in one day only 3-4 doctors conduct health checks on patients. The remaining have to attend regular training courses to improve their qualifications.

Phan said the number of patients is the highest on Monday and Friday, and most are retired and old.

The city health sector is now collecting all efforts to build the Nha Trang City Hospital in accordance with the Khanh Hoa Provinces construction plan, he said.

The municipal health sector completed the design to build the Nha Trang City Hospital last year, but faced several troubles related to location of the new hospital, therefore, construction work has not started.  VNS
Up to 90 per cent of domestic helpers in Viet Nam report not having a legal contract with the families they worked for.  Photo nld.vn

HA NOI  The country has required a legal labour contract between the employers and their domestic workers since 2014. Three years later, implementation of the labour contract law has fallen far short of hopes, as many workers still lack contracts and are vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment.

Up to 90 per cent of domestic helpers in Viet Nam report not having a legal contract with the families they worked for. No labour contract also means no social insurance, while their extra allowances or bonuses are dependent on the employers kindness only.

Hoang Thi Suus hometown is in Phu Tho Province , about 80 kilometres to the northwest of Ha Noi. She struggled to make a living and decided to leave for Ha Noi for a job. Suu found a job as a domestic worker for a family in Hai Ba Trung District.

My monthly salary is VN5 million (US$220). It helps to cover my childrens study costs, Suu said.

Suu did not have a legal labour contract with her family employer. Her salary and bonus for Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday were set in a verbal agreement prior to or during her working time at the house. The middle-aged woman had neither health nor social insurances.

The rising living standard of middle-class families in big cities has led to a rocketing in demand for domestic helpers over the last decade, which is unlikely to slow down in the near future. The great demand has drawn an influx of women from their rural hometowns to cities like HCM City and Ha Noi seeking an in-house job instead of hard labour in the fields.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Viet Nam is projected to have about 350,000 people employed as domestic workers by 2020.

Up to 75 per cent of migrant worker women choose domestic worker as their job.

Their daily work could range from taking care of the elderly and children in the family to cleaning and cooking. They may live with their employers or work on an hourly basis.

Nguyen Thi Mai is a veteran domestic worker in Ha Noi. It has been seven years since the middle-aged woman left her rural hometown of Thanh Chuong in the north-central province of Nghe An. Not once during her time in Ha Noi, Mai said, did she and her employer say a word about a labour contract. Every deal was verbal, she added.

The non-governmental organisation Research Centre for Gender, Family and Community Director Ngo Thi Ngoc Anh said that only three per cent of domestic helpers have social insurance. Most of them did not join the insurance during their time as domestic helpers but while they were working at their previous jobs.

The reason for the lack of labour contracts among domestic workers was not hard to figure out, Anh said.

A majority of domestic workers have low levels of education, she said, and few of them are familiar with the laws and regulations regarding labour rights.

A 2014 governmental decree states that the domestic workers and their employers must establish a labour contract including agreements on salary, bonus or overtime payment, among other issues.

Tong Thi Minh, Director of the Department of Labour Relations and Wages under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said that the labour contract matter was currently deemed a nuisance by both sides.

Most of them think that it (domestic help) is a simple job and a labour contract will be unnecessary, Minh said.

Regulations also require that young domestic workers aged from 15 to 18 must have a legal representative, or a guardian, to sign a contract with the employers. Its administrative procedure is thought to be complicated and so both employers and employees often dismiss it, Minh said.

Another key reason comes from the domestic workers themselves. They just do not want to spend their already meagre income on the insurances.

If I join social insurance, my wage will be cut. My daily life is already hard enough and I need all the money I have, Suu said.  VNS
LONDON  British citizens fighting for Islamic State should be located and killed and not allowed back into the country, new defence minister Gavin Williamson told the Daily Mail on Thursday.

"Quite simply, my view is a dead terrorist cant cause any harm to Britain," he told the tabloid.

"We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat," he added.

An estimated 800 British passport holders travelled to fight in Iraq and Syria, with 130 killed and around 400 returning, leaving 270 still in the Middle East.

The issue came into sharp focus in 2014 when British citizen Mohammed Emwazi -- also known as "Jihadi John" -- appeared in IS propaganda videos showing the beheading of a number of captives.

Williamson, who became defence chief last month after Michael Fallon resigned over allegations of misconduct, vowed that fighters who fled to other countries would also be tracked and refused passage back to Britain.

"We have got to make sure that as (they) splinter and as they disperse across Iraq and Syria and other areas, we continue to hunt them down," he told the Mail.

"Make sure there is no safe space for them, that they cant go to other countries preaching their hate, preaching their cult of death."

His interview came hours after two men appeared in London court charged with a plot to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May.  AFP
Learn about the exploration of Fort Stanton Cave in N.M., the 15th longest cave in the US, from two expert speleologists.

By Diana Northup, Ph.D. and Ronald Lipinski, Ph.D. Hear about the exploration of Fort Stanton Cave in New Mexico, the 15th longest cave in the U.S., by two expert speleologists.

Hear about the exploration of Fort Stanton Cave in New Mexico, the 15th longest cave in the U.S., by two expert speleologists  Dr. Northup is a world-renowned cave biologist and Dr. Lipinski is the Vice Chair of the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project.



They are an author and a contributor to the new book, 12 Miles from Daylight, describing the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project,, a unique blend of adventure, science, archaeology, history, geology, biology, and hydrology covering four decades of research and study. The 300-plus-pages include 350 color photos, maps, historic scenes, photos of delicate cave formations and a uniquely designed fold-out map of the entire cave.



Purchase the book onsite or bring a copy with you for the speakers to sign.



Ronald Lipinski, Ph.D., surveyed portions of Carlsbad Cavern and Lechuguilla Cave in the 1980s and 1990s and has been part of the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project since 2008. He is currently Vice Chairman of the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project and lead developer of Caver Quest, a 3-D interactive virtual reality simulation of the cave that can be downloaded from the web site (http://fscsp.org/CQ6/). He earned a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and worked for 38 years at Sandia National Laboratories. He will discuss the exploration of Fort Stanton Cave and its amazing feature called Snowy River, the longest continuous calcite formation in the world.



Diana Northup, Ph.D., has studied cave life since 1984. She and colleagues on the SLIME (Subsurface Life In Mineral Environments) Team are investigating the role of microbes in the formation of caves and cave formations. She also investigates microbes that masquerade as minerals to help better detect life on extraterrestrial bodies. Her work has been featured on NOVA, CNN, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic. She has a Ph.D. in Biology from UNM where she is Professor Emerita in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences and a Visiting Associate Professor in Biology. She is a Fellow of the AAAS. She will discuss the hunt for intraterrestrials in Snowy River and other parts of Fort Stanton Cave and how cave microbes survive in utter darkness.$7 ($6 members, $4 students). Space is limited. Purchase tickets at NMnaturalhistory.org or (if seats are available) at the door the night of the event. Questions: jayne.aubele@state.nm.us or 505-841-2840
ALGIERS  French President Emmanuel Macron has made his first official visit to Algeria, announcing that he came as a "friend" despite Frances historically prickly relationship with its former colony.

Ties between Paris and Algiers have defrosted in recent years, a half-century after French forces brutally cracked down on independence fighters in a 1954-62 war that left some 1.5 million Algerians dead.

Macron, the first French president to be born after the war, told news website Tout sur lAlgerie on Wednesday that he was "ready" to see his country hand back the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters killed in the 1850s, which are held at the Musee de lHomme in Paris.

Algerian and French academics have long campaigned for the return of the 37 skulls, a symbolic hangover from Frances 130-year occupation of Algeria.

Macron arrived in Algiers under bright sunshine on Wednesday after stressing that he came as "a friend of Algeria, a constructive partner who wants to strengthen our links".

"I know the history, but I am not a hostage of the past," he told Algerian newspapers El Watan and El Khabar by phone ahead of his visit.

"But from now on, I hope... that we will turn together towards the future."

Macron was welcomed at Algiers airport by Senate speaker Abdelkader Bensalah, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel.

He later laid a wreath at a monument in central Algiers to those killed in the war, and walked through the centre of the capital, talking with passers-by.

Macron later held a one-hour meeting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 80, who has rarely appeared in public since suffering a stroke in 2013 that has affected his speech and mobility.

He told reporters they discussed the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, crisis-hit Libya and the anti-terrorism struggle in the Sahel.

US President Donald Trumps decision was "regrettable", Macron said, calling for efforts to avoid violence.

Security co-operation

During his election campaign in May, the French leader called his countrys colonial history a "crime against humanity", prompting criticism from some in France and praise from Bouteflika.

But on a recent trip to west Africa, Macon called for "neither denial nor repentance", stressing that "we cannot remain trapped in the past".

Paris is keen to build ties with Algeria, a key player in the fight against armed groups in the Sahel, and the regions crises are likely to figure in meetings with officials.

The Sahel, which stretches from Senegal to Sudan, has sunk into lawlessness since chaos engulfed Libya in 2011, Islamists overran northern Mali in 2012, and Boko Haram rose up in northern Nigeria.

France has praised Algerias "experience in the fight against terrorism and radicalisation", a reference to its decade-long civil war in the 1990s.

Macron is due to host talks in Paris on December 13 on "speeding up deployment" of a five-nation anti-terrorism force in the region.

He touched a nerve in Algiers by choosing its regional arch-rival, neighbouring Morocco, for his first visit to the Maghreb.

But accompanied by artists and business executives on his Algiers mission, he hopes to boost economic ties.

In his interview with Algerian newspapers, he said: "Algeria must open up more, there are still many obstacles to investment." But he also pointed to "promising fields of co-operation" between the two countries.

France remains the largest foreign employer in Algeria although it is losing market share to other European countries and China.

On a visit to Algiers in November, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said it was "time to raise the bar".

Macron is set to leave Algeria for Qatar on Wednesday evening.  AFP
In December, 2016, WarbirdsNews posted a wonderful article written by Matthew McDaniel which described the little-known, but historically significant air station near Pearl Harbor known as Ewa Field. Ewa Field was a joint US Naval/Marine Corps air base which came under assault during the Japanese raid on Hawaii during December 7th, 1941. In fact Ewa came under attack before the main force bombed Pearl Harbor itself. Of more importance though, Ewa Field was heavily involved in the build up of naval and marine air units for the Battle of Midway in June, 1942. And as most readers will remember, the Battle of Midway was the key event in the Pacific War which sealed the fate of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and thus decided the outcome of the war. Ewa Field has been closed for more than half a century, but many artifacts and historical structures remain on site, and an organization known as the Historic Ewa Field Midway Project is trying to preserve them. This coming Sunday, they will hold a special event at Ewa Field as part of the commemorations for the 76th anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. There will be flyovers and a number of distinguished speakers presenting, so for those who can go, this is definitely going to be an interesting experience. But for the majority of us who cant go, please do read on, and learn how you can help the organization preserve this important WWII site for future generations. The press release continues as follows

Historic Ewa Field Midway Project P.O. Box 75578 Kapolei, Hawaii 96707

December 4, 2017 Pearl Harbor Week Commemoration Press Release

Public Event: Many distinguished speakers  Pearl Harbor  Ewa Field Commemoration, aircraft flyovers, Marine Forces Pacific Band, Pacific Air Forces Honor Guard. Part of the officially recognized Pearl Harbor commemoration week.

Event sponsor: American Veterans Hawaii

This will be held Saturday, December 9, between 9 AM to 10:30 AM at historic Ewa Field, located near 4365-4423 Roosevelt Ave, Kapolei, HI. Please arrive by 8:30 AM.

We would like to extend an invitation to the public and especially veterans and members of the Armed Forces to the 10th annual Ewa Field Battlefield Commemoration at the former Navy and Marine Corps airbase known as Ewa Field. This commemoration is in honor of those killed on December 7, 1941 at Ewa Field, Ewa Plantation Villages and the Ewa Battlefield area of West Oahu.

Attending will be numerous noted history speakers who will provide historic context, stories and insights. The Ewa airfield is located next to historic Ewa Plantation Villages and the Hawaiian Railway Society museum and rail station

at 4365-4423 Roosevelt Ave, Kapolei, HI 96707 (Look for event sign directions)

Ewa airfields naval history goes back to 1925 as a planned lighter than air airship mooring field with a later added coral runway used by Navy and Army Air Corps planes in the 1930s. Just as final conversion to a US Marine Corps advanced expeditionary airfield was taking place in December 1941 as Marine Air Group 21, Ewa Mooring Mast Field, Japanese main attack force naval fighters and bombers swept through the Ewa Plain and Ewa shoreline on December 7, 1941 to attack the airfield prior to the bombing Pearl Harbor.

Recent museum and archive research now documents Ewa Field, then known in early 1942 as Naval Air Station Ewa and Naval Air Station Barbers Point, as providing the main aviation force of Navy and Marine planes, pilots and squadrons that heroically fought in the June, 1942 Battle of Midway. Many of the Ewa Field planes and pilots were lost in valiant air attacks on the large Japanese fleet. This climatic and decisive battle brought nearly full revenge for the Pearl Harbor attack as four Japanese aircraft carriers of the 1941 raid were sunk in just five minutes.

Today Midway is considered the most important naval battle in American history. In 2018 a major movie will be filmed on Oahu about the 1942 Battle of Midway.

On June 4, 2017 at Ewa Field we also commemorated the 75th Anniversary of the Midway battle and those lost from Ewa Field. Ewa Field symbolizes the phoenix rising from the 1941 ashes to in 1942 leading the United States to victory in the Pacific War.

Many local and national veterans and community organizations are requesting this very important 1941 attack site and 1942 Battle of Midway historic airfield be added to the WW-II Valor in the Pacific National Monument and made a National Historic Landmark.

The current Ewa Battlefield commemoration site property is being conveyed by the US Navy as surplus land through the Department of Interior handling the conveyance to the City as a future park.

Special Ewa Field Commemoration speakers include:

Daniel Martinez  WW-II Valor in the Pacific National Monument historian.

Topic: NPS historic overview of Ewa airfield history.

Yoshinobu Oshiro, EdD (LtCol. USAF Ret.)  Ewa Veteran, Dec 7th eyewitness,

Topic: Ewa Plantation Dec 7, 1941, WW-II history cultural landscape.

Valerie Van der Veer  President, manager, Barbers Point Riding Club.

Topic: BP Stables history and National Register 1942 Aircraft Revetments

Col. Jason Seal  (USMC Ret.) Senior Marine Instructor, Kapolei High School MC JROTC, designated Naval Honor School program for three consecutive years.

Topic: Remembering the Marines at Ewa Field.

Regi Perry  (Major, USA Ret.) General Manager Barbers Point Aviation Services.

Topic: Remembrances of growing up in Ewa Villages, Barbers Point community. Successful Ewa veteran entrepreneur.

Ross Stephenson, PhD  noted historian, Previous Keeper of Hawaii Register.

Topic: Why historic Ewa preservation is important for community cultural identity.

Sponsor: American Veterans Hawaii, Donovan Lazarus, AmVetsHi Commander

Sincerely,

John Bond, Ewa Battlefield Commemoration POC, Director

Historic Ewa Field 1941-1942

Ewa-Kapolei, HI 96707 808-685-3045 ewabond@gmail.com
WATERLOO  A judge has declared a mistrial in a Dubuque County murder trial that had been moved to Waterloo for a venue change.

District Court Judge Thomas Bitter granted the defenses request to scuttle the trial of Eric Dewayne Campbell Jr. on Thursday after three days of testimony when a witness, who didnt know Campbell at the time of the crime and had previously been unable to identify Campbell, mentioned his name while she was on the stand.

Im concerned that it was too key of an issue for us to look past it or give a curative instruction or sweep it under the rug, Bitter said.

Some things when they get said, and you put that in peoples heads, you just cant unsay it. You cant tell them to erase it from their brains. When this got said, it made the hair on my neck stand up as if that could be problematic, he said.

Campbell, 31, of Dubuque, is charged with murder and robbery in the April 2, 2016, botched holdup at the Table Mound Mobile Home Park that resulted in the death of Collin Brown, 21. Prosecutors allege Campbell came up with the plan to rob Brown because he needed money and then entered Browns mobile home with two others. When Brown fled from the mobile home, one of the others shot him.

Leading up to Thursdays breakdown, witness Taylor Shaw, who was the alleged driver in the plot, told jurors she picked up Tacari Carl Minifee and Imere Hall in Dubuque and a third man she didnt know and couldnt identify because his hood was pulled up also entered her Pontiac G6.

Shaw said she drove the three to the mobile home park in Key West after someone in another vehicle pointed out Browns mobile home. She said they parked and Minifee, Hall and Eric exited her vehicle  effectively naming Campbell as the third man.

Assistant Iowa Attorney General Douglas Hammerand attempted to fix the slipup, reminding Shaw she wasnt able to identify the third man.

But defense attorney Aaron Hawbaker objected to the identification, and he requested a mistrial.

The majority of the case is the identity of the third person in that car, Hawbaker said. They could say but you really didnt know until they are blue in the face. It doesnt matter. That jury is assuming she either knew or has come to learn, and there is no way to undo it.

The utterance posed a problem for the defense as Shaw is the only states witness who was at the scene of the robbery when it happened, and other prosecution witnesses  who werent at the scene  could only testify about statements Campbell made before and following the crime.

Bitter said he didnt believe Shaw, who has testified in trials of others charged in the case, had attempted to sabotage Campbells trial.

A new trial date hasnt been set.

Minifee and Hall were convicted of murder and robbery in trials earlier this year and sentenced to prison.
WATERLOO --- Police continue to investigate a Wednesday night shooting that landed one person in the hospital.

Authorities said Trevel Altman-Aron, 19, was standing near the back of his house at 1112 Columbia St. around 9:50 p.m. Wednesday when someone opened fire from a vehicle that was driving down the alley.

Altman-Aron had gunshot wounds to his arm and chest, and he was taken to UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital. Police said he is expected to survive his injuries.

No arrests have been made, and the investigation is continuing, said Capt. David Mohlis with the Waterloo Police Department.

The Columbia Street home and two vehicles parked behind it were also hit, and at least two bullets struck a house in the area of Parker and Lincoln, according to police.

Investigators found spent shell casings in two different calibers, meaning more than one firearm was involved.

Altman-Aron is the fifth person to be injured by gunfire since the weekend. Police said they havent determined if any of the shootings are related.

Earlier report

WATERLOO  One person was injured in a Wednesday night shooting in a Waterloo neighborhood.

The victims identity and condition werent immediately available, but witnesses said he was conscious and alert at the scene. Paramedics with Waterloo Fire Rescue took him to UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital for treatment.

Neighbors began calling 911 shortly before 10 p.m. when the shooting broke out in an alley behind the 1100 block of Columbia Street. The victim was standing toward the rear of a house when he was shot, authorities said.

Bullets also hit the house and two vehicles parked behind the home. At least two bullets also traveled down the alley and hit a house on Lincoln Street.

Roman Wilson was in the Lincoln Street home making coffee when he heard the gunshots.

I heard like three gunshots and I came into the living room to tell my dad what was going on, like if he heard it.  As I walked into the living room, thats when we heard our glass window shatter and everything, Wilson said.

We were just kind of freaked out and kind of got down and didnt know what to expect, he said.

The bullet that broke the window struck a cabinet, he said, and a second bullet hit the houses siding. No one in the Lincoln Street home was injured.

No arrests had been made as of Wednesday night.

This is the fourth shooting with injuries in less that a week in Waterloo.
CEDAR FALLS  More than two dozen Cedar Falls public safety personnel practiced dousing fires on two vacant flood-buyout houses on Roosevelt Street in the Cedar City area Wednesday.

The crew included both full-time firefighters and police trained as public safety officers. It was the largest training exercise yet in which public safety officers and firefighters worked together.

Its really been great, Fire Chief John Bostwick said. We have career firefighters teaching a lot. And the public safety officers who have some experience are teaching the new ones. They are absorbing a heck of a lot.

Such training and firefighting will become more prevalent in the future.

All Cedar Falls police officers hired after July 1, 2016, are required to be cross-trained in firefighting skills. Public Safety Director Jeff Olson said officers typically are cross-trained within three years of hire and usually sooner.

But that does not mean the city eventually will have a full force of cross-trained public safety officers with no career firefighters or police officers.

Public safety officers will be hired until we get a balance between full-time firemen and public safety officers. So we will always have full-time firemen, said council member Dave Wieland. Its just we wont have as many because we can get more efficient operation by getting a balance of the two.

Cedar Falls Firefighters Association President Jim Cook, representing unionized full-time firefighters, would like to know what that balance is.

He said Wednesdays training exercise was good. But, Weve been asking for a strategic plan for our department, and we have yet to be presented with a plan. Thats the frustrating part.

Since July 1, 2016, the city has hired no full-time firefighters. Three firefighters left the force in recent years, Olson said. Those positions were not filled, while public safety officers continue to be hired. Olson noted the firefighting force tends to have less turnover than the police division.

Meanwhile, the city has been able to bring more personnel to fire scenes than ever before  a combination of full-time firefighters, public safety officers and other paid-on-call city staff.

Currently, the city has 27 career firefighters. Soon, 21 of its 43 police officers will be fully trained as public safety officers  a total of 48 people to fight fires, which Olson says is more than the city has had in many years.

In recent major fires, he said, the city has been able to bring 10 to 15 firefighting personnel to a scene. Public safety officers complement firefighters, often arriving early and suppressing fires until the full-time fire crew arrives.

The council is not trying to erase either (police and fire) department, but expand cross-training opportunities across the board, said council member Tom Blanford. Wieland noted firefighters can cross-train as police officers.

Added council member Susan deBuhr, Youre going to need a quantity of full-time firefighters as command staff and other purposes.

Mayor Jim Brown said the public safety model provides improved coverage, saves money and offers great opportunities for advancement.

He thinks bringing fire and police under one roof in the new public safety building will foster greater cooperation.

The mayor and some council members said the city can change direction when an optimum number of public safety officers has been hired or if a large number of full-time firefighters leave and need to be replaced.

Olson said optimum staffing of PSOs should be achieved in about a year. The city has the flexibility to hire a firefighter or a police officer. The job description leaves the timing of an officers cross-training to his discretion.

But, Cook said, Weve not seen any plan that says, This is where we want to go and this is how were going to get there.

Council member Mark Miller says he understands firefighters angst and wishes staffing levels were better defined.

That said, I like the options the public safety program provides, he said. He hopes it will provide better coverage in northern Cedar Falls, where he lives.

Miller believes full-time firefighters always will be needed, though maybe not at the same levels as years ago.

Olson said the public safety officer program will work if firefighters and PSOs work together as they did in Wednesdays training exercise.

Its better than a year ago, and a year from now it will be even better, he said.
WINTHROP  Winthrop was one seven Iowa cities to recently receive Community Development Block Grant funds to support community water and sewer infrastructure projects.

Winthrops $300,000 award will help fund expanding the pump station, lagoon improvements, installation of a UV treatment system and other improvements.

CDBG grants are awarded based upon the benefit to low- and moderate-income population financial need, project impact and readiness and commitment of local resources to the project.

Winthrop Mayor Gerald Dennie was pleased with the award.

City staff and the City Council have been engaged in long-term planning to make these improvements. We are grateful that the state of Iowa provides support for costly infrastructure projects. I want to thank the City Council and INRCOG for working together to make this happen, he said in a statement.
WATERLOO  Left unchecked, Christian populations could be erased from the Holy Land, according to a Maronite Catholic priest from the region.

The Rev. Emanuel Nakhle spoke recently at the Waterloo Rotary Club, describing current events through political, historical, social and religious lenses.

Nakhle serves Holy Family Maronite Church, a Lebanese congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn. He is fluent in Arabic, French, English and Italian. He also speaks Syriac Aramaic, Jesus native tongue.

The Maronite Church is the largest Christian denomination in Lebanon. It is united with the Roman Catholic Church but retains historic rituals, practices and traditions.

Nakhle came to the Cedar Valley through the American Association of Lutheran Churches and its retired bishop, the Rev. Dr. Duane Lindberg. The AALC forged the relationship with the Maronite denomination out of a desire to support the Middle Easts historically Christian populations.

You have a Lutheran body giving money to a Roman Catholic body so close to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation; if that isnt a miracle, I dont know what is, said Lindberg in introducing Nakhle.

Nakhle believes the current threat of fundamentalist Islamic groups and mismanagement of post-civil war Syria could obliterate the dwindling Christian population in Lebanon.

The war in Syria caused civilian people to flee their homes and towns out of the surrounding countries, into Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, said Nakhle. Among the faith communities, Christians paid  the highest price (for the war), having been completely cleansed out from ISIS areas and from areas occupied by whats defined moderate opposition.

The loss of Lebanons Christian heritage would be dire, he added. Christianity started in the Holy Land and spread first to the countries around, including Lebanon or Phoenicia, Syria and Mesopotamia, or Iraq, said Nakhle. The Apostles crossed the shores of Phoenicia to reach Antioch, the Roman capital of Syria.

For decades, the Middle East has been marked by sectarian conflicts. However, the past 15 years have given rise to groups that exploit increased religious intolerance and fanaticism, said Nakhle.

Christian communities struggle to survive in the midst of the rise of violence and radical Islam in the region today, said Nakhle. The situation of war in the Middle East is constantly changing.

In fact, he said some of his research became outdated with the recent fall of the Islamic State. He credits U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin with this. Hes also grateful to the two leaders for publicly supporting Lebanon and a Christian presence there.

Prior to Syrias civil war, Lebanons Christian population was growing toward 50 percent of the nation. This shifted with the refugee crisis, which created an influx of Syrians into Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

Lebanon, a country of 4 million, took in nearly 2 million refugees, of which 80 percent are Sunni Muslims, Nakhle explained.

With this exponential increase of refugees (into Lebanon), the Christians face a threat of demographic change which affects their future and destiny, he added. Christianity in Lebanon is the only relevant Christianity of whats left of the Holy Land.

Lebanese Christians emigrate to avoid the countrys overcrowding, strained economy and religious persecution, said Nakhle. The scenario has played out across the Middle East since the early 20th century. Christians once exceeded 20 percent of the regions population and have now dropped to less than 4 percent, according to the BBC.

Lebanon attempts a religiously balanced government by mandating the president must be Christian, prime minister Sunni Muslim and speaker of parliament Shia Muslim. In this and support from nations like the United States, Russia and France, Nakhle sees hope.

To prevent the collapse of whats left of Christianity in the Middle East and especially in Lebanon can be done in different levels, he explained.
DENVER -- A Waterloo woman was injured in two-vehicle crash on Highway 63 near Denver Wednesday.

The crash was reported about 10:50 a.m. at the intersection of Highway 63 and 250th Street, according to the Bremer County Sheriffs Office.

Deputies said Russell Schmitz, 57, of Wellsburg, was northbound on the highway in a 2006 International semi pulling a trailer. Kay Michel, 61, of Waterloo, was attempting to cross Highway westbound. Deputies said she entered the intersection and her vehicle was struck in the drivers side by Schmitz.

Michel was transported to UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital in Waterloo with serious injuries and later flown to University Hospitals and Clinics in the Iowa City. Schmitz was uninjured.

The Bremer County Sheriffs Office was assisted by Denver Ambulance Service and Denver Fire Department
Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota is resigning following allegations that he touched women inappropriately, he announced on the Senate floor Thursday.

"I am announcing that in the coming weeks I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate," Franken said in an emotional address in which he said some of the allegations against him weren't true.

Franken, who did not apologize during his speech, also called out President Donald Trump, who was repeatedly accused of sexual assault during his presidential campaign, and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who faces accusations that he pursued relationships with teenagers while he was in his 30s.

"I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party," Franken said.

The push for Franken's resignation started after a woman came forward last month to say he had badgered her into an unwanted kiss before he was a senator and groped her while she slept.

That allegation set forth weeks of open deliberation about the political future of the unlikely comedian turned progressive darling.

Last month, Leeann Tweeden, a morning news anchor on the AM radio station KABC in Los Angeles, posted her story on the station's website, saying Franken forcibly kissed her and groped her in 2006 during a USO tour.

Franken apologized following her account's publishing.

"The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thingand if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine -- is: I'm sorry," Franken said in the email statement.

As condemnation increased in the wake of the story, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, called for a Senate Ethics Committee probe into Franken, and Franken said repeatedly he would cooperate with that investigation.

But in the coming days and weeks, more accusers have come forward.

A woman came forward to CNN to say Franken, as a senator, grabbed her buttocks while taking a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.

The Huffington Post reported two more women accused Franken of inappropriately touching them in 2007 and 2008.

Franken went on to speak with media outlets in his home state of Minnesota, saying he was "embarrassed and ashamed," but hoped to regain the trust of those he let down.

An Army veteran told CNN later that Franken groped her on a USO tour as well before he was a senator. The woman, Stephanie Kemplin, said Franken cupped her breast while she was deployed in the Middle East during the Iraq War.

After Kemplin came forward, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Democratic leader would not comment on the allegation against one of his fellow Democrats.

Then on Wednesday, Politico reported a former Democratic congressional aide said Franken tried to kiss her forcibly in 2006. CNN has not yet verified the claims in the Politico story, but Franken flatly denied the allegations int he report.

Shortly after, New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called for Franken to resign, and other Democratic senators posted statements in swift succession. In the span of a few hours Wednesday afternoon, dozens of senators said Franken should go -- including Schumer.

'Saturday Night' to Capitol Hill

Franken made his start as a comedy writer in New York, contributing to NBC's "Saturday Night Live" as a writer from its opening years in the 1970s to the 1990s. He made his way occasionally from the writers' room to the stage, gaining national exposure.

As the years went on, Franken shifted from politically charged comedy and satire to politics outright, becoming a liberal voice on radio and releasing books attacking Republicans and right-wing media.

In some of his books, Franken proposed -- somewhat tongue in cheek -- that he would have a political life, maybe as a senator or even president.

In the 2008 election, Franken turned the idea into a reality and challenged Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

The 2008 elections saw Democrats around the nation ascendant, and as Barack Obama won the presidential election, Franken and Coleman were neck-and-neck. After a recount, Franken was ahead, and after ensuing legal challenges from Coleman, Franken emerged victorious and joined the Senate, giving the Democratic caucus a brief supermajority.

Franken hewed liberal on most issues and was a reliable Obama supporter through the years. He has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, and he drew plaudits from many in his party for his sharp questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

In the wake of Trump's stunning 2016 victory and the general disrepair of the Democratic Party, Franken's name even made its way to some discussions about potential 2020 candidates to challenge Trump for the presidency.

This story has been updated and will continue to update with additional developments.

CNN's Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, MJ Lee and Hannah Lang contributed to this report.
After all that has happened, the Alabama Senate race appears to be reverting to a fundamental political truth: A state that is one of the most Republican in the nation is likely to vote Republican.

Of course, there is still the possibility of some new and devastating sexual misconduct revelation about GOP candidate Roy Moore. But there is an increasing sense the old and devastating sexual misconduct revelations are receding into the distant past of two weeks ago. Now, Moore is recovering in the polls, and more Alabama voters seem comfortable with the idea of voting for him.

Moore was six points ahead of Democratic opponent Doug Jones in the RealClearPolitics average of polls before the first allegations. By Nov. 21, Moore was eight-tenths of a point behind Jones. Now, Moore is back in the lead, but by just 2.6 points.

It appears the improvement in Moores fortunes is being driven by a gradual change in the Alabama electorates view of the allegations against him. In a Morning Consult poll taken in mid-November, 43 percent said they found the sexual misconduct allegations against Moore to be credible, while 19 percent said not credible and 37 percent said they did not know or had no opinion.

In a newer poll by the same company, taken in the last week of November, 41 percent said they found the allegations credible, 21 percent said not credible and 41 percent said they did not know or had no opinion.

Thats not a huge change, but its a total six percentage point increase in the group of people who say the allegations are not credible or who say they dont know.

In the poll, the number of Republicans who said they dont believe the Moore allegations stayed roughly the same. But there appears to have been a pretty significant shift from those who earlier said they believed the allegations to those who now say they dont know.

Among Democrats, the number who said they did not believe the allegations ticked upward. The same occurred with independents.

Part of the change  perhaps a large part  seems to reflect the idea that many voters dont view Moores accusers in the same way many media figures do. A number of media reports portray overwhelming evidence against Moore. Hes pitting his word against the word of nine women who accused him of varying degrees of sexual misconduct, CNN reported recently. The message is that the sheer number of accusers means at least some must be telling the truth.

But it seems likely that some Alabama voters dont see nine accusers. They see one.

That one accuser is Leigh Corfman, who says Moore sexually assaulted her in 1979, when she was 14 years old. Published in the Washington Post, Corfmans was the first and most serious allegation against Moore, and it remains the most serious today. Corfman has seemed credible in media appearances, and Moore has not been able to refute her story. The Moore campaign realizes Corfmans is the most compelling allegation against him.

But the Post account also included the stories of three other women who said Moore asked them out when they were 16, 17 and 18 years old, and whose cases against Moore did not involve any physical abuse or coercion.

Then there was Beverly Young Nelson, who said Moore assaulted her in 1977, when she was 16. Nelson made the mistake of retaining celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred when she made her allegations, and she also mishandled Moores contention that a signature in a yearbook she produced, ostensibly by Moore, might be a fake. Both moves reduced her credibility.

So that is five accusers right there. It is likely voters pushed four of them to the side, leaving Corfman.

Then there was a woman who said Moore grabbed her behind in 1991, when she was 28. A woman who said Moore asked her out in 1982, when she was 17. A woman who said Moore asked her out repeatedly in 1977, when she was 18, and gave her an unwanted, forceful kiss. And finally, a woman who said Moore asked her out several times in 1977, when she was 22.

Asked her out several times when she was 22 years old? Thats not the most outrageous allegation in the news these days. Four more accusers, some with very thin stories.

That makes nine. The point is not that none of the accusers is telling the truth. Perhaps some, or all, are. What appears to have happened is one very serious allegation was followed by a series of less serious, or less credible, accusations that in the end did not have the cumulative effect Moores opponents perhaps hoped.

The bottom line is, instead of Roy Moore versus nine accusers, in many voters minds the story is Roy Moore versus one accuser, Leigh Corfman. And that is where the mental calculations begin.

Corfmans allegation is serious; she was, after all, 14 years old. But its not airtight. And it was in 1979  38 years ago. Memories fade, or change. And even if it is all true, has Moore changed in the nearly four decades since? Is there a statute of political limitations? Thoughts like that can change minds.

Finally, many conservative voters see Jones as a doctrinaire liberal whose pro-choice views on abortion would likely be enough to ensure defeat in an Alabama race. And so Alabama Republicans are more and more assessing the situation as Alabama Republicans. It would be no surprise if they vote that way Dec. 12.
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"We want positive conclusions to be drawn from PAIS Alliance and for Ecuador because we have had great achievements," said Armando Quijije.

Ecuador's coastal city of Esmeraldas is hosting the PAIS Alliance's 7th National Convention, which will be chaired by the left-wing coalition movement's founder and former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

The event, which will be held at the Hosteria La Pradera, comes amid division within the movement. Correa has referred to his successor, current Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno, as a wolf in sheep's clothing and traitor to the principles of the Citizens' Revolution.

Those backing Correa withdrew support for Lenin who was ousted as president of PAIS Alliance. The party's national directorate appointed Ricardo Patino, the former second vice-president, as the new president, and Gabriela Rivadeneira, former executive secretary, as the new second vice-president.

Moreno, subsequently, requested precautionary measures to halt Patino and Rivadeneira's new appointments. The appeal is being reviewed by the National Electoral Council.

Another point of contention which has drawn the split within the party is a popular referendum Moreno announced for Feb. 4, which could see  among a host of other political issues  the end of presidential re-elections.

"We want positive conclusions to be drawn from PAIS Alliance and for Ecuador because we have had great achievements," said Armando Quijije, who was waiting to see the former president. Also present was Yadira Catuto. She said, Here we are, the ones who believe in this process and we want better days for our country.
It was already dark in mid-October when we arrived to the Costa Rican birding mecca of Rancho Naturalista to have dinner on the veranda but then were interrupted with a call: Theres a Mottled Owl at the other side! You can imagine the rest: everyone jumped from the table to look for the owl. Lisa Erb, the manager and owner, but also a former bird guide, perfectly understood her guests.

After dinner, some teams walked around hoping for some more birds. My team, the Redstart Wranglers, was still on the veranda when our guide Abelardo Benavides called us out: Theres a potoo calling! All Wranglers went to the other side of the lodge listening a potoo mixed with human voices. Thats another team playing potoo calls from a smartphone. You have to be extra careful when on a bird race Hey, wait, lets play them back some other bird!

Belonging to the Caribbean (Talamancas) foothills biome, Rancho Naturalista protects 60 ha of secondary premontane forest and has the fourth longest eBird list among the hotspots of Costa Rica: 478 species, including 36 raptors and 38 hummingbirds. But, beside the ranch itself, up to two miles away there are six more hotspots whose names often end with near Rancho Naturalista. Curious to see what the combined list would show, I used the eBird polygon tool to sum them all up to 502 bird species. Now, how many lodges can you tell of with such a list?

White-necked Jacobin by Niklas Aronsson

Morning started with coffee and sweets and some more birding along the four ranch trails ranging from 400 m/0.3 mi to 2.5 km/1.6 mi. I spent the morning with Lisa among the hummingbird feeders at the upper terrace of the lodge, observing White-necked Jacobin, Green Hermit, Green-breasted Mango, Violet Sabrewing, Crowned Woodnymph and the Rufous-tailed Hummingbird.

Hmmm. well I moved in 1984 to live at Rancho and it was a coffee and sugarcane farm back then. We tried everything, Hawaiian pineapple, black pepper, even jalapenos, and we could not make money from farming, Lisa told me.

We loved the forest and had never cut it since we first owned the property. Then my dad spoke to some friends that lived up in the Costa Rican highlands who said they were going to have birdwatchers come to stay with them. My dad asked how did they do that? And they said they put an ad in Bird Watchers Digest and people would came, so we did that too! It started small and grew bigger. Over the years we had to expand but we never stopped being a strictly birding lodge.

We started at the exact perfect time when ecotourism was starting  it was lucky! Plus, I love birds and birding and I begin to guide and did that for 12 years. That background helps me feel what birders want and need in a lodge. We have also been lucky in having awesome guides and they go on to guide for different companies all over the world.

That background certainly helps, I noticed that. Lisa knew what I wanted way before I knew it, making Rancho Naturalista the kind of place  the rarest kind, actually  where one comes as a guest and leaves as a friend.

Later that day, we went to the El Copal Biological Reserve (about 20 km/12 mi from the Rancho) where while climbing the stairs I found the gem I missed that morning. In a flowering bush maybe two feet from me, there was the snow! I found the snow in Costa Rica, the endemic Snowcap hummingbird, that is. Just imagine how handsome they can be Well, this one tops that!

Snowcap by Jim Lawrence

From Lisas upper terrace, two volcanos can be seen in the distance, the active Irazu and the Turrialba. Alex, our driver, slowly drove up the Irazu Volcano National Park, stopping by this forest or by that bridge. The higher up we went, habitats looked more like mountains of Europe than the tropics.

A group of dead but still standing trees a pecker an Acorn Woodpecker one more and a few more about ten Acorn Woodpeckers!! I have never seen that many peckers at the same spot. And now add a few endemic Flame-throated Warblers and Slaty Flowerpiercers to that picture.

Bridges and wooded gullies they were crossing turned out to be the best spots. Lesser Violetears, Talamanca Hummingbirds (a recent split  formerly Magnificent) and endemic Volcano Hummingbirds adorned bushes, together with the Lessons Motmot (also a recent split  formerly Blue-crowned).

Acorn Woodpeckers by Niklas Aronsson

Rocky areas with low bushes near the summit of the volcano, endemic Sooty Thrush by the road. A cove protected from the winds  endemic Volcano Junco and the view over the main crater. At 3,400 m/11,000 ft, the very top and views over fluffy, white cloud landscape and the wind! That wind The temperature was barely above 10oC/50oF and I just took a few photos before retreating into the van.

On our way down, lets stop by that bridge hey, what are those guys watching? Sergio Arias, the mastermind behind this bird race was in the group and it was him who spotted it first  the glorious male Resplendent Quetzal! (cover photo by Niklas Aronsson)! My jaw drops. Not in my wildest dreams had I dared hope to be able to see this one, always thought it to be the bird of the deepest forests and here it was by the roadside! Perched, posing for us. A smile formed in the corners of my lips, to stay there until I fell asleep that night.

Top: the Redstart Wranglers (on the left is Abelardo Benavides, our guide). Bottom: left  with Lisa Erb (both at El Copal); right  the Redstart Wranglers at the closing ceremony.

After 7 and a half days and 1600 km/1000 mi of straight birding, the afternoon of the October 19th saw the finishing ceremony of the first Costa Rica Bird Race. Who won the race?

I did, of course. To be invited to this race as an absolute beginner in American birding was a victory in itself. Yes, there were participants who may have seen a few more birds than I did (maybe 200 more, to be honest), but more than 90% of my birds were lifers  now, try to beat that record! Take Adam Riley for example: an outstanding world-class birder, yet only 1% of his birds were lifers, which clearly proves my point (I will not tell you that he has already observed 85% or so of the bird fauna on Earth).

Okay, that was my reckoning, but the official results slightly differ from it. The Redstart Wranglers had observed 478 species, trailing the leaders by just 10 species, with third place coming in close, only 2 sp. behind. Yet, in many ways, we are all winners: combined, all three teams saw about 550 species in a week  well over half of Costa Ricas 920 species! We actually saw 5% of the birds of the Earth.

Still, as Kenn Kaufman once said, the best birder isnt the one with the longest list, but the one who had the most fun along the road and I reckon, that would be me.

Personally, I was lucky to be among such a great bunch of birders from whom I learned a lot  thank you guys, especially my team-mates (in no particular order) Rob, Ben, Ed, Dylan and ever hard-working Abelardo, and last but not least, the organisers, Sergio and Adriana, Futuropa and ICT. Thank you on this glass of pura vida.

Part three: The Scarlet Pacific of Costa Rica

Part two: The Great Green Caribbean Lowlands  Costa Rica

Part one: An Absolute Beginner in Costa Rica

#costaricabirdchallenge #costaricabirding #visitcostarica #futuropa #ict #birdwatchingrepublic
VANCOUVER, BC, December 07, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- On November 30th, The Answer Company came together to give back to their community as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, Answering the Call. All five of their offices participated in a company-wide volunteer day during which they filled 195 shoeboxes with gifts for Indigenous youth that they donated to I love First People's 2017 Shoe Box Campaign.



I love First People is a non-profit organization that works to address and solve the complex issues facing First Peoples. They work together with leaders to empower Indigenous children and youth to succeed by motivating them to stay in school and see the benefit of education. The 2017 Shoebox Campaign is a central part of that initiative, providing kids with gifts such as coloring supplies, learning games, and toys. Each shoebox also includes an encouraging note from the person that built the box, extending words of friendship and support.



The Answer Company's Answering the Call program gives them the opportunity to support local organizations through the donation of services and software, as well as individual and quarterly company-wide volunteer days. Children are our future, and the fact that I Love First Peoples' focuses on helping kids see their own value and the importance of their education made participating in the Showbox Campaign an easy choice for The Answer Company. Some of the items donated included:



- Coloring Pencils

- Math Flash Cards

- Travel Games

- Hair Clips

- Transformer Toys

- Fidget Spinners

- Playdoh

- Beads



More information about The Answer Company's Answering the Call program, including their work with Down Syndrome Research Foundation and Canucks's Autism Network, is available at www.theanswerco.com/giving-back/. If you would like to support the Shoebox Campaign visit https://www.ilovefirstpeoples.ca/shoebox-gifts.



Since 1995, The Answer Company has been helping organizations answer questions about investments in technology and information systems. As a Sage, Acumatica and NetSuite ERP partner, the entire team offers thought leadership & expertise on both solutions. From offices across Canada, the team provides specialized solutions to a wide array of industries, first executing an in-depth business analysis, followed by developing a tailored software solution and ensuring its effective implementation, followed by long-term support.



The Answer Company's goal is to make companies more successful at what they do and gain the confidence to make profitable moves in their respective industries.



# # #
Ken Roth in Foreign Policy:

The Trump administration wants to reform the U.N. Human Rights Council. But it cites two concerns that would require conflicting strategies to address. It needs to sort out its priorities if it expects to make any progress.

On one hand, it wants to improve the councils membership to strengthen its willingness to address the worlds most serious abuses. On the other hand, it wants to abolish the councils longstanding special agenda item on the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. If the administration insists on elevating its defense of Israel above all else, it risks undermining an essential institution for the global defense of human rights  instead of strengthening it.

The 47-member Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, is the U.N.s leading human rights body. As with any intergovernmental institution, its effectiveness depends on rallying the votes of its members. Sometimes it falls short: It has neglected, for instance, Egypts draconian four-year crackdown to crush all dissent and Venezuelas decimation of its once-vibrant democracy. But often it succeeds. The most recent session of the council, in September, adopted important resolutions on, among other subjects, Myanmars ethnic cleaning of its Rohingya population, Syrias targeting of hospitals and other civilian institutions, the Saudi-led coalitions bombing and starving of Yemeni civilians, and South Sudanese fighters slaughter of civilians because of their ethnicity.

More here.
Adam Serwer in The Atlantic:

Thirty years ago, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why.

It was 1990 and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, astonished political observers when he came within striking distance of defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, earning 43 percent of the vote. If Johnstons Republican rival hadnt dropped out of the race and endorsed him at the last minute, the outcome might have been different.

Was it economic anxiety? The Washington Post reported that the state had a large working class that has suffered through a long recession. Was it a blow against the states hated political establishment? An editorial from United Press International explained, Louisianans showed the nation by voting for Duke that they were mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Was it anti-Washington rage? A Loyola University pollster argued, There were the voters who liked Duke, those who hated J. Bennett Johnston, and those who just wanted to send a message to Washington.

What message would those voters have been trying to send by putting a Klansman into office?

Theres definitely a message bigger than Louisiana here, Susan Howell, then the director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans, told the Los Angeles Times.

More here.
Rhian E. Jones at Eurozine:

As apps and automation reconfigure work, what happens to how we think about the working class? The communities of manual, domestic and clerical workers called into being by industrial capitalism, who formed a majority of British society throughout the 20th century, now largely languish in areas defined by their lack of work, reliance on benefits, and subsequent demonisation in culture and politics. BBC research published in April 2013 as the Great British Class Survey, which divided UK society into seven layers, seemed to suggest that class was becoming defined on a cultural and social rather than occupational basis, in line with the nuanced framework proposed by Pierre Bourdieu in 1979. But while social and cultural expression and engagement may be less reliable as class markers, economic relationships remain fundamental in how people see themselves and others. Selina Todds The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910-2010 (John Murray, 2014) concludes by emphasising that a majority of British people still identify as working class, and around half of respondents to the Great British Class Survey were characterised by their low levels of economic capital. On the lowest rung of the great British Class Surveys taxonomy was the precariat, defined by its occupational and economic insecurity. This group was previously the subject of Guy Standings 2011 polemic The Precariat (Bloomsbury), in which he dubbed it a new dangerous class, whose plight could generate anger, violence and susceptibility to fascism unless addressed by social reforms geared towards financial security.

more here.


Australias largest hemp food production underway

Sydney, Dec 7, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - This week provided further major milestones in Queensland Bauxite's ( ASX:QBL ) investment in Medical Cannabis Ltd (MCL). MCL has made major progress in its Vitahemp brand's "farm-gate to retail" fully vertically integrated journey. Mass production and mass farming is now underway and Australia's largest current hemp seed import for sowing has now cleared quarantine for MCL.



Vitahemp is MCL's Hemp seed (low THC cannabis) food brand.



Mass Production Underway



A significant amount of approximately 60 metric tonnes of hemp seed ready for food production, is now being held for Vitahemp in storage. Following the highly successful soft launch of MCL's Vitahemp initial sample range at the HHI expo earlier this week, 20 metric tonnes is now being transported to Waltanna Farms for oil, protein and flour production by MCL's joint venture company Waltanna Hemp Group. A further 10 metric tonnes will be delivered to MCL's production company Hemp Hulling Co for seed processing. This will form the basis of the MCL - Vitahemp bulk commercial product launch in January 2018.



Mass Farming Underway



This is in addition to the 20 tonnes of seeds being planted by MCL's contracted farmers that has been imported this week that should yield in excess of a further 500 tonnes of seed for Vitahemp's further planned ramped up bulk production in March 2018. A further larger Autumn crop is being planned to enable the continuation of supply to meet the enormous demand MCL and Vitahemp have been receiving.



Vitahemp is now well placed to be the first mover and leader in the Australian hemp seed food industry, and the board of QBL are pleased to see the Team at Vitahemp meeting its milestones under its business plan for the roll out of its premier Gold Star quality brand.



At the moment Vitahemp is working on the orders from last weekend's highly successful launch, and as the sample range has been quickly snapped up by shareholders, the further larger orders including from the wholesale market, will begin to be filled in the coming weeks following the upcoming completion of Vitahemp's initial bulk production run. The Company will report on the results of the bulk production and sales as soon as the information is available.



This is Australia's largest current hemp seed import for sowing



In a significant event for both Company and Industry, Australia's largest hemp food sowing seed shipment of 20t was cleared this week by AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service), on behalf of MCL.



As mentioned above, these sowing seeds are now being used to grow Australian hemp (low THC cannabis) from which will be extracted all-Australian grown hemp seed to be used for food products.



This gives Vitahemp a huge advantage over competitors who are currently using overseas seeds to produce their hemp products, as pursuant to the new change in Australian legislation, Hemp food seeds from any country other than Australia now require rigorous processing such as being denatured and irradiated for safety and health reasons. Much of the potency of the seed is lost as a result which is not the case with hemp food seed extracted from hemp grown in Australia.



That is one significant reason of many why the Company believes that Vitahemp's product will surpass any local competitor's product not manufactured as all-Australian.



Right now the seed cleared by quarantine is being shipped to large broad-acre growing power-houses and to the expert carefully selected farmers who will grow the seeds for MCL with non-propagation agreements. This is "first-in best-dressed" step one in MCL having the ability to lead in the mass production of all-Australian hemp-seed food. Quite some time has already been spent visiting farmers and organising enough suitable ground to grow large quantities of hemp.



Although Queensland Bauxite has the majority controlling interest in MCL, the Vitahemp Team and Queensland Bauxite request that orders are not made by phone to Queensland Bauxite, but are sent via email to sales@vitahemp.com to enable efficient processing.



With farming and sowing taking place, and the current manufacturing, marketing and distribution being organised, the Board of QBL believe that the Company is very well placed to ensure cashflow as soon as possible for anticipated dividends to shareholders.





About Queensland Bauxite Ltd





Queensland Bauxite Limited (ASX:QBL) is an Australian listed company focused on the exploration and development of its bauxite tenements in Queensland and New South Wales. The Company's lead project is the South Johnstone Bauxite Deposit in northern Queensland which has rail running through the project area and is approximately 15-24 kilometres from the nearest deep water port. The Company intends to become a bauxite producer with a focus on commencing production at South Johnstone as early as possible. The Company also pursues additional investment opportunities, and has agreed to acquire a 100% shareholding in Medical Cannabis Limited, an Australian leader in the hemp and Cannabis industries, and a 100% shareholding in Medcan Australia Pty Ltd, a company with an ODC cultivation and production License and a DA approved Cannabis production and manufacturing facility.
Cash Revenues for Q2 expected to exceed $22m



Q2 FY18 Market Update - Update to Cash Revenue Guidance

Sydney, Dec 7, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Big Un Limited ( ASX:BIG ) (or 'the Company') is pleased to announce market guidance for Q2 FY18 following a continued strong sales results. Based upon excellent performance by the Company in November, BIG expects to achieve global cash receipts from customers in excess of $22m for Q2 (an increase of 447% from Q2 FY17 and a material increase of 10% on previous guidance).



Outlook

Positive start to FY18



Commenting on the guidance, CEO Richard Evertz says, "October and November were record months for BIG with our US sales on boards matching Australian sales on boards. We are now planning to further increase the size of our sales teams both in Australia and the US during the next quarter to fully leverage these outstanding market opportunities. October and November's growth is still predominantly from Pillar One of our business model as we continue to tap into the rapidly growing global demand for video content from SME's."



The Company's outstanding growth from Pillar One sales flows into Pillar Two of the business model providing many further revenue opportunities from large brand sponsors. The Company believe that Pillar Two will become a significant revenue stream and profit center over the next 12 months. As BIG's business model matures, it places the Company in a unique position to become a dominant player. BIG is experiencing growing viewership of its content, brand recognition and customer referrals, and the management team firmly believe that it is now beginning to experience the network effect of building a unique video ecosystem."



To view figures, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/38YU98VY





About Big Un Ltd





Big Un Ltd (ASX:BIG) is the parent company of Big Review TV Ltd. Big Review TV are innovative disruptors in the online video space delivering subscription based video technology products and services. The Company has operations across Australia and in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver and was listed on the ASX in December 2014.


Further High-Grade Historical Gold Intercepts at the Un-Mined Southwark Gold Deposit, Bottle Creek

Canberra, Dec 7, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Alt Resources Ltd ( ASX:ARS ) (Alt or 'the Company') is pleased to provide the outcomes of an ongoing review of historical drilling data from the Bottle Creek Gold Mine in WA. The Company is continuing to compile and digitise the extensive historical dataset for the area, with an immediate focus on un-mined gold mineralisation such as Emu (see Note 1 below) and Southwark. Broad, high grade ore shoots at these deposits present immediate walk-up targets for exploration drilling and resource development at Bottle Creek. Grades up to 28.0 g/t Au are reported from historical drilling at Southwark, alongside broad, consistently graded intercepts such as 16m @ 2.1 g/t Au. The latter hole ended in mineralisation at 56m depth. Reported intercepts are shallow, hosted within an ~80m deep lateritic zone.



HIGHLIGHTS:



- Historical drilling shows high grade ore shoots at the un-mined Southwark deposit



- Extends the known un-mined mineralisation continuously 3 km north of the VB pit



- Significant historical intercepts from sections of the Southwark deposit include:



o 10m @ 6.2 g/t Au



o 2m @ 7.2 g/t Au



o 11m @ 4.7 g/t Au (EOH), including 4m @ 10.8 g/t Au



o 4m @ 8.6 g/t Au



o 2m @ 10.4 g/t Au



o 10m @ 12.1 g/t Au, including 4m @ 22.5 g/t Au



o 6m @ 4.4 g/t Au



o 6m @ 9.3 g/t Au



o 10m @ 4.5 g/t Au (EOH)



o 6m @ 8.1 g/t Au, including 2m @ 10.6 g/t Au



o 16m @ 6.1 g/t Au, including 2m @ 28.0 g/t Au



o 14m @ 3.7 g/t Au (EOH)



o 4m @ 13.3 g/t Au (EOH)



- Many holes ended in mineralisation



- Drilling to confirm historical intercepts and develop a mineral resource at Southwark willcommence in March, 2018.



Alt executed a binding Option to Purchase Agreement for the Bottle Creek Gold Mine on the 3rd November, 2017 (see Note 2 below). Drilling is scheduled to commence in March 2018 to validate historical drilling and progressively bring the Bottle Creek resource into JORC compliance. The Company will undertake a minimum of 8,000m of reverse circulation (RC) drilling, with a focus on the un-mined Emu, Southwark and XXXX deposits, north of the VB and Boags pits (see Figure 3 in link below).



Regional Setting and Exploration History



The Bottle Creek gold mine lies 100 km north east of Menzies in the Mt Ida gold belt (see Figure 1 in link below). The gold mine is located on the northern extremity of the Mt Ida-Ularring greenstone belt extending from Davyhurst to Mt Alexander (see Figure 1 in link below). The Ularring greenstone belt forms the western part of the Norseman-Wiluna Province of the Yilgarn Craton. The location of mineralisation and local geology, is shown in Figure 2 (see link below). Locally, gold and silver mineralisation is hosted in carbonaceous, sulphidic shales, within a larger package of interbedded basaltic volcanics, sediments and ultramafic rocks. The area is tightly folded and metamorphosed, with intrusion of younger dolerite dykes (Robertson, 2003). Mineralisation at Bottle Creek occurs over a strike length of 11km, running north-west-south east and is interpreted to be nearly vertical, to steeply west-dipping.



Bottle Creek was discovered by Electrolytic Zinc Company of Australasia (EZ) in 1983, who passed management of the project to Norgold Limited (Norgold) in 1985. Norgold managed the project through to production. Ore was treated onsite in a CIP Circuit, producing 90,000 oz Au over an 18 month period from 1988-1989 from two open pits (Boags and VB; see Figure 3 in link below). Significant drilling was undertaken by EZ and later by Norgold along a 9.8 km strike length from 1984 to 1989. RC drill fences at 100m spacing were carried out, with infill drill line spacing at 50m and 25m at various locations. The majority of drilling targeted oxide mineralisation, and 80m vertical below surface.



Mineralisation at Bottle Creek is strongly weathered, with a regolith profile to a depth of ~80m. Gold mineralisation is enriched through supergene processes in the oxide zone, and this oxide ore was the target of previous miners.



Southwark Historical Drilling



The Bottle Creek gold mine included production from the VB and Boags pits between 1988 and 1989. Extensive drilling undertaken by EZ and Norgold resulted in the delineation of historical resources at the Emu and XXXX deposits, immediately north of the open pits, as well as definition of mineralisation (without a resource estimate) at Southwark. Drilling was to a nominal depth of around 80m, and targeted oxide mineralisation. A small number of drillholes targeted sulphide mineralisation at depth (e.g. EMU-385-PD, EMU-387-PD and EMU-388-PD, described below). Intensive drilling was also carried out over a gold-enriched laterite zone within the Southwark zone.



A review of the historical data reveals promising gold and silver intercepts at the southern and northern ends of the Southwark deposit. Significant intercepts from these areas include:



- 10m @ 6.2 g/t Au from 81m



- 2m @ 7.2 g/t Au from 39m



- 11m @ 4.7 g/t Au from 75m to EOH,

o including 4m @ 10.8 g/t Au from 75m



- 4m @ 8.6 g/t Au from 37m



- 2m @ 10.4 g/t Au from 6m



- 10m @ 12.1 g/t Au from 54m,

o including 4m @ 22.5 g/t Au from 54m



- 6m @ 4.4 g/t Au from 66m



- 6m @ 9.3 g/t Au from 52m



- 10m @ 4.5 g/t Au from 76m to EOH



- 6m @ 8.1 g/t Au from 50m,

o including 2m @ 10.6 g/t Au from 50m



- 16m @ 6.1 g/t Au from 63m,

o including 2m @ 28.0 g/t Au from 71m



- 14m @ 3.7 g/t Au from 68m to EOH



- 4m @ 13.3 g/t Au from 73m to EOH



The historical drillhole spacing is 30m between drillhole lines in the southern portion of the deposit. This spacing increases to 100m between drillhole fences in the north of the deposit area, in spite of some promising intercepts in that zone (e.g. 4m @ 8.6 g/t Au in drillhole EMU-280-RC; see Table 1 and Figure 6 in link below). The northern zone in particular represents an excellent opportunity for Alt Resources to potentially extend and expand mineralised zones during drilling planned for March 2018.



Figure 7 (see link below) shows the distribution of historical drillholes at Southwark, between 16000 and 16800N on the local Bottle Creek grid. The local grid is oriented north-west of magnetic north. The cross-sections in Figure 4 to Figure 6 (see link below) are oriented along the local grid eastings, as labelled.



Alt Resources is scheduled to commence drilling at Bottle Creek in March, 2018, pursuant to the terms contained in the Option to Purchase Agreement for Bottle Creek (see Note 2 below). Drilling will aim to confirm historical intercepts and increase the current confidence in historical data. The data is considered to be reliable, however insufficient QAQC measures were included in the historical drilling, sampling and analytical procedures to be able to bring the deposit to a modern JORC compliant resource. Alt's drilling program will then aim to infill the existing drill sections to further increase confidence in the resource estimate.



Significant intercepts for exploration targeting at Southwark are listed in Table 1 (see link below). The significant intercepts described in this release are representative, and do not include all of the significant intercepts included in historical data from the Southwark deposit. In this release, the Company is attempting to illustrate to shareholders the gold grades present at Southwark, and their continuity between drill sections. The Company considers the historical work by EZ and Norgold to be of generally high standard and reliability, and an excellent starting point on which to base modern exploration and develop a growth strategy for Bottle Creek.



Notes:



1 See ARS announcement, 22nd November, 2017: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/D5NQHG4E



2 See ARS announcement, 8th November, 2017: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/QCE95126



To view tables and figures, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/0ZOLOJ8K





About Aurenne Alt Resources Pty Ltd





Aurenne Alt Resources Pty Ltd is an Australian based mineral exploration company that aims to become a gold producer by exploiting historical and new gold prospects across quality assets and to build value for shareholders.
China said on Thursday an Indian drone intruded into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector which includes Dokalam, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of Chinas territorial sovereignty.

Chinas Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, (UAV) invaded Chinas airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

However, there was no immediate response from the Indian Defence Ministry.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a professional and responsible attitude to verify the device.

I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited, he said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

He said further details can be obtained from the Chinese military.

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

The action of the Indian side violated Chinas sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side, Geng said.

In its diplomatic protest to India, China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas, he said.

Geng declined to reveal the details of the drone. He did not confirm whether it has taken place near the Dokalam where the two countries were locked in a 73-day-long border standoff, which ended on August 28.

The standoff ended after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to Indias Chicken Neck corridor.

India had objected to the construction highlighting its security concerns. The road was being built by the Chinese troops in the area also claimed by Bhutan.

Asked whether the protest was lodged in Beijing or Delhi, he said he is not aware of the details.

I know that China has lodged solemn representation to the Indian side, he said.
Two video clips that were posted on WhatsApp by the killer went viral in no time. The murderer was very much confident in his gruesome act. No one knows why, and you cannot imagine the inhumanness that Afrazul had gone through just because of his religion, a daily wage labourer from West Bengals Malda.

Shambhu Nath Raigar, who was wearing a red shirt and white trousers, is seen leading Afrazul to a spot. The labourer may have been led to believe he was there for a job. Shambhu Lal follows him and suddenly attacks him repeatedly with a weapon. Loud wailing and screams for help are heard as the video becomes increasingly difficult to watch. It is shocking how he killed the man and made a video of it.

When the victim falls silent, Shambhu Lal looks into the camera and launches into a deranged hate speech, declaring that he killed to save a woman from love jihad. Police found a motorcycle, scooty, axe, bottle of petrol and a half-burnt Aadhaar card on the spot. However, Afrazuls identity remained unknown till the video surfaced on social media. In the video, Raigar is seen striking Afrazul with an axe, dousing him with petrol and setting him ablaze before fleeing the scene. In the video, Afrazul was seen crying for help even as Raigar attacks him with an axe and then burns him alive. Raigar had allegedly brought along a friend with him to record the video of the incident. The accused said to have taken the victim to the spot in his agricultural farm on pretext of work. In the video, there is also a long speech on love Jihad and patriotism. There was another video of Raigar, in which he admitted to committing the crime and mentioned that he will surrender. The Rajasthan government set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the killing and to find out if there was any communal angle to it.

There is no fear of law here, no fear of police there is no government. We must set an example where people must fear that there is a government that will set certain rules. There is a large Rajasthani community living in West Bengal for centuries. Such incidents may provoke backlash from large Muslim community in West Bengal. Before resorting to violence, people need to think what will be the consequences of their actions. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Love jihad is the monster created by local Sangh Parivar leaders, the raising of an outlandish conspiracy by Muslims to seduce Hindu girls and turn India into an Islamic state. Union Minister of State for Agriculture Sanjeev Balyan was recorded making these fantastic claims in a sting operation run by Cobrapost and Gulail as part of an investigation into the allegations of love jihad that Hindu right-wing organisations have been raising in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. The year-long investigation by the two web portals also captured several important leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Vishva Hindu Parishad speaking about their role in stoking fears about love jihad.

Many leaders of the BJP and affiliated outfits, some of them implicated in recent communal riots, have been caught on camera detailing their methods for splitting up inter-religious couples. The reporters conclude that the sanghs love jihad operations evidently have sanction from the very top level of the BJP and RSS. This not only explains the pan-India reach of the campaign, which is being run all the way from Uttar Pradesh to Karnataka and Kerala, but also the eerily similar narrative around which the love jihad propaganda is built.

Another BJP leader, Kairana MP Hukum Singh  who was accused of rioting in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli  shared Maliks views, the report said. He complained about how Hindus gave too much freedom to their daughters, while Muslims were becoming more and more conservative. Advocating moral policing as a solution to love jihad, Singh said. Union Minister of State for Agriculture Balyan, claimed that love jihad was part of a deliberate attempt to change the countrys demography. Incidentally, Balyan too was accused of inciting people to not cooperate with investigations in the Muzaffarnagar rape cases and of giving a communal colour to events preceding the riots.

Another firebrand BJP leader and MLA, Sangeet Som, when asked how he persuades a Hindu girl who has married a Muslim man to return to her parents, said, We make her see the reason that this is not good for her. We tell her that they are Muslims, they never settle for one woman, whereas a Hindu boy will be automatically sent to jail if he does so. Most importantly, we exert on her emotionally that her mother will die, her father will die and brother might even commit suicide as he would not be able to face the society.

One of factors that consistently emerge in the investigation is the misuse of the legal system to target inter-religious couples. Detailing some of the methods used in the campaign, the report talks of how right-wing groups slap fabricated cases of rape and kidnapping on innocent Muslim men and use force on uncooperative Hindu women who have married Muslim men to make them toe their line and give false testimonies against their husbands. Apart from exposing the communal mindset of those involved, their own admission is evidence of how they have broken the law at several levels. Love Jihad is nothing but the Modus Operandi, its a political tool and its a medium to express and spread hatred. The vandalism and communal clashes in the country are the result of love jihad allegations brought against a Muslim man by right-wing groups. Love jihad, Hindu groups have frequently claimed in the past, is an institutional practice among Muslims where men of the community are trained to woo Hindu women and convert them to Islam. In recent years, it has been used to break up numerous inter-religious unions and to harass and even kill those involved in such marriages.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
The gruesome murder of Mohammed Afrazul in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan has raised questions about the security of Muslims in the country. Ever since the BJP has come to power there has been a rise in attacks over people belonging to minority community. Who has the audacity to kill a person, record a video and make it viral online? This incident might disrupt law and order in West Bengal a communally sensitive state. Several debates have taken place over rising intolerance in the BJP reign.

The nation has witnessed more than 700 outbreaks of communal violence in last year that killed 86 and injured 2,321 people. Muslims who form about 15 per cent of Indias people have to bear the brunt of communal attacks as they are feeling insecure under BJPs rule. Hindu extremist groups have strengthened during Modi government regime. Incidents like lynching, forced conversion, threats and attacks on religious places have increased but the government is turning a blind eye towards it. Why is the government failing to take stringent action against accused?
Real estate investment firm Warden Capital plans to covert a former auto dealership into a self-storage facility with boat and RV parking.

Construction should begin in the first quarter of next year at the 8.5-acre site at 5600 Oporto Madrid Blvd. off Interstate 20.

The facility is expected to be open for business in the later part of next year, said Warden Capital Managing Principal Hawkins Entrekin.

"This will be our first project in Birmingham," Entrekin said. "We recently completed a similar rehab and conversion on a project in Louisville which turned out quite nicely."

The firm plans a full renovation and rehab of the existing buildings. The storage facility will take up about 79,000-square-feet of storage units and 115 covered RV/boat parking spaces for rent. The average unit will be about 105 square feet. The facility will have "top of the line" security, he said.

Entrekin said the facility should serve the surrounding area of Irondale, Mountain Brook, Crestwood and Avondale.

"Self-storage facilities like ours do well in cities where there is population growth and many people want to live in an urban environment  which increasingly describes Birmingham today," he said. "As housing sizes trend downward, people need somewhere to store all the stuff they no longer have room for."

Entrekin founded Warden Capital two years ago after working on commercial real estate and distressed debt acquisitions for RSF Partners, a $600 million real estate private equity fund based in Dallas, he said.
Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, head of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, met with church members and clergy in September and October to discuss the controversy over same-sex marriage.

About 1,200 church members and clergy took part in meetings with the bishop as part of her update on the Commission on a Way Forward, an effort to promote healing of division over the gay marriage issue.

Wallace-Padgett posted a letter Dec. 5 and released a summary of findings, which showed widespread support for maintaining the church's ban on openly gay clergy and the ban on officiating same-sex marriages.

In a survey completed during the meetings, 82 percent of participants said their congregations agree with the United Methodist Church not ordaining persons who are in same-gender relationships; 18 percent disagree.

The survey showed 80 percent of participants in the meetings said their congregations agree with the United Methodist Church clergy not officiating at weddings of same-gendered couples; 20 percent disagree.

After 111 clergy came out as gay before the 2016 United Methodist General Conference, risking being defrocked, more than 2,355 other United Methodist clergy signed a letter of support for them.

The United Methodist General Conference, the denomination's law-making legislative body which meets every four years, approved a plan by bishops to delay all votes on the homosexuality issue and form a study commission.

The gatherings in North Alabama expressed concerns about the "impact on the effectiveness of the UMC's ministry as a result of ongoing disagreements," denominational unity, theological concerns and membership loss.

Recommendations included emphasizing scriptural and theological principles, maintaining the current stance of the United Methodist Book of Discipline, and focusing on the church's core mission.
The Alabama Department of Transportation is looking to make modifications to the interchange at Interstate 65 and State Route 160 in Blount County.

DeJarvis Leonard, ALDOT east central region engineer, said there are safety and operational issues at Exit 284. "We want to determine a way to address these issues," he said.

Members of the public will be able to view four possible ways ALDOT could improve the off ramp during an informational meeting in Warrior on Thursday, Dec. 7. The meeting is from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Cross Roads Baptist Church at 801 AL-160 in Warrior.

No formal presentation will take place, but residents will be able to ask questions of ALDOT representatives and designers.

"The off-ramp going north in the evening backs on the interstate," Leonard said. "There are safety issues related to turning movements on the off ramps."
New exhibition raises awareness of the plight of tens of thousands who gave gone missing since Syrias war began in 2011.

You hear the gallery before you see it  a mournful folk melody, then a mans voice reciting other mens names, hometowns, and mobile phone numbers.

Then you see the five display cases.

Each one contains a piece of a shirt, tilted so you can read the names, hometowns, and phone numbers still being recited over the loudspeaker.

Some of the ink is smudged, but most of the writing is legible, and that makes these squares of fabric valuable.

They comprise a makeshift catalogue of the 82 men being held in a secret intelligence prison near the Mezzah military airport in Damascus during 2012.

They are also the heart of a new exhibition at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington: Please Dont Forget Us, about the estimated 100,000 political activists who have disappeared during Syrias civil war.

Mansour Omari came up with the idea to memorialise his detention and that of his fellow political prisoners.





It was in my mind all the time, Its my job, my task, to document the names, Omari told Al Jazeera at an event to mark the opening of the exhibition.

In 2011, Omari started keeping a list of missing political activists for the Violation Documentation Center, a local human rights organisation.

The government had been denying reports it had anything to do with the activists disappearances.

The centre was trying to get answers for many worried families.

The norm in Syria, when somebody is arrested, the family gets scared to ask about their loved ones, Omari said.

Its an atmosphere of fear. If you want to look for your son or your loved one, it also brings a threat to you.

Eventually someone decided the list keeper needed to be stopped  soldiers raided Omaris office and arrested him in February 2012.

During his detention, Omari decided the best way to get back at his captors was to keep doing what hed been doing on the outside: Make a list of his fellow detainees, and try to get it to the outside world.

Omari says his closest friends in the prison thought it was a good idea, and so they sprang into action.

They casually gathered everyones names and other information so no one would think to tip off a guard.

They then secretly created a mixture of their own blood and rust from their cells iron bars to be used as the ink. The pen: Chicken bones.

Best handwriting

One of the prisoners, Nabil Shurbaji, wrote all the names  because he had the best handwriting.

His was the dress shirt that would be used to smuggle the lists out of the prison.

Shurbaji, Omari, and the others agreed: Whoever was released first would wear Shurbajis shirt. The scraps would be hidden inside the collar and cuffs.

The group reasoned soldiers would never search the shirt for contraband.

Miraculously, the plan worked. Omari was released in 2013.

He shared the story of the secret prison and the scraps of fabric with filmmakers Sara Afshar and Nicola Cutcher.

They featured him in their documentary, Syrias Disappeared.

Museum officials then asked Omari if he would agree to put the fabric on exhibition, so that visitors could learn what is happening right now inside Syria.

Omari agreed, because all of this would help him in his mission: Helping the families of the disappeared.

It was very important to give the names to the families, to contact the families, to tell them, Your sons are alive. Many families I contacted, they didnt know any news about their sons. It was the first time they knew anything. Mothers cried. It was also very hard work for me, contacting mothers to tell them about their sons.

But sharing the news isnt the same as getting his fellow prisoners out and back home. Nabil Shurbaji was killed by a military guard in another prison in 2015.

Back in the gallery, visitors say little as they huddle around the cases. They leave behind comment cards with the words, Save Syria and Why do so many of us decide to act upon hatred?

Theyre bearing witness, acknowledging what has happened, and is still happening, inside Syria.
After 10 years in prison, Teodora del Carmen Vasquez, convicted under a strict abortion law, hopes she will be freed.

San Salvador, El Salvador  Sitting in the concrete courtyard of Ilopango womens prison in San Salvador, El Salvador, Teodora del Carmen Vasquez speaks slowly, with the tone of someone who has told her story many times.

It was more 10 years ago that she made a 9-11 call that led to her 30-year prison sentence.

I told them I was pregnant, and that I was going to have my baby, she recalls as other prisoners mill around the courtyard doing their daily tasks.

I asked them to help me  I kept dialling, but the ambulance never came.

Four hours later and still in extreme pain and bleeding, Carmen Vasquez says she went to the toilet of a school where she was working.

When I was in the toilet, I hadnt even sat when I felt something come down, and I fainted, she tells Al Jazeera.

After regaining consciousness, Carmen Vasquez says she sat outside the toilet waiting for help, surrounded by her blood, unaware that she had already delivered her daughter and that the baby was stillborn.

Someone else who was in the school at the time had spotted the blood and flagged down a passing police patrol.

They by Carmen

that I had killed my baby . [But] I thought the baby was still inside [me]]

When the police arrived, they did not give her the medical care or help she so desperately needed.

Instead, they handcuffed her.

They told me they were arresting me for the crime of homicide, she recalls.

A female police officer pushed me and told me you b***h, you are going to rot in jail.

Carmen Vasquez, who was 24 years old at the time and pregnant with her second child, says that when the police arrested her, she was still losing blood and had little idea of what was going on.

I did not hear anything. I never heard anything. I did not hear my baby cry, she says.

I was waiting for them to come to help me because I didnt have any knowledge, there was a lot of blood, and that was [all I knew].

Carmen Vasquez was taken straight to jail.

They  [said] that I had killed my baby . [But] I thought the baby was still inside [me], Carmen Vasquez says as she recalls a story still vivid in her memory.

She says she was taken to receive medical care after overhearing one police officer say: The woman is going to die here, take her to hospital.

When she woke up, she was surrounded by reporters who took her photo and filmed her, but did not ask  anything.

It was only months later that a judge found her guilty of aggravated homicide and sentenced her to 30 years in prison.

When they told me that I was sentenced to 30 years, I felt that my whole world had come crashing down. Carmen Vasquez says.

She was charged under a strict law in El Salvador that prohibits abortion in any circumstance.

Carmen Vasquez, her lawyers and supporters, including international human rights organisations, say she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl.

But the state accused her of aborting her child.

Hope for Carmen Vasquez

After 10 years in the squalid and overcrowded Ilopango prison, which houses nearly 10 times the number of people it is designed to hold, Carmen Vasquez hopes that conviction will soon be overturned.

San Salvadors Second Court of Judgement is set to review her case next week.

One of her lawyers, Katia Recinos who works with the pro-choice group Citizens Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, says she believes the review will lead to her client being freed.

Recinos tells Al Jazeera that the legal team was able to persuade the court to review the case because the forensic investigation was not executed correctly.

[The Institute of] Legal Medicine established that the baby died due to perinatal asphyxia, but we were able to determine [that] the baby was dead before she was born, Recinos says.

The lawyer explains that the incomplete assessment provided by the forensic doctors at the time combined with the fact that Carmen Vasquez had an ineffective legal team led to her conviction.

The General Prosecutors Office of the Republic of El Salvador was not available for comment.

Strict abortion law

El Salvador is one of only five countries where abortion is criminalised in all cases.

Under the law, which was implemented in 1998, women can be charged with murder and other related charges for an abortion or suspected abortion carried out for any reason.

Additionally, medical professionals can face prosecution for not reporting a suspected abortion.

Rights groups say that this has created an environment of suspicion that often leads to women who have suffered miscarriages, stillbirths and other medical emergencies during pregnancy, being falsely accused of having an abortion.

When a woman goes to the doctor because she has aborted naturally, the presumption of guilt automatically reigns instead of the presumption of innocence, Alberto Brunori the representative for Central America at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told local media in August.

Under the law, women can be charged with abortion or aggravated homicide.

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If convicted of abortion, a woman faces two to eight years in prison. Those convicted of homicide are sentenced to 30 to 50 years.

According to Recinos, a woman is typically charged with an abortion if she is suspected to have ended her pregnancy within the first 12 weeks of gestation. She is charged with aggrevated homicide, however, if she is suspected to have ended the pregnancy after the first 12 weeks.

But she adds that the judge often decides the charge solely based on the beliefs or gender biases that he has.

The law has been justified by the countrys Catholic community and right-wing politicians.

Gregorio Chavez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, told the BBC in 2015 that all human life is sacred.

He added: Eliminating it is a murder and if there are two lives in danger, mother and child, we must save the life of the weakest, the son.

At a 2016 plenary session on the topic of abortion in El Salvadors Congress, Ricardo Velasquez Parker, of the opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista party (ARENA), declared: If article one of our Constitution establishes that the person is recognised as a human being from the moment of conception, I do not need anybody to come to explain from a propagandist perspective that a  child to be born must pay for the broken dishes in  the unfortunate case of rape.

I would remind the deputies of all political forces that there is no Salvadoran that goes to church  that has principles and values that will see in a favourable light, in electoral matters, a deputy who votes in favour of decriminalising abortion, Velasquez Parker said.

They by Victor

do not understand that most of the time women do not have access to water, electricity and sanitary services. In these communities, many women do not even realise they are pregnant.]

Recinos says that this sentiment is often echoed in the media.

Many times, the media portrays them [the women] as murderers of their children, she explains.

Victor Pena, a journalist who works for the Salvadoran website El Faro, says Catholic families control the two major newspapers in the country.

Many times journalists have no choice but to follow that editorial line, fearing losing their jobs if they do otherwise, Pena tells Al Jazeera.

There is also rampant ignorance about how the lower classes live, he adds.

They [the upper-class] do not understand that most of the time women do not have access to water, electricity and sanitary services. In these communities, many women do not even realise they are pregnant.

But public opinion may be changing.

A 2013 Amnesty International survey found that 74 percent of Salvadorans were in favour of abortion when the life of the woman is in danger.

Over the last couple of years, there have been several protests to support both sides of the debate.

At a demonstration against the strict abortion law in September, 50-year-old Santo Froiland told Al Jazeera that the problem with El Salvador is that the legislation is made directly by men.

All the issues that are there are always favouring men in a macho style, putting aside all the rights women have, he said.

Las 17

While Carmen Vasquez sentence is one of the harshest, her story is not the only one.

She is part of what is known as Las 17 or The 17  a group of women who were convicted between 1999 and 2011 after losing their babies.

The women and their supporters say they suffered miscarriages, stillbirths or the child died shortly after birth.

The majority of Las 17 are like Carmen Vasquez: Young and poor.

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According to the Federation of Feminist Organizations, a network of womens groups in El Salvador, several of these women arrived at public health facilities bleeding and asking for help. But out of fear of being prosecuted themselves, medical staff contacted the police instead of providing care.

Rights groups say these women are guilty of nothing more than going into labour prematurely or experiencing gestational complications.

In most cases, these are women without resources who suffer obstetric emergencies or spontaneous abortions [miscarriages] and, when they go to hospitals, they are reported by the medical staff, because they are afraid of prosecution, Recinos explains.

I believe that my country hasn't treated me well at all, I didn't expect this, I didn't expect this from my country. by Carmen Vasquez

Their imprisonment doesnt just affect the women but also their families.

Most of them are single mothers, their life partners are abroad, Recinos says.

She adds that before being convicted, many of these women supported their families financially.

Once arrested, the womans family often struggles to pay the legal fees to support them in court.

Carmen Varquez family is still paying off the fees from her first lawyer 10 years ago.

In 2014, the Citizens Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, supported by Amnesty International, petitioned the Supreme Court to free the 17 women.

Three  Maria Teresa Rivera, Carmen Guadalupe Vasquez Aldana and one woman identified as only Mirna  have had their convictions overturned.

For Carmen Vasquez and her family, they hope her upcoming day in court will bring the same news.

The lawyers have done an excellent job, I hope that in this revision, we will be successful, and I can be there, outside, thats what I wish the most, she says.

But even if the conviction is overturned, Carmen Vasquez sister Cecilia fears for her life.

I dont want her to stay here, Cecilia says.

First of all, because of the discrimination that she will suffer from the family. Secondly, because the boys, the gang members, Im scared for her, she adds.

She has not been around for 10 years now, once she comes back, they will try to investigate her, to know why was she in jail . She could easily become a target of these criminal groups.

Carmen Vasquez says if she is freed, leaving may be her best option.

I would like to leave and never come back, she says.

Because believe me, I believe that my country hasnt treated me well at all, she adds.

I didnt expect this; I didnt expect this from my country.

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Womens Media Foundation as part of the Adelante Latin America Reporting Initiative.
A large number of people see Islam as alien to the Georgian national identity.

Muslims have lived peacefully in Georgia for centuries, a country with a majority of Orthodox Christians which considers itself as tolerant to all faiths, but a large number of people see Islam as alien to the Georgian national identity.

The attitude is a source of much frustration in its southwestern region of Adjara, where about 30 percent of ethnic Georgians follow Islam, most of them living in its highlands.

Hurie Abashidze, a 25-year-old postgraduate psychology student, grew up in one of the lush green mountainous villages of the area, which is close to the Turkey border.

But Abashidze was sheltered from such sentiment amid nation-building in the newly independent Georgia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

She used to overhear her mother complain when ethnic Georgian Muslims were branded as traitors who worshipped the God of the countrys past invaders  Arabs, Persians and Ottomans, but she had not encountered any negativity addressed to her until 2012.

Generally Christianity is always equated with the Georgian identity so the more Muslims there are, the more risk of losing the Georgian identity, according to them by Hurie Abashidze, postgraduate psychology student

That was when  at the age of 20  she started wearing a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion.

Generally, if you are not visually recognisable as a Muslim, people are fine with you because they dont necessarily ask about your religion. But if you are wearing a hijab and express your religious identity, you get a different reaction, she told Al Jazeera.

My family members had such a good reaction to my decision though that I didnt pay much attention to the outsiders.

With a nervous giggle, she said typical behaviour from strangers ranged from surprise and judgemental looks to swearing by men and cursing by women.

Hurie gets less of this treatment in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, than in Batumi, the administrative capital of her native Adjara.

Thats probably because there are more Muslims in Batumi. They seem to think that we are stripping away their national identity. It is associated with losing the Georgian identity, she said.

Generally Christianity is always equated with the Georgian identity so the more Muslims there are, the more risk of losing the Georgian identity, according to them.

Hurie thinks the only way to confront this is by Muslims becoming more visible in society, and she called on her fellow headscarf-wearing citizens to be active.

To influence positive change, she recently participated in public discussions on the topic and cooperated with the Tolerance and Diversity Institute (TDI)  a non-governmental organisation based in Tbilisi.

TDI commissioned a short video about Huries life as part of a project, implemented in the framework of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to promote tolerance through stories of people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Eka Chitanava, TDIs director, told Al Jazeera that a lack of knowledge created space for myths about other faiths.

TDIs research has shown that the religious diversity is portrayed negatively in Georgias school textbooks. For example, Muslims are equated to invaders without following up by explanations of the [historical] context, she said.

The contributions to the Georgian culture by other religious groups or their representatives are often not mentioned. Also, the fact that religious officials of Orthodox Christian and other faiths used to have strong cooperation and good relations between each other is often missed.

That cooperation and tolerance was broken by the totalitarian system of the Soviet Union and then continued by inertia, she said.

We still havent found a way out of the Soviet influence. Step by step, we must come out of it by providing more information to especially the young generation so that the ethnical and religious diversity is seen in a positive light and not as a risk of losing our national identity.

I returned to my ancestors religion

Despite their parents objections, some young ethnic Georgian Muslims who were born or grew up after independence, are choosing Orthodox Christianity over Islam.

They see it as a correction of a historical wrong, referring to Adjaras population adopting Islam during the Ottoman Empires rule over the region.

I decided to get baptised when I became a university student, when I looked deeper into our history, Mikheil Nakashidze, a 35-year-old lawyer from Adjara, told Al Jazeera.

Georgia was one of the first countries where Christianity was spread and it happened exactly through Adjara, so I decided to return to my ancestors religion.

He also said he converted because he could not read Arabic, so was praying in a language he could not understand.

His mother, a practising Muslim, was hurt and did not speak to him for three days.

But later she made up with me and told me that there was only one God and it did not matter in which way I believed in Him or served Him, said Nakashidze

Tariel Nakaidze, the head of Georgian Muslims Union, told Al Jazeera that there are currently between 300,000 and 350,000 Muslims in the country.

But out of all big cities, there was only one mosque in Tbilisi and one more in Batumi.

Tbilisis Jumah mosque is shared by Sunnis and Shia because Soviets destroyed the Shias house of worship decades ago  it was never rebuilt.

Batumis Orta Jami is not big enough to accommodate the Friday congregation; some worshippers offer prayers outside in the rain and snow, according to Nakaidze.

Talk of a new mosque in the city started more than 20 years ago, he said.

In 2015, a group set up by the Georgian Muslims Union aimed to secure a government permit to build a new mosque.

After receiving a verbal green light from the mayors office, the Union bought a plot of 3,000 square metres with contributions from the Muslim community, according to Nakaidze.

But the permit never came. A rejection letter arrived with an excuse that the location was not suitable for the mosque, prompting a legal case by the Union.

To protest the decision, we opened the mosque in open air on May 26, Georgias independence day, and we have not stopped performing prayers there since then.

We built a little hut-like structure to protect people from the rain and the authorities issued a penalty for it but we are not going to pay anything, he said.

The authorities dont say it out loud of course, but in closed-door discussions they mention that they dont want to upset the Christian community and thats why they are not ready to give the permit. But we are still hopeful that we will reach our goal through court.

We see this struggle as the struggle for real democracy. Neither a Christian, nor a Muslim has the right to stay in the way of the democratic development of Georgia, so in this case we have a civil obligation to see it through that this mosque, which now became a symbol of democracy, is built, he said.

Meanwhile, Hurie remains hopeful.

I took a university coursemate with me to the presentation of the film [about me], she said.

She was surprised to learn that there were people out there who reacted to me in such a negative way. She told me after the event: I am very happy to know you. And it was really very pleasant for me.

Follow Al Jazeeras Tamila Varshalomidze on Twitter: @tamila87v
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has called the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel a war declaration against Palestinians and urged his people to launch a new Intifada, or uprising.

Hours after Haniyas speech, Palestinians took to the streets of the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza to show their anger at US President Donald Trumps announcement.

Trump reversed decades of US policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and announcing his intention to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Palestinians called for three days of rage to protest the US decision.

The Israeli military fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition at Palestinian protesters in Gaza and the West Bank.

Protests were held in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, among other cities.

Dozens of Palestinians sustained injuries in the ensuing clashes.
By allowing Trumps third travel ban to take effect, the US Supreme Court has aided the rise of Islamophobia in the US.

On Monday, December 4, the United States Supreme Court allowed the third version of President Donald Trumps travel ban to take immediate effect. The latest rendition of what is broadly called the Muslim Ban, a campaign promise that Trump delivered on three times during the first 10 months of his presidency, limits entry of nationals from six Muslim majority nations (Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen) and two additional states on which the order has minimal practical effect (North Korea and Venezuela).

The Supreme Court decision is a limited one, overturning the lower courts restraining orders on the Ban until it is able to rule on the constitutional claims. However, it is significant on several accounts.

The decision is striking in that it is the first time the federal courts, and indeed the Supreme Court, has endorsed this version of the Ban in its entirety. The ruling revives and reinstates the Ban as standing immigration policy. The Supreme Court stay foreshadows a ruling on the constitutional challenges made against the Ban that may allow it to stand for the duration of the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court decision enables, only days after Trump issued a series of inflammatory tweets featuring the British ultra-nationalist Jayda Fransen, an administration bent on robustly institutionalising Islamophobia into their domestic and foreign policy programmes. The decision is a major victory for Trumps broader Islamophobia campaign, which he mounted as a candidate and now moved forward as president, and a major blow for the more than 100 million Muslims in the six restricted states, and the six to eight million living in the US.

Impact on Muslims from prohibited states

The Executive Order that will go into immediate effect, until the Supreme Court rules on the merits of the constitutional challenges. The Ban has a limited effect on nationals from the two designated non-Muslim majority states, and as stated by law scholar Peter Marguiles, North Korea is a red herring  since its nationals arent free to leave, and Executive Order-3 only affects a few Venezuelans related to government officials there.

Critics (pdf), including myself, have pointed to the inclusion of North Korea and Venezuela (in the third Travel Ban) as intentional strategy on the part of the Trump Administration to overcome the First Amendment Establishment Clause challenge, holding that it violates the separate of church and state mandate by facially discriminating against Muslim foreign nationals; and castigating an entire religion, Islam, as a faith conflated with terrorism.

The Ban, however, has a disparate effect on nationals from the six Muslim-majority states. It is not monolithic in effect. The Ban prohibits all immigrants (those intending on becoming legal residents) and temporary visitors holding tourist and business traveller visas from Chad, Libya, and Yemen. The scope of the Ban is far broader for Syria, restricting all immigrants and temporary visitors, regardless of the nature of the visa. Iranian immigrants are categorically barred by the Ban, while only holders of student and scholar (F, J, and M) visas may be permitted entry. Finally, Somali immigrants as a class are restricted from entry, while all visa holders will be subject to extra scrutiny.

This is the state of immigration policy for the foreseeable future. And from the perspective of nationals from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen seeking to join loved ones stateside, embark on studies or research, or commence a new career or life in the US, it is tantamount to a Muslim Ban.

Impact on Muslims in the United States

The Supreme Court decision will have a direct and collateral effect on Muslim populations currently in the US. For visa holders from the restricted states, leaving and coming back into the country will be encumbered by more intense vetting and questioning at points of entry (airports, land checkpoints). Although the Ban does not cover lawful residents (green card holders) and American citizens that originally hail from the restricted states, it drives a wedge between them and family members, friends and loved ones. For instance, children living in the US cannot send for their parents for a visit, and elderly family members needing immediate medical attention will be denied entry. Most direly, those with family and friends in the three nations ravaged by war and instability, Libya, Syria and Yemen, can do little while their loved ones face grave danger.

Beyond these immediate ripples, the Supreme Court ruling generates considerable momentum for an administration entirely wed to carrying institutional Islamophobia forward on the domestic front and intensifying the War on Terror in the heart of Muslim communities across the United States. And namely, plans to advance and enhance counter-radicalisation policing programs that, like the Ban, link Muslim identity to the possibility of a national security threat. With regard to domestic surveillance, the theoretical safeguards attached to citizenship may do little to protect Muslims suspected of homegrown radicalisation.

The presumption that Muslim identity alone is tied to suspicion of terrorism is the foundation of modern Islamophobia. An Islamophobia, of which the most threatening form, is hardly the vile rhetoric spewed by bigots or the violence unleashed by private citizens, but rather, the executive actions signed by presidents and affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Trump is no outlier with regard to championing Islamophobia, and the Supreme Court decision manifests that the highest halls of state power may not echo the brazen terms of his animus, but are in agreement with his vision.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Courtesy of Rock & Roll Hall of FameVoting in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's fan poll for favorite artist nominated for induction in 2018 has closed, and Bon Jovi is the act that's standing tallest in the final tally. The New Jersey rockers notched more than 1.1 million votes, well ahead of the second-place vote-getters Moody Blues, who had just under 948,000.

Rounding out the top five vote-getters were Dire Straits at #3 with about 614,000 votes, The Cars at #4 with almost 553,000 votes and Judas Priest at #5 with more than 538,000.

Thanks to the poll, these five acts will get an extra vote toward induction, although more than 800 ballots are cast each year in deciding which artists are welcomed into the Rock Hall.

That being said, the artists who received the most votes in the fan poll during the last five years all ended up getting inducted, which bodes well for Bon Jovi.

After the final tally was announced, the band posted a Facebook message that read, "Thank you to all of our fans who voted for us to be in the Rock Hall! Your daily votes, posts, and videos went such a long way and we appreciate them all!"

The 2018 Rock Hall inductees will be announced on Wednesday, December 13, at 7 a.m. ET. The induction ceremony is scheduled for April 14 at Cleveland's Public Hall.

Here is the full list of 2018 nominees and the exact number of votes they received in the fan poll:

Bon Jovi: 1,162,146

The Moody Blues: 947,795

Dire Straits: 613,749

The Cars: 552,733

Judas Priest: 538,508

The Zombies: 529,478

Eurythmics: 451,997

J. Geils Band: 349,319

Depeche Mode: 302,144

Nina Simone: 184,628

Kate Bush: 179,337

Radiohead: 176,310

Rage Against the Machine: 167,903

The MC5: 127,004

LL Cool J: 118,317

Sister Rosetta Thorpe: 111,158

Link Wray: 98,436

Rufus featuring Chaka Khan: 84,625

The Meters: 59,045

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Art of Christmas: New Mexico Style

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!)
Its not just Trump. The discourse of Arab leaders also marks the insincerity to achieve a real solution in the region.

Palestinians have been experiencing a collective sense of anxiety and anger ever since President Donald Trump announced that the US formally recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin the process of moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital is yet another painful blow to Palestinian morale as it once again showcases how international powers act without acknowledgement for, or recognition of, Palestinians despite them being the population that bears the brunt of the ramifications.

The problem with the US declaration, however, does not rest within the recognition and statement itself, but in the series of events which led to its manifestation. Its a culmination of international failure to address Israeli human rights violations, perpetual US support to Israel, the incompetency of Palestinian leadership to achieve any solutions through diplomatic efforts, and more recently the new friendship the US administration is building with some Arab states.

History repeating itself

This year  the year Jerusalem is recognised by the US as the capital of Israel  also marks 100 years since Lord Balfour gave the Zionist political movement a right to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The latest American decision thus, echoes the same sentiment whereby international powers ignore the indigenous Palestinian population and their right to self-determination.

Balfour declaration not only demonstrated the dangers of such unilateral statements, but also proved that Israel will employ them to advance their colonial agenda. The 1917 declaration paved the way for Zionist militia to raze Palestinian villages and take over Palestinian land, and today the Trump statement legitimises this history of violence by providing Israel with unrelenting support.

The discourse of Arab states also marks the insincerity to achieve a real solution in the region, one that would hold Israel accountable for its crimes and provide Palestinians with their full rights. by

Trump was correct in stating that Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

Jerusalem has indeed been treated as the capital of Israel for decades, albeit unofficially. It is because of this that the Trump recognition was made possible. The groundwork was already present, and so, all of which led up to this moment is evidence of the international communitys moral bankruptcy when approaching the Palestinian plight.

The Israeli government has been enforcing absolute and complete control over the Palestinian population in Jerusalem, just as it has done in other Palestinian cities and towns. Palestinian Jerusalemites only possess residency cards, which can be revoked at any point, Israel continuously demolishes homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods under the pretext of lacking house permits, and Palestinian youth are discriminatorily targeted by Israeli forces.

It is such Israeli policies, the same policies Palestinians have protested for years, that hushed Palestinian voices so Jerusalem can be presented as de facto Israeli.

Arab leaders ignoring Palestinian cries

What is even more distressing is the fact that this would not have been possible without the compromises made by Palestinian leadership. Palestinian politics have been marred with factional rivalry, security collaboration with Israeli intelligence at the expense of Palestinians, and a series of concessions in the form of agreements and treaties that have never encapsulated the fundamentals of Palestinian demands; justice, liberation and dignity.

And while Palestinians iterated for decades their demands for self-determination and basic human rights, the international community and the Palestinian leadership willfully ignored them to pursue another agenda that revolves around negotiations. This has only birthed more repression and a stark increase in the number of settlements.

Today, we see both the international community and Arab leaders ignoring Palestinian cries for justice once again. This is evident in the dominating discourse of global and as well as Arab leaders  It revolves around the fear of another uprising, instability, and protest. There is no genuine address, in most the speeches and proclamations, to the roots of the travesty bestowed upon the Palestinian people in the form of a violent occupation.

The fixation on the possible reaction of Palestinians and Arab community as being the main reason to oppose this decision obscures the fact that recognition of Jerusalem as an Israeli capital is built on human rights violations and abuse.

It is the amplification of fear the Palestinians/Arabs reaction narrative which may tragically be the framework to push for more negotiations as Arab states scurry to control the havoc of protest and the US pushes its vision for a peace that is merely a facade for giving Israel what it wants; a state without the nuisance of Palestinian existence.

So while leaders around the globe proclaim that this move will bring an end to peace talks, the two-state solution and any stability in the region, the truth is there has been neither peace nor stability in the territories since the start of the Israeli occupation.

The discourse of Arab states also marks the insincerity to achieve a real solution in the region, one that would hold Israel accountable for its crimes and provide Palestinians with their full rights. This is especially true as the flood of condemnations against the decision is propagated.

Palestinians have memorised this scenario and the reality that no action will be followed. The truth is, the US has an agenda that is aligned with Israeli interests and Arab states have been cajoling to the Trump administration, limiting any action.

Just this summer, we witnessed Palestinians protesting Israeli measures on al-Aqsa. Then too, there was condemnations and outcry from Arab states and international countries. However, this symptomatic and symbolic approach will only continue emboldening Israels occupation and takeover of Palestinian land.

Between the lines of Trumps speech on Wednesday, there is Israels message to the global community. It foretells that if you commit enough crimes while reciting a story to the world, you will get what you want and get away with it.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Arabs and Muslims hoping to hear directly from Donald Trump on his new policy on Jerusalem on Wednesday must have been shocked to witness the United States president deliver an Israeli speech instead. The tone was Trump, but the words and spin were all Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trumps claim that officially recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was merely recognising reality is pure Israeli reasoning  central to the occupations strategy of creating facts on the ground.

Palestinians know this. Arabs know this. The international community knows it, too. They all know that if you give an inch of Jerusalem to Israel, it will take the lot, and in the process, undermine peace efforts and cause havoc.

The US Congress also knew this, which is why they put a waiver clause in the original 1995 US Embassy Act in the first place. Three previous US presidents also knew it, which is why they used the waiver to avoid implementing it for more than 20 years. And everyone  from the world leaders who called Trump to warn him, to the state department officials and diplomats who advised him against his decision  knew that as well.

Netanyahu knows it too. Did Trump? Maybe, but it was too late. He had drunk Netanyahus Koolaid.

If there was ever doubt in the Arab mind about Israeli tail wagging the US dog, it dissipated with Trumps latest statement on Jerusalem. Within minutes, the Israeli premier appeared smug on television to thank the American president for recognising Jerusalem as capital of the Jewish state, and encouraged others to follow suit.

For decades, many of ruling elites of Arab states exploited the cause of Palestine and Israeli desecration of Jerusalem for their own interests. by

Mahmoud Abbas was furious. He accused the Trump administration of rewarding aggression and inflaming religious extremism. It was a humiliating moment for the Palestinian president who long placed his bets on Washington and the peace process only to see it destroyed with one speech.

For all practical matter, the speech is the product of President Trumps closest advisers since before he became president and the trio entrusted for the Peace Process: David Freedman, Trumps ambassador to Israel, Jason Greenblatt, his diplomatic ambassador at large, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The three New Yorkers are ultra-Zionists and stand to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu on the questions of unconditional support for Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. They are actual sponsors of illegal settlements themselves.

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Imagine if an American president appointed three American-Islamist Hamas sympathisers to run US Israel policy.

Trumps announcement is a violation of international law, to cite French President Emmanuel Macron. The speech in its totality is a declaration of war on Palestinian rights, wrapped in peace rhetoric. Its devoid of any mention of Palestinian plight or US commitment to a two-state solution. Which explains the appearance of the UN Secretary General briefly right after the speech to insist that theres no alternative to two states solution with Jerusalem as capital of both states.

It humiliates the US Middle Eastern friends and as Palestinian leaders say, disqualifies for good the US role as broker in any peace process. Its emphasis on historic if not exclusive Jewish rights to Jerusalem and Palestine will further weaken the so-called moderate Arab camp, and embolden US detractors and extremists across the region, especially in Iran.

Even before the speech, Arab and Muslims leaders, including Trumps newfound friends, expressed their concern, criticism and outright condemnation of Washingtons decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After the speech, these leaders called for emergency meetings of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has 57 members, in the coming days.

If by 

dont rise to the occasion and meet the expectations of their bitter and angry citizens, the US will continue to reward Israel for its aggression and Trumps much anticipated ultimate deal will be no more than the ultimate humiliation that pushes the region towards the brink.]

So what? Ask the sceptics.

US haters couldnt hate the US any more than they already do, and US allies wouldnt jeopardise their relations with Washington for the Palestinians sake. The Arab regimes issue statements and declarations for public consumption only. In reality, they are too weak or too divided to do anything about it. The entire Arab order has imploded in recent years under the pressures of civil wars and regional conflicts.

For decades, many of ruling elites of Arab states exploited the cause of Palestine and Israeli desecration of Jerusalem for their own interests. And today, a new generation of leaders is willing to abandon the Palestinians and Jerusalem altogether to enhance their power base with US and, yes, Israeli support. This was best expressed last week in a new Saudi hashtag gone viral: Riyadh is more important than Jerusalem, as its new rulers began to warm up to Israel under US tutelage.

All of which explains the timing and aggressive temperament of the US position.

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The USs longest-serving envoy to the peace process, Dennis Ross, has written an entire book, Doomed to Succeed, to reel against Washington obsession with balancing relations between Israel and the Arab world and caring too much for Arab sensitivity. A vocal Zionist, he argued that American leaders didnt learn from the lessons of their predecessors who naively give weight to Arab positions on Israel, when according to Ross, Palestine is not the Arabs priority.

Regardless of whether his claims are true or otherwise, the current US administration seems to subscribe to Rosss theory. Trump called his Arab allies to inform not consult them about his dangerous decision on Jerusalem.

Despite their plea for a softer and slower approach, Trump decided to kick them where it hurts, while at the same time, express support for their stance against Iran  in return for their compromises on Palestine. However, its Iran that has come out on top this week, thanks to Trumps Netanyahu emulation.

The so-called moderates may have registered their rejection of the US move, but it remains to be seen in the days and weeks to come whether Arab leaders will do more than hold meetings and issue empty statements.

If they dont rise to the occasion and meet the expectations of their bitter and angry citizens, the US will continue to reward Israel for its aggression and Trumps much anticipated ultimate deal will be no more than the ultimate humiliation that pushes the region towards the brink.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Hundreds rally in Greek capital to commemorate the 2008 killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

Athens, Greece  Protesters have clashed with police officers in the Greek capital as they marched through the city to commemorate the ninth anniversary of a police shooting that killed a teenager.

Black-clad youth fired flares and lobbed Molotov cocktails and stones at police officers in Syntagma Square on Wednesday afternoon, while hundreds marched to protest the 2008 police killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

The last word will be ours, these days are for Alexis, demonstrators chanted as they marched through central Athens. Cops, pigs, murderers, others yelled.

The march mostly remained peaceful, but a small group of masked demonstrators smashed windows of banks and stores during the protests.

More than 2,000 police officers were deployed in the city, according to local media reports.

A second march was held in the evening, with hundreds of demonstrators assembling and rallying against the police.

Giorgos Maniakis, a demonstrator with the Initiative for Political and Economic Solidarity, said that Grigoropoulos has become a martyr for the movement.

The murder of a 15-year-old young person nine years ago was a moment that was a prelude for everything that followed in Greece, he told Al Jazeera, referring to economic crisis and political violence the country has witnessed in recent years.

It marked a very important experience for a whole generation.

Savas Michael-Matsas, leader of the leftist Workers Revolutionary Party, spoke to Al Jazeera as he marched in Athens. He was only 15 years old and killed by police brutality, he said.

The revolt which followed the murder of Grigoropoulos was the first political explosion of the current crisis, he added.

He was an innocent victim of police brutality, but the revolt is symbolic of the political and social problems that make life so terrible in this country.

Michael-Matsas argued that the teenagers death signalled to many Greeks that if you just protest you can be killed.

The police officer who shot Grigoropoulos was sentenced to life in jail after being convicted of deliberate manslaughter.

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Yet, the killing subsequently sparked massive upheaval across Greece, with riots and clashes with police on a regular basis.

Late on Wednesday, anarchists and other demonstrators clashed with riot police in Exarchia, a neighbourhood that serves as a stronghold for anarchist and leftist activists.

Demonstrators erected barricades throughout the neighbourhood, setting fire to rubbish bins and hurling rocks and chunks of pavement stones at police officers. Officers fired tear gas and flash bangs at the demonstrators.

Writing on Twitter, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of New Democracy, a centre-right opposition party, accused the leftist-led government of failing to control the unrest on Wednesday.

Syriza, the ruling party, came to power in January 2015 after campaigning on a left-wing platform. It has since become the target of criticism for reneging on its promises to abandon the countrys austerity programme.

Seraphim Seferiades, a politics professor at the Panteion University, said the annual commemorations of Grigoropouloss killing serve as an outlet for people to express anger and rage at Greeces ongoing political and economic crises.

It is a display of genuine anger for the most part  but not exclusively  against police brutality, which has been very much felt by many Greeks, he told Al Jazeera.

The solution is to deal with the political issues underneath, which requires to change policies, he added, referring to the countrys austerity measures and economic hardships.

But there has been no political will to do that.
US president is rolling back the countrys efforts to fight climate change. Heres a look at what he has done so far.

Last week, a group of more than 100 members of Congress sent a letter to Donald Trump, calling on the US president to reconsider his decision to remove the threat of climate change from his National Security Strategy.

We have heard from scientists, military leaders and civilian personnel who believe that climate change is indeed a direct threat to Americas national security and to the stability of the world at large, the letter read.

Trump announced his National Security Strategy at the end of last year, dropping climate change from its list of global threats.

The move, the politicians said, represents a step backwards on this issue and discredits those who deal in scientific fact.

Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama, added climate change to the list of threats in 2015, saying it was an urgent and growing threat  contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.

Trumps reversal of the Obama-era stance comes at a time when city and state officials in the US move, without the president, to address climate change and its threats.

Just before Trump announced his National Security Strategy in December, city officials from the US and around the world met in Chicago to outline a collective plan to combat climate change at the local level, an effort they say is more ambitious than their respective national governments.

The North American Climate Summit brought together city and other local leaders who have signed onto a plan to combat climate change, known as the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

Nearly 7,500 localities, representing more than 680 million people around the world, have committed to the plan, according to organisers.

Among other goals, the covenant aims to reduce carbon emissions to meet the aims of the Paris Agreement, the international accord that seeks to reduce global carbon emissions and keep the worlds temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The deal entered into force in November of last year, and 170 states have ratified it to date.

Across the world, cities have made voluntary commitments to take significant action on climate change that are in line with, and in many cases more ambitious than, their respective national government baselines, the Global Covenant said in a statement.

But, as local leaders move forward in their fight against climate change, many climate experts and analysts, as well as politicians, say the US president is taking steps to reverse any progress.

President Donald Trump has attempted to roll back environmental protection measures and commitments to fight climate change that were made under previous US administrations

Al Jazeera examines the Trump administrations environmental policies, what appointments the president has made on the environmental file, and how local and state-level governments across the US have responded.

What are the Trump administrations policies?

Since taking office, Trump has systematically undone many existing climate and environmental safeguards, as well as policies pursued by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved, under Trump, to repeal a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Passed under the Obama administration, the Clean Power Plan (CPP) sought to reduce emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.

The Trump EPA has argued the CPP is not consistent with the Clean Air Act  a federal law to protect air quality and reduce air pollution across the country  but that claim has been challenged by environmental experts.

The government also says a repeal would take another step to advance President Trumps America First strategy.

The administration justified the decision by saying it is working to fulfil a campaign promise to bring coal mining jobs back to struggling communities across the country.

The move was welcomed by coal mining companies and some coal miners, who attended a public hearing on the proposed repeal in West Virginia in November.

Robert Murray, CEO of private coal mining company Murray Energy, referred to the rules as the no power plan, Reuters news agency reported. Murray, whose company had filed a lawsuit against the CPP, was accompanied by 20 miners from Pennsylvania and West Virginia at the hearing.

Reuters also reported that Scott Segal, head of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said the CPP is expensive and illegal because it requires some utilities to reduce emissions far away from the power plants themselves.

Despite Trumps promises to bring back coal, production levels and new jobs in the industry only slightly increased, according to local media.

And analysts and climate activists believe the Trumps position on CPP moves the US in the wrong direction.

Its an attack on the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land on which we stand, Nanette Diaz Barragan, a Democratic representative from California, said in a statement in March.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration dropped a proposal to limit the number of endangered whales, dolphins and sea turtles that can be killed by fishing nets off the West Coast. Its EPA dismissed several members of an advisory board that is tasked with verifying its scientists research, and has proposed cutting the EPAs overall budget by about 30 percent.

In March, Trump signed a presidential permit to begin construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, reversing a decision made by the Obama administration to abandon the multi-billion-dollar project after an environmental assessment.

Despite major concerns from environmental groups and indigenous and other local communities about the potential of a devastating oil spill, Trump said the pipeline  which will pump tar sands oil from Canada through several US states  would create jobs and stimulate the US economy.

In October, the president announced he would open up bids to lease almost 77 million acres (about 31 million hectares) in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.

The sale, which is expected in March, would be the largest offering in US history, and open an area the size of New Mexico to drilling, according to Fortune magazine.

In December, the Trump EPA also dropped a requirement that forced mining companies to prove they have the financial means to clean up any pollution they cause, the Associated Press reported. The decision came amid pushback from mining groups and Republicans in the western US, the news agency said.

The National Mining Association, a mining advocacy group, welcomed the decision.

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, the groups president and CEO, in a statement.

Todays action shows that reason can prevail, Quinn said.

The EPA justified the move by saying the requirement was unnecessary and that it imposed an undue burden on the US economy and rural parts of the country where most mining jobs are located.

But among Trumps many policy changes, his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement last year may be the most controversial and most widely condemned, both in the US and internationally.

Why did the US drop out of the Paris Agreement?

In line with his administrations America First mantra, Trump has argued the agreement undermines the US economy and the countrys sovereignty. But the president has said he would be open to renegotiating a deal thats fair to US interests.

The withdrawal process will take until November 2020 to complete.

When he announced the withdrawal, Trump said, the same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance.

I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris, he said.

However, the mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, said his city would continue to follow the guidelines set out by the accord.

As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future. https://t.co/3znXGTcd8C  bill peduto (@billpeduto) June 1, 2017

Experts have warned that, as the worlds second-largest carbon emitter behind only China, the US decision to withdraw from the agreement may weaken global efforts to control climate change. US emission cuts alone accounted for 20 percent of the deal, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States European allies have lobbied hard against a US exit from the deal, arguing that it would weaken its enforcement measures and undermine the resolve of other countries to make their own tough cuts, the report stated.

In January, Trump said the US could conceivably return to the accord if the agreement was amended to be more in line with US interests.

Its an agreement that I have no problem with, but I had a problem with the agreement that they [Obamas administration] signed because, as usual, they made a bad deal, Trump said.

Who has Trump appointed to lead the climate file?

The president appointed Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, the organisation that is tasked with protecting the health of US citizens and the environment.

Pruitt is a longtime recipient of donations from oil and gas companies, and, as the former attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the agency he now heads 14 times, according to EDF Action, an advocacy group allied with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Among those lawsuits, Pruitt challenged an EPA measure that would have curbed mercury and toxic air pollution from power plants, and another EPA guideline that sought to limit pollution from new, modified or reconstructed oil and gas facilities, EDF Action outlined.

Pruitt is also a climate change denier who has repeatedly questioned whether human activity is responsible for climate change.

Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialogue. And well it should be, Pruitt said, before his appointment as the new EPA Administrator.

But 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities, and experts have slammed Pruitts comments.

Mr Pruitt has claimed that carbon dioxide caused by human activity is not the primary contributor to the global warming that we see. Mr Pruitt is wrong.  Ben Santer, climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The scientific community has studied this issue for decades. The consensus message from many national and international assessments of the science is pretty simple: Natural factors cant explain the size or patterns of observed warming, Ben Santer, climate researcher at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, said in a statement.

A large human influence on global climate is the best explanation for the warming weve measured and monitored, Santer said.

Dr Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, added in a statement that Pruitt has demonstrated that he is unqualified to run the EPA or any agency.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the planet is warming and it is primarily due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels, he said.

A recent report by a non-profit coalition of researchers and other academics found that climate change web content is being censored by the Trump administration.

Although there is no evidence of any removals of climate data, we have documented overhauls and removals of documents, web pages and entire websites, as well as significant language shifts, the Environmental Data Governance Initiative said in its January report.

The report highlighted that the EPAs removal and subsequent ongoing overhaul of its climate change website raises strong concerns about loss of access to valuable information for state, local and tribal governments, and for educators, policymakers and the general public.

It added: While we cannot determine the reasons for these changes from monitoring websites alone, our work reveals shifts in stated priorities and governance and an overall reduction in access to climate change information, particularly at the EPA.

Do US citizens support the presidents policies?

Nearly 70 percent of people across every US state said the country should participate in the Paris Agreement, according to a study released by the Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University in May.

Nearly half of all Trump voters (47 percent) said the US should stay in the agreement, the same study found, compared with only 28 percent of Trump voters who said the US should not participate.

Another survey published in October by the same Yale University programme found that a majority of US citizens would be willing to pay a carbon tax on fossil fuels and would support investing that tax revenue into renewable energy.

The Trump administration has claimed its policies have broad support in Appalachia, the central part of the country that is home to most coal mining and other traditional industries that leave a larger carbon footprint.

Mining industry lobby groups and companies have welcomed some of the presidents recent actions, including the repeal of regulations on the coal industry.

A strong energy industry is a goal that will benefit all Americans and is achievable without diminishing the significant environmental protections that Americans rightfully expect, said Quinn of the National Mining Association in a recent statement.

However, Bill Price, an organiser with the Sierra Club in West Virginia, recently told Al Jazeera that local communities were ready to move away from coal and other dirty industries. Many people are realising the economic benefits of moving away from coal and towards more sustainable sources of energy, he said.

The coal miners that I talk to in the community are more and more understanding that they need to be looking at a transition, Price said.

They need investment from the federal government and the state government in that transition, and they understand that their industry is dying and not much can be done to revive it.

According to May 2016 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coal mining accounted for 53,420 total jobs in the US. That figure includes managerial and human resource jobs, as well as engineers, extraction workers and mining machine operators.

How have local and state-level officials responded?

Since the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement, 385 US mayors  from cities across the country including Albany, New York, Houston, Texas, and Sacramento, California  have committed to the climate plan.

More than 2,500 city, state, business and university leaders from all 50 states have also signed on to the We Are Still In pledge to demonstrate an enduring commitment to tackling climate change, ensuring a clean energy future, and upholding the Paris Agreement.

Additionally, dozens of governors, members of US Congress and other officials from across the US have and continue to speak out against the administrations environmental policies.

Christiana Figueres, vice-chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors, said Decembers summit in Chicago is an opportunity to continue acting on the political will to tackle environmental issues and show that local action is being taken to fulfil commitments.

Barack Obama also addressed the meeting, saying it was an unusual time where the United States is now the only nation on Earth that does not belong to the Paris Agreement, and thats a difficult position to defend.

Now, the good news is that the Paris Agreement was never going to solve the climate crisis on its own. It was going to be all of us. Cities and states and businesses and universities and nonprofits have emerged as the new face of American leadership on climate change, the former president said.

Attorney General for New York, Eric Schneiderman, is leading a coalition of his counterparts and other legal officers from 23 US states, cities and counties against the repeal of the Clean Power Plan.

We wont hesitate to protect those we serve, Schneiderman said in a statement, including by aggressively opposing in court President Trumps actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change.

Additional reporting by Vittoria Elliott

This article was originally published in December 2017. It has been updated as part of a multipart series examining the State of America Under Trump. Also read:

Trumps America: A shrinking space for protests

Trumps America: Dreamers must make deal with devil

Trumps America: War of attrition on journalists

Trumps America: A war on police, or their detractors?
Activists say that lynching of Muslim Indians is a growing phenomenon in many parts of the country.

New Delhi, India  A Muslim man was hacked and burned to death in Indias western state of Rajasthan in a suspected hate crime.

The half-burned body of the victim was found by the police on Thursday morning on a street in Rajsamand, over 300km away from the state capital Jaipur.

A resident of Rajsamand has been charged with murder.

According to the police, the victim has been identified as 48-year-old Mohammed Afrazul, who was working as a labourer in the town.

A YouTube clip shows the accused leading the Muslim man to a secluded spot and attacking him with a weapon. The victim cries out for help until he falls silent.

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The attacker, identified by the police as Shambhu Lal, then addresses the camera and delivers a warning against love jihad, which the Hindu far-right believes is a conspiracy by Muslim groups to lure Hindu women into marriages with Muslim men and to convert them to Islam.

You jihadis, this is the fate that awaits you. Stop love jihad in India, or else you will meet the fate of this man, the attacker says in Hindi.

He then proceeds to douse the body with petrol and set it on fire.

This is a brutal crime. Prima facie it does not look like this is done by a normal human being, Rajasthans Director-General of Police, OP Galhotra said at a press conference in Jaipur on Wednesday.

The probe by a special investigative team has made it possible for us to arrest the killer seen in the video, he continued, adding that The probe is in its initial stages.

It is one of the worst crimes in the recent upsurge of attacks suffered by Indias Muslim and Hindu lower caste communities.

Growing climate of hate

Harsh Mander, activist and former bureaucrat, says there is a growing climate of hate in India.

We have a political leadership now in the country that has created an environment which is permissive of acting out hate speeches and hate actions. Lynching of this kind is a growing phenomenon in many parts of the country, Mander told Al Jazeera.

We recently went on a journey across eight states to reach out to families who have been affected by lynchings and found that this is happening in the name of the cow and love jihad. We met around 50 families of victims on this journey.

Rajasthans states Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said he was shocked by the disturbing video which went viral on social media.

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It is shocking how he killed the man and made a video of it, Kataria told Indian news agency ANI. The accused has been arrested, and a special investigation team has been set up. Any person will be disturbed by the video.

Indian media reports suggested a second video reportedly filmed after the incident showed the same man making inflammatory comments at a local temple.

Mander said people do not feel that reported cases are held to any sort of accountability.

The role of the police is extremely worrying because they tend to register cases against the victims rather than the accused, he said. So people feel there is a permissive environment and a sense of impunity.

We are going to see more and more of this kind of hate, I am afraid, he added.

A brutal crime

Additional Director-General of Police in the state of Rajasthan, Pankaj Kumar Singh, confirmed to Al Jazeera that they have arrested the attacker and that the incident in Rajsamand is being investigated seriously.

He will face the consequences, Singh told Al Jazeera.

This is not the first case of anti-Muslim hate crime in the state of Rajasthan.

Earlier this year, a Muslim dairy farmer called Pehlu Khan was attacked and beaten to death by scores of Hindu cow vigilantes on a highway. Last month, another dairy farmer in the state, Umar Mohammed, was shot dead, allegedly by Hindu cow vigilantes.

Activists say Hindu far-right groups have been emboldened by Prime Minister Narendra Modis rise to power in 2014. Leaders of Modis Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have openly declared India a nation of Hindus, posing a challenge to its multi-faith constitutional commitment.

About a fifth of Indias 1.27 billion people identifies as belonging to faiths other than Hinduism.
Benjamin Netanyahu says his government in contact with many countries who may recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said more countries have indicated their willingness to recognise the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a day after the United States formally announced that it does.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, ignoring warnings from the international community, broke with decades of US policy and said Washington would recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the US embassy there.

I want to tell you that we are in touch with other countries that will make a similar recognition. And I have no doubt that the minute the US Embassy is moved to Jerusalem, and even beforehand, there will be a move of many embassies to Jerusalem. It is time, said Netanyahu, addressing foreign diplomats at the Israeli foreign ministry on Thursday.

He did not name any countries that had indicated they would make such a move.

On Wednesday, the Czech foreign ministry indicated that it recognised Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel, in a statement posted on its website.

The Czech Republic currently, before the peace between Israel and Palestine is signed, recognises Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967, said the statement, adding that it considered Jerusalem to be the future capital of both Israel and Palestine in the future.

The ministry can start considering moving of the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world.

Calls for policy change

Trump said on Wednesday the US would begin moving its embassy to Jerusalem in the coming months, despite repeated warnings from around the world that the gesture negated the possibility of peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The president insisted that the US continues to back a two-state solution, which would see a new Palestinian state created alongside Israel, and that his announcement did not indicate that the US was taking a position on any final status issues, including contested borders.

Netanyahu welcomed the decision in a televised speech on Wednesday, calling it an important step towards peace.

Addressing diplomats at a conference on Thursday, Netanyahu called upon European states to change their policies towards Israel, stressing that he believed there was a distinction between several countries stated and actual policies.

I ask that your actual policies towards Israel be no more and no less than the policies of the Arab world, he said. There has been a sea change, that is not reflected in public commentary, especially not these days.

But if you knew the wealth of contacts, the wealth of friendships, the commonality of interests and in some basic sense  the hope for a better, freer more liberal future for our peoples, then you would understand that there has been a pivot in Israels standing not only in the world but also in the Middle East.

The US move has received widespread criticism from governments around the world, with Palestinian leaders terming it an act of war.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait and others condemned the move.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the decision had effectively killed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

This decision has killed the peace process, has killed the Oslo [accord], has killed the settlement process, he said. The US decision is an aggression, a declaration of war on us, on the best Muslim and Christian shrines in the heart of Palestine, Jerusalem.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera that Trump had disqualified his country from any possible role in the peace process.
Diverse groups express their anger over US President Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Hundreds of Jordanians have demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Amman, demanding its closure and the expulsion of the US charge daffaires from Jordan in response to President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

President Donald Trump issued a statement on Wednesday proclaiming the US decision and preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jordanian parliamentary political blocs, Islamist movements and independents had called for protests on Thursday and Friday across Jordanian cities and in front of the US embassy in Amman in protest of the US decision.

The US embassy in Amman issued a statement on Thursday suspending public services and limiting the public movement of its staff.

The protesters, who braved cold weather and a heavy police presence, came from diverse political backgrounds and comprised Jordanian nationalists, pan-Arabists, Islamists and leftists.

They chanted America is the head of the snake and No US embassy on Jordanian lands and No US bases on Jordanian soil.

Jordanian police fired tear gas at protesters and tried to disperse them. Protesters remained in front of the US embassy all afternoon and evening.

Many of the protesters at the US embassy and elsewhere in Jordan said their anger was driven by Jordanian nationalist feelings, fearing their country was next on the US and Israeli agendas, and by Arab nationalism and Islamist sentiments because of Jerusalems significance for them.

Sheikh Mohamad al-Hadid, a well-known political activist who participated in the protest, told Al Jazeera that Jordanians fear that Trumps decision is part of a larger US-Israeli plan to end the Palestinian cause at the expense of Jordan and its royal family.

The Americans and the Israelis are trying to create a political environment in the region to make Jordan as the future homeland of the Palestinians, while Palestine is swallowed whole by the Israelis, Sheikh al-Hadid said.

He said Jerusalem is a fateful cause for Muslims all over the world.

Demographic fears

Jordan, a major segment of whose population is of Palestinian origin, stands to suffer the consequences of any future political settlement with Israel that does not consider Jordanian interests or address its demographic fears, according to Jordanian analysts and activists.

Jordanian intellectuals and activists argue that should the US and Israel succeed in eliminating the possibility of a two-state solution where Palestinians would have their independent state, Jordan will be next on their chopping block.

Many members of parliament (MPs) have called on the government to make a strong stand against Israel by withdrawing the Jordanian ambassador from Tel Aviv and cancelling the peace treaty with Israel it signed in 1994.

Saleh al-Armouti, an MP, said the US decision had practically eliminated any Jordanian role as a custodian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem and emboldened the Israeli government to complete its takeover of Jerusalem.

Al-Armouti said that his 14-member Reform bloc, a majority of whom are Islamist MPs, is proposing a bill in parliament to force the Jordanian government to cancel its peace treaty with Israel. He said the bill has already attracted 40 sponsors.

Trump has violated all international laws and agreements, including those sponsored by the US itself, like the Oslo agreements, by recognising the Israelis claims before reaching any agreement with the Palestinians, he said.

In taking this step, the US has made itself the enemy of Arabs and Muslims all over the world.

However, not everyone in Jordan is on the same page especially some current and former government officials.

Former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib told Al Jazeera that while Jerusalem is central to Arabs and Muslims, Jordan cannot do anything about Trumps decision. What Jordan is supposed to do? We cannot do anything, he said.

Al-Khatib also downplayed the high emotions in the Jordanian street saying that Jordanians cannot just pick up and go to the [border] bridge referring to the Jordan River bridge that connects Jordan to the Israeli occupied West Bank.

But Khaled al-Majali, a political analyst and former intelligence officer, disagrees with al-Khatib and argues that Trumps decision practically eliminated the two-state solution and that Jordanians can do a lot more to restore Jerusalem to its rightful Palestinian owners.

Under the American-Israeli plans, the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank will eventually be transferred over to Jordanian control in some kind of political arrangement like a confederation with Jordan over the remaining land pockets in the West Bank, al-Majali said.

Al-Majali said that Jordan is standing alone against the Israeli-American blitz, abandoned by major Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

It is clear to us that Trumps decision was made with Arab collusion, said al-Majali, referring to Arab and Israeli media reports suggesting that Trump announced the recognition decision with the agreement of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter @Ali_reports








A judge has ordered the arrest of former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at a Jewish community centre.

Judge Carlos Bonadio ordered on Thursday that Kirchner, who led the country from 2007-2015, be placed in pre-trial detention and stripped of her judicial immunity.

The judges order also calls for the arrest of Hector Timerman, former foreign minister, and a number of other officials from Kirchners two administrations.

Al Jazeeras Teresa Bo, reporting from Buenos Aires, said Kirchner has been accused of treason and interfering with the investigation into the bombing based on a memorandum of understanding between the governments of Argentina and Iran.

This accusation is based on an agreement  that would allegedly allow Argentine judges to interrogate Iranian officials that Argentina claims were involved in that investigation, she said.

The Mutual Israeli-Argentine Association (AMIA), a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, was allegedly blown up by a member of Hezbollah in 1994.

Argentine prosecutors have alleged the attack was ordered by the government of Iran.

The arrest order is also linked to accusations made by the murdered special prosecutor, Alberto Nisman.

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Nisman, who was investigating the AMIA bombing, alleged that Kirchner had covered up the role of Iranian officials in the attack.

Nisman was found dead in his home on January 18, 2015.

He had been set to explain his accusations in a congressional hearing the following day.

The death, initially declared as suicide, provoked an outcry against government corruption in Argentina.

Kirchner claimed the murder was the work of intelligence agents intent on destabilising her government. In response, she shut down the Secretariat of Intelligence, replacing it with the Federal Intelligence Agency in March 2015.

Kirchner, who is facing several corruption charges from her time as president, is set to take a seat in the Senate next week. Her election in October marked a return to politics.

The Senate will now have to vote on lifting Kirchners immunity. However, this is not likely to happen before the end of 2017, according to Bo, because of the holiday recess and divisions over the validity of the judges decision.

Many are questioning this arrest warrant because theyre saying that Kirchner was not even tried, she said.

Many of her administration are currently on preventive detention, and thats why theres many among the members of the previous government that are saying that the judge and the judiciary are persecuting [them] and that they are victims of the administration of [current President] Mauricio Macri.
Protests have broken out in the Gaza Strip in response to US President Donald Trumps expected decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, as Palestinian leaders called for three days of rage against the move.

Protests have broken out in the Gaza Strip in response to US President Donald Trumps expected decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, as Palestinian leaders called for three days of rage against the move.

Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza city on Wednesday, carrying banners denouncing Trump, hours ahead of his impending declaration that would also see the US embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The declaration, which is expected at 18:00 GMT on Wednesday, comes amid global condemnation of the decision.

Al Jazeeras Rosiland Jordan reports on how the location of the US embassy in Israel has long been a contentious matter in Washington DC.
French president reiterates the need for reconciliation between Gulf countries as he meets Qatars emir in Doha.

French President Emmanuel Macron has backed mediation efforts led by Kuwait to end a six-month blockade imposed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The Saudi-led quartet cut diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar on June 5 after accusing it of supporting terrorism, allegations that Qatar strongly denies.

A key regional summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries was cut short on Tuesday after the head of states from the three blockading countries failed to turn up.

With regards to situation in the Gulf, I want to see a promise of reconciliation between its members, as I have said since the beginning of the crisis, Macron said on Thursday at a joint press conference in Doha with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Sheikh Tamim reiterated the need for open talks between the parties to resolve the crisis, but said sovereignty was not subject to compromise.

We need to sort out the problems but not at the expense of our dignity and our sovereignty by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani

We need to sort out the problems but not at the expense of our dignity and our sovereignty, he said alongside the French leader.

We cannot accept intervention in our internal affairs. Qatari people have the right to know the reasons behind the blockade and the violence.

Sheikh Tamim also said that Qatar has been committed to fighting terrorism.

The two countries also signed commercial contracts worth around 12bn euros ($14.15bn).

Qatar has agreed to buy 12 more Rafale fighter planes from French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation and will employ Frances Suez to dredge and clean Qatars lagoon.

Qatar has also retained Frances RATP and SNCF to build and operate a metro system in Doha.

In total, it amounts to nearly 12 billion euros which was signed today and which underlines the closeness of our relations, Macron said.
At least 50 Palestinians have been injured in protests against a US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to protest against the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a contentious move that has inflamed tensions in Palestine and across the region.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces in a handful of cities throughout Thursday.

Over 50 Palestinians were injured in the protests, and 16 were sent to hospital, according to local health authorities in the West Bank.

Al Jazeeras Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Ramallah, said the clashes were dissipating after several hours of quite vigorous confrontation between the youth and the Israeli army.

Palestinian protesters gathered at the central Al Manara square in Ramallah and marched towards El Bireh, where they were met by Israeli troops firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

Protests were also held in Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Jericho in the West Bank, according to Anadolu news agency, as well as in East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.





At least four Palestinians were injured in Gaza after Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at dozens of demonstrators who assembled east of Khan Younes, in the southern part of the coastal territory, according to Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Trump, ignoring warnings from the international community, announced on Wednesday that the US formally recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the city, breaking with decades of US policy.

The decision has been condemned by world leaders who have described it as a dangerous escalation and a final nail in the coffin of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, while Israel says the city, which is under Israeli occupation, cannot be divided.

Trumps announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in, said Federica Mogherini, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs.

In a speech in Gaza City on Thursday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has said the US decision is a war declaration against Palestinians, and called for a new Intifada, or uprising.

Haniya said US President Donald Trumps recognition killed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

This decision has killed the peace process, has killed the Oslo [accord], has killed the settlement process, he said.

The US decision is an aggression, a declaration of war on us, on the best Muslim and Christian shrines in the heart of Palestine, Jerusalem. We should work on launching an Intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy, Haniya said.

Days of Rage

Palestinians had called for three days of rage in response to Trumps announcement on Wednesday, and for the closure of local schools and stores.

Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from East Jerusalem on Thursday, said a small-scale protest had been ongoing for most of the day outside Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City.

There has been a good deal of anger and just disbelief at what has happened overnight coming out of the White House, he said.





Israeli police, meanwhile, attempted to break up the protest and confiscated Palestinian flags, he reported.

In Ramallah, Al Jazeeras Abdel-Hamid said another round of confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers was expected on Friday.

We expect more scenes [of] violence and unrest across the entire occupied West Bank, she said.

Ignoring warnings

On Thursday, Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera from Ramallah that Trump was joining Israel in the war crimes and in confirming the annexation of the occupied Palestinian Territories.

I hope that the Palestinian Authority will not accept to meet with this American team any more, he said.

Israel decided it wants everything. They want everything? Fine. We will also fight for everything, he said.

We might be talking about a popular wide uprising but non-violent one, similar to the first Intifada. Thats what we need. Israelis should see the Palestinian resistance everywhere.
Palestinians continue day of rage protests against Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank  Hundreds of Palestinians marched through Bethlehem in a day of rage protest against Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, as anger over the controversial decision continues to spread across the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israeli military forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters in Bethlehem on Thursday, and at least seven youths were injured in the clashes, including one small child.

Men, women and children participated in the march, which was among several held in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem, as well as in major cities across the region, throughout the day.

Palestinian leaders also declared a general strike across the Palestinian territories.

I am seeing people at this protest that never come out to these kinds of demonstration, Rabee Alsos, 32, told Al Jazeera in Bethlehem.

Jerusalem and al-Aqsa [Mosque] means a lot to everyone here, even the children. This [US] decision is a big mistake.

Trump announced on Wednesday that he was recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital and that he would begin the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the city, to the disbelief of Palestinians and world leaders.

No country currently has its embassy in Jerusalem.

West Jerusalem was seized by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from historic Palestine, referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba (catastrophe) when Israel was officially founded.

Israel subsequently occupied and annexed the eastern part of the city after its military victory in the 1967 war, but its control over East Jerusalem has never been recognised by the international community.

Palestinians want occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel says the city cannot be divided.

While Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister, thanked Trump for this weeks decision, Palestinian leaders declared three days of rage to protest the controversial move.

Munther Amira, head of the Bethlehem-based popular struggle coordination committee, told Al Jazeera that Jerusalem is a red line for Palestinians.

This decision is against international law and against our rights as Palestinians, said Amira, his eyes bloodshot red from tear gas during the protest in Bethlehem.

Years of negotiations in this peace process [were] based on a two-state solution, with East Jerusalem as our capital, said Amira, adding that the decision will lead to a new intifada, or uprising, against both Trump and Israel.

Trump did not just announce that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He has shown us clearly that the US and Israel are the same thing.

Some Palestinians at the protest said they had never been able to visit Jerusalem.

Israel maintains strict control over access to Jerusalem, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip need special Israeli-issued permits to enter the holy city.

But Alsos said he was protesting for his six-year-old daughter, whom he said: deserves to see Jerusalem.

I want her to have a future here in Palestine, he said.

During the protest, a group of Israeli settlers came to watch and stood behind the Israeli soldiers.

Another Palestinian protester, Ramzi, who did not give Al Jazeera his last name in fear of reprisals, said that Palestinians were thirsty for Jerusalem and called on Trump to officially apologise to Palestinians.

America is biased in favour of the [Israeli] occupation, the 15-year-old told Al Jazeera.

But we are ready to sacrifice ourselves for Jerusalem. I am ready to sleep in Jerusalems alleys until it is liberated.

Jihad, 24, who also did not give Al Jazeera his last name, said that while Palestinians have reacted with anger, their response remains limited.

We dont have guns or planes to fight these soldiers, he told Al Jazeera.

We know throwing these stones does not have much of an impact, but this is a symbol of our rejection of Trumps decision.

Jihad added: How can Trump give away a land that he does not own?
Palestinians say that long-standing US bias towards Israel has pushed the peace process towards irrelevance.

The city of Jerusalem, with its historical, religious and political significance, has always been a prominent symbol for the Palestinian cause, or what is left of its tattered remains.

With a stroke of a pen, the United States, which has undertaken the role of peace broker between the Israelis and Palestinians for over two decades, has become the first country in the world to recognise the whole Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

But to the majority of Palestinians, who say their interests were never pursued by their leaders, the unprecedented move came as no surprise, and the peace process will have little meaning.

Abdelsattar Qassem, a professor of political science at the an-Najah University in Nablus, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinian leadership will not bring about any seismic changes to the peace process.

Nothing will happen, he said. [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas is not a man who takes decisive decisions, and he is not in a position where he has any choices.

He will go to the negotiating table if called on because he thinks it is a privilege to meet President [Donald] Trump, Qassem continued.

He is not going to sacrifice any chances to meet with the Americans.





The PA, whose economy is propped up by international conditional donor aid, relies on an annual budget of $300m from the US.

The 1993 Oslo Accords was based on the UN resolution 242, which called for a two-state solution with occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestine state.

Yet Israel showed no signs of cooperating to move in this direction, and did not rescind its 1980 law which stated Jerusalem as its undivided capital.

On the opposite spectrum, the Palestinian leaders made one concession after the other, turning the entire peace process into a farce.

In exchange, these leaders got what they craved for: recognition at the international level and a system of pseudo governance and control over a few ever-shrinking territories in the face of continued Israeli occupation and land expropriation.

Talal Awkal, a Gaza-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera that in light of Trumps decision, the expected course of action  if the Palestinian officials had political leverage  would be for the US to stop its mediating role.

Abbas did say that if this decision took place then the US can no longer be a mediator, Awkal said.

However, the US will continue to practice this role whether we like it or not, although this time its position will be unequivocal to the Arabs especially with regards to the deal of the century'.

Echoing Qassems view that nothing will change, Awkal said that the US administration will attempt to soften their decision through empty verbal bribes to the Palestinians.

On their part, the Palestinians might choose to hasten their way to the ICC, he said, or speed up the process of reconciliation talks. But the peace process will remain.

Pro-Israel bias

On this day in 1988, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) recognised Israel on 78 percent of the country, including West Jerusalem, which Israel occupied and illegally annexed in the aftermath of the 1967 war.

Yet the initial reaction from the US was frosty, and considered the PLOs recognition of Israel as falling short of long-standing American requests.

The US had long said it would not deal with the PLO until it stated unambiguously that it recognised Israels right to exist in addition to UN resolution 242 and 338, the New York Times reported at the time.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the PLO, told Al Jazeera Trumps decision on Jerusalem ends the charade that the US can be an even-handed peace broker between Israelis and Palestinians.





He has just given Israel permission and support to annexe Jerusalem, to transform its character, to kick out the Palestinians, and to Judaise it without any kind of accountability, she said.

Ashrawi said PLO leaders must begin looking for a new strategy to hold Israel accountable.

We have to redefine everything: our relationship to Israel, our relationship to the United States and also our relationship to the rest of the world that pays lip service to a two-state solution and allows Israel to destroy it.

Previous statements by US officials regarding Jerusalem has also made their bias towards Israel clear. Furthermore, the US gives Israel an annual military aid of $3bn.

For Qassem, it is these enduring US positions that have made the peace process useless, and the Palestinians unsurprised at Trumps decision. In his words, there is no popular anger on the streets.

The Palestinian cause has been on a steady decline and it is primarily the fault of the PLO and Palestinian leaders, he said. Signing the Oslo Accords and defending Israels security sends a message to the world to recognise Israel and its rights, leaving the Arabs racing each other to normalise relations with it.
After US President Donald Trump ignored warnings from the international community and formally recognised Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, some Twitter users focused on how Arabs contributed in the loss of Jerusalem.

The status of the holy city is an extremely sensitive aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Israel claims the whole city its capital  following the occupation of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war with Syria, Egypt and Jordan  Palestinians have long seen East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Jerusalem was lost from the day Sadaat visited it and the day you all danced for Oslo, wrote Mourid Barghouti, a celebrated Palestinian poet and writer, referring to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the Oslo Accords.

When Sadat took over the presidency in Egypt in 1970, he offered a peace settlement with Israel along the lines of UN Resolution 242, which, more or less, cemented Israels military victory.

As for the Oslo Accords, in 1993, the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally recognised one another for the first time, and committed to negotiate a solution to their decades-long conflict based on territorial compromise.

The accords did not stipulate, but implied, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That two-state vision required Israel to abandon its negation of Palestinian claims to national sovereignty, and Palestinians accept that such claims would be limited to only a small part of the entire territory of historic Palestine for which the PLO had been fighting, recognising Israels sovereignty over the remainder.

Oh Arabs and Muslims, Bolivia will ask for an emergency security council meeting in the event that Trump recognises Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Where is the Arab representative in the security council to call for such a meeting? said Abdullah K. AlShayji, a professor at Kuwait University.

   #          #  #   #!!

       #     !    (@docshayji) December 6, 2017

Bolivia said it would request a meeting of the United Nations Security Council after Trumps announcement on Wednesday, with Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz, UN ambassador, describing the move as a reckless and a dangerous decision that goes against international law, the resolutions of the Security Council, it also weakens any effort for peace in the region and also upsets the whole region.

Abdullah Hamidaddin, a social anthropologist, said: Trump deals a blow to the Arabs and Muslims and calls on them to accept it quietly. He throws resolution 242 against a wall and insists that the US is with the peace process. He hopes the moderates can do their part, then the extremists can cut off the argument of the moderates. He says Israel is the greatest democracy because it practices apartheid and violates human rights.

#:

      .

  242       .

          .

          .  Abdullah Hamidaddin (@amiQ1) December 6, 2017

The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967, calling for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict. It emphasised the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security.

While all parties ultimately accepted the resolution, it took two decades for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to do so. The PLO criticised the resolution for viewing Palestinians only as refugees, and not as a people with national rights.

There is no way Trump could have undertaken this decision without studying and making sure that the Arabs will not really mind..and if they did, they wont be able to do anything about it!, said Mohamd Nashwan, a Gaza-based writer.

   #         

       ..

      !#___     (@MohamdNashwan) December 6, 2017

As the world rejects and condemns Trumps decision, we find the conspirators also riding this wave of condemnation, said user @BoMuhannd.

https://twitter.com/BoMuhannd/status/938641647180664832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

You see muslims in sheesha lounge, listen to nasheeds about Palestine and wearing scarfs around their clean shaven faces, women chanting slogans, singing songs, waving. You think Palestine is going to be liberated like that?! #SaveAlquds #FreePalestine wrote @KoshurSeh, a user in Indian-administered Kashmir.

https://twitter.com/KoshurSeh/status/938453287124135936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

While most lamented Trumps move, some used the moment to criticise Palestinians.

The Palestinians do not sympathise with you or your causes. Instead they line up next to your enemies because they simply hate you. But despite that they ask you to sympathise with their cause, said Saleh Al Fahid, a journalist.

https://twitter.com/salehalfahid/status/938098803906883585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The trip, the first by a Turkish president since 1952, is aimed at boosting ties despite long-standing border disputes.

Athens, Greece  Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan met his Greek counterpart, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, in Athens on Thursday, marking the first time a Turkish president has visited Greece since 1952.

Erdogans two-day trip to Greece has been billed as a landmark visit that could see the two countries boost relations despite several long-standing disagreements.

The Turkish leader came to Greece as prime minister in 2010, and several other Turkish officials have visited the country in recent years.

Greek officials expressed concern leading up to Erdogans visit after the Turkish president said he hoped for an update of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which mapped out the current borders between the two countries.





Among the issues expected to be discussed are economic relations, security and the flow of refugees and migrants from Turkey to Greek islands.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras described the visit as a chance to take bold steps forward.

Low expectations

Thanos Dokos, director of the Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy think-tank, said he did not expect meaningful political progress between the two Mediterranean countries.

There is a systematic dialogue between the two countries, which hasnt solved any of the problems, but there are channels of communication and frequent contact, Dokos told Al Jazeera.

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I have low expectations, neither side is prepared to make serious discussion of the issues, he added, referring to past disputes over Cyprus and the Aegean Islands. This is more of public relations exercise and photo opportunity.

Although he did not expect political dialogue over these issues, Dokos added that he expects economic memorandums of understanding to be signed.

The Greek government has banned protests in central Athens for the duration of Erdogans visit, although protests are scheduled to take place in the city on Thursday evening. Some 2,800 police officers have been deployed in the Greek capital, according to the local daily Ekathimerini.

Seraphim Seferiades, a politics professor at Panteion University in Athens, said the visit is unlikely to go over well with left-wing critics and Kurdish residents in Greece. I dont really think it will make any important differences [between Greece and Turkey], he told Al Jazeera.

But there are problems in Turkey right now  thats a fact, he said, referring to a political crackdown that followed a failed coup attempt during the summer of 2016.
Poland has an ethnically and religiously homogeneous society, but the tiny Muslim group faces hate.

Warsaw, Poland  On the night of Monday, November 27, two men in hoodies vandalised the Muslim cultural centre in Warsaw, breaking windows with stones and pieces of concrete.

The attack took place amid deepening Islamophobia in Poland, where Muslims comprise a mere 0.1 percent of the population.

CCTV footage confirmed the incident, but in the darkness of night, the attackers faces are unrecognisable.

I hope that the perpetrators will be caught soon, said Mariusz Blaszczak, minister of interior.

So far, the men have not been named.

Recent events are part of a politically fuelled, unpleasant atmosphere of xenophobia and racism in Poland. by Anna Lukjanowicz, Polish Muslim convert

This was not the first attack against our centre, said Anna Lukjanowicz, a Polish convert to Islam who works at the institute, citing three previous attacks.

In October this year, a masked man threw a bottle against the front door, leaving visible marks.

Recent events are part of a politically fuelled, unpleasant atmosphere of xenophobia and racism in Poland, she told Al Jazeera. Because of the verbal and physical attacks against not only Muslims, but also people who look like Muslims  that is people with a darker skin, and the attack against the Muslim Culture Centre, Muslims living in Poland are losing the sense of security.

Completed in 2015, the centres architecture blends Middle Eastern tradition and European trends.

It hosts conference halls, a library and the largest prayer room in Poland, with space for 600 people.

At the beginning of 2017, the centres employees wrote to Polish officials, including the president, the prime minister, both chambers of parliament and all parliamentary parties, expressing their concern with the biased media coverage of Islam and its people as well as the consolidation of anti-Muslim attitudes in the political debate.

According to the authors, these could lead to the increase in xenophobia and violence against Muslims.

In, 2016, police figures revealed the second highest number of hate crime incidents after 2015, with 765 reported cases of violence. In 2014, police recorded 262 incidents.

In 2016, local prosecutor offices investigated 1,631 hate crimes fuelled by racism, anti-Semitism or xenophobia.

Since 2015, the number of attacks against Muslims rose from 192 to 362, followed by attacks against Jews and Roma people.

No explicit condemnation from officials

In May 2016, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo abolished an anti-discrimination council that was tasked with preventing xenophobia and intolerance.

The Muslim cultural centres letters generated little response from the authorities. In the only reply, in spite of evidence to the contrary, the office of the Senate said physical attacks against the centre were unlikely.

There are almost no refugees here, but the hysterical way in which the issue was discussed, used and manipulated for political ends has contributed to the increase in violence. by Anna Tatar, from the anti-racist Never Again Association

Facts from the Polish tradition and history show that Christian Orthodox people, Protestants, Jews, Tatars, Ukrainians and Belarusians lived in peace with Poles in our country, making a great contribution to its development, the response read.

Apart from reporting on worrying events, which take place in some countries of Western Europe, we have not noticed any references towards the Muslim community, which has been living in Poland for years, that would be worth condemning.

However, according to Anna Tatar from the anti-racist Never Again Association, which has been monitoring hate crime incidents in Poland since the 1990s, the political narrative in response to the refugee crisis has contributed to the increase in anti-Muslim sentiment in Poland.

The main reason for this change is the way the Polish debate about the humanitarian crisis and the possible acceptance of refugees was conducted. This is a problem which does not concern Poland at all because there are almost no refugees here, but the hysterical way in which the issue was discussed, used and manipulated for political ends has contributed to the increase in violence, Tatar said.

There are a number of examples of statements made by representatives of the authorities, which show that they do not want to see the problem or that they neglect it. For example, at the recent Independence March, a number of openly racist banners were present. Yet, there was virtually no explicit condemnation of the events, she said, an opinion shared by the wider Muslim community.

Some 60,000 people joined the Independence March attended by some nationalists and fascists in Warsaw on November 11  more people than the Polish Muslim population of around 35,000  where chants included: The whole Poland sings with us: f*** off with the refugees.

Public media and nationalist internet sites discriminate against Islam and Muslims and manipulate the public opinion, trying to convince Poles that Islam is a religion of violence, terror, that it is primitive, said Imam Youssef Hadid, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Muslim League in Poland.

There are debates and lectures which spread hatred towards Muslims, people who are invited to speak at them have xenophobic and Islamophobic views, have no knowledge of Islam, and those who specialise in it are not invited.

Moral panic and rising Islamophobia

A study by the Center for Research on Prejudice published in September 2015, found that although 80 percent of Poles do not know any Muslims, two-thirds declare that they would feel uncomfortable in their presence.

More than half of respondents stated that Muslims threaten Polands economic well-being and Polish values, and a similar number agreed with Islamophobic statements. Younger respondents demonstrated a higher level of fear.

What we are currently observing is a moral panic. Polish society is easy to manipulate. Public opinion polls show that we are the first in the EU when it comes to viewing social media as a reliable source of information about the world. Over half of Poles trust social media, said Adam Balcer, a Warsaw-based researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations. The Polish internet is very right wing and nationalistic, and as a result, Polish youth has a negative attitude towards Muslims.

Since the country has one of the most ethnically and religiously homogenous societies in Europe with a small Muslim minority, the right wing plays on irrational fears.

The authorities, which are openly Islamophobic, set the example. This falls on a fertile ground of fears and phobias, which reflect some deeply rooted stereotypes, said Balcer.

He compared the current atmosphere to the interwar period and the existing attitudes towards Muslims to the earlier situation of Jews.

A Jew used to be portrayed as oriental, the other, an eastern man, incapable of assimilating and integrating, who could destroy the nation, he explained.

Those cliches only had to be revived. You can see them in the current fears of the Law and Justices electorate which include the alliance of [George] Soros and the Germans to destroy Polands ethnic cohesion by bringing in refugees.

Following the attack at the Muslim cultural centre, some Poles sent messages condemning the incident and expressing solidarity. Others arrived at the scene and brought candles.

On November 29, a group of activists organised a protest in Warsaw under the slogan No to Islamophobia.

Representatives of the Jewish community have also expressed their regret concerning the attack, acknowledging the rise in negative attitudes towards minorities in Poland.

Poles are a hospitable nation, they are tolerant and respectful of people of other faiths, but unfortunately politics pushes them to spread nationalism and hate towards Muslims, Imam Hadid said.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark calls out Australia for refusing offer to take in 150 refugees on Manus Island.

Suva, Fiji  New Zealands former prime minister has criticised Australias treatment of refugees held on Manus Island, saying it needs to show humanity and allow her country to resettle some of them.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has repeatedly snubbed New Zealands offer to take in 150 out of the 600 refugees who are currently held at detention centres on Papua New Guineas remote Pacific island.

Wheres the humanity? Helen Clark, who served as prime minister from 1999-2008, told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of International Civil Society Week in the Fijian capital, Suva.

Australia isnt allowing New Zealand to help at all. Our offer to help has still not been accepted.

Up until late last month, more than 300 men had barricaded themselves in at one of the decommissioned camps on the island, resisting their relocation after a series of violent attacks against refugees by locals.

The men resorted to drinking rainwater and dug their own wells in order to survive, while pleading for other countries to take them in.

Manus Island police stormed the camp on November 23 and, according to witness accounts, used long metal poles to beat the refugees before dragging them out and relocating them to another site.





When I was prime minister, I offered Australia to take in refugees, and it was accepted, Clark said.

We took in many people, many Afghans, and it was one of the most successful refugee resettlements we had ever done.

Australia has refused to resettle any refugee that arrived by boat since 2013, instead it pays Papua New Guinea and Nauru to keep them in prisons and has been searching for countries that will resettle them.

Few refugees have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, a tiny impoverished atoll with a population of 10,000 people.

Australia had hoped the detainees would be either resettled into Papua New Guinea society or the United States, under a controversial refugee swap, by the time the centre closed.

Under the US deal, struck with previous US President Barack Obama and bitterly criticised by his successor Donald Trump, just 54 refugees have been accepted, with 24 flown to the US.

The situation still unfolding on Manus Island presents a grave risk of further deterioration, and of further damage to extremely vulnerable human beings, Thomas Albrecht, the regional UNHCR representative, said in a statement.

[We] renew [our] call for all Australian parliamentarians and leaders to take immediate action to provide protection and safety for all refugees and asylum-seekers transferred to Papua New Guinea, he added.

Back door

Clark said New Zealand would not be a back door to reach Australia, adding it simply offered a way out for a number of Manus distraught refugees.

It seems the offer is not being accepted on the grounds that people will come to New Zealand, get citizenship and then travel to Australia shortly thereafter. Well, once they have a New Zealand passport they can go wherever that passport takes them. Thats their right, she said.

We cant have two types of New Zealand passports, one that allows entry to Australia and the other that doesnt.

The UN and rights groups have for years cited human rights abuses among detainees at the detention centres.

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The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled in 2016 the Manus centre was illegal before ordering its closure.

However, human rights groups said the situation for refugees is far from better in New Zealand.

Amnesty International reported that some asylum seekers who had made it to New Zealand had been kept alongside remand prisoners at Aucklands Mount Eden prison and the countrys largest jail  Rimutaka.

There are well known negative, and at times serious physical and psychological, consequences for asylum-seekers in prison detention; there is a risk of violence with refugees and over-stayers being beaten and brutalised by other prisoners and prison guards not assisting, Amnesty said.

Last year, a New Zealand tribunal accepted a Somali asylum seekers claims that he was forced to take part in a fight club at the Mount Eden prison.

He was beaten by gang members and forced into gang fights against persons stronger than himself on a weekly basis, the tribunal said.

Clark said it was unlikely that New Zealands decision to take in the refugees would lead to a spike in arrivals by boat.

Very few spontaneous asylum-seekers try to reach New Zealand by boat, she said. Were a very, very remote country.

Follow Al Jazeeras Faisal Edroos on Twitter: @FaisalEdroos
Known as Bibi, Netanyahu joined the Israeli army in 1967, became an elite commando, and served as a captain during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Informally known as Bibi and currently being investigated for corruption, Benjamin Netanyahu is Israels longest-serving, most right-wing prime minister to date, and the first Israel-born politician to become leader.

This is his story from Washington and back to Tel Aviv.

European roots

The son of a Revisionist Zionist from Poland, Netanyahu traces some of his roots to Spain.

Zionist father: Born in Jaffa (now known as Tel Aviv) in 1949 to a settler family, Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem and went to high school in the United States.

Born in Jaffa (now known as Tel Aviv) in 1949 to a settler family, Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem and went to high school in the United States. His mother, Tzila Segal, was an Israeli-born Jew and his father Benzion Netanyahu was a secular Jew from Poland. His father, born Benzion Mileikowsky, changed his name to Benzion Netanyahu after he settled in Palestine.

Netanyahus father was one of the original Revisionist Zionists who believed that Israel should exist on both sides of the Jordan River, rejecting compromises with neighbouring Arab states.

In 1967, Benjamin Netanyahu joined the Israeli army and soon became an elite commando and served as captain during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Saliva test: In 2016, Netanyahu said that his brother had done a DNA test, and it came out that at least some of that tree needs to be attributed to the Jews of Spain.





Rise to power

After serving in the Israeli army, Netanyahu assumed various roles under Israels foreign ministry until he won in the general elections in 1996.

Ambassador: In 1982, Netanyahu was appointed deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 1984, he was appointed Israels ambassador to the United Nations.

In 1982, Netanyahu was appointed deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 1984, he was appointed Israels ambassador to the United Nations. In 1988, Netanyahu was appointed as deputy foreign minister in the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Likud chairman: Rising to the post of the right-wing Likud Party chairman in 1993, Netanyahu orchestrated the partys return to political power after its defeat in the 1992 election.

Rising to the post of the right-wing Likud Party chairman in 1993, Netanyahu orchestrated the partys return to political power after its defeat in the 1992 election. Later, Netanyahu lost the Likud leadership to Ariel Sharon, and regained it only after Sharon left Likud to form Kadima in 2005.

Four-time PM: Campaigning under the slogan a strong prime minister, his Likud Party managed to gain enough seats for him to form a coalition with fellow right-wing parties Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas.

Campaigning under the slogan a strong prime minister, his Likud Party managed to gain enough seats for him to form a coalition with fellow right-wing parties Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas. Netanyahu won the elections in 1996, in 2009, 2013, and 2015.

To critics such as Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israels domestic intelligence organisation, Netanyahu holds an inflated sense of entitlement. Diskin once said: At play inside Netanyahu, in my opinion, is a mix of ideology, a deep sense that he is a prince of a royal family from the Jerusalem elite, alongside insecurity and a deep fear of taking responsibility.

To supporters, he is a strong spokesperson for Israel, willing to tell the public uncomfortable truths and able to stand up to enemies.

Three nos

Netanyahu has a three nos mantra: no Palestinian state, no return of the Golan Heights to Syria and no discussion on the future status of Jerusalem.

Despite opposing most peace deals with the Palestinians, Netanyahu signed the Wye River Accords in 1998 with Yasser Arafat, who was then the president of the Palestinian National Authority.

Netanyahu resigned as foreign minister in August 2005, in protest against Sharons plan to disengage from Gaza, part of the Palestinian territory.

Jerusalem status

Obama criticism: Netanyahus relationship with former US President Barack Obama has been described as frosty, as Obama has, on occasion, criticised the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Netanyahus relationship with former US President Barack Obama has been described as frosty, as Obama has, on occasion, criticised the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. We will carrying on building in Jerusalem and in all the places that are on the map of Israels strategic interests, Netanyahu said.

Trump reset: The election of Donald Trump was eagerly greeted by Netanyahu.

The election of Donald Trump was eagerly greeted by Netanyahu. Coming after a rocky eight years in US-Israel relations under Obama, their meeting in Washington, DC was intended to signal a reset in relations between the two.

On December 6, Trump broke with decades of US policy and has announced that the US formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the city.

Netanyahu welcomed the decision, and said it was a historic day for Israel. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years, he said in a statement.

Biden call : A delay in Bidens first phone call to the Israeli prime minister raised speculation that the Democratic president was signalling displeasure with Netanyahus close ties with former President Donald Trump, who called the right-wing leader two days after his inauguration in 2017.

: A delay in Bidens first phone call to the Israeli prime minister raised speculation that the Democratic president was signalling displeasure with Netanyahus close ties with former President Donald Trump, who called the right-wing leader two days after his inauguration in 2017. Netanyahu has acknowledged differences with Biden about Iranian and Palestinian issues, but said the two enjoy a strong working relationship.

Netanyahu may find the two countries alliance tested if Washington restores US participation in the Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew, and opposes Israeli settlement building on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood.

Anti-Iran rhetoric

During his first stint as prime minister, Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, telling legislators that time is running out to deal with Iran. The deadline for attaining this goal is extremely close, he said.

Bibi does not believe leaders of Iran are necessarily rational and has said Iran poses an existential threat to Israel. He has threatened unilateral military action against Iran on several occasions.

As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have an atomic bomb, he said in 2013. If theres no other way, Israel is ready to act [with force].

Corruption scandal

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in long-running cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favours for media tycoons in return for favourable coverage.

The charges against him have been a central issue during three elections in which no clear winner emerged.

Netanyahu pleaded not guilty before a three-judge panel in a heavily guarded Jerusalem District Court.

The court ruled that evidence in the trial would be heard following the election, starting on April 5.

Coronavirus pandemic
Its starting to sound like a plan.

Since the beginning of the Oslo peace process, it has been assumed that Israel has more to give than the Palestinians. After all, the story went, Israel is wealthy, recognized, democratic, and stable. The Palestinians are refugees with nothing. Right? So Israel was told not to build houses for Jews in areas that might become a Palestinian state -- lest the Palestinians end up with a country that has Jews in it. Israel has, further, been pressed to make life better for the Palestinians in terms of jobs, electricity, water, medical care, and agriculture. The Arab states and the EU -- as well as the U.S. -- provide funds for, well, for everything including Palestinian leaders mansions and bank accounts. The deeper others waded into the process over the past two-plus decades, the more the Palestinians could be excused for believing that they didnt have to do anything, but could wait for people to squeeze more out of Israel on their behalf under threat of a) discontinuing the process and/or b) more violence.

After all, they reasoned, what did they have to lose?

The Trump administration, however, appears to have concluded that the process might work differently if the Palestinians thought they did have something to lose. And by the moaning and shrieking emanating from Ramallah, if that is the plan it may be a good one.

The President started with a clear statement to Palestinian strongman Mahmoud Abbas about not teaching hatred, and then castigating him when he discovered that Abbass reassurances were lies. Congress added in the Taylor Force Act, which the President has said he would sign. The bill cuts funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as long as the PA is funding salaries for terrorists. Then the administration publicly considered closing the Palestinian mission in Washington because the PA was not meeting its Oslo obligation to negotiate issues directly with Israel and had, instead, made overtures in the International Criminal Court.

And now it appears the administration has failed to sign the waiver that keeps the American embassy in Tel Aviv, rather than moving it to Jerusalem as the law demands. (This one is tricky -- the waiver was not signed six months after the previous waiver. Whether the signature has to be precisely six months to the day or has wiggle room is the subject of some discussion.) At the same time, the administration seems ready to declare its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, putting Israel on the same footing as 192 other countries in the world who determine their own seats of government.

Reuters reports that President Trump has spoken with both King Abdullah II of Jordan and Palestinian strongman Mahmoud Abbas about his decision to move the embassy.

What the Palestinians have to lose, then, is American acquiescence to a process by which the Palestinians continue gain something for nothing, and in which they believe violence is always their trump card (so to speak). Indeed, Mahmoud Habash, an advisor to Abbas, said that if President Trump were to recognize Jerusalem, it would amount to a complete destruction of the peace process. Habash said that the world will pay the price for any change in Jerusalems status.

Threatening the American administration doesnt seem like a game-winner. Threatening to destroy the nonexistent peace process is spurious.

The Palestinians -- and most of the Arab world, save for Egypt and Jordan -- have declined every opportunity and every demand for termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." This is the promise of UN Resolution 242 to Israel after the Arabs had tried in 1967 to reverse the establishment of the State of Israel.

Anwar Sadat and King Hussein offered Israel the terms of UN Resolution 242 and negotiated the terms of peace treaties that served their interests as well as Israels. Today, most of the Arab states today are fairly certain Israel is here to stay, but have done no better than put forward an Arab Peace Plan that fails Res. 242 entirely. (The so-called Arab Peace Plan didnt come close -- requiring that Israel retreat to insecure and unrecognized armistice lines before the Arabs considered recognition of Israels legitimacy.)

The U.S. can clearly state the way forward for the Palestinians -- they have to make a down payment on peace with Israel. A clear and demonstrable commitment to UN Resolution 242 -- to the legitimacy and permanence of Israel in the region -- is the price of continued American support. If that is too big a leap, let the Palestinians urge the Arab states to go first so they have support for their move.

If the Palestinians and the Arab states cant get there, they will have sabotaged themselves and their people (again) far more than Israel or the United States. Israel will continue to be what it is -- wealthy, recognized, democratic, and stable. It will continue to create alliances and relationships that benefit its people and its friends. It will continue to make progress in education, technology, security, the arts and the sciences, and it will continue to share those capabilities around the world.

And the United States will stand with its friend and ally, Israel.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has been borrowing and spending money like theres no tomorrow. In November, I reported about the new rollover regime we just entered, in which the feds will be refinancing the debt run up during the Obama era. It didnt occur to me at the time, but the $8.388T debt the feds will be rolling over in the four years that started on Oct. 1, 2017 is more than the debt incurred during the eight years of Obama, which was $8.096T, (thats the Public Debt from Jan. 20, 2009 to Jan. 20, 2017). So, we must redeem the Obama era debt in half the time it took to run it up!

A single $1T deficit in fiscal 2009 during the crisis might be acceptable, even warranted, but four trillion-dollar deficits in a row are unforgiveable. Those four deficits were so large that despite lower deficits in his second term, they gave Obama an average deficit of more than $1T a year for his eight years. The Public Debt, which is the real debt, went from $6.3T to $14.4T while Obama was in office. What did we get for all that debt and all that spending?

For years after the financial crisis the federal government and the Federal Reserve took extraordinary actions. What money the feds didnt borrow, the Fed created, out of thin air as they say, through QE, quantitative easing. The Fed is now poised for a drawdown of its $4.5T balance sheet, and has already changed ZIRP, its zero interest-rate policy, slowly raising its funds rate. Now, add to all this the new tax bills under consideration that will cut revenue and raise deficits and we have uncertainty. Markets dont like uncertainty.

Having looked at the House and Senate tax bills, theres not much to like in them. It would be better to have no new tax legislation than this. And I write that having advocated tax reform for years. But theres no real reform in these tax bills, and they raise the deficit at the worst time, (see above). As a Republican voter, I hate to write those lines, it pains me, but in their major legislative efforts this year the GOP Congress has been disappointing. They need to fix that soon.

The tax bill needs to be revenue-neutral; the feds need to be taking in at least as much money in the first year of its implementation as in the previous year. One reason for this is that Congress doesnt seem to be able to cut spending. Also, in certain areas, like Defense, Congress needs to spend more than it has been. For example, theres been a lot of news lately about our military readiness; some airplanes must be cannibalized to keep other planes operational.

One unacceptable change in both the House and Senate bills is the elimination of the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT was instituted to ensure that earners with hefty incomes pay at least some income tax; it was a check against the excesses of Congress in their creation of exemptions, write-offs, and preferences like the carried interest loophole. Guess were headed back to the good ole days when some high-income earners paid no income tax.

One of the more daft things about fiscal legislation is the 10-year projections that lawmakers make. They need to stop that. Congress cannot bind a future Congress. If Dems get control of everything again, theyll be able to dash the GOPs tax law to smithereens, and theyll end the legislative filibuster to do it. Dems will undo the GOPs handiwork, and taxes in America will continue to be a disgrace to the human race.

What Republicans should be doing is forging a tax law that is so efficient, so sane, so just, so simple, and so popular that Democrats would be afraid to tinker with it. But thats not what the GOP Congress is doing; theyre just rejiggering the same rickety mess, looking for pay-fors to offset rate cuts. Theres very little creativity in these tax bills, and at a time when creativity is sorely needed.

The big disappointment with the two tax reform bills is that the more important reform is being held hostage to the less important one. That is, corporate income tax reform has been yoked to personal income tax reform. Republicans are even selling their bill as a middle-class tax cut, when most middle-income Americans already have very low effective rates. Theyre even telling personal income taxpayers that theyll be able to file their taxes on a postcard, (presumably so others can see what their incomes are).

Since Congress isnt likely to come up with sensible personal income tax reform before the end of the year, they should focus on just the corporate income tax, which is the tax that economists think is the bigger drag on the economy.

Some Republican members of Congress are saying that the GOP must pass tax reform or theyre toast in next years midterm elections. If they pass anything like the two bills before us, the opposite may actually be the case. In The GOPs Tax Plan: Paving the Way to a Democratic Majority at The Corner, Andrew Stuttaford writes: Even if we forget about their impact on the deficit (and we shouldnt), the Republican tax plans have been characterized by extraordinarily sloppy thinking. He then details proposed changes to formerly untouchable tax expenditures that the GOP had best rethink.

Republicans members of Congress need to pull back from the brink. What they ought to do in the waning hours of 2017 is repeal not only ObamaCares individual mandate, which the Senate bill proposes, but the employer mandate as well. And that needs to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018. They should then tell Americans that those repeals are actually tax cuts, which would be true. And then GOP members should set the corporate income tax rate to 30 percent. That also needs to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

Although modest, the above changes would give GOP members of Congress a measure of credibility -- they will have delivered some tax relief and partially made good on their promise to repeal Obamacare. That credibility would allow congressional Republicans to then proclaim that they intend to make additional changes to the tax system in 2018, which might be made retroactive to Jan. 1. Among the changes should be real simplification, especially for business, so that the cost of compliance can be cut.

Considering their historic victories last November, congressional Republicans seem intent on giving a bright new meaning to screw the pooch. However, theres still enough time in what remains of 2017 for them to redeem themselves and demonstrate that they do have the right stuff after all.

Jon N. Hall of Ultracon Opinion is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.
The shrinking in size of two national monuments in Utah by President Trump through executive order was a long overdue rebuke to federal land grabs that have enabled federal control of vast swaths of American land, particularly in the West. As the New York Times noted in 2016:

The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. In some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nevada, the majority of land is owned by the federal government. Of course, it used to own nearly all of it. East of the Mississippi the federal government owns only 4 percent of land.

Part of that discrepancy is due to the vagaries of the Western expansion into the sparely populated frontier. Part of it is due to the desires of environmentalists to turn America into a save-the-earth postcard -- take pictures and dont touch. President Trump, who has unlocked much of Americas resources that were formerly held hostage by greenies and others, has decided to return to the people of Utah control of and decision-making power over the land of Utah, so you no longer need permission from a Beltway bureaucrat to pick up a rock and move it one foot to the left:

President Trump signed two proclamations Monday that shrink federally protected lands in Utah by about 2 million acres -- the largest rollback of national monument designations in history. The Bears Ears National Monument will shrink 85% to 201,876 acres, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be cut by 39% to 1 million acres Trump said previous presidents overstepped their authority in declaring vast tracts of western lands off-limits, abusing the "purpose, spirit and intent" of a 1906 law known as the Antiquities Act. That law requires presidents to limit the monument designation to "the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected." "These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of the people who actually live here, work here, and make this place their home," Trump said in Salt Lake City Monday.

One of those presidents was one William Jefferson Clinton. Although the Trump orders only refer to lifting restrictions on motorized vehicles and grazing rights, much of the land involved is energy-rich and was put off limits by President Clinton to deprive Americans access to those resources and to reward a political donor.

A large part of Americas energy dependence on foreign sources can be traced back to September 18, 1996, when Hillary's co-president hubby Bill Clinton stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side and signed an executive proclamation making 1.7 million acres of Utah a new national monument, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument:

President Clinton officially set aside 1.7 million acres of Utah canyon lands Wednesday as a national monument, with some concessions to Utah authorities who complained the move would stunt the local economy and block a job-generating coal mine. Standing against the sweeping backdrop of the Grand Canyon, Clinton declared that in creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument "we are keeping faith with the future... On this remarkable site, God's handiwork is everywhere." But officials trod carefully around the issue of the planned coal mine, which was to be dug by Andalex Resources, a Dutch company, on a leased site on the Kaiparowits Plateau, considered one of the new monument's most remote and valuable sites. Under current plans, 50% of the coal mined from the plateau would be exported from the Port of Los Angeles. In his remarks, Clinton implied that he intended to block the mine, which some have said could produce high quality coal with a value of $1 trillion.

So why would he dedicate a Utah monument while standing in Arizona? Well, this federal land grab was done without any consultation with the governor of Utah or any member of the Utah congressional delegation or any elected official in the state. The state already had six national monuments, two national recreation areas, and all or part of five national forests. Three-quarters of Utah was in already in federal hands.

It was sold as a move to protect the environment. At the time the Clintons were worried that Ralph Naders presence on the ballot in a few Western states would draw green votes from Clinton in a race that promised to be close after the GOP retook Congress two years earlier.

Bill Clinton's unilateral land grab in Utah declaring 1.7 million acres a national monument and placing off-limits to an energy starved United States up to 62 billion tons of environmentally safe low sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion that could have been mined with minimal surface impact was in fact a political payoff to the family of James Riady.

James Riady was the son of Lippo Group owner Mochtar Riady. Young James was found guilty of and paid a multi-million dollar fine for funneling more than $1 million in illegal political contributions through Lippo Bank into various American political campaigns, including Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run. Connect the dots. Riadys relationship between the Clintons, would be long and corrupt, even extending to donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton took off the world market the largest known deposit of clean-burning coal. Who owned and controlled the second-largest deposit in the world? The Indonesian Lippo Group of James Riady. It is found and strip-mined on the Indonesian island of Kalamantan.

The Utah reserve contains the kind of low-sulfur, low-ash, and therefore low-polluting coal the likes of which can be found in only a couple of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act without additional technology.

The mother of all land grabs, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said at the time. Hatch has called what was designated as the Grande Staircase of the Escalante National Monument the Saudi Arabia of coal.

When Clinton signed the proclamation, he promised to exchange other federal lands for the land that was taken. Hatch said a fair exchange was impossible, since no other land in Utah had a trillion dollars worth of clean coal.

Rep. James Hansen (R-UT) pointed out that a large portion of the coal-rich Kaiparowits plateau within the monument belonged to the schoolchildren of Utah. When Utah became a state in 1896, about 220,000 acres were set aside to benefit the schools of Utah. Upon the state's founding, a trust fund was created to collect and hold directly for the benefit of the state schools all the revenues generated from developing this land.

Margaret Bird, trust officer for the fund, said that because the land will not be developed, the schoolchildren of Utah stood to lose as much as $1 billion over the next 50 years. Phyllis Sorensen, head of the Utah chapter of the National Education Association, called Clinton's action "felonious assault," charging that "they are stealing from the schoolchildren of Utah." Stealing from children to reward Indonesian billionaire donors is a move typical of the Clintons.

Before there was the pay-for-play Clinton Foundation, and the putting up of American national security for sale in the Uranium One deal with Russia, there was Bill Clinton creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a monument to Bill and Hillarys monumental corruption.

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.
On December 3, 2017, members of the Trump administration, including Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and secretary of state Rex Tillerson announced that United States would no longer take part in the Global Compact on migration. That compact, the non-binding New York Declaration for Refugees and Migration, signed on September 19, 2016 by 193 states, purported to commit them to a unified framework  a safe, orderly, and regular organization of all aspects of international migration.

Secretary Tillerson explained, a day before a global conference on the issue was to open on December 4 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that the U.N. program is not consistent with the immigration policies of the U.S., which, like all states, has a sovereign right to apply its own immigration laws and to control its borders.

According to the sixth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Heraclitus, no one ever steps in the same river twice. Migration policy, like all political phenomena, is affected by the reality that the world and its population are in flux. By coincidence, the global conference in Mexico is occurring at a moment when the Pew Research Center has provided useful factual information about the changing population of Europe caused by migration, the first important estimates of the increase in the size of the Muslim population.

Even if not directly relevant to U.S. conditions, the data in the report are useful for their implications for European and U.S. attitudes to and debates on migration and foreign policy, understanding the tensions within political systems, the rise of far-right parties, expressions of populism, and the results of voting in national elections.

The key terms, migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees, are often used interchangeably, but regular migrants are those who legally move to Europe for economic, educational, or family reasons. Asylum-seekers are migrants who apply for refugee status on entry into Europe.

The Pew study largely concentrates on changes in Europe between 2010 and 2016. The crucial fact is that the number of refugees has escalated since 2014. The record number of 1.3 million migrants applying for asylum in the 28 states of the E.U. is nearly double the number in 1992 who applied after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Of the migrants in those years to Europe, both refugees and regular migrants, about 3.7 million were Muslims, and 3.3 million were non-Muslims. Of the 3.7 million Muslims, about 2.5 million were legal migrants as workers and students and 1.3 million who want refugee status; most of them were from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The significance of this is that while the Muslim population grew from net migration, the non-Muslim population declined between 2010 and 2016 by about 1.7 million.

There is no official tally of the migrant population, and figures are not necessarily exact and are affected by a multitude of factors. However, the best estimates suggest that Muslims now constitute about 25.8 million, or 5% of the population of Europe. That number is increasing, and the proportion is likely to double within a relatively short time, perhaps up to 14% of Europe's population by 2050, depending on the rate of migration into Europe. The number of Muslims in Europe grew considerably, through natural increase but mostly by immigration. Some projections of German population show about 20% Muslim by 2050, and Sweden's Muslim population could grow to 31%.

Germany is still the major destination of asylum-seekers. Between 2010 and 2016, Germany took in 670,000 refugees, mostly Muslims, and 680,000 migrants, about half of whom are Muslims. At present, the largest numbers of Muslims are in France, 5.7 million (8.8% of the total), and in Germany, 5 million (6.1% of the total). In Cyprus, the 300,000 Muslims, mostly Turkish Cypriots, account for 25% of the total. In Sweden, about 8% of the population are Muslims.

By comparison, the non-Muslim population in Europe declined by about 1.7 million. An important factor is that Muslims are younger and have a higher fertility rate than non-Muslims. The average age of Muslims in Europe is 30, 13 years younger than in the 28 E.U. countries. Two aspects of this are pertinent. One is that 50% of all European Muslims are under 30, compared with 32% of non-Muslims in Europe. The other is that Muslim women give birth to one more child than non-Muslim women. Though migration between 2010 and 2016 was the biggest factor in the increase in population, and natural growth was secondary, there were 2.9 million more Muslim births than deaths during the period.

The important and relevant factor for policy-makers is that the number of Muslim refugees has greatly increased. It is impossible to predict future migrant levels; they depend on changing economic and political conditions within and outside Europe, particularly the Middle East. But the rate of migration has increased since 2014. Between 2010 and 2013, about 400,000, on average 110,000 a year, reached Europe, but between 2014 and mid-2016, three times as many  about 1.2 million, or 500,000 a year  came to Europe, as conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan continued or intensified. The conflict in Syria is the biggest driver for migrants.

The result has been increased tension in European countries and increased responses. Surveys show the wide diversity of views toward Muslims in the different E.U. countries. The highest unfavorable view of Muslims is in Hungary, 72% of the population, followed by Italy, Poland, and Greece. The lowest proportion is in the U.K., then Germany and France.

Hungary received 85,000 applications for asylum from Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the last five years, and most Hungarians, and a number of political parties, see this as a major threat. The Hungarian government in October 2015 closed its border with Croatia and accordingly built a fence. In contrast, in Germany, the main destination for Middle East asylum-seekers, and in Sweden, the number of those viewing the influx of refugees as a threat is comparatively low.

The result of the influx is that most of the European countries, not only those with far-right political parties, and also the E.U. as a whole, have tried to limit the flow of Middle East migrants. Migration will probably decline as European countries make policy changes to limit flows of refugees. The E.U. in September 2016, trying to deal with the disproportionate burden in the E.U. countries, voted to relocate 160,000 refugees among the countries. The Hungarian government rejected this plan. Britain also opted out of this quota plan, but it did resettle 1,000 Syrian refugees in 2015.

Germany now plans to give asylum-seekers who voluntarily return to their home countries a payment of 3,000 euros ($3,570). An earlier German program offered 1,200 euros to those returning home. In 2017, about 9,000 had participated in these programs. The E.U. in 2016 signed an agreement with Turkey. By it, Greece, Turkey's neighbor, agreed to return to Turkey all new illegal migrants, while member-states pledge to resettle more Syrian refugees living in Turkey and to increase financial aid for those remaining there. This was successful in substantially reducing the number of migrants coming into Greece from Turkey. Similarly, a common path for many migrants is to get by sea from Libya to Italy. The response of Italy working with the Libyan coast guard has been to stop ships carrying migrants in the Mediterranean.

European politics reflects the issue. As a result of the German election in September 2017, when the far right AfD party gained some seats in parliament, Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to limit asylum-seekers to 200,000 a year. Sweden has announced a tightening of refugee policy, requiring identity cards on all forms of transportation. In the October 2017 election, Austrians voted for tighter controls on immigration. Almost certainly, immigration was a major factor in Britain in the vote for Brexit.

European governments and political parties are conscious that Europe's population is expected to decline from its present 521 million to an estimated 482 million without any further immigration. They face a dilemma of allowing further migration of Muslims and the internal problems and tensions that might result. The problem is enhanced by the fact, of which the Trump administration is aware, that Muslims, who now constitute 1.8 billion, 24% of the global total population, belong to the fastest growing religion in the world. For Europe and the U.S., this is now part of the context of immigration policies.
In April of this year, when Russia declared its recognition of West Jerusalem as Israels capital, the announcement was met with deafening silence by the Arab world. Why, then, the roars of protestations at the same simple acknowledgment by the United States?

Threats by Turkey and other countries in the Arab League to sever diplomatic relations with the U.S. over the issue prove once again that in our time the world has made the Middle East safe for hypocrisy.

Is there any reason to believe that acquiescing to Arab demands will lead to peace? Not if you look at the facts over the past half-century  during which time the Palestinians have stated with remarkable consistency that they will never recognize Israel as a sovereign state, much less Jerusalem as its capital.

If we are looking toward our own best interests, there are good diplomatic and constitutional reasons to countenance Jerusalem as Israels capital. First and foremost is historical reality and common sense. As law professor Eugene Kontorovich, an expert on international law and policy, pointed out last month in testimony before Congress, One of the main reasons for the failure to reach a peace deal is the unspoken assumption that protracted and repeated Palestinian rejectionism costs them nothing diplomatically, while creating constraints for Israel.

Every country in the world has had the right to designate the capital of its choice, with Israel the lone exception. Congress recognized this anomaly over two decades ago, when it passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995. (The vote was 93-5 in the Senate and 374-37 in the House.) The Act noted that. Jerusalem is the seat of Israels President, Parliament, and Supreme Court, and most of its ministries and cultural institutions  and that since the reunification of the

city in 1967, religious freedom has been guaranteed to every faith.

But the law was never implemented  because Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all came to view it as a congressional infringement on the executive branchs constitutional authority over foreign policy, and consistently exercised a built-in presidential-waiver clause based on their perception of national-security interests.

Its now eminently clear that all three of the past pre-Trump administrations missed the forest of Middle East reality for the trees of diplomatic denial and intransigence.

The root of the State Departments long-standing heavy-handed reluctance to offend Arab populations in the region is a willful ignorance of history and reality. In 1948, President Harry Truman ignored States strong objections and enabled the US to become one of the first countries to recognize Israel. Even though Israel won all of Jerusalem in the 1967 war, even though no Israeli government nor popular referendum would ever allow another city to be designated its capital, even though the Arab-Palestinian peace process countenances no other place for that purpose  in the view of the State Department, Jerusalem remains no-mans land.

Though some of President Donald Trumps closest advisors have likewise urged him to hold off, there has long been bipartisan support for the move. Elliott Abrams, a former Middle East adviser to Bush, said recently that Trump should follow through on his promise because, even if east Jerusalem were eventually ceded to the Palestinians as the capital of their own state, no conceivable settlement would deny west Jerusalem to Israel. There is simply no reason not

to put a US Embassy there.

Moscows surprising recognition of Jerusalem was largely ignored by the foreign-policy establishment because it disproves their predictions of chaos. On the other hand, the Palestinians have found that their threats of dire consequences have worked in the past  in effect allowing U.S. foreign policy to be taken hostage.

Two years ago ,in a challenge to the State Departments policy not to put Jerusalem, Israel on U.S. passports for American citizens born there, the Supreme Court ruled that the president has the exclusive power to recognize foreign nations, which includes the power to determine what a passport says. Recognition is a matter on which the nation must speak with one voice, said the Court. That voice is the presidents.

Kenneth Lasson is a law professor at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Defending Truth: The Quest for Honesty about Jews and Israel.
In 2008, while Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency, many Americans were deeply concerned about his background as well as his ideology. Among many other issues, they were profoundly disturbed by his admitted friendships with Marxist professors and assorted socialists and anti-American zealots. His notion of wealth redistribution was also, at that time, a concept foreign to Americans, who had always believed that success and wealth come from hard work, not redistribution by the state. His critics were afraid that the country was about to elect a president like no other, a president whose values were antithetical to American values, and a president who saw only America's flaws, not its greatness.

Just before his election, Obama proclaimed: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." It was one of the most disturbing and prophetic statements ever uttered by an American politician.

Under his administration, anti-American sentiment by our own citizens grew to new levels. Organizations like Occupy Wall Street were invigorated. New ones, like Black Lives Matter, were formed. Both exist primarily to condemn America and its policies.

And we saw drastic changes in the public at large under Obama's administration. Americans became envious of wealth and success, and more selfish, demanding more handouts from the government, to include free college education.

They also became filled with a new sense of self-loathing, assuming shame and guilt over events that happened decades, even centuries before they were born. Despite the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action programs, and the tremendous progress on race relations after the tumultuous 1960s, they came to believe that America has always been and remains today an inherently unfair, racially biased country.

But perhaps the most dramatic change came in attitudes toward national sovereignty, immigration, and illegal aliens. Not that long ago, all Americans, including Democrats, understood the concept of sovereignty and the importance of secure borders, but like Obama, the self-proclaimed "citizen of the world" and open-border advocate, his followers now do everything they can to encourage illegal immigration. They welcome illegal aliens into their sanctuary cities and condemn their critics using those same tired allegations of racism.

Well known conservative Rush Limbaugh was just one of those who foresaw all of this, who believed that Obama's values conflicted with American values. After Obama's election, Limbaugh famously said, "I want him to fail." The uproar, especially by the left, was deafening, even though Limbaugh had made it clear that what he was really wanted to see was the failure of Obama's radical agenda.

But Obama did succeed, at least in transforming the country. With help from academia and the media, he managed to warp the belief system and long held American values that once made our country exceptional. Now his followers, those most fanatic Trump critics, share the same hateful, anti-American sentiments as Obama's longtime mentor, Jeremiah Wright. They regurgitate the same socialist doctrine of Obama's early Marxist associates. And while innocent Americans die at the hands of illegal aliens, they drone on about building bridges instead of walls.

And they, Democrats and all loyal disciples of Obama, are more than just hoping for President Trump's failure. All of them are working hard to see it happen.

They mock him relentlessly, competing in some perverted contest to see who can hurl the most loathsome insult. They root around for shreds of evidence pointing to some misdeed that might lead to his impeachment. Many have gone so far as to encourage America's enemies abroad, wishing them success. For them, nothing, including casual references to assassination, is off the table.

That is not political opposition. While they've convinced themselves they are standing for American values, they have become radicalized  just as radical as Obama's early associates. Their rhetoric and actions reflect a deep-seated anti-American sentiment, cultivated during the last administration.

The changes Barack Obama helped bring about have been profound and may be irreversible. Any hope of returning America's greatness hinges on the restoration of those traditional American values lost to Obama: personal responsibility, self-dependence, and national pride. That may be President Trump's biggest challenge.
One thing that can be said is that some  or even many  Remainers have been lying about what they call "Brexit lies": those lies said to have occurred during and since the referendum. They've also massively exaggerated both the political significance and psychological power of those supposed lies.

Basically, in order for such large masses of people  over 17 million  to have succumbed to lies during the Brexit campaign (as well as after), they must have suffered from "false consciousness." Yes, Remainers have resurrected that ancient left-wing concept. There are, of course, variations on this theme, such as arguing that Brexiteers have been "brainwashed by the mainstream media." Or that the Daily Mail or Sun "told them what to think" about the E.U. and our relationship with it.

Clearly, the arrogance of these left-wing and Lib-Dem metropolitans knows no bounds. The snobbery is also blatant and obvious. It's only the self-image of Remainers that has it that they can't possibly be snobs. After all, don't snobs have a problem with blacks, ethnic minorities, and the poor? No, modern Remainers and left-wing snobs have a problem with white working-class right-wingers (some of whom are poor) and Brexiteers instead. Many of these snobs also wear Che Guevara t-shirts, go to "gigs," and smoke cannabis  so how on Earth could they possibly be snobs? I mean, the very thought!

This reminds of the public-school girl, Laurie Penny. This particular left-wing snob, Corbynite, and Remainer is the daughter of a lawyer. He sent Laurie to a private school after which she ended up at  rather predictably  Oxford University. Since then she's spent most of her life in  yes, you guessed it  London.

When an audience on the BBC's Question Time reacted in shock and outrage to her elitist and arrogant snobbery about Brexiteer racism (which she hinted at, rather than explicitly stated), she then rather fatuously and pathetically said she didn't also think that Brexiteers are "stupid."

More fully, she said:

I don't believe that people who voted for Brexit are stupid. I think, unfortunately, that people may have been lied to and manipulated.

So how can over 17 million people who're so easily lied to  as well as "manipulated"  not be...well, "stupid"? Laurie Penny's comment is as close to containing a self-contradiction as it's possible to be.

Now, if Laurie Penny's isn't a smug, metropolitan snob, then why wasn't she also the victim of all those Brexit lies and manipulations? If those lies were so powerful, then why were Remainers like her immune to them? Is it that Remainers like her are intellectually, morally, and politically superior to Brexiteers? What else can explain these Remainers' lack of susceptibility to such terrible Brexit lies?

The E.U.-NHS Lie?

The mass meme about Brexit lies has been utterly essential to the Remain campaign. It's mentioned in virtually every comment Remainers make.

So let's be specific about the lies we hear so much about.

In the vast majority of cases, it's a reference to that infamous "Vote Leave" billboard or poster and bus advert. The advert on the bus was this:

We send the EU 350 million every week. Let's fund our NHS instead.

The billboard advert was this:

Let's give our NHS the 350 million the EU takes every week.

The thing is, according to many, that figure wasn't a lie at all. And according to others, it was simply unclear.

The U.K. Statistics Authority watchdog, for example, said it was "misleading." That's because the figure wasn't false in itself. Instead, its citation relied solely on the UK's 19-billion gross annual contribution to the E.U. The figure failed to take into account the U.K.'s rebate and other monies that come back from the E.U.

Thus, even if it were taken as true that the U.K. sends 350 million to the E.U. every week, and at the very same time, the U.K. receives back 100,000,000,000 every week, that still doesn't make this claim a lie. Yes, it's still the case that we send the E.U. 350 million every week! See? It's complicated.

As ever with economics and statistics, the truth is complex. Indeed, almost every article on this "lie" fixates on different aspects of the figures and facts. None of these articles conclusively  or even convincingly  demonstrates that the claim was a brazen or willful lie.

Despite all that, according to some accounts, the figure was actually an underestimation! That is, it's been argued that we actually send (or sent at that time) more than 350 million to the E.U. every week!

Thus, saying this figure was a "lie" is to take a simplistic position on a complex matter.

One thing that can be conceded is that the billboard promise to directly link E.U. payments to NHS funding was probably a mistake. However, the bus advert is a different matter entirely, because it didn't promise that our E.U. payments would go directly to the NHS.

In any case, the idea that 17,410,752 voted for Brexit on the sole basis of a single statistic (or promise) is monumentally patronizing and obviously false. But what do you expect from those metropolitan Remainers who have a severely condescending view of Brexiteers?
Different observers see different motives for President Trump's U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

European leaders such as the French president and the pope see in Mr. Trump a naif desperately out of touch with sensibilities of the region, unwittingly adding fuel to raging Middle East conflicts.

Muslim potentates like Erdogan and Khamenei see an infidel stretching his greedy arms to a piece of holiness that by the natural order of things can only be in Islamic possession, under their sovereignty and control.

Observers of the American political scene see a president chafing under a semi-annual obligation to sign a waiver on the congressional mandate to move the embassy to Jerusalem, which he sees as a loud public reminder of a broken election promise. Trump wants to get rid of this embarrassment, come what may.

To my eye, however, we see a highly intelligent move by a skilled negotiator who sees one of the parties to negotiations shirking the negotiation process.

For all the protestations by well meaning people that Palestinians merely seek a state with a capital in East Jerusalem, living in peace alongside Israel, such is not the Palestinian goal at all. The ultimate goal is making Israel disappear, by taking what they can while giving nothing back, thus simply making inroads and eroding Israel at opportune moments. For such policy to work, any change in territorial or political disposition  be it a result of violence or negotiations  should go in one direction: in Palestinians' favor. Under no circumstance whatsoever can there be a deal with Israel, because a deal means the end to any encroachment, to any advance at Israel's expense. It means failure of the Palestinian struggle; it means that Israel will stay.

Needless to say, any negotiations endanger that goal, for they may result in an agreement  an unacceptable outcome, no matter what was agreed to. Hence, under no circumstances do Palestinians engage in meaningful negotiations.

They will sure take bribes, like the nine-month freeze on settlement activity into which Obama strong-armed Israel at the start of his first term, or welcome the release, at the demand of John Kerry, of some seventy-five unrepentant terrorists who murdered Israelis. Kerry thought this would make Palestinians negotiate (not to mention, of course, hundreds of millions of dollars in aid going to Mr. Abbas, his loyalists, and Palestinian terrorists and their families).

None of this worked, making Mr. Obama sour on engaging in further peace-processing and passing the baton to the eager Mr. Kerry, who in turn failed miserably to bring Palestinians to the negotiating table. Their masses fed, clothed, and housed by the international community, and their leadership feted throughout the world, Palestinians are well positioned to exercise what Mr. Obama called (referring to his North Korea policy) "strategic patience."

Mr. Trump, with his almost year-long experience nudging Palestinians toward negotiations, undoubtedly learned that much: Palestinians will only take and will not give. They see negotiations as the gravest danger to their national aspirations of destroying Israel  for success of negotiations is the failure of their national dream.

So what does Mr. Trump do? He tells the Palestinians in no uncertain terms: I mean business. You will either negotiate or be left behind. I will not be waiting for you. Make up your mind now.

How does he do it? By telling the Palestinians that their grand strategy of stalling on negotiations while grabbing what they can in the interim has been noticed and will not be allowed to proceed. Hence the moves in Congress to stop funding Palestinians unless they stop funding terrorists and their families. This did not produce the desired effect, hence Mr. Tillerson's putting Palestinians on notice that their D.C. office is in risk of getting closed. In response, Palestinians threatened to cut off contact with the U.S. negotiation team, hence, I think, President Trump's announcement of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Half a year back, Mr. Trump signed the waver specifically to give himself the elbow room and test the waters, to see whether he can move negotiations along. Having seen whom he is dealing with, and perceiving that he will be duped like his predecessors if he keeps on their course, he turned to a different tack.

So if Mr. Abbas is able to learn, he will be well advised to heed the message in President Trump's speech, which I think can be reduced to a single word addressed to Mr. Abbas: "negotiate."
A few weeks ago, we watched Democrats take another step toward making Virginia permanently blue. They had a great turnout and lots of victories, and they set the table for Virginia to go blue in 2020.

We've heard a lot about the growing number of federal employees who live in Virginia. They are also voting and donating to Democrats in large numbers, as David French wrote:

While there are certainly some biased, partisan conservatives in the federal bureaucracy, the ideological imbalance in the civil service is striking. It's not quite at university-faculty levels, but it's getting close. For example, in the 2016 election cycle, Hillary Clinton received an astounding 95 percent of all federal-employee donations.

Over at the Department of Justice, it is 90%! The DOJ is where the investigations happen.

Is it unreasonable for people who live in flyover country to be skeptical of lawyers and bureaucrats in a department that donated 90% to Mrs. Clinton?

As French wrote, there is also a terrible danger of groupthink under such circumstances. It discourages creativity, especially if the person proposing a new idea does not support the favored candidate.

Beyond turning Virginia and most of Maryland's suburbs rather blue, this is a threat to our democracy.

How can a federal bureaucracy be so different from the people it serves?

President Trump won 31 states, or 306 electoral votes. On a county-by-county basis, the U.S. is a red sea with islets of blue.

Shouldn't the bureaucracy reflect some of that vote? I understand that we've just finished two terms of a very partisan Democrat who used the bureaucracy to go around Congress, from immigration to Obamacare. I further understand that it will look a bit more balanced after President Trump's (hopefully) two terms.

We've often mentioned that there is a lack of political diversity in our university staffs. I would argue that the media could use a little political diversity. Absolutely, the federal bureaucracy would benefit from some diversity as well.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
If the Democrats get anything right, it is the uniformity of a working script. They are good at forming a chorus of clapping seals. And they have so much more party discipline than the Republicans. When it's time to run with a script, they choreograph it all and get everyone on the same page beforehand.

There are no sudden coincidences of conscience. This has zero to do with morality or a person's inner belief system.

Yesterday, Kirsten Gillinbrand New York, Patty Murray of Washington, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Kamala Harris of California, and Maggie Hasan of New Hampshire along with Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, Joe Donnelly, Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, and Dick Durbin all went on a full frontal assault on Senator Al Franken, demanding his resignation.

Apparently, as a strategy, this was all discussed prior as a game plan before the media got to lap it up, since no one person acting alone has an individual conscience in the Democrat cult machine. Even their morals suffer from socialized collectivism. It's like high school peer pressure but concentrated out of a heated crack spoon.

Unfortunately for them, it appears that the Senate pension program is really good. The hack ex-comedian (or never was) does not intend on stepping down. I guess that SNL royalties kind of suck. So he has decided to reject their pleas for voluntary removal.

Poor Democrats. Perhaps you should vet your freak show candidates first. It appears that not all of them will play patsy to your power end game, which is to retroactively eradicate your outed lechers as pro forma in order to groom the 2020 presidential run for a less wrinkly, less has-been (sorry Hillary) female candidate.

We already know that the Democrats never had actual ideas to run on, but instead force their loyalist chad-rippers to demean themselves as either racists (first black president) or gender-preferential misandrists. They are first and foremost a club for low-information haters. These are not idea people with high intelligence quotients. The Democrat leadership know this. So they spit out candidates who are historical novelties (in terms of demographics) and then accuse the other side of being racist or misogynist.

It's a great tactic. More than half of the weaker electorate falls for it. And today, with the coordinated attempt to publicly shame Al Franken into resigning just as they did with John Conyers, the Democrat leaders are proving their 2020 endgame, which is an all-out, full frontal genitalia campaign of #metoo female, anti-patriarchal rage.

Hillary was already thrown under the bus by Donna Brazile two weeks ago as the first brick to be laid for this new sacrificial foundational pretext. And so now the purge campaign continues of prying out the old dry rot of geezer-lechers  all of it to get their leading lady ready, entrenched in the wings, for a double-twenty unveiling.

That's what all this is. It has nothing to do with Al Franken. It has zero to do with morals or sexual harassment. It has everything to do with strategy and power. Single women are the most loyal voting demographic for the Democratic Party, even more than the black community, which is saying a lot. We saw with the Julia campaign that the Democratic Party loves to sell itself as quasi-husbands and father figures to young single women.

Yesterday was the day of going all in on a semblance of "integrity" as a sham circus to run the Democrat pervert purge in house and begin the process of building a house of feminism.

Not because of women. Not a thing to do with that. Just raw, naked power. Same as it always is.
After almost a year of congressional legislative lassitude, both houses of Congress passed a tax bill, the Senate most recently last week. While the two versions are similar, there are minor differences that must be reconciled before sending a bill to the White House for President Trump's signature.

The Heritage Foundation compared the two versions, as shown in the chart below. The differences are minor, window dressing, with two major exceptions.

The Senate version repeals the Obamacare individual mandate, while the House version keeps it in place. It should go. Senate version wins.

Then again, the House version repeals both the individual and corporate alternative minimum taxes, whereas the Senate version keeps both. Both should go. House version wins.

Now what? The two versions go to a conference committee, where these differences are reconciled  hopefully ironed out, taking the best provisions of each bill, combining them into something even better. The finished product then has to pass both chambers of Congress again before traveling across town for President Trump's signature.

What could go wrong? Plenty. It took much wheeling and dealing to pass the Senate bill. Certainly, any tax bill will have zero Democrat support. After eight years of Obama nearly doubling the national debt, although with some Republican help, Democrats are suddenly concerned about deficits. And they will not support any Republican legislation just out of partisanship.

There is also the cadre of #NeverTrump Republicans  Flake, Corker, McCain, Murkowski, Collins  jockeying to see who will cast the crucial nay vote to torpedo the bill and throw a wrench into the Trump agenda. This is why Roy Moore's likely arrival and Al Franken's likely departure from the Senate are quite important.

What are Republicans to do?

The smart thing is also the hardest thing. As the expression goes, "no pain, no gain." Leadership requires heavy lifting, which Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan may not be up to or have the desire for. Trump can do only so much, as he is not the leader of the House or Senate. Those jobs fall to Mitch and Paul.

This is a historic once-in-a-generation chance to reform the tax code. Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House. It won't get better than this. It's an opportunity that should not be squandered  as happened with Republicans' failure to repeal Obamacare despite years of campaign promises to the contrary.

Take the best of both bills, jettison the worst, and craft something even better. Ignore the braying of the left and their "tax cuts for the rich" canard. Neither bill cuts taxes for "the rich," those paying most of the income tax already. Both bills will spur the economy. Republicans should use another talking point for the left from over 50 years ago that leftists conveniently overlook: "a rising tide lifts all boats."

The alternative for the GOP is to quit while ahead, the House simply passing the Senate bill and sending it to the president  not ideal but, given this current Congress's lack of accomplishment, a reasonable compromise. It would be a "perfect is the enemy of the good" approach, similar to how the House passed the Senate version of Obamacare in 2010, not risking conference and a new bill, which might not withstand a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

The Democrats didn't get all they wanted but did get a bill they could live with. Of course, future Republican congresses could repeal Obamacare, but not surprisingly, when the future is now, Republicans fell short.

That's the current conundrum for congressional Republicans. Make the bill better in conference and hope to pass it again through both Houses of Congress? Or let the House pass the Senate bill and call it a day?

Personally, I prefer a better bill, but given the track record of Congress over the past year, I would happily accept the Senate bill signed into law by the president before Christmas.

Suppose they take the tax bill to conference, and it fails to pass both houses once in final form, with McCain, Flake, or Corker casting the decisive nay vote. Another GOP failure  enough to make much of the GOP base stay home next November, potentially losing the House in the midterms. Any guesses as to what would happen to President Trump on the impeachment front if Democrats captured the House? Or Senate? Lots at stake.

Remember the old Let's Make a Deal show? You could keep the prize you have or trade it for whatever is behind curtain number two  which, in this case, might be a handful of GOP senators, on their way out of office, happy to stick the president with a booby prize.

Do Mitch and Paul want to roll the dice? Risking losing the entire bill and with it possible loss of control of Congress after the 2018 midterm elections? Or take the easy win and move on to confirming judges, repealing Obamacare, and building the wall? A real conundrum.

Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS, is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker enraged Democrats and unions when he rammed a bill through the Republican legislature in 2011 that limited the power of public unions. In response, Democrats gathered enough signatures on petitions to initiate a recall election.

Walker won that election handily in 2012. But that was only the beginning of the story. A Milwaukee Democratic prosecutor decided to build a case against conservative activists for illegally communicating and coordinating their political efforts. The result was something straight out of a dystopian nightmare, as The Federalist describes:

In the predawn hours of October 3, 2013, armed deputies raided the homes of R.J. Johnson, Deborah Jordahl, and several others in a paramilitary style blitz across Wisconsin. The detainees weren't terrorists bent on mass murder or the overthrow of the government. The agents weren't looking for contraband narcotics or illegal firearms. In fact, no one was quite sure what they wanted, but agents got it all; computers, phones, business records, files, and communications dating back years. Deputies told the raided subjects to keep quiet or there would be consequences, as a pedophile might tell his prey. The targets represent only a fraction of political activists sucked into Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm's "John Doe"  a grand-jury-type mechanism Wisconsin prosecutors prefer for its secrecy. Chisholm accuses them of "illegal talking" by coordinating messaging, which is supposedly forbidden under Wisconsin's prolix campaign finance code. The investigation, which Chisholm has expanded 18 times, has engulfed advocates, large and small, for years on end. His favorite tactic is bulk intimidation. Alongside raids and gag orders, he employs kitchen-sink subpoenas, many of which are eventually quashed at great legal expense. When he fails to get sufficient obeisance, he serves arrest warrants and sends people to jail on nonexistent charges. One judge reviewing a John Doe prosecutor's actions stated, "The conduct described is nothing that we as Wisconsinites should be proud of, bottom line . . . . Mr. Landgraf was behaving badly, probably for political reasons."

America had never seen anything like it. Dozens of ordinary people, some of them unpaid volunteers, were swept up in a terrifying political dragnet. But the "evidence" in the cases being investigated was so badly mishandled that key details were leaked about the prosecutor's methods. The resulting outcry eventually led to the shutdown of the investigation by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who found no evidence of illegal activity on the part of the prosecutor. But one justice, writing for the majority, said, "It is utterly clear that the prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing."

Chisolm's wife Colleen was a teacher union shop steward whose job was directly affected by Walker's curb on union power. Both were Democratic activists.

Now, after an exhaustive investigation, the attorney general of Wisconsin, Brad Schimel, has issued a report that recommends contempt charges against the prosecutor and that professional sanctions be imposed on one of his investigators.

Milwaukee Sentinel:

In a 91-page report made public Wednesday, the Republican attorney general sharply criticized the probe's leaders for engaging in an overly broad investigation and failing to secure the vast amounts of evidence seized. He contended contempt proceedings should be initiated against special prosecutor Francis Schmitz and the team he led for how they handled seized material after courts told them they could not review it further or had to get rid of it. Schimel also wants to seek professional sanctions against Shane Falk, who served as an attorney for the now-defunct Government Accountability Board, as part of his investigation into the leak of secret John Doe material to the Guardian U.S. "The systemic and pervasive mishandling of John Doe evidence likely resulted in circumstances allowing the Guardian leak in the first place, and now prevents prosecutors from proving criminal liability beyond a reasonable doubt," the report says Jefferson Circuit Court Judge William Hue made Schimel's report public Wednesday. Hue, who is overseeing the wrap-up of the Doe investigation, wrote in a brief order that he would consider Schimel's request for contempt proceedings. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and Schmitz ran the investigation into whether the Republican governor's campaign illegally worked with conservative groups in recall elections. Chisholm is a Democrat and Schmitz has identified himself as a Republican. The state Supreme Court shut down the investigation in 2015, finding nothing illegal had occurred.

What is truly frightening about this story is that the Democratic prosecutor apparently acted within the law when his goons rousted ordinary people from their homes at gunpoint. As The Federalist's Paul Jossey points out:

Chisholm's John Doe represents the worst kind of legal thuggery, rife with personal enmity, conflicts of interests [sic], and professional skullduggery. Unfortunately victims are left with little practical recourse. The laws, judicial doctrines, and disciplinary structures that shield Chisholm and his cohorts should be reformed to prevent this type of abuse from ever happening again.

Prosecutors have been given enormous leeway to enforce the law. But they are expected to behave within the bounds of propriety, non-partisanship, and common decency. Chisholm not only crossed the line; he obliterated it. The least that can be done to punish him is to try him for contempt.
The Royal Anguilla Police Force on Monday 4th December, 2017 at about 5:15pm responded to a report of shots being fired in South Hill in the area of Dungeon Gym.

On arrival at the scene the officers confirmed that a firearm had been used as a result of forensic evidence that was gathered. It was also established that there were no injuries as a result of the incident.

As the Police continue its investigation into this incident they are appealing to members of the public who may have been in South Hill at the time of the incident in the area of Dungeon Gym and may have witnessed the incident or have any information regarding the incident to contact the Valley Police Station with such information. The telephone number is 497-2333 and asks for the Criminal Investigation Department or to speak to any Police Officer of their choice.

Additionally the RAPF is seeking the publics assistance in locating a person of interest in the matter, James Jamie Hodge of West End also known as Sea Fowl.

Furthermore information can be sent via the RAPF Tips Website by logging on to www.gov.ai/911 which is a secure website.
(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Republic of Cuba will hold the Sixth CARICOM-Cuba Summit in Antigua and Barbuda on Friday 8 December.

The Meeting will be co-chaired by the Chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell of Grenada, and the President of Cuba, Raul Castro.

This Meeting marks 45 years of diplomatic relations between CARICOM and Cuba, and will examine issues of regional and global importance including climate change adaptation and disaster risk management. A Memorandum of Understanding will be signed between the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and Cubas Agency for Civil Defence which will provide opportunities for closer collaboration, especially following the devastating impact of the September 2017 hurricanes across the region, and the increased focus on climate change resilience.

Fridays discussions will also review the status of the decades-old CARICOM-Cuba cooperation in commercial and economic areas. Trade relations between the two parties were strengthened in November 2017 with the signing of the Second Protocol to the CARICOM-Cuba Trade Agreement. The Protocol expands reciprocal duty-free market access to more than 320 items including meat, fish, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, beer, rum, cement, soap and apparel.

Cuba, a significant development partner, has supported the Community in building its human resource capacity through scholarship programs offered in several areas of study, including health and medicine, sports, agriculture and trade.

The Summit will conclude with the adoption of a CARICOM-Cuba Joint Declaration.
(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Ambassador Irwin LaRocque has lauded Barbados as it celebrates its 51st Independence Anniversary on 30 December 2017; describing it as a small state which has made a big impact on the world.

In a message to the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Rt Hon. Fruendel Stuart, the Secretary-General said that regional integration has benefitted from the unwavering, valuable involvement of the Government and people of Barbados, as evidenced by its commitment and guidance to the completion of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

The outstanding leadership displayed most recently in the successful hosting of CARIFESTA XIII in August 2017, despite having to brace for the passage of Tropical Storm Harvey, was one of the countless occasions when Barbados demonstrated its profound sense of community and its deep commitment to the Community, Secretary-General LaRocque stated.

He noted there was hardly any field of human endeavor in which Barbados has not marked itself on the global stage.

The full text of the message reads as follows:

Rt. Honourable Prime Minister:

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) extends warmest congratulations to the Government and People of Barbados on the occasion of the Fifty-First Anniversary of Independence.

This Anniversarys theme, Celebrating Community Spirit  Inspiring Strength and Unity resonates with both Barbados and our Community. This occasion is, indeed, cause for celebration as Barbados has grown from strength to strength as a nation. There is hardly any field of human endeavor in which Barbados has not made a mark on the global stage. It has justly earned its reputation as a small state which has made a big impact on the world.

Regional integration has benefitted from the unwavering, valuable involvement of the Government and people of Barbados as evidenced by its commitment and guidance to the completion of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

The outstanding leadership displayed most recently in the successful hosting of CARIFESTA XIII in August 2017, despite having to brace for the passage of Tropical Storm Harvey, was one of the countless occasions when Barbados demonstrated its profound sense of community and its deep commitment to the Community.

The Caribbean Community salutes Barbados as it continues its journey to greater heights and joins with the country in celebrating this Anniversary.
(The Valley, Anguilla)  The Royal Anguilla Police Force on Tuesday 5th December, 2017 at about 5:00pm were summoned to Shoal Bay area where the remains of a clothed female body was discovered.

The body was later identified as that of 38 years Sulamita Fleming-Concepcion of South Hill.

As the Police continue its investigation into this incident which is being treated as a suspicious death they are appealing to members of the public who may have any information regarding the incident to contact the Valley Police Station with such information. Anyone who may have seen the decease between 12:00 noon on Sunday 3rd December and 12:00 noon on Monday 4th December 2017 are asked to telephone the Criminal Investigation Department or to speak to any Police Officer of their choice with such information. The telephone number is 497-2333.

Additionally information can be sent via the RAPF Tips Website by logging on to www.gov.ai/911 which is a secure website.

The Commissioner of Police and members of the Royal Anguilla Police Force would like extend sympathy to the grieved family and friends of the deceased.

A Family Liaison Officer (FLO) has been assigned to the family during this difficult time.
TEL AVIV - Clashes are underway Thursday in various areas of the West Bank and in particular in Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah, following an announcement by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



Israeli Maariv website, citing Palestinian medical sources, brings the tally of injured Palestinians demonstrators injured in the clashes to 114. Maan News Agency said 16 demonstrators have been intoxicated by gas or injured by rubber bullets in clashes with the Israeli Army in Tulkarem and Qalqilya.



Other incidents have been reported in the area between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Israel's military say that two rockets fired from the north of the Gaza Strip have set off rocket alarms in Israel, bat have fallen to the ground within the Palestinian territory.



Demonstrators in Gaza and the West Bank have set fire to American and Israeli flags, as well as to posters of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.



The main target of the protests is Trump, where in Gaza posters depicting the US president were burned. In Bethlehem, a large portrait of Trump - graffiti that was recently painted on the Israeli West Bank barrier wall - was covered over with black paint.



In Nablus, demonstrators brought a puppet with Trump's face into the square and lit it on fire.



Since Wednesday a photomontage has been circulating online that depicts Trump lying on the ground bleeding, with bullet holes in his head and his chest.



Three Palestinian demonstrators were wounded by Israeli military fire when this morning the protest demonstration they were participating in at Khan Yunes (Gaza) reached the fencing of the demarcation line between the Gaza Strip and Israel, according to medical sources in Gaza.



In Tel Aviv, a military spokesperson confirmed only that soldiers in that area had broken up a violent Palestinian demonstration.(ANSAmed).
ISTANBUL - Some 65 years after the last visit by a Turkish president to Greece and as Ankara is going through one of its most difficult yet phases in relations with the EU and NATO, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a two-day visit to Greece. The aim is to get relations between the two countries back on their feet, balancing out alliances with Russian and Iran.

There are still many disagreements between the two countries, from Cyprus to the Aegean Sea. Erdogan used the visit to call for an "updating" of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which set down the borders between the two countries, and spoke out against "discrimination" in Greece of the Muslim minority of Turkish origins. His Greek counterpart ruled out any "revision" of the agreement.

Nevertheless, the visit set down the basis for a high-level bilateral cooperation council that in two months may result in three significant joint infrastructure projects: and Izmir-Salonika maritime connection, a high-speed rail line between Istanul and Salonika and a bridge over the River Evros on the border. These projects could be essential for the relaunch of trade and tourism between the two countries, after a halving of trade over the past four years to 2.6 billion dollars. On refugees, an agreement between the EU and Turkey in March 2016 continues to be the main reference point, but Erdogan continues to say that the EU has not kept its promises as concerns the transfer of funds.
ISIS and al-Qaeda want attacks on US over Jerusalem, SITE 'We will cut your heads off and liberate city'

(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 7 - Supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda on Thursday threatened to attack Americans after US president Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



Reports were from SITE, a website that monitors Islamic extremism online. One of the messages posted vows to "we will cut your heads off and we will liberate Jerusalem", flanked by photos of the al-Aqsa mosque. (ANSAmed).




ISTANBUL - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will arrive in Greece on Thursday for a historic two-day visit, the first by a Turkish president to the country in 65 years.



On Thursday Erdogan will meet with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos.



On Friday he will visit Thrace in the country's northeast, where he will meet with the local Muslim minority and participate in the Friday Islamic prayer in the Old Mosque in Komotini.



Local authorities have put strict security measures in place, including a ban on demonstrations Thursday in the centre of Athens.



The trip, which comes at a time in which Turkey is facing heavy tensions with the EU and NATO, is aimed at further developing bilateral relations between Turkey and Greece, countries that are still divided by various geopolitical disputes.



Erdogan drew criticism for a statement he made during an interview on Greek TV on the eve of his visit, when he said the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders between the two countries, should be "updated".



Topics on the agenda during the visit include strengthening commercial and energy ties as well as various shared infrastructure projects.



Another key theme is the refugee situation in light of the EU-Turkey agreement.(ANSAmed).


Erdogan visits Greece, talks business with former 'enemy' 1st Turkish president in country in 65 years, 'building bridges'

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, DECEMBER 7 - Some 65 years after the last visit by a Turkish president to Greece and as Ankara is going through one of its most difficult yet phases in relations with the EU and NATO, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a two-day visit to Greece. The aim is to get relations between the two countries back on their feet, balancing out alliances with Russian and Iran. There are still many disagreements between the two countries, from Cyprus to the Aegean Sea. Erdogan used the visit to call for an "updating" of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which set down the borders between the two countries, and spoke out against "discrimination" in Greece of the Muslim minority of Turkish origins. His Greek counterpart ruled out any "revision" of the agreement. Nevertheless, the visit set down the basis for a high-level bilateral cooperation council that in two months may result in three significant joint infrastructure projects: and Izmir-Salonika maritime connection, a high-speed rail line between Istanul and Salonika and a bridge over the River Evros on the border. These projects could be essential for the relaunch of trade and tourism between the two countries, after a halving of trade over the past four years to 2.6 billion dollars. On refugees, an agreement between the EU and Turkey in March 2016 continues to be the main reference point, but Erdogan continues to say that the EU has not kept its promises as concerns the transfer of funds. (ANSAmed).




Kurdish leader Demirtas on trial in Turkey, risks 142 years First hearing 399 days after arrest, 1,250 attorneys volunteered

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, DECEMBER 7 - The trial of imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey accused of terrorism, begins today at Ankara's Sincan prison court.



Demirtas, a former Turkish presidential candidate known as the "Kurdish Obama", has been in pre-trial custody for 399 days in the maximum-security Edirne prison and faces a potential sentence of 142 years.



He asked to be brought into court without handcuffs, a request that some judges have rejected in the past.



Although 1,250 attorneys have come forward volunteering to defend Demirtas, HDP said the authorities have chosen a courtroom with only about 20 seats, which they said limits Demirtas's right to defence in the trial, where international observers from about a dozen countries are expected to attend.



Various intellectuals including Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek have signed a letter along with eight MPs from HDP calling for the "immediate release" of Demirtas.



The Kurdish leader is also a defendant in other trials, and various prosecutors are calling for hundreds of years of prison time.(ANSAmed).




TEL AVIV - The Palestinian authorities on Thursday called a general strike in the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza, to protest US President Donald Trump's announcement on Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



The news was reported by the Palestine News Agency (WAFA), which said offices, stores and schools were closed in many Palestinian cities.



It said spontaneous protests broke out on Wednesday evening in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip.



A demonstration is planned at noon local time on Thursday at the Damascus Gate in the Old City.



On Wednesday night, the Christmas tree lights in Bethlehem's Manger Square were turned off as a sign of protest against Trump's decision.



"The Christmas tree was turned off by order of the mayor," said Fady Ghattas of the City of Bethlehem, cited by the media.(ANSAmed).
Tunisia wants EU dialogue on tax-haven blacklist inclusion Finance minister says decision isn't in line with partnership

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, DECEMBER 7 - Tunisian Finance Minister Ridha Chalghoum said Tunisia's inclusion on the European Union's tax-haven blacklist is "inappropriate because it doesn't correspond to the level of partnership between the EU and Tunisia".



In his response to questioning by members of parliament during a discussion on the budget bill for 2018, Chalghoum asked the EU for a dialogue to study the problems relative to the non-conformity of Tunisia's fiscal systems to EU regulations.



The minister speculated that Tunisia's inclusion on the tax-haven blacklist may be the result of EU reservations regarding Tunisia's system governing export companies and financial services for non-residents in the country.(ANSAmed).




The exhibition, running in parallel with Abu Dhabi Air Expo 2018, features a dedicated exhibition area, which allows helicopter exhibitors to stand out from the rest; it also features a full range of helicopters on static display as well as associated conferences.



Organisers 4M Events said: The helicopter market within the Middle East is an ever growing market due to expansion in the industry. Abu Dhabi is leading in this market, with major offshore oil transportation being provided by operators such as Falcon Aviation Services and Abu Dhabi Aviation.



Other helicopter activity within the region includes VIP charters, corporate charters, offshore support, sighting seeing tourism, aerial photography, heavylift services, search and rescue and police and ambulance surveillance and rescue, all of which will feature at the Abu Dhabi Heli Expo.
As official carrier of the two-day event which will be held on 10th and 11th December 2017 at the ART Rotana Hotel & Resort, Gulf Air is committed to supporting and promoting the improvement of safety in the GCC region.

Comprising different sessions focusing on flight, ground and cabin safety, this years event will see the attendance and participation of key representatives from Gulf Air, Bahrains Civil Aviation Affairs (BCAA), Bahrain Airport Company (BAC) and Ministry of Interior (MOI). Airlines from the region, including Gulf Air, Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, Saudi Airlines, Oman Air, Air Arabia, FlyNas and Flydubai, will also participate in the proceedings.

The Gulf Flight Safety Council consists of a regional and global membership base. Members include aircraft manufacturers, regulators, air traffic service providers, business jet and VVIP operators, airlines, cargo operators and more. The Council meets quarterly to promote safety improvement initiatives.
As part of the French president's state visit to Doha, Qatar also ordered 50 A321neo narrowbodies. Qatar Airways already operated 39 Airbus A320s and has 11 more due for delivery before 2020

This new defence order follows on from the contract signed on 4 May 2015 between the State of Qatar and Dassault Aviation for the acquisition of 24 Rafale, thus raising the number of Rafale aircraft operated by the Qatar Emiri Air Force to 36.

This new agreement is built around the special relationship that exists between the two countries and the shared determination, by the Defense Ministry of Qatar and Dassault Aviation, to move forwards together, saidd Eric Trappier, chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation.

The value of the fighter jets was put at $1.1bn, although the Qataris also ordered other equipment including 490 armoured vehicles which, with the Airbus narrowbodies, took the value close to $14 billion (12bn Euros)

Qatar has also agreed an option for another 36 Rafales according to the French government.

Meanwhile J, the A321neo ACF will support the continuous development of Qatar Airways network leveraging from the A321neo range capability and the unprecedented customer experience. The total value of the deal is at $6.35 billion at list prices.

Qatar Airways Group CEO Akbar Al Baker, said: At a time when Qatar Airways is experiencing unprecedented growth and expansion the need for efficient, reliable and modern aircraft has never been greater. To answer our need for growth and additional capacity, the A321neo is a world-class choice for our passengers and for our business. Qatar Airways is the fastest growing airline in the world and with this aircraft we will operate the youngest fleet whilst delivering unprecedented comfort and services to our customers.

The A321 is the largest member of the A320 Family, seating up to 240 passengers. Incorporating the latest engines, aerodynamic advances, and cabin innovations and offers a significant reduction in fuel consumption of at least 15% per seat from day one and 20% by 2020.


NDC ensures that customers have fast access to full fare and travel product information, making for better decisions and easier transactions for travellers.



IATA has led this industry-wide initiative to standardise the way that airlines and travel service providers communicate with one another and customers. This certification, the highest level to be achieved under IATAs New Distribution Capability (NDC) Certification Programme, provides increased transparency and speed of communication, allowing customers access to a wider choice of products and services, enabling them to make more informed buying decisions.



Qatar Airways chief commercial officer, Ehab Amin, said: As a global business with a global presence, we want to make it easier for customers to access our growing global network and range of products and services. As choices become more complex, we have to provide ways to access them more simply. That is what NDC is all about for Qatar Airways: improving the experience for our passengers.



The certification is a significant achievement, as Qatar Airways is the first airline in the Africa and Middle East region and second globally to implement the latest version of the standard. It shows that the airline is committed to improving the experience for its passengers at every part of their journey, both on the ground and in the air.



IATA Director NDC Program, Yanik Hoyles, said: Congratulations to Qatar Airways on achieving the first Level 3 Certification on NDC standard 17.2 in the Africa and Middle East Region. Beginning with their participation with the full trial and live deployment of NDC, Qatar Airways has been a leader in the region in supporting NDC. It is a standard that is modernising the way that airline products are presented through travel agents, helping to deliver a fuller and more transparent shopping experience to travellers.

This status, the highest level to be achieved, recognises that Qatar Airways uses the latest version of IATAs global technology standard.



Technology provider TPConnects has been chosen to provide the technology link between airline, service providers and customers to a new global standard. TPConnects chief executive officer, Rajendran Vellapalath, said: "TPConnects is proud to work with Qatar Airways to facilitate the certification process and to be the first airline in the region to achieve the Level 3 Certification on the latest NDC standard. Travel Agents using TPConnects NDC Certified B2B Aggregator Platform and Booking Engine will be able to access Qatar Airways prices, inventory and fares directly, including ancillary and fare family content, using NDC Offers and Orders. TPConnects is committed to work with IATA to further implement NDC and to support the evolution of this new messaging standard."
It was agreed on the eve of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait, which was attended largely by ministers from the member countries, rather than heads of state, as usual.

According to Al Defeiyah a committee will coordinate all military, political, economic, trade and cultural fields, as well as others, in the interest of the two countries.

The creation of the alliance, and the scope of its remit, is a further sign of the ever closer ties between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

While the GCC has been a forum for Gulf Arab countries to pursue their common interests for nearly 40 years, there have been clear signs for some time that the UAE and Saudi are seeking to strengthen their relationship outside the GCC.

The new committee will promote shared religious, historical, social and cultural ties between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and out of keenness to consolidate the fraternal relations between them, according to the UAE news agency WAM.

It would to be chaired by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, and Mohammed bin Salman, who has since taken a more active role in his country's affairs, after succeeding as Crown Prince in June, with wide scale reforms and a crackdown on corruption.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, said there had been a paradigm shift in bilateral ties between the two countries.

Both the UAE and Saudi are also engaged in joint military action in Yemen, leading the fight against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, and with the war potentially entering a crucial stage following the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh this week, after the breakdown of his alliance with the Houthis.


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SOUTHERN Californians have been bludgeoned with bad news lately, as a number of media outlets  LAist, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles magazine, the LA Times, and the OC Weekly  have either shut down or seen major layoffs. (In Orange County, editor Gustavo Arellano resigned after being asked to machine-gun his staff.)

Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the fresh murder of the LA Weekly, which has weathered a number of abrupt shifts in the past but now seems to be truly dead. The entire genre of alternative weeklies has had a tough run since the Recession and digital revolution  I wrote about the death of the Boston Phoenix and struggles of the Village Voice here in 2013. The Weekly was run by the former New Times company of Arizona, who are hardly paragons of virtue. But this is a whole new level of hell.

In parallel with the way rich right-wing men like Robert Mercer, Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Bros have  often invisibly  distorted our national politics with huge contributions and bogus foundations, especially post-Citizens United  the Weeklys new owners snuck up on us. This group created a new company, told a number of half-truths, then came in, busting a union and firing nearly the papers whole staff. This group of Libertarian jackals has also hinted that they will no longer pay writers for their contributions. The Dont Work For Free movement has never seemed so relevant.

This Pacific Standard story is the fullest recounting Ive seen so far. (KCRW Press Plays interview with new boss Brian Calle, former editor of the OC Registers famously Right-Libertarian editorial page, is also worth hearing if you have a strong stomach for evasion, duplicity, and intellectual shallowness.) The papers former film critic, April Wolfe, has been leading much of the opposition among former employees of the Weekly, a paper that got a big early boost in its coverage of underground rock music, gay culture, and LAs air pollution.

More recently, the paper has been focused on telling the stories of L.A.s marginalized communities. I came in with the express intent of raising the profile of women and people of color in our film section, and we did that, Wolfe says. We were reporting on Boyle Heights, communities south of the 10, in the San Fernando Valley, Creative communities that are mostly people of color, says former managing editor Drew Tewksbury (who on Sunday won a Los Angeles Press Club award for a piece on a queer performance artist of Mexican descent). Im bummed I lost my job, I loved it, but Im more bummed for the communities.  in the week since the staff was laid off, only a handful of articles were published, the majority of which the former editors told me had been pre-scheduled. One post, published by contributing writer Keith Plocek on Wednesday evening following the firings, is still active on the site. Keith writes: The new owners of L.A. Weekly [sic] dont want you to know who they are. They are hiding from you. Theyve got big black bags with question marks covering their big bald heads. The new owners backgrounds notwithstanding, there has been little evidence of a political shift at LA Weekly during the first week under Calle and co. Instead, the shift has, at least initially, been one toward incompetence and ignorance.

The whole story  with its description of the slithering secrecy of this new crew, is worth reading in its entirety.

Deadlines, Im afraid, keep me from saying more, but this saddens me and many others quite deeply. When I moved to town 20 years ago, the weekly was a feisty and intelligent paper, thick with adds, sometimes up around 200 pages, with the best food, film, and arts writing in the city. (I say this as someone who worked for the rival paper, whose owners later swallowed the Weekly.) I ended up marrying a longtime music contributor, and we still have many friends from several generations of the papers existence.

To see it crushed by smug, wealthy offspring of Ayn Rand (are there any other kind?) who want their writers to work for free is pretty close to stomach-turning.
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!)
The bill was presented in Lok Sabha in August before it was referred to a joint committee of Parliament.

The finance ministry said that the bill is far more depositor-friendly than in many other countries which provide for statutory bail-in without consent of creditors and depositors.

New Delhi: To quell growing fears and apprehension that the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, (FRDI) may result in people losing their hard-earned savings in case of a banks failure, the finance ministry on Thursday said that the bill as introduced in Parliament does not adversely modify the current protections for depositors.

The governments implicit guarantee for public sector banks remains unaffected, the finance ministry said in a statement.

The bill has caused alarm over a bail-in provision which, some analysts say, may mean that creditors and depositors, which include common account holders, have to absorb losses in case of a banks failure.

Under a bail-in, troubled banks issue ties in lieu of the money deposited. In the past, in several countries, bail-in efforts have largely worked against depositors. In Cyprus, for example, depositors lost almost 50 per cent of their savings when a bail-in was implemented.

The bill was presented in Lok Sabha in August before it was referred to a joint committee of Parliament.

Critics say the bill is anti-poor and aimed at minimising the losses of failing financial institutions. They say the law will put common peoples money in jeopardy.

The government dismissed these apprehensions and said that the bill does not propose to limit the scope of powers for the government to extend financing and resolution support to banks, including public sector banks.

The provisions contained in the FRDI bill, as introduced in the Parliament, do not modify present protections to the depositors adversely at all. They provide additional protections to the depositors in a more transparent manner, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministrys clarification came on a day when an online petition, started by Mumbai-based Shilpa Shree, against the bill received more than 40,000 signatures in just 24 hours. The petition, filed on change.org, calls for support against the proposed law.

Currently, under the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, 1961, a maximum of Rs 1 lakh of every depositor in banks is insured in case a bank goes bust.

The FRDI proposes a resolution corporation which, in association with a regulator, will determine the amount of money of depositors to be insured in case a bank fails.

The bill says that the provision of bail-in will not be applicable on any liability owed by a specified service provider to the depositors to the extent such deposits are covered by deposit insurance.

The finance ministry said that the bill is far more depositor-friendly than in many other countries which provide for statutory bail-in without consent of creditors and depositors.

Indian Banks have adequate capital and are also under prudent regulation and supervision to ensure safety and soundness, as well as systemic stability. The existing laws ensure the integrity, security and safety of the banking system, said the ministry.

The bill ensures that, in the rare event of failure of a financial service provider, there is a system of quick, orderly and efficient resolution in favour of depositors, added the ministry.
The actress said that Weinstein told aspiring actors to sleep with him after boasting of his sexual exploits with her.

Los Angeles: Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has said embattled Hollywood producer lied to multiple women that she slept with him.

Weinstein has been accused of sexual abuse by over 50 women. However, he has denied the allegations.

Paltrow, 45, told The New York Times that Weinstein told aspiring actors to sleep with him after boasting of his sexual exploits with Paltrow.

"He's not the first person to lie about sleeping with someone... but he used the lie as an assault weapon," Paltrow said.

The actor said she talked to his other accusers personally and called the incidents "devastating".

After investigations by The New York Times and The New Yorker that revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against Weinstein, multiple women came forward to accuse the director of abuse.

Prominent actors such as Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Angelina Jolie, including Paltrow and others, also came forward to narrate their experiences with the producer.

In an earlier statement, Paltrow revealed that Weinstein tried to harass her, but she rebuffed his advances and even told her the then boyfriend Brad Pitt about it.

Pitt confronted Weinstein and told him to stay away from Paltrow.
Rawat said in his address at the United Services Institutions annual lecture on national security on Wednesday.

New Delhi: In a candid admission that in recent times politics is making an unwanted appearance in the military, Army Chief Gen. Bipin Rawat on Wednesday sought a return to the good old days when women and politics were never discussed in the military.

The military should be somehow kept out of politics. Of late, we have been seeing that politicisation of the military has been taking place. I think we operate in a very secular environment. We have a very vibrant democracy where the military should stay far away from the polity, Gen. Rawat said in his address at the United Services Institutions annual lecture on national security on Wednesday.

Whenever an issue linking any military establishment or military personnel with a political entity comes in... that is best avoided, he said, adding that the military performs best when it doesnt get into the political affairs of the country.

Known not to mince words or hold his punches back, Gen. Rawat may well have been mouthing Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzus famous deceptive war strategies as he appeared to solicit the Indian medias help to deceive the enemy into thinking what is not.

Admitting that while the purpose of the media is to come out with the truth, to highlight the truth and to keep the citizenry informed, Gen. Rawat said: At times there may be a requirement to spread some disinformation, spread some half-truths... Surprise and deception require a lot of disinformation... This is one area where I think the military needs to move forward.

For this, it is important that we have all the media channels on board so that they appreciate what is the purpose of the information that is being communicated... not all of which will be usable... some of it will be disinformation which is being spread across for the purpose of deception... so there the media has to understand why half-truths (are) being informed to them and why the military insists on the publication of half-truths... it is for the purpose of surprise and disinformation.

That is what the media has to understand and support the armed forces in ensuring the surprise and deception package of the military makes headway... this is one issue which we are addressing but we will need the support of the media in this, he said.

On Sunday, the Army Chiefs extensive details about a cross-border surgical strike on June 15, 2015 by the Armys special forces against NSCN(K) militant hideouts in Myanmar caused the governments security mandarins to squirm in embarrassment as the Centre is yet to officially acknowledge the cross-border raid in Myanmar due to diplomatic reasons.
According to CBI, Koda, Basu and two accused public servants conspired to favour VISUL in the coal block allocation.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar has directed all accused, including former Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda, to remain present in court on the date of judgement. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: A special court will pronounce on December 13 its verdict in a coal scam case against former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, ex-coal secretary HC Gupta and others.

Special CBI Judge Bharat Parashar has directed all the accused to remain present before court on the date of judgement in the case pertaining to alleged irregularities in allocation of Rajhara North coal block in Jharkhand to Kolkata-based Vini Iron and Steel Udyog Ltd (VISUL).

Besides Koda, Gupta and the firm, the other accused in the case include former Jharkhand Chief Secretary AK Basu, two public servants  Basant Kumar Bhattacharya and Bipin Bihari Singh, VISUL's Director Vaibhav Tulsyan, Koda's alleged close aide Vijay Joshi and chartered accountant Navin Kumar Tulsyan.

The eight accused people were earlier granted bail by the court after they had appeared before it in pursuance to the summons issued against them.

They were summoned as accused after the court took cognisance of alleged offences; criminal conspiracy read with cheating and criminal breach of trust by public servants.

During arguments, the CBI alleged that the firm had applied for allocation of Rajhara North coal block on January 8, 2007.

It said although the Jharkhand government and Steel Ministry did not recommend VISUL's case for coal block allocation, the 36th Screening Committee recommended the block to the accused firm.

The CBI said that Gupta, who was chairman of the screening committee, had allegedly concealed facts from then prime minister Manmohan Singh, who then headed the Coal Ministry too, that Jharkhand had not recommended VISUL for allocation of a coal block.

Koda, Basu and two accused public servants conspired to favour VISUL in the coal block allocation, the agency added. The accused have refuted the allegations levelled against them.
The PAAS leader is campaigning aggressively and also focusing on the issue of alleged corruption in the local body

Dhoraji (Guj): The contest on Dhoraji seat of Gujarat will be a prestige issue for Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel as one of his key aides, Lalit Vasoya, is contesting from there on Congress ticket.

Mr Vasoya will be taking on veteran BJP leader and former Lok Sabha MP Harilal Patel on this Patel community-dominated Assembly constituency in Rajkot district.

Dhoraji has traditionally been a stronghold of Congress. Veteran Patel community leader Vitthal Radadiya was elected from the seat for five times on Congress ticket before he quit the party and joined the BJP.

Mr Radadiya is presently the BJPs Lok Sabha member from Porbandar. Dhoraji is the only Assembly constituency on which Congress has fielded a leader from Hardik Patel-led PAAS.

The Patidars form a sizable chunk of the population in the constituency, but Muslims and dalits are also present in significant numbers and can together decide the fate of candidates in the fray.

But more than the issues of Patidars and dalits, it is the issue of development at the local level that has taken the centrestage, because of an incomplete underground sewage system and poor road infrastructure in Dhoraji town.

The problems faced by farmers, cutting across caste lines, in getting the right minimum support price (MSP) for their produce like cotton and groundnut is also a key issue. The local issues are more prominent here than the issues of caste and Patidars. The BJP-ruled nagarpalika could not complete the underground sewage system in time and it is still incomplete, says Vasoya.

The PAAS leader is campaigning aggressively and also focusing on the issue of alleged corruption in the local body and low MSP for farmers in the villages.
The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit here to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," the defence ministry said in a statement. (Photo: Representational | Pixabay)

New Delhi: India on Thursday said an unmannedaerial vehicle (UAV) had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

The defence ministry said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

In Beijing, the Chinese defence ministry said the Indian drone recently "intruded" into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector, prompting it to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of China's territorial sovereignty.

The defence ministry in New Delhi said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit here to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," the defence ministry said in a statement.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."

It did not clarify when the incident happened.

"The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas," it said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country has lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the drone violating Chinese sovereignty.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day-long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off had ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.
February 6, 2018, would remain the deadline for linking Aadhaar for availing uninterrupted mobile services, it adds.

Some petitioners in the top court have termed the linking of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) number with bank accounts and mobile numbers as 'illegal and unconstitutional'. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it was willing to extend till March 31, 2018, the deadline fixed for mandatory linking of Aadhaar for availing various services and welfare schemes.

The Supreme Court now will be setting up a five-judge Constitution Bench next week to hear several pleas seeking an interim stay on the Centre's 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 December 31 to March 31, 2018 for linking of Aadhaar with various services and schemes.

The Attorney General, however, made clear that February 6, 2018 would remain the deadline for linking Aadhaar for availing uninterrupted mobile services as it had been mandated by the apex court.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for those who are opposed to Aadhaar scheme told the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, that the central government should give an undertaking that no coercive steps would be taken against those fail to link their Aadhaar with various services.

The apex court on October 30 had said that a Constitution Bench would commence hearing on the clutch of petitions against Aadhaar scheme from the last week of November.

Recently, a nine-judge constitution bench of the apex court had held that Right to Privacy was a Fundamental Right under the Constitution. Several petitioners challenging the validity of Aadhaar had claimed it violated privacy rights.

The Centre had on October 25 told the top court that the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar to receive benefits of government schemes has been extended till March 31, 2018 for those who do not have the 12-digit unique biometric identification number and were willing to enroll for it.

The Attorney General had told the court that no coercive action would be taken against those who do not have the Aadhaar card but are willing to enrol for. He had said such people would not be denied the benefits of social welfare schemes till March 31.

Some petitioners in the top court have termed the linking of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) number with bank accounts and mobile numbers as "illegal and unconstitutional".

They had also objected to the CBSE's alleged move to make Aadhaar card mandatory for students appearing for examinations, a contention denied by the Centre.

One of the counsel representing the petitioners had earlier said that final hearing in the main Aadhaar matter, which is pending before the apex court, was necessary as the government "cannot compel" citizens to link their Aadhaar with either bank accounts or cell phone numbers.
Patel, who is Congresss political advisor, stressed that he was never a candidate for the chief minister's post and 'never will be'.

The posters that came up in old city area and Surat-East constituency of the diamond and trading hub which goes to polls on Saturday carried photos of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Ahmed Patel. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Surat: Posters appealing Muslims to vote for Congress to make Ahmed Patel the chief minister came up in some minority-dominated areas in Surat on the last day of campaigning for first phase of Gujarat polls, but Patel called it a "dirty trick" by the BJP and said he was not in the race.

Patel, who is Congress President Sonia Gandhi's political advisor, stressed that he was never a candidate for the chief minister's post and "never will be".

The posters that came up in old city area and Surat-East constituency of the diamond and trading hub which goes to polls on Saturday carried photos of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Ahmed Patel.

"Muslims are requested to vote for Congress party to maintain unity of the community and make Ahmed Patel wazir-e-aalam (chief minister) of Gujarat," read the posters.

Trashing the posters, Patel alleged that such acts show the "utter desperation" of the BJP as it fears defeat.

"Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP.

"Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for CM and will never, ever be," he tweeted.

He said the BJP is trying to divert the narrative from its performance to a divisive agenda.

"The moot issue is that BJP is trying very very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda.

"Hence their reliance on lies & propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time," Patel said in another tweet.

Congress leader RPN Singh on Thursday said Patel will not hold any post in Gujarat if the party comes to power.

"We have seen fake banners that have come up at many places in Gujarat (in the name of Congress, claiming Ahmed Patel will become the chief minister). There has to be a certain level of politics in a democracy, and Rahul Gandhi and Congress party do not go below that level," Singh said.

"But doing something like putting up posters of opposition parties and deciding that Ahmed Patel will be our chief minister is not right," he told reporters in Ahmedabad.

When Congress forms government, Ahmed Patel will hold no post in the state government, he said.

"Ahmed Patel has himself said this, but I would like to make it clear that such politics of putting up fake posters is not going to work in Gujarat as people here are intelligent and understand everything," he said.
US President Trump on Wednesday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.

Ownership of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: Reacting to the United States' announcement, recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India on Thursday said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.

US President Donald Trump had on Wednesday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.
A police spokesman justified the action saying it was done to avoid breach of peace in the Valley.

Srinagar: The J&K police on Wednesday foiled an attempt made by non-local activists of two right-wing Hindu organisations to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk, the historic square and commercial hub of summer capital Srinagar.

The activists of Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal had relocated to Srinagar from different parts of the country, mainly Jammu, to hoist the tricolour at the clock-tower of Lal Chowk. But the police quickly swung into action and detained them.

A police spokesman justified the action saying it was done to avoid breach of peace in the Valley. The attempt was made early on Wednesday morning when not much public movement was visible at the central square and the marketplaces around it had not opened.

Before being bundled into police vehicles, the leader of the activists told reporters that they decided to come to Kashmir after former chief minister and opposition National Conference (NC) president Dr. Farooq Abdullah had challenged the Centre to hoist the tricolour at Srinagars Lal Chowk before dreaming of doing it in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. He said. If Farooq Abdullah wants to return to power, he should make efforts to address the problems and issues being faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir including providing employment to its jobless youth instead of indulging in political gimmickry.

Mr Abdullah who is also a member of Lok Sabha representing Srinagar constituency had on November 27 while speaking to reporters in winter capital Jammu said that the Centre should first try to hoist the tricolour at Srinagars Lal Chowk before talking about unfurling it in PoK.

His statements had evoked sharp criticism in and outside Jammu and Kashmir. His challenging New Delhi to hoist the tricolor at Lal Chowk was termed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as childish and playing to the gallery on part of the octogenarian opposition leader and three-time chief minister.

Shiv Sena asked Mr Abdullah to choose the day and the time when thousands of patriot Indians will travel to Srinagar to hoist the tricolour at Lal Chowk or at any other chosen place.

On the other hand, pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Muhammad Yasin Malik while reacting to the NC leaders remarks that independent Kashmir was not viable or a reality and that India should instead restore internal autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir to resolve the issue accused him of always playing non-serious and selfish politics. He also said that the Kashmiris never take Abdullahs words and personality seriously.
Manmohan Singh says, 'We must demand the government to release all the documents related to demonetisation in public domain for scrutiny.'

Manmohan Singh further claims that people should demand the release of documents related to demonetisation. (Photo: ANI)

Rajkot: Continuing his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr Manmohan Singh on Thursday once again criticised the demonetisation move and alleged that the former has "betrayed" the trust of Gujaratis.

While addressing a press conference in Gujarat's Rajkot, the former Prime Minister said, "The people of Rajkot and Gujarat trusted the Prime Minister and believed in the policy of demonetisation in the hope that their sacrifice would benefit India. Their faith and hopes have been shattered. Modiji has betrayed the trust that Gujaratis had reposed in him".

"99% of the demonetised currency came back to the banks. It is clear that a lot of black money got converted to white and corruption continues to flourish. One immediate impact of demonetisation has been on job sector. Therefore, demonetisation was an uninformed attack and a disastrous decision for our economy," added Manmohan Singh.

He continued, "I invoke memories of more than 100 people who lost their lives while standing in queues as a result of demonetisation. I say with immense pain and a sense of deep responsibility that November 8 was a black day for our economy and democracy."

Manmohan Singh further averred that people should demand the release of documents related to demonetisation.

"We must demand the government to release all the documents related to demonetisation in public domain for scrutiny," he said.

Manmohan Singh further criticised the lowering GDP, saying, "To equal the UPA's ten year average, the economy will have to grow at 10.6% in the fifth year, I would be happy if it were to happen but I frankly do not think it will".
The court, however, rejected that, and said it would hear the matter on February 8, 2018.

New Delhi: On the penultimate day of campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday accused the Congress of linking the Ram temple with politics and attacked senior party leader Kapil Sibal for asking the Supreme Court to defer the hearing on the issue till after the 2019 general election.

Mr Sibal had told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that since the courts decision in the case would have very serious ramifications, the hearing should be deferred till July 2019 by which time the general election will be over. The court, however, rejected that, and said it would hear the matter on February 8, 2018.

Mr Modi, addressing an election rally in Gujarat on Wednesday, said the Congress was now linking Ram Mandir with politics. Kapil Sibal, a Congress MP, argued in the Supreme Court yesterday in the Babri Masjid case. He can argue in court, but is it right for him to say postpone the hearing till 2019? Why is he linking the elections with Ram Mandir?

Does the (Sunni) Waqf Board fight elections? Are these thoughts of delaying the hearing for elections that of the Waqf Board? The elections in the country are being fought by the Congress Party. You want to keep the issue unresolved for political gain and losses in the elections? Mr Modi declared.

The Prime Minister also wondered why the Congress wanted to create hurdles when the Sunni Waqf Board, a party to the title dispute represented by Mr Sibal, wanted resolution of the Ayodhya tangle.

The Sunni Waqf Board must be congratulated for their brave stand on the matter and disassociating themselves from the statement of Kapil Sibalji, he said.

Mr Sibal was quick to hit back, saying the Prime Minister was factually wrong in stating that he represented the Sunni Waqf Board in the court. I am saddened that the Prime Minister and BJP president have said I represent the Sunni Waqf Board in court. I did not represent the Sunni Waqf Board.

The top lawyer and Rajya Sabha MP added: We have full faith in Lord Ram and the temple will be built whenever Lord Ram wishes. However, we have no faith in Mr Modi. Instead of addressing issues of Gujarat, he is more interested in who I represent in court.

One of the appellants in the title suit, Uttar Pradesh Sunni Waqf Board earlier on Wednesday said it wanted speedy justice in the case and was not in favour of shifting the hearing till after the 2019 general elections.

The board is of the view that hearing in the case be held and the matter be disposed of promptly... I do not know on whose behalf the counsel for the Muslims appearing in the apex court, Kapil Sibal, had stated this... No such directive had been given by the board, chairman of the Sunni Waqf Board Zafar Farooqui said in Lucknow.

BJP president Amit Shah had also attacked the Congress on Tuesday, asking the party to make its stand clear to make its stand clear on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue after Mr Sibals arguments in court. Mr Shah had said on the one hand Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was on an election tour of temples in Gujarat, and on the other his party wants the hearing on the Ayodhya title dispute deferred.
Govt committed to protecting borders with neighbouring nations, says minister.

New Delhi: A day before chairing a meeting of states bordering Bangladesh, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday that Centre was committed to securing the entire borders with all neighbouring countries.

Mr Singh will hold a crucial meeting in Kolkata on Thursday where issues like infiltration of illegal Rohingya migrants and Bangladeshis would be discussed in detail.

Centre is committed to make borders with all neighbouring countries totally foolproof and secure in the days ahead, the home minister told the mediapersons on Wednesday.

During the meeting, the home minister and chief ministers will also discuss the ways as to how the porous Indo-Bangladesh border can be made more secure and safe in a bid to check cross-border smuggling of fake Indian currency notes, narcotics and other illegal activities, the official said.

Those expected to attend the Kolkata meeting include chief ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. This is the fourth such meeting to be chaired by the home minister.

In the past, the home minister has had similar meeting with chief ministers of states having borders with Pakistan, China and Myanmar.

India shares a vast 4,096 km-long border with Bangladesh out of this as much as 2,217 km falls is adjoining West Bengal, 262 km with Assam, 443 km is with Meghalaya, 856 km and 180 km in Tripura and Mizoram respectively.

As of now an estimated 36,000 Rohingyas are suspected to be living in different parts of India. Senior security and intelligence officials are also expected to attend the meeting.

Home ministry officials admitted that illegal immigration from Bangladesh has been a major security concern for most states in the Northeast as well as West Bengal.

BSF director-general K.K. Sharma had said last week his troops apprehended 87 Rohingya Muslims along the Indo-Bangla border since the beginning of the current year till October 31, of whom 76 were sent back to Bangladesh.

Nearly 9-10 lakh Rohingya Muslims are estimated to have migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar due to alleged persecution by the military, and the possibility of a spillover into India cannot be ruled out, he had said.
The vice-president was addressing the 12th annual convention of the Central Information Commission (CIC) here.

New Delhi: Vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should soon tell people about the benefits derived from demonetisation and the amount of black money deposited in the banks after the announcement was made to scrap high-value currency notes.

He said the aim of demonetisation was to check corruption and get the entire money in circulation into the banking system, including the money kept in bedrooms, bathrooms or under the pillows.

Some people are asking, what was the benefit if all the money had reached the banks...The aim of demonetisation was to get the entire money into the banks...How much of that money was black and how much white, that is the job of the RBI (to ascertain). The RBI should complete the work as soon as possible and tell the people (about it). They (people) went through a lot of pain for 50 days to withdraw money (from ATMs). They have to be explained as regards  these were the advantages, this much money was official, this much money was not official, these many people came under the tax system, Mr Naidu said.

He added that if the people were informed about these aspects, their confidence in the system would grow. The vice-president was addressing the 12th annual convention of the Central Information Commission (CIC) here.

Mr Naidu also pitched for holding Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections in the country simultaneously, and said the political parties should seriously think about it.

In India, it is always an election festival. Every six months there is an election, he said, adding that simultaneous polls would help the people focus on their responsibilities.

The vice president said the information commissioners should make sincere efforts for speedy disposal of cases registered with them, and added that information provided to people should be prompt and true.

He also said the order should be in the mother tongue of the applicants as 95 per cent of people in the country did not know English.

I have given the suggestion to the minister concerned that the order on the application should gradually be moved towards the mother tongue of the petitioner. Ordinary people should have the benefit of getting the reply in their mother tongue, Mr Naidu said, adding that the arguments in courts should also be in a language known to the litigants.

The Vice President said some people were misusing the Right to Information Act, saying, Right to information is a mission and it should not be used for a commission.
Gandhi is, meanwhile, all set to resume his campaign in Gujarat on Friday for the second phase, where voting will take place on December 14.

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, saying that unlike Narendrabhai he was human and could err. Mr Gandhi tweeted, For all my BJP friends: unlike Narendrabhai, I am human. We do make the odd mistake and thats what makes life interesting. Thanks for pointing it out and please do keep it coming, it really helps me improve. Love you all. On Tuesday, Mr Gandhi had tweeted figures related to the price rise that had some factual inaccuracies. Promptly the tweet was deleted and a new one posted with corrections. In the meantime, the saffornite handles started pointing out errors in his tweet.

Continuing his series of asking one question a day to the Prime Minister, Mr Gandhi on Wednesday questioned Mr Modi over malnutrition in children in Gujarat. He tweeted: Thirty-nine per cent of children suffering from malnutrition. Thirty-three out of every 1,000 infants die. Rising cost of treatment amid severe shortage of doctors. Handed over a government hospital in Bhuj to a friend for 99 years. Is this the example of your healthcare management?

Mr Gandhi is, meanwhile, all set to resume his campaign in Gujarat on Friday for the second phase, where voting will take place on December 14. The Congress has termed this campaign of asking a question a day as 22 saalon ka hisaab, Gujarat maange jawaab (Gujarat demands answers for 22 years of BJP rule).

In his campaign, Mr Gandhi has hit out at the PM, charging him with making policies that benefit his few industrial friends. In its manifesto the Congress has promised to waive off all farm loans within 10 days of coming to power in the state. Reaching out to the fishermens community, the party has promised a special ministry to deal with fishermens issues. In his campaign, Mr Gandhi said the PM was focusing more on the Congress and him than outlining the future of Gujarat.

Interestingly, Mr Gandhi will not take his certificate of election as Congress president on December 11, the last date of withdrawal of nominations. Instead, Mr Gandhi will collect his certificate on December 14 along with his mother, incumbent Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Mr Gandhi filed his nomination for the post of Congress president on December 4. After the scrutiny of nominations, Mr Gandhi was the only candidate left, and he will therefore be declared elected unopposed.
The Janata Dal (United) on its part said that the rebel leaders should have resigned from the Rajya Sabha on their own.

New Delhi: Rejecting criticism of his swift decision to disqualify rebel JD(U) MPs Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar, Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said that Justice delayed is justice denied and such matters should never be left hanging.

On Wednesday I passed an order on disqualification within three months and then I gave the strong opinion at the end saying such decisions should be decided in around three months because the disqualifications (plea) itself that have been filed, some of them are pending for Years.

Addressing the 12th annual convention of Central Information Commission (CIC), he said some people are asking why the chairman has given the order just in three months.

Justice delayed is (justice) denied, he said asking the information commissioners to provide timely and correct information to people.

The Janata Dal (United) on its part said that the rebel leaders should have resigned from the Rajya Sabha on their own.

Attacking Mr Yadav, the party claimed that it was the senior leader who had as the then JD(U) chief incited Jitan Ram Manjhi against Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Mr Manjhi had rebelled against Mr Kumar after the JD(U) decided to bring the latter back to the top post.

Mr Yadav worked to destabilise Mr Kumar, JD(U) general secretary Sanjay Jha said. Mr Naidus decision has been questioned by the Left parties and Aam Aadmi Party.

While CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury questioned the speed with which the plea was decided by Mr Naidu, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal condemned Mr Yadavs disqualification and termed it as illegal and a matter of political vendetta.
Singh criticised demonetisation and alleged that the PM has betrayed the trust of people.

Rajkot/Delhi: Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh hit back at the BJP government over slowdown in the economy and said that the Centre has to register 10.6% growth in its fifth year to match the UPAs average GDP figures.

To equal the UPAs 10-year average, the economy will have to grow at 10.6% in the fifth year, I would be happy if it were to happen but I frankly do not think it will, Dr Singh said in Rajkot, Gujarat, on Thursday, the last day of campaigning for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections.

Continuing his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr Singh again criticised demonetisation and alleged that the PM has betrayed the trust of people.

While addressing a press conference, Dr Singh said, The people of Rajkot trusted the Prime Minister and believed in the policy of demonetisation in the hope that their sacrifice would benefit India. Their faith and hopes have been shattered. Modiji has betrayed the trust that people had reposed in him.

Dr Singh is in Rajkot to have samvaad (dialogue) with teachers, professors and other professionals in poll-bound Gujarat. This is Dr Singhs third visit for campaigning in the state.

Ninety-nine per cent of the demonetised currency came back to the banks. It is clear that a lot of black money got converted to white and corruption continues to flourish. One immediate impact of demonetisation has been on job sector. Therefore, demonetisation was an uninformed attack and a disastrous decision for our economy, added Dr Singh added.

He continued, I invoke memories of more than 100 people who lost their lives while standing in queues as a result of demonetisation. I say with immense pain and a sense of deep responsibility that November 8 was a black day for our economy and democracy.

Dr Singh further averred that people should demand the release of documents related to demonetisation.

We must demand the government to release all the documents related to demonetisation in public domain for scrutiny, he said.

The former Prime Minister also charged the BJP of protecting the corrupt. Dr Singh said, Whoever faced corruption allegations during UPA was dealt with strictly, but the same cannot be said about BJP, they have not acted on corruption in their rule.
The Palestininan President was also described then by PM Modi as an old friend of India.

New Delhi: In the wake of the United States under the Trump Administration recognising Jerusalem as Israels Capital and planning to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, India on Thursday made it clear that it had no such intention of following suit. In a brief statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in New Delhi, Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country. Observers see this as a clear indication that the Indian embassy will continue to remain located in Tel Aviv which is recognised by almost all countries as Israels Capital. This is despite the fact that India currently enjoys close strategic ties with both the US and Israel. This also comes at a time when the even the European allies of the US are shocked and stunned by President Donald Trumps decision. It may be recalled that in May this year, while hosting visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said India has been unwavering in its support of the Palestinian cause and had added that New Delhi hopes to see a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel. The Palestininan President was also described then by PM Modi as an old friend of India.

Palestine ambassasor says Modi will visit country

Even as the political situation in the middle-east is getting more volatile after the US recognised Jerusalem as Israel's Capital, Palestinian Ambassador in New Delhi Adnan Abu Alhaijaa reportedly told a TV channel that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine but did not elaborate when the visit will take place. I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine, the Palestininan ambassador was quoted by news agencies as telling a TV channel. PM Modi had skipped Palestine during his visit to Israel in July.
Home minister chairs meet with 5 state chief ministers.

Kolkata: Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asked five eastern states sharing boundaries with Bangladesh to be extra vigilant against influx of Rohingyas and illegal immigrants through the porous Indo-Bangla border.

At a meeting of chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura here, he said a border protection grid on the lines of Unified Command set up in insurgency-hit states will soon come up in these states to check illegal infiltration.

The state governments have to be extra vigilant against the Rohingyas and other illegal immigrants, he said, flagging the Central governments priority to check the illegal immigrants from Myanmar through Bangladesh.

The home minister resolved to check illegal immigrants who have links with extremists groups for further anti- national activities with ulterior motive and posing threat to internal security.

Radical elements and terrorists can be checked only with joint action and active cooperation of central and state governments, he said.

Influx of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis though the porous Indo-Bangla border has been a major concern for India.

According to official estimates, 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.

He quoted latest estimates to say that 9-10 lakh Rohingya Muslims have migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar and the possibility of a spillover to India cannot be ruled out. The home minister said the concept of the grid has been planned as a multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure the 4,036-km-long Indo-Bangla border.
Rahul has visited a number of temples in Gujarat, which his party believes would help counter the Hindutva platform of its rival.

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Wednesday said that the Gujarat Assembly poll campaign had transformed Rahul Gandhi into a leader and that the Congress vice-presidents temple visits was a win for Hindutva, which the BJP should welcome.

Mr Gandhi has been campaigning extensively in the election-bound state, where the first phase of polling will take place on Saturday. He has visited a number of temples in Gujarat, which his party believes would help counter the Hindutva platform of its rival.

The election, which is touted by the BJP to be a sure win, seems to have tired Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as it has turned Rahul Gandhi into a leader, the Sena, a long-time but often bickering partner of the BJP, said in an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana here.

The polls have proved that Rahul Gandhi is not a Pappu anymore. The BJP should have a big heart and accept this, the party said.

The position of the Congress across the country is bad, the Sena noted, adding Gandhi will have to carve a way out of the dense fog of vilification and political maze the BJP has created for the party.

The BJP is even angry with Rahul Gandhi for his visits to temples and offering prayers. On the contrary, it should be welcomed. Rahul Gandhi visiting temples is a win of Hindutva. If he is taking the party towards Hindutva from bogus secularism, the Sangh should welcome it, the Sena said. Taking a dig at Modi for dubbing Gandhis expected elevation as Congress president as Aurangzeb Raj, the Sena said, Such comments prove that the Prime Minister considers Rahul Gandhi an opponent and that he has become an able leader.
The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases  on December 9 and 14  and votes will be counted on December 18.

The Prime Minister will connect with the party workers on their mobile phones through the "audio bridge" technology and directly interact with the divisional heads of the party's SC and ST units in the state. (Photo: Twitter/ANI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) members of the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat on Thursday and listen to their concerns on cyclone Ockhi.

The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Assembly polls in Gujarat, Modi's home state, is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday.

The Prime Minister will connect with the party workers on their mobile phones through the "audio bridge" technology and directly interact with the divisional heads of the party's SC and ST units in the state.

About 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend Modi's call, the BJP said in a statement on Wednesday.

On Diwali, Modi had extended his greetings to around 23,000 BJP workers in Gujarat through tele-conferencing.

He had also spoken to around 2,000 party workers in his Parliamentary constituency, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, using the same technology.

On Wednesday, Modi addressed three rallies in Gujarat  in Dhandhuka, Dahod and Netrang. On Thursday, he will also address a rally in Surat, which was postponed from Wednesday due to cyclone Ockhi. The Surat rally will conclude his campaigning in Gujarat.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases  on December 9 and 14  and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
The inscription of the Kumbh Mela was recommended by the expert body which examines the nominations submitted by member states.

The committee observed it was the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: India's Kumbh Mela has been recognised by UNESCO as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" and held up as the world's largest peaceful gathering of pilgrims.

The external affairs ministry today said the recognition was accorded by the Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, an entity which works under UNESCO.

The decision to recognise the Kumbh Mela was taken at its ongoing meeting in Jeju, South Korea.

The inscription of the Kumbh Mela was recommended by the expert body which examines the nominations submitted by member states. The committee observed it was the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth.

"The Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage under UNESCO inscribed the 'Kumbh Mela' on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during its 12th session held at Jeju, South Korea," the MEA said.

The session, which started on December 4, is to end on December 9. It said the inscription was the third in two years following 'Yoga' and 'Nouroz'.

While recommending the Kumbh Mela, the expert committee observed it was the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth.

"The committee observed that 'Kumbh Mela' is the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth. The festival, held in Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, represents a syncretic set of rituals related to worship and ritual cleansing in holy rivers in India," the MEA said.

"As a religious festival, the tolerance and inclusiveness that Kumbh Mela demonstrates are especially valuable for the contemporary world," the MEA said in its statement.

The committee also took note of the fact that knowledge and skills related to the 'Kumbh Mela' were transmitted through the Guru-Shishya parampara (teacher-student relationship) by way of saints and sadhus teaching their disciples about traditional rituals and chants.

Reacting to the recognition, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said it was a proud moment for India.

"A very proud moment for us as sacred Kumbh Mela is just inscribed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO," he tweeted.

In 2003, the UNESCO General Conference had adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage as an international treaty, acknowledging that cultural heritage was more than tangible places, monuments and objects and that it also encompassed traditions and living expressions.

The Kumbh Mela joins new elements from Botswana, Colombia, Venezuela, Mongolia, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the UNESCO list.
In a shocking revelation the man said he and his neighbour love eating cat meat.

Every day we come across incidents of animal abuse which make us question our moral values and basic humanity. Something similar happened when 19-year-old Nancy Kadarikota from Ghatkopar East posted on social media looking for people to provide homes to five abandoned kittens that she had rescued.

Somebody had abandoned these kittens behind my building so I took them and I have been taking care of them since 2 months now, says Nancy. She goes on to add that the reason she was looking for a forever home for them is because she already has two big cats and it would not be feasible for her two keep more.

Soon after she had put up the foster post on social media, a man who calls himself Kevin Dsouza (his identity is yet to be verified) pinged her and assured her that he would like to adopt two of the kittens.

I posted a foster post in all the groups. I have been searching a forever home for them for months and while a few people showed interest they brought back the kittens twice.

She adds, This man sent me a text saying he is ready to adopt two kittens. He belonged to the same pet group that I was a part of in Mumbai.

However, as the conversation progressed, it turned out that the man had far more sinister reasons for wanting the helpless kittens.

Conversations between Nancy and Kevin

Conversations between Nancy and Kevin

He asked me for pictures of kittens, says Nancy.

He wanted one female and one male. I gave him pictures and details but when I asked him to come at my location to pick them up he said he couldn't come so I asked him his address.

The man, who claimed to live in Chakala however, said something so shocking that it sent chills down Nancys spine.

I asked him for assurance as I won't be able to take them back again and it was then he said, Don't worry I'll kill them as me and my neighbour like cat meat.

As soon as Nancy posted the conversation on social media, he blocked her.

Social media however, was shaken.

While one person posted, Screw him... Such jerks are always there... Hopefully you would get a sane parent for them... Cheers. Another said I strongly believe he is some pervert who targets girls/ woman animal lover. I feel, He may get dangerous if ignored! Please spread this information on Facebook as much as you can!

But the highlight was when another social media user saw the post and became aghast since the man had volunteered to look after her GSD when she wanted to go out of town.

OMG! This is the same guy who answered on my post to foster my GSD for free while I'm outta town! Thankfully, I thought I'd rather pay but give to someone with experience where my dog will be happy plus make new doggie friends!

However, no one knows if Kevin Dsouza actually exists with a lot of people saying that it was be a fake account created by someone looking to troll others, while others saying he should be reported.

The kittens rescued by Nancy

While the authenticity of the account is still being questioned, the entire episode has left Nancy visibly shaken who says, I don't know whether he was joking around or was serious but this is something cruel and stupid. I can't believe such people even exist.

Please do get in touch with Nancy Kadarikota if you want to give a forever home to any of the adorable kittens.
The incident occurred at the couple's home in Palm Harbor, Tampa, Florida.

During an altercation over sex toys and a laptop, the couple got into a verbal argument. (Photo: Pixabay)

A woman has been charged with domestic battery and arrested after she allegedly slapped her boyfriend across the face over 'sex toys and a laptop'.

Florida Police arrested 38-year-old Lindsay Clark for slapping her boyfriend of over a year, Chad Scerbo.

The incident occurred at the couple's home in Palm Harbor, Tampa, Florida.

The Smoking Gun released part of the police report, which read: 'Lindsay Clark did actually and intentionally strike Chad Scerbo, her boyfriend, who she has been in a relationship ongoing for more than one year.

'Lindsay struck Chad against his will during an altercation, to-wit: Lindsay slapped Chat with an open hand on the left cheek.

'During an altercation over sex toys and a laptop, Lindsay and Chad got into a verbal argument. During that argument, Lindsay admitted to slapping chad as she was upset over what Chad had said.'

There was no mention of Chad's injuries, or whether he suffered any.
Father refuses to take body, demands arrest of 2 doctors; Case transferred to Crime Branch.

In a case of alleged medical negligence, one of the newlyborn twins was declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh on November 30 and was later found to be alive when the parents were on their way to perform the last rites. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The premature baby, who was erroneously declared dead by Max Hospital in Delhi and was later found to be alive by family members, died during treatment at a nursing home on Wednesday.

The baby was admitted to a private nursing home in Pitampura where he was put on a ventilator and the doctors said that the due to the premature birth, his condition was serious and that his chances of survival slim.

In a case of alleged medical negligence, one of the newlyborn twins was declared dead by Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh on November 30 and was later found to be alive when the parents were on their way to perform the last rites. The baby was later admitted to Aggarwal Hospital, Pitampura.

The mother, identified as Varsha, had given birth to pre-mature twins (a boy and a girl). While the girl was stillborn, the baby boy was declared dead later. The hospital wrapped the two bodies in two separate paper bags and then handed over to the family in a polythene bag.

Father of the baby, Ashish Kumar, alleged that the baby acquired severe infection from the incident and that doctors at Max Hospital were responsible for the fate of his child.

The father has refused to take the body of his child, in an act of protest, and demanded that the two doctors allegedly involved in the medical negligence in the case be arrested. I have been wronged. I lived through the death of my daughter, and death of my son, not once but twice. I will not take my sons body until the two doctors are arrested, so that we get justice, he said.

Max Hospital had earlier terminated the services of two doctors  Dr A.P. Mehta and Dr Vishal Gupta  who were allegedly involved in the case. However, Dr Sanjeev Gupta of Aggarwal Hospital said that baby was of just 22 weeks and it was difficult for him to survive from the start as he needed too much support. Meanwhile, the Delhi police on Wednesday transferred the case to its Crime Branch for a detailed probe, a senior official said. Max Hospital, in a statement on Wednesday said, We just learnt of the sad demise of the 23-week preterm baby, who was on ventilator support. Our deepest condolences are with the parents and other family members. While we understand that survival in extreme preterm births is rare, it is always painful for the parents and family. We wish them the strength to cope with their loss.

The news of the death comes a day after the Delhi government probe team, in its preliminary findings, found the hospital guilty of not having followed prescribed medical norms.
Arvind Kejriwal had sought a stay on the summons issued to him by the trial court on March 4.

Mr Chandra, had on November 17, 2016, sought prosecution of the Delhi chief minister for allegedly defaming him by leveling false allegations in the wake of demonetisation. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday exempted Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal from personal appearance before a trial court on December 11 in a criminal defamation complaint filed by Rajya Sabha MP Subhash Chandra.

A bench of Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal also issued notice to Delhi Police and Chandra seeking their response on the chief minister's plea to quash the complaint filed by the BJP leader.

The court, which was not inclined to stay the proceedings before the trial court, however, exempted Mr Kejriwal's personal appearance and listed the matter for further hearing on January 22.

Arvind Kejriwal had sought a stay on the summons issued to him by the trial court on March 4.

Mr Chandra, had on November 17, 2016, sought prosecution of the Delhi chief minister for allegedly defaming him by leveling false allegations in the wake of demonetisation.
On December 4, he lured the girl, who was playing outside, to his makeshift barn in Rohini.

An eight-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an 87-year-old man in outer Delhi's Narela. (Photo: Representational | File)

New Delhi: An eight-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an 87-year-old man in outer Delhi's Narela, police said on Thursday.

The accused has been arrested.

On December 4, he lured the girl, who was playing outside, to his makeshift barn in Rohini.

He tried to force himself on her. Since the barn did not have a roof, a woman, who was standing on the terrace of her house, saw the accused with the girl, the police said.

She raised an alarm and alerted locals who rushed to the spot. The accused fled from there.

Police were subsequently informed and the girl was taken for a medical examination. A case was registered. The accused was arrested from the area on the same day.
The 28-year-old accused had also allegedly raped the infant two days earlier.

Mumbai: The Sangvi police arrested a man on Thursday for raping his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter at a time when his wife  the complainant  was in the washroom.

The accused had also allegedly raped the infant two days earlier and restrained his wife from approaching the police by threatening to kill her as well as the baby, according to the police. The accused is a 28-year-old transport driver and his family resides in a chawl.

Ajay Chandkhede, police inspector, Sangvi, said, The mother of the child, who is homemaker, lodged the FIR against her husband on Thursday morning. According to the FIR, on November 30, the complainant came out of washroom and saw her husband in the nude doing something to the girl. She immediately stopped him and saw that girls private parts had turned red. She wanted to take her daughter to the doctor and the police. But her husband threatened her into silence.

He added, Two days ago, the accused again repeated the act. This time, however, his wife did not pay heed to his threats.

The police has arrested the accused under the relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with unnatural sex offences.
The nation overwhelmingly voted in favour of changing the law, ending decades of political wrangling.

The final step is for the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, the Queen's representative in Australia, to ratify the law, which will likely take place within days. (Photo: AFP)

Sydney: Australia's parliament passed a bill legalising same-sex marriage Thursday after the nation overwhelmingly voted in favour of changing the law, ending decades of political wrangling.

There were loud cheers, hugs and sustained clapping in the lower House of Representatives when all but four MPs voted in support of marriage equality, after the upper house Senate passed the bill 43-12 last week.

"What a day for love, for equality, for respect! Australia has done it," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House.

The final step is for the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, the Queen's representative in Australia, to ratify the law, which will likely take place within days.
Art of 'pizzaiuolo' was given the nod by the UN cultural body's World Heritage Committee.

Result comes after some two million people signed a petition to support Naples' application, according to Sergio Miccu, head of the Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli. (Photo: AFP)

Naples' pizza twirling joined UNESCO's list of "intangible heritage" Thursday, securing the coveted status alongside a host of cultural treasures including a Saudi art form traditionally practised only by women.

The art of 'pizzaiuolo' -- which has been handed down for generations in the southern Italian city -- was given the nod by the UN cultural body's World Heritage Committee, who met on the South Korean island of Jeju.

It comes after some two million people signed a petition to support Naples' application, according to Sergio Miccu, head of the Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli -- no doubt buoyed by his offer of complimentary pizza if the age-old culinary tradition joined the prestigious list.

"We'll be giving out free pizza in the streets," Miccu earlier told AFP.

The custom goes far beyond the pizzaiuolo's spectacular handling of the dough -- hurling it into the air in order to "oxygenate" it -- to include songs and stories that have turned pizza-making into a time-honoured social ritual.

"Victory!" Maurizio Martina, Italy's minister for agriculture, food and forestry, wrote on Twitter. "Another step towards the protection of Italy's food and wine heritage."

In a statement, Martina said the recognition came after a years-long campaign. "The art of the Neapolitan pizza-maker contains Italian know-how ... especially traditional knowledge that has been transmitted from generation to generation," he said.

Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, a former agriculture minister who attended the proceedings in Jeju, said in a video posted on Twitter: "Long live the art of Neapolitan pizzaiuolo!"

The pizza's humble ancestor, a plain affair usually tarted up with a bit of lard, initially emerged as a cheap, easy and fast way to feed the city's army of poor, said historian Antonio Mattozzi.

But despite being an immediate hit with the locals, pizza failed to take off outside the city at first, Mattozzi told AFP.

It took Queen Margherita's love of the classic tomato, mozzarella and basil version to fire up the imagination and taste buds of diners far and wide -- at least that is how the story goes.

Hoping to win the hearts of the commoners, the Italian queen asked in 1889 to try their favourite dish. And while she was unconvinced by anchovy and Parmesan-topped versions, the basil delight won her over.

- Saving tradition -

Thirty-four candidates were in the running to join UNESCO's list of intangible heritage, created in 2003 mainly to raise awareness, although the agency also sometimes offers financial or technical support to countries struggling to protect their traditions.

The list already included more than 350 traditions, art forms and practices from Spain's flamenco dancing to Indonesian batik fabrics, to more obscure entries such as a Turkish oil wrestling festival and the Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels.

Saudi Arabia was among those celebrating on Jeju, claiming the tag for Al-Qatt Al-Asin -- elaborate interior wall paintings traditionally done by women. The art, which promotes solidarity among women, is handed down through observation.

Bangladesh claimed victory with its tradition of Shital Pati, an intricate weaving craft using strips of green cane to produce mats and bedspreads.

Another winner was the traditional horseback game of Kok Boru in Kyrgyzstan, where players score points by putting a goat's carcass in an opponent's goal -- though the dead animal is replaced with a mould in the modern-day version.

An array of traditions struggling to survive will also be given special support after being placed on an "urgent safeguarding list".

These include a whistled language that developed in Turkey as a way to communicate across steep mountains and rugged topography but is now threatened by mobile phones.

Morocco will also get help to protect Taskiwin -- a martial dance that developed in the western High Atlas mountain range and involves shaking one's shoulders to the rhythm of tambourines and flutes.

UNESCO said globalisation and young people's rejection of traditional heritage had driven the practice "closer to oblivion".
Trump had called several Arab leaders earlier to alert them about his impending announcement.

Early in the afternoon on Wednesday in Washington, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that the US embassy would be moving to that city. In spite of this unilateral move, he added that he still supported a two-state solution and this recognition would not affect the final status of the city to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians as part of their peace agreement.

Mr Trump has thus fulfilled his campaign promise to the two right-wing constituencies that are his solid support base  Christian evangelicals and hard-right Jewish lobbies. The latter include major donors, like the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed $25 million to the Trump campaign.

Mr Trump had called several Arab leaders earlier to alert them about his impending announcement. Every one of them responded negatively. King Abdullah II of Jordan warned him about the dangerous repercussions of the decision for regional peace and security.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia pointed out that the US announcement would harm peace talks and increase tensions in the region, while Egypts Abdel Fattah al Sisi said it would undermine the chances of peace in West Asia. Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims, and threatened to cut ties with Israel.

European leaders have been equally critical. Frances Emmanuel Macron has said the final status of Jerusalem could only be determined on the basis of two states, Israel and Palestine, emerging on the basis of negotiations between them. The German foreign minister has said the US decision was a very dangerous development.

Mr Trumps announcement has come exactly 100 years after British troops, led by Gen. Edmund Allenby, captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans in December 1917, ending millennium-old Muslim control.

The early Zionist leaders from Europe felt little enthusiasm for the city, seeing it, according to British historian Michael Dumper, as a regression to a conservative culture that was alien to them. Though they made West Jerusalem, annexed after the 1948 war, their capital, they spent most of their resources in developing the coastal towns of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon.

However, the Israeli military victory of 1967, which gave it control over both east and west Jerusalem, strengthened the countrys religious nationalism and placed Jerusalem at the heart of national identity. In 1980, the Israeli Parliament declared that Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel, but the UN Security Council said this decision was null and void.

Though 160 countries have diplomatic ties with Israel, not one of them has accepted Jerusalem as its capital. East Jerusalem is viewed as occupied territory and its final status is central to the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, since the Arabs see East Jerusalem as the capital of a free and sovereign Palestine.

The Trump initiative is thus a disruptive intervention into a sensitive and volatile cauldron of divisive history, conflictual politics and competitive national identities.

Several commentators have questioned the wisdom and motives of Mr Trumps announcement. The Israeli daily Haaretz in its editorial has criticised the US President for ignoring Palestinian aspirations and insists that a two-state solution requires the division of Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J-Street, the voice of moderate Jewish opinion in the US, has said that the status of Jerusalem demands less posturing and overblown rhetoric and more efforts to reach a two-state solution. Arab commentator Rami Khouri notes that, in the US perspective, the Arab countries can be treated with disdain forever.

Mr Trump seems convinced that, with the major Arab states now more concerned about Iran than Palestine, he is not likely to alienate the Arab leaders who matter, whatever public positions they might adopt for domestic consumption.

Mr Trump is wrong both in his understanding of US opinion and the impact of his position in the Arab world. At home, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll has revealed that 63 per cent of Americans oppose the shift of the US embassy to Jerusalem and 59 per cent want the administration to take a neutral position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A solid 81 per cent want the administration to depend more on experts with experience rather than rely on relatives and personal friends, a reference to the lead role the President has given his son-in-law Jared Kushner in addressing the Israel-Palestine issue.

Mr Kushner has hardly made any serious progress in his peace initiative: the plan in circulation provides for non-contiguous parts of the West Bank to constitute a Palestinian state, with limited sovereignty, without East Jerusalem as its capital, and with most settlements, with 200,000 Israeli settlers, continuing in place. This is not very different from the bantustans that have been offered by Israel as the Palestinian state for the last few years.

In West Asia, Jerusalem is the one emotive issue that can stir the Arabs and can bring them out on to the streets. This could have implications for Americas ties with major Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

They will have no choice but to view Mr Trump as an unreliable partner whose thoughtless actions could jeopardise their own rather shaky credibility at home. They will be particularly concerned that his announcement will encourage extremist elements to utilise the US anti-Arab and anti-Muslim policies to attract and use angry youth to attack Western targets and their Arab allies nearer home, thus, in the words of the Palestinian paper Al Ghad, flinging open the gates of hell in the region.

King Salman was quick to note that Mr Trumps position on Jerusalem is a dangerous step that provokes the feelings of Muslims around the world. The situation in West Asia, which is already experiencing widespread fratricidal conflict, has just got much worse.
An increase in attacks where DDoS and POS systems were the main vectors is making the situation even worse

The research shows that over the past year there has been an explosion (up to 16 per cent) in both attacks involving DDoS attacks, and attacks in which vulnerabilities in point-of- sale systems (POS-terminals) have been used.

According to the Kaspersky Lab IT Security Economics Report, over 77 per cent of companies have suffered from some kind of attack during the last 12 months. An increase in attacks where DDoS and POS systems were the main vectors is making the situation even worse  especially during the Christmas sale season, when there are more shoppers in store than usual, and the boost in sales is making retailer revenues an attractive target for cybercriminals.

The research shows that over the past year there has been an explosion (up to 16%) in both attacks involving DDoS attacks, and attacks in which vulnerabilities in point-of- sale systems (POS-terminals) have been used. These figures indicate that whatever heists cybercriminals are planning this season, they are likely to start with, or include, DDoS or the exploitation of vulnerabilities in retailer POS systems.

In particular, 2017 has seen a series of high-profile cybersecurity breaches reported in the payment systems of major brands: from Chipotle to Hyatt Hotels and recently, Forever 21. Kaspersky Lab also registered a considerable increase and geographic spread in botnet DDoS attacks in the third quarter of 2017, with targets in 98 countries (compared to 82 in Q2), according to the latest DDoS Intelligence Report.

This situation is going to be extremely relevant to retail and e-commerce organizations during the intense period of sales around Christmas. As shoppers look to bag their bargains, retailers can expect increased revenues. This in turn makes retailers a lucrative prize, if cybercriminals can stage successful DDoS attacks against them for a ransom, or for dirty competition, use POS systems as an entry point for targeted attacks, or steal customer credentials and money.

Given this years apparent increase in these types of attacks, we recommend businesses  retailers in particular  to stay alert during the Christmas season, when there are more risks of cybercriminals cashing-out, through the exploitation of payment systems or attacks that use DDoS. These can involve cybercriminals demanding a ransom, or simply preventing an organization from trading, making them lose income and clients as a result. But apart from the obvious risks, this is also a good opportunity for businesses to think about their protection in general, by developing their cybersecurity culture and investing in the right technologies.  said Alessio Aceti, Head of Enterprise Business Division, Kaspersky Lab.

To avoid ruining their revenues in the upcoming high sales season, retailers and e-commerce organizations can protect themselves with a range of solutions dedicated to meeting their specific requirements. Kaspersky Lab strongly recommends that retailers:

- Keep e-commerce platforms up-to- date because every new update may contain critical patches to make the system less vulnerable to cybercriminals.

- If possible, make sure that the POS terminals in use run the latest version of software and change the default passwords.

- Use a tailored security solution, like Kaspersky Embedded Systems Security, to protect point of sales terminals from malware attacks.

- Prepare for DDoS attacks by choosing a reliable service provider that is a cybersecurity expert and can protect against powerful and sophisticated DDoS attacks. This is not always possible using in-house resources or Internet providers. To learn about the specialist Kaspersky DDoS Protection offering for SMBs and enterprises, please visit our website.

- Educate customers about the possible cyberthreats they may encounter while shopping online and offline, as well as steps about how to minimize the risks.
Qualcomm spokesman further alleges that Apple isn't making the best use of its Qualcomm modems,and makes it slower to match intel's chip

Apples fight with one of its biggest supplier Qualcomm is in the news for a while and is getting messier day by day. Despite the mutual dependency on each other, there is no solution in sight for the tech giants. According to reports, Apple is even in the process of designing the 2018 iPhone models without using Qualcomm's modem chips.

However, Cristiano Amon, the president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), seems rather relaxed on the whole scenario

"Yes, there's one big OEM that we will continue to work hard to supply some of their volume, but in addition to that, we have seen tremendous growth in China, we have seen tremendous growth in the other customers with Samsung, and then we've seen growth outside the phone space. And on top of that, 5G is coming with a lot of new attributes," Amon told PCMag in an interview at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit.

Qualcomm's stock price has gone down amidst the legal tussle with Apple and it is even facing a hostile takeover bid from Broadcom. Previously Apple exclusively used Qualcomm modem chips from the iPhone 4s through 6s generations, the Cupertino giant has now split its business between Qualcomm and Intel for two cycles and may be preparing to go all-Intel in 2018.

"We've been very public in QCT. In early '16 we said, we're modeling our business assuming that a very large OEM is always going to [embrace] multi sourcing, and even multi tiering," Amon said. "It was probably surprising to a lot of people that now that we have a full year of a dual source on that OEM, we saw QCT continue to grow. Just on non-phone business, we probably grew $3 billion."

The bad omens dont end here for Qualcomm. Samsung and Huawei are also developing in-house modem chips and processors, which mean that worlds top 3 phone makers, may shift the business from Qualcomm in near future, but that's a challenge Qualcomm has faced before, Amon pointed out.

"We may have a different scale now given the amount of concentration we have. No question there's a concentration in the industry on the OEM side. But we always had it. In the early days of even 2G, with Qualcomm CDMA, you had companies like Samsung which had their own CDMA chips, you had Motorola with their own CDMA chip. If you have enough scale that you can afford the R&D in the scale of a semiconductor business you do it. Nokia did it, everybody did it, we always had that."

The phone maker landscape is changing, Amon argued. The rise of Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo has opened up new markets for Qualcomm where there were none before, he said. Qualcomm is also looking far beyond phones. The company's big announcement on the first day of its Snapdragon Summit was a trio of Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops, and the company is currently trying to buy chipmaker NXP to improve its position in cars.

"You can't really predict with any precision that the OEM landscape is going to be like that forever. And when you get to a new generation, like 5G, you may create an entry point for many OEMs in the market. It appears a bigger issue because the market is concentrated, but we will only really be worried if the decision of the market is that there's no more innovation in the phone space. If that's not the case, it's a very dynamic market," Amon said.

Amon further alleged that Apple isn't making the best use of its Qualcomm modems, anyway. Talking to various experts here, I'm more and more convinced that Apple not only crippled its Snapdragon X16 modems by deciding not to turn on 4x4 MIMO but also tuned the X16 down to match the Intel XMM7480 modem's lesser performance. Our exclusive study of the Qualcomm and Intel iPhone X models found the two devices much closer in modem performance than we saw last year.

We may or may not see Apple devices continue with Qualcomm components but Amons comments do suggest that Qualcomm is ready to embrace the departure.
Protests broke out in parts of Amman, Jordan, inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-US slogans.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday. (Photo: AP)

London: Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator.

The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at US President Donald Trumps decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Major US allies came out against Trumps reversal of decades of US and broad international policy on Jerusalem.

France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalems status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

Israel, by contrast, applauded Trumps move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israels first day.

He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israels capital and he urged other countries to follow Trumps example.

Trump upended decades of US policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East.

The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.

Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trumps move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator.

The last round of US-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine US interests in the region and to shun Israel.

Protests broke out in parts of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Ammans outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted.

Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

There were also reports of protests in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza took to streets shouting anti-US slogans, The Independent reported. "Down with America...America is the mother of terror," the protesters chanted as they burned flags and tires.

Legally Null Decision

Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trumps decision and said it did not change Jerusalems disputed legal status.

Jordan said Trumps action was legally null because it consolidated Israels occupation of East Jerusalem.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trumps Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability.

Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation.

Turkey said Trumps move was irresponsible.

We call upon the US Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate.

Iran seriously condemns Trumps move as it violates UN resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israels security.

British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said.

However, Mays spokesman welcomed Trumps stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trumps unilateral move.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers.

France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said.

For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks.

I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.
Deputy director of armys western theatre combat bureau did not give details about when or where the incident happened.

Chinese border troops 'took a professional and responsible attitude' and carried out identification verification of the device, the deputy director said. (Photo: AP/Representational)

Beijing: An Indian drone has "invaded" China's airspace and crashed, Chinese state media said Thursday, months after the neighbours ended one of their worst border standoffs in decades.

"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," Xinhua news agency cited the deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, as saying.

Zhang did not give details about when or where the incident happened.

Chinese border troops "took a professional and responsible attitude" and carried out identification verification of the device, Zhang added.

In August, the two nations pulled back their troops to resolve a tense deadlock over part of a Himalayan plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan, an ally of India.

India's army chief said in September that his country could not afford to be complacent and must be prepared for war.

India and China went to war in 1962 over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
Crew of 2 aircraft saw a flash, believed to be North Koreas ballistic missile.

Senior UN official Jeffrey Feltman shakes hands with North Korean vice-foreign minister Pak Myong Guk at Peoples Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: A North Korean ballistic missile was seen by the crew of several airliners last week, aviation authorities said on Wednesday, raising concerns about the threat to civilian flights posed by Pyongyangs unannounced tests.

The North has conducted a flurry of missile tests this year in defiance of repeated international protests, including from aviation authorities.

Pyongyang fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, which reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometres (2,780 miles) before splashing into the sea 950 kilometres (590 miles) east of its launch site, North Korean state media said.

A Korean Air jet flying to Incheon from San Francisco reported to Japanese controllers that its flight crew saw a flash from what was believed to be the North Korean missile, a Korean Air spokesman said.

Four minutes later another Korean Air plane on a Los Angeles-Incheon flight also reported the same sighting to Japanese control, he said.

A South Korean transportation ministry official, who wanted to remain unnamed, said the flight paths of both Korean airlines were some 220 kilometres (140 miles) away from where the missile landed.

In the clean dark sky, you can see flashes from a missile from that long distance, he said. .

Japans transport ministry also said air controllers in the country received reports of four such sightings.

A Japan Airlines spokesman said the cockpit crew of one of its airliners, flying from Tokyo to London, saw a bright flame falling down over the sea of Japan.

The reports from South Korea and Japan come after Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific said Monday that the crew of its flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong saw what is suspected to be the re-entry of the North Korean missile.

Cathay said there was no current plan to change air routes, saying its plane was far from the event location.

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.

David C. Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a report Tuesday that the Cathay crew most likely had seen the missiles first stage burn out and fall back to earth.

Ignition of the second stage rocket engine and separation of the first stage may have looked like an explosion that caused the missile to fall apart, he wrote.

Mr Wright also said the flash seen by Korean pilots about an hour after the missiles launch would be consistent with the warhead heating up during reentry, since the missile flew for 53 to 54 minutes.
The Punjab chief minister said he heard Khans remarks on the Jallianwala incident and was happy to know about his feelings on the matter.

Amritsar: The British government should apologise for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Wednesday, calling it a tragedy one must never forget.

Mr Khan, whose grandparents were born in India and parents migrated from Pakistan to the UK, arrived in Amritsar on Tuesday. He paid a rich tribute to those who died in the Jallianwala Bagh incident.

It was incredibly moving to visit Jallianwala Bagh. Our thoughts are with all those who died. It is time for the British government to finally apologise. The tragedy in 1919 on the eve of Vaisakhi is one we must never forget, Mr Khan wrote in the visitors book at the Jallianwala Bagh here.

The massacre took place on April 13, 1919, when British troops, commanded by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, opened fire at a crowd of unarmed people, on the harvest festival of Baisakhi. A large number of people were killed in the incident. It was important for me also to come to the Jallianwala Bagh. We all know the history here, Mr Khan said during a media interaction.

My view is that British government should apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh shooting. Some people used the word massacre, the Mayor said.

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh welcomed his suggestion. The chief minister said he heard Mr Khans remarks on the Jallianwala incident and was happy to know about his feelings on the matter.

The suggestion, coming from a British government functionary, was good and, if implemented, would go a long way in strengthening ties between India and UK, and perhaps, to some extent, assuaging the wounds of Indians who suffered the pain of the independence struggle, he said.

Wrapping up his first official tour to India, the London Mayor, earlier on Wednesday, also paid obeisance at the holy shrine of Golden Temple.

During his visit, he participated in langar at the Golden Temple complex and showed keen interest in knowing how the food is prepared.

Mr Khan was also presented with a Siropa (robe of honour) by the officials of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).

It has been a privilege for me to be in Amritsar for the last 24 hours. The Golden Temple is a spiritual home for tens of thousands of Londoners of the Sikh faith and millions of Sikhs around the world come to Amritsar to pay their respects to worship, he said while talking to the reporters.

Mr Khan, who was on a three-city tour to India, visited New Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar to strengthen the UKs capital trade ties with India.
Williamson, 41, has been defence minister for little over a month, replacing Michael Fallon after he quit in a sexual harassment scandal.

Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain, Williamson told the Daily Mail in an interview published late on Wednesday. (Photo: Twitter)

London: Britons who have joined the ISIS militant group in Syria and Iraq should be hunted down and killed, Britain's new defence minister said.

Gavin Williamson said that Britons who had gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS hated what Britain stands for, and that air strikes could be used against the estimated 270 British citizens who are still out there.

"Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain," Williamson told the Daily Mail in an interview published late on Wednesday.

"We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat," he said, adding that he believed any British fighters who joined ISIS should never be allowed to return to the United Kingdom.

Williamson, 41, has been defence minister for little over a month, replacing Michael Fallon after he quit in a sexual harassment scandal.

Prominent British militants such as Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, and Sally Jones, have been reportedly killed by British or US forces since travelling to fight for ISIS.

After the death of Jones, who was known as the "White Widow", Fallon said that British nationals who chose to leave the UK and fight for ISIS were a "legitimate target".
Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation.

Haniyeh called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. (Photo: AFP)

Gaza: The powerful Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

Haniyeh, elected the group's overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the US decision on Friday, calling it a "day of rage".

"Let December 8 be the first day of the intifada against the occupier," he said.

Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. It does not recognise Israel's right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005.

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," said Haniyeh.

"United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine," he said, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Haniyeh called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration.

"It should be announced that the so-called peace agreement was buried, once and for all, and that there is nothing called a partner for the Palestinians in peace," he said.

Trump reversed decades of US policy to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.
Trump's move was a clear violation of international resolutions and that Jerusalem was an inseparable part of Palestine.

The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour, said the Iranian foreign ministry. (Photo: AFP)

Tehran: Iran strongly condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday, saying it threatened a "new intifada", or uprising.

"The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," said the Iranian foreign ministry in a statement on its website.

Read: Trump declares Jerusalem Israel's capital, sparks fears of bloodshed in Middle East

The statement said Trump's move was a "clear violation of international resolutions" and that Jerusalem was "an inseparable part of Palestine".

"Iran strongly condemns this move and urges the international community, influential countries and especially Islamic countries to prevent the implementation of this US action, which is only of benefit to the Zionist regime, to preserve the stability of the region."
The Ma Ba Tha, or Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, applied to register a party. Banned by the government in the past, the movement is pro-military, and accuses Myanmars civilian government of not protecting Buddhism. The worst incidents of religious intolerance have occurred in its strongholds. It claims ten million members in almost 300 townships.

Naypyitaw (AsiaNews/Agency)  The Union Election Commission (UEC) has rejected an application to form a political party filed by a group of lay persons from the ultranationalist Ma Ba Tha Buddhist association.

The UEC rejected the application at its meeting on 23 November, saying that some group members were not in compliance with the Political Parties Registration Law.

Maung Thway Chon, one of the leaders of the would-be party, accused the UEC of discriminating against Ma Ba Tha, which has criticised Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government over the past year.

Their denial of our request to form a party, before we have had a chance to act [as a party], is a suppression of nationalism and goes against democratic norms, he said.

Ma Ba Tha grew out of 969, a nationalist movement established in 2012 to boycott Muslim-owned businesses. In 2013, 969 members rebranded the group as the Association for Protection of Race and Religion, commonly known by its Burmese acronym Ma Ba Tha.

The movement accuses Aung San Suu Kyis movement of favouring Muslims and not protecting Buddhist traditions and culture, a task which, in its opinion, was done by the military alone.

In recent months, some of its most important members, including the controversial monk Wirathu (pictured), have preached and published numerous anti-Islamic sermons, fuelling ethnic tensions in the country.

In May, the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, a government body composed of high-profile monks that oversees and regulates the Sangha (monastic community), forbade Ma Ba Tha from operating under its name and ordered it to remove its signs across the country by 15 July. Since then, Ma Ba Tha has used the Buddha Dhamma Charity Foundation.

In late May, the movement celebrated its fourth anniversary unveiling a plan to form a political party that would work for the national interest, unity and sovereignty. On that occasion, the leaders claimed that Ma Ba Tha had ten million members in almost 300 townships across the country.

Myanmars worst incidents of religious intolerance usually occur in its strongholds, even against Christians, which are often prevented from meeting for Sunday services.

Theravada Buddhism is the countrys main religion, practiced by about 89 per cent of the population. The Bamar are its main ethnic group, followed by Shan, Rakhine, Mon, Karen, Zo and ethnic Chinese.

Myanmar has the highest proportion of monks to the population and the highest spending on religion. Monks, who are revered in society, number about 500,000, whilst nuns are around 75,000.

Most Burmese are suspicious about monks who are members of ultra-nationalist groups, often linked to the military and its business interests.

Conversely, they have great respect for the monks who led the struggle against the military junta, which cracked down hard in the past, killing hundreds.
During his meeting with the president of the Lutheran World Federation, Francis said that the painful divisions that kept us distant and in conflict for centuries, have brought us in recent decades to a journey of communion.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis met today with the new president of the Lutheran World Federation, Nigerian Archbishop Musa Panti Filibus.

In his greetings, the pontiff said that Catholics and Lutherans cannot afford to be adversaries or rivals. He added that the painful divisions that kept us distant and in conflict for centuries, have brought us in recent decades to a journey of communion, the path of ecumenism awakened by the Holy Spirit.

Citing the recently concluded year marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and his trip to Lund, on 31 October 2016 (pictured), Francis stressed that the gift of unity among believers takes root and blossoms not as a result of human projects but by the grace of God."

For the pontiff, "Only by praying can we care for one another. Prayer purifies and strengthens us; it illumines our path and enables us to move forward. Prayer is like the fuel of our journey towards full unity. Indeed, the love of the Lord, which we experience in prayer, sets in motion the charity that draws us closer; it is the source of our patient expectation, the motive of our efforts at reconciliation, and the power that enables us to go forward together."

By praying, Francis added, we can constantly see one another in the right perspective, that of God our Father, whose loving gaze rests on each of us, without preferences or distinctions. In the Spirit of Jesus, in whom we pray, we realize that we are brothers and sisters. This must be our continual starting point.

Indeed, the painful divisions that kept us distant and in conflict for centuries, have brought us in recent decades to a journey of communion, the path of ecumenism awakened by the Holy Spirit. This has led us to abandon old biases like those having to do with Martin Luther and the state of the Catholic Church in that period.

For Francis, A significant contribution has been made in this regard by the dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, initiated in 1967. This has led to certain particularly important texts, such as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and, most recently, From Conflict to Communion.

With a purified memory, we can now look with confidence to a future unburdened by past conflicts and preconceptions, a future whose only debt is that of mutual love (cf. Rom 13:8), a future which calls us to discern the gifts coming from the different confessional traditions and to receive them as a common patrimony.

Prior to all disagreements, differences and past hurts, there is the present, foundational and permanent reality of our baptism, which has made us children of God and brothers and sisters of one another. Henceforth we will never again allow ourselves to be adversaries or rivals. Although the past cannot be changed, the future challenges us: we can no longer refuse to seek and foster greater communion in charity and faith.

Hence, it is necessary to "against the temptation of halting along the way. In the spiritual life, as in ecclesial life, whenever we halt, we are always turning back. To be self-content, to pause out of fear, indolence, weariness or convenience in the midst of our journey to the Lord in the company of our brothers and sisters, is to refuse his invitation."

What is more, fine ideas are not enough; there is a need for concrete steps and outstretched hands. That means, above all, spending ourselves in charity, looking to the poor and the least of the Lord's brethren who represent precious signposts to us along our way.

By this simple, exemplary and radical way of acting, we are called, today in particular, to proclaim the Gospel, the priority of our Christian life in the world through Reconciled unity.

Along the way, we are spurred on by the example of all those who have suffered for the name of Jesus and are already fully reconciled in his Paschal victory. How many there are, even in our own day, who are suffering for their witness to Jesus! Their heroism, shown in meekness and peace, urgently summons us to an ever more authentic fraternity.
The attack took place yesterday in the village of Tarra. Dozens of cars, bicycles and other private property were targeted with damages estimated at more than US$ 6,000. The attackers also harassed women and beat up men.

New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies)  A mob of more than a thousand Hindu nationalists attacked a fasting and prayer gathering attended by around 600 Christians.

The attack occurred yesterday in Tarra, a village near Ranjim (Gariaband district) in the Indian State of Chhattisgarh.

The incident is the latest in a series of episodes of violence against Indias Christian community, which has had to endure discrimination on the part of radical Hindutva supporters.

Witnesses report that the radicals attacked dozens of cars, bicycles and private property with damages estimated at 400,000 rupees (US$ 6,200)

The attackers appear to be members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (a Hindu ultra-nationalist paramilitary group) and the Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad), this according to Shibu Thomas, an activist with Persecution Relief, a watchdog group that monitors and documents attacks on Christians in India.

The Christians had completed 200 days of prayer under the leadership of Rev Lakhchan Sahu. At around noon, more than a thousand people from the RSS and Bajrang Dal stormed the prayer venue, Thomas said quoting Rev Sahu.

When the attack started, the 600 people who had gathered dispersed in a panic.

The radicals also molested women and beat up men, Thomas said, and prevented Christians from Marga Parra village from attending the prayer meeting.
The incident shrouded in mystery. India makes no statements. The story is likely to reignite the military confrontation between the two Asian giants.

New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - An Indian drone has "invaded Chinese airspace and crashed" into its territory , according to Chinese state media, which add that the incident occurred in recent days, without providing further details. The story is likely to reignite the military tension between the two Asian giants, protagonists in recent months of a bitter territorial dispute on the Doklam plateau, on the border with Bhutan.

Zhang Shuili, deputy director of the Western Theater Command's combat office, said: India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this. We will fulfill our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely".

On the Indian side, no declaration has yet been issued. Relations between New Delhi and Beijing quickly worsened last summer, when India deployed its troops to defend the Himalayan plateau, where the Chinese authorities had begun building a road. The Doklam Plain is located at the junction of China, the State of Sikkim (in the north-eastern part of India) and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The area is claimed by China, which calls it Donglang, while India supports the claims of Bhutan.

For weeks the confrontation between the two countries gave rise to fear of the outbreak of a regional war, with reciprocal accusations of territorial encroachment. Peace returned when the Delhi government ordered its army to withdraw. Analysts now fear that the drone crash could reignite the latent confrontation, which dates back to 1962 with the first Sino-Indian war for border control.
Three days of protest and demonstrations against Trump's decision. In Gaza the protests started already before the announcement. Desperation among the Palestinians: "We have already lost everything".

Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) - All Palestinian factions have announced three "days of rage" and demonstrations throughout Palestine and beyond, in protest at the US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In Gaza, hundreds took to the streets to protest, already hours before the official declaration.

In the evening, while Israeli and American flags were projected on the ancient walls of the Old City, the lights of the Esplanade of the Mosques were extinguished. The same happened for the lights of the Christmas tree in Bethlehem. Protests exploded in the Jordanian capital, where many Palestinians live.

The President of the Palestinian National Authority states that US President Trump has abdicated his role as mediator for peace. The Islamic movement Hamas declared that Trump's decision "will open the gates of hell", calling it a "flagrant aggression" against the Palestinians, which encourages all out confrontation with the Israeli occupation to make the voice of the Palestinians heard.

But beyond anger, there is also much disillusionment. Some Palestinians interviewed by Haaretz bitterly comment that Trump's decision will not change anything. One of them said: "We will not really lose anything, because we have already lost everything". Adnan Reit, a Fatah activist in Jerusalem, stresses that this will not pass "in silence", because "there is a whole generation that has been waiting for a long time, and now their hopes have been destroyed and they have nothing else to lose".
Francis met with a delegation from the National Council of Churches of Taiwan. The strengthening of relations between the Christian confessions, and the shared proclamation of Jesus, also through works of charity and educational projects aimed at the young, will prove beneficial to society as a whole.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis met with a delegation from the National Council of Churches of Taiwan during an audience today in the Vatican.

In his address, the pontiff encouraged them to promote greater Christian unity and charity as well as educational projects for young people.

The Holy Father, noting that he was just back from a trip to Asia, said that he was able to experience the vitality and the enterprise that mark the peoples of Asia, but also the suffering face of a humanity all too often deprived of material prosperity and social well-being.

There are many areas in which we, as Christians, are called to work together to promote the dignity of each human being and to support those who are less fortunate than ourselves. And The love of God, made incarnate in life, is [. . .] our royal road.

The Catholic Church, through the Chinese Regional Bishops Conference, has been committed, from the establishment of the National Council of Churches of Taiwan in 1991, to promoting greater unity between believers in the Lord.

The strengthening of relations between the Christian confessions, and the shared proclamation of Jesus, also through works of charity and educational projects aimed at the young, will prove beneficial to society as a whole.

Building a better future for all requires, in a particular way, educating the younger generations in the art of dialogue, so that they can become protagonists of a much-needed culture of harmony and reconciliation. This will encourage them to pursue, with Gods help, the path that leads from conflict to communion, a path that has shown itself so fruitful in the ecumenical journey.

I thank each of you for your commitment to pursuing this path by strengthening fraternity and cooperation among your communities. Let us continue to journey together in the primacy of charity towards that day when Jesus prayer will be realized: that they may all be one . . . so that the world may believe (Jn 17:21).


(By ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock.com) (By ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock.com)

Draft legislation has been introduced in Australia to create a new super Home Affairs office that will be led by current immigration minister Peter Dutton.The new department, which is expected to be up and running in the New Year, will encompass a number of agencies including the Australia Border Force, The Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.'The Government will soon start to implement the new Home Affairs portfolio, with the establishment of a Department of Home Affairs,' said Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and Dutton in a joint statement.The new super department will be responsible for combatting terrorism and crime as well as overseeing immigration and visa changes, including changes to the citizenship programme which are expected next year.There are also major visa changes ahead in 2018 when the popular 457 visa programme which allows skilled workers to work in Australia for up to four years is replaced by a two tier temporary visa scheme.Ministers have described the move as the most significant reforms to Australia's domestic security arrangements in decades and it is regarded as a direct response to the increasingly complex and challenging security environment facing the nation.'Since 2014, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have successfully disrupted 14 imminent terrorist attacks. Our borders continue to be tested by people smugglers, and organised crime syndicates are increasingly sophisticated in their efforts to peddle drugs, commit fraud and engage in cybercrime,' the statement continued.'The Government is acting against these threats to keep Australians safe and secure. The new Home Affairs portfolio will strengthen Australia's efforts in the fight against the evolving threats from terrorism, organised crime, child exploitation, foreign interference and the development of new and emerging technologies, such as encryption,' the statement added.The move also see the creation of an Office of National Intelligence as part of the Home Affairs portfolio to be headed by Nick Warner. It will begin work in 2018, tasked with coordinating strategy and capability development across Australia's intelligence agencies.Turnbull has previously denied that the new department is to be modelled on the United States Department of Homeland Security and described it as being a 'federation' of border and security agencies more like the UK's Home Office.


(argus/Shutterstock.com) (argus/Shutterstock.com)

Indonesian nationals are now able to apply online for a visitor visa to travel to Australia as part of a continued expansion of online access to visitor visas globally.Officials said that with over 118,000 visitor visa applications received from Indonesian nationals in 2016/2017, the online application form will increase efficiency and provide a more convenient option for Indonesians looking to visit Australia.Peter Dutton, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, explained that online lodgement of visas helps to lay the platform for the Government's transformation of Australia's visa system.'We are seeing an ever growing number of travellers and this Government is committed to building capability for the future and supporting Australia's economic and social priorities,' he said.'This is another example of the Government delivering on its digital transformation agenda and introducing innovative initiatives that cut red tape, increase efficiency and reduce costs for the taxpayer,' he added.According to Steven Ciobo, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, the expansion of online visitor visa applications to Indonesia is an investment in the future of Australia's tourism industry.He pointed out that Indonesia is the third largest country for visitor visa applications to Australia. 'This new capability will make it even easier for our friends in Indonesia to visit Australia,' he said.'This initiative will further boost the Australian tourism industry and online lodgement of visitor visas has now been rolled out to over 200 different countries and regions across the world,' he added.It is the latest in a series of visa initiatives to enhance tourism and business links between Australia and Indonesia following the success of a new three year, multiple entry visa for Indonesian visitors to Australia introduced by the Government last year.
Hi people, having spent a couple of years travelling around this beautiful country! Experiencing the highs and lows of being an intrepid backpacker, I know only too well the hardships of finding work that qualifies for your "nd year WHV and would like to share places that I found good, well payed farm work!For anyone about to leave their homeland for Australia you may find this link helpful https://drunkenpom.com/
Hi Everyone,



I'm not sure if there's already a same thread as this one. If there is, please let me know.



My partner and I applied for a Partner Visa and has been granted Bridging Visa A and it is already in effect, as my previous visa (Student Visa) already expired. However, I am still enrolled until 2019, my Partner and I decided to cancel my studies for the mean time. Is it possible to cancel my studies, if so, will there be an effect on my ongoing partner visa application?



Thanks for all your help!
Photo via EveryCarListed/Flickr.

The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in November was 25 mpg  down 0.1 mpg from October, according to Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak, researchers from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).

The value for November is up 4.9 mpg since October 2007, the first month of monitoring, according to the UMTRI report. The value is down 0.5 mpg from the peak of 25.5 mpg reached in August 2014.

The University of Michigan Eco-Driving Index (EDI)  an index that estimates the average monthly emissions of greenhouse gases generated by an individual U.S. driver  worsened to 0.83 in September 2017, up from 0.82 in August (the lower the value, the better).

The EDI indicates that the average new-vehicle driver produced 17% lower emissions in September 2017 than in October 2007, but 5% higher emissions than the record low reached in November 2013.
Joseph Luiz can be reached at 395-7368 or by email at jluiz@bakersfield.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @JLuiz_TBC.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Le Chat Lunatique (Album Release)

http://www.lechatlunatique.com/index.html

As unpredictable, fearless, and entertaining as their namesake, Le Chat Lunatique purveys an addictive genre they call filthy, mangy jazz, a signature sound that makes you want to smoke and drink too muchif only you could get off the dance floor. Le jazz hot of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli is their north star, but they use that beacon to navigate through a wide range of genres, blending Western swing, classical, reggae, d00-wop, and anything else we damn well please into strikingly original compositions and audaciously reworked standards alike.

Le Chat Lunatique is Muni Kulasinghes theatrical vocals, his violin skittering across the music like beads of water on a hot skilletinspired as much by a legless Polish gypsy he encountered on his vagabond travels as by the great Grappelli. Its the axe of guitarist John Sandlin, the classicist who fell under the sway of Reinhardt, felling bar after bar of music with ferocious dexterity. Its the slap-happy bass and slyly sweet vocals of Jared Putnam, the sinisterly innocent one whose dark past embraces both death metal and Western swing. Its Greg.



The group began prowling the nightspots of Albuquerque -that secret haven of hot jazz - back in 2005, spontaneously impregnating the ears of unsuspecting audience members, who found themselves unable to stop listening or dancing or making merry. From their earliest gigs, Le Chat Lunatique has offered swinging originals with ear-snagging hooks and stories to tellwell-constructed little gems that propagate earworms for ongoing pleasure. Devilishly clever lyrics offer insight into lamour (falling in love is like eating tacos), a louche paean to a doting millionairess (Buy me a Cadillac, buy me a yacht / Buy me everything that I havent got), minatory observations on fate (the bus of God will run you

over), and the inevitable bitterness of a broken heart (Miss Lady . . . please do me the courtesy of drinking in some other gin joint).

The bands repertoire also features original arrangements of tunes that stretch from kindergarten favorites (Frere Jacques) to pop hits (Straight Up) to swing anthems (Minnie the Moocher) to Reinhardt classics (Blue Drag). Every single tune is more than coveredits completely Le-Chat-ified. First, its dunked in the groups collective musical subconscious, and then they play the hell out of it. Take, for example, Sandlins inspired gypsy jazz arrangement of Eric Saties Gnossienne No. 1 - over a reggae rhythm (say what?). Then theres the medieval liturgical intro to House of the Rising Sun, which ultimately descends into transcendent desperation.

Riding the popularity of their acclaimed first CD, Demonic Lovely, which featured all original tunes, and their follow-up collection of covers, Under the Covers (Vol.1), Le Chat Lunatique has been inducing musical mania in an ever-widening circlefrom the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, to the clubs of England, to the boards of the national theater in Novi Sad, Serbia, where they performed their commissioned score for Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental's ground breaking theatrical production Flamingo/Winnebago. In their home state of New Mexico, theyve won award after award annually for best band, best jazz act, and best song.

Their irreverent humor, their intensity, and their expert musicianship will soon win them your acclamation as the best time youve ever had in public with your clothes on.

Get a copy of the new album with entry!
Thursday marks 76 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

New Hillsborough veterans center opens with Pearl Harbor remembrance

New Veterans Resource Center, located at 3602 N. US Highway 301

Dec. 7, 2017: 76th anniversary of Pearl Harbor attack

Veterans Memorial Park and Museum

The attack crippled the naval fleet and plunged the United States into World War II.

More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the Hawaiian attack and nearly 1,200 more were injured.

The somber anniversary was remembered today in Hillsborough County with the official opening of the new veteran's resource center.

Veterans Memorial Park & Museum Chairman Thomas Fletcher said the center will be able to help veterans that too often go without asking for the help they have earned.

"Believe it or not, many of them are reluctant to come forward," said Fletcher, who spent 27 years in the Navy and decades more working in veterans affairs. "Because they feel like somebody else deserves the benefit that they really do deserve and this is one of the drawbacks that we've seen over the years."

But Fletcher said Hillsborough County now has a solution.

The brand new Veterans Resource Center, located at 3602 N. US Highway 301, is adjacent to the Veterans Memorial Park. Nearly a decade in the making, this will be a location for veterans to apply for benefits and seek other assistance.

Eventually Fletcher said the facility will be the hub for veterans and their families seeking support from a variety of agencies.

"It provides a very honorable and respectable place for Veterans to come and receive support and get help," he said.

Also being unveiled during today's Pearl Harbor remembrance ceremony is a new World War II memorial that lists all the names of soldiers from Hillsborough County that served during the war.
The wife of the Pulse nightclub gunman will face trial in Orlando over charges she aided her husband and obstructed the investigation.

Judge Paul G. Byron on Wednesday denied a motion by Noor Zahi Salman's lawyers to move the trial's venue out of Orlando.

Salman faces charges of aiding and abetting her husband, Omar Mateen, in his attempt to provide material support to the Islamic State terrorist organization and of obstruction of justice.

Those actions culminated in the mass murder of 49 people at Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, a 20-page court order said.

Salman's attorneys said she can't get a fair trial in Orlando because of extensive media coverage and statements made by Orlando Police Chief John Mina. However, the judge ruled that Mina's statements weren't prejudicial.

A jury for Salman's trial should be picked by March 1, 2018, and the trial should start a few days later.
The mother of a 2-month-old girl has been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child after the baby's death earlier this year.

2-month-old Xzayla Harris died in Lakeland in May

Brittany Harris, 24, will be extradited back to Florida

Police say mom had meth, cocaine, alcohol in system



The Lakeland Police Department said the incident occurred in May, but the mother wasn't arrested until recently because she had fled to Michigan.

Brittany Harris, 24, has been taken into custody and will be extradited back to Florida, police said Wednesday.

Officers responded May 27 to a home on Baird Avenue after receiving a report of an unresponsive child.

Harris, according to police, was drinking that night and left the child, Xzayla Harris, with a babysitter while she went to a strip club in Hudson. When the mother returned home, the babysitter left, police said.

"A friend of Harris later checked on Harris and found her in bed with Xzayla tightly wrapped in a blanket and between the legs of Harris," police said in a news release.

The friend called for help and got Xzayla away from the mother, but the child died hours later at Lakeland Regional Health.

Detectives said Harris admitted to being intoxicated and "not having a plan" to care for the child after the babysitter left.

A toxicology report about the mother showed she had methamphetamine, cocaine and alcohol in her system hours after the baby's death, police said.

Harris was arrested Nov. 27 by the Sheriff's Office in Grand Traverse County.
Thursday marks 76 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and decades later, it is still felt by many.

Benefits, assistance being offered to veterans

2 Pearl Harbor sailors to be posthumously awarded

JUMP TO: The @USSArizona memorial relives the Pearl Harbor attack in live tweets

Several American ships were destroyed that day. The USS Arizona remains underwater along with the remains of some of its crewmembers.

The attack left 2,403 Americans dead and nearly 1,200 more wounded.

And while the attack led America into World War II, it still makes an impact on Americans generations later.

With nearly 27 years in the United States Navy, and decades in Veterans Affairs, Thomas Fletcher says helping fellow vets is now his passion, but he says too often, veterans do not seek out the services they rightly deserve.

"Believe it or not, many of them are reluctant to come forward because they feel like somebody else deserves the benefit that they really do deserve and this is one of the drawbacks that we've seen over the years," says Fletcher, the chairman at Veterans Memorial Park & Museum in Hillsborough County.

However, Fletcher said there is now a solution.

A brand new Veterans Resource Center, located at 3602 N. US Highway 301, is adjacent to the Veterans Memorial Park. Nearly a decade in the making, this will be a location for veterans to apply for benefits and seek other assistance.

Eventually Fletcher said the facility would be the location would be the hub for veterans and their families seeking support from a variety of agencies.

"It provides a very honorable and respectable place for veterans to come and receive support and get help," he said.

Across the country, two sailors who were at Pearl Harbor are being posthumously awarded medals for their service.

Two men are being posthumously awarded medals for helping save the lives of their fellow sailors during the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Navy said Monday the late Lt. J.G. Aloysious Schmitt is being recognized for sacrificing his own life while helping his shipmates escape their capsizing battleship. The USS Oklahoma chaplain is being awarded the Silver Star.

Chief Boatswains Mate Joseph George of the USS Vestal is being awarded the Bronze Star for saving the lives of several sailors from the USS Arizona. George tossed the sailors a rope they used to crawl to safety as flames engulfed the Arizona.

George died in 1996.

The Navy will present their families with the medals.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
A man accused of shooting at a Leesburg Police Department Officer was caught because the smartphone he left behind at the scene of the shooting had his selfie in it, according to police.

Jonathan Nadre Harris was charged with attempted murder of a police officer on Wednesday and had his bond set at $820,000 by a judge on Thursday.

According to a four-page arrest report, police received a search warrant for Harris' cell phone, which they said he left behind at a traffic stop.

A selfie on the phone led to his arrest. The Lake County resident is being charged with several other felonies, including possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, carrying a concealed firearm, resisting an officer with violence and use of a firearm while in the commission of a felony.

Harris told the judge that he wants to be represented by a public defender, which he was appointed.

The state says he should not get bond on the attempted murder charge and a no-bond status because he is a convicted felon and violated his probation.

There are no out-of-county warrants for failure to appear for Harris. His public defender argued that Harris has always made court appearances and should get a bond.

However, the judge set the total bond at $820,000.



Jonathon Nadre Harris, 24, is being charged with attempted murder of a police officer. The skull tattoo on his neck was used to identify him during the search for him, according to officials. (Lake County Sheriff's Office)

On Monday night, Officer Travonte Kitchen pulled over Harris, who was on a bicycle, on Highway 441 for riding with a broken tail light.

According to police, Kitchen told the 24-year-old Harris to put his hands in the air. However, dashboard-camera footage from Kitchen's vehicle appears to show Harris only raised his left hand and placing his right hand in a hooded jacket. He then pulls out a gun and fires at the officer, who fires back as Harris takes off running, according to the dash-cam footage provided by police.

The arrest report says Harris admitted to detectives that he was the one who shot the gun that night.

The firearm used during the alleged crime was recovered by detectives Thursday afternoon. Police said that after ballistics testing, they'll be able to determine if the weapon was the one used against Officer Kitchen.

Harris is a convicted felon in the state of Florida and was recently released from prison.

WATCH: Bicyclist fires shot at Leesburg officer
Southeast Texas musician Morgan Mitcham loves the feel of a well-built guitar in her hands.

When Mitcham couldn't afford a high-end instrument, she learned to make them herself.

"I am very picky when it comes to what I want in a guitar and I'm able to customize them to my specs at a small fraction of the cost of a new one," Mitcham said.

Mitcham began playing at 11 after seeing Australian songwriter and musician Rick Springfield in concert.

Morgan Mitcham When: 6:30 p.m. Friday

Where: The Boudain Hut North, 4201 S. Major Drive, Beaumont

Cost: Free

Upcoming gigs: www.reverbnation.com/morganmitcham

Southern Belle Guitar company: www.southernbelleguitars.com See More Collapse

While the Lamar engineering student has put guitar-building on hold to focus on school, she has kept up a busy performance schedule, regularly playing at restaurants and bars around Southeast Texas.

Mitcham took time to discuss her passion for music, thoughts while performing on stage and pesky skeptics.

Q: How would you describe your sound?

A: I would describe my sound as a mixture between folk, country, Americana. I never actually think about it, so this is just what I've been told by other people that have heard me perform. The songs I write vary so much depending on what I'm into that week, so it's difficult to describe, personally.

Q: When did you start making music, and what inspired you?

A: I started making music as soon as I was able to play guitar enough to write songs, which was around the age of 11. Inspiration was at its peak as I was learning guitar since everything was so exciting and new. My first concert as a kid was seeing Rick Springfield with my mom in Las Vegas and I've had a passion burning inside me for music ever since. I knew I wanted to sing and play guitar at that moment. My parents bought me a guitar and I spent months in my room trying to absorb everything I could from books and old "How-To" VHS tapes.

Q: What do you think about when you're performing on stage?

A: Performing on stage gives me a feeling that nothing else does. I feel a sense of belonging when I'm up there. I've been told that when I play and sing I give my heart and soul into whatever I'm singing, whether it be a cover or an original song. I've never known how to deliver a song any differently. Even if I'm having a bad day, I'm somehow able to leave all of that behind the moment I start performing.

Q: You have your own band, you're also in school for engineering. Is it difficult juggling music and college?

A: Juggling college and music is something I've always done and I've learned to balance the two pretty well. I didn't start gigging full time until my junior year in college. I was balancing my bachelor's degree in music from Lamar, working at Guitar Center and playing music locally. I know my limits as far as how many gigs to take per month or how far I can travel for a gig. Now that I'm in school for engineering, the gigs I can take are significantly reduced compared to the amount I was playing whilst in school for music. As long I don't stop playing, then I am totally happy.

Q: When times get tough, what keeps you motivated?

A: Times are tough most days for me. I must work harder than many of my peers because engineering doesn't come easy for me whatsoever and I have a job playing live during the week/weekends. I am never not working hard, but honestly, I am able to keep motivated naturally because there's always a fire burning inside of me. The same drive that helped me learn guitar and the same drive to learn anything I put my mind to. Someone told me I'd never be smart enough to finish an engineering degree and I'm currently a junior. Someone told me I could never build guitars, so I taught myself how to do that and started a business. I would not trade the natural motivation I have for anything in this world because I feel it is a rare attribute today.

Q: Who is your biggest musical influence and why?

A: I would say Rick Springfield just because of the inspiration I felt from that being my first concert and he has been a touring musician since the '60s so obviously he's doing something right.

Q: What bands do you hope to tour with one day?

A: I don't plan on ever touring, but if I did, I would love to tour with Allen Stone.

Q: You're also a guitar builder. That's very impressive. How long have you been making guitars, and how did that start?

A: I have been making guitars for the last four years. I started making them because I have always wanted quality instruments but couldn't afford them. Learning how to make them for myself was a big driving factor. Once I built a few for myself, I started building for band mates and then slowly a business was formed from it. I don't build anymore due to school and being too busy in general, but I plan to start back once I have more time.

Q: Guitar-building seems like it would be quite a lengthy process. How much work goes into making just one guitar?

A: About 35 or so hours goes into making a guitar. It's still a learning process for me. I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what there is to know about building guitars. I love learning about it though, and I am always up for new knowledge on the craft.

Q: Do you have any advice for new musicians?

A: Love and nurture your craft. Take the time to learn as much as you can about the different genres of music that exist. If you stick to one genre of music to listen to, you will hinder your creativeness as a musician/and or songwriter. For instance, I played saxophone as my emphasis in college and was never interested in jazz, but listening to it opened my eyes as a sax player, guitar player and songwriter.

Antonio Del Rio is a freelance writer.
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A Beaumont man sentenced to 75 years in prison in the 2014 killing of a 16-year-old Vidor girl will get a new trial after the state's highest criminal court this week upheld a lower appellate court's decision to overturn his conviction.

Kelvin Lee Roy, 36, killed Alexandria (Lexy) Bertrand when he crashed his Mercury Sable into the back of a stopped Honda minivan carrying Bertrand and her mother, April, at Main Street and Old U.S. 90 in Vidor on Feb. 7, 2014.

According to trial testimony, the crash was so violent, it ripped the upper-right side of the minivan off. The force ejected Lexy Bertrand, who was fastened into the front passenger seat. April Bertrand was driving.

Beaumont's Ninth Court of Appeals overturned Roy's August 2014 murder conviction in May, and on Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turned down a petition from the state asking for review. Their denial upholds the lower appeals court's decision, sending the case back to Orange County for a new trial.

No new trial date has been set.

Roy was charged with murder in his 2014 trial because his passenger, Taralynn Brown, told police he was threatening to kill her and himself while driving, and prosecutors transferred that "intent to cause serious bodily injury" to Bertrand.

The Appeals Court ruled that the jury in the case should also have been instructed to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter, in addition to murder.

Trial testimony showed Roy had been speeding when he hit the railroad tracks at the Vidor intersection and his Sable went airborne before crashing down on top of the Bertrand's minivan.

The car then flipped several times before coming to a stop near Orange Street  about 245 feet from where the Bertrands' van was stopped, authorities testified.

Roy's blood sample, which was taken immediately after the accident, tested positive for marijuana, PCP and alcohol, according to testimony. His blood alcohol content tested at 0.015, below the legal limit of 0.08, according to a Jefferson County Crime Lab toxicologist.

trial defense attorney, Malachi Daws, told the jury that his client caused the accident because he was high on drugs and not because he had the intention of hurting anyone.

Daws asked the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter before sentencing, but the charge was not included in the jury's instructions.

In the petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Orange County Assistant Attorney Krispen Walker argued that the appeals court hadn't conducted enough analysis of whether Roy was harmed by that mistake, essentially claiming that he still would have been convicted of murder even if the lesser charge had been included.

The Court of Criminal Appeals did not explain why it declined to review Walker's petition.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
Update: PN-G ISD said Thursday that the student is not infectious and the illness is contained.

Original Story: Port Neches-Groves ISD officials and parents are bracing for the results of a student's meningitis test, which could force the removal of students without required immunizations from school.

Texas requires students to be vaccinated against diseases including meningitis, polio and measles before entering any public or private school, but exemptions are allowed for medical reasons or "reasons of conscience," including religious beliefs. Parents can submit a signed affidavit opting out of immunizations, which covers the student for two years.

According to Department of State Health Services data from 2016-17, 1.44 percent of PN-G ISD's approximately 5,000 students have exemptions, or about 72 students.

Conscientious exemptions are on the rise statewide, though the number is still under 1 percent of the state's students. In 2016-17, the most recent year DSHS statistics are available, almost 53,000 Texas students had exemptions on file at school, up from 44,716 in 2015-16.

When parents submit those exemptions, they also acknowledge that "they understand that their child may be excluded from school attendance in times of emergency or epidemic declared by the commissioner of the department," according to the DSHS website.

DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen said the decision to keep non-vaccinated students out of school is a rare decision,and typically made in conjunction with the district and local health authorities.

District officials may also informally discuss keeping students out of school with their parents in that case, he said.

State officials would decide how long to keep those students out of school, depending on the nature of the disease and outbreak. Typically, they would consider waiting a full "incubation period," or the amount of time between exposure to the disease and showing symptoms of the disease.

Officials would generally want an incubation period to pass without any new cases before bringing those students back to class, Van Deusen said.

PN-G Interim Superintendent Jimmy Creel said the district is working with Jefferson County health officials and waiting for the student's test results before developing a plan to stop the disease's spread, if it's confirmed.

Meningitis is the swelling of membranes covering the brain and spinal cord; bacterial meningitis can be deadly or cause permanent disabilities, including brain damage, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Viral meningitis, which is one of the less severe variations, cannot be vaccinated against. Both types can be spread through sneezing, coughing and contact.

"According to the health department, each incident is unique in terms of what kind of bacteria it might be, what kind of infection it might be, so putting together a generic response is not a good response," Creel said.

The district said Wednesday that test results might not be available for another 48 hours or more.

If instructed by the state, that response could include removing students with vaccine exemptions from class.

"We're going to do everything we can to keep students and staff safe," Creel said, "but we're not going to take those steps until it comes from a health care professional."

Educational requirements for those situations are left up to the district, according to the Texas Education Agency. Districts can decide how students kept out of school should make up the lost time on their own.

As exemption rates rise, so do concerns about threatening "herd immunity," the idea that immunity by vaccination or previous illness of a large percentage of a population helps protect those who are not vaccinated, such as those with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving immunizations. Herd immunity limits the disease's opportunity to spread and helps prevent against outbreaks, according to the CDC - which could be threatened if numbers of exemptions continue to rise.

Exemption rates increased over the last year in Jasper, Orange and Hardin county schools and dropped slightly in Newton and Jefferson counties.

Kirbyville CISD had the highest exemption rate of districts in those counties with almost 2.5 percent opting out of vaccinations in 2016-17. Evadale and Deweyville ISDs both had no exemptions for 2016-17.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/LizTeitz
A Port Neches-Groves ISD assistant superintendent has been named the finalist for superintendent in a Houston-area district.

Tarkington ISD, near Cleveland, announced Wednesday that their board plans to hire Marc Keith as superintendent.

Keith is currently PN-G's Assistant Superintendent for Student Services. The Tarkington board is required to wait 21 days after naming Keith the finalist before officially hiring him.

He's the second PN-G administrator chosen for a district's top job in the last month: PN-G's board announced in November that Mike Gonzales, Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services, will be hired as superintendent after the waiting period.

Jimmy Creel has served as PN-G ISD's interim superintendent since June, after Rodney Cavness left the district for Texas City ISD.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
Father Walter Rosario sits in a police van after officers found him at a bus station in Sylhet, a district in northwestern Bangladesh, five days after the priest was last seen in western Bangladesh, Dec. 1, 2017.

Police said a Catholic priest who vanished during the week of Pope Francis visit to Bangladesh went into hiding willingly, but a Christian leader said the man was abducted and that clergy received a threatening email soon after.

Questions persist in the case of Father Walter William Rosario, who was found alive seven days ago at a bus station in northeastern Bangladesh, about 420 km (261 miles) or a 10-hour drive from his hometown of Natore in the countrys western region.

The priest is one of at least 11 people who vanished under mysterious circumstances since late August. The others, including a former Bangladeshi ambassador and a professor who specialized in the study of Islamic extremism, have not resurfaced since they were reported missing.

Police said they are investigating all the cases but have ruled out that Father Rosario was kidnapped.

Nobody abducted him, Biplob Bijoy Talukder, the police superintendent in Natore, told BenarNews.

After having discussions with him, we concluded that he was suffering from depression. To get relief from the mental pressure, he went into hiding. After recovering him, we have handed him over to his brothers care. The claim of abduction is false, the police chief said.

Since ending up at the bus station in Sylhet district last Friday, the 40-year-old priest has been recovering in Rajshahi town from mental exhaustion and is in the churchs care. But hes not talking to anyone now, according to Nirmal Rozario, president of an association that represents Bangladeshs tiny Christian minority.

Why should he tell a lie? We think it is an incident of abduction, Rozario told BenarNews.

After he went missing, a call came from an unknown number, asking for a few lakh [several hundred thousand] in ransom money. But later on, they did not contact [the family] again, he added.

Father Rosario, a priest at the Banpara Catholic church and headmaster of St. Louis High School in Natore, was reported missing on Nov. 27.

At the time, he was preparing to lead a delegation of 300 parishioners to attend a papal mass in the national capital, Dhaka, on Dec. 1, Nirmal Rozario said. Pope Francis, the first pope to visit the majority-Sunni Muslim country in 31 years, landed in Bangladesh on Nov. 30.

Two days before the popes visit, some of our priests received an email from an unknown contact. The email says, you are busy thinking about the Popes security, but who will ensure your security? Rozario said.

We informed police and RAB about the email, but as the popes visit was happening, we did not disclose the issue to the media, he added, referring to Bangladeshs elite security unit, the Rapid Action Battalion.

In recent years, members of Bangladeshs Christian community have feared for their safety following small-scale attacks by suspected Islamic extremists. Such violence has unfolded against a backdrop of growing conservative Muslim fervor.

During his three-day stay, Pope Francis praised Bangladesh for its tradition of inter-religious harmony. While meeting with congregation leaders of various faiths, the pontiff encouraged them to uphold that tradition.

Amal Rosario, the brother of Father Rosario, spoke to BenarNews about his four-day disappearance.

We are not sure whether he has been abducted or not. We dont know how he went to Sylhet. We didnt ask him anything about this, he told BenarNews.

He returned to us well and intact  thats the main thing for us. Militants did not abduct him, Amal Rosario said.

Ex-Diplomat goes missing

Meanwhile, a retired diplomat disappeared while on his way to the Dhaka airport to fetch his daughter, who was returning from Europe.

After leaving his house to head to the airport on Monday, Maroof Zaman, a former Bangladeshi ambassador to Qatar and Vietnam, called home twice and instructed his maid to hand over his computer, phone, camera and other electronic devices to a few people who will come to my home, his daughter, Samiha Zaman, told BenarNews.

At around 8 p.m. the same day, three unarmed men who did not identify themselves, came to the house to search it and take away the aforementioned items, said his daughter, who had not arrived home from the airport.

Her fathers car was found parked in a street 4.8 km (three miles) from the airport. Maroof Zaman has not been seen since.

Police are investigating his disappearance, Monirul Islam, the chief of the Bangladeshi polices counter-terrorist branch, told a news briefing the next day.

The ex-diplomats disappearance followed the case last month when Mubashar Hasan, an assistant professor of political science at the Private North South University in Dhaka and a scholar of extremism, was reported missing. A friend said the professor had feared for his safety in the days leading up to his disappearance.

Apart from the threat of abductions or attacks by Muslim extremists, the South Asian nation has been gripped by hundreds of cases of so-called enforced disappearances allegedly carried out by security personnel, according to Bangladeshi human rights groups.

As many as 545 people have been victimized by enforced disappearances during the past decade, according to one of these NGOs, Ain-O-Salish-Kendra (ASK). Of this number, the bodies of 78 people were recovered, while 51 people were found alive. The remaining 416 are still missing.

We do not believe in abducting anyone. Our law enforcers have been discharging their duties sincerely. The allegation of pursuing a policy of forced disappearance is completely baseless, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews last year.

In many instances, we have investigated the cases of forced disappearance and detected that they willingly went into hiding to embarrass the government internationally, he added.
Orthodox Jewish men pray at a Jerusalem cemetery in front of the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islams third-holiest site, Dec. 7, 2017.

The leaders of Muslim-majority Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh on Thursday condemned U.S. President Donald Trumps official recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital and his announcement that the United States will move its embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv.

The major shift in U.S. policy on the thorny issue of Jerusalem, which the American president announced Wednesday, shocked the Muslim world, which has rallied around the cause of Palestinian statehood. The move would destabilize peace efforts as well foment potential violence and terrorism, leaders and observers in Asia said.

Indonesia strongly condemns the one-sided claim made by the U.S. in recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital city. We urge the U.S. to reconsider the decision, Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo said Thursday.

Such unilateral recognition has violated United Nations Security Council and General Assemblys resolutions where the United States is a member. This can shake the stability of world security, added the leader of the worlds largest Muslim-majority country.

Move could fan radicalism: observers

In announcing the decision at the White House, Trump said the United States would support a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian state regarding the holy land for three major religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With todays action, I reaffirm my administrations longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region, Trump said.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital while Palestinians see East Jerusalem as their future state capital. Muslims worldwide see the Al-Aqsa mosque, which sits on Judaisms holiest site, the Temple Mount, as Islams third-holiest site.

Fifty years ago in June 1967, Israel seized East Jerusalem, the West Bank and other territories as it defeated the militaries of three neighboring Arab nations  Jordan, Egypt and Syria  in the Six-Day War.

In 1995, the U.S. congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, calling for the embassy to move there from Tel Aviv by 1999. Prior to Wednesdays announcement, presidents including Trump had issued waivers every six months to keep the embassy in place, citing national security interests.

It will make the world situation worse and lead to an endless conflict, said Helmy Faishal Zaini, general secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesias Muslim largest organization, reacting to Trumps announcement.

The decision will encourage radicalization among Muslims in reaction to the U.S.-created radicalism and global injustice, said another prominent Indonesian Muslim leader, Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the Indonesia-Palestine Friendship Initiative (PPIP)

Anti-American protests over the announcement were expected following Friday prayers in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, and the U.S. embassy in the Malaysian capital warned its citizens to be cautious.

Act of aggression against Islam: Najib

In Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke out against Trumps announcement during a speech to the ruling United Malays National Partys annual assembly.

This week, we are shocked to hear the plan of the United States of America to recognize one of the three Holy Lands for the Muslim Ummah [community] as the capital of Israel, Im confident, we as Muslims cannot accept this, Najib said.

We must voice our stand clearly so that the world listens to the voice of the Muslims in Malaysia, that we reject forever and in the harshest terms the suggestion to make Baitul Maqdis [Al-Aqsa mosque] as the capital of Israel.

Najibs government also issued a statement about the U.S. announcement.

It would have grave repercussions not only towards the security and stability of the region, but would inflame sentiments, making efforts to combat terrorism all the more difficult, the statement said. It added that Malaysia recognizes the issue of Jerusalem at the core of the Palestinian cause.

Any attempts to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, establishing or transferring any diplomatic mission to the city, are considered aggression not only against the Arab and Islamic Ummah, but are also infringements on the rights of Muslims and Christians alike, the statement said.

In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina joined a chorus from the Muslim world condemning and questioning the wisdom of the American presidents move.

I think the Islamic world would not accept the suo moto [unilateral] announcement made by the U.S. president, Hasina said. I would urge all Muslim countries and the Islamic Ummah to get united so that the Palestinians can guarantee their just rights.

An opportunity for a lasting peace

Trumps decision, however, has the official support of his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who has been at odds with the president over key areas of American foreign policy, according to U.S. media reports.

President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital aligns U.S. presence with the reality that Jerusalem is home to Israels legislature, Supreme Court, Presidents office, and Prime Ministers office, Tillerson said in a statement.

We have consulted with many friends, partners, and allies in advance of the president making his decision. We firmly believe there is an opportunity for a lasting peace.

Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata in Jakarta, N. Natha in Kuala Lumpur and Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report.
Philippine Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial holds a pamphlet on Zika virus that, along with a health declaration checklist, will be given to departing and arriving passengers at ports in the country, Sept. 2, 2016.

The former head of the Philippines health department had pushed for the release of anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, President Rodrigo Dutertes spokesman said Thursday.

Former Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial, whose appointment was rejected in October by congress, should be held liable for a health crisis following the suspension of a school-based vaccination program using Dengvaxia, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said. The spokesman would not say whether she should face criminal charges

Roque said one reason why Rosell-Ubials appointment was rejected was because she supported the French firm Sanofi Pasteurs release of the drug, which she had said was safe and whose side effects were low.

Last week, Sanofi admitted the drug could cause adverse side effects to people who have not had dengue but received the injection.

The government quickly pulled the drug off shelves last week and is investigating to determine how regulators allowed its sale.

The Philippines, a tropical nation where the mosquito-borne disease is endemic, became the first country in Asia to introduce Dengvaxia last year.

Roque quoted Rosell-Ubial as telling the congressional panel in October that the vaccine had been found to be relatively safe.

The likelihood of what we call adverse effects after immunization is low, Roque quoted Ubial as saying. He said that at the time, Rosell-Ubial also dismissed three deaths linked to the use of drugs as not actually due to the vaccine itself.

Rosell-Ubial also signed the certificate of exemption that allowed Dengvaxia to be used for pilot implementation in Manila and nearby suburbs, Roque said. More than 740,000 school children received injections of the drug.

This was the reason why her confirmation appointment was rejected, Roque said.

He added that Rosell-Ubial initially stopped the implementation of the dengue vaccination program shortly after she assumed office in July. Two months later, she approved its public release despite her red-flagging certain issues.

However, Roque stopped short of saying that Rosell-Ubial was among those who could be charged, pending a sweeping investigation.

Manila launched the school-based immunization program in April last year, two months before President Rodrigo Duterte began his six-year term. The first of three doses were given to school children age 9 and older in regions where the health department plotted the highest outbreak of dengue cases.

Sanofi has insisted on the effectiveness of its drug, and said that it did not contain any viruses that can make people ill with dengue or severe dengue. However, Manilas Food and Drug Administration ordered the drug be recalled and asked people to help health authorities monitor the health of children where it had been administered.

Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever are acute viral infections that are 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.
For Immediate Release, December 7, 2017



Contact: Randi Spivak, Center for Biological Diversity, (310) 779-4894, rspivak@biologicaldiversity.org

Alejandro Davila, Earthjustice, (202) 745-5229 or (760) 595-3518, adavila@earthjustice.org Conservation Groups Sue Trump for Illegally Slashing Bears Ears National Monument WASHINGTON Three days after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation taking an ax to Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah, conservation organizations filed a lawsuit attacking the order as an abuse of the presidents power. Following in the footsteps of the American Indian tribes who have already sued the president, Earthjustice is representing nine conservation organizations in a suit charging that the president violated the 1906 Antiquities Act and the U.S. Constitution by eviscerating the monument. The unprecedented action leaves rare archaeological sites and stunning wildlands without protection from looting, prospecting, oil and gas drilling, uranium mining or off-road vehicle damage. Bears Ears was decimated by more than 1 million acres. The nine groups challenging President Trumps unlawful action are The Wilderness Society, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, Defenders of Wildlife, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are co-plaintiffs in the case, represented by counsel from those organizations. Nearly 3 million Americans voiced their support for national monuments during Trumps monument review, but he chose to ignore both the American people and the letter of the law to cater to the extractive industries who would gut our natural wonders, said Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney in Earthjustices Rocky Mountain office. We stand with Native American tribes to defend Bears Ears National Monument from this outrageous attack. Because the presidents authority to create national monuments is delegated by Congress under the Antiquities Act, monument proclamations carry the force of law and cannot be reversed by later presidents. Trump lacks the authority to gut a national monument that belongs to all Americans. Home to ancient cliff dwellings, sacred tribal cultural sites and iconic wildlife, Bears Ears National Monument is a national treasure. Its buttes, cliffs and canyons include more than 100,000 American Indian archaeological and cultural sites, some dating to 12,000 B.C.E. To ensure its lasting protection from looting, mining and other threats, an historic intertribal coalition of the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni successfully advocated for its protection as a national monument. Five native tribes came together in an unprecedented way to protect Bears Ears National Monument, said Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust. This remarkable area had been considered for national monument status for 80 years, and President Trumps action to eviscerate the monument after a hasty review dishonors not only their heritage, but our shared American heritage as well. President Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument on Dec. 28, 2016 using the Antiquities Act, a century-old law that has been used by 16 presidents since Theodore Roosevelt to protect some of our nations most cherished landscapes and cultural heritage. Congress enacted the law in 1906, granting presidents the authority to create national monuments on federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural, historic or scientific features. The Antiquities Act does not, however, grant presidents the authority to diminish or rescind the monument designations of their predecessors. Only Congress can do that. The president has the unquestionable authority to create national monuments, and a monument like Bears Ears shows why this law should be respected, said The Wilderness Society's Senior Counsel Nada Culver. We will fight to make sure that both the law and this place are defended. By revoking Bears Ears National Monument President Trump will be remembered for coming down on the wrong side of history, said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. The federal public lands and significant cultural resources within Bears Ears National Monument are world-class treasures that demand the highest level of protection and respect. President Trumps broad attack on Bears Ears  the first by any president in the 111-year history of the Antiquities Act  puts these lands and resources at immediate risk of damage and destruction and cannot stand. The thousands of archaeological sites in Bears Ears are in dire need of protection from ongoing looting and desecration. No fewer than six serious cases of looting were documented in 2016 alone. These majestic lands are also threatened by uranium mining and oil and gas drilling. The administrations move to strip protections away from our treasured public lands leaves Bears Ears vulnerable to oil and gas development and looting of invaluable Native American cultural resources, said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of National Parks Conservation Association. Bears Ears protects and connects the surrounding national park landscape that includes Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Natural Bridges National Monument and Canyonlands National Park. This place was deserving of its national monument designation, just as park sites like the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods were, and remains so today. An attempt to diminish these protections is a betrayal of the American people, and the more than 2.8 million American voices who asked that these incredible places remain protected as they are. We cannot and will not let this stand. Bears Ears National Monument is home to bears, cougars and bighorn sheep, and is dominated by two buttes that jut thousands of feet above canyon lands to form the regions namesake. Bears Ears National Monument continues to be used for pilgrimage, prayer and ceremonies to this day, and is a healing place vital to sustaining American Indian culture and religion for the tribes with sacred ties to these lands. Overturning protections for critically important parts of the Bears Ears National Monument is an insult to people across the country who love and care about our public lands, and its a threat to the special places we leave as legacy for our children, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. President Trumps executive order obstinately ignores the will of the American people and the value Bears Ears holds for Native Americans, local communities and wildlife, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. Bears Ears National Monument supports a great diversity of plants, prized elk and bighorn sheep populations and 15 species of bat, yet the Trump administration would rather see this monument downsized and surrounded by oil and gas wells than protected for posterity. Some of Americas best-loved national parks, such as Grand Canyon, Olympic and Grand Teton, started off as monuments that were designated amid a storm of local controversy, said Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project. Twenty years from now, if our suit is successful, Bears Ears will be famous and treasured and its opponents will look just as foolish and shortsighted as those who opposed the Grand Canyons designation. The Trump administration has crossed the line in attacking the clear authority of a previous president to declare a national monument, said Shelley Silbert, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. President Trump lacks the legal authority to remove by fiat protection of any of the Bears Ears land for the enjoyment and use of future generations, and we stand ready to fight this in the courts. The sacred places and archeological treasures in Bears Ears will be devastated if Trumps order is allowed to stand, said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Weve seen the wreckage on public lands from toxic mining, drilling and fracking. Trump wants to ramp that up. Its unconscionable, and we cant allow it. Its appalling that the president prioritizes the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry over protecting this incredible, vulnerable landscape that belongs to every American, said Chris Krupp, public lands guardian at WildEarth Guardians. The president somehow kept a straight face at the signing ceremony when he spoke of increasing public access, but his only concern was industrys unfettered access to Bears Ears resources. President Trump grossly exceeded his authority in this shameful attempt to hand over sacred lands to private commercial interests, said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. His order is not just illegal, its a serious affront to every American who values our countrys natural wonders. This landscape  with its petroglyphs, stone villages and sheer natural splendor  has been the homeland to indigenous peoples for thousands of years. We look forward to fighting in court to forever preserve these historical, natural and cultural treasures that are held in trust for future generations. Resources for reporters:

Read the lawsuit.

Photos & information on Bears Ears natural wonders are available for media use at Defending Bears Ears

The giveaway to uranium, oil, and gas: map of potential oil and gas development and uranium development in Bears Ears

Learn about the Five Native American Tribes working to protect Bears Ears More on the Antiquities Act:

When President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law in 1906, he established a legal framework for the protection of national treasures. The law gives presidents the power to designate monuments on federal lands and watersan authority granted by Congress that has for more than a century protected landscapes of extraordinary cultural, scientific and ecological value. The Antiquities Act has been used more than 150 times by presidents of both parties.

Every president since 1906  with the exception of Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush  has used the Antiquities Act to protect iconic places. The law has also been used to protect cultural heritage sites  from Stonewall to Birmingham to Cesar Chavezs family home  that tell the more complete story of our nation. The Congressional Research Service has found that the Antiquities Act does not authorize the president to repeal national monument designations. Only Congress has that authority. Numerous legal scholars have reached the same conclusion. Read about the Center for Biological Diversity's numerous other lawsuits against the Trump administration.
For Immediate Release, December 7, 2017 Contact: Ms. Margaret Gordon, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, (510) 257-5640, margaret.woeip.com

Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7157, vbogdan@biologicaldiversity.org

Vivian Huang, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, (510) 282-0135, vivianh@apen4ej.org

Ernesto Arevalo, Communities for a Better Environment, (510) 910-5123, earevalo@cbecal.org

Lora Jo Foo, No Coal in Oakland, (510) 282-9454, ljfoo70@gmail.com Legal Action by Community Groups Defends Oakland's Ban on Coal Storage, Handling OAKLAND, Calif. Community and environmental groups took legal action today to defend a ban on coal storage and handling in Oakland. The citys prohibition faces a legal challenge by a local developer and out-of-state coal interests looking to bring millions of tons of coal annually to the former Oakland Army Base terminal next to the port of Oakland. Five organizations with offices in Oakland  West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, No Coal in Oakland and the Center for Biological Diversity  filed a friend of the court brief defending Oaklands move to keep coal out of its communities. People living in the West Oakland neighborhood next to the terminal would be hit especially hard. Despite recent improvements in air quality, the neighborhood has some of the highest levels of air pollution and worst health conditions in the city. West Oakland residents are twice as likely as others in Alameda County to be hospitalized due to asthma, and the cancer risk is 2.5 times higher than the area average. As a third generation resident of West Oakland, I have fought for environmental justice in West Oakland for over 20 years, said Ms. Margaret Gordon, cofounder of West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. The developer of the former Oakland Army Base is putting profit over people. His coal plan shows total disregard for West Oakland residents, and the health and safety of all who live, work, play and pray in the city. Oaklands low-income communities of color are already subjected to cumulative impacts of many pollution sources, said Ernesto Arevalo, Northern California program director at Communities for a Better Environment. The city has the right and the duty to protect the people of Oakland from the transport, handling and storage of coal near residents doorsteps. The federal court for the Northern District in California is slated to hear arguments on the case in January 2018. The Oakland City Council passed the ban in June 2016 in response to extensive evidence showing that coal poses substantial health and safety risks to workers and residents. Oaklands coal legislation is a necessary and legally sound measure that protects city residents from hazardous pollution, said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversitys Oakland office. It would be unsafe and unfair to subject West Oakland to massive amounts of a dirty fossil fuel that releases toxic air pollutants and can cause dangerous fires and explosions. Local developer Phil Tagami  slated to redevelop an old army base terminal at the port  challenged the ban and wants to use the project to export 5-10 million tons of coal from Utah to overseas markets. The coal would arrive by mile-long, diesel-powered trains. As a resident of Oakland and someone who worked at a locomotive factory for over a decade back in China, I have personally witnessed the disastrous impact that coal has on human health and the environment, said Hai Po Pan, a community leader with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. We cannot allow greed at the expense of our overall health, our community health and the health of our beloved city. These developers should be helping Oakland usher in 21st century jobs, not suing our city to protect a toxic, 19th-century industry, said Brian Beveridge, co-director of West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. Our community deserves to be protected.
Media Advisory, December 7, 2017 Contact: Ryan Beam, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 853-9929, rbeam@biologicaldiversity.org

Alicyn Gitlin, Sierra Club, (520) 491-9528, (928) 774-6514, alicyn.gitlin@sierraclub.org Flagstaff Activists to Rally Against Trump's Attacks on National Monuments Demonstration Part of Save Our National Monuments Week of Action FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. Activists on Friday will gather beneath the San Francisco peaks in Flagstaff for a large group photo with giant banners protesting President Trumps order this week to slash two national monuments in Utah. The demonstration, organized by the Center for Biological Diversitys Ignite Change network and the Sierra Clubs Grand Canyon Chapter, is part of a national week of action to support public lands that will include thousands of people participating in more than 100 events. Fridays event will give the public a chance to visually demonstrate their disapproval of Trumps action, their solidarity with tribes harmed by Trumps decision and their support for public lands and national monuments. What: Protect national monuments group photo Where: Just north of the main parking lot at Buffalo Park, 2400 N. Gemini Road, Flagstaff, AZ 86004 When: Friday, Dec., 8, 4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Media Availability: Volunteers and organizers will be available for media interviews. We hope this event brings out many Flagstaff residents who cherish their national monuments and public lands and who stand in solidarity with the tribes, said Ryan Beam, an organizer at the Center. This is our chance to create an image showing our deep love for public lands and our strong opposition to Trumps attacks. We will be seen and we will be heard. Public land access is what brought many people to our beautiful town, said Alicyn Gitlin, Grand Canyon conservation coordinator for Sierra Club. Our residents are clearly upset by this assault on beloved landscapes and waterways, revered archaeological and cultural resources, and wildlife habitats. These lands belong to all Americans and shouldnt be the subject of corporate giveaways. Background

Trump on Monday announced plans to slash protections from 2 million acres of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The move is part of a larger attack on public lands by Trump and some members of Congress to slash protections and allow more oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other industrial uses within protected areas. The Center, Sierra Club and other conservation groups and five tribes sued the Trump administration this week over the attack on monuments.
For Immediate Release, December 7, 2017 Contact: Kristen Monsell, (914) 806-3467, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org Lawsuit Launched Against Trump Administration for Approving Dumping of Offshore Fracking Waste Into Gulf of Mexico EPA Failed to Study Threats to Sea Turtles, Whales, Other Imperiled Wildlife DALLAS The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Trump administration for allowing oil companies to dump waste from fracking and drilling into the Gulf of Mexico without evaluating the dangers to sea turtles, whales or other imperiled marine life. In September the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized a Clean Water Act permit for new and existing offshore oil and gas platforms operating in federal waters off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The permit allows oil companies to dump unlimited amounts of waste fluid, including chemicals involved in fracking, into the Gulf of Mexico. The Trump administration is letting the oil industry turn our oceans into toxic-waste dumps. The EPAs supposed to protect water quality, not help pollute the Gulf, said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center. Its time for the courts to remind this agency that its mission is to safeguard the environment and public health. Today's notice letter highlights the fact that the agencys approval of the permit without studying risks to imperiled species in the Gulf of Mexico is a violation of the federal Endangered Species Act. Fracking chemicals and other contaminants in produced water raise grave ecological concerns because the Gulf of Mexico provides important habitat for whales, sea turtles and fish  as well as being federally designated critical habitat for imperiled loggerhead sea turtles. Dolphins and other species in the Gulf are still suffering the lingering destructive effects of 2010s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Federal waters off Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi host the largest concentration of offshore oil and gas drilling activities in the country. Previous records requests revealed that oil companies dumped more than 75 billion gallons of wastewater into these waters in 2014 alone. Records also show that fracking has been on the rise in the Gulf of Mexico, and the EPA has failed to conduct any meaningful review of the environmental impacts of dumping fracking waste into the water. In October the Trump administration announced plans to auction off more than 76 million acres of Gulf of Mexico waters to oil companies. That lease sale, which is scheduled for March 2018, will be the largest oil sale in U.S. history. It includes federal waters off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and could vastly expand drilling and fracking in the Gulf. Only the courts can stop Trumps assault on our oceans, Monsell said. Oil-industry pollution was already a problem in the Gulf, but this administration isnt even trying to protect wildlife from fracking chemicals. We need to fight back on behalf of marine wildlife. At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including marine mammals and fish, Center scientists have found. The California Council on Science and Technology has identified some common fracking chemicals to be among the most toxic in the world to marine animals. Todays 60-day notice of intent to sue is required before a lawsuit can be filed to compel the federal government to comply with the Endangered Species Act.
For Immediate Release, December 7, 2017



Contact: Ryan Shannon, (503) 283-5474 ext. 407, rshannon@biologicaldiversity.org Lawsuit Launched Challenging Trump Administrations Attack on Science, Endangered Species Trump Policy Allows Non-scientist, State Reps on Teams Protecting Endangered Species WASHINGTON The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a notice of intent to sue the Trump administration over a new policy allowing state representatives with no scientific background to be included in endangered species determinations. Species status assessment teams were originally intended to be groups of scientists tasked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to, among other things, determine if species need protection under the Endangered Species Act. But this new policy calls for those teams to include representatives from states governors offices, regardless of whether they have any scientific expertise. The policy is detailed in a memorandum that was leaked to the press this week and dated Oct. 13. It specifies that each team will have two state representatives, one from a state fish and wildlife agency and one from the governors office. Scientists, not political appointees, should determine which wildlife get protected under the Endangered Species Act, said Ryan Shannon, a staff attorney at the Center. This policy is clearly designed to interject politics into whats supposed to be a strictly scientific determination, a move thats all too typical in Trumps war on science. The policy likely gives veto power over protection of endangered species to governors offices, which in a number of states are hostile to endangered species. For species that occur in multiple states, the policy could easily create a situation where potentially biased state representatives outnumber scientists on the species status assessment teams. The new policy will also greatly slow the decision-making process. The Fish and Wildlife Service already faces a backlog of more than 500 species awaiting protection and has fallen behind on a workplan developed under the Obama administration. The Trump administration has denied protection to 31 species, including the Pacific walrus, black-backed woodpecker, Florida Keys mole skink and Northern Rocky Mountains fisher. Issued by a political appointee never confirmed by the Senate, the Oct. 13 policy was produced without public notice or the opportunity for comment. This is another unlawful example of the Trump administration working behind closed doors to weaken environmental protections, said Shannon. Thankfully, the law requires policies such as this to be exposed to the light of public scrutiny.
Nigerian business tycoon Aliko Dangote was the only African that made Bloomberg news media's annual global list of the 50 most influential businesspeople in 2017.

Alika Dangote featured on the Nasdaq billboard in New York.

Dangote was honoured this week at the Bloomberg 50 annual gala dinner at New York's iconic Gotham Hall. Bloomberg's list of 50 most influential names who have had an impact on the world in 2017 included Dangote, Africa's richest person, for his outstanding commitment of over $4B USD to increase Nigeria's food production capacity.

Represented in New York by the CEO of his foundation, Dangote was joined by electric car visionary Elon Musk; Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon; Beatrice Fihn, anti-nuclear weapons advocate and Nobel Peace Laureate; Amazon's Jeff Bezos; Robert Mueller, special counsel investigating Donald Trump's potential collusion with Russia; and Vitalik Buterin, whose invention of the cryptocurrency Ethereum is revolutionising the new blockchain craze.

Dangote's contribution to the world this year revolves around his dynamic attention to lessen food imports into his own country and Africa's largest nation, Nigeria, by focusing on domestic production of sugar and dairy, with 500 million litres of Nigerian milk to be produced by 2019. Earlier this year he announced a $50B USD plan to invest in renewable energy.

What sets The Bloomberg 50 apart from other lists is that each person chosen has demonstrated measurable change over the past year, Bloomberg Businessweek editor Megan Murphy said.

The event was emceed by actor Keegan-Michael Key, with a performance by Mandy Gonzalez of Broadway sensation Hamilton.

Dangote claimed another distinction at the Bloomberg 50, in that he was the only African nominated, although Elon Musk was of course born in South Africa and now makes his home in the United States.
To draw attention to the national 16 Days of Activism campaign, FCB Cape Town has developed another hard-hitting ad for the Western Cape Government's Safely Home initiative.

16 Days of Activism challenges violence and abuse against women and children. Often missed, aggressive driving is itself a form of abuse against those travelling with the driver.

The new ad aims to highlight the similarity of speeding and its consequences with that of domestic abuse. It challenges male drivers to reappraise their road habits and encourages them to man up and lower their speed on our roads.

You can view the ad here:

Statistics show that male drivers are a high risk group, which is why women pay lower car insurance. In the last five years, of the 6,581 drivers who have been killed on Western Cape roads, 88.4% were males (1,204), and 11.4% were females (156). This represents 7.7 male drivers killed for every 1 female driver.

The Western Cape Governments Safely Home initiative aims to reduce road fatalities by making people think carefully about the consequences of their actions when behind the wheel, travelling in a car or walking as a pedestrian. The Safely Home initiative also addresses distracted driving, driving under the influence, seatbelt use, speeding and vulnerable road users.

Credits:

Client: Western Cape Government: Safely Home

Client contact: Hector Eliott

Creative Agency: FCB Cape Town

Executive Creative Director: Mike Barnwell

Director: Hylton Tannebaum

Creative Team: Alistair Morgan & Dylan Davies

Production Company: Fuel Content

Producer: Nikki-Leigh Piper

Sound: Frequency Studios

Editor: Lawrence Jaeger

Agency contact: Nadja Srdic: Managing Partner




According to an Econex survey commissioned by the Hospital Association of South Africa (Hasa) in 2015, there were just 60 doctors per 100,000 people in 2013; whereas the world average is 152.

The emigration of healthcare professionals adds to South Africas doctor shortage  a situation which is placing the countrys entire healthcare system at considerable risk. While it is uncertain how many doctors have emigrated, Econex reported that between 2004 and 2009, 17% of doctors who had qualified did not report for community service. It is estimated that there are currently only 7,000 medical specialists practicing in South Africa.

One of the factors contributing to the declining number of doctors in South Africa is the prohibitive cost of monthly medical professional indemnity (PI) premiums. The issue around premium costs is a very real consideration for doctors currently in practice and those looking to start a career in medicine. In some cases, medical PI costs are driving high-risk specialists such as obstetricians and gynaecologists (ob-gyns) from their professions, says Volker von Widdern, group chief executive officer of Constantia Insurance Company Limited.

Here are some facts:
Recent appointments announced by Hellocomputer have again put the spotlight on the FCB Africa group agencies' commitment to transformation and empowerment.

From left to right - Bongi Mvuyana, Shika Sukdeo and Ashleigh Burton of Hellocomputer's Johannesburg office click to enlarge Lesego Masite - Group Chief Financial Officer for both Hellocomputer Joburg and Hellocomputer Cape Town click to enlarge

Hellocomputer Joburg Managing Director, Joey Khuvutlu, announced that four senior management positions have been filled by talented women, two from within the digital agency.

Bongi Mvuyana joins Hellocomputer Joburg as Head of Strategy from Havas Media where she was Digital Media Director and worked on a broad range of brands including Emirates, Hyundai SA, MiWay Life & Phillips.

Shika Sukdeo, who honed her logistics and managerial administrative skills at Young & Rubicam, Brand Activation, Underline Advertising & Promotions, McCann South Africa and Aqua Online before joining Hellocomputer, has been promoted to Head of Operation.

Ashleigh Burton, who joined Hellocomputer in 2015, moves up the ladder to Head of Social with experience at the Bonfire Theatre Company, the Society/King James Group, Saatchi & Saatchi Synergise and at English Made Easy in Cape Town.

Lesego Masite has been named as Group Chief Financial Officer with responsibility for both Hellocomputer Joburg and Hellocomputer Cape Town. She gained insights into several industries including pharmaceutical logistics, retail manufacturing, telecommunications and mining, mostly through her years at Ernst & Young

Just one month earlier in October, another woman, Nthabiseng Lethoko, strengthened the Hellocomputer Cape Town team when she was named Associate Creative Director and tasked with working alongside its Creative Director, Camilla Clerke, and Managing Director, Robyn Campbell.

Political and social commentators often criticise South Africas marketing communications industry for not implementing changes that result in significant and genuine transformation and empowerment.

In addition, particularly in the digital sector of the industry, gender parity is often overlooked. There is an alarmingly small number of female managing directors, and even fewer executive creative directors or creative directors, running digital agencies and, this year, only 23% of the Bookmark judges were women.

FCB Africa and its agencies, which include the two Hellocomputer offices in the country, are working hard to prove the critics wrong, and have been doing so since before before B-BBEE was legislated.

Today, the group has a BEE rating of Level 1 but its not just about the numbers. Its about using all of our available resources, knowledge and creativity to help redress the injustices of the past and create an inclusive economy that is sustainable for all South Africans, said FCB Africa Group CEO, Brett Morris.

That is easy enough to say but to achieve it requires an unwavering commitment from all levels of the

business, both philosophically and financially. This has been the case at FCB for decades. We are currently the only large black-owned network agency not reliant on modified flow through. But, we believe we can always do more.

At Hellocomputer, Khuvutlu added, We believe that, as an agency in a fast-changing environment, there is always more to learn, more potential to unlock for our staff and our clients, and more that we can do to transform the industry.

That is why I am so proud that our three most recent appointments have been women, and especially proud of the fact that we promoted two from within our ranks. All three ladies are passionate about the industry and committed to being the proverbial change. I look forward to the contribution they will make to our business and that of our clients.

Khuvutlu admitted that the digital sector of the industry is facing a large challenge when it comes to transforming its technical and/or programming teams.

With the advancement and integration of technology into every aspect of life, programming has become a critical skill across all industries and sectors of the economy. And there is a severe shortage of programmers.

At Hellocomputer, while we work towards transformation across all our departments and at all levels of management and leadership, we believe that transformation efforts in the programming space does more than meet the requirement of transformation in advertising and digital; it is a gateway for the previously disadvantage to take part in the job economy of the future.

With this in mind, Hellocomputer has partnered Umuzi to establish a 'Creative Programmer' Learnership Programme.

Together with Hellocomputers Executive Head of Technology, I worked with the organisation to define the syllabus to prepare programmers for the creative industry, and the agency has committed considerable budget to kickstart the Creative Programmer Learnerships as well as provide continuous support through initiatives such as mentorships, he concluded.




MENZEL MHIRI, Tunisia - These Tunisian women have some sauce, pooling their resources and a seasoned culinary expertise handed down the centuries from mother to daughter. Their secret? Harissa - the spicy hot pepper paste used to add zing to dishes traditionally prepared in North Africa's Maghreb region.

These days, when Najoua Dhiflaoui prepares harissa, it is no longer just for her family. She and another 150 women are now making money by producing and even exporting their ancestral savoir-faire.

Harissa, made from sun-dried chilli peppers, freshly prepared spices and olive oil to both preserve and soften its heat, is added to most dishes in restaurants in Tunisia, and is also popular abroad.

In 2013, a group of women farmers in Menzel Mhiri near Kerouan in rural central Tunisia banded together to form a cooperative they dubbed "Tahadi"  Arabic for "challenge".

Dhiflaoui and her co-workers certainly rose to it. They went "door-to-door to convince others to join them, to combine their knowledge and sell their products together", the dynamic fortysomething told AFP.

The women were able to take advantage of an official project to support local produce and were given training in the technical, hygienic and commercial aspects of their venture.

For the past two years, they have marketed their harissa under the "Errim" trade name. That's Arabic for small gazelle, also a symbol of feminine beauty.

"It's a way of representing the Tunisian woman  hard-working, authentic and fiery," said Dhiflaoui with a smile, her forehead beaded with sweat from both the heat and the peppers.

Tahadi now has 164 people working for it, and is one of the first firms in Tunisia to work exclusively with local rural women under a rotational system  its members work according to a flexible schedule.

In a spotless white laboratory lined with machinery that grinds, kneads and fills, the gloved women wash and prepare locally harvested ingredients to make the red paste.

Women play a key role in the Tunisian economy, said Farouk Ben Salah of PAMPAT, a UN, Swiss and Tunisian project aimed at getting rural products such as harissa onto the market. "The main thing is to create working conditions for them as soon as possible," he said.

The harissa makers are paid "slightly more than the agricultural wage, around 15 dinars" (five euros) per working day, said Ben Salah. Others work from home, performing essential tasks for the project and generating some income by cleaning and drying peppers on the roofs of their houses.

Dhiflaoui is full of enthusiasm. "This work allows women a certain financial autonomy," she said, boosting their confidence and enabling them "to move forward".

Since the launch of the cooperative, the farmers "have encouraged each other to make their mark. No longer do you have to be a teacher or doctor, now they too can work and feel they have a place in society."

Women in rural Tunisia are particularly affected by gender discrimination and lack of job security. While female unemployment is 22.5% at a national level, the rate exceeds 35% in rural provinces, according to a 2015 report by the National Institute of Statistics.

Dhiflaoui said that many of the women who now work at Tahadi used to labour in the fields in "terrible conditions" or "waited until their husbands brought money home". Their new role has "made them bloom" and given them "liberty", she added.

"There's a big difference between a woman with her own monthly salary and a woman who relies on a husband," said Chelbia Dhiflaoui, Najoua's cousin who also works at Tahadi.

"She feels a sense of responsibility, she sets goals she can reach -- and she's working to improve her living conditions."

Ben Salah said PAMPAT could help Tahadi diversify its production to give the cooperative more opportunities to employ women who live in rural areas.

Errim Harissa is already making a name for itself. Sold in gourmet food stores nationally, it can also be found in Switzerland and Germany, and orders have been dispatched to France and Italy.

Talks are also underway to export the delicacy to Canada.

Source: AFP
SYDNEY - Amazon's Australia launch was the company's biggest-ever opening day for orders, the US giant said on Wednesday, but some shoppers were underwhelmed by the range of goods and prices on offer.

The country's retailers have been scrambling to lift their online presence and cut costs amid expectations that Amazon, one of the world's most valuable companies, would shake up the market and eat into their profits.

Amazon said first-day orders on Tuesday were "higher than for any other launch day" in its history, with "tens of thousands of customers visiting the website during the first 24 hours".

"We are thankful to Australian customers for making this a landmark day in Amazon history," Amazon's Australia country manager Rocco Braeuniger said in a statement. "From early in the day, we experienced visitor numbers that far exceeded our expectations."

Despite the US giant's high-profile launch, local retailers who expect to be hurt by Amazon - including electronics chain Harvey Norman and department store Myer - saw their shares close higher on Tuesday.

It followed disappointment from some shoppers that prices on Amazon were not always lower than those offered by competitors.

"Amazon has underwhelmed high customer and investor expectations with its launch based on initial range and prices," Citi analysts said in a note. "Amazon has long targeted a pre-Christmas 2017 launch, but is unlikely to make an impact with the current undeveloped offer."

Harvey Norman's co-founder and chairman Gerry Harvey said the launch did not live up to the hype. "Beautiful, lame duck! Can't believe how bad they are, but it's good news for everybody because the hype has been ridiculous and the result has been, well, you couldn't be this bad," Harvey told Sky News Business late Tuesday.

But he acknowledged Amazon could still undercut local rivals and "sell 20% below cost".

Australian Retailers Association's executive director Russell Zimmerman said it was still early days and he expected Amazon to talk to retailers about their pricing on its platform. "Amazon have an incredible amount of data, so I think as it goes on, what they will do is talk to retailers and try to engage with their retailers to give the best possible offer to their customers," Zimmerman said.

Amazon already had Aus$1 billion (US$760 million) in sales in Australia annually through shipping from overseas before launching its local site, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

Source: AFP
The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) is extremely concerned about the recent report exposing horrific working conditions, amounting to slave labour, at some Brazilian poultry producers.

skeeze via pixabay

The US-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says that slave labour is endemic in Brazils poultry sector. If the report is correct, it shows totally unacceptable working conditions at facilities supplying a huge amount of chicken meat to South Africa.

Brazil is the worlds largest chicken producer and the main source of chicken imports to South Africa. These imports include both mechanically deboned meat, of which Brazil has long been South Africas main supplier, and more recently, increased amounts of frozen chicken portions as imports from the European Union were restricted following bird flu outbreaks.

SAPA will be asking the South African government to seek urgent comment from the Brazilian government about these allegations. If they are true, urgent action needs to be taken.

Effects of dumping

Thousands of South African workers have lost their jobs because of dumped chicken imports from countries including Brazil, which has now been exposed as a country where workers are subject to degrading working conditions and forced labour.

These allegations come just months after Brazils rotten meat scandal. In May this year, many countries, including South Africa banned imports of meat from some Brazilian producers following revelations of unsafe meat exports.

The poultry allegations are a further indication of unacceptable conditions at Brazilian producers and lax control by Brazilian regulators.
Professor Adipala Ekwamu, executive secretary of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture ( RuForum

Focusing on Africa's potential to feed itself and the world, Ekwamu emphasised that we cannot eat potential - that potential must be turned into reality, and in order to do so, the continent needs to address a number of key issues, including social stability, investment in the youth, a stronger science base, population growth, and developing a robust human capital base.

Nurturing the youth

Ekwamu noted that 60% of the African population is made up of its youth. "People see this as one of the biggest dividends that the continent has, but we must be able to nurture it, to make sure that they benefit, that they see value for themselves, and that they add to economic development, otherwise we are heading for disaster," he warned.

Another challenge Ekwamu highlighted was that of a declining rate of productivity in agriculture which has dropped from 1.8% in the 1970s to its current rate of 0.5% - this in the midst of rising world food demand.

Africa's physical agricultural production potential, in terms of land and water availability, varies from region to region, he noted, but even those areas with bountiful resources may not be fully able to harness this opportunity without significant investment in science, technology and innovation. "Having enough land is not enough," he said. "You must make it productive while at the same time ensuring environmental health and sustainability."

Investment in smallholder farmers

Smallholder farmers dominate in Africa, and that has policy implications, said Ekwamu, in terms of investment and improving productivity so that they are able to maintain large populations in the region. "The science that underpins development must look at how we can enhance productivity and sustainability within smallholder agriculture."

This level of farming, however, is threatened by Africa's high level of population growth and a youth population that do not see farming as a lucrative business, said Ekwamu, noting that majority of farmers in Africa entail an aging generation.

Previously, global food demand was largely met by Europe and North America, however, this region has seen very limited growth of late, noted Ekwamu, and while Latin America has seen a rise in agricultural potential, this is also declining due to environmental concerns in the region. Along with India and the Far East, that leaves Africa with the opportunity to contribute to an increase in global agricultural outputs and feed the world, he said.

Harnessing regional policies

To do this, significant public and private sector investment must be made in dealing with the continent's current challenges related to health, nutrition, hunger etc. Africa must also better harness the regional policies it has in place, he said, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa, and the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa.

Partnerships and knowledge-sharing will help take things to scale, he noted, pointing to the examples of Ethiopia and Rwanda which have both made significant strides in becoming food secure nations.

Ekwamu believes that Africa can indeed feed itself and the rest of the world, but recognises this as an enormous task. "We must have, above all, the skills and policies to help us take advantage of the opportunities," he concluded, emphasising once again the need to engage and invest in Africa's youth, and that it manages its population growth.
Name a tick, any tick, and Dr Nkululeko Nyangiwe of Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape will probably be able to tell you where you will find it in South Africa and in which type of vegetation. Since 2012, he has been working on his part-time doctorate in entomology about the distribution and ecology of ticks that are of economic importance to cattle farmers in South Africa and Namibia, and especially also in the Eastern Cape. Over the last five years, he has painstakingly collected more than 8,000 ticks from cattle on 80 farms across South Africa.

Dr. Nkululeko Nyangiwe. Image: Sonja Matthee

Nyangiwe is one of 15 students of the Faculty of AgriSciences at Stellenbosch University who will receive their PhD degrees during the institutions graduation week.

His studies were supervised by Prof Sonja Matthee in Stellenbosch Universitys Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology. She praised his commitment towards his studies. It is never an easy thing to do to hold down a full-time job while also pursuing studies, let alone a PhD degree, she said.

Although Nyangiwe didnt have the luxury of dedicating his attention 100% to his studies, he says it did help that issues related to ticks and tick-borne diseases are also part of his day job. This production scientist at the Dohne Agricultural Development Institute in Stutterheim regularly conducts research trials, often with the health of livestock in mind. There he has worked himself up through the ranks since joining the institution in 2002 as an animal scientist.

Hard work recognised

His diligence has paid off. In September 2017, he received the Bronze Medal from the South African Society of Animal Science (SASAS) at the annual congress held at Port Elizabeth for the meritorious PhD study. In the same month, he presented some of his work on the range expansion of the economically important Asiatic blue tick (Rhipicephalus microplus) at the third International Congress on Parasites of Wildlife held in the Kruger National Park.

Nyangiwe says it all started with small-scale studies that he conducted along with colleagues on the ecology and distribution of tick species in the Eastern Cape Province. This led to the development of a much larger study that included localities with different agro-ecological zones, including aspects of animal management practices as well as veld management, he remembers.

He has since published ten research papers in peer-reviewed journals about his work  not bad for a newly graduated PhD.

Major research findings: climate change, animal movement is allowing ticks to expand their range

One of his first significant findings was that the alien pantropical blue tick (Rhipicephalus microplus), a parasite that originated in Asia has spread to Namibia. It probably piggybacked on livestock imported from South Africa. The tick is linked to tick fever (babesiosis), and gall sickness (anaplasmosis) in cattle.

Pantropical blue tick. Image: Dr Nkululeko Nyangiwe

In his latest paper, published in the Journal of the South African Veterinary Association, he sets out how this tick has slowly but surely expanded its range across South Africa.

It was previously thought to occur only in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Worryingly, Nyangiwes studies have shown that the pantropical blue tick is now also present throughout the coastal region of the Eastern Cape, as well as the north-eastern region of the Northern Cape province. One record was made for the Free State. In the Western Cape, it was found on animals from farms near Wellington, Stellenbosch and Kuilsriver. Many of these animals are part of breeding stocks that are regularly transported to and from the northern grasslands and savanna regions of South Africa.

This recent finding means that the pantropical blue tick is now also comfortable in the Albany Thicket vegetation of the Eastern Cape, in the Bushveld of the Northern Cape and isolated patches of fynbos in the Western Cape.

It is possible that the establishment of the Asiatic blue tick in naive environments will result in higher disease incidence and tick-related deaths, he says. Several babesiosis-related deaths have already been recorded among naive cattle that have not previously been exposed to this tick species.

Ticks and tick-borne diseases have a significant impact on the health of domestic animals worldwide. It is difficult to estimate, but ticks and tick-borne diseases could cost the industry between $14 and 19bn, he explains the practical implications of his mapping exercise, and the role it plays in the provision of veterinary services. If one is able to map where certain tick species occur, government and farmers are better able to coordinate control strategies.

The observed range changes may be facilitated by the combined effects of environmental adaptability by the tick and the movement of host animals, he says. Ticks that used to be found only in colder regions are now also found in warmer locations, and vice versa.

Secret to success

Dr Nyangiwe says that having to study part-time isnt easy, and comes with a huge responsibility. How does one stay focused? Self-motivation combined with determination and a well-orientated vision, he says of the demands that come with having to balance work, family-time and studies. More than anything else, support is very vital in all aspects.

In this regard, he thanked his wife, Khunjulwa, who is also busy with postgraduate studies in social sciences, and his sons, Odwa and Thembelihle, who are studying towards pharmacy degrees at the Nelson Mandela University.
The Reserve Bank was attempting to remove Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane from office, her legal team alleged in the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday.

Mkhwebane's advocate, Paul Kennedy, made this explosive statement in response to earlier argument by the bank's advocate, David Unterhalter.

Unterhalter had said "it would be for other branches of government, the legislature in particular, to consider what to do" if the court declared Mkhwebane had abused her office in her investigation into and subsequent report on the Absa-Bankorp matter.

The Reserve Bank is seeking such an order, as well as a costs order against Mkhwebane in her personal capacity.

The public protector's AbsaBankorp report has given rise to a bitter battle between her office and the Reserve Bank. The Bank, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and Absa have applied to have the report's findings set aside.

Kennedy said the Bank envisaged consequences flowing from the order, namely, that "the court should be used to prepare the ground for, presumably, the public protector's removal".

That Mkhwebane might be guilty of administrative irregularities and factual inaccuracies, as alleged, did not mean she had acted in bad faith, he said.

"If she has done something wrong, she must be found to have done something wrong, not to have abused her office."

In failing to disclose in her report her meetings with the Presidency and in failing to keep transcripts of these meetings, it was "hypothetically a possibility that she was covering up the meetings " but there may have been human oversight," he said. "Mistakes do happen, but these are not necessarily mala fide."

The Reserve Bank's suggestion to the contrary was an "unjustified attack" on Mkhwebane's personal integrity.

Conduct inconsistent with the constitution did not necessarily constitute an abuse of office, said Kennedy.

Unterhalter hit back, saying Mkhwebane's treatment of key issues demonstrated bad faith.

Mkhwebane had provided no explanation of her meetings with the Presidency and State Security Agency in her responding affidavit, despite an explicit request to do so.

"Matters were raised with the Presidency and State Security Agency, which should never have been canvassed," he said.

Mkhwebane had "evidently discussed with the Presidency amending the constitution to take away the Reserve Bank's primary function, a topic that bore no relation to her investigation", bank general counsel Johannes de Jager said.

Notes of the meeting with the State Security Agency includeda discussion of the Reserve Bank's vulnerabilities.

The bank sought a personal costs order against Mkhwebane because she had lied in papers about her April meeting with the Presidency, claiming she had become concerned in that meeting that her remedial action might usurp the president's powers, said Unterhalter. Yet, the remedial action in her preliminary report of December had been careful not to do this - a precaution commended by the Presidency in a February letter.

This raised further questions as to what was discussed.

The matter continues.

Source: Business Day
UK property owner Capital & Regional's management says it expects to achieve dividend growth of nearly 8% in its financial year to December, as the group benefits from a strengthening consumer.

The UK-focused community shopping centre real estate investment trust released a trading update in which it said its passing rent was 61.1m at the end of November, up 1.2m, or 2%, compared with the end of June. Passing rent is rent payable at a particular point in time.

The opening of major new stores for German discount supermarket chain Lidl and The Gym Group in Walthamstow, as well as the Travelodge at Wood Green, a district of north London, contributed to the rental improvement.

Strong momentum in letting activity generated in the first half of the year had continued since June 30, the company said. In the five months to November 30, there were 15 new lettings and 18 lease renewals totalling 1.9m in contracted income, at a combined premium to estimated rental value of 7.1%. Total occupancy increased to 96.6% at November 30 from 95.5% at the end of June.

Footfall was flat across its shopping centres in the 21 weeks since the half year, rising 0.2%, but it outperformed the national index, which fell 2.7%.

Management reiterated its guidance for dividend growth for the December 2017 financial year of between 5% and 8%.

"In the short period since joining Capital & Regional in June 2017, the team and I have carried out a detailed review of the business, including the important role that our community shopping centres play in the rapidly evolving retail market place," said recently appointed CEO Lawrence Hutchings.

"A crucial part of this process has been the direct engagement we have undertaken with a wide-ranging group of stakeholders, including members of the local communities that our centres serve, together with in-depth external research," Hutchings said.

Capital & Regional is streamlining its cost structure, which has led the company to target annualised savings of at least 1.8m by 2018.

Source: Business Day
The Heritage Monitoring Project's (HMP) annual Most Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites campaign aims to identify and raise awareness of cultural heritage sites that are at risk from natural or man-made impacts as well to raise awareness of the courage and dedication of individuals and local organisations fighting to save the country's heritage. More importantly, we aim to provide a platform for heritage activists to share with the public their vision for at-risk sites and how communities can assist in overcoming these risks," says HMP co-founder, Jacques Stoltz.

This year was the second time that the HMP issued a call to the public to nominate sites of concern. In total, more than 35 heritage sites across a range of categories were submitted. The nominations include historic buildings and structures, cemeteries, sites of conflict, museums, mills, memorials, a mission station, a fortification, a cultural park and even a jetty.

The overwhelming public response to the call for nominations continues to show that South Africans are deeply concerned about the state of their cultural heritage.

Yet again, most of the sites share common threats, such as a lack of maintenance, lack of funding or other resources, mining, development pressure, lack of development and investment, gentrification or, simply, official neglect. Each years nominations provide an opportunity to also respond to emerging themes or trends, often a particular site tells us about what may be happening at a wider regional or national level that requires urgent attention, Stoltz says.

He notes, that the HMP and the judges are acutely aware that some heritage communities and activists are more privileged than others in having access to the necessary resources to prepare nominations  and more importantly, to organise locally. However, by running the campaign annually, we hope that the list will become ever more inclusive and representative of the rich variety of heritages our country is home to.

The final list of sites (in alphabetic order) are:

Peter Titmuss via 123RF

Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, Western Cape

Why this site matters

Containing some of the oldest and most intact Cape residential architecture, the Bo-Kaap has justly become a Cape Town icon with its distinctive colourful houses regularly featured in international travel magazines as integral to the South African tourist experience. With the first buildings dating from the 1760s, the Bo-Kaap was initially built by and for artisans and craftsmen but soon the district became home to Muslims and freed slaves following the abolition of slavery at the Cape. Many residents are direct descendants of slaves brought from the Indonesian Archipelago, India and Madagascar. For this reason, the Bo-Kaap is a rare South African example of a historic residential community still residing in the houses of their forebears, with cultural and religious institutions and practices still evident.

Why this site is endangered

The Bo-Kaap is threatened by ongoing gentrification, insensitive developments approved by the City of Cape Town  often resulting in over-scaled, high-rise buildings, land uses being approved in conflict with the predominantly residential character of the area, and rapidly increasing rates and taxes as property values in the city have skyrocketed in recent years. Many residents say they are being stonewalled by the City of Cape Town who is complicit in what they describe as apartheid spatial planning.

The judges concur with the Bo-Kaap Civic and Ratepayers Association that urgent safeguards are required to protect the rights of tenancy of the historic resident community. The association has called on the urgent declaration of the Bo-Kaap as a national heritage site and for the proposed Heritage Protection Overlay Zone to be adopted and enforced by the City of Cape Town.

Mission Church, Botshabelo Mission Station. Andrew Hall via Wikimedia Commons

Botshabelo Mission Station, Mpumalanga

Why this site matters

Botshabelo was founded by Alexander Merensky and Heinrich Gruntzner in 1865 as a place of safety for missionaries and Swazi and Bapedi converts following the suppression of Christianity by Sekhukune, King of the Bapedi. This German Lutheran Mission Station developed into a small town (containing a collection of an estimated 80 buildings) and a Fort (Fort Wilhelm or Fort Merensky, as it is known today) was constructed to protect the community from possible attack. From 1972, under the auspices of the Middelburg town council, Botshabelo was administered as a museum and a Ndebele historical village established. Pioneer black South African artist, Gerard Sekoto was born in Botshabelo, and it is here that famed-artist Esther Mahlangu started her career.

Why this site is endangered

In 2005, following a successful land claim application, the Botshabelo Community Development Trust gained ownership of land falling within the Botshabelo Nature Reserve. Infighting among the claimant community, however, resulted in years of neglect leading to buildings being vandalised, fences being stolen, the disappearance of historical objects and, importantly, the loss of tourism revenue as visitor numbers dwindled.

While a new interim board has been appointed to manage the Trust, the future of Botshabelo remains uncertain, although there are welcome signs that things are slowly improving. Most notable has been the restoration of the severely damaged 1860s church completed earlier this year. While the judges welcome these tentative steps at rehabilitating Botshabelo, due to its national significance, they have placed Botshabelo on the 2017 endangered list. By including the site, it is hoped that the Trust with the involvement and support of the various authorities and stakeholders concerned, will take further steps to stabilise what should be a showcase land reform project and to implement sustainable measures for the long-term management of this incalculable legacy.

Childrens Memorial Institute (Old Nurses Residence), Johannesburg, Gauteng

Why this site matters

This residence was opened in 1923 as part of the original Transvaal Memorial Hospital for Children. Initiated by the National Council for Women to commemorate the lives lost in the First World War, the nurses residence together with the Memorial Hall, two wards, a chapel and a synagogue was designed in the Classicist mould by architects Cowin, Powers and Ellis.

The hospital complex, opened in 1923 by Prince Arthur of Connaught, was the second dedicated children's hospital in South Africa making it one of the oldest childrens hospitals in Africa. It was an important training and research space for paediatrics in South Africa, predating its more well-known counterpart the Red Cross Childrens Hospital in Cape Town, by over three decades.

Why this site is endangered

The Nurses Residence has been unoccupied since 1978 when the childrens hospital functions moved to the Johannesburg General Hospital (now Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital). The building is managed by the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development together with the Gauteng Department of Health. However, a lack of proper asset management and maintenance, poor security, vandalism and informal occupation has left the building stripped of many unique original features and equipment. With doors stolen and windows broken, structural concerns are increasingly apparent. While the adjacent Memorial Hall is used by an estimated 30 Not-for-Profit organisations  all focussing on vulnerable childrens health, welfare and development - the Nurses Residence stands abandoned and is a security risk in what is meant to be a safe space for children. The judges concur that this is a telling example of poor heritage custodianship on the part of the Gauteng Provincial Government.

Fort Hendrina, Makhado, Limpopo

Why this site matters

This is believed to be the only extant iron fort that remains in South Africa. These forts were designed in 1887 by Captain Adolph Zboril, an Austrian, who became the second highest ranking officer in the Transvaal State Artillery. The forts were made from heavy armour plates and could be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere in the field. It is estimated that about 20 to 25 soldiers could be accommodated in a single one. Fort Hendrina was used in various military campaigns before, during and after the South African Anglo-Boer War (1899  1902). It is a grade II provincial heritage site.

Why this site is endangered

The Makhado Local Municipality is the custodian. Activists claim that the fort has all but been abandoned by the municipality and it is now victim to neglect, vandalism and in urgent need of restoration.

Goudkoppie Heritage Hill, North-West

Why this site matters

Goudkoppie Heritage Hill is a grade II provincial heritage site containing a replica Iron Age village, original Khoisan rock art and stone tools, a South African War blockhouse and war era graffiti, as well as remains of late 19th-century gold mining activity and geological history connected with the gold deposits mined in the area.

Why this site is endangered

A lack of funding to address the urgent need for security at the site hampers efforts to stop vagrancy and vandalism. The poor state of facilities is also deterring tourists.

Jan Smuts House Museum, Irene, Gauteng

NJR ZA via Wikimedia Commons

Why this site matters

The recent release of a new biography on Jan Smuts shows that the world is not quite done yet with this enigmatic, although compromised South African leader. The wood and corrugated iron house, which served as an officers' mess during the South African Anglo-Boer War, was purchased by Smuts and reconstructed at Irene. It was for many years a natural port of call and place of pilgrimage for prominent South Africans and overseas visitors.

Amongst these were royals such as Princess Frederika of Hanover and Greece (who lived there during the second world war). In 1947 the Royal Visit included King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England; Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII of England); Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II of England) and Princess Margaret (later Lady Snowden). The Royal Visit was extensively covered in the South African and foreign press. Other visitors included politicians such as high commissioners and governors Selborne, Milner and Gladstone; South African prime ministers Botha, Hertzog and Malan; South African scientists and literary figures ranging from Olive Schreiner and Sarah Gertrude Millin to Raymond Dart, IB Pole-Evans, and AL du Toit, and celebrities including Noel Coward, Sybil Thorndike and George Formby.

Why this site is endangered

The trustees of the Jan Smuts Foundation face a number of challenges. The house and grounds have never benefitted from official patronage. They have been cared for by a private foundation and by enthusiasts who now find the task rather daunting. Overall, Smuts House is in a poor state of repair and the valuable library with rare books dating from the 16th century lacks the requisite climate control necessary for the preservation of a priceless collection. Most importantly, the museum needs to find a way of making Smuts House relevant to new audiences.

Railway stations and associated structures of South Africa

Hilton Station via Grant Fryer. Image Source: The Heritage Portal

Why these sites matter

A report released earlier this year by the University of Pretorias Department of Architecture details the rich extent of the cultural heritage of the Netherlands-South African Railway Company (Nederlandsche-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorwegmaatschappij, or NZASM). The research highlights the heritage significance of hundreds of railway stations, sheds, bridges, residential buildings and other structures scattered across the northern parts of the country in an enterprise that was international in scale. Over 350 previously unknown NZASM structures were surveyed.

This study was fortuitous, as it confirmed what many communities across the country know  that valuable structures have been abandoned and left to decay, principally by Transnet. The communities of Grahamstown (Eastern Cape), Hilton (KwaZulu-Natal) and Heilbron (Free State), argue that with the necessary willpower Transnet can release these sites for adaptive reuse, returning once bustling economic hubs back to productive use in communities that were hard-hit by the closure of the railway lines.

Why this site is endangered

The Grahamstown Railway Station and platform was completed in 1879. The last line closed in 2009, not only relegating the station to decay and vandalism, but also isolating sidings at Atherstone, New Years River and Alicedale. The Heilbron station constructed in sandstone dates from the previous turn of the century. After, the closure of the line the building was left vacant and has since been vandalised to the extent that it no longer has a roof. Local heritage activists Twin Mosia and Piet Lombard would like to develop the site as a mixed-use tourism attraction. Both the Grahamstown and Heilbron stations are grade II provincial heritage sites. The Hilton Railway Station dates to 1888 and is believed to be the last remaining railway station on the original Durban to Johannesburg line. The station was used during the filming of the 1995 version of Cry the Beloved Country.

Tragedy Hill, Port Edward, KwaZulu-Natal

Why this site matters

Tragedy Hill was the site where settlers from the party of Henry Francis Fynn and members of the local eLangeni people were killed by Zulu warriors in 1831 after an apparent misunderstanding over royal cattle belonging to Zulu king Dingane. Tragedy Hill was also the site of an earlier dramatic incident when the Sao Joao became the first cargo ship wrecked along South Africas coastline in June of 1552. The fate of its cargo, passengers and crew has become arguably the most famous of all Portuguese shipwreck stories and is often recounted in the literature on early European trading with the east. Artefacts from the 1500s have been found at sites in the area.

Why this site is endangered

The landowner of an adjacent piece of property has applied for a mining permit to begin sand mining and create a borrow pit directly adjacent to Tragedy Hill. It is believed that the borrow pit may be linked to construction projects for the upgrade of the R61 between the Mtamvuna and Mbizana rivers. In the view of the judges, mining should never be allowed at the cost of heritage. The proposed mining also threatens Port Edwards much-needed tourism economy.

Village of Bathurst, Bathurst, Eastern Cape

Toposcope Bathurst via Gavin Came. Image Source: The Heritage Portal

Why this site matters

In three years time, South Africa will commemorate the bicentenary of the arrival of the 1820 British Settlers. The Village of Bathurst lies at the heart of settler country and is still home to a number of historic sites and buildings that date back to these first settlers. Some of the buildings are in urgent need of repair and restoration work. The judges include Bathurst on the 2017 list in order to show support to the efforts of local heritage champion, Historic Bathurst, and encourage initiatives underway to ensure that the bicentenary tells the story from both the British and amaXhosa perspectives.

Why this site is endangered

Historic Bathurst has identified a number of endangered sites that they hope to restore in time for the bicentenary. The 1820 Centenary Memorial Hall (built in 1920) is a well-used community facility, however, the roof of the building has been compromised and needs to be replaced. This will allow a series of tapestries, removed for safekeeping, to be placed on public display again.

The Bradshaw Mill was the first mill to be built in the Eastern Cape and probably the first in South Africa. The Mill was constructed in 1822. The spinning machine and loom were imported from Gloucestershire in England. During the Sixth Frontier War, amaXhosa soldiers set fire to the mill, but it was rebuilt in 1836. While the mill remains operational and is a big drawcard to tourists and learners, keeping it operating is financially and physically demanding and require rare skills.

The Powder Magazine is the oldest extant building in Bathurst dating back to 1821. The site is, unfortunately, the target of vandalism. The building needs to be secured and tourism signage erected to guide visitors to the landmark. There is also a need for additional displays. The Toposcope consists of a number of plaques creating a compass direction indicating the location of the various 1820 settler parties. The site used to be a prime tourist attraction, however, vandalism and theft have eroded visitor numbers.

Xolobeni Red Dunes, Wild Coast, Eastern Cape

Xolobeni Red Dunes via Kathryn Costello. Image Source: The Heritage Portal

Why this site matters:

Archaeologists believe that this paleoanthropological site could represent more than 300,000 years of human occupation. Although the oldest tools probably date to the Late Acheulean complex (Earlier Stone Age), the site appears to be particularly rich in artefacts from the Sangoan period (a transitional period between the Earlier and Middle Stone Ages). Sites from this period are rare in South Africa and only occur in certain habitats, making more in-depth archaeological surveys of Xolobeni necessary.

Why this site is endangered:

The area is rich in heavy minerals and mining rights have been applied for and granted. The Xolobeni community objected and an 18-month moratorium was put in place in September 2016, which means that unless research is done urgently, the area may be mined and the evidence destroyed forever. Because of conflict within the community about the mining application and a general distrust of outsiders, it has become difficult for archaeologists to access the site. Urgent surveying has, therefore, not taken place to meet the deadline by which mining may possibly proceed.
The Wavescape Surf & Ocean Festival will be held at the Labia Theatre in Cape Town on 7-10 December 2017. This year, the festival will screen a record of 32 films, several of which are premieres.

The screenings will include the African premiere of Bunker77; the story of Clark Gable's son Bunker Spreckels, who was the heir to a massive fortune and became one of surfing's most infamous characters.

There is also Proximity, a series of conversations between the world's top surfers. The latest features Kelly, John John, Rasta, Stephanie Gilmore, Albee Layer and Craig Andersen.

Nathan Oldfield's film Church of the Open Sky is beautiful. I am African is a film about a Moroccan who dreams of surfing Skeleton Bay in Namibia and travels the length of Africa to do it.

List of all the films:

Proximity

The Jump

Biarritz Surf Gang

Given

Optimist

Paradigm Lost

Sea Wolf

Blue Road

Bezerke

Week up West

I am African

Scarlet's Tale

Short films showing are:

A Million Waves

Awen

Woza

Shape qui Rit

Masa

The Edge of North

Sea Lone

Secret Waves

Welcome to Raglan

Night Rose

The Scramble Gamble

Left in Lagos

Blackboy

Visit

Zion's Gate

Go to http://www.wavescapefestival.com/2017-films/ to see the programme, synopses and trailers!

Go here to book tickets.
WINDHOEK - Namibia has criticised its listing on a new European Union blacklist of tax havens as unjust and biased, blaming the status on missing a deadline to comply.

Namibian finance minister, Calle Schlettwein. Photo: The Namibian

The southern African desert nation is the only sub-Saharan African country named in a 17-nation list of non-EU tax havens.

"Namibia is clearly, by any objective criteria, not a tax haven," said finance minister, Calle Schlettwein.

The listing is "unjust, prejudiced, partisan, discriminatory and biased," Schlettwein charged.

The list of non-cooperative tax havens adopted by EU ministers on Tuesday also named: American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, Macau, the Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates.

Schlettwein said Namibia's blacklisting was based on "miscommunication" as the country had missed a deadline to comply.

He added that Namibia would ask the EU to correct the blacklisting, saying it would cause serious harm to the country's "outstanding reputation as a politically stable democracy."

He added that the lower-middle-income country was instead "exposed to illicit outflow of cash, as has been revealed in the recently published Paradise Papers," he said.

The minister said he hoped the EU would help Namibia fight questionable flows of money from the country.

Namibia is a country of 2.4-million people and shares parts of its southwestern borders with South Africa.
Mark your calendars for 3 March 2018 - when Hauwei and Kfm 94.5 set the stage at Huawei KDay - Cape Town's premier music, technology and lifestyle event...

The event returns to the picturesque Meerendal Wine Estate in Durbanville, providing the perfect backdrop for the thirteen-hour music festival featuring some of South Africas well-loved musical acts.

Huawei KDay travelled through the city on an epic tour bus offering #HuaweiKDay fans the opportunity to win tickets, engage with their favourite presenters and meet artists featured on the Huawei KDay line-up.

The #HuaweiKDay tour bus visited key locales in the city including:



Location

Time:

Start: Kfm 94.5 studios  Somerset Road

08:30

Century City

09:30  10:30

Bloubergstrand

10:30-11:30

N1 City Mall

11:30-12:30

Liberty Promenade

12:30-13:30

Vangate Mall

13:30-14:30

Rondebosch Common

15:30-16:30

Newlands Swimming Pool

14:50 - 15:20

Sea Point Pavilion

15:50  16:30

End: V&A Waterfront  Amphitheatre

17:00

The eight hour larger than life journey through the city was the perfect precursor to Huawei KDay on 3 March 2018. The festivities didnt end there! We hosted a surprise performance by three of the musical acts on our line-up, crooner Matthew Mole, rapper YoungstaCPT and a special performance and welcome back home salute to Cape Town-born Idols winner, Paxton Fielies, said Kfm 94.5 Programming Manager, Stephen Werner.

We at Huawei are extremely excited to be partnering with KFM 94.5 yet again for another epic Huawei KDay. The previous Huawei KDay was successful in ensuring that consumers experienced the collaboration of two brands by sharing the passion for local music, said Claire Wujun Marketing Director at Huawei Consumer Business Group South Africa.

The upcoming Huawei KDay powered by the Huawei Mate 10 Pro will enable consumers to once again experience our latest masterpiece with AI technology at the core of our latest device, she added.

Fifteen thousand attendees are expected for the event which was launched in 2007. Eventgoers can expect a line-up featuring some of SAs hottest acts:

Paxton

Mi Casa

AKA

Matthew Mole

Shekinah

Timo ODV

Locnville

Craig Lucas

YoungstaCPT

Jimmy Nevis

DJ Kent

Gangs of Ballet

G&T

Freshly Ground

Tickets are priced from R280 for adults while children under the age of 12 will pay R120. Tickets for the Chill Zone are priced at R450 and are available through Computicket.

Stay tuned to Kfm 94.5 and www.kfm.co.za for additional line-up updates and other Huawei KDay 2018 news. Engage via social media using

#HuaweiKDay @HuaweiZA @KfmZA

EVENT DETAILS:

Event: Huawei KDay 2018 with Kfm 94.5

Date: Saturday, 3 March 2018

Time: 9am  8pm

Venue: Meerendal Wine Estate, Durbanville

Tickets are available through Computicket:



R280 adults



R120 for children under 12



R450 Kfm Chill Zone




Africa's underdeveloped energy infrastructure and growing demand could be the catalyst to attract private sector investment and thereby actually fast-track energy development.

Vera Songwe, European Union Economic Commission for Africas executive secretary

Africa will not be able to accelerate and sustain growth without adequate access to energy. Over 600-million people currently do not have access to energy, a situation that cannot be allowed to continue, Vera Songwe, European Union Economic Commission for Africas executive secretary, told the 12th African Economic Conference that opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

However, for this we need to improve the governance processes for contracts awards, and licensing to ensure populations get affordable prices, improve the governance of energy utilities most of which are underperforming and most of all, improve the governance of our regional power pool institutions, she said.

With Africas major hydro resources, the continent could produce over 283 gigawatts of energy and ensure its population has access to energy, so "access to energy is not due to lack of resources".

Agriculture

Songwe also addressed agriculture on the continent, telling the delegates 40-65% of the labour force in Africa is today engaged in the sector, most of them women.

However, she said, the governance processes regulating agriculture in Africa were still fraught with weaknesses.

Appropriate macroeconomic policy framework was critical for the continent to foster structural transformation. Land rights are not secure, the procurement process for inputs such as fertiliser and other inputs remains highly political in many country undermining the productivity of the sector and most of all profitability," she said

Of equal importance is the need to prioritise financing for development. While it is comforting to note that Africas domestic resource mobilisation efforts have improved over the last decade, the continent needs to do more."

Funding

Estimates of Africas financing needs are enormous, she said, around $93bn per year to finance the infrastructure gap; about $60bn or more to finance the sustainable development goals (SDGs); $50bn annually to meet the cost of climate adaptation; and $25bn annually to achieve universal access to energy.

The total funding is therefore big. We also know that Africas funding needs outstrip its current domestic resource capabilities  due to low domestic savings, shallow capital markets, weak financial intermediation, large informal sector, illicit transfer of funds and public financial management and governance challenges, said Songwe, adding to achieve the SDGs, development finance strategies need to go beyond filling financing gaps.

While official development assistance will remain a vital source of external public finance for the poorest and most vulnerable countries, it will not be sufficient. Effective domestic resource mobilisation will be at the core of financing sustainable development.

Illicit financial flows

Songwe also spoke about the perverse effects of illicit financial flows on African economies which she said continue to reduce the continents ability to make investments needed in education, health, science, technology and infrastructure to achieve its goal of industrialisation.

Africa loses $100bn annually to illicit financial flows representing around 4% of the continents GDP.

As such, strengthening the institutional architecture designed to tackle these flows must be a priority for the continent, she said.
Recently, the National Bank of Abu Dhabi merged with the First Gulf Bank to create First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest financial institution in the UAE with assets totalling $186bn. This not only represents a significant achievement for all parties involved, but it could also herald further merger and acquisition activity across the UAE - bringing both significant opportunities as well as challenges to the businesses involved.

As companies continue to expand, they are constantly on the lookout for the next growth opportunity. From entering new markets to launching new products and services, every option requires due diligence and a thoughtful communications strategy from both an internal and external stakeholder perspective.

Planned mergers or acquisitions are a great way to accelerate growth through the adoption of new technologies, skillsets, markets and geographic reach. But businesses be warned  many listed companies fail in this space due to mismanagement of stakeholders expectations and financial forecasts from a business and communications perspective.

Its vital before any planned M&A to confirm the viability of the transaction through all channels. Using the Bridge Protocol, a set of steps to ensure an effective communications strategy, companies can craft a narrative and strengthen the optics of the deal  a crucial move in todays ever-connected world. Through clear and transparent communication, companies can avoid any market misinformation that might detract from the value and core benefits of the transaction.

For effective M&A communications, here are the 6 best practices:

1. Be in control

In the initial stages, limit the circle of people who know about a planned transaction. Unofficial communication often leads to misinformation which can be detrimental for all parties involved, especially those operating within regulated environments. To mitigate the risk of distortion, a proactive communications strategy must be put in place. This strategy should include a timeline for corporate announcements, approved content and messaging for target audiences as well as a contingency plan for unexpected events like media leaks or a crisis.

Its important that all information output is controlled and distributed. Any inaccuracies should be monitored and addressed quickly to ensure accurate news is in the market place and the rationale for the proposed deal is clear and understood.

2. Remain consistent

In the planning stage of a merger or acquisition, a set of core messages should be developed to outline every aspect of the deal. These core messages should be bolstered through in-depth Q&As and briefing sheets that support the companys spokespeople who will be engaging with different audiences, including investors and the media. This controlled approach will ensure that all external communication materials are consistent and can address any potential concerns that may arise.

Additionally, having a consistent messaging cadence surrounding the deal will showcase a companys accountability. It is a subtle, yet effective way to engage shareholders organically while keeping them in the loop.

3. Inform and make commentary transparent

Transparency can be difficult due to the regulatory environment and the risks of revealing too much sensitive information to the competition. However, there are many ways to talk about a deal without divulging price or commercially sensitive information such as exact P&L figures or financial forecasts. Transaction background information can be explained through a variety of channels: industry research, thought leadership articles and letters to both internal and external audiences. Further means of communications include corporate videos, microsites, infographics  even traditional press statements.

Every transaction will have a series of opportunities and potential challenges to deal with. A valued in-house or external communications adviser should always be close to the Board to advise accordingly.

4. Develop content

As mentioned, M&As often involve complex financial and operating details. Thus, companies must be mindful of their target audience and adapt the content and messaging accordingly. For example, legal jargon would not be appropriate when communicating with insurance customers who are more interested in potential changes to their benefits, services or premiums.

Companies should craft engaging content that not only reflects their brands ethos in an authentic way, but works in conjunction with their digital strategy. This can be done through articles, infographics, multi-media as well as social platforms.

5. Go digital

Content must be hyper-personalised to address each audience in a format they can easily follow. Search Engine Optimisation can help target specific audiences while measuring both effectiveness and cost benefits. Other tactics include demographic targeting, retargeting via cookie data analysis, geo-targeting via zip codes or IP addresses as well as contextual targeting which looks at the category or keywords of a website.

Valuation metrics are just as diverse as targeting tactics. Metrics can be categorised by unique visitors, subscribes and followers, engagement and reach, click-to-open rates as well as conversion to sales ratios, all of which are supported by various types of smart analytic software. Aashti Bawa, a digital colleague of mine says, It is not about having a digital strategy, but more about having a strategy for a digital world.

6. Evolve  the end of the deal is only the beginning

Once the transaction is complete the on-going story only begins. Companies will need to consistently communicate updated business strategy, performance, key milestones achieved, etc. in order to explain the rationale for the initial transaction. For listed businesses, this will also require ongoing financial reporting, integration updates, analyst earning calls as well as shareholder and investor roadshows. Annual reports, which will require the C-Suite and Investor Relations and Corporate Communications teams to work closely together, are another great way to maintain communications.

There is no doubt that a merger or acquisition can make or break a company. Performing due diligence, and effectively communicating with stakeholders is key to gaining more than trust, but success.
Whenever somebody from out of town asks about places worth visiting in Albuquerque, Los Poblanos is always high on my list of recommendations. The lavender farm and inn is preternaturally peaceful and otherworldly, with peacocks strutting casually around the grounds alongside blissed-out tourists eating little triangles of cranberry cake from the Farm Shop. And now theres even more of a reason to visit the slice of New Mexican heaven, because Los Poblanos recently opened their new restaurant, called Campoand its stunning.

In the middle of the huge, open-layout kitchen, visible from the dining room, is the hearth. When I arrive in the afternoon the fire is small and pushed to a back cornerthe kitchen staff wont be needing it to cook for another few hours. Its here that I encounter Executive Chef Jonathan Perno. Hes peeling golden beets into a bowl filled with other vegetable waste that, Im certain, will go into compost or feed some of the animals on the property. I find out later that Perno doesnt like the word sustainabilityhe thinks its become too buzzwordy, and thus, meaninglessbut he certainly doesnt take any of his ingredients (or where they come from) for granted.

According to Perno, Campo was in the works from the moment Los Poblanos opened its doors as a bed and breakfast in 1999. Of course, there was a restaurant on the property from the start, but it wasnt as grand and unique as the owners, Armin and Penny Rembe, wanted. After he began cheffing at the original Los Poblanos restaurant 10 years ago, Perno worked together with the Rembes to come up with a restaurant concept that would live up to the standards of environmental stewardship and minimalist beauty that have guided all their efforts at Los Poblanos.

Perno grew up in New Mexico, but spent his formative early career in the Bay Area, where he worked under Wolfgang Puck at Postrio and learned raised-bed farming in Berkeley. The education he received there, and the appreciation for the Slow Food movement that was flourishing in the Bay, served him well when he came back to New Mexico. In the years since, he has fostered the connections hes made with farmers and producers in the area. One local farmer Perno talks about in particular, Jesse Amyo of Amyo Farms, is his exclusive provider of tomatoes and garlic, two very important ingredients in most restaurants. Hes started growing these little tiny European shallots that hes just selling to me as an experiment. So everything that he didnt keep for seeds, he gave to me, Perno says. Theyve known each other for 13 years, and have come to rely on each other. Which, I think, is just how the bond between chef and farmer should be.

He has a number of other farmer friends who save entire acres just for him. Im just a vehicle to let farmers showcase their wares, he says. While I think there may be a little more to it than that, Im sure his humility is appreciated by those who keep him in carrots and leeks.

Our inspiration is the state of New Mexico, Perno said when I asked him about the menu at Campo. That means, of course, plenty of green chile and blue corn, but it goes a little deeper than that as well. It means that many dishes are cooked over a wood fire, it means that their cheeses come from a dairy farm just a few miles away, and it means that whats in season in the state will largely dictate whats served.

While he may not be a fan of the term sustainability, its fair to say that the food that Perno serves at Campo is uniquely tied to the land and the growers who tend it. When I ask him what makes Campo different from many other restaurants that claim farm-to-table principles, his humility flags a bit as he grins wryly at me and says, well, we walk the walk.

Campo is now open for breakfast daily from 7:30 to 11:30am, and for dinner Wednesday through Sunday from 5 to 9pm. Reservations required for dinner, recommended for breakfast.
PR Newswire

RENHUAI, China, Dec. 6, 2017

RENHUAI, China, Dec. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tianchao Shangpin "Sharing Resources and Shaping Brands" Summit was held at the Moutai Conference Center Hall on November 30, 2017, with more than 1,000 high-level officials from the Guizhou provincial government, top executives from Kweichow Moutai Group, and leading members of the World Alcoholic Drinks Alliance and industry associations in attendance.

Kweichow Moutai Group chairman and deputy party secretary Yuan Renguo explained at the event that 2017 is proving to be a crucial year for Moutai Group during China's 13th Five-year Plan period spanning 2016 to 2020. Despite a complex and constantly changing international economic environment, a slowdown in the pace of growth of the Chinese economy and ongoing adjustments to the path of development for Chinese industry, the group has maintained rapid growth, with many indicators hitting historic new highs, far better than expectations.

The group's party secretary and general manager Li Baofang said at the event, "the group's 'Meeting in Africa through the Unique Aroma  China Kweichow Moutai One Belt, One Road Branding' initiative has been successful and represents another important milestone for us". Moutai Group has also set up a public interest fund to support the China's most disadvantaged in a move to add meaning to the Tianchao Shangpin brand.

The summit was hosted by deputy party secretary and secretary of Committee for Discipline Inspection for the group Zhao Shuyue, with former Croatian deputy prime minister and World Alcoholic Drinks Alliance chairman Dr. Ante Sominic and his wife Rita Zhao attending and delivering speeches. The Sino-Russian Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development's Healthy Lifestyle Council chairman Liang Yushi read a message from Russian Healthy Lifestyles Council chairman Sergey Krusev.

Tianchao Shangpin has set an ambitious goal of 3 billion yuan (approx. US$450 million) in sales for 2018 and 10 billion yuan (approx. US$1.5 billion) by 2020, driving the achievement of an overall sales goal of 100 billion yuan (approx. US$15 billion) for the group, said Tianchao Shangpin Wine (Guizhou) vice chairman and president Huang Yongyi.

The summit laid out the roadmap for Tianchao Shangpin and proved a genuine morale booster, laying a solid foundation for both the company and the group to achieve the ambitious goals that each have set for themselves.

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leading-chinese-liquor-brand-tianchao-shangpin-holds-summit-on-sharing-resources-and-sharing-brands-300568200.html

SOURCE Kweichow Moutai Group


Surface to Air Missile AKASH with indigenous seeker, successfully test fired from the Launch Complex-III, at ITR Chandipur, Odisha on Tuesday. Photo: PTI.

BALASORE, ODISHA (PTI): India on Tuesday successfully test-fired Akash its supersonic surface-to-air missile with indigenous radio frequency seeker from a test range in Odisha, officials said.



The state-of-the-art indigenous missile targeting an UAV 'Banshee', was fired from the launch complex-III of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur near here this afternoon.



"The radars, telemetry and electro-optical systems along the coast have tracked and monitored all the health parameters of the missile," an official statement said.



The supersonic missile is the first surface-to-air missile with indigenous seeker to be test fired and is being inducted into the Army as short range surface to air missile.



With the successful test firing, India has achieved the capability of making any type of surface to air missile, defence sources said.



Akash has a strike range of about 25 km and carries a 55- kg fragmentation warhead that is triggered by proximity fuse.



It is an all-weather area air defence weapon system for defending vulnerable areas against medium range air targets penetrating from low, medium and high altitudes.



Developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Akash missile system has the capability to neutralise aerial targets like fighter jets, cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles as well as ballistic missiles.



The system is designed to neutralise multiple aerial targets attacking from several directions simultaneously. The system is autonomous and its operation is fully automated.



There is flexibility in deployment, they said.



It uses state-of-the-art integral ram jet rocket propulsion system and the onboard digital autopilot ensures stability and control. Electro-pneumatic servo actuation system controls cruciform wings for agile response and thermal batteries provide onboard power supply.



The radio proximity fuse has advanced signal processing features. Together with the pre-fragmented warhead and safety arming mechanism, a high kill probability of manoeuvring targets is assured.



The launch operations were witnessed by Director General (Missiles) of DRDO and Scientific Adviser to the defence minister G Satheesh Reddy and other senior officials of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).



Reddy congratulated all the DRDO scientists and Armed Forces for the successful test firing of Akash, the statement said.


The UKs FTSE 100 index lifted from a two-month low yesterday as Brexit negotiations dented sterling, while Costa coffee shop owner Whitbread got a late boost when activist investor Sachem Head declared a stake in the company.

The index rose 0.5%, outperforming a negative European market thanks to a weaker sterling, which was down 0.4%.

Whitbread was a late riser to the top of the FTSE, shooting up 7.8% after US activist investor Sachem Head revealed a stake in the Costa coffee owner.

Shares in HSBC, Lloyds, and Barclays fell back as enthusiasm over US tax reform, which had boosted lenders in the past week, dissipated.

Jitters in technology shares drove Micro Focus and WorldPay down.

Investors eyes were glued to developments in fraught Brexit negotiations which have caused swings in sterling.

Whether or not there is sufficient progress on Brexit divorce talks by the EU Council Summit on 14-15 December is key to our economic outlook, said Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategists in a note.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said negotiations over how Brexit would change the border arrangements could pick up again in the new year if a deal was not made this week. British press reports that no such deal would be reached sent sterling lower.

Market bets on sterling had shifted considerably in recent weeks towards betting on a breakthrough in Brexit negotiations, with sterling rising to more than a two-month high last Friday.

Though the tentative deal was rejected on Monday, some market strategists such as Nomura believe there is a 70% probability of a breakthrough in talks, though some traders say the latest headlines reduce those expectations even further.

This political ping-pong battle is really hurting investor sentiment towards sterling, said Neil Jones, Mizuhos head of currency sales for hedge funds in London. Against the euro, sterling was down 0.2% at 88.11p.

Meanwhile, British manufacturers called for their government and the EU to reach a Brexit transition deal before Christmas, or else risk damaging uncertainty in 2018.

Companies in the UK and across the EU want to see a transition or implementation deal nailed down this side of Christmas, Stephen Phipson, chief executive of Britains EEF manufacturing trade association, said.

An opportunity to do so is in clear sight and political leaders across the spectrum must put the economic interests of the country front and centre, said Phipson.
A mortgage expert has expressed serious concern after Central Bank research showed the number of home loan accounts  possibly well over 120,00 and as many as 200,000  that needed some sort of modification or restructuring was much higher than officially recorded, writes Eamon Quinn.

Michael Dowling, chair of the mortgage committee at the Irish Brokers Association, said the discrepancy in the figures raised concern because the new figures suggest the household debt crisis to be larger than first thought and that the challenges were greater in tackling the debt distress faced by many households.

He called on the Central Bank to provide more details over how the discrepancy could have occurred. The Central Bank said that the new figures on non-preforming loans in the Irish market showed that the scale of mortgage modification in the market is larger than previously measured.

The research by Fergal McCann showed that AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and KBC issued almost 100,000 temporary modifications between 2009 and 2016, and issued around 100,000 modifications on a sustainable, or long-term basis, over the same period.

Double counting will likely mean that there were fewer than 200,000 modifications but that the number was nonetheless higher than the official figures suggest.

The Central Bank quarterly arrears figures record there were almost 120,400 restructured residential mortgage accounts, at the end of June.

The research, called Mortgage Modification in Ireland: A recent history, said the figures cover five banks, or 90% of the mortgage market, and cannot be directly compared with the official figures.

However, it is unclear if the Central Bank will have to change the figures in its quarterly arrears bulletin. Researcher Mr McCann wrote: Relative to the 120,398 that are classified as being restructured by official Central Bank statistics, these numbers highlight that, when previously elapsed short-term arrangements are counted, the scale of mortgage modification in the Irish principal dwelling house mortgage has been even larger than measured by statistics on the currently -restructured group of loans.

The research found there were improvements after the Central Bank brought in its new set of rules for banks dealing with mortgage customers in arrears, called mortgage arrears resolution targets in 2013.

In the early part of the crisis, banks were most likely to offer temporary solutions such as accepting repayments of only the interest on the loans for existing mortgage holders to alleviate the repayment difficulties faced by borrowers, according to the research.

Before 2013, the research found 75,000 mortgages had been issued a temporary modification, while 40,000 mortgages had received a permanent modification.

After the introduction of mortgage arrears resolution targets, the number of permanently modified mortgages surpassed the number of ever-temporarily modified loans, the research showed.

In general, modifications issued before 2011 have been more likely to be in longer-term arrears by the end of 2016 than those issued since then, it showed, and borrowers are likely to be more successful in meeting longer-term mortgage modifications.
Plastics group One 51, which was renamed IPL Plastics, is to pursue acquisitions in mainland Europe in a bid to rebalance its spread but wont carry out any deals until after a likely flotation next summer, writes Geoff Percival.

Speaking after an EGM at which shareholders approved the restructuring of the groups capital structure  which would allow for a flotation  and its name change, chief executive Alan Walsh said while there are opportunities in north America, upping the groups presence in mainland Europe is on the radar, in order to rebalance its operations. Currently, 75% of One51/IPLs revenues are generated in north America.

However, Mr Walsh said any further acquisition activity would be unlikely before a potential flotation, which is still managements preferred avenue to growth despite it still being open to considering alternative proposals. The prospects of a trade sale to private equity firm CapVest ended last month after talks came to nothing.

Mr Walsh said any flotation would likely happen around May or June next year, with a primary share listing likely in Toronto, with Dublin the probable location for a secondary listing. He declined to estimate how much IPL could raise via its float. The group, however, will keep its headquarters in Dublin.

Canadian fund manager Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec is the Dublin groups largest shareholder with a 25% stake, while Canadian development capital fund FSTQ also has an interest. Both are behind the flotation plan, which initially arose last year before being shelved in the face of opposition by One51s then investor base.

In a separate trading update, One 51 said it expects full-year earnings to be broadly in line with market expectations. It said its UK business continues to perform strongly despite economic and political uncertainties brought about by Brexit. Its north American operations  in Canada and the US  have performed strongly this year.

However, the groups Irish business has been hit by reduced demand from its largest customer and delays in embedding new customers into its new food grade facility in Cork, which was commissioned for full production this year.

However, Mr Walsh said this is a temporary situation, which will not hamper long-term growth in Cork.
By Anna O'Donoghue

Last week Dublin commuter, @AHoonter found this wallet-sized photo on the floor of the number 37 bus.

In a bid to find its owner she tweeted a picture of the family photo.

Im after finding this wallet photo of two lovely ladies on the floor of a 37, she captioned the tweet.

I dont know where to post it to try and find the owner, going to try Facebook but wonder if someone on Twitter might know what I should do to get it back

@dublinbusnews @LovinDublin I'm after finding this wallet photo of two lovely ladies on the floor of a 37  idk where to post it to try and find the owner, going to try Facebook but wonder if someone on twitter might know what I should do to get it back!!  pic.twitter.com/JMKeVOo31a   (@AHoonter) November 29, 2017

Dublin Bus spotted the tweet and launched a campaign to find the ladies in the photo.

Lost this photo? Looks like it could tell a story or two. If you lost this on the 37 bus, we're looking for you pic.twitter.com/j9dZLpC1ad  dublinbusnews (@dublinbusnews) November 30, 2017

Last week, the daughter of one of the ladies in the photo replied to the original tweet.

Maddie, who lives in the UK, explained that the photo belonged to her grandmothers cousin, who lives in Ireland.

Sadly she went on to say that the other lady in the photo was her great aunt who passed away 30 years ago.

Thank you so much for finding the photo! Sadly my great aunt in the photo passed way 30 years ago so the photo is very sentimental, also just to let you know the photos on its way to my great aunty!  Mads (@MaddieFozard) December 1, 2017

The photo is now on its way to the family of her great aunt!

Im glad it made your day better! Passing on good wishes to you! All the family in Ireland and here in the uk cant thank you enough and my great aunts children would love to get in contact with you to say thank you!  Mads (@MaddieFozard) December 1, 2017

It just makes you feel all warm and cozy inside, doesnt?
An opinion poll of people in Northern Ireland shows nearly 58% want the north to stay in the single market and customs union after Brexit.

Almost 48% favoured joining a united Ireland in the case of a 'Hard Brexit'.
Update 9.27pm: Theresa May is preparing to make a fresh Brexit offer on the Irish border by Friday to try and break the logjam in negotiations amid warnings she may have to wait until the New Year for trade talks, the Taoiseach has said.

With the clock ticking to the December 14 summit of the European Council which must decide whether sufficient progress has been made on the UK's divorce deal to clear the way for talks on the future relationship, there was no sign of a breakthrough on the crucial issue of the Irish border.

The Taoiseach's office characterised a phone-call with Mrs May as a "stock-taking" exercise, and later he made clear he would not back down on his position that Dublin's approval for the opening of the second phase of talks is dependent on agreement on the border.

But he said he discussed with the British Prime Minister the idea of Britain amending its offer to win over the DUP, which scuppered a proposed deal on Monday.

With Mrs May under intense pressure from business for certainty by Christmas over the transition to a new UK/EU relationship, Mr Varadkar said she is hoping to return with a new formal written offer "tonight and tomorrow".

The Taoiseach said he would consider any new proposal, but added: "Ultimately it is up to them to come back to us, given the events that happened on Monday.

"And having consulted with people in London, she wants to come back to us with some text tonight and tomorrow."

After talks with Dutch PM Mark Rutte in Dublin, he said his "absolute red line" that Brexit should not create a hard Irish border remains.

And earlier he told the Dail: "We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week because of the problems that have arisen, well then we can pick it up of course in the New Year."

Mr Rutte made clear the EU would not compromise and allow the Irish border to kicked down the road to phase two of the talks, even under threat of Britain crashing out with no deal or divorce negotiations dragging on to 2018.

"You cannot just say because we need a soft Brexit that we will somehow compromise on some of the fundamentals on the three issues now on the table - citizens' rights, the exit bill, the border," he said.

"On each of three issues these sufficient progress needs to be established and if somehow your scenario would play out and somewhere along the line Britain would opt for a hard Brexit all by itself, the impact on the United Kingdom would again be infinitely bigger than on us."

He added: "We will not loosen our position.

"We will stay very firm."

Update 7.37pm: Calls for UK Brexit Secretary to resign as he admits UK has made no Brexit impact assessments

There were calls for David Davis to resign as the UK's Brexit Secretary and face investigation for contempt of Parliament, after he admitted that the British Government has produced no impact assessments on the effect of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy.

Hauled before the UK's House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee to explain his failure to hand over 58 sectoral assessments as required by Parliament, Mr Davis said that no such documents had been produced as their usefulness was thought to be "near zero".

Leaving the EU will provoke a "paradigm change" in the UK economy on a similar order of magnitude to the financial crash of 2008, making economic forecast models unlikely to be "informative", he told MPs.

The Brexit Secretary told British MPs as early as last December that his department was "in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses" on different parts of the economy.

In a TV interview in June he said nearly 60 sector analyses had been completed and in October he told the Brexit committee that British Prime Minister Theresa May had read "summary outcomes" of impact assessments, which he said went into "excruciating detail".

His admission that no assessments existed was branded a "dereliction of duty" by Labour committee member Seema Malhotra, while Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas said: "This is beyond farcical. Davis is either grossly incompetent, or someone who struggles with the truth and treats MPs with contempt. Either way, he should be out of his job."

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron called for "Dexit: an exit from the duplicity and dither of David Davis" as he called for the removal of a minister who he said had "misled Parliament and ... turned incompetence into an art form".

At least two MPs - Labour's David Lammy and the SNP's Pete Wishart - approached Commons Speaker John Bercow to ask whether contempt proceedings could be triggered.

But the Speaker said he would await the conclusions of the committee before considering the issue.

After the Commons passed a Labour motion, unopposed by the Government, last month demanding that Mr Davis hand the 58 impact assessments over to the committee, the Brexit Secretary insisted that the documents did not exist in that form and that it would take time to compile the information gathered by departments across Whitehall.

There was anger among MPs last week when he gave the committee two lever-arch files containing 850 pages of what he termed "sectoral analyses" setting out the current position of various parts of the UK economy.

Today he told the committee that "no systematic impact assessments" had in fact been carried out.

Pressed by committee chairman Hilary Benn whether any impact assessment had been conducted of the implications of Brexit for the automotive, aerospace or financial services sectors, Mr Davis said "no" to each, before cutting the Labour MP short, saying: "I think the answer will be no to all of them."

Instead, he said, officials will, "at some stage" during the forthcoming second phase of Brexit negotiations, conduct work to quantify the effects of different possible outcomes, such as a free trade agreement with the EU or moving to World Trade Organisation rules.

And he told Mr Benn there was no "formal quantitative" assessment undertaken of the likely impact of leaving the customs union before the Government committed itself to the step.

"There was a judgment made on qualitative things, not a quantitative one," he said.

Mr Benn described the decision not to conduct sectoral impact assessments as "rather strange".

And he said it was "quite extraordinary" that no assessment was made of the impact of leaving the customs union "given the momentous nature of that decision".

"You have said there are no impact assessments," said Mr Benn.

"You were hoping that, at the October (European) Council, the door would be open to phase two of the negotiations, where the question would be asked 'What does the UK Government want?'

"Are you actually telling us that the Government hadn't at that point - and still hasn't - undertaken the assessment?"

Mr Davis told the committee: "I'm not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong.

"When you have a paradigm change - as happened in 2008 with the financial crisis - all the models were wrong. The Queen famously asked why did we not know.

"Similarly, what we are dealing with here in every outcome - whether it is a free trade agreement, whether it is a WTO outcome or whether it is something between that on the spectrum - it is a paradigm change.

"We know not the size, but the order of magnitude of the impact."

He told the committee he had tried to provide "the closest we could" to what the House of Commons had demanded, subject to his responsibility not to release information which was commercially secret, market sensitive or liable to undermine the UK's negotiating position.

Chancellor Philip Hammond later told a separate meeting of the Commons Treasury Committee that his own department had "modelled and analysed a whole range of potential alternative structures" but said that placing them in the public domain would be "deeply unhelpful to the negotiation".

Update 5.37pm:Brexit crisis: Taoiseach reaffirms Ireland's position in phone call with Theresa May

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has spoken with the British Prime Minister today about developments in the Brexit talks.

A spokesman said they took stock of the events since Monday, and the Taoiseach reiterated Ireland's firm position on the text of the border deal agreed earlier in the week.

Mr Varadkar and Theresa May will speak again in the coming days.

A spokesman for Mr Varadkar said: "The Taoiseach and the Prime Minister, Theresa May, spoke by telephone this afternoon.

"They took stock of developments since Monday. The Taoiseach reiterated the firm Irish position regarding the text as outlined by him on Monday.

"They agreed to speak again over the coming days."

In the Dail earlier, the Taoiseach said all of Northern Ireland needs to be considered, not just the DUP.

He said: "I think we should listen to all parties in Northern Ireland, and not accept this idea that seems to be gaining prevalence in some parts of London, and maybe other places as well, that there is only one party in Northern Ireland and that party speaks for everyone in Northern Ireland.

"I don't accept that premise which seems to be accepted by too many people at the moment."

Update 4.23pm: Brexit crisis:Theresa May warned over dissident republicans if no deal

Theresa May has been warned no Brexit deal is "reckless and dangerous", as "utterly ruthless" dissident republicans would target border officials.

Independent MP Lady Hermon (North Down) said a hard border would inevitably exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic if the UK and EU failed to agree a deal.

She added the UK Government had a "moral" responsibility to take care of all officials, including those from HM Revenue and Customs, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and UK Border Force.

Lady Hermon has attracted support from Conservative MPs for her European Union (Withdrawal) Bill proposal - new clause 70 - which seeks to preserve the principles of the Good Friday Agreement in the legislation.

The Bill seeks to transfer European law into British law, and says it may not amend or repeal the Northern Ireland Act 1998 - which is underpinned by the agreement.

Lady Hermon said she believed the wording was technically correct but questioned what it meant, insisting the language must be clearer in stating its commitment to the principles of the agreement.

Update 2.33pm: Brexit crisis: It is in Ireland's interest to move to phase two of talks, says Varadkar

Irish border talks could resume in the New Year if agreement is not sealed by next week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said today.

Leo Varadkar acknowledged it was in Ireland's own interest to see the EU-UK negotiations proceed to their second phase and address post-Brexit trade once the European Council meets on December 14/15.

The DUP MP Ian Paisley Jnr has suggested a no-deal Brexit could cost the Republic 3.8% of its GDP overnight.

Mr Varadkar said leaders needed to listen to other voices in Northern Ireland as well as Theresa May's pro-Brexit partners the Democratic Unionists, as they attempted to iron out differences over the border and other issues.

Mr Varadkar told the Dail: "We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week because of the problems that have arisen, well then we can pick it up of course in the New Year."

He stood by the text "agreed" between negotiators on Monday which was reportedly scuppered by a late intervention from the DUP, which said it could not accept the Government's proposal that there should be continued "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Mr Varadkar said he intended to speak to the British Prime Minister in the coming days.

He added: "I think we should listen to all parties in Northern Ireland and not accept this idea that seems to be gaining prevalence in some parts of London and maybe other places as well that there is only one party in Northern Ireland and that party speaks for everyone.

"I don't accept that premise, which seems to be accepted by too many people at the moment."

The Taoiseach said it was the UK's role to come back to the EU side with proposals.

"I understand that the Prime Minister has difficult issues that she is managing, there are different views within her own party on Brexit and she also has to manage a confidence and supply agreement that she has with the DUP," she said.

"I absolutely accept that Theresa May wants to come to an agreement, that she is acting in good faith and I want to give her time ... before we move things forward."

He said it was the "desire, ambition and wish" of his Government to move on to post-Brexit trade talks.

"It is in our interest to move to phase two, that is where we talk about the transition period that we need, so individuals and businesses can prepare for any long-term change.

"It is where we can talk about the new trading arrangements which are so important for Irish importers and exporters, the agri-food industry and anyone whose job in Ireland depends on trade with Britain."

Update 1pm: Taoiseach warned against 'placating' DUP with watered-down proposal

A senior Sinn Fein TD has warned Taoiseach Leo Varadkar not to take part in "back-sliding" on the on-ice Brexit border deal in order to placate the DUP's concerns over the issue.

A senior Sinn Fein TD has warned Taoiseach Leo Varadkar not to take part in "back-sliding" on the on-ice Brexit border deal in order to placate the DUP's concerns over the issue, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith.

Sinn Fein housing spokesperson Eoin O Broin said his party is not in favour watering down of the plan, should it be suggested over the coming days.

This morning, it emerged that Mr Varadkar may be open to adding to the initial border deal on the strict conditions any additional points do not change the meaning of the document.

While Government officials have stressed if such a move takes place it will not under any circumstances be allowed to water down the current agreement, Mr O Broin told the Irish Examiner: "The DUP has today said they want radical revisions, not amendments or corrections.

"Given our experience with the DUP in their unreasonableness in implementing existing agreements, I think the Government would need to be very, very careful to give any indication they will entertain the DUP on such serious issues.

"While we haven't seen the detail of the text received, we certainly wouldn't support any back-sliding on that to placate the DUP or the Euro-sceptic Tory back-benches," he said.

Update 1pm: Theresa May promises to protect 'constitutional integrity' of UK

Theresa May has pledged to protect the "constitutional integrity" of the UK in the negotiations to break the deadlock in the Brexit talks over the Irish border.

The British Prime Minister, who spoke earlier by telephone to Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster, said that her government was committed to ensuring there was no return to a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

However, she told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions that the issue could only be finally resolved once negotiations with the EU move onto the second phase - including talks on a free trade deal.

Her comments came after the DUP scuppered a deal on Monday to enable the talks to move the second phase, saying they could not accept the British government's proposal that there should be continued "regulatory alignment" between the North and the Republic.

Mrs Foster said that it amounted to imposing a "border in the Irish Sea" between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

Jeremy Corbyn asks Theresa May to clarify the government's position on the post-Brexit Irish border



Theresa May says We will ensure there is no hard border in Northern Ireland to shouts of "how?" from Labour MPs #PMQs pic.twitter.com/uNMll3sUEx  Sky News (@SkyNews) December 6, 2017

Mrs May said: "We will ensure that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

"We will do that while we respect the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom and while we respect the internal market and protect the internal market of the United Kingdom.

"That is the point of the second phase of the negotiations because we aim to deliver this as part of our overall trade deal with the European Union and we can only talk about that when we get into phase two."

"We will not give a running commentrary on negotiations" says Prime Minister Theresa May on Brexit pic.twitter.com/hOjqZZe9P4  Sky News (@SkyNews) December 6, 2017

Meanwhile in the Dail, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar trying to stay diplomatic, but encouraging the DUP to get with the programme.

"Though we should remember in Northern Ireland that there are many voices, and there are even unionist voices who are very much behind the proposals that were taken to Brussels in the days gone by," he said.

Earlier: Arlene Foster: Ireland pushing border agenda in Brexit talks

Brexit talks remain in deadlock as DUP leader Arlene Foster said the Government has been pushing an aggressive agenda on the border issue, writes Elaine Loughlin and Juno McEnroe.

With the negotiating clock ticking down, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar hit out at Ms Fosters party, claiming in the Dail that most people in the North would back the deal rejected by the DUP.

UK prime minister Theresa May now faces intense pressure to formulate a solution before the end of the week with Dublin and Belfast placing the responsibility firmly on her shoulders.

Mr Varadkar said there is still time to piece a deal back together before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels next week, but said that the ball is very much in Londons court.

An optimistic note was sounded by the Taoiseachs spokesman last night who suggested it would not be unreasonable to change the wording of the agreement provided it did not undermine what had been achieved by the Irish side.

However, there was little give from Ms Foster, who blamed Mr Varadkar for withholding the text of the agreement, which, when seen by the DUP on Monday resulted in a phone call to Ms May and the eventual stalling of the deal.

Arlene Foster says she told Theresa May that the Brexit proposal over the border between the UK and Ireland 'could have been dealt with differently' pic.twitter.com/IjNKLEcaoy  RTE News (@rtenews) December 5, 2017

We were told that the Irish government prevented it coming to us and we have to take that at face value, said Ms Foster. The text only came through to us late [Monday] morning. Once we saw the text we knew that it wasnt going to be acceptable.

We had made it clear right throughout that our red line, and its the one thing that we have consistently talked about that we couldnt have a situation where Northern Ireland was different from the rest of the UK. That is something that obviously came as a big shock when we looked at the wording.

However, the Government last night strongly denied claims that they were responsible for keeping unionists in the dark on the special Brexit deal.

In a statement clearly laying the blame back on Downing Street, the Government said it rejected Ms Fosters claim and said it had no role whatsoever in the negotiations conducted by the British government.

A Government statement said it had no involvement in any decision on which documents should go to the DUP.

In the Dail the Taoiseach said he believed the majority of people living in the North would favour the deal rejected by the DUP, adding that no agreement could involve one political party to the exclusion of others.

I believe, and this is the most important thing, that the majority of people in Northern Ireland, if they were so asked, would like to have this agreement, said Mr Varadkar.

We will recognise the fact that the majority of people in Northern Ireland, and the majority of constituencies in Northern Ireland, did not vote to leave the European Union.

Perhaps if the Northern Ireland Assembly was meeting today it might even pass a resolution in favour of what was agreed, as a majority of the people elected to that Assembly wanted to remain and the majority of the parties, including the Alliance Party, the Green Party, the SDLP and others, want to stay in the internal market and the customs union but, unfortunately, we have to deal with the situation as we find it.

Mr Varadkar already said this week that a final deal could be done in January or even February. Another meeting in Brussels between Ms May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is expected either today or over the next few days.

The priority is to give plenty of time to resolve this, a spokesman said.

The negotiating deadlock was yesterday described as a car crash by a former Northern Ireland secretary in the Lords. Labours Peter Hain suggestion was to apply that alignment across the UK then the problem is solved.

This article first appeared on the Irish Examiner.
The Children's Minister, Katherine Zappone, says abortion without restriction should be available up to the 12th week of a pregnancy.

In a speech to be given this evening, Ms Zappone will say women should not have to justify their decision to anyone.

It has been known that the Minister is in favour of repealing the 8th Amendment, but in a speech due to be given in Dublin City University she goes into more detail.

Ms Zappone says the 8th Amendment should be repealed and not replaced with any other text in the Constitution

She wants to decriminalise abortion and says a termination should be available on request up to the 12th week of a pregnancy

She goes further to say that, while she sees some argument in limiting abortion after the 12th week, it should not just be in extreme cases of risk to life, fatal foetal abnormality or rape.

Ms Zappone argues those terms would help almost none of the women in Ireland who seek abortions.

In her speech, the Minister says it is time to repeal the 8th Amendment and to reclaim women's bodies from the State.
A Dublin man has lost an appeal against the severity of a seven-year prison sentence for killing his partner's son.

David Mahon (aged 46) had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Dean Fitzpatrick (aged 23), the older brother of missing teenager Amy, on May 26, 2013.

Dean Fitzpatrick received a stab wound to the abdomen outside the apartment his mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick, shared with David Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross, on the Malahide Road in Dublin.

The two-week trial heard that Mahon had been in a relationship with Audrey Fitzpatrick for 12 years by the time her son died.

The State had argued that Mahon was drunk, angry and agitated when he thrust a knife into his stepson with deadly intent. Mahon claimed his death was an accident or possible suicide and that Mr Fitzpatrick had "walked into the knife" while they had been arguing.

A Central Criminal Court jury found Mahon not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment by Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan on June 13, 2016.

The Court of Appeal upheld Mahon's sentence today holding that a seven-year sentence, taking an overview of the case, was quite typical of knife manslaughters.

As sentence appeals go, this one was somewhat unusual, according to Mr Justice George Birmingham in his judgment delivered on behalf of the three-judge court.

Unusually for sentence appeals, the case made on Mahon's behalf was that the sentencing judge did not sentence in accordance with verdict of the jury, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

Counsel for Mahon, Sean Guerin SC, said the only conclusion which could be drawn from the verdict is that the jury were not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mahon had stabbed the deceased.

As such, he said Mahon was factually proven only to have produced the knife. That was all he did. He produced the knife, he didn't thrust it, he didn't stab, and because he didn't thrust it, he didn't commit an act that could have amounted to a physical assault, Mr Guerin said.

The alternative view to murder was that Mahon had merely produced the knife as if to show the victim as it were. He either intended to put him in fear or was reckless to put him in fear.

Once that is acknowledged, Mr Guerin said it becomes clear that this was a very unusual case involving a very low level of culpability.

One of the routes by which the jury may have arrived at the verdict of unalwful and dangerous act manslaughter was in finding that Mahon committed the unlawful and dangerous act of putting Mr Fitzpatrick in fear, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

The court did not disagree with the principle that a sentencing court is obliged to proceed on the basis most favourbale to the accused.

However, in the Court of Appeal's view, it was going too far to say the verdict returned by the jury must definitively mean they concluded that the knife had been produced by Mahon to frighten. There were a number of possible routes by which the jury could have arrived at a manslaughter verdict, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

In the case of murder trials which result in manslaughter convictions, Mr Justice Birmingham said it will sometimes be the case that several different scenarios have been canvassed to a greater or lesser extent.

Sometimes a verdict is explained by the prosecution's failure to exclude an issue raised like provocation, or the prosecution's failure to prove one of the ingredients of murder, particularly the intention to kill or cause serious injury.

In such cases, it may be appropriate for the sentencing judge to form an overview of the case and to sentence accordingly, Mr Justice Birmingham said.

In this case, the judge did not specifically address or rule on the submissions made to her. However, taking an overview of the case, the sentence imposed by her was quite typical of knife manslaughters.

He said sentences of eight years, one year higher than was imposed on Mahon, were imposed by the Court of Criminal Appeal in DPP v Dillon, DPP v Kelly and DPP v Cooney, where guilty pleas to manslaughter had been offered.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Michael Peart and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, said the sentence decided upon was not out of line with sentences imposed in previous cases that might be regarded as broadly similar.

There were aggravating factors including the following of Mr Fitzpatrick from the apartment, the production of a large knife during the course of an altercation, Mahon's leaving of the scene and the failure to seek medical assistance. The relationship between Mahon and Mr Fitzpatrick was relevant.

On the other hand, Mahon pleaded guilty to manslaughter in advance of his trial for murder and he came before the court without previous convictions of any relevance.

In the Court of Appeal's view, it was a sentence that fell within the available range and the appeal was accordingly dismissed.
By Ann O'Loughlin

The DPP has agreed to review his refusal to prosecute prison officers for perjury concerning an incident where a convicted rapist was assaulted in custody, the High Court has heard.

Because the DPP only agreed by letter last month to conduct that review, seven months after Darius Savickis initiated legal proceedings seeking review, Savickis is entitled to his costs of the proceedings against the DPP, Mr Justice Charles Meenan ruled.

When Savickis initiated his case last May, the DPP could have sent his letter then which would have ended the case but that did not happen and instead the court dealt with pre-trial matters and fixed a hearing date for December 7, he said. However, on November 20, the DPP sent a letter which conceded the "whole point" of the case.

Earlier civil proceedings by Savickis seeking damages over the assault were relevant because the High Court and Court of Appeal, "at the very least", voiced uneasiness and discomfort about some of the evidence given by prison officers, he said.

Savickis' case was also against the Garda Commissioner, who strongly disputed claims a Garda investigation into the alleged perjury was inadequate. Mr Justice Meenan said Savickis was not entitled to costs against the Commissioner and those two parties should bear their own costs of that aspect of the case.

Darius Savickis in 2009. Pic: Paddy Cummins

Originally from Lithuania, Savickis (aged 47) was assaulted by a prison officer while serving a six-year sentence for orally raping a 23-year-old German woman when she was walking home from work in Galway on November 28, 2005.

In 2016, he was awarded 17,225 by the Court of Appeal over what Mr Justice Gerard Hogan described as a "clear" assault on him by an officer in Castlerea Prison.

It was very difficult not to conclude some of the prison officers who gave evidence in Savickis' earlier civil action before a High Court jury "told lies", Mr Justice Hogan said.

The jury had awarded Savickis 224 after rejecting most of his claims, but finding unreasonable force had been used by the officers. Attributing 95% responsibility to Savickis, the jury reduced its award from 4,500 to 224.

He appealed and the Court of Appeal found he was assaulted and awarded him 10,000, plus 5,000 exemplary damages over the evidence given by the prison officers and 2,225 over the use of unreasonable force.

Last May, Siobhan Phelan SC, for Savickis, applied to the High Court for permission to bring judicial review proceedings against the DPP and Garda Commissioner over the DPPs' March 2017 decision not to prosecute the prison officers for perjury.

Among the claims were the refusal was irrational and the DPP failed to give adequate reasons for it as required under a 2015 EU directive on victims' rights.

The High Court directed the leave application be heard on notice. That was ultimately listed for today when Ms Phelan told Mr Justice Meenan it was not going ahead in light of the DPP's November 20th letter and sought her side's costs.

Sunniva McDonagh SC, for the DPP, said each side should pay their own costs. The Director was not a party to the civil case, his role was to independently review whatever evidence arises in the context of possible criminal prosecution and the DPP also disputed the Victims Directive directly applied to this case, she said.

Without prejudice to his argument gardai cannot be sued over conduct of an investigation, counsel for the Garda Commissioner said his side strongly disputed claims of an inadequate investigation into the alleged perjury and had provided a sworn statement outlining the steps taken in that investigation. Prison officers had declined to make statements, he noted.

He agreed a sworn statement on behalf of Savickis had complained a digital audio recording of evidence of two persons had not been obtained.
Try This at Home

Making Mead (Honey Wine)

An easy recipe from Jonathan Ortiz of Southwest Grape and Grain

Mead is surprisingly easy to make at homeif youre patient. This fermented honey wine, arguably the first alcoholic beverage that humans created, can consist simply of water and honey, left open to the air for several months until natural yeasts arise and start converting sugar to alcohol. This recipe, though, involves a lot less control over the end product (and a lot less sanitation!) than most brewers want, which is why commercially produced yeasts are typically used in mead-making these days.

I recently went to a mead-making workshop at Southwest Grape and Grain, a fantastic brewing and fermenting supply shop staffed by knowledgeable folks. One of those folks, by the name of Jonathan Ortiz, was kind enough to speak with me after the event and give me his basic mead recipe.

Southwest Grape & Grain

Mead is not necessarily as sweet and syrupy as you might think, based on the ingredients, Ortiz told me. The flavor profile of any given batch depends heavily on how long its fermented and what type of yeast is used. In the recipe below, for instance, a champagne yeast is used, yielding a very dry mead. Youre welcome to use any other kind of yeast youd likethe resulting flavors of each yeast are usually printed on the packaging, so you can shop around for what you like.

Before you embark on your mead-making journey, visit Southwest Grape and Grain to get all the necessary equipmentthey even have a preassembled mead-making kit to make your life a little easier. Here are all the things youll need:

Two one-gallon fermentation jugs

Mini auto-siphon

Combination bottle filler

Siphon tubing

Three-piece airlock

Two #6.5 stoppers, one drilled and one solid

Be sure to sanitize everything before you begin (you can buy sanitizer at SWG&G), and happy hooch-making.
By Ann O'Loughlin

The Manager of a South Dublin-based Community Centre that closed suddenly in September has settled a claim for alleged bullying and harrassment she brought against her former employer.

Donna Ralph, who was appointed manager of Brookfield Youth and Community centre, Tallaght in 2008, had brought proceedings including a personal injury action against Brookfield Youth and Community Centre Ltd, which operated the centre, for alleged bullying and harassment.

She had also made complaints and a protective disclosure about the governance of the State-funded Community Centre and the defendant company.

In 2015 she also secured an injunction from the High Court preventing her employer from terminating her employment, or from communicating to any other party that she had been dismissed.

The injunction was to remain in place until her claim against the employer had been determined.

Before the case was heard Ms Ralph was informed in late September that the centre, which provided various services in West Tallaght, was to be closed resulting in all six staff members, including Ms Ralph, being made redundant.

Following the closure of the facility Ms Ralph's legal team returned to court claiming the directors of the company that operated the facility were in contempt of High Court orders not to fire her.

Barney Quirke, Bl for Ms Ralph, had questioned the bona fides of the decision to close the facility.

Counsel said Ms Ralph believed the true reason for the closure is to prevent and frustrate a review being conducted by the Department for Children and Youth Affairs into the governance of the defendant company arising out of matters contained in her protective disclosures.

The directors are Mr David Hoare of Brookfield Drive, Tallaght and Helena Mullen-Darcy of Rossfield Avenue, Brookfield, Tallaght, who represented themselves in court and had denied any wrongdoing.

The proceedings came before Mr Justice Paul Gilligan who adjourned the action on several occasions.

Today following talks between the various parties Mr Quirke told the judge the claims had been settled, and could be adjourned to later this month to allow for the implementation of the settlement agreement.

The Judge welcomed the settlement.
Theresa May is facing a high-pressure race against time to make progress in Brexit talks amid a deadlock over the Irish border which threatens to drag on until the new year.

The British Prime Minister is hoping to make a new offer by Friday to satisfy both Ireland and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party which props up her Government and scuppered a deal on divorce issues on Monday.

Pressure is growing on Mrs May to get leaders at the December 14 European Council summit to declare sufficient progress has been made on divorce issues so trade talks can begin, with business chiefs warning companies will activate contingency plans that will cost Britain jobs if there is further delay.

After talks in Dublin, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Dutch PM Mark Rutte made clear the EU would not compromise and allow the Irish border to be kicked down the road to phase two of the talks, even under threat of Britain crashing out with no deal or divorce negotiations dragging on to 2018.

And after a phone call with Mrs May on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar said the PM was hoping to return with a new formal written offer "tonight and tomorrow", but warned if there was no agreement talks would be picked up in the New Year.

Downing Street said Mrs May told Mr Varadkar she was "working hard to find a specific solution to the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland" and was committed to "moving together to achieve a positive result on this".

The PM also spoke with DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose rejection of plans for "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic led to the collapse of a proposed deal on Monday.

But it is understood Mrs Foster has no immediate plans to fly to London for talks with Mrs May and any such move would depend on progress in negotiations between the DUP and the Government in London.

Confederation of British Industry (CBI) president Paul Drechsler underlined businesses' "immediate" need for a transition deal, telling the City of London Corporation: "Or 60% of firms with contingency plans will have put these into effect by Easter. That means jobs leaving the UK - in most cases irreversibly."

Meanwhile, senior ministers came under attack over their positions on Brexit as Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed the Cabinet had not yet discussed details of the UK's preferred long-term relationship with the EU.

Mr Hammond also received a slapdown from Downing Street after suggesting it was "inconceivable" the UK would not pay a financial settlement to the EU, regardless of whether it obtains a trade deal.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman swiftly said the payment - estimated at up to 50 billion - was "dependent on us forging (a) deep and special future relationship with the EU".

And opposition MPs demanded that Brexit Secretary David Davis be sacked and face investigation for contempt of Parliament after admitting his department had produced no impact assessments of the likely effect of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy.

As conflicting reports suggested the EU was considering when exactly Mrs May would pass the point of no return in her hopes to get an agreement on "sufficient progress" before next week's summit, Mr Varadkar warned in the Irish Dail: "We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week because of the problems that have arisen, well then we can pick it up of course in the new year."

Later in a press conference alongside Mr Rutte, he said Mrs May "wants to come back to us with some text tonight and tomorrow".

Mr Rutte said they "will not loosen" their position on the "fundamental" points of citizens' rights, the exit bill and the border.

Elsewhere, 19 Remain-backing Tory MPs wrote to Mrs May to condemn "highly irresponsible" Brexit-backing colleagues who "seek to dictate terms" that could leave Britain leaving the EU with no deal as negotiating pressure mounts.

Among the signatories to the letter were former cabinet ministers Nicky Morgan, Dominic Grieve and Stephen Crabb, as well as select committee chairs Sarah Wollaston and Bob Neill.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A former Ryanair pilot has denied claims by the airline's CEO Michael O'Leary he caused five fare paying passengers to be offloaded from a flight in order to acommodate crew travelling from Dublin to London.

Martin Duffy was a member of the Air Corps until he joined Ryanair in 1997 and worked as a captain and an instructor until his dismissal in 2001.

During Mr O'Leary's evidence in his airline's case against three other pilots over an allegedly defamatory email, the CEO said Mr Duffy was dismissed for gross misconduct over the removal of five fare paying passengers from a July 2001 flight to accommodate Ryanair crew who were being positioned in London.

Mr Duffy told the court that was "absolutely not" the case. "I never asked to have five fare paying passengers offloaded, nor would I".

He said what occurred was it had been practice that Ryanair crew flying to another airport would sit in any vacant passenger seats and/or in three spare fold-up "jump" seats located in the cockpit and at the rear of the plane.

It turned out that on this flight there was one spare passenger seat and another was being taken up by a crew member of another airline who had taken up a standby seat, he said.

The standby passenger was offloaded and there were now five seats available, two jumps and two normal passenger seats, for Mr Duffy and his other four Ryanair crew members, he said.

Mr Duffy said the plane was "basically ready to go when I received an instruction to offload myself and my crew".

He and his first officer were instructed to go to head office immediately where Mr Duffy met Mr O'Leary. There was a subsequent disciplinary meeting and at it Mr O'Leary "basically handed me my P45".

He later took Employment Appeal Tribunal proceedings which were settled shortly after Mr Duffy had obtained other employment.

Mr Duffy said he had been a member of the Irish Airline Pilots Association while in Ryanair. In his role as chairman of the group of IALPA pilots within Ryanair, the group had had issues and conflict with the company prior to his dismissal.

Mr Duffy said he never received any evidence to support his dismissal other than his dismissal letter. In his opinion there was no legitimate basis for his dismissal.

Mr Duffy switched careers after his dismissal and became a senior project IT manager, but also took some work as a flying instructor.

Some 10 years later he was approached by IALPA to do some consulting work in relation to responding to indications from Ryanair pilots to become more organised.

He and another consultant visited a number of Ryanair bases in different countries as part of that assessment. The project was extended and forms of communication were set up with Ryanair pilots .

A petition seeking an investigation by the aviation authority into Ryanair's employment model was organised, but withdrawn following a letter from the airline warning of disciplinary action if safety matters were reported other than through the proper channels.

A survey was then carried out which received over 1,000 replies and which provided "quite worrying results", he said.

Mr Duffy said his work was initially funded by IALPA and later from the membership of the European Cockpit Association, an umbrella body for pilot unions.

The Ryanair Pilot Group (RPG), whose three interim council members, Evert Van Zwol, John Goss and Ted Murphy, deny Ryanair's claims they defamed the airline in a 2013 email, was later established.

Ted Murphy, Evert Van Zwol and John Goss. Pic: Collins

Mr Duffy and his co-consultant Gerard Kelly, came up with the idea for that 2013 email. The purpose of that email was to indicate to pilots what was happening in the market.

Asked about Ryanair's allegation that when the email was put out, the RPG knew it was false he replied: "I believe it was entirely true and accurately reflected activity in the market place which was relevant to the pilot body and we had no reason to believe otherwise".

Under cross examination by Martin Hayden SC, for Ryanair, he accepted that a reference to a sale of shares by Ryanair management in "late June" (2013) was incorrect. He said if he had said "by late June", it would have been more correct.

He denied the objective of the email was to outcast management in the eyes of pilots.

The case continues.
Gardai are investigating after a security man was assaulted and locked into the boot of his car at an Irish Rail compound in Portlaoise on Tuesday.

It happened at Kilbricken, Mountrath, Co. Laois at around 5am on the morning of December 5, 2017.
Update: Catherine Hughes has been located safe and well

Earlier: Gardai are asking for help to find a woman missing from her home in Dublin.

43-year-old Catherine Hughes, aka Anne Hughes, was last seen on Grove Road, Blanchardstown this morning at 11.20am.

She is described as being five foot five inches tall, with short black hair and she wears glasses.

When last seen Catherine was wearing a black dress, black flat shoes and a blue Northface jacket.

Anyone who has seen Catherine or who can help in finding her is asked to contact Blanchardstown Garda Station on 01-6667000, The Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A High Court judge has allowed the mother of three young children, who is "the innocent victim" of a dispute over possession of a Dublin property, to stay on in the house until February.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan said the woman was not entitled to, but should be allowed remain at the property at Cedar Brook Avenue, Cherry Orchard, Dublin 10, which is the subject of proceedings between its owner Mr Gerry Ward and Mr Simon Coyle who was appointed receiver over the property by Bank of Ireland.

Mr Ward has opposed the validity of the receiver's appointment.

In 2016 Mr Coyle obtained orders from the High Court preventing Mr Ward from dealing with, occupying, trespassing and interfering with the Cherry Orchard property and the receivership.

However he was unable to gain possession of the property, resulting in him bringing proceedings alleging contempt of the court orders against Mr Ward, Mount Eagle Green, Leopardstown Heights, Dublin 18, and the occupier of the property who the court was told earlier this week was a Ms Amy O'Reilly.

Ms O'Reilly appeared before the High Court today by arrangement.

The Judge accepted Ms O'Reilly - who was visibly very upset during the proceedings when saying she did not understand what was happening - was an innocent party in the matter.

She told the court she had been paying rent to Mr Ward. The Judge said he was making an order requiring her to vacate the property as she was not entitled to be there.

The Judge added he was adjourning the matter to February so that she could take steps to secure alternative accommodation elsewhere.

He said if she left the house before mid-February she would not have to return before the court. He added that if anyone approached her in regards to her occupation before then, she was to contact the Gardai.

Mr Coyle, represented in court by Declan Wade Bl, was in 2015 appointed receiver over the Cherry Orchard property, which Mr Ward acquired on foot of a mortgage he acquired from ICS Building Society in 2007.

Counsel said his client wished to take "a humanitarian and practical" attitude towards Ms O'Reilly but Mr Ward was in a different position.

Mr Ward was not present in court for the proceedings.
A Japanese hotel chain that mostly hires women is the preferred bidder for a former Magdalene Laundry in Dublin.

No frills franchise, Toyoko Inn, wants to redevelop the Sean McDermott Street site into a 350-bedroom hotel.
Update 4.14pm: A man who lives nearby said it is the second shooting in the area in a month, while in August a mother of six and a 30-year-old man were brutally murdered in nearby Balbutcher Drive.

He said: "This is the second incident in the space of less than a month and the residents around here are quite shocked.

"It is sad to see a Garda injured and another guy in hospital, it's just unbelievable."

Drug feuding has been going on in Ballymun for some time.

Dessie Ellis, a local TD, said: "There is an awful lot of ureported gun crimes where there are shots being fired at windows, sort of intimidation."

Update 1.10pm: Latest: 'Lucky nobody was killed' after shots fired during Garda raid in Dublin

Locals say it is lucky nobody was killed after shots were fired during a garda raid in North Dublin.

An officer and an 18-year-old man are recovering in hospital after being injured in Ballymun. Three people have been arrested.

The shooting happened just before 7am this morning as Gardai were carrying out a planned drugs raid on Barnewall Drive in Ballymun.

Armed officers were breaking down the door of a house when shots were fired at them. They returned fire.

Senior Gardai and members of GSOC at the scene on Barnwell Drive, Ballymun where a member of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and a suspect were shot during a raid on a house in the early hours of this morning.

During this exchange, a Garda was shot in the arm and an 18-year-old man in the house was shot in the shoulder.

They have both been taken to hospital but their injuries are not life threatening.

One local man gave his reaction saying: "It got a bit rough alright, to be honest I think it is mostly drugs, they all do it."

Local cllr Andrew Montague says it is lucky nobody was killed during the shooting.

He said: "This area is full of families, full of children, elderly people, it just could have been so serious, they shot randomly, they didn't know what was going to happen."

A man and two women in their 30s and 40s have been arrested on suspicion of gun possession.

Drug feuding has been going on in Ballymun for some time.

Sinn Fein TD Dessie Ellis says the situations been simmering for a while.

He said: "There have been a number of incidents and a lot of guns used, it was probably going to happen sooner rather than later."

The Gardai and GSOC are carrying out separate investigations into the shooting.

The GRA says this highlights the dangers garda face on the job every day.

Shooting Scene. An Garda Siochana are investigating shooting incident at Barnwall Drive in Ballymun, Dublin 11.

Update 10.10am: Investigations underway after Garda and 18-year-old man shot in Dublin

Investigations are underway after a Garda and an 18-year-old man were shot in North Dublin.

It happened this morning before 7am in Ballymun.

Three people have been arrested.

This shooting happened as gardai were carrying out a planned drugs raid at a house in Barnwall Drive in Ballymun.

Armed officers from the Emergency Response Unit had broken down the doors of the house when at least one shot was fired at them.

A Garda was injured in the arm and officers returned fire, an 18 year old man inside the house was then shot.

The officer and the man have been brought to hospital but their injuries are not believed to be life threatening.

The shooting has been reoffered to the Garda watchdog - GSOC - for investigation.

The Garda technical burea has arrived in Ballymun on site to examine the scene.

A man and two women were in the house and have been arrested.

Garda and civilian injured in shooting incident in Ballymun during planned search of house. Injuries not thought to be life threatening #IEstaff  Cormac O'Keeffe (@CormacJOKeeffe) December 7, 2017

Earlier: Garda and man shot during planned search operation in Dublin

A member of the Gardai and a man have been shot in Dublin.

The shooting incident happened during a planned search operation in Ballymun in the north of the city in the early hours of Thursday.

Members of the Garda at the scene in Barnwall Drive, Dublin, where a member of the Irish Garda and a man were shot.

The garda and the man were treated at the scene in Barnwall Drive and then taken to hospital.

Their injuries are not believed to be life threatening.

The Garda Ombudsman had been informed of the incident.

Gardai have appealed for anyone with information to contact them.
Update 8.59pm: There is fresh speculation of a breakthrough in the Brexit talks.

A government official told an event in Brussels that an agreement is "very close" with a deal possible within hours.

The official said border talks were "moving quite quickly," adding that the Government was "going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK government to close this off."

Irish, European and British officials are reportedly examining a new draft of text on the agreement reached earlier this week.

It is believed the new wording was put forward by London as the British Prime Minister Theresa May attempts to keep the DUP onside  while also placating Irish demands that there will be no return to a hard border following Brexit.

The EU Commission says talks aimed at reaching a deal will continue through the night.

The European Council President Donald Tusk says he will make a statement on Brexit early tomorrow morning.

The Commission President Jean Claude Juncker spoke with the Taoiseach and with the British Prime Minister this evening in a bid to reach a deal on the border.

Update 7.59pm: Latest: Theresa May still battling to agree Brexit deal on Irish border

Theresa May has not yet reached an agreement on a post-Brexit plan for the Irish border to push negotiations forward which satisfies the European Union, Ireland and the Democratic Unionist Party.

The announcement that European Council president Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday morning fuelled speculation that the Prime Minister had made progress.

But a Government source said: "We're not there yet."

DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson said: "Discussions are ongoing."

European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker telephoned Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and then Mrs May, his chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.

He said an early morning meeting was "possible".

"We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night," he tweeted.

Update 5.54pm: Latest: European Council President Donald Tusk to make Brexit statement in the morning

The European Council President Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early tomorrow morning.

Talks have been ongoing all week in a bid to reach a deal on the border with Northern Ireland, allowing Brexit talks to go to the next stage.

A Government spokesman said: "Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government."

But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am Irish time) but would not give any further details.

Update 1.43pm: 'No white smoke' on Brexit talks as Tanaiste says Irish Government's position not changing

A European official has said there is still "no white smoke" in Brexit talks amid a deadlock over the Irish border.

European officials say they are talking with all sides but there has been no breakthrough.

They added the deal will have to come this week, but talks could go as late as Sunday.

The sticking point is still the border.

Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald says there has to be assurances on Northern Ireland staying in the customs union and single market.

She said: "In the absence of that kind of clarity, in the absence of a deal that secures that very thing, then we are undoubtedly headed towards a border on the island of Ireland, the undermining of the Good Friday Agreement and everything else that might flow from that."

At Leaders Questions in the Dail today, Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney said the Irish Governments position will not be changing.

"The core issues that Ireland got agreement on at the start of this week are not changing," he said.

"They are in the interests of this island and the relationships on it."

.@simoncoveney: Our position in relation to the Brexit negotiations has not changed. What the Irish Government is advocating is good for this island, north and south, and the people on it. #Dail  Fine Gael (@FineGael) December 7, 2017

Sinn Feins Mary Lou McDonald wants guarantees that the North will stay in the EU customs union and single market.

"In the absence of that kind of clarity, in the absence of a deal that secures that very thing, then we are undoubtedly headed towards a border on the island of Ireland," she said.
A federal judge has asked Argentinas senate to allow the arrest and trial of former president Cristina Fernandez on a charge of treason for allegedly covering up the role of Iranians in a 1994 bomb attack on a Jewish centre.

Judge Claudio Bonadio asked politicians to remove Ms Fernandezs immunity from prosecution, which she gained when she was sworn in as a senator last week.
Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops have erupted across the West Bank while demonstrators in Gaza burned Israeli and US flags after Donald Trump moved to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger over the US presidents move.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tyres on fire and threw stones at anti-riot troops.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesuss birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tyres on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Mr Trumps dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians closed their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Mr Trumps decision.

Rallies were under way in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalems Old City.

There were no serious casualties reported in Thursdays clashes.

But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamass leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders".

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israels destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s.

But the groups capabilities are more limited now.

Gaza, Hamass stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested.

Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tyres, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

A Palestinian paints over a mural of the U.S. President Donald Trump during a protest in Bethlehem. Picture: AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments".

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Mr Trumps decision had no impact on the citys daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Mr Trumps decision.

Mr Netanyahu said Mr Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Anger at the US has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabias royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administrations decision in a rare public rebuke by the US ally.

Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump in Gaza City. Picture: AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra

The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said the kingdom had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the US administrations decision", describing it as "unjustified and irresponsible".

Mr Trumps move puts the Sunni nation in a bind.

The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Mr Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Mr Trumps efforts to restart Middle East peace talks.

US embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Mr Trumps move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Mr Trumps move, the US disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The talks, stalled in recent years, have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

In parallel, Israel has steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate a deal.

Mr Abbas has not said what steps he would take, if any.

He is to meet with his closest Arab ally, Jordans King Abdullah II, to co-ordinate positions.

Jordan plays a central role in the mounting controversy and, alongside other US allies in the region, has criticised Mr Trumps decision on Jerusalem.

The king is seen as one of Washingtons most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

A Palestinian steps on a poster of U.S. President Donald Trump and a representation of the American flag during a protest. Picture: AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role in Jerusalem, as religious guardian of a key Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem.

Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The consultations between the monarch and Mr Abbas will kick off a series of meetings in the Arab and Muslim world on how to respond to Mr Trump.

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet on Saturday.

Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Mr Trumps seismic policy shift.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom.

"Its not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Mr Erdogan said, referring to Mr Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankaras airport.

AP
Update 9.50am: The top leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas has called for a new uprising against Israel in the wake of President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Ismail Haniyeh spoke to his followers in the Gaza Strip and called the US decision an "aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries".

He has said the uprising should begin on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

Mr Haniyeh then added: "We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision."

Hamas killed hundreds of Israelis during an armed uprising in the early 2000s.

But Hamas' ability to carry out attacks is more limited.

Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and many of Hamas' supporters in the West Bank have been arrested.

Even so, Hamas possesses a large arsenal of rockets in Gaza capable of striking many areas in Israel.

Earlier: Palestinians protest after Donald Trump's decision on status of Jerusalem

Schools and shops have closed in the West Bank, as Palestinians protested against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Political groups have called for protest marches in West Bank town centres at noon on Thursday.

Mr Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

In recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Mr Trump was seen as siding with Israel which claims the entire city.

Meanwhile, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" with his decision on the holy city.

Mr Erdogan also compared Mr Trump to a "blender" that is stirring up trouble in the region.

The Turkish leader said, addressing Mr Trump: "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it."

Mr Erdogan added that "political leaders exist not to stir things up, but to make peace".

He also said: "If Trump says 'I am strong therefore I am right', he is mistaken."

Mr Erdogan spoke to a group of workers on Thursday who had gathered at Ankara's airport, before he departed for an official visit to Greece.
Update 3pm: A father found strangled in his flat alongside his daughter was a convicted sex offender.

Detectives investigating the deaths of Noel Brown, 69, and Marie Brown, 41, also believe it is a "strong possibility" she disturbed the attackers as they attempted to dismember his body, Scotland Yard said.

Mr Brown and his only daughter were found strangled at his flat in New Butt Lane, Deptford, south-east London, at about 2.45am on Monday after police responded to a welfare concern.

Police are trying to establish why they were killed but Detective Superintendent Paul Monk said Mr Brown's conviction in 1999 for a sex offence, for which he served four years in prison, was not "screaming out" as a motive.

He said "nothing" had happened in Mr Brown's life in the 18 years since the conviction to suggest that was the reason for the murder.

Mr Monk said: "The offence was a sex offence, he was convicted and served time and was released in 2004 but I'm not prepared to give any more details."

Earlier: A father murdered along with his daughter were both found strangled in a London flat with no signs of forced entry, UK police said.

Noel Brown, 69, and Marie Brown, 41, were found dead at his home in New Butt Lane, Deptford, at about 2.45am on Monday.

Metropolitan Police detectives said they have found no evidence that Mr Brown was killed because of a large gambling win, although he had visited his local betting shop Paddy Power on the day he was last seen alive.

A neighbour saw Mr Brown at his home at around 8pm on Thursday November 30, and days later at around midday on Saturday December 2, his daughter went to his flat out of concern for his welfare - she was not seen alive again.

After forensic searches of the area and gathering hours of CCTV, police have appealed for the publics help and urged two men who visited Mr Browns flat in the days before he was found dead to come forward.

Detective Superintendent Paul Monk said: "At this early stage we are keeping an open mind regarding the motive. However, it was clear to the responding officers that there were no signs of forced entry to the property.

"One of our key lines of inquiry is to establish if the suspect or suspects were known to Noel and if Marie disturbed them.

"One of the key strands of our investigation is understanding all we can about Noels life. He was well known and liked locally.

"We know that Noel used to go to his local betting shop, Paddy Power, in Deptford High Street and had in fact been there during the day he was last seen alive on 30 November.

"There has been speculation that his murder was as a result of a large gambling win. However, at this time there is no evidence to suggest this was the case.

"I am keen to hear from anyone who saw Noel in the days leading up to his death or saw anyone or anything unusual in or around New Butt Lane, SE8 during that time.

"This is a deeply distressing time for Noel and Maries family as they come to terms with their loss."

Mr Monk said officers did not believe the motive was burglary or robbery and said there may be more than one suspect.

He said: "One of the possibilities Im investigating is that these people were known to Noel so Im particularly keen to hear from anybody that knew Noel, knew his lifestyle and knew people he may associate with.

"There were no signs of a disturbance so I dont think its a burglary or robbery or anything of that nature. There were no signs of forced entry and I think Marie probably went to the address on the Saturday and may have disturbed his attacker or attackers - it may be one it may be many more."

Although Mr Brown was a regular gambler, placing "very small bets" every day at the betting shop, Mr Monk said his biggest win was thought to be up to 15 or 20.
The British Government has announced further plans for its independent inquiry into disgraced breast surgeon Ian Paterson, which will look at any broader lessons that can be learnt about private healthcare.

The inquiry will be chaired by the Right Reverend Graham James, Bishop of Norwich.

It will examine the circumstances and practices surrounding Patersons malpractice and look at how this can improve care locally and the independent healthcare sector across the country to ensure private patients have the safeguards they expect.

Paterson - a consultant breast surgeon who was employed by the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) - intentionally wounded his patients by exaggerating or inventing cancer risks and claimed payments for more expensive procedures.

Paterson, who had practising privileges in the independent sector at both Spire Parkway and Spire Little Aston in Birmingham, was found guilty of 17 counts of wounding patients with intent in April and jailed for 20 years.

The details released on Thursday follow a pledge by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to hold a "comprehensive and focused inquiry" into Patersons wrongdoing.

Following this, and Health Minister Philip Dunnes meeting with victims and their families, the initial scope of the investigation has been widened in recognition of their feedback that broader issues about care in the independent sector needed attention.

This includes whether any further action is needed to strengthen the Care Quality Commissions (CQC) inspection regime in relation to the private sector.

Mr Dunne said: "Ian Patersons malpractice sent shockwaves across the health system due to the seriousness and extent of his crimes, and I am determined to make sure lessons are learnt from this so that it never happens again in the independent sector or the NHS.

"I believe an independent, non-statutory inquiry, overseen by Bishop Graham James, is the right way forward to ensure that all aspects of this case are brought to light and lessons learned so we can better protect patients in the future."

The Right Revd James said: "The actions of Ian Paterson and the grievous harm he inflicted on patients are deeply concerning, and they have given rise to some serious questions which remain unanswered.

"It is vital that the inquiry be informed by the concerns of former patients of Ian Paterson and their representatives.

"The interests of all patients, whether they seek treatment in the NHS or the private sector, should be at the heart of this Inquiry and I will do my very best in the interest of those affected and the public."

Tracey Smith, who was operated on by Paterson in 2010, said she was pleased at the announcement.

She said: "Were happy that we seem to be finally getting somewhere after five years.

"Weve kept on the fight also for the ladies that didnt make it past treatment by Paterson, and their families, to get answers as to why he was allowed to continue after red flags were raised.

"He was allowed to continue when it was clearly shown on his CV he was only a vascular surgeon.

"Why was he doing breast surgery?"

The mother-of-one said she wanted other people to be held to account, "and the dysfunctional system under which he was allowed to work scrutinised".

"Our GPs could not access notes from the private sector," she added.

"If the GP was allowed access to our pathology and scans it would have shown most patients were non-cancerous and none of our surgeries were actually needed.

"Ladies with Grade One and Grade Two cancers were being over-treated."

Asked about how she felt about the women who had not survived since treatment by Paterson, Mrs Smith said she felt "choked up".

She added: "I feel quite emotional when I talk about the ladies that didnt make it past Patersons treatment.

"There were many missed opportunities to stop him because they knew he was performing cleavage sparing mastectomies, and leaving ladies at risk of secondary cancers.

"But now were moving forward and will finally be allowed to answer those questions for the families.

"I do feel choked up, because we had a lady two weeks ago who has died.

"It is relentless and it just goes on and on.

"We will continue to speak up for those families and victims who are not here to speak for themselves."

The inquiry, which is expected to take 18 months, will be informed by Patersons victims and their families, and will look at the work he did under the NHS as well as the private sector.

It is likely to examine the responsibility for the quality of care in the independent sector, along with the appraisal and ensuring validation of staff in the independent sector and the safety of multi-disciplinary working.

It will also look at information sharing, reporting of activity and raising concerns between the independent sector and the NHS, and is expected to consider whether GPs should have access to the notes of privately treated patients.

The role of insurers of independent-sector healthcare providers will also be scrutinised, including how data it holds about the scope and volume of work carried out by doctors is shared with the sector, and arrangements for medical indemnity cover for clinicians in the independent sector.

The inquiry will be formally established in January 2018 and expected to report in summer 2019.

The terms of reference and other arrangements relating to how it will be conducted are yet to be announced.

The Association of Independent Healthcare Organisations (AIHO) said it welcomed Thursdays announcement.

Chief Executive Fiona Booth said: "The Government is right to emphasise the importance of patient safety. We look forward to making a constructive contribution to the inquiry.

"Patient safety is a priority for the independent sector. The independent sector delivers high-quality care to patients and is regulated by the Care Quality Commission to the same standards as the NHS.

"Consultant surgeons working both in the independent sector and the NHS are regulated by the General Medical Council and follow the same code of practice.

"The failings of an individual rogue surgeon such as Ian Paterson do not represent the high quality and compassionate care delivered day in and day out by the multi-disciplinary teams working in both independent sector or the NHS ."

Emma Doughty, a medical negligence lawyer from Slater and Gordon, which represented more than 100 of Patersons victims, said: "We and our clients are relieved that the sheer enormity of failings that led to Paterson being able to harm his victims for years has led to the inception of a much needed independent inquiry into the private sector.

"Having supported our clients fight for a review of patient safety and regulation in the private sector for over six years, we now hope that this inquiry will not only look into the roles of individuals in scandals, such as the Paterson case, but also how the institutions involved enabled this to go on for so long.

"It is fundamental that patient safety in the private sector must be protected."
Latest News MFAA elects board members One re-elected, two newcomers welcomed

ANZ raises fixed rates Forty other lenders have hiked at least one fixed rate in the last month, data shows

Three in 10 Australians have admitted they would not opt for an interest-only loan despite some of them recognising the benefits, new research has found.



A paper from Gateway Credit Union, entitled the 2017 Mortgage Holders Sentiment Report, found that 46% of Australians were adamant decliners of interest-only loans, meaning they would not choose them and perceived that they increased debt.



A further 25% were resistant approvers who chose not to use interest-only lending despite acknowledging the benefits.



Of those remaining, 11% viewed interest-only loans as bad but still used them (hesitant compliers) while only 18% said they used interest-only loans because they increased cash flow (enthusiastic users).



Paul Thomas, CEO of Gateway Credit Union, said it was encouraging to see so many Australians were aware of the dangers behind interest-only lending.



While they do serve a purpose for some borrowers, the reality is for many the interest-only home loan can create a precarious situation, especially if borrowers enter the loan without considering if they can service it once the interest-only period ends.



The research also uncovered a generational gap with the Baby Boomers more likely to be adamant decliners. At the other end of the spectrum, Gen Y were more likely to be enthusiastic users.



Thomas said it made sense that the younger generation was more accepting of interest-only home loans.



Many younger Australians are finding it difficult to break into the property market or are at a stage of life  such as starting a family  when they need more cash flow. An interest-only home loan would afford them more flexibility with their finances, suggesting their acceptance may be a result of necessity.



Over the past five years, the number of adamant decliners has increased by 5% while the number of enthusiastic users has dropped by 4%. Numbers of resistant approvers and hesitant compliers have remained steady.



Gateway Credit Unions research polled over 1,000 borrowers through an online survey and is nationally representative of Australians over the age of 18.



Related stories:



Major bank cuts fixed mortgage rates



Name change unveils customer-owned bank



Risks arise from patchy commercial lending laws
A 24-year-old man is facing a slew of felony charges for illegal straw purchase of 21 guns at gun stores, almost exclusively in Bucks County. Leonard Truesdale was arraigned on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022, on 21 counts each of making false statements on firearm purchase forms, criminal conspiracy to make false statements on firearm purchase forms and selling or transferring...
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In path breaking research into the Tibetan uprising in 1956-59, and the lead-up to the 1962 war, Chinese scholar Jianglin Li has accessed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents and interviewed Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) veterans from that war to present critical new aspects of that periods history.
Vijay Mallya on Thursday returned to a UK court here for the third day of his extradition trial, which will determine whether the embattled liquor tycoon can be forced to return to India to face charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crores.

The 61-year-old has claimed, via his legal team, that the case brought against him is "politically motivated" and that it was being used as an opportunity to make "political capital" by the ruling BJP as well as Congress and Shiv Sena.

"CBI has a long and inglorious history of being politically motivated in cases with a direct correlation between allegations of corruption and election years," his barrister Clare Montgomery had told Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

The CBI team in London for the case, led by Special Director Rakesh Asthana, was present in court during this claim.

Laying out her counter-arguments before Judge Emma Arbuthnot, Montgomery had also called into question the "admissibility" of some of the evidence submitted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on behalf of the Indian government.

She claimed that much of the material was questionable and there were at least a dozen documents submitted which read like an identical "template".

The judge has asked both sides to submit a document laying out the factors for and against the admissibility of the evidence submitted by the Indian authorities by the end of this week.

While the defence claims there is "zero" evidence to support a credible case of fraud against Mallya, the CPS had opened the trial on Monday with a detailed chronology of events to show "by virtue of evidence a prima facie case" against the boss of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

The prosecution's case rests on "three chapters of dishonesty" by Mallya misrepresentations to various banks to acquire loans, the misuse of the loans and 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," CPS barrister Mark Summers told the judge.

The charge of money laundering, for which Mallya had been re-arrested in October, is being focussed on less at this stage with fraud being central to the CPS case.

Thursday's hearing, expected to take place over some "interruptions" while Judge Emma Arbuthnot attends to other cases, is likely to focus on the testimony of a financial sector expert referred to in court as Mr Rex.

He will be the second defence witness to take the stand, following aviation expert Dr Humphreys, who had been brought in on Tuesday to support the defence argument that there was no intentional fraud involved in the default on bank loans by the then-struggling Kingfisher Airlines.

Mallya, who has been based in the UK since March 2016, was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year and has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds.

His extradition trial is scheduled to end on December 14, with Friday marked as non-sitting day. A timeframe for a judgement in the case will be determined at the end of the trial after closing arguments have been made.

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.
A man was brutally attacked and his body set ablaze in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district for allegedly committing "love jihad". The accused, who has reportedly been arrested, shot a video of the brutal act and uploaded it on social media.
A day after Army Chief General said the military must be kept out of politics, a defence expert on Thursday hailed his remark while saying that the government should also not take such steps which forces the armed forces to meddle into politics.

Defence expert PK Saighal told ANI, "India armed forces have been totally secular and apolitical. But there have been increasingly drawn into talking about women and politics which is not good either for the armed forces or the country at large."

He further said the civil dispensation should also make sure that they give no occasion to the armed forces to dwell into politics.

"If you see the OROP (One Rank One Pension) case and the government's order to cap the fees that were given to the children of widows is something that is despicable. The government forces the armed forces to meddle into something. The bureaucracy should also ensure that no acts undertaken by them which forces the armed forces to start looking into politics as well," he added.

Army Chief General Rawat on Wednesday said the military must be kept out of politics.

Speaking at the third security lecture in New Delhi, the army chief said, "Military must be kept out of politics. It is important to evolve a strategy which ensures that only that much goes out to the media which is necessary for the information of the public. There are some issues related to defence which have to be kept out of the public domain. We can develop a relationship with the media through building confidence and gaining their support rather than keeping them away."

"In the good old days, we always said we do not discuss politics and women in the Army in any establishment, but gradually we find that we are inching towards that but that is best avoided. I think the media can help us in doing that," General Rawat said.
India's Kumbh Mela has been recognised by Unesco as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", a tweet posted today by the international organisation said.





The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage under the UN body inscribed Kumbh Mela on the "Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" at its 12th session in Jeju, South Korea. The meeting, which opened on December 4, will end on December 9.

Kumbh Mela, considered the world's largest congregation of religious pilgrims, joins new elements from Botswana, Colombia, Venezuela, Mongolia, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the list.

Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma tweeted:



A very proud moment for us as sacred #KumbhMela is just inscribed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by @UNESCO



Kumbh Mela is considered to be the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth, attended by millions irrespective of caste, creed or gender. pic.twitter.com/8Lq6z4vKyf  Dr. Mahesh Sharma (@dr_maheshsharma) December 7, 2017

The inscription of elements on the list helps countries which are a part of UNESCOs convention for safeguarding cultural heritage to mobilise international cooperation and assistance for ensuring that communities continue to practise and transmit such aspects of their heritage.

The Kumbh Mela, held in Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, represents a syncretic set of rituals related to worship and cleansing in holy rivers.

The inscription of Kumbh Mela was recommended by the expert body which examines in detail nominations submitted by the Member States.

The Committee also took note of the fact that knowledge and skills related to Kumbh Mela are transmitted through the Guru-Shishya parampara (teacher-student relationship) by way of saints and sadhus teaching their disciples about traditional rituals and chants.

"Kumbh Mela is considered to be the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth, attended by millions irrespective of caste, creed or gender," Sharma tweeted.
Tremors were felt in several parts of North India as a medium-intensity earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter Scale hit Uttarakhand's Rudraprayag district on Wednesday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. According to the IMD's Seismological Centre, the quake occurred at 8:49 pm.
The government plans to fine distribution companies (discoms) from April 2019 for power outages deemed avoidable and will push for Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of electricity subsidy, as with cooking gas, in the states.



DBT would, Power Minister R K Singh said on Thursday, make for a more competitive sector, besides helping to control a rise in supply rates.



Centre will move an amendment to the Electricity Act for making power supply and DBT a legal obligation.



DBT in power was introduced by Bihar this year, while raising tariffs by 25 per cent across all slabs. DBT introduced subsidy for some poorer sections and farmers.



The central government launched a Rs 16,000-crore project in September to provide the rural population with power by the end of 2018.



Most of the states, said Singh, have also agreed on 24x7 power for all, 90 per cent prepaid meters, and to make it mandatory for the firms to install prepaid or smart meters to prevent electricity theft.



Singh was speaking at the All States Power Ministers Conference. Our vision is that we want 24x7 power for all by March 2019. Now, it will be a legal obligation. After March 2019, if there is any load shedding without any reason, there will be penalties, except in case of technical issues or act of God, Singh said.



The Centre, he said, would also like states to reduce cross-subsidy charges to 20 per cent for industrial and commercial consumers.



The Centre has urged all states to reduce the number of billing slabs and cap the cross-subsidy charge for industries at 20 per cent, as proposed in the National Tariff Policy-2016. Currently, there are as many as 60-90 slabs in some states. The aim is to curtail these to 12-15.



Business Standard had reported earlier that the Centre was looking at ways to usher in pay as you use. This entails changing the method of calculating rates, setting standards, and optimising the high price paid by industries.



For giving a push to Make In India and domestic industrialisation, we have to make quality power affordable for all and all states have to ensure that power purchase agreements are honoured, tariffs are sustainable, and the element of cross-subsidisation remains below 20 per cent, said Singh.



Cross-subsidy charges are levied by discoms on heavy buyers, such as manufacturers and commercial users, to recover their cost of supply in giving subsidised power to others. Industries are also allowed to purchase from outside the state their units are in and in the spot market  the open access category. The subsidised population is mostly in rural areas and poorer sections.



Open access is supposed to be allowed for all, but this is yet to happen. It is also proposed that this be made free of any additional charges, to entail a uniform power market across the country.



To allow multiple power suppliers in a state and allow choice to consumers, Singh said separation of content and carriage had been proposed as an amendment to the Electricity Act. He further said there would be 100 per cent metering (of electricity supply) and 90 per cent of this would be prepaid meters.



To decrease the losses of the discoms and make them viable, the Centre is proposing to do away with human interface in meter reading and billing of consumers. Mandatory installation of prepaid meters for small consumers and smart meters for large ones, with every connection in the future in each state, would prevent corruption and increase compliance in bill payments, said Singh.



Asked about the deadline for achieving the goal of 90 per cent prepaid meters, he said there is no deadline. But we have to reduce losses by January 2019. It is agreed that the (distribution) losses would be reduced to below 15 per cent by January 2019, he said.
The official form for making complaints under the anti-profiteering mechanism in the goods and services tax (GST) regime defeats the purpose  to help consumers get the full benefit of tax cuts and input tax credits.
The Union government is likely to put its proposal to ease retrenchment norms, by allowing factories with a large workforce to hire and fire without seeking its permission, on the back burner.
An International Arbitration Tribunal on Wednesday directed the Government of India (GOI) to seek deferment of any ruling from the ongoing Madras High Court proceedings in a petition by the Tamil Nadu government on a tax incentive dispute between the state and Nissan Motor.
In another setback for Indian seafood exporters, Thailand, an emerging market for Indian products, has gone for a temporary suspension of import of shrimps from India.
Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and start preparations for the US to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested city, has the potential to further inflame tensions across the Middle East.
The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is gearing up to showcase its industrial and diplomatic bench strength at the multi-city road shows being organised as a prelude to the UP Investors Summit 2018.
The FRDI Bill, under consideration of a joint parliamentary committee, is depositor friendly and provides more protection to them compared to existing provisions, the finance ministry said on Thursday.

The statement comes in the wake of "certain misgivings" that appeared in the media about 'bail-in' provisions of the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017 (FRDI Bill).

The provisions in the do not modify current protections for depositors adversely at all, the ministry held, maintaining that these rather provide additional protections in a more transparent manner.

"The is far more depositor friendly than many other jurisdictions, which provide for statutory bail-in, where the consent of creditors or depositors is not required for bail-in," it added.

The FRDI Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 11, 2017, is under consideration of the joint committee of Parliament. The panel is consulting all the stakeholders on the provisions of the legislation.

"The does not propose in any way to limit the scope of powers for the government to extend financing and resolution support to banks, including public sector banks. The government's implicit guarantee for public sector banks remains unaffected," it said.

The government further said Indian banks have adequate capital and are also under prudent regulation and supervision to ensure safety and soundness as well as systemic stability. The existing laws ensure integrity, security and safety of the banking system.

In India, it said all possible steps and policy measures are taken to prevent failure of banks and protection of interests of depositors through the issue of directions/prompt corrective action measures, capital adequacy and prudential norms.

The FRDI Bill will "strengthen" the system by adding a comprehensive resolution regime which will help ensure that, in the rare event of failure of a financial service provider, "there is a system of quick, orderly and efficient resolution in favour of depositors", the statement said.

The Bill also seeks to deal with the insolvency of financial service providers.

It provides for the establishment of a resolution corporation with powers relating to the transfer of assets to a healthy financial firm, merger or amalgamation, liquidation to be initiated by an order of the National Company Law Tribunal.

It can also designate certain financial providers as systematically important financial institutions, the failure of which may disrupt the entire financial system, said the 'Statement of Objects and Reasons' of the Bill.
On the last day of campaigning for the first phase of Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress on Thursday spent its firepower to question the Gujarat model of development, but a senior leaders derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi forced it onto the defensive.
The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls, viewed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon-to-be Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, will come to an end on Thursday.

A total of 89 seats  out of 182  spanning the Saurashtra and South Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Voting will be held on December 9.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Rahul Gandhi, has mainly targeted the "hollow Gujarat development model" to slam Modi.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties' campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state.

Kutch is the largest district comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Of the 58 seats in Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP had won 35 in the 2012 Assembly polls and the Congress 20. Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the now-defunct Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) of Keshubhai Patel and one by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

In 2007, the tally of the BJP and the Congress in Saurashtra and Kutch stood at 43 and 14 respectively, while the NCP had bagged one seat.

Of the 35 seats spread across the seven districts of south Gujarat, the BJP had won 28 and the Congress six in the 2012 polls. The remaining seat was won by "Others".

The 2009 tally for the BJP and the Congress stood at 19 and 14 seats respectively in south Gujarat, while two constituencies had gone to "Others".

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) -- both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJP's new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim- dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The contest for the 12 seats in Surat, the diamond and textile hub of the country, is being viewed as a referendum on the note ban and GST, as the BJP is facing a stiff opposition from the trading community.

During canvassing, Gandhi had interacted with the traders in Surat, who vented their ire against demonetisation and the "complicated GST structure".

Subsequently, the Congress vice-president had attacked the Modi government over the "four-tier" GST structure and sought rationalisation of the indirect tax rates.

For the BJP, Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani had held the fort to defend the GST and note ban, while trying to allay the concerns of the traders and textile merchants during their interactions with them.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 14 rallies, while Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

BJP president Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the saffron party, had also addressed a number of rallies, mainly targeting the Congress and Gandhi.

The BJP had also drafted in Union minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The Congress had fielded former prime minister Manmohan Singh and prominent leaders such as P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, to name a few, for canvassing.

The campaign mainly shaped up as a duel between Modi and Gandhi, with the latter emerging as the Congress' pivot to take on the might of the prime minister on the latter's home turf.

A big takeaway for the Congress was ensuring the support of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an umbrella organisation of the numerically strong Patidar community, which traditionally formed the bedrock of the BJP's support in Gujarat.

In its bid to form a caste bloc against the BJP, the Congress won over Alpesh Thakor, Patel and Jignesh Mewani, who have emerged as the young Turks representing the OBCs, Patidars and Dalits respectively.

The Congress, which is in political wilderness in Gujarat for 22 years, is desperate to break the jinx. It has raised issues such as the BJP's "hollow development model", "the prime minister's proximity with select industrialists", besides demonetisation and GST, at the hustings.

The second and final phase of the polls will be held on December 14 and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
The Election Commission is learnt to have advised the government not to publicise GST rate cuts on certain popular consumables in poll-bound Gujarat as it could influence voters in the state where the first phase of elections is on December 9.

It, however, has allowed advertisement of simplified tax procedure without mentioning any products, functionaries in the poll panel said today.

"On the first draft, the EC has advised that any publicity which could influence voters should not be done. Of course, people have to be made aware of procedures so the commission has approved of that proposal," a functionary said.

The commission has advised that advertisements on GST rate cuts can take place after the second phase is over on December 14.

The Election Commission had earlier allowed the Centre to release the second instalment of funds under the MNREGA scheme for Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat with a rider that there will be "absolutely" no publicity in this regard.

Polls in Himachal Pradesh were held on November 9.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the final phase of campaigning on Thursday to retain power in his home state and stave off the most serious challenge yet from a combined opposition.
An analysis of pre-poll surveys reveals that Gujarat Assembly election 2017 may not be an easy win for Narendra Modis ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the margin of victory will probably be smaller than expected. To win, a party needs 92 seats.
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh chaired a meeting with the Chief Ministers of the Indo-Bangladesh Border (IBB) States, in Kolkata today The Home Minister, giving highest priority to making borders secure, had earlier conducted border specific review meetings for Indo-China, Indo-Myanmar, Indo-Pakistan borders. .

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In the meeting, the Home Minister underlined the need for securing the countrys borders and putting in place the systems to facilitate legitimate trade and commerce. He added, India has friendly relations with Bangladesh and all these measures will facilitate genuine trade and legitimate cross-border movement of people while curbing radicalization, illegal migration, and smuggling of cattle, fake Indian currency notes and drugs etc. He stressed on the need to prevent entry, at International borders, of illegal migrants some of whom have links with extremist groups for furthering anti-national activities with ulterior motives and posing threat to internal security. .

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In the comprehensive review meeting of border management, he emphasized the need to fast track border infrastructure development and to strengthen border security. .

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The Indo-Bangladesh Border covering 5 states of India including Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and West Bengal is 4096 km long. So far in 3006 km border security infrastructure of fence, roads, floodlights and border out posts (BOPs) are in place and works in the remaining 1090 km are yet to be started. Out of this, 684 km will be secured with fence and the related infrastructure, and the balance 406 km with the non-physical barriers. Although bulk of the infrastructure is in place or under construction, construction in some parts is yet to commence mainly due to land acquisition issues. The Home Minister urged the Chief Ministers to take personal interest to expedite land acquisition in the interest of national security. They assured to make land available at the earliest. .

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The areas to be covered by non-physical barriers are those where fencing is not feasible like rivers or nullahs etc. In these areas technological solutions of a networked combination of electronic gadgets like radar, day-night cameras, various types of sensors etc. all integrated in a command and control architecture will be used. .

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He highlighted the concept of Border Protection Grid (BPG) for multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure our border. The grid will comprise of various elements namely physical barriers, non-physical barriers, surveillance system, Intelligence agencies, State Police, BSF and other State and Central agencies. BPG will be supervised by a State level Standing Committee under the Chairmanship of respective Chief Secretaries. BPG will ensure greater help for the States in the overall border security. For putting in place the BPG, he sought active participation of all stakeholders including State Governments. .

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The Home Minister said that the people living in the border areas are our strategic asset and need to be provided with all the infrastructure and socio-economic development facilities. He emphasized the importance and necessity of improved infrastructure such as roads, railways, health and education etc. and also boosting border economy in the border areas in a holistic and comprehensive manner. He asked the State Governments that while the Home Ministry was working to supplement their efforts, they must pay greater attention to these areas. .

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While appreciating the role of BSF for their unshakeable courage, skills, determination and dedication in securing this border, Shri Rajnath Singh reiterated that they should be more vigilant. He expressed satisfaction over the active participation and assurance of all cooperation given by the states. .

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The meeting was attended by Minister of State (Home Affairs) Shri Kiren Rijiju, Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Assam and Mizoram, Union Home Secretary, Secretary (Border Management), MHA, DG BSF, Chief Secretary Meghalaya, Secretary, Home, Tripura. .

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Senior officers of MHA and other Ministries of Government of India besides State Governments also attended. .

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Captains of Indian trade and industry have committed a support of nearly Rs 500 crores for the development of amenities like ghats, river fronts, crematoria and parks at various places along River Ganga as part of the Namami Gange Mission. Shri Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Road Transport & Highways and Shipping interacted with business leaders in Mumbai today, and appealed to them to participate in the mission to clean Ganga . The interaction was organized by the National Mission for Clean Ganga . .

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Speaking on the occasion Shri Gadkari emphasised that cleaning the Ganga should become a peoples movement .He informed that a lot of private individuals from across the world have pledged support for cleaning Ganga and have donated generously . He also said that strict laws will be brought in to check pollution of the river . .

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The support from the business community in Mumbai follows closely after similar success in London last week where Indian corporates committed overwhelming support for Namami Gange Mission after an interaction with Shri Gadkari at a road show organized by NMCG. .

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Private funding is being sought for projects worth over Rs 2500 crore for development of ghats, crematoria, waterbodies, parks, sanitation facilities, public amenities and river front. An indicative list of these projects have been published as a booklet and are also available on the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) website as an e- booklet . The Government is appealing to the business community to participate in the Namami Gange Mission to clean the river by funding projects of their choice. .

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At the interaction with business leaders in Mumbai Shri Gadkari outlined the implementation of the Namami Gange programme for rejuvenation of the river Ganga and its tributaries, which has been divided into three levels. The short term activities for immediate visible impact include river surface cleaning and modernization of ghats and crematoria .The medium term activities to be implemented within five years include municipal sewage management ,biodiversity conservation, afforestation, Ganga gram, industrial effluent management , water quality monitoring and rural sanitation. Long term activities to be implemented within ten years include adequate flow of water, improved efficiency of surface irrigation and increased water use efficiency . .

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Shri Satyapal Singh, Minister of State for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation said that for Indians Ganga is not just a river, it is a civilization in flow. For Indians river Ganga has always represented the most significant scared river, with many religious centres having developed on its banks. Water as one of the tatvas is symbolically associated with creation, dissolution, fertility and cleansing and is inherent in the larger Indian cultural ethos. .

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Shri U.P Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources said that the vision of Ganga rejuvenation constitutes restoring the wholesomeness of the river in terms of ensuring continuous and unpolluted flow and geological and ecological integrity. He informed that 113 ghats and 52 crematoria are under various stages of progress at a cost of Rs 626.57 crores. 84 ghats in Varanasi will be cleaned up at a cost of Rs 5 crores per year . All villages near Ganga have been declared Open Defecation free . Trash skimmers have been deployed in 11 cities to collect all kinds of floating waste materials to clean the Ganga river surface . .

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The Government of India, through Namami Gange Programme announced in 2014, has given a much needed thrust to restoring the wholesomeness of the river by allocating resources of about Rs.20,000 crores and has adopted an integrated Ganga Rejuvenation approach addressing various aspects. The National Mission for Clean Ganga ( NMCG) has sanctioned projects worth about Rs.17,000 crore for Sewerage Management, Industrial Effluents Managements, Biodiversity Conservation, Solid Waste Management, Afforestation , Rural Sanitation, River Front Management, Capacity Building, Development/ Rehabilitation of Ghats& Crematoria etc. and above all a Communication & Public campaign to make Ganga Rejuvenation a public movement. .

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However, the task of rejuvenating river Ganga, associated with 43% of the countrys population and its critical religious, spiritual, cultural and historical significance, assumes a gigantic proportion and cannot be achieved by governmental efforts alone. It requires wholehearted involvement and support from all Indians, cutting across society, for whom Ganga is important not only as an unending source of nourishment, but as part and parcel of a rich and timeless culture and tradition. .

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Mr. N K Singh, Chairman, 15th Finance Commission calls on the Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dr. Urjit Patel in Mumbai today; Both discussed the technical and other assistance which the RBI could give enabling the Commission to discharge its wide ranging Terms of Reference.

Mr. N K Singh, Chairman, 15th Finance Commission called on the Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dr.

Urjit Patel in Mumbai today. During the course of the discussions, they discussed the technical and other assistance which the RBI could give enabling the Commission to discharge its wide ranging Terms of Reference.

The RBI has the data and technical speciality in matters relating to overall finances. The emerging fiscal scenario and the RBIs State Finance Division is a rich repository of information on State finances over a long period of time. Mr Singh said that the Commission would be greatly benefitted by the analytical and domain knowledge of the RBI in these specialised areas. RBI could also assist the Commission in the preparation of analytical papers and analysis on some of the complex issues which the Commission would need to address in its Terms of Reference, Mr Singh concluded.

Mr Arvind Mehta, Secretary to the 15th Finance Commission was also present at this meeting.
The National Human Rights Commission will be organizing a function here to mark Human Rights Day on the December 10, 2017. The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu will address the gathering as the Chief Guest on the occasion. Chairperson, NHRC and former Chief Justice of India, Justice H. L. Dattu, will also address the gathering. .

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Human Rights Day is celebrated on the 10th December every year to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 as the shared standard yardstick to protect human rights across the globe. .

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The National Human Rights Commission, India has organised different events, including a nationwide Short Films on Human Rights Award competition, in run up to the celebration of Human Rights Day. The three best short films on human rights, will be given awards of Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 75 thousand and Rs. 50 thousand along with trophies and citations on the occasion. Some NHRC publications will also be released. .

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Besides, this the prize winning paintings by children will be displayed at an exhibition at the venue of the function, which will also be showcasing the journey of the Commission through photographs of its various events and activities towards protection and promotion of human rights since the last Human Rights Day. .

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During the last 24 years, since its inception on the 12th October, 1993, the Commission has endeavored to promote a culture of human rights. The NHRC, like most of the human rights institutions in the world, is a recommendatory body as per the Protection of Human Rights Act passed by Parliament. .

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Apart from looking into the complaints of the human rights violations, the Commission's functions also include reviewing safeguards provided under the Constitution or any Law, make recommendations for effective implementation of International Conventions/Covenants, undertake research and organise seminars and discussion programmes on human rights issues, spread awareness about human rights and encourage efforts of non-governmental organisations towards promotion of human rights. .

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It has also been organising Camp Sittings for disposal of pending cases and Open Hearings of complaints of atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in different parts of the country for the redressal of their problems. It has also been visiting, State-wise, different districts to make an assessment of enforcement of various measures related to human rights and implementation of welfare schemes so as to come out with recommendations for the governments, committed to ensuring good governance. .

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It has made a number of interventions on key issues of human rights, which include, among others, issues of bonded and child labour, prison reforms, right to health, right to food, mental healthcare, rights of persons with disability, silicosis, illegal clinical drug trials, pesticides in food items, pricing of drugs, corporate-social responsibility, manual scavenging and sanitation, human rights of women. .

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In order to spread awareness about human rights and its activities, the Commission, apart from publication of monthly Newsletter in Hindi and English, has published more than 80 books and journals. Apart from the Centre and the State Governments, several organisations, NGOs of Human Rights Defenders and media have actively supported and supplemented the work of the NHRC towards promotion and protection of human rights. .

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PM dedicates Dr. Ambedkar International Centre to the Nation

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The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today dedicated the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, in New Delhi, to the nation. He had laid the foundation stone of this Institute in April 2015. .

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Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister expressed confidence that the Centre would play a key role in the dissemination of Dr. Ambedkar's teachings and vision. .

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Noting that the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre for Socio Economic Transformation is also part of this project, the Prime Minister said that this will be an important centre for research on social and economic issues. He said the centre would function as a think-tank for inclusive growth, and related socio-economic matters. .

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The Prime Minister said that thought-leaders and visionaries have shaped the direction of our country, at different points in time. He said the country is indebted to Baba Saheb, for his contributions to nation-building. He said the Union Government wants more and more people, and especially the youth, to learn about his vision and ideas. That is why, he added, that important places related to Dr. Ambedkar's life have been developed as centres of pilgrimage. In this context, he mentioned the sites at Alipur in Delhi; Mhow in Madhya Pradesh; Indu Mill in Mumbai; Deeksha Bhumi in Nagpur; and the house in London. He said that this 'Panchteerth' is the today's generation's way of paying homage to Dr. Ambedkar. He said that the BHIM App for digital transactions, is the Union Government's homage to the economic vision of Dr. Ambedkar. .

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Quoting from Dr. Ambedkar's address to the Constituent Assembly in December 1946, the Prime Minister said despite his struggles, Dr. Ambedkar had an inspirational vision for the nation to overcome its problems. He said that we have still not been able to fulfil the vision of Dr. Ambedkar. He said today's generation has the capability and the potential to eradicate social evils. .

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The Prime Minister recalled Dr. Ambedkar's words, that we should make our political democracy, a social democracy as well. He said that over the last three to three and a half years, the Union Government has worked towards fulfilling this vision of social democracy. In this context, he mentioned initiatives taken by the Government such as Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, insurance schemes, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, and the recently launched Saubhagya Yojana. He said the Union Government is making every effort to complete schemes and projects within their intended duration, and the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre represents one illustration of this. He spoke at length about other schemes including distribution of soil health cards, Mission Indradhanush and progress towards rural electrification targets, to show the speed and commitment of the Union Government in implementing public welfare initiatives. The Prime Minister also mentioned the Stand-Up India scheme for generating self employment. .

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The Prime Minister asserted that his call of "New India", is the India which Dr. Ambedkar envisioned, where everyone has equal opportunity and rights, free from caste oppression, and progressing through the strength of technology. He exhorted everyone to work towards fulfilling the vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar; and hoped that we would be able to accomplish it by 2022. .

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The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, visited the Andhra University, Visakhapatnam today (December 7, 2017) and opened the Centre for Defence Studies. He also laid the foundation stone for the E-Classroom Complex and Incubation Centre. .

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Speaking on the occasion, the President said that it is extremely satisfying that the Andhra University, in particular its College of Engineering, is engaged in R&D projects with defence institutions. He noted that the Centre for Defence Studies will focus on cybersecurity, nanotechnology, radar and communications, corrosion technology, and other technologies that have strategic dimensions. .

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The President noted that professors and researchers from the Andhra University are collaborating on specific projects with DRDO as well as with the Naval Research Board and other institutions. Professors from Andhra University have been used as R&D consultants for missile projects, including in the development of the Brahmos missile. Additionally, expertise from this University has been sought by the Eastern Naval Command, headquartered in Vishakhapatnam, for civil engineering structural applications and corrosion related issues. .

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Research related to defence and military applications and technologies will have multiple benefits for our country. It will provide a tonic to the effort to Make in India. And as experience in other countries has shown, research in defence technologies can also lead to innovations that have diverse civilian applications. .

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The President said that the overall gender imbalance in our scientific and technological institutions continues to be a concern. He was happy to note that 40 per cent of the students at the Andhra University are girls. He expressed optimism that the inauguration of the Classroom and Laboratory Complex at the Andhra University College of Engineering for Women will enhance our countrys capacities to produce high-quality women engineers and technologists. .

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The President said that a true test of Indias progress is in the access and opportunity we provide our daughters when it comes to education. He pointed out that some of our leading defence and space scientists - who have powered our missile programmes and our rocket launches - are women. He said that he had the privilege to felicitate the senior DRDO scientist Dr Tessy Thomas, known as the Missile Woman of India", earlier this week in Agra. Women achievers like her are role models for our youth, particularly for our girl students. .

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Prime Minister inaugurates Dr. Ambedkar International Centre

The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre" at 15, Janpath, New Delhi today. He had laid the foundation stone of this Centre in April 2015. The Prime Minister unveiled the statue of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in the lawns and another statue of Dr. Ambedkar in the artrium of the Centre. Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot, Ministers of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Krishan Pal Gurjar, Shri Ramdas Athawale, Shri Vijay Sampla, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs & Statistics and Programme Implementation Shri Vijay Goel, Secretary of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Smt. G. Latha Krishna Rao and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister expressed confidence that the Centre would play a key role in the dissemination of Dr. Ambedkar's teachings and vision. Noting that the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre for Socio Economic Transformation is also part of this project, the Prime Minister said that this will be an important centre for research on social and economic issues. He said the centre would function as a think-tank for inclusive growth, and related socio-economic matters.

The Prime Minister said that thought-leaders and visionaries have shaped the direction of our country, at different points in time. He said the country is indebted to Baba Saheb, for his contributions to nation-building. He said the Union Government wants more and more people, and especially the youth, to learn about his vision and ideas. That is why, he added, that important places related to Dr. Ambedkar's life have been developed as centres of pilgrimage. In this context, he mentioned the sites at Alipur in Delhi; Mhow in Madhya Pradesh; Indu Mill in Mumbai; Deeksha Bhumi in Nagpur; and the house in London. He said that this 'Panchteerth' is the today's generation's way of paying homage to Dr. Ambedkar. He said that the BHIM App for digital transactions, is the Union Government's homage to the economic vision of Dr. Ambedkar.

Quoting from Dr. Ambedkar's address to the Constituent Assembly in December 1946, the Prime Minister said despite his struggles, Dr. Ambedkar had an inspirational vision for the nation to overcome its problems. He said that we have still not been able to fulfil the vision of Dr. Ambedkar. He said today's generation has the capability and the potential to eradicate social evils.

The Prime Minister recalled Dr. Ambedkar's words, that we should make our political democracy, a social democracy as well. He said that over the last three to three and a half years, the Union Government has worked towards fulfilling this vision of social democracy. In this context, he mentioned initiatives taken by the Government such as Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, insurance schemes, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, and the recently launched Saubhagya Yojana. He said the Union Government is making every effort to complete schemes and projects within their intended duration, and the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre represents one illustration of this. He spoke at length about other schemes including distribution of soil health cards, Mission Indradhanush and progress towards rural electrification targets, to show the speed and commitment of the Union Government in implementing public welfare initiatives. The Prime Minister also mentioned the Stand-Up India scheme for generating self-employment.

The Prime Minister asserted that his call of "New India", is the India which Dr.

Ambedkar envisioned, where everyone has equal opportunity and rights, free from caste oppression, and progressing through the strength of technology. He exhorted everyone to work towards fulfilling the vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar; and hoped that we would be able to accomplish it by 2022.

Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot in his address said that the construction of Dr. Ambedkar International Centre is an historic achievement as it has been completed before scheduled time. He congratulated Dr. Ambedkar Foundation and all those associated with the centre for it. He said that under the guidance of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has done remarkably well during past three years.

Dr. Ambedkar International Centre (DAIC) has been constructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 195 crores. Scheduled for completion in January, 2018, the project has been completed well in advance of the scheduled date of completion. The foundation stone for DAIC was laid by the Prime Minister of India on 20 April, 2015.

DAIC is built in an area of 3.25 acres with a total built up area of 117830.59 sq.ft. In order to develop DAIC into a Centre of Excellence, it has been equipped with an extensive library, three state-of-art auditoriums, three conference halls with varying seating capacities and exhibition areas.

The architecture of DAIC is a mix of modern and traditional styles with the Sanchi Stupa Toran as the main facade of the Centre in keeping with Dr. Ambedkar's love for Buddhism. Red sandstone has been used for the Chaitya Arch and the freizes in the interiors. An eight foot stone statue of Buddha in Dhyana Mudra posture is placed in the open area. A standing statue of Dr. Ambedkar is placed opposite to the Chaitya Arch and statue of Dr. Ambedkar in a sitting posture is in the Atrium. The building is also unique in having a 25 metre high Ashoka pillar made of bronze placed strategically in the western corner of the building, open to public view.

The central dome of the building is of transparent material with 24 spokes representing the National Flag. The transparent nature brings in natural light through the day, thereby saving on power costs. The e-library will have access to international libraries. Scholars, researchers and students can access approximately two lakh books and 70,000 journals of both national and international libraries. The library will also have a Braille Section for the visually impaired.

DAIC houses the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre for Socio-Economic Transformation (DAICSET) which is a Centre of Excellence for research in the field of social and economic studies. The DAICSET is a think-tank dealing with socio-economic issues with focus on inclusive growth and development. The Centre has consulting Wing and a Media Wing. The Centre would propose field interventions, take up consultancies, provide research reports, policy briefs and conduct workshops and conferences.

The life and teaching of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar form the pivotal point around which the conceptual base for the Centre was developed. The building form and design uses transparency, inclusiveness and symbolism to express the essence of democracy and equality through architecture. Special emphasis has been laid down for the incorporation of the persona of Dr. Ambedkar in the structure. The stone clad fa?ade on this modern edifice reflects the strength, firm determination and exemplary resoluteness; the inspiring traits of Dr. Ambedkars personality. It is also embedded with the subtle elements of Buddhist Architecture reminding us of the eternal values of compassion, universal brotherhood and equality among all, the corner stone of the philosophy of Dr. Ambedkar.

Dr. Ambedkars vision of fraternity finds its eloquent expression in the environment friendliness features of the building by integrating energy efficient principles in the building design. The building has been envisioned as a world class institution of national importance dedicated to the multi-disciplinary study of the subjects which Dr. Ambedkar dealt with in his life time and to afford and promote human rights, equality and upliftment of society.
Southern Naval Command continued to undertake Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and providing Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) material support, over Southeast Arabian Sea and L& M islands in the aftermath of Very Severe Cyclonic Storm 'OCKHI' for the eighth consecutive day. Nine naval ships and four types of aircraft (P8I surveillance aircraft, Dornier aircraft, Seaking and ALH helicoters) continued to be deployed for Search and Rescue. .

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INS Jamuna provided fresh water in excess of 12000 Lts today at Kavaratti even as work is in progress to repair the damaged desalination plant. The ship would be providing fresh water to the island for next five days. .

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INS Sharda reached Minicoy in the morning on 07 Dec 17 with consignment of HADR material comprising fresh water, medicines, food, clothing and blankets. In addition, the ship had also carried other essentials like emergency lights, petrol, portable 10 KVA power generators, UPS, rechargeable torches, tarpaulin, electrical tool kits, boiler suits and a Public address (PA) system with speakers. However, the items could not be delivered today due to non availability of barge from Minicoy and these will now be delivered on 08 Dec 17. .

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INS Shardul, while proceeding from Minicoy to Kochi encountered a stranded Singapore registered Tug Bes Power" at 35 miles off Minicoy. The Tug was on passage from Oman to Maldives when it ran into bad weather due to cyclone Ockhi. The drifting vessel had exhausted its entire fuel. Shardul promptly transferred 45 tons of fuel for the Tug to continue its passage to Maldives. .

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INS Kalpeni, with six local fishermen embarked, undertook guided search for missing/ fishing vessels in distress for the second day at Bassas de Pedro", a traditional fishing area. The fishermen who embarked INS Kabra returned on completion of search that did not find any further fishing vessels in distress/ survivors. INS Kabra is continuing its planned search operations over Southeast Arabian Sea. .

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Normalcy is being restored on a war footing at Minicoy, with the naval contingent working 24X7. In addition, A relief camp was established to distribute the relief materials ferried by naval ships to all 11 villages through their Moopans (village heads) as requested by the administration of Lakshadweep. Other maintenance activities such as clearing of fallen trees, cleaning of premises of jetty area, Navodaya School, relief camp and Fisheries department premises are being undertaken in full vigour by the naval personnel present there. .

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Based on information received about fishing boat with15 fishermen off Lakshadweep being in need of assistance, Coast Guard ship Abhinav approached the boat and provided it with fresh water and provisions. The boat has been identified as FB Thiru Churulai which is now proceeding towards Kochi on its own as it did not want any other assistance. .

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Earlier in the day two dead bodies were recovered by Coast Guard Ship Vaibhav about 100 nautical miles off Alappuzha which is being handed over at Vizhinjam. A total of 12 ships including two from Mumbai and two types of aircraft (Dornier fixedwing and Chetak helicopter) are being employed by the Coast Guard for the operations.

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Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh said that the Agriculture Ministry is constantly working towards increasing farmers income, creating employment opportunities in the agrarian sector and ensuring farmers earn maximum profit. Shri Singh said Kisan Goshthi Sah Prakshetra Bhraman" is also being organized for the welfare of farmers. The Agriculture was speaking at the Kisan Goshthi Sah Prakshetra Bhraman" organized at ICAR in Patna today. .

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Shri Singh said that agriculture sectors contribution is important for economic growth of the country. Agriculture contributes around 14 percent in the country's GDP and the contribution is 19 percent in Bihar. With the growth of the economy, the contribution of agriculture sector to the country's GDP is decreasing, but the populations dependency on agriculture is not decreasing in the same proportion. It poses a challenge for inclusive growth. Compared to the rest of the country, there is more pressure on agriculture in Bihar. The states share in land holdings in the country is 3.8 percent, whereas Bihar's share in the country's population is 8.6 percent. The population density of the state is 1106 people per sq. Km, whereas the national average is only 382 persons per sq. Km. In the state, 91 percent of the farmers are marginal while the national average is 68 percent. Keeping this in view, the population of the state is under heavy pressure and the number of marginal farmers and agricultural laborers in the farming families is higher. .

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The state has enough natural resources such as fertile soil, water and agricultural hydrological conditions for the development of agriculture. In the last four-five years apart from achievements in crop and horticulture, there has been a significant progress in agriculture too. Last year, an estimated 141 lakh tonnes of crops were produced in the state and it includes paddy 68.8 lakh tonnes, wheat 47.4 lakh tonnes, maize 25.2 lakh tonnes, pulses 4.2 lakh tonnes and oilseeds 1.3 lakh tonnes. According to the estimates, 156.29 lakh tonnes vegetables and 40 lakh tonnes fruits were produced. Similarly, milk production in the state has been 87 lakh MT, egg 111 crore, meat is 3.26 lakh tonnes and fish production is 5.06 lakh MT. .

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Agricultural universities and agricultural institutions have made significant contributions in agricultural production. At present, there are two agricultural universities and one animal science university, four research institutes of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (2 in Patna, and one each in Muzaffarpur and Motihari), four regional agricultural research institutes (in Motipur, Pusa, Darbhanga and Begusarai), six agricultural colleges, one fish, dairy, agricultural management, horticulture and veterinary college in the state. Krishi Vigyan Kendra is working in all 38 districts for the promotion, evaluation, and training of agricultural technology. Agricultural science portal has been created to provide information about the activities of all the agricultural science centers. .

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Kisan Suvidha and Pusa Krishi Apps, Crop Insurance Mobile App and Agricultural Market App have been developed by incorporating information technology in agriculture. Farmers can get information about climate change, agricultural consultations, market prices etc through the apps. .

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Pusa Krishi App provides information about the technology developed by IARI. Crop Insurance App provides general information as well as about insured amount, premium details, notified crop information, etc. National Agricultural Market (eNAM) App provides information about the value of the crop in mandis within the range of 50 km. Crop insurance portal reduces claim settlement time and increases transparency. To double the income of the farmers till 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture is running a seven-point program. .

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The Louvre Abu Dhabi is getting Leonardo Da Vincis Salvator Mundi, which sold last month at a Christies auction for $450 million, the most ever paid for a work of art.
A US appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit accusing Holding Ltd of defrauding shareholders by concealing a regulatory warning about counterfeiters that the Chinese online retailer had received shortly before going public.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled 3-0 that a lower court judge erred in dismissing claims by holders of Alibaba's American Depositary Shares and ADS call options against Alibaba, Executive Chairman Jack Ma and others.

Alibaba said it was disappointed by the decision but that the ruling did not determine that Alibaba had violated US securities law.

"We believe our behaviour was entirely appropriate, and we intend to defend ourselves vigorously as this litigation progresses," it said in a statement.

The appeals court in the Tuesday opinion said the plaintiffs adequately alleged that Alibaba intended to defraud them but did not rule on the merits of the case.

Alibaba has long faced accusations that its websites are a haven for counterfeiters, including of luxury goods.

Shareholders accused Alibaba of concealing a meeting on July 16, 2014, two months before its $25 billion initial public offering, in which China's powerful State Administration for Industry and Commerce threatened huge fines if Alibaba failed to suppress counterfeiting.

The price of Alibaba's ADS fell 12.8 percent on Jan. 28 and 29, 2015 after the SAIC revealed its concerns about products that were banned, fake or substandard, or infringed trademarks.

In June 2016, Chief Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan dismissed the nationwide lawsuit, saying Alibaba had flagged the regulatory risks in its IPO materials.

The appeals court called the SAIC threat "highly material" to investors because it "required Alibaba to choose between giving up an important source of its revenue or risking enormous fines," either of which could hurt results or the IPO's success.

"Given the eventual market reaction to revelation of the information that was concealed at the time of the IPO, its revelation would likely have had a multi-billion dollar negative effect," the appeals court said.

The lawsuit was returned to McMahon for further proceedings.

Robert Kry, a partner at MoloLamken representing the plaintiffs, said: "We're pleased with the decision, and look forward to proving our claims."

The case is Christine Asia Co et al v Ma et al, 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-2519.
The Islamic Hamas movement on Thursday called for a Palestinian "popular uprising" against the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The call came amid mass demonstrations across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

"Tomorrow will be a day of public anger and the launching of an uprising under the name of Intifada of Jerusalem Freedom," said Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh during a public speech.

He said Friday would be "the beginning of a new movement" to fight Israel's plan of occupation of West Bank and Jerusalem, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Trump will regret this decision," said Haniyeh. He also called for a general Palestinian meeting to discuss the current situation and to reach an agreement on future Palestinian .

Describing Trump's recognition as "a turning point in the history of the Palestinian cause", the Hamas leader stressed that Jerusalem "has always been the source of victory, the beginning of revolutions and the starting point of uprisings".

He reiterated that Hamas would never recognize the legitimacy of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

On Wednesday, Trump officially announced his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his intention of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city.

The US leader's declaration triggered a wave of popular anger and outrage among Palestinians. The Palestinian factions and political powers declared a general strike in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Some set fire to the US flags and pictures of Trump in Gaza.

Shops were closed and the business of local markets was affected by the comprehensive strike.

Protests erupted mainly in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, East Jerusalem as well as in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of youths expressed anger over Trump's move by setting tires on fire for hours at night in various parts of Gaza.

Also in Gaza, three Palestinians were reportedly injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Qatar's emir called today for a negotiated settlement to a damaging dispute with other Gulf states, but insisted any solution should not come at the expense of "our sovereignty and dignity."



"Qatar's sovereignty is above all considerations. We want to resolve the rift but not at the expense of our sovereignty and dignity," Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said at a joint press conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.

"If the brothers want to resolve the dispute, we are ready," Sheikh Tamim said. "Any solution should be founded on a clear basis acceptable by all and the non-interference in the sovereignty of others."



On June 5, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed all diplomatic and economic ties with gas- rich Qatar, accusing it of links to extremist groups and being too close to Shiite Iran, Riyadh's arch-rival.

The four countries also cut off all air and sea links to Qatar and closed the only land terminal for the tiny peninsula.

Qatar has denied the allegations and repeatedly called for a negotiated settlement.

The four nations have demanded that Doha accepts a list of 13 conditions to open a dialogue.

Mediation efforts to resolve the rift, mainly led by the emir of fellow Gulf state Kuwait, have so far failed to break the deadlock.
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that it will move its embassy to the holy city.
In a respite for Google, a judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit from former Google employees that accused the tech giant of paying male employees more than women.

According to a report in wthitv.com late on Wednesday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Mary E Wiss said that the allegations were "insufficient to state class claims".

The class-action lawsuit had alleged that there were "systematic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the board".

"The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they were underpaid for performing similar or better work than their male counterparts," Wiss said.

The three women have 30 days to file an amended appeal.

In September, three former Google employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the tech giant accusing it of discriminating against women when it came to pay and promotions.

According to a report in Fortune, the three former employees who served as software engineer, communications specialist and manager, filed the lawsuit that said: "Google pays women in California less than men who perform similar work and assigns female workers jobs that are less likely to lead to promotions."

"While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century," Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the women, had said in a statement.

In August, James Damore -- the engineer who was fired by the company over a memo criticising it's diversity efforts - has also alleged that the tech giant was discriminating in hiring practices.

"There's a place for you at Google. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you," Google's Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai told women innovators on the sprawling campus at Mountain View, California, responding to Damore's manifesto.

Google, however, is facing a probe by the US Department of Labour into its pay practices.
Im contemplating writing a book on the first year of President Trumps foreign policy, and I already know the name: The Art of the Giveaway.
The Arab world, the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), close US ally the United Kingdon, and France have either condemned or raised concerns over the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
British citizens fighting for Islamic State should be located and killed and not allowed back into the country, new defence minister Gavin Williamson told the Daily Mail today.

"Quite simply, my view is a dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain," he told the tabloid.

"We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat," he added.

An estimated 800 British passport holders travelled to fight in Iraq and Syria, with 130 killed and around 400 returning, leaving 270 still in the Middle East.

The issue came into sharp focus in 2014 when British citizen Mohammed Emwazi -- also known as "Jihadi John" -- appeared in IS propaganda videos showing the beheading of a number of captives.

Williamson, who became defence chief last month after Michael Fallon resigned over allegations of misconduct, vowed that fighters who fled to other countries would also be tracked and refused passage back to Britain.

"We have got to make sure that as (they) splinter and as they disperse across Iraq and Syria and other areas, we continue to hunt them down," he told the Mail.

"Make sure there is no safe space for them, that they can't go to other countries preaching their hate, preaching their cult of death."



His interview came hours after two men appeared in London court charged with a plot to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May.
The so-called space billionairesJeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk  imagine a day when people will live and work in space, gradually transforming humanity into a multi-planet species. The next step in that direction is the development of a space tourism industry, and thats about to become a reality. The rich will go first, of course, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be astronauts  if only for a few minutes. These extreme-tourism-style flights by Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX are seen as a precursor to an era when blasting to and from space will be considered as routine as flying from New York to Chicago. The preparation needed to make these civilian rides work is also crucial for the kind of point-to-point hypersonic flights that Musk and others have envisioned as a way to shrink travel times across the Earth.
(formerly Financial Technologies (India)) slipped nearly 20% to Rs 95 on the BSE, extending its past three days decline, after the Bombay High Court on Monday upheld the order of the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) for a merger of scam-tainted National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) with the company.
The price in India of bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, touched Rs 10 lakh this afternoon, when its price on major global exchanges crossed $16,000. It was $13,000 on Wednesday evening. Bitcoin has seen a high of $16,418 before it slipped back to below $16,000.
Shares of rice producers rallied by upto 20% on the BSE on back of heavy volumes. LT Foods, Kohinoor Foods and Chaman Lal Setia Exports have rallied more than 6% on the on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), as compared to 0.64% rise in the S&P BSE Sensex at 10:45 AM.



Chaman Lal Setia Exports was locked in upper circuit of 20% at Rs 143, also its 52-week high on the BSE. The trading volumes on the counter more than tripled with 357,000 shares changed hands so far against an average 103,000 shares were traded in past two weeks on the BSE. In past two trading sessions, the stock rallied 30% from Rs 110 on Tuesday, November 5, 2017.



According to the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda), exports of agricultural products registered with it jumped to $8.73 billion in April-September from $7.69 billion in the corresponding period a year ago.



The rise in farm exports was primarily driven by rice, both basmati and non-basmati, which contribute nearly 44% to the countrys annual farm shipments. Exports of rice rose by over 30% in dollar terms and 25% in rupee terms during April-September as European buyers built inventories in anticipation of tighter quality tests effective November 1, the Business Standard reported. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL REPORT.
At least 14 militants, including a senior leader belonging to the Afghanistan's insurgent group Taliban, were killed in an operation in eastern Nangarhar province.

According to the Khaama Press, the senior Taliban leader killed in the operation was their prison's in-charge.

The provincial government media office confirmed the death of the Taliban leader identified as Nabi, in a statement, and said he was among the 14 militants killed during the operation conducted by Afghan forces on Wednesday night.

Taliban shadow district chief for Hesarak Abdul Hasan was also killed during the operation, along with the shadow education director of the group, who was identified as Yar Mohammad, the statement added.

Taliban hasn't commented on the incident so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Udacity to upskill engineering students in the state.

The tie up covers five Udacity Nanodegrees for Andhra Pradesh students to help equip them for better opportunities in the future.

These Nanodegree programs feature world-class content co-created by tech giants like Google, Kaggle, Amazon, and AT&T with industry-relevant projects, project reviews, mentorship, and Udacity career services, Udacity said.

" Udacity's Nanodegree programs will immensely benefit the students by making them job ready. Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) is encouraging the students to pursue these programmes by providing mentors in the colleges to guide the students and also bearing part of the course fee," Sambasiva Rao Koganti, MD and CEO, APSSDC said.

APSSDC has been in forefront of facilitating skill development and will look to Udacity's programs to help upskill the students selected by the organization. Udacity recently also partnered with Google and Telecom Sector Skill Council in separate initiatives to provide relevant instruction and new-age technology learning to help Indian students .

"We are extremely pleased to help the APSSDC and the Andhra Pradesh government's laudable objective to further equip the state's young students with the skills required for better placements in the near future," Ishan Gupta, MD Udacity India said.

As Andhra Pradesh continues to develop at an impressive pace and invites greater tech-driven businesses into the region, Udacity said that it looks forward to preparing candidates with relevant skills in nascent and emerging technologies to improve their placement opportunities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Australia on Thursday became the 26th country in the to legalise same-sex marriage.

"This is Australia: Fair, diverse, loving and filled with respect for everyone. This is a great day, it belongs to every Australian," reported CNN, citing Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as saying, as he introduced the bill for a final vote.

The legislation passed with a majority that wasn't challenged.

The only no votes were Coalition MPs Russell Broadbent, Keith Pitt, David Littleproud and independent MP Bob Katter.

The historic bill was passed on the voices and no count was made due to the overwhelming support for the bill.

The ministers on the House floor and guests in the gallery began singing "I am, you are, we are Australian."

The law will likely take effect in about a month.

The Netherlands became the first country in the to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the Supreme Court deferred the commencement of final hearing in Ram Mandir- case to February 8, 2018, filmmaker Shyam Benegal has suggested the construction of a monument at the disputed site to showcase country's diversity.

Along with 31 activists, the filmmaker filed a petition in the apex court on Tuesday, demanding a monument for integrity instead of a mosque or temple at the disputed site.

Speaking to ANI, Benegal on Wednesday said, "The petition has already been presented. It has been left for the Supreme Court to decide on it. When it comes to a solution, we felt that it would be best if we had a monument that represented the diversity of our country. A monument will include everybody as all religions are practised in our country."

He further called for a united India and said there was no point in fighting on such issues.

"There is no point in taking sides. It is a dispute that will go on. There appears to be no real solution if you take one or the other side. We should keep India as a nation united. (We) can't afford to have fights among ourselves," he added.

The top court is 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 area at Ayodhya among the parties- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Lord Ram Lalla.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday took a jibe at the Opposition, saying that the political parties who asked for votes in the name of Dr B. R. Ambedkar have lately turned into "Shiv bhakts".

Speaking at the inauguration of Dr Ambedkar International Centre here, Prime Minister Modi said, "The political parties ask for votes in Baba Saheb's name. But these days they are not remembering Baba Saheb, but Baba Bhole."

Prime Minister Modi's statement comes after Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi earlier said his family is a devotee of Lord Shiva, but does not believe in using it for political gain.

"My grandmother (Indira Gandhi) used to worship Lord Shiva and my entire family does the same. But, we keep such things private; we normally don't talk about it. We believe that our religion is a personal thing and don't want to trade on Lord Shiva's name. We don't want to make political use of it," Rahul Gandhi had said.

Prime Minister Modi also talked about the dreams of Dr B. R. Ambedkar for the nation.

"From the last three years, we have tried to fulfil the dream of Baba Saheb's social democracy. The schemes of this government are to strengthen the social democracy," he added.

Prime Minister Modi also asked the people to visit villages and see the difference that the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has created, and how it has helped the government in eliminating social discriminations in villages.

"He (Baba Saheb) always hoped that the governments in India would follow the constitution without discriminating against the caste, without distorting the caste. Today, in this plan of this Government you will see an effort to give equal rights to all without discrimination," added Prime Minister Modi.

He further said that the delays in the schemes in this government are considered criminal negligence.

"See this centre itself (Dr. Ambedkar International Centre), it was decided to build it in 1992, but nothing happened for 23 years. In this government, the foundation stone is opened and this government is being inaugurated," said Prime Minister Modi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Thursday slammed the Congress Party and its leader Mani Shankar Aiyar over his low remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling it their 'strategy.'

Aiyar on Thursday called PM Modi a "neech aadmi" (low-born) for appropriating Babasaheb Ambedkar for his election campaign for the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections.

Reacting on the remark, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "I think it is a well-thought strategy by Congress to use filthy language about the prime minister and spread misinformation. But when there is public outrage, they apologise."

"It is not just a matter of filthy language but of Congress' mindset which resonates that only one family can rule this country. If someone from the weaker section becomes the prime minister, then they call him 'chaiwala' and 'neech'," Jaitley added.

Further, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad took a jibe at Aiyar, saying the mindset of Aiyar is of a 'darbaari' (court man) in the courtroom of Congress.

"Mani Shankar Aiyar has called our prime minister 'neech'. His mindset is of a 'darbaari'," Prasad said.

Appreciating Prime Minister Modi for giving a befitting reply to the Congress leader, Prasad said, "We are proud of our prime minister as he answered (Mani Shankar Aiyar) very politely and sensibly."

Soon after Aiyar's remarks, the prime minister told the media, "One Congress leader, who has studied in the best institutions, served as a diplomat and was a cabinet minister, called me 'neech' (low-born). This is insulting and is nothing but Mughlai mindset."

Meanwhile, Aiyar has 'apologised' for calling Prime Minister Modi 'neech', saying he had a different meaning of the word in mind and that he never called the prime minister a 'Chaiwala'.

Earlier in the day, while talking to ANI, Aiyar had said it was the first prime minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who turned Dr Ambedkar's wish into reality and it was not correct to badmouth the Nehru-Gandhi family.

"This person [PM Modi] is a 'neech aadmi' (low-minded). He is not civilised and in a situation like this, there is no need to practice such dirty politics," Aiyar had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With high demand driving the prices of Bitcoin to record heights worldwide, cryptocurrency experts and the Reserve Bank of India have reiterated concerns involved in the investment in highly volatile market of Bitcoins.

"It is a high risk investment. If you do not have adequate information and knowledge about internet and bitcoins it is quite risky and amounts to harming oneself. If the worth of this currency can rise 10-15 times in a year, there is also a possibility that it can come down by 15-20 times in a night," said crypto currency expert, Subhransh Rai.

For the first time on Thursday, Bitcoin surpassed USD 15,000 which shows fuelling investor interest ahead of the launch of Bitcoin futures on Chicago-based CBOE on Sunday.

Rai said that Bitcoin demand has risen worldwide and when something is in limited quantity and in high demand, prices are bound to rise.

" The Indian government, RBI is not considering it as a currency or even a commodity. It is advisable to the general public not to invest their hard earned money in the highly volatile market of bitcoins," he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) called on those trading in Bitcoins and other virtual currencies regarding the risks involved in the same.

The central bank in an official release cautioned users, holders and traders of Virtual Currencies (VCs) including Bitcoins regarding the potential economic, financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks associated in dealing with such VCs.

The RBI had also clarified that it has not given any licence or authorisation to any entity or company to operate schemes or deal with Bitcoin or any other VC.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis and allows people to bypass banks and traditional payment processes to pay for goods and services.

However, banks and other financial institutions have been concerned about the early associations of the currency with money laundering and online crime, and it has not been adopted by any government so far.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An FIR has been registered against BJP leader and Union Minister Anant Kumar Hegde. He has been charged under sections 153 and 504, for allegedly making derogatory comments against Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

Hegde had earlier warned the people of Karnataka that Siddaramaiah may start celebrating Kasab (Ajmal Kasab) Jayanti as well.

Ajmal Kasab was the lone captured terrorist in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The attacks started on November 26 and lasted until November 29, killing 164 people and wounding 308 persons. Kasab was ultimately hanged on November 21, 2012 at Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.

The Union Minister castigated the Congress-led government for celebrating Tipu (Sultan) Jayanti on November 10 across the state "just to appease Muslim voters".

Tipu Sultan was an 18th century ruler of Mysore, who had opposed the rule of British East India Company. He had fought four wars with the British by using rocket technology.

Hegde wrote a letter to Siddaramaiah's secretary and the District Collector of Uttara Kannada district, asking them to not include his name in Tipu Jayanti celebrations, which was held on November 10.

Earlier, descendant of Tipu Sultan, Sahabzada Mansoor Ali Tipu, had urged for a legal action against Hegde for his alleged "derogatory" comments against his forefather.

He added that as a Union Minister, Hegde should not have made such irresponsible comments against a ruler, who is revered as a hero in Karnataka. He had even requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action and sack him from the post of the Union Minister.

The Congress government views Tipu Sultan as a patriot, who fought against the British. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) views are completely different from those of the state government.

They regard Tipu Sultan as a tyrant monarch and for his biasness and atrocities against Hindus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gurugram's Fortis Hospital on Thursday denied allegations of any bribe offered to Jayant Singh, father of a seven-year-old girl who died of Dengue.

"We categorically deny assertions or allegations of any bribe being paid to Jayant Singh (father of deceased girl who was treated for dengue at the hospital). Fortis did offer a refund of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the family, in good faith," a statement by the hospital read.

It added that consequently to articulation of that family's financial position by the father, the hospital had offered an additional amount as a humanitarian gesture.

"A written and signed statement to this effect has been submitted to the inquiry committee," the statement further read.

Earlier on Wednesday, the father of the deceased seven-year-old girl said the hospital had offered a total of Rs 35,37,889 for assuring to stop his social media campaign and any legal action against them.

Speaking to ANI, Jayant Singh said, "Senior members of Fortis had met me and offered me a cheque worth Rs 10,37,889 refunding the entire amount. They also said they will be offering me Rs 25 lakh cash on top of this, saying I will have to sign and enter into a legal agreement assuring to stop my social media campaign, or going to court and taking legal action against them."

Earlier, a committee formed by the Haryana Government found criminal negligence on the part of the hospital, causing the death of a seven-year-old girl suffering from Dengue.

The statement came after a committee of senior doctors, formed by the state government, gave its recommendations.

The committee also alleged several irregularities, including refusal of appropriate ambulance service to the patient, not following leave against medical advice (LAMA) protocol, and overcharging.

The committee also found the Fortis Hospital guilty of overcharging for medicines and platelets and has sent a notice for cancellation of its blood bank's licence.

Parents of the seven-year old girl, who died on November 21 of Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS), had alleged the Fortis Hospital for charging Rs 16 lakh for the 15-day treatment.

The hospital, however, had denied the allegations.

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The father of a seven-year-old girl, who died of Dengue in Gurugram's Fortis Hospital, on Wednesday said the hospital has offered a total of Rs 35,37,889 for assuring to stop his social media campaign and any legal action against them.

Speaking to ANI, Jayant Singh said, "Senior members of Fortis had met me and offered me a cheque worth Rs 10,37,889 refunding the entire amount. They also said they will be offering me Rs 25 lakh cash on top of this, saying I will have to sign and enter into a legal agreement assuring to stop my social media campaign, or going to court and taking legal action against them."

Earlier in the day, a committee formed by the Haryana Government found criminal negligence on the part of the hospital, causing the death of a seven-year-old girl suffering from Dengue.

The statement came after a committee of senior doctors, formed by the state government, gave its recommendations.

The committee also alleged several irregularities, including refusal of appropriate ambulance service to the patient, not following leave against medical advice (LAMA) protocol, and overcharging.

"The girl was on ventilator in the hospital, but she was provided with an ordinary ambulance. The ventilator system was withdrawn and an ambu bag was also not provided. This eventually led to the girl's death," Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij said.

The Haryana Government will now file an FIR against the Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI) under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for death due to negligence and will also ask the Medical Council of India (MCI) to take an action against the hospital which may include cancelling of its licence.

The committee also found the Fortis Hospital guilty of overcharging for medicines and platelets and has sent a notice for cancellation of its blood bank's licence.

It was also found by the committee that the hospital did not provide 20 per cent RBD to the patient's family, violating a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA).

Parents of the seven-year old girl, who died on November 21 of Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS), had alleged the Fortis Hospital for charging Rs 16 lakh for the 15-day treatment.

The hospital, however, had denied the allegations.

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A central government source on Wednesday said there was a "very strong prima facie case of fraud in terms of Fraud Act 2006 of UK" against liquor baron Vijay Mallya.

This reply comes in the wake of number of press reports suggesting that there was no evidence to support 'case of fraud' presented by the Union Government against Mallya in the extradition case.

Defence counsel Clare Montgomery on Tuesday argued that the Indian government, in the extradition trial of Mallya, was "clutching at straws" to implicate the liquor baron in an alleged fraud case as there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations.

The extradition trial of Mallya, who is wanted in India for financial irregularities involving a total amount of Rs 9,000 crore as well as money laundering, began at the London's Westminster court on Monday, wherein Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) outlined the Indian government's case against him.

The source further outlined that Mark Summers, who represented the CPS, in his opening statement, had laid before the court the basic ingredients of fraud that is falsities, false projections and intention not to repay the loan and use the same for purposes other than those intended for.

"The post default conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts was also highlighted by Mark Summers to bring home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in Supreme Court of India," the source further said.

The Indian government further alleged that there were 'factual inconsistencies' in the arguments advanced by counsel Montgomery, in defence of Mallya and the same was "rhetoric" not based on sound evidence.
Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria on Thursday termed the video of a man being burnt alive over alleged love-jihad case in Rajsamand as gut wrenching and assured stringent action against the perpetrator.

The home minister told ANI: "The video is gut-wrenching. Strict action will be taken against him (the perpetrator) once caught."

"Despite knowing the consequences, he made the video viral," said Kataria.

The incident came to light after the perpetrator of the crime allegedly filmed the incident on Dev heritage road in Rajnagar area of Rajsamand and uploaded it on social media yesterday.

The minister said a special investigation team (SIT) has been set up to probe the case.

The culprit is at large.

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Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday called for shifting of India's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Taking to Twitter, the BJP MP said, "Israel has international recognition of a part of Jerusalem as its territory, hence India should shift its embassy to this part of the city."

The tweet comes hours after United States President Donald Trump ordered his administration to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city after recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Jerusalem is considered a sacred place, which is home to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. However, it is also a disputed territory, contested by both Israel and Palestine, which sees it as a capital of its future state.

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Confirming a Chinese military claim made earlier today, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said that an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) lost control on a regular training mission and crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in Sikkim.

The Ministry clarified in a statement, "An Indian UAV, which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian Territory, lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC in the Sikkim Sector".

"As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas," the statement further read.

Incidents involving drones have erupted before between India, China and Pakistan in the past few years.

In 2015, Pakistan's armed forces shot down a drone near the Line of Control with India, which later turned out to have been manufactured in China.

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Pakistan has condemned the United States' move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"It is deeply regrettable that pleas from states across the globe not to alter the legal and historical status of Al Quds Al Sharif/ Jerusalem have been ignored, more out of choice than necessity," the Dawn quoted Pakistan Prime Minister Office, as saying, in a statement on Thursday.

The statement further said US President Donald Trump's decision represented a serious violation of international law and applicable United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Expressing its concerns, Pakistan also called upon the UN Security Council to take cognisance of this situation and take steps in accordance with the UN Charter.

The US has become the first country in the to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In line with this announcement, the US is also shifting its embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, again becoming the first country to take such a step.

With this step, Trump has fulfilled one of its campaign promises and reversed decades-long US policy on this matter.

Jerusalem is considered a sacred place, which is home to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. However, it is also a disputed territory, contested by both Israel and Palestine, which sees it as a capital of its future state.

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Continuing his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr Manmohan Singh on Thursday once again criticised the demonetisation move and alleged that the former has "betrayed" the trust of Gujaratis.

While addressing a press conference in Gujarat's Rajkot, the former prime minister said, "The people of Rajkot and Gujarat trusted the Prime Minister and believed in the policy of demonetisation in the hope that their sacrifice would benefit India. Their faith and hopes have been shattered. Modiji has betrayed the trust that Gujaratis had reposed in him".

"99% of the demonetised currency came back to the banks. It is clear that a lot of black money got converted to white and corruption continues to flourish. One immediate impact of demonetisation has been on job sector. Therefore, demonetisation was an uninformed attack and a disastrous decision for our economy", added Manmohan Singh.

He continued, "I invoke memories of more than 100 people who lost their lives while standing in queues as a result of demonetisation. I say with immense pain and a sense of deep responsibility that November 8 was a black day for our economy and democracy."

Manmohan Singh further averred that people should demand the release of documents related to demonetisation.

"We must demand the government to release all the documents related to demonetisation in public domain for scrutiny", he said.

Manmohan Singh further criticised the lowering GDP, saying, "To equal the UPA's ten year average, the economy will have to grow at 10.6% in the fifth year, I would be happy if it were to happen but I frankly do not think it will".

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A day after the 61st death anniversary of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Dr Ambedkar International Centre here today and said that it would become an important institution for research and economic issues.

Whilst addressing a rally, the Prime Minister said, "Dr Ambedkar International Centre for Socio-Economic Transformation has also been created at Dr Ambedkar International Centre. It will also become an important centre for research on social and economic issues."

Prime Minister Modi said that efforts were made to eradicate Baba Saheb's "wonderful power" after his demise, but his ideas could not be removed from the minds of the people.

"People are more influenced by Baba Saheb rather than the family for whom all this was done," said Prime Minister Modi.

Prime Minister Modi's statement comes a day after he had said that the Congress Party believed that freedom in the country was brought by the Nehru-Gandhi family. "The Congress feels only one family won India's freedom. They forgot the contribution of the tribal communities in India's struggle for freedom. The Congress Party is an expert in lying," he had noted.

Speaking about the contributions by B. R. Ambedkar, who is the father of the Indian Constitution, Prime Minister Modi asserted that the whole nation is indebted by the contributions Baba Saheb has made. He further asked the younger generation to read and study about B. R. Ambedkar.

"This government is taking developing important places connected with the life of Baba Saheb as pilgrimage. The house where Baba Saheb died Dr. Ambedkar Memorial is being constructed there.

"Similarly, in Mahu of Madhya Pradesh, where Baba Saheb was born, it is also being developed as a pilgrimage. By purchasing the house of Baba Saheb in the house of London, the BJP government of Maharashtra is developing it as a memorial as well," said Prime Minister Modi.

Speaking about the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) application, Prime Minister Modi asserted that the app was a tribute to the immense financial vision of Baba Saheb, adding that the BHIM app has come as a "boon for poor, dalits and exploited communities."

However, Prime Minister Modi said that the country has not fulfilled the expectations enthralled by Baba Saheb.

He further said that the "New India" he is talking about is Baba Saheb's dream of India.

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India's first converged payment solutions company Razorpay on Thursday announced its partnership with Visa to roll-out Visa-certified QR solutions under the Visa Ready Partner Programme.

Razorpay, which is India's first converged payment solution provider, will associate to roll out QR code solutions for convenience, security and reliability provided by the Visa brand.

With QR technology, merchants need not invest in payment terminals at point-of-sale, enabling them to transact electronically while solving many pain points associated with the use of cash. Driven by superior technology and an exclusive suite of products, Razorpay has been scripting new solutions to aid more and more Indian companies to go digital.

"We at Razorpay have always been working towards improving the payment infrastructure in India and making it easily accessible to businesses. Now with BharathQR, we would be able to bring new payment innovations to our merchant base, both online and offline," said CEO and co-founder Razorpay, Harshil Mathur.

"In the context of a rapidly evolving Digital India, the solution has great synergy with Razorpay's expertise to onboard merchants instantly and support advanced features like multi-tier reporting. Brought together, this represents a quantum leap in solving cash on delivery for Indian businesses," added Harshil.

The Visa Ready Partner Programme will provide structure and clarity to allow mobile device manufacturers, technology partners, mobile network operators, and others, to gain access to Visa IP, licenses and best practices and quickly introduce devices and solutions that can initiate or accept Visa payments.

However, under the Visa Ready Partner programme, Razorpay and Fomo Pay of Singapore, the First Asia Pacific partners will leverage Visa tools such as QR code generators, merchant QR code test cases and QR code testing utilities, to refine their proposed payment solutions and ensure they meet Visa's interoperable QR standards and specifications.

The collaboration between Visa and Razorpay is intended to promote a cashless lifestyle in India through will enable a wide array of new QR code use cases in the market accelerating the adoption of QR code payments.

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An Israeli siren smartphone app has warned that missiles were fired at southern Israel near the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

According to initial reports, "a red alert was activated" by the app in that region.

Later, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Twitter that at least two missiles were launched from the Gaza Strip, but did not reach the country.

"Following the sirens that were sounded in Hof Ashkelon & Sha'ar HaNegev regional councils in southern Israel earlier this evening, 2 launches from Gaza towards Israel landed within the Gaza Strip," IDF tweeted.

According to CNN, a fresh wave of violence has erupted following United States President Donald Trump' decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Reportedly, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, has called for a new "intifada," or uprising, as protests broke out in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem.

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Dateline: Turkey

A Turkish university is now offering ufology classes to help students prepare for contact with extraterrestrial visitors. A research center at Akdeniz University in Antalya has launched Ufology and Exopolitics in its latest curriculum. Tutor of the course Erhan Kolbas told reporters that humanity can expect to meet aliens from outer space within 10 or 15 years. He hopes to prepare his students for the coming mass contact he envisions. The course will reportedly cover a conspiracy theory claiming that a secret organization within the US government known as Majestic 12 (MJ-12) has been covering up official knowledge of visiting extraterrestrials to protect national interests. Kolbas, who is also the deputy chair of the Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center, also makes the claim that a number of current technologies were discovered through the reverse engineering of crashed UFOs, including fiber optics, microchips and night vision.

Dateline: Canada

An enraged shopper was filmed telling a mall Santa he wasn't real. Last week, a woman in a Toronto mall confronted a seasonal employee dressed as Santa Claus to yell angrily at him. Another shopper caught the tirade on cell phone. Do you have a sleigh? You fucking dickhead? Do you have a sleigh? the woman can be heard saying in the footage, Youre not magic. Youre not even real! I heard about it when I was a young kid! Youre not real, man. The witness who filmed the scene reportedly told the video licensing agency Viral Hog that Santa kept his cool and refrained from engaging with the angry shopper. Mall security eventually escorted the woman away from the area.

Dateline: Russia

A man posted photos of himself holding an armed fragmentation grenade moments before he died. According to local Russian news stations, a young man removed the pin from a live hand grenade to take photos of himself holding the explosive in his car. The man took a photo of his hand holding the grenade with the removed pin lying nearby and sent it to a friend in a text message. The friend responded, asking if he was okay. It depends by what you mean 'OK,' he reportedly replied. Moments later, the grenade exploded, and the man was dead. Police are not treating the death as a suicide, because they say the man had previously sent several photos of himself posing with the device to friends, indicating the incident was an accident. According to the Russian news service Interfax, the man believed the grenade was a lemon and expected to be able to replace the pin.

Dateline: India

A man admitted to a hospital for stomach pains is discovered to have nails, bolts and hundred of coins in his abdomen. Doctors at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, India decided to perform an endoscopy on Maksud Khan, who had admitted himself to the hospital for what was originally thought to be food poisoning. The procedure reportedly revealed hundreds of coins, over three pounds of nails, shaving blades, glass, stones and a six-inch piece of rusted iron shackle lodged in his abdomen. Khan reportedly had been complaining of stomachaches for about three months before entering the hospital. According to his doctors, he very nearly died, as some of the nails had pierced the stomach and were causing internal bleeding. Over 15 pounds of foreign material was removed from his body. Khan's family members say they were unaware of his unhealthy eating habits. His doctors say he worked as a three-wheeler driver and could have swallowed the coins he received from customers. It is believed that Khan suffers from mental illness and began eating the strange objects after the onset of depression. He has told doctors that he will discontinue the practice.

Dateline: China

A bus commuter in China was fined for altering road markings to make his bus ride faster. A man in eastern China was fined around $150 after surveillance video caught him adding arrows to a turning lane's road markings in an attempt to make his daily commute faster. The footage, which was released by officials in the city Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, shows the man carrying a white paint bucket and brush into the left turn lane and adding a straight arrow, indicating that the lane could also be used by through traffic. According to the Modern Express, police tracked the man down, and he admitted to the deed. He allegedly added the arrow because he had noticed on his daily bus ride that while traffic in the straight-only lanes was consistently congested, the left-turn lane usually had space. He hoped that by changing the directional signs, he would make the ride smoother. In April this year, a driver in eastern Zhejiang was fined after surveillance footage captured him making his own parking space with chalk.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has become the first Western politician of his generation to make the journey between India and Pakistan on foot at the Wagah border crossing.

Khan was taken from the border to the city of Lahore in a heavily armed police convoy, which included an ambulance and fire engine,

He, however, defied the advice of the Foreign Office officials.

"We were advised against going to India and Pakistan on the same trip," Khan said.

The mayor, whose family originated in India but moved to Pakistan after partition, described it as an emotional journey, retracing his grandparents' steps.

His family settled in Karachi in Pakistan, where his paternal grandfather was a civil servant.

Khan is scheduled to travel to Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi during his three-day visit to Pakistan.

He will meet senior politician's as well as key figures from the Pakistan's cultural and financial sectors.

The purpose of the Mayor's visit is to forge closer ties with the Pakistani business community and focus on meeting the young, up-and-coming generation who will play a key role in the ongoing development of the country.

Earlier, Khan held meetings with business leaders and Indian government ministers as a part of his visit to Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar in India.

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At least three people were killed and 15 other injured in a shooting incident at a school in United States' New Mexico, on Thursday.

According to CNN, Aztec Police Chief Mike Heal said, "Two people and a shooter were shot in an incident at Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico."

The police chief, however, did not clarify if those killed were students or adults.

Later, Aztec Mayor Sally Burbridge confirmed that the shooter was killed and said there was no more threat to the community.

Aztec, in San Juan County, is a small town in northwest New Mexico.

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Arun Lakhani, Chairman and Managing Director of Vishvaraj Group has been named the 'Most Promising Leader of Asia' at the recently held Asian Leaders Conclave 2017 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Asian Leaders Conclave is a platform for the biggest business leaders of Asia along with bureaucrats to converge and facilitate conversations on Asia as a business hub and the role of the rising business leaders.

The award was presented to Mr. Lakhani by Malaysia Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed at an event held in Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Lakhani was voted from amongst business leaders and government dignitaries from Asian powers like India, China, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, UAE and Taiwan.

On the recognistion, Mr. Arun said, "It is indeed heartening to see one's efforts being acknowledged at international forums. Such recognitions makes us more aware of our responsibilities towards the citizens, as a leading water utility. It also motivates us to continue innovate and provide solutions to the environment and urban infrastructure issues in a sustainable way for our future generations."

Asian Business Leaders Conclave takes stock of the developments in Asian economy in the last year and act as a melting pot for thought leaders, governments and business leaders to further the cause of greater economic integration between emerging and leading countries in the region. It also acts as a focal point for discussion between ASEAN, India and the Middle East. It acknowledges business leaders who are going to play an important part in shaping the business demographics of not just Asia, but also the world in the very near future.

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Vice President Venkaiah Naidu and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan paid tribute to freedom fighter Jayee Rajguru on his 221 martyrdom day celebration here.

Speaking at the function here on Wednesday, the vice president remembered Rajguru as a leader and said younger generation should take inspiration from the sacrifice he made for the nation.

"These people deserve a great deal and importance. Everyone should know about the real heroes of freedom struggle. That is what the minimum we can do to those great soul so that the younger generation can take inspiration from the sacrifice, teachings and preaching of the great people," he added.

Union Minister Pradhan also hailed the Odia freedom fighter and said Rajguru led the fight to oust the Britishers from Odisha in 1804.

"I pay tribute to Rajguru for his sacrifice. We should always remember him and his sacrifice and inspire his principles," Pradhan said.

Jaykrushna Rajguru Mahapatra, popularly known as Jayee Rajguru, was the royal priest of Khurda king Mukunda Dev II. He was hanged by the British East India Company in 1806.

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The Home Minister underlined the need for securing the country's borders and putting in place the systems to facilitate legitimate trade and commerce. He added, India has friendly relations with Bangladesh and all these measures will facilitate genuine trade and legitimate cross-border movement of people while curbing radicalization, illegal migration, and smuggling of cattle, fake Indian currency notes and drugs etc. He stressed on the need to prevent entry, at International borders, of illegal migrants some of whom have links with extremist groups for furthering anti-national activities with ulterior motives and posing threat to internal security.

In the comprehensive review meeting of border management, he emphasized the need to fast track border infrastructure development and to strengthen border security.

The Indo-Bangladesh Border covering 5 states of India including Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and West Bengal is 4096 km long. So far in 3006 km border security infrastructure of fence, roads, floodlights and border out posts (BOPs) are in place and works in the remaining 1090 km are yet to be started. Out of this, 684 km will be secured with fence and the related infrastructure, and the balance 406 km with the non-physical barriers. Although bulk of the infrastructure is in place or under construction, construction in some parts is yet to commence mainly due to land acquisition issues. The Home Minister urged the Chief Ministers to take personal interest to expedite land acquisition in the interest of national security. They assured to make land available at the earliest.

The areas to be covered by non-physical barriers are those where fencing is not feasible like rivers or nullahs etc.

In these areas technological solutions of a networked combination of electronic gadgets like radar, day-night cameras, various types of sensors etc. all integrated in a command and control architecture will be used.

He highlighted the concept of Border Protection Grid (BPG) for multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure our border. The grid will comprise of various elements namely physical barriers, non-physical barriers, surveillance system, Intelligence agencies, State Police, BSF and other State and Central agencies. BPG will be supervised by a State level Standing Committee under the Chairmanship of respective Chief Secretaries. BPG will ensure greater help for the States in the overall border security. For putting in place the BPG, he sought active participation of all stakeholders including State Governments.

The Home Minister said that the people living in the border areas are our strategic asset and need to be provided with all the infrastructure and socio-economic development facilities. He emphasized the importance and necessity of improved infrastructure such as roads, railways, health and education etc. and also boosting border economy in the border areas in a holistic and comprehensive manner. He asked the State Governments that while the Home Ministry was working to supplement their efforts, they must pay greater attention to these areas.

While appreciating the role of BSF for their unshakeable courage, skills, determination and dedication in securing this border, Shri Rajnath Singh reiterated that they should be more vigilant. He expressed satisfaction over the active participation and assurance of all cooperation given by the states.

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With effect from 05 December 2017

Chennai Meenakshi Multispeciality Hospital announced that Dr. S. Varadharajan has been appointed as Additional Director with effect from 05 December 2017 in the meeting of the Board of Directors held on 05 December 2017.

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The export of oilmeals during November 2017 is provisionally reported at 328,091 tons compared to 170,189 tons in November 2016 i.e. up by 93% due to jumped in export of soybean meal as per the data compiled by The Solvent Extractors' Association of India. The overall export of oilmeals during April - November 2017 provisionally reported at 1,813,037 tons compared to 868,358 tons during the same period of last year.

On 17th November 2017, Government raised the import duty on edible oils by 12.5 to 15% across the board and yesterday, increased MEIS on soybean meal to 7% from 5%. This steps will make Indian oilmeal more competitive in the world market and may result in to larger export of oilmeals during current year.

During April - Nov., 2017 oilmeal imported by Vietnam from India reported at 286,874 tons compared to 181,160 tons; consisting of 18,380 tons of soybean meal, 43,063 tons of rapeseed meal and 225,430 tons of De-oiled Rice Bran Extraction. South Korea imported 547,812 tons compared to 433,989 tons; consisting 181,502 tons of rapeseed meal, 341,549 tons of castor meal and 24,761 tons of soybean meal.

Bangladesh imported 110,105 tons compared to 51,788 tons; consisting 25,488 tons of rapeseed meal, 5,079 tons of De-oiled Rice Bran Extractions and 79,538 tons of soybean meal. Thailand imported 122,088 tons compared to 8,841 tons; consisting 90,659 tons of rapeseed meal, 9,454 tons of De-oiled Rice Bran Extractions and 21,940 tons of soybean meal. European countries were the major importer of Indian Soybean Meal. France imported 65,190; consisting 60,525 tons of soybean meal and 4,665 tons of Castor meal and rest of European countries imported 257,738 tons of oilmeals, mainly soybean meal.

The export from Kandla is reported at 982,161 tons (54%), followed by Mumbai including JNPT handled 254,701 tons (14%), Mundra handled 153,505 tons (8%) and Kolkata handled 243,164 tons (13%) and others ports handled 179,506 tons (10%).

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Gayatri Projects rose 1.91% to Rs 218.40 at 9:25 IST on BSE after the company said that its board of directors approved to raise funds upto an amount of Rs 1000 crore though various modes.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 December 2017.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 106.08 points or 0.33% at 32,703.26. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 105.18 points or 0.63% at 16,768.06, outperforming the Sensex.

On the BSE, 1,081 shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 70,763 shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 218.50 and a low of Rs 217.85 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 220.65 on 6 December 2017 and a 52-week low of Rs 118 on 16 December 2016.

The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 6 December 2017, gaining 10.32% compared with 3.36% drop in the Sensex. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 20.52% as against Sensex's 2.95% rise. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past year, jumping 75.25% as against Sensex's 23.51% rise.

The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 35.45 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

Gayatri Projects announced that its board of directors approved to raise funds upto an amount of Rs 1000 crore, by issue of securities but not limited to equity shares, and or any other securities convertible into equity shares and/or non convertible debentures (NCDs) with or without warrant, through further public offer/qualified institutional placement/preferential issue/rights issue or through any permissible mode.

Gayatri Projects' net profit jumped 104% to Rs 23.71 crore on 20.9% rise in net sales to Rs 423.18 crore in Q2 September 2017 over Q2 September 2016.

Gayatri Projects in a Hyderabad-based infrastructure and construction company specializing in road, irrigation, power transmission and industrial projects with a pan India presence.

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Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh welcomed the visiting delegates led by Shri H. E Maurizio Martina, Italian Minister for Agriculture Food and Forestry Policies , mentioning that India and Italy enjoy traditionally friendly and cordial relations. Shri Radha Mohan Singh also conveyed that India attaches great importance to the development of bilateral ties between the two countries and look forward to further expand and strengthen ties between the two countries in various areas including in the Agriculture sector. Shri Singh thanked the Italian Minister for participating in the AGRIMACH India, 2017 along with a large business delegation.

Shri Singh identified areas such as agriculture machinery, training, investment, institutional linkages, precision farming, cattle breeding and fisheries having much potential for cooperation, and briefly provides the initiatives taken by the Government in the field of agriculture market, soil health, irrigation, crop insurance etc.

Shri Singh also raised the issue of Indian exports of grapes and rice suffering on account of arbitrary Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) set by European Commission. He suggested a mutually acceptable solution can found to this issue, as these limits were set by EU without any scientific assessment being shared to India.

The two Ministers signed a new MoU for cooperation in Agriculture and Phytosanitary issues that will replace the one signed in 2008. The MOU provides a good framework for cooperation in this field.

Shri Radha Mohan Singh said that India has always had an active association with IFAD ever since it was set up in 1977 as the 13th specialized agency of the United Nations.

India is a founder member of IFAD, a key contributor among the member Countries, participates actively in the Fund's governing bodies, and holds a permanent seat in IFAD Executive Board. It currently holds the chairmanship of the Governing Council and of the Evaluation Committee.

Union Agriculture Minister further said that he welcomes the new country strategy for IFAD engagement in India for the period 2018-2024, which proposes to strategically focus on 'smallholder food and agricultural production systems that are remunerative, sustainable and resilient' and achieving India's goal of doubling farmers' incomes. Shri Singh also appreciated IFAD plans to establish sub-regional hubs in New Delhi to serve as a sub-regional hub, covering Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives besides India. This will significantly enhance opportunities for further investment, technology and knowledge cooperation, including South-South Technical Cooperation (SSTC).

Shri Singh said India has contributed 37 million USD in the 10th replenishment of IFAD for the period 2016-2018. He further added that he looks forward to enhanced cooperation between India and IFAD in the coming years. Together, we can do much more by expanding the collaboration with the private sector, and to engage more systematically in South-South Technical Cooperation involving public and private organizations as well as farmers and their organizations.

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At least six people died after gunmen opened fire inside a carwash in the Gulf coast port of Coatzacoalcos, authorities in Mexico's Veracruz state said on Thursday.

The attackers left behind a message claiming responsibility for the assault on behalf of the Zetas cartel and threatening further violence against the rival Jalisco Nueva Generacion group, Efe news agency reported.

Five people were pronounced dead at the scene and a sixth victim died at a nearby hospital.

State police seized a vehicle left inside the carwash.

More than 1,500 people have died in drug-related violence in Veracruz state during the past 11 months.

Nationwide, homicides climbed by 62 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, according to figures published by the National Public Safety System.

The Zetas, Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Gulf cartel are battling in Veracruz to control not only the drug trade, but other criminal activities such as human trafficking, kidnapping and protection rackets.

Veracruz, the heartland of the Mexican oil industry, is also an important agricultural region and boast the country's second-busiest cargo port.

--IANS

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Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Thursday trashed charges by opposition parties that the BJP got the EVMs tampered in the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh.

In Mainpuri to attend a wedding, the former minister said had this been the case, he would not be a legislator now.

Shivpal Yadav's statement contradicts what his estranged nephew and party President Akhilesh Yadav has said. Akhilesh Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, has time and again said that the Electronic Voting Machines had been tampered with.

"I won the election from Jaswantnagar earlier this year, many of my supporters have won the urban body polls. So without proof how can I allege that the EVMs were tampered to favour the ruling party?" he asked.

Shivpal Yadav has been daggers drawn with Akhilesh Yadav and has now been more or less ditched by his elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav who has apparently bought peace with his son after initially siding with his brother.

Shivpal Yadav also took a dig at Akhilesh Yadav for the Samajwadi Party's defeat in the civic polls, demanding to know who had picked the candidates.
Australias Parliament legalized same-sex marriage on Thursday, overcoming years of conservative resistance with an overwhelming majority vote.

Cheers and applause broke out as ministers voted in favour of the bill following hours of debate and emotional speeches at the House of Representatives. Only four MPs voted against the bill, the Australian media reported.

"This is Australia: Fair, diverse, loving and filled for respect for everyone," said an effusive Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he introduced the bill for a final vote.

"What a day, what a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it!" said Turnbull following the announcement.

"Today we've voted for love, for equality. It's time for more marriages, more love, more respect. This belongs to us all," Turnbull said.

Labour Party leader Bill Shorten said the new law spoke for a modern Australia, "inclusive and fair", 9news.com reported. Gay rights advocates praised the landmark vote even as they said it was long overdue.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a staunch critic of same-sex marriage, seemed to have softened.

"When it comes to same-sex marriage, some countries have introduced it via the courts, some via Parliament, and - Ireland and now Australia - by vote of the people," Abbott said. "And that is the best way because it resolves this matter beyond doubt or quibble."

The bill will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. The country is now the 24th in the world to allow same-sex couples to marry, according to Pew Research.

The move follows a two-month national postal survey that showed 61 per cent of more than 12 million respondents were in favour of marriage equality.

Australia's first same-sex weddings will not take place until at least January due to a longstanding requirement for all Australian couples to provide a full month's notice of their intention to get married.
The West Bengal BJP leaders on Thursday met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to apprise him of the situation in Darjeeling hills and appealed him to urge the state government to withdraw "fake cases" against exiled Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (JMM) chief Bimal Gurung.

Singh was in the city on Thursday to hold a meeting with the chief ministers of states bordering Bangladesh on the developmental security issues along the India-Bangladesh border.

"We informed him about the Bengal government's double standards in dealing with the issues of Darjeeling hills. In spite of having same charges against them, GJM leader Binay Tamang has been rewarded by the Bengal government, while Bimal Gurung has been exiled.

"It goes on to show how the state government's policies are politically motivated," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national secretary Rahul Sinha, who met Singh, told IANS.

"We appealed him to urge the state government to withdraw all false cases against Bimal Gurung and his associates and work towards bringing permanent peace in the region," he said.

The Bengal Police has charged Gurung under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and issued a lookout notice against him in the wake of three-month-long agitation for separate state of Gorkhaland.

Sinha claimed the situation in Darjeeling was still vulnerable and could become tensed again if the massive police posting there was withdrawn.

"The Bengal Chief Minister is claiming that peace has been reinstated in Darjeeling, but in reality the situation there is still vulnerable. The state government has posted thousands of police personnel there to control the situation. It might become hostile the moment the extra forces are withdrawn from Darjeeling," he said.

The BJP leader said they had also talked to the Home Minister about the police atrocities on their activists and the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

"The law and order situation in Bengal is in a shambles. The only job of the police is to charge BJP activists with false cases and jail them. We informed Rajnathji about it," Sinha stated.

"We also told him that the Bengal government and the state's ruling party leaders are involved in the cattle smuggling happening across the India-Bangladesh border," he added.

--IANS

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In a warning for those who wish to invest in Bitcoins to make some big bucks, the cryptocurrency mining market NiceHash has revealed hackers wiped out its entire Bitcoin wallet, resulting in over $60 million loss.

"Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours," the marketplace said in a statement late on Wednesday.

"Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken," it added.

Coindesk reported on Thursday that the loss is about 4,736.42 Bitcoins, worth more than $60 million.

"Are we going to get our btc? or might as well just forget it. Your press release said nothing about sending us what you owe. I have 4000$ stuck in your wallet which is now almost 4300$," tweeted a user named Lohit.

Another NiceHash user Philip Richardson tweeted: "If I dont get my BTC back i will never use your service again".

Earlier in the day, the value of one Bitcoin had crossed $14,000, a new record high for the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoins are created through a complex computer process known as mining and then monitored by a network of computers across the world.

A steady stream of about 3,600 new bitcoins are created a day - with about 16.5 million now in circulation from a maximum limit of 21 million, BBC reported.

"Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency," NiceHash said.

The company recommends users to change their passwords - both on NiceHash and other services.

The incident brings back the memories of the 2014 implosion of the "mtGox" Bitcoin marketplace which lead to losses of millions of dollars.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) this week cautioned the "users, holders and traders" of Bitcoins about the security-related risks associated with dealing with such virtual currencies (VCs).

The apex bank reiterated its stand that "it has not given any license or authorisation to any entity or company to operate such schemes or deal with Bitcoin or any VC".

"In the wake of a significant spurt in the valuation of many VCs and rapid growth in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), RBI reiterates the concerns," the central bank said in a statement.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will raise the case of a British mother jailed in Iran when he travels to the country this weekend.

The dual British Iranian national from north London was sentenced to five years in prison in the country in 2016 over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, Sky News reported.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested during a family holiday, a trip in which the 38-year-old was showing her baby daughter Gabriella to her parents.

Johnson's two-day trip -- his first to Iran -- will include talks with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and is aimed at improving ties between Britain and Iran.

--IANS

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's name figuring in Somnath Temple's non-Hindu visitors book might have kicked up a pre-election row but caste overshadows religion among the voters in this assembly constituency.

With sizeable numbers of Kolis and Muslims forming a possible winning combination in Somnath, the BJP has pitted its sitting MLA Jasha Bhai Barad, an OBC Karadiya Rajput, while the Congress has fielded a 35-year-old leader Vimal Bhai Chudasama from the Koli community.

Barad won the Somnath constituency in the 2012 assembly polls on a Congress ticket but resigned from the party to join BJP in 2014. He again won the seat and became Minister of State for tourism in Vijay Rupani's Council of Ministers.

Pradip Bhai Advani, a BJP supporter, who runs a Pan Parlour in the heart of Veraval taluka, does not hesitate to say that Congress is going to win this seat.

He elaborates the reason too. "Being a Koli, Vimal Bhai is getting most of the votes of his community. Muslims too would vote him. Besides he will get the votes of Ahirs and some other," he said.

Vimal Bhai belongs to Chorwad village, where business-tycoon late Dhirubhai Ambani was born in adjacent Junagadh district, and is a Nagarpalika Pramukh.

Manish Gohil, an employee of Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC), said: "Vimal Bhai is our brother and one among us. Definitely those close to BJP would vote Barad but majority of Kolis would favour Vimal Bhai."

Bhagwan Bhai Jala, who runs a hotel in Somnath, said that his village Bhalpara has around 12,000 voters consist of Ahirs, Dalits, Bharwars and Prajapatis and most of them would vote for Congress.

"Barad has nothing to say for development of the area. There is scarcity of water and Power cut problem in the area. Our area produces peanuts but farmers are waiting to sell them," he said expressing his anger towards the BJP government.

Hira Bhai Nagora and Ram Bhai Nagar echoes similar sentiments.

Suresh Goswami, a businessman in tower chowk area of Verawal, said that Kolis may now say they support Congress but as the elections come close they all would vote the saffron party.

"Kolis and Muslims can never be on same page as both the communities have always been against each other politically. So finally Kolis would vote against Muslims," he said.

But Ramji Bhai Badiya of Mota Kolpada rejects Goswami's claim.

"I know it very well that when Congress comes to power Muslims have a chip on their shoulders. But these are things of past. This time scenario is different. Vimal Bhai is our own men. As long as he is here such things would not happen," he said.

Jaydeep Bhai is a Khavar and runs a small shop in Mandir area of Somnath. He said, "There are other communities too here. The OBC community and major chunk of SCs would vote in favour of BJP.

Somnath, a constituency in Gir-Somnath district, is a prestigious seat for BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the temple and addressed a rally in the district. Amit Shah has also visited this temple town twice after the polls were declared.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi also visited the temple but a controversy erupted after his name figured in non-Hindu visitors book.

Besides Somnath, the Congress has fielded a Koli candidate in Una, an Ahir in Talala and a Dalit in Kodinar.

(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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China on Thursday said an Indian drone "invaded" its airspace and crashed in its territory in the Sikkim section of the border where the two countries were locked in a 73-day military stand-off. New Delhi said the drone crossed the border by mistake, and China had been informed about it.

The claim was first made by Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of Chinas' Western Theater Command's joint staff department, who said an Indian UAV had recently intruded into China's airspace and crashed. Later, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it has lodged a protest with India over the issue and warned New Delhi not to use such devices near the border area any more.

New Delhi meanwhile said that China had been informed that the drone, which was on a regular mission inside Indian territory, lost contact with the ground control and crossed the Line of Actual Control. Sources said India will, through diplomatic channels, seek its return.

The incident took place in the Sikkim sector, where the two countries were engaged in a stand-off from June 16 to August 28, close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction. The Indian Army had objected to road building by China's PLA in Doklam, which is also claimed by Bhutan.

The exact location of the area where the drone crashed or date of the incident was however not revealed by either India or China.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said: "Recently an Indian unmanned aircraft invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border... The Chinese border troops took professional and responsible attitude and verified the device."

He said the the Sikkim section of China-India border has been delimited and Chinese side along the borderline is China's territory.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it's not conducive to the peace and tranquility in the border area. China is dissatisfied with this and lodged a solemn representation with the Indian side.

"China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquility of the border areas," Geng added.

Zhang said that Chinese border troops "have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle".

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this. We will ... defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

India however said that the Chinese side was informed when the drone strayed in their territory.

Sources said the drone was an Israeli Heron UAV, and it crashed on the Chinese side of the border across north Sikkim. The source said the drone had gone missing earlier this week, but the exact date of the incident was not revealed.

The Defence Ministry statement meanwhile said UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC.

"As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," the statement said.

It said the Chinese side got back with its location details.

"The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocol through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," the statement added.

The strong reaction from China also comes days ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India for the Russia, India and China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting. Wang will arrive in India on December 10.

Asked if the incident will have a negative impact on the bilateral meet, Geng said: "I think Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit's goal is to attend the foreign ministers' meeting."

--IANS

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China on Thursday said an Indian drone "invaded" its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of the border where the two countries were locked in a 73-day military stand-off. New Delhi said the drone crossed the border by mistake.

The Foreign Ministry said China lodged a protest with India over the development and warned New Delhi not to use such devices near the border area any more.

"Recently an Indian unmanned aircraft invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border," Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

Chinese and Indian militaries had over a two-month standoff at Doklam in the Sikkim section of their border. The Indian Army had objected to road building by China's PLA in Doklam, which is also claimed by Bhutan.

The Indian Defence Ministry said the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost control with the ground control due to "some technical problems and crossed over the Line of Actual Control".

The Ministry standard protocol was followed and Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV.

Asked if the drone was found in the Sikkim region, Geng said he did not have information about that.

"The Chinese border troops took professional and responsible attitude and verified the device," he said.

"I want to point out that the Sikkim section of China-India border has been delimited and Chinese side along the borderline is China's territory.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it's not conducive to the peace and tranquility in the border area.

"China is dissatisfied with this and lodged a solemn representation with the Indian side.

"China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquility of the border areas," Geng added.

Earlier, Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's Joint Staff Department, said an "Indian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) intruded into China's airspace and crashed recently, and Chinese border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this. We will ... defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he added.

The incident comes ahead of Foreign Minister Wang Yi's India visit to attend the Russia-India-China meet. Wang will meet his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj.

Asked if the incident will have a negative impact on the bilateral meet, Geng said: "I think Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit's goal is to attend the foreign ministers' meeting."

--IANS

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Geneva, Dec 7 (IANS/AKI) Donor governments have pledged an initial $857 million to the UN refugee agency UNHCR to help some 67 million displaced or stateless people worldwide next year, UNHCR said.

"A year of no peace and much war is about to end," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Tuesday. "Refugee crises grow. Refugee needs grow as well."

The pledges, made at an annual meeting in Geneva, amount to around 11 per cent of UNHCR's total 2018 funding needs of over $7.5 billion, the agency said.

The funds committed this year are considerably higher than the $701 million pledged at the end of 2016, the agency said, noting a widening gap between the cash it has received and the needs of refugees amid new crises that have seen record numbers of displaced people.

This "means that UNHCR has to prioritize, sometimes mercilessly," Grandi said. "Some (refugees) will be left to fend for themselves during the harsh winter months and others won't get the assistance they need to reintegrate upon return," he underlined.

UNHCR said it relies almost entirely on voluntary contributions from governments, intergovernmental organisations and, increasingly, from individuals, corporations and foundations to keep up its life-saving work in some of the biggest emergencies around the world.

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are crisis zones where UNHCR is continuing to give vital assistance, the agency said.

--IANS/AKI

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Egypt condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Egypt rejects this move as well as the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem, Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump announced that the the country formally recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while ordering to immediately begin the process of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Egypt reiterated that such unilateral decisions violate the international legitimacy, adding such decisions will not change the legal status of Jerusalem as an occupied city.

Egypt also referred to many Jerusalem-related resolutions taken by the international legitimacy, including United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which demands Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem.

There is also the UNSC Resolution 478 of 1980 that rejected Israel's attempted annexation of Jerusalem as well as its declaring the city as Israel's capital, the statement said.

The statement said that Egypt is extremely concerned over the possible consequences of this decision on the stability of the region, warning that it will stir the feelings of the Arab and Islamic peoples for the historical, spiritual and cultural status of Jerusalem.

The decision will also have negative impacts on the future of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis, as Jerusalem is one of its major issues, according to the statement.

--IANS

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It didn't take long for fake notes of 2,000 rupees to start circulating after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation in November 2016, with one of its stated aims being to kill counterfeit currency, official data show.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) latest report released on November 30, a total of 2,272 fake notes of Rs 2,000 denomination were seized in 2016. Since the Rs 2,000 note -- along with the new Rs 500 currency -- was introduced only after November 8, 2016, it means that those counterfeiting the notes got into the act very quickly.

In just 53 days between November 8 and December 31 last year, police and other government agencies seized 2,272 fake Rs 2,000 notes -- at a time when people across the country were struggling to get hold of the new currency.

The maximum number of these Rs 2,000 fake notes were seized in Gujarat (1,300), followed by Punjab (548), Karnataka (254), Telangana (114), Maharashtra (27), Madhya Pradesh (8), Rajasthan (6) and Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana (3 each). Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala accounted for two fake notes each. One such note was seized in Manipur as well as in Odisha.

The Rs 2,000 notes were part of the 281,839 fake notes of various denominations recovered from different locations across India.

When Modi announced the note ban, he said it was being done to end black money, counter terror financing and do away with counterfeit currency.

Among other fakes, 82,494 notes of Rs 1,000 and 132,227 of Rs 500 denomination were also seized last year along with 59,713 notes of Rs 100 and 2,137 notes of Rs 50, said the annual publication of NCRB released by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

In a number of raids across the country, police forces, the Income Tax department and other government agencies also recovered 184 fake notes of Rs 20, at least 615 notes and coins of Rs 10 and 2,001 notes of Rs 5.

Also seized were 196 fake coins of Rupee 1 denomination -- between January to December 31 last year.

According to the data, the face value of the total fake notes found in 2016 is Rs 101,222,821.

In terms of value of maximum fake notes, Delhi (Rs 56,521,460) topped the list.

The national capital was followed by Gujarat (Rs 23,724,050), West Bengal (Rs 23,295,800), Andhra Pradesh (Rs 9,280,000), Karnataka (Rs 8,009,136), Telangana (Rs 7,600,905), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 5,013,700), Maharashtra (Rs 4,799,700), Punjab (Rs 4,239,750), Bihar (Rs 3,736,800), Tamil Nadu (Rs 3,342,540), Kerala (Rs 2,057,200), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 1,626,890), Chandigarh (Rs 1,499,000), Rajasthan (1,035,100), Assam (Rs 800,050), Jharkhand (Rs 706,000) and Uttarakhand (Rs 666,400).

At 114,751, Delhi also topped the chart in terms of maximum seizure of fake notes, followed by Gujarat (39,725), West Bengal (32,869), Andhra Pradesh (14,541), Karnataka (14,228) and Telangana (12,667).

Among all the states and union territories, Goa accounted for just 21 fake notes having a face value of Rs 17,000.

No fake note was recovered from Chhattisgarh, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu as well as Lakshadweep, the NCRB data says.

The data said a total of 1,172 FIRs were registered and 1,107 people arrested for their involvement in the illegal trade.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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A 45-year-old woman was killed here on Thursday after a tree fell on her, an official of the BMC Disaster Control said.

The victim, identified as Sharda S. Ghodeswar, was on a morning walk near the Golden Club in Chembur when the accident occurred.

She was rushed to the nearby Shatabdi Hospital but declared dead on arrival, said the official.

This is the second such incident in Chembur in the past six months.

On July 20, Kanchan Nath was killed when a tree suddenly fell on her at Swastik Park.

In the first incident after the Mumbai Police declined to book the BMC officials for negligence, her husband Rajat Nath filed a criminal writ petition in the Bombay High Court which is expected to come up for hearing soon.

Several activists have said that many fully grown and healthy trees collapse during the monsoon season when they are weakened by heavy winds and rain.

A resident said that during the building of roads, BMC workers and contractors cover up the entire base of all the trees growing besides the roads and highways in the city.

"This does not leave space for the water to seep to the roots, and the trees can't breathe properly. So although they appear strong and healthy, they can't withstand heavy rain or winds and suddenly come crashing down with fatal consequences."

He urged the BMC officials to immediately clear an area of at least one square metre at the base of all trees which are covered by concrete to enable the trees to drink and breathe and remain standing strong and safe without endangering pedestrians and property.

--IANS

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Actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, who takes fitness seriously, will now endorse Apollo Munich Health Insurance.

As the brand ambassador, he aims to make more Indians aware of health insurance.

"I am someone who takes fitness very seriously but at the same time, I feel that we live in a very stressful world. When we talk about our parents' generation and before them, the times are very different. The world is so fast now.

"If we see the lives of people and their sleeping patterns, heath issues start at a younger age than it used to for people of generation before us," Farhan said here on Thursday.

So, he feels it is important to have health insurance at a young age.

On associating with Farhan, Antony Jacob, CEO, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, said: "We have a few values - honouring commitment, innovation, relationships which go beyond a particular transaction and to be accessible at all times. We found all these qualities in Farhan."

Apollo Munich Health Insurance also announced a new category called Winsure with its health insurance plan called Health Wallet.

--IANS

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Actor Vishal Krishna, whose nomination papers to contest in the December 21, 2017 by-election to the Radhakrishnan Nagar assembly constituency were rejected, prayed to the Almighty to save India.

In his tweet on Thursday, Vishal, as he is popularly known, said: "Still awaiting Democracy to lift its head up again..."

"God save my beloved country from this anarchy!!"

On Wednesday, he met Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu Rajesh Lakhoni and submitted a petition to review his nomination papers filed for the by-election.

But the Returning Officer rejected Vishal's nomination papers, saying the signatures of two proposers were forged.

Vishal also tweeted to President Ramnath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday and brought his plight to their notice.

In his tweet, the actor said: "To the people, I look upto, Hon @narendramodi & Hon @rashtrapatibhvn I am Vishal, I hope u r aware of wats happening in the RK Nagar Election process in Chennai.

"My nomination was accepted & later rejected. Totally unfair. I bring this to your notice & I hope justice prevails."

He also tweeted: "5th Dec 2016, Amma died, 5th Dec, 2017, Democracy died... RIPDemocracy."

In Tamil Nadu, late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa is referred to as Amma.

The actor said he was also consulting legal experts.

According to Vishal, the Returning Officer would get up from his seat and go out to speak to somebody on the phone.

He said the rejection of his nomination was pre-planned and the two proposers (Sumathi and Deepan) were threatened.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has said a total of 59 candidates were finally left in the fray for the by-election.

A total of 145 persons had filed their nomination papers, of that 72 nominations have been accepted and 73 rejected. Later, 13 candidates withdrew from the electoral race.

The major contest will be between the ruling AIADMK (E. Madhusudhanan), DMK (N. Marudhu Ganesh) and the sidelined AIADMK leader T.T.V. Dinakaran, now contesting as an Independent candidate.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded K. Nagarajan as its candidate.

The Radhakrishnan Nagar seat fell vacant following the death of Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016.

--IANS

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The National Green Tribunal on Thursday held Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living responsible for damaging the ecology of the Yamuna floodplains during the three-day cultural extravaganza held last year and asked the organisation to pay for the restoration works.

"We hold respondent no. 3 (Art of Living) responsible for the damage to the Yamuna floodplains," green tribunal head Justice Swatanter Kumar said in his order.

The verdict comes after a report by an environmental experts panel accused the organisation of causing extensive damage to the Yamuna floodplains in Delhi during the World Culture Festival in 2016.

The NGT has already find the Art of Living Rs 5 crore for the damage and said the amount would be used to restore the fragile floodplains.

"In case more funds are required, Art of Living will have to pay," the NGT chief said. However, if restoration costs less, the remaining amount of the already deposited Rs 5 crore will be refunded.

The green court also asked the capital's lead planning body, the Delhi Development Authority, to do a fresh assessment of how much money would be required to restore the damaged floodplains.

Environmentalists had vocally objected to organising the World Culture Festival on the ecologically fragile Yamuna banks -- which included a 7-acre stage for 35,000 musicians and dancers, newly built dirt tracks and 650 portable toilets across 1,000 acres.

The Art of Living has denied it caused any damage to the banks, alleging that it has been a victim of a "conspiracy".

"We have never caused any damage to the environment but have in fact worked for preserving and reviving it through various environment-related projects over the years," the organisation said.

--IANS

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In 2016, Washington, DC welcomed 100,000 visitors from India making it the citys fifth largest overseas market.

"India continues to be a strong and developing market for Washington, DC," said Destination DC President and CEO Elliott L. Ferguson II while addressing the media here.

A delegation from Destination DC, the official destination marketing organisation for Washington, DC, is on an India visit to support Air India's new non-stop service connecting New Delhi to Washington, DC. In partnership with Air India and Washington Dulles International Airport, the delegation members visited Mumbai, Hyderabad and are finally in the Capital.

Elliott L. Ferguson, II added that "In 2016, one in every 12 visitors from India to the US visited Washington, DC."

" We're excited about the potential for increased business and leisure travel from Indian visitors, especially since the launch of Air India's direct flight last July and our increase in marketing efforts for 2018," he said.

According to Travel Market Insights Inc., visitors from India to Washington, DC ranked sightseeing, shopping, and visiting national parks and monuments among their top three activities. Also incredible museums and art galleries, exceptional dining and nightlife scene, high-end designer retail along with iconic monuments and memorials make the city a highly desirable destination.

Also, Indian visits to the US capital increased 25 percent over 2015, adding 20,000 more visitors than last year.

Destination DC continues to market the destination to India through its DC Cool brand from editorial and social to new promotions with tour operators. The organisation launched a series of 360 videos with virtual-reality (VR) capabilities.

--IANS

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India on Thursday declined to comment on US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying its position on Palestine "is independent and consistent".

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in response to queries.

The Indian statement comes ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expected visit to India early next year.

Trump on Wednesday announced that the US now recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, describing the move as "a long overdue step" to advance the Middle East peace process evoking strong reactions from Arab and European capitals.

--IANS

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India on Thursday said it had informed China about a drone that crashed in Chinese territory, after Beijing claimed the Indian UAV had "intruded" in its area.

The Defence Ministry in a statement said that the Indian UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the Line of Actual Control in the Sikkim Sector.

"As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," the statement said.

In response, the Chinese side responded with the location details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the Defence Ministry said.

"The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocol through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," the Ministry said.

A report from China's Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, as saying that an Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed.

China did not give any exact location or time of the crash.

The newly-created Western Theater Command is the largest of the five military divisions in China. Tibet which shares a border with India comes under it.

Shuili said the development "infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this."
India on Thursday said it had informed China about a drone that crashed in Chinese territory, after Beijing claimed the Indian UAV had "intruded" in its area. India will go through diplomatic channels and ask for return of the drone.

Sources said the drone was an Israeli Heron UAV, and it crashed on the Chinese side of the border across north Sikkim. The source said the drone had gone missing earlier this week, but the exact date of the incident was not revealed.

The Defence Ministry in a statement said that the Indian UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the Line of Actual Control in the Sikkim Sector.

"As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," the statement said.

The Chinese side got back with the location details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the Defence Ministry said.

"The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocol through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," the statement said.

A report from China's Xinhua news agency on Thursday quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, as saying that an Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed.

China did not give any exact location or time of the crash.

The newly-created Western Theater Command is the largest of the five military divisions in China. Tibet which shares a border with India comes under it.

Shuili said the development "infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this."

The incident comes months after a two-and-half-month long stand-off in Doklam along the border in Sikkim, close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction. The stand-off started on June 16, when the Indian Army stopped a PLA party from its road construction activity in Doklam area. Both sides announced disengagement on August 28.

The strong reaction from China also comes days ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India for the Russia, India and China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting. Wang will arrive in India on December 10.

--IANS

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The Indian government's refusal to denounce the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital "shows the extent of servility of the Modi regime" to Washington, the CPI-M said on Thursday.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist said it strongly condemned the decision of US President Donald Trump, who has said the American embassy will shift to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

"This action goes against the UN's and the international community's stand that East Jerusalem is an occupied territory by Israel since 1967. An independent Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital is the internationally accepted position," a CPI-M statement said.

"The US has taken the formal step of legalizing the illegal occupation of Palestine territories by Israel. No other country in the world has given recognition to Jerusalem as Israel's capital."

The CPI-M said that unlike the worldwide opposition to this move, the Indian External Affairs Ministry "has scrupulously refused to criticize the US decision. This shows the extent of servility of the Modi regime to the US".

The CPI-M asked the Modi government to come out strongly against the US action "as it goes against India's longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause".

--IANS

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A tank and an aircraft targeted two military posts in the Gaza Strip, following projectiles that was fired from the northern Gaza Strip and exploded in southern Israel, according to a statement made by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Thursday.

The IDF held Hamas responsible for the hostile activity perpetrated against Israel from the Gaza Strip, said the statement, Xinhua reported.

Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday afternoon, according to another IDF statement.

The rockets came amid rising tensions in Gaza and the West Bank following US President Trump's announcement that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel closed the Gilboa Crossing in the northern West Bank after Palestinians threw rocks at it during a demonstration, the Israeli Defense Ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said that the reopening of the crossing will be dependent upon situational assessments.

--IANS

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Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital amid growing international criticism of the move.

The Saudi Royal Court in a statement warned of serious consequences of such an "irresponsible and unwarranted step", including further complicating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Trump on Wednesday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital reversing decades of US policy. He also instructed moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city.

"The decision represents a great bias against the historic and permanent rights of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, which have been affirmed by international resolutions and recognized and supported by the international community," the Saudi statement said.

Calling the decision a pivot from the "historically impartial position" of Washington in regard to the issue of Jerusalem, the statement said the decision exemplifies a drastic regress in efforts to move the peace process forward.

Saudi Arabia called on the US administration to reverse this action and support the international will to enable the Palestinian people to regain their legitimate rights.

Eight of the 15 nations who are currently members of the UN Security Council called for the body to hold an urgent meeting on the US decision by the end of the week.

--IANS

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In a horrifying video gone viral, a man is seen being burnt alive in Rajasamand district of Rajasthan, for allegedly committing "love jihad". Police arrested the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Shambunath Raigar, on Thursday.

The person killed has been identified as Afrazul, hailing from Tezpur, in Malda district of West Bengal, police said. Earlier, police had identified him as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.

Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar said that interrogation of the accused is on and police is keeping an eye on the law and order situation.

Initially, Raigar made a video of his brutal act and it was uploaded on social media. The video went viral as the police were conducting their investigations.

The video shows the perpetrator hitting the man with an agricultural tool, and then pouring kerosene on his body and burning him alive. Raigar is seen warning that those indulging in 'love jihad' will meet the same fate.

In another video, which has also gone viral, Raigar is seen justifying the act as an endeavour to save a girl from 'love jihad'.

Speaking to IANS, SP Manoj Kumar said the police received information about a semi-burnt body lying in Ragnagar in Rajsamand district.

Without delay, he along with ASP Manish Tripathi and DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location where they found a badly disfigured body. Immediately the forensics team and dog squad were summoned. The agricultural tool used for murder, the victim's motorbike and his slippers were found at the crime scene.

--IANS

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Calling for an end to "corrupt practice" of electricity distribution companies (discoms) in states not billing the entire power supplied, Union Power Minister R.K. Singh on Thursday said failure to act will seriously jeopardise government's plan to provide uninterrupted power to all.

In many states, around 45-55 per cent of the power supplied by discoms was not billed, and the Centre would soon be putting forth systems like prepaid and smart metering mandatory to counter losses on this account, Singh said after inaugurating a conference of state Power Ministers here.

"Meter reading and billing are at the heart of our inefficiencies... that have made the discoms accumulate such huge losses over the year," he said.

"In 17-18 states, they are not able to bill up to 45-55 per cent of the supplied power ... how can the state discoms be viable in this situation," the Minister asked.

"Our responsibility is to give power 24X7, but we are not able to do so because we are not able to collect money for the power supplied," he added, drawing attention, thereby, to the widespread menace of power theft.

He said changes would be proposed to the Electricity Act, 2003, to remove human interface in these operations, introduce prepaid systems for power use to help poor consumers, and smart metering, as well as cap on permissible limit for factoring in discom losses in the tariff policy at 15 per cent.

"There will be no system of manual meter reading. We will do away with human interface and the consumer will pay via mobile for as much power that he can afford. For large consumers, there will be smart meters and auditing at the feeder-level," Singh said.

"Besides, it will be mandated that discoms cannot pass on the billing losses to consumers. We are discussing with regulators that after 2019, the percentage of loss permissible to be absorbed in the tariff cannot exceed 15 per cent," he added.

In a move to restructure the accumulated debts of discoms, the Centre designed the Uday scheme wherein state governments have taken over the debts. Till date, 27 states have joined the discom debt restructure scheme.

Singh said in case any discom continued to make losses even after these changes, the state could consider awarding distribution of its area to a private franchisee as in case of Delhi, where distribution losses have reduced significantly.

"I have told the states that if you adopt prepaid and smart metering your losses will come down to 20 per cent," Singh said.

Noting that around Rs 85,000 crore had been spent on the renewal of distribution infrastructure in the country, the Minister said he had told the discoms that, despite Uday, their viability would return to very poor unless they remedied their billing losses.

The power sector accounts for a major chunk of the non-performing assets, or bad loans, in the Indian banking system that have crossed a staggering Rs 8 lakh crore.

--IANS

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Militants have abducted the brother of a police constable in Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora district.

Police said the militants barged into the house of Constable Farooq Ahmad Khan in Ajas village of Bandipora district on Wednesday evening and kidnapped his brother Mudasir Ahmad at gunpoint.

Family sources said the militants were looking for Farooq Ahmad Khan, who was not in the house at that time. Police said a massive operation had been launched to trace the abductors.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar for calling him a "neech jaati" (low caste) man and said by this he has insulted all the Gujaratis who will give a befitting reply to the Congress by voting for the BJP in the upcoming assembly elections.

"They can call me 'neech jaati'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work," Modi told an election rally here.

He was responding to Aiyar who had earlier in the day called Modi "bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai" in Delhi. "He is a very cheap person. Has no manners. What is the need to do such dirty on this occasion (at the inaugural of Bhimrao Ambedkar research centre in Delhi)."

During the 2014 elections, Aiyar's "chaiwalla" jibe against Modi had cost the Congress dearly as Modi and the BJP exploited the remarks on the humble origins of the Prime Minister.

Targeting Aiyar, Modi said he came from a good family, has a number of university degrees, was a diplomat for a number of years and remained a Minister in the Manmohan Singh government, but was resorting to such insults. "This is an insult to Gujarat. Not just to Gujarat but to the entire nation."

"You are the people who discriminated on the basis of caste. Not we. They feel troubled. You call us 'gandi naali ka keeda'. You call us low caste people but we won't lose our culture."

He said Aiyar was speaking out of the "Mughlai mindset" that "sees everyone as 'neech'".

"They called us donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede...the people of Gujarat will give a befitting reply to such derogatory language. The Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in democracy.

"We have seen enough insults from them. They insulted me when I was the Chief Minister. They called me 'maut ka saudagar' and wanted to jail me. But our value system is strong. We have nothing to say to such elements. Our answer will come through the ballot box.

"I appeal to all BJP activists not to retort. But answer them on December 9 and 14 (voting days). My people should not lower their standards. We will teach them a lesson. Voting results would mean what low caste means when everyone votes for the BJP. You have lost your mental balance. I am not upset because I work for the people.

"You all have seen me. I have been the Chief Minister and Prime Minister. Has anyone had to hold his or her head in shame because of me? Have I done any shameful thing? Then why are they calling me 'neech'?"

Referring to demonetisation, Modi asked the crowd if anyone among them had lost money due to the note ban.

"Did you lose black money due to demonetisation. We cancelled registrations of 2.5 lakh fake companies. We found that some 5,000 companies had deposited Rs 4,000 crore black money during the note ban period," he said.

Hailing the work of BJP governments in Gujarat in the last two decades, Modi said earlier there used to be frequent powercuts but the problem has been solved now.

"We have stopped that. There were 700 sub-stations before the BJP came to power. Now there are 1,700 power stations.

"We are working to build modern railway station and airport in Surat. Surat is renowned in the world for its shining diamonds."

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Meghalaya, where elections are due early next year, on December 16 to launch the BJP campaign and inaugurate a party office in the state.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh was supposed to inaugurate the Bharatiya Janata Party office here on Thursday but he cancelled his visit.

"Modi will spearhead the election campaign on December 16 at Polo Ground. His campaign will boost the party's prospects in the state," state BJP President Shibun Lyngdoh told IANS.

The Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government has been in power for two consecutive terms.

The BJP, which had no presence in the assembly, hopes to win 40 of the 60 seats in the Meghalaya Assembly.

--IANS

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A number of prominent Muslim organisations, including the Jamat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), on Thursday condemned the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and said the move will hamper a "comprehensive resolution" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

JIH Vice President T. Arif Ali said the Trump administration's decision was "a clear violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions, especially United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 478 of 1980".

"We are deeply concerned and deplore the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shift the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," he said.

"It would destabilise the region, create conflict, offend religious sensibilities of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims and delay a just and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Ali said.

Condemning the US decision, JUH General Secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani termed it "highly provocative".

"This move will not only create unrest in the region but in entire Muslim community across the world. The US has not only ignored the international law but also ignored the international apprehensions on the issue. This move has also subverted the efforts to usher in peace in the region," Madani said.

"We also exhort the United Nations to convene an urgent meeting on the issue and protect the interest of the Palestinians, in keeping with its past rulings and conventions," he added.

Madani also exhorted the Arab world to "review" their diplomatic relations with the Unites States.

All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat President Naved Hamid said this "misadventure" by the US President Donald Trump needed to be condemned in the strongest words.

"The US is playing a dangerous game that would lead to unrest not just in the Middle East and West Asia but across the world. Being the place of the third holiest shrine of the Muslims -- Masjid Al-Aqsa -- Jerusalem holds a special sentimental value for the community," Hamid said.

On Wednesday, President Trump government recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said it would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The US would be the first and the only country so far in the world to do so.

Several past US Presidents insisted that the status of Jerusalem -- home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions -- must be decided through negotiations between the two sides.

Trump's policy reversal has drawn flak from leaders across the world with both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron saying that their countries did not support the move and Canada asserting that its embassy would not move to Jerusalem.

--IANS

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Neapolitan pizza making has been recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by Unesco, the organisation's intergovernmental committee announced on Thursday.

The culinary practice, which consists of preparing the pizza dough in four stages before baking it in a wood-fired oven, has been included in Unesco's list of elements that must be conserved for their important cultural value, reports Efe news.

The list, which includes other activities such as the Fallas of Valencia, flamenco and Colombian-Venezuelan llano work songs, seeks to mobilise international cooperation and assistance to enable different societies to maintain their cultural heritage.

A total of 12 elements from India, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Kyrgyzstan and Malawi were included in the list on Thursday, while six others were included a day earlier.

Currently, there are only around 3,000 pizza makers in the southern Italian city of Naples, which is why Unesco proposes carrying out cultural activities, during which young people can observe them at work.

Pizza making is considered an art as it requires a particular skill to make and bake the dough that is made up of just water, flour and salt.

In addition to the Neapolitan pizza making, Unesco also recognized the music of the Irish uilleann pipes, German organ music and the pottery of Estremoz in Portugal.

The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, comprising of 24 signatory countries of the Unesco Convention, decided to include these assets in its list to respond to the social need to preserve traditional arts and crafts that would otherwise disappear.

This committee meets once a year to examine the functioning of that convention, adopted in 2003, and to select cultural elements to be included in the list.

--IANS

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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday said it has arrested an arms supplier involved in the murder of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain in Ludhiana in Punjab.

An NIA official told IANS: "The agency has arrested Malook who is accused of providing weapons to the assailants who killed Gosain." The arrest was made during a joint operation by the NIA and the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Wednesday.

On Sunday, a team of NIA and Uttar Pradesh Police was attacked by a mob when it raided Nahali village in Ghaziabad district in pursuit of the accused.

Constable Tahzib Khan suffered a leg injury when the mob stoned the raiding team and even fired at them. The mob also damaged an official vehicle.

The NIA was also looking for Iqbal, a resident of Hapur district for giving shelter to Malook.

NIA teams are reportedly searching for him in the National Capital Region.

On Tuesday, Pahar Singh, 48, was arrested from his residence in Meerut on charges of supplying a home-made weapon to the main accused, Hardeep Singh.

The NIA earlier had arrested Ramandeep and Hardeep Singh for the murder of Gosain, 60, who was shot dead on October 17 near his house while returning after a morning RSS meeting.

The NIA took over the case from Punjab Police.

--IANS

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that Germany does not support US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

"The Federal Government does not support this attitude because the status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," Xinhua news agency quoted spokesperson Steffen Seibert as saying on behalf of Merkel.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump announced that he formally recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while ordering to immediately begin the process of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Although the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former US presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.

--IANS

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As many as 36 out of the 61 buildings of the University of Mumbai at its Kalina Campus are in regular use without the mandatory "Occupation Certificate" (OC) issued by the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation, rendering them technically illegal, an RTI reply has revealed.

The Kalina Campus at Santacruz east, close to the Mumbai Airport, came up between 1975-2016 in a bid to decongest the existing varsity premises at the cramped Fort Campus in south Mumbai, and RTI activist Anil Galgali recently sought information about the critical documents like commencement certificates, intimation of disapproval and occupation certificates of its 61 buildings.

"Shockingly, the BMC Building Proposal Department's Deputy Chief Engineer, Special Cell, informed that on the Kalina Campus, which is CTS No. 4094, a majority of the buildings do not have the mandatory OC," he said.

According to the RTI response, Galgali said of the 61 buildings for which the university authorities had submitted proposals, only 24 buildings have been granted full OC, while one building has been issued a partial OC.

These granted OCs include Ranade Bhavan, Tilak Bhavan, MJ Phule House, WRIC Guest House, SP Ladies Hostel, Dnyaneshwar Bhavan, C.D. Deshmukh Bhavan, Babasaheb Ambedkar Bhavan, Abdul Kalam Building, Phirozeshah Mehta Bhavan, Annau Bhau Sathe Bhavan, the Glass House, Animal House, Eurasian Studies building and the Vice-Chancellor's Bungalow, besides some staff quarters.

The lone building which has been issued only a partial OC houses the university's Cultural Centre on the campus, he added.

All other major buildings like Students Canteen, J.N. Library, Rajiv Gandhi Centre, Shankarrao Chavan Teachers Training Academy, J.P. Naik Bhavan, Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil Boys Hostel, MDK Ladies Hostel, Pandita Ramabai Ladies Hostel, Alkesh Dinesh Modi Gallery and many more continue to be in use without the requisite OC.

Following the RTI revelations, Galgali has written to Governor C. V. Rao, who is also the Chancellor of the varsity, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Education Minister Vinod Tawde highlighting the issue and demanded an enquiry into this major lapse by authorities concerned.

"The buildings without OC are frequented by thousands of students, officials and visitors daily. No OC from the BMC clearly implies that the projects may not have been executed as per the sanctioned plans despite available FSI," he said.

Galgali said that the fault apparently lies with the university authorities and the project architects, who should be directed to resubmit the amended plans, rectify the wrongs or shortcomings in the building projects and acquire the OC on top priority.

--IANS

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The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a notice to Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Ramachandra Prasad Singh and the Election Commission (EC) on a plea filed by the Sharad Yadav faction of the party, challenging the poll panel's order of granting the party's "Arrow" symbol to the faction led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Justice Indermeet Kaur sought a response from the Commission and Singh, a Rajya Sabha member from the party, on the plea and posted the matter for hearing on February 19.

K. Rajasekaran, the newly-appointed President of the Sharad Yadav faction of the JD-U, filed the petition, seeking that the November 25 order of the Commission, by which it granted the Arrow symbol to the Nitish Kumar-led faction, be set aside.

Earlier, legislator Chottubhai Vasava of the Sharad Yadav faction had moved the high court against the poll panel's November 17 order rejecting their claim to the JD-U symbol.

On Vasava's plea, the high court had asked the Commission to pass a reasoned order in the matter and on November 25, the poll panel had passed the order giving details of the decision.

The EC had recognised the Nitish Kumar faction of the JD-U as the "real party" and hence entitled to use the party's Arrow poll symbol.

The poll panel had said that the group led by Nitish Kumar had demonstrated overwhelming majority support in the legislature wing as well as in the National Council of the JD-U -- the apex organisational body of the party.

Sharad Yadav, a former President of the JD-U, broke away from the Bihar Chief Minister and JD-U President Nitish Kumar after the latter joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in July this year.

The Election Commission had referred to the Supreme Court's verdict wherein the apex court had upheld the principle of test of majority support in the organisational and legislative wings.

--IANS

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will once again be in Gujarat, landing in the state on the eve of the first-phase polls, to campaign in north and central Gujarat regions for the second phase of the state Assembly elections.

Gandhi, who had to cancel his previous campaign visit after visiting just one place in Anjar in Kutch due to bad weather and the 'Ockhi' cyclone alert, will be addressing more public meetings than scheduled during his two-day visit.

On Friday, the Gandhi scion will be visiting Chota Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Kheda and Anand districts, regions of the second phase of the elections. And on the following day, he will visit Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts.

Rahul Gandhi will be addressing a public meeting at APMC ground in Pavi Jetpur in Chhota Udepur district on Friday noon. Continuing with his temple visits, which the ruling BJP party has been scoffing at, Gandhi will go to the Mogal Dham Mandir in Ranesar in Ahmedabad district. Later in the afternoon, he will address a public gathering at the ground opposite Super Gas in Ranesar.

In the early evening hours, Gandhi will hold a corner meeting in Anand district's Tarapur and later another corner meeting at Kheda district's Limbasi near the Rice Mill.

In Anand district, Gandhi will be welcomed by local Congress leaders in Mangrol and Sojitra Chokdi regions, after which he will address a public gathering at Vyayamshala Ground, Loteshwar Bhagol in Anand. His night stay will be in Vadodara.

On Saturday, the day of polling for the first phase, Gandhi will be in Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts, the region said to be the Patidar bastion.

He will arrive in Patan district's Chanasma by chopper from Vadodara and hold a public a meeting at Harij around at noon. He will reach Banaskantha district's Vadgam by chopper and address a public meeting in Chappi in the afternoon. Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani is contesting as an independent from Vadgam constituency.

From Vadgam, Gandhi will fly by chopper to Vadnagar, the home town of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and address a public meeting in at around 4 in the evening. The place falls in the Unjha Assembly seat of Mehsana district. From Modi's hometown, Gandhi will take a Yatra Bus to Vijapur, another place in Mehsana district, the region believed to be a Patidar fortress.

At 6 p.m., Gandhi will address a large gathering in Vijapur on the Ladol road in Mehsana. The Mehsana Assembly constituency seat is held by the Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat, Nitin Patel.

--IANS

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There is rising unease about the fate of a Pakistani activist who has been reported missing since last week, the media reported on Thursday.

Raza Khan from Lahore disappeared after attending a public discussion on a recent, controversial protest by a hardline religious group, reports the BBC.

On December 2, Khan helped organise a small public event in Lahore which discussed the recent sit-in by a new Islamist political party.

The protesters, accusing a government minister of committing blasphemy, had caused mass disruption in Islamabad, turning violent when police attempted to intervene.

The Army had then facilitated an agreement between the demonstrators and the government, resulting in the minister's resignation and all the protesters' other demands being met.

Umair Vahidi, a friend of Khan who was also at the public meeting, told the BBC that it had been a "frank and open discussion".

"People shared their conflicting points of view... There was no hostility."

Blasphemy laws "and how they can be used to target minorities" had also been discussed, Vahidi said.

Vahidi told the BBC the discussion had finished around 8 p.m. on December 2 when all of the participants went home. That was the last he or any of his friends heard from Khan.

"I started calling Raza at about 1.30 p.m. the next day and his phone was off. We started calling his friends."

After being unable to contact him throughout the day, Vahidi and a group of other friends visited his house where the light was on which was "unusual".

The door was locked, he added, and "nothing was missing from his room. There were no signs of struggle... The neighbours, the landlord, nobody knew anything..

However, on a later search, Vahidi said they noticed while Khan's computer screen was still in his room, the computer base unit was missing.

Vahidi told the BBC that he was not aware of Khan having received any threats, but said he had told him some of the people attending his events "would sign the register with different names each time".

Meanwhile, civil rights campaigners have raised concerns about a crackdown on dissenting voices in Pakistan since six bloggers went missing in January.

--IANS

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The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) on Thursday urged the government to roll back an increase in compensation cess rates on cigarettes to revenue neutral rates, as earnings of tobacco farmers have cumulatively shrunk since 2013-14.

According to the association, the tobacco farmers were under extreme duress due to heavy taxation and adverse regulatory environment on the legal cigarette industry.

"During the last six years, the consumption of domestic Flue Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco has reduced substantially. The excessive taxation on cigarettes has given a huge boost to smuggled cigarettes," the FAIFA said in a letter to the Finance Ministry.

Appreciating the government's efforts focused on agricultural growth and doubling of farmer incomes in the country, the association, however, has said that the plight of tobacco farmers whose earnings have reduced sharply in recent years have been completely neglected and no relief has so far been provided.

"The unintended consequences of steep increases in taxation is demonstrated by the huge growth of illicit trade. We appeal to the Government to roll back the tax increase to Revenue Neutral Levels, consistent with the government's stated objectives. This will help curb illicit trade and increase the demand of home grown tobacco, save our livelihood and arrest further loss of employment opportunities," said Murali Babu, General Secretary, FAIFA.

According to the association, the entire legal cigarette value chain is reeling under pressure of the punitive taxation on account of year on year increase in taxes on cigarettes, which have cumulatively gone up by 202 per cent during the last six years.

This trend has hurt the FCV tobacco farmer, their families and 22 of them have committed suicide.

FAIFA has appealed to the government to take appropriate measures to protect the livelihood and earnings of farmers in the country so that unfortunate incidents of farmer suicides are not repeated in future.

--IANS

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Threatened by hydroelectric projects, pollution and fishing, Amazon pink river dolphins were now being tracked and monitored via satellite, an initiative in the Brazilian region to increase knowledge about a species on which little data exists.

Considered to be the "Ambassadors of the Amazon River", the freshwater dolphins were included by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in the category of animals about which there is "insufficient data", reports Efe news

Now, a group of governmental and civil organisations, headed by the World Wildlife Fund, have started to monitor the dolphin populations in the Amazon region's rivers in Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia, a project that can help fill the gap in knowledge about the aquatic mammals.

A select group of 11 dolphins are observed each day by researchers with the aim of registering their travel and activity routes, gathering information about their genetic profile and verifying, among other things, the extent of their contamination with mercury.

Following their activities is possible thanks to the installation of small devices on the dolphins that send real time information about the animals' location several times per day.

"It's a pioneer system in Amazonia. It had been done by radio, but this is the first time that it's being done by satellite and thus we're managing to follow the animals in real time," Marcelo Oliveira, a conservation expert with WWF Brazil's Amazonia Project, told Efe on Wednesday.

A total of five dolphins were being followed in Brazil's Tapajos River basin; one in the area between Colombia and Peru and five others in the vicinity of the Madeira River, in Bolivia and Brazil.

In addition to mercury contamination, researchers want to analyze the impact of hydroelectric project construction on the dolphins' behaviour.

In the Tapajos River basin alone there are 40 hydroelectric projects in the planning stages, the WWF says, and one began operating in October which, researchers say, could affect the animals' habitat and food sources.

Pink dolphins are also under pressure because of local fishing. Dolphin flesh is fatty and attracts "piracatinga", a type of commercially exploited catfish, and thus Amazon fishermen often kill the dolphins to use as bait.

The WWF estimates that there are between 20,000 and 50,000 dolphins in the Amazon region, although there are huge "unexplored" zones in the area and the figure is considered to be untrustworthy.

--IANS

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The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo 2020) on Thursday unveiled a shortlist of mascots that will be voted in the coming months by school children.

Three pairs of mascots were unveiled at an event in the Kakezuka school in central Tokyo, which was attended by the selection panel and some 116 students, reports Efe.

The first pair of mascots comes in the futuristic blue and pink representing the "tradition and innovation in Japan", according to members of the panel.

The second pair is in a more traditional style and represents the fire and the wind.

A fox and a raccoon, two very popular figures in Japanese folklore, form the third pair.

A total of 6.5 million Japanese children -- from schools in the country and abroad -- will cast their vote between December 11 and February 22.

The chosen mascots will be announced after the conclusion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February, with the selection panel subsequently deciding a name before a formal launch in July or August 2018.

The three final designs have been chosen from among 2,042 entries submitted from all over Japan.

The organising committee unveiled the official emblems for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in April 2016, after scrapping the initially selected logos over allegations of plagiarism.

--IANS

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The UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs met North Korea's Foreign Minister in Pyongyang on Thursday.

The meeting between Jeffrey Feltman and Ri Yong-ho took place barely a week after North Korea launched its most sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile to date, an action that may lead to a new round of UN Security Council sanctions, Efe news reported.

Feltman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday and it is the first trip by a UN official to the isolated country in over seven years. Ri held a conversation with Feltman, who also paid a courtesy visit to the Supreme People's Assembly (North Korea's Parliament).

The UN official was scheduled to meet other representatives of the North Korean regime to discuss matters of mutual interest and concerns.

He will also meet diplomats in Pyongyang as well as the UN team in North Korea, where the UN operates six agencies with 50 international staff.

--IANS

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United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the face of international criticism while asserting that he was "not taking a position of any final status" of the ancient city that is also claimed by Palestine.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking immediately after Trump's announcement, delivered criticism couched in diplomatic terms, saying he was "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres added.

Trump invoked the a 1995 law passed by US Congress calling for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to justify fulfilling his campaign promise. As he pointed out, his three predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, issued waivers putting the law on hold but he was now following the intent of the Congress.

While nations and leaders, from China to Pope Francis criticised Trump's decision and even US allies have refused to follow Washington's lead on moving embassies to Jerusalem, there was no noticeable political opposition in the US from even the Democrats. In the US, politicians are loath to be seen as anti-Israel and Trump's move was a challenge to his domestic critics to make it a major politically issue.

Trump's announcement muddies the diplomatic waters in the Middle East where his son-in-law Jared Kushner is engaged in a so-far unsuccessful peace effort to bring Israel and Palestinians together for a solution to the contentious issue.

"The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides," Trump said. "I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement."

While declaring that he would ask the State Department to move the embassy to Jerusalem, he added, "This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement."

"We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders," he added. "Those questions are up to the parties involved."

That leaves the room for Israel to have West Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestine has its capital in East Jerusalem, a territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East War, if there is an eventual peace agreement between the two sides.

Trump's announcement is directed towards his domestic base, rather than the world. Almost a year into power, he has failed to fulfill most of his campaign promises ranging from building a wall along the Mexican border to abolishing his Obama's health insurance programme.

The only high-profile promise he was able to achieve was a tax reform. Now he can add Jerusalem to that without his opposition turning it into a divisive issue.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

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Pakistan on Thursday joined the international community in expressing its strong opposition and condemnation over US President Donald Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the plan to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city.

"This decision represents a serious violation of international law and applicable UN Security Council resolutions... It is a serious setback to the rule of law and international norms. It signals a severe blow to the Middle East peace process as well," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

President Mamnoon Hussain said the move was "unacceptable to the Muslim world". Islamabad urged Washington to revisit its decision in order to avoid the potentially grave repercussions in the region and beyond.

Reversing decades of US policy, Trump made the declaration on Wednesday triggering widespread international opposition.

Pakistan called upon the UN Security Council "to take cognizance of this situation and take steps in accordance with the UN Charter". It further welcomed an announcement by Turkey to convene an "extraordinary" meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on December 13 to discuss the situation.

--IANS

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Rome, Dec 7 (IANS/AKI) Italian authorities have deported two alleged Albanian jiahadists accused of supporting a Salafite group and of abetting illegal immigration, the Interior Ministry said.

The first Albanian, aged 24 and resident in the southern city of Lucera, had posted numerous anti-Western messages to his Facebook page and had taken an active part in a WhatsApp jihadist chat, according to anti-terror investigators in Bari.

The suspect had also been in close contact with an Albanian foreign fighter and had clear ties to a Salafite group to which two Albanian terror suspects belonged who were deported from Italy last year, investigators said. He was also allegedly involved in smuggling migrants.

The second Albanian, 23, had close ties to the first suspect and to an Albanian criminal gang that trafficked migrants to the southern city of Foggia, investigators said. His Facebook page showed a picture of him wielding a pistol, according to investigators.

A total 100 Islamic extremists have been expelled from Italy this year and 232 since January 1, 2015.

--IANS/AKI

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Iraq on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying the move would put the region on the "brink of a new conflict," Iraqi Foreign Ministry said.

"We condemn the decision of US administration, which would put the region and even the world on the brink of a new conflict," Xinhua quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jafari as saying.

"This step will create an atmosphere of tension and deepen the state of violation that Palestine has suffered for a long time," Jafari added.

Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Wednesday also issued a statement and reaffirms Iraq's permanent position and support for the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people.

(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.)
Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday released a book on the late Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) chief Ashok Singhal, who played a key role in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Calling Singhal "one of the finest proponents of Hinduism", Naidu said he had sacrificed 75 years of his life for the benefit of the future generations.

"Despite being asked by many in Congress party to join the Freedom Struggle under leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Singhal chose to side with K.B. Hedgewar's Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh and dedicated his entire life to Sangh," Naidu said, according to an official statement.

He said that the book - "Ashok Singhal: Staunch and Perseverant Exponent of Hindutva", by Mahesh Bhagchandka - elucidates life, philosophy, vision, and ideas of Singhal, who was the VHP's international working president for over 20 years.

--IANS

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "step-motherly treatment to farmers" saying that he has not waived off farm loans and not given proper market price for their produce.

This was Gandhi's ninth question as part of a strategy wherein the Congress Vice President would put up one question daily to Modi ahead of the Gujarat Assembly polls.

In a tweet, the Congress leader said: "Neither have you waived off farm loans, nor have you given the proper price of the crops. Farmers didn't get the crop insurance amount and nor you arranged the tubewells for water.

"The 'Gabbar Singh' (Goods and Services Tax reference) whammy on farming. By snatching their lands you made the farmers workless. PM saheb please tell why step motherly treatment with farmers?" the Congress leader asked.

Gandhi has been putting one question every day in a bid to take on the Vijay Rupani-led government in Gujarat, where polling will take place on Saturday and December 14.

He previously put out posers on unemployment among youths, malnutrition in children, education, women safety, "undue benefit" to power selling companies, state debt and the Prime Minister's flagship 'Housing for All' scheme.

--IANS

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US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital triggered global flak, including from some of America's closest allies, amid fears it could strengthen extremists and destroy the region's faltering peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump's decision on Wednesday had made for a "historic day" and was "an important step towards peace". But furious Palestinians condemned it and warned that had diminished Washington's role as a peace mediator.

Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas called the decision "deplorable" and said it will not change Jerusalem's status as the "eternal capital of the State of Palestine".

Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza and the West Bank.

The hardline Hamas called for a "day of rage" on Friday and said the decision would "open the doors of hell" on US interests in the region.

In a landmark speech in Washington, Trump reversed decades of US policy in defiance of warnings that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital will derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and create further unrest in the Middle East.

Trump, fulfilling his campaign promise, said he had "judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the US and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians".

He said he would tell the State Department to begin preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump said the US still supported a two-state solution to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if approved by both sides.

Several past US Presidents insisted that the status of Jerusalem -- home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions -- must be decided in negotiations between the two sides.

The UN Security Council will discuss the issue on Friday after eight of the 15 nations called for an emergency session. The Arab League will meet on Saturday.

The Arab and the wider Muslim world, including a number of US allies, condemned Trump's announcement.

The Saudi Royal Court warned of serious consequences of such an "irresponsible and unwarranted step". The United Arab Emirates expressed "deep concern" about the repercussions of the decision, WAM news agency reported.

Lebanon's pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper declared "Death to America" on its front page on Thursday.

President Hassan Rouhani said Iran "will not tolerate a violation of Islamic sanctities. Muslims must stand united against this major plot".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the US decision was not only a violation of international law but also a severe blow to the conscience of humanity. Demonstrations erupted outside the US consulate in Istanbul.

Kuwait and Qatar, besides China and Pakistan, also came out against the US move.

India declined to comment, saying its position on Palestine "is independent and consistent".

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it was "a moment of great anxiety". He said "there is no alternative to the two-state solution".

Pope Francis called for the city's "status quo" to be respected, saying new tensions in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts.

British leader Theresa May disagreed with the US decision, which was "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron both said their countries did not support the move. Canada said its embassy won't move to Jerusalem.

EU chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced "serious concern".

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to "make it clear that we strongly oppose" the US move. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo too slammed the US decision.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, its final status is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks.

--IANS

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The two ends of the innovation journey are rich with literature: the early stage, associated with start-ups, emphasises creativity and cleverness, and the late stage, associated with large companies, emphasises scaling and discipline. The in-between pathway is scantier in literature-richness. I have contributed in this space through the new book, .
The decision of US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital and order the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would certainly trigger an upheaval in already volatile West Asia. The decision is intended to tip the scale in Israels favour. Historically, the full-fledged state of Israel was established after World War-II and the UN recognised Israel in 1948 and placed the holy city of Jerusalem under International Control in 1949. In a six-day Arabs-Israel War in 1967, Israel captured the eastern section of Jerusalem. In view of this, Israels parliament passed a law in 1980 saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but the UN rejected this decision. Thus, the status of Jerusalem remained a bone of contention between Israel and Palestine with both sides claiming the city as their capital.
Senior Gujarat leader from the Congress Ahmed Patel maintains he is not a chief ministerial candidate. Now posters have emerged in Surat ahead of the Gujarat elections that have muddied the waters. These posters show Patel and soon-to-become Congress president Rahul Gandhi together and the copy, in Gujarati, reads: "To maintain the unity of the Muslim community and to make Ahmed Patel the 'Wazir-e-Alam' of Gujarat, the Muslim community is urged to vote for the Congress." Patel, a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, has alleged the posters are fake and has accused the states ruling party of "trying to divert the narrative from its performance of the last 22 years to a divisive agenda". He was never a chief ministerial candidate and will never be, Patel emphasised.
Former prime minister on Thursday said the people of Gujarat have seen though the "lies" propagated by the BJP during its 22-year-rule in the state, and took a dig at the ruling party over the 'Gujarat model' of development, saying it only benefited the top one per cent of the society.

He also said the "achhe din" promise made by the BJP was "nowhere to be seen".

"Twentytwo years is a long time, and now the results are there for all of us to see. The Gujarat model of the BJP has only benefited the top one per cent of the society," he told reporters here.

Singh claimed Gujaratis have seen through the lies and the BJP's Gujarat model was being openly challenged on the streets of the state.

"Every community and class, except a few rich businessmen, are raising their voice against the inequality and injustice of the Gujarat model as operationalised by the BJP over the last 22 years," he said.

He said that in many critical areas of human development, Gujarat has "regressed in the last 22 years".

"On every social indicator, it has fallen behind states including Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu," he said, noting that if the Congress formed the government in Gujarat, it would change this.

"The Congress party has a vision for the people of Gujarat," he said.

Singh also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation and GST rollout, saying, "Modiji has betrayed the trust that the people of Gujarat had reposed in him."



The Congress leader also demanded that the Centre should release relevant documents and files relating to note ban.

"We must demand that the government release all the relevant documents and files related to demonetisation in the public domain and Parliament for security. We must avoid the repetition of such blunders in the future. India cannot afford such mistakes," he said.

He said note ban and GST have damaged the economy and caused a loss to the GDP, even as China benefited with 23 per cent year-on-year increase in India's import from China in FY 2017-18.

On the Ayodhya issue, Singh refused to comment saying that it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the matter as it was sub-judice.

"The issue is in the Supreme Court and I feel that it is not appropriate to discuss it. We (Congress) will accept whatever verdict the court pronounces on the matter," he said.

He also welcomed Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's nomination for the top party post and expressed confidence in him saying that he would take the Congress to newer heights.

The Congress veteran also slammed the Modi government for "not taking any action to curb corruption".

"It should take action, just like the Congress-led UPA government had taken," he said.

On the Centre's Jammu and Kashmir policy, Singh said that he was not aware if the government has achieved anything on the issue.
An overcrowded boat carrying devotees capsized in a creek in Pakistan's Sindh province today, killing at least 21 people including women and children, authorities said.

The boat carrying members of the Dawoodi Bohra community capsized near to Thatta city.

Deputy Commissioner Thatta Nasir Baig the accident took place as the overloaded boat lost balance and tipped over in a creek, 30 kilometres away from Bohara. He added that the boat was carrying passengers travelling to the shrine of Pir Pathai to celebrate a festival.

He said the boat was carrying 60-70 passengers.

At least 21 bodies have been recovered, Dawn newspaper quoted officials at the Mirpur Sakro Taluqa Hospital as saying.

Officials said the dead included women and children.

About 15-20 people were rescued and admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state, Baig said.

Commissioner Hyderabad Division Saeed Magnejo said that the ongoing local rescue efforts are being supported by coordination between Navy and Army units in the area.

According to local rescue officials, the passengers were devotees seeking to attend the annual urs celebration of the sufi saint. They are believed to be members of the Dawoodi Bohra community.

Chairman Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Muhammad Ali Shah said that one boat capsized at the Bohara jetty when the boat tilted over as passengers rushed to exit it. He said there were nearly 100 passengers on board at the time.

Shah said he had received reports of at least 40 bodies being recovered. These reports, however, have not been independently verified, the paper said.

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Union Health Minister J P Nadda asked chief ministers of all states today to adopt and implement the Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 to curb malpractices in private health sector.

The letter comes in the backdrop of incidents of alleged overcharging and negligence by Fortis and Max hospitals in Gurgaon and Delhi respectively.

Effective implementation of the Act, enacted with a view to prescribe the minimum standards of facilities and services provided by clinical establishments, would deter them from indulging in unethical practices and ensure that they discharge their duties responsibly towards the patients, he said.

Till now, five states including Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Assam, and all Union Territories except the NCT of Delhi have adopted and implemented the Act.

States such as Sikkim, Mizoram, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have adopted the Act, but are yet to implement it.

"You would agree that such a pertinent area should not be left unregulated. Ergo, I call upon you to adopt this comprehensive legislation in your state for effective regulation of clinical establishments and thereby prevent recurrence of such unsavoury incidents in the interest of patients," Nadda said in the letter.

He said the recent public ire, widely covered by the national and local media, over excess charging for health care services and professional negligence on the part of some private hospitals has once again put the issue of affordable and assured healthcare services to the citizens in public domain.

"As you are kindly aware the Government of India has enacted the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 and notified the rules framed thereunder. This comprehensive Act provides for registration and regulation of different categories of clinical establishments in government as well as private sector," he said.

"Alternatively, you may even consider bringing a state specific legislation in the matter if adoption of the Act is not found suitable," he added.

Earlier, the Union Health Secretary asked all states to issue strict warnings and take action against hospitals, including private ones, which indulge in malpractices such as overcharging and don't follow standard treatment protocols.

The bureaucrat also drew attention to the alleged malpractices by various clinical establishments in the recent past.

These include exorbitant charges, deficiency in services, not following the standard treatment protocols, etc, resulting not only in compromised patient safety but also concerns about transparency and accountability in healthcare costs, the health secretary said.

The clinical establishments act was enacted by the Centre to provide for registration and regulation of all clinical establishments in the country with a view to prescribe the minimum standards of facilities and services provided by them.

The act is applicable to all types (both therapeutic and diagnostic types) of clinical establishments in the public and private sectors.

Under the act, standard treatment guidelines are specified for 227 diseases, including dengue, chikungunya and malaria. The hospitals are supposed to abide by minimum standards in terms of infrastructure, services, staff, equipment and lighting arrangements among others.

A technical committee is to be set up to decide on charges for treatment of diseases and procedures at clinical establishments, including private hospitals.

Health facilities are supposed to display the charges for each procedure and facility to keep the patient informed in advance. Failure to adhere to these guidelines would result in imposition of penalty.

A premature baby was found alive after being declared dead by Max Hospital in Delhi on November 30.

Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon has been accused of overcharging during the treatment of a seven-year-old girl, a dengue patient who died in September.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley termed Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's 'Neech' remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi today as a "deliberate casteist statement", said his suspension from the party was "strategic" and urged people to see through "this game".

"Mani Shankar Aiyer's 'Neech' attack on Prime Minister-- a deliberate casteist statement, a convenient apology, a strategic suspension. People should see through this game," Jaitley tweeted.

Jaitley lashed out at Aiyar, saying his remark displays the mindset that "only one elite family" can rule this country.

Aiyar earlier today called Modi a "neech aadmi" (vile man) who does "dirty politics" after the prime minister targeted the Congress saying that parties seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's name tried to erase his contribution to nation building the party.

Reacting to Aiyar's remark, Jaitley said the Congress party has challenged the weaker and backward sections of India by calling the prime minister 'neech'.

"The strength of India's democracy will be displayed when a person of humble background politically defeats the dynasty and its representatives," the finance minister said in a tweet.

In another tweet, Jaitley said, "Mani Shankar Aiyer's 'Neech' remark against the prime minister displays a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the 'Neech'."



Earlier, Aiyar claimed that it was the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru who recognised Ambedkar's potential.

"What is the need for doing dirty politics on such an occasion?" he asked after the prime minister attacked the Congress while inaugurating the Ambedkar International Centre that was conceived 23 years ago.

The Congress tonight suspended Aiyar from the primary membership of the party and issued him a show-cause notice for his remark.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar today set off a political firestorm when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech kism ka aadmi" (a vile man), a remark the latter claimed was a casteist slur against him.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi promptly admonished Aiyar, who has often courted controversy with his off-the-cuff comments, prompting the senior leader to apologise.

Modi, who was on campaign trail in the Patidar belt of Surat in poll-bound Gujarat, quickly seized on the comments that may prove potentially damaging for the Congress coming as it did on the last day of electioneering for the first phase of poll in the state on December 9, insisting he was targeted over his caste.

Modi said Aiyar's remark was an "insult" to Gujarat as he once again sought to stir a sense of Gujarati pride among the voters.

"He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," Aiyar said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's but trying to erase his contribution to nation building.

Modi quickly lapped up Aiyar's comment to launch a scalding attack on the Congress leader and his party.

"Shriman (Mr) Mani Shankar Aiyar today said that Modi is of 'neech' (lower) caste and is 'neech' (vile). Is this not an insult to Gujarat?



"You called us donkey, you called us 'gandi nali ka keeda' (worm of a dirty drain), you called us 'maut ka saudagar' (merchant of death), you said I am of 'neech jaati' (lower caste man) and 'neech'. But we will live according to our 'sanskars' (values)," Modi said, launching an onslaught against Congress leaders who called him names in the past.

"This is a Mughal mentality where if such a person (who comes from a humble background) wears good clothes in a village, they have a problem," he said.

Modi said he was following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi who devoted his entire his life to the cause of poor and the "neech" (people of the lower strata of society". "I am sitting with the 'neech' and will continue doing so even if you find me vile, my caste low," he said.

Rahul Gandhi, who is all set to take over the mantle of the Congress president from his mother Sonia Gandhi midway through the Gujarat polls, ticked off Aiyar.

"BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Gandhi said on Twitter.

Chastised, Aiyar was soon on national television proffering clarification, insisting it was because of his poor understanding of Hindi language that he used the word, and tendering apology.

"I am told that 'neech' has many meanings, many connotations in Hindi, and if Mr Modi chooses to distort it to claim that it means low born, then all I can do is to apologise for having used a word that could be interpreted as low born. But that was not my intention at all and certainly not a part of my culture.

"Therefore, for the misinterpretation that can be given to the word, I extend my apologies, particularly since it is going to harm the Congress party's interests in Gujarat," he said.

Aiyar said he was asked about Modi's criticism of the Congress at an event and "the bulk of my answer dealt with Modi's very, very nasty remarks about the Congress party and Dr Ambedkar and I used the word 'neech'."



He said his "intention was not to talk of his (Modi's) family".

When repeatedly asked if he was tendering apology for calling Modi 'neech', Aiyar said,"Do I apologise about the word 'low'? No. Do I apologise about the word that is translated which says 'low born'? Absolutely yes."



The Congress leader said he does not think Modi was low born "but the language...I would say is very low".

Modi, at his rally in Surat, which has a sizeable population of Patidars, a section of whom are on a warpath with the government over reservation for the community, said people will give a befitting reply to the Congress through the ballot box.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also hit out at Aiyar, saying his 'neech' remark against the prime minister "displays a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the neech."



"The Congress party has challenged the weaker and backward sections of India by calling the Prime Minister as neech. The strength of Indias democracy will be displayed when a person of humble background politically defeats the dynasty and its representatives," he said.

BJP Chief Amit Shah said he was neither shocked nor surprised by Aiyar calling the prime minister neech.

"Yamraj, Maut Ka Saudagar, Ravan, Gandi Nali Ka Keeda, Monkey, Rabies Victim, Virus, Bhasmasur, Gangu Teli and Goon. These are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians," he tweeted.

Aiyar's 'neech' jibe at Modi was the latest in a series of ill-timed personal attacks by him on top BJP leaders.

His 'chaiwala' barb against Modi ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls gave the then BJP's prime ministerial candidate a stick to beat the Congress how with, as election results showed.

In 1998, he had called the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a widely respected leader, 'nalayak' (incompetent), a Hindi word considered a pejorative. Aiyar apologised after the backlash.

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Chief Minister Amarinder Singh here today inaugurated the 12th edition of Punjab International Trade Expos (PITEX-2017) with the promise of more steps by the state government, including a review of the new industrial policy, if needed, to ease the processes for facilitating business and industry.

In his inaugural address, the chief minister said the exposition, a joint effort of Punjab government and PHD Chamber that was initiated by him during his previous tenure (2002-2007), would pave the way for giving impetus to international trade and commerce, thus helping the state grow and making the region a hub of industrial activity.

PITEX, which will see 34 MoUs worth Rs 2,268 crore being signed to generate 13,370 jobs in the state, is expected to witness much higher footfall than last year's 3 lakh - an indication of the new mood in the state, said Amarinder.

He pointed out that since the Congress government had taken over the state's reins, MoUs worth Rs 50,000 crore had already been signed, with many more in the pipeline.

Reacting to the concern raised by PHD Chamber president Anil Khaitan, that as many as 32 permissions were still needed to set up a factory in Punjab, while setting up a power plant required 50, the chief minister said he would surely look into the matter and, if needed, relook the industrial policy to make sure that the 'Business First' philosophy is not compromised.

Lamenting that the state lost its industrial hub at the time of its division in 1966, the chief minister said his government was committed to rebuilding the same and was keen on industrial development across the state.

Pointing out that the state's agrarian advantage continues to exist, despite the problems faced by farmers, the chief minister said Punjab had contributed 51 per cent to the country's food stock even this year.

"It is time now to explore ways to expand the industry, which is essential for creating jobs and improving the lives of the people," he stressed.

Citing the incentives provided under the new industrial policy, launched recently by the Congress government in the state, Amarinder Singh said the state government was ready to extend all help and cooperation to industrialists from India and abroad to invest in Punjab.

Noting that institutions like PHD Chamber were playing a significant role in promoting Punjab government's industrial development schemes, he further said his government would extend all support to ensure the success of PITEX-2017.

Enterprising businessmen from India and other countries, visitors and buyers participating in this event would be greatly benefited, he added.

The Congress government, he said, understood the concerns of trade and industry and was continuously striving to address these issues to provide a conducive industrial environment not only in the state, but in the entire region.

Others present at the inaugural event including state government minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Media Advisor to Punjab CM Raveen Thukral, MLAs Sukhbinder Singh Sukh Sarkaria, OP Soni, Raj Kumar Verka, Tarsem Singh Attari, Sunil Datti, Harpratap Singh Ajnala, among others.

Apart from these PHD Chamber Punjab Committee Chairman R S Sachdeva was also present.

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An Argentine judge today ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Kirchner for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead, according to a judicial source.

The order also removes the judicial immunity of Kirchner, who served as president from 2007-2015 and is now a senator.

She has previously called the case an "absurdity."



"As happens regularly in Argentina, the was first leaked to the press and Cristina has not yet been notified," an aide to the former president told AFP.

The former president is accused of signing a deal with Tehran to allow Iranian officials suspected of ordering the attack on the Jewish center to be interviewed by Argentine magistrates in Tehran rather than in Buenos Aires.

Kirchner, 64, who had two four-year terms in office, is due to take her seat in the Senate next week after her election victory in October crowned a political comeback and granted her immunity from imprisonment in several corruption cases.

The Senate will now have to vote on lifting her immunity at the judge's request, for which a two-thirds majority is needed.

Kirchner's leftist alliance in the Senate has a total of 32 seats, but only around a dozen senators are in the Kirchner camp.

The center-right Cambiemos alliance of President Mauricio Macri has 25 seats in the upper house.

Judge Carlos Bonadio also ordered the arrest of former foreign minister Hector Timerman and several other former officials in the Kirchner governments.

The ex-head of the Federal Intelligence Agency, Oscar Parrilli, was ordered not to leave the country.

Bonadio took over the case after prosecutor Alberto Nisman, which was filed four days before his mysterious death on January 18, 2016.

The Jewish center bombing case is the most serious before Kirchner, who is facing trial in several other cases involving corruption and money-laundering stemming from her years as president.

Several prominent members of her former government have been detained on corruption charges in recent weeks, including ex-public works minister Julio De Vido and Amado Boudou, Kirchner's vice-president from 2011-2015.

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An Argentine judge today ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Kirchner for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead, according to a judicial source.

The order also removes the judicial immunity of Kirchner, who served as president from 2007-2015 and is now a senator. She has previously called the case an "absurdity".

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Suspected arms smuggler Malook, who is believed to have supplied firearms to those accused in the killing of an RSS leader in Punjab, was today arrested from the Uttar Pradesh-Delhi border, a senior police officer said.

A joint team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the UP Police was fired upon and pelted with stones by a mob on December 3 when it was carrying out searches in Ghaziabad to apprehend Malook.

The NIA is probing the killing of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain in Ludhiana.

According to Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) H N Singh, a team of Bhojpur police arrested Malook from the Delhi-UP border this morning and recovered a country-made pistol and three live cartridges from his possession.

In connection with the attack on the NIA-police team, the Bhojpur police lodged an FIR against Malook, Naushad, Shahzad, Rahees, Naubahar, Mustkeem and Trikat, and 50 unidentified men and women.

So far, police have arrested five people -- Malook, Nazir, Yusuf, Khalid and Naubahar, the SSP said.

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The Centre for Defence Studies, declared open by President Ram Nath Kovind at the Andhra University (AU) here today, is the first-of-its-kind in any Indian University that will cater exclusively to the education and research requirements of the defence sector.

The Ministry of Defence is providing a grant of Rs 60 crore for setting up this centre, according to Andhra University Vice-Chancellor G Nageswara Rao.

The AU had been running various courses for the Army, Air Force and Navy, and this Centre would bring them all under one roof.

"I understand that theCentre for Defence Studies will focus on cyber security, nanotechnology, radar and communications, corrosion technology, and other technologies that have strategic dimensions," the President said on the occasion.

"Professors and researchers from this University are collaborating on specific projects with DRDO as well as with the Naval Research Board and other institutions.

"Professors from Andhra University have also been used as R&D consultants for missile projects, including in the development of the Brahmosmissile. This is indeed an impressive body of work," Kovind added.

During his visit here, the president also released a commemorative stamp on INS Kalvari at INS Dega in the presence of Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba and Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Eastern Naval Command Vice-Admiral Karambir Singh.

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Gay couples will be able to legally marry in Australia after a same-sex marriage bill sailed through parliament today, ending decades of political wrangling.

There were loud cheers, hugs and sustained clapping in the 150-seat lower House of Representatives when all but four MPs voted in support of marriage equality, after the upper house Senate passed the bill 43-12 last week.

"What a day for love, for equality, for respect! Australia has done it," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House.

"Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it!"



The historic reforms will commence on Saturday, when same-sex couples can a lodge a notice to marry. They will then have to wait a month before tying the knot.

Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten hailed the passing of the bill as a uniting moment for Australia, adding: "Now is the time for healing".

"A time to build, a time to love, and is now at last a time for marriage equality," he said.

Same-sex marriage campaigners converged outside parliament in the nation's capital Canberra to celebrate the historic occasion, which sees Australia join more than 20 other countries in recognising such unions.

The bill was tabled in parliament by the conservative government after Australians last month endorsed the reforms in a controversial voluntary postal vote.

Nearly 80 per cent of eligible voters took part in the poll, and almost 62 per cent of the 12.7 million people who participated chose "yes" on their postal ballots.

The ballot had been called by Turnbull, a moderate who backed gay marriage, in the face of opposition from hardliners who refused to back a national plebiscite on the issue.

It was opposed by proponents of same-sex marriage, who wanted direct legislative action and argued a poll would expose gay people and their families to hate speech.

Just under five million people voted "no", with conservative politicians using their rejection of gay marriage as a catalyst to push for religious exemptions to be included in the bill.

But after lengthy debate, both houses of parliament knocked back amendments to the bill, including from former prime minister and staunch "no" campaigner Tony Abbott, on religious freedom.

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BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh here today and urged him to look into the law-and-order situation in West Bengal.

Singh is in the city to chair a meeting of chief ministers of the states bordering Bangladesh.

Sinha, along with other senior leaders of the state BJP unit, met Singh in the morning and discussed a wide range of issues, from the recent unrest in the Darjeeling hills to the overall law-and-order situation in the state.

"We told him (Singh) about the worsening law-and-order situation in the state, how the workers of the opposition parties are being beaten up and even killed. We told him that democratic rights and values are facing a threat in the state," Sinha told PTI.

"We urged him to look into the matter and take up the issue with the (West Bengal) chief minister (Mamata Banerjee) during the meeting today," he added.

Sinha said Singh was told about the "double standards" of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal as regards the Darjeeling hills.

"The state government is solely responsible for the unrest in the hills. On one hand, it is rewarding (rebel Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leader) Binay Tamang, who has police cases against him, and on the other, it is taking action against (GJM chief) Bimal Gurung.

"The state government's divide-and-rule policy in the hills will backfire very soon," he added.

The Darjeeling hills had witnessed an over-three-and-a- half-month-long shutdown, from June to September this year, over the GJM's demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland.

The influx of the Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants and how to curb it were likely to be discussed at today's meeting, which had been convened by Singh, a home ministry official said.

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BJP's Prasad Lad today defeated his Congress rival Dilip Mane in the bypoll held to the lone Maharashtra Legislative Council seat.

Though Lad's victory was certain given that numbers were heavily stacked in his favour, the election witnessed splitting of nine votes from the opposition camp of the Congress and NCP.

Lad secured 209 votes while Mane bagged 73 votes.

The bypoll was necessitated following resignation of former Congress leader Narayan Rane whose Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha is a constituent of the NDA.

Rane is likely to be accommodated as a Cabinet minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government.

In the bypoll, 284 MLAs out of the total 288 MLAs voted.

Among the remaining four, Waris Pathan and Imtiaz Jaleel of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musalmeen (AIMIM) abstained from voting whereas Shiv Sena minister Arjun Khotkar could not cast his ballot as he was disqualified as an MLA by the high court. Jailed NCP MLA Chhagan Bhujbal could not cast his ballot as he was not granted the necessary permission in time.

Out of the 284 MLAs who cast their ballots, two votes of the BJP were turned invalid, bringing the quota needed for victory to 142 votes.

On the eve of the bypoll, the tally of votes of the BJP camp, comprising the Shiv Sena, stood at 202 as against the combined Congress-NCP tally of 91 votes.

However, the saffron tally whittled down to 200 votes as two votes of the BJP turned invalid, whereas Lad finally got 9 votes more.

The Congress-NCP tally came down to 85 votes, as Congress MLA Nitesh Rane and NCP's Ramesh Kadam, who is in jail, hinted that they had not voted for Mane. Rane supporter Kalidas Kolambkar too had turned a Congress rebel.

Out of the 42 MLAs of the Congress, Nitesh Rane, the son of Narayan Rane, indicated that he did not vote for the Congress candidate. Out of 41 MLAs of the NCP, Bhujbal could not vote while Kadam voted in favor of Lad, besides abstention of two AIMIM MLAs.

The BJP-led saffron camp has 196 votes and managed to enlist the support of six more votes, bringing its overall tally to 202 votes.

Out of 196 votes, the BJP has 122 MLAs, Sena (62 minus Arjun Khotkar), BVA (3), MNS (1), RSP (1) and Independent (7).

With Lad's win, the BJP's strength in the 78-member Legislative Council rose from 17 to 18, whereas the Congress' tally comes down to 18 from 19.

The current partywise strength in the 78 member Legislative Council is as follows: NCP 23, Congress 18, BJP 18, Sena 9, JD-U 1, PWP-I 1, PRP 1, Independents 6 and vacant 1.

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A seven-year-old boy was killed by a leopard when he was sleeping in an agriculture field at Sakur village in the district last night, police said today.

The big cat dragged Kunal Ahire when he was sleeping near his mother.

After Ahire's mother raised an alarm, villagers rushed to the spot and started searching for the child, an official said.

Ahire's remains were found later.

In a separate incident, a 38-year-old woman was injured when she was attacked by a leopard in a cotton field in Chalisgaon taluka of neighbouring Jalgaon district.

The feline ran away after the woman raised an alarm and was joined by farm hands working in the field.

She sustained injuries to her neck in the attack, a Forest official said.

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Talks on Brexit divorce terms are making "progress" after EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker spoke by telephone with the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, and will go on through the night, a spokesman said today.

An early morning meeting in Brussels between Juncker and British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose efforts to reach a deal broke down in failure earlier this week, was also a possibility, Juncker's spokesman said.

"We are making progress but not fully there yet. Talks are continuing through the night," Juncker's spokesman Margaritis Schinas said on Twitter,



Juncker spoke first with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar then British premier May, the spokesman said.

"Early morning meeting possible with press point thereafter," Schinas said. "Tonight more than ever, stay tuned."



European Council President Donald Tusk was also set to make a statement giving a "situational update" on Brexit at 06.50 GMT, adding to the fevered speculation about a deal.

The EU earlier set a deadline of Sunday for May to reach a deal on divorce terms so they can be approved by member states in time for an EU leaders' summit on December 14-15.

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Scotland's nationalist leader accused the British government today of being "totally and utterly incompetent" on Brexit, saying the current situation showed that Scotland should be independent.

"This week, this Tory UK Government -- strictly speaking, it's a Tory/DUP UK government -- has been shown to be dissembling, mendacious and totally and utterly incompetent," First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said at a Scottish parliament session in Edinburgh.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was close to striking a deal on the Irish border with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday, until Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) expressed its opposition.

The DUP keeps May in power after she lost her majority in a general election in June, giving it disproportionate influence over the government.

Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, urged Sturgeon to use her influence to build momentum for a second Brexit referendum, claiming that London Mayor Sadiq Khan "is on side".

Sturgeon said the Liberal Democrats, who oppose a second Scottish independence referendum, were being "selective" in their support for referendum reruns.

She said that the case for a second Brexit referendum might one day "become difficult to resist", but that the immediate priority was to convince the British parliament of the need to keep Britain in the European single market and customs union.

"If Labour was to get its act together, and if (Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn was to get his act together, I believe that position could command a majority in the House of Commons," she said.

But she said "the real lesson" of the past week was that Scotland "will always be at the mercy of reckless decisions taken by Tory governments at Westminster" unless it became independent.

"The sooner we are in control over our own future here in Scotland the better, and this week has proved it," she said.

Scotland voted in favour of staying a part of Britain by 55 per cent in a 2014 referendum, and voted to remain in the European Union by 62 per cent in 2016.

The most recent polls suggests support for independence has risen to 47 per cent, and support for remaining in the EU is up to 68 per cent.

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The CPI(M) today accused the US of legalising the illegal occupation of Palestine's territories by Israel and demanded that the Centre strongly disapprove of the decision.

The CPI(M) politburo condemned the decision of US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shift the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Disapproving of Trump's decision, the Left party said the action went against the international community's stand that East Jerusalem was a territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

"An independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, is the internationally accepted position. The United States has taken the formal step of legalising the illegal occupation of Palestine's territories by Israel. No other country in the world has given recognition to Jerusalem as Israel's capital," it said in a statement.

The party held the US responsible for scuttling any possible peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

It warned that Trump's decision would trigger further tension and conflicts in the region with global ramifications.

The CPI((M) also slammed the BJP-led central government for refusing to criticise the US decision and said, "It shows the extent of servility of the (Narendra) Modi regime to the United States".

The party demanded that the "Modi government should come out strongly, disapproving of the US action, as it goes against India's long-standing commitment to the Palestinian cause".

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today filed a charge sheet against 16 people including senior officials of IRB Infrastructure in the sessions court here in connection with a land scam exposed by the slain RTI activist Satish Shetty in 2009.

CBI prosecutor Vijaykumar Dhakane said the 2,000-page charge sheet names 16 persons including IRB chairman and managing director Virendra Mhaiskar, Deepak Gadgil, authorised signatory of M/s Aryan Infrastructures (a subsidiary of Ideal Road Builders), revenue officials, land agents, lawyers and some farmers.

Based on documents received under the Right to Information Act, Shetty had filed a cheating and forgery case with Lonavala police in October 2009 against Mhaiskar and others, alleging illegal purchase of government land in Ozarde and Pimploli villages in Maval tehsil of Pune district.

On January 13, 2010, Shetty was hacked to death at Talegaon Dabhade by unidentified assailants.

While the land scam case was initially closed after the Pune Rural police filed a closure report, the CBI, after taking over the Shetty murder case, moved the Bombay High Court in August 2014 and sought permission to reopen the land scam case.

In January 2015, the CBI conducted searches at 21 residential and office premises of IRB and its senior officials in Mumbai and Pune and claimed to have seized some incriminating material.

IRB, in a statement today, said, "...it appears that the charge sheet focuses on alleged conspiracy to attempt to cheat for acquiring certain land parcels belonging to the government/MSRDC. We deny all allegations made against Mr Mhaiskar, Mr Gadgil... the company will seek appropriate remedies under law.

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Chinese courts today jailed 21 people including firefighters and government staff over a fire at a nursing home that killed dozens of elderly residents in 2015, the official Xinhua agency said.

The blaze, which killed 38 people at the privately-owned home in central Henan province, sparked soul-searching in China where enforcement of safety standards is often lax.

Three courts handed jail terms to the 21 defendants, including the legal representative of the Kangleyuan Nursing Home who was sentenced to nine years in prison for constructing an illegal extension to the property, Xinhua said.

The building contractor, who used flammable materials to construct the extension where the fire broke out, was sentenced to six and a half years while other defendants, including firefighters, government workers and nursing home managers, received terms ranging from 30 months to eight years, Xinhua said.

In the days following the accident, China's top safety watchdog said the facility had poorly designed fire exits while safety checks, fire and electricity management and the emergency response system were all found lacking.

Deadly fires are common in China, where fire safety regulations are widely flouted, with some property and business owners paying corrupt officials to look the other way.

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China said today an Indian drone "intruded" into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector which includes Dokalam, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of China's territorial sovereignty.

China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, (UAV) invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

However, there was no immediate response from the Indian Defence Ministry.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

"I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited," he said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

He said further details can be obtained from the Chinese military.

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", he said.

Geng declined to reveal the details of the drone. He did not confirm whether it has taken place near the Dokalam where the two countries were locked in a 73-day-long border standoff which ended on August 28.

The standoff ended after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to India's Chicken Neck corridor.

India had objected to the construction highlighting its security concerns. The road was being built by the Chinese troops in the area also claimed by Bhutan.

Asked whether the protest was lodged in Beijing or Delhi, he said he is not aware of the details.

"I know that China has lodged solemn representation to the Indian side," he said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department said.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers all most all of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua agency as saying.

"We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

The military's charge comes ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi to take part in the Russia-India-China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting to be held on December 11.

Asked whether, the drone issue would figure in Wang's talks with Indian officials when he visits New Delhi, Geng said the "goal" of the Chinese foreign minister's visit was to attend the RIC meeting.

"When he is in India he will meet with the senior officials of the Indian side. At that time, the two sides will exchange views on China-India relations and other issues of the common concern," he said.

Wang's visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is expected to be followed by the 20th round of India-China boundary talks in New Delhi between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who are the designated Special Representatives.

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An Indian drone has recently "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed, the Chinese military said today, asserting that the incident infringed upon the territorial sovereignty of the country.

China's Defence Ministry said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border.

The Indian drone "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department.

He did not provide the exact location of the crash. Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the 3488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC), including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua agency.

"We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

However, there was no immediate response from the Indian Defence Ministry.

The Chinese military's claim came months after India and China were locked in a standoff in the Dokalam sector after the Chinese troops began constructing a road near the Bhutan trijunction.

The 73-day-long Dokalam standoff ended on August 28 after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to India's Chicken Neck corridor.

India had objected to the construction highlighting its security concerns. The road was being built by the Chinese troops in the area also claimed by Bhutan.

The military's charge comes ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi to take part in the Russia-India-China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting to be held on December 11.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media here yesterday that Wang will meet top Indian officials on its sidelines.

This will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of second five-year term after Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is expected to be followed by the 20th round of India-China boundary talks in New Delhi between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who are the designated Special Representatives.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China on Thursday asserted its opposition to India's membership bid to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), saying there is no change in its stand and efforts were on to forge "consensus" among the 48-member elite nuclear club about the admission of new members.

"China's position on this remains unchanged," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media here responding to Russian deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov's remarks in New Delhi yesterday that Moscow was speaking to China for India's membership into the NSG.

"China supports the NSG to follow the principle of consensus through consultation through transparent and fair intergovernmental process to deal with this issue," Geng said.

China, a key member of the NSG, has been stridently opposing India's bid primarily on the grounds that New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its opposition has made India's entry into the group difficult as the NSG works on the principle of consensus.

China's repeated stonewalling of India's membership bid in the NSG has become a major stumbling block in bilateral relations.

After India's application for entry into the elite group which controls nuclear trade, Pakistan, China's all-weather ally, too had applied with the tacit backing of Beijing.

Pakistan's application came despite serious allegation of the proliferation of nuclear technology by its scientist A Q Khan.

Ryabkov yesterday said that Russia is unwavering in its support to India's membership of international nuclear control regimes and Moscow was speaking to China in this regard.

Asked for his reaction to Ryabkov's comments, Geng said all the members of the NSG supported the two-step approach-to fin a non-discriminatory solution that applies to all non-NPT countries then on that basis discuss the application of the non-NPT counties.

He said the focus is on some non-NPT countries who hope to join the group in the capacity of nuclear weapons free countries.

"At the same time they will not sign the Comprehensive Safeguard Agreement (CSA) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)" which is mandatory under the NPT, he said.

"In this circumstance, if we agree for the above-mentioned applications, it will have two consequences, that is to recognise the nuclear weapons status of the Non-NPT countries. Secondly, it will cause other than nuclear weapons free countries to follow suit not to sign CSA with IAEA," he said.

"This will subvert the NPT and whole international non- proliferation regime," he added.

China suggested that the NSG can pool the wisdom and further explore on this issue and find a solution which can be accepted by all relevant parties and can uphold the international non-proliferation regime with NPT as a cornerstone.

"On this we will further discuss application of non-contracting parties," Geng said.

Asked whether the issue will figure in the Russia, India, China (RIC) Foreign Ministers' meeting to be held in Delhi on December 11, Geng said that the meeting will focus on pragmatic cooperation. At the same time they will exchange views on international issues of common concern.
Technology giant Cisco will acquire Cmpute.io, a privately-held company in Bengaluru, for an undisclosed amount as it looks to beef up its cloud offerings.

"To help our customers optimise the consumption of cloud resources in this more complex reality and control cloud spending, Cisco is announcing our intent to acquire Cmpute.io, also known as 47Line Technologies," Cisco said in a blogpost.

It added that Cmpute.io is a privately-held company operating in Bengaluru and incorporated in Delaware.

"We expect the acquisition of Cmpute.io to close in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2018," it said.

Cmpute.io's software solution analyses cloud-deployed workloads and consumption patterns, and identifies cost- optimisation strategies.

The solution helps customers right-size their cloud workload instances and avoid paying for resources that do not deliver business value, the blog said.

In October 2015, Cisco had made its first acquisition in India by acquiring Bengaluru-based IT security company Pawaa for an undisclosed amount.

The US-based company has been aggressively investing in the Indian market.

It has also invested in over 25 startups in India, including Mobikwik and MobStac. In 2016, it had committed investments of USD 100 million to fund startups and train 2.5 lakh students in India by 2020.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maharashtra government has approved the farm loan waiver of 4.1 million farmers to the tune of Rs 19,537 crore till now, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today.

"Around 77 lakh online applications were received out of which action has been taken on 69 lakh applications after resolving the lacunae. The government has, uptil now, approved Rs 19,537 crore for 41 lakh farmers accounts," a statement issued by the Chief Minister's office said.

Out of Rs 19,537 crore, a sum of Rs 4,673 crore is part of One Time Settlement (OTS), the statement added.

Fadnavis chaired a meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee to review the progress of crediting of waiver amount into accounts of farmers under the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman scheme.

The CM asked banks to speed up the process of actual disbursement into farmer accounts and also insisted for more coordinated efforts in implementing the OTS.

Meanwhile, the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde claimed that the figures provided by Fadnavis were "fake" and asked him to reveal the names of farmers who have benefitted from the scheme.

"This is the seventh day of our padyatra. Till now we have not met a single farmer who received the loan waiver amount," he said.

He claimed that the foot march by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) against the government will have disastrous consequences for the BJP.

Munde further said that he saw crops destroyed by bollworms when he visited a cotton farm at Pavnar village in Wardha district.

"Instead of compensating the farmer for the loss, the farmer told us that government officials asked him to sell whatever cotton was left and pay the electricity bill," he said.

Munde added that the farmer, as a mark of protest against the state government, asked him to run a plough on a grown cotton field.

"Since the farmer forced me to do so, I did it with a heavy heart," he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Eyeing a return to power, the ruling Congress in Karnataka will embark on a series of state wide tours, in the run up to the 2018 assembly polls.

In the first phase, ChiefMinister Siddaramaiah will tour about 124constituencies, predominantly represented by Congress MLAs to launch a series of government programmes from December 13, KPCC chiefG Parameshwara said.

Following this, a team led by Pradesh Congress Committee will tour the remaining 100 odd constituenciesthat are not represented by the party in the current assembly.

In the second phase, all state Congress leaders including the chief minister together will be touring across thestate from March first week, he said.

"Dates are yet to befinalised. It will be party programme," the KPCC chief told reporters here.

BJP state chief B S Yeddyurappa has already embarked on a state wide tour-- 'Karnataka Parivartana Yatre.'



On the other hand, JD(S)' H D Kumaraswamy is visiting parts of the statein a specially designed bus under the campaign banner 'Kumara Parva'.

Siddaramaiah's state wide tour to launch various government programmes, where he will be predominantly visiting constituencies represented by Congress MLAs, has drawn flak from opposition parties.

Responding to the allegations that the chief minister wastouring for party propaganda using public money, Parameshwaraclarified that Siddaramaiah will also be visiting constituencies of other party MLAs.

"Wherever possible, chief minister will also be visiting constituencies of BJP and JDS MLAs," he said.

The KPCC chief also said the party will mostprobably begin the process to select candidates in about 15 days by appointing observers.

District in-charge ministers have been directed to take more responsibility in their respective districts.

Responding to a question, he said the party's central election committee will decide on tickets tositting MLAs and the number of people from one family who can get the ticket.

He also noted that the report on a survey conducted bythe party along with confidential report from the district committee is still awaited.

"They will all be considered while selecting candidates," he said.

Congress had earlier announced a survey to collect data to help it select candidates and decide strategy for the 2018 assembly polls.

He asserted that there were no differences between himand the chief minister.

Media reports in this regard were"false", Parameshwara said, adding, "we will tour together and take decisions together."



"In the last seven years that I have been PCC President,there have been no differences between us. We are workingcollectively and are fulfilling our respective responsibilities," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress has questioned Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's advise to farmers to not pay electricity bills if the latter felt the amount was inflated.

While addressing a farmers' convention yesterday night at Badarwas town under Kolaras assembly segment, Chouhan told farmers that they should not pay the electricity bills if they felt that the amount was inflated.

He announced that camps would be organised to remove the discrepancies in electricity bills. Pay only after discrepancies are settled, he added.

The opposition Congress, however, raised objections over this announcement as it came in the Kolaras assembly segment which is slated for bypolls.

On October 18, sitting Congress MLA from Kolaras, Ram Singh Yadav had passed away after suffering a heart attack.

In a tweet, Congress state president Arun Yadav asked the chief minister to extend this facility to all consumers facing problems due to inflated bills.

"Chief Minister, the election is to be held in entire Madhya Pradesh after eleven months. Also extend this facility to the common consumers immediately. You are chief minister of entire state. Don't extend this facility only in the areas going to bypoll," Yadav stated.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A court here today issued a non- bailable warrant (NBW) against M Natarajan, husband of deposed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala, and three others in connection with a case of evasion of duty while importing a luxury car from the UK 23 years ago.

The Eighth Additional Judge of the Principal Special Court for CBI cases, A Thiruneelaprasad, issued the NBW based on a November 17 Madras High Court order, upholding the trial court order sentencing the accused to two years in prison in the case.

The counsel for the CBI approached the court, seeking issuance of NBW citing the recent Madras High Court order.

Natarajan and three others were convicted for conspiracy, forgery, cheating and tax evasion and sentenced to two years in jail in the case by the court in 2010.

All the accused appealed against the CBI court order.

When the pleas came up before the high court on November 17, it had dismissed their petitions and directed the trial court to secure the accused and remand them in judicial custody to undergo the remaining period of the sentence, if any.

The case relates to the import of a Toyota Lexus car in 1994, declaring it as a "used vehicle" and thereby allegedly evading tax to the tune of Rs 1.06 crore.

The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate registered separate cases against Natarajan and three others after it was found that the documents presented by them were fabricated.

According to the CBI, Natarajan, his nephew V Bhaskaran, Yogesh Balakrishnan and Sujaritha Sundararajan substituted the original sale invoice with a photocopy of an invoice fabricated by changing the vehicle's manufacturing date to July 1993.

They cleared the car under transfer of residence provision, and thereby caused a loss of Rs 1.06 crore to the exchequer by way of short levy, penalty and redemption fine, the CBI said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Delhi court today issued a production warrant against a British national, in custody on charges of allegedly recruiting youths for al-Qaeda to carry out terror activities, after the NIA sought his presence in the court.

Shamiun Rahman, who is of Bangladeshi origin and against whom the warrant was issued for tomorrow, was arrested in September by the Delhi Police for his alleged involvement in recruiting Rohingya Muslims for the terror outfit and train them to fight against the Myanmarese army.

District Judge Poonam A Bamba directed the Tihar Central Jail authorities to produce the 27-year-old accused before the court after an application was moved by National Investigation Agency (NIA) seeking his physical presence before the court, which was supported by the advocate for the accused also.

The case was recently transferred from the Delhi police to the NIA.

The accused had moved an application before a city court alleging that he was sexually harassed by the jail security personnel and inhuman behaviour was meted out to him by them.

The court had sought a response from the jail authorities on that application.

The Special Cell of the police had earlier alleged that the process of radicalisation of Rahman alias Raju Bhai began in a jail in London where he was lodged on charges of rash driving.

During this period, he stayed at various madrassas in Kishanganj (Bihar), Hazaribagh (Jharkhand), NCR and other places, the Delhi police had said, adding that the accused had plans to set up base in Mizoram or Manipur to train the radicalised youths.

An FIR was filed by the special cell after his arrest under various provisions relating to the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Arms Act and Passport Act.

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The Allahabad High Court has held that cut-off marks for reserved category in a recruitment process cannot be decreased in a later stage just because some vacancies of reserved quota remained unfilled.

Dismissing a petition filed by Bhuvnesh Pachauri, an unsuccessful candidate belonging to the "Dependents of Freedom Fighters" (General) category, Justice Siddharth observed, "Petitioner participated in recruitment process and later challenged select list and prayed that cut-off marks for reserved category should be lowered to fill vacant posts."



However, once the petitioner agreed to the procedure of selection but was unsuccessful, he cannot turn around and protest against the terms of the process of selection, the court said.

Pachauri had applied for the post of junior engineer (Civil) for which an advertisement was issued by the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam on October 3, 2013.

He appeared in the written examination in 2014 after which only five candidates belonging to that category were called to appear in the interview.

The petitioner's contention was that according to law, 2 per cent seats were required to be reserved for the "Dependents of Freedom Fighters".

The total seats advertised were 469, hence 9 posts were required to be reserved for the aforesaid category, but only five candidates were invited for interview and all of them were selected, he claimed.

UP Jal Nigam's argument was that the cut-off marks for qualifying for the interview was fixed as 42, but the petitioner obtained only 34 marks and therefore he was not called for the interview.

Likewise, the remaining four posts remained unfilled because no one obtained the cut-off marks.

The court after hearing both the parties observed, "No relief can be granted to the petitioner regarding his prayer for lowering of cut-off marks for his social category of reservation. However, it is open for the petitioner to apply for reserved vacancies carried over for the next recruitment as per state reservation law.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior IAS officer J K Dadoo, who was serving as additional secretary in the Union commerce and industry ministry, has been prematurely repatriated to his parent cadre, according to a government order today.

The competent authority has sanctioned the premature repatriation of Dadoo, a 1983-batch IAS of Union Territory cadre, to his parent cadre, it said.

Dadoo was serving as additional secretary and financial adviser, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

In a separate order, the government said Manoj Kumar Singh, a 2009-batch IAS officer from Bihar cadre, has been appointed as private secretary to R K Singh, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power and New and Renewable Energy.

Singh has been appointed at the level of under secretary on co-terminus basis with effect from the date of assumption for a period of five years or until further orders whichever is earlier, it said.

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A Delhi-centric approach is inadequate to rid the city of air pollution, a group of activists today said and called for collective action for strict implementation of emission norms.

Participating in a panel discussion on pollution, they expressed concerns over emission of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and rued the "absence" of any mechanism to punish the polluting units.

"Delhi-centric approach is not going to help because you need to clean the air in surrounding areas as the city cannot be an island," Ritwick Dutta representing Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment said.

Referring to a study conducted by IIT Kanpur, Greenpeace India representative Nandikesh Sivalingam said the report held emissions of power plants of 18,000 MW capacity within 300 km of Delhi responsible for air polluting in the city.

The activists also cited RTI replies by 17 thermal power plants across the country to highlight lack of adequate measures to check SO2 and NO2 emissions.

"Even as the deadline for implementing new emission standards for thermal power plants notified by the Environment Ministry has ended, none of the 17 plants had provided for Flue Gas Desulphurisation to check SO2 emission and modify burner designs for low emissions of nitrogen oxide," Sivalingam said.

New emission norms for thermal power plants concerning particulate matter, SO2, oxides of nitrogen, mercury and water consumption, notified on December 7, 2015, have come into force from today.

"There is no mechanism to punish the violators who flout emission norms. The polluting units seem to have been given a long rope and and as far as implementation of steps to curb emissions are concerned, the agencies seem to be ready to wait till the end," Dutta said.

Indian Medical Association (IMA) president K K Agarwal explained the harmful effects of particulate matter on health and called for a "public movement" to deal with the situation.

"IMA has asked its members for a nationwide campaign against air pollution," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Senator Al Franken's political career was on the brink today after more than half of his fellow Senate Democrats demanded his departure over multiple claims that he groped women.

Franken -- a former comedian who made his name on the popular late-night comedy show "Saturday Night Live" before turning to politics -- has acknowledged misconduct with at least one accuser.

The 66-year-old Minnesota lawmaker apologized last month and vowed to work to regain the trust of his colleagues and voters.

But with six other women now reportedly coming forward to accuse Franken of touching them inappropriately, and the issue of sexual harassment reverberating throughout Washington, a chorus of Democratic senators said it was time for him to go.

That group include a dozen female and 17 male Democrats, among them the Senate's top Democrat Chuck Schumer, who heaped major pressure on Franken by issuing a statement saying he should step down "immediately."



It marked a dramatic and sudden show of unity against one of their own in the 100-member chamber, where the Republicans hold a slim majority.

"We must commit to zero tolerance," Heidi Heitkamp said in a tweet. "And that means Senator Franken should step down."



Two other Senate Democrats stopped short of openly demanding Franken's resignation, but said he should be held accountable and that sexual harassment should not be tolerated.

Franken's office said he would make an announcement today.

"Senator Franken is talking with his family at this time and plans to make an announcement in D.C. tomorrow," said a message on his official Twitter account.

"Any reports of a final decision are inaccurate."



House Democrat Keith Ellison, a close Franken friend in the Minnesota congressional delegation, said: "I think he will do the right thing and resign.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A group of dissenting Sri Lankan Tamil lawmakers has formed a new coalition to challenge the TNA which has come under severe criticism for going soft on the government's delay in delivering justice to the minority community, a parliamentarian said today.

Tamil parliamentarian Sivashakthi Anandan said the Tamil Liberation Alliance (TLA) has been formed to challenge the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which is the main political front for the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka.

The new alliance hopes to contest the forthcoming local council elections as their first endeavour.

Anandan, who represents Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front, said that his party along with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) of veteran Tamil leader V Ananda Sangaree have joined together to form the TLA.

"We cannot agree with the current TNA policies, there will be more Tamil parties joining the TLA soon," he said.

The moderate TNA and its leader R Sampanthan, the main opposition leader, have come under strong criticism from the Tamil nationalists for going soft on the government's delay in delivering justice to Tamils.

The TNA's moderation has meant they no longer espouse the cause for a separate Tamil homeland.

They have expressed willingness to work for a solution within an undivided Sri Lanka.

The Tamil nationalists allege that President Maithripala Sirisena, who was backed by them against Mahinda Rajapaksa's pro-Sinhala majority regime, has not delivered justice to the Tamils.

The government has said that its resolve to deliver justice to the victims of the country's three-decade long civil war remains firm and it is working towards making the reconciliation process with Tamils a success.

The UN Human Rights Council has criticised Sri Lanka's "slow" progress in addressing its wartime past and reiterated its earlier call for hybrid court of international and local judges to investigate allegations of rights violations.

The Tamil minority insists on a probe with foreign judges, saying that the Sri Lankan judicial system could not be relied upon to deliver justice to Tamil victims of the conflict.

According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to nearly three-decades long civil war in Sri Lanka with the defeat of the LTTE in 2009.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi Medical Association today took stong exception to the comments made by Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij in connection with the death of a seven-year-old girl at Gurgaon's Fortis hospital, saying it was high time politicians and the media stop making doctors the "soft target".

The DMA, the Delhi state branch of the Indian Medical Association, in a statement, also sought to defend doctors in another case at the Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, saying the clinical approach for "an extremely premature foetus of less than 24 weeks of pregnancy is not viable and non-survivable".

"It is high time now that the media, society, politicians, bureacrats, etc. stop blaming the soft target called 'doctors' for anything bad or any unwanted event happening and malign the image of the medical profession," the statement read.

A panel set up by Haryana government probing allegations of overcharging against the Fortis hospital regarding a case in which the minor girl died of dengue has found "several irregularities" following which the state government is planning to lodge an FIR, minister Vij said yesterday.

"In simple words, it was not a death, it was a murder," Vij had alleged at crowded press conference in Chandigarh.

The Max Hospital case pertains to a premature boy, wrongly declared dead last week at the hopsital where he was born, and who died during treatment at a nursing home in Pitampura yesterday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a bid to bring down poaching activities, two squads of sniffer dog will be deployed in the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve (DTR) soon, a top official said today.

The squad would be deputed in the Dudhwa National Park as well as Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary, Deputy Director, DTR Mahavir Kaujlagi said. Both of them falls in the respective Tiger Reserve only.

"A sniffer dog of labrador species with two handlers would arrive in Dudhwa by Dec 16," the deputy director told PTI.

Traffic India -- a branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) which oversees wildlife crime matters -- has arranged the sniffer dog squads, WWF sources said here.

Another squad would be deputed at the Katarniaghat sanctuary, Kaujlagi said, adding that the sniffers had been intensively trained at the Gwalior army facility to enable them detect wildlife crimes.

He asserted that the sniffer squad would be vital in ensuring safety of wild species in DTR.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A signed letter written by German scientist Albert Einstein to his closest friend Michele Besso, expressing joy at the success of his theory of relativity, has fetched USD 106,250 at an auction.

The letter is postmarked Berlin and dates December 10, 1915. It was originally estimated to be worth USD 30,000.

"The boldest dreams have now been fulfilled," Einstein wrote in the letter, rejoicing in his theory's success.

Einstein had set out the key elements of the general theory of relativity in four magisterial papers submitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences between November 4 and 25, according to the British auction house Christie's.

The postcard was a part of a collection of letters written by Einstein to his college friend Besso that was auctioned online at Christie's. The collection of 63 letters was sold for a total of USD 1,234,625.

Einstein's general theory of relativity is one of most important developments of 20th-century physics.

Published in 1916, it explains that gravity is in fact curvature of space and time.

Recent observation of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space and time - successfully confirmed this theory, 100 years after it was put forward by the renowned scientist.

The postcard, written in German, opens with of an intended journey to Switzerland, after Einstein was assured that his eldest son, Hans Albert, wished to spend time with him.

Einstein signed off the letter with 'greetings from your happy but rather worn out Albert'.

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The Karnataka government today urged the Centre to allow it to use the CAMPA funds for setting up an elephant corridor by acquiring private land in the Sakleshpur taluk of Hassan district.

The CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) fund is used for afforestation and forest conservation purposes.

"Farmers have come forward to give 2,500 acres of land voluntarily. This, along with the government land, can be utilised for the corridor, which will help widen the elephant habitat," Karnataka Minister for Animal Husbandry and in- charge of Hassan district A Manju told reporters here.

"The state CAMPA fund has about Rs 300 crore and we want the Centre's permission to utilise that amount for acquiring the private land," he said.

Manju said farmers were ready to sell their land as they had suffered a crop damage.

He added that more than 30 people were reportedly killed by elephants over the last five-six years in Karnataka.

Several representations were submitted to the Union environment ministry in this regard, Manju said, adding that a separate elephant corridor would benefit both the animals and the farmers.

Manju was in the national capital to take up issues concerning Karnataka with some of the Union ministers, including Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation D V Sadananda Gowda.

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Homegrown FMCG major Emami today announced to acquire 30 per cent stake in Helios Lifestyle, which owns male grooming brand 'The Man Company'.

The stake will be acquired by December 31, 2018 through infusion of required funds in Helios, the Kolkata-based company said in a statement.

The size of the deal was however not disclosed.

"The acquisition of stake by Emami is significant as it marks the companys entry in the fast growing online male grooming segment," it said.

Emami is present in the male grooming segment through its brands Fair and Handsome and HE.

"Rapidly growing male grooming portfolio supported by digital marketing & online sales is an emerging growth segment in the FMCG space," said Emami Director Harsha V Agarwal.

The Man Company offers premium men's grooming products in Bath & Body, Beard management, Shaving & Perfumes category and are sold online majorly through the company's own website



www.themancompany.com.

"Emami not only has very deep industry experience, but also believes in our vision to make The Man Company a global brand," said Rohit Chawla, co-founder, Helios Lifestyle.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today lashed out at his US counterpart Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying it would put the region in a "ring of fire".

"Taking this type of step puts the world, especially the region, in a ring of fire," Erdogan said in a speech to supporters at Ankara airport before heading on a visit to Greece.

"Hey Trump! What do you want to do?" he said, addressing the US leader directly in one of Erdogan's most familiar rhetorical habits.

"What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace!" he added.

There were chants of "damn Israel!" and boos from Erdogan supporters gathered at the airport when the president first mentioned the US move.

In a speech on Wednesday, Trump overturned decades of US policy with a decision to recognise the disputed city. He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Erdogan accused Trump of trying to be an agitator and said the decision "completely disregarded" the 1980 UN resolution on the contested city's status.

Turkey will hold a leaders' summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday in Istanbul to discuss Trump's decision.

Turkey currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC.

Erdogan said work continued for other events planned for after this summit but he did not give further detail.

Around 1,500 people gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday night to protest against Trump, chanting slogans such as "down with America!".

Erdogan said he was due to speak with Pope Francis on Thursday evening or on Friday, as well as with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western allies including Germany.

"This is now not just the duty of Muslims, but also of humanity" to oppose the move, Erdogan added.

He hit back at Trump saying that being strong did not mean that you were automatically right but that "the righteous are the strong".

Relations between Washington and Ankara have already been strained over the Syrian conflict as well as the US failure to extradite a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric blamed for last year's attempted overthrow of Erdogan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Courtesy of Cabq.gov

Almost four years ago, the United States Department of Justice announced investigative findings as they related to our local law enforcement agency, an entity known as the Albuquerque Police Department. The department, hereafter known as APD, had been accused of a string of civil rights violations that resulted in the unnecessary deaths and deprivations of Albuquerque citizens, criminals and innocents.

On April 10, 2014, the office of the assistant attorney general wrote the mayor of this town, Richard Berry. Ex Cathedra, the voice of the letter told a tale that includes the following language, right up front: Based on our investigation, we have reasonable cause to believe that APD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Section 14141 

The days that followed the announcement only seemed to confirm the worst. On April 21, an alleged petty criminal, a teenager named Mary Hawkes, was killed in an encounter with patrolman Jeremy Dear. The controversial shooting kept awareness of APDs problems highly visible and in Jan. 2015, the DOJ named Dr. James R. Ginger to lead and oversee the mandated APD reform efforts.

Its easy to forget about all those long-ago details (heck its only been four years folks and who in the hell remembers what they were doing that long ago!) and in the meantime, APD-involved shootings have declined, even as the homicide rate in town has risen. It would be keen to believeespecially during the holiday season when our cultures highest hopes center around the myth of the eternal returnthat just less than three years after that important appointment, substantive progress has been made in reestablishing a fair and grounded institution.

In idealistic terms, the reformed APD should by now be reformed and regrown, carefully and kindly bent toward helping citizens solve a myriad of problems from murder to domestic disturbances without fear of further civil rights violations.

But thats not how it turned out during the Berry administration. A series of missteps, a tendency to depend on the deeply entrenched status quo at APD and stern refusal to act with contrition hasuntil recent electoral developments changed the civic environmentmarked the reform efforts as chaotic, confusing and ineffective.

The election of a new, progressive municipal administration may just be what APD needs to regain its crime-fighting mojo and to establish itself as an institution devoted to serving and protecting this city.

On Tuesday morning, Dec. 5, Michael James Geier will officially become Albuquerques new interim police chief. Geier is a reform-minded police officer from inside the local ranks; Keller intends to preserve and strengthen his positive relationshipwhich resulted in an important election endorsementwith the local police and firefighters unions. These sorts of positive relationships, difficult to maintain in the realpolitk world of local governance, bring the hope for reform into the realm of reality.

Geier brings more than 20 years experience to a difficult job that has seemingly grown even more unmanageable during the last half of this year. Geiers crime-fighting and administrative resumes are impeccable and it is hoped he and his teamEric Garcia, Rogelio Banez and Harold John Medinacan bring some light to a situation that has been effectively been rendered foggy by the mists of time.

It was only a couple weeks ago, after all, that US District Judge Robert Brack struck a critical but necessary note in the ongoing reform controversy. In his 17-page opinion, found that the surreptitious recording of Gingers activities by high ranking APD officials came close to obstruction, noting that the decision to tape the DOJ overseer was, in and of itself unacceptable.

Its clear that certain members of the APD hierarchy saw Gingers efforts to be an existential threat. Former city attorney Jessica Hernandez repeatedly expressed frustration with Ginger regarding the departments involvement in the DOJ process, particularly at meetings where Gingers reform efforts were discussed.

Along the way it seems, Hernandez handlers decided, in almost a Trump-like fashion, that they needed some dirt on the federal reformer. The institutional belief that the federal monitor had an ax to grind with regard to his job investigating and holding accountable a municipal organization that demonstrated abusive, even murderous, policies for a number of years is as baffling as it is ludicrous.

But now the air is clearing. Gorden Eden is no longer at APD. City Attorney Jessica Hernandez has gone somewhere else, too. And our new interim police chiefwhom Keller says can apply to the national level search for a permanent placementis an ace. Hes a guy the mayor says is committed to better crime fighting, accountability in APD, and to restoring trust and community policing. In the midst of the unacceptable crime epidemic in our city and the ongoing need for reform, I'm grateful to share that our safety will be in the hands of a chief with a rare combination of qualities."

Lets hope that Geier can look past departmental loyalties, ideological boundaries and learn from the tragic, bloody and unkempt past as he pursues Kellers vision of community policing and justice for all.

As Judge Brack noted in his admonitions to the citys leadership, Lets hit the reset button.  These games arent acceptable. The officers  and the citizens deserve better.
Lt Governor Anil Baijal has directed the revenue department of the Delhi government to examine a complaint regarding reconstitution of a Waqf Board and submit a report on the issue.

The move cames a week after a delegation of the BJP MLAs, led by Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta, submitted a memorandum to the Lt Governor, alleging reconstitution of the Delhi Waqf Board by the AAP government by "violating" laid down rules.

"The Lt Governor has desired that matter (regarding Gupta's complaint) may be examined as per rules, and comments be submitted to this secretariat for his kind perusal through proper channel," Anoop Thakur, private secretary to the Lt Governor, said in a written statement to the revenue secretary.

On November 27, the BJP legislators had raised the issue of reconstitution of the Delhi Waqf Board by the AAP government before Baijal and sought his intervention in the matter.

"The Delhi government is bent on reconstituting the Waqf Board in utter violation of the Waqf Act 1995 and the Waqf (Amendment) Act of 2013, throwing moral propriety and ethical considerations to the winds," Gupta had said in a statement after meeting the Lt Governor.

He also charged that Amantullah Khan, the former chairman of the Waqf Board, was being reappointed to the post.

Khan is facing cases of "criminal breach of trust" which are being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation , he had also alleged.

The Delhi Waqf Board comprises seven members, who elect the chairman. Khan was elected as a member of the board last month.

The AAP MLA was the chairman of the Waqf Board for 6 months last year.

He had resigned amid allegations of irregularities during his tenure and raids on the office of the board by the Anti- Corruption Branch in September last year.

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Rajasthan aims to increase exports three-fold by 2022, state Industry Minister Rajpal Singh Shekhawat said.

He said the government is going to introduce an export promotion policy in one month which will be focused on increasing the exports three-fold by 2022.

The minister said exports from the state stood at Rs 46,000 crore in 2016.

"With the implementation of the export promotion policy, we aim to increase the export to Rs 1.21 lakh crore in the year 2022 from Rajasthan," the minister told reporters.

He said the government in the last four years has made efforts to boost investments and economic growth.

He added that close to 60 per cent of the investment commitments made during the Resurgent Rajasthan Summit in 2015 have been materialised or are under process.

The minister also said the government has prepared a detailed project report for an effluent treatment plant in Bhiwadi in Alwar district which will be sent to the Centre for approval.

"The state government will bear 25 per cent of the project cost and the Centre will be bear 50 per cent cost. Rest 25 per cent cost will be borne by a trust of industrialists in Bhiwadi," he said.

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For the fans of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), the end of the ban period from Indian Premier League is a big step forward as they look forward to seeing the 'Men in Yellow' back at their den, M A Chidambaram Stadium here.

In more good news, the IPL governing council announced that a franchise could retain up to five players by virtue of a combination of player retention (pre-player auction) and right to match (RTM) (during the player auction).

This meant CSK's biggest name - Mahendra Singh Dhoni would be back in the team colours.

CSK, one of the most successful franchises in IPL, is expected to have Dhoni, who played for Rising Pune Supergiant for two years, back as the captain.

Fans are hoping that the franchise would be able to retain Suresh Raina, another CSK marquee and Ravindra Jadeja to start with.

Meanwhile, CSK's whole-time director K George John said it was wonderful for the franchise and fans and hoped to have the core team back.

"We are very happy.. It has always been our wish to have the core team back and it will be wonderful for the fans, who have supported CSK all the while," he told PTI.

He said the franchise would decide on how to go about the retention after a meeting.

"We would love to have Dhoni back as he has been one of the pillars of CSK," John said about the ace 'keeper-batsmen, who has a huge fan following in the city.

H Saravanan, a CSK fan said he was overjoyed that the IPL GC had allowed five retentions adding it would allow the team's supporters here to see 'Thala' Dhoni back in action at the MAC.

"I am delighted.. We have been waiting to see the Super Kings back on the field at MAC. Nothing like watching 'Thala' (Dhoni) led the team," he said.

Saravanan, who is famous for his body painting and wig said, "World over, fans have been waiting for the return of CSK. We wish the team retains 'Chinna Thala' Raina, Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo apart from Dhoni."



"We will be back with a bang. I am looking forward to the auction to see what squad CSK gets," he said.

Another city resident A R R Sriram, a die-hard fan of the franchise said he was happy to see MSD back in the yellow jersey.

"With IPL GC allowing players to retain, I am excited to see MS in yellow jersey.. I am sure the management will retain Dhoni and Raina too.. It would be a double delight."



"Can't wait to cheer for our men in yellow at Chepauk in the opening match," he signed off.

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Hundreds of fisherfolk today staged a rail roko at Kuzhithurai railway station on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border demanding steps to trace more than 1000 fishermen reportedly missing after they put to sea from Kanyakumari.

About 5000 people, including women and children, squatted on the rail track protesting alleged failure of the Tamil Nadu government on taking steps to trace those missing following cyclone Ockhi.

Protesters also blocked the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari national highway.

People from nine coastal panchayats of Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu were staging the protest.

A Johan Leonard, President of an outfit, the 'Naithal Ezhuchi Peravai', spearheading the agitation, said more than 1000 fishermen, who ventured into the sea in 112 boats, are yet to come back.

More concern was about those who had gone in about 150-250 roofless small fishing boats, he said.

"There was no information about them."



They had left Thenkaipattanam harbour in Kanyakumari district few days before cyclone Ockhi hit the coast on November 29-30, he said.

Leonard alleged that the Tamil Nadu government was not doing anything to locate the missing fishermen.

"The stir would continue till the state and Centre take steps to trace the missing persons," he added.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami had yesterday held a review meeting with senior officials of Indian Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard on rescuing missing fishermen from the state.

A government release, quoting the meeting, said most of the fishermen who could not return to shore following cyclone Ockhi have been rescued by joint efforts of the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard in association with the state government.

The chief minister insisted that the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard should continue with coordinated search and rescue in the Arabian sea till the fishermen were rescued.

Following the rail roko, railway cancelled two passenger trains between Kanayakumari and Thiruvananthapuram.

It also regulated express trains including Bengaluru-Kanayakumari in view of the agitation, a railway spokesperson said.

Train services have been regulated between Parassala in Kerala and Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu, the spokesperson added.

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France today welcomed the International Solar Alliance (ISA) achieving the status of a global organisation, saying the progress was in line with the efforts to combat climate change.

The ISA was launched by India and France at the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015.

Its goal is to facilitate large-scale deployment of solar energy in 121 countries in the area between the tropics by aggregating the demand for funding, technology and innovation.

"I welcome the achievement by the International Solar Alliance of status as an international organisation. The framework agreement defining its statutes has been signed by 46 countries and ratified by 19 of them," Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.

It was released to media here by the French Embassy.

"This progress is in line with the efforts to combat climate change, which will be central to the One Planet Summit on December 12 in Paris.

"It is one of the most promising coalitions for combating climate change. It is also the first international organisation on the Indian subcontinent," the statement said.

Australia has also joined the ISA, it said yesterday, adding that its entering of the alliance will support the government's commitment to clean energy cooperation and help meet the Paris Agreement emission targets.

The ISA will "deepen cooperation on solar research, reduce technology costs and harmonise international standards", Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop said in a statement which was released to the media by the Australian High Commission here.

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Battered by cyclone Ockhi, Kerala will forgo the inaugural ceremony of its mega film festival which opens here tomorrow, organisers said.

The 22nd edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) will open with the French-Lebanese film, "The Insult", which explores the lives of refugees in Arab countries.

The festival will begin on a quiet note without the opening ceremony as the southern state is yet to recover from the cyclone which hit the Kerala coast last week, claiming 36 lives and causing widespread damage.

Directed by Lebanese filmmaker Ziad Doueiri, the opening film bagged the Volpi Cup at the Venice International Film Festival and would be screened tomorrow evening, marking the start of the festival, organising body Kerala Film Academy said.

Bengali actress Madhabi Mukherjee, the star of Satyajit Ray's 1964 film "Charulata", and South Indian actor Prakash Raj are expected to attend the first screening.

The Kerala government had yesterday said the controversial Malayalam movie "S Durga" would be screened at the festival if it got a clearance from the Kerala high court.

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had cancelled the certification of the film on November 28.

The film's producer and director have challenged the suspension of the certificate in the Kerala High Court.

According to the Academy, 190 films from 65 countries would be screened at the one week-long gala.

The competition section includes 14 films, of which two are in Malayalam.

Films will be shown in 20 different categories such as 'Indian Cinema Today', 'Malayalam Films Today', 'Contemporary Masters in Focus', 'Retrospective' and 'Identity and Space'.

This year, films from Brazil will be the 'Country Focus'.

Six films curated by film scholar Stefan Solomon will be exhibited in this section, Academy sources said.

The festival would screen the films of 35 women directors under various categories and these would focus on the subject of 'Being Woman'.

Four of the 14 films in the 'International Competition' section have been made by women.

Rima Das is the only woman director in the 'Indian Cinema Now' section.

In the 'Uprooted: Films on identity and space' category, Geethu Mohandass film "Liar's Dice" will be screened.

Bengali award-winning filmmaker Aparna Sen, who will deliver the Aravindan Memorial lecture, will also screen her latest feature film "Sonata", which is about three unmarried women living in a metropolis.

Marco Mueller, who was festival director at various international film festivals, is the jury chairman of IFFK this year.

Filmmakers T V Chandran, Colombian actor Marlon Moreno, French editor Mary Stephen and African cinema scholar and film critic Aboubakar Sanogo are also on the jury.

The festival will pay homage to cinema personalities K R Mohanan, I V Sasi, Kundan Shah and Om Puri, who died this year, and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

A total of 8,848 seats have been arranged in various theatres in the town for the festival, which would conclude on December 15, Academy sources added.

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A BPCL pipeline carrying diesel from Manmad in Nashik district to Mumbai was allegedly breached by unidentified fuel thieves in Niphad taluka, police said today.

The incident came to light at around 6 A.M, but by then hundreds of litres of diesel had flowed alongside Mumbai-Manmad road.

The leak was plugged by 11 A.M, a police official said.

According to an official from Sykheda police station in Nashik district, the rupture caused the fuel wastage running into thousands of litres.

He, however, said the leakage came to notice late last night in Khangaon Thadi area.

"Thousands of litres of diesel entered nearby agriculture fields as well as the Godavari river," the official claimed.

After the leakage was reported , BPCL officials rushed to the spot while the police cordoned off the area.

Fire tenders have been stationed around the area, the official said.

Both BPCL and Indian Oil Corporation have fuel storage depots at Panewadi near Manmad in Nashik district.

Tankers transport petrol and diesel from Panewadi to various destinations.

A case was being registered in Sykheda police station.

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Army chief General Bipin Rawat today held extensive talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart Abu Belal Muhammad on ways to further deepen the cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.

They deliberated on enhancing cooperation in ensuring adequate cooperation between security forces of the two countries, guarding the India-Bangladesh border, official sources here said.

A number of key issues related to defence and security were discussed in the meeting, they said.

They also discussed issues of mutual concern, a senior Army official said.

The Bangladeshi Army chief is currently on a visit to India.

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Germany's center-left Social Democrats agreed today to open talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives on whether to renew their governing coalition or at least to support a minority government.

Party leader Martin Schulz, Merkel's defeated challenger in Germany's Sept 24 election, secured a party congress's agreement to a motion calling for talks on "whether and in what form" the party could support a new government.

Delegates voted down a call from party's youth wing to explicitly rule out a repeat of the "grand coalition" of Germany's biggest parties in which the Social Democrats have been junior partners since 2013.

But the road to a new government is likely to be lengthy and bumpy, a several-hour debate revealed little enthusiasm for a coalition.

Schulz had insisted after the Social Democrats' disastrous election result in September that the party would go into opposition.

He said he still wouldn't contemplate joining a new coalition after Merkel's talks with two smaller parties collapsed last month. But President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made clear he doesn't want a new election, and Schulz reversed course.

Schulz told today's previously scheduled congress that the leadership's plan for talks, which he hopes to start next week, "takes no option off the table" and wouldn't automatically lead to a coalition.

"We don't have to govern at any price, but we also shouldn't want not to govern at any price," he said. "What is important is what we can implement."



Schulz has promised a ballot of the party's entire membership on any coalition deal with Merkel's Union bloc.

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Regulators from around the world tied off the final round of new regulations for banks in Frankfurt on Thursday, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said in a statement, closing a saga begun at the height of the financial crisis.

Completing the so-called "Basel III" reforms "represents a major milestone that will make the capital framework more robust and improve confidence in banking systems," European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said after the meeting, which brought together regulators and central banks from major advanced economies like the United States and the European Union as well as emerging nations such as China, India and Brazil.

The committee -- named after its headquarters at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland -- agreed a final set of rules to complete a new round of bank regulation begun in mid-2010.

They include compromises on how regulators treat the risks banks run from their lending business, from financial market activities and from "operational risks" ranging from human error to acts of God.

In particular, the deal puts an end to EU-US wrangling over how should be calculated the amount of capital banks should keep on hand to weather financial shocks.

And the supervisors and central bankers also pushed back deadlines, giving lawmakers time to implement the new global rules and banks time to prepare for their application.

"Now that the Basel III regulatory reform agenda is complete, we must focus on the important task of ensuring the standards are implemented consistently around the world," Basel Committee chairman and Swedish central bank chief Stefan Ingves said.

Most of the changes are expected to only take effect from 2022.

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will soon have night landing facility, Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha said here today and batted for connecting the Valley directly to international destinations like Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.

"My endeavour will be to have international flights in Srinagar by the time tourist season starts in May-June," the minister told reporters while replying to queries.

The minister, who was speaking at the day-long Ideas Summit 2017 of entrepreneurs, announced that the ministry is exploring the possibility of a new airport in Jammu region, preferably in Katra so that Vaishno Devi pilgrims are also benefited.

On Srinagar airport, he said most of the arrangements for night landing at the airport here have been completed.

"We are going to be working very hard to get night landing done in Srinagar as soon as possible. We are going to build approach lights so that landing takes place in night and they also help in safer landing even in low visibility.

"I have been told that most of the arrangements for night landing have been done and the approach lights will be readied soon and it will be implemented. This will happen in just a few months and should not take more than that," Sinha said.

Sinha said Srinagar needs to be connected directly to other destinations across the country as well as internationally.

"We need to connect Srinagar directly to other major hubs and destinations and these include places like Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.

"I cannot give you a firm commitment on this, but we are going to do our level best to enable Srinagar to get connected towards the east to Kuala Lumpur and we are going to see a possibility to connect you to Dubai as well," he said at the event organised by Foundation for Resource Development and Education (FRDE) at SKICC.

"Of course, we have some over-flight issue as you know, I will try for that. But east is not an issue, therefore as far as Kuala Lumpur is concerned, through Air Asia, I am sure in six months we will have it done," he said.

The Union minister of state for civil aviation said a scheme like Udaan will be devised for connecting Srinagar with other major cities especially in the peak tourist season.

"We were also discussing about ways in which we can connect Srinagar with direct flights particularly during the tourist season to other major cities of this country, so whether it is Ahmedabad or Chennai, these cities deserve direct flights to Srinagar," he said.

The initiative will be sponsored by the Centre and the state in partnership so that more tourists can be brought comfortably to Srinagar, he said.

He said about 40 flights operate at in the peak season but with these changes, it can have many more flights and that would help tourists, business people and craftsmen to Kashmir.

Sinha also announced that cargo facilities would be expanded at .

He also said the ministry would explore the possibility of building a pilot training facility in Srinagar and a flight simulator as well.

Asked about the surge in airfare especially during the peak tourist season in the Valley, the Union minister said, "We have investigated the surge in pricing and we found out that only one or two per cent of fares increase whether in Srinagar or elsewhere in the country".

Asked if the civil aviation ministry has discussed with the Ministry of Defence about converting Srinagar airport into a civil airport, Sinha said, "No, I have not discussed this with Ministry of Defence. So I cannot speak on it. But since you have raised this issue.. we will see the status of that."



He said the ministry has undertaken many developmental works at Jammu airport.

"It has a new terminal, now the work on runway will start. There has been an expansion.

"We have held discussions with Chief Minister (Mehbooba Mufti) and her deputy about a new airport in Jammu preferably in Katra so that Vaishno Devi pilgrims are also benefited," he said.

Asked about his father and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha's statements on Kashmir and his suggestion that the Centre should talk to separatists, the Union minister said he fully supports the policies of the government and his father is free to express his views as an independent person.

"I have full faith and confidence in the prime minister, the home minister and all of the senior leaders of my party. I fully support the policies of the government and I am fully backing all of those policies," he said.

"As far as my father is concerned, he is an independent person, he has his own independent views and of course as a citizen in our democratic country, he has full rights to express his views and pursue his thinking," Jayant Sinha said.

The minister shared many ideas with the audience while speaking on entrepreneurship and assured the business community of government support.
The battle for Rajkot-West seat, the traditional BJP fortress, could be a cliffhanger for its high-profile contestant and Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani who is facing a challenger in Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru.

Earlier known as Rajkot-II, the seat is considered as 'safe' for the saffron party which has been representing it since 1985.

The constituency goes to polls on December 9 in the first phase of the high-stakes Gujarat elections.

Vajubhai Vala, incumbent Governor of Karnataka, had won the seat seven times for the BJP - from 1985 to 2012. In 1985, he had defeated Harshadba Chudasama.

Vala vacated the seat for Narendra Modi in 2002 after the latter was then nominated as the chief minister. Later, when Modi moved to Maninagar constituency, Vala continued his undefeated run till 2012.

Later, after Vala was shifted to Karnataka, Vijay Rupani won the bypoll from the seat in 2014.

Though Rajkot-West is a stronghold of the RSS, the Congress has mounted a strong challenge by bringing in Rajyaguru, the sitting MLA from Rajkot-East, to rework the caste combination in the party's favour.

To retain his seat, Rupani has to surmount the angry Patidars as well as the trading community, which is smarting under the impact of demonetisation and rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Out of 3.15 lakh voters in the constituency, the number of Kadva and Leuva Patidars is the highest at 62,000, followed by Brahmins, Lohana and Jain communities.

The Congress is trying to direct the simmering anger among Patidars over lack of reservation in education and government jobs under the BJP rule against Rupani.

The quota agitation and Hardik Patel joining hands with Congress may dent the BJP's base among the Patidars, who till now were considered as the bedrock of the BJP's support base in Gujarat.

Congress nominee Rajyaguru, the richest candidate in Gujarat elections, believes that he has won the "initial battle" against Rupani by keeping him busy in the constituency since the poll schedule was announced.

"I wanted to keep the chief minister busy in Rajkot-West constituency and morally I have won the initial battle as the chief minister has to visit his constituency more than once in a week," Rajyaguru claimed.

However, Rupani has been unfazed and is confidant of his victory.

He earlier cited the work done by him for the people of the state as well as his constituency, especially bringing the Narmada river water to Rajkot.

Rupani had said that he was not facing any challenge in Rajkot West as it is a traditional bastion of the BJP.

"I will win the seat easily," he had told PTI in an interview recently.

BJP's Saurashtra and Kutch spokesperson Raju Dhruv said that Rupani has always been ready to solve the problems faced by the people of Rajkot or elsewhere in Gujarat.

"As the CM, he has done well and because of his tireless efforts, Rajkot could get the Narmada water in less than five years of the project announced by then chief minister Narendra Modiji," Dhruv said.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14 -- and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
The Madras High Court today asked the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Board officials to fix the salary of 'Othuvars' (persons who recite ancient Tamil hymns in temples), on par with the government employees as it rejected the contention that they were not full-time workers.

Disposing of a petition filed by Singavelan, Othuvar of Sri Elanji Kumarar temple in Tirunelveli district, Justice R Mahadevan said the service of the Othuvars should not be measured with the aid of clock.

"Simply because the Othuvars recite hymns for two hours or three hours, officials cannot make them shed tears for their salary," the Juge said in his order.

An analysis of their service would reveal their deep and unimaginable knowledge of Tamil literature and language. Their singing energise the Human mind who come to the temple to get rid off their agonies, he said.

The judge rejected the contention of the Joint Commissioner of HR and CE, which administers a large number of temples in the state, that 'Othuvars' in the temple were not a full time workers and recited the hymns only during two or three 'kala poojas' out of six poojas daily.

Tracing existence of othuvars since 9th century AD, the Judge said Chola king Rajaraja Cholan appointed 48 persons to recite 'Thirupathigam' along with musical instruments. Vijayanagar kingdom's Krishnadeva Rayar also appointed othuvars in 1517. The significance of the othuvars was prominent for centuries and it was painful now the government was making them run from pillar to post.

Despite several G.Os, the government had not implemented the salary fixation for the othuvars.

The Judge also rejected the argument that funds were not available with temples for paying the Othuvars.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Emphasising on the growing cultural and people-to-people ties between New Zealand and India, its envoy Joanna Kempkers said here today Hindi is now the "fourth most-spoken" language in her country.

"We both share common values, such as commonwealth heritage and democracy. And, also, the common language i.e., English and now also Hindi," she said at an event here.

"In fact, Hindi is now the fourth most-spoken language. Also, we have about 1,85,000 people belonging to the Indian community, who are living in New Zealand and they are contributing to the growth story of our country," Kempkers said.

She also emphasised that the inflow of Indian tourists to New Zealand and the number of students going there are "on the rise".

"In 2016, the number of Indian tourists who visited New Zealand stood at 58,000 while the corresponding figure from New Zealand to India was 66,000. Besides, the place is also attracting Bollywood," she told PTI on the sidelines of the the New Zealand-India Sustainability Challenge 2017 here.

A few months ago, Education New Zealand, a government agency for international education, had signed up Bollywood actor Kriti Sanon as its brand ambassador.

"We offer 35 scholarships to students (applying for our universities) and after Kriti tweeted about it, the number of application went up dramatically. So, we feel the connect," the envoy added.

John Laxon, Education New Zealand's Regional Director - India, South East Asia and Middle East, also endorsed the rise in the influx of students applying to universities in New Zealand.

"Indian students are increasingly choosing to study in New Zealand. For the Januart-October period this year, there has been a 24 per cent increase in student visas, compared to the corresponding period last year," he told PTI.

In tourism sector, Kempkers said, people are choosing New Zealand as wedding destinations, shooting locales, and even corporate groups are sending employees for recreational tours there.

The population of New Zealand stands at about 4.5 million, Laxon said and the Indian community forms about 4 per cent of it.

"There are people hailing from different parts of India, who reside in the country, and so they speak, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and other languages," the envoy added.

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ICFAI Business School (IBS) is offering short-term tailored management courses to corporates which is expected to gain pace in the future.

Corporates want to keep pace with the fast changing business enviornment and for skilling their employees, IBS is colloboarting with them to offer short-term courses tailored as per their requirements, the institute's Kolkata branch director Ajay Pathak told reporters here.

IBS will not partner with the government for low-end skilling education but will be open to any opportunity in offering specialised management related skilling.

The business school currently offers two-year PGPM program in the city and Pathak said it continiously interacts with the industry to keep the course relevent.

The school claimed healthy placement for its students.

Nationally IBS is in nine locations and out that three of its branches in Dehradun, Hyderbad and Jaipur are offering MBA degree and the rest, including Kolkata offer courses in PGPM.

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"If not your mother, who would you salute, Afzal Guru," Vice President Venkaiah Naidu today asked, apparently questioning why there were objections to saying 'Vande Mataram', which meant salute to the motherland.

"Vande Mataram mane maa tujhe salam. Kya samasya hai? Agar maa ko salam nahi karenge to kya Afzal Guru ko salam karenge? (Vande Mataram means salute to mother. What is problem with it, if you don't salute your mother, who would you salute, Afzal Guru)," he asked.

Naidu was speaking at an event to release a book on former VHP chief late Ashok Singhal.

Vande Mataram means praising the mother, he further said while referring to the people who are seeking to define nationalism.

He said when someone says 'Bharat Mata ki jai' it is not only about some goddess in a photo.

"It is about all 125 crore people living in this country irrespective of their caste, colour, creed and religion. They all are Indians," Naidu said.

Mentioning the Supreme Court's 1995 verdict on Hindutva which says it is not a religion but a way of life, he said, "Hinduism is not a narrow concept, it is a broader cultural connotation of India."



Hinduism is the culture and tradition of India which has been passed on from various generations. There could be different ways of worship, but there is only one way of life that in Hinduism, he added.

Naidu attributed the non-violent nature of Indians to Hinduism saying "every Tom, Dick and Harry attacked India, ruled it, ruined and looted it, but India never attacked any country because of its culture."



Our culture teach us Vasudev Kutumbkam, that means the world is one family, he said.

Speaking about Singhal, Naidu said he was one of the finest proponents of Hinduism and sacrificed 75 years of his life for the benefit of future generations.

Despite being a student of science and engineering, he chose to spend time on banks of Ganges and reflected on religion, society and culture, he said.

During freedom struggle, Singhal wanted Muslims to join in large number in non-cooperation movement, he claimed.

He was an exemplary individual who selflessly dedicated himself as a pracharak and served society for over six decades, Naidu added.

Speaking at the same event, RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi said Singhal worked hard to realise the dream of building Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

"Now he might have gone but we should not forget his goal," he said.

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India and New Zealand have warm and long-standing relationship and share common values and concerns, including in areas of counter-terrorism and cyber security, New Zealand's envoy Joanna Kempkers today said.

Addressing a gathering at the New Zealand-India Sustainability Challenge 2017 here, the High Commissioner also noted that "Hindi is now the fourth most spoken language in New Zealand."



"We both share common values, such as democracy, and sustainability, and we also have same worries. So, that means (working on) counter-terrorism and cyber security," she said.

Kempkers said the Indian community in New Zealand was contributing to the growth story of his country.

Sustainability is of important to us. A large part of energy in the country is sourced through renewable resources, she said.

"Over 80 per cent of the electricity is sourced from renewable sources. Also, New Zealand is planning to go carbon-free by 2020. So, we are on the path," the envoy said.

Six finalists, whittled down from 90 shortlisted teams, presented their ideas today to a jury at the event.

"Each team consisted of two students from Indian institutions and one from a university in New Zealand, who worked under a mentor," said an official of TERI, a partner of the competition.

The ideas pitched ranged from clean energy to waste management.

The three partnering universities from New Zealand are University of Canterbury, University of Otago and University of Waikato.

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India is proud of its Caribbean diaspora for their resilience, achievements and contributions to their host countries, a top Indian diplomat here has said.

Speaking at a conference on "History, Present and Future of Indentured Indian Diaspora", Consul General of India at New York said that India is making efforts to connect its diaspora and address their concerns.

"India is proud of the Indian Caribbean diaspora for their resilience, achievements and contributions to their host countries," Consul General Sandeep Chakravoorty said.

"Under the leadership of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is making efforts to connect the diaspora to India and address their concerns," Chakravoorty said



at an event in New York on occasion of 100th anniversary of abolition of Indenturedship.

The conference was organised by the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies in association with the Hindu Yuva Chapter of the prestigious Columbia University.

Ravi Deo, ex-Member of Guyanese parliament and founder of political party Rise and Rebuild Guyana talked on the politics of entitlement in a ethnically divided society of Guyana.

"Until the politicians and other actors in the public arena openly and publicly confront the ethnic bases of Guyanese political culture and structures, and deal with their consequences affirmatively, Guyana will remain mired in a Sisyphean paradigm," he said.

"Amid aspirations toward modernity, Indians do not necessarily dismiss their preexisting values education, gender relations, and family cohesion and connectionwhen they migrate", said Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine from Jakson State University.

Vishnu Bisram, New York based Indian Caribbean political analyst said, "India has had an institutionalised caring, compassionate relationship focused on culture, business, education, diplomacy and other non-political fields."



"India must develop the courage to address political issues like the racial persecution of Indians especially in Guyana similar to how the Chinese or Israeli government speak out against victimisation of their Diasporas," Bisram said.

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India's new envoy to China Gautam Bambawale has invited firms from the world's second largest economy to invest in the country, citing heavy sales being registered by Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.

Being the sixth largest economy with the seize of USD 2.5 trillion, growing at the rate of 7 to 8 per cent, India offers a huge market and several business opportunities, he said.

"We believe that many Chinese companies are well suited and well positioned to take advantage of the large and growing Indian market," Bambawale said at a seminar on 'Investment Opportunities in India' here yesterday.

"Chinese mobile phone maker OPPO has just announced that its sales revenue in India in fiscal 2016 grew by 750 per cent, thereby making it a very significant player in India's mobile phone market. I need not say more," Bambawale said.

He also highlighted India's move to further liberalise business visas for Chinese travellers to India by introducing an e-visa facility.

"The entire process can be done online without a need to visit either our embassy in Beijing or any one of our consulates in China," he said.

The seminar received an overwhelming response with more than 270 representatives from more than 190 Chinese companies attending the event, the Indian embassy said in a statement.

Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, emphasised the sound economic fundamentals of India - enumerating a young working population, high savings rate and low levels of government debt as important positive indicators for the Indian economy, the statement said.

Kumar was here to attend the annual dialogue between NITI Aayog and China's Development Research Centre (DRC).

The DRC, under the State Council, China's Cabinet, is the agency mainly responsible for doing research on strategic, long-term issues in China's economic and social development.

Senior Chinese government officials including Vice Minister of the Development Research Centre of the State Council Wang Liming and Vice President of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Chen Zhou were also present at the event.

Bambawale, who has served as High Commissioner to Pakistan and earlier as India's envoy to Bhutan, submitted his credentials to President Xi Jinping on Tuesday.

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The IRB Infrastructure Developers stock today settled with losses of over 2 per cent after the company said that the CBI has filed a charge sheet against the company.

The CBI yesterday filed a charge sheet against 16 people including senior officials of IRB Infrastructure in the sessions court here in connection with a land scam exposed by the slain RTI activist Satish Shetty in 2009.

CBI prosecutor Vijaykumar Dhakane said the 2,000-page charge sheet names 16 persons including IRB chairman and managing director Virendra Mhaiskar, Deepak Gadgil, authorised signatory of M/s Aryan Infrastructures (a subsidiary of Ideal Road Builders), revenue officials, land agents, lawyers and some farmers.

Following the news, the company stock plunged 7.28 per cent to touch an intra-day low of Rs 194.70 on the BSE. At the end of the session, the stock was quoted at Rs 205.20, down 2.29 per cent.

On the NSE, it opened at Rs 201.50, then fell to an intra-day low of Rs 194.30, and finally settled at Rs 205.45, down 2.05 per cent over its previous closing price.

"The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a charge sheet today with the Sessions Court, Pune in the matter of alleged illegal purchase of government land in village Pimploli and nearby, Taluka Maval, District Pune by Aryan Infrastructure Investment Private Ltd (AIIPL), a subsidiary of M/s IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited," IRB Infrastructure had said in a regulatory filing yesterday.

The company and its officials have been fully co- operating with the authorities during the course of the investigation and have provided all information and document upon request, it added.

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Actor Jacob Tremblay has signed a new animation film backed by Danish studio Lani Pixels.

According to Deadline, actors Christopher Lloyd, Kenan Thompson and Mel Brooks have also joined the cast of the untitled 3D film, to be directed by debutante Kim Pagel.

Pagel has also penned the script for the film, which is about two children who attempt to rescue their grandfather, Mr. Campbell, from supernatural forces that have invaded his isolated island.

The "Room" actor will provide the voice for one of the children.

Lani Pixels has been founded by Kim Pagel and Thomas Pagel. Thomas is producing the film along with Jason Mirch.

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James Mangold will direct the film based around the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst.

Actor Elle Fanning is in negotiations to star as Hearst in the untitled film. The screenplay has been written by Larry Karaszewski, Scott Alexander and Mangold, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The film is based on Jeffrey Toobin's best-selling book "American Heiress".

It will detail the heiress's capture and two-year detainment by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the mid-1970s, as well as her transition from hostage to warrior. She ended up sympathising with her captors and even went on bank robberies with them before she was arrested in 1975.

20th Century Fox is backing the film via its Fox 2000 label.

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The United Nations Security Council has convened a meeting on Friday in the wake of the US President Donald Trump announcing his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and France - the two permanent members which closely align themselves on most of the global issues - joined by other non-permanent members -- Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay -- asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.

The UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres is expected to address the Security Council on Friday.

Earlier in a statement, Guterres said that Jerusalem was the final status issue and must be resolved through direct negotiations.

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," he said, adding that he has consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would "jeopardise" the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said.

Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city. He also directed the State Department to immediately begin the process of construction of a US Embassy in Jerusalem.

His announcement has outraged several countries.

Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement said she disagreed with the US announcement to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it," she said.

May stressed that the status of Jerusalem should be "determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis the Palestinians".

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," she said, adding that "Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states".

"In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories," May said.

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The separatists have called for peaceful protests after the Friday prayers tomorrow against the decision of US President Donald Trump, recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"The US decision to declare this sacred land (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel points towards the political bankruptcy of the fascist Trump regime.

"Kashmiris across the valley will stage peaceful protests against the US decision after the Friday prayers tomorrow," the separatists, under the banner of the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), said in a statement.

The JRL, comprising Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik, said Jerusalem represented the religious emotions and aspirations of more than a billion Muslims across the globe.

"This is our Qibla-I-Awwal (the first direction of prayer) and no Muslim can ever accept it (Jerusalem) as the capital of the Zionist state of Israel.

"By taking this kind of irrational decisions, US President Donald Trump is actually showing his imprudent politics, fascist behaviour and enmity against Muslims," the statement said.

Terming the US decision "naive" and "dangerous" for international peace, the separatists said these unilateral and anti-Muslim decisions were bound to deteriorate and damage the already fragile peace and tranquillity of the world.

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A is entitled to maintenance as a divorced wife and there is no reason to deny it to her, the Supreme Court has said.

The apex court observed this while dealing with a woman's plea challenging the Patna High Court's 2014 verdict which had said that she was not entitled for maintenance.

The high court's order had come on a petition filed by her husband who had challenged a trial court order awarding maintenance of Rs 4,000 per month to the woman.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta set aside the high court's order and remanded the matter to it for fresh consideration.

During the proceedings before the top court, the advocate appearing for the man had argued that she was not entitled for any maintenance and there was already a decree of judicial separation in the case.

"We are noting this argument only to reject it since we find no substance in this argument. If a divorced wife is entitled for maintenance, there is no reason why a wife who is judicially separated is not entitled for maintenance," the bench said in its order.

The bench said it was unable to subscribe to the high court's view that merely because the lower court had not given a finding that the woman was not able to look after herself, she was not entitled for maintenance.

"The high court is required to look into the question whether the petitioner (woman) is entitled to maintenance or not and, if so, the quantum of maintenance," it said.

The woman's counsel told the apex court that she had not been paid any maintenance for the last nine years.

The bench requested the high court to "keep this in mind" while deciding the petition.

The woman had filed a plea before the lower court seeking maintenance under provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The Kerala State Youth Commission today registered a case against those who had made abusive remarks on social media against three Muslim women students for dancing in a flash mob at Malappuram recently to mark World Aids day.

The commission directed the cyber police cell to investigate and take action against those indulging in "such obscene campaigns on social media and otherwise. "



Commission chairperson Chinta Jerome said in a statement that case should be registered under relevant sections, "including for insulting womanhood."



The Kerala Women's Commission had yesterday registered a case against those who had made abusive remarks against the three women, students of a dental college.

The students were trolled for allegedly insulting Islam by publicly dancing at an AIDS awareness campaign at a traffic junction in Malappuram on December 1.

The women, wearing hijabs and jeans, had performed the 'Entammede Jimmikki Kammal' a popular number from a Mohanlal film.

The video of the flash mob at the busy traffic junction had invited the wrath of a section of the muslim community and the students were trolled for allegedly causing "disgrace" to Islam.

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A special CBI court today extended till December 19 the judicial custody of all nine police officials accused in the custodial death case of an accused in the rape-and-murder case of a minor girl in Kotkhai in July.

The court extended the custody of the police officials after they appeared before it through a video link.

No decision could be made on taking the voice samples of the accused and the matter was also deferred till December 19 as no advocate of the accused party appeared in the court.

The case relates to the custodial death of Suraj Singh, one of the six accused in the rape-and-murder case of the 16- year-old girl.

The case later came to be known as the "Gudiya" rape- and-murder case.

Singh, a 29-year-old labourer from Nepal, was killed allegedly by another accused in the rape-and-murder case at Kotkhai police station on the night of July 18-19, triggering a massive public outrage.

The nine policemen, including an IG-rank officer, were arrested by the CBI in connection with the custodial death.

The CBI has filed a chargesheet against the IG-rank officer, Z H Zaidi, and seven others. An additional charge- sheet would be filed against Superintendent of Police D W Negi, who was arrested on November 16 in connection with the custodial death.

Both the matters - the rape-and-murder case of the girl and the custodial death of Singh - were handed to the CBI on July 19.

The CBI chargesheet has said Singh died due to severe torture.

The girl, a Class X student, had gone missing on July 4 and her naked body was recovered from Haliala forests in Kotkhai on July 6.

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In some good for the cancer- stricken wife of ousted Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the election authority today clarified that she remains a member of the National Assembly despite not taking oath after winning a by-poll in September.

Kulsoom Nawaz, undergoing treatment in London for throat cancer, remains a member of the National Assembly (NA) though she has not taken the oath, the Express quoted the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as saying.

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India's Kumbh Mela has been recognised by UNESCO as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" and held up as the world's largest peaceful gathering of pilgrims.

The external affairs ministry today said the recognition was accorded by the Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, an entity which works under UNESCO.

The decision to recognise the Kumbh Mela was taken at its ongoing meeting in Jeju, South Korea.

The inscription of the Kumbh Mela was recommended by the expert body which examines the nominations submitted by member states. The committee observed it was the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth.

"The Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage under UNESCO inscribed the 'Kumbh Mela' on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during its 12th session held at Jeju, South Korea," the MEA said.

The session, which started on December 4, is to end on December 9.

It said the inscription was the third in two years following 'Yoga' and 'Nouroz'.

While recommending the Kumbh Mela, the expert committee observed it was the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth.

"The committee observed that 'Kumbh Mela' is the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth. The festival, held in Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, represents a syncretic set of rituals related to worship and ritual cleansing in holy rivers in India," the MEA said.

"As a religious festival, the tolerance and inclusiveness that Kumbh Mela demonstrates are especially valuable for the contemporary world," the MEA said in its statement.

The committee also took note of the fact that knowledge and skills related to the 'Kumbh Mela' were transmitted through the Guru-Shishya parampara (teacher-student relationship) by way of saints and sadhus teaching their disciples about traditional rituals and chants.

Reacting to the recognition, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said it was a proud moment for India.

"A very proud moment for us as sacred Kumbh Mela is just inscribed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO," he tweeted.

In 2003, the UNESCO General Conference had adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage as an international treaty, acknowledging that cultural heritage was more than tangible places, monuments and objects and that it also encompassed traditions and living expressions.

The Kumbh Mela joins new elements from Botswana, Colombia, Venezuela, Mongolia, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the UNESCO list.

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Kapurthala police said today that they have suspended four policemen, including a sub-inspector, for security lapse during the visit of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to an Army cantonment here on Wednesday night.

Kapurthala SSP Sandeep Sharma said the four policemen were on a vehicle ahead of the police pilot, and the driver of their vehicle was driving rashly, ignoring the instructions of DSP (Detective) Sohan Lal, who was commanding Singh's convoy.

The SSP said over phone that this created confusion and the chief minister's convoy could not find way for a while to come out of the cantonment situated on the KapurthalaHamira road.

Sharma said the confusion was resolved soon with other police officers making a headway to come out of the cantonment area.

Singh on Wednesday evening visited the Army cantonment to participate in the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Sikh Regiment.

He had made a brief stopover at the residence of Punjab Irrigation and Power Minister Rana Gurjit Singh here before attending the event.

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The head of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement today called for a mass demonstration in protest at US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I call on everyone to take part in a mass popular demonstration to protest and denounce this American aggression and this unjust... decision," Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address.

The demonstration is to be held on Monday in Beirut's southern suburbs, a bastion of Nasrallah's Shiite movement.

"I am calling on men, women, young and old, the southern suburbs, Beirut and all those who wish to join in from across Lebanon," Nasrallah said, also inviting residents of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

Trump yesterday announced that his administration was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that was widely condemned as inflammatory.

Most of the international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through negotiations with the Palestinians.

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The Centre has told the Supreme Court that the ongoing dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh over the Mahanadi river should be sorted out through negotiations between the concerned parties.

The Centre has also alleged that Odisha was not participating in the meetings relating to the issue and has not provided the requisite details, a lawyer representing one of the parties in the case said.

Another advocate representing Odisha in the case said that a written statement was filed yesterday by the Centre in the top court.

The lawyer said the Centre has told the court that they were in the process of finalising a bill to constitute a composite tribunal which would deal with all the inter-state river water disputes in the country.

The Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill 2017 was introduced in Lok Sabha by the Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti on March 14, 2017.

The Bill proposes to set up an Inter-State River Water Disputes Tribunal, for adjudication of water disputes, if a dispute is not resolved through the Disputes Resolution Committee.

The counsel said that the government has also told the apex court that the Mahanadi dispute should be resolved through discussion between the parties.

The Centre had in October told the apex court that it would take a decision on issuing a notification with regard to the dispute.

The Odisha government had moved the court in December last year seeking an order asking Chhattisgarh to stop its construction work in projects on the upstream of Mahanadi.

Odisha has been opposing Chhattisgarh's plans to build 13 barrages and seven pick up weirs (small dams) across the Mahanadi, in a plan to extract more water. Odisha has said this would adversely affect the interests of its farmers.

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A Delhi court has awarded life term to a man for killing and then burning the remains of his live-in partner in 2012.

Additional Sessions judge SanjeevAggarwal jailed north Delhi resident Umakant while relying on circumstantial evidence and sent his accomplice Sumit to rigorous jail term for a period of four years.

"The circumstances cumulatively establish and support the hypothesis, that it was Accused 1 (Umakant) but none else who had committed murder of deceased Rachna by strangulating her and thereafter burning her dead body consequent to her death, in which he was actively aided, abetted and helped by Accused 2 (Sumit)," the judge said.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on Umakant.

According to the prosecution, Umakant had rented out an apartment in Rohini where he was living with the woman as a married couple.

On June 19, 2012, a neighbour saw the convicts dragging a bag from the apartment, from which blood was oozing out, and putting it into a car, the prosecution said.

It said the neighbours alerted the police and Umakant and his accomplice were apprehended later that night.

The prosecution claimed that he had strangulated her as she used to pressurise him to divorce his wife and marry her.

Umakant had claimed innocence and said he was falsely implicated in the case while his accomplice Sumit denied having even met the convict or the victim.

However, both the convicts failed to adduce any evidence to their claim, the court noted.

"The defence version which is supported by no tangible or intangible evidence, does not in any way dilutes or scales down the probative force of the overwhelming nature of prosecution evidence which is almost touching the point of certainty," the court said while convicting them.

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A Muslim labourer was hacked and burnt to death in Rajasthan's Rajsamand, leading the police on Thursday to arrest the killer, seen raving against "love jihad" while torching Mohammad Afrazul in videos shared on social media.

Chief ministers Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan and Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal closed ranks across the political divide to condemn the attack yesterday on the 48-year old worker from West Bengal.

The accused, identified as Shambu Lal Raigar, is seen in the video ranting against "love jihad", a term used by sections of Hindu activists to describe marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men, who they claim seek to propagate Islam.

Police said Raigar was arrested in Rajsamand, about five hours from the Rajasthan capital of Jaipur, today.

"He is seen shouting against 'love jihad' in the video and why he did so is under investigation," DGP O P Galhotra said here.

He said Raigars minor nephew shot the video and has been detained.

His minor daughter, who Galhotra said was suffering from a mental disorder, was with Raigar when he was arrested.

In the video, which went viral today, a man in a pair of white trousers, a red shirt and white muffler is seen ranting against "love jihad". He is also seen leading Afrazul to a deserted spot and then attacking him.

The internet has been suspended in Rajsamand to stop the videos from being shared on social media sites. Sources said there were fears the clips could lead to communal tension.

Raje described the killing as deplorable and Banerjee called the assailant inhuman.

"We strongly condemn the heinous killing of a labourer from Bengal in Rajasthan. How can people be so inhuman. Sad," Banerjee tweeted.

SP Rajsamand Manoj Kumar said the accused attacked Afrazul yesterday with a sharp-edged weapon, poured kerosene over him and then torched him.

This is among the rarest of rare cases and at the end of a trial, we will seek death for him, the DGP said.

Afrazul's relatives, who described him as the family's sole earning member, demanded strict action against Raigar.

"We want a thorough investigation and the culprit to be punished," a relative told reporters in Malda in West Bengal.

Galhotra said primary investigations revealed Raigar was not affiliated to any organistation.

"It is being investigated why he had that kind of a mindset, the officer said.

Chief minister Raje appreciated the action by the police and directed that the criminal is prosecuted at the earliest.

This is a deplorable act which needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, she said in a statement.

Her home minister Gulabchand Kataria, who described it as a shocking incident, told reporters in Jaipur that he had asked officers to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter when it was reported to him last night.

Afrazul's family said it did not know why he was killed.

"We don't know the real reason behind his killing. He was the sole bread winner of the family. We came to know that the person who killed him had called him on the pretext of giving him work," a relative said.

Afrazul had been living and working in Rajasthan for several years.

The killing drew the ire of human right groups which demanded the resignation of Raje and and Kataria, accusing them of protecting those behind targeted attacks on Muslims.

Although the police have arrested the murderer ... it is important to reach the people who motivated him to carry out this murder, the statement by bodies such as the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, Federation of Indian Women, All India Democratic Womens Association and Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan said.

The statement said this was the fourth such killing in the last nine months, referring to the lynching of Pehlu Khan and Zafar Khan and the killing of Umar Mohammad by alleged cow vigilantes in Alwar.
The bulk of clay minerals on Mars could have been formed as the red planet's crust cooled and solidified, not by later interactions with water on the surface as has long been assumed, a study has found.

Planetary scientists from Brown University in the US have proposed a new scenario for the formation of ancient clay minerals on Mars that, if shown to be true, could rewrite the early history of the red planet.

There are thousands of ancient phyllosilicate outcrops on the martian surface.

Phyllosilicates, or clays, are formed by the interaction of water with volcanic rock, leading many scientists to conclude that there must have been sustained surface water, groundwater or active hydrothermal systems at some point in Martian history.

However, the study published in the journal Nature suggests that the clays may have formed during the creation of the martian crust itself, long before any water flowed on the planet.

Mars and other rocky planets are thought to have been covered by oceans of molten magma, researchers said.

As the Mars magma ocean began to cool and solidify, water and other dissolved volatiles would be outgassed to the surface, forming a thick, steamy atmosphere surrounding the planet, they said.

The moisture and heat from that high-pressure steam bath would have converted vast swaths of the newly solidified surface to clay.

As the planet then evolved over billions of years, volcanic activity and asteroid bombardments would have covered the clays in some places and excavated them in others, leading to the widespread but patchy distribution seen on the surface today.

"The basic recipe for making clay is you take rock and you add heat and water," said Kevin Cannon, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida who led the research while completing his PhD at Brown.

"This primordial atmosphere created by a magma ocean would have been the hottest and wettest Mars ever was. It is a situation where you could pervasively alter the crust and then just shuffle those materials around afterward," said Cannon.

Researchers said the scenario offers a means of creating widespread clay deposits that does not require a warm and wet climate or a sustained hydrothermal system on early Mars.

State-of-the-art climate models suggest an early Mars where the temperature rarely crept above freezing and where water flow on the surface was sporadic and isolated, researchers said.

"One of the complications that comes up in Mars evolution is that we can not create a scenario where surface weathering had the capacity to produce the extent of mineral alteration that we see," said Jack Mustard, a professor at Brown.

"We are certainly not trying to discount other alteration mechanisms entirely. Surface weathering and other types of alteration surely occurred at different points in martian history, but we think this is a plausible way to explain much of the widespread clay we see in the oldest martian terrains," said Mustard.

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The Medical Council of India (MCI) has directed three private self-financing medical colleges here to discharge 105 students admitted to first year MBBS course during academic year 2017-2018 in violation of rules.

A release from the Directorate of Health and Family Welfare services of Puducherry government today said the MCI has directed the three colleges to "immediately discharge the students," admitted in violation of Graduate Medical Education (GME) Regulations 1997.

Based on the orders of MCI, the territorial government has directed the three colleges to remove the students from their rolls and submit a compliance report, it said.

While 41 studentswere admitted to the MBBS course in Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College, the Sri Venkteshwara Medical College Hospital and Research Centre offered admission to 38 students whereas the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences gave admission to 26 candidates.

The MCI's direction is "on account of the fact that the lists of these students furnished by the colleges were not available in the the ones provided by the CENTAC (Centralised Admission Committee) of Puducherry government."



CENTAC is the statutory authority for selection of the candidates for professional courses here.

The territorial government has also informed the Registrars of Pondicherry University and theTamil Nadu Medical Council of the directives of the MCI for necessary action.

It was also stated that the MCI had "erroneously recommended discharge of 56 candidates (55 under government quota and one under management quota) in Sri Venkateshwara Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, who were duly sponsored by the CENTAC."



"The Puducherry administration has takenup the matter with MCI seeking to withdraw the action in respect of these 56 candidates," an official of the Health Department told PTI.

"The college has alsobeen advised not to discharge these candidates until further orders or communication of the MCI," he said.

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A Thane police inspector was arrested today under the charge of kidnapping a married woman police official who went missing from neighbouring Navi Mumbai 19 months ago.

Assistant Police Inspector (API) Ashwini Bidre (37) went missing from Kalamboli area of Navi Mumbai last April.

Her family members lodged a complaint against Abhay Kurundkar, who is posted as Police Inspector, Thane (rural), with Kalamboli police station, the Navi Mumbai Police said in a press note today.

Her family suspected that she was kidnapped and killed.

Bidre's family approached the Bombay High Court as the police failed to trace her.

On the orders of the HC, the Kalamboli Police today arrested Kurundkar.

Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale has confirmed the arrest of Kurundkar.

He has been booked under sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 497 (adultery) 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and other relevant sections of the IPC, a senior official said.

Bidre, who hailed from Kolhapur in western Maharashtra, was working in the Human Rights Commission department of Navi Mumbai.

Kurundkar had met Bidre at the Sangli Training Centre.

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Mizoram government employees today called off their three-day stir on the second day, following Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla's warning that stern action would be taken against them if the continue their agitation.

Spearheaded by the Federation of Mizoram Government Employees and Workers, state government employees took mass casual leaves since yesterday, demanding immediate enhancement of salaries in accordance with the recommendations of the Centre's seventh Pay Commission.

The agitation was called off today, the Federation said in a statement.

Officials said it was withdrawn after the chief minister warned that stern disciplinary action would be taken against the employees if they continue to inconvenience the people.

The functioning of the Mizoram government had come to a halt yesterday, the first day of the agitation, as all the employees stayed away from work.

The state government has set up a Pay Implementation Committee to look into the issue of salary enhancement and is waiting for its report and recommendation, state Finance Minister Lalsawta had said yesterday.

Leaders of the Federation of Mizoram Government Employees and Workers, however, alleged that the government had formed the panel as a delaying tactic.

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MLAs, MPs and former lawmakers of Nagaland today appealed for a solution to the vexed Naga political problem before the state Assembly elections due early next year.

The MLAs, MPs along with ex-MLAs and former MPs made the appeal during a closed door consultative meeting called by the Nagaland Assembly Speaker Imtiwapang Aier, at the Regional Center of Excellence in Music and Performing Arts, Jotsoma.

A copy of the resolution passed in the meeting said the lawmakers placed on record their deep sense of appreciation for all the positive steps taken by the Government of India (GoI) and the stake holders so far in seeking to arrive at an honourable and acceptable solution to the Naga political issue.

"Urges the GoI and other stake holders engaged in dialogue to resolve the issue well before the next state Assembly elections", they resolved.

The MLAs and MPs also appealed to the Election Commission of India to conduct the elections to the 13th Nagaland Legislative Assembly only after an honourable and acceptable solution is reached with regard to the vexed Naga political issue, the resolution said.

They also urged the members of the present Assembly to pass resolution on similar lines during the ensuing winter session, scheduled for December 14 and 15, it said.

Today's resolution was appended by Nagaland Assembly Speaker, Chief Minister TR Zeliang and president of Ex-Parliamentarians Association of Nagaland, T Khongo.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched a blistering attack on Mani Shankar Aiyar after the Congress leader called him "neech aadmi" (a vile man), claiming it was a casteist slur against him.

Modi said Aiyar's remark testified to the Congress's "Mughal mentality".

The prime minister also said the Congress leadership cannot digest if someone from a humble background "wears good clothes", an apparent retort to Rahul Gandhi's "suit-boot ki sarkar" jibe.

"One leader in Congress comes from a very learned family. He himself was an officer of the Indian Foreign Service and also a minister in the Congress government.

"Shriman (Mr) Mani Shankar Aiyar today said that Modi is of 'neech jaati' (low caste) and is 'neech' (vile). Is this not an insult to Gujarat? This is an insult to the great legacy of India. This is born of Mughal mentality," he told an election rally here in poll-bound Gujarat.

Earlier in the day, Aiyar said, "He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)."



Aiyar's controversial comment came after Modi accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's name but trying to erase his contribution to nation building.

"You called us donkey, you called us 'gandi nali ka kida' (worm of a dirty drain), you called us 'maut ka saudagar' (merchant of death), you said I am of 'neech jaati' and 'neech'. But we will live according to our 'sanskars' (values)," Modi said.

Modi said people of Gujarat had seen his 14 years as chief minister and then prime minister.

"Have I done anything which made you look down in shame? Have I done any 'neech' work?" Modi asked the crowd which responded with the chant of "Modi! Modi!".

The prime minister said he may belong to a low caste but his values were such that he always did (uchha) good work.

He said he followed in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi and worked for the uplift of the poor. "I sit with those who are most backward, I work for their uplift, I follow the principles of Mahatma Gandhi. You may call me 'neech' for that, but I will continue on this path," Modi said.

The prime minister requested his followers and BJP workers not to respond to Aiyar's remarks "even on Twitter".

"I request all BJP workers and followers who believe in values in public life with folded hands... do not say even a word against those who have used such language against me, against the prime minister of this country, against son of Gujarat, even on Twitter," he said.

"But if you have any anger over the use of such words against me, press the button alongside the lotus symbol on 9th and 14th (Gujarat polling dates)," Modi told the gathering.

He said Gujarat will teach a lesson to the Congress on December 18, the day votes would be counted.

When results come out, you will know the gravity of the word you used, Modi said.

"The Congress party has lost its mental balance as it knows it is going to lose this election. Could anybody imagine that they will lose Assam? They have lost Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and also Bihar. The entire country has discarded them," Modi said.

He said, the Congress had forgotten public decorum after a string of disappointing losses in these states.

"Gujarat has endured many insults. They called me 'maut ka saudagar'. They tried to put me behind bars, they tried to jail half of my cabinet," Modi said, adding despite being the prime minister for three-and-a-half years he never took a single step with a feeling of vengeance.

"That is not my way. We are ones who uphold decorum in public life," Modi said.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said today without elaborating when it will take place.

His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting tomorrow after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

"I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine," the ambassador told Rajya Sabha TV.

He, however, did not elaborate when the visit will take place.

Participating in a discussion on the channel, he said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel.

Reacting to the US' announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India today said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.
The first Saturday of every month will be kept reserved for the sarpanch of villages to discuss problems, Women and Child Welfare minister Pankaja Munde said today.

Munde was speaking after she held a 'Sarpanch Darbar' at Mantralaya today where she heard their views on village development.

"The first Saturday of every month will be kept reserved for sarpanch and they will be contacted through social media. A sarpanch is an important component of rural development and thus efforts will be made to understand the problems of villages and solve them through this initiative," she said.

She added that the number of elected young sarpanch in the state is high for the first time in the state and that they will be trained about the development of villages and of various government schemes.

She urged them to take efforts to make villages open defecation and sewage free.

Munde asked them to study various schemes of the government and effectively implement them.

"The government is positive about giving an honorarium to the sarpanch. They will also be provided with identity cards," she said.

Munde further said that many drinking water schemes are incomplete in villages and that the issue will be resolved by holding a meeting with Water Supply minister Babanrao Lonikar during the Winter session of Maharashtra Legislature in Nagpur.

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In a relief to nearly 5,000 lawyers frequenting the Patiala House Court, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) today approved free parking for them at nearby Purana Quila parking site.

The decision was taken at a council meeting today chaired by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"The agenda item regarding grant of Purana Quila parking site free of cost from 9 am to 5 pm to advocates of the Patiala House Court, was approved today," a senior NDMC official said.

Situated in Central Delhi, the Patiala House Court Complex is one of the six district courts complexes in the national capital.

The complex consists of 32 courts, 1 family court, the Delhi Legal Services Authorities (DLSA) Office and various other branches and lawyers chambers.

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A 28-year-old man from Nepal allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the 24th floor of a building located near Bandra Bandstand in the wee hours today, a senior police official said.

The deceased was identified as Bharat Hooda.

"Hooda ended his life by jumping off the 24th floor of the building where he used to work as a domestic help. He used to work and live in that building with his uncle," the official said.

Last night around 10 pm, Hooda came to the building drunk and killed himself around 1 am, he said.

"The victim's uncle told the police that Hooda was under some pressure since the last one month. But despite repeatedly asking him about the cause of his worry, Hooda did not reveal it to him," senior police inspector of Bandra police station, Pandit Thackeray, said.

The official said no suicide note was found at the spot.

Police have registered a case of accidental death in this connection.

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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the BJP, saying that by not coming out with its manifesto for poll-bound Gujarat it has shown "unbelievable disrespect" to the people of the state.

Polling for 89 assembly constituencies in the phase one will be held on December 9. The second phase voting will be held on December 14.

"The BJP has shown unbelievable disrespect towards the people of Gujarat. Campaign is over and STILL no mention of a manifesto for the people, no vision and no ideas presented for Gujarat's future," Gandhi said on Twitter.

Congress's chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also hit out at the saffron party, tweeting, "Using 'jumla' (rhetoric) is only their (BJP's) manifesto."



The Congress had released its manifesto for the election last Monday.

'Special category' quota for weaker communities with similar rights enjoyed by OBCs, farm loan waiver, setting up of 'Indira canteens' to provide nutritious food for labourers at Rs 10 are some of the highlights of its manifesto.

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The head of the multinational nuclear fusion project known as ITER, in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump's administration, has warned US budget cuts could delay completion of the experimental reactor.

Launched a decade ago by seven partners -- the European Union, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and South Korea -- the project has been plagued by delays and budget overruns.

ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot has been in the US capital since Tuesday to urge top administration officials including Energy Secretary Rick Perry to uphold America's commitment.

Washington has so far spent some USD 1 billion on the project, and had pledged to contribute a further USD 1.5 billion by 2025, the first test date for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is located in France and currently half-finished.

But its annual contribution was reduced by around 50 per cent in the 2017 and 2018 budgets, from USD 105 to USD 50 million and USD 120 to USD 63 million respectively -- as a result of cuts to the overall Energy Department's budget.

Bigot told AFP late yesterday he hoped to secure "a clear decision on American commitments, at least in the short term, on the supply of components, and to be sure that they will arrive in time for assembly.

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The Madras High Court today appointed a retired judge as the 'observer' for the annual general body meeting of the Tamil Film Producers Council to be held here on December 10.

Justice CV Karthikeyan passed the interim order while allowing the applications arising out of a batch of civil suits filed by a group of producers.

The judge appointed Justice RS Ramanathan, a retired judge of the Madras High Court, as an observer to monitor the proceedings of the meeting.

The batch of suits challenged the proposed amendments to bye-law 3(e) and 13 of the Council, which they alleged would alter the meaning of the 'regular producer' and introduce a new law to the effect that to enroll as a regular producer and to enjoy the voting right, he/she should have had released three films.

Granting permission for the meeting, the judge said it shall proceed on the designated date, time and place and there can be a discussion over Agenda No 6, which pertains to introduction of new bye-laws and voting.

However, the result shall not be declared without the permission of the court, the judge added.

The counsel of plaintiffs insisted that to ensure that the meeting is held in a conducive atmosphere, the presence of an observer would be helpful.

The Council, being a body of respectable persons, would be able to regularise the meeting by themselves, the judge observed.

But, since it is insisted that the resolution is to be discussed in the meeting and later to be confirmed by the court, it is just and necessary that an Observer is appointed, he said.

Accordingly, Justice Ramanathan is appointed, he added.

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Pakistan's parliament today passed a unanimous resolution condemning US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In a highly controversial decision, Trump also decided to shift the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

The Treasury and opposition benches in the National Assembly joined hands to pass the resolution which termed Trump's decision as a direct attack on Muslims at a time when the Middle East is already beset with wars and conflicts.

It said the US move violates the international law, several resolutions of UN Security Council over the matter, and Global consensus on how to resolve the Palestine conflict.

The National Assembly also demanded the United States to immediately revoke its decision.

Earlier, the Foreign Office in a statement condemned President Trump's decision.

"Pakistan joins the international community in expressing its strong opposition and condemnation at the decision of the US Administration to recognise the occupied city of Al Quds Al Sharif (Jerusalem) as the so-called capital of Israel and the plan to relocate its Embassy there," the Foreign Office said.

Pakistan said that it was deeply regrettable that pleas from countries across the globe not to alter the legal and historical status of Jerusalem have been ignored, "more out of choice than necessity".

It said the decision represents a serious violation of international law and applicable UN Security Council resolutions, particularly UNSCR 478.

Pakistan said it was a serious setback to the rule of law and international norms and signals a severe blow to the Middle East peace process as well.

Pakistan shares the international outrage and is deeply concerned over the implications of this decision for international peace and security, especially in the Middle East and calls upon the UN Security Council to take cognizance of this situation and take steps in accordance with the UN Charter.

The FO also urged the United Sates to revisit its decision as soon as possible in order to avoid the potentially grave repercussions in the region and beyond.

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A senior Palestinian official said today that US Vice President Mike Pence was "not welcome in Palestine" during his upcoming regional visit after a White House decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The American vice president is not welcome in Palestine," Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah, told AFP.

Rajoub also signalled that Abbas would not meet with Pence during his planned visit later this month.

"And President Abbas will not welcome him because of the statements he made" about Jerusalem.

Abbas has not made similar comments and his office could not immediately be reached.

The White House warned today that cancelling a planned meeting between Abbas and Pence in the wake of the US policy shift on Jerusalem would be "counterproductive".

US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday in a move that outraged Palestinian leaders, but which was hailed as historic by Israel.

The move was fully supported by Pence.

Abbas said Trump has disqualified the United States from its traditional role as peace broker in the Middle East conflict.

Pence is expected to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories sometime before Christmas.

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Hundreds of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank today while demonstrators in Gaza burned posters of President Donald Trump over his widely denounced decision to recogniSe Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger, as the demonstrators torched American and Israeli flags.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tires on fire and hurled stones at Israeli troops.

In Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Trump's dramatic break yesterday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians shuttered their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Trump's decision.

Rallies were underway in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

"We are here. We believe in our rights," said Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were lightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Friday, the Muslim holy day when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers, could prove more violent.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders."



"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s.

But the group's capabilities are more limited now. Gaza, Hamas' stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank, many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets in Gaza capable of striking much of Israel.

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Ahmedabad-based realty firm Parshwanath Corporation has settled a case, related to alleged violation of capital market norms, with regulator Sebi after paying Rs 6 lakh.

According to an order dated December 6, the realty firm had filed an application to settle the "proposed adjudication proceedings" for the alleged violation of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules.

The settlement terms proposed by Parshwanath Corporation were considered by Sebi's High Powered Advisory Committee (HPAC), which recommended the case for settlement on payment of Rs 6 lakh. This was accepted by the panel of whole time members of Sebi.

In October, the firm paid the settlement amount of Rs 6 lakh, following which the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) settled the proposed adjudication proceedings.

However, the regulator said if any representation made by Parshwanath Corporation in the present settlement proceedings is subsequently discovered to be untrue, enforcement actions including commencing proceedings can be initiated against it.

In a separate matter, Coflexip Stena Offshore settled a case, related to alleged disclosure lapses, with Sebi after paying Rs 2 lakh.

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Hitting out at the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said parties seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's name tried to erase his contribution in nation building and did little to build the Ambedkar International Centre conceived 23 years ago.

Modi, who inaugurated the centre in the heart of the national capital in Janpath, also took a jibe at Rahul Gandhi's comment on being a Shiva devotee and said some parties talked more of Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Babasaheb.

Such was the incredible strength of Ambedkar that his philosophy and contribution in nation building could not be erased despite the efforts of some people, the prime minister said in his address.

"Such was his incredible strength that when years after his demise efforts were made by such people to crush his philosophy, when efforts were made to erase his contribution towards nation-building, his ideals could not be wiped out from people's memory," he said.

He said he would not be wrong in saying that "more people are still influenced by his ideas than the family for which such efforts (to erase his contribution) were made".

The prime minister said the idea to construct the centre was conceived in 1992.

"Then nothing happened for 23 years...when our government came, we not only laid its foundation (in April 2015), but are also dedicating it to the nation today."



In a broadside against the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, who is poised to become party president, he said political parties who seek votes in the name of Ambedkar were perhaps not even aware that the project was pending.

"It is a different matter that they are thinking more of Baba Bhole than Babasaheb... even that is okay," he said.

The Congress vice president recently evoked Lord Shiva in reply to the BJP's criticism that his temple visits in Gujarat are an election gimmick.

"I am a devotee of Shiv. The BJP may say anything, but I will remain honest," he had said in Ahmedabad.

The prime minister said in his address that there are forces trying to divide the country on caste lines.

Caste divisions, he added, put brakes on the pace of development.

Modi also lamented that Ambedkar's dream of social democracy -- where all have a say -- is still unaccomplished.

"But I see hope in today's generation... things are changing... the ills of society are being removed," he said.

He said the centre will be an inspiration for the promotion of the Dalit icon's thoughts and teachings and an important place for research on social and economic issues.

Modi added that the government had developed five places related to Babasaheb Ambedkar into pilgrimage spots.

The five pilgrimage spots -- in Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Mhow and London -- were like a homage from the present generation.

"I think that this centre is for the youth... where they can see and understand the vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar," the prime minister said.

The centre, he said, was a fusion of Buddhist and modern architecture.

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Beverages and food major today announced top-level global management rejig, following which Mike Spanos will become CEO of AMENA region in place of India-born Sanjeev Chadha, who is set to retire in March.

As part of the changes, Chadha will become Chairman of AMENA (Asia, Middle East and North Africa) through the end of the first quarter of 2018 reporting to Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi, the company said in a statement.

Further, Ram Krishnan, currently Senior V-P and General Manager of the global Walmart business, will become President, Greater China Region (GCR), succeeding Spanos and would report to Spanos, who will also report to Nooyi, it said.

"We have a strong bench of senior executives, and we are thrilled to promote Mike, one of our most seasoned and proven leaders, into this important role," Nooyi said.

Acknowledging Chadha's contribution to the company in his 27 years of long association, she said: "His continued support as Chairman of AMENA until his retirement at the end of March will ensure a smooth transition."



All the major changes are effective January 1, 2018.

Chris Turner, currently senior V-P of transformation for Frito-Lay North America, will become senior V-P and General Manager of global PepsiCo Walmart business, reporting to Al Carey, CEO for North America.

Chadha, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, had moved to head PepsiCo Middle East and Africa in January 2011. Prior to that, he was Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo's India Region from 2007 to 2010.

Krishnan is with PepsiCo for more than a decade, where he has served in a number of senior leadership roles.
Poland's governing rightwing party today tapped its Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, an ex- banker, to replace Prime Minister Beata Szydlo who has tendered her resignation.

"The Law and Justice (PiS) party political committee has proposed the candidature of of Mateusz Morawiecki for prime minister," governing party spokeswoman Beata Mazurek told reporters in Warsaw.

Mazurek added that current Prime Minister Beata Szydlo had tendered her resignation to the PiS political committee.

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Poland's governing rightwing party today tapped its Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, an ex- banker, to replace Prime Minister Beata Szydlo who tendered her resignation as the administration focuses more on the economy.

"The Law and Justice (PiS) party political committee has proposed the candidature of Mateusz Morawiecki for prime minister," governing party spokeswoman Beata Mazurek told reporters in Warsaw.

Mazurek added that Szydlo had tendered her resignation to the PiS political committee.

Earlier today, Szydlo survived a no-confidence motion in parliament tabled by the liberal opposition, amid reports that she would be replaced by her own party by the end of the day.

PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country's most powerful politician and the man believed to be calling all the shots, had also been one of the figures tipped to replace Szydlo.

She is expected to stay on as a deputy prime minister in the PiS government, deputy foreign minister Jan Dziedziczak told the Polish PAP agency.

Further changes to the government are due in January, the PAP said.

Development and Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, 49, has made a name for himself by taking on tax evasion and bolstering the welfare state.

Critics however accuse him of wasting a golden opportunity offered by a strong economy to consolidate public finances.

He has a cosmopolitan pedigree while strongly asserting his patriotism, and makes no secret of his desire to banish all traces of Poland's communist past from public life.

He is expected to focus the government's efforts on boosting economic growth and investment during the second half of its four-year term.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today held telephone talks with Pope Francis to discuss the crisis triggered by the recognition of Jerusalem by the United States as the capital of Israel, state media said.

The Turkish leader and head of the Roman Catholic Church have both strongly opposed the move announced by US President Donald Trump, and Erdogan has called an emergency summit meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on December 13.

The state-run Anadolu agency gave no further details but NTV television said Erdogan and Francis shared their concern over the situation.

Citing presidential sources, it said that Erdogan expressed his appreciation to Francis for his stance on the issue and both agreed the status quo should not be changed.

Last year, Turkey and Israel ended a rift triggered by Israel's storming in 2010 of a Gaza-bound ship that left 10 Turkish activists dead and led to a downgrading of diplomatic ties.

The two sides have since stepped up cooperation, particularly in energy, but Erdogan, who regards himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause, is still often bitterly critical of Israeli policy.

Erdogan earlier warned Trump that the move would put the region in a "ring of fire".

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Posters appealing Muslims to vote for Congress to make Ahmed Patel the chief minister came up in some minority-dominated areas here on the last day of campaigning for first phase of Gujarat polls, but Patel called it a "dirty trick" by the BJP and said he was not in the race.

Patel, who is Congress President Sonia Gandhi' political advisor, stressed that he was never a candidate for the chief minister's post and "never will be".

The posters that came up in old city area and Surat-East constituency of the diamond and trading hub which goes to polls on Saturday carried photos of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Ahmed Patel.

"Muslims are requested to vote for Congress party to maintain unity of the community and make Ahmed Patel wazir-e-aalam (chief minister) of Gujarat," read the posters.

Trashing the posters, Patel alleged that such acts show the "utter desperation" of the BJP as it fears defeat.

"Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP.

"Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for CM and will never, ever be," he tweeted.

He said the BJP is trying to divert the narrative from its performance to a divisive agenda.

"The moot issue is that BJP is trying very very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda.

"Hence their reliance on lies & propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time," Patel said in another tweet.

Congress leader RPN Singh today said Patel will not hold any post in Gujarat if the party comes to power.

"We have seen fake banners that have come up at many places in Gujarat (in the name of Congress, claiming Ahmed Patel will become the chief minister). There has to be a certain level of politics in a democracy, and Rahul Gandhi and Congress party do not go below that level," Singh said.

"But doing something like putting up posters of opposition parties and deciding that Ahmed Patel will be our chief minster is not right," he told reporters in Ahmedabad.

When Congress forms government, Ahmed Patel will hold no post in the state government, he said.

"Ahmed Patel has himself said this, but I would like to make it clear that such politics of putting up fake posters is not going to work in Gujarat as people here are intelligent and understand everything," he said.

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Jammu and Kashmir Tribal Affairs Minister Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali today ordered a magisterial probe into the violence during a recent anti-encroachment drive in Jammu city in which five cops and a photo-journalist were injured, an official said.

Speaking at a meeting here, Ali asked the district administration to conduct an inquiry into the incident and asked officers to identify those responsible and take appropriate action against them, an official spokesman said.

The government had earlier issued transfer orders for a Station House Officer (SHO) for withdrawing police personnel from the spot in the Gole Gujaral area during the drive.

On Monday, five policemen, including three officers, and a photo journalist sustained injuries in clashes with residents during an anti-encroachment drive in the city.

Locals carrying rods, sticks and bricks, attacked the anti-encroachment team after they razed a structure constructed illegally on a plot of land owned by the Jammu Development Authority.

The minister also asked the officers concerned to conduct a survey about the status of nomadic population in their respective districts within two months so that a comprehensive policy could be framed to rehabilitate them, the spokesman said.

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With its leader Mani Shankar Aiyar coming under attack for his "neech aadmi" remark against Narendra Modi, the Congress today said that Rahul Gandhi had asked party leaders not to use uncouth language when referring to the prime minister.

"(Congress vice president) Rahul Gandhi has criticised the language used by Aiyar...We have once again issued an advisory saying that however uncouth language the party in power uses against us, and however Modi-ji may insult (former prime minister Jawaharlal) Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, we will not use such language against the prime minister," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said here.

"We are followers of Mahatma Gandhi and he always adopted non-violence as a way to counter the violence inflicted through words or physical violence. Rahul Gandhi has said no Congress member should lose decency and balance in the use of words," Surjewala said at a press conference.

"Rahul Gandhi has criticised all those who use unreasonable language against the prime minister...we will reply to violence with dignity and love," he said.

Aiyar today called Modi a "neech aadmi" (a vile man), who did "dirty politics", kicking up a row on the last day of campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly polls.

"He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," Aiyar said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's name but trying to erase his contribution to nation building.

Modi, at a campaign rally in Surat, termed Aiyar's words as insult to Gujarat.

The Congress tonight suspended Aiyar from the primary membership of the party and issued him a show-cause notice.

Attacking the prime minister over his remarks during the inauguration of the Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi this morning, Surjewala said that under the BJP-led government at the Centre, atrocities on Dalits have risen sharply.

"Cases of atrocities on Dalits are being registered at the rate of 41,000 per year, or (a case of atrocity on) one Dalit every eight minutes, as per the National Crime records Bureau, but the prime minister remains silent," the Congress spokesperson said.

"In 2013, the UPA government had given 92,928 jobs to Dalits, which came down to 8,400 in 2015. Today, there is 31 per cent backlog in vacancies in jobs reserved for Dalits in the Central government," he said.

"Congress government had launched a pre-matric Scheduled Caste scholarship, allocating Rs 882 crore for it in 2013-14. Modi reduced the budget to Rs 50 crore in 2017-18," Surjewala claimed.

"Budget for rehabilitation of manual scavengers went down from Rs 439 crore to Rs 5 crore," he said.

The prime minister should not use Ambedkar's name to badmouth Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi or the Congress, he said.

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will visit cyclone 'Ockhi' hit areas in the city on December 14, Leader of the party-led UDF Opposition in the Kerala assembly Ramesh Chennithala said today.

Gandhi would also address a party leaders' meet and a public meeting organised as part of 'Padayorukam', the political rally led by Chennithala that concluded last week.

Talking to reporters, Chennithala alleged that the state government had failed to take necessary precautionary steps and also provide 'warning' to fishermen about the impending cyclone.

"The central agencies concerned had given information about the cylone to the state," he said.

Chennithala also wanted the state government to increase the Rs.20 lakh compensation amount announced by it to the families of deceased fishermen.

Earlier in the day, UDF leaders visited the Poonthura and Vizhinjam areas, from where most fishermen, who ventured into the sea, were yet to come back.

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Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma today alleged that Congress vice- president Rahul Gandhi was giving a communal colour to his party's election campaign in Gujarat and trying to divide the society.

Sharma, who was in Ghaziabad for a school programme, told reporters that Gandhi was attempting to link all issues with politics to win the Assembly polls in Gujarat this month.

"Congress is trying to divide the society for its political motive," he alleged.

Gandhi has been campaigning extensively in Gujarat. He has attacked the BJP, which has ruled the state uninterrupted for the past 22 years, on many issues, including the chaotic implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in July and the demonetisation of high-value currency in November 2016.

He has been attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hails from Gujarat, on some of these issues via his Twitter series "a question a day", through which he demands answers from Modi on "unfulfilled promises" made by his party.

The Congress leader has even been visiting temples in the poll-bound state, inviting criticism from the BJP that he was playing a "soft-Hindutva card" ahead of the Assembly polls.

In his interaction with the media, Sharma said that a Ram Temple will be built in Ayodhya as per the Supreme Court order.

"Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party must clear their stand on the issue of Ram Mandir. In Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi is trying to give communal colour to (his party's) election campaign," the deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh said.

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Registration of 1,600 Myanmarese nationals have been undertaken to ascertain the number of refugees in four villages in southern Mizoram's Lawngtlai district, deputy commissioner, Arun T said today.

The Myanmarese nationals fled their country due to clashes between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan militants.

The deputy commissioner said officials of the district administration were keeping a close watch on the refugees and elaborate security arrangements have been made.

"We like to see that they go back once the fighting ends across the border," he said, adding, the district administration had to render assistance on humanitarian grounds.

The refugees, majority of them women and children, crossed the border an took shelter in Hmawngbuchhuah, Zochachhuah, Laitlang and Dumzautlang villages after the Myanmarese Army launched a major offensive against the Arakan militants in Myanmar's Chin State near the Mizoram border.

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The CBI has registered a case in connection with the illegal transfer of Rs 100 crore from a Jharkhand government account for the midday meal programme in State Bank of India to a private builder, officials said on Thursday.

The agency carried out searches at the official premises of the accused and the company Bhanu Construction in Ranchi on Wednesday, officials said.

The FIR was registered against the company, its partners Sanjay Kumar Tiwari and Suresh Kumar and Ajay Oraon, former deputy manager of the bank's Hatia branch who has now been suspended.

The FIR, registered on the complaint of a State Bank of India officer, alleged that a deputy manager (Business Development Department) of the bank "dishonestly and by abusing his official position" transferred over Rs 100 crore from the account of "Rajya Madhyan Bhojan Pradhikaran" to Bhanu Construction.

"On August 05, 2017, State Bank of India, Hatia Branch received six debit advices from the...Government of Jharkhand for transfer of Rs 120.31 crore from their Saving Bank Account to multiple accounts maintained with different banks including State Bank of India," it alleged.

Rs 20.29 crore was to be transferred to State Bank of India and Rs 100.01 crore was to be transferred to other bank accounts, the FIR said.

For bulk transfer through real time gross settlement and electronic fund transfer (RTGS/NEFT), Rs 100.01 crore was debited from the account of Jharkhand Rajya Madhyan Bhojan Pradhikaran and was temporarily parked in office/suspense account of the branch for processing of the transfer to various accounts.

"Due to failure in uploading, the entire amount of Rs 100.01 crore got returned to the office and suspense account of the Branch," it said.

Instead of crediting back Rs 100.01 crore to the account of Jharkhand Rajya Madhyan Bhojan Pradhikaran from office account, it alleged that then deputy manager Oraon transferred the amount to the current account of Bhanu Construction.

Tiwari and Kumar dishonestly transferred the amount to their various accounts. It was utilised and misappropriated by keeping it as a liquid security or margin for the credit facility extended to them by Axis Bank Ltd, HDFC Bank, SREI Equipment Finance Ltd and Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Ltd, the FIR alleged.

According to the FIR, the SBI managed to recover Rs 76.29 crore on November 20, 2017, from various accounts with different banks but Rs 23.28 crore could not be recovered, "resulting in a loss to the bank and corresponding gain for Bhanu Construction".

The agency has booked the accused under charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
India should assure Russian companies that it will buy their India-made spares and not go for cheaper purchase from a third country to address its armed forces long grievance of delays in procuring critical defence equipment from Moscow, a top Russian official has said.

Viktor N Kladov, director for international cooperation and regional policy, Rostec, a state-owned Russian defence and industrial group, said Russia has chalked out a strategy to build technical service centres in India dedicated for specific equipment.

"India has bought a lot of Soviet and Russian made defence equipment and a bulk of these equipment requires modernisation, upgrade and repair and this can be done in the country (India).

"The way to address this problem is to set up facilities with our partners. We also need assurance from the Indian side that their products will be used by the end user," Kaldov told PTI here.

It has been a long-standing grievance of the Indian armed forces that supply of critical spares and equipment from Russia takes a long-time, affecting maintenance of military systems procured from Moscow.

Terming it a "complicated issue", Kaldov said Rostec was cooperating with Indian defence ministry to address the problem and manufacturing company Russian Helicopters plans to create service in India on the principle of "one window", which will simplify and accelerate the work in this direction.

"This is a pilot project and India is the first country where it is being implemented. India is interested in the implementation of this project, as it is operating the largest fleet of Russian helicopters," he said.

Russia has been a major supplier of military platforms to India.

Kladov said Rostec companies were interested in increasing the efficiency of after-sales service and simplifying the procedures for supply of spare parts to India.

"About a year ago, the Government of Russia decided to grant the right to a number of major Russian defence industry companies to directly conduct after-sales service, repair and modernisation of previously delivered military hardware.

"Now Russian Helicopters, United Engine Corporation, Techmash, Schwabe and High-Precision Weapons can directly interact with Indian customers on these issues," he said.

Kaldov noted that the very sophisticated defence equipment needed to be addressed in a specific workshop and licensed parts and spares should be used and technology of repair should be controlled by the manufacturer and the chief designer of the products.

"This is an issue which is both sided. And our rule is to provide life time support for the equipment. Sometimes the end user becomes opportunistic and its looking to buy spares elsewhere to make it cheaper. So they are outsourced in other countries," he said.

Kaldov said he had pointed out the concerns of the Russian companies regarding production of spares in India in his recent meeting with an Indian minister.

He said the company was offered a space to set up a facility to produce components, spares for electronics, machinery, engines and helicopters in Maharashtra.

Kaldov said Indian officials have told them that Russian manufacturers to participate in international tender exercise if they want to sell their products to the Indian armed forces.

"We will set up facilities and this can only be done if the Indian government assures that the Russian products will be purchased," he said.

Speaking on the issue of India inching closer to the US and Israel in terms of defence deals and procurement, Kladov said he did not see it as a threat, but as a challenge for Russia as the market is becoming more competitive.

"We don't see it as a threat rather as a challenge. It gives us thrust to do better and be more innovative and proactive. We don't fear competition. Let's look at the broader picture, its industrial cooperation, strategic trust which gives us a cutting edge," he said.

Calling the relationship between India and Russia a "privileged strategic partnership", Kladov said it meant "we trust our Indian partners with most sensitive defence inventions and achievements".

"America has many competitive products to offer. It's for Indian government to choose. It's up for the Indian government to build up balances. I can only speak on behalf of the Russian side. We are firm friends and strategic partners of the Indian republic," he said.
An exhibition of some 140 Indian rare traditional artefacts, some dating back to 5,000 years, opened in here today with a minister urging Singaporeans to visit it and witness the evolution of artistic and crafting traditions across generations.

The highlight of the exhibition is a collection of rare artefacts from the Indus Valley Civilisation loaned by the National Museum of India.

Each piece tells a story and will fascinate with its exquisite designs, including elaborate ancient Indus and Brahmi scripts and familiar motifs in Indian crafts such as the lotus and the mango, said the Indian Heritage Centre (IHC) which is hosting the exhibition till June 30.

The IHC has engaged 15 expert craftspeople from India to offer visitors an opportunity to witness ancient crafts being practiced up close, through fortnightly demonstrations.

Some of the ancient craft traditions include bidri - a craft that has its beginnings in the 14th and 15th centuries - where artists etch intricate designs and calligraphy on metal surfaces before filling them in with fine silver wires.

They will also demonstrate ancient skill of leather puppet making, which are then used in shadow puppetry performances of great Indian epics such as the Ramanyana.

The annual exhibition is themed: Symbols and Scripts: The Language of Craft.

The IHC CultureFest 2017, being held along the exhibition, explores the theme of Rasa, or aesthetics, in Indian tradition.

"Traditional craftsmanship embodies practices that have been passed down from our ancestors. This special exhibition at the Indian Heritage Centre showcases rare artefacts that represent the evolution of artistic and crafting traditions across generations," Grace Fu, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, said yesterday during the launch of the exhibition.

"I encourage Singaporeans to visit this exhibition and learn more about this important part of our intangible cultural heritage," said Fu.

"Through the artefacts featured in the exhibition, we celebrate the rich and diverse heritage of the Indian community in Singapore, as well as that of the larger global Indian diaspora," elaborated Trudy Loh, Director of Heritage Institutions at the National Heritage Board, parent group of IHC.

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SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal today announced that the party's ongoing sit-in protest, at Harike Pattan in Ferozepur, against "registration of false cases" against its leaders and workers would continue till those cases are withdrawn and other demands are met.

A Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) spokesman here alleged that the cases were registered at the insistence of the Congress- led government in the state.

He said the dharna was also against "non-cancellation of the election process at four places where Akali workers were not allowed to file their nomination papers for the upcoming civic polls."



The spokesperson said the SAD president, who is presently camping in Harike Patan after addressing a dharna at Manawala in Ferozepur has decided to continue the sit-in till the demands are met.

Badal demanded registration of cases against Congress leaders who had allegedly attacked Akali workers yesterday and indulged in arson.

He also demanded immediate countermanding of elections in the Nagar panchayats of Manawala and Makhu besides municipalities of Baghapurana and Ghanaur.

The SAD chief alleged that at all these places the Akali workers were prevented from filing their nomination papers forcibly and that even their nomination papers were torn.

If the government did not take steps immediately, the SAD would be forced to extend the scope of its agitation which was currently taking place only in Harike Patan, Badal said.

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Saudi Arabia today slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said.

"The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem."



Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.

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The White House warned today that canceling a planned meeting between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Vice President Mike Pence in the wake of the US policy shift on Jerusalem would be "counterproductive."



Amid indications that Abbas may withdraw from a planned meeting later this month, a White House aide said Pence "still plans to meet with Abbas as scheduled" and "believes it would be counterproductive for him to pull out of the meeting."



Pence is due to travel to Egypt and Israel in the second half of December, a visit that has taken on extra significance in the wake of President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of Abbas's Fatah party, told AFP that Pence was "not welcome in Palestine" during his upcoming visit.

Rajoub also signaled that Abbas would not meet with Pence.

"And President Abbas will not welcome him because of the statements he made" about Jerusalem.

Abbas has not made similar comments and his office could not immediately be reached.

Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel sparked Palestinian protests, sporadic clashes and a call for a new intifada today as fears grew of fresh bloodshed in the region.

Some Palestinian leaders have indicated that they no longer consider the United States an honest broker in the peace process.

Pence's trip now risks becoming a lightning rod for Palestinian anger.

In an effort to keep the trip on the rails, the White House is likely to only consider the meeting canceled if they hear that from Abbas himself.

Breaking off ties with Washington in such a public way would be risky, but the 82-year-old Palestinian leader could be under fierce domestic pressure to make the snub.

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An encounter took place between security forces and ultras belonging to Peoples Liberation Front of India (PLFI) at Tarobora village in West Singhbhum district but there was no report of any casualty, police said today.

The security forces personnel comprising - CRPF and district armed police - were on their routine long-range patrolling in extremist-hit area of the district when the ultras opened fire on them yesterday, the police said.

Around 30 to 35 rounds were fired by the security forces in retaliation, forcing the PLFI ultras to make a hasty retreat, Superintendent of Police, Anish Gupta said.

Some mobile phones and sim cards were recovered from the spot, the police said.

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A 65-year-old man has been arrested today for allegedly clicking photographs of women clandestinely in a metro train here, police said.

N Narasimha, a retired employee of the education department, was apprehended by the police's "She Team" which is entrusted with looking into cases of eve-teasing and stalking, police said.

"He was found "capturing" photographs of women and girls seated in front of him in the metro train without the knowledge or permission of the latter," Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh M Bhagwat said.

The officer added that some more photos were found in the man's phone.

" He was booked under IPC section 354-C (voyeurism) and was placed under arrest," Bhagwat said.

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Homegrown global vaccines major Serum Institute of India plans to launch at least four products and enter European and US markets in the next three to four years as it seeks to retain number one position.

The company sells its products in 147 countries and is the largest vaccines manufacturer by dosage globally with 1.2 billion doses per annum.

"There are two ways to maintain the position - come out with new vaccines as fast as possible for the existing markets and developing new markets," Serum Institute of India CEO Adar C Poonawalla told PTI.

Elaborating on the company's plans to launch new vaccines, he said Serum Institute plans to launch four new vaccines in the coming years.

"We are planning to launch a pentavalent meningitis vaccine. It is five-in-one meningitis vaccine. It will be coming out in less than two years time," Poonawalla said.

By end of 2019, there is a plan to launch a pneumonia vaccine, which will have a huge impact of protecting children's lives, as pneumonia causes maximum number of child deaths in the world, including in India, he added.

The other vaccines the company plans to launch are a dengue vaccine and a human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine for cervical cancer in women, Poonawalla said.

He sought government help to cut down the time required for approvals and improve ease of doing business and for the company to stay ahead of global competition.

"For us to stay ahead, we need support from the government to give us a fast track approval for our new vaccines," Poonawalla said.

On entering new markets, specially the developed ones in Europe and the US, he said steps are being taken up to have presence in these markets.

"We are not selling in the US and Europe right now but eventually in three years time we will go to Europe. Our first vaccine, TDAP (for protection tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) should be launched in Europe in three years. It is a booster vaccine given to children," Poonawalla said.

The company's new facility in Pune, which will be ready in a year and a half will cater to Europe and the US, he added.

When asked about the company's investments on new products, he said: "We spend between Rs 300-400 crore a year on research and development."



Moreover, the company spends Rs 300-400 crore every year on capex, he added.

"We re-plough around 80 per cent of our profits in our business for R&D and capex for future growth and for upkeep of our facilities," he added.

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The court of the judicial magistrate at Khanna today sent sharpshooters Hardeep Singh Shera and Ramandeep Singh on a four-day police remand in a targeted killings case.

The police obtained the remand of the duo in the murder of Shiv Sena leader Durga Das, who was shot dead in broad daylight on a busy road in Khanna on April 23, 2016, officials said.

Meanwhile, DIG (Ludhiana Police Range) Gursharn Singh Sandhu said proceedings were initiated to produce others arrested in targeted killings cases, including those nabbed for funding and conspiracy, in the Khanna court.

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Syrian men and boys, in their war- torn country and abroad, have suffered "a vicious cycle" of sexual abuse with more devastating consequences than previously reported, the United Nations said today.

In its new report, "We Keep it in our Heart," the UN's refugee agency said it had documented widespread sexual violence against Syrian males, including those seeking refuge.

"There have been documented reports of how Syrian women and girls have suffered sexual violence and displacement. However, this particular issue is a lesser known element of this grim story -- the male survivors, the boy survivors," said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.

"The results are clear. There is a vicious cycle here," he told AFP.

Based on input from 196 refugees and interviews with 73 humanitarian personnel, the report says sexual abuse has been a "disturbing" feature of Syria's nearly seven-year conflict.

Men and boys have suffered sexual violence in detention centres and checkpoints manned by armed factions -- but also in countries hosting them as refugees.

"One of my uncles in Syria was arrested. A few months after he was released from detention, he told us -- he broke down, crying in front of us -- that there was not one spot on his body that had not been abused by an electric drill," said Ahmed, a Syrian refugee in Jordan.

"After he was released he stopped eating and became alcoholic. He died from kidney failure."



Gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Syrians were especially vulnerable.

"There's no one (in the LGBTI refugee community) that didn't go through sexual violence. It's something that happens to everyone, to all of us," said Mazen, a young transgender man cited in the report.

Forms of sexual violence included electric shocks, cigarette burns to the genitals and anus, castration, and gang rape.

And in countries of asylum, Syrian men and boys reported being blackmailed into sexual relationships or exploited by employers.

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An 18-year-old girl collapsed on her way to school in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district today and later died in a hospital, police said.

Anu Sharma, a student of Government Higher Secondary School, Devak, collapsed this morning and was rushed to a sub-district hospital in Sunderbani, they added.

She was later declared dead by doctors and the body handed over to her family members, police said.

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Bicycle manufacturer TI Cycles of India today said it has signed an agreement to acquire controlling stake in Sri Lanka-based Creative Cycles Pvt Ltd and Great Cycles Pvt Ltd.

TI Cycles of India, a part of the USD 4.7 billion Murugappa Group, said the acquisition will help strengthen and expand the global supply chain for the premium cycles portfolio of TI Cycles.

"With this acquisition, we will be able to grow the market for premium cycles and our market share in the premium segment even more aggressively," said L Ramkumar, Managing Director, Tube Investments India Ltd (of which TI Cycles of India is a division).

Creative Cycles and Great Cycles have manufacturing facilities in the Katunayake Export Processing Zone, Colombo with a capability to produce a range of bicycles.

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said today that Ukraine was the sole sticking point keeping the United States and Russia from forging a closer relationship, suggesting that all other disputes were secondary.

"The issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," Tillerson said.

The assessment from America's top diplomat notably played down other areas of dispute, particularly Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, have concluded the Kremlin interfered in the election in an effort to help now-President Donald Trump and hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on that finding, and a special counsel is investigating whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian effort. He has said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin's personal denials that Moscow meddled.

But Tillerson hasn't shied away from accusing the Kremlin of election interference. One of the Trump team's toughest voices on Russia, he said in a speech last week that there was "clear evidence of Russia meddling in democratic elections in the US and Europe," and he called it part of an "active threat of a recently resurgent Russia."



Tillerson's focus on Ukraine came as he met with European diplomats at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, established during the Cold War to serve as a bridge between East and West.

Tillerson insisted the US could never overlook Russia's "attempted annexation" of Crimea or Moscow's military intrusion in eastern Ukraine.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence," Tillerson said.

"Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces.

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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam on Thursday launched the campaign for December 21 by-election to the prestigious R K Nagar assembly constituency, seen as an acid test for the ruling AIADMK.

As AIADMK flags fluttered along the campaign route, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam canvassed for party candidate E Madusudanan from an open jeep.

All along the campaign, party workers waved images of a smiling Amma (Jayalalithaa) engraved on a plastic clipboard like material.

Featuring the late party supremo in her favourite green in such publicity materials, party functionaries also held the party symbol two-leaves which was cast in the same colour.

Addressing the electorate, Palaniswami said after Amma won from the assembly segment, she announced several welfare schemes for RK Nagar and brought amenities for the people.

Inaugurating the campaign at Korukkupet, Palaniswami appealed to the people to help Madusudanan win with a huge margin to "continue the good work of Amma."



Hitting out at DMK Working President M K Stalin, he alleged that when the Leader of Opposition in the assembly was the city Mayor he did not bring amenities or devise schemes for the people of RK Nagar.

The Chief Minister accused the DMK leader of not introducing schemes for the constituency when he was a Minister.

A resident of North Chennai, Madusudanan who won from the same constituency in 1991 was a Minister for Handlooms during 1991-96 when late J Jayalalithaa was the Chief Minister.

Sporting a bright white shirt, dhoti and a tilak on his forehead, Madusudanan sought votes with folded hands all along the campaign trail.

Panneerselvam said Madusudanan is a popular leader whom the people across the constituency knew very well. He has been working for the people for decades together.

After winning in 1991, he did a lot of good work for the RK Nagar people, he said.

Earlier, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam inaugurated a party election campaign office, held discussions with party functionaries and visited a local temple.

State Ministers including Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar, an AIADMK strongman of North Chennai where RK Nagar falls, C Vijayabaskar and SP Velumani were among those who accompanied the top two ruling party leaders.

DMK candidate N Marudu Ganesh has begun campaign in R K Nagar by going door-to-door seeking votes.

The by-poll to the assembly seat was necessitated after the death of legislator and chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

The by-poll was earlier scheduled to be held on April 12.

However, it was rescinded by the Election Commission following complaints of money distribution.

Madhusudhanan was then the candidate of the Panneerselvam-led rival AIADMK faction, while Dhinakaran was contesting on the then AIADMK (Amma) camp.

Later, the factions led by Panneerselvam and Palaniswami merged in August.

The Election Commission awarded the 'Two Leaves' symbol to the unified AIADMK on November 2.
West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh today alleged that the Trinamool Congress had come to power in the state via democratic process but since then it is looting democracy in every sphere.

The Trinamool Congress has become the property of two persons and others are merely employees of the party, he said without naming anybody.

"From educational institutions to administrative machinery -- no one can find democracy in West Bengal. It is being looted," Ghosh alleged here in Jalpaiguri district.

Posts of ministers in the Mamata Banerjee government and leaders in her party are not safe and they cannot work with dignity, he told reporters at New Jalpaiguri railway station.

Ghosh said Mamata Banerjee has been attacking the BJP as she is afraid of the saffron party.

"People do not want the Trinamool Congress now. They want the BJP. It is certain that the BJP will bring another round of change in West Bengal," he said.

To a question, Ghosh said no decision has been taken yet by the party about the post Mukul Roy will get.

Roy has joined the BJP from the Trianamool Congress last month.

Later, Roy also reached Jalpaiguri in another train to attend a party programme.

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Former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn texted a businessman during President Donald Trump's inauguration speech that a Middle East nuclear power plant scheme with Russian partners was "good to go," a Democratic lawmaker alleged today.

According to a whistleblower who contacted the lawmaker, the businessman said Flynn had told him that sanctions on Russia would be "ripped up" as a priority in the new Trump government to help the nuclear scheme go ahead.

"Mike has been putting everything in place for us," the businessman, Alex Copson, managing director of nuclear power promoter ACU Strategic Partners, allegedly told the whistleblower.

"This is going to make a lot of very wealthy people."



The allegations posed new troubles for Flynn, who left the White House last February after barely three weeks and pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI investigators in the Russia election meddling probe.

It also raised fresh questions on what Trump knew about Flynn's business plans when he appointed the retired three- star general to serve as his national security advisor.

Representative Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, recounted the whistleblower's allegations as part of a push to have Flynn and others testify to his committee.

According to Cummings, on January 20, 2017, the whistleblower had a conversation with Copson as they attended Trump's inauguration.

Six months earlier, Copson had paid Flynn USD 25,000 to travel to the Middle East to help promote his scheme, and was excited about the possibility that it would move ahead.

The ACU plan involved some two dozen nuclear power plants around the Middle East, to be developed jointly by the United States and Russia.

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US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital sparked a Palestinian general strike and a call for a new intifada today as fears grew of fresh bloodshed in the region.

The Israeli military deployed hundreds of more troops to the occupied West Bank amid uncertainty over the fallout from Trump's decision.

A mass demonstration was being planned for the West Bank city of Ramallah later. Several thousand marched in the Hamas- run Gaza Strip last night, burning US and Israeli flags while chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."



Trump's announcement prompted an almost universal diplomatic backlash that continued today, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warning it would put the region in a "ring of fire".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however lavished praised on Trump, saying his name would now be associated with Jerusalem's long history and urging other countries to follow his lead.

Trump's defiant move -- making good on a pledge made during his 2016 presidential campaign -- ends seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the Holy City, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump said this marks the start of a "new approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," he said in a speech from the White House on Wednesday, urging calm and "the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate."



But immediately the move sparked anger among Palestinians and their supporters.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for a new intifada, or uprising, in a speech in Gaza City.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Trump's move disqualifies the United States from its traditional role as peace broker in the Middle East conflict.

Saudi Arabia called the move "unjustified and irresponsible."



Erdogan asked: "Hey Trump! What do you want to do?



"What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace," he said, addressing the US leader directly in one of his most familiar rhetorical habits.

Palestinian shops in east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as in the West Bank were largely shuttered and schools closed today after a general strike was called.

"By this decision, America became a very small country, like any small country in the world, like Micronesia," Salah Zuhikeh, 55, told AFP in Jerusalem's Old City.

"America was a great country for us and everyone."



Trump's move left many angry US allies struggling to find a diplomatic response.

Through gritted teeth, Britain described the move as "unhelpful" and France called it "regrettable." Germany said plainly that it "does not support" Trump's decision.

Eight countries including Britain, France and Italy pressed for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in response to the move, which was set for tomorrow.

The leaders of Muslim nations meanwhile deployed ever- harsher rhetoric to describe Trump's decision, while Jordan and the Palestinians requested an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers.

Trump also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In doing so, he begins to make good on a campaign promise dear to US evangelical Christian and right-wing Jewish voters -- as well as donors.

Trump's predecessors, from Bill Clinton to George Bush, had made the same promise, but quickly reneged upon taking office.

The 45th US president was determined to show his arrival in Washington spells the end of business as usual, suggesting his predecessors failed to act though lack of "courage."



Israel seized Arab east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

The Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

Several peace plans have unravelled in the past decades over the issue of how to divide sovereignty or oversee holy sites in Jerusalem.

The international community does not formally recognise the ancient city as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved in negotiations -- a point reiterated by UN chief Antonio Guterres in the wake of Trump's decision.

Guterres implicitly criticised Trump, stressing his opposition to "any unilateral measures that would jeopardise the prospect of peace."



Trump insisted the move did not prejudge final talks, saying it simply reflected the reality that west Jerusalem is and will continue to be part of Israel under any settlement.

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President Donald Trump has recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, overturning decades of US and international policy on the disputed holy city, a hugely controversial decision which many Arab leaders warned could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

Trump said he had "judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians".

In his nationally televised address, Trump said he has "determined" that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and was directing the State Department to begin preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The move, which was promised by Trump during his 2016 campaign and appeals to his right-wing base, could lead to massive protests in the Middle East and elsewhere, Arab leaders have warned.

He said the US still wanted to see a peace agreement and would not take a position on "the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders".

"The US remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.

"There will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement, but we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a place of greater understanding and cooperation," he said in an apparent reference to the tough road ahead.

Trump said that his predecessors have not been able to take a decision in this regard despite a decision by Congress more than two decades ago.

"In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognise that city as Israel's capital.

"This Act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago," Trump said.

He said that Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world.

Recognising the status of Jerusalem as a highly-sensitive issue, he said he does not think the peace process is aided by ignoring the simple truth that Jerusalem is home to Israel's legislature, the Supreme Court, President and Prime Minister.

Trump recognised that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final status negotiations between the parties and reaffirmed the US' support for the status quo at the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.

Trump said he is optimistic that peace can be achieved as delaying the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has not helped achieve peace over the past two decades.

Trump also said that he is prepared to support a two- state solution to the dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians, if agreed to by the parties.

"For over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law's waiver, refusing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, or to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.

"Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgements based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in," he said.

"After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians," Trump said.

It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result, the President said.

"Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

"This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement. Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace," Trump said.

He said that this decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from America's strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement.

Earlier, the Trump administration officials claimed that the decision enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Congress.

With the announcement, Trump has ignored dire warnings from Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, America's closest allies in the Middle East.

Jordan's King Abdullah II had said Jerusalem is the key to stability of the entire Middle East.

The international community considers east Jerusalem illegally occupied by Israel and most countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv.

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US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel may play well with his domestic political base but is a big risk and would derail the peace process in the volatile West Asia, top American media outlets warned today.

Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital yesterday, reversing nearly seven decades of US and international policy on the holy city.

In an editorial, The Washington Post said Trump cast himself as setting aside failed conventional wisdom he pointed out there has been no peace deal and of offering a fresh approach.

"That's a stance that may play well with his domestic political base and with many Israelis. But Trump is implicitly betting that previous presidents were wrong to worry about blowback in the Middle East and beyond. That's a big risk to take for the scoring of political points," the daily said.

In its lead editorial, the daily said so far, Trump's decision has been rejected by every major US ally in Europe and the Middle East, including Britain, France, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"It will put considerable pressure on Jordan, Israel's fragile neighbour, whose King Abdullah II sees himself as a protector of Jerusalem's holy Muslim sites. It will probably make it harder to promote a tacit alliance between Israel and Sunni Arab states against Iran, as Tehran will surely exploit the Jerusalem issue," the daily said.

"It will also virtually ensure that Palestinian leaders respond unfavourably to the peace initiative the Trump administration says it is preparing. If violence erupts in Jerusalem or elsewhere in the West Asia and extremists will do their best to make that happen Trump will be blamed," the Post said.

The New York Times says Trump's decision to tip the scales toward Israel on this critical matter almost certainly will make an agreement harder to reach by inflaming doubts about America's honesty and fairness as a broker in negotiations, raising new tension in the region and perhaps inciting violence.

"The constituency Trump is most clearly courting is his own political base of evangelicals and other pro-Israel hard-liners,"



it said, adding the big winner is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hard-line government has shown no serious interest in peace, at least not a two-state solution that could win Palestinian support.

However, The Wall Street Journal in its lead editorial said Trump's decision is hardly the radical policy departure that critics claim and Trump accompanied it with an embrace of the two-state solution for Palestine that Presidents of both parties have long supported.

"Trump called his decision yesterday "a recognition of reality," and he is right. Israel's parliament, Supreme Court and the president and prime minister's residences are housed in Jerusalem and US Presidents and Secretaries of State meet their Israeli counterparts there," the daily said.

Meanwhile, two White House officials told CNN that this would derail the peace process. "We're prepared for derailment -- temporary, I hope. Pretty sure it will be temporary," a senior White House official, told the network.

The official acknowledged that the President's peace team has not spoken with furious Palestinian officials since the Trump's announcement.

"A lot of people put their heads into this decision to see how do we make this happen without at the same time throwing the peace process out of the window," one of the officials said.

"In terms of a moment where it could happen, where it could be the least disruptive at a moment in time, this is the moment. We know there will be some short-term pain, but think it will help in the long run," the second senior official told CNN.

Fox said Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital city is an acknowledgement of historical fact and current reality. "Bold actions can prompt new thinking and stimulate initiatives to advance peace," it said.

"US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is an act of constructive diplomacy not, as one Palestinian leader proclaimed, a declaration of war," it asserted.
The co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party went on trial in Ankara today on charges of links to outlawed Kurdish rebels, after more than a year behind bars in a case his supporters say is politically motivated.

Selahattin Demirtas of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was first detained in November last year in a crackdown under the state of emergency that followed the 2016 failed coup.

Before his arrest Demirtas was considered one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's major rivals, a silky orator who has succeeded in bringing his party from the fringe into the political mainstream.

Demirtas, 44, is charged with "managing a terror organisation", "making propaganda for a terror group" and "inciting criminal acts" among other accusations.

He faces up to 142 years in prison if convicted.

His trial got under way at the Sincan prison complex in Ankara province but Demirtas was not present.

The MP is being held in prison in the northwestern region of Edirne and the party has previously accused the justice ministry of preventing any court appearances by Demirtas.

The judge said he refused to appear via videolink.

Defence lawyers called for Demirtas' acquittal, arguing what he was charged with was part of his legal political activity. But the prosecutor urged for his continued detention during the packed hearing.

Hundreds of supporters turned up outside the complex, chanting "oppression will not intimidate us" and "Selahattin Demirtas is our honour", an AFP correspondent said.

A diplomatic source said representatives of foreign missions who wished to attend were not allowed to enter the court.

A dozen HDP MPs were detained at the same time as Demirtas, including former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag. She was stripped of her MP status in February and stepped down in May.

Nine HDP MPs are still in prison, including Demirtas and Yuksekdag.

Under Demirtas' leadership, the HDP became the second biggest opposition party, winning support from liberal and left-wing Turks beyond its Kurdish base.

But the government accuses it of being a political front for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group blacklisted by Turkey and its Western allies.

Analysts say Demirtas never succeeded in fully distancing his party from the PKK, though the HDP denies the claims.

It has rubbished Ankara's accusations against its co- leader, saying Demirtas' 501-page indictment was based on press releases, speeches, panels and similar legal and political activities.

Demirtas is ensnared in nearly 100 legal cases, but this is the most serious and the one for which he has been held in prison for almost 400 days.

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India today said an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

The defence ministry said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

In Beijing, the Chinese defence ministry said the Indian drone recently "intruded" into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector, prompting it to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of China's territorial sovereignty.

The defence ministry here said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit here to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," the defence ministry said in a statement.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."



It did not clarify when the incident happened.

"The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas," it said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country has lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the drone violating Chinese sovereignty.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day- long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off had ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.

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An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Indian Army crashed around Dokalam in the Sikkim sector after it "crossed" the border into China following a technical problem, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India.

Sources in Delhi said today that the Indian security forces in Nathu La immediately informed the Chinese army over the hotline about the UAV's technical problem and crossing the Line of Actual Control(LAC).

The Indian defence ministry said its border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location. It, however, did not give details of when the UAV had crashed but sources in Delhi said the incident happened around 10 days ago.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Delhi to attend the Russia-India- China trilateral meeting on December 11.

In Beijing, China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China- India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

The Indian defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," it said in a statement released in Delhi.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."



Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty, said, "I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited."



Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day- long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", Geng said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the LAC and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua agency as saying.

Wang's visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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The UK has sidestepped London mayor Sadiq Khan's call for an official apology on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, saying the government has "rightly condemned" the "deeply shameful act" in British history in the past.

The UK Foreign Office statement comes after Khan during his visit to Amritsar yesterday said the British government should apologise for the mass killing.

"I'm clear that the Government should now apologise, especially as we reach the centenary of the massacre. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need through a formal apology," Pakistani-origin Khan said during his ongoing trade mission to India and Pakistan.

He described the massacre as one of the most horrific events in India's history.

The Foreign Office invoked former British Prime Minister David Cameron's views on the issue after Khan asked for an apology.

"As the former Prime Minister said when he visited the Jallianwala Bagh in 2013, the massacre was a deeply shameful act in British history and one that we should never forget. It is right that we pay respect to those who lost their lives and remember what happened. The British Government rightly condemned the events at the time," it said in a statement.

The UK's Conservative party-led government had last fallen short of a formal apology for the massacre during a visit to Amritsar by Cameron.

During his Indian trade mission in February 2013, Cameron had said it would be wrong to "reach back into history" and apologise for the wrongs of British colonialism.

Meanwhile, a veteran UK-Indian MP has revived his petition calling for an apology by Britian for the massacre after Khan's demand.

Virendra Sharma, a fellow Opposition Labour Party member like Khan, had launched the petition on the UK Parliament's website earlier this year but it has attracted just over 1,778 signatures.

At 10,000 signatures, the UK government would have to respond to the petition and at 100,000 it has to be considered for a House of Commons debate.

"In 1919 Colonel Dyer ordered his men to fire, and maybe 1,000 peaceful protesters were left dead. At the time Winston Churchill proclaimed the massacre 'monstrous' and the British Government condemned Dyer for his actions, but no apology has since been forthcoming. It is now time to apologise," the petition reads.

Punjabi-origin Sharma has been campaigning for an apology over the years.

Khan, who was on a three-city tour to India, visited New Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar to strengthen the UK's capital trade ties with India.

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A senior United Nations official on a rare high-level visit to North Korea held talks with the North's foreign minister today.

Jeffrey Feltman, the UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, met with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on the second full day of the highest-level UN visit to the North since 2010. He arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a stay expected to last four or five days.

It's not immediately known what the two discussed. According to North Korea's state-run media, Feltman discussed UN assistance and operations in North Korea along with "other matters of mutual concern" during a meeting with the vice foreign minister yesterday.

Six UN agencies, with about 50 international staff, are represented in the North.

The visit by Feltman, an American citizen and former State Department official, comes amid high tensions on the peninsula fanned by tough talk and posturing by Pyongyang and Washington.

The North recently launched its most advanced missile to date and the US and South Korea are now holding joint exercises with some of the world's most powerful fighter aircraft.

North Korea's official agency on Wednesday quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman strongly criticising senior US administration officials' "bellicose remarks" and the ongoing military exercises.

"The remaining question now is: when will the war break out," it said.

Though the North's state media are prone to publishing alarmist rhetoric, North Korean authorities have regularly criticized the U.N. for its sanctions resolutions, insisting Pyongyang has the sovereign right to test missiles, nuclear devices and launch satellites.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly in September, Foreign Minister Ri defended his country's missile and nuclear programs as a "righteous self-defensive measure" in the face of US hostility and nuclear threats.

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The UN Security Council today said reports that migrants detained in Libyan camps were being sold into slavery could amount to "crimes against humanity" in a joint statement of condemnation.

It follows global shock over the atrocities suffered in Libya by African migrants, many of whom are trying to reach Europe, brought home by a CNN report showing people being sold as slaves.

The council said it "condemns such actions as heinous abuses of human rights which may also amount to crimes against humanity," according to the statement, which was drafted by Great Britain.

It added it was essential "to transfer detainees to State authorities and encourages the Libyan authorities to reinforce their cooperation with international organization and UN agencies and to ensure humanitarian access to detention centers."



Since the 2011 collapse of the Moamer Kadhafi regime, Libya has been riven by fighting between militias which hold captives. Libyan authorities exercise little control over them.

"The Security Council emphasizes that a stable Libya is the only way to help improve the living conditions of all people in Libya, including migrants," the resolution added.

It is rare for a UN resolution to single out a specific country when talking about slavery, a phenomenon that is normally discussed in the context of global rights abuses.

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The UN Security Council will meet on Friday in emergency session to discuss the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the council's leadership announced today.

The talks -- requested by eight nations -- will begin at 10:00 am, but there are other items on the agenda, so the Jerusalem issue may not come up until the late morning, the council's Japanese presidency said.

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The UN Security Council is to vote today on a resolution authorizing its Mali peacekeeping mission to support a new Sahel regional force against jihadists, diplomats said.

If the text proposed by France is accepted, the MINUSMA mission in Mali would provide medical evacuations, fuel, water, rations, and engineering units to assist the G5 Sahel troops provided by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The G5 conducted its first operation last month in the Sahel region, which has turned into a hotbed of lawlessness since chaos engulfed Libya in 2011, Islamists took over northern Mali in 2012, and the Boko Haram group became active in northern Nigeria.

France and the United States -- two of five permanent members of the Council -- have clashed over international support for the Sahel force.

French President Emmanuel Macron has complained about the sluggish deployment of the G5 Sahel and said it needed more troops and military means.

He has called an international meeting in Paris next Wednesday in an effort to address the shortfalls.

In its proposed resolution, France asked United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to conclude "as soon as possible" a technical agreement between the UN, the European Union and the G5 Sahel states "with a view to providing specified operational and logistical support through MINUSMA" to the new force.

The assistance would apply to the G5 Sahel force "only when operating on Malian territory" and would come at no extra cost to the UN because it would "be subject to full financial reimbursement to the United Nations," the draft resolution says.

MINUSMA has almost 11,000 Blue Helmets and has been deployed in Mali since 2013.

France has its own 4,000-strong military presence in the region, known as Barkhane.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has said that the peacekeeping mission in Mali was already overstretched. She raised "serious" reservations about "using UN resources to support non-UN activity."



Financing of the G5 Sahel force, which Paris says would need 400 million euros (USD 473 million) when it is fully operational next year, is not yet assured.

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He would wander the streets of occupied Mosul by day, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information.

He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by the extremists. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and stonings, so he could hear killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes.

By night, anonymously from his darkened room, Mosul Eye told the world what was happening. If caught, he too would be killed.

But after more than three years, his double life has grown too heavy to bear. He misses his name.

His secrets consume him, sap energy he'd rather use for his doctoral dissertation and for helping Mosul rebuild. In conversations with The Associated Press, he agonized over how to end the anonymity that plagues him. He made his decision. Mosul Eye is Omar Mohammed, historian, scholar, blogger. He is 31.

The revelation of his identity is for his thousands of readers and followers, for all his volunteers in Mosul who have been inspired by a man they have never seen. But above all, it is for the brother who died in the final battle and for his grieving mother.

"I can't be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now," he told The Associated Press.

Mohammed first posted about the Islamic State group under his own Facebook account, in the first few days after its fighters swept into Mosul, but a friend told him he risked being killed. So in those first days he made himself a promise: trust no one, document everything.

A newly minted teacher with a reputation for secular ideas, he had lost his university job.

He found another calling.

"My job as a historian requires an unbiased approach which I am going to adhere to and keep my personal opinion to myself," he wrote on that first day, June 18, 2014.

Mosul Eye became one of the outside world's main sources of about the Islamic State fighters, their atrocities and their transformation of the city into a grotesque shadow of itself.

During Friday sermons, Mohammed feigned enthusiasm. He collected propaganda to post online later. He drank tea at the hospital, fishing for information.

Much of what he collected went on the blog. Other details he kept in his computer, for fear of giving away his identity. Someday, he promised, he would write history with them.

The most sensitive details initially came from two old friends: a doctor and a high school dropout who had joined an Islamic State intelligence unit.

Mohammed's information sometimes included photos of the fighters and commanders, complete with biographies surreptitiously pieced together during the course of his normal life that of an out-of-work scholar living at home.

"I used the two characters, the two personalities to serve each other," he said. He expanded into a Facebook page and a Twitter feed to parcel out information at a time when little was escaping.

Intelligence agencies made contact as well and he rebuffed them.

"I am not a spy or a journalist," he would say. "I tell them this: If you want the information, it's published and it's public for free. Take it."



In March 2015, his catalog of horrors got to him.

"I was super ready to die," Mohammed said. "I was so tired of worrying about myself, my family, my brothers. I am not alive to worry, but I am alive to live this life. I thought: I am done.

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The Odisha Assembly today witnessed repeated adjournments as members of three major political parties engaged in a war of words over Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh.

Opposition Congress MLAs rushed to the well and shouted slogans against the central and state governments for not setting up a tribunal to resolve the dispute.

The ruling BJD MLAs also joined the frenzy and raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP members, on the other hand, blamed the ruling party for the stalemate.

The central government, through an affidavit in the Supreme Court, has said the Odisha government did not provide required information in the matter, hence, there is no need to constitute a tribunal, said BJP legislature party leader K V Singhdeo.

Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra alleged that the Centre has betrayed the people of Odisha by denying them a tribunal.

"As per the Constitutional guidelines, a tribunal should be formed to resolve water dispute between two states. This is one of the biggest violations of law," Mishra said.

Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat was unable to run the House amid the noisy scenes and adjourned the sessions several times in the day.

The state was not serious about the Mahanadi issue, the BJP MLAs maintained.

"We have been demanding a White Paper on Mahanadi water dispute, but the state failed to provide one with proper data," BJP MLA Pradeep Purohit said.

The state government chief whip Amar Prasad Satpathy countered the BJP's allegations and said the Centre's betrayal came to the fore when it moved Supreme Court with the affidavit.

When a state applies for a tribunal, the Centre is bound to constitute it under the Inter State River Water (ISRW) Disputes Act, 1956, he said.

"In case of Odisha, the Centre acted with an ill intention to help completion of projects by the Chhattisgarh government," Satpathy alleged.

The Odisha government had written to the Centre for constitution of an inter-state tribunal under section 3 of the Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956 (IRWD Act) to resolve the Mahanadi water sharing dispute between Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

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The US today issued a "worldwide caution" to its citizens travelling overseas, urging them to exercise caution in the wake of President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as it may trigger violent protests.

The travel advisory includes South Asia in particular Afghanistan and Pakistan in addition to the Muslim-majority countries.

"As terrorist attacks, political upheaval, and violence often take place without any warning, US citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness when travelling," the State Department said.

The latest worldwide caution replaces the previous alert issued on September 14 this year.

The US government facilities worldwide remain in a heightened state of alert, the advisory said, adding that these facilities may temporarily close or periodically suspend public services to assess their security posture.

Terrorist groups including ISIS, al-Qaeda, their associates, and those inspired by such groups, are intent on attacking US citizens wherever they are, the department said.

Extremists may use conventional or non-conventional weapons to target US government and private interests, it said.

Terrorists are increasingly using less sophisticated methods of attack to more effectively target crowds, including the use of edged weapons, pistols, and vehicles as weapons, the alert said.

There are terrorists, guerrilla, and insurgent groups in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and the potential for al- Qaeda or ISIS-inspired attacks is high in several West African countries and countries bordering Somalia.

Armed terrorist and criminal groups are operating in the East Asian and Pacific region and may attempt to target US citizens, particularly for kidnapping in the coastal areas and outlying islands of the eastern part of the Malaysian state of Sabah and the southern Philippines, the State Department said.

Further terrorist groups continue to plot attacks in Europe as foreign fighters return home from Syria and Iraq, while other individuals may be radicalised or inspired by ISIS propaganda, it said.

Noting that terrorist groups are very active in the Middle East and North Africa, it said the US government remains highly concerned about possible attacks against US citizens, facilities, businesses, and perceived US and Western interests in the region.

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are considered violent and unpredictable war zones, and there is no official US diplomatic presence in the latter three countries, it said.

The US government assesses terrorist groups in South Asia may be planning attacks in the region, possibly against US facilities, citizens, and interests, it said, adding that citizens should avoid travel to Afghanistan, as no region in the country is immune from violence.

"A number of established terrorist organisations, indigenous sectarian groups, and other militants pose a danger to US citizens in Pakistan. Extremist elements are also active in India, as outlined in a recent emergency message. Terrorists have hit a wide variety of targets and institutions in Bangladesh," the State Department said.

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The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a congressman's motion today to impeach President Trump, as Democratic Party leaders argued that now was not the time to pursue the effort.

Lawmakers voted 364 to 58 in rejection of liberal Democrat Al Green's resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against the Republican president. The vote was not on the articles of impeachment themselves but on tabling the proposal.

Green had used a so-called privileged motion to force a vote on the issue. All Republicans opposed the motion, along with 126 Democrats.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that while Trump has made several statements and taken actions "that are beyond the pale for most Americans," it was important to allow congressional committees probing Russian meddling in the US election and possible Trump campaign collusion to proceed with their work.

"The special counsel's investigation is moving forward as well, and those inquiries should be allowed to continue," she added, referring to Robert Mueller.

"Now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment."



Green first introduced impeachment proceedings in October, but forced the vote yesterday.

"I love my country. For this reason I will bring articles of impeachment to a vote in the House of Representatives," Green wrote in a letter to colleagues.

In the resolution, Green argues that Trump has sewn discord among Americans "by associating the majesty and dignity of the presidency with causes rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, or neo-Nazism."



Two other House Democrats have introduced impeachment articles, but they have not reached the floor.

Democrats have debated the political merits of pressing for impeachment, and some have cautioned that an aggressive stance could provoke a backlash by Trump's conservative base at the ballot box.

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Top American lawmakers, across the aisle, joined by eminent experts today slammed China for the "continued repression and human rights violations" in Tibet, even as they praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

"Tibetans inside Tibet continue to live in very, very challenging times indeed," top Hollywood star Richard Gere, chair of the International Campaign for Tibet, said in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

During the hearing, lawmakers and experts testifying before the subcommittee called for reciprocal access, religious freedom and human rights in Tibet.

Congressman Ted Yoho, who chaired the hearing, supported the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017 which proposes to deny US visas to Chinese government officials involved in restricting access to Tibet.

Alleging that human rights and personal freedoms in Tibet were "already in a poor and worsening state", Yoho said the government of China engages in "severe repression" of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic heritage by and "strictly curtailing" the civil rights of the Tibetan population, including the freedom of speech, religion, association, assembly and movement.

The authorities have used "heavy-handed and violent tactics" to maintain control in Tibet, especially in response to unrest, including "extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial detentions and house arrest", he said, he said.

"Tibet remains extremely isolated. The flow of information in and out of Tibet is tightly restricted. Tibetans are prevented from obtaining passports and moving freely, and foreigners, especially journalists and officials are frequently denied access," he said.

Congressman Brad Sherman demanded that Congress must act quickly to counter China's "repressive tactics and policies" toward Tibet.

"This is important for our own standing as leaders in world human rights," he said, as he praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

"We're trying to build a strategic relationship and partnership with India, and we've got to commend India for providing refuge to over 90,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama himself, who have had to flee Chinese repression," he said.

According to Congressman Steve Chabot, China's "decades- long oppression of Tibet is a constant example of its total disregard for religious freedom and human decency".

"Just this past weekend, another Tibetan monk set himself on fire to protest China's ongoing tyranny. China has systematically marginalised Tibet for over 50 years now," he said.

America's own national security interests dictate that it oppose China's "increasingly repressive policies" on Tibet and that the US work toward a negotiated solution and start making the treatment of the people of Tibet an important factor in our relations with Beijing, asserted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Congressman Jim McGovern, author of the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017, said the Dalai Lama can play a constructive role in negotiating a better future for the Tibetan people, but China "clearly doesn't see it that way".

"China is waiting him out and counting on his eventual departure to remove Tibet from the international agenda, so we need to move now, and we need some leverage, and that is why earlier this year, along with a bipartisan group of members, I introduce HR1872, the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act," he said.

"If China wants its citizens and officials to travel freely in the United States, Americans must be able to travel freely in China, including Tibet.

"But allowing travel to Tibet is only one step China needs to take, and there are others. Most especially, China should permit His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to return to Tibet for a visit if he so desires," McGovern said.

Gere told lawmakers that reciprocity is an important principle in diplomatic relations that should be implemented not only when it comes to trade, but also to freedom of movement and freedom of information.

"If they (Chinese) want to be the superpower they claim to be and the world leader they claim to be, these norms are to be followed," he said.

Gere said another important part of the Tibet Policy Act was to encourage the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and his representatives and the Chinese government.

"We have not done that recently, and this needs to be the forefront of what our policy is with China. It's not unreasonable, and it's actually good for China. To resolve this Tibetan issue is good for everyone, especially the Chinese," he said.

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The United States warned Russia today that its ties with the West can never recover until it pulls its forces out of Ukraine, as OSCE foreign ministers met in Vienna.

Diplomats had hoped that meetings on the sidelines of the 57-nation body would make progress on agreeing terms for a UN peacekeeping force for war-torn Ukraine.

But the major powers in the dispute are still far apart, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went so far as to declare that the stand-off over Ukraine was the single most important obstacle to warmer US relations with Moscow.

Tillerson was to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later in the day, but there appeared little room for compromise after the veteran Moscow envoy branded the idea of a robust UN mission a bid to resolve the conflict "by force".

At a conference with OSCE host Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, Tillerson recalled that US President Donald Trump had been clear during his campaign last year that he wanted better relations with Russia.

"But the issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," he stressed, after a morning ministerial meeting at which he and Lavrov had expressed starkly different views.

"We can have difference in other arenas ... but when one country invades another that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile," he warned.

"And we've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning: That we must address Ukraine, it stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing relations."



In principle, both Moscow and Washington have now expressed support for the idea of a UN peacekeeping mission to end the war between Kiev's government forces and Russian- backed separatists in the east of the country.

But Russia envisions a limited force to simply protect the existing 600-strong group of unarmed OSCE observers, who are struggling to monitor a shaky ceasefire in a conflict that has already left 10,000 dead since 2014.

Washington, in contrast, has in mind a much more robust UN mission that would police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine, building the conditions for lasting peace.

"We've reached an absolute low point regarding confidence between the main players," Thomas Greminger, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's secretary general, admitted as talks began.

Western powers fear that a limited United Nations mission would serve to create a frozen conflict that would lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine.

But Lavrov, in his opening remarks to the OSCE ministerial council, argued that the bigger mission idea could become "an occupational administration" and be tantamount to attempting "to solve this problem by force".

Tillerson did not directly address the peacekeeping issue in his remarks but was strident in his condemnation of the threat he said Russia poses to the existing unarmed mission.

"Of all the challenges confronting the OSCE today, none is more challenging nor vexing than the situation in Ukraine," he warned, stressing the US will never lift sanctions until Russia returns control of Crimea and the disputed Donbass region to Ukraine.

Tillerson noted that more civilians were killed this year in eastern Ukraine than in 2016, and that ceasefire violations are up 60 percent.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces," he said.

"We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission," he demanded.

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Health Minister Anil Vij today ordered the removal of Gurgaon's Fortis Hospital from a list of private hospitals empanelled with the Haryana government, a day after a committee found several irregularities on its part that led to the death of a seven-year-old girl suffering from dengue.

The decision was taken in the wake of the death of the girl during treatment at the Fortis hospital in September, according to a state government statement.

The girl's parents were charged more than Rs 15 lakh for treatment by the hospital.

The three-member committee, probing the circumstances under which the girl died, in a report submitted to the state government yesterday found "several irregularities" including protocols not being followed by the hospital in the case.

Following the indictment by the panel, Vij yesterday said an FIR will be filed against the hospital and the license of its blood bank will be cancelled.

The committee headed by Dr Rajiv Wadhera, Additional DG, Health, Haryana, was set up by the government on November 21.

The hospital had earlier refuted the charges, claiming the patient's family was informed about the bill on a daily basis and that there was no medical negligence.

Yesterday, the group said they were "yet to receive a copy of the report" of the committee.

In July this year, the Haryana government formulated a policy for empanelment of private hospitals and clinical laboratories for providing treatment to government employees, pensioners and their dependents in the state.

Under the policy, the empanelment of private hospitals would be valid for a maximum of three years or till the end of the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers certificate.

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In a major development, leading export control regime on Friday decided to admit India as its new member.

The decision was taken at the grouping's plenary meeting in Vienna.

The grouping said India will be its 42nd member state as soon as the necessary formalities are completed.

" (WA) participating states reviewed progress of a number of current membership applications and agreed at the plenary meeting to admit India which will become the arrangement's 42nd participating state as soon as the necessary procedural arrangements for joining the WA are completed," the grouping said in a statement at the conclusion of its plenary meeting.

An entry into the export control regime would enhance India's credentials in the field of non-proliferation despite not being a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).




Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has said embattled Hollywood producer lied to multiple women that she slept with him.

Weinstein has been accused of sexual abuse by over 50 women. However, he has denied the allegations.

Paltrow, 45, told The New York Times that Weinstein told aspiring actors to sleep with him after boasting of his sexual exploits with Paltrow.

"He's not the first person to lie about sleeping with someone... but he used the lie as an assault weapon," Paltrow said.

The actor said she talked to his other accusers personally and called the incidents "devastating".

After investigations by The New York Times and The New Yorker that revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against Weinstein, multiple women came forward to accuse the director of abuse.

Prominent actors such as Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Angelina Jolie, including Paltrow and others, also came forward to narrate their experiences with the producer.

In an earlier statement, Paltrow revealed that Weinstein tried to harass her but she rebuffed his advances and even told her the then boyfriend Brad Pitt about it.

Pitt confronted Weinstein and told him to stay away from Paltrow.

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Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today condemned the killing of a labourer from West Bengal in Rajasthan and termed the incident "inhuman".

Mohammad Afrazul was burnt alive and a video of the gruesome incident was uploaded on social media in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district. In the video, the laboured was seen hacked and burnt to death.

"We strongly condemn the heinous killing of a labourer from Bengal in Rajasthan. How can people be so inhuman. Sad," she said in a tweet.

According to SP of Rajsamand Manoj Kumar, the accused, who allegedly committed the crime yesterday, has been arrested and being interrogated.

The accused was also seen shouting at the victim in the video, IG of Udaipur Anand Srivastava said.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria condemned the incident and said the case has been handed over to SIT for further investigations.

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The West Bengal government will announce a new information technology (IT) policy at Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) in January, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said today.

The government has had discussions with industry bodies such as ASSOCHAM, CII and Nasscom before framing the policy, she said.

"We have decided to announce a new IT policy during the BGBS in January. We want to create more jobs in the IT sector and might even dole out property tax, rental tax reliefs and other subsidies," Banerjee said at the Infocom 2017 here.

The CM also said companies like TCS, Cognizant were expanding here and ITC Infotech will begin operations soon.

The government is also setting up a hardware park at Sonarpur near the metropolis, she said.

"There is space available for creating 2.6 lakh job opportunities in the state," she said.

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Rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav today said he will challenge his disqualification from the Rajya Sabha in court and claimed that his opposition to JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar and the BJP resulted in the ouster.

He suggested that he was denied a fair play, noting that the case of embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who "looted" public exchequer, was sent to the Ethics Committee pf Parliament but he was not allowed such an opportunity despite being a veteran parliamentarian who took up "people's causes" in his career.

At a press conference, Yadav disapproved of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu's comments defending his decision but said the institution of the Rajya Sabha was too important to him to attack Naidu.

Even Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani terrorist hanged in India following his conviction in the Mumbai terror attack case, was allowed to exhaust all appeals available to him but in his case the "supreme court", an apparent reference to Naidu, gave an order straightaway without referring the matter to a parliamentary committee, he said.

Yadav, who was elected to the Lok Sabha seven times and the Rajya Sabha four times, said in a lighter vein that his "new freedom" will give him more time in uniting opposition parties against the BJP.

"I was not shocked that I have been disqualified... I was expecting the same outcome," he said, suggesting that it was decided in advance.

Noting that he had resigned three times in past as an MP on moral ground, Yadav said had he been interested in power, then he would have been part of the government now.

The constitutional provisions invoked by the Rajya Sabha chairman to disqualify might not apply in his case, he said, noting that he would file an appeal against it in court.

"My fight is for principles and democracy. I will fight it in all forums, including court," he said.

Yadav also accused the BJP of using religion to polarise voters in the Gujarat and claimed that the party will suffer defeat like it did in Bihar.

The JD(U) had sought Yadav's disqualification after he attended a RJD rally in Patna in August following his opposition to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to jettison his party's alliance with the RJD and the Congress and join hands with the BJP.

The disqualification decision came within three months of the JD(U) moving a plea, inviting criticism from opposition leaders.

Naidu, however, said yesterday that justice delayed was justice denied, asserting that such matters should be decided quickly.

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Spirits have gained Indian drinkers' preference vote for one simple reason - pocket- friendliness and given a choice and a long evening of heavy binge drinking ahead of them, most of them will opt for the strong spirits rather than wine, says a new book.

In "The Indian Spirit: The Untold Story of Drinking in India", wine connoisseur Magandeep Singh tells readers how to enjoy their drink while relishing the unique story of how it reached their glasses.

"India loves its spirits. For one simple reason, spirits have gained the Indian drinkers' preference vote - pocket- friendliness. Not to say that we don't make some good spirits - we do, really - but when you break down costs drink for drink, nothing gets you higher for lesser," argues Singh.

He says wine was never native to India.

"They imported it, drank it, and eventually even made some, but it was never the tipple to win any consumer choice awards. More than 2000 years ago, it was an elitist drink. Surprisingly since then, a lot has evolved but this attitude has pretty much remained unchanged," he writes in the book, published by Penguin Random House.

Wine, according to him, in India is only a fad and is not consumed as frequently or as comfortably as any strong spirit.

"It costs a lot for one, a major deterrent to sales and proliferation. A bottle of wine is good for two people, at best, but costs the same as a bottle of spirit which could sort out at least half a dozen of our friends. We as Indians dont drink wine enough, preferring spirits which are clearly the pocket-friendly choice," Singh writes.

"Given a choice, and a long evening of heavy binge drinking ahead of them, they will mostly opt for spirits. This explains the overall unimpressive volume of wine as compared to the figures for whisky, vodka or even beer: it's not because we lack a degree of culture or an idea of how to pair wines with food. We just understand economics better," he says.

Singh, a French-qualified sommelier, describes his book as a narrative on alcohol, one that flows through the history of this glorious country.

"It's an observation on the love-hate (but mostly love) relationship that alcohol in all its delicious forms has had with the subcontinent."



Dark spirits dominate in the market, he says, adding white spirits may show more growth potential - double-digit percentage growth year on year - but in volumes they remain a tiny blip as compared to the dark spirit sales figures.

"The southern states are generally ruled by brandy (Telangana and Andhra Pradesh prefer whisky but Kerala and Tamil Nadu are brandy bastions) while most of the north is whisky county. In the middle as also in the metros, the figures are mixed.

"The big city is where one finds vodka consumption the highest; the trend shows a distinct positive streak around university campuses, student accommodation, or establishments that have loud music and a dance floor for daytime revelry," the book says.

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A woman who helped the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and police to bust an illicit liquor racket in outer Delhi's Narela, was today allegedly beaten and her clothes torn by other women of the locality who apparently were involved in bootlegging, police said.

Terming the incident as "shocking and shameful", Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today urged Lt Governor Anil Baijal to intervene and take action against local policemen who were allegedly colluding with those running the racket.

Police have registered a case under various sections of the IPC against the women involved in the incident.

DCW chief Swati Maliwal has alleged that the woman had tipped off the Commission about illegal liquor sale during an inspection in Narela area last night after which she was today attacked by a mob of over 25 people and was assaulted with iron rods.

"Her clothes were torn and she was paraded naked in the area and the entire incident was filmed and the video was allegedly shared in the area by these criminals.

"The entire incident proves complete lawlessness and zero fear of law in the area and it is shocking that police did not take any action to protect these women," Maliwal said.

In a video which was shared by Maliwal on her twitter handle, the victim alleged that she was threatened and asked to not raise her voice against liquor mafia.

"I was dragged and disrobed. A police personnel tried to stop them from meting out such inhuman treatment but he was also thrashed. They also said that they would do the same with Maliwal and other women who will oppose their actions," the victim said between sobs in the video.

Maliwal, in turn, summoned the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Rohini District, to appear before the women's panel and submit an action taken report along with details of the FIR registered in the incident of attack on the woman.

Rajneesh Gupta, DCP, Rohini, said, that the woman was beaten and her clothes were "torn a bit", but denied she was paraded naked.

The injuries are blunt and there is no fracture, he said, adding that the woman has always been associated with police in their action against bootleggers.

Maliwal also sought details of the FIRs registered over liquor being sold illegally in Narela and surrounding areas over the past five years.

Kejriwal took note of the incident and tweeted, "Utterly shocking and shameful that this is happening in the capital of India. I urge Honble LG to immediately intervene, take action against local policemen and ensure everyones safety."



Maliwal claimed to have received several complaints from the women residents regarding sale of illicit liquor and drugs in certain houses in the area.

Last night the local police confiscated 300 bottles of liquor from a house after they were provided information about it by a DCW team.

The house from where the liquor was seized was barely a few meters from the police post, Maliwal said, adding "such illegal business is flourishing on a very large scale in Narela in full public view and knowledge of the local police".

"It appears that the illegal activity of selling liquor in homes is occurring with active connivance and protection of the police," she said in the summons to the DCP.

She also sought copies of all complaints along with status reports against police officers in the area regarding their inaction or collusion with people selling liquor in their houses.

"This house as well as many other houses in the area, have been selling illegal liquor for years. Please inform what action has been initiated by the Delhi Police to curb this menace," she said in the letter while asking the DCP to appear in person before the panel on December 12.

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By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin rocketed above $15,000 for the first time on Thursday, after adding more than $2,000 to its price in fewer than 12 hours.

Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has seen a more than fifteenfold surge in its value since the start of the year.

It climbed to as high as $15,344 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange around 1420 GMT, leaving it up more than 12 percent on the day, having traded just above $13,000 12 hours earlier.

Many market-watchers said the launch this weekend of bitcoin futures by CBOE, one of the world's biggest derivatives exchanges, was helping drive up the price on expectations it would draw more investors to the market.

"Futures trading will mean more demand...and is a form of ratification of the underlying tech - bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. They are now on the main stage," said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis firm Cryptocompare.

But some are warning that the launch of bitcoin futures, which will allow investors to take speculative "short" positions on the cryptoccurrency, as well as "long" positions, could cause even greater volatility.

"Aggressive traders, such as hedge funds and algorithm-driven funds, (will be able) to use this futures market to enter bitcoin trading with high levels of liquidity for aggressive short-selling and knock the prices really low," said Think Markets analyst Naeem Aslam.

"Players now have an incentive to be on the short side and make profits hedging against the upside."

The latest surge brought bitcoin's "market cap" - its price multiplied by the total number of bitcoins in circulation - to more than $260 billion, according to Coinmarketcap, a trade website. That, in theory, makes its market value higher than that of Visa.

The value of all cryptocurrencies now stands at around $415 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.

Bitcoin has more than tripled in price since the start of October, putting it on track for its best quarter since the end of 2013, when it surged above $1,000 for the first time.

It slumped in 2014, after Mt Gox, then the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, collapsed, saying it had been hacked and had 650,000 bitcoins stolen.

(Reporting by Jemima Kelly, Editing by Abhinav Ramnarayan)

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(Reuters) - Anheuser-Busch, which makes Budweiser beers, has reserved 40 of Tesla Inc's all-electric Semi trucks as it seeks to reduce fuel costs and vehicle emissions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

This could the biggest order Tesla has received for its electric trucks, which are scheduled for rollout in 2019.

The U.S. subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV plans to use the trucks for shipments to wholesalers within 150 to 200 miles of its brewery locations - well within the 500-mile range that was promised by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Journal reported. (http://on.wsj.com/2j40eK1)

The brewing company has not finalized yet whether to buy the vehicles outright or lease them, James Sembrot, the company's senior director of logistics strategy told the Journal.

Last month, Tesla received orders for its electric trucks from high profile companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and fleet operator J.B. Hunt.

Germany-based Deutsche Post AG's DHL and Fortigo Freight Services Inc, one of Canada's largest fleet management companies, also pre-ordered Tesla's electric trucks last month to test on limited routes.

Anheuser-Busch did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Tesla declined to comment.

(Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The outgoing president of the Eurogroup said on Thursday that euro zone finance ministers were likely to reject a European Commission proposal to create an EU finance minister combining the roles of commissioner and Eurogroup chair.

The bloc's executive unveiled a package of measures aimed at strengthening the 19-country euro zone, including the creation of a European Minister of Economy and Finance who could take office at the end of 2019.

"I think the Eurogroup will insist on having its own chair," Jeroen Dijsselbloem told lawmakers in the European Parliament's economic committee, dismissing the "double-hatting" idea.

"There is a strong sense in the Eurogroup that there should be a distinction between the role of the Eurogroup, which is a group of ministers, and the role of the Commission, which is the guardian of the treaties," said Dijsselbloem, a former Dutch finance minister who will make way for Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno in mid-January.

He said the commission's ideas on the new role were "very broad and also still quite vague".

The commission said the new minister would "be responsible for identifying an appropriate fiscal policy for the euro area as a whole," according to a document published on Wednesday.

"Does it mean the EU minister of finance gets control over national budgets? That would be a huge step, but would also raise huge issues," Dijsselbloem said, citing concerns over democratic legitimacy and constitutional issues.

Most money spent by governments goes on policies that are under full national competence, such as healthcare, welfare, pensions and education, Dijsselbloem said.

"If you have such a direct influence over the budget, you should also have some influence over where it is spent," he stressed.

The commission has tried in past months to increase its influence over the overall fiscal stance of the euro zone, in a bid to favour investments by countries in better shape, like Germany. Those attempts were blocked in the Eurogroup.

The EU executive is already in charge of monitoring the national budgets of EU members and can propose sanctions for states breaching common fiscal rules, which require governments to keep their deficits and debt levels under control.

Brussels can recommend policy measures to improve a country's fiscal stance, but cannot decide over how money is spent at the national level.

If the commission were given powers to influence national expenses on social issues or other policies under national competence, a change to the EU constitutional treaty would be required.

The commission made it clear on Wednesday that its proposal would not require a treaty change.

"The establishment of a European Minister of Economy and Finance could be pursued (..) within existing Treaty arrangement," it said in a document.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Hugh Lawson)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is open to reforming the country's biofuels policy if it can be done in a way that protects jobs in both the refining and agriculture industries, senators said on Thursday after a meeting with Trump on the issue.

Nine lawmakers had requested the meeting with Trump to argue that the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, a law requiring refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the fuel supply every year, was threatening to put refineries in their districts out of business.

The Trump administration ruled in favour of Big Corn and against the refining industry in a series of decisions this year, with senators on both sides using parliamentary procedures such as holds on administrative appointments to punish their rivals.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters after the meeting that Trump's attitude was to "get it done."

"Get both sides together to find a win-win, so we can say to the farmers: 'Listen, we got your back,' but to the people employed in the refineries: 'You're not going to lose your job," Cassidy said of Trump's comments.

Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma also said Trump expressed a desire to help refiners, but added there were no conclusions about how to do it.

"It was just a recognition that this is a more complicated problem and we're going to have to get everybody together from all sides," Lankford told reporters.

A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

The White House said earlier in the day the meeting would include Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

REFINERS SEEK CHANGES

The RFS was introduced more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions, and has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year.

Refiners oppose the RFS because they say it costs them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in blending and regulatory expenses while propping up demand for rival fuels.

They have requested tweaks to the policy in the past that would cut the annual volume targets for biofuels, allow ethanol exports to be counted against those targets, or shift the blending burden to supply terminals from refiners.

While the leadership of the EPA, which administers the RFS, had considered some of the changes, it ultimately rejected them under pressure from Midwestern lawmakers, and slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018.

The meeting with Trump could set the stage for negotiations over legislation to overhaul the RFS, but any measure would likely require cooperation from representatives of the corn belt. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said this week he was not invited to the meeting and called it "a waste of time."

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and eight other Republican senators from states with oil refineries had requested the meeting with Trump in a letter in October.

Cruz said he would block Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey's nomination to a key post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture until he got the meeting. A Cruz spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Peter Cooney)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bitcoin jumped more than $5000 and scaled the $17,000 mark in just two days. Earlier, the popular virtul currency rose to $19,000 on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Experts cite the December 10 launch of bitcoin futures by the CBOE, one of the world's biggest derivatives exchanges, a major reason behind the sharp jump. Bitcoin has now breached the market value of more than $280 billion. On Thursday, around 4,700 bitcoins worth more than $70 million were stolen from Nicehash, a bitcoin mining company.

The virtual currency has soared more than 1,000 per cent since the start of the year. Last Wednesday, it was trading at $9,500. So what is fuelling this rapid rise of bitcoin? This is something that has puzzled many bankers and financial analysts. Business magnet Warren Buffett recently called it a 'real bubble'. He is not alone to caution the investors against the cryptocurrency. Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School, earlier said: "What's happening right now has nothing to do with bitcoin's functionality as a currency - this is pure mania that's taken hold." Despite these cautionary words from financial experts, bitcoin continues to rise.

Now, another warning has come for the virtual currency investors - this time from the Reserve Bank of India. The Central Bank on Wednesday issued its third warning, reminding the investors of its earlier concerns. In its first warning issued on December 24, 2013, the RBI had said that the creation, trading or usage of virtual currencies or VCs as a medium for payment are not authorised by any central bank or monetary authority. "No regulatory approvals, registration or authorisation is stated to have been obtained by the entities concerned for carrying on such activities," it added.

RBI's next warning came this year on February 1. It reiterated that the Reserve Bank has not given any licence or authorisation to any entities to operate such schemes or deal with bitcoin or any virtual currency. The bank regulator categorically said that any investor or trader dealing with virtual currencies 'will be doing so at their own risk'.
Love it or hate it, you just can't escape it. We're talking about Aadhaar, which is a bigger buzzword than usual in the face of the looming end-December deadline for linkages with bank accounts, PPF, insurance policies, ration card and perhaps even PAN. As India rushes to comply, there are a number of myths and half-truth making the rounds.

The official website of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the body issuing the biometrics-based Aadhaar number, helpfully lists out some of them, while others came to light when activists took up cudgels on behalf of Aadhaar-harassed citizens. But, either ways, you need to know the hard truth behind them.

Myth: Aadhaar-linkage is not only mandatory for every Indian citizen but also every person residing in the country.

Fact: In a notification dated May 11, 2017, the Central Board of Direct Taxes exempted the following categories from mandatory Aadhaar enrolment:

Those who are not citizens of India, non-resident Indians as per Income Tax Laws, those aged over 80 years at any time during the tax year, and the residents of Assam, Meghalaya and Jammu & Kashmir.

The UIDAI has also made it clear that NRIs and those holding the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card are not eligible to obtain Aadhaar as per the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. "NRI/OCI need not verify their bank account or SIM or PAN with Aadhaar. If required, they may inform the service provider(s) that they being NRI/OCI are exempted from Aadhaar verification," the UIDAI had said on Twitter way back in October, and followed it up with a circular in mid-November.

As per the Aadhaar Act, only a "resident" is entitled to obtain Aadhaar, which refers to an individual, irrespective of nationality, who has resided in India for a period aggregating 182 days or more in the year immediately preceding the date of application for enrolment. So, this means that even NRIs and expats fulfilling the above criteria can apply for Aadhaar, but they cannot be forced to link their Indian bank accounts with it.



Myth: I had to give my fingerprints to get a SIM card and now the telecom company will keep my biometrics for future use



Fact: According to UIDAI, a telecom company cannot store your biometrics at its end. All the biometrics collected should be encrypted by the service provider and sent to UIDAI at that instant itself. Any storage of biometric by any agency is a serious crime punishable with up to three years of imprisonment under the Aadhaar Act.

Myth: Aadhaar is prone to data breaches and leaks

Fact: Yes, there have been at least two serious leaks reported in the media, but the UIDAI has denied both of them.

In May 2017, The Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit research organisation, had reportedly investigated three government portals linked with social welfare schemes that together leaked Aadhaar information of around 1.3 crore people. Then, two months later, came news about over 200 government websites Aadhaar information public. This raised a lot of concerns and detractors cried themselves hoarse.

According to the UIDAI, some agencies of central or state governments had been proactively putting up details of their beneficiaries as required under the RTI Act. While the said information was promptly removed from the offending websites, the authority points out that no biometrics were displaced.

"Therefore to say that Aadhaar has been breached, data has been leaked, is completely incorrect and misleading," it says.

Moreover, the Aadhaar Act and IT Act are now in place, which impose restrictions on publication of Aadhaar numbers, bank account, and other personal details.

Myth: Aadhaar has a poorly verified database.

Fact: Several security measures are in place to ensure that Aadhaar enrolment system is secure. It is done through registrars-credible institutions like state government, banks, Common Service Centres which employ enrolment agencies empanelled by UIDAI. The latter, in turn, employ operators certified by the authority. Aadhaar enrolments are done only through customized software developed and provided by UIDAI. Every day, the operators have to log into the enrolment machine through their Aadhaar number and fingerprints. Once an enrolment is done, the operator is required to sign through his/ her biometrics. Moreover, at the time of enrolment itself, the captured data is encrypted and can't be read by anyone other than the UIDAI server.

Myth: People are being denied benefits and rations because they don't have Aadhaar or because of biometrics issues

Fact: UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey has clarified to the media that though Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act stipulates that benefits and subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India shall be given on the basis of Aadhaar or proof of possession of an Aadhaar number, the lack of it cannot be grounds for denial. "Section 7 specifies that till Aadhaar number is prescribed, the benefits should be given through alternate means of identification," Pandey said to The Hindu.

The Act also provides for statutory protection to those who are unable to authenticate because of worn-out fingerprints, medical conditions like leprosy or other reasons such as technical faults. "The field agencies have been accordingly instructed through the notifications issued by the government. In spite of this, if a person is denied because he does not have Aadhaar or he is unable to biometrically authenticate, it is undisputedly a violation of instructions issued by the government and such violators have to be punished," added Pandey.

Myth: Publicly sharing the Aadhaar number, to track a lost Amazon package, for instance, makes one susceptible to identity fraud

Fact: Your Aadhaar number, just like your mobile phone number or bank account number, is not a secret though it is certainly sensitive personal information. Just as no one can hack into your bank account using just the account number, identity theft is impossible using the Aadhaar number alone.

What you need to assiduously protect are things like passwords, including OTPs, and PINs. A prudent practice would be to never put up any sensitive personal information on websites or social media platforms.
Twenty four days are left before the official deadline to link your bank account with Aadhaar Card expires, and only 50 per cent of the bank accounts have been connected with Aadhaar so far. The government counsel, however, assured the Supreme Court on Thursday that the Centre was "not against extending deadline till March 31 for those who don't have Aadhaar Card". This will definitely address a major concern of many who don't have the Aadhaar identity. BloombergQuint quoted VG Kannan, chief executive officer of the Indian Bank' Association, saying while the linking process is moving along, a little less than half the accounts have been linked so far.

In a big relief for people who still haven't linked their Aadhaar number with services such as bank accounts, insurance policies, PAN, mutual funds, PPF, etc., the Modi government on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it was willing to extend the deadline of various 131 services and welfare schemes to March 31 next year. The Centre had earlier set December 31 as the last date to link Aadhaar, except the Aadhaar-Mobile SIM linking, which is February 6 next year.

The Supreme Court will be setting up a five-judge Constitution Bench next week to hear pleas on making Aadhaar card mandatory for various social and welfare schemes. A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was informed by Attorney General KK Venugopal that the Centre was willing to extend the deadline of December 31 to March 31 next year. However, Venugopal said 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 AM Khanwilkar and DY 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.

Even as the Supreme Court considers setting up a Constitution Bench next week, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has clarified that the deadlines for verifying bank accounts, PAN cards and mobile SIM cards with the biometric ID stand 'valid and lawful', and there is no change in them. There is no stay from the Supreme Court on Aadhaar and its linking to various services, it said.

UIDAI asked people not to get misled by an outdated video doing rounds in the social media and Whatsapp and said "people should instead verify their banks accounts, investment accounts, SIM cards, etc as per the current laws and deadlines as early as possible to avoid any inconvenience."
IRB Infrastructure drops over 2.3% today after CBI filed chargesheet against the senior officials of the company and its subsidiary - Aryan Infrastructure Investments Private Ltd. The matter relates to the illegal purchase of government land in Maharashtra. The chargesheet was filed in a special court in Pune under Sections 120 (b), 420, 511 of IPC and sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act. It is alleged that Virendra Mhaiskar, chairman and managing director of IRB Infrastructure and 17 others have attempted to cheat the state by grabbing government land at village Pimpaloli along the Pune-Mumbai expressway for a proposed integrated township project. The case was initiated in 2009 by RTI activist Satish Shetty, who was murdered in January 2010. The stock hit an intra-day low of Rs 194.7, which is 11 month low. The stock recovered some ground during the day and closed at Rs 205.2, which is -2.3% below the previous day's close.

IRB Infrastructure commenced operations in 1998 and it is engaged in construction, project management and engineering. It executes build-operate-transfer (BOT) road and highway projects. Its portfolio comprises of 22 BOT projects, out of which 14 are operational and 8 projects are under implementation. Its major clients are government agencies, such as NHAI and State Road Development Authorities, which engage in the development of the country's highways. The company has a strong order book of Rs 9959 crores at the end of FY17.

In the last five years, company's net-worth and BOT assets registered an annualised (CAGR) growth of 13% and 22% respectively. In FY17, on a consolidated basis, its sales revenue grew by 14% compared to FY16. 40% of the revenue comes from toll collections whereas 60% comes from construction. The operating profit and net profit grew by 13.8% and 11.9% respectively between FY16 and FY17. The company has shown efficiency in utilization of capital as both ROCE and ROE improved between FY16 and FY17. ROE improved from 13% in FY16 to 14% in FY17, whereas, ROCE improved from 10% in FY16 to 11% in FY17.

Looking at the consolidated quarterly results for Sep 2017, the company witnessed decline in sales revenue and operating profit compared to Sep'16 quarter. The sales revenue fell by -13% whereas the operating profit went down by -3.2%. The fall in revenues are due to transfer of investments in six subsidiary companies to IRB InvIT Fund. Substantial jump in other income (335.6%) and reduction in interest costs (-30.6%) and depreciation costs (-44.6%) helped IRB Infrastructure post healthy bottom-line growth of 65.1%. Its net profit margin improved substantially from 11.02% in Sep'16 to 20.9% in Sep'17.

The stock trades at current PE of 18.02 times which is lower than the average PE (equally weighted) of BSE Infrastructure Index of 22.2 times. In the last one year, the stock has significantly underperformed the market. It gained 12.2% between 6 Dec 2016 and 6 Dec 2017. The BSE Infrastructure Index and BSE Sensex gained 24.6% and 23.5% respectively during the same period.
To beat the lull in sales towards the year end, auto dealers are offering discounts and other offers, in the range of Rs 25,000 and Rs 8.85 lakh, on certain vehicles. The benefits include cash discounts and exchange bonuses on select models by companies including market leader Maruti Suzuki to luxury carmaker Audi, and everything in between.

Most offers by the car manufacturers will be available for a limited period and may vary according to the region. To get further information, interested buyers can call local dealerships for exact quotes on the desired variant and model.

Recently, all the automobile manufacturers released their third quater results for 2017 and showed an impressive growth over last year. Maruti continued with thier top rank, and that too with a huge margin. The company registered a growth of around 14 per cent. Despite the grwoth, the company's favourites, Alto and Wagon R have shown a dip in sales. The year-end offers will help the company spike the tipping growth rate in entry-hatchback segment.

These offers come despite the recent shocks to the auto industry earlier this year. The ban on sale of BS-III vehicles, increase in cess on certain vehicles under the Goods and Services Tax, and the latest government decision to push BS-VI fuel seems to have left auto dealers with a surplus stock. Moreover, change in buyer preferences, as seen in the November sales figures released last week, have led to a decline in sales of some popular models, adding to their pending stocks. Also, buyers avoid buying cars in the year's end as it affects the vehicle's resale value in mid-term.

It is to be noted that dealerships in different regions have put up different offers. Here are some of the discounts and benefits that are being offered by the car companies before the year 2017 comes to an end.

Maruti Suzuki

The top player in Indian auto market is offering discounts and benefits on its popular hatchbacks Alto, WagonR, Celerio and Swift , premium hatchback Ignis, its flagship sedan Ciaz, and MPV Ertiga. Maruti Suzuki is offering the various variants of the Alto, including the one with AMT, with benefits from Rs 45,000 to Rs 55,000, as per reports. The AMT variant of WagonR with CNG is being offered with benefits up to Rs 55,000.

Ciaz with petrol engine is available with offer benefits up to Rs 70,000 where the diesel variant comes with benefits up to Rs 85,000. The recently launched Ignis is available with benefits up to Rs 40,000.

Maruti Suzuki has also announced nationwide 'Winter Car Care Camp' for free car check-up from December 7 to 17. The offer will be available at authorised Maruti Suzuki service centres and will provide thorough examination of the key components of the car. Customers can even redeem their loyalty vouchers at the camp for discounts on labour charges and select car parts.

Tata Motors

Indian car maker Tata Motors has launched Mega Offer Max Celebration sales where buyers can own a Tata car at a down payment of Re 1 and even save up to Rs 1 lakh. The hatchback Tiago and styleback Tigor are being offered with discounts of Rs 26,000 and Rs 32,000 respectively. Hexa, the premium SUV by Tata Motors is available with discouts up to Rs 78,000 whereas Safari Storme is going with the highest discount of Rs 1 lakh.

Hyundai



Hyundai dealerships are offering discounts on Eon, i10, i20, Elantra, Xcent and Tucson this year-end. The small hatchback Eon is on sale with benefits up to 55,000, same as the Activ and Elite trims of i20.

Hyundai Grand i10 is going with the highest discounts, with the petrol version getting discounts up to Rs 75,000, whereas the diesel engine gets benefits up to Rs 90,000. The compact sedan Xcent has benefits up to Rs 45,000.

Volkswagen

The German carmaker is offering hefty benefits up to Rs 1.1 lakh on its premium sedan Vento. Meanwhile, Polo, the popular hatchback from Volkswagen is being offered with benefits up to Rs 60,000.

Audi

The luxury car maker Audi has recently slashed prices on its A3, A4 and A6 sedan line-ups as well as the SUV Q3 by Rs 3 lakh to Rs 8.85 lakh. Consumers can also opt for the Audi Rush scheme launched recently which comes with an EMI holiday till 2019.
Tata Motors on Wednesday rolled out the electric version of its 'styleback' Tigor at the the Sanand manufacturing facility in Gujarat today. While Tata Group's Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata and Chairman N Chandrasekaran flagged off first batch, Tata Motors CEO Guenter Butschek drove off the first Tata Tigor EV. This batch is meant for the Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL).

Tata Tigor was introduced by the company back in March this year. The vehicle is based on the same platform as Tata Tiago but with the addition of a boot. The petrol and diesel versions of the car are priced between a range of Rs 4.65 lakh to Rs 7.09lakh (ex-showroom). The price tag on the non-electric Tata Tigor goes up to Rs 7.1 lakh. The prices for e-Tigor are expected to come down once the car is released in open markets.

The first batch of Tata Tigor EVs is part of the first 350 orders under the first phase of the order for 10,000 electric sedans placed by EESL earlier this year. Tata Motors is expected to deliver a total of 250 cars in the first phase for which it has already received the letter of agreement. The same for 100 more units is in the pipeline and will soon be issued by EESL, the company said in a statement.

Tata Motors became the L1 bidder (lowest bidder) for the EESL order of 10,000 electric cars, by outbidding Mahindra by Rs 2.3 lakh, and will supply the bulk of the order to government of India during a period of two years. The toughest competition for the Tata Tigor EV will also be from the Mahindra eVerito.

This is part of the government plan to own a completely electric fleet by 2030 in order to cut oil imports as well as emission levels. This means that the electric Tata Tigor will be available for government use only for the time being. We might reportedly catch a glimpse of the e-Tigor meant for open markets in the Auto Expo 2018 next year.

Tata Motors had reportedly quoted a price of Rs 10.16 lakh for the every unit of Tata Tigor EV to the government, excluding GST. Factoring in GST takes the final price of the vehicle goes over Rs 11 lakh.

"As we work together to build the future of e- mobility, I am confident that our customers will respond very favourably to this electric model," Chandrasekaran said at the event.

The electric engine on Tata Tigor EV is can 39.95 hp, a bit more docile than the 113 hp seen on the Tata Tiago EV. The dimensions have been kept changed from the usual Tigor, though. Tata Motors has developed the electric powertrain on the Tigor EV with Electra EV, a firm which deals with every aspect of electric mobility solutions. Reports suggest that Tata and Electra are working for an electric powertrain for Tata Nano which will be launched for cab fleets later.

Tata Motors will be supplying shells of Tata Nano to Coimbatore-based Jayem Automotives, which will then complete the rest of the car. The smallest car will not have any Tata branding and will make its comeback with the name Jayem Neo. Just like the first batch of e-Tigors, the electric avatar of Tata Nano will not be available to masses right away and will be deployed as part of the Ola fleet in Delhi-NCR.

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The union government on Thursday set March 2019 as the deadline for 24x7 supply of electricity. Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh urged his states' counterparts to bring electricity distribution losses below 15 per cent to ensure uninte power for all by 2019.

Discoms will be penalised for load shedding post March 2019, CNBC TV 18 reported. "We have reduced the distribution (aggregate technical and commercial) losses. It is necessary to achieve 24x7 power for all by 2019," Singh said.

Power Minister R K Singh inaugurated the conference of 'Ministers for Power and New & Renewable Energy of States & Union Territories'. The minister said there are 16 to 17 states, which are incurring distribution losses more than 15 per cent.

He further said: "We are going to add 4 crore more subscribers under the Saubhagya scheme. Thus, with increase in supplies, leakages would further increase. We cannot continue to set off these losses using taxpayers' money."

On the Saubhagya scheme, he said: "We are going to do it by December 2018. We have to do it. We have provided over Rs 90,000 crore from 9th Five Year Plan onwards to strengthen the system in states. We are providing funds under various schemes."

At present, all states have not submitted their proposals under the scheme. The proposal would have to come from states to seek funds. The Centre has provided Rs 16,320 crore under the scheme.

Talking about the renewables, Singh said clean energy would edge out fossil fuels, particularly petroleum, which is strategically in favour of India in view of huge imports.

The minister also spoke about the Centre's hydro policy which is aimed at reviving the stranded projects and assured states to push this clean source of energy which can become base load to replace thermal power.

Singh also asked them to roll out the Saubhagya scheme in their states to provide power connections to 4 crore families by December, 2018.

with PTI inputs
As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
On October 30, 2017, Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, along with Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Georgias Prime-minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, Kazakhstans Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev, and Uzbekistans Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov attended the opening ceremony of the long-delayed Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway. The opening of the railway is of historic and strategic significance, Aliyev said at the ceremony in the Caspian port city of Alat, south of Baku, to mark the departure of the first trains. In fact, the opening of the new railway provides an alternative route to existing rail services carrying goods from Asia to Europe.

BACKGROUND: The BTK railway, totaling 826 kilometers in length, is intended to complete a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey (and thereby linking Central Asia and China to Europe) by rail. The railway is constructed on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. At the initial stage, it will have a capacity of one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo per year, projected to reach 17 million tons of cargo per year by 2023. Starting in Baku, the trains will stop in Tbilisi, pass through gauge-changing facilities in Akhalkalaki, and terminate in north-east Turkey.

Given the importance of the BTK project, most Central Asian countries including Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have expressed an interest in becoming connected to BTK, which is the shortest route linking the landlocked region with Europe. Kazakhstan, for example, appears eager to join the route to its strategic Khorgos Gateway on the border with China. The initiators of the project forecast the development of a new railway junction between Central Asia and Europe, after Kazakhstans Aktau port and Turkmenistans Turkmenbashi are connected to the BTK route. The regions connection with Europe through the Caspian Sea would indeed provide a shorter route for transportation of local goods. Besides stimulating local manufacturing operations, the BTK route will also provide the countries it passes through with additional new sources of revenue, such as transit fees.

IMPLICATIONS: The Central Asian region, confined by its geography, seeks economic diversification through promoting various ambitious projects such as the China-led One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. In general, the regional states see the BTK route as a logical continuation of the multi-billion dollar OBOR project, which intends to link the region with Europe.

The BTK rail line physically connects the central portions of Eurasia, the singular landmass stretching from Chinas east coast to Europes west coast, containing 70 percent of the worlds population, 75 percent of its energy resources, and 70 percent of its GDP. The overland journey between China and Europe via the BTK rail line will take around 15 days, which is more than twice as fast as sea transport at less than half the price of air travel. Trains can depart from a variety of cities in China, cross into Kazakhstan at the Khorgos Gateway, be easily transported by ferry across the Caspian Sea to the New Port of Baku, and then be loaded directly onto the BTK and head on to Europe  and vice versa in the opposite direction.

In this context, analysts in Kazakhstan have raised the possibility of reviving the Trans-Caspian Transportation Corridor. However, this project requires significant increases in trade turnover and Chinese exports to European markets. These options were discussed during recent the EXPO-2017 held in Astana. On November 5, 2017, the first train cargo carrying 600 tons of wheat from Kazakhstan arrived in the Turkish port of Mersin via the BTK route. The train completed the 1258-km journey from Kars to Mersin in about 30 hours. The first successful transit of goods was received with optimism in Kazakhstan regarding the future benefits of the BTK railway. According to Beybit Isayev, Kazakhstans ambassador to Azerbaijan, the BTK railway project is in Kazakhstans perspective the most valuable part of the transportation corridors from China through the Central Asian region and the Caspian basin, opening new prospects for delivering Kazakh goods to European markets.

Uzbekistan is eager to join the BTK route for the same reasons. The first high-level consultations regarding Uzbekistans participation in the BTK project were held in Tashkent on October 17, 2016, during a meeting between Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and his Uzbek counterpart Abdulaziz Kamilov. On March 18 this year, a trilateral meeting of Azerbaijans, Georgias, and Uzbekistans railway departments was organized in Tashkent. Uzbekistan is known for its multi-sphere export, including coal and cotton, which has attracted foreign investments and gradually improved the production level. Increased trade turnover through this railway will increase Uzbekistans GDP, enabling the country to facilitate and diversify its export of cotton and other agricultural products to the world markets.

The South Korean Black and Caspian Sea Export Company has expressed a willingness to invest in transit projects that pass through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The company intends to export Polypropylene and Polyethylene from these countries. The BTK railway is seemingly the most relevant option for the company to deliver goods to Europe via Turkey. According to the companys director Lee Dong, the Georgia-based Caucasus-Trans Express Company will be its logistical partner.

Turkmenistan also eyes the possibility of connecting to the BTK railway project, as indicated during President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedovs recent visit to Baku. Possessing substantial natural resources deposits, including enormous hydrocarbon reserves, Turkmenistan also seeks alternative routes to Europe. In Baku, Berdimuhammedov emphasized the importance of improving transport connections between the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which would ease mutual trade operations of all these countries. In this regard, the BTK railway may serve as a suitable platform, which will provide access for Turkmen goods to European markets.

Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistans and Turkmenistans participation in the BTK project nevertheless remains problematic due to limitations in existing infrastructure. Their participation in the BTK project depends on the successful launch of the Navoi  Turkmenbashi railway route, which will connect to the BTK railway, as well as Bakus Alat International Seaport, and further increase the effectiveness of rail links between Azerbaijan and Central Asia. It remains a precondition for the westward export of Uzbek, Turkmen and Afghan goods via the BTK railway. Early talks regarding the Navoi  Turkmenbashi transport corridor were held in Ashgabat in 2012, when Uzbekistans former President Islam Karimov visited Turkmenistan.

CONCLUSIONS: The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project is set to reinvigorate regional economic growth, and to serve as a suitable gateway to Europe for the landlocked Central Asian countries. Hence, beyond its economic value, the BTK will improve connectivity across Eurasia. With its geographic location, Central Asia has the potential to become the core of all main transport projects that pass through this region. Undoubtedly, the Central Asian countries participation in the BTK railway project will be beneficial not only for regional but also for European actors.

AUTHORS BIO: Fuad Shahbazov is an Expert-Advisor of the Foreign Policy Analysis Department of the Centre for Strategic Studies under the President of Republic of Azerbaijan.

Image source: By Giorgi Balakhadze CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons accessed on 12.07. 2017
A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.
On 7 December Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan convened a working consultation devoted to the realization of a number of educational programs, press service of the Presidential Office informed Artsakhpress.

December 7, 2017, 16:36 Bako Sahakyan convenes a consultation devoted to the realization of a number of educational programs

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 7, ARTSAKHPRESS:Minister of education, science and sport Narine Aghabalyan presented information on the course of the activities.

The Head of the State underlined the imperative of coordinated work between the legislative and executive branches of power, as well as close cooperation with Mother Armenia and the Diaspora for successful implementation of the set targets.
Two upstate New York members of Congress and the state's U.S. senators are urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reconsider requests from Cayuga and Monroe counties for assistance after Lake Ontario flooding affected communities along the shoreline this year.

U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer sent a letter to FEMA Administrator Brock Long urging him to add Cayuga County to the Lake Ontario flooding disaster declaration.

U.S. Reps. John Katko and Louise Slaughter wrote to Tom Von Essen, a FEMA regional administrator who oversees New York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico, in support of any appeals submitted by New York on behalf of Cayuga and Monroe counties.

President Donald Trump approved disaster aid in November for six counties along Lake Ontario, but Cayuga and Monroe counties weren't included in the declaration. Katko, R-Camillus, and Slaughter, D-Fairport, said Cayuga and Monroe were left out of the declaration because damages didn't exceed the minimum threshold for each county.

The state is appealing FEMA's decision.

"The exclusion of both individual and public assistance for these two counties jeopardizes the recovery efforts for more than 800,000 of our constituents," Katko and Slaughter wrote. "These grants are essential for the continued operation of several localities along the shoreline as recovery efforts continue to incur high costs."

High lake levels impacted several communities along the shoreline. In Cayuga County, the village of Fair Haven had docks and homes affected by the flooding. Businesses close to the water were impacted, too.

The rejection of aid for Cayuga County appears to have been on technical grounds. Fair Haven Mayor Jim Basile said there was a "clerical error" that could have excluded damages at Fair Haven Beach State Park.

The state park damages should have been included in the county's request. Without those damages, the county doesn't meet its threshold for disaster aid.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Schumer, D-N.Y., asked FEMA to expedite the appeal due to the "significant negative impacts from the flooding event" that affected Cayuga and Monroe counties.

"Costs have continued to mount for the counties and timely FEMA federal assistance is vital in ensuring immediate repairs and long-term recovery for these communities," the senators wrote.
U.S. Rep. John Katko describes his stance as a "lean yes" vote on the final Republican tax bill that will be negotiated by members of a House and Senate conference committee.

Katko, R-Camillus, voted for the House bill last month. He was one of four Republicans from New York who supported the legislation, which would reduce the number of income tax brackets, cut corporate taxes and eliminate several credits and deductions.

The Senate passed its own tax plan last week. The bills have many similarities. But there are some key differences, including how the corporate tax cut would be implemented and whether income tax brackets would be preserved.

As the conference committee begins its work to reach a final agreement on tax reform legislation, Katko will be a member to watch. House Republican leaders can't afford to lose support within their own conference.

Here are five factors that will impact how Katko votes on the final Republican tax bill:

State and local tax deduction

The House bill would eliminate the ability to deduct state and local income and sales taxes, but it would allow homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 of state and local property taxes. This is a major reason why Katko, R-Camillus, supported the House bill last month.

An earlier version of the Senate bill called for the complete elimination of the state and local tax deduction. But U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, sponsored an amendment to add the House provision to the Senate bill. Her effort succeeded and it was included in the measure approved by the Senate last week.

Now, Katko wants to make sure the partial restoration of the state and local tax deduction remains in the final agreement negotiated by the House and Senate conference committee.

If it's not in the final bill, he will vote no.

Historic preservation tax credit

The House bill would eliminate the Historic Tax Credit program, which supports the rehabilitation of historic structures. An example of a project that benefited from historic tax credits is the former Hotel Syracuse (now the Marriott Syracuse Downtown).

Unlike the House, the Senate would keep the historic preservation tax credits in place.

Katko didn't say whether it would be a deal-breaker for him if the tax credit program wasn't included in the final tax bill. But he hopes the agreement preserves the credits.

"I want to address that issue and try and get that back in," he said.

Higher education tuition benefits

With central New York home to several colleges and universities, Katko is concerned about how the tax bill would impact employees and students at these institutions.

The House bill proposed taxing a perk for university employees: free tuition for their children. The measure also would consider tuition waivers as taxable income for graduate students who work as research or teaching assistants. For graduate students, this would likely result in much larger tax bills.

Katko highlighted the higher education benefits as issues he wants addressed in the final tax bill.

Repealing Affordable Care Act's individual mandate

The Senate bill included a provision to repeal the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, a 2010 health care law commonly referred to as "ObamaCare." The mandate requires individuals to buy health insurance.

Katko acknowledged his past votes to repeal the individual mandate.

"I think there is something inherently unconstitutional about forcing someone to buy something or you're going to penalize them if they don't," he said. "That's inherently un-American to me."

Despite his opposition, he would rather not address thorny health insurance issues in the bill. But if the individual mandate repeal is included in the final tax agreement, he said "it's not going to prove fatal to my support of what the ultimate bill is."

Allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

As a way to generate revenue, the Senate plan would permit oil drilling in a section of the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, was one of the major proponents of the drilling provision.

Environmental groups have urged Katko to oppose drilling in the refuge. The League of Conservation Voters, a national organization, launched a television ad campaign targeting Katko and two other Republican congressmen. A rally was held outside Katko's Syracuse office to demand he oppose the drilling proposal.

"Is it fatal to my support? I haven't decided yet on that and that's why I'm a lean yes, not a definite yes," he said.

The oil drilling would target the refuge's coastal plain. It's unknown how much oil is located below the 1.5-million-acre area. One estimate suggested there is at least 4.3 billion barrels of oil in the plain.

There are concerns about how drilling would impact wildlife on the coastal plain. Critics highlight the potential impact on wildlife, including polar bears that den on the plain.

"I'm still looking into it," Katko said. "But the more I learn about it the more I realize it may not have such a deleterious effect on the refuge as a whole."
The House passed a bill Wednesday that would allow individuals who have permits to carry a concealed firearm in their home state to possess the weapon in other states with concealed-carry laws.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 passed by a 231-198 vote. Most Republicans and six Democrats supported the bill. Fourteen Republicans joined a vast majority of Democrats in opposition to the measure.

It's the first gun measure of any kind considered by Congress in the aftermath of two major mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas. The bill was backed by the National Rifle Association, which called passage of the legislation "the most far-reaching expansion of self-defense rights in modern American history."

Opponents of the bill said it would override state laws and increase crime. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely wounded at an event in 2011, said she is "furious" the House passed the concealed carry bill.

"Let's be clear: These politicians are trading our safety for political contributions from the gun lobby," she said.

The legislation also included a provision that is supported by members of both parties to bolster the background check system. It would encourage federal, state and local agencies to provide updated information when someone is convicted of a crime.

This was an issue raised in the aftermath of the Texas church shooting. The gunman who killed 26 people had a prior domestic violence conviction while he was in the Air Force. But the Air Force failed to disclose that information in the federal crime database.

If the information about the gunman was included in the database, he would have been unable to legally purchase guns. Federal law prohibits convicted felons from buying firearms.

Most members of the New York House delegation opposed the concealed carry bill, including two Republicans  U.S. Reps. Dan Donovan and Peter King.

Here is how the entire state congressional delegation voted:

YES

Rep. Chris Collins (R), Rep. John Faso (R), Rep. John Katko (R), Rep. Tom Reed (R), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R), Rep. Claudia Tenney (R), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R)

NO

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D), Rep. Dan Donovan (R), Rep. Eliot Engel (D), Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D), Rep. Brian Higgins (D), Rep. Peter King (R), Rep. Nita Lowey (D), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D), Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D), Rep. Grace Meng (D), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D), Rep. Kathleen Rice (D), Rep. Jose Serrano (D), Rep. Louise Slaughter (D), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D), Rep. Paul Tonko (D), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D)
The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday that would allow individuals with concealed carry permits possess a firearm in any state with similar laws.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act passed by a 231-198 vote. It was supported by most Republicans and a half-dozen Democrats. A vast majority of Democrats and 14 Republicans opposed the measure.

The bill's main provision allows gun owners to carry concealed firearms across state lines if they are eligible to possess the weapons under federal law, have a valid photo identification and a valid concealed carry permit issued by their home state.

U.S. Rep. John Katko, an original cosponsor of the concealed-carry gun bill, compared it to an individual who has a driver's license. Once they have a driver's license, they are able to drive in another state while abiding by the laws in that state.

"The same thing holds true here," he said.

A federal ban on possessing firearms in school zones would not apply to those with concealed carry permits. And they may carry concealed handguns on federal lands that are open to the public, according to a summary of the bill.

The National Rifle Association, the leading gun rights group, supported the legislation. After the bill's passage, the group called the achievement "the most far-reaching expansion of self-defense rights in modern American history."

"This vote marks a watershed moment for Second Amendment rights," said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action."

However, critics of the bill question how it would impact states' rights and predicted it would lead to an uptick in violent crime.

Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely wounded in 2011, slammed the House vote.

"Congress has failed the American people," she said.

The bill also includes a provision supporters say would help to prevent tragedies like the massacre at a Texas church in November. The gunman who killed 26 people in that mass shooting had a prior domestic violence conviction while serving in the Air Force. However, the Air Force failed to enter the conviction in a federal crime database.

If the Air Force properly reported the conviction, the shooter would have been prevented from legally purchasing guns.

The legislation seeks to address the problem by encouraging federal government agencies and states to improve reporting of criminal offenses. The goal is to ensure the crime database has the most up-to-date information available.

"If you're a felon in the United States, you're not allowed to possess a firearm," Katko, R-Camillus, said. "And if someone is a felon, we damn well better know about it when the guy goes to the counter to buy a gun because we'll make sure it keeps it out of his hands."

Despite the strong support for the bill in the House, its fate in the Senate is unclear. Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate and most Democrats oppose expanding concealed-carry rights.

There is bipartisan support for boosting the federal crime database to ensure those with felony convictions can't buy guns. A standalone Senate bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, would address the criminal database concerns. Cornyn also backs concealed-carry reciprocity, but he introduced that as a separate bill.
| BY Ricki Green |

The Agency Circle, is an industry body thats all about turning the talk around diversity into action. Launched back in October 2016, a survey of all participating agencies was conducted to establish an (industry aggregate) baseline. 12 months on, The Agency Circle has completed the second survey and the long-awaited results are in.

In good news, almost all metrics have improved on last year, validation that the industry is moving in the right direction. This year The Agency Circle has grown in size with 11 new creative agencies as well as 18 media agencies joining.

Says Emily Perrett (right), managing director of Clemenger BBDO Sydney and chair of The Agency Circle: This is real progress, which is great to see. The results show that the focus of senior agency staff, coupled with the freedom for each Agency to address the key issues in a way that suits them, works. All the numbers are moving in the right direction. But, it is slow going, there is still a load of work to be done.

This year we had 1,144 respondents from creative agencies, a comparable sample to the 1,211 last year.

They shape up like this:

 Respondents were 77% Caucasian, 9% Asian, 5% Multi Racial, 1% Middle Eastern, only eight are African American and one Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander completed the survey

 58% female, 41% male, 1% other

 50% of the respondents were under 30, 33% were in their 30s and less than 17% were over

40

Results saw some big shifts this year:

 The number of people who reported experiencing sexual harassment has dropped

significantly (down by 18%). NB: the question in 2017 survey refers to current employer only.

 Less people have observed sexual harassment of others at their current agency (down 17%).

 Agencies are perceived to be less sexist, less racist and more inclusive of LGBTQI than

previously (up 10%+)

And some smaller shifts in the right direction:

 Harassment still takes the form of unwelcome comments or jokes but we are improving

(down 6%)

 As an industry, we feel like we are performing marginally better on gender equality (up 11%)

 Most people feel included in decision making and not excluded due to discrimination (up

12%)

 Agency cultures are deemed increasingly supportive of women who take parental leave (up

21%)

But there is still work to do on a few fronts:

 Reported workplace discrimination, in terms of not receiving desired assignments or

promotions at their current agency has increased (up 11%).

 People dont intervene when they see discriminatory acts (up by 9%)

The comprehensive creative agency results have been supplied.

Industry aggregate scores are released, however the agencies that took part for the second year now have the ability to monitor their progress against their own benchmark as well as the industry average.

Individual agency results are not released by The Agency Circle. Each member has bought into the charter, and an honesty system  agencies that make positive progress on their metrics stay  those that dont should think about whether The Agency Circle is right for them.

The media agency results will be made public in the coming weeks.

The Agency Circle thanks all its member agencies, and those whove worked really hard to pull the survey and results together.

If youre interested in signing up for 2018, please get in contact HERE.

The Agency Circle member agencies include:

303 MullenLowe*

Analog Folk

Adrenalin Media

BWM Dentsu*

CHE Proximity*

Clemenger BBDO Brisbane

Clemenger BBDO Melbourne*

Clemenger BBDO Sydney*

Core

DDB*

DigitasLBi

Havas Group*

JWT*

Leo Burnett*

Marcel

Marketforce*

M&C Saatchi*

McCann*

Ogilvy Australia

OMD

Publicis.Sapient

SapientRazorfish

Saatchi & Saatchi

TBWA*

The Hallway*

The Monkeys*

VCCP*
| BY Lynchy |

Host/Havas Australia has unveiled a landmark initiative to help the fragile Pacific Island nation of Palau tackle the negative impacts on the environment of mass tourism.

The Palau Pledge is a simple, pioneering solution: all visitors to Palau will now be asked to sign a personal promise, stamped in their passports, to protect and preserve Palau for future generations. This commitment is a first of its kind.

Written with the help of Palauan children, and developed in collaboration with its Government, the country has redesigned its immigration policy and landing procedures. By encouraging visitors to be more conscious about their behaviour while they travel, the Palau Pledge aims to foster a more sustainable form of tourism.

Tourism is Palaus biggest form of income, but as the thirteenth smallest nation in the world, its annual visitor numbers are almost eight times the size of its population. The Palau Pledge is a solution that helps Palau preserve its sensitive environment, while also preserving its biggest economic driver.

Host/Havas led the development of the concept, drawing on its breadth of creative, digital, social and production capabilities and expertise to bring the Palau Pledge to life, alongside its sister PR and social agency, Red Agency and members of the Havas global network. They worked in partnership with the Palau Legacy Project team, a local group of voluntary business and marketing professionals that work alongside the Palauan Government to help communicate Palaus conservation message.

A dedicated website has been set up to provide information for visitors and the tourism industry. The Pledge has also been backed by a number of global figures including Leonardo DiCaprio, HRH Queen Noor of Jordan, political influencers such as Secretary John Kerry and conservation luminary Dr Sylvia Earle. Through their own social channels, they will be asking people around the world to join them in support of Palau and a more conscious, sustainable form of tourism.

A film, shot on location and featuring Palauan children, will be played on every inbound flight to Palau. Inspired by an ancient Palauan legend, it tells the story of a giant who came to visit their islands and who acts as a visual metaphor for the cumulative impact that visitors can have on their home. Signage and information packs have also been developed, which will be placed around Palaus airport and throughout the country to educate and remind visitors and locals alike, about the conditions of the Palau Pledge.

Seamus Higgins, Executive Creative Director at Host/Havas, said: Palau is a true paradise, with a legacy of taking bold, pioneering steps to preserve it. They know that to solve something no one else has been able to, you cant do what everyone else has been doing. Just what can be achieved with such a truly innovative client is incredible and we are honoured to play a meaningful role in helping to protect their country for future generations to enjoy.

We knew that to inspire a true and lasting change in behaviour, we had to find a way to make every visitor stop and think, that would transcend culture and nationality. This is behavioural psychology, innovative legislation and creativity coming together to do something thats never been done before.

The philosophy around the Palau Pledge is also being integrated into the childrens education by the Ministry of Education, to help them understand the essential role they play in protecting their countrys future.

Laura Clarke, one of the four co-founders of the Palau Legacy Project said: The Palau Pledge is a genuinely innovative solution which provides a significant first step to increasing awareness around eco-tourism practices and what the global community can do to collectively take greater responsibility and make a difference.

Most visitors are unaware of the serious impact their individual actions have or even what they can do to help. The Host/Havas team has provided invaluable support in helping us to develop this initiative and realise our mission to communicate these important messages in a way that all guests will understand, and that will compel them to protect Palau as a result. We are hopeful that this will help create a long-lasting legacy for generations to come.

The Palau Pledge becomes the latest in Palaus long history of creating world-firsts in conservation. It was the first country to create a shark sanctuary in its national waters; it was the first to ban the destructive practice of bottom trawling; and in 2015, its leadership created the Palau National Marine Sanctuary: the largest fully-protected, no-take zone in the world.

Host/Havas

Seamus Higgins  Executive Creative Director

Stu Turner  Executive Creative Director

Paul Bootlis  Creative Director

Gustavo Vampre  Creative Director

Josh Bryer  Digital Creative Director

Gustavo Vampre & Stu Alexander  Senior Art Directors

Paul Bootlis & Daniel Fryer  Senior Copy Writers

Darren Cole  Head of Design

Nic Adamovich  Senior Designer

Dylan Reid  Digital Designer

Michael Macgregor  Designer

Serlina Wong  Designer

Pip Snelling  Senior Finished Artist/Designer

Alex Ball  Client Business Director

Maggie de Goede  Account Manager

Mark McKissock  Social Director

Shea Warnes  Senior Digital Strategist

Beau Simmons  TV & Video Editor

Ros Payne  Senior Broadcast Producer

Thea Clausen  Senior Print Producer

Andrew Sambell  Senior Digital Producer

Megan Evans  Digital Producer

Adam Shutler  UX & Design Director

Rhys Hobbs  UX

Inflight Film Production

Production Company  Yukfoo

ROYGBIV (Evan Viera and Tommy Wooh)  Director

Alan Dickson  Producer and Creative Director

Amy Neave  Animation Producer

Andy Commis  DOP

Chris Lansell  Flying Dragon, Drone Footage

Concept Film

Production Company  The Pool Collective

Danny Eastwood  Director and Photographer

Oliver Quirk  Camera Operator

Photography

Production Company  The Pool Collective

Cameron Gray  Executive Producer

Sean Izzard  Photographer

Sarah England  Camera Assist

Enric Sala  National Geographic

Music/Sound

Sound Studio  Song Zu

Abigail Sie  Sound Designer

Jed Kurzel  Composer

Red Agency

Adam Freedman  Head of Consumer

Kat

ie Lettice  Senior Account Manager

Jackie Holt  Senior Account Manager

Andrea Philips  Senior Account Executive

Caroline Jeffery  Senior Account Executive

Madeline Mullins  Account Executive

Sarah Dillon  Account Executive

Palau Legacy Project

First Lady of Palau, Debbie Remengesau  Chairperson

Laura Clarke  Co-founder

Nicolle Fagan  Co-founder

Jennifer Koskelin Gibbons  Co-founder

Nanae Singeo  Co-founder
| BY Ricki Green |

Lifestyle marketing agency MKTG, and creative technology team, Perceptual Engineering hosted an experiential future think event for clients over breakfast yesterday.

Guests were invited to interact with some of the unique creations at Perceptual Engineerings Kingsland studio, including Interactive Earth, an experience which gives the audience control over the fate of the planet, the structure is based on a two metre fibre glass sphere projected onto from all sides, the fate of the earth changes dramatically and visually by manipulating the parameters nature, development, control and chaos.

Perceptual Engineering co-director Jon Baxter demonstrated their award winning work and talked about some of his favourite projects including a time machine built for Te Papa and their involvement in the recent hit theater production, Pleasuredome. Baxter explained that for the production, the team not only produced the visual effects, they created the entire set as a VR preview experience for the cast and crew before it was complete, enabling them to visualise the production and make key decisions about what the live experience would actually be.

Baxter says that a shared sense of perspective has brought the two agencies together to share ideas and create the Humanize 2018 event experience: Despite technology being an intrinsic part of our toolkit, we are ultimately driven by ideas, stories, and the opportunity to create human connection.

A senior panel from MKTG comprised of general manager Fleur Skinner, head of strategy Jacquie Bennett and head of engagement Jacqui Marks then presented key insights and trends, as well as an introduction to Isaac; a new proximity sensor for tracking people in experiential and retail environments, offering measurement and insight previously unavailable to brands.

Key insights

Brand relationships are increasingly digital relationships, and while consumers want seamless digital experiences, theyre still searching for enriching experiences to share.

Digital brands are therefore recognising the power of live brand experience, take Amazon Go and Airbnbs Van Gogh BNB as examples.

Experiencing a brand trumps broadcast advertising; according to the Dentsu Aegis Networks proprietary Consumer Connection System (CCS) research tool.

The best brand experiences are driven by a powerful human truth. Dentsu Aegis Network Head of Strategy Jacquie Bennett called out her two favourite MKTG experiential campaigns of the year, both based on a clear human truth; firstly the NZ launch of Cars 3 for Disney Pixar. The Cars 3 racetrack activation connected kids passion for the film with their innate desire to express their excitement physically, they just love to run. The solution allowed the kids to be part of the Cars 3 action  usually reserved for the screen, they got to run on a replica Cars 3 track and of course, climb the podium for the trophy moment at the end.

Secondly Bennett gave a nod to the MKTG UK team for its London launch of Adidas boost. For the active female target audience the team tapped into another powerful human truth, when its dark in London women just dont feel safe to get out and exercise. The solution landed in the form of a unique activation space where women could generate energy (from jumping, jogging to downward dogging), all with the aim of generating enough kinetic power to light up a running track.

Key trends for 2018

Hyper Personal

MKTG General Manager Fleur Skinner explained that events and experiences will move from personalised to hyper personal; offering a completely unique experience per person.

Hyper-personal is deeper, more meaningful, memorable and sharable. IBMs Watson as Museum Guide in Brazil is a great example of how Artificial Intelligence can be deployed to offer a deeply personal experience of a large space. And its worth visiting The Old Claire Hotel in Sydney if you want to experience their take on personalisation. They collect (public) social media insights about their guests before they arrive and leave personal touches in guest rooms, your favourite chocolate perhaps, or a framed portrait of your favourite musician.

Retail as venue

Retail has the opportunity to be a leisure destination, not just to compliment, but as a primary motivator for visitors  one which fuels the secondary consumer motivation, to shop. A fun example is the worlds largest Lego store in London, where you can create your own Lego Mosaic portrait. Step into a photo booth and the camera will scan and map your face, offering you a print out and a corresponding Lego kit to get creating your Lego self.

Glass Box Brands Go Live

Theres no denying the global transparency trend, consumer expectations around ethical corporate behavior and sustainability are high. Patagonia apparel has long embraced a self-aware state in terms of their role in consumerism, famous for their Black Friday dont buy this jacket ad campaign, but the brand has more recently been demonstrating their values with brand activation. The shift, from saying to doing is evident in their recent campaign called the Worn Wear College Tour, where a bio-diesel truck, customised with a built in sewing room, toured campuses to repair and renew clothing. This might be the best of both worlds for the brand, the experience connects the audience to the brand in a deeper, more meaningful way building brand equity, which in turn leads consumers to um, buy more stuff.

Tech Enhanced

Technology isnt a reason to activate, its an enabler to enhance experiences and to help extend them to new audiences. But technology will always play a big role in inspiring new ideas and fulfilling our potential as marketers. The tech we expect to be enabling activation in the coming year includes biometrics, (the return of) holograms, and augmented reality  through a social lens. One of this years best biometric experiences came from Mountain Dew. The Mountain Dew 2017 Dew Tour offered event goers the chance to experience the art of doing gallery.

During the event athletes wore sensors to capture the unique physical and sensory experience of each skateboarder. The information was analysed and translated into digital art. A personalised l

ed canvas was created for each skateboarder. Facial recognition sensors in each canvas then captured the emotional response of event attendees and projected their emotional reaction onto a wall of 100 skateboards.
| BY Ricki Green |

Global creative network for women, SheSays, has partnered with The Royal Womens Hospital to bring Melbourne ladies the first SheSays fundraising event to finish off the year. The breakfast event titled Love of Self will be held in Melbourne at Greenfields Albert Park on Tuesday, December 12 at 7:30am and tickets are selling fast with limited availability.

The event will be helping guests look at self-love from a branding, cultural, and psychological perspective, exploring ways to bring a focus back to ourselves and start the new year refreshed.

The guest speakers include Code Like A Girl co-founder, Vanessa Doeke (above left), director of womens health at Royal Womens Hospital, Prof Louise Newman (above top right) AM and A-SPACE Meditation Studio co-owner, Manoj Dias (above bottom right).

The event follows this years appointment of three new directors for SheSays Melbourne, Ella Yarnton of Leo Burnett, Molly Hyndman of Alt/Shift and Kate Prowse of Taboo.

Ella Yarnton of SheSays describes the fundraiser as a great opportunity for SheSays to bring women together from various professional backgrounds.

Says Yarnton: Were giving women the space and time to reflect on the year as well as provide them the opportunity to build relationships with other women, who all experience the same career obstacles no matter their profession. At the same time, were raising funds for a hospital that specialises in caring for over 200,000 Australian women every year.

We want our guests to develop a deeper understanding of how self-love and strong boundaries for yourself can impact you, your personal brand, and ultimately, the trajectory of a satisfying career.
| BY Lynchy |

Contract Communications, a subsidiary of J. Walter Thompson Malaysia, has developed fun new creative television commercials for SAFI toothpaste and client Wipro Unza. The campaigns humorous moral care angle is in deliberate contrast to traditional oral care advertising prevalent among bigger toothpaste brands.

The 3 TVCs, which have just started airing on-line and on TV, feature different scenarios in which characters tempers are tested to the limit. As their anger builds toward a verbal tirade, a giant SAFI toothbrush appears from nowhere to clean their teeth. Immediately their mood is refreshed, their patience and teeth both stronger for the experience.

Sriram Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Wipro Unza (Malaysia) said, SAFI may be a smaller brand in the toothpaste category, but it has a heritage and home-grown appeal that connects with the Malay Muslim consumers. It is evident in the use of the natural ingredients; Miswak, Sea Cucumber & Herbal Orange in the 3 variants coupled with Habbatus Sauda which symbolizes Selamat dan Suci (Safe & Pure) and stays true to the brands tagline. To stand out from our larger competitors, we wanted a campaign that people could identify with in a humorous way, and we think this creative work from Contract Communications definitely brings a smile.

Saurabh Saksena, Managing Director, J Walter Thompson Group, Malaysia added, Knowing we couldnt outspend the major toothpaste competitors, we had to play smart using the key insight that consumers see very little brand differentiation in this category. So using the key benefit of Habbatus Sauda, we came up with this campaign which also has an injection of humour to make it more relatable to this audience group who enjoy a good laugh. With major players all taking the similar scientific tone in their advertising, we felt that some lightheartedness would prove a breath of fresh air.

Closing line translations:

Coffee mug: Next time, be careful okay honey.

Naughty kids: If you want, just tell me.

Dirty cat: Its ok. Go wash off the cats paw okay.

Credits 

Managing Director  Saurabh Saksena

Business Director  Janet Yap

Planning Director  Bhaskar Thakur

Creative Director  Hasnah Mohammed

Creative Group Head  Mandar Waikar

Senior AV Producer  Vincent Tja

Account Director  Nancy Khoo

Account Executive  Jensen Wong

Wipro Unza (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.

Chief Executive  Sriram Krishnamurthy

GM, Marketing  Pan Choi Yen

Marketing Manager  Mahsuri Sulaiman

Product Group Manager  Tan Say Ong
| BY Lynchy |

Konstantin Popovic, who has been leading Greys second biggest client GSK across Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, is adding to his responsibilities and has now also been named CEO of Grey Group Singapore, effective 1st of January, 2018.

He will continue to work closely with Nirvik Singh, Chairman & CEO, Grey Group, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and continue to accelerate the transformation of Grey into a full marketing services organization.

Popovic (pictured left) joined Grey from Publicis WW New York, where he was the Brand Agency Leader for P&G Healthcare, leading multi-agency teams globally. Additionally, he was the global leader for Publicis real-time marketing engine.

Prior to Publicis, Popovic was with BBDO for 16 years in Dusseldorf, Chicago & New York leading businesses for blue-chip clients such as Henkel, Mars, Wrigley, J&J & Best Buy.

Since taking over GSK for the region, Popovic has built a vibrant global hub for the client that has put Grey Group Singapore on the map as one of the very few agencies to run global brands from Singapore.

In his new role, he will partner with Neil Cotton, Chief Strategy Officer and Tim Cheng, Chief Creative Officer  who both joined Grey Group Singapore earlier in the year.

Singh said, With elevating Konstantin Popovic, we have now completed our renewal of the Grey Group Singapore leadership. KP has a proven track record in being strategic and bold and in winning businesses. In addition, his drive and his understanding of the digital and marketing landscape will be instrumental in the continuing transformation of our agency.

Popovic said, I am thrilled and energized to be taking on this broader responsibility right now. Grey turned 100 this year, a great moment to reflect on the next 100 years and what the agency of the future might look like. Nobody has the answer, but part of it is adopting an Always in Beta mindset and that is my promise: To relentlessly improve, never stop pushing and always strive for more. I feel blessed to have our CCO Tim Cheng  a proven digital transformer  and CSO Neil Cotton  equal parts Strategist and Consultant  by my side. Together we represent the end-to-end integration that clients demand to help them navigate through todays complex business challenges. The three of us also embody our commitment to regional and global business leadership, already reflected in our highly diverse employee base and our international client roster, which includes P&G, GSK, Ferrero and Dulux to name a few.
Student loan forgiveness isn't dead. Here's the (narrow) path forward

With the presidents plan for mass debt relief in limbo, some question if the payment pause will be extended.
A request for proposals has been issued for private companies interested in booking non-fair events at the New York State Fairgrounds in Geddes, Onondaga County.

The main focus of the state's request is the new 136,000-square-foot expo center being built at the fairgrounds. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the $50 million project at the beginning of the 2017 fair. While the facility will be used during the fair, one reason the center is being constructed is to host year-round events at the fairgrounds.

When Cuomo unveiled plans for the expo center, he also revealed that a private company would be sought to book events at the building.

Construction is expected to begin this month, according to the governor's office. Once built, the expo center will be the largest facility of its kind north of New York City between Boston and Cleveland.

The expo center is the latest project at the fairgrounds. The state has allocated $120 million for various improvements in and around the fairgrounds in Geddes. The first phase of work included an expanded midway, improved RV park and new main gate.

"After back-to-back years of record-breaking attendance and with the completion of the new expo center as an additional draw, we will ensure the fairground becomes and remains a year-round destination and economic engine for all of central New York," Cuomo said in a statement.

With the request for proposals, the state wants a private company that will book at least 20 events at the expo center by the end of 2019. At least three of the events must utilize the expo center and other fairgrounds facilities.

There will be incentives for the company if it books events that have never been held in central New York. The contract will require the company to retain 75 percent of the events its schedules from 2020 through 2023 when the contract ends.

While the private company will be responsible for booking events, the fair will provide support staff  janitors, parking attendants and security guards  for events at the fairgrounds.

"The growth from the governor's initial investments in the fair and fairgrounds has been substantial and we know that this new facility will provide economic growth for central New York," said Troy Waffner, the fair's acting director. "We stand ready to work shoulder-to-shoulder with a partner who can help us realize the full potential of this exciting new facility."

Request for proposal submissions are due Jan. 31, 2018.
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Police have found an item and begun investigations, but would not say what happened at the building nor how many people were involved, except to confirm most divisions of the police force had been called to the operation.
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?
Four New York contractors, including two from the Auburn area, will help construct the $10 million Equal Rights Heritage Center across from Memorial City Hall.

J&E Electric, an electrical contractor based in Aurelius, and Siracusa Mechanical, a plumbing and heating contractor, will have roles in the construction of the downtown Auburn facility. J&E Electric was awarded a $344,100 contract for the electrical work. Siracusa Mechanical won a $140,320 contract to install the plumbing systems.

Gazebo across from Auburn City Hall removed to make way for welcome center The wooden gazebo across from Memorial City Hall in Auburn was removed Tuesday to clear the 

The general contract to build the 7,500-square-foot center was awarded to FAHS Construction Group, a Binghamton-based firm. The company won the contract with a bid of $5,027,000.

Another firm, HMI Mechanical Systems in Waterloo, won a $454,000 contract to install a geothermal heating, ventilation and cooling system.

The state is reviewing bids for exhibit fabrication and installation within the heritage center. The winning bidder will be selected in January.

There were 16 bids submitted for the construction, electrical, mechanical and plumbing work, according to the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Auburn Mayor Michael Quill said in a phone interview Thursday he is pleased that two local contractors will be involved in the construction of the center.

"That keeps local people working," he said. "The local people can work on local projects. A lot of our construction workers have been hurting with not a lot of work around. It's terrific news."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo first announced plans to build a welcome center in Auburn last fall. The 2017-18 state budget included funding for the construction of welcome centers in each of the 10 economic development regions. Auburn was selected as the site of central New York's facility.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul visited Auburn in September to announce the state would commit $10 million to the project. The construction of the center is being supported by funds through the CNY Rising, the region's economic development program.

The heritage center will feature a tourism center promoting equal rights landmarks in the area, such as the national parks honoring Harriet Tubman and the women's rights movement. It will also include a market with locally made food products. Improvements will be made to surrounding infrastructure, including streets and the downtown parking garage.

Construction will commence in March. The facility is expected to open in fall 2018.

"The Equal Rights Heritage Center will honor those who strove and struggled to seek out equality and correct the injustices that once prevented equal rights for all," State Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey said.
AUBURN  Some Cayuga County legislators feel it's about time they get a raise.

The base pay for a legislator is $10,100, and outgoing Legislator Terry Baxter said it's been 15 or 16 years, at least, since the salary has changed. Baxter, who is wrapping up his term on the Legislature to take on the Moravia town supervisor post, brought the issue up at a Government Operations Committee meeting Wednesday night.

The committee was discussing pay raises for non-bargaining county positions, elected officials and officials appointed for a fixed term. Legislators are full-time at 30 hours a week.

"Now that I'm leaving, it doesn't matter," Baxter said. "It's not a very thankful job, and pay raises ought to go along (with the non-bargaining raises)."

Legislator Paul Pinckney, who was just re-elected for another term, agreed.

"I would support a raise for this body, be it the day after I leave in four years, I don't care when, but I think it's very unhealthy to go 20 years, 15 years without an increase of sorts, and if the taxpayers of this county want to chastise us for a nominal fee, it's just not a healthy situation to go that long," he said. "It's not going to break anybody. These are not big dollars."

Onondaga County and Tompkins County legislators earn more than $20,000.

Legislator Tim Lattimore pointed to the difference between the pay for Onondaga County and Cayuga County officials, and said he'd support a raise. But, he added, he'd hope that the Legislature would combine some districts to shrink the 15-member body. Pinckney asked Cayuga County Attorney Fred Westphal how that could be done.

Westphal said this was an ideal time to discuss merging districts, a couple of years before the U.S. Census is conducted. That will happen in 2020.

Legislature Chairman Keith Batman said he would consider getting a committee together to explore that possibility, hopefully before the end of the year.

As for the salary increases, Legislator Andy Dennison said he'd support increases for other elected officials, but not for legislators. Westphal is expected to draft two local laws  one calling for raises for legislators, and one calling for raises for other elected officials and those appointed for a fixed term  for the Ways and Means Committee meeting on Dec. 12. Resolutions will also be coming forward for non-bargaining position raises.

The local laws will have to move through committee and to a public hearing before the full body would pass them.

In other news:

 Reassessment of damage to Fair Haven Beach State Park was completed Wednesday, and Cayuga County does in fact meet its threshold required to receive Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for Lake Ontario flooding. Niel Rivenburgh, acting director of the county's emergency services, said the state park's damage numbers had been left out of the county's assessment due to a clerical error at the state or federal level.

FEMA had approved a major disaster declaration for multiple counties affected by Lake Ontario flooding. Cayuga and Monroe counties were left out of the declaration, however.

Rivenburgh said the state is appealing to the federal government.

"We'll either be included in the standing deal, or they'll deny it," he said. "We're cautiously optimistic."
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.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
BRUTUS  Firefighters from both Cayuga and Onondaga counties battled a fire at the Kenyon Landing mobile home community in Brutus Wednesday afternoon.

A neighbor reported the fire at 8 Fietta Lane at around 2:30 p.m. Weedsport Fire Department Chief David James said neither of the two occupants were home at the time of the fire and no one was injured.

James said he does not know where in the home the fire started or what caused it, but the home is a total loss. No other homes in the area were damaged, however. It took firefighters about 30 minutes to extinguish the blaze, James said, and the cause is still under investigation.

James said the Red Cross has been notified to provide assistance to the two brothers who lived in the home, Wilfred and Larry Hunn. Wilfred was at the scene as firefighters were working. He did not wish to comment.

In addition to Weedsport, Jordan, Port Byron, Sennett and Elbridge fire departments responded to the call.
John Katkos latest email plea for money is sad and pitiful. He starts by demonizing Nancy Pelosi, who he claims is coming to our district in 2018 with her far-left agenda. No, Nancy Pelosi is not running in the New York 24th Congressional District. Is this an attempt to undermine a woman in power?

He further claims that far-left candidates are popping out of the woodwork. This is another attempt to vilify candidates who are from central New York. Two women have declared their candidacy. Both live in Syracuse. He claims they are bringing radical policies to central New York. No, they are from central New York. Again, he is wrong.

Because John Katko has not met with constituents in an open meeting since he has been in office he seems to not recognize central New York values. He calls himself a moderate but he is following the lead of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. According to Project 538 John Katko votes with the Trump administration nearly 90 percent of the time. He falsely claims to be a moderate.

John Katko is following the far-right lead of the president. You know Donald Trump who said that people marching in Charlottesville, under a Nazi flag, were good people; Donald Trump who said that he and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey and authoritarian politician, are on the same wavelength; Donald Trump who praises Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, known for his oppression and execution of citizens within his country; Donald Trump who invited the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Larov and Russians U.S. Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to meet in the Oval Office at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin while excluding the U.S. press.

If anyone is trampling on central New York values it is John Katko and his far-right partner in Washington, Donald Trump.

Mickey Belosi

Owasco
Morning commuters on Interstate 405 in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles were left stunned yesterday morning as a huge wildfire got nervously close to the road.



KTLA5 reports that the wildfire near The Getty Center prompted the temporary closure of the 405, just hours after the blaze started near Mulholland Drive.

Footage captured by drivers on the 405 show the inferno stretching down large hills and towards the road, creating a scene that looks like something akin to an apocalyptic Hollywood film.

It is reported that the fire ripped through 50 acres of land in a little over 30 minutes and by 3 pm, it had spread to roughly 475 acres in size, threatening homes in the Bel Air area and prompting the evacuations of over roughly 46,000 people.
Former VW executive Oliver Schmidt has been sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $400,000 for his involvement in the dieselgate scandal.



Schmidt served as the head of VWs environmental and engineering office in Michigan and was arrested in January after travelling to the United States with his family. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government and for violating the Clean Air Act.

Judge Sean F. Cox imposed the sentence in line with the recommendation of prosecutors.

You are a key conspirator responsible for the cover-up in the United States of a massive fraud perpetuated on the American consumer, the judge said at sentencing.

Just days before sentencing, Schmidt penned a letter to the judge, admitting that he had been misused by VW when he disclosed the brands use of diesel software that cheated emissions while in a 2015 meeting with a senior official from the California Air Resources Board.

A script, or talking points, I was directed to follow for that meeting was approved by management level supervisors at VW, including a high-ranking in-house lawyer. Regrettably, I agreed to follow it, Schmidt said.

Only one other VW employee has been sentenced in the United States over dieselgate, company engineer James Liang, who received a 40-month term in August.

Many of the senior executives reportedly involved in the scandal are German citizens and out of the reach of American justice. It was Schmidts decision to travel to the United States from his native Germany that allowed for his arrest.

PHOTO GALLERY
Things clearly havent been working in Hondas F1 engine program, and Honda knows it. Thats probably why its not only changing the guard, but completely reconfiguring the way its F1 operation runs.



Up to this point, the effort has been run by one Yasuke Hasegawa, who has worn two hats: one supervising the development of the powertrain at Hondas R&D facility in Japan, the other directing its application from the pit lane at grands prix and test sessions around at circuits around the world.

As Honda moves on from its partnership with McLaren to a new one with Toro Rosso, Hasegawas position is now being split into two, with the role of technical director (for trackside operations) now falling to one Toyoharu Tanabe. Currently employed as a senior manager at Honda Performance Development in the US, Tanabe has been with Honda since 1984, working in F1 alongside the likes of Gerhard Berger (at McLaren) and Jenson Button (at BAR-Honda) as well as in IndyCars.

The official announcement made no mention of who will run the powertrain development program back in Sakura. However Autosport reports that the role will fall to Yasuaki Asaki, previously head of Hondas N series of JDM kei cars.

As for Hasegawa, hes now being simply listed as a researcher in Hondas R&D department. The changes are set to take effect as of January 1, 2018.

Photo Gallery
Remove judicial diversion/community supervision and send convicted drug dealers to prison. Thomas Jefferson stated If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free it is the responsibility of every American to be informed. Wise counsel.

I read with great interest Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann's exposure of former New York Gov. David Patersons 2009 law allowing convicted drug dealers judicial diversion/community supervision instead of prison. I think about it and then I think again  drug dealers go scot-free. How disastrous as the result of this law has enabled convicted dealers free rein in our state and community. Incredible.

Beware who we support. Remember, cast your vote for those who have produced instead of those who promise. By their actions they will reveal themselves.

Let us reverse the law former Governor Paterson has inflicted upon us in 2009. This is imperative.

Stand up and be counted.

Lucy Cacciotti

Auburn
Lyft and autonomous driving company nuTonomy has rolled out a fleet of robo-taxis throughout Boston.



The two companies first publicized their partnership in June and authorities in Boston have only just granted the firms permission to offer Lyft users rides in fully-autonomous Renault Zoe models.

Mashable reports that the program has started in the citys Seaport district and that all the autonomous taxis will have human drivers behind the wheel in case anything goes wrong. Beyond the program being a vital tool to improve Lyfts and nuTonomys autonomous systems, the program will help to educate the public about driverless cars.

This isnt nuTonomys first rodeo when it comes to a robotaxi service. In fact, it first rolled out the technology in the One-North business district of Singapore in August 2016.

Discussing the program in Boston last month, city mayor Martin J. Walsh said, Boston is ready to lead the charge on self-driving vehicles, and I am committed to ensuring autonomous vehicles will benefit Bostons residents. This is an exciting step forward, and together with our public and private partners, we will continue to lead the way in creating a safe, reliable and equitable mobility plan for Bostons residents.

PHOTO GALLERY
What an absolute waste of time and money. Asking the citizens of Kelowna how they want the city to develop is pointless. Just like the OCP, that too was developed over time with input from all stakeholders.

It is obvious our current council headed by former realtor Bazran, believe it is just a suggestion. One that is mostly ignored anytime a developer with deep pockets comes along with a proposal. Smaller setbacks, less parking, add several more stories even tax holidays no problem.

We want more park space, council and friends want a new tourist centre in the park at our expense.

Our only hope is that a number of trustworthy citizens that actually believe in democracy, step up for the next civic election.

Gord Marshall
Photo: file photo Kids playing on the outdoor rink at the Penticton Lakeside last winter

To celebrate the final month of Canadas 150th birthday, the Penticton Lakeside Resort is taking part in a family event on Sunday.

A Canada 150 Skate will be held on the outdoor rink at the resort.

Many cities across Canada are doing this Canada 150 Skate, and although Penticton is small compared to some of these cities, were definitely proud to be Canadian, said hotel director of sales and marketing Brannigan Mosses.

The event will also mark this season's opening of the outdoor rink.

Were going to have crafts and coloring for the kids, as well as beverages and food available for purchase, Mosses added.

The skate will also feature complimentary beavertails and family games.

Bring your own skates for the free event, 3 to 5 p.m.
Photo: Contributed

Kelowna Regional Transit System is shifting gears for Christmas.

The holiday service schedule starts December 24th and goes through to January 2nd.

Transit riders in the Kelowna area are advised of the following service during the holiday season:

 December 24 and 25 Sunday-level service

 December 26 Saturday-level service

 December 27-29 Regular weekday service

 December 30 Regular Saturday service

 December 31 Regular Sunday service

 January 1 Sunday-level service

 January 2 Regular weekday service
Photo: Wayne Moore City manager Ron Mattiussi

Ron Mattiussi has put his employer on notice.

You may want to begin looking for a new manager.

Mattiussi, Kelowna's long-time city manager, has let it be known he will be stepping down from his lofty perch in 2018.

His first public hint that his days with the city were numbered came during budget deliberation day a year ago.

During his budget preamble that day, Mattiussi fought back tears when he told council this could very well be the final budget he presided over.

He was off by a year.

Speaking with Okanagan Oldies 103.9 morning show host Gord Vizzutti, Mattiussi said there is nothing official, "but I'm going to retire in the next year.

Mattiussi has been Kelowna's city manager for 13 years. Prior to that, he was planning director, a position he took March 1, 1995.

When asked what he is most proud of over the past 13 years, Mattiussi talked about the plans put in place that allowed the city to figure out what was needed and when.

"We've had phenomenal growth. If we weren't the fastest growing, we were the third fastest. We played a lot of catch up, but I think we put in place a lot of good plans to get ahead of it," said Mattiussi.

Surprises?

Mattiussi pointed to two things, including Bernard Avenue.

"I was surprised at how successful at how Bernard Avenue is. We can only do so much with bricks and mortar, the business community has to step up.

"When you walk down Bernard Avenue on a Wednesday night in November, there are people there. It's vibrant. Everything came together."

The profound impact UBC Okanagan has had on the community, and how quickly that impact happened, also surprised Mattiussi.

As for the future, he said it's bright.

"I like the way we're going," he said.

When he first came to Kelowna, Mattiussi said the housing stock was 75 per cent single family and 25 per cent multi. That has been completely reversed through good planning and a changing demographic.

"The younger people want a condo in a vibrant, urban centre.

"That's where the downtown works. We are absolutely on the right track."
Chantelle Deacon

Construction will begin shortly on a new cold-storage facility for wineries, distilleries and cider operations in Naramata.

The old BC Tree Fruits packinghouse has been vacant for a decade, partially demolished and sitting silent in the middle of the Naramata village.

The first stage is getting the packinghouse back in operation. We hope to do that in the next two to three months, said David Enns, former owner of Laughing Stock Vineyards.

The facility needs to be revamped and our goal is to put it back into service as storage, primarily for wineries, barrels and cased goods.

The 4.6 acre property sold for an undisclosed amount to four local residents, Mik Ball, David Enns, Robert Gritten and Steven Jaeger.

The idea will create a modern building on the rocky piece of land, which is currently surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

Its not going to be a production facility ever, but it will be accessible to commercial trade on the Naramata Bench, which is 35+ wineries, Enns said.

Redevelopment plans for the cold storage building includes new electrical, climate control, as well as site and building security.

The space could potentially be used for more than just storage, added Enns.

We have a long term goal of perhaps looking at secondary tasting rooms, he said. Typical of other wineries in the world a secondary tasting room allows for a cooperative venue not much different than a farmers market but for wineries.

The Naramata Wine Vault is scheduled to open in spring 2018.
Photo: Contributed

The annual 'Lights Tour' on B.C. Transit buses of Christmas lights around Penticton will take place on Dec. 13.

B.C. Transit said the tour they and the City of Penticton put on is a chance to "enjoy the beauty of Penticton during the holiday season."

The first trip begins at Wade Avenue and Martin Street at 6:30 p.m., stopping at the Penticton Plaza at 6:35 p.m., the Cherry Lane Shopping Centre at 6:40 p.m., and the Peach Tree Mall at 6:45 p.m.

A second trip will depart from Wade Avenue and Martin Street at 7:45 p.m., and make the same three stops with five-minute intervals.

The tours are free of charge for riders.
Alanna Kelly

UPDATE: 11:25 a.m.

Kelowna's 28th edition of the Nutcracker has officially sold out as of Thursday morning.

ORIGINAL: 9 a.m.

Kelownas Nutcracker is celebrating its 28 year with a unique twist you wont want to miss.

The Canadian School of Ballet presents a holiday classic that will transport the audience through an unforgettable journey with Clara, her Nutcracker Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy.

We have a brand new opening scene set this year and an opening scene party so we are very excited to show that off this year, said director Regeanna Stubel.

Cast members range in age from six-years-old to 60.

Itll be a nice kick off to the Christmas season, and there is no snow outside but there will be snowflakes falling in here, said Stubel.

The performance will run from Dec. 8 to 10 with shows at 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m.

Tickets are going fast and can be purchased online here.
Photo: CTV

That brazen sea lion who bit a young girl posing for a photo, dragging her into the water near Richmond B.C. is among the top trending videos for 2017.

YouTube's just-released list indicates the video is Canada's most-watched clip for 2017.

The clip racked up 30 million views worldwide and made headlines around the world as well.

The girl who was tugged into the river only suffered a superficial wound.

Biologists, who said the mammal likely mistook the girl's white dress for food, used the incident as a reminder not to feed wildlife.

-With files from CTV
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Photo: RCMP

Kelowna RCMP need your help to locate 21 year old Nathan Guy Durant, last seen November 29, 2017.



Police do not believe foul play is involved at this time and they believe he is still in the Kelowna area but has been known to travel to Vancouver Island.

Since Nathans disappearance, police have followed up on several leads and possible sightings, however, he remains missing at this time.



Police are very concerned about Nathans health and well-being and friends and family report that it is out of character for him to be out of contact for this long.

He is described as:

Caucasian male;

21 years;

5 ft 6 in (168 cm);

146 lbs (66 kg);

brown hair;

hazel eyes;

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Nathan Durant is urged to contact their local police, or remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477, leaving a tip online at www.crimestoppers.net or by texting your tip to CRIMES (274637) ktown.
Photo: CTV

The U.S. International Trade Commission has unanimously voted that the American lumber industry has been harmed by Canadian softwood lumber imports.

In a 4-0 vote, the agency sided with the U.S. lumber coalition.

The U.S. Commerce Department last month lowered preliminary duties. Most Canadian producers will pay a combined countervailing and anti-dumping rate of 20.83 per cent, down from 26.75 per cent in the preliminary determinations issued earlier this year.

The duties have driven up the price of lumber, adding to the cost of building a home in the United States. Canadian unions and lumber companies fear the issue will eventually cause layoffs.

West Fraser Timber (TSX:WFT) pays the highest duties at 23.7 per cent. Canfor (TSX:CFP) is next at 22.13, followed by Tolko at 22.07, Resolute Forest Products (TSX:RFP) at 17.9 per cent and J.D. Irving at 9.92 per cent.

Reasons supporting the vote are expected to be released in two weeks.

Canada is challenging the duties under both the North American Free Trade Agreement and at the World Trade Organization. The NAFTA dispute panel has to make a ruling by next fall. The WTO process could take years.
Photo: The Canadian Press Palestinians play cards during U.S. President Donald Trump's televised speech in the West Bank City of Nablus, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. Defying dire, worldwide warnings, President Donald Trump on Wednesday broke with decades of U.S. and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Hundreds of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank on Thursday while demonstrators in Gaza burned posters of President Donald Trump over his widely denounced decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger, as the demonstrators torched American and Israeli flags.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tires on fire and hurled stones at Israeli troops. In Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians shuttered their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Trump's decision. Rallies were underway in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

"We are here. We believe in our rights," said Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were lightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Friday, the Muslim holy day when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers, could prove more violent.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders."

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

The Israeli military said two rockets were fired from Gaza but fell short, landing in Palestinian territory. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Photo: Parks Canada

The Lower Similkameen Indian Band is looking forward to negotiations about a national park reserve proposed for the South Okanagan.

In a statement released Wednesday, LSIB Chief Keith Crow said his First Nation is willing to work with the federal and provincial governments and Osoyoos and Penticton Indian Bands.

Any decision concerning a National Park Reserve will impact our people for generations, including our title lands, way of life, and continued ability to fulfill our responsibilities, Crow said This discussion is not solely about creating a park  it is about the future of smElqmix people, lands, and waters.

The First Nation says it expects the Okanagan First Peoples traditional decision making mechanisms to be upheld.

Planning discussions will commence once Parks Canada has jointly established a government to government pathway with the LSIB, the statement continues.

The LSIBs position on the creation of a nation park reserve will be defined during negotiations.
Photo: Google Maps

A shooting at a high school in a small New Mexico town left two students and the suspect dead, authorities said Thursday as schools throughout the area remained on lockdown as a precaution.

State police did not release any details about the shooter but confirmed the other two people who were killed attended Aztec High School. The school of about 900 students was cordoned off as authorities cleared the buildings and teens were taken to another location.

A crowd of nervous parents gathered outside City Hall to wait for more information as officers tried to reassure them about the safety of their children.

"The families of the victims were notified immediately. They are in our thoughts and prayers," state police said in a statement on social media.

State and federal authorities are investigating what led to the shooting and did not immediately release any details about the circumstances.

Aztec is a rural community of 6,500 people in the heart of northwestern New Mexico's oil and gas country and near the Navajo Nation. Its main street is lined by old brick buildings that date back more than a century.
Photo: Google Street View

A young person was hit by a vehicle on Okanagan Landing Road Thursday morning, but fortunately was not injured.

The youth was hit at the intersection of 34th Street and Okanagan Avenue.

RCMP attended the scene and the youth that was struck was treated on scene for minor injuries by EHS and released to his mother and off to school he went, said Vernon RCMP Const. Kelly Brett. A motor vehicle act charge for failing to yield was issued to the driver.
Madison Erhardt

Norm Letnick has found the man he would like to see lead the BC Liberal party into the next provincial election.

The Kelowna-Lake Country MLA announced Thursday morning he is throwing his political weight behind Andrew Wilkinson's bid for the leadership.

Wilkinson says he now has the support of more sitting MLAs than the other five candidates combined.

"He has all the abilities necessary to advance the needs of my constituents here in Kelowna-Lake Country, and also to lead British Columbia," said Letnick in explaining his decision to back Wilkinson.

"We need someone with experience, someone who knows the system, who has the leadership qualities to be able to attract people with ideas."

Wilkinson describes himself as a fiscal conservative who says he won't load debt onto our children.

"I'm the guy who has put out a whole package of ideas within a balanced budget," he said.

"We need to run a responsible government that cares about people, who doesn's waste people's money, and drive up taxes like the NDP."

Wilkinson is one of six in the race to replace former premier Christy Clark, who stepped down in August.

He says one of the differences between him and the other five is what he calls a 'spending contest going on among the other candidates.'

"Making wild promises on things they can deliver."

Speaking specifically to a statement made Wednesday by Todd Stone that he would reduce the PST by one per cent and eliminate the NDP tax increases, Wilkinson says Stone is talking about running up a $13.7 billion deficit over three years.

"I'm not prepared to do that.

"We need to be the responsible government that thinks people can make decisions about their own money better than government can. Keep the money in taxpayers pockets and not pick it out of their pockets and have government spend it."
Photo: Okanagan Rail Trail Initiative Hikers and bikers must use the north end of the Okanagan Rail Trail at their own risk.

Hikers and bikers can once again use the north end of the Okanagan Rail Trail but they must do so at their own risk.

Rock scaling and heavy equipment work along 12 kilometres of line from Coldstream to Kekuli Bay has wrapped up  for now.

I can't guarantee (heavy equipment) won't be back on the trail again, but at this time they have constructed the base level and most of the construction is done, said Mike Fox, community services general manager for the North Okanagan Regional District. I believe there is signage and some other work that has to happen yet, so we do recommend caution if somebody is walking on the trail or using the trail.

Fox said although the trail won't be officially opened until all the work along the 48.5 km former rail line is complete, access is no longer being blocked. He said rock scaling work continues along Lake Country's portion of the trail.

During a meeting of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee on Thursday, Coldstream director Doug Dirk expressed concern over the possibility of further rock fall along cliff areas of the trail.

You can never guarantee a perfectly safe environment, conceded David Sewell. At the end of the day, there will be rockfall.

But Sewell said the regional district was doing its due diligence, such as having qualified contractors carry out the rock scaling and ensuring the cliffs were regularly inspected.

Sewell said there had been efforts to move part of the trail away from the cliff and signage would be going up, warning people not to stop in certain areas.

We're not going to be putting picnic areas in there, Sewell joked.

Staff from all the jurisdictions, Kelowna, Lake Country, OKIB and NORD continue to hold collaborative meeting. A letter is to be sent asking for City of Vernon and District of Coldstream staff members to also take part in those talks.

As well, the Okanagan Rail Trail Initiative continues to raise money to finish off work along the trail.
Photo: Google Maps Police are looking for a man around 50 after a frightening incident in Kamloops.

Kamloops RCMP are asking for the publics help in identifying a man who grabbed a teenage girl on 9th Avenue Wednesday afternoon.

On Dec 6th at around 2:30 p.m., a 15-year-old girl had a frightening encounter as she walked northbound on 9th Avenue, between South Kamloops Secondary School and Lloyd George Elementary School, when a middle-aged man grabbed her by the arm.

Luckily, the girl was able to pull away and run down to Columbia Avenue where she was meeting her father.

Patrols were made by both the girls father and police officers but a suspect was not located, police said.

The man is described as Caucasian, approximately 50 years old, wearing a black toque, black hoodie and baggy brown pants.

Anyone with information about the incident or who can identify the male, is asked to contact the Kamloops RCMP at 250-828-3000.
Photo: Shea Coulson

Five small Okanagan wineries had their day in court today during a rare two-day hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada.

The wineries are intervening in a case on behalf 100 B.C. wineries trying to break down legal barriers to inter-provincial shipping of Canadian wine, arguing it has negatively impacted consumer choice, as well as threatening the local wine industry itself.

"The Court was engaged in a deep debate about whether to expand the constitutional guarantee for a national common market in Canada, and if so, to what extent," said Shea Coulson, the wineries lawyer.

"The Court was particularly concerned with judges entering too far into the policy jurisdiction of the democratically-elected provincial governments. At the same time, they recognized that the current situation regarding national distribution of liquor is not ideal."

The case, R. v. Comeau, is a constitutional challenge stemming from when Gerard Comeau was stopped and fined in 2012 for carrying alcohol from Quebec across the New Brunswick border.

The challenge is trying to convince the court to uphold the "letter and spirit" of the 1867 Constitution, which provides some level of constitutional guarantee of free trade.

The Okanagan wineries are just one of many interveners in the case. Most on the non-government groups  and 89 per cent of Canadians  side with Comeau.

The ruling would make it easier for individuals as well as industry to access a national market, potentially contributing an additional $50 to $130 billion to the gross domestic product, said Coulson.

The outcome of the case will be decided in 2018.
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Realtors in the North Okanagan have done it again.

The annual food drive collected more than 30,000 pounds of food in a single night.

The realtors, along with numerous other volunteers, canvassed neighbourhoods throughout Greater Vernon, collecting food that was then dropped off at the Salvation Army Food Bank.

On the same night last year, we only did about 24,000 pounds and last night we surpassed 32,000, said Lt. Stefan Reid of the Salvation Army.

We are seven to eight thousand pounds ahead of what we were last year and we are expecting another four or five thousand pounds in the next two or three days.

This is the 40th year for the food drive and to mark the milestone, a goal of collecting 40,000 pounds of goods was set, and Reid said by the time all the food is collected they will be very close to their goal.

The realtors always surpass our expectations with this food drive, said Reid. This food will last us until well into May and June of next year.

If anyone was missed during the food drive, they can call their favourite realtor to have donations picked up, or they can drop them off at the Salvation Army warehouse at 4609-23rd St.

Reid said none of this would be possible without the realtors and the support of the community.

It's because of the support of the community that we can do what we do, said Reid, adding the food bank provides up to 25 hampers a day year round and have already received 500 applications for Christmas hampers.

Our community is our heroes. It's not us in our uniforms or sitting in our offices, it's the community who truly make our food bank run.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A provincially-funded private bus company could be in the future in B.C. to help Greyhound keep rural bus routes running.

Greyhound is asking for written support from the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen, as the company plans to apply for subsidized funding from the provincial government.

The request is in response to a number of board members who wrote letters urging Greyhound not to cut its routes through the Similkameen.

Keremeos mayor and RDOS vice-chair Manfred Bauer emphasized the need for some sort of provincial funding to enhance rural transportation, and noted he has spoken to Boundary-Similkameen MLA Linda Larson on the matter.

He added that asking for funding for transportation is as appropriate as other rural initiatives, such as funding for education and operating public facilities.

Oliver mayor Ron Hovanes said he's wary about Greyhound's route priorities, having dealt with the bus company in the past when his town had bus routes slashed.

"Greyhound has never listened to community conversations about their needs, and special needs for seniors in small rural communities," he said.

Electoral Area F director Michael Brydon pointed out that the regional district may be better off working with the already publicly-funded B.C. Transit to improve rural transportation.

In an earlier presentation done by B.C. Transit, officials pointed out that ridership is increasing through the region for the urban bus service.

"Lets talk about subsidized rural transportation now as a provincial responsibility with one boss in one direction," Brydon said, noting private companies like Greyhound are "competing, but not coordinating" with other companies.

RDOS staff will bring more information to board members in January on what devising a draft letter to the province's Passenger Transportation Board would look like.
Photo: CTV Vancouver Island

UPDATE 6:20 P.M.

Family have confirmed the man taken into custody for the murder of Heather Jones is Jones' 22-year-old son, Martin Vandenberg.

While police have not confirmed the identity of the victim or the arrested man, they said the two knew each other, and foul play is suspected in the death.

The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit was at the Salt Spring Island house all day, and neighbours said they had been asked to stay inside while police investigated.

ORIGINAL 12:25 p.m.

A 22-year-old man is in custody following the death of a Salt Spring Island woman.

CTV Vancouver Island is reporting that Heather Jones has been identified as the person found dead in a duplex on Maliview Drive, north of Ganges, on Wednesday.

RCMP say the man in custody is known to the victim and they believe foul play is involved.

The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit sent officers to the island Wednesday.

Saltspring RCMP, the RCMP Forensic Identification Section, and the BC Coroner's Service are also investigating the death.

 with files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: Contributed

Half of working women in Canada have endured sexual harassment in their careers, according to a recent Insights West survey.

The online survey released on Dec. 6, also the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, states many of the incidents were never reported to a superior or human resources department.

It is evident that many working women in Canada have faced unwanted situations during the course of their careers, said Mario Canseco, Vice President, Public Affairs, at Insights West.

Fifty per cent of working women in Canada say they have experienced a significant, moderate or small amount of sexual harassment.

More than half of working women in Canada say they have experienced conduct, comments, gestures of a sexual nature that caused them offence of humiliation.

Women said they had to listen to unwanted jokes with sexual content from a co-worker, and 40 per cent of them heard those remarks from a boss, manager or superior.

Unwanted sexual comments, unwanted touching or patting, cat-calls, whistles, pressure to go on dates, presence of pornography or sexual images at work and unwanted pressure for sexual activity from a co-worker were just some of the harassments women faced.

Only 22 per cent filed a complaint after being offended or humiliated by somebody elses behaviour.

Very few of these incidents have been duly reported, partly because there are low expectations for significant action, said Canseco.

Of the women who went forward to file a complaint, only 46 per cent said the employee who behaved improperly was penalized or reprimanded.

Canada Labour Code defines sexual harassment as any conduct, comment, gesture, or contact of a sexual nature that is likely to cause offence or humiliation to any employee; or that might, on reasonable grounds, be perceived by that employee as placing a condition of a sexual nature on employment or on any opportunity for training or promotion.

Insights West is a progressive marketing research company based in Vancouver and Calgary.
Photo: Contributed

Ridership this year appears to be up significantly for B.C. Transit users in the South Okanagan, compared to 2016.

The number of riders has increased 41 per cent for the region's public bus routes between OK Falls and Naramata, according to senior regional transit manager Daniel Pizarro.

Revenue also has taken a 10 per cent jump, while net costs for municipalities were four per cent under budget due to fuel and maintenance savings, Pizarro said. Operating costs per passenger also decreased a marginal 30 per cent this year.

For routes from Osoyoos to Penticton, ridership is up 11 per cent and revenue is nine per cent higher than 2016.

Net costs for those routes were five per cent below budget, and operating costs per passenger dropped nine per cent.

Pizarro explained the discrepancy between ridership and revenue for the Naramata and OK Falls routes in particular.

"Every time someone buys a monthly pass, that equates to a certain number of rides Now whether someone is using the bus every single day is impossible to tell with the absence of an electronic reader, like a Compass Card," he said.

"So you dont always see the equation between ridership and revenue go up."

He added the Regional District Okanagan Similkameen is in line to become one of the next services to have the electronic trip planner set up, where people can use Google Maps on their phone or computer to find out when the next scheduled bus is coming.
Photo: The Canadian Press Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project's oil storage tank farm, at right with green tanks, is seen in Burnaby, B.C., on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

The National Energy Board has ruled in favour of Kinder Morgan Canada in its efforts to bypass Burnaby, B.C., bylaws that stand in the way of its Trans Mountain expansion project.

The NEB order says the company is not required to comply with two sections of the city's bylaws as it prepares to begin construction in the area.

The company had filed a motion to have the NEB overrule the bylaws on a constitutional basis, because it claimed the city was delaying a project the federal government had approved.

Burnaby maintained that it was following the standard bylaws process and that the company was to blame for shoddy applications.

The NEB says its decision allows the company to start work at its temporary infrastructure site near the Westridge Marine Terminal, and some work at the Burnaby Terminal, subject to any other permits or authorizations that may be required.

Kinder Morgan Canada says the $7.4 billion pipeline expansion is already months behind and further delays could threaten the viability of the controversial project.
PHOENIX -- Arizona taxpayers could be on the hook for up to $18,000 to pay the legal fees of lawmakers accused of ethics violations.

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard has authorized up to 20 hours of legal work on behalf of Reps. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, and Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix. All three were named in complaints and became the subjects of an internal probe to see if there is truth to allegations against them. That inquiry is the first step in determining if any House rules were violated and whether lawmakers should face a disciplinary hearing.

Each attorney is being allowed to charge up to $300 an hour.

But Mesnard told Capitol Media Services that if the investigation leads to formal disciplinary charges, the lawmakers will be on their own financially.

That's not going to happen in at least one of the cases.

Late Wednesday, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee dismissed the complaint against Rios that has been filed by fellow Democrat Ray Martinez of Phoenix.

In a letter to Martinez, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said that complaints of violations of House ethics rules need to be based on "facts within the personal knowledge of the individual making the complaint.'' But Farnsworth told Martinez his complaint that Rios had "inappropriate relationships,'' including one with someone who had been a House staffer at the time, "appears largely based upon information you have overhead from others.''

And there's something else. Farnsworth said even if Martinez did have such first-hand knowledge -- Rios has refused to comment -- nothing he accused her of doing violates any law, rule or House policy.

That conclusion could also be good news for Ugenti-Rita.

One of the two allegations made against her by Shooter is that she entered into a personal relationship with a House staffer. But based on what Farnsworth concluded about Rios, that may not be grounds to pursue that issue.

It was not immediately known how much Rios' lawyer had run up in legal fees.

Mesnard defended letting all three legislators use state dollars to get legal help.

He said if any lawmaker were under investigation it would be the obligation of the House of Representatives, as their employer, to provide legal assistance. But with all the House lawyers now tied up doing the probe, Mesnard said that left outside counsel as the only option.

Not everyone is in agreement.

"I believe it is wholly inappropriate for the taxpayers to have to provide for a defense that has nothing to do with the business of the people,'' said Majority Whip Kelly Townsend. "I oppose this idea and hope that the decision is reversed immediately.''

That's not going to happen.However, Mesnard said it's only fair and appropriate to give lawmakers facing charges -- some from other legislators -- some legal help during this stage of the investigation.

The most serious of the allegations are against Shooter, with allegations by three female lawmakers, multiple lobbyists, and even a newspaper publisher; each accused him of inappropriate comments and harassment. That includes a claim by Ugenti-Rita that Shooter made comments about her breasts and sought a sexual relationship.

Shooter responded by filing his own complaint against her, saying not only did she enter into a romantic relationship with a House staffer, she also made a comment during a committee hearing about masturbation to a male legislator.

Mesnard responded to all the complaints by putting together a committee of House staffers, including attorneys from both political parties, to take a closer look. That panel, in turn, hired a private lawyer, Craig Morgan, to do some of the actual digging.

That potential $18,000 cost for legal fees for the three legislators could prove to be the least expensive part of the probe.

Morgan's contract says he will be paid what he called a discounted rate of $325 an hour, with other members of the firm who get involved in the probe billing at $400 an hour. The contract does not specify a maximum amount.

The speaker said he hopes to have the entire inquiry wrapped up -- including any hearings of the Ethics Committee if it comes to that -- before the Legislature returns for its regular session on Jan. 8. But he conceded that may not be possible.

At this point -- and with the facts now available -- Mesnard said it's only fair to provide legal help to the three legislators.

"Right now you have member-to-member accusations flying fast and furious,'' he said.

But at this point, that's all they are. So Mesnard believes they're entitled to at least some legal advice on the investigative process at this stage.

"The alternative would be me saying, 'Sorry, I'm investigating you, now you've got to go come up with money out of your pocket because of an accusation,' '' he said.

"Any organization, if it has folks within the organization accusing others of misconduct, I think they're going to follow a very similar process,'' Mesnard said. "They're going to do their own investigation. It's going to involve the attorneys of the business.''

Only if and when that inquiry by that business finds reason to believe someone acted improperly would the obligation to provide legal help to the employee be cut off,'' he contends.

"I just consider their counsel an extension of the investigation,'' Mesnard said of the taxpayer-provided legal help for the three lawmakers. "It's to make sure an investigation happens properly.''

And there's something else behind his decision.

"I'm trying to make sure that, on the other side, I'm not liable if they come back and say, 'You investigated me, you need to pay for my attorneys, you didn't pay, and now you're on the hook for the whole thing,' '' Mesnard said.

The speaker conceded that the inquiry into Shooter, who faces allegations beyond those filed by fellow legislators, "complicates things a bit.'' But Mesnard said he still believes the best course of action is to provide the 20 hours of legal help to him, too.

Mesnard's fear of the House being liable for more serious legal bills if it doesn't front some legal costs raises a different issue: what happens if lawmakers are forced to reimburse taxpayers if an investigation leads to charges and the Ethics Committee ultimately finds them guilty of violating House rules? "That's an interesting question,'' Mesnard responded. But the speaker said he believes that the use of tax dollars is appropriate as the legal fees are limited solely to the investigative part of the inquiry. All that changes if the findings result in an Ethics Committee hearing.

"That's why it makes sense at that point if there's any subsequent issues that the legal fees are on them, on the legislators,'' he said. "But at this point we are fact finding.''

None of the lawmakers have issued specific responses to the allegations against them.
Would expanding Highway 180 alleviate winter gridlock, or is the solution creating an alternate route? Would an extra lane on Milton Road help commuters move faster?

Those are the questions the Arizona Department of Transportation has set out to answer while creating the U.S. 180 and Milton Road master plans, which will include a 20-year vision for each of the ADOT-controlled roads.

ADOT Project Manager Dan Gabiou and Kevin Kugler, a project manager for Michael Baker International, a consultant hired for the planning process, presented the goals and projected timeline for the planning process to the Flagstaff City Council Tuesday evening. The two also looked for feedback from the councilmembers about their visions for the two corridors and what they would like to see in future plans.

ADOT has partnered with the Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Northern Arizona Intergovernmental Public Transit Authority, the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Arizona University and other stakeholders to create the master plans.

The goals identified for both projects include determining the 20-year vision for each area. The Milton plan includes the section of Milton between Forest Meadows Street until it turns into Route 66 at Butler Avenue and continues to the intersection of Route 66 and Beaver Street. The U.S. 180 plan begins at the intersection of Humphreys Street and Route 66 and continues up to Crowley Pit.

At the meeting, some councilmembers expressed worry that once the plan is completed, solutions proposed may be cost prohibitive and not lead to any real changes.

My major concern is we go through the planning processes and the documents sit on a shelf, said Mayor Coral Evans.

Evans said the community is frustrated with Miltons problems, like heavy traffic and long wait times at lights. However, she said she would not want to use the citys transportation tax revenue to fund a fix on an ADOT-controlled road unless there were a true partnership.

The city created a commission to discuss creating one or more questions on the 2018 ballot to extend or possibly increase the citys sales tax, which pays for transportation improvements.

We as a city have major transportation needs that are not tied to a state highway, Evans said.

One of the questions posed to the council was whether the city wanted to preserve or enhance the character of the Milton corridor.

Im not quite sure Milton has a character, Evans said. If we could create a sense of place or a vibe that you have arrived in this really cool town, that would help.

Councilman Scott Overton said the financial realities of lane capacity and the structure of Milton Road are probably pretty unlikely due to the cost associated with widening the street, like acquiring property along the road. Overton suggested alternatives to simply widening the road, like adding a median to prohibit left turns in sections or lanes dedicated for only transit.

Vice Mayor Jamie Whelan said she would like to see the process include data that has been compiled from other studies about the corridors. There has been a lot of data and study dedicated to both Milton and U.S. 180, Whelan said, and the new master plan should also consolidate data generated from previous studies.

Councilwoman Eva Putzova said she would like the planning team to consider solutions that do not involve engineering, and focus on social and behavioral changes. Most of the congestion on Milton is during regular commuting times, and a change in behavior, like alternate modes of transportation or a social change, like staggered hours for starting and ending the work day, could help alleviate the gridlock, she said.

Gabiou and Kugler will present to the Coconino County Board of Supervisors at the meeting December 12. The two are planning to host a public open house in either January or February 2018.
When you use the word all, what do you typically mean? Its an interesting term, because a little child at dinner might say, All done! with her plate still filled with food. We shrug our shoulders and say, I gave it my all, knowing we could have done more or tried harder. In some churches the hymn, I Surrender All, is commonly sung  but how many are really doing that?

The literal meaning of all, of course, is everything or all things. If you have a party and say to everyone in the room, Youre all invited, that means no exceptions. On election day, when we hear that all the votes are in, that means every precinct, every vote. At least it should mean that.



In the Bible, however, when it says all, what it really means isALL. My Strongs Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible lists every verse that includes all  more than 17 pages for that word alone. All is used nearly 6,000 times in Old and New testaments combined!



Unlike our common practice, the biblical use of all doesnt imply sometimes or even most of the time. This is why my friend, Gib, says all is his favorite word in the Bible.



Philippians 4:6-7 tells us, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything [all things], by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Gibs been going through serious health issues, so knowing he can take everything  including his illness  to God is a promise he clings to with confidence. That assurance, along with the prayer support of many friends, is enabling him to experience Gods peace that truly passes all understanding.



Then theres 1 Thessalonians 5:18, which says were to give thanks in all circumstances, for this is Gods will for you in Christ Jesus. When were confronted with pain, hardships and all manner of adversities, its difficult to feel grateful for those circumstances. We dont desire such things. But trusting in God and His sovereign control over our lives enables us to give thanks even when emotions say we cant.



When Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the multitude with five loaves of bread and two fish, the account says, About 5,000 men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children! (Matthew 14:21). Not a single person was overlooked, even in that remote area without fast-food restaurants or quick-stop markets.



But the use of all in the Scriptures isnt just for Gods involvement. He expects our engagement as well. Proverbs 3:5-6, for example, tells us to, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. To me this is saying, Do all you can, and God will do all He can.



One of my favorite passages in the Bible is where we see a contrast between people willing to give their all and others who are less than fully committed: Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it [all] at the apostles feet. Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wifes full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles feet (Acts 4:36-5:2).



The passage then tells how the attempted deception cost Ananias and Sapphira their lives. It seemed like harsh judgment, but God was making clear He doesnt equivocate on His promise of all, and He expects us to be equally sincere in fulfilling our commitments.



As the New Living Translation of 2 Corinthians 1:20 assures us, For all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding Yes! and through Christ, our Amen (which means Yes) ascends to God for his glory.



Just before Jesus ascended to heaven, He used the word several times to demonstrate His promises are all-inclusive, no exceptions: Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nationsand surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20). So, as my friend Gib says, when we read all, we should hold onto it tightly. Sometimes, its all weve got.



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Robert J. Tamasy is a veteran journalist, former newspaper editor and magazine editor. Bob has written hundreds of magazine articles, and authored, co-authored and edited more than 15 books. These include the newly re-published, Business At Its Best, Tufting Legacies, The Heart of Mentoring, and Pursuing Life With a Shepherds Heart. He edits a weekly business meditation, Monday Manna, which is translated into more than 20 languages and distributed via email around the world by CBMC International. To read more of Bob Tamasys writings, you can visit his blog, www.bobtamasy.blogspot.com, or his website (now being completed), www.bobtamasy-readywriterink.com. He can be emailed at btamasy@comcast.net.
A report from Wageningen Food & Biobased Research commissioned by RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) has revealed a number of promising biobased alternatives to the controversial polar aprotic solvents NMP, DMAc and DMF. Wageningen Food & Biobased Research carried out a broad scan of new and marketable biobased chemicals. This focused specifically on substitutes for the polar aprotic solvents NMP, DMAc and DMF  all substances of very high concern, the use of which may be limited by EU law in the future.

Within the EU BBI project RESOLVE, Wageningen Food & Biobased Research is already developing safe alternatives to toluene and NMP, two widely used substances of very high concern. RESOLVE focuses on the development of alternatives with a completely different chemical structure, entirely avoiding the chemical groups which make toluene and NMP toxic. Moreover, the alternatives are sustainable because they are made from carbohydrate-rich waste streams such as sugar beet pulp.

Important solution for toxic substances

The RIVM study looked specifically at substitutes for polar aprotic solvents. One of these solvents is DMAc, which received negative coverage in the news as recently as last year for supposedly causing fertility issues among the female employees at a chemical plant. The study was carried out by Daan van Es, senior scientist at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research.

Biobased chemicals are currently of considerable interest. The development of new materials with unique chemical structures and properties can provide a replacement for controversial polar aprotic solvents such as DMAc and NMP. It is, however, crucial to understand issues such as technical feasibility, availability of raw materials and the viability of commercial production. Our study presents all this clearly.

Van Es indicates that further research is needed in order to be able to judge the effectiveness, sustainability and toxicity of the proposed replacements. We have identified a large number of potential replacements, but they are not yet in production as substitutes for the relevant polar aprotic solvents. Final assessments of sustainability and toxicological properties should be subject to further research performed in cooperation with the private sector.

RIVM is conducting a desk study to screen which toxicological information is available for these biobased alternatives, if any.

Tests with industrial partners

A follow-up programme in which several potential replacements are made and tested would be very useful. Ideally, we would work with several industrial partners  such as manufacturers of paints and industrial detergents, as well as producers of biobased materials themselves  to examine the proposed substitutes for toxic substances in their solvents, Van Es continues. The government can encourage and facilitate such partnerships within a broad research programme. We have already created an impetus for the substances toluene and NMP within the RESOLVE project. This is necessary to assess the concrete potential of biobased substitutes, and enables us to really start thinking about commercial production together with private sector partners.
When lithium-ion batteries are charged too quickly, metallic lithium gets deposited on the anodes. This reduces battery capacity and lifespan and can even destroy the batteries. Scientists at the Forschungszentrum Julich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now presented a process that, for the first time ever, allows this so-called lithium plating process to be investigated directly. This puts new strategies for quick-charging strategies close at hand.

Lithium plating, the depositing of metallic lithium at the anodes of lithium-ion batteries, is one of the primary factors that limits charging current. The performance of batteries suffers significantly from these metallic deposits. In extreme cases this can result in short circuits and even batteries going up in flames.

When charging batteries, the positively charged lithium ions move through the liquid electrolytes and are deposited in the porous graphite anodes. However, the larger the current and the lower the temperature, the greater the probability that the lithium ions will not be deposited within the electrodes, as desired, but rather as a solid metallic layer on the outer surface.

Indirect evidence does not serve the goal

Even though this phenomenon is basically well-known, many aspects remain shrouded in mystery. Until now, it was not possible to directly observe how and under which circumstances lithium plating takes place. "Using traditional methods of microscopy, we can only observe a battery after the fact, because it needs to be cut open," explains Dr. Josef Granwehr at the Julich Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-9). "In the process, further reactions that distort the results become inevitable."

Even highly developed processes like neutron scattering allow for only indirect analyses. Compounding the problem is the fact that available slots for measurements at research reactors and large particle accelerators are scarce. This makes these tools more suitable for fundamental investigations than for tedious, practical test series.

Electrons show the way

The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy process presented in the renowned scientific journal Materials Today, on the other hand, can be readily integrated into laboratory procedures  with only moderate investment. The method is akin to the better-known nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, albeit focusses on electron spins rather than atomic nuclei.

"Electrons are placed in an externally applied, static magnetic field," explains Granwehr. Unpaired electrons in the sample are "sounded out" using microwaves. In the magnetic field, these stimulate the electrons to flip, which can be measured via the associated drop in microwave radiation intensity. EPR can differentiate between metallic lithium plating and lithium embedded in the graphite anodes.

The test cell is the key

"The key to detecting lithium plating using EPR was the construction of a test cell compatible with the requirements of EPR spectroscopy while at the same time exhibiting good electrochemical properties," explains lead author Dr. Johannes Wandt. "The geometry is also important. Precise measurement results are contingent on the sample being exposed to the magnetic field but not the inevitably present electric field."

To ensure this, Wandt developed a rod-shaped cell while he was a doctoral candidate in the group of Prof. Hubert A. Gasteiger (Chair of Technical Electrochemistry) at TUM that allows the formation of metallic lithium to be detected directly and with quantitative precision.

The right strategy for quick charging

"Using this process, it is now for the first time possible to investigate lithium plating and the associated processes in a differentiated manner that is relevant to a whole array of applications," explains Rudiger-A. Eichel, a director at the Julich Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-9). "One example is the development of safe and at the same time fast charging protocols. Our process make determining the maximum charging current before lithium plating sets in possible, as well as ascertaining other boundary conditions like temperature and the influence of electrode geometry."

Beyond this, the methodology is well suited as a test procedure for a variety of battery materials, for example the development of new admixtures that suppress lithium plating.
MADRID  Sevilla, with a 1-1 draw at Maribor, Liverpool with a resounding 7-0 win over Spartak Moscow, Porto after thrashing Monaco, 5-2, and Shakhtar Donetsk, responsible for Manchester Citys first loss 2-1, rounded out the list of 16 clubs qualified for the UEFA Champions League Round of 16.

These are the four winners of the last matchday of the Group Stage, in which Real Madrid beat Borussia Dortmund, 3-2, despite have already secured its second place in the group, and with a new record by Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored in each of the six group matches.

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The list of Fridyas draw at UEFA headquarters in Nyon is closed, with eight teams seeded (Barcelona, Besiktas, Manchester City, Tottenham, Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain, Roma, and Liverpool) and eight second-place teams (Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Basel, Sevilla, Porto, and Shakhtar).

Another eight teams will be headed to the Europa League: Atletico Madrid, CSKA Moscow, Celtic, Sporting Lisbon, Napoli, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, and Spartak Moscow.

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Sevilla advances thanks mainly to Liverpools rout of Spartak, which has enough to secure qualifying, although it made up the partial deficit against Maribor with the 1-1 scored by Brazilian midfielder Ganso with a quarter of an hour left.

Liverpool locked down first place in 15 minutes, lead by goals from Philippe Coutinho -wanted by Barcelona all summer and key at Liverpool- from the penalty spot for the 1-0 in the fourth minutes, and the 2-0 in the 15th against a Spartak side that needed to win, but ended up thrashed.

By the 19th minutes, Roberto Firmino scored the 3-0, taking advantage of a defensive tie up, and piling on later with another goal by Coutinho, two by Sadio Mane, and one by Mohamed Salah, while Sevilla felt relie some 19,000 kilometers away while being beaten by Maribor in the 10 minute. It later tied it when it became an unnecessary task.

Porto came out on top in the tussle for second place in Group with a resounding victory over the already-eliminated Monaco, shutting them down in the first half with a 3-0 led by Vincent Aboubakars 1-0 in the 9th, his 2-0 in the 33rd, and Yassime Brahimis 3-0 in the 45th.

The match ended 5-2, without any doubt of its qualification to the Round of 16, where Besiktas had already secured first palce two weeks ago, and from which RB Leipzig will be missing, going instead to the Europa League thanks to Portos win and their loss to the Turkish side, 2-1. Alvaro Negredo scored the 1-0 by penalty kick.

The last matchday also saw Pep Guardiolas Manchester Citys first loss to Shakhtar Donetsk, 2-1. The Ukrainian side sealed their spot without much trouble with goals from Brazilians Bernard and Ismaily in a space of six minutes between the 26th and 33rd. Towards the end, Sergio Aguero converted a penalty kick for the 2-1.

Napoli was on the prowl, but has to settle for Europa League after finishing in third place. They did not come close to the combination of scores that would send them to the Round of 16, because they could not beat Feyenoord in Rotterdam, losing 2-1, nor could Shakhtar beat City, the undisputed leader of the group.

Group H was already settled in therm of the first two spots, with Tottenham at the top and Real Madrid in second, but not quite in the next two spots, with Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrids rival at the Santiago Bernabeu, and APOEL, Tottenhams adversary in London, tied at two points.

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Neither team added points. Not the German side, upended by Madrid, 3-2, with Cristiano Ronaldos ninth goal of the tournament (setting the record for scoring in every matchday), another one by Borja Mayoral, and the definitive score by Lucas Vazquez to undo the 2-2 draw scored earlier by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, nor the Cypriot side, defeated 3-0 by Tottenham, courtesy of Fernando Llorentes first goal and assist, with which Dortmund would play in the Europa League thanks to goal differential, a lesser of two evils for the a German side far removed from its best form during all of the Group Stage, obtaining two out of 18 points.
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Two large Catholic hospital systems  Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health  have agreed to merge and will locate the headquarters of the combined entity in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)

Two large Catholic hospital systems have agreed to merge  and they plan to locate their headquarters in Chicago.

Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health announced Thursday that theyve signed an agreement to create a new nonprofit system. Neither system has hospitals in Illinois now, but the combined operation will establish its corporate headquarters in Chicago.

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Lauren Davis, a spokeswoman for Dignity, couldnt provide details Thursday on how many employees might be located in Chicago or when the Chicago headquarters might open.

Catholic Health Initiatives current headquarters in Englewood, Colo., and Dignity Healths current headquarters in San Francisco will remain open, Davis said in an email.

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This decision was made because Chicago is centrally located, has convenient access to all parts of the country where our ministries are located, and offers good infrastructure to support a national organization, Dignity said in a statement provided by Davis.

The new system will have 139 hospitals and combined revenue of $28.4 billion. Neither system is paying the other as part of the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2018, pending federal, state and Catholic Church approvals.

The systems said in a news release that their hospitals have no geographic overlap across service areas.

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lschencker
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Illinois, stands at the podium Wednesday on Capitol Hill while Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., second right, responds to the media during a news conference unveiling legislation to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Illinois, stands at the podium Wednesday on Capitol Hill while Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., second right, responds to the media during a news conference unveiling legislation to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. (Zach Gibson / Bloomberg)

New legislation proposed Wednesday would prevent companies from keeping sexual harassment complaints from employees in private arbitration, where accusations are kept confidential and companies can influence who adjudicates the case.

The bipartisan bill would allow victims of sexual harassment or gender discrimination in the workplace to take their claims to court instead.

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"If you have been subjected to sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace, we think you, not the employer, should have the right to choose to go to court," said Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who introduced the bill. "No more telling women they have to put up with harassment and stay silent any longer."

In a year of broken silence about sexual harassment, the bill offered a reminder that accusers' quest for resolution is often complicated or kept out of reach by legal restrictions beyond their control. Forced-arbitration agreements have been repeatedly cited this year as a barrier for women seeking to name perpetrators of sexual misconduct.

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Bustos said that she was inspired to pursue the legislation by a class-action case involving Signet Jewelers, the parent company of Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, Kay Jewelers and Sterling Jewelers, whose workers must sign forced-arbitration agreements as a condition of their employment.

Roughly 250 former Sterling employees filed sworn statements as part of a class-action arbitration case alleging that female workers in the late 1990s and 2000s were routinely groped, underpaid and pressured to cater to their bosses' sexual demands in order to stay employed. Sterling has disputed the allegations.

[ Fear and panic in the HR department as sexual harassment allegations multiply ]

The arbitration was first filed in 2008 by more than a dozen women who accused the company of widespread gender discrimination. The class-action case is still unresolved and now includes 69,000 women who are current and former employees of the company, which operates about 1,500 stores across the United States. One of the original women who brought the case, lawyers involved in the hearing said, died in 2014 as proceedings dragged on without resolution.

Heather Ballou, a class member in the lawsuit and a former Kay employee who said she was pressured into having sex with a district manager promising to help her transfer to a better store, said she was encouraged by the legislation and hoped that it would make it easier for women to break their silence.

"That's the whole reason I didn't come forward and a lot of women haven't come forward," Ballou said in an interview. "You go to arbitration, and it's a black hole of nothing. Why would anyone do that when, in the process of that, you are getting fired, you're ruining your reputation, you're getting blackballed by the industry, you're ruining your life - and nothing comes of it?"

[ Hundreds allege sex harassment, discrimination at Kay and Jared jewelry company ]

David Bouffard, Signet's vice president of corporate affairs, said in a statement: "We are currently reviewing the legislation and therefore cannot comment further on any specifics. Signet is committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive workplace, and we remain confident that the systems and practices in place for filing grievances are fully compliant with legal requirements."

A trial in the private arbitration is scheduled for next year.

Ballou, who left the company in 2009 and is studying to become a nurse, said it has been difficult to watch the recent months of high-profile sexual-harassment cases, sparked by numerous women accusing movie producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

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While perpetrators in several cases were exposed and quickly vilified, she feels frustrated by the arbitration's private proceedings and long-running limits on her ability to speak openly about the case.

"It felt empowering on one hand that we aren't the only ones, but it scares me a little bit. All of these celebrities have come out, and it makes me feel like the little people like me are going to get tossed aside," Ballou said.

"I didn't have Harvey Weinstein," she added, "but I had my district manager, people in power above me, do those things to me."

Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who accused the network's late chairman Roger Ailes of punishing her for rejecting his sexual demands, was prevented by an arbitration agreement from suing the company. Instead, she sued Ailes directly and received a $20 million settlement.

[ Page: Has a sexual harassment backlash begun? ]

Carlson, speaking alongside lawmakers at the Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, called forced arbitration "un-American" and a "harasser's best friend."

A growing number of U.S. companies require new workers to sign employment agreements forcing them to resolve disputes through arbitration, a private legal system in which companies often have the upper hand, labor advocates say.

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About 56 percent of private-sector nonunion employees, or more than 60 million workers, are subject to forced-arbitration agreements, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

Lawyers and labor advocates say companies use the agreements as a way to prevent workers from joining together in legal action or discussing their cases publicly. Companies and arbitration associations say the private legal system provides a quicker and more efficient way to resolve employee disputes.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a co-sponsor of the bill, said he hoped that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and other business-community leaders would speak out against forced-arbitration clauses, which he said provided companies an unfair advantage over employees. "It may be good business" now, Graham said, but "we're going to make it bad business."

A Chamber of Commerce representative said: "While no senator has yet reached out to the Chamber about this legislation, we will review it carefully. The Chamber will work with anyone to make sure appropriate steps are taken to combat sexual harassment."

A Business Roundtable spokeswoman said the group is "analyzing the legislation closely" and "agrees that workplaces should be free from harassment of any kind."
Media equipment is set in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on December 4, 2017. The court will hear arguments in a case out of Illinois to determine if unions are able to charge all employees for the cost of collective bargaining ( Mari Matsuri / AFP/Getty Images)

Washington  It was another dramatic reversal in a high-profile case before the high court, and at least the third time since President Donald Trump's inauguration that the Department of Justice has renounced its past positions, some held for decades.

It puts the administration squarely on the side of conservative legal activists, who have complained for years that the requirement violates the free-speech rights of those who don't want to join the union or pay fees to it.

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The unions and the Supreme Court precedent the administration wants to overturn says that unions may charge all employees for the cost of collective bargaining, but not for the union's political activities. Approximately 20 states allow them.

The Obama administration supported the unions in previous challenges, and when the issue was last before the court in January 2016. It appeared from oral arguments that challenge would be successful, but Justice Antonin Scalia died a month later, and the court announced that it had split 4 to 4 on the issue.

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With Justice Neil Gorsuch taking Scalia's place, the court announced in September it was taking a new challenge on the issue.

"The government reconsidered the question" after the new grant, says the brief filed by Solicitor General Neal Francisco. "The government's previous briefs gave insufficient weight to the First Amendment interest of public employees in declining to fund speech on contested matters of public policy."

The court's decision in 1977's Abood v. Detroit Board of Education "is inconsistent with prevailing First Amendment precedent and should be overruled."

It is at least the third time since the election that the Department of Justice has switched its position on an issue at the Supreme Court. While different views are expected when control of the the White House moves from one party to another, they can sometimes cause problems for the government lawyers who argue at the high court.

The office of the solicitor general, which represents the government at the Supreme Court, is supposed to supply the court with a consistent view of the law without undue partisan considerations.

The Trump administration already has changed its view on one case involving worker's rights that created a rift with the the National Labor Relations Board. In another, it changed the Justice Department's longstanding position on how states may purge inactive voters from the rolls.

The Abood decision said states could allow public-employee unions to collect fees from nonmembers to cover the costs of workplace negotiations but not the union's political activities.

The unions say losing those fees would be a heavy blow because there is no incentive for workers to pay for collective-bargaining representation they could receive free.

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But conservative activists - and conservative justices in recent cases - have sharply questioned whether it is possible to separate public-employee negotiations from the kind of public-policy questions - teacher salaries and classroom sizes, for instance, and the tax dollars needed to pay for them - that are raised.

The lead plaintiff in the new case is Mark Janus, a child-support specialist at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. The case is Janus v. AFSCME Council 31.
When Regards to Edith opened a few months ago at the base of Google's Midwest headquarters in Fulton Market, it launched with a menu containing a few quirky nods to classic Chicago foods. You know, the sort of cheap and humble offerings you used to be able to grab for lunch in the exact same area before money flooded in from tech companies. That included a version of an Italian beef made with prime rib, and a double char burger topped with aged cheddar.

None intrigued me more than a dish I never thought I'd see at a restaurant with a cocktail menu and a $42 rack of lamb entree: a pizza puff. Just as you'd guess from the name, a pizza puff features a flaky browned exterior, with cheese, tomato sauce and usually a meat (pepperoni and sausage are most common) in the middle. It's always fried, always greasy.

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Even though numerous lists claim that the pizza puff originated here, including Eater Chicago and Mental Floss, it's something of a bit player of the Chicago food pantheon  far below Chicago-style hot dogs, deep dish pizza, Italian beef and even Maxwell Street bone-in pork chop sandwiches. Most people I talked to had either never tried one or admitted that they only indulged after drinking.

You can find Iltaco's Pizza Puffs at hot dog stands all around the city. (Nick Kindelsperger / Chicago Tribune)

When you order a pizza puff, unless the establishment makes its own, a real rarity, you're undoubtedly eating one produced by Iltaco Foods on the West Side. You'll find this packaged product sold mostly at bare-bones hot dog stands, like Downtown Dogs (804 N. Rush St.), just off the Magnificent Mile. For $3.35, you get a modest, rectangular offering. Each bite makes an immediate impact, delivering fat, salt and cheese in a compact, easy-to-eat form. It is not subtle, and grease may as well be an ingredient, but it's easy to get the appeal of deep-fried pizza.

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For a company thats operated since 1927, there isn't much information online about Iltaco. About all I could find was when the company started, and that Iltaco actually stands for Illinois Tamale Company. That last fact took me by surprise, considering the company is best known for pizza puffs. I tried for weeks to chat with someone from the company to help clear up some basic questions. A representative said that they needed to check with their lawyers first, and then eventually declined to comment. (I still don't know why they needed to contact lawyers to answer a few questions about pizza puffs, but that's not for me to know.) This left me trying to figure out the history by myself. But I had trouble finding any information from any source about when the dish was invented, who did it or what inspired the creation.

The pizza puff at Regards to Edith boasts a remarkably light crust that crackles delicately when you bite. Inside is luscious burrata. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Pizza puffs do seem to be exceptionally rare outside of Chicagoland. Jared Wentworth, the chef who helped craft the opening menu at Regards to Edith (326 N. Morgan St.), told me he'd never heard of them while growing up on the East Coast. The version he created for Regards to Edith (available for $14) takes the immediate, in-your-face pleasures of the pizza puff and smooths them out. The golden-hued offering has a remarkably light crust that crackles delicately when you bite in. Inside is luscious burrata, the creamier sibling of mozzarella. If you're missing the gut punch of the original, Wentworth serves pepperoni oil on the side for you. "If I were just eating it, I'd have the pepperoni in the middle," admits Wentworth. "But this way vegetarians can order, and it's very easy to add your own." (Days after the interview, Wentworth left the restaurant, though the pizza puff remains on the menu.)

Albano's Pizzeria in Cicero serves an incredibly huge version of the pizza puff. (Nick Kindelsperger / Chicago Tribune)

I did track down a few other freshly made versions. Albano's Pizzeria (5913 W. Roosevelt Road, Cicero) serves a monster pizza puff, so unwieldy and enormous, it makes Iltaco's pizza puffs look like Pop-Tarts. Like deep dish, this is a knife-and-fork kind of affair, thanks to the gooey glob of cheese, rivers of tomato sauce and immense piles of sausage held within. I found a similarly colossal offering at Terry's Place (5950 W. Madison St.).

Terry's Place in Austin is one of the few places in town that makes its own pizza puff. (Nick Kindelsperger / Chicago Tribune)

But these visits only left me more confused, because both Albano's and Terry's Place served pizza puffs that seemed to have very little to do with Iltaco's version. I seriously wondered whether they had much history in common.

Of course, the concept of putting pizza ingredients in the middle of some dough and then frying it isn't exactly novel. Variations on this theme exist both in traditional Italian cuisine and in the freezer section of your local grocery store. Was it fair to call the pizza puff a Chicago creation at all?

Describe the pizza puff to people, and most will note that it sounds a lot like a calzone. In "1,000 Italian Recipes by Michele Scicolone, the calzone is described as "a circle of pizza dough folded like a turnover around filling." Anna Del Conte's "Gastronomy of Italy" even refers to them as "a folded-over pizza."

But look at the majority of recipes for making a calzone, and they are bound to be baked, not fried. Plus, the older the recipe, the less likely you'll find tomato sauce inside. Luigi Carnacina's Great Italian Cooking," published in 1968, features a calzone stuffed with only salami and mozzarella cheese. In fact, according to "The Regional Cooking of Italy" by the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, calzoni (the plural of calzone) didn't have tomato sauce until about the 1940s.

A more intriguing possibility is panzerotti. "The New Food Lover's Companion" refers to panzerotti as a "square ravioli-style pouch of dough filled with cheese, tomato sauce and various additions " This definition squares almost perfectly with the frozen pizza puff sold by Iltaco. Though Food Lovers this book also claims there is a second kind of panzerotti that's made with "circles of pizza-like dough folded over a filling and sealed, creating a half-moon or crescent shape very much like a calzone."

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This led me down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out if there was a meaningful difference between a calzone and a panzerotto. The most commonly cited difference is that calzoni are baked, while panzerotti are fried. That's the case in "Gastronomy of Italy" and "Great Italian Cooking." But this was contradicted by even more sources. "1,000 Italian Recipes" notes that street vendors in Naples fry calzoni "in big pots of boiling oil set over portable stoves. "Food Lover's" claims that while panzerotti are usually fried, they can be baked.

So, perhaps a better way of phrasing it is that calzoni are most often baked, and panzerotti mostly fried.

Pasta Fresh in Dunning doesn't serve pizza puffs, but it does serve panzerotti that have a lot in common with the homemade pizza puffs around town. (Nick Kindelsperger / Chicago Tribune)

I hoped a visit to Pasta Fresh (3418 N. Harlem Ave.) in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Belmont Heights would help clear things up. Though I'd heard the classic Italian deli served panzerotti, I couldn't immediately spot one on the menu. When I asked the waitress for one, she assured me that they could do it. The result was a golden-browned half-moon of fried dough, which was stuffed with a judicious amount of cheese and sauce. Problem solved.

But when I went to the register to pay, another customer was picking up his order of fried calzoni, which looked identical to the panzerotti I had just consumed. (Calzoni are easy to find on the menu.) Confused, I asked the cashier if there was a difference between the fried calzoni and the panzerotti, and he assured me that they were exactly the same.

Despite the confusion over the name, it's easy to see the Italian connection with the house-made pizza puffs at Albano's and Terry's Place. Each is just a folded over pizza that's fried. Sure, they have been inflated to Chicago-esque proportions, but squint and they are the same. Whether you want to call it a calzone or panzerotto is up to you, but we are squarely in Italian hands.

But neither the calzone nor panzerotto seemed to explain Iltaco's pizza puff. This meant I needed to leave the comfortable hold of Italian cuisine and set out into uncharted American territory. Since you can find Iltaco's pizza puff in the freezer section of most Chicagoland grocery stores, I looked for other pizzalike objects hanging out nearby. That's when I found Hot Pockets and Totino's Pizza Rolls. It became pretty clear that Hot Pockets were a dead end, because they weren't created until the early 1980s. Plus, they were developed, thanks to a pioneering crisping sleeve, with the microwave in mind, not the fryer. (The history, however, of how Jewish brothers from Iran created such a quintessentially American snack is utterly fascinating.)

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Totino's pizza rolls don't look much like the pizza puff. Instead, the little squares of dough with tomato sauce, cheese and meat more resemble petite ravioli. But the history of these bite-size snacks turns out to be both far more intriguing than I originally imagined, and pertinent to understanding the pizza puff.

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As Mike Siemienas, General Mills' brand public relations manager, explained to me over the phone, Jeno Paulucci created the pizza roll in the late 1960s, under the original name of Jeno's pizza rolls. (The name wasn't changed to Totino's Pizza Rolls until after Pillsbury purchased the brand in 1985 for $135 million. To make things even more confusing, General Mills acquired Pillsbury in 2001.)

This wasn't Pauluccis first food product. He started in the food business back in 1944 with Chun King, a canned Chinese food company. While it makes more sense for the son of an Italian immigrant to create the pizza roll than canned chow mein manufactured in northern Wisconsin, his previous experience turned out to be serendipitous (especially, if you're a fan of the pizza roll).

According to a New York Times obituary of Paulucci from Nov. 25, 2011, the pizza roll isn't made with a traditional pizza dough, but with a wrapper similar to the one used for Chinese egg rolls. (I couldn't confirm this directly with General Mills, mostly because the brand had been purchased so many times they didn't have the full story.)

Which brings us back to the Chicago pizza puff. Though I could never get the owners of Iltaco to chat, I do know one thing. Iltaco's pizza puff isn't wrapped in pizza dough or anything like it. It's wrapped in a flour tortilla, the same kind you'd use for a burrito. How do I know? It says so right on the wrapper. The first ingredient listed on the back is a flour tortilla. Iltaco's website is also not shy about this fact. Here's what the site has to say about the original pork pizza puff: "Pork Sausage and Mozzarella Cheese with our Home-Style Pizza Sauce Wrapped [in] a Soft Flour Tortilla." Unwrap one of the still frozen pizza puffs from Iltaco, and you can clearly see the tortilla.

This means that the pizza puff most Chicagoans know and love has as much in common with a chimichanga (a deep fried burrito) as a calzone or panzerotto. This shouldn't come as too big of a surprise considering Iltaco's name, but this is still an odd ending for this little-considered Chicago specialty.

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nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @nickdk

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If the slippery sustainable-seafood issue still leaves you unsure about the right fish to eat, join the club.



The situation remains complex and its explanation could make for a long, boring treatise. Fortunately for seafood fans, journalist Paul Greenberg explains it with clarity and lyricism in his book, "Four Fish." The 304-page volume illuminates the world seafood crises with compelling narrative, using the world's four staple fishes  salmon, bass, cod and tuna  as its protagonists.



Greenberg shows us how their fates have been shaped by history, and through their stories, we see how overfishing and unsound fish farming may lead to extinction for some wild fish.



But Greenberg throws out a line of hope, hope that international cooperation, regulation, enforcement and different consumer choices could make a difference. We caught up with the author as he toured with his book.



Q: We hear a lot about what we shouldn't be eating, but what seafood should we feel good about eating?



A: Aside from eating sardines, mackerel and anchovies, another thing we can do to get more omega-3s onto plates is cultivate oysters, clams and mussels.



Arctic char also is a great fish. It's grown in closed-containment systems rather than open-net pens where disease can be transferred to the wild. They are omnivorous and very nutritious. If you are looking for something like salmon, arctic char is a good substitute.



For a white flesh fished I'd go with catfish. American farm-raised catfish is actually good for the environment. Before catfish farming took hold, there was a net loss of wetland, and a huge amount of corn and soy were grown on that land. Now there are these little oases of wetland all over the South.



Q: Some people feel as if they can make all the right choices just by keeping a Monterey Bay Seafood Watch card in their wallets. Where do you differ from them?



A: On things like having Atlantic cod red-listed across the board. Many fishermen on the East Coast are starting to rebuild stocks after years of overfishing. I will eat a line-caught cod from the Northeast. I would consider anything that is caught in a sustainable way from a small-scale fisherman because I think supporting small-scale fishermen is a way to get stable fisheries in the end.



Q: Your book brings out parallels between the troubles created by factory farming of land animals and factory farming of seafood. Are there similar solutions?



A: Yes. We are seeing these more traditional back-to-the-land movements, and, in a way, we need a back-to-the-sea movement so we can reward the fishermen who use some of the more sustainable practices of the past.



Q: So what are some things a concerned American fish lover can do?



A: If you like to eat salmon, there is a very important issue coming up with the proposed Pebble Mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay in Alaska. More than 60 million salmon migrate there every year, and a company called Anglo American wants to have a copper and gold mine there. But copper is notoriously bad for salmon. It will throw off their navigation system and they will get lost. Every time you go into the canned-fish section, the salmon is from Bristol Bay, and about half of the wild Alaskan salmon comes from there. If you care about this issue, write to your congressman.



meng@tribune.com
The new Chris Ware book has sat beside my desk for weeks. Its been tough to miss. Its about a foot-and-a-half tall with a canary-yellow spine, and the cover image is signature Ware: Comic book hieroglyphics of domestic ennui, linked by thin schematic lines, flow charts of word balloons and worried portraits of the Oak Park genius himself. Its like the blueprints for a bomb that leaves you melancholy. Even if I wanted to avoid it, I couldnt: My desk is only slightly larger than the book, yet Monograph ($60, Rizzoli), a survey of an artist who turns only 50 this month, is perfectly outsized, correctly singular.

No wonder I have found the book routinely moved around my desk by curious co-workers. One day an anonymous Post-It was stuck on the cover, the message simply: !!!

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I get that. I havent been able to keep my hands off Monograph either. It includes giant reproductions of Wares New Yorker covers (which actually, partly, show Oak Park); a generous sample of his homemade toys and models (dumb little gifts, he writes); Ware even inserts, within the book itself, small, flippable reproductions of his smallest books. Until he receives the vast museum retrospective he already deserves, itll more than do.

Chris Ware's "Monograph" is only slightly smaller than a desk. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Its also a terrific example of the book as an object to savor, to obsess over.

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For months I set aside works like this  books that distract, waving from corners of your vision, demanding another flip through. Think of these as excellent examples of inspired, and addictive, book design from 2017  that each is also a good read is like icing. These are not books to compete with screens: Should you drop Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past ($100, Taschen) on an iPhone, youll need a new iPhone. Had I been a 10-year old boy and found this absorbing history of the 20th century paintings commissioned by natural history museums to explain the discovery of dinosaurs  yes, Charles Knights beloved Field Museum murals are well represented  I might have faked a cold daily. It pairs well with photographer Tim Flachs Endangered ($65, Abrams), his intimate yet enormous portraits of the mandrills, bees and vultures not quite prehistoric.

An inside view of Tim Flach's "Endangered." (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

For book people, theres sweet irony here.

The Age of Screens has meant a renaissance for physical books as keepsakes. For instance, Picador may not be the first publisher to regift old books in cool packages, but its new pocket hardcovers ($16 each) of classics by contemporary female writers like Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem) are too smart to quibble with. Hillary Chutes Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere ($40, Harper) is not another thoughtful argument for the importance of comic books (in this case, from a former University of Chicago assistant professor) but as charmingly illustrated and approachable as the works it considers. Canadian publisher Biblioasis pamphlet-sized ghost stories from Dickens, Wharton and others  meant to revive the forgotten tradition of telling spooky stories at Christmas ($6.95 each), and designed by Canadian cartoonist Seth  present both the air of menace in many childrens books and the durability of classic commercial illustration. Likewise, The Unquotable Trump ($19.95, Drawn & Quarterly)  which looks at first like an obsessive rant  is actually a fiendishly exact homage to beloved comics (from Watchmen to Archie), recasting each with Donald Trump and a few infamous quotes.

'The Unquotable Trump" is a homage to beloved comics starring Donald Trump. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Obsession, though, in its repetition and way of forcing us to lean forward in horror and delight, is a thread through many of these books. Its why you can get lost in Sandwich Anarchy: The Cult Culinary Posters of Melt Bar & Grilled ($29.95, 1984 Publishing), 200 pages worth of sandwich ads from a Cleveland restaurant. The beautiful reissue of Lynda Barrys underrated autobiographical novel The Good Times Are Killing Me ($21.95, Drawn & Quarterly), about race and falling in love with records, gets 50 pages of new art, much of it Barrys folk-art-ish paintings of music pioneers.

Obsessiveness, in a sense, is the subject of Julia Wertzs Tenements, Towers & Trash ($29.99, Black Dog), which was flat-out the most enjoyable experience I had with any book this year. Wertz, best known for her memoiristic comics and New Yorker strips, gives an illustrated, random everyday New York City, drawing the same corners a century apart, providing mini-histories of food carts, backroom bars, serial arsonists, street cleaning. The stories are funny and personal, the surprises endless. Its so good it demands someone in Chicago  with arguably an even richer cartoonist community  to just rip off Wertz and deliver an illustrated history of Canal Street, CTA cars, viaducts.

"Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters" depicts in rich visual detail the life of the musician. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Until then, Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters ($17.99, Atheneum), that rare childrens picture book the childless should own, captures at least one local story with style and smarts to burn, its paintings of everyday L tracks and Chicago jazz clubs (by artist Evan Turk) recalling Middle Eastern art by way of Jacob Lawrence. Everyday, these books richly suggest, doesnt mean ordinary. To flip through the long, thin Bridges: A History of the Worlds Most Spectacular Spans ($29.99, Black Dog)  the silver curlicue in Millennium Park and the Michigan Avenue Bridge both get starring roles  the book itself must be turned on its side. Even more clever: The new catalog ($30, Mousse) for the Smart Museum of Arts Revolution Every Day exhibit, about life during the Russian Revolution, takes the form of a traditional Soviet tear-away calendar.

"Nothing Personal" is an art-book collaboration between Richard Avedon and James Baldwin. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

That said, Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives ($29.99, Black Dog) fascinates on the strength of its material alone, from a rare image of a 27-year-old Jesse Jackson protesting in Chicago, to Gwendolyn Brooks preparing a lecture  and thats just the Chicago stuff. Nothing Personal ($69.99, Taschen), an art-book collaboration between photographer Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, had itself long gone out of circulation, remarkable as that sounds. Given the 50-plus years since it was published, this adoring new edition (handsome and imposing, bundled with a book of outtakes and letters and a new essay from Hilton Als) makes plain how Avedons large tight portrait of students and politicians, poets and celebrities and the mentally ill, revealed a cultural chasm, just before old America and new America clashed; Baldwins essay, wrapping around the photos, hasnt lost a day of poignance:

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and light goes out.

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A good gift, if not a light one.

For some cheer, try Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, From Godzilla to Kurosawa ($32.95, Wesleyan), with Chicago writer Ed Godziszewski as co-author and a forward by Martin Scorsese, an appreciation of Japanese fantasy-film history through the eyes of a filmmaker whose name is obscure but populism remains influential. Think Star Wars, the inspiration for the fun new story collection From a Certain Point of View ($35, Del Rey), a reminder of the enduring power of nothing much at all  40 tales, 40 writers, not one told by or about a Skywalker or a Vader but the Rosencrantz and Guildensterns of the galaxy, the Death Star middle-managers, alien bartenders and droid eavesdroppers.

And think Spielberg.

Theres a point, as you poke around the coffee-table book Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History ($50, Harper), when you question the necessity of knowing every last bar stool story from the set of the classic, of including actual schematics and a replica Western Union telegram  even if it is from Francois Truffaut to Steven Spielberg. But then book waves to you from the edge of your coffee table ...

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @borrelli

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On a film distributors dime, when an actor rolls up in a sleek black SUV for an interview its usually in the vicinity of a red carpet at a big film festival or in front of a swank hotel laden with free-loading junket journalists.

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This was different. The other week I interviewed two-time Academy Award nominee and longtime Chicago resident Michael Shannon. He rolled up in a rapper-worthy SUV, but this was in front of the Billy Goat, just off Lower Michigan Avenue, at 8 in the morning. No glamour. No witnesses. It was the SUV roll-up equivalent of the tree that falls in the forest when no one can hear it.

All the years I lived in Chicago, Ive never been here! Shannon says. He ducks his head, heads down the steps and we order egg and cheese on kaiser sandwiches and coffee. Shannon is taken with the pickle stash and relish bin next to the register. Now were talking, he says.

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This week  the first week of December, a few weeks after his Chicago promotional visit tied to the Chicago International Film Festival  is a typical week for Shannon, 43, in that hes a prominent part of yet another new film. In Guillermo del Toros The Shape of Water, the actor plays the cattle-prod-wielding government operative who has discovered, and captured, an Amazonian river creature, half-man, half-amphibian. Shannon shares the screen with several other splendid talents  Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer and Michael Stuhlbarg among them.

Stuhlbarg was in town the same week around festival time, and he told me about how Shannon always seemed to be conferring with del Toro on set, asking about cameras and lenses. Stuhlbarg thought: Here is a director in the making. (Shannon has directed one play in his long stage and screen career, and hes scheduled to direct his second, Brett Neveus adaptation of the Ibsen drama An Enemy of the People, for A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago.)

You cant help it, Shannon says. You spend a lot of time on these sets. I guess for me it started when I was shooting Boardwalk Empire. I just started asking directors: Whaddya doing? Whaddya doing now? I mean, youre there; you might as well learn a few things.

By Shannons estimation, there are two things telling the story: the picture and the cut. Its a motion picture. The actors are responsible for .003 percent of it. I dont want to be too self-deprecating about it, and theres nothing more thrilling than a great performance. But you can also have people in front of the camera who have no idea what theyre doing, and still end up with a great movie.

On The Shape of Water, Shannon was impressed by del Toros highly mobile and expressive camera. All the movies Ive made, says the actor, who has completed 17 or 18 new films and TV projects since our last meeting in 2015, Ive never seen a camera in motion to that degree. But it was always motivated; nothing fancy for the sake of being fancy. The camera was always saying something.

Directing, Shannon says, seems like a recipe for insomnia. I always wonder when the director sleeps. In between prepping, shooting, watching dailies, when? The actors boo-hoo all day, Wow, long day, lotta waiting around, but the director shoots 12 hours and then checks out a location, and then looks at dailies. If I ever did it, Id lay down at night and probably have all this anxiety about the next day. I dont know how they do it. Pause. I should try it at some point.

When we talked, Shannon was in the midst of his first work break in a crazy-long time. David O. Russells starry, untitled mob-themed series, scheduled to star Robert De Niro, Julianne Moore and Shannon, had just fallen apart. It was planned as a co-production of the Weinstein Co., i.e., Harvey Weinstein, and another disgraced mogul, Amazons Roy Price. So, yeah. Im kinda looking for a job, he says.

He lives primarily in Brooklyn, N.Y., with his partner, actress Kate Arrington, and their two daughters. Shannon acknowledges the challenges of frequent extended travel. While he was shooting Fahrenheit 451 for director Ramin Bahrani in Toronto recently, he was near-simultaneously rehearsing Sam Shepards Simpatico back in Chicago with his longtime Red Orchid Theatre cohorts. Simpatico then moved to a McCarter Theatre engagement this fall in Princeton, N.J. From that, Shannon got the offer (from the late Shepards daughter, Hannah) to record the audiobook of Shepards final writing, Spy of the First Person.

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Eighty pages in length, the book, he says, is made up of very short ruminations chronicling Shepards collapse, and his experience of dying.

Its pretty phenomenal, Shannon says. It was hard not to feel unworthy of doing it.

Audiobook narration, he says, is strange. I spent a lot of time trying to breathe quietly, and dealing with stomach noise. They had a little bowl of breakfast bars in the recording studio, and the producer at one point says to me, You should eat one of the breakfast bars. And I said, Nah, I dont like breakfast bars. So he says, Well, put a pillow over your stomach, then.  Shannon laughs. He finishes his egg and cheese. He declares it a winner. He checks out some of the celeb photos on the Goats wall on the way out.

Wait. Is that Ron Howard? Was he here? Huh. Yes, he was. And so was Michael Shannon.

Movies on the radio: Michael hosts The Film Score: Music for the Winter Holidays 10 p.m. Dec. 18 on WFMT-FM (98.7).

Michael Phillips is the Chicago Tribune film critic.

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mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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Broadway legend Chita Rivera, 84, will be appearing Monday at Steppenwolf Theatre in an unscripted event that's part of its LookOut Series. (Laura Marie Duncan photo)

In times of stress and trouble, wise creative souls seek out the wisdom of Chita Rivera.

Of course, people have been seeking out the wisdom of the legendary actress-dancer, one of the most beloved figures in the Broadway business and now 84 years old, ever since she shot to fame in the mid-1950s as the original Anita in West Side Story. Youre likely aware of at least some of what happened subsequently: Bye Bye Birdie, the original production of Chicago, The Rink, Jerrys Girls, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Nine, and, relatively recently, The Visit, which began at the Goodman Theatre in 2001 and then took years to find its way to Broadway.

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Riveras steely encapsulation of the vengeful Claire Zachanassian remains imprinted on my brain, as does her simply astounding performance as Roxie Hart in the long-lived revival of Chicago, which I saw in Las Vegas in 1999. At the time Rivera already was well into her 60s and dancing every Fosse-charged step in the dancers lexicon. I had never seen the like. Dont think I ever will again.

No wonder dancers revere Rivera  who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009  for the longevity of her career, notwithstanding a serious accident in 1986 that would have meant the end for those without her fortitude.

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Talking in New York the other day, I asked Rivera, the veteran of thousands of stories and profiles, what annoyed her the most about her interviewers.

She laughed. When they have the wrong information, she said. Or when theyre trying to stir up trouble.

She mimicked the measly voice of a celebrity journalist.

How did you and Gwen Verdon get along? Get out of my face, please. There is a life connected to a career and I like to keep my life clear. I dont think there is a lot of crap that surrounds me. I am not a superstar like a Barbra or a Liza. When I think about what or whom I have dreaded in my life, I generally have found a way to laugh, or get around it, or solve it.

I asked how she is currently feeling. She chose to answer in the macro context.

These are hard times, she said, and I would not even say they are interesting times. We have to stick together and show that we have power and strength. Social media is a big problem. People are getting away from looking at each other eye to eye. We have to look up.

Rivera will be looking up (or down) at anyone who cares to buy a ticket to her appearance Monday night at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Shell be talking (and singing) with Seth Rudetsky, the self-invented Broadway personality who last appeared in Chicago with Audra McDonald, also at Steppenwolf. Rudetskys signature format works well, on and off cruise ships: In essence, he pedals something akin to a long-format guest spot on the live taping of a talk show.

Rudetsky chats with the star, improvisationally, mostly. And then from time to time, he assumes the role of enthusiastic accompanist and the star gets up and sings from a loosely planned but pliable repertoire. Endlessly verbose and optimistic, Rudetsky is Americas uber-Broadway nerd. As Rivera puts it, a tad dryly, He knows more about me that I do myself.

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So you can expect to hear songs from the formidable Rivera backlist (shes about theatrical songs, not standards, a couple of albums thereof notwithstanding). And you will likely receive some advice for living from a Latina who has survived and thrived in one of the toughest careers anyone can pursue.

I am still living in the world of all those shows, Rivera said, her voice quickly filling with emotion, causing her interviewer to become verklempt. And at my time of life, I have found that if you just keep doing what you are doing, you get a lot of gifts offered to you in return. I now feel responsible for focusing on the young ones.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

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Illinois prepaid college tuition program has stopped accepting new participants because it does not have the money to fulfill its projected obligations. The program allows parents to pay tuition toward a state university in advance as a hedge against rising tuition. (Getty Images)

For the second time in seven years, Illinois prepaid college tuition program has stopped accepting new participants because it does not have the money to fulfill its projected obligations.

The program, called the College Illinois! Prepaid Tuition Program, allows parents to pay tuition toward a state university in advance as a hedge against rising tuition.

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But parents have been shunning the program recently. Only 450 new participants signed up during the most recent fiscal year compared with 4,392 contracts from 2006 to 2007. In total, the program has about 38,000 contracts, a significant decline from about 52,000 in 2012.

The result has been a darkening financial picture.

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From 2016 to 2017, the unfunded liabilities for the program grew from about $264 million to roughly $320 million, according to a report filed in June. That meant the program dropped from being nearly 80 percent funded to 74 percent.

During a General Assembly higher education appropriation committee hearing in August, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which oversees College Illinois, put new enrollments on hold for the 2017 to 2018 fiscal year, said Lynne Baker, spokeswoman for the commission, in an email.

Its unclear when or if the program will open up to new enrollments. Officials from the commission are in talks with lawmakers about ways to close in on the unfunded liability, but Baker declined to detail the options the commission is considering.

The state is under no obligation to pay anything toward fulfilling commitments made by College Illinois.

If the prepaid tuition program is permanently shut down, beneficiaries who are enrolled or will enroll in a college or university within five years of when the program shuts down will receive the benefits of the contract, according to one of the programs fiscal reports. But all other beneficiaries will receive a refund from their contract and any accrued interest, according to the report.

The recent shutdown follows a similar move in 2011 when the program, saddled with a deficit of $560 million, stopped accepting new participants amid questions about investment strategy, conflicts of interest among its managers and a funding shortfall. A report from the state auditor generals office in 2012 determined administrative costs increased at the same time sales of the program were decreasing. In addition, the program was taking financial risks such as a $12.8 million investment to ShoreBank, which later collapsed.

The program was reopened to new participants in 2012 with new incentives to jump-start sales.

Those incentives, though, failed to attract enough new enrollees needed to keep the fund solvent. In recent years, the number of new contracts has fluctuated. During the 2015 to 2016 fiscal year, they dipped to 494 and this past fiscal year only saw 450 new contracts.

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And the states two-year budget standoff, which starved Illinois public universities of state money and led to higher tuitions, only tightened the squeeze on the program.

Illinois is among a dozen states with a prepaid tuition program while the majority of states offer 529 savings plans, said Kathryn Flynn, spokeswoman for Savingforcollege.com, a website that helps parents navigate saving and paying for college.

That is down from about 20 states that at one point offered prepaid tuition programs but are no longer accepting new participants.

As prepaid plans have declined, parents have gravitated to a different kind of college savings vehicle. Known as the 529 qualified tuition program, it allows participants to use the funds at a wider variety of institutions, and to pay for college student expenses like room and board, Flynn said.

Illinois offers two of that type of college savings fund  the Bright Start 529 College Savings program and the Bright Directions 529 College Savings program.

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The 529 plans have been growing very much in recent years due to the flexibility that they offer, Flynn said. Even if you have the prepaid plan, it wouldnt hurt to also have a savings plan.

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As of September, there were 12.1 million 529 savings plan accounts compared to 1.1 million prepaid plans, Flynn said citing information from research company Strategic Insight.

The companys website has rated Bright Start and Bright Directions programs higher than College Illinois because those programs have better financial track records, Flynn said.

College Illinois relies on funds from the sale of new contracts, and the state doesnt have an obligation to fill in the gap between the programs investment returns and tuition costs, according to research firm Morningstars website. The website also cautions buyers to read the fine print of the contracts.

emalagon@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ElviaMalagon

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Lifeng Ye, in yellow scarf, is the mother of Yingying Zhang, a missing University of Illinois scholar. She's at O'Hare International Airport to return to China on Nov. 13, 2017. About $156,000 was raised to help the family search for Zhang, who is presumed dead. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Nearly 600,000 Illinois residents donated to at least one GoFundMe campaign this year, according to the online fundraising platforms 2017 Giving Report released Thursday, which highlights the top fundraisers worldwide and stories about strangers generosity toward others.

In 2017, there were big news events that shook us and resulted in waves of compassion, the report stated. But there were also small acts of kindness that added up to something much bigger.

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The campaigns that raised the most money this year were those created to help victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in October, provide famine relief for Somalis, cover medical treatment for children, rebuild a mosque in Texas destroyed by a fire, and give support to Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria in September.

In Illinois, 37,867 campaigns were created this year through Nov. 30.

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Illinois, with 595,930 donors, ranked fifth behind California, Texas, Florida and New York. The state ranked eighth in the number of campaigns created, behind California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

GoFundMe did not release the total financial amount of donations contributed to campaigns in 2017. It said it has raised more than $5 billion since launching in 2010.

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The top three fundraising campaigns in Illinois this year were:

1. Dillon Narko Family Tragedy: $218,161 was raised to help Kathleen Dillon Narko, who has multiple sclerosis, pay for around-the-clock care for her autistic son, college tuition costs for her younger son and daily expenses for transportation, food and housing after her husband, Kevin, died. The Lincoln Park man was reported missing in January after going for a run along Chicagos lakefront. His body was found several weeks later in Lake Michigan.

2. Yingying Zhang Family Emergency: $155,910 was raised to help the family of Yingying Zhang with expenses incurred in the search for the missing 26-year-old University of Illinois visiting scholar from China. Former graduate student Brendt Christensen has been charged with kidnapping resulting in death stemming from the disappearance of Zhang in June. Her body has not been found.

3. Hailee and Christian Crawford Fund: $137,123 was raised to help two children  Hailee,15, and Christian, 9  after their parents and older sister died in a car crash in Des Plaines in February. Police said the 21-year-old driver, Piotr Rog, was intoxicated and likely driving 135 mph when he crashed into the Crawfords car, killing Kevin Crawford, his wife, Anita, and their eldest daughter, Kirsten, 20, of Arlington Heights. Rog also died.

None of the GoFundMe campaigns this year in Illinois surpassed last years campaign to benefit Fidencio Sanchez, an elderly paleta vendor from Chicagos Little Village neighborhood, who received $384,000 to help him retire from selling Mexican ice pops from a pushcart. It was the largest fundraiser in Illinois to date.

lvivanco@chicagotribune.com

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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:
iStock/Thinkstock(JEFFERSON COUNTY, Ky.) -- Three school buses in Kentucky were involved in a crash on Dixie Highway in Jefferson County Thursday morning, injuring 41 middle and high students, a Jefferson County Public Schools official said.



All of the students on board the three buses were taken to hospitals after the collision, according to Allison Martin, public schools communications director in Jefferson County. The students' injuries were minor, she said.



The conditions of the three drivers were unknown, Martin said, and the cause of the accident is under investigation.



This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
All votes in the CO-3 election won't be counted until the end of this week
On Friday, the Beatrice Police Department will be heading to the Beatrice YMCA in full force.

Officers have about 200 presents to deliver that they collected during the Stuff the Cruiser event outside of Wal-Mart the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the YMCA will be working with officers to get the gifts to local children in need.

On Dec. 12, children from around the area who are in need of a merry Christmas will come to the YMCA to pick out a free gift. But before they get there, the whole place needs a fresh coat of Christmas magic.

On Tuesday night, volunteers and employees of the Beatrice YMCA were on hand in an upstairs room, getting everything ready for the kids, building giant lollipops, snowflakes and candy canes.

Callie Lamkin, Brandel Riekenberg and Missy Lamkin were standing at a table building a fire to put inside a fireplace that was still being constructed in the corner.

Cutting out various shapes of paper, Callie Lamkin had built about three flames of the total four they needed for the fireplace.

And we have to make six stockings, she said.

Theyre expecting about 100 kids to show up next Wednesday, which is about the same as last year, Shely Bauman said.

So far, 85 children are signed up for the program, which means there are still about 15 spots open. Theyre hoping to have all the applications turned in by this Friday, she said.

People turned out in droves for the Stuff the Cruiser event at Wal-Mart, Bauman said. There were people who remembered the event from last year, as well as some new faces, wanting to give kids in need something good for Christmas.

Bauman commended the Beatrice Police Department, saying that the police do the heavy lifting and the hard work, while the YMCA handles the fun part of doling out the gifts.

Next Wednesday, when the children come in, she wants them walking into a winter wonderland. Toys will be separated into different age groups and unwrapped so that children can pick out exactly the gift they want.

We hope that it's an event that they'll remember, Bauman said. That's what we're trying to create here.

Applications can be picked up at the front desk of the Beatrice YMCA at 1801 Scott St. in Beatrice.
The latest issue of China Briefing Magazine, titled Managing Chinas Financial System, is out now and currently available to subscribers as a complimentary download from the Asia Briefing Publication Store.

In this issue:

Why do Foreign Investors think Chinas Financial System is Complex?

How to Manage Complexities within Chinas Tax Regime

Pre-investment Capital Planning for Chinas Foreign Exchange Control

Transfer Pricing Regulations in China

Foreign investors often find Chinas financial system to be one of the most difficult areas to navigate when establishing or growing their presence in the country. Navigating Chinas tax system, and its complexities, requires time and commitment.

That should not come as a surprise. The World Bank recently ranked China 130 out of 190 jurisdictions for ease of paying taxes, for example. Overseas-based financial administration teams too often find that mastering the financial system in China is more complicated than in other jurisdictions.

A complex bureaucracy and licensing regime, idiosyncratic features, strict capital controls, and frequent audits  as well as pronounced regional variance  all contribute to this complexity. These issues are borne of seemingly mundane day-to-day tasks, such as issuing invoices known as fapiao, as well as for more complex and strategically important issues, like profit repatriation and intercompany payments.

In this issue of China Briefing Magazine, we look at the factors that make Chinas financial system unique and complex, and identify steps foreign investors can take to overcome the resulting challenges.

First, we look at the issues that most commonly disorient foreign investors. We then take a closer look at some of these complexities, and what businesses can do to manage them. Next, we discuss the importance of pre-investment capital planning in the context of tough foreign exchange controls, before examining the ever-maturing regulations for the transfer pricing system.



About Us China Briefing is published by Asia Briefing, a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. We produce material for foreign investors throughout Asia, including ASEAN, India, Indonesia, Russia, the Silk Road, and Vietnam. For editorial matters please contact us here, and for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click here. Dezan Shira & Associates is a full service practice in China, providing business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax, IT, HR, payroll, and advisory services throughout the China and Asian region. For assistance with China business issues or investments into China, please contact us at china@dezshira.com or visit us at www.dezshira.com

Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure

Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide.

An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2017

This Dezan Shira & Associates 2017 China guide provides a comprehensive background and details of all aspects of setting up and operating an American business in China, including due diligence and compliance issues, IP protection, corporate establishment options, calculating tax liabilities, as well as discussing on-going operational issues such as managing bookkeeping, accounts, banking, HR, Payroll, annual license renewals, audit, FCPA compliance and consolidation with US standards and Head Office reporting.

Chinas Investment Landscape: Identifying New Opportunities

Chinas foreign investment landscape has experienced pivotal changes this year. In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we examine how foreign investors can capitalize on Chinas latest FDI reforms. First, we outline new industry liberalizations in both Chinas FTZs and the country at large. We then consider when an FTZ makes sense as an investment location, and what businesses should consider when entering one. Finally, we give an overview of Chinas latest pro-business reforms that streamline a wide range of administrative and regulatory measures.

Dezan Shira & Associates
The mysterious epic "Forever Young" starring Zhang Ziyi will be unveiled in January 2018 - 6 years after the project was first announced.





A stellar cast of Zhang Ziyi, Huang Xiaoming, Leehom Wang, Chang Chen and Chen Chusheng attended a press conference on Wednesday in Beijing to announce the release date as Jan. 12 next year.





The film, written and directed by acclaimed writer-turned-director Li Fangfang, was originally planned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tsinghua University in 2011, with a budget of over 100 million yuan. The story covers four generations spanning a hundred years of modern Chinese history since World War II.





Actress Zhang Ziyi and actor Huang Xiaoming both mentioned in previous interviews that they cried after reading the script. By the end of 2012, the film had finished shooting but nothing has been heard since. Director Li commented in June 2014 that she is extremely meticulous about post-production and the film will be ready for release by the end of that year. However, it was not.





Sun Zhonghuai, CEO of Penguin Pictures and Vice President at Tencent Holdings Ltd., one of the film's producers, said the nearly 6-year wait has made this production "a legend" in Chinese film industry.





The past five years has witnessed great changes in the actors' personal life. When the cast members shot the film, they were all single. Now they are all married with children.





Huang Xiaoming added, "First I was attracted by the director's good script, then I was moved by her sincere creative work ethic, as she had researched and studied tens of thousands of historical photos and documents to reenact the historical details in her production. I believe a good film is like a good wine, the longer it takes to make the better it will taste."





Director Li Fangfang later joined the cast on the stage and praised them, "every one of them wanted to act as best as they can for their roles. We worked sincerely together and hope to tell a good story."





It is also worth noting that the film was shot in film stock and may be the last film in China produced this way as most film processing studios have closed as Chinese filmmakers turn to digital filmmaking.




You are here: Arts

The world's largest 'Tianhuang' stone has been auctioned off for 109 million yuan ($16.5 million) in Beijing, the highest auction price ever paid for a so-called 'yellowfield' stone, reports thepaper.cn.





The 1.7 kilogram chunk of nacrite has 9 dragon seals carved into the stone, and are shown playing with a pearl.





128 other Tianhuang stones were also auctioned at the sale in Beijing on December 3, 2017.





The stone ornate Tianhuang stone was extracted toward the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) from Shoushan county in Southeast China's Fujian province.
China will step up efforts to broaden market access for foreign investors into its financial sector and to create a predictable and fair business environment for all market players, vice governor of the central bank said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Fortune Global Forum on Wednesday, Pan Gongsheng, vice-governor of the People's Bank of China, said the government "will make great strides" to grant more market access to foreign investors and will give them equal treatment compared to domestic firms.

"Past experience shows that the Chinese market is big enough and capable of allowing full competition," he said. "We are looking to achieve win-win results for both domestic and foreign participants."

Granting more market access means massive business opportunities for foreign firms eyeing the evolving sector.

"That was a very welcoming message for us," said Gordon French, head of Global Banking and Markets, Asia-Pacific of HSBC. "It's the same when we do business in Hong Kong, in Paris and other places-if we can do business in a fair business environment and then we are able to do it well."

As the first foreign bank to get approval for a majority-owned securities joint venture in China, HSBC is one of the firms that could benefit from the progress in opening up the market to foreign firms.

The first approval gives some privileges to HSBC compared to other banks as it allows the company to better deploy its strengths, provide better services to existing large clients-global institutions planning to tap Chinese markets.

French said he sees potential capital market reforms, more convertibility under capital account, and sustained efforts to promote low carbon development-which reflects a key business for the bank, sustainable financing.

Analysts are expecting more radical steps to push the reform forward, as the timing is right for China to create a level-playing field.

Huang Yiping, a central bank advisor, said more efforts are needed to turn policy signals into concrete steps.

"Foreign investment in the domestic market is totally different from short-term capital inflows," said Huang. "The regulatory bodies are able to equalize treatment in venture shares, issuance of licenses and scope of business."

Some possible steps include allowing foreign securities and insurance firms to set up wholly-owned units in China and streamline approval process for acquiring licenses, according to Huang.




With more than 1,000 delegates ranging from Fortune 500 CEOs to heads of China's most important companies, along with government officials and celebrities, the Fortune Global Forum 2017 kicked off in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province on December 6.

Themed "Openness and Innovation: Shaping the Global Economy," the forum marks the fifth Fortune Global Forum held in China. The event has previously taken place in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chengdu and Beijing in the last 20 years, presenting a valuable opportunity for chiefs of the world's largest multinational companies to engage with China and its leaders from both business and government.

As Fortune said, "With unprecedented speed, a new innovation revolution is building in the digital era," nowhere in the world will this revolution be more profoundly felt than in China  with its new and burgeoning middle class, accelerating urbanization and expanding digital technologies.

"To date, China has 115 companies listed among the Fortune Global 500. For any company that has an ambitious global vision, China is a crucial market," said Alan Murray, Chief Content Officer of Time Inc. and Fortune President at the opening ceremony, emphasizing China's impact of shaping the global economy.

In a congratulatory letter to the Fortune Global Forum 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will develop the open economy to a higher level, promote the Belt and Road Initiative, and push for a new pattern of all-round opening up, and he also said that China will not close its door to the world, but it will only become more and more open, with its business environment becoming more open, transparent and regulated.

The Guangzhou-based forum put this historically vibrant hub for free trade and innovation investment on the map again.

"As the forefront of reform, opening-up and innovation in China, Guangzhou has seen the miracles China has created in last 40 years, and today, it is still a powerful demonstration of China's innovation-driven development," said Li Xi, the secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPC.

Data provided by Guangzhou Municipal Commission of Commerce shows that by the end of this year a total of 297 Fortune Global 500 companies have invested in Guangzhou, covering a total of 920 projects, which fully demonstrates that Guangzhou has become the best place to be based in, invest in and develop.

At present, Guangzhou is working hard to develop its IAB industry  a new generation of the information technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and biomedical industry, which is a prosperous industry with high-technology content, strong innovation drive and great future potential.

During the three-day international event, world leaders and business titans will discuss the future of the industries in the age of digital technology. Meanwhile, they will explore how openness and innovation, in China and beyond, are primary forces in guiding economic development that will lead to prosperity and progress.
China will further integrate government information systems and enable more information disclosure on the allocation of public resources, according to a decision made at the State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.

The government will work to consolidate and integrate the national data sharing and exchange platform to enable connectivity across networks, data and administrative services, the meeting has decided.

This move is part of the government effort to streamline administration, enhance compliance oversight and provide better services, with the aim of delivering greater benefits to the public with easier and faster access to administrative services.

Chinese leaders have stressed the importance of integration, sharing and disclosure in the running of government information systems on multiple occasions.

President Xi Jinping said that the integration of information resources should be pushed forward to break information silos and develop a national information resources sharing system.

Premier Li Keqiang said that the integration and sharing of government information systems should be accelerated to deliver better administrative services.

According to a decision at the meeting, the contents and modality of data sharing across State Council departments will be clearly defined to ensure public access to information that can be released.

The 40 vertical information systems run by the State Council bodies will be made open to governments at various levels by the end of this year, which will enable the sharing of service information on some 500 data items, including the identity verification of natural persons and enterprises, tax payment certificate, real estate registration, and diploma certification.

The government will encourage multi-purpose service stations to raise efficiency and cut the legwork of the public and businesses in seeking government services from different departments.

The security of information sharing will also be a priority, with measures set to be introduced to enhance the security management system and risk assessment.

In the establishment of any new government information system, sharing shall be a guiding principle to prevent duplication and new information silos. The government will also step up technical safeguards for such public infrastructure as the National E-Government Network and the national data sharing and exchange platform.

"We should use the integration of government information systems to achieve connectivity of data and government services, and break the barriers to our reform to streamline administration, enhance compliance oversight and provide better services. Such integration will also help spur social creativity, foster a more favorable business environment and bring greater conveniences to our people. This effort meets the public expectation and will help strike a proper balance between the government and the market," the premier said.

A new guideline, which specifies a set of requirements for government information disclosure on the allocation of public resources, was also approved at the meeting.

The guideline, issued as part of the plan by the Communist party of China Central Committee and the State Council to push forward government information disclosure comprehensively, has identified a number of key areas for information disclosure, including housing, transfer of state-owned land use rights, transfer of mining rights, government procurement, transaction of state-owned property rights and tendering of engineering construction projects.

Information disclosure in these areas will be conducted through government portal sites, mobile Internet platforms, or the press by the competent government departments or the state bodies, government-affiliated institutions or enterprises that undertake the allocation of these public resources.

"More transparency in the allocation of public resources can help reduce corruption and unfair distribution. It can also lower cost, raise efficiency and enhance government credibility." Li said.

The use of high and new technology should be prioritized in integrating government information systems and releasing government information on public resources allocation on the basis of ensuring information security,he added.
You are here: China

Police in southwest China's Guizhou Province have seized 30 suspects in connection with illegal gun manufacturing and trading, local police said Wednesday.

Police in Anshun city confiscated more than 80 guns and over 4,500 bullets after investigating for more than 200 days in several provinces, including Henan, Zhejiang, Hunan and Jiangxi, as well as the city of Shanghai.

They also seized three machines for gun and bullet production, as well as more than 2,000 gun parts.

Anshun police started investigating the case after finding a parcel containing bullets when inspecting the postal sector in May.

China bans the manufacturing, sale and public ownership of guns.

Anyone found guilty of owning a gun can face up to seven years in prison.
The use of vehicle automation that allows drivers to switch between manned and unmanned operation is still raising questions about safety and legal issues, according to The Beijing News.





On Dec. 2, 2017, a line-up of buses was spotted crawling along the boulevards between Hailiang, Shenba and Futian Stations in Shenzhen, a distance of about 1.2 kilometers.





Different from the conventional tests, the buses, installed with laser and millimeter-wave radars, video cameras and GPS antennae, were steered automatically without the intervention of any human in the driving seat.





By evaluating the signals sent by the sensory equipment, industrial computers and Vehicle Control Units can analyze, judge and react to traffic conditions and direct the vehicle to accelerate, slow down and stop, turn, pass through junctions, park at roadside or change lanes.





The new bus, of moderate size comparing to ordinary buses with a capacity of no more than 25 passengers, can reach a maximum speed at 40 kilometers per hour (kph) and an average speed of 25 kph. At the same time, its batteries can be recharged in 40 minutes and it can then run for a distance up to 150 kilometers.





Owned by the Shenzhen Bus Group Co Ltd, the driverless buses had experienced closed-door tests for four consecutive months under different road conditions before making their public debut.





However, according to the Transportation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, the buses are still being tested using data collected from traffic routes, passenger flows and smart driving systems and there is no immediate plan to open them for general public use.





However, a certain number of passengers are welcomed to take free rides during the trial runs to provide feedback and suggestions.





According to international standards, the operation of prototype vehicles is divided into six categories ranging from L0 to L5. L0 refers to normal manned driving while L5 is completely unmanned. The buses in Shenzhen are mostly operating at a level of L3 plus, which means the buses can operate almost independently without the help of drivers as long as there are no emergencies where sudden braking is needed.

The expansion of the smart driving will probably relieve the shortage and lessen the tedious nature of bus driving, besides, enabling the traffic safety to be better guaranteed, said Luo Lan, spokesman of Shenzhen Bus Group Co Ltd.





However, the company also reckons that the smart buses are still in trial operation and the traffic routes cannot be officially opened yet. The suspended launch of the driverless buses is not an exception across the country.





In August, this year, an automatically steered and electricity-powered bus with a length of 12 meters was rolled out in Hunan Province. However, despite its successful testing, such as, making turns or changing lanes, it has yet to be placed in service.





Robin Li, known as Li Yanhong in Chinese, CEO of Baidu Inc, admitted in the latest annual Baidu World Conference that their self-driving car had received a traffic ticket.





Zhang Qihuai, an attorney from Lanpeng Law Firm, said, the traffic law in China had yet to cover the operation of unmanned vehicles. And lawyer Wang Yongjie from Beijing Zeyong Law Firm warned that the vacuum in law pertinent to self-driving may result in severe penalties if the drivers take their hands off the steering wheel.




Late last month, legislators in the US capital are feverishly pushing through a tax bill that would dramatically reduce America's global standing. [Photo by Xu Lin / China.org.cn]





Late last month, legislators in the US capital were feverishly pushing through a tax bill that would dramatically reduce America's global standing.







The Republicans' long-standing desire to cut taxes and Trump's last attempt to get major legislation passed by the end of his first year is a short-sighted, self-imposed wound in the making, but one that wealthy contributors to the party salivate at for its short-term benefits to their pocketbooks. Already facing a $500 billion budget deficit and rising in the projected future, the Trump tax bill is projected to add $1.5 trillion to the US national debt over the next decade.





This reckless elite self-enrichment comes at a time when Trump is proposing heavy increases in the military budget. As well, an expensive entitlement bill is coming due, as the largest generation of baby boomers is retiring, and the support ratio of workers-to-consumers is declining. America's social security retirement system and elderly Medicare system face increasing pressures that could wipe funds clean in the coming decades if nothing is doneand neither Trump nor Republicans have proposed to do anything.





Rather than take on the necessary but politically-difficult reforms to the entitlement  which is popular with the older generation but is really driving the debt, Republicans have proposed nickel-and-dime cuts to a hodgepodge of programs for the poor and middle class. They need to save just enough money to get the bill into compliance with parliamentary ruleswhich means in addition to eliminating tax credits for adoption and other reasons, they also phased out all individual tax cuts after a decade, leaving only corporate tax cuts, which incidentally benefit the president himself and his own businesses.





The upshot is that the United States government will have less money to maintain its military and diplomatic presence, domestic policies, or its already-lackluster infrastructure. Many of these programs have been withering away on the vine in recent years due to politicaldysfunction. Having been unable to arrive at any kind of budget compromise, the Republican Congress and Obama administration was forced to adopt across-the-board budget cuts between 2013 and 2021. Raiding the sources of government funding will only further constrain America's ability to respond to fund needed programs.





This comes at a time when the United States faces major decisions about its place in the world. Shifts are taking place in the weight of regional power. Conflicts in the Middle East could either be wound down or extended yet indefinitely. Either way, America will remain a player on the world stage. The liberal world order built by the United Statesbrought the nation many benefits, but its maintenance doesn't come for free.





Trump campaigned partially on a promise of paring down U.S. commitments, but his actions in office have been scattershot, to put it generously. Still, America at least has a choice now of whether it wants to be interventionist, isolationist, or something in between. If the coffers run dry, there will be no such choice.





Domestically, the demands from years of neglect are weighing on America's bridges, highways, and airports. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country a D+ in its 2017 infrastructure report card. One third of national roads are in substandard condition, according to the transportation research group TRIP.





This impacts America's global competitiveness. While ranked third overall in the World Economic Forum rankings, the United Statesranks only twelfth for infrastructure and sixteenth for roads. It impacts ordinary citizens' quality of life. Commuting to work is getting harder in many cities, and public transportation systems are non-existent or nightmarish even in the biggest cities. New York City's subway only arrives on time to its destinations 65 percent of the time, compared to over 99 percent on-time arrivals for Singapores metro.





The cause of America's dilapidation is long-running short-term thinking. Politicians think in one-and-a-half year chunks, always calculating for re-election. As such, they are reluctant to raise taxes or do anything that will bring long-benefits at a short-term cost. The federal gas tax, which funds highways, hasn't been raised in 24 years, and the highway trust fund has been operating at deficit for the past 17 years.





The top marginal tax rate has fallen from over 70 percent between the 1930's and 1960's to 50 percent in the 80's and then into the 30+ percent range in the 90's. US tax receipts have already fallen from close 20 percent of GDP in 2000 to 15 percent in 2011. The corporate income tax will be cut dramatically by 15 points. It has already been cut so much that its composition of federal revenue went from 30 percent in 1952 to 10 percent today. Effective corporate tax rates are at their lowest levels yet this decade, and corporate profits are at record peaks.





Put simply, there is no reason for America to cut taxes now and even less reason for it to cut taxes on corporations and the highest income earners. But maybe the 71-year-old Donald Trump doesn't want Eric and Donald Jr to have to contribute anything when he hands the family business over to them for real. Eliminating the estate tax, which only applies to inheritances valued at over $5.5 million, would cost $150 billion in and of itself, three times the increase Trump has proposed in military spending.





His kids won't have to pay the bill, but the country will.





Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm





Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.




 Flash

Israel's air force announced Wednesday that its new squadron of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets is fully operational.





Israel began establishing the "Golden Eagle" squadron upon the arrival of the first F-35, or "Adir" as it is called in Israel, in December 2016.

"The reception process of the Adir was performed by specially trained dedicated crews, who received nine aircrafts over the past year," a military spokesperson said in a statement.

The Israeli air force is the only air force, beyond the United States Armed Forces, that operates the Adir aircraft.

The reception of the Adir "adds another layer in the force design and employment efforts of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) continuing the evolving adaptation of the IDF to various threat scenarios," the statement read.

According to the air force commander, Major General Amikam Norkin, the announcement of the operationalization of the aircraft comes at a sensitive time.

"The air force is operating on a large scale on a number of fronts in a dynamic Middle East," he wrote in a letter sent to the air force.

The military considers the F-35 a major mean of enhancing its strategic and operational capabilities. "The constantly evolving and complex challenges are met with a high-quality and professional aerial response. The operationalization of the Adir aircraft adds another level to the Israeli air force's capabilities at this time," Norkin wrote.

The squadron's current nine aircrafts are among 50 F-35s that Israel agreed to purchase from the United States. Israel received about three billion U.S. dollars in defense aid from the U.S. for this purchase.

The F-35 is the newest and most advanced U.S. fighter jet. Its features include advanced stealth capabilities that allow the pilot to avoid being discovered by regular radars. It can carry an array of bombs and fly at a supersonic speed of Mach 1.6 (about 1,230 miles per hour.)

However, the jet has been criticized in the U.S. Congress over its costs and alleged engineering flaws.
 Flash

China on Wednesday agreed to provide Zimbabwe with a funding of about US$213 million for infrastructure development projects.

The funding includes those for the expansion and upgrading of the country's flagship airport, the Harare Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, construction of a new Zimbabwe parliament building and the second phase of the high performance computing center, the third fastest computing center in Africa.

The financing agreements are the first to be signed by Zimbabwean President Emmersen Mnangagwa's new administration and are a fulfillment of some of the projects agreed between Zimbabwe and China during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit in 2015.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Huang Ping said China will continue to support the Zimbabwean government in its economic revival and social development efforts.

"The agreements we have signed today are just a testimony of our efforts and our friendship that withstands the test of time.

"As Zimbabwe's all-weather friend, the Chinese government has been committed to assisting our good friend and brother in its development path through thick and thin ever since Zimbabwe's liberation struggle," Huang said.

He said China was pleased to be lending financial support to Zimbabwe at "this new juncture of Zimbabwe's social and economic development."

Zimbabwean finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said China's financial support was testimony to the lasting friendship that exists between Zimbabwe and China.

"I want to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude and appreciation to China for the support that they have availed," Chinamasa said.

He said the infrastructure development projects were significant in that they will help create jobs for local people and boost business for local suppliers of construction materials.

He said upgrading of the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport will entail expansion of the terminal building, rehabilitation of the runway, installation of the communication system, refurbishment of the fire station and new satellite station, among other works.

Financing of the project will be administered by China Export-Import Bank.

The expansion works will more than double the airport's handling capacity from the current 2.5 million passengers per year to 6 million.




 Flash

China on Wednesday said that the status of Jerusalem is sensitive and complicated, and urged all parties concerned to exercise caution for peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks when asked to comment on U.S. intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

A senior U.S. administration official said President Donald Trump is expected to announce that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there.

"We pay close attention to the developments of the situation and are concerned about the possible intensification of regional conflicts," Geng told a routine press briefing.

He said all parties concerned should exercise caution and avoid rocking the basis for the settlement of the Palestinian issue, which may trigger new regional confrontation.

China firmly supports the Middle East peace process and the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate rights and interests, said Geng.

He said China supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty and independence on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

China calls on all parties concerned to abide by relevant UN resolutions and commit themselves to resolving differences through negotiations and promoting regional peace and stability, said Geng.




 Flash

Clashes with anti-riot forces ended a series of rallies organized by student unions, left-wing parties and anti-establishment groups in the center of Athens on Wednesday to mark the ninth anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager in 2008.









Hooded protesters, after setting fire to garbage containers, threw scores of petrol bombs, bricks and flares at police in riot gear who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Most scuffles took place at the district of Exarchia near the spot where the 15-year-old high school student Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead on Dec. 6, 2008 by a policeman who was convicted later to life imprisonment.

Grigoropoulos' death was followed by a string of violent clashes across Greece for two weeks in protest of police violence. The anniversary has been marred by violent incidents every year.

An earlier march by students and high-school pupils in Athens on Wednesday was disrupted by violent clashes by small groups of youths. Greek riot police responded with limited use of tear gas in the center of the capital to disperse them.

Some 3,000 officers were deployed across the city center of Athens to monitor the protests.

Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki in northern Greece where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police.

Greek police were on high alert with tight security measures ahead of the official visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Athens on Thursday.

Authorities banned all protest rallies and demonstrations in central Athens from 6 am on Thursday to 12 pm on Friday.

The metro station "Syntagma" is to remain closed all day on Thursday, while, the traffic in Athens will be temporarily interrupted and there will be changes in buses and trolley's itineraries following police directions.




CNBC | Dec. 07, 2017

Next year is looking strong for China Southern Airlines, the company's president told CNBC on Wednesday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Fortune Global forum in Guangzhou, China, Tan Wan Geng, the president of China Southern Airlines, looked ahead to the coming year.

"The common view is our industry is entering a profitable cycle, so we are quite happy for China Southern. We have the very largest fleet [of any Asian airline] and we are confident about the future," he said.

Oil prices, a major cost for airlines, are "stable" for now, Tan said. Looking forward, he said, the company expects crude prices to remain relatively stable.

Tan highlighted his company's interest in Europe, especially given the positive economic situation there: "Right now the information, the message, is the whole Europe economy is recovering. We like to hear that, and we expect that market to recover."
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Former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, proclaimed global interest in boosting cooperation with China in the field of education and scientific research in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

"What China achieved in the past five years is remarkable and large-scale," Gillard said. "China has got much to teach the world about how to make sure hundreds of thousands of children get a quality education, even in remote locations outside urban centers."

Gillard was also impressed by China's focus on science, technology, engineering and math. She said China succeeds in getting students excited about studying these subjects. "Girls in many countries are either excluded from education, or if they're in school they tend to disproportionately select away from science and math subjects."

The former Australian prime minister has directed her attention to children's education for many years. She believes quality education has a transformative power in individual lives.

Since leaving her leadership post in 2013, she has chaired the board of the Global Partnership for Education, the only multilateral partnership and fund dedicated exclusively to education in the world's poorest countries. The organization includes developing country partners, donor countries, multilateral agencies, civil society, teachers, philanthropic foundations and the private sector.

In 2017, UNESCO raised awareness for the estimated 264 million girls and boys who are not going to school and, just as distressing, many more children who are in school but not learning. "This is a failure that we must tackle together," said Irina Bokova, UNESCO's previous director-general.

Launched in 2002, the GPE works with developing countries to increase domestic investment in education, providing results-based grants, mobilizing technical assistance and inclusive discussion. Through GPE's efforts, 78 percent of GPE partner countries have maintained their education budget at or above 20 percent of public expenditure, or increased their education budget in 2015. As a result, 72 million more children were in primary school in 2015 in GPE partner countries compared to 2002.

Now in its 15th year, GPE has set its next replenishment round, aiming to raise $3.1 billion over three years to support 89 developing countries to improve quality and access to education for 870 million children and youth.

"It's a huge ambition," Gillard admitted. She was, however, quite enthusiastic about China's involvement in the Global Partnership for Education and sharing the country's experience in building a quality education system. "Beyond money, which matters so much, there's also technical collaboration and good ideas from China that can be shared with other nations. It's a real win-win, working together," Gillard said.

Meanwhile, Gillard noted China has continued to do well in enrollment rates and the availability of school in rural and poverty-stricken areas, sharing President Xi Jinping's ambition to further reform education, speed up its modernization and develop education people are satisfied with. "President Xi puts great stock in education," she said. "He's talked recently to the party congress, and he takes education as a cornerstone of development. I absolutely agree with those sentiments."
Making use of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to become a hub

With its modern industrial system, Tianhe district in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, is seizing the opportunities brought about by the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to become an international first-class central business district, an international core area for innovation in science and technology, and a demonstration zone for Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao cooperation.

Its solid industrial foundation and favorable business environment, as well as the government's strong policy support, attract large numbers of enterprises to the district.

By the end of November, 162 out of the Fortune Global 500 enterprises had invested in 228 projects in finance, science and technology, trade and commercial services in Tianhe. It is the city's center for headquarters, with 104, or 29 percent of the total across Guangzhou, making Tianhe's business district one of the three largest world-class central business districts in China. Among these, 95 percent of the headquarters in Tianhe are in the service sector and 25 headquarters are foreign-funded ventures.

In the first three quarters of 2017, Tianhe's GDP hit 304 billion yuan ($46 billion), up 9.5 percent year-on-year. Its GDP has been the highest among all the districts in Guangzhou for 10 years consecutively.

More importantly, experts said innovation, high-tech and service sectors have become the driving force of the district's economic growth. The district government focuses more on quality rather than quantity when it comes to the economy.

With 53 innovation platforms and 51 startup incubators above city level, the district government is carrying out what it calls its "super incubator" strategy. It is making use of old industrial parks, factory workshops and public sites collectively owned by villagers to provide a platform for startups and to foster local economic growth. So far, Tianhe has created 29 of this kind of incubators for startups and innovation, covering a total area of 1.11 million square meters. The district is also implementing a convenient "five-in-one" new business registration system.

As a center of finance and technology industries, Tianhe has 215 registered financial agencies and 33 enterprises listed on the stock market. It boasts 378 research and development institutes set up by enterprises, 86 institutes affiliated to universities and governments, and 239 engineering technology research centers.

Last year, 4,312 patent applications were submitted in Tianhe, 32 percent of the city's total and a rise of 45 percent year-on-year. Among these 1,158 patents were granted.

By the end of last year, Tianhe had 1,403 high and new-technology enterprises, as well as more than 50,000 science and technology enterprises.

The Tianhe government said it attaches great importance to optimizing the district's investment environment, developing its headquarters economy and upgrading key industries such as finance and technology. The government has enhanced its support for businesses in emerging industries, such as cloud computing, big data, the internet of things and the IAB industries - information technology, artificial intelligence and biopharmaceuticals.

Lin Daoping, Party chief of Tianhe, said: "As for the artificial intelligence industry, Tianhe would like to attract more R&D, sales and support centers. In manufacturing and biopharmaceuticals, Tianhe eyes more opportunities in advanced medical apparatus and instruments, health services, and stem cell and regenerative medicine among others.

"Finance is the blood for the IAB industries' development."

He said that's why Tianhe pays special attention to developing its financial industry. The district has formed three kinds of science and technology financing platform systems: venture capital investment, loans and multilevel capital market.

Quality education and medical care, a habitable environment, developed urban infrastructure and efficient public services in Tianhe are also important factors that attract professionals from around the world.

The new technology revolution is speeding up, presenting both opportunities and challenges, said the local official.

A combination of information and intelligence technologies can help to upgrade these industries, so as to improve the quality and efficiency of the supply side.

(China Daily 12/07/2017 page12)
8 Reactions to Trump Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's Capital: From Biblical Prophecy to 'Day of Rage' Christian Post Contributor | 07 December, 2017 by Stoyan Zaimov

U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement on Wednesday that America is to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has sparked both "day of rage" outcry and praise around the world.

Some have hailed the president for keeping his promise, while others have warned it will obstruct peace efforts in the Middle East.

Trump's administration has said the move is not intended to come on the side of Israel when it comes to territory dispute with Palestine, with the White House stating that it simply reflects the "fundamental truth" of Jerusalem's status.

"The president believes this is a recognition of reality," a White House official told reporters on Tuesday, according to Reuters. "We're going forward on the basis of a truth that is undeniable. It's just a fact."

Some evangelicals have hailed Trump's decision; many Islamic leaders have condemned it with grave warnings, while church leaders, such as Pope Francis, have expressed concern.

Read more on The Christian Post for eight reactions to Trump's announcement from world leaders, organizations, and faith figures.
We tell two stories around Christmas. One is Christian, while the other is mostly sentimental.

The first story begins (at least in the Gospel of Luke) with an elderly priest named Zechariah serving faithfully at the temple. Luke tells us that Zechariah and Elizabeth, his wife, both loved the Lord and likely harbored some hope for Israel to be freed from Roman oppression. The angel Gabriel gives life to their hope by announcing that this barren couple would have a son who would herald the coming Messiah.

From there, the story moves to a young woman in Nazareth named Mary. The wonder of her pregnancy would surpass that of Elizabeth. Instead of being barren, Mary is a virgin. Instead of preparing the way for the king, her child would be the King himself, created within her womb by the power of the Spirit, God come to dwell among us.

We need not rehearse all that follows, save to say that shepherds and angels show up in abundance. The Lord of the universe enters the world through a virgin and spends his first night well loved in a humble manger. This is our Christmas story, rightly celebrated as the beginning of a new era in human history.

The other story that dominates the Christmas cards, songs, and movies weve come to love centers around a different kind of family. This is the all-American nuclear family, gathered around the tree in matching pajamas and exchanging presents as Nat King Cole croons in the background. Our image of family at Christmaswell-decorated, wealthy, happy, and intactactually sits uneasily beside the gospel of the first.

I have no problem with churches that laud family togetherness during the holidays. Nonetheless, for children without a mother or a father, it can feel like a second Christmas story reserved for the elite. James Stewart, after much travail, may return to a family and community that loves him, but the rest of us may not get our Its a Wonderful Life happy ending.

I think of my own upbringing without a father. Around the holidays, my mother came home haggard to deal with children eager for the energy that she spent at work to keep the creditors at bay.

As a boy, I was envious and curious about the kind of family Christmas we didnt have. Were our festivities second-class because they did not resemble what I saw on television? As I looked to the church, I wondered which Christmas story we celebrated the most and which had room for the prayers of a child who had been abandoned.

Tucked away in a forgotten corner of Lukes infancy narrative, an angel charts the way forward for all Gods children. Despite often going overlooked, this exchange between Gabriel and Zechariah proves staggering in its relevance. Speaking of John the Baptist, Gabriel says, And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:17, ESV).

According to Gabriel, John would prepare Israel for the Messiah by turning the hearts of fathers toward their children. The healed family, then, is a manifestation of the coming messianic age.

Gabriels words actually echo Old Testament prophecy. The idea that the last days would be marked by the reconciliation of fathers and children was a part of Malachis vision of eschatological renewal: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Mal. 4:56, ESV).

Opinions vary over why Malachi highlights family reunions. The best interpretation seems to be that the prophet builds upon his earlier criticism of fathers in Malachi 2:1016. There, he castigates the men of Israel for abandoning the wives of their youth. These divorces were a part of a larger pattern of unfaithfulness in Israel that included idolatry and flagrant disregard of Gods commands.

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Let me be clear: Not every divorce is the result of a mans callousness toward God, his wife, and his children. Life is more complicated than that. But when children are abandoned, that leaves its mark. Malachi claims that Elijah would undo that harm by calling the fathers to repentance. Luke, in turn, picks up on this same theme when he describes the coming work of John the Baptist. He would turn the hearts of fathers toward their children.

The reconciliation between parent and child during the holidays, then, has the ability to transcend mere sentimentality. It can be gospel work.

For someone who longed to have both parents at Christmas and other celebrations, Gabriels prophecy brought real comfort. It showed me that there was a place in the Christmas story for families like mine. The two Christmas stories (the incarnation of the Son and the joy of family togetherness) are not so far off after all.

It is interesting to note that neither Malachi nor Luke mention the full reunion of the husband and wife, even though the passages do envision some restored relationship between the father and his children. This broken but redeemed relationship, in its very messiness, testifies to the Messiahs ability to put back together what sin has torn apart.

What are we to do now with Gabriels declaration that John the Baptist would turn the hearts of the fathers toward the children? First, in our preaching and teaching, Christians should recognize that Christmas, for some sons and daughters, reminds us of what we are missing. We must give space for the holidays to be hard while comforting families with an embodied gospel.

During the second Sunday of Advent, we remember the prophets, especially John the Baptist. This Sunday could be a time in which we can call upon parents to be reconciled to those they have wronged.

Still, not every story will have a tidy ending. My mother and father did not get back together. My father and I did not make amends until I had my own children and wife. We never shared that idealistic Christmas.

Still, I think that our reconciliation in the last years of his life had some of the gospel in it. It was a foretaste of the coming kingdom in which all our disappointments will be overcome.

Esau McCaulley is assistant professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Northeastern Seminary. He writes about New Testament scholarship, Anglicanism, and the black experience for The Living Church and his blog, Thicket of the Jordan.
Just as it is wise and prudent to have a long term directive so that family members know the wishes of their loved one prior to his or her passing, it is imperative that a church and its staff are involved in leadership transition while the church and the leadership is healthy.

As founder of a megachurch in the Dallas Metroplex, I determined early on that I would not ex- tend my pastoral tenure beyond my effectiveness and the churchs healthy growth rhythm, but rather make a transition when both (me and the congregation) were enjoying vibrant ministry and growth. As my ministry opportunities expanded, it was evident that both the local church and the churchs growing network needed undivided attention. I began to seriously pray, observing the staff that had joined with me in our leadership team.

It soon became clear that my youngest son, Tim, was the one God had anointed as my successornot because he is my son, but because he was anointed and equipped to take the congregation to a new level. We had 5 pastors on our staff, two of those were my sons. I spoke on occasion with each of my sons about their future role in ministry. It was equally obvious that my oldest son, Stephen, was gifted as an exhorter and missionary with a great people skills to encourage other pastors, particularly throughout Latin America, where our network has flourished.

About a year to 18 months before passing the lead pastoral role to my son Tim, I met with him and told him that I felt he was the person that God had anointed to be my successor as the Senior Pastor. I made a pledge to him at that time that no other elders, deacons, or hired staff members would be chosen without his approval. I did not want to encumber him with people that might not have the proper chemistry for a successful working relationship. I kept my promise, and I was so pleased with his mature selection process as we moved forward toward the proposed transition.

Not only did I notify the staff, but the congregation as well, that anytime I was out of town, Tim was in charge and his decision carried the same weight as if it were my decision. I made the entire pastoral team aware of the future transition and released them to make their own decision about working under his leadership long term. Today, I am glad to say that the most senior elders that I had named continue to this day as elders under his leadership.

After properly informing the staff of the transition period, we called a meeting with the elders and key leaders to let them know what our transition strategy was. It was obvious that they trusted me and they trusted Tim. Even though some of the elders were in position while Tim was still a teenager; but his testimony was pure, and his service as the worship leader and oversight of many areas was excellent, so his youth was never in question. Tim was only 32 when he assumed the role as Senior Pastor.

I also delivered messages that gave clarity to the congregation that I would not always be their pastor, but that all of us must grow and enter into new dimensions that God has prepared for us.

On the day of the official transition, I preached a message about Elijah and Elisha and the mantle that Elijah wore. As I preached, I draped a cloth shawl around my shoulders as a part of my illustrated sermon. I mentioned how God promoted Elijah to another level and the mantle he was wearing fell to the ground. As I made that point, I allowed the shawl to fall from my shoulders to the floor. Then I mentioned that even though previously Elijah would place his mantle (his anointing) on Elisha, on this occasion, it became Elishas responsibility to pick it up. I announced to the congregation that the pastoral mantle would now be taken up by the person who picked it up and draped it on his shoulders. As Tim started up the steps to the platform, the entire congregation stood to their feet and clapped for a very extended period of time.

My releasing pastoral oversight was very important. I did not try to hold on nor make decisions from that day forward. My relationship with Tim today is strong and we have a mutual trust.

Even though since the transition, some members have stopped me in the hallway to ask for counsel or ask for an appointment. My first response: Have you spoken to your pastor? Usually with that, the message is perceived and they know that I honor the pastor and his authority. (Of course, there are times when Tim has sought my counsel. He asked me to serve on his board.)

When transition is done properly, both outgoing and incoming pastors will experience a great fulfillment and be fruitful in their new assignment. Good transition gives security to the members. A legacy is enjoyed and a future anticipated that takes us from glory to glory.

Ralph Holland serves as overseer of a network of churches throughout Latin America that is an outgrowth of the Mundo De Fe church that he and his wife, Donna, founded in the Dallas area. Having resided in Latin America for 14 years, he is an effective communicator in the Spanish language. Dr. Holland has two doctoral degrees from Phoenix University of Theology.

[ This article is also available in espanol. ]
The man who brought faithful readers some of the most influential stories in 20th-century Christianity, author and editor John Sherrill, died Saturday at age 94.

Sherrill, along with his wife, Elizabeth, cowrote the bestselling books The Cross and the Switchblade with David Wilkerson; Gods Smuggler with Brother Andrew; and The Hiding Place with Corrie ten Boom.

Over 66 years as an editor and writer for Guideposts, he helped shape the inspirational magazine and train hundreds of Christian writers.

Guideposts executive editor Rick Hamlin remembered Sherrill as always honest, always seeking to grow in faith, always ready to tell a life-changing story, whether it was his own or someone elses.

A World War II veteran and son of a theologian, Sherrill was drawn to stories that showcased the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit, which he chronicled in his book about charismatic gifts, They Speak With Other Tongues.

CTs 2006 list of the top 50 books that have shaped evangelicals called the Sherrills the most influential Christian authors you know nothing about. The pair also cofounded the publishing imprint Chosen Books, whose first release was Chuck Colsons Born Again.

A man of wisdom, a lover of God, a faithful husband, and a man passionate to see all Christians live the Spirit-filled life, read a tribute from Chosen, now part of Baker Publishing Group. We are humbled to carry on your legacy of Spirit-empowered resources and a deep love for Gods people.

Sherrill mentored and trained fellow charismatic writers, including the late Jamie Buckinghamwho authored biographies of Nicky Cruz, Pat Robertson, and Kathryn Kuhlmanas well as Steve Strang, the founder and publisher of Charisma magazine.

To me, John Sherrill was an icon at a time when I was a neophyte writer and editor, Strang said. He considers Sherrill one of the greatest writers of our generation.

In an interview with Assist News Service, Sherrill was asked about his most-popular books and whether they would fare as well today.

We have asked ourselves that same thing, he responded. I dont think books take off and do well or dont do well depending just on the quality of the writing. I think it depends on catching something that is in the airthat people need.  I think all three of these books did catch something that people needed at that time.

That may be one reason why they have lasted for a long time and have sold 50 million copies.

The Sherrills had lived and written in Africa, South America, and England. Hamlin described the couple as looking for scoops and stories wherever they traveled. John Sherrill wrote for the publication, including reflecting on its early years, well into his 90s.

He died in his home outside Boston, Massachusetts, weeks before he and wife Elizabeth had planned to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. Sherrill is survived by three children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
FDA Discloses Truth to Senator Charles Grassley(IA), Regarding the Experimental Device Tested in Patients Press Conference to be held in Chicago, December 7, 2017 at 12:00 noon at Corvita, 1006 S. Michigan Ave, Suite 500 Chicago, IL 60605



Contact: Nalini M. Rajamannan, 312-498-9496



CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Rajamannan's new edition to the Myxo Files reveals confirmation by the FDA to Senator Charles Grassley(IA) that the device, model 5100, is considered experimental and needed an investigational device exemption. Senator Ron Johnson of homeland security is working with the OIG and Congressman Glenn Grothman is working with the FDA on the newly discovered evidence.



wgntv.com/2017/11/27/former-cardiologist-resurrects-malpractice-claims-against-northwestern-hospital/



The FDA has now determined that the Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring is not covered under any 510(k) clearance. A significant risk device such as the Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring that is not cleared or approved would be required to be studied under an investigational device exemption (IDE). Edwards has not yet received 510(k) clearance or IDE approval for Myxo ETlogix Annuloplasty Ring. The sponsor came in for a regulatory meeting with CDRH's OC on October 14, 2008. At this meeting, the sponsor stated that their firm had discontinued distribution of the device. Shortly thereafter Edwards Submitted the 510(K) on October 29, 2008. Edwards also stated publicly in October 2008 that the firm discontinued distribution of the device.



The FDA has confirmed in a news conference in September 2017 that they are relying upon Northwestern University to inform the patients of the experimental nature of the device as the Myxo ETlogix is still classified as experimental.



Edwards Lifesciences received a 510(k) for the Detlogix in April 2009, which is a new device.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=X00NFQJqQHI



FDA Congressional office to Senator Charles Grassley(IA) after three congressional oversight investigations of the FDA, Edwards Lifesciences and the clinical studies related to the device.



www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/grassley-seeks-answers-about-the-use-of-a-heart-device-in-clinical-research



www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-seeks-documents-northwestern-university-heart-valve-device



www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/continues-press-northwestern-university-heart-valve-disclosures



Dr. Rajamannan and a patient will be available tomorrow at noon, Corvita on Michigan Ave to review the updated FDA statement and the truth surrounding the devices placed in 667 patients from Chicago and across the United States of America.



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My highlight of 2017  A portrait head of Ptolemy VIII

G. Max Bernheimer, Head of Antiquities in New York, reveals the bloody history behind an unassuming marble likeness of the ancient Egyptian king, sold in October

Literary sources describe Ptolemy VIII of Egypt as a terrible man who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, says G. Max Bernheimer, International Head of Antiquities at Christies. Grotesquely overweight, he was given the nickname Physkon, which roughly translates as pot-bellied, or fatty, explains the specialist. Following the death of his brother Ptolemy VI Philometor in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII stormed the city of Alexandria. He married Philometors wife Cleopatra II  who happened to not only be Ptolemy VIIIs sister-in-law, but also his actual sister, says Bernheimer. To secure his own dynastic succession, Ptolemy VIII then had Philometor and Cleopatras son murdered during their wedding feast. Not long after that, he married Philometor and Cleopatra IIs daughter, Cleopatra III  without divorcing her mother, the specialist continues.

The strength and length of the sculptures fresh provenance piqued interest. At auction the head fetched $612,500  more than six times its low estimate
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We now know how Ralphie May, a comedian who made a name for himself in Houston, died.

Clark County Nevada shared a tweet on Dec. 6, 2017 that the medical examiner determined May died from Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease - or high blood pressure.

CELEBRITY DEATH: Beloved comedian, actor dies at 87

He died at the age 45 on Friday Oct. 6 in his Las Vegas home.

TMZ originally reported that the Houston transplant had been battling pneumonia for six weeks, but his ultimate cause of death was cardiac arrest.

Now Playing: On Friday morning, American standup comedian Ralph O. Ralphie May died of cardiac arrest in Las Vegas, PEOPLE confirms. He was 45. Video: People

The Tennessee native moved to Houston in his late teens and graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Afterward he moved to Los Angeles where he pursued a career in stand up.

He got his "big break" in 2003 when he competed and placed second in the first season of "Last Comic Standing." From there he went on to appear in shows like "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and the "Wayne Brady Show."

He and fellow comedian Lahna Turner were married for 10 years before she filed for divorce in 2015. The couple's separation allegedly turned nasty, especially in regards to who would get custody of their two daughters, April June May and August May.

Take a look through the gallery to see which other celebrities have passed away in 2017.
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Gordon Ramsay gave a Sacramento soul food restaurant a major makeover this weekend, but the owners and management of Sandra Dee's Barbeque & Seafood aren't pleased with the celebrity chef's revamp.

Emmy-nominated Ramsay spent Friday and Saturday at the 19-year-old restaurant to film an episode of his new unscripted Fox show, "Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell & Back," an eight-episode series that features "Ramsay going through hell in order to bring failing restaurants back from the brink of disaster," according to a press release.

Family owned and operated Sandra Dee's has been serving up Creole and Southern mainstays  slow-cooked tri-tip, spicy fried catfish, crispy hush puppies  on the corner of 15th and F streets for almost two decades. It had been approached by numerous television networks over the years, hoping to give the neighborhood joint an update, said manager Tatiana Johnson, the daughter of owners Sandra Dee and Jeffrey Johnson.

Tatiana Johnson said her family agreed to participate in the Fox special without fully "understanding the whole concept."

"We agreed to allow some contractors to renovate our space," she said. "We didn't know Gordon Ramsay was a part of it until he walked in."

The premise of "Hell & Back" involves a disguised Ramsay surprising restaurant owners and diners mid-service.

On Saturday night, the chef arrived in a construction worker uniform and fake beard, said Steve Walker, a Sacramento-based real estate agent who witnessed the charade.

"He pulled off his beard and started ranting about everything that was terrible," Walker recalled.

Said Johnson: "He was arrogant and an ashole."

Over the next 24 hours, Ramsay and a large crew of production assistants redecorated the restaurant and changed up its extensive menu.

Story continues below.

Now Playing: The new series is essentially a revamped version of 'Kitchen Nightmares.' Video: Food & Wine

On Saturday, Ramsay invited the previous night's diners to revisit the restaurant and share their thoughts with the cameras.

The food options that night were "surprisingly limited" but "pretty good," Walker recalled. He said Ramsay's new menu included three entrees (pulled pork, seared trout, and smoked chicken), a single dessert of banana pudding and a handful of sides and appetizers, including baked mac n' cheese, potatoes and seasoned fries.

Johnson said the restaurant has decided not to retain any of Ramsay's menu recommendations.

"The owner decided to stay with what she knows best," Johnson said of her mother, who was born in Louisiana and cooks with recipes handed down over generations.

"I definitely think he misunderstood this type of food," Johnson said. "He was saying everything used too much spice. I don't think he has that type of taste palate."

Creole food originated in Louisiana and is known for its liberal use of Cayenne, paprika and pepper sauces.

Ramsay also took a hammer to much of the restaurant's decor. The dated furniture was replaced with new wooden tables and chairs, and the walls were painted a subtle navy blue accented with wood panels. Portraits of African-American musicians on the facade of the restaurant were left untouched.

The construction crew also removed a wall hung with framed photos of celebrity visitors. Signed head shots of Lil Wayne and Faith Evans were replaced with shutters.

"We plan to put them back up," Johnson said, by digitally projecting the photos onto a wall.

Fox Television did not immediately respond to SFGATE's request for comment.

Community members have mixed reviews about the makeover for the neighborhood institution, Johnson said. "Some like it, some don't," she said of Sandra Dee's new look.

In a Facebook post, Sandra Dee's regular Paul Imagine feared that Ramsay had turned the spot into "another overpriced hipster d-bag restaurant."

Others welcomed the new look and hoped the makeover would breathe of fresh air into the longstanding restaurant.

Local food blogger Darrel Ng told the Sacramento Bee that Sandra Dee's had begun facing some serious competition "as Sacramento's food scene matured."

"In recent years, while their food remained excellent, their service had suffered," local food blogger Darrel Ng told the Sacrmento Bee. He said Sandra Dee's had begun facing some serious competition "as Sacramento's food scene matured."

"They need Gordon Ramsay as a catalyst to change things up and help them modernize their cuisine without losing what so many of their regulars love about the restaurant," he added.

Business has lagged in recent years, according to the Sacramento Business Journal, and catering and special events have kept the business going.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.
A gas well blow-out Wednesday evening in southwest Houston is causing a foul odor to spread across the area, according to the city's Office of Emergency Management and Missouri City.

The blow-out occurred near the Fort Bend Parkway Toll Road and Texas Parkway, according to Missouri City.
Dear Abby:

I spent an evening with a guy I've been wanting to date for some time. After a few drinks he confided to me that he has a serious heart condition. He said he doesn't expect to live past age 23.

I don't know the details of his condition, but I'm sure he believes what he told me. Because of this, his life has taken a downward spiral. He has been drinking a lot, failed multiple classes last semester and feels like studying is futile if he may only live a year after graduating.

For lack of evidence to the contrary, I accepted his statement as accurate. I don't think he'd make up something like that. What can I say or do to show my support? How can I encourage him not to give up on his dreams and his goals? He's only 19. How can I be strong for him?

Since he told me about his heart I haven't been able to think about anything else. I don't know how to process this information. How do you comfort someone you care about who's facing mortality at such a young age?

Broken-hearted Guy in the South

Dear Broken-hearted Guy:

If you want to be a friend to this young man, ask how many doctors have told him about his poor prognosis. If the answer is only one, urge him to get a second opinion because there are medical advances in cardiology happening every day.

You say he's still in school. Suggest he talk to someone at the student health center about his depression because it is interfering with his grades. And while you're at it, suggest he stop drinking and neglecting his studies because, in the end, he might live.

Dear Abby:

My best friend of more than 20 years is a busy person. She has a demanding job, a husband, two children and extended family she cooks for on most holidays.

When I'm invited to her house for dinner, she refuses to let me help her clear the table. I'm not happy with that, but I accept it. The problem arises when I invite her over for dinner. I'll pile the dishes in the kitchen so I can spend time with her and wash them later. But she cannot sit still. You will find her in the kitchen scraping plates, soaking pans and hand-washing the wine glasses.

I have tried working with her, but she prefers to power through the mess by herself, which gives us less time to sit and talk. How can I get through to her?

Anxious in New York

Dear Anxious:

Assuming that you have spoken to your friend more than once about this, I think it's time to accept her the way she is. Some people are unable (notice I didn't say unwilling) to just sit still and have a conversation, and she appears to be one of them. If this is her only flaw, consider yourself blessed to have a sparkling kitchen when she leaves.

DearAbby.comDear AbbyP.O. Box 69440Los Angeles, CA 90069Andrews McMeel Syndication
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A regional beer in the United States isn't sold in Texas, but some folks on social media hope that will change.

On the east coast of the country, particularly in Pennsylvania, Yuengling is an old reliable. The beer label (with six varieties) is beloved by many and has a working class tradition as a hearty beer.

RELATED: You can't buy America's most popular craft beer in Texas

Think of it as the Shiner of Pennsylvania.

A recent tweet from the brand mentioned Texas among other states, leading some in the beer world to ask if this regional favorite might dip into the Lone Star State.

In the end, the new state to get the beer was announced to be Arkansas, just a state over from Texas.

"We love and appreciate the support from our passionate Yuengling fans across the country. For now, our Texas Yuengling smugglers will need to keep smuggling," said Jessica Seiders, the brewery's communications manager.

Yuengling currently focuses distribution on the mid-Atlantic states and the southeastern U.S. The closest state to Texas with a distributor is Alabama. Its flagship offering, Yuengling Traditional Lager, is a medium-body brew.

The addition of the brew to taps in Texas would surely make some transplants feel home again. It remains to be seen if Texas will be the state or at least one of the new states to welcome it onto tap walls and stores.

If you are west of the Mississippi, you're not going to find their beer. According to its website it's only found in 21 states.

For now, Texans thirsty for Yuengling will have to sit tight.

"A combination of factors weigh in when it comes to which states where we can expand. Our brewing capacity is the primary factor," said Seiders. "Over the past years, we've added capacity to enter new states like Mississippi and Louisiana, and now Arkansas."

"Someday, we hope to get to Texas," she said.

Founded in 1829 by German immigrant David Gottlob Yuengling, its Pottsville, PA is known as the country's oldest operating brewery. It's in the United States National Register of Historic Places.

RELATED: Texas Beer Refinery offers beer as reward in burglary case

Yuengling built the brewery in Pottsville to serve the region's expanding German beer-drinking population. His first year of production yielded 600 barrels. It now produces as much as 600,000 barrels annually.

Now Playing: Pizza Hut may soon start delivering beer and wine... and has already started testing the service in Arizona. Phoenix-based customers can order six packs of Budweiser, Bud Light and Shocktop. The company plans on adding wine in January. Phoenix was selected to test the market given that several locations already serves alcohol. Video: Wibbitz

During Prohibition, it survived by opening a creamery (open until 1985), producing legal near-beer with 0.5 percent alcohol, an alcohol-free children's version and a two-percent alcohol elixir available only at pharmacies.

D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. is owned and operated by Richard Yuengling, Jr., a fifth generation owner.

All Yuengling products are produced at three company-owned breweries, two in Pottsville and one in Tampa, Florida.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. He's an intolerable native Texan with too much ink in his skin and too much brisket stuck in his teeth.
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Catholic Health Initiatives, the owner of St. Luke's Health System, and Dignity Health have merged, the two Catholic institutions announced Thursday.

The agreement will create the largest non-profit health system in the country.

"We are joining together to create a new Catholic health system, one that is positioned to accelerate the change from sick-care to well-care across the United States," Kevin E. Lofton, CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives, said in a statement. "Our new organization will have the talent, depth, breadth, and passion to improve the health of every person and community we serve."

Now Playing: Many businesses are looking to expand with monumental deals and acquisitions. Video: Houston Chronicle

Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Dignity, added that "by combining our ministries and building upon our shared mission, we will expand our commitment to meeting the needs of all people with compassion, regardless of income, ethnicity, or language. "We foresee an incredible opportunity to expand each organization's best practices to respond to the evolving health care environment and deliver high-quality, cost-effective care."

The new entity will comprise 139 hospitals and employ 159,000 people. Its combined revenue will be $28. 4 billion.

It is still unclear exactly what the merger will mean for CHI's Texas division, which includes St. Luke's in Houston. Catholic Health Initiatives acquired the venerable Houston hospital system in 2013.
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A thief got a foul surprise when he found dirty diapers in a package left on Angie Boliek's porch.

Boliek told Chron.com that she decided to leave her son's soiled diaper as bait for an unknown thief in early December after a package of his Christmas pajamas were stolen from her porch.

PROTECTING YOUR GIFTS: Here's how consumers can sidestep package thieves this holiday season

"I put it out on Sunday morning and it was gone by Monday afternoon," Boliek said. "The police thought it was hilarious and awesome."

Now Playing: Walmart and Amazon have similar programs in the works that will allow delivery people to enter customers' homes when they are not there. while this sounds like an ideal option to prevent packages being stolen, it does raise some concerns about privacy violations. at the end of the day, it is still a stranger coming into your house. To help make customers feel more comfortable, it is rumored that the devise will have a built in camera, so you can watch the delivery person enter your house. Video: Wochit

Boliek said people suggested putting in explosives or other items that could hurt potential thieves, but that isn't her aim. While she wants to deter future thefts, she isn't looking to harm anyone.

"I'm going to get cameras up and leave another decoy package," the Oregon woman said. The hope is to catch future thieves should they target her porch ever again.

NOW WHAT?: Here's what you can do if your Amazon package got stolen

Boliek said a package with a beer opener asking her husband to be the best man in his friend's wedding also has been stolen from her porch.

In addition to cameras, having packages delivered to your work is one way to circumvent thieves. Another way is to let neighbors know that you're expecting a package and asking them to watch out for them.

Scroll through the gallery above to see some of the everyday items that are stolen from stores.





Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter.
Alex Brandon/STF

WASHINGTON - Americans are signing up in growing numbers for the Affordable Care Act's subsidized health insurance, the government said Wednesday. But with enrollment season cut in half and just over a week to go, experts say the final tally will likely fall short.

About 3.6 million people signed up through Dec. 2 in states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That's about 20 percent higher than the comparable period last year.
Visitors to Jesse H. Jones experienced traditions of earlier times as the homestead came to life with 19th-century holiday customs at the annual Old-Fashioned Christmas celebration.

Festivities included music, holiday crafts, tree lighting, wassail and cookies and an early visit from Saint Nicholas. The Kingwood High School Madrigals performed as well as the North Harris County Dulcimer Society of Houston.
Courtesy photo

Seven Riverwood Middle School students were surprised with a WorldStrides trip to Washington, D.C. WorldStrides is a travel organization that helps create and arrange educational trips for students in over 85 countries.

WorldStrides recognized that students in the area had been through a lot recently. Students affected by Hurricane Harvey were nominated to join WorldStrides on a Hurricane Healing trip to Washington, D.C., in February. Their hope is to allow the students to experience a special trip away from home and to ignite a passion for learning.
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When her daughter's ex-husband admitted to the brutal Christmastime slaying that shook League City, Stephanie Lieber Johnson thought it would help bring closure.

Instead, almost a year later she's fighting the accused killer's family for time with her grandson, who has autism. She filed an appeal this week after a judge ruled against her.

"There is no fit parent in the whole scenario, and basically the murderer shouldn't be able to have any say-so in this," said attorney Stefanie Gonzalez, who is representing the victim's mother in her bid for visitation rights and conservatorship.

But a lawyer for the boy's paternal grandfather said the child "has had enough" and said it was "for a reason" the victim's mother was not previously named as conservator.

BACKGROUND:League City man confesses to killing ex-wife to 'put her out of her misery'

Shaun Hardy allegedly confessed to killing 30-year-old Anne-Christine Johnson in his League City home. The 32-year-old was arrested after officers found her body stashed in the garage, covered in dark plastic and surrounded by scented candles.

The couple had a turbulent relationship in the years leading up to Johnson's death, filing protective orders against one another, including one in which the waitress said she feared for her life and recounted an alleged assault. But when the pair divorced in 2015, they agreed to name Hardy's father as the sole managing conservator should anything happen to both parent.

So when Johnson was killed and Hardy jailed on the Galveston County murder charge, care for their 6-year-old special needs son fell to the grandfather.

Initially, the slain woman's mother, Johnson, was able to get a single supervised visit. But then she decided to take legal action and formally file for visitation rights in March.

"This was an uphill battle," Gonzalez said. In part, that's because Johnson has no standing in the case. But in part, it's because there's no indication the boy's grandfather is any way unfit, the Houston-based lawyer said.

Kathleen McCumber, who is representing the grandfather, stressed that other family members have been allowed access to the boy. "He is a really good guy trying to raise this kid under horrible circumstances," she said.

OUT:League City man accused in ex-wife's grisly slaying released on $1 million bond

And, although Hardy has been out on bail since August - months after his family sold the home that was the crime scene - McCumber said he lives separately and has not been permitted to see the boy.

Though a county court judge slapped down Johnson's plea for visitation, on Monday she filed an appeal in the Court of Appeals for the First District of Texas.

"If we lose, I'm going to aggravate the Texas Legislature about changing the family code on this one," she said.

Meanwhile, Hardy's criminal case is still working its way through the courts. His criminal lawyers have filed motions to suppress the confession and he's due back in court in January.
Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office

The Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office is asking for the public's help locating the killer of a 39 year-old mother of two who was shot multiple times Tuesday night in a southwest Houston neighborhood Tuesday night.

According to investigators, around 7:40 p.m. Fort Bend County Sheriff Deputies were dispatched to an area near the intersection of Bissonnet Street and Addicks Clodine Road. They found the body of Lieu Nguyen shot multiple times in her Toyota Camry. The driver's side window had been shattered.
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Those who visit Huffman ISD school campuses this holiday season may notice Christmas trees displaying ornaments that each describe a different family.

These are the district's Giving Trees, an annual initiative to serve community families in need in the community during the holidays.

In past years, individuals were asked to donate individual items.

"It's been the same up until this year," said Angela Rhodes, a coordinator for the initiative. "We changed it this year because of the need from Harvey. We knew many more families are in need having been displaced, losing their homes, their items."

For the 2017 Giving Tree initiative, Huffman ISD has asked organizations, businesses and individuals to adopt families in need who have children enrolled at a Huffman ISD campus. Some infants and toddlers are included as well.

Donors select one of the cards describing families of various sizes from a Huffman ISD campus' Giving Tree.

"Families may have one child, or they may have six children," Rhodes said. "It's up to the donor how much they give - it's whatever they're financially capable of."

Huffman ISD has each recipient family to identify the clothing size, shoe size and two reasonably-priced toys for each of their children. Donors can follow the list exactly, or choose to purchase extra items to donate in addition to the list. Donors contact the family they have adopted to set up plans to deliver the donation.

Interested donors should contact any of the Huffman ISD campuses' counselors. Contact information for each campus can be found through the district website at www.huffmanisd.net.

Rhodes requests donors contact campuses before school lets out for Christmas break on Dec. 21.

Huffman ISD identified families who may be in need based on documentation the district gathered after Hurricane Harvey. More than 300 letters were sent to those families who then chose whether to accept or decline the invitation to be recipients of the Giving Tree.

Rhodes estimates approximately 150 families are Giving Tree recipients so far this year.

Some of the recipient families are referrals. Rhodes expects families may continue contacting the district requesting assistance up through the final days of the Giving Tree initiative.

"Myself and the counselors knew there'd be such a need from the hurricane, which is why we changed it this year to adopting a family, instead of donating just one item," Rhodes said.

Rhodes said the district understands not everyone is able to adopt an entire family.

People are welcome to donate individual items, gift cards, make a monetary donation, or pair up with other individuals and organizations for the Giving Tree initiative.

Ultimately, she said, it's all for the children.

"Nobody wants to see a child go without Christmas," Rhodes said.

For more information about the Giving Tree, visit http://www.huffmanisd.net/apps/news/article/788551.
The Shenandoah Police Department is asking Christmas shoppers to be vigilant after making holiday purchases.

Shenandoah Assistant Police Chief Barry Gresham said the holidays give would-be thieves double the opportunity to snatch up thousands of dollars' worth of Christmas gifts from distracted shoppers.

"It's the holiday season and the criminal element know that people are out there with cash, their credit cards and gift cards shopping for Christmas presents," Gresham said. "Naturally, they are going to step up their efforts to burglarize vehicles."

Shenandoah and The Woodlands area are "target-rich environments," with shopping centers, malls, electronic stores and clothing boutiques, that people are drawn to this time of the year, including tourists and savvy shoppers looking for a great deal that a store downtown might not offer, Gresham said.

More Information The 12 Days of Shopping Safety from the Shenandoah Police Department DO be aware of your surroundings at all times. Criminals often target people who are distracted or preoccupied. DO minimize shopping at night or alone. DO avoid wearing expensive jewelry. DO avoid carrying large amounts of cash. When possible keep cash in your front pocket or an inside pocket. DON'T keep a wallet, credit cards or cash in a backpack. Carry a wallet in your front pants pocket or coat breast pocket. The rear pants pocket is the easiest to pick. DO carry your purse close to your body, and in front where you can see it. Place one end in the palm of your hand and the other in the bend of the elbow. Cover the clasp or flap with your hand or forearm. DON'T overload yourself with packages. Maintain clear visibility and freedom of motion. DO beware of strangers approaching you for any reason. "Con-artists" may try various methods of distracting you with the intention of taking your money or belongings. DON'T leave your handbag over the back of a chair, on the floor, or unattended (e.g. in restaurants, when paying for items, etc.). DON'T leave belongings unattended (e.g. in shopping carts, on the floor, etc.). DON'T resist if someone tries to take any of your belongings. DON'T chase someone who robs you, they may have a weapon. Instead call 911. See More Collapse

"Unfortunately, 90 percent of the crime that happens, happens to visitors," Gresham said, noting that criminals know how to spot tourists or folks who are not from the area.

In a recent Shenandoah Police Department newsletter titled "The 12 Days of Shopping Safety" sent out to residents, police officials urged shoppers to always be aware of their surroundings and to "try to minimize shopping at night or alone."

"You have to remember that the night time or the darker hours give criminals a concealment factor where they are less likely to be observed by law enforcement and their victims," Gresham said.

In many cases, thieves will sit in front of a store waiting for shoppers to leave to take their purchases back to the car, he said. In many cases, people will put their newly-bought presents into their car and then go out for dinner, he added.

"And that gives them an opportunity to break into your car, while you're eating," Gresham said. "It's much better to take your items home, because they are more likely to steal while you're in a restaurant than to follow you home, although anything is possible."

While crime in The Woodlands area is relatively low, officials acknowledge that burglaries of motor vehicles in the third quarter increased by 16 percent, according to a Montgomery County Sheriff's Office report presented to the township Board of Directors in October by Montgomery County sheriff's Capt. Allison Allen.

In a previous The Woodlands Villager article, sheriff's officials reported that 61 percent of those burglaries involved unlocked cars or cars where items were in plain view.

"Don't go shopping and then leave $15,000 worth of gifts in your vehicle and expect it to be there when you get back," Gresham said.

Shenandoah police officials also advise shoppers to not resist anyone attempting to take property from you.

"No property item is worth your life," Gresham said. "I would much rather give them my $100 or $200 or even my purse, than to be shot or stabbed. Each person has to make that decision for themselves. If you're protecting your child or your family, well then all bets are off."

Gresham said the best thing that recently-burglarized victims can do is to "be a good witness."

Being a good witness entails several things, including getting a description of the suspect, a license plate number, the make and model of the car and be observant when walking back to your car after a shopping spree, he said.

And while burglars might have double the opportunity to steal from consumers this holiday season, law enforcement will have double the opportunity to catch them, Gresham said.

Police have ramped up prevention efforts, he noted, with hundreds of hours of overtime approved, agencies have increased officer patrol units and unmarked cars patrolling the community.
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Six of 36 men arrested in a December child sex crime sting were indicted Thursday on felony charges Thursday.

Raymond Ybarra, 41, Alfonso Ruiz, 27, Sadam Castellanos-Reyes, 23, and Kyle Storie, 31, face second-degree felony online solicitation of a minor charges Thursday. Carlos Valdez, 29, faces a second-degree felony criminal attempted sexual assault of a child charge, while Adam Rivera, 25, has a charge of second-degree felony aggravated sexual assault of a child.

All could serve up to 20 years in prison, if convicted.

The six were arrested during a special Internet Crimes Against Children sting in fall and winter 2016, a part of what prosecutors dubbed Operation Safe Holiday. Three dozen men were arrested in the sting, and almost all of them have been indicted by a grand jury.

Now Playing: Houston has long been known as a major hub for human and sex trafficking. Video: John-Henry Perera

See all of those indicted or convicted from the sting operation in the photos above.

The ICAC Task Force consists of officers from the Conroe Police Department, all five of the Montgomery County constable's offices, the District Attorney's Office, Homeland Security Investigations, Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Attorney General's Office.

Other, unrelated Montgomery County grand jury indictments for April 13:

Richard Jackson, assault family strangulation

Anthony Amador, assault family strangulation

Nicholas Brown, sexual assault of a child

Austin Gillioun, aggravated sexual assault of a child

Gregory Whale, assault family strangulation

Nelson Arieta, online solicitation of a minor

Justin Balli, online solicitation of a minor

Isauro Flores Jr., criminal attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child

Austin Reyes, criminal attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child

Alexis Castillo, online solicitation of a minor
An interactive map pulling together data from government agencies is tracking the fierce wind-driven fires blazing uncontrollably across Southern California.

You can actually zoom in to see whether a fire ran down a specific street and pinpoint an address to determine how many miles away a fire is burning.

REVIEW: Best air purifiers for the money

The aggregation map produced by the National Interagency Fire Center draws the dispatches of fire agencies and departments across the country, NASA and NOAA satellite imagery and data collected by planes with infrared thermal imagery that detects heat.

The result is a resource that uses red, orange and yellow dots to show fires' hot spots and perimeters to depict burn areas.

"Just because a place is within a perimeter doesn't mean everything in that perimeter has burned," Sean Triplett, a geospatial engineer with the NIFC says.

He explains that when you get wind-driven fires like the ones burning in Southern California, they act like tornadoes: "You'll have one side of the block that has burned, and another that has not."

RELATED MAP: Also check out the San Francisco Chronicle's interactive Southern California fire map, based on technology developed during the Wine Country fires

The perimeters are updated as firefighters using GPS technology load data into their mobile devices and overnight when airplanes fly over burn areas.

"There's a lag time in the updates, probably about 12 hours on average," says Triplett.

The satellite data is updated about every four to six hours.

Triplett says the Southern California map is solid as Ventura County has a "very capable data system" and "we can share data back and forth easily."

Go directly to the NIFC's map site.

Wind-driven fires have raced through California communities for the second time in two months, leaving hundreds of homes feared lost and uprooting tens of thousands of people.

The biggest and most destructive of several wildfires burning in Southern California has scorched more than 101 square miles.

State fire authorities say the fire burning in Ventura County about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles is also considered a threat to 12,000 structures Wednesday.

Dozens of homes have burned since the fire erupted Monday amid fierce Santa Ana winds.

A new fire burning among ridges and canyons on the west side of Los Angeles has also burned several homes while snarling morning commuter traffic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Houston police are investigating after a man was fatally shot several blocks from Texas Southern University.

About 6:50 p.m Wednesday, the unidentified 25-year-old victim was shot in the parking lot of a convenience store on the 2600 block of Wheeler in the Third Ward, witnesses told the Houston Police Department.

The victim was transported to Ben Taub hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

In a news release, HPD described the suspects as two black males in their early 20s, one wearing a leather jacket and the other a light blue hoodie.

The motive is unknown.

Police are encouraging anyone with information about the shooting to call the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
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A Houston federal judge has denied an emergency request by three Texas churches for access to funds to rebuild sanctuaries damaged during Hurricane Harvey in a case that tests the constitutional boundaries separating church and state.

U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller denied the churches' motion Thursday for a temporary injunction to apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency grants.

The case will proceed to trial on the question of whether nonprofit religious organizations can use federal money to rebuild church sanctuaries. The churches' argument relies on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that found the Missouri state government could not deny funds to a church group that applied for federal community grants to improve a playground.

Churches in three hard hit communities  Harvest Family Church in Cypress, First Assembly of God in Rockport and Hi-Way Tabernacle in Cleveland  filed the suit in September, claiming the government's disaster relief policy violated the Constitution's establishment clause, denying faith groups the right to apply for funds.

Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at Becket, the nonprofit religious liberty law firm that brought the case, said upholding the government's stance was particularly grim given the time of year.

"FEMA is turning into the Grinch who stole Christmas," he said. "By continuing to discriminate against churches, FEMA is sending the message that churches are not full members of the community, when they are in fact the beating heart of disaster recovery in Texas and elsewhere."

The churches promptly appealed Miller's ruling on the injunction Thursday to the Fifth U.S. Circuit.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the decision.

Timing not 'ripe'

A range of groups that support the separation of church and state were pleased with Miller's opinion, according to Alex Luchenitser, associate legal director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief last week along with five other organizations.

"The Court correctly recognized that the Constitution does not require the government to grant churches tax dollars to rebuild their places of worship," Luchenitser said. "This ruling protects the freedom of conscience of taxpayers by ensuring that they do not have to subsidize religions to which they do not subscribe."

He added, "It also protects the religious freedom of churches, because governmental funding can result in improper governmental interference in religious matters."

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison had given the government a Dec. 1 deadline to respond to the churches' request to apply for relief funds, which have previously been denied to religious groups seeking to rebuild houses of worship after natural disasters.

Ellison recused himself, and the case was transferred to Miller.

A Justice Department attorney said in briefs and oral argument that the timing was not "ripe," and the government could not take a position about the churches getting the money. Top officials at FEMA were proposing a change in the law but those changes were awaiting administrative review, the lawyer said.

In the courtroom and filings, lawyers for the churches had asked the court to move swiftly, while FEMA remained in this holding pattern.

The lawsuit leans heavily on a June opinion by Justice John Roberts in which the Supreme Court found a Lutheran church in Missouri that ran a preschool and day care should not be denied access to state grants that pay for rubberized ground coverings made from reclaimed tires. The court found that excluding the church from an available public benefit due to its religious status amounted to discrimination against the group's freedom of religion.

No firm stance from DOJ

Roberts wrote that Missouri's denial did not amount to "chains or torture on account of religion."

"The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees," the chief justice said. "But the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand."

The Justice Department has not taken a firm stance opposing the Texas churches request. But the friend-of-the-court brief by Americans United argues that the facilities the churches intend to rebuild are explicitly used for religious activities and should therefore not be granted government relief funds just because they are used for community service activities.
A Wisconsin man was sentenced Thursday to more than a decade in federal prison after he was caught in a sting in which he apparently believed he would be having a lengthy rendezvous with a 4-year-old girl.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal ordered Benjamin David Sherwood, 42, to serve just over 11 years in prison to be followed by a lifetime on supervised release.

Sherwood pleaded guilty Aug. 23 to traveling with the intent to engage in illicit contact and enticing a minor.

According to court documents, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigation's cyber unit encountered Sherwood during a 2015 undercover operation in an chat room dedicated to discussion and shared images about abuse of children and infants.

The agent identified herself as the mother of a 2-year-old named Lexi who was offering up her fictional daughter for exploitation. During a series of chat, email, text and phone conversations with the agent between August 10, 2015, and May 12, 2017, Sherwood expressed interest in traveling from La Crosse, Wis., to Houston for several days to have sexual contact with the child, according to court documents. He stated during these conversations that he did not have relationships with adult women because he was only aroused by small children. He also stated that he knew it was illegal to cross state lines to have sex with a minor.

The sting happened in 2017 after Sherwood began pressing for the trip to happen, at which time the federal agent said the fictitious child was now 4. He sent an image of his rental car on May 11. The following day he sent a message saying, "I'm very excited I can barely stand it. Finally get to love on your baby Angel."

He went on to say had brought blankets and a video to distract the child during the sex acts, documents say. Federal agents maintained surveillance on Sherwood as he stopped at a Babies R Us in Houston and checked into the hotel where they'd planned to meet, according to an affidavit.

Sherwood was arrested at the designated meeting place.

During a search of the hotel room, agents found pacifiers and lubricant on the nightstand, court documents say. In a closet, they found stuffed animals, children's outfits and a pink sign that said "sweet baby girl."
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Houston religious and community leaders on Wednesday urged FEMA to extend by 60 days the deadline for flood-related appeals as many residents are unaware of how to navigate the process in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

"How are our families going to recover at this rate of response from FEMA? We do not expect FEMA to pay for all, or even most of the damage. But the amounts that they are giving don't even allow for homes to be habitable," said Rhonda Sepulveda, the communications and government relations coordinator for Catholic Charities.

IMPACT: Staggering Meyerland before and after photos

"The only response is for people to appeal" to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, she said during a Wednesday press conference at Assumption Catholic Church.

Now Playing: FOX 26 News anchor Kaitlin Monte Video: Fox 26 Houston

At the event, members of the Metropolitan Organization, a Houston-based advocacy group, announced they had prepared an information sheet outlining the appeals process and other recovery paths, which leaders will distribute in their communities.

The plea to extend the deadlines comes days after a new survey of Southeast Texas residents showed that many survivors of Hurricane Harvey continue to suffer the effects - including financial losses and mental distress - of the historic late August storm, with the greatest hardship reported by Hispanics, African Americans and people with low income. The survey was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Episcopal Health Foundation

Homeowners currently have 60 days after the decision to file an appeal, and some people, unaware of the process, discarded decision letters necessary for the appeal process, said Sherry Dunlap, of Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. She said an extension is necessary in order to assist those unfamiliar with how to proceed.

According to the survey, 26 percent of those who applied for FEMA assistance following Harvey were approved. and 33 percent said they'd been denied. The remainder said their applications were pending or they simply didn't know the status of their cases. Of those who applied, the study reports that 60 percent were not informed of the appeals process.

Jackie Chandler, spokeswoman for FEMA's Hurricane Harvey response in Texas, told the Washington Post on Monday night that people who are declared ineligible for assistance are always given specific reasons, in a letter, for that determination. "The reason is in their letter. Everybody should know why they are ineligible."

Minister Jacqueline Hailey of New Hope Baptist Church said those most impacted by a lack of knowledge about the appeals process are households with low to middle income, including elderly and non-English speaking populations.

Evelyn Wagner Wright, a member of Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, said she was denied assistance by both her homeowner's insurance and FEMA after her house suffered water and mold damage.

"I have watched the strong elders of my church and my community cry because of lack of resources and their inability to help themselves at this time," Wright said. "I will appeal for assistance and I encourage anyone, anyone who's been denied or given a minimum amount, or insufficient amount, to appeal as well, and appeal now."

"Time flies and the clock is ticking," said the Rev. Simon Bautista of Christ Church Cathedral. "You should appeal and you should do it now."

In addition to calling for a 60-extension of the appeal deadline, TMO is requesting that FEMA assist individuals in filling out paperwork for the appeal process.

"Hurricane Harvey was a very unusual storm," said Father Zanatta Albert of Assumption Catholic Church. "It was a one in 1,000-year event, so we are expecting unusual support from our government in response to the massive damage done by Harvey."
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Literary classics "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Escape from Alcatraz," which tell the fake and true stories of men escaping from prison, were not included in a massive list of books banned in Texas prisons.

The list, obtained by the Dallas Morning News, has stunned the literary world for how arbitrary it seems.

While books like "Where's Waldo? Santa Spectacular" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" were banned, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was not.

WHAT MADE THE LIST: It's Banned Books Week. Which books are challenged or banned most often?

Some of the criteria used in banning books was whether it contains details on manufacturing explosives or weapons or it contains sexual imagery. Books with a binding or cover that could be used to smuggle in contraband were also banned.

"Material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption" were also banned, stated the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's policies.

James LaRue, the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (ALA), felt the list was a disservice to Texas' prison population.

Now Playing: Central Coast libraries are celebrating "Banned Books Week" by encouraging the right to read books that people have demanded be removed from shelves at one point or another. Last year, the books with the most requests to be banned included LGBT characters or content. Video: KSBW

"The common denominator of people in prisons is illiteracy," LaRue told Chron.com Thursday morning. "The problem isn't that they're reading too much. By withholding these books in an arbitrary fashion, they are discouraging people from reading which is the one thing to get a person out of jail and to stay out of jail."

Since 2010, the ALA has been working to raise awareness around lists banning books in U.S. prisons. In a proclamation titled "Prisoners Right to Read," the ALA believes that the suppression of ideas does not prepare inmates for life outside prison.

This perspective was also shared by Anthony Graves, a death row exoneree now living in Houston.

"It's basically up to the administration which books they want to ban," he said. "It think this is just another form of punishment because they get to pick and choose what books they let in."

He agreed that books offering maps or detailed descriptions of how to escape should be banned.

Graves, who spent 18 years behind bars before charges were dropped in 2010, recently penned a book himself, due to be released in January.

Making sure his death row memoir, "Infinite Hope," would be allowed inside the system was one of his considerations in writing it.

"I made sure that it wasn't very controversial, that it was just the truth," he said. "The truth should never be banned."

To read the Houston Chronicle's complete story, visit here.

Fernando Alfonso III is a digital reporter at Chron.com. You can read more of his stories here and follow him on twitter at @fernalfonso. If you also like surreal GIFs and Polaroids, go here and here.


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WASHINGTON - Doctors treating the U.S. embassy victims of suspected attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain hearing, vision, balance and memory damage, the Associated Press has learned.

It's the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.

Loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing had led investigators to suspect "sonic attacks." But officials are now carefully avoiding that term. The sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage, said three U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. They weren't authorized to discuss it publicly and demanded anonymity.

Physicians, FBI investigators and U.S. intelligence agencies have spent months trying to piece together the puzzle in Havana, where the U.S. says 24 U.S. government officials and spouses fell ill starting last year in homes and later in some hotels. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday he's "convinced these were targeted attacks," but the U.S. doesn't know who's behind them. A few Canadian Embassy staffers also got sick.

Doctors still don't know how victims ended up with the white matter changes, nor how exactly those changes might relate to their symptoms. U.S. officials wouldn't say whether the changes were found in all 24 patients.

But acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain's white matter tracts, said Elisa Konofagou, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia University who is not involved in the government's investigation.

"I would be very surprised," Konofagou said, adding that ultrasound in the brain is used frequently in modern medicine. "We never see white matter tract problems."

Cuba has adamantly denied involvement, and calls the Trump administration's claims "deliberate lies."

The case has plunged the U.S. medical community into uncharted territory. Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness. After extensive testing and trial therapies, they're developing the first protocols to screen cases and identify the best treatments - even as the FBI investigation struggles to identify a culprit, method and motive.

Doctors treating the victims wouldn't speak to the AP, yet their findings are expected to be discussed in an article being submitted to the Journal of the American Medical Association, U.S. officials said.
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WASHINGTON - His once-promising political career in shambles, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken appeared on the verge of resigning after fellow Democrats led by female senators abandoned him Wednesday over the mounting allegations of sexual misconduct that are roiling Capitol Hill.

But his departure was not certain. A tweet from his Twitter account late Wednesday said no final decision had been made and he was still talking with his family.

A majority of the Senate's Democrats, including more than a half-dozen women, called on the two-term lawmaker to get out after another woman emerged Wednesday saying he forcibly tried to kiss her in 2006. That brought to at least seven the number of women accusing him of sexual impropriety.

Franken, the former comedian who made his name on "Saturday Night Live," scheduled an announcement for Thursday. Democratic senators said they expected their liberal colleague to resign.

"Enough is enough," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. "We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is OK, none of it is acceptable and we, as elected leaders, should absolutely be held to a higher standard."

Schumer weighs in

Gillibrand was the first to call for Franken's resignation on Wednesday, but a torrent of Democrats quickly followed.

"I'm shocked and appalled by Sen. Franken's behavior," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state. "It's clear to me that this has been a deeply harmful, persistent problem and a clear pattern over a long period of time. It's time for him to step aside."

Late in the day Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York added his voice.

"I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately," Schumer said.

The resignation demands came in rapid succession even though Franken on Wednesday vehemently denied a new accusation that came from a former Democratic congressional aide, who said he tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The woman, who was not identified, told Politico that Franken pursued her after her boss had left and she was collecting her belongings. She said she ducked to avoid his lips, and that Franken told her: "It's my right as an entertainer."

Announcement scheduled

Franken, in a statement, said the idea he would claim such conduct as a right was "preposterous."

But it was soon clear that his position had become untenable, and his office later issued a statement saying, "Senator Franken will be making an announcement tomorrow. More details to come."

Fellow Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who spoke to Franken, wrote on Twitter, "I am confident he will make the right decision."

Franken already faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into previous claims by several other women that he groped them or sought to forcibly kiss them.
WASHINGTON  The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance three of President Donald Trump's federal appeals court nominees, including two jurists from Texas.

By 11-9 party-line votes, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett and former Texas Solicitor James Ho will now be considered by the full Senate as nominees to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas.
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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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
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Agents from three federal agencies visited Cleveland City Hall Wednesday night as part of a criminal investigation, according to an IRS spokesman.

Agents from the IRS, FBI and Department of Housing and Urban Development were present at the city's Lakeside Avenue offices for "official business," according to IRS spokesman Craig Casserly.

Details of what brought the agents to City Hall after hours were not immediately known, nor was the focus of the agencies' investigation. Casserly said he could not release additional details about the agents' work because court records are sealed.

Cleveland FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson also confirmed in an emailed statement Thursday morning that agents from the three federal agencies were at City Hall "after business hours for authorized law enforcement activity." Like Casserly, she said she could not provide more information because of sealed records.

A cleveland.com reporter witnessed an unmarked black SUV leave the City Hall parking garage about 11:15 p.m.

City spokesman Dan Williams said in a statement Thursday morning that "it is an ongoing investigation by federal agencies. While we do not discuss ongoing investigations we will fully cooperate."

Cleveland.com reporter Justin Madden contributed to this story. This story was updated after receiving statement from the Cleveland FBI and the city.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - In the past three years, University Hospitals increased its economic contribution to the state by $3 billion, according to a study Silverlode Consulting Corp. completed for UH.

The health system contributed $7.7 billion in 2016, up from $4.7 billion in 2013 - the last year studied.

"Research has shown there is a direct correlation between population wealth and population health and for this reason, our commitment to the communities we serve transcends the walls of our health system," UH CEO Tom Zenty said in a news release.

Heidi Gartland, vice president of government and community relations for UH, attributes the increase to the hospitals' growth, acquisitions and efforts to buy and hire locally.

UH, now in its 150th year, went on a buying spree the past few years, acquiring UH Elyria, UH Parma, UH Portage, UH Samaritan and UH St. John medical centers.

"These were many organizations that, quite frankly, were either going to consolidate with another institution or financially were not going to exist," Gartland said.

UH supported 63,410 direct and indirect jobs in 2016 and $4 billion in labor income, up 37 percent and 82 percent, respectively, from 2013. In those three years, the system also spent more than $305 million on land, new buildings and building improvements in the state, creating 1,800 direct and indirect construction jobs and generating nearly $91 million of labor income.

"We don't just look at ourselves as a healthcare institution; we are an anchor in the community," Gartland said.

UH's efforts to buy and hire locally started with its Vision 2010 plan, which kicked off a major $1-billion building initiative that created UH Seidman Cancer Center and UH Ahuja Medical Center. Through those projects, the system focused on hiring local companies and purchasing local products.

"That focus on local investing really has an impact on the community," Gartland said. "There is a multiplier effect when that dollar stays in the region."

The hospital also started a number of workforce development initiatives, such as Step Up to UH, which helps those in high poverty areas get jobs. Now, UH is working to extend those efforts beyond UH Cleveland Medical Center.

Gartland said she doesn't know what UH's growth will look like during the next three years.

"I know we'll be there," Gartland said. "I don't know that it will be as rapid of a growth, but I don't think in 2013 we could have predicted we would be where we are in 2017."

In 2013, economic impact reports also were completed for the Cleveland Clinic and the MetroHealth System. Those reports showed the Clinic's economic impact to the state to be $12.6 billion and MetroHealth's impact to be $797 million.

This year, Cleveland State University estimated the potential benefit from MetroHealth's campus transformation plan, set to be complete in 2023, will make the system's economic impact $873.3 million.
NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - This Cleveland suburb profited to the tune of $1.2 million from its mayor's court operations from 2013 to 2016 and stands to net in excess of $200,000 from its court fees in 2017.

That's a lot of money for a city with an annual general-fund budget of about $20 million and little discretionary money with which to buy an extra police car, perhaps, or to improve a road.

It's also revenue North Olmsted never would have received had it not made the controversial decision five years ago to create a mayor's court to deal with traffic violators and minor criminals.

Today, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer take a look at the North Olmsted Mayor's Court as part of Justice For All, a series that advocates for criminal justice reform. The series already has sparked broad-based reform efforts in Cuyahoga County, including some calls for consolidation of municipal courts.

By creating the mayor's court, North Olmsted Mayor Kevin Kennedy fulfilled a campaign pledge to examine all the city's operations from a business perspective. After all, he's a businessman, having started a successful computer company in Cleveland.

But good-government advocates would argue that courts are not businesses, or at least should not be in the business of making money. The duty of the court and its judges is to dispense justice in a fashion that is fair, equitable and not prejudiced by a mayor's need to balance the city budget.

The move also aggravated officials at Rocky River Municipal Court, which prior to 2013 handled all of North Olmsted's traffic violations and criminal misdemeanors and received all the related court fees that now go to the city.

Kennedy makes no apologies for his decision to create the court, however. He did his homework, he said, analyzing the cost structure at the Rocky River Municipal Court. He concluded that a mayor's court could provide swifter justice with far fewer people. Furthermore, why should Rocky River benefit from the ticket-writing efforts of North Olmsted police officers, he said.

"It's cheaper and its way faster," Kennedy said in an interview with cleveland.com. "We get them in and out of here at night."

While Kennedy is happy with the performance of his court, the folks over in Rocky River are troubled.

Since its inception, the North Olmsted Mayor's Court has siphoned off thousands of easy-to-process, high-revenue traffic cases, while leaving Rocky River Municipal Court to handle cases that originate in North Olmsted, but are more costly to resolve - cases involving domestic violence or a second driving-under-the-influence charge, for example.

That means defendants from other suburbs served by the court are unfairly picking up the tab for the court to handle North Olmsted cases, some of which involve indigent defendants who are unable to pay fines or court fees.

The municipal court, which also serves Bay Village, Fairview Park, Rocky River, Westlake and sections of the Cleveland Metroparks, has raised court fees for traffic violations from $125 at the end of 2012 to $148 today, in part to offset the lost revenue, Court Clerk Deborah Comery said. Those fees include a $20 charge to help pay off debt on the municipal court building.

The North Olmsted Mayor's Court also charges court fees of $95, though the court incurs far fewer expenses than the municipal court. A magistrate holds hearings only once a week, on Thursdays starting at 5 p.m. and the court has no courthouse to maintain. Hearings are held in the City Council chambers at North Olmsted City Hall. And many cases are never heard in court. Defendants can simply pay their fine and court costs to a clerk during weekday business hours.

How lucrative is the mayor's court?

The biggest revenue year for the mayor's court was 2015, when the court handled 9,877 cases. The court took in $566,320 in courts costs and fees, and after subtracting the court's actual expenses of $208,332, it cleared $357,987.

That money flows into the city's general fund, as do the fines that North Olmsted collects on the cases it handles in mayor's court. Money from fines unlike court costs, has always been passed along by the municipal court to the city where the offenses occurred.

Kennedy acknowledges that fees derived from the mayor's court help him balance the city budget in times of declining aid from the state. But he said he does not pressure the police department to write tickets to generate money.

Another upside to the court, he said, is that defendants pay less for their indiscretions, in part because they are not charged the $20 fee to pay off courthouse debt.

But why should two people convicted of the same crime pay different fines and fees simply because one must appear in a municipal court and the other a mayor's court? How does that constitute equal justice?

That's one reason why mayor's courts are considered by good-government advocates to be detrimental, but there are other reasons. Before his death several years ago, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Thomas Moyer was on an unfulfilled quest to outlaw mayor's courts. Moyer believed the courts create a conflict of interest by allowing cities to benefit financially from their law enforcement efforts.

Tim Young, director of the office of the Ohio public defender, believes mayor's courts are improper because they are administered by the executive branch of government, not the judicial branch, and that politics can creep into the way cases are handled.

The fact that trained magistrates rather than mayors typically fill the role of judge, does not make it okay, Young said.

"The magistrate is directly hired not by a court but by the executive branch of the government," he said.

Young also shares Moyer's concerns about cities with mayor's courts helping to balance their budget on the backs of defendants.

"Not all of them, but many of them, have lost their way and become money generators," he said.
CLEVELAND -- A Cuyahoga County judge ruled Thursday in favor of Cleveland and other cities challenging a state law that restricted municipalities' ability to control the placement of wireless cell equipment in public spaces.

Common Pleas Judge Steven E. Gall found amendments to Senate Bill 331, signed by Gov. John Kasich in December 2016, violated the Ohio Constitution's rule limiting bills to a single subject. Cleveland officials called the ruling a win, even though it struck down a provision city council members sought to block an effort to raise the city's minimum wage.

The Ohio Attorney General's office has not yet decided whether it will appeal Gall's decision, a spokesman said Thursday. The state has appealed similar rulings in Franklin and Hamilton counties; a Summit County court ruled in the state's favor.

The bill began as a way to prevent local governments from enacting stricter rules on how pet stores could obtain dogs and cats and was dubbed the "Petland bill." It became a vehicle in last year's lame duck session for several seemingly unrelated amendments.

Those amendments included a provision allowing cellular companies to place micro-wireless or "small cell" equipment such as antennae and boxes on street signs, traffic signals, utility poles and other public structures. The bill also prohibited municipalities from setting a local minimum wage and work conditions and banned bestiality.

"Prohibitions against pet sales, animal fighting and sexual acts with animals share nothing in common with small cell wireless facilities and equipment or statewide minimum wage provisions and work condition policies," Gall wrote in his opinion. "Such a combination is a classic example of logrolling which is the exact practice the one-subject rule seeks to prevent and is contrary to fair legislative process."

Gall said the animal welfare-provisions should remain law, but the micro-wireless, minimum wage and work conditions amendments should not.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson opposed the micro-wireless part of the bill and the city, along with more than 80 other Ohio municipalities, sued the state. Similar lawsuits were filed in Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Summit counties.

"The bill was an attempt to erode our constitutional rights as a city," Jackson said in a statement. "This is a victory for Cleveland and every municipality that would have been impacted by this bill had it not been struck down."

In June, a Franklin County judge also struck down the law, saying it violated the single-subject rule.



"Fostering good legislation is the reason the Ohio Constitution contains a one-subject provision, and why it requires a single subject to be 'clearly expressed in its title,'" Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Richard A. Frye wrote in his opinion. "Here, a blatant disunity exists between matters engrafted at the last minute on to S.B. 331. No rational reason for their combination can be discerned."

Mobile readers, click here to read the ruling.
KENT, Ohio - The Kent State University community will honor a student who died suddenly with a gospel concert scheduled Thursday evening.

Students and staff members are mourning the death of Devin Moore, a senior journalism major from Cleveland. A Kent State University spokesman declined to release details of Moore's death, but the Record-Courier reported he experienced a medical emergency Wednesday evening at the university's recreation center.

A gospel choir concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in Cartwright Hall at 650 Hilltop Drive, Kent State University spokesman Eric Mansfield said in a statement.

Moore is a Beachwood High School graduate and a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, which named him 2017 4th District Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year, Mansfield said in the statement.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Devin Moore's family, friends and Kent State students as they grieve his tragic passing," Mansfield said.

Students gathered on campus Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil in memory of Moore, the Record-Courier reported.

The university is also offering support and grief counseling. Students and staff members can contact Psychological Services and University Health Services at 330-672-2487 or Dean of Students Dr. Lamar Hylton's office at 330-672-8003 and odos@kent.edu.

Students can also meet with grief counselors Thursday at the Kent Student Center. Services are available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Leader's Lounge and beginning at 4 p.m. in the Student Multicultural Center.
KENT, Ohio -- A student at Kent State University has died, a university official confirmed Wednesday night.

Eric Mansfield, executive director of media relations for KSU, released a statement identifying the student as Devin Moore, a senior majoring in broadcast journalism and a graduate of Beachwood High School.

Mansfield did not say how Moore died. According to the Record Courier, Moore died after a medical emergency just after 7 p.m. Wednesday at the school's recreation center.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Devin Moore's family and members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. as they grieve his tragic passing," Mansfield said in the statement. "Out of respect for his family, we will provide no further information surrounding his death."

Mansfield said counseling is being offered for students.
WASHINGTON -- The number of people in Ohio who were homeless on a January day and night early this year reached a modern low, which suggests advocates, social service agencies and the county and federal government are addressing the problem.

The homeless rate in Ohio dropped by 3 percent in a year, and nearly 20 percent since 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual homelessness report to Congress.

That's in contrast to a small uptick in homelessness nationally, HUD reported. The nation's 0.7 percent increase was driven largely by homeless populations in Los Angeles and New York, a result of unaffordable rents, HUD said.

Nevertheless, the 553,742 people counted as homeless nationally represented a 13 percent national drop since 2010.

Why the drop?

"The system that addresses homelessness has gotten better," said Marcus Roth, communications and development director for the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, or COHHIO.

Economic times are certainly better, which plays a role. "But we also know that more and more of our communities are using funding wisely, and employing best practices," Bill Faith, COHHIO's executive director, said.

He and other advocates say federal, state and local government's concerted focus on the long-term homeless, on people with mental health issues and on homeless veterans is paying off. The Obama administration aimed to end veterans' homelessness by matching an increase in funding with better coordination among federal agencies that deal with housing, health care and social services, and has largely reached that goal in such places as Akron and Dayton.

Similarly, Cuyahoga County in 2002 adopted a Housing First policy to reach people who are chronically homeless -- those who lack housing for most of the year -- and also have behavioral or physical disabilities. The county and advocates who work with it try to provide coordinated services.

But HUD's annual homeless census is not an entirely accurate count, says Chris Knestrick, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

The count of people on the street or staying at shelters and similar facilities in a single 24-hour period in January misses the many people who are staying with friends or couch-surfing because they lack permanent housing, Knestrick said.

And it can be flawed for other reasons.

For example, HUD showed 11,823 people in Ohio were homeless during a point-in-time count in 2014, Roth said. Yet COHHIO found about 61,000 -- about five times the number counted by HUD -- were using emergency shelters, transitional housing and supportive housing at the time.

And as HUD acknowledges, local variations can differ from the national snapshot. For example, HUD's January census showed the number of families with children who are homeless dropped by 5.4 percent nationwide, and it has dropped sharply in Cuyahoga County in recent years, according to the HUD homeless census. Yet there are still far more such families than shelters can house, Knestrick said.

Similarly, even while advocates cite improvements in finding housing for veterans, veteran homelessness went up by 1.5 percent nationally this year. Some perspective helps here: That's a difference of 585 people, and veterans in California accounted for most of them.

While the report to Congress did not break out all cities, a related HUD homelessness assessment did. It put the number of homeless people in Cleveland at 1,727. That was a 21.2 percent drop from 2012, according to COHHIO.

Despite general improvements, and remarkable ones over time, a lack of affordable housing still presents challenges, authorities say. Someone earning the Ohio minimum wage of $8.15 an hour would have to work 57 hours to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment charging fair market rent in the state, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The average renter in Ohio earns more than that: $12.87 an hour. But to afford an average two-bedroom, market-rate apartment without spending more than 30 percent of his or her income, the renter would need to make $15 an hour, the coalition says, and never take an unpaid day off.

Housing advocates say the problem could grow worse under the tax-cut package that Congress could soon pass. Current tax law provides tax credits and incentives, including the use of tax-free bond financing, for developers and private investors who put up low-income housing. The House of Representatives version of the tax plan would end some of these incentives, and the Senate version could change the way they are structured.

Developers and investors would get lower tax rates under the plan. But housing advocates say the loss of incentives specifically for low-income housing could push development toward other, more lucrative projects.
WASHINGTON -- Now that the Senate and House have passed their separate tax-cut plans, a select group of lawmakers will meet behind closed doors to resolve the differences.

Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and booster of the cuts, will be in that group. Republican Senate leaders Wednesday night appointed Portman and several colleagues to meet with House of Representatives counterparts, work through their bills' differences and present a final, combined bill for passage in both chambers.

Excited to serve on a House-Senate conference committee to help finalize the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. We've made important strides toward providing #middleclass tax relief & reforming our tax code. More to do: https://t.co/oIstbNA3F0  Rob Portman (@senrobportman) December 7, 2017

President Donald Trump hopes to have the bill on his desk for signing by Christmas. It is likely to pass both chambers with few Democratic votes.

Since last year, Portman has been among a few key senators behind the scenes shaping the tax package, which he says will help most Ohioans keep more of their pay and spur companies to expand and hire. His prominent leadership now could bring more heat from critics and praise from supporters.

As a member of the conference committee, @senrobportman will get full ownership of the GOP tax bill. ''I'm optimistic that the House and Senate will send a final bill to the presidI'ents desk before Christmas."  MLSchultze (@MLSchultze) December 7, 2017

Critics say the tax cuts are a gift to billionaires, will lead to higher deficits and will prompt subsequent cuts to spending on social safety net programs. They note that the bill Portman is helping craft could actually bring higher taxes in the end for individuals while assuring that corporations keep their lower rates.

Among those critics is Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist who caucuses with the Democrats -- and who will also be on the tax bill committee, as a Democratic conferee.

"Let me be very clear: Both versions of the Senate and the House tax bills are morally grotesque and terrible economic policy," Sanders said in a statement. Sanders said that "as a member of the conference committee, I will do everything I can to defeat these bills."

Portman, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, insists that the Senate version of the bill, which he voted for late last week, calls for expiration of the individual tax cuts strictly for technical reasons and he expects Congress will vote in several years to make all the tax cuts continue.

Democrats are less sure. Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown on Thursday reminded reporters that under Senate budgeting rules, the expected deficits from the tax cuts will require almost immediate spending reductions for Medicare, border security, farm support programs and the Military Retirement Fund.

Portman says that won't happen because the Senate can vote to waive these immediate cuts. Speaking Wednesday to a group of Ohioans who pressed him on this during a constituent meeting in Washington, Portman said the Senate has voted to waive the so-called PAYGO rules repeatedly in recent years and he expects that will happen in this case.

Portman enthusiastically supported the broad outlines of tax cuts even before there was a bill. He says that by reducing the statutory corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and taxing overseas profits in a way similar to that of other developed countries, companies will pump the savings into expansion and jobs, bolstering the economy.

He also says that with individual income taxes also cut, the combined economic impact -- the tax cuts for families along with higher wages and more jobs from the corporate side -- will put $2,375 a year into the pockets of the middle class Ohio family.

That's an estimate from the conservative Tax Foundation, based on assumptions that the tax cuts will spur economic growth and boost wages.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation do not share that level of optimism, particularly over the long run. And like several outside or academic estimates, the CBO and JCT assume slower economic growth, and that means the bill's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts could still leave $1 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years.

Portman says he thinks such an underlying assumption is wrong because it assumes low growth when compared with longterm historic trends.

The Senate and House versions of the tax bill have significant differences, not only in their proposals for new tax brackets but also in what deductions and credits would and would not be changed from current tax law.

For example, the House version would end some tax credits for developers and investors who restore historic buildings and build or renovate in low-income neighborhoods. The House bill would treat tuition assistance for graduate and professional students as if it were income -- a student getting $30,000 a semester in free tuition in exchange for conducting research or teaching would see his or her income for tax purposes go up by that amount -- which universities say could make advanced education unaffordable for many.

Portman says he wants to try to keep those kinds of tax breaks. But the Senate bill found money for keeping them only by making the income tax cuts for individuals phase out in 2025. The corporate cuts would be permanent.

That means under the Senate bill, most individuals and families would see their new tax benefits evaporate. Their taxes would go back up.

Portman says a future Congress would probably to vote to keep the individual cuts.

Similarly, the Senate tax package calls for ending the Affordable Care Act's requirement that nearly every American have health insurance. The House bill does not, although House Republicans are likely to agree to that Senate provision. If people dropped insurance coverage, the government would save money on the subsidies it provides to help them pay for overage. This could drive up premiums and erode the ACA's core principles, but Republicans in both chambers have never liked the ACA.

"We've made important strides toward providing middle-class tax relief and reforming our tax code, and I will continue to work to improve this bill as the House and Senate complete our work," Portman said in a statement. "In 2010, I made a commitment to the people of Ohio that I would help lead an effort to reform our broken tax code and provide relief to families and small businesses, and I intend to keep that commitment."

Other Senate Republican conferees are Republican Sens. Orin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; Mike Enzi of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; John Cornyn of Texas; John Thune of South Dakota; Tim Scott of South Carolina and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Senate Democrats picked Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Patty Murray of Washington, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Tom Carper of Delaware for the conference committee.

House Republicans and Democrats earlier named their conferees. None are from Ohio.
Subir Ghosh

In a new book, Subir Ghosh , Bangalore-based journalist, researcher and writer, quoting an ex-Government of India bureaucrat, has alleged that the former bluechip state public sector undertaking (PSU) Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) has had links with a company that was associated with dubious business concerns mentioned in the infamous Panama Papers. Titled Grand Illusion: The GSPC Disaster and the Gujarat Model, the books writer is a co-author of the controversial Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, which has invited Rs 100 crore defamation suit from the Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). The book was released in Ahmedabad on Thursday.Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta , another co-author of Gas Wars, the book quotes former economic affairs secretary EAS Sarma as writing to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) bringing in the Panama Papers angle, says Ghosh, after the ED did not respond to an earlier plea to investigate into GSPCs alliance with a private company, of which a former Gujarat minister known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a beneficiary.Sarma is quoted as saying, I find more distressing facts about the Gujarat Natural Resources Ltd (GNRL). It was operating through six subsidiaries which include Heramec, Gorlas, Sigma Oil & Gas & Alkor Petro and Overseas.The book says, the GNRL, contrary to its misleading name, is a private limited company and not a state enterprise. Saurabh Patel, a former minister overseeing GSPC, was a beneficiary investor in GNRL. Patel, fighting Gujarat state assembly polls from Vadodara and a BJP chief ministerial aspirant, was mysteriously removed as state energy minister after Vijay Rupani took over the states reins of power last year.Book further quotes Sarma as saying, Both Heramec and Gorlas figure on the website of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Panama Papers, as evident from the enclosed snapshot pictures of that website. The book, however, does not provide the enclosed shapshots.Sarma continued, It is surprising that the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) should assign eight oil blocks to [the] GSPC knowing well that Heramec is a 30% partner in Kanawara, North Kathana, Allora, Unawa, North Balol and a partner with Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) in CB-ONN-2004/1, CB-ONN-2004/4 (see pages 71 and 72 of the enclosed GNRL annual report for 201516).Sarma underlined, Assignment of such a large number of hydrocarbon blocks to GSPC/GNRL consortium was in itself highly questionable. [The] MoPNG should be asked to explain the circumstances that compelled it to allot these blocks to the Gujarat consortium.He added, In turn, it is distressing as to how [the] GSPC, a state PSU, under the administrative control of Saurabh Patel, the minister, joined hands with such a highly questionable company, namely GNRL, and its subsidiaries and exposed itself to an enormous risk, which in turn got indirectly transmitted to MoPNG, knowing well that GNRL was only a family concern of the minister.The accusation comes amidst indications emerging that GSPC, which has reportedly gone bankrupt, is being bailed out by a Central PSU, the largest oil and gas producer, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which has completed a Rs 7,738 crore acquisition of 80% stake in GSPC.An earlier letter by Sarma to ED had said, The annual report of GNRL shows how GSPC had allowed that company to have a share in several oil blocks it won in competitive bidding. GNRL was partly owned by Saurabh Patel, the minister in charge of the department in Gujarat.Sarma had added, These findings raise very serious concerns about the way Saurabh Patel had a free hand in the then Modi government of Gujarat and how valuable oil blocks that belong to the people of India were bartered away to foreign nationals of questionable credentials.
STAMFORD  Six Financial Information USA, a data provider for the asset-management industry, is relocating its offices in the city from Springdale to the downtown, Hearst Connecticut Media has learned.

The firm will take approximately 13,300 square feet in the office building at 9 W. Broad St. Its local offices are currently based in the 3 building, on One Omega Drive, in the River Bend Center office park.

Six Financial also maintains offices in Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco. Officials of Six Financial were not immediately available for comment.

The arrival marks the latest phase in an ongoing revival of the approximately 200,000-square-foot 9 W. Broad St. building, which languished nearly empty before its acquisition four years ago by its current owners, Darien-based Forstone Capital and Wilton-based Westport Capital Partners. Renovations worth more than $20 million and active recruiting by real-estate firm Rhys have since propelled the property to an occupancy rate of more than 80 percent.

Among other recent arrivals, real estate investment firm Waypoint Residential moved in July to renovated offices covering 11,500 square feet on the eighth floor.

The location is really ideal with the park right next to us and with easy access to downtown, Waypoint Chief Operating Officer Peter DiCorpo said in an interview earlier this year. The team at Forstone have really done an amazing job with this building. It is a true turnaround story and a great value-added execution. It felt like home.

Using 9 W. Broad as a model, Forstone is finishing up renovations of an 100,000-square-foot office building it owns at the other end of the downtown, at 750 E. Main St. Like 9 West Broad, 750 East Main also stood mostly vacant when it was purchased by Forstone last year for about $8 million. A year later, signed tenants combine for about 35,000 square feet.

What weve had success with in Stamford is buying it at the right basis, which allows you to improve the building, reposition it and create a first-class building, fully amenitized, but still offer value rents, said Forstone Principal Brandon Hall.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
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HARTFORD  If a billion dollars in additional revenue doesnt show up in the states transportation fund over the next few years, Connecticut wont be able to afford many of its needed bridge and highway upgrades.

That is the warning Gov. Dannel P. Malloy gave Thursday when he said the General Assembly needs to quickly act on a variety of options, from highway tolls to mileage taxes, from higher gasoline surcharges to transfers of taxes on auto sales to the states transportation fund.

At stake are 10 percent rail fare increases and 15 percent bus-fare raises as soon as next July.

Were open to any way to resolve this issue, Malloy told reporters during a news conference in the Capitol. Im saying we need funding.

Malloy said while interstate trucks pay some fees, they are not paying enough for the use of state highways  yet they are charged by other New England states.

He said gas prices have fallen sharply since 2015, creating less sales-tax revenue.

At the same, time total vehicle miles statewide have declined, while more electric cars are being purchased, meaning less money is coming into the fund ... but its happening even faster than we might have thought.

More Information On the chopping block If the General Assembly doesn't find a billion dollars in new revenue over the next five years, the Special Transportation Fund will be under-funded, resulting in either an inability to borrow for capital projects, or higher interest rates. In the shorter term, however, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Thursday warned that as soon as July 1: * Rail fares would increase by 10 percent. * Bus fares would rise 15 percent. * Highway rest areas would be closed. * Maintenance staffs would be cut back, affecting the DOT snow-removal crews. * Weekend and some off-peak service on the New Canaan, Waterbury and New Canaan branches would be eliminated. * Shoreline East rail service would be cut back starting in July of 2019. See More Collapse

Malloy presented reporters with a list of projects totaling $4.3 billion that could be canceled or delayed if the Special Transportation Fund were to become insolvent, including:

* The replacement of up to 200 rail cars for the Danbury and Waterbury lines.

* The Merritt 7 rail station in Norwalk.

* The New Haven and Stamford railroad station parking garages.

* The Barnum Station rail stop on Bridgeports East Side.

* The Cos Cob Bridge repairs in Greenwich.

* State highway bridge repairs.

* Improvements to the Wilbur Cross Parkway tunnel through West Rock.

* The widening of Interstate-95 from Greenwich to Bridgeport.

For years I have advocated for major investments to improve Connecticuts transportation infrastructure because it is a critical lifeline for our states economy, Malloy said. An investment in transportation is an investment in jobs. For too long Connecticut has let its transportation system languish. This goes back decades.

Without a robust surplus the state cannot borrow money at a competitive rate for long-term projects, including Malloys 30-year, $100-billion infrastructure program.

Malloy praised Rep. Antonio Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, the co-chairman of the legislative Transportation Committee, who attended the event. A longtime proponent of highway tolls, Guerrera has seen the politically sensitive issue fail in House votes as recently as last spring.

Shame on us that we didnt make the best decision for the state, Guerrera told reporters after the sometimes contentious 38-minute afternoon news conference.

Guerrera said that lawmakers knew last year that the $1.5-billion Special Transportation Fund (STF) would go broke by the middle of 2020.

Its an unfortunate situation, Guerrera said. By the end of the session it needs to be done.

In reaction, Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said that this year a so-called lockbox was approved by lawmakers that will allow statewide voters next November to decide whether a constitutional amendment is needed to protect the Special Transportation Fund from revenue transfers for state government operating expenses.

In the 2016-17 budget lawmakers diverted $37.5 million from the STF, resulting in Malloys order to raise bus and rail fares, a reduction in highway maintenance and cuts in state Department of Transportation personnel.

I still believe a modern electronic-toll system and less reliance on the gas tax has to be part of the equation to help get us back on track in the long term, and intend to have a vote on tolls this upcoming session, Aresimowicz said. It makes no sense, and isnt fair to Connecticut taxpayers that we provide a freeway to the large amount of out of state traffic that passes through, while all of us pay every time we cross the border into surrounding states.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
MILFORD  Five massage parlors in Milford were issued stop-work orders Wednesday from the State of Connecticut Department of Labor.

Ginko Health Spa at 522 Boston Post Road, VIP Health Spa at 232 Boston Post Road, Merritt Massage at 465 Bridgeport Ave., Lotus Foot Spa at 67 Turnpike Square and Salubrious Spa at 517 New Haven Ave. were ordered to temporarily stop business.
Even if youve never seen a wrong-way driver in your travels, that doesnt mean it will never happen. And should that time ever come, Connecticut State Police want to be sure drivers know what to do.

First and foremost, state police said you should slow down and safely move away from the wrong-way driver as soon as possible.

If it can be avoided, do not slam on your brakes  especially if there is a car directly behind you. Avoid swerving until other lanes or off the road if it is not absolutely essential to ensure your safety.

In an effort to alert the wrong-way driver without doing anything unsafe, state police suggest you honk your horn, flash your headlights and put on your hazard lights.

Its possible that you may be able to make the wrong-way driver aware that they are traveling in the wrong direction, state police said.

As soon as it is safe to do so, state police ask the driver to call 911 and report the wrong-way driver. The most helpful way to alert them to the drivers location is to give a direction of travel and the closest exit. If possible, give police a description of the vehicle.

No matter what the circumstances, state police said you should never turn around and follow a wrong-way driver.

In order to be proactive, state police suggest driving on the furthermost right lane on the highway when driving at night  especially after midnight. State police said wrong-way drivers will often travel in the left lane, thinking theyre in the correct lane for their direction of travel.

State police also remind drivers that not all wrong-way drivers are under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Some wrong-way drivers may be experiencing a medical emergency, while others may be disoriented or confused by signage, state police said.
A 36-year-old Derby man has been arrested after State Police said he drove the wrong way on Route 15 last month. Troopers also say the man was DUI and didnt have a license.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on Nov. 20, state police at the Troop I barracks received a 911 call reporting a vehicle traveling northbound in the southbound lane near Exit 56 in Orange.
Dec. 1 marked World Aids Day, a day designated to raise awareness for the AIDS pandemic (which is caused by the sexually transmitted infection HIV) and honoring those who have died from the disease. Over 6,000 people live with diagnosed HIV in Memphis, according to 2015 data gathered from the Center for Disease Control and Preventionas (CDC) national HIV surveillance database.

This past summer, I attended one of Planned Parenthoodas aSexpertsa classes, and I learned about sexually transmitted infections, condoms and gender and sexual identities, among other things. I had not known about these things in such detail because I attended a high school in Tennessee. In 2012, Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law prohibiting Tennessee teachers from teaching agateway sexual activity,a as the law calls such activities like atouching genitals.a This became law after I had taken my high school health class, but nevertheless, we never learned about condoms with or without the law.

Comprehensive sex education has proven to be effective a researchers for the National Survey of Growth determined teenagers from ages 15 to 19 who received comprehensive sex education were half as likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy than those who had received an abstinence-only education.

With this in mind, for the holiday season, Iad like to give campus the gift that keeps on giving: the gift of knowledge a about having safe, healthy and pleasurable sex. Here are some tips, from the experts, for staying safe while getting physical.

Emily Swan | Special Nick Lingerfelt

Letas get back to the basics: communicate with your partner

To have enjoyable and pleasurable sex, the first step involves good communication between those wishing to engage in sexual behavior. Justine Shuey, a sexologist who has spoken to college students for over a decade, thinks this is not talked about enough.

aWhen I say communication, Iam talking about things like talking to your partner about your sexual history,a Shuey said. aTalking to your partner about what you like and what feels good for you. Talking to your partner about consent and making sure youare getting affirmative and enthusiastic consent. Making sure everyoneas on the same page with every sexual activity every single time. Having conversations about safer sex a whatever that looks like for people.aA

People should feel comfortable having these conversations if they want to have sex with each other, Shuey said.

aAs a sex educator, maybe Iam biased, but I feel like if you canat talk to your sexual partner about sex, you shouldnat be having sex with them,a Shuey said. aI feel like if you can put somebodyas genitals in your mouth, you can tell them what you like and what feels right, and if you canat, you should probably find another partner, or you shouldnat be having sex with them.a

If you decide to be sexual with someone, make sure you know the boundaries, both yours and the other personas, and respect them, Sara Nasserzadeh, a sexuality and relationship consultant, said. She said people need to be clear about what they are ready or not ready to do.

aThis will help you when you are in a sensitive situation with a person that you are attracted to,a Nasserzadeh said.

Being able to have vulnerability when you are talking about sex and sharing your thoughts with your partner is key to having sex, said Ian Kerner, a marriage, family and sex therapist.

aUltimately, it comes down to vulnerabile communication youare able to have with your partner and also being willing to explore your own unique sexual template a your own unique fingerprint,a Kerner said. aI think we all have different erotic themes that turn us on, and many of those thing are unique to us.aA

Reid Mihalko, who defines himself as a asex and relationship role model,a outlines seven talking points in what he calls his aSafer Sex Elevator Speecha for discussing safe sex with a new partner:

First, share when you were last tested for STIs, which STIs you got tested for and the results of those tests.A

Second, share what Mihalko calls your awin with me infoa a your relationship status, sexual orientation and any relationship agreements that you have the other individual should know about. Share your pronouns, your triggers, your safewords and any other words they should or should not use.A

Third, share your safe sex protocol and needs. Tell them what you need to have safe sex and your emotional and physical safety and after-sex needs.A

Fourth, update your partner on anything you have done since you last got tested a any risky sexual behaviors like a condom breaking or forgetting to take birth control.A

Fifth, tell your partner a few things you like to do during sex in general or maybe just with this person.A

Sixth, tell your partner anything you donat like to do during sex or might not want to do right now.A

Lastly, turn it around on them and ask them ahow about you?a Listen to what they say and how they say it.

A

Make sure you have your partneras consent

Let me be abundantly clear about this point.

Rape is not sex.

Rape is an abhorrent and violent crime, so you should make sure your partner is enthusiastically agreeing to what you both are going to engage in. Almost three-quarters of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, according to data from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN).

Sexologist Shuey often gets asked how one can convince their partner in an existing relationship to do something new, whether it be a threesome, anal sex or anything else. She reminds them you canat convince someone to do something they donat want to do a thatas coercion, itas not consent.A

Educating yourself on the rules, regulations and laws around sexual abuse and assault within both the university and the state might prove beneficial because ayou never know when you might need them,a Nasserzadeh said.

Sex should not be intimidating or scary a if you decide you want to engage in it, you get to set the parameters of the sexual encounter.

aKnow that at any stage of a sexual encounter, you can stop and reverse the process, so donat think that anow that I am this far, I better continue,aa Nasserzadeh said. aListen to your heart and mind.a

A

Get tested and be safe

It is important to have protected sex and to use some type of contraception. Condoms can protect from unwanted pregnancy and STIs, but these are not always a safeguard. It is also important to talk with your partner about any potential risks before sex and to get tested regularly.

aBeing able to say, aLook, if you want a partner whoas participating, enjoying giving and receiving pleasure, then the sex that weare having needs to be protected,aa Kerner said.A

Condoms have expiration dates. Storing condoms in places where it would not be exposed to extreme heat or cold, get dried out or punctured is important for proper condom use. Putting it on the right way is also as important.

Oral sex is not necessarily safe sex a every sexual activity has some level of risk, Shuey said. Itas not same in terms of percentage of risk as some other sexual activities, Shuey said, but STIs like Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Herpes and HPV can be transmitted through oral sex, either through the bodily fluids or even skin-to-skin contact with Herpes or HPV.

Unprotected oral sex is one of the leading causes of throat cancer in the United States. Data presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in 2011 suggested HPV was overtaking tobacco as the leading cause of oral cancers in Americans under the age of 50. You can also get other types of sexually transmitted infections from oral sex, Shuey said.A

Using condoms or a dental dam, a thin sheet of latex or non-latex materialA during oral sex, can help prevent this.A

Planned Parenthood provides free condoms at its clinics, and University of Memphis students can also get free condoms in the bathroom at the Student Health Center.

aIf you are mature enough to have sex, then you are mature enough to carry condoms with you,a Nasserzadeh said.

Testing for STIs also has importance for people wishing to engage in any sexual behavior, not necessarily just with penetrative sex. Planned Parenthood provides testing for STIs, some free of charge.

aIf youare engaging in any kind of sexual activity, if youare doing anything that puts your mucus membranes up against other peopleas mucus membranes, you should get tested regularly,a said A.V. Flox, a journalist and writer who focuses on the topic of sex and has been published in The Los Angeles Times and Vice.

A

Know what youare looking for from a sexual encounter

Not everyone who engages in sex wants a long-term relationship leading to marriage, but many people expect a relationship to ensue after sex, Flox said. Dissonance among those engaged in sex with each other can cause some members emotional pain, Flox said.

aA lot of the time, we do approach sex as a physical activity we want to engage in, but most of the time, also, I think we are approaching it as mammals who want to create a bond with somebody else,a Flox said.

Understanding what relationship people engaged in sex will or will not be forming will cut out an awkward conversation afterward, Flox said, and sex in general just may not be for everyone.

aThere is a lot of pressure on students to experience sexual encounters once they are in college,a Nasserzadeh said. aDonat fall into this trap and follow your own pace.aA

Keep thinking about what you like and what turns you on, and notice how it changes a many things are much more dynamic than we realize, Flox said.

aThinking about pleasure, the most common thing I hear from college students is amy partner never gives me an orgasm,a and I take that back to the awell, your partner isnat supposed to give you an orgasm. You should know your own body enough to figure out sort of what works for you,aa Shuey said. aSo exploring your own body and being able to communicate with your partner your fantasies, your wants, needs, desires, what feels good, what doesnat feel good, what turns you on, what turns you off and having those conversations before having sex.aA

It is important to know which kind of sexual experience you want to have before engaging in one. Know if you are looking for a casual experience or something more serious.

aItas important to bring a level of self-reflection to the kind of sex you want to be having, you feel you deserve to be having and you are actually having,a Kerner said.

If you are exploring those different parts of yourself, it is important to not box yourself in. You always need to engage in sex that makes you feel good in your own body.

aI think itas important to be able to fantasize,a Kerner said. aItas important to think of yourself as a sexual person whoas aware of all the sexual cues a the sights, the sounds, the touch, taste and smells are all around you a and to get familiar with your turn ons and your body. I think to really allow yourself to fantasize and to potentially embrace your quirkier, kinkier sexual thoughts.a

Exploring your own body through masturbation and different forms of touch and different sources of stimulation can lead to learning more about what you do and do not enjoy in sex, Flox said. Reading erotica and watching pornography can also expose you to things you may enjoy during sex. Flox encourages people to make space for themselves, to reflect on themselves and what turns them on and to look for things they enjoy sexually.

aKinky sex is now really, really popular, which is interesting, and thereas a lot of kinks within BDSM [Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism] that are actually incredibly interesting and significantly safer,a Flox said. aFull-body latex sex is defintely a way to go if you have concerns about transmissibility.a

Testing the water when it comes to sex is important for knowing what you want to do. Flox encourages people to aexplore all the basesa but said you should be free to say ano,a too.A

aI think, provided youare with somebody who understands you have certain reservations, you should be very free to just say, aNo, I want to try this out, Iam not entirely sure,a and if that person understands that you have agency and is willing to acknowledge your consent, which I would hope is the case, then you can stop at any time,a Flox said. aMake room for yourself to say, aI donat know how I feel about this aA I just donat want to do it.aa

And if you do not want to be sexually active, you should not feel like you are missing out on anything.

aI think we live in a society that really tells us we need to be having sex all the time as much as possible, aItas very empowering,a which it can be, but so can painting,a Flox said.A

I am dedicating this story to Gus, my editor-in-chief, who not only gave me a platform to share this story, but also pushed me to get it done. It has been a apleasurea to work with you (wink wink).

I am also dedicating this story to my grandfather, Pop, who passed away a year ago today. Before he passed away, he told my parents about how proud he was of me for chasing my dreams. This one is for you, too, Pop.
JULY: Halfway through the 3,745th round of Brexit talks, officials discover that both sides have fallen asleep around the table.

This is a cause for very real optimism, says leading Brexit campaigner, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith on BBC Question Time. The more we can force everyone into having a jolly good snooze, the better it must surely be for this country.

Saying, Let me recap, if I may, Mr Duncan Smith went on to list the innumerable benefits that would come with Brexit.

Iain Duncan Smith's plan for a smooth Brexit involves everyone having a 'jolly good snooze'

When he had finished speaking, viewers noted that three other panellists were fast asleep, while the Chairman, David Dimbleby, ever the professional, could be seen pinching himself and splashing water from his glass straight onto his eyes.

In response to this almost universal narcolepsy, the UK withdrawal from the EU is to be renamed Brexzzzzzzzit.

Meanwhile, the IBO (Institute of the Bleeding Obvious) has discovered a direct link between eating food and weight-gain. Its something weve long suspected, says IBO spokesman Geoffrey Bland, but we now have firm proof that stuffing yourself full of cream buns for months on end may, in certain cases, lead to an increase in weight.

AUGUST: Apple unveil their new iPhonerazor. Billed as the new all-in-one answer to all your phoning-and-shaving problems, its state-of-the-art digital technology allows you to phone and shave all at the same time, thus saving valuable minutes for extra shopping and networking.

This follows other innovations from Apple, including iPhonespray, which offers the owner the chance to hold the phone above his or her head and employ it as a shower.

The years greatest success so far has been iPhonebanter. Targeted primarily at the sulky teenage market, it provides parent-and-family-based conversation in the users own voice, thus allowing adolescents the ability to continue browsing Facebook and texting free from interruption.

SEPTEMBER: A man has been arrested after admitting making a marriage proposal to a single woman. Wed known each other for at least a year, and we clearly liked each other, so I asked her to marry me, the man says in court.

But I now realise that this was inappropriate behaviour, amounting to a terrible error of judgment. The woman is undergoing trauma counselling. Only two other proposals of marriage have been perpetrated this year: both offenders have been convicted and are presently awaiting sentence.

Elsewhere in the UK, a man is being held in custody after being caught watching an old Benny Hill show. It is believed that over 200 Donald McGill postcards were found in his home. I feel bitterly ashamed, he told magistrates.

The Great British Bake Off has spawned a host of copy-cat series of varying degrees of quality

OCTOBER: Following the success of The Great British Bake Off, a host of copy-cat series are being broadcast. These include The Great British Ache Off, in which contestants compete for the title of Hypochondriac Of The Year; The Great British Take Off, in which teams of comedians attempt to impersonate President Trump; the Great British Rake Off, with agents and auctioneers competing for the biggest percentage; and The Great British Fake Cough, hosted by Major Charles Ingram.

NOVEMBER: According to the Office for National Statistics, there are now more cookery books in the UK than there are people who cook. People like to read cookery books while eating their takeaways and oven-ready dishes from the supermarket, says the Director of the Institute. Its a form of nostalgia for an age gone by.

Meanwhile, motoring experts at the IBO (Institute of the Bleeding Obvious) have issued a warning to motorists of the very real dangers invol-ved in att-empting to cross a river in the absence of a bridge.

Tests have shown that cars crossing wide stretches of deep water without a bridge in sight invariably end up under water. This can prove damaging to the car, and potentially fatal for the motorist.

A good way of telling if you are under water is to look out for tell-tale signs of water coming through the window.

DECEMBER: There is unrest in the Australian jungle on Im A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! Sick of having to deal with creepy-crawlies, stick insects and preying reptiles, a group of jungle animals protests to the series producers about the invasion of minor celebrities of whom theyve never heard.

It was bad enough having to listen to their incessant babble, says a disenchanted cockroach, but then I found my back legs being chewed up by a semi-finalist from last years X Factor.
Fifty years ago, the Abortion Act 1967 made it legal for a woman in Britain to terminate a pregnancy. Since then, attitudes have been transformed, with one woman in three now predicted to have a termination during her lifetime.

Yet abortion remains an emotive, rarely discussed subject.

Here, five women who have had abortions bravely tell their stories.

DUE DATE I CAN NEVER FORGET

Rosie Martin, 55, is an accountant. She lives in Norfolk and is married with three children. She says:

Rosie Martin (pictured), 55, had an abortion whilst going through a divorce with her first husband. She says she still wonders what could've been

Each year, when July 6 comes around, I cant help but think about the baby I aborted in 1992. That was my due date and he or she would be 25 now, so I find myself wondering what that child would have been like. Deep down I know the decision I made was right for me at the time, but still it breaks my heart.

I was in a really bad place when I had the abortion. My first husband had walked out on me and our two children, both under five, and I was in the middle of a painful divorce. I met another man who was simply wonderful and I really loved him, but I got pregnant very quickly and I knew having a child wouldnt be fair on either of us.

I told my mum, who agreed completely. In fact, she paid for me to have the abortion.

It wasnt a decision I took lightly. Seven years previously, Id lost a much-wanted baby and was put in the same ward as women who were there to have an abortion. I was so judgmental at that point, thinking they were pure evil. But when I found myself with an unwanted pregnancy, I learnt an important lesson: you never know whats around the corner in your life and should never pass judgment on others.

I went to a private clinic and they treated me dreadfully. I was just another woman who wanted to get rid of a baby and they showed no compassion at all.

I hadnt told my partner what I was doing. I didnt want his reaction to sway my decision, although he found out afterwards and that spelt the end of our relationship. But I hadnt lied, Id simply not told him. I just knew I couldnt add a baby to our situation.

After the operation, I was very tired and a good friend picked me up, took me home and looked after me.

Im lucky because I had another baby with my new husband three years later. I didnt tell him about the abortion. My children dont know either, but if they find out now Ive admitted it, Ill be honest with them. Its not exactly something Ive tried to hide.

But that third pregnancy reminded me of the baby Id aborted. While I know I could never have coped with three young children at the time, I will always wonder what might have been.

IT TOOK YEARS TO FORGIVE MYSELF

Maria Madalena, 57, is a performance artist and complementary therapist. She is married to Robert, 56, a musician, and the couple live in North Wales and have five children aged 19 to 29. She says:

Maria Madalena (pictured), 57, had an abortion at the age of 20 as she wasn't in a committed long-term relationship

I was 20 in 1981 and on a youth orchestra tour in Cyprus when I realised I might be pregnant. I kept being sick but it was only when I returned to London, where I was studying music, that I realised what had happened.

Id come off the Pill after a relationship ended, had met Robert  now my husband  and wed got carried away. But a baby was the last thing we needed.

We were very young and not yet committed to a long-term relationship, so I knew I had to end the pregnancy. I went to see my welfare officer at university, who agreed it was the best thing.

I told Robert, but I didnt want to put any pressure on him to do the right thing, so I went to the hospital by myself for the termination.

It was the same hospital where Id been born. My mother had got pregnant with me out of wedlock but had gone ahead with the pregnancy and married my father. For a few years after my abortion, I carried some guilt that she had given her baby  me  a chance and I hadnt done the same.

I was in a lot of pain afterwards and had to return the following day for another, more painful operation to remove what was left from the pregnancy. I suffered a lot of bleeding and felt completely judged throughout the entire process by the male consultants, who looked at me as if I was some sort of silly girl. The female medics were much more sympathetic.

I believe abortions can drive a wedge into some relationships, but each situation is unique and Id never judge anyone else

Robert was very understanding and supportive and we continued to see each other. Six years later, I was still with Robert and I had a miscarriage, which was devastating. I have no religious background but I felt I was being punished in some way.

Thankfully, we went on to have our first son in 1988 and married that same year. We have been blessed with four more children over the years.

But the baby I aborted has never left my thoughts. I recall once walking down the road with my sons pushchair, looking at his tiny form and thinking: How could I have got rid of my baby?

The abortion had an impact on mine and Roberts relationship, too. We have sometimes cried together over that decision, but ultimately we went on to have five beautiful children and were happy and thankful.

I believe abortions can drive a wedge into some relationships, but each situation is unique and Id never judge anyone else.

It took me a long time to forgive myself and there are still times when I find it hard. Ive no idea if that baby was a boy or a girl but I gave it the name Ellen and even wrote a song for her. Ill always feel connected to her.

FAR TOO YOUNG  BUT I SO REGRET IT

Claire Harrison, 33, is a full-time carer for her two youngest children who are both autistic. She lives with her partner Jason Watson, 30, a painter and decorator, and their children Anabel, seven, Joey, three, and Emily, two, in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. She says:

Claire Harrison (pictured) , 33, had an abortion at the age of 17 as her parents told her she wasn't old enough to have a baby

Even as I went under the anaesthetic to have my abortion, there was a big part of me that wanted to cry out: I dont want this!

I never wanted to get rid of my baby. It was 2005 and I may have been only 17, but Id always wanted to be a mum and the fact Id got to 13 weeks and had started to develop a bump made me feel even more maternal.

However, my parents told me I wasnt old enough, didnt have enough money and couldnt take the responsibility  which was all true. But I look back and wonder what might have happened if they had just been a bit more supportive. It has affected the relationship we have now, because I cant forgive them for persuading me to have the operation.

Id been with my boyfriend for three years when I got pregnant while taking the Pill. Id been ill just before, so maybe that altered its effectiveness.

Im adopted myself and I discovered that my birth mother hid her own teenage pregnancy from her parents until days before the birth. What if shed had an abortion? That would have meant Id never lived

When I did a test at six weeks and saw it was positive, I was really excited. I told my boyfriend, who wasnt happy and urged me to get rid of it. I was heartbroken.

When I broke the news to my parents a couple of weeks later, they took me to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, where I was asked if I wanted counselling, but I said no. I told them I didnt want an abortion.

For weeks my parents and I were at loggerheads. I was determined to go ahead, as I wanted to be a mum and had imagined what it might be like.

But in the end I knew Id have to have the operation. They were right, I didnt have the finances even though I had a full-time job. It broke my heart. I was so young and just wish Id been told there were other options.

Im adopted myself and I discovered that my birth mother hid her own teenage pregnancy from her parents until days before the birth. What if shed had an abortion? That would have meant Id never lived.

I stayed with that boyfriend for three more years but I knew he wasnt the man Id settle down with. When I finally had Anabel at 26, it was after six years of unexplained infertility and I will always wonder if my abortion had anything to do with it, especially as Id fallen pregnant so easily in my teens.

I try not to think about the abortion itself, or the due date. I have my hands full looking after my three children and I find it too upsetting.

I DIDNT WANT TO GIVE UP MY LIFE

Gabriella Apicella, 38, is a screenwriter and teacher. She lives in Hornsey, North London, and has been in a new relationship for four months. She says:

Gabriella Apicella (pictured), 38, had an abortion at the age of 31 as she says she had never been maternal. At the time she had been with her partner less than a year

My pregnancy in 2011 at the age of 31 was totally unplanned. Id been with my partner for less than a year, we werent living together and I had been taking the Pill  though clearly I had not been paying attention.

When the test was positive, my immediate thought was: Ive got to get rid of this. There was no doubt in my mind. Ive never been maternal at all and while I love children, Ive never wanted any of my own.

Its not for selfish reasons  if anything, women who dont have babies are being incredibly selfless by not overpopulating the planet. I just knew I didnt want to give up my life to look after a child  it wouldnt be fair on either of us.

So when I found out I was pregnant, I called my partner and told him what I was planning. He was thankful he didnt have to persuade me one way or the other. He already had a child with a previous partner and didnt want another.

What shocked me most about my abortion was how many hoops you have to jump through to get one. You cant simply get one on demand  I had to go to my GP, then two other doctors had to sign it off.

I dont look back on the experience with the slightest regret

Ive had depression in the past, so the doctors were only too willing to sign off. This has nothing to do with my wellbeing, but the potential risk to the unborn child.

I went on my own to the Homerton Hospital in East London for the operation and everyone there couldnt have been more compassionate.

They were astonishingly gentle. Id asked for an IUD contraceptive to be inserted, too, as there was no way I wanted this to happen again. Afterwards, I came home and felt so relieved it was over. Having a bunch of cells inside me that I didnt want to be there felt invasive. I was as happy with my decision then as I am now.

I spoke to my partner on the phone after the abortion, then never heard from him again. I dont think he was upset that Id gone ahead with it, but an unplanned pregnancy plunged the relationship into something more serious that it had been, which scared him. I was annoyed because we had been having such fun before.

But I dont look back on the experience with the slightest regret. My mum sacrificed so much to give me and my brother the best chances in life and I knew Id need to be able to do the same for my children.

Maybe Ill adopt or foster in the future. So many children need a little kindness and love and have led such tough lives. So maybe one day I can do that.

MY GRANDSON HAS HELPED ME GRIEVE

Josephine Woodgate, 71, is a retired legal administrator. Divorced, she has two daughters aged 45 and 39 and lives in Exmouth. She says:

Josephine Woodgate (pictured) , 71, had an abortion in 1970 as she didn't love her partner

Recently, I was laughing at my four-year-old grandson and I asked my daughter: I wonder if this is the little boy I should have had?

I have no idea whether the baby I aborted back in 1970 was a boy, but Ive always had a feeling it may have been. Perhaps the fact that I get so much joy out of my grandchildren means God is being kind to me for a decision I still regret.

I had just split from my husband in the spring of 1970 and was a young single mum with no home or money, so I was forced to move back in with my parents.

I was working in a hotel when I met Michael and we had a fling. It developed into something I thought was more meaningful and we even started talking about marriage. But when I found out I was pregnant I despaired.

Although Michael said he wanted me to keep the baby and wed make the best of it, I knew he didnt really think that  and being pregnant made me realise I didnt really love him. I tried to adapt to the thought of having another child, but I couldnt.

A month later, I sobbed to my GP and he suggested my only option was to terminate the pregnancy. I booked into an abortion clinic to have the procedure  which had only recently been legalised  just shy of 12 weeks into my pregnancy.

Michael and I told friends and family we were going away for the weekend and when we got home, we said Id miscarried. It sounds odd now, but we feared people wouldnt talk to us if they knew the truth.

In the weeks following the abortion I felt numb but relieved, too. I left Michael and moved back in with my parents, who never knew about the termination. The decision has preyed on my mind for years.

When I married my second husband, Peter, and got pregnant again, it was a particularly tough time. When I reached 12 weeks  the stage at which Id had my termination  I learnt that the babys vital organs had formed. It made me feel incredibly guilty and when I held my daughter in my arms for the first time, all I could think was that I should have done this with the baby Id killed.

Today, I know that if I lived my life again I would never have had the abortion. But I think its absolutely every womans right to choose what she does with her own body.
They're the go-to vacuum models that we all wish we owned, but for most of us they are just too expensive.

But Christmas has come early this year for Dyson fans, with Aldi announcing it will be selling a number of vacuum cleaners for a substantial discount.

The supermarket chain will discount two popular Dyson models as part of a 'special buys' event on December 16.

Supermarket chain Aldi announced on Thursday it will be discounting two popular Dyson models ahead of Christmas

The supermarket chain (stock image) will discount two popular Dyson models as part of a 'special buys' event on December 16

DYSON VACUUM CHRISTMAS PRICES DC 44 Animal Myer: $439.20 Target: $349 Aldi: $299 DC29 Multifloor Target: $399 Aldi: $349

Advertisement

People are suggested to arrive at stores early, as the offer is expected to create a frenzy among Christmas shoppers, according to an Aldi spokesperson.

'Aldi Australia is excited to be selling two popular Dyson models at an affordable price as part of our Special Buys, on sale Saturday December 16,' the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'We anticipate the Dyson vacuums will sell quickly and recommend customers arrive early in-store the day of the sale.'

On sale will be the cordless handstick DC 44 Animal and the larger barrel vacuum DC29 Multifloor.

On sale will be the cordless handstick DC 44 Animal (left) and the larger barrel vacuum DC29 Multifloor (right)

The DC 44 Animal will be priced at $299 - $50 cheaper than competitors such as Target. The DC29 Multifloor will be on sale for a slightly more expensive $349, which is also $50 cheaper than other competitors

People are suggested to arrive at stores early, as the offer is expected to create a frenzy among Christmas shoppers, according to an Aldi spokesperson (stock image)

The DC 44 Animal will be priced at $299 - almost $150 cheaper than competitors such as Myer.

Meanwhile, the DC29 Multifloor will be on sale for a slightly more expensive $349, which is $50 cheaper than Target.

However, both models are no longer considered Dyson's top-of-the line since they released the latest V6 and V8 models.

The newer V8 models retail at a whopping $799, while newer multifloor models retail at $699.
Take a dip: How Meghan might look when curtseying

Years ago, when Prince Philip was a mere whippersnapper, he thought the whole business of curtseying at Court a bit of a laugh.

Invited to Balmoral by his future father-in-law, George VI, Philip discovered he was expected to wear a kilt, an item he did not possess. In a hastily-borrowed tartan man-skirt, he was ushered into His Majestys presence  and promptly dropped a full curtsey. The King was not amused.

Seventy years on, the tradition of bobbing before the Sovereign continues  even if these days its only the womenfolk who are required to do it.

Men have the easy option at Court, they just bow to everybody they meet.

But for women, the whole dip-and-bob business is a social minefield: To whom do they curtsey and from whom should they expect a curtsey? When should they do it? How often?

Its just one of the many perils of Royal etiquette that lie ahead for Prince Harrys fiancee, Meghan Markle.

Curtseying, within the confines of the royal court, is not only a physical act but a political one, too. The rules and the pecking order can change, and they bear little relation to the order of succession.

Meghan will be expected to become swiftly au fait with whos above, and whos beneath, her and Harry. For his part, as guide and mentor, Harry will need to take her painstakingly through the protocol.

So does she curtsey to her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge? Yes.

Does she, a complete newcomer to the royal pack, curtsey to Sophie, Countess of Wessex  a one-time commoner but a royal since 1999?

Autumn Phillips, Peter Phillips, Dave Clark and Princess Beatrice pictured, with the two women curtseying. Meghan will have to dip the knee to Beatrice if Harry's not around, but the roles will be reversed if he is

No, she doesnt. Except if Prince Edward, Sophies husband, is in the room. In which case, she needs to flex those knees. As out-dated as it sounds, its the presence of the royal husband that validates the status of the wife.

A curtsey to Princess Anne? Yes. Shes the daughter of the Sovereign. Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice? Yes. But not if Harrys in the room when they should curtsey to her.

What if the Queens cousin, Princess Alexandra, wanders by? Now aged 80, shes considered more regal than the Queen, boasting two royals for parents (Prince George of Kent, fourth son of George V, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark) rather than just the one. She still curtseys to Her Majesty, and to Anne (Sovereigns daughter). But thats all: Meghan, and everybody else, must pay obeisance to her.

So does she curtsey to her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge? Yes

Then theres Alexandras sister-in-law, Princess Michael of Kent, of whom legend has it the Queen, on being informed of her European royal credentials, remarked that she sounds a bit too grand for us. Grand or not, Meghan will never have to bob before her.

Nor before Princess Annes daughter Zara Phillips, who despite being a blood royal will still be below Meghan in the pecking order (and expected to curtsey to her if Harry is present).

As you can see, its rather a complex business but one that is taken seriously by courtiers (if not always the royals themselves).

The current rules on who-curtseys-to-who come from a document drawn up by the Queens private secretary in 2005 and circulated among the family and courtiers only. Entitled Precedence Of The Royal Family To Be Observed At Court, its purpose was to clarify Camillas place in the firm following her marriage to Charles.

As the new wife of the Prince of Wales, Camilla ought to have come second in order of precedence after the Queen  the position Diana occupied as Princess of Wales.

However, owing to the circumstances and evolution of her relationship with Charles, Camilla was moved down a peg or two.

This was done at the behest of Princess Anne and Princess Alexandra, both of whom had given their adult lives to royal service, a former courtier told me.

Naturally, everybody must curtsey to the Queen, as this young schoolgirl is pictured doing in 2007

Will Meghan be expected to curtsey to Princess Anne? Yes. Shes the daughter of the Sovereign

They saw no reason to make obeisance to this  at the time  highly unpopular woman. Anne in particular made it clear she had no intention of curtseying to her ever.

Its effect was to put Princesses Anne, Alexandra, Beatrice and Eugenie ahead of Camilla  but not Sophie Wessex.

Her nose was said to have been put severely out of joint when told she would not have the same seniority as the others. She didnt like that one bit, the courtier said.

In 2012, the rules were updated to include the Duchess of Cambridge and her place in the order of precedence is behind the blood royal Anne, Alexandra, Beatrice and Eugenie (although when William is by her side she is not expected to curtsey to the last two).

Without William, Kate would curtsey to Camilla; with him, she would not. Thats unless Prince Charles is present, in which case she would.

Princess Michael of Kent, of whom legend has it the Queen, on being informed of her European royal credentials, remarked that she sounds a bit too grand for us. Grand or not, Meghan will never have to bob before her

The curtsey or courtesy is one of the last great eccentricities of British royalty. It was instituted in the 1500s as an easier alternative to dropping down on ones knees  which is what people used to do when confronted with royalty.

Over time, men adopted a low bow, while women developed a more graceful and lasting movement that has remained a hallmark of royal politesse ever since.

That takes care of the women. Then there are the courtesies Meghan must extend to the men at court. Fortunately for her, its a far simpler proposition.

If hes got Prince in front of his name, she will curtsey. For people such as Peter Phillips, of royal blood but without a title, she wont.

Once shes mastered all that etiquette, Meghan will have to perfect her curtsey. In Love In A Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford, great satiriser of the upper classes and their habits, provides a wonderful description of how daft its possible to look doing it.

Camilla ought to have come second in order of precedence after the Queen  the position Diana occupied as Princess of Wales. However, owing to the circumstances and evolution of her relationship with Charles, Camilla was moved down a peg or two

She says of the character Lady Montdore: Her curtseys, owing to the solid quality of her frame, did not recall the graceful movement of wheat before the wind.

She scrambled down like a camel, rising again backside foremost like a cow, a strange performance, painful it might be supposed to the performer, the expression on whose face, however, belied this thought. Her knees cracked like revolver shots but her smile was heavenly.

Its not something Meghan will seek to emulate: instead her right foot will slide behind and slightly to the left of her left leg as she gradually sinks down on the bent right leg, arms falling to the side and with the head slightly  but not abjectly  lowered.

She then must rise with her weight on the left foot, since it does not move during the sequence of the curtsey.

Does she, a complete newcomer to the royal pack, curtsey to Sophie, Countess of Wessex  a one-time commoner but a royal since 1999? No, she doesnt. Except if Prince Edward, Sophies husband, is in the room

Its well worth practising before coming face-to-face with a royal as it can put your back out if done incorrectly and its easy to topple over.

A few years ago, the Queen privately acknowledged the curtsey was anachronistic  indicating that she no longer expected women publicly introduced to her to perform it (and indeed, younger royal women are also more relaxed with each other).

And you can see why: When the statuesque figure of Theresa May entered the royal presence for the first time on taking up the office of Prime Minister in 2016, she made a curtsey and, though well-meant, it made both women look vaguely absurd.

However, within the confines of the royal court it remains. At formal dinners and get-togethers  and even on lesser occasions  its still part of the highly-stylised royal life we rarely see or hear about.

There will be nights when the future Duchess of Sussex  the dukedom most likely to be bestowed on Harry and his bride  will sit with her husband scratching her head and trying to fathom why in 21st-century Britain such traditions are preserved.

At least shell be spared the indignity accorded to thousands of debutantes throughout the 20th century at the Queen Charlotte Ball.

All were required to make a very public curtsey  not to a royal, but to a cake.
A 38-year-old mother has opened up about the terrifying moment she almost died after giving birth to her twins at 29 weeks.

Kristie Miller, from the Gold Coast, was told one of her babies had a slim chance of surviving at birth after she started bleeding at 18 weeks.

She discovered her unborn son Tyson had suffered an intrauterine growth restriction - a condition where a baby's growth is slow, or stops all together, in the womb.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the mother-of-four said she delivered her babies during a traumatic emergency C-section before she was placed in a coma.

'I was dead for a couple of days,' she said.

Mother Kristie Miller, from Queensland, gave birth to twins - son Tyson and daughter Chanel - at 22 weeks

The twins celebrated their second birthday in June after they were born prematurely in 2015

The harrowing ordeal began when the pregnant woman noticed the first signs of complications at 18 weeks in 2015.

'Doctors told us to prepare for the worst - or if Tyson did survive, life would be pretty grim because he would be very sick,' Ms Miller recalled.

'It was shocking to hear that but I had to keep it together for my family.'

At 22 weeks, the mother was rushed to hospital again after she experienced more bleeding - but the cause of it was unknown.

'I was hospitalised for a week. They said it was probably just a twin pregnancy thing because there was too much strain on the uterus.

'During the pregnancy, I had placenta accreta - but at the time, no one knew.'

Placenta accreta is a life-threatening condition where placenta attaches itself too deeply into the wall of the uterus.

The 38-year-old mother said when she saw Tyson for the first time, he was the size of her hand

They were told Tyson (pictured shortly after he was delivered via an emergency C-section) had a slim chance of surviving at birth after complications arose at 18 weeks

For the first four days, the mother said she could only see her twin babies through FaceTime

At 29 weeks, she was forced to undergo an emergency C-section after doctors found Tyson's placenta was growing into the uterine wall.

'They were trying to get him out but didn't know he was so deep in there so they ripped a hole in my uterus, I started bleeding internally,' she said.

As her heart rate dropped dramatically, the mother 'died' after she drowned in her own blood.

'It happened really quickly,' she recalled.

'All of a sudden I heard one baby cry and then two babies cry - and that's all I remembered. I died on the table. I didn't know what had actually happened.

'Over the next 24 hours I had three blood transfusions to make sure I stayed alive.'

Happy family: The toddlers (pictured with their father Adam and mother Kristie) have proved to be fighters after they celebrated their second birthday

Sibling love: Despite being in and out of hospital in the first few months of their lives, the twins have been doing well

She found herself incubated when she woke up 24 hours later.

'I remember waking up and there was something coming out of my mouth. I couldn't speak but all I wanted to know was if my babies were okay.

'My hands were the size of elephant hooves. Everything was blown up, it was really scary. I had no idea what had actually happened.

'I was freaking out. I started panicking because I didn't know why I had a tube down my throat. My heart rate was up so they put me back to sleep.'

When she regained consciousness 24 hours later, she was able to breathe on her own.

'I could actually mutter a few words and they told me my babies were okay,' Ms Miller recalled.

The excited parents were allowed to cuddle their adorable twins at six weeks old

She found out baby Tyson was born weighing just 810 grams while his twin sister Chanel weighed 1.2 kilograms.

'I wasn't allowed to see my babies but I couldn't leave the ICU,' she said.

'My husband Adam showed me photos - and it just hit me. I had such a normal experience with my two previous babies.

'He even FaceTimed me from the neo-natal intensive care. All I wanted to was to see them visually in front of me but I couldn't.

'I didn't believe anyone they were real until I could see them myself. They're my babies I gave birth to, I just needed to see them. I was so upset.'

Ms Miller was then wheeled to her babies' rooms but unfortunately, her stretcher didn't fit through the doors.

'I couldn't stand or move by myself because I had a full hysterectomy. So they had to wheel me over,' she said.

'But I was stuck in the corridor because my stretcher didn't fit through the doors. I was so far away, I couldn't see any babies in the room.'

Family time! The mother of four also has a 19-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son

And on day five, she was finally allowed to touch her babies after she was placed in a wheelchair.

'They looked extremely weak and fragile so it was shocking to me,' she said.

'Even though I had prior warning of how small they were, I was just shocked when I saw how skinny and little they were.

'The twins were in separate rooms because of their separate needs. When I saw my son first, he was the size of my hand. It was shocking and upsetting.'

At six weeks, she was allowed to give her twins a 'double cuddle'.

'I had to wait until until they were in special care before I could hold them,' she said.

Reminiscing the moment she held them both against her chest at the same time, Ms Miller said: 'It was beautiful... magical a billion times.'

The mother-of-four said she delivered her babies during a traumatic emergency C-section

The couple were expecting twins - but at 18 weeks, Ms Miller started experiencing bleeding

The twins were finally allowed to go home after staying in hospital for 11-and-a-half weeks.

'The hardest part was the hospital visits,' Ms Miller said.

'We were going into a routine. Tyson was in and out of hospital because he needed surgery and lots of therapy. Chanel has chronic lung disease and hip dysplasia.'

But against all odds, the siblings have proved they are little fighters after celebrating their second birthday in June.

'The twins are good now,' she said.

'They don't have any more surgeries in the future. Tyson had his last one last year but he still needs therapy.

'There were major complications but they are very close now. I don't have family here so I have to do everything with them together.'

Reminiscing the moment she held her twins for the first time, Ms Miller said: 'It was beautiful'

Against all odds, the twins have prove they are little fighters two-and-a-half years on

Ms Miller, who is the president of the Australian Multiple Birth Association, said she wanted fellow mothers to reach out to her for support.

'No one reached out to me [at the time] so I want to make sure if people need to talk or seek help, they can speak to me,' she said.

'You learn how precious life is so I wanted to give something back.'

By sharing her story, she wanted others to draw hope from her experience.

'I want people to know that they shouldn't jump to conclusions during pregnancy,' Ms Miller, who has since made a miraculous recovery, said.

'When I was told the worst thing from the get-go at 18 weeks, I never prepared myself for the worst. I just ignored it and took every day as it comes.

'I'm not saying doctors are wrong but they just want to give you a worst case scenario just in case.

'There are so many stories of people who passed away at birth but I just wanted to share mine to show there is a happy ending.'
For some, the concept of 'love at first sight' is found only in over-hyped Hollywood movies and fairytales.

But for Victorian couple Minda and Tony van Eyk, it was their reality.

After striking up an incredible connection on a dating site in April 2014, the pair went on their first date within a week, became engaged three weeks later and in February, 2015, married in a dream wedding ceremony.

Here, Mrs van Eyk, 33, speaks to FEMAIL about their unbelievable whirlwind romance and why she truly believes that when it comes to love, 'when you know, you know'.

For some, the concept of 'love at first sight' is found only in over-hyped Hollywood movies and fairytales, but for Victorian couple Minda and Tony van Eyk, it was their reality

After striking up an incredible connection on a dating site in April 2014, the pair went on their first date within a week, became engaged three weeks later and married in February, 2015

When Melbourne-born Mrs van Eyk was attending university in a country town, her mother would joke about her being swept off her feet by a dairy farmer and living happily ever after on a property.

However, Mrs van Eyk returned to Melbourne single after university and started work as a teacher.

At 29, she set up a dating profile on eHarmony after trying a number of other platforms and spotted Mr van Eyk's profile about two months in.

'There was no photo or anything but it said that his occupation was a dairy farmer and I remembered what my mother had said years earlier so I clicked on his profile,' Mrs van Eyk told Daily Mail Australia.

Mr van Eyk, then 32, was 200 kilometres away on a dairy farm in Shepparton, Victoria, but that didn't stop Mrs van Eyk from travelling down to visit him just one week later

'I figured the worst case was that I would have a meal at a country pub and a hotel stay and best case was that I'd meet this amazing guy,' Mrs van Eyk said

'From there we just clicked and every piece of communication we had was different to anything I'd ever experienced.

'His answers were perfect, the way he wrote was amazing and of course the fact that he was a dairy farmer was fantastic too.'

Mr van Eyk, then 32, was 200km away on a dairy farm in Shepparton, Victoria, but that didn't stop Mrs van Eyk from travelling down to visit him just one week later.

'Within a week I had driven down to Shepparton. I liked going and staying in hotels so I figured the worst case was that I would have a meal at a country pub and a hotel stay and best case was that I'd meet this amazing guy,' Mrs van Eyk said.

'When I turned the corner and saw him standing there that was it and I just knew,' she said

'I was so nervous when I was outside the pub in the car, I was so scared that I might ruin this perfect thing we had going or that it wouldn't be as incredible as it seemed.

'But when I turned the corner and saw him standing there that was it and I just knew.'

Mrs van Eyk said she was blown away by her future husband's hard working nature, 'solid' personality and 'big beautiful blue eyes' and insists she fell for him immediately

'Our story is so ridiculous as this kind of thing doesn't happen in real life but it did,' she said.

'Our story is so ridiculous as this kind of thing doesn't happen in real life but it did,' she said

'We didn't stop talking and they had to kick us out of the pub.

'The following day, a Friday, was a public holiday so Tony said to come back the next day and see him on the farm.

'We spent the following day feeding calves, riding motorbikes and jumping on hay bales - it was amazing - and then that night he said his family was visiting the following day and that he'd like me to meet them.

'He said 'You're going to meet them eventually so why wait?' and I didn't doubt that for a second so I stayed on the Friday night and met his entire family on the Saturday.'

Mrs van Eyk said the meeting was wonderful and fun and that nobody really questioned their blossoming romance, they just went with it.

The pair are pictured in Disneyland during their overseas trip in the weeks before the wedding

On the Sunday, Mrs van Eyk returned home to Melbourne and recalls bursting into tears - partly because she was sad to leave and partly because she was so happy and overwhelmed with emotion.

'We were on the phone for hours and hours every night and three weeks later I wanted to make sure he could fit into my life as easily as I could his so I invited him down to my 30th party in the city,' Mrs van Eyk said.

'It was the perfect night. He mingled with everyone and stood next to me during my speech and everybody loved him.'

The following day, Mrs van Eyk went to the shops with her beau who told her he wanted to buy her a birthday present.

With their families on board after seeing how they were together, the loved up pair started planning their wedding and just weeks later, Mrs van Eyk packed up and moved in to the farm

'He said he wanted to buy me a ring and I asked what kind and he said "a ring that means I'll wear one too one day" and I just burst out crying,' Mrs van Eyk said.

'We found a diamond ring and he bought it but he said "I just wanted to buy it I didn't say I was going to use it" and later that day I took him up to Eureka Tower sightseeing.

'When we got to the corner that looks north towards Shepparton he got down on one knee and proposed. He said every day had been better and better with me and that it had just been amazing since we entered each other's life - we were both just crying and so happy.

'It sounds ridiculous I know but it was amazing.'

'We had an absolute ball. This is the stuff you see in movies... it's one of those crazy Hollywood stories and our friends love it,' she said

With their families on board after seeing how they were together, the loved up pair started planning their wedding and just weeks later, Mrs van Eyk packed up and moved in to the farm.

'The only date free for the location we wanted was Valentine's Day, 2015, so we booked in and six months later we were married in a dream ceremony,' she said.

'The four weeks prior we spent travelling together to really understand and learn what it would be like to live together and be together as a married couple and it couldn't have been better.

'We had an absolute ball. This is the stuff you see in movies... it's one of those crazy Hollywood stories and our friends love it.'

Three years on, the couple now live together on the dairy farm and are more in love than ever

Three years on, the couple now live together on the dairy farm and are more in love than ever.

Mrs van Eyk teaches at a school nearby and the couple try and get away and go on adventures on weekends - the duo previously enjoying trips to Europe and around Australia.

'My mum still takes credit for it all,' Mrs van Eyk said.

'We are so happy and so glad we followed our hearts.

'My advice for anyone in our situation is to just follow your gut and take a leap. Sometimes you need to break out of routine to truly see what you're missing.'

One woman who knows exactly what it's like to fall hard and fast is Frances Abbott, the daughter of the former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott

The 26-year-old recently announced her engagement to Olympic rower, Sam Loch, after just two weeks together and on Wednesday debuted her ring for the first time

One woman who knows exactly what it's like to fall hard and fast is Frances Abbott, the daughter of the former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

The 26-year-old recently announced her engagement to Olympic rower, Sam Loch, after just two weeks together and on Wednesday debuted her ring for the first time.

'Two weeks was all it took to know that forever with you was a mighty fine idea,' the fitness devotee wrote in her Instagram announcement.

As for the proposal itself, Frances told Stellar that it happened while she was in the kitchen putting peas in the freezer.

As for the proposal itself, Frances told Stellar that it happened while she was in the kitchen putting peas in the freezer

Mr Loch, 34, had a bottle of champagne in his hands and cleverly convinced her to ask him why. When she obliged, he replied that he had brought it to drink after he asked her to marry him.

That was two weeks after they first met, and the couple waited another two weeks before telling the world.

Having already moved in together, Frances and Mr Loch will walk down the aisle next year.

Peppered with questions about the speed of the engagement, Frances revealed it could not have felt more natural, saying she believes in trusting her instincts.
Each week, we send two people on a blind date. Our latest couple, Tonya Elson, 50, and Jonathan Cass, 52, had dinner at the Rivenhall Hotel in Witham, Essex.

Jonathan, who lives in nearby Great Dunmow, has a 27-year-old son and is an actor. Twice-married Tonya, from Colchester, has twins aged 12 and a ten-year-old son. She works at an estate agency.

TONYA, 50, SAYS:

Tonya Elson (pictured), 50 works at an estate agent and lives in Colchester

Im amazed by people who come out of divorce and meet someone quickly. Thats not happening for me! Ive tried online dating, but often feel its a waste of time and effort.

Im old-school in many ways, and wasnt nervous at all about the idea of a blind date. I was intrigued about who I was going to meet and relieved it didnt involve all that chatting online to a stranger  its so impersonal.

I was pleasantly surprised when Jonathan walked in. I like someone to make an effort after all, I always do  and he was dressed smartly. Ive gone on plenty of dates where men turn up in a pair of trainers!

From the word go, our conversation flowed easily, as if we knew each other already. We talked about life in general and have a lot in common. We both have children and have been married twice. I lived in Singapore for a few years and, because of his previous job as British Airways cabin crew, we knew a lot of the same bars and restaurants there.

Jonathan said he had been nervous, but he didnt seem it. Im not sure I have a type, although I probably go for tall, dark men, but really, its about the person, not the looks.

Jonathan told me about his job and said upfront he probably wasnt the best boyfriend in the world due to work commitments. It made me realise we have very different lives.

I really enjoyed our date  if Jonathan hadnt been so lovely to chat to, I would have gone way earlier. Hes a very interesting guy, and I loved hearing about his job. At the end of the evening, he kissed me on the lips, which took me by surprise, but it was OK.

I always go on a date with an open mind, but for me, the chemistry is usually instant. Although we had a really nice conversation, not to mention that kiss, I dont think the attraction was there.

At the end of the night, he kissed me on the lips, which took me by surprise

I liked Jonathan a lot and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, though. I so enjoyed having some male company.

We could have talked all night  they were cashing up when we left. But sadly, I dont think its the start of a big romance for me, lovely though he was.

Jonathan would make a lovely partner for someone who didnt have young children and had more time than me. I have three youngsters who keep me busy, and I work, too.

I would possibly go out again with him as a friend, but I think we are at very different stages in our lives. He kept saying he did understand that side of things about my children, but I think this is hard to do unless you are actually living it.

LIKED? He made an effort to dress nicely and was really friendly.

REGRETS? None.

COFFEE OR CAB? Coffee.

VERDICT: 10/10

JONATHAN, 52, SAYS:

Jonathan Cass (pictured), 52, is an actor who lives nearby Great Dunmow

Ive been married twice, once in my early 20s and again in 2002. My second marriage ended in 2014, after we grew apart.

Since then, Ive dated on and off, but have been single for the past two years. Ive had fits and starts of trying to find someone online, but it never gets beyond chatting because my job as a supporting artist in TV and film makes it difficult to make plans.

I live in Great Dunmow, but spend a lot of time on my narrow boat down the road in Roydon. My lifestyle is not conducive to a stable relationship.

As this was my first proper date in two-and-a-half years, I was apprehensive. I walked into the restaurant early, as I didnt want Tonya to be sitting by herself, but she was already there.

She is very pretty and obviously keeps herself fit, and from the start, the conversation was easy. We got on really well.

Shes Libra, like me, and I always get on with Librans, so we hit it off. We chatted about our personality traits, then a little about each others lives and previous relationships. Ive travelled a lot and she lived in Singapore for nine years, so we had lots in common.

It did bother me a bit that she has three young kids, as I know that, with my job, I wouldnt be a very good partner to someone with a young family. Id be worried Id let them down. I might make an arrangement, then get a work call that changed things.

I think Tonya wants a man who can do family days or has children the same age. I get that. I think there was chemistry, though. At first, I got the impression I wasnt her type. When I asked, she told me she normally goes for tall, dark men.

But somehow, because we got that out in the open, it meant we relaxed and had a good evening.

We were there for four hours. At our age, you dont want time- wasters, so early on we got to the nitty gritty and defined the ground rules. It let us relax.

As a result, this date has really given me a boost, even if it doesnt lead anywhere. I might come over as super-confident, but some of it is show and, when you havent been dating in a while, you question: Have I still got it? and Can I sit down and do this?

The date gave me a real boost  even if we have no future

I would love a relationship, but worry Im a very difficult to be with because my job makes me difficult to pin down.

Sometimes, I overthink it. I analyse everything and ask: If I do this today, how will this affect my life in five years? Its like Im apologising in advance for being a useless boyfriend!

The fact that we had such a relaxed evening and got on so well has given me the confidence to think I can do this again.

TOP FLIRTING TIPS Try Dating Doctor Ala na Kirks tips for not overthinking and going with the flow: If something goes wrong, laugh about it together. Its the best way to bond.

Try to just focus on the moment.

Never expect a perfect date; youll only be disappointed.

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We didnt swap phone numbers at the end. Tonya was a little anxious to get back to her kids once we realised the time, but it wasnt awkward, as I think wed both had a really nice evening and had been open and frank.

So we shared a kiss and wished each other well.

Ive spent most of my life in relationships, and this is the first time in years Ive put myself first. Ive found my mojo, having lost it in my last relationship, and I finally like who I am.

This date has taught me that, sometimes, you just have to take a leap of faith.

I may not be right for Tonya, but I would like to see her again, even as a friend, because we had such a lovely time.

LIKED? She is a beautiful and lovely person.

REGRETS? None.

COFFEE OR CAB? Coffee.

VERDICT: 10/10
Mary Berry and Paul Hunnings have been happily married for 51 years

For an 82-year-old, she is fiercely independent and has a busier diary than most people half her age.

Now Mary Berry has revealed that her greatest fear is being left by herself.

In particular, the TV chef, who has been married to Paul Hunnings for 51 years, said she couldnt bear the thought of being widowed.

She said: I shouldnt think about it, but I cant bear the thought of being a widow.

Many of my friends are now widows and Im so proud of them. Its a scary thing.

Miss Berry married her husband Paul, a retired antique bookseller, in 1966.

The couple, who recently bought a 2.6million four-bedroom property together, had three children together - tree surgeon Thomas, their only daughter and Miss Berrys business partner Annabel and William who died in a car accident at the age of 19 in 1989 while studying business at Bristol Polytechnic.

Dame Judi's solo bliss Dame Judi Denchs partner has said they are too old to move in together. The Oscar-winning actress, 82, and conservationist David Mills, 74, are content with making time to see one another and not co-habiting. They have resolutely refused to get married, he said, adding: We are very lucky at our stage to have found this path together. Why change it? Speaking to Radio Times about their seven-year relationship, Mr Mills said: Having two houses allows us space. It works extremely well. Despite living four miles apart, they say they still enjoy doing normal things, like watching TV, and entertaining friends. Advertisement

Despite saying she is very happily married, Miss Berry revealed she did not feel appreciated by her husband, 85, who she said is not in the slightest bit romantic.

Asked what shes learnt during her marriage, she told Good Housekeeping: It is a long time! Im so lucky. We are very happily married. I appreciate him enormously and tell him so  which is not reciprocated! But there we are.

She added: But I dont mind at all, because he is very old-fashioned.

I think he is quite happy with his lot. Paul is not in the slightest romantic.

The former Great British Bake Off host said her father Alleyne, a surveyor who served as Mayor of Bath, advised her husband never to go to bed on an argument, which she said was very good advice.

She said: Some very good advice my father gave Paul is never to go to bed on an argument.

Otherwise one of us  and it will be me  will be awake all night. Paul will have gone to sleep! It is much better to discuss a whole situation and see how you feel. I think that is very good advice.

Miss Berry revealed earlier this year that she turned down her husband the first time he asked her to marry him because he was drunk.

While looking back on photos of their wedding day in an episode of her BBC series Mary Berry Everyday, the couple recalled how how it had taken three attempts for her to agree to marry him.

Asked if she remembered when he first proposed, she responded: I do remember the first proposal and I think you were drunk.

The couple at Windsor Castle as she receives her CBE

I think you had too much and I can remember telling you you were drunk and thinking, Im not going to have anything to do with this man.

But you did come back.

On the second occasion, Mr Hunnings said she had responded in the same way.

He said: Third time I think I said from memory, I cant go on like this, Im getting on in age, so either its yes or no.

She agreed to take his hand, and they wed in 1966 at Charlcombe Church near her parents home in Bath.

Berry, who baked her wedding cake herself, said she had no regrets over her marriage.

She said: Im very happy and it was for better for worse for richer for poorer and weve had some wonderful times.

Miss Berry previously revealed how her husband helped out as she tried to juggle her career with being a mother.

Writing in her 2013 autobiography, Mary Berry: The Queen of British Baking, the chef, who took only five weeks off after each of her three babies before returning to work, said: None of my friends had careers, but I loved my work and Paul was marvellous with things like the school run.

It wasnt like today. There was no maternity leave and if you didnt come back to your job soon, someone else would jump into your shoes. By then, I was cooking editor of a magazine and there was lots of competition.
Beloved childrenswear brand Pumpkin Patch is sprouting again, and this time around nothing costs more than $40.

More than a year after the company went into liquidation and was forced to close all of its stores, the brand has re-launched exclusively online.

And to celebrate its return, Pumpkin Patch is offering a limited edition summer collection for children aged one month to 8 years old.

Beloved childrenswear brand Pumpkin Patch has re-launched exclusively online, and this time around nothing costs more than $40

To celebrate its return, Pumpkin Patch is offering a limited edition summer collection for children aged one month to 8 years old

Pumpkin Patch was recently acquired by eCommerce site Catch Group, which revealed the brand's summer line will feature completely new designs.

'We assembled a very small team of experienced children's fashion professionals to design the new look from scratch,' Pumpkin Patch spokesman Ryan Gracie told Daily Mail Australia.

The girls' collection features a variety of dresses in pinks and yellows, with patterns ranging from gingham to stripes and florals, while the boys' line features a brightly-coloured mixture of shirts and shorts.

The majority of the range is made from 100 per cent cotton, created by the team of professionals in Melbourne.

Pumpkin Patch had been in business for 27 years when it collapsed into receivership and was forced to shut hundreds of stores across Australia last year

'Our designers have really captured that fun, carefree spirit of childhood that Pumpkin Patch has always stood for,' Catch Group CEO Nati Harpaz said in a statement.

Pumpkin Patch had been in business for 27 years when it collapsed into receivership and was forced to shut hundreds of stores across Australia last year.

The majority of the new range is made from 100 per cent cotton, created by the team of professionals in Melbourne

Catch Group acquired the company's customer database, intellectual property and trademarks in March 2017.

'When we took on Pumpkin Patch, we knew it was a much loved brand but underestimated just how much love there was for it,' Gracie said.

'Generations of Australians and New Zealanders had grown up wearing quality Pumpkin Patch clothing, so it was very important for us to stay true to the quality promise.'

That was the reason why Catch Group decided to relaunch Pumpkin Patch exclusively online.

'Being purely online means we don't have the huge overheads of the brick and mortars stores,' Gracie said.

'We don't have to charge high prices to pay the rent, we can create the highest quality clothing and pass the savings on to the customers.'

And the brand wanted to ensure it could create fresh designs at a 'price that everyone can afford', Gracie added.

'For too long people have had to pay crazy prices for quality designs,' he said. 'We want Pumpkin Patch to challenge this.'
A grief-stricken mother has released the heartbreaking final text message from her 23-year-old son who thought he had flu  but died mere hours later of a cardiac arrest.

'Having the flu and going to work really took it out of me,' university graduate Patrick Walsh told his mum Elaine Walsh, 54, in Devon just hours before he died.

She responded 'I love you so much xxx' not realising it would be the last message she would ever send him.

Hours later his still body was found by police in bed with his headphones on, and it's thought he died from an underlying heart problem he didn't know he had.

Elaine told how her only child was living his dream of working in California's technology hub Silicon Valley, when he told his mum he was feeling unwell but not to worry.

Elaine Walsh, 54, from Devon was left heartbroken by the death of her son Patrick, 23, who suffered a cardiac arrest hours after complaining of flu

Super-fit Patrick is thought to have had an underlying, undiagnosed heart condition

In his final text message to his mother, Patrick said he had the flu but told her not to worry

Working out at the gym every day, Patrick was seemingly the picture of health and fitness.

But in January this year, when Elaine, thousands of miles away in Teignmouth, Devon, unusually didn't hear from the promising account manager in January this year, she begged her ex-husband John Walsh, 60, a retired American airman, who also lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico to ring the local police.

Paying tribute to the son she thought of as a 'best friend,' Elaine said: 'He really looked after me and loved his mum. We had a special bond.

'He loved his family to bits and would do anything for me. He had so much love to give - a truly caring and beautiful person.'

The fitness fanatic was always in the gym working out and seemed to be the picture of health

Patrick with his father John and mother Elaine at his graduation ceremony in Bath

Patrick, who studied business management at Bath Spa University before going on to the University of Birmingham to complete a master's degree in business, took a job in Silicon Valley, California, at research firm Canalys in October last year.

Elaine continued: 'It was his dream to work in California so when he was offered the job at Canalys I couldn't have been more proud.

'I encouraged him to live his dream and do what he wanted, but inside I didn't really want him to go.

Patrick was found dead in bed with headphones on after suffering a cardiac arrest

Patrick with his parents and grandmother. He had moved to the US to pursue his dream job in California

'We were so close, he knew everything about me and I knew everything about him, and I would really miss him.'

The last time Elaine saw her son in person was during a visit to the States in November last year, right after he was involved in a car crash in California where he was uninjured.

Patrick was close to his mother and spoke to her every day on WhatsApp

To this day, she says she's unsure what happened  but thinks perhaps Patrick's black out could have been an early sign of a heart concern.

Though Patrick spent Christmas in California, he still spoke with Elaine daily, usually via instant messaging service WhatsApp.

Recalling their final exchange, she said: 'The last time I heard from him was on January 15 this year. He said he hadn't been feeling very well over Christmas, like he had the flu.

'I assumed it was some kind of winter bug he would get over. He was such a fit lad, always going to the gym and working on his six pack.'

After what turned out to be Patrick's last message to his mum, reading 'having the flu and going to work really took it out of me' the pair agreed to speak again later that afternoon.

But when Elaine didn't hear from him, she began to worry.

After ringing him a few times with no answer, she said she 'just knew something had happened.'

Elaine became worried when she didn't hear from Patrick as it was rare for him not to be in contact with her

Elaine said that she knew in her heart her son was dead before police confirmed the news

'It was so unlike Patrick so I called his dad and asked him to call the police,' she said.

The next day - January 16 - officers went to Patrick's home but got no reply.

Then, after visiting his work, they returned to his flat on January 17 with a spare set of keys  and tragically found him dead in bed.

'I knew they were going to find him dead,' Elaine said. 'I drove six hours to my friend Karen's house in Lincolnshire in the hours before Patrick's dad John told me the news.

'I said to her "I know I've lost him" and cried all day before it was confirmed at 10pm that night. I was absolutely devastated. I felt like my whole world had crumbled.'

Elaine said it's a small comfort that Patrick died at home while listening to music

Patrick's body was taken around the town in a horse-drawn carriage

John told Elaine, who has been with her partner Kevin Phelps, 53, for 20 months after splitting from John three years ago, that officers had found Patrick in his bed with his headphones on, as if he was sleeping.

She added: 'He had a cardiac arrest and we have since discovered the flu symptoms he was having were likely a result of the underlying heart condition he had.

'It gives me some comfort, knowing he died whilst listening to music.

'It's my belief it was a very peaceful end for him.'

It took almost three weeks for Patrick's body to be repatriated back to the UK, and then transported to his hometown of Teignmouth.

Elaine went to see her boy in the chapel of rest twice, kissing his hair the final time she saw him before his funeral was held on February 13 this year at St Michael's Church, Teignmouth.

His body was taken around the town in a horse-drawn carriage, so the local community could pay their respects.

Elaine said: 'I wanted everyone to see him and know it was someone important who had died.

'People stopped in the street and did the sign of the cross for him before I followed his body, carried by his dad and stepbrother Robbie Walsh, 36, into the church.'

The Eva Cassidy song Fields of Gold - containing the lyrics 'will you stay with me, will you be my love among the fields of barley?' - was sung by an ex-girlfriend of Patrick's whilst his closest friend Joshua Green gave a best man-style speech.

'The church was absolutely packed and people came from all over the world to say goodbye,' Elaine recalled.

An inquest at Torquay Coroner's Court in May this year heard Patrick died of natural causes.

MUST PAR: Now, Elaine is backing St John Ambulance's C.A.R.E for a Heart campaign, which gives four steps to learn to give people the best chance of survival.

C, is for find your closest defibrillator, A is for be ready to spot the signs of cardiac arrest, R is to know how to resuscitate using CPR, and E is for early defibrillation, which gives the best chance of survival.

Elaine has raised money from family and friends to fund defibrillators  equipment that can deliver an electric shock to the heart and restore its natural rhythm  that will be placed in Devon's Newton Abbot and Paignton town centres.

According to St John Ambulance, up to seven out of 10 people who suffer a cardiac arrest could survive if they are treated with a defibrillator inside the first five minutes but many people have no idea where their nearest one is.

Elaine said: 'Life without Patrick is empty and joyless. But I am determined to try and save lives for Patrick.

'It's important to get more defibrillators into public places, and if I can help save another life and prevent another family going through what I am going through now, then my son's death won't have been in vain; that's what he would want.'

For more information visit www.sja.org.uk/care
A mother has revealed how she gave birth to quadruplets after believing that a battle with bladder cancer had put an end to her dreams of having children.

Virginia Johnson, from Arizona, discovered she had tumour when she had a scan to examine an ectopic pregnancy in October 2013.

The 35-year-old, who had her right Fallopian tube removed as a teenager, was devastated when doctors revealed they would have to remove her left tube to stop the spread of the disease, fearing it would mean she would never become a mother.

But IVF proved successful and she gave birth to daughter Zoe, now three, in October 2014. Hoping to give their daughter a sibling, Virgina and her husband Victor, 45, had one final round of IVF last year - and fell pregnant with quadruplets.

Family: Parents Virginia and Victor Johnson with three-year-old daughter Zoey and quadruplets, Ava, Madelyn, Olivia and Victor, who were all born through IVF

Surprise: Identical girls Ava, Madelyn and Olivia, left, and baby Victor, were born this year

Big sister: Virginia and Victor wanted to give three-year-old Zoey a sibling - now she has four

The mother-of-five now keeps thousands of Instagram followers entertained with updates about her life with Zoe and eight-month-old Ava, Madelyn, Olivia and Victor.

She said: 'I feel so lucky when I look at my children because I never thought this would happen to me. It hasn't been your typical journey into parenthood, but I wouldn't change it for the world.'

Virginia has suffered fertility issues since puberty and had her right ovary and Fallopian tube removed aged 13 due to complications with Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

She and Victor, a car dealer, tried for years to conceive before falling pregnant. But they suffered further heartbreak when they discovered the pregnancy was ectopic and would have to be terminated.

Four times the fun: Baby Victor, right, with identical sisters Ava, Madelyn and Olivia

Expecting: Virginia and husband Victor while she was pregnant with the quadruplets

New additions: Victor takes three-year-old daughter Zoey to meet her siblings in hospital

It was only when doctors conducted a scan to monitor the pregnancy that the malignant tumour in Virgina's bladder was detected.

If the pregnancy had not been ectopic, doctors believe the cancer would have most likely gone undetected and might have spread throughout her body.

Virginia said: 'When doctors discovered the cancer I was so broken. After trying to have a baby for long, we were just so incredibly happy to have conceived naturally.

'And then boom: two weeks later it was all taken away from us. I was incredibly angry and severely depressed. It took me a long time to realise that the ectopic pregnancy happened for a reason. It was like my body saying: "Don't worry, you are going to be a mum but not yet, your body isn't ready, let's beat this cancer first".'

Hand full: Virginia and the quadruplets, pictured with Victor, stayed in hospital for six weeks

Tiny: One of the quadruplets reaches out to grab their mother's hand in hospital

Doctors removed the tumour and her remaining Fallopian tube in November 2013 to stop the cancer spreading, eliminating the couple's remaining hope of conceiving naturally. But just a month later they started IVF, determined to start a family.

Virginia revealed the swift dive into IVF was 'a coping mechanism' and a way to 'numb the pain' of the couple's loss a month earlier.

Shortly after they discovered it had been successful and a year later they welcomed daughter Zoey, now three.

After an 'incredible' year and a half of being parents, Virginia said she felt like she wanted to have another child.

Four of a kind: Little Victor with his three identical sisters look adorable in a newborn shoot

Following an unsuccessful round of IVF, the parents discovered they were having twins. A week later they discovered one of the embryos had split in two and that they would have triplets. Two weeks after that, they were given the news that two babies were sharing one sac and she was actually carrying quadruplets - three identical girls and a boy.

'It was such an emotional rollercoaster,' Virginia said. 'I went from being excited for twins, to being overwhelmed at the idea of triplets and then being completely gob smacked that I was pregnant with quadruplets.

'Straight away, my doctors warned me about the dangers of carrying quads and asked me to consider "selective reduction", meaning to abort one or more of the babies. But that was never an option for me or my husband.'

Virginia carried her quadruplets to 32 weeks before a scheduled caesarian section, where all babies were delivered safely. Six weeks later, the family came home.

She said: 'It was incredibly chaotic bringing them home. You can't imagine the crying and the running around for each baby and, of course, still taking care of Zoey.

'We hardly got any sleep and were awake every three hours for bottle feeds. It's hard enough with one newborn but with quads it's four times as demanding.

'But I also feel four times as blessed. We're so lucky that we have such a good support system here and we do get a lot of help.'
A University of Alabama student is currently spending the rest of her semester in a Christmas tree costume after losing a self-imposed Twitter bet.

Kelsey Hall, 20, shared a photo of herself wearing the festive outfit, which engulfs her entire body and only has a small hole for her face to poke through, earlier this month on the platform.

She pledged to wear it to all of her classes every day until the end of the current semester, with classes due to end tomorrow before a week of finals begins.

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Festive! University of Alabama student Kelsey Hall (pictured), 20, is currently spending the rest of her semester in a Christmas tree costume after losing a self-imposed Twitter bet

Promise: The sophomore took to Twitter to share a photo of herself in the costume and pledged to wear it every day until the end of the semester if she got 1,000 retweets

Naturally, Hall's message has gone viral, easily surpassing the threshold she had set for herself in just a few hours. It has now been retweeted more than 30,000 times.

The student, a chemistry major, has remained true to her word and has now worn the costume for four days in a row.

Other students have enjoyed seeing her on campus in the jolly getup, and have stopped her to pose for selfies in her company. She even took snaps with her alma mater's mascot, an elephant named Big Al.

'I'm sure a lot of people on campus have wondered, "Why is she dressed like a Christmas tree?"' Hall told the University of Alabama's news center. 'I never thought it would take off like this.'

Of course: Hall's message has gone viral, easily surpassing the threshold she had set in just a few hours. She has stayed true to her word and has been spotted on campus in the costume

They're loving it: Other students have enjoyed seeing her on campus in the jolly getup, and have stopped her to pose for selfies in her company

Viral: Hall has become a local celebrity and is even having trouble finding enough time to study while handing interview requests and online notifications

The student explained that her mother gave her the Christmas tree costume as a gift after being inspired by an online video of a man dancing to the song Jumpman, by Drake, in a similar outfit.

'I love dressing up, and I love Drake, and it reminded her of me. So, she bought it for me to recreate the video,' Hall said.

While she would love to meet Drake, she said she has yet to learn the actual dance featured in the video before she can recreate the clip.

Hall admitted that, while she has stock to her promise, the costume isn't very comfortable to wear for hours at a time.

Duo: The student She even took snaps with her alma mater's mascot, an elephant named Big Al

Spreading the join: Hall is already thinking about bringing the costume back next year, and urged others to join in on the fun

'The face-hole falls down a lot, and I have to keep readjusting it, especially with my backpack on,' she said. 'It's very hot, and it's getting a lot of water in it. But it's light and airy.'

Her experiment has garnered so much attention the student finds herself lacking enough time to respond to all interview requests and manage her online notifications while at the same time studying for finals.

'I've been sleeping a lot, so that hasn't been affected. But I've had to turn off notifications so I can focus on work,' she said. 'I try to respond to people asking for interviews, but it's kind of hard to balance with tests coming up. I haven't had time to study, and I'm a little stressed about that.'

Hall is already thinking about bringing the costume back next year, and urged others to join in on the fun.

'I've been getting a lot of weird looks being the only person dressed like this,' she added. 'And if someone wants to take over, I'd definitely pass it on.'
Marla Maples is undoubtedly looking forward to spending the Christmas holiday with her daughter Tiffany Trump, and the mom couldn't resist sharing a throwback picture of her only child visiting Santa Claus.

The 54-year-old, who is President Donald Trump's second ex-wife, got into the holiday spirit on Thursday when she took to Instagram to post a heartwarming photo of herself holding Tiffany while she and her late mother, Ann, sat on Santa's lap.

Marla paid tribute to both her mom and daughter when she captioned the image, writing: '#tbt to a precious moment with Mom (our dearest angel of Christmas), a man called "Santa" and this littlest bit of Holiday Magic @tiffanytrump who brings the Joy!'

Feeling festive: Marla, 54, took to Instagram on Thursday to post a throwback photo of herself holding her daughter Tiffany while she and her late mother, Ann, sat on Santa's lap

Reunited: Marla and Tiffany, 24, celebrated Thanksgiving together while her father, President Trump, was at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida

Marla's mother Ann passed away on March 6, 2014 in California at the age of 74, and it is clear that she is still very much adored by her daughter and granddaughter.

In the picture, little Tiffany matches Santa Claus in a festive red dress featuring a furry white hem and a matching headband to hold back her blond curls.

Tiffany's grandmother looks chic in black turtleneck, which she is wearing under a red skirt suit, and Marla is equally festive in a bright green long-sleeve top.

The photo appears to have been taken in the mid-'90s, when now-24-year-old Tiffany was about two years old.

Nostalgia: Marla recently posted an old snapshot of herself holding up the cherry pie that won her first place at the North Georgia Fair when she was 11 years old

Inherited talent: Over Thanksgiving, Marla posted a series of throwback photos of herself posed with Tiffany while they showed off the pecan pies they made over the years

Home for the holidays: Most of the pictures appear to have been taken when Tiffany was a teenager

Marla was married to President Trump from 1993 to 1999, and she tagged her ex-husband's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, when posting the picture,

The mother-of-one has been feeling nostalgic lately, and last week she posted a snapshot of herself holding up her award-winning pie when she a young girl living in Georgia.

The cherry pie I entered in the North Georgia Fair and won first place! #tbt 11 yrs old,' she captioned the image, which sees her proudly holding up her finished pie.

Young Marla's waist-length blonde hair is parted to the side and held back with a barrette while her bangs are curled to the side.

Happy family: Other photos from the post see Tiffany posing with her grandparents Stan and Ann

Having fun: Tiffany is playing pool with her mother, her grandfather, and her mom's half-sister Danielle in another photo

Fall foliage: Marla also posted a snapshot of herself posed with her daughter and parents outside when Tiffany was a teen

It seems as though Tiffany has inherited both her mom's blonde curls and her pie-making ability, and this Thanksgiving the mom proudly posted old pictures of her little girl posed with the pecan pies that they baked together over the years.

The mother-daughter duo are holding up their partially eaten pecan pie in the first photo, while the following images see Tiffany posing with her mom and grandparents.

In the last picture in the series, Tiffany and Marla are holding up their freshly baked pecan pie for the camera.

'#tbt Thanksgiving from years gone by with Tiff & pecan pie, Our Mom-Mom Ann, lil sister Danielle, Daddy Stan, & of course Dingdaddy. May your day be blessed with sweet memories & new everyday miracles of love,' Marla wrote when posting the images.

All smiles: This Thanksgiving, Marla and Tiffany posed for a photo with their friends Tara Sutphen (far right) and her daughter Cheyenne Van Zutphen (center, right)

'Catch!' As a nature lover, Marla has been enjoying the fall weather while playing in the fallen leaves

Tiffany is in the midst of her first year of law school at Georgetown University, and while she now lives closer to her father and her half-sister Ivanka in Washington, D.C., her mom clearly misses her.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Marla happily shared photos of herself enjoying her time with her little girl.

In one photo, Marla and Tiffany are posed with their friends Tara Sutphen and her daughter Cheyenne Van Zutphen.

'Catching the light of the most beautiful fall day #momsanddaughters friends through time making new memories. So grateful for these girls,' Marla wrote.

Another photo sees Marla and Tiffany playing with a Thanksgiving-theme filter that gave them drumsticks for ears.

'Tiffany Treats': Back in October, Marla thanked Tiffany for coming home for her 54th birthday

Look of love: Marla also paid tribute to her daughter's 24th birthday in October by sharing a photo of Tiffany at her first birthday party in 1994

'Me and my little drumstick,' she captioned the image. 'After dinner, pre-dishes fun! Hope you found lots of reasons to smile today. Grateful for time with Tiff sharing in a special #momsanddaughters weekend.'

It has been a busy few months for Marla and Tiffany, who both celebrated their birthdays in October.

A few days after she turned 54 on October 27, Marla posted a photo of herself posed with her daughter while sharing her gratitude that Tiffany took time off from studying to visit her.

And a week after Tiffany's 24th birthday on October 13, Marla paid tribute to her only child by sharing a throwback photos of herself taking her baby girl for a dip in the pool.

'1 week ago, 24yrs ago this little girl was born. Here we are at Tiffanys 1st birthday party in 1994,' she wrote. 'Oh how I wish I could still hold her that close Yes Im that mommy. I love my girl so much! And so proud of all your accomplishments, but most important of all is the love you share.'
Thought a peppermint mocha was the peak of Christmasy drinks? Sure, maybe in 2016.

Starbucks announced today that for a short time, it will be offering Christmas Tree Frappuccinos at stores in the US and Canada.

The peppermint mocha-flavored Frapp is topped with green whipped cream and candy 'ornaments', so it looks just as festive as it tastes.

Sip and sleigh! Starbucks has unveiled a Christmas Tree Frappuccino

Exclusive: The drink is only available now through Monday in the US and Canada

Mint chocolate: It is made with a with a Peppermint Mocha Creme Frappuccino base

The drink will only be in stores from today, December 7, through Monday, December 11  so curious customers will have to act fast.

It starts with a Peppermint Mocha Creme Frappuccino base and is topped with green matcha whipped cream, piled high to look like a tree. The whipped cream is then drizzled with a caramel 'garland' and sprinkled with candied cranberry 'ornaments'.

Finally, on top, they put a strawberry 'tree topper'.

Instagram and Twitter have already been flooded with images and reviews of the limited drink since it hit stores this morning.

Festive: It's topped with green matcha whipped cream, which is piled high to look like a tree

Decorative: The whipped cream is sprinkled with candied cranberry 'ornaments'

Cute: There is also a caramel drizzle 'garland' and a tree topper made out of a strawberry

Get it while it's cold! The drink was unveiled this morning and is already very buzzy

Must-have! Social media users have expressed excitement about the treat

Yum: Reviews have been mostly positive, though some have noted that it doesn't look like it does in pictures

A little fun: There are plenty of Christmas-loving customers who just want it because it is seasonal

'OH MEH GOAD I JUST SAW THE STARBUCKS CHRISTMAS TREE FRAPPUCCINO and the very sight of it gave me a medical event. I want one so badly,' wrote one excited fan.

'I hate Christmas but I NEED a Christmas tree Frappuccino ASAP please and thank you,' wrote another.

While there were a few skeptics who wrote that they didn't understand why anyone would 'need' such a drink, most people who have taken to social media to comment on the drink are excited.

'Verdict: minty and tasty, though not as festive looking as some of the other special frapps like the zombie or unicorn. Still good, though!' wrote one reviewer. Said another: 'We tried the new Christmas Tree Frappuccino at work earlier and it looks atrocious but it doesn't taste half bad.'

'Bought a Christmas Tree Frappuccino from Starbucks because I have no f***ing self control when it comes to Christmas-related things,' another said.

Boo! For Halloween, the chain put out a Zombie Frappuccino

Magical: Starbucks seems to be trying to recreate the popularity of the Unicorn Frappuccino

Not everywhere: They also had a Mermaid Frappuccino in Mexico

The over-the-top drink is just the latest in a succession of Instagrammable Starbucks Frappuccino, which have all caught the attention of fans with a sweet tooth and a smartphone.

Most recently, for Halloween, there was a Zombie Frappuccino, which was made with a Creme Frappuccino base, tart apple and caramel flavors, and a topping of red mocha drizzle and pink whipped cream 'brains'.

Earlier this year, their Unicorn Frappuccino was a huge hit, and a Mermaid Frappuccino released only in Mexico drew envy from Americans and Europeans.
Chefs have revealed how we've been cooking many staple dishes such as poached and scrambled eggs the wrong way this year.

And now a cookbook author has said that many of us make some catastrophic errors when cooking a basic tomato sauce too.

Nicola Millbank, who starred as Ella in Mount Pleasant, which had its final series this year, has exclusively shared her perfect tomato sauce recipe with FEMAIL Food&Drink.

She says the thing most people do wrong is failing to cook their sauce for long enough.

You can't rush a good tomato sauce, according to Nicola Millbank

'In a lot of people's heads, you just chop up an onion, get it in a pan, brown it and pour in tinned tomatoes and that's kind of done,' says Nicola, who published her first cookbook, Milly's Real Food, in May this year.

'But for me the secret of a really good bolognese or a pomodoro sauce for pasta, is to use the classic italian trio: onions, celery, and carrot, diced really fine.'

Nicola, who is currently writing a screenplay as well as running her Milly's Cookbook food brand, says the longer you cook a tomato sauce, the better.

She warns that if you try to rush it, it will taste 'metallic'.

Here she shares her tomato sauce recipes: one for meat, and one for a plain all-purpose sauce.

Nicola, who until recently played Ella in Mount Pleasant, published her first cookbook this year

Nicola Millbank: How to make a perfect tomato sauce For a meat sauce: 1. Start with the classic Italian trio of onions, celery and carrot diced really fine, with a couple of cloves of garlic. 2. Sweat that down, don't brown it, until it's really soft. 3. Add your meat - I really like to use pork and sage in a lasagne. Brown off meat and add sage then add a glug of wine. 4. Next add some whole plum tomatoes, tinned, and sweat that down. 5. Add puree, some stock, salt and sugar to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes, some chilli flakes and let that bubble down for about two hours. For plain tomato sauce: 1. Sweat down the Italian trio with garlic, with herbs, salt and sugar again. The longer you cook it, the better. If you do it in a rush, then you get that metallic taste that doesn't actually taste like a good tomato sauce. Advertisement

Nicola Millbank is the first ever UK ambassador for Glenilen Farms natural farmhouse yoghurts. Available in Sainsburys, Waitrose, Ocado and independent stores. Visit glenilenfarm.com.
In the final part of our unmissable series, Prue Leith reveals some of the special family recipes her loved ones enjoy at Christmas. With comfort food treats such as her late-night pasta feast, lemon polenta cake and Peking duck pancakes, theyre sure to become firm favourites with your friends and family too.

A late-night pasta feast

I made this with my nephew Sam, the journalist, on camera for a photo shoot for Saga Magazine. We made it up as we went along, and were both surprised at how delicious it was. Its really my English answer to Italian pesto, which has pine nuts, pecorino and basil, not walnuts, Cheddar and parsley. I like mine better!

SERVES 4

600g tagliatelle

1 tsp salt

Little splash of oil

Large bunch (or three packets) fresh parsley, stalks removed

140g walnut pieces, plus extra to garnish

3 large cloves garlic, peeled

175g mature Cheddar, in chunks

150ml rapeseed oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to season

Cook the tagliatelle with the salt and a splash of oil in plenty of boiling water until just al dente (about ten minutes for dried, three minutes for fresh).

Drain, rinse under hot water and leave in the colander to steam dry while you make the sauce.

PRUE'S TIP The trick is to have really good walnuts, as fresh as possible  not the ones from the half-used pack at the back of the cupboard! Advertisement

Put the parsley, walnuts and garlic into a large liquidiser or food processor and blitz till smooth.

Then add the Cheddar and blitz some more. Finally pour in the rapeseed oil as you pulse it further until it looks like pesto. Mix into the pasta and season with the sea salt and black pepper. Garnish with the walnuts and serve immediately.

The trick is to have really good walnuts, as fresh as possible  not the ones from the half-used pack at the back of the cupboard!

Twice-baked smoked fish souffles

These little souffles are wonderfully rich. Use any smoked fish: smoked salmon, cooked or raw haddock, or kippers. They can be cooked a few hours before serving, then re-baked at the last minute. They can even be re-baked from frozen, in which case they will need extra time. They work well with any leftover cheese or a mix of cheeses.

Serves 8 if cooked in individual ramekins or small tea cups

40g butter, plus extra for greasing

300ml milk

1 slice of onion

40g plain flour

A pinch of dry English mustard

A pinch of cayenne

175g any smoked fish, skinned and finely chopped

55g strong cheddar, grated

4 eggs, separated

Freshly ground black pepper

300ml single cream

Use a little butter to grease the ramekins. Heat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4. Bring the milk to the boil with the onion in it. Discard the onion. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour, mustard and cayenne. Gradually add the milk, off the heat, stirring until smooth. Return to the heat and stir until the sauce boils and thickens. Add the smoked fish, stir, and take off the heat. Add three-quarters of the cheese and finally the egg yolks. Season with pepper.

In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry-looking. Fold into the cheese mixture. Spoon into the ramekins to fill two-thirds full. Stand the ramekins in a deep roasting pan and put into the oven. Carefully pour boiling water into the pan (you may need to pull the oven tray out a little) to come half way up the sides of the dishes. Bake for 15 minutes, or until set. Allow to sink and cool completely.

Run a knife round the souffles to loosen them. Turn them out and put upside down in an ovenproof serving dish (or wrap each one in clingfilm if freezing). Twenty minutes before serving, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the cold or frozen souffles. Pour the cream all over, coating them completely. Put the dish into a hot oven, 220c/200 fan/gas 7, for ten minutes (18 minutes if cooking from frozen) or until the souffle tops are pale gold. Serve immediately.

Classic chicory and orange salad

Chicory and orange is a classic combination for good reason  they are a marriage made in heaven. If serving with the duck pancakes do as below. If you add broken-up goats cheese you will have a delicious lunchtime main course.

Serves 6

2 tbsp hazelnuts

4 large heads chicory

2 large seedless oranges

1 small packet watercress

2-3 sprigs of mint, chopped

2 tbsp good olive oil

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Put the hazelnuts in a hot oven for a few minutes until just beginning to brown (watch out  they burn easily). Rub them in a tea towel to remove the papery brown skin. Return to the oven to toast them, or brown them in a dry frying pan. Allow to cool, then chop roughly.

Slice the chicory through on the diagonal. Separate the leaves and put into a salad bowl. Cut the skin and pith off the oranges, then carefully cut into the orange on each side of each segment so you can extract the segments without any pith. (If this sounds too difficult, just slice the peeled oranges thinly.) Add the oranges to the salad bowl.

Discard the thicker watercress stalks and add the rest to the salad. Combine the oil, vinegar, a good sprinkling of salt and about six twists of the pepper mill to make the dressing. Just before serving add the dressing to the salad and toss carefully (use your fingers, salad servers can break the chicory leaves). Sprinkle on the mint and toasted nuts.

Muscovado heaven with spice kumquats

This is a variation of the Muscovado Heaven recipe I thought Id invented. But then I saw Nigella had an almost identical recipe called Barbados Dream. Ah, well!

Serves 4

10 kumquats

115g granulated sugar

Small stick of cinnamon

1 star anise

200ml plain yoghurt

200ml double cream

About 2 tbsp dark muscovado sugar

Cut the kumquats in half and put them in a small pan with the granulated sugar, cinnamon and star anise. Cover with water and simmer slowly until the fruit is soft. Then boil until the liquid is reduced to a thick, very tacky syrup. Remove the spices. Cool.

PRUE'S TIP Dark muscovado is a must. It has a rich, treacly taste and its soft and dissolves quickly. Advertisement

Divide half the soft kumquats between four glasses. Mix together the yoghurt and cream and whisk until it will just hold its shape. Carefully spoon into the glasses, taking care not to mess up the sides. Then top with the remaining kumquats. With your fingers (to get an even layer) sprinkle muscovado sugar all over the top to cover completely but thinly.

Refrigerate for an hour or two, when the dark sugar will have melted and begun to run down the inside of the glasses!

Almost Peking duck pancakes

I once tried to make an authentic Peking duck, which involved blowing air into the duck with a bicycle pump to lift the skin from the carcass so it would dry to amazing crispness when roasted. Needless to say, Ive not done this since. You can get a nice all-over crisp duck if you roast it on a wire rack.

One year, when there was only the immediate family for Christmas, we had this instead of turkey. My son, then ten, now 43, has never forgotten it and would like a repeat.

There is something very good about a sharing sort of dish with everyone making their own pancakes. You can buy Chinese pancakes in supermarkets, or make your own, depending on how much time you have. This dish is delicious with the chicory and orange salad.

Serves 4-6

For the pancakes

225g plain flour

2 tbsp cornflour

80ml water

80ml milk

4 eggs

55g butter, melted

For the filling

1 large 2.5kg duck

Good pinch of salt

6 spring onions, washed

Half a cucumber

Jar hoisin sauce

Heat the oven to 200c/180c fan/gas 6. Prick through the skin of the duck, rub over the salt and set it on a wire rack over a roasting tin. Now roast for 1 hours, or until the skin is crisp and a skewer will glide easily into the thigh and the duck is cooked through. Cool on the rack.

While the duck roasts, whizz the flour, cornflour, water, milk, eggs and half the melted butter in a food processor to make a smooth batter. Pour into a jug. Cover and stand for at least 15 minutes (or overnight in the fridge is fine).

PRUE'S TIP If you cant get hold of hoisin sauce, plum jam spread thinly will do just fine. Advertisement

Use a little of the remaining butter to lightly grease a small frying pan (with a base about 11cm). Put over a medium heat and, when hot, pour a tablespoon of batter into it, swirling to make a thin pancake. Cook until set, then turn the pancake over and cook for another minute.

Remove to an oven-proof plate. If the batters too thick, thin with a little milk. Repeat with remaining batter. When cool enough to handle, remove all the skin off the duck and cut it into fine strips. If they are not crisp, put them aside and carefully pour all the fat, but none of the juices, from the roasting tin into a frying pan. Fry any soggy duck skin in this until crisp. Drain it well on kitchen paper, then put aside, but dont cover. Pull the meat off the duck into shreds, or cut into strips, put into the roasting tin and turn in the juices. Transfer to an ovenproof dish and cover with foil.

Cut the spring onions and cucumber into thin finger-length strips. Rewarm the pancakes, covered in foil, in the oven for ten minutes. Place them and the fillings (duck, skin, spring onion, cucumber, hoisin and salt and pepper) on the table so that everyone can reach them to roll their own pancakes. And eat with your fingers, of course!

My all-time favourite: Lemon, polenta and almond cake

This cake keeps really well (four days in a cake tin, at least a week in a plastic bag in the fridge), is delicious plain, and is great for a lunch or dinner party: just put small slices on individual plates and serve with a spoon of fruit curd or coulis and another of creme fraiche, clotted or whipped cream, or ice cream.

Serves 10

450g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

450g caster sugar

450g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

 tsp salt

2 tsp good vanilla essence

Zest of 4 lemons

Juice of 1 lemon

6 eggs

225g fine polenta flour

To serve

Fruit curd or coulis

Creme fraiche, cream or ice cream

Set the oven to 160c/140c fan/ gas 3. Line the bottom of a loose-bottomed 30cm cake tin with baking parchment. Lightly grease the bottom and sides, and dust with flour.

PRUE'S TIP For a smooth delicate texture, get fine polenta flour. Ordinary ground polenta is too grainy and makes a heavier cake. Advertisement

In a large bowl, whisk the butter and sugar together until pale and light. Stir in the ground almonds, baking powder and salt, vanilla, lemon juice and zest. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, each time with a spoon of polenta. Fold in the rest of the polenta.

Spoon into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for one hour, covering the cake lightly with a piece of foil or a folded sheet of newspaper after 45 minutes. After an hour, give the cake a little shake. If the middle doesnt wobble, the top is brown and the edges are just beginning to shrink away from the sides, the cake is done. If not, give it another ten minutes or so. Cool in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve in slices with fruit coulis or curd, and cream.

For a St Clements version, swap half the lemon zest with orange zest and add 2 tsp of orange water to the cake.

John's mum's stuffed dates

My husbands mother used to make these. He remembers total deliciousness. If you like marzipan and you like dates, then do try them.

Makes about 24

12 Medjool dates

225g marzipan

Juice of one lemon

Red, green and natural food colourings

A handful mint leaves

Split the dates in half and remove the stones. Take care not to damage the date halves. Knead the lemon juice into the marzipan a little at a time. Divide into three. Colour one third red and one third green by working the colouring into the marzipan (wear latex gloves if you dont want brightly coloured fingers) and leave the remaining third uncoloured. For gel or paste colourings youll only need a little  for liquid colourings youll need more. Roll small sausages of each marzipan colour and stuff the dates with this plump, sweet filling. Decorate with mint leaves.

BOOK OFFER: Get a 20 per cent discount on Prues autobiography Relish: My Life On A Plate, 16 (normally 20), and her novel The Prodigal Daughter, 7.19 (normally 8.99), until December 16, 2017, both published by Quercus. Order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640, p&p free on orders of 15 or over.

Photography by Toby Scott/Kate Whitaker. Food styling by Lorna Brash/Lizzie Harris. Prop styling by Morag Farquhar.
It's the moment millennials have been waiting for: the launch of stoneless avocados.

M&S has become the first UK supermarket to start selling the seedless variety, which are much smaller than normal avocados.

The so-called Cocktail Avocados are entirely edible, which means you can eat the skin as well.

Sadly, they're just as expensive as normal avocados though, as M&S are selling them at 2 a pack.

The Cocktail Avocados come without a seed but don't grow to be very big

The Cocktail Avocados look like gherkins, and only grow to between five and eight centimetres in length.

The result of an unpollinated avocado blossom, the fruit develops without a seed, which is why they don't grow very large.

The fruit is grown in Spain and is only availably in December due to its short season.

The harvest is usually reserved for a Parisian food market where they are snapped up by chefs, but this year M&S has secured a small atch to sell in the UK.

The stoneless variety is grown in Spain but M&S will be selling them for the first time in small batches this year just for December

Charlotte Curtis, M&S's agronomist, said: 'We've had the mini, the giant, ready-sliced and we're now launching the holy grail of avocados: stoneless.

'This amazing fruit has been on our radar for a couple of years and we're very excited to have finally been able to get hold of some for our customers to try.

'We know they will be in demand and we've only been able to get our hands on a limited amount so make sure you get them while you can.

'They're perfect for snacking and lunchboxes as they can be eaten whole but can also be used for a beautiful garnish or in a salad. My top tip is to try them deep fried.'

M&S first sold avocados in 1968 as an 'Avocado Pear' and it recommended that people enjoyed them as a dessert served with custard.

Cocktail Avocados are available in selected M&S stores throughout December, while stocks last at 2 per pack.
Thrashing about in your sleep may be an early warning sign of Parkinson's and dementia, new research suggests.

Moving around in bed, and seeming to 'act out' dreams is a characteristic of a condition called rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD).

People who suffer from this were shown to have inflammation in the area of the brain where the chemical dopamine is produced, which is involved in sending messages.

Parkinson's and dementia patients are known to have diminished supplies of dopamine because nerve cells that make it have died.

RBD affects around five per cent of people and includes talking, laughing, shouting and swearing while sleeping.

It adds to research published two years ago which discovered about half of people with RBD will develop Parkinson's disease or another neurological disorder within a decade of being diagnosed.

Thrashing about in your sleep may be an early warning sign of Parkinson's and dementia, research suggests (stock image)

An estimated seven to 10 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson's disease  one million Americans and 127,000 people in the UK.

Dementia affects 850,000 the UK and 5.4 million in US  figures expected to rise substantially to place huge pressures on health and social care services.

WHAT IS RAPID EYE MOVEMENT SLEEP DISORDER? For most people, dreaming is purely a 'mental' activity: dreams occur in the mind while the body is at rest. But people who suffer from REM behavior disorder (RBD) act out their dreams. They physically move limbs or even get up and engage in activities associated with waking. Some engage in sleep talking, shouting, screaming, hittting or punching. Some even jump out of bed while sleeping. RBD is usually noticed when it causes danger to the sleeping person, their bed partner, or others they encounter. People with RBD move around during the rapid eye movement period of sleep, when most dreaming occurs but the body's muscles are usually paralysed by the brain stem. Those with the condition are believed to have a malfunction in their brain-stem which allows them to move around during REM sleep, and therefore act out their dreams. RBD is not curable, but it can be treated with high doses of the sleep aid or low doses of the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam. Source: National Sleep Foundation Advertisement

Sleep disorder patients are at risk of other conditions

Study author Dr Morten Gersel Stokholm from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, said: 'These patients have an inflammation of the brain in the area where the dopamine-producing nerve cells are found.

'With this study, we have gained new knowledge about the disease processes in the brain in the early initial stages of the disease development.

'The idea is for this knowledge to be used to determine which patients with the sleep disorder will later develop Parkinsons disease.'

The findings were published in the journal The Lancet Neurology.

Previous research

Previously, the University of Minnesota reviewed 500 studies published between 1986 and 2014 that explored the link between RBD and Parkinson's.

The team found that ultimately, between 81 and 91 per cent of patients with RBD developed a degenerative brain disorder during their lifetimes.

They suggest that it could be that RBD results from the early stages of the breakdown of the proteins in the brain cells.

It is a different condition from sleepwalking, lead author Professor Howell explained, as sleepwalkers are confused when they wake up.

However, not everyone who develops Parkinson's will have RBD first.

Nevertheless, the findings could help doctors find a way to catch Parkinson's early and treat Parkinson's disease while it is in its early stages, Professor Howell added.
Hearing loss may be a sign of dementia, according to new research.

But a hearing aid could help prevent cognitive decline and dementia by improving verbal communication and keeping the brain healthy, say experts.

The study found a small association between age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and increased risk for cognitive decline.

This includes executive function  which is the equivalent of a CEO of the brain  and episodic memory  autobiographical events such as times, places. Hearing loss was also linked to slower processing speed, cognitive impairment and dementia.

It is estimated two-thirds of the over 65s suffer hearing loss and previous studies have shown ARHL precedes the onset of dementia by five to 10 years.

Experts have suggested the lack of mental stimulation experienced by those who are hard of hearing may play a role in declined cognitive function.

An hearing aid could improve verbal communication and keep the brain healthy, say experts (stock image)

Currently there is no cure for dementia but new drugs can slow down its progression and the earlier it is spotted the more effective treatments are.

Key findings

A limited number of studies have examined ARHL and cognitive decline but results have been inconsistent.

So researchers from Trinity College Dublin carried out a systematic review of 36 studies involving 20,264 participants to examine the issue.

David Loughrey, a PhD candidate involved in the research, said: 'In this meta-analysis, ARHL had significant associations with accelerated multi-domain cognitive decline, cognitive impairment, and dementia, thus supporting further consideration of ARHL as a risk factor for these outcomes.

'The associations, although small, were comparable in size and significance with other more commonly researched risk factors using meta-analysis.'

He explained that ARHL has been associated with loss of brain volume in both the grey matter and white matter.

And as Alzheimer's disease progresses, brain tissue shrinks. In the early stages, short-term memory begins to decline when the cells in the hippocampus degenerate.

The link is unclear

However, Mr Loughrey said the association between ARHL and cognitive decline 'remains unclear'.

He said it could be because of decline in the vascular system  the arteries and veins that carry blood throughout the body, delivering oxygen and nutrients to the body tissues.

And he said ARHL is a sign of frailty syndrome, which has been causally linked to dementia. Frailty is associated with a greater risk for falls, disability, hospitalisation and death.

'Other hypotheses suggest that the association may be mechanistic, for example, ARHL causing cognitive decline through impaired speech perception,' he explained.

Changes can improve cognitive decline

Mr Loughrey said the findings could mean that interventions to improve hearing can help reduce cognitive decline.

'Hearing loss is easily diagnosed and can be treated,' he said. 'Although associations were small, treatment may cumulatively benefit cognition.

'In patients with ARHL, these domains may benefit from improved verbal communication through use of hearing aids.'

He said further studies exploring the cognitive benefits of hearing loss treatment are needed.

Research is also needed to know whether treatment, alone or as part of a wider approach, improves dementia outcomes.

Lack of mental stimulation

CANOLA OIL COULD WORSEN MEMORY IN ALZHEIMER'S Canola oil has been heavily marketed as a healthy choice because it is low in saturated fat. But a new study suggests the trendy kitchen staple could worsen memory loss and learning ability in Alzheimer's patients. It may also increase the build-up of plaques in the brain, a hallmark of the degenerative disease. And despite its seemingly wholesome profile, researchers discovered it caused weight gain. The findings suggest for the first time that long-term consumption of canola oil is not beneficial to brain healt Advertisement

Dr Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimers Research UK said there may be a link between hearing loss and dementia, but the lack of mental stimulation experienced by those who are hard of hearing may also play a role.

She said: 'This small but statistically robust association between hearing loss and a decline in memory skills adds to mounting evidence of a link, but the study does not conclusively show that hearing loss is driving memory problems.

'Hearing loss is associated with dementia risk factors like heart disease, which could also be an underlying reason for the link observed in this study.

'Some research suggests that being socially engaged and mentally active could help to boost cognitive reserve  a kind of mental resilience that may delay the effects of a disease like Alzheimers.

'As things that we hear can provide mental stimulation and a means of social interaction, a loss of hearing could influence cognitive reserve, leaving people more vulnerable to memory and thinking decline.'

The study was published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology  Head & Neck Surgery.
THE LATE SHOW by Michael Connelly (Orion 19.99)

THE LATE SHOW

by Michael Connelly (Orion 19.99)

This is my crime book of the year, written by one of the great practitioners of the craft.

It has been more than ten years since Connelly last introduced a major new character  back then it was the Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller.

Now it is Hawaiian-born surfing enthusiast Detective Renee Ballard, whose career has fallen under a cloud as a result of her sexual harassment claim against a former boss.

She finds herself working the graveyard shift out of the Hollywood station, where she catches two cases that haunt her.

It is superb storytelling built around a feisty, fresh character.

END GAME by David Baldacci (Macmillan 18.99)

END GAME

by David Baldacci (Macmillan 18.99)

An edge-of-the-seat ride from one of the worlds thriller masters, this opens explosively on the London Underground, where trained assassin and government agent Will Robie is trying to stop an imminent terrorist attack.

The odds are 16-to-one against him, but he succeeds, only to find himself plunged into a frantic search for his CIA handler, who has disappeared in Colorado.

Joining forces once again with fellow agent Jessica Reel, the pair confront neo-Nazi skinheads as they search for their former boss. The heart-stopping action shows Baldacci is in fine form.

CHANCE by Kem Nunn (No Exit Press 8.99)

CHANCE

by Kem Nunn (No Exit Press 8.99)

Now a TV series starring Hugh Laurie, this tells the story of Dr Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist who unwisely becomes fascinated by his patient Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused but apparently schizophrenic wife of an Californian homicide detective, who also happens to be a violent and jealous man.

In his bid to help her, Chance treads the very edges of the law in the company of a street-wise young man known only as D, who is adept with a switchblade.

Will Chance succeed in saving his patient, or will she morph into her alter-ego?

This is James M. Cain territory, twilight noir at its very best, where nothing and no one are ever what they seem.

THE DEATHS OF DECEMBER by Susi Holliday (Mulholland 7.99)

THE DEATHS OF DECEMBER

by Susi Holliday (Mulholland 7.99)

When DC Becky Greene arrives at her police station in December, she is handed the mail to take up to the CID office.

One item is a plain envelope addressed to a detective who knows what to do.

She takes the envelope back to her desk and opens it. Inside is an advent calendar, but when she opens one of the small windows, Greene discovers not a nativity scene, but a crime scene  a tiny photograph of a dead body lying in a pool of blood.

The other windows reveal similar crime scenes, and so begins the hunt for a murderer who may have been secretly at work for 20 years.

Dark and satisfying, it is a fine antidote to Christmas cheer.

EAST OF HOUNSLOW

EAST OF HOUNSLOW by Khurrum Rahman (HarperCollins 12.99)

by Khurrum Rahman (HarperCollins 12.99)

A snappy debut from a native Pakistani who moved to England at the age of one and was then brought up in the bad lands of Hounslow, west London and beyond.

Now in his early forties Rahman currently works as an IT officer, but that may well change with the publication of this riveting thriller.

The hero is a low level Pakistani drug dealer who has been targeted by MI5 as a potential recruit to infiltrate the evolving terror groups in his local community.

Reluctant at first he is eventually persuaded after getting himself into a heap of trouble with his own drug supplier. Told with striking panache, it announces the arrival of a fine, fresh new thriller writer.
British luxury fashion brand Mulberry is upping efforts to grow in Japan and China as UK sales faltered in the six months to the end of September.

Mulberry, which prides itself on making 50 per cent of all bags in Somerset, said sluggish sales were propped up by tourists spending more in London.

Losses at Mulberry widened to 0.6million, up from 0.5million a year earlier, while sales came in flat at 74.5million.

Luxury losses: Mulberry, which prides itself on making 50% of all its bags in Somerset, said sluggish sales were propped up by tourists spending more in London

The group blamed the losses on higher marketing spend and IT systems costs.

Mulberry recently struck a deal with Japanese company Onward Global Fashion to open five stores there. It is also increasing the number of stores in Hong Kong and China.

Despite the slowdown, Thierry Andretta, chief executive at Mulberry, said the company would not compromise on price.

'Our focus on full-price sales growth has delivered good results with new designs proving popular with customers,' he said.

'We continue to see strong demand from tourists in London and, while the UK remains uncertain, the group remains in a strong position to invest in developing the customer experience in key international markets and enhancing its UK design and manufacturing base.'
Milo Yiannopoulos and his promoters won't pay the $50,000 they will be asked to cough up to cover the heavy police presence at his Melbourne show.

Police Minister Lisa Neville said the event's organisers would be sent the bill after protesters violently clashed outside the Kensington venue on Monday night.

Yiannopoulos' Australian tour promoter Damien Costas defiantly argued 'his people' had nothing to do with the violence and said he will refuse to cover the cost.

'This is political grandstanding. It's actually absolute nonsense,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday.

'My answer to politicians that like to get political mileage out of something - in this case the Police Minister - my answer to her is quite simple: "Sue me".

Scroll down for video

Milo Yiannopoulos and his promoters won't pay the $50,000 they will be asked to cough up to cover the heavy police presence at his Melbourne show

Hundreds of police were sent in to control up to 500 left-wing and around 50 right-wing activists who clashed outside the Kensington event on Monday night. This left-wing protester was arrested

Yiannopoulos' Australian tour promoter Damien Costas (pictured right) defiantly argued 'his people' had nothing to do with the violence and said he will refuse to cover the cost

'And I will call, during the trial, every single one of the 3,000 people that were there who can demonstrate it wasn't us that caused the problem.

'If it was our people that did it, I'd probably be liable, but our people didn't do it. The people that did it weren't welcome there.'

Mr Costas argued the minister could not justify the bill and said he had extensive negotiations with Victoria Police ahead of the event.

'In good faith we offered to pay [for police presence] - we asked if there was going to be a cost and the answer was no.

'For her to get involved after the event demonstrates very clearly where politics is at in this country.'

Ms Neville said on Wednesday she didn't know if Yiannopoulos' promoters would agree to pay the bill, but said it was standard practice for these kinds of events.

'There was a lot of kerfuffle out front,' Yiannopoulos said responding to the violent scenes

Yiannopoulos (pictured at his second Sydney show) arrived in Australia last week ahead of his tour

A protester is arrested after being involved in a brawl outside Yiannopoulos' Melbourne show

'I'm not sure whether they have [agreed to pay it] but they will certainly be getting a bill for it,' she told 3AW.

Hundreds of police were sent in to control up to 500 left-wing and up to 50 right-wing activists outside the event.

Five officers were pelted with bottles and rocks and two protesters, one from each side, were arrested during the violent scenes.

Yiannopoulos, who arrived in Australia last week for his seven-show tour, slammed the 'violent' left-wing protesters for causing the trouble that required heavy police presence.

'There was a lot of kerfuffle out front,' he told Alan Jones on 2GB Radio on Tuesday.

'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.

Police in riot gear were forced to subdue demonstrators during the ugly scenes on Monday

A Campaign Against Racism and Fascism supporter and a Yiannopoulos supporter are pepper sprayed by police

'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.'

Similar scenes unfolded on Tuesday night at Yiannopoulos' first Sydney show at the Le Montage in Lilyfield.

Seven protesters were arrested outside the venue, which was heavily guarded by mounted police, officers on bicycles, the riot squad and marine police.

Fans of the right-wing commentator were heckled by more than 100 protesters as they entered the venue, with police having to stand between the two groups.

A protester throws a street sign towards Police officers during a demonstration outside Milo Yiannopoulos's sold out show at the Melbourne Pavilion

Similar scenes unfolded on Tuesday night at Yiannopoulos' first Sydney show at the Le Montage in Lilyfield

The mayhem unfolded outside the Melbourne Pavilion in inner-city Kensington on Monday night

Four people were arrested for breaching the peace, one for assaulting a police officer, one for affray and one for not complying with direction.

Banners and placards saying 'f*** off Nazi scum' and 'kill yourself like Adolf Hitler' greeted Yiannopoulos as he arrived to denounce Islam, feminism and cultural Marxism.

Police on horseback were called 'animals' and 'racist pigs' as they kept more than 70 youthful demonstrators to a patch of grass by the shores of the Parramatta River.

Protesters held signs including a large banner that said: 'First they came for the Muslims and we said, 'Not this time you f***er'.'

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

Police detain a protester before Milo Yiannopoulos was set to speak to supporters in Sydney

There were no arrests at Yiannopoulos' second Sydney show at the same venue on Wednesday night.

Yiannopoulos' speeches on university campuses in the US have previously sparked violent protests.

He was banned from Twitter last year after being blamed for a barrage of racist abuse directed by his fans toward 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.

Yiannopoulos lost a book deal after a video emerged in February in which he said some relationships between older men and teenage boys could be beneficial.

Police push away protesters before right-wing British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos's show

Milo Yiannopoulos appears live on stage at his Troll Academy Tour in Lilyfield, Sydney
A 12-year-old Western Australian boy has died after being injured in a sissor lift accident while volunteering on a Church construction site alongside his father.

Albert Sharpe was working with a group of men on an 'informal' job at Plymouth Brethren Church meeting hall in Northam, a rural town north east of Perth on November 25.

The group were erecting plasterboard at a construction on the corner of East Street and Frankish Street when the tragic accident occurred, WA Today reports.

Albert Sharpe, 12, (pictured) died after he was injured while volunteering on a Church construction site alongside his father

Albert was rushed to Northam Hospital about 11am before being airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital, where he died the following day.

WA Police have seized the sissor lift as part of its investigation but are not treating the incident as suspicious.

A spokesman from the church said the men had been wrapping up an uncomplicated job.

'They were finishing up a simple task, putting sheets up and screwing it to the frame (when the accident occurred),' James Bagshaw said.

He was working with a group of men on an 'informal' job at Plymouth Brethren Church meeting hall in Northam, on the corner of East Street and Frankish Street (pictured)

Specific details surrounding the incident will be revealed after a coroners investigation.

Worksafe, WA's occupational health and safety regulator, revealed it had not yet decided if an investigation into the boy's death was necessary.

The accident has had a widespread impact on the small community, according to Plymouth Brethren Church spokesman James Bagshaw.

Albert was rushed to Northam Hospital about 11am before being airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital (pictured), where he died the following day

'The loss is a tragedy for the family and the wider community and will affect the school in the days ahead,' Mr Bagshaw said.

'Staff and students at the Woodthorpe Cunderdin Campus will be offered counselling during this very difficult time.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the family involved. The school and the church community is providing support and assistance.'
A man accused of dumping his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter in a North Carolina creek had allegedly sexually abused her before her death.

Earl Kimrey was seen putting 'his penis in the mouth' of little Mariah Woods by a witness who lived in the family's trailer with them, according to Child Protection Service documents.

Child services report that his girlfriend, Mariah's mother, 29, 'knew Mr. Kimrey was sexually abusing the juvenile Mariah.'

Earl Kimrey (left) has been arrested in the disappearance of his girlfriend Kristy's three-year-old daughter Mariah Woods (right). Child Protection Service documents reveal he was also accused of sexually abusing her

Kristy Woods (pictured with her daughter Mariah) reportedly knew about the abuse

Kimrey (above with Mariah's mother Kristy) told police he was the last to see Mariah alive

Kimrey, an alleged meth and heroin addict, also abused the young girl's brothers, aged 5 and 10, hitting them with a belt and once punching her eldest brother in the face, according to the documents seen by JD News.

Deputies have since charged the 32-year-old in connection with Mariah's death.

Arrest warrants say Kimrey moved Mariah's body from where she died, knowing her death was not natural. They haven't said how they think the girl was killed.

On Saturday, Kimrey was brought before a magistrate to be charged with concealing a death, obstruction of justice, burglary, larceny and possession of stolen property.

Her body was found in Holly Shelter Creek (pictured) in Pender County creek about 25 miles from Mariah Woods' home

Law enforcement search near the Southwest Creek Bridge for three-year-old Mariah Woods

FBI Special Agent Stanley Meador (left) and Onslow County Sheriff Hans Miller (right) Saturday

He is now being held in county jail on a bond of $1,010,000.

'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 Monday to report her missing. '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 Monday.

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.

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

The youngster was reported missing from her bed at around 6am on November 27 when her mom Kristy Woods went into her bedroom to wake her up and found she was gone.

She revealed that the last person to see her daughter was her live-in boyfriend, Kimrey, who says he told the girl to go back to bed when she came out of her room around midnight.

They claimed that the youngster had been snatched from their home in the night but Mariah's father, Alex, immediately suspected Kimrey who was later arrested.

'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?' he'd asked, incredulously, after she disappeared.

'Nobody heard anything? Four people in the house, two adults and two kids, someone just comes up and snatches the baby and walks out?', he aid.

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

A boat is pictured at one of the search locations. Mariah's body was found by divers Saturday

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

Kristy had made a tearful television appearance after her daughter went missing, begging: 'Please, bring her back.

'I love her. I'll do anything that I can, whatever you want.'

Law enforcement officials also searched the home and the family's car for evidence.

Late on Saturday, divers recovered her body from the bottom of Holly Shelter Creek along Shaw Highway in Pender County creek about 25 miles from Mariah Woods' home in Jacksonville.

Kimrey appeared in court on Monday, wearing body armor and surrounded by guards, for his first hearing. He has not yet made a plea.

Meanwhile, Mariah's father Alex is demanding custody of his two sons he has with Kristy.
Fired former national security advisor Mike Flynn exalted that a nuclear deal involving Russia was 'good to go' just minutes after President Trump took the oath of office, House Oversight panel Democrats said based on a whistleblower's claims.

The whistleblower came forward this summer and spoke to the committee about attending an inauguration party and meeting Alex Copson, managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners.

Flynn, who pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI, did consulting work with the form as part of a deal to build nuclear reactors across the middle east. He flew to the region on behalf of the project in June of 2015.

The deal was in partnership with Russia with Saudi financing. It gave Flynn a potential monetary incentive to get sanctions imposed on Russia during the Obama administration lifted immediately.

'GOOD TO GO': A whistleblower claims fired national security advisor Mike Flynn texted about a deal to build nuclear reactors from the dais where President Trump was giving his inaugural address

According to the whistleblower account, Copson said the inauguration was 'the best day of my life' owing to progress on the nuclear deal, which was now 'going to make a lot of very wealthy people.

According to a letter by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Copson then showed the whistleblower his phone, which contained a message from Flynn.

The message said the project was 'good to go.' It continued that Copson should contact colleagues to 'let them know to put things in place.' The whistleblower could not read the text of the message, but said the timestamp said 12:11 pm, meaning just minutes after Donald Trump assumed the presidency.

'Our committee has credible allegations that President Trump's National Security Advisor sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners,' wrote Cummings, Politico reported in a story on the letter.

Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) (R), talks with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn inside of the inaugural parade reviewing stand in front of the White House

According to a letter by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Flynn business partner Alex Copson showed a whistleblower a tex message from Flynn

The letter was written to the new Oversight Committee chair, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. These grave allegations compel a full, credible, and bipartisan congressional investigation,' Cummings wrote.

The lawmaker's office determined that at 12:11 pm, Trump was about ten minutes into his inaugural speech, promising that every decision would be to 'benefit American workers and American families.

According to the whistleblower account, Copson said Flynn was making sure sanctions would be 'ripped up,' which would allow money to start flowing to the project.

The letter says Flynn blamed Obama for having 'f***** everything up in my nuclear deal with the sanctions.'

Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI during its probe of Russian interference in the presidential election

Two days after the election, Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn, CNN reported.

The whistleblower was 'extremely uncomfortable' with the situation, and made notes about it and Copson's name.

The letter tells Gowdy it is difficult to discern what happened because he would not subpoena Flynn, the White House, or Copson.

Flynn didn't reveal his relationship with ACU Strategic Partners until August after leaving it off previous government forms.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI during its probe of Russian interference in the presidential election, including about conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. about sanctions.

Cummings wrote that Mueller's office had asked him to hold back the information until 'they completed certain investigative steps'  which apparently have now been concluded.
As summer rolls in the togs come out, but not everyone is packing confidence below the belt.

Perth cosmetic surgeon Dr Jayson Oates (pictured) is giving men a bigger bulge for the beach with penis enlargement procedures

Perth cosmetic surgeon Dr Jayson Oates is giving men a bigger bulge for the beach with a unique non-surgical penis enlargement procedure.

More than 300 men have visited Dr Oates at Calibre Clinic over the last four years to for the procedure he claims adds an extra one inch in the average male member - with the number of men opting for the procedure doubling in preparation for summer.

'Running into Christmas, it's our busiest time, everyone is wanting to look their best, clothing is more revealing and everything's on show,' Dr Oates told Daily Mail Australia.

'Women are concerned about the size of their breasts, guys are concerned about the bulge in their bathers.'

The procedure called Calibre, which uses the same dermal fillers that are used in the face to rid wrinkles, was originally created to help the 'locker room syndrome'.

Over summer the number of men visiting the penis enlargement clinics double so they can be 'budgie smuggler ready' (stock image)

Dr Oates said men felt nervous about the size of their penis when they were in a locker room with other men, which also translates to other areas of life.

'In summer, they want to be budgie smuggler ready,' he said.

'Just this week I saw a guy I'd done two weeks ago, he's been to the beach and feels so much more confident in his bathers.

'Putting it in a colloquial fashion, he has a package he can show off.'

Dr Oates told Daily Mail Australia men want a package they can show off (stock image)

Popular with men aged between 20 and 30-years-old, Dr Oates said he recently saw an 83-year-old man come in for the procedure (stock image)

Most commonly, Dr Oates said he saw men aged in their 20s and 30s coming in for the hour long procedure, however an man in his 80s recently came in wanting an enlargement.

'His wife of 60 years had died and he found that he was keenly sought after by younger women in their 70s,' Dr Oates told Daily Mail Australia.

'They're wanting sex and he was worried he wasn't big enough to be such a popular sex object.'

Dr Oates said the penis enlargements, which are quick, simple, low risk, painless and require no down time, are most popular with tradies, business owners, doctors and lawyers, and about four men get a penis enlargement in Sydney every week over summer.

The penis enlargements are quick, simple, low risk, painless and require no down time, are most popular with tradies, business owners (stock image)

While the cosmetic surgeon said the average penis is about nine-and-a-half centimetres when measured around, his procedure can take the manhood to 12 centimetres.

'Make a circle with your thumb and finger and separate it by an inch, that's a good idea of what we can do,' Dr Oates said.

'It's not a length procedure, but when it's flaccid it hangs out more.'

Men have flown from America, Malaysia and New Zealand to bulk up their bulge at the Perth and Sydney clinics, with Dr Oates planning to open a clinic in every capital city across Australia by 2018.

'Women are concerned about the size of their breasts, guys are concerned about the bulge in their bathers' (stock image)

The cosmetic surgeon said they cover the penis in numbing cream and wrap it in glad wrap for 30 minutes before injecting the dermal fillers underneath the skin of the penis to make it thicker.

The enlargement lasts between 18 months and three years before the body starts to break down the tissues, but Dr Oates said there are potential risks with permanent fillers, making the Calibre procedure more effective as it can be reversed with medication.

'We're doing more and more guys all the time,' he said.
The owner of an Arizona newspaper has revealed he was poisoned - and says he knows who was behind the plot to kill him.

Joseph Soldwedel, 65, who publishes the Daily Courier, told his newspaper that he had a 'good idea' who may have slipped him thallium - a deadly heavy metal formerly used in rat poison.

So far he has refused to name his alleged poisoner until the police finish their investigation, although he did rule out his close family as suspects.

No arrests have been made and cops declined to comment, the Daily Courier reports.

Joseph Soldwedel, who publishes the Daily Courier, told his newspaper that he had a 'good idea' who may have slipped him thallium - a deadly heavy metal formerly used in rat poison

Soldwedel had gone to the doctors earlier this year when he began suffering severe symptoms of a mystery illness.

Dr. Ernest P. Chiodo, a Michigan-based physician who specializes in forensic toxicology, discovered Soldwedel had 'elevated levels' of thallium in his system.

Dr. Hildegarde Staninger, a leading scientist in the field of industrial toxicology, concluded in Soldwedel's test results that the poisoning was not environmental.

'The heavy metals are not caused by environmental factors, for there are significantly too high of values,' she wrote.

Staninger believes that Soldwedel's food was being poisoned over a long period of time.

'The findings and conclusions of this report... clearly illustrates that Mr. Joseph E. Soldwedel was exposed to a poison through ingestion,' she continued.

Thallium (pictured) is an odorless, flavorless substance which was once a common ingredient in rat poison in the US until it became so notorious as a murder weapon it earned the nickname 'inheritance powder

Staninger told the Courier, 'Many seasoned poisoners that utilize this type of thallium-based poison use low doses over time in food or drinks, and then administer an elevated fatal dose. I believe Mr. Soldwedel's food was being laced with the basis of heavy metals. Having 15 times the thallium reference level can kill you. I think he was very lucky. His will to live saved him.'

THE POISONER'S POISON: WHAT IS THALLIUM? Pure thallium is a bluish-white HEAVY metal. It was previously used in rat poison and today is mostly in manufacturing electronic devices and the manufacture of special glass. Thallium has been called the 'poisoner's poison' since it's colorless, odorless and tasteless. It is also slow-acting, painful and has wide-ranging symptoms which can easily be mistaken for a host of other illnesses. People can be exposed to thallium by eating food or drink poisoned with the chemical or breathing workplace air in industries that use thallium. There is a cure for thallium poisoning; Prussian Blue which is taken orally. Advertisement

The mineral is an odorless, flavorless substance which was once a common ingredient in rat poison in the US until it became so notorious as a murder weapon it earned the nickname 'inheritance powder' or the 'poisoner's poison.'

It was eventually banned as an ingredient in rodent poison in 1965 following several poisonings but it still imported and used today in electronics and optical lenses.

Chiodo said that people working in certain industries, such as mining or construction, could be expected to have higher levels of thallium, but a newspaper publisher should not.

Soldwedel's test results revealed that his thallium levels were 15 times higher than that of an average person.

The results also revealed the presence of lithium, aluminum, barium and zinc  were found in his system.

'The question is, what is causing him to have elevated thallium levels?' Chiodo said. 'I do not know that he's been intentionally poisoned, and I don't know who would be doing it, but based on my findings, the police should look into it.'

Soldwedel, a father-of-two, is the president, CEO and co-owner of Western News&Info Inc. multimedia company, which publishes the Kingman Daily Miner and Today's News-Herald in Lake Havasu City among others.

Soldwedel is the president, CEO and co-owner of Western News&Info Inc. multimedia company, which publishes the Daily Courier (pictured) among other titles

Anyone who ingests thallium begins to feel the effects around 12-24 hours later, and symptoms get increasingly severe over the next couple of weeks.

People suffer nausea and vomiting, painful or burning sensations in the body's extremities, headaches, seizures, delirium, and in the most serious cases, respiratory failure, coma and death after five to seven days, according to the CDC.

The most famous case of thallium poisoning in recent years happened to 19-year-old student Zhu Ling in Beijing in 1995 who survived but was left partially paralyzed and nearly blind. No arrests were ever made.
Adult film actress August Ames (pictured) was found dead on Tuesday, according to police in southern California .

Adult film actress August Ames was found dead on Tuesday, according to police in southern California.

The Ventura County Medical examiner confirmed the 23-year-old's death, but had yet to issue an official cause.

Those close to Ames, however, believe that she had taken her own life, telling online publication The Blast that she was prone to depression.

A recent online incident may have triggered the suspected suicide, sources close to the Ames said.

Ames recently suffered a torrent of online abuse after posting on Twitter that she would not be doing a scene with a male performer who had previously done gay porn.

On December 3, Ames posted a message reading: 'whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you're shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say. Do agents really not care about who they're representing? #LAdirect I do my homework for my body.'

The Ventura County Medical examiner confirmed the 23-year-old's death, but had yet to issue an official cause

Ames claimed that medical testing was different for straight vs gay sex scenes, and did not want to participate.

Some male performers in the adult film industry do both gay and straight scenes for extra money, a practice known as 'crossing over.'

According to the Daily Beast, the practice is relatively common but fairly taboo.

A majority of female performers are apprehensive about doing scenes with male co-stars who have a history of gay pornography in their resume, believing it exposes them to a higher risk of contracting HIV.

Following the post, Ames was accused of being homophobic, as social media users clamored for her to issue an apology.

Adult film actress August Ames (L) and husband, adult film producer Kevin Moore, attend the 2016 Adult Video News Awards at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 23, 2016

'NOT homophobic,' she said in response to the accusations. 'Most girls don't shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety. That's just how it is with me. I'm not putting my body at risk, i don't know what they do in their private lives.'

Camarillo police said that Ames was pronounced dead at the scene, noting there had been no indication of foul play

Camarillo police said that Ames was pronounced dead at the scene, noting there had been no indication of foul play.

Police did not give a specific location on where the 23-year-old had died.

'She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me,' her heartbroken husband, Kevin Moore, told industry trade magazine Adult Video News.

'Please leave this as a private family matter in this difficult time,' he added.

Shortly after her death had been confirmed, an outpouring of condolence from friends and industry peers filled up Ames's Twitter page, many describing her as a kind person with a big heart.

'Rest In Peace to August Ames, one of the best, nicest people I ever knew in the business,' producer Jules Jordan wrote in a tweet.

Fellow porn star Abella Danger described Ames as 'the most kind-hearted person ever.'

'I f*****g loved this girl so much... I am so sorry that I didn't know it was this bad ... we are all so broken hearted, you were truly loved by so many,' industry photographer and friend Holly Randall said.

Born Mercedes Grabowski in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1994, Ames had found her way into the adult-film industry in 2013 following a short stint in the food service industry as a bartender.

In her brief four-year-career, Ames starred in more than 270 films and nabbed a nomination for Best New Starlet at the 2015 AVN Awards.

In her brief four-year-career, Ames starred in more than 270 films and nabbed a nomination for Best New Starlet at the 2015 AVN Awards
A man has died after cleaning a very hot vat of ink at a western Sydney factory.

He was one of three workers who became trapped at the Auburn site shortly before 9am on Thursday.

The deceased man's two other colleagues, aged in their twenties, were rescued from the Chisholm Road premises owned by DIC Australia, with one of them trapped for several hours.

However, the worker who died remained in the vat. A stretcher was seen being carried to the accident scene shortly after 1.20pm.

It is believed the workers were trapped in a mixing arm of the ink vat.

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A heavy-duty hazardous materials Fire and Rescue NSW truck at the scene of the tragedy

Rescue crews arrived at the scene where a worker died after falling into an ink vat in Auburn

Dic Australia's Chisholm Road site at Auburn has suffered from the loss of a worker in an ink vat

New South Ambulance superintendent Paul Turner said the deceased man, aged in his thirties, had been trapped by his legs, describing the area as 'a very difficult scene'.

'There was still ink on the floor of the vat, which hampered rescue efforts and treatment,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'It's extremely hot inside the vat,' he said.

'Very limited personnel have been able to get inside.'

Special operations paramedics have been dispatched to the six-metre high vat 'shaped like a large battery'.

The front area of the Auburn factory in western Sydney where a worker died on Thursday

Ambulance, NSW Fire and Rescue and police are on the scene at the Auburn ink factory

Ambulance paramedics were sent to the scene of the industrial accident on Thursday afternoon

A police rescue specialist is on the scene at Auburn in Sydney's west where the men are trapped

Three men were initially all conscious and talking when they were trapped about 8.45am on Thursday.

However, Mr Turner said the deceased men 'deteriorated rapidly towards the end'.

Ten ambulances are on hand, along with police and Fire and Rescue trucks.

The two rescued men were taken to Westmead Hospital, with one man suffering suspected leg injuries and the other leg fractures.

Ambulance parademics at the scene told Daily Mail Australia the injuries were likely to have been caused by falling into the vat instead of the chemicals inside.

'This is a terrible tragedy,' Mr Turner said later in a statement.

Police Rescue and firefighters arrived on the scene after three men were initially trapped

'We did absolutely everything we could.

'It was a complex operation. We worked as quickly as we could to access these patients.'

The man is yet to be formally identified and his body remains in the tank, a NSW Police spokesman said.

Detectives have established a crime scene and are investigating.

SafeWork NSW has also sent inspectors to the site to investigate, a spokesman told Australian Associated Press.
A Sydney man has been jailed for at least 19 years for the murder of his wife, who he claimed had killed herself by jumping on a knife.

In June a jury found Gavin John De Beyer guilty of murdering his partner of 30 years, Sharon Louise Michelutti, while he was subject to an apprehended violence order in February 2016.

The New South Wales Supreme Court's Acting Justice Peter Hidden on Thursday sentenced the 52-year-old to a maximum sentence of 25 years and a non-parole period of 19 years.

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Sharon Louise Michelutti was murdered by her husband Gavin John De Beyer last year

Gavin John De Beyer was filmed weeping in Campsie police station after murdering his wife

Family and friends of murdered mother-of-five Sharon Louise Michelutti outside court on Thursday after her husband, Gavin John De Beyer was sentenced to at least 19 years' jail

Gavin John De Beyer has been sentenced to a minimum 19 years' jail for murdering his wife

The killer was captured on CCTV weeping on the floor of a police station as he told officers his 48-year-old wife had died after jumping on a knife.

De Beyer was seen entering Campsie police station in Sydney's south-west on February 1 last year as he reported Sharon Louise Michelutti's death.

He later pleaded not guilty to murdering the mother-of-five at their Riverwood home.

A number of police testified during De Beyer's trial about seeing a sobbing De Beyer in the police station about midday on the day Ms Michelutti died.

As he cried uncontrollably, saying 'she's dead,' he slumped onto the floor.

Senior Constable Vanessa Bolas said she heard moaning and loud sobbing before she saw a man curled up in a fetal position.

Family and friends of murdered mother-of-five Sharon Louise Michelutti outside court on Thursday after her husband, Gavin John De Beyer was sentenced to at least 19 years' jail

Sharon Louise Michelutti was stabbed to death in the home she shared with her husband

When she bent down she recognised him 'from previous dealings with him and his family over the past 10 years.'

The jury was shown the CCTV footage, which did not record sound, of De Beyer going into the foyer, and then lying on the floor.

De Beyer was taken to another area where he slumped on a sofa, getting up and down. He continued to sob saying his wife was dead.

Senior Constable Bill Moussa-Khalil told the jury he heard the man say: 'She was holding a knife and she jumped on it.'

Sergeant Bartholomew Ganaine heard him say: 'My baby is dead, she killed herself, I tried to save her.'

Another officer testified that he had previously attended the couple's house in relation to domestic incidents between De Beyer and his wife.

Gavin John De Beyer, in red shirt, was filmed weeping in a police station after killing his wife

Killer Gavin John De Beyer was filmed reporting to police his wife had stabbed herself to death

Ms Michelutti, who died of a single stab wound, was found on her bed with the covers pulled over her whole body.

The last time the couples daughter Kalyra spoke to her mother she sounded normal, but her father was screaming in the background, the jury heard.

The couple did not have a happy relationship, Crown Prosecutor Ken McKay told the court.

Their daughter told police she spoke to her mother on the phone around 10am the day she died.

From 10.18am to 10.21am, CCTV footage showed De Beyer, wearing distinctive clothing including a yellow and green shirt, at a Riverwood supermarket.

At 10.42am, the dead woman's phone was used to dial triple zero, but the call did not connect.

Family and friends of murdered mother-of-five Sharon Louise Michelutti outside court on Thursday after her husband, Gavin John De Beyer was sentenced to at least 19 years' jail

Gavin John De Beyer pictured after murdering his wife Sharon in the couple's Riverwood home

Footage from outside another building showed De Beyer, in different clothing, walking past about 10.53am.

'At about 12 noon, the accused entered Campsie police station, told police his wife was dead and that she had inflicted the wound to herself,' Mr McKay told the jury.

Between the time he left home and spoke to police, there was no evidence that he tried to get help, or speak to a family member or neighbour to alert them to his wife's condition.

Defence lawyer Angus Webb told the jury his client denied inflicting the stab wound and did not concede he was present when it happened.

Neighbour Lissa Elzein testified that she often heard the couple arguing, that they both used alcohol and marijuana, and she had seen police at their house.

Once when they were arguing on the footpath and De Beyer was walking ahead of his wife, she heard him say: 'Hurry up, you dog, woof woof.'
Britain and Ireland are just 'hours away' from securing a deal to take to Brussels to move Brexit talks on to trade, an Irish official has tonight said.

The official said Westminster and Dublin are 'very close' to an agreement on the Irish border and that talks are 'moving quickly', with discussions expected to continue throughout the night.

Theresa May has held talks via telephone with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and the Irish PM Leo Varadkar tonight.

Mr Juncker's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said after the calls that an early morning meeting and 'press point' was 'possible', but added: 'We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night.'

A Number 10 spokesman also confirmed the calls, adding: 'Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing.'

A UK Government source said: 'We're not there yet.'

Theresa May (pictured left outside No10 yesterday) has been scrambling to get her Brexit plan back on track and is said to be just 'hours away' form reaching a deal with the Irish PM Leo Varadkar (pictured right) to take to Brussels

Magaritas Schinas, a spokesman for Jean Claude-Juncker, said talks 'are continuing throughout the night' and suggested a deal is very close and could be announced in the morning

DUP leader Arlene Foster (pictured in Belfast on Monday night) refused to back down in a row over Brexit insisting she was just as 'unequivocal' as Dublin about the terms of the Irish border

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am UK time) - before the London Stock Exchange opens - but would not give further details.

The PM is on the cusp of a breakthrough on Brexit talks after her last plan to move the negotiations on to trade was suddenly torpedoed by the DUP on Monday.

The party - which props Mrs May up in No10 - pulled the plug at the eleventh hour amid fears the proposals for the Irish border would tear the UK apart.

The PM must get all sides signed up to a new plan by a crunch summit in Brussels in just seven days time at the very latest.

It comes after Boris Johnson fired a warning shot to Mrs May not to compromise any more on Brexit as Britain has met Brussels 'more than half way' on key demands.

An Irish official told a British Irish Chamber of Commerce event in Brussels: 'It is moving quite quickly at the moment. Negotiations are continuing.

'I think we are going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK government to close this off. I say hours because I think we are very close.'

While European Council president Donald Tusk has scheduled a Brexit press briefing early tomorrow morning fuelling rumours Britain is on the cusp of a breakthrough.

An Irish Government spokesman said: 'Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government.'

WHY IS THE IRISH BORDER SUCH A THORNY ISSUE? Why is the Irish border a problem? After Brexit, Northern Ireland will have the only land border between the UK and the EU. With Britain leaving the single market and the customs union  but the Republic staying inside both  there are questions about how to move goods over the 300 crossing points along the 310-mile frontier. What does each side want? Dublin  backed by the EU  says there must be no 'hard border' involving customs checks for fear of undermining peace accords. Irish ministers have suggested Northern Ireland should stay inside the customs union. But Mrs May  and the DUP  could never agree, as it amounts to breaking up the integrity of the UK. Why was the last deal scuppered? Downing Street, Dublin and Brussels all thought they were ready to sign off on adeal to move Brexit talks to trade on Monday. But they collapsed at the eleventh hour when the DUP - who prop Theresa May up in No10 - pulled the plug on them. They collapsed talks amid fears only Northern Ireland would keep 'regulator alignment' with the Republic post Brexit - effectively pushing border controls eastwards to the border with the rest of the UK. They feared the deal would drive a wedge between the UK which could tear it apart. Advertisement

But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.

DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: 'Discussions are ongoing.'

Earlier today, Mr Johnson insisted the Brexit deal must stick to the spirit of the Leave campaign and mean the 'whole of the United Kingdom' takes back control from Brussels.

The Foreign Secretary said Britain's pledge to pay the EU a 50billion divorce bill was a 'very good' offer and said it is time to 'get going' with trade talks.

The remarks by Mr Johnson - a leading Brexiteer - will be seen as a warning to Mrs May not to give much more away .

And he piled pressure on the PM to come up with a plan which ensures there is no regulatory difference between Northern Ireland and the mainland UK post Brexit.

Speaking at the Foreign Office in London today, he said: 'It is very, very important that whatever happens now, whatever we agree, has got to be consistent with taking back control of our laws, of our borders and of our cash.

He said the UK was making a 'very good' financial offer to the EU and defended his comments the EU could 'go whistle' for a large divorce bill insisting he was referring to reports of demands of 100 billion.

Mr Johnson said: 'I was asked my reaction to some of the very extortionate sums that I had heard in the region of 80 or 100 billion, and, I don't want to repeat the offending phrase, but go whistle seems the appropriate reaction to that kind of money.

'When it comes to other sums and other obligations, a more detailed examination of our obligations, our financial obligations, I think you will find the British Government is absolutely punctilious in wanting to meet our friends more than half way and to be useful.

'I think you will find the financial offer that we are making is very good, but it is nowhere near the sums that I was first invited to comment on in a musical way.'

And he took a swipe at any deal which would subject Northern Ireland to different rules and regulations than the rest of the UK.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (pictured in London today) repeated British demands for a start to trade talks today despite EU demands the divorce must be agreed first

Speaking in the opulent Foreign Office today (pictured), Mr Johnson said the agreed figure - thought to be around 50billion - was a 'very good' offer that should pave the way for the next phase.

Despite the chaos engulfing the Brexit negotiations, Theresa May took time out of the diplomatic fracas to choose a Christmas card designed by children in her constituency

He said: 'You can take it from me that whatever comes up, whatever the solution that we come to, whatever we devise getting on to the body of the talks, it's got to be consistent, it's got to be consistent with the whole of the United Kingdom taking back control.'

And he threw down the gauntlet to the EU urging them to hurry up and kick start the next phase of negotiations on trade.

EU CITIZENS WILL BE ABLE TO BRING THEIR FUTURE CHILDREN TO THE UK Britain will guarantee rights for as yet unborn children who join EU parents in the UK after Brexit, a leaked document reveals today. Britain will also accept EU judges' rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution. The document also supports Theresa May's call for an agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit. But it contains no mention of how long EU citizens living in Britain might have any recourse to the European Court of Justice - a continuing sticking point in the Brexit talks. The draft resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement May was about to sign on Monday before objections. A final version of it could be voted by MEPs as soon as next week. The draft, revealed by the Reuters news wire, has since gone back into negotiations after Mrs May's DUP allies rejected working on the Irish border. Advertisement

Breaking briefly into French, he said: 'We need to get going, franchement (frankly), with the second part of the talks.

'That's the exciting bit. That's the bit where we will achieve a new trading relationship with our friends and partners.

'We can get it done, we just need to get on with it, and I hope very much that the December European Council will mark that progress.'

EU leaders will meet next week to formally decide whether that second phase, on the future UK-EU relationship, can begin.

Before they will do so a deep impasse over how the Irish border will work must first be navigated.

The EU Commission today said there was still no 'white smoke' but that Jean-Claude Juncker was on stand-by to meet Mrs May 'at any moment'.

Mrs May must finds a solution acceptable to the DUP in Northern Ireland, the Irish Government in Dublin and her own Tory party in Westminster.

The crisis in the talks came against a backdrop of renewed rumours about Mrs May's future today as critics claimed there was the 'smell of death' around her and reports said Mr Juncker feared she could be replaced by a hardline Brexiteer.

The PM is expected to make a last minute dash to Brussels as soon as the DUP sign off on a fresh plan to move the Brexit talks on to the next phase.

The DUP torpedoed attempts to move the talks on amid fears a guarantee to keep regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic would move customs controls to the border with the rest of the UK a d risk breaking up the union.

Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels today: 'So far no white smoke.

'We stand ready to receive prime minister May at any moment in time when they are ready,'

DUP sources this morning told The Sun: 'We're going to slow it all down. This is a battle of who blinks first  and we've cut off our eyelids.'

Mrs May is scrambling to find an agreement that is acceptable both to her DUP partners in Westminster and the Irish government in Dublin

The Prime Minister has denied caving into Brussels demands as she scrambles to get the plans back on track. She is pictured switching on the Christmas lights at Downing Street last night

Leo Varadkar said Theresa May plans to propose suggestions on an Irish Border over the next 24 hours as she desperately tries to seal a Brexit divorce deal.

Downing Street today said talks continued. The PM's spokesman told reporters: 'We think we're close to an agreement but there's more work to be done.'

The pressure for May is on, with one EU official telling The Telegraph: 'Mr Juncker wants to support Mrs May to avoid the collapse of her government.

NO TRADE TALKS FOR MONTHS UNLESS A DIVORCE DEAL IS DONE BY NEXT WEEK Brexit trade talks might not start until the Spring unless a divorce deal is done in the coming days. The EU summit taking place next Thursday and Friday is the last opportunity this year to get approval for the second phase of negotiations. Unless leaders agree this time around that 'sufficient progress' has been made, it might have to wait until the next gathering in several months. The EU has also been insisting that a deal must be thrashed out several days before the summit so it can be put out for 'consultation'. But in reality it is likely the arrangement over the Irish border - thought to be the biggest outstanding issue - could be settled by leaders on the night if it came to a crunch. EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has made clear he is prepared to meet Mrs May at any point over the next week to try to clear the first phase. Advertisement

'He is prepared to meet her at any time, including on days next week in the run up to the European summit.'

Another source said there was 'wiggle-room' to change the controversial wording in the agreement concerning the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, that caused talks to fail on Monday.

The source said: 'It's a highly difficult situation for Theresa May and he [Juncker] wants to help her.

'It's important that he supports her in everything she does.'

Despite Mr Juncker's apparent flexibility, EU negotiator Michel Barnier has insisted the deal must be done by Friday if trade talks are to be started at the leaders summit in seven days.

May has also been threatened by her own MPs, some of whom have stressed she could be thrown out of Downing Street if she fails to secure a deal.

One Tory MP said it could be 'a matter of weeks' if the situation does not improve.

Another MP told the Sun the Prime Minister had the 'smell of death' around her amid the crisis in the Brexit talks.

Possible successors include David Davis, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove - all three of whom are said to be prepared to take charge if others pushed May out.

MPs linked to Brexit Secretary Mr Davis denied to MailOnline they were involved in an active plot against the Prime Minister today.

Theresa May, pictured at PMQs yesterday, had planned to return to Brussels swiftly to try to complete a divorce deal with the EU, but this has been cancelled

In other developments, twenty MPs have written to May to attack pro-Brexit colleagues for being 'highly irresponsible' in risking a no-deal outcome for Britain.

Tory Anna Soubry and Labour's Chuka Umunna have joined forced to table a new amendment to flagship Brexit laws that would allow Parliament to ask for an extension to Article 50.

The Irish prime minister yesterday said May wanted to 'come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow'.

He added: 'I expressed my willingness to consider that because I want us to move to phase two if that is possible next week.'

May angrily denied caving into Brussels demands as she scrambles to get the EU divorce plans back on track.

But the DUP, who humiliatingly torpedoed the proposals just before Mrs May was due to seal them on Monday, have demanded more assurances they will not trigger the break-up of the UK.

Mr Varadkar previously warned he was ready to delay a decision on launching trade talks to beyond Christmas - even though it could raise the prospect of Britain leaving with 'no deal'.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured with the PM on Monday) is ready to 'receive Prime Minister May at moment' if she can patch up her deal

Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin today accused the European Commission of being 'intransigent' over refusing to discuss trade until divorce issues were dealt with, and said Brussels had been using the Republic of Ireland as a 'proxy' in order to prevent the creation of an open frontier on the EU's border.

Mr Jenkin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I don't think we should walk away, but I do think we should take a firm line, as the Prime Minister did earlier this week.

'We shouldn't be allowing ourselves to be bullied into promising more and more money or giving up the goal of regulatory autonomy or being dragged into a long period of uncertainty without clarity on what we are getting at the end of it.'

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, one of the most prominent Brexiteers in the Cabinet, said: 'I remain absolutely optimistic that we will reach a successful point, we will move on to the trade talks, because ultimately it is in everybody's interests for that to happen.'

Businesses in the Republic of Ireland would suffer if no agreement was reached on the border, he warned.

'If you are running a business in the Republic of Ireland and shipping foods to the EU, the relationship with the UK is pretty fundamentally important, because your goods need to go through the UK,' he said.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling (pictured on BBC Breakfast today) said he was 'optimistic' a deal would be reached in the coming days

In a combative performance at PMQs, Mrs May defended her position, insisting no terms would be finalised until an overall deal was struck with the EU next year, and said the sides were 'close' to making progress on the first phase of negotiations.

DAVID DAVIS SAYS BREXIT IMPACT COULD BE ON SCALE OF CREDIT CRUNCH David Davis appeared before the Brexit select committee today Brexit could have as big an impact on the British economy as the 2008 credit crunch, David Davis warned today. The Brexit Secretary said quitting the Brussels club will amount to a 'paradigm change' comparable with the biggest financial slump since the Depression of the 1930s. He made the extraordinary comment as he was called before the Brexit select committee where he admitted no Brexit impact assessments have been carried out by Whitehall. He said an assessment of the potential impact of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy would not necessarily be 'informative' as economic models 'have all proven wrong' in the past. Mr Davis told the committee: 'You don't need to do a formal impact assessment to understand that if there is a regulatory hurdle between your producers and a market, there will be an impact.' Advertisement

The defence came after Mrs May was rebuked for playing a 'risky game' by keeping her top team and the DUP in the dark over plans for a 'soft Brexit' deal with Brussels.

Mrs May was repeatedly urged to toughen up her stance by MPs in the Commons.

Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said her Brexit red lines needed a 'new coat of paint', while hardline Eurosceptic Peter Bone offered to accompany her to Brussels to 'sort out' the Eurocrats.

Mrs May said: 'We're leaving the EU, we're leaving the single market and the customs union but we will do what is right in the interests of the whole United Kingdom and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.'

There is growing alarm on the Tory benches after David Davis confirmed some sectors of the UK economy could have to align with the EU after Brexit to resolve the Irish border issue.

Former leader Iain Duncan Smith  who has acted as a bridge between No 10 and Eurosceptic MPs until now  described the proposal as 'intolerable' and suggested it was time to walk away from the talks.

'We are beginning to stare at the edge of what is a price that we simply cannot afford to pay,' he said.

DUP MP Jim Shannon challenged Mrs May over the situation at PMQs this afternoon.

'Can you give a specific commitment that nothing will be done that creates any barrier constitutionally, politically, economically, or regulatory between NI and the rest of the UK?' he asked.

She replied: 'The simple answer is yes. He will know as other members will that there are already areas where there are specific arrangements between NI and Republic of Ireland, for example specific energy markets...

'We want to make sure there is no hard border, that is what we're working for, we are also working to protect the constitutional integrity of the UK and the internal market of the UK and I think we share those aims.'

Mr Bone, a leading Brexiteer, drew gales of laughter in the chamber by offering to act as the PM's enforcer.

'If we have a problem would it help if I came over to Brussels with you to sort them out?' he said.

Mr Rees-Mogg, who yesterday congratulated the DUP on scuppering the proposed divorce deal, said: 'Will she apply a new coat of paint to her red lines... they are looking a bit pink.'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the Government's Brexit approach a 'shambles'. But Mrs May shot back that Labour was in chaos over whether it wanted to stay in the European single market or not.

'The only hard border around is right down the middle of the Labour Party,' she said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the Government's Brexit approach a 'shambles'. But Mrs May said Labour was in chaos over whether it wanted to stay in the European single market

Peter Bone offered to come to Brussels with the PM and 'sort them out'. DUP MP Jim Shannon asked Mrs May for a commitment that Northern Ireland would not diverge from the UK

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg warned Mrs May she needed to put a 'new coat of paint' on her Brexit red lines

Irish Taoiseach Mr Varadkar risked fuelling the row by arguing that the DUP did not represent everybody in Northern Ireland.

'We need to bear in mind that there are a lot of different voices in Northern Ireland; we need to listen to them all, and all parties in Northern Ireland, not just one,' he told the Dail parliament in Dublin yesterday.

He said his Government wanted to begin phase two of the UK-EU talks to address post-Brexit trade and acknowledged it was in the Republic's own interest.

'We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week then we can pick it up in the new year,' he said.

He added that he stood by the text of a draft deal 'agreed' on Monday. In a phone call with Mrs May later, Mr Varadkar 'reiterated the firm Irish position', according to a spokesman.

Government sources insisted that the proposal on the Irish border was only a 'backstop' designed to open the door to trade talks this month.

Mr Davis, pictured giving evidence to MPs today, was in Brussels with Mrs May this week
The severance payment to Christina Slade by Bath Spa University is thought to be the highest made to any UK vice-chancellor

One of the country's smallest universities paid its vice chancellor 808,000 in her final year in the job due to a record-breaking 'golden goodbye'.

The severance payment to Christina Slade by Bath Spa University is thought to be the highest made to any UK vice-chancellor  and came following a catalogue of problems at the university.

The latest financial statements show Professor Slade received 429,000 for 'compensation for loss of office' in addition to her salary of 250,000 in 2016-17.

She also got pension contributions of 89,000, a housing allowance of 20,000 and other benefits worth 20,000  taking the total for the year to 808,000.

The university would not reveal why Professor Slade left her job and why she had received such a huge pay-out.

They simply said the money had been handed over following 'legal advice' which said it 'reflected her contractual and statutory entitlements'.

Details of the deal emerged after Dame Glynis Breakwell announced her retirement from the helm of nearby Bath University amid a scandal over her 468,000 pay.

She was the highest-paid vice- chancellor in the country  although her salary for this year is now dwarfed by the total amount paid to Professor Slade.

Lord Adonis, former Labour education minister who has spearheaded a campaign to remove Dame Glynis, said of the latest revelation: 'Every day brings a new university vice-chancellor pay scandal.

'There should now be an independent inquiry into top university pay and a cap of no more than 200,000 on all university administrator salaries.'

Professor Slade's 'loss of office' payoff was branded a 'golden goodbye' by Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union.

The latest financial statements show Professor Slade received 429,000 for 'compensation for loss of office' in addition to her salary of 250,000 in 2016-17, from Bath Spa University

She urged university spending watchdog Hefce to launch an urgent investigation into why the money was paid.

'We are seeing what happens when decisions are taken in secret without proper checks and balances. This simply cannot be allowed to continue,' she said.

'We need an urgent overhaul of how senior pay and perks are determined, and how our universities are governed.

'Clearly, when it comes to senior pay and perks in our universities, many vice-chancellors and senior staff look like they are living on a different planet.

'Defending their own massive rises while pleading poverty when it comes to staff pay and pensions only makes them look out of touch and greedy.'

Professor Slade, 64, an Australian specialist in media theory, had led Bath Spa since September 2012 and announced she was stepping down in the summer of this year.

We need an urgent overhaul of how senior pay and perks are determined Sally Hunt

Professor Nick Foskett, a former vice chancellor at Keele who now runs a consultancy, is currently filling in as interim vice chancellor.

From January 22 next year, Professor Susan Rigby will fill the position permanently, having been recruited from the University of Lincoln, where she is deputy vice-chancellor.

Professor Slade's departure comes after a string of problems at Bath Spa, with the university's latest financial statements recording a number of 'challenges' in 2016-17.

In September 2017, its international student numbers dropped by 30 per cent and overall domestic and EU intake dipped to 2,100.

In addition, subsidiary companies  Bath Spa U and Bath Spa Global  racked up significant losses, the accounts note.

Figures available on Companies House show Bath Spa Global  an international pathway college venture set up in 2014 in partnership with US firm Shorelight Education  has lost about 1.4million in the three years to July 2016, while its parent company Bath Spa U has lost about 736,000 over the same period.

Bath Spa University has only 7,300 students  less than a quarter of the 39,700 at Manchester and 33,221 at Leeds.

It is ranked 90th of 129 in the Complete University Guide league table and was given the middle award of 'silver' in the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework this year.

A Bath Spa spokesman said: 'Professor Slade stood down as vice chancellor after more than five years of service.

'Relevant Hefce guidance was taken into account and legal advice, based on this guidance, obtained.

'The vice-chancellor's salary is determined by the university's remuneration committee.'

Vice-chancellor on 468k faces revolt as her own professors tell her to quit

Britain's highest-paid university chief faced a revolt last night as scores of professors called for her quit immediately.

Bath University vice-chancellor Dame Glynis Breakwell announced last week that she would step down in February 2019  after a six-month 'sabbatical' on full pay.

The arrangement will see her pocket a 234,000 'golden goodbye' even after she stops being vice-chancellor in August.

Bath University vice-chancellor Dame Glynis Breakwell announced last week that she would step down in February 2019  after a six-month 'sabbatical' on full pay

But more than 70 Bath academics have written to Dame Glynis  paid 468,000 a year  calling on her to leave now without a pay-off.

Yesterday, university spending watchdog HEFCE confirmed it was investigating 'governance issues' over the decision to award the 65-year-old such a generous retirement package, which includes writing off a 31,489 car loan.

She has denied being forced out of her job following a scandal which saw her pay rise by 18,00 this year as students and ordinary staff struggle to make ends meet.

The letter from Bath's academic community says they are 'very concerned at the reputational crisis that has developed over recent months' and urged her to step down immediately.

It said: 'We question the use of public funds for the vice chancellor's proposed 'sabbatical', which was awarded without reference to our standard sabbatical procedures, and risks continuing negative publicity.'

They also called for the resignation of the university council chairman Thomas Sheppard, who oversaw her pay deals.

Dame Glynis said her sabbatical had been awarded on the recommendation of the university's remuneration committee, adding: 'During the sabbatical, I will be engaged in research and publishing primarily in the fields of psychology.'

Mr Sheppard said the complaint to HEFCE over the sabbatical had 'no substance whatsoever' and he refuted all allegations.
A Chinese woman who sends shipments of baby formula back to her homeland says the practice is 'good for Australia', despite it leaving supermarket shelves empty.

Song Chen moved to Newcastle, in New South Wales, three years ago and soon after began shipping boxes of the milk powder back to China, where it is in huge demand.

The 40-year-old admitted she gets around limits imposed on buying baby formula at Coles, Woolworths and chemists by raiding shelves with groups of her friends.

And photos sent to Daily Mail Australia reveal the full extent of China's thirst for baby formula and the process professional shoppers, called 'Daigous', go through to send it overseas.

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Next stop, China: Song Chen (pictured), who sends shipments of baby formula back to China, says the practice is 'good for Australia', despite it often leaving supermarket shelves empty

Before and after: It's understood Ms Chen raids supermarket shelves with groups of friends, then takes the baby formula products home (left) before later shipping them off in boxes (right)

The enormous demand from the Chinese market has seen Australian shoppers limited by supermarkets to be able to buy only two tins of baby formula at a time from their shelves (pictured)

'We send it (baby formula) to China by aeroplane. I have lots of friends back there and they ask me for it,' Ms Chen said.

'I have friends who when I have no time to buy it they help me. They buy at different times and different brands because you can't buy that much at one time.

'I'm not doing big business like the ones in Sydney, it's just to my friends mainly.'

When asked how much she makes per shipment Ms Chen refused to give a specific amount, saying 'it just depends'.

But messages seen by Daily Mail Australia show she tells her friends she makes close to $21,000 Yuan per shipment - the equivalent of AUD$4,000.

Aware of the controversy surrounding the booming demand for baby formula in Asia, Ms Chen defended her work, claiming it was good for the nation's economy.

'I think it kind of helps Australia's economy, it's expensive baby milk formula,' she said.

'Not many (Australian) people buy the expensive ones, they only buy the cheap ones, it's all Chinese people who buy the expensive ones.'

Ms Chen even posts photos of the supermarkets from which she and her friends collect baby formula to social media platforms

It comes a day after Daily Mail Australia revealed the full extent of China's thirst for the milk powder, by uncovering a major warehouse (pictured) full of the products in Sydney's west

While observing their operation on Tuesday, dozens of vehicles were witnessed arriving at the warehouse to be loaded up with baby formula (pictured)

Photos posted by Ms Chen to online social media platforms show her running friends through the process from the supermarket to her home, and even shipping.

It comes a day after the full extent of China's insatiable thirst for high quality baby formula, and the large shipments heading overseas daily, were revealed.

Tonnes of 'white gold'  from leading brands Aptamil and A2  were among hundreds of pallets found by Daily Mail Australia inside a Sydney warehouse earlier this week.

From there, thousands of tins are packaged and indirectly shipped to China, as well as being distributed locally, despite limits imposed by supermarkets on how much customers can buy off their shelves in Australia.

Top Warehouse, the business behind the warehouse, said it did not 'directly sell baby formula overseas', claiming it was just a 'middle-man' and didn't ask customers about where its products ended up.

But a former worker at the factory claimed huge shipments are sent to China 'daily'.

Tonnes of 'white gold'  from leading brands Aptamil and A2  were among hundreds of pallets found inside the warehouse (pictured) at Silverwater, in Sydney's west, on Tuesday

It's understood many of those collecting baby formula were owners of Asian grocers and duty free stores across the city, where they are later on sold to Chinese tourists to take home

While observing their operation, Daily Mail Australia witnessed dozens of vehicles arrive at the warehouse to be loaded up with baby formula.

It's understood many of those collecting baby formula were owners of Asian grocers and duty free stores across the city.

These stores then sell the products to Chinese tourists to take on the plane home with them.

Mike Chen, manager at Top Warehouse, said that where the formula ended up once it left the warehouse really wasn't the company's concern.

'Basically what we do is we take the order off the customers and we give them what we get in from Aptamil,' Mr Chen said.

'Mainly, we are selling to local businesses... I believe (but) we're not going to ask and they are not going to tell us about where their product is going.'

Two men seemingly discuss their large order of a pallet of baby formula with the manager of Top Warehouse

Some international shoppers are happy to pay prices marked up to 1000 per cent, so sought after is the high quality milk powder

A delivery van sits outside the warehouse, waiting to be loaded up with baby formula for one of the many daily trips

Professional Asian shoppers raiding shelves at Coles, Woolworths and other stores across the country has become common place in recent years.

While it's legal, the practice has left Australian parents outraged at their now reduced access to the once freely accessible product.

So enormous is the demand from China that Aptamil has increased its production of its formula by 50 per cent in the past three months.

Earlier this year Woolworths announced it would be sending its homebrand products to China, feeding the endless appetite of the nation.

Some international shoppers are happy to pay prices marked up to 1000 per cent, so sought after is the high quality milk powder.
The Defence Secretary escalated a row with the Chancellor last night as he declared ministers who do not pay for VIP trips on RAF jets dont get to use them.

Gavin Williamson made the remarks after Philip Hammond was banned from using a fleet of RAF aircraft this week because the Treasury owes a six-figure sum over previous flights he has made with No 32 Squadron.

Defence officials were said to have been ordered to refuse travel requests until the bill is settled, amid a growing spat between the pair over defence cuts.

The Ministry of Defence has blocked Chancellor Philip Hammond from using No 32 Squadron's aircraft until his department settles its six-figure bill

Defence Secretary Gavin Willimason, pictured leaving 10 Downing Street claimed Chancellor Philip Hammond must clear his six-figure bill before being allowed to use MoD jets in future

Mr Hammond hit back last night by appearing to suggest Mr Williamson has yet to get to grips with the complexities of the defence budget. He insisted he was a great champion of defence spending.

In relation to the row over the Chancellors use of Ministry of Defence aircraft, Mr Williamson yesterday said the MoD was very fiscally responsible and that if you are going to be using services youre having to make sure that you are paying for those services  if you are not paying for them, you dont get to use them.

He added: Obviously departments have to pay their bills and Im sure the Treasury will have paid their bills. You wouldnt expect the Treasury to be late payers. 

But if people arent paying for the services they dont get to use the services do they? You would expect all government departments, the Treasury of all, to pay their bills on time.

The ban came days after allies of Mr Hammond mocked Mr Williamsons inexperience in defence matters and compared him to Private Pike from sitcom Dads Army. Then it was claimed Mr Hammond, who served as defence secretary from 2011 to 2014, had told the Prime Minister that the Army needs as few as 50,000 troops.

The claims came amid reports the Defence Secretary and Mr Hammond are locked in a briefing war over defence spending.

Mr Williamson is preparing to fight the Treasury for up to an extra 2billion a year for the armed forces to prevent a series of cuts as part of a defence review.

Giving evidence at a Treasury select committee yesterday, Mr Hammond appeared to ridicule Mr Williamson.

He said: I expect that once he has had a chance to understand the situation in the Ministry of Defence and to get his head around the defence budget the new Defence Secretary will be wanting to come and talk to me and he will find no one more sympathetic to the challenges of defence than me.

Army cut to 50,000 'could not defend UK' Britain would not be able to defend itself if the Army was shrunk to 50,000 troops, the Defence Secretary declared last night. Gavin Williamson described cutting the Army from its size of 78,000 to such a low level as ridiculous. His comments came after it was claimed that Chancellor Philip Hammond had enraged defence chiefs by telling Theresa May the Army only needed a 50,000-strong force. Mr Hammond reportedly suggested this would be enough for the Army to carry out its key standing task to send a division to fight a war. But last night Mr Williamson vowed to maintain a world class Armed Forces as he slapped down the idea of drastic cuts. The former chief whip told the Mail: You cant have a British Army of 50,000 men. If you had an army of 50,000 we wouldnt be able to defend ourselves properly. We wouldnt be able to provide the defence that the British people expect that this country has. He also pointed out that there was a manifesto commitment to keep the size of the army the same and said MPs took that very seriously. Sources close to the Chancellor yesterday said claims he believed the Army should be cut to 50,000 troops were utterly untrue. Advertisement

He added: There is no greater champion of defence than me. I was defence secretary for almost three years. Im a huge advocate for our armed forces.

Mr Hammond said rumours about the defence budget being cut were untrue, and that it was in fact being increased.

The Prime Minister, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Brexit Secretary all have permission to use a fleet of RAF aircraft, which operates out of RAF Northolt.

Mr Hammond has used BAE 146 jets and A109 helicopters from the squadron on more than 20 official business trips this year. Some journeys are thought to have cost up to 20,000 each.

He has taken flights to Manchester, Brussels and Frankfurt. It is believed the total bill that he owes the MoD for the trips is a six-figure sum.

But although all other departments have covered the costs, the Treasury is yet to pay up for Mr Hammonds travel.

This is understood to be because of administrative issues and the payment will be paid imminently. The Prime Ministers official spokesman said there was an administrative discussion going on between the Treasury and the MoD over the issue and it was being resolved.

He added: My understanding is the Chancellor used a Government jet yesterday.

I gather there is an administrative discussion going on. This matter is being resolved.

It is understood Mrs May is ready to meet Mr Williamson and Mr Hammond as early as next week to discuss the state of the armed forces.

A national security capability review that is being overseen by the Cabinet Office is due to be published early next year.
A furious father has written an impassioned letter to his daughter's school slamming the gender-based activities it offered its Year 6 students.

The concerned parent, from New South Wales, accused the school of taking pupils back to the 1960s by offering hair and make-up sessions to girls while boys were sent to a hardware store.

'When Ruby left for school yesterday it was 2017 but when she returned home in the afternoon she was from 1968,' he wrote in a letter to the school principal which he posted on Twitter.

'I know this to be the case as Ruby informed me that the ''girls'' in Year 6 would be attending the school library to get their hair and make-up done on Monday afternoon while the ''boys'' are going to Bunnings.

The concerned parent, from New South Wales, accused the school of taking pupils back to the 1960s by offering hair and make-up sessions to girls while boys were sent to Bunnings (stock)

'When Ruby left for school yesterday it was 2017 but when she returned home in the afternoon she was from 1968,' he wrote in a letter to the school principal

'Are you able to search the school buildings for a rip in the space-time continuum? Perhaps there is a faulty Flux Capacitor hidden away in the girls' toilet block?'

He asked the school to return its student 'to this millennium' and to stop 'sharply' dividing children 'along gender lines'.

The father's letter was widely applauded on social media and his post has since gone viral.

'Good on you - reminds me of my primary school in the early 70's where the girls did embroidery while the boys did sport. At least embroidery involved a skill though,' one wrote on Twitter.

The father asked the school to return its student 'to this millennium' and to stop 'sharply' dividing children 'along gender lines' (stock image)

'I don't wear makeup I don't brush my hair even hardly and Bunnings is my favourite,' a woman commented on social media (stock)

'I'd much prefer Bunnings! I had to fight to do maths enrichment instead of grooming and deportment classes when I was at school. I was the only girl in that class,' another said.

Yet another wrote: 'I don't wear makeup I don't brush my hair even hardly and Bunnings is my favourite.

'I hope my daughter is the same. Girls should not be shepherded away from that!'
Ray Dolby, pictured, who died in 2013 aged 80 made his fortune having created the Dolby Noise Reduction System

The estate of sound pioneer Ray Dolby has donated 85 million to Cambridge University.

Mr Dolby was at Cambridge from 1957 to 1961, and he founded Dolby Laboratories four years later.

It went on to invent sound technologies which made him a fortune, including Dolby Surround, familiar to cinema-goers, Dolby Noise Reduction and the Dolby System.

The 85 million gift, which is the largest philanthropic donation ever made to UK science, will help redevelop an entire laboratory.

The Cavendish Laboratory redevelopment will be named the Ray Dolby Centre, and is expected to open in 2022.

Mr Dolby, who died in 2013 at the age of 80, was a student and later a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

His son, David Dolby, said many of his father's ideas were stimulated by his time at Cambridge.

'My father's time at the Cavendish provided him with an environment where he got a world-class education in physics, and many of his successful ideas about noise reduction were stimulated by his Cambridge experience,' he said.

'Our family is pleased to be able to support the future scientists and innovators who will benefit from the thoughtfully designed Ray Dolby Centre.'

Mr Dolby, pictured, who studied at Cambridge between 1957 and 1961. His family bequeathed 85 million to the college after previously donating 35 million in 2015

The money will be used to redevelop the Cavendish Laboratory which will be named after Ray Dolby who studied there during the late 1950s and early 1960s

His widow Dagmar said the University of Cambridge 'played a pivotal role' in her husband's life

Mr Dolby's widow, Dagmar, added: 'The University of Cambridge played a pivotal role in Ray's life, both personally and professionally.

'At Cambridge and at the Cavendish, he gained the formative education and insights that contributed greatly to his lifelong groundbreaking creativity, and enabled him to start his business.'

The Dolby family previously donated 35 million to Pembroke College in 2015.

It is now the second-largest donor to Cambridge University in its 808-year history. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave 210 million US dollars for a postgraduate scholarship programme.

Cambridge Vice Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope said: 'This unparalleled gift is a fitting tribute to Ray Dolby's legacy, who changed the way the world listened - his research paved the way for an entire industry.

'A century from now, we can only speculate on which discoveries will alter the way we live our lives, and which new industries will have been born in the Cavendish Laboratory, in large part thanks to this extraordinarily generous gift.'

The new Cavendish Laboratory will be its third home since its founding in 1874.

Its researchers have made many contributions to the development of science over the past 140 years, including the discovery of the electron and of the neutron, and the unravelling of the structure of DNA.
Donald Trump Jr (pictured) has refused to tell lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer

Donald Trump Jr has refused to tell lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.

The President's son cited attorney-client privileges after emails detailing the meeting had become public, according to the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

Speaking to the committee behind closed doors on Wednesday as part of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump Jr also said he didn't tell the President about the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians when it happened.

The Trump tycoon heir declined to elaborate on what he ultimately told him after the meeting became public.

California Representative Adam Schiff said that Trump Jr claimed he couldn't speak about the conversations with his father this summer because of attorney-client privilege, telling the committee a lawyer was present when he spoke to his father about the June 2016 meeting and the emails that led up to it.

Schiff said that wasn't a valid excuse not to talk, saying 'the presence of counsel does not mean communications between father and son are privileged'.

The Trump Tower meeting is a matter of keen interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also investigating the meddling and whether there was any obstruction of justice.

Trump Jr and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russian operatives under the impression that they might receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Mueller is also interested in the White House response to the meeting once it became public.

The White House has said the President was involved in drafting an early statement saying the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program.

But emails later released by Trump Jr showed he enthusiastically agreed to the sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others after he was promised dirt on his father's rival.

Trump Jr later said the promised material never materialized.

Representative Adam Schiff, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, speaks to media after a House Intelligence Committee meeting where President Donald Trump's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, was interviewed behind closed doors on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday

The Trump Tower meeting is a matter of keen interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also investigating the meddling and whether there was any obstruction of justice

During Wednesday's eight-hour interview, Trump Jr said he spoke with his father's communications aide Hope Hicks as early reports of the meeting emerged, according to one person familiar with the interview.

The New York Times was first to report the existence of the meeting last July, and Trump Jr released the emails detailing the planning for it several days later.

Hicks was with the president on Air Force One while they were writing the initial statement that said the meeting primarily concerned the adoption program.

Trump Jr also told the intelligence panel that he didn't tell his father about the 2016 meeting at the time that it happened, according to the person familiar with his interview.

The person was not authorized to speak about the testimony and asked not to be identified.

Both the House and the Senate intelligence committees have been interested in the Trump Tower meeting and have interviewed several participants.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is also investigating the meeting, and interviewed Trump Jr behind closed doors in September.

In that interview, Trump Jr cast the 2016 meeting as simply an opportunity to learn about Clinton's 'fitness, character or qualifications', insisting to investigators that he did not collude with Russia to hurt Clinton's campaign.

The Senate intelligence committee also hopes to interview Trump Jr before the end of the year.

Kushner has spoken to both intelligence committees.

Trump Jr and Jared Kushner (back right), Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russian operatives under the impression that they might receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

Trump Jr (left with brother Eric) also told the intelligence panel that he didn't tell his father about the 2016 meeting at the time that it happened, according to the person familiar with his interview

The panels have also interviewed Ike Kaveladze, who was at the meeting as a representative of a Russian developer who once partnered with Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist.

A translator who was in attendance has also spoken to congressional investigators.

Lawmakers were also expected to ask Trump Jr about his communications with WikiLeaks during and after the campaign.

Trump Jr released messages last month that showed him responding to the WikiLeaks' Twitter account three times, at one point agreeing to 'ask around' about a political action committee the whistleblowing site had mentioned.

He also asked the site about a rumor about an upcoming leak, and tweeted a link that the account sent him.

Also Wednesday, the House intelligence panel released a transcript of an interview last week with Erik Prince, the founder of the security firm Blackwater and a prominent Trump supporter.

According to the transcript, which was partially redacted, Prince told the panel he met a Russian with ties to President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands earlier this year, but he denies he was representing Trump in the exchange.

Prince said he and Kirill Dmitriev of the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund had a 30-minute conversation in a hotel bar January 11 and discussed oil and commodity prices and how Dmitriev wished the two countries' trade relationship would improve.

The meeting has captured the interest of investigators since an April report in The Washington Post that it was an attempt to establish a back-channel line of communication between Trump and Putin.

Prince denied that assertion in the interview.

He also suggested intelligence officials in former President Barack Obama's administration leaked details of the meeting.

Though the intelligence committee does not generally release transcripts of interviews, lawmakers agreed to do so in negotiations with Prince.
Boris Johnson today compared the spread of extremism to crack cocaine as he insisted the threat of terrorism can and will be defeated.

And in a thinly veiled attack on Labour's pacifist leader Jeremy Corbyn he hit out at those who 'bash the West' and blame our military interventions for the spread of terror.

The Foreign Secretary said Britain has done much to 'cut out' the cancer of extremism and terrorism abroad.

And he tore into Tony Blair for saying jihadis pose an 'existential threat' to the UK - saying it is a 'scourge, a malaise' but that it can and will be defeated.

Although he warned that jihadis are 'working on new bombs of all kinds, and new ways of eluding detection...enlisting everyday objects as terrorist weapons'.

In a major speech on terrorism at the Foreign Office today, Mr Johnson said Britain must be prepared to play its full role on the world.

He said the lure of extremism is more than just a military threat but a 'psychosis' Britain must root out.

Boris Johnson, pictured at the Foreign Office today, said Britain has done much to 'cut out' the cancer of extremism and terrorism abroad.

The Foreign Secretary tore into Tony Blair for saying jihadis pose an 'existential threat' to the UK - saying it is a 'scourge, a malaise' but that it can and will be defeated.

He said: 'Islamist extremism has been compared to crack cocaine.'

He added: 'Whatever else it may be, Islamist terrorism is simply not not an existential threat to Britain, and I never understood why Tony Blair used to say it was.

'It is a scourge, it is troubling, a malaise, but we can get on top of it.

'For all its addictive power there are only a small proportion of people who are vulnerable to its bombastic lunacies.

'We can defeat this scourge.'

BORIS URGES TRUMP TO COME UP WITH PEACE PLAN AFTER JERUSALEM EMBASSY ROW Donald Trump, pictured in Washington yesterday) has sparked worldwide condemnation by announcing that the US will recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and signalling plans to move the embassy there Boris Johnson today threw down the gauntlet to Donald Trump to come up with a plan for peace in the Middle East. It comes as the Foreign Secretary criticised the US President for recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and agreeing to move the American embassy there. Mr Johnson said that now the embassy has been moved the world will be looking to see hat the 'Trump administration can bring to the Middle East peace process.' He said: If we are going to see a move of the US embassy lets also see some moves on the long overdue peace process. He said the US is he 'preeminent player' on the world stage and should show its 'leadership and power' in taking steps to broker peace. Advertisement

He also took a swipe at the Labour leader and other like him who 'bash' the West and blame Western military interventions abroad for the blood and carnage spilled by terrorists on Britain's streets.

He said Britain has 'made horrendous mistakes' and pointed to the failure to plan for the reconstruction after the Iraq war as a chief example.

But he said it is wrong to excuse the murder carried out by terrorists by blaming it on the West's wars.

He said: To assert as people do, that terrorism seen on the streets of Britain and America is somehow some kind of punishment for our adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited upon people  swedes, Belgians, Finns and the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh, with no such history in the region.

'There is no consistency or logic in this bashing of the west. We must not play their game.'

In a major foreign policy speech, Mr Johnson also warned that the country cannot remain paralysed by its experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and also highlight the danger of Western 'aloofness' in the world.

Mr Johnson is also expected to lay out his plan for defeating jihadism both at home and abroad.

Speaking at the Foreign Office, he said: 'Above all we will win when we understand that ''we'' means not just us in the West but the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who share the same hopes and dreams, who have the same anxieties and goals for their families, who are equally engaged with the world and all its excitements and possibilities, who are equally determined to beat this plague.'

Dozens of people have been murdered or injured in terror attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park this year.

He praised British efforts around the world to tackle terrorism, saying they are already illustrating the country's commitment to the security of Europe and the world after Brexit.

And he called for unity with Muslims around the world who are 'equally determined' to fight Islamist terror.

Mr Johnson will point out that nations which have little history of military intervention in the Middle East suffer terrorism inspired by Islamic State, also known as Daesh (pictured in Syria in 2014)

Boris will warn that the country cannot remain paralysed by its experiences in Iraq (pictured) and Afghanistan and warn of the danger Western 'aloofness' in the world

His speech today comes after Prime Minister Theresa May rowed with United States president Donald Trump over his sharing on Twitter of anti-Muslim videos posted by far-right group Britain First.

Strengthening national identities in the Muslim world, empowering women and fostering reform are key to restoring peace and prosperity, Mr Johnson said.

He also said British troops and spies are 'putting their lives at risk' to protect Europe from Islamic terrorists as he hits back at Brussels over claims the UK has abandoned the EU.

The foreign secretary also used his speech to take a swipe at the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier over his criticism of Britain last week.

Mr Barnier suggested Britain was selfish in voting Leave at a time when several EU countries had faced major attacks by Islamic State terrorists.

'Rather than stay shoulder to shoulder with the union, the British chose to be on their own again,' he said.

But Mr Johnson will stress that UK commitment to European security is 'unconditional' on the outcome of Brexit talks.

'Every day around the world I can tell you that British serving men and women are putting their lives at risk to roll up terrorist networks  to thwart them and bring them to justice,' he will say.

'They are making good on what the Prime Minister has rightly called the unconditional commitment of the British people to the security of our European friends, not just in this continent but beyond.'
It is a treat that many children enjoy while baking with their parents.

But licking the mixing bowl may not be safe after all, according to food safety regulators.

Thats not because of the raw eggs in the mixture  but the raw flour.

The warning comes after an E.coli outbreak was linked to a batch of flour in the US, leading to 10million pounds of it being recalled.

The decision by the Food Standards Agency comes after dozens were struck down by e. coli that was traced it back to a flour mill in Kansas City, Missouri.

Now the UKs Food Standards Agency (FSA) has echoed the US governments warning over raw flour, citing outbreaks of food poisoning caused by salmonella and e.coli in other countries as a reason to avoid it.

The new guidance is likely to come as a fresh blow to bakers just months after the FSA finally lifted a health warning on raw eggs that was in place for almost 40 years.

Whether it is safe to eat raw cookie dough would depend on the ingredients, a spokesman at the FSA said.

However, we would advise that people should not eat raw cookie dough unless manufacturers instructions say that it is safe to do so, because dough is generally not intended to be eaten in that state and some ingredients may not be safe to eat without cooking. It is always advisable to follow manufacturers instructions when using food ingredients.

We have been advised to avoid eating raw mixture because of the risk of salmonella poisoning

The decision comes after dozens were struck down by a strain of e. coli O121 in the US last year. Tests later traced it back to a mill in Kansas City, Missouri.

The bacteria is usually associated with undercooked or raw meat, raw vegetables, and unpasteurised milk. But researchers have since found raw flour can also be a vehicle for pathogens.

In most cases, e.coli causes minor symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea. However, it can also cause an infection that leads to an incurable form of kidney failure, which is more likely to affect children and older people.

By cooking the dough, the bacteria responsible for the infections and illness is killed.

In the past, we have been advised to avoid eating raw mixture because of the risk of salmonella poisoning. Soft boiled eggs have come with a health warning ever since 1988, when the then health minister Edwina Currie warned they could carry the bug.

The resulting scare led millions to turn away from eggs in a devastating blow to sales and British farmers. But efforts from farmers to eradicate salmonella, including vaccinating hens against it, have now effectively eliminated the risk.

The FSA said there was no evidence to suggest there are any problems with UK flour  but cases elsewhere led them to advise caution.

The agency said: We do not advise eating uncooked flour or products containing uncooked flour because there is potential for it to be contaminated. Adequate cooking will ensure any harmful bacteria are killed.
She was greeted with the usual cheers from Government sycophants when she entered the Chamber at 11.57am but during Prime Ministers Questions a few minutes later, Theresa May was regarded with suspicion by Conservative Brexiteers.

They have put up with an awful lot of nonsense from her and her Government so far during the Brussels negotiations. They swallowed that underwhelming Florence speech. They kept schtum when she gaily offered ever higher sums of divorce payment to Jean-Claude Juncker. But with that fandango in Brussels on Monday their patience has frayed.

Their understated unease is a great deal more powerful, theatrically, than any amount of pro-European squeaking from the Opposition or from Mother Soubry. It is more menacing, all the colder for being below the surface. You sense that they, like their Democratic Unionist allies, are deadly serious about their position and therefore see no need to exaggerate it. Hyperbole is the currency of bluffers and despots.

Jacob Rees-Mogg made his point to Theresa May with such 'faultless politeness' that he 'could have been offering her a slice of lemon drizzle cake'

Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) was called towards the end of the session. He stood at the far end of the House, double-breasted suit, voice unhysterical, one hand used to help convey his point. He asked Mrs May if, before her next trip to Brussels, she would apply a new coat of paint to her red lines because on Monday they were starting to look a little bit pink.

Translation: weve had enough of this pusillanimous caving in to the EU, Prime Minister. As ever with Mr Rees-Mogg, it was put with faultless politeness. He could have been offering her a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

But it still must have stung her a little. A Labour heckler told Mr Rees-Mogg to grow up! but it was a clever and accessible and proper question  and will certainly have meant more to viewers than all the bejargoned stuff churned out by officialdom.

Mrs May gave a faintly insincere laugh and replied: I can happily say that the principles on which this Government is negotiating were set out in the Lancaster House speech, they were set out in the Florence speech, and those principles remain.

Bernard Jenkin was 'gentlemanly' in his questioning, reminding the Prime Minister that many countries wanted trade deals with the UK

Make of that what you will, for the Lancaster House and Florence speeches had very different flavours.

Another Eurosceptic, Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich & N Essex), again impeccably gentlemanly, reminded the PM that countries such as Canada, Japan, the US and Australia are eager to talk to us about trade deals. There is apparently even talk of us joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Yet all those opportunities would not come our way if we remain shackled to EU regulations once we have left the EU (which is pretty much what Downing Streets geniuses seem to have been proposing on Monday).

Mrs May again said she was very happy to assure Mr Jenkin she knew about those trade deal offers. What she wanted to do, she added, was get a good trade deal with the EU in addition to all that other foreign stuff. Again, we must make of this what we will.

Peter Bone wondered if the Prime Minister would like him to accompany her on her next trip to Brussels

When she claimed that she could achieve both a soft border in Ireland and full independence from the EU, Labour MPs yelled: How? How? How? When she rounded on them and gave them a longish-winded answer, the hecklers added: You dont know!

Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) was worried about European judges still having some sway over our courts. He wondered if Mrs May would like him to join her when she next goes to Brussels. Much laughter at this. I dont know why. Old Bone might give Juncker & Co a more accurate view of British opinion than Mrs Mays civil servants are doing.

At points of order, the Scots Nats and others were still banging on about Brexit Secretary David Davis not handing over all the Whitehall papers which Europhile MPs thought they had forced him to surrender. Speaker Bercow did some posturing.

That little sideshow will rumble on a few days yet but it is more about MPs vanity than Brexit.
It has long been dismissed as an old wives tale that morning sickness signals a healthy pregnancy.

But experts now say it is probably true  giving encouragement to sufferers, who famously include the Duchess of Cambridge.

More than four in five women battle nausea in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and around half experience vomiting.

Scientists at the University of Reading say the sickness may be a good thing as it is caused by a hormone vital for a healthy pregnancy.

It has long been dismissed as an old wives tale that morning sickness signals a healthy pregnancy - but experts now say it is probably true (stock image)

Endokinin, which acts on the brain to cause morning sickness, also ensures good blood flow through the placenta so that oxygen and nutrients can reach the unborn baby.

Professor Philip Lowry, from the University of Readings school of biological sciences, said he hoped the news would bring psychological relief to pregnant women.

There may be a temptation to use endokinin-blocking drugs to treat morning sickness during pregnancy, but these findings suggest that such drugs could affect the health of the pregnancy and must be avoided, he said.

Awful as morning sickness can be, it does not endanger babies and usually clears up by weeks 16 to 20 of a womans pregnancy.

However some women, such as the Duchess of Cambridge, suffer a more severe form of nausea and vomiting, hyperemesis gravidarum, which can see them admitted to hospital and given fluids through a drip.

Kate developed acute morning sickness weeks into her current pregnancy, having been hospitalised when she was expecting Prince George and suffering again with Princess Charlotte.

The news will give encouragement to sufferers, who famously include the Duchess of Cambridge.

The expert review, led by Professor Lowry, states: Although morning sickness is very unpleasant, the old wives tale that it results in a healthy baby now has a credible scientific explanation.

The body releases endokinin, which improves blood flow in the placenta, to ensure the baby is not starved of nutrients.

However, its entry into the bloodstream stimulates receptors in the brain known to cause nausea and vomiting.

The review, published in the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, references a study of 800 pregnant women from last year. It found that, for those with a history of miscarriage, vomiting and nausea in subsequent pregnancies was linked to higher odds of a successful birth.

Doctors advise women with morning sickness to get lots of rest, drink plenty of fluids and eat small, frequent meals high in carbohydrates.
The former girlfriend of a Farmer Wants A Wife star has been slammed online after sharing a disturbing photo of herself 'deep throating' a decapitated joey.

Sydney pig hunter Natalie Cepeniuk posted to social media a graphic photograph of herself in a blood stained shirt as she holds the dead baby kangaroo up to her mouth.

'I may have deep throated a joeys neck,' Ms Cepeniuk wrote alongside the photo.

Sydney pig hunter Natalie Cepeniuk (pictured) was slammed online for sharing a photo of herself 'deep throating' a decapitated joey

Ms Cepeniuk (pictured) posted the gruesome photograph of herself in a blood stained shirt as she holds the dead baby kangaroo up to her mouth to social media

The former girlfriend of a Farmer Wants A Wife 2015 star Lachlan McAleer (pictured together) hit back saying the joey was 'humanely put out of its misery'

Despite the photo being shared late November, a wildlife activist drew attention to the confronting image at the weekend prompting RSPCA NSW to investigate the photograph.

Ms Cepeniuk, who is the former girlfriend of the 2015 Channel 9 series star Lachlan McAleer, took to her MSPIGR Facebook page to defend her actions saying she 'hit a few nerves with a few greenies and haters'.

'[The joey] was humanely put out of its misery because it's mother jumped in front of my ute,' Ms Cepeniuk wrote.

Claiming she did not shoot the mother, the pig hunter said she loves animals but is also a 'realist' and said it would have been cruel to keep the 'already mangled joey' alive.

'I could have kept driving and left the baby to die or get eaten alive by meat ants in the pouch but I didn't, I turned around and checked the roo,' Ms Cepeniuk wrote.

'Plus being 50-60kms out of town it would [have] died from shock before anyone came out at 2am to "rescue" it.

Ms Cepeniuk (pictured) shared in a post to her MSPIGR Facebook page that it would have been cruel to keep the 'already mangled joey' alive

'I could have kept driving and left the baby to die or get eaten alive by meat ants in the pouch but I didn't, I turned around and checked the roo,' Ms Cepeniuk wrote

'It was also pretty pink, meaning it had f*** all hair on its body .... being mangled there was going to be a f*** all survival rate unless they have homes for retarded joeys.

'You better get me charged for eating moths and beetles too ... cause I eat them.'

Hundreds took to social media to share their outrage towards the pig hunter's photo, calling Ms Cepeniuk a 'sick piece of s***' and 'revolting'.

'Wow, she's not right in the head ... sicko,' one person wrote.

Despite the backlash towards the graphic photo, the Australian Government's Department of Environment and Energy for injured kangaroos and pouch young says female kangaroos must be examined for a joey.

Hundreds took to social media to share their outrage towards the pig hunter deep throating the decapitated joey, calling Ms Cepeniuk a 'sick piece of s***' and 'revolting'

'Wow, she's not right in the head ... sicko,' one person wrote on Facebook after the viral photo

Despite backlash, the Australian Government's Department of Environment and Energy for injured kangaroos and pouch young says female kangaroos must be examined for a joey

'The pouch young of a killed female must also be killed immediately,' the code states.

'Decapitation with a sharp instrument in very small hairless young or a properly executed heavy blow to destroy the brain in larger young are effective means of causing sudden and painless death.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted RSCA NSW and Ms Cepeniuk for comment.
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The first ever underwater images of a sunken Navy warship which is believed to have fired Americas first shot of World War Two were revealed on Wednesday.

Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, sent his team of deep-sea explorers to far beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines.

It was there, on the seafloor of Ormoc Bay, that they used maritime drones and a research vessel to photograph the wreckage of the USS Ward.

The Ward was a Wickes-class destroyer that patrolled the entrance to Pearl Harbor nearly 76 years to the day  December 7, 1941  that Japanese aircraft launched a surprise attack on the Hawaiian base.

The first ever underwater images of a sunken Navy warship which is believed to have fired Americas first shot of World War Two were revealed on Wednesday

Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, sent his team of deep-sea explorers to far beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines

It was there, on the seafloor of Ormoc Bay, that they used maritime drones and a research vessel to photograph the wreckage of the USS Ward

The Ward was a Wickes-class destroyer that patrolled the entrance to Pearl Harbor nearly 76 years to the day  December 7, 1941  that Japanese aircraft launched a surprise attack on the Hawaiian base

An hour before the attack, the Ward noticed an 80-foot-long midget submarine that was trailing the USS Antares into the harbor

The Ward accelerated to bear down on the submarine. Within three minutes of first spotting the sub, it opened fire

An hour before the attack, the Ward noticed an 80-foot-long midget submarine that was trailing the USS Antares into the harbor.

The Ward accelerated to bear down on the submarine. Within three minutes of first spotting the sub, it opened fire.

This was believed to have been the first time that American military personnel fired a shot during World War Two.

We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a [Japanese] submarine operating in defensive sea areas, Lieutenant William Outerbridge told the dispatch to the Commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District in Pearl Harbor.

This was believed to have been the first time that American military personnel fired a shot during World War Two

The USS Ward's number three gun and its crew were cited for firing the first shot the day of Japan's raid on Hawaii in 1941

Three years to the day after Pearl Harbor, the Ward was patrolling the waters off the Phillippines when it was hit by several Japanese kamikazes

Allen and his crew explored the Ward to pay tribute to American soldiers killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor

Three years to the day after Pearl Harbor, the Ward was patrolling the waters off the Phillippines when it was hit by several Japanese kamikazes.

Ward's gunners opened fire with 3-inch and 20-millimeter batteries, hitting the center plane that wavered and crashed the ship at the waterline at 0956, entering the forward part of the boiler room and the after part of the lower troop space, the Naval History and Heritage Command said.

Men in the forward part of Ward could not contact those in the aft, since the fires amidships had severed all communications.

The ship was soon engulfed by fire.

Crews were told to abandon ship less than 30 minutes after it was hit.

One crew member suffered injuries. All of the men on board managed to reach other ships nearby.

Before it was sunk, the Ward did a variety of tasks in the Pacific theater.

It helped a number of landings, went on patrols against enemy submarines, and defended against Japanese air attacks near Guadalcanal in June 1943.

Its wreckage was found on December 1, just days before the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The centrepiece of Allens project is the R/V (research vessel) Petrel - a 250-foot research and exploration vessel he bought in 2016.

Last year, an underwater remote vehicle operated from the Okeanos Explorer, a ship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, viewed the sunken Japanese mini-submarine off Pearl Harbor that was destroyed by the Ward

The Japanese Imperial Navy vessel with a two-man crew - the first casualties of shots fired by US forces in World War II - lies at 1,100 feet. The hull, a host for barnacles and coral, is coming apart in three places

Its advanced underwater equipment and technology makes it one of the few ships in the world capable of exploring more than 3.5 miles beneath the surface of the ocean.

The Petrel and its capabilities, the technology it has and the research weve done, are the culmination of years of dedication and hard work, said Robert Kraft, the man tapped by Allen to head subsea operations.

Weve assembled and integrated this technology, assets and unique capability into an operating platform which is now one among very few on the planet.

So far, Allen has led expeditions that led to the discovery of the USS Indianapolis, the Japanese battleship Musahi, and the Italian destroyer Artigliere.

Allen and his crew explored the Ward to pay tribute to American soldiers killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Last year, an underwater remote vehicle operated from the Okeanos Explorer, a ship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, viewed the sunken Japanese mini-submarine off Pearl Harbor that was destroyed by the Ward.

The Japanese Imperial Navy vessel with a two-man crew - the first casualties of shots fired by US forces in World War II - lies at 1,100 feet. The hull, a host for barnacles and coral, is coming apart in three places.

The location is maintained as a gravesite, said Hans Van Tilburg, a historian with NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Former Hells Angels bikie Wayne Schneider was bound to a steel chair and bashed to death in Thailand by five men recovering a debt, a NSW inquest has heard.

Security guards at his Pattaya villa, south of Bangkok, saw the masked men forcing Schneider into the back seat of a ute in the early hours of November 30, 2015.

Schneider's naked body, covered in bruises, lacerations and ligature marks, was found in buried a shallow grave by the side of a road the next day.

At Glebe Coroner's Court on Thursday acting state coroner Teresa O'Sullivan formally found Schneider died from blunt force injury to the head and the manner of his death was homicide.

Former Hells Angels bikie Wayne Schneider was bound to a steel chair and bashed to death in Thailand by five men recovering a debt. Sydney kickboxer Antonio Bagnato (pictured) was sentenced to death after being found guilty of his murder

The inquest heard Bagnato (left) asked four men to help him assault Schneider (right)

Sydney kickboxer Antonio Bagnato was in February sentenced in a Thai court to death after being found guilty of murdering Schneider.

The inquest heard Bagnato asked four men to help him assault Schneider over a debt and gave each of them a balaclava, a SIM card and money, Mr Welsh said.

At Schneider's house, Bagnato put him in a neck hold while another man hit him with a baton and the others assaulted him with knuckle dusters.

Detective Sergeant Paul Roe told the court Schneider was driven to another flat, which was rented by Bagnato through a friend, where he was likely restrained in a stainless steel hospital chair and further assaulted.

'He may still have been alive when he arrived at that address,' Det Sgt Roe said.

Schneider's naked body, covered in bruises, lacerations and ligature marks, was found in buried a shallow grave near his Pattaya villa, south of Bangkok

At Schneider's house, Bagnato (pictured) put him in a neck hold while another man hit him with a baton and the others assaulted him with knuckle dusters

The men allegedly left Schneider alone in the room and returned to find him dead.

They stripped Schneider, dumped his clothes and buried his body in a roadside grave, Det Sgt Roe said.

To identify the body, Thai police took a photo on a mobile phone of the body being exhumed and showed the photo to one of Schneider's associates.

'It wasn't a method that we would normally practise here,' Det Sgt Roe said.

Although NSW police weren't told Schneider's body had been repatriated they got wind of a funeral taking place in Sydney on December 11.

Before the funeral police took the embalmed body to the Glebe morgue where it was formally identified as Schneider using a palm print.

The inquest heard Schneider left Australia in 2012 after police allegedly linked him to two clandestine drug laboratories in southwest Sydney.

Bagnato also fled the country after the 2014 murder, for which he is a suspect, of Sydney man Bradley Dillon.

His cousin Diego Carbone was in October found guilty of Dillon's murder.
The Chinese government has accused Australian universities of treating foreign students like 'cash machines' to pay off their study debts.

An editorial in the Global Times - a pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper - also says universities have done little to help students integrate into Australian culture.

'I sincerely advise Australian universities to pay more attention to their quality of education and stop treating Chinese students as a cash machine,' Beijing-based journalist Lilly Wang wrote on Wednesday.

'I rarely hear professors or lecturers helping them to understand Australian culture or purposely mix them with local students in a class.'

These Chinese international students in Canberra are having a barbecue the Australian way

A Chinese government newspaper says Australian universities haven't done enough to help Chinese students integrate (stock image)

But she concedes Chinese students also don't make efforts to integrate and had resorted to cheating.

'Some students are too busy shopping to study, so they hire a ghostwriter, or exam substitute, to help them complete their degree,' she writes.

Wang also says tens of thousands of Chinese students in Australia set up shop as a 'daigou' - or someone who buys luxury goods on behalf of people back in China - to help pay their university fees.

The head of Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Frances Adamson warned universities in October they needed to better protect themselves from the rising influence of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Chinese newspaper says Chinese students aren't doing enough to mix with Australians

These Chinese students at Canberra's Australian National University enjoy a barbecue

She also cautioned foreign students they had to engage in respectful debate rather than trying to spread propaganda or attempt to gag views they disagreed with.

Silencing anyone in Australian society was an affront to our values, Ms Adamson told a Chinese government-funded academic institution.

Wang took aim at this and similar views, saying if Australia was a country with freedom of speech and academic freedom everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions.

'Chinese students grew up under the educational and cultural system ruled by the Communist Party. They were educated to be patriotic and to think and believe as the Chinese government does,' she writes.

'That they politically support the Chinese government does not equate them to being spies.'
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Same-sex marriage will officially be legalised in Australia after both houses of Parliament voted in favour of the historic change.

The House of Representatives voted to pass same-sex marriage into law on Thursday afternoon after a months-long public debate that has created tension and division across the country.

Ministers erupted in celebration as the landmark result was handed down, with many shedding tears of joy and embracing.

A rainbow flag was brought into the room by a minister who proudly held it aloft as the viewing gallery cheered.

In a rare moment of unity inside Parliament, the prime minister and opposition leader even shared a smile and a handshake.

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People inside the Stonewall Hotel in Sydney applaud the passing of the Gay Marriage Bill on Thursday afternoon

Australians around the country erupted in celebration at events, bars and in the streets after same-sex marriage bill passed

Magda Szubanski celebrates on the lawn of Parliament House after the result was handed down

More than 7.8 million Australians - about 62 per cent of voters - gave their support to the reform in a voluntary postal survey

'What a day, what a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it!' an impassioned Malcolm Turnbull said immediately following the announcement.

'Today we've voted for love, for equality. It's time for more marriages, more love, more respect. This belongs to us all. This is Australia.'

More than 7.8 million Australians - about 62 per cent of voters - gave their support to the reform in a voluntary postal survey.

The bill, which passed the Senate in late November, will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. It will become law in days.

The historic bill was passed on the final day of parliamentart sitting for 2017. The legislation means same-sex couples will now be able to be legally married in Australia

Australians overwhelmingly voted 'Yes' in the marriage law postal survey for the law to be changed in November

Patrons pose under a rainbow flag inside The Stonewall Hotel on Thursday in Sydney to celebrate the historic moment

Patrons raise their glasses to celebrate the passage of the same-sex marriage bill inside the Stonewall Hotel in Sydney

Magda Szubanski dances in front of equality ambassadors and volunteers from the Equality Campaign gathering in front of Parliament House in Canberra

Equality ambassadors and volunteers from the The Equality Campaign gather in front of Parliament House in Canberra

The House of Representatives voted to pass same-sex marriage into law on Thursday afternoon after a months-long public debate

A rainbow flag was brought into the room by a minister who proudly held it aloft as the viewing gallery cheered

Ministers were unable to contain their joy after the decision was handed down to legalise same-sex marriage

'What a day, what a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it!' an impassioned Malcolm Turnbull said immediately following the announcement

The first weddings are expected to be held in early January, because couples are required to give 30 days advance notice for nuptials under existing laws.

The prime minister had promised to pass the reform into law by Christmas and called on lawmakers to heed the 'overwhelming' survey result.

The issue was put to a conscience vote for parliamentarians, meaning politicians could vote as individuals rather than follow the party line.

Some politicians had vowed to vote down the change despite the outcome of the survey, claiming they were representing the 38.4 per cent of Australians who voted No.

However, their objections were vastly overshadowed as only four people chose to vote against same-sex marriage, providing a powerful lasting image for the debate.

Right: The ministers in favour of same-sex marriage. Left: those against. An overwhelming victory for love and a powerful lasting image for the debate

The prime minister had promised to pass the reform into law by Christmas and called on lawmakers to heed the 'overwhelming' survey result

Ministers erupted in celebration as the result was handed down, with many shedding tears of joy and embracing

The viewing galleries erupt as the decision to legalise same-sex marriage is handed down

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten immediately took to Twitter to celebrate the result

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek also took to social media, saying 'love prevailed'

'Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it!' Turnbull said.

'And the Parliament has got on with it and we have voted today for a quality, for love, it is time for more marriages, more commitment, more love, more respect, and we respect every Australian who was voted, those who voted yes, and those who voted no, this belongs to us all.'

'This is Australia! Fair! Diverse in the loving and filled with respect. For everyone of us, this a great day of its belongs to every Australian, the 45th Parliament is doing its job delivering, getting on with it, it is fair, we have done the work, we have done it together. Let's do it, let's finalise the deal right now!'

The first weddings are expected to be held in early January, because couples are required to give 30 days advance notice for nuptials under existing laws

'Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it!' Turnbull said of the postal survey

Same sex marriage including television star Magda Szubanski and Olympic champion Ian Thorpe spent the day at Parliament, rallying on the front lawn and keeping a close eye on proceedings.

Szubanksi celebrated on the law in front of Parliament House following the result, dancing in a circle with friends and supporters.

Attorney General George Brandis confirmed from December 9 same-sex couples can lodge their Notice of Intended Marriage, which is a month-long process.

Couples will be able to commence marrying from January 9, 2018.

Supporters of the law change clad in rainbow-coloured attire and holding signs came together outside parliament to celebrate on what is an emotional day for many

Pictured outside Parliament celebrating were television star and prominent same-sex marriage campaigner Magda Szubanski

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's sister Christine Forster was also in attendance outside Parliament to celebrate

Ambassadors and volunteers from the Equality Campaign are pictured gathered in front of Parliament House

Same-sex marriage campaigners Alex Greenwich and Magda Szubanski dance as they call on the gay marriage bill to be passed

The final bill was authored by West Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's sister Christine Forster was also in Canberra for the occasion.

Mr Abbott has said he is looking forward to his sister's impending nuptials, which are expected to be held in February.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science announced Wednesday that it has adopted its first code of conduct for its 8,427 members.

Film academy chief executive Dawn Hudson introduced the new rules to members in an email.

In October, the academy broke with tradition and made Harvey Weinstein just the second person ever expelled from the Oscars' governing body.

The new code of conduct stipulates that the academy is no place for 'people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates standards of decency.'

The academy's board may now suspend or expel those who violate the code of conduct or who 'compromise the integrity' of the academy.

The Academy Motion Pictures Arts and Science has created its first code of conduct in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Weinstein (above at its 2014 awards) was expelled from the Academy in October

The standards of conduct were drafted by a task force launched by the academy in October.

It was formed after Weinstein was accused by dozens of women of sexual harassment and abuse.

Weinstein, who won an Academy Award for 1998's 'Shakespeare in Love,' has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.

Despite being stripped of his lifetime membership, he has not has his Oscar for the film revoked.

Kevin Spacey, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by a string of men, has won two Best Actor awards.

Neither has been revoked.

Kevin Spacey has won two Academy Awards and has also been accused of sexual misconduct. He remains a member of the Academy

Nor have the awards of Dustin Hoffman who has been accused of misconduct by two different women. He denies their claims.

Hudson told members that more details on the process by which offending members will be judged will be announced later.

Weinstein is the second person to have been expelled from the Academy in its 90-year history.

The first was Carmine Caridi, an 83-year-old actor who was thrown out in 2004 for sharing banned screener copies of films.

At the time of Weinstein's expulsion, the Academy said in a statement that the decision was made 'not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.'

'Whats at issue here is a deeply troubling problem that has no place in our society.

'The board continues to work to establish ethical standards of conduct that all Academy members will be expected to exemplify,' it went on.

The new code of conduct will apply to its existing 8,000 members.

Oscar nominees and winners are automatically considered for membership.
Billionaire real estate developer Harry Macklowe is not a magician, yet during his divorce trial he managed to make over half-a-billion dollars disappear.

Although Macklowe's financial statements say he holds a portfolio of properties worth $548.9million, he is now telling his soon-to-be ex-wife Linda's lawyers that he is really worth a measly $23million.

The Macklowes are currently in the midst of an acrimonious divorce, according to Page Six.

'The total amount of commercial real estate that you certified to the banks was $548.9million and the position that you're taking in this lawsuit is that your total commercial real estate is worth $23million, is that correct?' Linda Macklowe's lawyer, John Teitler, asked Harry Macklowe in a Manhattan court on Wednesday.

Although Harry Macklowe's (right) financial statements say he holds a portfolio of properties worth $548.9million, he is now telling his soon-to-be ex-wife Linda's (left) lawyers that they are worth $23m

The Macklowes are currently in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. Harry Macklowe, 80, informed his 79-year-old wife of 58 years, Linda, that he was leaving her for a younger woman - the blonde French mistress Patricia Landeau (seen with Harry above on the right), 62

'That's correct,' he responded.

In 2016, Harry Macklowe gave a 'statement of financial condition' to banks so that he could obtain loans and lines of credit.

The statement listed $548.9million worth of assets, including the 'crown jewel' in his portfolio - Macklowe's $440milllion stake in 432 Park Avenue, the tallest residential building in the Western hemisphere.

In the statement, he also claims just $30million in liabilities.

Yet, in his divorce from Linda Macklowe, Harry Macklowe is claiming liabilities of $400million - most of which is from deferred capital gains.

The statement listed $548.9million worth of assets, including the 'crown jewel' in his portfolio - Macklowe's $440milllion stake in 432 Park Avenue, the tallest residential building in the Western hemisphere

One of the Macklowes' estates in the Hamptons (above) includes a pool, main house and what appears to be a guest house or separate building on the property, which one site has valued at more than $7.6million

The statement failed to mention his vast art collection, which is thought to be worth in excess of $1billion.

He also owns a condominium in the Plaza Hotel whose value is estimated to be at $100million.

As if that weren't enough, the couple owns a $41million racing yacht and a two mansions in the Hamptons.

The judge presiding over the divorce didn't seem surprised.

'Its not uncommon in matrimonial cases that a spouse says I have no money and yet shortly before the divorce action starts submits a statement to a landlord that says, oh, yeah, I have plenty of money you should give me an apartment,' Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Laura Drager said.

Harry Macklowe, 80, informed his 79-year-old wife of 58 years, Linda Macklowe, that he was leaving her for a younger woman - the blonde French mistress Patricia Landeau.

It marked the end of an era for one of New York City's most long-lasting and recognizable couples in the cutthroat world of real estate and Manhattan high society.

As husband and wife each fight to keep their properties, paintings and playthings their divorce seems set to be just as ruthless as Harry Macklowe's business dealings.

Linda's team has scoffed at attempts by her husband's lawyer to downplay his wealth, saying that he's used accounting tricks to hide his true value.

Landeau, 62, is president of the French Friends of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
If found guilty, the Class 6 felony carries a sentence between one and 18 months in prison and a fine of between $1,000 and $100,000

According to court documents, four bullets were found inside magazine but none in chamber

forgotten the gun had been inside her bag

Lori Saine claims that she had

Lori Saine claims that she had

A Colorado state lawmaker was arrested after she brought a handgun to Denver International Airport

State Rep. Lori Saine (pictured), R-Firestone, was found carrying a gun through Denver International Airport on Tuesday

A Colorado state lawmaker was arrested on Tuesday after she was discovered carrying a loaded firearm through Denver International Airport.

State Rep. Lori Saine, R-Firestone, was found carrying the weapon around 1.45pm after a TSA agent screening bags through an X-ray machine spotted the loaded 9mm handgun, according to NBC affiliate KUSA.

A TSA statement claims that Saine 'knowingly brought the handgun into the North Screening Check point.'

According to court documents obtained by KUSA, four bullets were found inside the magazine but none in the chamber.

Saine was arrested for felony gun possession at a public transportation facility and was taken to the Downtown Detention Center in Denver after requesting a lawyer.

If found guilty, the Class 6 felony carries a sentence between one and 18 months in prison and a fine of between $1,000 and $100,000.

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According to court documents, four bullets were found inside magazine but none in chamber

Saine's defense attorney, Randy Corporon (pictured left), was granted a request by Denver County Court Judge Andrea Eddy (R) to have his client remain behind a glass partition

During a court hearing Wednesday morning, Saine's defense attorney, Randy Corporon, was granted a request by Denver County Court Judge Andrea Eddy to have his client remain behind a glass partition.

Other arrestees present inside the courtroom were made to stand at the podium outside of the partition.

Saine was given a $5,000 personal recognizance bond and was released from custody.

Corporon told KUSA that the state lawmaker had merely forgotten the gun had been inside her bag.

Since 2013, at least 14 people have been charged with carrying a firearm through a public transportation facility in Colorado, according to the Denver District Attorney's Office.
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Lindsay Lohan dazzled on the red carpet after jetting in from Dubai for DailyMail.com and Daily MailTV's star-studded Unwrap The Holidays 2017 party in New York on Wednesday.

The actress looked stunning as she embraced the festive spirit in a sexy, sheer number, studded with crystals, at the holiday event at Magic Hour at Moxy Times Square, Manhattan.

She toughened up her look with leather-style trousers, black boots and a black bomber jacket.

Lohan was accompanied by her mom Dina, 55, for the red carpet who was matching her daughter's biker look in a leather jacket.

The Mean Girls star told DailyMail.com how excited she was to be going home for Christmas after spending most of the past year in Europe and Asia.

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Lindsay Lohan dazzled on the red carpet after jetting in from Dubai for DailyMail.com and Daily MailTV's star-studded Unwrap The Holidays 2017 party in New York on Wednesday

Lohan was accompanied by her mom Dina, 55, for the special family reunion, and the pair shared a hug on the red carpet

Even her parents, Dina and Michael Lohan - who divorced in 2005 after 22 years of a tumultuous marriage - are reuniting for a big family Christmas in Long Island.

'I think this is going to be our first full family Christmas dinner in a long time,' she told us. 'Mom, dad, all the family, both grandmothers, Italian, Irish, everyone at dinner.

'It's going to be loud but good, Im happy.'

The Lohans have been working to put their past behind them in recent years after their messy divorce turned up allegations of alleged abuse and unpaid child support. Now it appears they may finally have buried the hatchet - just in time for Christmas.

Lindsay has also had a somewhat fraught relationship with her father and in 2006, she described him to Vanity Fair as a destructive and violent force with a drug and alcohol problem. For years, she kept him at arm's length on the advice of her management but always wanted a better relationship, the Daily Beast reported.

This will be the first Christmas in years that the family has been reunited.

Lohan added that the dinner was planned for Long Island, and after getting used to the finer things in life, her expectations were high.

'I've been going to Michelin Star restaurants these days so every place I go to I go to Michelin star restaurants, so I want to do little plates,' she added.

Lindsay looked stunning as embraced the festive spirit in a black, sheer top, studded with crystals at the holiday event at Magic Hour at Moxy Times Square, Manhattan

She toughened up her look with leather style trousers, black boots and a black bomber jacket

Lohan chatted to DailyMail TV's correspondent Alicia Quarles outside the celebrity-packed event

Lohan led the red carpet at the Unwrap The Holidays 2017 party - which was headlined by rapper Flo Rida - and had celebrity guests such as Million Dollar Listing's Ryan Serhant, stars of Real Housewives of New York 'Countess' Luann de Lesseps and Dorinda Medely and of course, none other but dashing DailyMailTV host Jesse Palmer.

'Everything and anyone, find out about this party, this is whats going on!' Flo Rida told DailyMail.com ahead of his performance.

Lohan was not only a fan of the event, but also praised the Daily Mail for its veracity, something she claimed was increasingly important in the current climate.

The 31-year-old said: 'I appreciate the Daily Mail because they tell the truth you know - it doesn't always have to be negative - and you dont have to find something that doesnt exist, they are very honest in their actions and what they post, and I respect that, and I admire that, especially with all the media and the world we live in right now.'

Lohan attended the party just a few hours after sitting down with DailyMailTV's Jesse Palmer to talk about how she's doing and what's next.

'I'm good, I'm really happy, I'm in a really good place,' said the star. 'I love life!'

The former child star also talked about how she wants to give people more 'hope' and that is why she will be traveling to Yemen soon.

'Those people need more hope, I want to help,' said the siren. 'I really like to give back.'

Flo Rida posed for the camera on the red carpet before he performed for the star-studded crowd on Wednesday

DailyMail TV's host Jesse Palmer, who interviewed Lohan earlier on in the day, looked dashing as he arrived for the event

Million Dollar Listing's Ryan Serhant (right) with Emilia Bechrakis at the DailyMail.com & DailyMailTV Holiday Party

(L-R) Amanda Batula, Kyle Cook, and Lauren Wirkus attend DailyMail.com & DailyMailTV Holiday Party with Flo Rida on December 6, 2017 at The Magic Hour in New York City

Vanderpump Rules' Stassi Schroeder looked glamorous in a sleeveless black dress as she attended the event

At the party, she added she 'really would like to explore the idea of bringing in more media about what is going on with children and civil rights.

'When you turn on the news in America, you only see bad things, but there are good things... to explore and I feel blessed enough to go to these countries in poverty and help change laws.'

She added that she's been working with a family in Istanbul and that 'talk(s) to them everyday.

'It's three kids and their father and their mother that we got back to them, and they are really close to my heart.

'I'm planning a trip to Yemen so well see what happens. I don't like to say when Im going it's better I just show up, I just want to go in and I want to understand it before I discuss it.'

During her sitdown with Jesse, she also discussed working in Hollywood films again.

The Freaky Friday star said: 'Acting will always be a big part of my future.'

Lindsay shocked fans when she moved to Dubai after years in London. But she said the attraction is obvious: 'You can really live your life there.'

The Herbie: Fully Loaded star added that she doesn't get photographed in the city and has more privacy.

Lohan attended the party just a few hours after sitting down with DailyMailTV's Jesse Palmer to talk about how she's doing and what's next (pictured)

The former child star also talked about how she wants to give people more 'hope' and that is why she will be traveling to Yemen soon; she was interviewed by Jesse Palmer (right)

And the New York native also addressed that time in her life when she was getting on trouble with the law.

'Everyone has their ups and downs but I lived mine for everyone to see.

'You can have moments in your life where you don't really know what you want,' added the icon, 'and there's a way through that.'

She will also be working on a new project in 2018, Lindsay hinted.

'There's a book that I found called The Honeymoon, I was reading it over this summer. I want to make it into a series or movie.'

And she is also launching a lipstick and fragrance line with a nifty LL logo.

When Jesse tells the star that the 20 year anniversary for her movie The Parent Trap is coming up, Lindsay says, 'Thank you for reminding me. I didn't even think about that. It was my first movie so I have the best memories of it.'

And asked if the cover girl would like to be in Mean Girls the Broadway musical, she shot back: 'I would rather do Mean Girls 2 the Movie.'

Palmer also asked Lohan what she thought when Tina Fey said she wanted to 'adopt' her. Lindsay wasted no time before shooting back: 'I love Tina Fey so come on adopt me, you can do it in the movie!'

As far as the haters out there, the screen favorite said: ''You're stuck with me I'm not going anywhere.'

Just before leaving Dubai Lindsay shared this snap writing 'Happy 46th National Day UAE'

Stunning! The blonde beauty posted this snap from a night out in Dubai last month

Never one to shy away from the issues, she recently weighed in on the Harvey Weinstein scandal again.

The Parent Trap star had been criticized for standing up for the 65-year-old disgraced producer, who has been accused of sexually assaulting and harassing multiple women. She had tweeted she felt 'very bad' for him and called on his wife 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.'

She has since responded to the criticism by insisting she stands for women's rights and complaining that 'no one cared' when she accused her former fiance Egor Tarabasov of abusing her.

Lohan 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 Weinstein.

Lohan 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)'

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)'

Lohan's DailyMailTV interview airs on Wednesday evening.
A young bodybuilder has been sentenced after he was caught smuggling drugs into prison inside his anal cavity for the second time.

Christos Panagakos, 25, was caught when the ice and Valium fell out of his bum during a search on his way to Capricornia Correctional Centre via Mackay Watch-house in Queensland on July 27.

He had been sentenced for a previous offence the same day and had the drugs concealed inside his body during sentencing, The Morning Bulletin reported.

Christos Panagakos, 25, was caught when the ice and valium fell out of his bum

Panagakos fronted Mackay Magistrates Court via videolink from prison on Wednesday and was sentenced to four months jail for his latest offence

On Wednesday he pleaded guilty to one count of drug possession for the 2015 offence and 2 counts of drug possession for the 2017 offences

Panagakos fronted Mackay Magistrates Court via videolink from prison on Wednesday and was sentenced to four months jail for his latest offence.

It was also revealed in court Panagakos was caught for a similar offence at Ipswich police station in July, 2015, when he smuggled a bag of drugs inside his anal cavity.

On Wednesday he pleaded guilty to one count of drug possession for the 2015 offence and 2 counts of drug possession for the 2017 offences.

Defence solicitor Mark Williams said Panagakos regretted his behaviour.

'He instructs the reason why he did what he did was simply to reduce his stress and anxiety about going to prison,' Mr Williams said.

'But he recognises that not only were his actions just extremely stupid, to use his words, but they were very contrary to the generous discounts that his honour Justice Henry had given him in sentencing.'

Defence solicitor Mark Williams said Panagakos regretted his behaviour

Christos Panagakos, 25, was caught when the ice and valium fell out of his bum during a search on his way to Capricornia Correctional Centre via Mackay Watch-house (pictured)
A pet dog has been dragged by the neck for up to 100 metres after it was flung from the back of its owners moving ute while wearing a collar and lead.

The Queensland motorist had at least three dogs tied up on their flat tray when one fell over the edge and was left dangling by its throat.

Hair raising footage shot from the dash cam of a nearby parked car shows the vehicle zooming through the 60 kilometre zone before coming to a stop.

A pet dog has been dragged by the neck for up to 100 metres after it was flung from the back of its owners moving ute in Queensland

The disturbing video, shot just after 11am on Thursday, prompted a 'viewer warning' when uploaded to the Dash Cam Owners Australia Facebook page.

The brown canine can be seen bouncing up after making contact with the road, before being thrown into a series of vicious twists.

It then hangs dangerously close to the back wheel of the vehicle, possibly coming into contact with its spinning wrath.

The dark-coloured Toyota Landcruiser pulls over a short distance up the road, followed by a smaller while vehicle.

The motorist had at least three dogs tied up on their flat tray when one fell over the edge and was left dangling by its throat

'It is Imperative to ensure that if you are transporting animals that they are secure and not able to fall off your vehicle like this poor Doggo,' the post read.

'You are legally required to ensure your dog is safe, secure and comfortable while in transit. Considerable penalties apply for breaching the law.

'An unrestrained dog can be considered an unsecured load. Penalties of up to $2,523 may apply if you don't comply (QLD).'

Outraged Facebook users slammed the driver in the comments of the post, with several slamming the 'moron' for being irresponsible.

Outraged Facebook users slammed the driver in the comments of the post, with several slamming the 'moron' for being irresponsible

'That poor dog. F**k, maybe drag the driver along the road, roped by his neck and he might get a clue,' one angered social media user wrote.

'Put the dog inside in the ac with you! My dogs have seat belt leads that clip into a normal seat belt then attach to their collars. Don't leave them out in the heat, with the threat of falling off!,' another added.

One wrote: 'You see morons like this all the time with chains too long. It makes you wonder about the intelligence level of some ute drivers.'


The chief firefighter of a small western Massachusetts town died battling a two-alarm blaze, it was reported on Wednesday.

Stephen P. Frye, 59, collapsed at the scene of a chimney fire in Montgomery, the Boston Herald reported.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

'He was the best, he was the absolutely best, you couldn't ask for a better person,' an unidentified woman said she was Frye's sister-in-law told the Herald.

'He would give you give the shirt off his back. He was the best of the best of the best.'

The chief firefighter of a small western Massachusetts town died battling a two-alarm blaze, it was reported on Wednesday. Stephen P. Frye (above), 59, collapsed at the scene of a chimney fire in Montgomery

Frye had climbed the ranks of the Montgomery Fire Department, which he joined in 1993

The fire department received an emergency call at around 11:08pm, Massachusetts authorities told the Herald.

Firemen rushed to 1524 Southampton Road. Frye was among the firefighters battling the blaze.

'Immediate aid was rendered by firefighters that were with him and the Hilltown Ambulance that was already on scene,' a spokesperson for the Department of Fire Services told the Herald.

'He was transported to Bay State Noble Hospital in Westfield where he was pronounced dead.'

Frye had climbed the ranks of the Montgomery Fire Department, which he joined in 1993.

He served as the department chief for the past 13 years.

Frye leaves behind a wife and two adult children  a son and a daughter.

His son is also a member of Montgomery's all-volunteer fire department. He was at the scene where his father collapsed.

'Immediate aid was rendered by firefighters that were with him and the Hilltown Ambulance that was already on scene,' Mieth said in a statement.

'He was transported to Bay State Noble Hospital in Westfield where he was pronounced dead.'

Montgomery is a small town just west of Springfield, Massachusetts. Its population is slightly less than 1,000 residents.

The residents of the home were able to escape the fire before it engulfed their house and destroyed it.
A harrowing scene from SBS's Struggle Street showing a woman, 23, blowing bubbles on her steps to pass the time, has prompted an outpouring of emotion.

Melbourne woman Jessica lives with a rare and incurable disease called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type 6 which leaves her in constant pain.

'It feels like knives stabbing into me,' Jessica said.

Jessica also lives with autism, a moderate intellectual disability, scoliosis, kyphosis, lordosis and intestinal failure.

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Melbourne woman Jessica (pictured with her mother Michelle) lives with a rare and incurable disease called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type 6 which leaves her in constant pain

She revealed she was diagnosed with 34 different conditions in total.

Jessica's mother Michelle, a single mother-of-two, was forced to quit her job as a pharmacy assistant to care for her daughter full-time.

Michelle and Jessica struggle to survive on their disability and carers pensions.

Sharing her story on a GoFundMe page, Jessica said she was unable to find proper treatment for her rare condition in Australia.

'Doctors can make my life comfortable but to do that I need to travel to the only clinic that knows enough about my disease, in Baltimore, USA,' she said.

'Doctors in Australia do not know much about type 6 EDS and simply cannot help me.

'This is my only option left to live a comfortable life, as I have tried many treatments here in Australia and none have worked.'

A harrowing scene from SBS's Struggle Street showing a woman, 23, blowing bubbles on her steps to pass the time, has prompted an outpouring of emotion

Jessica (pictured in hospital) also lives with autism, a moderate intellectual disability, scoliosis, kyphosis, lordosis and intestinal failure

Michelle and Jessica struggle to survive on their disability and carers pensions

Jessica also revealed she would require a wheelchair van and hoist 'as my condition will continue to deteriorate as I get older'

Jessica also revealed she would require a wheelchair van and hoist 'as my condition will continue to deteriorate as I get older'.

The 23-year-old, who has a life expectancy of 40, said her mother was also struggling under the weight of her illnesses.

'My mum is a single parent of two and it is hard financially for us,' she said.

Her emotional mother revealed their situation was so dire, they were 'looking at a pre-paid funeral'.

'I don't know when the time is going to come, but when it happens, I want to be able to go, I'm really glad the funeral is in place,' she said.

'It's something I can't stop thinking about... burying your child before yourself.'

Jessica also revealed she would require a wheelchair van and hoist 'as my condition will continue to deteriorate as I get older'

Her emotional mother Michelle (pictured) revealed their situation was so dire, they were 'looking at a pre-paid funeral' for Jessica

Jessica and her mother created the GoFundMe page 19 months ago, in which time they raised $445 in donations.

Since their plight was aired on Struggle Street on Wednesday night, the GoFundMe page was overwhelmed with support.

Australians flocked to the charity page to donate money for Jessica and her poverty-stricken family.

The page reached $55,845 of its $60,000 goal on Thursday, with supporters donating small sums of money from $5 all the way up to $2,000 overnight.

To help Jessica receive treatment visit her GoFundMe page here.
Dozens of heavily-armed police swarmed outside an office in Canberra during a mysterious three-hour siege.

Officers negotiated with at least one person, believed to be the owner of the Canturf building in Fyshwick, blocking off surrounding streets between 11am and 2pm.

But details of the siege remained shrouded in mystery with police refusing to give out much information about what happened.

Dozens of heavily-armed police swarmed outside an office in Canberra during a mysterious three-hour siege

Officers negotiated with at least one person, believed to be the owner of the Canturf building in Fyshwick, blocking off surrounding streets between 11am and 2pm

No one was injured and no arrests made, and police said an 'object' was found and investigations opened, according to the Canberra Times.

How many people were involved or whether they were armed was not made clear either, but most divisions of ACT Police were involved in the situation.

Reports of people on the premises for came in about 11am and several police cars and an ambulance rushed to the scene.

But details of the siege remained shrouded in mystery with police refusing to give out much information about what happened

No one was injured and no arrests made, and police said an 'object' was found and investigations opened

How many people were involved or whether they were armed was not made clear either, but most divisions of ACT Police were involved in the situation

A drone was deployed to check out the situation about 11.30am and tactical officers armed with automatic weapons arrived an hour later.

About 12.45pm police began negotiating thorough a loudspeaker and by 2pm the situation was over, though it was not clear why or how.

'We had things under control, we had police resources in place and at no time was any member of the community put in any danger,' ACT Police said.
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Violent protests have broken out in the West Bank today after US President Donald Trump enraged the Middle East by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians torched debris and hurled rocks towards Israeli troops who fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration in Bethlehem.

Medics said 31 people have been injured by Israeli army gunfire during clashes in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip with rallies underway in the cities of Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah. In Hebron and Al-Bireh, thousands of demonstrators marched with chants of 'Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine', witnesses said.

It comes after Trump sparked fury with his White House announcement yesterday, which changed decades of American policy and sparked warnings from Hamas of a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel.

Amid growing fears of fresh bloodshed in the region, the Islamist group said the President had 'opened the gates of hell' with his 'flagrant aggression' while a pro-Hezbollah newspaper in Lebanon has declared 'Death to America' on a front page showing a burning US flag.

This morning, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Trump of throwing the Middle East into a 'ring of fire' and compared him to a 'blender' stirring up trouble in the area. The Country's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the US 'has pulled the pin on a bomb ready to blow in the region.'

President Erdogan spoke to Pope Francis on the phone and the pair agreed there should be no attempts to change Jerusalem's status.

'Emphasising that Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, President Erdogan and Pope Francis stated that any attempt to change the city's status should be avoided,' sources in the President's office said.

Russia said today that it viewed Trump's move with 'serious concern' and will criticise the new stance at the UN Security Council. Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the new stance as 'not helpful' while France rejected the 'unilateral' decision and Germany said Jerusalem's status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump had 'bound himself forever' to the history of Jerusalem with his announcement and claimed other states are now considering following the US lead.

Violent protests have broken out in Bethlehem (pictured) today after US President Donald Trump enraged the Middle East by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Footage shows Palestinians burning tyres and hurling rocks towards Israeli troops who fired off tear gas to disperse the demonstration in the city

Boiling over: Rallies are also underway in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Ramallah (pictured), Nablus and Jenin

Furious Palestinian protesters could be seen burning an effigy of Donald Trump in the West Bank city of Nablus this morning

A Palestinian protester prepares to hurl a rock at Israeli troops during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah this morning

Palestinian protesters step on US and Israeli flags and on a portrait of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City today

Protesters burned tyres and hurled rocks at troops in Ramallah today as tensions mounted over Donald Trump's new stance on Jerusalem

Violence: There were clashes on the streets of Ramallah as protesters hurled rocks and Israeli troops responded with tear gas

Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capitol on Wednesday and launched a process to move the U.S. embassy there, casting his decision as an act of political courage

Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli forces near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank city of Ramallah this morning

The Israeli army said it retaliated after a 'projectile' fired from Gaza hit its territory, blaming Hamas, which called for an intifada.

'A short while ago, a projectile was fired from northern Gaza & exploded in southern Israel,' the Israel Defence Forces said on its official Twitter account.

'In response to that fire & the projectiles fired at Israel throughout the day that fell short in Gaza, an IDF tank & an IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted two terror posts in Gaza.'

The military said Hamas was 'responsible for the hostile activity perpetrated against Israel from the Gaza Strip' which the Islamist movement controls.

A senior Palestinian official said US Vice President Mike Pence was 'not welcome in Palestine' during his upcoming regional visit.

'The American vice president is not welcome in Palestine,' Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah, said.

Rajoub also signalled that Abbas would not meet with Pence during his planned visit later this month.

'And President Abbas will not welcome him because of the statements he made' about Jerusalem.

Abbas has not made similar comments and his office could not immediately be reached.

The White House warned Thursday that cancelling a planned meeting between Abbas and Pence in the wake of the US policy shift on Jerusalem would be 'counterproductive'.

Pence is expected to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories sometime before Christmas.

As spontaneous protests broke out in Gaza overnight, the Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address 'possible developments.'

Netanyahu said this morning that 'we are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition.'

The Israeli army said it retaliated after a 'projectile' fired from Gaza hit its territory, blaming Hamas, which called for an intifada. Pictured: A rioter burning a tyre in Ramallah

The army statement on Thursday says it will deploy several battalions to the territory while other troops have been put on alert to address 'possible developments.' Pictured: An Israeli soldier in Ramallah

A protester runs as Israeli security forces intervene with teargas during a protest against the US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Palestinian Charge d'Affaires Feda Abdelhady-Nasser said in a letter to the UN Security Council president that Trump's declaration violates numerous council resolutions and could lead to 'a never-ending religious war.' Pictured: Flag-burning in Gaza City

Egyptian protesters burn an Israeli flag during a demonstration against the US president's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

This morning, two senior White House officials admitted Trump's move could temporarily derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Pictured: A protester poses for the camera during a demonstration in Gaza

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said the Palestinian people 'know how to respond properly to the disregard of their feelings and sanctuaries.' Pictured: Protesters starting fires in Gaza

President Trump recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital yesterday - a historic decision that overturns decades of US policy and risks triggering a fresh spasm of violence in the Middle East. Pictured: Israeli troops in Jerusalem

He says the 'time has come' and expressed confidence that others will follow suit and move their embassies to Jerusalem.

Last night, he hailed the move as 'historic' and said any peace deal with the Palestinians must concede that Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it will be deploying additional troops to the West Bank ahead of Friday, when mass Palestinian protests are anticipated in response to Trump's move.

The army statement on Thursday says it will deploy several battalions to the territory while other troops have been put on alert to address 'possible developments.'

Palestinians went on strike across the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip on Thursday and protests are expected on Friday after midday prayers.

Palestinian Charge d'Affaires Feda Abdelhady-Nasser said in a letter to the UN Security Council president that Trump's declaration violates numerous council resolutions and could lead to 'a never-ending religious war.'

The letter cites several council resolutions that prohibit changes to the status of Jerusalem.

Abdelhady-Nasser urged the Security Council to send 'a clear message' reaffirming relevant laws and resolutions and 'opposing this unilateral and provocative decision.'

She warned that disregarding 'these fundamental legal, political and religious dimensions of the question of Jerusalem can only aggravate already heightened tensions.'

Trump's decision could lead to the 'exacerbation of religious sensitivities that risk transforming this solvable political-territorial conflict into a never-ending religious war, which will only be exploited by religious extremists, fueling radicalism and strife in the region and beyond,' Abdelhady-Nasser warned.

The Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on Trump's announcement on Friday.

This morning, two senior White House officials admitted Trump's move could temporarily derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

According to CNN, one of the unnamed sources said the President's peace team had not spoken to angry Palestinian officials since the announcement but that they were 'pretty sure' that 'derailment' of the peace process would be 'temporary'.

One official said: 'A lot of people put their heads into this decision to see how do we make this happen without at the same time throwing the peace process out of the window,'

The second added: 'In terms of a moment where it could happen, where it could be the least disruptive at a moment in time, this is the moment. We know there will be some short term pain, but think it will help in the long run.'

Clashes: Footage from Bethlehem shows protesters and Israel security forces facing off amid tensions over Trump's Jerusalem stance

Israeli forces used water cannons and tear gas as they dispersed crowds of protesters in the biblical town of Bethlehem this afternoon

Response: Police used tear gas to disperse crowds as tensions grew on the streets of Bethlehem this afternoon

Patrol: An Israeli officer carrying a weapon walks close to Palestinian demonstrators during a day of tension on Bethlehem

Israeli border police load tear gas in Bethlehem during clashes with Palestinians during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

Israeli forces were called in to disperse Palestinian protestors outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City this morning amid rising tensions following Trump's announcement

Trump set off protests throughout the Middle East on Wednesday as he announced that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Anger: There were demonstrations in Gaza City overnight against Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

This morning, two senior White House officials admitted Trump's move could temporarily derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Pictured: Demonstrations on Gaza City overnight

Demonstrators in Gaza City burned tyres, shouted slogans and held posters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a protest against US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital

This was the scene overnight as demonstrators hurled tyres on to a fire in protest against Donald Trump's announcement yesterday

A masked Palestinian takes part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip this morning

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Donald Trump of throwing the Middle East into a 'ring of fire' by declaring the divided holy city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Lebanon's al-Akhbar paper today called the decision 'America's new Balfour' referring to the Balfour Declaration in which Britain endorsed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East a century ago. Its front page and website declared 'Death to America' and showed a burning US flag

In a speech in Washington, Trump said his announcement marked the beginning of a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, urged Arabs and Muslims to 'undermine the US interests in the region' and to 'shun Israel.'

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said the Palestinian people 'know how to respond properly to the disregard of their feelings and sanctuaries.'

He added that the decision 'will not change the facts of history and geography.'

President Trump recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital yesterday - a historic decision that overturns decades of US policy and risks triggering a fresh spasm of violence in the Middle East.

'Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital,' the US leader declared from the White House. 'Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace.'

'It is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,' Trump said, urging calm and 'the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate.'

The declaration - met by fierce regional condemnation - ends seven decades of deliberate diplomatic ambiguity about the final status of a holy city vociferously claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Although welcomed by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a 'courageous and just decision,' Trump's move also left the already faltering peace process in deep doubt.

Rallies were underway on Thursday in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem. A demonstration was also being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City. Palestinians have called a general strike on Thursday and are preparing for more mass protests on Friday

Flash point: Israeli forces take position during clashes with Palestinian protesters in the West Bank village of Betunia near Ramallah today

Israeli and American flags were torched by protesters outside the UN's UNSCO headquarters in Gaza City this morning

Tensions: Israeli forces pass by two women as they disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City today

Taking a stand: Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan today amid an international outcry over Trump's stance on Jerusalem

Hundreds of Palestinians are protesting in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Mahmud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organization said Trump has destroyed the two-state solution, warning the United States could no longer hope to be a peace broker, while Hamas - the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip - said Trump's decision opens 'the gates of hell on US interests in the region.'

Making the announcement, Trump also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

That makes good on a campaign promise dear to evangelical Christian and right wing Jewish voters - as well as donors - in what he said marked the start of a 'new approach' to solving the thorny Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump's predecessors - from Bill Clinton to George Bush - made similar campaign promises. But they quickly reneged upon taking office and assuming the burden of war and peace.

Having taken office with no foreign policy experience and denouncing experts, Trump was determined to show his arrival in Washington spells the end of business as usual.

'Many presidents have said they want to do something and they didn't do it,' Trump said in the run-up to his historic address.

'Whether it's courage or they changed their mind, I can't tell you,' he said. 'I think it's long overdue.'

TRUMP SETS OFF CONDEMNATION WORLDWIDE... 'I'm intending to speak to President Trump about this matter. Our position has not changed, it has been a long standing one and it is also a very clear one. It is that the status of Jerusalem should be determined in a negotiated settlement.' British Prime Minister Theresa May 'These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts.' Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas 'This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region.' Hamas official Ismail Radwan Trump's move plunges the United States into a decades-long dispute over a city considered holy by Jews, Muslims and Christians, and flies in the face of warnings from US allies and enemies across the Middle East In a frantic series of calls, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the European Union, France, Germany and Turkey all warned Trump against the move. Pictured: Trump making the speech yesterday The move will have 'dangerous repercussions on the stability and security of the region and efforts to attain peace'. King Abdullah of Jordan 'This decision is a regrettable decision that France does not approve of and goes against international law and all the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council.' French President Emmanuel Macron 'I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.' U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres 'We call upon the U.S. Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem.' Turkey's Foreign Ministry 'Death sentence for all who seek peace.' Qatar's foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani ' I pray to the Lord that its identity is preserved and strengthened for the benefit of the Holy Land, the Middle East and the whole world and that wisdom and prudence prevail to prevent new elements of tension from being added to a global context already convulsed by so many cruel conflicts.' Pope Francis 'That they claim they want to announce [Jerusalem] as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure,' Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 'The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states.' European Union Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini Advertisement

The announcement leaves many angry US allies and leaders across the Middle East trying to find a measured response and hoping that the tinderbox region is not destined for yet another round of bloodshed.

Saudi Arabia's royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, today condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the royal court of their US ally.

Saudi Arabia, a regional powerhouse that could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said on Thursday the kingdom had already warned against this step and 'continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administration's decision,' describing it as 'unjustified and irresponsible.'

Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind. The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Iraq's senior shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also joined the condemnation today.

'This decision is condemned and decried, it hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims,' said a statement from Sistani's office.

'But it won't change the reality that Jerusalem is an occupied land which should return to the sovereignty of its Palestinian owners no matter how long it takes,' it said, calling on the 'Umma', or Islamic nation, 'to combine its efforts that purpose.'

There were angry scenes in the West Bank city of Nablus as protesters shouted anti-Trump slogans and waved placards

A group of men torched an effigy of Donald Trump amid angry scenes in the West Bank city of Nablus this morning

Hundreds of Palestinians are protesting in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Palestinians burn posters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, during a protest in Gaza City

Children in Islamabad, Pakistan stand on U.S. and Israeli flags during a protest following Donald Trump's announcement that he has recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) said Trump had 'bound himself forever' to the history of Jerusalem with his announcement and claimed other states are now considering following the U.S. lead

Iraq's Foreign Ministry has also summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad to hand him a memo protesting against Trump's decision.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban denounced Trump's decision as a 'reckless step' and said it will 'fan the flames of conflict in the entire world especially the Middle East'.

A Taliban statement to the media on Thursday says that with the decision, America exposed its 'colonialist face and declared enmity toward Islam as well as support for policy of occupation and colonisation of Muslim lands.'

The statement also called on Muslims world over and Islamic countries to back the 'oppressed Palestinian nation'.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, meanwhile, says his government is 'deeply concerned' over Trump's move which 'hurts the sentiments of the entire Islamic world.'

US Embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa have warned American citizens of possible protests as a result of Trump's decision.

The leaders of Muslim nations have deployed ever-harsher rhetoric to describe Trump's decision, dashing any hope of a muted response that would help avoid clashes. Turkey called the decision 'irresponsible' and illegal.

In a frantic series of calls, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the European Union, France, Germany and Turkey had warned Trump against the move. Pope Francis joined a list of leaders warning of a historic misstep.

Protest: Boys joined protesters during a demonstration this morning in Gaza City amid fury over Donald Trump's decision

There have been no signs of serious violence so far. But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tires, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters

A Palestinian man walks in front of closed shops in the West Bank city of Hebron this morning. Palestinians announced a general strike and a 'rage day' as a protest against US President DonaldTrump's declaration recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

'I cannot silence my deep concern over the situation that has emerged in recent days,' the pontiff said Wednesday.

In Brussels, the EU's diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said Trump's stance could take the region 'backwards to even darker times'.

'President Trump's announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact. It is a very fragile context and the announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we're already living in,' he said.

But this morning, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson responded to global criticism by saying that the U.S. President is merely recognising reality.

Speaking in Vienna, he said the US would still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 'if that's the desire of the two parties.'

He said Jerusalem's final status is still for Israelis and Palestinians to workout and that 'the whole world' wants a peace process.

Moving the US embassy will probably take years to implement, but the repercussions of Trump's decision preceded even his announcement.

Palestinian terrorist group Hamas warned the announcement 'opens the gates of hell on US interests in the region'. Pictured: Palestinian protesters burn the American flag and Israeli flag in the city of Gaza City

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh (pictured) said the Palestinian people 'know how to respond properly to the disregard of their feelings and sanctuaries'

The Turkish foreign ministry added in a statement that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can only be solved through the creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. Pictured: Protests in Istanbul

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man holds a shofar (ram's horn) with the golden Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine behind

A Turkish government spokesman said the decision was 'irresponsible' and illegal. Pictured: Protesters in Gaza attack the move

Criticism poured in from Tehran and Ankara to war-ravaged Syria and Pope Francis, reflecting the anxiety surrounding the announcement, which upends decades of US policy. Pictured: Palestinian women shout slogans during a protest in Gaza City

Hundreds of Palestinians burned US and Israeli flags as well as pictures of Trump in the Gaza Strip, while relatively small clashes erupted near the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinians called for three days of protests - or 'days of rage' - starting Wednesday.

US government officials and their families were ordered to avoid Jerusalem's Old City and the West Bank, though the situation remained largely calm up until Trump's address.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday called for a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the main pan-Islamic body, in Istanbul next week to display joint action over Jerusalem.

Jordan and the Palestinians also called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League.

Most of the international community does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved in negotiations - a point reiterated by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the wake of Trump's decision.

Guterres implicitly criticized Trump, stressing his opposition to 'any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace.'

A child holds a Palestinian flag as he chants slogans during a sit-in in the Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, in Beirut, Lebanon

A woman chants slogans during a sit-in in the Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon

But Trump insisted the move did not prejudge final talks, saying it simply reflected the reality that west Jerusalem is and will continue to be part of Israel under any settlement.

'This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do,' Trump said.

'Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach it,' said the US leader, who declared that 'this decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace.'

'The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides,' Trump said, as he announced that Vice President Mike Pence would travel to the region in the coming days.

Trump further stated that the United States was not taking a position on any 'final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders.'

'Those questions are up to the parties involved.'

How Trump was making good on 2016 campaign pledge President Donald Trump's move to recognise the divided city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital may have triggered a worldwide chorus of critics but the president had his ears closely tuned to his supporters at home. For Trump, the proclamation was an important way to make good on a pledge to his political base, which includes evangelical Christians and pro-Israel Republicans eager for such a move. 'While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver,' the president declared Wednesday in announcing his decision. 'Today, I am delivering.' Those were words to savor for a president who's been frustrated to see a number of key campaign pledges stalled or slowed - sometimes by a bitterly divided Congress, some by larger national or international concerns. Repealing the Obama era health care law is a promise unfulfilled, much to Trump's frustration. Withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement remains in his TBD column. And Congress has yet to approve money Trump has requested for his promised border wall. 'Today we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital; this is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do,' Trump said The president counts the successful confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as a key victory. And he has acted on certain other campaign pledges with some caveats: He refused to recertify the Iran nuclear deal, but left the matter of new sanctions to Congress. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement but left open the possibility of rejoining it later. And he ordered an end to a program protecting young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as kids, but gave Congress six months to find a way to protect them from deportation. On Jerusalem, Trump had pledged during the 2016 campaign to recognize Israel's claim to the city and to move the American embassy there from Tel Aviv. He's now checked that box - although he offered no timeline for the embassy relocation and signed a waiver officially delaying any move for six months. Steve Bannon, the president's former chief strategist, repeatedly counseled the president to take the step as a means of holding to his campaign promise and energizing evangelical voters. Observers were divided on how to score the president's action. 'If I were keeping score, I would rate this as fulfilling a campaign promise,' said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official now at the Brookings Institution. 'Any move is significant and the world is right to regard it as a serious step.' But Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, saw Trump's words about the embassy as 'just a grandiose statement on Jerusalem without a line in the sand.' A host of world leaders had urged Trump in advance to reconsider his decision, warning that the action could have serious and immediate consequences in the tinder box of the Middle East. Trump spoke to cameras in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House, surrounded by Christmas trees as he spoke about tensions between Muslims and Jews But after Trump announced his plans from a White House room laden with Christmas decorations, his backers gleefully heralded the move. An email from Trump's campaign operation trumpeted: 'Jerusalem: Another Promise Made and Promise Kept.' And conservative faith leader Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said in a statement that Trump 'continues to deliver on his promise to the American people to strengthen the solidarity between the United States and the people of Israel.' Critics warned the consequences could be dire, arguing that the move could inflame tensions in the volatile region and complicate Mideast peace efforts. 'My hope is it doesn't change much, and we have a couple days of protest,' said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Wilson Center who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents, called the announcement a 'triumph of domestic politics and personal ego' over 'sound foreign policy.' Trump insisted he was not trying to derail a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians. He repeated the U.S. position that Jerusalem's borders must still be worked out through negotiation, saying he wants 'an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.' The president hasn't hesitated to assess his first year in office as a banner success, pointing to promises kept, such as the installation of Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. During a recent speech in Missouri, Trump said: 'I will tell you this in a non-braggadocios way. There has never been a 10-month president that has accomplished what we have accomplished.' Trump's critics see bold words, but said he often delivers half-measures or rhetoric. 'What he does is he wants to give the perception of campaign promises filled,' said Brinkley. 'It's making people feel there's activity and boldness going on. But what it is is rhetorical boldness.' Advertisement

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 capital.

The Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

Trump was pushed to act on the embassy as a result of a 1995 law, which stated that the city 'should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel' and the US embassy be moved there.

A waiver has been invoked by successive US presidents, postponing the move on grounds of 'national security' once every six months, meaning the law has never taken effect.

Several peace plans have unravelled in the past decades over the issue of how to divide sovereignty or oversee holy sites in Jerusalem.

Why is Jerusalem important, what makes Donald Trump's intervention so toxic and does anyone else recognise the city as Israel's capital?: SAM GREENHILL explores why today's announcement is so incendiary

What is the status of Jerusalem?

Israel set up its parliament in West Jerusalem when the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. The move followed the United Nations' vote to partition Palestine on the basis of the British pledge known as the Balfour Declaration that paved the way for a homeland for the Jewish people.

Israel occupied 78 per cent of the land, with the remaining 22 per cent split between Gaza and the West Bank.

Then, in 1967, during the Six-Day Arab-Israeli war, Israel annexed Arab-controlled East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Israel has claimed ever since that both parts of the city are its 'undivided' capital.

However, Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital. Most countries, including Britain, do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Why is Jerusalem so important to both sides?

Chiefly because of its religious history. The Temple Mount in the Old City is the most sacred place in Judaism  the site of Solomon's Temple said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed in 586 BC by King of Babylon.

The site is also the third holiest shrine in Islam, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif ('Noble Sanctuary'). It was the scene of Prophet Muhammad's 'Night Journey' ascension from Earth to Heaven in 621. The compound includes Islamic shrines the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The city is also sacred to Christians  Jesus attended a temple in the Old City and was crucified on a hill outside its walls. But it also has hugely important implications for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

What has Donald Trump done and why is his intervention so toxic?

Until now, peacemakers have pursued the strategy that Jerusalem would be part of an overall negotiated settlement, with its status decided in the latter stages of peace talks, with agreement on both sides. But if America jumps to a conclusion on the city's status now  and takes Israel's side  many fear it will undermine the chances of a peace deal. It could also damage America's position as an 'honest broker' between the two sides.

It does not take much to spark violence in the Middle East. In 2000, the Second Intifada  two bloody years of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military killings  started after a visit by the then leader of the Israeli opposition, Ariel Sharon, to the Old City site.

The Temple Mount in the Old City is the most sacred place in Judaism  the site of Solomon's Temple said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed in 586 BC by King of Babylon. The compound includes Islamic shrines the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque

How can the status of Jerusalem be peacefully resolved?

Jerusalem is described as the most intractable part of the world's most intractable conflict. But one of the main planks of the peace process is a two-state solution  in which Jerusalem would serve as capital of both states: East Jerusalem for Palestine, West Jerusalem for Israel.

About a third of the people living in Jerusalem are Palestinians. An uneasy co-existence is lived out day-to-day, under the watchful eyes of clusters of armed Israeli police.

Though there is generally free movement around the divided capital, Israeli security forces set up checkpoints to seal off Palestinian neighbourhoods in times of tension, such as a wave of stabbings in 2015.

Since 1967, Israel has built a dozen settlements, home to about 200,000 Jews, in East Jerusalem. These are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Jerusalem is governed by a mayor and city council whose members are elected to four-year terms. Palestinian Arabs living in East Jerusalem have the right to vote in Israeli elections, but most refuse to do so.

Mr Trump could now have catastrophically undermined his own Middle East strategy of trying to forge peace  not just between Israel and Palestinians, but also between Israel and Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslims

How does Trump justify moving the U.S. embassy?

The U.S. embassy is currently in Tel Aviv. To move it to Jerusalem would be a powerfully symbolic and inflammatory gesture in support of Israel and in defiance of Palestinians.

But technically Trump has a legal framework: in 1995, amid lobbying from pro-Israel Americans, the Republican-controlled Congress passed a law, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which instructs the President to move the embassy. But all Presidents since Bill Clinton have signed a waiver every six months to prevent that happening.

So why has he done this now?

Mr Trump's move seems driven not by diplomatic calculations, but by a campaign promise and his current low ratings.

In 2016, he appealed to Christian evangelicals and ardently pro-Israel American Jews by vowing to move the embassy. His pledge was extremely popular with these voters, including casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who donated $25 million to the Trump cause. Mr Adelson expressed anger when Mr Trump signed the waiver in June to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv. Advisers said this week Mr Trump was making good on his promise.

Why are all the Arab countries so hostile to the move?

Opinion polls show that at least 90 per cent of Arabs view Israel as their main enemy. So no Arab regime can risk provoking internal political upheaval by appearing to side with the U.S.

Mr Trump could now have catastrophically undermined his own Middle East strategy of trying to forge peace  not just between Israel and Palestinians, but also between Israel and Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslims.

He wants the Saudis to take on and curb the growing influence of Iran's Shia Muslims  the Sunni's mortal enemies  and their allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The Saudis could now be forced to abandon their gradual clandestine move towards open acceptance of the Jewish state.

Opinion polls show that at least 90 per cent of Arabs view Israel as their main enemy. So no Arab regime can risk provoking internal political upheaval by appearing to side with the U.S

Do other countries recognise Jerusalem as the capital?

The world  including China  is virtually united in not recognising Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its undivided capital.

One exception is the Pacific island of Vanuatu, which recognised it in May this year. Its late president, Baldwin Lonsdale, was an evangelical Christian who was described as having 'a strong connection to the Jewish people and to Israel'.

Taiwan also considers Jerusalem as Israel's capital. However, Israel does not even recognise Taiwan as a country.

Russia's position is slightly ambiguous but seems to leave room for the city to be Israel's capital in the event of a peace deal.
Jeremy Clarkson revealed today he hasn't smoked for four months - despite going through 40 per day for decades - and he has also cut down on his drinking after a near-deadly bout of pneumonia.

The star, 57, admitted he put a cigarette between his lips but 'couldn't smoke it' and has stuck to nicotine gum ever since he was rushed to a Majorcan hospital in August.

He has also been asked to moderate his drinking about getting pneumonia and blood poisoning but will not giving up his beloved rose wine.

Mr Clarkson also says he won't go on forever on TV because 'there's no such thing as a funny old person', adding: 'John Cleese is the classic case'.

Jeremy Clarkson revealed today he hasn't smoked for four months and has cut down on his drinking after a near-deadly bout of pneumonia

He has also been asked to moderate his drinking about getting pneumonia and blood poisoning but will not giving up his beloved rose wine

And in another blast for his former employer the BBC, who sacked him for punching a Top Gear producer over the lack of a steak dinner after a day of filming, he believes the licence fee should be scrapped in favour of a subscription service.

The Grand Tour host smoked around 40 cigarettes per day for 43 years and got through nearly 630,000 cigarettes, despite warnings from doctors

Grand Tour will return to our screens this month but its second series was hampered by Clarkson's illness and Richard Hammond's high speed crash in Switzerland earlier this year.

Clarkson has revealed how he turned purple and was shaking uncontrollably in Majorca and was admitted to hospital without any tests because doctors were so worried.

He also admits he knew how ill he was because he couldn't face another cigarette.

He told The Sun: 'I threw it [his packet of cigarettes] out. And then I was in hospital and I haven't smoked since.

'I was very ill but I'm made of wood so it doesn't take long for me to mend. I've never been ill. I've never had a day off work, and I've not taken an antibiotic in my life, ever.

'It had become blood poisoning, which is dangerous. So I was shaking like crazy'.

The Grand Tour host smoked around 40 cigarettes per day for 43 years and got through nearly 630,000 cigarettes, despite warnings from doctors.

But after doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia in the midst of his summer getaway to the Balearic island of Majorca in August, he decided it was time to put down the lighter.

'I was told, by everyone, that I had to stop. Immediately,' he wrote in a column for The Sunday Times. 'I had no choice at the time because the blood poisoning was so bad and I was so racked with the resultant rigors that I couldn't work a cigarette lighter.'

Jeremy Clarkson's mortality hit home when he fell ill in Majorca and posted this image of his drip in his arm

He joked that people have told him to take up running, or give up drinking as a next step in healthy living.

He advised others trying to quit to go places where it's near-impossible to smoke, like the cinema, or Australia, where cigarettes are highly priced and banned in many public spaces.

He said that it's helpful to have a friend willing to quit with you, and the key to staying away from the cigarettes is 'willpower'.

After his bout of pneumonia, Clarkson said lung tests showed he still had 96 per cent capacity for a person his age and he could 'breathe out harder and for longer than a non-smoking 40-year-old'.

'In short, getting on for three-quarters of a million fags have not harmed me in any way. I have quite literally defied medical science,' he wrote.

He wrote that he had spent 'three nights spent spasming in my bed' before a doctor sent him for tests at the hospital.

He was then told he would have to be admitted 'for at least a week', which he called 'impossible'.

The doctor added: 'If you don't do as I say you will die', writes Clarkson.

The TV presenter described his boredom in the hospital as 'so bad I thought often about killing myself'.

The illness was two months after his co-host Richard Hammond was airlifted to hospital when his car crashed while filming The Grand Tour.

In December 2014, Clarkson admitted that he had let himself go and put on 'a lot' of weight  and that a doctor had branded his fitness level as 'atrocious'.

The presenter, who regularly makes headlines for his on-air remarks, spoke on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show.

During the interview, it was pointed out to him that, even with his usual paunch, he appeared to have to be 'a bit' fatter on a Top Gear DVD that had just been released at the time.

Clarkson immediately corrected TV-turned-radio presenter Chris Evans, saying: 'Not a bit  a lot fatter.'

Clarkson smoked for 43 years but has finally called it a day and appears unlikely to go back

Describing his ample stomach as 'the product of hard work', he added: 'I eat a lot but mostly I've cultivated it by sitting down all the time. Literally all the time, I'm now exhausted.

'Getting to your studio this morning I had to have a 15-minute rest.' He added: 'I had to go for a medical the other week. They put me on a treadmill and described my fitness as atrocious.'

The father-of-three has previously painted himself as a man unable to shy away from indulgence.

He has claimed he cannot write his scripts without ample supplies of alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine, adding: 'The amount you drink when you're writing, that's the thing that worries me.'

And in a newspaper column back in 2014, he wrote: 'I get tired pulling on my socks these days. So, if I want to live much past the end of next weekend [my doctor] says I must give up smoking, drink less, walk more, lose weight.

But in typical nonchalant style, he said of his role on Top Gear: 'If somebody decides one day that actually you really have got too fat or you really are awful then you do something else.'
A victim of a Grooming gang prosecuted as part of the Operation Sanctuary sex abuse scandal has been denied compensation as she has a criminal conviction.

The woman was refused money because she had spent time in juvenile detention as a result of the abuse itself.

The Ministry of Justice has promised to investigate after the case was raised by Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah.

Chi Onwurah, pictured on a march in 2015, has sparked anger by taking a jibe at the Duke of Edinburgh

Under present rules, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), which is responsible for providing compensation, routinely rejects claims from victims if they have a conviction for anything except the most minor crime.

Ms Onwurah said: 'We are calling for the rules to be changed to ensure that a victim of sex abuse is entitled to compensation.'

Northumbria Police secured the convictions of more than 90 offenders as part of Operation Sanctuary, an investigation into rape and sexual abuse in Newcastle and the North East.

And this included Operation Shelter, in which 18 people were convicted of abusing Newcastle's most vulnerable girls and women, some as young as 14.

The specific case raised by Ms Onwurah in the House of Commons involved a woman who suffered emotional distress as a result of the abuse.

She said: 'Girls and vulnerable women were subject to horrendous abuse and rape by a sexual exploitation gang in Newcastle.

Justice Minister Phillip Lee promised to look into the case once Ms Onwurah provided full details privately

'Some of the perpetrators were recently convicted as part of Operation Sanctuary, but there are victims who feel that they have not had justice.

'I know of at least one who has been denied compensation for horrific abuse, because of time spent in juvenile detention as a consequence of that abuse.

'Does the Minister think that is just? If not, will he amend the criminal injuries compensation scheme to ensure justice?'

She added to MailOnline: 'We know how grooming works, they target vulnerable girls and young women who are more likely to come to the attention of the police and social services.'

Justice Minister Phillip Lee promised to look into the case once Ms Onwurah provided full details privately.

He said: 'I recently met the chief executive of the CICA and was convinced that it has in place systems to deal appropriately with all cases.

'However, if there is a particular case that is of concern to her, would she please write to me? I will respond.'

Survivors of rape and other sexual assaults are able to claim compensation running into thousands of pounds to help pay for counselling, improving their security or moving away from their attacker.

But it emerged in October that at least 398 alleged victims had been refused payments since January 2015 because they were convicted of some sort of crime.

Research into the compensation process previously found that convictions for nonviolent or minor offences, including theft or failing to pay for a TV licence, are routinely used as reasons to withhold money from alleged victims.

Operation Shelter revealed that girls and young women in Newcastle's West End had been sexually exploited and prostituted by a groups of older men in a campaign of abuse.

Most of the offences happened between 2011 and 2014 and were directed at generally immature, vulnerable teenage girls who were exploited by a group of older men using drugs and alcohol to incite sexual activity.

Those convicted in Operation Shelter were jailed for a total of more than 180 years at Newcastle Crown Court in September

The men held parties known as 'sessions' to which the girls were lured by the offer of alcohol and drugs, in particular mephedrone and cannabis.

They were expected to offer sexual services in return.

Those convicted in Operation Shelter were jailed for a total of more than 180 years at Newcastle Crown Court in September.
A former member of the Norwegian royal family claims Kevin Spacey groped his genitals during a Nobel Peace Prize party ten years ago.

Ari Behn, who divorced Princess Martha Louise of Norway last year, revealed in an interview that he had been propositioned by the Hollywood actor.

Spacey had been hosting the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo alongside Uma Thurman, and had sat down for a chat with the then-royal.

Royal grope: Princess Martha Louise of Norway's ex-husband Ari Behn, pictured together last year, revealed in an interview that actor Kevin Spacey had groped him at a party

'We had a nice conversation, he was sat next to me,' Behn, 46, told Norwegian radio station P4.

'After five minutes, he says "Hey, let's go out and have a cigarette", and then he touched me right on the balls under the table.'

Behn, a non-smoker, says he was so surprised he just said; 'eh, maybe later?'

More than a dozen men have accused Spacey of sexual assault in the wake of an October expose by Buzzfeed which saw actor Anthony Rapp accuse Spacey of forcing himself on him when he was only 14 years old.

At least 15 young men have since come forward to say that he sexually assaulted or attempted to rape them.

Accused: Behn said Spacey, who had been hosting the 2007 Nobel Peace Price concert, had invited him out for a smoke before touching him 'right on the balls'

Royal heartbreak: Princess Martha Louise and author Ari Behn divorced last year after 14 years of marriage and now co-parent their three daughters

Spacey will not appear on the next series of Netflix's House of Cards and has been replaced by Christopher Plummer in an upcoming drama about oil magnate Jean Paul Getty.

According to his representatives, he is seeking unspecified treatment.

Behn and Princess Martha Louise married in May 2002 and have three children together: Maud Angelica, 13, Leah Isadora, 11, and Emma Tallulah, eight.

In August last year, the couple announced that they were divorcing, with Martha Louise said the couple had 'grown apart'.

Alongside her royal duties, the princess has written books in which she claimed to have had contacts with angels, while Behn is a writer.
Nick Jensen and his wife Sarah will not go ahead with their pledge to divorce because it would require them to separate

A married Christian couple who pledged to divorce if same sex marriage was legalised will not go ahead with it because it would require them to separate from one another.

Nick and Sarah Jensen, from Canberra, sparked controversy in 2015 when Mr Jensen announced they would end their decades-long legal union if same sex marriage was legalised.

When legalisation seemed much more likely in November, Mr Jensen said he would wait to see the letter of the law before making a decision.

And after Parliament finally passed the law to cheers on Thursday afternoon, Mr Jensen announced his position in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.

'My previous public comments regarding civil divorce never envisaged me separating from my wife, but rather our marriage from the State,' he wrote.

'The legislation currently makes it untenable for us to do this under the law.

'The point we were highlighting and that still stands however is the fact that a redefinition of marriage changes the agreement under which we were originally married.

'We will be making no further comment'.

Nick and Sarah Jensen (pictured), from Canberra, sparked controversy in 2015 when Mr Jensen announced they would end their decades-long legal union if same sex marriage was legalised

The couple did not play a prominent role in the 'No' campaign - although Mr Jensen did decorate his Facebook profile picture with this political sticker

And after Parliament finally passed the law to cheers on Thursday afternoon, Mr Jensen announced his position in a statement to Daily Mail Australia (pictured are people celebrating the law's passing)

'My previous public comments regarding civil divorce never envisaged me separating from my wife, but rather our marriage from the State,' said Mr Jensen (pictured is Magda Szubanski dancing in front of Parliament House in Canberra on December 7)

The couple's initial announcement in 2015 raised questions about how they could get divorced if they weren't planning to separate.

Under the Family Law Act, divorce in Australia requires a couple to satisfy a court they have lived separately and apart for at least 12 months and have no reasonable likelihood of resuming married life.

'This has been a big decision for my wife and I,' Mr Jensen once wrote for Canberra's CityNews. 'The truth is, "marriage" is simply too important...

'It has always been understood to be that exclusive relationship where one man and one woman become "one flesh".

'Any attempt to change the definition of marriage by law is not something in which we are able to partake.'

Despite his fame, Mr Jensen - who previously worked for the Australian Christian Lobby - was not on the front lines of the No campaign.

When legalisation seemed much more likely in November, Mr Jensen said he would wait to see the letter of the law before making a decision (pictured are MP celebrating the passing of the Marriage Amendment Bill)

Same-sex marriage will officially be legalised in Australia after both houses of Parliament voted in favour of the historic change (pictured are MPs celebrating the passing of the bill)

'Our situation is a bit of a unique one from the rest of the No campaigners,'he said.

'In part, we're affected if there is a bit of a change in law - I haven't been out there on the front line campaigning.'

In his 2015 piece, Mr Jensen said he and his wife - 'the only woman I have ever loved' - will still live together and call each other 'husband and wife' - in the 'eyes of God'.

But he wrote they would 'refuse to recognise' the government's marriage regulations 'if its definition includes the solemnisation of same sex couples'.

Mr Jensen's column sparked such a reaction that more than 100,000 people signed up to attend a Facebook event, 'Celebrating Nick and Sarah Jensen's divorce'.

The House of Representatives voted to pass same-sex marriage into law on Thursday afternoon after a months-long public debate that has created tension and division (pictured is a couple celebrating the legalisation of same-sex marriage)

But his piece quickly led to questions about whether the couple could legally divorce without separating for the years - as is required by federal law.

Same-sex marriage will officially be legalised in Australia after both houses of Parliament voted in favour of the historic change.

The House of Representatives voted to pass same-sex marriage into law on Thursday afternoon after a months-long public debate that has created tension and division.

More than 7.8 million Australians - about 62 per cent of voters - gave their support to the reform in a voluntary postal survey.

The bill, which passed the Senate in late November, will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. It will become law in days.
The House on Thursday passed a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this weekend and buy time for challenging talks on a wide range of unfinished business on Capitol Hill.

The measure passed mostly along party lines, 235-193, and would keep the government running through Dec. 22. The Senate was expected to swiftly approve the measure as early as Thursday night and send it to President Donald Trump.

The vote came as Trump and top congressional leaders in both parties huddled to discuss hurdles to a long-term deal on Capitol Hill, including the military's budget, the renewal of a key children's health program, aid to hurricane-slammed Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida and protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Trump told reporters as the meeting commenced that it was a 'friendly' gathering between himself and the top Republicans and Democrats in the House - a group that included Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

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The vote came as Trump and top congressional leaders in both parties huddled to discuss hurdles to a long-term deal on Capitol Hill, including the military's budget. President Donald Trump accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence is seen listening as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks to House Speaker Paul Ryan (her left), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (center left) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (far right)

The group's tone was in keeping with the holiday, unlike last week, when Pelosi and Schumer boycotted a meeting with the president because he was trash-talking them.

Invited to make opening remarks by Trump, Schumer said, 'Well, we hope we can come to an agreement. Funding the government is extremely important, helping our soldiers is very important, and helping average citizens is very important.

'So we're here in the spirit of: let's get it done.'

Pelosi, the top-ranking House Democrat, seconded Schumer.

'We are here to make progress. We have some important issues that we share with you,' she said, ticking off issues including the opioid crisis, funding for veterans and an expired children's health insurance program. 'All things that have bipartisan support in the Congress.'

Trump relied, 'That's very true.'

The negotiations are sure to be tricky. Pelosi staked out a hard line on Thursday and insisted that any year-end deal would include help for 'Dreamer' immigrants, many of whom have only known America as their home. The immigrants are viewed sympathetically by the public and most lawmakers but face deportation in a few months because Trump reversed administrative protections provided to them by former President Barack Obama.

'We are here to make progress. We have some important issues that we share with you,' she said, ticking off issues including the opioid crisis, funding for veterans and an expired children's health insurance program. 'All things that have bipartisan support in the Congress'

Pelosi told reporters before the meeting that 'We will not leave here' without helping the immigrants. Her stance was noteworthy because GOP leaders are likely to require Democratic votes for the pre-Christmas spending bill.

Pelosi returned from the White House to oppose Thursday's stopgap bill. Fourteen Democrats supported the measure, however, while 18 Republicans were opposed.

Among Republicans, the conservative House Freedom Caucus had resisted the pending stopgap measure earlier in the week, fearing it would lead to a bad deal for conservatives down the road. But on Thursday, the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, said the group will likely give leaders whatever support they need to pass the legislation.

Meadows said they'll help it pass to avoid distractions from the GOP drive to push their treasured $1.5 trillion tax bill through Congress this month. That measure, which mostly benefits businesses and upper-income people, is Trump's and the GOP's top remaining priority and would be their first major legislative triumph of the year.

Trump told reporters as the meeting commenced that it was a 'friendly' gathering between himself and the top Republicans and Democrats in the House - a change in tone from a week prior when he was assailing Pelosi and Schumer on Twitter

Hours before Trump was to bargain with congressional leaders at the White House over longer-term spending decisions, Meadows said the conservatives would oppose any agreement they feel allows excessive federal spending.

'I want to avoid a headline that says President Trump's administration just passes the highest spending levels in U.S. history,' Meadows told two reporters. 'There will be zero support on numbers that are too high, regardless of anybody's position on that.'

He also said Ryan promised he'd fight in coming weeks to pass a full-year budget for the military and leave battles with Democrats over domestic spending for later.

It is unclear how that strategy would work, since Republicans control the Senate 52-48 and will need at least eight Democratic votes to pass any spending legislation.

The prospects for successful White House talks had been buffeted Wednesday when the impulsive Trump blurted to reporters that a shutdown 'could happen.' He blamed Democrats, saying they want 'illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime.'

Pelosi returned from the White House to oppose Thursday's stopgap bill. Fourteen Democrats supported the measure, however, while 18 Republicans were opposed

Last week, an unexpected attack by Trump on Schumer and Pelosi prompted the two to skip a bargaining session that was planned then.

He had the meeting anyway and left seats open for them at the table with placards bearing the Democrats' names.

Schumer and Pelosi said earlier this week in a joint statement that they'd accepted a new invitation to meet with Trump.

This time, the White House smoothed the waters by following up with a more peaceable, written statement. It praised Pelosi and Schumer for choosing to 'put their responsibility to the American people above partisanship' and said Trump was anticipating productive talks between 'leaders who put their differences aside.'

A statement sent out by Pelosi and Schumer said: 'We had a productive conversation on a wide variety of issues. Nothing specific has been agreed to, but discussions continue.

'Democrats continue to press for action on the urgent, bipartisan priorities before Congress: to strengthen our national defense with parity for our domestic budget, to fund veterans and the fight against opioids, to address CHIP and Community Health Centers, to save Americans endangered pensions, and to pass the DREAM Act,' they said.

The two-week spending bill also makes money available to several states that are running out of funds for the Children's Health Insurance Program. That widely popular program provides medical care to more than 8 million children.

While many Democrats seemed likely to oppose the short-term bill, enough were expected to support it in the Senate to allow its passage there. They know they'd still have leverage on subsequent bills needed to keep the government running.

Democrats promise to use their leverage to insist on spending boosts for health care, infrastructure and other domestic programs that would match increases Republicans want for defense.
Peter Ball, now 85, was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 for offences dating back to the 1970s against 18 young men at his home in East Sussex

A disgraced former Church of England bishop, who was a confidant of Prince Charles and jailed for sex abuse plans, has converted to Catholicism to 'live and worship in anonymity'.

Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester who boasted of links to royalty, has asked to join the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton, in Bristol, a spokesman for the Church confirmed.

His identical twin brother, the former bishop of Truro Michael Ball, also sent an email to friends telling them of the idea.

Peter Ball, now 85, was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 for offences dating back to the 1970s against 18 young men at his home in East Sussex.

The email sent yesterday morning said the pair would not be sending Christmas cards after recent events had 'totally wearied and reduced' them.

In it, Michael Ball said: 'Peter and Michael will not be sending Christmas Cards this year.

'The events of the last years and rightly or wrongly the battering by the Church have totally wearied and reduced us. We will proabably (sic) be joining the Roman Catholic Church soon.

'We love The Church of England but would like to end our days in a church where we can live and worship in anonymity and without constant fear.

'We send our love and are enormously grateful fo [sic] the kindness and continued support of so many. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a joyful New Year.'

The message was mistakenly sent to a BBC journalist and subsequently shown to Peter Saunders, the child abuse campaigner who founded support charity NAPAC.

Mr Saunders, who sits on the Vatican's commission on protecting children from abuse, said: 'It's not surprising they are moving to another church.

'If the Catholic hierarchy welcome him [Peter Ball] I hope they put in place every possible safeguard so that people know something about his background and he can never, ever pose a threat to children or young people again.'

Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester who boasted of links to royalty (picture with Prince Charles), has asked to join the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton, in Bristol

He said Michael Ball's complaint of taking a 'battering' from the Church was 'flippant' and it was 'disgusting' the pair were acting as though they were the victims.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese of Arundel and Brighton said: 'We confirm Peter Ball has been in contact with the Roman Catholic diocese of Clifton, in which diocese he now lives, expressing an interest in becoming a member of the Catholic Church.

'This matter is subject to discussions between Clifton diocese and the statutory authorities, who are the lead with regards to Peter Ball's risk management in the community.

'The Church of England authorities including their safeguarding team are aware of this request.'

Disgraced ex-bishop, the Rt Rev Peter Ball

Neither Michael or Peter Ball could be contacted by Press Association.

But Michael Ball reportedly told the BBC a move to the Catholic Church was a 'possibility'.

Justin Welby commissioned a report into the actions of Peter Ball, the former bishop of both Gloucester and Lewes, after he was jailed in October 2015 for grooming and exploiting 18 men over a period of two decades.

The report found the church colluded with Ball's priority to 'protect and promote himself' rather than give help to the abused.

Peter Ball's sentence came 22 years after the abuse first surfaced. He eventually admitted misconduct in a public office and two counts of indecent assault.

The court heard how Ball had convinced some of his victims to strip naked to pray and even suggested they submit to beatings between 1977 and 1992.

The first of his victims to come forward took his own life in 2012 after hearing Sussex Police had reopened the case.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey resigned as honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Oxford after the public inquiry into child sex abuse last year heard he delayed a 'proper investigation' into Ball's crimes for two decades by failing to pass information to police.

A review of how Ball's case was handled found he used his connections to boost his position and was said to be a confidant of the Prince of Wales.

An independent review entitled an Abuse of Faith, led by Dame Moira Gibb, said he 'betrayed his Church' and its followers.

The report added: 'The Church at its most senior levels and over many years supported him unwisely and displayed little care for his victims.'

Ball was released from jail in February after serving half his sentence behind bars.
A world-famous wildlife conservationist has been killed while riding his bike.

Dr Tony Whitten - who had 11 species named after him - was involved in a collision with a car while riding through Cambridge on Wednesday.

The 64-year-old, of Cambridge, died when his bike collided with an orange Ford Focus C-Max on Newmarket Road at about 9.15pm.

His devastated family and friends paid tribute to the 'remarkable' wildlife conservationist and told of the 'outpouring of love' for him.

World renowned conservationist Dr Tony Whitten, pictured, has died after his bicycle crashed into a Ford Focus

Dr Whitten was the Asia-Pacific regional director on the international conservation group for Fauna & Flora International (FFI) based in Cambridge.

His family said: 'We are truly grateful for the outpouring of love and support from friends and colleagues around the world.

'We can't and don't want to imagine a future without him, but we know his legacy will continue in so many ways.'

The conservationist met his wife Jane, 62, when they were young field scientists working in Sumatra, where they were 'absorbed wholeheartedly into the community' and remained close with friends there, even taking their own children back to visit.

A species of gecko from Myanmar was named hemiphyllidactylus tonywhitteni in Dr Whitten's honour while a beetle from China was called pilosaphaenops whitteni after him

Dr Whitten had many species named after him including a gecko, two types of beetle and a fish.

His death came just a month after he announced the discovery 15 new species of gecko in Myanmar from an expedition he was part of in October 2016, with one species named Hemiphyllodactylus tonywhitteni in his honour.

Leading zoologist Dr Matt Prescott said on Twitter: 'I'm very sorry to hear that Tony Whitten has been killed in a traffic accident.

THE SPECIES NAMED AFTER DR WHITTEN 1. Thopeutica whitteni - a gold spotted tiger beetle from Sulawesi 2. Sulawesidromia whitteni  a small lake snail discovered in Sulawesi 3. Anaglyphula whitteni  a snail from a Balinese volcano 4. Plectostoma whitteni  a snail from Peninsular Malaysia 5. Lentipes whittenorum (named for both Tony and wife Jane)  a fish from a Bali river 6. Onthophagus tonywhitteni  a dung beetle from Sulawesi 7. Cnemaspis whittenorum  a gecko found in West Sumatra 8. Papillacarus whitteni  a soil mite from Vietnam 9. Sinella whitteni  a springtail from southern China 10. Pilosaphaenops whitteni whitteni  a blind, long legged cave beetle found in southern China 11. Hemiphyllodactylus tonywhitteni  a gecko recently discovered in Myanmar. Advertisement

'Many, many endangered species and field biologists will have lost an effective advocate and kind-hearted ally.'

Environmentalist Tony Juniper said on Twitter that Dr Whitten's death was 'A huge loss to conservation.'

Dr Whitten's team at David Attenborough Building has been involved in the battle against plastic pollution in oceans and works to protect rare species.

The FFI said: 'It is with deep sadness that we report the death of Dr Tony Whitten, a deeply loved husband and father, a truly remarkable conservationist and a dear colleague and friend, whose tireless work and passion inspired all who knew him.'

Rosalind Aveling, deputy chief executive of the FFI, added: 'We knew Tony as a remarkable man, a giant of the conservation world with an irrepressible optimism, a thirst for knowledge and an enthusiasm for cave creatures that bordered on obsession.

'It is not surprising that he had 11 new species named for him, and he was particularly pleased that they might be viewed as small and uncharismatic, as it meant he could take up their cause and - as a consummate communicator - change that perception.'

She added: 'Aside from an astute scientific mind, Tony had an ability to connect with people whoever they were and wherever they were working, whether trekking through forests, arguing the case in corporate boardrooms or finding agreement in government offices.'

Dr Whitten also worked for the World Bank during his career in its biodiversity unit, before joining the FFI in 2011.
Chris Grayling was left floundering this morning as he got an on-air grilling about why the Government's Brexit plans hit the skids in what viewers branded a 'car crash' interview.

The Transport Secretary left the presenter Charlie Stayt less than impressed as he refused to say what ministers are doing to get the stalled talks back on track.

Theresa May and her minsters have been given just 48 hours to get the DUP to sign up to a new plan or face trade talks being delayed until next year.

Viewers heaped praise on Stayt and said he was showing Radio 4's flagship Today programme how it's done, while another viewer hailed him a 'bad a**'.

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Chris Grayling was left floundering this morning as he got an on-air grilling about why the Government's Brexit plans hit the skids

In a scathing assessment of the Cabinet minister's explanation as to why negotiations have hit the buffers, Stayt said: I'm not quite sure what your role was today in doing media interview.

'Was your job to reassure people that everything is going well and everything is in hand?' Because I am not sure you are doing that.

The PM's push to strike a deal to move on to the next stage of talks collapsed at the eleventh hour on Monday after the DUP pulled the plug on the plan amid fears it would tear the UK apart.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar last night said he expected to see a new draft of the proposed divorce deal today so the new plan can be back in Brussels this week.

But the DUP poured cold water on hoped for a quick resolution and say they do not expect a new agreement this week.

Twitter user Lou said: Chris Grayling got crucified by Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast, rightly so, but trotting out the same platitudes on R4Today.

Geoff Hall replied to a tweet from BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg about the Radio 4 interview and said: 'Best interviewer Charlie Stayt, he really tried to make him answer the difficult questions that Grayling did not want to answer.

One Twitter user hailed the presenter's grilling describing him as a 'bad a**'

While one BBC viewer said the presenter 'nailed' the Transport Secretary over Brexit

As Mrs May faces a frantic scramble to get the crunch talks back on track, her Brexit -backing Transport Secretary toured the television studios this morning to bat for the Government.

But as Stayt grilled him about how the Government could have let talks get so far without having the DUP - who is propping up in No10 - sign them off, Mr Grayling struggled to given an answer.

He told BBC Breakfast: We are in the middle of a negotiating process, I cant give you a running commentary on the detail but I remain very optimistic that we will reach an agreement..'

But Stayt interrupted him, saying the 'stock line' is 'not good enough' as the negotiations have hit a crisis point.

Other Twitter users were more critical of the grilling and wondered aloud why Cabinet ministers subject themselves to it

Another viewer said it was wrong for the BBC presenter to accuse the minister of offering answers that were not good enough

He added: We apparently have 48 hours to come up with something new  I'd like to know and I think a lot of other people would like to know what you, Theresa May and the cabinet and the Brexit Secretary are doing between now and then to change things.'

Mr Grayling insisted ministers are working 'very hard' but this less the journalist less than impressed as he pressed for answers.

A clearly frustrated Stayt said: With respect you were doing all this before  you are giving me the generalities but the clock really is ticking here  you know this more than anyone.

The clock is ticking here whats going to be different about the wording of the proposals that you are going to put forward?

He added: 'I'm really confused here. If you cant tell me Theresa May is going to come up with a new proposal, thats a bit alarming isn't it?

Mr Grayling was unable to give clear answers about the talks while negotiations continue with the DUP (pictured in Westminster on Tuesday)

'That means everything is going to be pushed back into the long grass until the new year.

Mr Grayling replied: 'No. I'm telling you there are discussions going on all throughout the week an dim confident we will get to the point by the time we reach the European council we will have an agreement and be able to go o to constructive trade talks.

Mrs May has exactly one week until the EU summit in Brussels where member states will decide whether to approve her final proposals on the Irish border, citizens rights and the Brexit divorce bill and move on to trade talks.

Lee Davies said on Twitter: 'Oh my God, @BBCBreakfast's Charlie Stayt grilling Chris Grayling MP. Best interview I've seen in a long time. Actual serious questions and not accepting rhetoric as answers. Bravo!'

Geoff Hall replied to a tweet from BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg about the Radio 4 interview and said: 'Best interviewer Charlie Stayt, he really tried to make him answer the difficult questions that Grayling did not want to answer.

'Did it very calmly and politely therefore effective.'

Twitter user Lou said: Chris Grayling got crucified by Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast, rightly so, but trotting out the same platitudes on R4Today.

'Inept doesn't seem to be a strong enough word for this joke of a govt.'

User Brutus or Brett said: 'I wish Dan Walker would be more of a bad a** like Charlie Stayt when interviewing politicians.'

But while many viewers went wild for the grilling on Twitter, others were more critical and wondered aloud why cabinet ministers subject themselves to the 'snooty' questioning.
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Parliament overwhelmingly voted to introduce same-sex marriage in a historic vote on Thursday that united Liberal, Labor, and crossbench MPs in unprecedented jubilant celebration on the chamber floor.

But four rebel MPs defied the 61.8 per cent of Australians who voted yes in the gay marriage postal vote last month to stand against the bill as it passed the House of Representatives.

The final division showed one side of the chamber packed with supportive MPs with only four lonely holdouts - Bob Katter, Keith Pitt, Russell Broadbent, and David Littleproud - sitting on the other side.

Four rebel MPs defied the 61.8 per cent of Australians who voted yes in the gay marriage postal vote last month to stand against the bill as it passed the House of Representatives

David Littleproud (L) followed his no-voting electorate, as did Mr Katter (R) who would have voted no anyway

Additionally, former prime minister and prominent SSM opponent Tony Abbott was absent from the chamber as he abstained from the votes after debating fiercely for rejected amendments.

This was despite previous pledges to respect the will of the people and 75 per cent of his electorate of Warringah voting yes in the postal vote - one of the highest in the country.

Maverick North Queensland MP Mr Katter is well known for his bluster, outrageous campaign ads, and multiple bizarre speeches against homosexuality, but few could pick the others out of a lineup.

Mr Pitt said his opposition was not to the survey result but the text of the bill and its lack of amendments protecting the rights of no voters to discriminate against LGBTQI people on religious grounds.

'I think it's critical that the four million Australians who did vote no not only are represented in this place but have their views protected in this Bill,' he told the Bundaberg NewsMail.

The final division showed one side of the chamber packed with supportive MPs with only four lonely holdouts - Bob Katter and Russell Broadbent (pictured far left), Keith Pitt, and David Littleproud - sitting on the other side

Keith Pitt (L) and Russell Broadbent (R) voted against their 'yes' electorates due to their personal religious views

Additionally, former prime minister and prominent SSM opponent Tony Abbott was absent from the chamber as he abstained from the votes after debating fiercely for rejected amendments

The 48-year-old earlier said his electorate of Hinkler in central Queensland - which voted yes by 50.7 per cent - first elected him in 2013 knowing his views on the issue and 'I am a man of my word' and would not betray them.

'The people who are calling on me to vote in favour of same-sex marriage, are the very same people who would scream blue murder if I broke any other election commitment,' he said on his website.

'Many of those who value the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and woman are not willing to share their views publicly for fear of being vilified.

'They are often labelled as being 'out of touch, homophobic, backwards, dinosaurs' by people who promote tolerance, love and freedom of choice. Does anyone else see the hypocrisy?'

Mr Broadbent, MP for McMillan, east of Melbourne, said despite 62.7 per cent of his constituents voting yes he was not prepared to vote for something he wasn't in favour of.

'I will not be obstructionist, I respect the will of the Australian people, but at the same time I have a long held standing position on this, and everyone knows where I stand,' he told ABC radio.

After the chamber divided for the final vote, only a few like Mr Katter and Mr Broadbest (bottom left) remained on the no side

Mr Katter provoked heckling from the public gallery while pushing for amendments to the same-sex marriage bill ahead of the vote on Thursday, doubling down on comments he made on Wednesday night by saying: 'I refuse to say the word g-a-y'

The 66-year-old said he also represented those who voted no and would either vote no or abstain - but when it came to a vote ended up opposing the bill.

However, he vowed not to try to wind back anti-discrimination laws in amendments to the bill and was not surprised by the survey outcome because: 'When a proposition of equality and fairness is put forward it's in Australian people's DNA to support it'.

Mr Littleproud had cover for his decision to vote no as 56.1 per cent of his electorate of Maranoa, in southwest Queensland, agreed with his personal position in the postal vote.

'I'm comfortable and was always going to respect the views of the Maranoa. They've given me a clear direction and it's my job to respect their views,' he told the Warwick Daily News.

'I have said I didn't support same sex marriage but had the vote come back as a yes then I would have voted yes.

'Regardless of the result, we stick together in the bush. If there's a flood or fire - no matter your background or lifestyle, we're all standing side-by-side filling sandbags or volunteering to help the whole community.'

The bill, which passed the Senate in late November, will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. It will become law in days

Liberal MP Warren Entsch hugs Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after the passing of the Marriage Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives

Mr Katter's seat of Kennedy also backed up his position, with 53.3 per cent voting no, and there was little chance he'd do anything but support that given his frequent public comments.

He provoked heckling from the public gallery while pushing for amendments to the same-sex marriage bill ahead of the vote on Thursday, doubling down on comments he made on Wednesday night by saying: 'I refuse to say the word g-a-y'.

'LBGTs [sic] or whatever the hell the words are, whatever it is,' he said, causing laughter to erupt in the chamber.

'No, I seriously have no idea what it is,' the member for Kennedy responded, 'and I'm not going to spend any time finding out.'

'They took the word "gay" off us, now they're taking the word "marriage" off us, and when we ask for religious freedoms... not one of them in this place stood up.

The prime minister had promised to pass the reform into law by Christmas and called on lawmakers to heed the 'overwhelming' survey result

Ministers erupted in celebration as the result was handed down, with many shedding tears of joy and embracing

Ministers were unable to contain their joy after the decision was handed down to legalise same-sex marriage

Mr Katter was condemned for his earlier comments describing gay people as murderers responsible for AIDS and for saying boys are being forced to wear dresses.

'You talk about equality. They wanted equality in the giving of blood,' Mr Katter told the House of Representatives.

'They said, "We as homosexuals have a right to give blood," so they did, and I think 72 children were injected with AIDS from the blood that was given.'

The 72-year-old, who lives in Mount Isa, described as killers promiscuous gay men and intravenous drug users who had donated blood during the earlier days of the AIDS crisis.

'I watched on television last night a murder case involving two people of that persuasion,' he said.

The viewing galleries erupt as the decision to legalise same-sex marriage is handed down

'What a day, what a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it!' an impassioned Malcolm Turnbull said immediately following the announcement

The bill, which passed the Senate in late November, will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. It will become law in days.

The first weddings are expected to be held in early January, because couples are required to give 30 days advance notice for nuptials under existing laws.

The prime minister had promised to pass the reform into law by Christmas and called on lawmakers to heed the 'overwhelming' survey result.

The issue was put to a conscience vote for parliamentarians, meaning politicians could vote as individuals rather than follow the party line.

'Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it!' Turnbull said of the postal survey
Last month, a non-binding and voluntary postal survey revealed Australians were overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex couples being granted the right to marry.

But 12 electorates from western Sydney returned a majority 'no' vote.

Hours before Parliament voted to enact the change into law on Thursday to allow same-sex couples the same recognition of their relationships that straight couples have, residents in the seat of Blaxland, which returned a No result with a 73.9 per cent majority, were in two minds.

Azzam, 21, and his friend Ayman, 23, were sitting at a juice bar ahead of the vote, looking disgruntled.

'It's not appropriate,' Ayman told Daily Mail Australia.

'We can't teach our kids and raise them like that  [the future] is going to be ugly. I'll probably raise my kids overseas, in the Middle East.'

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Azzam (left) and his friend Ayman (right) were sitting at a juice bar ahead of the vote, looking disgruntled. 'It's not appropriate. I'll probably raise my kids overseas, in the Middle East.'

Shop-owner Fayis, 35, told Daily Mail Australia he didn't personally support same-sex marriage, but he accepted the result of the postal survey. 'This is not right,' he said

Despite his strong views, Ayman did not participate in the postal survey, as he believed his vote 'wasn't going to do anything'.

George, a local 28-year-old who explained he was a 'devout Catholic', used the bible to explain his stance against same sex marriage.

'Lucifer was the first person to [want] equality,' he explained. 'He was God's favourite angel  look how that turned out for him.'

He says he has nothing against gay people though: 'Hate the sin, not the sinner, you know?'

Shop-owner Fayis, 35, told Daily Mail Australia he didn't personally support same-sex marriage, but he accepted the result of the postal survey.

'This is not right,' he said.

'But if it is law, we follow the law.

Mozza (right), 46, was laughing on the street with her friend Lamtech (centre), 30, and Mai (left) as the historical vote approached

Hours before Parliament voted to enact the change into law, allowing same sex couples, the same recognition of their relationships that straight couples are afforded the seat of Blaxland, which returned a No result with a 73.9 per cent majority, were in two minds

While the men in the seat of Blaxland were quite outspoken in their views against same-sex marriage, the women were decidedly more open to the idea. Pictured: Mozza and Lamtech (right)

'The people have spoken, who am I to judge? If you ask me if it is good, I say no, for myself.'

While the men in the seat of Blaxland were quite outspoken in their views against same-sex marriage, the women were decidedly more open to the idea.

A woman named Sahara was walking through the local shopping precinct wearing a purple, yellow and white hijab.

'I'm not going to judge anyone,' she said.

'Everyone gets a choice. I choose to cover myself [with the hijab], they can choose what they like.

'We've just got to support them.'

Sylva, 19, who was sitting with her mother outside a takeaway shop, told Daily Mail she had 'no problem' with Parliament's end decision.

New Zealand citizen John (right), 52, said he didn't vote for obvious reasons, but would have voted yes. George (left, his rosary beads) explained he was a 'devout Catholic' and used the bible to explain his stance against same sex marriage

Despite his strong views, Ayman (right in left pic) did not participate in the postal survey, as he believed his vote 'wasn't going to do anything'

'This is their year,' she said.

'This is part of their life. We can't change people in religion or marriage, everyone has the right to do what they want.'

New Zealand citizen John, 52, said he didn't vote for obvious reasons, but would have voted yes.

He said his one gripe with the process was that local MP Jason Clare would be voting yes, against his electorate's clear choice.

'It's not representing his constituency  but I guess he's just going along party lines,' he said.

Mai, who was eating lunch nearby, said: 'I'm nearly 66 years old and have never been married  if they can do it, go for it'

Mozza, 46, was laughing on the street with her friend Lamtech, 30, as the historical vote approached.

'I'm cool with it,' she said. 'Each to their own  it doesn't affect me.'

Lamtech said he was also happy with the upcoming change in the law.

'We stand for the people, It's all good,' he said.

Mai, who was eating lunch nearby, said: 'I'm nearly 66 years old and have never been married  if they can do it, go for it'.

THE TOP 10 SEATS THAT VOTED YES 1. MELBOURNE, VIC - 84% YES 2. SYDNEY, NSW - 84% YES 3. MELBOURNE PORTS, VIC - 82% YES 4. WENTWORTH, NSW - 81% YES 5. GRAYNDLER, NSW - 80% YES 6. BRISBANE, QLD - 80% YES 7. HIGGINS, VIC- 78% YES 8. GRIFFITH, QLD - 77% YES 9. GOLDSTEIN, VIC - 76% YES 10. WARRINGAH, NSW - 75% YES 11. NEWCASTLE, NSW - 75% YES 12. CANBERRA, ACT - 74% YES 13. FENNER, ACT - 74% YES 14. DENISON, TAS - 74% YES 15. KOOYONG, VIC - 74% YES 16. JAGAJAGA, VIC - 74% YES 17. RYAN, QLD - 73% YES 18. CURTIN, WA - 72% YES 19. DUNKLEY, VIC - 72% YES 20. NORTH SYDNEY, NSW - 72% YES Advertisement
Singapore Airlines have announced that they are re-routing flights over the Sea of Japan in the wake of North Korea's recent missile tests.

The airline join several others who have overseen their routines for flights through the area as Kim Jong-Un has increased the number of missile tests carried out.

As North Korea does not announce when or where their missile tests will take place, several companies deem it too high a risk to fly through the area.

Flight or fight: Singapore Airlines have overseen their routines for flights over the Sea of Japan and near North Korea as Kim Jong-Un has increased the number of missile tests carried out

Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and Air France now all avoid North Korean airspace, the BBC reports.

A Lufthansa representative also told the BBC that they take decisions on whether to fly over the Sea of Japan on a day to day basis.

This comes after the latest missile test on November 29 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 the ICBM missile test while flying over Japan.

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.

Kim Jong-un tested the Hwasong-15 missile, raising the prospect of war with America on the Korean Peninsula

A rally celebrating North Korea's progress in their nuclear and missile programme in a photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency

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.

Last night, a North Korean spokesman said that a nuclear war with the US is an established fact and the only question is when it will break out.

In response to a huge US military exercise over South Korea , the rogue state said: 'We will make the US dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force.'

North Korea also claimed that 'bellicose remarks' from high-ranking US officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, make war inevitable.

Pompeo said Saturday that US intelligence agencies believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn't understand how tenuous his situation is domestically and internationally.

The North's spokesman said Pompeo provoked the country by 'impudently criticizing our supreme leadership which is the heart of our people.'
A father who was strangled to death at home before his daughter walked on his killer dismembering his body was a convicted paedophile, it emerged today.

Noel Brown, 69, and his 41-year-old daughter Marie were found dead by officers who forced entry into his flat in Deptford, south east London, on Monday morning.

Officers said they were both strangled to death and added it is a 'strong possibility' his daughter disturbed the attackers as they attempted to dismember his body.

It has now emerged that he was jailed for nine years at the Old Bailey in 1999 - when he was 51 - after he abused two young girls. He was released in 2004.

And detectives are probing the theory that his criminal record may have been the motive for vigilante attackers.

Marie Brown, 41, and her father Noel, 69, were discovered in the early hours on Monday at his house in Deptford, south east London

Police officers using a drain pump and a mechanical scoop are seen searching the storm drains in the area on Wednesday afternoon

Mr Brown (left) was a regular in a local bookmakers but officers said his recent big win was not related. His daughter (right) went to the home after getting concerned

He was still on the sex offenders' register at the time of his death and police are now probing whether he was targeted by anti-paedophile campaigners.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman told MailOnline: 'Noel Brown was a Registered Sex Offender and was convicted of sexual offences in 1999.'

Detective Superintendent Paul Monk, who is overseeing the investigation into their murders, said killers tried to conceal his death.

He said 'nothing' had happened in Mr Brown's life in the 18 years since the conviction to suggest that was the reason for the murder.

Mr Monk said: 'The offence was a sex offence, he was convicted and served time and was released in 2004 but I'm not prepared to give any more details.'

He added there an attempt was made to 'dismember his body' following the death.

Mr Monk said Mr Brown, a regular gambler who placed 'very small bets' every day at the Paddy Power shop in Deptford High Street, did not visit the bookmakers on Friday and it is possible he was killed before his daughter arrived.

Mr Monk said Mr Brown's biggest win was thought to be up to 15 or 20.

He said: 'I don't know whether he was dismembered at that point or whether he was dismembered after Marie was killed.

'There's some attempt to cover up the crime, it's a strong possibility that Marie had disturbed them.

'Attempts have been made to dismember his body, it's possible Marie has made attempts to disturb that and it's possible she's been killed.

'There's no attempt to dismember Marie at all.'

It comes as police said they were contacted by a member of Marie's family at 12.30am after Marie had failed to return to her home in nearby Southwark.

Timeline of events Thursday, November 30: Neighbour sees Mr Brown at his home at 8pm Saturday, December 2: His daughter goes to his flat because she is concerned and is not seen alive again Monday, December 4: Police force entry into the flat and find the pair had been strangled to death Advertisement

Officers attended Mr Brown's home address at 2.45am and a post-mortem has shown the pair died from strangulation.

Scotland Yard said there were no signs of a forced entry, suggesting the suspects were known to Mr Brown and his daughter disturbed them.

Metropolitan Police detectives said they have found no evidence that Mr Brown was killed because of a recent large gambling win, although he had visited his local betting shop Paddy Power on the day he was last seen alive.

There is no suggestion that Paddy Power was connected in with the murder.

A neighbour saw Mr Brown at his home at around 8pm on Thursday November 30.

Days later at around midday on Saturday December 2, his daughter went to his flat out of concern for his welfare - she was not seen alive again.

After forensic searches of the area and gathering hours of CCTV, police have appealed for the public's help and urged two men who visited Mr Brown's flat in the days before he was found dead to come forward.

DS Monk added: 'Today, I am asking for the public's help as part of our investigation into the murder of Noel and his daughter Marie.

'We know that Noel was last seen alive and well at his home by a neighbour at about 8pm on Thursday, November 30.

'Marie, having grown increasingly anxious about her father's wellbeing, went to visit him at about midday on Saturday December 2.

'That is the last sighting of Marie alive. Our investigation is fast moving and making progress every day.

Police discovered the nursery worker (pictured) and her father after receiving a tip-off from a concerned member of public

Forensics scouring the scene of the gruesome double murder have been seen handling what is believed to be a knife

'I want to reassure people that we are doing all we can to find those responsible for the murders of Noel and Marie.

'I am asking the public to help us with any information they may have that could assist our investigation - specifically about two men who visited Noel's flat in the days prior to his death.

'If that was you, or you know who it was, please get in contact with us.

'At this early stage we are keeping an open mind regarding the motive, however it was clear to the responding officers that there were no signs of forced entry to the property.

'One of our key lines of enquiry is to establish if the suspects or suspects were known to Noel and if Marie disturbed them.'

A police forensic officer searching wheelie bins at the scene as the area has been taped off

Flowers were left at the scene on New Butt Lane on Wednesday after news of the killings emerged

Officers are carrying out extensive local enquiries around Noel's Deptford home, collecting hours of CCTV and carrying out full forensic searches of the areas in and around his flat.

Detective Superintendent Monk continued: 'One of the key strands of our investigation is understanding all we can about Noel's life.

'He was well known and liked locally. We know that Noel used to go to his local betting shop, Paddy Power, in Deptford High Street and had in fact been there during the day he was last seen alive on November 30.

'There has been speculation that his murder was as a result of a large gambling win, however at this time there is no evidence to suggest this was the case.

'I am keen to hear from anyone who saw Noel in the days leading up to his death or saw anyone or anything unusual in or around New Butt Lane, Deptford, during that time.

A window of the home in New Butt Lane, Deptford, is taped up with black bin bags (shown)

'This is a deeply distressing time for Noel and Marie's family as they come to terms with their loss.'

Specially trained family liaison officers are supporting Noel and Marie's family at this tragic time.

One family member who visited the scene on Wednesday afternoon, who did not want to be identified, said: 'The whole family are distraught.

'We just do not know what has happened.' The flat was still sealed off by officers today.

Anyone with any information, no matter how small, is asked to contact the investigation team on 020 8721 4205, or 101.

You can also tweet police @MetCC.To remain anonymous please call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A not guilty verdict handed down to a former soldier who stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her new partner to death has left the woman's mother outraged.

Christopher Carter walked free from Brisbane Supreme Court last month after saying he killed Renee Kuch and Corey Croft in self defence.

Renee's grieving mother Joanne is aghast at the jury's decision, and believes they were influenced by Croft's paedophile past and Kuch's drinking problem.

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A not guilty verdict handed down to a former soldier (pictured) who stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her new partner to death has left the woman's mother outraged

Renee's grieving mother Joanne (pictured) is aghast at the jury's decision, and believes they were influenced by Croft's paedophile past and Kuch's drinking problem

Christopher Carter walked free from Brisbane Supreme Court last month after saying he killed Renee Kuch (pictured, left) and Corey Croft (pictured, right) in self defence

Ms Kuch claimed her daughter was unaware Croft was a convicted paedophile, and said Renee was a good mother despite her binge drinking.

She questioned how the jury could have freed Carter even though he stabbed Renee 10 times and Croft five times, A Current Affair reported.

'We've got to get some sort of justice, no matter what. How can it be self defence?' asked Joanne.

'[After the verdict] I just burst into tears and I just said this can't be right, it cannot be right,' she said.

Ms Kuch claimed her daughter (pictured) was unaware Croft was a convicted paedophile, and said Renee was a good mother despite her binge drinking

'He didn't even get manslaughter. How can that be?'

Carter spent two years in jail before last month's decision, and the former soldier had initially lied to police about the killings.

Kuch and Croft's son, now eight-years-old, was present at the time of the stabbings, having been left at the home by Carter.

Croft (pictured) moved to Queensland after his release, where in 2007 he was sentenced to another year and four months behind bars for possessing child pornography

Croft (pictured) served four and a half years in prison after videotaping himself sexually assaulting a five-year-old child in 1995

Joanne said the boy is now suffering from anger management problems and ADHD, and has separation anxiety.

Carter had two children with Renee Kuch from a previous relationship.

Croft served four and a half years in prison after videotaping himself sexually assaulting a five-year-old child in 1995.

He moved to Queensland after his release, where in 2007 he was sentenced to another year and four months behind bars for possessing child pornography.
A doctor who was let off with a 12 month suspension after her blunders resulted in the death of a six-year-old boy should be struck off 'to protect the public', the High Court heard.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba was convicted, along with agency nurse Isabel Amaro, of the manslaughter of Jack Adcock at Nottingham Crown Court in November last year.

Jack, who had Down's syndrome and a heart condition, died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in February 2011 following a septic shock, hours after being admitted with sickness and vomiting.

Dr Bawa-Garba, 35, made the 'remarkable error' of mistakenly placing Jack under a 'do not resuscitate' order after confusing him with a two-year-old who had been discharged.

But she was allowed to remain on the medical register after an independent Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel ruled that she should not be struck off and instead suspended her for a year.

After hearing the evidence, judges reserved a decision until a later date, but speaking outside the hearing Jack's father Victor said the doctor would 'walk away scot-free' if she was allowed to keep her job.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, left, was convicted of the manslaughter by gross negligence of Jack Adcock, six, right, and the General Medical Council wants her suspension upgraded to being struck off to 'protect the public'

Jack's parents Nicola and Victor Adcock, pictured outside the High Court today, previously said the doctor has 'not been held accountable' after she confused Jack's case with a child who had a 'do not resuscitate' order. Mr Adcock said she would 'walk away scot-free' if she keeps her job

The General Medical Council wants the decision to be quashed and replaced with erasure because suspension 'is not sufficient to protect the public'.

But their actions have already sparked outrage by many professionals who claim doctors would be scared to admit mistakes.

Some 800 medics and other professionals have signed a letter supporting Dr Bawa-Garba and more than 10,000 have signed a petition backing her.

They say that it would set a dangerous precedent if she were to be struck off from the register, arguing that the doctor previously had an unblemished career.

Mr Justice Ouseley said before the appeal hearing began he fully understood that 'obviously this is tragic case all around and we fully understand that'.

After hearing evidence from both sides Mr Ouseley said the judgement would be reserved until a later date.

'Our thanks to both of you,' he said. 'Extremely well argued on both sides.

'We will give you our judgement in due course.'

At the hearing Ivan Hare, QC, representing the GMC, said the case makes for 'grave reading' and there is 'great deal of interest in these matters.'

He said the MPTS 'got it wrong', adding: 'The exercise of judgement by the MPTS is simply incorrect.'

Mr Hare told the court: 'In the briefest of outlines at the relevant time Dr Bawa-Gerba was working as a registrar, she had just returned from maternity leave.

'The patient was a six-year-old boy who was born with a number of health conditions.'

Jack, who had Down's Syndrome and a known heart condition, was described as a popular student who attended a mainstream school and was a 'happy and energetic child.'

'He had been unwell the night before, when Jack arrived he had been unresponsive and limp - despite efforts to resuscitate him Jack died at 9.20pm,' said Mr Hare.

'We say this is a fundamentally and very straight forward case, we are not inviting the court to pour over the transcripts.

'It is simply a case where we say the Medical Practitioners Tribnal Service went behind the findings of the crown court - they regard her culpability as substantially reduced.'

Dr Bawa-Garba failed in her appeal against conviction at the Court of Appeal earlier this year.

Mr Hare said: 'The judge had correctly directed the jury that the prosecution had shown that the defendants treatment was exceptionally bad.'

Referring to the judge who sentenced the doctor, Mr Hare said: 'For what it is worth - and I do not say that with any disrespect - Mr Justice Nicol in his sentencing remarks was clear that the inevitable outcome in her conviction would be the end of her career.'

Sean Larkin, QC, representing Bawa-Garba, said the MPTS are 'well used to dealing with cases that end in fatalities'.

But he said that every case is different and should be treated as such.

He said manslaughter is 'one of the wider offences that is capable of being committed.'

Mrs Adcock is at the hearing today, pictured, and said the doctor has 'never said sorry' for her son's death

'And the GMC accept in there submissions and sanctions each case is different,' he said.

He questioned if there were errors made because Bawa-Garba was she was 'simply being lazy or not bothered'.

'Mr Justice Nicol has said that this was not the case,' he added.

'What we have in this case is a good and safe doctor who was good and safe up until this incident and was good and safe for the many years after the incident.

'One has to ask why this good and safe doctor made these errors on this day, and we submit that the systemic failures are relevant.

'We submit that this did not go behind the jury's finding.'

Mr Larkin said: 'We submit that the tribunal properly followed what they were required to do.

'There is no definition of what upholding public confidence means - we submit that public confidence does not mean public opinion.

'Public opinion may change, different regulators may have different approaches.

'Decisions may be made that are controversial, decisions may be made that people do not like - that does not mean that the confidence in the system is undermined.'

He added: 'Of course there are cases in which one can say the behaviour of a doctor is so egregious that it must result in an erasure.'

'This case has attracted some publicity and there was this letter to the Times on Tuesday and a comment from the patient's mother that she had not received an apology.'

Mr Justice Ouseley interrupted and said that that would be dealt with at a later stage in the hearing.

Mr Larkin said: 'I am simply explaining that an apology has been made - I have no doubt too little to late but it has been made.'

Speaking after the hearing, Charlie Massey, chief executive of the GMC, said: 'The court has reserved judgement in this case and we await the outcome.

'At the heart of this case was the sad death of a six-year-old boy, Jack Adcock who did not receive the care he should have.

'We would like to recognise how difficult this entire process has been for his family.

'This has been a tragic case and we acknowledge the strength of feeling expressed by many doctors.

'Our decision to appeal the doctor's suspension was not taken lightly.

'We would stress that cases such as this, where a doctor has been convicted of gross negligent manslaughter, are extremely rare.'

Speaking after the hearing, Jack's mother said the whole ordeal has taken a huge toll on their lives, adding: 'Everyone has suffered.'

Jack, left and right, had Down's Syndrome and a heart condition and was admitted to hospital in February 2011 with sickness and shortness of breathing. He then suffered a septic shock but treatment was stopped for two minutes after Dr Barwa-Garba confused his case with the other child's

Dr Barwa-Garba attended the first day of the hearing today with her husband and hugged a member of the public gallery as she took her seat in front of Jack's parents in the packed courtroom.

Earlier this week more than 700 doctors protested against attempts to strike off Dr Bawa-Garba, The Times reported.

In a letter to the newspaper, healthcare professionals said the General Medical Council's pursuit of Dr Bawa-Garba ignores the role short-staffing played in the tragedy.

They also claim that the case could lead to a 'climate of defensiveness' where doctors would be scared to admit to mistakes.

Jack's mother Nicola previously said she was 'disgusted that doctors are all sticking together' and defending Bawa-Garba, who was given a two-year suspended sentence.

She's never been held accountable for what she did,' added Mrs Adcock. 'She hasn't gone to prison, she hasn't been struck off.

'Never once did she ever say sorry to us, she showed no remorse, nothing.'

Speaking on the eve of the case, Mrs Adcock added: 'Hundreds have signed this letter. I don't care if I have to stand up against thousands of them.

'They will not intimidate me, they won't patronise me or make me feel I shouldn't be there.

'I will do whatever is necessary for my son, and to stop parents having to go through the sort of thing my family has gone through.'

The GMC argued that the healthcare profession in the UK will be damaged if a doctor convicted of manslaughter is allowed to continue working.

Charlie Massey, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, told MailOnline: 'We have a clear responsibility to maintain the public's confidence in the medical profession.

'That is why we must act in cases where a truly exceptional degree of negligence  the very high threshold set in the criminal law for gross negligence manslaughter  has been established, as was the case with Dr Bawa-Garba.'

Jack, who lived with his parents and younger sister Ruby in Glen Parva, Leicester, was said to be a 'lively and energetic' boy who attended a mainstream primary school.

But on February 18, 2011, Jack showed symptoms of diarrhoea, sickness and breathlessness and was admitted to hospital's children's assessment unit.

Although he had sepsis and urgently needed antibiotics, Dr Bawa-Garba - originally from Nigeria - wrongly diagnosed him as having gastroenteritis and failed to look at an X-ray for over three hours which showed he had signs of the highly dangerous infection.

Nurse Isabel Amaro, pictured, was previously struck off after receiving a two-year suspended sentence for gross negligence manslaughter around Jack's death after providing 'truly, exceptionally bad care'

She also did not review 'seriously abnormal' blood tests results which showed the youngster was suffering organ failure and later allowed him to be mistakenly given medication usually used to treat high blood pressure.

That evening Jack suffered septic shock and a 'crash call' went out to medics to revive him only for Bawa-Garba to call off CPR because she mistakenly believed there were instructions not to resuscitate him.

Efforts to help Jack were halted for up to two minutes until the junior colleague picked up the mistake but by then it was too late.

Mother-of-two Dr Bawa-Garba was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of manslaughter by gross negligence in December 2015 but was given a 24-month jail term suspended for two years after she said she was sole carer for her five-year-old son who is disabled.

She said her husband, who lives in Dubai and works in aviation, would not be able to care for her autistic son and has no right to work or claim benefits in the UK.

Portuguese agency nurse, 47-year-old Isabel Amaro, of Manchester was also given a two-year jail terms suspended for two years for gross negligence manslaughter.

The court heard the pair had provided Jack with 'truly, exceptionally bad care' in the hours before his death.

Amaro, 47, was previously struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for failing to give Jack proper care over a seven-hour period.

The Court of Appeal hearing, in front of Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Ouseley, continues.
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The full horror of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour has been laid bare in newly colorized pictures released on the 76th anniversary of the assault.

In just 90 minutes, more than 2,400 US servicemen and civilians lost their lives while 17 ships were damaged or lost - dragging America into the Second World War and forever changing the course of the conflict.

The pictures here show the wrecks of the USS California, which sank after being hit by two torpedoes and two bombs, and the USS Oklahoma, which was holed by four torpedoes and capsized.

Others reveal the damage done on shore as Navy fighter planes were blown up without the chance to take off and hangars set ablaze during the surprise assault.

Newly colorized images have brought home the full horror of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the 76th anniversary of the assault (pictured, the USS West Virginia, which was hit by seven torpedoes)

In just 90 minutes more than 2,400 Americans lost their lives and seventeen ships were damaged or lost. Of the sailors who perished, more than half were killed when the forward magazine of the USS Arizona exploded (pictured, damaged ships)

The attack initially proved a huge success, allowing the Japanese to expand rapidly into the Pacific and south east Asia, but ultimately saw the country defeated by America (pictured, the USS Shaw after two bombs penetrated its forward magazine)

The devastation left behind after the attack was bleak, but only three ships were permanently destroyed. Among them was the USS Oklahoma (pictured here, covered by smoke). Also pictured here is the USS California, which was sunk by later raised

Pictured right is the keel of the USS Oklahoma which was hit by five torpedoes, the last two of which struck above her belt armor and caused her to capsize

Of the 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged. Almost none were ready to take off to defend the base when the attack started, and just eight managed to get airborne during the attack.

Of the sailors killed, almost half died when the USS Arizona exploded after its forward magazine was hit by a shell.

Despite the devastation the Japanese left behind, 14 of the 17 damaged ships returned to service later in the war. The Arizona, the Oklahoma and the USS Utah - a training ship - were the only ones to be permanently destroyed.

The attack was part of a campaign of Pacific expansion undertaken by Imperial Japan that was intent on carving out an Asian empire to rival those of Europe.

Clearing the US base on Hawaii was seen as vital to capturing the Philippines, Guam, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong from the Americans, British and Dutch.

Airmen watch helpless as fighter planes burn after being destroyed without the change to take off. During the entire attack, just eight aircraft managed to take off, six of which were credited with shooting down at least one Japanese

An aircraft hangar on Ford Island burns after the attack. Of the 404 American aircraft at the Hawaii base, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, almost all of which were on the ground

View from the other side: Japanese sailors wave at their pilots as they prepare to launch the surprise assault

Japan used 354 planes launched in two waves to devastate the US Navy. Here, some of those planes prepare to take off

While the plan initially led to huge gains for the Japanese, making an enemy of America would eventually prove to be their downfall as the territories were recaptured, and the war eventually ended with nuclear bombs being dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Admiral Hara Tadaichi summed up the Japanese result by saying: 'We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war.'

The photographs are the work of Cardiff-based British electrician, Royston Leonard, 55, who painstakingly added color to the images: 'The photos show what was an island at peace hit by the horror of war.

'They are a reminder that no matter how much you want peace it can be taken in a moment. I've been colourising pictures of Pearl Harbour for quite some time now, it's a project that's been ongoing for over three years now.

'I think the key message to take from the photos is to never take peace for granted and always be ready. If they had been ready at Pearl Harbour the loss of people and equipment might've been less.'
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Fearless photographers risked their lives to get the perfect shot in Hawaii by perching precariously on the edge of a huge volcano with red-hot molten lava spewing at their feet.

The two snappers were spotted balancing on the precipice of Mount Kilauea, on the Big island of Hawaii, while lava of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit ran like rivers of fire beneath them.

The daring duo, who ventured far away from the public viewing area, were spotted by photographer, Joseph Anthony, who saw them from the base of the volcano - the lava ocean entry point - during a boat trip.

Two snappers were spotted balancing on the precipice of Mount Kilauea, on the Big island of Hawaii, while lava of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit ran like rivers of fire beneath them.

The daring duo, who ventured far away from the public viewing area, were spotted by photographer, Joseph Anthony, who saw them from the base of the volcano - the lava ocean entry point - during a boat trip

The pair risked their lives in a bid to get the perfect picture by venturing far away from the public viewing area. The shelf below them was previously part of a cliff that had already collapsed

The 44-year-old said he was shocked to see that the photographers had put themselves in such great danger, especially with the edge of the cliff being so unstable.

He said: 'A little along from them a whole section of the cliff had collapsed into the sea which pushed the viewing area for the public further away along the coastline.

'Also the shelf beneath them was previously part of the cliff and that also has obviously collapsed.

'The "firehose" as it is called is the lava from an underground tube finding a weak spot in the cliff which causes it to burst out and fall like a waterfall.

'This can happen anywhere including right under the photographer's feet and it is totally unpredictable. Witnessing the "firehose" with the photographers next to it was an unexpected bonus of the trip.

'Even the boat captain was excited at seeing this event. He ranked it as one of the most amazing he had ever seen and he has been going for many years. Where they are standing is technically completely forbidden.

Anthony, who snapped the photos of the pair from a boat, said he was shocked to see that the photographers had put themselves in such great danger, especially with the edge of the cliff being so unstable

Anthony said the photographers were standing above the 'firehose', where lava found a weak spot in the cliff and bursts out like a waterfall. The photographer said that 'anything can happen' at the 'firehose', because the land is 'unpredictable'

Kilauea Volcano is on the US Geological Survey's 'Watch list' and continues to erupt at its summit and from the Pu'u O'o vent on its East Rift Zone

'There is a rope barrier surrounding this section of the cliff and the public viewing area is quite a long way from where this activity took place. So they took their lives into their own hands by choosing to hike there.'

Kilauea Volcano is on the US Geological Survey's 'Watch list' and continues to erupt at its summit and from the Pu'u O'o vent on its East Rift Zone.

The lava does not, however, pose a risk to nearby communities.

The volcano is a shield volcano so called as its shape resembles a warriors shield. It is primarily made up of fluid lava flows and has been constantly erupting since 1983.

Photographer Anthony, who was born in Nigeria but grew up in the UK and is currently living in Hong Kong, said capturing the images was extremely difficult as he had to balance on the boat as it got very close to the molten lava.

He added: 'It was a very intense shoot indeed. I was totally exhausted at the end as it is quite a physical work out having to balance on the rocking boat while also photographing in low light with various cameras.

The volcano is a shield volcano so called as its shape resembles a warriors shield. It is primarily made up of fluid lava flows and has been constantly erupting since 1983. Its lava, however, does not pose a risk to nearby communities

Photographer Anthony, who was born in Nigeria but grew up in the UK and is currently living in Hong Kong, said capturing the images was extremely difficult as he had to balance on the boat as it got very close to the molten lava

Anthony said the pair who risked their lives hiked a 'long way' from the public viewing area, so they 'took their lives into their own hands'

'The boat gets very close to the lava entering the ocean and this creates turbulent water with rocks flying around as the lava comes into contact with the water. So getting the shots was a huge technical challenge in these conditions as it is a violent shooting environment.

'The experience of seeing molten lava up close is a visceral one which leaves a major impression on you. The sheer intensity of the heat when you get up close to the lava is an incredible experience and one not to be taken lightly.

'There are clues as to the state of the ground under your feet. It can be disconcerting when you suddenly see the ground popping.

' Literally fragments of old lava bouncing off the surface is a clue that there is pent up pressure beneath the surface which can break out at any time.

'Also the texture and even sound changes underfoot are clues you should pay closer attention to where you decide to take your next step as it could be your last.'
A pro-ISIS hacking group has threatened a massive cyber attack on governments and armies around the world starting with 'the cursed Unites States' tomorrow.

Electronic Ghosts of the Caliphate declared in an ominous video to its enemies: 'We are the hackers of ISIS. We will face you in a massive cyber war.'

The video features a distorted voice saying in Arabic: 'We will penetrate the websites of governments, military ministries, companies and sensitive global sites.'

It shows tomorrow's date as the voice says: 'The first goal is the cursed United States, the head of the snake. Black days you will remember.'

Asked if the threat was credible, one expert told MailOnline: 'It's impossible to say for certain because we never know what's next with ISIS.'

A pro-ISIS hacking group has threatened a massive cyber attack on governments and armies around the world starting with the US tomorrow

One screenshot from the video shows tomorrow's date with the caption: 'Black days you will remember'

The Electronic Ghosts group is one of four which joined forces in 2016 to create the United Cyber Caliphate which was dormant until 24 November.

Raphael Gluck of monitoring group JihadoScope told MailOnline: 'With the exception of hackers like the now-deceased Junaid Hussein, ISIS' level of hack has been very low.

'The United cyber caliphate claims to be hacking social media accounts but what it's really doing, if anything, is taking control of some very dormant accounts from 2012 or something like that. These accounts have older and shorter passwords so are easier to hack.'

Gluck said it's unusual for groups to name the date of their attack and suggested the video posted on Monday was an attempt to 'project a great threat.'

He added: 'The other week an anti ISIS group called a "hack ISIS" day for November 17. This turned out to be a bit over hyped but it might be the reason behind them naming a date.'

Electronic Ghosts of the Caliphate declared in an ominous video to its enemies: 'We are the hackers of ISIS. We will face you in a massive cyber war'

The group is threatening to penetrate websites including government and military

The increased cyber threat comes as ISIS collapses in Iraq and Syria.

Yesterday the chairman of the US Senate Homeland Security Committee said: 'This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace.'

US national security officials told senators that the collapse of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has not diminished the group's ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet.

Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center, told a US Senate committee: 'Unfortunately, we don't see ISIS' loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks.'

'ISIS' capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of homegrown violent extremists,' Shiao said.

The US-led coalition estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 ISIS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014.

The US-led coalition estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 ISIS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria

ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say 'the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight.'

Yet 'the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations,' said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict.

As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire 'stray dog' attacks by vulnerable people.

Senators questioned the security officials about US efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists.

They described an evolving threat including ISIS' ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process.

The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message.
A desperate father who handed over $15,000 for his son's drug rehabilitation claims the bizarre treatment facility almost killed him because it was nothing more than a money-making front for Scientology.

Melbourne father Colin Harold paid for his son Brad's treatment at the Narconon Drug Treatment Centre in the state's north-east, not knowing it was linked to the controversial church of Scientology.

'I asked them straight out, I said 'do you make your students in any way shape or form, conform to Scientology, and they said no,' Mr Harold told A Current Affair on Thursday.

Brad, who was a heavy user of ice and GHB, said the centre 'brainwashed' him and tried to convert patients to Scientology.

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Melbourne father Colin Harold paid for his son Brad's (pictured together) treatment at the Narconon Drug Treatment Centre in the state's north-east, not knowing it was linked to the controversial church of Scientology

Two weeks in, Brad begged his father to take him home.

'He looked me in the eyes seriously and said "Dad you've got to get me out of here",' Mr Harold said.

The secluded rehab centre in the Yarra Ranges, east of Melbourne, is a drug treatment program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology.

The centre, which has no medical professionals on site, reportedly uses unorthodox treatments including making patients sweat in the sauna for hours on end, yell at inanimate objects and watch the movie Alice in Wonderland on repeat.

When Brad was admitted to the facility, he claims he was forced to go cold-turkey while confined to an 'isolation cottage'.

Professor at National Drug Institute Nicole Lee said going off drugs cold-turkey was incredibly dangerous.

'When someone's heavily dependent on drugs, withdrawal from those drugs can be quite dangerous and life threatening,' she told A Current Affair.

'Brad (left) looked me in the eyes seriously and said 'Dad you've got to get me out of here',' Mr Harold (right) said

Narconon (pictured) in the Yarra Ranges, east of Melbourne, is a drug treatment program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology

Mr Harold claimed the centre tried to 'brainwash' his son.

Mr Harold claimed the facility demanded he pay for Brad's treatment in cash, and made him sign his Centrelink payments over as well.

Mr Harold claimed the facility took advantage of him and his son when they were at their most vulnerable.

Brad, who was made to give up drugs cold-turkey, suffered excruciating stomach pains and was rushed into surgery two weeks into his treatment.

Mr Harold claims the facility demanded he pay for Brad's treatment in cash, and made him sign his Centrelink payments over as well

Narconon said all incoming students were informed the centre used a program developed by Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology

He also fell into a state of psychosis.

'With Narconon, Brad could've died with the way they treated him and they didn't care,' Mr Harold said.

Narconon told Nine News all incoming students were informed the centre used a program developed by Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

The centre said it was a not for profit organisation and its focus was on the safe treatment of drug addicted patients.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Narconon for further comment.
The life story of the first Allied pilot to score aerial kills against the Germans in World War II has been detailed in a new biography.

Wadysaw Gnys first fought for his native Poland when it came under attack from Nazi Germany, and later joined both the French and the British Royal Air Forces.

Gnys has been credited with shooting down the first two German aircraft of WWII, during an attack on Krakow in September 1939.

Hero: Wadysaw Gnys, credited with making the first aerial kills in the fight with Nazi Germany during World War II stands in front of his Spitfire V WX-F with Polish checker at RAF Heston

When Poland fell to the Nazis, Wadysaw - known as Wadek to friends and family -fled to France where he joined the French Air Force.

However, come July 1940, after the French surrender, Gnys was forced to flee again and soon arrived in Liverpool, UK. During his time with the RAF he fought in the Battle of Britain and during the invasion of Normandy.

In August 1944 , Gnys was shot down in Normandy and captured by German forces. Despite his injuries, which included a bullet in his liver that he carried with him until his death, he escaped from a POW field hospital.

He was found by French resistance fighters and survived his ordeal, moving to Canada with his British wife Barbara at the end of the war.

'Ironically his life was spared by the enemy on more than one occasion,' his son Stefan W. C. Gnys, who has authored the biography of his father says.

Starding off: Gnys, second left, is pictured ready to board a plane for a jump at the end of a fighter course in Grudziadz, 1934

Fighting for the Allies: Gnys is second from left in the back row of this photograph of the Polish Fighter Squadron, RAF Leconfield, September 4, 1940

Beginnings: Gnys, centre, is pictured age 21 during military training in winter at Torun 1931-32

General Sikorski shaking hands with Lt Bursztyn, while S-Lt Gnys raises his arm in salute, ready for the handshake

Brave: Gnys, pictured during one of his first parachute jumps in flying school in Grudziadz, 1933, fought for Poland, France and the UK during WWII

Life story: Gnys is pictured Skiing as part of military training in the Tatra mountains, Poland

Fleeing: Gnys and fellow Polish pilot Jan Blazejewski are wearing civillian clothes to try not to be noticed by Gestapo agents in Bucharest, Romania, October 1939.

'He carried a bullet in his liver for fifty-six years, from 1944 to 2000 when he passed away.'

'Fifty years after the invasion of Poland, he was reunited with the German Stuka pilot who attacked his squadron in September 1939.

'The two former enemies shook hands in the summer of 1989, reconciled their differences and became friends until their deaths.'

The book follows Gnys' life from his childhood in rural Poland, through to flying for three Allied forces and and commemoration as a national war hero.

After the war: Gnys with his British wife Barbara and their two sons; Stefan - who has written the biography of his life, and Haydn, in 1950

Fighter: Gnys in the winter of 1930, just before he joined the Polish Air Force, left, and right, the cover of the book about his life

Memories: Gnys is pictured reminiscing later in life

'The question arises as to why our father was historically unique, because there were many other Polish fighter pilots who saw more action and had more victories than he did,' added Stefan.

'The obvious answer is that he was credited with shooting down the first two German aircraft of the war and half a century later making peace with the Stuka pilot who killed his captain and almost himself.'
Gordon Ramsay is renowned for barging his way into restaurants and changing its fortunes with a mixture of expertise and explosive rants

Gordon Ramsay is renowned for barging his way into restaurants and changing its fortunes with a mixture of expertise and explosive rants.

In a new series, he took on Sandra Dee's Barbeque and Seafood joint in Sacramento in typical fashion - stripping down the menu and revamping the decor.

But the owner decided to shun all of the celebrity chef's recommendations, reverting back to her old ways.

Filming for the new Fox show, Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back, was filmed on Friday and Saturday.

With a similar concept to his Kitchen Nightmares show, he is drafted in to improve a struggling establishment.

The show's own synopsis states the Brit goes 'through hell in order to bring failing restaurants back from the brink of disaster'.

On Friday, he sat at the diner which is known for slow-cooked tri-tip, spicy fried catfish and crispy hush puppies and has been established for 20 years.

He arrived in disguise and sat down to eat dressed as a bearded construction worker.

Steve Walker, a Sacramento-based real estate agent who was eating at the time, told the SF Gate: 'He pulled off his beard and started ranting about everything that was terrible.'

In a new series, he took on Sandra Dee's Barbeque and Seafood joint in Sacramento in typical fashion - stripping down the menu and revamping the decor

On Friday, Ramsay sat at the diner which is known for slow-cooked tri-tip, spicy fried catfish and crispy hush puppies and has been established for 20 years

Tatiana Johnson, the owner's daughter, was a little more blunt with her assessment, saying: 'He was arrogant and an a**hole.'

The owners did not 'fully understand' what they had signed up for, and had no idea Ramsay was part of the deal.

Ramsay and his team spent the next 24 hours sprucing up the restaurant's decor and cutting down the menu before inviting Friday night's diners back on Saturday.

The new menu only featured three entrees - pulled pork, seared trout, and smoked chicken - one dessert of banana pudding and a handful of sides and appetizers.

Walker said the new menu was 'surprisingly limited' but 'pretty good'.

The furniture was stripped from the restaurant and replaced with wooden tables and chairs and the wall-of-fame of famous diners was also taken down.

But in spite of his expertise, Johnson has decided to go back to what she knows best.

The furniture was stripped from the restaurant and replaced with wooden tables and chairs and the wall-of-fame of famous diners was also taken down

Pictures of clebrity diners including Lil Wayne are being prepped to be put back on the wall, and the decision has delighted some regulars

While the featured Creole cuisine, which originated in Louisiana, is known for it's generous use of Cayenne, paprika and pepper, Ramsay said too many spices were used.

'I definitely think he misunderstood this type of food,' Johnson said.

'He was saying everything used too much spice. I don't think he has that type of taste palette.'

The pictures of celebrities including Lil Wayne are being prepped to be put back on the wall, and the decision has delighted some regulars.

In a Facebook post, Sandra Dee's regular Paul Imagine expressed his worry that that Ramsay had turned the spot into 'another overpriced hipster d-bag restaurant'.

But others suggested a fresher look is what was needed at Sandra Dee's.
An Australian mother-of-two is lucky to be alive after a horrific moped crash put her in a Thailand hospital.

Shani and her partner Sam were riding through the popular tourist destination when she had to swerve quickly to avoid a parked car, sending her into the path of a truck.

'She went flying and was knocked out. Sam was sitting in the street holding her and screaming, it was very traumatic,' Shani's friend Renee told Seven.

An Australian mother-of-two is lucky to be alive after a horrific moped crash put her in a Thailand hospital

Shani (right) and her partner Sam (left) were riding through the popular tourist destination when she had to swerve quickly to avoid a parked car, sending her into the path of a truck

The crash occurred earlier this month on a narrow street in Phuket. Sam had surprised his 24-year-old girlfriend with a trip for her birthday.

The Canberra couple were hoping to see elephants in a nature reserve near the city.

Shani is now bed-ridden in a Thai hospital, suffering from bleeding to her brain, a broken pelvis and nose and severe lacerations across her body. Thankfully, both she and Sam were wearing helmets.

"She's scared as you would be in a country where you know no one but your partner," Renee said.

"He's obviously beside himself.'

Shani is now bed-ridden in a Thai hospital, suffering from bleeding to her brain, a broken pelvis and nose and severe lacerations across her body

Her medical bills have currently risen past $14,000, and she may require a medivac to fly home and see her children in time for Christmas. The medically-assisted transport would cost $80,000.

A GoFundMe page has been created to help the young family receive the care she needs and help them reunite in time for the holidays.

'Shani's two beautiful little boys just want their Mummy and Sam back home,' the campaign's creator Sarah Howard wrote.

She has recently been slipping in and out of consciousness, but doctors found no new bleeding on the brain and are hopeful of recovery.

They do not know when she will be medically cleared to fly home should they not use a medivac.

You can help Shani by donating to her GoFundMe page here.
One person is dead and five others injured after a teenager allegedly went on a rampage through a Perth suburb.

Two people were stabbed, one with life-threatening injuries, in a brawl involving a large number of people outside a McDonald's in Canning Vale.

Both were rushed to hospital after the incident at Livingstone Shopping Centre about 3.15pm on Thursday.

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Two people were stabbed, one with life-threatening injuries, in a brawl involving a large number of people outside a McDonald's in Canning Vale

Just half an hour later a car ploughed into four pedestrians on nearby Eucalyptus Drive in what police believed was a deliberate act

Just half an hour later a car ploughed into four pedestrians on nearby Eucalyptus Drive in what police believed was a deliberate act, according to PerthNow.

A 16-year-old boy was rushed to Fiona Stanley Hospital with serious injuries along with another hurt pedestrian.

Two others were taken to Royal Perth Hospital with less severe injuries.

A 16-year-old boy was rushed to Fiona Stanley Hospital with serious injuries along with another hurt pedestrian

Police confirmed one victim died but would not say whether they were caught up in the brawl or the car crash.

Witnesses said a teenage boy was handcuffed at the scene of the car crash and taken away for questioning by police.

Police said the two incidents were linked.
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The Queen was today presented with a cheeky cake of her and a sailor holding up an 'HMS Me' sign after she officially welcomed the UK's new 3.1billion HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy.

Her Majesty, 91, was seen giggling with Princess Anne when the pair attended the special commission ceremony of the 65,000-tonne vessel, known as Big Lizzie.

At 280 metres long and with an estimated half a century working life, the huge behemoth aircraft carrier is the most powerful warship ever built by the UK.

The Queen, Princess Anne and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones today attended the ceremony along with 3,700 guests in Portsmouth, Hampshire.

She was wearing a purple outfit and arrived on board using a specially installed lift to bring her up to the hangar for the occasion and was shown around by the ship's commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd.

Prime Minister Theresa May had been due to attend today but cancelled amid ongoing talks over Brexit.

Giving a speech today, the Queen said HMS Queen Elizabeth is a 'true flagship for the 21st century'.

Cakes created for the special commission ceremony included a scale model of the carrier and others depicting the Queen and sailors holding up 'HMS Me' signs

The Queen was presented with the cake during the special ceremony in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on Thursday afternoon

The Queen shared a laugh with Princess Anne (centre) and the ship's commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd while she welcomed the UK's new 3.1billion aircraft carrier into the Royal Navy today

The Queen (pictured walking with the ship's commanding officer, Captain Jerry Kyd) today said the huge vessel is a 'true flagship for the 21st century

The Queen was standing next to Captain Jerry Kyd (left) and Princess Anne (right) as she welcomed Big Lizzie into the Royal Navy

The Queen (pictured walking in front of Captain Jerry Kyd) has officially welcomed the UK's new 3.1 billion aircraft carrier at a ceremony today

The Queen (pictured) has today visited the UK's biggest and most powerful warship before she welcomes the 3.1billion HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy

The Queen (pictured) arrived in Portsmouth on Thursday morning to welcome HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy

Her Majesty entered the ship's hangar on Thursday morning and met some Royal Navy members during the famous ceremony

The 91-year-old was smiling while she was being driven to the hangar in Portsmouth, which is the home of Big Lizzie

Wearing a purple outfit, Her Majesty walked into the ship's hangar where she was shown around the the vessel's commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd

The aircraft cost 3.1billion to make and the Queen arrived in Portsmouth on Thursday morning to welcome to ship into the Royal Navy

The 3billion and 65,000-tone HMS Queen Elizabeth was photographed in Portsmouth on the day of her commissioning ceremony this morning

The Queen, Princess Anne and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones are expected to join the 3,700-strong guest list on Thursday

She added: 'The most powerful and capable ship ever to raise the white ensign, she will in the years and decades ahead, represent this country's resolve on the global stage.'

On her arrival, the national anthem was played before the Queen and Anne inspected a guard on parade.

She then received the royal salute as the white ensign was raised for the first time on the flight deck, broadcast into the hangar on large screens.

An audible sigh of relief could be heard from the ship's company as the ensign, initially slightly entangled, opened out fully and flew freely in the wind.

The Queen said: 'We are gathered here in Portsmouth today, just a short distance from HMS Victory, a flagship of our seafaring past and a reminder of the debt we owe to the Royal Navy, which, for more than 500 years, has protected the people of this country and our interests around the world.

'Like HMS Victory, HMS Queen Elizabeth embodies the best of British technology and innovation.

'At the forefront of these responsibilities will be the men and women of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, supported by the Army, Royal Air Force and by coalition partners.

'As the daughter, wife and mother of naval officers, I recognise the unique demands our nation asks of you. I will always value my special link with HMS Queen Elizabeth, her ship's company and their families.

'As you prepare to take this country's message of peace, partnership and prosperities across the seas and oceans of the world, the lord high admiral, the Duke of Edinburgh, joins me in wishing you well in all your endeavours.'

Cakes created for the event including a scale model of the carrier and others depicting the Queen and sailors on parade, including one fainting sailor shown fallen on his face were on show.

The ceremony was organised to commission the carrier into the fleet but the Aircraft Carrier Alliance confirmed that the Navy had formally accepted the ship on Thursday, meaning it had been fully handed over to the MoD.

Her Majesty was wearing a purple outfit and was standing next to Princess Anne and delivered a speech after welcoming Big Lizzie into the Royal Navy

The huge aircraft carrier, which weighs a staggering 65,000 tonnes, could be seen in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on Thursday

The 3.1billion aircraft carrier has become the flagship of the Royal Navy and the Queen today praised the Navy personnel

The Queen's colour flag is paraded in the hangar of HMS Queen Elizabeth during the ship's commissioning ceremony in Portsmout

Royal Navy ratings were photographed in the hangar of HMS Queen Elizabeth during the important commissioning ceremony

The ship's company arrived inside Big Lizzie's hangar ahead of the Commissioning Ceremony in Portsmouth today

Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins sang alongside the Royal Marine band on Thursday morning - just minutes before The Queen arrived

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson also attended to witness the huge vessel being welcomed into the fleet.

He said today: 'It is an honour to witness the crowning moment of an extraordinarily busy year for the Royal Navy that has seen us name the second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, cut steel on the first Type 26 frigates and launch the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

'Our new aircraft carrier is the epitome of British design and dexterity, at the core of our efforts to build an Armed Forces fit for the future.

'For the next half a century both carriers will advance our interests around the globe, providing the most visible symbol of intent and commitment to protect the UK from intensifying threats, wherever they may come.'

'We have been working, the Navy have been working, the Ministry of Defence have been working to get it ready for the last 20 years. This is a very important moment.'

The ceremony finished with the cake representing the ship being cut by the commanding officer's wife Karen Kyd and the youngest member of the ship's company Steward Callum Hui, 17, from Lynton, Devon.

Describing the moment, which is a service tradition, as a definite peak in his short career, he said: 'It will probably be one of the stories you tell your kids'.

The families of crew members of the new aircraft carrier have spoken of their pride in their loved ones.

Able seaman Oscar Russell, 21, of Portsmouth, is the second member of his family to serve on Queen Elizabeth, his great-grandfather Archer Thomas Russell served on the previous Queen Elizabeth in 1921.

AB Russell's father, who was sitting in the stands of the warship's hangar for the commission ceremony, said it was a momentous day.

HMS Queen Elizabeth becomes the UK's largest ship Weight: 65,000 tons

Length: 920 feet

Top speed: Upwards of 25 knots

Flight deck size: 230ft by 920ft - the equivalent of three football pitches

Keeps 45 days worth of food onboard

Is made up of 17 million parts

28 million hours have been spent designing and building the carrier

More than a million feet of pipes inside the ship Advertisement

He said: 'We're so incredibly proud of Oscar. He is probably the only person serving on the ship now to have a relative who was on the last HMS Queen Elizabeth.

AB Russell's mother Dana, 52, of Leeds, added: 'I'm so excited and really proud of him. This is just something to really celebrate. It's the greatest ship in the world. It's an unbelievable experience.'

Petty Officer Peter Snepp, of Gosport, near Portsmouth, was supported by his mother, Linda.

The 38-year-old sailor, who joined the ship's company eight weeks ago as a gas turbine engineer, said: 'This is a huge day for all of us. Days like today are what you join the Armed Forces for.'

Mrs Snepp said: 'This is a one-off. I'm so proud for him being on the ship. He is the third generation of his family in the Royal Navy. It's amazing he is on a ship that's making history.'

Anita Sanders, of Portsmouth, was waiting for her husband Lieutenant Lee Sanders, with his mother and father Colin, 63, and Marie, 63, and their children Nancy, six, and Constance, seven.

She said: 'He joined the ship in Rosyth and he leaves the ship today. He has seen it from scaffolding to where she is today. It's amazing.'

Senior warfare officer, Lieutenant Commander Nick Leeson, revealed the ship's 700-strong company had been undertaking a 'healthy amount of activity' to ensure the vessel was ready for the ceremony.

Lt Cdr Leeson is the officer commanding the royal guard during the ceremony and the Queen, accompanied by Captain Kyd, inspected the front rank.

Captain Kyd described the commissioning ceremony as a 'major milestone'.

He said: 'Building aircraft carriers is not for the fainthearted. There are very few countries who can do this around the world.

'So we should look at our British industry, our designers, all the skills, all the production companies around the country, the shipyards from Devon through to Fife, to the Royal Navy, who have come together to make this happen.

'We should be really proud as a country. This has been a national endeavour. It has just been fantastic - it is really a culmination of all our hard work.'

Queen Elizabeth was shown around the vessel by Captain Kyd (rear right) as she officially welcomed the UK's largest ever ship into the Royal Navy

The Queen was star next to Princess Anne during the commissioning ceremony on Thursday as she welcomed Big Lizzie into the Navy

Ship's company gave three loud cheers for the new ship and Queen Elizabeth II during the commissioning ceremony today

Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Benjamin John Key, CBE RN signs the Commissioning Order certificate for HMS Queen Elizabeth

HMS Queen Elizabeth was pictured undergoing final preparations before the commissioning ceremony in Portsmouth

The flag ship will officially join the Royal Navy in Portsmouth in a ceremony later today which will be inspected by Queen Elizabeth

The 700 crew (pictured) had been busily preparing for its commissioning ceremony before the Queen and a VIP audience

Able Seaman Ellie Smith, left, and Able Seaman Jessica Hewes practiced raising the ensign on the flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth ahead of the official ceremony

This detailed graphic shows many of the different features of the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth and where they are

Set to be the nation's future flagship, the aircraft carrier can be pressed into action for various tasks such as high intensity war fighting or providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

She will also serve as a floating military base for the F-35B stealth fighter jets that will launch from the deck of the vessel to undertake missions.

Lt Cdr Leeson added: 'I will be in the middle of the hangar in front of the 96 man guard, and I will be reporting the guard and speaking to the Queen as she comes to inspect us.

'It is a massive thing of personal pride for me. It will be the first time that I have met the Queen so it is a real honour and a real privilege, and it is the first time I have commissioned a ship into service as well.

'Just to be associated with this amazing ship is a real privilege.'

Asked if the crew had been tidying up ahead of the big day, he said there had been a 'healthy amount of activity', stressing that everyone wanted to 'make sure the ship looks her best on this magnificent day'.

To prepare for the ceremony, the hangar of the aircraft carrier has been cleared and seating installed, as well as screens so that those attending were able to witness the white ensign being raised on the top deck.

Lt Cdr Leeson added of the ceremony: 'It is a big deal, but we are delighted to be on show, we are delighted to be here presenting this magnificent ship to our friends, to our family and to the nation essentially.

This graphic illustrates the Royal Navy's flagships and it shows that HMS Queen Elizabeth is 48,000 tonnes heavier than HMS Invincible

There were frenzied scenes in Portsmouth yesterday as preparations continued for the special event which was attended by the Queen

While some crew were involved in rehearsals, others ensured the vessel was fit for a Queen and her VIP guests on Thursday

The crew seemed relaxed ahead of today's VIP commissioning ceremony on board the 65-tonne vessel in Portsmouth

Commodore Jerry Kyd, captain of HMS Elizabeth, accompanied the Queen along with his Lieutenant Commander Nick Leeson who has commanded the royal guard

Members of the 700 crew have spent days preparing for today's commissioning ceremony with a series of rehearsals

96 members of the crew made up the special guard for the Queen during the ceremony which was supposed to be attended by the Prime Minister

'Since we have been back in our base port of Portsmouth we have really been cracking on with the commissioning preparations, and this last week it has been our sole focus.'

Hoisting the white ensign above HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time will be a day to look back on forever, a young sailor carrying out the honour has said.

The flag is one of the world's most recognisable naval standards and has flown from British warships, boats, bases, and Royal Marine craft for more than 150 years.

Featuring a St George's Cross on a white background and a Union flag in the upper left corner, the White Ensign was raised above HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time today.

Able Seaman Ellie Smith, 20, from Hull said she was excited to be tasked with the job of raising the white ensign.

Able Seaman Jessica Hewes, 26, from Portsmouth, pulled the ropes to hoist the flag while the national anthem was played.

The youngest crew member serving on HMS Queen Elizabeth cut the cake during a ceremony as the ship was accepted into the Royal Navy.

Lieutenant Commander Nick Leeson, pictured, has been in charge of commanding the royal guard during the ceremony

Following today's ceremony, the 65,000-tonne vessel with join the Royal Navy and continue its preparations for deployment with the planned introduction of its F-35b jets during 2018

The ships company of 87 women and 613 men were completing preparations last night - just hours before the official ceremony

Ratings on board the ship performed marching practice in the massive hangar yesterday so they were fully prepared for the event today

The Queen was joined by Princess Anne on board, but Prime Minister Theresa May has cancelled amid ongoing Brexit talks

HMS Queen Elizabeth: Where has she been? The ship set sail from the Rosyth dockyard in Fife this summer. She passed under the iconic Forth Road Bridge before heading to the south of England and docking at Southampton. She has just spent six weeks in the North Sea for sea trials. The boat will soon head to America's east coast for flight trials which will begin in October 2018. Queen Elizabeth is expected to be operational by 2020. Advertisement

As well as the royal party, there were more than 3,000 guests including the crew's family, The Queen and Princess Anne

The Royal Navy ratings were sent through their paces during some last-minute rehearsals on Wednesday, just hours before the huge day in Portsmouth

The aircraft hanger, pictured, should receive the first of its fighter jets during 2018 and the ship is expected to be in service from 2020

The names of some of those involved in building the vessel have been displayed in the hangar in Portsmouth, Hampshire

He was joined in slicing the aircraft carrier cake by the wife of commanding officer, Captain Kyd.

Using a sword, they were watched by the Queen and guests including the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, as well Steward Hui's mother, Pak, and brother, Vincent.

Asked if he is treated any differently as the youngest member of the ship's 700-strong company, he said he is dealt with 'exactly the same as anyone else'.

He added: 'When you are working, you don't really notice that you are under 18.'

The crew have been working to ensure everything goes like clockwork later today in front of the royal guests and VIPs

The white ensign, pictured on Wednesday during a rehearsal, was raised officially today to mark welcome the ship into the Royal Navy

These are the first crew members onboard HMS Elizabeth during her 50-year lifespan and have all played a part in the build up to the ceremony

Inside Britain's most powerful warship At 280 metres long, with a lifespan of half a century and a flight deck of four acres, HMS Queen Elizabeth is Britain's largest and most powerful warship ever built. Here are the facts and figures behind the vessel which will be officially commissioned into the Royal Navy on December 7. The aircraft carrier weighs some 65,000 tonnes and has a top speed of 25 knots Workers were busily loading supplies yesterday ahead of the commissioning ceremony The aircraft carrier weighs 65,000 tonnes and has a top speed in excess of 25 knots.

A number of ship building yards around the country were involved in the build - these include Govan and Scotstoun in Glasgow, Appledore in Devon, Cammell Laird in Liverpool, A&P on the Tyne in Newcastle and Portsmouth.

A total of 10,000 people worked on construction of the ship, made up in sections at yards around the UK and transported to Rosyth, Fife, where it was assembled.

It is the second ship in the Royal Navy to be named Queen Elizabeth.

The ship has a crew of around 700, that will increase to 1,600 when a full complement of F-35B jets and Crowsnest helicopters are embarked.

There are 364,000 metres of pipes inside the ship, and from keel to masthead she measures 56 metres, four metres more than Niagara Falls.

Facilities onboard include a chapel, a medical centre and 12-bed ward, staffed with GPs, a nurse and medical assistants, as well as a dentist and dental nurse.

There are also five gyms on the warship which include a cardiovascular suite, two free weight rooms and a boxing gym.

Regular fitness circuit sessions and sporting activities such as basketball and tug of war are held in the hangar and on the flight deck, with weights and other items stored inside the flight deck ramp.

Captain Jerry Kyd said his favourite part of the ship was the laundry, which he called 'huge and bespokely built'.

There are five galleys on the warship which is where the food is cooked and those on board eat their meals everyday. This includes two main galleys, the bridge mess and an aircrew refreshment bar.

The distribution network on board manages enough energy to power 30,000 kettles or 5,500 family homes.

Its flight deck is 280 metres long and 70 metres wide, enough space for three football pitches.

The entire ship's company of 700 can be served a meal within 90 minutes, 45 minutes when at action stations.

Recreational spaces enjoyed by the crew feature televisions and sofas, as well as popular board games including the traditional Royal Navy game of Uckers.

Each of the two aircraft lifts on HMS Queen Elizabeth can move two fighter jets from the hangar to the flight deck in 60 seconds.

The warship has a range of 8,000 to 10,000 nautical miles, and has two propellers - each weighing 33 tonnes and with a combined 80MW output of power - enough to run 1,000 family cars or 50 high speed trains.

The crew is currently made up of 87 women and 613 men. Advertisement
Pope Francis has said he wants to change the interpretation of 'Our Father', the best known prayer in Christianity.

The Pontiff said the Roman Catholic Church should adopt a better translation of the phrase 'lead us not into temptation' in the Italian version of the Lord's Prayer.

He said the current phrasing, which is the same in English and many other languages, suggests that it is God who has a choice to lead us into temptation or not.

New words: Pope Francis said the Roman Catholic Church should adopt a better translation of the phrase 'lead us not into temptation' in the Lord's Prayer, saying it could be misinterpreted

'That is not a good translation, because it speaks of a God who induces temptation',' the pope said in a television interview on Wednesday night.

Francis said the Catholic Church in France had opted for a different phrasing, which worked around this particular issue.

The French translation uses the phrase 'do not let us fall into temptation' as an alternative, which, the Pope said, implies that the fault would be human.

Making changes: The pope says that the French had managed to work around the issue in their translation by using the words 'do not let us fall into temptation'

He indicated that it or something similar should be applied worldwide.

The prayer is part of Christian liturgical culture and memorised from childhood by hundreds of millions of people within all branches of the religion - both Catholic and Protestant.

It is a translation from the Latin vulgate, which was translated from ancient Greek, which was in turn translated from Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

Liturgical translations are usually done by local Churches in coordination with the Vatican.
British businesses are being plagued by so-called 'ransomware' computer hacks mainly emanating from Russia, a new report shows.

More than a quarter of firms in the UK have been targeted in the last year, with nearly half of those paying up to 10,000 to recover hacked files, cyber security company Malwarebytes has found.

Around 10 per cent of firms were deluged with more than 20 attacks in the last 12 months, with the overall cost to the economy estimated at 1billion.

British companies are being forced to hand over thousands to 'ransomware' hackers

Marketing firm WPP, which is behind famous campaigns for Chanel and Virgin Atlantic, was among the companies hit by a widespread attack in June this year

Marketing giant WPP, which is behind famous adverts for Chanel and Virgin Atlantic, and shipping firm Maersk are among the famous companies to have been affected.

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that criminals use to attack computer systems, with hackers demanding the victims pay ransom money to access their files or remove harmful programmes.

The new report by Malwarebytes states: 'Cybercrime has emerged from a nascent threat to an endemic global phenomenon, inflicting vast damage to businesses and individuals.

'Attacks on businesses are growing. The number of attacks recorded in the first 10 months of 2017 has surpassed the total for all of 2016.

'The average monthly volume of attacks is up 23%. Businesses underestimate the extent to which they are targeted.

It continued: 'Ransomware is emerging as the latest tool of choice for cybercriminals. The rate of ransomware attacks, as detected by Malwarebytes, exploded by 289% in 2016.'

In August this year, shipping firm Maersk was hit by attack which cost it up to 200million

Up to three quarters of the attacks come from Russian or Russian-speaking hackers, researchers told The Times.

The scale of the problem was highlighted when the NHS was hit by an so-called WannaCry attack, which affected computers, phones and emergency bleepers in hospitals and GP surgeries

British advertising agency WPP were among a number of companies hit by a widespread global attack in June this year.

It is understood many firms never report the hacks for fears of backlashes from customers.
A council has stamped out the festive spirit at schools after banning children from giving their teachers Christmas presents.

Falkirk Council in Scotland has asked parents not to give their children gifts to bring in for teachers across the area.

But the stringent rules have caused outrage among many, who have already bought presents - and labelled the measures 'an insult to children'.

Falkirk Council in Scotland has asked parents not to give their children gifts to bring in for teachers across the area (file photo)

One of the schools which sent out a letter to bemused parents was the Sacred Heart RC Primary School in Grangemouth.

One parent, who did not want to be named, saw red when she received a pre-Christmas newsletter from her child's primary school last week.

The newsletter stated: 'As we approach Christmas and recognise that children often bring gifts to school for teachers and other staff, we have been asked to share a new policy from Falkirk Council which prevents any employee from receiving gifts.

'We therefore ask that if you or your child wishes to gift anything to staff that this could possibly be in the form of a card. We appreciate your co-operation.'

The angry mother could not see why a pupil should be barred from showing gratitude to their teachers.

She said: 'My son has given his teachers a Christmas present every year he has been at the school.

'I don't see what the harm is - he just wants to show his teacher how much he appreciates the job she is doing and the help she gives him.

'He got quite upset when I told him what the newsletter said and couldn't understand why giving his teacher a present was a bad thing. It's never anything big or expensive, just something thoughtful.'

One of the schools which sent out a letter to bemused parents was the Sacred Heart RC Primary School in Grangemouth

Writing on Facebook, Lizzie Trotter said: 'I've already bought stuff for my son's teachers and I'm still going to hand them in.'

Mary Cameron wrote: 'Falkirk council at its best...its an insult to the children.

And David Millar said: 'My boys are a little old now but this is crazy. If you want to get a wee gift, why not?'

Employees at Falkirk Council have been subject to the ban for a number of years but it is believed that this is the first year that it has applied to teachers.

The move follows general guidelines laid down by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to ensure staff adhere to the highest standards of public service.

Employees at Falkirk Council have been subject to the ban for a number of years but it is believed that this is the first year that it has applied to teachers (file photo)

A Falkirk Council spokesperson said: 'While the sentiment is understood, the council has agreed a policy which sets out clearly that no member of staff working for Falkirk Council should accept gifts or hospitality.

'This policy has been in place for non-teaching staff for a number of years. If any gifts or hospitality offers are accepted then these must be properly recorded and headteachers or service managers should be informed.'

Colin Finlay, Educational Institute of Scotland learning representative, said that the council were complying with the rules laid down by the HMRC.

He said: 'Every time this comes up the council are said to be mean at Christmas but they are HMRC rules and it will be Falkirk Council that fall foul of them if they are breached.

'When it comes to teachers receiving gifts these rules can be difficult to enforce - parents and pupils want to reward their teachers for being good teachers.

'According to the HMRC, gifts to council employees can be perceived to be, on some occasions, something like a bribe.

'Imagine if you had a building control officer getting a bottle of whisky as a gift from a contractor who had just won a contract or for a plan that had just gone through.

'I believe employees must declare any gifts which cost over 12. It shouldn't come into force if you give your teacher a box of chocolates.

'Where it might impact teachers is if a group of parents club together and get a teacher an expensive gift.'

However, a spokesman for HMRC said: 'HMRC does not prevent pupils giving gifts to teachers.'
A mother-of-one feared she was 'disfigured' for life after the lid of her thermal mug 'collapsed' and poured scalding-hot latte on her face.

Abigail Jones was left screaming in 'excruciating' pain earlier this year when the instant latte she made with boiling water hit her skin.

Red welts and blisters covered her chin, lower jawline, neck, chest and six inches of her inner arm after the accident in February.

The devastated mother, from Spilsby, Lincs, was rushed to hospital by her father Roger and feared she would need skin grafts.

Abigail Jones was left screaming in 'excruciating' pain earlier this year when the instant latte she made with boiling water hit her skin

But nine months on, thanks to treatment from specialist burns doctors, Ms Jones's injuries have completely healed.

Childminder Ms Jones, 30, said: 'I couldn't compare the pain to anything else.

'If you get a burn from something like catching yourself on the oven or catching your finger on your straighteners it's a quick, sharp pain.

'This was a very prolonged burn which left me in constant pain, it was awful.

'I was in a lot of shock when it happened, I remember just screaming through the pain and crying.

'At the hospital I asked a doctor the worst-case scenario and he said I might need to have a skin graft.

'That worried me, I was thinking 'I'm going to be disfigured, how are people going to look at me?'

Latte lover Ms Jones had made herself a drink using instant latte powder and hot water, but no milk, which she poured into an old travel mug to take in the car

'It was the emotional as well as physical injuries. I was dealing with.'

Latte lover Ms Jones had made herself a drink using instant latte powder and hot water, but no milk, which she poured into an old travel mug to take in the car.

The mother-of-one took a sip from it in the kitchen before leaving the house and thought she'd pushed the lid down firmly as usual before taking a sip.

Ms Jones said: 'I wanted a coffee in the car so made the drink and thought the lid was on correctly, but it wasn't.

'I like to drink my coffee hot so only left it on the side for two minutes.

'I tipped the drink back and not much came out, but then the lid collapsed on the thermal cup I'd had for years.

'I just remember it feeling very hot and a horrendous burning on my chin which was the most painful part of it all.

Ms Jones's father rushed her to Boston Hospital's A&E department before going to Nottingham Hospital's Burns Unit

'Thank God I was alone in the kitchen. It hit my chest and arm too but they didn't hurt as much as my chin so I instantly went to put cool water on my face thinking 'if I can rescue that part of me I'll be ok'.

'I now know I should have stood in the shower because there were three areas that were damaged and that would have ensured I got cool running water to all areas.'

Ms Jones's father rushed her to Boston Hospital's A&E department before going to Nottingham Hospital's Burns Unit.

How to help someone who is burnt or scalded Move the person away from the heat

Place the burn or scald under cool running water for 10 minutes minimum

If the burn is to a child, larger than your hand, on the face, hands or feet, or is a deep burn, call 999.

Remove jewellery and clothing around the area, unless stuck to the burn.

Cover the burn loosely, lengthways with kitchen film to prevent infection

Don't burst blisters.

Monitor and treat for shock if necessary.

Tell them to seek medical advice. Source: St John Ambulance Advertisement

She said: 'I was given some sort of pain relief at Boston Hospital and the blistered burns on my arm were wrapped in clingfilm.

'I was screaming with the pain on my face - it hurt so much - it was excruciating.

'I was told that it was a superficial burn on my face and that the worst part of the burn was my arm which didn't hurt as much.

'I was told the less a scald or burn hurts the more damage it's done.

'The burn on my arm had gone deeper than skin tissue which is when it's more dangerous.

'On my wrist there was a black mark - it was there that they didn't know if I needed a skin graft.'

Ms Jones was sent home with her arm slathered in a specialist burns gel and carefully wrapped in bandages and after weekly check-ups throughout February she was eventually discharged with minimal scarring.

Ms Jones, who now waits for her coffee to cool before taking a sip, said: 'How my chin isn't really badly scarred I don't know - thank God it's OK. There's just a small blemish left behind which only I can see.

'I'm first aid trained for my job but when it happened I panicked and didn't really know what to do.
A man who arrived at Perth Airport from Bangkok in an airline wheelchair with methylamphetamine stuffed into his pants and an adult nappy has been jailed for seven years.

James Pollock Walden, 31, arrived in Perth on March 10 onboard a Thai Airways flight and was carrying four plastic bags containing meth, which were hidden in his clothes.

He admitted he had the drugs on him when Australian Border Force officers said he was going to be forcibly searched, the WA District Court heard.

A man who arrived at Perth Airport from Bangkok in an airline wheelchair with methylamphetamine stuffed into his pants and an adult nappy has been jailed for seven years

The total weight of meth was almost 800 grams, at a purity of about 56 per cent.

The value of the drugs, if sold in ounces, was up to $293,000 and much more if sold in smaller quantities.

Walden, who is on a disability pension due to cerebral palsy and was living in Thailand before deciding to return to WA, claimed his offending as a drug courier was motivated by a desire to make quick money.

The court heard he had intended to provide the meth to another person in WA, who would more widely distribute the drugs into the community, and Walden expected to receive tens of thousands of dollars in return.

'You were prepared to take the risk of being apprehended when you brought the drugs into Australia,' Judge Mark Herron said.

The judge noted Walden had no prior record, had showed some remorse and had stopped using drugs and alcohol since he was taken into custody.

He also took into account Walden's poor physical and mental health, and the fact that prison would be more onerous for him.

Walden, who pleaded guilty to importing a border controlled drug, was sentenced this week and must serve at least four-and-a-half years behind bars before he can be eligible for parole.
A Hollyoaks actress took to social media to shame smokers who light up right outside the front door of a women's hospital.

Rachel Adedeji, who is expecting her first child in just three weeks, took to Twitter to vent her frustration at visitors who smoke right outside the entrance of Liverpool Women's Hospital which exclusively treats pregnant women and their babies.

The former X-factor hopeful is expecting her first baby with husband and manager Jason Finegan, but says that being forced to walk through a curtain of cigarette fumes every time they go for an appointment or antenatal class is causing them concern for their baby's health.

After her latest appointment, Ms Adedeji took to Twitter to post two pictures -one shows a woman smoking in front of a child, near a sign urging mothers not to smoke.

Heavily pregnant Hollyoaks star Rachel Adedeji posted pictures on Twitter of a woman smoking in front of a child and a 'stop smoking' poster outside the hospital where she is having maternity care

The actress vented her fury at smokers outside Liverpool Women's Hospital, pictured, and said there should be instant fines when people are caught in the act

Another appears to show a woman flicking her cigarette ash onto the floor.

Ms Adedeji, 26, said she was forced to take the drastic measure of shaming the smokers on social media because she felt there wasn't enough being done about the issue.

She said: 'I don't judge anyone who smokes - I've got loads of relatives who smoke - but there's a time and a place. We're outside a hospital solely for pregnant women and their babies, we're not outside a club.

'This isn't me being a ranty non-smoker, I've spoken to a lot of people who feel the same way and the other day I witnessed a man having to waft smoke away from a car seat which he'd brought to pick up his newborn.

'He shouldn't have to worry about that on such a happy day for him. They are right at the entrance of the hospital.

'It is a two or three minute walk from the entrance to the car park to the hospital doors but instead they smoke right outside the entrance even though there are about seven signs warning them not to and pregnant women - and women with babies - are forced to walk through it just to get to their appointments.'

Ms Adedeji even claims she has seen heavily pregnant women in their pyjamas also smoking on hospital grounds.

Ms Adedeji, pictured, is a former X Factor hopeful who is expecting her first child in the next three weeks

She said: 'I've been for three classes there, and several appointments, and every time I've been I've seen people smoking.'

The hospital, which has a non-smoking policy in place, says that there are regular patrols by security staff; however, Ms Adedeji says further measures are needed.

She added: 'I've mentioned it to security staff before but they have seemed reluctant to do anything, but I really think there needs to be something done about it.

'I think there should be fines in place for people who smoke there.'

She added: 'It's such a shame because it's such a good hospital. I don't think there's a better hospital that we could be at and the staff have been great.'

A hospital spokesperson confirmed they were aware of the complaint and that they provide 'clear signage' to enforce their no smoking policy.

Julie King, acting director of nursing and midwifery added: 'We are aware of this complaint and have been discussing the specific concerns directly with the lady who raised them.

'Liverpool Women's has a no smoking policy in place to protect the health and well-being of our patients, visitors and staff.

Ms Adedeji also claimed security were 'watching football' when she reported the smoking

'There is clear signage across the Trust site and at main entrance areas which ask people to respect the policy we have in place.

'We are always happy to consider ways that we could improve how our no smoking policy is implemented.

'However, we are not currently in a position to adopt any stricter measures such as fines and will continue to ask people visiting the site to simply respect the policy that is in place.

'We hope that the increased signage that we have recently put in place across the Trust site will further emphasise the unpleasant and harmful impact smoking on Trust premises has on our patients, including the 8,000-plus newborn babies who pass through our doors every year.

'We will continue to monitor how effective our no smoking policy is in the near future.'
Police who pulled over a Bentley-driving DJ and said it was a 'fact' black people commit more crime were not being racist, an independent probe concluded.

Officers stopped DMO Deejay while he was filming a music video in central London and said it was common practice for black men to be stopped when they're wearing 'gangsta-style clothing'.

Scotland Yard apologised after widespread claims of racism following the incident in Leicester Square at around midnight on January 5.

But the police watchdog investigation found there was 'no evidence the officer's comments were intentionally discriminatory or targeted'.

DJ DMO (left) posted footage online of a policeman (right) telling him 'black lads in gangster-style clothing' were more likely to be committing crime. An independent investigation fopund the incident wasn't racist

Although investigators admitted the officer admitted he was 'clumsy' in the language he used and he has received training.

DMO Deejay filmed himself driving around the West End in his Bentley, where he works in a nightclub.

The footage shows the officer, who hasn't been named, saying: 'This isn't racist. Predominantly, the criminal profile of people who do it are black people.

'So naturally, if we see a car full of black lads, they're maybe dressed in gangster-style clothing or whatever, when they're driving down there, they're getting stopped.'

The DJ often performs at the DSTRKT nightclub in Piccadilly and was near the club in a Bentley GTC he had hired for a promotional video.

He told The Evening Standard earlier this year: 'Once I'd showed him it was all fully legal and insured he started saying most crimes in this area are committed by black people so I am likely to get stopped if I drive through here.'

After the incident the Met apologised and said they understood the 'frustration' caused and referred it to professional standards investigators.

But the officer has been cleared by the police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

An IPCC investigation report said: 'The car was stopped after being spotted changing lanes randomly without indicating, with the top down in the early hours of a winter morning.

'Checks also revealed that the car was registered to a dealership rather than an individual.

'Body-worn footage examined by the IPCC revealed the man verbally accepted the reasons offered by the officers for the stop and did not express any wish to make a complaint.

'A video clip posted online captured a conversation about 'criminal profiling.'

'Body-worn footage showed that this was a small segment of a larger exchange, which went on for about 16 minutes, and the male and the officer appeared to have conversed in a relaxed, friendly and jovial manner throughout.

'The IPCC investigation also applied tests to determine if the actions of the officer were either direct or indirect discrimination.

DMO left his camera recording in the car while he was questioned by the police officers

The DJ (left), who had picked up the car for a promotional video, performs at a nearby club

'It concluded there was no evidence the officer's comments were intentionally discriminatory or targeted, and he had no history or complaints of discriminatory behaviour in the past.

'The lead investigator concluded that the comments made about 'criminal profiling' could constitute misconduct, however, in the context of the entire 16 minute conversation, they did not appear to be directed at the man maliciously and the routine stop was appropriate and not motivated by discrimination.

'Following the investigation the MPS confirmed that the officer had already received management action over the incident and had accepted that his language had been clumsy.'

After the incident, Birmingham-born DMO Deejay said he did not want to complain, but wanted 'other officers to reflect on the footage'.

The footage was viewed thousands of times after being shared on the DJ's YouTube channel.

IPCC operations manager Neil Orbell said: 'Footage of this exchange attracted a large amount of attention and prompted the IPCC to launch an independent investigation.

'Body worn camera footage captured the entire exchange between the police officer and his colleagues and two members of the public in the Bentley vehicle.

'The officer recorded commenting on 'racial profiling' has accepted his comments were clumsy and could easily be misinterpreted and has admitted he has learned from the episode.'
A man waving a Palestinian flag launched an attack on a Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam just hours after Trump announced that the US now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Video filmed by a bystander shows the man using a piece of wood to smash in the windows of the kosher venue in Willemspark, one of Amsterdam's most affluent neighbourhoods, on Thursday morning.

The man was reportedly screaming 'Allahu Akbar' - God is Great - during the attack on the restaurant, which a Dutch Jewish organisation has branded 'an act of terror'.

Shocking: Video footage starts with the man standing outside a Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam waving a Palestine flag

Attack: As two police officers approach him, he uses the piece of wood in his hand to smash the windows of the venue

Video shows how two police officers appear to try to calm him down, but he continues to vandalise the front of the building, before breaking into the seemingly closed venue through the glass door.

The footage from AT5 shows the man, who is wearing a black and white Keffiyeh scarf which has become a symbol of Palestine, emerge from the restaurant with an Israeli flag.

As soon as he comes out again, the two police officers spray him with pepper spray and slam him to the ground.

Amsterdam police said in a statement that a 29-year-old man had been arrested after the incident and that an investigation has been launched.

A spokesperson confirmed to MailOnline that police had arrived at the scene and arrested the suspect within five minutes of being called at around 10.50am.

Violent: Another video filmed by a witness shows the moment he kicks the door down

'Terrorism': The vandalism of the restaurant has been branded and act of terror by the Organization of Jewish Communities in The Netherlands

Police made efforts to speak to the perpetrator and make a non-violent arrest, but were forced to use pepper spray to subdue him.

'We are disgusted,' the Organization of Jewish Communities in The Netherlands said in a statement in response to the attack.

The attack was 'an act of revenge, meant to instil fear, and is no less than an act of terror.'

The 29-year-old, described as 'residing in the Netherlands, has been remanded in custody and charged with criminal damage.

Dutch media has linked the attack to the President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday evening.

Vandalism: The 29-year-old then breaks into the restaurant and comes out wielding an Israeli flag stolen from inside

Taken down: After making several attempts to talk to the attacker, police are forced to use pepper spray to subdue the attacker

Police work: Video footage shows two police officers handcuffing the 29-year-old

Arrested: Amsterdam police confirmed that the 29-year-old has been remanded in custody and charged with criminal damage after Thursday morning's incident

Today, the Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel.

'We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy,' Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

Haniyeh, elected the group's overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the U.S decision on Friday, calling it a 'day of rage'.

The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel already considers the whole of Jerusalem its capital, while Palestinians want eastern Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine state.

Anger: A child holds a Palestinian flag as he chants slogans during a sit-in in the Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, in Beirut, Lebanon as US President Trump's recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday

Response: While these women joined a peaceful protest in Gaza City, Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel

Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

A number of world leaders have been critical of Trump's move, including leading politicians in France, the UK, Turkey and across the Middle East. Both China and Russia have also expressed concern.

The EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: 'The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both.'

The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the U.S. decision, diplomats said.
Japan is considering giving workers ten days off to mark the succession of a new Emperor.

Crown Prince Naruhito will ascend the throne on 1 May 2019 a day after Emperor Akihito's abdication.

If that day is made a national holiday then April 30 and May 2 would also become holidays because a law stipulates that a weekday between national holidays becomes a public holiday.

April 29 and May 3-6 are already assigned as national holidays in 2019.

Japan's much admired Emperor Akihito (right) plans to abdicate on April 30, 2019. His son Crown Prince Naruhito (left) will then ascend the throne. The pair are pictured together in January 2016

Theresa May refused to make Prince Harry's wedding to Megan Markle a bank holiday, saying: 'There isn't a precedent in this area' even though a Bank Holiday was held for the wedding of Princess Anne in 1973

This would give a stretch of ten days off from Saturday 27 April to Monday 6 May, Japan Today reports.

It comes after Theresa May refused to make Prince Harry's wedding to Megan Markle a bank holiday, saying 'there isn't a precedent in this area' even though a Bank Holiday was held for the wedding of Princess Anne in 1973.

There was no Bank Holiday to mark the weddings of Prince Andrew in 1986 or Prince Edward in 1999.

Emperor Akihito's decision to abdicate was announced after a meeting of the Imperial House Council, which included politicians, judicial officials and imperial family members.

Akihito, 83, expressed his apparent wish to step down in 2016, citing his age and health.

Successor Naruhito (right) and Crown Princess Masako wave to Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko leaving Tokyo International Airport for Vietnam in February 2017

Akihito (pictured in November) was 56 years old when he ascended the throne in January 1989 after the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, beginning the Heisei Era. Naruhito will be 59 when he becomes emperor

Japan's Emperor Akihito waves to well-wishers from the palace balcony during a New Year's public appearance in 2017. He will be the first Emperor to abdicate in 200 years `

However post-war legislation had not allowed for abdication, so a one-off law was adopted in June to accommodate the emperor's wishes.

Formal Cabinet approval for the formal date for the process is due on December 8, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

He added: 'I feel deeply moved that the decision was made by the Imperial Household Agency making a major step toward an imperial succession.'

The last Japanese emperor to step down was Kokaku, who did so in favour of his son Ninko in 1817.

Akihito's desire to leave the throne has revived a debate about the country's 2,000-year-old monarchy, one of the world's oldest, and has fuelled discussion about improving the status of female members of the shrinking royal population.

The current male-only succession rules prohibit women from succeeding to the throne and female members lose their royal status when they marry a commoner.

It means that, as it stands, Naruhito's only child, Princess Aiko, 16, will not be able to inherit the throne after her father.

Instead, Naruhito's younger brother Prince Fumihito will become crown prince following Akihito's abdication with his son, Prince Hisahito, 11, then in line to succeed him.

Japanese politicians, judicial officials and members of the imperial family attend a meeting to discuss the issues related to the abdication at the Imperial Household Agency in Tokyo

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pictured arriving at the abdication meeting said formal cabinet approval of the decision is due on December 8

Akihito was 56 years old when he ascended the throne in January 1989 after the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, beginning the Heisei Era. Naruhito will be 59 when he becomes emperor.

The Emperor and his wife Empress Michiko, who was born a commoner, are an elegant, stately pair often seen making visits to disaster victims and carrying out other official duties.

They have also spent much time trying to address the legacy of World War Two, which was fought in the name of Hirohito.

Akihito and Michiko are widely respected by the Japanese public.

'Akihito redefined the job. He wanted to modernise the monarchy and take care of the unfinished business ... and bring the imperial household closer to the people,' said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Japan's Temple University. 'He's been remarkably successful on all fronts.

'He is deeply admired and respected. His moral authority is unquestioned.'

Akihito pictured with his wife Empress Michiko at the Imperial Palace in 2002. The pair are often seen making visits to disaster victims and carrying out other official duties

Akihito meets Theresa May during the Prime Minister's visit to Japan in September this year

Then US President Barack Obama bows as he greets Emporer Akihito and Michiko at the Imperial Palace in 2009

Akihito and Michiko are greeted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2007

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher talks with Akihito and Michiko at the Imperial Palace shortly after the Emperor's ascension to the Japanese throne in 1989

Akihito shares a drink with Bill Clinton during the former US president's visit to Japan in 1996

One of the Emperor's subjects, Taeko Ito, 72, who works as a caregiver, said: 'Both the Emperor and Empress thought tirelessly about the people.

'Now he is elderly and I wish from my heart that he can have a rest.'

Akihito and Michiko, who is the first commoner to wed a Japanese monarch, have worked to reconcile ties across Asia, soured by Japan's aggression before and during World War Two, with numerous visits abroad.

In 1992, the Emperor became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of the war run deep.

During that visit he said he 'deeply deplored' an 'unfortunate period in which my country inflicted great suffering on the people of China'.
Two seemingly happy Canadian backpackers took their own lives shortly after meeting the WA-based leader of a doomsday cult who disappeared a decade ago, an inquest has heard.

The revelations were made at the coronial inquest into one of Australia's most baffling missing person's cases, the disappearance of 45-year-old Gary Felton, who went by the stolen identity Simon Kadwell, his partner Chantelle McDougall, 27, their daughter Leela, 5, and friend Tony Popic.

The Canadian couple, Kirk Helgason and Alixander Fominoff, were in their 20s, and while holidaying went to Nannup in southwest WA to meet 'Mr Kadwell' because they were devoted to his philosophical teachings.

Chantelle McDougall, her daughter Leela, cult leader Gary Felton and flatmate Tony Popic

Warren Sunkar ran a backpacker hostel where the pair stayed, and became friends with them.

He also knew the self-styled new age spiritual leader Mr Kadwell and told the inquest he liked him but wrote his own books about philosophy.

'Kirk and Alixander had similar beliefs to Simon,' Mr Sunkar said.

'They were good, young kids that enjoyed discussing philosophy and ended up becoming really good friends.'

However, Ms Fominoff took her own life back in Canada on July 24, 2007, a week after the four went missing.

A month later on August 26 Mr Helgason and another woman, Christina Arnott, also died of a drug overdose in Massachusetts in the US.

Gary Felton was a self-styled spiritual leader who went by the alias Simon Kadwell

Simon Kadwell and daughter Leela pictured before they disappeared in 2007

Mr Sunkar rejected the suggestion Mr Kadwell was running a 'death cult', saying he liked his beliefs in a 'catharsis' on earth, people 'waking up to what was going on in society', that there was something greater and the system was crashing.

However, the inquest also heard Mr Kadwell did not believe suicide existed, instead writing that people could move between the physical and spiritual realm.

He appeared to be depressed and despondent in his online writing leading up to his disappearance, with the inquest earlier hearing he was planning a suicide pact involving Ms McDougall, Leela and Mr Popic.

A coronial inquest is being held over three days in Busselton this week into what is one of the nation's most unusual missing persons mysteries (Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela)

Mr Felton was described in court as an odd and quiet person who did not have a job, stayed up all night on his computer and slept during the day

Mr Sunkar also described a strange phone conversation with Ms McDougall several weeks before she disappeared when he rang her because he heard a rumour Mr Kadwell had died.

She would not confirm it, saying 'is that what they said?'

Ms McDougall's Nannup friend Eleanor McKie told the inquest Mr Kadwell was controlling and she believed he had brainwashed her, as the previously bubbly Ms McDougall talked about 'not belonging or wanting to be here'.

The police investigation failed to find any evidence of the four, who left a note and told people saying they were going to a commune in Brazil.

According to the passenger manifest, their names were not listed, but Mr Felton reportedly had a history of forging identity documents

The last known movements were known from phone calls made about the time of their disappearance from the Nannup house and Mr Popic's mobile in which trains and buses to Kalgoorlie and Northcliffe were booked under the name Jay Roberts, along with a Perth hostel, taxi and pizza delivery.

Their bank accounts were never accessed and credit cards, furniture and computers and electronic items were left in the house, although clothes were taken and the house had been cleaned.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela pictured before they all went missing
A BBC journalist asked the Mayor of London if being in Pakistan felt like 'coming home' during an interview.

Sadiq Khan, who was born and raised in England, was presented with the bizarre question while visiting Pakistan and India as part of a historic trip.

During the exchange, BBC London reporter Karl Mercer asked the Labour politician if visiting the country felt like 'coming home'.

Within a flash, Khan hit back: 'Home's south London, mate.'

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BBC journalist Karl Mercer asked the Mayor of London if being in Pakistan felt like 'coming home' during an interview

'I'm from south London, mate': The BBC reporter took to Twitter after the exchange to share the Mayor's response to his question

He then added: 'But it's good to be in Pakistan. It's good to come to India, home of my parents and grandparents.'

Mr Mercer has been travelling in the press pack following Khan on his trip to India and Pakistan this week.

Pictured: BBC London reporter Karl Mercer

Footage of the toe-curling exchange was shared on Twitter.

In a tweet which went viral, Dj Artwork wrote: 'Blinder from Sadiq Khan on BBC News just now', in reference to the Mayor's quick-witted response.

A spokesman for the BBC told MailOnline: 'Our reporter asked the Mayor a question in the context of the trip being referred to by senior politicians in the region as a homecoming.

'The full answer the Mayor gave shows he understood the context of the question.'

But others appeared to disagree, including the Beeb's own producer of their flagship political show Newsnight.

Matthew Thompson wrote: 'Yes Sadiq! That question though...!'

While another journalist Rohan Jayasekera added: 'Mayor deals neatly with small pickle spoonful of BBC institutional racism with good grace.'

Khan was born in Tooting and made history by becoming London's first ethic minority mayor after beating Conservative Zac Goldsmith last year.

His parents were born in India and lived in Pakistan before emigrating to Britain in the 1950s.

This week he has broken records by becoming the first Western politician in a generation to make the journey between Pakistan and India on foot.

A spokesman for Khan told MailOnline he is visiting the two countries to promote the message 'London is open for business'.

The trip almost didn't happen after the Foreign Office disapproved of the visit.

'We were advised against going to India and Pakistan on the same trip,' Mr Khan said. 'There are tensions between the two countries, there are diplomatic challenges. The land crossing is symbolic.'

Khan was born in Tooting and made history by becoming London's first ethic minority mayor after beating Conservative Zac Goldsmith last year

Karl Mercer, pictured second from left, has been accompanying Khan on his tour of Pakistan this week

How Sadiq's parents risked their comfortable, middle-class life in Pakistan to 'try their luck' in London

The story of Sadiq Khan is now well-known: the working-class son of a bus driver who excelled in his professional career as a human rights barrister before entering politics in 2005.

As the Mayor of London, Khan has never lived anywhere but the bustling city however for his grandparents 70 years ago, the British metropolis seemed a million miles away.

When the Indian empire was divided in 1947 and the British left, almost 15 million people fled as violence mounted between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.

Pictured: Sadiq, pictured in yellow, with his three older siblings and father Amanullah, left, shortly after the family moved to Earlsfield in London in the 1960s

Caught up in the carnage, were Khan's grandparents. As villages were set alight, women were subjected to horrific sexual violence and more than a million people were slaughtered.

But by the time Khan's mother and father were born, tensions had settled and he said they were far more sheltered from the horrors witnessed by the older generations.

Both sets of grandparents enjoyed comfortable lives near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh before leaving India for Pakistan. The families settled in Karachi where his paternal grandfather was a civil servant.

His parents were wed after his great-grandparents arranged their marriage. His parents, Amanullah and Sehrun, had happy childhood memories with his mother, who lives in south west London now, recalling memories about mango trees.

Family life: Sadiq, centre with two of his six brothers, went to school in south London where he was encouraged by a teacher to practice law

Khan rules out of becoming UK's first Muslim Prime Minister Sadiq Khan today ruled himself out of being Britain's first Muslim Prime Minister, insisting he had no ambitions to move to Downing Street. The London Mayor has been tipped as a future Labour leader ever since he won the race for City Hall in 2016. Speaking to ITV News, he said he had no ambition: 'I never had ambitions in the first place and I've got no ambitions now. I love being the Mayor. 'Why give up a job I love to do a job I don't want. I'm absolutely ruling myself out. Forever.' Diplomatic sources in Islamabad said the mayor's rise from humble beginnings make him 'huge' in Pakistan. He was granted a personal meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi. Advertisement

His parents had three children before his father decided to 'try his luck' in other parts of the Commonwealth, joining the air force in Australia before moving to London in 1968.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, Khan said his father didn't talk about when he first arrived in Earl's Court where signs read: 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs'. He described the period as 'difficult'.

Before long, his father was joined by the rest of the family in London.

Khan described his childhood as 'tough' as he and his siblings were subjected to racism. He took up boxing as a hobby and said it wasn't uncommon to get into fights.

The family lived in a three-bedroom council flat on the Henry Price estate in Earlsfield. In the city, Amanullah worked as a bus driver and Sehrun as a seamstress.

He attended Fircroft Primary School and then Ernest Bevin School, a local comprehensive.

He initially dreamt of becoming a dentist but a teacher recommended that he read law instead, as he had an argumentative personality.

He read Law at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). He practised as a human rights lawyer before entering politics in 2005 where he was elected first time round as the member of parliament for his home constituency of Tooting.

Since becoming a teenager, Khan has always worked and credits his parents for his strong work ethic. He said: 'I was surrounded by my mum and dad working all the time, so as soon as I could get a job, I got a job. I got a paper round, a Saturday jobsome summers I laboured on a building site.'

The family continues to send money to relatives in Pakistan, 'because we're blessed being in this country.'
Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale has admitted breaching the Official Secrets Act by leaving police documents in a car

One of the UK's top police officers today admitted breaching the Official Secrets Act after a large briefcase containing two secret files was stolen from his car.

Former counter terrorism boss Marcus Beale, 54, was given an envelope containing two sensitive documents on 10 May and put them in a locked briefcase in his unmarked police car.

Five days later the case had gone missing from the car on his driveway in the East Midlands in circumstances that have not been revealed.

Beale was suspended from his role as Assistant Chief Constable for West Midlands Police on full pay and was summoned to Westminster magistrates' court.

Today, he pleaded guilty to one count of a crown servant retaining a document or article contrary to their official duty, contrary to the Official Secrets Act.

Much of the detail of what happened to the documents is shrouded in secrecy.

Prosecutor Jane Stansfield QC said the content of the secret files was so sensitive that it couldn't be revealed in full in open court.

ACC Marcus Beale was previously the counter terrorism lead for West Midlands Police

Ms Stansfield said: 'The defendant on the 10 May was given an envelope containing something that he was expecting to receive and that by 15 May, in circumstances I don't propose to go into, the receptacle in which he had placed that document was missing.

'The question then is, this is the nature of the allegation, had between 10 May and 15 May the defendant taken such care to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of the contents of that briefcase as a person in a position could reasonably be expected to take?'

'Because of the nature of the material it has to be dealt with at a very senior level,' she added.

West Midlands Police previously declined to reveal where the theft took place, or whether any police investigations or operations were jeopardised as a result of the security breach.

Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot withheld Beale's address from the public after hearing that he might be a risk due to his role as a counter terrorism officer.

Beale, from the East Midlands, will be sentenced at later today.
A couple had to be towed to safety after Google Maps sent their Vauxhall Corsa along a quad bike track in remote hills in Scotland.

Their Vauxhall ended up deep in a bog in Dumfries and Galloway on Tuesday after following instructions on their Sat-Nav.

The 'cold and muddy' couple had to be rescued by Galloway Mountain Rescue Team who have now issued a warning urging drivers over the festive period to use their common sense and not rely solely on a Sat-Nav.

A couple had to be winched to safety after their Vauxhall Corsa ended up in a deep bog while following Google Maps

One image, taken by the team, shows mud splattered over the front of the vehicle with the front wheels stuck deep in the bog.

Another shows one member of the rescue team standing next to an ambulance wearing high visibility clothing and surrounded by thick mud and coarse grass.

Sharing the pictures on Facebook the rescue team wrote: 'Just after 10pm last night, Galloway MRT were requested by Dumfries and Galloway Police Division to attend to a vehicle that had left the roadway, leaving two people stranded, beyond the Fleet Viaduct.

'The police were concerned for the welfare of the two people, as their given location was not definite.

Galloway Mountain Rescue Team, who rescued the couple, have now issued a warning to other drivers over the festive period

The rescue team came to the aid of the 'cold and muddy' couple who had followed Google Maps

'After an initial search of various forest roads, we located a Vauxhall Corsa deep in a bog on the back of Cairnsmore of Fleet.

'The forest track the vehicle was using turned into a quad bike track.

'Three team members responded in Galloway Lima, our Land Rover, which easily recovered the vehicle with our winch and provided safety for the cold and muddy driver and passenger.

'The two were checked over by team members, and were able to follow Galloway Lima out of the forest and down the main road, where our Police RV point was.

They added: 'Moral of the story: Google Maps are great, but don't always trust them!'
Dr. Eric Fishman of Westmed Medical Group (shown from his medical profile) has been sued by a patient for taking a Spanish test on his phone during an operation

A woman is suing a New York City surgeon who she claims took a Spanish test on his cell phone during her procedure.

Mary Edwards, 70, of Port Chester, who was awake during the outpatient procedure for vascular surgery in September, noticed Dr. Eric Fishman of Westmed Medical Group was distracted and speaking Spanish into his device.

The furious patient filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court Monday, seeking 'monetary damages' from the event she claims caused her severe emotional distress, according to the complaint obtained by the Daily Mail.

Edwards visited the renowned doctor - who has stellar reviews on the medical center's official website - twice this year for her varicose vein problem.

But she was shocked most recently when she saw Fishman fumbling around during her second operation.

The lawsuit notes that the American College of Surgeons prohibits cell phone use during operations.

Mary Edwards, 70, of Port Chester, (shown from Facebook) was alert during vascular surgery in September when she noticed Fishman was using his device

Fishman's office is located inside 3030 Westchester Avenue in Purchase, New York

The patient's lawyer revealed his client was 'in absolute terror' during the September incident, The Journal News reported.

'She had no clue what was going on until after,' Mitchell Baker said of Edwards, who was in a haze at the time.

The woman was told the full story when she asked the doctor what he was doing at the time, and he confirmed he had been taking the Spanish test.

Dr. Fishman told her the time of her operation was the 'only' moment he had free to practice his skills, the newspaper reported.

But the lesson clearly was not urgent - and Baker said: '(There is an argument that) in an emergency (cellphones) can be helpful. But this was no emergency.'

Dr. Fishman (pictured) has stellar reviews on his medical profile. One person even praised his proficiency in Spanish

The elder visited the renowned doctor twice this year to treat her varicose vein problem (an operating room at Westmed is pictured)

Fishman's medical profile notes his proficiency in the language, which many of his patients speak.

The complaint further included that the doctor violated policy previously in April when he discussed a patient's medical condition with another in his office.

Officials at the center have deemed his behavior to be 'inappropriate'.

The group is not permitted to comment further on the instances.

Fishman's profile is shown above. The surgeon received 4.6/5 stars in his reviews from patients

Fishman's office is located at 3030 Westchester Avenue in the hamlet of Purchase.

He received his doctorate degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and has been affiliated with numerous hospitals in New York, his profile page said.

'An excellent doctor. Thank you very much for having doctors of the human & personal quality of *Dr. Eric Fishman & speaks Spanish,' one patient wrote back in July to his reviews section.

Another said in May they thought 'everything was handled well' during their operation.

While one more added in January: 'Dr. Eric Fishman saved my life along with his wonderful staff. God bless all of them.'
Investigators say a 16-year-old girl who was found dead after a Monday night car crash in Waterbury, Connecticut, was shot moments before the accident by her uncle, who was driving the car.

After giving two false stories about how his niece, 16-year-old Evalyce Santiago, died, Dominique Pittman, 27, said that he accidentally shot her after the two got into a fight over their secret sexual relationship.

The warehouse worker was driving when he says Santiago threatened to expose their relationship to his wife, who is Santiago's aunt and adopted sister. Pittman and his wife have three kids together and the rest of the family was unaware about the affair.

At one point, Pittman says the fight escalated, with Santiago reaching into the center console to grab a handgun he had stored inside.

He says the two began to fight over the gun, and eventually he shot Santiago three times - twice in the head and once in the hand.

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Dominique Pittman, 27 (left, in court on Wednesday), says he fatally shot his girlfriend, 16-year-old Evalyce Santiago, in the head Monday night when she threatened to expose their relationship

Pittman was secretly dating Santiago while married to her aunt and adopted sister, who he has three kids with, police say

Pittman says he accidentally shot Santiago Monday night, and then crashed the car he was driving in Waterbury, Connecticut

Pittman sustained minor injuries. Santiago was pulled from the vehicle and pronounced dead

It was at that moment that he veered off the road and crashed the car - wrapping it around a telephone pole.

When police arrived at the scene around 8.30pm, they found Pittman outside the car wit minor injuries. They pulled Santiago from the burning vehicle, and pronounced her dead at the scene.

At first, police say Pittman told them that Santiago's boyfriend, who's name he doesn't know, was in the car. He said that the man shot her and then fled the vehicle.

He later changed his story again, saying that Santiago was accidentally shot after the two got into a fight when she demanded that he loan her money to buy a winter coat.

Pittman eventually copped to being in a relationship with Santiago when police confronted him about the possibility of Santiago being pregnant and finding traces of his DNA, NBC New York reports.

According to court documents, Pittman said he 'last had sex with her around the beginning of November.' Investigators are still determining how long the relationship had been going on for.

Family and friends said they had no idea that Pittman was having an affair with Santiago (left and right)

Pittman appeared in court on Wednesday, when he was officially arraigned on murder charges. He was also hit with weapons charges including carrying a pistol without a permit and weapons in a motor vehicle, murder.

Pittman's bail was initially set at $1million, but raised to $3million on Wednesday when the motivations behind the murder were revealed.

He is due back in court on December 20.

Family and friends were shocked after hearing about the affair in court on Wednesday. At one point, a fight broke out outside of the court house.

Pittman appeared in court on Wednesday when he was charged with murder and his bail was raised to $3million

'He was my son in law. I just want the truth,' Francisco Rivera, the grandfather and adoptive father who raised Santiago said. 'He was dating my daughter and he has three kids with my other daughter.'

'Nobody knows nothing until something happens. That's when we all realize the tragedy. It was under our noses and we didn't see it,' he added to NBC Connecticut.

'I don't believe it. I know his girlfriend and that's not the girlfriend,' Rosara Rodriguez told WFSB. 'His girlfriend's of age and they're all family he's not going to do something crazy like that.'

One of Santiago's friends, Davionna Copeland, said that the teen had recently talked about her uncle and said nothing ever happened between them.

'She was venting to us literally before she died she told us I trust him that's my Uncle I don't think he would do anything,' Copeland said. 'That's really who I grew up with. She said we never did anything it was an incident one time but she still trusted him after the incident.'

'He didnt do it,' said James Murphy, Pittmans co-worker told Fox 61. 'He doesnt get in trouble. He doesnt really bother anybody. It doesnt make sense.'
A coffee chat several years back with cowboy poet and Eastern Montana rancher Wally McRae sealed Alexis Bonogofskys mission.

Bonogofsky grew up south of Billings along the banks of the Yellowstone River, appreciating sandstone bluffs, sagebrush flats, yucca blossoms and Montanas open sky.

The thing is, and weve all heard this before, that folks in other parts of the state and around the West dont always appreciate the plains of Eastern Montana. Bonogofsky wants people to see that the beauty here is worth protecting.

I was working with the National Wildlife Federation on energy issues, and I couldnt get people interested in caring about this part of the state, Bonogofsky said.

She bought her first professional camera in 2013 and started chronicling the people and places in Eastern Montana. More than two dozen of those photos are on display through the end of December at the Downtown Billings Alliance, 2815 Second Ave. N.

Wally McRae always said, Weve got to make people care. I wanted people to see Eastern Montana like I see it. People in Western Montana say its sparse and desolate and that the only thing that is beautiful are the mountains."

This is the second year that Bonogofsky has shown her photographs during the December ArtWalk. Her East of Billings calendars were big hits last week at ArtWalk and she continues selling them on her website, eastofbillings.com or at This House of Books, where they are available for $15 each.

Bonogofsky earned a master's degree in international development at the University of Denver, then worked for the National Wildlife Federation for 11 years as the tribal lands partnerships manager.

After receiving a Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in 2014, she turned to freelance writing and photography. She still manages the family goat and sheep ranch along the Yellowstone River and teaches yoga. She also founded Artemis Sportswomen earlier this year to help introduce women to hunting. Last weekend Bonogofsky hosted an elk butchering workshop on her ranch.

"We want to help people gain the skills they need to hunt and fish. Hunting isn't all about the horns," she said.

With no formal training in photography, Bonogofsky taught herself by finding an interesting spot, setting up the tripod experimenting with the settings on her camera.

One of Bonogofskys favorite photos in the exhibit is a black and white print showing two horses, one of them hobbled but hopping forward to find a new patch of grass to eat. Part of the appeal to Bonogofskys photos is the storytelling behind them. Several photos were taken on Eastern Montana ranches, including the Rocker 6.

"If you take your time and look, that's where life is happening  where the prairie meets the mountains," she said.

One photo shows a woman roping a calf, a rare sight for some folks who are more used to male ropers. Bonogofsky is planning to shoot a series of photos featuring women ranchers, like herself.

Another shot is of two young cowboys, the littlest one with a cowboy hat so big on him he has to peak out under the brim. The two cowboys are part of the Amish colony on the Tongue River near Ashland. Area cattle ranchers value the Amish people and often hire them because they are hard workers and excellent horsemen.

Another photo shows a group of cowboys laughing during branding. Bonogofsky said she wished she had been close enough to hear what was so funny.

To make good pictures, you have to understand what you are seeing, Bonogofsky said. These arent just photos, there are the stories behind them. My goal is to help people see and understand.

The show and sale are a group effort. Bonogofskys friend, Bart Bilden, crafted frames out of deer antlers, old horseshoes, and a weathered fence post. Her mom and sister helped sell calendars and many of her cowboy subjects came in to see the show. Clint McRae, Wallys son, helped hang the photographs.

Most photos are unframed to keep the price down. You can buy a photo for as little as $40 or a calendar for $15, plus shipping costs.

This isnt all about making money. I want people to be able to buy my work.
A high risk registered sex offender who was the subject of a two day manhunt has been arrested by police.

Mago Machol was taken into custody at a block of flats on Canning Street in North Melbourne.

The 27-year-old, who also uses the name Makout Akot, had failed to notify police of his residential address.

Mago Machol (pictured), a dangerous sex offender, was arrested by police after failing to update his current address

After failing to comply with his reporting obligations police released an image of Machol, Nine News reported.

Superintendent Lauren Callaway told reporters Machol had an obligation to tell police of any contact with minors, and inform them of his address.

'He's got violence in his prior convictions and sexual-related offences exacerbated by alcohol and we rate him as a high-risk offender,' she said.

Machol had been convicted of committing a sex offence against a teenage girl known to him in New South Wales in 2011.

He was taken into custody at Footscray Police Station, and faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon.
An entire east German village is up for sale for 125,000 after most of its population moved out to find jobs.

Twelve buildings plus sheds and garages that make up the village of Alwine will be sold by private owners at an auction in Berlin on Saturday.

Only about 20 mostly retired people still live in the cluster of decaying homes in rural Brandenburg state, 75 miles south of Berlin.

An entire east German village is up for sale for 125,000 after most of its population moved out to find jobs

Twelve buildings plus sheds and garages in the village of Alwine will be sold by private owners at an auction in Berlin on Saturday

Only about 20 mostly retired people still live in the cluster of decaying homes in rural Brandenburg state, 75 miles south of Berlin

Residents nervously wait to see who will buy the property as some fear the sale may bring unwelcome changes. Paul Urbanek, 71, said: 'We have been chucked into cold water.'

During World War II, the Hitler Youth trained around Alwine and prisoners of war were incarcerated nearby. Then the Iron Curtain went up and it became part of Germany's communist East.

Until Germany's 1990 reunification, all the property in Alwine, which once counted about 50 residents, was owned by a nearby coal briquette plant, the oldest in Europe.

Several local residents had worked there since the 1960s, said Andreas Claus, the mayor of Uebigau-Wahrenbrueck of which Alwine is a part.

The plant closed in 1991 and many people left.

During World War II, the Hitler Youth trained around Alwine and prisoners of war were incarcerated nearby

Until Germany's 1990 reunification, all the property in Alwine, which once counted about 50 residents, was owned by a nearby coal briquette plant, the oldest in Europe

'Most of the departures were, of course, younger people - the daughters and sons of this place' who moved to West Germany, said Peter Kroll, the district representative, who has lived nearby since 1945. None have come back, he said.

'People had no other prospects here, especially if they were older,' added Claus.

Alwine is not the only such community in eastern Germany, which still lags behind the west in prosperity, wages and jobs, with a per capita GDP that was only 67 percent of that in western states in 2015.

Between 1990 and 2015, the region's population fell by about 15 percent, said a government report this year.

'After reunification, many people moved away for jobs,' said Hildegard Schroeteler-von Brandt, a professor of architecture and urban studies at Siegen University.

'These jobs have not been replaced everywhere in East Germany.'

In 2000, the hamlet was sold to private investors for one 'symbolic Deutschmark,' the pre-euro national currency, Kroll said.

The two brothers who are the current owners did not manage to stop its slide into neglect.

Residents nervously wait to see who will buy the property as some fear the sale may bring unwelcome changes

Paul Urbanek (pictured hear his home), 71, said: 'We have been chucked into cold water.'

Urbanek, who moved there after a divorce in 2010, said he likes Alwine because it's quiet.

But now the roof of his house needs to be replaced, he said, and the electrician doesn't come by anymore.

Except for one family, all of Alwine's inhabitants are elderly.

'I'm retired, my neighbour is retired ... The others are also both retired,' Urbanek noted, pointing across the way.

Given the region's exodus of younger people, 'the ageing process in eastern Germany is progressing much faster than in western Germany,' according to the government report.

Several local residents had worked there since the 1960s, said Andreas Claus, the mayor of Uebigau-Wahrenbrueck of which Alwine is a part. Pictured: Local mayor Andreas Claus

A sign announcing the auction of real estate is pictured in the Alwine splinter settlement of the town Uebigau-Wahrenbrueck

Mayor Claus, who only learned of the sale by reading it in the newspaper, said his town would not seek to buy the buildings.

And Urbanek said it was unlikely that anyone living there would be able to raise the necessary 125,000 euros to do so.

'People in economically underdeveloped areas feel left alone with their problems,' said Claus, voicing a common complaint that has impacted eastern German politics.

During the elections in September, nearly 23 percent of Uebigau-Wahrenbrueck voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, nearly twice the national average.

Now the fate of Alwine rests on the result of the auction.

'Many people are interested,' Matthias Knake of the Karhausen auction house said saying it was the first time they were selling 'an entire village'.

Mayor Claus said he would invite the new owner to the town hall 'to see how we can try to develop something here, in collaboration with the people, and not against them.'

Mayor Claus, who only learned of the sale by reading it in the newspaper, said his town would not seek to buy the buildings
Dramatic dashcam footage has captured the moment police smash into a car of gun-wielding mourners who were seen firing their weapons at a funeral procession.

Officers in Chicago were called to reports of shots being fired from an SUV which had left a funeral service in the West Side Austin neighborhood and was on its way to the cemetery.

They chased the car, ramming it twice, before a foot-chase ensued in a Burger King parking lot.

The four occupants were eventually arrested and it transpired that - between the four of them - they had been arrested 160 previously.

Hillside Police Chief Joseph Lukaszek said Forest Park police alerted his squadron to the group who were driving erratically on Eisenhower Expressway.

Lukaszek told the Chicago Sun Times the procession was 'total chaos,' with passengers hanging out of the vehicles' windows and driving in and out of traffic as they headed toward the cemetery.

Cops located the SUV and fearing it would take off, they made the decision to smash into the rear driver's side panel to stop the car.

'I could see a gun in the driver's hand,' Lukaszek said.

'He was holding the gun in one hand, the steering wheel with the other, and I just thought we have to end it.'

The SUV was attempting to weave through traffic when it was hit the first time, spinning it in the process.

The driver then sped into a Burger King parking lot where it was hit again.

This prompted the occupants to get out and flee on foot, which was captured on dashcam footage.

Dramatic dashcam footage has captured the moment police smash into a car of gun-wielding mourners who were seen firing their weapons at a funeral procession

It is understood the bizarre behavior was gang-related.

The police chief conceded his officers have to deal with problems at funeral processions on an almost weekly basis.

The SUV driver, Marcus Davis, 24, of Chicago, has been charged with aggravated unlawful use of weapon.

His passengers, two men and a woman all in their 20s, were all in police custody awaiting charges.

Cops searched the SUV and the suspects after they had been apprehended and found three handguns with high-capacity magazines and high-impact ammunition.

Nobody was wounded as a result of gunfire in the incident, but a number of officers were treated to injuries as a result of the two crashes.
A gas station in Pennsylvania has installed blue lights in its bathrooms to try to deter drug use.

The Sheetz gas station in New Kensington installed the lights this week.

It is not clear if any drug users have ever overdosed in their bathrooms but local police say they find as many as two a month dead inside gas stations generally.

The blue lights make it more difficult for people to see their veins.

Staff hope it will prevent addicts from injecting opioids on the premises.

The bathrooms at Sheetz in New Kensington where staff have installed blue lights to stop drug addicts from being able to find their veins and inject

'One of our highest priorities at Sheetz is creating a safe and secure environment for our customers and employees.

'The light system in the restrooms at this New Kensington store is designed to help our customers and employees avoid dangerous situations,' a Sheetz spokesman said.

Customers said while it might stop addicts from using Sheetz' bathrooms to inject, it would do little to stop the drugs epidemic sweeping America.

'I don't think it'll work. I can understand Sheetz not wanting it to occur and if that drives them away, fine, but I don't think it's going to do it.

'They'll do drugs everyplace,' Jan Mills Snr, an elderly customer, told WJAC.

Drugs are a growing concern for local law enforcement.

The lights are in use above the sinks in addition to the individual cubicles

The cubicle inside the bathroom is lit with the same lights

The Sheetz gas station is in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Police there say they find two drug addicts a month who have overdosed in a gas station bathroom in the area

In the past year, 179 people in the county which encompasses the town have died from drug use.

It fits with the larger trend of increasing opioid and heroin addiction across the country.

In October, the president declared the situation a nationwide public health emergency.

Like the gas station, libraries and community centers across small towns are also taking steps to combat the problem.

A frightening CNN report earlier this year told how librarians were being trained to act as first responders to take over the role of paramedics when handling overdoses.

They were taught how to administer the life-saving drug naxolone which reverses the effects of opioids.
The teenage grandson of an elderly woman has been arrested after she was found stabbed to death inside her home.

Pauline Farrugia's body was found inside her house in country Victoria on Wednesday morning.

Her 19-year-old grandson was arrested in a nearby town and is being taken back to Melbourne where it is expected he will be charged with her murder.

The teenage grandson of an elderly woman has been arrested after she was found stabbed to death inside her home

Pauline Farrugia's body was found inside her house in country Victoria on Wednesday morning

Ms Farrugia, 67, was found dead just before 11am. She is the mother of five children and a grandmother.

Police were called to her house after she failed to turn up for her regular game of bingo at the Penrith RSL on Monday.

Her car was found dumped in a car park nearby, while her grandson's vehicle was found in Werrington County, a nearby suburb.

The teenager will face an extradition hearing in Melbourne on Friday and is expected to be transported to New South Wales.

She was remembered by friends as a loved member of the community.

'It's very horrible. I couldn't sleep last night. I think about her all the time because she a very very good lady,' Phyllis Miscalles, a friend of Ms Farrugia, told Nine.

The Penrith RSL held a minute's silence for Ms Farrugia on Thursday.
Gary Herbert, the governor of Utah, has waded into the Albama Senate race, calling Steve Bannon a 'Mormon bigot'

Utah governor Gary Herbert has branded Steve Bannon a 'Mormon bigot' after he accused Mitt Romney of using his faith to dodge the Vietnam draft.

Mr Herbert waded into the row between the alt-Right figurehead and GOP stalwart on Thursday amid a highly contentious Senate race in Alabama.

Bannon made his comments about Romney on Wednesday as he stumped for Roy Moore, the alleged sex offender and Republican candidate in the deep-red state.

Romney previously said electing Moore, who has been ahead in polls for most of the race, would be 'a stain on the GOP and on the nation.'

Mr Herbert told KSL Newsradio's 'The Doug Wright Show': 'This smacks of good old-fashioned Mormon bigotry.

'I think that's what Steve Bannon has demonstrated with his comment, is just he's a Mormon bigot. There's more than one way to in fact go out there and do good things for your fellow man.'

Herbert attacked Bannon (pictured) after the former White House chief strategist lambasted Mitt Romney, accusing him of using his religion to dodge the Vietnam War

It comes after Bannon told a Moore rally in Fairhope that the candidate 'has more honor and integrity in [his] pinky finger than [Romney's] entire family has in its DNA.'

Bannon noted that Moore graduated from the United States Military Academy, while Romney received a draft deferment in 1966 for his missionary work in France where he spent two-and-a-half years.

He added, 'You hid behind your religion. You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies.'

Moore looked to be pulling back ahead in the Albama race before Romney's intervention, having regained a lead in the polls, secured the backing of the President, and got the RNC back on side.

Bannon's rebuke to Romney came after he attacked Roy Moore, the Senate candidate for Alabama, who Bannon is backing

But the latest numbers show the race is still anyone's, with a Big League/Gravis poll on December 5 showing Jones up by four, while a Raycom News Network/Strategy Research survey published the following day had Moore up by seven.

The election is due to take place on December 12 and was triggered after Jeff Sessions was called to serve as Trump's Attorney General.

The winner will serve the remainder of Sessions' term, due to end in 2020.
The leader of Germany's main socialist party has called for a United States of Europe by 2025.

Martin Schulz said any countries who disagree should follow Britain's example and leave the bloc.

He made the plea in a speech to 600 of his Social Democrats at a congress to decide whether to start coalition talks with Angela Merkel's party.

Martin Schulz said any countries who disagree with a federal Europe should follow Britain's example and leave the bloc

He said: 'I want a European constitutional treaty that creates a federal Europe'.

The treaty would then be presented to all member states for ratification, with those that reject it automatically leaving the bloc, he said.

He suggested a target year of 2025, one century after the SPD first spoke of a future 'United States of Europe'.

Schulz said only a more united EU could meet challenges such as combating climate change or managing mass migration, forcing internet giants such as Google and Facebook to respect civil rights or stopping large companies from dodging taxes.

'Europe is our life insurance,' said Schulz. 'It is the only chance we have to keep up with the other great regions of the world.'

He also argued that only a strengthened EU would stop the advance of right-wing nationalists, citing gains they had made in Germany as well as Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and the Netherlands.

'If we don't change course, if we don't strengthen Europe in very practical and concrete ways, then these forces will win,' he warned.

The former European Parliament president said the eurozone should have more investment and a common finance minister and budget.

Schulz said that if the SPD ends up again governing with Merkel, Berlin's stance on Europe would have to shift away from the austerity approach of Merkel and her former finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

'God knows that the European Union can't afford another four years of German policies on Europe in the style of Wolfgang Schaeuble,' he said to applause from 600 delegates.
Amazon is using artificial intelligence to learn how we think and shop, while causing job losses and avoiding tax, experts warn.

Despite a lacklustre Australian launch this week, the internet juggernaut will benefit heavily from the data it collects.

Retail expert Brian Walker said Amazon's true goal was to collect information on its customers.

Amazon is using artificial intelligence to learn how we think and shop, while causing job losses and avoiding tax, experts warn (pictured is Amazon's Australian homepage)

Despite a lacklustre Australian launch this week, the internet juggernaut will benefit from the data it collects (pictured is the Amazon Fulfillment Centre)

'Amazon is much more than a retailer, it is a data mining business,' Mr Walker told The Daily Telegraph.

'People are right to think Amazon is a game changer, but it is not because of price. Over time it will use algorithms and artificial intelligence to predict exactly what we want.'

Dr Shumi Akhtar, of the University of Sydney Business School, said the presence of the online retailer in Australia would cost the country jobs in the long term.

'The US retail industry faces growing problems, with nearly a dozen companies pushed into bankruptcy already in 2017 according to Standard & Poor's,' she said.

Retail expert Brian Walker said Amazon's true goal was to collect information on its customers (pictured is the Amazon Fulfillment Centre)

Mr Walker said 75 per cent of Amazon's 1000 hires in Australia were computer programmers.

Meanwhile in the US the internet giant has doubled the number of its warehouse robots, bringing numbers up to 110,000.

Dr Akhtar also warned Amazon was known for its reluctance to pay a fair share of tax, which is why their global headquarters is located in Luxembourg, a tax-haven.

She said the European Union had recently demanded the company come up with $400 million in unpaid taxes.

The Australian Taxation Office said it would employ forensic audits to make sure Amazon is unable to avoid paying its proper share of taxes here.

The news comes as the ATO's third tax transparency report revealed 732 companies paid no tax in Australia in the 2015-16 financial year.

According to the report, Amazon Corporate Services paid $9,079,303 on a taxable income of $30,264,343.

An Amazon spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia: 'Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in every country where we operate.

'Corporation tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits have remained low given retail is a highly-competitive, low margin business and our continued heavy investment.

'We believe that Amazon did not receive any special treatment from Luxembourg and that we paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law.

'We will study the Commission's ruling and consider our legal options, including an appeal.

'Our 50,000 employees across Europe remain heads-down focused on serving our customers and the hundreds of thousands of small businesses who work with us.

'Worldwide we have hired over 350,000 across Amazon and we continue to hire across our Fulfillment Centre network.

'Over time, we will create thousands of new jobs and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Australia.

'We don't have robotic technology in our Australia Fulfilment Centre.'
The mayor of a small city in Florida is in hot water after being arrested on charges of using a deceased person's identification after being caught parking in a handicapped space with a hang tag that didn't belong to her.

According a report by the Bradenton Herald, Mayor Darlene Bradley was arrested on felony charges of using the identification of a deceased person.

Additionally, Bradley was charged with possessing an altered or counterfeit decal.

Bradley, 60, has been Davenport's mayor since 2015.

Scroll down for video

Bradley, 60, was arrested on charges of using a deceased person's ID. She is seen left in her mugshot

While investigating the alleged acts, authorities said that Bradley was spotted placing placard for handicap access on her rear view mirror before leaving her car, and removing it upon returning.

According to the Polk County Sheriff's Office, deputies found two handicapped placards issued to two different victims, one of whom died in 2012 and the other died in 2015.

Bradley is accused of parking with hang tags that belonged to deceased people - she's seen above parking her car illegally

'We expect our elected officials to set the proper example. She not only violated the law, she embarrassed the citizens of Davenport with her illegal conduct,' Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Bradley was released on $2,250 bond.
Police are hunting Ross Ryan, who disappeared from prison during a sentence he was given over a 2008 shooting

A gunman who was jailed for shooting a man in the leg outside his home has gone on the run from prison.

Ross Ryan was handed a 19-year sentence in 2009 for attempted murder after he blasted a 28-year-old man in the Levenshulme area of Manchester.

Police launched a hunt for the 29-year-old today after he went missing from HMP Thorn Cross in Cheshire.

They released a photo of the prisoner and appealed to anyone who knows where he is to come forward.

Ryan was 20 when he was convicted after a jury heard how he fired at a man following a row outside a house in December 2008.

The victim confronted Ross before throwing his bike over a fence. Ross, who was wearing a hood, then fired a gun at his victim, hitting in his upper leg.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said today: 'We are appealing for the public's help to trace a wanted man from Levenshulme.

'Ross Ryan of HMP Thorn Cross is wanted for absconding from prison on Sunday 26 November 2017.'

Ryan went missing from HMP Thorn Cross, where he was in the last two years of his jail term

The spokesman added: 'He is known to have links with the Levenshulme, Openshawe and Reddish areas.

'Anyone who seems him or knows where he is, is urged to call police on 101 at the earliest opportunity.'

Thorn Cross is a Category D jail for prisoners with less than two years less to serve. It has a capacity of 380 inmates.

Anyone with information about Ryan's whereabouts should contact police of anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
Five wilderness study areas left in legislative limbo for 35 years would be released to multiple use planning under a proposed bill by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana.

The 449,500 acres of wild country include the Blue Joint and Sapphire WSAs south and east of Hamilton, the Big Snowies WSA near Lewistown, the Middle Fork Judith WSA south of Stanford and the West Pioneer WSA east of Wisdom.

These lands were to be studied for five years and the findings reported to the president, Daines said in a conference call to reporters on Thursday. We are now 35 years past due on the deadline set by Congress, and action has not been taken. Its paralysis in Washington that has frozen Montanans access and use of their public lands.

Daines bill affects WSAs recommended for non-wilderness designation by both the U.S. Forest Service and local stakeholders. The areas were first put up for wilderness consideration by Sen. Lee Metcalf in 1977. Metcalf died in 1978, and subsequent Montana congressional delegations have mostly failed to agree on legislation that would resolve those proposals. The state Legislature passed a joint resolution in February asking Congress to either confirm or release almost 1 million acres of WSAs.

This is not about whether you are for wilderness or against wilderness, Daines said. Montanans want to see wilderness, but they also want to see less restrictions on lands not designated as wilderness.

Daines said his bill would not affect any existing federal wilderness areas or places the Forest Service had formally recommended for wilderness designation. He added that he didnt include two WSAs targeted by the Legislatures joint resolution because they didnt have local opposition. They were the 151,000-acre Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn south of Bozeman and the 34,000-acre Ten Lakes area north of Eureka.

Wilderness study areas are public lands that may meet the federal Wilderness Act standards of outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation and may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic or historical value.

Federal courts have required the Forest Service to preserve those qualities in WSAs. That has meant enforcing travel plans that restrict ATVs, snowmobiles and bicycles from the area, in keeping with the laws ban on mechanical transport.

Motorized recreation has been largely or completely excluded from these wilderness study areas, said Russ Ehnes of the Great Falls Trail Bike Riders Association. The Forest Service has made decisions based on a desire to comply with interpretations by courts, rather than what uses were appropriate for those areas. Releasing these areas gives all Montanans and Americans a voice in how these areas are managed.

George Nickas of Wilderness Watch said protecting those places from new motorized access was exactly the point of Metcalfs study law.

Basically what the courts have told the Forest Service is you have to preserve presently existing wilderness character, Nickas said. All this talk about how uses have been restricted  they havent been beyond the kinds of uses and levels occurring back then (in the 1970s). The ATVers, snowmobilers, and mountain bikers dont like that. They want to get into these areas.

Ravalli County Commission Chairman Greg Chilcott said the Sapphire and Blue Joint WSAs had been in need of resolution since 1987, when the Forest Service recommended against giving parts of them full federal wilderness protection.

Weve worked very hard to have this issue addressed for nearly 40 years, Chilcott said. Theyre still managed as wilderness, which negatively impacts management decisions in Ravalli County. That affects fire suppression strategies and public access to public lands.

During questions with reporters, Daines said his bill could be necessary to win bipartisan support for another measure Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, has written to halt gold mining in the Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition community director Karrie Kahle disputed the need for linking the two measures.

"We think our delegation can pass legislation to protect our jobs and way of life without creating unnecessary controversy in other areas of the state," Kahle said in an email. "Our legislation has widespread bipartisan support and minimum opposition so it should stand squarely own its own two feet in Congress."

Daines added the WSA bill would also help the Forest Service refocus its public process of land management by giving it a clear congressional answer that those lands should be considered for something other than wilderness, such as timber harvest or multiple-use recreation.

Wilderness Watchs Nickas said that showed Daines true anti-wilderness colors.

Hes on a single-minded mission to minimize wilderness protections everywhere in the state, Nickas said. This bill is a classic example of it. Just because he wore a backpack once upon a time doesnt make him a wilderness advocate.
'When I came into office, I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking.

'We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. All challenges demand new approaches.

'My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

'In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act urging the federal government to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city, and so importantly, is Israel's capital. This act passed congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. And was reaffirmed by unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

'Yet for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law's waiver, refusing to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital city. Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in.

'After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

'It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result. Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver.

'Today I am delivering. I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process. And to work towards a lasting agreement.

'Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this is a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States under President Truman recognized the state of Israel.

'Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

'For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of State and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.

'Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have by the a country where Jews, Muslims and Christians and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

'Jerusalem is today and must remain a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the stations of the cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque. However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

'But today we finally acknowledge the obvious. That Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done.

'That is why consistent with the Jerusalem embassy act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers and planners so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

'In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear. This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement.

'We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

'The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks.

'The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides. In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Above all, our greatest hope is for peace. The universal yearning in every human soul.

'With today's action, I reaffirm my administration's longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region. There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation. This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity.

'Lifting our sights to what is possible, not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach it.

'So today we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts. I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud and diverse. Vibrant and strong.

'But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance and terror.

'Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.

I't is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midsts. It is time for all civilized nations and people to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate, not violence. And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

'So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities.

'And finally, I ask the leaders of the region political and religious, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Christian and Muslim to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.

'Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians and God bless the United States.'
As conservatives continue to grapple with allegations of assault against Roy Moore, the president's former campaign manager on Thursday said that the Alabama Senate candidate is a 'disgusting animal' if he did what he's accused of.

Corey Lewandowski, an ex-Trump aide who's still in the president's orbit, had said previously that Democratic Sen. Al Franken is a 'disgusting pig' for groping women, and he ought to resign.

'Look if what Roy More is accused of he did it, he's a disgusting animal, as well, and he has no right to serve in the U.S. Senate,' Lewandowski said Thursday on CNN.

As conservatives continue to grapple with allegations of assault against Roy Moore, Corey Lewandowski the president's former campaign manager on Thursday said the Alabama Senate candidate is a 'disgusting animal' if he did what he's accused of

The ex-Trump aide who's still in the president's orbit had said previously that Democratic Sen. Al Franken is a 'disgusting pig' for groping women, and he ought to resign

'Look if what Roy More is accused of he did it, he's a disgusting animal, as well, and he has no right to serve in the U.S. Senate,' Lewandowski said Thursday on CNN

In an appearance on New Day this morning, host Alisyn Camerota aggressively pressed Lewandowski to condemn Moore, asking about his claim yesterday on Newsmax TV that Franken is a 'disgusting pig.'

Lewandowski had predicted that Franken, a former comedian who's claim to fame is that he was on Saturday Night Live before winning a contested election for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, would step down today following allegations that he's a serial groper of women.

'Al Franken is finally going step down and do the right thing from the United States Senate because he's a disgusting pig,' Lewandowski told Newsmax as he made the rounds on television promoting his new book.

Franken has copped to at least one of the accusations against him. Moore says he did not sexually assault children.

If the accusations against Moore are true, that would be cause for serious concern, Lewandowski said.

'But they are allegations right now,' he asserted, arguing in the interview that Moore needs to be allowed 'to have his day in court.'

After a heated debate on the topic with Camerota on Thursday, the unofficial adviser to the president agreed that the Republican candidate must own up to what he did if the accusations against him are true.

'One has an accusation and those accusation that needs to be taken very, very seriously. And the people of Alabama need to weigh if those accusations are real, and if so, they need to make that decision at the ballot box,' he said.

'The difference with Al Franken is, there is not an accusation here. We have pictures. We have evidence and an admission of guilt that he decided it was appropriate to grope women while they were sleeping and thought it was a joke.'

Camerota was in disbelief that Lewandowski would call Franken, who has apologized for his behavior, a pig, yet he's supporting Moore.

A tit for tat ensued, with Lewandowski dinging Camerota's New Day co-host Chris Cuomo, who was on set today but was not taking part in the interview, for dismissing the original Franken groping evidence as a 'stupid picture.'

'Come on! You don't think that Chris. thinks -- that he's against groping women? Of course he is,' Camerota retorted.

'Hold on a second, Corey. The picture is Al Franken,' she was saying when Lewandowski finished her sentence with 'groping a woman who is asleep.'

'In the state of New Hampshire, we call that assault,' he stated.

Camerota shot back: 'And what do you call assaulting a woman behind a shopping mall when she's 16 years old? What do you call that in the state of New Hampshire.'

In an appearance on New Day this morning, host Alisyn Camerota aggressively pressed Lewandowski to condemn Moore

'The difference is one is accused of it. One has admitted to it. One is a sitting US senator and guess what, 50 percent of his colleagues have now asked for him to be removed,' Lewandowski told her.

Moore has been accused of inappropriately touching a 14-year-old when he was an Alabama prosecutor in his '30s. Another woman says he sexually assaulted her when she was 16. Other women have claimed that they dated him when they were underage. Moore says none of it is true.

Franken, on the other hand, has apologized for a photo in which he appears to grab a radio host's breasts while she sleeps. Then a comedian, he had a big grin on his face in the photo he says was meant to be funny.

Yesterday, another woman, came forward in The Atlantic to say that Franken had groped her, too, at a Washington D.C. party.

Democratic senators are lining up to say that Franken should resign.

Comparing the two politicians, Lewandowski said Thursday, 'Those allegations need to be taken absolutely seriously. And what Roy Moore has to do is he has to answer to the voters.

'And what Al Franken is going to do finally, which is a real profile in courage, is resign from the U.S. Senate because another accuser, his eighth one, came out yesterday.'
A woman was arrested outside the Ukrainian parliament today, after stripping off to pose with a paddle and the words 'row the f*** away' scrawled over her body.

Her angry message was directed to Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko and his political opponent Mikheil Saakashvili.

Aleksandra Nemchinova, 36, said she was protesting against both men as they were 'ruining the country.'

Fighting back: Femen member Aleksandra Nemchinova, 36, fights with onlookers and a security guard outside the Ukrainian parliament

Protest: Nemchinova, 36, stripped off and posed with a paddle near the Ukrainian parliament

The protest took place at a makeshift 'tent city' campsite of Saakashvili supporters near the parliament in Kiev.

Nemchinova took her clothes off to reconstruct a well-known Russian socialist statue called Girl With An Oar.

But after taking off her clothes she was set upon by security guards who tried to drag her away.

Bystanders tried to help her and she eventually put some underwear on.

She was arrested after police turned up and is now being held for questioning.

Rowing row: After posing with a paddle and the words 'row the f*** away' scrawled over her body, she started fighting with security guards in the tent city

Nemchinova had taken her clothes off to reconstruct a well-known Russian socialist statue called Girl With An Oar.

She said she was protesting against both the president and his political rival

Arrest: Police covered her up and detained her during her protest in a tent camp of supporters of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in front the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev

She is expected to be charged with hooliganism and faces a fine of 300 Ukrainian hryvnia (around 8).

Alisa Vinogradova from the group Femen who were behind the demonstration told MailOnline: 'The woman was arrested last time on November 21st when she staged another naked protest against the President and according to her friends she will continue the struggle.

'Her goal was to draw some attention to the political circus which is being performed by Saakashvili and Poroshenko.

'They both do not care about Ukraine or Ukrainians, they only care about their own ambitions.'

The woman's demonstration follows yesterday's clashes at the site between police and supporters of Saakashvili after officers tried arresting him.

Ukrainian authorities say Saakashvili, a former governor of Odessa who stepped down following a falling out with the Poroshenko has been colluding with Ukrainian businessmen to oust the president.
New York's new Transit Authority president has said that the Big Apple's subway system could learn a thing or two from the London Underground.

Andy Byford, who will take over the job in January after leaving his role as the Toronto Transit Commission's CEO, hopes to solve the current transit crisis in Manhattan.

Years of underfunding and mismanagement has left New York's subway system with rising delays, unreliable service and regular derailments.

New York state governor Andrew Cuomo declared a transport state of emergency earlier this year and pledged $1billion toward fixing the situation.

Andy Byford, who will become New York's Transit Authority president in January after leaving the Toronto Transit Commission, hopes to solve the current transit crisis in Manhattan

Byford, who started his transport career in 1989 as a uniformed station foreman on the London Underground's Bakerloo line, has looked toward the British city for inspiration.

He said that London's improvements in the 2000s could be a lesson for New York's subway, which has 7.7 million daily users..

'I think back to how the Tube was facing these kinds of issues [as New York],' he told the Evening Standard. 'To me it's a good role model as a turnaround.

'I think back to how decrepit some of the Northern line stations were, the Bakerloo line and Elephant and Castle was awful.

The customer service was not where it should have been. 'Every time I go back to the Tube I am amazed.

'I go to the stations and they are bright and renovated. The station staff are incredibly proactive, they look great, they're very helpful, there are lots of announcements on the actual trains and the bus network has gone from strength to strength.'

Years of underfunding and mismanagement has left New York's subway system with rising delays, unreliable service and regular derailments. Pictured above, the Barclays Center subway station

Byford, who started his transport career in 1989 as a uniformed station foreman on the London Underground's Bakerloo line, has looked toward the British city for inspiration. Pictured above, the London Underground's Northern Line

Byford added, however, that he might make some unpopular decisions, including temporarily ending 24-hour service on some lines.

'I think it's great New York has a 24-hour service because it's a 24-hour city, it's vibrant and that's what I love about it,' he said.

He added: 'But at the end of the day, if you want things to improve and you want the service to be more reliable than the operator must get time to do the time-consuming difficult work of progressively upgrading infrastructure.'

Byford told WNYC that once he starts his new role, he'll focus on implementing the Subway Action Plan, a more than $800million effort to overhaul the MTA.

The plan works to get trains running on time, address the overcrowding and update decades-old signals.

Byford was praised in Toronto for speaking bluntly when things went wrong and for taking the subway every day, something he wants to do in New York as well.

In Toronto, he shifted the focus of TCC culture to its riders, a goal MTA has wanted to tackle with better announcements and clearer information about delays and disruptions.

He also brought in new tap cards and saw a drop in delays and fewer track fires.

He also pulled off a 5.3-mile extension of the Toronto's oldest and busiest line that's set to open within a month.
It was a show of force designed to send a shiver down Kim Jong-un's spine - two supersonic bombers flanked by American and South Korean fighter jets, ripping through the skies above the Korean Peninsula.

But the formation was actually short an aircraft, after one of the B-1B Lancer bombers had to abort as it taxied for takeoff because of a maintenance issue, it has been reported.

The incident raises questions over the military's readiness to confront Kim's army should war suddenly break out.

America and South Korea are conducting their largest ever joint air drills near the North this week, including a B-1b Lancer bomber which was flanked by fighters

But the formation was actually one bomber short after the pilots had to stop on the runway at Guam due to a maintenance issue

The breakdown was reported by an Air Force officer who spoke to Fox News on condition of anonymity.

Previous images of joint flybys using Lancer bombers, taken in September, show two aircraft in the formation.

Only around half of the B-1 bombers in the Air Force's inventory are ready to fly, the station reports.

The aircraft were first introduced in the 1980s and now often exceed 10,000 miles of flying time, exacerbating mechanical problems.

A lack of spare parts means the aircraft are also difficult to repair, with mechanics forced to salvage from an aircraft 'boneyard' in California, Fox claims.

Funding cuts have also left the Air Force around 2,000 pilots and about 4,000 mechanics short.

While there is no doubt among observers that America would eventually win any conflict with North Korea, questions have been raised about the military's readiness should war break out unexpectedly.

Previous images of the same formation clearly show two bombers at the front. This picture was taken during similar drills back in September

Questions have been raised in the past over whether America is ready for the sudden onset of war with Kim Jong-un (pictured this week)

In November General Jan-Marc Jouas, the former deputy commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, wrote to Senate Democrats expressing his concerns about a potential war.

Jouas cautioned that it would take days or months for reinforcements to reach the region, leaving 28,000 American troops and 490,000 South Korean soldiers to fend off 1.2million North Korean fighters.

The soldiers would have to contend with artillery and rocket bombardments and should 'expect' attacks with chemical and nuclear weapons as well, he wrote.

One distinct advantage held by American forces is a vastly superior air force which could be used to take out artillery and rocket batteries - but this task would likely take 'days', Jouas said, during which 'a lot of people will die'.

And if North Korean troops advance quickly into major cities in the South much America's air power would be negated for fear of killing civilians with strikes, he said.

'Unlike every conflict since the last Korean War, we will not be able to build up our forces prior to the start of hostilities' because Kim will preempt any attempt to do so with an attack of his own, Jouas wrote.
The Oxford University medical student who was handed a suspended 10 month jail term after stabbing her Tinder date with a bread knife has appealed against her sentence.

Lavinia Woodward, 24, a student at Christ Church, was handed a 10-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months following a trial.

Woodward got a suspended term after Judge Ian Pringle QC said she was 'too bright' for jail and it would end her dream of being a heart surgeon.

She has now applied for permission to take her case to the Court of Appeal.

Lavinia Woodward, 24, (pictured arriving at court in September) was handed a suspended 10 month jail term - she has now applied for permission to take her case to the Court of Appeal

A spokesman for the Judicial Communications Office said: 'Lavinia Woodward has submitted an application for permission to appeal.

'The next stage is for a single judge to consider the application on paper and if permission is granted it then the substantive appeal will be heard in court before three judges.'

The 24-year-old has voluntarily suspended her studies at Oxford for the duration of her sentence.

It means any university disciplinary hearing will not take place for at least 18 months.

It had initially been thought Woodward would leave the university voluntarily.

Her legal counsel, James Sturman, QC, had said she was 'reluctant' to return because she was worried at being recognised.

After the court case Oxford had also suggested she would be subject to a speedy inquiry that could have seen her kicked out of the university.

At other universities and medical schools, students convicted of violent offences who are also drug addicts can expect to be expelled.

But she has now voluntarily suspended her studies, meaning a disciplinary panel cannot rule on whether to expel her until she decides to return.

A source at Oxford University said Woodward could be trying to 'set the terms' of the process so she is looked on more favourably once she completes her sentence.

But they highlighted that she will go through the same rigorous disciplinary procedures regardless of how much time passes.

A friend of the 24-year-old claimed Woodward had the support of a number of senior figures at Christ Church College.

The unnamed friend said she had 'an awful lot of institutional support' and academics recognised her as a 'potential Nobel Prize winner'.

A source at Oxford University said Woodward could be trying to 'set the terms' of the process so she is looked on more favourably once she completes her sentence

They said: 'I think they would be happy to have her back, and that she will end up returning quietly. She's done some very interesting work in cardiology, they've described her as a future Nobel Prize winner.

Woodward is already in conversations to do a DPhil at Oxford, the friend claimed.

But they added: 'There obviously is a safety concern associated with somebody who has pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding being in an educational environment.

'Clearly she's been having help, but it's up to college officials to decide whether it's safe for us for her to come back.'

But Martyn Percy, dean of Christ Church, said: 'I do not think [Woodward] is getting special treatment.'

Woodward (pictured left and right) looked relieved as she left Oxford Crown Court last month with a suspended sentence

Woodward got a suspended term after Judge Pringle described her as 'an extraordinarily able young lady' and said sending her to prison would damage her hopes of becoming a surgeon.

Woodward had pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding earlier this year for stabbing her ex-boyfriend and Cambridge student Thomas Fairclough.

Oxford Crown Court heard she stabbed him in the leg with a bread knife while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Woodward (circled) posed naked with her fellow students to raise money for the university's LGBTQ society

Critics claimed she would have been sentenced differently if she was a man or came from a council estate.

The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) rejected three complaints against Judge Pringle in connection with the case.

A judge must now look at Woodward's application and decide whether to grant her permission to appeal.

Since the trial Woodward is reported to have returned home to her parents' villa in Italy.

She is also undergoing drug rehabilitation which is said to have prompted a substantial change to her character.

The case caused outcry, with critics saying she would have been treated differently were she not a wealthy Oxford student




Taiwo Martins and the infant have been missing from Leyton, east London, since Tuesday 7 November

Fears are growing for a mother, 21, who went missing with her four-month-old baby son a month ago.

Taiwo Martins and the infant have been missing from Leyton, east London, since Tuesday 7 November.

The Metropolitan Police and Waltham Forest Council are 'extremely concerned' for the pair, particularly given that cold weather is forecast.

Taiwo is known to be a practising Ahayahs Witness, a Christian group centered on the USA.

She is described a black female with short dark hair. She around 5ft 6in tall, and of slim build.

She may be wearing a traditional Nigerian head-dress, known as gele, and robes. No image of her baby is available.

At the time of her disappearance she had a black and maroon coloured baby buggy with her.

A council spokesman said: 'We are keen to make contact with Taiwo to make sure that she and her son are healthy, well and safe.'

Anyone with information can contact police on 101 or Missing People on 116000.

Anyone with information can contact police on 101 or Missing People on 116000
Although he didnt testify at his murder trial on Wednesday, Busby resident Dimarzio Swade Sanchez earlier gave conflicting versions of what happened to a Crow Agency woman who died after being strangled, set on fire and abandoned in a field last year.

Sanchez, 20, told federal agents in a recorded interview three days after the April 17, 2016, attack that he had driven the victim, Roylynn Rides Horse, to Dunmore, on the Crow Reservation, where he dropped her off outside a trailer home.

Sanchez also told Theresa Hastings, a neuropsychologist hired by the defense to evaluate him, that he was a passive participant who watched events unfold and that he was afraid.

Sanchez is charged with first degree murder in Rides Horses death and faces mandatory life if convicted.

Federal prosecutors rested their case on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Billings. The defense called Hastings as its only witness before also resting its case.

Prosecutors allege Sanchez, who was driving the car that night, killed Rides Horse by dousing her with gasoline and lighting her on fire along Castle Rock Road, off of U.S. Highway 212 on the Crow Reservation. Fourteen hours later, a passerby found Rides Horse, who was naked, frostbitten and severely burned.

Rides Horse, 28, suffered third-degree burns over 45 percent of her body and died 72 days later in a Salt Lake City hospital.

The defense has argued that co-defendants have lied numerous times to investigators and reached plea deals to save themselves. In addition, Sanchez has fetal alcohol syndrome, functions at a grade-school level and was a follower, not a leader, his attorneys argued.

Audio recording

Testimony on Wednesday included the prosecution playing for the jury an audio recording of an interview Sanchez had with two Bureau of Indian Affairs agents on April 20, 2016.

Sanchez and five others, including two co-defendants convicted in the case, had encountered Rides Horse that night in the Kirby Saloon and had offered to give her a ride home to Crow Agency, the prosecution said. The group, however, ended up on Castle Rock Road where the attack occurred.

In the audio interview the BIA agents, Sanchez said he dropped off others in the group before he, Whiteman and Rides Horse went to Dunmore. There he dropped off Rides Horse outside a trailer, he told the agents.

Hastings testified for the defense about Sanchezs mental status, while the prosecution called its own clinical psychologist as a rebuttal witness.

Sanchez, Hastings testified, told her that Angelica Whiteman, a co-defendant, instructed him to pull onto a dirt road where everyone except him initially got out. He eventually got out but stayed near the car and watched.

Hastings said Sanchez told her three of the girls got into a fight and that Whiteman returned to the car and said she had killed her. He said Whiteman ordered another male to get the gas can. Someone else lit Rides Horse on fire, he told Hastings.

Those two versions also differ from the testimony of other witnesses, who said Sanchez strangled Rides Horse with a bandanna and told his brother and co-defendant, Frank Sanchez, to get the gas can from the trunk of the car and to give it to him.

Whiteman, 24, of Billings, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting first degree murder. Frank Sanchez, 20, of Busby, pleaded guilty to not reporting a felony and to being an accessory after the fact. Both reached plea deals with prosecutors, testified for the prosecution and are awaiting sentencing.

Mental condition

The psychologists also gave differing views of Dimarzio Sanchezs mental condition.

In testifying for the defense, Hastings, a private practice psychologist in Rapid City, South Dakota, described a variety of tests she gave Dimarzio Sanchez and discussed her conclusions.

In general, Hastings said Dimarzio Sanchez was somewhere on the fetal-alcohol spectrum, has problems with reading and communications, was passive, was a follower and is easily led and influenced by others.

Hastings said she thought Dimarzio Sanchez followed directions and tried hard in the testing and did not deliberately try to do poorly to skew the results.

The prosecution's rebuttal witness, Tiffany Smith, a clinical psychologist with the federal Bureau of Prisons in Los Angeles, disagreed with Hastings.

Smith, who had also tested and evaluated Dimarzio Sanchez, said she did not think he was a follower and that while his initial responses were brief, he answered questions appropriately with follow-up questions. Smith also said she thought he intentionally tried to appear worse than he was.
The White House called Alec Baldwin attention hungry on Thursday, after the actor repeated a claim that the first lady likes his Trump impression.

Baldwin made the claim during an interview on Megyn Kelly Today this morning, saying that he heard from 'somebody in the know' that Melania watches SNL and is a fan of his.

'Well I said this before. and I will not throw under the bus who told me this. I won't say who said this. Somebody in the know said to me that Melania loves my Trump and she watches Saturday Night Live and said she watches the show.'

'I wouldn't be surprised she has a good sense of humor,' Kelly responded.

Scroll down for video

Alec Baldwin (left) said on Megyn Kelly Today on Thursday that 'somebody in the know' told him that Melania Trump (right) watches Saturday Night Live and loves his President Trump impression

Trump took over the role of President Trump last year, in the run up to the 2016 presidential election. He has continued to appear almost weekly on the show, alongside Cecily Strong as first lady (the two pictured on the show last Saturday)

This is the second time that Baldwin has made the claim that the first lady loves his Trump impression. The first lady's office denied the claim last month

'She thinks it's very funny,' Baldwin said. 'It made it worthwhile right there.'

This isn't the first time that Baldwin has made this claim.

The actor told the same story in an interview on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show last month.

After that appearance, Newsweek reporters reached out to the White House for comment and got a stern denial.

'That is not true, which is why Mr. Baldwin has no actual names to go with his bizarre assertion,' the first lady's spokesman, Stephanie Grisham, said at the time.

The first lady's office appeared to be more tired of Baldwin's antics when DailyMail.com reached out for comment after his latest interview.

'As I stated last month, the story is false. Mr. Baldwin is desperate for publicity and is trying to get it through self-praise,' Grisham, said.

Baldwin attended the interview with his wife Hilaria and the youngest of their three children, one-year-old Leo.

For a portion of the interview, Baldwin had his one-year-old son Leo on his lap

Little Leo came to the interview with his mom Hilaria, who sat in the front row

Hilaria sat in the front of the audience, holding Leo on her lap while he cried for his father.

At one point, she brought him up to sit on dad's lap but he soon grew antsy and scrambled away.

At times, the interview turned serious, with Baldwin weighing in on the sexual harassment scandals plaguing Hollywood.

Baldwin appeared to be critical of Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, who grilled Dustin Hoffman about decades-old sexual harassment complaints at a panel before a 20th anniversary screening of his film Wag the Dog.

'I just don't want to see people who are innocent get into trouble. Like Weinstein for example, is in rehab hiding behind millions of dollars worth of lawyers, and I want to see the people who really did something get convicted. I wanted the people who are wrong to be punished but I don't want to see innocent people get hurt either,' he said.

Baldwin said he thinks the issues with the claims against Hoffman were a reflection of the time period.

'This was never an excuse, but like 40 years ago, there was a kind of way that people had, a kind of sexualized by-play and a kind of fooling around, that was wrong - you look back and you say it was wrong then - but it seemed to be less problematic than it is now. Where we live now is that there's a lot of things you just don't do anymore,' he said.
Another member of special counsel Robert Mueller's legal 'dream team' is coming under scrutiny, this time for her prior work providing legal representation for the Clinton Foundation.

Jeannie Rhee is a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department, where she worked in the office of legal counsel.

But it is some of her past work as a private lawyer that is now drawing attention, as Republican investigators and outside media turn their focus on members of Mueller's team.

Rhee joined a legal team that defended the Clinton Foundation from a racketeering lawsuit filed by conservative activist Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch.

Jeannie Rhee, a member of special counsel Robert Mueller's team, is coming under scrutiny for her past legal work for the Clinton Foundation

Heading the team was Jamie Gorelick, a partner at the Wilmer Hale lawfirm who has as a client President Trump's son in law Jared Kushner.

CNN reported on the representation in June in a story tallying up political contributions by Mueller's legal eagles.

The Yale Law School grad donated $5,400 to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2015 and 2016, and donated $7,300 to President Obama's presidential campaigns.

She is among multiple members of Mueller's team who made contributions to Democrats, which is not prohibited under FBI guidelines.

Rhee also represented Obama security advisor Ben Rhodes as he negotiated a congressional investigation in connection with the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Rhodes was one of Obama's most trusted advisors.

Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham went after Rhee on Fox News on her show Tuesday night, accusing her and other team members of 'brazen partisanship.'

'What Mueller did was hire a pedigree team of obvious partisans,' Ingraham said. 'They should all step aside,' she continued, 'including Bob Mueller.'

Conservative host Laura Ingraham, pictured here at the Republican National Convention, said on Fox News that Rhee should 'step aside'

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is coming under increased scrutiny

Mueller's team is coming under new pressure following the guilty plea by former Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI on Friday

The scrutiny of Rhee comes after Mueller removed FBI lawyer Peter Strzok from the special counsel's Russia probe after the discovery of anti-Trump text messages he sent in the course of an extramarital affair with another FBI official who is no longer part of the probe.

House Republican lawmakers are also putting Mueller and his team under the microscope.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Robert Goodlatte held a hearing Thursday with FBI Director Christopher Wray, where he brought up the issue.

'Reports on the bias of some of the career agents and lawyers on current special counsel Muellers team are also deeply troubling to a system of blind and equal justice,' said Goodlatte. 'Investigations must not be tainted by individuals imposing their own personal political opinions.'
The University of Wyoming and its police department pressured student journalists to name its source for a story alleging sexual assaults by an unnamed resident assistant, prompting a lawyer to get involved and the school to consider changing its reporting policies.

On Nov. 3, the UW student paper, the Branding Iron, published a report headlined "Number of sexual assault reports increases." The article begins with an allegation that an unnamed resident assistant had been accused of sexually assaulting "girls" in a dorm during the spring and fall 2017 semesters.

The report does not provide sources for that claim, nor does it offer details about who the resident assistant is or in what dorm the assaults allegedly took place.

Chad Baldwin, a spokesman for the university, said Tuesday that the University of Wyoming Police Department had concluded that the claim was false.

"It's a baseless report," he said.

Taylor Hannon, the editor in chief of the Branding Iron and a UW student, said the newspaper was "working on completing the story to further investigate."

She said she and the other editors felt the story was appropriately backed up and "wouldn't have run it" otherwise.

In any case, authorities did not know that the story was apparently rumor at the time it was posted. After its publication, a University of Wyoming Police Department detective contacted its author, according to a letter sent to the university by Bruce Moats, an attorney retained by the newspaper's advisor. Moats also represents the Star-Tribune on some legal matters.

The detective spoke with the story's author, a freshman, in what Hannon described as a setting that was like an interrogation. The author felt very pressured to give the detective information, Hannon said.

The journalist told the detective that she heard the story from another staff member, who told the detective that she'd "overheard the rumor" from another student in a class, according to Moats' letter.

"The reporter was told to go find that student and get her name and number," Moats wrote in his letter to Tara Evans, the general counsel for UW. "The reporter did so, but the student refused. The reporter informed police of the refusal and was told to try again or to give the source the office's number."

In a Dec. 1 editorial calling for more protection for journalists, the Branding Iron said the detective "continued to pressure another staff writer, calling her personal cell several times demanding information regarding a source that (the detective) should have obtained herself as a detective."

The editorial calls for a statewide shield law. Generally, such laws protect journalists from having to give up sources in court or to authorities.

In addition to the law enforcement contact, Nycole Courtney -- the interim dean of students -- emailed the newspaper's advisor, Cary Berry-Smith, to tell her that the students "are to give up (their) sources," according to the editorial.

Hannon said the reporters have a right to protect their sources. But she added that she was not sure if any source had been granted anonymity or confidentiality in the reporting of the Nov. 3 report.

The university and police were apparently pressuring the paper not only out of a desire to investigate the alleged assault but also because they believed the Branding Iron staff were "mandatory reporters," meaning that they were required to report campus sexual assault to the appropriate authorities.

In his letter, Moats wrote that UW's interpretation was incorrect: Quoting the university policy, he said that "every administrative officer, dean, director, department head, supervisor, and all instructional personnel" qualified as mandatory reporters. Students and unlisted employees appear to be excluded.

Baldwin said he would defer to Moats' interpretation. The university's 2015-2016 student code of conduct identifies mandatory reporters as "university officials," then refers to the list included in Moats' letter.

In any case, Baldwin said the university was working to create an exception within its policy for journalists.

"Yes, there is a qualified privilege for reporters that we need to honor," he said. "But also that -- understand when it comes to the health and safety of our campus, were going to be pretty aggressive."

Hannon said she was unaware of the proposed changes to the policy until she read it in media reports on Tuesday.

UWPD Chief Mike Samp told the Star-Tribune that there was no threat of punishment or arrest toward the reporters. Nor did they invoke any First Amendment protections, he said.

"Of course were going to check into that. Our only source of information at the time were those reporters," Samp said. "The conversations from a law enforcement perspective, in my opinion, is they were courteous, they were respectful. Not coercion, not demanding."

Baldwin said that "perhaps" the university went "too far in this case" but that officials took the report seriously. He noted that authorities neither arrested nor threatened any other legal action against the newspaper or its reporters.

"Perhaps we erred on the side of being too rigid there perhaps in this case, but the intent was, 'Listen, lets get to the bottom of what was reported here,'" he said.

In his letter, Moats wrote that the university's response to the original article has already had a negative impact on the Branding Iron's coverage. When a sexual assault was reported on campus last month, "no reporter for the Branding Iron would do the story for fear of being subjected to heavy-handed treatment like the two reporters here had endured," he wrote.

The newspaper instead appeared to copy and paste the university's own release about the assault and publish it on their website. The author of the article is given only as the Branding Iron.
It's no secret President Trump loves a burger but it seems the First Lady also like to chow down on fast food as she rolled up to a Whataburger in Texas.

Melania looked somewhat lost as she stood in front of the counter contemplating her order.

The First lady, along with Second lady Karen Pence, were followed by a motorcade and a hungry press pool, when they stopped at a Whataburger in Corpus Christi.

While the ladies went to order, Melania stared at the menu board, but nothing seemed to catch her eye.

It's unclear, however, just what they ended up ordering for their lunch, as the press pool was not allowed inside the establishment while they enjoyed their food.

First lady Melania Trump and Second lady Karen Pence ordered lunch at the popular Texas chain Whataburger

Perfect day for some fast food: Melania braves the rain, and apparent chill, to chow down inside one of the chain's locations in Corpus Christie

On the bright side the press pool was excited to be brought out french fries from the chain to munch on while they waited.

If the president were there, he would have been sure to get more than just fries. His love of burgers is so pervasive, that on his recent trip to Japan, instead of local fare- he opted for a patty in bun.

In early November, Trump was not photographed in Japan enjoying a hamburger sourced from American Angus beef. He ordered it well done.

While FLOTUS was visiting Whataburger, she and Ms. Pence were touring the state to meet with first responders and victims of Hurricane Harvey, when they decided to stop at one of the chain's restaurants..

The First and Second ladies, who were also accompanied by Gov. Greg Abbott's wife Cecilia, stood at the counter to place their order, while the Secret Service stood outside.

Gov. Abbott, tweeted, 'Looks like @FLOTUS is Texas savvy. She & Karen Pence dined at @Whataburger today with my wife the First Lady of Texas. They are here for ongoing help for #HurricaneHarvey. @TexasFLCA #txlege #TexasStrong.'

Her aide Stephanie Grisham tweeted a photo of Trump ordering her lunch at the counter.

'On our way out of town, @FLOTUS & @SecondLady decided to stop in to @Whataburger for some lunch! The American chain opened its 1st restaurant in Corpus Christi, TX in 1950!' tweeted Grisham, Mrs. Trump's director of communications, along with a photo of the women ordering their lunch.

Eleanor Dearman with the Texas Caller Times shared that the press pool was bought french fries, sharing a snap of the delicious looking fast food treat

CNN's Kate Bennett shared that they received no burgers during the stop. The press pool was not allowed to capture the lunching ladies

Their visit caught the attention of Whataburger, which tweeted, 'Hope it was a great meal! Thanks for stopping by.'

Even the Corpus Christi Police Department took notice, tweeting, '@Flotus knows a good burger @Whataburger.'

And J.R. Hernandez, the chief of staff for Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, tweeted photos from the outing, writing, '@FLOTUS @SecondLady @TexasFLCA @georgepbush obligatory stop at the best burger in America: @Whataburger'

Secret Service stood outside while the First and Second ladies had lunch during the rainy Texas day

Police were also on hand during the motorcade stop at Whataburger where the ladies lunched

It takes a village, to have lunch. Melania and Karen's fast food stop was well guarded

The president is a huge fan of fast food- especially the ubiquitous McDonalds, its been reported his go-to order is not one but two Big Macs

Melania and Karen also traveled to Rockport, Texas, to meet with a family whose home was destroyed in the storm.

They also visited the family's new Manufactured Housing Unit, provided by FEMA, which will serve as the family's temporary residence until they can move into a new, rebuilt home.

Additionally they visited an elementary school and food bank.

During a stop in Coastal Bend, Melania told reporters: 'We are here to lend our support to those who were impacted by Hurricane Harvey,'

She added the White House stands in solidarity with Texas.

'My husband's administration has worked with Governor Abbott to ensure resources are made available to help your community recover from the storm.'

The category four storm ravaged Texas in late August, killing at least 60 people. It destroyed over 40,000 homes and a million cars as well.
Hasna Begum, 25, is accused of savagely killing Pietro Sanna (pictured) at his house in Canning Town, east London

A shop assistant accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend by stabbing him 36 times later 'rubbed out' his social media profiles, a court heard.

Hasna Begum, 25, is accused of savagely killing Pietro Sanna at his house in Canning Town, east London, before washing her blood-soaked clothes at home.

Begum took her ex-partner's phone from his property and in the days following the alleged attack, deleted his Instagram posts, profile picture and changed his username from 'pieztak' to 'sarah654-ty'.

Begum told jurors at Inner London Crown Court :'I don't remember deleting anything on his Instagram.'

Duncan Penny QC, prosecuting, said: 'You did that because you knew he had gone, didn't you?

'You knew he had gone because you had removed him.'

She replied: 'I didn't know he had died. I thought he was going to come and get me.'

Mr Penny said: 'You stabbed him on several occasions. It transpires that he received 36 injuries.

'At the time you are pressing delete, he was lying dead on the bedroom floor with all those injuries.'

'You rub him out by replacing his identity with a different name, and by deleting his photograph. Both of those were conscious decisions.

'Change his name, delete his photograph, because his digital presence had vanished now in the same way as his bodily presence, hadn't it?'

After leaving Mr Sanna's house, Begum, from Millwall, east London, said she put a pair of his trousers and a hooded top over her clothes and went to a clinic.

Inner London Crown Court heard how Begum took her ex-partner's phone from his property and in the days following the alleged attack and deleted his Instagram posts

By the time police arrested her a few days later, her blood stained clothes had gone, the prosecutor said.

Begum replied: 'I washed it by hand. It was dried naturally.

'They were still in the house, I don't remember disposing of them.'

A few days before Mr Sanna's death, Begum had made fake Instagram accounts which she used to threaten a woman she suspected he was dating.

Mr Penny said: 'There's no doubt however you were stalking this girl.'

She answered: 'I was drunk with my friend, I wasn't stalking her.'

The prosecutor said: 'You were tracking her down and threatening her.'

Begum denies murder.

The trial continues.
EU citizens living in Britain after Brexit will be allowed to have family members move and join them, a leaked document reveals today.

Britain will also accept EU judges' rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution, for an as yet unspecified period.

The document also supports Theresa May's call for an agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit.

But it contains no mention of how long EU citizens living in Britain might have any recourse to the European Court of Justice - a continuing sticking point in the Brexit talks.

Senior MEP Guy Verhofstadt has been a major player in the Brexit talks, representing the European Parliament and warning the deal must be acceptable to MEPs before it agreed

Senior MEP Guy Verhofstadt has been a major player in the Brexit talks, representing the European Parliament and warning the deal must be acceptable to MEPs before it agreed.

The draft resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement Theresa May was about to sign on Monday before objections. A final version of it could be voted by MEPs as soon as next week.

The draft, revealed by the Reuters news wire, has since gone back into negotiations after Mrs May's DUP allies rejected working on the Irish border.

It goes into more detail on citizens' rights, notably on issues where London had been resisting MEPs' demands.

These included that 'core family members and persons in a durable relationship currently residing outside (Britain) shall be protected by the Withdrawal Agreement and that this is also the case for children born in the future and outside (Britain)'.

Britain, which does not grant its own citizens automatic rights to bring in foreign spouses, had sought to apply that to EU citizens after Brexit and also wanted to deny rights to British residence to any children born abroad after Brexit.

Britain will also accept EU judges' rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution, for an as yet unspecified period.

Britain has also, according to the draft, accepted that EU citizens can 'export all exportable benefits' as defined by EU legislation after the country leaves the European Union.

And it has 'accepted the competence of the (ECJ) in relation to the interpretation of the Withdrawal Treaty'.

'Citizens' rights will be guaranteed through a declaratory, light touch, proportionate procedure, consisting of a single form per family,' the resolution stated.

The measure appears to be a compromise over UK plans to charge around 70 per head for settled status - equivalent to getting a Birtish passport.

MEPs are still pressing for the procedure to be free.
The soap actress who married one of Britain's most notorious prisoners has delivered a petition to Downing Street campaigning for his freedom.

Paula Williamson, 37, a former Coronation Street and Emmerdale actress, wed Charles Bronson, who has spent 41 years in jail, in a ceremony inside Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire last month.

Today she handed in a 20,000-name petition calling for her new husband to be moved to a lower security jail.

Charles Bronson's wife Paula Williamson is joined by her husband's lookalike as she hands in a petition calling for him to be moved onto a lower security wing at Downing Street today

Ms Williamson says her husband is no longer a danger and should be given a chance to show it

The petition states: 'Charlie and his supporters ask that he be taken off Segregation and transferred to a catagory A or B prison and reintroduced into general population. Only then can he prove that he really is a changed man.

'He is no longer "Britain's most dangerous inmate" but a man who has found true love and who ultimately wants to help steer others away from a life of crime.'

Bronson, 64, is currently serving a life term for taking a prison art teacher, who criticised his work, hostage for 44 hours at HMP Hull.

Ms Williamson was joined by Bronson lookalike, Timothy Crowley, as she handed in the petition, due to go before the Ministry of Justice, in to Downing Street today.

She was joined by Bronson lookalike Timothy Crowley to hand over the petition today

The couple had been together five months and met just four times when the former armed robber popped the question in February.

Despite insisting that she was marrying Bronson for love and not publicity, Miss Williamson was driven to the wedding by a Bronson look-a-like and with a documentary crew in tow.

Conjugal visits are banned in British jails so the couple will not be able to consummate their marriage.

Instead Miss Williamson, who has previously revealed Bronson wants to become a father, has declared she is 'willing to wait'.

Asked if she believes he will one day be released she insisted: 'Yes, yes I do.

'I have to otherwise it would be a bit silly getting married to him if I didn't ever believe we were going to have a life outside. I 100 per cent believe that he's going to be out.'
Mrs Grant told doctors not to prolong her life because she feared 'degradation and indignity more than death'

Even the best laid plans can go disastrously wrong.

Brenda Grant was a considerate woman who had given a lot of thought about how she wanted to die.

She wanted to make sure her family didnt have to worry or care for her if she was incapacitated, and could get on with their lives.

Sadly, Brenda went through a living hell. After suffering a stroke which left her unable to talk, walk or swallow at the age of 81, she was kept alive, fed through a tube directly into her stomach, her hands encased in mittens after she tried to rip it out in protest.

Brenda was treated like a premature baby or a vegetable.

In spite of her family begging for this inhuman treatment to end, so she could die with dignity, doctors at the George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton persisted with this torture for 22 months.

Brenda had seen her own mother lose her quality of life and independence through dementia and was determinded that she wouldnt be a burden on anyone.

She feared degradation more than dying, and wrote a detailed document setting out that if she lost the ability to make her own decisions, she did not want her life prolonged.

Sadly, that living will was lost by the teams who so cruelly kept her alive, and it finally came to light when Brenda was re-admitted to the hospital from a nursing home.

Only then, was she allowed to die.

When her devastated family took the hospital to court, they received an apology and and 45,000 in settlement.

The money is an insult and no apology can repair the mental torture thats been inflicted on this family.

The hours spent visiting someone who didnt want to be alive. A person who had tried so hard to do the right thing by making very detailed plans.

Brenda and Brian Grant at their golden wedding anniversary with their children Kim, Gary and Tracy

How often do we hear the words lessons will be learned- just imagine if it was your mum, your sister or your best friend lying there incoherent and incontinent.

How dare doctors inflict life-prolonging treatments that offer nothing except ticking a box?

Death is a difficult subject, but one that Brenda had thought about and prepared for, unlike the majority of us.

Were bombarded with stuff that claims to extend out lives, from face creams to supplements, to clean eating regimes.

But the bitter truth is, they are of limited use - the stark reality is, we cant avoid dying. There comes a time when- no matter whats in the bank, what exercise regime you religiously followed and in spite of the thousands of steps counted each day- our body will shut down.

That will be it - finito.

Never mind about planning a gorgeous funeral, choosing the hymns, the Bryan Ferry track you always loved, ordering your best mates to turn up in bright colours, and chuck wild flowers on your eco-friendly wicker coffin or paper shroud, what will the actual experience of dying be like? The bit before the funeral show.

Brenda Grant, pictured, suffered a stroke in 2012 that left her unable to walk or talk and made a living will telling doctors not to 'prolong her life', only for staff at George Eliot Hospital, in Nuneaton to lose the document

Its something I think about a lot, having sat with friends and relatives during their last few hours.

Often, they bear no resemblance to the person you cared about, heavily medicated, ranting, having visions, settling scores and talking gibberish.

Dont buy all that crap about peace, once the medics start handing out heavy duty pain killers, the dying person is transformed, and not necessarily in a pleasant way.

Death can be undignified, messy and humiliating, especially in an NHS hospital or care home, where inmates wait for the rattle of the pill trolley or the stench of lunch.

In those circumstances, wouldnt you rather say hello to death sooner, rather than later?

Dementia is now the UKs biggest cause of death, overtaking heart disease - which means that over 70,000 people will die this year and not really understand what is happening to them.

Brenda Grant at home with her daughter Tracy, just after she was born

Its a shocking thought, and one that should spur us into setting out our wishes in Living Wills, also known as advance directives.

These documents are legally binding if witnessed, signed and dated, and tell medical staff what you want to happen when you are no longer able to make decisions for yourself or communicate your wishes any longer. You can specify that you no longer want treatment, even that means you will die, and make it clear when you want those wishes to come into force.

People spend far too long tinkering with their wills - I must have revised mine every few years, removing ex-husbands and friends as they fall out of favour, but I have failed to write a Living Will. It should be compulsory by law, and placed on our health records, the minute we can vote, ie become an adult.

Copies should be placed with doctors, family members and anyone important.

If you care about living life to the full, then be sure to plan a decent death, a quick death not some medically-prolonged artificial fake existence.

Death is too important to be handed over to the macho-medics in white coats.
A man who had just been released from jail on Tuesday was arrested again after he set off a fire extinguisher inside a Kentucky jail.

Jose Antonio Rojas called authorities to report that he had been robbed at gunpoint while at a US Bank. But when Hopkinsville police officers reviewed surveillance footage, they determined that he was lying.

Shortly after that incident, Rojas allegedly went to Jennie Stuart Medical Center and claimed he was robbed by people who had chased him around in the hospital.

Jose Antonio Rojas (right) who had just been released from jail on Tuesday was arrested again after he set off a fire extinguisher inside a Kentucky jail

Rojas was allegedly involved in a series of incidents that led up to his arrest for disorderly conduct on Tuesday around 3.50pm. Rojas was released from the Christian County Jail at 10pm. He reportedly ran back in side the jail and grabbed the extinguisher (pictured)

According to News Channel 5, police determined he was lying again and arrested him for disorderly conduct around 3.50pm.

Rojas was released from the Christian County Jail around 10pm that night. He reportedly started running around the jail's parking lot before running back inside 10 minutes later.

Surveillance footage at the jail showed Rojas grab a fire extinguisher and set it off under the sprinkler system.

Rojas is seen spraying the extinguisher everywhere until the cameras are covered.

Chief Deputy Steve Howard told Channel 5 that Rojas tried breaking the door knob to the administrative office using a wet floor sign but failed.

'I absolutely don't know the reason why he would do something like that and come back to the facility. I just don't understand it,' Howard said.

Surveillance footage at the jail showed Rojas (left and right) grab a fire extinguisher and set it off under the sprinkler system

Rojas then allegedly used the fire extinguisher to break the door know to the administrative office. Police said the incident took place during off hours but jail staff managed to take him into custody before he got any further

Rojas then allegedly used the fire extinguisher to break the door know to the administrative office.

Police said the incident took place during off hours but jail staff managed to take him into custody before he got any further.

Rojas was charged with disorderly conduct, criminal mischief and falsely reporting an incident.

Bond was set at $2000 and an arraignment hearing was scheduled for next week.

Rojas is expected to undergo a mental evaluation. Police do not believe that he was under the influence.

Rojas was charged with disorderly conduct, criminal mischief and falsely reporting an incident. He will undergo a mental evaluation. Police do not believe that he was under the influence. Rojas sprayed the extinguisher everywhere until the cameras were covered (above)
A gang who shot the wrong man when a gun was fired through a letter box in a drug war have been jailed for a combined total of 100 years.

Ahmed Oke was out of his flat in South Oxhey, Watford at the time and it was a guest, Shaun Smith, who ended up taking a bullet in the thigh.

Today Andrew Bright QC jailed Anthony McLaughlin, Christopher Kerr, Leon Usher and Wayne Holness each for 25 years following their conviction for conspiracy to murder Mr Oke.

During an 11-week trial, a jury at St Albans Crown Court heard that the doorbell of the top-floor flat in Ainsdale Road was rung at 10.35 at night on Thursday, 1 December last year.

Holness was said to have taken the sawed-off shot gun and the ammunition to the scene and either fired it or gave it to someone else

Wayne Holness (left), 23, of no fixed address, was convicted by a majority of 10 to two. He was convicted unanimously of possessing a Class B drug with intent to supply. Leon Usher (right) was not present during the shooting but was said to be involved in the conspiracy

Mr Smith was walking towards the front door in the hallway when the shotgun was fired.

Prosecutor David Aaronberg said: 'Ahmed Oke was the target, but he was not there. Shaun Smith was staying there and received the impact of shot. Fortunately the premises had a reinforced letter box fitted that absorbed much of impact of shot.

'Mr Smith suffered a very nasty wound to his leg. Had it not been for the reinforced letter box and the fact that he was standing to the left of the door, he would have been injured extremely seriously or possibly fatally.'

He said Mr Oke was 'concerned in a number of matters that may have led to him being the target for a revenge attack.'

Mr Aaronberg described him in court as a drugs supplier with an unsavoury reputation.

Prosecutor David Aaronberg said: 'Ahmed Oke was the target, but he was not there. Shaun Smith was staying there and received the impact of shot. Fortunately the premises had a reinforced letter box fitted that absorbed much of impact of shot'

In January 2016 a car went up in flames outside his home and the fire brigade was asked to put a fire-proof letter box in his flat.

Six weeks before the shooting, on 18 October, a gun was discharged in the street outside his home. The police found a shotgun shell in the street along with a crossbow bolt. When they searched Mr Oke's flat, a crossbow was found.

Mr Aaronberg told the jury of seven men and five women there had been agreement to kill Mr Oke.

'The shooting came in the aftermath of communication between them that day. There were lots of telephone calls and lots of texts exchanged,' he said.

Five men denied conspiracy to murder during the trial.

After deliberating for 65 hours and 51 minutes, the jury at St Albans Crown Court found Anthony McLaughlin, 27, of Baldwins Lane, Watford; Christopher Kerr, 32, of Leslie House, Wyril Road, Lambeth; and Leon Usher, 39, of Bedford Road, Barton-Le-Clay unanimously guilty.

Wayne Holness, 23, of no fixed address, was convicted by a majority of 10 to two. He was convicted unanimously of possessing a Class B drug with intent to supply.

Michael Smith, 25, of John Street, South Norwood was cleared of conspiracy to murder, and an alternative of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm. He was also found not guilty of possessing a firearm.

At 8.45 on the night of the shooting Kerr, Holness, Smith and Usher were all in the Stockwell area of London.

Shortly before 9pm, Kerr went in a mini cab to Watford. Holness followed in a car.

While Kerr and Holness went near McLaughlin's home in Baldwin's Lane.

They went on to Ainsdale Road while McLaughlin stayed at his home and Usher remained in London.

But even though McLaughlin and Usher were not at the scene of the shooting, Mr Aaronberg said they were part of the shooting conspiracy, being linked through telephone evidence.

'At half past ten one of the men obtained access to Lalsham House, knocked on the door and fired. The prosecution say the most likely candidate is Mr Holness, but we can't say precisely,' he said.

Judge Bright told them: 'You were all four convicted of conspiring to murder Ahmed Oke who was drug dealing in the Watford area.'

The judge said the home of Anthony McLaughlin (left) was the rendezvous point. He sentenced him to 23 years for the conspiracy plus two more years for possessing cocaine with intent to supply following a separate trial. Right: Christopher Kerr was told the evidence pointed to him going to the flat and recruiting Holness

He said it was fortunate that Mr Smith was standing to one side when the shot was fired, causing a serious, but not life-threatening wound.

The judge said: 'There can be no doubt the shooting was drug related and the intention was to kill Ahmed Oke.'

Kerr was told the evidence pointed to him going to the flat and recruiting Holness.

Holness was said to have taken the sawed-off shot gun and the ammunition to the scene and either fired it or gave it to someone else. He received 23 years plus two years for possessing cannabis with intent to supply.

The judge said McLaughlin's home was the rendezvous point. He sentenced him to 23 years for the conspiracy plus 2 more years for possessing cocaine with intent to supply following a separate trial.

At the end of the case the judge commended DC John Wheeler, analyst Kirsty McGowan, DS Graham Paul and DI Justine Jenkins for their work on the case.
Interstate 80 has a lot of two things: heavy trucks and crashes. Trucks comprise half the traffic on Wyomings primary east-west transit corridor and are involved in roughly 40 percent of the 1,500 crashes that take place on the route every year.

Weve had a number of high profile crashes involving multiple vehicles (in recent years), said transportation department spokeswoman Aimee Inama.

Over half of the crashes on Wyomings three interstates take place on I-80 and a new master plan for the freeway, unveiled last week, calls for a series of safety improvements in addition to several other changes.

The draft master plan calls for creating or extending third lanes used by freight trucks ascending steep sections of the freeway as well as additional parking areas where truck drivers can wait out storms.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation also wants to roll out new technology, including variable speed limit signs that use digital screens and change driving speeds depending on travel conditions and sensors that can communicate crashes and other road hazards to self-driving cars.

New equipment to make I-80 safer ROCK SPRINGS  New communication technology could help make Interstate 80 safe for travelers.

The proposed improvements vary in cost and importance, and WYDOT chief engineer Gregg Fredrick said that no action will be taken directly as a result of the study. A final version of the plan is expected in early January.

What itll do is be a foundation for identifying a menu of projects, Fredrick said. Some of those items can be handled internally by department employees while others will require money from the Legislature or federal grants.

But Fredrick said WYDOT is not planning on requesting additional state funding during the legislative session that begins in February. The department has already applied for federal funds for several projects, including the truck parking areas, he said.

Other major highlights of the master plan include the reconstruction of interchanges in Rock Springs and Cheyenne. The interstate runs from the Utah border in the southwest corner of the state through Evanston, Rock Springs, Rawlins, Laramie and Cheyenne before entering Nebraska at Pine Bluffs.

I-80 corridor project has huge price tag CHEYENNE  Wyomings 400-mile Interstate 80 corridor is going to see more traffic in coming years, and making sure its facilities are accommodating and safe is going to come at a high cost.

The report identified a lack of funding as a major impediment to I-80 improvements, noting that the transportation departments annual funding has largely declined since 2010 and stating the construction costs are starting to exceed WYDOTs appropriation. The drop in money is a result of declining federal dollars and a fall in mineral royalties and fuel tax revenue, the report states.

The department has an annual budget of roughly $600 million, about half of which comes from the federal government. The master plans executive summary provides several wide-ranging options for increasing revenue including:

Charging higher vehicle registration fees to newer and heavier vehicles;

indexing the fuel tax;

increasing operators fee and the cost of special permits;

increasing the sales tax by 0.2 percent;

a 4 percent increase in the fuel tax;

a 5 percent increase in the lodging tax;

a 5 percent increase in alcohol and tobacco taxes;

increasing property tax by 5 percent and allocating it for transportation;

implementing a cap and trade system;

creating a mileage-based fee for drivers.

The plan also discusses whether to implement a toll on the interstate ranging from 10 cents per mile for trucks and 1 cent per mile for cars to 25 cents per mile for trucks and 2.5 cents per mile for cars.

Such tolls could generate up to $332 million per year, according to the report, which would be sufficient to cover all I-80 maintenance costs but might also encourage drivers, especially long-haul truckers, to use alternate toll-free routes.

Before any tolling could be implemented the Legislature would have to create a law allowing it and Wyoming would need to qualify for one of two federal programs allowing fees to be charged on interstate highways.

Such a system has been ardently opposed by the trucking industry in Wyoming.

Otherwise, Fredrick said the state has large discretion over how to manage or potentially expand I-80, including whether to build additional lanes or change signage, so long as any work conforms to federal safety guidelines.

The federal government pays roughly 90 percent of interstate highway maintenance and operations costs in the state, but the amount given to Wyoming each year is based on a set formula. If WYDOT wanted to expand I-80 it would need to either use state dollars, reallocate the existing federal funds it received or apply for special grants.

Expanding I-80 to a total of six lanes would cost between $1.9 billion and $4.1 billion.

The plan was presented to the Legislatures joint transportation committee in Thermopolis last week.
On Thursday, first lady Melania Trump tried to pay tribute to the 'Pearl Harbor Heroes,' though she missed the mark by a month.

In a tweet from the @FLOTUS account, the first lady reminded the world that the Pearl Harbor attacks happened on 11/7/1941.'

She was off though by a month, as the Japanese attacks on Hawaii occurred on December 7, 1941, which cemented American involvement in World War II.

Scroll down for video

On Thursday, first lady Melania Trump's Twitter account tried paying homage to those who died during the Pearl Harbor attack - but got the date wrong

On second attempt, the first lady's Twitter account offered the correct date - December 7, 1941

'Thank you to all military for your courage and sacrifice!' the first lady wrote on both tweets.

The photo of President Trump and a servicemember saluting, with the first lady flanking her husband's side, comes from the president's stopover in Hawaii en route to Asia on November 3.

Trump and the first lady visited the USS Arizona Memorial at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam.

The first couple took a short boat ride to the memorial and then presented their gift of a wreath of white flowers, according to the Associated Press' account.

The president and first lady watched as two sailors placed the wreath near the wall of names of those who perished in the surprise attack by the Japanese.

President and Melania Trump then tossed white flower petals into the water display, which is situated above the ship's sunken hall.

The president did not make remarks during those solemn moments.

The president did send out two tweets marking the occasion Thursday morning.

'National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day - "A day that will live in infamy!" December 7, 1941,' the president wrote.

The president signed a proclamation in the Roosevelt Room for National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

He also tweeted out a video of himself talking about the Pearl Harbor attacks, spliced with footage from the Hawaii trip and World War II-era newsreels.

'We understood then as we still do today there is no substitute for American strength,' Trump says in the spot. 'America does not seek conflict, but we do not run from it.'

'Not then, not now, not ever,' the president said.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (left) are reported to have tried to push it back to 2023 despite the streaming giant paying them a rumoured $100million (88million) for the fly-on-the-wall series (right filming in Holland). There have been mixed reports in the US, with Deadline insisting the show will be delayed until the new year citing bosses being 'rattled' and 'blinking first' because of the backlash over Season 5 of The Crown. But Page Six reports today that there will be no postponement and 'the show will go on' in December, citing a source close to the project. The insider said: 'As far as I am aware, the docuseries is still going ahead later this year.' The show has made waves on both sides of the Atlantic and it is expected to cause fresh turmoil for the Royal Family. Harry also has his memoirs, named 'Spare', which is on the way. Royal experts claim these two bombshell projects have prevented any reconciliation with King Charles or Prince William. But after the Queen's death the Sussexes were said to have wanted to 'downplay much of what they have said about Charles III, Queen Consort Camilla, and the Prince and Princess of Wales' in their documentary series, according to a previous report. Meghan Markle even appeared to distance herself and Prince Harry from their upcoming and controversial Netflix documentary around a month after Her Majesty's passing. The Duchess of Sussex suggested that its direction is now in the hands of left-leaning filmmaker Liz Garbus 'even if it means it may not be the way we would have told it'.
A quick-thinking police officer saved the life of a teenager threatening to kill himself after being dumped by his girlfriend - then knocked him unconscious with a string of head punches.

Footage taken by an onlooker showed the officer grabbing the 19-year-old by the legs while he was distracted before using his fists to knock him out from close-range.

The astonishing scenes took place on an advertising hoarding above a bridge over a busy road in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

This is the moment a brave police officer approached a suicidal man in Monterrey, Mexico

The officer tackled the man and knocked him over before punching him across the face

The bridge where the drama happened is opposite Fundidora Park, a public park with museums in the heart of the city which was originally developed as the site of a steel foundry but is a now a tourist attraction.

The unidentified police officer appeared to pass the distraught youngster a mobile phone before rugby-tackling him from behind 65ft above the ground as he dialled a number.

It was not immediately clear why the officer had decided to lash out. But his actions met with the approval of most social media users who concluded he had made an on-the-spot decision to play for safety and make sure the youngster didn't take him with him in case he tried to wrestle free and leap off the bridge.

Red Cross and Civil Protection workers were waiting below to assist the police officer as he lowered the groggy youngster down with help from a colleague.

Local reports said the man was subsequently arrested after receiving medical assistance at the scene.

The mother of his ex was said to have witnessed the drama and told officers it wasn't the first time they had broken up.

There was little sympathy for the jilted boyfriend today/yesterday (THURS) on social media.

Monica Res said: 'What would have hurt more. The break-up or the beating?'

Joseph Uznabek added: 'Let's hope that one day this young man is thankful for the punches he received from the policeman.'
Former congressman Harold Ford Jr. has unequivocally denied allegations of misconduct which prompted him to be fired from Morgan Stanley on Thursday.

An unnamed woman claimed in an interview with The Huffington Post that Ford Jr, 47, 'grabbed' her during a professional meeting 'several years ago'.

She was not a colleague of his at Morgan Stanley but rather someone he was meeting to discuss the firm's business.

She said that after he grabbed her and she left, he continued to ask her out for drinks in emails and only stopped when she pleaded with him to. The woman said he also apologized for the alleged incident.

Her allegation led Morgan Stanley, the financial firm which Ford Jr. joined in 2011 as a 'managing director' tasked largely with schmoozing clients, to fire him.

Harold Ford Jr. has denied allegations of misconduct which he was fired from Morgan Stanley over on Thursday

The 47-year-old tweeted his denial on Thursday afternoon shortly after the story broke

Since then, the father-of-two has hit back both at the woman, who he says is lying, and Morgan Stanley and has vowed to sue them both.

'This simply did not happen. I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life.

'Having drinks and dinner for work is part of my job and all of my outreach to [the woman] making these false allegations was professional and at the direction of my firm for business purposes.

HAROLD FORD JR. STATEMENT This simply did not happen. I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life. Having drinks and dinner for work is part of my job and all of my outreach to [the woman] making these false allegations was professional and at the direction of my firm for business purposes. I support and have tremendous respect for the brave women now speaking out in this important national dialogue. False claims like this undermine real silence breakers. I will now be bringing legal action against [the woman] who has made these false claims about me as well as Morgan Stanley for improper termination Advertisement

'I support and have tremendous respect for the brave women now speaking out in this important national dialogue.

'False claims like this undermine real silence breakers.

'I will now be bringing legal action against [the woman] who has made these false claims about me as well as Morgan Stanley for improper termination,' Ford Jr. said in a statement.

The woman alleging misconduct was not a Morgan Stanley employee. She claims however that she met with Ford Jr. under professional circumstances 'several years ago' but does not say exactly when.

On the night of their meeting, she said she was left so frightened by how he 'grabbed' her that she asked a security guard in the building they were in for help.

No other details were given of the meeting but another person corroborated her account, telling The Huffington Post that they spoke with her immediately after the incident.

That person said she was 'distraught, shocked, and frightened.'

Ford Jr.'s accuser said he continued to ask her out for drinks after the alleged incident and only stopped when she asked him to. In those emails, she claims he apologized for the alleged grabbing.

However he says all of their contact was innocent, professional and merely part of his very social job.

The former politician has been married to his wife Emily since 2008. They are pictured in 2009

Ford Jr. was one of the youngest member of congress in US history when he joined the House of Representatives in 1997. He is pictured in 2006, nine years into his career, with former president Barack Obama who was the Democratic Senator for Illinois at the time

Ford Jr. also works as a panelist on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He is pictured on the show's set in 2010

In 2011, Morgan Stanley hired him as a managing director but placed an emphasis on how his role would involve managing client relationships with directors, senior executives, investors and private clients.

He has already worked at Merrill Lynch for several years after joining them from congress which he had served in since 1997.

Ford Jr. joined congress at the age of 26, taking over his father's seat as the Democratic Representative of Tennessee's 9th District.

He now also works as a panelist on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Mark Halperin, another of the show's regular fixtures, was fired amid accusations of sexual misconduct last month.

A spokesman for Morgan Stanley confirmed his termination, saying it had been based on 'conduct inconsistent with our values and in violation of our policies.'
A woman who survived the Aurora theater shooting in 2012 died unexpectedly Sunday night.

Heather Snyder, 31, was among the 70 survivors of the horrific shooting on July 20, 2012, at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises at the Century 16 theater in Denver, Colorado.

The mother-of-one had to have her index and middle fingers amputated after gunman James Holmes sprayed bullets into the crowded movie theater, killing 12 people.

Heather Snyder (left), 31, was among the 70 survivors of the horrific Aurora theater shooting on July 20, 2012, at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises at the Century Aurora 16 theater in Colorado. Heather had to have surgery (right) following the shooting

'We are still not sure what happened. It was totally unexpected,' Heather's father, Rick Snyder, said on Monday. Snyder said that Heather never 'totally recovered from it'. Heather's family are seen bringing her home from the hospital after her surgery

'We are still not sure what happened. It was totally unexpected,' Heather's father, Rick Snyder, told the Denver Post on Monday.

'She never totally recovered from it. She was reminded of it every day,' her father said.

Heather was with 12 Red Robin employees who attended the movie to celebrate the 27th birthday of their co-worker, Alex Sullivan, on the night of the shooting.

She and six other members of the group were wounded and Alex tragically died.

James Holmes (pictured in 2015) opened fire at a Batman premiere in a Denver theater in 2012 that ended in the deaths of 12 people. He wounded 70 others

Despite Heather's injuries, she carried on with her life and even had her daughter Kennedy.

In 2015, Heather testified in court against Holmes, who killed 12 people injured 70 others.

Holmes received 12 life sentences plus an addition 3,318 years in jail for killing the 12 movie-goers and attempting to murder more. He has no chance at parole.

Heather's relatives said a memorial will be held on December 13 at the Aurora Eagle's Lodge.

The family also set up a GoFundMe page that's asking for help with her memorial and donations that will go toward taking care of her young daughter.

Family friend, Larry Martinez, told the Post that Heather was a loving, caring and courageous woman.

'When you have a wonderful human being that is a support system for everyone that can light up your day, and they're taken from you, it's not easy. It's very difficult,' said Martinez.

Relatives have been told that it could take weeks until they learn the exact cause of Heather's death.

Gunman, James Holmes was moved to a new facility in Pennsylvania in September after he was attacked by another inmate.

Heather (pictured) was with 12 Red Robin employees who attended the movie to celebrate the 27th birthday of their co-worker, Alex Sullivan, on the night of the shooting. Heather was injured but Alex tragically died

Heather's relatives said a memorial will be held on December 13 at the Aurora Eagle's Lodge. The family also set up a GoFundMe page that's asking for help with her memorial and donations that will go toward taking care of her young daughter

Holmes gunned down 12 people to death inside The Century movie theater (pictured here) July 20, 2012 whilst wounding 70 others in a firing rampage inside the showing of Batman, The Dark Knight Rises

In July 2015, Holmes was found guilty on all 165 counts against him in the devastating 2012 attack on moviegoers at a midnight Batman premiere.

The tragic scene, which saw him use three murder weapons  a shotgun, a handgun and an AR-15 rifle, left 12 people dead and dozens of others wounded.

The youngest victim to die was a six-year-old girl - her mother also suffered a miscarriage and was paralyzed in the attack.

After the attack Holmes, who was obsessed with Batman, surrendered outside the theater and informed officers he had booby-trapped his apartment with explosives, which were defused one day later by a bomb squad.

At the time of his attack his attorneys said Holmes suffers from schizophrenia and was in the grip of a psychotic breakdown.

They claim his condition was so serious that he was unable to tell right from wrong.

In 2015, Heather (pictured center) testified in court against Holmes, who killed 12 people injured 70 others

Holmes (left in July 2012) received 12 life sentences plus an addition 3,318 years in jail for killing the 12 movie-goers and attempting to murder more. Holmes (right in September 2012) has no chance at parole

Holmes used three murder weapons: a shotgun, handgun and an AR-15 rifle. The youngest victim to die was a six-year-old girl - her mother also suffered a miscarriage and was paralyzed in the attack. A makeshift memorial was set up for the victims on following the shooting

They argue he was so delusional that he managed to cover up his plans from friends and two psychiatrists months prior to the shooting.

In 2015, Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr told the Colorado gunman he would not be eligible for parole, adding: 'It is almost impossible to comprehend how a human being is capable of such acts.'

After imposing the sentence, he added: 'It is the court's intention that the defendant never set foot in free society again.

'If there was ever a case that warranted a maximum sentence, this is the case. The defendant does not deserve any sympathy.

'Sheriff, get the defendant out of my courtroom please.'

Holmes was facing the death penalty when he was sentenced September 2015, but a lone juror held out, meaning he was given a prison term instead.
When dozens of actresses came forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment in the past two months, one of his former muses was strangely silent - Renee Zellweger.

But on Wednesday, the Bridget Jones's Diary actress had a few choice words when she learned of a lawsuit that alleged she offered Weinstein sexual favors for roles.

Actress Melissa Sagemiller is a plaintiff in a new lawsuit filed against Weinstein this week in New York federal court.

A lawsuit filed this week claims Weinstein once told an actress that Renee Zellweger and Charlize Theron traded sexual favors to further their careers (Zellweger and Weinstein pictured above in 2006)

Zellweger fiercely denied the claim, telling US Weekly through a spokesman that 'If Harvey said that, he's full of s***'. She appeared in such Weinstein-produced films as Bridget Jones's Diary (left) and Chicago (right)

She says during an encounter with Weinstien in the summer of 2000, he tried to coax her into having sex with him on the promise that it would further her career.

The lawsuit says that Weinstein told her that 'Renee Zellweger, Charlize Theron and other actresses gave sexual favors'.

Zellweger's career did hit its stride around that time, when Bridget Jones's Diary was released a year later. She then continued to pad out her IMDB page with such hits as Chicago and Cold Mountain, both also produced by Weinstein.

But in a statement issued to US Weekly on Wednesday, through a spokesman, Zellweger denied that she slept her way to the top.

'If Harvey said that, he's full of s***,' the representative said.

As for Theron, she has yet to weigh in on the claims in the lawsuit.

But shortly after the allegations against Weinstein came to light in October, she published a statement on Instagram saying she wasn't surprised.

'The women who have spoken about their abuse are brave and heroic and although I didn't have a personal experience like this with Harvey Weinstein, I unfortunately cannot say I'm surprised. This culture has always existed, not just in Hollywood but across the world,' the statement read, in part.

When the allegations against Weinstein came to light in October, Zellweger remained silent, despite having worked with his extensively. The two pictured above in 2005

Zellweger was one of the few who didn't offer any statement after the scandal, despite having worked extensively with Weinstein.

DailyMail.com reached out to Zellweger for comment on October about the allegations against the longtime producer but she never replied.

Zellweger first worked with Weinstein on the 1998 film A Price Above Rubies. She then had back-to-back-to-back winners at his then-production company Miramax with Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Chicago (2002), and Cold Mountain (2003). Zellweger later worked with him again on the 2006 film Miss Potter, after Weinstein and his brother Bob set up The Weinstein Co.

When Zellweger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Cold Mountain, she made sure to thank her 'friends at Miramax, especially Harvey'.

Theron worked with Weinstien on five films - 1998's Celebrity, 1999's The Cider House Rules, 2000's The Yards, 2002's Waking up in Reno and 2009's The Road. The first four were at Miramax and the fifth was at The Weinstein Co.

Charlize Theron starred in five Weinstein-produced films including 1999's The Cider House Rules
A woman who lived in a harem arrangement in Perth with a religious cult leader who disappeared with three other people in 2007 believes the quartet are still alive.

Justine Anne Smith has described how self-styled spiritual leader Gary Felton, who went by the stolen identity of Simon Kadwell, was the head of a household that included three women he was in sexual relationships with.

The 45-year-old fathered children with two of them, including Chantelle McDougall.

She went missing with him at the age of 27, along with his five-year old daughter Leela and friend Tony Popic.

Chantelle McDougall, her daughter Leela, cult leader Gary Felton and flatmate Tony Popic disappeared together in 2007

Woman who lived with Mr Kadwell (pictured with his daughter) in Perth told an a coronial inquest this week he's likely in hiding

The police investigation failed to find any trace of the four, whose bank accounts were never touched, leading to the belief they were dead.

However, Ms Smith said suicide was never a spiritual driver for Mr Kadwell and his beliefs, although he had written of planning a suicide pact and had attempted it in his youth.

'I believe it is more likely they are in hiding,' she told a coronial inquest in Busselton.

'It is strange they would want to hide their suicide.'

She believes Mr Kadwell was running from something in his past, possibly involving stealing money and the stolen UK identity, and he had a previous minor fraud conviction.

She believed a note left at the Nannup farmhouse they disappeared from, which said they were moving to Brazil, was a deliberate 'misdirection'.

Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Balfour told the inquest he could strongly argue theories both for and against the group being alive.

Two seemingly happy Canadian backpackers took their own lives shortly after meeting Mr Kadwell, the inquest previously heard.

A coronial inquest is being held over three days in Busselton this week into what is one of the nation's most unusual missing persons mysteries (Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela)

The Canadian couple, Kirk Helgason and Alixander Fominoff, were in their 20s, and while holidaying went to Nannup in southwest WA to meet 'Mr Kadwell' because they were devoted to his philosophical teachings.

Warren Sunkar ran a backpacker hostel where the pair stayed, and became friends with them.

He also knew the self-styled new age spiritual leader Mr Kadwell and told the inquest he liked him but wrote his own books about philosophy.

'Kirk and Alixander had similar beliefs to Simon,' Mr Sunkar said.

'They were good, young kids that enjoyed discussing philosophy and ended up becoming really good friends.'

Gary Felton was a self-styled spiritual leader who went by the alias Simon Kadwell

However, Ms Fominoff took her own life back in Canada on July 24, 2007, a week after the four went missing.

A month later on August 26 Mr Helgason and another woman, Christina Arnott, also died of a drug overdose in Massachusetts in the US.

Mr Sunkar rejected the suggestion Mr Kadwell was running a 'death cult', saying he liked his beliefs in a 'catharsis' on earth, people 'waking up to what was going on in society', that there was something greater and the system was crashing.

However, the inquest also heard Mr Kadwell did not believe suicide existed, instead writing that people could move between the physical and spiritual realm.

He appeared to be depressed and despondent in his online writing leading up to his disappearance, with the inquest earlier hearing he was planning a suicide pact involving Ms McDougall, Leela and Mr Popic.

Mr Felton was described in court as an odd and quiet person who did not have a job, stayed up all night on his computer and slept during the day

Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela pictured before they all went missing

Mr Sunkar also described a strange phone conversation with Ms McDougall several weeks before she disappeared when he rang her because he heard a rumour Mr Kadwell had died.

She would not confirm it, saying 'is that what they said?'

Ms McDougall's Nannup friend Eleanor McKie told the inquest Mr Kadwell was controlling and she believed he had brainwashed her, as the previously bubbly Ms McDougall talked about 'not belonging or wanting to be here'.

The police investigation failed to find any evidence of the four, who left a note and told people saying they were going to a commune in Brazil.

According to the passenger manifest, their names were not listed, but Mr Felton reportedly had a history of forging identity documents

The last known movements were known from phone calls made about the time of their disappearance from the Nannup house and Mr Popic's mobile in which trains and buses to Kalgoorlie and Northcliffe were booked under the name Jay Roberts, along with a Perth hostel, taxi and pizza delivery.

Their bank accounts were never accessed and credit cards, furniture and computers and electronic items were left in the house, although clothes were taken and the house had been cleaned.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.
Catholic Health Initiatives, the parent organization associated with CHI St. Alexius Health, has signed an agreement with Dignity Health to combine into a new Catholic health system.

Englewood, Colo.-based CHI and San Francisco-based Dignity have been in talks for a year. Dignity Healths Board of Directors and Sponsorship Council and CHIs Board of Stewardship Trustees have approved the combination. The deal, subject to federal, state and church approvals, is anticipated to close in the second half of 2018.

We are excited about what this means for Catholic Health Initiatives as an organization and the opportunities it will bring to CHI St. Alexius Health," said CHI St. Alexius Health President Kurt Schley. "This new organization will be grounded in the Catholic values, which are a foundation to our healing ministry."

Schley said some of the benefits of the merger, should it be finalized, would include sharing of best practices and advancement of research.

The new organization will have the size and ability to scale best-in-class clinical service lines, recruit and retain top talent, standardize operations to improve quality and reduce cost of care and advocate more effectively for all people, Schley added.

The joint organizations would have a 28-state footprint, including North Dakota, with 700 care sites and 139 hospitals nationwide, about 159,000 employees and more than 25,000 physicians and clinicians.

A merger between the two companies would create the nation's largest not-for-profit hospital chain, with combined annual revenue of $28.4 billion.

"We foresee an incredible opportunity to expand each organization's best practices to respond to the evolving health care environment and deliver high-quality, cost-effective care, Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Dignity Health, said in a statement.

The new organization plans to establish its corporate headquarters in Chicago and operate under a new name to be chosen in the second half of 2018. Local facilities will continue operating under their current names.

In September 2016, the two systems formed Precision Medicine Alliance LLC community-based precision medicine program, including precision oncology and plans for four to six more service area launches in the next 12 months. The objective is to be available at nearly 150 CHI and Dignity Health and care centers across the U.S.

The potential merger comes as CHI continues to be dogged by financial issues.

In March, the major ratings agencies, including S&P, dropped CHI's rating to BBB-plus from A-minus. S&P did upgrade CHI from a negative outlook to stable outlook, meaning no further downgrades were looming.

While management's current turnaround plan has created an expectation for stabilization and modest improvement over the next 18 months, it is our opinion that it will take several years on the current financial improvement trajectory for CHI to return to a higher rating, said S&P credit analyst Martin Arrick in the downgrade report.

We expect a strengthening of our financial performance  and a strengthening of our credit profile, CHI said when the ratings were released as operating losses shrunk from $75.6 million in the second quarter compared with $93.7 million a year earlier.

Since then the hospital system has continued to cut its operating losses in half, with an operating loss before restructuring for the first quarter of fiscal year 2018 of approximately $64 million, compared to more than $137 million and in the same period last year. The organization also enjoyed excess of revenue over expenses of $136 million in the first quarter.

CHI's debt is relatively high for its size at $8.6 billion in June. Dignity's debt is lower at $5.25 billion in March, though it pays $408 million annually in interest on that debt.

The story has been changed to reflect the entities correct combined revenue.
The White House insisted Thursday that Middle Eastern outrage over President Donald Trump's decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was part of a 'cooling off period' that it expected.

Peace is still within the administration's grasp, a White House official told DailyMail.com, and a plan will be presented in 2018 as previously planned.

The official swatted down reports that suggested otherwise, including one claiming that Trump's son-in-law was behind the stunning announcement.

'It was him,' a so-called confidant of Jared Kushner's told Politico.

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An official swatted down reports that suggested otherwise, including one that had a so-called confidant of Jared Kushner's claiming President Trump's son-in-law was behind the stunning announcement yesterday that the U.S. is moving its embassy to Israel

Trump's dramatic break with decades of U.S. foreign policy had opponents of his administration up in arms and world leaders reeling. It also had tongues wagging in the press about the impetus for the stunning announcement that he was official recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The unnamed person that Politico says is close to Kushner gave Trump's Jewish son-in-law all the credit.

'Encouraging would be an understatement,' the person said in the profile that noted Kushner's otherwise waning influence in the White House.

Kushner has seen his political capital dwindle since John Kelly, a retired general, took the helm as chief of staff at 1600 Penn. Oval Office walk-in privileges for almost every senior official were suspended, but Kushner has also had other problems that have made his presence at the White House somewhat toxic.

He and Donald Trump Jr. have become persons of interest in the special counsel investigation of election meddling following the disclosure of their June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian nationals.

A peace deal between Israel and Palestine would help Kushner a former real estate developer like his father in law, remake his image.

A peace deal between Israel and Palestine would help Kushner(back, center) a former real estate developer like his father in law, remake his image

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have opposed the embassy move. He was noticeably absent on Wednesday when Trump convened his Cabinet and was out of the country at the time of Trump's speech.

A former State Department official told DailyMail.com that Tillerson's exclusion from the event meant nothing - he was at previously scheduled NATO meetings in Brussels.

Still, it was observed by a White House official that the missing Tillerson had 'pushed back vocally' on Trump's decision, according to the Washington Post.

The Post reported that Secretary of Defense James Mattis was also against the policy change that angered American allies and could have negative consequences for the U.S. in the region.

Speaking about Kushner's role in the decision, the person who spoke to Politico said, 'If hes right, he will be a hero of heroes. He end-ran Tillerson again.

The source added, 'If hes wrong, hes doomed.'

A White House official told DailyMail.com that none of the source's claims were true.

'The peace team was aware of and supportive of the decision but this was a well-run and through inter-agency process,' the senior aide to the president said.

Lawyer Alan Dershowitz told The Washington Post that it was Trump who was adamant about the formal recognition of Jerusalem.

Trump told him he planned to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in March, Dershowitz said.

'What he said to me was, "Im going to do it. Every other president has promised, and all of them didnt keep their promises," ' Dershowitz stated. 'He said there would be criticism of him but that he wanted to keep his promise.'

That was generally the sense of the White House as Trump took heat for the decision - that Trump was proving that when he says he's going to do something he'll do it.

'The president could not have been more clear in his speech that he is as committed to peace as ever,' the White House official said.

Every president since Bill Clinton has signed and re-signed a six-month waiver postponing the embassy's relocation. Trump also approved the waiver first time the deadline came around.

He said Wednesday that he'd keep signing it until the embassy in Jerusalem is up and running, which U.S. officials say will be at least three years, taking him to the end of his first term and potentially the end of his presidency.

President Donald J Trump (L) and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner meet with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) at the King David Hotel on May 22, 2017 in Jerusalem

Trump said as a candidate that he would finally move the embassy in keeping with the intent of the intended policy shift that U.S. presidents keep ignoring.

He said Wednesday in an address from the White House's diplomatic room, 'Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time.

'Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,' he said. 'It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result. '

The president's announcement was met with protests in the West Bank and the beginning of 'three days of rage' among Palestinians.

The chief of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, encouraged a new uprising against Israel on Wednesday and pledged that 'Trump and the occupation' would 'regret this decision.'

The peace process set into motion by the president that's led by Kushner and special envoy to the region Jason Greenblatt was doomed by Trump's critics in the wake of the announcement.

The pair were on track to put forward an accord sometime next year.

'From the peace perspective we understand that parties are going to react the way they feel they need to react and that might lead to a bit of a cooling off period,' a senior official told DailyMail.com 'But we are going to continue to work on our plan and present it when the time is right.'

Worry abroad that the U.S. is declaring all of Jerusalem the property of Israel with the policy announcement are misguided, the official with knowledge of the situation said.

'Nothing in his speech prejudged final status negotiations,' the source said. 'We recognize while there might be some short term pain we think in the long run this will help the process.'
A black music executive who was boarding first class called out a white woman for trying to cut him in line because she didn't believe he was a priority passenger.

Emmit Walker was traveling to the Dominican Republic from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in DC on Tuesday for his 37th birthday and was waiting in the priority boarding queue when the unidentified woman behind him tried cutting into his place in line.

Walker posted the interaction he had with the woman along with her photo, but later regretted it, saying he felt bad he put her on blast.

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The original Facebook post went viral with over 250,000 shares in two days, and it received considerable coverage

According to Walker's Facebook post, the exchange with the woman went like this:

'Her: excuse me I believe you may be in the wrong place you need to let us thru. This line is for priority boarding.

Me: priority meaning first class correct?

Her: Yes...now excuse me they will call yall after we board.

Me: *shove first class priority boarding pass in her face* you can relax maam Im in the right spot, been here longer, so you can board after me.

Her: *still wont let It go* he must be military or something, but we paid for our seats so he still should have to wait.

Me: nope to big to ever be in anybodies military. Im just a n**** with money.

Everybody waiting in line: starts to clap.'

Now, in the moment, it is easy to get tempted in today's viral age to post something that you feel needs calling out, however, Walker apologized only a day later for putting the still unidentified woman's face out there.

He wrote: 'When I posted that post on Facebook i didnt expect all that to come from it. I can honestly name the four or five people i thought would comment with something funny, and that will be it. This racist stuff is definitely a issue but this is not the solution to that issue.'

Just a day later, Walker conscience weighing on him, he issued an apology to the woman

Walker said to the woman during the exchange that he's too big to be in anybody's military, indicating he did buy the first class ticket on his own, without any assistance for anyone

Music executive Emmit Walker is pictured (left) with Orange is the New Black star Samira Wiley and (right) showing off his considerable wealth

He earnestly adds, 'It brings me no joy waking up in paradise to for my 37 bday and knowing that woman might be going threw hell. The story was definitely real, just like this issue is definitely real, but I now know that I myself should of handled it another way, or left it how it was, and not shared it publicly.'

'When dealing with people i always try to stay on the side of Right, so to make sure I never do anybody wrong, I try to always put myself in that persons shoes, and ask how would I feel if that person did this to me, and if I was her this morning I would be a total wreak today, and that doesnt help this situation, or her...it only makes them more angry, and bring more drama...SO I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE AGAIN TO THE WOMAN I HAD THIS ENCOUNTER WITH YESTERDAY. NO MATTER HOW WRONG YOUR ACTIONS YOU DONT DESERVE THIS,' he continues.

He tagged several people in the post and concluded with: 'I BELIEVE IF YOU CANT HELP NOBODY AT THE VERY LEAST YOU SHOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING TO HURT THEM.'

A lot of people who posted under his apology to the woman, said he had nothing to apologize for, however it was clearly weighing on his conscience.

He said all the people he tagged on Instagram were his biggest followers and he was hoping that he could make his apology go viral as well.
A woman, who was attacked by a Minnesota cop's K9 as she was taking out her trash in September, filed a lawsuit against the officer on Wednesday.

St Paul police officer Thaddeus P Schmidt was walking with his K9, Gabe on September 23, when the dog viciously latched on to Desiree Collins' right arm, according to the Star Tribune.

According to the suit, Gabe, a five-year-old German shepherd ignored more than 10 commands from Schmidt and two other officers demanding he release Collins.

Horrifying video of the shocking incident was released on Thursday. The video shows the moment that Collins was viciously attacked.

Minnesota woman, Desiree Collins, who was severely injured after a Minnesota cop's K9 (pictured walking) attacked her as she was taking out her trash in September, filed a lawsuit against the officer on Wednesday

St Paul police officer Thaddeus P Schmidt was walking with his K9, Gabe on September 23, when the dog viciously latched on to Desiree Collins' right arm

According to the suit, Gabe (left), a five-year-old German shepherd ignored more than 10 commands from Schmidt and two other officers demanding he release Collins (center)

In the video, the dog is seen walking on its leash about 20 feet in front of Schmidt when it turns a corner.

Within a matter of seconds, Collins is heard screaming as the dog grabs onto her arm. She immediately falls to the ground as the cops run over to command Gabe off of her.

He doesn't listen and instead for about 30 seconds the dog continues to rip into Collins' arm.

One of the officers grabs the victim's hand and tells her that 'you're fine' as the other officer shouts commands at the dog.

'Please help me!' the woman screams as the dog pulls on her arm once more before one of the officers pulls him off of her.

The officers are then seen helping the woman to her feet. Collins is heard asking 'what did I do to him?' to which one of the officers responds: 'Nothing you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

After helping Collins, the officers called in medics to treat her wounds.

According to the lawsuit, the injuries that Collins sustained required hospitalization.

Horrifying video of the shocking incident was released on Thursday. The video shows the moment that Collins was attacked as she screamed for the officers to help her

One of the officers grabs the victim's hand and tells her that 'you're fine' as the other officer shouts commands at the dog

Collins suffered a bite wound to her lower left leg and multiple bites to her right arm during attack, according to the suit

She suffered a bite wound to her lower left leg and multiple bites to her right arm during attack, according to the suit.

'What you have here is a completely innocent person taking out their garbage and a K-9 simply wasn't controlled,' one of Collins' attorneys, Andrew Noel told the Tribune. 'It should never have happened.'

On Thursday, police Chief Todd Axtell said in a written statement to the Tribune that the incident was a 'terrible accident that should not have occurred'.

'I am sorry it happened and that she was injured. As a department, we wish we could go back and do things differently. Unfortunately, we can't.

'What we can do is apologize and take responsibility and learn from the incident so we can continue to work to prevent it from happening to anyone else,' Axtell added.

Schmidt was suspended for a day over the attack.

On Thursday, police Chief Todd Axtell said in a written statement that the incident was a 'terrible accident that should not have occurred'. He said that he is 'sorry it happened and that she was injured'. Officers are seen helping Collins up after the attack

The attack occurred while Schmidt and Gabe were searching for two males suspected of a home burglary. The lawsuit alleges that Schmidt violated Collins' Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force and unreasonable seizure. Collins is pictured moments after the attack

According to the Tribune, the bite occurred while Schmidt and Gabe were searching for two males suspected of a home burglary. The incident occurred around 6.30am.

The lawsuit alleges that Schmidt violated Collins' Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force and unreasonable seizure.

It also alleges that Gabe's long lead 'greatly reduced' Schmidt's control of the dog.

Her lawyer, Noel, said that Collins is 'struggling emotionally with this incident' because she also has to deal with not having her left hand.

Collins' left hand was amputated when she was a child. She currently receives counseling.

She is suing for unspecified punitive damages and changes in training, policies and procedures in St Paul's use of K-9s.

Schmidt joined the department in 1998. He and Gabe remain on duty in the K9 unit.
Fortune: Robert Hay with Lady Killearn. She said she was leaving him everything 'in thanks for his great help during my lifetime'

When celebrated society hostess Jacqueline, Lady Killearn took up with flamboyant property agent Robert Hay, eyebrows were raised not only as he was several decades her junior, but also because he was an ex-boyfriend of her daughter, Bunty.

Hay's relationship with Lady Killearn, who died in 2015 aged 105, has, though, proved to be a rewarding one as, I can reveal, she left him her entire fortune in her will.

She bequeathed not a single penny to her son, Countess of St Germans and Roxana 'Bunty' Ross, mother of top model Liberty Ross.

Probate documents which have finally been released disclose that Jackie bequeathed her total 626,000 estate to Hay, who lives with his wife, Sarah, at Bickleigh Castle in Devon.

'It's appalling,' a friend of the family tells me. 'No doubt, Mr Hay will be delighted.'

Lady Killearn appointed Hay as an executor of her will. The other executor was Jacquetta, but her appointment was revoked in 2006 because of what her mother described as her daughter's 'current illness'.

In her will, Jackie described Hay as her 'partner'. She said she was leaving him everything 'in thanks for his great help during my lifetime'.

She added: 'I have not made any provision for my two daughters and my grandson Miles Lampson as I have made adequate provision for them during my lifetime.'

Stately: Haremere Hall, the 13-bedroom Jacobean property in East Sussex that Jackie and her son fell out over

Lady Killearn did not even mention her son Victor, with whom she had a spectacular falling out over her 13-bedroom Jacobean property in East Sussex, Haremere Hall. So rancorous were relations between them that two funerals were held for Lady Killearn. One was organised by Hay in Devon and a second was later held in London.

The sale of Haremere Hall was initially blocked following High Court action in 2011 by Jackie's son.

He successfully argued that Haremere, which had been on the market for 4 million in 2004, was under-valued at 1.65 million.

This victory proved short-lived, however: three months before Jackie's death, Haremere was sold for 2.4 million, in a deal brokered by Hay, who is believed to be in his late 60s. The buyer was one of his friends.Jackie was just 24 when she wed 53-year-old Sir Miles Lampson, Britain's High Commissioner in Cairo, then an 18-stone, 6ft 5in giant towering above her.

Roxana 'Bunty' Ross, mother of top model Liberty Ross, is pictured marrying Ian Ross at St Margaret's Church, Westminster. Her mother cut her out of her will alongside her brother Victor, the 3rd Lord Killearn, and sister Jacquetta

Fortunately for Lady Killearn's children, her home in London's Harley Street was transferred to a family trust before she died.

It was put on the market last year for 10 million and the proceeds will be divided among them.

Her butler, Paolo Sclarandis, successfully sued her for unfair dismissal, and subsequently declared Lady Killearn had been 'ruled by Mr Hay', who had an adjoining room to hers.
Police in Bismarck are looking for a woman reported missing Wednesday morning and considered endangered.

Bismarck Police Sgt. Mark Buschena said Camille Lynn Crowe, a 21-year-old Native American woman, was not in her home at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday when her caregiver went to check on her.

Her bedroom window was open with its screen removed and footprints leading away from the house on the 100 block of West London Avenue.

She is considered endangered as she has a medical condition that requires her to take medication on a daily basis.

Crowe is 5-feet-2 to 5-feet-4, 110 to 115 pounds with black shoulder length hair in a ponytail. She has brown eyes, a slight build and a light brown complexion. Police did not have a clothing description.

She was reported as missing between midnight and 8:15 a.m. Wednesday.

Anyone with information may call Bismarck Police at 701-223-1212.
U.S. Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, is expected to resign amid claims of inappropriate behavior, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a Republican source familiar with the decision.

'We will have a statement a little bit later, but thats all I can tell you right now,' Franks said, according to Roll Call news website. 'The statement will explain.'

Roll Call said rumors had been swirling since at least 2012.

An Arizona Republican told the website: 'Theres been rumors swirling around him for years, at least in 2012. And if this turns out to be true, there wont be that many people who are surprised.'

As he walked past reporters outside the floor of the House of Representatives, Franks said: 'Ill let the statement speak for itself.' Franks has served in Congress since 2003.

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He's gone: Trent Franks is the latest to quit amid sexual harassment claims. A Republican said 'nobody would be surprised' and that rumors went back to 2012

His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Franks, 60, is a married father of two whose district covers suburbs north and west of Phoenix.

It is likely to be a safe Republican seat, with Trump winning by 21 points last November.

Earlier on Thursday, Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota said he would resign in a few weeks following allegations of sexual misconduct.

U.S. Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan resigned on Tuesday after accusations of sexual harassment were leveled against him.

Conyers denied the allegations, while Franken said some of the accusations against him were untrue and he remembered other incidents differently from his accusers. Reuters has not verified the allegations against either men.

Franken announced Thursday he would resign from the Senate amid groping allegations  but maintained his innocence and blasted President Trump for bragging about 'his history of sexual assault.'

Franken was facing fresh allegations of sexual misconduct and vanishing support from fellow Democrats when he made the announcement Thursday morning from the floor of the Senate.

Franken said he will leave in 'the coming weeks'  even as he insisted the public charges he groped a slew of women were not accurate. A raft of his colleagues disagreed, coming out against him 24 hours earlier in an extraordinary effort to get him out of the chamber.

'Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,' said Franken.

U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) announces his resignation while addressing allegations of sexual misconduct

As the most high-profile politician to lose his job over recent harassment allegations, he took a direct shot at President Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

'I, of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits the Oval Office,' Franken said, in an obvious reference to the infamous 'p**** tape.'

'And a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaign for the Senate with the full support of his party. But this decision is not about me. Its about the people of Minnesota,' he said of Moore, who is accused of dating and sexually touching teens while he was in his 30s in Alabama in the late '70s ad early '80s.

The charges against Franken dated from before he became a senator, and he said that: 'Nothing I have done as a senator, nothing has brought dishonor on this institution.'
Meghan Markle's father has said he would 'love' to walk his daughter down the aisle when she marries Prince Harry next year.

Thomas Markle, a TV lighting engineer, was tracked down in Mexico and asked about Meghan's romance.

He said he was 'very pleased' and 'delighted' about the engagement, but stressed he was 'sorry' because 'you know I can't talk'.

Thomas (left) said he was 'very pleased' and 'delighted' about the engagement, but stressed he was 'sorry' because he 'you know I can't talk'. Pictured right: Meghan and Harry

A reporter working for The Mirror also handed him a bottle of Champagne to toast the couple as well as a box of Twinings English Breakfast tea to prepare him for England, to which he replied: 'Thank you. That's very kind.'

The reclusive figure was found near Rosarito Beach, where he was buying cigarettes and beer.

His half-sister previously revealed his intention to walk Meghan down the aisle.

Thomas, who lives in Mexico, was said to be attending the May ceremony with Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, who divorced when Meghan was five.

Kensington Palace would not say at the time if Mr Markle will give his daughter away at St George's Chapel in the grounds of Windsor Castle next year.

Ms Markle's half-sister Samantha Markle, 53, told US Weekly today: 'I'm sure he wants to walk her down the aisle. I know he wants to do it'.

She added: 'He's a shy guy now, he's a quiet man, but he'll speak when he feels it's appropriate. He gave me permission to say how happy he is, but he'll talk when he's ready'.

Thomas Markle (pictured with Meghan as a child) lives in Mexico and will be attending the May ceremony but it is not known if he will walk her down the aisle

Doria Ragland and Meghan Markle were seen together at the Invictus Games closing ceremonyInvictus Games in Toronto on September 30

Harry is said to be considering flying to Mexico with his fiancee to meet her father, who he hasn't met yet.

But the prince did call him to ask for his permission to propose before they got engaged earlier this month.

Royal Engagement: Prince Harry has not met Meghan's father and could fly to Mexico to meet him - but they have spoken on the phone

Her brother Thomas Jr said previously: 'When Meggie was born, Dad was a completely changed man. Before then, Dad's work took priority over everything but she became his whole world. She was her daddy's princess'.

Palace aides would not say at the end of November whether Meghan's reclusive father, who is an award-winning Hollywood lighting director, would walk her down the aisle.

When Meghan was five, her parents divorced. She lived with her mother during the week, and her father  who rented a plethora of rundown Hollywood apartments  at weekends.

Whether she will invite her siblings though remains to be seen.

Her half sister Samantha Grant, 52, has not spoken to Miss Markle in 10 years; while her half brother Thomas Markle Jnr, 50, was once arrested for allegedly holding a gun to his girlfriend's head.

But her family appears willing to come to the UK even if they are not invited.

Meghan's nephew TJ Dooley, 26, from Oregon, told The Sun: 'I'd probably come to the UK for the wedding  even if I'm not invited. I am thrilled.'

Samantha Markle, half-sister to Meghan, pictured on Good Morning Britain their family was 'elated' at the Royal engagement and said their father wanted to give her away

This week Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland spoke of their delight at the news of the engage, saying: 'We are incredibly happy for Meghan and Harry.

They added: 'Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person.

'To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents.

'We wish them a lifetime of happiness and are very excited for their future together.'

Though they divorced in 1987, when Meghan was almost six, Thomas and Doria remained friends.

Miss Markle has previously spoken of her love for her parents, describing her clinical therapist mother as 'her inspiration' after she went back to university as a mature student and earned a master's degree in social work.

Low-key living: Meghan Markle's mum Doria Ragland spent the weekend preparing for her daughter's announcement in a decidedly low-key fashion outside her Los Angeles home

On Mother's Day last year she posted a picture of Doria on Instagram, writing: 'Always proud of this beautiful woman.'

Prince Harry has already met Doria, most recently at the Invictus Games in Toronto in September.

Miss Markle also described Hollywood lighting director Thomas, who now lives in Mexico, as the 'most hardworking father you can imagine'.

Doria is the great-great-great granddaughter of a slave, who took the name Wisdom when it was abolished in America.

She was just 20 years old and temping in a TV studio when she met Thomas, then a 32-year-old divorced father of two.

The cinematographer was already well respected in his profession, where he worked on American soaps such as General Hospital and Married... With Children.

He also did the lighting for the 1984 LA Olympics and the 1986 Oscars, even winning an Emmy.

They married in 1979, and Meghan was born two years later. The family lived in a beautiful sea-front house before moving to an affluent small town in The Valley area of Los Angeles, where their neighbours included one of Bing Crosby's twin sons.

Miss Markle attended the private Little Red Schoolhouse in Hollywood, which Elizabeth Taylor attended, followed by Immaculate Heart, an 11,500-ayear Catholic school.

Her half-brother, Thomas Junior, recalls how Thomas and Doria 'doted' on Meghan.

However, he said, Samantha envied the attention lavished on her half-sister, and tensions arose.

It was exacerbated by Thomas senior's long working hours, and in 1986, when Meghan was a few months short of her sixth birthday, her parents divorced.

The couple were awarded shared legal custody of Meghan, and Doria took various jobs to supplement her maintenance, including working as an air-stewardess, the same job once done by the Duchess of Cambridge's mother, Carole Middleton.

With her mother working, the teenage Meghan spent much of her with time with her father, in a Hollywood tenement block. Today, her mother works for a respected Los Angeles charity, specialising in helping people who had suffered brain injuries.

Her father, meanwhile, enjoys a quiet retirement in Mexico, close to the border with California.
A man killed in an ink vat in western Sydney had been trapped by a mixing blade that abruptly began moving.

The 42-year-old deceased worker was cleaning inside the vat at the Auburn factory when this blade swung into him and trapped his legs about 8.45am, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Another worker, 29, was injured while a third man, 28, sustained leg injuries when he tried to save his co-workers at the DIC Australia premises on Chisholm Road.

The worker who died was a contractor called to the site to clean the tank, paramedics said.

His surviving co-workers were a contractor and a DIC employee, who were freed by paramedics after also becoming trapped and are recovering in a stable condition at Westmead Hospital.

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A man has died after being trapped inside an 'extremely hot' ink vat at a factory (pictured) in Sydney's west

The incident occurred at DIC Australia factory on Chisholm Road in Auburn, western Sydney

Despite the heroic efforts of his two colleagues who immediately rushed to his aid, he could not be saved

Rescue crews were finally able to recover the man's body from the vat shortly before 3pm, more than six hours after the accident

Rescue crews were finally able to recover the man's body from the vat shortly before 3pm, more than six hours after the accident.

A stretcher was seen being carried to the accident scene shortly after 1.20pm. The workers were reportedly trapped in a mixing arm of the ink vat.

NSW Ambulance superintendent Paul Turner said the deceased man had been trapped by his legs, describing the area as 'a very difficult scene', adding the rescue became more difficult because the deceased workers colleagues had jumped into the vat to try and save him.

'There was still ink on the floor of the vat, which hampered rescue efforts and treatment,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'It's extremely hot inside the vat,' he said.

Special operations paramedics have been dispatched to the six-metre high vat 'shaped like a large battery'.

A man holds his head in his hands as he walks through the DIC Australia factory on Thursday

A van, believed to have belonged to the workers involved in the accident, leaves the factory

The front area of the Auburn factory in western Sydney where a worker died on Thursday

Three men were initially all conscious and talking when they were trapped about 8.45am on Thursday.

However, Mr Turner said the deceased men 'deteriorated rapidly towards the end'.

Ten ambulances were needed, along with police and Fire and Rescue trucks.

The two rescued men were taken to Westmead Hospital, with one man suffering suspected leg injuries and the other leg fractures.

Ambulance parademics at the scene told Daily Mail Australia the injuries were likely to have been caused by falling into the vat instead of the chemicals inside.

'This is a terrible tragedy,' Mr Turner said later in a statement.

A police detective leaves the grounds of the factory where the man died on Thursday morning

A man dressed in protective clothing walks through the factory metres from where the accident occurred

NSW paramedics said they had done 'absolutely everything we could' to save the workers at the factory

'We did absolutely everything we could.

'It was a complex operation. We worked as quickly as we could to access these patients.'

The man is yet to be formally identified and his body remains in the tank, a NSW Police spokesman said.

Detectives have established a crime scene and are investigating.

SafeWork NSW is preparing a report.
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The average deposit that first-time buyers need to get onto the property ladder is expected to rise to more than 80,000 in the next 10 years.

For those living in London, the amount required will reach more than three times that amount at an eye-watering 245,000, according to the research by mortgage brokers L&C Mortgages.

It is the latest evidence of the extreme financial pressures placed on those wanting to buy their own home - and the mortgage broker created an interactive map that shows how the UK will be affected.

The average deposit for first-time buyers across the UK currently stands at 51,821, it said.

The average deposit that first-time buyers need to get onto the property ladder is expected to rise to more than 80,000 in the next 10 years

The data looked at some of the largest cities around the country, with the deposit required for those looking to buy in Brighton and Hove potentially reaching 125,280 within 10 years, compared to 77,407 now.

For those in Bristol, it could reach 92,000 from 58,035, while for those in Norwich and Edinburgh, the average level may reach 63,364 and 58,204, from 40,890 and 37,661, respectively.

David Hollingworth, of L&C, said: 'First-time buyers could be forgiven for giving up hope of owning their first home.

'There is some stark variation between cities but the fact that London deposits could be almost hitting a quarter of a million pounds by 2027 is alarming.'

HOW FIRST-TIME BUYER DEPOSITS ARE FORECAST TO RISE AROUND THE UK BETWEEN NOW AND 2027 UK cities Deposit needed today Deposit needed 2022 Deposit needed 2027 Total % increase by 2027 London 139,987 188,966 244,842 75% Brighton and Hove 77,407 100,032 125,280 62% Bristol 58,035 74,192 92,062 59% Norwich 40,890 51,626 63,364 55% Edinburgh 37,661 47,467 58,204 55% Southampton 45,262 56,775 69,349 53% Cardiff 34,400 42,593 51,485 50% Leeds 29,589 36,633 44,252 50% Manchester 28,672 35,513 42,912 50% Birmingham 30,602 37,792 45,564 49% Plymouth 36,384 44,762 53,806 48% Sheffield 26,193 32,263 38,797 48% Glasgow 21,876 26,904 32,291 48% Nottingham 25,132 30,693 36,650 46% Newcastle upon Tyne 26,037 31,826 38,046 46% Liverpool 21,292 25,852 30,716 44% Belfast 29,682 35,528 41,755 41% Source: L&C Mortgages

The average deposit for first-time buyers is expected to rise to more than 80,000 in 10 years, according to new research

The research looked at how house prices in some of Britain's largest cities had changed in the past 20 years.

It used the gap between this data and the level of mortgage borrowing to determine the average deposit paid by first-time buyers.

It then applied these historical rises in deposit levels to the next 10 years to forecast how much of a deposit first-time buyers might require in the future.

Some of the figures - particularly in the capital - may seem high, but Mr Hollingworth explained how it is unlikely 10 years ago that many buyers would have thought that the levels of deposit required today.

Mr Hollingworth said: 'Pulling together a deposit continues to represent one of the single biggest challenges and these forecast will make frightening reading for aspiring first-time buyers.

'As result, the bank of Mum and Dad will do doubt continue to play an important role for those attempting to get on the ladder.'

First-time buyers can also now benefit from the Chancellor's decision in last month's Budget to scrap stamp duty on first homes worth up to 300,000.

This will save them up to a maximum of 5,000 and abolishes stamp duty below 300,000 for any home costing up to 500,000.

It's a bargain! This one-bed flat in London's Beckenham has an asking price of 165,000, which is marginally more than the average 139,987 deposit required to buy in the capital

L&C went on to examine the attitudes of first-time buyers and found that their perception of how much of a deposit they will require in the next 10 years is much lower than the findings in its research.

It suggests that first-time buyers are dramatically underestimating how much of a deposit they will need to get onto the property ladder.

It found that these borrowers thought they would only need 35,402 on average for a deposit to buy a property in the next 10 years - and that they had only saved 16,436 towards this goal. It contrasts to the research findings that the average deposit could be 81,468 within 10 years.

It leaves a large shortfall between what they have saved and what the broker predicts they will need to buy a property in the future.

Although there are mortgage deals available to those with smaller deposits of as little as 5 per cent of the purchase price of a property, rates on these types of deals are higher than for those with a larger deposit.
While you might think that a fish would stand no chance against a bird, a new video has seen the tables turn.

The nail-biting footage shows a pike grabbing a grebe and slowly yanking it underwater in a river in Zegveld, the Netherlands.

Onlookers intervened in the battle by throwing a stick at the fish, which many have criticised as disrupting the course of nature.

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While you might think that a fish would stand no chance against a bird, a new video has seen the tables turn. The nail-biting footage shows a pike grabbing a grebe and slowly yanking it underwater in a river in Zegveld, the Netherlands

THE FISH-BIRD BATTLE The pike holds the grebe in its mouth, while the bird struggles to pull away. This tug-of-war continues for around 30 seconds, before the pike yanks the bird underwater. The squabbling pair re-emerge at the surface, and the bird tries to bite the fish to urge it to let go. At this point, an onlooker decides to intervene by throwing a stick at the pair. The duo disappears underwater, and the bird is able to make its escape. Advertisement

The video was filmed in a river in Zegveld and has had over 300,000 views on YouTube.

In the video, a huge pike can be seen holding a grebe in its mouth, while the bird struggles to pull itself away.

This tug-of-war continues for around 30 seconds, before the pike yanks the bird underwater.

The squabbling pair re-emerge at the surface, and the bird can be seen trying to bite the fish to urge it to let go.

At this point, an onlooker decides to intervene by throwing a stick at the pair.

The duo disappears underwater, and the bird is able to make its escape.

Martin Fowlie, Media Manager for RSPB, told MailOnline: 'Pike are predators, eating all manner of fish and amphibians.

'They also take young ducks and moorhens.

'Only a really big pike would be able to attack and eat a bird as large as an adult great crested grebe.'

In the video, a huge pike can be seen holding a grebe in its mouth, while the bird struggles to pull itself away. This tug-of-war continues for around 30 seconds, before the pike yanks the bird underwater

Some people supported the onlooker's decision to intervene.

CB said: 'Good surgery! Probably both animals did not survive otherwise.'

And Dave Smith added: 'They could both have died if the gentlemen had not thrown the stick. So class men's top! '

An onlooker decides to intervene by throwing a stick at the pair. The duo disappears underwater, and the bird is able to make its escape

But others slammed his/her choice.

Niels commented: 'Do you also throw a beam of wood to a great critter, heron, cormorant, kingfisher, and so on, if they have caught a fish?'

And Goldmine said: 'Disturbance of nature -1. If you try to eat a steak I do not throw a stick to your head .'
An uncanny resemblance to one of science fiction's most evil villains has earned a fossilised crab the dubious honour of being named after Darth Vader.

The unusual shape of the now extinct horseshoe crab species bears a striking similarity to the famous helmet of the intimidating Star Wars character.

The 245-million-year-old species, whose remains date from the Triassic period, have been dubbed Vaderlimulus tricki, after the Dark Lord of the Sith.

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An uncanny resemblance to one of science fiction's most evil villains has earned a fossilised crab the dubious honour of being named after Darth Vader. The 245-million-year-old crab from the Triassic period was found in Idaho and has been labelled Vaderlimulus tricki

WHAT IS CITIZEN SCIENCE The limitations for researchers in gathering data are normally time, man power and money. Citizen science helps resolve this by utilising keen volunteers to assist in gathering more information. Often through an online portal and with some basic training provided, citizen science studies allow people to get involved in a field that interests them and genuinely contribute to ongoing studies. Other examples of citizen science studies include: looking for new planets, assessing the populations of bird populations and keeping an eye on the fragile bumblebees. Advertisement

Researchers from New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and the University of Colorado published their a paper outlining the find.

The species name 'tricki' pays tribute to the man who found the fossil in Idaho, Trick Runions.

Trick is part of the citizen science Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado.

It is the first fossil of its kind from the Triassic Period to be found in North America.

Experts have called the specimen 'mostly complete and moderately well preserved.'

When this creature was alive, it would have lived on the supercontinent of Pangea.

Scientists believe its peculiar appearance was because of the species expanding its range and moving from the ocean to freshwater.

'Vaderlimulus has unusual body proportions that give it an odd appearance,' said lead author Allan J Lerner.

Writing In the study its authors added: 'The fossil record of horseshoe crabs from the Mesozoic [era] of North America consists of only three specimens from the Cretaceous [period].

'We add to this depauperate record the first report of a horseshoe crab body fossil from the Triassic [period] of North America.'

Only three fossils of horseshoe crab, daring from the Mesozoic era, have been found in North America.

This specimen is the only one from the Triassic period, which is the first period in the Mesozoic era and spanned from 251 million to 199 million years ago.

Of the three existing fossils, all of them came from the more recent Cretaceous period, which was between 145 million and 66 million years ago.

At the time this fossil was found, mammals and dinosaurs were just beginning their evolutionary journey.

The unusual shape of the now extinct horseshoe crab species bears a striking similarity to the famous helmet of the intimidating Star Wars character (pictured)

When this animal was alive, it would have lived on the supercontinent of Pangea. Scientists believe its peculiar appearance (artist's impression) was because of the species expanding its range and moving from the ocean to freshwater

Already ancient at that time, horseshoe crabs date back nearly 500 million years and surviving fossils are rare.

Today only four similar species remain and their numbers continue to dwindle.

Relics of a long ago time, the living descendants of the Darth Vader crab are more closely related to scorpions than they are crabs.

Citizen science involves the use of members of the public to help gather information and cover more ground.

The limitations for researchers are normally time, man power and money but citizen science helps resolve this by utilising keen volunteers to assist in getting more information.

Often through an online portal and with some basic training provided, citizen science studies allow people to get involved in a field that interests them and genuinely contribute to ongoing studies.

Other examples of citizen science studies include looking for new planets, assessing the populations of bird populations and keeping an eye on the fragile bumblebees.
Homosexuality isn't a lifestyle choice, but is rooted in a person's biology, according to a controversial new study.

Research from NorthShore University in Illinois claims to have found genetic markers that can reveal if a man is gay.

Scientists looked at the DNA of more than 2,000 people and located two regions of chromosomes that may be linked to sexuality.

The study has been described as 'weak' by independent scientists, and the study's authors admit the link is 'speculative'.

They say, however, that the research could help them get closer to finding so-called 'gay genes'.

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Gay men share variations in their DNA that may point to clues about how sexual orientation is hardwired into our genetic code, according to new research. In a controversial study, experts say that they have located two regions of chromosomes that may be relevant (stock image)

THE FINDINGS Experts found two regions with multiple genetic variants most strongly associated with sexuality. These were located on chromosomes 13 and 14, near genes that have functions which may be relevant to the development of sexual orientation. The strongest associated region on chromosome 13 was located between the genes, SLITRK5 and SLITRK6. SLITRK6 is a neurodevelopmental gene mostly expressed in a region of the brain called the diencephalon, which contains a region previously reported as differing in size in men depending on their sexual orientation. On chromosome 14, the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) gene was found to span the most significant region that may offer clues into sexual orientation. Genetic variants in TSHR may help explain past findings linking thyroid function and sexual orientation. Advertisement

Debate has long raged among the scientific community over whether sexual orientation is biologically determined, the result of environmental causes or a combination of factors.

The latest study is unlikely to settle this debate, but it is by no means the first to try and the claim that homosexual men share a gay gene created a furore in the 1990s.

In 1993, American geneticist Dean Hamer found families with several gay males on the mothers side, suggesting a gene on the X chromosome.

He showed that pairs of brothers who were openly gay shared a small region at the tip of the X, and proposed that it contained a gene that predisposes a male to homosexuality.

Gay men were divided. It vindicated the oft-repeated claims that I was born this way but also opened frightening new possibilities for detection and discrimination.

In the latest study researchers at NorthShore University (NSU) HealthSystems Research Institute, based in Evanston, made the findings after conducting a genome-wide association study (GWAS).

This examined the sexual orientation of 1,077 homosexual and 1,231 heterosexual men.

Sexual orientation of participants in the study was rated based on their self-reported sexual identity and sexual feelings.

Men were asked to provide DNA by blood or saliva samples that were then analysed for variations in their genetic code.

They found two regions with multiple genetic variants most strongly associated with sexuality.

These were located on chromosomes 13 and 14, near genes that have functions which may be relevant to the development of sexual orientation.

Alan Sanders, a psychiatrist who studies behavioural genetics at NSU who led the study, said: 'Because sexuality is an essential part of human life, for individuals and society, it is important to understand the development and expression of human sexual orientation.

'The goal of this study was to search for genetic underpinnings of male sexual orientation, and thus ultimately increase our knowledge of biological mechanisms underlying sexual orientation.

'What we have accomplished is a first step for GWAS on the trait, and we hope that subsequent larger studies will further illuminate its genetic contributions.'

The strongest associated region on chromosome 13 was located between the genes, SLITRK5 and SLITRK6.

SLITRK6 is a neurodevelopmental gene mostly expressed in a region of the brain called the diencephalon, which contains a region previously reported as differing in size in men depending on their sexual orientation.

On chromosome 14, the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) gene was found to span the most significant region that may offer clues into sexual orientation.

Genetic variants in TSHR may help explain past findings linking thyroid function and sexual orientation.

It has long been believed that sexuality has a biological basis, with certain genes linked to homosexuality. Experts found two regions with multiple genetic variants most strongly associated with sexuality, located on chromosomes 13 and 14 (stock image)

The authors note that the modest sample size in their study for a trait with complex genetics is a limitation.

So too is their focus on men of European ancestry, as well as limiting the study to just men.

Researchers emphasise that although the top two association regions provide interesting and perhaps trait-relevant examples with their closest genes, the potential connections remain speculative.

About the findings Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, group leader at The Francis Crick Institute biomedical research centre in London, who was not involved in the study, said: 'Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) are problematic and are frequently underpowered, meaning that the sample sizes are too small to allow any robust conclusions.

'This is particularly so for traits like being gay that are likely to involve many genes and where "environmental" influences, perhaps both in utero and postnatally, can have a strong effect.

'Moreover, correlation does not mean causation.

'The new data on genetic associations they report here does not show sufficient statistical significance to make any formal link between a gene or chromosome region and being gay or heterosexual.

'However, their data does tend to reinforce some previous findings of associations, which were also relatively weak, with a region of Chromosome 8 and the X chromosome.

CAN STUDYING DNA REALLY REVEAL IF SOMEONE IS GAY? Debate has long raged among the scientific community over whether sexual orientation is biologically determined, the result of environmental causes or a combination of factors. The latest study is unlikely to settle this debate, but it is by no means the first to try and the claim that homosexual men share a gay gene created a furore in the 1990s. In 1993, American geneticist Dean Hamer found families with several gay males on the mothers side, suggesting a gene on the X chromosome. He showed that pairs of brothers who were openly gay shared a small region at the tip of the X, and proposed that it contained a gene that predisposes a male to homosexuality. Hamers conclusions were extremely controversial. He was challenged at every turn by people unwilling to accept that homosexuality is at least partly genetic, rather than a lifestyle choice. Debate has long raged among the scientific community over whether sexual orientation is biologically determined, the result of environmental causes or a combination of factors Gay men were divided. It vindicated the oft-repeated claims that I was born this way but also opened frightening new possibilities for detection and discrimination. Similar studies gave contradictory results. A later search found associations with genes on three other chromosomes. More recently, in February 2014, scientists announced they had found two stretches of DNA linked to homosexuality in men. In the study, Chicago University researchers analysed the DNA of more than 400 pairs of gay brothers, recruited at Gay Pride festivals at marches over several years. This flagged up two pieces of DNA that seem to be linked to homosexuality. And in October 2015, experts claimed they could predict whether someone is gay or straight with up to 70 per cent accuracy by looking at their DNA. The study involved 37 pairs of twins in which one brother was homosexual and the other heterosexual, and 10 pairs in which both were homosexual. Using a computer program called Fuzzy Forest they found that nine small regions of the genetic code played the key role on deciding whether someone is heterosexual or homosexual. Advertisement

'Regions of chromosome 13 and 14 also appear from the new work to be worth paying attention to in future studies.'

Professor Gil McVean, who specialises in statistical genetics at the University of Oxford, added: 'The researchers have found weak evidence for genetic variation that influences self-reported sexual preferences in men.

However, the sample size is small, the results have not been replicated in an independent study and the level of evidence presented doesnt meet the threshold of significance typically required within the field.

'I dont think the work would have been published if it were on a less controversial topic. It is, at best, preliminary.'

The full findings of the study were published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
If you use an iPhone, you may want to check whether the charger you have is a knock-off.

A shocking new report has revealed that 98 per cent of fake iPhone chargers put consumers at risk of lethal electric shocks or house fires.

Researchers hope their findings will help raise awareness of the issue and the threat that counterfeits pose to consumers.

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If you use a fake or lookalike iPhone charger, you may want to consider upgrading to the real-deal. A shocking new report has revealed that 98 per cent of fake iPhone chargers put consumers at risk of lethal electric shocks or fire (stock image)

HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR IPHONE CHARGER IS 'FAKE' The researchers tested a range of fake iPhone chargers, including 50 purchased in the UK. They all had incorrect or fraudulent safety markings. Some attempted to copy markings from real iPhone chargers, but included some errors such as spelling mistakes. Apple says users to only buy official chargers as these are put through extensive tests. Advice on Apple's official chargers can be found here. Advertisement

In the study, researchers conducted a series of safety tests on counterfeit and lookalike iPhone chargers, including 50 purchased in the UK.

The findings, published in a report by Electrical Safety First, reveal that almost all (98 per cent) of these chargers had the potential to deliver lethal electric shocks and cause a fire.

Martyn Allen, Technical Director at Electrical Safety First, said: It is extremely concerning that 49 out of 50 UK chargers we tested failed basic safety checks.

'This report shows that anyone purchasing an iPhone charger from an online marketplace or at an independent discount store is taking a serious risk with their safety.'

The chargers were sourced from a variety of online marketplaces and discount stores and stalls across the UK.

Of those tested, all but one failed one or more of the tests and more than one in three chargers failed every part of the test.

The researchers subjected the chargers to a number of electrical and mechanical tests.

Their results showed that almost half failed an electric strength test; meaning that there is a severe risk of electric shock when using these chargers.

Internal examination showed almost half failed basic safety requirements, with sub-standard internal components or inadequate spacing.

The findings reveal that almost all (98 per cent) of these chargers had the potential to deliver lethal electric shock and cause a fire

Sixty-eight per cent of the chargers tested carried a severe risk of electric shock due to lack of insulation and poor quality internal components.

And 15 chargers that passed the electrical tests failed the plug pin strength test, demonstrating a danger of breaking off inside a mains socket.

WHICH CHARGING METHODS ARE WORTH A TRY? DIY charger using a 9V battery: this method doesn't work and is dangerous. Fruit battery: this method is also unlikely to work and can damage your phone. Backup battery packs: these are the easiest and safest option. They will definitely charge your phone and are inexpensive and available everywhere. Solar panel and charger: this is an affordable option that ads more versatility than the traditional backup battery packs because it doesn't require electricity to charge in the first place. Hand crank: The Eton BoostTurbine2000 handcrank would be a difficult way to give your phone a full charge, but it can get you some power in an emergency. Wind turbine: the inventors claim that when fully-charged, the turbine can charge your phone four to six times. But this is a pricey option at $399. Advertisement

Mr Allen said: 'The vast majority of chargers we tested had the potential to deliver a lethal electrical shock or cause a fire.

'We're urging people to take care when buying a charger and recommend buying directly from trusted retailers only.

'When you buy a fake, at best you could damage your phone but at worst you could be putting your life, your family and your home at risk.'

The latest study follows news last month that a teenage girl died in Vietnam after being electrocuted in her sleep by her faulty iPhone charging cable.

Le Thi Xoan, aged 14, reportedly rolled over onto the torn cable and had as a result been exposed to the live wire, police in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi said.

She was found unconscious by her parents and rushed to a local hospital; however, doctors were unable to revive her and pronounced her dead.

Police found the burnt white cable on her bed and believe a slight tear in the rubber casing may have revealed the live wires inside.

According to investigators, the police believe the girl had plugged her Apple device into charge and laid the iPhone 6 on her bed like she did every night.

The charging cable is being inspected but the authorities said they are yet to determine whether it was the original Apple wire or a third-party device.

In a picture showing the burnt cable, it appears to be shorter than Apple's original 20-inch charging cable.

See-through tape had also been wrapped around the front of the cable, suggesting that the victim may have been aware of the wear and tear but decided to continue using it regardless.
In 1770, people living in far-east Asia saw the sky turn a deep crimson for over a week - an event that was recorded in ancient scrolls.

Now, scientists have analysed the historical event, and suggest the red hue was caused by a giant solar storm.

Lost to the annals of time, the event could be the largest recorded solar flare in recorded history.

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In 1770, people living in far-east Asia saw the sky turn a deep crimson for over a week - an event that was recorded in ancient scrolls. Now, scientists have analysed the historical event, and suggest the red hue was caused by a giant magnetic storm (stock image)

WHAT ARE CMEs? Two main types of explosions occur on the sun: solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Unlike the energy and x-rays produced in a solar flare  which can reach Earth at the speed of light in eight minutes  coronal mass ejections are giant, expanding clouds of solar material that take one to three days to reach Earth. Once at Earth, these ejections or CMEs can impact satellites in space or interfere with radio communications. Advertisement

China, Korea and Japan all saw a deep red sky for nine days in the late 18th century.

Researchers from Osaka University have unearthed new documents which suggest the celestial phenomenon was caused by a geomagnetic storm.

'Historical documents can let us trace back solar activity for millennia,' Dr Hisashi Hayakawa, who led the study, told Live Science.

Previously, the 'Carrington' event of 1859 was considered the benchmark for huge solar storms.

To solve the 300-year-old mystery, researchers looked at historical records from China, Korea and Japan from the 18th century, to see if there were mentions of auroras.

They also looked as records from Captain James Cook's missions on the HMS Endeavour, as well as sunspot drawings from the period by German astronomer Johann Caspar Staudacher.

By carefully looking through 111 ancient antique documents, the researchers discovered that this Asian occurrence had sun spots twice as large as the one's observed during the Carrington event.

'Sunspot drawings from 1770 reveals the fact that sunspots area was twice as large as those observed in another great storm of 1859, which substantiates this unusual storm activities in 1770,' the authors said in their study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers also found auroras were seen farther south by the crew aboard the HMS Endeavour near Timor Island in Southeast Asia.

Because these auroras took place at low latitudes, it suggests a powerful geomagnetic storm caused them.

The researchers believe that the eerie blood-red glow was likely caused by the ejection of 'several huge, sequential magnetic structures in short duration into interplanetary space, resulting in spectacular world-wide aurora in mid-September 1770.'

If a solar storm the size of the one in 1770 was to occur now, it would have catastrophic results for the power grid and machinery we use (stock image)

Before now, the event was believed to have been over two days, but new evidence suggests it was far longer, lasting well over a week.

The skies were a deep red for nine days, setting a new record for a geomagnetic aurora as the Carrington event is believed to have lasted a maximum of four days.

Unlike solar flares, which travel at the speed of light once emitted and reach Earth in about eight minutes, CMEs are larger events where giant, expanding clouds of magnetised particles are launched into space and take one to three days to reach Earth.

HOW WOULD WE BE AFFECTED? In 2016, the government published a report outlining what needs to be done to prepare for 'space weather' including solar flares and CMEs. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections both involve gigantic explosions of energy, but while flares can last minutes to hours and can reach Earth in a matter of minutes, CMEs are intense clouds of magnetised particles hurled into space including a hot material called plasma, which takes up to three days to reach Earth. The two phenomena can occur at the same time and the strongest flares are almost always accompanied by CMEs. The report states: 'Space weather results from solar activity. Solar activity can produce X-rays, high energy particles and Coronal Mass Ejections of plasma. 'Where such activity is directed towards Earth there is the potential to cause wide-ranging impacts. 'These include power loss, aviation disruption, communication loss, and disturbance to (or loss) of satellite systems.' For example, GPS systems could go down for up to three days at a time, leaving train networks and shipping badly affected. While mobile phones and landlines are expected to be unaffected, satellite communication and high frequency radio communication used by shipping and aircraft, could also go down for several days. Power grids could also be affected, leading to black outs in some areas. Advertisement

Although the researchers are not entirely sure if the event of 1770 was a solar flare or a CME, they added: 'The long duration of the auroral observations in 1770 indicates long-lasting magnetic storm activities resulting from continuous solar activity, such as multiple, consecutive CMEs.'

This period of speculated intense solar activity created a phenomena which endured in folklore for centuries.

However, if it happened now the consequences would be far more severe.

Unlike the energy and x-rays produced in a solar flare  which can reach Earth at the speed of light in eight minutes  coronal mass ejections (pictured) are giant, expanding clouds of solar material that take one to three days to reach Earth

'Modern civilisation heavily relies on satellites and large-scale power grids,' the researchers wrote. 'If such events were to strike the Earth now, the consequences could be catastrophic.'

A huge solar storm would have the potential to disrupt flights, disturb satellites and render GPS pointless.

A previous study suggested that if a solar storm the size of the Carrington event was to happen now, it would cost North America $2.3 trillion (1.7 trillion).

The authors of that study said that the possibility of it happening in the future is 'almost inevitable.'
Me too. Millions of victims have found their voice, as of late, and used the phrase to denounce sexual assault and harassment. This week, Bismarck State College is using its theater program to shed light on this difficult-to-address topic through its production of How I Learned to Drive.

Paula Vogels Pulitzer Prize-winning play tells the story of a young woman who was sexually assaulted as a child and her attempts to become a survivor and overcome her past.

It is, sadly, an extremely relevant show for us to work on, said director Daniel Rogers, noting the production was in the works long before accusations began to surface. The production is appearing on campuses all over the country in response to the sexual assault and harassment charges that are sweeping the nation as many women are finding their voice and daring, as a group, to step forward and say Me too.

Recommended for a mature audience, How I Learned to Drive will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at BSCs Sidney J. Lee Auditorium.

Playing the lead role of Lil Bit is Breanna Sailer, a BSC freshman majoring in English education and minoring in theater.

"Lil Bit is a survivor of sexual assault, mostly from her uncle who she was not blood-related to, Sailer said. As shes looking back at memories of her life, not all containing sexual abuse, shes not all down and conservative and scared all the time. Shes funny, she goofs off and shes still allowed to be a loveable character, even though plenty of terrible things have happened to her in her life.

A challenging role for any actor, but, for Sailer, it hits close to home.

I was really apprehensive on doing this play in the first place. I figured it would bring up triggers and things from my past, she said. I didnt know if I could emotionally handle it, because I was abused, in several different ways, for five years of my life.

This role has been a true gift and art form and has done nothing but helped me with my recovery, she said. Its allowed me to just completely open up about the topic, because its something thats never really talked about. Ever.

Sailer, the current Miss Rugby titleholder, plans to compete for Miss North Dakota in June, with sexual abuse awareness as her platform.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one out of four girls and one out of six boys will experience sexual abuse before they turn 18.

I think we all know, in terms of sexual assault, the real healing power has to be discussion and awareness. And Ive always felt the theater can help in that process, Rogers said. The theater is a safe place for us to explore the difficult topics, the difficult issues. The stage is a laboratory where we can witness, ponder and judge human behavior, and do so from a safe and enlightening distance.

BSC, in collaboration with the Abused Adult Resource Center, is also hosting The Clothesline Project, a visual display of T-shirts created by survivors of violence, or in honor of someone who has experienced violence.

Each T-shirt reflects the experience of its creator, and many contain graphic materials, such as swear words, explicit descriptions of the attack or other statements that reflect the emotions and reality experienced by the individual.

I think the images are striking and difficult, but they should be, said Danny Devlin, BSCs assistant professor of theater. It forces the spectator to keep their eyes open.

The T-shirts will be on display outside of the auditorium throughout the plays run.

What I think the show does so well, and one of the reasons we brought in 'The Clothesline Project,' is it takes these uncomfortable topics, and things we want to bury down deep and not talk or think about, and it makes them visible, Devlin said.

People are finding the strength to make their abuse visible, and, if we can participate in that in any way, then I think thats an important thing we can do in the theater, he said. We want to make the invisible, visible.

Rogers encourages parents to bring their kids, ages 11 and older, to the play.

I would hope parents would bring their younger adult children, if they want to have a discussion about sexual assault, if they want an in to starting communication. These are awkward conversations to have, Rogers said.

This production will give them a lot to talk about and its done in a way, quite intentionally by Paula Vogel, to give the audience a distance. Not to shock them, not to rip them to pieces with the power and awfulness of the situation, but to do it in a style which is Brechtian, which offers the audience a distance, he said.

How I Learned to Drive marks the first directorial return of Rogers to the Sidney J. Lee Auditorium stage since his retirement in 2015.

We were really, really fortunate to be able to bring Dan back for this particular production, Devlin said. Its a show weve long wanted to do, but we needed the right director  someone we could trust to really care for the process and care for the students intellectual and emotional safety. Dan was our guy.

Its been a delight to work with a group of enthusiastic, brave and fun college actors approaching a difficult and very challenging play, Rogers said.

The cast and crew have been rehearsing 15 hours per week for the past seven weeks and are ready to present How I Learned to Drive to the community.

I think its a beautiful form of art and, if you come, you are going to have a greater understanding about a topic thats really not talked about," Sailer said.

For more information or to purchase tickets, call 701-224-5677 or visit www.bsctheatre.com.
The date the first humans migrated from Africa has been pushed back 60,000 years by scientists.

Researchers suggest that early humans began crossing to Eurasia as early as 120,000 years ago.

The traditional 'Out of Africa' model suggests that modern humans evolved in Africa and then left in a single wave around 60,000 years ago.

But advances in DNA testing and other fossil analysis techniques show that humans actually arrived in Asia much earlier than previously thought, according to a review of recent research.

The study also claims migrants dispersed across Eurasia in a number of waves across tens of thousands of years, interbreeding with their human-like cousins along the way.

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Researchers suggest that early humans began crossing to Eurasia as early as 120,000 years ago. Pictured is a map of sites and migratory pathways taken by modern humans dispersing across Asia according to findings from a new study

WHEN DID HUMANS LEAVE AFRICA? The researchers reviewed a flood of new early human discoveries reported from Asia over the past ten years. Homo sapiens reached distant parts of the Asian continent, as well as Near Oceania, much earlier than previously thought, recent findings show. For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Based on these studies, humans could not have come in a single wave from Africa 60,000 years ago, the study found. Instead, multiple, smaller movements of humans out of Africa beginning 120,000 years ago were then followed by a major migration 60,000 years ago. Advertisement

The researchers, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, reviewed research on early human migration spanning the past decade.

Recent findings show that the 'Out of Africa' theory does not tell the full story of our ancestors, the study found.

Instead, multiple, smaller movements of humans out of Africa beginning 120,000 years ago were then followed by a major migration 60,000 years ago.

Most of our DNA is made up of this latter group, but the earlier migrations, also known as 'dispersals', are still evident.

This explains recent studies finding that all modern non-African populations branched off from a single group in Africa around 60,000 years ago.

'The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations,' study coauthor Professor Michael Petraglia said.

'A later, major "Out of Africa" event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter.'

The researchers reviewed a flood of new early human discoveries reported from Asia over the past ten years.

Homo sapiens reached distant parts of the Asian continent, as well as Near Oceania, much earlier than previously thought, recent findings show.

The researchers reviewed research on early human migration spanning the past decade. They say that recent research shows that human reached Asia earlier than 60,000 years ago. Pictured are 80,000-year-old human teeth found in southern China in 2015

Migrants dispersed across Eruasia in a number of waves across tens of thousands of years, interbreeding with their human-like cousins, such as Neanderthals (model pictured), along the way, the study shows

INTERBREEDING WITH OTHER SPECIES After leaving Africa, our ancestors interbred with other hominins already present in Asia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, the researchers said. Recent research estimates that all present-day non-Africans have 1-4 per cent Neanderthal heritage. Another group suggested that modern Melanesians have an average of 5 per cent Denisovan heritage. Neanderthals, Denisovans and perhaps other hominin groups likely overlapped in time and space in Asia, and certainly had many instances of interaction, the new study claimed. Advertisement

Over the past decade, early human remains have been found in the far reaches of Asia dating back further than 60,000 years.

For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Other recent finds show that modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Australia prior to 60,000 years ago.

Based on these studies, humans could not have come in a single wave from Africa around this time, the study found.

After leaving Africa, our ancestors interbred with other hominins already present in Asia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, the researchers said.

The evidence of human activity outside of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago debunks the 'Out of Africa' theory of human evolution, the researchers said. Pictured is an edge-ground hatchet head found as part of a July study that found humans arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago

ANCIENT DNA IN HUMANS Modern humans carry traces of DNA from mixing with other hominids, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. In February, researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine analysed the DNA of 1,500 people, including those from Europe, Asia and the Pacific islands, to see where these ancient genes remain. They identified 126 areas of the modern human genome where ancient DNA persists. Modern humans carry traces of DNA from mixing with other hominids, including Neanderthals and Denisovans (stock image) They found genes relating to the immune system and skin function. Neanderthal gene expression likely contributes to traits such as height and even our susceptibility to lupus and schizophrenia. Scientists believe the genes from our extinct cousins helped modern humans to thrive as they moved outwards from the African continent. Advertisement

Recent research estimates that all present-day non-Africans have 1-4 per cent Neanderthal heritage.

Another group suggested that modern Melanesians have an average of 5 per cent Denisovan heritage.

Based on this recent research, Neanderthals, Denisovans and perhaps other hominin groups likely overlapped in time and space in Asia, and had many instances of interaction, the Max Planck study claimed.

Designers have used the fossils to recreate what they think the first Homo sapiens across Africa looked like 300,000 years ago. New research suggests that H. sapiens began migrating to Eurasia 120,000 year ago in small groups before a bigger dispersal 60,000 years ago

WHAT KILLED OFF THE NEANDERTHALS? The first Homo sapiens reached Europe around 43,000 years ago, replacing the Neanderthals there approximately 3,000 years later. There are many theories as to what drove the downfall of the Neanderthals. Experts have suggested that early humans may have carried tropical diseases with them from Africa that wiped out their ape-like cousins. Others claim that plummeting temperatures due to climate change wiped out the Neanderthals. The predominant theory is that early humans killed off the Neanderthal through competition for food and habitat. Homo sapiens' superior brain power and hunting techniques meant the Neanderthals couldn't compete. Advertisement

The authors argued for the development of more complicated models of human dispersals from Africa.

They said new research must be carried out in the areas of Asia where none has been done to date.

'Fortunately, there have been an increasing number of multidisciplinary research programs launched in Asia over the past few decades,' study coauthor Dr Katerina Douka said.

'The information that is being reported is helping to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary records.'
The countdown to Santa's one-night circumnavigation of the globe has started.

You can now track his progress with The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), which follows Father Christmas as he leaves his top-secret toy factory in the North Pole.

The site allows children - and adults - to track Santa as he travels around the world at lightening speed, starting on Christmas Eve.

You can track Santa in real-time using NORAD's tool below. Mobile users who can't see the tracker above can visit NORAD's website to use it

You can track Santa in real-time using NORAD's tool above. Mobile users who can't see the tracker above can visit NORAD's website to use it

TRACKING SANTA Although Father Christmas won't set off until Christmas Eve, the site is now live to get people ready. The popular website shows his path above different countries and has a counter that reveals the number of presents delivered. As well as a clock with a countdown to Christmas Eve there are weather updates, games, films and Christmas stories available on the site. Come Christmas Eve, if users cannot access the tracker there is also an email address or number you can contact to get the latest updates. Advertisement

NORAD has been following Santa's movements from space since 1955, when an advert encouraging children to phone Santa gave out its number instead.

It told children to give Santa Claus a call 'any time day or night' on his private phone, but accidentally gave the number ME-2-6681, which connected to the NORAD 'hotline'.

Colonel Harry Shoup received the call on a telephone meant to be used during an incidence of impending attack by the Soviet Union, but responded in a playful way and let the boy know where Santa was en route from the North Pole.

Colonel Shoup ordered staff to answer calls with an update on Father Christmas' location and the tradition has continued, now with a live tracker of Santa's journey online.

The website shows his path above different countries and has a counter that reveals the number of presents delivered.

Although Father Christmas won't set off until Christmas Eve, the site is now live to get people ready.

Come the 24th December, if users cannot access the tracker there is also an email address or number you can contact to get the latest updates.

As well as a clock with a countdown to Christmas Eve there are weather updates, games, films and Christmas stories available on the site.

People can track Santa's progress when he leaves his toy factory in the North Pole. This screenshot shows tracking has begun

NORAD has been following Santa's movements from space since 1955, when an advert encouraging children to phone Santa gave out its number instead. This screenshot from NORAD shows Santa's village

'One of our favourite places on the website is the Holiday Activities page under Library', according to the NORAD Facebook page.

'You can see a personalised message from Santa, Elf Yourself, print out colouring pages, and SO MUCH MORE'.

Volunteers are manning NORAD's 157 phone lines and computers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to field hundreds of phone calls, emails and tweets from anxious children, wondering what time Santa will arrive.

According to the website the email address is; noradtrackssanta@outlook.com

It says you can phone the call centre on 00-1-719-556-5211.

Santa is based in a top-secret workshop at the top of the world, known only to a few people

NORAD said Santa is able to complete his journey because he works within his own special space-time continuum. His sled carries incredible weights and is propelled by 'reindeer power (illustrated above)

They generally get around 70,000 calls from children in around 200 countries checking his location.

Parents and guardians will also want to ensure their children are in bed before Santa arrives so he stops and makes his much-anticipated delivery.

Volunteers will share Santa's location on Facebook and Twitter. In 2014 Santa got 1.6 million Facebook likes.

Normally the NORAD facility is responsible for defending the skies of the US and Canada and was originally located within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs in order to withstand a nuclear attack.
The first virtual space nation has arrived to low-Earth orbit after detaching from the International Space Station yesterday.

Asgardia launched to the ISS with the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft in November, carrying half a terabyte of data into orbit to establish sovereign territory for its 152,000 citizens.

Its latest move means Asgardia has become the first nation to have all of its territory in space  and officials are now calling on citizens to run for parliament.

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The first virtual space nation has arrived to low-Earth orbit after detaching from the International Space Station yesterday. Asgardia launched to the ISS with the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft in November

FIRST SPACE NATION Asgardia will be the first 'space nation'. The name comes from the city of the skies ruled by Odin from Valhalla in Norse mythology. It is described as 'a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations'. The Asgardia Project Team is made up of experts from around the globe. The project team is being led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, a Russian scientist and founder of the Aerospace International Research Center (AIRC) in Vienna. By creating a new space nation, the experts behind the project hope to develop future space technology free from the restrictions of state control. Alongside its announcement, Asgardia opened up applications for virtual citizenship via its website, and so far almost half a million people have pledged their allegiance. The first Asgardia satellite will launch in September this year. One of Asgardia's first projects will be the creation of a protective shield to protect humankind from space debris, including asteroids. Advertisement

The Asgardia-1 satellite is just about the size of a loaf of bread, but tows everything needed to establish its nationhood in low-Earth orbit.

This includes its constitution, national symbols, and personal information from thousands of citizens.

Officials from the space nation say Asgardia-1 deployed early today after the Cygnus craft de-docked from the ISS and moved to a higher altitude.

The launch of the Asgardia-1 satellite earlier this month which represented the first independent nation in space has created a huge amount of excitement around the world, said Igor Ashurbeyli, Asgardias Head of Nation.

Today, I am delighted to share that Asgardia-1 is deployed and is in an autonomous flight in low-Earth orbit.

Our next goal is to ensure the parliamentary elections are a success to guarantee that citizens are represented through a well-functioning democratic institution.

We invite the best, the brightest, and the most enthusiastic to run for Asgardias parliament. This is the chance to be among the first pioneers who redefine humanitys future in space.

Asgardia remained at the ISS for roughly three weeks after launching atop the Antares rocket from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Nov 12.

Doing so satisfies the last condition necessary for admission to the UN, according to Asgardia.

Asgardia has designed a constitution, which has already been accepted.

And, it even has its own cryptocurrency called the Solar, which is registered at the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

The first nation in space also has a flag and a coat of arms.

The project was hatched by an international group of scientists and backed by a Russian billionaire Dr Igor Ashurbeyli.

But, it's already been met with a number of challenges.

Earlier this year, the team behind the plan revealed they're having difficulties organizing the new country.

The team, led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, billionaire and founder of the Aerospace International Research Center in Vienna, unveiled the bizarre plans at a press conference in Paris last October.

Dr Ashurbeyli said at the time he believed the space-bound private 'country' could 'offer an independent platform free from the constraint of a land-based country's laws.'

The small satellite, roughly the size of a loaf of bread, aims to establish Asgardias sovereign territory, carrying half a terabyte of data into orbit

Asgardia has designed a constitution, which has already been accepted. And, it even has its own cryptocurrency called the Solar, which is registered at the European Union Intellectual Property Office

However, it seems some more human problems are getting in the way of this vision.

Dr Ashurbeyli told Wall Street Journal the biggest issue is 'self-organisation'.

'No one has ever tried organisingwhat is today 100,000 citizens from 200 countries who dont know each other and live in different places on Earth', he said.

Future Asgardians speak many different languages and also have different political systems, which could lead to political unrest.

There is also debate as to whether the new nation should accept refugees from Earth.

Out of the 300,000 that initially signed up online, only 110,000 approved the constitution and were granted citizenship.

The team behind the Asgardia (concept image) are having difficulties organising his new country - such as how the political system will work and what currency will be used

'My task is to defend planet Earth and defend humanity', he said.

Before launching he wants the UN to recognise Asgardia as a country.

Potential inhabitants have raised concerns about the constitution and how power will be shared among the space-dwellers.

Dr Ashurbeyli said it would be a constitutional monarchy similar to those in Europe, with himself as king and a fixed term of five years.

The team is led by Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, pictured, founder of the Aerospace International Research Center

There is also concern about how taxation will work - which according to the constitution is voluntary.

These issues are part of the team's attempt to form an independent country outside of the legal and physical bounds of our planet.

The nano-satellite piggy backed on a re-supply trip to the ISS. According to a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing in June, The nano-satellite piggy backed on a re-supply trip to the ISS.

'The primary payload is a solid state device hard drive,' Asgardia said in a June Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing.

'The drive is loaded on the ground with data, and the data is updated once in orbit.

'A file is returned that verifies successful data transmission.'

The nano-satellite will measure just 4 by 4 by 8 inches (10 by 10 by 20 cm) - roughly the size of a loaf of bread - and weigh about 5 pounds (2.3 kg).

It will come loaded with two particle detectors, mounted internally and externally, to test technologies that are key to the group's goals.

'From this data we can map the solar flux, and determine the radiation dosing that the internal electronics are receiving,' the application said.

The launch of the first Asgardia satellite is planned for September, and the scientists hope the project will develop from there. When it is launched, the satellite will enter a low-earth orbit and test the concept of long-term data storage in orbit around Earth

The project aims to create a new framework for ownership and nationhood in space by creating a completely new nation, according to the project leaders.

If the nation did come to fruition it would pave the way for off-planet data and tax havens floating in space.

One of the early developments planned by the team will be the creation of a state-of-the-art protective shield for all humankind.

SPACE JUNK There are estimated to be more than 20,000 traceable objects of man-made space junk, including old spacecraft, upper-stage rockets and final stage vehicles in near-Earth orbits. Natural objects in space also pose a threat to life on the planet. For example. the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite which crashed over a major Russian town in 2013, injuring 1,100 people and damaging 4,000 buildings. Advertisement

This will protect the world from cosmic threats, both man-made and natural, to life on earth.

This includes space debris, solar flares and asteroid collisions, the researchers say.

There are estimated to be more than 20,000 traceable objects of man-made space junk, including old spacecraft, upper-stage rockets and final stage vehicles in near-Earth orbits.

Natural objects in space also pose a threat to life on the planet.

For example, the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which crashed over a major Russian town in 2013, injured 1,100 people and damaged 4,000 buildings.

'The project's concept comprises three parts  philosophical, legal and scientific/technological,' said Dr Ashurbeyli.

'Asgardia is a fully-fledged and independent nation, and a future member of the United Nations - with all the attributes this status entails.'

The founder says the essence of Asgardia is Peace in Space, and the prevention of Earth's conflicts being transferred into space.

'As low-Earth orbit becomes more accessible, what's often called the 'democratisation' of space, a pathway is opening up to new ideas and approaches from a rich diversity of participants,' said Professor David Alexander, Director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, Houston, Texas.
A stunning new video has revealed a look inside the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator fusion reactor  the largest of its kind in the world.

The video includes a compilation of footage from tests at the massive device, as scientists work to bring humanity closer to achieving limitless energy by mimicking the conditions inside the sun.

Bright flashes can be seen erupting inside the reactor, showing the path of super-heated-plasma.

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The video includes a compilation of footage from tests at the massive device, as scientists work to bring humanity closer to achieving limitless energy by mimicking the conditions inside the sun

HOW DOES FUSION POWER WORK? Fusion involves placing hydrogen atoms under high heat and pressure until they fuse into helium atoms. When deuterium and tritium nuclei - which can be found in hydrogen - fuse, they form a helium nucleus, a neutron and a lot of energy. This is down by heating the fuel to temperatures in excess of 150 millionC, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls so that it doesn't cool down and lost it energy potential. These are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. For energy production. plasma has to be confined for a sufficiently long period for fusion to occur. Advertisement

Wendelstein 7-X is located in Greifswald, Germany.

And, researchers involved in the project say its the largest stellarator fusion device on Earth.

The video shared by researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics reveals a jaw-dropping look at the processes that take place on the inside.

The reactor switched on for the first time two years ago  and, just last December, a research paper on the initial tests revealed everything was working as expected.

After a 15-month conversion break, experiments resumed at the fusion device in September of this year.

A recent upgrade means it is now capable of higher heat and longer pulses.

The device was also fitted with measuring instruments that allowed scientists to track the turbulence in the plasma.

We shall be able for the first time to check whether the promising predictions of theory for a completely optimized stellarator are correct, said project head Thomas Klinger in September.

In comparison with previous devices, Wendelstein 7-X is expected to yield quite new, possibly even better, conditions.

Bright flashes can be seen erupting inside the reactor, showing the path of superheated plasma

After a 15-month conversion break, experiments resumed at the fusion device in September of this year. A recent upgrade means it is now capable higher heat and longer pulses

The experiment is part of a worldwide effort to harness nuclear fusion, a process in which atoms join at extremely high temperatures and release large amounts of energy.

Advocates acknowledge the technology is likely many decades away, but argue that, once achieved, it could replace fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors.

Two of the main contenders for nuclear reactors of the future are called tokamaks and stellarators.

Instead of trying to control plasma with just a 2D magnetic field, which is the approach used by the more common tokamak reactors, the stellerator works by generating twisted, 3D magnetic fields.

The device was also fitted with measuring instruments that allowed scientists to track the turbulence in the plasma

STELLARATOR VS TOKAMAK Stellarators are one type of nuclear reactor, and are less widely used than tokamak fusion reactors. Instead of trying to control plasma with just a 2D magnetic field, which is the approach used by the more common tokamak reactors, the stellerator works by generating twisted, 3D magnetic fields. Stellarators confine the hot, charged gas, otherwise known as plasma, that fuels fusion reactions in twisty magnetic fields. In contrast, tokamaks use a strong electric current to trap plasma inside a doughnut-shaped device long enough for fusion to take place. The tokamak was conceived by Soviet physicists in the 1950s and is considered fairly easy to build, but extremely difficult to operate. The twisty configuration of stellarators enables them to control the plasma with no need for the current that tokamaks must induce in the gas. Stellarator plasmas run little risk of disrupting, as can happen in tokamaks, causing the internal current to abruptly halt and fusion reactions to shut down. Advertisement

Last year's results could be a key step in verifying the feasibility of stellarators for use in future fusion reactors.

Since the machine has been switched on, researchers have been trying to answer the important question of whether or not it is producing the right magnetic fields.

This is crucial because the magnetic field in the machine is the only thing that will trap hot balls of plasma long enough for nuclear fusion to occur.

Physicist Sam Lazerson of the US Department of Energy teamed with the German scientists to test the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device.

The report, published in Nature Communications, proven it does work as planned.

Last year, scientists started up a new type of massive nuclear fusion reactor for the first time. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute injected a tiny amount of hydrogen and heated it until it became plasma, effectively mimicking conditions inside the sun

The hydrogen was heated in the doughnut-shaped Wendelstein 7-X machine (illustrated). Called a stellarator, the device uses a complicated system of magnetic coils to trap plasma long enough for fusion to take place

'We've confirmed that the magnetic cage that we've built works as designed,' said one of the lead researchers, Sam Lazerson from the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, at the time.

Over the coming years W7-X, which is not designed to produce any energy itself, will continue to test the extreme conditions nuclear fusion devices will be subjected to.

The device was first fired up in December 2015 using helium, which is easier to heat than hydrogen.

The nuclear fusion research centre at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics is pictured. The device was first fired up in December 2015 using helium last year, which is easier to heat

'Here we show the first physics results, obtained before plasma operation: that the carefully tailored topology of nested magnetic surfaces needed for good confinement is realized, and that the measured deviations are smaller than one part in 100,000,' the authors said.

'To our knowledge, this is an unprecedented accuracy, both in terms of the as-built engineering of a fusion device, as well as in the measurement of magnetic topology,' the authors said.
Brits desperate for a white Christmas should head for Scotland and the city of Stirling, which has the best chance of one, according to historical weather data.

It shows that Scotland has a 7.3 per cent chance of snow on Christmas Day, England a 6.1 per cent chance, Northern Ireland 5.2, Wales 3.6 and Ireland just a 3.2 per cent chance.

The Scottish cities most likely to see a white Christmas are Stirling, which has a 12.9 per cent chance, Aberdeen (12.5) and Inverness (11.3), though Bradford (10.48 per cent) isn't far behind.

Brits desperate for a white Christmas should head for Scotland and the city of Stirling (pictured), which has the best chance of one, according to historical weather data

At the other end of the scale, Truro (1.6 per cent), Swansea (2.4), Plymouth (2.4) and Exeter (2.4) are looking a little bit less likely.

For the big day to be defined as a white Christmas in the UK, it's necessary for 'one snowflake to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25th December somewhere in the country'.

This means that, even if there is a fabled white Christmas, it could be something of an underwhelming experience for Brits.

England has seen just 15 total days of snow across the past eight Decembers.

It could be worse for Brits, however - there are 127 countries in total who have a veritable 0 per cent chance of seeing snow, according to Vouchercloud.com, which compiled the results by looking at data from the past eight Christmas Days.

At the other end of the scale, Truro (1.6 per cent, pictured), Swansea (2.4), Plymouth (2.4) and Exeter (2.4) are looking a little bit less likely

THE CHANCES OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS IN UK CITIES Most likely Stirling, Scotland - 12.9 per cent chance Aberdeen - 12.5 Inverness - 11.29 Bradford - 10.48 Newry, Northern Ireland - 8.47 Carlisle - 8.47 Wolverhampton - 8.47 Birmingham - 8.06 Portsmouth - 8.06 Armagh - 7.66 Least likely Truro - 1.6 Exeter - 2.42 Plymouth - 2.42 Swansea - 2.42 Southampton - 3.23 Cardiff - 3.63 Chichester - 3.63 Newport - 4.03 Nottingham - 4.03 Winchester - 4.03 Source: Met Office data compiled by Vouchercloud.com Advertisement

Chris Johnson, Head of Operations, commented: 'Christmas always has a way of filling us with a little bit more hope, a little bit more optimism. Hopefully these numbers don't dampen that spirit too much.

'Hopefully the predicted cold snap this winter will boost these chances, and we'll all see a picturesque Christmas Card setting.'

The Met Office has slashed odds on a white Christmas all across the UK, though many experts agree that you can only really offer accurate predictions up to a week in advance.
Lord Sugar dealt another blow on Wednesday night's episode of The Apprentice when he sent two candidates home in a shock double-elimination.

But despite the fact that Harrison Jones and Jade English have missed out on a place in the final five, both have revealed they're open to a future in TV.

'I am absolutely gutted to go at this point in the process,' Jade, 25, told MailOnline. 'But doing it has made me love broadcast journalism again. And so there are maybe some TV and radio opportunities I'd like to explore with my business.'

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They'll be back! Despite the fact that Harrison Jones and Jade English have missed out on a place in the final five, both have revealed they're open to a future in TV

Jade's business is a service that assists people getting into their ideal careers; and Harrison, 27, has a healthy food brand.

But, like Jade he also doesn't rule out staying in TV. When asked if he'd ever consider Celebrity Big Brother [like other Apprentice candidates before him] he said: 'I would never say never  but I would have to take each opportunity as it comes.

'But everything would be for my business. I guess more PR is good as long as it's positive.'

Both explained how disappointed they were to be fired at this stage, when they were within only a couple of episodes from the finale.

Pictured Harrison: 'Everything would be for my business. I guess more PR is good as long as it's positive', he said

'I am absolutely gutted to go at this point in the process,' Jade, 25, told MailOnline. 'But doing it has made me love broadcast journalism again. And so there are maybe some TV and radio opportunities I'd like to explore with my business.'

'I was happy just to get on the show, but I was happy I did all the tasks,' Harrison said. 'I think leaving on this task was - not unfair - but I do think I did enough to carry on to the final five.'

Harrison and Jade's last task saw them on a team together, selecting a fashion designer to represent at a show.

Going off after that task, it was probably not unfair, but I reckon I did enough to get to the final five,' said Harrison.

'You're fired!' Lord Sugar dealt another blow on Wednesday night's episode of The Apprentice when he sent two candidates home in a shock double-elimination

'I was happy just to get on the show, but I was happy I did all the tasks,' Harrison said. 'I think leaving on this task was - not unfair - but I do think I did enough to carry on to the final five.'

During the task, Jade was the Project Manager and admits that she 'can understand why Lord Sugar made the decision he did at the end of the day' but that she 'gave the task 110 per cent'.

But Harrison admitted that the fashion-themed task was not in his wheelhouse.

'When I saw the designs we were working with I thought it would be hard to sell,' he went on. 'When I saw them I know it would be an uphill struggle.'

Part of the failure of the task came down to the miscommunication between Jade and the designer, Helen.

Close call! The other team made it through to the next round in a tense battle

Winners! The winning team celebrated with a bottle of bubbly as they discussed who could be leaving

'I'm actually good friends with her now - so no bridges have been burned there,' she insisted. 'I went to her London fashion show this year.'

Neither of this week's eliminated candidates begrudge Lord Sugar for firing them - although think that they would have made good business partners.

'If Lord Sugar didnt see me as a business partner, hopefully someone else will,' Jade said.

Harrison added: 'How can you not respect him. He's a self-made millionaire. But if I'd made it further in the process I'd have won it.'

The Apprentice continues next Wednesday at 9PM on BBC One.
Lindsay Lohan is back in the United States as she takes a break from her new hometown of Dubai.

And on Wednesday the 31-year-old actress sat down with DailyMailTV's Jesse Palmer to talk about how she's doing.

'I'm good, I'm really happy, I'm in a really good place,' said the Mean Girls vet. 'I love life!'

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Good place: Lindsay Lohan is back in the USas she takes a break from Dubai. And on Wednesday the actress sat down with DailyMailTV to talk about how she's doing

Still glowing: The beauty looked nicely put together in a blue suit with her long blonde locks worn down

The beauty looked nicely put together in a blue suit with her long blonde locks worn down.

The former child star also talked about how she wants to give people more 'hope' and that is why she will be traveling to Yemen soon.

'Those people need more hope, I want to help,' said the siren. 'I really like to give back.'

Charity: The former child star also talked about how she wants to give people more 'hope' and that is why she will be traveling to Yemen soon; she was interviewed by Jesse Palmer

She had a ball: The looker smiled during her interview that took place in NYC

As far as working in Hollywood films again, the Freaky Friday star said: 'Acting will always be a big part of my future.'

Lindsay shocked fans when she moved to Dubai after years in London. But she said the attraction is obvious: 'You can really live your life there.'

The Herbie: Fully Loaded star added that she doesn't get photographed in the city and has more privacy.

She takes to the place: As far as her attraction to Dubai, she said 'you can really live your life there.' The Herbie: Fully Loaded star added that she doesn't get photographed there and has more privacy

The past: And the New York native also addressed that time in her life when she was getting on trouble with the law. 'Everyone has their ups and downs but I lived mine for everyone to see,' noted the SNL vet

And the New York native also addressed that time in her life when she was getting on trouble with the law.

'Everyone has their ups and downs but I lived mine for everyone to see,' noted the SNL vet.

'You can have moments in your life where you don't really know what you want,' added the icon, 'and there's a way through that.'

She will also be working on a new project in 2018, Lindsay hinted.

Her take: 'You can have moments in your life where you don't really know what you want,' added the icon, 'and there's a way through that'

'There's a book that I found called The Honeymoon, I was reading it over this summer. I want to make it into a series or movie.'

And she is also launching a lipstick and fragrance line with a nifty LL logo.

When Jesse tells the star that the 20 year anniversary for her movie The Parent Trap is coming up, Lindsay says, 'Thank you for reminding me. I didn't even think about that. It was my first movie so I have the best memories of it.'

She wants more: And asked if the cover girl would like to be in Mean Girls the Broadway musical, she shot back: 'I would rather do Mean Girls 2 the Movie'

And asked if the cover girl would like to be in Mean Girls the Broadway musical, she shot back: 'I would rather do Mean Girls 2 the Movie.'

Palmer also asked Lohan what she thought when Tina Fey said she wanted to 'adopt' her. Lindsay wasted no time before shooting back: 'I love Tina Fey so come on adopt me, you can do it in the movie!'

As far as the haters out there, the screen favorite said: ''You're stuck with me I'm not going anywhere.'

Lindsay's DailyMailTV interview airs on Wednesday evening.
He has undergone over 50 plastic surgeries and has spent nearly 400,000 on his procedures.

But that has not deterred the Human Ken Doll from carrying out more surgeries, as he is set to go under the knife in January - this time, to remove six ribs.

This comes in a desperate bid to lose weight, as the 34-year-old revealed he feels 'shapeless and big' despite a recent detox for a film in India.

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Again? Human Ken Doll Rodrigo Alves is set to remove six ribs in an attempt to lose weight

Expressing his extreme efforts to shed the pounds, the socialite, real name Rodrigo Alves, told MailOnline: 'Lately I have been feeling that my body is going back to what used to be before plastic surgeries...shapeless and big!'

In his attempt to combat his burden, he revealed: 'I have taken the decision to remove some my ribs in early January - four of which are floating ribs so can be easily removed.'

He also confessed that he is trying to convince the surgeon to remove two more ribs, which is set to take place in Beverly Hills.

Then and now: The 34-year-old is pictured showcasing his surgically-enhanced mid section (left), which contrasts his fuller figure (right)

In order to prepare for his grueling procedure, he explained that he is forced to follow a strict gym routine, and is also expected to wear a snug corset around the clock.

With an aim to 'have a tiny waist' for his new years resolution, the TV personality will introduce an exclusive fashion line, which is set to include 'unisex double breasted blazers'.

This is not the first time Rodrigo has taken a shot at losing weight in the recent months, as he followed a relaxing detox plan in a specialised retreat in India in early November.

Claiming the experience changed his life forever, he was seen sporting tiny turquoise swimming trunks for a shoot in the tropical country, which showed him lounging by the swimming pool at the retreat and basking in the Indian heat.

'I've been living on tea!' Human Ken Doll Rodrigo Alves shows off the results of his two-week detox as he poses shirtless by the pool in India... and says he's a changed man

Rodrigo showed off his surgically-enhanced torso, which he flaunted proudly on a lounger, with a matching blue hoodie draped over his head.

In later shots, he loosened the hoodie and stepped into the waters in just a pair of trunks, showing off the full effect of the detox.

Of his trip, he revealed he only drank fluids for the two week duration, during which time he also shot scenes for a cameo in a Bollywood film.

Namaste: He escaped to India to undergo a relaxing detox in a specialised retreat after a very decadent Halloween weekend

Serene: The TV personality is seen sporting tiny turquoise swimming trunks in the images, which show him lounging by the swimming pool at the retreat and basking in the Indian heat

'It has been a great trip - a combination of work (filming the Bollywood movie) and,' he told MailOnline.

'I have been for two weeks only on tea - no solids or alcohol. I have been at a spa getting holistic treatments which have changed my life.

'This trip has also been very cultural and I shall look forward to returning to India to experience it all over again.'

Rodrigo - who is known for his lifestyle of parties and decadence - also noted: 'This experience has made me realise that there is so much more to life than drinking champagne and going to parties.

Awakening: 'It has been a great trip - a combination of work (filming the Bollywood movie) and,' he told MailOnline. 'I have been for two weeks only on tea - no solids or alcohol. I have been at a spa getting holistic treatments which have changed my life'

Soaking up the atmosphere: Another image shows the Ken Doll in a floral shirt, strolling through an intricately adorned Indian chamber

'I realise that I was living inside a bubble. I'm still going to carry on being the party lover Roddy, but with moderation.'

Rodrigo was rushed to hospital having overdone it at Halloween.

'After being sent to hospital on my arrival from LA it made me realise that only having plastic surgery and wearing nice expensive outfits isnt enough. I will detox and meditate more often too, to align my mind, body and soul.

'My next destination is Milan where I return to my live one hour slot on Domenica Live.'

Photos from the set of the Bollywood film he starred in see the TV personality in all his royal regalia, taking on the role of a Danish Prince.

Epiphany: Rodrigo - who is known for his lifestyle of parties and decadence - also noted that - 'This experience has made me realise that there is so much more to life than drinking champagne and going to parties'

Princely: Of his role as Danish royal, the Brazilian socialite added - 'Growing up my influences were Disney and I have always wanted to look like a prince. And now I have the chance to be one and to look like one'

On duty: Of the rest of his trip he said - 'I traveled to Agra where the Taj Mahal is. It has been now three days that I'm in Japuir, the pink city, where it is predominantly Hindo and very colourful'

He explained: 'My trip started first in New Delhi where I filmed for three days. The main reason of my trip to India is the Bollywood movie that I am part of.

'It is a huge production with lots of people involved, and music and dancing.

'I play a Danish Prince who is one of the guests at a royal Indian wedding, who is very lavish and flamboyant.

'I feel very honoured to be given the chance to be part of such an amazing production and I shall look forward to seeing the end material on the big screens next year when the movie is out.'

Speaking to MailOnline exclusively, the 34-year-old explained: 'My trip started first in New Delhi where I filmed for three days. The main reason of my trip to India is the Bollywood movie that I am part of'

Looking the part: Photos from the set of the film see the TV personality in all his royal regalia, taking on the role of a Danish Prince

Monkey business: Another animal on the tour was a monkey, who Rodrigo played with outside a stately temple

Relaxed: Rodrigo Alves, better known as the Human Ken Doll, confessed he was healthier than ever on Monday, after jetting to India for a relaxing detox - which has seen him drop one stone

Admitting the experience had been 'life-changing', he said: 'I have been seen a lot of cultural sights and have met some amazing people.

'However I have also seen a lot of poverty, which has made me realise that I live in a bubble, and that I never knew what reality is for some people.'

Yet, Rodrigo confirmed he is still keen to relax while away and recover from his exhausting few weeks in the States, ahead of his upcoming TV appearances.

However, he admitted he planned to go under the knife in 2018 to have six ribs removed, in order to achieve his ideal figure.

He said: 'I have the surgery booked to give me a smaller waist in order, so my blazers will fit me properly.'

Explaining the procedure will move him one step closer to his body goal, he added: 'God made us perfectly with spare parts in case we need them, and the floating ribs only make me look square.

'I would like to achieve a classic figure while wearing my suits, and the only way to achieve that is to remove my ribs.'
Rove put on his best Hollywood smile at the AACTA Awards last night.

The beloved comedian, 43, has had somewhat of a rough year, with his return to the radio-waves being less than triumphant.

First 2DAY FM moved his show with Sam Frost to nights, before giving it the chop from its line-up altogether.

Still Standing: Despite a rough year, which saw his radio show with Sam Frost axed, TV comedian Rove, 43, and wife Tasma, 44, made for a dazzling pair, when they attended the AACTA Awards in Sydney on Wednesday night

Despite this, Rove and wife Tasma Walton, 44, made a dazzling pair, with the TV star wearing a black tux with velvet blazer, and the actress in a sheer embroidered gown, paired with a gold-detailed clutch.

Tasma wore her hair in an elegant up-do, while accessorising with a drop necklace and detailed gold cuff on her arm.

The entertainer seemed to enjoy himself, regularly updating fans on his social media accounts.

'Black tie date night with @tasmawalton #AACTAS,' he wrote on Instagram.

All smiles: Comedian Rove McManus at the AACTA Awards in Sydney last night

The entertainer also took to Instagram to congratulate fellow stand-up comedian, Sri Lankan-born Dilruk Jayasinha, who took out the Best Actor gong.

'Congrats to the little kid from on his well deserved Best Actor Award at last night's AACTAS They grow up so fast,' he posted.

Since his axing from 2DAY FM, which saw comedians Em Rusciano and Harley Breen replace the duo, Rove has appeared on Ten's new show Cram and ABC's Play School Story Time.

Congratulations: Rove posted a pic of himself with Sri Lankan-born stand-up comedian Dilruk Jayasinha, who won a Best Actor gong.

Rove and wife Tasma celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary this year, with the couple sharing a daughter Ruby, 4.

'Thanks for a bloody fantastic eight years,' the comedian wrote after sharing a picture of the couple on a beach date.

The funnyman continued showing his sentimental side.

'Lots of love from the guy who was lucky enough to have you ask him,' he wrote.

Funnyman: Rove regularly shares updates about family life. The comedy veteran is married to Tasma Walton, with the couple sharing a daughter, Ruby, 4.




She's the Sydney PR queen and the face of TONI&GUY.

And as 2017 comes to a close, it's become apparent that Roxy Jacenko has gone through quite the style transformation.

From a blunt bob, to pastel pink-hued locks, to Kim Kardashian-esque platinum blonde extensions, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at some of her most iconic looks yet.

Mane appeal! From cropped locks to pastel-hued tresses and Kim Kardashian-inspired platinum blonde extensions, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at Roxy Jacenko's most iconic hairstyles yet

Roxy's latest look sees the entrepreneur opt for long semi-wavy platinum blonde extensions, reminiscent of Kim Kardashian West.

A recent glamorous photo shoot at the Primus Hotel's Presidential Suite in Sydney, saw Roxy team the look with a subtle smoky eye, a false set of lashes, a touch of highlighter and a nude lip.

The mother-of-two told Daily Mail Australia: 'I love ShowPony Hair Extensions and it means I can take my hair from shoulder length to waist in an hour. I use their tape extensions these days.

The mother-of-two told Daily Mail Australia: 'I love ShowPony Hair Extensions and it means I can take my hair from shoulder length to waist in an hour. I use their tape extensions these days'

'Elizabeth my hairdresser and Aaron who do all my colours at TONI&GUY talked me into it and I haven't looked back!'

Roxy shared her pro tip for ensuring platinum blonde works for you: 'An application of Skinny Tan self-tan is a must - weekly otherwise you can end up blending into a white wall!!! I find the colour in the 7 Day Dark cream works brilliantly for a blonde.'

Hosting Paris Hilton last week at the launch of her 23rd fragrance, Roxy swept her hair extensions into a chic ponytail with several strands left out to frame her face.

Girly with an edge: Hosting Paris Hilton last week at the launch of her 23rd fragrance, Roxy swept her hair extensions into a chic ponytail with several strands left out to frame her face

The long and short of it: The talent manager has also sported an effortlessly chic ponytail at the nape of the neck

The author toughened up the girly look with an edgy T-shirt and skinny-leg grey jeans.

Roxy admitted: 'It was a 29 degree day and my first emcee gig with Paris Hilton so I decided on a ponytail, so I wasn't worrying about my hair when I was on stage. Add two-and-a-half heads of tape-in hair extensions and I suppose a ponytail was really the only viable option!'

A photo shoot for Skinny Tan saw the talent manager switch up her look, opting for an elegant topknot, adding height to the bun for a dramatic element.

Getting swept up: A photo shoot for Skinny Tan saw Roxy switch up her look, opting for an elegant topknot, adding height to the bun for a dramatic element

In profile: An up-do allows the acclaimed talent manager to draw attention to her striking facial features

'This is one of my favourite styles of the year. I hadn't done a topknot before and this really let the makeup shine. This is a new go-to for me!' Roxy revealed.

Lending her profile to breast cancer awareness, Roxy sported pastel pink locks.

'Having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 at 36-years-old being involved and creating awareness around the disease is very important to me. When TONI&GUY asked me if I would go pink for their charity initiative it was a no-brainer and I was only too happy to support and encourage people to dig deep.

For a good cause: Lending her profile to breast cancer awareness, Roxy sported pastel pink locks

Roxy told Daily Mail Australia: 'Having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 at 36-years-old being involved and creating awareness around the disease is very important to me. When TONI&GUY asked me if I would go pink for their charity initiative it was a no-brainer and I was only too happy to support and encourage people to dig deep'

'It was a long process and Aaron my colourist worked for days to ensure that we got it right.'

And earlier this year, the acclaimed event planner took inspiration from Lara Worthington, chopping her blonde strands into a cropped style.

'I have never loved short hair - but with a wave this was fun and low maintenance. Whilst I didn't keep it for long, I'll be going back to this for the summer holidays so I can enjoy swimming with the kids on the Gold Coast.'

Getting the chop: And earlier this year, the acclaimed event planner took inspiration from Lara Worthington, chopping her blonde strands into a cropped style

Easy maintenance: 'I have never loved short hair - but with a wave this was fun and low maintenance,' Roxy shared. Whilst I didn't keep it for long, I'll be going back to this for the summer holidays so I can enjoy swimming with the kids on the Gold Coast'

No matter what the style, the social media sensation relies on regular treatments and a lip colour to finish off the look.

'I always steered away from a lip (colour) but now I am converted, it finishes a look and means you aren't taken over by your eye make up or your hair. In my case, my hair is not often understated, so a lip balances it all out.

'My go-to at the moment for the ultimate nude lip is Melissa Sassine Cosmetics.'

She added: 'Natalie Anne who is a local stylist recently released a range of haircare and styling products which are amazing. I do a mask every Sunday without fail  if you want to change your hair up, its vital to do treatments.'
One day after an apartment fire, a resident of the building has been charged with setting the blaze in an alleged attempt to kill his roommate.

Darren Michael Weber, 42, of Bismarck, is charged with Class B felony endangering by fire or explosion as well as four other felony counts in violation of a court order.

Weber and his roommate are registered sex offenders who lived together in a unit at the apartment house at 501 Memorial Highway in Bismarck, where firefighters and police responded around 7:15 a.m. Tuesday to the fire.

At first, Weber allegedly considered using a pocketknife and hammer to kill his sleeping roommate, whom he blamed for violations in a probation search the night before, according to court documents. Weber reportedly told police he "just thought this other way would be easier," regarding the fire.

During the previous night's search, Weber had allegedly been found with a marijuana joint. He reportedly admitted to smoking pot, viewing pornography and using the internet  all in violation of a court order from January.

At the same time, records indicate that Weber, who reportedly admitted he was stressed, wanted to return to the state penitentiary, so he decided, "Ill just kill him."

Weber put two vacuum cleaners, a foot soak tub, a plastic container, two lawn chairs, a dresser and a footstool in front of his roommates bedroom door before starting a fire in his own bedroom and leaving, according to an affidavit.

However, Weber reportedly returned indoors when he could see nothing was happening. After seeing the fire grow inside his bedroom, he reportedly decided to wake up the other man.

Bismarck Fire Marshal Owen Fitzsimmons declined to comment on the cause of the fire, citing the police investigation. The city reported no injuries from the fire.

Weber is held at the Burleigh-Morton County Detention Center, pending $100,000 cash bond.

He has faced endangering by fire charges before, from three events in 1993. His criminal history includes a range of charges, including his guilty plea in 2002 to Class A felony gross sexual imposition.

In 2005, a federal judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity for threatening to kill President George W. Bush and then-U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley.
She's the former Real Housewives Of Melbourne star who has not been shy about documenting her body transformation on her social media.

And Pettifleur Berenger has showcased her trim, toned and tanned figure ahead of her trip to Cancun, Mexico.

The 52-year-old has flaunted her lean physique in a saucy video on Instagram.

She posed in front of her giant mirror, leaving very little to the imagination as she turned for the camera in white lace lingerie-style bikini, by French swimwear brand Huit.

The former Real Housewives Of Melbourne star proudly flaunted her taut tummy.

Pettifleur also made sure to show off her pert posterior and toned thighs as she panned her phone around.

'This bia*ch is Cancun ready!' former Real Housewives Of Melbourne star Pettifleur Berenger has showcased her trim, toned and tanned figure ahead of her trip to Mexico

She's got it! The 52-year-old has flaunted her lean physique in a saucy video on Instagram. She proudly flaunted her taut tummy and made sure to show off her pert posterior and toned thighs as she panned her phone around

She captioned her post: 'This bia*ch is Cancun ready!'

Her legions of followers loved her body positive post, including one who wrote: 'Looking like 21, but better.'

While another said: 'All that training has definitely paid off! Go girl.'

'Seriously flawless!! Excellent work & commitment,' a fan wrote, 'Enjoy Cancun  Beautiful beaches & tons of sun.'

Fit and fab! The reality TV star has not been shy about documenting her body transformation on her social media

Whoa mama! Her legions of followers loved her body positive post, including one who wrote: 'Looking like 21, but better.' While another said: 'All that training has definitely paid off! Go girl'

Her clip comes after she recently hit back at her former Housewives cast mates who called her 'cringe-worthy' and an attention-seeker who 'wasn't well-received' by viewers.

The property developer and author was clearly not affected with their comments when she took to Twitter to write: 'Why are they still talking about me?'

Pettifleur left the Housewives franchise after two explosive seasons and starred on Channel Seven's Hell's Kitchen alongside Sam Frost and Gaz Beadle.
Comedian Ralphie May died of natural causes, a coroner has ruled.

The 45-year-old comedian, who passed away in Las Vegas in October, suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure, TMZ reported Wednesday.

Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg told the website the official cause of death was hypertensive cardiovascular disease and that May's weight was a contributing factor in his death.

Natural causes: A coroner has ruled comedian Ralphie May, 45, who passed away in October, died from heart disease and high blood pressure. He's pictured in April 2015

Neither drugs nor alcohol were factors in his death.

May was found dead at a private residence just hours after performing on stage at Harrah's in Vegas.

The comedian, known for his television appearances on Inside Amy Schumer, had been battling pneumonia for six weeks.

He was in the midst of a nationwide tour, but had been forced to cancel some dates while he attempted to recover from his illness.

Popular: May, who was seen on Inside Amy Schumer last year, was found dead hours after performing on stage at Harrah's in Las Vegas

Two days before his death, May was crowned Casino Comedian Of The Year at the Global Gaming Expo in Vegas.

His manager, Judi Marmel, told TMZ: 'As his manager and his friend, I will miss his laugh, his generosity to fellow comedians, his trademark orneriness, and his enormous love of life.

'He left us entirely too soon -- and we can only wonder where his comedy might have taken all of us. We send our love to his family, his fans, and all the comics who shared stages with him across the country.'

May is survived by by his wife, Lahna Turner, and their daughter April June and son August James.

Lahna filed for divorce in 2015 after the couple had been married for ten years.
He's often seen wearing workwear while hosting the popular home renovation series, The Block.

But late last month, Scott Cam threw away his plaid in favour for a biker jacket and jeans.

The 55-year-old television presenter somewhat channelled Arnold Schwarzenegger when he took his motorbike for a ride in Sydney.

Throwing away the plaid! The Block's Scott Cam, 55, traded his workwear for a biker jacket, in Sydney late last month, as he took his motorbike for a ride

Scott appeared carefree and relaxed as he took to the streets of Sydney.

The Channel Nine personality sported a blue shirt teamed with a black leather biker-style jacket.

Scott finished off the look with lightwash jeans, sturdy black boots and ensured his safety with a helmet.

Concealing his gaze, the handyman rocked a pair of tinted aviator sunglasses.

I'll be back! Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger is a huge fan of motorbikes

Attire: The Channel Nine personality sported a blue shirt, teamed with a black leather biker-style jacket, lightwash jeans, sturdy black boots and ensured his safety with a helmet

His usual style: As host of home renovation series The Block, Scott has become known for wearing workwear

Scott's sighting follows reports by Woman's Day that producers are allegedly lining up his replacement as host on The Block.

The publication claimed that his role on the show is on shaky ground, after coming under fire for calling judge Shaynna Blaze a b***h after she scored some of the teams 'harshly'.

'Producers are obsessed with social media and there was a huge backlash after what Scotty said, so they told him to publicly apologise,' a source reportedly told Woman's Day.

Claims: The handyman's sighting follows reports by Woman's Day that producers are allegedly lining up his replacement, as host on The Block

Antics: The publication claimed that his role on the show is on shaky ground, after coming under fire for calling judge Shaynna Blaze (pictured) a b***h after she scored some of the teams 'harshly'

Scott defended his actions by telling Hit 105's Stav, Abby & Matt: 'It was poor judgement, I've apologised. Sometimes I'm an idiot.'

'I obviously said that in complete jest and I said it to get a rise out of the contestants...I've rung Shaynna and apologised.'

Daily Mail Australia contacted the Nine Network, however they declined to comment.

Scott has hosted the hit reality series on the network for the past 11 seasons.
She's the only daughter of doting mum and radio host Jackie 'O' Henderson.

But on Thursday, Jackie faced some backlash on her parenting of Kitty, six, from her co-host Kyle Sandilands.

The shock jock joked that Jackie and her husband Lee had been 'smoking all her inheritance away' because they gave daughter Kitty only $20 from the tooth fairy.

'Smoking all her inheritance away!' Hilarious moment Kyle Sandilands jokingly accuses Jackie O of 'raiding' daughter Kitty's piggy bank

Kitty sat on mum Jackie's lap in the studio during her first ever visit to the radio station.

'Oh god there is kids everywhere,' Kyle complained. 'What is everyone's kids [doing] here, this is not a creche!'

'Well they don't usually get to see us at work and Kitty has never ever been to my work,' Jackie hit back.

'How much did the tooth fairy bring?' Kyle decided to grill Kitty on air on what Jackie was like as a parent

Adorable: Kitty sat on mum Jackie's lap in the studio during her first ever visit to the radio station

'And for good reason this is a terrible place to bring children,' Kyle retorted.

'It's not great,' Jackie admitted, laughing.

Later, Kyle decided to grill Kitty on air on what Jackie was like as a parent.

'So, we had a chat about how much money the tooth fairy should bring - how much did I say? $1000. And how much did the tooth fairy bring?' He asked Kitty.

'$20,' Kitty replied.

Family of three: Kitty is the only child of Jackie and her husband Lee

Needs to spend more: Kyle wasn't impressed, replying: 'What a tight wad! Where is the rest?'

But Kyle wasn't impressed, replying: 'What a tight wad! Where is the rest?'

'I don't know, Mummy and Daddy must have stolen it,' Kitty answered, much to Jackie's mock disgust.

'They always do that, poor old Kitty is trying to save for a house, being a tough Sydney market for the young ones to get a home she has to save her whole life,' Kyle added in mock outrage.

'Do you think mum or dad care? No. If they want some ciggies, let's raid the piggy bank. Smoking all her inheritance away!' He joked.
He is locked in an ugly divorce battle with his estranged wife who stayed with him throughout his prison stint, before she uncovered his affair earlier this year.

But Jeremy Meeks, who shares a seven-old son with wife Melissa Meeks, appeared in good spirits as he enjoyed a shopping spree with Chloe Green, 26, in LA on Wednesday.

The model, 33, who has been hit with child support papers by his ex, appeared far from bothered as he enjoyed his new-found lifestyle in Beverly Hills with his British billionaire heiress girlfriend.

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The good life! Jeremy Meeks, who shares a seven-old son with estranged wife Melissa Meeks, appeared in good spirits as he enjoyed a shopping spree with Chloe Green, 26, in LA on Wednesday

The couple appeared loved-up as they walked hand-in-hand down the popular shopping street, laden with bags.

This week Melissa Meeks filed legal documents asking for child support from her ex Jeremy, according to a Tuesday report from TMZ.

In the papers the nurse reportedly claims that he has 'stopped paying for their son while he pursues his modeling career', leaving her swamped with bills.

While she claims he's pulling in $1M a month from modelling contract, he has claimed he receives just $6k per month.

Shopping sprees! The model, 33, who has been hit with child support papers by his ex, appeared far from bothered as he enjoyed his new-found lifestyle in Beverly Hills with his British billionaire heiress girlfriend

Former flames! This week Melissa Meeks filed legal documents asking for child support from her ex Jeremy, according to a Tuesday report

Additionally, Melissa claimed that Jeremy's Billionaire heiress girlfriend Chloe Green had 'slut-shamed' her online.

According to the showbiz site, the mother-of-one said: 'Shame on Ms. Green for attempting to slut shame me.'

This came after an underwear picture of her shared to Instagram was removed from the social network, before she reposted it.

Babymama drama! In new papers the nurse reportedly claims that he has 'stopped paying for their son while he pursues his modeling career', leaving her swamped with bills

Ugly spat: While she claims he's pulling in $1M a month from modelling contract, he has claimed he receives just $6k per month

Unbothered: The couple appeared loved-up as they walked hand-in-hand down the popular shopping street, laden with bags

According to the site Mellissa branded her felon turned model ex is a hypocrite, explaining: 'Jeremy struts around on a catwalk in his underwear and that's okay for our son to see, but my attempts to help shape my public image are wrong?

'I would not even have a public image if not for Jeremy's tabloid adventures. I am shocked that Jeremy and his attorney attempt to slut shame me as they do.'

Melissa also claims that of the 130 days since their separation, Jeremy has only had their child for 30 days of it according to TMZ.

Twisting the knife? Additionally, Melissa claimed that Jeremy's Billionaire heiress girlfriend Chloe Green (pictured) had 'slut-shamed' her online

Battle: Melissa also claims that of the 130 days since their separation, Jeremy has only had their child for 30 days of it according to TMZ

Last month, in the latest move to their very public relationship breakdown, Jeremy introduced billionaire Chloe to his 7-year-old son Jeremy Junior.

And days later Melissa was pictured trying to heal her heartbreak with Love Island star and athlete Theo Campbell in London , before going on This Morning to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair.

Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity.

'I had to grieve the loss of a child at the same time': Melissa revealed she was in the early stages of pregnancy when she saw images of Chloe and Jeremy kissing while on a romantic break to Turkey in June

She said: 'He was an amazing husband, honestly, when I think about it I still get emotional. It's still very raw. We had a really good life together.'

Melissa's voice broke as she recalled Jeremy confessing his infidelity to her this June, in the aftermath of the pictures of Chloe draped all over him during a yacht photoshoot.

The nurse said: 'He was just apologetic for how things came out and how hurt I was by it.

'I don't really think there's any denying it based on the photos that were out there... That's my husband of 8/9 years, I love him deeply, I still do. It's very hard when I think about what happened.

Raw: His estranged wife Melissa went on This Morning last month to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair

'I wish I still had my husband to go home to... but I don't believe there is any hope,' she added.

Although Melissa and Jeremy split on bad terms, the pair are doing their best to be civil for the sake of their children.

She declared: 'He still sees the kids. They're still very involved with each other. That's still positive for the children.'

Emotional: Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity

Former flames: The mother-of-three, who stayed with felon-turned-model Jeremy throughout his stint in prison, put on a brave face as she kicked off the new chapter in her life

Jeremy and Chloe took their controversial romance a step further last month, when he met her mum aboard a luxury yacht in Monaco.

At the beginning of the month they were forced to deny engagement rumours, after she flashed a huge rock on her wedding finger in a series of confusing snapchats. but made sure she kept her ring finger hidden.

The duo have since been spotted on a series of sun-soaked holidays together, even appearing together at various public events, cementing their relationship status.

Despite the shockwaves their romance caused after the couple were spotted canoodling on a yacht in Turkey while Jeremy was still married to mother-of-three Melissa Meeks, the duo's relationship appears to be going from strength to strength.

Jeremy began August by publicly parading his romance with heiress Chloe as they enjoyed carnival during a sunny Barbados holiday, his estranged wife Melissa Meeks appeared to take their continuous insensitivity in her stride as she took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique soon after.

The brave nurse appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make-over, posing in her underwear as she showed off her already enviable figure.

Moving on: Jeremy's estranged wife Melissa took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique last month as she appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make over last month- however the picture was removed before she reposted it

Dressed in a black thong, the nurse proudly displayed her toned derriere and flat stomach, teasing a glimpse of her red lace bra.

'Day 1. Week 1. #letsseehowthisgoes', she captioned the racy snap.

And Melissa garnered an influx of supportive messages from followers, who slammed the actions of Jeremy- who Melissa stayed with during his lengthy prison stint.

And despite staying maintaining a largely dignified silence over her estranged husband's actions, in July Melissa gave a rare insight into her life post-Jeremy Meeks, as she took to Instagram in a lengthy tirade.

The mother-of-three, who shares a seven-year-old son with the 33-year-old felon turned model, let rip just days after he continued to parade his romance with Chloe.

Taking to Instagram, the nurse shared a snapchot which read: 'I fed mouths that talked sh** about me. I wiped tears from the same people that caused mine. Picked up people that tried to knock me down. Did favours for those who couldn't do sh** for me. Been there for the ones that left me. Crazy? Maybe.'

Proving she was taking the high road, the brave beauty concluded: 'But I don't lose myself in the hatred of others. I continue to be me because I can't change who I am. Life ain't easy but through the bullsh** I remain solid. Because I know god got big plans for me.'

'Saw this and felt how REAL it was, so I wanted to share it... #haveablessedday #remember #keepitsolid', she captioned the picture.

And as Chloe and Jeremy engaged in another public round of PDA, wife Melissa finally removed reference to Jeremy on her Instagram bio.

Previously describing herself as 'Wife to Jeremy Meeks' along with a ring emoji, the pretty nurse removed reference to him, keeping the remainder of the bio as 'Blessed beyond belief.. Dedicated to everything I do... Me and my Fam'.

Jeremy sent shock waves across the internet when pictures emerged of him kissing Chloe Green on a yacht in Turkey in June.

The duo reportedly met during the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Jeremy was modelling for Phillip Plein.

And in July Jeremy filed for legal separation from mother-of-three Melissa, who he shares her youngest son with.

He was married to the nurse, who stayed with him throughout his stint in prison, for eight years.

She later told the Mail of her devastation, admitting that her husband had been seduced by the glamour of his newfound modelling career.

I know it takes two to tango but she knew he was married. To me, thats unforgivable. My whole world has been torn apart by this. What do I tell our children? My heart is broken.

What sort of woman would do something like this to another woman? My marriage wasnt perfect but I thought it could be saved, until this happened.

Of course Im angry at her. What she did is unforgivable. And Im angry at him too. What they did destroyed my entire world.

Life of luxury: Meeks sent tongues wagging after pictures emerged of him kissing British Topshop heiress Chloe Green on a yacht in Turkey in June

Did either of them think about the children and how this will affect them? Theyre the innocent victims in this. And so am I.

Melissa is mother to his biological child Jeremy Jr, seven, and Robert, 11, Melissas son from a previous relationship. She also has a daughter, 16-year-old Ellie, and says both stepchildren consider Meeks a father figure.

Meeks and Chloe, who is heir to her father Sir Philip's billions, were pictured sharing the intimate kiss aboard a 112,000-a-week yacht in Bodrum.

At the time he was still with his wife of eight years, who was seemingly unaware of his new romance until pictures surfaced.

And fans quickly turned on the duo, accusing Chloe of breaking up a marriage.

Chloe was soon forced to delete her Instagram, after followers trolled a gloating post she shared as she snuggled up to married Jeremy.

However she since returned to the social media site, changing her settings to private.

Meeks too has edited his account, deleting all photographs of him and Melissa, which has not gone down with the fans who fell in love with his good looks after his California mugshot went viral in 2014.

Meeks, whose looks have earned him a huge fan base, made his first official modelling appearance at New York fashion week this year, and has certainly turned his life around in an impressive way since his release from prison.

However his journey to stardom hasn't been all smooth-sailing, after he was recently barred from entry to the UK after arriving at London's Heathrow airport from New York.

The California native shot to fame in 2014 when the Stockton Police Department posted his mugshot on their website, following his arrest for gang activity and a misdemeanour charge of resisting/obstructing justice.

The photo promptly went viral, with internet users dubbing him 'the hottest convict ever'.
It's no sad country song for Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Evans.

The entertainers this week have been sharing romantic shots from their honeymoon via social media, days after they exchanged vows in a shoreside ceremony in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

On Wednesday, the 24-year-old songstress shared glamorous shots in which she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit, posed standing in an infinity pool at a resort, as well as posed on a bench in front of a wall with sprawling vines.

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Relaxing: Kelsea Ballerini, 24, and Morgan Evans, 32, shared a series of romantic shots to Instagram following their nuptials earlier this week

The Grammy-nominee captioned the image to her 1 million Instagram followers, 'Hubs is a photographer.'

The sexy shots came two days after the Mascot, Tennessee-born beauty shared a beach-side shot of her feet and legs next to her new husband's, with the caption 'Mr & Mrs. Evans.'

The image looked like something right out of The Bachelor, with a small pit with a flame flanked with rose petals, and a tiki torch burning in the background.

Evans, 32, has also shared romantic images via social media, embracing Ballerini in a pool with the caption, 'I do.'

Beaming bride: Ballerini amazed in a white one-piece bathing suit amid her honeymoon

The good life: The Grammy-nominated musical artist soaked in the sun in a luxury pool

Paradise: The new bride basked in a pool as she enjoyed her honeymoon

Earlier this week, she took to Twitter in the wake of their Wedding to express her exuberance over her new union.

'Woke up to the hottest human Ive ever seen wearing a ring,' Kelsea wrote Sunday, 'and ate leftover wedding cake for breakfast hello marriage.'

Ballerini and Evans tied the knot on Saturday in a romantic beach ceremony in Cabo San Lucas, just less than a year after they got engaged on Christmas Day.

Happy together: The beaming couple shared a kiss in Nashville, Tennessee in June

Gushing: The entertainer has taken to social media to express her happiness over her marriage

The duo chat with People about their good fortune finding love with one another, less than two years after their first meeting.

'With our careers, we get to do what we love, then we get to find time to be with who we love,' Ballerini told the publication. 'I think that makes for a really full life - when you can do everything that you want, and then share it with someone.'

Evans, an Australia native, said that he had been quizzing his married pals about life after the vows have been exchanged.

'In the lead-up to a wedding, you ask a lot of your married friend - especially people that are in similar situations or similar age - "Does anything change or is it just the same but a little more awesome?"' he said. 'Everyone keeps telling us, "Ah, it gets better."

'And so whatever that means, Im looking forward to that, and its gonna be fun.'
Shannon Beador has posted an inspirational quote on social media amid her pending divorce.

The 53-year-old reality star shared an uplifting passage on Instagram on Tuesday from 70-year-old Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho.

The quote read: 'Someday, everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears, and keep reminding yourself that everything happens for a reason'.

Inspirational quote: Shannon Beador, shown last month in New York City, shared an inspirational quote on Instagram amid her pending divorce

Shannon filed for divorce from husband of 17 years David Beador last week in Orange County Superior Court after announcing their separation in October.

The Real Housewives Of Orange County star in her divorce petition was seeking sole custody of their 15-year-old daughter Sophie and 13-year-old twins Adeline and Stella.

Shannon in divorce documents listed her income as $22,000 per month with spending of $55,355 per month, according to a report by The Blast.

David, who owns Beador Construction Inc., reportedly had monthly earnings of $179,432 before taxes in 2016.

Keep reminding: The quote by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is from his 2012 novel Manuscript Found In Accra

Happier times: Shannon and David are shown in June 2016 in Hollywood

The inspirational quote was flanked on Shannon's Instagram page by a post in which she promoted a face cream and another with her daughters offering a discount for an at-home teeth aligner.

Shannon was requesting spousal support and for attorneys' fees to be paid by David.

She cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for their split and has requested that David be granted child visitation.

Promotional postings: The inspirational quote was flanked on Shannon's Instagram page by a post in which she promoted a face cream and another with her daughters offering a discount for an at-home teeth aligner

The couple's marriage woes were on display during the past twelfth season of RHOBH.

The Bravo show previously showed the couple struggling after David's infidelity but rebounding with a renewal of their wedding vows during season 11.

Shannon revealed during the reunion that she had split from David and moved into a new home with the girls.
Teen Mom has been nominated for a Critic's Choice Award... but Farrah Abraham doesn't think much of its chances.

The former star of the show scoffed at her former employer on Twitter on Wednesday, labeling it 'structured'  even though the nom was for 'Best Unstructured Reality Series'.

Farrah was let go from the show in October because she refused to give up her other career as an adult film star.

'I don't think it will win': Farrah Abraham scoffed at Teen Mom's Critic's Choice nomination on Wednesday... after she was fired for working on adult films

'NEWS: #TeenMom Is nominated for Best Unstructured Reality Series at the 2018 #CriticsChoice Awards!,' fan site Teen Mom News tweeted.

But Farrah replied: 'I dont think it will win as its very structured, manipulated by the network , production & almost scripted story lines at this point... '

The site remained diplomatic, resisting the urge to accuse her of sour apples, replying: 'well it's a honor being nominated it's at pretty big award show.'

Teen Mom is up against Born This Way, Ice Road Truckers, Intervention, Live PD, and Ride with Norman Reedus.

'NEWS: #TeenMom Is nominated for Best Unstructured Reality Series at the 2018 #CriticsChoice Awards!,' fan site Teen Mom News tweeted

Zing: But Farrah replied: 'I dont think it will win as its very structured, manipulated by the network , production & almost scripted story lines at this point... '

Last month, a teaser of the upcoming season of Team Mom OG showed the moment the 26-year-old was delivered the bombshell news.

The mother-of-one fumes at one of the show's producers, telling the behind-the-scenes pro: 'Shoot me for being who I am!' after being given the choice between staying on the show or continuing to make adult films.

Teen Mom OG's executive producer explained that they would have to cut ties with Farrah if she continued down her X-rated career path.

'If you choose to work in the adult industry, we cant continue to film,' Morgan J Freeman told the scarlet-tressed TV personality.

Emotional: A teaser for Teen Mom OG captures Farrah Abraham's explosive reaction to being fired from the MTV reality show

Farrah seethed at MTV's ultimatum, telling the producer: 'Who are you to tell someone to choose one thing?'

Things got even more heated as the starlet curses and yells: 'Shoot me for being who I am!'

Farrah's firing came after she made two appearances on the adult webcam site Camsoda.

Gotta choose: The reality star, 26, was let go from the show after being given the choice between filming or continuing to work in the adult industry

On or the other: Teen Mom OG's executive producer explained 'If you choose to work in the adult industry, we cant continue to film'

Don't tell me what to do! Farrah seethed at MTV's ultimatum, telling Teen Mom OG's executive producer 'Who are you to tell someone to choose one thing?'

The star is the mother of Sophia, aged eight, whose father died in a car accident in 2008.

She first made her mark in the reality world during the first season of 16 And Pregnant, all the way back in 2009.

News of her firing went public after the Nebraska native opened up about incident on Facebook at the end of October but later claimed that she was only 'fake fired' for the sake of the show drama.

Not gonna change: The scene got got even more heated as the starlet cursed and yelled 'Shoot me for being who I am!'

Doting mom: The star first made her mark in the reality world during the first season of 16 And Pregnant in 2009 and is now a single mother to daughter Sophia, eight (pictured in August)

Back on Halloween, the TV star wrote a lengthy Facebook post where she said it's a shame MTV lost its 'biggest talent' because of her ties to the adult film industry.

It was days after the star had released a pornographic Halloween-themed web cam show.

During her October announcement, Farrah explained MTV 'let me go because as a Business Mogul I act like an adult and part take in adult promotions and activities that other adults do for FREE or in private!'

The starlet then sang her own praises, dissing co-stars Maci Bookout and Amber Portwood while calling herself the show's 'biggest talent.'

A lot of words: The mother-of-one went on for several paragraphs, clearly upset, when she revealed she had been fired from the show in October

'Sad such a phenomenal show will no longer have its biggest talent on the show because of women hating, sex shaming, hate crimes, selfish, Weinstein company power trip behavior against a professional hard working, honest mother,' she said.

The trailer also show Farrah exchanging tense words with her mom.

'I wish that you would not date somebody that is so narrow-minded and horrible,' the cosmetically enhanced celeb told mom Debra Danielsen, continuing: 'So when we're not at your wedding, you know why.'

Teen Mom OG returns next Monday, December 4 at 9pm on MTV.
Teresa Giudice confronted former friend Kim DePaola for spreading rumors about her during her charity fashion show on Wednesday's episode of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey.

The 45-year-old reality star stormed into the charity Posche fashion show after Kim claimed that Teresa was cheating on her imprisoned husband Joe.

Teresa brought along sister-in-law Melissa Gorga, Danielle Staub and Margaret Josephs for support.

Cheating rumors: Teresa Giudice confronted Kim DePaola for spreading cheating rumors during Wednesday's episode of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey

Siggy Flicker and Dolores Catania meanwhile were walking the runway during the fashion show.

The boutique owner was hosting the event to benefit the families of two men who were found shot in the head and burned in March in a car owned by Kim.

Kim stood by her account while Siggy and Dolores were getting ready and said hair dresser Lina saw Teresa getting cozy with another man.

Siggy said it could have been a friend and told Kim that she wasn't in favor of 'messing with someone's marriage' especially with children involved.

Spreading stories: Kim stood by her account and taunted Teresa

Air hair: Teresa said she wanted to grab Kim by the hair but restrained herself

Low blow: Kim called Teresa 'white trash' and referenced her recent prison stint

'I heard that Teresa is done with Joe anyway,' Kim said.

Teresa in a red leather dress lead the way once they crashed the charity show and promptly challenged Kim.

'What's your problem?,' Teresa asked her.

Good question: Teresa crashed the fashion show and immediately asked Kim what was her problem

The mother of four shouted that nobody should be talking about her or her husband.

'Too bad,' Kim replied nonchalantly.

She then called Teresa a 'dirty b****' and accused her of going to 'clubs every night'.

Her business: The mother of four insisted that nobody should be talking about her or her husband

'Who gives a f*** what I do?," Teresa yelled at her.

Kim then told Teresa that 'nobody straightens me out' and called her 'white trash'.

'You were the one who was in jail, not me, b****,' Kim hissed at Teresa who served 11 months in in a federal prison on fraud charges.

Margaret screamed at Kim not to talk to Teresa that way while Siggy and Dolores stood silently.

Sticking up: Margaret Josephs stood up for Teresa

Kept silent: Dolores Catania and Siggy Flicker kept quiet as Teresa and Kim fought

Teresa then ridiculed Kim's Posche boutique and said POSCHE stood for 'Piece Of S***, Coke Whore Home Wrecker Every Day!'.

Melissa asked Dolores and Siggy if they were still going to walk in the show and Dolores got in her face about it.

Kim kicked Teresa and her crew out of the place and they regrouped at Margaret's house.

Boutique name: Teresa came up with her own acronym for POSCHE

Face to face: Melissa asked Dolores if she still planned on walking in the show and Dolores got in her face

Too close: Dolores invaded Melissa's personal space and shouted at her

Not happy: Melissa was not happy with Dolores and questioned inviting her to Milan

They decided that Siggy and Dolores after the ugly argument should not have walked in the fashion show.

Teresa also was left wondering if she wanted to go to Milan with Siggy and Dolores.

Siggy met up with Dolores and her ex Frank for a bite and they told him about the fashion show drama.

Fashion show: Dolores and Siggy walked the fashion show after the argument

In agreement: Melissa, Danielle Staub and Margaret agreed that Siggy and Dolores were in the wrong

Dinner time: Dolores and Siggy told Frank about the fashion show

Spot on: Frank pointed out that Siggy and Dolores should let Teresa know they still support her

He's right: Siggy immediately realized that Frank was right

Frank said they should let Teresa know they have her back after staying and walking in the fashion show.

Siggy then met up with Teresa and said that Kim's comments were 'disgusting' and 'below the belt' and she only stayed at the fashion show so she wouldn't disappoint the victims' families.

She also promised Teresa that she had her back while accusing Margaret of lacking a 'sensitivity chip'.

Catching up: Teresa met up with Siggy who pledged her support

Siggy said she would only go to Milan if Dolores was going and Teresa checked with Melissa who did not rescind the invitation.

Melissa also warned that Dolores better not disrespect her again.

Margaret during the episode also chaperoned a date between her mother Marge Sr and accountant Steve.

Invitation stands: Melissa declined to rescind her invitation to Dolores

First date: Steve and Marge Sr went on a date chaperoned by her daughter

Joe Gorga also confided to Melissa that he missed his late mother Antonia and had contacted a psychic.

Melissa admitted that she was apprehensive about having a medium but went along with it.

Teresa joined them for the session with medium Concetta Bertoldi.

Candid conversation: Joe told Melissa that he missed his late mother Antonia and hired a psychic

The medium: Concetta Bertoldi came over for a session with Joe, Melissa and Teresa

'This is what she's saying,' Concetta told them with a dramatic gasp.

She then mentioned that one child was 'sensitive to the other side' and everyone agreed she was referencing Teresa's 11-year-old daughter Milania who has claimed to see her grandmother after her passing.

Concetta also referenced a Connie Francis song that played at Joe and Melissa's wedding and said 'now she can run' after suffering from arthritis.

Full attention: Joe and Teresa listened as Concetta relayed messages from their late mother

Still needed: Teresa admitted that she still needed her late mother

The session was comforting to Joe and Teresa who admitted that she still needed her.

Concetta also revealed that Joe and Teresa's mother was worried about their father Giacinto wanting to join her.

The RHONJ will return next week on Bravo.

Getting emotional: Joe and Melissa got emotional during the session
It's a hilarious turn for Mena Suvari.

The 38-year-old actress appears in a cameo on the Pop TV comedy series Hot Date, playing the role of a worker at an erotic boutique who spares no details when it comes to describing the products on hand.

In the skit, the American Beauty star fields questions from Murph and Emily (Brian K. Murphy and Emily Axford), when they enter the establishment in hopes of adding a bit of fire to their love life.

Funny: Mena Suvari, 38, showed her comedic side in a skit for the Pop TV comedy series Hot Date, playing a salesperson at an erotic boutique

The Rhode Island-born actress gets a bit presumptuous as she tries to sell the couple on the variety of naughty goods on sale, telling them, 'Nothing destroys a relationship like bad sex.'

She then delves into graphic detail about the products on hand - some of them even Bluetooth enabled!

The couple remained uncertain about the array of goods, until Mena showed them another product at the shop, a swing.

While they had different reactions - Murph thought it was too pricey, while Emily was enthusiastic - they eventually got on the same page and agreed on the purchase.

WARNING: Content is graphic

Overenthusiastic: Mena's character's expertise shines through with little subtlety

Satisfied customers? Brian K. Murphy and Emily Axford play Murph and Emily, a couple seeking to shake things up, in the clip

It's a comedic turn for the actress, who's been in the limelight as of late for her activism against animal cruelty, taking part in Fur Free Friday, a Black Friday protest against animal fur fashion, on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Suvari was one of 200 activists taking to the well-heeled streets, along with actress Donna DErrico, for the group Last Chance For Animals, clad in a T-shirt that read, 'Fur is Cruel,' with cruel spelled out in a font of dripping red blood.

Put off: The couple seems a bit shocked at the plethora of products Mena's character seeks to sell them

Wearing her message: Mena, an ardent activist against using fur for fashion, took to Instagram on Wednesday to show off a faux fur ensemble

The actress took to Instagram on Wednesday wearing a coat from Unreal Fur, an Australian organization specializing in producing 'luxurious & ethical faux fur.'

She wrote, 'Feeling cozy in my #Vintage Jaquard/Midnight @unreal_fur from @maisondemode!'

Hot Date airs on Pop TV Wednesday at 11/10c.
The North Dakota Supreme Court has affirmed a $950,000 fine for a trucking company that illegally dumped oilfield waste onto a northwest North Dakota road in 2014.

Black Hills Trucking challenged the fine from the North Dakota Industrial Commission, arguing it already paid a $200,000 fine to the North Dakota Department of Health for the same violations.

The company did not dispute that a truck driver intentionally released produced water, a waste byproduct of oil production, onto a Williams County gravel road, but argued the Industrial Commission overstepped its jurisdiction.

In an opinion published Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Industrial Commission, affirming the decision of a Northwest Judicial District Court judge.

A majority of justices concluded the Industrial Commission has the authority to regulate the disposal of saltwater and oilfield waste, including while the wastes are being trucked to a disposal site.

Justice Daniel Crothers dissented, concluding that the Industrial Commission has impermissibly interfered with the health departments jurisdiction over produced water that is moved away from a well site or other oilfield facility.

Crothers noted in his opinion that the regulators did not order cleanup work at the sites.

Surveillance equipment recorded a truck owned by Black Hills Trucking dumping produced water on a road in February and March of 2014. One incident was observed by a Department of Mineral Resources inspector and led to a criminal conviction against the driver and a $3,000 fine.

Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms said the agency is pleased with the Supreme Court's opinion.

The outcome of this case was vital in maintaining the jurisdiction of the commission on complaint cases," Helms said in a statement.

Black Hills Trucking, part of Wyoming-based True Companies, has 14 days to file a petition for rehearing with the court. Otherwise, the opinion is considered final. John Morrison, an attorney who represented Black Hills Trucking, did not respond to an email requesting comment Thursday.
She spent the day sunning herself on the beach.

But life isn't all lying around on sun loungers for Sofia Richie, who scrubbed up for the Art Basel Kick-Off party at Miami's Confidante Hotel on Wednesday night.

The 19-year-old brought her 34-year-old boyfriend Scott Disick to the DuJour bash, with publisher Jason Binn and WellNEST hosting the shindig.

Smitten: Sofia Richie joined boyfriend Scott Disick at the Art Basel Kick-Off party at Miami's Confidante Hotel on Wednesday

The teenager looked gorgeous in long sleeved, figure-hugging LBD, which she matched with delicate black ankle strap heels.

Scott meanwhile matched her in all black, unbuttoning his shirt almost to his belly button.

The couple looked in awe with one another inside the bash, forever keeping in close proximity as they circulated the party and mingled with the other guests.

But when they weren't chatting to other event-goers, they had no trouble keeping themselves entertained, as Sofia was snapped frequently laughing at her boyfriend's anecdotes.

Hot: The teenager looked gorgeous in long sleeved, figure-hugging LBD, which boasted a daringly high split detail

Cute: She elongated her statuesque frame with a pair of barely-there stilettos as she posed on the green carpet

Smile: Sofia and Scott also shared a snap with former Mayor of Miami Beach Philip Levine, and host Jason Binn (L-R)

Strike a pose! Sofia is the cover girl of DuJour magazine's latest edition, which sees her grace the pages in a white high-neck dress, while her blonde locks are swept away from her face

Earlier the couple had spent hours soaking up rays on the beach, Sofia putting on a very revealing display in a tiny red bikini.

And Sofia's day of rest seemed to leave her more than rejuvenated as she put on an animated display inside the event.

Posing in front of her stunning new DuJour cover - which sees the beauty slick her blonde locks away from her face while wearing a high-collared white dress - the model stretched her arms out in the air and got low. =

Feeling good! The daughter of Lionel Richie appeared to be in seriously high spirits as she pulled an animated stance for the camera

The look of love: Scott - who kept his shirt open for the occasion - was captured looking lustfully at his girlfriend

Giggles! Publisher Jason had the couple in hysterics inside the bash

Making a style statement: Sofia's skintight dress showed off her curves from all angles as she paraded around the bash

Joining them at the evening gig was 43-year-old Swedish stunner Victoria Silvstedt, who also got the all-black memo, rocking a sexy cleavage-baring short black dress of her own.

Model Karolina Kurkova looked very air hostess in a matching blue suit, scarf, shoes and blouse.

Artist Beau Dunn put on a very eye catching display, from her thigh-high orange boots, to her sheer plunging lace top.

Loved-up: Sofia and Scott kept in close proximity to each other as they circulated the party and mingled with the other guests

Smitten: The couple had no trouble keeping one another entertained inside the bash, as Sofia was snapped laughing at her older beau's anecdotes

Not stepping a fashion foot wrong! Sofia is quickly rising up the ranks as one of the world's most stylish celebrities

Rubbing shoulders: Sofia also chatted with Keith Butz, the General Manager of The Confidante Hotel, and Amanda Butz

Daytime: Earlier the couple had spent hours soaking up rays on the beach, Sofia putting on a very revealing display in a tiny red bikini

Also there was former Mayor of Miami Beach Philip Levine, who stepped down last month to prepare for a run at becoming Governor of Florida next year.

Director Michael Bay, who just wrapped an as-yet-untitled 1970s-set drug runner crime drama in Miami, was another famous face spotted.

Host for the evening Binn, who founded DuJour Media and Ocean Drive Magazine among others, was also on hand to oversee proceedings.

Gorgeous: Joining them at the evening gig was 43-year-old Swedish stunner Victoria Silvstedt, who also got the all-black memo, rocking a sexy cleavage-baring short black dress of her own

In-flight entertainment: Model Karolina Kurkova looked very air hostess in a matching blue suit, scarf, shoes and blouse

Wow: Artist Beau Dunn put on a very eye catching display, from her thigh-high orange boots, to her sheer plunging lace top
He's the man with the rosy red cheeks and an unshakeable urge to spread love through the power of gift-giving, known and loved the world over.

That man of course, is Jarrod Woodgate, the Bachelorette reject who gifted Sophie Monk the seedlings that would eventually symbolise their sprouting romance.

But as the story goes, someone urinated in his plant, she chose the other guy, and now here he is doing a Christmas campaign for Melbourne's Chapel Street instead.

A Christmas Clinger: He's the man with the rosy red cheeks and an unshakeable urge to spread love through the power of gift-giving, known and loved the world over

On Thursday, the man rumoured to be bringing the Christmas cheer to Keira Maguire was revealed as the face of Melbourne's premiere shopping precinct's campaign.

Alongside a hilarious-but-adorable photo shoot that saw Jarrod donning the famous fluffy red hat, Chapel Street introduced their newest ambassador.

'TVs resident romantic, bachelor Jarrod Woodgate, will be offering a free service for Christmas 2017 to ensure women receive the present of their dreams,' it read.

He's the gift that keeps on giving! That man of course, is Jarrod Woodgate, the Bachelorette reject who gifted Sophie Monk the seedlings that would eventually symbolise their sprouting romance

Started from the bottom now we're here: But as the story goes, someone urinated in his plant, she chose the other guy, and now here he is doing a Christmas campaign for Melbourne's Chapel Street instead

The release revealed Jarrod - fresh from filming Bachelor In Paradise - will appear in Melbourne on Saturday to provide a free gift advice service for men.

'Known for his thoughtful gifts Jarrods timely tips have been designed especially for love-struck men who havent got a clue when it comes to shopping!

'I dont care if youve been naughty or nice, everyone is welcome to come down to the Chapel Street Precinct and whisper in my ear what they want for Christmas,' Jarrod said in a statement.

Tis the season! Alongside a hilarious-but-adorable photo shoot that saw Jarrod donning the famous fluffy red hat, Chapel Street introduced their newest ambassador

Priceless! 'TVs resident romantic, bachelor Jarrod Woodgate, will be offering a free service for Christmas 2017 to ensure women receive the present of their dreams,' it read

In the photo shoot, 'stage five clinger Claus' donned the red hat and a much sleeker interpretation of the thick red overcoat and slacks.

He was pictured holding several of his most recommended gifts, including a hairbrush, wine glasses and luggage.

Whisper sweet nothings! 'I dont care if youve been naughty or nice, everyone is welcome to come down to the Chapel Street Precinct and whisper in my ear what they want for Christmas,' Jarrod said in a statement

Jarrod also presented his 'Top Ten Tips For Buying Christmas Presents,' a helpful 'do's and don'ts' guide, clearly borne out of his own personal experiences.

Jarrod will be at Chapel Streets Christmas grotto, Prahran Town Hall, on Saturday 9th December from 1-3pm

JARROD WOODGATES 10 TIPS FOR BUYING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS 1. NEVER BUY HER THESE HOMEWARES: Unless shes asked for it, dont get her cleaning or cooking appliances because it sends the wrong message. Instead, get some fancy wine glasses, and a good bottle of what she likes. Shell love it, and youll get to share. Win. Win. 2. NEVER BUY HER A DRESS ON YOUR OWN: You will screw things up royally. Instead, take your beloved clothes shopping on Chapel Street and get her to try a few on. Shell put something on, twirl and love it but put it back because its probably too pricey. Thats your present! If theres nothing on the day, a gift voucher will work too! 3. YOU CAN NEVER GO WRONG WITH HAIR: Every girl loves looking fresh after a cut and colour. Get a voucher and a gift set to go along with it and youre done! 4. ONLY BUY SUNNIES IF YOU DO THIS: A perfect gift at this time of year, but not all sunglasses suit all face shapes. So take your significant others photo (preferably wearing sunglasses) and let the experts narrow down the selection. Keep the receipt just in case she wants to exchange! 5. IF YOU GIVE A VOUCHER, PUT SOME THOUGHT IN TO THE PACKAGING: Create a romantic gift by placing a love letter and a restaurant voucher from any one of Chapel Streets many eateries and in an empty bottle of wine  just like a message in a bottle. Its all about the presentation! 6. IF YOUR PARTNER IS STRESSED  THIS IS THE ULTIMATE GIFT: A spa day away from you and the kids is exactly what a stressed partner needs, especially if her daily life is hectic. PS - drive home the fact youll look after the kids while shes relaxing. The Norbu Urban Retreat at Chapel Street's Olsen Hotel is excellent. 7. FURNITURE - PROCEED WITH CAUTION: Unless you want it to end up on Gumtree on boxing day, only surprise her with a piece of furniture if she has already picked it out or dropped hints for that new West Elm leather loveseat! 8. BE VERY CAREFUL IF BUYING EXERCISE GEAR: Activewear is hot right now, so why not get her an entire outfit like Lululemon (with some help from the experts in store). Include a note saying how much you love her the way she is and her new workout gear is just something to make her feel extra baben! 9. BUY HER SHOES, BUT HAVE SOME FUN WHILE DOING IT! Girls love shoes, but they are so personal you dont want to buy her a pair and screw things up. Do this fun trick; giftwrap an old pair shoes she hates with a card promising a day of shoe shopping on Chapel Street with your credit card, because these old shoes are history! 10. SHE WILL LOVE A ROMANTIC GETAWAY Surprise your lady with a dreamy escape to one of Chapel Street Precincts luxury accommodations like The Cullen, The Olsen or The Como. All just a quick stroll away from some of the worlds best restaurants, bars, shops and more! You could throw in a voucher or let her pick the activities once youve arrived. Advertisement
Two hosts from Brisbane's number one breakfast radio show became embroiled in a fight live on-air Wednesday.

Following the scuffle on Nova's Ash Kip & Luttsy, David 'Luttsy' Lutteral, accused Kip Wightman of punching him.

The incident was culmination of a verbal sparring match between the pair that played-out on-air and between songs for over 20 minutes.

'He punched me!' Nova Brisbane's David 'Luttsy' Lutteral (L) has accused co-host Kip Wightman (R) of punching him, after a fight broke out live on-air on Wednesday's show

It started as a lighthearted argument that carried over from an off-air team meeting, in which someone made a joke about their disdain for social media influencers.

'That term makes me sick, more like social influenza,' said someone - Luttsy insisted it was his line, Kip begged to differ.

Both men insisted on pleading their cases to their co-hosts, who sounded more interested in moving on with the show.

Sparring match: The incident was culmination of a verbal sparring match between the pair that played-out on-air and between songs for over 20 minutes

Mountain out of a molehill: It started as a lighthearted argument that carried over from an off-air team meeting, in which someone made a joke about their disdain for social media influencers

'How about you just let go of it?' pleaded show regular and former Olympian Susie O'Neil.

'But He's gotta stop stealing ideas, ya just can't get away with this,' Luttsy snapped back.

'Oh get...' Kip began, before being interrupted by his seething co-host, who jabbed: 'get what? Oh he's actually upset now?'

Standing their ground: Both men insisted on pleading their cases to their co-hosts, who begged the pair to 'drop it' and let them get on with the show

From the audio, it's clear Kip was no longer behind his microphone, heard instead in the distance yelling: 'Don't call me a f**king liar!'

Shocked, a producer attempted to quickly fade-up a song, but not before an audibly shaken Luttsy exclaimed: 'what? He punched me!'

'Don't call me a f**king liar!': After Luttsy yelled: 'he's gotta stop stealing ideas!' Kip snapped back: 'Don't call me a f**king liar!

According to news.com.au, a Nova spokesperson has denied there was 'any physical contact between the pair'.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to a representative for the network for comment.
One day after a British newspaper article questioned why she catapulted teen dancer Maddie Zielgler into the spotlight while herself eschewing it, Sia has responded via Twitter.

The Australian artist acknowledged it's a question she has 'often' asked herself since Ziegler, now 15, achieved international stardom thanks to her roles in Sia's music videos.

'I do check in with Maddie weekly about whether she wants this, and assure her if she ever wants it to stop it stops,' Sia tweeted.

Speaking out: Recording artist Sia responded to criticism for catapulting Maddie Ziegler to fame while opting to keep a low profile herself, saying she feels protective of the young starlet

Declaration: The Australian took to Twitter Thursday to explain her motives and why she continues to work with the dancer

'Maddie was already famous when I discovered her, but I have certainly expanded her exposure and feel responsible for that,' she went on.

'I feel very protective of her and my goal is to empower her in whatever choices she makes. Some would argue a teenager cant or shouldnt be charged with making sound choices for themselves and so I do try to choose the best for her always. But I think this is an important conversation.'

Maddie was eight when she started appearing in Lifetime's reality series Dance Moms in 2011.

She went on to star in six videos for Sia between 2014 and this year including Chandelier and Elastic Heart. She is currently touring with the 41-year-old from Adelaide.

Sia is rarely seen 'as herself' in public appearances, preferring to hide behind wigs and costumes. She cast Maddie in six of her music videos and is currently touring with her

'Some would argue a teenager cant or shouldnt be charged with making sound choices for themselves and so I do try to choose the best for her always,' Sia said of Maddie, 15, pictured in LA in August

Sia - full name Sia Furler - suggested in her series of tweets that the question of exposing a child or teen to fame is something that should be considered and weighed by all stage parents, directors and agents.

She said: 'What I learned from Maddie is that fame affects her differently than how it affected me. I can only trust that she is telling me the truth. If that changes, we stop.'

The piece published in The Guardian on Wednesday was titled: 'The Sia conundrum: if fame is so damaging, why pass it on to a child?'

The piece published in Britain's The Guardian on Wednesday was titled: 'The Sia conundrum: if fame is so damaging, why pass it on to a child?'

The author of the artist Bonnie Malkin had seen Sia along with Maddie in concert in Australia this past weekend.

'Up on the stage in Sydney on Saturday, with Furler concealed and Maddie in the spotlight, it seemed that the superstar was deploying a child in a way that she herself refuses to be. Where Furler was hidden, Maddie was exposed,' Malkin wrote.

The article went on: 'Furler herself might not be willing to marry fame but standing on the stage in front of us, she seemed to be officiating another marriage. Not to a "perfect blank slate" but to a minor who is yet to learn about, or tame, the monster.'

Sia suggested in her series of tweets that the question of exposing a child or teen to fame is something that should be considered and weighed by all stage parents, directors and agents

Back in September, Maddie gave an interview to News Corp. in which she gushed about the life-changing call to star in Sia's Chandelier video.

'I didn't know exactly who she was that well, being 11,' she said. 'So when I met her I was 'Wow, she's so incredible'. I thought I would do this one video and never see her again. But we became a dynamic duo.'

Maddie's performance in Chandelier has been viewed almost 1.7 billion times since it was released in 2014.

That turn led Maddie to play Sia again, alongside Shia La Beouf in the clip for Elastic Heart while she also had a lead dancer role in videos for the Big Girl's Cry, Cheap Thrills and The Greatest.

Already famous: Maddie was eight when she started appearing in Lifetime's reality series Dance Moms in 2011
She usually shares photos of her tanned torso, shapely pins and perfect pout.

But on Thursday, Natalie Roser's Instagram post set tongues wagging for a different reason.

The model shared a photo of a Victoria police car that she claimed was parked illegally outside a Melbourne cafe.

'Parked illegally to get a coffee': Model Natalie Roser accused Victoria police of a parking violation this week and shared this photo of the alleged offence on Instagram

In the caption, the Women's Health cover babe claimed an officer 'parked illegally.'

'Parked illegally to get a coffee... not cool @victoriapolice,' she wrote.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to both Natalie and Victoria police for comment.

Making moves! She has just been named the January cover girl for Women's Health - an achievement she put down to having a 'healthy body and healthy mind'

This week the famed social media celebrity is in Melbourne with her actor boyfriend Harley Bonner.

She has just been named the January cover girl for Women's Health - an achievement she put down to having a 'healthy body and healthy mind.'

The 27-year-old wears a stunning The Is First Base swimsuit on the cover, which is in celebration of all things 'strong'.

Not always so bikini ready! Natalie admitted to the publication she has often struggled with body image

Rocking that bod! The 27-year-old wears a stunning The Is First Base swimsuit on the cover, which is in celebration of all things 'strong'

But she hasn't always been so bikini-body confidence, admitting to the magazine she has 'always had doubts' about her physique.

'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.

Together forever: This week the famed social media celebrity is in Melbourne with her actor boyfriend Harley Bonner

'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.

Meanwhile, Natalie recently revealed the secrets behind her incredible figure.

She reportedly has had an alkaline cleanse and success in kicking an 'eating and sugar addiction' to thank for her glowing summer-ready body.
She just enjoyed a romantic holiday with beau Joshua Kushner.

And former Victoria's Secret Angel Karlie Kloss was spotted touching back down in Los Angeles after her traipse through the UK.

The 25-year-old was spotted at LAX on Wednesday in an edgy outfit.

She's back! Karlie Kloss was spotted touching back down in Los Angeles after her traipse through the UK

The blonde sported a leather biker jacket and skinny jeans with a crewneck shirt.

The model and her financial investor boyfriend, 32, were spotted enjoying a stroll through London on Saturday.

Kloss has been in the U.K. for several days, where she gave a talk in Oxford on Thursday and on Monday night co-hosted the British Fashion Awards.

Biker chic: The 25-year-old was spotted at LAX on Wednesday in an edgy outfit

Hell for leather: The blonde sported a leather biker jacket and skinny jeans with a crewneck shirt

The couple were low-key as they toured some of the sites in the British capital together.

The former Victoria's Secret Angel paired a gray turtleneck sweater with a fluffy pink jacket and added a pair of blue jeans.

She wore her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and sported sunglasses despite the cloudy skies.

Fresh faced: The star looked good after her flight

Her boyfriend, who is the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, wore a navy padded jacket and navy trousers.

On Monday night, Kloss joined other models for the Fashion Awards, walking the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall in a strapless scarlet gown.

The designer number gave a good view of her ample cleavage which event he diamonds dripping around her neck couldn't distract from.

She wore her blonde hair loose in a tousled style and rocked bright red lipstick.

Across the pond: The model and her financial investor boyfriend, 32, were spotted enjoying a stroll through London on Saturday
The former Bachelor babes became close after sharing the spotlight on 2016's season of The Bachelor.

And on Thursday, reality star Steph Dixon jokingly accused best friend Olena Khamula of stealing her underwear.

Taking to Instagram Story, the 26-year-old shares a conversation from Facebook where she wrote to Olena: 'Give me my G-strings back, you weirdo!'

'Give me my G-strings back, you weirdo! Former Bachelor star Steph Dixon (pictured) jokingly accuses best friend Olena Khamula of stealing her underwear

The models have regularly caught up and continued their friendship since the dating series aired last year.

Olena clearly found the conversation amusing, responding: 'Hahahahhahahaha I can't deal.'

She continued, joking with her pal: 'How does someone break in and only takes your underwear. I will never understand.'

That's cheeky! Steph (R) accused model and friend Olena (L) of stealing her underwear within a Facebook thread that she later shared on Instagram Stories

'Hahahahhahahaha I can't deal': Olena clearly found the conversation amusing, laughing while adding she couldn't understand why someone would break in to her pal's place just to take underwear

Steph, also baffled, replied 'Yeah I dunno mate it's absolutely FRIED', before insisting to her 25k followers the tale was a 'true story'.

Steph, who entered The Bachelor as an intruder, previously credited her friendship with Olena for stopping her from leaving the compound.

After forming an instant friendship with Olena, the pair received much criticism when people accused them of faking their friendship for the camera.

'In regular contact errrrrydayyyyyy': After forming an instant friendship with Olena, the pair received much criticism when people accused them of faking their friendship for the camera

Steph hit back at the time by saying: 'I remember reading a comment from (a fan) stating they weren't "buying" our friendship.'

She continued: 'Well guys, pretty sure Olena and I are the only ones out of every relationship from that season that are still together & in regular contact errrrrydayyyyyy'.

'Im (sic) proud of us @olenakhamula we now share a bond of an experience that know one else will ever understand... love you bubbles,' Steph ended her lengthy post, with the Ukrainian-born beauty commenting moments later: 'I LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH'.

The pair last posted a picture together on their respective Instagram accounts in August.
Her new movie The Disaster Artist hits theaters Friday.

And Melanie Griffith was spotted at the premiere of her other movie The Pirates of Somalia at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Wednesday.

The 60-year-old actress looked cheery as she was joined on the red carpet by her movie co-stars.

Elegant in ivory: Melanie Griffith was spotted at the premiere of her other movie The Pirates of Somalia at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Wednesday

Melanie cut a chic figure in a ivory turtleneck sweater, teamed with a matching long flowing silk skirt.

The Lolita actress added height to her frame with pointed-toe nude heels.

Melanie accessorized her look with pearl earrings and a gold clutch that she held in her hand.

The blonde-beauty wore her hair in an elegant up-do, while finishing off with a pink pout and mascara.

All smiles! The 60-year-old actress looked cheery as she was joined on the red carpet by her movie co-stars

Coming in clutch: Melanie cut a chic figure in a ivory turtleneck sweater, teamed with a matching long flowing silk skirt

She was later joined by co-star Evan Peters, who stepped out in a dark gray suit and matching tie.

The American Horror Story vet paired his red carpet look with lace-up brown oxfords.

Evan and Melanie were also accompanied at the premiere by their co-star, Oscar Nominated, Barkhad Abdi.

Barkhad kept his ensemble simple with a patterned gray button-up shirt.

The stars: She was later joined by co-star Evan Peters, who stepped out in a dark gray suit and matching tie

Putting on a handsome display: The American Horror Story vet paired his red carpet look with lace-up brown oxfords

The Pirates of Somalia film is based on the book, The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World, written by Canadian journalist Jay Bahadur.

The film follows the story of a rookie journalist  played by Evans  who decides to get an inside look into the lives of pirates in Somalia.

The director Bryan Buckley told an audience at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, that he made the movie to tell the real story of the Somali people, according to Deadline.

He said: 'Originally, I had done a short doc for the UN on refugees. I met Somali people in Kenya and I realized that we werent getting the proper story from them.'

The Pirates of Somalia will be released in theaters on December 8.

On the red carpet: Evan and Melanie were also joined at the premiere by their co-star, Oscar Nominated, Barkhad Abdi
Actress Jacqueline McKenzie has broken her silence on co-star Russell Crowe's 'tone deaf' joke about 'sodomising' her in 1991 R-rated film Romper Stomper.

According to The Guardian, the Hollywood star told the bizarre tongue-in-cheek tale during Wednesday night's AACTA Awards in Sydney as a means to highlight the need for 'sensitivity' in the industry.

Jacqueline jumped to the actor's defense on Thursday, beginning a public Facebook post: 'There were no blurry lines on that awkward days filming back in 1991!!!'

Report claims Russell Crowe made 'tone deaf' joke about 'sodomising Jacqueline McKenzie' on set of 90s film Romper Stomper at AACTA Awards before it was CUT from Channel Seven broadcast

The star, 50, shut down any misunderstanding regarding the pair's interaction on set, writing: 'The very important conversation of sexual harassment in the workplace bares no relevance to this. There were no blurry lines on that awkward day back in 1991. As there should never be.'

'Over the eons, he and I have often laughed at the awkwardness we felt shooting that scene. How we were trying to be as protective of our modesties as we could, as sensitive to each others feelings as we could BUT when the director called action, the scripted action was violent and explicit,' Jackie said.

'The irony -what we actors are asked to do in scenes and how we actually film them- is what we laugh at. Then and now.'

The 4400 actress later admitted: 'Yes, it was uncomfortable. For everyone. Scenes like that always are. Also for family and friends when they later watch the work on the big screen.'

'The very important conversation of sexual harassment in the workplace bares no relevance to this': The actress made it clear that no wrong-doing by either party was committed during the filming and confirmed they were both 'sensitive' to each other's feelings on set

'He and I have often laughed at the awkwardness we felt shooting that scene': She confirmed the stars had discussed the R-rated indie film's sex scene in the past

Russell, 53, was reflecting on the R-rated indie film's sex scene on stage at the event, but the comments were reportedly never made cut from the Channel Seven broadcast.

'I didn't actually intend to do that  I was trying to keep my bits away from her bits, and she's been given one of those pieces of elastic that the girls get when you do those scenes, which protects them from all things, and my bits and pieces were in a little canvas sack with a drawstring,' Russell began.

'And it was actually my desire to keep the bits apart. It wasn't until the opening night of the film that it was pointed out by none other than Jackie McKenzie's beautiful late mother that we were in fact, in her mind, engaged in sodomy.

'Anyway that was just a story about sensitivity!' He concluded but his 'joke' was met with a muted silence from the audience.

Actor Russell Crowe's tone deaf anecdote about 'sodomising Jacqueline McKenzie' on set of 90s film Romper Stomper was CUT from AACTA Awards broadcast on Wednesday night, according to The Guardian

'Statement from Russell Crowe': On Thursday, Jackie also re-Tweeted a post from journalist Ben Fordham, which claimed to be a 'statement from Russell Crowe' regarding the story

On Thursday, Jackie also re-Tweeted a post from journalist Ben Fordham, which claimed to be a 'statement from Russell Crowe' regarding the story.

'Actors and actresses by the nature of our job get thrown into some embarrassing, bizarre and extreme circumstances,' the statement read.

'Jacqui and I survived that moment in our young careers because we looked after each other. Our friendship has only strengthened over the years and it's a story we both cringe and laugh over.'

'I was sodomising Jacqueline McKenzie (female co-star) on the set of Romper Stomper. I didn't actually intend to do that': It's alleged the 'joke' did not please the crowd, with a silent audience reacting to his description of the event from more than 20 years ago

Daily Mail Australia reached out to Russell Crowe, the AACTA Awards and Channel Seven for comment at the time.

The film producer and musician reportedly made the comments with his former co-star Jackie sitting in the crowd on the night.

Just days prior, the actress claimed she was the victim of 'grubby behaviour' and 'sexual harassment and groping' during her early career in a Facebook post.

'It was actually my desire to keep the bits apart': Russell apparently laughed as he told the tale about how despite the actress wearing 'one of those pieces of elastic' and himself wearing a ' canvas sack with a drawstring' they appeared to get a little too close for comfort

The scene he was referring to was within the racist youth gang film, Romper Stomper, where the actors had sex in an aggressive manner

Daily Mail Australia have reached out to AACTA organisers, Channel Seven and management for Russell Crowe for further comment

She also claimed a blind eye was turned when she raised the issue and her complaints were ignored on two occasions in the past.

On the red carpet before the event, Jackie told Guardian Australia: 'It's not just about sexual assault and harassment, it's bullying and bad behaviour in the industry.'

What timing: Only a week earlier the actress had claimed she was the victim of 'grubby behaviour' and 'sexual harassment and groping' during her early career in a Facebook post

'In all industries, no matter what job, gender or age, it occurs everywhere. I posted on Facebook last week about my experience  I'm really interested in effecting some change now,' she added.

The 50-year-old has remained too nervous to publicly 'out' her offenders in the past, but said they were predominantly 'actors/directors'.
He has dismissed claims of a reunion with girlfriend Rebecca Bignell after The X Factor reportedly caused their split.

And Myles Stephenson certainly seems to be making the most of being single after he enjoyed a fling with Love Island's Malin Andersson, according to The Sun.

The Rak-Su hunk reportedly hooked up with the beauty after she messaged him on Instagram during his stint on the show.

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Reality strikes! Myles Stephenson certainly seems to be making the most of being single after he enjoyed a fling with Love Island's Malin Andersson

A source tells the newspaper: 'Myles clearly took a fancy to Malin after she made contact on Twitter and Instagram.

'They met up in secret and enjoyed a few nights together at her home in Milton Keynes before going their separate ways.'

A representative for the singer and the Love Island star has been contacted by MailOnline.

The claims come after he is said to have called off his 18-month romance with Rebecca, because it would be 'selfish' to continue as he works on his music career.

Insiders claim that Myles is conscious of hurting his ex-partner because he cannot commit to a relationship at this time.

Online romance: The Rak-Su hunk reportedly hooked up with the beauty after she messaged him on Instagram during his stint on the show

Not getting back together: The claims come after he is said to have called off his 18-month romance with Rebecca, because it would be 'selfish' to continue as he works on his music career

A source also told The Sun on Wednesday: 'Myles wants to protect Rebecca as much as possible. He cannot commit to a relationship. He needs to be single right now.

'Rebecca is a very important person in his life. He is conscious that he doesn't want to hurt her by giving her false hope.

'It would be selfish for Myles to lead Rebecca on. The time is not right. But who knows what will happen in the future. Never say never.'

MailOnline has reached out to a representative for the band for further comment.

Winners: Myles is said to be placing his focus on music, after winning the competition on Sunday with bandmates amal Shurland, Mustafa Rahimtulla and Ashley Fongho

Front and centre: Rebecca (centre, in black) attended the X Factor only three weeks ago to support the band, despite taking a break from the artist in September

False hope: Myles is reportedly conscious of giving Rebecca (centre) false hope, because he cares about her

It follows claims that the duo were headed for 'crunch talks' in the coming weeks with a view to reconciling.

Myles and Rebecca's relationship fell apart in September when he stepped back from the relationship to focus on his music but they officially split in November.

They had been together for a year and a half and known each other for nine years before.

The duo stayed on good terms, and she has continued to promote the band's music as well as visit him at the studio during the live shows.

Separate ways: The duo are said to have split last month after an 18-month romance

Keeping busy: Insiders close to Myles have claimed he is 'completely single'

Sources close to Sony music boss Simon Cowell - the Rak-Su mentor - have also reiterated that the boys' focus should be music.

During the competition, it was claimed that Myles had grown closer to a female production staff member but that was later denied, with reports that he was 'completely single'.

A source said at the time: 'Rak-Su are the favourites [to win] and Simons priority - he doesnt want anything getting in the way of their focus.'

Rak-Su became the first boyband to win in the X Factor's 14-year history, on Sunday night when they beat solo artist Grace Davies to the win.

Six years after Little Mix were crowned the first ever band to triumph, the Groups category found success once again.

The four piece group - featuring Myles, Jamal Shurland, Mustafa Rahimtulla and Ashley Fongho - have already released the winners' charity single Dimelo, which features Wyclef Jean and Naughty Boy.

Meanwhile, Mustafa has revealed that he still hasn't quit his hotel job despite winning the X Factor.

He told the Mirror: 'I was put on a zero- hours contract so technically I am still working there. There may have to be a little phone call.'
A local chef recently returned from Indonesia, her suitcases filled with deluxe teas ready to be sampled by attendees of Saturdays White Christmas High Tea and Fashion Show, which supports the Sleepy Hollow Theater.

This is the best tea anyone will ever have in their lifetime, said Susan Lundberg, executive director of the Sleepy Hollow Theater. Youre not going to want to miss this.

Rather than just serve one selection of tea at the event, Chef Cicilia Dina Andersen, of Bismarck, insisted there must be three  Pandanas Green, Sekar Kedhaton and Exotic Especia.

Cicilias so ambitious, she outdoes everybody, Lundberg said. I told her one flavor of tea would be fine, but she wouldnt hear it.

The chef has traveled the globe on more than one occasion to secure unique or high-quality ingredients for a favorite recipe.

If I need special ingredients I cant find here, I go elsewhere, Andersen said, noting the time she acquired reindeer meat from Norway.

Born in Indonesia, Andersen grew up learning to cook with an array of spices.

My grandma taught me how to cook with Spice Island spices. My mom lived in Bali, a place that favors Dutch spices. So, growing up, I learned how to cook with a lot of spices and learned how to balance it, she said. You can always add hot sauce if you like your food hot.

One of the more time-consuming desserts she prepares is a vanilla spice cake.

A combination of five spices, including cinnamon and nutmeg, is sprinkled between thin layers of vanilla cake batter, and baked layer-by-layer.

The higher it is, the better it is, said Andersen, noting most vanilla spice cakes end up 30 thin layers tall. Its very challenging.

Andersen moved to Bismarck in the 1980s, upon marrying her husband. The couple has two grown sons.

Shortly after tying the knot, she traveled to Paris, France, to attend a year's worth of culinary school, receiving her Diplome de Patissiere at the Ecole Ritz Escoffier.

I received good training there, from chefs all over the world, Andersen said, noting taste comes first, then presentation.

Special events are her specialty. Andersen starts cooking and preparing food one week in advance of a big event, working around the schedule of her everyday job at Lowes.

Saturdays High Tea will feature her famous chocolate creme brulee cake.

I love to work with chocolate, Andersen said. If I have friends over, I like to bake my chocolate creme brulee cake.

She enjoys making pastries and working with foie gras, which is the liver of a duck or goose that has been enlarged through a special feeding technique.

"Cicilia is knowledgeable, creative and always willing to share," said Stephanie Delmore, president of the Sleepy Hollow Theatre. "After eating her delicious food, none of us want to go home to our drab cooking."

"She's changed the taste buds and ambiance of thousands," Lundberg added.

I love to make people happy, Andersen said. When I introduce someone to a new food, I like to see their expression. It makes me happy.

The annual event, which includes a vintage fashion show, begins at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Trinity Community Center, 310 E. Ave. A, Bismarck. White-themed costumes will be modeled by Sleepy Hollow cast members, selected from Sleepy Hollow Theatres extensive costume collection.

The Holiday Silent Auction features wreaths, trees, tea, floral arrangements and decorative pieces. Ambiance piano selections are by Joy Sorenson. A presentation of Santa Lucia also highlights the event.

"We hope this event encourages respite and gives people a new lease on life," Lundberg said.

The $30 ticket supports the educational programming of Sleepy Hollow Theatre & Arts Park. Paid reservations are necessary, and space is limited. For more information, call 701-319-0894 or visit www.shst.org.
He lasted nearly three weeks in the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! jungle.

And while Stanley Johnson might now be back in the real world, his hilarious slips of the tongue are still as on point as ever.

Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Thursday morning, the 77-year-old explained how strange it was to be out of the loop. He was also asked whether he'd spoken to his politician son Boris yet.

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A good run: Stanley lasted nearly three weeks in the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! jungle

'Is Boris still PM?' Stanley Johnson makes hilarious gaffe as he forgets his son is actually Foreign Secretary... and says of his jungle weight loss 'I havent been 12 stone 9 since 1954'

But he simply asked: 'Is he still PM?'

Realising that his son is in fact not the Prime Minister of the UK, he was quick to add: 'Oh sorry no, Foreign Secretary! I havent had specific telephonic communication with him but I have had a whatsapp and he is as thrilled as I am. Ive had messages from all the kids.'

In a separate interview later in the day, he cleared up the error.

Speaking to Lorraine Kelly, he said: 'Oh my god that was a slip of the tongue! I was like Rip Van Winkle emerging from seclusion.

Faux pas: In a separate interview later in the day, he cleared up the error. Speaking to Lorraine Kelly, he said - 'Oh my god that was a slip of the tongue! I was like Rip Van Winkle emerging from seclusion'

Back to reality: Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Thursday morning, the 77-year-old explained how strange it was to be out of the loop

'But no [Boris and I] have exchanged a WhatsApp. He said "good show dad everyones rooting for you". But yes... got it wrong about the PM, it really was a slip of the tongue!'

Across his various morning interviews, Stanley - who is the first male to be eliminated since the public began voted celebrities out of the camp - also said: 'I am so gutted to be out but the voice of the people have spoken and we have to listen to it!

'I really am gutted. Its a sad day but a wonderful day here too.'

Of the campmates' rationing on the show, he said: 'As far as Im concerned beans and rice is absolutely fine, half the world would kill for beans and rice and we have two weeks of it. Brilliant!'

Gaffe: While Stanley might now be back in the real world, his hilarious slips of the tongue are still as on point as ever

Friends and family: He was also asked whether he'd spoken to his politician son Boris yet

Asked what he highlight of his time in the jungle was, Stanley said: 'My highlight was the moment when I did the complicated factory of fear trial.

'I was strapped to a circular table revolving, all sorts of gunge was being poured on me, and I had to toss a ball into the hopper. I was so unbelieavbly thrilled when my last ball went in with two seconds to go!

'We got five meals for camp - that was my highlight!'

Stanely was far from coy about his desire to win the show, which ends at the weekend.

'I really was disappointed not to win. I didnt go in there thinking let's have a nice weekend on the Gold Coast... I am totally disappointed. I gave it my best, it didnt work, but never mind.

He's out: Stanley is the first male to be eliminated since the public began voted celebrities out of the camp

'The people were fantastic, the place, Australia, the finest jungle you could imagine. The food left a little more to be desired but I really couldnt have asked for any more.'

Stanley insisted that he 'hasn't let Boris or the country down'.

'The best man or woman will win. And it has been tremendous fun. And let's not forget I was there for my new novel! Its the reason I was there!' he said, giving his book a plug.

Speaking to Lorraine Kelly later in the morning, Stanley said: 'I wanted to be there til the bitter end, I wanted to be crowned king of the jungle! But it was not to be!'

'The jungle experience - Im a novelist I write books, my new thriller is just out actually! I just thought this could be the most fab experience and I could write a new book called Gameshow or something. But no seriously, it was a great opportunity to go and do something challenging and testing.'

Taken to task: Stanley went through a his fair share of challenges in the jungle

And relax: Stanley will spend the rest of the week in the luxury of his hotel

The witty writer added: 'I hate being serious, I resist it as much as I can, but being serious it was fantastic to meet people like Dennis Wise, the 21-times cap for England. And look at Amir, former world champion. They're the real heroes of our time.

'I move in political and business circles but these are real people and I was thrilled to be there. We can have a WhatsAapp group 2017, we can WhatsApp each other!'

Of who he thinks will win the series, Stanley concluded: 'I'm terribly interested to see whos going to win! Im rooting for Toff, the future is in her hands.'

Appearing later in the morning on This Morning, Stanley spoke of how he fared in the competition overall.

'I'm four decades older than most in there but also up against some very tough competition: Dennis Wise, Amir Khan and the lovely Jennie McAlpine. Shes been Fizz for 17 years! But the best people will win.

She's got his backing: Of who he thinks will win the series, Stanley concluded - 'I'm terribly interested to see whos going to win! Im rooting for Toff, the future is in her hands'

Revealing what he did when he got out of the jungle, Stanley told Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield: 'I did check my emails and had messages from all over the place. And I thought okay, I'm fine'

'It's wonderfully organised, a wonderful environment in the rainforest, and these games, yes they stop just short of danger or torture, but they're such fun!'

Revealing what he did when he got out of the jungle, Stanley told Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield: 'I did check my emails and had messages from all over the place. And I thought okay, I'm fine. Im a lucky man Ive written books, including my new thriller out now!'

Glad to be out, he added: 'Im not coming back here I can tell you, not to the jungle... for a while anyway! And of course weve got Christmas coming up!'

He then burst into a rendition of Jingle Bells,

'Cant wait for the album!' Holly quipped.
She's a regular fixture in the headlines thanks to her high-profile relationship with Today co-host Karl Stefanovic.

But Jasmine Yarbrough is a talented woman in her right, heading up her own shoe label Mara & Mine.

And on Thursday night, the 33-year-old was supported by her celebrity pals as she launched her new store in Sydney's Paddington.

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Walking in her shoes! As Jasmine Yarbrough (left) opened her new Mara & Mine store in Sydney's Paddington on Thursday, she was supported by a host of famous pals, including Christian 'Prince' Wilkins (right) and Sylvia Jeffreys

Sylvia Jeffreys, Christian 'Prince' Wilkins and Phoebe Burgess were among the big names to make an appearance at the lively event in the exclusive suburb.

Today show presenter Sylvia took to Instagram to share footage of the occasion, including a video of a guitarist playing music in front of the boutique store.

Another video showed Christian, who had donned Mara & Mine Jem Skull slippers for the event, dancing enthusiastically to the tunes.

Music to their ears! Today show presenter Sylvia posted a video of a guitarist playing tunes

Moving their feet! Sylvia also shared a video of Christian Wilkins dancing to the music while wearing Mara & Mine slippers

Meanwhile, NRL WAG Phoebe Burgess also attended the launch, posting a snap of herself at the store to Instagram.

In the image, the former CLEO magazine writer was dressed in a navy and burgundy patterned top teamed with high-waisted striped pants with the same colour scheme.

Completing the look with a pair of maroon Mara & Mine shoes, Phoebe captioned the snap: 'Huge congratulations to @jasyarby on her new @maraandmine store on William St. Amazing girl.'

'Huge congratulations' Phoebe Burgess (pictured) also attended and posted a snap of herself at the lively event

If the shoe fits! Christian was on point as he shared a snap of several people decked out in Mara & Mine footwear

Equally supportive was Christian Wilkins, who was on brand with his social media snaps.

Posting to his Instagram story, the socialite shared a photo of three people's feet adorned with Mara & Mine shoes and tagged Jasmine's brand.

It's not the first time Jasmine's celebrity associates have publicly shown their approval for her new store.

On Saturday, stunning Sylvia spent some time at Jasmine's trendy new boutique, a move that showed how close the blondes have become since the designer began dating Karl.
She was left devastated to discover that her husband was unfaithful after seeing him kissing billionaire heiress Chloe Green aboard a yacht earlier this year.

And now Jeremy Meeks' estranged wife has sensationally claimed that the 'Hot Felon' has repeated his cheating behaviour with his new love.

In a defiant post on Instagram, Melissa - who was married to the convict-turned-model for eight years - made the allegations to her followers as she thanked them for support.

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Allegations: Jeremy Meeks' estranged wife has sensationally claimed that the 'Hot Felon' has repeated his cheating behaviour with his new love Chloe Green, just months after he left her for the Topshop heiress

She wrote: 'Thank you for all the positive love...Ive never been in a better place in my life than I am now. My ex husband has already been unfaithful in his new relationship.

'With me... Id rather be alone and happy with self respect then to be played.'

MailOnline has contacted a representative for Meeks for comment.

The claims come as the pair are locked in an ugly divorce battle.

However, Jeremy, who shares a seven-old son with wife Melissa, seemed content as he enjoyed a shopping spree with Chloe, 26, in LA on Wednesday.

The model, 33, who has been hit with child support papers by his ex, appeared far from bothered as he enjoyed his new-found lifestyle in Beverly Hills with his British billionaire heiress girlfriend.

Unfazed: However, Jeremy , who shares a seven-old son with wife Melissa, seemed content as he enjoyed a shopping spree with Chloe, 26, in LA on Wednesday

Former flames! This week Melissa filed legal documents asking for child support from her ex Jeremy, who claims he only earns $6,000 a month from modelling

The couple appeared loved-up as they walked hand-in-hand down the popular shopping street, laden with bags.

This week Melissa filed legal documents asking for child support from her ex Jeremy, according to a Tuesday report from TMZ.

While she claims he's pulling in $1M a month from modelling contract, he has claimed he receives just $6k per month.

This came after an underwear picture of her shared to Instagram was removed from the social network, before she reposted it.

Babymama drama! In new papers the nurse reportedly claims that he has 'stopped paying for their son while he pursues his modeling career', leaving her swamped with bills

Ugly spat: While she claims he's pulling in $1M a month from modelling contract, he has claimed he receives just $6k per month

According to the site Mellissa branded her felon turned model ex is a hypocrite, explaining: 'Jeremy struts around on a catwalk in his underwear and that's okay for our son to see, but my attempts to help shape my public image are wrong?

'I would not even have a public image if not for Jeremy's tabloid adventures. I am shocked that Jeremy and his attorney attempt to slut shame me as they do.'

Melissa also claims that of the 130 days since their separation, Jeremy has only had their child for 30 days of it according to TMZ.

Last month, in the latest move to their very public relationship breakdown, Jeremy introduced billionaire Chloe to his 7-year-old son Jeremy Junior.

And days later Melissa was pictured trying to heal her heartbreak with Love Island star and athlete Theo Campbell in London , before going on This Morning to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair.

Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity.

'I had to grieve the loss of a child at the same time': Melissa revealed she was in the early stages of pregnancy when she saw images of Chloe and Jeremy kissing while on a romantic break to Turkey in June

She said: 'He was an amazing husband, honestly, when I think about it I still get emotional. It's still very raw. We had a really good life together.'

Melissa's voice broke as she recalled Jeremy confessing his infidelity to her this June, in the aftermath of the pictures of Chloe draped all over him during a yacht photoshoot.

The nurse said: 'He was just apologetic for how things came out and how hurt I was by it.

'I don't really think there's any denying it based on the photos that were out there... That's my husband of 8/9 years, I love him deeply, I still do. It's very hard when I think about what happened.

Raw: His estranged wife Melissa went on This Morning last month to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair

'I wish I still had my husband to go home to... but I don't believe there is any hope,' she added.

Although Melissa and Jeremy split on bad terms, the pair are doing their best to be civil for the sake of their children.

She declared: 'He still sees the kids. They're still very involved with each other. That's still positive for the children.'

Emotional: Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity

Former flames: The mother-of-three, who stayed with felon-turned-model Jeremy throughout his stint in prison, put on a brave face as she kicked off the new chapter in her life

Jeremy and Chloe took their controversial romance a step further last month, when he met her mum aboard a luxury yacht in Monaco.

At the beginning of the month they were forced to deny engagement rumours, after she flashed a huge rock on her wedding finger in a series of confusing snapchats. but made sure she kept her ring finger hidden.

The duo have since been spotted on a series of sun-soaked holidays together, even appearing together at various public events, cementing their relationship status.

Despite the shockwaves their romance caused after the couple were spotted canoodling on a yacht in Turkey while Jeremy was still married to mother-of-three Melissa Meeks, the duo's relationship appears to be going from strength to strength.

Jeremy began August by publicly parading his romance with heiress Chloe as they enjoyed carnival during a sunny Barbados holiday, his estranged wife Melissa Meeks appeared to take their continuous insensitivity in her stride as she took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique soon after.

The brave nurse appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make-over, posing in her underwear as she showed off her already enviable figure.

Moving on: Jeremy's estranged wife Melissa took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique last month as she appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make over last month- however the picture was removed before she reposted it

Life of luxury: Meeks sent tongues wagging after pictures emerged of him kissing British Topshop heiress Chloe Green on a yacht in Turkey in June
She lead the glamour on the red carpet at the Dubai International Film Festival earlier this week.

And Cate Blanchett turned heads once again on Thursday as she stepped out for an IWC photocall in a striking outfit.

The 48-year-old looked remarkably fresh-faced as she showed off her sensational figure in clashing prints for day two of the celebrations.

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Looking good: The 48-year-old looked remarkably fresh-faced as she showed off her sensational figure in clashing prints for day two of the celebrations

Sporting a houndstooth print pencil skirt, the Hollywood actress showed a glimpse of her toned pins as she posed up a storm for the cameras.

She contrasted the skirt with a pale green and black polka-dot chiffon top which skimmed over the Cinderella star's slim waist.

Despite the stark contrast in patterns, the Golden Globe Award winner looked demure in the sophisticated ensemble.

Stylish: Sporting a houndstooth print pencil skirt which fell just below the knee, the Hollywood actress showcased her toned pins as she posed up a storm for the cameras

Striking: With such loud prints, Cate kept her accessories to a minimum and opted for pointed black heels to add a boost to her height

With such loud prints, Cate kept her accessories to a minimum and opted for classic black heels to add a boost to her height.

She styled her cropped blonde hair into corkscrew curls and complemented her pale complexion with a glossy pink lip and a rosy blush.

The stunning star posed alongside Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr and actress Hend Sabry after arriving to the waterfront on a boat.

Understated make-up: She styled her cropped blonde hair in corkscrew curls and complemented her pale complexion with a glossy pink lip and a rosy blush

Fashion icon: Her stunning appearance comes a day after she graced the red carpet at the film festival in a colourful full-length gown

The stunning star posed alongside Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr (left) and actress Hend Sabry (right) at the IWC photocall

Her glamorous appearance comes a day after she joined stars for the Opening Night Gala of the Dubai International Film Festival held at Madinat Jumeirah, where she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Australian beauty commanded attention on her arrival in a colourful floor-length gown and showcased her youthful beauty with a soft focused make-up look.

Posing on arrival, Cate made sure to catch the eye in her vibrant number that boasted a fitted bodice and high ruffled neckline - nipping in at the waist to accentuate her slender frame.

All eyes on her: Cate looked simply stunning as she stepped out for the Opening Night Gala of the Dubai International Film Festival held at Madinat Jumeirah on Wednesday night

Making an entrance: The Hollywood sensation was joined on the red carpet by IWC Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr, who was clad in a dapper tux and bow-tie for the calendar highlight

Chic: Posing on arrival, Cate made sure to catch the eye in her vibrant number that boasted a fitted bodice and high ruffled neckline - nipping in at the waist to accentuate her slender frame

Stunning: The actress commanded attention on her arrival in a colourful floor-length gown and showcased her youthful beauty

The Hollywood sensation was joined on the red carpet by IWC Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr, who was clad in a dapper tux and bow-tie for the calendar highlight.

Marking a special evening in the Middle East, Cate was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award as this year's Film Festival got underway.

Cate's trip to Dubai comes as she has three films in post-production; Jungle Book, Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Ocean's Eight that boasts a stellar cast including Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Helen Bonham Carter and Damien Lewis - all set for release in 2018.

Handsome: The Hollywood sensation was joined on the red carpet by IWC Schaffhausen CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr, who was clad in a dapper navy suit
She was booked into emergency surgery this week to help cure her debilitating migraines.

And Grant Denyer's wife Chezzi shared a picture from her hospital bed just hours after the miraculous operation on Thursday.

'I'm alive! I'm very much alive (even though my eyes tell a different story),' she wrote in a caption on Instagram.

'I'm missing my babies terribly': Grant Denyer's wife Chezzi opens up after undergoing emergency surgery to heal her dibilitating migraines

'My Doc says the operation was a huge success, which is exactly what I wanted to hear. I'm feeling sore but not too bad.

'I've swallowed heaps of blood which makes me feel quite queasy and I have very low blood pressure for some reason, but all in all I feel pretty good.'

Many of her commenters wished the mother-of-two a speedy recovery and asked about how her family were coping.

'I'm on a lot of medication to reduce inflammation and bruising and now it's just recovery and rest for me for the next few days.. I'm missing my babies terribly but they're in good hands - thanks Mum!

Prior to D day! Many of her commenters wished the mother-of-two a speedy recovery and asked about how her family were coping

'Thank you to everyone for all the well wishes and messages and flowers and cards. I'm completely overwhelmed by all the love. Love to you all. See you in a few days time!' She said.

It was only last week Chezzi revealed she was struggling with the horror headaches.

'I am left really struggling to just get through my everyday life,' the 38-year-old candidly shared.

'I'm struggling to get through everyday life': Grant Denyer'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

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.'

Debilitating: Severe migraines have left the media personality struggling daily, and is scheduled to go into surgery on December 6

Support network: Chezzi is relying on the support of her beloved husband Grant, to get her through such challenging times

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.

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.'
Thousands of Beatles fans flocked to AAMI Park in Melbourne on Wednesday night to watch Paul McCartney perform live.

But the night didn't end well for Michael Gilchrist who was arrested and escorted from the venue during the gig.

Speaking to Channel Seven News Perth on Thursday, the concertgoer teared up as he described being booted for 'dancing' as 'the worst experience of my life'.

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'It was the worst experience of my life': Emotional concertgoer Michael Gilchrist (left) told Seven News Perth he was booted from Paul McCartney's (right) Melbourne gig for 'dancing'

In the interview with the television network Michael claimed his only crime had been dancing to the popular musician's songs.



'One of the security people said you can't be here and I said "mate it's Paul McCartney, we're having a boogie"' he said.

'Next thing I know, I was just dropped by police. I was dragged 30 metres by police, put up against the wall, handcuffed, bashed and basically told "shut the f**k up"'

'Next thing I know, I was just dropped by police': Michael claimed he was 'handcuffed' and 'bashed' by police

The Paul McCartney fan also said he was left bruised by the altercation and was locked up for several hours, causing him to miss the gig he had shelled out big bucks for.

Michael appeared emotional as he described his recollection of the experience.

'It was the worst experience of my life because I was so helpless,' he explained.

Help... he needs someone! The Paul McCartney fan also said he was left bruised by the altercation and was locked up for several hours, causing him to miss the gig

However, Victoria Police have since denied Michael was arrested simply for dancing.

Instead the police told multiple news outlets the concertgoer was escorted from the venue due to his high level of intoxication and refusal to return to his seat

The police also claimed other patrons made complaints about Michael's disruptive behaviour.
She became a mother for the second time in February, when she and her husband Benjamin Millipied welcomed the birth of their daughter Amalia.

And Natalie Portman looked every inch the doting mother on Wednesday, when she took her bundle of joy for a stroll in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Los Feliz.

Cutting a stylish figure in an asymmetrical patterned cream sweater, the 36-year-old actress lovingly cradled her youngest offspring in her arms as they left a pal's home.

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Baby love: Natalie Portman was seen going for a stroll in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Los Feliz with her 10-month-old daughter Amalia on Wednesday afternoon

The Oscar-winning Black Swan star looked stylish for the low-key excursion, teaming her warm and fluffy top with dark-rinse skinny jeans and slate grey heeled boots.

With her raven tresses scooped back in a sleek ponytail, she shielded her eyes from the Californian sunshine with a pair of oversized sunglasses.

She carefully carried adorable little Amalia, who was kept warm in a grey long-sleeved top with matching bottoms.

Stylish: Cutting a stylish figure in an asymmetrical patterned cream sweater, the 36-year-old actress lovingly cradled her youngest offspring in her arms as they left a pal's home

The mother-daughter duo appeared to be solo for their leisurely outing, with the star's son Aleph, six, and 40-year-old husband Benjamin, 40, staying behind.

Last month, the actress talked about what it was like to meet her future husband on the set of Black Swan during an appearance at Vulture Fest in Hollywood.

Asked what was better, winning an Oscar or meeting the love of her life she replied: 'Yeah. The husband more.'

My girl: The mother-daughter duo appeared to be solo, with son Aleph, six, and dad Benjamin Millepied, 40, staying behind (Benjamin and Natalie pictured in January)

Natalie continued saying that that working on the film 'was really special and making it was really wonderful and so fun. It was really incredible.'

Benjamin was the head of choreography for the film, which saw Natalie play a ballerina who breaks from reality while preparing for a high-pressure production of Swan Lake.

The couple were married in August 2012 in a cozy Jewish ceremony in Big Sur, California.

Love story! Last month, the star talked about what it was like to meet her future husband on the set of Black Swan, when he worked as lead choreographer on the thriller
She hinted wedding bells may be on the cards with her boyfriend Chris Zylka last month.

And Paris Hilton looked besotted with her handsome beau as she put on a very public display of affection at The Daily Front Row launch in Miami on Wednesday.

Clad in a thigh-skimming leopard print mini-dress, the 36-year-old showed off her endless limbs as she puckered up to her boyfriend.

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Loved-up: Paris Hilton looked besotted with her handsome beau as she put on a very public display of affection at The Daily Front Row launch on Wednesday

Bold fashion statement: Clad in a thigh-skimming leopard print mini-dress, the 36-year-old showed off her endless limbs as she sat next to fashion photographer, Noa Faena (left)

The socialite, who recently enjoyed a sun-soaked trip to Australia to promote her fragrance, flaunted her sun-kissed tan in the skimpy dress.

She complemented the risque ensemble with black studded heeled boots, which added a boost to her statuesque figure and added a pair of racy silk gloves.

Paris accessorized the look with heart-shaped sunglasses, which she put on in a series of fun shots with her 32-year-old boyfriend.

Glowing: The socialite, who recently enjoyed a sun-soaked trip to Australia to promote her fragrance, flaunted her sun-kissed tan in the skimpy dress

She styled her long blonde locks in a sleek straight look, tucking her hair behind her ears to show off her glamorous silver star earrings.

The Hilton hotel heiress complemented her glowing complexion with a gold smoky eye, blush-swept cheeks and a glossy pink lip.

Her man sported a much more casual appearance, attending the bash in a Calvin Klein jumper and black ripped jeans.

The happy couple were joined by fashion photographer Noa Faena, who embraced the Simple Life star in a pouty snap.

Dressed-down: Her 32-year-old boyfriend sported a much more casual appearance, attending the bash in a Calvin Klein jumper and black ripped jeans

In deep discussion: The happy couple were joined by fashion photographer Noa Faena at the Launch of Act1 event

Paris revealed she would like to start a family with her handsome beau, telling Ocean Drive magazine last month that the couple are 'perfect together'.

'The first time we met was about eight years ago at a Chateau Marmont Oscar party,' she said.

'He walked in and I just thought he was the most gorgeous thing Ive ever seen in my life, and we started flirting and talking.

Having a ball: Paris donned a pair of fun heart-shaped sunglasses as she posed with artists Adrienne Gaither (left) and Lynnie Z in a snap

She said the duo were friend for years, until two years ago when he started showing his artwork at the Miami Beach event.

'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.

True blue: Paris looked beautiful next to boyfriend Chris Zylka; seen in Sydney in November

The former Simple Life star said she would love a baby or three with the handsome star.

'We are so perfect together. Hes my everything. Im so happy and excited to have someone who is my best friend, who I trust. Everything Ive ever wished for came true,' she said.

'I always thought I would end up alone just because I never thought I would fall in love and trust somebody. With him, its like God literally made him for me to save me from all these weirdos.

She added: 'I definitely want to have more than one [baby]. Two I would be happy with, but three I would be even happier.'
It's one of the longest running movie franchises ever.

And now the cast of Star Wars, droids and all, kicked off the hype for the latest film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi during a press conference in Japan on Thursday.

Actor Mark Hamill, 66, stood proudly with props from the movies, C3PO and R2D2 alongside Girls alum Adam Driver, producer Kathleen Kennedy and Director Rian Johnson.

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Oh My! Actor Mark Hamill, 66, stood proudly with props from the movies, C3PO and R2D2 during a press conference in for Star Wars: The Last Jedi in Japan on Thursday.

Smile BB8: Producer Kathleen Kennedy (L), Mark Hamill, Adam Driver and director Rian Johnson stood with C3P0 and BB8 for the conference

Mark dressed casually for the event, donning a black jumper, grey shirt and dark blue jeans.

The dark side seemed to be the main theme for this event, as his co-stars also chose black ensembles, with Adam in an almost matching outfit of a black long sleeve jumper.

Producer Kathleen Kennedy, who is working on the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones movie, arrived in a sleek black leather skirt and matching midnight jumper.

Rian Johnson, who previously director sci-fi thriller Looper, pulled out all the stops in a black suit and charcoal grey button shirt.

Bleep bloop: Producer Kathleen Kennedy, who is working on the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones movie, arrived in a sleek black leather skirt and matching midnight jumper

The Last Jedi is the last film to feature late actress Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, and Mark recently opened up about his regret over not seeing enough of her daughter, fellow actress Billie Lourde.

In an interview with E! News on Wednesday, Mark reminisced about the days he and Carrie were 'inseparable' and how losing touch with her over a number of years meant he didn't get to know Billie, who he calls his 'niece'.

He said: 'I feel badly that I wasn't there for my niece. [Billie] is wonderful in her own right. There is so much Carrie in her and so much of [her grandmother] Debbie Reynolds in her.'

The 25 year-old actress got the chance to play alongside her mother and Mark when she played Lieutenant Connix in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and was also reunited with the long-time sci-fi actor.

Reminiscing: Mark dressed casually for the event, donning a black jumper, grey shirt and dark blue jeans. He told E! News that he feels 'regret' over not knowing his 'niece, Billie Lourd

34 year old Adam trained his fight scenes in the upcoming film with his prop light saber and revealed in a behind-the-scenes look at the film that he could not get lazy as the stunt men he worked with were so on top of it.

He said: 'It's just rigorous in a great way. These stunt guys are very disciplined. So you can't half a** it,' he added.

Driver trained with two stuntmen at the same time, which could be a hint of what will appear in the movie.

Bloop for the camera: The cast of Star Wars wait for cameras to get their moment with little droid BB8, who was first introduced in The Force Awakens
The former Today host broke her arm after slipping on a wet bathroom floor during an Italian holiday in July.



And while Lisa Wilkinson made a speedy recovery from her inconvenient injury, the journalist has revealed the fall almost resulted in something more permanent.

According to The Daily Telegraph this week, the 57-year-old claimed she came close to having her arm amputated after Italian doctors mistreated her broken wrist.

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'The doctors were very sweet, but not very talented': Lisa Wilkinson reveals her holiday accident almost resulted in an ARM AMPUTATION after medical professionals 'mistreated' injury

The frightening tale, told at Sydney's sold-out Business Chicks Event on Thursday, is believed to have never been uttered by the star before publicly.

Lisa told the crowd: 'The doctors were very sweet, but not very talented, and they put a cast on that cut off my circulation for four or five days.'

The TV presenter went on to explain that she was in constant pain after the full-arm cast was applied.

Ouch! Lisa confessed 'They manipulated my bones back into position without any pain relief'

'They put a cast on that cut off my circulation for four or five day': Lisa claimed Italian doctors 'mistreated' her injury, with local doctors frightening the journalist when they revealed she had 24 hours in the cast before she would have needed an amputation

When returning home to Australia, doctors were confused by the cast size when she only broke bones in her wrist.

Lisa also alleges when she finally saw local doctors, they claimed she had narrowly avoided needing an arm amputation by 24 hours due to the 'mistreated' nature of her injury.

She recalled the moment doctors placed the original cast on in Italy: 'When they put the cast on I was so out of it because they aren't big on painkillers in Italy... They manipulated my bones back into position without any pain relief.'

No more early starts! Lisa recently resigned from Nin'es breakfast Today show, where she was a co-host to Karl Stefanovic for 10 years

Lisa originally revealed her injury to Instagram, captioning a photo wearing the cast: 'And so ends my beautiful Italian holiday with two badly broken bones after a shocking fall on a wet bathroom floor.'

Lisa recently resigned from Today show, where she was a co-host to Karl Stefanovic for 10 years.

She will be joining Channel Ten's The Project panel in 2018.
Peaky Blinders' fourth season has left fans of the BBC drama in shock week after week with its twists and turns.

Despite some teasers on social media hinting that this would be the case and the rumour mill being rife for some time, viewers were left dumbstruck before the episode had actually begun on Wednesday evening, after the BBC Two announcer declared what the latest twist would be as he was introducing the show.

As the credits for MasterChef: The Professionals rolled moments before the episode was about to start, the announcer declared: 'With the Italians gunning for them, they need all the help they can get. Tom Hardy joins the fight with the Peaky Blinders next on BBC Two.'

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[No] spoiler alert! Peaky Blinders viewers are left RAGING as BBC announcer RUINS shock Tom Hardy return by proclaiming he will appear in the episode moments before it starts

As the Hollywood actor's reappearance in the series had been a surprise to some, many fans were left fuming at the BBC for ruining it for them.

'Why the f*** did that announcer just spoil tonights show by telling us Tom Hardy is in the show?' screeched a first fan on Twitter.

'Seriously @BBCTwo. Did your continuity announcer really have to come up with such a massive spoiler just before #PeakyBlinders? It absolutely ruined the episode,' a second person echoed.

Ruined: As the credits for MasterChef: The Professionals rolled moments before the episode was about to start, the announcer declared - 'with the Italians gunning for them, they need all the help they can get. Tom Hardy joins the fight with the Peaky Blinders next on BBC Two'

Uproar: As the Hollywood actor's reappearance in the series had been a surprise to some, many fans were left fuming at the BBC for ruining it for them

A third posted: 'Thanks @BBCTwo for ruining the fact that Tom Hardy is back in #PeakyBlinders.'

Another wrote: 'Love the way the announcer dude just spoilered us with Alfie Solomons return before it even started!'

Others were less stressed about the spoiler.

Co-stars: Tom's guest-starring role in the gangster drama has been a popular cast addition for fans of the series which also features Cillian Murphy, Adrian Brody [pictured R], Helen McCrory [pictured L] and Sam Neill

Shock: Tom joined series regular Cillian in the fourth season of the drama

'The news that Tom Hardy is back in Peaky Blinders tonight is absolutely fantastic!' one wrote, followed by another who posted: '#peakyblinders brilliant, cant wait to see Tom Hardy tonight!'

Tom's guest-starring role in the gangster drama has been a popular cast addition for fans of the series which also features Cillian Murphy, Adrian Brody, Helen McCrory and Sam Neill.

Wednesday evening's instalment Alfie Solomons [Tom] returned as the leader of his Jewish gang in Camden Town.

Peaky Blinders continues next Wednesday at 9pm on BBC Two.
She has been sharing her incredibly lavish lifestyle with fans on her new reality show, Tamara's World.

And Tamara Ecclestone once again shocked her viewers on Wednesday night's installment, by revealing her father Bernie owns a mountain in Gstaad, Switzerland.

The heiress, 33, explained on the new episode that her billionaire father purchased the Glacier 3000 simply because 'he liked it' - though it's unclear how much it cost.

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Impressive: Tamara Ecclestone shocked viewers on Wednesday's episode of Tamara's World, by revealing her father Bernie owns a mountain in Gstaad (pictured together on a past trip)

Treat yourself: The heiress, 33, explained on the episode that her billionaire father purchased the Glacier 3000 (above) simply because 'he liked it' - leaving her fans open mouthed

The episode saw Tamara, along with her husband Jay Rutland and their daughter Sophia, enjoy a winter getaway in the Swiss Alps.

The family are known for holidaying in Gstaad - and father Bernie's love for the town soon became clear, when he was revealed to own several of the buildings.

Ambling past a grand hotel, Jay asked: 'Whose hotel is that?', causing Sophia to exclaim: 'Ours!'

Getaway: The episode saw Tamara, along with her husband Jay Rutland and their daughter Sophia, enjoy a winter getaway in the Swiss Alps

Rule the world: The mother-of-one then revealed her father even owned one of the mountains - which her little girl was seeing on the trip for the first time

Speical: She said: 'Glacier 3000 is my dad's mountain, he liked the mountain so he bought it, taking Sofia for the first time is so special'

'Bernie owns a hotel- Sophia: that hotel is ours!' Tamara confirmed.

Not stopping there however, the mother-of-one then revealed her father even owned one of the mountains - which her little girl was seeing on the trip for the first time.

She said: 'Glacier 3000 is my dad's mountain, he liked the mountain so he bought it, taking Sofia for the first time is so special'.

At which her husband quipped: 'You can see where she gets it from!'

Dream: Fans immediately took to Twitter to express their jealousy at the fact Bernie, who is the former chief executive of Formula One (above with Tamara), owns a mountain in the Alps

'I can't even afford my dinner!': Fans joked about the purchase and expressed their jealousy they could not afford the same

Fans immediately took to Twitter to express their shock and jealousy at the fact Bernie, who is the former chief executive of Formula One, owns a mountain in the Alps.

One joked: 'Tamara Ecclestones Dad liked a mountain so he bought it... I cant even afford my dinner'

While another added: ''My dad liked the mountain so he bought it' Tamara Ecclestone seriously loves in another world man. What a life.'

Ski season: The family are known to holiday in Gstaad - with Tamara and her sister Petra holidaying on the slopes in their youth, and now with their own kids

Relaxing: The trio documented their holiday in Switzerland during the episode

Further disbelieving fans chimed in with: 'He liked the mountain, so he bought it #obviously' and 'Bernie brought the mountain.. as you do.'

Another joked of her jealousy: 'Bernie Ecclestone liked a mountain so he bought it! I have to contemplate buying a 20 dress ffs! What a life.'

While another said: 'OMG owns a mountain... who does that - good luck to them.'

Tamara has amazed fans with lifestyle on the series - having turned her pool into a sprawling play area for Sophia, and given a glimpse into her 5million wardrobe, complete with 72 pairs of designer sunglasses and a room of 95 clutch bags.
She's modelled for huge labels such as Chanel, Dior and Armani.

And now, 43-year-old Swedish beauty Victoria Silvestedt is proving age is just a number as she stepped out in not one, but two stunning ensembles that showed off the best of her svelte figure on Wednesday.

Starting out with a relaxing day at Miami beach, the actress gave some serious side boob when she stepped out in a black cut out one-piece bathing suit, matched perfectly with a floral red and black maxi skirt.

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Beach beauty: 43 year old Swedish beauty Victoria Silvestedt is proving age is just a number as she stepped out in two stunning ensembles that showed off her svelte figure on Wednesday

Walking barefoot while out on the beach, Victoria carried a baby blue bag, contrasting her dark ensemble perfectly.

Letting her tanned skin glow, she let her signature blonde tresses hang loosely down while she tied the look together, with big rimmed dark sunglasses keeping her eyes out of the Miami sun.

Victoria never misses an opportunity to support the artistic community in Florida, and after her day out in the warm weather, she attended the Art Basel Miami Beach Kick-Off event on Wednesday evening.

All eyes were on the Scandinavian stunner, as she donned a lacy black bustier and short button up cardigan that left little to the imagination.

Sun-kissed: Walking barefoot while out on the beach, Victoria carried a baby blue bag, contrasting her dark ensemble perfectly

Barefoot: Letting her tanned skin glow, she let her signature blonde tresses hang loosely down while she tied the look together, with big rimmed dark sunglasses keeping her eyes out of the Miami sun

Fashion statement: Victoria got the full effect of her maxi skirt as she sauntered down the beach

Victoria paired the daring lingerie top with a thigh-skimming black mini-skirt, perfect for showing off her impressive pins.

The TV personality contrasted her dark look with crimson strappy heels and a beige velvet clutch bag.

She kept things au naturel with a fresh nude lip and bold mascara to highlight her blue eyes, while leaving her sun-kissed blonde locks free and flowing.

Her jewelry choices stood out against the dark outfit as she selected a gold statement necklace, bold diamond ring and a selection of delicate bracelets.

Double look: Stepping out again for an arts event in Miami, Victoria paired the daring lingerie top with a thigh-skimming black mini-skirt, perfect for showing off her impressive pins

Victoria is best known for representing her country in the Miss World pageant in 1993.

Since her career rocketed, she has modeled for some of the world's most prestigious fashion houses, including Chanel, Dior and Valentino.

She later became a pin-up when she was spotted by Hugh Hefner and became a Playboy Playmate.
Nina Dobrev showed off her star power during her arrival into Los Angeles on Wednesday as she wore a stellar sweater, but her mood didn't seem too great.

The former Vampire Diaries star has recently been plagued with rumors circulating that she and boyfriend of nearly one year, Glenn Powell, have broken up.

A representative for the 28-year-old told Daily Mail they have 'no comment.'

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Mums the word: Nina Dobrev arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday as rumors swirled that she and Glen Powell split

Dobrev looked chic for her flight in a black sweater with silver stars all over.

She paired it with skin-tight black leggings and black leather boots.

The TV wonder finished her look with a small black purse, dark sunglasses and her iPhone in hand.

The Toronto native is looking extra toned these days and it's thanks to her collaboration with streaming work out provider Les Mills and sneaker giant Reebok.

Low-key arrival: Nina looked chic-yet-comfortable as she made her way through airport arrivals

'I have a really, really great group of girlfriends that are all interested in the same things, which is being healthy, and being active, and doing fun things and not sitting around and waiting for opportunities but making them for yourself,' Dobrev told Teen Vogue.

'By surrounding myself with those people, those good people and that good energy, it makes me a better person and it makes me want to do more in my life.

'I feel like if everyone did that more, theyd get out more, theyd have more experiences theyd be more active and theyd feel better about themselves.'

Slaying: The former gymnast talked about the importance of keeping your body and mind fit with Les Mills collbaboration

Just us girl: The Vampire Diaries alum shared images of her getting fit and having fun exercising with her friends which included Julianne Hough

Dobrev and boyfriend of almost a year, Powell, have been plagued with breakup rumors this week.

Though there has been no comment from Dobrev or Powell, People's source says that things have simply slowed down between them due to her busy shooting schedule.

E! News also stated things have cooled off between the actors.

Red carpet official: The hot couple posed for cameras in January for the InStyle and Warner Bros. Golden Globe Awards post-party

'They are still seeing each other,' a source confirmed to the outlet. 'But have cooled things off a little because of busy schedules.'

The pair's relationship was confirmed after images of them posing amorously inside a photo booth during Dobrev's pal Julianne Hough's wedding in July.

Powell confirmed he spent Thanksgiving in his native Texas seemingly without the brunette beauty by his side.

Happy days: Dobrev hit the dance floor January during her La La Land birthday party in Los Angeles

Double date: Actors Glen and Nina departed with friends after dining at Craig's in July

The actor and producer also told the publication that although he'd be back in Los Angeles he would be spending Christmas in the Lone Star State.

'Sometimes when your jeans get too tight, and the Vs in your shirt get too deep, youve got to go back to Texas,he told People.

'My bodys going to come back looking very different. Ill say Texas is good for the soul, but not good for the body.'

Date night: Things have cooled off between Nina and Glen who have been dating for nearly a year. They were photographed after dining at Craig's in West Hollywood in November

'Im going to come back [to Los Angeles] for probably a couple of weeks, and then Im going to go back for Christmas and just decompress,' he continued.

'Spend some time on the ranch and try to be a man again. Sometimes L.A. it just pampers you too much. It just takes the masculinity out of you.'

Nina has yet to speak openly about the status of her relationship.
She appears as the disgraced ice skater's mother LaVona in the dark comedy I, Tonya.

And Allison Janney revealed what the real-life Tonya Harding thought about the film after meeting her at Wednesday's Los Angeles premiere, when she appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday.

'She loved it,' the actress, 58, dished, also admitting that her childhood dream was to become a figure skater.

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Smiling star: Allison Janney revealed what Tonya Harding thought about I, Tonya when she appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday

'There were parts she didnt like but I think mostly she was really excited about it,' Allison told Ellen.

'I just wanted to give her a hug, because back when we first heard about this story we were told what to think about her and we were told she was a villain.

'Actually, it was a lot more complicated than that, the story of what happened to her. And I think people come away with a lot more compassion for her.'

Tonya was banned from skating for life for her involvement in a bungled plot to injure rival Nancy Kerrigan to keep her out of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway.

Chatting with the host: The actress, 58, said Tonya 'loved' the biopic, and also admitted that her own childhood dream was to become a figure skater

New take on the scandel: She and the disgraced figure skater met at the Los Angeles premiere

After seeing the dark comedy in which Margot Robbie played Tonya, 'I came away from it [thinking] like she had nothing to do with it,' Ellen said.

Allison, who wore an eye-catching black off-the-shoulder shift over white pants, continued: 'Everyone will have their own opinion, I'm glad you think that because that's what I think, too.'

The scandal ruined Tonya's career, but she was the first female skater to land the terrifically difficult Triple Axel 'one of a handful of women who have ever done so,' Allison said, 'and they can't take that away from her.'

Tough love: Allison appears as the disgraced ice skater's mother LaVona in the dark comedy

In fact when director Craig Gillespie wanted to get someone to perform the jump for the movie, he was out of luck.

'The only two women in world who could do it were getting ready for the Olympics or something and they didn't want to risk it,' Allison shared. 'They had to CGI that stuff.'

Meanwhile, Allison admitted that she had to stop skating after she got injured on the ice when she cheated in a party game.

Premiere meet up: Allison told Ellen, 'I just wanted to give her a hug, because...we were told she was a villain and it was much more complicated than that'

Ellen jumped on that, declaring: 'So you started cheating early in life - every time we've played a game you've cheated.

'So I have a feeling you could win the Oscar because you know how to cheat, you can cheat your into winning the Oscar. Now I'm going to bet on you cos I know you're a cheater.'

I Tonya is out on Friday.
She's best known for her roles in reality TV favourites Love Island and The Only Way is Essex.

And now, Georgia Harrison, 22, is setting tongues wagging again as she releases the first images out of her racy new 2018 calendar.

Posing on top of a red Vespa, the reality star went completely topless for her photo shoot, leaving little to the imagination in curve-hugging distressed blue jeans.

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Picture perfect: Georgia Harrison, 22, is setting tongues wagging again as she releases the first images out of her racy new 2018 calendar

The starlet wore her long ombre tresses down and let her loose curls fall behind her back.

Georgia's wore nothing else, other than a touch of make-up, with a bold smokey eye, strong contour and a nude lip, all of which accentuated her high cheekbones.

In another calendar shot, the brunette beauty worked her perky derriere in lacy navy lingerie and a tight white shirt, flaunting her toned abs to perfection.

Red hot: The starlet wore her long ombre tresses down and let her loose curls fall behind her back

Georgia went with a bold red lip, complementing the bold blues and reds used in the calendar photo shoot.

The starlet wowed in white for another shot, wearing fishnet tights while seductively sitting on a tan leather sofa.

The Essex model, who broke up with Love Island alum Sam Gowland in August, looked the picture of perfection on her calendar cover, sporting a edgy biker jacket adorned with spikes and a lacy lingerie ensemble.

Biker chic: The Essex model looked the picture of perfection on her calendar cover, sporting a edgy biker jacket adorned with spikes and a lacy lingerie ensemble

Georgia first met Love Island beau Sam, 22, on the hit ITV2 show over the summer, when the Geordie was reintroduced to the villa for a second time after failing to find love in the first few weeks.

However, the pair's love story appeared to ground to a halt after Sam was spotted enjoying the new found throes of his fame on nights out flanked by various women.

The posted a cryptic Tweet outlining that she had ended things with the Geordie lad - and hinted at his infidelity.

She penned: 'Would like to confirm that myself and Sam are no longer together. Unfortunately for some men one girl isn't always enough'.

Georiga recently accused her former TOWIE stars of ''ostricising and bullying' new cast additions - claiming they feel 'threatened' if they think a girl is 'prettier than them'.

In November, she jumped to the defence of Megan McKenna after the reality beauty was accused of having 'no friends' on TOWIE by her co-star Chloe Sims.

Fans can buy the calendar at greatcalendaroffers.com/GeorgiaHarrison
'Proud Muslim' Bella Hadid has branded President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital as 'absurd, unfair and one-sided'.

The supermodel, 21, took to her Instagram page to condemn the 'unjust' announcement, writing that seeing the news made her 'cry for the many many generations of Palestine' and her own family.

Bella has deep ties with the nation; her father, real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid, 69, was born in Nazareth and lived in both Syria and Lebanon before immigrating to the US aged just 14.

'Unjust': 'Proud Muslim' Bella Hadid has branded President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital as 'absurd, unfair and one-sided' (pictured in Dubai this week)

Taking to her social media on Thursday morning, the Victoria's Secret Angel warned the move 'takes us five steps back, making it harder to live in a world of peace'.

She wrote: 'I've been waiting to put this into perfect words but I realized there is no perfect way to speak of something so unjust.

'A very very sad day. Watching the news and seeing the pain of the Palestinian people makes me cry for the many many generations of Palestine.

'Seeing the sadness of my father, cousins, and Palestinian family that are feeling for our Palestinian ancestors makes this even harder to write.

'Jerusalem is home of all religions. For this to happen, I feel, makes us take 5 steps back making it harder to live in a world of peace. The TREATMENT of the Palestinian people is unfair, one-sided and should not be tolerated. I stand with Palestine.'

Bella went on to quote her friend and 'Palestinian sisters', DJ duo Simi Haze: 'It is absurd that Palestine, a country where Muslims Christians and Jews lived side by side for centuries, has been fighting to be recognized since the inception of Israel in 1948, and to add insult to injury yesterday Trump 'decided' to recognize Palestine's capital of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - as if it's his to give away.

'A very sad day': The supermodel, 21, took to her Instagram page to blast the announcement, writing that seeing the news made her 'cry for the many many generations of Palestine'

Close ties: Bella's real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid, 69, was born in Nazareth and lived in both Syria and Lebanon before immigrating to the US aged just 14 (pictured in Cannes in May)

'This is a violation of international law and a huge setback to any hope for peace. In his speech yesterday, he never once mentioned Palestine but referred to Israel and "the Palestinian people" as if Palestine never existed.

'Jerusalem is and always has been the capital of occupied Palestine. Declaring Jerusalem as Israels capital is a calculated move to make Palestinians lose hope of ever gaining statehood in their own country.'

Bella's father, Mohamed Hadid - a Los Angeles-based real estate mogul worth an estimated $200 million - declared it to be the 'saddest day of my life'.

He wrote on Instagram: 'The Saddest day of my life as an American Palestinian.. and to all the Palestinians that have endured the Israeli occupation of our fathers and great grandfathers Land.

'Now Mr president Trump with a simple signature gave with no return Our beloved holy land Jerusalem to the Israelis as their capital ... this is not a real estate deal .. whats worse that all the Arab leaders sold us out .. no shame no heart no soul.

Speaking out: Taking to her social media on Thursday morning, the Victoria's Secret Angel warned the move 'takes us five steps back, making it harder to live in a world of peace'

Back to work: Bella was pictured arriving at London's Heathrow Airport on Thursday as she spoke out about the political decision

'Disgusting of their behavior. Palestine land for the Palestinian.' (sic)

Hadid also posted a photograph of a letter addressed to President Trump penned by the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches In Jerusalem, pleading with him for the United States to reconsider their position.

Bella has previously described herself as a 'proud Muslim' as she opened up about her Islamic faith and her father's experience as a refugee in an interview with Porter magazine in April.

She said: 'He was always religious, and he always prayed with us. I am proud to be a Muslim.'

The Los Angeles-born supermodel and her sister Gigi, 22, also joined the No Ban No Wall march in New York after President Trump announced his immigration ban in January.

'Proud': Bella has previously described herself as a 'proud Muslim' when she opened up about her Islamic faith and her father's experience as a refugee in an interview

'No shame, no heart': Bella's father, Mohamed Hadid - a Los Angeles-based real estate mogul worth an estimated $200 million - declared it to be the 'saddest day of my life'

'May God bless us all': Hadid also posted a photograph of a letter addressed to President Trump penned by the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches In Jerusalem

Bella said of the decision: 'My dad was a refugee when he first came to America, so it's actually very close to home for my sister and brother and me.'

The catwalk queen is among the world's top ten highest-earning supermodels, landing in ninth place on the Forbes 2017 list after netting $6 million in the past 12 months alone.

President Trump received widespread condemnation for his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Calling it an act of political courage, he said: 'Many presidents have said they want to do something, and they didn't do it.

'Whether it's through courage or they change their mind I can't tell you. But a lot of people have said we have to do something, and they didn't do it.'

Politically-minded: Bella (R) and her sister Gigi, 22, (C) also joined the No Ban No Wall march in New York after President Trump announced his immigration ban in January

Controversial: President Trump received widespread condemnation for his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital

A senior administration official said on Tuesday that the president would also launch a long process of moving America's embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

While Israel welcomed the news, Palestinian officials declared the Mideast peace process 'finished' and Turkey announced it would host a meeting of Islamic nations next week to give Muslim countries' leaders an opportunity to coordinate a response.

In Gaza, U.S. and Israeli flags were burned and in the West Bank Hamas declared Friday a 'day of rage,' raising the specter of mass violence in the occupied territories.

The Pope made a plea for Trump to rethink urgently and spoke out at his weekly general audience in Rome.

In the UK Prime Minister Theresa May said she would challenge the country's closest ally.

The U.S. State Department issued a global alert warning Americans traveling overseas that they could be in danger.
It was announced earlier this year that Jeff Goldblum would be reprising his iconic role as Dr Ian Malcolm in the fifth Jurassic Park movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

And after months of waiting for a first look at Goldblum on set, the actor, 65, has cropped up in the latest of Universal's teasers for the blockbuster sequel.

As the main trailer for the film is set to drop on Thursday evening, this week has seen the studio drip-feed short hints at what to expect; but the latest is a three minute collection of clips from the film and behind-the-scenes snippets, including a scene with Goldblum at a hearing of some sort.

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'Here I am talking about dinosaurs again!' First glimpse of Jeff Goldblum reprising his role for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in behind-the-scenes video

'Here I am talking about dinosaurs again!' the actor says, in character, seemingly being asked advice by an official panel.

The video is peppered with the stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard talking about the new film, along with soundbites from the crew of the film.

Writer of Fallen Kingdom, and director of 2015's Jurassic World Colin Trevorrow, says: 'For kids growing up loving dinosaurs, the Jurassic movies are really the vehicle for them to see their dreams realised.'

'We are telling the next chapter,' Pratt says, as Howard promises that 'this story takes Jurassic where its never gone before...'

Back for more: Clips from the movie feature the pair of actors reprising their roles from the fourth film - dinosaur trainer Owen Grady [Pratt] and former Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing [Howard]

Disaster site: Shots see meadows with abandonned Gyrospheres [one of the rides from the park] in them, an off-the-rails monorail and a barely-standing Jurassic World entrance gate

Clips from the movie feature the pair of actors reprising their roles from the fourth film - dinosaur trainer Owen Grady [Pratt] and former Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing [Howard].

They are seen in a variety of sequences, seemingly back on the island from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, Isla Nublar, with newcomer Justice Smith, undertaking an operation of some sort involving the now-destroyed theme park.

Shots see meadows with abandonned Gyrospheres [one of the rides from the park] in them, an off-the-rails monorail and a barely-standing Jurassic World entrance gate.

This gives fans a glimpse at something not seen in the previous Jurassic Park sequels - a look back at the destroyed park.

Escape: They are seen in a variety of sequences, seemingly back on the island from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, Isla Nublar, with newcomer Justice Smith, undertaking an operation of some sort involving the now-destroyed theme park

Out for the count: Later in the video, the actors are seen transporting the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex anesthetised and locked in the back of a truck

After the events of Jurassic Park [1993] in which the yet-to-be-opened park fell into chaos and was ruined by it's released dinosaurs, the franchise didn't return to Isla Nublar.

Both The Lost World [1997] and Jurassic Park III [2001] took place on sister island Isla Sorna.

Jurassic World returned to Nublar, but by this point the island had been rebuilt and was open to the public. Other than a slight glimpse at the old Vistor's Centre, the park was mostly in mint condition.

Yet the new feature sees the character on Isla Nublar in the state it was left at the end of Jurassic World - overrun by dinosaurs and in ruins.

Eye spy: The plot has remained for the most part unknown, and only now have glimmers come through regarding the movie's story line

Dino danger: The cast and crew promise 'surprises', a 'different, intense, spectacular' film, and an experience like 'nothing you've ever seen before'

The plot has remained for the most part unknown, and only now have glimmers come through regarding the movie's story line.

Pratt tells the camera: 'We are literally blowing up the island.'

Later in the video, the actors are seen transporting the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex anesthetised and locked in the back of a truck.

This suggests, despite Isla Nublar being 'blown up', the dinosaurs are in fact being retrieved from it and saved.

Another clip sees the crew arranging a model of a theme park. It's unclear whether this is a film-making tool or whether it's a prop for the movie.

Another park? Another clip sees the crew arranging a model of a theme park. It's unclear whether this is a film-making tool or whether it's a prop for the movie. If the latter, could the story involve an attempt to rebuild Jurassic Park/World for the fourth time?

At the helm: 'Hes a genius when it comes to frightening people,' Howard says of director J A Bayona, whose fifth film is intended to set up a sixth

Back to Nublar: After the events of Jurassic Park [1993] in which the yet-to-be-opened park fell into chaos and was ruined by it's released dinosaurs, the franchise didn't return to Isla Nublar. Both The Lost World [1997] and Jurassic Park III [2001] took place on sister island Isla Sorna

If the latter, could the story involve an attempt to rebuild Jurassic Park/World for the fourth time?

The original park was subject to a re-launch attempt by the company that owned it, inGen, in the first sequel The Lost World - with plans to bring it away from Costa Rica and instead to San Diego.

After a disaster involving Isla Sorna's T-rex and it's offspring, this plan was axed.

Jurassic World saw the third attempt at a park - which was, until the invent of the hybrid Indominus Rex, a success.

Chaos: The new feature sees the character on Isla Nublar in the state it was left at the end of Jurassic World - overrun by dinosaurs and in ruins

Battle cry: The video is peppered with the stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard talking about the new film, along with soundbites from the crew of the film

Could a fourth park be in the works in Fallen Kingdom?

Whatever the case, the cast and crew promise 'surprises', a 'different, intense, spectacular' film, and an experience like 'nothing you've ever seen before'.

'Hes a genius when it comes to frightening people,' Howard says of director J A Bayona, whose fifth film is intended to set up a sixth.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is due for release in June 2018.
Meek Mill has been a model inmate in his short time in prison so far but if he gets it his way he won't have to be there much longer.

The 30-year-old rapper - real name Robert Rihmeek Williams - is part of the general labor crew in jail according to a Thursday report by TMZ.

The same day TMZ also reported that he has officially appealed the court decision that landed him a sentence of 2-4 years.

The publication obtained legal documents in which Meek's lawyer Brian McMonagle is beginning the effort to request that a higher court free his client on the grounds that the judge had been unfair and biased against him.

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Working hard: Meek Mill - pictured in February - is part of the general labor crew in jail as he is said to be cleaning the cell block and prison grounds according to a Thursday report by TMZ

Despite the issues in court the All Eyes On You hitmaker seems to not be using his fame as an excuse to get out of hard work as he is said to be cleaning the cell block and prison grounds.

Meek even cooks food, serves it up, and washes the dishes according to the report.

No doubt it is a humbling experience as TMZ says he is only earning 19 cents an hour but it is claimed that he does it all with a smile.

His rep told the publication that he is a 'model inmate' and does receive some benefits to being on his best behavior.

Apparently Meek is able to attend electrical and carpentry shops and is currently on the waitlist for therapy courses.

The news comes just days after a bit of a setback as he was denied bail by a Philadelphia judge on Friday.

Ouch: The news comes just days after a bit of a setback as the 30-year-old rapper was denied bail by a Philadelphia judge on Friday after being sentenced last month for violating probation

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.'

The Jay Z protege 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.

The chart-topping rapper's probation officer and a prosecutor had recommended he not be jailed.

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'

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.

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 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.

Mill's imprisonment sparked backlash in opinion pieces, rallies, billboards and bus ads.

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

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.

The Save Me 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.
Casey Affleck's annual earnings have been revealed as $400,000 per year.

In new divorce documents, obtained by TMZ, it has emerged the Oscar-winning actor, 42, will pay his ex-wife Summer Phoenix $4,000 a month in child support for the former couple's two sons, Indiana, 13, and Atticus, nine.

The Manchester By The Sea star - the brother of Ben Affleck, 45 - will also pay for the boys' private school tuition for the next two years, but will not be handing out anything in the way of spousal support.

Revealed: Casey Affleck's annual earnings have been revealed as $400,000 per year (pictured in Pasadena, California, in September)

On Tuesday, TMZ reported the couple - who tied the knot in 2006 - had reached an agreement about their divorce, and decided on joined custody of their sons.

The two separated in 2016 and she filed for divorce this summer, with a prenuptial agreement in place.

In November a judge signed off the papers for the divorce, according to People.

The documents show that Summer cited 'irreconcilable differences' as the reason for the split. She asked for joint legal and physical custody of their children as did he.

Split: In new divorce documents it has emerged the actor, 42, will pay his ex-wife Summer Phoenix $4,000 a month in child support for the couple's two sons (pictured in May 2014)

Sad end: The Manchester By The Sea star will also pay for the boys' private school tuition for the next two years, but will not be handing out anything in spousal support (pictured 2013)

The pair met in 1995 through Summer's brother Joaquin Phoenix, who was working with Casey on To Die For.

They got engaged in 2003.

When the pair split last year, they issued a joint statement to insist they had 'amicably' gone their separate ways.

Their spokesperson confirmed: 'Casey and Summer have amicably separated. They remain very close friends.'

New love: This year he has been seen with Floriana Lima (pictured in June)

And a source added at the time: 'She was having a lot of trust issues. They went to therapy but they just couldn't recover.'

This year he has been seen with Floriana Lima, even taking her to the Academy Awards where he won an Oscar for Best Actor.

Meanwhile, his brother Ben is still in the process of divorcing Jennifer Garner.

They both want joint legal and physical custody of their three kids Violet, Seraphina and Samuel. As for spousal support, they left it open, so the judge could award it before the divorce becomes final, according to TMZ.

They do not list a date of separation, but in June 2015 they announced their separation.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Minnesota Sen. Al Franken said Thursday he will resign from Congress in coming weeks following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations and a collapse of support from his Democratic colleagues, a swift political fall for a once-rising Democratic star.

"I may be resigning my seat, but I am not giving up my voice," Franken said in the otherwise-hushed Senate chamber.

Franken quit just a day after new allegations brought the number of women alleging misconduct by him to at least eight. Wednesday morning, one woman said he forcibly tried to kiss her in 2006, an accusation he vehemently denied. Hours later, another woman said Franken inappropriately squeezed "a handful of flesh" on her waist while posing for a photo with her in 2009.

"I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator  nothing  has brought dishonor on this institution," Franken declared Thursday.

Franken, the former comedian who made his name on "Saturday Night Live," had originally sought to remain in the Senate and cooperate with an ethics investigation, saying he would work to regain the trust of Minnesotans.

"Some of the allegations against me are simply not true," Franken said Thursday. "Others I remember quite differently." Still, he said he could not both cooperate with an investigation and fully carry out his duties to his constituents.

Franken had gained respect as a serious lawmaker in recent years and has even been mentioned in talk about the 2020 presidential campaign.

His resignation means Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a fellow Democrat, will name a temporary replacement. The winner of a special election in November would serve through the end of Franken's term in January of 2021. Among the possibilities is Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, a trusted ally.

"Enough is enough," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York declared on Wednesday. "We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is OK, none of it is acceptable, and we, as elected leaders, should absolutely be held to a higher standard."

A torrent of Democrats quickly followed Gillibrand.

"I'm shocked and appalled by Sen. Franken's behavior," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state. "It's clear to me that this has been a deeply harmful, persistent problem and a clear pattern over a long period of time. It's time for him to step aside."

Franken has acknowledged and apologized for some inappropriate behavior, but he strongly denies the new accusation that came from a former Democratic congressional aide, who said he tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The woman, who was not identified, told Politico that she ducked to avoid his lips but Franken told her: "It's my right as an entertainer."

Franken said the idea he would claim such conduct as a right was "preposterous."

Timeline: Key events related to misconduct allegations against Franken Sen. Al Franken has announced will resign over sexual misconduct accusations. Here are key events related to allegations.

The pressure on him to leave mounted this week after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., resigned following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct. Rep Ruben Kihuen, D-Nev., faces pressure to resign as well over allegations reported by Buzzfeed that he repeatedly propositioned a former campaign worker.

While Franken is departing, Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore could be arriving, if he prevails in a Dec. 12 special election. Multiple women have accused the 70-year-old Moore of sexual misconduct with them when they were teens and he was a deputy district attorney in his 30s. If Moore is elected, it could create a political nightmare for Republicans, who have promised an ethics probe.

The allegations against Franken began in mid-November when Leeann Tweeden, now a Los Angeles radio anchor, accused him of forcibly kissing her during a 2006 USO tour in Afghanistan.

Other allegations followed, including a woman who says Franken put his hand on her buttocks as they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Two women told the Huffington Post that Franken squeezed their buttocks at political events during his first campaign for the Senate in 2008. A fourth woman, an Army veteran, alleged Franken cupped her breast during a photo on a USO tour in 2003.
Ralphie May has left all of his personal effects to his wife Lahna Turner.

The comedian's will has been revealed in court documents obtained by The Blast, leaving all tangible property including furniture, silver, paintings, automobiles and clothing to his spouse.

The Inside Amy Schumer star passed away in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 6 at the age of 45, just hours after coming off stage at Harrah's.

Revealed: The late Ralphie May has left all of his personal effects to his wife Lahna Turner following his passing on October 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada (pictured in November 2007)

Turner, also a comedian and the executor of his estate, will also get the rest, residue and remainder of May's estate, although the amount of which this is valued at remains undetermined.

In the will, The Blast reports that May changed his mind three times on who would get custody of his two children in the event his wife died before him or he and his wife died simultaneously.

May and Turner filed for divorce in 2015, but it was never finalized prior to his death.

In the documents, May made it very clear the couple's two children April, 10, and August, eight, should have 'extensive visitation' with their grandparents.

Proud parents: The comedian's will has been revealed in court documents, leaving all tangible property to his spouse (pictured December 2007)

Earlier this week, TMZ revealed Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg had ruled May's official cause of death was hypertensive cardiovascular disease and that his weight was a contributing factor in his death.

Neither drugs nor alcohol were factors in his death.

May was found dead at a private residence just hours after performing on stage at Harrah's in Vegas.

The comedian, known for his television appearances on Inside Amy Schumer, had been battling pneumonia for six weeks.

He was in the midst of a nationwide tour, but had been forced to cancel some dates while he attempted to recover from his illness.

Talent: The Inside Amy Schumer star passed away in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 6 at the age of 45, just hours after coming off stage at Harrah's (pictured April 2015)

Popular: May, who was seen on Inside Amy Schumer last year, was found dead hours after performing on stage at Harrah's in Las Vegas

Two days before his death, May was crowned Casino Comedian Of The Year at the Global Gaming Expo in Vegas.

His manager, Judi Marmel, told TMZ: 'As his manager and his friend, I will miss his laugh, his generosity to fellow comedians, his trademark orneriness, and his enormous love of life.

'He left us entirely too soon -- and we can only wonder where his comedy might have taken all of us. We send our love to his family, his fans, and all the comics who shared stages with him across the country.'

May is survived by by his wife, Lahna Turner, and their daughter April June, 10, and son August James, eight.

Lahna filed for divorce in 2015 after the couple had been married for ten years.
She recently sparked speculation of a reunion with her ex Jon Clark, despite sources saying she had refused to take him back.

But while Lauren Pope went solo for her latest London outing, she was still joined by some of her TOWIE co-stars for the interview on Thursday.

The 35-year-old reality TV star put on a chic display in a white trouser and leather jacket combo as she joined Dan Edgar and Chloe Sims for the chat on the Build Series.

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Fashion Queen: TOWIE star Lauren Pope put on an ever-chic display on Thursday as she donned white pleated trousers for an interview on the Build Series

Heading to London's Shropshire House, Lauren looked as fashion forward as always in off-white silk-style pleated trousers, which the star teamed with a simple black cami.

Flashing just a hint of her cream strapped heels, the blonde beauty covered up in a classic black leather biker jacket.

The star rocked several dainty rings and necklaces with the look, and kept her blonde tresses down in loose curls.

Essex pals: Lauren made the appearance at the interview with TOWIE co-star Jon Clark, who was bundled up in a grey overcoat

Biker Queen: Lauren finished her look with a black cami and a leather jacket, along with silver hoop earrings and several necklaces and rings

Ever the Essex girl, Lauren was rocking a classic bronze smoky eye, with just a subtle pink gloss on her plump lips allowing her flawless complexion to stand out.

Dan rocked a casual display for the interview in a grey overcoat and all-black as they arrived at the studio in the capital.

Lauren previously sparked reconciliation rumours with ex-beau Jon Clark, after she allegedly refused to take him back after his split for the second time from Chloe Crowhurst.

Looking good: Dan was wrapped up against the freezing December weather in a grey overcoat and all-black look

Back together? Lauren recently sparked reconciliation rumours with her ex Jon Clark, after telling The Sun Online that they were back on speaking terms

Under the mistletoe? In the interview, Lauren said that she did not want to spoil the upcoming TOWIE Christmas Special, and remained Mum on the relationship rumours

Ahead of TOWIE's upcoming Christmas Special, Lauren told The Sun Online: 'Me and Jon are a rollercoaster  it changes all the time.

'Obviously we filmed together and we were talking again.

'I don't want to spoil the Christmas special, but it will unravel on there.'

Good terms: The star did let slip that she came face to face with her ex after they filmed festive scenes together at a Suffolk country mansion

Good chat: Lauren was joined at the interview by Dan and fellow TOWIE star Chloe Sims

Style Queen: Chloe looked equally chic in a deep green velvet suit, with her blonde tresses in a stylish topknot

Coming Soon: ITVBe are yet to confirm an air date for The Only Way is Essexmas, though it is expected to be two parts like the 2016 special

Non-stop: Lauren and her TOWIE co-stars teased another drama-filled episode of the reality series, which saw Chloe and Dan getting very cosy between scenes
Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, and Nicole Kidman united as they led a star-studded pledge to speak up against sexual assault, as accusations of misconduct continue to be leveled against men in positions of power.

'I will not be silent,' was the promise made by Jennifer, Emma, Nicole, and a slew of other celebrities in a video made by W Magazine.

Gal Gadot, Margot Robbie, Jessica Chastain, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Mary J. Blige were among the stars to band together in lending their support in the video.

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'I will not be silent': Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, and Nicole Kidman led a star-studded pledge to speak up against sexual assault as accusations of misconduct leveled at powerful men continue to grow

Speaking up: Nicole stood defiantly as she made her promise to support survivors

The video began with a defiant Nicole speaking powerfully towards her audience, 'I will not be silent.'

Andrew Garfield, Caroline Wolff, Daniel Kaluuya, Daniel Vega, Diane Kruger, Grace Van Patten, Hong Chau, Jessica Kolstad, Madeline Pachon, Michelle Williams, Oliver Pachon, Robert Pattinson, Salma Hayek, Saoirse Ronan, Sheena Rao, and Timothee Chalamet were also among those to lend their voices in the pledge.

Just months ago, scandal erupted when numerous women accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct and assault - an event that led to a number of other allegations of misconduct to be leveled at powerful men in Hollywood, news, and government.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer recalled her experience working with Harvey, who has been accused of rape and sexual harassment, explaining she was sickened to learn of the crimes he has been accused of.

Lending her support: Gal Gadot promised not to remain silent

United: Diane Kruger and Margot Robbie gave their support

'He had only ever been nice to me - except for the moments that he wasn't, and then I called him an a******, and we moved on,' she began.

'He was paternal to me. So I needed a moment to process everything because I thought I knew this guy, and then he's being accused of rape. We all knew he was a dog, we knew that he was a -'

Oprah, who was interviewing Jennifer, offered the word 'brute.'

Speaking out: Mary J. Blige showed her support in the star-packed video

Promise: Jessica Chastain lent her support

'A tough guy, a brute, a tough guy to negotiate with. I didn't know that he was a rapist,' said the X-Men star.

And it's so widespread, the abuse, from so many different people  it's directors, it's producers  that I think everybody needed to [process it]. Everybody needs to deal with this in their own way; everybody needs to heal.'

She also said hearing Harvey plead with a woman to come into his hotel room was a sickening experience.

Lending his voice: Robert Pattinson also pledged his support

Speaking up: Andrew Garfield and Jake Gyllenhaal promised not to remain silent

Taking a stand: Daniel Kaluuya also lent his voice to the video

'Being able to hear when the woman wore the microphone and Harvey was telling her to watch him shower  I felt sick in my bones for an entire day,' she said.

'I was just sick. I was just like, "I can't," after hearing that. And that's why it's so important to talk about abuse, all of the different forms of abuse, because he didn't lay a finger on her, and I felt chilled to my bones.'

'Imagine having a man who is that powerful telling you to do something [and] you're saying no. [He's] threatening you, saying, "Don't embarrass me. We're at this hotel."

Jennifer said there needed to be 'social change. Men need more social awareness.'

Speaking out: Michelle Williams and Salma Hayek also appeared

Gal, meanwhile, has made no secret of her desire to spark change in Hollywood as well.

The actress stars as Wonder Woman, and has revealed she will not return to her role in the upcoming sequel if producer Brett Ratner, who has also been accused of sexual misconduct, is connected to the follow-up.

'Everyone knows the way that I feel because Im not hiding anything,' Gal, 32, recently told Today show host Savannah Guthrie.

Nicole also showed her support for those coming forward in a statement she released to People after allegations against Harvey emerged.

'As I've stated before publicly, I support and applaud all women and these women who speak out against any abuse and misuse of power  be it domestic violence or sexual harassment in the workforce. We need to eradicate this behavior.'

Support: Saoirse Ronan gave her support for survivors
She rose to prominence as a reality star before branching out into her own business.

And Kimberley Garner showed off an office chic look with a twist as she attended the UK film premiere of Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle on Thursday.

The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, showcased her tiny waist and long legs in a blazer ensemble as she turned heads at the event in London.

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Turning heads! Kimberley Garner showed off an office chic look with a twist as she attended the UK film premiere of Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle on Thursday

Making the most of her toned abs, Kimberley rocked a cropped Rolling Stones t-shirt, teaming it with a pair of high waist fitted trousers.

The flared bottoms accentuated her endless slender limbs, and she teamed them with a pair of killer heels.

Wearing her blonde hair loose around her face, she opted for bold brows and a dab of lipstick as she posed up a storm on the red carpet.

Leggy! The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, showcased her tiny waist and long legs in a blazer ensemble as she turned heads at the event

Hometime: Kimberley shot to fame in 2012 in Series 3 of MIC where she caught the gaze of many male cast members including Spencer Matthews, 27, and Richard Dinan

Kimberley shot to fame in 2012 in Series 3 of MIC where she caught the gaze of many male cast members including Spencer Matthews, 27, and Richard Dinan.

After one date with Spencer, the pair decided not to take the union any further.

Kimberley has now turned her attention to the world of swimwear design, having ditched her reality TV ties.

Abs-tastic! Making the most of her toned abs, Kimberley rocked a cropped Rolling Stones t-shirt, teaming it with a pair of high waist fitted trousers

Legs for days! The flared bottoms accentuated her endless slender limbs, and she teamed them with a pair of killer heels

Kimberley has fully thrown herself into herself into swimwear design over recent years, designing several swimwear lines since leaving Made in Chelsea in 2012.

She previously revealed she has fully embraced the challenges that come with running a business, saying: 'I have some really cool new designs coming out over the next few months which I am excited about. They are still all made in London, which is really important to me.

'I love being a young female running a start up. Learning every section of what it take to run a company has been amazing and challenging but am really excited to see it grow and can't wait for next year's collections.'
She underwent a dramatic physical transformation for her role as infamous ice skater Tonya Harding.

And Margot Robbie's hard work already appears to be paying off, the 27-year-old winning rave reviews for her role in I, Tonya.

The Australian actress is tipped for awards glory after major industry publications praised her performance in the film, produced by Margot and her husband Tom Ackerley.

Next stop Oscars? Margot Robbie tipped for awards show glory after winning rave reviews for I, Tonya

The film has managed to score an 88 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Margot lauded for her funny and sympathetic portrait of Tonya.

Top film critic Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone that Margot was 'never better' and portrayed the skater to perfection.

'Robbie turns her features hard  and her attitude harder  to play the queen of the triple axel,' he wrote.

Praised: The film has managed to score an 88 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Margot lauded for her funny and sympathetic portrait of Tonya

'She never begs for sympathy, though we give it willingly thanks to the pow of the star's take on Harding as a woman who refuses to be a punchline.'

Meanwhile, Margot has been busy on the promotional trail for I, Tonya.

She boldly shut down reporters who decided to question her about married life rather than asking about the new film.

Margot married her longtime producer beau Tom Ackerley last December in Byron Bay.

Hotly anticipated: Margot portrays controversial ice skater Tonya in a movie produced by the actress and her husband Tom

Speaking to Page Six the actress recounted the incident, questioning why she hadn't been asked about her other achievements, namely being a producer on her latest film.

'I had a boss moment the other day. I was doing a press conference and they keep asking me what it was like to be married, and I said, ''Being married is not my achievement'',' the actress recalled.

'''My achievement is producing this film and having a producing deal with a major studio  that is my achievement.'' And everyone shut up after that. It was really nice.'
She put on a glamorous display as she stepped out in New York on Wednesday evening.

But it was a comparatively low-key Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who made another appearance in the Big Apple the following afternoon.

With temperatures dropping, the model turned actress, 30, wrapped up in a thick faux-fur coat while taking a stroll through trendy Greenwich Village.

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Stepping out: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley made a low key appearance in New York on Thursday afternoon

Covering her slender frame, the generously cut coat ensured she stood out during a solo appearance in the city.

A simple black top and leather trousers added to her look, while suede high-heeled boots with distinctive spotted embellishments rounded things off.

Accessorising tastefully, Rosie shielded her eyes with a pair of heavily tinted sunglasses as she made her way across the sidewalk clutching a stylish Yves Saint Laurent handbag.

Well wrapped: With temperatures dropping, the model turned actress wrapped up in a thick faux-fur coat while taking a stroll through trendy Greenwich Village

Hard to miss: Covering her slender frame, the generously cut coat ensured she stood out during a solo appearance in the city

Striking: A simple black top and leather trousers added to her look, while suede high-heeled boots with distinctive spotted embellishments rounded things off

Rosie's latest appearance comes after she was photographed in New York in a sleeveless white dress redolent of Old Hollywood.

The British star, who welcomed her first child this June, stepped out in SoHo draped in an off-white overcoat that slid off her shoulders.

Earlier that day, she'd hinted at her inspiration, posting an Instagram photo of Kate Moss in a similarly sleeveless floor-length white frock at the 1995 CFDA Awards.

Don't mind me: Accessorising tastefully, Rosie shielded her eyes with a pair of heavily tinted sunglasses

Finishing touches: The British star made her way across the sidewalk clutching a stylish Yves Saint Laurent handbag

Out and about: Rosie has been enjoying a series of public appearances in New York over recent days

Rosie's gleaming Wednesday night dress offered a faint trace of cleavage and was hemmed at the ankles, allowing her to show off her silver-hued stilettos.

She added a bit of glitz to the ensemble with a glistening drop necklace and an elaborate pair of earrings, letting her blonde hair down.

The British bombshell, who used to be a Victoria's Secret Angel, played up her movie star features with makeup including an eye-popping shade of scarlet lipstick.

Hello, gorgeous: Rosie was photographed in New York Wednesday night in a sleeveless white gown redolent of Old Hollywood
He is about to return to screens again on Friday, as Prince Phillip in the much-anticipated second series of The Crown.

But Matt Smith appeared far happier keeping a low profile on Thursday as he headed out and about in New York, keeping wrapped up against the freezing December weather.

The 35-year-old actor rocked a Burberry-esque scarf as he stepped out into The Big Apple, teaming the accessory with a mixture of prints.

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Leading man: Despite playing a member of royal family in The Crown, Matt preferred to keep a low profile on Thursday as he headed out and about in New York

Matt rocked a checked tweed jacket over a striped t-shirt for the look, along with simple black jeans and trainers, going hat-less to keep his voluminous quiff on full display.

Rocking quirky cat-eye style sunglasses, the former Dr Who star headed out into the city unnoticed, ahead of the release of The Crown's second series on Friday (December 8).

Matt has been in New York promoting the Netflix series along with co-star Claire Foy, but the screen star enjoyed to alone-time with beau Lily James on Wednesday.

Wrapped up: Matt rocked a Burberry-esque scarf in an mixture of prints as took a break from promoting the upcoming second season of the Netflix series

Cosy: Matt rocked a checked tweed jacket along with a striped top, jeans and black trainers, as well as cat-eye sunglasses

Royal role: Matt will return to screens on Friday (December 8) as a young Prince Phillip in Netflix series The Crown

Drama: In the second series, Claire Foy's Elizabeth will come to terms with Phillips alleged infidelities

Opting for a distinctive leopard print coat, former Downton Abbey star Lily looked typically stylish while walking arm in arm with her beau.

Opting to keep it simple, the actress added to her look with a conventional black top, while matching retro-cut jeans and Reebok trainers rounded things off.

Walking alongside his girlfriend, Matt looked equally casual in his own black top and jeans, teamed with a stylish winter coat.

On another chilly day the actor completed his look with a monochrome beanie hat, while a simple striped scarf proved to be a distinctive addition to his ensemble.

Stepping out: Work commitments were put to one side as Lily James and Matt Smith made their latest appearance in New York on Wednesday afternoon

The second season of The Crown, which is released on December 8, will paint an unflattering portrait of Prince Philip as an adulterer.

Scenes show the Duke of Edinburgh being tempted by a flirtatious Jackie Kennedy during her visit to Buckingham Palace in 1961.

Meanwhile the Queen's suspicions of infidelity are aroused after she finds a picture of a dancer in his bag - believed to represent Pat Kirkwood, the real-life dancer he was once linked to.

The Netflix show also suggests he was romantically involved with women on a 1956-7 tour of Commonwealth countries without his wife, aboard the HMY Britannia.

Out and about: With winter temperatures soaring, the couple wrapped up as they ventured out in the city, where Matt has been promoting the second series of The Crown
She experienced a horrible fall during an Italian holiday resulting in an arm injury.

And Lisa Wilkinson has revealed the damage done in July was more serious than she initially disclosed.

The 57-year-old told an audience at a Business Chicks event in Sydney on Thursday she was informed by Australian doctors she almost needed her arm amputated.

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Traumatic: Lisa Wilkinson has revealed the damage done in July to her arm was more serious than she initially disclosed

'The doctors were very sweet but not very talented,' the veteran journalist told the packed crowd about her Italian experience.

'They put a cast on that cut off my circulation for four of five days and when they put the cast on, I was so out of it because they aren't big believers in painkillers in Italy, I've now discovered,' she continued.

'So they manipulated my bones back into position without any pain relief,' she added.

'The doctors were very sweet but not very talented,' the veteran journalist told the packed crowd about her Italian experience

Close call: The 57-year-old told an audience at a Business Chicks event in Sydney on Thursday she was informed by Australian doctors she almost needed her arm amputated

Lisa went on to explain that upon arrival back in Australia, local surgeons determined had she waited any longer for a procedure, amputation would have been needed.

The former Today co-host was enjoying a getaway on the Amalfi Coast with husband Peter FitzSimons when she slipped and fell in the shower, snapping her right arm.

She initially thanked the hospital for its immediate care, writing for Huffington Post that 'within minutes I was in the hands of wonderful professionals'.

Accident: The former Today co-host was enjoying a getaway on the Amalfi Coast with husband Peter FitzSimons when she slipped and fell in the shower, snapping her right arm

She also mentioned a reciprocal health care agreement between Australia and Italy meant she received complimentary medical attention in the European country.

'In Italy, public hospitals are free for everyone, including blow-in tourists like us,' she described.

Enjoying an extended break after her high-profile exit from Today, Lisa will be seen on Channel 10's The Project from early 2018.
There are fears many young Australians are at risk of developing negative attitudes towards sex and relationships because of exposure to pornography.

A discussion paper on the impact of pornography has been released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which reveals just under half of all children aged nine to 16 have viewed pornography.

The paper says there is a "growing evidence base" showing that adolescents' use of pornography can negatively influence their knowledge about sex, safe sex practices, gender roles, and could lead them to have unrealistic expectations about sex.

"In Australia, 44 per cent of children aged nine to 16 years old had encountered sexual images in a 12 month period. Of these, 16 per cent had seen images of someone having sex," Institute Director Anne Hollonds said.

Responses to the exposure varied, however the research showed more young girls expressed shock or distress compared to the boys. The males were more likely to find pornography amusing or exciting.

Ms Hollonds says exposure to pornography for some can be accidental as they turn to the internet to search online for information on sexual health, relationship or medical advice.

In the absence of quality sex education, parents are being asked not to underestimate the impact pornography could have on adolescents.

"The content of pornography may reinforce double standards of an active male sexuality and a passive female receptacle," said AIFS Senior Research Fellow, Dr Antonia Quadara.

"Exposure to pornography can shape young people's expectations about sex, for example about what men find pleasurable, what they expect their partners to do and how consent is negotiated. It also depicts sex that undermines public health messages about safe sex and condom use," said Dr Quadara.

Dr Quadara said previous research has also shown evidence of an association between consuming pornography and boys perpetrating sexual harassment.

"Male adolescents who view pornography frequently were more likely to view women as sex objects, strengthening attitudes supporting sexual violence against women."
Mental health is the number one issue among young Australians, with body image, stress and study problems among their biggest worries.

It's the first time mental health has topped the list of issues of national concern for young people in Mission Australia's annual Youth Survey, which began 16 years ago.

Mental health edged out alcohol and drugs as the most important concern for 15-to-19 year olds, with equity and discrimination the third biggest.

The number of young people who identified mental health as a national concern has more than doubled since 2015, when 15 per cent of respondents considered it an issue.

Mission Australia chief executive James Toomey said this could be because there's been more public discussion about mental health in recent years, which has helped remove many long-held stigmas and encouraged people to talk about their struggles.

However, he said the fact that mental health is now the biggest concern among young people suggests more needs to be done to provide specific co-ordinated services to help them.

"When we look at the question of where people go for advice and guidance ... people talk to friends and family and peers but those people are not always particularly well equipped to give appropriate advice and guidance," Mr Toomey told AAP.

"I think we need to continue the destigmatisation of mental health to make it more likely that people are going to be able to come forward, and then when they do they can talk to people who can join them up with a coherent service system or get support at the time they need it, as opposed to waiting some considerable time."

In terms of personal issues, nearly half of the 24,055 young people surveyed were worried about their stress levels, while more than a third had school or study problems.

Body image was also a concern for one in three young people, particularly girls, while nearly a quarter were either extremely or very concerned about depression.

More girls than boys expressed concerns about mental health issues, while boys were more worried about drugs and alcohol.

Despite their worries, around two-thirds felt happy with their lives and positive about the future.

Seventy per cent plan to go to university after finishing school, while nearly a third want a job, 28 per cent aim to travel, 12 per cent are intent on going TAFE or college, and eight per cent hope for an apprenticeship.

But only four in 10 were confident they would achieve those goals.

Half thought they would face barriers including their own academic ability, money problems and mental health issues.

Mr Toomey said the number of young people lacking confidence in terms of achieving their goals has doubled in the past few years.

Australian readers seeking support and information about depression can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.

Multicultural Mental Health Australia www.mmha.org.au.

Local Aboriginal Medical Service details available from www.bettertoknow.org.au/AMS
WASHINGTON  Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., called for the resignation of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., on Wednesday, joining the morning surge of Democrats who began demanding Franken step down after reports of a seventh woman accusing him of inappropriate conduct.

We must commit to zero tolerance, Heitkamp wrote on Twitter. Which is where I believe we as a country and Congress should be  and that means Senator Franken should step down.

Heitkamps statement was posted shortly after a wave of Democratic senators began calling for Franken to step down. Shortly before noon, there were 13 lawmakers asking Franken to resign, as well as Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

On Wednesday morning, Politico published claims from a former Democratic aide that Franken had tried to forcibly kiss her in 2006. Its the seventh account of inappropriate conduct that has been published in the past weeks since radio host Leeann Tweeden said Franken kissed and groped her without her consent.

Ive said before that for decades as a country, we have been far too tolerant and dismissive of past allegations, Heitkamp said in her Twitter statement. In recent months, women have been courageously stepping out of the shadows to tell their stories of sexual harassment and abuse. Thats a huge step. We need to stand by them and all women to empower them to come forward and speak out, prevent those actions, and impose serious consequences when they do happen.

Heitkamps office did not immediately answer emailed questions about the timing of her call for Frankens resignation.

Franken plans a Thursday announcement in Washington. Although details were not forthcoming, the consensus was that he would resign.

Franken apparently has not been in Minnesota since Nov. 11, days earlier than allegations began to be reported a week before Thanksgiving. He talked to some Minnesota reporters and stopped to talk to Washington media last week before heading to his first Senate meeting after the first allegation surfaced.

The senator largely has been silent in public in recent weeks.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop strongly denies relations with China are at a low after its Canberra embassy scolded the Australian media and political class.

The embassy lashed out against what it said was a "Cold War mentality", following the Turnbull government's flagged crackdown on foreign interference and earlier resentment about a new foreign policy blueprint.

When asked whether relations with Beijing were at a low, Ms Bishop told reporters in Canberra on Thursday: "The Australian government enjoys a very close, comprehensive, strategic partnership with China".

Ms Bishop said she welcomed China's commitment to ensuring there would not be any illegal interference in Australian political affairs.

She insisted Beijing was deeply concerned by the behaviour of Labor senator Sam Dastyari and his dealings with a Chinese Communist Party linked-businessman.

"But the actions of Senator Sam Dastyari are separate from this," Ms Bishop said.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong is concerned about heightened rhetoric as debate heats up over the proposed legislation.

"It is important that national leaders set the appropriate tone and don't succumb to populism in how they take these matters forward," she told reporters.

The embassy insisted China had no intention of interfering in Australia's internal affairs or exerting influence on its political process through political donations.

But some Australian politicians and government officials had made irresponsible remarks to the detriment of political mutual trust between China and Australia, it said.

As well some media had repeatedly fabricated news stories about the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia.

"Those reports, which were made up out of thin air and filled with Cold War mentality and ideological bias, reflected typical anti-China hysteria and paranoia," an embassy spokeswoman said.
A Sydney man has been jailed for at least 19 years for the murder of his wife, who he claimed had killed herself by jumping on a knife.

A jury in June found Gavin John De Beyer guilty of murdering his partner of 30 years, Sharon Louise Michelutti, while he was subject to an apprehended violence order in February 2016.

Acting NSW Supreme Court justice Peter Hidden on Thursday sentenced the 52-year-old to a maximum sentence of 25 years and a non-parole period of 19 years.
A Chinese state-owned newspaper has accused Australian universities of treating foreign students like "cash machines" but also conceded many of them are too busy working to study.

An editorial in the Global Times - a pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper - says universities have done little to help students integrate into Australian culture and aren't doing enough to crack down on cheats who hire others to write essays or take exams for them.

"I sincerely advise Australian universities to pay more attention to their quality of education and stop treating Chinese students as a cash machine," Beijing-based journalist Lilly Wang wrote on Wednesday.

"I rarely hear professors or lecturers helping them to understand Australian culture or purposely mix them with local students in a class."

But she concedes Chinese students also don't make efforts to integrate.

Wang also says tens of thousands of Chinese students in Australia set up shop as a "daigou" - or someone who buys luxury goods on behalf of people back in China - to help pay their university fees.

"Some students are too busy shopping to study, so they hire a ghostwriter, or exam substitute, to help them complete their degree," she writes.

The head of Australia's foreign affairs department Frances Adamson warned universities in October they needed to better protect themselves from the rising influence of the Chinese Communist Party.

She also cautioned foreign students they had to engage in respectful debate rather than trying to spread propaganda or attempt to gag views they disagreed with.

Silencing anyone in Australian society was an affront to our values, Ms Adamson told a Chinese government-funded academic institution.

Wang took aim at this and similar views, saying if Australia was a country with freedom of speech and academic freedom everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions.

"Chinese students grew up under the educational and cultural system ruled by the Communist Party. They were educated to be patriotic and to think and believe as the Chinese government does," she writes.

"That they politically support the Chinese government does not equate them to being spies."
Crossbench MP Rebekha Sharkie says her support for the Turnbull government is on a "day-by-day" basis.

The government, which was left with a one-seat majority after the 2016 election, is down one MP as John Alexander fights a by-election in his NSW seat of Bennelong.

This makes it all the more critical Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has the support of the five crossbench MPs for confidence and supply.

Ms Sharkie, who represents the Nick Xenophon Team in the lower house, says she wants parliament to give its unanimous support to a referral of her dual citizenship case, as well as that of Labor and other coalition MPs, to the High Court.

"I take it day by day and I've given the government my confidence and I said I would support supply and I don't want to be seen as a wrecker," she told Sky News on Thursday.

"But I think the government is doing a very good job of wrecking the parliament themselves."

She says the citizenship issue can only be put to rest with a bipartisan approach.
Almost two weeks after Queensland went to the polls, Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has been formally declared the winner of her South Brisbane seat, with Labor also taking Mount Ommaney from the LNP and the new seat of Macalister.

Labor has also taken Gaven, in the Gold Coast hinterland, from the LNP, according to the latest batch of declarations from the Electoral Commission of Queensland.

In the key north Queensland seat of Burdekin, LNP incumbent Dale Last has managed to hang on after a tight contest with Labor's Michael Brunker.

The Electoral Commissioner declared the following 16 seats on Thursday:

* Bonney: Sam O'Connor (LNP)

* Burdekin: Dale Last (LNP)

* Coomera: Michael Crandon (LNP)

* Gaven: Meaghan Scanlon (ALP)

* Ipswich: Jennifer Howard (ALP)

* Kurwongbah: Shane King (ALP)

* Macalister: Melissa McMahon (ALP)

* Mackay: Julieanne Gilbert (ALP)

* Mansfield: Corrine McMillan (ALP)

* Miller: Mark Bailey (ALP)

* Mount Ommaney: Jess Pugh (ALP)

* Mudgeeraba: Ros Bates (LNP)

* South Brisbane: Jackie Trad (ALP)

* Southport: Robert Molhoek (LNP)

* Theodore: Mark Boothman (LNP)

* Toohey: Peter Russo (ALP)
Federal Labor MP Ed Husic has a way with words.

"This reflects the delightfully feral state of Australian politics."

Husic was talking about the pursuit of Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg - whose mother fled Nazi Europe to Australia - over his citizenship status.

But he could have been talking generally about the final week of parliament for the year.

For Labor's part it has been a messy week. Bill Shorten has insisted for months his caucus team was squeaky clean when it came to their eligibility under the constitution.

But this week, with all 226 MPs putting their cards on the table, it was discovered two Labor members - Victorian MP and Right faction warlord David Feeney, and ACT senator Katy Gallagher - had issues worthy of examination by the High Court.

Feeney, who could well lose his seat of Batman to the Greens at a by-election, couldn't find some of his paperwork dating back to 2007.

Gallagher will be a crucial test case for whether filling out the paperwork, paying the fee and waiting for the UK Home Office to pull its finger out is enough to justify the argument of "reasonable steps" to renounce dual citizenship.

The government immediately seized on it as another sign of Shorten being "shifty" and unable to be trusted.

It was already zeroing in on another Shorten ally, Sam Dastyari, who is accused of cosying up to Chinese interests and accepting money from a Chinese businessman in exchange for freelancing on Labor foreign policy.

As well, he reportedly tipped off the businessman that they could be under ASIO surveillance.

To double-down on the issue, the government released details of new laws to expand the definition of espionage, ban foreign political donations and publicly register people who lobby on behalf of foreign interests.

The Liberal Party is hoping concerns over Shorten's credibility and character will help sway voters in the Bennelong by-election to support sitting member John Alexander on December 16.

Alexander resigned when he discovered he 'most likely' held dual citizenship by decent.

Under section section 44 of the constitution, a senator or MP can't be a dual citizen

As Treasurer Scott Morrison, who is well versed in campaign techniques having been a former NSW Liberals director, put it this week: "The electors of Bennelong should ... reward John for his integrity and the government's integrity for dealing with this matter and punishing Labor for their dishonesty."

A win in Bennelong, following Barnaby Joyce retaining his seat of New England and the legalisation of same-sex marriage, will be a welcome morale boost for the government heading into the Christmas-New Year break.

However, despite Malcolm Turnbull having a solid edge over Shorten in terms of personal approval and preferred prime minister, Labor continues to lead the coalition in two-party terms.

The government had more balls in the air this week than the Cirque du Soleil.

Espionage laws, resolving MP citizenship, foreign donations, defence contracts, same-sex marriage, economic growth figures, defending the national broadband network and support for first home buyers were all in the mix.

Turnbull's colleagues are keen for him to focus on two core issues heading into the new year - economic management and national security.

Both issues are consistently rated by voters as strong points for the coalition and weaknesses for Labor.

The mid-year economic and fiscal outlook to be released shortly will be one opportunity to reset the conversation.

However, the coalition's focus has been blurred by distractions - many of which are not of the government's making - giving the impression Labor is the more unified side, taking the lead on policy and on top of the political agenda.

There is more scope for distraction.

A Labor stunt on Wednesday to refer a "prisoner swap" of nine MPs - four ALP, four coalition and one independent - to the High Court to sort out their eligibility resulted in the government kicking the citizenship issue into the new year.

There is also potential for the banking royal commission and the report of the inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, due on December 15, to dominate the airwaves.

And a loss in the Bennelong by-election would reignite internal bickering over Turnbull's leadership.

Feral could be the new norm.
A natural rat exterminator, the southern boobook owl is under threat from household poisons used to kill the rodents, a Perth researcher says.

About the size of a dinner plate, the species is the smallest owl in Australia with a familiar night-time call heard across most regions.

But numbers of the once-common bird have fallen over the past 15 years.

Unfortunately for the boobook, its ability to cope with habitat loss and adapt to urban areas has brought it into conflict with rat baiting.

Edith Cowan University PhD candidate Michael Lohr conducted autopsies on dead boobooks and found 70 per cent contained toxins from commercial rat poisons.

Mr Lohr said the owl deaths were caused by Australian household's using poisons restricted in many other countries.

"Rodenticides such as the commonly-used Brodifacoum are anti-coagulants that are very strong and chemically stable, having a half-life of 200 days," he said.

Half-life is the time taken until a product breaks down half the toxin in their bodies.

The poison works by blocking the vermin's ability to produce vitamin K.

Most animals have up to seven days' worth of vitamin K in their bodies, meaning they can keep feeding on the baits for longer, increasing toxin levels in their systems and drawing out their deaths.

Anti-coagulant rat poisons had a half-life of 16 days and were not as damaging to predators.

But rats built up a resistance, causing much stronger, longer-lasting chemicals to be made, capable of killing rats with a single dose.

These toxins will make the rat act abnormally, venturing out in the day and making it an easy target for hungry predators.

When an owl eats a bait-ridden rodent they are consuming toxins that will stay in their system for a long time.

"The more the boobook consume, the higher the toxic load in their liver, until they reach a fatal dose," Mr Lohr said.

Other animals including cats, hawks and eagles can also receive secondary poisoning by eating toxin-filled animals.
The NRMA may best be known for its roadside assistance, but its portfolio is expanding to the water with the takeover of Sydney's Manly Fast Ferry.

"For years, Manly Fast Ferry has been a beacon of fast transport in a region notorious for its limited transport options and roads that remain among the most congested in the city," said NRMA chairman Tim Trumper said in a statement on Thursday.

Last year the Manly Fast Ferry's 10 vessels transported more than 3.2 million people between the city and the Northern Beaches, as well as on whale watching tours.

A trip from Manly to Circular Quay on the Fast Ferry takes approximately 18 minutes, according to NRMA, which along with vessels, is also moving into business ventures including an electric vehicle charging network and Travelodge Hotels.

"This significant announcement sends a clear message that while our history was around the automobile our future represents this and much more," Mr Trumper said.

The founding owners of Manly Fast Ferry, Will and Richard Ford, will stay on in their roles as chief executive officer and chief operating officer.
A Sydney Trains employee has been charged after he allegedly flashed a female passenger while in uniform in the city's west.

The 35-year-old boarded a train at Blacktown on the evening of November 23 and sat opposite the 21-year-old woman.

Police said he then exposed himself before committing an "act of indecency" some time before the woman left the carriage at Lidcombe railway station.

He was arrested at Parramatta on Wednesday and charged with wilful and obscene exposure and committing and act of indecency.

The man was granted conditional bail and is expected to appear at Parramatta Local Court in January.

Sydney Trains has been contacted for comment.
A detective who has dedicated her time in the troubled Pilbara region to providing a safe environment for child sex abuse victims to come forward has won the top honour at the WA Police Excellence Awards.

Detective Sergeant Gina Horch, who is currently based in Karratha, heavily involves herself in the community, gaining trust and building a rapport with the locals.

Det Sgt Horch has also built relationships with other government and non-government agencies in the area to assist victims.

She received multiple nominations, including from colleagues who described her as a great role model.

The winner of the team category was the Midland Police CBD Team for targeting significant anti-social behaviour and theft in the area.

The three team members have instigated initiatives that have challenged the norm and reduced crime.

They focus on redirecting offenders to counselling or other avenues to curb their behaviour, and have also become mentors to youths.

Police Minister Michelle Roberts said there were 153 nominations this year, with the winners each receiving a $5000 prize.
All but 55 customers of Montana-Dakota Utilities in Tioga had their natural gas service restored by 3 p.m. Wednesday after a citywide outage the day before.

MDU spokesman Mark Hanson said the outage affected 909 customers in Tioga, stemming from an apparent failure in the gas supplier's backup system during maintenance Tuesday afternoon.

Fifty MDU technicians from around North Dakota and eastern Montana traveled to Tioga Tuesday evening to manually reset every customer's natural gas meter and relight appliances.

Techs worked throughout the night to correct services for 650 customers by 8 a.m., Hanson said. MDU prioritized Tioga's nursing home and hospital, Tioga Police Officer Mia Lefever said Tuesday.

Tioga's coal-heated high school opened as a shelter for those residents without heat. Principal Brodie Odegaard said, as far as he knew, no one stayed at the school.

Tioga Police Chief Corey Murphy said police had no calls for service related to the outage during the night and Wednesday morning.

"I think everybody's been warm," he said around noon Wednesday.

MDU's local district representative will now work with the city to contact any residents or businesses who have not responded to technicians' visits.

"We'll be working a number of different ways to get those final ones," said Hanson, adding they might be using auto dialer phone messages and a website alert.

He said he knew of no frozen pipes or related problems from the outage.

Temperatures dropped to single digits in Tioga overnight into Wednesday, with a high of 8 during the day.

Tioga is a city of about 1,600 residents in northwestern North Dakota, about 40 miles east of Williston.
Faulty Christmas lights were to blame for a house fire in Tasmania which sent three residents running for their lives.

The front half of the home at Montello in the state's northwest went up in flames in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Two women and a man were found sheltering in the backyard of the badly destroyed property, which suffered $300,000 damage.

"The occupants of this property were lucky to escape," Tasmania Fire Service regional fire investigator Anthony Goss said.

"We believe the fire was caused by a failure of the small connection box on a Christmas lights set which has caused it to heat up and catch fire."

Mr Goss said the trio were altered to the fire by smoke alarms.

He's urged all home owners to check Christmas lights for damage.
The Defence Department has told residents of a small Queensland town there are no health impacts from its leaked chemicals, but they should still not drink or use local water.

The department presented its final investigation into the health and environmental impacts of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on residents surrounding the Army Aviation Centre in Oakey, on Wednesday at a community meeting and one-to-one on Thursday.

"There's no conclusive evidence of adverse human health impact from PFAS," Defence Department spokesman Chris Birrer told reporters.
Injured Australian diver Melissa Wu will rely on the discretion of selectors for a ticket to next year's Commonwealth Games.

The 25-year-old took to Instagram on Thursday to announce that bulging discs in her back will keep her out of next week's trials on the Gold Coast.

The triple Olympian competed at the FINA Grand Prix on the Gold Coast last month, winning gold with Taneka Kovchenko in the 10m syncronised event.

Wu won silver at Melbourne's Games as a 13-year-old but back, knee and neck injuries have been stumbling blocks in recent years.

"It's definitely frustrating to have worked so hard to prepare for trials only to have injury get the better of me," she wrote.

"I will continue to work hard ... to overcome this injury and get this battered old body ready for next year."

The top two in the 3m and 10m divisions at the Commonwealth Games trials will earn selection for next year's Games.

But Wu could still find her way on to what would be a fourth Games team, with Diving Australia able to select a third athlete for individual events and an additional syncronised team at its discretion.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says a Labor MP should not be sitting in parliament as she is still a UK citizen, but he's declined to refer her to the High Court.

Queensland-born MP Susan Lamb's father was born in Scotland in 1945 and his parents were born in the UK.

The member for Longman said in her citizenship declaration to parliament she "may have acquired British citizenship by descent" via her father.

She completed a renunciation form on May 24 last year and payment for processing the application was taken by the UK Home Office on June 6, three days before nominations closed for the election.

But on July 7, 2016, the Home Office wrote to her saying "we cannot be satisfied from the documents available that you hold British citizenship. The application has therefore been refused."

Ms Lamb, who ticked a box on the parliamentary form saying she was a British citizen at the time of nomination, says she has legal advice stating she satisfied all legal requirements for renouncing British citizenship.

But Mr Turnbull told parliament on Thursday Ms Lamb was in the same position as former One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, who was disqualified by the High Court in October.

"Her declaration makes it clear that her attempts to renounce her British citizenship were unsuccessful and so she is in the same position as Senator Malcolm Roberts," he said.

"She has declared she's a UK citizen. She should not be sitting in the parliament."

Labor sought to refer Ms Lamb to the court on Wednesday, as part of a group of nine parliamentarians, including four Liberal MPs, but the government voted it down.
An unlicensed Tasmanian driver has been caught hiding in a pine tree in a farmer's paddock in an audacious attempt to avoid police.

The 26-year-old was one of three dangerous drivers nabbed by police in the state's far northwest on Wednesday.

He failed to pull over for officers in Smithton, but was later found in the tree, police say.

He then failed a roadside drug test and faces several charges including dangerous driving.

Another driver was caught travelling 149km/h, while a motorcyclist was busted travelling 160km/h.

"The three detections are all extremely concerning, particularly relating to the significantly high speeds and blatant disregard of the law," acting inspector Adrian Shadbolt said.
As dual citizenship speculation swirls through Canberra, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke has assured a Sydney pub he's "ridgy-didge".

Sitting at a bar in Sydney's eastern suburbs on his 88th birthday, Mr Hawke on Thursday told reporters he was "coming good" after a spell in hospital some weeks ago.

Mr Hawke wouldn't be drawn on the current citizenship scandal rocking federal parliament, but assured the pub there was no such confusion with his eligibility.

"I'm ridgy-didge," he laughed after unveiling a wax sculpture of himself holding a can of Hawke's Lager.

Mr Hawke's proceeds from the beer go towards Landcare, the rural program he elevated from a grass-roots community program to a national movement as prime minister in 1989.
British challenger Gary Corcoran has accused Jeff Horn of headbutting Manny Pacquiao and expects more of the same in their WBO welterweight world title fight in Brisbane on Wednesday night.

Unheralded Corcoran sensationally claimed Horn was known for leading with his head, saying the Australian headbutted 11-time champion Pacquiao in his shock July world title triumph at Suncorp Stadium.

"It's the way he fights. I am expecting it. I have been headbutted before so it doesn't bother me but Jeff is known for using his head," Corcoran said.
Draft laws to limit risks to Australia's water, energy, port and telecommunications assets from foreign powers have been introduced to parliament.

Legislation tabled in the Senate on Thursday will establish a register of assets and give the minister increased powers to step in when national security risks are identified.

"While recognising its many benefits, increasing foreign involvement in our national critical infrastructure means that Australia ... is more exposed than ever to sabotage, espionage and coercion," Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told parliament.
Even the most hardened gluttons for punishment struggle to pay attention to federal politics at times.

But as parliament edged closer to passing historic marriage equality laws, the house on the hill was bursting at the seams with enthusiastic onlookers.

Same-sex couples who spent the morning dancing outside spilled into the public galleries to watch politicians pave the way for them to marry.

So full were the galleries that the building's custodians took the unusual step of inviting advocates, allies and families into an adjoining theatre to watch proceedings on a big screen.

Failed amendments fell away throughout the morning and the final vote edged ever closer, but debate on the bill had taken much longer than expected.

Suddenly, the Speaker pointed to the clock, for question time had arrived.

Crowds in the public galleries thinned out and those who remained dressed in rainbow scarves and shirts slouched in their seats, folded their arms and chatted restlessly among themselves.

And then, a glimmer of hope.

Bill Shorten rose to reveal he had contacted the PM to propose canning the hour-long interrogations to crack on with marriage equality instead.

"Will the prime minister join with Labor to get this done as soon as possible?" the opposition leader asked.

Spectators thrust forward on their seats. An olive branch for the weary on the last sitting day for the year.

"This must be the first time the leader of an opposition has asked that question time be abandoned - I wonder why?" the PM pondered aloud.

The hours of Labor's "fancy footwork" stirring trouble in deputy Barnaby Joyce's absence were evidently still fresh in his mind.

No deal, Turnbull declared.

Few eyebrows were raised in the hour that followed, as Labor raked over old coals about internet connections and the coalition spruiked their candidate for a Sydney by-election.

Backbenchers scribbled away at Christmas cards and twiddled away on Twitter, keeping their heckling to a dull roar.

A raucous "wall of noise" which had erupted throughout the week when embattled Senator Sam Dastyari's name was uttered had obviously fallen down.

Even a cheeky "Senator Double Agent Sam Dastyari" sledge failed to attract much attention, save for a few audible groans.

A brief moment of excitement came deep in the play when Mr Joyce - without a hint of irony - derided the opposition for allowing an MP to continue casting votes while facing questions about his foreign ties.

A few minutes before tea, Turnbull knocked off the bails and declared it was time to return to the main game.

Marriage laws retook centre stage and the finish line returned to sight.
People who blow the whistle on corporate tax cheats will be protected under new laws that aim to encourage people to report white collar crime.

The new protections will help protect the identity of people who report suspected tax offences, as well as allowing anonymous disclosures.

Special Minister of State Mathias Cormann introduced the law changes, which were promised in the May budget, to the Senate on Thursday.

"Officers, employees and taxpayers will now be aware that there is a significantly higher likelihood that misconduct will be reported," Senator Cormann told parliament.

Companies will no longer be able to use protections as a defence for failing to start internal investigations, while large organisations will be forced to have a whistleblower policy.

"These reforms will encourage the Australian business community to assess corporate governance frameworks and to take stock of current whistleblower practices and procedures," Senator Cormann said.

It will also be easier for whistleblowers to seek redress for damage caused by speaking out.
Theres a lot of interest in a task force Gov. Doug Burgum is forming to study governance of public colleges and universities. The governors office has received 234 applicants for the 15-member committee.

That reflects widespread interest in higher education in North Dakota, which is good. The applicants are no doubt motivated by a variety of reasons, but they should share one goal: improving education in the state. Burgum has stressed the committee will look at governance, not at eliminating any of the states colleges or universities. The state Board of Higher Education has passed a resolution asking Burgum to allow them representation on the task force.

Thats a reasonable request. The task force will need feedback from those who have been working closely on higher education issues for the last few years. Burgum has indicated the board will be included in the task force's work. Three members of the board have applied to be on the task force: board chairman Don Morton, a retired Microsoft executive from Fargo; Greg Stemen, branch manager of First Community Credit Union in Oakes; and Kevin Melicher, an optometrist.

If one of the board members isnt appointed to the task force then at least one should be named an adviser to the group. The task force needs to tap into their knowledge. Its going to be a challenge for the task force to accomplish the work ahead.

Burgum will be reviewing the large pool of applicants this month and hopes to convene the first meeting later this month or in early January, according to Mike Nowatzki, Burgums communications director. When the first meeting is held will be dependent on the availability of the members he selects.

He wants the task force to develop proposals for the 2019 Legislature, which convenes in a little over a year. Thats not a lot of time to hold meetings, gather information and develop proposals.

The task force will hear from a lot of people with different agendas. Administrators, faculty, students, parents and legislators will no doubt offer conflicting suggestions. Coming up with creative and workable proposals and getting them through the Legislature will be a daunting task. We need a system of higher education governance thats open, effective and has the confidence of the public.

Its a tough job that needs to be tackled.
Despite the sense of relief with the passing of same-sex marriage laws, the politics of it doesn't come to an immediate end.

There are many within the Turnbull government who feel cheated none of their changes were successful and will hold onto their disgruntlement for some time to come.

The term "proper protections" is a phrase most commonly used by critics of the bill who lost the vote on every proposed amendment as they spoke on behalf of five million 'no' voters.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce described it in typically blunt fashion: "Total victory is total tyranny."

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese countered with a Rolling Stones reference: "Those great philosophers, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, once sung 'You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need'. This bill is what these people need."

Unsuccessful amendments included exemptions for civil celebrants, small businesses and religious charities, protections against organisations losing their funding or charitable status if they disagree with same-sex marriage, and two definitions of marriage - one for men and women, and another for two people.

Conservative cabinet minister Peter Dutton accepted that in the end it was a numbers game in parliament.

He looks forward to an inquiry into religious freedoms led by former minister Philip Ruddock.

It is this inquiry, and its recommendations including possible legislation, which will keep the issue burning into next year.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has said any future legislation on religious freedoms would not be the subject of a Labor MP conscience vote, paving the way for a battle with the coalition if it goes down that path.

Treasurer Scott Morrison, an opponent of same-sex marriage, is confident Ruddock has the skills to identify any deficiencies in the law and recommend new protections.

"It doesn't replace what many of us believe we need to do in the (parliament) ... but you've got to be careful about making changes that ... you don't have any unintended consequences," he said just after the Ruddock review announcement.

"I'm for religious freedoms, not for religious extremism."

A recent UN Human Rights Committee report appears to back up concerns about religious freedom.

The report raised concerns about Australia's anti-discrimination laws, including the lack of direct protection against discrimination on the basis of religion and the absence of a comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation.

As the first Australian same-sex couples clink champagne glasses, Ruddock's report, due at the end of March, will keep the issue bubbling along.
"What a day! What a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it." - Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

"We are no longer a nation of people who voted no, or people who voted yes - we are simply Australians one and all." - Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

"Love has won and it's time to pop the bubbly." - Greens MP Adam Bandt.

"By the end of today Australia will be better, kinder, fairer place for all of us." - Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek.

"You have had your day. The time has come to give the LGBTI community freedom from religion." - Independent Andrew Wilkie to those supporting amendments.

"Gay means beautiful, light, attractive, ethereal ... they took the word gay off us and now they are taking the word marriage off us." - Independent Bob Katter, who opposed the law change.

"There are many members who would be only too happy to open the bar for you and then we could all come back and do this, but do it in the right way." - Tony Abbott urging MPs and the public gallery to support further debate on amendments.

"We are all a bit hungry, thirsty and tired, but democracy has been served." - Tony Abbott's lesbian sister Christine Forster.
As the historic vote on same-sex marriage laws drew closer, Elizabeth Santolin turned to her partner and revealed she had thought she would never feel normal or accepted.

Then, on Thursday evening, the couple watched on as federal politicians voted emphatically in favour of marriage equality.

"I just never thought this moment would happen, so to see it and be a part of it is just absolutely crazy, so crazy good," Ms Santolin told AAP outside the public gallery.

"I think for the first time, just feeling really accepted and loved, there was so much love going around. No more division, no more feeling outside, just accepted and loved. Just really, really together. Australian."

The couple shed tears and embraced as they soaked up the moment, surrounded by hundreds of like-minded Australians.

For her partner Hannah McIntosh, the most powerful image was seeing all bar four parliamentarians vote to allow the pair to wed.

So what's next for the Canberra couple, after enjoying the champagne on ice at home with their friends and family?

"We're going to have to get married," Ms Santolin said.
Embattled Labor senator Sam Dastyari could be referred to a parliamentary committee over allegations he advanced Chinese interests in Senate estimates hearings in return for payment.

Attorney-General George Brandis will move a motion to refer Senator Dastyari to parliament's privileges committee when the Senate sits again in February over what he says appears to be a "very serious breach".

Senate President Scott Ryan said he had received a letter from Senator Brandis concerning Senator Dastyari receiving payments from companies Yuhu Group and Top Education to settle debts, before "echoing" Chinese policy positions through more than 100 questions in estimates hearings.
A Fijian man with scars on his back from falling onto a barbed wire fence carries the marks of modern slavery in Australia.

Moceica Turaga was trafficked from his home country to pick grapes and watermelons in Victoria.

He worked 12 hour days, seven days a week but never received a pay check.

He's just one of the victims of modern slavery who gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry.

The committee handed down its report on Thursday night.

Among the 49 recommendations was a call for Australia establish modern slavery laws and a special commissioner.

The inquiry looked at the effectiveness of the UK's modern slavery act.

Committee chair Liberal MP Chris Crewther spoke of a shocking case in his Victorian electorate in which a woman was forced to live in a wall cavity at a brothel.

There are an estimated 40 million victims of modern slavery, including 4300 in Australia, he said.

The committee also recommended:

* More training for the federal police and immigration department officials.

* A compensation scheme for victims.

* An education campaign to discourage Australians from taking part in orphanage tourism which exploits children.

* An overhaul of tied visas that can put migrant workers at risk of being exploited on farms.
Amid tensions in the Middle East over the US move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Australia is warning those travelling in the region to be alert for violent protests.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned travellers heading to Jordan, Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank there may be widespread protests over the move by the Trump administration.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop confirmed on Thursday that Australia would be leaving its embassy in Tel Aviv.

Updated advice on DFAT's Smart Traveller website said Australian officials were limiting non-essential travel in Gaza and the West Bank.

"In response to an anticipated US announcement on Jerusalem on 6 December 2017, the Palestinians have called for protests in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza from 6 December," the advice said. "Large protests are likely, particularly after Friday prayers, and could result in violence. Avoid demonstrations and monitor the media about possible unrest."

It also issued a similar warning on its advice for travel in Jordan.
Nearly 200 new NSW Police recruits are set to be welcomed into the force during a parade at the Police Academy in Goulburn.

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, NSW Governor David Hurley, Minister for Police Troy Grant and Member for Goulburn Pru Goward will inspect the 199 new recruits before they are formally sworn in as probationary constables on Friday morning.

Class 332 consists of 150 policemen and 49 policewomen who will complete a year of training and study before being confirmed to the rank of Constable.

The occasion will also be used to farewell retiring Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch, who has spent nearly four decades serving the NSW Police Force.
The hunt continues for two men accused of shooting a Gold Coast man in the face outside his home.

The 36-year-old and a colleague were leaving for work from an Upper Coomera home on Thursday morning when a car pulled up and a man got out and shot at them, hitting the man in the eye.

The injured man and his workmate fled to a neighbour's yard and rang emergency services, and he was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital in a stable condition.

Inspector Jim Plowman said on Thursday police are investigating whether there were any links to organised crime.

"I believe from the little information I have that these people are known to each other and this was certainly a targeted incident," he told reporters on the Gold Coast.

The man's family were not at home when the shooting occurred, and the offenders remain on the run as police urge anyone with information to come forward.
Liberal National Party leader Tim Nicholls could concede defeat in the Queensland election as early as Friday, with Labor now looking certain to win majority government.

It's been nearly a fortnight since the November 25 election day, but with the vote count extremely close the LNP has been waiting on results in a handful of marginal electorates .

However, after the electoral commission declared results in dozens of seats on Thursday, a clearer picture has emerged of the likely makeup of the new 93-seat parliament.

Labor now looks on track to win 48 seats, which would give it a two-seat majority and a slight amount of breathing room, meaning they wouldn't have to deal with the minor parties to form government.

The LNP meanwhile would only reach 39, although the party was refusing to concede on Thursday, claiming some marginal electorates such as Thuringowa and Mundingburra could still go their way.

Even if that were the case there would be no clear path to power for the LNP, with Katter's Australian Party picking up three seats, the Greens and One Nation one each, and independent Sandy Bolton winning Noosa.

Only a handful of seats remained undeclared late on Thursday, and a final result could be handed down by Friday, barring any calls for recounts.
Melbourne will pay tribute to the victims of the Queen Street massacre, 30 years after the shooting claimed eight lives.

A wreath will be laid on Friday morning at the now-H&M building, formerly the Melbourne GPO, on the corner of Queen and Bourke streets where failed law student Frank Vitkovic, shot dead eight people then plunged 11 floors to his death.

Vitkovic entered the Australia Post building just after 4pm on December 8, 1987, intent on killing former schoolmate Con Margelis.

He made his way to the fifth floor, pulled his shotgun from under his jacket and fired at Margelis.

But the weapon misfired and as Margelis escaped - warning colleagues as he fled - Vitkovic opened fire indiscriminately.

Judith Morris, Nancy Vignone, Rodney Brown, Catherine Dowling, Julie McBean, Michael McGuire, Marianne Van Ewyk and David Spencer were all killed.

The massacre came just four months after Julian Knight shot dead seven people in Hoddle Street, only five kilometres away at Clifton Hill.

Friday's wreath-laying will be followed by a public memorial service at St Michael's Church.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.

Multicultural Mental Health Australia www.mmha.org.au.

Local Aboriginal Medical Service details available from www.bettertoknow.org.au/AMS
Rescue crews and water police will scour areas near a NSW mid-north-coast beach where an 11-year-old boy was swept out to sea nearly two days ago.

Hopes are fading of finding the young ACT boy, who was caught in a rip on unpatrolled Lighthouse Beach at Port Macquarie about 1.30pm on Wednesday.

The search continued until nightfall on Thursday, with no sightings of the boy, and will resume on Friday morning.

Detective Inspector Guy Flaherty said the chances of finding the boy alive were falling.

The boy's mother could only watch as the boy, who was waist-deep in water, was sucked into the surf, while his older brother tried to rescue him.

The Westpac Rescue Helicopter and Police Marine Area Command resumed searching on Thursday morning with boats and jet skis.

Officers are also maintaining a presence on the beach and divers are entering the water, images posted on social media by NSW Police show.

Around 20 surf lifesavers and lifeguards are also involved in the search effort which involves three local surf lifesaving clubs.
Malcolm Turnbull says his government has scraped off three "difficult" barnacles weighing down the coalition as parliament wraps up for the year.

The prime minister says he has dealt with the issues of energy policy, same-sex marriage and the ongoing citizenship fiasco.

With the historic same-sex marriage legislation passing on the last sitting day of the year, Mr Turnbull told the ABC on Thursday it had been a very difficult issue but was now the "law of the land".

He said the coalition had been transparent with the dramas thrown up by the dual citizenship crisis that has resulted in disqualifications and resignations in both houses and threw the heat onto Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

"Labor is the one that is running, you know, the protection racket on some of it's MPs," Mr Turnbull told 7.30.

Finally, he said the coalition's energy policy had won broad support, including from some Labor states.
Unions will escalate their picket at the Melbourne port in an ongoing dispute over a casual worker who was denied a security clearance because of a conviction.

A rally has been called for 10am Friday at the Webb Dock, which has been picketed now for two weeks and which the Victorian International Container Terminal says threatens more than $100 million in business growth.

VICT successfully got a Supreme Court order for the Maritime Union Australia to stop the picket a week ago, but other unions have taken up the line since.
Julian Wilson needs the three men above him to bomb out at Hawaii's famed Pipeline, but it is the man below that may ultimately cruel the Australian surfer's world title charge.

The Coolum product sits fourth ahead of the World Surf League finale, with nothing short of a Pipe Masters win needed to claim his first title.

Series leader John John Florence will defend his crown if he makes the final, but Brazilian Gabriel Medina and South Africa's Jordy Smith in second and third will prey on any mistake made by the Hawaiian.

Eight different men have won the 10 events to date, with Wilson's victory in Tahiti and a second in Portugal's most recent round keeping him in the hunt.

Wilson needs the top three to be knocked out in the third round or earlier to claim an unlikely victory, but he says fifth-placed Australian Owen Wright has every chance of scuppering his best-laid plans regardless.

A wipeout in the days leading into the 2015 Pipe Masters left Wright with life-threatening head trauma that has kept him away from the break ever since.

But with the support of sister and newly crowned women's world champion Tyler, who has returned to Hawaii to watch, Wilson sees Wright as a legitimate contender.

"He hasn't been here for a couple of years but I'd say he's definitely one of the favourites for sure," the 29-year-old told AAP.

"What Tyler did was incredible; she's so tenacious and it'll give him a boost."

In Wilson's favour is the fact he is the only man in world title contention to win at Pipeline, while he says the likelihood of a favourite being knocked out early is at its highest level all season.

The 32-man Pipe Invitational is scheduled to begin Saturday (AEDT), with the top two progressing to the main draw and capable of beating anyone in the field.

"It's the strongest wildcard field all year, so there's every chance of something (like an upset) happening early," he said.

"I'm such a long shot, but if a door opens I'll take it."

A 2.5m swell is forecast to grow larger from Saturday, with a likely round one start on Tuesday AEDT.

World Surf League Men's Standings

1. John John Florence (USA) 53,350

2. Gabriel Medina (BRA) 50,250

3. Jordy Smith (SAF) 47,600

4. Julian Wilson (AUS) 45,200

5. Owen Wright (AUS) 39,850

*10,000 points awarded to the round's winner
Gay men are being urged to get a free meningococcal vaccination following an outbreak of the deadly disease in Victoria.

Eight cases have been identified across Melbourne since May, almost all in gay and bisexual men, and the vaccines wil be available from December 11 until June 30, the state's deputy chief health officer Dr Brett Sutton said in a statement on Friday.

The infection can lead to meningitis and sepsis, which can be deadly in up to 10 per cent of cases, and about 20 per cent of people who survive the disease are left with a permanent disability, such as brain damage or the loss of fingers, toes or limbs.
A army-led crackdown has forced some 626,000 people to flee Myanmar's northern Rakhine state and cross the border into squalid camps in Bangladesh in recent months

China said Wednesday that a UN resolution expressing grave concern over widespread abuses committed against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority "cannot help to ease the tensions and solve the problem".

Beijing voted against a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council that said abuses in Myanmar indicated "the very likely commission of crimes against humanity".

"It will probably complicate the issue and have some negative influence on implementing the repatriation agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a regular press briefing, referring to a deal signed in November to start returning Rohingya refugees within two months.

"This is not in the interest of Bangladesh, Myanmar or the international community."

China was one of only three countries that opposed the text, which passed Tuesday with 33 of the council's 47 member states voting in its favour.

A army-led crackdown has forced some 626,000 people to flee the northern Rakhine state and cross the border into squalid camps in Bangladesh in recent months, and left hundreds of villages burned to the ground.

Myanmar's military vehemently denies accusations by the UN and the US that it has committed ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

But in his address to Tuesday's special council session, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein went even further by suggesting that "elements of genocide may be present".

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar and Bangladesh last month, proposing a "three-phase solution" that starts with a ceasefire in Rakhine, followed by continued talks between the countries and concluding with a long-term solution focused on poverty alleviation.

The proposal was "warmly received by relevant parties," Geng said Wednesday.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited Beijing last week, meeting with President Xi Jinping and attending a global meeting of political organisations hosted by the Chinese Communist Party.
Trees are seen through the haze at the burned-out Vista del Mar Hospital after the Thomas wildfire swept through Ventura, California

Local emergency officials warned of powerful winds on Thursday that will feed wildfires raging in Los Angeles, threatening multi-million dollar mansions with blazes that have already forced more than 200,000 people to flee.

Authorities issued a "purple" alert -- never used before -- because of the extreme danger, warning that winds could reach 80 miles an hour (128 kilometers an hour), severely limiting firefighting efforts.

"As expected winds have increased dramatically," Cal Fire, the agency responsible for fire protection in the state, said on Twitter. "Stay alert and prepared in case of evacuations. If you feel unsafe, evacuate."

The flames have swallowed about 80,000 acres (32,000 hectares) in just over a day since the "Thomas" fire, currently the state's largest, broke out, leaving at least one person dead in an area about 45 minutes' drive from downtown LA.

The flames have swallowed about 80,000 acres (32,000 hectares) in just over a day since the fire broke out

High winds caused another wave of wildfires to erupt on Tuesday night, including one in Los Angeles' affluent Bel-Air neighborhood.

The area battled gridlocked traffic as residents fled ash and smoke that churned over the smoldering hillside in the second-largest US city.

Fire crews worked to save luxury homes threatened by the flames.

- Celebrities evacuated -

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said more than 230,000 people had been forced from their homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

"Very strong winds" blowing from the northeast to the southwest were causing the fire to balloon, he said, warning Angelenos to be ready to flee at a moment's notice.

In Bel-Air, that's exactly what they did.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said more than 230,000 people had been forced from their homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The "Skirball" fire ignited Wednesday morning and quickly grew to engulf about 150 acres around the district, home to celebrities and billionaires including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and pop superstar Beyonce.

Police knocked on doors and used loudspeakers to make sure everybody had left their mansions.

"They told even us to leave," one of the officers said.

Among the last to go was Evan Kleib, a bearded photographer, locking his door. He put his camera and his dogs in his vintage burgundy car and left the home where he has lived for several years, its fate uncertain.

US media reported that the Bel-Air Moraga Estate of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, which contains a vineyard, was threatened by the wildfire.

The singer Lionel Richie cancelled a concert to help his ex-wife flee the area, while comedian Chelsea Handler and designer Adrienne Maloof were among celebrities tweeting that they had to evacuate.

Among those evacuated was model Chrissy Teigen, wife of singer John Legend. "Never thought I'd get to actually play what I thought was a hypothetical game of what would you grab if there were a fire," Teigen wrote on Twitter.

"We are fine and we will be fine. thinking of everyone else affected and continuing my lifelong intense love of firefighters," she added.

Forecasters predicted that winds could cause fires to spread further, threatening more upscale homes and the acclaimed Getty Center museum.

The "Skirball" fire -- near a cultural center of the same name -- also prompted authorities to close the 405 Freeway, a major commuting corridor.

Residents of wealthy LA neighborhoods between Mulholland Drive to the north and Sunset Boulevard to the south were part of the evacuation zone.

- Flames menacing art -

The Getty arts institution -- home to masterpieces including works by Edouard Manet -- was closed until at least Thursday.

Museum authorities tweeted that "air filtration systems are protecting the galleries from smoke."

The prestigious University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is near the same area and also ended up evacuating, after students began the day wearing masks.

US President Donald Trump tweeted a message of "thoughts and prayers" to California as it nears the end of its deadliest year ever for wildfires

Dozens of schools were closed, as was Santa Monica College.

Just north in Ventura County the "Thomas" blaze continued out of control, after erupting in the hills of oak and scrub north of Santa Paula, powered by strong seasonal guests known as Santa Ana winds.

- State of emergency -

At least 4,000 firefighters were deployed across the entire fire zone, including on the scene of the "Rye" blaze -- which had grown to 7,000 acres in the Santa Clarita area -- as well as the "Creek" fire north of downtown Los Angeles that had grown to more than 11,000 acres.

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency over the area on Tuesday.

A motorist involved in a traffic accident waits to get towed beside a wall of flames during the Thomas wildfire near Ventura, California

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said it had released funds for relief services.

US President Donald Trump tweeted a message of "thoughts and prayers" to California as it nears the end of its deadliest year ever for wildfires.

burs-it/ska-ch/ser
Saudi King Salman had warned that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a 'dangerous step'

Saudi Arabia on Thursday slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city on Wednesday, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said.

"The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.
Turkish pro-Kurdish opposition leader Selahattin Demirtas has spent more than a year behind bars

Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition party leader goes on trial in Ankara on Thursday over alleged links to Kurdish militants, after spending more than a year behind bars in a case his supporters say is politically motivated.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was first detained in November last year in a crackdown under the state of emergency that followed 2016's failed coup.

Before his arrest Demirtas was considered one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's major rivals, a silky orator who has succeeded in bringing his party from the fringe into the political mainstream.

The HDP co-leader, 44, is charged with "managing a terror organisation", "making propaganda for a terror group", "inciting criminal acts" and more. He faces up to 142 years in prison if convicted.

Demirtas -- who is being held in prison in the northwestern region of Edirne, well away from his Kurdish heartland -- is not expected to appear in the first hearing of his trial in Ankara.

The HDP has denounced a letter it claimed the justice ministry sent to all courts prosecuting Demirtas, telling them not to allow the charismatic leader to appear in court.

- 'Political reasons' -

Before his arrest, Demirtas was considered one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's major rivals

A dozen HDP MPs were detained at the same time as Demirtas, including former co-chairwoman Figen Yuksekdag. She was stripped of her MP status in February and stepped down as co-party leader in May.

Nine HDP MPs are still in prison, including Demirtas and Yuksekdag.

Under Demirtas' leadership, the HDP took seats in the Turkish parliament as the second biggest opposition party, winning support from liberal and left-wing Turks beyond its Kurdish base.

But the government accuses the party of being a political front for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group blacklisted by Turkey and its Western allies.

Analysts say Demirtas never succeeded in fully distancing his party from the PKK, though the HDP denies the claims.

It has rubbished Ankara's accusations against its co-leader, saying Demirtas' 501-page indictment was mostly made up of press releases, speeches, panels and similar legal and political activities.

Demirtas is ensnared in nearly 100 legal cases, but this is the most serious and the one for which he has been held in prison for almost 400 days.

The party claimed the accusations were "prepared for political reasons, not legal ones" because they date back to events between 2011 and 2013 yet the HDP said the preparation was done in the first four months of 2016.

Further infuriating the HDP, the computer which contained Demirtas' defence for the hearing was stolen in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir.

Renowned US intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky was among authors and politicians who signed a petition this week calling for Demirtas and Yuksekdag to be released.

Demirtas supporters hold up the book of short stories he wrote in prison

While in prison, former human rights lawyer Demirtas has written poetry, produced artwork, tweeted through a third party and even written a selection of short stories entitled "Seher" ("Dawn" in Turkish).

The book's publisher Dipnot told AFP it had printed 155,000 copies of the book which was now in its 15th print run.

- 11,500 HDP officials detained -

After June 2015 legislative elections which the HDP hailed as a triumph, the two-year ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state fell apart and intense fighting resumed.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched its insurgency against Turkey in 1984.

Less than a year after the 2015 poll, parliament voted to lift MPs' immunity from prosecution, paving the way for the arrest of HDP lawmakers.

Since the government imposed a state of emergency after the July 2016 failed coup, tens of thousands of people have been arrested over alleged links to the putsch. Government critics and Kurdish activists have also been targeted.

The HDP has been hit hard with 11,500 officials, members and party sympathisers detained since the end of the ceasefire, while 4,537 have been formally arrested.
Drug overdoses have surged in the United States, killing 64,000 people last year. Most of those deaths were caused by opioids -- a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetics such as fentanyl

The United States has asked China to crack down on postal shipments of synthetic opioids, which President Donald Trump says are fueling a US drug-abuse crisis, a State Department official said Wednesday.

Because synthetic opioids, such as the highly potent drug fentanyl, are hard to detect in the mail, fighting drug trafficking into the United States has become "a completely different ballgame," said James Walsh of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Walsh met this week with Chinese counter-narcotics officials in Cancun, Mexico, on the sidelines of a global conference on drug addiction.

It was a follow-up to conversations between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump, who declared the US opioid crisis a national public health emergency in October and said the United States needed to stop "the flood of cheap and deadly fentanyl" coming from China.

Trump and Xi discussed the opioid crisis when they met in Beijing last month.

Ahead of that visit, Chinese officials disputed Trump's claim that most US-bound fentanyl comes from China.

But Walsh said his Chinese counterparts were receptive to working to curb shipments of opioids produced in Chinese labs.

"We've been asking China to get better control on their production, better assistance with monitoring their mail that's being shipped either to Mexico or the United States," he told AFP.

"We've had very good conversations."

Drug overdoses have surged in the United States, killing 64,000 people last year. Most of those deaths were caused by opioids -- a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetics such as fentanyl.

Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, which has made fighting it a challenge.

"One kilogram can supply a million pills," Walsh said.

"So you can just ship that in a FedEx box."

He said US officials were also in talks with Mexican counterparts on ways to crack down on opioids made in China and trafficked into the United States by Mexican drug cartels.

The traditional tactic of using dogs to sniff out drugs has not worked with fentanyl, which is so powerful it can kill them if they come into contact with it.

"We have a lot of experts working on" new canine training techniques and screening technology, he said.
Alejandro A. Alex Chafuen, longtime president of Washington-based Atlas Network, is joining the Acton Institute on January 1 as its Managing Director, International.

As one of our founding board members and earliest supporters, Alex has been an important part of the Acton Institutes work and mission since day one, said Acton Institute Executive Director Kris Mauren. Twenty-seven years later, we are truly honored to bring his invaluable experience and wisdom in the think tank industry to lead our global growth.

At Atlas Network, Chafuen was instrumental in the organizations mission of establishing and sustaining a network of free market think tanks all over the world. Today, Atlas Network connects more than 475 think tanks in m 90 countries. In his new role, Chafuen will help Acton expand its growing reach of international conferences, scholarly work and educational projects. In the latest report from the University of Pennsylvanias Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, Acton was ranked 11th in the top social policy think tanks in the world. At its 2017 Acton University conference in Grand Rapids, Acton welcomed more than 1,100 participants from 87 countries. In Rome on Nov. 29, Acton hosted a conference of 380 scholars, diplomats, clergy and journalists from more than 40 countries. With its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Acton also has offices in Rome and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Chafuen, who was born in Buenos Aires, said he was extremely thankful to the colleagues, donors and allies of Atlas Network who, for more than three decades, made possible the work of helping start and develop think tanks across the globe. I feel blessed to be able to join the action at Acton which, like no other think tank, can help us win the moral case for a free economy, he said.

Alex Chafuen is a tireless advocate for free markets and individual liberty, and our whole Atlas Network team is full of appreciation for his many accomplishments, said Atlas Network CEO Brad Lips.

Chafuen joined Atlas Network in 1985 and worked alongside its founder, Sir Antony Fisher. He is a trustee of Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and has been a member of the Mont Pelerin Society since 1980. A graduate of the Argentina Catholic University, he was a professor at the Argentine Catholic University, University of Buenos Aires, and The Hispanic American University. Chafuen, who holds a Ph.D. in economics, serves on several boards including the Chase Foundation of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is on the Members Committee of the John Templeton Foundation, the World Charity Foundation, and the Templeton Religion Trust.

He is a member of the board of advisers of The Philanthropic Enterprise, and was a member of the founding committee of Donors Trust. He is also the president and founder of the Hispanic American Center of Economic Research. Chafuen is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, writing a column called Intellectual Entrepreneurs which focuses on think tanks and policy scholars.

His book Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics (2003, Lexington Books) examines the Christian roots of free market economics and has been published in several editions in seven countries. He also wrote the introduction to A Treatise on the Alteration of Money by Juan de Mariana (2011, Acton Institute). Both books are available in the Acton shop.
Handbags made by migrants at the Lai-Momo headquarters, a vocational training programme to teach skills in leather bag making to those seeking asylum in Italy.

From forced labour in Libya to a job as a founding member of an Italian fashion start-up, Bassirou has come a long way in two years, thanks to his skills with scissors.

The 26-year-old Burkina Faso native is the star student of a novel project aimed at training asylum seekers in one of Italy's most emblematic crafts: making leather handbags

And after a 15-month apprenticeship, Bassirou has just become the first employee of a small company set up with the aim of turning the project into a self-sustaining venture.

"It is a great opportunity," he says of his new career move. "I had done a bit of cutting and sewing back home but that was with cloth, not leather.

"It wasn't easy at the start, every little thing seemed difficult, but after a certain point, you get the hang of it."

Bassirou left Burkina Faso in west Africa, and a partner then pregnant with his now two-year-old daughter, in 2015.

He says he fled because he feared for his life in the tumultuous aftermath of yet another military coup in the impoverished former French colony.

The EU-funded leather skills project is run by the social cooperative Lai-Momo in a small town near Bologna.

Now he is awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Italy and is one of some 400 recently-arrived immigrants being looked after by Lai-Momo, a social cooperative that runs the EU-funded leather skills project in the small town of Lama Di Reno near Bologna.

The decision to leave home was not an easy one, Bassirou says, and it is one he might have reconsidered had he known of the horrors that awaited him in Libya, the jumping off point for most Africans trying to get to Europe.

- 'It's slavery' -

Shocking recent images of slave auctions in the troubled north African state came as no surprise.

"These are things that are really happening in Libya," Bassirou told AFPTV.

"I had a bit of a taste of it. They put us in a prison. At any time they could come and get us to do forced labour, all sorts of jobs. They never gave us enough to eat.

"All that, it's slavery," he said.

Bassirou endured these conditions for four months before the traffickers controlling his fate finally put him onto an inflatable dinghy packed with over 100 others.

After many fraught hours at sea, mostly spent praying it would not sink, the overcrowded dinghy was spotted by a British ship.

"At the moment we were rescued there was a bit of a stampede to get off and the boat started taking on water. In the end they got everyone off."

The date, March 20, 2016, is etched permanently in his memory. "These are things you don't forget easily," he says.

Now he dreams of being able to open his own shop, but the future path of his life remains uncertain, as is the case for tens of thousands like him in overcrowded reception centres across Italy.

Few of them will benefit from the kind of support that has helped Bassirou pursue his education to Italian high school level, or the distraction from the stress that comes with living in limbo.

"Doing this (working), you are going to have positive rather than negative thoughts, you're thinking that when you're finished, you'll have a trade," he says.

- 'Return issue not easy' -

Issa, a migrant from Burkina Fasso, works at a sewing machine with the help of a volunteer at the training programme in leather bag making, one of 18 new participants.

A total of 15 migrants have completed the first round of training and another 18 have just started, including Bassirou's compatriot, Issa.

The 21-year-old recounts a similar tale about his time in Libya. "I have friends who are still there in slave camps," Issa says.

Having made it to Italy, he is now relieved to have escaped the frustrated boredom that is the lot of many asylum seekers.

"Before I came here, I was in another house, just sleeping all the time, doing nothing," he says.

"Now I feel much more relaxed. I have contact with (local) people and I'm beginning to learn the language."

Not all the apprentices can realistically aspire to the proficiency Bassirou has attained.

As some have limited literacy and numeracy, lessons in cutting have to be preceded by an introduction to basic concepts of measuring and geometry.

Lai-Momo says the goal of the programme is to give the migrants skills they need to enter the job market in Italy or if they return to their country of origin.

"The objective is to provide people with the ability and skills they need to enter the labour market here in Italy, but also in the event of a possible return to their country of origin," said Lai-Momo's president, Andrea Marchesini Reggiani.

The Lama Di Reno project is part of a wider programme overseen by the Ethical Fashion Initiative run by the United Nations and WTO-backed International Trade Centre with the aim of creating new economic opportunities in developing countries to help curb irregular migration.

People like Bassirou say going home is not an option they can contemplate, for now. And Marchesini Reggiani admits that the emphasis on voluntary repatriations can be problematic, given the risks, sacrifices and struggles involved in many migrants' journeys to Europe.

"For sure, it is not an easy thing to address the issue of return," he says. "For us the important thing is to give people skills. Whether they can use them here or whether they are refused the right to stay, they are being given an opportunity, let's say a plus.

"It is clear though that, after the journeys they have made, the ideal solution is to stay here and that's why we believe giving people the skills to work and integrate is so important."
Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro Blaise Diagne International Airport

Senegal opens a flagship new airport on Thursday seven years later than originally planned but with ambitions to become a west African regional hub with a capacity for three million passengers.

President Macky Sall will cut the ribbon at Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) at midday (1200 GMT) in the town of Diass, 47 kilometres (29 miles) from the capital of Dakar, while a plane from new airline Air Senegal will make the first symbolic takeoff.

Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro ($767 million) airport under former president Abdoulaye Wade, but unforeseen problems and a change of construction company have repeatedly delayed the project and ballooned costs.

Blaise Diagne -- named after the Senegalese MP who was the first African elected to France's parliament -- is at the heart of Sall's "Emerging Senegal" plan, which includes the construction of a new city, Diamniadio, close to the site in Diass.

As the country invests more heavily in tourism, Senegal is also betting on the facility's strategic position close to several beach resorts that are already heavily frequented by European holidaymakers.

Senegal hopes the new airport will make it a west African hub

"The airport will be key in the promotion of 'Destination Senegal'," Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne said in a speech on Tuesday, adding that airport services at the site would contribute to the development of the special economic zone nearby.

With a capacity of three million passengers, Blaise Diagne will still rank far below the busiest African airports and a long way off challenging Nigeria in the west African region, though plans for up to 10 million travellers are in the pipeline, according to officials.

- Uncertainty for new airline -

Passenger numbers have increased in recent years at Dakar's current airport in the middle of the city, leading to long waits at security and contributing to chronic traffic jams, and the old Leopold Sedar Senghor airport will become a military airfield from Friday.

The new airport boasts six footbridges direct to flight cabins, and will be able to service a range of aircraft including Airbus's massive A380s.

Work was completed on the 4,500-hectare site -- with 2,000 hectares unused in case of required expansion -- by Turkish consortium Summa-Limak after a disagreement with Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden construction derailed the final stage of preparations.

But bets on whether Blaise Diagne would open on time have lasted until the last minute amid complaints by major European airlines over fuel capacity and regulations.

Summa-Limak will now operate the airport for the next 25 years, furthering ever-closer economic ties between Ankara and Dakar.

A train linking the airport with the city is not expected to open for years, leaving taxi drivers in pocket but ordinary travellers nervous of arriving on time for flights in a city with unpredictable traffic.

Backed by loans from France's development agency the African Development Bank (ADB), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and Islamic lender the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), officials are celebrating the airport's completion -- but the future of Senegal's new airline is less certain.

Air Senegal still does not have all the licences required to begin commercial flights and has a fleet of just two ATR 72-600s, but Aviation Minister Maimouna Ndoye Seck said international ambitions for the airport meant a well-performing national airline was "a necessity".
There are about 2.5 million Musahars -- 'Rat Eaters' -- making up one of India's most marginalised communities

The rat kept crawling over Phekan Manjhi's arm as he battled to pin it to the ground before he eventually managed to kill it with repeated blows to the head.

The execution drew applause from neighbours huddled around the 60-year-old in a grimy courtyard outside his mud and straw hut. Another meal lined up for the Rat Eaters -- some of India's poorest people.

Phekan said it would take 15 minutes to prepare the rat stew, as he dissected the animal with his fingernails.

"Almost everyone here loves this and knows how it's prepared," he added.

"They are the poorest amongst the poorest and rarely hear about or get access to government schemes," said Sudha Varghese, who spent three-decades working among Musahars or 'Rat Eaters' of India

Phekan is one of about 2.5 million Musahars -- 'Rat Eaters' -- one of India's most marginalised communities. Even the browbeaten low-caste Dalits look down on them.

"They are the poorest amongst the poorest and rarely hear about or get access to government schemes," said Sudha Varghese, who spent three-decades working among Musahars in the northern state of Bihar, where most live and survive as dollar-a-day labourers.

- Rat eater minister -

"It's a daily struggle for the next meal and diseases like leprosy are an everyday reality," added Varghese, who was awarded India's top civilian honour for her work.

"Governments may have changed but nothing has changed for us. We still eat, live and sleep as our ancestors," one Musahar told AFP as he took the roasted rat off the fire and poked the tender meat

Phekan's neighbour in the village of Alampur Gonpura, 28-year-old Rakesh Manjhi, bemoaned his life.

"We sit at home all day with nothing to do. Some days we get work at the farm, on other days we go hungry or catch rats and eat it with whatever little grain we can get," Rakesh told AFP.

"Governments may have changed but nothing has changed for us. We still eat, live and sleep as our ancestors," said Phekan as he took the roasted rat off the fire and poked the tender meat.

He cut the flesh with his hands into a bowl and added mustard oil and salt.

The feast disappeared in seconds as a dozen men and half-naked children grabbed what they could.

"Nothing but education can change our lives and future," said Jitan Ram Manjhi, who in 2014 became the first Musahar chief minister of any Indian state.

"Nothing but education can change our lives and future," said Jitan Ram Manjhi, who in 2014 became the first Musahar chief minister of any Indian state

His nine-month tenure heading Bihar, one of India's most populous states, is considered a huge achievement for the Musahars.

"My community is so downtrodden that I think even government records don't yet show its real numbers, which could easily be around eight million," Jitan Ram added.

- Training for life -

As a child, the former minister herded cattle for a rich landowner who employed his parents as labourers.

"They were almost like bonded labourers, getting one kilogram of grain for each day's work. Even today, things haven't changed much for many," he added.

While there are well-intentioned oest programmes are often privately-run -- like the Shoshit Samadhan Kendra residential school for Musahar boys on the outskirts of the state capital Putna.

While there are well-intentioned oest programmes are often privately-run -- like the Shoshit Samadhan Kendra residential school for Musahar boys on the outskirts of the state capital Putna

"I started the school around a decade back with only four students and today it has 430, from remote Musahar communities across the state," founder J.K Sinha told AFP.

He discovered how Musahars live while on a police raid as a young officer four decades ago.

"They were cramped in a small hut with pigs and the filth. It was shocking. Inhumane. I can't forget it," Sinha said.

R.U Khan, the school principal, said the Musahars face discrimination, seclusion and squalor wherever they gather.

"Most still only work as farm labourers who are forced to catch rats or snails in fields and scavenge for grain if the crop fails," Khan said.

Out of 430 pupils at Shoshit Samadhan Kendra, 117 lost their fathers at an early age.

"Once here, it takes us at least a month to teach them the most basic personal and social skills -- like using toilets, personal hygiene, washing hands or eating food," Khan said.

The regular education only starts after. But once given a chance, the boys are proud to get the opportunity to improve their lives.

Bihar's Welfare Department Minister Ramesh Rishidev insisted that life has improved for the Musahars.

"We've been working hard with the different communities, which includes the Musahars," the minister told AFP.

"Our workers go to the communities to get their young enrolled in schools. They are linked to government skills and training projects to get them employment opportunities," he added.

Rishidev said that while in the past the Musahars ate rats to stave off hunger, most now do so out of a "cultivated taste and not compulsion."

"Some from the older generation still eat rats because it is like any other food they have. Most of the younger generation don't eat it. Things have improved and will further change," he added.

Many Shoshit Samadhan Kendra boys are the target of jokes when they return to their villages for holidays however.

"We often hear stories how their village friends taunt them to catch rats or scavenge for other food with them, like they used to earlier. And under pressure, some of them do," Khan said.
India and China border tensions

An Indian drone has "invaded" China's airspace and crashed, China's defence ministry said Thursday, months after the neighbours ended one of their worst border standoffs in decades.

"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, said in a statement.

Zhang did not give details about when or where the incident happened.

Chinese border troops "took a professional and responsible attitude" and carried out identification verification of the device, Zhang said.

"We will earnestly fulfil our mission of duty and firmly defend the sovereignty and security of our country," he added.

The Indian embassy in Beijing declined to comment.

In August, the two nations pulled back their troops to resolve a tense deadlock over part of a Himalayan plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan, an ally of India.

The standoff began in mid-June after Chinese troops started building a road on the remote Doklam plateau.

India has an army base nearby and moved soldiers into the flashpoint zone to halt the work, prompting Beijing to accuse it of trespassing on Chinese soil.

After both sides withdrew, India's army chief said in September that his country could not afford to be complacent and must be prepared for war.

"As far as our northern adversary is concerned, flexing of muscles has started," General Bipin Rawat said at a think tank event in New Delhi, in reference to China.

"The salami slicing, taking over territory in a very gradual manner... testing our limits of threshold is something we have to be wary about and remain prepared for situations which could gradually emerge into conflict," the army chief said.

Rawat said India also has concerns that its arch rival Pakistan -- an ally of China -- could take advantage of the tensions.

India and China went to war in 1962 over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The latest episode has fed into a broader competition for regional influence between the two Asian powers.

The two emerging economies both have large populations and a growing middle class.

China has invited India to join President Xi Jinping's new "Silk Road" project to revive ancient trade routes from Asia to Europe and Africa.

But the proposed economic corridor has alarmed India, partly because one of the links cut through Pakistan-administered Kashmir, disputed territory that New Delhi claims is illegally occupied.
The ICG said Rohingya militants could try to recruit desperate refugees languishing in the Bangladesh camps for future operations

Prolonged displacement of Rohingya refugees in squalid Bangladeshi camps poses a "grave security risk", conflict analysts ICG warned Thursday, raising the spectre of militants recruiting among the displaced and launching cross-border attacks on Myanmar.

Raids by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on August 25 sparked the vicious Myanmar army response which has forced more than 620,000 Rohingya to flee Rakhine state for Bangladesh.

ARSA "appears determined to regroup and remain relevant" and may draw on desperate Rohingya refugees languishing in camps for future operations, the ICG International Crisis Group said in the report.

The group may "shift to cross-border attacks" using Bangladesh as a base for recruitment and training, the study said, cautioning the risk of an ever-deepening cycle of violence is all too real.

"Such attacks would have profoundly negative consequences," straining Myanmar-Bangladesh relations and worsening contempt for the Rohingya "that would further diminish prospects of an eventual refugee return".

Global outcry over the refugee crisis, one of the worst in recent history, has triggered a hyper-defensive response inside the country, where anti-Rohingya attitudes have hardened since ARSA's emergence.

Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group eligible for citizenship, instead calling them "Bengali", suggesting they are illegal immigrants.

In another serious looming risk, ICG warned that Rohingya's plight has become a "cause celebre of the Muslim world" with Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other global jihadi groups calling for attacks on Myanmar.

Myanmar's military has repeatedly used the terror threat to justify its campaign in northern Rakhine state.

ARSA has distanced itself from any wider global cause for jihad, saying it is only fighting to protect Rohingya rights.

International pressure is ratcheting up on Myanmar.

This week the UN rights chief said Myanmar's crackdown on the Rohingya showed possible "elements of genocide", as calls for the safe and sustainable repatriation of refugees grows.

Myanmar refutes any wrongdoing saying it was forced into a defensive action by ARSA attacks.

It has agreed with Bangladesh to start repatriation of "eligible" refugees within a few months.

But there are widespread doubts over how many Rohingya can prove they are entitled to return to Rakhine, or want to go back to areas riddled with communal mistrust and where their villages were razed.

China, a key strategic ally of Myanmar, is pitching itself as an arbiter in the crisis, and has repeatedly urged the international community to take a softline on Myanmar.

But pressure is mounting in the West -- particularly Washington -- to reimpose targeted sanctions on Myanmar military figures.

Sanctions were slowly rolled back in recent years as reward for democratic gains after decades of outright junta rule.

The ICG study said any fresh sanctions would backfire by isolating Myanmar and calcifying hatred towards the Rohingya.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak attending a rally for his UMNO party in Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak put his party on a war footing Thursday as polls loom, vowing to "fight till the end" despite a massive financial scandal that has rocked his government.

The leader told the annual assembly of his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) -- which has ruled Muslim-majority Malaysia for six decades at the head of a coalition -- that the country was facing a "crucial election".

"In this battle we fight till the end, in this election we will emerge victorious", he told thousands of cheering delegates wearing the red colours of his party in Kuala Lumpur.

He also took a swipe at veteran former premier Mahathir Mohamad, who has come out of retirement in a bid to try to oust his government, comparing him to toppled Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe.

Elections must be called by August at the latest. Najib did not hint at a date in his speech but speculation is swirling that they will be take place early next year.

Najib's chances of winning a third term have been dented by explosive graft allegations. Billions were looted from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund that he founded in complex overseas deals which are being investigated in several countries.

Both Najib, who made no mention of the scandal during Thursday's speech, and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The US Justice Department has led the charge in tackling the alleged pillaging, launching lawsuits through which it is seeking to recover $1.7 billion in assets thought to have been purchased with looted money, from artwork to high-end real estate.

This week US Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a conference in Washington that the 1MDB scandal was "kleptocracy at its worst".

- Election race upended -

The election race has also been upended by the emergence of Mahathir, who led Malaysia for 22 years, as a key figure in the main opposition alliance.

The 92-year-old has teamed up with his former nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim, a jailed opposition leader and one of the country's most charismatic politicians.

In his speech at the UMNO gathering, the most closely watched event in Malaysia's political calendar, Najib, 64, accused Mahathir of having "crossed the line" by uniting with former political foes.

He said it was strange there were still people willing to be led by Mahathir, adding that "former Zimbabwe president Mugabe, who is the same age as him, has now been rejected by his own people".

He also warned that if the opposition won the election then Muslim Malays, about 60 percent of the country's 32 million people, "will become homeless and despised in their own country".

UMNO has long championed the Malay cause in a country that is home to substantial ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, and has enshrined policies that favour them.

The ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition has steadily lost support in recent elections however, with voters increasingly unhappy at recurring graft scandals and rights abuses. They lost the popular vote for the first time in the 2013 election.

But observers believe that the coalition will edge another victory in the forthcoming elections, as the opposition remains weak with leading light Anwar still in jail following a 2015 sodomy conviction his supporters say was politically-motivated.

Najib has overcome the worst of the 1MDB crisis, which peaked in 2015, purging critics from government and cracking down on dissent.

"BN, and especially UMNO, is set to win big," said Oh Ei Sun, from Malaysian think-tank the Pacific Research Center.

"The opposition is definitely not shaping up for a real fight."
Super Mario wannabes will have to buckle up in future

People dressed as Super Mario tearing round the streets of Tokyo in go-karts will have to buckle up, Japanese authorities said Thursday, following a series of accidents.

Visitors to Tokyo are often stunned to see convoys of karts driven by people -- often tourists -- dressed up as Mario and other popular Nintendo characters screaming around the busy streets of the world's most populous city.

Unlike many countries, Japan has no ban on people driving go-karts on public highways.

But following three accidents over the past year, the transport ministry has decided to enforce the wearing of seatbelts for such vehicles.

Currently, the vehicles have no seatbelts and drivers are not required to wear helmets, a ministry official who did not wish to be named told AFP.

"It's dangerous as other cars cannot see them because of their low height," he added.

The ministry is looking to implement the regulations in a few years.

Under the proposed new rules, go-karts must be at least one metre (three feet) off the ground and the driving wheel must be made with soft material to prevent driver injury in case of accident.

The move comes after Kyoto-based Nintendo filed a lawsuit in February against MariCar, a Tokyo go-kart rental firm, for letting tourists wear unauthorized Nintendo character costumes.
Naples' art of pizza twirling has joined UNESCO's list of 'intangible heritage'

The art of Naples' dough-twirling pizza makers joined UNESCO's list of "intangible heritage" Thursday, securing the coveted status alongside a host of cultural treasures including a Saudi art form traditionally practised only by women.

The art of the 'pizzaiuolo' -- handed down for generations in the southern Italian city -- was given the nod by the UN cultural body's World Heritage Committee, who met on the South Korean island of Jeju.

Two million people had signed a petition to support Naples' application, according to Sergio Miccu, head of the Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli -- no doubt buoyed by his offer of complimentary pizza if the age-old culinary tradition joined the prestigious list.

"We'll be giving out free pizza in the streets," Miccu earlier told AFP.

Proud pizza-makers in Naples celebrated even before the distinction was announced on Thursday, pounding the dough and handing pizzas out to passersby who chewed it up in celebration.

"How perfect to celebrate with pizza for breakfast. The word pizza must be the most famous in the world, in every language, and now everyone knows we invented it!" said Marco Toeldo, 47, who was on his third slice.

- Pizza ritual -

Pizza is about to be named an "intangible heritage"

The Neapolitan custom goes far beyond the pizzaiuolo's spectacular handling of the dough -- hurling it into the air in order to "oxygenate" it -- to include songs and stories that have turned pizza-making into a time-honoured social ritual.

"Victory!" Maurizio Martina, Italy's minister for agriculture, food and forestry, wrote on Twitter. "Another step towards the protection of Italy's food and wine heritage."

In a statement, Martina said the recognition came after a years-long campaign. "The art of the Neapolitan pizza-maker contains Italian know-how ... especially traditional knowledge that has been transmitted from generation to generation," he said.

- Humble origins -

A pizza maker uses the stone oven where the first pizza Margherita was cooked

The pizza's humble ancestor, a plain affair usually tarted up with a bit of lard, initially emerged as a cheap, easy and fast way to feed the city's army of poor, said historian Antonio Mattozzi.

But despite being an immediate hit with the locals, pizza failed to take off outside the city at first, Mattozzi told AFP.

It took Queen Margherita's love of the classic tomato, mozzarella and basil version to fire up the imagination and taste buds of diners far and wide -- or so the story goes.

Hoping to win the hearts of the commoners, the Italian queen asked in 1889 to try their favourite dish. And while she was unconvinced by anchovy and Parmesan-topped versions, the basil delight won her over.

- Saving tradition -

The first pizzerias were born at the end of the 18th century

Thirty-four candidates were in the running to join UNESCO's list of intangible heritage, created in 2003 mainly to raise awareness, although the agency also sometimes offers financial or technical support to countries struggling to protect their traditions.

The list already included more than 350 traditions, art forms and practices from Spain's flamenco dancing to Indonesian batik fabrics, to more obscure entries such as a Turkish oil wrestling festival and the Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels.

Saudi Arabia was among those celebrating on Jeju, claiming the tag for Al-Qatt Al-Asin -- elaborate interior wall paintings traditionally done by women. The art, which promotes solidarity among women, is handed down through observation.

Bangladesh also claimed victory with its tradition of Shital Pati, an intricate weaving craft using strips of green cane to produce mats and bedspreads.

Another winner was the traditional horseback game of Kok Boru in Kyrgyzstan, where players score points by putting a goat's carcass in an opponent's goal -- though the dead animal is replaced with a mould in the modern-day version.

An array of traditions struggling to survive will also be given special support after being placed on an "urgent safeguarding list".

These include a whistled language that developed in Turkey as a way to communicate across steep mountains and rugged topography but is now threatened by mobile phones.

Morocco will also get help to protect Taskiwin -- a martial dance that developed in the western High Atlas mountain range and involves shaking one's shoulders to the rhythm of tambourines and flutes.

UNESCO said globalisation and young people's rejection of traditional heritage had driven the practice "closer to oblivion".

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday lashed out at his US counterpart Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying it would put the region in a "ring of fire".

"Taking this type of step puts the world, especially the region, in a ring of fire," Erdogan said in a speech to supporters at Ankara airport before heading on a visit to Greece.

"Hey Trump! What do you want to do?" he said, addressing the US leader directly in one of Erdogan's most familiar rhetorical habits.

"What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace!" he added.

There were chants of "damn Israel!" and boos from Erdogan supporters gathered at the airport when the president first mentioned the US move.

In a speech on Wednesday, Trump overturned decades of US policy with a decision to recognise the disputed city. He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Erdogan accused Trump of trying to be an agitator and said the decision "completely disregarded" the 1980 UN resolution on the contested city's status.

Turkey will hold a leaders' summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday in Istanbul to discuss Trump's decision.

Turkey currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC.

Erdogan said work continued for other events planned for after this summit but he did not give further detail.

Around 1,500 people gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday night to protest against Trump, chanting slogans such as "down with America!".

Erdogan said he was due to speak with Pope Francis on Thursday evening or on Friday, as well as with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western allies including Germany.

"This is now not just the duty of Muslims, but also of humanity" to oppose the move, Erdogan added.

He hit back at Trump saying that being strong did not mean that you were automatically right but that "the righteous are the strong".

Relations between Washington and Ankara have already been strained over the Syrian conflict as well as the US failure to extradite a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric blamed for last year's attempted overthrow of Erdogan.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura has issued a thinly veiled warning to Moscow not to "sabotage" the Syria peace talks in Geneva

Syrian government negotiators will return to Geneva this weekend to rejoin United Nations-backed peace talks, after leaving the city in protest last week, the UN envoy said Thursday.

"The government has informed us that they would fly back to Geneva on Sunday the 10th of December", UN mediator Staffan de Mistura told reporters, confirming information reported by the Syrian state news agency SANA.

The government delegation is scheduled to stay until December 15, when the eighth round of the faltering UN-brokered talks is due to wrap up.

The negotiations aimed at ending nearly seven years of bloodshed in Syria reopened last week.

The talks were halted over the weekend before resuming Tuesday, but without the government team headed by Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari.

Jaafari had criticised the talks before his departure, saying there were "big problems in this round", a reference to the opposition's insistence on President Bashar al-Assad's removal.

The opposition, united in one delegation for the first time, has so far defied calls to give up its demand that Assad step down before any peace deal can be reached.

Jaafari described that position as "provocative" and "irresponsible", warning that "there will be no progress" if the opposition maintained its stance.

For several days, government sources had said officials were still deliberating whether they would come back to Geneva.

De Mistura has met with the opposition's delegation in the meantime.

- 'Sabotage' warning -

De Mistura said he expected both sides to "seriously engage" in negotiations next week, which will be focused on shaping a new Syrian constitution and organising UN-supervised elections.

He also issued a thinly veiled warning over a new diplomatic track being pushed by Syria's key ally Russia, which has announced plans to host a new peace conference at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in coming months.

The opposition and Western diplomats are concerned that the Sochi meeting might be part of an effort by Moscow to circumvent the UN talks and impose a solution favourable to Assad.

"There are many initiatives that are being planned and can be planned in the future, but we shall assess the behaviour of both sides -- government and opposition -- in Geneva", de Mistura said.

He underscored that the UN would be watching to see if these other initiatives were supportive of the UN talks, "or a sabotage".

He warned that if one side was "de facto sabotaging the process and the progress of Geneva, that would have a very bad impact on any other political attempt to have processes elsewhere", an apparent reference to the proposed Sochi meeting.

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One of the most beloved figures of Christian history  St. Nicholas, the basis for the legend of Santa Claus  is commemorated around the world on December 6. An historical happenstance shows that his life still holds lessons for the piety and economics of the transatlantic sphere.

St. Nicholas, the archbishop of Myra in Asia Minor during the fourth century, is remembered for one example of his generous love of the poor. He learned that a wealthy man in his congregation had lost his fortune and, driven to despair, was about to sell his three daughters into slavery to pay off his debts. That night, the saint secretly entered their home and brought them gold, ransoming the girls from their fate. According to one version of the story, St. Nicholas left the gold in socks the girls had left hanging by the fire to dry  the origin of Christmas stockings. On the night of December 5, children across Europe sometimes leave out their shoes, awakening to find them miraculously filled with sweets.

St. Nicholas, who is called the wonder-worker for the innumerable miracles attributed to his intercession, is revered by all Christendom. He is the patron saint of Greece and Russia (and, once, the French Duchy of Lorraine). Perhaps because his See of Myra was a sailing port heavy with commerce, he is also the patron saint of merchants. (You can read more about his life here.)

This year, December 6 also marks a less auspicious event: Credit Day, the date when the average government in the European Union exceeds its tax revenues and begins deficit spending, or living on credit. December 6 is an improvement of six days over 2016, according to the Molinari Economic Institute (Institut Economique Molinari, or IEM), which calculates the date annually.

The greatest deficit spender in the EU28 this year is France, which reached credit day on November 7. France, one of the big three, has not reduced public spending, with its public debt increasing to nearly 100 percent of GDP in 2016, according to a briefing from the European Policy Information Center. EPICENTER noted that, although an outlier, the economic situation in France represents a danger for the EU economy as a whole.

How is that?

Economists agree that once debt reaches a certain percentage of GDP, it causes the nations economic growth to slow. That means less employment and opportunity for everyone, especially those already vulnerable. Michael Strain of AEI testified before Congress this year about the intimate connection between economic growth and human flourishing:

Economic growth drives increases in living standards and quality of life. This is perhaps most easy to see over long periods of time. Compare life two-hundred years ago with life today. Economic growth facilitated dramatic reductions in child mortality rates and poverty rates, increased access to education and medical care, increased lifespans, and the amenities of the modern world we enjoy today.

Cecile Philippe, director of IEM, said that experience shows that lasting [deficits] are a source of risk for  future generations.

Too many young Europeans are already shut out of permanent employment by poor economic policy, something Pope Francis has highlighted before EU leaders. In all, 16 nations exceed the EUs maximum debt-to-GDP ratio of 60 percent.

Thankfully, most nations are moving in the right direction since the catastrophic recession of 2008. Four EU members enjoy a budget surplus. However, four other nations increased deficit levels over last year. The (U.S.) Congressional Budget Office noted in 2010, There is no identifiable tipping point of debt relative to GDP indicating that a [financial] crisis is likely or imminent. Catastrophe, the CBO warned, comes unexpectedly. If France, one of the three largest remaining economies, reaches this tipping point, young people across the EU could lose the opportunities for self-improvement they possess.

Economic policies that promote economic growth  such as lower taxes and a limited government that lives within its means  are a means of benefiting young people and the impoverished. The poor in economically free societies enjoy better longevity and quality of life than the rich in more statist nations. Spurring economic growth affords a greater number of people the ability to rise out of poverty and hopelessness. And it spares them being separated from their own families  the families they cannot afford to begin.

By embracing economic liberty and refusing to shackle their children with the consequences of unsustainable debt, Christians can still learn from the hagiography of St. Nicholas. It would be best not to wait until it takes a miracle to turn things around.

(Photo credit: Public domain.)
Austrian foreign minister and incoming chancellor Sebastian Kurz greets US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the start of the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna

Foreign ministers from the 57-member OSCE met in Vienna on Thursday with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russia's Sergei Lavrov set to discuss a possible UN peacekeeping force for Ukraine.

As dignitaries from Europe, North America and Asia gathered in Vienna's magnificent Hofburg palace, the regional group's leader admitted the sides remained far apart.

"We've reached an absolute low point regarding confidence between the main players," the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's secretary general Thomas Greminger told reporters.

After long resisting the idea, Russia has suggested deploying a UN peacekeeping force to help end the war between Ukraine's government and Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country that has killed over 10,000 people since 2014.

But Western powers, led by the United States, want a force with a robust mandate that would allow it to protect the 600 OSCE monitors there, police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine.

They fear that a United Nations mission that only polices the front line would serve to create a frozen conflict that would de facto lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine.

Before arriving in Vienna, Tillerson, who was due to meet Lavrov later on Thursday on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting, said agreeing on an effective force was now Washington's main priority.

"We prioritise ending the violence, that's our first priority, and to seek to do that we need to put a peacekeeping force in place," Tillerson said.

"Russia has long resisted a peacekeeping force, but they have agreed now," he said after NATO talks on Wednesday.

"I think it's significant that we're talking about the right thing," he said.

But he warned that there was a "significant difference" over the mandate the force will have "and that's why we continue to talk with the Russians."

- Diplomatic standstill -

The UN peacekeeping force was not on the official agenda for the two-day OSCE gathering in Vienna, which involved some 40 foreign ministers, but was expected to be a big topic on the sidelines.

The OSCE was created during the Cold War to ease dialogue between East and West.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago it expanded and now has 57 members including the United States, Russia and Ukraine.

The Vienna-based body monitors conflicts, elections, media freedom and human rights. Italy will take over the rotating presidency from Austria in January.

The nosedive in relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine and other points of contention has brought OSCE decision-making to a near-standstill, diplomats say.

In the past the annual meeting of OSCE foreign ministers produced a joint communique but this hasn't been possible for several years.

Earlier this year the OSCE was without a secretary general for several weeks after member states were unable to agree on a candidate.

Other key posts were left vacant for even longer and there have been major delays agreeing budget questions.

"Everything is blocked," a Western diplomatic source told AFP on the eve of the two-day meeting in Vienna on Thursday and Friday.
Some opposition protests in Kenya have turned violent

Kenya's attorney general said Thursday that an opposition plan to have its leader Raila Odinga sworn in as an alternative president would amount to treason.

Odinga challenged the result of August's presidential election but then boycotted the court-ordered October rerun, handing victory to President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The veteran opposition leader continues to dispute the legality of Kenyatta's rule and plans to have himself declared president at a ceremony on December 12, Kenya's independence day.

Attorney General Githu Muigai said any such move would be illegal.

"The criminal law in the republic of Kenya... stipulates that that process is high treason," he said, a crime punishable by death although Kenya has not executed anyone for 30 years.

"It is high treason in respect of the person so involved and any other person facilitating that process," he said.

Odinga has insisted the ceremony will go ahead, defying growing pressure to call it off amid fears it will lead to yet more violence between police and opposition supporters.

On a visit to the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday Donald Yamamoto, the acting top diplomat for Africa in the US government, urged Odinga to call off his planned swearing-in and instead "work within Kenya's laws" to seek reform.

Yamamoto said the opposition should "avoid extra-constitutional actions such as the proposed 'inauguration ceremony'."

Odinga dismissed the US pleas on Thursday. "Kenyan problems will be resolved by Kenyan people," he said. "Don't come and shout at us and tell us that we are violating the constitution."
China became the first country since Nazi Germany to allow a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in state custody when Liu Xiaobo passed in July

China touted its political and development model as it hosted an inaugural global human rights forum on Thursday, even as activists slammed the country's own abuses.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society since taking power in 2012, targeting everyone from human rights lawyers to celebrity gossip bloggers.

Hundreds of activists have been detained in the past five years while internet censorship has intensified.

And China became the first country since Nazi Germany to allow a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in state custody when democracy activist Liu Xiaobo succumbed to liver cancer under heavy police guard in July.

But some 300 participants gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to hear about the country's "human rights development path with Chinese characteristics" at the South-South Human Rights Forum.

Some attendees came from countries with their own checkered human rights record.

"There's no one size fits all approach in human rights practices," said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "No one is in a position to lecture others on human rights."

He highlighted China's achievements in poverty reduction as an example of the country's efforts to improve rights.

Beijing says it has reduced its poverty rate to four percent and seeks to eradicate poverty by 2020.

But forum attendee Zhu Liyu, deputy director of the Centre for Human Rights at Renmin University, pointed out that such calculations were based on the country's official poverty line, much lower than that of other nations.

"The standard for poverty here is very low. I think we should raise it," he told AFP.

The overseas NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Thursday that China's focus on economic development had taken a toll.

"In the past few decades, this 'China model' has left behind countless people in China, victimised by breakneck growth at the expense of basic protection from discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of power," it said in a statement.

"The 'secret' of the 'China success' hinges on squashed protests, silenced complaints, and swollen jails and extrajudicial holding cells," it added.

- 'China's answer' -

The inaugural forum comes two months after Xi outlined his vision of turning China into a major superpower by mid-century at a Communist Party congress that confirmed his status as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.

In November, Donald Trump repeatedly praised Xi during his state visit to Beijing during which the US president did not publically address China's human rights record.

The forum included diplomats, scholars and government officials from developing countries, as well as representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization.

"This is China's answer to the question of where human society is heading," Wang said of the forum.

Representatives of countries such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan with questionable human rights track records of their own took to the podium to extoll the Chinese model.

Burundi's presidential office spokesman Willy Nyamttwe said he was honoured to attend the forum as his country sought "solutions that can counterbalance Western diktats that through their propaganda instruments, the media and NGOs, are tarnishing the image of developing countries."

Last month, UN human rights investigators said they believed Burundi's top leaders had committed crimes against humanity.
President Bashar al-Assad has refused to step down as part of a deal to end the nearly seven-year Syrian war

Syrian opposition negotiators in Geneva receive a steady stream of visitors, all bearing the same request: freeze the demand that President Bashar al-Assad resign as a precondition for a peace deal.

With an eighth round of UN-backed peace talks dragging on, the opposition is in a tight spot.

They insist Assad cannot be part of Syria's longterm future but are being pushed to recognise realities on the ground, where the regime has the upper hand.

"Most of the diplomats that have visited the delegation have repeated the same call," an opposition delegate told AFP, requesting anonymity.

"You have to be realistic if you want to solve the conflict," he described diplomats as telling the opposition.

"They want us to freeze the demand that Assad step down, but not abandon it completely."

- New tactic -

Syria's opposition was pressured ahead of the talks to form a united delegation for the first time, which it agreed at talks in Riyadh.

But the unified delegation has reiterated the need for Assad to go as part of the solution to a nearly seven-year war that has killed over 340,000 people.

Western envoys have argued that suspending the Assad demand would embarrass the government into entering substantive negotiations, according to the opposition.

Seven previous rounds of talks have gone nowhere -- and rival sides have not yet met face-to-face.

The current round, which began last week, remains deadlocked.

The government, outraged over the opposition's intransigence on the Assad question, went back to Damascus but has agreed to return to Geneva next week.

Some in the opposition say flexibility on Assad's fate is not a viable option to break the stalemate.

- No leverage -

"There are growing numbers who are pressing for us to pursue this option, but the representatives of the military factions and some of the political representatives are absolutely opposed," an opposition source told AFP.

Among them is Mohammed Alloush, an opposition delegate and leader of the Army of Islam rebel group.

"Our position has consistently been that Assad must go at the beginning of the transitional period," he told AFP.

"If anyone is retreating from that position, they only represent themselves," he added.

According to UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, Assad's future has not yet been discussed.

Last week, he published 12 principles for a future Syria that he said both sides could agree, including that the country "shall be democratic and non-sectarian".

De Mistura wants "to start the conversation from somewhere else, to get us to agree on general principles and then go into details," a second opposition source said.

- Risky move? -

Experts said abandoning a demand as fundamental as Assad's departure would be risky.

"I don't think the opposition... can do that and still maintain any modicum of credibility in the eyes of the millions of Syrians who sacrificed a lot in the fight against the Assad regime," said Randa Slim, from the Middle East Institute.

But the rebels have little leverage after losing chunks of territory to Russian-backed regime forces in recent months.

Traditional opposition allies like the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, also no longer appear wedded to Assad's departure.

"The opposition's allies are getting tired of the conflict in Syria and want it over. The prevailing thinking is that Assad won this round," Slim said.

The rebels are also being pushed by US and European diplomats to incorporate the main Kurdish Democratic Union Party into its ranks.

Syria's Kurds have been a key US ally in the fight against jihadists, but the opposition views them with suspicion in part because they never took up arms against the regime.

Kurdish officials say they have received assurances from American and Russian officials that no peace deal will be reached without them.

They have already been invited to a new peace conference Moscow plans to hold in Sochi in the coming months.

The opposition sees the Sochi meeting as Russia's attempt to bypass the UN process, but the government says it will aid progress towards a deal.

"The conference will open the door to a broad dialogue among all Syrians, while Geneva restricts it to a government delegation and a group of opposition that does not represent anyone," a source close to the government said.

"The Sochi conference will outline the political solution, which will be presented later in Geneva."
A boy stands next to a burnt out car in Yemen's capital on December 6, 2017 after clashes between rebels and loyalists of late ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh

Yemen's government has retaken a Red Sea town from Huthi insurgents, officials said Thursday, days after President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's administration ordered troops to advance on the rebel-held capital.

The war-torn Arabian Peninsula country has been plunged deeper into turmoil by the killing on Monday of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh by the Huthis after his alliance with the Iran-backed insurgents collapsed.

Government troops backed by a Saudi-led military coalition launched an operation overnight and drove the Huthis out of Khokha, which fell to the rebels in January, an army captain and officials in the town said, requesting anonymity.

The news could not be independently confirmed.

The Yemeni capital Sanaa is now largely under the control of the Huthis -- northern tribes with links to Iran -- after clashes between the rebels and Saleh loyalists erupted last week.

Khokha lies between rebel-held Hodeida and government-controlled Mokha on the Red Sea coast and is central to the expansion of government control over the strategic coastline.

The port of Hodeida is the main conduit for UN-supervised deliveries of food and medicine to Yemen, where poverty has been compounded by war and a blockade on ports and airports imposed by the Saudi-led coalition.

Riyadh and its allies accuse their arch-rival Iran of arming the Shiite rebels. Tehran denies the accusation.

More than 8,750 people have been killed since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the government's fight against the Huthis in 2015, triggering what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia must pull its forces out of Ukraine before ties with the West can recover

The United States warned Russia on Thursday that its ties with the West can never recover until it pulls its forces out of Ukraine, as OSCE foreign ministers met in Vienna.

Diplomats had hoped that meetings on the sidelines of the 57-nation body would make progress on agreeing terms for a UN peacekeeping force for war-torn Ukraine.

But the major powers in the dispute are still far apart, and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went so far as to declare that the stand-off over Ukraine was the single most important obstacle to warmer US relations with Moscow.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met privately to discuss their differences over Ukraine, but their public comments were explosive

Tillerson met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov behind closed doors, but when they had addressed the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) council earlier in the day, they traded allegations about interference in Ukraine and there appeared little room for compromise.

At a news conference with OSCE host Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, Tillerson recalled that US President Donald Trump had been clear during his campaign last year that he wanted better relations with Russia.

"But the issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," Tillerson stressed.

"We can have differences in other arenas... but when one country invades another that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile," he warned.

"And we've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning: That we must address Ukraine, it stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing relations."

After the meeting later with Lavrov, Tillerson would not be drawn on what had been said but suggested that he was receiving unspecified commitments from the Russians.

"We are. I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get, but we get progress, that's what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation. We don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting," Tillerson said.

- Blue helmets -

The conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kiev's government forces and Russian-backed separatists has already left 10,000 dead since 2014.

Neal Walker, UN humanitarian coordinator, said in Geneva on Thursday that the humanitarian situation was "worse than it has never been".

People "are now forced to make impossible choices between food, medicine, shelter, heating or their children's education. Millions of women, children and the elderly are daily at risk of shelling, intensive fighting and other hostilities," he said.

In principle, both Moscow and Washington have now expressed support for the idea of a UN peacekeeping mission.

But Russia envisions a limited force to simply protect the existing 600-strong group of unarmed OSCE observers, who are struggling to monitor a shaky ceasefire.

Washington, in contrast, has in mind a much more robust UN mission that would police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine, building the conditions for lasting peace.

Western powers fear that a limited United Nations mission would serve to create a frozen conflict that would lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine.

But Lavrov, in his opening remarks to the OSCE ministerial council, argued that the bigger mission idea could become "an occupational administration" and be tantamount to attempting "to solve this problem by force".

- 'Vexing' situation -

Austrian foreign minister and incoming chancellor Sebastian Kurz greets US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the start of the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna

Tillerson did not directly address the peacekeeping issue in his remarks, but was strident in his condemnation of the threat he said Russia poses to the existing unarmed OSCE mission.

"Of all the challenges confronting the OSCE today, none is more challenging nor vexing than the situation in Ukraine," he warned, stressing the US will never lift sanctions until Russia returns control of Crimea and the disputed Donbass region to Ukraine.

Tillerson noted that more civilians were killed this year in eastern Ukraine than in 2016, and that ceasefire violations are up 60 percent.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces," he said.

"We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission," he demanded.

Tillerson also paid tribute to an American paramedic killed in April when his OSCE patrol hit a landmine, and met a handful of other monitors, including one injured by a hand grenade, in Vienna.
Trump's decision on Jerusalem has been met with near-universal criticism

US President Donald Trump's decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital could take the region "backwards to even darker times", the EU's diplomatic chief warned on Thursday.

"President Trump's announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact. It is a very fragile context and the announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we're already living in," Federica Mogherini told a press conference in Brussels.

Trump's move, which has prompted deep concern among other international powers, upends seven decades of US ambiguity on the highly contentious status of the holy city, which is claimed by both Palestinians and Israelis.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry described Mogherini's position as "strange", adding: "Any denial of this simple truth is postponing peace because it raises unrealistic hopes among Palestinians. President Trump has made a courageous and fair decision that advances the chances of peace by confirming the truth."

Trump's announcement sparked a Palestinian general strike and a call for a new "intifada" or uprising. The Israeli military deployed hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank.

The EU has long supported a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Mogherini said the 28-member bloc would keep working with both sides -- as well as regional players such as Egypt and Jordan -- to restart direct talks.

Mogherini, who meets Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Brussels on Friday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, called for cool heads, saying demonstrations against the decision should be peaceful.

"What we truly need in these difficult times is wisdom and to listen to the wise voices calling for peace and peaceful reactions," Mogherini said.

"We believe this difficult moment calls for an even stronger engagement for peace. The most urgent priority now is that all relevant actors avoid to further escalate tensions on the ground," she added.

Netanyahu's visit, which is to include an "informal" breakfast with EU foreign ministers, was planned before Trump's announcement, but the Jerusalem issue is now set to dominate the meeting.

British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Trump's decision made it all the more urgent that what he called "the long-awaited American proposals on the Middle East peace process" were brought forward.

In recent months Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been working with a small team to develop a new US proposal to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

But a senior EU official said that despite close contact with Washington on the matter, "we have not seen elements of a plan for the moment".
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is pictured during his meeting with the French president in the Qatari capital Doha on December 7, 2017

Qatar's emir called Thursday for a negotiated settlement to a damaging dispute with other Gulf states, but insisted any solution should not come at the expense of "our sovereignty and dignity."

"Qatar's sovereignty is above all considerations. We want to resolve the rift but not at the expense of our sovereignty and dignity," Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said at a joint press conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.

"If the brothers want to resolve the dispute, we are ready," Sheikh Tamim said. "Any solution should be founded on a clear basis acceptable by all and the non-interference in the sovereignty of others."

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed all diplomatic and economic ties with gas-rich Qatar, accusing it of links to extremist groups and being too close to Shiite Iran, Riyadh's arch-rival.

The four countries also cut off all air and sea links to Qatar and closed the only land terminal for the tiny peninsula.

Qatar has denied the allegations and repeatedly called for a negotiated settlement.

The four nations have demanded that Doha accepts a list of 13 conditions to open a dialogue.

Mediation efforts to resolve the rift, mainly led by the emir of fellow Gulf state Kuwait, have so far failed to break the deadlock.
Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria in September 2015 but it has also had armed forces operating on the ground

Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said its mission to oust Islamic State jihadists from Syria had been "accomplished" with the country "completely liberated" from the extremist group.

"The Russian armed forces' goal to defeat armed groups of the ISIL terrorist organisation in Syria has been accomplished," said senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi, using an alternative acronym for the group.

"There is not a single village or district in Syria under the control of ISIL. The territory of Syria has been completely liberated from fighters of this terrorist organisation," he told reporters.

There has been an "unprecedented" involvement by Russia's airforce in recent days, he said, with warplanes making 100 sorties and staging up to 250 strikes daily.

At the same time, special forces were active on the ground directing planes and "destroying the most odious leaders of militant groups behind enemy lines," he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said Thursday that IS still holds about eight percent of Deir Ezzor province.

Rudskoi said "separate sabotage bands of ISIL" could still be operating but would be fought by Syrian government troops, indicating that Russia's involvement would be scaled down.

"With the liquidation of armed bands of the ISIL terrorist group in Syria, the Russian contingent will concentrate its main efforts on providing aid to the Syrian people in rebuilding peace" and ensuring ceasefire commitments were met, he said.

Russia began its bombing raids in September 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered forces.

Those strikes have helped Assad regain control over much of war-ravaged Syria.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin said efforts to end the war were entering a "new stage" as the focus shifts from military intervention to political reform.

More than 340,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out in March 2011 with protests against Assad's rule that sparked a brutal crackdown.
The new commander will replace Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, who was appointed to lead Nigeria's operation against Boko Haram just seven months ago

Nigeria has replaced the officer leading troops fighting Boko Haram, the army said on Thursday, after a recent surge in deadly attacks in the country's remote northeast.

"A new commander has been appointed for Operation Lafiya Dole," army spokesman Brigadier General Sani Usman said in a statement, identifying him as former military logistics chief Major General Rogers Ibe Nicholas.

He takes over from Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, who was appointed to the post just seven months ago and now has been reassigned to the army's policy and planning department.

No reason was given for the change.

In recent weeks, there has been an upsurge in Boko Haram attacks that have cast further doubt on government and military claims that the jihadists are a spent force.

Last weekend, two suicide bombers killed at least 13 and injured more than 50 in Biu, a town some 185 kilometres (115 miles) south of Borno state capital Maiduguri.

On November 21, another suicide bomber blew himself up killing at least 50 worshippers at a mosque in Mubi, a town in Adamawa state, northeast Nigeria.

There have also been hit-and-run raids targeting towns, villages and military outposts in the northeast.

One such attack last month saw Boko Haram fighters briefly overrunning Magumeri, a town 50 kilometres north of Maiduguri, forcing troops to withdraw until reinforcements arrived.

The Boko Haram insurgency, which began in 2009, has left at least 20,000 dead and made more than two million others homeless.
Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, told a Washington event the computer chip company wants to remain independent and sees "no real path to value" in a hostile bid from rival Broadcom

Qualcomm chief executive Steve Mollenkopf on Thursday reaffirmed his opposition to a hostile takeover bid from computer chip rival Broadcom, saying the deal offers "no real path to value."

The comments came days after Singapore-based Broadcom escalated its efforts on a $130 billion bid by proposing a slate of directors to unseat the Qualcomm board of directors.

Mollenkopf, speaking at an event hosted by The Economic Club of Washington, said that "we always have discussions" on potential tie-ups but that Qualcomm's future is well-positioned as an independent company.

He added that "we didn't think the offer was in the ballpark of value," and that "there is a lot of uncertainty" on whether the merger -- which would be the largest ever in the technology sector -- could pass regulatory muster.

"There's no real path to value that we see in terms of offers now in terms of an alternative" to remaining independent, he said.

Mollenkopf maintained that Qualcomm, the leading global supplier of smartphone chips, is well-positioned for emerging technologies for connected devices and 5G, or the fifth generation of wireless networks.

"We're probably the best positioned company for 5G and the connected world," he said.

He noted that the company is "in a momentary spot where our revenue is a little difficult to model" because of a series of legal disputes, including with Apple, but predicted that "those will get resolved."

Mollenkopf also said he expects Qualcomm to finalize later the year or early in 2018 a $47 billion acquisition of Dutch rival NXP, a deal that is the subject of a European Union anti-trust probe.

Broadcom's announcement on Monday sets the stage for a fight at the Qualcomm shareholder's meeting in March, by proposing a slate of directors likely to press for the merger or replace management.

If completed the deal would be the largest-ever in the tech sector and create a powerful player in the booming sector fueled by growth in smartphones and an array of connected devices from cars to wearables.

Any merger deal would need to pass muster with Qualcomm shareholders and could face regulatory scrutiny in the United States and other markets.

Broadcom's November 6 proposal followed a visit by its CEO Hock Tan to the White House, where he met President Donald Trump and announced plans to move the tech company back to the United States from Singapore.
Protesters shout slogans and wave flags during a demonstration near the American Embassy in Amman against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 7, 2017

Jordanian demonstrators torched the US flag and pictures of President Donald Trump during a protest Thursday near the American embassy in Amman to denounce his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Hundreds of people took part in the rally in the Abdoun neighbourhood of west Amman chanting slogans hostile to Trump and Israel and waving the Jordanian and Palestinian flags.

Dozens of riot police cars surrounded the fortified embassy compound to keep protesters at bay and policemen deployed in the area, an AFP reporter said.

Demonstrators stood around 50 metres (yards) away and called on Jordanian authorities to close the US embassy and expel the ambassador.

Jordanian police stand guard as protesters shout slogans and wave flags during a demonstration near the American Embassy in Amman against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 7, 2017

"No American embassy on Jordanian soil," they chanted, saying the United States is "the source of terrorism" in the world.

They also chanted "Death to Israel".

Similar protests were held in universities across Jordan, with students denouncing Trump's recognition of Jerusalem and calling for a boycott of the United States.

At a protest on the main Jordan University campus in Amman, thousands of students demonstrated chanted "down with American hegemony" and "long live Jerusalem".

The students also called on Jordan, a close ally of the US, to cancel its 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood has called on demonstrators to rally against Trump's announcement after the weekly Friday prayers, and other protests are also expected to be held across the kingdom.

Protesters shout slogans and wave flag during a protest near the American Embassy in Amman against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 7, 2017

The Jordanian government has condemned Trump's decision, warning that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital amounted to a violation of international law and the UN charter.

Jordan is custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and has stressed that the status of the disputed city must be decided through negotiations.
The luxurious multi-million homes in Bel-Air are threatened by the Skirball Fire, a blaze that destroyed 200 hectares (500 acres) in less than 24 hours

Replica Tuscan castles, minimalist mansions and country cottages in the rarefied Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles could soon be reduced to ashes, their owners' fame and wealth providing little immunity against California's latest raging wildfires.

"We're evacuating the street you must leave!" a police officer barked into a bullhorn, amid the din of helicopters and airplanes dropping fire retardants.

"The fire is at the end of this street," added one of his colleagues.

The officer knocks on each door on the street -- home to the likes of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, pop superstar Beyonce and media magnate Rupert Murdoch -- to make sure no one is left behind.

The luxurious multi-million homes here are threatened by the fire named "Skirball", a blaze that destroyed 200 hectares (500 acres) in less than 24 hours.

At least four homes were already reduced to ashes, while Murdoch's property, along with his vineyard, was surrounded by flames.

Evan Klein, a photographer in jeans and a white t-shirt, locked his door taking only his cameras and his dog, who waited for him on the passenger seat of his vintage sedan. His wife was already at work.

"We woke up at 5:30 (Wednesday) morning and the fire was on the hill and was coming right towards us," he told AFP.

"It was pitch black out and you were seeing orange on that hill, and it became enormous at the end of the street," he said.

He hoped that the fire would remain contained -- even as authorities said the wind was expected to dramatically pick up as Thursday progressed.

- Like a car on the highway -

A helicopter drops water over the Moraga Estate, the only working winery in Bel-Air and home to Rupert Murdoch in Bel-Air

Sheldon Shire had just turned the ignition on his car and was getting ready to head over to his son's house. He and his wife Joni were nervous.

They are taking "papers, valuables, works of art, letters from our grandchildren, photos of our weddings, passports, computer passwords," she said.

"It's hard to choose. All of a sudden everything has a lot of value," adds the brunette with a bob cut and round glasses.

Greater Los Angeles has been struck since Monday evening with several blazes like the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, about 45 minutes' drive from the city.

It has claimed one life and swallowed more than 80,000 acres and 150 buildings.

Local fire chief Captain Anthony Valdez said conditions were the worst he'd seen in 20 years "because of the low humidity and the wind -- it was blowing at 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour) with gusts up to 80 mp/h," he explained as branches and vegetation devoid of moisture popped noisily in the background.

The Rupert Murdoch estate, multiple opulent mansions and a vineyard surrounded by heavy gating, was threatened by several blazes.

By dawn, Skirball, which has already threatened the Getty Center museum and its collection of masterpieces, was "was coming to you as fast as a car on the highway" with flames higher than 10 meters, said Valdez.

As he and his team battled the blaze, they "took down the door of a house and hid there until the fire passed us," he added.

He gestured to two houses that have already been razed to the ground on the hills at the end of the adjoining Moraga Lane.

A firefighter for the past 30 years, Valdez had already spent nearly 48 hours on his feet, but this was far from his first rodeo.

"We do cat naps of 10 to 20 minutes," he added, preparing for a long night ahead.

The last Bel-Air fire in 1961 left 500 homes destroyed and prompted revision of the city's fire code.
ITER, a multi-national nuclear fusion project, has been plagued by delays and budget overruns

The head of the multinational nuclear fusion project known as ITER, in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump's administration, has warned US budget cuts could delay completion of the experimental reactor.

Launched a decade ago by seven partners -- the European Union, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and South Korea -- the project has been plagued by delays and budget overruns.

ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot has been in the US capital since Tuesday to urge top administration officials including Energy Secretary Rick Perry to uphold America's commitment.

Washington has so far spent some $1 billion on the project, and had pledged to contribute a further $1.5 billion by 2025, the first test date for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is located in France and currently half-finished.

But its annual contribution was reduced by around 50 percent in the 2017 and 2018 budgets, from $105 to $50 million and $120 to $63 million respectively -- as a result of cuts to the overall Energy Department's budget.

Bigot told AFP late Wednesday he hoped to secure "a clear decision on American commitments, at least in the short term, on the supply of components, and to be sure that they will arrive in time for assembly."

"If the American components do not arrive in time, the whole project will be delayed," Bigot said.

ITER's member countries finance the manufacturing of project components via their own national companies, shipping the parts for assembly at the reactor's site at Cadarache, in southern France.

Bigot said that French President Emmanuel Macron had written to Trump last summer urging him to reconsider the budget cuts.

"We hope for a decision very soon," he added.

More than 600 US companies, laboratories and universities are participating in the ITER project.

ITER's job is to build a testbed to see if nuclear fusion -- the limitless energy source that powers the Sun -- can be a realistic source of clean and cheap power for the 21st Century.

So far achieved in a handful of labs at great cost, the process entails fusing atoms together to generate energy, as opposed to fission, the atom-splitting process behind nuclear bombs and power stations, which carries the risk of costly accidents, theft of radioactive material and dealing with dangerous long-term waste.

For all its promise, nuclear fusion has proven elusive and highly costly to achieve.

The idea is to heat atoms to temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius (212 million degrees Fahrenheit) so that their nuclei fuse.

To do so, ITER is building a doughnut-shaped containment vessel called a tokamak. But the project, whose overall budget was revised upward in 2017 from $21 billion to $26 billion, has yet to carry out its first experiment almost a decade after its launch.
Burundi's political crisis, which began in 2015, has forced more than 410,000 people into exile

More than 2,000 Burundian refugees living in a transit camp in Democratic Republic of Congo are resisting plans to register them on a biometric database, claiming it would violate their religion.

They belong to an obscure Catholic sect that follows a female prophet called Zebiya and claim to have fled their homeland due to religious persecution.

"2,167 refugees are resisting the identification scheme despite several efforts" by refugee agencies, including the UN, local NGO worker Augustin Bulimuntu told AFP in the South Kivu region which borders Burundi.

Bulimuntu said guidelines in DR Congo mandate that refugees register on a biometric database that includes fingerprints and iris scans.

Most of those currently housed at the camp in the border town of Kamanyola are followers of Zebiya who claims to have had several visions of the Virgin Mary in north Burundi.

They fled there with the prophetess in 2015, accusing the Burundian police of religious persecution.

"We refused this biometric registration because our faith forbids it," group spokesman Dionise Nyandwi told AFP, without explaining why.

In September, at least 36 Burundian refugees were killed by Congolese soldiers during a protest at Kamanyola camp which is administered by the UN's mission in DR Congo.

Most of them were members of the Zebiya, witnesses told AFP.

At the time, Kinshasa insisted it was dealing with an "armed group" which had infiltrated the refugees.

In 2013, nearly 200 Zebiya were jailed for five years in Burundi for "civil disobedience" but they claim to have targeted due to their beliefs.
Japan has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world, and attacks involving weapons of any kind are unusual

A former priest wielding a samurai sword killed his Shinto priestess sister and another woman in an apparent family vendetta at a historic Tokyo shrine, before turning the blade on himself, police told AFP Friday.

Shigenaga Tomioka, 56, set upon his older sister Nagako, chief priestess at Tomioka Hachimangu shrine, with a samurai sword late Thursday in a rare violent assault in the Japanese capital.

The 58-year-old Nagako was later pronounced dead with a "deep" stab wound to her chest along with a laceration to the back of her neck.

Shigenaga Tomioka had once served as a priest and the siblings had long quarrelled over shrine affairs, according to local media.

Police refrained from commenting on the motive but said it was not a random assault.

Nagako and Shigenaga are known to have fought over the succession rights at the shrine, local media said.

While Shigenaga was assaulting his sister, another woman -- reportedly the attacker's wife -- pursued Nagako's driver with a sword.

The driver escaped but suffered deep cuts to his shoulder, arm, and chest, police said.

After the attack, the pair then moved to an area near the residential compound on the shrine's leafy grounds.

"We believe the male suspect (Shigenaga) stabbed the woman before stabbing himself," the spokesman said, adding that they both died, bringing the total fatalities to three.

The shrine dates back to 1627 and is best known for its summer water-splashing festival, seen as one of the top three festivals in Tokyo.

It has received Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko in the past.

Sumo wrestlers also pay visits to the shrine, which had hosted tournaments in historic times.
FBI Director Christopher Wray defends his agency's political independence before the House Judiciary Committee

FBI Director Christopher Wray defended his agency Thursday against President Donald Trump's criticisms, amid a mounting Republican push aimed at discrediting the probe into alleged collusion between the US leader's campaign and Russia in last year's election.

Trump laid into the Federal Bureau of Investigation last weekend, accusing its agents of political bias and Wray's predecessor James Comey, whom Trump fired in May, of lying.

"Its reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History," Trump wrote on Twitter of the FBI, at the end of series of posts about a senior agent who allegedly supported Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Wray responded Thursday in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee: "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good."

"The agents, analysts and staff of the FBI are big boys and girls. We understand that we will take criticism from all corners. We're accustomed to that," he said.

But Republicans on the committee pressed Wray hard over allegations that pro-Clinton, anti-Trump FBI investigators and lawyers controlled both last year's probe into Clinton's use of classified material on a private email server, and special prosecutor Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow to tilt the White House race.

Trump and Republicans appear to be building such a case to undermine the Mueller probe, which has already unleashed charges against four former Trump aides and increasingly menaces the White House and Trump's family.

They focused their attacks on the high-level involvement in both the Clinton and Mueller probes of FBI agent Peter Strzok.

News reports last weekend said Strzok had been fired by Mueller as lead investigator in August over pro-Clinton text messages he sent to a Justice Department lawyer.

According to reports, he also had a major role in Comey's decision in July 2016 -- in the middle of a tense election campaign -- to clear Clinton of any crime related to her email use.

Trump seized on the reports about Strzok in his weekend anti-FBI, anti-Comey tweetstorm.

"Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

- Republicans press over investigation 'bias' -

Since then, Republicans in Congress have latched on to the Strzok case as they pressed the FBI and the Justice Department over the independence of their investigations.

In a letter to Wray on Tuesday, Senator Charles Grassley demanded information on Strzok's role in Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton, his role in the early Russian collusion investigation, and any communications he made with negative statements about Trump or positive ones on Clinton.

In Thursday's hearing, Republicans alleged that Muller, after taking on the Russia probe in May, assembled a team of largely Democratic lawyers and investigators.

"If you kicked everybody off Mueller's team who are anti-Trump, I don't think there would be anybody left," said Republican Congressman Jim Jordan.

Asked Thursday whether Trump truly believes the FBI under Wray is in "tatters," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders stressed Trump's problem was with former director Comey and people involved in the Clinton probe.

"We certainly felt like some of the political leadership at the FBI was problematic. We are glad that Director Wray is there. We feel he's going to clean up some of the messes left behind by his predecessor," she said.
Since 2013, Central African Republic has been blighted by simmering sectarian violence between rival militia groups

A Central African Republic aid worker was killed after gunman stormed his home, his family said Thursday, the latest death in a week of clashes in the country.

The 35-year-old man who worked for Italian humanitarian organisation Intersos, died at hospital following the shooting overnight Wednesday to Thursday in Kaga Bandoro, in the north of CAR.

The region is controlled by two armed groups which last week prevented the celebration of a national holiday.

At least 10 people had already been killed this week in a wave of incidents between rival armed groups, local officials and a UN source said on Thursday.

The bloodshed, which began on Sunday in the central town of Ippy, resulted from clashes between the mainly Muslim ex-Seleka rebels and Christian anti-Balaka militia.

"On Wednesday, we buried 10 people," a religious source told AFP, saying the dead included both civilians and gunmen and warning that the death toll could reach as high as 40.

The violence pitted members of the FPRC and the UPC, both offshoots of the Seleka rebel alliance who joined forces two months ago, against a dissident branch of the FPRC which is allied with the anti-Balaka, the sources said.

On Monday, a Mauritanian policeman with the UN mission in CAR was killed and three others wounded in an attack in the central city of Bria. He was the 14th peacekeeper to be killed in attacks in the country this year.

One of the world's poorest nations, CAR has been struggling to recover from a 2013 civil war that started when President Francois Bozize was overthrown by the Seleka rebels.

Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, sought revenge by organising vigilante units dubbed "anti-balaka" in reference to the machetes used by the rebels.

Since then, the country has been blighted by simmering sectarian violence which has killed thousands and displaced more than 600,000 people, almost a quarter of the total population.
Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Thursday for child pornography.

Nassar, 54, who is also facing sentencing for sexually assaulting members of the women's Olympics gymnastics team, pleaded guilty in July to three counts of possessing child pornography.

The pornography, which included more than 37,000 of images and videos depicting children as young as infants, was discovered last year while Nassar was under investigation for assault.

He was given 20 years in prison on each count by a judge at a court hearing in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

'This is very difficult, as you can imagine, standing here,' Nassar said in court on Thursday.

'I've been battling with this, obviously for a considerable period of time. It's something, your honor, I'm very ashamed of... I've lost everything because of this... You wonder how I got down this path to begin with.'

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Larry Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Thursday for child pornography. He's pictured above in November

'He has demonstrated that he should never again have access to children,' U.S. District Judge Janet Neff said.

'You have to wonder whether he felt he was omnipotent, whether he felt he was getting away with something so cleverly,' Neff added.

They said he 'deeply regrets the pain that he has caused the community.'

Nassar has also pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexual assault in two other cases in Michigan, admitting that he abused young athletes under the guise of offering medical treatment.

Olympic Gold Medalist McKayla Maroney is one of the women to come forward and accuse Nassar of assault (the two pictured above at a competition in this undated file photo)

Maroney's teammates Gabby Douglas (left) and Aly Raisman (right) also said they were abused by Nassar

He is set to be sentenced in those cases in January.

Olympic gold medalists McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas have said they were among the members of the USA Gymnastics team assaulted by Nassar when he served as team doctor.

He could face life in prison when he is sentenced on those charges next month.

Nassar is set to be sentenced in January for sexual assault

Nassar was the team physician for the Michigan State University gymnastics and women's crew teams, as well as an associate professor at MSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine. He served as the USA Gymnastics physician through four Olympic Games.

'He abused my trust, he abused my body and he left scars on my psyche that may never go away,' Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said in a victim statement submitted to Neff and published online.

She added that the years-long abuse nearly drove her to suicide.

Nassar's attorneys had asked the federal judge for leniency in court filings, arguing Nassar had helped fellow inmates and taken Bible classes since his arrest nearly a year ago, the State Journal said.

In addition to the criminal cases against Nassar, more than 100 women and girls are suing him.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, in a televised address, calls for a mass protest Monday against US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The head of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement on Thursday called for a mass demonstration in protest at US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I call on everyone to take part in a mass popular demonstration to protest and denounce this American aggression and this unjust... decision," Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address.

The demonstration is to be held on Monday in Beirut's southern suburbs, a bastion of Nasrallah's Shiite movement.

"I am calling on men, women, young and old, the southern suburbs, Beirut and all those who wish to join in from across Lebanon," Nasrallah said, also inviting residents of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

Trump on Wednesday announced that his administration was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that was widely condemned as inflammatory.

Most of the international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through negotiations with the Palestinians.

Trump's move sparked threats of a new intifada by the Palestinians and fears of a fresh eruption of violence across the region, but the response of Arab nations has been relatively muted.

Nasrallah, whose military organisation holds the southern region of Lebanon bordering Israel, stopped short of threatening any direct action himself and instead put the onus on Arab governments to provide support to the Palestinians.
Zimbabwe's Patrick Chinamasa, seen here presenting last year's budget, was reappointed as finance minister after the collapse of the Mugabe regime

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Thursday presented the 2018 budget which included a raft of business- and investor-friendly proposals as well as plans to tackle corruption and waste.

The measures include the partial repeal of a controversial indigenisation law passed under former president Robert Mugabe that had limited foreign ownership of local businesses to 49 percent.

The $5.1 billion (4.32 billion euros) budget, the first since Mugabe's shock resignation on November 21, must now be passed by parliament.

It also contains measures to tackle corruption and waste, including a ban on first-class air travel for officials except the president and his deputy, a reduction in overseas diplomatic posts and compulsory retirement for civil servants over 65.

"Government will attract both domestic and international investment by implementing investor-friendly policies," said Chinamasa, who was reappointed as finance minister by Zimbabwe's new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

He said Zimbabwe needed to reestablish its credibility with global financiers in order to relieve chronic cash shortages, a dearth of foreign exchange and a gaping budget deficit.

- Repairing strained ties -

As he took over last month, Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to create jobs

Zimbabwe would also seek to mend strained ties with Britain, the European Union and the United States while attempting to secure new lines of credit from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, he said.

The country is currently in arrears to the World Bank and other creditors to the tune of around $5 billion.

Chinamasa forecast the economy would grow by 4.5 percent in 2018, driven by his austerity measures and anticipated growth in the mining and agricultural sectors.

The country's economic growth has slowed sharply from an average eight percent between 2009 and 2012, to less than one percent last year, while the deficit rose as high as 10 percent of the economy.

The indigenisation law, which was blamed for scaring away investors as it required foreign companies to hand up to 51 percent shareholdings to local partners, will still apply to overseas diamond and platinum miners.

- Selling off state firms -

Mugabe's seizure of white-owned commercial farms is widely blamed for the financial implosion of 2000

To cut waste, the government will also institute a hiring freeze, abolish posts handed to members of the ruling party's youth wing and sell-off loss-making state companies.

As much as $3.2 billion of next year's budget will be required to pay the country's mammoth state wage bill.

As he took over last month, Mnangagwa promised to create jobs in a country where unemployment ballooned to 90 percent under the ruinous financial mismanagement of his predecessor.

In one of his first acts as president, Mnangagwa ordered a three-month amnesty for the return of stolen funds to the country.

Mugabe's seizure of white-owned commercial farms is widely blamed for the financial implosion and the sharp decline in production from the year 2000 that caused the economy to halve in size.
Calls for greater autonomy in Cameroon's two English-speaking areas have been rejected by President Paul Biya whose government has led a crackdown on the separatists

Cameroonian author Patrice Nganang was arrested at the airport as he tried to fly to Zimbabwe a day after publishing an opinion piece sharply critical of Cameroon's president, a source said Thursday.

Nganang, who teaches literature at New York University, "was taken into custody yesterday (Wednesday) at Douala (airport)," a source close to the police told AFP.

"He drew attention to himself in recent days with several acts of provocation," the source said, also mentioning Nganang's Facebook posts.

Agents were waiting for him at the airport in Douala, Cameroon's economic capital, and he has since been taken to the capital Yaounde for detention.

The writer had been en route to Harare after wrapping up a stay in mainly French-speaking Cameroon, during which he visited the restive anglophone regions that have been hit by an anti-secession government crackdown.

On Tuesday, Nganang published a French opinion piece on the Jeune Afrique news site that was critical of Cameroonian President Paul Biya's handling of the anglophone crisis.

"It will probably take another political regime to make the state understand that the machine gun cannot stem a movement," wrote Nganang.

"Only change at the head of the state can settle the anglophone conflict in Cameroon," he said.

Calls for greater autonomy in Cameroon's two English-speaking areas, the Northwest and Southwest Regions, have been rejected by Biya whose government has led a crackdown on the separatist drive.

Anglophones make up about a fifth of the country's 22 million people, and often say they suffer from economic inequality and discrimination, especially in education and the legal system.
"We will not be moving Canada's embassy from Tel Aviv," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a visit to Guangzhou, China, broadcast nationally in Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it clear Thursday that Canada's embassy in Israel would remain in Tel Aviv, in a split with its neighbor and ally, the United States.

"We will not be moving Canada's embassy from Tel Aviv," Trudeau said during a visit to Guangzhou, China, broadcast nationally in Canada.

Trudeau was reacting to US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians, as Israel's capital.

On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland reaffirmed Canada's longheld position that "the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute."

"We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel," she said.
Yemeni Huthi rebel fighters march during a rally celebrating the death of Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh a day after he was killed, in the capital Sanaa on December 5, 2017

Human Rights Watch said Thursday it was concerned that Yemen's Huthi rebels were carrying out "abusive practices" against former allies -- loyalists of slain ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh -- and civilians.

The Huthis gunned down Saleh on Monday, and the Iran-backed insurgents have since consolidated their grip on the capital.

"The Huthis should remember that the killing of Ali Abdullah Saleh does not negate their obligations under international law, nor to civilians in areas under their control," HRW's Yemen researcher Kristine Beckerle told AFP.

Beckerle said the actions of the Huthis fit a pattern -- documented by HRW since the group took over Sanaa in 2014 -- of arbitrary detentions and forcible disappearances against critical voices, notably activists and journalists.

"Troubling reports from Sanaa over the last few days indicate the Huthis are again engaging in these abusive practices," she said.

A three-year alliance between the Huthis and pro-Saleh forces has degenerated into open warfare in Sanaa since last week, leaving at least 234 people dead and 400 wounded, according to the Red Cross.

The Huthis seized near total control of the capital after Saleh's death but even as the violence subsided, rivals of the insurgents have reported a massive crackdown.

Members of Saleh's political party said the Huthis have rounded up hundreds of suspected loyalists, including his family members.

Reports of summary executions could not immediately be confirmed.

Tribal chiefs in at least four provinces have been summoned to pledge allegiance to the Huthis, and the crackdown has also targeted local journalists.

On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists as well as Reporters Without Borders urged the Huthis to immediately release 41 staff of Yemen Today, a pro-Saleh television station.

Yemen's Sanaa-based national syndicate of journalists said the Huthis had posted the names of employees of media viewed as hostile at checkpoints around the capital.
Palestinian men watching President Donald Trump's address recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital on December 6

President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has reverberated across the Middle East and the world, but the motives for his move may lie in politics at home.

In fulfilling an explosive campaign promise, Trump has prompted rioting in Ramallah, put the already moribund Middle East peace process in doubt and cleaved a wedge between the United States and its allies.

Yet crucially for this embattled US president, he has also shored up his evangelical Christian base, squared away further support from a vital donor and burnished his image as a political iconoclast.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had made the same promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, but faced with the same destabilizing consequences, backed down.

Trump's political brand is to show no such queasiness.

"It's a fetish, and I'm convinced Trump is driven in part by a desire to make his predecessors look bad by comparison," said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. "'They ignored their promises. I fulfilled mine.'"

- Familiar playbook -

Trump's announcement in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House carried more than a hint of deja vu.

Two months ago, in the same room, before the same podium, beneath the same emblematic portrait of America's founding father George Washington, Trump launched a similar foreign policy gambit.

Then, he shocked allies by questioning a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program. On Wednesday it was picking sides in the blood feud over control of Jerusalem.

During the Great Recession and World War II, Franklin Roosevelt used the Diplomatic Reception Room for his "fireside chats," designed to sooth and reassure an anxious nation.

Trump has twice in his young presidency used the room to light a match that risked setting the Middle East ablaze.

But on both Iran and Jerusalem, aides say Trump made it crystal clear early on that he was determined to fulfil his pledge to voters.

He baulked at the timidity of advisors -- like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Pentagon chief James Mattis -- who warned of grim consequences, according to people familiar with the discussions.

At a November 27 meeting of the National Security Council on Jerusalem, Trump gave more weight to the voices of UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Vice President Mike Pence.

"The Vice President argued that this is our moment to take decisive action," one White House aide told AFP. "The president was very receptive to that."

Pence and Haley's deep interest and involvement in that decision was not a coincidence.

- Religious right -

Pence, who late last month courted pro-Israel groups in New York, has also been one of the links between the administration and mega donor Sheldon Adelson.

The casino magnate threw tens of millions of dollars behind Trump's presidential campaign and has lobbied vociferously for the White House to recognize Jerusalem.

And since being selected as Trump's running mate in July 2016, Pence has been an even more crucial bridge between the bombastic New Yorker and those evangelical voters that helped propel him to the White House.

Both he and Haley are strong advocates for a religious right that has given Jerusalem policy surprising weight.

Around 76 percent of evangelical voters aged over 65 -- a group that voted overwhelmingly for Trump -- have a positive view of Israel, according to a survey by LifeWay.

And a significant portion of evangelicals believe that regaining control of Jerusalem's Temple Mount would set in motion events in the Book of Revelation, according to author and religious scholar Diana Butler Bass.

Trump does not share that view, but facing a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, midterm elections in 2018 that could see Democrats make significant gains and a Russia investigation that threatens his presidency, he must keep diehard supporters onside.

During Wednesday's announcement, Trump and Pence stood side-by-side, both wearing blue ties and white shirts that echoed the Israeli flag, offering a small hint at the motive behind a move that echoes far beyond the United States.
Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, seen here in November 2017, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for child pornography

Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, accused of sexually assaulting more than 100 young girls, including members of the US Olympic team, was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Thursday for child pornography.

Nassar, 54, who is facing sentencing next month for separate sexual assault charges, pleaded guilty in July to three counts of possessing child pornography.

He was given the maximum 20 years in prison on each count by US District Judge Janet Neff at a court hearing in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Thursday, US media reported.

"He has demonstrated that he should never again have access to children," Judge Neff was quoted by the local Lansing State Journal newspaper as saying.

"You have to wonder whether he felt he was omnipotent, whether he felt he was getting away with something so cleverly," she added.

Nassar, who was brought into court in handcuffs, told the judge that he was ashamed of his actions and had lost everything, the Journal said.

Nassar, who worked at Michigan State University in addition to USA Gymnastics, was found to be in possession of more than 37,000 graphic videos and images of child pornography.

He has pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexual assault in two other cases in Michigan, admitting that he abused young athletes under the guise of offering medical treatment.

Olympic gold medalists McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas are among the members of the USA Gymnastics team who have said they were sexually assaulted by Nassar.

- 'A Monster' -

Maroney, in a victim impact statement submitted to Judge Neff, called Nassar a "monster" and urged her to hand down the maximum sentence.

US gymnast McKayla Maroney described former team doctor Larry Nassar as a "monster" who should spend the rest of his life in prison

"Dr. Nassar was not a doctor, he in fact is, was, and forever shall be, a child molester, and a monster of a human being," Maroney wrote.

"He abused my trust, abused my body and left scars on my psyche that may never heal," she said.

"Larry Nassar deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison," she added.

Maroney won team gold and an individual vault silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics as a member of a US women's gymnastics team dubbed the "Fierce Five."

A three-time World Champion, she first went public with her allegations against Nassar amid the "#MeToo" movement.

She said Nassar began abusing her when she was just 13 and the abuse continued throughout her gymnastics career.

Nassar could face life in prison when he is sentenced on the sexual assault charges next month.

Nassar has been accused of molesting more than 100 female athletes during the three decades he worked with USA Gymnastics.

His case was part of a wide-ranging scandal which forced the resignation of USA Gymnastics chief Steve Penny in March.

Penny was accused by victims of failing to quickly notify authorities about abuse allegations.

USA Gymnastics adopted a new "safe sport policy" in response to the Nassar scandal that requires "mandatory reporting" of suspicions of sexual abuse.

A civil lawsuit has been filed on behalf of about 100 of Nassar's victims.

Their attorney, John Manly, estimated that the total number could be as high as 160.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson presents a speech on Islamist terrorism to an audience of academics, diplomats and members of the media at the Foreign Office in London on December 7, 2017

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is set to visit Iran this weekend, where he is expected to raise the case of a British-Iranian woman held in a Tehran prison, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

Johnson will meet with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif and is also expected to hold talks on the Iranian nuclear deal, the report said.

It would be the first visit by a British foreign secretary to Iran since 2015 and only the third since 2003.

The Foreign Office refused to confirm the trip.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison in September 2016 for taking part in the mass anti-regime protests in 2009, which she denies.

She was working at the Thomson Reuters Foundation -- the media organisation's philanthropic arm -- at the time of her arrest.

She is due to face fresh charges in court of "spreading propaganda" on December 10.

Thomson Reuters chief executive Monique Villa said recently that the new charges risked a further 16-year prison sentence and were "a mockery of justice".

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016 after visiting family. She was travelling with her daughter Gabriella, now three years old.

The case has become highly politicised, especially after a "slip of the tongue" by Johnson last month when he stated that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran, which has been used by the Iranian authorities to help justify the new charges.
Thirty-five years after the start of the AIDS epidemic, one person in two in sub-Saharan Africa "does not know their HIV status," according to a French expert

Thirty-five years after the start of the AIDS epidemic, one person in two in sub-Saharan Africa "does not know their HIV status," according to a French expert.

"Testing remains insufficient in west Africa and central Africa," public health demographer Joseph Larmarange told AFP in an interview at an AIDS prevention conference in Abidjan.

- Why are screenings a challenge? -

"Testing is the cornerstone of our response to AIDS, because once people get tested and are found to be positive, we can refer them to medical care and treatment. If they are negative, (we orient them) towards preventive care," Larmarange said.

"Today, more than one person in two in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in west and central Africa, does not know their HIV status. We know that in Ivory Coast 40 percent of women and 60 percent of men have never been tested".

"Why the delay? Because west Africa has received less attention than east and southern Africa, where the disease is more pronounced. In west Africa, the outbreak is limited in the general population, with a prevalence of 1-2.5 percent, but more pronounced in high-risk groups -- sex workers, drug users and men who have sex with men. The difficulty is in how to reach those most at risk."

- Are current testing strategies enough? -

"Several strategies have been implemented in the region, such as community testing to identify the most at-risk groups."

"Depending on the country, we have what is called rapid testing, which is done by pricking the fingertip. It allows screenings on the spot. But community volunteers are not all trained to perform this test."

"Routine screening during medical visits, advocated by the World Health Organization, remains limited in practise because of health workers' reluctance and the device's heaviness. Only one person in five is offered such a screening during a routine medical visit."

"Even during specific consultations for sexually transmitted diseases, three quarters of people are not offered these tests. A quarter of women will not be offered testing during prenatal visits, nor two-thirds of men accompanying their wives."

- What needs to change? -

"We'll have to make screenings accessible through many different methods. We must always agree to voluntary testing, which is lagging today, meaning that when someone wants to get a test done, they can easily obtain one.

"We know we need to improve our approach to testing during medical consultations, maybe tailor them to specific consultations.

"Moreover, we need to strengthen our community activism in populations not easily accessible... New tools, such as the self-test, also need a place in our approach to west and central Africa."

"The self-test can be offered in different ways: through secondary distribution, which means people giving the test to others within their circle as a way to reach hidden populations, such as occasional sex workers and closeted gay men. And through pharmacy distribution, including in rural and remote areas."
Guinean riot police officers stand next to burning barricades during clashes with protesters in Conakry on November 21, 2017, after thousands of schoolchildren descended onto the streets to support a walkout by their teachers against the government

Teachers in Guinea said Thursday they have agreed to suspend their month-old strike following an offer by religious leaders to mediate talks with the government.

"We decided to suspend our movement because our imams, our religious leaders got involved in the negotiations," said Aboubacar Soumah, the deputy leader of the West African country's teachers' union.

Soumah had called for a teachers' walkout on November 13 over salary increases, which drew thousands of pupils onto the streets in support.

In front of a crowd of about 300 teachers gathered at the union's offices in capital Conakry, Soumah urged his peers to return to school and resume classes starting on Monday.

Muslim and Christian religious leaders "will confer with the Guinean authorities on how to resolve our demands, which are legitimate and non-negotiable," the union leader said.

Several teachers have been arrested and two teenage protesters killed since the walkout was called, with President Alpha Conde taking a hard line on media he described as aiding an "illegal" movement.

Guinea suspended broadcasting by a radio station late last month after it attempted to interview Soumah, prompting more than 40 radio stations to shut down programming for 24 hours in protest.

Several trade unions had also threatened a nationwide "general strike" if the striking teachers were punished.
Dutch soldiers, shown here at their base in Gao, Mali, are among nearly 11,000 peacekeepers in MINUSMA, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali

The UN Security Council is to vote Friday on a resolution authorizing its Mali peacekeeping mission to support a new Sahel regional force against jihadists, diplomats said.

If the text proposed by France is accepted, the MINUSMA mission in Mali would provide medical evacuations, fuel, water, rations, and engineering units to assist the G5 Sahel troops provided by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The G5 conducted its first operation last month in the Sahel region, which has turned into a hotbed of lawlessness since chaos engulfed Libya in 2011, Islamists took over northern Mali in 2012, and the Boko Haram group became active in northern Nigeria.

France and the United States -- two of five permanent members of the Council -- have clashed over international support for the Sahel force.

French President Emmanuel Macron has complained about the sluggish deployment of the G5 Sahel and said it needed more troops and military means.

He has called an international meeting in Paris next Wednesday in an effort to address the shortfalls.

In its proposed resolution, France asked United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to conclude "as soon as possible" a technical agreement between the UN, the European Union and the G5 Sahel states "with a view to providing specified operational and logistical support through MINUSMA" to the new force.

The assistance would apply to the G5 Sahel force "only when operating on Malian territory" and would come at no extra cost to the UN because it would "be subject to full financial reimbursement to the United Nations," the draft resolution says.

MINUSMA has almost 11,000 Blue Helmets and has been deployed in Mali since 2013.

France has its own 4,000-strong military presence in the region, known as Barkhane.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has said that the peacekeeping mission in Mali was already overstretched. She raised "serious" reservations about "using UN resources to support non-UN activity."

Financing of the G5 Sahel force, which Paris says would need 400 million euros ($473 million) when it is fully operational next year, is not yet assured.

The death in October of four American soldiers in Niger -- ambushed by Islamic militants -- highlighted the US's own military role in the region. It has about 800 troops in Niger.
Protesters demonstrate in front of the US Army career center in Times Square, New York on July 26, 2017

President Donald Trump's administration has asked a federal court to block the Pentagon from starting the hiring of transgender recruits next year.

The filing by the Justice Department late on Wednesday is the latest in a series of legal measures that have unfolded since Trump sent out three tweets in July saying that transgender troops could not serve "in any capacity" in the military.

Those tweets, later followed by a formal White House memorandum, set off a roar of protest -- with several service members and rights groups quick to sue.

Two federal courts have since temporarily blocked Trump's ban, and the Pentagon was due to start accepting transgender recruits on January 1.

The government's filing calls for a partial delay, specifically that the Pentagon does not accept transgender recruits from that date.

"Defendants request that the court stay the portion of its preliminary injunction requiring defendants to begin accessing transgender individuals into the military on January 1, 2018," pending an appeal decision, court documents state.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the litigation.

Under a new policy announced last year by the Obama administration, the Pentagon was originally supposed to start accepting transgender recruits on July 1, 2017.

However, that was delayed for six months by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pending further review of the matter.

"Compelling the military to implement a new accessions policy while it is simultaneously completing a comprehensive study of military service by transgender individuals ... would waste significant military resources and sow unnecessary confusion," the government argued in its filing.
US President Donald Trump (center right) and congressional leaders including top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi (left) were facing a tight timeframe for reaching agreement on federal spending

The US Congress, facing an end-of-week deadline, passed a funding stopgap measure Thursday that averts a government shutdown and provides lawmakers and President Donald Trump with breathing room to strike a 2018 budget deal.

The Senate easily passed the bipartisan measure that funds government until December 22, by a vote of 81 to 14.

It occurred just hours after the House of Representatives did the same.

The bill heads to the White House for the president's signature ahead of the Friday midnight deadline. But with a shutdown crisis prevented -- at least for now -- a heated battle could lay ahead.

Trump will need to work with Democrats and his fellow Republicans in the coming weeks to thrash out a budget plan for fiscal year 2018 that earns the support of lawmakers battling over policy and spending priorities.

The Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress, but in the Senate they will need at least a handful of Democratic votes in order to pass the spending bill.

While the two sides share some common goals, such as funding the program that provides health insurance for millions of children, they remain divided on issues like the level of military funding compared to that for domestic programs.

Democratic and Republican leaders huddled with Trump at the White House before the Senate vote.

"We hope we can come to an agreement" on 2018 spending, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said.

"We're here in the spirit of 'Let's get it done.'"

Senate Democrats earlier had threatened to block progress unless they won 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.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said passage of the Dream Act protecting young immigrants was a top priority.

But White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Republicans were angling for separate talks on immigration.

Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "stressed that negotiations on immigration should be held separately on a different track, and not as part of the government funding bill," she told reporters.

With the Trump administration seeking to boost military spending for 2018, Pelosi said Democrats wanted to match those hikes on the domestic side.

"Our fight is to bring up the domestic agenda to parity" with military spending increases, she said.

Democrats supported several bipartisan priorities including funding opioid abuse prevention, improving conditions for veterans, and disaster relief funding.
"Salvator Mundi," which was sold at auction for a record $450 million, is one of fewer than 20 paintings generally accepted as being from Leonardo Da Vinci's own hand

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the actual buyer of a painting by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci that sold for a record-breaking $450 million at auction last month, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The young and dynamic crown prince, known by his initials MBS, used an intermediary to buy the much-sought-after painting of Christ, "Salvator Mundi," the newspaper reported, citing US intelligence and other unnamed sources.

The son of Saudi King Salman is seen to be progressively consolidating his power, and is the architect of a wide-ranging plan dubbed Vision 2030 to bring social and economic change to his country's oil-dependent economy.

He is also seen as the mastermind of last month's rounding-up of more than 200 princes, ministers and businessmen in a sweeping anti-corruption purge.

The painting -- one of fewer than 20 works generally accepted as being by the Renaissance master, according to Christie's -- was bought by little-known Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, reports say.

The Journal reported that Bader was the nominal buyer, but said MBS was identified in US intelligence reports as the true owner.

"He is a proxy for MBS," an unnamed figure in the Gulf art world told the Journal.

American officials are keeping close tabs on the crown prince, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

On Wednesday, the Louvre Abu Dhabi announced that the record-breaking Da Vinci painting would be displayed there.

The reports come shortly after the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new military and economic committee, separate from the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In recent years, Qatar has been the biggest player in the Gulf art world, but in June, Saudi Arabia and some of its allies broke off diplomatic and trade relations with Doha, which they accuse of supporting extremist movements.

"Salvator Mundi" -- dated to around 1500 -- is the last known Da Vinci in the hands of a private collector. It was long believed to be a copy but was finally authenticated about a dozen years ago.
JERUSALEM (AP) - President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday could have deep repercussions across the region.

Recognition of Israel's control over the city will be welcomed by Israel, a close American ally, and be popular with pro-Israel evangelical Christian voters who make up a key part of Trump's base. But it could also trigger violence in the region, derail a developing U.S. Mideast peace plan before it even gets off the ground and infuriate key allies in the Arab world and in the West.

Here is a look at why Jerusalem is such a sensitive issue:

FILE - In this Monday, Feb. 1, 2016 file photo, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man looks at the Western Wall and Dome of the Rock in the back, in Jerusalem's Old City. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)

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CONFLICTING CLAIMS

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim the city's eastern sector, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future independent state. These rival claims lie at the heart of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conflict is focused largely on the Old City, home to Jerusalem's most important Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, and in particular on a hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. The compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the spot where the biblical Jewish Temples stood thousands of years ago and is considered the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock.

While Israel controls the city and its government is based there, its annexation of east Jerusalem is not internationally recognized. The international community overwhelmingly says the final status of Jerusalem should be resolved through negotiations.

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WHY IS TRUMP DOING THIS?

On the campaign trail, Trump took a strongly pro-Israel stance and promised to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, where most countries keep their embassies, to Jerusalem. Since taking office, he has learned that such a move is easier to talk about than to carry out.

Under American law, the president must sign a waiver every six months that leaves the embassy in Tel Aviv. In June, Trump renewed the waiver, as a string of predecessors has done. This week, another six-month deadline passed without Trump renewing it.

On Wednesday, however, Trump ordered the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the U.S. Embassy to the holy city.

"This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality," he said.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital could allow Trump to say that he kept a campaign promise. It also will thrill Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of Trump's biggest supporters on the global stage.

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WHAT EFFECT WILL HIS DECLARATION HAVE?

On the ground, very little will change. Netanyahu's office and official residence are in Jerusalem, as are the country's parliament, Supreme Court and Foreign Ministry. Visiting world leaders immediately travel to Jerusalem for meetings with Israeli officials.

Much of Jerusalem is an open city where Jews and Palestinians can move about freely, though a separation barrier built by Israel more than a decade ago slices through several Arab neighborhoods and requires tens of thousands of Palestinians to pass through crowded checkpoints to reach the center of the city.

Interaction between the sides is minimal and there are large disparities between wealthier Jewish neighborhoods and impoverished Palestinian ones. In addition, most of the city's more than 300,000 Palestinians do not hold Israeli citizenship and instead are "residents."

But a U.S. declaration carries deep symbolic meaning by essentially imposing a solution for one of the core issues in the conflict.

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HOW WILL THIS BE RECEIVED?

Beyond the electoral concerns, there seems to be little upside for Trump in making a change.

Trump likes to call an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement "the ultimate deal," and he has invested significant effort in laying the groundwork for a peace initiative in the coming months. His son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, is leading that effort and a close aide, Jason Greenblatt, has crisscrossed the region for talks with Israelis, Palestinians and other Arab leaders.

The Palestinians have warned that changing the status of Jerusalem would mean the end of those peace efforts. They also have warned of mass street protests - something that could easily erupt into full-scale violence.

International opposition to the move, including from key American allies, also has grown increasingly strident. In recent days, the European Union, Germany and France have all implored Trump not to take action on Jerusalem.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation said changing Jerusalem's status would amount to "naked aggression" against the Arab and Muslim world, and the head of the Arab League said it would be a "dangerous measure that would have repercussions" across the entire Middle East.

Perhaps most significantly, Saudi Arabia spoke out strongly against the possible American step. The Saudis are a key American ally necessary for any attempt to forge a region-wide peace.

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WILL THERE REALLY BE VIOLENCE?

Israeli security officials say they are monitoring the situation and prepared for all scenarios. Israel and the Palestinians also maintain discreet security ties in the West Bank that have helped prevent violence from escalating in recent years.

Still, much of the violence between Israel and the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank over the past 20 years has been connected to tensions in the holy city.

The city experienced deadly riots in 1996 after Israel opened a new tunnel in the Old City. The second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount. More recently, the city experienced a wave of Palestinian stabbings in late 2015 in part because of growing numbers of visits by Jewish nationalists to the Temple Mount, and last summer, the city again experienced weeks of unrest when Israel tried to install security cameras next to the Al Aqsa Mosque after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli police officers.

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AP's Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this story.

FILE - In this Sept. 24, 2015, file photo, Palestinians pray during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, near the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's old city. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

FILE - In this April 13, 2017, file photo, covered in prayer shawls Jewish men of the Cohanim priestly caste participate in a blessing during the Passover holiday, in front of the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's Old City. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

FILE- In this Feb. 19, 2009 ,file photo, people walk in and out of the Damascus gate, while the Dome of the Rock, background and left, is seen on a cloudy, overcast day in Jerusalem's Old City. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

FILE - In this April 1, 2017, file photo, Israel border police blocks an alley in Jerusalem's Old City after a stabbing attack. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 19, 2017 file photo Israeli border police officers stop a Palestinian woman for a security check as Palestinians gather for prayer at the Lion's Gate, following an appeal from clerics for Muslims to pray in the streets instead of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in Jerusalem's Old City. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 9, 2015 file photo, Israeli police officers stand guards just before Muslims Friday prayer in Jerusalem's Old City. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 2, 2015, file photo, Israeli border policeman exchanges blows with a Palestinian man during a confrontation after Friday prayers outside the Old City in Jerusalem. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, Dec. 6, and instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. His decision could have deep repercussions across the region. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Many mainstream economists say they're appalled by President Donald Trump's threats to trash trade agreements and tax imports in a blunt-force drive to shrink America's bulging trade deficits.

Yet economists themselves bear some blame for the backlash against free trade and globalization that helped propel Trump to the White House and Britain to abandon the European Union.

So says Dani Rodrik, a Harvard economist, in a provocative new book. In "Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy," Rodrik argues that most economists long ignored what their own scholarship had made clear: That global free trade, for all its benefits, inevitably ends up depressing some industries and communities.

This Sept. 15, 2016, photo provided by Jessica De Simone shows author Dani Rodrik at his office at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass. In Rodrik's new book, "Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy,'' Rodrik argues that most economists long ignored what their own scholarship had made clear: That global free trade, for all its benefits, inevitably ends up depressing some industries and communities. (Jessica De Simone via AP)

Economists kept quiet about this, Rodrik argues, because they feared that any criticism of free trade would empower "protectionist" critics who oppose open trade in nearly all forms.

But according to Rodrik, it all backfired: By dodging an honest debate on the pros and cons of open trade, he says, economists perversely "empowered the barbarians" and made it easier for "extremists and demagogues" to win public support.

"Economic theory teaches us that globalization and openness to trade cause a lot of redistribution of income," Rodrik says. "The flip-side of gains from trade is that some people, some communities, some parts of the country end up becoming worse off. That wasn't a mystery. That's what economists were teaching all along."

Rodrik, a 60-year-old Turkish-born professor of international economy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, has cast a critical eye on globalization for years. The Associated Press spoke with him recently about his latest book, Trump and his policies and how economists are responding to discontent with globalization and its consequences.

Rodrik wants to be clear: He supports free trade. But he is critical of what he calls "hyperglobalization" - something he says involves wresting control of commerce from individual governments and handing it to global institutions to spur ever-freer-flowing trade and investment. When many European countries abandoned their own currencies and adopted the euro, for example, they effectively turned their economic policy over to the European Central Bank.

Countries should form their own policies, Rodrik says, guided by the likely impact on workers and communities. If European nations fear the consequences of genetically modified foods for people, for instance, they should be free to ban them - even knowing the trade-off will likely be fewer food choices and higher prices.

Some of his peers take issue with Rodrik's argument. One of them, C. Fred Bergsten, director emeritus of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has sparred for years with Rodrik over the consequences of globalization. Bergsten argues that while some economists downplayed the costs of free trade, others, including at Peterson, backed programs to help workers who lose out to foreign competition and train them for new careers.

More at fault, Bergsten says, are business leaders and free-trade advocates in Congress who pushed trade deals but refused to pay for the safety-net programs that would support displaced workers. Advocates of free trade "are often the very same people who are most resistant to even modest programs" of assistance to those hurt by trade, Bergsten contends.

Yet in Rodrik's view, recent free-trade deals have evolved from simple efforts to pry open closed markets into complex deals that reward powerful corporations but often cause workers to lose jobs to cheaper labor in countries with lax workplace and environmental safeguards.

Rodrik, points, for example, to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal with 11 Pacific Rim countries that Trump nixed in January. The deal would have served pharmaceutical companies by strengthening patent protections on their drugs, thereby delaying poorer countries' access to cheaper generics.

Trade deals contain "thousands and thousands of pages of detailed rules," Rodrik says. "Do we protect labor and affected communities, or do we protect pharmaceutical companies or large multinationals or financial establishments?"

Rodrik says he empathizes with the grievances that led to Trump's election. He agrees with the president, for example, that the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada cost America jobs by opening the U.S. market to cheap Mexican imports and by encouraging U.S. manufacturers to move jobs to capitalize on lower-wage labor. Still, he rejects Trump's idea that his administration could bring back those jobs by renegotiating or withdrawing from NAFTA.

"Just undoing that agreement is going to create new dislocations elsewhere," he says, "like in all the auto supply chains" that now cross NAFTA borders.

Rodrik says he thinks the economics profession is learning from its mistakes, including its pre-Great Recession celebration of a free flow of capital around the world. As finicky investors move in and out of markets, sometimes overwhelming and destabilizing economies, it's clear, he says, that "financial globalization is no bowl of cherries."

"Things change when the evidence comes in," Rodrik says. "Economics is a discipline that's quite capable of changing track. It just doesn't happen very quickly."

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Follow Paul Wiseman on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sounding a discordant note among the positive talk on the tax bill, a number of Republicans are delivering a blunt assessment, casting the bill as a boost to big corporations and the wealthy instead of the middle class.

"Fundamentally if you look at the bulk of the bill, two-thirds of it, it's tied on the business side," Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said Tuesday as leaders in the House and Senate hailed their respective measures as an advantage for working Americans.

Asked why GOP leaders label it a middle-class tax cut, Sanford said, "There is certainly a chicken in every pot, in essence. But, again, look at where the big money is. The big money is on the corporate side."

In this Dec. 5, 2017, photo, House Republicans, from left, Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., arrive for a closed-door strategy session on Capitol Hill in Washington. Sounding a discordant note among the positive talk on the tax bill, a number of Republicans are delivering a blunt assessment, casting the bill as a boost to big corporations and the wealthy instead of the middle class. "Fundamentally if you look at the bulk of the bill, two-thirds of it, it's tied on the business side," Sanford said Tuesday as leaders in the House and Senate hailed their respective measures as an advantage for working Americans. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Both the House and Senate have passed massive tax bills that would provide steep tax cuts for businesses and more modest tax breaks for families and individuals. The tax cuts in both bills add up to about $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Expect changes to the final package. California Republicans are pushing to enhance a deduction for state and local taxes. Both the Senate and House bills would limit the deduction to $10,000 in property taxes. Some Republicans from high-tax states want taxpayers to be able to use the deduction for state and local income taxes as well.

"That's one of the options that our lawmakers have brought to us from California and New York and Illinois and others. So yes, we are looking at it. That's one of many options," said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.

Brady, who is one of the lead negotiators for House Republicans, said lawmakers are also considering increasing the child tax credit. It's $1,600 in the House bill and $2,000 in the Senate bill. Under current law, the credit is $1,000.

Congressional estimates show that taxpayers in every income group would initially see tax cuts, with the biggest cuts going to the wealthiest Americans. However, after several years, many low- and middle-income families would see tax increases, according to the analyses by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper for Congress.

"We think that all Americans should be given lower taxes, and so there's still work to be done on tax reform," said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus.

The two chambers must reconcile their respective bills, and GOP leaders are intent on delivering a final package to President Donald Trump by Christmas.

"I call it the mixer," Trump said Tuesday. "It's a conference where everyone gets together and they pick all the good things and get rid of the things they don't like."

But days and nights of tough negotiations await the House and Senate.

Even Republicans who have defended the legislation have sometimes tripped over themselves.

A top Republican senator gained attention when he defended GOP efforts to scale back the federal estate tax because it helps those who invest rather than people who spend their money on "booze or women or movies."

"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 it's on booze or women or movies," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told The Des Moines Register late last week.

Later, Grassley issued a statement saying his comments had been taken out of context.

"The question is one of basic fairness, and working to create a tax code that doesn't penalize frugality, saving and investment," Grassley said.

Other provisions appear ripe for change.

Republicans on both sides of the Capitol have slammed a Senate provision that would retain the alternative minimum tax for corporations, which is designed to make sure that corporations pay at least some tax. The House bill eliminates the tax.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said keeping the corporate AMT would kill incentives for businesses to invest in research and development.

Brady said addressing concerns about the corporate AMT is high on the list of priorities.

Brady also said the conference panel will look closely at the differing House and Senate tax treatments for "pass-through" businesses, the millions of firms large and small whose profits are reported on the owners' individual income-tax returns.

"The Senate structure has some strengths to it. So does the House," he said. "Right now we're looking at how we can improve on both structures."

Despite complaints from some members, GOP leaders see no deal-breakers to reconciling the House and Senate bills and passing a unified package before Christmas.

Sanford said Republicans need a big legislative victory after failing to repeal and replace Barack Obama's health law.

"The (Republican) base was particularly frustrated when health care didn't move, and so this is seen as a, quote, win," Sanford said. "If you talk to folks back home, the Republican base, they'll say, 'Well, you need to get that done.' If you ask them what's in it, they don't have a clue."

He added, "Be careful what you ask for."

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Associated Press writers Marcy Gordon, Alan Fram and Ken Thomas contributed to this report.

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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter at http://twitter.com/stephenatap
The nation's biggest health insurer is spending nearly $5 billion to buy hundreds of clinics, just three days after rival Aetna announced a tie up with CVS Health Corp.

Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. said Wednesday that its Optum segment will buy the DaVita Medical Group from DaVita Inc. in a cash deal expected to close next year.

Health insurers have been pushing deeper into managing or providing patient care in order to cut costs and improve health, especially for people with chronic conditions.

FILE - This Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, file photo, shows a portion of the UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s campus in Minnetonka, Minn. UnitedHealth Group Inc. said Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, that its Optum segment will buy the DaVita Medical Group from DaVita Inc. in a cash deal expected to close next year. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

DaVita Medical Group runs nearly 300 primary and specialty care clinics in several states. It also has about three dozen urgent care centers and six outpatient surgery centers.

Optum already operates more than 1,100 primary, urgent care and surgery centers through a business it has been expanding.

On Sunday, CVS said it would pay about $69 billion for Aetna Inc., the nation's third-largest health insurer. That deal could position the company as a one-stop-shop for basic health care, chronic disease monitoring, prescriptions and insurance to cover those goods and services.

CVS runs nearly 10,000 stores and also operates one of the country's largest pharmacy benefit management businesses. Aetna covers around 22 million people.

Leaders of both companies are pitching that deal as a way to complement doctor care. They note that the company's vast network of stores and clinics can help patients stick with treatment plans, monitor their conditions and do other things to improve their health.

CVS has been offering blood draws at some of its locations and plans to start adding nutritionists and other expanded services.

Companies hope this more involved approach will keep patients on a treatment plan or living healthier lives, an approach that could ward off expensive hospital stays.

Insurers also want their patients to use clinics and care centers as a way to cut down on the over use of expensive emergency rooms for care that isn't dire.

DaVita Medical Group serves about 1.7 million people annually in California, Colorado and Florida, among other states.

Denver-based parent DaVita Inc. said it will use proceeds from the deal to buy back stock and pare down debt. It plans to focus on its U.S. and international kidney care business.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A teen accused of killing his grandmother before Thanksgiving has been extradited back to Florida from New York where he was captured by agents near the Canadian border.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office tweeted that 15-year-old Logan Mott arrived in back in Florida on Tuesday evening to face charges of second-degree murder and theft of a vehicle.

Mott and his 53-year-old grandmother Kristina French were reported missing when they didn't pick up his father at the airport the day before Thanksgiving. The grandmother was watching the teen while his father was out of town.

French's body was found in a shallow grave in Mott's backyard. Police say he took her car and was detained in Buffalo, New York.
BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said Wednesday that recent crime figures are "trending in the right direction," hopeful of achieving a turnaround in a city where the number of homicides this year is nearing the all-time high set in 2015.

The city of roughly 620,000 people has recorded more than 320 killings so far this year, nearing the record 344 slayings in all of 2015. In comparison, New York City, a city of some 8.5 million, is projected to have fewer than 300 homicides this year.

At her weekly press briefing, Pugh said a new city initiative is chipping away at skyrocketing crime as authorities particularly focus attention on five troubled zones. She also said directors from 30 departments have been meeting daily at police headquarters in recent weeks to make crime reduction a top priority.

"We're focused on the long-term and the short-term. That's why these meetings take place daily in our police department and as you can see I think they are producing results," said Pugh, seeking to put a positive spin on city crime rates she described in early November as "out of control."

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis appeared alongside Pugh at Wednesday's news conference. He said figures showing fewer homicides, non-fatal shootings and other crimes since the Oct. 30 launch of the city's latest crime-fighting initiative "provide us with a lot of momentum going into 2018."

"October 30th might not seem like a long time, but being able to pause and recognize the momentum and the crime reductions that are being accomplished across the board is something that we find very encouraging," Davis said.

Gary LaFree, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, said it's generally not possible to turn crime around that rapidly.

"In general, serious crime trends are gradual - not like the ups and downs of an EKG," LaFree said by email.

Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore, noted that crime rates ebb and flow due to complex dynamics. He said it could be possible there is a "leveling off" happening on the streets that is totally "unrelated to what the police or the city are doing."

On Tuesday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan came to Baltimore to announce plans to crack down on gangs and repeat violent offenders, including directing the state police to help serve high-priority warrants in Baltimore. The U.S. Marshals Service also said it would help the state and the city with high-priority arrest warrants for violent criminals.

It's not hard to find Baltimore residents who are deeply skeptical about any assertions by politicians that there could be a speedy fix to Baltimore's crime problem.

Lanita Williams, a 29-year-old administrative assistant at a downtown law firm, believes Pugh has mostly done a good job during her first year as mayor. But she added, "it's going to take a whole lot more than a few weeks to make things different."

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David McFadden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmcfadd
LONDON (AP) - Washing away the pain of last year's botched Champions League campaign, Tottenham completed this group stage as Europe's leading team.

A 3-0 victory over an ineffective APOEL on Wednesday took the team to 16 points, the highest total of any team this season, and first place in Group H ahead of holder Real Madrid.

That's some progress for a team that could not even make the knockout phase last season, and is only appearing in the Champions League for the third time.

Tottenham's Son Heung-min, right, celebrates his goal with his teammate Fernando Llorente against APOEL during the Champions League Group H soccer match between Tottenham and APOEL Nicosia in London, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

With top spot already secured, Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino even had the luxury of giving fringe players a run-out at Wembley Stadium. Fernando Llorente and Georges-Kevin Nkoudou seized their chance by scoring their first goals for Tottenham, either side of Son Heung-min's strike.

"It's a massive change," Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino said. "Last year we were so disappointed about how we played, about how difficult it was for us to compete in the Champions League. This season we have improved a lot."

Not on the domestic front, though. Runners-up last season in the Premier League, Tottenham has slipped to sixth and is already 18 points adrift of leader Manchester City. The wait for a first English title since 1961 will extend into another season unless there's a rapid transformation.

And there's a danger the only way back into the Champions League is by winning it for the first time.

"We have spent a lot of energy ... and maybe it has affected us a bit in the Premier League," Pochettino said. "Now we have to be focused on the Premier League and win games there."

That is something Tottenham has not achieved in a month, collecting only two points from its last four fixtures.

"We wanted to get back to winning ways and we did that tonight," said Dele Alli, one of only three players retained from the side that drew at Watford on Saturday. "It's important that as a team we stay together and keep building."

Pochettino did have a chance to test the depth of the resources at his disposal in the buildup to the busy end-of-year fixture program.

Llorente's wait for a Tottenham goal ended in his 17th game, on only his fourth start since joining from Swansea as cover for Harry Kane in August.

"It's difficult when you don't have opportunities," Llorente said, "but you have to create them for yourself."

The 32-year-old striker scored on the turn after meeting Serge Aurier's cross in the 20th minute.

"It's important for him," Pochettino said. "When you are a striker you need to feel the net. Of course players need time to adapt, when you arrive at a new team with no pre-season you need time to find your best level.

"It's difficult to play 20 or 30 minutes, it's important for him to feel he can cope for 90 minutes. He is a player who is going to help the team a lot. He has been helping a lot but now with more confidence and belief he is going to help more."

Llorente went on to set up the second. Son Heung-min played a one-two with Llorente on the edge of the area before striking low into the net in the 37th.

Nkoudou's chance to get off the mark came in the 80th minute. The French midfielder, who joined in August 2016 from Marseille, netted with a deflected shot after waltzing through the Cypriot side's defense.

"I'm very happy, for different players had a different opportunity to play and show their quality," Pochettino said. "They will add quality and put pressure on the players in the first XI. To have more players with the confidence to compete for a place is important."

The omens are good for Tottenham in the Champions League. The last two English teams to collect 16 points in the group stage went on to reach the final: Arsenal in 2006 and Manchester United in 2008. The furthest Tottenham has previously reached was the quarterfinals in 2011.

But despite winning its group, thanks to a victory and draw against Madrid, Tottenham could still face a tough team when the competition resumes in February. Bayern Munich and Juventus are among the second-place teams who could await the north London club in the draw on Monday.

APOEL exited Europe after finishing last in the group. Borussia Dortmund took third place to qualify for the Europa League despite losing to second-place Real Madrid 3-2.

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More AP Champions League coverage: www.apnews.com/tag/ChampionsLeague

Tottenham's Fernando Llorente, right, scores as APOEL Nicosia goalkeeper Nauzet Parez try to stop the ball during the Champions League Group H soccer match between Tottenham and APOEL Nicosia in London, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Tottenham's Moussa Sissoko, top, challenges for the ball by APOEL Nicosia's Carlao, below, during the Champions League Group H soccer match between Tottenham and APOEL Nicosia in London, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
JACKSON, Mississippi -- Jamie Miller is leaving his post as Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Marine resources to join the Mississippi Development Authority, Gov. Phil Bryant's office announced this week.

Miller, a Pascagoula native, has served as the DMR head since April 2013, when he replaced longtime DMR director Bill Walker, who resigned amid a federal public corruption investigation. Walker would ultimately plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was released earlier this year after serving roughly three years.

Bryant has nominated retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Joe Spraggins to replace Miller. Spraggins has served as the DMR's Chief Operations Officer for the past four years. Miller is will officially join the MDA on Dec. 20, with Spraggins expected to take over the DMR the same day.

"Jamie has served the people of Mississippi well at DMR," Bryant said. "I know he will continue to improve our state at MDA. DMR is in good hands with Gen. Spraggins assuming leadership, and I am pleased he has accepted this appointment."

Miller, 44, has 20 years of 20 years of experience in both the private and public sectors in south Mississippi and Washington, D.C., including experience in legislative affairs, natural resource management, along with community and economic development.

He is a graduate of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and went on to earn a bachelor's degree from in Environmental Biology from the University of Southern Mississippi.

"I look forward to joining Director Glenn McCullough and his team at the Mississippi Development Authority," Miller said. "I share the passion Glenn and Governor Bryant have for Mississippi and hope to build on the agency's success. It has been an absolute privilege to lead the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and its employees for nearly 5 years."

After taking over the DMR in the wake of the corruption scandal, Miller worked with the legislature to pass the DMR Reorganization and Accountability Act, which required annual agency audits, created an Office of Restoration and Resiliency and three new agency positions -- chief scientific officer, chief financial officer and marine patrol chief.

"I leave knowing the positive initiatives we implemented will continue to benefit the agency in the future," he said. "My role at MDA gives me an even greater opportunity to promote the entire state as a premier business and tourism destination."

Prior to joining the DMR, Miller served as Chief of Staff for Rep. Steven Palazzo and as a policy advisor to then-Gov. Haley Barbour's Office of Recovery and Renewal following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Miller played a key role in developing the Community Development and Block Grant (CDBG) program.

Miller will join the MDA as its Deputy Director for Governmental Affairs and Chief Innovation Officer. In that role, Miller will focus on local, state, federal and international governmental relations.

He will also serve as disaster recovery administrator and oversee all state-owned ports. Miller will serve as the liaison between MDA and all Mississippi military installations, monitor all base realignment and closure activity and work with the Mississippi Military Communities Council.

Other duties will include coordinating all university and federal research center relations on behalf of MDA, serving as liaison to the Delta Regional Authority and Applachian Regional Commission, along with other duties.

Spraggins, a native of Alexander City, Ala., graduated from Troy (Ala.) University with a degree in Resource Management. He served 34 years in the U.S. Air Force, reaching the rank of Brigadier General before retiring in 2006.

He served as commander of the Combat Readiness Training Center in Gulfport, and Chief of Staff of the Joint Force Headquarters in the Tennessee National Guard. Spraggins also served as Harrison County's Director of Emergency Management, Homeland Security and the E-911 Commission. He started in that role just days prior to Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005.

"I am honored that Governor Bryant chose me to be the executive director for the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources," Spraggins said. "I have worked alongside Jamie Miller for the past four years, and his leadership has been outstanding. I look forward to continuing the work that he has done to make this agency one of the best in the state."
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - After Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's nomination this summer to an ambassador's post, the fellow Republican destined to succeed him as governor ducked policy questions by declaring, "There's one governor at a time."

Four months later, some people in Kansas think they have two governors.

Brownback still holds the office as he waits for a Senate vote on his appointment. But he's backing away from his Kansas duties while Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer is stepping up.

FILE - In this March 9, 2017 file photo, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, right, along with Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer participates in a humanitarian award ceremony at the statehouse in Topeka, Kans. Brownback remains the governor of Kansas while he awaits U.S. Senate confirmation to take an ambassador post in the administration of President Donald Trump. But he has allowed Colyer to make major decisions for the administration, leading to an awkward situation in running the state. (Thad Allton/Topeka Capital-Journal via AP, File)

As governor-in-waiting, Colyer is putting together a proposal for the next state budget. He's appointed one Cabinet member and is set to name another.

It was Colyer - not Brownback - who spoke Wednesday at aircraft manufacturer Sprint Aerosystem's announcement of a $1 billion, 1,000-job expansion in Wichita and then tweeted about it, taking on a role the governor has in the past. Brownback, meanwhile, lit the Statehouse's Christmas tree Wednesday evening.

All of it has many legislators scratching their heads about who's in charge.

"I can't really pick up the phone and get any real decisive answers to anything in particular," said Senate budget committee Chairwoman Carolyn McGinn, a Wichita-area Republican.

Legislators don't yet know how much Colyer will differ from Brownback on issues big and small. They've started drafting a response to a state Supreme Court order demanding more money for public schools - something that could take a tax increase - without any solid cues.

State Rep. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, called the situation "super-strange" and said he doesn't know whether to approach Brownback or Colyer about issues.

"Is the handoff complete?" Claeys said. "I have no idea."

The informal arrangement between Brownback and Colyer is unprecedented for Kansas, at least in recent memory. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in Kansas run as a team, but the governor has always been the boss.

Colyer insisted Wednesday that's still the case, even with the lieutenant governor's higher visibility and Cabinet selections.

"Sam is running the show on a day-to-day basis," Colyer said after the Wichita event.

In talking to reporters after the Christmas tree lighting, Brownback rejected a description of the arrangement as a "co-governorship."

"We're really trying to do this more like a relay race, so that you've got continued momentum moving on forward," he said. "And that's what can seem, I think, complicated to people."

President Donald Trump nominated Brownback as U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom at the end of July. State officials had hoped for a Senate vote in October.

The last time a governor left office early was 2009, when Democrat Kathleen Sebelius was nominated as U.S. health and human services secretary. She invited Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson into important meetings but remained fully in charge during the six weeks she waited for her Senate vote.

Sebelius said the White House pushed her to fly to Washington as the Senate was debating her nomination. So, making sure she had a witness, she left a letter on her Statehouse desk saying that if she was confirmed, she resigned. The vote came when she was in the air.

Earlier this year, in Iowa and South Carolina, Republican Govs. Terry Branstad and Nikki Haley remained fully in charge until they were confirmed as ambassadors to China and the United Nations, respectively.

Sebelius said Brownback "seems to have chosen not to act as governor and not to resign."

"If he doesn't want to act as governor, then he should resign," she said.

Brownback was still making judicial appointments this week. Even if Colyer is filling the two Cabinet spots, Brownback is formally signing off.

Some Republican legislators said it's reasonable for Brownback to let Colyer make important decisions. After all, Colyer will have to live with them.

"He's always been part of the decision-making process," said Budget Director Shawn Sullivan. "The difference is this year we've had more briefings with him."

Colyer, 57, is a plastic surgeon who still has found time to go on international medical relief missions. He's a former legislator and the longest-serving lieutenant governor in state history. His biggest impact on policy has been - at Brownback's direction - guiding the privatization of the state's Medicaid health coverage for the needy.

The 61-year-old Brownback is unpopular as he prepares to leave after nearly seven years in office. Voters soured last year on big income tax cuts he championed in 2012 and 2013 because persistent budget problems followed. The GOP-controlled Legislature rolled back most of the tax cuts earlier this year to help balance the state budget.

Colyer is running for a full, four-year term as governor in 2018. Some supporters expect him to demonstrate his leadership chops by distancing himself from Brownback.

Still, Colyer has been careful to remain loyal in public even as he takes on some of the governor's duties.

"It's definitely weird," said state Sen. Rob Olson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican.

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Also contributing were Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kansas; Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa, and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has been calling potential donors to let them know he plans to join the race to succeed Republican Bob Corker in the U.S. Senate.

A prominent supporter confirmed he had spoken to Bredesen, the most recent Democrat to win a statewide race in Tennessee, about the decision Wednesday. He spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because an official announcement wasn't expected until Thursday.

A Bredesen spokesman did not return several messages seeking comment.

Bredesen's calls to donors were first reported by the Nashville Post.

The Senate campaign of Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn wasted little time in attacking Bredesen.

"Tennessee families want change and that is not what 74-year-old Democrat politician Phil Bredesen will bring to the United States Senate," said Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for Blackburn, 65. "Bredesen's views are out-of-touch with Tennessee values."

The other major Republican in the race is former U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher. Nashville attorney James Mackler had previously announced a Democratic bid and vowed to contest Bredesen for the nomination.

Mackler called the race "a clear contrast between an Iraq War combat veteran that volunteers to serve his country against a career politician who only serves special interests."

Bredesen earned his fortune as a health care entrepreneur before serving two terms each as Nashville mayor and governor. He had largely withdrawn from politics and public life after leaving the governor's office in early 2011.

Democrats were heartened by the news that Bredesen planned to join the race.

"He'll make a great candidate; I couldn't be more pleased," said Will Cheek, a longtime Democratic activist. "Phil Bredesen is the kind of Democrat that can win in a state like this - he's done it before. I'm not sure he's not the front-runner at this point."

Nashville attorney Jeff Yarbro, one of just five Democrats in the 33-member state Senate, said voters are still familiar with Bredesen - and wiling to vote for him.

"People in Tennessee know Phil Bredesen, and the last time he ran, he won all 95 counties," Yarbro said. "His entry into the race confirms just how big an election year 2018 will be."

In expressing interest in running for the seat after Corker announced he wouldn't seek a third term, Bredesen acknowledged it would take a vast amount of money to wage a successful bid.

"Set against that, I love solving problems, and in Washington right now, there is plenty of material," he said at the time.

Bredesen narrowly won the 2002 governor's race to succeed unpopular Republican Gov. Don Sundquist, who spent much of his second term trying unsuccessfully to pass a state income tax to help bridge a widening budget gap from exploding costs of TennCare, the state's expanded Medicaid program.

Bredesen found a way to stem spiraling costs at TennCare by cutting 170,000 adults from the program and reducing benefits to thousands more. He won re-election the next year.

But those cuts became an issue later, when health care advocates made them a rallying cry against Bredesen while he was under consideration to become President Barack Obama's secretary of Health and Human Services in 2011. That job ended up going to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

As mayor, The pro-business Bredesen lured the Houston Oilers to Nashville to become the Tennessee Titans and, as governor, persuaded Volkswagen to build its lone U.S. assembly plant in Chattanooga.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, which is closing after 24 years, drew praise Wednesday from its president, the U.S. and many Security Council members - but not from Russia, which called it biased and anti-Serb.

The council established the tribunal in 1993 to deal with atrocities during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s. It was the first international court to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide since the tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II.

At a council meeting before the tribunal ends operations Dec. 31, its president, Judge Carmel Aguis, said the court proved to be "a bold and innovative response to conflict" that has written "a very important page in the history of international justice and the fight against impunity."

He expressed hope that the tribunal's "legacy and judgments" won't be undermined by the dramatic death of Croat ex-general Slobodan Praljak, who took poison Nov. 29 after judges at the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed his 20-year-sentence for war crimes in Bosnia.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison said the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia "established key precedents in international criminal law" and "has created a legacy of the greatest importance."

Russia's deputy ambassador, Petr Iliichev, disagreed. He said the court was based on "a one-sided, anti-Serb interpretation of the tragic events of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia" and didn't play an impartial and independent role.

"We are convinced that a whole range of its decisions have discredited the very idea of international justice," Iliichev said.

According to the court, it indicted 161 people and concluded proceedings for all of them - convicting and sentencing 90, acquitting 19, referring 13 to national courts, and sending two to be retried by a "residual" court that is wrapping up the tribunal's work. It said 37 people had their indictments withdrawn or died.

Iliichev complained that more than 60 percent of the convictions dealt with Serbs whose sentences totaled more than 1,000 years while the other parties to the conflict - Croats and Bosnian Muslims - often received "a range of non-guilty sentences."

Sison highlighted the Nov. 22 conviction of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces rained shells and snipers' bullets on Sarajevo and carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II at Srebrenica. He was convicted of genocide and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

Iliichev called Mladic's sentence a continuation of the "politicized and biased line" against Serbs.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said her country shares the assessments that it "greatly lived up to the expectations of the international community" by fighting against impunity and ensuring accountability for war crimes.

"Equally important is the tribunal's role in giving voice to over 100,000 victims of horrific crimes," she said.

Serbia's justice minister, Nela Kuburovic, noted that Serbs accounted for 109 of the 161 people indicted by the tribunal.

"These numbers speak tellingly about the selective justice of the tribunal, especially in the context of its mandate to establish the truth about the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and bring about reconciliation," she said.

Serge Brammertz, a prosecutor for the court, said reconciliation in the Balkans remains a significant challenge, noting that convicted war criminals "continue to be seen by many as heroes, while victims and survivors are ignored and dismissed."

"The reality is that there is still no true will within the region to accept the immense wrongdoings of the past and move forward, sadly most of all among the political leadership," he said.
BEIJING (AP) - Hundreds of participants attended the opening of a human rights forum in Beijing on Thursday in the latest installment of China's energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping.

Beijing's new outreach comes as the U.S. turns inward under President Donald Trump, who has set aside traditional U.S. advocacy of democracy and human rights in favor of an "America first" approach that has seen Washington withdraw from key forums from the Paris climate agreement to negotiations on a U.N. migration compact.

The "South-South Human Rights Forum," drawing some 300 participants from over 50 mostly developing countries, follows a conference of political parties last weekend in Beijing also attended by hundreds of delegates, some of whom sung the praises of Communist Party rule. The gathering also comes on the heels of a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress in October, at which Xi declared that China now stood "tall and firm in the east" and had entered a new era seeing China "moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind."

Chinese Foreign Minster Wang Yi speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened a human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Addressing Thursday's opening session, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the party congress had "identified the goal of forging a new field in international relations and building a community of shared future for mankind."

"This is China's answer to the question of where human society is heading, and it has also presented opportunities for the development of the human rights cause," Wang said.

China's growing confidence on issues like human rights is related to broader global trends, said William Nee, an Amnesty International researcher on China. "Obviously we've seen the Trump administration deprioritize human rights, we've seen issues like Brexit, and China is kind of stepping in the field and void," he said.

"The Western liberal bastion is crumbling and China sees this an ideal moment to strengthen its own normative power," said Jonathan Holslag, a professor of international politics at the Free University of Brussels.

Participants at the Beijing forum were mostly government officials, diplomats and academics from developing nations, along with representatives from the United Nations, the Arab League, the African Union, the World Bank and the World Health Organization. Absent were representatives of NGOs working in the field of civil and political rights such as Amnesty, Human Rights Watch or Reporters Without Borders.

China has long rejected traditional notions of human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration and Western constitutions, redefining the concept along the more prosaic lines of the right to development, health, nutrition and housing.

Speakers at the forum kept their comments strictly within those parameters.

Citing falling poverty rates and rising life expectancy, Tom Zwart of Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit told participants China had "entered a new era of human rights."

"China has started to play a bigger role in building a just and harmonious international order that also includes the international human rights system," Zwart said.

Saad Alfaragi, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to development, noted that 800 million people globally still live in abject poverty.

"South-South cooperation has multiplied opportunities for development cooperation ... on different terms from traditional development cooperation," Alfaragi said in his address.

The forum's use of the "South-South" designation is a throwback to the Cold War-era concept of developing nations cooperating among themselves, independent of either the U.S.-led West or the Soviet bloc.

Yet, while it still calls itself the world's largest developing nation, China is increasingly casting itself in the role of rising superpower, retiring its past strategy of "hiding and biding" until it was ready.

Analysts and Western diplomats remain divided on whether China is actively seeking to upend the international order or merely making the best use of the circumstances to advance its own interests.

In his address to last weekend's political party forum, Xi offered China's experience as an alternative for others to study or emulate, while taking care to avoid the appearance of coercion. "We don't import models from other countries, neither do we export the Chinese model. We will never place demands on other countries to copy the way China does things," said Xi, who sent a congratulatory letter but did not address Thursday's opening ceremony.

The renewed international outreach comes at a time when Chinese authorities are overseeing the most severe crackdown on activists and dissidents in decades, drawing criticism from Western governments.

"Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, these are things that have come under severe constraints in China recent years," Nee said.

The city of Beijing has also been criticized domestically over the evictions of tens of thousands of Chinese migrant workers over recent weeks. Officials say they're addressing safety hazards after a fire killed 19 people, but the efforts have drawn attention to unfairness in a system that controls where people may live and denies rural Chinese migrants access to education, housing and medical subsidies granted to residents of the wealthier cities.

Recent years have also seen the party advocate a wholesale rejection of "universal values" as merely a weapon to undermine China's socialist system. Universities have been told to drive such concepts from the classrooms and writers and scholars who argue otherwise can find themselves shunned and unemployed.

The ideological push dovetails with China's economic strategy of outward expansion, spearheaded by Xi's signature Belt and Road Initiative that seeks to bind China to the rest of Asia, Europe and Africa through a trillion-dollar development of ports, roads, railways, power stations and other massive projects funded by Chinese loans.

Levels of development figure prominently in how countries prioritize human rights, said Brantly Womack, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Virginia. Although China is the world's second largest economy, living standards remain low for the majority and millions remain mired in poverty.

Along with many developing nations, China puts heavy stress on the unfairness of global inequality and the right of the majority to sustain and improve itself materially, Womack said.

"Regardless of China's active promotion of itself as a model, its success would attract the attention of countries facing similar problems. And China's willingness to provide funding for infrastructural transformation certainly provides an additional incentive," Womack said.

Hostesses serve flasks of hot water for tea as Chinese Foreign Minster Wang Yi speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened a human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Saad Alfarargi, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development of the United Nations Human Rights Council, speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened the human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Suriname Minister for Foreign Affairs Yldiz Pollack-Beighle speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened the human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Huang Kunming, minister of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened the human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Chinese Foreign Minster Wang Yi speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened a human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Millions of people in southern Nepal voted Thursday in the final phase of mostly peaceful elections for members of national and provincial assemblies.

The two-phase election is the first for the seven provincial assemblies established under the constitution adopted in 2015 after initial rejection from ethnic groups in southern Nepal. The assemblies will name the seven provinces formed under the constitution and draft provincial laws.

Thursday's voting involves about 12 million people in the southern half of the Himalayan nation, nearly 80 percent of the population.

Nepalese women stand and wait on a queue to cast their vote during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

The northern, mountainous region voted on Nov. 26, and counting in some of those areas began Thursday evening.

Vote tallying in the rest of the country is expected to start Friday and take several days because some ballot boxes must be transported from remote villages to counting centers.

Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhee Prasad Yadav estimated voter turnout at 67 percent and said there were no major problems.

People holding voting cards began lining up before polling stations opened at 7 a.m. in the capital, Kathmandu.

"I am here to vote today because it is the first election for provinces, with the hope these provincial governments will be able to deliver development," said Kedar Sharan Raya, a 74-year-old retired lawyer.

"I am voting after many years because there is new hope in the country with the establishment of provinces," said Iswor Prasad Shrestha, 70, a businessman.

Security was stepped up for the election, with thousands of police and soldiers deployed. Vehicles were banned from the streets and voters walked to polling stations in their neighborhoods.

Foreign and local observers monitored the polling.

European Union observer Zeljana Zovko said they did not note any major issues in the places they visited.

Nepal's slow path to democracy began in 2006, when protesters forced the king to give up his rule. Two years later, Nepal officially abolished the centuries-old monarchy and decided a federal system would best serve all areas of one of the poorest nations in the world.

But bickering among political parties delayed until 2015 the implementation of the new constitution, which declared Nepal a republic.

Soon after the constitution took force, protests by ethnic groups in southern Nepal turned violent and left some 50 people dead.

The ethnic Madhesi group complained that they deserved more territory in the province assigned to them because they represented a bigger population. Their protests blocked the border with India for months, cutting off fuel and other supplies in Nepal.

Nepalese people cast their vote during the legislative elections in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese woman casts her vote during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese woman waits to cast her vote during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people were voting in southern Nepal on Thursday in the final phase of mostly peaceful elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese policeman stands guard next to a ballot box during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese policeman stands guard as a woman receives ballot paper from election commission staff to cast her vote during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Nepalese army men patrol a street during the legislative elections in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese policewoman does security check to an elderly voter before entering polling station during the legislative elections in Thimi,Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people in Nepal are voting in the final phase of elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. About 12 million voters in the southern half of the Himalayan nation are voting Thursday.(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

A Nepalese policeman stands guard as a man waits outside a polling station to cast his vote during the legislative elections in Thimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Millions of people were voting in southern Nepal on Thursday in the final phase of mostly peaceful elections for members of the national and provincial assemblies. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
BANGKOK (AP) - A Thai military court on Thursday delayed a decision on whether to prosecute a prominent historian and social critic who suggested that a famed duel on elephant-back won by a Thai king against a Burmese prince 500 years ago may not actually have happened.

The 84-year-old Sulak Sivaraksa was charged by police last October under the country's draconian lese majeste law that protects the monarchy from libel and defamation.

The military court on Thursday agreed with Sulak's request to hear views from experts and historians and set a new hearing for Jan. 17.

Sulak Sivaraksa, center receives flowers from a well-wisher outside a military court Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand as he walks in to find out whether military prosecutor has proceeded with the indictment against him on lese majeste. A Thai military court has delayed a decision on whether to prosecute the prominent historian and social critic who suggested that a famed duel on elephant-back won by a Thai king against a Burmese prince 500 years ago may not actually have happened. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Sulak told reporters outside the court that "to live in this country you must have a sense of humor because my case is nonsensical." He said it would be impossible for Thais to learn history if commenting on King Naraesuan, who led the famous 1593 battle that is celebrated as a national holiday, is considered illegal.

The case stems from remarks Sulak made in 2014 when he urged a university seminar to think critically about Thai history.

Thailand's lese majeste law is the harshest in the world, punishable by three to 15 years in prison. The law, in writing, only protects the king, queen, and heir apparent, and doesn't appear to mention dead monarchs, but in practice the rules are more widely interpreted.

The ruling military government has pursued over 250 lese majeste cases since it seized power in a 2014 coup, more than any previous governments in the past decade, according to Thai newspaper Prachatai. The law has been widely criticized including by rights groups and the U.N., which has called for it to be revoked.

"The junta's abusive use of the lese majeste law has reached a new height of absurdity when a prominent scholar is charged with a criminal offense for questioning the occurrence of a 16th-century battle," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "Academic freedom and free speech in Thailand will suffer devastating blows if the trial against Sulak proceeds."

Sulak is a well-known academic and proclaimed royalist but an outspoken critic of the lese majeste law. He has previously faced at least five lese majeste charges.

British writer and historian Chris Baker said there are at least 10 different accounts of the elephant battle told in Thai, Burmese and French.

"There is no definitive account. There are various different accounts and historians accept that perhaps we don't actually know what happened," Baker said. "There are just many different stories told about an event that seems to have been very exciting."

Sulak Sivaraksa pauses outside a military court Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand as he walks in to find out whether military prosecutor has proceeded with the indictment against him on lese majeste. A Thai military court has delayed a decision on whether to prosecute the prominent historian and social critic who suggested that a famed duel on elephant-back won by a Thai king against a Burmese prince 500 years ago may not actually have happened. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Sulak Sivaraksa, center, walks to a military court Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand to find out whether military prosecutor has proceeded with the indictment against him on lese majeste. A Thai military court has delayed a decision on whether to prosecute the prominent historian and social critic who suggested that a famed duel on elephant-back won by a Thai king against a Burmese prince 500 years ago may not actually have happened.(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Qatar's ruling emir and French President Emmanuel Macron signed 12 billion euros ($14 billion) in deals during the French president's visit to Doha on Thursday, including the purchase of 12 French-made Dassault Rafale fighter jets with the option of buying 36 more.

The agreement brings the total number of Rafales the Gulf Arab country will have to 36.

Macron is traveling with Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who in 2015 as defense minister helped negotiate a deal with Qatar to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets. As part of a deal negotiated two years ago, Qatar exercised its right to purchase 12 aircraft.

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, speaks to French troops at the Al-Udeid base in Qatar, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Macron and Qatar's ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed 12 billion euros ($14 billion) in deals during the French president's visit to Doha, including the purchase of 12 French-made Dassault Rafale fighter jets with the option of buying 36 more. (AP Photo/Fay Abuelgasim)

France and Qatar also agreed that Qatar would purchase 490 VBCI armored vehicles from French firm Nexter, and signed a transportation deal with France's national rail authority to manage and maintain Doha's planned metro, as well as a light rail system north of Doha.

Qatar announced it would additionally buy 50 Airbus twin-engine A321s with option of buying 30 more.

Macron's one-day trip to Qatar comes as the Gulf nation faces continued isolation and a boycott by some of its Arab neighbors. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut relations with Qatar over allegations it supports extremists and has too-close relations with Iran.

Qatar has long denied supporting extremists and shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Tehran. It has also rejected demands put forth by the quartet as infringement on its sovereignty.

In a rare press conference, held with Macron, Qatar's ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said it was especially disappointing that neighboring states cut off ties with Qatar during the holy month of Ramadan in June.

"For us, our dignity and the sovereignty of Qatar are above everything. If our brothers want to resolve this crisis then we are ready on a basis that is clear and feasible to everyone and without the interference of anyone's sovereignty," he said.

Earlier this week, a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Kuwait failed to bring the standoff any closer to a resolution.

While in Qatar, Macron traveled to the vast al-Udeid air base, which hosts U.S.-led international coalition operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and the war in Afghanistan.

The air base is home to some 10,000 American troops and the forward headquarters of the U.S. military's Central Command. France also has a contingent of several hundred French troops in Qatar as part of the 1,200 French forces active in the region in the battle against the IS group.

Macron smiled and shook hands with the French and American soldiers who greeted him at the base before walking into a meeting with the base's top commanders.

Speaking to coalition soldiers, he said the next few months of battle will determine the outcome of the war against the IS group in Iraq in Syria.

"This military win does not signify the end of the operations and the end of our battle because first we need to stabilize and win peace in Iraq and Syria," he told troops. "Next spring is decisive in the situation in Iraq."

Macron also stressed in his remarks at the air base that France wants to avoid partition in Syria and "avoid the domination of certain international elements whose interests contradict peace."

Later, during his joint press conference, he noted the importance of maintaining the Iranian nuclear accord that France helped negotiate alongside other world powers. He also called for an internationally defined framework to contain Iran's regional ambitions and "ways to put limits" on Iran's presence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

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Follow Fay Abuelgasim on Twitter at www.twitter.com/fayabuelgasim .

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This story has been corrected to show that the deals signed are worth 12 billion euros, not $12 billion.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - Uganda's military has begun withdrawing dozens of its troops from a regional force in Somalia, a military official said Thursday, marking the beginning of the end of an African Union team that has battled violent Islamic extremists.

Some 281 troops will leave Somalia by Dec. 31, said Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, deputy spokesman for the Ugandan military.

Uganda was the first country to deploy troops to Somalia in 2007 to back a weak federal government in Mogadishu against an insurgency by the extremist group al-Shabab, which is responsible for many deadly attacks in Somalia and elsewhere in the region.

Under an agreement between the African Union and the U.N. Security Council the number of all African peacekeepers in Somalia will be reduced by 1,000 before the end of 2017, Akiiki said. The African Union plans to withdraw all its 22,000 forces from Somalia by the end of 2020, prompting questions about the ability of Somalia's army to fight al-Shabab on its own.

Uganda has more than 6,000 troops in Somalia as part of the multi-national African Union force. Other African countries such as Burundi and Kenya also contribute to the regional force.

The Western-backed deployments have helped to push Islamic extremists out of Mogadishu and other areas, even though the rebels still make frequent bombing attacks targeting public places. The armed group is now mostly active in the southern rural areas of Somalia.

Al-Shabab, which is allied to al-Qaida, opposes the presence of foreign troops in Somalia. The group has mounted deadly attacks in Kenya and Uganda, saying the killings were in retaliation over those countries' military involvement in Somalia.
JERUSALEM (AP) - A lawmaker from Israel's governing Likud party has been charged with assault for allegedly attacking the mayor of his hometown in 2014, before he was elected to parliament.

The Justice Ministry said Thursday that Orem Hazan assaulted the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Ariel over a lien placed on Hazan's mother's bank account for unpaid municipal taxes. Hazan dismissed the allegations as a "pure political witch hunt."

Hazan, a rookie parliamentarian, has cultivated a reputation as a rogue politician. He snapped an unexpected selfie with President Donald Trump after he landed in Israel in May, challenged a Jordanian parliament member to a fistfight and berated a disabled opposition member.

He has also been accused of solicitation and drug use while managing a casino in Bulgaria, charges he denies.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - The parents of the 24-year-old man suspected in a string of fatal shootings that terrorized a Florida neighborhood must "show cause" on why they shouldn't be held in civil contempt for refusing to answer investigators' questions about the case, a judge ruled Thursday.

Hillsborough County Judge Margaret Taylor set a Jan. 5 hearing for Howell Donaldson Jr. and Rosita Donaldson. State Attorney Andrew Warren requested the hearing after the Donaldsons refused on Tuesday to answer questions about their son, Howell Emanuel Donaldson III. Prosecutors were seeking information about his background, developmental history, gun possession and state of mind.

"This is a rarity," State Attorney Andrew Warren said while addressing the issue on Wednesday. "Because most people understand that they have a duty to answer questions. And when that duty is explained to them by a judge, they're willing to provide us answers."

FILE - This file booking photo provided by the Tampa Police Department, Fla., on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017, shows Howell Emanuel Donaldson, the suspect in a string of four slayings that terrorized a Tampa neighborhood. The parents of Donaldson will go before a judge Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, after refusing to answer questions about their son. The Tampa Bay Times reports investigators wanted to question Howell Donaldson Jr. and Rosita Donaldson on Tuesday about Howell Emanuel Donaldson III's background, developmental history, gun possession and state of mind. But they refused, revealing only the names, addresses and birth dates of family members. (Tampa Police Department via AP, File)

Ralph Fernandez, an attorney for the couple, said they haven't slept much since their son was arrested Nov. 28 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the apparently random shootings that began in early October in Tampa's Seminole Heights neighborhood.

In motions filed Wednesday, the state attorney's office said the parents' refusal to testify despite having received a court-authorized subpoena constitutes indirect criminal contempt. The judge questioned whether the goal was to punish the parents or simply to get them to comply with subpoenas. Taylor ruled that the couple must "show cause" that they shouldn't be held in civil contempt.

Assistant State Attorney Jay Pruner told the judge that the state believes there is no privilege that allows the Donaldsons to avoid answering questions, which is what prosecutors were seeking when they requested the hearing.

The parents were being interviewed in separate rooms Tuesday when they refused to continue answering questions.

The Tampa Bay Times reports Rosita Donaldson told investigators she and her husband also have a 28-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. She said the family had frequent gatherings around the holidays.

"Thanksgiving everyone was at our house," she said, before her attorney told her that if she wanted to refuse to talk she could just say no.

When investigators asked if she would continue, she declined, adding, "With all due respect, I'm not answering any more questions."

"We're not only trying to build a case against the defendant, we're trying to ask the broader question of why - a question that the victims' families and the community deserves to have answered," Warren, the state attorney, said Wednesday.

Unlike some states, Florida has no law establishing "parent-child privilege," which would keep communications between them confidential.

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Information from: Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.), http://www.tampabay.com.
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- Ocean Springs police are asking for the public's help in locating a 16-year-old girl missing since Nov. 20.

According to Ocean Springs Capt. Chuck Jackson, 16-year-old Nova Clark was last seen in Ocean Springs wearing a blue "Vancleave" hoodie-style sweatshirt and black sweatpants. She is described as a white female, 5-feet in height and weighing 105 pounds.

She is possibly in the Vancleave area, Jackson said.

Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call the Ocean Springs Police Department at 228-875-2211 or Crime Stoppers at 877-787-5898.
The European Union announced Thursday that it is taking the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to court for failing to accommodate their fair share of refugees under a plan agreed to by the 28-country bloc two years ago.

EU nations agreed in Sept. 2015 to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece as the countries buckled under the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants that year.

Under the plan, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were supposed to take in a combined 10,000 people.

But Hungary and Poland have taken none at all, while the Czech Republic has accepted 12. The EU's executive Commission sought reasons why but was given no satisfactory explanations.

Syrian refugees at a makeshift camp for migrants on the island of Lesbos, Greece

The Commission said Thursday that the three "remain in breach of their legal obligations" and "have given no indication that they will contribute to the implementation of the relocation decision."

Their cases are being referred to Europe's top tribunal, the Court of Justice.

The refugee relocation plan was adopted in a legally-binding vote by a majority of EU member states, but not the three refusing to take part.

The plan never worked well. As of last week, only around 32,000 refugees had been relocated in all.

The dispute has highlighted the deep divisions among Europeans over how best to handle the migrant wave, which saw more than 1 million people enter Europe in 2015, mostly from Turkey to the Greek islands and across the Mediterranean to Italy. It has also undermined trust among EU partners.

The Commission's second in command, Vice-President Frans Timmermans, said he did his utmost to avoid legal action and that the three could still do something about it as a few thousand people in the Greek islands remain eligible to be distributed.

"Going to court is always the instrument of last resort. That's not what we want," he said. "We hope we still find a way out through an act of participation by these three countries."

But Poland is intransigent. Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said the government was not changing its policy on migrants.

"Nothing has changed. Our position is clear: we do not agree with the solution that the European Union proposed two years ago," he told reporters Thursday.

Nigerian returnees from Libya disembark from a plane upon arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017

However, the Czech Republic seemed more conciliatory, with newly appointed Prime Minister Andrej Babis told the local CTK news agency that he wants to negotiate with the Commission to get the legal action lifted.

In a separate move, the Commission also referred Hungary to the Court of Justice over two other laws, one on higher education and the other on non-governmental institutions.

In both cases, Hungary has failed to address EU concerns about the laws or amend the legislation to bring it in line with EU standards.

At the core of both laws are the Hungarian government's efforts to curtail the influence of Hungarian-American financier George Soros in Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban considers Soros a key political foe, mainly because of their diverging views on migration.

The law on nonprofits compels civic groups getting more than around $27,000 a year in funding from abroad to register themselves with a court and identify themselves as being "foreign-funded" on their websites and all publications. Many NGOs hit by the new law are partially funded by Soros.
LONDON (AP) - Queen Elizabeth II has attended the commissioning ceremony of Britain's new aircraft carrier, which is named after the monarch.

The 91-year-old queen boarded the Royal Navy's newest, largest and most expensive vessel Thursday in Portsmouth naval base.

The white ensign was raised to mark the moment HMS Queen Elizabeth was officially added to the Royal Navy's fleet.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II walks with the ship's commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd, rear right,, as she arrives for the commissioning ceremony of Britain's biggest and most powerful warship HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy Fleet at Portsmouth Harbour southern England, Thursday Dec. 7, 2017. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)

The queen says the ship "embodies the best of British technology and innovation."

It is still undergoing sea trials and will not be fully operational for several years. It will head to the United States late next year for initial flight trials.

Admiral Philip Jones says that with the new carrier "Britain has confirmed her place among the world's great maritime powers."

The ship cost roughly 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) to build.
WASHINGTON (AP) - China is more of an adversary than an ally on North Korea, according to a leading Republican senator and staunch supporter of President Donald Trump who declared during a wide-ranging interview Thursday that Pyongyang's push for an atomic arsenal actually benefits Beijing.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas told The Associated Press the U.S. should expand its military presence on and around the Korean Peninsula to pressure China into being a serious partner in the campaign to defuse North Korea's nuclear program. He said the Defense Department should move the families of American military personnel out of South Korea as North Korea pushes the U.S. closer to a military conflict.

Cotton, a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, also said U.S. allies in Europe have their "head in the sand" on the Iran nuclear deal. They need to realize that Trump will pull the U.S. out of the landmark accord unless they agree to his demand for changes aimed at making the pact more stringent, he said.

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., answers questions during an interview at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Cotton said Chinese diplomats are lying when they tell their Western counterparts that Beijing shares their goal of convincing North Korea to abandon its advancing nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang last week test fired a long-range ballistic missile that experts said could hit Washington.

A nuclear-capable North Korea draws attention away from Beijing's misbehavior that includes "economic warfare" against the U.S., island building in the disputed South China Sea, and its "atrocious treatment of Christians," Cotton said in an AP Newsmaker interview.

"As long as North Korea is a nuclear country, the time and energy and effort of U.S. policymakers must be focused on North Korea, not on China," he said. "That's why they've been playing both sides of the street, saying one thing to Western officials in public but doing nothing to stop North Korea from getting nuclear weapons or now to get them to denuclearize."

Cotton's stance on China is more strident than the approach the president has taken with Beijing.

Although Cotton is a junior senator - he was elected just three years ago - his words carry weight. He's close to Trump and senior White House officials said Cotton is considered to be a leading candidate to run the CIA should Trump decide to shake up his national security team.

Cotton said in one conversation with the president, he recommended that he nominate current White House chief of staff John Kelly to be secretary of state. Trump eventually tapped Rex Tillerson for the job and named Kelly secretary of homeland security.

But on other issues covered in the interview, Cotton emphasized that no evidence has so far been found that Trump colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

He shrugged off as "idle speculation" talk of him eventually replacing CIA Director Mike Pompeo if Pompeo were to move to another administration post.

On North Korea, Trump has tried to cajole and flatter Chinese President Xi Jinping, seeking to make him an ally in the effort to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. During the presidential campaign, Trump accused China of "raping" the United States on trade. But during a visit to Beijing last month, he abandoned the confrontational posture, saying he didn't blame China for taking advantage of the U.S.

Cotton appears to be much more in line with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has called for the United States to be "maniacally focused" on an economic war against China to narrow the trade deficit and pull manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

The interview also delved into the sexual harassment politics roiling the United States, from Hollywood and corporate executive offices to campaigns and Capitol Hill, as Sen. Al Franken said he will resign his seat following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations and the loss of support from his Democratic colleagues.

In Alabama, GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore hopes to win Tuesday's special election even as allegations of sexual misconduct are swirling around him. Multiple women have accused him of sexual misconduct decades ago, when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

Cotton declined to say whether he thinks equal standards apply in all cases against Franken, Moore and Trump, who has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct and was recorded by "Access Hollywood" bragging about touching women without their consent. All three men have denied details of the accusations, if not the claims outright.

On Moore and others, Cotton said, voters "are going to make that decision, just like the people of this country made their decision last year on Donald Trump."

He added that women should be able to complain of sexual assault and the accused should be able to defend themselves.

"We shouldn't have trial by newspaper," he said.

On Russia, Cotton said it's a fact Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election because "that's what Russia does." But he emphasized that none of the congressional or Justice Department investigations have revealed evidence that Trump or his associates colluded in that meddling.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.

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On Twitter, follow Kellman at http://twitter.com/APLaurieKellman and Lardner at http://twitter.com/rplardner

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is interviewed by AP Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, at the AP bureau in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., answers questions during an interview at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
BOSTON (AP) - She was impartial enough to serve as a justice on the highest court in Massachusetts, but apparently that wasn't enough for Geraldine Hines to be named a juror in a murder trial.

The 70-year-old Hines, who retired from the Supreme Judicial Court in August, said she was "so disappointed" when the prosecutor rejected her as a juror Wednesday.

Hines tells The Boston Globe , "I've been waiting my whole life to be a juror in a criminal case."

After questioning from defense attorneys and Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee, Lee used one of his challenges to keep Hines off the jury. He apologized outside of court.

The case involves two gang members involved in a gunfight at a festival in Boston in 2014 that took the life of an innocent bystander.

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Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com
A 27-year-old Italian has been arrested on suspicion of killing three members of his own family with thallium, because he claimed they were 'impure'.

Mattia Del Zotto, 27, said he killed them and used the poison on another five relatives 'to punish impure people', Maria Luisa Zanetti, the prosecutor from the northern town of Monza just north of Milan, told reporters.

Del Zotto bought the thallium from a company in Padua near Venice, and sprinkled the toxic chemical in the drinks and dishes of his family members.

Tragic: Mattia Del Zotto is accused of poisoning his entire family with the chemical, leading to the deaths of his paternal grandparents, Giovanni Battista Del Zotto, 94, (centre) and Maria Gioia Pittana, 91, (right) as well as his aunt Patrizia Del Zotto, 63 (left)

His paternal grandparents, Giovanni Battista Del Zotto, 94, and Maria Gioia Pittana, 91, as well as his aunt Patrizia Del Zotto, 63, died in October after ingesting the poison.

He then tried to poison other relatives. Five others, including his maternal grandparents, have been hospitalised in the past weeks.

Prosecutors said Del Zotto confessed after police searched his home and found vials of thallium, a colourless, odourless and tasteless heavy metal that is highly toxic.

Police also found an email on his computer quoting the poison's price as well as tax and shipping rates, investigators said.

Prosecutors said Del Zotto confessed after police searched his home and found vials of thallium, a colourless, odourless and tasteless heavy metal that is highly toxic

His mother told investigators del Zotto had become 'manic'.

He spent his days in front of his computer and had stopped eating sweets and drinking alcohol, saying people were only allowed to consume 'vital' things.

She also reportedly told investigators he was under the influence of a cult.

'Lately he has been angry with the whole world. But I don't think he is capable of harming anyone,' she was quoted as saying in Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Carabinieri captain Manusueto Consentino said investigators were still trying to understand the motive.

He said Del Zotto was not under psychiatric care or known to be religious, but his family concurred he had grown more 'introverted' lately.

Italian media have been speculating for weeks about the mysterious poisoning after traces of thallium were found in the tea the family drank.

Thallium, a soft metal, has long been used as a murder weapon as it dissolves in water and is odourless and tasteless.

The chemical was once used as a rodent killer, but the World Health Organisation in 1973 recommended it be discontinued because of its toxicity for humans.

Initial symptoms of thallium poisoning include gastrointestinal problems, delirium and coma.

Hair loss, psychotic behaviour and organ damage can also occur.

Poisoning can be treated with an antidote of Prussian blue, which prevents the thallium from being absorbed.

In the 1990s, there were several reports that Iraqi security agents were using thallium to poison enemies of Saddam Hussein.

The Agatha Christie novel The Pale Horse used thallium as its murder weapon of choice.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - The Latest on the federal sentencing of a former South Carolina police officer in the death of an unarmed motorist (all times local):

12:40 p.m.

A white former police officer says he is grateful for the forgiveness from the family of a black man that he shot to death.

FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, file photo, former South Carolina officer, Michael Slager, right, walks from the Charleston County Courthouse under the protection of the Charleston County Sheriff's Department after a mistrial was declared for his trial in Charleston, S.C. Slager, who fatally shot a black motorist, Walter Scott, in 2015, could learn his fate as soon as his federal sentencing hearing winds down. On Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, attorneys are expected to call friends and relatives of both men who'll tell the judge how Scott's death and the officer's arrest have impacted their lives. (AP Photo/Mic Smith, File)

Ex-North Charleston officer Michael Slager testified Thursday before he was sentenced to 20 years for violating the civil rights of Walter Scott. Slager shot Scott in the back five times as he ran away from a traffic stop in April 2015.

Slager took responsibility for his actions that day and said the tragic event that occurred in seconds changed the lives of everyone involved.

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12:15 p.m.

A white former South Carolina police officer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting an unarmed black motorist to death in 2015.

A federal judge handed down the sentence for Michael Slager on Thursday. Slager pleaded guilty to violating Walter Scott's civil rights by unjustly shooting him in the back five times as he was running away from a traffic stop.

In arguing for a lighter sentence, Slager's attorneys told the judge that the former North Charleston officer and Scott fought on the ground and Scott reached for his stun gun during the struggle.

A bystander's cellphone video didn't capture the struggle but did show Slager firing into Scott as he was running away.

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11:50 a.m.

A defense attorney says a white former South Carolina law officer should be sentenced on the low end of guidelines being considered by a federal judge.

Andy Savage said Thursday he felt it would be appropriate for Michael Slager to receive about 19 years in prison for shooting a black motorist to death in 2015.

U.S. District Judge David Norton said earlier that the shooting was second-degree murder and he would use a sentencing guideline range of about 19 to 24 years when he decides Slager's fate.

Slager pleaded guilty in May to violating Walter Scott's civil rights when he shot the unarmed, fleeing motorist five times in the back following a traffic stop.

During tearful statements in court, several members of Scott's family said they forgave the officer and were praying for him.

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10:45 a.m.

The mother of a slain black motorist says she forgives the white former South Carolina police officer who killed her son.

Judy Scott on Thursday turned toward Michael Slager and said her faith in God gives her the ability to forgive him for killing her son, Walter Scott.

She also told Slager she hoped he would repent for the killing and allow Jesus to come into his heart.

Through tears, the mother spoke as part of a hearing during which a judge will decide how much time Slager spends in prison for the April 2015 killing following a traffic stop. Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Norton ruled that the killing was second-degree murder and said he'd work from guidelines that recommend Slager spends 19 to 24 years in prison.

Slager pleaded guilty in May to violating Scott's civil rights.

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10:15 a.m.

A federal judge has ruled that a former South Carolina officer committed second-degree murder when he shot an unarmed black motorist to death.

U.S. District Judge David Norton on Thursday made that determination in the April 2015 shooting of Walter Scott.

The ruling comes as part of federal sentencing proceedings for Michael Slager. The former North Charleston officer has been in jail since pleading guilty in May to violating Scott's civil rights, and Norton is tasked with deciding how much time he spends in prison.

Norton also said Slager obstructed justice when he made statements to state police after the shooting.

This week, federal prosecutors and Slager's lawyers have called witnesses to testify about technical aspects of the case, including what happened to Slager's stun gun before the shooting. The officer has said he shot Scott in self-defense after fearing for his own life when the man grabbed the weapon and turned it toward him.

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3:30 a.m.

For three days, attorneys representing the federal government and a former South Carolina officer charged in an unarmed black motorist's shooting death have presented technical testimony to a judge considering how much time Michael Slager should spend in federal prison.

That includes use of Slager's stun gun, which the former officer says Walter Scott grabbed and turned on him, causing Slager to fear for his life and shoot in self-defense. Slager, who is white, fired five times into Scott's back as he ran away.

On Thursday, attorneys are expected to call friends and relatives of both men who'll tell the judge how Scott's death and the officer's arrest have affected their lives. What's known as victim impact testimony is intended to help the judge weigh the personal implications a crime has had.

FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, file photo, Judy Scott, center, Walter Scott's mother, is comforted by her son Rodney Scott, as the family attorneys, Chris Stewart, left, and Justin Bamberg, right, hold a press conference after a mistrial was declared in former South Carolina officer, Michael Slager's trial in Charleston, S.C. Slager, who fatally shot a black motorist, Walter Scott, in 2015, could learn his fate as soon as his federal sentencing hearing winds down. On Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, attorneys are expected to call friends and relatives of both men who'll tell the judge how Scott's death and the officer's arrest have impacted their lives. (AP Photo/Mic Smith, File)
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is meeting with his Colombian counterpart to discuss bilateral cooperation on combatting organized crime and drug trafficking.

A delegation from Mexico is also present at the meeting Thursday in the Caribbean city of Cartagena.

Colombia is the U.S.'s staunchest ally in the region and one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, though the relationship has been tested as coca production continues to soar.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions pauses before speaking at the Global Forum on Asset Recovery (GFAR) at the International Finance Corporation in Washington, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, about anti-corruption efforts of the Trump administration and other topics. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump threatened to decertify Colombia as a partner in the war against drugs earlier this year unless the South American reverses a record coca surge.
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Egypt next week to discuss expanding political, economic, energy and trade ties, officials said Thursday.

During Monday's trip the Russian leader will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on issues related to stability and security in the Middle East and North Africa, the Kremlin said.

The Egyptian government said Putin's visit reflects the shared commitment to "strengthening the historic and strategic relations" between Moscow and Cairo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures while speaking to employees of Rostec Corporation during an awarding ceremony at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The spokesman for Vladimir Putin says the Russian president has not decided yet whether to run for office next year as an independent candidate or secure support from the ruling party. (Sergei Karpukhin/Pool Photo via AP)

Putin's visit follows the Russian government's announcement last week that Moscow and Cairo have drafted an agreement for Russian warplanes to use Egyptian military bases.

The deal comes as part of Moscow's efforts to further expand its military foothold in the region following its campaign in Syria.

Under el-Sissi, Egypt has expanded military ties with Russia and signed a slew of deals to buy Russian weapons.

On a visit to Cairo last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu noted an increase in military cooperation between the two countries and emphasized the need to strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism.

An Islamic State affiliate based in the northern part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula claimed responsibility for the October 2015 downing of a Russian passenger jet that killed all 224 people on board, mostly Russian tourists.

The bombing prompted Russia to cut commercial flights with Egypt, a heavy blow that decimated the country's vital tourism industry.

Moscow and Cairo have held talks on boosting airport security and resuming the air link, but no agreement has been reached so far.
LOUISIVLLE, Ky. (AP) - Officials say 41 students in Kentucky have been injured in a crash involving three school buses.

Jefferson County Public Schools spokesman Daniel Kemp told news outlets the crash happened Thursday morning on a highway in Louisville as the students were being transported to three different schools. He said student injuries appear to be minor.

Louisville Metro Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said two buses were stopped in traffic when a third bus hit one and caused it to hit the other.

The school district's transportation director, Randy Frantz, said another bus was sent to take uninjured students on to school.
BRENHAM, Texas (AP) - Prosecutors say three women have been charged with murder in the death of a resident at a center for people with developmental disabilities in Southeast Texas whose body was found in a hot van in July.

The Washington County District Attorney's Office says the three women were indicted Nov. 28 in Amy Parrish's death. They were arrested this week.

Authorities say workers at the Brenham State Supported Living Center hunted for the 48-year-old Parrish for hours before discovering her body in the van, outside the center. First Assistant District Attorney Adam Muery (MUR'-ee) said Thursday that prosecutors don't believe the workers intended to cause the death.

If convicted, the women could face life in prison.

Brenham is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of Houston.
Pressure is mounting on Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and member of the Senate education committee who has pushed for LGBT student rights for several years, to resign from the Senate in light of sexual harassment allegations.

Among the senators who called on Franken to resign Wednesday were Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, as well as committee members Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.



Sexual harassment, or assault, or in any way using your power to demean women cannot be tolerated, Murray said in a statement calling on Franken to resign.

Franken will hold a press conference Thursday. If he resigns, he would leave the Senate with a record of advocating for the rights of LGBT students in schools, and in particular for transgender student rights to be protected.

In 2016, for example, he applauded the Obama administrations guidance since rescinded by the Trump administrationthat said transgender students should be allowed to access restroom and locker room facilities that match their gender identity. And at a confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Franken questioned Kenneth L. Marcus, Trumps pick to lead the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights, about whether (in Marcus view) transgender student rights are protected under Title IX.

Franken also authored the Student Non-Discrimination Act , a bill which would establish comprehensive federal protections against discrimination in public schools based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. And he advocated for the Education Department to take an aggressive approach to sexual assault allegations on college campuses , also under Title IX.

You might also remember Frankens exchange with soon-to-be U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during her confirmation hearing for education secretary back in January. Franken asked DeVos whether she prioritized proficiency or growth with respect to school performance, and when DeVos gave an unclear answer, Franken sharply criticized her for what he said a lack of understanding of a key education issue.

Franken also took credit for a provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act designed to aid principals working in high-needs schools .

Photo: Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., speaks during an executive session meeting of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on the nomination of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in January. (Alex Brandon/AP-File)

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - A super PAC spending heavily to support Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama race for U.S. Senate has not disclosed donors, and Republican Roy Moore's campaign on Thursday criticized it as a "shadowy" group and has threatened legal action over its advertisements.

Highway 31 has run multiple hard-hitting advertisements and direct mail pieces in the heated race, including several that highlight accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore. Despite emerging as a major player in the Alabama election, the group has not yet reported donors to the Federal Elections Commission.

"We will never learn who is pumping money into Highway 31 until after the election, and this is by design," said Moore spokesman Ben DuPre at a Thursday press conference. "About the only thing that Highway 31 is open about, is its complete disregard for the truth."

Highway 31 is a super PAC led by Edward Still, an attorney who has specialized in voting rights cases and has been involved in Democratic politics for several decades. A spokesman for the group said it is complying with "every appropriate rule and regulation."

"The end of the reporting period was in the middle of the PACs startup. The PAC will file contributors per the FEC reporting schedule," spokesman Adam Muhlendorf said in an emailed statement.

Moore has vehemently denied accusations that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old waitress and molested a 14-year-old nearly 40 years ago. Several other women said Moore dated them, or asked them out, when they were between the ages of 16 and 18. Moore, who has made limited appearances since the accusations surfaced, has not wholly ruled out that he dated teens as a man in his 30s. In a statement he said he did not date "underage" women but has not defined underage.

Google took down one of the group's digital ads following a complaint from Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, who said it falsely gave the impression that how people voted would be public record.

In the piece, a female narrator refers to Moore as a "child predator" and tells the audience that "your vote is public record and that "your community will know whether or not you helped stop Roy Moore." Public records reflect whether someone voted in an election, but they don't show how someone voted.

A Highway 31 spokesman said they are working to ensure the ad runs through Election Day.

Moore's campaign has also sent cease and desist letters to television stations demanding that they stop running another Highway 31 ad that says Moore was banned from a mall, because of making romantic overtures to young girls. The Moore campaign said that ad is an attempt to "rehash gossip and rumor that has been entirely debunked."

The group said the ad was based on news reports.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Amid a deepening electoral crisis in Honduras, the administration of President Donald Trump on Thursday certified the country's progress in protecting human rights and attacking corruption.

The move comes nearly two restive weeks after a presidential election, but Hondurans still do not know who their next leader will be. President Juan Orlando Hernandez narrowly leads in the vote tally, but has not been declared the winner. His challenger, Salvador Nasralla, alleges fraud.

Troops and police units, some trained by U.S. forces, are patrolling the streets of the capital and have been accused of killing and wounding demonstrators after Hernandez declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew and suspended some constitutional rights to tamp down pro-opposition protesters.

Anti-government demonstrators help a woman in a wheelchair get past a burning barricade they erected to block the road to Valle de los Angeles, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Eight Latin American governments on Wednesday applauded Honduras' willingness to recount disputed votes in the presidential elections, but questions remain about how thorough that recount will be. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

If accepted by U.S. congressional appropriations committees, the certifications by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would ensure that Honduras receives millions of dollars in U.S. funds that are conditional on progress in human rights and corruption.

Human rights defenders in Honduras were stunned by the certification.

"We were really surprised that in the middle of this crisis the State Department comes out with this kind of statement when the government of Honduras is not meeting the conditions," said Carlos Sierra, a security and human rights investigator with the Center for Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights in Honduras. "It came right in this institutional and political crisis."

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hernandez said Wednesday that he appreciated the U.S. certification.

"That determination signifies a very important message," he said, "and reflects how they (the U.S.) are seeing Hondurans."

The certification affects only half of the U.S. funds that go directly to Honduras' central government, which amounts to between $15 million and $20 million, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Other U.S. assistance is unaffected by the certification process.

Leahy said the certification conditions are important to send a message that U.S. aid is not a blank check.

"We expect our own government to hold them accountable," he said. "The certification just received, in the midst of an election debacle that has triggered a political crisis, requires careful scrutiny by the Congress."

As vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, Leahy could put a hold on all or some of those funds, but the senator has not decided how to respond to the certification and wants to discuss it with the State Department, his office said.

While the certification was published Thursday in the Federal Register, Tillerson signed the memo recommending it on Nov. 28, two days after the election.

Nasralla had held a five-point lead in the electoral court's first partial results when the count stalled for some 24 hours. When results resumed, his lead gradually diminished and then disappeared entirely. He alleged fraud and called his supporters into the streets.

An election monitoring team from the European Union released a preliminary report on Nov. 28 criticizing the electoral tribunal's poor communication about the delayed results. By the end of the week, security forces and protesters began to battle in the streets.

The Honduran Committee of Detained and Disappeared Relatives said Wednesday that it had documented 14 deaths related to protests or the curfew between Nov. 30 and Dec. 5. It blamed the vast majority on military police. The government has said only that it is investigating the killing of a 19-year-old woman in Tegucigalpa, allegedly by police.

Carlos Reyes, a union leader, also denounced the certification.

"It is almost like they want to say what is happening is false," he said Wednesday. "They're practically giving carte blanche so that they can violate human rights in this country under the umbrella of the United States."

The United States has funneled money into Honduras in large part to train security forces so they can better participate in the war on drugs. Honduras is a major transshipment point for cocaine moving toward the U.S. But it also funds development work aimed at stanching the flow of Honduran migrants to the U.S.

In the certification memo, the State Department lauded some of the work being undertaken by an anti-corruption mission from the Organization of American States to bolster Honduras' justice system. It also noted that an official commission has purged some corrupt and unqualified members of its national police force.

"Challenges in protecting human rights defenders remain, but Honduras continues to take effective steps," the memo said.

But human rights groups point to the country's general lack of safety, which in addition to foreign migration has created a large population of internally displaced people. While the murder rate fell considerably under Hernandez, gang violence remains a major threat.

They also note the continued vulnerability of human rights and environmental activists who have had to seek refuge in other countries.

There is no U.S. ambassador in Honduras; the Trump administration has yet to appoint one. The Embassy's charge d'affaires, Heide Fulton, has made no public remarks related to the certification. An Embassy spokesman said Thursday "she is focused on the current political situation, as you might imagine."

Fulton Armstrong, who worked for the CIA in Honduras, criticized Tillerson for the endorsement of a government that he said has not done enough to protect human rights and for making it during a political crisis.

"I know how these things work; certifications are written a month before they're published," Armstrong said. "I know that it's a complex dance. But it's not unheard of that you hold off if a crisis is rising."

"It's truly cynical of him (Tillerson)," Armstrong added, complaining that Washington had remained silent "since this historically abnormal - even for Honduras - election and vote count and repression of the opposition."

"To remain silent only leads to the most cynical interpretation of what the certification is about: Juan Orlando is an SOB but he's our SOB."

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Garance Burke reported from San Francisco and Martha Mendoza from San Jose, California.

An anti-government protestor stands at a burning barricade erected by protesters to block the road to Valle de los Angeles, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Eight Latin American governments on Wednesday applauded Honduras' willingness to recount disputed votes in the presidential elections, but questions remain about how thorough that recount will be. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Soldiers clear away a barricade erected by anti-government protestors blocking the road to Valle de los Angeles, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The government has lifted the curfew it imposed last week for nine of the country's 18 provinces, but left it in place for the two biggest cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, armed forces spokesman Jorge Cerrato said. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A woman, carrying a child, walks past a burning barricade erected by anti-government demonstrators blocking the road to Valle de los Angeles, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The government has lifted the curfew it imposed last week for nine of the country's 18 provinces, but left it in place for the two biggest cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, armed forces spokesman Jorge Cerrato said. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Soldiers clear away a barricade erected by anti-government protestors blocking the road to Valle de los Angeles, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The government has lifted the curfew it imposed last week for nine of the country's 18 provinces, but left it in place for the two biggest cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, armed forces spokesman Jorge Cerrato said. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
HONOLULU (AP) - The Latest on the 76th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack (all times local):

7:40 a.m.

Pearl Harbor survivor Gilbert Meyer says he has returned to the site of the 1941 Japanese bombing because of his shipmates from the USS Utah. He says he comes to pay his respects and say a prayer for them.

Navy Veterans Joe Low, center left, and Al Villalobos carry a wreath during a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on board The Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial in Camden, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The 94-year who lives near Lytle, Texas, says the anniversary of the attack reminds him that he and the other survivors are lucky they got off their ships.

He and other survivors are gathering Thursday at Pearl Harbor to remember fellow servicemen killed in the early morning raid 76 years ago.

Meyer was a fireman first class on Dec. 7, 1941 when a torpedo hit the port side of the Utah. He says he's still alive because he happened to be on the starboard side. The 18-year-old fireman first class later served in the battles at Attu, Kiska, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He witnessed Japan's surrender in 1945 from the deck of the USS Detroit in Tokyo Bay.

He says he thinks about his shipmates and how they were killed. He says it reminds him that they were lucky to get off the ship "and we've made a good country for them."

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Survivors will gather at the site of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to remember fellow servicemen killed in the early morning raid 76 years ago.

About 20 survivors are expected to attend Thursday's event at a grassy spot overlooking the harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. A couple thousand members of the public, Navy and National Park Service officials will join them.

Author Steve Twomey will deliver the keynote address. He wrote "Countdown to Pearl Harbor," which examines the 12 days leading up to the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.

A moment of silence will mark the time the attack began.

More than 2,300 servicemen were killed in the assault carried out by Japanese airplanes. Nearly half were on the USS Arizona battleship, which exploded and sank after being bombed.

World War II era T-6 Texan trainer aircraft flyover The Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial in Camden, N.J., during a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The collection of police traffic stop data around the country has exposed a divide among law enforcement officials on how to respond to the numbers, which consistently show blacks and Hispanics are pulled over at higher rates than whites.

Some police chiefs have taken action, including reducing stops for broken tail lights and other defective equipment that snare more minorities than whites. Other officials question assumptions made about the data, saying their officers are enforcing the laws and not targeting people based on race or ethnicity.

"There's a wide variety of thought among police leadership about the value of the traffic stop data," said Ian Mance, a staff attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina. "There are those police chiefs who categorically reject the idea that the data could be a useful tool for management purposes, and then there are police chiefs who believe the data is vital."

Mance said police departments in Durham, Fayetteville and other North Carolina towns have seen declines in racial disparity by reducing stops for faulty equipment and other measures. Because black drivers in North Carolina are disproportionately poor, they are more likely to have older cars with defective equipment and don't always have the money to fix the problems, he said.

North Carolina has mandated that police record information on traffic stops since 2000.

After he became police chief in Fayetteville in 2013 and looked at the traffic stop data, Harold Medlock told his officers to focus less on equipment violation stops and more on speeding and other moving violations. The result, he said, was fewer deaths and injuries in accidents and a reduced racial disparity in stops.

"We made a ridiculous number of equipment stops," said Medlock, who retired last year. "I would rather have officers stopping cars running red lights because that's how people get hurt, that's how people get killed."

The moves by Medlock helped reduce animosity between the community and police, said Jimmy Buxton, president of the Fayetteville branch of the NAACP.

From 2012 to 2016, the percentage of police traffic stops in Fayetteville involving black drivers decreased from 58 to 52. The city's population is about 51 percent white and 45 percent black, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Police departments elsewhere that have taken action in response to the data have been successful in improving relationships with their communities, said Frank Baumgartner, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina who has been studying traffic stop data across the country.

Nine states currently require police to report information on all their traffic stops, including the race or ethnicity of the drivers, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina. Others are considering doing the same.

In Wethersfield, Connecticut, next to Hartford, police aren't making major changes after being singled out in state reports for stopping minorities at high rates over the past three years. Nearly a third of police stops are for equipment violations.

Chief James Cetran disputes the methodology used in the reports. He said they don't take into account large numbers of Hartford residents from predominantly minority neighborhoods driving into Wethersfield every day. He also said there are major flaws in an analysis showing black and Hispanic drivers are pulled over at higher rates during the day.

"I'm not going to tell my officers to stop making equipment stops because those cars can be extremely dangerous," he said.

Connecticut is a microcosm of the differing law enforcement opinions on traffic stop data.

About 30 miles south of Wethersfield in Hamden, Police Chief Thomas Wydra told his officers in informal conversations a couple years ago to cut down on defective equipment stops, because data showed blacks were more likely than whites to be pulled over for those violations.

Over the next two years, traffic stops involving black motorists in town dropped from 38 percent in 2013-2014 to 31 percent in 2015-2016. About 18 percent of Hamden's driving age population is black, but the town is next to highly diverse New Haven.

Missouri began compiling data on traffic stops in 2000 in response to concerns about potential racial profiling. Despite the 17 years of data, disparities have gotten worse. Data released earlier this year show black drivers in Missouri were 75 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over in 2016, the highest level since 2000.

Like some officials in Connecticut, police leaders in Missouri have disputed assumptions about the data. The Missouri Police Chiefs Association has said the data is not proof of racial profiling and racial disparities in the data may be inflated by traffic stops of nonresident drivers compared with local populations.
MEDFORD, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey pastor has been accused of sexually assaulting children over the course of 16 years.

Harry Thomas, of Medford, is pastor of Come Alive Church. He was taken into custody Wednesday.

The Burlington County prosecutor's office says the 74-year-old pastor assaulted four children between 1999 and 2015. No further details about the cases were released as part of an effort to protect the victims' identities.

A working number for Thomas couldn't be located, and it couldn't be determined if he had an attorney.

Come Alive Church says in an email it will hold a press briefing Thursday afternoon.

The prosecutor's office announced Thursday that Thomas is charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault, three counts of sexual assault and four counts of endangering the welfare of children.
STOKE, England (AP) - Spanish forward Jese Rodriguez has been disciplined by Stoke after leaving the substitutes' bench early and returning to the dressing room during a Premier League game.

Jese, who is on loan at Stoke from Paris Saint-Germain, appeared to be unhappy after manager Mark Hughes made his second and third substitutions in the 70th minute in the 2-1 win over Swansea last weekend.

Hughes said Jese has been the subject of disciplinary action, adding that "he's a little bit frustrated."

Jese has made just two appearances as a substitute after losing his place in the team at the end of October. He will be unavailable for the league game against Tottenham on Saturday because he has returned to Gran Canaria to be with his baby son Nyan, who was born prematurely.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said the president's throat was merely dry when he seemed to slur his words during a Wednesday address.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to internet speculation about President Donald Trump's seemingly slurred words, saying Thursday, "The president's throat was dry - nothing more than that."

Trump noticeably mispronounced "states," when concluding an address to the nation on his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The moment was quickly shared online, and prompted speculation about the 71-year-old president's health.

Sanders also said Trump will undergo the customary presidential physical in early 2018 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, adding, "Those records will be released by the doctor following that taking place."
JERUSALEM (AP) - Breaking with decades of U.S. policy, President Donald Trump on Wednesday recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a declaration that set off a wave of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces and drew sharp criticism from U.S. allies in the Middle East and beyond.

Here's a look at why U.S. recognition of the holy city as Israel's capital matters.

JERUSALEM'S CURRENT STATUS

Lebanese and Palestinians students, burn a poster of U.S. President Donald Trump as they take part in a protest, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. A number of U.S. allies in the Middle East are condemning the Trump administration's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia urging Washington to reconsider and reverse the announcement. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Israel has considered Jerusalem its capital since the state's establishment in 1948 and sees the city as the ancient capital of the Jewish people.

In the 1967 Mideast war, Israel captured the city's eastern sector and later annexed it in a move that is not recognized internationally. Israel's government ministries and institutions are all located in Jerusalem and Israelis across the political spectrum see the city as their capital.

Israel is likely the only country in the world whose capital isn't recognized internationally.

The Palestinians equally lay claim to Jerusalem and want the eastern part of the city as capital of their future state. Some 200,000 Palestinians live in that part of the city and Palestinians claim a deep cultural, historical and religious connection to the city.

The Old City, located in east Jerusalem, is home to sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. These include the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site.

It is one of the most explosive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to that end, the U.S., along with most other countries, has maintained its embassy in Tel Aviv, saying the status of Jerusalem should be resolved between the sides in negotiations.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUMP'S DECLARATION

The U.S. remains the world's most influential superpower and a key player across the region. For the past quarter of a century, it has played a special role as the lead mediator between Israel and the Palestinians in on-again, off-again peace talks.

Although it cannot singlehandedly dictate a solution to the Jerusalem dispute, its opinions carry great weight with both parties and traditionally influence others to follow its lead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been one of Trump's most vocal supporters globally and has been outspoken about his gratitude for Trump's declaration on Jerusalem. But the Palestinians, and much of the international community, view the declaration as a unilateral action that could dash hopes for a negotiated two-state solution.

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WANING AMERICAN INFLUENCE

As with other issues such as climate change and global free trade agreements, Trump finds himself at odds with the international community.

American friends and foes alike have almost universally criticized Trump's decision with exceptionally harsh language. The European Union, along with Germany, Britain and France, as well as the pope and key Arab allies, have denounced the move.

While the U.S. remains a power in the region, its influence in the Middle East has been on the decline. Some saw U.S. weakness in the Obama administration's handling of the war in Syria and its concessions to Iran for the 2015 nuclear deal. Trump's insistence on putting "America first" seems to presage a further drawdown.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to rally the world against the U.S. decision, reaching out to traditional Arab allies as well as Europeans nations. As a first step, the Palestinians asked the U.N. Security Council to demand that the U.S. decision be rescinded.

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ANGER AND WEARINESS

Trump's announcement has elicited shock, sadness and anger from Arabs across the Middle East. But there have also been feelings of resignation and shrugs from many who have long given up on their leaders standing up to either Israel or the United States.

The Palestinians have been worn down by decades of conflict and years of stalled peace efforts, as their cause has been overshadowed by the fighting in Syria and Iraq, and regional concerns about Iran. Many of their Sunni Arab allies are believed to have expanded covert ties with Israel to counter Tehran.

Randa Slim, an analyst with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, tweeted Wednesday: "In times of fear and repression and revolution fatigue I will not be surprised if we don't see the kind of demonstrations people expect. This does not mean people are not angry. How people express their anger is different than in past."

Israel and the U.S. may be counting on this crisis to pass, allowing Trump to renew his efforts to clinch what he calls "the ultimate deal," while leaving Israel firmly in control of the holy city.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - One of the three North Carolina correctional officers watching roughly 250 prisoners on the day one was killed had not received the four-week basic training course that includes instruction on how to subdue an attacking inmate.

The Charlotte Observer reported Thursday that just an hour before she was assaulted, 29-year-old Sgt. Meggan Callahan confided to a supervisor that she worried her officers were not prepared if an inmate attacked.

Callahan was beaten to death in April with a fire extinguisher in the understaffed unit she was responsible for guarding at Bertie Correctional Institution.

State Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Pamela Walker said Thursday that beginning in September new correctional officers began receiving basic training right after an initial week of orientation at the prison where they work.

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Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotteobserver.com
Some high-profile Democrats are flying into Alabama this weekend to encourage people to send Doug Jones to the Senate.

His campaign wants it known that he didn't ask for the help as he tries to upset controversial Republican Roy Moore in Tuesday's special election.

Jones and national Democrats have tried to keep Washington's fingerprints off the race, given the party's unpopularity in Alabama.

FILE- In this Dec. 4, 2017 file photo, Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones speaks at a news conference, in Dolomite, Ala. In Alabama's special Senate election, underdog Jones and his fellow Democrats are intent on not sinking his upset bid against Republican Roy Moore. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

Jones has to win over an electorate that President Donald Trump carried by 28 percentage points, and hasn't elected a Democrat to be senator in a quarter-century. He's trying to persuade reliably conservative white voters to abandon their usual loyalties while firing up turnout among black voters and white liberals who typically combine for about 40 percent of the vote.

Even with an opponent like Moore - twice removed as the state's top judge and now accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls - Democrats quietly admit that Jones can't build a winning coalition if he's viewed as tethered too closely to potential colleagues on Capitol Hill. So Jones keeps his distance, and national party operatives and grassroots organizations stay in the background.

"This is an Alabama-based campaign run on issues all Alabamians care about, like jobs, education, the economy," says Jones' top campaign aide Giles Perkins, a veteran Democratic player in Alabama.

Jones, who grew up in metro Birmingham's old steel mill neighborhoods, is a former prosecutor best known for helping convict two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for killing four black children in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. He mixes attacks on Moore with an emphasis on his biography and economic arguments about "kitchen-table issues."

Even when it comes to sexual misbehavior, Jones notes that Democrats stand accused as well.

"I applaud the women who have come forward against Roy Moore. And I think it's time that those women be believed, just like the women who are coming out against Sen. (Al) Franken, Rep. (John) Conyers and others," Jones said Wednesday.

Jones also walks a tightrope with surrogates. Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned with Jones in October, but the candidate has crisscrossed the state mostly on his own since. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will appear with Jones this weekend, but Perkins emphasized that it was Rep. Terri Sewell, Alabama's lone Democrat in Congress, who extended the invites to her fellow black Democrats.

Sewell spokesman Chris MacKenzie said that the congresswoman invited Booker and that her constituents asked Patrick to visit. "She's been working with Doug to make sure these are successful events," MacKenzie said.

The campaign is maintaining its cautious course, even as Moore has regained support from his national party and Trump. The president said he accepts Moore's denials of sexual impropriety and warned "we don't need a liberal Democrat" in the seat held previously by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

National Democrats' reluctance is evident in their lack of a major advertising push or cash transfers to the Jones campaign by party committees. Asked about the race, a spokesman at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's Washington headquarters declined to say anything on the record, deferring to Jones.

It's a stark contrast to this year's other headliner campaigns, which gave Democrats big wins in Virginia's statewide and legislative elections, and a bitter defeat in Georgia. In both cases, the national party and activist groups poured millions into advertising and voter turnout.

As Georgia's special congressional election became the most expensive House race in American history, Republicans used the spending to define Democrat Jon Ossoff as a tool of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, an unpopular figure in Atlanta's GOP-leaning suburbs.

"It's just part of the Republican playbook right now to nationalize these races where they have the built-in advantage," says Keenan Pontoni, who managed Ossoff's race.

Jones has mostly escaped the onslaught of attack ads Ossoff faced, but both races offer reminders that Democrats must address their own branding challenges ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and not simply count on dissatisfaction with Trump and Republicans.

Jones is targeting likely voters with the help of national Democratic Party's database of Alabamians' voting history, consumer preferences and political leanings. National party fundraising emails urge donors to support him - but they're boilerplate campaign tactics.

There are no campaign offices financed or staffed by the Democratic National Committee, no national party ads on television. Jones' television ads don't mention his party. The state Democratic Party, such as it is, has been sidelined.

"We just have two paid staffers," and no DNC funding beyond the $10,000 monthly allowance every state party gets nationwide, Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Worley said.

What Jones doesn't lack is money: As of Nov. 22, he outraised Moore $11.8 million to $5.3 million.

Perkins said donations paid for enough staffers to shepherd in-state volunteers.

"We are out there every day finding progressive voters in every neighborhood we can," says Susan Griffin, a leader of Huntsville's chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots organization of the left.

Democrats say they haven't ceded organizational advantages to Moore, because the Republican National Committee also kept its distance before belatedly committing to a mere $170,000 in last-minute support.

"This is the first time since the 90s that we have seen anything like this, all this excitement," Worley said. "Democrats truly believe we can win."

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Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP.
We wrote about the GOPs new legislation to reauthorize the nations higher education law last week. But theres one issue we should highlight that specifically impacts teachers.

The PROSPER Act would eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that currently allows for the cancellation of higher education debt under certain conditionsfor teachers, as well as others working for federal, state, and local governments. In addition, the bill would end loan forgiveness for teachers under the Perkins Loan Program , according to a summary of the bill from the American Council on Education, which tracks higher education policy.

Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, qualifying individuals can have their outstanding loans for higher education forgiven if they have made 120 qualifying monthly payments. People also have to be considered full-time employees by their organizations, or work at least 30 hours a week at their jobs.

Ending loan forgiveness for public service isnt a new idea even for 2017: The Trump administrations proposed budget for fiscal 2018 would also eliminate the loan forgiveness program. But it could have a significant impact on many K-12 teachers who took out student loans. Earlier this year, the Education Department also cast some doubt on whether PSLF would cover some applicants to the program.

The Perkins loan program allows for higher education debt to be forgivenagain, under certain circumstancesfor teachers working at low-income schools, or for those who teach subjects like math and science.

Republicans are expected to work to pass the PROSPER Act over the next year, although its no sure thing to pass.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota announced on Thursday that he will resign in the face of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. He joins a long list of lawmakers ousted by scandal.

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- Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Retired abruptly Tuesday amid sexual harassment allegations by former staff members. The 88-year-old Conyers was the longest-serving House member.

- Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa. Resigned in October after the anti-abortion lawmaker allegedly urged his mistress to end a pregnancy.

- Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. Resigned in 2011 after posting lewd pictures of himself on Twitter. He initially claimed he had been hacked, then admitted to sexting with various women. He later was sent to prison after he was caught sexting with a teenage girl.

- Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., Resigned in 2011 after he was accused of sexually harassing the 18-year-old daughter of a political donor.

- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Resigned in 2011 after admitting to an affair with the wife of his chief of staff. Ensign was accused of helping the husband get a job as a lobbyist to try to keep him quiet.

- Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y. Resigned in 2010 after he was accused of sexually harassing male staffers in his congressional office, including engaging in unwanted tickling.

- Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind. Resigned in 2010 after admitting to an affair with a female staffer.

- Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. Resigned in 2006 after media reports that he engaged in sexually explicit instant message conversations with teenage, male congressional pages. At least 10 people came forward to allege that Foley had sexually harassed them or made inappropriate sexual comments.

- Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La. Announced his resignation in late 1998 after being chosen as the next House speaker, citing adulterous affairs. Livingston shocked his colleagues by announcing his decision to the House as it debated the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He left Congress in March 1999.

- Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill. Resigned in 1995 after being convicted of sexual assault, statutory rape and other charges stemming from a sexual relationship with an underage campaign worker.

- Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore. Resigned in 1995 after a series of women, including former staffers and lobbyists, accused him of sexual harassment and assault. A report by the Senate Ethics Committee described Packwood's "physical coercion" of women and "a habitual pattern of aggressive, blatantly sexual advances, mostly directed at members of his own staff." The committee recommended his expulsion. Packwood resigned before the Senate could vote to expel him.

- Rep. Donald "Buz" Lukens, R-Ohio. Resigned in 1990 after being convicted of contributing to the unruliness of a minor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl. Lukens initially refused to resign from Congress, but was defeated in a GOP primary and later resigned.

- Rep. Jon Hinson, R-Miss. Resigned in 1981 after being arrested on sodomy charges.

- Rep. Wayne Hays, D-Ohio. Resigned in 1976 after The Washington Post reported that a 33-year-old clerk with House Administration Committee said she had been placed in her job to be his mistress.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Countering strident attacks on his agency from the president who appointed him, FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday defended the tens of thousands of people who work with him and declared, "There is no finer institution."

Wray, who has led the agency just four months, fended off politically charged questions from lawmakers of both parties during a routine oversight hearing that was overtaken by questions about Hillary Clinton's emails and President Donald Trump's campaign. Citing pending investigations, he repeatedly declined to answer questions about either, while also refusing to give an opinion on whether Trump could be accused of obstructing justice.

But he did not hesitate to defend the nation's premier law enforcement agency following a weekend of Twitter attacks by Trump, who called the FBI a biased institution whose reputation is "in Tatters - worst in History!" and urged Wray to "clean house."

FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a House Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The outburst from the president followed a guilty plea from his former national security adviser for lying to the FBI and the revelation that an agent had been removed from a special team investigating the Trump campaign because of text messages seen as potentially anti-Trump.

Wray, who was nominated as FBI director by Trump, faced Republican criticism over perceived political bias in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election and in the handling a year earlier of an FBI investigation Clinton's use of a private email server that ended without criminal charges.

When asked about Trump's harsh tweets, Wray rebutted him directly, saying, "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good."

Wray expressed pride in the agents, analysts and other personnel who he said were working to protect Americans. But he also conceded that agents do make mistakes and said there are processes in place to hold them accountable.

"There is no shortage of opinions out there, but what I can tell you is that the FBI that I see is tens of thousands of agents and analysts and staff working their tails off to keep Americans safe," Wray said of the agency he has led for just four months. "The FBI that I see is tens of thousands of brave men and women working as hard as they can to keep people they will never know safe from harm."

The White House on Thursday tried to soften Trump's message, denying any discrepancy between his comments and those of the FBI director. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump agrees field agents are "appreciated and respected," but said the president's "issues are with the political leaders in the FBI under former director Comey, particularly those that played politics with the Hillary Clinton email probe."

The emphasis on the Clinton and Trump probes reflected how the FBI in the last two years has found itself entangled in American politics, with investigations focused on the Democratic presidential nominee and the Republican president and his successful campaign. Those investigations have transformed routine oversight hearings, like the one Thursday, into platforms for tense questions about the political leanings of an agency that prides itself on being removed from partisan consideration.

Wray's defense of the FBI came after the committee's chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he was concerned by reports that Peter Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent involved in the Clinton investigation, was removed from Mueller's team last summer following the discovery of text messages seen as potentially anti-Trump.

"Even the appearance of impropriety will devastate the FBI's reputation," Goodlatte said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, top Democrat on the House Judiciary panel, predicted Trump's attacks on the FBI will only grow louder as Mueller continues investigating. "Your responsibility is not only to defend the bureau but to push back against the president when he is so clearly wrong, both on the facts and as a matter of principle," Nadler told Wray.

Wray's tenure as the new FBI chief would be difficult even without the intense scrutiny of the Russia investigation. Since he was sworn in on Aug. 2, the U.S. has experienced two of the deadliest shootings in its modern history and an attack on a bike path in Manhattan that officials have said was terrorism.

Trump's weekend tweets created a fresh dilemma for Wray. With his bosses, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Sessions' deputy, Rod Rosenstein, staying publicly silent, it fell to Wray to defend the agency. But FBI directors traditionally have been low-key and stoic - with Wray's predecessor, James Comey, a notable exception.

And Trump's firing of Comey while he led the Russia probe shows what can happen to a director who antagonizes the president.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, right, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., shake hands before the start of a House Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

FBI Director Christopher Wray is sworn in during a House Judiciary hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
CLEVELAND (AP) - The Latest on an Ohio man accused of lying about his role in Bosnian war crimes (all times local):

5 p.m.

The government says an Ohio man has pleaded guilty to an immigration fraud charge after he was accused of hiding his role in a 1995 Serbian massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians.

Oliver Dragic (DRAH'-gich) was arrested after a three-count federal indictment last year.

Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cleveland, says Dragic pleaded guilty Thursday to possessing and using fraudulently obtained immigration documents.

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster sentenced Dragic to time already served since his 2016 arrest and ordered him deported.

A message left with Dragic's public defender wasn't immediately returned.

Prosecutors say Dragic, of Barberton in suburban Akron, made false statements on forms about his role in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia while applying for refugee status in the U.S.

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10 a.m.

A change of plea hearing is scheduled for an Ohio man accused of hiding the fact that he had been in a special police unit in Bosnia and took part in the Serb massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians during the 1995 genocide.

The U.S. government accused Oliver Dragic (DRAH'-gich) of immigration fraud in a three-count federal indictment last year.

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster scheduled the plea hearing for Thursday afternoon. A change of plea hearing is typically held when a defendant plans to plead guilty.

Darin Thompson, Dragic's public defender, has declined to comment.

Prosecutors say Dragic, of Barberton in suburban Akron, made false statements on forms about his role in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia while applying for refugee status in the U.S.
STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) - Nearly 50 people have been arrested in a crackdown on gangs in a troubled Northern California city that also netted nearly three-dozen firearms, the state attorney general's office said Thursday.

The sweep was aimed at members of some of south Stockton's most notorious criminal gangs, with names like the MOB, Flyboys, East Coast Crips, Conway Gangsters, Sierra Vista Project and Glock Team.

The 35 seized weapons included 10 assault rifles. Also seized was nearly $44,000 in cash, 34 pounds of marijuana, two pounds of methamphetamine, and two pounds of cocaine.

In this Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, photo released by the Stockton Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit shows some of the 35 seized weapons including 10 assault rifles, after nearly 50 people were arrested in a crackdown on gangs in Stockton, Calif. Also seized was nearly $44,000 in cash, 34 pounds of marijuana, two pounds of methamphetamine, and two pounds of cocaine. The sweep was aimed at members of some of south Stockton's most notorious criminal gangs, with names like the MOB, Flyboys, East Coast Crips, Conway Gangsters, Sierra Vista Project and Glock Team. (Stockton Police Department via AP)

The sweep on Tuesday rounded up 47 people charged with crimes including conspiracy to commit murder, robbery, drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal weapons possession and gang activities.

"Families in Stockton can breathe a little easier tonight knowing that gang members, drugs, and deadly weapons are off the streets," Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

The crackdown came after a joint investigation by Becerra's Department of Justice and the California Highway Patrol. Together the agencies act as a "special operations unit" that has been funded with $9.4 million to work with local government agencies to target violent criminals, gangs, organized crime and interstate drug traffickers.

In this case, they worked with the Stockton Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit and the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office.

In this Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, photo released by the Stockton Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit shows a MPA 9mm gun, one of the 35 seized weapons including 10 assault rifles, after nearly 50 people were arrested in a crackdown on gangs in Stockton, Calif. Also seized was nearly $44,000 in cash, 34 pounds of marijuana, two pounds of methamphetamine, and two pounds of cocaine. The sweep was aimed at members of some of south Stockton's most notorious criminal gangs, with names like the MOB, Flyboys, East Coast Crips, Conway Gangsters, Sierra Vista Project and Glock Team. (Stockton Police Department via AP)

This Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, photo released by the Stockton Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit shows some of the 35 seized weapons included 10 assault rifles, after nearly 50 people were arrested in a crackdown on gangs in Stockton, Calif. . Also seized was nearly $44,000 in cash, 34 pounds of marijuana, two pounds of methamphetamine, and two pounds of cocaine. The sweep was aimed at members of some of south Stockton's most notorious criminal gangs, with names like the MOB, Flyboys, East Coast Crips, Conway Gangsters, Sierra Vista Project and Glock Team. (Stockton Police Department via AP)
Royal fans desperate for a replica of Meghan Markles engagement ring have been told by the jewellers who created the piece they will not be making copies.

Romantic Prince Harry designed his fiancees ring using diamonds which belonged to his mother Diana, Princess of Wales.

The two outside stones came from the late princesss personal collection and are a poignant tribute to Diana in the year of the 20th anniversary of her death.

(Victoria Jones/PA)

At the centre of the ring is a large diamond from Botswana, a country that holds special significance for Harry who has visited many times since he was a child.

But Stephen Connelly, director of Cleave and Company Court Jewellers and Medallists to Her Majesty The Queen, who were commissioned to make the ring, said the intense media attention has been a bit of a shock.

He added: Were not going to be making replicas of it. If you want a ring, then well design you a different one.

David Thomas, a former Crown Jeweller who looked after the royal familys jewels and now works with Cleave and Company, said working on the ring was the biggest and hardest secret hes had to keep in his life.

He said he has been bombarded by questions from the press  including how much the ring had cost  but declined to violate the royal couples privacy.

Jewellers are like doctors: we never discuss our patients, Mr Thomas said.

Harry is not the only royal to design his bride-to-bes engagement ring using jewels that belonged to his mother.

The Duke of Edinburgh designed an engagement ring for the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, in 1947.

The Duke had the ring made by the jewellers Philip Antrobus Ltd, using diamonds from a tiara belonging to his mother, Princess Alice of Greece.

When Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, he gave her Dianas famous sapphire and diamond engagement ring.
Here are some of the main developments in the row over the Governments analysis of Brexits impact on different sectors of the economy.

Brexit Secretary David Davis tells the Commons Exiting the European Union Committee select committee: We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85% of the economy.

(PA)

Some of those are still to be concluded.

We have work still to be done on justice and home affairs, so there is a fair number of things still to do. It will be as soon as we are ready.

Mr Davis says on BBC Ones Andrew Marr Show: In my job I dont think out loud and I dont make guesses. Those two things. I try and make decisions. You make those based on the data. That datas being gathered, weve got 50, nearly 60 sector analyses already done, weve got planning work going on in the Customs, weve got planning work going on 22 other issues.

Here is David Davis back in June saying that @DExEUgov has 50-60 sectoral analyses already done. He just told Parliament that no impact assessments have been done on the impact of Brexit on the UK economy. https://t.co/OpqGskNu26  David Lammy (@DavidLammy) December 6, 2017

By now the Government has refused to publish the analysis in response to several freedom of information (FOI) requests from MPs and others, as well as written parliamentary questions.

The Government refuses to say whether it has carried out regional impact assessments following a Press Association FOI request because doing so would provide a reactionary response that could damage the economy.

More than 120 opposition MPs call on Mr Davis to come clean and publish the economic studies. Meanwhile, Chancellor Philip Hammond confirms to the Commons Treasury Committee that the Government has a model which looks at Brexits potential impact on economic sectors, as well as regions of the UK.

Chancellor Philip Hammond answering questions at the Commons Treasury Select Committee (PA)

Mr Davis tells the Exiting the EU Committee the assessments are in excruciating detail and that Prime Minister Theresa May has read summary outcomes from them.

MPs approve a Labour motion unopposed which asks for a humble address requesting the Queen to tell Mr Davis to release the documents to the Exiting the European Union Committee.

Earlier, Brexit minister Robin Walker told the Commons: The analysis is not a series of 58 economic impact assessments. It is a cross-sectoral analysis. It is not just work undertaken by our department, as it draws on analysis and expertise across the whole of government.

Mr Davis provides a dossier of around 850 pages to the Exiting the European Union Committee but admits that sensitive information has been withheld.

David Davis ( Jonathan Brady/PA)

In a letter to the committee he said: Since the start of this process I have been clear that there are not, nor have there ever been, a series of discrete impact assessments arising out of our analysis of the 58 sectors.

Exiting the European Union Committee chairman Hilary Benn summons Mr Davis to give evidence, warning that his decision to withhold information is contrary to the instruction given to the Government by the Commons. He said the committee would need to consider whether this is potentially a breach of privilege.

Giving evidence to the committee, Mr Davis confirms that no sectoral impact assessments have been undertaken, as it was believed their usefulness would be near zero, given the scale of change which Brexit will cause to the UK economy.
Britains 4.8 billion architecture industry is under threat if the Government fails to strike a Brexit deal and could see its EU exports slump by nearly a third, a report has warned.

Research from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has cautioned that a disorderly withdrawal from the EU could cut off vital access to talent and put the UKs position as a global hub for the industry at risk.

It said a no deal scenario could decimate the sectors mammoth contribution to the UK economy, estimating that exports to the EU alone would collapse by 29%.

Lord Norman Fosters firm, Foster + Partners, has already been hit by Brexit uncertainty (PA)

The impact of lost export earnings from around the world could be 73 million a year, the report claimed.

The study comes as the latest warning over the implications of a no deal Brexit, with sectors including the car industry sounding the alarm over the impact of a hard border and tariffs.

Britains architectural sector has already been hit by Brexit, with the largest player, Foster + Partners, whose projects include Londons Gherkin tower, axing nearly 100 jobs earlier this year as a result of uncertainty around major builds.

Riba is calling on the Government to take steps to protect Britains architecture industry during negotiations.

Ben Derbyshire, president of Riba, said: Without a Brexit deal that works for UK architecture we risk losing more of our global talent due to increased costs and economic uncertainty.

A no deal Brexit is not an option; it would be a disaster for UK architecture and our built environment, and the Government must take this option off the table.

The UKs architecture sector is particularly exposed to the impact of trade and border changes due to its position as an exporter and its reliance on international talent, according to the report.

Riba is urging the Government to ensure there is a post-Brexit immigration system to allow access to talent worldwide, continued mutual recognition of qualifications across the EU and market access without non-tariff barriers.

It also wants the Department for International Trade to expand its scope to support medium and small sized businesses to expand internationally.

But the research, called Global Talent, Global Reach, said there is potential for growth from new trade agreements outside the EU, with deals struck with the likes of China, the US, India and the United Arab Emirates estimated to be worth at least 54 million in its first year.

Alan Vallance, chief executive of Riba, said: British architects are the most respected and admired in the world, but we cant take this success and our 4.8 billion contribution to UK economy for granted.
Political issues both at home and abroad make the front pages of Thursdays papers.

While British Prime Minister Theresa May continues to face mounting pressure to break the Brexit deadlock, US President Donald Trump has also come under fire for his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Isreal.

The Daily Telegraph reports that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker fears Mrs Mays Government could collapse as early as next week if a divorce deal is not reached.

What the papers say - December 7

The paper says support for the PM from Eurosceptic Tory MPs is ebbing away and describes an air of chaos around Mrs May.

Tomorrow's Daily Telegraph front page: May will fall without deal, warns EU #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/cxbUmsxqTF  The Telegraph (@Telegraph) December 6, 2017

The i features the headline CLEULESS, and says Chancellor Philip Hammond admitted the Cabinet had not yet discussed details of the UKs preferred long-term relationship with the EU.

The paper reports that Number 10 publicly rebuked the Chancellor over his divorce bill outburst.

Tensions between the Prime Minister and Mr Hammond are also picked up in The Independent, which carries a headline of Brexit breakdown.

The paper also features a striking image of photographs of Donald Trump being set on fire, saying that the President risks a fire with no end.

, meanwhile, reports that Mr Trump enraged the Arab world and defied global opposition when he declared Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The paper says that the President claimed it to be a long overdue step to advance the peace process.

But the move brought immediate condemnation from world leaders who had previously said it would be a destabilising factor in a turbulent region, the paper adds.

GUARDIAN: Anger as Trump declares Jerusalem Israels capital #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/M5nc09nTa1  Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) December 6, 2017

Elsewhere, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson declared British people who fought for Islamic State should not be allowed home, the Daily Mail reports.

And The Times says that cancer patients and people with mental illness are going without essential medicines due to drug shortages.

Tomorrow's Times front page: Patients hit by shortage of drugs as prices soar pic.twitter.com/O4d0l11Lxl  The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) December 6, 2017

claims police were called when a neighbour of Simon Cowell launched a rant over parking, while thesays a man has appeared in court accused of urging jihadis to attack Prince George at school.
Theresa May is engaged in a flurry of diplomacy which could continue through the night and has fuelled speculation that a Brexit agreement on plans to maintain a soft Irish border could be edging closer.

The announcement that European Council president Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday morning added to talk that the Prime Minister had made progress.

Under-pressure Mrs May had been hoping to make a new offer by Friday on the Irish border to satisfy both Dublin and Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her Government.

A mooted agreement between the UK and EU on divorce issues including the Irish border, which would allow talks to progress to the future trade relationship, was torpedoed on Monday by the DUP.

On Thursday evening, Mrs May spoke to European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, after he had phoned Irish PM Leo Varadkar.

Mr Junckers chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said after the calls that an early morning meeting and press point on Friday was possible, but added: We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night.

Downing Street did not comment on suggestions that Mrs May could fly to Brussels very early on Friday to seal a deal.

(PA Graphics)

Confirming the PMs calls, a Number 10 spokesman said: Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing.

And earlier on Thursday evening, a UK Government source said: Were not there yet.

DUP sources urged caution, insisting talks were continuing and stressing suggestions that a text had been signed off by MPs but not the leader Arlene Foster were not fully accurate.

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am UK time)  before the London Stock Exchange opens  but would not give further details.

The DUP objected to plans for regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic to maintain a soft border between the two, arguing it would amount to the drawing of a new frontier with the UK mainland in the Irish Sea.

Theresa May is under pressure to move on to the next stage of Brexit talks before the end of the year (Virginia Mayo/AP)

The Prime Minister is under intense pressure to get leaders at the December 14 European Council summit to declare sufficient progress has been made on divorce issues so trade talks can begin.

On Thursday evening, an Irish Government spokesman said: Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government.

But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.

DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: Discussions are ongoing.
A Leonardo da Vinci painting of Christ that sold in New York for a record $450 million (336m) is heading to a museum in the United Arab Emirates.

The newly-opened Louvre Abu Dhabi made the announcement on Wednesday.

Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is coming to #LouvreAbuDhabi pic.twitter.com/Zdstx6YFZG  Louvre Abu Dhabi (@LouvreAbuDhabi) December 6, 2017

The 500-year-old painting is called Salvator Mundi, Latin for saviour of the world.

Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi on display at Christie's London (AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

It is one of fewer than 20 paintings by the Renaissance master known to exist and the only one in private hands.

Christies auction house sold it to an anonymous buyer last month.

Congratulations  the Salvator Mundi is going to its new home the @LouvreAbuDhabi https://t.co/ehv8jm5Lii  Christie's (@ChristiesInc) December 6, 2017

The New York Times reported the mystery buyer was a little-known Saudi prince according to documents it reviewed.

Christies says it doesnt comment on the identities of buyers or sellers without their permission.

The highest known sale price for any artwork had been $300 million (224m), for Willem de Koonings painting Interchange.
While graduation rates for English-language learners and Native American students are on the rise, educators and researchers are still questioning whether the needs of those students are being better served in the nations K-12 schools.

The nations four-year graduation rate for English-language learners has improved 10 percentage points over the past five years, rising to 65.5 percent.

On the surface, some states seem to be doing a better job than others of helping ELLs earn high school diplomas. Arkansas, Iowa, and West Virginiaall states with relatively small populations of English-learnershad graduation rates that topped 80 percent.

But a number of states fell well below the national average, including six that had less than half of their ELL students graduate on time. That group includes New York, which has the fourth highest ELL enrollment in the nation.

In California, the state with the largest K-12 ELL enrollment, 72 percent of English-learners in the class of 2016 graduated in four years. That marks a seven percent increase over the past two years.

Even with the national gains, the percentage of ELLs graduating high school within four years still trails most other subgroups, including students from low-income families.

Improving graduation rates on the whole is a good thing, said Lucrecia Santibanez, an associate professor of teaching, learning, and culture in the school of educational studies at Claremont Graduate University in California whose research interests include ELLs and bilingual education.

Wide variations in state policy make it tough for researchers to determine why the numbers are on the rise nationally, Santibanez said.

She also worries that state-level changes in defining who is an ELL, which in many states includes students who were formerly classified as English-learners, could artificially inflate graduation rates, and perhaps leave an impression that the needs of more students are being met.

The improvements came as the rights of English-learners emerged as a significant policy issue for the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice during President Obamas administration.

As the number of ELLs in K-12 schools increased, the departments issued joint guidance to remind public schools of their obligations to ensure such students have equal access to a high-quality education.

The guidance, along with stringent enforcement of federal law by the education departments office for civil rights, likely served as reminders that schools must educate ELLs, said Diane August, who directs the Center for English Language Learners at the American Institutes for Research.

It probably put a lot of districts on notice that you really are accountable for educating these kids, August said.

How that holds up remains to be seen. The prospect that the Trump administration will roll back the federal role in education civil rights enforcement has many advocates on edge after nearly eight years of attention to such issues under President Barack Obama.

Improvements in Indian Country

While Native American high school graduation rates have increased by seven percent in the past five years, the numbers remain problematic, said Susan Faircloth, a professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe.

Despite the increases, Native American students still have the lowest performance among ethnic and racial subgroups, and the graduation rates in Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico and South Dakota, all states with sizable American Indian populations, continue to lag behind the national average.

Faircloth also questioned if the improved graduation rates have concealed another problem: students who drop out of school before they factor into graduation rates.

The Obama administration devoted more resources to Indian Country, including the Generation Indigenous (Gen I) initiative, a joint effort by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of the Interior that sought to address barriers to success for Native American youth.

To support that effort, the federal government also awarded more money to tribes, schools, and other organizations under the belief theyre best equipped to identify key barriers to and opportunities for improving educational and life outcomes for Native students. The efforts focused on improving preschool, adding Native language instruction and immersion programs, and providing more mental health services.

You saw a recognition across the country on the value of culturally based education. This isnt anything different in Indian Country than it is in Hispanic communities or African-American communities, said Ahniwake Rose, executive director of the National Indian Education Association.

When we have parents and community members that are engaged in education ... were going to see students flourish.
Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops have erupted across the West Bank while demonstrators in Gaza burned Israeli and US flags after Donald Trump moved to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger over the US presidents move. In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tyres on fire and threw stones at anti-riot troops.

In Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesuss birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tyres on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Mr Trumps dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital. Palestinians closed their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three days of rage over Mr Trumps decision.

Rallies were under way in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalems Old City. There were no serious casualties reported in Thursdays clashes.

But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

(PA Graphics)

In the Gaza Strip, Hamass leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries, he said, urging supporters to be ready for any orders. We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision, he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israels destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s. But the groups capabilities are more limited now.

Gaza, Hamass stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

A poster praising US president Donald Trump in Jerusalem (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry people burning tyres, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address possible developments.

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Mr Trumps decision had no impact on the citys daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed the move (Sebastian Scheiner/AP)

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Mr Trumps decision.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr Trump bound himself forever to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition, he said at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Anger at the US has rippled across the Arab world. Saudi Arabias royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administrations decision in a rare public rebuke by the US ally.

US embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Mr Trumps move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Mr Trumps move, the US disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was met with fierce condemnation from leaders around the world.

Here are some key questions to explain the dispute.

The status of Jerusalem has long been a sensitive issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is considered disputed territory by many countries.

Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital, but neither is internationally recognised.

In 1980, Israel passed a law declaring Jerusalem to be Israels complete and united capital, but the United Nations Security Council condemned this and passed a resolution that it would not recognise the law.

Palestinians, meanwhile, see east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967, as their capital and view Mr Trumps move as a decision to side with Israel.

Protests in Gaza City following the news (Adel Hana/AP)

A number of countries used to have their embassies in Jerusalem, but this changed after the UN Security Council resolution in 1980.

Costa Rica and El Salvador were the last to move their embassies out of the holy city in 2006, joining all other embassies in Tel Aviv.

Some countries do maintain consulates in Jerusalem, however.

The US President said he believed the decision to be in Americas interests, and marked a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr Trump said he was not delivering any verdict about where an Israeli-Palestinian border should lie, but said he was recognising the reality that most of Israels government already operates from the city.

PM: "We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement." Full statement: https://t.co/TEPAn7fX2U  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) December 6, 2017

Leaders across the world have condemned Mr Trump for recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, over fears it could worsen tensions in the volatile Middle East.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she disagrees with the presidents decision and reiterated Britains position that the city should be the shared capital of Israel and Palestine in a negotiated two-state solution.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described Mr Trumps move as reckless.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the decision by the US President was a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process.

But Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision, calling it an important step towards peace.

This is a historic day. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years. Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. Thank you, @realDonaldTrump!  pic.twitter.com/mWCUpUMpiC  Benjamin Netanyahu -   (@netanyahu) December 6, 2017

Mr Trump has already announced plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

But in the short-term, there are fears that the decision could spark violent protests, with US personnel and their families ordered to avoid visiting Jerusalems Old City or the West Bank.

US embassies and consulates around the world have also been put on high alert.
Ademola Lookmans brace ensured a youthful Everton side did not miss Sam Allardyces presence in Cyprus as they finished their woeful Europa League campaign with a victory.

FULL TIME! Limassol 0-3 Everton. Lookman's brace and a late Vlasic strike win it - and there's five debuts for young Blues.



Blog: https://t.co/ubTJo9jVHl#efcawayday pic.twitter.com/kgCtyFuPJ0  Everton (@Everton) December 7, 2017

A pre-arranged medical appointment meant new boss Allardyce was not in Nicosia to witness the 3-0 win over Apollon Limassol, the Toffees first of the group stage, but he will receive a positive assessment of his fringe players and youngsters from stand-in manager Craig Shakespeare.

The most glowing review will be reserved for 20-year-old Lookman, who scored two goals in seven first-half minutes, the second of which was a blistering strike from range to cap off a 26-pass move where each Everton player touched the ball, with Nikola Vlasic then adding a third late on.

What they said

Of course as young players they need the opportunity, but they also need to show the ability as well. He (Lookman) did tonight. We just said to the squad after, look at this as a starting block and in the football you get your just rewards most of the time. The work ethic was there for all to see and so were the rewards. Hopefully that will give the young boys a bit of confidence and they can have a good career in the game.

We have to say congratulations to Everton, they played a really good match. This match will show us what we need to avoid going forward.

Tweet of the match

26 - Ademola Lookman's second goal for Everton vs Apollon Limassol tonight ended a sequence of 26 passes. Confidence. pic.twitter.com/PVysXjwV8G  OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 7, 2017

Star man  Ademola Lookman

 | Craig Shakespeare on Ademola Lookman: "He can be an important player but he is only young. He showed his ability tonight."



More on the blog: https://t.co/ubTJo9jVHl pic.twitter.com/bFAWHVQ7wK  Everton (@Everton) December 7, 2017

Could have finished the game with four goals but a brace was enough to see off Apollon. The second goal was a terrific strike and evidence there is certainly an end product from the winger.

Stat of the match

 | Big day for two young Blues here in Cyprus!



Keep up to date with all the matchday news on our live blog.



 https://t.co/ubTJo9jVHl pic.twitter.com/eaYlXi2Iux  Everton (@Everton) December 7, 2017

This was the youngest XI an English club had selected in a European group-stage fixture since 2009, when Everton named an even more youthful line-up having already secured their passage to the last 32.

View from the bench

Craig Shakespeare

This was the first European match Shakespeare had taken charge of since Leicester were beaten by Atletico Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals last season. Who knows if he will ever be at the helm for a continental fixture again but the stand-in boss must have been pleased with what he saw.

Ratings

Joel Robles 7, Beni Baningime 6, Morgan Feeney 7, Muhamed Besic 6, Harry Charsley 7, Morgan Schneiderlin 6, Davy Klaassen 7, Nikola Vlasic 7, Kevin Mirallas 7, Ademola Lookman 8, Fraser Hornby 7.Nathan Broadhead: (on for Hornby, 82) 6, Anthony Gordon (on for Mirallas, 89) 6, Alex Denny (on for Charsley, 90) 6.

Whos up next?

Liverpool fans

AC Omonia v Apollon Limassol (Cypriot First Division, December 11)

Liverpool v Everton (Premier League, December 10)
By Peter Apps

Dec 6 (Reuters) - "Missed a train? Lost a vote? Blame us!" reads one of the many posters recently posted on Londons underground transport system for RT, the Russian-based satellite broadcaster formerly known as Russia Today.

The ads are yet another sign of just how overtly Moscow and its outlets have been reveling in their newfound reputation for driving events in Western politics. But it also points to a growing and increasingly difficult dynamic. As the United States, Britain and other European nations obsess ever more deeply about potential Russian interference within their borders, they ironically risk playing further into the Kremlins hands.

President Donald Trump might remain unconvinced, but outside the White House there remains little doubt that President Vladimir Putins government has deliberately attempted to drive political events in Europe and the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies are united in their conclusion that Moscow interfered directly during the 2016 presidential election, primarily through hacking Democratic Party e-mails and disseminating their content to discredit Hillary Clinton.

In Europe the evidence is even more widespread. The European Unions counter-disinformation campaign "EU Disinfo" says it has tracked more than 1,300 examples of pro-Kremlin interference this year. Moscows hand is seen as trying to drive support for the far right across the continent as well as a host of disparate causes like Brexit and independence for Catalonia.

Particularly in its most recent campaigns, social media analysts believe Russia has been using an army of automated social media feeds, dubbed "bots," to get its message across. But it also has more traditional media arms such as the website "Sputnik" and the RT network.

Both Sputnik and RT have their own considerable web presence. Google last month announced it would "derank" both to give them less prominence on Google News and other platforms. Their stories, however, continue to be widely spread on other social media.

Even directly Russian government-linked social media outlets such as the Russian embassy Twitter feed in London have been openly "trolling" western governments and institutions, mocking them with jokes and sometimes ungrammatical rants.

None of this behavior is entirely new - but it has increased substantially in the last two years. Ever since Russia annexed Crimea and began a wider war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, a growing number of Western analysts have believed that Putin is deliberately doing whatever he can generate discord and chaos within the West.

Even more than the intensity of Russias activity, the level of attention now paid to it has increased. Britains Prime Minister Theresa May recently devoted an entire speech to the topic, saying such actions "threaten the international order."

In the United States, meanwhile, the focus is on the potentially paralyzing consequences of prosecutor Robert Muellers probe of potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow - particularly now that former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn has cut a deal to cooperate with the inquiry after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador last December.

There is clearly a difficult balance here. Many in the West, particularly former members of the Obama administration, feel they were caught out by the scale and intent of Russian activity, especially during the 2016 U.S. election.

The risk, however, is that the level of attention now being devoted to Russian hacking, manipulation of social media and other questionable political activities furthers Putins goal of delegitimizing Western governments while boosting Russias reputation for being able to call the shots.

For all the evidence of Russian activity, we may never know to what extent Moscow truly affected the outcomes of any of the political contests in which it dabbled. We know that a pro-Kremlin institution bought ads on Facebook to provoke partisanship in the United States. We know that significant numbers of American voters went online to search for the hacked political emails Russia apparently gave to Wikileaks. But, as analyst Nate Silver notes, "there just isnt a clean-cut story in the data."

On the surface, the volume of potential Russian interference on social media can seem massive. According to one estimate, Russian-related Twitter feeds were responsible for more than 1.5 million election-related tweets during the 2016 campaign. However, compared to the sheer volume of other election-related material published during the campaign, the Russian contribution is unlikely to have been the only factor.

The same is true when it comes to the rise of Europes far right. Theres no doubt that Russia has pushed some very divisive storylines, including around the alleged rape of a 13-year-old Russian-speaking girl in Germany by Arab migrants - an incident authorities say was later proven never to have happened. Those who monitor far-right chat rooms closely, however, say that Russia -related content remains only a very small proportion of the traffic. Most simply remains homegrown, according to a report by the UKs Royal Institute of International Affairs.

That doesnt mean Russian involvement isnt real. But by focusing on it to the exclusion of other variables, political establishments in Europe and the U.S. all too often give the impression of looking for scapegoats. That may paradoxically reduce the prospects of addressing reasons for the underlying political issues that led to dissatisfied Britons voting to leave the European Union and disaffected U.S. citizens voting for a polarizing candidate like Trump.

In the UK, those issues included frustration at the mainstream political establishment over multiple issues, immigration in particular. In the United States Trumps rise too was partly because he was able to tap into the alienation and frustration of those whod lost their jobs to workers in other countries.

Russia clearly did what it could to exploit those feelings and trends, but it did not create them. Politicians need to find ways to address their concerns and reduce political polarization, not look for excuses about why voters turned against them.

That is obviously easier said than done - every Western government has been desperately searching for policy solutions since the 2008 financial crisis, with often relatively little to show for it. But that doesnt mean its not vital that policymakers continue to try. The Kremlins narrative is aimed not just at undermining individual governments and institutions, but the entire idea of Western democracy itself.

The West needs to be alert to Russian meddling, and giving people the information they need to detect it is important. But if the West is tempted to make Moscow take the blame for all its ills, it will end up furthering the Kremlins strategy more than Putin might ever have hoped. (Reporting by Peter Apps)
SHANGHAI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Chinese shipping conglomerate SITC International Holdings Co Ltd is looking for logistic companies to buy in Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, the company's CEO said on Wednesday.

"We're focusing on ... those (targets) that are connected to our business," SITC's Yang Xianyang told Reuters in an interview, adding that none of the talks are in final stages.

Yang declined to name any of the targets or provide further details on the nature of their business.

SITC's acquisition plans are not being primarily driven by Beijing's "Belt and Road" plan, Yang said, although the company expects the general transportation business to grow as the national initiative gathers pace.

China's "Belt and Road" campaign encourages Chinese companies to strengthen the country's overseas trade and transport links, and has led to an increase in overseas acquisitions under its banner.

The global shipping industry has already seen a series of mergers and acquisitions that are helping to shake the market out of a prolonged slump.

In February last year, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company merged with China Shipping Group to create China COSCO Shipping Corporation.

This year, COSCO Shipping Holdings Co Ltd offered in July to buy Orient Overseas International Ltd for HK$49 billion ($6.3 billion), a deal that would turn the mainland group into the world's third-largest container liner.

Having fewer shipping players is beneficial for the entire market, said Yang.

An improving market has also prompted some lines to think about adding new ships as freight rates rise.

SITC, which also handles ship brokering and freight forwarding, has ordered four 1,011 TEU gearless container vessels for delivery in 2018 and two more for 2019, and has options on more new builds, Yang said.

SITC's profit for the first half of the year rose 20 percent to $85.8 million from $71.3 million a year ago. (Reporting by Engen Tham; Additional Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Tom Hogue)
NAIROBI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it has approved a further $44.5 million credit for Madagascar, as part of a drive to support the country's economic recovery.

The IMF and other international donors broke ties or cut aid payments to the Indian Ocean island after a coup in 2009, but resumed them after a peaceful presidential vote in late 2013.

"The gradual economic recovery has continued, with solid growth and continued macroeconomic stability despite the drought and cyclone that affected Madagascar in early 2017," the IMF said in a statement late on Wednesday.

In late November, Madagascar's finance ministry said economic growth will rise to 5.1 percent in 2018, from an estimated 4.5 percent this year.

Madagascar is one of the world's poorest countries, even though it has reserves of nickel, cobalt, gold, uranium and other minerals.

In June, the IMF approved an $86 million credit for the Indian Ocean island. (Writing by George Obulutsa; editing by Richard Pullin)
By Fanny Potkin and Dhara Ranasinghe

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Germany's two-year government bond yield fell to a three-month low on Thursday, as global political uncertainty and anticipation of increased buying by the European Central Bank before the end of the year continued to boost appetite for debt from Europe's biggest economy.

U.S. Treasury yields fell across the board on Wednesday as risk appetite dwindled after a sell-off in some foreign equity markets and U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital touched off a storm of protest from world leaders.

That set the tone for the start of the European session. In addition, analysts said, front-loading of ECB asset purchases before the end of the year pushed German yields down.

The ECB said earlier this week it will not purchase bonds as part of its stimulus package from Dec. 21 to Dec. 29, expecting market liquidity will drop around the Christmas holidays.

Germany's two-year bond yield fell just over a basis point to -0.794 percent, its lowest level since Sept. 8. Ten-year bond yields were a sliver lower and below the 0.30 percent mark, close to three-month lows reached the previous session.

"Overall a moderate risk off tone has crept into markets," analysts at ING said.

In its last auction of the year, France sold 3.997 billion euros in fixed-rate government bonds, or OATs, on Thursday.

"The bid-to-cover ratios were a bit lower than usual, but all in all it's a decent auction, especially given the richness of French paper," said ING strategist Martin van Vliet. "France is the most highly valued government bond at the moment relative to its fundamentals."

Also, Spain sold 4.1 billion euros ($4.8 billion) of debt at a bond auction on Thursday.

A key overnight benchmark rate that European banks use to lend money to each other remained in focus after surging last week.

The Euro Over Night Index Average (EONIA) was fixed at minus 0.326 percent on Wednesday, down from a high of minus 0.241 percent last week. But it remains elevated, suggesting distortions in the market persist, analysts said.

"We feel affirmed in our suspicion that excess liquidity at a periphery panel bank is rather to blame," Commerzbank analysts said in a note. "This means that the distortion should become more persistent and the fixing more erratic."

For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets

(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe, editing by Larry King and David Evans)
By Hadeel Al Sayegh

DOHA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Qatar will buy fighter jets and armoured vehicles as part of 12 billion euros worth of commercial contracts it agreed with France on Thursday, bolstering its military capability and its international ties as it faces a boycott by other Arab states.

The latest contracts underscored how Doha can use the wealth it has accumulated as the world's biggest exporter of liquified natural gas to defy some of the largest and wealthiest Arab countries.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and trade relations with the emirate almost six months ago. They accuse the Qataris of backing terrorism, which Qatar denies.

"Our position on this blockade was very clear. Qatars position was very clear - to resolve this problem, if we saw problems between us and our neighbors - we should be at a table and speak honestly," Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said at a news conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron, who has tried to play a mediation role between the sides, was in Doha to discuss how to combat the financing of terrorism at a time when the Middle East is locked in a regional power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran.

"Restoring stability to the Gulf is a priority for us because we have a lot of friends here," Macron said. "Our wish is that we find a quick resolution to today's situation."

Paris has strong commercial and political ties with Qatar. It has promoted deeper business interests in the country and encouraged Qatari investment in France, where the Gulf state already has assets of about $10 billion.

Macron said some 12 billion euros ($14.13 billion) worth of deals were agreed on Thursday. They included Qatar's taking up an option from 2015 to buy 12 more Dassault Aviation-made Rafale fighters, and saying it could purchase a further 36. It has already bought 24 planes for about 6 billion euros, including missiles.

It also committed to buying 490 armoured vehicles from defence firm Nexter.

Doha has repeatedly called for dialogue with its neighbours, although it has strengthened its military as relations with them have deteriorated. It has secured this year alone military equipment deals with the United States, Russia and Britain.

"In total, it amounts to nearly 12 billion euros which was signed today and which underlines the closeness of our economic cooperation," Macron said.

Among other deals signed, Suez A will dredge and clean Qatar's lagoon and a rail consortium of RATP and SNCF will build and operate a metro system in the Qatari capital.

Qatar Airways also placed a new order for Airbus A321neo civilian aircraft to replace an earlier A320neo order. The new deal for larger planes is worth an extra $930 million at current list prices for Airbus and involves a switch of engine supplier to a French-American venture co-owned by Safran< and General Electric. (Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Tim Hepher, writing by John Irish, editing by Richard Lough, Larry King)
ZAGREB, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Croatia on Thursday raised its minimum wage by 5 percent and increased the number of licences for foreign workers in 2018 in a bid to boost the competitiveness of one of the weakest economies in the European Union.

The government also slashed contributions employers have to pay on net minimum wages by 50 percent to reduce salary costs.

"These measures are going to favour both employers and workers," Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a cabinet session.

The net minimum wage will from next year stand at 2,752 kuna ($429.63), while its gross value will be 3,439 kuna. This represents 43 percent of an average gross wage that in September amounted to 7,989 kuna.

"Our goal is to increase over time the minimum wage to 50 percent of an average gross wage," Labour Minister Marko Pavic said at the cabinet session. Some 75,000 people in Croatia receive minimum wages.

The government also increased to 31,000 from this year's 9,000 the number of licences for foreign workers, most notably needed in construction, tourism, shipbuilding and metal processing.

Over the last few years, those industries have suffered from shortage of workers on the domestic market. Croatia's unemployment rate is 11.6 percent, or some 180,000 people. It's population is 4.3 million.

Most foreign workers come from European countries outside the European Union.

"These measures cannot solve the structural problems which hamper stronger economic growth, like Croatia lagging behind in modernising its industrial sectors," said economic analyst Damir Novotny.

Croatia's economy is expected to grow a bit over 3 percent this year. Analysts say its longer-term growth prospects are at between 1-2 percent unless the country significantly improves the investment climate and public sector efficiency.

($1 = 6.4055 kuna) (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Bitcoin rocketed above $15,000 for the first time ever on Thursday, up more than 10 percent on the day, after adding more than $2,000 to its price in fewer than 12 hours.

Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has seen a more than fifteen-fold surge in its value since the start of the year.

It climbed to as high as $15,212 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange just after 1400 GMT, having traded just above $13,000 12 hours earlier.

Many market-watchers said the launch this weekend of bitcoin futures by CBOE, one of the biggest global derivatives exchanges, was helping drive up the price on expectations it would draw more investors to the market. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly, Editing by Abhinav Ramnarayan)
ABUJA/LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - One of Nigeria's two main oil unions on Thursday threatened to launch a nationwide strike from Dec. 18 over what it said was a "mass sacking of workers that joined the union".

If the government fails to force the management of domestic oil and gas companies and marginal field operators to recall laid-off union members, its workers will go on strike, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) said.

PENGASSAN did not say how many workers were laid off and union officials did not respond to calls and messages.

Oil output from Nigeria, Africa's largest crude exporter, has been volatile over the past two years due to militant attacks, pipeline theft and sabotage and industrial action.

Strikes by PENGASSAN workers in December last year at ExxonMobil facilities affected production and dented exports from the company's fields, according to oil traders and Reuters oil export data.

Nigerian oil minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said on Thursday that the government would engage with PENGASSAN to resolve the dispute "as soon as possible." (Reporting by Camillus Eboh; additional reporting by Libby George in London; writing by Paul Carsten and Libby George; editing by Jason Neely and Adrian Croft)
DPA, 06th DECEMBER, 2017- Almost 17 million babies across the world are breathing toxic air, which could be damaging the development of their brains, according to a report released by UNICEF on Wednesday.



There are 136 million children under the age of 1 globally, which means one in eight are being exposed to toxic air, the UN childrens

fund said.



Satellite imagery analysed by UNICEF indicates that 12.2 million of these children live in South Asia. The East Asia and Pacific region is home to some 4.3 million babies living in areas with pollution levels at least six times higher than international limits.



Not only do pollutants harm babies developing lungs - they can permanently damage their developing brains - and, thus, their futures, said UNICEF executive director

Anthony Lake.



Lake called on countries exceeding international limits to step up efforts to reduce

air pollution.
With corruption and specially political corruption continuing to spread like a cancer in Sri Lanka, tomorrows International Anti-Corruption Day needs to give important lessons to our politicians at all levels and from all parties.



According to the United Nations, every year US$ one trillion is paid in bribes while an estimated $2.6 trillion are stolen annually through corruption  a sum equivalent to more than 5 per cent of the global GDP. In developing countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme, funds lost to corruption are estimated at 10 times the amount of official development assistance.



The UNDP says corruption is a serious crime that can undermine social and economic development in all societies. No country, region or community is immune. This year the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and the UNDP have developed a joint global campaign, focusing on how corruption affects education, health, justice, democracy, prosperity and development. Corruption is a complex social, political and economic phenomenon that affects all countries. Corruption undermines democratic institutions, slows economic development and contributes to governmental instability.

Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires. Economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the start-up costs required because of corruption, the UNDP adds. UNODC Executive Director, Yury Fedotov in a message to mark the event, says young people denied all-empowering education, women excluded from life-saving surgery and workers prevented from working, are just some of corruptions unwitting victims.



Corruption has a catastrophic impact on societies; it stifles opportunities, denying vulnerable people access to infrastructure, and condemns them to lives of inequality and inequity. The victims of corruption are not from a single generation. This crime haunts successive generations impacting on countless numbers of people. If people are to be removed from poverty and economic growth promoted, the world must stand united against corruption. This means rejecting corruption and embracing accountability, transparency and good governance, the UNODC Executive Director says. In Sri Lanka, politicians who read about these catastrophic effects of corruption need to examine their conscience and come to an awareness how their tendency to accept commissions and kickbacks affects the whole economy and worst still, millions of impoverished people. During the past ten years specially, corruption among politicians, top officials, their lackeys, business leaders and others has reached devastating proportions largely because of the breakdown of the rule of law, lack of accountability and transparency and the dictatorial regime that prevailed after the 18th Amendment was approved.

On January 8, 2015 President Maithripala Sirisenabacked by a rainbow coalition including most of the political parties and civic action groupswas elected to office with the crackdown on corruption being high on the agenda of the manifesto. But exactly 35 months later where do we stand on the corruption scoreboard. Significantly a report was scheduled to be issued today by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry which probed the alleged treasury bond scams in the Central Bank. But the President yesterday gave the commission time till December 31 to issue the report.



While the people await the report to find out as to who did what and how much was plundered, progress is still slow in prosecuting VIPs who allegedly plundered billions in public funds during the former regime. Last year Sri Lanka was ranked 95th among 175 countries probed in the Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International. In 2009 Sri Lanka ranked 97. Whatever the rank we hope the recent law to appoint special High Courts to probe corruption cases will be implemented fast, while tough action is taken against those found guilty in the alleged Treasury Bond scam.

As President Sirisena has said, people who want to do business by fair means or foul would be well advised to keep out of politics where the priority is to serve and sacrifice for the people. Politicians need to ask what they could give to the country instead of finding ways of grabbing from the country.
Kayts Divisional Judge M. Riyaz on Tuesday ordered to take into custody the Sub Inspector who released Swiss Kumar, the main suspect in the gang rape and murder of Vidya, the student from Jaffna.

The Judge made this order when the case against Senior DIG Lalith Jayasinghe, who had been under custody and enlarged on bail over the incident was taken up. The evidence surfaced at this hearing detailed that while six suspects including Swiss Kumar were been taken to Kayts Police Station, a sub inspector identified as Gajan had arrived and taken away Swiss Kumar and another to the Jaffna Police Station and released the two suspects and remanded the remaining four.

As this was stated in the Jaffna High Court, as an action taken on the orders of the DIG, the concerned DIG was taken into custody and later released on bail. With the DIG submitting to the courts that he had not issued any orders or instructions to release Swiss Kumar, and he has no connection whatsoever in this regard, the Judge ordered the immediate arrest of the SI and production in courts.

The suspect SI had gone missing ever since the case on the murder of Vidya was being heard. However, on been confirmed that the SI was connected to this incident, IGP Pujith Jayasundera who visited Jaffna in July took steps to interdict him from service.

When this case was taken up for hearing on Tuesday, the Kayts Magistrate postponed the hearings to February 28, 2018. (Romesh Madushanka)
REUTERS: European Union finance ministers adopted a blacklist of 17 jurisdictions deemed as tax havens on Tuesday, in an unprecedented step to counter worldwide tax avoidance, although they did not agree on financial levies for the listed countries.



To discourage the use of shell structures abroad - which in many cases are legal but may hide illicit activities - the EU in February began screening 92 jurisdictions seen as possible tax havens. The move came in the wake of numerous disclosures of offshore tax avoidance schemes used by companies and wealthy individuals.

EU finance ministers approved a common blacklist on Tuesday made up of American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates.



This list represents substantial progress. Its very existence is an important step forward. But because it is the first EU list, it remains an insufficient response to the scale of tax evasion worldwide, EU tax commissioner Pierre Moscovici said after the meeting.

A second public grey list, or watchlist, of 47 jurisdictions that have committed to changing their tax rules to abide by EU standards on transparency and cooperation was also adopted. It includes Switzerland, Turkey and Hong Kong.



Morocco and Cape Verde were moved from the blacklist to the watchlist at a late hour after making last-minute commitments to tax reforms, officials said.

The lists will be updated regularly.



Blacklisted countries may no longer be used by EU institutions for international financial operations, and transactions involving them could be subject to closer scrutiny.



These penalties may have little effect in persuading the wealthiest tax havens to change course, however.



Stronger countermeasures would have been preferable, EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told a news conference after the meeting. Some states, like Luxembourg and Malta, opposed stricter sanctions, officials said.



The ministers ruled out imposing a withholding tax on transactions to tax havens as well as other financial sanctions.



Britain had shown reticence over the process, EU officials said. No British overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, nor the Channel Islands were put on the blacklist, in what was seen as a diplomatic victory for London. They were put on the grey list instead.



Bermuda was at the centre of the most recent large disclosure of offshore financial documents, the Paradise Papers.



Eight Caribbean islands recently hit by hurricanes, including Anguilla and the Bahamas, were given until March to comply with EU standards before a decision is made on their listing.



EU states have not been screened and will not be on the list. The commission said none of the 28 members of the bloc can be classified as a tax haven, as all have agreed to respect EU tax standards.



But anti-poverty and fair tax groups said that if screened against EU criteria, countries like Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Ireland would all be on the EU list.

The list cannot just comprise third countries but must also contain EU jurisdictions, the German conservative vice-chair of the European Parliaments economic affairs committee, Markus Ferber, said in a statement on Tuesday.
It was about 6 oclock in the evening. A luxury van used to transport foreigners on its way to Colombo stopped in front of a fruit stall in Galle. The driver of the vehicle got down from the vehicle clutching his chest. He claimed he was experiencing a chest pain.

He was given first-aid by by-standers. The driver told his helpers that his purse, the key to the vehicle and his mobile phone were inside the van. After receiving first-aid, he was taken to a hospital close by. On his insistence, a call was taken on his mobile phone to inform his wife of his plight. After some time, the owner of the vehicle arrived at the place where the van was parked. He is a resident of Mahamodera. He opened the door of the van and checked the purse that was still inside. To his knowledge there should have been at least rupees eight hundred and four thousand in the purse. But to his dismay he did not find a cent.

This driver was driving some foreigners to several locations and had been paid Rs. 804, 000 for a three-week-long trip a foreign family who had been staying in Unawatuna had given him.

The day after he was discharged from the hospital the police took him into custody. It was discovered that he had actually not suffered a heart attack and had tried a fast one on the owner of the van. The suspect is a resident of Bandarawela aged 38. The foreign family had also came to the police station and made a statement to the police saying that they paid him the money that had gone 'missing'. He reluctantly accepted that he received the money but claimed that someone must have stolen the money from the vehicle while he was receiving treatment.They say the best laid plans sometimes go awry. This is a good example of it.

OIC Chief Inspector Sujeewa Silva and SI Palitha Ranasinghe of the Special Crimes Unit of the Galle Police are conducting further investigations. The suspect was to be charged with criminal breach of trust. (D.G. Sugathapala)


Microsoft today launched a program to equip students in Sri Lanka with the digital skills required to thrive in the future.

An hour long programme on coding was held at Temple Trees, with the participation of 200 students.

Minister of Law and Order and Southern Development Sagala Rathnayaka and Country Manager of Microsoft Sri Lanka Hasitha Abeywardana attended the ceremony. Pix by Pradeep Pathirana
Laugfs held the Pehesara Art Competition for the third consecutive year with the enthusiastic participation of Laugfs employees children islandwide in celebration of World Childrens Day 2017.



Participants submitted over 170 works of art in the Primary, Junior, Intermediate and Senior categories. Laugfs team organised the competition in a bid to further enhance engagement with employees and family members by offering the children a chance to display their talent.



Winners of the competition received awards at a ceremony held at the Laugfs auditorium with the participation of Chief Guests: Laugfs Holdings Chairman W.K.H. Wegapitiya, Group Managing Director Thilak De Silva, Sector Managing Director Asanga Ranasinghe and Group Finance Director Dilshan Perera. The winners received valuable certificates, prizes and cash prices. Adding vibrancy to the occasion, the Young Players drama group performed a short stage drama at the awards ceremony.



In our own corporate culture, creativity is a valued asset. Organising Pehesara Art Competition for the third consecutive year was our way of encouraging and recognising creativity through artistic expressions amongst children of our employees. Within our diverse employee base, we consistently strive to foster a culture that values family and close connections. This annual event is yet another part of that drive. The future of humankind depends on the creativity of its members. We were pleased to witness the talent that the younger generation possess. It was a good opportunity for Laugfs as a leading Sri Lankan corporate entity to encourage childrens imaginative powers and love of art, commented Director/Chief Human Resource Officer Dulani Nissanka.The young competing artists submitted their work in four age categories. Primary category participants (Grade 1-3) were allowed to submit artwork depicting any theme that each child preferred while the junior category (Grade 4-6) drew paintings depicting a Kite Festival. Children in the intermediate category (Grade 7-10) submitted work that illustrated the concept of Green Sri Lanka while the senior category (Grade 11-13) expressed their artistic skills through imagining and painting how they see their village/town in 2050. The judging panel shortlisted 80 works of art and announced the winners at the awards ceremony.The judging panel comprised of a team led by University of the Visual and Performing Arts Sri Lanka Visual Arts Faculty Dean Prof. M.R. Podinilame. Following a tough competition, H.M. Adheesha Induwara Herath of Oxford International College Badulla won the first place in the primary category while A. Ranudi Pevinya of St. Anthonys Girls College Kandy won the first place in the junior category. The other two categories were equally competitive with W.D. Kavitha Amandhi of Thakshila Central College Horana winning the first place in the intermediate category and H.M. Chamalka Lakshani Weerawansha of Dudley Senanayake Central College Tholangamuwa emerging the winner in the senior category.
The number of tourists who visited Sri Lanka in November 2017 totalled 167,511, recording a 0.2 percent growth compared to 12 months ago amidst a mixed performance in the key markets.



Western Europe was the largest regional market for Sri Lanka during the month with 45,903 tourists, although this was a 1.4 percent decline year-on-year (YoY).



The British market grew by 2.2 percent YoY to 13,645 tourists, although the equally important German market continued its decline, falling by 11.5 percent YoY to 9,891 tourists. The French market fell by 4.6 percent YoY to 5,574 tourists.



The second largest regional source of touristsSouth Asia too contributed less towards Sri Lankas tourism industry in November, with the market falling 2.7 percent YoY to 45,061 tourists. This was due to a 17.9 percent fall in arrivals from the Maldives.



However, arrivals from the single largest country where Sri Lanka sources its tourists fromIndia remained resilient, growing at 6.9 percent YoY to 32,243 tourists.



Meanwhile, arrivals from East Asia increased by 14.2 percent YoY to 36,087 tourists, on the back of arrivals from Indonesia growing at 209.8 percent YoY to 3,795 tourists. Arrivals from China totalled 19,237 visitors, showing an improvement of 3.5 percent YoY.



Arrivals from Eastern Europe fell by 12.3 percent YoY, with 18,636 tourists visiting Sri Lanka. Both the Russian and Ukraine markets recorded deficits during November.



Meanwhile, in the smaller regional markets, arrivals from the Middle East fell by 30.4 percent YoY to 5,066 tourists. Arrivals from Australasia and the US grew at double digits, bringing in 7,613 and 7,635 tourists, respectively.

Over the 11 months so far in 2017, arrivals to Sri Lanka grew by 2.5 percent YoY to 1.87 million tourists. Western Europe contributed nearly a third towards this and the market grew at mid-single digits, despite the reduced interest from German tourists.



East Asia contributed 406,062 tourists, growing at 4.4 percent YoY despite the marginal fall in Chinese arrivals, while arrivals from South Asia fell by 0.4 percent to 452,179 tourists over the fall in arrivals from the Maldives and other regional countries, despite a higher number of Indians holidaying in the island.



Sri Lanka was hoping to achieve 2.5 million tourists for this year but the closure of the countrys main airport for about four months, the dengue outbreak and floods slowed down the tourist arrivals to the country.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is back on the global economic radar. Its 11th Ministerial Conference (MC-11)  the highest decision-making body that meets every two years  will convene in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from December 10 to 13, 2017. While expectations for a major trade deal at the conference are low, Sri Lanka must continue to support the WTO-led multilateral trading system in the new Trump and Brexit era.



Long and winding road from Doha to Buenos Aires

Multilateral trade liberalisation under the WTO has had a difficult decade. Despite the initial optimism surrounding the Doha Development Round of negotiations that began in 2001, multiple deadlines have come and gone without any breakthroughs on the most contentious issues.



At the last Ministerial Conference in late 2015, the negotiators could not even agree on whether they should continue the Doha Round. This impasse has left the WTO to focus on more modest outcomes like the Trade Facilitation Agreement that was announced at its 2013 Bali meeting and which Sri Lanka ratified last year. MC-11 looks set to continue this trend by trying to find agreement on a few specific topics, thereby supporting the quest for multilateral trade liberalisation, if only on a more modest level.



Whats up for negotiation and where should Sri Lanka stand?

Three main areas are up for discussion in Buenos Aires. The first is a possible agreement on the reduction and elimination of fisheries subsidies, which encourage unsustainable overfishing of the worlds oceans. The second is how to ensure free trade in the booming e-commerce sector and the third is the long-standing issue of reducing the support that some governments - most notably in developed economies - provide to their agricultural sectors. Agricultural subsidies, in particular, make it difficult for exporters from developing countries like Sri Lanka to compete in these markets and keep global prices artificially low.



Of these three topics, Sri Lanka should focus its limited trade negotiating capacity and lobbying capital on advocating for a successful outcome on the reduction of global fisheries subsidies. This is both the least contentious issue up for negotiation and the area where Sri Lanka stands to benefit most from an agreement.



While fisheries are not a major part of the Sri Lankan economy, accounting for only 1.5 percent of gross domestic product and 1.7 percent of exports in 2016, the sector provides employment to almost 10 percent of the labour force and is ripe for further development as recognised in the governments Vision 2025 plan. A reduction in the estimated US $ 35 billion spent on fisheries subsidies globally will help to level the playing field for Sri Lankan fishermen and create export opportunities for the local industry.



E-commerce also has substantial economic potential for Sri Lanka as the world economy transits to the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (based on digitisation and artificial intelligence). However, discussions of international trade rules remain in their infancy and several developing economies have voiced concerns about whether they have much to gain from an agreement when they have limited access to technology. As such, e-commerce seems more likely a prime candidate for a future plurilateral or sector-specific agreement among like-minded economies - which may include Sri Lanka - than a full-scale multilateral deal in Buenos Aires.



Reducing domestic support to agriculture is the area least likely to be resolved in Buenos Aires. It remains highly contentious and the continued power of agricultural lobby groups in advanced economies makes a significant reduction in such support a distant prospect. In addition, as Sri Lanka is a net food importer, a reduction in global support to agriculture would have a mixed impact on the local economy.



Sri Lanka must also provide robust defence of multilateral trading system

Even more important, however, are the issues not explicitly on the negotiating table in Buenos Aires, specifically the increasing strains on the WTOs Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). The DSM has played a crucial role in mediating trade disagreements between countries over the last two decades.

However, the US has criticised the DSM for unfairly favouring other nations (particularly China) and is blocking the appointment of judges to its highest appeal body until the system reformed; this risks bringing the DSM to a complete halt. Without a working DSM, the WTOs trading rules would become toothless and governments would face few consequences for violating them. In the worst case, this could spark a tit-for-tat trade war between major powers.



Sri Lanka must lobby other governments to ensure a robust defence of the WTOs DSM in Buenos Aires, while putting its support behind sensible reforms to moderate the US position. As a small open economy, Sri Lanka benefits significantly from being able to engage with economies many times its size on an equal basis through the WTO. The DSM will only become more important as Sri Lanka seeks to develop its economy by boosting exports.



Batting for WTO

The WTOs failure to make significant progress towards further multilateral liberalisation in recent years does not mean its previous achievements should be discarded. While attempting to find agreements on the areas that are most beneficial to its economy, Sri Lanka should make clear that the global trading system is worth defending, as it provides a level playing field for small and large countries alike. This is a fight that will go far beyond Buenos Aires.



(Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja is Chair of the Global Economy Programme at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKI). Adam Collins is a Research Fellow at the LKI. The opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and not the institutional views of the LKI. They do not necessarily represent or reflect the position of any other institution or individual the authors are affiliated with)
IMF is believed to have requested govt. to address issues at SriLankan before the release of further funds under EFF

Govt. told to protect solvency and credit rating of two main state banks who are key funders of SriLankan

Govt. appoints special ministerial committee and committee of officials to assist them to decide on SriLankans fate

Official committee to start work on Dec. 11; submit report on Dec. 20 and recommend action executed on or before March 31, 2018

The fate of the ailing national carrier, Sri Lankan Airlines, will be decided soon as the airline has now become a litmus test for the government to prove its commitment towards restructuring of loss making state-owned enterprises (SOEs)one of the key conditions of the ongoing three-year programme Sri Lanka has with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).



Mirror Business reliably learns that IMF has requested the government to immediately take appropriate measures to correct the course of the loss-making, debt-laden airline before the release of further funding under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF).



Although Sri Lanka has a number of loss-making SOEs, SriLankan Airlines is said to have been chosen as a test case of sorts.



Mirror Business also learns that it has been pointed out to the government that the solvency and credit rating of the two main state banks, who are the key funders of the airline, should be protected as anything that negatively affects the two banks will have an adverse impact on the balance sheet of the government.



The IMFs request has prompted the government to set up a special ministerial committee, which includes Finance and Mass Media Minster Mangala Samaraweera, Special Assignments Minister Sarath Amunugama, Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, Public Enterprise Development Minister Kabir Hashim and Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama. The committee is headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.



The ministerial committee is assisted by a committee of officials headed by Treasury Secretary Dr. R. H. S. Samaratunga, and consists of Secretary to the Ministry of Public Enterprise Development Ravindra Hewavitharana, Chairman of the National Agency for Public Private Partnership (Convenor) Thilan Wijesinghe, Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Finance and Mass Media Mano Tittawella, Director to the Ministry of Public Enterprise Development Dr. Roshan Perera and Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer of SriLankan Airlines.



The committee of officials will start their work as early as next Monday (11th) to decide on the fate of the airline, which could range from finding an equity partner to the closure of the airline, and is expected to compile a preliminary report by December 20th as the entire way forward for the airline has to be implemented on or before March 31, 2018.



A statement by SriLankan Airlines yesterday said all the trade unions of the airline have expressed their solidarity to the management in supporting the restructuring efforts initiated by the government under the supervision of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) unit attached to the Ministry of Finance.



This was expressed by the representatives of the trade unions when they met SriLankan Airlines Chairman Ajith Dias, CEO Capt. Suren Ratwatte together with senior management of the airline and National Agency for the Public Private Partnership Chairman Thilan Wijesinghe on December 5th.



At the meeting, representatives of the trade unions comprising The Airline Pilots Guild, Flight Attendant Union (FAU), Licensed Aircraft Engineers, Technicians, Executive Association, SLNS, JSS and the Engineers Guild expressed their fullest support to the management on its restructuring efforts.



The securing of the future of the national carrier was acknowledged to be of paramount importance, irrespective of the professional or political affiliations of the unions, the statement said.



Trade unions have also been notified that the airline would not negotiate or enter into new collective agreements until March 2018, Mirror Business learns.




THE HINDU, 06th DECEMBER, 2017- The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce its revised ban on people from eight nations from travelling to the country. The third iteration of the travel ban  after the first two were blocked by the judiciary  has been partially in force already.



The SC order has not explained the reasons for its decision but nudged the lower courts that are hearing the arguments on the merit of the case to move faster. Two appeals courts are expected to hear arguments in separate cases, challenging the ban this week. President Donald Trumps decision has been challenged on questions such as his legal authority to issue such an order and whether it constitutes a religious test and a Muslim ban, as promised by Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Trump administration has argued before the courts that the travel ban is for national security.



Six of the eight countries barred by the order are majority-Muslim  Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad and Somalia. North Korea and Venezuela are the other two. The SC order, supported by seven of the nine judges, increases the chances of the administration winning the case on merit as and when it reaches the highest court.
Its convenient now and then to root our collective, national incapacity for something, anything, in our (real or imagined) feelings of cultural inferiority. Not just convenient, but also justifiable, given our harrowing trysts with colonialism. But what is convenient and justifiable emotionally and in terms of rhetoric isnt always what is true and what should be true. That is why we have to move on, though not at the cost of forgetting what decades and centuries of black-and-white exploitation left us with; a ramshackle economy which never took off thanks in large part to the inability of the colonial (and post-colonial) bourgeoisie to transform it into an industrialised society. Our bourgeoisie are modernists only when it comes to their ability to emulate superficially the Occident. Theyll probably be surprised to learn that Anagarika Dharmapala, whom they vilify using all sorts of expletives and what-not today, was more of a modernist than them.

The irony is that our elite sent their children to Oxford and Cambridge for the sole purpose of entering that Civil Service



We are a nation of imitators because the colonial bourgeoisie are still in power



Some of these former insurrectionists have today become apologists for whatever government spouts their rhetoric



I believe that a firm engagement with history, its pluses and minuses, its flattering and less than flattering facets, is what makes for the blooming and nurturing of a cultural sensibility. In Sri Lanka that sensibility never really endured for long, considerably owing to the fact that we are, after all, still a post-colonial society. Our filmmakers and artists are wont to describing our society as post-war, but in this they are only partly correct; neither the war, nor the efforts made at building bridges after the war, can conceal the inexorable culture of apathy on the one hand and elitism on the other hand which our bourgeoisie continues to stand for. And affirm. The emergence of an alternative education system in the late 70s and 80s is, I rather suspect, a good indication of that culture. For the fact of the matter is, and I am being quite blunt here, that the rise and proliferation of private, international schools was a vague result of the emergence of a swabasha education sector after 1956. The one necessitated the other through English.



It has been said of Israel that its founding fathers (and mothers) were idealists, while those who were chosen to lead it after their demise were the realists. I suppose the same can be said of other incidents in history, including the founding of the United States, with the truism that ideals are always tempered by disenchantment. The aborted project that was 1956, which we can trace to the writings of Dharmapala and also, faintly, in the Buddhist Renaissance brought about by the Theosophists, empowered one generation, a generation who were already vassals to an education system which privileged entrance to the Civil Service as the only mark of distinction in society that mattered. The irony is that our elite sent their children to Oxford and Cambridge for the sole purpose of entering that Civil Service, and not for anything that was nationally, economically, productive. (Part of the reason why P. de S. Kularatne returned to Sri Lanka to act as Principal at Ananda College was his realisation that the British were less interested in the Civil Service he himself hoped to enter than his own countrymen.)

The fringe movement of the JVP has always been that partys most vocal, committed, and eloquent crusader against the intrusion of the private sphere on the public



Rise of the middle class

The rift which existed before 1956 was largely economic but also determined by language, specifically English. In his book on the LSSP, Working Underground, Regi Siriwardena observes that in colonial society the latter sometimes overrode the former to such an extent that even the middle class, bereft of privilege and occupying an intermediate position between the haves and have-nots, were able to rise socially. A revolution, cultural or political, is decided at the outset by this intermediate class, who enjoyed the benefits of a median position without the inhibitions and deficiencies that visited the elite and the multitude equally. Siriwardena became our foremost critic, translating our cultural sphere to the patrons of the Lionel Wendt and our English Departments despite his inability to wield Sinhala, the language of the 1956 revolution, properly. But this intermediate position wasnt filled only by those who spoke and wrote in English. It was also filled by the rural and the urban Sinhala Only bourgeoisie. They would elect Bandaranaike as the idealists, while their children would become the realists.



The dichotomy between the ideal and the real in our cultural and political spheres this point reveals is important because, carried away by the world of social empowerment that the Bandaranaike Government promised would open to the Sinhala Only bourgeoisie, the idealistic elders educated their later-to-be pragmatic children in the vernacular, forgetting, or choosing to ignore, the fact that what transpired in 1956 was the substitution for the hitherto existing class discrepancies of a more insidious form of elitism. The social rifts which prevailed until then were bottled up, repressed in fact, until what resulted was a culture of envy (as I pointed out last week). A key element of this new culture of envy was the inability of those who had been promised rice from the moon to comprehend the alternate space that the English intelligentsia carved for themselves here. The latter lacked the numbers, but what they lacked in numbers was compensated for by their sway over policy. They became, in short, the policy elite: Michael Youngs technocrats.

Our filmmakers and artists are wont to describing our society as post-war, but in this they are only partly correct



And in seeing the hegemony that these new elites and their offspring wallowed in, the empowered ones found themselves quickly to be disempowered and disarmed. They were the insurrectionists who had felt betrayed by a largely obsolete left movement. They attempted to abort elected governments in 1971 and 1988, the former largely drawn from our universities and the latter from the rural, political South. (Its interesting to note here that many of those who led the 1971 insurrection, and were later rehabilitated, remained JVPers while partaking of the NGO sphere that invaded the country in the eighties. Some of these former insurrectionists have today become apologists for whatever government spouts their rhetoric of federalism and devolution.) Being largely rural and pragmatic they would have realised the follies of their elders who had elected for swabasha in 1956. Being insurrectionists they would have confused the follies of their elders for an excuse, on their part, to discern each and every organ of the State  including the judiciary and the education sector  as an arm of a rightwing status quo.



Crusaders

The fringe movement of the JVP has always been that partys most vocal, committed, and eloquent crusader against the intrusion of the private sphere on the public. But in being radicals they were unable to fully become the pragmatists that the Sinhala Only middle class and bourgeoisie were, because while the Sinhala Only peasantry became disenchanted and turned into crusaders, the former forewent on their fidelity to the rhetoric of 1956 and embraced the same uprooted, neither-here-nor-there lifestyle that their parents had heard Dharmapala condemn. We are a nation of imitators because the colonial bourgeoisie are still in power. When we see them emulate the West thinking that the West is best, we want to emulate them because in that act of emulation we are guaranteed social upliftment. So when our education sector was opened to the private sphere in the eighties, with the establishment of international schools, the children of the children of 1956, who hailed from the Sinhala Only middle class, embraced them. They had been educated in the vernacular. Owing to the feelings of insecurity this compelled in them, they chose to send their children, not to the bastions of vernacular education their elders had idealised, but to the institutions of privilege those elders had decried.

Siriwardena became our foremost critic, translating our cultural sphere to the patrons of the Lionel Wendt and our English Departments

Sinhala only

The international school system in Sri Lanka was initially divided into two broad categories: the elite schools that catered to the children of diplomats and other top-ranking professionals, and the budget schools that catered to the middle class. The latter made and continues to make good business sense because, in stark contrast to the former, they were targeted not at a specific market segment but at an entire sensibility: the sensibility that had grown tired of the Sinhala Only rhetoric of the Bandaranaike years. They had studied in Sinhala and had come to know how lowly they were regarded by their better off countrymen. So they sent their children, thinking and hoping that those children would not meet the fate they had. This class still flourishes because there is always a middle class that studied in the vernacular, who wish to see their children acquire the privileges that proficiency in English and a Westernised education bring.



But then the international school system, which had before bifurcated between the elitist institutions on the one hand and the budget institutions on the other, splintered off to yet another category, this one comprising of institutions which were set up everywhere, on an ad-hoc basis, because (to this date) private and international schools are not monitored by the State. The milieu that patronises these new international schools do not approximate to the middle class that earlier sent their offspring to the budget institutions. They belong to a more ruralised, less ambitious, but nevertheless pragmatic milieu, whose knowledge of English is far less than that of the post-1956 Sinhala Only bourgeoisie. This makes good business sense because these new schools are staffed by teachers who are paid more relative to the state sector (but who are technically unqualified) and because their standards, or the lack thereof, are never questioned by their intended customers (who after all cant spot out the mistakes in the curriculum their children are taught).

All these leave much to reflect on. What that is, however, I will get to next week.
Three leading civil society activists who played a prominent role in the peoples movement for social justice largely responsible for ushering in yahapalanaya called on Number One the other day.



The trio explaining their mission appealed to Number One not to take a drastic step following the unveiling of the report of the Treasury Bond Commission which, they pointed out, could lead to the fall of the yahapalanaya government.



Despite all shortcomings bedeviling yahapalanaya, it is much better than the previous regime. And it is your prime duty to ensure the continuity of yahapalanaya while rectifying its shortcomings, the trio told Number One.



Number One gave the three activists an attentive hearing, but did not commit himself, informed sources say.
President Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and setting in motion a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to the fiercely contested Holy City.

Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital, Mr. Trump said from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. Its something that has to be done.

The president cast his decision as a break with decades of failed policy on Jerusalem, which the United States, along with virtually every other nation in the world, has declined to recognize as the capital since Israels founding in 1948. That policy, he said, brought us no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result, Mr. Trump declared.

Recognizing Jerusalem, he added, was a long overdue step to advance the peace process.

Mr. Trumps remarks were the most closely scrutinized of his presidency on the Middle East, where he has vowed to broker the ultimate deal between Israelis and Palestinians but has yet to find a breakthrough to end the conflict. He said he remained committed to brokering an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.

The president said the decision to recognize Jerusalem should not be construed as the United States taking a position on whether, or how, the city might ultimately be shared. But he offered little solace to the Palestinians, making no mention of their long-held hopes for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state.

Instead, Mr. Trump emphasized the domestic political dimension of the decision. He noted that he had promised to move the embassy during the 2016 presidential campaign, and added, While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

Though he did not mention it, Mr. Trump signed the same national security waiver signed by his predecessors, from Barack Obama to George W. Bush to Bill Clinton, which will allow the administration to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for an additional six months. White House officials said that was unavoidable because it would take several years to move the embassy staff to a new facility in Jerusalem.

There will of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement, the president said. He appealed for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate.

Mr. Trumps recognition of Jerusalem isolates the United States on one of the worlds most sensitive diplomatic issues. It has drawn a storm of criticism from Arab and European leaders, which swelled on Tuesday night after the White House confirmed Mr. Trumps plans.

Pope Francis and the Chinese foreign ministry joined the chorus of voices warning that the move could unleash a wave of violence across the region. At a meeting in Brussels, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was sternly reproached by European allies.

Standing next to Mr. Tillerson, the European Unions top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, made clear that Europe saw the presidents decision as a threat to peace in the Middle East.

We believe that any action that would undermine these efforts must absolutely be avoided, she said. A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as a future capital of both states.

Just hours before Mr. Trump made his announcement, Mr. Tillerson said that peace in the Middle East was still possible.

Mr. Tillerson, during a news conference at NATO headquarters in the heart of Europe, expressed reassurances about the expected consequences of the decision.

The presidents very committed to the Middle East peace process, Mr. Tillerson said.

Mr. Tillerson has been largely shut out of the usual back-and-forth between Israelis and Palestinians that many secretaries of state spent much of their tenures conducting. Instead, Mr. Trump entrusted that task to his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

At least one former Obama administration official also weighed in with sharp criticism. John O. Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in a statement that Mr. Trumps action was reckless and would damage U.S. interests in the Middle East for years to come and will make the region more volatile.

Administration officials said they expected the blowback from the Palestinians and others, but they asserted that the move would accelerate, not hinder, the peace process.

Mr. Trumps promise to move the embassy appealed to evangelical voters and pro-Israel American Jews, including Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate. By delivering on that promise, Mr. Trumps aides said, he was enhancing his credibility as a peacemaker.

The announcement, officials said, was recognition of current and historic reality. West Jerusalem is the seat of Israels government, and recognizing it as such would remove ambiguity from the American position, they said.

Jerusalem is one of the worlds most fiercely contested swaths of real estate, with each side disputing the others claims. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, and most of the world considers it occupied territory. Jerusalems Old City has the third-holiest mosque in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism, making the citys status a sensitive issue for Muslims and Jews alike. Jerusalem is also sacred ground to Christians.

In addition to declining to take a position on the ultimate shape of Jerusalem, Mr. Trump called for the status quo on a disputed area of the Old City, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, which has been a flash point for tensions.

Mr. Kushner and Jason D. Greenblatt, the presidents special envoy, have been working for months to prepare for a negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians. Though they have little to show for the effort publicly, they say they have made progress behind the scenes.

Those efforts, Middle East experts said, would be jeopardized by Wednesdays announcement. But Mr. Kushner and Mr. Greenblatt, the presidents special envoy, supported the presidents move, officials said. (nytimes)
President Donald Trump on Wednesday will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the ancient city, senior U.S. officials said, a decision that upends decades of U.S. policy and risks fueling violence in the Middle East.



Facing an outcry of opposition from Arab capitals, Trump, in a landmark speech, will announce he has ordered the State Department to begin developing a plan to move the embassy from Tel Aviv in what is expected to be a process that takes three to four years, the officials said. He will not set a timetable for the move.



Trump will sign a national security waiver that authorizes him to delay the embassy relocation for now, since the U.S. diplomats do not yet have a building in Jerusalem to move into, security arrangements or housing for diplomats, the officials said.



Still, Trumps endorsement of Israels claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse long-standing U.S. policy that the citys status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and

Christian religions. The officials, who briefed reporters ahead of Trumps speech at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) on Wednesday, insisted that Trumps decision, intended to fulfil a key campaign promise, was not meant to pre-judge the outcome of eventual talks on the final status of Jerusalem or other major disputes between the

two sides.

REUTERS, 06th

DECEMBER, 2017
Yemeni rebels who seized full control of the capital Sanaa over the past week have detained more than 40 media staff, press watchdogs said on Wednesday, demanding their immediate release.



They include staff of Yemen Today -- a television channel affiliated with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom the Huthi rebels killed on Monday as he fled the capital following the collapse of their uneasy three-year alliance, the watchdogs said.



The rebels overran the televisions Sanaa offices on Saturday after attacking it with rocket-propelled grenades and wounding three guards, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.



This hostage-taking is typical of the climate of hostility in Yemen towards journalists, who are often targeted in this conflict, said RSFs Alexandra El Khazen.



A spokesman for the Committee to Protect Journalists called for the immediate release of the journalists, saying the Huthi attack on Yemen Today shows a profound contempt for press freedom.



Saleh, who ruled Yemen for three decades, had joined forces with the Huthis in 2014 when they took control of large parts of the country, including the capital.



But that alliance unravelled over the past week as the former leader reached out to the Saudi-led coalition that has waged an air campaign against the Huthis since March 2015.



A least 234 people were killed in fighting that the International Committee of the Red Cross described as the fiercest since the start of the conflict.



An official of Salehs General Peoples Congress (GPC) said some of the detained staff had since been transferred to prison while others were still being held in the televisions offices.



The Huthis were exerting pressure on them to change their coverage, to issue certain statements and report the betrayal of former president Saleh and accuse him of working for the Arab coalition.

But the journalists refused to do it, the official said.

-AFP
Looking at the world through the eyes of the Web
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political analyst Doctor Pedzisai Ruhanya has warned the Zimbabweans youth to stop the tendency of boot-licking top politicians like what was happening with former President Robert Mugabe when junior politicians jostled to boot-lick him.Zanu PF politicians who broke the record in boot-licking Mugabe are Webster Shamu who called him a Cremora, Obert Mpofu who called himself Mugabe's obedient son, and former Zanu PF youth secretary Kudzanayi Chipanga who called him Jesus."I remember one of former Zanu PF youth league leader Chipanga's rants; Gushungo, even if you die, we will come to your grave to consult you on how to run Zimbabwe. Now Chipanga is holed in some dirty and dingy remand prison in Harare far away from Mugabe's opulent Blue Roof residence. He can even access and consults the dear leader before he dies," Ruhanya said."This boot-licking behaviour cuts across Zimbabwean party youths including the opposition. Zimbabwe youths should learn. Those who came before you and me like Lookout Masuku, Tongogara, Mangena etc were not this cheap!"
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Zanu PF Chairperson for the United Kingdom Chapter Nick Mangwana has lamented that some of the alleged criminals whom the military claimed to be targeting which they forced the changed of leadership in government and Zanu PF are now surrounding the new president which might mean the nation is still at square one.President Emmerson Mnangagwa has since appointed the new cabinet among them Obert Mpofu now the Home Affairs Minister who has been labelled as having been amassed wealth through corruption when he was the Mine and Mining Minister under Robert Mugabe's administration."We are back:"Some of the people perceived as criminals are now going to surround the new President. So were the people conned into believing there was a cleaning exercise taking place or it was just a ruse to buy them into internal Zanu-PF politics?" said Mangwana.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Norton House of assembly member Temba Mliswa has challenged ministers who have been appointed by the new president Emmerson Mnangagwa but are implicated in corrupt activities in the past administration to do the honourable thing and resign.About 32 ministers were sworn in on Monday at State House in Harare some of them who had served in the Robert Mugabe administration amid concerns by citizens that they have nothing new to offer."My wish was that the ministers implicated in corrupt activities be honourable and step down whilst the law takes its course. Anyone guilty should not wait to be fired but step down. It is moral after seemingly putting your own interests before that of the country. Let's mature," Mliswa said.
At present, e-NAM participants are doing payments through traditional ways via bank branches, debit cards and net banking.

New Delhi: The government has engaged private lender ICICI Bank to enable online payments at 470 mandis integrated with national portal of electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM), a senior Agriculture Ministry official said on Thursday.

At present, e-NAM participants are doing payments through traditional ways via bank branches, debit cards and net banking.

"Farmers have started trading online within mandi. We want online payments to be smooth and without any delay. Therefore, ICICI Bank has been roped in as a banker for e- NAM," the official told PTI.

ICICI Bank will enable BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on the e-NAM portal for making cashless payments, the official added. The effort is to provide seamless experience for making online payment of trade and services undertaken on the e-NAM platform.

At present, 470 mandis across 14 states are live and 90 commodities are being traded on e-NAM platform, which was launched in April 2016.

The target is to connect 585 mandis with e-NAM by March 2018. In the first phase, farmers are trading agri-produce via e-NAM portal within a mandi though the government's aim is to allow e-trading between mandis within the state and later between mandis of two states.

The e-NAM model aims at revolutionising agri markets by ensuring better price discovery, bringing in transparency and competition to enable farmers to get improved remuneration for their produce moving towards 'One Nation, One Market'.
RBI had in December last year capped the MDR charges at 0.25 per cent for transactions up to Rs 1,000.

Mumbai: In order to promote digital payments, the Reserve Bank on Wednesday came out with differentiated merchant discount rates (MDR) for debit card transactions, prescribing separate caps for small and large traders.

MDR is the rate charged to a merchant by a bank for providing debit and credit card services.

As per the latest notification, MDR charges for small merchants with an annual turnover of up to Rs 20 lakh has been fixed at 0.40 per cent with a cap of Rs 200 per transaction by debit cards through Point of Sale (PoS) machines or online transactions.

For accepting payments via QR (quick response) code based transactions, the charge will be 0.30 per cent subject to a cap of Rs 200 per transaction.

In case the annual turnover of a merchant is over Rs 20 lakh, the MDR charges would be 0.90 per cent with a cap of Rs 1,000 per transaction. If transaction is through QR code, the charges will be 0.80 per cent with a similar cap.

These directions will come into effect from January 1, RBI said, adding it would be the duty of the banks to ensure the MDR levied on the merchant does not exceed the prescribed cap.

RBI said rationalisation of the charges is being undertaken with a view to achieve the twin objectives of promoting debit card acceptance by a wider set of merchants, especially small traders, and ensuring sustainability of the business for the entities involved.

Following demonetisation, the RBI had in December last year capped the MDR charges at 0.25 per cent for transactions up to Rs 1,000.

For transactions above Rs 1,000 and up to Rs 2,000, it was capped at 0.5 per cent of the transaction value. Before that, the MDR was capped 0.75 per cent for transaction up to Rs 2,000 and not exceeding 1 per cent for payments above Rs 2,000.

Commenting on RBI's move, Ashwani Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director of Dena Bank, said introduction of differentiated MDR and a cap on the absolute amount is expected to increase acceptance of debit card usage and "will also bring down the cost of transactions for small merchants".
Tweet involving the picture was retweeted by Shabana Azmi.

Peshawar: A candle vigil was held outside veteran actor Shashi Kapoor's ancestral home, near the historic Qissar Khwani bazar, on Wednesday.

The Kapoor Haveli, situated in the Dhaki Nalbandi area in the interiors of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, was built by Kapoor's grandfather Dewan Basheswarnath Singh Kapoor in the early 20th century, who lived in the city.

Cultural Heritage Council (CHC) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa paid tributes to the Hindi cinema star, who passed away on December 4 at the age of 79.

The meet was attended by several people from different walks of life, including cinema lovers.

Speaking on the occasion, CHC secretary Shakeel Waheedullah said the veteran actor always remembered Peshawar as the home of his ancestors.

It was the love for his roots that prompted Kapoor to visit the city back in 2000.

Shakeel added, "Peshawarites have great love and respect for the Kapoor family and Bollywood actors belonging to the ancient city."

Besides the Kapoor family, actors Dilip Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Vinod Khanna, Amjad Khan and Anil Kapoor have roots in Peshawar.

Historian Mohammad Ibrahim Zia, who has penned 'Peshawar Ke Fankaar', a book on Bollywood actors hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, threw light on the Kapoor clan's connection with Peshawar.

He said Prithiviraj Kapoor, father of Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor and Shashi, used to go to Bombay (now Mumbai) from Peshawar to work in films.

It was in 1942 that the head of Kapoor family sold the house and migrated to Mumbai.

Despite leaving Peshawar, the Kapoors always fondly remembered the city. Raj Kapoor had even expressed desire to visit his childhood home before his death.

Zia recounted meeting the 'Junoon' actor in 2014, when he visited India and found the actor's response cordial.

He said that Kapoor was happy to make the acquaintance of the guests from Peshawar in his Mumbai home.

"Though he was ill at the time when we met in 2014, happiness was clearly visible on his face," the historian recalled.

Zia added a CHC delegation will soon visit India to meet the bereaved Kapoor family and convey condolences to them from the people of Peshawar.
With several projects keeping her busy in Bollywood, actress Taapsee Pannu has been going slow with films down south. In fact, after very long, she did the horror comedy Anandobrahma in Telugu. Now, she has signed yet another Telugu film, this time alongside Aadhi Pinisetty. Despite her busy schedule, the actress reveals that her reason for signing a film here as often as possible is because Telugu cinema is close to her heart.

She shares, This is where I started my journey in cinema and I will never have a heart to leave it when things are working out so well for me. My frequency of doing films mustve reduced but I will not stop doing films here unless they arent getting the right response. I am closely attached to the industry, and will always be open to taking up good scripts and roles.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Mthwakazi Republic Party has said it is fully supports the more than 40 civic society organizations and pressure groups who converged at Bulawayo's large city hall last Saturday for the Matebeleland Indaba."We fully support all the resolutions adopted, and we would like to encourage all of us to embark on the immediate Voter education to help encourage our people to register to vote. We notice the similarities of our demands, to those of our civic society organizations, as tabled to the new Harare administration. This clearly shows the need for effective partnership between us as a Mthwakazi political party, and our Matabeleland CIVIC SOCIETY. Territory dictates that we work in unison," said MRP in a statement."We further, encourage and plead with all the Civic Society groupings to consider backing MRP in the 2018 general elections. Evidently, all other opposition parties have been tried and failed the people of Matebeleland over the years. Most of the opposition parties we have are splinter political parties that are branded by the same individuals who have failed as either Zanu Pf or MDC leaders. Such political parties can not be trusted, on the basis of the change of names, slogans and party colours."MRP said it would like to encourage Mthwakazi people who have not yet registered to Vote, to do so, as the process is still in progress."We discourage our people against voter apathy because failure to register as a voter diminishes one's power to be heard, politically. Massive voter registration for the people of Matebeleland will help complement the voice of our civic society. MRP will save as a conduit to carry their demands to Parliament when elected next year," said the party."The government uses the statistics of voter registration to determine the number of constituencies each province should have, or how big one constituency should be. The same statistics are also used for the purposes of budget allocations. This has proven to be catastrophic and consequential to the Mthwakazi population at large as most of our people have given up on the need to register and to vote."The party said currently, the numbers of registered voters in the three of the four Mthwakazi provinces which are Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, and Bulawayo are still very low, at slightly above 30 percent average."Hence we encourage all our people to register to VOTE and be counted.While it is true that Zimbabwean elections have always been rigged one way or the other since 1980, boycotting while the rest of the citizenry and their political parties vote is not an option. Such an act starves us of the opportunity to be heard as a people of this region," said the party."MRP remains the best alternative for the people of Mthwakazi, and we give assurance that your Vote for MRP will not be a loss. We pledge to make sure that, working with our Civic Organisations and other social structures, we deliver on the aspirations of our people. We genuinely warn, out of a painful experience that Civic Organisations must have clear terms of reference and adhere to them in the interests of society. Most civil society groups have been vanquished by the temptation to exploit the people's support by transforming into political parties."MRP has youthful leadership which believes in working for the people and advancing Mthwakazi cause without fear or favour."Our passionate plea to our people is that you register to vote team MRP and trust us to give you the long elusive political power. Finally, we encourage all the women, young and old to participate actively in politics, and be counted in decision making and socio political programs. MRP deliberately avails enough space for women and youth participation in politics," said MRP.
Thiruvananthapuram: The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), the annual film lovers pilgrimage, begins on Friday. The festival which has spawned filmmakers out of common men and women will show 190 films from 65 countries. The festival will continue to be the festival of masses, said IFFK director Kamal. As the state capital is still reeling from the shock of a devastating cyclone, the 22nd edition of International Film Festival of Kerala will start by remembering the victims of Ockhi tragedy.

The condolence meet at Nishangandhi auditorium will be followed by the screening of The Insult, an Arabic film set in Lebanon by Ziad Doueiri, at 6 pm. Actors Madhabi Banerji and Prakash Raj will be present. Tagore, Kalabhavan, Kairali, Sree and Nila will start screening films on Friday morning. King of Peking will be shown at Tagore Theatre at 10 am. At 10.15 am, Woodpeckers will be shown at Kalabhavan, while Sree will show Dogs and Fools. Nila will screen The Blessed at 10.30 am.

The festival honours Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov with Lifetime Acheivement Award, whose films have received critical acclaim, even as the Soviet Union authorities had little to agree with him. For the first time, the festival features a section dedicated to Japanese animation films, popularly referred to as anime. Children might recognise the style of the animation, as cartoon series like Pokemon uses it. However the content is usually targeted at adults. There will be 445 screenings at 14 theatres. Delegates can reserve their seats a day before through IFFK website or mobile application. There will be help desks at venues to facilitate reservations. There are 35 women film makers, whose works will be shown at the festival. In fact four of the 14 films in International competition are made by women.
Are the works of Jane Austen relevant even today? Comprising seven stories set in contemporary Pakistan, Austenistan is a clever piece of work amalgamating a range of emotions, from savage sarcasm, to love and second chances in a contemporary society that is still holding on to the last shreds of sense and sensibilities from Regency England.

Edited by Laaleen Sukhera, founder of Jane Austen Society of Pakistan (JASP), the stories penned in the book are written by journalists, editors, lawyers and medical health professionals, and show in various degrees how Austens works still hold relevance in the modern society, at least when it comes to love, loss and the marriage market.

Speaking about how the collection came about, Sukhera says the idea was cooked up during the tail end of a JASP meet up.

We toyed with the idea of writing fiction someday and I remember going home and thinking to myself, why not now? What are we all waiting for?

Shortly thereafter, Sukhera had written the concept down, invited story submissions, andbefore the manuscript was even ready, the editor says publishers were competing with offers.

JASP, says Sukhera, is a literary community of like-minded enthusiasts of Austens novels and postmodern tributes such as period drama.

There are about 1,800 online followers from 45 countries, and 90 per cent are women. We have chapters in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and London, where we meet up in small groups of 6 to 12 at cafes and discuss all things Austen to our hearts delight, she says, adding that they also host annual dress-up tea parties where they channel Regency fashion and Austen characters and unleash their eccentricities.

The stories compiled in the book, seemingly portray an affluent socio-political Pakistan background and Sukhera says that the writings are works of fiction and people write what they know. However, she begs to differ on the fact that it only highlights one section of the society.

The British-Pakistani writer says that many of the issues experienced by characters in the stories are not limited to a particular social class. She lists these issues as domestic abuse, financial insecurity, adultery, substance abuse, toxic relationships, and the claustrophobic wretchedness of unhappy marriages and closeted homosexuality.

Weve actually juxtaposed the upper echelons with middle and upper middle class characters and contexts as well, she adds.

Speaking about the book itself, Sukhera says that while she wanted Austenistan to be like a wonderful jewellery box, having to edit stories to bring that effect was difficult.

Reducing the word count can be a heart breaking process, she says, adding, I was fortunate enough to be working with Faiza S Khan of Bloomsbury and I have full faith in her shearing and pruning abilities.

Going through the pages of the book, one can find a subtle undertone of Austen sensibilities playing through the lives of the characters in each story.

Sukhera puts it down as being the relevance of Austens works even in contemporary world.

In South Asia, we often find ourselves in very Regency-esque situations. Whether its a marriage proposal received through ones family or even a match arranged between cousins, its sometimes tricky to distinguish Austens era with the twenty first century.

The book also sees short excerpts before each story that set the undertone or flavour for the same. She elaborates, The quotes bear relevance to the stories and the main protagonists and their situations. I hope that Austen enthusiasts will enjoy them and that readers unfamiliar with Austen will find them illuminating.

Ask her about the contrast of modernism and old world values that run throughout Austenistan, Sukhera adds, Its second nature for us because weve literally grown up in Austenistan with its quixotic mix of convention, misogyny, evolution, and decadence.

She explains this by saying that contributor Gayathri Warnasuriya is Sri Lankan but shes spent enough time in Islamabad to get closely acquainted with its society and culture to write about it with aptitude and eloquence. Similarly Sukhera adds that Nida Elley, who lives in Austin, Texas, partly grew up in Lahore too and has given a brilliant and evocative piece of writing to make the collection.

As they say, you can take the gal out of Pakistan but you cant really take Pakistan out of the gal!

As for what the book hopes to convey, Sukhera emphatically points out that it attempts at conveying humour, hope, curiosity, fascination, and a thirst for more savvy, sassy heroines who happen to be brown skinned and are relatable worldwide rather than exoticised.

The author who has contributed one short story to the collection herself and believes that there would always be a possibility of another Austenistan (since One can never truly run out of stories.) adds on a parting note that drawing room novels -- like the works of Austen, and Austenistan -- would always be a part of mainstream society, even in a postmodern world.

We might be scrolling Facebook and Instagram and responding to a dozen WhatsApp chats but were still doing it from our drawing rooms, for the most part, Sukhera concludes.
Conspiracy theorists latest claim is that world leaders are spraying chemicals into the skies to hide planet Nibiru, a mythical world that could potentially trigger an apocalypse.

They say the leaders are also using the moon and sun to hide it in this grand scheme, the Daily Mail reported.

Matt Rogers regularly posts conspiracy videos on Youtube to explain his theory. "Our skies are being sprayed to cover up the truth," Mr Rogers said in one video. He also shows a range of photos of the moon and sun spotted from around the world.

A post shared by Mantequilla (@last_meheecan) on Dec 6, 2017 at 7:50am PST

"Looking up we should see the moon, not that beam of light," he said in the video of an image of the moon over Austria. Adding," I do believe they are using another reflector up there - it does look very strange. That is not the moon."

He believes all this comes down to Nibiru also referred to as Planet X. "They spray the skies at specific times of the day and times of the month, and the pattern of spraying is so blatantly obvious that they're hiding something," he said in the video.

As bizarre it all sounds, many people agree with him.

"They have been spraying in CA heavy for a long time. I feel ill almost every day. It's hard to understand how our military would do something like this, but they are," Julie Dotseth is quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. While Nancy Simmons said: "The public is aware of the cover up by the government, Nasa. I have emailed our president asking him to tell us the truth, we the voters who put you in office, but hope the rest of you will do the same. Be safe all."

A post shared by Kiana (@kikeiri) on Dec 5, 2017 at 8:11pm PST

However, author of the UFO Investigations Manual Nigel Watson, is not convinces about these theories about the moon. "Seems like such theorists just don't want to accept a scientific viewpoint of the world, and believe any thing the "authorities" say or do is part of a plan to hide the "truth" about our "real" existence," he is quoted as saying in the report.
Chennai: A special team of the city police arrested S. Dhashwanth (24), who raped and murdered a seven-year-old child earlier this year, in connection with the murder of his mother.

A special team rounded him up near Chembur in Mumbai, according to a senior police officer. He will be brought to Chennai after obtaining a transit warrant from a magistrate there.

Dhashwanth's inclination to bet on race horses, a hobby he acquired from his father, Sekar, is said to have helped police in narrowing down the places where he would have left to after absconding. After scanning through the racecourses within the state, a team was sent to Maharashtra and Dhashwant was found there, police said. Last Saturday, Dhashwanth's mother, Sarala was bludgeoned to death in her house in Kundrathur. Jewellery worth 200 grams and her son, who was out on bail went missing from the house pointing the needle of suspicion towards Dhashwanth.

Meanwhile, police also found that he approached two persons he acquainted while in prison to help him pledge the jewels before escaping to Mumbai. Police suspected that he could have left Chennai because he had last switched on his mobile phone at the central railway station and then switched it off. We pursued all possible leads available at our disposal and were able to trace him with the leads we got, a senior police officer said. A team headed by Kundrathur inspector Charles and three others rounded him up near Chembur on Wednesday, police sources said.Dhashwanth didn't try to escape when apprehended by the police team and reportedly confessed to the murder, sources added.

The 24-year-old, who was arrested for the rape and murder of the minor in February this year, was granted bail in September as the prosecution failed to file the chargesheet. The trial in the case was supposed to begin on Tuesday.

After he came out on bail, Dhashwanth allegedly threatened the family of the child that they would be harmed, according to a complaint at the Chengalpet town police station by the child's father, CDS Babu in November.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday said that the LB Stadium, venue of the World Telugu Conference, should have besides literary and music programmes, food courts, book exhibition, handicrafts sales emporium and exhibitions by the archeological department.

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday said that the LB Stadium, venue of the World Telugu Conference, should have besides literary and music programmes, food courts, book exhibition, handicrafts sales emporium and exhibitions by the archeological department.

He wanted decorations put up inside and outside the stadium. He also wanted cut-outs of Telugu literary personalities should be put up at the stadium.

Mr Rao held a review meeting on the preparations to be made for the conference, and visited the stadium. He said that besides organising literary and musical programmes at LB Stadium every day, literary programmes should also be held at city auditoria.

He wanted parking and traffic regulated. He also wanted one-day musical programmes on the Telugu film songs. A documentary should be made reflecting the Telangana lifestyle, Mr Rao said.
Bhubaneswar: The Centre on Wednesday declined to form a tribunal to resolve the Mahanadi water row between Odisha and Chhattisgarh. In an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court, the Centre said the Odisha government did not furnish the required information, hence, there is no need to constitute a tribunal.

Counsel of the Central government Wasim A. Kadri told reporters in Delhi that the Odisha government had been asked to submit information needed for the proposed tribunal by November 19. However, the State did not provide the details.

Meanwhile, during a discussion in the Odisha Assembly, Government Chief Whip Amar Prasad Satpathy said 41 per cent less water flowed in Mahanadi river in November this year as compared to the same month last year due to barrages constructed by the Chhattisgarh government in upper catchment areas.

He further stated water flow in the river will reduce by 73 per cent in March and 77 per cent by May 2018. As many as 16 districts of the State will be affected following the reduction in water flow, Satpathy informed.

He alleged, The Centre has been a mute spectator though Chhattisgarh is busy setting up barrages. Opposition leader Narasingha Mishra said, The Odisha government has been neglecting Chhattisgarhs barrage construction issue since 2000. On the other hand, the Centre has violated rules by delaying formation of a tribunal.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country has lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the drone violating Chinese sovereignty. (Photo: Representational/File)

New Delhi: India on Thursday said an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

The defence ministry said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

In Beijing, the Chinese defence ministry said the Indian drone recently "intruded" into its airspace and crashed in the Sikkim sector, prompting it to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of China's territorial sovereignty.

The defence ministry here said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army. The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit here to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," the defence ministry said in a statement.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."

It did not clarify when the incident happened. "The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," it said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country has lodged a diplomatic protest with India over the drone violating Chinese sovereignty.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day-long standoff in Dokalm after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off had ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim

section of the India-China border.
About BJP 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) members of the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat on Thursday and listen to their concerns on cyclone Ockhi.

The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Assembly polls in Gujarat, Modi's home state, is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday.

The Prime Minister will connect with the party workers on their mobile phones through the "audio bridge" technology and directly interact with the divisional heads of the party's SC and ST units in the state.

About 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend Modi's call, the BJP said in a statement on Wednesday.

On Diwali, Modi had extended his greetings to around 23,000 BJP workers in Gujarat through tele-conferencing.

He had also spoken to around 2,000 party workers in his Parliamentary constituency, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, using the same technology.

On Wednesday, Modi addressed three rallies in Gujarat  in Dhandhuka, Dahod and Netrang. On Thursday, he will also address a rally in Surat, which was postponed from Wednesday due to cyclone Ockhi. The Surat rally will conclude his campaigning in Gujarat.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases  on December 9 and 14  and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
Earlier, there were studies indicating that the number of young drinkers in the state was increasing.

Thiruvananthapuram: The state government has decided to bring in an ordinance to raise the minimum legal age for alcohol consumption from 21 to 23.

The Cabinet on Wednesday decided to recommend to the Governor to promulgate an ordinance amending the Abkari Act in this regard.

The LDFs election manifesto and the LDF governments liquor policy had mentioned that the minimum age limit for liquor consumption would be raised from 21 to 23 as part of the efforts to bring down liquor consumption. The previous UDF government had raised the age from 18 to 21.

According to section 15 of the Abkari Act, those selling liquor to those below the prescribed age limit would also be held liable. A fine of Rs 5,000 has been prescribed as punishment.

Meanwhile, excise department sources said that the provision was very rarely invoked in the state. There are even practical difficulties for retail outlets in checking the age limit of a person turning up to buy liquor. The only measure possible is to put up warning boards in front of retail outlets, bars and beer parlours. The punishment for the offence also needs to be enhanced, said an official.

Earlier there were studies indicating that the number of young drinkers in the state was increasing. According to a study by the Alcohol and Drug Information Centre - India (ADIC), the age of initiation into drinking was 19 in 1990 and it reached 13.5 in 2014. The number of young drinkers also increased from two percent of the drinking population to 20 percent.

ADIC director Johnson Edayaranmulla termed the government decision to raise the age limit as an eyewash.
Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said there was no lapse on the part of state government during cyclone Ockhi. He said it was an unprecedented tragedy that took place in this century. The state government received Cyclone warning only on November 30 at 12 noon and took measures on a war footing.

The warning should have been given at least three days in advance. Even central ministers said there was no lapse on the state governments part. Recalling the turn of events, Pinarayi said on November 28 Ocean Surveillance Centre mentioned on its website that fishermen going to sea should be cautious. However, the government didnt receive any e-mail or fax message.

On November 29 at 2.30 pm there was a message from Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services advised the fishermen not to venture into sea. This was also reported by a section of media. On November 30 at 8.30 am, the MET centre gave information that the low pressure might turn into deep pressure. The map and path given along with the information indicated that the low pressure was 170 km south of Kanyakumari. However, there was no cyclone warning or warning to fishermen against venturing into the sea.

At 12 noon on November 30, there was information from national MET centre that the low pressure had turned into cyclone. After receiving cyclone warning, within five minutes the information was passed on to important officials, media and SDMA. But by then many fishermen had already ventured into the sea.

The central government did not comply with criteria: The chief minister said as per cyclone warning norms of National Disaster Management Authority, between three to five days - messages have to transmitted once in 12 hours. The messages have to be conveyed once in three hours about the intensity of cyclone, path and direction.

However, these norms were not complied with in the case of Ockhi cyclone. There was no lapse on the part of the state government which was also pointed out by the two central ministers who visited the state.The ministers had also expressed the need for putting in place an effective warning system.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zimbabwe's new government is set to unveil its first budget since the fall of long-serving ruler Robert Mugabe.It comes a day after Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa signed a $153m (115m) loan agreement with China to upgrade the international airport in the capital, Harare, in a bid to attract investors and tourists.The deal meant cash-strapped Zimbabwe was "back in business", and was "serious about reshaping" the economy, Mr Chinamasa said.Addressing the inaugural meeting of his cabinet yesterday, President Emmerson Mnangagwa called for the "high-speed execution" of development projects ahead of what are expected to be tightly contested general elections next year.The International Monetary Fund has said that government spending and foreign debt are too high and Zimbabwe's economy needs structural reform.Mr Mnangagwa took office on 24 November with a pledge to grow the economy and provide "jobs, jobs, jobs".Mr Mugabe, 93, was forced to resign after 37 years in power.The military and Mr Mnangagwa engineered his downfall after he was accused of planning to anoint his controversial wife, Grace Mugabe, as his successor.
Ownership of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi: Reacting to the United States' announcement, recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India on Thursday said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.

US President Donald Trump had on Wednesday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.
The occupants of the van were proceeding to Tiruchirappali en route to Tirupati from Kanyakumari when the accident took place late on Wednesday night. (Photo: PTI/ Representational)

Tiruchirappali: Nine people including three children and two women were killed when the van in which they were travelling rammed into a stationary lorry at Thuvarankurichi, some 50 km from Tiruchirappali, police said on Thursday.

The occupants of the van were proceeding to Tiruchirappali en route to Tirupati from Kanyakumari when the accident took place late on Wednesday night, they said.

Four people, who were injured in the mishap, have been admitted to the government hospital in Tiruchirappali, police said.
Hyderabad: In an unusual development the AP government has decided to file contempt petition in the Supreme Court against the central government regarding its orders o sharing of assets of 9th and 10th Scheduled institutions. Interestingly, the Telugu Desam party which is in power in AP is also a partner in the NDA coalition government at the Centre headed by the BJP. On the petition filed by the Telangana government AP High court issued orders that the assets of the higher education council should be shared on location basis. Challenging the High Court orders the AP government has filed a petition in the Supreme Court.

Directing the central government to constitute a committee on bifurcation of assets between AP and Telangana states the Supreme Court said that the sharing of assets should not be done on location basis and should be done on population basis. Accordingly the central government has constituted a committee to look into this issue. But, meanwhile union home department has issued orders on sharing of assets between the two states.

The central government in its order said that the movable and immovable assets should be bifurcated on location basis, funds of these institutions should be bifurcated between the two states on population basis and the employees should be bifurcated between the two states on the basis of where they are working at present they belong to that state. AP government has opposed the home ministry orders and filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking clarification on location issue.
Hyderabad: Work on the Metro Rail from Ameerpet to Hitec City, an 8.5 km stretch, is being speeded up to meet the June 2018 deadline, according to managing director of Hyderabad Metro Rail, N.V.S. Reddy. But sources in the government say that acquisition of properties has still not been done and so it will be difficult to meet the deadline.

Five pillars in Yousufguda are being taken up on the left hand side, as the Hero Honda Building is being demolished. Twenty-one spans of a viaduct have to be completed in Yousufguda. Two spans of the viaduct are in the slums, nine in Krishn-anagar, two near Tran-stroy building, and eight near Sirisampada Apartments in Jubilee Hills.

While HMR is planning to complete these spans, L&T officials have to find the right space and also the permission to carry out the work. A senior officer on condition of anonymity said, All the government departments have to come in and ensure that the acquisition is carried out; then only we will have the right way to carry out the work. Work on the foundations and pillar will not be completed before June because the acquisition is a challenge.

The land acquisition and town planning department have to facilitate construction by acquiring the properties at the street level for entry and exit points at Peddamma temple, Madhapur and Durgam Cheruvu Metro stations.

According to a senior officer, The Durgam Cheruvu Station is ready but where is the place to set up the staircase? The shops at street level have still not been acquired, he said.

The further extension of 1.5 km till Raidurg is also being worked out with L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad where 49 pillars have to be erected. The challenge here is that the crafts village Shilparamam has to be protected and the Metro viaduct near Cyber Towers has to be redesigned. The viaduct will be between Cyber Towers and Hitec City. It will take one-and-a-half years for the work up to Raidurg to be completed, stated sources.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and a known Gandhi loyalist, Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar, ran out of luck on Thursday as the party suspended him for calling Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi a neech aadmi (vile man) who does dirty politics. He has also been served a show cause notice. Mr Aiyars remark not only rattled the Congress but also gave BJP a stick to beat its rival before the crucial Gujarat polls. Mr Modi who seemed to be fighting his toughest battle in Gujarat indicated that Aiyars remark would now provide BJP a major electoral advantage.

Speaking in Surat, Mr Modi maintained that while he had nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling him neech, he hinted that this could just be the winning card. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box, Mr Modi said. The development came on a day when a vituperative campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls that saw emotive issues of religion and caste competing with that of development as the main rivals, BJP and Congress, launched no-holds-barred attacks on each other ended on Thursday evening.

Sensing that this could just be the chaiwala moment for the BJP, Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi decided to act swiftly and removed Mr Aiyar from the primary membership of the party and issued a show cause notice. However, it just could be a wee bit late for the Congress to rein in Mr Aiyar as yet again before a crucial poll, he handed over a major advantage to the BJP. His description of Mr Modi as a chaiwala played a crucial role in making the Prime Minister closer to the poor and ordinary people in the country.
NEW DELHI: Responding to Chinas livid demand for an explanation as to how an unmanned Indian Aerial Vehicle (UAV) crashed in Chinese territory after crossing the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Sikkim sector, the Indian Army has said that the UAV had developed technical problems after which it lost contact with ground control. Stating that Indian border forces had immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts and that the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV, Colonel Aman Anand, spokesperson of the Indian Army, said.

The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas. The UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory before losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC, the spokesperson added.

While Indian officials declined to provide more information on the UAV including the timing of the incident, the episode assumes significance in the backdrop of the 73-day-long standoff at Doklam, near the tri-junction between Indias Sikkim, China and Bhutan that ended in August-end. Terming the incident as an infringement on Chinas territorial sovereignty, Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Commands joint staff department, told the Chinese media. India has infringed on Chinas territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this We will fulfill our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely, Zhang said.
KOLLAM: The cashew industry has placed its hopes in the newly constituted Cashew Board to end the speculative trade in domestic market. The government has announced that various nationalised and state cooperative banks were willingness to sanction Rs 200 crore as operational capital for the board. The requirements of the cashew board were in-principle approved by these banks to provide a working capital. The state government will stand guarantee for the loan sanctioned by the banks. Nearly 10 lakh metric tonne of raw cashew is required for the functioning of cashew factories in the state.

It has been observed that the middlemen in cashew trade who buy raw cashew from foreign countries and sell in domestic market are mostly responsible for crisis in the industry. The cashew board expects to support the industry by ensuring supply of raw cashew in domestic market at reasonable rates. Around 20%-40% of the market price of raw cashew is hiked by intervention of speculative traders. This can be avoided. According to the intention of the board, agreement to buy cashew is signed by the government directly, Kadakampally Manoj, anti-corruption activist, told DC.

The quality of these cashew will be certified by the government of the country from which the raw cashew is supplied. The big shots in the industry are currently supplying cashew in domestic market. They are now into mere speculative trade keeping their processing units closed, Mr Manoj added. The board plans to buy raw cashew directly from foreign markets and provide them to private cashew factories at nominal rates avoiding middlemen. The board also plans special packages for 60 non-functional factories by declaring moratorium for their existing loans to revive the industry.
Hyderabad: The state government has directed all local bodies in districts to give top priority to drinking water while spending funds accrued through Layout Regularistion Scheme and Building Penalisation Scheme. All the local bodies in districts together earned a whopping Rs 525 crore through LRS and BPS schemes announced by state government in November 2015.

While LRS applications have been cleared, the BPS has been stuck due to a case pending in the Hyderabad High Court since December 2015. The court, however, had allowed the local bodies to receive BPS applications. A total of three lakh BPS applications were received across the state, of which 1.40 lakh were from the GHMC limits alone. The GHMC alone got Rs 2,500 crore, which was collected towards application and processing fee. The order on giving top priority to drinking water projects in local bodies was issued by municipal administration commissioner T.K. Sreedevi .

The order, however, adds that the local bodies need to take the approval of chairman of District Development and Review Committee (DDRCs) in respective committees before spending funds. The state government has issued directions to all municipal corporations, municipalities, and nagar panchayats to divide the funds accrued through LRS and BPS in the ratio of 50:50.

Of this, 50 per cent of the funds should be spent on improving civic facilities, while the balance 50 per cent should be spent on ensuring drinking water during the summer. This is because all the municipalities have be-en facing severe drinking water crisis in the summer. The water supply is being provided once in two or three days. The government has been asking local bodies to hire private borewells, tankers etc to meet the demand but they could not do so citing paucity of funds. The funds being allocated by the government to meet water demand in the summer could not support local bodies even for a month in the summer.
Rahul Gandhi has earlier termed the Goods and Services Tax as 'Gabbar Singh Tax' to attack the government. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Taking forward his 'question a day' campaign, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the problems afflicting the farm sector and farmers.

Asking his 9th question in the series, he asked, neither loan waiver, nor remunerative price for produce, neither received crop insurance benefit, nor were tube wells installed.

The Congress leader also used the 'Gabbar' jibe to target the Prime Minister.

"Agriculture hit by Gabbar Singh, land snatched and the (annadatta) farmer was rendered useless. PM sahib should explain why such step-motherly treatment with the farm labour," he also said on Twitter.

Gandhi had earlier termed the Goods and Services Tax as Gabbar Singh Tax to attack the government.

Under the ongoing offensive, the Congress leader is using the tagline 22 saal ka hisab, Gujarat maange jawab (22 years of account, Gujarat demands answers), in the run-up to Gujarat elections starting December 9.

The Congress Vice-President has been using the microblogging site to pose daily questions to the Prime Minister over the performance of the BJP in Gujarat and its "unkept" promises over the past 22 years of its rule in the state.
Ali Abdullah Saleh survived several assassination attempts during his decades at the helm in Yemen, but the former Presidents luck ran out on Monday.

It remains unclear whether he was killed in a firefight or summarily executed by his, until very recently, Houthi allies as he fled Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. It remains to be seen precisely what effect his sudden excision from the scene will have on the devastating war in the country he led for more than 30 years.

Saleh was no stranger to switching sides. In fact, it was something of a habit with him. He allied himself firmly with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, only to succumb to the lure of American largesse following the USS Cole attack by Al Qaeda affiliates in 2000 and even more notably post-9/11, with US agencies allowed free rein to pursue their prey via drones.

As a young soldier, Saleh fought on the side of the Yemeni republican forces backed by Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser against the Saudi-supported forces of regression in the 1960s, but as President he slipped in and out of Saudi favour. The kingdom expelled 800,000 Yemeni workers in retaliation against Salehs support for Saddam, but it did not want him gone when the Arab Spring reached Sanaa in 2011. Saleh was eventually persuaded to make way for his vice-president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

During Salehs extended tenure as President, his energies were frequently devoted to combating Houthi rebels, so it was something of a surprise when he aligned his forces with theirs in the fight against Hadi and, latterly, the Saudi-led military coalition spearheading Operation Decisive Storm. But, at the same time, he tentatively kept open channels to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and UAE diplomats are believed to have been instrumental in persuading Saleh to reconsider his allegiances yet again.

Analysts fear that the removal from the scene of a perennial player will intensify the conflict, with both Saleh loyalists and the Saudis, who had hailed the ex-Presidents betrayal of his latest allies as a breakthrough, hungry for revenge. The short-term consequences may indeed conform to that scenario. But the bigger picture of the regions richest nation devoting a substantial proportion of the firepower it readily obtains from the United States, Britain and France to punishing its poorest neighbour remains unaltered.

Pakistan demurred, much to their dismay. But it provided a chief, in the shape of Raheel Sharif, for the so-called Muslim Nato that Bin Sal-man subsequently drummed up, which could only be int-ended, in the medium term, to serve as a force dedicated to the obstruction  or destruction  of Iranian influence in the region. And, however deleterious one might assume Irans role and ambitions to be, could they conceivably be worse than Saudi designs?

What role, if any, the Muslim Nato might be playing in Yemen is, conveniently, unknown. What is well known, on the other hand, is the extent of the humanitarian catastrophe the conflict has spawned, including the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, and famine on a scale that puts Syria in the shade.

A considerable proportion of the blame for these crimes against humanity can only be attached to the future custodian of the holy shrines and his blinkered allies. Salehs departure from the scene may not turn out to be an immediate boon for Yemen, but his considerable responsibility for its horrendous fate can hardly be denied.

By arrangement with Dawn
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Zimbabwe Diaspora Investment Group Limited (ZiDIG), a private equity investment consortium launched by Zimbabweans based in the UK, will lead an investment mission of Diaspora investors to Zimbabwe in January 2018.The Zimbabwe Diaspora Trade and Investment Mission, which will include at least 20 Zimbabwean professionals and entrepreneurs based in the UK, is set to meet with senior government officials, business leaders and trade bodies to explore various investment opportunities for Zimbabwe's Diaspora."We are finalising our itinerary for the trade mission which we will publicise shortly" said ZiDIG's chief executive officer Taffi Nyawanza said.Nyawanza said he had always been an optimist when it came to Zimbabwe as an investment destination for the Diaspora population and the developments in the country in the last two weeks of November have added an exciting dimension for ZiDIG."We were certain that change was imminent when we set up ZiDIG and our timing as well as faith in the country and its opportunities have been vindicated," said Nyawanza, a practising lawyer and principal solicitor at UK legal firm Genesis Law Associates.He said although ZiDIG already had plans in place to launch its Zimbabwe offices, the changes in the country have made it necessary to include an investment mission comprised of Diaspora investors with interests in various sectors of the economy."We believe that Zimbabwe is an exciting investment destination and we have reached out to various institutional investors who are equally excited about investing and unlocking value in the economy and creating jobs".The mission, in the 10 days, is expected to sign various agreements that will lead to the efficient channelling of Zimbabwean Diaspora investment funds into the country.ZiDIG in February at its launch in UK's second city Birmingham, raised from its founding shareholders 100 000 into a seed fund to leverage larger institutional investor funding.In addition to this, the consortium recently secured a grant from a UK Developmental Institute to, among other things, open an operations office in Harare, Zimbabwe.The Zimbabwe operations head office opened in Eastlea in Harare will coordinate Diaspora trade and investment activities including carrying out due diligence on projects and businesses seeking foreign investment.
Early in the afternoon on Wednesday in Washington, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that the US embassy would be moving to that city. (Photo: AFP)

Early in the afternoon on Wednesday in Washington, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that the US embassy would be moving to that city. In spite of this unilateral move, he added that he still supported a two-state solution and this recognition would not affect the final status of the city to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians as part of their peace agreement.

Mr Trump has thus fulfilled his campaign promise to the two right-wing constituencies that are his solid support base  Christian evangelicals and hard-right Jewish lobbies. The latter include major donors, like the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed $25 million to the Trump campaign. Mr Trump had called several Arab leaders earlier to alert them about his impending announcement. Every one of them responded negatively. King Abdullah II of Jordan warned him about the dangerous repercussions of the decision for regional peace and security.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia pointed out that the US announcement would harm peace talks and increase tensions in the region, while Egypts Abdel Fattah al Sisi said it would undermine the chances of peace in West Asia. Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims, and threatened to cut ties with Israel.

European leaders have been equally critical. Frances Emmanuel Macron has said the final status of Jerusalem could only be determined on the basis of two states, Israel and Palestine, emerging on the basis of negotiations between them. The German foreign minister has said the US decision was a very dangerous development.

Mr Trumps announcement has come exactly 100 years after British troops, led by Gen. Edmund Allenby, captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans in December 1917, ending millennium-old Muslim control.

The early Zionist leaders from Europe felt little enthusiasm for the city, seeing it, according to British historian Michael Dumper, as a regression to a conservative culture that was alien to them. Though they made West Jerusalem, annexed after the 1948 war, their capital, they spent most of their resources in developing the coastal towns of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon.

However, the Israeli military victory of 1967, which gave it control over both east and west Jerusalem, strengthened the countrys religious nationalism and placed Jerusalem at the heart of national identity. In 1980, the Israeli Parliament declared that Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel, but the UN Security Council said this decision was null and void.

Though 160 countries have diplomatic ties with Israel, not one of them has accepted Jerusalem as its capital. East Jerusalem is viewed as occupied territory and its final status is central to the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, since the Arabs see East Jerusalem as the capital of a free and sovereign Palestine.

The Trump initiative is thus a disruptive intervention into a sensitive and volatile cauldron of divisive history, conflictual politics and competitive national identities.

Several commentators have questioned the wisdom and motives of Mr Trumps announcement. The Israeli daily Haaretz in its editorial has criticised the US President for ignoring Palestinian aspirations and insists that a two-state solution requires the division of Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J-Street, the voice of moderate Jewish opinion in the US, has said that the status of Jerusalem demands less posturing and overblown rhetoric and more efforts to reach a two-state solution. Arab commentator Rami Khouri notes that, in the US perspective, the Arab countries can be treated with disdain forever.

Mr Trump seems convinced that, with the major Arab states now more concerned about Iran than Palestine, he is not likely to alienate the Arab leaders who matter, whatever public positions they might adopt for domestic consumption.

Mr Trump is wrong both in his understanding of US opinion and the impact of his position in the Arab world. At home, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll has revealed that 63 per cent of Americans oppose the shift of the US embassy to Jerusalem and 59 per cent want the administration to take a neutral position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A solid 81 per cent want the administration to depend more on experts with experience rather than rely on relatives and personal friends, a reference to the lead role the President has given his son-in-law Jared Kushner in addressing the Israel-Palestine issue.

Mr Kushner has hardly made any serious progress in his peace initiative: the plan in circulation provides for non-contiguous parts of the West Bank to constitute a Palestinian state, with limited sovereignty, without East Jerusalem as its capital, and with most settlements, with 200,000 Israeli settlers, continuing in place. This is not very different from the bantustans that have been offered by Israel as the Palestinian state for the last few years.

In West Asia, Jerusalem is the one emotive issue that can stir the Arabs and can bring them out on to the streets. This could have implications for Americas ties with major Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

They will have no choice but to view Mr Trump as an unreliable partner whose thoughtless actions could jeopardise their own rather shaky credibility at home. They will be particularly concerned that his announcement will encourage extremist elements to utilise the US anti-Arab and anti-Muslim policies to attract and use angry youth to attack Western targets and their Arab allies nearer home, thus, in the words of the Palestinian paper Al Ghad, flinging open the gates of hell in the region.

King Salman was quick to note that Mr Trumps position on Jerusalem is a dangerous step that provokes the feelings of Muslims around the world. The situation in West Asia, which is already experiencing widespread fratricidal conflict, has just got much worse.
A quarter century ago a 16th century mosque was pulled down in Ayodhya by Hindutva stormtroopers in an act of unspeakable criminality which did violence to the fundamental values of our Constitution and the civilisational ethos of the country.

A quarter century ago a 16th century mosque was pulled down in Ayodhya by Hindutva stormtroopers in an act of unspeakable criminality which did violence to the fundamental values of our Constitution and the civilisational ethos of the country. All our institutions, including the judiciary, have wobbled before mob frenzy or the threat of mob frenzy.

The hoodlums were marshalled in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 to destroy the mosque by the most important leaders of the BJP at the time. Their goal was to bring the saffron party from the margins of Indias politics to centrestage, riding on religious emotionalism, encapsulated in so-called Hindu grievances in a Hindu-majority land.

The instrument the BJP-RSS chose was the non-ascertainable plea that it was a matter of faith for Hindus that the place where the mosque stood marked the exact spot where Lord Ram was born, and hence could only be marked by a grand Ram temple. The carefully fabricated Ram Janmabhoomi movement was thus born. Its objects were explicitly political and the dividend for the BJP in rising voteshare was swift in coming.

Now the ruling party carries the burden of fulfilling its promise to the faithful of building a Ram temple at the same spot where the Babri Masjid was demolished, and there is much activity on the political and the legal side. A leading light of the BJP, who has no locus standi in the mosque/temple land dispute, was permitted in July to mention the matter in the Supreme Court and asked for early hearings.

Recently, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, who is legally unconnected to the dispute, declared that only a Ram temple can stand in Ayodhya. This is akin to saying that even if the judicial ruling on the land title where the demolished mosque stood went in favour of the Sunni Waqf Board, the RSS will ensure that a mosque cant be rebuilt in Ayodhya and only the promised Ram Mandir will be bult. This is a sorry state of affairs.

The Ayodhya dispute goes back to the 19th century, fuelled by the British divide-and-rule policy. History is strewn with chicanery arising from a communal mindset. It was repeated bungling by Congress administrations that gave the BJP the opening to publicly communalise Ayodhya. The judiciary too has much to answer.

Supreme Court observers were present in Ayodhya as the stormtroopers descended, and the court never speaks of their report. The top political figures behind the demolition are untouched by the law. The Supreme Court embarked on hearings in the title dispute on Tuesday, and is going into the tenability of the 2010 Allahabad High Court order giving the Hindu side two-thirds and the Muslim party one-third of the land. The next hearing is on February 8. The nation bears a heavy cross.
Gen. Bipin Rawat has sent out a very serious warning about politicisation of the armed forces. He makes a significant point about the need to keep the fighting forces away from politics, which we know is getting more intense. The country has a proud history of the military being apolitical in a secular environment.

Maybe it was a talking point the general pursued during a speech at a military think tank that the norm in the good old days was never to discuss women and politics. The armed forces are nearer to providing equal opportunity across the gender divide today, with women likely to be considered for combat duties too, but the one thing that can secure all fighting forces from external influences is a strict no to politicisation.

The freedom with which senior retired military officers have been mouthing opinions on television, often airing propaganda on behalf of the ruling side, is dangerous as that is where the spark of politics may begin in the armed forces. Take, for instance, how token nationalism seemed to seek avenues with some government help in a desire to place battle tanks and flags on university campuses. While that may do little to raise the armed forces image, the promotion of narrow nationalism could stoke ambition in serving officers.

After all, we live in a region where the power of Army generals is evident in running countries to our west and east, but apparently not doing it too well. In a vibrant democracy like India, there is no place for the forces to meddle in the nations political affairs.
The Armageddon that US President Donald Trump has been recklessly promising North Korea if it did not pipe down may well be visited on the West Asia theatre. This is the upshot of the US leaders Wednesday declaration that for Washington Tel Aviv will now no longer be deemed to be the capital of Israel, and that the US would officially recognise Jerusalem and move the US embassy there.

Historic Jerusalem is home to the holiest shrines of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The city was partitioned into east and west in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, to go under Palestinian and Israeli control respectively. The Palestinian Territories, now constituted almost as a state, aspires to make East Jerusalem its capital after recovering it from Israel, which annexed it after the 1967 Six-Day War.

This is among the key aspects of the two-state solution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in respect of which the United States has attempted to play honest broker. With President Trumps latest move, the US forfeits that privileged position.

The most likely impact of this is return to open warfare in West Asia, with no single power or international institution having the weight or influence to chaperon the peace process in the foreseeable future.

The worlds longest-running and most dangerous conflict, which has kept West Asia destabilised and given birth to nuclear rivalry between the perpetually sabre-rattling Israel and Iran (with Saudi Arabia making no secret of its own nuclear ambition), thus now finds itself as a region being drained of hope of peace.

The flip side of this is preparation for war by multiple forces into which the US could very easily be dragged. That will land countries like India, friendly with the Arab world, Iran, and the US at the same time into a zone of deep diplomatic anxiety.

Dipping into mythology, Israel has always regarded Jerusalem as its united and eternal capital. But Israel was created by the colonial powers by lopping off a part of the territory of Palestine, and the Palestinians have never accepted Israeli intransigence on Jerusalem.

They have nevertheless accepted the two-state solution, which visualises that Palestine will accept the existence of Israel, with Jerusalem being pragmatically shared by both countries, in light of history, politics and demographics. Mr Trumps decision therefore strikes at the central core of any meaningful steps toward reconciliation in West Asia.

This makes Americas closest Arab allies and the Europeans very nervous, and they have publicly articulated their concern, with Turkey even threatening to cut off ties with Israel, with which it has good relations. The Pope has urged retaining the status quo. It is unclear if the US leader had the map of the world before him when he reversed 70 years of US policy.
Sandeep Dikshit, The writer is a Congress spokesman: Well abide by the court verdict

Frankly, the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya is not only the BJPs obsession but an electoral ploy that it unleashes to win elections. For the last 30 years, the BJP and its affiliates have kept the pot boiling on Ayodhya so that it can have electoral gains. It has got very little to do with their self-claimed aastha or faith.

The strange aspect that always comes to light is that whenever the BJP is in power, its government says that the resolution of the Ayodhya dispute should be through courts, and when it is in Opposition it says that its a matter of faith for them.Surprisingly, BJP president Amit Shah has the gumption to ask the Congress to clarify its stand on the issue. I would like to ask Mr Shah  would he please clarify what his stand is.

The BJP government at the Centre is claiming that the dispute resolution should be done via the courts. Does it not show that the BJP as a party is speaking in a voice different from what the BJP government is saying?

The fact of the matter is that this is the evil-speak of the BJP to polarise people in an effort to garner votes. The BJP is in power at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh as well. Instead of asking us questions, the BJP and its president should be giving answers now. Will the BJP please clarify its stand on this issue? What is their clear stand on the construction of the temple? And most importantly, what has the BJP and its affiliates done in the way of easing the hurdles in the construction of the Ram temple.

If the BJP is so worried and anxious for temple what legal steps has it taken? Apart from using the issue politically what has the BJP done? Our stand has been clear that we will abide by the verdict of the top court, so why is the BJP giving a running commentary when the matter is sub-judice? After the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 what has the BJP done? Has the BJP ever started a movement for the construction of the temple? Has any of its leaders taken out a yatra like the one they did which culminated into the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

Sadly, you will find that there is no such movement. Because as I said earlier the entire issue is not about faith but about electoral gains that the BJP wants. Interestingly, the BJP also has an army of affiliates that keep on taking the hard line to hoodwink people, while the official line of the BJP keeps disassociating itself from these utterances.

Harish Khurana, The writer is Delhi BJP spokesman: We want an all-party meet on it

The Babri Masjids demolition is an important event in post-Independent India. The controversies, communal tension, political battle and religious flareup over the issue have been the hallmark of this dispute. It led to the collapse of a government, and drew worldwide attention. The Babri Masjid has been a contentious point in every election; it is more of a political than a religious issue. A special bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer heard a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgment of the Allahabad HC in four civil suits in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janma-bhoomi temple dispute at Ayodhya, on December 5. The final hearing on the matter is on February 8, 2018.

What exactly is the Ayodhya dispute? At the core of the nearly 70-year-old Ayodhya dispute is the belief that Hindu deity Lord Ram was born 900,000 years ago (in Treta Yug) in a room located under what was the central dome of the Babri Masjid. The masjid was built on the orders of Mughal emperor Babur in the 16th century before its demolition by kar sevaks on December 6, 1992.

As for the BJP, it talked about building a Ram mandir at Ayodhya for the first time in its manifesto in 1989. By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of the Somnath Mandir built by the Government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony, the 1989 BJP manifesto stated. The other parties are alleging that it is only now that we (the BJP) are talking about a constitutional framework to build Ram mandir in Ayodhya. But the BJP has always believed in going by the constitutional framework. In fact, it is the Congress which indulged in vote bank ki rajneeti. In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi ordered that the locks on the Ram Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid in Ayodhya be removed. Until then, a priest had been permitted to perform puja once a year for the idols installed there in 1949.

Having said that, the BJP stand is absolutely clear. We are committed to building Ram mandir as it is a question of our belief. That site is the birthplace of Lord Ram. But our topmost priority is finding an amicable solution to the issue. We want to have an all-party meet to discuss the issue, as directed by the apex court. We would like to explore all possibilities under the constitutional framework for building the temple.
To those following latest news and developments in the technology world, it is abundantly clear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast transforming human interactions as well as business processes across industries and around the world. On one hand, automakers like Tesla are building AI that matches the driving abilities of humans, on the other, an increasing number of consumer-facing companies are automating every possible aspect of their business with AI and Machine Learning technologies.

Dhruv Raj Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of Tripshelf, feels that the travel and hospitality industry is also enthusiastically embracing AI, largely for the latters capacity to perform conventional human functions faster and more efficiently. Using AI can often result in seamless and friction-less experiences for the end-users and huge cost savings for business owners, like us.

According to a recent report by Google India and BCG, travel consumers spend an average of 49 minutes spread over 46 days, visiting as many as 17 different online sites to plan, research and make a booking. Clearly, the travel consumer who is most likely a holiday seeker is wasting a lot of time gathering information from a variety of sources and processing it. This information covers multiple aspects of the travel, from destinations and travel options to duration and pricing. A chatbot powered by AI can make this whole process simpler and efficient to the point where a customer can complete all her research and book a dream holiday in a matter of minutes.

Several leading travel portals across the world, including the likes of Kayak and Skyscanner, have launched their own chatbots. Skyscanners Facebook Messenger bot, for example, helps travellers search and book flights in less time than it takes to complete the booking on their website. Kayak rolled out a bot that allows users to simply search for flights by entering travel destinations and dates. Consumers love the experience of chatbots and companies benefit from lower operating costs- it is after all a bot chatting with the customer! In a survey by LivePerson, covering 5,000 consumers from six countries, only 19 percent of participants rated a negative perception of chatbots.

In the Indian market, the chatbots serve another important purpose. Travel for Indians often involves a high amount of emotional and financial investments. When they have real-time interaction with chatbots on a travel portal, customers often feel rewarded with just the right kind of real-time assistance  something they would have experienced while sitting across a human travel agent in her office. This simulation of an agent-customer interaction via a chatbot has actually helped Indian online travel portals build trust with their customers and in turn generate higher lead conversion and retention.

In fact, online travel marketplaces in India like TripShelf, ixigo and others have already invested in chatbots to provide this unique and differentiated consumer experience  which is a far cry from self-service mandated by conventional travel portals. TripShelfs bot not only helps travellers with easy bookings, research and getting the best deal but even lets them choose their food menu- because the food is an integral part of a memorable trip.

The story doesnt end with the simulated experience. As more travellers talk to chatbots for lodging, airfare and travel research, the bots, in turn, are able to capture valuable customer insights that can help them become even more intelligent and deliver a more personalized customer experience.

There is no doubt that with chatbot integration, the line between real and virtual interactions has blurred. As we go along though, the chatbots will become more human-like with an engaging personality and ability to provide comprehensive research and information within seconds; something that a human agent would have taken minutes if not hours. If this is not disruption, nothing else is.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Haniyeh called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. (Photo: AFP)

Gaza: The powerful Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

Haniyeh, elected the group's overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the US decision on Friday, calling it a "day of rage".

"Let December 8 be the first day of the intifada against the occupier," he said.

Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. It does not recognise Israel's right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005.

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," said Haniyeh.

"United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine," he said, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Haniyeh called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration.

"It should be announced that the so-called peace agreement was buried, once and for all, and that there is nothing called a partner for the Palestinians in peace," he said.

Trump reversed decades of US policy to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.
The world waited with bated breath since Monday amid reports of delay in President Donald Trumps statement.

Was he really going to step out of years of convention, derail decades-long US policy towards Middle East, and threaten unrest and possible bloodshed across the Muslim world to publicly acknowledge Jerusalem as Israels capital?

So when, on Wednesday Trump finally made his decision-unequivocally and independently- the world sighed, and yet perhaps it was not a sigh of relief.

Through a carefully worded and (surprisingly) uncontroversial speech, Trump had opened a can of worms. Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace, he said.

Warnings, what warnings?

In doing so, Trump had neglected the warnings from Arab leaders, the global community as well as from fellow Congressmen.

Congressmen David Price, Peter Welch, John Yarmuth, Barbara Lee and Earl Blumenauer issued a joint statement claiming that such an announcement would indicate "his complete disregard" for long-standing American and international diplomatic practice. "It unilaterally undermines prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and recklessly endangers US, Israeli, and regional security. For more than 50 years, Republican and Democratic Administrations have recognised that the US should stand as a good faith arbiter for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians," they said.

Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Jordan, Ayman Safadi took to Twitter, running an open campaign against Trump. On December 3, Safadi tweeted claiming that he had communicated to his counterpart in US, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on 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.

Saudi Arabias King Salman warned Trump on December 5 that moving the embassy would be precarious and could provoke Muslims in the region.

The two expressed their hope that the US administration reconsiders its plan before making a final decision, due to its potentially dangerous impact on the region and the peace negotiations, Egypt Today reported, referring to the meeting between Egyptian and French foreign ministers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went so far as to say that he would not abstain from severing diplomatic ties with Israel if Trump went ahead with a move that he said was in red line with the Muslims.

Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Congressman Alcee Hastings, Congresswoman Betty McCollum, joined the wagon that in so many ways tried to stop the US President from distempering (the already deadlocked) Israel-Palestine peace process .

Ironically, warnings such as these only come when the least wanted outcome is also the most possible one. The truth was, with or without the statement, the world knew that Trump had made up his mind. So when the sun rose on Wednesday, it took away with it the last shadow of doubt that many were clinging on to.

No surprises here

For anybody who was paying attention, this was not in the least unforeseen.

Keeping with the Embassy Act of 1995, like all presidential candidates, Trump had vowed to shift the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during his presidential campaign.

The Embassy Act was passed on October 24, 1995. An evening before Israels then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabins speech, wherein he declared that There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem.

The roots of the Embassy Act can in one way be traced back to the Balfour Declaration, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and the Oslo Accords -- which is when the advocacy for the bill was at its highest. According to this law, the US government was required to shift its Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 31 May, 1999. Conversely, it allowed US Presidents to waiver the bill.

Clinton, Bush and Obama failed, or rather, abstained from doing so, choosing instead to toe the diplomatic line so as to remain neutral between conflicting Israel and Palestine, both of which consider Jerusalem holy.

With Trump however, things were clear as far back as November, 2016, when Jason Greenblatt- Trumps advisor for Israel- told Army Radio after the elections, The two sides are going to have to decide how to deal with that region, but its certainly not Mr. Trumps view that settlement activity should be condemned and that it is an obstacle to peace, because it is not the obstacle to peace.

He also said that Trump was going to do it because he was a man who keeps his word.

A new era for Middle East?

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump said without elucidating what this new approach might be.

As Vox reporters, Jennifer Williams and Sarah Wildman have pointed out, Though Trump affirmed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he didnt call it the undivided capital of Israel -- suggesting the US would still support potentially dividing Jerusalem between the Israelis and the Palestinians as part of future peace negotiations.

White House officials stress on the fact that the President- elects announcement in no way points towards the final status and that Trump was not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders, only creates room for more confusion.

Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides, Trump said in his speech on Wednesday.

The primary impediment to the peace process between Israel and Palestine has been the issue of Jerusalem. Arabs and Jews have now for five decades laid claims and counter claims over the city. A number of diplomatic efforts to realize a two-state solution have failed -- the last one as recent as 2013-14.

Keeping this in mind, Trumps pre-emptive announcement and recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital before the realization of a two-state solution is only counter-productive even if he claims to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.

For two nations that were born out and live off of war, both asserting equally for the same rights on the much contended Jerusalem and both diffident on their points, Trumps announcement is nothing more than a subtle indicator toward whose side he is on.

Though his carefully worded and unrecognisably humble speech was a breath of fresh air, with almost a year as President, the world has learnt to read between the lines.
All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday. (Photo: AP)

London: Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator.

The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at US President Donald Trumps decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Major US allies came out against Trumps reversal of decades of US and broad international policy on Jerusalem.

France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalems status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

Israel, by contrast, applauded Trumps move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israels first day.

He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israels capital and he urged other countries to follow Trumps example.

Trump upended decades of US policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East.

The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.

Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trumps move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator.

The last round of US-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state.

Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza rallied against Trump's imminent announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his plan to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

Wednesday's demonstration on the streets of Gaza City was organised by different Palestinian factions and militant groups which called for Palestinian unity in response to Trump's expected announcement.

The protesters burned American and Israeli flags.

They also waved Palestinian flags and banners proclaiming Jerusalem as "our eternal capital" and calling it a "red line."

Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist organization, also called for more protests over the coming days.

Hamas official Salah Bardawil said the Palestinians were "on a dangerous crossroad today; we either remain or perish." He added that "Trump or anyone thinking that our people, nation and resistance are unable to push back his plans is wrong."

Protests broke out in parts of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Ammans outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted.

Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

Legally Null Decision

Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trumps decision and said it did not change Jerusalems disputed legal status.

Jordan said Trumps action was legally null because it consolidated Israels occupation of East Jerusalem.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trumps Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability.

Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation.

Turkey said Trumps move was irresponsible.

We call upon the US Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate.

Iran seriously condemns Trumps move as it violates UN resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israels security.

British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said.

However, Mays spokesman welcomed Trumps stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trumps unilateral move.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers.

France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said.

For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks.

I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.
Trump Jr's appearance on Wednesday came amid mounting criticism of the Russia probes by some of his father's fellow Republicans in Congress. (Photo: AP)

Washington: President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, returned to Congress on Wednesday to face questions from lawmakers about alleged Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US election and possible collusion with Moscow by his father's presidential campaign.

Trump arrived shortly before 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) for what was expected to be several hours of questioning by members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, one of three main congressional committees investigating the matter.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also conducting a broad investigation of the matter. He has announced the first indictments of Trump associates and President Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Read: Michael Flynn to plead guilty for lying

Trump Jr.'s appearance on Wednesday came amid mounting criticism of the Russia probes by some of his father's fellow Republicans in Congress, who accuse investigators of bias against Trump.

The committee meeting was conducted behind closed doors, and Trump Jr. was not seen by reporters waiting outside the meeting room, although congressional officials confirmed he had arrived.

The younger Trump testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September. The Senate Intelligence Committee has also said it wants to talk to him.

Lawmakers said they want to question him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York at which he had said he hoped to get information about the "fitness, character and qualifications" of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat his father defeated in 2017 race for the White House.

Trump Jr., like his father, denies collusion with Russia. US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 campaign to boost Trump's chances of defeating Clinton. Moscow denies any such effort.

Some of Trump's fellow Republicans criticized Mueller, the FBI and the Department of Justice at a news conference on Wednesday, ahead of congressional testimony on Thursday by the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray.

The Republican House members accused Justice, the FBI and Mueller of being biased against President Trump and having been too easy on Clinton during the investigation of her use of a private email server while leading the State Department.

While the Republicans have complained about the FBI, Clinton has made no secret of her belief that then-FBI Director James Comey's announcement, shortly before the election, that the bureau was investigating potential new evidence in the lengthy email probe helped cost her the White House.

Republican Representative Matt Gaetz accused investigators of "unprecedented bias" against the president over the Russia matter, compared with their treatment of Clinton.

Republican Representative Jim Jordan told the news conference that investigators have "two standards of justice."

Trump and some of his closest Republican allies in Congress, have frequently criticized the Justice Department, arguing that it has focused too many resources on the Russia investigation while neglecting conservative concerns.

Separately on Wednesday, Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Department of Justice, announced a hearing next week with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, citing "serious concerns" about reports on the political motives of staff on Mueller's team.

Republican Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he was asking the FBI for documents relating to the activities of FBI agent Peter Strzok after reports the agent had shown political bias while handling matters in both the Clinton and Trump investigations.

Republicans control majorities in both the House and Senate.

Other lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, say the goal of their investigation is to guarantee the integrity of US elections, not to target Trump and his associates.
News / National

by Staff reporter

High Court judge Justice Edith Mushore has freed former Finance Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo on $5000 bail.Chombo's bail conditions include reporting three times a day to the police and reside at his Mt Pleasant home.He was asked to surrender title deeds, travel documents and not to visit the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) or local government offices.Meanwhile, former Zanu PF Youth Affairs secretary Kudzanayi Chipanga has also been granted a $500 bail and was asked to report two times a day at Borrowdale Police Station.
The request for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the Security Council meeting was made by France, Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay. (Photo: AP)

United Nations: The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday at the request of eight states on the 15-member body over US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, diplomats said on Wednesday.

The request for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the Security Council meeting was made by France, Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay, said diplomats.

Trump abruptly reversed decades of US policy on Wednesday, generating outrage from Palestinians and defying warnings of Middle East unrest. Trump also plans to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally.

The UN has given Jerusalem a special legal and political status, which the Security Council has called upon the international community to respect. That is why we believe the Council needs to address this issue with urgency, Deputy Swedish UN Ambassador Carl Skau said on Wednesday.

A UN Security Council resolution adopted in December last year underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.

That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former US President Barack Obamas administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump for Washington to wield its veto.

After Trump spoke on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised Trumps decision as the just and right thing to do.
The final step is for the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, the Queen's representative in Australia, to ratify the law, which will likely take place within days. (Photo: AFP)

Sydney: Australia's parliament passed a bill legalising same-sex marriage Thursday after the nation overwhelmingly voted in favour of changing the law, ending decades of political wrangling.

There were loud cheers, hugs and sustained clapping in the lower House of Representatives when all but four MPs voted in support of marriage equality, after the upper house Senate passed the bill 43-12 last week.

"What a day for love, for equality, for respect! Australia has done it," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House.

The final step is for the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, the Queen's representative in Australia, to ratify the law, which will likely take place within days.
Robots have always fascinated people, whether they are aspiring to be the 'engineers of the future' or just spectators and consumers wanting to see what the next gadget will be. For those wanting to start a career as an engineer, it is an excellent time to study robotics: governments across the globe are encouraging industries to focus on the long-awaited fourth industrial revolution, the so-called Industry 4.0, which will embed robots in smart manufacturing technologies.



Manufacturing has come a long way since the first mechanisation of devices using water or steam power. The first factories relied on simple machines doing repetitive tasks and people labouring to complete the product. As consumerism and need grew, the mass production assembly line allowed items to be created quickly and to a high quality, using machines running on electricity.

Then came the first standalone automation systems and robots. The next evolution in manufacturing is cyber physical systems - interconnected networks of robots, devices and products that communicate data, which is the main new element of smart manufacturing, or Industry 4.0.

Outside of the factories, robots have vast potential for operating in our cities where they will contribute to smart and safe traffic systems with wirelessly interconnected driverless cars. And in healthcare, robots surgeons will operate on and care for people with tireless attention to detail, moving surgical tools with micro-scale precision beyond the limits of human capability. There is a massive demand for the engineers who will design these robots of the future, and one of the ways in which these engineers will learn the skills they need is through either an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

A Mechatronic and Robotics engineering degree is built around the pillars of Computing, Control, Mechanics and Electronics. And one more thing: Maths. Maths is often overlooked by prospective students but it is central to robot design as a good engineer needs to understand all the fundamentals. For instance, using differential equations from Calculus to

describe the changing forces and velocities of a driverless car with respect to

time.

Mathematics is also of key importance for developing machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms for robot control. As such, on most degree programmes in Robotics engineering, you will study machine learning techniques such as artificial neural networks, pattern recognition and data fusion - some of the main building blocks of artificial intelligence.

Possible careers

Currently, robots and mechatronics systems used in industry are quite simple: robot arms pick up objects and place them down in pre-defined locations in factories, safely isolated from people. However, in the future, robots will operate around people, in what are known as unstructured environments, where random events occur. Robots will need to be able to adapt to unpredictable situations, like when a person unexpectedly steps out in front of a driverless car.

As the robots become smarter, the demand for robots will increase in industry, driving increased employment opportunities for robotics engineers. Some of the industry sectors likely to benefit are:

Smart manufacturing: Robots working safely alongside humans to increase productivity (in industry 4.0).

Offshore exploration: Underwater robots will be use to explore the oceans, inspect and maintain underwater infrastructure, and also aid rescue missions.

Robotics engineering is one of the most soguht-after degree to study not only because of the excitement it offers, but also due to the high salaries offered, when compared to many other fields. This makes Robotics engineering a great investment for your future.

So, if you enjoy Maths but want to work in a growing industry, amongst some of the most exciting technologies of the 21st century - consider robotics as a possible option for study in higher education.

(The author is senior lecturer, University of Sheffield, UK)
Saudi Arabia today slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".



Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said.

"The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.
An Indian drone has "invaded" China's airspace and crashed, Chinese state media said Thursday, months after the neighbours ended one of their worst border standoffs in decades.



"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," Xinhua news agency cited the deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, as saying.

Zhang did not give details about when or where the incident happened.

Chinese border troops "took a professional and responsible attitude" and carried out identification verification of the device, Zhang added.

In August, the two nations pulled back their troops to resolve a tense deadlock over part of a Himalayan plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan, an ally of India.

India's army chief said in September that his country could not afford to be complacent and must be prepared for war.

India and China went to war in 1962 over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The United Nations Security Council has convened a meeting on Friday in the wake of the US President Donald Trump announcing his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.





At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and France - the two permanent members which closely align themselves on most of the global issues - joined by other non-permanent members -- Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay -- asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.



The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected to address the Security Council on Friday.



Earlier in a statement, Guterres said that Jerusalem was the final status issue and must be resolved through direct negotiations.



"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," he said, adding that he has consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would "jeopardise" the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.



"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said.



Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city. He also directed the State Department to immediately begin the process of construction of a US Embassy in Jerusalem.



His announcement has outraged several countries.



Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.



British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement said she disagreed with the US announcement to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.



"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it," she said.



May stressed that the status of Jerusalem should be "determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis the Palestinians".



"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," she said, adding that "Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states".



"In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories," May said.
Prime Minister Theresa May today said the British government disagreed with US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts.



"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

The prime minister reaffirmed that Britain's embassy to Israel would remain in Tel Aviv and her government's belief that the status of Jerusalem "should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians".

"Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states," said May. "We regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

But May, who sparred with Trump last week over the US president's retweeting of a British far-right group, said she shared her counterpart's "desire to bring an end to this conflict".

"We welcome his commitment today to a two-state solution negotiated between the parties, and note the importance of his clear acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including the sovereign boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

May urged the US to submit "detailed proposals" for an Israel-Palestinian settlement and called on all sides to refrain from violence.

Trump's declaration -- met by fierce regional condemnation -- ends seven decades of deliberate diplomatic ambiguity about the final status of a holy city vociferously claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Taking forward his 'question a day' campaign, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi today targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the problems afflicting the farm sector and farmers.



Asking his 9th question in the series, he asked, Neither loan waiver, nor remunerative price for produce, neither received crop insurance benefit, nor were tubewells installed.

The Congress leader also used the 'Gabbar' jibe to target the prime minister

"Agriculture hit by Gabbar Singh, land snatched and the (nnadatta) farmer was rendered useless. PM sahib should explain why such step-motherly treatment with the farm labour," he also said on Twitter.

Gandhi had earlier termed the Goods and Services Tax as Gabbar Singh Tax to attack the government.

Under the ongoing offensive, the Congress leader is using the tagline 22 saal ka hisab, Gujarat maange jawab (22years of account, Gujarat demands answers), in the run-up to Gujarat elections starting December 9.

The Congress vice president has been using the microblogging site to pose daily questions to the prime minister over the performance of the BJP in Gujarat and its "unkept" promises over the past 22 years of its rule in the state.
A video of a man being hacked to death and then set on fire went viral on news channels and social media on Thursday morning.



The incident is said to have occurred in Rajasthans Rajsamand district. According to News18, the victim was a Muslim labourer identified as Mohammed Afrazul who was working in the area as a contract labourer.



The attacker, identified as Shambhulal Regar according to media reports, can be seen issuing a warning to those practising "love-jihad" after setting the body on fire, leading people to believe that this was a possible hate crime. Police said that he had lured the victim on the pretext of offering him some work. Regar was later arrested by the police who also reportedly recovered the murder weapon at the scene of the crime.



Police recovered the charred remains of the body at around 1 PM on Wednesday according to Indian Express.



It is shocking how he killed the man and made a video of it. The accused has been arrested and a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been set up for investigation in the case, State Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria was quoted as saying by ANI.



The victim, identified as Mohammed Afrazul, was a migrant from West Bengals Malda district and was working in Rajsamand as a contract labourer. The man seen as the attacker in the video has been identified as Shambhulal Regar.



Police said that the motive of the crime is not clear as of yet and will be revealed after the investigations are complete.


News / National

by Immigration Maziwisa

The last few weeks have been very interesting in Zimbabwean politics. Interesting because so much happened in the blink of an eye. For the first time in 37 years, Zimbabweans from all upbringings merged in their common cause to march against former president Robert Mugabe's protracted reign. On the 18th November 2017, thousands of Zimbabweans took to the street to express their displeasure in the affairs of the country. The unity exhibited by Zimbabweans on the day was last seen in April 1980  if not better. In particular, their common source of fury emanated from the fact that Robert Mugabe presided over one of the worst economies in modern history. In essence, the common feeling was that he had arrogantly overturned the fortunes of a thriving nation into a desperate State. As a result of Zimbabweans' coordinated effort, Mugabe eventually succumbed to the pressure and resigned on 21 November 2017.The Zimbabwe Defence Forces, acting in accordance with provisions of section 212 of the Constitution, moved in to protect its citizenry, secure the lives of future generations and to ensure the general security of the nation.Needless to say, although the transitional effort was implemented by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, and well within the margins of section 212 of the Zimbabwean Constitution as pronounced by High Court judge President Gorge Chiweshe, the opposition insisted on some sort of transitional arrangement. Comrade Christopher Hatikure Mutsvangwa, who is special advisor to the President, declared that Morgan Tsvangirai demanded to be appointed as Vice President in the top hierarchy. "President Mnangagwa wanted to pick some MDC-T members for ministerial posts, but held back after the party's leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai threatened to expel from his party prospective appointees unless the opposition leader was himself given a post in the presidium." He said.President Mnangagwa's offer to appoint some members of the MDCT in his cabinet is the best example of responsible leadership. For some strange reason, the leader of the opposition threatened to fire the appointed members of his party if he was not appointed in the presidium. His argument is probably based on the fact of their participation in the march of 18 November 2017. But to be fair to the opposition and its leadership, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their participation in the recent escapades deserved some sort of recognition considering their unwavering cooperation  but certainly not the kind of representation being sought by the opposition leader  Morgan Tsvangirai.But let us consider one fundamental question of 'entitlement': Is Morgan Tsvangirai 'entitled' to demand a place in the presidium? Well, by virtue of any constitutional interpretation, neither the MDCT nor Morgan Tsvangirai in his political capacity, has any legal entitlement to be in the new government let alone its presidium. In simple terms, one cannot demand what they are not constitutionally entitled to. Perhaps their only entitlement is to participate in the general elections scheduled to be held by August 21 2018, when the national legislative assembly's five-year term expires, according to section 158 of the new Constitution.In any case, the events leading the swearing in of President Mnangagwa were entirely constitutional. Section 101 of the Zimbabwe Constitution stipulates that succession takes place in the event of death, resignation or incapacity of the president. Although, according to the Zanu-PF constitution, Vice President Mphoko was expected to assume office following the involuntary resignation of former president Robert Mugabe, the reality was that Mphoko's political mischief had also become a national security threat  thus deeming his expulsion permissible too. Through the central committee, Zanu-PF unanimously nominated Emmerson Mnangagwa as its representative to take over from Zimbabwe's only executive leader since Independence 37 years ago.Morgan Tsvangirai's alleged demands can also be viewed in light of his absolute obsession with power. There are some important considerations in that regard: firstly that Morgan Tsvangirai has already been Prime Minister between 2009 and 2013 during the GNU arrangement  secondly that he is not feeling particularly well to be seeking another term in office and thirdly that he has repeatedly amended MDCT's constitution in-order to remain in power thereby compromising his supposed commitment to true democracy.In any case, it is complex to ascertain the actual numbers of opposition members who participated in the march as being the majority  as widely appealed. Even if it were the case, their solidarity in the march is not sufficient to warrant any constitutional involvement in the new cabinet. That Morgan Tsvangirai allegedly demanded to be Vice President was the best exhibition of egocentric conduct.Presented with an opportunity for some members of the MDCT to serve their country probably for the last time, considering that the MDCT's prospects of winning the next elections will depend on President Mnangagwa's performance in the next few months, Morgan Tsvangirai permitted self-indulgence to creep in. Alas, until the next elections, Cabinet appointments or dismissals are, exclusively, President Mnangagwa's prerogative.
Two men accused of brutally killing a person in Delhi have been acquitted by a local court after the police failed to produce the lone eyewitness.

Special judge Narinder Kumar absolved the accused of the offence of murder and said the prosecution could not secure the presence of the 16-year-old eyewitness on whose statement the case was registered.

"Despite efforts, the prosecution could not secure the presence of prosecution witness...A fresh process was issued and directed to be served. However, the inspector also could not get the process served because of non traceability of the witness," the judge said.

The court noted the police's submission that the witness was a vagabond and hence summons could not be served.

"As a result, when the court finds that prosecution has not been able to substantiate accusation levelled against the accused, both the accused persons are acquitted," the judge said.

The victim was found dead on the roof of the Gauri Shankar temple near New Delhi Railway Station on January 21.

The police lodged a murder case after the eyewitness told them that he saw the accused kill the man with a stone and a knife.

It was alleged that the accused were arrested and the weapons used in committing the offence were also recovered.

The postmortem report, too, confirmed that stone caused his death, the court noted.

However, as the only eyewitness could not be produced, the court did not consider other witnesses and evidence and acquitted the accused of the charges.
Governor Vajubhai R Vala has referred the bill to ensure reservation in promotion to SC/ST employees.

This bill was passed by the state legislature passed recently to circumvent a Supreme Court order that struck down the provision.

Law Minister T B Jayachandra remained mum on the grounds on which the Governor wanted the President to clear the Bill.

Karnataka introduced reservation in promotions for the SC/ST employees in April 1978. Around 3,000 SC/ST employees working in 63 government departments will face demotions if the apex court order is implemented.

"We have explained in the Bill why it is necessary, given the Supreme Court order. The Governor has reserved the Bill for Presidential assent," Jayachandra said.

As per the apex court order, the State government has prepared new seniority lists for about 80% of the departments, Jayachandra said. "The SC order has to be implemented by January 15."

With the Bill now awaiting the President's nod, the government will now seek the advocate general's opinion on whether the SC order continues to be in force, the minister said.
In a shocking incident, a labourer was hacked and burnt to death and the video of the incident was uploaded to social media in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district.

The victim, Mohammad Afrazul, was from West Bengal.

The suspect who committed the crime in Raj Nagar has been arrested, SP Rajsamand Manoj Kumar said.

He said the suspect, Shabhu Lal, was being interrogated.

Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria condemned the incident and said that the investigation has been handed over to the Special Investigation Team.

According to IG Udaipur Anand Srivastava, the suspect is seen shouting at the victim in the video.
"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests and not determined by any third country," said Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and set in motion a plan to shift the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

The US move evoked sharp criticism not only from the Arab world but also from Europe.

India's ambassador to Israel, like the envoys of all other nations, is based in Tel Aviv.

Though some nations maintain consulates in Jerusalem without recognising them as a diplomatic mission to either Israel or Palestine, New Delhi does not have any in the fiercely contested city.

Sources in New Delhi on Thursday indicated that India had no plan to shift its embassy to Jerusalem.

But New Delhi carefully avoided articulating its long-held position that Israel-Palestine conflict should be resolved through negotiation "resulting in sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognised borders, side by side at peace with Israel as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions".

During his visit to Ramallah in October 2015, the then President Pranab Mukherjee had reiterated India's "principled support" to Palestinians' demand for East Jerusalem to be the capital of the State of Palestine.

New Delhi's long-held view was last articulated in India's statement presented at a committee of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on December 5, 2016.

India stopped calling for East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine this year.

Hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New Delhi in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did call for "a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel", but avoided supporting the demand for East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine.

He carefully avoided referring to it during his visit to Israel in July, the first by a Prime Minister of India.

His message on the occasion of International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 25 last or India's statement to UN General Assembly on November 29 last, too, did not refer to the call for East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine.

Modi's visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in July substantially de-linked India's relations with Israel and Palestine.

Indian dignitaries visiting Israel in the past had made it a point to visit Palestine too.

Mukherjee had visited both Israel and Palestine. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, too, had visited Palestine after touring Israel in January 2016, just as one of her predecessors, S M Krishna, had done in October 2012.

India was the first non-Arab country to recognise Palestine way back in 1988.

But New Delhi's growing ties with Israel after the BJP's ascent to power in May 2014 fuelled speculation about India reviewing its position on Palestine.

The Narendra Modi government made it clear that while India would continue to support the cause of Palestine, it would also seek to build stronger ties with Israel.

New Delhi is now set to host Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is likely to visit India next month.
Online financial marketplace BankBazaar.com on Thursday said it plans to hire to support its rapid business expansion.

The company, which recently received a $30 million investment from Experian, has grown significantly in the last one year, almost tripling the number of visitors and doubling the revenue. To support this pace of growth, the company is planning to hire more people.

This round supplements the first hiring round announced in March 2017. This time, too, the marketplace's focus continues to be on product development and supply chain of financial products and plans to concentrate its hiring primarily across technology, product, and operational roles, a company release said.

At the close of the first round, there have been more than 400 hires till date, with the company looking to add as many as 300 more new employees.

BankBazaar has seen more than 20X growth in the last few years. The company saw 1 million visits a month in January 2014 when Sequoia invested in Series B, which went up to 5 million visits a month in June 2015 when Amazon invested Series C. In October 2017, when Experian invested in Series D, this number had touched 23 million.

BankBazaar is working on taking this number even higher by the end of the financial year and wants to reach 100 million visitors per quarter milestone in Q4 from 54 million per quarter in Q2 FY18.

The rise in the number of visitors has seen corresponding increase in revenue numbers as well. The company announced a 102% year-on-year increase (Oct16 - Oct17) in app submissions despite a 17% reduction is cost per transaction. This has contributed to a 14% increase in revenue per application and a whopping 129% growth in revenue compared to last year.

Adhil Shetty, Co-founder and CEO, BankBazaar, said: "Our paperless financial services delivery mechanism is unique in the market and give us a huge competitive edge in the long run. This clarity of vision has positioned us at the top of the financial services sector in India through increased customer adoption, and ensured that we are able to grow our business and revenues sustainably. We believe that FY18 will be a year of even more organic growth as India migrates to paperless."

The company has been steadily expanding its product range, and recently added two-wheeler insurance to its category of paperless products. BankBazaar is now focused on augmenting its existing categories with a wider range of products from more partner organisations.
A democratic country like India is cutting a very sorry figure with open threats being given to artists and others and with attacks on people for voicing their opinions, the Bombay High Court said on Thursday.



The high court, while referring to the Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversy-hit film Padmavati, observed that the director has not been able to release his film and an actress is facing death threats.

The court also pulled up the CBI and the state CID, which are investigating the murder cases of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, respectively, over the failure to arrest the main suspects in these cases so far.

The strong remarks were made by a division bench of Justices S C Dharmadhikari and Bharti Dangre while hearing the petitions filed by the family of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking court supervision on their murder probe.

"In this country, we have come to a situation where people cannot voice their opinions. Every time a person says he or she wants to voice their opinion, somebody or a fringe group says they would not allow it. This does not augur well for the state," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

"In which other country do you see threats given to artists and performers? It is distressing to know that a person makes a feature film and several people work tirelessly towards it but are not able to release the film because of continued threats. What have we come to?" he said.

"Today, somebody says I will give a reward to anyone who kills an actress. Such open threats! People are taking pride in saying we will give a reward to those who will kill an actress. And even chief ministers are saying they will not allow the release of the movie in their states," Justice Dharmadhikari added.

He added that if such things are happening to people with financial backings, what will happen to the poor.

The court noted that this was censorship of a different kind and it was damaging India's image.

"What concerns us is India's image and reputation as a democratic country. We are the largest democracy. We cannot take pride in the happenings of such incidents day in and day out. We are cutting a very sorry figure," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

The court directed a meeting to be convened with the secretary of state home department, director general of police and joint director of CBI with Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh and Ashok Mundargi, who appears for CID in the matter.

The bench has now posted the matter for further hearing on December 21.
The navy engaged in search and rescue operations in Cyclone Ockhi-hit seas off Kerala and Lakshadweep extended help by giving fuel to a foreign vessel stranded off Minicoy Island.

INS Shardul encountered tug 'Bes Power' of Singapore stranded due to the cyclone 35 nautical miles north-east of Minicoy Island late on Wednesday night.

On interrogation, the tug crew requested 45 tonnes of fuel to continue passage to Maldives.

"Fuel was transferred to the tug in true naval ethos of being the first responder to all," a defence spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a Dornier aircraft and a ship of the navy have left for rescuing a boat stranded with 15 people near Lakshadweep islands after receiving a message through an aircraft flying near Kochi, the spokesman said.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday held the Art of Living (AoL) Foundation of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains by holding the World Cultural Festival there in March 2016.



A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, however, refused to impose any further environment compensation on AoL and said the amount of Rs 5 crore which was submitted by it earlier would be used for the restoration of the floodplains.

"We hold AoL responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains in terms of the report submitted by the expert committee," the bench said.

The bench also comprising Justice Jawad Rahim and expert member B S Sajwan directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to assess the damage and compute the cost of restoration in line with the recommendations of the expert panel.

The tribunal said that in case if the expenditure of the restoration crosses the Rs 5 crore then it would be recovered from AoL.

However, if the cost is less than Rs 5 crore, the remaining amount would be refunded to the foundation, it said.

The NGT also said that Yamuna floodplains should not be used for any activity which can cause damage to the environment.

However, it refused to decide whether AoL was authorised to hold the festival on Yamuna floodplains or not, saying it is beyond its jurisdiction.

The NGT also rapped the DDA for failing to exercise its duty to protect the Yamuna floodplains but refrained from imposing any penalty on it.

Before the pronouncement of the judgement, it was informed that Justice R S Rathore, who had earlier heard the matter, had recused from the bench.

The AoL counsel said that they will approach the Supreme Court against the verdict.
Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddi said on Thursday that neither he nor his department, had anything to do with the procurement of marks cards for universities. He denied allegations of a 'scam' having occurred in the process.



"Universities are autonomous and can take independent decisions. So there's no question of my interference," Rayareddi told reporters.

The minister said the issue came up at a Karnataka State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) meeting that he chaired in August last year. "Vice-Chancellors in the meeting said universities were procuring marks cards at different rates and quality. It was decided that the Lekhak brand of the MSIL was the best, and a resolution was passed to that effect," he said.

It was in November 2015 that MSIL floated a tender "although it was exempted from doing so" ...and received bids from vendors who followed standards of the Reserve Bank of India.

Mumbai-based Devharsh Infotech emerged as the lowest bidder. "MSIL has clarified that this company is not blacklisted as alleged," he said. "In line with the KSHEC resolution, universities dealt with MSIL directly. I'm not involved in any manner."

The minister lambasted NSUI state president Manjunatha H S for making baseless allegations.

"This person had come to me for securing help to pass VTU failed students. He asked to me allow a carryover, that was not possible," the minister said; alluding to the possibility that the student body may have used this 'scam' to get back at him.

The Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) has accused the Higher Education department of abetting the scam, which apparently involved the Mysore Sales International Limited (MSIL) procuring low-quality marks cards and certificates at higher rates from a Mumbai-based vendor.
Opinion / Columnist

Nullification as a remedy

Justice Chiweshe Judgement

Vacant Parliamentary seats

Conclusion

Nullification is used as a reason to override or counter the effect or force of something. When an act that is bad at law is carried out, and the adjudicator chooses nullification as a remedy to redress the infraction, it means the parties should go back to their positions they were in before the alleged infraction.Following the expulsion of the then vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa from Zanu-PF, the central committee was compelled to review its previous decision following the intervention of the military.It was agreed that the central committee was to consider all expulsions carried out beginning the year 2014 to date that were carried out without due process. The decision rendered was to nullify all the expulsions. It meant that all the expulsions were illegal and hence of no legal effect.It gave the option to those that had moved on to form other political parties to return to Zanu-PF. Those affected by this nullification include but not limited to individuals like Themba Mliswa, Christopher Mutsvangwa, Bright Matonga, Joyce Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa, Rugare Gumbo and many others.So, if we understand nullification as a remedy that involves cancelling something or for example countering the effects of a snake bite with an antidote it means nullification is basically erasing the effects of the first thing. For example, the expulsion of Themba Mliswa and Christopher Mutsvangwa, Hurungwe west member of parliament and war veterans minister respectively instantly caused their recall from the House of parliament.It then should be argued that logically the nullification of their expulsions from the party also means that their recall from parliament must by extension be also rescinded. In other words, those expelled from Zanu-PF since 2014 to date and where members of parliament, their recall from parliament must also be rescinded in line with the nullification of the illegal process at party level.Following the intervention of the Military in the administrative affairs of Zanu-PF, in the process arresting the abuse of executive powers by individuals close to the first family, the High Court of Zimbabwe was approached to pronounce over the legality of this action.On the 17th of November 2017, Justice Chiweshe ruled that the actions by the "Zimbabwe Defence forces (ZDF) in intervening to stop the takeover of the president's constitutional functions by those around him was constitutionally permissible and lawful in terms of section 212 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. Section 212 of the Zimbabwe Constitution provides that "The functions of the Defence forces are to protect Zimbabwe, its people, its national security and interests and its territorial integrity and to uphold the Constitution"By allowing those that where members of parliament before they were illegally expelled from Zanu-PF to come back in that capacity, the secretary for legal affairs in Zanu-PF will legally be able to fill those vacant seats that would ordinarily be filled through by elections. This of course would give President Emmerson Mnangagwa a larger pool of expertise to draw cabinet ministers from.The judgement by Justice Chiweshe is in line with the thinking I have outlined above. The intervention by the military has been pronounced as legal in terms of our Constitution. It ratifies the actions of the Generals in correcting a constitutional anomaly. The Secretary for legal affairs in Zanu-PF must also pronounce the rescission of the parliamentary recalls of those individuals that were members of parliament before the expulsion at party level. This can be done in the same way they did when expelling the same, by notifying the speaker of parliament. My thoughts
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar today kicked up a row when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech" (vile man), drawing a sharp reaction from the latter who dubbed it as an "insult" to Gujarat and a reflection of "Mughal mentality".



Congress leader Rahul Gandhi too disapproved of Aiyar's remarks and said both he and the party expected the senior leader to apologise. "He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," Aiyar, who has often courted controversy with his off-the-cuff remarks said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's but trying to erase his contribution to building India.



The prime minister, while inaugurating the Ambedkar International Centre had earlier today hit out at the Congress, saying parties seeking votes in the name of the architect of the Indian Constitution's name tried to erase his contribution to nation building.



"Such was his (Ambedkar's) incredible strength that when years after his demise efforts were made by such people to crush his philosophy, when efforts were made to erase his contribution towards nation building, his ideals could not be wiped out from people's memory," he said.



He said he would not be wrong in saying that "more people are still influenced by his (Ambedkar's) ideas than the family for which such efforts (to erase his contribution) were made".



Aiyar asked Modi "What is the need for doing dirty politics on such an occasion?". Modi, who was in Surat, latched on to Aiyar's comments, saying it was an insult to Gujarat.





"Mani Shankar Aiyar today said I belong to 'neech' caste, I am 'neech' (vile), this is an insult to Gujarat," he told an election rally. "This is Mughal mentality which hates people who even wear good clothes," he said but asked BJP workers and supporters not to respond to Aiyar's remarks.



The Congress too strongly disapproved of Aiyar's remarks, with party vice president Rahul Gandhi saying he and the party expected the leader to tender an apology. "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage.



I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Gandhi said on Twitter.
Posters appealing Muslims to vote for Congress to make Ahmed Patel the chief minister came up in some minority-dominated areas here on the last day of campaigning for first phase of Gujarat polls, but Patel called it a "dirty trick" by the BJP and said he was not in the race.



Patel, who is Congress President Sonia Gandhi' political advisor, stressed that he was never a candidate for the chief minister's post and "never will be".

The posters that came up in old city area and Surat-East constituency of the diamond and trading hub which goes to polls on Saturday carried photos of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Ahmed Patel.

"Muslims are requested to vote for Congress party to maintain unity of the community and make Ahmed Patel wazir-e-aalam (chief minister) of Gujarat," read the posters.

Trashing the posters, Patel alleged that such acts show the "utter desperation" of the BJP as it fears defeat.

"Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP.

"Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for CM and will never, ever be," he tweeted.

He said the BJP is trying to divert the narrative from its performance to a divisive agenda.

"The moot issue is that BJP is trying very very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda.

"Hence their reliance on lies & propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time," Patel said in another tweet.

Congress leader RPN Singh today said Patel will not hold any post in Gujarat if the party comes to power.

"We have seen fake banners that have come up at many places in Gujarat (in the name of Congress, claiming Ahmed Patel will become the chief minister). There has to be a certain level of politics in a democracy, and Rahul Gandhi and Congress party do not go below that level," Singh said.

"But doing something like putting up posters of opposition parties and deciding that Ahmed Patel will be our chief minster is not right," he told reporters in Ahmedabad.

When Congress forms government, Ahmed Patel will hold no post in the state government, he said.

"Ahmed Patel has himself said this, but I would like to make it clear that such politics of putting up fake posters is not going to work in Gujarat as people here are intelligent and understand everything," he said.
The Consortium of Pepper Growers has welcomed the move of the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry to bring about an amendment to the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) towards fixing Minimum Import Price (MIP) of Rs 500 on every kilo of pepper imported to the Indian market. The Consortium expressed hope that the action implemented will lead to an appreciation in the commercial aspect of Indian pepper.



Addressing reporters at Campco Administrative Office here on Thursday, Organisation Chief Convener Konkodi Padmanabha, referred to the notification by the Directorate of Foreign Trade under the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry dated December 6 and said that import price will be applicable on crushed, ground, uncrushed, unground, long pepper, light black pepper, black pepper (garbled and ungarbled), green pepper (dehydrated), pepper pinheads, frozen or dried green pepper, pepper other than green and frozen pepper, bearing various Exim codes. The provided CIF value is Rs 500 and above per kilogram.

The amendment has been introduced to the import policy condition of pepper classified under Chapter 9 of ITC (HS), said a notification issued by Foreign Trade Director General Alok Vardhan Chaturvedi.

Konkodi, on behalf of the organisation, thanked the Central government, Union Minister for Commerce Suresh Prabhu, Union Skill Development Minister Anant Kumar Hegade, Members of Parliament Nalin Kumar Kateel, Shobha Karandlaje and Pratap Simha for addressing the problems of growers.

A delegation comprising the members of the consortium of pepper growers organisation had met Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, Union Skill Development Minister Hegade and senior officials of the Central Horticultural department, requesting them to initiate measures to check the import of low quality pepper to Indian market, Konkodi recalled.

The major move by the Central government will play a decisive role in applying brakes on the import of low quality pepper to India.

As a result of import of pepper in large quantities, the demand for good quality Indian pepper had reduced against the comparably poor quality of pepper imported from Vietnam through Sri Lanka. In the month of November, the market prices of pepper has witnessed a record low point, following which, the Consortium of Pepper Growers' Organisation was formed by 14 growers' organisations including UPASI, CAMPCO, KGFKPA, COPA, BG, SB, TMSS and TSS.

With the implementation of the new notification, the local growers will benefit as the demand for Indian pepper will catch up again.

Campco president SaR Satishchandra, Vice President Shankaranarayana Bhat, Managing Director Suresh Bhandary M and Director Krishna Prasad Madtila were present.

BOX

'Import pepper only at times of shortage'

Organisation co-convener Vishwanath K K said that the growers have requested the government to import pepper only at times of shortage and not otherwise. Dumping duty should be applied on the imported pepper. Import duty on pepper should be increased to 108% from 64%. Pepper should be imported at only two identified ports in India. Government Certification should be done so as to assure the quality of imported pepper. Strict legal action should be initiated against the issue of fake certificates on imported pepper.
A Japanese delegation has reiterated that it would fund the Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) project only after the state government completes the land acquisition process.



The delegation headed by Japanese Ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu conveyed the decision to Bengaluru Development Minister K J George on Wednesday.

Sources said the delegation inquired about the delay in land acquisition even a year after the government mentioned about the financial assistance from the Centre.

George and officials from the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board and urban development department are said to have informed the delegation that the Centre is yet to provide financial assistance to acquire land.

According to the sources, the delegation was stunned at the protracted delay in executing the PRR project from Hosur Road to Tumakuru Road to complete the full ring and linking with the existing NICE Road.

In 2016, the state had promised a then visiting Japanese delegation that it would soon complete the land acquisition process as the Centre had promised to fund it. Following this, the delegation had assured a long-term loan to take up the project through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The government needs Rs 9,000 crore to acquire 1,810 acres of land to construct the remaining 65-km of the PRR. The BDA estimated that the whole project will cost Rs 11,950 crore and so the JICA was approached for funds.

During the meeting, the government representatives and the Japanese delegates also discussed the details of the elevated north-south corridor. The government is keen on obtaining the JICA funds for this project also.

The electric vehicle policy was also discussed. The delegation showed an interest in the policy and in the energy storage mechanisms, the sources added.

It was also interested in the intelligent transport systems and the Cauvery stage 5 project



The government assured the delegates that it will obtain all clearances from the ministry by January after which exchange notes will be signed.
Hailing the proposed law against triple talaq, Muslim women on Thursday sought tougher provisions to check the practice and also demanded a ban on polygamy.



Muslim Rashtriya Manch, a women's rights outfit, sought more stringent provisions to curb the practice of men divorcing their wife by saying talaq three times in one go.

The outfit also submitted a memorandum to state governor Ram Naik, demanding a better deal for Muslim women across the country.

Manch convener Shabana Azmi said those who resort to triple talaq should be jailed for at least ten years and not for only three years as the proposed law intends.

''There should be a provision to arrest the violators immediately,'' she said, adding that those who tortured their wives and then left them in the lurch by divorcing them should be prosecuted under the proposed law.

The outfit also demanded that the children of the victims of triple talaq should be given 50% share in the immovable property of the offenders, besides being made to pay for the education and upbringing of the children.

''Those who support and extend any kind of help to the persons resorting to triple talaq must also be charged with conspiracy and prosecuted,'' she said.

Ban polygamy

Azmi also demanded a complete ban on polygamy in Muslim society. ''This practice is also a kind of torture and must be banned,'' she said.
MP Pralhad Joshi stated that the State Government and the District Administration are responsible for the inordinate delay in the implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) between Hubballi and Dharwad.

"We repeatedly asked the officials to speed up the works. We even brought the then union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu to inspect the works. The project was approved in 2012, works started in 2013, and the project is not yet ready for commissioning," he lamented.

Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly Jagadish Shettar noted that officials have informed that civil works of the BRTS project would be completed by January end, and the full-fledged launch of the project would be by March end.

"There is no question of playing election politics with regard to this project, as we would have been very happy if it was completed earlier," he added.
At last, the Muhurtha for officially dedicating the upgraded airport in the City for public service, and starting the much-awaited air service between Hubballi and Mumbai has been fixed.

Hubballi Airport which is upgraded at a cost of Rs 142 crore, with an expanded runway, new terminal, new air traffic control (ATC) tower, more parking area, and other facilities, is set to be thrown open for the use of air passengers on December 12, and on the same day, Air India will launch its Bengaluru-Hubballi-Mumbai air service also.

An airport of international standards having the ability to handle bigger and more aircrafts, and better air connectivity have always been considered as one of the essential infrastructure facility required to boost the economic development of this region. The process to upgrade the airport began in 2006, and later, the State Government handed over 600 acres of land to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) free of cost.

After 11 years since then, the upgraded airport with new terminal is now ready for inauguration. The expanded runway is already being used for flight operations. With the upgradation works getting completed, this airport has become the biggest airport of North Karnataka region.

According to MP Pralhad Joshi, delay in shifting the utilities in the airport area was a major reason for the delay in completing the airport upgradation works. The airport lacked flight service after Spice Jet stopped the service and also during the runway expansion work, before Air India started Bengaluru-Hubballi air service which is available now, he recalled.

Inauguration

Speaking to media persons here on Thursday, Mr Joshi stated that Union Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju would inaugurate the new terminal of the upgraded airport on December 12 at 11:30 am, and he would also flag off the Hubballi-Mumbai flight service at 1:20 pm.

Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayanth Sinha, Union Chemicals & Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar, and others would be present, while State Government representatives including the district in-charge minister would also be invited, he said, adding that Union ministers would travel from Hubballi to Mumbai in the inaugural flight itself.

More flights likely

Mr Joshi said, discussion is going on with private airlines companies to start air service from Hubballi to Hyderabad and Chennai too.

Udaan-2 scheme would be launched shortly, under which some airlines companies have shown interest to bid for Hubballi, he noted, adding that the upgraded airport can handle cargo flights also.

Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly Jagadish Shettar stated that the Air India flight on Bengaluru-Hubballi-Mumbai route, and in the return direction would operate on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and efforts would be made to make it a daily flight.

Getting the slot at Mumbai airport was difficult, and there is lack of space for parking aircrafts. In future, aircrafts that do not get parking space there can come to Hubballi for parking, and that would improve the air connectivity here.

The occupancy rate of flights operating from here is also very good, Mr Shettar said, adding that opening upgraded airport and starting Mumbai flight service is the beginning of development of this sector in the region.

PM to be invited

Mr Joshi stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be invited to lay the foundation stone for IIT-Dharwad building, Hubballi-Haveri NH 4 six-laning work, and development of national highway on Tadas-Kalghatagi-Dharwad-Byahatti-Hebsur-Annigeri route.

MLC Pradeep Shettar, Mayor D K Chavan, Deputy Mayor Laxmibai Bijwad, and others were present. They also inspected the facilities developed at the new terminal of the airport.



What is special about upgraded airport?

* 957 acres total available land

* AAI spent Rs 142 cr for upgradation works

* Runway expanded from 1,674 metre to 2,600 metre

* 300 metre basic strip

* 3,600 sq mt new terminal building

* New apron for parking 3 aircrafts, isolation bay

* 2,060 sq mt ATC tower, technical block, fire station

* 12.8 km security wall, perimeter road, 17 security watch towers

* Sewage treatment plant
For the first time, the Hubballi Airport, which is upgraded now, is set to handle comparatively bigger passenger aircraft, when the Air India will begin its tri-weekly Bengaluru-Hubballi-Mumbai air service through Airbus A319 aircraft.

At present, a 72-seater aircraft (ATR 72-600) is operating from Hubballi Airport. The new flight which will start operating from here from December 12 will have 124 seats. "This is the first time that this bigger aircraft is operating in the entire North Karnataka region," MP Pralhad Joshi said.

A319 aircraft of the Air India will depart Bengaluru at 12:00 noon, land in Hubballi at 12:50 pm, depart at 1:25 pm and reach Mumbai at 2:30 pm. In the return direction, it will leave Mumbai at 3:25 pm, land in Hubballi at 4:35 pm, depart at 6:10 pm, and reach Bengaluru at 7:00 pm.

This service is available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The inaugural fare for Hubballi-Mumbai journey is Rs 3,840, MP Pralhad Joshi said.

The inaugural flight on December 12, will land at the Hubballi Airport at 11:30 am itself, and will take off for Mumbai at 1:30 pm.

As a Bengaluru-Hubballi-Bengaluru flight is already operating in afternoon and evening hours, we are trying to change the timing of that flight to morning hours, he said, adding that the Union Government is trying to regulate the air fares as they get increased with less availability of seats.
SLN Coffee, a coffee producer and retailer from the heartland of coffee in India, Kodagu, has marked an entry into the instant coffee market with the launch of Levista. It is vying a spot in the top three companies in the category, alongside Bru and Sunrise.

The Rs 800-crore company, has launched three blends under Levista, in Bengaluru and Chennai, and hopes to capture a large part of the market in North India, where instant coffee is rapidly growing. The brand is estimated contirbute to about 10% of the company's total turnover, which currently stands at 60% contribution from exports.

The company is aiming Rs 100 crore revenues from Levista in the next three years, and is further improving its standing in the coffee market with the launch of its cafe in Kushalanagar. SLN Coffee MD N Sathappa said, "The cafe should be ready by March 2018. Post this launch, we will explore options of expanding the brand."

The company is also working on a plan to develop and launch green coffee in the Indian market. SLN Coffee MD N Vishwanathan said, "Currently, we are in the R&D stage, working on getting the blend right. We expect to launch it in the next three years or sooner." Green coffee, as a health-trend is picking up extensively in the West, and has been seen to influence trends here as well.
Opinion / Columnist

President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his cabinet team have already started hitting the ground left, right and centre whilst the ground is being responsive and aspiring as well.I see the plane has not yet taken off at Robert Mugabe International airport with the President and his contigent showing signs of commitment on issues affecting the country.Talk about misplaced priorities his grand child went to Asia for a pregnancy check up thereby gobbling thousands of dollars just for self actualization, while people lay on uncovered 3 wheeled metal stretcher bed at Parirenyatwa hospital.I notice that President Mnangagwa has not yet boarded a plane since his official inauguration about two weeks ago. He has instructed ministers to pursue quick-win outcomes.This isn't rocket science. He should just do the unthinkable and scrap or amend the indigenisation law forthwith. This has been an abatross law which is unattractive to the investment and can easily scare away prospective business entrepreneurship.The govermnent must introduce bankable title in agriculture which remains the major economic powerhouse. To those who are found at the wrong side of the law must be prosecuted thus looters and economic saboteurs. Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be a fast track prosecution when dealing with such kind of matters and this will send a signal warning to would be offenders. There should be reforms within the government parastatal and revive them.There are critical and noticeable development which have to be channelled towards infrastructure development, transport and communication being key that's our airports, rail and roads.Most countries which have no railway are slow to develop. I think this is the time to increase the pace of development. For an example Nigeria has unveiled a major railway expansion project with the help of the Chinese to ease congestion on roads and to boost the economy.It will cascade down to other critical areas later, we don't want to borrow consumable funds.I suppose the responsible ministries will propose those policy adjustments and/or strategies for consideration through relevant structures. If the president will make these mega changes by himself fissures may emerge and choke his presidency. Let there be mega signing deals which will improve the ailing industry where a lot of people have lost their jobs. Our young people are also anxiously waiting to see job opportunities rising.Bootlicking is a ladder to reach to the top and I can strongly equate it to rampant corruption between the one who is being bootlicked and the one bootlicking. I propose if possible the government should enact or a draft law which will enforce abd punish whoever is found bootlicking. There should be a custodial sentence on that. We have seen the country sinking with such kind of bootlicking where people see no evil, hear no evil.Its unfortunate that we have already started seeing the traits emerging from the usual quarters. Our nation cannot be built by praise and worshipping. Only we give praise to the Almighty God. We can't afford to have people who always sing for their supper and singing choristers. Praise or criticism should given where it is due and there is nothing bad about that.This budget should be able buttres the vision of a new and vibrant Zimbabwe which is ready to accommodate the erstwhile friends from the regional and international community. We should start talking about introducing our own currency because we cannot continue using the United States dollar where we do not have control over its monetary policy. We have to instill confidence to those countries who want to do business with us. This is the time to work very hard for our beautiful nation.ContactsFacebook - Leonard KoniTwitter - @leokoniWhatsapp - +27747402042Email - konileonard606@gmail.com
A stray military drone has added to the strains in India-China relations ahead of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New Delhi next week.



New Delhi on Thursday stated that an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV aka drone) of the Indian Army strayed across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Sikkim Sector after losing contact with the ground control due to "some technical problem". The Ministry of Defence issued the statement in New Delhi after China formally lodged a protest with India over the incident.

The LAC serves as the de facto border between India and China in the absence of settled boundary.

China's state-run news agency Xinhua on Thursday reported that the military of the communist country had "voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the Indian UAV's intrusion" into the airspace of China.

The Xinhua quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command of Chinese People's Liberation Army, as saying that India's move had "infringed upon the territorial sovereignty" of China.

"We are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," said Zhang. "We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

The Indian Army said that India's border security personnel had immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. "In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," said Indian Army spokesperson.

Neither New Delhi nor Beijing specified where and when the UAV had strayed across the LAC and flew into the territory claimed by China.

Doklam face-off

The Sikkim Sector of the disputed Sino-India boundary came under international focus earlier this year, as the Indian Army and the Chinese People's Liberation Army had a 72-day face-off at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan. It ended on August 28 last, but tension continued to prevail, not only in Sikkim Sector, but also the entire stretch of the disputed boundary.

Beijing also conveyed its concerns to New Delhi through diplomatic channels. "China asks India to immediately stop its activities of using unmanned aircraft near the border, and to work alongside China to maintain the border area's peace and tranquillity," Geng Shuang, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chinese Government, told journalists in Beijing.

The incident took place at a time when India and China lined up back-to-back engagements to mend bilateral relations, which hit a new low during the military face-off at Doklam Plateau.

The NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar had a meeting with Li Wei, president of Development Research Council of China, in Beijing on Tuesday. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is set to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sideline of the Russia-India-China trilateral talks in New Delhi early next week. The meeting between Swaraj and Wang is likely to be followed by the 20th round of boundary negotiation by the Special Representatives of India and China a Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi.
An FIR has been registered against Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Anantkumar Hegde on Thursday for derogatory comments against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.



Following the order by a local court, the Devaraja police has booked the Union minister under IPC Section 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace). The court has also directed the police to submit a report after conducting an investigation.

Congress leader H L Basavaraj Naik had lodged a complaint with IV Judicial Magistrate First Class, on Wednesday, seeking action against the Union minister for his derogatory remarks passed on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah during a Parivartana Rally speech in Kittur, Belagavi district, recently.

Meanwhile, Mysuru City and Rural Congress committees, on Thursday, demanded the arrest of Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde for using the foul language against the chief minister.

Addressing media persons here, DCC president BJ Vijaykumar said, "Anantkumar Hegde had made derogatory remarks against the CM during a BJP rally in Kittur, a few days ago. Following the order by IVaJMFC, the Devaraja police has registered an FIR under CrPC 156, he said.

Naik had approached the court after the police refused to register an FIR.

According to advocate AG Sudheer, also Congress party worker, Hegde insulted the CM using singular term with an intention to provoke violence in the state, thereby committing offence under Section 504 of IPC.
Veteran leader Manishankar Aiyar on Thursday was suspended from the primary membership of the Congress after Rahul Gandhi strongly disapproved his "neech aadmi" (degenerate man) remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



A section of the Congress viewed Aiyar's remarks, in the middle of the high-pitched campaign for the Gujarat Assembly elections, as an attempt to weaken Rahul, who is set to take over as party president next week.

A row erupted as Aiyar described the prime minister as "neech aadmi" (degenerate man) who lacked "civility", remarks that drew a swift response from Modi who said the people of Gujarat will give a fitting reply to the Congress.

Aiyar had called Modi a degenerate person after the prime minister made certain remarks against the Congress while inaugurating the Ambedkar International Centre for Socio-Economic Transformation.

Sensing that Aiyar's remarks threatened to derail the carefully crafted campaign focussing on development and economic issues, Rahul issued a strong condemnation and directed the party veteran to apologise.

"I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Rahul said on Twitter in an attempt to control the damage.

Rahul said the BJP and the prime minister have routinely used "filthy language" to attack the Congress party. "The Congress has a different culture and heritage," he said.

Within hours, the Congress issued a showcause notice to Aiyar and suspended him from the primary membership of the party.

"Congress party has issued a showcause notice to Manishankar Aiyar and suspended him from the primary membership. Will Modi dare to take such action?" Congress' chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said.

The Congress action came as prime minister sought to make political capital of Aiyar's remarks on the campaign trail in Gujarat recalling that the grand old party had always run him down for his humble beginnings.

"What all have they called us - donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede...the people of Gujarat will give a fitting answer to such deplorable language," the prime minister said making an emotional speech at a rally in Surat.

After Rahul's strong disapproval, Aiyar issued an apology contending that his remarks were lost in translation. "I never meant low born. In English there is a clear distinction between low and low born...if it has some other meaning then I apologise," the former Union minister said.

This is not the first time that Aiyar's remarks have landed the Congress in a spot during elections. Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, Aiyar had derided Modi as a tea seller who could never be prime minister.

Modi made political capital of Aiyar's remarks describing his modest beginnings from a tea-seller to chief minister.

"We just handed over the Gujarat election on a platter to the BJP. Why do we have such leaders in the party," a senior Congress leader said.
Shravanabelagola (Hassan dist): The district administration is leaving no stone unturned to ensure a hassle-free environment for the devotees arriving here for the Mahamastakabhisheka. The new concept on the list is to provide cab service at low rates.



As lakhs of devotees and tourists are expected to visit the historical town during the festival that is held once in 12 years, the district administration is planning to rope in mobile app-based cab aggregators like Ola, Uber companies for the service. If all goes well, around 500 vehicles will be available for hiring during the month-long festivities.

There is a common complaint that tourists are fleeced by the private vehicle owners, especially during the festival times.

Those from the other states who are not well-versed in Kannada language are harassed by a few autorickshaw and cab drivers seeking more money. Hence, the administration is mulling with the idea of introducing cab service at low rates for the benefit of the tourists.

Plans afoot to include tourist places like Belur, Halebid, Sakleshpur and Bisile Ghat in the Western Ghats in the list of must-visit places of the district. Even Melkote, which is close to Shravanabelagola, will be included, sources said.

Speaking to DH, Mahamastakabhisheka Special Officer B N Varaprasad Reddy said, the district administration has already held talks with the representatives of cab aggregators and the response is good.

There will be different rates for the airconditioned and non-airconditioned cars and the lowest possible rates would be fixed, he added.

"Besides cab service, autorickshaws and two-wheelers too will be available for the benefit of people.
New Delhi: Minister for Sericulture and Animal Husbandry A Manju said on Thursday that all infrastructure development works in connection with Mahamastakabhisheka at Shravanabelagola would be completed by January 15.



The construction of temporary townships is on at a full swing and other works such as building roads, drinking water and sanitation facilities were at final stages, he said.

The government is constructing 12 temporary townships to accommodate over 26,000 people, and each township will be designated to a particular group. Thyagi Nagar, a township for Jain saints, is expected to be ready by December 15, he told reporters. He said the construction of scaffolding for the Gomateshwara statue atop Vindhyagiri would be completed as per the schedule.

More than 35 lakh people are expected to attend the 15-day event commencing February 7, the minister added.
Qatar to Buy Additional Rafales, 300 VBCI Combat Vehicles from France



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San Diego City Council voted on a continuance on a proposed new Sorrento Valley marijuana outlet at its Dec. 4 meeting after some confusion between the applicant and staff about whether or not retail marijuana sales will be allowed.

The Torrey Pines Community Plan has a policy that prohibits free-standing retail establishments in the industrial-designated area of Sorrento Valley  the outlet plans to move into a 1,451-square-foot former bank building located on 10715 Sorrento Valley Road.

Firouzeh Tirandazi, development project manager for the city of San Diegos Development Services Department, defined the proposed outlet as a commercial use, stating that per the terms of the conditional use permit, the facility would be a medical marijuana consumer cooperative only and no retail sales would be permitted.

However, the applicant Belinda Smith stated that her intent is to be a retail cannabis dispensary  she said the plan has always been that marijuana for both medical and recreational use would be sold at that location and that she will apply for a state retail license once it is allowed in January 2018.

In January this becomes retail, said Torrey Pines Community Planning Board Chair Dennis Ridz. This is not allowed within our community plan.

Ridz said the community plan calls for not over-commercialized services in the industrial zone such as little coffee and sandwich shops that serve the immediate area, not facilities that serve a regional need. He said the applicant has stated they will sell to anyone with a physician-approved script, therefore the facility is serving the general public as a retail operation and not a small consumer cooperative.

City Council agreed to the applicants request to continue the conditional use permit process. As one portion of the building is slated to remain vacant for the length of the permit , the applicants will explore the possibility of getting another use in there so it would not be considered a free-standing facility. City Council is expected to hear the project again on Jan. 9.

This was the first time that City Council was considering a marijuana outlet, which typically go through a process 3 Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application via the citys Development Services Department, including a hearing officer and a Planning Commission hearing. City staff determined that the project is exempt from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), however, the city received an appeal of the environmental exemption which forced the public hearing at City Council.

Marijuana outlets must comply with San Diego Municipal Code, which requires a 1,000-foot separation from public parks, churches, child care centers, playgrounds, libraries, minor-oriented facilities, other medical marijuana consumer cooperatives, residential care facilities and schools. There is also a minimum distance requirement of 100 feet from a residential zone.

The project meets all the requirements, according to Tirandazi, however, Ridz pointed out that a youth orchestra is located within the 1,000 feet. City staff requires that a youth facility be the primary business within the building and control 50 percent of the square footage  the orchestra does not.

At the Dec. 4 hearing, Smith said she plans to partner with OutCo (Outliers Collective) in El Cajon for the new establishment. She looked for a stand-alone building so as not to be a burden to other tenants and for a building large enough to provide privacy for patients seeking alternative treatments and wellness.

Smith said she is a cancer survivor whose chemotherapy and radiation treatments translated to sleep issues later in life.

Cannabis really helped me and I really advocate for the things OutCo will be able to to do, I believe it will be able to help other people, Smith said. I know that there are some issues that are contentious but today is not about whether or not you approve or disapprove of cannabis use but whether our project meets the requirements, it does.

In June, the Torrey Pines Community Planning Boards Project Review Committee (PRC) voted not to take a formal vote but did submit comments to the city  its concerns included issues with traffic and safety.

Smith said that the facility will comply with the citys security requirements, including a private security guard and that they have more parking spaces than is required with 21 in the lot. Vicki Estrada of Estrada Land Planning said that traffic should not be much more than the former bank use of the building.

Smith said she believes in community having spent five years on the town council of Mission Hills she said that she would be willing to meet with the planning board on a regular basis to discuss any concerns that come up with the facility.

While the Torrey Pines Community Planning board members spoke out against the project, there were also several speakers in support of the project, encouraging City Council to follow their responsibilities with the emerging cannabis industry and to provide access to constituents.

City Councilmember Barbara Bry agreed  she noted Californians overwhelmingly approved Prop 64 in 2016 and she voted in favor of City Councils regulations for marijuana cultivating and manufacturing in October as it is the councils responsibility to put reasonable regulations in place that protect public safety and enhance our local economy. Bry said while she has long-believed in the benefits of medical marijuana, her decision on this issue is based on land use and whether the facility belongs in this specific location.

Councilmember David Alvarez said this issue, prohibiting free-standing retail, has not been an issue in any other community as the policy is specific to the Torrey Pines Community Plan. Alvarez requested that the condition that the facility is restricted to medical marijuana sales only be removed from the permit.

Every community should have some type of access, Alvarez said. Its a real problem if we treat people differently throughout our city. If some communities are not allowing facilities, that means that were not treating all communities the same and it is preventing equal access.

Under City Councils rule, the number of dispensaries per council district is limited to four. Fifteen medical marijuana dispensaries have been licensed and will be allowed to sell the drug on a retail basis when the new rules take effect in January.

One medical marijuana outlet is already in operation on Roselle Street in Sorrento Valley  two more in addition to this project are in the process to open in Sorrento Valley. Neither are proposed in free-standing buildings.
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Larry Kreisman retiring, but he won't stop trying to save historic buildings



Journal Staff Reporter By LYNN PORTER Journal Staff Reporter

Larry Kreisman is retiring from Historic Seattle Dec. 28, ending a run that started in the mid-1970s when he joined the organization as a volunteer.

Kreisman, now 70, was hired in 1997 as program director of the public development authority, which the city established to preserve and protect Seattle's built heritage through restorations, education and advocacy.

He is an architectural historian, author and preservation consultant, with a bachelor's degree in English and fine arts from The City College of New York, a master's in English literature from the University of Chicago and a master's in architecture from the University of Washington.

Kreisman

To honor Kreisman, Historic Seattle recently launched a fund for education programs that has already reached it $25,000 goal. Also, the city declared May 31 (his birthday) Lawrence Kreisman Day.

Liz Johnson is Historic Seattle's new program manager. She has experience in program management, public engagement and educational programming, and holds a master's in urban planning from the University of Washington.

The DJC spoke with Kreisman. His comments have been edited for length.

What's the value of historic buildings to Seattle?

They are more important than ever as the city undergoes major expansion that favors higher, denser development. The most obvious inroads are being made downtown and in South Lake Union, taking with them many buildings under five stories that tell the story of the city's earlier development.

While most are not protected landmarks, they served important purposes and will be missed. In some cases, owners and developers purposely removed historic materials to disqualify them from being city landmarks  to free up the land for development. The same is happening on arterials that were the major neighborhood shopping centers of our streetcar suburbs. The traditional character of these commercial streets is disappearing.

Is it enough to keep the facade of an old building?

A facadectomy doesn't save a building  it simply saves a partial facade behind new construction that is not of the same scale or materials as the building that took up the site. It is a visual reminder of what was there, but does not respect our historic architecture.

Property owners want to maximize their return, but I wish developers would target vacant land, parking lots or poorly designed old structures with no viable use left to develop their apartments and office towers.

Utilitarian buildings that were handsome and useful in their time  laundries, automobile showrooms, one-and two-story commercial buildings  can be beautifully restored and adapted for myriad uses if owners asked, What can I do with this building to add value to the community and provide some return on my investment? rather than, How can I fill the building envelope allowed by the zoning on this spot and maximize my profit?

Would requiring seismic upgrades mean more old buildings get demolished?

There is always that danger. Some property owners are invested in the land, and not the building. My hope is that most owners of an older building are invested in the character-defining features of their building and how it helps keep the neighborhood vital, so they will invest in its longevity. Historic Seattle believes that preserving a building rather than sending it to landfill is, by itself, an important environmental plus. And having it continue to be useful and income-producing should be the goal of stewardship.

With Seattle changing so fast, do you sometimes not know where you are?

Yes, especially in South Lake Union. Reorienting Mercer Street and Westlake to two-way traffic and closing or shifting directional streets frustrate those of us who used to know our way around  and the shortcuts. And while light rail stations are important, they have also meant demolition of valuable historic commercial and residential buildings, particularly on and near Broadway and Northeast 65th Street. Frankly, the replacements are not distinctive.

Are there new buildings in Seattle or Bellevue that will be worth saving?

I am not a contemporary architecture expert and can't predict what will win favor. However, I am critical of many of the quickly built apartment buildings in residential neighborhoods that use flat roofs, a multitude of facade materials, and segmental forms to break up their bulk but without creating a harmonious whole, or relating to the older nearby buildings.

However, architectural qualities are only one factor in long-term worth of a building. Others are the way in which the community accepts it, favors it and uses it.

What's your favorite building and style of architecture?

Late 19th and early 20th century design. I am drawn to buildings of the Art Nouveau and Austrian/German Secession period in Europe, and of the Arts & Crafts period in Great Britain and America. My favorite building style is the emerging skyscraper and its European ornamental vocabulary that powerfully expressed America's progressive metropolitan pep.

No building in the Northwest does that more successfully than the 27-story Northern Life Tower (now Seattle Tower). Designed in 1928 by A.H. Albertson, Joseph Wilson and Paul Richardson, it explores the richness of regional design motifs. It is no coincidence that Albertson, who sat on the planning commission that developed this city's setback ordinance in 1923, was also instrumental in the design of Seattle's finest setback skyscraper.

Any regrets about things you would have done differently?

I have created unique educational experiences and helped develop support for built heritage and design, along with writing and doing exhibitions about the region's importance in architecture and applied arts.

I would not have done anything differently, but I think we must do a better job of reaching elementary and secondary school students, who function in a virtual world of devices rather than experience the built environment they walk through.

Education must focus more on the importance of buildings and neighborhoods in our collective memory, or young people will not be invested in preserving those reminders of an earlier time.

Also, we should engage college students in a young preservationist circle, much as museums use activities to get younger people involved in art and design, and develop a speakers' bureau to better tap into youth with a compelling preservation message.

What was the best Historic Seattle program during your tenure?

The annual Bungalow Fair and Arts & Crafts lecture series of 1998 to 2011. It educated people on the values of design reform, hand-craftsmanship and the rich heritage of bungalows and craftsman buildings in the city, and let them meet with antique dealers and cottage industries.

Your plans?

I will continue to support Historic Seattle in its increasingly important mission of preserving our built heritage, and there may be another book or exhibition to fill the gap in our understanding of the talented people and businesses that worked here, produced significant design legacies, and have not been acknowledged.





Lynn Porter can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.




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Days and nights of tough negotiations await since GOP leaders are intent on delivering a final package to President Donald Trump by Christmas.



By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON  Sounding a discordant note among the positive talk on the tax bill, a number of Republicans are delivering a blunt assessment, casting the bill as a boost to big corporations and the wealthy instead of the middle class.

Fundamentally if you look at the bulk of the bill, two-thirds of it, it's tied on the business side, Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said Tuesday as leaders in the House and Senate hailed their respective measures as an advantage for working Americans.





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Straight Talk on Trade' says most economists have long ignored that global free trade, for all its benefits, inevitably ends up depressing some industries and communities.



By PAUL WISEMAN

AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON  Many mainstream economists say they're appalled by President Donald Trump's threats to trash trade agreements and tax imports in a blunt-force drive to shrink America's bulging trade deficits.

Yet economists themselves bear some blame for the backlash against free trade and globalization that helped propel Trump to the White House and Britain to abandon the European Union.





. . .
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Portland officials say uncertainty over the fate of private activity bonds has added $1 million to the cost of a 240-unit affordable housing complex.



By GILLIAN FLACCUS

Associated Press

PORTLAND  Municipal governments worry the tax overhaul in Washington, D.C. could chill the construction of affordable housing as homelessness reaches a crisis point on the West Coast.

Officials with the housing authority in Portland said Tuesday the U.S. could lose nearly 1 million units of affordable housing over 10 years if the final bill eliminates the tax-exempt status for a type of bond commonly used by developers to finance affordable housing.





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Ford to make driver-less cars in Michigan, to move EV production to Mexico

After General Motors announced last week that it would start commercial deployment of automated mobility services in 2019, Ford has announced updates on its own automated driving programme.

In August 2016 Ford announced plans for a level 4 automated vehicle, and has now confirmed that it will be a bespoke design specifically to meet the needs of commercial fleet operations.

Production of the new AV would get underway at Ford's Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan, as the 2020 electric crossover that is being built will be moving to Mexico.

According to commentators, while Ford would not be the first on the AV circuit, it has a different road map from GM. GM plans to launch its automated driving services with a heavily modified Chevrolet Bolt EV, demonstrated last week on the streets of San Francisco. At this juncture, GM plans to push ahead with exclusively electric lineup of its automated vehicles and the Bolt would not be the only offering although it is first.

Ford on the other hand is looking to leverage its experience in serving a range of special vehicle markets including taxis, police vehicles and other commercial applications. In a blog post by executive vice president Jim Farley, Ford revealed plans to make its new AV commercial grade.

"You're starting to see the foundation of Ford's bet on A-V's (autonomous-drive vehicles). We're very excited about what we are doing," said Jim Farley, president of global markets for Ford, CNBC reported.

The company is however not revealing many details about the autonomous-drive vehicle it plans to build in Michigan except that it will have commercial grade performance and durability.

"While others are focusing on A-V's for ride-hailing, our business model will be much more diverse," said Farley. "We'll move people and goods."
India hurling charges 'without a shred of evidence': Mallya's defence

Vijay Mallya's defence team on Tuesday argued in a London court that there was no evidence to support the case of fraud against him by the government of India, and he should not be extradited to face fraud charges related to the collapse of his Kingfisher Airlines.

The Indian government has requested Mallya's extradition from Britain accusing him of fraudulently palming off the airline's losses onto banks by taking out loans he had no intention of repaying.

The 61-year-old was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery.

Montgomery opened her arguments by stating that there was no evidence to support the case of fraud.

On the opening day of the trial, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, had asserted that the embattled liquor baron had a "case of fraud" to answer. (See: Mallya never intended to repay Kingfisher loans, UK court told)

Mallya has had business interests ranging from liquor to aviation. He is also the co-owner of Formula One motor racing team Force India.

The case against him centres on a series of loans Kingfisher obtained from Indian banks, especially state-owned lender IDBI. The banks want to recover a total of about $1.4 billion (Rs9,000 crore) that they say the defunct airline owes.

Montgomery claimed that the evidence presented by the CPS, on the direction of the Indian government, to prove a case of fraud amounted to "zero", and was a "critical failure on the part of the government of India".

"There is no evidence," she told the court. "Economically and legally it is impossible to palm off losses onto banks by borrowing to pass on the cost of failure."

She said there were competing narratives, fraud versus business failure, and that no reasonable jury would be able to reach a safe conclusion that there had been a deliberate intent to defraud.

She added that the Indian government's case revealed a "shocking" lack of appreciation of how companies function and of basic realities such as the effects of incorporation and the rights of shareholders.

Mallya, the focus of intense media interest in India, arrived wearing a dark suit and yellow tie and was mobbed by cameramen as he walked into the building.

Inside the courtroom he spoke only to confirm his name and age, before sitting quietly in the glass-walled dock as Montgomery spoke.

She said the government's allegation that Mallya had deliberately misled banks by overstating Kingfisher's projected profits was "a false premise".

That was because airlines were subject to many unpredictable factors beyond their control, such as fuel cost fluctuations and the global economic climate, so to make entirely accurate projections several years in advance was unrealistic.

Montgomery also rejected the allegation that senior managers at state-owned lender IDBI were involved in Mallya's fraudulent plan.

"That is one of a number of allegations that prosecuting authorities have made without a shred of evidence," she said.

Montgomery also rejected the allegation that Mallya had improperly spent the money borrowed from the banks, saying there was no evidence of disbursements on anything other than the benefit of Kingfisher.

The extradition hearing is expected to last two weeks. 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 Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation (KFO) has called on the government to oppose proposed cuts by The European Commission for certain key stocks at the Council of Fisheries Ministers next week.

The KFO has said that if the cuts are adopted it could result in up to 300 fulltime and part-time jobs losses in the fisheries sector and ancillary services.

The potential direct losses are approximately 33 million including the 20 per cent reduction in Irelands mackerel quota already agreed at the Coastal States negotiations, the KFO said.

The KFO will be meeting agriculture minister Michael Creed and his advisers in Brussels on Sunday ahead of the Fisheries Council negotiations.

KFO CEO, Sean ODonoghue said: I am very concerned about the potential outcome of this years Fisheries Council particularly for certain demersal stocks such as cod, haddock, and whiting in the Celtic Sea and nephrops in ICES area VII and for pelagic stocks Celtic Sea herring.

I recognise that when the state of the stock requires it there must be reductions in the fishing opportunities for particular stocks. However, it is my contention in relation to a number of the reductions proposed on our key are unjustifiable and arbitrary. Moreover, they are contrary to the Commissions own stated position and entirely unacceptable.
Patients at Letterkenny University Hospital are waiting three years for an appointment with neurology services, Donegal TD Donegal Charlie McConalogue has said.

The Fianna Fail TD has described as unacceptable the fact that 500 people are currently on a waiting list for neurology services at Letterkenny University Hospital.

He said new correspondence from the hospital reveals that waiting times for a routine appointment is three years.

The waiting times for neurology appointments at Letterkenny University Hospital are completely unacceptable, he said.

The fact that there are now 500 waiting for appointments shows the scale of the backlogs in the hospital. This is leaving patients with conditions such as MS, Epilepsy, Parkinsons and other neurological conditions have to endure these excessively long wait times to see a neurologist, explained Deputy McConalogue.

It had been anticipated that a second neurologist, currently based in Sligo, would help to ease the burden significantly. It took some time for the post to be filled and now that it has, it has been revealed that that neurologist will only be providing 2 clinic days per month in Letterkenny University Hospital. While this may provide some relief, the fact that the consultant will only be available for 2 days a month leaves a lot to be desired and will do little to address the lengthy waiting lists.

Our neurology services are severely under-resourced and overburdened. Much more needs to be done to address this.
Bill Duncan was born in Toledo, Ohio on June 20, 1936, and he passed away on November 27, 2017. Bill played in the Duncan Downbeats Band, which helped support him through college. He attended The University of Michigan for two years. He received his business degree after two years at Detroit University. Bill became employed with the Government in the U.S. Customs Office in Detroit, Michigan. While working for U.S. Customs in Philadelphia he went to Temple University Law School. He became District Director in Saint Louis, Missouri. After fourteen years, Bill transferred to Washington, D.C. in the International Division of Customs. While in the International Division, Bill designed a program to train other countries how to computerize their customs. He implemented his program at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia where numerous foreign governments received instruction in computerizing their customs systems.
A male driver and his female passenger were killed in a crash on Interstate 10 Wednesday, according to Florida Highway Patrol.

The incident occurred at noon on Wednesday, Dec. 6, near mile marker 130 and US 231 in Jackson County, FHP reports.

Officials say Herman Carter, 79, of Newaygo, Michigan, was the driver of a 2014 Chevrolet 2500HD pickup truck involved in the crash. That pickup was merging onto I-10, via the westbound entrance ramp, at the same time a 2014 Mack dump truck, driven by Clifford Branch, 67, of Panama City, was headed west, in the left, inside lane of the same road.

While merging, the driver of the Chevrolet lost control and the vehicle traveled into the path of the Mack, FHP said in the incident report. That caused the front of the Mack to collide with the left, driver-side of the Chevrolet pickup.

Both vehicles, still conjoined, came to rest on the north shoulder of the westbound lanes, the Chevrolet facing south and the Mack facing west.

Chevrolet driver Carter and passenger Patricia Carter, 74, also of Newaygo, were killed in the crash; Branch, driver of the Mack, sustained no injuries, according to officials.

All three persons are listed as wearing their seat belts at the time of the incident.

FHP says charges are pending the outcome of the agencys investigation.
According to the Alabama Board of Pardon and Paroles a former Dothan Police officer is eligible for parole next month. A hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 24, and if parole is granted, the inmate will be released early.

Lanice Bonds was ordered to serve a decade in the Alabama Department of Corrections in July 2014. Bonds pleaded guilty to a Class B Felony charge of school employee or official engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19.

In 2013, Bonds was a police officer assigned to Dothan High School as a resource officer. According to information obtained through law enforcement, Bonds was having sex with a 17-year-old student and was arrested for violating the School Employee Sex Law.

Questions have arisen regarding the School Employee Sex Law. On August 11, 2017, in Decatur, Morgan County Judge Glenn Thompson dismissed charges against two defendants charged with violating the same law. Thompson stated that a law barring teachers from having sexual relationships with students old enough to consent is unconstitutional. This ruling is being challenged by the state on appeal. The defendants were a teacher and school aide.

Bonds is not the only Wiregrass man to face this charge. Another Dothan Police officer serving as a school resource officer at Dothan High School was arrested Wednesday on two counts of engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19.

Officer Adrian Folmar was booked into the Houston County Jail Wednesday with bail set at $60,000.

According to the Dothan Police Department, Folmar is believed to have engaged in a sex act with a 17-year-old student. If convicted he could serve 2 to 20 years in the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Welcome to the premiere source for factual, encouraging updates on Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar and their 19 kids (TLC's 19 Kids and Counting & Counting On ). Our site is not maintained by the Duggars, but we (Lily and Ellie) are personal friends of the family.




Millennial-centric fintech lender MoneyMe has hit some impressive milestones in 2017. In addition to reaching $150 million in loans funded, the North Sydney startup received a $120 million capital injection and debuted on the coveted Fintech100 list, placing it amongst the worlds most innovative fintech companies. Despite reaching lofty heights, co-founder and CEO Clayton Howes believes MoneyMe can soar even higher next year.

The entrepreneur spoke to Dynamic Business about the pain points MoneyMe addresses for millennials, and how he and co-founder Steve Bannigan plan to build on the four-year-old companys momentum. He also explained MoneyMes orchestrated, methodical approach to securing a $120 million capital facility  $100 million from Fortress Investment Group plus $20 million in bonds issued by corporate advisory Evans & Partners  last month.

DB: What is the elevator pitch for MoneyMes core service?

Howes: We provide unsecured personal loans to customers with a very broad range of risk profiles. We do this completely online, with the simplicity, speed and convenience that todays digitally-savvy consumers demand.

DB: What motivated you and Steve to launch the startup?

Howes: Steve and I saw an opportunity to create a likeable brand for millennial consumers in circumstances where they had become increasingly disenfranchised by the way in which banks approached loans. Specifically, banks havent adapted to the contemporary spending and finance consumption patterns of millennials; instead, theyve continued to base their lending decisions solely on negative credit reporting.

This problem has been compounded by the lack of transparency and flexibility around consumer credit. For instance, millennials have been penalised for being discerning. By that, I mean that shopping around for credit online is, in some cases, negatively affecting their credit worthiness. You might look for a credit card with American Express, move on to Visa, then visit MoneyMes website. Well, the credit reporting bureaus have access to this data and they will penalise you for excessive credit enquiries. Rather than understanding that youre simply shopping around for the right credit instrument, a bureau would look at this journey and simply think everyone is saying no to you. Consequently, there is a whole class of consumers who have lower scores from higher enquiries but who are otherwise strong when it comes to the fundamentals.

With MoneyMe, Steve and I resolved to develop a more nuanced approach where lending decisions are based on a consumers true risk profile, not a one-size-first-all model. In other words, we dont just consider an applicants credit score, we also take into account their past history with us, their income and their spending patterns.

DB: How are you marketing MoneyMe to your target audience?

Howes: We use style, language, media that is relevant to tech-savvy millennials who dont like the idea of being sold to. We want to be stylish, fresh and relevant without trying too hard because they can spot that a mile off.

DB: Whats the significance of your deal with Fortress?

Howes: Striking a $100 million deal with a single investor, let alone the right investor, is by no means an easy feat for a four-year-old business like MoneyMe. The deal with Fortress came together over the space of nine months. In them, weve found a like-minded partner who has scale and can support us as we grow.

The $100 million facility provided by Fortress is the first part of a tranched-investment, with the next will likely be a $250 million facility. The initial $100 million will enable us to continue growing our loan book and serving more customers. It provides bandwidth for putting more products to market to meet more of the markets needs.

Just like banks, we need to fund the loans we lend out. Banks fund the loans they write through a combination of customer deposits, as well as borrowing from the wholesale capital markets. We do not take deposits, so we also borrow from wholesale capital markets to fund our loans.

Fortress provides certainty to us, giving us around 18 months of runway. It means that we have the confidence and headroom to continue writing loans, growing our portfolio size, building more products and services, and meeting more of the markets needs.

DB: How do Evans & Partners fit into the picture?

Howes: Our $120 million facility is structured as a mezzanine facility, common in the debt capital markets. In this structure, there is a senior lender (Fortress @ $100m), junior lender(s) (bonds issued by Evans & Partners @$20m) and MoneyMes own contribution. The structure spreads the risks and returns for participants according to their risk appetite and capital contribution.

The senior lender holds the lowest amount of risk (they are paid first) in return for a higher contribution and lower return. The junior lender accepts higher risk. The $20m junior debt through Evans & Partners is a mandatory component of the facility and critical for it going ahead.

DB: With so much funding at stake, was it a tense raise?

Howes: There wasnt any massive emotional tension because we laid out  and were sticking to  a very clear plan for where MoneyMe is heading. The $120 million capital facility is just one of many milestones weve accounted for. Had we attempted to lock in investor support sooner, that might not have been the case, it might have been uncomfortable but we took a very orchestrated, methodical approach.

By that I mean that we went to market with a clear strategy to land the right investors  this involved having a well-crafted information memorandum (IM), having our investment-grade data room which investors are familiar with on hand, and completing our audits well ahead of time to provide investors with confidence. Also, our message was clear, our loan book was trading positively, and we understood the sensitivity points of the investors we were seeking to attract.

DB: How does it feel to be named one of the worlds Top 100 fintechs?

Howes: When I heard the news, it sent chills down my spine. Making it into the Fintech100 report was a proud moment for not just Steve and myself but also our entire team because its a very credible acknowledgment of all our hard work. The report also prompted the CEOs of large organisations, across a variety of industries, to contact us and they will be valuable connections moving forward. Of course, now that weve made it into the Top 100, we have our sights on entering the Top 50 in 2018.

DB: What strategies will MoneyMe employ to break into the Top 50?

Howes: Well continue to expand our brand proposition through the creation of bespoke products that reach consumers banks are incapable of reaching. Were also making arrangements to assist us with getting our products to market at scale. Now that weve got the runway to put money in the market, its just a matter of sticking to our plan as it plays out over time. Based on where we are today, and our results for the 2017 calendar year, I think were well-positioned to make it into the Top 50 next year.

DB: What are some of the other key milestones reached in 2017?

Howes: In March, we surpassed $100m in loans but today, having serviced 70,000 loans, its somewhere closer to $150 million. We also refreshed our brand, launched our IOS and Android apps and introduced a $15,000 loan product  $15k is a meaningful sweet spot for borrowers who are looking for more substantial spending (e.g. second-hand vehicles, debt consolidation, kitchen renovations, life events).

There are other milestones, which are less exciting to the public but no less significant for us. These include the roll-out of our employee share option plan, enhancing out cybersecurity infrastructure, partnering with a US-based artificial intelligence (AI) provider to bolster our decision making and shifting to a Tier 1 accounting firm (KPMG). All these things demonstrate that were moving out of a startup phase and becoming more robust and governance-focused.

See also: Australia has ten Fintechs inside the top 100, Lets Talk Fintech and So, you want to become an entrepreneur Prepare to say goodbye to these five things.
A lack of training and career development is fuelling employee dissatisfaction amongst Australias IT workers, with 49% actively looking for new work and a further 40% open to jumping ship for the right offer.

These findings are from a survey of nearly 2000 tech workers undertaken by IT workforce solutions specialists Greythorn, which gathered data on issues such as pay, skills, career development, discrimination and the industry outlook.

The research also revealed growing demand, amongst IT workers for contract roles (42%)  chiefly, temporary (13%) or independent (9.5%) contract roles. According to Greythorn, this demand relates to the fact that a) 42% expect rates of pay for contract workers to increase over the next 12 months and b) 25% are interested in greater flexibility of work hours and the ability to work from home. In terms of pay, 25% reported having had an increase exceeding 5% in the last twelve months but 40 percent said they have had no pay rise at all.

The findings reveal a number of emerging challenges for employers. In particular, high levels of job dissatisfaction, poor culture and the perception that companies arent investing enough in skills and career development are likely to make it more difficult for companies to hold on to tech workers.

Recent research by Right Management (part of the ManpowerGroup) found that 68% of employees globally expect their employer to provide career development resources and 65 percent expect to receive career guidance from their managers; however, the Greythorn research found that when IT workers do not receive this support, they will leave their current employer for organisations that provide clear career development opportunities.

Only 25% of IT workers reported being very engaged in their current role while lack of development (18%) and poor culture (16%) are the two primary reasons tech workers give for leaving their employer. Overall, 50% said there was either no opportunity for career development in their current role or they were unsure of whether such opportunities existed. Nearly 25% of tech workers reported never having participated in employer-supported training, with another 30% having received no training over the last twelve months.

Greythorn General Manager Suzanne Gerrard said the findings suggest employers must place more emphasis on training and career development to attract and retain the best workers, especially as IT is one of the top five most difficult skills to find in Australia (ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage Survey 2016-17).

The Greythorn research clearly shows that an increasing number of IT workers are seeking new ways of working and expect greater input from their employers into training and career development, she said.

Tech workers continue to adapt to changes in work structure such as the rise in contract work. However, in return they want employers who are willing to invest in training, career development and ensure workplace flexibility benefits both employer and employee. Smart companies will take advantage of this openness by providing workers with flexible arrangements while recognising that they must continue to invest in skills.

The Greythorn survey also found that 58% of IT workers has been personally discriminated against on the basis of age, race or gender. A third (34%) said there was a gender pay gap, with 49% citing transparent remuneration policies and 43% citing more flexible work arrangements as essential if more women are to be attracted to the sector.

There is clearly more work to be done if we are to increase the number of opportunities for women and provide a working environment in which professionals from all backgrounds believe they have the opportunity to learn and prosper in the Australian tech sector, Gerard said.

The gender pay gap, opportunities for older workers and ensuring an open and inclusive environment are essential to reducing perceptions of discrimination and lack of opportunity.

In terms of skills, tech workers reported that being better equipped for the cloud (35%) and making better use of big data (34%) are key areas for development over the coming year. IT executives cited balancing innovation and budgets and increasing data accessibility without compromising security as their biggest challenges. Furthermore, 25 percent of CIOs said their role had become more business-focused.
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. IGLESIA PENTECOSTAL CASA DE DIOS PARA LAS NACIONES, INC.; ISRAEL MEDINA VALDEZ, Plaintiffs - Appellants, v. ELAINE C. DUKE, Secretary, United States Department of Homeland Security; L. FRANCIS CISSNA, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, United States Attorney General; RON ROSENBERG, Chief of the Administration Appeals Office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services; ROSEMARY MELVILLE, Director, California Service Center, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Defendants - Appellees.* No. 16-3265 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before BRISCOE, MATHESON, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.

ORDER AND JUDGMENT**

Iglesia Pentecostal Casa De Dios Para Las Naciones, Inc. (Iglesia), a Pentecostal church in Kansas City, Kansas, appeals the denial of the visa application it filed on behalf of its music director. Iglesia alleges that one of the visa requirements substantially burdens its religious exercise in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The district court found no substantial burden. Because Iglesia has failed to present a prima facie RFRA claim, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. R-1 Visa Program

The Immigration and Nationality Act allows ministers and other religious workers to enter and stay in the United States under a non-immigrant visa, known as an R-1 visa, for up to five years. See 8 U.S.C.  1101(a)(15)(R), 1101(a)(27)(C)(ii); 8 C.F.R.  204.5(m), 214.2(r). To obtain the visa, a religious organization seeking to hire and sponsor an R-1 applicant petitions the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The petitioner must: (1) establish that the R-1 applicant has been a member of the same denomination as the petitioner for at least two years preceding the petitionthe denomination requirement8 U.S.C.  1101(a)(15)(R)(i), and (2) demonstrate its intention and ability to compensate the R-1 applicantthe compensation regulation8 C.F.R.  214.2(r)(11). Evidence of compensation may include:

past evidence of compensation for similar positions; budgets showing monies set aside for salaries, leases, etc.; verifiable documentation that room and board will be provided; or other evidence acceptable to USCIS.

Id.  214.2(r)(11)(i). If available, the petitioner must submit IRS documentation, such as IRS Form W-2 or certified tax returns. Id. Otherwise, it must submit comparable, verifiable documentation. Id.

B. Iglesia's Petition for an R-1 Visa for Mr. Medina-Valdez

In May 2011, Iglesia petitioned USCIS for an R-1 visa that would authorize its music director, Israel Medina-Valdez, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, to stay in the United States as a temporary religious worker for two years. Mr. Medina-Valdez was then living in the United States under a visitor visa set to expire in August 2011. In its petition, Iglesia confirmed it was willing and able to provide Mr. Medina-Valdez a $26,000 annual salary. See App. at 985. It also stated that Mr. Medina-Valdez had not been a member of its denomination for at least two years.

C. Agency Response

1. USCIS

After receiving Iglesia's R-1 visa petition, USCIS requested evidence of Iglesia's ability to meet the denomination and compensation requirements. Iglesia submitted documentation regarding Mr. Medina-Valdez's denomination and its finances, including a copy of its federal tax form (IRS Form 990), bank statements, and a 2010 profit and loss statement. USCIS denied Iglesia's petition on one ground: The church had failed to demonstrate that Mr. Medina-Valdez had been a member of its denomination for at least two years.

2. Administrative Appeals Office

Iglesia appealed to the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO), which affirmed USCIS's denial of the petition because Iglesia had failed to meet the denomination and compensation requirements. It determined that neither Iglesia's R-1 petition nor its financial documents demonstrated its ability to pay a $26,000 annual salary.

In October 2013, Iglesia sued in federal district court to challenge the denial of its petition. The AAO reopened the matter, and Iglesia voluntarily dismissed the federal case. The AAO determined Iglesia had met the denomination requirement but still had not satisfied the compensation regulation. Iglesia submitted additional evidence, including a balance sheet, bank statements, and profit and loss statements. The AAO again denied the petition, citing insufficient evidence and noting unexplained discrepancies in the visa petition, tax forms, and other documents.

Iglesia filed a motion to reopen with the AAO, arguing that it deserved a RFRA exemption from the compensation regulation because the church believed that contributions from parishioners in the form of love offerings would adequately compensate Mr. Medina-Valdez. Iglesia's religious conviction to live by faith entailed trusting that the Sunday collections from parishioners would cover the cost of his salary. The amounts were not reflected in the church's financial documents, it explained, because the money collected thus far had gone directly from the parishioners to Mr. Medina-Valdez.

The AAO denied Iglesia's motion. First, it again said Iglesia had failed to show its ability to compensate Mr. Medina-Valdez. Second, it explained it lacked discretion to invalidate the compensation regulation absent a judicial ruling. Third, it denied Iglesia's request for a RFRA exemption because the church had failed to show a substantial burden. See ROA, Vol. 1 at 17-18.

D. Federal District Court Proceedings

Iglesia sued in federal district court to challenge the agency's denial of the R-1 visa application under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C.  702. It moved for summary judgment, arguing (1) it had demonstrated its ability to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez, and (2) as to RFRA, (a) the compensation regulation violated RFRA, and (b) the AAO wrongly claimed it lacked jurisdiction to grant a RFRA exemption.

The district court affirmed the agency's denial on two grounds: (1) the AAO's decision that Iglesia lacked the ability to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez was not arbitrary and capricious, and (2) the compensation regulation did not substantially burden Iglesia's religious exercise. The court said the compensation regulation merely require[d] Iglesia to establish that it is able to compensate [Mr. Medina-Valdez] by submitting verifiable evidence.  Iglesia Pentecostal Casa De Dios Para Las Naciones, Inc. v. Johnson, No. 15-CV-2612-DDC-GEB, 2016 WL 3936435, at *10 (D. Kan. July 21, 2016) (quoting 8 C.F.R.  214.2(r)(11)). The regulation did not interfere with Iglesia's ability to compensate Mr. Medina-Valdez through love offerings.

II. DISCUSSION

Iglesia appeals, arguing (1) the compensation regulation violates RFRA by imposing a substantial burden on the church's religious exercise, and (2) the district court violated the Chenery doctrine by affirming the agency's decision on alternative grounds. It has abandoned its contention that it had met the compensation regulation. We hold Iglesia has not alleged facts sufficient to support its RFRA claim, and its Chenery argument lacks merit.

A. Standard of Review

Whether a government action substantially burdens a person's religious exercise in violation of RFRA is a legal question we review de novo. United States v. Friday, 525 F.3d 938, 948-49 (10th Cir. 2008).

B. RFRA

RFRA provides that the government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability unless it demonstrates that the burden (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. 42 U.S.C.  2000bb-1(a)-(b). [A] plaintiff establishes a prima facie claim under RFRA by proving the following three elements: (1) a substantial burden imposed by the federal government on a (2) sincere (3) exercise of religion. Kikumura v. Hurley, 242 F.3d 950, 960 (10th Cir. 2001); see also Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058, 1068 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (explaining a RFRA claimant must present evidence sufficient to show a substantial burden).

Courts defer to a RFRA claimant's statement of its own belief, so long as it actually holds that belief. See Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2779 (2014) ([I]t is not for [courts] to say that [a person's] religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial.). But courts determine whether a challenged law or policy substantially burdens religious exercise. See Yellowbear v. Lampert, 741 F.3d 48, 55 (10th Cir. 2014); Kikumura, 242 F.3d at 961 & n.6. As such, whether a burden is substantial under RFRA is a question of law. See Mahoney v. Doe, 642 F.3d 1112, 1121 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

The government impermissibly burdens religious exercise if it: (1) requires participation in an activity prohibited by a sincerely held religious belief, (2) prevents participation in conduct motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, or (3) places substantial pressure on an adherent  to engage in conduct contrary to a sincerely held religious belief. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, 723 F.3d 1114, 1138 (10th Cir. 2013) (en banc) (citations and quotations omitted), aff'd sub nom. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751 (2014). In making this determination, we consider how the challenged law or policy actually operates and affects religious exercise. See Kaemmerling v. Lappin, 553 F.3d 669, 679 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (explaining that courts may consider the connection between the action required and the petitioner's beliefs and the extent to which that action interferes with or otherwise affects its religious exerciseall without delving into the beliefs themselves).

C. Analysis

Iglesia's two arguments fail. First, Iglesia's bare assertion that the compensation regulation impedes its collection and use of love offerings falls short of stating a RFRA violation. It provides no factual basis that the regulation precludes or discourages parishioners from making love offerings or using them to pay the music director. USCIS and the AAO denied Iglesia's R-1 visa petition because the church's deficient bookkeeping precluded satisfactory documentation that it met the compensation regulation, not because Iglesia relies on love offerings to provide compensation. Second, Iglesia's Chenery doctrine argument lacks merit.

1. RFRA Substantial Burden

Iglesia fails to demonstrate that the compensation regulation imposes a substantial burden on its religious exercise.

First, it claims that it cannot meet [this requirement] unless it stops allowing its congregants to  giv[e] a love offering directly to Mr. Medina-Valdez. Aplt. Br. at 14. But the compensation regulation does not prevent or restrict Iglesia's reliance on love offerings to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez. It neither mandates nor precludes any particular method of compensation for church employees. As the Government points out, the regulation requires only that Iglesia provide evidencebe it IRS documentation (e.g., tax returns) or other verifiable documentationof its ability to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez the $26,000 salary that the church stated in its application it was willing and able to provide. See Aplee. Br. at 8 (Iglesia would be free to compensate [Mr. Medina-Valdez] through love offerings' as long as it could demonstrate its ability to do so, which it did not.). Iglesia points to nothing in the statute, implementing regulations, or statements by the agency to support its contention that the compensation regulation bars or even dissuades parishioners from contributing love offerings for Mr. Medina-Valdez's benefit. It can obtain an R-1 visa while continuing to rely on love offerings, but it still needs to provide documentation of its ability to pay.

Second, Iglesia does not even contend that the requirement or process of documenting its ability to pay in its R-1 visa application substantially burdens its religious exercise. It never explains how living by faith is incompatible with documenting the donations before they were sent to Mr. Medina-Valdez or with asking Mr. Medina-Valdez to report the love offering compensation he has received. Instead, Iglesia offers only vague and conclusory assertions that the kind of proof USCIS now demands for the compensation regulation conflicts with the way the church and its parishioners have lived their expression of faith. See Aplt. Br. at 13.

Iglesia maintains it cannot provide documentation of previous love offerings because parishioners sent money directly to Mr. Medina-Valdez without the church making a record. Inadequate bookkeeping doomed Iglesia's R-1 visa petition, not the compensation regulation's alleged interference with love offerings.

2. Chenery Doctrine

The Chenery doctrine provides that courts may not properly affirm an administrative action on grounds different from those considered by the agency. Ecology Ctr., Inc. v. U.S. Forest Service, 451 F.3d 1183, 1195 (10th Cir. 2006) (quotations omitted); see also SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196 (1947) (Chenery II). Iglesia argues the district court violated the Chenery doctrine by reaching the merits of its RFRA argument when the agency denied relief only on the ground that it lack[ed] jurisdiction  to grant a[ ] RFRA exemption. Aplt. Br. at 10. There are two problems with this argument.

First, the AAO made a merits determination. It stated that a petitioner seeking a RFRA exemption must demonstrate a significant burden on  religious beliefs or exercise, App. at 17 (quoting 73 Fed. Reg. 72,276, 72,283-84 (Nov. 26, 2008)), and Iglesia had failed to meet that burden, id. at 18. The district court affirmed on the same ground, concluding that the compensation regulation did not impose a substantial burden. Further, the AAO never claimed it lacked jurisdiction to grant a RFRA exemption. Rather, it said the agency must apply the regulation unless a court holds it invalid. Id. at 17 (Absent [a judicial finding that the regulation violates RFRA], neither the director [of USCIS] nor the AAO has any discretion to set aside any provision of those regulations.).

Second, Iglesia fails to establish that Chenery applies to the RFRA issue here. The Chenery doctrine applies only to a determination or judgment which an administrative agency alone is authorized to make. Chenery II, 332 U.S. at 196 (emphasis added). In other words, the prohibition on judicial consideration of alternate grounds to affirm an agency decision applies only if the issue under review has been entrusted exclusively to agency determination. See id.; SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94 (1943); see also INS v. Ventura, 537 U.S. 12, 16 (2002) (holding that Chenery prohibited the reviewing court from making its own judgment about an alien's asylum eligibilitya determination that Congress had exclusively entrusted to an administrative agency); Canonsburg Gen. Hosp. v. Burwell, 807 F.3d 295, 304-05 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (explaining that Chenery applies to determinations that Congress specifically entrusted to an agency's expertise, not general legal principles like issue preclusion).

Although USCIS determines whether an applicant qualifies for an R-1 visa, the specific issue herewhether the compensation regulation substantially burdens Iglesia's religious exerciseis a legal determination that Congress has not exclusively entrusted to USCIS. See Ventura, 537 U.S. at 16; Friday, 525 F.3d at 948-49; see also 42 U.S.C.  2000bb-1(C) (providing that a person whose religious exercise has been burdened may assert that violation  in a judicial proceeding (emphasis added)).

III. CONCLUSION

Exercising our jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.  1291, we affirm.

Entered for the Court

FOOTNOTES

. Specifically, the petitioner must:state how [it] intends to compensate the alien, including specific monetary or in-kind compensation, or whether the alien intends to be self-supporting. In either case, the petitioner must submit verifiable evidence explaining how the petitioner will compensate the alien or how the alien will be self-supporting.8 C.F.R.  214.2(r)(11)

. The petition listed March 1, 2011 to March 1, 2013 as the period of intended employment.

. The AAO noted Iglesia had submitted an uncertified copy of its unsigned and undated IRS Form 990. App. at 277. In one section of Form 990, Iglesia reported $214,144 in revenue and no expenses. In another section, it reported total program expenses of $474,961. Its 2010 profit and loss statement reflected a net loss of $31,160.85. The AAO concluded that Iglesia had failed to provide reliable or sufficient evidence to demonstrate its ability to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez.

. An additional problem for Iglesia is that USCIS, in its summary of the final rule amending the religious worker visa program that was published in the Federal Register, stated that a petitioner must request a RFRA exemption when it files its visa petition. See 73 Fed. Reg. 72,276, 72,283 (Nov. 26, 2008). We do not rely on Iglesia's failure to do so for our decision here.

. The district court, citing our decision in Olenhouse v. Commodity Credit Corp., 42 F.3d 1560, 1580 (10th Cir. 1994), treated Iglesia's motion as an appeal of the agency's decision under the APA.

. The court also said the AAO lacked discretion to set aside the compensation regulation, though it acknowledged that parties may request a RFRA exemption when they petition for a visa. Iglesia, 2016 WL 3936435, at *5 n.5.

. We understand Iglesia to be making an as-applied RFRA challenge to the compensation regulation. To the extent it attempts to make a facial challenge, it fails to allege facts sufficient to state such a claim. See United States v. Friday, 525 F.3d 938, 951 (10th Cir. 2008) (holding that a facial challenge under RFRA is one that contends the statute is impermissible in all, or at least the vast majority, of its intended applications) (brackets and quotations omitted).

. Although Iglesia maintains it has demonstrated the ability to compensate Mr. Medina-Valdez, it expressly declines to develop any arguments to that effect on appeal. See Aplt. Br. at 9 n.4 (Plaintiffs maintain that they have  show[n] they have the ability to pay Mr. Medina-Valdez. However, because the agency's RFRA violation and the District Court's violation of the Chenery doctrine are so plain, Plaintiffs focus their appeal on these issues.)

. Iglesia's appellate briefs suggest it is attempting to raise a RFRA claim under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Aplt. Br. at 2; Aplt. Reply Br. at 8 n. 3; see 5 U.S.C.  702; but see id.  704. Even assuming that this is the proper characterization of the appeal, we would still review the agency's legal conclusion de novo. See BNSF R. Co. v. U.S. Dep't of Labor, 816 F.3d 628, 638 (10th Cir. 2016).

. See also Eternal Word Television Network, Inc. v. Sec'y of U.S. Dep't of Health & Human Servs., 818 F.3d 1122, 1143 (11th Cir. 2016) (We now consider whether, accepting the plaintiffs' sincere religious beliefs, the [disputed regulation] substantially burdens their religious exercise.); Kaemmerling v. Lappin, 553 F.3d 669, 679 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (Accepting as true the factual allegations that [plaintiff's] beliefs are sincere and of a religious naturebut not the legal conclusion, cast as a factual allegation, that his religious exercise is substantially burdened ); cf. Hobby Lobby, 134 S. Ct. at 2775 (Because RFRA applies in these cases, we must next ask whether the HHS contraceptive mandate substantially burden[s] the exercise of religion.) (citing 42 U.S.C.  2000bb-1(a)) (alteration in original)).

. This case stands in contrast to recent RFRA litigation concerning regulations promulgated under the Affordable Care Act that required group health plans to cover contraceptive services for women. The regulations allowed religious non-profit organizations to opt out of this requirement by notifying their health insurance issuer or the federal government. Non-profit religious employers challenged the regulations, arguing that the opt-out process substantially burdened their exercise of religion. See Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557, 1559 (2016) (per curiam). Iglesias makes no such argument here that the process to obtain an R-1 visa, including the preparation and submission of documentation to meet the compensation regulation, burdens its religious exercise.

. Iglesia also contends the compensation regulation burdens religious workers who take a vow of poverty. Aplt. Br. at 14; see 72 Fed. Reg. 20442, 20446 (Apr. 25, 2007) (exempting from the compensation regulation religious workers who have taken a vow of poverty or similarly made a formal lifetime commitment to a religious way of life). But Iglesia has not supported that Mr. Medina-Valdez has taken a vow of poverty or made a similar lifetime commitment. In any event, it forfeited this argument by failing to raise it in district court and has not argued plain error on appeal. See Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123, 1130 (10th Cir. 2011).

. Iglesia, having argued substantial burden before the district court, now criticizes that court for deciding that very issue, seemingly changing positions according to the exigencies of the moment. See Queen v. TA Operating, LLC, 734 F.3d 1081, 1087 (10th Cir. 2013). We do not, however, rely on a judicial estoppel ground to affirm.

Scott M. Matheson, Jr. Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. WILLIAMS BAINA ANTEZAN, Petitioner, v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. No. 16-17475 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before MARCUS, JILL PRYOR and FAY, Circuit Judges.

Williams Baina Antezan, a native and citizen of Bolivia, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' (BIA) final order affirming the Immigration Judge's (IJ) denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). The BIA's decision rested on its conclusion that Antezan failed to meet the particular social group requirement for asylum and withholding of removal and to demonstrate it was more likely than not that he would be tortured such that he would be eligible for CAT relief. After careful review, we deny Antezan's petition.

I. BACKGROUND

Antezan obtained a multiple entry visa and, beginning in 2007, was admitted to the United States several times. In 2010, after having entered the United States on five previous occasions, remaining very close to the legal time limit, and then engaging in a consistent pattern of short exits, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detained Antezan upon his arrival at the Miami airport. Based on this pattern of behavior, whichalong with his inconsistent statements, unemployment, and inability to explain his pattern of visitsapparently evidenced that he intended to immigrate to the United States without an immigrant visa, DHS obtained an order of removal for Antezan. In response, Antezan claimed that he feared returning to Bolivia. An asylum officer found that his fear was credible, so Antezan was paroled into the United States and his initial removal proceedings were terminated.

A. Application for Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and CAT Relief

Antezan thereafter applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT relief. In his application, Antezan stated that he was the financial leader of a Bolivian Company, Orion Bolivia. He and Jose Moscoso formed Orion Bolivia to invest funds in the New York Stock Exchange. They began with 24 investors, including themselves, and eventually acquired 900 investors. They entrusted the company's money to a man named Hector Gallardo; Gallardo in turn invested the money in another company and lost it all. Orion Bolivia investors soon learned of the losses, and some threatened retaliation against Antezan and Moscoso.

Antezan alleged that the investors threatened to retaliate against him and his family with violence. One investor, a nephew of the President of Bolivia, threatened to use his influence to have Antezan extradited from the United States to Bolivia where he would be tortured. Two investors threatened to contact Bolivian military members who had contacts in the United States to take justice into their own hands.

After he filed his application, Antezan again was placed in removal proceedings.

B. Hearing Before the IJ

At his hearing before the IJ, Antezan testified that he could not return to Bolivia because of the threat of retaliation by the people who had invested in his company. He asserted that he feared persecution on account of his membership as one of a group of 24 original investors in Orion Bolivia, which he asserted qualified as a particular social group, a protected ground under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He acknowledged that he had never been physically attacked, but asserted that he and his family members had been harassed and threatened because investors were angry that he had lost their money.

Antezan testified that, before he left Bolivia, a woman threatened him at his office, telling him she would bring others to beat him. In March 2008 he left Bolivia for the United States; while he was in the United States a group (the leader of which apparently had a sibling in the military) came to Antezan's mother's home (where Antezan had been living before he left the country) with the intention of holding his mother hostage. The group attempted to open the door but could not get in, so they tried to burn the house down with Antezan's mother, siblings, and niece inside. Television reporters arrived on the scene and thwarted the group's plan.

Antezan further testified that, while he was in the United States in April 2008, a man named Jose Pena Rieta wrote him to explain that 900 people, presumably the 900 Orion Bolivia investors, did not believe Antezan that the fraud had been committed by Gallardo. Rieta said he wanted Antezan's head and, if he could not get Antezan, he would go after Antezan's family because he knew where they lived. Antezan testified that his brother was attacked the same month and beaten by a group of people. One man in the group pointed a revolver at Antezan's brother and said he would not stop until he killed Antezan.

Antezan testified to other harassment he experienced after investors lost their money in Orion Bolivia. The nephew of the Bolivian president said he was going to use his influence to have Antezan extradited to Bolivia to have him tortured and killed. A man named Edwin Martinez Onya sent Antezan an email complaining that Onya's family had been physically abused because people thought he was involved in Orion Bolivia. Onya told Antezan that if Onya's family was hurt, he would find Antezan and kill him.

Antezan testified that his sister Juana Maria Baina was harassed on three occasions because of her relation to Antezan. First, she was physically attacked at work by people who pulled her hair. Second, she received a phone call from a man who told her that he was going to kill Antezan and that she and her children were going to be kidnapped and killed. Third, a woman threatened Baina and passed out pamphlets denigrating her reputation.

Finally, Antezan testified that two investors reported to him that they had received death threats.

The IJ took administrative notice that Gallardo was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 60 months' imprisonment. Antezan testified that he cooperated with the criminal prosecution against Gallardo. As documentary support for his application, Antezan submitted press releases, signed by himself and Moscoso, about Orion Bolivia's loss of the investors' money. He submitted a newspaper article reporting that Orion Bolivia was being prosecuted for fraud. He also submitted emails in which Orion Bolivia investors expressed frustration with Antezan and Moscoso. None of the documents, however, mentioned a group of 24 original investors.

Antezan submitted the 2011 State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices on Bolivia, which indicated that the principle human rights problems reported in the country were arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life, arbitrary arrest and detention, and denial of a fair public trial. Antezan's lawyer argued that the State Department report showed that individuals in Bolivia take the law into their own hands, using torture and lynching to exact justice. Antezan submitted two articles about lynching in Bolivia, documenting the lynching of suspected witches, thieves, and rapists.

C. IJ's Decision and Appeal to BIA

The IJ denied Antezan's application. With respect to asylum and withholding of removal, the IJ concluded that Antezan failed to demonstrate past persecution or an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution on account of membership in a particular social group. Although the IJ found Antezan's testimony to be credible, he nonetheless concluded that there was insufficient evidence that the harassment Antezan suffered while he was still in Bolivia amounted to past persecution. The IJ further concluded that, although Antezan had a well-founded fear of future persecution based on threats and attacks on his family after his departure from Bolivia, the persecution Antezan feared was personal and retaliatory, not based on a protected ground. The social group Antezan advanced24 original Orion Bolivia investorsfailed to qualify as a particular social group under the INA because it lacked any immutable characteristic or social distinction and could not be defined with sufficient particularity to delimit its membership. For these reasons, the IJ denied Antezan asylum and withholding of removal.

As to CAT relief, the IJ stated that Antezan's torture claim rested on the fact that some of the aggrieved investors were connected with military members or the Bolivian government, and that if Antezan returned to Bolivia he would be tortured by some government or military official. This, the IJ concluded, was speculative and insufficient to establish that it was more likely than not that Antezan would be subjected to torture if he returned to Bolivia. Thus, the IJ denied Antezan's application for relief under CAT.

Antezan appealed the IJ's decision to the BIA, which affirmed and dismissed the appeal. As to asylum and withholding of removal, the BIA considered the threats against Antezan cumulatively and concluded that they amounted to harassment but not persecution. Threats and harm directed against Antezan's family members, the BIA noted, were not directed towards Antezan specifically. Moreover, the BIA agreed with the IJ that the threats Antezan received were related to a personal dispute rather than on account of a protected particular social group. As to CAT relief, the BIA agreed with the IJ that Antezan's support for his application was speculative and insufficient to satisfy the burden of proof.

D. Remand to the BIA

Antezan petitioned this Court for review, and the government filed an unopposed motion to remand to the BIA for a renewed determination of whether Antezan's proposed group of 24 original investors constituted a particular social group under Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 227 (B.I.A. 2014), or, alternatively, for the BIA to conduct a mixed motive analysis to determine whether membership in such a group would constitute one central reason for the feared persecution. We granted the government's motion.

On remand, the BIA again dismissed the appeal, incorporating by reference its previous decision. The BIA concluded that Antezan's proposed social group did not amount to a particular social group under the INA because it lacked the requisite social distinction. Specifically, Antezan failed to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the proposed group was perceived by Bolivian society as a particular social group. Rather, the BIA opined, the evidence showed that the group of 24 original Orion Bolivia investors were perceived as a group only by others who lost money they had invested in the company.

Relatedly, the BIA determined that Antezan failed to establish the requisite nexus between the harm he experienced and a protected ground. In making this finding, the BIA relied on the IJ's conclusion that the alleged persecutors were motivated by a desire for personal revenge for a failed business venture, rather than on account of an enumerated ground. And Antezan had shown no other central reason for being targeted, so he could not prevail even under a mixed motive theory.

Antezan now petitions this Court for review.

II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW

We review only the BIA's decision as the final judgment, except to the extent that the BIA expressly adopts the IJ's opinion. Al Najjar v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 1262, 1284 (11th Cir. 2001). If the BIA adopts the IJ's reasoning, we will review the IJ's decision as well. Id. Here, because the BIA expressly agreed with the IJ in several of its determinationsincluding that the threats Antezan received were related to a personal dispute rather than on account of a protected particular social group and that Antezan failed to prove a clear probability that he would be torturedwe review both opinions on these points.

We review de novo the BIA's legal conclusions, including whether an alleged group qualifies as a particular social group under the INA. Gonzalez v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 820 F.3d 399, 403 (11th Cir. 2016). We review factual findings, including credibility determinations, under the substantial-evidence test, under which we will affirm findings that are supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole, viewing the record evidence in the light most favorable to the agency's decision and draw[ing] all reasonable inferences in favor of that decision. Forgue v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 401 F.3d 1282, 1286 (11th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted).

III. APPLICABLE LAW

An applicant for asylum must meet the INA's definition of refugee. INA  208(b)(1), 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(1). The definition includes:

any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality  and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

INA  101(a)(42)(A), 8 U.S.C.  1101(a)(42)(A). Thus, to satisfy the definition of refugee, the applicant must, with specific and credible evidence, demonstrate (1) past persecution on account of a statutorily listed factor, or (2) a well-founded fear that the statutorily listed factor will cause future persecution. Ruiz v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 440 F.3d 1247, 1257 (11th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Antezan's application for asylum and withholding of removal asserted that he was a member of a particular social group; that is, the original 24 investors in Orion Bolivia.

The BIA has held that a particular social group must be (1) composed of members who share a common characteristic (2) defined with particularity, and (3) socially distinct within the society in question. Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 237; see Gonzalez, 820 F.3d at 404-05 (deferring to the BIA's interpretation of particular social group). To be socially distinct, a group must be perceived by society as a group. Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 240. The burden is on the applicant to present evidence that the proposed group exists in the society in question. Id. at 244.

To establish eligibility for withholding of removal, an applicant must demonstrate that if he were removed, his life or freedom would be threatened because of his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Sepulveda v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 401 F.3d 1226, 1232 (11th Cir. 2005). The standard for withholding of removal is more stringent than the asylum standard. Id. An applicant for withholding of removal must demonstrate that it is more likely than not that he will be persecuted or tortured upon returning to his country of origin. Id.

To obtain relief under CAT, an applicant must prove that it is more likely than not that he  would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal. 8 C.F.R.  1208.16(c)(2). In assessing whether it is more likely than not that an applicant would be tortured in the proposed country of removal, a decisionmaker should consider all evidence relevant to the possibility of future torture, including, but not limited to: evidence of past torture inflicted upon the applicant; evidence that the applicant could relocate to a part of the country of removal where he is unlikely to be tortured; evidence of gross, flagrant, or mass violations of human rights within the country of removal; and other relevant information regarding conditions in the country of removal. Id.  1208.16(c)(3).

III. DISCUSSION

A. Asylum and Withholding of Removal

Antezan contends that the BIA's denial of asylum and withholding of removal was erroneous. Specifically, he argues that the BIA erred when it concluded that he failed to establish that he suffered past persecution and was targeted as a member of a particular social group. Accepting for argument's sake that Antezan demonstrated past persecution and accepting the IJ's finding that he demonstrated a well-founded fear of future persecution, we agree with the BIA that he nonetheless failed to prove that any persecution was or would be based all or in part on his membership in a particular social group.

Antezan argues that the 24 original investors' shared experience as investors and victims of Gallardo's scheme is a common immutable characteristic that renders them a particular social group under the INA. This shared experience, Antezan asserts, is fundamental to the investors' individual identities in society. And, Antezan maintains, based on the original investors' interpersonal interactions with other investors, Bolivian society associates the group with Orion Bolivia and the financial losses the company suffered.

Unfortunately, Antezan's evidence demonstrates only that those who harassed him and his family understood him to be part of a group; he has offered argument, but no evidence, to establish that the group of 24 original investors is recognized as distinct in broader society. The only evidence Antezan proffered that might establish his status to society were press releases and a news article about Orion Bolivia's losses, but those documents never identified a group of 24 investors; rather, they only identified Moscoso and Antezan. Antezan has offered no evidence linking the group of 24 original investors to any societal perception. Thus, the BIA was correct to conclude that Antezan failed to show that the group of 24 original investors comprised a particular social group under the INA. The BIA therefore appropriately denied Antezan's application for asylum and withholding of removal.

B. CAT Relief

Antezan next contends that the BIA's rejection of his application for CAT relief was not based on substantial evidence. He asserts his evidence showed that members of the Bolivian government and military threatened him and his family with torture and death and that human rights violations and corruption are widespread problems in Bolivia. These he says, coupled with the threats and personal attacks on his family while he was living in the United States, demonstrate his eligibility for relief.

We cannot say, however, that the BIA's rejection of Antezan's application for CAT relief based on the IJ's findings was unsupported by substantial evidence. The IJ found that Antezan had not been tortured in the past and that, although Antezan's family members were harassed, none was tortured. These findings are amply supported by the record. The IJ found also that, although Antezan arguably could not relocate to another part of Bolivia, a small country, to avoid harassment, there was no evidence of gross, flagrant, or mass violations of human rights in Bolivia. Antezan has not argued that this finding is unsupported by substantial evidence.

The remainder of Antezan's evidence, including threats by individuals related to the Bolivian President and a member of the militarywas, according to the IJ, too speculative to satisfy Antezan's heavy burden to show it was more likely than not he would be tortured if he returned to Bolivia. Viewing the evidence Antezan presented, as we must, in the light most favorable to the IJ's and BIA's decisions, we cannot say that the conclusion that the evidence was speculative was unsupported by the record as a whole. Forgue, 401 F.3d at 1286. Thus, we do not disturb the BIA's rejection of Antezan's application for CAT relief.

IV. CONCLUSION

For these reasons, we deny Antezan's petition for review.

PETITION DENIED.

FOOTNOTES

. The government refers to the petitioner as Williams Baina Antenaz or, alternatively, Baina. We note that Antenaz appears to be a misspelling of the petitioner's name. Petitioner's brief does not indicate his preferred name; we refer to him herein as Antezan.

PER CURIAM:
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. CARMEN ELENA CORVERO-ALFARO, JUAN DIEGO CORVERO-ALFARO, Petitioners, v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. No. 17-10533 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, MARTIN, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

Carmen Corvero-Alfaro, a citizen of Guatemala, seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals's (BIA) decision affirming the immigration judge's (IJ) denial of her application for withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Corvero-Alfaro argues that the BIA erred by finding she was not a member of a protected group and likely would not face persecution if she returned to Guatemala. After careful review, we are bound to deny her petition.

I.

Corvero-Alfaro was born in Guatemala. In 2003, while she was working in a clothing factory there, two of her coworkers tried to recruit her to join their gang, MS-18. The coworkers, one of whom was Corvero-Alfaro's relative, threatened her a number of times, saying there would be consequences if she refused to join. In June 2003, Corvero-Alfaro's two coworkers attacked her, throwing her to the ground, kicking and hitting her. They told her that this was a consequence of not joining the gang, and that things would get worse if she continued refusing to join. Corvero-Alfaro saw a doctor at the factory who gave her medication. She had bruises and scratches on her head, face, neck, and arms. Corvero-Alfaro says the threats continued after this attack.

In 2004, Corvero-Alfaro left Guatemala and moved to the United States. She says she left because she was afraid of the gang. In 2012, Corvero-Alfaro moved from the United States to Mexico. She met her son there, who also fled MS-18, and lived with her husband's parents for three years, eventually becoming a permanent resident. But Corvero-Alfaro also did not feel safe in Mexico. She and her husband's family were victims of crimes, and she feared being targeted because her husband was living in the United States. In October 2015, Corvero-Alfaro and her son entered the United States. Soon after they arrived, they were detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS served Corvero-Alfaro with a Notice to Appear, charging her with removability under 8 U.S.C.  1182(a)(6)(A)(i). Corvero-Alfaro applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the regulations implementing the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

The IJ denied Corvero-Alfaro's application for relief. The IJ found that Corvero-Alfaro was ineligible for asylum from Guatemala because she had resettled in Mexico. The IJ denied Corvero-Alfaro's withholding of removal claim, finding she had not shown past persecution or a clear probability of future persecution based on a protected ground. The IJ also denied Corvero-Alfaro's claim for CAT relief, finding that she had not shown it likely that she would be tortured, or that the government would be involved. The BIA affirmed. This appeal followed.

While Corvero-Alfaro initially sought asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under CAT, in her petition for review she challenges only the BIA's decision denying her withholding of removal under the INA. She argues that the BIA erred in finding she would not be persecuted in Guatemala and that any persecution she would face was not the result of her membership in a cognizable particular social group.

II.

When the BIA issues a decision, we review that decision and the IJ's decision to the extent the BIA expressly adopted it. Al Najjar v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 1262, 1284 (11th Cir. 2001). In this case, the BIA expressly adopted and affirmed the IJ's decision, so we review both decisions. See id.

We review de novo the BIA's legal determinations, but that review is informed by the principle of deference articulated in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S. Ct. 2778 (1984). Castillo-Arias v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 446 F.3d 1190, 1195 (11th Cir. 2006) (quotation and citation omitted). Whether an asserted group qualifies as a particular social group under the INA is a question of law. See id. This Court follows the BIA's interpretation of what constitutes a particular social group under the INA unless the interpretation is unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious, or clearly contrary to law. Id.

To obtain withholding of removal, an applicant must establish that her life or freedom would be threatened in that country because of her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Tan v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 446 F.3d 1369, 1375 (11th Cir. 2006) (quotation omitted and alteration adopted). Corvero-Alfaro bears the burden of demonstrating it is more likely than not that she will be persecuted on the basis of a protected ground if she returns to Guatemala. See id. This burden can be met either by showing past persecution or a more-likely-than-not threat of future persecution motivated at least in part on a protected ground. See id.

Corvero-Alfaro argues that the BIA erred in finding that any persecution she may face would not be based on her membership in a particular social group. A particular social group refers to persons who share a common, immutable characteristic that the members of the group either cannot change, or should not be required to change because it is fundamental to their individual identities or consciences. Rodriguez v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 735 F.3d 1302, 1310 (11th Cir. 2013) (per curiam) (quotation omitted). To be cognizable in a withholding of removal claim, a group must be particular and distinct. See Gonzalaz v. U.S. Att'y Gen.,820 F.3d 399, 404 (11th Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (deferring to the BIA's interpretation of particular social group). The BIA has said that for a group to be particular, it must be discrete and have definable boundariesit must not be amorphous, overbroad, diffuse, or subjective. Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 227, 239 (BIA 2014). A particular social group cannot be defined so broadly that it becomes a catch-all for all groups who might claim persecution. Castillo-Arias, 446 F.3d at 1197. And to be socially distinct, the BIA has said a proposed group must be perceived as a group by society. Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 240. The risk of persecution alone does not create a particular social group within the meaning of the INA. Castillo-Arias, 446 F.3d at 1198.

Corvero-Alfaro says she is a member of three particular social groups: (1) Guatemalan women who have resisted gang recruitment; (2) Guatemalan women who expressly oppose gang activities; and (3) female relatives of gang members. [R. 26] The BIA found that these social groups were neither particular nor distinct, stating that Corvero-Alfaro's proposed groups are essentially defined without limiting characteristics, and that she had provided no evidence that her proposed groups were viewed as distinct in Guatemala. In support, the BIA pointed to past agency precedent that found mistreatment on account of resistance to gang recruitment does not constitute persecution on account of a protected ground.

We cannot say that the BIA's determination was unreasonable. See Castillo-Arias, 446 F.3d at 1196. This Court has previously concluded that noncriminal informants working against a gang were not members of a particular social group. Id. at 1198. Specifically, this Court ruled that their defining attribute is their persecution by the cartel, and [t]he risk of persecution alone does not create a particular social group within the meaning of the INA, as virtually the entire population of Colombia is a potential subject of persecution by the cartel. Id. Similar analysis supports the BIA's determination here. Corvero-Alfaro has provided no evidence that the social groups she identifies are viewed as distinct within Guatemala, could be defined with particularity, or are characterized by traits other than being previously targeted by gangs. See Gonzalez, 820 F.3d at 404; Castillo-Arias, 446 F.3d at 1198.

Because it was not unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious, or clearly contrary to law, we affirm the BIA's decision that her claimed social groups are not cognizable under the INA. See Castillo-Arias, 446 F.3d at 1196. While we acknowledge Corvero-Alfaro's past harm and future risk, she has not met the requirements for withholding of removal as set out by this Court. As a result, we need not reach her argument that the BIA erred in finding she did not show it more likely than not that she would be persecuted on the basis of her identified social groups if returned to Guatemala.

PETITION DENIED.

FOOTNOTES

. Corvero-Alfaro's minor son, Juan Diego Corvero-Alfaro, joined in the petition for review. However, he was a derivative beneficiary only for his mother's asylum claim, which has not been appealed.

PER CURIAM:
PRESS RELEASE

Statement by European Commission and ECB staff following the conclusion of the seventh post-programme surveillance mission to Portugal

Staff from the European Commission, in liaison with staff from the European Central Bank, visited Lisbon from 28 November to 6 December to conduct the seventh post-programme surveillance (PPS) review for Portugal. This was coordinated with the International Monetary Funds post-programme monitoring visit. Staff from the European Stability Mechanism also participated in the meetings on aspects related to its Early Warning System. The main objective of PPS is to assess the countrys capacity to repay loans granted under the former EU-IMF financial assistance programme and, if necessary, to recommend corrective actions.

The economic recovery further gained momentum. Economic activity has accelerated and has become more broad-based, with a pick-up in investment and exports alongside continued growth in consumption. Employment grew even faster than GDP, particularly in labour-intensive services related to tourism, while wage growth remained overall subdued. Although GDP growth is expected to remain strong in 2018 on the back of further export and employment growth, it is projected to moderate over the medium term.

The current favourable macroeconomic and financial conditions provide an opportunity to address Portugals persistent macroeconomic imbalances. In particular, elevated public and private sector debt and prevailing rigidities in the economy weigh on medium-term potential growth and leave the country vulnerable to shocks. Moreover, the limited intermediation capacity of the banking system on account of gradually declining, but still high NPL ratios, limits investment.

Further fiscal consolidation will be important for ensuring a steady decline in the still high public debt level. The current favourable cyclical conditions together with the decline in interest payments should be used for furthering structural fiscal adjustment to ensure a sustainable budgetary position over the medium term. However, the currently planned structural adjustment is at risk of deviating significantly from the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). This strengthens the case for containing expenditure growth and using gains from lower interest expenditure for accelerating public debt reduction. In this context, progress in broadening the spending review is very welcome, even if more ambitious savings targets could be considered. In a similar vein the Country-Specific Recommendations by the Council regarding expenditure control for state-owned enterprises and in the health sector as well as the pension system remain valid.

The recovery of the Portuguese banking sector continues, while key vulnerabilities remain. Near-term risks emanating from the Portuguese banking sector have been markedly reduced compared to last year as the major banks managed to attract new capital. Nevertheless, banks continue to face important challenges, including high non-performing loans, weak profitability and thin capital buffers. The transition to new accounting and regulatory standards (in particular IFRS 9 and MREL) may put further strain on existing capital buffers. Also in this view, banks should improve profitability by, for example, further reducing their cost base. The platform to enhance coordination of NPL management, which is being developed by banks with the support of the authorities, and the strengthened framework for corporate debt restructuring are important initiatives in this regard.

Addressing impediments to investment and further improving the business environment will be key for strengthening potential growth. In this context, the authorities efforts to improve the relatively low skill level of the Portuguese labour force and to support innovation are highly welcome. The measures implemented under the adjustment programme contributed to the recent positive developments in the labour market. This notwithstanding, increases in the minimum wage should take into account productivity growth and the impact on the overall wage structure and thereby employment opportunities for less skilled workers. Moreover, the gap between permanent and temporary labour contracts should primarily be addressed by making the former more flexible rather than by introducing restrictions for the latter. Despite significant improvements over the last several years, further increasing the efficiency of the judiciary will positively impact the business environment. Increasing potential growth would also require implementing further measures to improve the efficiency of product markets, most notably in the energy and transport sectors as well as in business services.

The mission would like to thank the Portuguese authorities for the helpful and open discussions.

The next PPS mission is planned to take place in the spring of 2018.
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United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. EXPRESSIONS HAIR DESIGN, Linda Fiacco, The Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, Inc., Peter Freeman, Bunda Starr Corp., Donna Pabst, Five Points Academy, Steve Milles, Patio.com LLC, David Ross, PlaintiffsAppellees, v. Eric T. SCHNEIDERMAN, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of New York, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., in his official capacity as District Attorney of New YorkCounty, Eric Gonzalez, in his official capacity as Acting District Attorney of Kings County *, DefendantsAppellants. Nos. 13-4533, 13-4537 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before: Wesley, Livingston, and Carney, Circuit Judges. For DefendantsAppellants: Judith Vale, Senior Assistant Solicitor General, Barbara D. Underwood, Solicitor General, Steven C. Wu, Deputy Solicitor General, New York, NY, for Eric T. Schneiderman, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of New York. Kathy Chang Park, for Zachary W. Carter, Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, New York, NY, for Cyrus R. Vance, in his official capacity as District Attorney of New York County, and Eric Gonzalez, in his official capacity as Acting District Attorney of Kings County. Seth E. Mermin, Thomas Bennigson, Public Good Law Center, Berkeley, CA, for amicus curiae Public Good Law Center, in support of DefendantsAppellants. For PlaintiffsAppellees: Deepak Gupta, Jonathan E. Taylor, Gupta Wessler PLLC, Washington, DC, for PlaintiffsAppellees. Richard A. Samp, Washington Legal Foundation, Washington, DC, for amicus curiae Washington Legal Foundation, in support of PlaintiffsAppellees. Sharon K. Robertson, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, New York, NY, for amici curiae United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, Inc., Consumer Action, and National Association of Consumer Advocates, in support of PlaintiffsAppellees.

On remand from the Supreme Court, we are tasked with determining whether [New York's General Business Law ] 518 is a valid commercial speech regulation under Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557, 100 S.Ct. 2343, 65 L.Ed.2d 341 (1980), and whether the law can be upheld as a valid disclosure requirement under Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 105 S.Ct. 2265, 85 L.Ed.2d 652 (1985). Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman (Expressions II),  U.S. , 137 S.Ct. 1144, 1151, 197 L.Ed.2d 442 (2017). Finding aspects of the New York statute at issue in this case unclear, and, further, that the resolution of these ambiguities will determine the course of our constitutional analysis, we defer decision and certify the following question to the New York Court of Appeals: Does a merchant comply with New York's General Business Law  518 so long as the merchant posts the total-dollars-and-cents price charged to credit card users? The New York Court of Appeals may reformulate or expand this certified question as it deems appropriate.

BACKGROUND

We largely assume familiarity with the factual and procedural history discussed extensively in our prior opinion in this case. See Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman (Expressions I), 808 F.3d 118 (2d Cir. 2015). We recount this history, and the case's subsequent procedural history, only as necessary to explain our decision to certify.

In Expressions I, we considered the plaintiffs' First Amendment challenge to New York's General Business Law  518 (Section 518). That provision, the scope and application of which, as we explain below, is directly at issue in this iteration of the case, reads, in its entirety, as follows:

No seller in any sales transaction may impose a surcharge on a holder who elects to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means.

Any seller who violates the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars or a term of imprisonment up to one year, or both.

We observed then that the plaintiffs' papers appeared to raise two facially distinct challenges to Section 518. First, [certain of the plaintiffs] aver [red] that they would like to post only a single price for their goods and services and charge more than that price to credit-card customers, but are prohibited from doing so by Section 518. Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 128. In other words, these plaintiffs claimed, they would like to advertise or mark their products at one price, displaying the credit card surcharge to be imposedeither as a percentage of the base price or as a dollar amountalongside that single price. For instance, a merchant might post a price of $10 for an item, but note with roughly equal prominence either that a surcharge of thirty cents, or, alternatively, that a three-percent surcharge would be imposed on credit card users. See Joint App'x 140. We termed this proposed pricing approach a single-sticker-price scheme, and explained that a pricing scheme of this sort was clearly prohibit[ed] by Section 518. Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 129.

Second, one of the plaintiffs sought First Amendment protection for a dual-price scheme, under which a seller posts two different prices for its services[,] one for credit-card customers and one for cash customers. Id. Though we thought it far from clear that Section 518 would bar a seller's use of such a scheme, see id. at 139, the plaintiff suggested that it fear [ed]  prosecut[ion] for characterizing this [posted] price differential as a surcharge or for telling its customers that credit costs more,  id. at 129.

Following our decision in Expressions I, in which we (1) rejected the plaintiffs' as-applied First Amendment challenge to the single-sticker pricing scheme on the grounds that Section 518, applied in that context, regulated conduct and not speech, id. at 13035, and (2) declined, on Pullman abstention grounds, to reach the question whether Section 518, if ever applied to the proposed dual-pricing scheme, would withstand a challenge under the First Amendment, id. at 13741, the plaintiffs petitioned for certiorari. The Supreme Court granted that petition, and, after argument, vacated and remanded.

Narrowing the scope of their challenge on certiorari, the plaintiffs specifically focused on the proposed single-sticker pricing scheme. See Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 1149 & n.1; see also id. at n.4. Analyzing that scheme, the Supreme Court agreed with our assessment that [Section] 518 regulates a relationship between a sticker price and the price charged to credit card users. Id. at 1151. However, the Supreme Court explained, because the statute, as we understood it, primarily operates by regulating the way sellers communicate their prices, rather than by regulating merchants' prices themselves, Section 518 must still be analyzed as a speech regulation under the First Amendment. Id.

Having determined that Section 518 should be analyzed under the First Amendment doctrines governing state regulation of commercial speech, the Supreme Court then remanded this case for us to determine whether [Section] 518 is a valid commercial speech regulation under Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557, 100 S.Ct. 2343, 65 L.Ed.2d 341 (1980), and whether the law can be upheld as a valid disclosure requirement under Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626, 105 S.Ct. 2265, 85 L.Ed.2d 652 (1985). Id.

DISCUSSION

I

Taking up the task before us on remand, we find it necessary to first certify to the New York Court of Appeals a question of state law, the answer to which will directly shape our First Amendment analysis. Not only do the First Amendment issues in this case not, to our mind, admit of easy answers, but, more importantly, these issues cannot be addressed without initially considering how Section 518's restrictions operate in practice.

We have previously noted our uncertainty about how widely Section 518's restrictions sweep. See Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 137 (noting that the primary problem with the plaintiffs' First Amendment challenges is that it is far from clear that Section 518 prohibits the relevant conduct in the first place). As we explain below, resolution of at least some of this uncertainty will clear the path for our First Amendment analysis. Thus, before definitively addressing the questions the Supreme Court has asked us to resolvenamely, whether Section 518, as applied to the single-price scheme, is either a valid regulation of commercial speech under Central Hudson or a permissible disclosure rule under Zaudererwe seek the benefit of the New York Court of Appeals' views with respect to certain aspects of Section 518' s operation.

Specifically, we certify to the New York Court of Appeals the question whether a merchant complies with Section 518 so long as the merchant posts the total dollars-and-cents price charged to credit card users. Section 518' s prohibitionwhich, by its terms, governs whenever a seller impose[s] a surcharge on a holder who elects to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar meanshas never been understood to bar differential pricing schemes in their entirety. See Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 12326. The State does not appear to have ever contended, for instance, that Section 518 bars sellers from offering discounts on their advertised prices to consumers willing to pay in cash. If we are correct in assuming that Section 518 permits a merchant to use certain differential pricing schemes even as it bars the use of others, the First Amendment questions in this case necessarily center on the relationship between the pricing approach we took to be barred by Section 518 (the single-sticker scheme) and potential alternative methods for disclosing and implementing pricing schemes that differentiate between credit-card and cash payment.

Take, for example, the question whether Section 518 can be upheld as a valid disclosure requirement under Zauderer. Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 1151. Following the path laid down by the Supreme Court's decision in Zauderer, our precedent holds that we apply a more lenient standard of review when adjudicating a First Amendment challenge to a law that forces a commercial entity to make purely factual and uncontroversial disclosures regarding the product it is offering for sale. N.Y. State Rest. Ass'n v. N.Y.C. Bd. of Health (NYSRA), 556 F.3d 114, 132 (2d Cir. 2009) (quoting Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 651, 105 S.Ct. 2265). More specifically, we have held that Zauderer's less-exacting standard applies whenever a law mandates that a merchant disclose specific facts relating to a product it is offering for sale, and, further, that this standard is applicable even where the merchant is otherwise willing to disclose the information at issue, but prefers to do so in a manner different than the one the law requires. See NYSRA, 556 F.3d at 12122 (describing both New York City's calorie disclosure rules and the restaurant association's suggested alternatives).

Under this precedent, Section 518 could potentially be understood, from a First Amendment perspective, to do nothing but compel the truthful disclosure of an item's credit-card price. For, even as Section 518 prohibits single-sticker pricingin which a merchant does not directly disclose the price it charges to credit card usersit might also, understood correctly, permit merchants to post the cash price alongside the credit card price, using something like the dual-price scheme described above. If this is soand though we express no view on the question herethe practical legal effect of Section 518 might be to compel merchants to disclose an item's credit card price, and Zauderer might then provide the appropriate framework for analyzing any resulting First Amendment claims.

More fundamentally, because the question whether to apply Central Hudson's test or Zauderer's turns in part on a functional analysis of Section 518, the First Amendment inquiry in this case properly begins by accounting for the way the statute operates in practice. Despite the general rationale it offered in Zauderer for the lesser standard of review it articulated in that case, the Supreme Court has never clearly specified a governing framework that determines when Zauderer's less-exacting standard should apply instead of Central Hudson's intermediate scrutiny. See Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 650, 105 S.Ct. 2265 (explaining only that there are material differences between disclosure requirements and outright prohibitions on speech). However, the Supreme Court has suggested that, at a minimum, Zauderer supplies the governing standard when evaluating the constitutionality of a law (1) designed to address misleading commercial speech (or, presumably, its equivalent, the non-disclosure of information material to the consumer), (2) which mandates only that the merchant make certain truthful statements, and (3) which does not prevent the merchant from conveying additional truthful information. See Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz, P.A. v. United States, 559 U.S. 229, 250, 130 S.Ct. 1324, 176 L.Ed.2d 79 (2010) (distinguishing Zauderer from In re R.M.J., 455 U.S. 191, 102 S.Ct. 929, 71 L.Ed.2d 64 (1982), where the Court applied Central Hudson).

We see no obvious way to conduct the functional analysis this view of the Central Hudson/Zauderer distinction requires without first gaining greater clarity about the correct application of Section 518 under New York law. Here, of course, the State argues that Section 518 is designed to address the possibility that consumers will be misled if a merchant does not clearly disclose, at the outset, the price it charges to credit card users. As a result, the scope of Section 518's prohibition is crucial to our analysis in this case. If Section 518 forces a merchant to disclose an item's credit-card price, without otherwise either barring the merchant from (a) implementing (and describing to customers) a pricing scheme that differentiates between payments by credit card and cash or (b) conveying to its customers other information the merchant finds relevant, then Zauderer might apply. However, if the statutory prohibition sweeps much more broadly, then Central Hudson might apply. At the very least, without some clarification of Section 518's scope from the Court of Appeals, and in the absence of some other way to identify the actual scope of Section 518's rule, it is not clear that we can even decide the basic question of which standard of reviewCentral Hudson or Zaudererproperly applies.

The plaintiffs resist the suggestion that Zauderer could apply here for two reasons. First, they argue that since Section 518 is framed as a prohibition, it cannot be the case that Zauderer applies. But, as the plaintiffs themselves recognize, the Supreme Court was cognizant of the structure of Section 518 and yet asked us to examine whether the law passed muster under Zauderer. See Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 115152. At the very least, this mandate suggests that a viable argument exists that, irrespective of its framing, Section 518 might survive scrutiny under Zauderer.

Second, the plaintiffs argue that because the text of Section 518 does not identify with precision, or clarity, the type of disclosure it requires, the law cannot survive as a disclosure rule even under Zauderer. Expressions Br. at 14. But, even without disposing of this argument on the merits, it is worth noting that it is essentially a version of the plaintiffs' earlier vagueness argument, which was specifically rejected by the Supreme Court. See Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 115152. Moreover, the plaintiffs cite no authority for the proposition that Zauderer's test imports a clarity requirement, and it is at least subject to question whether such a requirement would make sense in light of the more-abstract materiality standards that form the heart of many disclosure regimes. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C.  77j(b) (requiring disclosures in a prospectus related to the issuance of a security); id.  77k(a) (requiring disclosures in a registration statement related to the issuance of a security); see also Hutchison v. Deutsche Bank Sec. Inc., 647 F.3d 479, 488 (2d Cir. 2011) (If a particular product or product line, or division or segment of a company's business, has independent significance for investors, then even a matter material to less than all of the company's business may be material for purposes of the securities laws.).

In any case, even though we are inclined to reject the plaintiffs' suggestion that Zauderer cannot apply on any reading of Section 518, the Court of Appeals' answer to the question we certify today will be helpful even if Central Hudson is controlling. After all, one of the components of the Central Hudson analysis looks at whether a law restricting commercial speech preserves alternative channels for the speech at issue. See 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484, 502, 116 S.Ct. 1495, 134 L.Ed.2d 711 (1996) (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Kennedy and Ginsburg, JJ.); id. at 52930, 116 S.Ct. 1495 (O'Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and Souter and Breyer, JJ., concurring in the judgment); Fla. Bar v. Went for It, Inc., 515 U.S. 618, 63334, 115 S.Ct. 2371, 132 L.Ed.2d 541 (1995). Thus, if Section 518 restricts certain forms of speech that the State deems particularly deceptive (e.g., failing to post the credit card price), but preserves alternative ways for merchants to communicate the same message (e.g., that consumers will pay less when they pay in cash), that fact would be material to the Central Hudson analysis. Moreover, there is a cognizable argument that, even under a Central Hudson analysis, a focused rule that effectively mandates only that a merchant disclose certain facts to consumers trenches less heavily on First Amendment interests. See Milavetz, 559 U.S. at 256 n.1, 130 S.Ct. 1324 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).

As a result, it is clear to us that securing the Court of Appeals' views on the question whether a merchant complies with Section 518 so long as, when posting prices, the merchant discloses the total dollars-and-cents price charged to credit card users will materially assistand will in fact determine the course ofour First Amendment analysis.

II

Under New York state law, and our local rules, we may certify to the New York Court of Appeals determinative questions of New York law  involved in a case pending before [our] court for which no controlling precedent of the Court of Appeals exists. N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 22,  500.27(a); see also Second Circuit Local Rule 27.2(a). Before certifying, we must answer three questions: (1) whether the New York Court of Appeals has addressed the issue and, if not, whether the decisions of other New York courts permit us to predict how the Court of Appeals would resolve it; (2) whether the question is of importance to the state and may require value judgments and public policy choices; and (3) whether the certified question is determinative of a claim before us. Osterweil v. Bartlett, 706 F.3d 139, 142 (2d Cir. 2013) (quoting Barenboim v. Starbucks Corp., 698 F.3d 104, 109 (2d Cir. 2012)).

As we have previously observed, there is a dearth of case law interpreting Section 518. Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 125 ([T]here are almost no reported cases involving Section 518's application.). The Court of Appeals has never addressed the sweep of the rule laid down in Section 518, and there are no decisions of New York appellate courts (or, for that matter, any substantial judicial authority) that would allow us to fairly predict what interpretation the Court of Appeals might offer. Specifically, outside our own assessment that Section 518 bars single-sticker pricing, there is no judicial authority that would indicate to us whether Section 518's bar is: (1) designed to force disclosure of an item's credit-card price (and, if so, how), (2) alternatively, whether the law is designed to sweep much more broadly, or, (3) at the other extreme, whether it bars single-sticker pricing at all.

The Supreme Court has made clear that certification is the appropriate course  even, and perhaps especially, when important federal rights are at stake. Osterweil, 706 F.3d at 144. More directly, the Supreme Court has warned against premature adjudication of constitutional questions when a federal court is asked to invalidate a State's law, for the federal tribunal risks friction-generating error when it endeavors to construe a novel state Act not yet reviewed by the State's highest court. Id. (quoting Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 79, 117 S.Ct. 1055, 137 L.Ed.2d 170 (1997)) (internal notations omitted). That is exactly the case here: the plaintiffs ask us to hold that Section 518 violates the First Amendment as applied to them despite the fact that Section 518 has never been definitively interpreted by the Court of Appeals. It is specifically because the First Amendment interests potentially at stake are serious enough, and the legal framework surrounding Section 518 uncertain enough, that certification is warranted. While [t]he prospect of disagreement over the seriousness of a constitutional question is always present when a federal court certifies  this has always led the Supreme Court to counsel in favor of certification, not against it. Id. The presence of a serious constitutional question is a good reason to certify  not a reason to race ahead. Id.

Of course, the last time this case was before us and we were confronted with sweeping questions about the scope of Section 518, we preferred Pullman abstention to certification. Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 14041. But that decision, as we explained, was informed by the scope of the plaintiffs' challenge and the resulting likelihood that certification would not materially advance the litigation. Id. at 141. At this point, however, the plaintiffs have focused on a single as-applied challenge to Section 518whether Section 518, as applied to their proposed single-sticker scheme, is constitutional under the First Amendmentand hence certification has substantial benefits to recommend it.

Certification allows a federal court faced with a novel state-law question to put the question directly to the State's highest court, reducing the delay, cutting the cost, and increasing the assurance of gaining an authoritative response. Osterweil, 706 F.3d at 145 (quoting Arizonans for Official English, 520 U.S. at 76, 117 S.Ct. 1055). Though the Supreme Court did not require us to certify on remand, we do so here precisely because the Court of Appeals' views on the scope of Section 518 will lay the groundwork for the careful analysis of the First Amendment issues in this case that the Supreme Court's mandate requires. As Justice Breyer observed in his Expressions II concurrence, certification may well be helpful  [in] clarify[ing] the nature of the obligations the statute imposes and so Section 518's constitutional implications. See Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 1153 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment); see also id. at 1159 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in the judgment) (The Court's opinion does not foreclose the Second Circuit from choosing [the certification] route on remand.).

Put succinctly, the answer we receive from the Court of Appeals in this case will, at a minimum, materially change the nature of the [constitutional] problem presented. Osterweil, 706 F.3d at 143 (quoting Bellotti v. Baird, 428 U.S. 132, 147, 96 S.Ct. 2857, 49 L.Ed.2d 844 (1976)). More, the answer we receive will determine the proper framework for our constitutional analysis. See In re World Trade Ctr. Lower Manhattan Disaster Site Litig., 846 F.3d 58, 70 (2d Cir. 2017). As a result, we find certification appropriate.

In light of these considerations, and pursuant to Second Circuit Local Rule 27.2(a) and N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 22,  500.27(a), we CERTIFY the following question to the New York Court of Appeals:

Does a merchant comply with New York's General Business Law  518 so long as the merchant posts the total-dollars-and-cents price charged to credit card users?

In certifying this question, we understand that the New York Court of Appeals may reformulate or expand the certified question as it deems appropriate.

CONCLUSION

It is hereby ORDERED that the Clerk of this Court transmit to the Clerk of the New York Court of Appeals this opinion as our certification, together with a complete set of the briefs and the record filed in this Court both prior to the grant of certiorari and following remand. The parties shall equally bear any fees and costs that may be imposed by the New York Court of Appeals in connection with this certification. This panel retains jurisdiction to decide the case once we have had the benefit of the views of the New York Court of Appeals or once that court declines to accept certification.

FOOTNOTES

. By single-sticker-price scheme, we referred toand continue to refer toa scheme in which the advertised sticker price is the cash price. If a merchant were to employ a scheme in which the advertised sticker price were the credit card price (e.g., $10.25, with a .25 cent discount for paying with cash), that scheme would be permissible under the interpretation of Section 518 we outlined in Expressions I. See Expressions I, 808 F.3d at 128 ([I]f the seller's regular price is $103, it may charge credit-card customers $103 and cash customers $100.).

. Of course, nothing we say with respect to the interpretation of Section 518 binds the New York Court of Appeals, which may choose to address aspects of Section 518's operation in practice that we do not discuss here. See Johnson v. Fankell, 520 U.S. 911, 916, 117 S.Ct. 1800, 138 L.Ed.2d 108 (1997) (Neither th[e Supreme] Court nor any other federal tribunal has any authority to place a construction on a state statute different from the one rendered by the highest court of the State.).

. Though nowhere near dispositive of the interpretation of New York's Section 518, we note that a California appellate court has interpreted its structurally similar law to permit merchants to use the dual-price scheme. See Thrifty Oil Co. v. Super. Ct., 91 Cal.App.4th 1070, 111 Cal.Rptr.2d 253, 25859 (Cal. Ct. App. 2001) (interpreting Cal. Civ. Code  1748.1).

. While it is true that, if Section 518's design was somewhat clearer, we could, if the same result would obtain, apply both the Central Hudson and Zauderer tests without resolving the question of which test properly applies, we decline to attempt that project at this stage of the case. As an initial matter, it is far from clear that the same result would obtain. Moreover, given the uncertainty surrounding how Section 518 applies, a full evaluation of its constitutionality, even as-applied to the single-sticker context, would rest on pure speculation about how the statute operates, and hence would not be much better than an analysis of Section 518's facial constitutionalitya challenge plaintiffs have disclaimed. See Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 450, 128 S.Ct. 1184, 170 L.Ed.2d 151 (2008) (explaining that one feature of facial challenges is that they often rest on speculation  [and so] raise the risk of premature interpretation of statutes on the basis of factually barebones records (internal quotation marks omitted)).

. See also Expressions II, 137 S.Ct. at 1151 n.3 (To assess [Section 518's] constitutionality, the [Second Circuit] may need to consider a question we need not answer here: whether the statute permits two-sticker pricing schemes like the one petitioner Expressions currently uses ).

Debra Ann Livingston, Circuit Judge:
(Photo:  Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)Two key symbols of Judaism, the Western Wall, and for Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, stand side by side in Jerusalem as seen on Feb. 11, 2016.

The World Council of Churches has joined other global Christian leaders in expressing grave concern for the Middle East region and the wider international community at the decision of President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"Such a step breaks with the longstanding international consensus, and almost seven decades of established American policy, that the status of Jerusalem remains to be settled," said the WCC which represents more than half a billlion mainly, Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant Christians worldwide.

In a statement from its Geneva-headquarters Dec. 6, the WCC said the move "also pre-empts a negotiated resolution of this most difficult issue in any final peace agreement, which must be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians themselves."

The head of churches Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem also lamented Trump's decision to recognize the ancient city as Israel's capital, while calling for its international status be retained.

"We are certain that such steps will yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land," the leaders said in a letter to Trump, "moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division."

Thirteen heads and patriarchs signed the letter. They represent various branches of the Christian faith, including Greek, Syrian and Armenian Orthodox churches; Episcopalians, Roman Catholics and Lutherans.

Some of them are Palestinian, and most share space in the revered Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem's Old City. Most Christian tradition holds that the church is located at the site of the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Our solemn advice and plea is for the United States to continue recognizing the present international status of Jerusalem," the churchmen said. "Any sudden changes would cause irreparable harm.... In this coming Christmas, we plea for Jerusalem not to be deprived from peace."

The council said that along with all Christians around the world, the churches that belong to the WCC, look to the Holy City of Jerusalem as the "location of the foundational event at the origins of our faith."

The churches' council said it recognizes Jerusalem as a city of three faiths (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) and two peoples (Israelis and Palestinians).

"We also recognize the central significance and acute political, social and religious sensitivity of the status of Jerusalem in any final and sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians."

The churches' council said it shares the concerns expressed by King Abdullah II of Jordan that the measure of Trump's administration will have serious implications for security and stability in the Middle East.

"It will undermine the efforts of the American administration to resume the peace process and fuel the feelings of Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike. Together with King Abdullah, we also stress that 'Jerusalem is the key to achieving peace and security in the world.'"
Charles Hayes (left), executive managing director of IDEO Asia, and Robbie Antonio (center), founder and CEO of Revolution Precrafted, talk at a panel during the conference, moderated by Clay Chandler, executive editor of Time International. [Photo/China Daily]

Guangzhou, a centuries-old international commercial hub, gathered leaders of the global innovation economy at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech International Conference that opened on Tuesday.

Focusing on technological innovation, the first-ever Fortune Brainstorm Tech International Conference is huge in its own right, but is also the curtain raiser event for the Fortune Global Forum, which runs from Wednesday to Friday in the capital city of southern Guangdong province.

For its part, the earlier brainstorm tech conference is a meeting for the world's top technology and media thinkers, operators, entrepreneurs, innovators and influencers, according to the event's organizers.

They said the two-day event is a showcase for innovation in China and the major trends in technology in the international context, as well as an opportunity to build up Guangzhou as a China-based community for global tech and innovation leaders.

"Guangzhou is fast becoming a global leader in science and technology innovation," said Alan Murray, president of Fortune and chief content officer of the United States-based group Time Inc.

"The city is the ideal location for the conference," Murray added. Fortune is a multinational business magazine published and owned by Time Inc and headquartered in New York City.

Murray said that Guangzhou has established commercial and trade links with more than 200 countries and regions.

"It is China's southern gateway to the world and an emerging center for tech innovation," he said.

The Fortune Brainstorm Tech International Conference brings together some of China's most promising startup companies and emerging technology leaders.

The program features exchanges between innovators in China who are finding new pathways to success, and tech leaders from around the world, including those from Silicon Valley in the United States, Israel, Europe and other parts of Asia.

John Needham, managing director of the Fortune Global Forum, said that China has made great progress in innovation in the fields of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, financial technology, virtual reality, the shared economy and mobile technologiesinstead of being an imitator of science and technology.

He added that Guangzhou is one of the leaders in China in reforms driven by globalization and digitization, and the city was showcasing its innovation results through the conference.

"We are honored that Guangzhou Automobile Group, a company that is highly respected for its innovative research and development, is our partner sponsor," said Needham.

The company, one of China's homegrown automakers, is providing official vehicles for the Fortune Global Forum.

Another sponsor, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group, has promoted its development scale and international influence in recent years through its innovations.

Li Chuyuan, chairman of the group, said that cooperating with the world-leading economic forum provides a good opportunity to promote the brand's international influence and seek more global partners.




United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. TARA DORSEY, Appellant v. PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS (DOC); JOHN E. WETZEL, Secretary of Pennsylvania DOC; PAUL NOEL, Chief Medical Director of Pennsylvania DOC; CHRISTOPHER H. OPPMAN, Director of the Bureau of Health Care Service DOC; SUPERINTENDENT ROBERT SMITH, State Correction Institute (SCI) Muncy; SUPERINTENDENT JOYCE WILKES, SCI Cambridge Springs; GREGORY FAMIGLIO, Medical Directory SCI Muncy; DIRECTOR PRZYBROWSKI, Medical Director SCI Cambridge Springs; CORIZON HEALTH, INC.; WEXFORD HEALTH SERVICES, INC.; JOHN AND JANE DOE'S 1 TO 5; DOE CORPORATION No. 17-1246 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before: VANASKIE, RENDELL, and FISHER, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

Appellant Tara Dorsey challenges the grant of summary judgment in favor of Appellees, in her suit alleging a civil rights violation under 42 U.S.C.  1983. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

We exercise plenary review of a district court's grant of summary judgment, and apply the same standard the district court should have applied. Farrell v. Planters Lifesavers Co., 206 F.3d 271, 278 (3d Cir. 2000). A federal court should grant summary judgment if, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and thus the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. FRCP 56(a).

The parties are familiar with the facts and procedural posture of the case, given both the Magistrate Judge's Report and Recommendation and the District Court's adoption of said report. We summarize minimally.

Dorsey was an inmate housed at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy (SCI-Muncy) from November of 2009 through August of 2014. Prior to Dorsey's incarceration, in February of 2009, a thoracic spinal cord stimulator was surgically implanted in her lower back to alleviate her complex regional pain syndrome; however, Dorsey had an accident in June of 2011, while incarcerated at SCI-Muncy, which aggravated her symptoms. In December of 2012, Dorsey was seen by a neurosurgeon, who recommended that the spinal device be surgically removed. Yet the Department of Corrections (DOC) refused to provide Dorsey the needed surgery, citing cost. Dorsey began lodging complaints to the Superintendent at SCI-Muncy and various prison officials in September of 2013.

Appellant's claim, brought under 42 U.S.C.  1983, is subject to Pennsylvania's two-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 266-67 (1985); 42 Pa.C.S.  5524. The cause of action accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury forming the cause of action, Sameric Corp. of Delaware v. Philadelphia, 142 F.3d 582, 599 (3d Cir. 1998), not at a later date, when the plaintiff learns of the full extent of her injuries. Kach v. Hose, 589 F.3d 626, 635 (3d Cir. 2009) (citation omitted).

The District Court correctly noted that Appellant's own declaration evinces her subjective awareness of her injury and the need for surgery, as well as the DOC's failure to provide her the necessary operation.

Appellant argues that she should be afforded an equitable exception to the timely filing requirement on account of the continuing violations doctrine. Her request is misguided. The District Court appropriately held that Appellant's time to file ran from the time [Appellant] reasonably should have known that [Appellees] were deliberately indifferent to her serious medical need, and not from the time the full extent of the precise medical cause of the injury was known. A. 155.

Although Appellant knew by at least September 2013, if not earlier, of DOC's failure to provide her medical treatment, she delayed filing this action until April 8, 2016 approximately two-and-a-half years after she became aware of DOC's decision. We find that Appellant became subjectively aware of Appellees' deliberate indifference to her medical needs well over two years before she filed this action, and thus her claim is time-barred.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Appellees in its entirety.

RENDELL, Circuit Judge:
Kentucky Power customers in December will receive a newly designed bill that is easier to read and understand.

"Our customers told us they wanted a simpler bill so we asked them to help us redesign it," said Del Borden, Kentucky Power's director of customer services and business development. "We value our customers' opinions. They spoke and we listened. We made changes based on their feedback. The new format improves the way we share information with customers so they can make informed decisions about their energy use."

The new bill format features color, graphics and section headers to make it easier for customers to find important information. A cover page provides a snapshot of the details customers say they want the most: the total amount due, due date, current balance, usage and payment options. A new circle graph shows a quick breakdown of the monthly charges. Customers will find more details on the following pages. This includes line item charges, meter readings, and charts to see energy usage trends.

Changes to the bill were guided by input from more than 1,400 customer surveys.

For more information, visit kentuckypower.com/newbill.

Kentucky Power, with headquarters in Ashland, provides service to about 168,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties, including Boyd, Breathitt, Carter, Clay, Elliott, Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Knott, Lawrence, Leslie, Letcher, Lewis, Magoffin, Martin, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, Pike and Rowan. Kentucky Power is an operating company in the American Electric Power (AEP) system. AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio, is focused on building a smarter energy infrastructure and delivering new technologies and custom energy solutions to customers. AEP's more than 17,000 employees operate and maintain the nation's largest electricity transmission system and more than 224,000 miles of distribution lines to efficiently deliver safe, reliable power to nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states, including Kentucky. AEP also is one of the nation's largest electricity producers with approximately 33,000 megawatts of diverse generating capacity, including 4,200 megawatts of renewable energy. AEP's companies includes utilities AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power, Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company. AEP also owns AEP Energy, AEP Energy Partners, AEP OnSite Partners and AEP Renewables, which provide innovative competitive energy solutions nationwide.
US Air Force(WASHINGTON) -- The Secretary of the Air Force appeared before Congress Wednesday amid continued concerns that U.S. military services are not adequately reporting service members' criminal records to law enforcement.



The issue started a national conversation after it was revealed Devin Kelley, the shooter who killed 26 people in a Sutherland, Texas church last month, was a former airman whose domestic violence conviction was not properly transmitted to an FBI database, which would have prohibited his purchase of a firearm.



"It was clear very early that Mr. Kelley's criminal history was not reported, and it should have been," Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. "In the weeks since, our review has determined that the breakdown in reporting was not limited to this case, and it was not limited to this detachment at Holloman Air Force Base."



Wilson has admitted the Air Force has "a more systemic problem" when it comes to reporting data to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.



But it's not just the Air Force.



Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley acknowledged there are a "significant amount of omissions" that show the Army needs to "tighten up" its reporting of criminal activity to federal agencies. He estimated that as many as 10 to 20 percent of the Army's cases are not reported.



"It's not just an Air Force problem," Milley told reporters at the Pentagon several weeks after the Sutherland, TX shooting. "It's a problem across all the services where we have gaps in reporting criminal activity of people in service when they're convicted or they get a dishonorable discharge or those sorts of things, getting that over the appropriate law enforcement agency."



A Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) report released Tuesday showed a much more pervasive problem with reporting standards across the services beyond Kelleys case.



Commissioned in February, investigators focused on whether the military services were meeting the requirement to forward fingerprint cards and the disposition of criminal cases to the FBI.



The IG reviewed the cases of service members convicted by court martial from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016, a time frame that would not have included Kelley, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to assaulting his then-wife and her infant son.



According to the report, 24 percent of the 2,502 fingerprint cards that should have been submitted from across the military services to the FBI over a two-year period were never transmitted. And an even higher percentage -- 31 percent -- of the 2,502 final disposition records were never submitted.



Glenn Fine, the acting Inspector General for the Department of Defense, told the Committee on Wednesday that DoD IG has long found "serious deficiencies" in how the department submits its information to the FBI.



An earlier review conducted in 1997 found "significant gaps" with the service's compliance, Fine said, as did a review completed in 2015.



DoD IG is currently investigating what happened in the case of Kelley, as well as conducting another broader review of the department's practices when it comes to submitting information to FBI databases.



Since the deadly shooting in Texas that revealed gaps in the Air Force's reporting deficiencies, Wilson has implemented several changes while the service has two task forces review its criminal records database -- which she believes will take another four to five months to complete.



Now, second and third checks have been instated to ensure criminal files are properly recorded, including requiring the case investigator to print a photo or screenshot of the file in the FBI database for Air Force records.



Additionally, annual audits within the Air Force will begin in the next year to make sure the new changes are ensuring criminal records aren't falling through the cracks, Wilson said.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. DEANNA S. PAINTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Defendant-Appellee. No. 16-3187 Decided: December 06, 2017

ORDER

By the Court:

Deanna Painter claims that her former employer, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), required her to undergo unnecessary mental-health examinations in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C.  1210112213. The district court entered summary judgment for the IDOT, reasoning that a fact finder would have to conclude from the undisputed evidence that the challenged examinations were job-related and consistent with business necessity. We affirm the judgment.

Painter began working as an Office Administrator for the IDOT's Division of Traffic Safety in September 2010. After many employees complained about her behavior, the IDOT put Painter on paid administrative leave and required that she submit to a fitness-for-duty examination. Dr. Fletcher, an occupational-medicine specialist, examined Painter and concluded that she could perform the essential functions of her job without posing a threat to herself or others. He did note, however, that Painter displayed some hypomania and could be bipolar, so he recommended that she be reevaluated in 45 days. At that reevaluation he deferred making a fitness-for-duty recommendation until Painter could be seen by a mental-health specialist. He referred her to Dr. Karen Lee, a psychologist. Painter met with Dr. Lee, but the psychologist did not send the IDOT a report because Painter retained her for treatment.

Despite Dr. Fletcher's inconclusive reevaluation, the IDOT allowed Painter to resume working in response to a grievance her union filed. She returned in October 2011 but transferred to a different division, still as an Office Administrator. Again she had difficulties with coworkers. Painter used work time to keep a detailed log of her new coworkers' conversations and other actions. She insisted the log was necessary for her to learn why she was put on leave since no one would tell her. Painter also sent numerous emails to her new supervisor, Stuart Hunt, often after the workday ended. For example, she emailed Hunt at 8 p.m. on October 30, 2011:

I didn't talk about God  other than the one time Mike Fitzgerald asked me what I was listening to and I said a Christian radio station talking about blended families.  Isabel, for whatever reason one day told me that her mom works at the Marian Center downtown. I told her I had just bought a cross necklace there a couple of months back. It's a Catholic store. Also, she told me her little brothers and sisters had gone to Little Flower. I said I had gone to Little Flower from K8 and sent my kids there for a little while but couldn't afford the entire time.

Hunt reacted by documenting his involvement in handling complaints about Painter's behavior. For example, on October 31, 2011, he noted for his file that one of Painter's coworkers had told him she was fearful of  Deanna and was making other arrangements for her car-pool to pick her up in the evening as she and Deanna both leave work at the same time. Hunt gathered similar statements from other coworkers. He disciplined Painter for keeping the log, and he gave his file and the employee statements to Ryan Amerson, a labor-relations specialist. Amerson recommended that Hunt again place Painter on paid administrative leave, which, after conferring with his supervisor, Hunt did on November 23, 2011.

Five days later Marie Malek-Robinson, the IDOT's fitness-for-duty coordinator, retained psychiatrist Dr. Terry Killian to evaluate Painter's mental health. Dr. Killian met with Painter on December 2 and 16, 2011. He concluded that Painter was psychiatrically fit for duty, but the statements from her coworkers and supervisors caused him to suspect she might suffer from a personality disorder. Even so, Dr. Killian cleared Painter to return to work.

She returned in January 2012, and the complaints from coworkers started anew. Hunt gathered more written statements about her behavior and forwarded them to Amerson. In March 2012 Hunt gave Painter a written reprimand for being argumentative. He also reprimanded her for speaking to coworkers in an unprofessional tone. Malek-Robinson contacted Dr. Killian in late April requesting that he again examine Painter. The next day Painter once more was placed on paid administrative leave.

A few days later Painter emailed her union representative, Tim Lynch. She wrote: For the record, the clock in the small conference room being set to 4:30 p.m. when it was only 4:00 p.m.that was a tell-tale sign for me. It told me everything I needed to know. Thanks. Lynch replied that he did not understand the reference to the clock and said that he thought the battery in the clock was dead. Painter responded, Something's dead alrighthowever, I prefer to be a lady and not say what I think is dead. :). Lynch interpreted that statement as a death threat. He told Painter he would no longer represent her and demanded that she cease communicating with him. The IDOT also interpreted Painter's email as threatening and contacted the Illinois State Police. Whether the state police took any action is not disclosed in the record.

Dr. Killian conducted his second examination of Painter on May 8, 2012. This was the fifth medical examination directed by the IDOT: two with Dr. Fletcher, the occupational-medicine specialist; one with Dr. Lee, the psychologist retained by Painter; and two with Dr. Killian, the psychiatrist. This time Dr. Killian declared Painter unfit for duty because of her paranoid thinking and the highly disruptive behavior which results from her paranoia.

Painter then filed this action claiming that the IDOT had violated the ADA by forcing her to attend unnecessary medical examinations. The ADA prohibits covered employers from requiring their workers to undergo medical exams that are not shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity. 42 U.S.C.  12112(d)(4)(A). Damages may be awarded for a violation, see id.  12117, 1981a(a)(2), and Illinois has legislatively waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity against claims for damages under the ADA, 745 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/1.5(d). Painter also asserted in her complaint, but later abandoned, claims that the IDOT had discriminated against her on the basis of a real or perceived mental impairment and retaliated against her for filing a charge of discrimination. As the case progressed, Painter further narrowed her  12112(d)(4)(A) claim to exclude all but the two examinations by Dr. Killian. In entering summary judgment, the district court reasoned that the only conclusion a jury reasonably could draw is that the IDOT's actions were based on legitimate concerns and its employees reasonably responded to the situation which they encountered. Thus, jurors would have to find that Dr. Killian's medical examinations were job-related and consistent with business necessity.

As was true at summary judgment, this appeal concerns only the two medical exams by Dr. Killian. Painter principally argues that a jury could conclude that those examinations were not job-related or consistent with business necessity. Employers bear the quite high burden of establishing that compelled medical examinations are consistent with business necessity. Wright v. Ill. Dep't of Children & Family Servs., 798 F.3d 513, 523 (7th Cir. 2015).

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued guidance for  12112(d)(4)(A). According to the EEOC, a medical examination is job related and consistent with business necessity if the employer has a reasonable belief based on objective evidence that a medical condition will impair an employee's ability to perform essential job functions or that the employee will pose a threat due to a medical condition. EEOC Enforcement Guidance: Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (July 27, 2000), https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/guidance-inquiries.html#6; see Wright, 798 F.3d at 523 (discussing EEOC's enforcement guidance); Coffman v. Indianapolis Fire Dep't, 578 F.3d 559, 565 (7th Cir. 2009) (same). That an employee's behavior could be described as annoying or inefficient [does not] justify an examination; rather, there must be genuine reason to doubt whether that employee can perform job-related functions.  Wright, 798 F.3d at 524 (quoting Sullivan v. River Valley Sch. Dist., 197 F.3d 804, 811 (6th Cir. 1999) (alteration in Wright).

Preventing employees from endangering their coworkers is a business necessity: a safe workplace is a paradigmatic necessity of operating a business. EEOC v. AIC Sec. Investigations, Ltd., 55 F.3d 1276, 1283 (7th Cir. 1995). Employers need not retain workers who, because of a disability, might harm someone; such a rule would force an employer to risk a negligence suit to avoid violating the ADA. Timmons v. Gen. Motors Corp., 469 F.3d 1122, 1129 (7th Cir. 2006); Palmer v. Circuit Court of Cook Cty., 117 F.3d 351, 352 (7th Cir. 1997).

We start with Dr. Killian's first examination. Like the district court, we conclude that the undisputed evidence compels a finding that Dr. Killian's initial exam of Painter was job related and consistent with business necessity. Dr. Killian conducted that examination after Painter had precipitated the same type of complaints from coworkers in her new position as she had with coworkers in the Division of Traffic Safety. Dr. Killian reviewed complaints from Painter's former coworkers, including allegations that she snapped and screamed at them, gave blank stares and intimidating looks, ranted, constantly mumbled to herself, repeatedly banged drawers in her office, and had mood swings. Her coworkers also feared she would go postal or blow up at any time. Similarly, Dr. Killian reviewed complaints from Painter's new coworkers, including allegations that she glared and growled at them; kept the log; was rude, angry, abrasive, aggressive, and threatening; and had mood swings. Her supervisor said that in 20 years as a manager he had never dealt with a similar employee. Several of Painter's coworkers had even alerted supervisors that they feared she might become physically violent. That Painter was paranoid is evident from the fact that she felt compelled to write extensively about coworkers in her log, often making at least one entry per hour. One time, according to Hunt, Painter burst into his office, her eyes darting back and forth, and pointed a finger at him while growling incoherently about approaching a coworker to ask her about God, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments. After that Hunt felt compelled to document their interactions. Painter admitted having issues with all of her new coworkers.

Likewise, on this record a reasonable jury also would have to find that Dr. Killian's second examination of Painter was job related and consistent with business necessity. That exam occurred after Painter was reprimanded for unprofessionally interacting with her coworkers. Dr. Killian reviewed an additional 160 pages of documentation from Malek-Robinson, including supervisor notes, discipline directives, email communications, and statements from other employees. This time, Dr. Killian saw supervisory notes suggesting that Painter had continued engaging in argumentative, confrontational, insubordinate, and disruptive behavior.

One coworker wrote about Painter's brash, condescending, intimidating, and accusatory manner. Dr. Killian also analyzed emails in which Painter exhibited paranoid behavior and accused others of hostile body language. Additionally, emails Painter sent directly to Dr. Killian strongly suggested that she suffered from a personality disorder. Moreover, around this time Painter sent her union representative an email that was perceived as threatening and led to police involvement. According to Dr. Killian, this incident contributed to his conclusion that Painter was paranoid in the psychiatric sense, which is a risk factor for violence. Inquirieseven multiple inquiriesconcerning a worker's psychiatric health may be permissible if they reflect concern for the safety of other employees and the public at large. See Coffman, 578 F.3d at 565. Here, the second examination was again based on the IDOT's reasonable concern for the safety of its employees.

Painter's remaining appellate claims are insubstantial. First, she contends that Hunt twice contradicted his earlier deposition testimony in the affidavit he submitted at summary judgment and thus the affidavit should have been stricken. But Painter never asked the district judge to strike this affidavit, so this appellate claim is waived. See Beverly v. Abbott Labs., 817 F.3d 328, 33536 (7th Cir. 2016). Regardless, the supposed contradictions are illusory.

One contradiction is Hunt's statement in the affidavit that Painter's coworkers had told him they feared she potentially was violent and dangerous, leading him to believe she presented a safety concern. In contrast, Painter asserts, Hunt never mentioned a safety concern during his deposition. But where is the contradiction? Hunt never testified that Painter's coworkers said they felt safe around her. Indeed, Painter's lawyer never asked Hunt during his deposition whether Painter's coworkers shared concerns that she might be dangerous. Moreover, Hunt testified that he believed Painter was disruptive, insubordinate, unprofessional, and uncooperative because he had seen her act harshly toward a coworker and he later read a series of emails she sent to that employee. Thus, Hunt's allegation that Painter was a safety concern augmented, rather than contradicted, his deposition. Augmentations that do not contradict are admissible. Russell v. Acme-Evans Co., 51 F.3d 64, 68 (7th Cir. 1995).

The second contradiction Painter identifies is that during his deposition Hunt did not recall which labor-relations specialist recommended that Painter undergo an examination. In contrast, Hunt swears in his affidavit that the specialist was Ryan Amerson. True, there is a difference between I don't recall and Ryan Amerson. But even if that difference is a conflict, a later conflicting affidavit is allowed if a memory lapse plausibly explains the discrepancy. Id. In this case, Hunt was deposed four years after Painter's medical examination, and a memory lapse later corrected by reviewing documents plausibly explains the discrepancy.

Painter also argues that the IDOT could not avoid a trial without evidence identifying the decision-maker behind each challenged medical examination. Although Painter relies on Kroll v. White Lake Ambulance Authority, that Sixth Circuit opinion does not conclude that the decision-maker must be identified. 763 F.3d 619, 623 (6th Cir. 2014). Rather, in a paragraph explaining the standards governing claims under  12112(d)(4)(A), the Kroll court said that employers cannot satisfy the business necessity requirement with general assertions that compelling a medical examination is convenient or expedient, but [r]ather, the individual who decides to require a medical examination must have a reasonable belief based on objective evidence that the employee's behavior threatens a vital function of the business. Id. That statement cannot be read as defining a rule of law that a single decision-maker must be readily identifiable, especially when, as in this case, multiple people participated in deciding whether to compel the examination.

Last, Painter argues that the IDOT shopped around for a doctor until it received an opinion supporting its decision to fire her. But this contention has no support in the record. The IDOT received reports from two doctors, Dr. Fletcher and Dr. Killian. The IDOT sent Painter back to those same two doctors for reevaluations even after they initially had concluded that she was fit for duty. It was Dr. Fletcher, an occupational-medicine specialist with no expertise in diagnosing or treating mental health, who recommended that Painter be evaluated by a mental-health specialist. The initial selection of Dr. Lee came from him. And the only reason that the IDOT later substituted Dr. Killian for Dr. Lee is that Painter chose to continue treatment with Dr. Lee. The characterization of doctor shopping is frivolous.

Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court's judgment.
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United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. RICHARD WILLIAM MORRIS, on behalf of Oregon Cascade Corporation and CLAUDINE MORRIS, Assignee on behalf of Oregon Cascade Corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FRANCOIS ROBERT HARLEY, AKA Francois Robert Haussauer; et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 16-16064 Decided: December 06, 2017

Before: GOULD and MURGUIA, Circuit Judges, and GRITZNER,*** District Judge.

MEMORANDUM*

The issue in this case is whether the district court correctly ordered dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction over Defendants Francois Harley and his company, Cambium E.I.R.L. Richard and Claudine Morris and Harley signed a lease agreement in the Dominican Republic on August 29, 2012. This agreement gave the Morrises a 99-year lease for the lot Mango 12 in Cambium, a subdivision located entirely within the Dominican Republic. On May 31, 2013, while Harley was in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Morrises and Harley amended their 2012 lease agreement, substituting the Cambium lot Cana 17 for Mango 12.

In 2015, the Morrises brought claims against Defendants for violations of the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act (ILSA), as well as state tort and contract law. The district court granted Defendants' motion to dismiss, finding that Defendants were not subject to personal jurisdiction in Nevada or, by way of the federal long-arm statute, in the United States as a whole. On appeal, the Morrises argue that Defendants waived their personal jurisdiction defenses; that they are subject to personal jurisdiction in both Nevada and under the federal long-arm statute; and that personal jurisdiction is automatic under the ILSA.

Defendants raised the defense of lack of personal jurisdiction in their first responsive pleading and moved to dismiss all claims on that basis. Defendants did not waive their personal jurisdiction defenses. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h).

Because the Morrises brought suit in the District of Nevada, this court assesses whether the exercise of personal jurisdiction over Defendants in Nevada is proper. See Walden v. Fiore, 134 S. Ct. 1115, 1121 (2014). The Morrises allege that Harley promoted and solicited purchases on behalf of Cambium at a two-day convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Such a discrete act does not render Defendants essentially at home in Nevada. See CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc., 653 F.3d 1066, 1074 (9th Cir. 2011). Nevada lacks general personal jurisdiction over Defendants.

The Morrises' lease agreement was signed in the Dominican Republic and predated Harley's visit to Nevada. Though the parties amended the agreement at the Las Vegas convention, this amendment only substituted one plot of land for another; the remaining terms from the 2012 lease were unaffected. The Morrises failed to show their ILSA claim would not have arisen but for Defendants' Nevada contacts and thus failed to establish specific jurisdiction. See Menken v. Emm, 503 F.3d 1050, 1058 (9th Cir. 2007).

Moreover, adjudicating this dispute in Nevada would not be reasonable. Defendants did not purposefully direct their conduct toward Nevada beyond Harley attending the Las Vegas convention. Cambium is incorporated in, and has its principal place of business in, the Dominican Republic. The entire Cambium subdivision is located in the Dominican Republic. The 2012 lease agreement was signed in the Dominican Republic and notarized by a Dominican notary public. The agreement contains a dispute-resolution clause requiring mandatory mediation and arbitration in the Dominican Republic. An alternative forum (arbitration in the Dominican Republic) exists. See CollegeSource, 653 F.3d at 1079 (setting forth factors relevant to reasonable exercise of specific jurisdiction). Nevada lacks specific personal jurisdiction over Defendants.

Because the Morrises assert a federal law claim under the ILSA and Defendants are not subject to personal jurisdiction in any individual state, the court can assess Defendants' contacts under the federal long-arm statute. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2); Pebble Beach Co. v. Caddy, 453 F.3d 1151, 1159 (9th Cir. 2006). The same due process analysis for specific and general personal jurisdiction applies, except that the relevant forum is the United States as a whole. Pebble Beach, 453 F.3d at 1159.

The Morrises allege that Harley visited the United States in 2013 and promoted Cambium lots in California, Florida, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The Morrises have presented evidence suggesting that Harley advertised Cambium in brochures and publications distributed in the United States. A few discrete acts promoting Cambium, however, do not render Defendants essentially at home in the United States. See CollegeSource, 653 F.3d at 1074. The United States lacks general personal jurisdiction over Defendants.

The Morrises have failed to show their ILSA claim would not have arisen but for these U.S. activities. See Menken, 503 F.3d at 1058. The August 29, 2012 lease agreement predated Harley's 2013 U.S. marketing tour. The May 31, 2013 amendment to the 2012 lease agreement only changed the Morrises' lot without altering any other terms. And, as with the analysis of specific contacts with Nevada, the reasonableness factors weigh against adjudication in the United States. See CollegeSource, 653 F.3d at 1079. The United States lacks specific personal jurisdiction over Defendants.

The Morrises' final argument, that jurisdiction is automatic under the ILSA, is contrary to longstanding precedent holding that the exercise of judicial authority over a defendant not located in the forum must satisfy constitutional due process standards. See Int'l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 319 (holding due process does not contemplate that a state may make binding a judgment in personam against an individual or corporate defendant with which the state has no contacts, ties, or relations). The district court committed no error in concluding it lacked personal jurisdiction over Defendants.

AFFIRMED.
11/17/2022

There is no such thing as just another normal night with the Chattanooga Cadet Squadron of Civil Air Patrol. On Tuesday, Nov. 15 the Cadets had the chance to learn about the Civil Air Patrol ... more
'It's time to revise Treaty of Lausanne' Erdogan says

Lausanne needs to be updated in the light of all these developments. This update would be useful not only for Turkey but also for Greece. says Erdogan on Athens visit.

Speaking to Greeces local broadcaster Skai TV ahead of his visit to the country on Thursday, Erdogan touched bilateral relations between Turkey and Greece.

President Erdogan had said there were some details in the Treaty of Lausanne which are not clear. When asked about updating the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the modern borders between Greece and Turkey, Erdogan stated that in fact, all agreements made in the world must be updated in the course of time.

LAUSANNE NEEDS TO BE UPDATED IN THE LIGHT OF ALL THESE DEVELOPMENTS

"...Let's now quickly do what is necessary," he told the Greek president. "It's not easy, 94 years have passed, and many things have changed in 94 years. If we review these, I believe that all the sides will agree that so many things have to change."

Lausanne also needs to be updated in the light of all these developments. This update would be useful not only for Turkey but also for Greece. Erdogan added.

"THE TREATY DOESN'T ALLOW SPACE FOR TERRITORIAL DISPUTES"

For his part, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos told Erdogan the treaty "doesn't need revision or updating. It is valid as is." He added the treaty didn't allow space for territorial disputes and clearly set the status for the Muslim minority in Greece.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Greece in 65 years. President Celal Bayar was last Turkish head of state to pay official visit to Greece in November 1952.
After explaining to a fellow officer the reason why he doesn't understand discrimination because he has benefited from white privilege, Carri Weber, a police captain was placed on paid administrative leave. It is reported that her future with the Indiana Plainfield police bureau is in limbo and will be decided by a vote that will take place during the commissioners meeting on December 7.

What Happened Between The Co-Workers

The incident between Weber and the officer happened during a training session on how police officers should interact with those who identify as transgender. The seminar was led and taught by a representative of the United States Department of Justice and United States government attorney. The incident between Weber and the officer happened during a training session on how police officers should interact with those who identify as transgender. The seminar was led and taught by a representative of the United States Department of Justice and United States government attorney. While the two presented, the officer (who also served in the department for 28 years) questioned a statistic that was featured in their work.

The Statistic

It claimed that transgender people are 3.32 times more likely to be victims of police brutality than those who identify with their gender with their biological sex reproductive system. My wife has never been part of police violence. Most of the people that I know have never been, accused the police of violence. So I guess I dont get where that statistic comes from, the officer said to the representatives in audio obtained from the presentation. In response to his statement, Weber cited that the officer would never understand how police brutality happens because of his race and how he chooses to label his gender.

Cause your white male privilege, so you wouldnt know, she was heard saying. Im sorry? the veteran police officer asked her. Your white male privilege, Weber repeated for him. The police officer began to get annoyed and asked the police chief if he was going to let Weber get away with her commentary. Seriously? Im asking a legitimate question here, and Im getting [unintelligible] white privilege? the man said as his voice began to rise. Are you serious? I find that extremely offensive.

What Is White Privilege?

The police officer decided to file a complaint stating he was racially and sexistly slurred by Weber. I am now firmly aware of the discriminatory belief she just verbally communicated.  There is no place in the Plainfield Police administration or supervision for someone who holds and espouses her discriminatory views.

To be clear, stating someone has white or male privilege is not discriminatory. The two phrases were coined by activist Peggy McIntosh in 1988; McIntosh wrote in her scholarly work that the terminology references people who identify as white," male or both have social advantages that those who identify as another race/ethnicity, woman or other genders do not.

Members of the Plainfield community and the internet have shown their support for Weber by writing to the police department via Facebook. In their comments, the supporters reprimand the department for placing Weber on leave. "I am very disappointed that you suspended Captain Weber. If anyone is suspended, it should be the officer claiming offense for insubordination and plain ignorance. She told him the right thing. His experience as a white police male is not relevant to the statistic about transgender violence or the experiences of others not like him. Do you not see the irony here? He turns to the chief to whine but doesn't understand how transgender people might be subjected to violence more than him and his wife? I would not call that officer for help if I was in Plainfield. I sure would want Captain Weber. That man's attitude contributes to unjustified police action against people of color and genders other than male," Lata Williams wrote.

Since the complaint was filed, Weber was placed on paid administrative leave on November 16.

View the video of Weber and the police officer's interaction, down below.
According to Jax Taylor, Faith Stowers is a wanted woman.

Following Monday night's premiere episode of Vanderpump Rules season 6, Taylor responded to a fan who suggested that Stowers was trying to become an actress by performing on the show.

"Is Faith wanting to be an actress [because] she cant lie!" the fan wrote. "Lol sorry but what chick waits for a camera to tell someone she had sex with a guy and broadcasts she could be pregnant. She wanted to be a cast member."

During Monday's episode of the Bravo TV reality series, Stowers told James Kennedy that she and Taylor slept together earlier this year  and that she hadn't gotten her period after the affair. Quickly, word spread and Taylor's girlfriend, Brittany Cartwright, was informed of the report.

Although Taylor denied hooking up with Stowers on the show, rumors continue to swirl about his potential cheating and Stowers' potential pregnancy. That said, Taylor insists that Stowers is not a credible source for any information and revealed her troubled past to fans and followers on Dec. 4.

"She's wanted by the police for grand theft auto and 'awol' from military, bad idea to be on a reality show dude. Someones going to jail," he wrote.

Taylor and Cartwright went through hard times because of the allegations against him earlier this year but these days, they are back together and committed to their romance. In fact, just weeks ago, they both spoke of their future and mentioned marriage.

We absolutely talk about it, Taylor told Life & Style magazine of their plans to wed.

Theres a castle in Kentucky that Ive always wanted to get married at, Cartwright noted. Its absolutely gorgeous, and I just want that complete fairy-tale wedding... I want a winter wedding with snow on the ground and red roses everywhere.

Taylor and Cartwright are not currently engaged but have discussed the issue numerous times on Vanderpump Rules and on their spinoff series, Jax and Brittany Take Kentucky.

To see more of Jax Taylor and his co-stars, including Brittany Cartwright, Stassi Schroeder, Scheana Marie, Tom Sandoval, Tom Schwartz, Kristen Doute, Lisa Vanderpump, Katie Maloney, James Kennedy, and Lala Kent, tune into Vanderpump Rules season 6 on Monday nights at 9 p.m. on Bravo TV.
Back in 2016, a live-action movie starring Detective Pikachu got greenlit. Fast-forward to today, there's now an actor to play the electric mouse's part in, well, Detective Pikachu, and it's none other than Ryan Reynolds.

The Deadpool star will be joined by Justice Elio Smith, best known for his role in the Netflix show The Get Down, and Kathryn Newton, who starred in Gary Unmarried and Paranormal Activity 4, to name a few.

Monsters vs. Aliens and Shark Tale director Rob Letterman will take the lead, while Alex Hirsch and Nicole Perlman are the minds behind the script.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the story is about Newton's character getting forced to team up with Detective Pikachu after his father was kidnapped. Meanwhile, Newton will take on the role of a journalist.

Sources also say that the role is "motion-capture in nature."

Needless to say, details surrounding Detective Pikachu are scarce at best for now, which media company Legendary has been keeping under wraps tightly.

Universal is expected to distribute the movie outside of Japan, while Toho will take care of things in Japan.

Now it's no mystery that the typical Pikachu knows only three syllables: "pi," "ka," and "chu"  or rather, they can only say their names in various tones and nothing else. Kind of like Groot in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, where Vin Diesel was signed on to say, "I am Groot," throughout the movie.

However, Detective Pikachu is no ordinary Pikachu because, aside from the fancy detective cap a la Sherlock Holmes (also known as a deerstalker), this Pikachu can talk. That means Reynolds won't be subjected to numerous recording sessions of saying "Pikachu" over and over again with various inflections.

It's worth mentioning that this isn't the only instance that a Pikachu talked straight English, Japanese, or any other human language, for that matter. For those who missed it, Ash's Pikachu spoke perfect English in Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You! and said, "It's because I always want to be with you."

Hi, I am just learning that Pikachu speaks English in the new Pokemon movie and, yes, it is extremely fucking weird pic.twitter.com/k5hm5lyW7Y  Ryan Broderick (@broderick) November 13, 2017

(Excuse the language.)

To sum things up, Reynolds is going to play Detective Pikachu in a movie called Detective Pikachu. Sounds about right.
David Cassidy, a musician, and star of the popular 70s sitcom, Partridge Family, has deliberately left his daughter, actress Katie Cassidy, out of his will.

Katie Gets Zilch

David passed away at the age of 67 on Nov. 21 after suffering from liver and kidney failure. He already had a will drawn out to express his wishes as to how his assets should be distributed after his demise but intentionally chose to cut his daughter out of it.

The late actor and musician's will and testament obtained by The Blast specifically states that although he has two children, daughter Katie Cassidy and son Beau Cassidy, all references made in the document to his child or children should be to Beau and not Katie.

The document states that David had approximately $150,000 in various assets and the ownership of the assets should be handed over to Beau. His three half-siblings, however, will receive anything that classifies as "music memorabilia." The will also categorically mentioned that Katie should receive zero benefits from his fortune.

"It is my specific intent not to provide any benefits hereunder to Katherine Evelyn Cassidy and/or any descendant of Katherine Evelyn Cassidy," David wrote in the will.

Father and Daughter's Troubled Relationship

It is important to point out that the will was filed in 2004 and David shared a tumultuous relationship with Katie, an actress best known for her portrayal of Laurel Lance, the alter ego of Black Canary on The CW's Arrow. Katie was raised by her mother, former model Sherry Williams, and stepfather Richard Benedon.

In February, David told People that despite he was Katie's biological father, he never shared a relationship with his eldest child and is no longer in contact with her.

"I've never had a relationship with her," he told the publication. "I wasn't her father. I was her biological father but I didn't raise her. She has a completely different life."

A source revealed that there were many issues in the family because of David's struggles with alcoholism. However, all the members of the family, including Beau, brothers Patrick and Shaun, and ex-wife Sue Shifrin, reunited in support of the late actor following his hospitalization.

Despite Katie's complicated relationship with her biological father, she rushed to be by his dad's side. A couple of days after David's passing, the Arrow actress took to social media to share a touching tribute honoring the late actor.
Stephanie Hinton, a veteran school administrator in Hamilton County Schools has been selected to fill the role of director of teaching and learning and share her talents for positively impacting the success of children with other administrators and schools across the system. My experience in urban and suburban schools serves to strengthen my belief that a strong positive culture has a great impact on student achievement and teacher retention, Ms. Hinton said. I will now work with others to increase achievement and provide all students with opportunities to learn and be successful.

Ms. Hinton has more than 17 years of experience successfully leading schools in the area. She is in her sixth year as principal at East Side Elementary School and she spent seven years as principal at Red Bank Elementary. Under Ms. Hintons leadership at East Side, the school has earned Reward status from the state twice in the last five years. Student growth at East Side has been in the top five percent for the state of Tennessee during her time at the school.



Ms. Hinton was also an assistant principal at both East Side Elementary and Hillcrest Elementary. Extensive experience in the classroom has also been an important part of Ms. Hintons career in education as she taught special education at Mountain Creek Elementary and Rivermont Elementary.



Stephanie Hinton has a wealth of experience and knowledge on how to positively impact teaching and learning for children, said Dr. Bryan Johnson, superintendent of Hamilton County Schools. She will be a strong influence on academic growth for children across the system.



Ms. Hinton presently serves on the Chattanooga 2.0 Committee, the Transition Team and on the Expanding Success Action Team. She was selected the Hamilton County Department of Education Principal of the Year for 2016 and received the 2011 NAACP Image Award as Educator of the Year.



As Ms. Hinton leaves East Side, she will place the successful school in the capable hands of Greg Wilkey as he becomes principal at the school. Mr. Wilkey has served as the assistant principal at East Side for the past five years. I am extremely proud of the work we are doing at East Side to foster a positive and productive climate, Mr. Wilkey said. Im honored to have the chance to serve as East Sides principal and I am looking forward to working with the teachers and community members to ensure that our students continue to make academic gains.



Mr. Wilkey became an assistant principal in 2007 at Battle Academy. He moved to Tyner Middle Academy as an assistant principal in 2009 before he started his work as assistant principal at East Side in 2012. He spent 15 years in the classroom teaching Spanish at Chattanooga High, Rivermont Elementary, and Tyner Middle Academy.



These are two excellent educators who provide tremendous value to our school system and for our children, said Dr. Bryan Johnson, superintendent of Hamilton County Schools. These changes just continue our efforts to examine every staff opening and position to ensure that we are structured in the most effective manner to achieve our goal of being the fastest improving school district in Tennessee.


We've all heard of women getting breast implants, nose jobs, and Botox injections to achieve their desired figure but have you heard of thighlighting?

Thighlighting is a new plastic surgery trend that is sweeping through Hollywood as more and more women request thighs like Bella Hadid, Jennifer Lopez, and Kendall Jenner.

What Is Thighlighting?

Thighlighting is the name given to a series of leg-based cosmetic surgery that gives the patient a full leg makeover. While it is usually tailored to meet a woman's request, thighlighting can include a variety of procedures including thigh lifts, calf implants, contouring of the inner and outer thighs, and liposuction.

The outcome of the procedure is slimmer and toned legs that make the patient look taller and also helps the woman's body look more proportionate. The entire procedure lasts only a couple of hours and most patients are typically discharged on the same day.

"Thighs are always an area of concern for women," Chiu told The Hollywood Reporter. "Also, thighs are an area that makes a dramatic difference in the overall body. When contoured right to elongate the legs, they can help create a better proportion, thus the entire physique looks leaner and longer."

Dr. Esho of The ESHO Clinic in London, England also endorsed Chiu's statement. He told The Independent that women nowadays are becoming increasingly worried about the appearance of their thighs and opting for thighlighting to shape their thighs as well as help elongate their legs.

Thighlighting can also be achieved without the patient having to go under the knife. The Georgia Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Clinic makes this happen with a combination of nonsurgical procedures like laser hair removal, Coolsculpting, and ThermiTight among other methods.

Trend Inspired By Celebrities On The Red Carpet

The trend has been made popular by celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez, Bella Hadid, and Kendall Jenner, who wear high-slit gowns on the red carpet that leave the thigh area exposed, according to Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon Dr. Gabriel Chiu.

#JLOxGUESS A post shared by Jennifer Lopez (@jlo) on Dec 4, 2017 at 12:35pm PST

Miami-based plastic surgeon Rian Maercks also pointed out that patients request that their thighs will look exactly like the legs of Taylor Swift, Lopez, Karlie Kloss, Hadid, and Jenner.

However, this cosmetic procedure is not light in the pocket. While the cost of thighlighting varies depending on the patient's target areas, Dr. Esho said a complete thighlighting procedure can cost more than $9,000.
Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi painting is headed to Louvre in Abu Dhabi. The painting is purchased by an anonymous buyer for a record-breaking $450 million in New York last month.

'Salvator Mundi' Heads To Abu Dhabi

On Wednesday, the newly opened Louvre in Abu Dhabi announced that the 500-year-old painting will be displayed inside the museum. Salvator Mundi features an image of Christ wearing a Renaissance-inspired robe.

The painting is one of the few last artworks created by da Vinci that is known to exist. It is also the only one in private hands.

During last month's auction, Salvator Mundi or Savior of the World was described by Alan Wintermute, a spokesperson for Christie's auction house, as the greatest art discovery of the 21st century.

"The word 'masterpiece' barely begins to convey the rarity, importance and sublime beauty of Leonardo's painting," said Wintermute.

Anonymous Buyer Is A Saudi Prince

Christie's auction house sold the work of art to an anonymous buyer, but it has recently been revealed that a Saudi prince bought Leonardo's painting. Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud's identity was disclosed in the documents obtained online.

The Saudi prince is not a famous art collector and the sources of his wealth remain unknown. He initially gave a $100 million deposit to secure his purchase and to qualify for the auction.

Notably, the 32-year-old prince's identity wasn't revealed without his knowledge. Also, the prince has not commented regarding his recent purchase.

da Vinci's Masterpiece Has Controversial History

Meanwhile, Salvator Mundi has had a controversial history, with one expert doubting if it is still the original work of da Vinci. King Charles I of England used to be the owner of the painting before it disappeared for a long period of time.

When it resurfaced in 1900, it was purchased by a British collector. The painting was sold again in 1958 and then acquired in 2005 by a group of art dealers for less than $10,000. At that time, the painting was badly damaged and most of its parts were painted over.

In 2013, Salvator Mundi was bought by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.

Christie's said that most scholars, however, still believe that the Salvator Mundi they recently sold was the one painted by da Vinci. Prior to the Saudi Prince's purchase, the artwork was also displayed in Hong Kong, London, and San Francisco.
The Motion Picture Academy Board has outlined new standards of conduct amid a slew of sexual abuse allegations in Hollywood. The board of governors is expected to enforce the new standards as soon as possible.

On Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sent a letter to all of its members where the new rules have been outlined. A day earlier, the Academy's 54-member board of governors approved the motion.

Members of the Academy convened a special task force that consulted with professors, human resource personnel and sexual harassment experts since October.

Harvey Weinstein Gets Expelled From The Academy

The task force was created after the Academy also decided to expel mega-producer Harvey Weinstein following several allegations of sexual abuse and harassment.

Following his expulsion, the Academy released a statement saying that any member of the group who abuses their power or influence in a questionable or indecent manner will be removed from the Academy without further notice or explanation.

The Academy also reiterated their stand on all forms of abuse, harassment, and discrimination and said that they will not tolerate any of it.

Some of the Academy's board of governors include Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg. They are expected to lead the implementation of the new standards.

Meanwhile, the new standards state that any member of the Academy who violates the new rules may receive disciplinary action given to them by the board of governors. Some disciplinary actions include suspension or expulsion.

Dawn Hudson, chief executive of the Academy said that the new standards will represent a first step in ensuring that all of their members live up to the group's values. He also acknowledged that a lot of things still need to be done.

"The task force will finalize procedures for handling allegations of misconduct, assuring that we can address them fairly and expeditiously," said Hudson.

Hudson added that the board of governors will be the one to access the accuracy of the allegations. They will also be the ones to decide what action they should impose thereafter.

Some of the Hollywood figures who were linked to various sexual abuse, harassment and misconduct allegations included Billy Cosby, Brett Ratner, Roman Polanski and more. All three are still members of the Academy.

Harvey Weinstein's Accusers

Weinstein, on the other hand, was stripped of his position at the Academy after Rose McGowan came forward with her story of rape by the producer. Other actresses who accused Weinstein included Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and more.
Adult film star August Ames passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 5 from an apparent suicide. She was 23 years old.

Husband Confirms August Ames' Death

Ames' husband confirmed the news of the actress' passing via a statement. Toxicology reports are still being conducted, so no official cause of death has been revealed, but there is no evidence of foul play.

"She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me," said Kevin Moore, Ames' husband. Moore works as an adult film director.

Porn Star's Suicide Maybe Due To Online Bullying

Even though Ames' official cause of death is still undetermined, her friends claimed that she had been battling depression for quite some time. Her peers also believe that a recent online bullying incident triggered her decision to take her own life.

Earlier this month, Ames refused to film a sex scene with an actor who had previously starred in gay porn. The adult film star received criticism on social media and was accused of being a homophobe.

However, Ames said that she declined to participate in the filming because the medical testing for straight and gay men is very different. Ames also criticized agents for not caring about who they represent in the porn industry.

Just hours before her demise, Ames told her social media followers that she won't apologize for stating her stand on the issue loud and clear. She also said that her intentions were not malicious, so everyone should just let her be.

Following Ames' death, some of her friends took their thoughts to social media to accuse the online bullies of encouraging her to commit suicide. Initial reports claimed that Ames died of hanging in her Ventura County home.

Annika Albrite, a fellow porn star, expressed her shock over Ames' death.

"Online harassment is a real thing and it claimed another life. Someone who I liked and would have even called a friend," wrote Albrite.

Omg,I cant believe shes dead. You people should have known better than to berate her over her personal thoughts! Shame on all you for beating it into the ground. Online harassment is a real thing & it claimed another life. Someone who I liked & would have even called a friend!  Anikka Albrite (@AnikkaAlbrite) December 6, 2017

Film producer and director Jules Jordan was also surprised to learn about Ames' sudden death. She said that Ames was one of the best and nicest people she has ever known in the business.

Ames, whose real name is Mercedes Grabowski, was born in Canada. She received two AVN awards and starred in 270 films since she joined the industry in 2013.
R.Kellys two homes in Atlanta, Georgia, were burglarized during Thanksgiving weekend while the three-time Grammy winner was on tour in New Orleans.

The mansions were completely emptied and the mastermind behind the theft was Alfonso Walker who served as a part-time employee for the Chicago native vocalist. According to the report, items such as Kellys couches and even diamond hoodie were taken. Police officers of Johns Creek County, where the homes are located, said the crime was reported by Kellys housekeeper.

The Case

Detectives believe the stolen items were later sold off. A neighbor named Mark Gibson said when a third truck came to the house he lives next to, the police pulled up alongside it.

"They blocked the guy in. One of the guys got out with his gun drawn," he said.

TMZ revealed that law enforcement caught three men leaving one of the vans that were used in the burglary. When brought in for questioning, the men shared that they were hired by Walker to sell all of the items because Kelly was moving his businesses back to Illinois where he was raised.

Kellys neighbors say they saw the moving trucks and thought it was suspicious that all the furniture was being moved out of the house.

"Ultimately, it led them to an individual that they say hired them that works for Mr.Kelly's organization.They were told he was moving his organization out of Atlanta back to Chicago and was selling off all of his belongings," Gibson confirmed about the investigation.

Police say Walker was supposed to turn himself in on December 5 but he didnt come to the station. The employee of the 12 Play vocalist is facing charges such as burglary and theft by deception.

R&B Star's Ongoing Scandal

Gibson was surprised to learn that he lived next to one of the megastar's homes. He even claimed he didnt know there was anything important to steal inside the property.

News of Kellys homes being vandalized comes after two women, Kitti Jones and Jerhonda Pace stepped forward to share that R.Kelly has an alleged sex cult where he grooms young women to be his girlfriends (sex slaves).In news reports, they revealed that they had to perform sexual acts on him or other women who were in the house.

The women also claimed he doesnt allow his girlfriends to have contact with their family, friends, or other members in his camp, especially if they are males. The women both shared that the musician created a dress code for his women and if his strict rules were broken, the women would be beaten by Kelly or left to starve in one of the rooms of his mansions or music studio.

Who Trains R. Kelly's Girlfriends

In an interview with The Real, Pace, who became one of Kellys girlfriends when she was a teenager, claimed she was trained by a woman older than her to please Kelly properly.

Learn more about her story in the video below.
In October 2017, a familiar scene played out in a sessions court in Mumbai. A constable informed the judge that the police had not been able to trace the complainant. A new date was given, and the accused in the case trooped out. The complainant was a policeman, no longer residing at his old address. With their vast resources, the Mumbai Police had not been able to trace one of their own, who, just six years back, had been an assistant commissioner of police (ACP).

But the public prosecutor was not unduly perturbed, for this was just one of the many cases he had to handle. In fact, he saw this one as a burden on him, given that it was almost 25 years old.
A TITAN KRIOS cryo-electron microscope has been inaugurated at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, in Grenoble, France. The inauguration took place in the presence of Ada Yonath, chemistry Nobel Prize laureate in 2009, Francesco Sette, Director General of the ESRF and all the partners that jointly run the facility with the ESRF: the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). This cryo-electron microscope will provide Europe with a new, innovative and complementary facility for structural biology, serving a vibrant scientific community and addressing new biology and health challenges.

The importance of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) for biochemistry has been recently recognised through the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson. According to the Nobel Prize Committee this technique both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules and has taken biochemistry into a new era. Chemistry laureate Ada Yonath, who received the Nobel in 2009 for determining the structure of the ribosome using X-ray crystallography, in particular at the ESRF, described this technique as the next step in the resolution revolution.

To capture life in atomic details

It is often said in structural biology that seeing is believing: It is only by knowing the atom-by-atom arrangement of a biomolecule that researchers can grasp how it works and identify therapeutic solutions.

The team in the control hutch of the new CRYO-EM platform. Credits: Stef Cande.

Thanks to cryo-EM, researchers can now freeze biomolecules mid-movement, and therefore portray them at atomic resolution. They can also visualise processes inside cells they have never previously seen or depict membrane proteins. Cryo-EM allows researchers to produce films that reveal how proteins interact with other molecules, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of lifes chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals. The technique of cryo-EM has opened up the molecular world of the cell to direct observation, with scientists using the technique to probe the structure of drug targets, as well as components within cells involved in sensing pain and human diseases.

A collaborative platform for Europe and beyond

The strength of this equipment lies in its synergy with synchrotron-based techniques and, in its collaborative nature. The cryo-EM platform will provide scientists with a support to users from all the partner institutes: ESRF, EMBL, ILL and IBS.

This platform will offer users in Europe and beyond a holistic approach to their research as it concentrates 350 scientists from three European Institutes and one French mixed research facility in structural biology (MX) on a same site. Along with state-of-the-art and highly automated MX beamlines, it will provide scientists with full services and a large combination of techniques from sample preparation, to data collection and their interpretation.

Eaazhisai Kandiah preparing an experiment. Credits: Stef Cande.

As underlined by Francesco Sette, DG of the ESRF We are proud to inaugurate this cryo-electron microscope. The ESRF has always helped lead the way in structural biology, with the commissioning of worlds first undulator-based beamlines for MX and MX-dedicated micro-focus beamline. With this collaborative cryo-EM platform, the ESRF, with its partners, will offer a unique hub for pioneering research in structural biology and a great tool for the understanding of life.

The cryo-EM platform, which started operating in November, is open to the international user community through a peer-review system that evaluates the scientific merit of proposals, as well as their technical feasibility. There are few cryo-EMs in Europe, and they are mostly used locally. The ESRF, as an international institute, is the ideal place to offer this service to the scientific community worldwide, explains Eaazhisai Kandiah, beamline scientist.

With the addition of this world-class cryo-EM, the ESRF offers the international structural biology community the possibility of coordinated access to cutting-edge methods and instrumentation. "The ESRF international scientific community can now use the information obtained both from diffraction experiments and from cryo-EM in a complementary fashion to better and more fully interpret action and function of complex bio-macromolecules. It will allow scientists to push the field of structural biology forward, to better understand the nature of health diseases, and to develop new drugs. underlines Christoph Muller-Dieckmann, beamline responsible.

The Cryo-EM platform will be run by 7 scientists, including 3 from the ESRF, 2 from EMBL and 2 from IBS.

"At EMBL, we're very excited at the opportunities this new facility will offer, and the more refined insight it will give us into detailed biological structures that are difficult to observe otherwise, like the components of viruses," said Iain Mattaj, Director General of EMBL. "We're happy to continue to develop this technology for biology, with an EMBL scientist as one of the platform's managing scientists.

The IBS, with its competitive program in electron microscopy, is proud to participate in this European effort to provide state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy technology to a large community of structural biologists in order to piece together the atomic details of macromolecular assemblies, the molecular machines of life, underlined Winfried Weissenhorn, Director of the IBS.

The arrival of cryo-EM on the EPN campus provides new, state-of-the-art infrastructure and a major boost for biology. The ILL, with its UK partner at Keele University, is excited to be part of this project, looking to further develop synergies between neutron techniques and the wider range of techniques on the EPN campus, explained Mark Johnson, Director of Research at ILL.
Lee Universitys Senior Showcase Art Exhibitions for the fall 2017 semester opened on Nov. 2 and are currently on display in three locations across Lees campus until Friday, Dec. 15.

The exhibit showcases the work of seven art students who will graduate this month. Ruth Schuiling and Jacob Yorks work is on display in the Communication Arts Building. Natalie Beck, Joy Noelle Bell, Oksana Ferenchuk, and Justin Sigels work is on display in Squires Library. Olivia Wattss work is on display in the Humanities Building.

This showcase represents a variety of approaches and styles depending on the focus and interest of each student. The artists statements are posted with each work, giving viewers a sense of what the artists interests and goals were in creating the work.

The art faculty feel this display shows a lot of talent and creativity, but at the same time only a small portion of each students total body of work they have created while at Lee, said John Simmons, assistant professor of art at Lee. We are very proud of their accomplishments and are confident their future holds a lot of promise.

The Senior Showcase Art Exhibitions are free and open to the public during normal university hours.

For more information, contact Mr. Simmons at jsimmons@leeuniversity.edu.
Philip Setzer Edward Arron Gloria Chien Previous Next

String Theory, in partnership with Lee University and the Hunter Museum of American Art, will continue its ninth season with a performance featuring violinist Philip Setzer, cellist Edward Arron, and pianist Gloria Chien. The concert will take place on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the museum.

The evenings performance, sponsored by Pinnacle Financial Partners, will include Tchaikovskys impassioned Piano Trio In Memory of a Great Artist, an epic work dedicated to Tchaikovskys friend Nikolai Rubinstein, as well as Schubert and Setzers Du bist die Ruh, D. 776.

Prior to the concert, Musical Dialogues will take place at 6 p.m. from the concert stage. Dr. Chien will lead an in-depth conversation with the musicians on their lives, inspirations, and the masterpieces being performed.

Mr. Setzer began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and later at the Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. He is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, which has received eight Grammy Awards, three Gramophone Awards, and the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. He has also appeared with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony, Memphis Symphony, and Puerto Rico Symphony, among others.

As a soloist, Mr. Setzer has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Aspen Chamber Orchestra, and with the National, Memphis, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Omaha and Anchorage symphonies. He has performed cycles of the complete Beethoven, Bartok, and Shostakovich string quartets in the worlds musical capitals, from New York to Vienna.

Mr. Setzer is a professor of violin and chamber music at Stony Brook University in New York and has given master classes at schools around the world. He has also been a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center.

Mr. Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. He is currently the artistic director, host, and resident performer of the Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut, as well as the Festival Series in Beaufort, South Carolina, and Chamber Music on Main at the Columbia Museum in Columbia, South Carolina.

He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Harvey Shapiro. In 2016, Mr. Arron joined the faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst, after having served on the faculty of New York University for many years. In 2013, he completed a 10-year residency as the artistic director of the critically-acclaimed Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert.

Mr. Arron has performed numerous times at Carnegies Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Centers Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Halls, New Yorks Town Hall, and the 92nd Street Y, and is a frequent performer at Bargemusic. He has participated in Yo-Yo Mas Silk Road Project, as well as Isaac Sterns Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters.

Dr. Chien, a Steinway artist, is a chamber music advocate and the founding director of String Theory at the Hunter. She made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as a soloist under the batons of Sergiu Comissiona, Keith Lockhart, Thomas Dausgaard, Irwin Hoffman, Benjamin Zander, and Robert Bernhardt.

She is a prize winner of the World Piano Competition, Harvard Musical Association Award, as well as the San Antonio International Piano Competition, where she also received the prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work. Dr. Chien has presented solo recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Harvard Musical Association, Sanibel Musical Festival, Caramoor Musical Festival, Salle Cortot in Paris, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan.

She has also been a member of the CMS of Lincoln Center since 2012 and frequently plays at numerous venues around the country with the music society. She has emerged in recent years as one of Americas finest young chamber musicians and has been praised by well-known Boston music critic Richard Dyer for her wondrously rich palette of colors, which she mixes with dashing bravado and with an uncanny precision of calibration.

Dr. Chien currently serves as an artist in residence at Lee University.

Individual concert tickets are $35 for Hunter members, $45 for non-members, $10 for students with a valid student ID, and $25 for groups of 20 or more people.

For more information on String Theory at the Hunter Museum of American Art or to purchase tickets, call 414-2525 or visit http://stringtheorymusic.org/.




The Mayor of London wants more people from India to study and work in the city as part of a plan to create a new special relationship that is not based on just trade and investment.Sadiq Khan has revealed his vision for deeper ties between the UK and India and called for the British Government to put in place a more flexible visa system for Indian nationals.In a keynote speech in Mumbai during a trip to India, Khan voiced his frustration that, while there has been a drive to increase UK trade with India, business is hampered by the UK visa system.He pointed out that many Indians, particularly young students, are finding it harder than ever to gain visas to work and study in the UK. These Indians are choosing to go to the United States, Canada and Australia instead.He wants to see the introduction of a new post-study work route for international students and said that the number of Indian students coming to London has fallen by over 40% since 2010. He also would like to see a work experience programme between the two countries to encourage young people to spend time in both countries and a change to the immigration rules to make it easier for Indian entrepreneurs and skilled workers to gain visas.I fully appreciate the real disappointment that many Indians have felt about the British Governments decision to make it more difficult for Indians to gain visas to work and study in the UK, Khan said.In my view this is not only counterproductive, but simply wrong for the British Government to launch a charm offensive for Indian trade and investment on one hand, but then to work to enforce a visa system that makes it more difficult for Indians to come to our country with the other, he explained.In London Im making the case loud and clear for a fair, flexible immigration system that allows us to attract talented people - with fewer barriers and less red tape. As part of this, Im putting forward detailed proposals for a new post-study work visa for international students, he pointed out.The British Prime Minister Theresa May got it badly wrong with her decision to close this route a few years ago. Because its not only led to a substantial drop in Indian students coming to our universities and its in danger of starving my city of great talent. History shows us that people go on to do great things after studying and working overseas, he added.Dame Minouche Shafik, director of the London School of Economics, supports the Mayors call for a more flexible visa system. Increasing the availability of post-study work visas will help encourage the brightest minds from countries like India to study at Londons world leading universities, while reaffirming to the world that London is open, she said.Everybody wins. The students who come to study here, our universities, and the firms who want to employ our talented graduates, she added.Also supporting the change is Shalini Khemka, a member of the Mayors Business Advisory Board and Founder of E2Exchange (E2E) the UK's largest entrepreneurs organisation. Encouraging trade and increasing innovation through welcoming dynamic entrepreneurs, from India and across the world, is a must. London is a top destination to start a business with its innovative culture, access to finance, high skilled workforce and research excellence, all in one city. We need a flexible visa system that makes sure London remains open to global entrepreneurial talent, said Khemka.
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Local leaders have negotiated a $6 million incentive package with USAA that promises to expand its workforce in San Antonio and bring 2,000 employees to the city center  the areas single-largest infusion of jobs in the heart of downtown.

Under a plan called Project Blue that was announced late Wednesday, USAA would add 1,500 new jobs in San Antonio and move 2,000 office workers to its downtown buildings in exchange for $6 million in forgivable loans and tax breaks that would cover a portion of the companys $70 million investment.

Moving 2,000 jobs downtown is a game changer for the community, City Manager Sheryl Sculley said in a news release announcing the plans.

USAA hasnt nailed down the exact mix of jobs that it would add in San Antonio should the deal pass, company spokesman Matthew Hartwig said. But the terms of the deal dictate that new employees earn salaries starting at $50,000.

Suffice it to say these are corporate jobs, Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, president and CEO of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, said in an interview. These are going to be great jobs.

City Council members were briefed on the proposal during the closed-door portion of their Wednesday meeting and will vote on it at their meeting next Thursday.

San Antonio officials and economic development leaders say the deal would be the largest local job creator since Toyota Motor Corp. opened its plant on the South Side in 2006, which added 1,900 jobs at that time.

This is a huge win for the people of San Antonio. Any time an employer as important as USAA grows its presence in a community, the positive effects are felt by everyone, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in the announcement.

By comparison, Hulu plans to add 500 jobs to its newly opened Viewer Experience Operations headquarters by the end of 2018.

Saucedo-Herrera called it a catalyst project that will draw other major employers to San Antonio and downtown.

Officials believe USAAs proposed expansion would transform downtown San Antonio  bringing an influx of residents to rent or buy new downtown apartments, attract new shops, fill up local restaurants and spur other businesses to beef up their downtown presence.

The financial services firm already has 200 workers in downtown San Antonio and announced in November it plans to add 400 more by the end of 2018.

San Antonio is our home and we are pleased to play a part in the citys continued growth, USAA CEO Stuart Parker said in a news release. Our members needs are constantly evolving. Expanding in the citys center allows us greater access to employees with the skills and talents we need to best serve our members.

The company intends to upgrade its buildings at One Riverwalk Place and the Bank of America Financial Services building, which it bought earlier this year, to accommodate the move.

If you step back and think broadly about downtown San Antonio and how we all believe around this table that a vibrant downtown really drives the success of your broader economy; 2,000 additional new bodies roaming the streets, dining at Rosella, leveraging Lucys Doggy Day Care, thats whats really going to make a difference, Saucedo-Herrera said.

More than 6,000 new apartments have opened in downtown San Antonio within the past five years, Sculley said in an interview.

The city initially planned to add 7,500 downtown housing units by 2020 under the long-term SA2020 initiative started by former Mayor Julian Castro. Sculley said the city now expects to exceed that goal.

That makes it attractive for companies to locate more employees in the downtown area, Sculley said.

If council members pass the proposed package in its current form, the city would give USAA a $4 million loan out of the citys Economic Development Incentive and Parking Enterprise funds to partly finance the expansion of USAAs parking garage at One Riverwalk Place.

USAA also would a receive a 10-year, $2 million tax abatement on personal and real property to help cover improvements to the companys offices.

USAA will have to repay the $4 million loan within five years of the downtown parking garage receiving a certificate of occupancy. But the city plans to forgive $4,000 for each new job added that has a minimum base salary of $50,000.

USAA must also allow the public to use the parking garage after 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, after 6 p.m. Friday and all day on Saturday and Sunday. Ten percent of that parking must be made available to San Antonio Virtual Valet or other valet services sponsored by the city.

Its a great way to partner and leverage the existing parking assets we have without having to build a brand new public parking garage, Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said.

USAA has about 19,000 employees based in San Antonio and more than 32,000 across the company.

jfechter@express-news.net
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With 2017 winding down, CPS Energy is running low on money for residential solar rebates and could tap into funds set aside for commercial projects.

Through Dec. 2, the city-owned utility had allocated more than $10 million of the $15 million it started using in April.

Of that amount, $9 million was set aside for residential projects and $6 million for commercial. Nearly $8.2 million has been allocated for residential projects while only $2 million has been allocated for commercial.

If the residential funds run out, CPS Energy is allowed to use the remaining commercial funds for both residential and commercial projects on a first-come, first serve basis, said Rick Luna, CPS Energys senior manager of product development.

The current rebate is 60 cents a watt and gives up to a 10 cent additional rebate for projects that use locally-made modules and inverters. The previous rebate had been 80 cents a watt.

CPS Energys board approved the $15 million fund of solar rebates in January after the previous $30 million fund, approved at the end of 2015 and expected to run through 2018, ran low. Luna said the $15 million started being used in April and was expected to last between 12 and 18 months.

At this point Luna expects the $15 million fund will last, in total, for 12 months, though he said forecasting in solar is a tricky business.

Were certainly cognizant that were probably several months away (from running out of funds) but at this point I cant really comment on future tranches or funding levels, Luna said.

CPS Energy has been allocating money for solar rebates under the Save For Tomorrow Energy Plan, or STEP, which aims to save 771 megawatts of daily power use by 2020, enough to power 150,000 homes a day over a hot Texas summer. CPS Energy has saved 602 megawatts of daily power usage through STEP initiatives.
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Every winter, the citys theaters devote a lot of energy to producing a slew of holiday shows, and this year is no different.

Heres a look behind the curtain at some of this years offerings: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, All is Calm, A Christmas Carol, Hometown Holidays, Santaland Diaries, A Charlie Brown Christmas and La Pastorela.

Snagging the must-have car

The creative team at the Woodlawn Theatre spent about a year discussing how to handle the titular car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Building the car came off the table pretty quickly  its too expensive, and the theater doesnt have the staff to make it happen, said Christopher Rodriguez, artistic and executive director.

Ultimately, he and technical director Benjamin Grabill decided that renting a car was the way to go.

A plan to rent from a company near Houston fell apart on a weekend just one month from opening night, leaving Rodriguez scrambling to find a replacement. He spent most of that Sunday emailing every company he could find online that had a car available, casting as broad a net as possible.

I didnt even realize I emailed someone in Canada, I emailed someone in Australia, and they were like, We have the car; are you sure you want to figure this out?, he said, laughing.

More Information Where and when? "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:" 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sunday (additional performance 7:30 p.m. Dec. 21) through Dec. 23, Woodlawn Theatre, 1920 Fredericksburg Road. $18-$29 at woodlawntheatre.org or 210-267-8388. "All is Calm:" 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and Thursdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 24, The Playhouse San Antonio, San Pedro at Ashby. $20-$35, 210-733-7258; theplayhousesa.org. "A Christmas Carol:" 8 p.m. most Saturdays and 4 p.m. most Sundays through Dec. 23. Additional performances at 8 p.m. Dec. 15 and Dec. 21; the Dec. 17 show is at 8 p.m., and the Dec. 23 performance is at 4 p.m. All shows at the Roxie Theatre Company, 7460 Callaghan Road. $17-$25, roxietheatrecompany.com; 210-360-9180. "Hometown Holidays:" 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 23, The Harlequin, 2652 Harney Road, Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. $10- $22. 210-222-9694. "Santaland Diaries:" 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 17, Classic Theatre, 1924 Fredericksburg Road. $25 at classictheatre.org; 210-589-8450. "A Charlie Brown Christmas:" Opens Dec. 21. 6:30 p.m. Dec. 21-22, 26 and 29; 1, 4 and 7 p.m. Dec. 23; 2 p.m. Dec. 24 and 1 and 4 p.m. Dec. 30, Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, 226 N. St. Mary's St. $18-$30 box office, ticketmaster.com. "La Pastorela:" 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, San Antonio Mennonite Church, 1443 S. St. Mary's St. $15 at teatroaudaz.com. See More Collapse

A to Z Theatrical, a Kansas City-based company, also responded, letting him know that the car was available, and, he noted, the shipping costs were much more favorable than those for a car coming from another country.

It arrived in a semi truck right in time for tech week. The cast had been rehearsing with chairs or crates filling in for the car. Thats not unusual, said Melissa Gonzalez, who paints a zesty portrait of the diabolical Baroness Bomburst in the show.

This is our tech challenge du jour, Gonzalez said. You have to pretend.

Grabill drove the car through the front doors of the theater and built ramps to get it onto the stage.

It looks glorious, Rodriguez said after the car had been parked in the lobby.

And it has all of the bells and whistles that help sell it as a sentient vehicle that requires a please before starting and can also determine on its own whether to lift its tires to prepare to float or take to the sky to escape villainy. (Benjamin Farrars digital projections also help depict the cars unusual abilities.)

Its probably a fitting end to a year of big tech and design challenges for the theater.

We had a dragon (for Shrek), we had a man-eating plant (for Little Shop of Horrors), we have a flying car, Rodriguez said.  I told Ben (Grabill), Next season, all you need is a tornado and a bubble for Wizard of Oz. Everything else is pretty standard.

Getting in tune

This marks the second year that The Playhouse has staged All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, and its also the second time that Nicholas Ponting has served as music director. Thats no small task, given that all of the music is a capella, and not all of the songs are in English.

The songs are woven together with monologues drawn from first-hand accounts of the real-life armistice that occurred during the first Christmas of World War I.

We have to, as a group, really be listening to each other and not rushing, because if we rush, were going to cut (someones) monologue off, said Ponting, who is also in the show and designed the set. So theres no chance to be passive or comfortable onstage  you really have to be attuned to whats happening and make adjustments.

It was a little bit easier for him to work on the music this year since he had a year under his belt. Most of the cast returned, so everything snapped into place much quicker this time around.

Because of the material, the show has a different feel and a different weight than other shows for those who are in it.

Its a different experience than being in a musical, Ponting said. It doesnt even really feel like a musical. It just feels like this night of being human. Were not performing the show. Were showing people who come to see it what these people went through. Its not about us at all.

Becoming Scrooge

Actor Sean Salazar never thought of Scrooge as a possible role for him to play  for one thing, at 30, hes a little young to be a curmudgeon  but hes glad hes playing the part in the Roxie Theatres staging of A Christmas Carol.

Hes enjoyed tackling the challenge of playing someone so different from himself. Another big plus is that he gets to work with his dad. Jay Salazar plays Jacob Marley, Scrooges former business partner, in the show.

Just as Marley mentored Scrooge, Seans dad encouraged him to give theater a try, encouraging him to audition for Beauty and the Beast. His audition didnt go well, but director Jonathan Pennington gave him a chance anyway, casting him as the baker.

And because of that, I realized this is my passion, Sean Salazar said. And Ive been doing it ever since.

Working on this particular show, with its message of the importance of kindness and its depiction of one miserly man driven to open his heart, has been meaningful, he said.

Its so good to see somebody go from one end of the spectrum to the other, because it helps us as audience members or actors see thats how we need to be, he said.

Getting fancy

Shawn Kjos, who creates, costumes and often appears in the musical revues at The Harlequin, has been stepping up his costume game over the past year or so, inspired by the tiny details on the ensembles in a touring production of Motown that played at the Majestic Theatre.

He created 42 costumes for Hometown Holidays, which blends together about three dozen Christmas songs sung by seven actors. The looks range from square dance-style puffy skirts and boots for a rockabilly-driven section to a shimmery mermaid gown and a red-and-green Christmas camouflage version of a Santa outfit.

Good costumes, Kjos said, bring the production up. It makes everybody look like a star onstage. Everybody wants to sparkle.

Kjos has learned about costuming by doing it. He typically orders pieces online  Theres so much at your fingertips, he said  and then jazzes them up with crystals and other embellishments.

Dresses typically take eight to 10 hours to doll up, he said: Ill see things online for $1,000, and Ill think, I know why theyre charging that.

Back to Macys

First things first: No, John Stillwaggon has not heard David Sedaris reading his famed piece Santaland Diaries for NPR.

Stillwaggon, who is on his third go-round starring in Classic Theatres annual staging of the show based on Sedaris essay, has stayed away from it to try to do his own thing.

I understand that David Sedaris delivery is more sardonic and biting, Stillwaggon said, adding that that approach doesnt quite work for a live one-man performance. If someone is going to spend an evening with you, if youre too biting, too bitchy, people are going to shut down.

Every year, the piece is a little bit different, he said. The set changes  this time around, it includes the fireplace that graced the companys recent production of A Dolls House  and his interpretation does, too. This year, hell be sporting a beard, giving the character a more rugged look.

He looks forward to diving into the role each year, he said: Its so much fun.

Choreographing Snoopy and the gang

Charles Bell wasnt able to fit Magik Theatres A Charlie Brown Christmas into his schedule as a performer this year. So instead of once again zipping around the stage as Snoopy, a role hes played a few times, hes shifted behind the scenes, choreographing Magik Theatres production.

I wont be doing it, but Ill still be doing it, Bell said.

There is dance throughout the show  including the well-known number in which Charlie Browns pals bop about joyfully  but movement is most important for Snoopy (Delvin James) and Woodstock (Rosa Gardner).

The only way they can express themselves is through movement and gesture, Bell said.

Going back to church

La Pastorela, a contemporary take on the traditional nativity play that has long been produced all over Mexico, was Teatro Audazs first full production after it was founded last year. The company is offering its second annual staging this year.

One thing different this year is the script. Director Paula Rodriguez has pulled together a new one, stitching together pieces from various versions of the story. The basics of the tale remain the same. In it, the archangel and the devil bet on whether the shepherds will be able to successfully reach the barn where they are to welcome the Christ child.

A few other things will be the same, too. The company is returning to the San Antonio Mennonite Church to stage it.

Its a great little space, Rodriguez said. People there are super-kind and just generous.

And the church has once again opened up its fellowship hall and kitchen to the company, allowing them to serve bunuelos and hot chocolate to audiences after each performance.

We think thats the icing on the cake, Rodriguez said.
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Thursday, the city of San Antonio, CPS Energy and the University of Texas at San Antonio officially begin an effort to address the causes and effects of global warming in Americas seventh-largest city.

The Climate Action and Adaptation Plan will be San Antonios effort to make good on its promises this summer after signing onto the goals of the Paris Agreement, a global accord to try to keep warming to tolerable levels.

It starts with a public kickoff from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at UTSAs Downtown Campus at 501 W. Cesar Chavez Blvd. Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe will be the featured speaker.

We really want to hear what people have to say, said CPS Energy President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams. We would be really excited if its standing room only.

The plan will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and adapting to the effects of a changing climate, such as more extreme heat waves and floods.

Weather data show that San Antonios average temperatures have climbed 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit since records began in the 1880s. One federal climate study predicts that average annual temperatures will increase between 4 and 8 degrees by 2070 through 2099.

Under a framework approved by City Council last week, the city will lead the planning process with UTSA researchers answering technical questions about where San Antonios emissions come from and what kind of effects climate change will wreak on the city.

We see ourselves not as advocates of any specific strategy but as objective evaluators of all the different options, said Hazem Rashed-Ali, an associate professor of architecture at UTSA who will be leading the project, which involves faculty from four different colleges.

CPS Energy will provide further support and funding  $500,000 out of a $50 million pot for collaborative research with UTSA set up in 2010. CPS has provided nearly $7.3 million in funding to UTSA for previous work on energy research.

Public input and engagement in the climate plan is crucial, organizers say. No state or federal agency will slap San Antonio with fines or enforcement actions if the city fails to cut back on greenhouse gases or adapt to extreme weather.

Instead, that pressure needs to come from the public if the climate plan will be anything more than words on paper, they said.

The plan will only be a success, will only be implemented, if we have the right stakeholders at the table, said District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval.

CPS energy mix will be one major question on the table. In 2016, CPS customers got 27.6 percent of their power from coal, 30.5 percent from nuclear, 24.1 percent from natural gas, 4.8 percent from purchased power and 13 percent from solar, wind and landfill gas.

Long-term changes in CPS trajectory must have public support behind them, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said.

I want to have a clear message direct from the public about the importance of keeping our foot on the accelerator with regards to a renewable portfolio within CPS, Nirenberg said.

The plan will also focus on other emissions sources, including the way CPS power is used. According to a 2014 inventory of greenhouse gases included in the citys SA Tomorrow Sustainability Plan, 59 percent of San Antonios emissions are tied to buildings, 36 percent to transportation, 4 percent to solid waste and 1 percent to supplying water.

San Antonio isnt starting from scratch on addressing climate change, city Chief Sustainability Officer Doug Melnick said.

Besides CPS, Melnick mentioned the San Antonio Water Systems quest to diversify its water supply and the San Antonio River Authority working with the federal government and Bexar County to restore natural habitat to sections of the San Antonio River.

The thing about San Antonio that Ive learned is we dont necessarily tout everything that weve done, said Melnick, who came to the city from Albany, New York. Even though we havent been talking about climate, weve been doing a lot as a community that falls under the climate banner.

UTSA researchers will consider all this and are already working on updating the emissions inventory, Rashed-Ali said. Theyve also launched social media pages, and a project website will go live Thursday.

In 2018, the process will focus on looking at different futures for San Antonio and what techniques could be used to get there. UTSA researchers will look at the costs and benefits of each and not only their economic or environmental effects, Rashed-Ali said.

Yes, were looking at it from a climate perspective, but were also looking at benefits from a quality-of-life perspective, he said.

If all goes as planned, the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan will be finished by March 2019.

bgibbons@express-news.net, Twitter: @bgibbs
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Retired U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering said Wednesday that President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital was a serious foreign policy mistake and called it an effort to divert attention from special counsel Robert Muellers expanding Russia investigation.

Pickering, ambassador to Russia, Israel, El Salvador and other hot spots in a career that spanned five decades, was in San Antonio to deliver a lecture on Iran to the World Affairs Council.

In an interview before the talk, he invoked a 1997 Barry Levinson movie in which the president conjures up a fake war to distract Americans from a sex scandal.

How do you like Wag the Dog? Pickering said when asked if the president was trying to please pro-Israel, evangelical Christian voters. It hasnt been a good week, has it?

Trump routinely makes headlines as a distraction when facing bad news, and the Jerusalem announcement de-Muellerizes the horizon for awhile, Pickering said.

He acknowledged that Trump might be trying to play to U.S. voters, particularly in the American Jewish community and the evangelicals, and said another reason might be the anything-but-Obama theme of Trumps policy decisions. But the Jerusalem policy has been unchanged by every other president  Republicans included, Pickering said.

He joined a chorus of voices that condemned Trumps decision, questioning whether the president was genuinely interested in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together, because it in every way crosses the boundary that former previous presidents have not wanted to cross, of prejudging the outcome of negotiations on Jerusalem.

Trump called the move a recognition of reality and the right thing to do.

Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the decision doesnt fit a strategy outlined at a policy conference last weekend by Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law, that sees a convergence of interests between Arab states and Israel against a more assertive Iran.

If thats the outlook, its unclear why the president would act against the unanimous wishes of all of the Arab leaders who cautioned him not to take this action at this time, Crowley, author of Red Line, a book on Syria, told the Express-News.

Both he and Pickering said that in recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital, the United States has jeopardized any hope of serving as an honest broker in the long-stalled peace process.

At the lecture Wednesday evening at the San Antonio Country Club, Pickering talked at length about the possibility that Trump might pull the United States out of the international agreement aimed at stopping Iranian efforts to build a nuclear weapon. If the administration breaks the deal, he warned, the president will complicate efforts to stop North Korea's nuclear program.

If, in fact, we want North Korea to denuclearize, we're going to have to press them with a negotiated agreement to get it done, he said. If North Korea believes that such an agreement will bring advantages to it in return, why would it make an agreement with the president whose view is that at any point in time, for no reason at all, we can abandon any commitment that the United States makes internationally whenever he likes?

sigc@express-news.net
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Since Edward Benavides resigned last month as leader of the Tricentennial Commission, City Manager Sheryl Sculley has distanced herself from the notoriously fraught efforts to plan for the yearlong celebration of the citys 300th anniversary, claiming virtually no involvement.

I havent been involved in the planning for Tricentennial, Sculley told me on Wednesday. Unless there was a problem that was brought to my attention or someone had a question, I was not involved in the planning or the execution of duties for Tricentennial.

Public documents obtained under the Open Records Act, however, suggest Sculley was more involved in Tricentennial planning than she has indicated.

According to his calendar, Benavides attended monthly meetings with the city manager while serving as CEO of the commission, a nonprofit created by the City Council to plan for Tricentennial.

Sculleys own calendar also notes more than a dozen meetings concerning Tricentennial.

City spokesman Jeff Coyle confirmed Wednesday that Benavides and Sculley met on a monthly basis.

Benavides served as Sculleys chief of staff for five years before a committee on which the city manager sat hired him to lead the commission in 2015, a promotion that bumped his salary up to $167,000.

The five-person selection committee included three Tricentennial executive commission members  Katie Luber, Robert Thrailkill and Lionel Sosa  as well as Sculley and Jill DeYoung, who was serving as chief of staff for former Mayor Ivy Taylor at the time.

The committee evaluated 40 applicants and interviewed three finalists before unanimously choosing Benavides. He resigned four weeks ago following a tenure marked by repeated lapses.

Sculleys assertions of detachment from the commission arent surprising for someone with a reputation for bringing professionalism to City Hall.

Theyre difficult to square, however, with her equally strong reputation for exerting tight control.

Speaking to the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board last week, Mayor Ron Nirenberg was under the impression that Sculley and Benavides did not work together closely on the planning for Tricentennial.

My understanding is, not closely at all, Nirenberg said. Part of the challenge is, Tricentennial was created as a separate organization that had very little oversight and control from the city  and, frankly, had lapses in judgment and bad decisions. How do we prevent that from happening the next time? Thats what Im calling on the council and the city organization to fix.

On Wednesday, Sculley acknowledged her regular meetings with Benavides but sought to downplay their importance.

Wed meet from time to time, Sculley told me. But I didnt review any contracts.  I met with Edward just to say, Are things OK? Do you need my help? But I wasnt reviewing all the contracts.

Benavides bungled more than one high-profile contract while leading the commission, including a media partnership with KSAT-TV to film the New Years Eve celebration.

The commission released a request for proposals months after it already had begun discussions with KSAT, where Benavides brother works as an executive producer.

Tricentennial commission member Joe Linson this week complained that Benavides had misled commissioners on contracts.

In every meeting of the group, we were told that conversations were being had with media, vendors, potential sponsors, etc., Linson wrote in an email. When, in fact, (Benavides) had gone ahead and signed agreements without full board approval.

On Wednesday, Linson told me, I had no idea his brother worked (at KSAT). He never said that to anybody.

In light of Benavides close relationship to Sculley, Linson also felt that Benavides was essentially assigned to the commission by the city managers office.

I like Sheryl a lot, but thats a fact of life, Linson said. Hes her guy. We cant get around that. Eds her guy. But he was the wrong guy for this deal.

He added, Thats not to beat up Sheryl. Shes super. But on this, it wasnt a pretty picture.

bchasnoff@express-news.net
Heritage House Arts & Civic Center will present two screening of "The Bishop's Wife," starring Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 21.

"This holiday favorite tells the story of Bishop Henry Brougham (Niven), who is having trouble finding the funds for the building of a new cathedral. Brougham prays for divine guidance and his plea is seemingly answered by a suave angel named Dudley (Grant); however, Dudleys counsel isnt about fund-raising," officials said.



Admission is free and popcorn is provided. Running time: 1:49; rated PG.






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The needs of San Antonio students have changed in the more than a century thats passed since Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy founded her St. Peter Claver School here, but the school still fills an important role in San Antonios educational community.

The Healy-Murphy Center, a near East Side educational institution, was an early alternative school and today serves students such as the homeless and teenagers with children, who find themselves left behind by traditional schools.

Next year, the religious order that Healy-Murphy founded to run her original school will celebrate its 125th anniversary. The St. Peter Claver School she opened in 1888 was created to educate freed slaves and their descendants in San Antonio. Healy-Murphy faced opposition in the community after a difficult life as an Irish immigrant in South Texas and a long history of helping the underserved.

She suffered in her own life as a child, said Sister Geraldine Klein, the general superior of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate. Really and truly, she went through a lot. I think that made her strong and it gave her that eye to see and care about others.

Margaret Mary Healy was born in 1833. Her mother died when she was 4 years old. At age 12 she joined her father, a doctor, when he journeyed to the United States. Over the next 16 years she lived in Virginia, New Orleans and Matamoros, Mexico. During that time her father died of an illness, her uncle Walter died on a journey to California during which her two brothers disappeared and she witnessed another uncles murder, according to Margaret  Trailblazer for the Poor, a short biography published in 1989.

In 1849 she married John Bernard Murphy in Matamoros and the two settled on a ranch in San Patricio County. They later moved to Corpus Christi, where Bernard served as mayor before his death in 1884.

While living in Texas, Healy-Murphy launched a number of efforts to help the needy, including operating a clinic and soup kitchen on the ranch where she lived with her husband, treating victims of yellow fever in 1867 and making a failed attempt after a hurricane hit Corpus Christi in 1875 to open a hospital for all races, according to the biography.

In 1887, Healy-Murphy moved to San Antonio. That same year she heard a sermon at St. Marys Church downtown that would launch the St. Peter Claver School. At the time, U.S. Catholic bishops were trying to expand the churchs ministry to African-Americans in the former Confederacy.

After hearing from San Antonio church leaders about the need to help the citys black residents, who were faced with Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination, Healy-Murphy came up with the idea of a school that offered free education. In 1888, using money from the sale of a portion of her ranch in San Patricio County, Healy-Murphy opened St. Peter Claver Church and school, named after a Jesuit saint who ministered to and advocated on behalf of African slaves in Colombia.

Early photos of the schools students show them without shoes, said Sister Mary Fagan, a teacher at the Healy-Murphy Center. The no-cost education, which eventually including a boarding school, filled an important need in the community, even though many of the students werent Catholic, Fagan said.

There were some areas in these South Texas communities and in Louisiana where black students couldnt go to high school, she said. There were like 75 kindergartners, 80 first graders. They were just packed.

The church and school at Live Oak and Nolan streets is the home of the current Healy-Murphy Center. At the time, neighbors were unhappy with Healy-Murphys decision to open the school there. She struggled to get loans and the city slowed construction of the school.

Opponents attempted incessantly to arouse trouble and discord for her school and its clientele, according to her biography.

The endurance of the teachers was taxed to the limit and their work in the school was jeopardized.

Facing a shortage of teachers, Healy-Murphy went to Bishop Jean Claude Neraz, whod been a champion of St. Peter Claver School. Neraz suggested she seek out nuns to help her run the school, and when that failed he had a novel idea: start her own religious order.

In 1893, Healy-Murphy and three others pronounced their vows, becoming the first Sisters of the Holy Ghost and Mary Immaculate. Now the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate, it was the first Catholic community of religious women formed in Texas, according to the Handbook of Texas Online. Today the sisters have missions around Texas and the world but are still based in San Antonio.

I think we feel honored we were the first  that someone saw a need and thats how they dealt with the need, Klein said. She founded the church. She founded the school. She went to Ireland to (recruit). She drained her coffers. And it wasnt just money. She gave all of herself.

Healy-Murphy died in 1907. According to Margaret  Trailblazer for the Poor, her eulogy read in part that Healy-Murphy was destined to bring forth glorious fruits under the pains and self-sacrificing zeal of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost.

In the 1970s, with the end of segregation in San Antonio, the communitys needs changed. Under the leadership of Sister Mary Boniface ONeill, St. Peter Claver School was reborn as the Healy-Murphy Center, one of the first alternative high schools in the state.

Today the school offers extensive counseling and health services, works closely with a growing homeless population and offers child development services for the children of its students.

Teen pregnancy is the No. 1 reason young women drop out of school, said Douglas Watson, the centers executive director, and the child development center allows young parents to continue their education.

Classes are still held in some of the original buildings from its days as St. Peter Claver, although the board is raising money for a new child development center.

With its extensive services, mentorship programs and self paced teaching, the Healy-Murphy Center has helped students who have lost hope find hope again, Watson said.

She was a very courageous woman, he said of Healy-Murphy. She had a certain spirit about her that, despite the odds, she was going to make this work. Its the courage of Margaret Mary and her fortitude that is the backbone of what we do today, he said.
U.S. pork exports remained ahead of last years record volume pace, and beef exports are poised to break $7 billion this year for only the second time, according to October export results released by USDA and compiled by the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF).

October pork exports were the largest since May, totaling 211,592 metric tons (mt), up 5 percent from a year ago, valued at $565.4 million, up 8 percent. Through the first 10 months of the year, pork exports increased 8 percent in volume (2.005 million mt) and 10 percent in value ($5.28 billion) from the same period last year.

Exports accounted for 25.4 percent of total pork production in October (steady with last year) and 21.6 percent for muscle cuts only (up slightly from a year ago). For January through October, these ratios increased about one percentage point from a year ago to 26.4 percent of total production and 22 percent for muscle cuts. October export value averaged $51.41 per head slaughtered, up 9 percent from a year ago and the highest since July. Through the first 10 months of the year, per-head export value was $52.64, up 7 percent.

Beef exports reached 111,287 mt in October, up 5 percent from a year ago, valued at $662 million, up 18 percent. These were the second-largest monthly totals of 2017, trailing only August. For January through October, exports totaled 1.038 million mt, up 9 percent year-over-year, valued at $5.93 billion  up 16 percent from a year ago and slightly ahead of the record value pace established in 2014.

Beef exports accounted for 13 percent of total production in October, the highest since July but down from 13.9 percent last year. The percentage of muscle cuts exported was steady with last year at 10.7 percent. For January through October, beef exports accounted for 12.8 percent of total production (down from 13.3 percent last year) and 10.2 percent for muscle cuts (steady with last year).

October beef export value averaged $301.88 per head of fed slaughter, up 12 percent from a year ago and the highest since December 2016. January-October export value averaged $279.85 per head, up 10 percent.

Pork exports rebound to Mexico, Japan; record month for South America

Following a modest slowdown in September, pork exports to leading volume market Mexico regained momentum at 69,529 mt, up 7 percent from a year ago, valued at $129.8 million (up 13 percent). Through October, exports to Mexico are well-positioned for a sixth consecutive annual volume record at 655,527 mt (up 14 percent) valued at $1.24 billion (up 17 percent).

Mexico is an especially important destination for U.S. hams, and consumption growth in Mexico has been critically supportive of ham prices in this time of record U.S. pork production, explained USMEF President and CEO Dan Halstrom.

Although ham prices are currently below last years level, they have been up an average of 2 percent in 2017 and predictions of ham prices plummeting have not come true, he said. Strong demand in Mexico is absolutely a key reason for this. USMEF has focused on expanding per-capita pork consumption in Mexico, which is up by about one-third in the past 10 years. This has helped make Mexico an even more critical and more reliable trading partner for the U.S. pork industry.

Exports to leading value market Japan also trended upward in October, increasing 5 percent from a year ago in both volume (32,475 mt) and value ($134.5 million). January-October exports to Japan were 322,422 mt (up 1 percent) valued at $1.33 billion (up 3 percent). This included 176,609 mt of chilled pork valued at $834 million, down 2 percent in volume but 2 percent higher in value than a year ago.

Led by Colombia and Chile, October pork exports to South America reached a record 12,624 mt (up 31 percent from a year ago) valued at $32.3 million (up 29 percent). Through October, exports to South America were 78 percent ahead of last years pace in both volume (85,175 mt) and value ($218.8 million), already surpassing the previous records set in 2014. Export volumes to Colombia and Chile have also exceeded previous highs reached in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

Other January-October results for U.S. pork exports include:

Having gained further momentum in October, exports to South Korea have already exceeded their full-year 2016 totals in both volume (136,041 mt) and value ($372.7 million). Compared to the first 10 months of last year, exports were up 27 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

Led by mainstay markets Honduras and Guatemala, exports to Central America are on a record pace, totaling 56,906 mt (up 7 percent year-over-year) valued at $138.4 million (up 9 percent). Exports also increased substantially to El Salvador and Nicaragua, and edged slightly higher to Costa Rica.

Exports are also on a record pace to the Dominican Republic  up 26 percent year-over-year in volume (26,476 mt) and 32 percent in value ($60.6 million).

Despite trending lower in October, pork exports to the ASEAN region were still 16 percent ahead of last years pace in volume (39,910 mt) and 31 percent higher in value ($109.2 million), led by strong performances in the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

October exports to China/Hong Kong were below last years volume but steady in value, reflecting the upward trajectory of Chinas domestic pork production. Through October, exports to the region dropped 8 percent from a year ago in volume (413,032 mt) but were just 1 percent lower in value ($872.8 million) as continued strong demand for variety meat largely offset the slowdown in muscle cut exports.

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Were still got big gaps in the availability of those basic service providers. What were also seeing is that inner regional areas are growing much faster than the rural and remote areas where we have really poor health and education outcomes, he said.
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Caty Davis, Miss Tennessee 2017, will be visiting the children of Signal Centers, 109 N. Germantown Road on Friday at 9:45 a.m.

Miss Tennessee is a yearly guest of the Chattanooga Civitan Club during their December fundraiser. The meeting is highlighted by an enthusiastic Clazton fruitcake auction, which raises money for local charities.

Each year Miss Tennessee takes tours of agencies near and dear to Civitans hearts, said Pam Hudson, Signal Centers Childrens Program director and Civitan member. This year she will stop by Signal Centers where she will certainly be inspired by our childrens tenacity, drive, individuality and charm.

Signal Centers Childrens Program serves children six weeks to six years of age. Using an inclusion model of teaching, children with disabilities and typical children play and learn alongside each other.

To learn more about Signal Centers, visit SignalCenters.org.






As a child, I made my own toys. Growing up in a very large family, money for toys was non-existent, but ingenuity was plentiful. A sturdy branch, dragged from the nearby wood and threaded through a wooden fence, became a seesaw. Empty cocoa tins, and cans became a shop, or containers for mud pies, or skittles for the boys. And coats became dolls. The arms were tied in the front, and pulled round to the back. A scarf tied under the upturned collar formed a neck and head, and the vent at the back formed legs! Never short of real babies in the family, we had plenty of cast-offs that we could dress our dolls in. We loved them as if they were real. Having to make do and mend, fuels the imagination.

Mary Wood

One of my ancestors was cheated out of the family fortune. My great, great, grandfather was the favourite of his very wealthy maternal grandfather and stood to inherit his vast fortune. However, in pursuit of his chosen career, he went to India in the service of The East Indian Company. There he married the daughter of the Governor of Chinsurah. He wrote to his grandfather telling of his marriage, but the letter didnt arrive. His jealous cousin took the opportunity of discrediting him. He told the grandfather that the marriage was to a lowly woman. Something that mattered in the class divide days of our history. Poor great, great grandfather was cut out of the will and his cousin inherited everything. With some of his ill-gotten fortune, the cousin went on to build a castle in the Brecon Beacons called, Craig y Nos, which today is run as a hotel.

There are over two hundred descendants of my mum and dad. Many happy moments, but also many sad as the law of averages will dictate. Until a recent bereavement, over a hundred of us have gathered at my eldest sisters house each year  not always the same hundred. These occasions have been the highlight of our family, keeping us in touch and meeting new members. I am a great, great Aunt, many times over.

I have contributed many to my large family. Married, almost fifty four years ago at the age of seventeen. I am the mother of four, grandmother of eight, plus five add-ons, and great grandmother to twenty, plus three add-ons  add-ons are those who came with partners who had been in a relationship before joining our family. All are treated the same, as to us, they are all precious.

I never give up. A trait that helped me to recover from ME and sustained me through twice being hit by breast cancer. Through the long months of being in a wheelchair, when ME sucked my mind and body into an abyss of fog and jelly-like limbs, I strove to recover. Each day, I set myself, and achieved, a goal. I increased, the difficulty of these as I went, until I could once more cope with life. When cancer struck, overcoming the shock of my first encounter, was easier than my second, as I was left intact after a small operation to send it on its way. When it came back fourteen years later and claimed one of my breasts I was left feeling maimed and less of a woman. Fighting back wasnt easy, but I did regain a sense of myself, thankful to have been saved.

I wrote my first full-length novel by hand, in 1989. After writing my second and having them both rejected, I began work on my third. I had so much faith in this one, that I spent fifteen years, writing and rewriting it  between working full time, that is. Character led, it went through changes of title, and style, and from being written in a very broad northern accent to a smattering of the dialect. And though rejected by agents, when I self-published it as an ebook, it went to number one in genre and stayed in the top ten for fifteen months. This book was my learning curve  now I write three books a year!

Ive had a number of careers before becoming a writer. After a variety of jobs, from cleaning, to managing hotels, I took a course in office skills and became a Temp. This led to a ten year career in the Probation Service, starting in admin and working up to becoming a Probation Service Officer. My experiences in this job, gives my writing its gritty edge. I cannot paper over bad things that happen in life. Because, I know that life can be raw, emotions torn to shreds, and despair a reality. I write about life as it really was/is  though always end with happiness, or a hope of it.

I love to travel for my writing. My journeys for research have taken me to Germany, Poland, Zakopane, Auschwitz, The Somme, Normandy, Dunkirk, Bletchley Park, and Londons East End. And for my Northern Sagas, to The Trough of Bowland, Upper Mill, where I saw a working cotton mill. Leeds, and Blackburn. Now, I am planning trips to Dublin and Guernsey.

My claim to fame. I once snogged Les Dawson  unintentionally. It happened after a dinner-show. Les stood in the bar after his performance, and my husband asked if he would have his photo taken with me. Les approached me, making come here gestures with his hands and puckering his lips in that exaggerated way that he had. I was in fits, so when he suddenly grabbed me, I thought I was going to fall, and I grabbed his neck. To my embarrassment my lips smacked into his. Poor Les, didnt have much choice but to kiss me. My hubby took it all in good part, snapping away with his camera!

I go to Spain every winter. I have a writing retreat in Spain. I love my time there, and can feel the stresses of everyday life melt from me the moment I enter, and am embraced by this lovely country. This is where I do most of my writing, having done my research and armed with that and the synopses for each book I plan to write, I feel part of the world, and not shut away in my bedroom office as I am at home. Here I am given endless sunny days when I can sit on the patio, or even on the beach, and type away on my laptop, while my husband sits with me reading his paper. Bliss.

Brighter Days Ahead by Mary Wood is available now, published by Pan in paperback, priced 6.99
Prince George played a sheep in his school's nativity play.

Prince George

The four-year-old royal's father Prince William was beaming with pride when he went to watch his son in the traditional Christmas play and couldn't wait to tell people all about it.

Speaking to school children at BBC's Bridge House in Media City, Salford, north England about their Christmas plans, he said: "I went to my boy's nativity play. It was funny. He was a sheep."

It comes after the Duke of Cambridge hand delivered his son's Christmas list to Father Christmas during a recent trip to Helsinki, Finland, after George promised he had been a good boy this year.

Prince William - who also has two-year-old daughter Princess Charlotte with his wife Duchess Catherine, who is also pregnant with the couple's third child - said: "He hasn't written down many requests, so I think one request is probably OK."

The pre-formed list offered the option of writing down five gifts they would like, however George only wrote down one - a police car - before signing it off with his name.

The Kensington Palace Official Instagram account shared a picture of William meeting Santa.

The caption reads: "Prince George's Christmas Letter! The Duke of Cambridge hand delivered a letter written by Prince George to Father Christmas at Esplanade Park in Helsinki. HRH is currently on Day 2 of #RoyalVisitFinland, which coincides in the year of the country's 100 year anniversary of independence. (sic)."
The Vietnam Textile & Apparel Association (VITAS) expects the sector will generate $31 billion in exports in 2017, a year-on-year rise of 10.23 per cent. The sector has done well in a challenging year as the Trans-Pacific Partnership was cut short, and renamed Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, VITAS vice chairman Truong Van Cam said.Apparel exports in the last two months of this year are expected to reach $5.27 billion, increasing the total exports to more than $30 billion, according to a Vietnamese news agency report.

The Vietnam Textile & Apparel Association (VITAS) expects the sector will generate $31 billion in exports in 2017, a year-on-year rise of 10.23 per cent. The sector has done well in a challenging year as the Trans-Pacific Partnership was cut short, and renamed Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, VITAS vice chairman Truong Van Cam said.#

The industry has applied technologies to create better-quality, value-added products and VITAS has initiated trade promotion programmes and professional training courses to increase productivity and adopt smart production models, CAM told a recent press conference in Hanoi.A conference to review the sectors performance will be held on December 15 in Da Nang city. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Girls Inc of Chattanooga will present the 2018 UnBought and UnBossed honorees at a reception held in their honor.

The honorees will be announced on Thursday at the Edney Innovation Center.

Named for the phrase coined by Congress member Shirley Chisholm, the awards honor Hamilton County women, who through their career and/or community service, have improved the lives of girls and women.

As in past years, girls participating in the Girls Inc.Women's History Project select honorees from nominations submitted by community members.

This is the 14th anniversary of UnBought and UnBossed, and honorees will be recognized at a luncheon to be held at the Chattanooga Convention Center on Wednesday, April 11, 2018.
Over 10.132 million bales of cotton have arrived in 2017-18 season at various ginneries in Pakistan, as on December 1, 2017, up 3.62 per cent over arrival of 9.778 million bales during the corresponding period of last season, according to the latest fortnightly report on cotton arrivals, released by Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA).

In the major cotton producing province of Punjab, total cotton arrivals decreased by 0.83 per cent year-on-year to 6.107 million bales, according to the report prepared by PCGA, in joint cooperation with All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) and the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA). While in Sindh province, cotton arrivals increased 11.18 per cent to 4.024 million bales as on December 1 during the ongoing cotton season 2017-18.

Of the total arrival of 10.132 million bales at various ginneries in Pakistan, 9.281 million bales were pressed by ginners, of which 8.274 million bales were sold, leaving an unsold stock of 1,006,991 bales with the ginners, as on December 1, according to the data.

Over 10.132 million bales of cotton have arrived in 2017-18 season at various ginneries in Pakistan, as on December 1, 2017, up 3.62 per cent over arrival of 9.778 million bales during the corresponding period of last season, according to the latest fortnightly report on cotton arrivals, released by Pakistan Cotton Ginners' Association (PCGA).#

The textile mills in Pakistan consumed 8.062 million bales, while another 211,989 bales of cotton were sold to exporters, according to the data. The Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) has not procured any bale of cotton so far this season.

As of December 1, a total of 666 ginning factories were operational in Punjab compared to 566 ginneries that were operational during the same time last season. Similarly, 294 ginning units were operational in the Sindh region, compared to 222 operating units during the corresponding period last year.

Analysing the cotton arrival situation, PCGA has stressed the need for continuation of ban on cotton imports from India through Wagah and Karachi port. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
In an international show of confidence in the Fijian Governments sugarcane industry reforms, the Indian Government today presented Prime Minister and Minister for Sugar Voreqe Bainimarama a grant for nearly FJD2.2 million to be earmarked for the purchase of new cane farming machines and equipment.



The Indian High Commissioner to Fiji, His Excellency Mr. Vishvas Sapkal, presented Hon. Prime Minister with a cheque for FJD2,172,576.35 at the Office of the Prime Minister in Suva.



Prime Minister Bainimarama, in thanking the Indian Government for the grant, said it was reflective of the strong relations shared between the two countries, and of Indias confidence in the Fijian Governments reforms and the overall direction of Fijis sugarcane industry.



All the machines that Fiji purchases through this grant will help our cane farmers become more efficient, and in effect, better adapt to both a changing economy and climate, Prime Minister Bainimarama said. This grant is about more than just machinery, and more than just dollars and cents. It is a sign that the reform programme that we are carrying out within the Fijian sugarcane industry is attracting support from the international community, and that it is worth investing in. The future is bright for Fijis sugarcane industry, and this grant is proof.



I also want to thank the Government of India, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for their enduring support, and for the friendship that India continues to share with Fiji, he added.



High Commissioner Sapkal said India would continue to assist Fiji in development cooperation.



Fiji and India have special relations and we share a close bond. We are partners in a development process, and we give a lot of importance for agriculture sector cooperation, High Commissioner Sapkal said.



He added a team from India was also working with sugar stakeholders here to provide all possible support in the rail network development.



Ministry of Sugar Permanent Secretary, Yogesh Karan said the assistance would go a long way in boosting cane production through mechanisation of the sugar industry.



We already have Mahindra tractors available here and we will purchase more Indian products with this grant, said Permanent Secretary Karan. The Fiji Sugar Corporation will also decide on what other machinery is needed. We will make these purchases quickly because we want to capitalise on the current planting season.



The machines will be distributed for use in the cane belt areas in the Western and Northern divisions.



-ENDS-


The Captis Intelligence I-4 System Significantly Elevates Asset Protection/Loss Prevention Capabilities

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 6, 2017 / Captis Intelligence, a leading provider of I-4 crime solutions (Intelligence, Information, Investigation, Identification) announced today the addition of Rite Aid, one of the nation's leading pharmacy retailers as a client.

The announcement comes in the wake of a major acceleration in growth for Captis Intelligence, which recently opened offices in London and Singapore to support its growing international customer base. Captis will provide Rite Aid with asset protection support service from its corporate office located in Los Angeles.

'Working with Captis Intelligence has enhanced our asset protection capabilities and provides us with extremely valuable information,' said Robert Oberosler, group vice president of asset protection at Rite Aid. 'We are pleased not only with the results we've achieved since we began using the company's platform but also with the team's commitment to delivering a high level of customer service.'

Captis Intelligence developed its I-4 solution over the course of three years, with the goal of unifying powerful asset protection systems within an easy-to-use interface, categorized into four groups: Intelligence, Information, Investigation, and Identification. Multiple industry-first solutions highlight the I-4 platform, including solveacrime.com, the first mass crowd-sourcing system used to identify unknown criminals in surveillance videos or pictures.

'As we look to the future, one of the key elements of our growth strategy is to expand our services to the retail asset protection segment,' said Dario Brebric, president of Captis Intelligence. 'We are excited to add Rite Aid, a thought leader in the asset protection and loss prevention industry to our client roster, as part of this expansion.'

For more information on Captis Intelligence, please visit www.captisintelligence.com.

About Captis Intelligence

Captis Intelligence's I-4 platform (Intelligence, Information, Investigation, Identification) provides an advanced cloud-based system for public and private sector applications. Captis unifies situational awareness, geographic crime intelligence, social media investigation, criminal databases, access to solveacrime.com, and secured information exchange portals for neighboring businesses and law enforcement. A global innovator, Captis is headquartered in Los Angeles and has offices in London and Singapore. Captis was founded on the principle of innovation and remains at the forefront of pioneering I-4 crime prevention/suspect identification technologies.

SOURCE: Captis Intelligence
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) announced that it has received a request for additional information from the Federal Trade Commission or FTC. This second request is part of the regulatory process in connection with the FTC's review of Northrop Grumman's proposed acquisition of Orbital ATK, Inc. (OA). The company continues to expect the acquisition to close in the first half of 2018, after receiving regulatory approvals. In September 2017, Defense contractor Northrop Grumman said it entered into a definitive agreement to buy Orbital ATK, Inc., an aerospace and defense technologies company, for approximately $9.2 billion. The consideration comprised $7.8 billion in cash, plus the assumption of $1.4 billion in net debt. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Citigroup Inc.'s (C) Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said that the bank expects to take a non-cash charge to earnings of about $20 billion if the U.S. Senate's version of the tax reform bill is enacted. Gerspach said at an investor conference in New York that the hit to profit would mostly stem from the bank writing down its deferred tax assets in the period the bill is signed. About $3 billion to $4 billion of the charge would come from the taxation of unremitted foreign earnings. 'From what we understand in that tax bill, our best estimate would be in the year that bill gets signed we would probably have an upfront hit of $20 billion,' Gerspach said. The bank said at its July investor day that the charge could be $15 billion, a number that assumed a 25 percent corporate rate and a one-time repatriation of overseas earnings. 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.
LUXEMBOURG CITY, LUXEMBOURG / ACCESSWIRE / December 6, 2017 / While many traders consistently gravitate towards a combination of stock purchases and mutual funds as a more aggressive way to increase their ROI over the long term, indices are often overlooked as reliable investment. Although not nearly as volatile, index investing is a rewarding choice that offers numerous benefits for those willing to take on a more patient strategy. Q Smart Limited, an internationally-recognized broker, highlights the main advantages offered through this increasingly popular method.

Sometimes wrongly criticized as an overly safe technique that yields smaller profits when compared to others, index investing is on the rise for a good reason. Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett is a strong backer himself. "Consistently buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund. I think it's the thing that makes the most sense practically all of the time," he told CNBC. A 2013 study by Rick Ferri and Alex Benke found that index investing outperformed similar active strategies anywhere from 80-90% of the time. In the overwhelming majority of cases, taking the market returns produced better results than trying to actively beat the market. Q Smart Limited suggests one of the biggest reasons this method is so effective is due to its low overall cost. Indices are often among the cheapest investments available because generally they don't require a portfolio manager who needs to be paid regularly. They also don't rack up all the trading costs, taxes, and other expenses that are usually involved with more active strategies.

Diversification is always suggested with serious investors, allowing them to decrease risk without diminishing expected returns. Index funds are an easy way to accomplish this because they invest in entire markets, and hold every stock in an index such as the S&P 500, including many well known entities such as Apple, Microsoft and Google. This encourages them to stay relatively constant, largely sidestepping the risk that comes with choosing individual stocks. Consistency is another distinct advantage these funds offer, which can be a breath of fresh air for those accustomed to volatile market activity. Indices make it easier to stay consistent as well as avoid all the speculation and stress associated with other strategies. They often involve selecting a few different funds to follow within a small amount of corresponding markets, so there isn't much to alter.

A joint venture of financial and e-commerce experts, Q Smart Limited is a leading source of contracts for difference (CFDs) on currencies, indexes, commodities, and stocks. The firm has been providing their services for more than 17 years, with an emphasis on trading in financial products on over-the-counter (OTC) and organized stock markets. With a team of more than 200 trading specialists operating from offices in Auckland, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Oslo, and Sao Paulo, the company remains dedicated to supporting retail and institutional customers in executing successful transactions while achieving maximum profitability, with the backing of advanced technological solutions and strong liquidity.

Q Smart Limited - Market Leading Supplier of CFDs: http://qsmartlimitednews.com

Q Smart Limited - Discusses Brexit's Global Market Impact: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/q-smart-limited-discusses-brexits-002100324.html

Q Smart Limited - on the Investing Trends Expanding in 2017: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/q-smart-limited-investing-trends-155200356.html

Contact Information:

QSmartLimitedNews.com

contact@qsmartlimitednews.com

http://qsmartlimitednews.com

SOURCE: Q Smart Limited
OAKVILLE, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/07/17 -- Giyani Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE: WDG)(FRANKFURT: KT9) ("Giyani" or the "Company") has received positive metallurgical testing results, performed by Dalhousie Minerals Engineering Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, from the manganese oxide bearing rocks sampled at the K.Hill Prospect, the first of three potential deposits within the Kanye Manganese Project in Botswana.

Of significance, manganese nodule type material, abundant at K.Hill, can be easily treated using a trammel/gravity/washing process. Manganese found in staining and veins environments suggest only a light grind is required making it physically amenable to hydrometallurgical processes. Hydrometallurgical processing takes the product to a grade higher than 99.7% manganese in the form of electrolytic manganese dioxide (EMD) suitable for the battery industry.

Robin Birchall CEO of Giyani said, "I am very pleased with the results of these tests. They vindicate the approach the Company has taken to pursue the high value battery market. We look forward to continuing our exploration and test work in Botswana at our deposits and hope to have further supportive good news in the near future".

In detail, the results indicate manganese minerals at K.Hill occur in three forms:

-- Staining on the silicates, iron oxides and themselves. -- Small veins, as manganese oxides deposited on each other -- Nodules wherein the manganese has built-up into botrydal masses that may contain other minerals

This supergene mineralogy is complex as there are many oxidation states of manganese and a variety of other metals are present.

These results, however, are positive indications that the percentage of deleterious elements in the rock does not affect quality or recovery. For example, Kaolin is present in one layer of the manganese bearing rock tested. This mineral has a smaller particles size and is found in veins; thus, should not present a problem during processing. Iron oxides are also found which is normal in manganese ores.

It is recommended that additional testing be performed to determine the recovery of manganese nodules through a screening, washing and/or gravity separation system and that the remainder of the manganese be tested for recovery and purity using hydrometallurgical processes.

-- Dump Material: hydrometallurgy tests to determine potential recovery. It is unlikely that grinding will be required on this material. However, grinding should be done on a second iteration of these tests to determine if recoveries can be improved. -- Manganese-Iron Altered Shales: Size reduction to the range of 100-300 micrometers followed by hydrometallurgical testing to determine potential recovery of the manganese. -- Manganese Shales with Kaolin: this material is similar to the Manganese- Iron altered shales with the potential of a smaller required grind size and the presence of Kaolin. If Kaolin is detrimental to the hydrometallurgy a course grind should be performed at sizes larger than a millimeter, followed by a washing to remove the kaolin prior to size reduction to the 100 - 300 micrometers final size. -- Manganese altered Silicates: This has a low grade of manganese. However, some of the manganese occurs in larger veins and could be separated with a course grind followed by leaching and hydrometallurgy.

Examples of the manganese minerals found in the samples are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Manganese minerals identified in the K.Hill samples

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name Lustre Colour Hardness Tenacity Density MnO Grade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cryptomelane Earthy Brown-gray 5-6.5 Brittle 4.17-4.41 60% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hausmannite Resinous Brown-black 5.5 Brittle 4.83-4.85 72% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hollandite Metallic Silver-Black 4-6 Brittle 4.95 52.8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Psilomelane submetallic Iron black 5-6 Brittle 4.7 48.8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pyrolusite Varies Black-gray 2-6.5 Brittle 5.04-5.08 63.2% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jacobsite Resinous Brown-Black 5.5-6.5 Brittle 4.76 23.8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coronadite Varies Gray-Black 4.5-5 Brittle 4.2-4.5 48.7% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Bond Work Index for power requirements, to crush and grind manganese ore, ranges from 12 to 16 kWhr/tonne, but when grinding only to exposure can be as low as 6 kWhr/tonne. This is an approximation of the power required to break the rock from an infinite size to 100 micrometers.

Metallurgical testing was performed on samples collected from the K.Hill Prospect in Botswana in August and September of 2017 by Dr. Ian M. Flint, Ph.D., P.Eng. These samples were shipped to Dalhousie university in Nova Scotia, Canada, where sectioned mineralogy work was done on thin sections randomly taken from the samples using an electron microprobe and an optical mineralogical microscope. Dr. Flint supervised each stage of the work, including from the site, and ensured the chain of custody of the samples.

Ian Flint, Ph.D., P.Eng, is the qualified person, as that term is defined by National Instrument 43-101, on behalf of the Company and has approved the scientific and technical content contained in this press release.

Additional information and corporate documents may be found on www.sedar.com and on Giyani Metals Corp. website: http://giyanimetals.com/.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Giyani Metals Corp.

Duane Parnham, Executive Chairman

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, the financial picture of the Company etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statement.

Contacts:

Giyani Metals Corp.

Robin Birchall

CEO - Director

+447711313019

rbirchall@giyanimetals.com




RENHUAI, China, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tianchao Shangpin "Sharing Resources and Shaping Brands" Summit was heldat the Moutai Conference CenterHall on November 30, 2017, with more than 1,000 high-level officials from the Guizhou provincial government, top executives from KweichowMoutaiGroup, and leading members of the WorldAlcoholicDrinksAlliance and industry associations in attendance.

Kweichow Moutai Group chairman and deputy party secretary Yuan Renguo explained at the event that 2017 is proving to be a crucial year for Moutai Group during China's 13thFive-year Plan period spanning 2016 to 2020. Despite a complex and constantly changing international economic environment, a slowdown in the pace of growth of the Chinese economy and ongoing adjustments to the path of development for Chinese industry, the group has maintained rapid growth, with many indicators hitting historic new highs, far better than expectations.

The group's party secretary and general manager Li Baofang said at the event, "the group's 'Meeting in Africa through the Unique Aroma - China Kweichow Moutai One Belt, One Road Branding' initiative has been successful and represents another important milestone for us". Moutai Group has also set up a public interest fund to support the China's most disadvantaged in a move to add meaning to the Tianchao Shangpin brand.

The summit was hosted by deputy party secretary and secretaryof Committee for Discipline Inspection for the group Zhao Shuyue, with formerCroatian deputyprimeminister and WorldAlcoholicDrinksAlliance chairman Dr. Ante Sominic and his wife Rita Zhao attending and delivering speeches. The Sino-Russian Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development's Healthy Lifestyle Council chairman Liang Yushi read a message from Russian Healthy Lifestyles Council chairman Sergey Krusev.

Tianchao Shangpin has set an ambitious goal of 3 billion yuan (approx. US$450 million) in sales for 2018 and 10 billion yuan (approx. US$1.5 billion) by 2020, driving the achievement of an overall sales goal of 100 billion yuan (approx. US$15 billion) for the group, said Tianchao Shangpin Wine (Guizhou) vice chairman and president Huang Yongyi.

The summit laid out the roadmap for Tianchao Shangpin and proved a genuine morale booster, laying a solid foundation for both the company and the group to achieve the ambitious goals that each have set for themselves.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616134/Kweichow_Moutai_Yuan_Renguo.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616135/Kweichow_Moutai_Li_Baofang.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616136/Tianchao_Shangpin_Huang_Yongyi.jpg
The Tennessee Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that, when one spouse unilaterally withdraws money from a married couples joint bank account and places the funds in a certificate of deposit, the funds are no longer joint property and belong to the spouse to whom the certificate of deposit was issued.

In April 2012, Calvert Hugh Fletcher and his wife, Nelda Karene Fletcher, deposited funds in a joint checking account designated with a right of survivorship. The joint account card required only one signature to withdraw funds. Later, Mr. Fletcher withdrew $100,000 from the account and deposited the money in a certificate of deposit held only in his name. After he died, a dispute arose between Mrs. Fletcher and Mr. Fletchers children from a previous marriage regarding ownership of the certificate of deposit. The Putnam County Probate Court ruled that the funds belonged to the husbands estate because the funds ceased to be joint property when withdrawn from the joint account. Mrs. Fletcher appealed, and the Court of Appeals ruled the funds belonged to her because the money could be directly traced to the joint account.



After reviewing cases from Tennessee and other states, the Supreme Court held that, once a husband or wife withdraws funds from a joint bank account held as tenants by the entirety, the funds cease to be held by the entirety. The Supreme Court found this approach provides the clarity and finality needed in the current banking environment, noting it would be difficult for a third party receiving funds to know the source of the money and if someone else has an ownership interest in the funds.



In an opinion authored by Justice Sharon G. Lee, the Court held that the certificate of deposit issued to Mr. Fletcher from money withdrawn from the couples joint bank account was owned by Mr. Fletcher at his death and, therefore, was not owned by Mrs. Fletcher, but became a part of Mr. Fletchers estate and passed under the terms of his will.



To read the unanimous opinion in In Re Estate of Calvert Hugh Fletcher, authored by Justice Sharon G. Lee, visit the Opinions section of TNCourts.gov.
Series C funding round brings the total amount raised to $220m

Leading digital money transfer service WorldRemit has raised $40 million to drive its next phase of global growth, including an expansion of its Indonesia operation.

WorldRemit's mobile-first, digital model allows migrants to send money in a few taps directly from their phones or online instead of going to a bricks and mortar agent. Its popularity across APAC has grown rapidly and the region now accounts for 25% of WorldRemit's total revenue.

Within that, Indonesia is a key market with year-on-year growth of WorldRemit's transfers to the country topping 40%. Indonesians living overseas send remittances worth billions of dollars back home every year. The Indonesian fintech sector is vibrant and innovative, as businesses and consumers rapidly embrace digital technology.

WorldRemit handles a growing share of the $600 billion remittance market. Currently sending from over 50 countries to 148 destinations, the new funding will be used to increase WorldRemit's presence in Indonesia, including appointing its first country manager.

Bryce Currie, Global Business Development Director in the region, comments: "Indonesians are rapidly adopting WorldRemit's digital first money transfer service which is more convenient and lower-cost than traditional operators. This new funding will allow us to expand our network and service in Indonesia. Having a country manager in place will help us drive our growth even faster."

Since its last funding round in 2015, WorldRemit has launched 206 new services across the globe and has grown its transaction volume by 400%. Last month WorldRemit became Arsenal FC's first-ever online money transfer partner. Earlier in 2017 it announced a global integration with Android Pay.

The Series C round was led by LeapFrog Investments a dedicated equity investor in emerging markets, supporting fast-growth firms that deliver social impact alongside commercial returns. The round also had significant participation from existing investors Accel and TCV.

It follows a Series B investment raised from TCV in 2015 and a Series A from Accel and Project A in 2014 then one of the largest ever Series A rounds in Europe.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About WorldRemit

WorldRemit was founded in 2010 by Ismail Ahmed, a remittance specialist and former compliance advisor to the United Nations. Personal experience of using money transfer agents convinced Ismail that technology could improve the sending process, enhance compliance and reduce costs to the customer.

In November 2017 WorldRemit became Arsenal FC's first-ever online money transfer partner in a global sponsorship deal for all Premier League, League Cup and FA Cup games. In June 2017 WorldRemit added Android Pay to its service, offering a new way for WorldRemit's Android Pay users to safely and securely send money to 130 million mobile money accounts accessible via its network.

WorldRemit has secured $220 million in funding backed by Accel and TCV early investors in Facebook, Spotify, Netflix and Slack and LeapFrog. WorldRemit's global headquarters are in London, UK with regional offices in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

For more information, please visit the WorldRemit web site at www.worldremit.com

About LeapFrog Investments

LeapFrog invests in extraordinary businesses in Africa and Asia. We partner with their leaders to achieve leaps of growth, profitability and impact. LeapFrog companies now operate across 33 markets reaching 111 million people with financial services and healthcare. Over 93.8 million of those are emerging consumers, often accessing insurance, savings, pensions, credit and healthcare for the first time. LeapFrog companies provide jobs and livelihoods to over 114,626 people. These companies have grown on average by 43.3 per cent per annum since LeapFrog's investment. LeapFrog was recently named by Fortune as one of the top five companies changing the world, the first private equity firm ever to be listed. www.leapfroginvest.com @leapfroginvest

About Accel

Accel is a leading venture capital firm that invests in people and their companies from the earliest days through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Algolia, Avito, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, Deliveroo, DJI, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Funding Circle, Kayak, QlikTech, Slack, Spotify, Supercell and WorldRemit are among the companies the firm has backed over the past 30 years. The firm seeks to understand entrepreneurs as individuals, appreciate their originality and play to their strengths. Because greatness doesn't have a stereotype. For more, visit www.accel.com, www.facebook.com/accel or www.twitter.com/accel.

About TCV

Founded in 1995, TCV provides capital to growth-stage private and public companies in the technology industry. TCV has invested over $9 billion in leading technology companies and has helped guide CEOs through more than 100 IPOs and strategic acquisitions. TCV investments in the financial technology sector include Automated Trading Desk, Avalara, AxiomSL, CCC Information Services, Envestnet, FX Alliance, Green Dot, iPipeline, Lynk Systems, MarketAxess, Payoneer, Retail Merchant Services (RMS), Solarc, Riskmetrics Group, Tastyworks, thinkorswim, and WorldRemit. TCV's internet and software investments include Altiris, Dollar Shave Club, ExactTarget, Expedia, Facebook, Fandango, GoDaddy, Genesys Software, HomeAway, Merkle, Netflix, Redback Networks, Rent the Runway, Sitecore, Splunk, Spotify, VICE Media, and Zillow. TCV is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York and London. For more information about TCV, including a complete list of TCV investments, please visit http://www.tcv.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171206005161/en/

Contacts:

Media

WorldRemit

Lucas Germanos, +44 207148 6118 (ext. 775)

Global Lead, PR and Media Relations

lgermanos@worldremit.com

or

Bryce Currie

Global Business Development Director

bcurrie@worldremit.com

or

Photo Media Pack

http://bit.ly/2A68TD4
- First Phase III combination trial of a cancer immunotherapy to show improvement in progression-free survival as an initial treatment in advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) -

Genentech, a member of the Roche Group (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY), today announced results from the positive, pivotal Phase III IMpower150 study of TECENTRIQ (atezolizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) plus chemotherapy (carboplatin and paclitaxel) in people with previously untreated, advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study showed that people who received TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy had a 38 percent reduced risk of their disease worsening or death (progression-free survival, PFS) compared with those who received Avastin plus chemotherapy (hazard ratio [HR]=0.62, p<0.0001, 95 percent CI: 0.52-0.74; median PFS 8.3 vs. 6.8 months). Importantly, a doubling of the 12-month landmark PFS rate was observed with the combination of TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy (37 percent) compared to Avastin plus chemotherapy (18 percent). The rate of tumor shrinkage (overall response rate, ORR), a secondary endpoint in the study, was higher in people treated with TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy compared with Avastin plus chemotherapy (64 percent vs. 48 percent). The safety profile of the TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy combination was consistent with the safety profiles of the individual medicines, and no new safety signals were identified with the combination.

The analysis of the co-primary PFS endpoint in IMpower150 was assessed in two populations: all randomized people without an ALK or EGFR genetic mutation (intention-to-treat wild-type, ITT-WT) and in a subgroup of people who had a specific biomarker (T-effector "Teff" gene signature expression, Teff-WT). IMpower150 met its PFS co-primary endpoint per study protocol for both populations assessed. In the Teff-WT population, the combination of TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy reduced the risk of disease worsening or death by 49 percent compared to Avastin plus chemotherapy (HR=0.51, p<0.0001, 95% CI: 0.38-0.68; median PFS 11.3 vs. 6.8 months).

"This TECENTRIQ study is the first positive Phase III combination trial that showed a cancer immunotherapy reduced the risk of the disease getting worse when used as an initial treatment in a broad group of people with advanced non-squamous NSCLC," said Sandra Horning, M.D., chief medical officer and head of Global Product Development. "The IMpower150 study represents an important advance in lung cancer treatment, and we will submit these results to regulatory authorities around the world to potentially bring a new standard of care to people living with this disease as soon as possible."

The late-breaking IMpower150 data will be presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Immuno Oncology Congress (Abstract LBA1_PR) on Thursday, December 7, 6:15 p.m. Central European Time (CET) and are also part of the official press program. Early results from the co-primary endpoint of overall survival (OS) are encouraging. While they are not yet fully mature, these preliminary OS results will be presented at the ESMO IO Congress. The next analysis of survival is expected in the first half of 2018.

About the IMpower150 study

IMpower150 is a multicenter, open-label, randomized, controlled Phase III study evaluating the efficacy and safety of TECENTRIQ in combination with chemotherapy (carboplatin and paclitaxel) with or without Avastin in people with stage IV or recurrent metastatic non-squamous NSCLC who had not been treated with chemotherapy for their advanced disease. It enrolled 1,202 people of which those with ALK and EGFR mutations were excluded from the primary ITT analysis. People were randomized (1:1:1) to receive:

TECENTRIQ plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (Arm A), or

TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (Arm B), or

Avastin plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (Arm C, control arm).

During the treatment-induction phase, people in Arm A received TECENTRIQ administered intravenously at 1200 mg in combination with intravenous infusion of carboplatin and paclitaxel on Day 1 of a 3-week treatment cycle for 4 or 6 cycles. Following the induction phase, people received maintenance treatment with TECENTRIQ (1200 mg every 3 weeks) until loss of clinical benefit or disease progression. Due to pre-specified statistical testing hierarchy, Arm A vs. Arm C has not been formally tested yet. IMpower150 was designed to formally compare TECENTRIQ plus chemotherapy (Arm A) vs. Avastin plus chemotherapy (Arm C), only if TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy (Arm B) is shown to improve OS in the ITT-WT population compared to Avastin plus chemotherapy (Arm C). These OS results are expected in the first half of 2018.

People in Arm B received induction treatment with TECENTRIQ (1200 mg) and Avastin administered intravenously at 15 mg/kg in combination with intravenous infusion of carboplatin and paclitaxel on Day 1 of a 3-week treatment cycle for 4 or 6 cycles. People then received maintenance treatment with the TECENTRIQ Avastin regimen until disease progression (Avastin) or loss of clinical benefit/disease progression (TECENTRIQ).

People in Arm C received induction treatment with Avastin administered intravenously at 15 mg/kg plus intravenous infusion of carboplatin and paclitaxel on Day 1 of a 3-week treatment cycle for 4 or 6 cycles. This was followed by maintenance treatment with Avastin alone until disease progression.

The co-primary endpoints were PFS, as determined by the investigator using Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Version 1.1 (RECIST v1.1), and OS.

A summary of the IMpower150 Arm B vs. Arm C PFS and ORR results are included below; additional data, including preliminary OS results and Arm A vs. Arm C PFS will be presented as part of the Late-Breaking Abstract presentation.

Primary PFS Analysis (ITT-WT Population; Co-Primary Endpoint) Arm C Avastin carboplatin

+ paclitaxel Arm B TECENTRIQ Avastin +

carboplatin paclitaxel ITT-WT populationa n 336 n 356 Median PFS (95% CI), months 6.8 (6.0, 7.1) 8.3 (7.7, 9.8) HR (95% CI) p-value 0.62 (0.52 0.74) p< 0.0001 ITT-WT Landmark PFS 6-month (95% CI) 56% (51, 62) 67% (62, 72) 12-month (95% CI) 18% (13, 23) 37% (31, 42) Primary ORR Analysis (Secondary Endpoint) ITT-WT ORR (95% CI) 48% (43, 54) 64% (58, 68)

Independent review facility (IRF)-assessed PFS demonstrated a similar benefit with Arm B vs Arm C as INV-assessed PFS in the ITT-WT population

Primary PFS Analysis (Teff-WT Population; Co-Primary Endpoint) Arm C Avastin carboplatin

+ paclitaxel Arm B TECENTRIQ Avastin +

carboplatin paclitaxel Teff-WT populationa n 129 n 155 Median PFS (95% CI), months 6.8 (5.9, 7.4) 11.3 (9.1, 13.0) HR (95% CI) p-value 0.51 (0.38 0.68) p< 0.0001 Teff-WT Landmark PFS 6-month (95% CI) 57% (48, 66) 72% (65, 79) 12-month (95% CI) 18% (10, 25) 46% (38, 54) Teff Primary ORR Analysis (Secondary Endpoint) Teff ITT-WT ORR (95% CI) 54% (44, 62) 69% (61, 76)

IRF-assessed PFS showed a similar benefit for Arm B vs. Arm C as INV-assessed PFS in the Teff-WT population

PFS Subgroup Analysis (HR; 95% CI) (Arm B vs. C) ITT (Includes EGFR mutant ALK+)* 0.61 (0.52, 0.72) EGFR mutant ALK+* 0.59 (0.37, 0.94) Teff negative-WT 0.76 (0.60, 0.96) PDL1 by IHC TC1/2/3 IC 1/2/3-WT 0.50 (0.39, 0.64) PDL1 by IHC TC2/3 IC2/3-WT 0.48 (0.35, 0.65) PDL1 by IHC TC0 and IC0-WT 0.77 (0.61, 0.99)

HR, hazard ratio; ORR, overall response rate; PFS, progression-free survival; WT, wild-type; Teff, T-effector; IC, tumor-infiltrating immune cells; TC, tumor cells a WT populations exclude patients with EGFR or ALK driver mutations. Inclusion criteria included people with an EGFR mutation who had experienced disease progression (during or after treatment) or intolerance to treatment with one or more EGFR TKIs or people with an ALK mutation who experienced disease progression (during or after treatment) or intolerance to treatment with one or more ALK inhibitors

The safety profile of TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy combination was consistent with the safety profiles of the individual medicines, and no new safety signals were identified with the combination. Serious adverse events related to treatment were observed in 25.4 percent of people who received TECENTRIQ and Avastin plus chemotherapy compared to 19.3 percent of those who received Avastin plus chemotherapy.

About lung cancer

According to the American Cancer Society, it is estimated that more than 222,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017, and NSCLC accounts for 85 percent of all lung cancers. It is estimated that approximately 60 percent of lung cancer diagnoses in the United States are made when the disease is in the advanced stages.

About the TECENTRIQ (atezolizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) combination

There is a strong scientific rationale to support further investigation of TECENTRIQ plus Avastin in combination. We are investigating this combination in a broad range of cancers, including first-line advanced NSCLC. Avastin, in addition to its anti-angiogenic effects, may further enhance TECENTRIQ's ability to restore anti-cancer immunity, by inhibiting VEGF-related immunosuppression, promoting T-cell tumor infiltration and enabling priming and activation of T-cell responses against tumor antigens.

About TECENTRIQ(atezolizumab)

TECENTRIQ is a monoclonal antibody designed to bind with a protein called PD-L1. TECENTRIQ is designed to bind to PD-L1 expressed on tumor cells and tumor-infiltrating immune cells, blocking its interactions with both PD-1 and B7.1 receptors. By inhibiting PD-L1, TECENTRIQ may enable the re-activation of T cells. TECENTRIQ may also affect normal cells.

About Avastin (bevacizumab)

Avastin is a prescription-only medicine that is a solution for intravenous infusion. It is a biologic antibody designed to specifically bind to a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that plays an important role throughout the lifecycle of the tumor to develop and maintain blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis. Avastin is designed to interfere with the tumor blood supply by directly binding to the VEGF protein to prevent interactions with receptors on blood vessel cells. The tumor blood supply is thought to be critical to a tumor's ability to grow and spread in the body (metastasize).

TECENTRIQ U.S. Indication (pronounced 'te-SEN-trik')

TECENTRIQ is a prescription medicine used to treat:

a type of bladder and urinary tract cancer called urothelial carcinoma.

TECENTRIQ may be used when your bladder cancer: has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced urothelial carcinoma), and you are not able to take chemotherapy that contains a medicine called cisplatin, or you have tried chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working.



The approval of TECENTRIQ in these patients is based on a study that measured response rate and duration of response. There is an ongoing study to confirm clinical benefit.

a type of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

TECENTRIQ may be used when your lung cancer: has spread or grown, and you have tried chemotherapy that contains platinum, and it did not work or is no longer working.



If your tumor has an abnormal EGFR or ALK gene, you should have also tried an FDA-approved therapy for tumors with these abnormal genes, and it did not work or is no longer working.

It is not known if TECENTRIQ is safe and effective in children.

Important Safety Information

Important Information About TECENTRIQ

TECENTRIQ can cause the immune system to attack normal organs and tissues in many areas of the body and can affect the way they work. These problems can sometimes become serious or life-threatening and can lead to death.

Getting medical treatment right away may help keep these problems from becoming more serious. A healthcare provider may treat a patient with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. A healthcare provider may delay or completely stop treatment with TECENTRIQ if a patient has severe side effects.

Patients should call or see their healthcare provider right away if they get any symptoms of the following problems or these symptoms get worse.

TECENTRIQ can cause serious side effects, including:

Lung Problems (pneumonitis) Signs and symptoms of pneumonitis may include: new or worsening cough, shortness of breath, or chest pain

Signs and symptoms of pneumonitis may include: new or worsening cough, shortness of breath, or chest pain Liver Problems (hepatitis) Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes, severe nausea or vomiting, pain on the right side of the stomach area (abdomen), drowsiness, dark urine (tea colored), bleeding or bruising more easily than normal, feeling less hungry than usual

Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes, severe nausea or vomiting, pain on the right side of the stomach area (abdomen), drowsiness, dark urine (tea colored), bleeding or bruising more easily than normal, feeling less hungry than usual Intestinal Problems (colitis) Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: diarrhea (loose stools) or more bowel movements than usual, blood in the stools or dark, tarry, sticky stools, severe stomach area (abdomen) pain or tenderness

Signs and symptoms of colitis may include: diarrhea (loose stools) or more bowel movements than usual, blood in the stools or dark, tarry, sticky stools, severe stomach area (abdomen) pain or tenderness Hormone Gland Problems (especially the pituitary, thyroid, adrenal glands and pancreas) Signs and symptoms that the hormone glands are not working properly may include: headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches, extreme tiredness, weight gain or weight loss, dizziness or fainting, feeling more hungry or thirsty than usual, hair loss, changes in mood or behavior (such as decreased sex drive, irritability, or forgetfulness), feeling cold, constipation, voice gets deeper, urinating more often than usual, nausea or vomiting, stomach area (abdomen) pain

Signs and symptoms that the hormone glands are not working properly may include: headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches, extreme tiredness, weight gain or weight loss, dizziness or fainting, feeling more hungry or thirsty than usual, hair loss, changes in mood or behavior (such as decreased sex drive, irritability, or forgetfulness), feeling cold, constipation, voice gets deeper, urinating more often than usual, nausea or vomiting, stomach area (abdomen) pain Nervous System Problems (neuropathy, meningitis, encephalitis) Signs and symptoms of nervous system problems may include: severe muscle weakness, numbness or tingling in hands and feet, fever, confusion, changes in mood or behavior, extreme sensitivity to light, neck stiffness

Signs and symptoms of nervous system problems may include: severe muscle weakness, numbness or tingling in hands and feet, fever, confusion, changes in mood or behavior, extreme sensitivity to light, neck stiffness Inflammation of the Eyes Signs and symptoms may include blurry vision, double vision, other vision problems, eye pain or redness

Signs and symptoms may include blurry vision, double vision, other vision problems, eye pain or redness Severe Infections Signs and symptoms of infection may include: fever, cough, frequent urination, flu-like symptoms, pain when urinating

Signs and symptoms of infection may include: fever, cough, frequent urination, flu-like symptoms, pain when urinating Severe Infusion Reactions Signs and symptoms of infusion reactions may include: chills or shaking, itching or rash, flushing, shortness of breath or wheezing, dizziness, fever, feeling like passing out, back or neck pain, and swelling of the face or lips

Before receiving TECENTRIQ, patients should tell their healthcare provider about all of their medical conditions, including if they:

Have immune system problems (such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, or lupus); have had an organ transplant; have lung or breathing problems; have liver problems; have a condition that affects their nervous system (such as myasthenia gravis, or Guillain-Barre syndrome); or are being treated for an infection

Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant TECENTRIQ can harm an unborn baby If patients are able to become pregnant, they should use an effective method of birth control during treatment and for at least 5 months after the last dose of TECENTRIQ

Are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed It is not known if TECENTRIQ passes into the breast milk Do not breastfeed during treatment and for at least 5 months after the last dose of TECENTRIQ



Patients should tell their healthcare provider about all the medicines they take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.

The most common side effects of TECENTRIQ in people with urothelial carcinoma include:

feeling tired

decreased appetite

nausea

constipation

urinary tract infection

diarrhea

fever

The most common side effects of TECENTRIQ in people with non-small cell lung cancer include:

feeling tired

decreased appetite

shortness of breath

cough

nausea

muscle or bone pain

constipation

TECENTRIQ may cause fertility problems in females, which may affect the ability to have children. Patients should talk to their healthcare provider if they have concerns about fertility.

These are not all the possible side effects of TECENTRIQ. Patients should ask their healthcare provider or pharmacist for more information.

Report side effects to the FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 or http://www.fda.gov/medwatch. Report side effects to Genentech at 1-888-835-2555.

Please visit http://www.Tecentriq.com for the TECENTRIQ full Prescribing Information for additional Important Safety Information.

Avastin Indications:

Metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) for first- or second-line treatment in combination with intravenous 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy. It is also approved to treat mCRC for second-line treatment when used with fluoropyrimidine-based (combined with irinotecan or oxaliplatin) chemotherapy after cancer progresses following a first-line treatment that includes Avastin. Avastin is not approved for use after the primary treatment of colon cancer that has not spread to other parts of the body.

for first- or second-line treatment in combination with intravenous 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy. It is also approved to treat mCRC for second-line treatment when used with fluoropyrimidine-based (combined with irinotecan or oxaliplatin) chemotherapy after cancer progresses following a first-line treatment that includes Avastin. Advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel in people who have not received chemotherapy for their advanced disease.

in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel in people who have not received chemotherapy for their advanced disease. Metastatic kidney cancer (mRCC) when used with interferon alfa.

when used with interferon alfa. Glioblastoma (GBM) in adult patients whose cancer has progressed after prior treatment (recurrent or rGBM).

in adult patients whose cancer has progressed after prior treatment (recurrent or rGBM). Advanced cervical cancer (CC) in combination with paclitaxel and cisplatin or paclitaxel and topotecan is approved to treat persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cancer of the cervix.

in combination with paclitaxel and cisplatin or paclitaxel and topotecan is approved to treat persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cancer of the cervix. Recurrent ovarian cancer (rOC). Avastin in combination with paclitaxel, pegylated liposomal doxorubicin or topotecan, is approved to treat platinum-resistant recurrent epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer (prOC) in women who received no more than two prior chemotherapy treatments. Avastin, either in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel or with carboplatin and gemcitabine, followed by Avastin alone, is approved for the treatment of patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer (psOC).

Possible serious side effects

Everyone reacts differently to Avastin therapy. So it's important to know what the side effects are. Although some people may have a life-threatening side effect, most do not. Their doctor will stop treatment if any serious side effects occur. Patients should talk to their doctor if there are any signs of these side effects.

Most serious side effects (not common, but sometimes fatal):

GI perforation. A hole that develops in the stomach or intestine. Symptoms include pain in the abdomen, nausea, vomiting, constipation, or fever

A hole that develops in the stomach or intestine. Symptoms include pain in the abdomen, nausea, vomiting, constipation, or fever Wounds that don't heal. A cut made during surgery can be slow to heal or may not fully heal. Avastin should not be used for at least 28 days before or after surgery and until surgical wounds are fully healed

A cut made during surgery can be slow to heal or may not fully heal. Avastin should not be used for at least 28 days before or after surgery and until surgical wounds are fully healed Serious bleeding. This includes vomiting or coughing up blood; bleeding in the stomach, brain, or spinal cord; nosebleeds; and vaginal bleeding. If a patient has recently coughed up blood or had serious bleeding, they should be sure to tell their doctor

Other possible serious side effects

Abnormal passage in the body. This type of passage-known as a fistula-is an irregular connection from one part of the body to another and can sometimes be fatal

This type of passage-known as a fistula-is an irregular connection from one part of the body to another and can sometimes be fatal Severe high blood pressure. Blood pressure that severely spikes or shows signs of affecting the brain. Blood pressure should be monitored every 2 to 3 weeks while on Avastin and after stopping treatment

Blood pressure that severely spikes or shows signs of affecting the brain. Blood pressure should be monitored every 2 to 3 weeks while on Avastin and after stopping treatment Kidney problems. These may be caused by too much protein in the urine and can sometimes be fatal

These may be caused by too much protein in the urine and can sometimes be fatal Infusion reactions. These were uncommon with the first dose (less than 3% of patients). 0.2% of patients had severe reactions. Infusion reactions include high blood pressure or severe high blood pressure that may lead to stroke, trouble breathing, decreased oxygen in red blood cells, a serious allergic reaction, chest pain, headache, tremors, and excessive sweating. The patient's doctor or nurse will monitor for signs of infusion reactions

These were uncommon with the first dose (less than 3% of patients). 0.2% of patients had severe reactions. Infusion reactions include high blood pressure or severe high blood pressure that may lead to stroke, trouble breathing, decreased oxygen in red blood cells, a serious allergic reaction, chest pain, headache, tremors, and excessive sweating. The patient's doctor or nurse will monitor for signs of infusion reactions Severe stroke or heart problems. These may include blood clots, mini-stroke, heart attack, chest pain, and the heart may become too weak to pump blood to other parts of the body (congestive heart failure). These can sometimes be fatal

These may include blood clots, mini-stroke, heart attack, chest pain, and the heart may become too weak to pump blood to other parts of the body (congestive heart failure). These can sometimes be fatal Nervous system and vision problems. Signs include headache, seizure, high blood pressure, sluggishness, confusion, and blindness

Side effects seen most often

In clinical studies across different types of cancer, some patients experienced the following side effects:

High blood pressure

Too much protein in the urine

Nosebleeds

Rectal bleeding

Back pain

Headache

Taste change

Dry skin

Inflammation of the skin

Inflammation of the nose

Watery eyes

Avastin is not for everyone

Patients should talk to their doctor if they are

Undergoing surgery . Avastin should not be used for 28 days before or after surgery and until surgical wounds are fully healed

. Avastin should not be used for 28 days before or after surgery and until surgical wounds are fully healed Pregnant or think they are pregnant . Data have shown that Avastin may harm a woman's unborn baby. Birth control should be used while patients are on Avastin. If Avastin is stopped, patients should keep using birth control for 6 months before trying to become pregnant

. Data have shown that Avastin may harm a woman's unborn baby. Birth control should be used while patients are on Avastin. If Avastin is stopped, patients should keep using birth control for 6 months before trying to become pregnant Planning to become pregnant. Taking Avastin could cause a woman's ovaries to stop working and may impair her ability to have children.

Taking Avastin could cause a woman's ovaries to stop working and may impair her ability to have children. Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding while on Avastin may harm the baby and is therefore not recommended

Patients should talk with their doctor if they have any questions about their condition or treatment.

Report side effects to the FDA at (800) FDA-1088 or http://www.fda.gov/medwatch. Report side effects to Genentech at (888) 835-2555.

For full Prescribing Information on Avastin please visit http://www.avastin.com

About Genentech in Personalized Cancer Immunotherapy

For more than 30 years, Genentech has been developing medicines with the goal to redefine treatment in oncology. Today, we're investing more than ever to bring personalized cancer immunotherapy (PCI) to people with cancer. The goal of PCI is to provide each person with a treatment tailored to harness his or her own immune system to fight cancer. Genentech is studying more than 20 investigational medicines, 10 of which are in clinical trials. In every study we are evaluating biomarkers to identify which people may be appropriate candidates for our medicines. For more information visit http://www.gene.com/cancer-immunotherapy.

About Genentech in Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is a major area of focus and investment for Genentech, and we are committed to developing new approaches, medicines and tests that can help people with this deadly disease. Our goal is to provide an effective treatment option for every person diagnosed with lung cancer. We currently have four approved medicines to treat certain kinds of lung cancer and more than 10 medicines being developed to target the most common genetic drivers of lung cancer or to boost the immune system to combat the disease.

About Genentech

Founded more than 40 years ago, Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. The company, a member of the Roche Group, has headquarters in South San Francisco, California. For additional information about the company, please visit http://www.gene.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171206006468/en/

Contacts:

Genentech

Media Contact:

Meghan Cox, 650-467-6800

or

Advocacy Contact:

Nicole Martin, 650-826-9223

or

Investor Contacts:

Loren Kalm, 650-225-3217

Karl Mahler, 011 41 61 687 8503
BEIJING, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded VFS Global an extension to its global contract for visa processing services. The contract extension covers four regions - Asia and Oceania, Europe & Russia, Middle East & Africa, and the Americas.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150528/747609-a )



VFS Global has been serving the Royal Norwegian Government since 2010 and currently operates 101 Visa Application Centres across 39 countries for Norway.

The contract renewal was signed byPer Egil Selvaag, Director General, The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, andChris Dix, Head-Business Development, VFS Global.

This is a significant win for the company, which processes approximately 260,000 Norway visa applications globally each year.

Chris Dix, Head - Business Development, VFS Global,remarked,"We are delighted to continue our partnership with the Norwegian Government.This is not only commercially important for VFS Global, but alsodemonstratesthe Norwegian Government's satisfaction with and trust in VFS Global, and further reinforces our company's position as the leading visa services partner to Schengen member statesand to 57 client governments worldwide."

TheRoyal Norwegian Government reported the country's tourism industry had another record year in 2016, following strong growth in the number of visitors in 2015. Figures compiled by Statistics Norway show average annual growth in the number of foreign visitors to Norway has exceeded the international average since 2010. The tourism industry accounted for over 4% of value creation and almost 9% of employment in the Norwegian business community in 2015. Nearly 160,000 people work in the tourism industry in Norway.Travellers from China, Russia, Thailand and India account for most of the inbound traffic into Norway.

For VFS Global, 2017 has been an eventful year and has outperformed competition by being awarded contracts for seven new client governments this year alone namely, Bahrain, Cote D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Nigeria, Slovakia and Ukraine. VFS Global is the trusted partner to 57 client governments worldwide, offering a range of visa, permit, passport, and consular services.

About VFS Global

VFS Globalis the world's largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide. With2430 Application Centres, operations in129 countriesacrossfive continents and over 158 million applications processedas on 31 October, 2017, VFS Global is the trusted partner of57 client governments.VFS Global's worldwide operations are certifiedISO 9001:2008for Quality Management System,ISO 27001:2013for Information Security Management SystemandISO 14001:2004for Environmental Management System. For more information, please visithttp://www.vfsglobal.com.
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Itiviti, a world-leading technology provider for the capital markets industry, today announced that its regulatory solution Itiviti Analyst was recognized as "Best New Technology Product - Regulatory Reporting" at the 2017 FOW (Futures & Options World) International Awards, presented yesterday at the FOW prize event in London.

Itiviti Analyst addresses the new regulatory trading landscape brought by the application of MiFID II in January 2018. This mandates investment firms to manage a more demanding set of compliance requirements, which in turn are expected to produce secondary issues related to trading strategy and performance. With its pioneering suite of five modules, Itiviti Analyst helps manage regulatory as well as competitive issues, enabling firms to address compliance confidently and efficiently while maintaining a focus on business innovation and growth.

"We are naturally very proud each time Itiviti's commitment to innovation and technology excellence is recognized," said Jonas Hansbo, Chief Strategy Officer, Itiviti. "Our latest FOW International Award for Itiviti Analyst means even more, as this award is also a testament to our industry and regulatory expertise."

The annual FOW International Awards recognize the best performance in the cleared derivatives industry. The "Best New Technology Product - Regulatory Reporting" winner is selected by a jury of industry experts, independent of the FOW team. Judges singled out Itiviti Analyst mentioning that the solution "addresses a wide scope of MiFID II-related reporting and includes MAR compliance module in one, as well as cost analysis and best execution analyses" and that "the timely product produced by Itiviti merits the first place for its comprehensiveness and appropriateness."

"The introduction of MiFID II is a major concern for the derivatives and risk management community, and the impact on our industry clearly shows that compliance is now more than a legal issue; it also involves fintech solutions to ease the regulatory burden and business decisions to stay competitive in a new market landscape," said William Mitting, publisher of FOW. "The Best New Technology Product Award indicates that Itiviti has captured the broad scope of these needs, and done so in a very timely fashion."

Itiviti Analyst is a vendor-agnostic solution that can be implemented with minimal impact on existing trading infrastructure while covering multiple asset classes (equities, ETFs, derivatives and bonds).

For easy and smooth adaptation to each client's unique demands and configuration, it offers a selection of five functional modules:

Algo Monitoring, real-time monitoring of algorithmic trading activity, in accordance to RTS 6, detecting rouge algorithms, generating alerts of relevant events.

Market Maker Compliance, real-time monitoring and reporting of market making obligation requirements.

Market Abuse Regulation, providing a real-time monitoring, detection and reporting of suspicious orders and trades.

Best Execution, reporting in accordance to RTS 27 and RTS 28, disclosing and publishing data relating to execution quality.

Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA), pre-trade execution cost estimation, real-time execution outcome as well as post-trade execution reporting.

About Itiviti

Itiviti is a world-leading technology provider for the capital markets industry. Trading firms, banks, brokers and institutional clients rely on Itiviti technology, solutions and expertise for streamlining their daily operations, while gaining a sustainable competitive edge in global markets.

With 13 offices and serving more than 400 clients worldwide, Itiviti has a track record of delivering innovative financial infrastructure solutions covering all asset classes, across geographies and regulatory landscapes. We offer highly adaptable platforms and solutions, enabling clients to stay ahead of competitive and regulatory challenges.

Itiviti is owned by Nordic Capital Fund VII.

For further information, please contact:

Jonas Hansbo

Chief Strategy Officer

Itiviti

Tel. +46-706-525193

Christine Blinke

Chief Marketing Officer

Itiviti

Tel. +46-739-01-02-01

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/itiviti-group-ab/r/itiviti-wins-fow-international-award-for-mifid-ii-regulatory-solution,c2403841

The following files are available for download:
The Predominant Battery Metals Industry Advisory Firm

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2017 / Maxtech Ventures Inc. (CSE: MVT) (Frankfurt: M1N) (OTC: MTEHF), ("Maxtech" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a signed agreement with Cairn Energy Research Advisors ("Cairn ERA").

Sam Jaffe is the founder and Managing Director of Cairn ERA. He has more than twelve years experience as an analyst, consultant and executive in the energy storage industry. He is an authority on battery usage on the grid, transportation, and consumer electronics. He is an accomplished public speaker and a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and events throughout the world, including Battery Power, Interbattery Korea, Stockage D'Energie and the Energy Storage Association annual meeting. He is frequently quoted in multiple press outlets, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

Manganese is a critical and irreplaceable element used in steel production, fertilizers, as well as lithium-ion batteries and other clean-energy applications. Electric vehicles, off-grid power systems and other energy storage applications will require significant amounts of high-quality manganese. Maxtech is pleased to announce the Company will become a research and subscription client of the Battery and Energy Storage Subscription Service offered by Cairn ERA. "The supply side of the battery industry is in need of new sources of all crucial materials, including Manganese," says Sam Jaffe. "Maxtech has shown that it could become a major player in this space."

Peter Wilson, CEO of Maxtech said "As we expand our global manganese exploration assets and partnerships, the Company is advancing to the forefront of the clean energy industry. Having a strong industry research group advising of current pricing, delivery and market trends is essential to this mandate. I am pleased to welcome Sam Jaffe and his firm to the advisory side of the company."

About Cairn ERA

Cairn ERA is a battery industry consulting and advisory firm and produces strategic market research, data and analysis on the supply chain, manufacturing, emerging technologies and end markets for batteries. All Cairn ERA partners have multiple years of experience working in the energy sector and have a strong and diverse network of contacts throughout the industry. The Cairn ERA approach to research and modelling has been honed over decades of experience in providing first-rate deliverables to some of the world's most successful and demanding companies.

About Maxtech Ventures Inc.

Maxtech Ventures Inc. is a Canadian based diversified industries corporation with gold and manganese mineral properties. Its focus is on mining and the products that are derived therefrom.

For additional information see the Company's web site at http://www.maxtech-ventures.com

Email to info@maxtech-ventures.com

Phone: 604-484-8989

Further information about the Company is available on www.SEDAR.com under the Company's profile.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward-looking information") as those terms are used in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated", "anticipates" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this release contains forward-looking information relating to the business of the Company, the Property, financing and certain corporate changes. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

SOURCE: Maxtech Ventures Inc.
7 December 2017

88 Energy Limited

North Slope 2017W Leasing Update

88 Energy Limited ("88 Energy", "the Company", "Operator") (ASX, AIM: 88E) is pleased to provide an update on its projects, located onshore North Slope of Alaska.

Highlights

Announced high bidder on two parcels of acreage totalling ~32,800 gross acres

Bid Details

88 Energy Ltd via its subsidiary companies, Accumulate Energy Alaska Inc and Regenerate Alaska Inc, was announced high bidder on 32,800 gross acres on 6th December (AK time) as part of the North Slope Areawide 2017W lease sale.

The two parcels are subject to regulatory approvals and formal award, expected in 2018. Joint Venture Partner, Burgundy Xploration LLC, has a right to back in to ~2,590 acres contained within Parcel 1, adjacent and to the west of the existing Project Icewine leases.

Additional detail will be provided on the new leases in due course.

*approximate outline of existing acreage currently under award

Managing Director, Dave Wall, commented: "This result is a continuance of our acreage expansion plan on the North Slope and the Company is very pleased to be announced high bidder at the recent lease sale. Additional details in relation to both parcels will be announced in due course."

Media and Investor Relations:

88 Energy Ltd

Dave Wall, Managing Director Tel: +61 8 9485 0990

Email: admin@88energy.com

Finlay Thomson, Investor Relations Tel: +44 7976 248471

Hartleys Ltd

Dale Bryan Tel: + 61 8 9268 2829

Cenkos Securities Tel: + 44 131 220 6939

Neil McDonald/Derrick Lee

Pursuant to the requirements of the ASX Listing Rules Chapter 5 and the AIM Rules for Companies, the technical information and resource reporting contained in this announcement was prepared by, or under the supervision of, Mr Brent Villemarette, who is a Non-Executive Director of the Company. Mr Villemarette has more than 35 years' experience in the petroleum industry, is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and a qualified Reservoir Engineer who has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style and nature of the oil prospects under consideration and to the activities discussed in this document. Mr Villemarette has reviewed the information and supporting documentation referred to in this announcement and considers the prospective resource estimates to be fairly represented and consents to its release in the form and context in which it appears. His academic qualifications and industry memberships appear on the Company's website and both comply with the criteria for "Competence" under clause 3.1 of the Valmin Code 2015. Terminology and standards adopted by the Society of Petroleum Engineers "Petroleum Resources Management System" have been applied in producing this document.

Project Icewine Overview

In November 2014, the Company entered into a binding agreement with Burgundy Xploration (BEX) to acquire a significant working interest (87.5%, reducing to 77.5% on spud of the first well on the project) in a large acreage position on a multiple objective, liquids rich exploration opportunity onshore Alaska, North America, referred to as Project Icewine. The current gross acreage position is 458,097 contiguous acres (286,589 acres net to the Company).

The Project is located on an all year operational access road with both conventional and unconventional oil potential. The primary term for the State leases is 10 years with no mandatory relinquishment and a low 16.5% royalty.

The HRZ liquids-rich resource play has been successfully evaluated based on core obtained in the recently completed (December 2015) Icewine #1 exploration well, marking the completion of Phase I of Project Icewine. Phase II has now commenced, with drilling at the follow-up appraisal well, Icewine#2, commencing early 2Q2017. Production testing is ongoing.

Significant conventional prospectivity has also been identified on recently acquired 2D seismic across the project acreage.





Cautionary Statement: The estimated quantities of petroleum that may be potentially recovered by the application of a future development project relate to undiscovered accumulations. These estimates have both an associated risk of discovery and a risk of development. Further exploration, appraisal and evaluation are required to determine the existence of a significant quantity of potentially movable hydrocarbons.

Exploration incentives provided by the State of Alaska with up to 35% of net operating loss refundable in cash were concluded for all expenditure post 30 June 2017.

The primary objective is an untested, unconventional liquids-rich shale play in a prolific source rock, the HRZ shale (Brookian Sequence), that co-sourced the largest oil field in North America; the giant Prudhoe Bay Oil Field Complex. Internal modelling and analysis indicates that Project Icewine is located in a high liquids vapour phase sweetspot analogous to those encountered in other Tier 1 shale plays e.g. the Eagle Ford, Texas.

Recently acquired 2D seismic has identified large conventional leads at Project Icewine within the same Brookian petroleum system and shallow to the HRZ shale, including potential high porosity channel and turbiditic sands associated with slope apron and deepwater fan plays. The Brookian conventional play is proven on the North Slope; the USGS (2013) estimated the remaining oil potential to be 2.1 billion barrels within the Brookian sequence. Two recent discoveries in the Brookian have already exceeded these estimates, with Armstrong/Repsol discovering 1.4 billion barrels in 2015 and Caelus announcing a 2.5 billion barrel discovery in 2016. Additional conventional potential exists in the Brookian delta topset play, deeper Kuparuk sands and the Ivishak Formation.

A Prospective Resources Report by DeGolyer and MacNaughton, was commissioned by 88 Energy to evaluate the unconventional resource potential of Project Icewine in February 2016 and was released to the market on 6th April 2016.

About 88 Energy: 88 Energy has a 77.5% working interest and operatorship in ~325,000 acres onshore the prolific North Slope of Alaska ("Project Icewine"). Gross contiguous acreage position for the Joint Venture is 458,097 acres (88E 286,589 net acres). The North Slope is the host to the 15 billion barrel Prudhoe Bay oilfield complex, the largest conventional oil pool in North America. The Company, with its Joint Venture partner Burgundy Xploration, has identified highly prospective play types that are likely to exist on the Project Icewine acreage - two conventional and one unconventional. The large unconventional resource potential of Project Icewine was independently verified by leading international petroleum resource consultant DeGolyer and MacNaughton. In addition to the interpreted high prospectivity, the project is strategically located on a year-round operational access road and only 35 miles south of Pump Station 1 where Prudhoe Bay feeds into the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. The Company acquired 2D seismic in early 2016 to take advantage of the globally unique fiscal system in Alaska, which allowed for up to 75% of 1H2016 exploration expenditure to be rebated in cash. Results from the seismic mapping and prospectivity review are encouraging, and form the basis of a conventional prospectivity portfolio for Project Icewine. In late 2015, the Company completed its maiden well at the project, Icewine#1, to evaluate an unconventional source rock reservoir play which yielded excellent results from analysis of core obtained from the HRZ shale. The follow-up well with a multi-stage stimulation and test of the HRZ shale, Icewine#2, spud in early 2Q2017. Flow testing at Icewine#2 is scheduled to re-commence in April/May 2018.
READING, England, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

ActiveOps Ltd, a leader in back office workforce optimization announces the release of Workware' v6.1.

Building on the success of the support for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) introduced in Workware v6.0, Workware v6.1 adds drill-down features to key performance and intra-day real-time dashboards and reports, 'in context' help, bulk forecasting and a streamlined organisational hierarchy builder.

The enhancements in Workware v6.1 are the result of customer feedback and innovation designed to provide faster access to operations information for managers and help and support resources for team members.

Bulk forecast values can now be generated for multiple tasks per team aided by automatic suggested forecast values based on historic data and trends to enable better planning decisions.

The new org chart builder simplifies the linking of teams and departments within an organizational hierarchy, and includes the ability to archive unused teams.

Workware help has been updated with a new user interface, search feature and navigation menu to allow 'in context access' to help articles and how-to video tutorials. The new search feature enables users to search for specific terms and advanced topics.

The ability to 'drill-down' into the data has been added to the Workware Performance Review report, providing interactive charts and graphs on team and individual performance and allowing users to explore the detail behind the summary data.

About ActiveOps

ActiveOps - Manage Differently'

Since 2005, ActiveOps has been committed to helping organisations improve their operational efficiency by helping managers and teams deliver their best possible performance. ActiveOps provide cloud-based software and services to meet the increasing market demand for back office workforce optimization and digital transformation.

Workware', cloud-based software, is purpose built for the back-office to quantify work and time, measure productivity and efficiently by monitoring human and robotic resources in real-time. It enables capacity to be optimized, processes to identified for automation and the agile management of the entire operations helping reduce costs, improve service delivery, staff well-being and customer service.

The Active Operations Management (AOM') Method enables 'teams of teams' to collaborate and sustain higher productivity through a consistent management framework. Better communication and improved control results in higher staff engagement and reduced stress.

ActiveOps operates across the globe from offices in the UK, Australia, India, South Africa and North America supporting back office operations in financial services, shared service centres, government organizations and Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs).

activeops.com

Contact

Zoe Rogers

Phone: +44-(0)-1189-075-047

Email: enquiries@activeops.com

Address: One Valpy, 20 Valpy Street, Reading, RG1 1AR, UK

activeops.com
DARMSTADT, Germany, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Not intended for U.K./U.S. based media

First treatment in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) to show sustained clinical efficacy for up to 4 years with a maximum of 20 days of oral treatment over 2 years

Updated registration follows recent approval of Mavenclad in Europe and Canada

Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has updated the registration including the indication, dosing and safety information of MAVENCLAD(cladribine tablets) for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) in Australia. As a result, MAVENCLADis now approved for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) to reduce the frequency of clinical relapses and to delay the progression of physical disability. Following completion of 2 courses of treatment, no further treatment is required in years 3 and 4. The changes bring the Product Information[1]in line with the latest clinical trial evidence supporting MAVENCLAD. MAVENCLADis the first and only oral short-course treatment to provide efficacy across key measures of disease activity in patients with RRMS, including disability progression, annualized relapse rate and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) activity.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/472778/Merck_Logo.jpg )



"Multiple sclerosis is a debilitating disease where new treatments are needed," said Professor Bill Carroll, Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of Western Australia and the Perron Institute, and a consultant neurologist at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital as well as President-elect of the World Federation of Neurology. "Mavenclad will be a welcomed treatment option for patients with the relapsing-remitting form of MS. As an oral therapy taken in two short courses over a 2-year period, Mavenclad will be convenient for all eligible patients in Australia, including those who may not live close to their treating healthcare professional."

"We are pleased the Therapeutic Goods Administration has updated the Product Information for Mavenclad in Australia to reflect additional clinical data," said Simon Sturge, Chief Operating Officer at the biopharma business of Merck. "Our next step is to work closely with the Australian government to bring this treatment advance to patients as quickly as possible."

MAVENCLADhas been subject to a comprehensive clinical development program in multiple sclerosis (MS), that includes more than 10,000 patient years of data with over 2,700 patients included in the clinical trial programs,[2]and up to 10 years of observation in some patients.

MAVENCLADis a selective immune reconstitution therapy[3],[4]which simplifies treatment administration, by giving patients just 2 short annual courses of tablets with a maximum of 20 days of treatment over 2 years providing a lasting treatment benefit of at least 4 years. MAVENCLADworks by selectively targeting B & T lymphocytes followed by a distinct pattern of lymphocyte reconstitution, without continuous suppression of the immune system.[5]

This registration update for MAVENCLADin Australia follows the recent approval of MAVENCLADin Europe and in Canada. MS affects more than 23,000 Australians with most people diagnosed between the ages of 20-40.[6]Merck plans additional filings for regulatory approval in other countries, including the United States.

MAVENCLADMinimum Product Information: Indications:MAVENCLAD is indicated for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) to reduce the frequency of clinical relapses and to delay the progression of physical disability. Following completion of the 2 treatment courses, no further cladribine treatment is required in years 3 and 4. Re-initiation of therapy after year 4 has not been studied.Contraindications:Patients with hypersensitivity to cladribine or to any of the tablet excipients, infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), active chronic infections (tuberculosis, hepatitis), immunocompromised patients, including patients receiving immunosuppressive or myelosuppressive therapy, moderate or severe renal impairment (creatinine clearance <60mL/min), during pregnancy and breastfeeding.Precautions:Haematological monitoring is required prior to and during therapy. Lymphopenia; Infections; Malignancies; Switching to and from MAVENCLAD treatment; Renal impairment; Hepatic impairment; Fructose intolerance; Effects on fertility (incl. male patients), Use in pregnancy (Category D) and lactation; Use in Paediatric or Elderly; Carcinogenicity, Genotoxicity.Interactions:3 hours interval required for administration of other oral medicines. Concomitant treatment with immunosuppressive or myelosuppressive agents is contraindicated; must not be initiated within 4 to 6weeks after vaccination with live/live-attenuated vaccines. Recommendations to avoid co-administration with potent ENT1, CNT3 and ABCG2 transporter inhibitors.Adverse reactions:Very Common:Lymphopenia (may be severe, Grade 3 or 4).Common:Rash, alopecia, oral herpes, dermatomal herpes zoster, decrease in neutrophil count.Dosage and administration:Haematological and infections screening criteria for starting and continuing therapy have to be met before initiating MAVENCLAD therapy or administering any subsequent treatment course. The recommended cumulative dose of MAVENCLAD is 3.5mg/kg body weight over 2years, administered as 1treatment course of 1.75mg/kg per year. Each treatment course consists of 2treatment weeks, one at the beginning of the first month and one at the beginning of the second month of the respective year. Each treatment week consists of 4 or 5days on which a patient receives 10mg or 20mg (one or two tablets) as a single daily dose, depending on body weight. Patients should receive no more than 2 treatment courses over two consecutive years. The recommended dose should not be exceeded. Following completion of the 2 treatment courses, no further cladribine treatment is required in year 3 and year 4. Re-initiation of therapy after year 4 has not been studied.

Based onapprovedPI dated 5 December 2017

About MAVENCLAD

MAVENCLAD(cladribine tablets) is approved in the European Union for the treatment of highly active relapsing multiple sclerosis (RMS). MAVENCLADis approved in Canada and Australia for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). MAVENCLADis a short-course oral therapy that selectively targets lymphocytes thought to be integral to the pathological process of relapsing MS (RMS). In August 2017, the European Commission (EC) granted marketing authorization for cladribine tablets for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (RMS) in the 28 countries of the European Union (EU) in addition to Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. MAVENCLADis currently under clinical investigation and not yet approved for the treatment for any use in the United States.

The clinical development program for MAVENCLADincludes:

The CLARITY (Cladribine Tablets Treating MS Orally) study: a two-year Phase III placebo-controlled study designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of MAVENCLADas a monotherapy in patients with RRMS.

The CLARITY extension study: a two-year Phase III placebo-controlled study following on from the CLARITY study, designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of MAVENCLADover an extended administration for four years.

The ORACLE MS (Oral Cladribine in Early MS) study: a two-year Phase III placebo-controlled study designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of MAVENCLADas a monotherapy in patients at risk of developing MS (patients who have experienced a first clinical event suggestive of MS).

The ONWARD (Oral Cladribine Added ON To Interferon beta-1a in Patients With Active Relapsing Disease) study: a Phase II placebo-controlled study designed primarily to evaluate the safety and tolerability of adding MAVENCLADtreatment to patients with relapsing forms of MS, who have experienced breakthrough disease while on established interferon-beta therapy.

PREMIERE (Prospective Observational Long-term Safety Registry of Multiple Sclerosis Patients Who Have Participated in Cladribine Clinical Studies) study: interim long-term follow-up data from the prospective registry, PREMIERE, to evaluate the safety and efficacy of MAVENCLAD

The clinical development program of Cladribine in MS comprises more than 10,000 patient years of data with over 2,700 patients included in the clinical trial program, and more than 10 years of observation in some patients.

About Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory condition of the central nervous system and is the most common, non-traumatic, disabling neurological disease in young adults. It is estimated that approximately 2.3 million people have MS worldwide. While symptoms can vary, the most common symptoms of MS include blurred vision, numbness or tingling in the limbs and problems with strength and coordination. The relapsing forms of MS are the most common.

All Merck Press Releases are distributed by e-mail at the same time they become available on the Merck Website. Please go towww.merckgroup.com/subscribeto register online, change your selection or discontinue this service.

About Merck

Merck is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life - from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2016, Merck generated sales of  15.0 billion in 66 countries.

Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials.

[1]. Approved MAVENCLADProduct Information (2017)

[2]. Merck data on file

[3]. Giovannoni G. Personalized medicine in multiple sclerosis. 2017 Neurodegenerative Disease Management; 7 (6s) 13-17

[4]. Giovannoni G. Cladribine to Treat Relapsing Forms of Multiple Sclerosis. Neurotherapeutics. November 2017; DOI 10.1007/s13311-017-0573-4

[5]. MAVENCLAD' Product Monograph. November 2017

[6].https://www.msaustralia.org.au/what-ms
BEIJING, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SenseTime, China's leading artificial intelligence company, announced today they have signed a long-term development agreement with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to build smart AI cars with autonomous driving. The partnership will leverage Honda's vehicle control system with SenseTime's AI algorithms to jointly create an autonomous driving solution. The two companies also announced they will work together to develop robot technology.

Rooted in computer vision technologies, autonomous driving solutions can be deployed even in the absence of high-resolution maps, allowing them to cover an even wider array of driving conditions. When a vehicle is driving without a detailed map covering its trajectory, for example, it will still be able to use the self-driving function. This autonomous driving solution offers great advantages to a variety of passenger vehicle scenarios and will also lower transducer manufacturing costs.

SenseTime Japan CEO Lao Shihong said, "Safety is theutmost priority when it comes to driving, and it also constitutes the core of our autonomous driving solution. By combining SenseTime's strengths in computer vision technologies with Honda's superior vehicle control technologies, we will together enable a safe and pleasant autonomous driving experience. Moreover, the fact that SenseTime provides core technology to a global enterprise like Honda marks a milestone."

A fast up-and-coming field, autonomous driving is levying new, extremely high standards on AI algorithms and development platforms as it requires extraordinary technologies to deliver such a solution. SenseTime, with a set of core technologies and patents for autonomous driving, has also developed chips and embedded systems for smart AI cars. The partnership between SenseTime and Honda is expected to accelerate theresearch ofdevelopementof smart AI cars.

About SenseTime

SenseTime is a leading Chinese artificial intelligence company focused on computer vision and deep learning technologies. Besides from its technological strengths, SenseTime has achieved commercial successes. It has powered many industries such as finance, security, smart phone, mobile Internet, robotics, and automobile with core computer vision technologies including face recognition, video analysis, character recognition, and autonomous driving. SenseTime boasts more than 400 leading customers and strategic partners including Qualcomm, NVIDIA, China Mobile, UnionPay, HNA, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Weibo, and iFLYTEK.

Following its latest US$410 million series B round of financing (which set the then-record for a single round of funding in the AI field), SenseTime has allocated more resources to developing autonomous driving, intelligent medical treatment, and deep learning computer chips.

With offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Kyoto, and Tokyo, SenseTime has attracted top talents around the world to build a world-leading technology company - from China, for the world. For more information, please visit SenseTime's website, WeChat and Weibo.

About Honda



Honda is a global company with a high level of know-how and skills on mobility, including automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, power products and robotics as businesses.
GUANGZHOU, China, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ISLE attracts global sign and LED visitors, who are looking for new and hightechnology products. "I found many new products and professional manufacturers in ISLE and looking forward to visiting the show next year," said Mr. Ahmed from Dubai. In China,nearly 70% of Chinesesignsand LED factoriesarelocated in the Pearl RiverDelta. The industrial ecosphere isconvenient for exhibition attendees, as they can visitfactories directly after meetingat ISLE.

World'sLargest Industry Event to Highlight Signs and LED

The 2018 International Signs and LED Exhibition will take placefromMarch 3-6in Area B of the Canton Fair Complex inGuangzhou, China.

Featuring LED Displays & Applications,Lighting & New Technology, Engraving Machinery, and advertising signs, ISLE 2018 willserveglobalbuyers as a premium industrial platform for buying and sourcing signs and LEDs for the advertising and LED industries.

"We are expecting more than 1,600 exhibitors and over 200,000 buyers to come to this exhibition," said Mr. Lee Yingjie, Director of ISLE. "We are presenting a complete industry chain for our attendees that covers product design, manufacturing, systems and accessories. The one-stop purchasing experience and integrated solutions we offer to visitors bring more value to this professional platform."

Highlights of ISLE:

LIGHTKING, willbring its King series, E series, and RC series products. Its high-profile P10.66 ultra energy-efficient product has an average power consumption of 100W and luminance of over 8000cd/m^2, saving users more than 50% in electricity costs.

Ledman will bring its Cubic LED video display, which is a specially-shaped screen with a unique design. It has a pixel pitch of 4mm and brightness of 1800nit. It can be customized based on the requirements of diameters and realize full-color display with different pixel density.

Linsn's LED control system, which includes full-color synchronism, full-color light decoration, full-color asynchronism, double-color synchronism, and double-color asynchronism.

NovaStar Tech Co., LTD's introduction of its All-in-1 controller and other integrated chips.

Exhibitor list: http://en.isle.org.cn/enboothlist/4100.html

Ticket Application: http://en.isle.org.cn/en/envisitorapplication.html

About ISLE

The 2018 International Signs and LED Exhibition (ISLE), organized by Canton Fair Advertising Co., Ltd and the China Foreign Trade Guangzhou Exhibition General Corp (CFTE), is a fully integrated LED industry chain solution platform for professional, charismatic and intelligent advertising signs.
EXIT Realty McGowan and Associates announced that real estate professional, Lisa Ellis, has joined the company.

"Lisas market knowledge, reputation, and dedication to her clients complement our team and were delighted to welcome her," said Tim Mazzolini, principal broker of EXIT Realty McGowan and Associates. The company is actively expanding its sales team and plans to add 5 more professionals in the coming months.

EXIT Realty McGowan and Associates is an involved member of the community both locally and through its affiliation with EXIT Realty Corp.

International. A portion of every transaction fee collected by EXIT Realty Corp. International is applied to its charitable fund and to-date, $4 million has been pledged to charity.
Espoo, Finland, 2017-12-07 12:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SRV GROUP PLC PRESS RELEASE 7 DECEMBER 2017, AT 13.00 Shopping centre REDI of the Finland's largest city centre site at rooftop height Construction of the REDI shopping centre, implemented by SRV at Kalasatama in Helsinki, has proceeded on schedule and the roofing ceremony will be celebrated at the construction site on Thursday, 7 December 2017. REDI will have more than 200 business premises and around 70 per cent of premises have been leased on binding agreements and negotiations are ongoing with almost all the rest of premises. The 64,000 square metre shopping and experience centre is expected to attract over 12 million visitors in its first full year of operation. "REDI is one of the most significant construction projects in the history of SRV and the entire Helsinki Metropolitan Area. REDI combines in a new way a shopping centre, housing and transport links. Entrepreneurs coming to the shopping centre will also value, above all, the shopping centre's central location, excellent transport links and large customer streams," says SRV's Juha Toimela, Vice President, Operations in Finland. REDI, in addition to the shopping centre, consists of eight tower buildings, an Esplanadi park-sized yard, and parking hall of 2,000 cars. First to be completed is REDI shopping and experience centre where customers will find new and surprising leisure-time options in addition to a comprehensive retail offering. The REDI shopping centre will, for example, provide opportunities to experience the thrill of flying as well as a 7D virtual theatre that stimulates all the senses and where movie action is made real through virtual headsets and motion simulators. REDI will also be home to a climbing centre, which will include a 1,000 m2 training area and a 20-metre high climbing wall. Construction began in August 2011 with preparatory earth construction and excavation work. Construction work was halted in summer 2012 due to a city planning appeal and started again in April 2015 with a significant earth construction phase. The excavation of a three-hectare pit lasted just over a year. During that time, a total of 900,000 cubic metres of material was removed from the site which corresponds to the amount of nine Parliament House of Finland. During the entire excavation period, the metro operated normally, and blasting work was timed taking the busy metro timetable into account. Before excavation began in the area, one of the most difficult phase was completed, when a new section of bridge was built for the metro to replace track previously supported by bedrock. One of the major construction phases of REDI which affected immediate surroundings and traffic was the phase where Itavayla highway was shifted at REDI onto a detour built to the south side of the route. The Itavayla highway was restored to its former location in September 2017. In the shopping centre, interior finishing work is now under way. This year, the REDI shopping centre site was also awarded first prize in Rakennuslehti magazine's Construction Site of the Year Competition. "I am particularly pleased that, in addition to project management skills, the good atmosphere and team spirit at the REDI site received recognition and impressed the panel that selected the winner. REDI is a demanding construction project, and the work is taking place in a challenging location. Daily around 1,000 workers are employed on the REDI site, which sets its own demands for site management. It's a fine feeling when your own great personnel receive public recognition for how well they have done in their work," says Jukka Nikkola, Construction Site Manager, REDI. For further information, please contact: Juha Toimela, VP, Operations in Finland, SRV, tel. +358 40 594 5473, juha.toimela@srv.fi Jukka Nikkola, Construction Site Manager, SRV, tel. +358 40 592 6290, jukka.nikkola@srv.fi Heli Pulkkinen, Communications Specialist, REDI by SRV, tel. +358 50 411 0787, heli.pulkkinen@srv.fi www.srv.fi/en www.redi.fi/en You can also find us on the social media: Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Instagram SRV - Building for life REDI in brief REDI, due to open in 2018 next to Finland's mostly densely populated area, will have around 60,000 people living in its direct proximity, and there will be over 500,000 people, a third of the residents of Greater Helsinki, in its entire area of influence. REDI is located at the intersection of three large highways, and the metro will stop 500 times a day on the third floor of the shopping centre. A number of bus lines will stop both on the third floor of the shopping centre and at street level. There will be 45,000 jobs within a ten-minute walk of the centre. REDI, implemented by SRV at Kalasatama, Helsinki, will comprise the inner city's largest shopping and experience centre as well as eight tower buildings. Below the centre will be a 2,000-space parking facility, usable by both the towers' residents and the shopping centre's customers. REDI's popularity is not just restricted to business premises. Of the apartments in the first residential tower, Majakka, around 90% have been sold. Construction work at REDI, Finland's largest urban construction project, was launched in spring 2015 and is expected to continue until 2023. The REDI shopping centre as a whole will open in autumn 2018 and Majakka, the first of the tower buildings to be completed, will receive its first residents in spring 2019. The remaining tower buildings will be completed in stages by 2023.
HYDERABAD, India and LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyient, a global provider of engineering, manufacturing, geospatial, network and operations management services to global industry leaders, announced that it has entered into a non-exclusive business alliance with EATechnology, an energy technology company headquartered in Chester, United Kingdom.

Through this agreement, Cyient and EA Technology will jointly pursue business opportunities globally, by leveraging their complementary skills, technical capabilities, and experience. The alliance will provide asset management and decision support solutions and services for electric utilities. Under the agreement, Cyient will also provide project delivery and implementation services for EA Technology's Asset Investment Management (AIM) software solution.

Expressing confidence in the partnership, John Renard, President - Utilities & Geospatial Business Unit at Cyient said, "EA Technology is well-respected for its unparalleled knowledge and expertise in electrical asset management. We are delighted about working together and are confident that the complementary skills of the two organizations will deliver considerable value to the global electric utility market."

"We are thrilled to be joining forces with Cyient," said Robert Davis, Group CEO of EA Technology. "This partnership provides real synergy in harnessing the data management and presentation capabilities of Cyient with the electrical asset management capabilities of EA Technology. Our joint competencies, coupled with an enhanced global reach, provides the foundation for an exciting future, and significant value-add to our collective customers," he added.

About Cyient:

Cyient (Estd: 1991, NSE: CYIENT) provides engineering, manufacturing, geospatial, network and operations management services to global industry leaders. Cyient leverages the power of digital technology and advanced analytics capabilities, along with domain knowledge and technical expertise, to solve complex business problems. As a Design, Build and Maintain partner, Cyient takes solution ownership across the value chain to help clients focus on their core, innovate, and stay ahead of the curve.

Relationships form the core of how Cyient works. With nearly 14,000 employees in 21 countries, Cyient partners with clients to operate as part of their extended team, in ways that best suit their organization's culture and requirements. Cyient's industry focus includes aerospace and defense, medical, telecommunications, rail transportation, semiconductor, utilities, industrial, energy and natural resources.

For more information, please visit www.cyient.com. For media queries, write to press@cyient.com.

Follow news about the company at @Cyient

About EA Technology

EA Technology is a specialist in asset management solutions for owners and operators of electrical assets. Headquartered in the UK, our operations and customers are global with seven regional offices around the world.

EA Technology was set up in 1966 as a groundbreaking research and development organization serving the electricity industry.

EA Technology is committed to providing our customers innovative products and services, consultancy and training, helping them to create safer, stronger and smarter networks for today and the future.

For more information about EA Technology and their offerings, please visit https://www.eatechnology.com.

Follow news about the company at@eatechnology

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ALBANY, New York, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Transparency Market Research states that the key players operating in the global erythropoietin drugs market are focusing on product development. The intensifying competition is expected to coax players to look for newer distributorship in the coming years. The research report, identifies Merck & Co., Inc., Amgen Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Novartis AG, and GlaxoSmithKline plc as the important players in the global market. In the coming years, these players also likely to emphasize on strategic acquisitions with primary focus on production of erythropoietin drugs to earn better returns on investments. Companies will also look like at making the most of the incentives offered by the government for research on chronic diseases.

According to the research report, the global erythropoietin drugs market is expected to be worth US$19,379.2 mn by the end of 2025 as it surges at CAGR of 7.5% from 2017 to 2025. Out of the various applications of erythropoietin drugs, cancer is expected to be the highest revenue contributor. The high diagnosis rate of cancer and a strong pipeline erythropoietin drugs for cancer have expected to fuel the growth of this segment. Geographically, North America is slated to remain the key regional market due to better research and development grants offered by the governments.

View Report at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/erythropoietin-market.html

Demand for Precise Clinical Testing to Boost Usage of Erythropoietin Drugs

The global erythropoietin drugs market has been garnering a good momentum in the past few years as the diagnostic rate of chronic conditions has been on a consistent rise. For instance, in European Union cancer has been growing significantly, and according to research article European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2017, published in US National Library of Medicine, around 13, 73,500 cancer deaths predicted in 2017. Further, strong pipeline of erythropoietin drugs, of which cancers account for a major share, is expected to aid to the market growth of the segment in the near future. Meanwhile, the rising rate of renal diseases such as chronic kidney disease is expected to contribute to the overall revenue. The prominent genetic mutation rates which is the primary cause of renal disease are anticipated to propel the market growth of the segment.

Request to View Sample Copy of Report - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1856

Additionally, it is difficult to manufacture biosimilars or generic versions of biologic erythropoietin drugs as compared to biosimilar drugs. Furthermore, unique design of erythropoietin drugs which enables precise clinical testing and offers better outcomes in clinical trials. Additionally, fewer side effects of these drugs makes them a preferred choice of treatment. The demand for erythropoietin drugs for treating anemia is also expected to be a profiting trend for the vendors in the global market.

Request Erythropoietin Drugs Market Report Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=1856

High Pricing to Dissuade Consumption

However, lack of capping on pricing of erythropoietin drugs by hospital laboratories in certain countries of Europe is likely to hamper the market in the region during the forecast period. Furthermore, poor healthcare facilities in developing parts of the world are also expected to restrain the market growth in the foreseeable future. Additionally, the lack of diagnoses of chronic diseases in the rural parts of emerging economies are also anticipated to have a negative impact on the global erythropoietin drugs market.

Global Erythropoietin Drugs 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.

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OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/07/17 -- Indigenous women leaders, Sharon McIvor and Dr. Pamela Palmater, will appear before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today at 8:30 am Eastern Time to provide testimony on Canada's failure to eliminate sex discrimination from the Indian Act.

The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) requested the hearing as a follow-up to findings by the Inter-American Commission, in its 2015 report, Missing and Murdered Women in British Columbia, Canada, that Indian Act sex discrimination is a root cause of Canada's crisis of murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls.

Bill S-3, the latest in a series of piecemeal amendments to the Indian Act, passed in the House of Commons this Monday, December 4th. Rather than eliminating the sex discrimination immediately, Bill S-3 delays - to an unspecified date - the elimination of the core discrimination. Bill S-3 leaves in place the sex-based hierarchy between (full) 6(1)(a) and (partial) 6(1)(c) status, which the Senate attempted to remove with its '6(1)(a) all the way' amendment; it also leaves in place the "1951 cut-off", which bars descendants of women (but not men) born prior to 1951 from eligibility for status. The Government of Canada promises to remove this discrimination sometime, but not now.

Sharon McIvor, Pamela Palmater and Shelagh Day, Chair of FAFIA's Human Rights Committee, will request that the IACHR urgently communicate with Canada regarding its legislative failure to grant equal status to Indigenous women and their descendants immediately and take an active role in monitoring Canada's compliance with its human rights obligations to Indigenous women and girls under regional human rights instruments.

The hearing will be web cast live at: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/default.asp.

Contacts:

Sharon McIvor

250-378-7479



Dr. Pamela Palmater

905-903-5563



Shelagh Day

shelagh.day@gmail.com






JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has evoked worldwide condemnation, including from its allies. In an anticipated White House announcement Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. Embassy will move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.



Trump said previous presidents failed to implement their major campaign promise of officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 'Today, I am delivering.'



The world heard only one voice in support, that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed it as 'a historic day'.



The United Nations Security Council has convened an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the situation that has arisen from Trump's far reaching decision. At least eight of the 15 UNSC members, including Britain and France, called for an emergency session.



UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.



Immediate reactions from the Middle East has triggered concerns that the move will ignite violence in the region. Iran and Gaza militant group Hamas have called for a new 'intifada', or uprising.



Three days of 'rage' in protest against the United States reversing its decades-old policy on the holy city has already started in Palestinian territories. Saudi Arabia, America's strongest ally in the Muslim world, called it 'unjustified and irresponsible', while France and the UK said they did not support the decision.



British Prime Minister Theresa May said it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. 'The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it.'



The European Union's chief diplomat voiced 'serious concern' over the decision.



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Takes Honor for Second Consecutive Year

CHICAGOand LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Chicago-based R.J. O'Brien & Associates (RJO), the oldest and largest independent futures brokerage and clearing firm in the United States, has won the 2017 FOW International Award for Best Non-Bank Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) of the Year - earning the honor for the second consecutive year. FOW, part of the Global Investor Group, presented the award at a dinner ceremony last night in London, following the FOW Derivatives World London: The Debates conference.

The FOW International Awards celebrate those who have provided exceptional service and/or innovation to their clients and the industry.

Will Mitting, Managing Director, Global Investor Group, said: "RJO has continued to invest in its services and innovate with new launches to meet the ever-increasing demands of the global market. Judges agreed that the firm continued to lead the pack in the non-bank FCM market."

Gerald Corcoran, RJO Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said: "We are humbled to win this award two years in a row. We've worked diligently over the past several years to become a truly global entity, strengthening our capabilities in Europe and Asia while continuing to build on our unique culture, commitment to client service and expertise in the middle market. As a result, despite challenging market conditions, we are experiencing a near-record year in terms of key performance metrics."

RJO's London-based UK affiliate won the magazine's prestigious Editor's Choice Award at the 2015 FOW International Awards, based on factors including growth prospects, company achievements and successful collaborations and acquisitions.

Created in April 2017, the Global Investor Group incorporates the Global Investor, FOW and ISF brands and offers news, data and in-depth analysis across derivatives, securities finance, custody and fund services and asset management.

About R.J. O'Brien

Founded in 1914, R.J. O'Brien & Associates is the largest independent futures brokerage firm in the United States, serving institutional, commercial and individual clients globally, in addition to a network of 400 introducing brokers (IBs). Clearing more than 80,000 client accounts, RJO services the industry's most expansive global network of IBs, a vast array of middle market firms and many of the world's largest financial, industrial and agricultural institutions. The firm offers state-of-the-art electronic trading and 24-hour trade execution on every major futures exchange worldwide.

The firm's UK affiliate, R.J. O'Brien Limited (RJO Limited), offers clearing and execution-only services, risk management and direct market access to exchange-listed financial and commodity derivatives worldwide, as well as proximity and colocation services. RJO Limited provides anonymous electronic and voice access to markets across multiple asset classes, including futures and options, equity contracts for difference (CFDs), over-the-counter cleared commodities and foreign exchange (FX).

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TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/07/17 -- Editors Note: There is an image associated with this press release.

Pasinex Resources Limited (CSE: PSE)(CSE: PSE.CN)(CNSX: PSE)(FRANKFURT: PNX) (The "Company" or "Pasinex") is pleased to announce that, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Pasinex Resources Nevada Limited, it has entered into an option agreement with Cypress Development Corp (TSX VENTURE: CYP) ("Cypress") and Silcom Systems Inc. ("Silcom") to earn up to an 80% interest in the Gunman zinc project ("Project" or "Gunman") located in White Pine County, Nevada ("Option Agreement"). In essence, Pasinex has acquired the option by honouring the terms of Silcom's original option agreement to acquire an 80% interest from Cypress in the Gunman zinc project.

The Option Agreement's total consideration to acquire the 80% interest is staged over four (4) years and is approximately US$1.5 million payable in a combination of cash and Pasinex common shares (assuming a share price of C$0.22 per share and exchange to US dollars of $0.79 using the December 5, 2017 closing price and rate, respectively). In addition, the Company must incur minimum exploration expenditures totalling US$2,950,000 over the same four (4) year period. The Company can accelerate payments to acquire ownership sooner and also has no obligation to continue payments if the Company decides not to proceed in exercising the option.

The spending and associated ownership over the four years is as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- US$ Common exploration Stages US$ Cash Shares expenditures ============================================================================ Upfront payment already paid $25,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable upon execution of Option Agreement $100,000 2,200,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 11, 2018 $200,000 2,200,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prior to December 5, 2018 $250,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 11, 2019 $100,000 200,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prior to December 5, 2019 $800,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prior to December 5, 2020 $800,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Option to exercise and acquire initial 51% of the Project, followed by a Joint Venture Agreement with Cypress ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prior to December 5, 2021 $250,000 200,000 $1,100,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Option to exercise and acquire remaining 29% of the Project for 80% ownership interest ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total $675,000 4,800,000 $2,950,000 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

President and CEO of Pasinex,Steve Williams said: "We want to grow Pasinex into a mid-tier zinc company and acquiring this new zinc project is the next step towards that objective. Our 50% owned Pinargozu zinc mine in Turkey has exceeded our expectations and that is a testament to a great team and high grade generating profitability in a relatively short time. We recently received our full dividend related to 2016 profits from the joint venture company Horzum A.S. of approximately US$1 million. This represents the first cash coming out of Turkey. Expected future cashflows from Pinargozu underpins the reason to enter into the option to acquire this high grade zinc prospect in Nevada that shows many similarities to what we have in Turkey."

The Technical Report for the Project can be viewed on Sedar here.

The Project is in White Pine County, Nevada in the northern half of the Basin and Range physiographic province called the Great Basin. The Project area is 106 kilometres south of Elko Nevada, 48 kilometres northeast of the town of Eureka.

Reverse circulation drilling programs totalling 12,250 metres have intersected zinc grades between 5% to 33% and silver between 15g/t to 465g/t over substantial widths. The deposit style at Gunman is carbonate replacement (CRD) with central zones of massive, strongly oxidized mineralization and halos of partial replacement and veining. The mineralization is within 125 metres of the surface. Pasinex is attracted by the high grades and the deposit style with striking similarities to the Company's Pinargozu high grade CRD zinc mine in Turkey.

Figure 1:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- % Drill Hole From (feet) To (feet) Length (feet) Zn Ag ppm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BC-16 125 185 60 10.96 45 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BC-24(i) 20 65 45 4.02 40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM04-32 40 210 170 15.13 145 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-01 160 210 50 9.47 60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-01 355 375 20 14.96 121 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-07 105 165 60 9.88 57 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-07 180 205 25 12.50 82 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-09 130 195 65 6.78 49 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-09 225 285 60 5.98 39 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-26 50 225 175 15.66 149 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-27 60 205 145 5.11 37 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-28 5 175 170 9.97 51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-29 15 85 70 5.96 33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-29 140 180 40 6.47 33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GM-32 45 165 120 8.73 51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-4 20 175 155 8.70 48 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-5 5 205 200 8.87 63 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-9 50 225 175 11.99 121 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-11 0 150 150 3.06 18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-11 165 215 50 7.87 126 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-15 80 185 105 19.33 103 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-16 45 225 180 16.74 105 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-20 40 185 145 9.52 79 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMRC-22 105 150 45 21.38 41 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) Apart from BC-24, in the RH South zone, all intersections are from the main RH zone. Note: True widths of the drill hole intersections reported in the Figure 1 cannot be determined from the information available.

Figure 1 extracted as Table 10-1. P40 from Gunman NI 43-101 Technical Report, May 30, 2017 - Report to Silcom Systems Inc. Prepared by Daniel W. Kalmbach, CPG; Gerald E. Ray, PhD., P.Geo. Filed by Silicom Systems, Inc on SEDAR, June 13, 2017. Click here to see Gunman NI43-101 Techical Report.

Detailed Notes on Chemex Assay Procedures Used: A basic aqua regia-ICP multi-element package was run on 50 gram splits from 250-gram master pulps. Intervals assaying greater than 100 grams/tonne silver and/or 1% zinc were rerun using a complete aqua regia digestion followed by ICP-AES analysis. Intervals assaying greater than 30% zinc following complete aqua regia digestion were then re-assayed from a fresh 50-gram pulp using classical titration methods.

Discovery History

Western Mining Corporation ("WMC"), while initially exploring for gold in the early 1990's, discovered zinc at Gunman quite by accident. A series of reverse circulation holes targeting the mineralized outcrops at Gunman led to the discovery of the main "RH (Zinc) Zone". Gold values were low and erratic and as a result WMC allowed the claims to lapse in 1996. White Pine Minerals staked the property in 1999 and vended the claims to Cypress. Cypress began an aggressive RC drill program in May 2000 and discovered greater than 10% zinc over drilled intervals of 18 metres. Multi-ounce silver values occurred with the zinc. The best result was in RC drillhole GM-26 at the RH Zone which cut 65 metres averaging 13% zinc and 126 ppm silver including 30 metres from a depth of 37 metres averaging 23% zinc and 231 ppm silver. Additional discoveries of high grade zinc, lead and silver were made 250 metres south of the RH Zinc Zone.

President and CEO of Pasinex, Steve Williams, commented: "We picked up this outstanding high grade zinc asset primarily because of its similarities to our high grade zinc CRD deposit in Turkey. We see this high-grade zinc mineralizing system at Gunman to be an indication that there might be a much larger sulphide body at depth. For that reason, we quickly substantially increased the relatively small land package at Gunman to provide "room" for a major discovery - see Figure 2 below."

To view Figure 2: Original claims and expanded ground position, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Figure2-Pasinex.jpg

Pasinex completed due diligence on the Gunman drilling results in October which involved taking a random mix of 30 pulps and coarse reject samples from the RC drilling for analysis. These samples were submitted to ALS Global in Reno using the same analytical method (code MEICP-41) along with six QA/QC samples and three standards from the same batch used to control the Cypress assay results and three blank samples to check for any contamination. The original samples and Pasinex duplicate samples compared very closely for all elements including silver and zinc.

Dividend Payment from the 50% owned Horzum AS company in Turkey

Pasinex reports that they have just received about US$1 million as a complete payment of a dividend from the 50% owned Horzum AS company which operates the Pinargozu zinc mine. This dividend payment is the first for the joint venture company and reflects the 2016 profit. The dividend payment was received in full last week.

Qualified Person

The Company's Qualified Person is John Barry, who holds a MSc in Geology from the Pennsylvania State University and is a Professional Geologist with the European Geological Society. Mr. Barry is the Senior Technical Advisor to Pasinex Resources with 29 years of extensive global experience in exploration, mining and mine development and is a "Qualified Person" as defined in National Instrument 43 -101 "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects" of the Canadian Securities Administrators. He has supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release, reviewed and approved its contents.

About Pasinex

The mission of Pasinex (CSE: PSE)(FRANKFURT: PNX) is to build a mid-tier zinc company by expanding our footprint in the productive CRD district in Turkey, and, at the same time, seek additional zinc assets in other attractive mining jurisdictions. The Company has a strong techincial management team with many years of experience in mineral exploration,mine development and production. The Pinargozu Mine is owned jointly in a 50/50 joint venture between Pasinex and Turkish mining house Akmetal Madencilik San ve Tic. AS, one of Turkey's largest family-owned conglomerates with the nearby past-producing Horzum zinc mine. The Pinargozu mine is producing high grade zinc that ships directly to smelters/refineries under a direct shipping ore (DSO) program.

Pasinex now adds the Gunman zinc property located in Nevada to their portfolio, in which they have an option to own 80% of the property. The Gunman property is similar to the Pinargozu mine with high grade zinc mineralization and attractive silver credits.

Visit our web site at: www.pasinex.com

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

PASINEX RESOURCES LTD.

Steve Williams

The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

This news release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from the historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Although Pasinex Resources Ltd. believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, continued availability of capital and financing, exploration results, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Contacts:

Steve Williams

President/CEO

416.861.9659

info@pasinex.com



Cathy Hume

CHF Investor Relations

416.868.1079 ext. 231

cathy@chfir.com






BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound climbed against its major counterparts in the European session on Thursday amid risk appetite, as investors digested merger and acquisition news and awaited further details on progress towards U.S. tax reform.



Reports that the U.S. Congress is on track to approve legislation to avert a partial government shutdown also kept the mood buoyant.



The House of Representatives is set to vote on a two-week extension for spending measure on Thursday, followed by a Senate vote on Friday.



The U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is likely to put forth a fresh offer to resolve Irish border dispute, as Brexit negotiatior Micheal Barnier issued a deadline to potential deal.



Barnier insisted that diplomats of the 27 member states have to sign the deal by Friday, if talks must move onto trade at a summit next week.



Data from the mortgage lender Halifax and IHS Markit showed that UK house prices increased more than expected in November.



On a monthly basis, house prices increased 0.5 percent, faster than the 0.3 percent rise posted in October. This was the fifth consecutive increase. Prices were forecast to grow marginally by 0.2 percent.



The currency showed mixed trading in the Asian session. While it fell against the greenback and the yen, it held steady against the franc and the euro.



The pound edged up to 1.3421 against the greenback and 151.17 against the yen, from its early lows of 1.3364 and 150.14, respectively. The next possible resistance for the pound is seen around 1.36 against the greenback and 153.00 against the yen.



The pound climbed to a 2-day high of 0.8781 against the euro and a 3-day high of 1.3304 against the franc, up from its previous lows of 0.8828 and 1.3223, respectively. If the pound rises further, it may locate resistance around 1.35 against the franc and 0.86 against the euro.



Looking ahead, U.S. weekly jobless claims for the week ended December 2, Canada building permits for October and Ivey PMI for November are set for release in the New York session.



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HKTDC Communications and Public Affairs Department Katherine Chan Tel: +852 2584 4537 Email: katherine.cm.chan@hktdc.org Sunny Ng Tel: +852 2584 4357 Email: sunny.sl.ng@hktdc.org

HONG KONG, Dec 7, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - The Business of Intellectual Property Asia (BIP Asia) Forum 2017, jointly organised by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government, Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and Hong Kong Design Centre, started its two-day run today (7-8 December) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC).Entitled "IP & Innovation: Propelling Change, Growth and Connectivity", the BIP Asia Forum features more than 80 heavyweight speakers and is expected to attract over 2,500 participants. Carrie Lam, Chief Executive, HKSAR and He Hua, Deputy Commissioner, State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China, attended the opening ceremony."IP is one of the engines driving Asia's remarkable economic growth and development in recent years and is expected to continue in the future," said Margaret Fong, HKTDC Executive Director. "Hong Kong has emerged as Asia's hub for IP, thanks to our world-class business environment, robust legal and IP arbitration systems, and our extensive network with the Chinese mainland and the rest of the world. Now in its seventh year, BIP Asia has grown into a major annual event promoting global IP trade."- Plenary Session I: Evolving IP Policy in the Innovation EraThe highlights of the first day of the BIP Asia Forum were the two Plenary Sessions. Speakers at Plenary Session I, with the theme "Evolving IP Policy in the Innovation Era", included Wang Binying, Deputy Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization; Molan Karim Tarigan, Chair, ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation; Takayuki Sumita, Secretary-General, Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters, Cabinet Office of Japan; and Prof Habip Asan, President, Turkish Patent and Trademark Office. They spoke on the latest developments in IP policies and ways in which IP protection empowers innovation hubs.- Plenary Session II: Crafting a Comprehensive IP Strategy for the New World OrderUnder the theme of "Crafting a Comprehensive IP Strategy for the New World Order", Plenary Session II featured Gustav Brismark, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, Ericsson AB, and Toshimoto Mitomo, Corporate Executive, Intellectual Property and Mid-to-Long-Term Business Development, Sony Corporation. As leaders of multinational corporations, the two speakers shared how they have stayed abreast of the increasingly complex IP landscape and effectively integrated IP into their global business strategy.In addition, the BIP Asia Forum features a series of Concurrent Breakout Sessions covering five areas: IP of Business Practices, IP Legal Tips, Industry-specific IP, Quick Guide to IP Basics and IP Market Insights. The event also features such new topics as food and film adaptation.- Tomorrow's Plenary Session III: The Revolution of Artificial IntelligencePlenary Session III, titled "Global Tech Summit - The Revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI)", will be held tomorrow (8 December), with world-renowned experts and Asian industry pioneers sharing their insights on the next wave of AI revolution. Speakers include Eric Chang, Senior Director, Technology Strategy and Communications, Microsoft Research Asia; Simon See, Director and Chief Solution Architect, NVIDIA AI Technology Center; Herbert Chia, Honorary Chairman, B4B Limited; Rick Zou, Executive Vice-President, National Eastern Tech-Transfer Center; Barry Chan, Partner, Financial Services Sector, IBM Global Business Services, IBM China/Hong Kong Ltd; Bruce Ren, Chief Strategy Officer, UBTECH Robotics Corp.; Aldrin Yim, CEO, Codex Genetics; and Chris Au Young, General Manager, Smart Airport, Airport Authority Hong Kong.- New strategic partnership for Asia IP ExchangeAs Asia's largest international IP trading platform, Asia IP Exchange lists more than 27,000 tradable IP items including patents, copyrights, trademarks and designs for various industries, ranging from biotechnology, medicine, electronics and engineering to film and publishing. The HKTDC will sign a memorandum of understanding with National Eastern Tech-Transfer Center to forge a strategic partnership to promote IP information exchange and cooperation in Asia.- Exhibition features 90 exhibitorsThe BIP Asia exhibition is being held alongside the main forum to provide more business opportunities for forum participants. It features more than 90 exhibitors, including the World Intellectual Property Organization, major international technology companies, leading local and overseas research and development (R&D) centres, universities and IP services providers. The exhibition provides one-stop on-site advisory services, ranging from knowledge transfer and commercialisation to the application, licensing and trading of IP such as patents, trademarks and copyrights, as well as relevant laws.BIP Asia Forum is an event of the Innovation & IP Week. Three other HKTDC events are being held concurrently: the SmartBiz Expo (until 8 December), the Hong Kong International Franchising Show (until 8 December) and DesignInspire (until 9 December). Covering design, branding, technology, entrepreneurship, and IP management, the four events together provide a one-stop platform for SMEs to source the best business solutions.WebsitesBusiness of Intellectual Property Asia Forum: http://bipasiaforum.com/en/index.htmAsia IP Exchange: http://www.asiaipex.com/Home/Index_ENPhoto download: http://bit.ly/2k46rC6(Photo:) (From L) Habip Asan, President, Turkish Patent and Trademark Office; Molan Karim Tarigan, Chair, ASEAN Working Group on Intellectual Property Cooperation; He Hua, Deputy Commissioner, State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China; Margaret Fong, Executive Director, Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC); Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR); Edward Yau, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development of the HKSAR; Wang Binying, Deputy Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization; Eric Yim, Chairman, Hong Kong Design Centre; Takayuki Sumita, Secretary-General, Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters, Cabinet Office of Japan; and Andrew Liao, Senior Counsel, a past member of the Executive Council, HKSAR attend today's opening ceremony of the BIP Asia Forum.About HKTDCEstablished in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body dedicated to creating opportunities for Hong Kong's businesses. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China, Asia and the world. With 50 years of experience, the HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in international markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.- Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdc- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdc- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2017 / NCI Building Systems, Inc. (NYSE: NCS) will be discussing their earnings results in their Q4 Earnings Call to be held on December 7, 2017 at 9:00 AM Eastern Time.

To listen to the event live or access a replay of the call - visit https://www.investornetwork.com/company/1254.

To receive updates for this company you can register by emailing info@investornetwork.com or by clicking get investment info from the company's profile.

About Investor Network

Investor Network (IN) is a financial content community, serving millions of unique investors market information, earnings, commentary and news on the what's trending. Dedicated to both the professional and the average traders, IN offers timely, trusted and relevant financial information for virtually every investor. IN is an Issuer Direct brand, to learn more or for the latest financial news and market information, visit www.investornetwork.com. Follow us on Twitter @investornetwork.

SOURCE: Investor Network
As temperatures begin to drop across Chattanooga and the surrounding area, many homeowners see their energy bills rise. Whether you are turning up the heat or turning on the holiday lights, energy usage tends to increase during these cooler months. Yet, there are many steps you can take  from small adjustments to major modifications  to stay warm and use less energy this winter. Here are a few simple tips to get you started.

Dont Heat an Empty Home



If household members are at school and work during the day, or you are traveling for the holiday season, adjust your thermostat to limit the amount of wasted heat. While you can do this manually each day, programmable and smart thermostats can automatically keep your house cozy when it counts and save energy when everyones away.

The selection of smart thermostats is ever-expanding. Many keep track of how much you would save based on your region, size of home and heating type. In many cases, this investment results in significant savings.



Some utility companies also offer free programmable or smart thermostats to encourage their customers to use energy wisely. Check with your local utility to see what programs they offer.



Control the Air Flow



By sealing air leaks in a home, an average household can cut 10 percent of its monthly energy bill. Use caulk to seal any cracks or small openings on surfaces such as where window frames meet the house structure. Check your weatherstripping in exterior door frames and replace any that is deteriorated or cracked.

Sealing windows and doors will help, but the worst culprits are cutouts for pipes or wires, gaps around recessed lights, and unfinished spaces behind cupboards and closets. Do-it-yourselfers can buy material that expands to fill the gaps and prevent air from escaping.



Use Energy-Efficient Holiday Lights



There is a wide and growing selection of holiday lighting options on the market today, meaning their energy usage and operating costs also vary. The most efficient lights are the light emitting diode (LED) options, which produce very little heat and last much longer than traditional lights. While the initial price of LED lights is often higher than less efficient lights, they use a lot less energy, meaning long-term energy savings. LED lights also typically last about 20,000 hours, which means you will not need to replace them as often. Plus, connecting your lights to an automatic timer helps you control the amount of energy that is being used, as well.

For more information and tips on how to make your home more efficient this winter, contact HBAGC at 423-624-9992 or info@hbagc.net.


Password Manager Releases Second Annual Rankings

NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Dashlane, the award-winning password manager, and one of the world's most trusted digital security companies, today announced its second annual list of the "Worst Password Offenders." The rankings highlight the high-profile people and organizations that suffered the most significant password-related blunders of 2017.

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While the violators on this list vary, they all showcase that common password mistakescan cause great embarrassment and economic loss, and that the aftermath of a breach can often be prevented. Most people make the same simple errors that these offenders made, such as using weak passwords or reusing passwords for multiple accounts. And, now that Equifax has exposed the data of nearly 150 million people, using a unique password for every account has become the duty of every person and business using the Internet.

Learn how to prevent common hacks here: http://blog.dashlane.com/year-of-the-hack

Dashlane's "Worst Password Offenders" of 2017, in order of rank:

1.Donald Trump: The President tops this year's list of offenders, and for good reason. As a person who has continually lamented the cybersecurity woes of his opponents, and trumpeted his own, his leadership in this area leaves much to be desired.

For starters, a January investigation by UK outlet Channel 4 News exposed that many of the top staff members Trump handpicked, including multiple cabinet secretaries, senior policy directors - even cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani - were reusing unsecure, simple passwords. These passwords were used across multiple websites, as well as for their personal email accounts, and were believed to have been part of a slew of breaches that occurred between 2012 and 2016.

This revelation is not to be taken lightly, and signals that a president who touts his cybersecurity prowess may have added numerous cyber vulnerabilities to the nation's highest office. Trump also has direct connections to three of our other Top 10 offenders (Republican Party, Paul Manafort, Sean Spicer), which suggests he has never implemented proper cybersecurity protocols in any of his positions. Lastly, numerous Trump Organization websites were hacked this year, and a multitude of leading security experts questioned the security of his Twitter devices and accounts.

2.Equifax: The Equifax breaches of 2017 allowed cybercriminals to access the personal information of nearly 150 million people in the US, UK, and Canada. Pouring salt in the wound was the additional discovery by security researcher Brian Krebs that the company was using the username/password combination "admin/admin" for some of its online portals. Although the cause(s) of the breaches are still unknown, it's clear that Equifax's egregious password practices put the personal information of millions around the world at risk.

3.UK Government: A June investigation by The Times found that Russian hackers were trading thousands of passwords belonging UK government officials. Affected parties included MPs, parliamentary staff, and officials in the Foreign Office, including the head of IT. Most of the passwords were stolen from previous breaches, and because they remained unchanged after the breaches, the Russian hackers had easy access to their accounts. Perhaps the most concerning element of the report was that the most popular password for these officials was...you guessed it: "password."

In an unrelated December incident, multiple MP's Tweeted that they routinely share their passwords. They were defending a colleague they believe was falsely accused of an offense, but as security researcher Troy Hunt stated, the incident," ...illustrates a fundamental lack of privacy and security education." Non-secure password sharing increases infosec risks and undoubtedly leaves these MP's, as well as Parliament, susceptible to a variety of cyber dangers.

4.Department of Defense: Defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton left the Pentagon severely exposed by leaving critical files on a non-password protected Amazon server. Included in the exposed data were several unencrypted passwords that could have been used to access classified D.O.D. information.

5.Republican Party: One of the GOP's data analytics firms accidentally leaked the personal details of 198 million Americans - roughly the entire voting-age population. One cybersecurity expert described the leak as a "gold mine for anyone looking to target and manipulate voters." Much like the Pentagon hack, the firm was storing data on a non-password protected server.

6. Google: A wide-scale phishing attack in May compromised an unknown number of Google users' login credentials. The attack sent users to a real Google sign-in screen and captured their credentials when the user gave permission to a third-party app. Although Google swiftly resolved the issue, it highlights the password-related dangers that come with phishing attacks, as well as the need for extra vigilance by both users and companies regarding app access.

7.HBO: Your favorite Sunday night lineup provider was hit by a variety of hacks and breaches in 2017. These ranged from the leaks of episodes and stars' personal information, to the network's social media accounts getting hacked. Spoiler alert: HBO was treating cybersecurity lightly. After the litany of incidents, employees came forward with reports of terrible cybersecurity practices, including the reuse of passwords for personal and work accounts.

8.Imgur: The cause of this recent breach is still unknown, but the company admitted that at the time of the hack it was using an outdated algorithm to encrypt its users' passwords. Although it updated its encryption last year, the damage was already done as 1.7 million user passwords were potentially compromised.

9.Paul Manafort: Donald Trump's recently indicted campaign manager appears to be to a James Bond fan, as he was using 'Bond007' as his password for multiple personal accounts, including Dropbox and Adobe. The dangers of password re-use are real, and the fact that he and so many Trump associates are on this list is unsettling.

10.Sean Spicer: Remember him? The least critical incident on our list is still of note, as the former Press Secretary sent numerous Tweets of what appeared to be his very own passwords. His copying and pasting mistakes highlight the need for password managers that can automatically log you in, leaving no data stuck on the clipboard. Or podium.

Avoid Your Own Dishonorable Mention

It may seem easy to call out the unhealthy habits of public figures, but if you've found yourself committing any of the same cybersecurity sins as the offenders on our list, you are at risk too.

Here are the top three lessons to learn from the 2017 incidents:

1.Actually Use Passwords: This one seems obvious, but as our list shows, it's not always followed. Whether on a server, in an email account, or in an app, you should always secure your data with passwords as they're the first, and often only, line of defense between hackers and your personal information.

2.Use Strong Passwords: Never use passwords that are easy to guess, or that contain names, proper nouns, or things people can easily research about you. All of your passwords should be longer than eight characters and include a mix of random letters, numbers, and symbols. Use a password generator to think of them for you.

3.Never Reuse Passwords: Each and every one of your accounts needs a unique password. As our offenders underscored, the risk in password reuse is that hackers can use passwords from compromised accounts to easily access other accounts. The only protection against this is to have a different password for every account.

Password managers like Dashlane can help protect you on any device. In addition to creating unique strong passwords for all of your accounts, Dashlane ensures you're not reusing passwords for multiple accounts, alerts you when breaches occur, and lets you change your passwords automatically in one-click.

To learn more, visit dashlane.com.

About Dashlane

Dashlane, one of the world's most trusted digital security companies, takes the pain out of passwords with its password manager and secure digital wallet app. Dashlane allows users to securely manage passwords, credit cards, IDs, and other important information via advanced encryption and local storage.

With so many devices, the line between home and work no longer exists. Thankfully, Dashlane works everywhere, for everyone. The company has helped 9 million consumers manage and secure their digital identity and enabled over $10 billion in e-commerce transactions. Dashlane Business is trusted by 7,000+ companies to create, enforce, and track effective access management, and features the only patented security architecture in the industry.

The Dashlane app is available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has won critical acclaim by top publications includingThe Wall Street Journal,The New York Times,andUSA Today. Dashlane is free to use on your favorite device for life, and costs $39.99/year to sync between an unlimited number of devices.

Dashlane was founded by Bernard Liautaud and co-founders Alexis Fogel, Guillaume Maron and Jean Guillou. The company has offices in New York City and Paris, and has received $52.5 million in funding from TransUnion, Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. Learn more atDashlane.com.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2017 / Cantel Medical Corp. (NYSE: CMD) will be discussing their earnings results in their Q1 Earnings Call to be held on December 7, 2017 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

To listen to the event live or access a replay of the call - visit https://www.investornetwork.com/company/3059.

To receive updates for this company you can register by emailing info@investornetwork.com or by clicking get investment info from the company's profile.

About Investor Network

Investor Network (IN) is a financial content community, serving millions of unique investors market information, earnings, commentary and news on the what's trending. Dedicated to both the professional and the average traders, IN offers timely, trusted and relevant financial information for virtually every investor. IN is an Issuer Direct brand, to learn more or for the latest financial news and market information, visit www.investornetwork.com. Follow us on Twitter @investornetwork.

SOURCE: Investor Network
Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this document are made as of the date of this document and the Corporation disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation. Although Management believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

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.
VICTORIA, British Columbia, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IMMUNOPRECISE ANTIBODIES LTD. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: IPA)(OTC PINK: IPATF) announces that it has signed a binding letter of intent with ModiQuest Research BV ("ModiQuest") whereby the Company has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of ModiQuest (the "Transaction").

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616736/ImmunoPrecise_Antibodies_Ltd__ImmunoPrecise_to_Acquire_ModiQuest.jpg

The Transaction continues to realize on the Board's commitment to grow globally through strategic acquisitions. It allows IPA to become a single source provider of services across the full antibody discovery value chain (antigen design, hit generation, lead selection, lead optimization and lead characterization) and to offer the full spectrum of antibody production methodologies (library based technologies, hybridoma methods, transgenic animal based platforms and single B cell based technology). Furthermore, the acquisition enhances the Company's capacity for generating human antibodies.

"In acquiring ModiQuest Research B.V., IPA becomes a leading integrated antibody solutions company with global reach" said Dr. James Kuo, Chairman, Interim President of the Company.

ModiQuest

ModiQuest is a privately held company based in Oss, The Netherlands that specializes in the generation of monoclonal antibodies against difficult target antigens. ModiQuest applies proprietary technologies to all aspects of the antibody discovery process in research and development, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Using its proprietary ModiFuse' (hybridoma electrofusion), ModiSelect' (B-cell selection) and ModiPhage' (phage display) technologies, ModiQuest can generate very large panels of monoclonal antibodies from various backgrounds including mouse, rat, rabbit, chicken, llama and human, as well as transgenic animals harboring the human antibody gene repertoire.ModiQuest serves clients in Europe, the US, Asia and Russia. During its year-ended 2016, ModiQuest had revenues of 2,009,374 (CAD $3,037,249) and earnings of 671,799 (CAD $1,015,451).

The Transaction is accretive in both revenue and earnings and brings additional scientific and management capacity.

Terms of Transaction with ModiQuest

Under the binding letter of intent, the Company and ModiQuest have agreed to negotiate a definitive agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") whereby the Company will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of ModiQuest for 7,000,000 (CAD$10,570,000) (the "Purchase Price"), of which (A) 2,500,000 (CAD$3,775,000) will be paid in cash on closing, (B) 2,500,000 (CAD$3,775,000) will be satisfied by the issuance of approximately 6,622,807 common shares of the Company on closing, and (C) 2,000,000 (CAD$3,020,000) in deferred payments over a three year period (the "Deferred Payments"). The Deferred Payments will be made in three equal installments of cash and equity totaling 666,666 (CAD$1,006,665) on each anniversary date following closing of the transaction. The Deferred Payments will be prorated if the EBITDA of ModiQuest fails to equal the average EBITDA from the previous two years. ImmunoPrecise expects to finance the cash portion of the purchase price using a convertible debt instrument.

The letter of intent also requires that Jos Raats, a principal of ModiQuest, to enter into a three year management contract, which will include non-solicitation and non-competition clauses, and Mr. Raats will provide a minimum of 60% of full time employment to ModiQuest under the management contract. The Company has also agreed to appoint one of the principal shareholders of ModiQuest to its board of directors.

The parties will be entitled to carry out due diligence of each other until February 15, 2018. Upon the parties completing due diligence to their reasonable satisfaction, the parties will enter into the Definitive Agreement setting forth the terms and conditions of the Transaction by February 28, 2018. Completion of any transaction with ModiQuest 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, the availability of financing on terms acceptable to the Company, and receipt of any required regulatory and shareholder 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 ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

The Company provides custom antibody development and production services and protein expression to support research and development programs at leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as academic research laboratories. Antibodies are naturally occurring proteins capable of binding to specific target molecules, or antigens. They have been used very widely in research assays, diagnostics, purification, biologics and therapeutics.

The Company operates from state of the art laboratory facilities located at the Vancouver Island Technology Park in Victoria, British Columbia which house its tissue culture and molecular facilities as well as an animal care unit, and is a member of the Canadian Council for Animal Care and in association with U-Protein Express B.V. its subsidiary laboratory operation in Life Science Incubator, Utrecht Science Park, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The services offered to customers include the development of mouse and rat monoclonal and recombinant rabbit monoclonal antibodies against a wide spectrum of antigens, as well as polyclonal antibodies, immunologically based assays, and solutions to challenges faced by clients in antibody related research and development. In addition, cryopreservation services are provided for the storage of valuable biological materials including hybridoma clones, plasmid constructs, and cell lines. The antibodies produced by the Company target a wide variety of environmental, diagnostic and research applications.

The Company employs a highly experienced group of R&D scientists. Over the last 25 years, investments in innovative and proprietary technologies and methods have vastly improved the speed and efficiency of monoclonal and polyclonal antibody production.

For further information please contact:

ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

Phone: 1-250-483-0803

3204-4464 Markham Street.

Victoria, BC V8Z 7X8

www.immunoprecise.com



For investor relations please contact:

Rob Gamley

Phone: 1-604-689-7422

Email: rob@contactfinancial.com

Contact Financial Corp.

810 - 609 Granville St.

Vancouver, BC V7Y 1G5

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains statements that, to the extent they are not recitations of historical fact, may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. The Company uses words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "expect", "believe", "intend" and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by the Company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. However, whether actual results and developments will conform to the Company's expectations and predictions is subject to any number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. Such factors include, among other things, the Company closing its acquisition of ModiQuest, and such risks and uncertainties described in the Company's Filing Statement dated December 13, 2016 which can be accessed at www.sedar.com . The "forward-looking statements" contained herein speak only as of the date of this press release and, unless required by applicable law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise such information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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.
PALM BEACH, Florida, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The global lithium market is experiencing an enormous uptick in competition as major and junior miners race to enhance mining efforts in order to maximize the revenue potential that comes in hand with the precious metal. As demand across the planet skyrockets due to the electric vehicle boom, the forecasts for lithium's growth continue to grow, with the most recent estimate pinned at a 16.6% CAGR according to MarketsandMarkets. The key driving factors for the growth of the lithium ion battery market are increase in demand for electric vehicle, strict government mandates on fuel economy, growing demand for smart devices and other consumer electronics, and development toward enhancement of lithium ion batteries. Increased investment in production facilities, along with other methods of optimization, are allowing industry leaders to keep up with the steadily rising demand such as: NRG Metals Inc. (TSX-V: NGZ) (OTC: NRGMF), Lithium X Energy Corp. (OTC: LIXXF) (TSX-V: LIX), Glencore Plc (OTC: GLNCY) (LSE: GLEN.L), Rio Tinto plc (NYSE: RIO), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX).

NRG Metals Inc. (TSX-V: NGZ) (OTCQB: NRGMF) (Frankfurt OGPN), is pleased to announce the discovery of lithium at the Salar Escondido Lithium Project, Catamarca Province, Argentina. Consistent with the Company's geophysical data and geological model, the target zone of sediments saturated with brine that could contain lithium was intersected, and the first lithium values from near the top of the brine are very encouraging.See a table of values and read more news for NRG Metals at http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/nrg.html



The samples, which were collected with a single packer, were analyzed by the Alex Stewart laboratory in Jujuy, Argentina. Alex Stewart employed Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry ("ICP-OES") as the analytical technique for the primary constituents of interest, including those shown in the table.

Adrian Hobkirk, CEO of NRG commented, "We are very excited with the initial results from near the top of the brine zone at Salar Escondido.These results prove the concept that there is a buried salar that contains lithium at Salar Escondido. Furthermore, the Mg/Li ratio is relatively low at 4.6, which is very encouraging. We are hopeful that lithium grades will increase at deeper levels, which is the case in many salars in Argentina. We look forward to continuing the exploration at Salar Escondido to fully assess and delineate this discovery."

The drill hole has intersected weakly consolidated sandstone and unconsolidated sand horizons with occasional conglomerate and clay layers from a depth of 113 meters to 176 meters, and predominately poorly consolidated conglomerate with occasional clay layers below 176 meters. Saline brine is present below a depth of 140 meters. As of December 5, 2017, the hole had reached a depth of 221 meters, and the Company is planning to extend the hole to a depth of 350 meters.

In other mining industry news and developments:

Lithium X Energy Corp. (OTC: LIXXF) (TSX-V: LIX.V) (CDNX: LIX) announced in November it has closed its previously announced agreements with Borax Argentina SA and South American Salars SA and their parent company, Orocobre Ltd., collectively (refer to news release of Oct. 4, 2017). The Orocobre agreements involved the acquisition of 2,700 hectares of claims from Borax Argentina SA replacing the usufruct Lithium rights previously held by the company over the Borax claims and an agreement to acquire a further 700 hectares currently owned by South American Salars SA for a total consideration of 650,000 common shares of Lithium X, $1-million (U.S.) and a 1-per-cent net revenue royalty over the SDLA project.

In an article published on BloombergTechnology, The race is on to supply more of the cobalt needed for batteries in the fast-growing market for electric vehicles - and that means fresh competition for the big players Glencore Plc (OTC: GLNCY) (LSE: GLEN.L) and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A pipeline of projects is looming in places including Australia, the U.S. and Canada after cobalt prices more than doubled in the past year. Glencore produces almost a third of the world's supply, mainly from the Congo, which is by far the biggest source, accounting for as much as 65 percent. Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-08/cobalt-upstarts-eye-glencore-s-turf-for-244-billion-ev-spoils .

Rio Tinto plc (NYSE: RIO) came to a close up .53% on Wednesday with a volume north of 2.9 million. In a recent article on Business Times, Rio Tinto plc is getting distracted by a shiny new thing. The Anglo-Australian mining giant may be on the verge of buying a stake in US$15 billion lithium producer Sociedad Quimica y Minera (NYSE: SQM). After previously chasing aluminium at its peak, Rio is looking late again. Excavators are emerging from a period of austerity. They have cleaned up a string of disastrous deals and slashed costs. Thanks to China and the surge of interest in electric cars, demand is growing. Materials including lithium, cobalt and copper are in vogue. Read more at: http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/rio-tinto-may-buy-stake-in-lithium-producer-sociedad-quimica-y-minera

Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX) closed Wednesday up 1.70% with over 22.5 million shares traded by the market clsoe. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. In a recent article, there are potentially bottlenecks in lithium and cobalt mining efforts, which are crucial for lithium-ion batteries used to power electric cars. In terms of supply, major disruptions that took place in the first half of the year supported prices. But worries have eased as top copper producer Chile reported higher output in July. Meanwhile, Freeport-McMoRan, which owns Grasberg, the world's second-largest copper mine, will continue to export copper as it negotiates a new permit with the Indonesian government. Read more at https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/base-metals-investing/copper-investing/copper-prices-rally-q4/

DISCLAIMER: MarketNewsUpdates.com (MNU) is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. MNU is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein.MNU and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security.MNU's market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities.The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material.All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks.All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release.MNU is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks.For current services performed MNU has been compensated forty-nine hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press release issued by NRG Metals Inc. by a non-affiliated third party.MNU HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and MNU undertakes no obligation to update such statements.



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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - CenturyLink Inc. (CTL) announced that a Special Committee of independent board members has reported the findings of its review of the company's policies, procedures and practices relating to consumer sales, service and billing. The company said the investigation did not reveal evidence to conclude that any member of the company's management team engaged in fraud. The company's outside directors voluntarily formed the Special Committee after a former employee alleged that the company engaged in sales-related misconduct, including charging customers for services they did not order-a practice known as cramming. CenturyLink reported that the Special Committee's key findings include: company management did not condone or encourage cramming, and the evidence did not show that cramming was common at the company. 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.
Collaboration leads to discovery of a new material able to separate ethylene from ethane

Targeting up to a 25 percent reduction in both process energy needs and carbon dioxide emissions

Research published in nation's leading peer-reviewed journal Science

Scientists from ExxonMobil and the Instituto de Tecnologia Quimica (ITQ) in Valencia, Spain have discovered a potentially revolutionary new material that could significantly reduce the amount of energy and emissions associated with the production of ethylene. Depending on the application, use of the new material, in conjunction with other novel separation processes, could result in up to a 25 percent reduction in both the energy needed for ethylene separation, as well as the associated carbon dioxide emissions. Results of the research have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Science

ExxonMobil and ITQ researchers found that the new material, composed of a uniquely structured silica zeolite, can be used in gas separation processes, such as the recovery of ethylene from ethane, with an unprecedented degree of selectivity at ambient temperature. The new material could provide insights into the design of additional materials to be used as adsorbents or membranes in a variety of different gas separation applications associated with chemical manufacturing. Zeolites are porous materials frequently used as adsorbents and catalysts in chemical processes.

"Cryogenic distillation, the current commercial-scale process used for ethylene separation, is an energy-intensive process," said Vijay Swarup, vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. "If advanced to commercial scale, use of this new material could significantly reduce the amount of energy and emissions associated with ethylene production. This is another great example of collaboration between industry and a university that is focused on driving solutions for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions from industrial processes."

Ethylene is a critical component in producing chemicals and plastics. Finding alternative, low-energy technologies to separate ethylene from ethane has been a longstanding challenge due to their similar properties. While chemical manufacturers have evaluated a number of alternatives to cryogenic distillation, including new adsorbents and separation processes, many of these technologies are hindered by low selectivity and an inability to regenerate when exposed to contaminants.

The patented new material, ITQ-55, is able to selectively adsorb ethylene over ethane as a result of its unique flexible pore structure. Built from heart-shaped cages interconnected by flexible elongated pore openings, the material allows the diffusion of the flatter ethylene molecules as opposed to the more cylindrical-shaped ethane molecules. The new material acts as a flexible molecular sieve.

"ITQ-55 is a very interesting material whose unique combination of pore dimension, topology, flexibility and chemical composition results in a highly stable and inert material that is able to adsorb ethylene and filter out ethane," said Professor Avelino Corma of the Instituto de Tecnologia Quimica and co-author of the research. "We are excited about this discovery and look forward to continuing our fruitful collaboration with ExxonMobil."

Additional research must be conducted before the material can be considered for larger-scale demonstration and commercialization. Fundamental research will continue focusing on incorporating the material into a membrane and developing additional novel materials for gas separation.

"Our ultimate goal of actually replacing cryogenic distillation is a long-term challenge that will require many more years of research and testing, in and out of the lab," said Gary Casty, section head for catalysis at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. "Our next steps will focus on better understanding the full potential of this new zeolite material."

Chemical plants account for about eight percent of global energy demand and about 15 percent of the projected growth in demand to 2040. As global populations and living standards continue to rise, demand for auto parts, housing materials, electronics and other products made from plastics and other petrochemicals will continue to grow. Improving industrial efficiency is part of ExxonMobil's mission to meet the world's growing need for energy while minimizing environmental impacts.

ExxonMobil works with about 80 universities around the world to explore next-generation energy technologies. In 2016, ExxonMobil and the Georgia Institute of Technology announced the development of a potential new material focusing on liquids separation that could also reduce the amount of energy and emissions associated with manufacturing plastics. The results of this joint research were published by Science, as well.

About ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company, uses technology and innovation to help meet the world's growing energy needs. ExxonMobil holds an industry-leading inventory of resources, is one of the largest refiners and marketers of petroleum products, and its chemical company is one of the largest in the world. For more information, visit www.exxonmobil.com or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/exxonmobil.

Cautionary Statement: Statements of future events or conditions in this release are forward-looking statements. Actual future results, including project plans and timing and the impact and results of new technologies, including efficiency gains and emission reductions, could vary depending on the outcome of further research and testing; the development and competitiveness of alternative technologies; the ability to scale pilot projects on a cost-effective basis; political and regulatory developments; and other factors discussed in this release and under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Results" on the Investors page of ExxonMobil's website at exxonmobil.com.

About the Instituto de Tecnologia Quimica

The Instituto de Tecnologia Quimica (ITQ) is a joint research center created in 1990 by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. The ITQ is an international reference center in the area of catalysis and new materials (especially zeolites) and also in photochemistry. Due to its excellent fundamental and oriented research level and to its multidisciplinary character, the ITQ has the possibility to develop research in different disciplines having an extraordinary flexibility and capability to adapt itself to new research challenges.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005171/en/

Contacts:

ExxonMobil

Media Relations, 972-940-6007
Company's ADVOS Technology Represents First System Worldwide for Advanced Multi-Organ Support

Hepa Wash, a Munich-based manufacturer of the worldwide first method for advanced multi-organ support, announced today its collaboration with the German Accelerator Life Sciences (GALS) program, an initiative founded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), to facilitate the company's U.S. expansion.

The mortality rate of intensive care patients with multi-organ failure is still very high. Although dysfunctions of the main detoxification organs, liver, lungs, and kidneys, can clearly be delineated, the failure of one organ can affect several others. This leads to a life-threatening toxin accumulation in the body and subsequently to progressive organ failure and death.

Hepa Wash recently introduced the innovative approach of the ADVOS (Advanced Organ Support) procedure, which offers multi-organ support for liver, lungs, and kidneys and correction of acid-base balance disorders. The ADVOS device represents an evolution from conventional dialysis machines, as it uses protein enriched dialysis water instead of regular dialysis water and allows targeted manipulation of acidity of the dialysis fluid. Within the device, the dialysis fluid is permanently reprocessed and cleared of toxins to maintain a constantly high detoxification performance. The AVDOS procedure has already proven its capabilities in several studies and in large university hospitals in Germany.

"We are very excited about being accepted into the GALS program. As this is a very competitive program, it shows that our team has done great work so far. Also, highly accomplished U.S. experts see the great potential of our ADVOS multi-organ support to revolutionize treatment in intensive care settings and improve patient survival," commented Dr. Bernhard Kreymann, CEO and founder of Hepa Wash. "The U.S. market is the largest medical technology market in the world, but it also follows its own set of rules. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to be supported by experienced U.S. specialists in establishing a strategy for market approval, reimbursement, and market penetration. Hence, we very much look forward working with the GALS advisors to analyze our US market readiness and develop our FDA and reimbursement strategy."

"We look forward to working with Hepa Wash. The company's ADVOS technology has enormous potential to improve the treatment of organ-failure patients worldwide," commented strategic project lead and GALS mentor Michael Bogenstaetter. "I am confident that GALS can add to Hepa Wash's success by assisting in the continued development of the company's U.S. strategy," added Christoph Lengauer, CEO of the German Accelerator Life Sciences.

Hepa Wash's U.S. expansion will be guided by a team of GALS mentors with profound commercial and technical expertise in the field of organ support. Additional support through GALS includes access to the vast GALS network of medical device industry leaders, investors, and top-notch service providers.

About Hepa Wash:

Hepa Wash has established the ADVOS system, the first method in the world for extended and individualized support of the human body's main detoxification organs: the liver, the lungs and the kidneys. The company was founded in Garching near Munich in mid-2005 by renowned nephrology and multi-organ support expert Dr. Bernhard Kreymann who had been instrumental in establishing the previous gold standard of organ support using single-pass albumin dialysis. Building on this expertise, Hepa Wash is developing reliable treatment methods to close the therapeutic gap in multi-organ failure.

About the German Accelerator Life Sciences:

The German Accelerator Life Sciences (GALS) is an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) with the goal of helping German startups and young companies succeed in the global marketplace. GALS, centrally located and highly connected in the world's leading life sciences innovation hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers support in multiple areas: from operational assistance to high-end strategic guidance by experienced industry experts and key opinion leaders. GALS opened its doors in October 2015 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more information, visit: www.GermanAccelerator.com/Life-Sciences

Additional Material:

For more on the functionality of the ADVOS procedure, please click: http://hepawash.com/en/funktionsweise/

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005169/en/

Contacts:

Hepa Wash GmbH

Julia Rochser, M.A., +49 (89) 4111842-27

Marketing Manager

marketing@hepawash.com

or

German Accelerator Life Sciences

Annika Pierson, +1-617-531-0404

Head of Strategy Operations

gals@germanaccelerator.com


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The cryptocurrency mining marketplace NiceHash said it was hacked and $64 million worth of bitcoin may have been stolen.



Slovenia-based NiceHash said it is investigating the nature of the security breach involving its website, and stopping all operations for a day. The payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet were stolen on Thursday.



NiceHash head of marketing Andrej P Skraba was quoted as saying that approximately 4,700 BTC - worth about $64 million - was lost.



NiceHash, which offers computing capacity for bitcoin miners to mine digital currencies, said this is a matter of deep concern and is working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. 'The incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement'.



Customers have been urged to change their online passwords.



Several users have reported on social media that their NiceHash-linked wallets were emptied during the outage, with some saying they could lose hundreds of dollars.



Ethereum, another form of cryptocurrency, had come under attack last month. millions of dollars worth Ethereum were 'accidentally' frozen on the cryptocurrency wallet provider Parity after a user deleted its code and froze all ether tokens contained within.



Following the failure of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox in 2014, Japanese Government enacted new laws to regulate cryptocurrencies.



In the wake of significant spurt in the value of bitcoin, the Reserve Bank of India this week had cautioned users and traders of virtual currencies against the potential economic, legal, customer protection and security related risks involved in dealing with them.



Meanwhile Bitcoin's value surpassed $15,000 mark for the first time on Thursday. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, or CBOE is planning to launch futures trading in the virtual currency starting Sunday.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
NEW YORKand LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Avature, a provider of innovative cloud applications for CRM and Human Capital Management, announced today the general availability of its Contingent Workforce solution, designed to allow companies to leverage the gig economy more efficiently. The solution, in combination with Avature's CRM, ATS and Internal Mobility solutions, allows organizations to fully integrate contingent workforce development with existing talent acquisition and talent management practices. This allows customers to develop a total talent management (TTM) perspective of their organization.

Avature Contingent Workforce was conceived so that HR organizations can quickly deploy on-demand talent to support the increasing need for agility. This responsiveness helps continue a HR organizations transformation from "back office" payroll processors to strategic "front office" business service providers to the rest of the organization.

"HR leaders and purchasing managers have expressed a desire to align contingent hires with the organization's overall talent and workforce initiatives and we are responding accordingly," said Nina Jaksic, Avature's Product Manager for the solution. "We are combining bespoke processing capabilities with comprehensive analytics to generate a real-time view of workforce readiness across the entire organization."

This new solution includes Avature's industry leading sourcing tools, talent communities and advanced communication capabilities for attracting and engaging with the contingent workforce. Fine-grained segmentation coupled with advanced database search gives organizations clear visibility into their talent networks and also gives them the ability to find the best candidate based on specific criteria such as availability, skillset, performance ratings and more. Using Avature's highly configurable workflow engine, workflows can be deployed to support a wide variety of on-boarding and off-boarding processes that comply with stringent procurement controls and complex regulatory requirements. Avature's advanced document management and customizable forms functionality can support a wide variety of SOWs, and Avature's Enterprise Service Bus supports easy integration into financial systems.

"Our customers want to better engage the contingent worker," said Dimitri Boylan, CEO of Avature. "Our social CRM features can dramatically improve the contractor experience so that our customers can stay connected with the dependable high performing, independent contractors that know how to work inside their organization. There is no doubt that replacing old systems that silo data with a single platform that supports web and mobile apps will speed deployment of critical resources and boost company performance."

Avature Contingent Workforce has been in production use with a small number of customers since August of this year. Agustin Donati, Avature's Director of Product Marketing, expands on the company's plans. "Customer-driven enhancements will be made through a series of 18 additional releases over the next year. Among other things, key enhancements will include contract-specific document parsing and smart tagging developed by Avature's Natural Language Processing AI team, as well as a financial transaction ledger that can be easily exported to the financial system of record."

Avature Contingent Workforce can be delivered as a stand-alone solution or as an integrated component of a complete talent suite on the Avature platform.

About Avature

Avature is a highly configurable enterprise SaaS platform for Talent Acquisition and Talent Management and the leading provider of CRM technology for recruiting globally. Founded by Dimitri Boylan, co-founder and former CEO of HotJobs.com, Avature brings consumer-grade internet technology and innovation to HCM software. Avature solutions include shared services sourcing, applicant tracking, campus & events recruiting, employee referral management, social on-boarding, branded employee engagement, employee mobility and workforce optimization, and performance management. Used by 101 of the Fortune 500 in more than 100 countries and 17 languages, Avature delivers its services from its private cloud, located in data centers in the US, Europe, and Asia. Avature has offices in Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Munich, New York, and Shenzhen. Learn more at www.avature.net or follow @Avature.
Catoosa County Habitat for Humanity is seeking future lunch donations for volunteer groups. Our volunteers work hard on projects and we like to thank them by providing lunch for them. said Penny Mahon, Catoosa Habitats Executive Director. Several restaurants have participated in providing lunch for our volunteers and we are looking for some new partners.

Restaurants that have participated in providing lunch for Catoosa Habitat volunteers include Krystal, Dominos, and Chick-fil-A. During a recent project Jacks donated food to volunteers who were helping to lay down new flooring in a home. Corey Sanders, Jacks general manager, stated that he was happy to help feed Catoosa Habitat volunteers.

There has been great support from local restaurants to our cause but we wanted to put the word out that we are seeking new partners, said Ms. Mahon. Even church and civic groups are welcomed to make lunches for volunteers. Most of our projects take place on Saturdays so it would be a great opportunity for a church or civic group to get together to make sack lunches early in the morning and bring them out to volunteers on the worksite.

If your restaurant or organization would like to provide lunch for Catoosa Habitat volunteers, contact the office at 706-861-5858 or email at Habitat1@catt.com.

To learn more about what Catoosa Habitat is doing in their community, and to volunteer, check out their website at catoosahabitat.org and like Habitat for Humanity of Catoosa County on Facebook.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The House of Representatives has passed a law allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons between states without having to worry about conflicting state laws. It was the first major self-defense gun legislation that the House approved after a Connecticut school massacre five years ago. The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act was passed by a 231-198 vote with bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Lower House. The National Rifle Association, which has been lobbying for it for 30 years, applauded the passage of the Bill. The bill, H.R. 38, ensures that those Americans who can legally carry a concealed firearm in one state will legally be able to do so in every other state. It eliminates the conflicting state laws that prevented gun owners from carrying a firearm in multiple states. The bill also makes improvements to the national background check system. National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, helps states and government agencies to update it with legitimate records of prohibited persons. Additionally, the bill creates an expedited process for removing records that are erroneously put in the system. Currently, when a person discovers they have been wrongly added to the NICS, it can take up to a year to get their name removed. This bill requires a response to an appeal within 60 days. The measure will now go to the Senate, where it needs to be passed to become law. 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.
Executives from hundreds of Hong Kong enterprises attend the 50th anniversary reception of HKTDC Enterprise, hosted by HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau (front row centre).

The Enterprise Yearbook 2018 is published today. Buyers can read it online or download a mobile version to their smartphones through the HKTDC Marketplace app.



HKTDC Communications and Public Affairs Department Agnes Wat Tel: +852 2584 4554 Email: agnes.ky.wat@hktdc.org

HONG KONG, Dec 7, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - The Hong Kong Trade Development Council's (HKTDC) flagship magazine, HKTDC Enterprise, marked its 50th anniversary with a cocktail reception held today during the SmartBiz Expo. The event was hosted by HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau and attended by executives from hundreds of local enterprises.Launched in 1967, Enterprise has since expanded into some 20 product magazines, serving as an effective platform connecting buyers and suppliers in Hong Kong and around the world. For decades, the publication has been in close partnership with local suppliers in their product promotion and brand building endeavours by showcasing products and services to a worldwide audience, helping to forge numerous business partnerships.Together with local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), HKTDC product magazines have been moving with the times. Apart from constantly evolving and strengthening their content to reach new readers, the magazines embrace the digital era with interactive online versions and the HKTDC Marketplace mobile app, which consolidates sourcing information from the Council's fair websites, product magazines and hktdc.com. The award-winning app offers personalised functions for buyers to obtain information and services according to their industry and interests, and to send enquiries to suppliers anytime and anywhere.An e-Badge function was added to the app last month during the HKTDC Hong Kong Optical Fair. From January 2018, HKTDC trade fair websites will feature enhanced sourcing functions. These services will provide buyers with added convenience and comprehensive information, while assisting Hong Kong suppliers to promote their products and services and expand customer base through multiple channels.At the reception, Mr Chau thanked Enterprise readers and advertisers for their long-term support that contributed to the publication's success. "We are proud that Enterprise has been in business for half a century, an achievement that would not have been possible without the support of our readers and advertisers," he said. "While there is now a much wider range of channels for export promotion, the HKTDC will continue to innovate and go hand in hand with SMEs in their quest to rise to new challenges in global markets."Long-term Enterprise advertisers who attended today's reception include: Brilliant Rich Electronics Ltd, Eastcolight (HK) Ltd, GPI International Ltd, Fung Tat Leather FTY Ltd, Heroka Industries Ltd, Hip Lik Packaging Products FTY Ltd, Kinox Trading Limited, Lee Tat Handbags MFY O/B Lexsun Ltd, Maxwell Electronics Ltd, Minwa Electronics Co Ltd, Sunnex Products Ltd, Win-Chance Metal FTY Ltd, Yee Hing Metal FTY and Yee On Gems & Jewellery FTY Co Ltd.Enterprise Yearbook 2018 publishedThe HKTDC Enterprise Yearbook 2018 was published today. It contains details of more than 300 suppliers and over 500 pages of buyer-centric content. With a readership of over 500,000 buyers from more than 200 countries and regions, the publication helps suppliers reach potential customers from around the world. It offers insightful content for international buyers, featuring global export outlook and market analysis for 2018, as well as a special article named "Hong Kong Legends" marking the 50th anniversary of Enterprise. The Yearbook also spotlights budding designers and start-ups, as well as their design ideas and stories. There is also a feature on the Belt and Road Initiative, detailing the latest developments and related opportunities for businesses.Websites:HKTDC Enterprise: www.hktdc.com/magazinesHKTDC Marketplace mobile app: www.hktdc.com/mobilePhoto Download: http://bit.ly/2k76ld7About HKTDCEstablished in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body dedicated to creating opportunities for Hong Kong's businesses. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China, Asia and the world. With 50 years of experience, the HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in international markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.- Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdc- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdc- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
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) - Citing attorney-client privilege, Donald Trump Jr. refused to answer members of a congressional committee's questions about a discussion he had with his father about a meeting with an attorney linked to the Russian government during the presidential campaign. Trump Jr. argued in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that the details of the conversation were protected because of the presence of attorneys during the exchange. The meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016 has attracted the attention of investigators as emails released by Trump Jr. indicated that a 'Russian government attorney' was willing to provide information that would 'incriminate' Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Congressman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the committee's top Democrat, said the conversation for which Trump Jr. is claiming privilege took place after the emails became public and focused more on the reaction to the emails. Schiff argued that the purpose of attorney-client privilege is not to shield communications between individuals merely by having an attorney present. Trump Jr. reportedly did tell the committee about earlier discussions with the White House adviser Hope Hicks about how to respond to the publication of the emails. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) 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:

Air Liquide (Paris:AI) and Groupe ADP today inaugurated the first public hydrogen station installed in an airport zone in France. It was designed and installed by Air Liquide with the support of the FCH JU1 and is promoting the deployment of "Hype", the world's first hydrogen-powered taxi fleet. This collective project is opening up a new clean mobility option in the Greater Paris Area.

Hydrogen offers a number of benefits for clean transportation. Used in a fuel cell, it combines with the oxygen in the air to produce electricity, with water as the only byproduct. It does not generate any pollution at its point of use: zero greenhouse gases, zero particles and zero noise. Hydrogen brings a concrete response to the challenges of sustainable mobility and local pollution in urban areas. It takes less than five minutes to recharge hydrogen-powered electric vehicles for a driving range of around 500 kilometers

With this new station located at a major airport, Air Liquide and Groupe ADP are helping to develop a network of hydrogen stations in the Greater Paris Area and contributing to the adoption of clean modes of transportation. The Parisian taxi fleet "Hype", the world's first ever taxi fleet powered by hydrogen, was launched by the start-up STEP (Societe du Taxi Electrique Parisien) in 2015, in partnership with Air Liquide. Currently powered by an Air Liquide station located in the heart of the French capital, at Cours Albert 1er near Pont de l'Alma, the fleet counts more than 50 hydrogen-powered vehicles and plans to grow to 600 taxis by 2020. Air Liquide will continue to support the growth of this offer by opening new hydrogen stations around Paris in 2018, notably one near Versailles, and another at the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Benoit Potier, Chairman and CEO of Air Liquide, commented: "Present in the hydrogen sector for 50 years, Air Liquide is actively developing its energy applications today and is involved in the organization of this field, mostly through the Hydrogen Council. The installation of this charging station at the Orly Airport, in collaboration with Groupe ADP, marks a new step in the development of clean mobility in and around Paris. It also illustrates the maturity of technologies and the mobilization of a growing number of players in promoting hydrogen energy. Indeed, this molecule has a key role to play in the energy transition thanks to its capacity to store renewable energies and its various applications for industry and transport."

Augustin de Romanet, Chairman and CEO of Groupe ADP, added: "The rollout of this innovative equipment in collaboration with Air Liquide is one of the embodiment of our ambitious policy promoting innovation while protecting the environment. A hydrogen station will also be installed at the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2018. This new energy offer provides access to new modes of transportation and allows us to reaffirm our role as an experimental territory and as a key player in the field of mobility."

Air Liquide's commitment to hydrogen energy

Air Liquide masters the entire hydrogen supply chain, from production and storage to distribution and the development of applications for end users, thus contributing to the widespread use of hydrogen as a clean energy source, for mobility in particular. Air Liquide has designed and installed 100 stations around the world to date.

In January 2017, Air Liquide and Toyota co-founded the "Hydrogen Council, the world's first initiative for hydrogen bringing together 28 key players in energy, transportation and industry.

Blue Hydrogen is an Air Liquide program whose goal is to gradually decarbonize its production of hydrogen dedicated to energy applications. In practical terms, Air Liquide has made a commitment to produce at least 50% of the hydrogen necessary for these applications through carbon-free processes by 2020 by combining:

the use of renewable energies, water electrolysis, and biogas reforming,

the use of technologies for the capture and upgrading of carbon emitted during the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas.

Even when it is produced from natural gas, hydrogen is a virtuous energy: for equal distance traveled, hydrogen electric cars allow to reduce GHG emissions by 20% compared with internal combustion vehicles and don't produce any fine particles.

Groupe ADP and the development of clean mobility at Paris's airports

This hydrogen station completes the choice of charging points available free of charge for electric vehicles in Paris airport parking lots. To enhance passenger and airport staff electromobility, Groupe ADP has installed a total of 162 charging points including 37 for passengers in its public parking areas. Paris-Orly has 11 charging points for drivers using its parking lots.

Groupe ADP has also acquired 172 clean (electric and hybrid) vehicles, including 50 for Paris-Orly. These new systems illustrate ADP's efforts to reduce local GHG emissions and pollutants. The company was recently rewarded by ACI Europe, which renewed its Level 3 Airport Carbon Accreditation for Paris-Orly, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Le Bourget.

About Air Liquide

The world leader in gases, technologies and services for Industry and Health, Air Liquide is present in 80 countries with approximately 65,000 employees and serves more than 3 million customers and patients. Oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen are essential small molecules for life, matter and energy. They embody Air Liquide's scientific territory and have been at the core of the company's activities since its creation in 1902.

Air Liquide's ambition is to lead its industry, deliver long term performance and contribute to sustainability. The company's customer-centric transformation strategy aims at profitable growth over the long term. It relies on operational excellence, selective investments, open innovation and a network organization implemented by the Group worldwide. Through the commitment and inventiveness of its people, Air Liquide leverages energy and environment transition, changes in healthcare and digitization, and delivers greater value to all its stakeholders.

Air Liquide's revenue amounted to 18.1 billion in 2016 and its solutions that protect life and the environment represented more than 40% of sales. Air Liquide is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange (compartment A) and belongs to the CAC 40, EURO STOXX 50 and FTSE4Good indexes.

www.airliquide.com

Follow us on Twitter @airliquidegroup

About Groupe ADP

Groupe ADP builds, develops and manages airports, including Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris-Orly and Paris-Le Bourget. In 2016, the Group handled via Paris Aeroport more than 97 million passengers and 2.2 million tons of freight and mail at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly, and more than 42 million passengers in airports abroad through its subsidiary ADP International. Boasting an exceptional geographic location and a major catchment area, the Group is pursuing its strategy of adapting and modernizing its terminal facilities and upgrading quality of services; the Group also intends to develop its retail and real estate businesses. In 2016, Group revenue stood at 2,947 million and net income at 435 million.

Registered office: 1, rue de France, 93 290 Tremblay-en-France. Aeroports de Paris is a public limited company (Societe Anonyme) with share capital of 296,881,806. Registered in the Bobigny Trade and Company Register under no. 552 016 628.

groupeadp.fr

1 The FCH JU (Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking) is a public private partnership supporting research, development and demonstration activities in energy technologies, fuel cells and hydrogen in Europe. This infrastructure is part of the H2ME project that has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 671438. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005811/en/

Contacts:

Air Liquide

Corporate Communications

Caroline Philips, +33 (0)1 40 62 50 84

Caroline Brugier, +33 (0)1 40 62 50 59

or

Hydrogen Initiative Communications

Alexandra Lebrethon, +33 (0)1 40 62 52 73

or

Investor Relations

Paris France

+33 (0)1 40 62 50 87

Philadelphia USA

+1 610 263 8277

or

Groupe ADP

Media and Reputation Management department

+33 (0)1 74 25 23 23

or

Claire Gozlan, +33 (0)6 10 62 72 43

or

Investor Relations

Audrey Arnoux, +33 (0) 1 74 25 70 64

invest@adp.fr
Regulatory News:

Teleperformance (Paris:RCF), the worldwide leader in omnichannel customer experience management, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Patrick Thomas as an independent director, as recommended by its Remuneration and Appointments Committee. The appointment will be submitted to shareholders for ratification at the next Annual General Meeting, to be held in Paris on April 20, 2018.

Patrick Thomas is currently Chairman of the Supervisory Board and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee of Ardian, a private equity firm that manages and/or advises 65 billion in assets in Europe, North America and Asia. Mr. Thomas is also a director of Renault, where he is Chairman of the Remuneration Committee and a member of the Appointments and Governance Committee and the Audit, Risks and Ethics Committee. He chairs the boards of Hermes International subsidiaries Shang-Xia Trading (China) and Full More Group (Hong Kong). Mr. Thomas is also Vice Chairman of the Supervisory Boards of Laurent Perrier and Massily Holding and is a member of the Supervisory Boards of Leica Camera AG and Chateau Palmer. During his career, he has held a wide variety of executive positions with Pernod Ricard, Lancaster Group, William Grant and, lastly, Hermes International, where he served as Chief Executive Officer from 2003 to 2014. Mr. Thomas graduated from the ESCP business school.

Mr. Thomas will support Teleperformance in successfully leading the ambitious growth plan for its businesses by sharing both his extensive experience as an executive and director of international corporations and his expertise in fast growing business environments.

Based on the opinion issued by the Remuneration and Appointments Committee, the Board of Directors intends to appoint Mr. Thomas as its lead director, in a commitment to meeting the highest standards of corporate governance and complying with the recommendations of the Afep-Medef governance code.

Following his appointment, the Board now comprises fourteen directors, of whom six are women (43%) and nine are independent (64%). Six different nationalities are represented.

"For many years, Patrick Thomas has led companies based in a variety of countries, all of which are market leaders in very different business segments. His appointment has strengthened and further enhanced Teleperformance's Board of Directors. His more than 40 years of experience in highly demanding, international environments will provide a critical advantage for the Group, which is continuing to expand its global leadership. In addition, the appointment of a lead director attests to the Group's commitment to aligning its governance with its new scope of business," explained Daniel Julien, Teleperformance Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We are delighted to welcome Patrick to our expanding Teleperformance family around the globe."

ABOUT TELEPERFORMANCE

Teleperformance (RCF ISIN: FR0000051807 Reuters: ROCH.PA Bloomberg: RCF FP), the worldwide leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management, serves companies and administrations around the world, with customer care, technical support, customer acquisition (Core Services), as well as with online interpreting solutions, visa application management services, data analysis and debt collection programs (Specialized Services). In 2016, Teleperformance reported consolidated revenue of 3,649 million (US$4,050 million, based on 1 $1.11).

The Group operates 163,000 computerized workstations, with 217,000 employees across 340 contact centers in 74 countries and serving 160 markets. It manages programs in 265 languages and dialects on behalf of major international companies operating in a wide variety of industries.

Teleperformance shares are traded on the Euronext Paris market, Compartment A, and are eligible for the deferred settlement service. They are included in the following indices: CAC Large 60, CAC Next 20, CAC Support Services, STOXX 600, SBF 120, and MSCI Global Standard. They also have been included in the Euronext Vigeo Eurozone 120 index since December 2015, with regard to the Group's performance in corporate responsibility.

For more information: www.teleperformance.com

Follow us: Twitter @teleperformance

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005778/en/

Contacts:

PRESS RELATIONS

AMERICAS AND ASIA-PACIFIC

TELEPERFORMANCE

MARK PFEIFFER, Phone: 1 801-257-5811

mark.pfeiffer@teleperformance.com

or

EUROPE

IMAGE7

Phone: +33 1 53 70 74 70

szaks@image7.fr

or

INVESTOR RELATIONS

TELEPERFORMANCE, Phone: +33 1 53 83 59 87/59 15

investor@teleperformance.com
Award-winning executive brings more than 18 years of world-class enterprise software marketing experience to new role

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Anaplan, a leading platform provider driving a new age of connected planning, announced today the appointment of Maria Pergolino as Chief Marketing Officer. Pergolino is a proven marketing leader known for building world-class teams that drive growth, product differentiation, and category development with award winning-campaigns.

"Maria is widely respected as an exceptional team builder and an accomplished enterprise software marketing executive, and we're excited to welcome her to Anaplan," said Frank Calderoni, President and CEO of Anaplan. "She has one of the best track records of success, and I am confident that Maria will make an immediate impact as we scale globally."

Prior to joining Anaplan, Pergolino served as Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Development at Apttus, where she directed go-to-market strategy, sales development, customer advocacy, demand generation, strategic events, and communications initiatives. Before that, Pergolino was Senior Director of Marketing at Marketo, where her demand-generation efforts drove quadruple-digit growth.

Pergolino also held significant demand generation and marketing leadership roles at Shunra Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard) and Chubb Ltd. She is regularly recognized for her contributions to the marketing industry as a whole and as a respected leader across numerous fields. Recent accolades include a Stevie Award for Women Executives, membership of the renowned Forbes Communication Council, and being named among the 30 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing Technology, 35 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing Technology, 40 Marketing Game Changers, and 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management.

"My career has been spent at the forefront of marketing and technological innovation, which matches perfectly with Anaplan's industry leadership," Pergolino said. "Together, our team will use the most advanced and strategic methods, including Anaplan's connected planning platform, to prioritize our customers' success and accelerate our own rapid growth."

Pergolino will speak at Hub 2018, Anaplan's annual connected planning conference. More than 1,500 Anaplan users, partners, and planning experts will gather at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas from March 5-7, 2018 for more than 85 focused breakout sessions, a full day of training, social and networking events, and a talk by bestselling author and influencer Malcolm Gladwell.

About Anaplan

Anaplanis driving a new age of connected planning. Large and fast-growing organizations use Anaplan's cloud platform in every business function to make better-informed plans and decisions and drive faster, more effective planning processes. Anaplan also provides support, training, and planning transformation advisory services. Anaplan is a privately held company based in San Francisco with 18 offices and over 150 expert partners worldwide. To learn more, visitanaplan.com.

Photo -https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616945/Anaplan_Pergolino.jpg

Logo -https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/482892/Anaplan_Logo.jpg
The Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies will be announcing its fourth edition during a press conference to be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday 21 Rabi Al Awwal 1439h/ December 9, 2017 at the Al Kaznah Meeting Room in St. Regis Hotel, Nation Towers, Abu Dhabi Corniche. The Forum is held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Organized during 23-25 Rabi Al Awwal 1439h/ 11-13 December 2017, under the theme Global Peace and the Fear of Islam: Countering the Spread of Extremism, the fourth Forum will be chaired by HE Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, President of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies and chief architect of the Marrakesh Declaration. It will be attended by senior officials, ministers of Islamic countries, and an elite of high-level scholars, decision-makers, intellectuals and media figures who will be contributing towards discussing strategic solutions on how to re-establish the Muslim world in positive terms while simultaneously dissolving the false notions of the Muslim world in the midst of modern Islamic paranoia.

Alongside HE Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah will be HE Dr. Mohammed Matar Al Kaabi, Secretary General of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, who will give an overview of the event and answer any questions the audience members may have. This is considered as a necessary permeation so that critical information can be distilled to over the wider public regarding the Forum's activities that have been executed and plans for the future in line with its vision.

The Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies is pleased to invite journalists and media representatives to attend the press conference that will shed light on the event's agenda and the variety of topics to be discussed by participants, particularly the escalating prevalence of Islamophobia and increasing accusations against Islam and Muslims.

The Forum kindly asks journalists and media representatives wishing to cover the press conference to arrive at least one hour prior to the press conference to complete their registration. It is also requested that all media representatives take part in covering the various activities and events of the fourth Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The activities of this year are plentiful and vast, and media representatives are invited to recognize the broad range of subtopics that will be covered as a cumulative contribution towards global peace. General sessions have been divided into several themes including the role of violence in the dialectic between religion and identity, the root instigations that have caused fear in the global populous of Islam, and the development of strategies that need to take place for Islam to reintegrate harmoniously with the wider society in the modern climate. We are also holding surgical workshops that tackle more specific concerns including jihad and its misnomers, the link of Islamophobia with media representation of Islam, and the concerns of the Western world of Islamic developments in the contemporary period. The Forum requests if a balance can be achieved that represents the breadth and depth of this year's conference in light of the Forum's goals and organizational activities.

*Source: AETOS Wire

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005982/en/

Contacts:

Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies

Amani Mohammed, +971503366878

Media Office

media@peacems.com
LONDON, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

After the biggest UK airline collapse in years, the administrator of the bankrupt Monarch Airlines has struck a deal with the International Airlines Group (IAG) over slots at Gatwick airport, valued by experts at over 68 million.

The sale has sparked outrage among passengers left stranded or without holidays by the airline collapse, the majority of whom are yet to receive any flight compensation, which according to SKYCOP should total 291 million.

After a favourable decision by the court, the administrator of the bust Monarch Airlines, KPMG, signed a sales deal with IAG, owner of the UKs flag carrier British Airways, over airport slots at Gatwick International Airport. This deal fulfils the long-standing British Airways' goal of expanding its presence at one of the major European aviation hubs, however, KPMG has not yet reported whether the estimated 68 million will go as far as handling the debts of Monarch Airlines.

Giedrius Kolesnikovas, partner at law firm Motieka & Audzevicius, says best practice of bankruptcy administration shows that first and foremost, the administrator should settle debts with airline employees and deceived passengers, before switching to creditors and suppliers.

"The contract goes to show that the administrator is doing everything in its power to gather capital. However, employees and stranded passengers are yet to be compensated for their moral and physical struggle and have been left waiting," explains G. Kolesnikovas.

Since Monarch Airlines has gone bankrupt, the flight disruption and compensation process is handled outside of the renowned EU 261 law, which would have seen all 860,000 passengers entitled to travel compensation. Nevertheless, flight compensation company SKYCOP has already contacted the administrator and the UK's CAA in order to ensure that the IAG deal money goes straight to compensating passengers.

"According to the administrator, almost 2000 of Monarch Airlines' redundant employees are due to receive the money they are owed, which is great. However, hundreds of thousands of passengers have seemingly been pushed aside after they were rescued from abroad by the UK authorities," says Marius Stonkus, CEO of SKYCOP.

"According to our estimates, if the EU law applied in this case, the passengers would be receiving over 291 million to make up for all of the stress, panic and moral struggle these travellers have been through."



For more information, contact:

Marius Stonkus

press@skycop.com

+370-685-72454


MCLEAN, VA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/07/17 -- Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) today expanded its support for affordable housing with a new series of credit risk transfer securities backed predominantly by single-family rental (SFR) properties that are overwhelmingly affordable for low-income and working families.

SR Certificates are backed by mortgages secured primarily by single-family rental housing properties (SFR Loans). In this inaugural offering, the company expects to issue approximately $161 million in SR01 certificates, which includes 59 loans originated primarily by CoreVest American Finance Lender LLC. The SR Certificates are expected to settle on or about December 18, 2017.

"We are pleased to announce another securitization capability that will bring liquidity, stability and affordability to a market that is fragmented but vital to the nation's housing landscape," said Robert Koontz, vice president of Multifamily Capital Markets. "Consistent with our multifamily mission, this inaugural transaction is an important step in ensuring an ample supply of affordable rental housing."

Of the 2,355 properties included in this transaction, 94% are affordable to families earning less than 100% of area median income (AMI). In addition, 71% are affordable to low-income families earning less than 80% AMI and more than 12% affordable to families earning 50% of AMI or less. The loans were not underwritten by Freddie Mac at the time of origination but meet the company's current underwriting standards.

"Today, Freddie Mac Multifamily has taken another important step to increase the availability of affordable rental housing in communities across the country," said David D. Leopold, vice president of targeted affordable sales & investments at Freddie Mac Multifamily. "Single-family rentals provide an important alternative for the millions of families looking for options beyond rental apartments who may not have the means to -- or choose not to -- purchase a home. We are using our multifamily financing capability to help meet this critical need and ensure that as families grow, their homes can grow with them."

SR01 Certificates Pricing

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Principal/ Weighted Notional Average Life Class Amount (mm) (Years) Spread (bps) Coupon Yield Dollar Price ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A-1 $20.272 3.06 S + 23 2.3570% 2.3151% $99.9981 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A-2 $93.571 4.62 S + 33 2.7500% 2.4919% $100.9980 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A-3 $47.266 9.36 S + 64 3.0890% 2.9601% $100.9939 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- XA $161.109 5.81 Non-Offered ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Details

Co-Lead Managers and Joint Bookrunners: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Co-Managers: Drexel Hamilton, LLC and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated

Related Links

SR01 Offering Circular Supplement www.freddiemac.com/mbs/data/sr01oc.pdf

Freddie Mac Multifamily Investor Presentation [pdf]

Multifamily Securities Investor Access database of post-securitization data from Investor Reporting Packages

The SR01 Certificates include three senior principal and interest classes, and one interest only class. The SR01 Certificates are backed by corresponding classes issued by the CoreVest American Finance 2017-2 Trust and guaranteed by Freddie Mac. The CoreVest American Finance 2017-2 Trust will also issue Class B, Class M and Class R Certificates, which will not be guaranteed by Freddie Mac and will not back any class of SR01 Certificates.

Freddie Mac Multifamily is a leading issuer of agency-guaranteed structured multifamily securities. SR Certificates are part of the company's business strategy to transfer a portion of the risk of losses away from taxpayers and to private investors who purchase the unguaranteed subordinate bonds.

This announcement is not an offer to sell any securities of Freddie Mac or any other issuer. Offers for any given security are made only through applicable offering circulars and related supplements, which incorporate Freddie Mac's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 16, 2017; all other reports Freddie Mac filed with the SEC pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) since December 31, 2016, excluding any information "furnished" to the SEC on Form 8-K; and all documents that Freddie Mac files with the SEC pursuant to Sections 13(a), 13(c) or 14 of the Exchange Act, excluding any information furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K.

Freddie Mac's press releases sometimes contain forward-looking statements. A description of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in these and other forward-looking statements can be found in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and its reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K, filed with the SEC and available on the Investor Relations page of the company's Web site at www.FreddieMac.com/investors and the SEC's Web site at www.sec.gov.

Freddie Mac makes home possible for millions of families and individuals by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Since our creation by Congress in 1970, we've made housing more accessible and affordable for homebuyers and renters in communities nationwide. We are building a better housing finance system for homebuyers, renters, lenders and taxpayers. Learn more at FreddieMac.com, Twitter @FreddieMac and Freddie Mac's blog FreddieMac.com/blog.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Christopher Spina

703-388-7031

Christopher_Spina@FreddieMac.com



INVESTOR CONTACTS:

Robert Koontz

571-382-4082

Aaron Dunn

571-382-5818




The Metropolitan Bells is an advanced community handbell ensemble consisting of 15

auditioned ringers from the greater Chattanooga area plus the director.

They perform on seven octaves of Malmark bells and seven octaves of Malmark choir chimes.

Established in 1993, The Metropolitan Bells was the vision of founding director, Ken Cochrane.

Under his ten years of leadership, The Metropoliban Bells enjoyed performances with the

Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, the Chattanooga Boys Choir and the Chattanooga Girls Choir.





The goal of the organization is to bring advanced sacred and secular handbell music to the community and to promote the art and enjoyment of handbell ringing. Over the years, the group has performed for numerous civic groups and community events. The group is currently under the direction of Gary Bynum.





Christmas with The Metropolitan Bells will include many holiday favorites including The First Noel, Ding Dong, Merrily On High, Up on the House Top and Holly Jolly Christmas.





Thursday, Dec. 7

Fairview Baptist Church

261 County Road 439

Athens, Tn.





Tuesday, Dec. 12

Brainerd Baptist Church

300 Brookfield Avenue

Chattanooga, Tn.





Tuesday, Dec. 19

Christ United Methodist Church

8645 East Brainerd Rd.

Chattanooga, Tn.





Thursday, Dec. 21

Signal Crest United Methodist Church

1005 Ridgeway Avenue

Signal Mountain, Tn.





All Concerts are at 7:30 p.m.

Free to the Public - Donations Accepted





For Additional Information, Please call Gary Bynum at 423-504-4679

Find Us On Facebook: Search METROPOLITAN BELLS OF CHATTANOOGA





Other Holiday Appearances:





Singing Christmas Tree with the Chattanooga Boys Choir

Dec. 2

Tivoli Theatre





Home For The Holidays with the Chattanooga Symphony

Dec. 16 and 17
SACRAMENTO, CA--(Marketwired - December 07, 2017) - California State Treasurer John Chiang and ScholarShare 529, one of the nation's top performing college savings plans, today announced the launch of a new program to help low- and moderate-income California families jumpstart saving for college.

The Matching Grant Program will help families open a college savings account and counter rising tuition costs, one of the most significant obstacles to securing a higher education.

"The wealth gap in our country is the widest it has been in 40 years and the ability to afford higher education is becoming increasingly difficult for low- and moderate-income California families," said State Treasurer John Chiang, chair of the ScholarShare Investment Board. "To break the back of college unaffordability, we need to both tame out of control tuition increases and student loan debt as well as help families build college nest eggs."

Research shows that children with savings accounts, however small, are seven times more likely to attend and graduate college. To give California families an opportunity to pursue higher education and a bright future, ScholarShare529 will encourage families to open 529 accounts as part of the new Matching Grant Program.

The program offers flexibility as the funds can be used at any accredited higher-education program, including community colleges and trade schools, as well as other approved educational expenses. And, the savings in a ScholarShare 529 account will not impact eligibility for most state benefits, such as CalWORKS and CalFresh.

ScholarShare 529 is working closely with community based organizations (CBOs) across the state, including California Asset Building Coalition, Closing the Women's Wealth Gap Initiative, Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, United Ways of California and EARN, to ensure that eligible families receive the news about the Matching Grant Program and take advantage of this new incentive to save for college.

"Recent studies indicate that California will fall short about 1.1 million college graduates by 2030 if current trends persist. Making college more accessible to all Californians, regardless of income, is a necessity if we want to improve the overall fiscal health of our state and close the workforce skills gap," Chiang said.

The Matching Grant Program, which opens on Jan. 1, 2018, offers a dollar-for-dollar match contribution of up to $200 on new accounts. Families that establish a monthly automatic contribution plan of $25 or more are eligible for a $25 bonus.

Eligible parents/guardians must be California residents at enrollment, have a valid social security number or a federal tax ID number, and have an adjusted gross annual income of $75,000 or less.

For additional information about eligibility, please visit www.mgp.scholarshare529.com.

About ScholarShare 529

ScholarShare 529 is the official college savings plan of California. Established in 1999, ScholarShare 529 helps California families save for college and currently holds more than $8 billion in assets across nearly 300,000 accounts as of October 2017.

With 100% tax-free growth, families can accumulate up to 25% more money for higher education - funds which can be used for a range of qualified expenses at most trade schools, colleges, and universities nationwide. ScholarShare 529 is offered by the State of California and managed by TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing, Inc.

For more information about the plan, visit ScholarShare529.com. For information about the ScholarShare Investment Board (SIB), which oversees ScholarShare 529, visit www.treasurer.ca.gov/ScholarShare. ScholarShare 529 can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/ScholarShare529 and on Twitter at @ScholarShare529.

Image and Spanish translation of release below:

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/12/7/11G148581/Images/CATreasurerlogo-9b390c2d31a1ad9bb181c9a4251b189a.jpg

Attachment Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/12/7/11G148581/MGP_ScholarShare_529_Announcement_Press_Release_Es-6379d3e8dcd9ba34a8962abb94626137.pdf
Frankfurt am Main (ots) - The Chair of the KfW Board of Supervisory Directors, Germany's acting Federal Minister Peter Altmaier, and Deputy Chair Brigitte Zypries, acting Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy, provide this statement following the meeting of the KfW Board of Supervisory Directors on 7 December 2017:



Today, the Board of Supervisory Directors agreed to prematurely terminate the contract of KfW's Chief Executive Officer Dr Ulrich Schroder (65) at his own request with effect from 31 December 2017, for health reasons. Dr Schroder was first appointed to KfW's Executive Board as Chief Executive Officer of KfW on 1 September 2008 and has stepped down from his duties as Chief Executive Officer and as Member of the KfW Executive Board with effect from 31 December 2017.



The Chair of KfW's Board of Supervisory Directors, Federal Minister Peter Altmaier, said: "The Board of Supervisory Directors of KfW would like to thank Dr Schroder immensely for his extraordinary achievements in managing and modernising KfW in the past years. During Dr Schroder's term of office, KfW has fulfilled its task as a promotional bank in an outstanding manner. Thus, the bank played an important role in overcoming the financial and economic crisis and is one of the key players in global climate and environmental finance. Under his direction, KfW took the decision to establish its own investment subsidiary to pool and extend its activities in the field of venture capital financing. KfW today also is a role model for the establishment of promotional banks all over the world. The Board of Supervisory Directors wishes Dr Schroder all the best for the future."



Until the final appointment of Dr Schroder's succession, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Dr Gunther Braunig will continue to fulfill the tasks of the Chief Executive Officer. The new Chief Executive Officer will be appointed by the Board of Supervisory Directors of KfW after consultation with the federal cabinet. We propose Dr Braunig as succeessor to Dr Schroder and are confident that the necessary decisions will be taken soon and responsibly.



Detailed CVs and press photos are available on the KfW website at Executive board of KfW (http://ots.de/zYse2).



Originaltext: KfW digital press kits: http://www.presseportal.de/nr/41193 press kits via RSS: http://www.presseportal.de/rss/pm_41193.rss2



Pressekontakt: KfW, Palmengartenstr. 5 - 9, 60325 Frankfurt Kommunikation (KOM), Dr Michael Helbig, Tel. +49 (0)69 7431 2277, Fax: +49 (0)69 7431 3266, E-Mail: Michael.Helbig@kfw.de, Internet: www.kfw.de

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Most Americans think former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea and cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in last year's election is a serious matter for President Donald Trump's administration, according to a CBS News poll. Sixty-seven percent of Americans said the move by Flynn is a serious matter for the Trump administration, while 27 percent said it is not a serious matter. Democrats and independents are far more likely to say the issue is a serious matter, although 34 percent of Republicans agree. Flynn pleaded guilty last Friday to 'willfully and knowingly' making 'false, fictitious and fraudulent statements' to the FBI regarding conversations with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. Meanwhile, the poll showed a significant partisan divide over whether the Russia investigation is justified or politically motivated. Eighty-one percent of Republicans said the investigation is politically motivated, while 74 percent of Democrats said the probe is justified. The partisan divide contributes to a split among all Americans, as 48 percent said the investigation is politically motivated and 46 percent said it is justified. The survey also found that 67 percent of Americans think it is very or somewhat likely that senior Trump advisors had improper dealings with Russia, while 26 percent said it is not very or not at all likely. The CBS News poll of 1,120 adults was conducted by SSRS from December 3rd through 5th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/07/17 -- Corvus Gold Inc. ("Corvus" or the "Company") - (TSX: KOR)(OTCQX: CORVF) announces it has completed a CAD $5,253,500 private placement (the "Private Placement"). Pursuant to the Private Placement, the Company issued 2,829,130 common shares at a price of CAD $1.15 each to institutional shareholders and 1,574,803 common shares at a price of CAD $1.27 each to a key strategic shareholder. No warrants were issued. The Company expects that the proceeds of the financing will fully fund the Company's planned 2018 exploration program at its new Mother Lode project.

Jeff Pontius, President and CEO of Corvus, said, "We are pleased to have secured this important financing which will provide funding to advance and develop our new high-grade Mother Lode project through 2018. The Company intends to expand its planned 2018 drill program to 20,000 metres, to focus on expanding the new high-grade zone at the north end of the currently defined deposit. The mix of long-term and strategic shareholders in this financing is a welcome endorsement of Corvus Gold and its Nevada projects. Our shareholders can look forward to continued news flow on our development progress of the high-grade Mother Lode project."

The common shares issued in the Private Placement are subject to a minimum 6-month hold period unless otherwise registered under applicable securities laws. The Toronto Stock Exchange has granted conditional approval to the issuance of the Corvus common shares under the Private Placement.

In addition, a financial advisory fee of CAD $62,675 was paid to Industrial Alliance Securities for assistance and advice on the financing.

The foregoing securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended or any applicable state securities laws and may not be offered or sold absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of the foregoing securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About the North Bullfrog & Mother Lode Projects, Nevada

Corvus controls 100% of its North Bullfrog Project, which covers approximately 72 km2 in southern Nevada. The property package is made up of a number of private mineral leases of patented federal mining claims and 865 federal unpatented mining claims. The project has excellent infrastructure, being adjacent to a major highway and power corridor as well as a large water right. The company also controls 65 federal unpatented mining claims on the Mother Lode project which totals 522 hectares and which it owns 100% of.

About Corvus Gold Inc.

Corvus Gold Inc. is a North American gold exploration and development company, focused on its near-term gold-silver mining project at the North Bullfrog and Mother Lode Districts in Nevada. In addition, the Company controls a number of royalties on other North American exploration properties representing a spectrum of gold, silver and copper projects. Corvus is committed to building shareholder value through new discoveries and the expansion of its projects to maximize share price leverage in an advancing gold and silver market.

On behalf of Corvus Gold Inc.

Jeffrey A. Pontius

President & Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements regarding the potential use of proceeds from the offering, the advancement and development of our Mother Lode project and the expansion of our 2018 drill program; the full funding of the 2018 drill program as a result of the financing; updates on the development progress at the Mother Lode project; the potential for new deposits and expected increases in a system's potential; anticipated content, commencement and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the Company's inability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the Company's inability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2017 filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's most recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings in Canada may be accessed via www.sedar.com and filings with the SEC may be accessed via www.sec.gov and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties.

Contacts:

Corvus Gold Inc.

Ryan Ko

Investor Relations

1-844-638-3246 (toll free) or (604) 638-3246

info@corvusgold.com




AMSTERDAM, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Bonds fully subscribed in just 10 days

Fastned, the Dutch company that builds a European network of fast charging stations, has raised 12.3 million euro in 10 days via a public issue of bonds. The proceeds of this issue will be used to further expand the network of fast-charging stations in the Netherlands, Germany other European countries.

Investors could subscribe to the issue between Tuesday 28 November and Tuesday 12 December. However, the issue was already fully subscribed this afternoon. The bonds pay out 6% interest per annum and have a maturity of 5 years. The interest is paid quarterly in arrears.

Bart Lubbers, co-founder of Fastned: "More and more people see that the future is electric and want to invest in the sustainable mission of Fastned. This is reflected in the incredible demand for our bonds. We will use the proceeds of this issue to build dozens of new stations and add chargers to existing locations. We really need to expand the number of fast-charging stations because our growth is accelerating and queues at our stations are becoming more common."

Fastned is building a European network of fast charging stations. The company currently has 63 stations operational and a new series of stations under construction. In recent months Fastned invested in new grid connections and the purchase of faster chargers with a charging power of up to 350 kW. These will be installed before the end of the year and allow EV drivers to charge up to 100 times faster than at home. The strong demand for fast charging is shown by the fact that Fastned has grown at a rate of around 10% month-on-month in the past few years; significantly faster than the market.

Fastned has a unique portfolio of AAA locations where fast charging stations can be realised. In 2012, Fastned acquired concessions for the sale of electricity to electric cars at 201 of the 245 service locations along the Dutch highways. In the past year, the portfolio has been expanded with a large number of locations in Germany and Belgium. Fastned also signed an agreement with Transport for London (TfL) for the realisation of fast-charging stations in the United Kingdom.

Notes for editors:

For more information please visit www.fastnedcharging.com or check out our pressroom. In the presskit you will find logos, pictures and graphics.

Background information about Fastned:

Fastned is building a European network of fast-charging stations where all electric cars can charge. The stations are located at high traffic locations along the highways and in cities, where electric cars can charge within 20 minutes. This will provide freedom for electric cars to drive across Europe. As of today, Fastned has 63 stations operational in The Netherlands and is working on expanding its fast charging network to the rest of Europe. Fastned is preparing the construction of fast charging stations in Germany, The United Kingdom and Belgium. Fastned is listed on the Nxchange stock exchange.

Fastned is rolling out its network of fast charging stations in response to the rapidly increasing numbers of EVs in Europe. Car manufacturers such as Tesla, Audi, Volvo, Aston Martin, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Ford, General Motors, Renault and other car manufacturers are investing billions of Euros in the development of, and production capacity for, EVs. More and more EVs are hitting the roads, which drives the need for charging infrastructure. Fastned is responding to this development by building the service stations of the future. Co-founder and CEO Michiel Langezaal: "We are the Shell of the future, only our energy comes from the sun and the wind."

For more information go to www.fastnedcharging.com.

PRN NLD


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Senator Al Franken, D-Minn., announced Thursday he will step down in the coming weeks amid allegations of sexual misconduct by several women.



The announcement by Franken comes after a number of his Democratic colleagues called for his resignation over the allegations.



Franken noted in a speech on the Senate floor that his decision comes even as President Donald Trump and Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore have also been accused of sexual misconduct.



'I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party,' Franken said.



'But this decision is not about me. It's about the people of Minnesota,' he added. 'And it's become clear that I can't both pursue the Ethics Committee process and, at the same time, remain an effective Senator for them.'



Franken's resignation comes as seven women have come forward in recent weeks and accused the senator of groping or trying to forcibly kiss them.



The former comedian said some of the allegations against him are simply not true, while he remembers the other alleged incidents very differently.



'I am proud that, during my time in the Senate, I have used my power to be a champion for women - and that I have earned a reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day,' Franken said.



'I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks,' he added. 'But I know who I really am.'



The decision by Franken sets up a special election next year in which candidates will run to serve out the final two years of his term.



A report from Politico said Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is expected to appoint Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to fill Franken's seat until the election in November of 2018.



Sources told Politico that Smith would not run for the remainder of Franken's term, clearing the way for a wide open Democratic primary.



(Photo: Lorie Shaull)



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Copenhagen, 7 December 2017 Company Announcement No. 16/2017 Greentech Energy Systems A/S ("Greentech") revises its full-year guidance for 2017. EBITDA is expected to exceed the previously announced outlook, revenue expectations are adjusted upwards, while production is expected at a lower level than previously announced. Production over 2017 was lower than expected due to poor wind conditions in Southern Europe and should be in the lower range, from 370 - 390 GWh to 350 - 370 GWh. However, energy prices for solar and wind sources in Italy and Spain have increased over 2017 and reflect an unexpected evolution in the energy mix and a higher demand for energy due to the ongoing recovery in Southern European countries. Thus, Revenue expectation for 2017 is increased from EUR 58 - 62M to EUR 60 - 64M (including Revenue from Associates). In addition, operating expenses and G&A were lower than expected. The combined effect on the EBITDA is an improvement in the expected range from EUR 39 - 43M to EUR 42 - 46M (including EBITDA from Associates). The previous outlook and the revised outlook are presented in the table below: OUTLOOK 2017 Outlook 2017 Revised (March 2017) outlook (December 2017) (EUR'000) Net production (GWh) 370 - 390 350 - 370 Revenue 51 - 53 53 - 55 Revenue from Associates 7 - 9 7 - 9 Total revenue 58 - 62 60 - 64 EBITDA* 33 - 35 36 - 38 EBITDA from Associates 6 - 8 6 - 8 Total EBITDA 39 - 43 42 - 46 Total EBITDA margin 67% - 69% 71% - 73% * Adjusted for income from Associates and Special Items Contact: Peter Hstgaard-Jensen, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Tel: +45 40 10 88 71 Alessandro Reitelli, CEO, Tel: +45 33 36 42 02 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=656345
DUBLIN, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Global Bio-fuels - Procurement Market Intelligence Report" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

Global Bio-fuels Market, provides up-to-date information about market shifts and potential risks, as well as in-depth knowledge of products and services, which can help in planning and in executing category management activities. It focuses on the cost-saving aspects of procurement and on providing insights that can lead to optimization of category spend.

One of the procurement best practices for buyers in the global bio-fuels market is to engage with suppliers that have in-house capabilities to produce bio-fuels feedstocks or have tie-ups with farmers. Buyers must prefer to engage with suppliers that have the in-house production capability to produce bio-fuel feedstocks.

According to the report, one of the key growth drivers for the global bio-fuels market is the rise in demand for biogas across end-user industries for generation of electricity and heat which is used as transportation fuel. Also, the rise in demand for biogas is due to the increase in government initiatives regarding the use of sustainable fuels in the production process

Further, the report states that one of the key procurement challenges faced by buyers is the difficulty in estimating the procurement budgets. Typically, bio-fuels are manufactured using raw materials such as soybean, cornstarch, and sugar beets. However, prices of these raw materials are highly volatile due to fluctuating demand and supply of these materials.



Key Topics Covered:



PART 1: CATEGORY AT A GLANCE



PART 2: SCOPE OF THE REPORT

Category Definition

Research Methodology

PART 3: MARKET INSIGHTS

Category Spend Analysis

Category Maturity by Regions

Demand-Supply Shifts

Regional Demand-Supply Snapshot

Global Molasses Production Hubs

Market Developments

Regional Impact of Trends

Key Category Growth Drivers and Corresponding Regional Impacts

Major Category Growth Constraints and Corresponding Regional Impacts

Key Current Technological Innovations

Major Regulatory Frameworks

Strategic Sustainability Practices

Porter's Five Forces

PESTLE Analysis

PART 4: SUPPLY MARKET INSIGHTS

Supplier Operational Capability Matrix

Other Prominent Suppliers by Region: Operational Capability Matrix

Supplier Functional Capability Matrix

Other Prominent Suppliers by Region: Functional Capability Matrix

Key Clients/Partners

Supplier Cost Breakup

Supplier Positioning Matrix

PART 5: PRICING INSIGHTS

Pricing Models Snapshot

Pricing Models - Pros and Cons

Indicative Pricing

PART 6: PROCUREMENT INSIGHTS

Major Category Requirements

Major Procurement Pain Points

Category Sourcing Evolution Matrix

Procurement Best Practices

Cost-saving Opportunities

Supplier Selection Criteria

Category Negotiation Strategies

SLA Terms

Supplier Evaluation Criteria

Category Risk Analysis

PART 7: TOP FIVE SUPPLIERS

Archer Daniels Midland

Cargill

Neste

Cosan

Renewable Energy



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g5wg7f/global_biofuels?w=5





Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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VICTOR, N.Y., 2017-12-07 22:31 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) (NYSE:STZ.B), a leading beverage alcohol company, announced today it will report financial results for its fiscal third quarter ended November 30, 2017, on Friday, January 5, 2018, before the open of the U.S. markets. A conference call to discuss the financial results and outlook will be hosted by President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Sands and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer David Klein at 10:30 a.m. eastern time, January 5, 2018. The conference call can be accessed by dialing +973-935-8505 beginning at 10:20 a.m. (eastern). A live, listen-only webcast of the conference call will be available on the company's website, www.cbrands.com, under the Investors section. Financial information discussed on the conference call, and a reconciliation of reported (GAAP) financial measures with comparable or non-GAAP financial measures, will also be available on the company's website when the call begins under Investors and by selecting Financial History. For anyone unable to participate in the conference call, a replay will be available on the company's website. About Constellation Brands Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ and STZ.B), a Fortune 500 company, is a leading international producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits with operations in the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. Constellation is the No. 3 beer company in the U.S. with high-end, iconic imported brands such as Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Modelo Negra and Pacifico. The company's beer portfolio also includes Ballast Point, one of the most awarded craft brewers in the U.S. In addition, Constellation is the world leader in premium wine, selling great brands that people love, including Robert Mondavi, Clos du Bois, Kim Crawford, Meiomi, Mark West, Franciscan Estate, Ruffino and The Prisoner. The company's premium spirits brands include SVEDKA Vodka, Casa Noble Tequila and High West Whiskey. Based in Victor, N.Y., the company believes that industry leadership involves a commitment to brand building, our trade partners, the environment, our investors and to consumers around the world who choose our products when celebrating big moments or enjoying quiet ones. Founded in 1945, Constellation has grown to become a significant player in the beverage alcohol industry with more than 100 brands in its portfolio; about 40 wineries, breweries and distilleries; and approximately 9,000 talented employees. We express our company vision: to elevate life with every glass raised. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @cbrands and visit www.cbrands.com. CONTACTS Media Mike McGrew: 773-251-4934 Amy Martin: 585-678-7141 Investor Relations Patty Yahn-Urlaub: 585-678-7483 Bob Czudak: 585-678-7170
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 7, 2017) - Power Americas Minerals Corp. (TSXV: PAM) ("Power Americas" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has completed the 2017 exploration program on the Kittson Cobalt Project Located in the prolific Cobalt Silver Camp in Northeast Ontario, Canada.

The 2017 exploration program consisted of reconnaissance prospecting, geological mapping, and shallow diamond drilling using an ultralight man-portable drill rig. The primary focus of the 2017 exploration program was to define and better understand the historic cobalt mineralization on the project in order to develop drill targets for a future drill program. Preliminary prospecting results from this program returned up to 3.66% Cobalt (see PAM news release 10-03-2017).

The drilling portion of the of the 2017 exploration program included seven drill holes, totaling 161m, of BTW core. This work was designed to test beneath overburden filled historic workings on the historic Shakt-Davis mine. The program successfully intersected the fracture zone that hosts the Shakt-Davis mineralization over a strike length of 55 metres. The fracture zone ranged from 5 to 13 meters wide (drilled core length) and hosted several 0.1-1.0 metre quartz-carbonate veins surrounded by intense carbonate alteration. Assay results are pending and will be released as they become available.

Mapping and sampling was also completed as part of the Company's due diligence on newly acquired claims to the southwest of the core property (see PAM news release 11-22-17). This work encountered numerous undocumented workings (pits, shafts and trenches) over approximately three kilometre strike length located in a Nipissing diabase, similar to the mineralization at the Shakt-Davis mine. Sampling results are pending and will be released as they become available. Closing of the above transaction is subject to receipt of all required documentation and final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Company also announces that Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P.Geo., a current director has been appointed Vice-President of Exploration. The 2017 Kittson Cobalt Exploration Program has been under the direct supervision and management of Mr. Pettigrew and Fladgate Exploration Consulting Corp. Mr. Pettigrew has over 15 years of experience in the mineral exploration industry and worked for several junior and major companies, and held officer and director positions in several Junior companies. He has also worked for the Ontario Geological Survey as a Senior Precambrian Geoscientist. He is a founder, part-owner and vice-president of Fladgate Exploration Consulting Corp. a full-service mineral exploration consulting firm located in Thunder Bay ON.

The company also announces the appointment of Janet Francis B.Sc. as it new corporate secretary. Ms. Francis has 12 years' experience in the field of regulatory compliance and corporate governance, most recently as director of a private company providing corporate secretarial services to public companies listed on the TSX, TSX Venture, and Canadian Securities Exchanges, and to other reporting issuers. Ms. Francis is an officer or director of several listed issuers. Dianne Szigety has resigned as the Company's previous corporate secretary.

Finally, the Company is granting 2,500,000 incentive stock options to certain officers, directors, consultants and employees of the company to purchase up to a total of 2,500,000 common shares of the company at a price of 20 cents per common share for a period of five years.

The stock options are subject to the terms of the company's stock option plan and regulatory approval.

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P.Geo., Vice President, Exploration, and a director of the Company, and the Company's Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About the Kittson Cobalt Project

The Project is located near the town of Cobalt in northeast Ontario, Canada. The Project hosts the historic Shakt-Davis and Kittson Cobalt mines, as well as numerous historic workings, the deepest extending down to 628 feet, and over 2,500 feet of lateral workings. Cobalt mineralization occurs in Proterozoic aged quartz-calcite veins hosted in brittle shears in Nipissing diabase. This style of mineralization is similar to that of the famous Cobalt Silver Camp which produced 420 million ounces of silver with cobalt as a significant by product. The mineralization at the Kittson Cobalt project differs from the typical Cobalt Silver Camp veins in that they are lower in silver content but richer in cobalt and are associated with significant gold. Historic reports from the Shakt-Davis mine indicate values of 1.5% cobalt over 1.37 meters and select grab samples returning up to 4% cobalt and 93.3 g/t gold. Locally significant nickel, copper and to a lesser extend lead, zinc and bismuth also occur within the quartz-carbonate veins.

About Power Americas Mineral Corp

Power Americas Minerals Corp. is a Canadian-based junior mining exploration company focused on the procurement, exploration and development of cobalt, lithium and other energy metals in North and South America. Power America's acquisition strategy focuses on acquiring affordable, cost-effective and highly regarded mineral properties in areas with proven geological potential. The Company's shares are listed and posted for trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "PAM" the OTC Pinks under the symbol "PWMRF" and on the Frankfurt Exchange under the symbol "VV0".

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

"Jeffrey Cocks"

Jeffrey Cocks

President

For more information please contact:

Howard Milne V.P. Business Development

Tel: (604) 377-8994Email:hdmcap@shaw.ca

Website: www.poweramericascorp.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Parkridge East Hospital CEO Jarrett Millsaps has named neonatologist Kelly R. Hersey, MD, as director of the facilitys level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Dr. Herseys clinical expertise makes him a critical part of the future of the NICU at Parkridge East as we continue to expand our service area to provide care to more families across the tristate region, Mr. Millsaps said.



As director of the NICU, Dr. Hersey will oversee the 22-bed NICU at Parkridge East, which serves families throughout the tristate region, providing specialist care for babies born at less than 28 weeks gestation and those who have severe or complex conditions. The unit is staffed around the clock by board-certified neonatologists, neonatal nurse practitioners and registered nurses.



Dr. Hersey, who is board-certified in pediatrics and neonatal-perinatal medicine by The American Board of Pediatrics, is affiliated with Regional Obstetrical Consultants. He comes to Parkridge East from The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), where he was director of telemedicine, director of the Newborn Follow-up Clinic and medical control director for Neonatal Transport. After earning his medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Dr. Hersey served his residency at the University of Missouri-Columbia Hospitals & Clinic, where he also completed a fellowship in neonatal and perinatal medicine.


Episode 1, a London, UK-based software only early stage venture capital firm, closed its second tech fund at 60m.

LPs included British Business Bank, the UK governments economic development bank, entrepreneurs, and new institutions including Draper Esprit and ADV.

The Enterprise Capital Fund (ECF) aims to lead seed-to-Series A rounds of 500k to 2m into teams with real insight into markets that are emerging or evolving.

Led by Simon Murdoch and Paul McNabb, Episode 1 is particularly interested in how emerging deep technologies such as AI are disrupting all industries and how technology is reinventing markets. Founded in 2013, the firm has built a portfolio of software businesses including CarWow, TouchSurgery, TripTease, Global App Testing, AimBrain and CloudNC.

Read Simon Murdochs post about the new fund here.

FinSMEs

07/12/2017
NextWave Ventures, a Carlsbad, CA-based venture capital firm specializing in the commercialization of early-stage technologies, has appointed Dr. Peter Curley as Director of Technology Platforms.

Dr. Curley will serve as a technology partner scout and will focus on identifying opportunities for NextWave Ventures with universities and research institutions throughout California and the United States.

He will be responsible for ensuring that portfolio companies are poised for success and positioned for growth series funding rounds. Additionally, Dr. Curley will help identify key technologies that will receive capital from the company.

Prior to joining NextWave Ventures, Dr. Curley served as a Director and advisor for Imprimatur Capital, a UK-based venture capital firm, where he was responsible for identifying key technologies worldwide for investment in addition to providing operational support for portfolio brands.

He has also served as an advisor to The Climate Group where he created new low-carbon projects and collaborative opportunities with global corporate partners.

Dr. Curley also supervised the management of LED programs and partnership with Philips Lighting, covering the wide benefits of low carbon technologies, energy efficiency, LED lighting, connected smart cities and buildings, and the Internet of Things.

Founded in 2010 and led Jeff Slosar, Managing Partner, NextWave Ventures is a seed to early stage investment firm specializing in the commercialization of advanced technologies originating within universities and research institutes.

Investments span sectors from ambient computing to advanced materials, artificial intelligence to digital media, and IoT to 3D bioprinting.

FinSMEs

06/12/2017
SwipeSense, a Chicago, IL-based healthcare technology company, raised a $10.6m Series B2 funding round.

The round was led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from Sandbox Industries and other existing technology and healthcare investors.

The company, which has raised a total of $23.3m in funding, intends to use the capital to grow the team, to evolve its hand hygiene solution and scale up product development for new applications, including asset tracking and nurse rounding.

Led by Mert Iseri, CEO, Michael Cruz, vice president of engineering, Katy De Leon, vice president of marketing, and Stephen Williamson, vice president of sales, SwipeSense provides an electronic hand hygiene application that empowers healthcare facilities to create behavior change and reduce risks associated with Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) by providing hospital employees with accurate and actionable data.

Hospitals nationwide are currently using SwipeSense.

FinSMEs

07/12/2017
There is hue and cry over certain provisions of the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) bill currently pending before Parliament. The reasons for this public outcry arent hard to understand. If this Bill becomes law in the existing format, depositors' money will be used to bail out failing financial institutions. One of the existing elements of the Bill, called bail-in clause ensures this.

Another major flaw in the FRRDI Bill is that it doesnt commit a specific deposit insurance amount to protect the depositor if the bank goes broke. Right now, under the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) rules, all deposits up to Rs 1 lakh is protected under the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act.

This will go when the FRDI act comes and a resolution corporation will take up the dominant role in handling the liabilities of a failing financial institution. For several years now, there have been demands to increase the Rs 1 lakh amount with stakeholders citing this as too low for someone who might be depositing his entire lifes savings in the bank. The FRDI Bill provisions add to these concerns.

Bank deposits continue to be the most trusted savings avenue for majority of Indians who are not comfortable with putting their money in riskier financial instruments, such as equities and mutual funds. According to (read a report here) a recent survey conducted by Sebi, over 95 percent Indian households prefer to park their money in bank deposits, while less than 10 percent opt for investing in mutual funds or stocks.

Mutual funds came at sixth place (9.7 percent), followed by stocks (8.1 percent), pension schemes, company deposits, debentures, derivatives and commodity futures (1 percent) as investment vehicles for the urban households", the report said citing the survey.

The Narendra Modi government has duly acknowledged the concerns of the common savers. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has hinted that the Bill is currently under the examination of a Parliament standing committee and the government is committed to protect the interests of depositors. Thats a good move.

If the FRDI Bill (presented in Parliament in August) becomes a law in the current shape, that will offer ammunition to the Opposition to portray it as yet another anti-people move by the Modi-governmentsomething clearly this government cant afford after the backlash over disastrous demonetisation and poorly executed goods and services tax (GST) rollout. The government understands this fact and hence the rethinking.

Economic Affairs Secretary SC Garg, too has spoken to allay the concerns of depositors saying principal guarantee for PSU bank depositors come from the government ownership and there is no reason to worry. But, not too many would agree with this argument unless the Bill itself undergoes a change with respect to the two controversial provisions.

The concerns, as explained earlier, are valid. If the bail-in clause continues, the failure of a bank or other deposit-taking financial institution that comes under the purview of this law, could wipe off the savings of depositors to save the company itself. Such a scenario is not in the interest of the depositors. The Modi government must change controversial provisions of the FRDI Bill without delay.
The Bombay High Court on 6 December, 2017 upheld the constitutional validity of the Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA), a seminal piece of legislation that would give comfort to home buyers across the country like never before. The 6th of December incidentally is remembered as the Babri Masjid demolition day. Now it would be remembered for a more constructive purpose (pun intended).

It is significant to note that it was at the Supreme Courts behest that the Bombay High Court was hearing the numerous challenges mounted on the fledgling legislation. The SC could have easily transferred to itself all the petitions across the country as is the normal practice. That it chose to entrust this task to the Bombay High Court (HC) perhaps was in recognition of the reality that Maharashtra by far heads the tables in maximum registration under RERA---13,000 projects at the last count.

For the harried buyers of properties, the most beneficial and comfort-giving feature of the nascent law is 10 percent per annum compensation for delays beyond one year from the promised date of handing over of possession mentioned in the sale agreement. The Bombay HC has given its thumbs up to this salutary provision, brushing aside the innocent protestations of the builders that this was penal in nature.

The Court reiterated that the interest was compensatory in nature and not penal. Indeed, it is compensatory and makes the field level for builders and buyers. If builders can invoke the interest clause for delays in payment of installments, there is nothing wrong in turning the tables on them. In any case, a stiff interest would prevent dilatory tactics and diversion of fund besides being eminently fair.

What could stir the hornets nest, however, is the HCs liberal interpretation of the various sections culminating in the interpretation that the one-year condonation of delay in handing over is not cast in stone. It has vested power on the authorities constituted under the RERA to condone the delay further on case by case basis. As it is, they have the power to extend the handing over period beyond one year only when the force majeure clause can be invoked.

The builders feared a double-whammy---- payment of 10 percent interest and cancellation of their registration with its disruptive effect and ignominy. Force majeure means acts of god like earthquake, flood, accidental fire etc. It is an internationally accepted condonation or latitude norm.

Case by case regime always bristles with the possibility of corruption, the bane of the Indian society, the one that afflicts the construction industry more than any other. Yet their Lordships have chosen to give this latitude in favor of the builders who have to live down the dubious reputation of worming themselves into the hearts of the officialdom with their glib talk and money power.

In my view, their Lordships ought to have enlarged the escape clause beyond force majeure to include municipal delays, electricity authoritys delay, water authoritys delay, sewerage authoritys delay etc instead of giving the authorities a carte blanche in this regard. A set of narrowly described situations and circumstances eschews corruption in the bud.

Indeed, builders should not be penalized for acts of God as well as inaction of the government machinery that more often than not is tasked with providing basic infrastructure like water, power and sewerage. Indeed, it would be unfair to hold the builder responsible for the lethargy of the government departments. But to indulge them beyond force majeure and inaction of government departments is inviting trouble.

Indeed, it could prove counterproductive. Just imagine a builder faced with the grim prospect of having to pay 10% interest to thousands of buyers would look for an easy escape route----knock at the doors of the state RERA even when the fault is his. Case by case approach is not only responsible for corruption in the higher echelons of power but also for mushrooming court cases. Harried buyers who are denied compensation thus would challenge the condonation in appeal thus setting in motion a never-ending spiral of frenetic judicial activity and dissatisfaction.
Mumbai: Lenders to the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines made a mistake by not accepting Rs 6,600 crore settlement offer by Vjay Mallya, said one of the top former senior executives of the State Bank of India (SBI).

Vijay Mallya, at one point, had offered banks Rs 6,600 crore but nobody took that (offer). Banks did a major blunder. You call it a mistake, said Naresh Malhotra.

Malhotra was speaking on State of the Economy Dialogues, a series of interviews where experts discuss the state of the economy with Firstpost.

Kingfisher owes more than Rs 9,000 crore to a group of 17 banks. The lenders have intensified their legal battle with Vijay Mallya after the liquor baron left the country in March, 2016 to the UK and hasnt returned since then.

Last year, Mallya had offered to pay up lenders of Kingfisher around Rs 6,600 crore in tranches, but banks rejected it. The Narendra Modi government has made a case with the UK authorities to send Mallya back to the home country.

All the while, banks were hopeful that Kingfisher will turnaround, Malhotra said.

Banks havent been able to recover money from Kingfisher in a meaningful manner. The case is pretty much at the point where it all started in 2012 when banks classified Kingfisher loan as a non-performing asset (NPA) and cried foul on Mallyas financial conduct.

Mallya has so far denied any wrongdoing. There have been several attempts by the bank consortium, the government and the investigative agencies to nail Mallya and get him to repay the loan. In the past on several occasions, the courts have issued warnings against him.

Mallya was arrested twice in the UK in connection with the Kingfisher loan case but was able to secure bail in a matter of few hours.
Applications are now being accepted for the Dalton Police Departments popular Citizens Police Academy program. The agencys 26th Citizens Police Academy will start Feb. 27, 2018.

The Citizens Academy will meet on Tuesdays from 6-9 p.m. for 10 weeks (Feb. 27  May 1) at the Dalton Police Services Center. A graduation banquet will be held the following week on May 8th. During the course of the program, participants will get an up-close look at every aspect of the police departments operation.

In addition to classroom sessions covering each of the departments three divisions and each specialized unit within the agency, the course also gives participants chances to experience policing in the real world. Among the real-world experiences offered by the program is a chance to spend one night at the county firing range to test fire all of the departments weapons and a night of real-life experience on our simulator. The academy also provides each participant a chance to ride along with a patrol officer for a shift to further understand the daily walk of a police officer.

Each session of the academy is taught by members of the Dalton Police Department and also subject matter experts from other agencies. While participant wont be an officer at the end of the 10-week program, they will know a lot more about police work.

Applicants must be at least 21 years old. Background checks will be performed on all applicants. Please note that completion of the course does not certify a participant as a police officer. To apply, simply pick up an application form at the Police Services Center at 301 Jones Street. One can also apply online at daltonpd.com/academy2018 or call Officer Osvaldo Sicarios at 706-278-9085, extension 9316.
New Delhi: Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) on Thursday said it is considering to increase prices of its models by up to 3 percent from January, to offset impact of rising input

costs.

The company considered the price rise after reviewing input and freight costs periodically, which is also a general industry phenomenon, TKM said in a statement.

"There has been an increase in the cost of manufacturing of vehicles. Frequent fluctuation in the global commodity prices and foreign exchange rates have continued to impact our input costs, from both domestic as well as import fronts," a company spokesperson said.

TKM has been absorbing the additional costs all this while, protecting the customers from price increase, the spokesperson added.

"However, due to the continued pressure of high costs, Toyota is considering a price increase of up to 3 percent across models with effect from January," the spokesperson said.

The company sells models ranging from hatchback Etios Liva with price starting at Rs 5.2 lakh to Land Cruiser 200 priced at Rs 1.35 crore (ex-showroom Delhi)

On Wednesday, Honda Cars India announced to hike vehicle prices by up to Rs 25,000 from January to offset the impact of rising input costs.

Earlier this month, Isuzu had announced to increase prices of its models by up to Rs 1 lakh. Last month, Skoda Auto India announced that it will hike prices of its vehicles by 2-3 percent across the entire model range from 1 January.
New Delhi: The newly appointed Chairman of the 15th Finance Commission N K Singh and RBI Governor Urjit Patel on Thursday discussed various issues related to the devolution of taxes between the Centre and states.

They discussed the technical as well as other assistance which the Reserve Bank of India could provide, enabling the Commission to discharge its wide ranging Terms of Reference, Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The RBI has the data and technical speciality in matters relating to overall finances, it said, adding that the emerging fiscal scenario and the central bank's State Finance Division is a rich repository of information on State finances over a long period of time.

Singh said that the Commission would be greatly benefited by the analytical and domain knowledge of the RBI in these specialised areas. Secretary to the 15th Finance Commission Arvind Mehta was also present at this meeting.
Before he became Captain Jack Sparrow with dreadlocks, kohl-black eyes, gold teeth and a rum-addled swagger; before he turned into the purple-gloved, top-hat wearing Willy Wonka; before he had to swat off the bats of Raoul Duke's drug-induced delusions; before he became the serial killing hairdresser Sweeney Todd; before he was mad as a hatter, and before his eventual descent into self-parody with whatever the hell Mortdecai was; Johnny Depp put on white makeup, an ugly wig and a leather costume, made up mostly of straps and buckles, to play another ageless weirdo  a gentle robot with scissorblades for fingers in Tim Burton's 1990 gothic fantasy Edward Scissorhands.

The film  which released exactly 27 years ago  put a modern, whimsical twist to the fairy tale genre by blending it with the dark, macabre imagery of Gothic fiction. On the surface, Edward Scissorhands seems like a contemporary archetype of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein but it is more a metaphor for Burton's own awkward teenage years. It established all of the familiar Burton trademarks and tropes: his distinctly expressionistic visual style, a carnivalesque atmosphere, an introspective narrative, an eccentric misunderstood outcast (typically played by Depp), fantastical themes and a Danny Elfman score.

Framed as a fairy tale, the film begins with a young girl asking her grandmother where snow comes from. As the grandmother recounts the tale of snows origins, a POV shot pans from a suburban hamlet of snow-covered ranch houses and neatly manicured lawns to an old Gothic mansion that looms among the withered vines and trees at the edge of the town  a mansion rather fittingly inhabited by an aging but certifiable scientist played by the iconic Vincent Price. Feeling lonely in his mansion, the scientist creates a synthetic son with spare parts from his cookie-cutting machines. But sadly, the scientist dies before he can complete assembling Edward leaving him with a grotesque appearance and cold razorblade hands but a warm heart.

When a compassionate, Avon-selling suburban mom Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest) discovers Edward, she takes him home to her loving family. Soon, he becomes the talk of the town as neighbours become intrigued by his childlike persona. When he discovers his newfound talent for topiary and haircutting, he is slowly and gradually accepted by society. After several discouraging attempts  including one ending with a punctured waterbed  to connect with Pegs teenage daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder), he falls for her. In one of the film's most beautiful scenes, Edward sculpts an ice statue for her during a Christmas party. The ice shavings from the sculpture create an effect of falling snow  a rarity in a hot Californian suburb  as Kim begins to dance under it.

However, Edward Scissorhands is sadly not the sharpest knife in the drawer as the neighbours begin to take advantage of his kindness and naivete. He finds himself seduced by a desperate housewife and caught in the jealousy-stemmed antics of Kim's boyfriend. Despite his innocence, his scissorhands always make him an outcast and the suburban neighbourhood soon turn on him forcing him to escape the town. The grandmother, absurdly but endearingly, implies that the reason snow continues to fall in their town is because Edward and his scissorhands continue chopping and shaving away ice sculptures atop his lonely mansion.

In what is possibly his most personal film, Edward Scissorhands reflects Burton's feelings of isolation and self-discovery. Edward is introduced to the audience with a wide shot before shifting to a close-up of his freakish appearance with his scissorhands in full view. It is here that Burton does something interesting. He compels us to challenge our stereotypes of the traditional freak or monster by focusing on his doleful eyes and the soft dulcet tone of his voice in an effort to emphasise his innocence. By making the outcast the hero, he makes us rethink our prejudices.

His scissorhands-enabled topiary and haircutting skills not only highlight his inner beauty and ingenuity but they also allow him to be accepted by the neighbourhood. Yet, the same contraption make him an outsider as Burton drives home the point that creative individuals will always be misunderstood by a narrow-minded society. Edwards emotions as he tries to assimilate into suburbia is fittingly underscored by Danny Elfman's evocative music. Burton's condmenation of suburban life is evident in his visual treatment as he juxtaposes an old Gothic mansion against the pastel-coloured surreality of suburbia. He seeks to not only draw our attention to its sterility but also its superficiality.

In the late 80s, Depp had garnered a sex symbol status after playing a teen heartthrob on 21 Jump Street but Burton  impressed with the actor's "ability to act with his eyes"  completely changed his career trajectory. It cemented Depp's reputation as a risk taker who was ready to eschew his matinee idol looks to portray more interesting characters. Even Winona Ryders role as the blonde cheerleader and girl-next-door in the film is a far cry from her more nuanced, angsty teen roles in 80s cult classics like Heathers and Burtons Beetlejuice.

In 27 years since the release of Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton's obsession with putting Johnny Depp in the most bizarre makeup and costumes has not always had the most favourable results. But the 1990 film did pave the way for Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and yes, sadly, Dark Shadows. Edward Scissorhands marked the beginning of one of modern cinema's most creative and prolific collaborative partnerships as Burton and Depp made the morbid look oddly beautiful and the oddball tragically comic.

So, with Christmas just a few weeks away, theres no better way to get yourself in the mood for the holiday season than Tim Burtons bittersweet suburban tale of a lost soul and a gifted hairdresser named Edward Scissorhands.
New York: Lena Dunham claims that she warned Hillary Clintons communications director about Harvey Weinsteins behavior, the New York Times reported in an expose that includes new details about the lengths Weinstein went to cover-up his alleged behavior. The details led the powerful Hollywood talent agency C.A.A. to apologize for its role in the scandal.

Dunham told the Times that when she worked with the Clinton presidential campaign last year, she tried to warn them about rape allegations against the mogul. Dunham said she also told Clinton spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod about Weinstein.

I just want to let you know that Harveys a rapist, and this is going to come out at some point, Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the campaigns deputy communications director. I think its a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because its an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.

Magazine editor Tina Brown also said she cautioned the Clinton campaign about Weinstein.

Representatives for Dunham didnt immediately respond to requests for comment on 6 December. Clintons communications director Nick Merrill told the paper that only (Dunham) can answer why she would tell them instead of those who could stop him.

Weinstein was a significant contributor to Democratic candidates and helped fund-raise for Clinton.

Weinstein attorneys Blair Berk and Ben Brafman reiterated Weinsteins denials in a statement Wednesday.

Mr. Weinstein has never at any time committed an act of sexual assault, and it is wrong and irresponsible to conflate claims of impolitic behavior or consensual sexual contact later regretted, with an untrue claim of criminal conduct, said the attorneys. There is a wide canyon between mere allegation and truth, and we are confident that any sober calculation of the facts will prove no legal wrongdoing occurred. Nonetheless, to those offended by Mr. Weinsteins behavior, he remains deeply apologetic.

A Weinstein spokesperson also said the producer also contributed to Republican candidates, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and said Weinstein had never had any discussions with any politicians about his personal conduct.

The Times report published online Tuesday night was followed Wednesday with a lawsuit filed by six women in federal court in New York against Weinstein, claiming his actions to cover up assaults amounted to civil racketeering. The lawsuit, which seeks to represent a class of dozens, if not hundreds of women who say they were assaulted by Weinstein, claims that a coalition of companies and people became part of the growing Weinstein Sexual Enterprise and that they worked with Weinstein to conceal his widespread sexual harassment and assaults.

Weinstein is currently under investigation for sexual assault in four cities. He has apologized for his behavior with women but denied having non-consensual sex.

The latest New York Times report, titled Weinsteins Complicity Machine, further illustrated how Weinstein leveraged his power and connections to keep his alleged crimes hidden, and detailed how those who enabled Weinstein allowed his actions to go unchecked.

The Times reported that at least eight C.A.A. agents were aware of Weinsteins pattern of harassment. Gwyneth Paltrow, who is among the dozens of actresses who earlier came forward to claim sexual harassment by Weinstein, said she told her own C.A.A. agent, Rick Kurtzman, about being harassed by Weinstein. (Paltrow continued to star in several movies produced by Weinstein.)

Canadian actress Mia Kirshner also said C.A.A. set up a meeting with Weinstein in New York to discuss a film. But his actual purpose was to exchange sex for career opportunity, the Times reported.

C.A.A. declined to discuss individual cases but responded with a broad apology.

We want to make clear to clients and colleagues that even one of our clients being harassed over the companys 42 years is one too many, the agency said in a statement. We are here to serve, fight for, and protect our clients. We apologize to any person the agency let down for not meeting the high expectations we place on ourselves, as individuals and as a company.
The trailer of Anurag Kashyap's much-anticipated film Mukkabaaz has released and it lives up to its hype. Set in Uttar Pradesh, the film revolves around a lower-caste aspiring boxer, Shravan, who trains at a gym which is owned by an upper-caste don played by Jimmy Shergill.

Shravan falls for Mishra's niece Sunaina, but Mishra, who is a Brahmin, does not approve of the match. Shravan must rise above the deadly caste politics and become a successful boxer while avoiding Mishra's wrath.

The trailer packs a punch and is outlined with moments of heightened drama. With earnest performers like Singh, Ravi Kishan and of course, Shergill, it is safe to say that there is very little that could go wrong in the film; however, the story must act as a proper foil for these actors to shine.

Because it set in Uttar Pradesh, the dialect and diction that everyone and Shergill in particular seem to have mastered, make the scenes memorable. The movie stars Vineet Kumar Singh as Shravan, Zoya Hussain as Sunaina, Kishan as Sanjay Kumar and Shergill as Bhagwan Das Mishra.

The film is slated to release on 12 January and is going head-to-head with Saif Ali Khan's upcoming dark comedy, Kaalakaandi. The trailer of the film has been exclusively released on Eros Now.
New York: Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrixs Both Sides of the Sky on 9 March, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.

Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar heros archive. Valleys of Neptune was released in 2010, followed by People, Hell and Angels, released in 2013.

Eddie Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made during the artists life, said in an interview that 1969 was a very experimental year for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked on the new album.

The first thing is you put the tape on and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of your neck and you go, Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible, said Kramer. Its an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we are and Im listening to these tapes going, Oh my God, thats an amazing performance.

Many of the albums tracks were recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrixs trio with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: '$20 Fine' and 'Woodstock'.

It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except its on acid, you know, Kramer, laughing, said of '$20 Fine'.

Jimi is just rocking it, he added. Its an amazing thing.

Johnny Winter appears on 'Things I Used to Do'; original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on 'Hear My Train A Comin'; and Lonnie Youngblood is on 'Georgia Blues'.

Kramer produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the legends sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though Both Sides of the Sky is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.

He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.

It was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks off the thought process  it goes through his brain through his heart and through his hands and onto the guitar, and its a seamless process, Kramer said. Its like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same time, and its scary. Theres never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least in my mind.
Mumbai: Former censor board chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani says the film industry needs to be united in its fight to avoid becoming a victim of politics.

Expressing sympathy for filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali and his movie Padmavati, Nihalani said: "Full sympathy to Sanjay Leela Bhansali and full concern for the industry because it is not just about Padmavati.

"Any movie can face this kind of a trap of the politicians, politics and different parties. So, I think it is a very sad thing and the industry should combine and decide. Today it is Padmavati, tomorrow any movie can become like this, so we should not be a victim of politics."

Nihalani spoke at the unveiling of the Society magazine cover  which features him  in Mumbai on 6 December.

He also blamed the "lack of unity" in the film industry for the lack of solutions when controversies, as the one faced by Padmavati, emerge. The movie has been in news as Hindu groups backed by the BJP have been opposing its release over alleged distortion of facts.

Nihalani, who presented the movie Julie 2 recently, also spoke on issues such as nepotism and the casting couch.

He said nepotism is very much prevalent in Bollywood.

"New people are not getting in and this has been going on for a while now, because there are only 4-5 groups who are signing sons or daughters of known celebrities," he said.

On the casting couch, Nihalani said it can happen in any industry.

As far as the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) is concerned, Nihalani was succeeded by writer-adman Prasoon Joshi.

Asked about comparisons between them, Nihalani, who himself had a controversial tenure, said: "I am not here to compare. I did a good job, I know that. What he is going to do, you will see. I did a good job and media wrote such good praises about me. For that, I am thankful and grateful. Now you find out how he is working and the way I was working. How many movies have released on time and how many lapsed out the date?"
Actor Ryan Reynolds has joined the cast of the first ever live-action Pokemon movie, Detective Pikachu. The Deadpool actor will provide the voice of the monster detective, and joins Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton in the film, reported Variety.

The story will reportedly revolve around the disappearance of the father of the character essayed by Smith, which forces him to take Pikachu's help. Newton, who is currently seen on Big Little Lies, will be playing a journalist in the film. Filming on the project is expected to start soon.

Director Rob Letterman of Goosebumps fame is helming the project, while the script has been penned by Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch.

Universal Pictures is on board to distribute the film outside Japan, which is where the legendary video-game was developed. Toho, which has been The Pokemon Company's trusted collaborator, will handle the film's distribution in Japan.

Created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1995, the franchise revolves around fictional creatures which humans, known as Pokemon Trainers, catch and train to battle each other for sport. Although the franchise started as video games, it now spans across multiple mediums including trading card games, animated television shows and movies, comic books, and toys.

With inputs from PTI.
LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin rocketed above $15,000 for the first time on Thursday, after adding more than $2,000 to its price in fewer than 12 hours. FILE PHOTO: A Bitcoin logo is displayed at the Bitcoin Center New York City in New York's financial district in NY, U.S. on July 28, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File PhotoBitcoin, the worlds biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, has seen a more than fifteenfold surge in its value since the start of the year. It climbed to as high as $15,344 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange around 1420 GMT, leaving it up more than 12 percent on the day, having traded just above $13,000 12 hours earlier BTC=BTSP. Many market-watchers said the launch this weekend of bitcoin futures by CBOE, one of the worlds biggest derivatives exchanges, was helping drive up the price on expectations it would draw more investors to the market. Futures trading will mean more demand...and is a form of ratification of the underlying tech - bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. They are now on the main stage, said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency data analysis firm Cryptocompare. But some are warning that the launch of bitcoin futures, which will allow investors to take speculative short positions on the cryptoccurrency, as well as long positions, could cause even greater volatility. Aggressive traders, such as hedge funds and algorithm-driven funds, (will be able) to use this futures market to enter bitcoin trading with high levels of liquidity for aggressive short-selling and knock the prices really low, said Think Markets analyst Naeem Aslam. Players now have an incentive to be on the short side and make profits hedging against the upside. The latest surge brought bitcoins market cap - its price multiplied by the total number of bitcoins in circulation - to more than $260 billion, according to Coinmarketcap, a trade website. That, in theory, makes its market value higher than that of Visa. The value of all cryptocurrencies now stands at around $415 billion, according to Coinmarketcap. Bitcoin has more than tripled in price since the start of October, putting it on track for its best quarter since the end of 2013, when it surged above $1,000 for the first time. It slumped in 2014, after Mt Gox, then the worlds biggest bitcoin exchange, collapsed, saying it had been hacked and had 650,000 bitcoins stolen.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
(Reuters) - Anheuser-Busch, which makes Budweiser beers, has reserved 40 of Tesla Incs all-electric Semi trucks as it seeks to reduce fuel costs and vehicle emissions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. FILE PHOTO - The logo of Anheuser-Busch InBev is pictured outside the brewer's headquarters in Leuven, Belgium February 25, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman/FilesThis could the biggest order Tesla has received for its electric trucks, which are scheduled for rollout in 2019. The U.S. subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV plans to use the trucks for shipments to wholesalers within 150 to 200 miles of its brewery locations  well within the 500-mile range that was promised by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Journal reported. (on.wsj.com/2j40eK1) The brewing company has not finalized yet whether to buy the vehicles outright or lease them, James Sembrot, the companys senior director of logistics strategy told the Journal. Last month, Tesla received orders for its electric trucks from high profile companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and fleet operator J.B. Hunt. Germany-based Deutsche Post AGs DHL and Fortigo Freight Services Inc, one of Canadas largest fleet management companies, also pre-ordered Teslas electric trucks last month to test on limited routes. Anheuser-Busch did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Tesla declined to comment.

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Tanner | Hill Gallery will host an opening reception of Interference, a solo show of artwork by Damien Crisp, on Thursday, Dec. 14, between 5-8 p.m. The gallery is at 3069 Broad St.

Review for the exhibit:

Employing poetic gestures, Mr. Crisp suspends direct interpretations of his artwork through emotive mark-making, and he develops new linguistic associations with repetitive text. His artwork intuitively relates to anyone living in the 21st century, and provides thought-provoking exercise for semioticians, painters, and psychoanalysts.

Mr. Crisp is an artist currently living and working in Chattanooga. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and his Master of Fine Arts at School of Visual Arts in New York City. His work includes painting, writing, photography, collage, and installation.

This show is part of a curatorial series by Ashley Hamilton. This exhibition will be open by appointment after the opening. To set up an appointment, contact Ashley Hamilton at 580-4645 or AshleyHamiltonArt@gmail.com.
MEXICO CITY/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Didi Chuxing, Chinas ride-hailing behemoth, plans to expand into Mexico next year, intensifying its global rivalry with Uber, according to two sources familiar with the plans. Logo of Didi Chuxing is seen at its headquarters building in Beijing, China, May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo Didi has spoken before of global ambitions, but has not formally announced where or when it would expand. The Chinese company is the second-most highly valued, venture-backed private firm in the world, after Uber Technologies Inc. [UBER.UL] Didi has no cars outside China, meaning Mexico could be its first international operation. Didi, whose brand is ubiquitous in China but little-known in the West, will launch a smartphone app in Mexico and recruit local drivers to the platform, according to the sources, who declined to be named. It is unclear which cities Didi will target, although one of the sources said the company was aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year. The company has already begun trying to recruit corporate talent in the sector, the source added. A spokesman for Didi declined to comment on Thursday. About a month ago, Didi met with ProMexico, a government trade and investment body, to discuss opportunities in the country, according to a Mexican official, who declined to provide further details about the conversations. The company has made no secret of its desire to expand beyond China, particularly in light of the growing number of Chinese customers who travel overseas. In April, Didi raised $5.5 billion from investors, in part to fund global expansion. But until now, its plans have been limited to financial commitments to ride-hailing companies in other countries and a research lab in Silicon Valley that opened earlier this year. Didi has invested in Uber rivals around the world, including U.S.-based Lyft, Brazil-based 99, Indias Ola, Singapore-headquartered Grab, Estonias Taxify and Careem in the Middle East. The company acquired Ubers China business last year after Uber lost roughly $2 billion trying to compete. After ceding its China business, Uber doubled down on Latin America, where Didi is now encroaching. Uber has established a stronghold in Mexico, with seven million users across 45 cities. Mexico City is Ubers third-biggest market in the world by rides, after the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Didi will also compete with Spanish ride-hailing company Cabify, which operates in seven Mexican cities. Regulatory battles are looming. In the touristy state of Quintana Roo, for example, Uber has said the proposed regulation is so onerous that it would drive the company out of the market if passed in its current form. The regulation would ban cash fares, which Uber has said are critical for reaching riders without credit cards. Mexican authorities fear that allowing ride-sharing apps to accept cash payments would put them in direct competition with traditional taxis, which are a political force in some cities. Despite Ubers presence in Mexico, competitors have room to grow, particularly if they can find a way to reach unbanked consumers while addressing regulators concerns about cash, said Enrique Garcia, a PhD student at Mexicos CIDE university who has published research on Ubers presence in the country. There is not a point of saturation, Garcia said.

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Politicians cutting across party lines expressed solidarity with India's armed forces personnel and ex-servicemen on the occasion of Armed Forces Flag Day, celebrated on 7 December. They also urged all citizens of the country to donate generously for the jawans' welfare.

The Indian Armed Forces Flag Day is observed every year since 1949 to honour the soldiers, airmen and sailors of the country.

The day is also observed to raise funds for the well-being of serving jawans, and also for providing rehabilitation to battle victims, and supporting their families.

Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit contributed Rs 25,000 towards the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund on Wednesday.

According to a statement from Raj Bhavan, Purohit "contributed Rs 25,000 by demand draft towards the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund".

State chief minister K Palaniswamy also appealed for "generous" public donations towards the fund.

Such generous donations would benefit kin of defence personnel killed or injured in war, and ex-servicemen suffering from various ailments, he said in a statement.

The people of Tamil Nadu had always done exceedingly well in donating towards the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund, he added.

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh also urged people to come forward with voluntary donations and said the money would be used for the rehabilitation of war widows, disabled defence personnel and ex-servicemen.

"On this Flag Day, let us strive to help the families of our brave soldiers who died in service while honouring the motherland," he said.

Noting that India would forever remain indebted to the valour and commitment of its soldiers, Singh said any contribution to the Flag Day Fund would be seen as a token of respect for the outstanding services rendered by the armed forces.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that the army's contribution towards the country can never be forgotten.

Today is Armed Forces Flag Day. The contributions of the Army must never be forgotten  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) December 7, 2017

Union minister of State for finance and shipping Pon Radhakrishnan also paid tribute to the armed forces.

On Armed Forces Flag Day, we salute the men in uniform who valiantly protect our borders to uphold the country's honour. Let us pledge to contribute towards the welfare of families of the brave personnel at pic.twitter.com/3QZgSLhRK2  Pon Radhakrishnan (@PonnaarrBJP) December 7, 2017

Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu took to Twitter to thank the jawans and their families.

On this Armed Forces Flag Day, thanking the families of Indian Armed Forces personnel and recognising their sacrifices. Honouring the servicemen and commemorating the soldiers, airmen and sailors of our nation.  N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) December 7, 2017

On 1 December, the defence ministry had said the first week of December would be marked as 'Armed Forces Week', as per a report on Doordarshan. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman appealed to the people to join in the celebration.

People who wish to contribute towards the welfare of war widows, and the families of serving and former servicemen may do so by visiting the official website, http://ksb.gov.in, the defence minister said.

With inputs from PTI
To make sense of the present, often we need to take a hard look at the past. On the 25th anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition which for many reasons remains an epochal moment in the history of modern India, it would be worthwhile looking at the impulses that led to the destruction of the mosque and how these long-suppressed impulses of far-history are shaping the political narratives of today.

To those untrained in history and to practitioners of wilful denial, the bringing down of the 16th-century structure was an act of communal wantonness that broke the back of 'secularism' in India and unleashed genies that cannot be put back into the bottle. It is the only reading that has ever been allowed to exist and it refers to that moment as the 'manifestation of naked majoritarianism'.

It is the starting point of any discussion  an axiomatic truth over which all structures of future debates must necessarily rest.

The problem with reality is that it exists in many dimensions. Sometimes these realities clash, and when they do, those in position of power to determine the discourse relegate some realities to nether regions of consciousness in favour of their version of events. The subterranean realities do not cease to exist. In turn, these suppressed realities reveal themselves in various ways  sometimes in quite unexpected, resentful ways  and a nation that refuses to engage honestly with these realities pay a steeper price in the end.

It would be misleading and wrong to see the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya on 6 December, 1992, in medias res.

It wasn't an event without context, and it certainly wasn't an act that started and ended with BJP's ambition to gain power over the rubble of a mosque. Those political impulses are undeniable, and even the BJP might acknowledge it as such. However, a larger, balanced debate over the Babri mosque demolition is impossible if we refuse to ask ourselves why, even two-and-a-half-decades later, the issue not only remains relevant but continues to drive political discourse.

Any fruitful discussion must necessarily break free of the trope that mosque demolition was an act of "pure evil" sponsored by the far-right Hindu revivalist programme as against a syncretic 'idea of India'. It is precisely because of these restrictions on discourse that we have been going around in circles.

When the kar sevaks on that fateful day cried "Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tod do", they were not only responding to political impulses of the day, but were also releasing the anger of suppressed history that has not been allowed an expression. These are strong impulses, grappling with these motivations aren't easy, and they start where the boundaries of political correctness end.

A few writers and thinkers who have been brave enough to shed light on the unwritten histories have been branded and labeled into neat little compartments, notwithstanding their considerable achievements in own fields.

Historians, for instance, have even branded Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul a 'BJP sympathiser' for his take on the history of Hindu civilisation. In a discussion with the late author and journalist Khushwant Singh whose views on Babri demolition were firmly within the realms of accepted reality (that it was an act of communal disharmony created by BJP), Naipaul once described razing of the mosque as "an act of historical balancing."

In the discussion, which happened 17 years ago in the month of May and was reproduced in Outlook, Sir Vidia told Singh that Hindu revivalists were "mimicking the Islamic fundamentalists" in their destruction driven by an impulse of resentment because "the mosque built by Babar in Ayodhya was meant as an act of contempt. Babar was no lover of India. I think it is universally accepted that Babar despised India, the Indian people and their faith."

These were by no means outlier statements by the agent provocateur. A year before that discussion, in conversation with journalist Tarun Tejpal in Outlook, the Trinidad-born author who by some reckoning is the greatest living writer in English, expanded on his claim that Muslim invaders had indulged in wanton and large-scale destruction of Hindu religion and culture, and these histories lie un-chronicled but never forgotten, consequently giving rise to a revivalist version of Hinduism. He contested the view that Muslim invasions had resulted in enrichment and syncretisation of cultures.

"In art books and history books, people write of the Muslims "arriving" in India, as though the Muslims came on a tourist bus and went away again."

The author  who relied for his reading of history on primary and original sources such as 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Batuta, the Chachnama, an account of the invasions of Sindh by Arabian marauders, or Bernier, the French traveller to India during the time of Shah Jahan  held that Muslim version of the history of India's dark ages were truer ones compared to the sanctified ones that we have been taught to believe.

"The Muslim view of their conquest of India is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of the faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the carting away of the local people as slaves, so cheap and numerous that they were being sold for a few rupees. The architectural evidence-the absence of Hindu monuments in the north-is convincing enough There are no Hindu records of this period. Defeated people never write their history. The victors write the history," he told Tejpal in the interview.

Giving two examples  the destruction of the Vijaynagar kingdom in the south in 1565 and Akbar's ravaging of Odisha in 1592, he spoke of a "larger and more tragic and more illuminating theme. That theme is the grinding down of Hindu India."

In an article written in 2004 in Outlook, India-born British playwright Farrukh Dhondy ripped apart historian William Dalrymple for challenging Sir Vidia's credentials as a historian. Pointing out that unlike Dalrymple, Naipaul had relied on primary sources, Dhondy wrote that "Naipaul's history is constructed from the original sources and from the evidence of what is left."

Naipaul had a meeting with BJP functionaries in Mumbai in 2004 (he reportedly also was keen on meeting Congress party members but received no invitation). Dhondy, who had attended that meeting later wrote in the Outlook article about Naipaul's views on Babar.

"Naipaul is not saying that Babar single-handedly destroyed Hindu civilisation What Naipaul did say about this sixteenth century invasion, at the misreported meeting and elsewhere, was that Babar knew very well what Ayodhya meant to the Hindus. In an act of hubris and religious vandalism he built a mosque on the spot where the population had pitched a legend."

We find similar views from the late Nirad C Chaudhuri, the irreverent Englishman who happened to be a Bengali scholar, author and a man of letters. On Babri demolition, he held that: "Muslims do not have the slightest right to complain about the desecration of one mosque in Ayodhya. From 1000 AD every temple from Kathiawar to Bihar, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas has been sacked and defiled."

For his impertinence, the brilliant Nirad C was dismissed as an eccentric who had lost his reason with age. This denial of raids and destructions, which Dhondy reckons have "left the civilisation headless, wounded, truncated in its development," and forced suppression of history, have given rise to anger which manifests itself in myriad, unconnected ways such as unmitigated rage against a Bollywood movie.

Padmavati fell victim to that impulse of resentment which seeks to now rewrite history in its own terms. Will this set forth another chain of destruction? Sir Vidia feels it won't. He called India a wounded civilisation in his work, and told Tejpal that Hindu resurgence is "a necessary corrective to the history"

It is undeniable that much of the suppression which happened under the aegis of Nehruvian secularism by Leftist historians had as its motto a higher ideal of communal harmony. But as events subsequently have taught us, it is never wise to tamper with history. It is important to engage with injuries of the past to heal the present.
New Delhi: In one of the biggest contraband seizures across the India-Pakistan border, the BSF on Wednesday confiscated about 55 kg heroin worth Rs 5 crore in Punjab's Gurdaspur district, official sources said.

The incident was reported at about 6.30 pm when a Border Security Force (BSF) patrol team detected some suspicious movement along the border post 'Rosse'.

The intruders were challenged and they fired back, the sources said.

After a brief exchange of fire, the intruders hastily fled back, they said.

"The troops involved in the operation reported that there were three intruders with some head-load and a plastic pipe. As the BSF party retaliated, one of the intruders got injured but his accomplices took him back across the international border."

"In the initial search, 55 packets of contraband, a plastic pipe and two pistols were found. The search is still in progress," a senior BSF officer said.

It is one of the biggest seizures of contraband along this border and the cache is estimated to be worth Rs 5 crore in the international market, he added.
New Delhi: The Indian government's refusal to denounce the United States decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital "shows the extent of servility of the Modi regime" to Washington, the CPM said on Thursday.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist said it strongly condemned the decision of United States president Donald Trump, who has said the American embassy will shift to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

"This action goes against the United Nation's and the international community's stand that East Jerusalem is an occupied territory by Israel since 1967. An independent Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital is the internationally accepted position," a CPM statement said.

"The US has taken the formal step of legalising the illegal occupation of Palestine territories by Israel. No other country in the world has given recognition to Jerusalem as Israel's capital."

The CPM said that unlike the worldwide opposition to this move, the Indian external affairs ministry "has scrupulously refused to criticise the US decision. This shows the extent of servility of the Modi regime to the US".

The CPM asked the Modi government to come out strongly against the US action "as it goes against India's longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause".
Chandigarh: A 16-year-old Class 11 boy in Haryana allegedly killed a five-year-old girl by drowning her in a water tub after kidnapping her for a ransom, the police said.

The boy was apprehended around 1 am on Thursday after the police traced the ransom call to a house that was rented to his brother-in-law by the girl's father, Superintendent of Police (SP), Ambala, Abhishek Jorwal said.

"He did not show any remorse. During questioning, he told us that he had watched a movie after which he decided to hatch a plan to make easy money. The boy was working on his laptop when the police reached the house," he said.

The 16-year-old had hid the body in a water cooler after drowning her in the water tub, the SP said.

The boy was alone at home as his brother-in-law, who worked at a shop owned by the girl's father, along with his family had gone to Uttar Pradesh, he said.

The officer said that the boy lured the girl to his house on Wednesday evening when she was playing outside her residence. The victim's family started searching for her after she did not return home and later informed the police, he said.

In the meantime, a neighbour received the ransom call. The caller demanded Rs 20 lakh, the SP said.

It was traced and the police zeroed-in on the house. Realising that the police had been alerted and the girl could raise an alarm, he decided to kill her, Jorwal said.

The SP said that the girl's father was not aware of the boy's background and intentions.
New Delhi: Delhi environment department secretary will sound an alarm on Whatsapp if Air Quality Index (AQI) crosses a particular mark, asking authorities to carry out pollution control measures, official sources said on Wednesday.

"On the basis of AQI, an alarm will be triggered by the secretary (environment), GNCTD on Whatsapp. The follow-up action by authorities concerned is expected without delay," an environment department communique said.

The SOP (standard operating procedure) for controlling severe air pollution in Delhi asks city Municipal Corporations, Public Works Department, Delhi Development Authority and others to carry out different measures like sprinkling of water, checking of biomass burning, diesel generator sets, and polluting vehicles.

The heads of authorities concerned will work out an internal mechanism to carry out the task and communicate the name and mobile number of their nodal officers, the order said.
On 6 December, US president Donald Trump, in an unprecedented policy move, recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital and announced that the American embassy will soon be moved out of Tel Aviv into the sharply contested holy city. This is an affirmative validation of the decades-old Israeli claim on west Jerusalem and a tacit attestation to its claim on East Jerusalem, as opposed to the corresponding claim by Palestine. These counter-claims remain key flashpoints in the limping dialogue process between the two parties.

Make no mistake: Trumps announcement is a decisive turnaround in longstanding US policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and severely negates Washingtons credibility as a mediator in the fifty-year long dispute. It is a radical move in itself that promises to come along with an entire spectrum of ramifications for the regional political and security landscape.

In an immediate follow-up to Trumps announcement, the spokesperson for Indias Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) gave the following statement: "India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country."

This highly-calibrated and diplomatically-measured statement encapsulates Indias complex balancing act with respect to not just Israel-Palestine, but also the US and the entire West Asian region extending to the Gulf.

Tilt or balance?

Taken at face value, the MEAs position reflects New Delhis ostensible neutrality over the era-defining Israel-Palestine issue. This neutrality is hardly new, and goes back to the early 1990s when India opened diplomatic channels with Israel while also keeping bilateral engagement alive and well with the Palestinian leadership. This balancing act has continued under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, albeit within a slightly different template.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, New Delhi has moved visibly closer to Israel. It has initiated fresh diplomatic engagement with the Netanyahu government in the critical sectors of defence, agriculture, IT, and education. Modis lavish visit to Israel in July 2017 and his decision to not visit the occupied Palestinian territories, in many ways, reflect Indias subtle tilt towards the former.

In many ways, even the BJPs right-wing Hindutva nationalism falls fit with Zionist nationalism insofar as building an anti-Islamic alliance is concerned. Another pivotal driver behind this growing intimacy is Indias tacit expectation of deriving the US goodwill, a point that gained greater relevance with the coming of staunchly pro-Israel Trump.

However, it might be too early to identify a clear diplomatic shift. In May, India also hosted Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on a four-day visit. The MEA called him an important guest. During the visit, Modi reaffirmed Indias unwavering support of the Palestinian cause and expressed hope towards the realisation of a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel.

Several Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed, entailing Indias support in building infrastructure and capacity in Palestine. The Modi government also appears to be placing itself as an active supporter of the tottering peace process, unlike the previous UPA administration that remained largely passive in the regions political disputes. To this end, maintaining amicable relations with both disputing parties remains imperative.

Despite this median posturing, fact remains that New Delhis engagement with Israel is much deeper and broader than with Palestine, wherein the promises of material support made by the Modi government to the latter remain unrealised as yet. For example, the India-Palestinian Digital Learning and Innovation Centre that Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj inaugurated during her January 2016 visit to Ramallah still awaits completion. Moreover, a large section of the Palestinian leadership feels that the Modi government has significantly scaled down support to their cause, in addition to the visible congruence of the Hindutva and Zionist agendas.

But, Indias statement in light of the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital proves that New Delhi can afford to maintain a non-productive relationship with Palestine but never really openly subvert it.

New Delhis logic of supporting the Palestinian cause

The MEAs statement on the US decision on Jerusalem is a blunt affirmation that India is not obligated to either support or condemn the Trump administrations startling move. In doing so, New Delhi seems to be relaying a carefully-framed message to both Washington and the powerful oil economies of the Gulf, a message that is tailored to suit its own national interests.

First, Indialike most other traditional US alliesremains apprehensive of the Trump cohorts errant but assertive diplomatic dispensations. Despite doubts over the feasibility of Trumps contentious campaign promises before he won the White House, the US president has proven that he is, after all, not all talk, no action. So far, he has successfully managed to install selective immigration blockades, pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, begin testing prototypes of the border wall with Mexico, push his promised tax reforms through the Senate, started their attempt to repeal net neutrality, and finally, recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital. All of this within his patent framework of unpredictability and recklessness.

Although Trump has been generally amicable towards India, his unyielding character and unconventionally America-centric policy approach compels India to keep him in its good books, lest it ends up in a disadvantaged position. This fear has unraveled most in the domains of American H1B visas for Indian immigrants (which for now remains as it is) and Indias IPR laws that restrict free-flow of US investments. Both have played spoilers in the lukewarm Modi-Trump relationship.

Thus, any hostile move from New Delhi could draw Trumps ire to the end of Washington slamming the hammer on India on both issues. This, amongst others, is a key reason why India avoided deploring Trump on his Jerusalem decision, unlike many of its longtime allies in Europe and West Asia. It would even be fair to argue that New Delhi might have expressed concern, if not condemnation, at the move if it was anyone else in place of Trump: Someone more diplomatic and predictable.

The second driver is Indias growing closeness with the wealthy Gulf economies, almost all of which have openly condemned Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countriesparticularly Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwaitare extremely crucial to Indias political, economic, and strategic interests.

These countries remain, on the upward, the largest exporters of crude oil to India, thus forming the conclusive source of Indias long-term energy security interests. The Gulf countries also host the largest share of Indian immigrant workers, thus forming the biggest source of remittances. Moreover, under Modi, India has initiated greater strategic cooperation with these countries in the domains of counter-terrorism and infrastructural investments.

Clearly, New Delhi expressing positive affirmation of Trumps Jerusalem announcement would not have gone down well with Indias West Asian partners. That would have been gravely disastrous for Indias interests in the region. This is even more so because of the stark quantitative difference between the India-Israel and the India-Gulf trade channels: While trade between India and Israel is valued at $4 billion as of 2017, Indias trade with Saudi Arabia alone stood at $26.6 billion in the 2015-16 period. This is a massive gap that compels India, within rational boundaries of long-term viability, to value the Gulf more than Israel.

Consequences of Indias position

One could argue that Indias neutral posturing on the Jerusalem decision has the potential to isolate Israel, and by extrapolation, the US. After all, the MEAs statement could be read as a solid rejection of Washingtons position, put against Israels calls to all other countries to follow suit. However, it is too early to say so.

In this particular case, perhaps unlike others, Indias neutral stance is what it is: Neutral. In other words, India refused to condemn the US move while also not standing by it. Three distinct consequences could follow from this: First, Washington reads this as a hostile stance, in which case, it could tighten the screws on India on the H1B visa and IPR issues; second, the entire matter remains out of the India-US bilateral, mostly because India exercised its sovereign and perfectly acceptable right to operate along its own exclusive interests; and third, US reads this as tacit support for its position.

Rather than losing losing US goodwill, India will actually gain goodwill because of its response: Much like the Indian refusal to condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea was taken positively in Moscow as a sign of support. At the same time, the MEA statement subtly but clearly says that Indian interests, investments, and domestic political consequences in the region are quite different from those of the US, argues Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a New Delhi-based strategic analyst specialising in West Asian affairs.

In all, India has shown impressive diplomatic tact in dealing with this hugely polarising issue. By not moving towards an extreme position, New Delhi has successfully retained the promising space for broad-spectrum engagement with not just the Trump administration, but also the whole of West Asia, from Riyadh to Tel Aviv (or Jerusalem?).
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday questioned Shailesh Kumar, the husband of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadavs daughter Misa Bharti, for over eight hours in its ongoing probe into a money laundering case of over Rs 8,000 crore.

Shailesh Kumar arrived at the agency's office in south Delhi's Khan Market around 12.30 p.m. The agency has also issued notice to Misa Bharti, who is a Rajya Sabha parliamentarian, for questioning.

The agency also questioned both Misa and Shailesh in July.

An ED official requesting anonymity told IANS: "The agency officials confronted Shailesh with the documents that they have seized earlier."

"He was also confronted with the replies of his wife Bharti and others given in this case till date," the official said.

Shailesh was also asked to share the password of the electronic devices that were seized during the raids.

The agency official said that it wants to access the laptops and mobile phones for data.

The official said that Palam Farms in Delhi's Bijwasan area was bought from the money raised through shell companies owned by Bharti and her husband.

Palam Farms was allegedly bought from the money raised through M/s Mishail Packers and Printers Pvt Ltd, owned by Bharti and her husband, he said.

In September, the agency had attached the property.

The Income Tax department is also probing how shell companies were used by Lalu Prasad and his family to buy expensive properties in Delhi and Patna.

In July, the ED had chargesheeted around 35 people, including Chartered Accountant Rajesh Agrawal and businessmen brothers Surendra Jain and Virendra Jain.

Agrawal was accused of helping Shailesh's company with some transactions.

Mishail Packers and Printers Pvt Ltd was registered at 25, Tughlaq Road, New Delhi, which was then the official address of Lalu Prasad, till the shares were bought by Bharti.

It was only during 2009-10, that the address was changed to Farm Number 26, Palam Farms, Bijwasan, New Delhi.
A day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Supreme Court fixed 8 February, 2018 to hear on a day-to-day basis the final argument in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, better known as the Ayodhya matters. Prior to fixing the date, the Supreme Court rejected the plea of the Sunni Waqf Boards counsel, Kapil Sibal, to hear the matter after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Underlying Sibals plea was his apprehension that the Supreme Courts judgment in the Ayodhya dispute could be exploited to set the election agenda for 2019. Regardless of whether his fear is justified, a reading of the legal history of the dispute illustrates vividly how the Babri Masjid was converted into a temple over a century and more, often because of judicial pronouncements.

Whether these pronouncements were legally right or wrong will be known once the Supreme Court decides who holds the title to the spot where once the Babri Masjid and now a makeshift temple, having the idol of Ram Lalla and other deities, functions.

The conflict of 1855

The legal history of the dispute is linked to the claims that a general of the Mughal emperor Babur demolished a temple, located at the spot where Lord Ram is believed to have been born, to construct the Babri Masjid. There is no documentary evidence to back these claims. The generals alleged depredation constitutes Ayodhyas popular memory, reinforced further because of entries in the District Gazetteer and assertions that judges made in court cases without quoting sources.

It led to a jumbling up of events and dates. For instance, it is claimed that there erupted armed clashes between Hindus and Muslims over the Babri Masjid in 1855. However, historian KM Panikkar in a chapter (A Historical Overview) in the book Anatomy of a Confrontation: Ayodhya and the Rise of Communal Politics in India, points out that the 1855 clash was over the Hanumangarhi temple.

A Muslim party claimed that the Hanumangarhi temple had been built over a mosque and organised a raid in 1855 to occupy its premises. The raiders were beaten back, some killed, and others chased to the Babri Masjid where they took refuge. However, the victorious Hindus did not make claims to the Babri Masjid. This suggests that the mosque had not yet become contentious in Ayodhyas local memory.

The Nawab of Oudh instituted a committee of inquiry into the conflict of 1855. The inquiry concluded that the Hanumangarhi temple hadnt been built over a mosque. However, to mollify Muslims, the Nawab toyed with the idea of constructing a mosque adjacent to the Hanumangarhi temple. It perhaps prompted the construction of a parallel story around the Babri Masjid.

It originated, Panikkar says, most probably, as an attempt to checkmate the Muslim claim on the Hanumangarhi temple. It was probably conceived as a measure to mount counter-pressure on Muslims if they dared to revive their agitation over the Hanumangarhi temple.

A few years after the revolt of 1857, the Mahant of Hanumangarhi built a chabutra or raised platform near the Babri Masjid. A complaint regarding the appropriation was made to the magistrate by the then muezzin of the Babri Masjid. In 1861, the district administration is said to have built a wall to separate the mosque from the chabutra.

In 1883, mahant Raghubar Das started to build a temple over the chabutra, but the District Magistrate, because of the objections of Muslims, stopped it. It led to Raghubar Das filing a suit in 1885 in the court of Sub Judge, Faizabad, claiming that as the owner of the chabutra he should be allowed to build a temple there.

The judgements of 1885-86

Sub Judge Pandit Hari Kishan referred to the 1855 clashes to say a boundary wall had been constructed between the chabutra and mosque. He was relying on the local memory which had connected two unrelated episodes. It had Kishan to assert that the "place (chabutra) where the Hindus worship is in their possession and their ownership cannot be questioned and around it there is the wall of the mosque and the word Allah is inscribed on it.

But the sub judge denied permission to Das to build a temple. His reasoning was, "If a temple is constructed on the chabutra at such a place then there will be sound of bells of the temple and shankh (conch shells) when both Hindus and Muslims pass from the same way, and if permission is given to Hindus for constructing temple then one day or the other criminal cases will be started and thousands of people will be killed."

Das went in appeal to District Judge Col F.E.A Chamier. He upheld the verdict of the sub judge in March 1886, but cancelled his observation that the ownership of the chabutra vested in Das and Hindus. Chamier, however, observed: It is most unfortunate that a masjid should have been built on land specially held sacred by the Hindus, but as that event occurred 356 years ago it is too late to remedy the grievance."

At least until 1886, it was the chabutra, and not the spot under the central dome of the Babri Masjid, which was believed to be Lord Rams birthplace. This is evident from what Chamier said, The chabutra is said to indicate the birthplace of Ram Chandra.

The indefatigable mahant then went in appeal to the Court of Judicial Commissioner, Oudh, not only to build a temple over the chabutra, but to also get Chamiers ruling that he wasnt the owner of the chabutra, cancelled. Judicial commissioner W Young on 1 November, 1886 said that the Hindus wanted to create a "new temple" over the "holy spot" that was said to be "birthplace of Sri Ram Chandra."

Young then went on to observe, Now this spot is situated within the precinct of the grounds surrounding a mosque erected some 350 years ago owing to the bigotry and tyranny of the Emperor Babur, who purposely chose this holy spot, according to Hindu legend, as the site of his mosque.

A legend, we all know, is a story popularly thought to be historical, but cannot be verified. It was typically the style of British officials to harp on unverifiable stories to create a Hindu-Muslim divide in colonial India, of which the legend of Padmavati was an example.

Young said the Hindus had been persistently trying to increase their rights to the property and to erect buildings on two spots in the enclosure: (1) Sita ki Rasoi (b) Ram Chandar ki Janam Bhumi. But the executive authorities, he said, had been right in forbidding any alteration of the status quo. He upheld Chamiers verdict, including that Das wasnt the owner of the chabutra.

The Babri Masjid was next in news in 1934, because of a riot over cow-slaughter in a village near Ayodhya. Enraged Hindus damaged the Babri Masjid, which was subsequently repaired at the British governments expense. In March 1946, the mosque was declared a Sunni mosque after an inquiry ordered by the Commissioner of Waqfs.

December 1949: A winter of joy and discontent

It was the year in which the communal polarisation created an ambience conducive to hatching conspiracies. Anyone who thinks the Congress is anti-Hindu should turn to the by-elections held in Uttar Pradesh in 1948. At least, thirteen socialist legislators left the Congress and sought a fresh mandate. Among them was Acharya Narendra Dev, who stood from Faizabad. Congress leader and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Gobind Ballabh Pant fielded Baba Raghav Das as Congress candidate and then launched a vicious campaign accusing Acharya Dev of not believing in Lord Ram.

In the election campaign against the Acharya, who was eventually defeated, Pant took the help of KKK Nair, the district magistrate of Faizabad. It was Nair who on 2 December, 1949 suggested to Hindu groups that it was wiser to secretly plant the Ram Lalla idol in the mosque instead of taking it over through mass action, a revelation made by Krishna and Dhirendra K Jha in Ayodhya: The Dark Night.

Twenty days later, on intervening night of 22-23 December night of 1949, the idol was smuggled into the mosque. Harold A. Gould writes in Grass Roots Politics in India: A Century of Political Evolution in Faizabad District, Government inquiries revealed that followers of KKK Nair and Guru Datta Singh (city magistrate of Faizabad-cum-Ayodhya) used the authority which these two men commanded to persuade the police guarding the mosque to look the other way while the murtis (of Lord Ram and others) were smuggled inside.

But as the situation on the morning of 23 December threatened to spiral out of their control, Nair and Singh rushed to Babu Priyadatta Ram, the chairman of the Municipal Board, who agreed to intervene and staved off the communal confrontation.

It should have been the administrations responsibility to remove the idol from the Babri Masjid. But Nair stonewalled suggestions from Lucknow on this count. In a letter to Uttar Pradeshs Chief Secretary dated 27 December, Nair said that the removal of the idol could spark off riots. He suggested an alternative proposal  attach the mosque, exclude Hindus and Muslims from it, and appoint pujaris to perform pooja and offer bhog to the idols. This arrangement should continue, Nair advocated, until the civil court adjudicated on the rights of disputants.

Nair made this suggestion after slipping a threat in a letter to Uttar Pradeshs chief secretary a day before. Nair had written, I would, if government decided to remove the idol at any cost, request that I be relieved and replaced by an officer who may be able to see in that solution a merit which I cannot discern.

It was a classic Hindutva strategy  alter status quo and stoke communal animosity, and then claim that attempts to restore status quo ante would trigger bloody riots. It was now for the judiciary to respond to the brazen alteration of status quo, passed off as a miracle.

The legal suits of 1949

On 29 December, 1949, Magistrate Markandey Singh attached the Babri Masjid and appointed Priya Dutt Ram as receiver. Ram took over the property on 5 January, 1950 and drew a scheme on the arrangements to be made there, including the cost involved in organising bhog. Eleven days later the ploy to roll back the right of Muslims to the disputed site was legitimised.

On 16 January, 1950, Gopal Singh Visharad filed a civil suit (called Civil Suit No 2 of 1950) in the Faizabad court of the Civil Judge requesting that he be allowed to worship Lord Ram Lalla and other deities in the Babri Masjid. He also sought a permanent injunction against the removal of idols from the mosque.

A temporary injunction was granted to Visharad. But the district magistrate asked the government counsel to move for a modification of the order. It was argued that if the public were to have unrestricted admission inside the mosque to do puja and darshan, it would imply allowing one party (Hindus) to exercise their rights which were in dispute.

Civil Judge NN Chadha modified his earlier order on 19 January, 1950. It now read, "The parties are hereby restrained by means of the temporary injunction to refrain from removing the idols in question from the site of dispute and from interfering with the puja, etc, as at present carried on. The civil judge confirmed his interim order on 3 March, 1951, justifying it thus: The undisputed fact remains that on the date of this suit the idols of Shri Bhagwan Ram Chandra and others did exist on the site and that worship was being performedthough under some restrictions put by the executives.

The other undisputed fact that the idols hadnt been there on the site until 22 December, 1949 evening was ignored. What about the right of Muslims to pray inside the mosque? The civil judge said, It is a matter of admission between the parties that there are several mosques in the mohalla in question. The local Muslims will not, therefore, be put to much inconvenience, if the interim injunction remains in force during the pendency of the case.

Shorn of the legalese, the civil judges order implied that the worshippers couldnt go inside the mosque, but, as was learnt in a case in 1986, could do darshan of Ram Lalla through the iron grills of the doors of the Babri Masjid. The civil judges order was confirmed by the Allahabad High Court on 26 April, 1955. It, however, asked the civil court in Faizabad to expeditiously decide the suit.

The idol of Ram Lalla in the Babri Masjid was now the new reality, which had been undeniably crafted because of the view the judiciary took. This new reality was to remain as long as the Ayodhya dispute wasnt settled in the court. That wasnt to happen for decades, thereby reinforcing in Hindus that the site belonged to them.

Three new suits

Meanwhile, apart from Visharads, three additional suits were filed. In December 1950, Ramchandra Das Paramhansa filed a suit asking for the same relief as Visharad had. In 1959, Nirmohi Akhara and Mahant Raghunath Das filed a suit asking for the management and charge of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple. In 1961, the Sunni Central Board of Waqfs filed the fourth suit asking the Babri Masjid to be declared as a public mosque and that it be handed over to them. In 1964, all these four cases were consolidated and the suit of the Sunni Waqf Board was made the leading case.

The suits remained pending in Faizabads civil court, more or less forgotten until the Ayodhya dispute was back in the headlines in 1986.

The decisive turn

On 28 January, 1986, Munsif Hari Shankar Dubey, of Sadar, Faizabad, issued an order rejecting Umesh Shankar Pandeys plea that locks on the gates of the Babri Masjid should be removed. Pandey wanted this relief as it created a hurdle for the Hindus to do puja and have darshan of Ram Lalla. It was, as he argued, also in violation of the interim injunction granted in the 1950s.

Pandey appealed against the Munsifs order in the District Court. The district judge KM Pandey in his order of 1 February, 1986 said that the idols inside the disputed premises were visible from outside. The outer gate had no doors. Inside the main gate there is an enclosure made of grills and two doors have been placed in the inner enclosure. In both the gates locks were placed. No records are available on this point as to who passed the orders, he said.

After examining both the district magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police, Faizabad, Pandey concluded that law and order wouldnt be affected even if the locks on the gates were opened. He ruled, This appears to be an unnecessary irritant to the applicant (Umesh C Pandey) and other members of the community. There does not appear any necessity to create an artificial barrier between the idols and the devotees.

Once again, status quo at the disputed site was invoked to justify the enlarging of the rights of Hindus to the disputed site. Pandey said, After having heard the parties it is clear that the members of the other community, namely Muslims, are not going to be affected by any stretch of imagination if the locks of the gatesare opened and the idols inside the premises are allowed to be seen and worshipped by pilgrims and devotees.

Thus, were the locks from the gates of the Babri Masjid removed, spawning a fervour that gave a fillip to the Sangh Parivars Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

The countdown begins

In 1989, just before the Lok Sabha elections, consecrated bricks were ferried from different parts of the country to Ayodhya, stoking the popular passion. In the same year, yet another suit was filed in the Ayodhya dispute, on behalf of Bhagwan Sri Ram Virajman represented by next friend Deoki Nandan Agarwala, a former High Court judge. The suit wanted the court to declare that the entire premises of Sri Ramjanmabhumi at Ayodhyabelong to the plaintiff deities; and that a perpetual injunction be issued against any interference in the construction of a Ram temple at the site.

All the suits in the Ayodhya dispute were transferred to the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court in 1989, because of an application filed by the Uttar Pradesh government in 1987. The Ayodhya issue had cleaved the nation and a judicial verdict or negotiated settlement was urgently required to bridge the social chasm.

But the chasm only widened as BJP leader LK Advani undertook a rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya, hoping to mount pressure on the VP Singh government to hand over the mosque to Hindus for building a temple there. Two years later, on December 6, 1992 the Babri Masjid was demolished. A makeshift temple sprang up at the disputed spot.

This was now the new reality. The judiciary adjusted to it as well.

After the demolition

On January 7, 1993 the PV Narasimha Rao government issued an ordinance taking over 66.7 acres of land in Ayodhya, including the 2.77 acres on which the Babri Masjid had stood. The ordinance was turned into the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act, 1993. The Act prescribed maintenance of status quo that prevailed just before the acquisition. It meant that the makeshift temple was to remain and puja was to be continued.

The Act also abated court proceedings on disputes over ownership rights to all properties in the acquired land. In other words, the Ayodhya title suits, pending in the High Court, too abated. Either the government was willing to let the mosque become a temple or planned to use the prevailing status quo to negotiate a deal between Hindus and Muslims. It tells you a bit about the nature of the Indian state.

A five-member bench heard a challenge to the Act in what is known as Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India, and also debated over the Presidential Reference that was made to it. The Reference asked Supreme Court to give its opinion on whether a Hindu temple or any Hindu religious structure existed prior to the construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi Masjid-Babri Masjid in the area on which the structure stood.

The Supreme Court refused to give its opinion on the Presidential Reference. The Reference, after all, did not involve a point of law. But worse, its formulation reeked of bias. As former Chief Justice of India AM Ahmadi pointed out to this writer in a recent interview, We were being asked to give an opinion on whether there existed a temple or a Hindu religious structure, not whether a Rama temple existed. However, the cause of the dispute was that a Rama temple had been demolished to build the Babri Masjid in 1528. It was akin to shifting the goalpost, so to speak.

By a majority 3:2, the Supreme Court upheld the Act but for the provision regarding the abatement of title suits. The title suits were consequently revived. But the Supreme Court, as had the High Court and the District Court in several instances in the past, recognised the new reality as status quo  the makeshift temple and the puja in it was to continue. No thought for the fact that the makeshift temple had been built after reducing to rubble the Babri Masjid and usurping the site.

This was the nub of the minority judgement that Justice A.M. Ahmadi and Justice SP Bharucha delivered in Ismail Faruqui vs Union of India. They declared the Act unconstitutional. No account is taken of the fact that the structure thereon had been destroyed in a most reprehensible act, they said. The perpetrators of the deed struck not only against a place of worship but at the principles of secularism, democracy and the rule of law. To condone the acquisition of a place of worship in such circumstances is to efface the principle of secularism from the Constitution.

Ayodhya in 21st century

In 2010, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court delivered its verdict on the Ayodhya. It partitioned the dispute land three ways between Ram Virajman, Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board. The Ayodhya title suits were over the question as to who owned the Babri Masjid. It wasnt about partitioning the property. For this reason, the verdict was challenged in the Supreme Court in 2010.

For seven years, the 13 appeals and cross-appeals in the Ayodhya dispute lay in deep freeze. On 11 August this year, a three-member bench headed by Dipak Misra, now Chief Justice of India, ordered that the final arguments in the case should begin from 5 December, without adjournments. The date has now been shifted to 8 February, 2018.

The hearing in the case was ostensibly sped up because of an application of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who asked the Supreme Court to allow for the rebuilding of the Ram Temple so that he could exercise his fundamental right to worship Ram Lalla without impediment. Though Ram Lalla is worshipped at the disputed site even today, there are, in Swamys view, impediments aplenty, including having to take darshan of the deity from a distance.

It is debatable whether the right to worship can be claimed on a property in dispute or belonging to someone, let alone a site where a place of worship was demolished to usurp it. This, perhaps, could have been the ground for dismissing Swamys application outright. But then, Muslims can wait for their rights, not Swamy.

Misra retires on 2 October, 2018. This has had many to think he has ordered day-to-day hearing so that he can deliver the judgement before superannuation. Indeed, it would do the nation good to judicially resolve the Ayodhya dispute as early as possible. But herein is the catch  a verdict in the months before the 2019 election could tear apart the countrys social fabric. Whether the verdict favours a temple or mosque, triumphalism and disappointment will lead to communal polarisation, sharpened even further because of elections.

A judgment either way will undoubtedly be to the BJPs advantage. A verdict in favour of the temple will lead the Sangh Parivar to organise a massive show to build it. An adverse judgement will have it turn the 2019 election into a referendum on Lord Ram, asking people to give the BJP a brute majority to enact a law to supersede the Supreme Courts judgement and build a temple.

These things apart, one thing is sure  should the Supreme Court favour building a temple at the disputed site, it would have retrospectively endorsed the deliberate altering of reality that took more than 100 years to achieve, an alteration in which the judiciary too had a role.

This article is largely based on original documents published in AG Nooranis magisterial work, The Babri Masjid Question: 1528 and 2003; Volume I and II.
Blood Assurance established the Crystal Green Memorial Scholarship fund for high school students dedicated to serving the needs of their community. The program offers a total of 12 one-year scholarships in the amount of $1,500 each. The scholarship was created in memory of Crystal Green, a young woman who lost her life in a battle to aplastic anemia. Aplastic anemia is a rare condition that occurs when the body no longer produces enough new blood cells and leads to a higher risk of uncontrolled bleeding and infections.



Crystal Green was an incredible young woman who set an example of strength, kindness and care, said Jay Baumgardner, executive director for marketing and community relations. Blood Assurance is dedicated to serving the needs of each community, and the Crystal Green Memorial Scholarship is one way we are able to accomplish that. We encourage students to apply for this scholarship in order to continue their education after high school.



Ms. Green, who graduated from Dade County High School in Trenton, was a student at Georgia Southern University before suffering a setback with aplastic anemia. After hundreds of hours receiving platelet transfusions and a bone marrow transplant, Ms. Green lost her long battle in Nov. 1998, shortly after turning 21. In her honor, Blood Assurance established the scholarship fund in 1999.



Students must complete the online application process and attend a Project Lifesaver high school in one of the five states served by Blood Assurance, which include Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. The completed applications must be submitted online by Feb. 1, 2018.

To find out more information about the Crystal Green Memorial Scholarship and to apply online, visit www.bloodassurance.org/youth-programs.



All donors who give in December will receive a long-sleeved Oh, What Fun it is to Give t-shirt; donors 18 years or older will be entered into a drawing to win a KitchenAid Mixer Prize Pack.



To be eligible to donate blood, you must be at least 18 years old (16 and 17 years old with parental consent), weigh 110 pounds or more and be in good health. Donors are asked to drink plenty of fluids  avoiding caffeine  and eat a meal that is rich in iron prior to donating. To schedule an appointment at a donor center or blood drive near you, visit www.bloodassurance.org, call 800-962-0628 or text BAGIVE  to 444999.
Students at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) were left bemused after issues like 'Kautilya on GST' and 'Manu on globalisation' made an appearance in the question paper for a course titled "Social and Political Thought in Ancient and Medieval India", said media reports. The course was a part of the Political Science paper for MA (Master of Arts) students.

When contacted by The Indian Express, Professor Kaushal Kishore Mishra (who set the question paper), said that he had "interpreted the two thinkers and taught their philosophies through new and current examples like GST and globalisation... Kautilyas Arthashastra is the first Indian book which hints at the current concept of GST... Kautilya is one such thinker who propounded national economic integration  ekikaran."

One student told the newspaper that while Mishra had dictated the answers and said that these questions would be part of the question paper, they were not explained in the textbooks. Other students of colleges affiliated to the BHU said that they had not been taught the answers, and it was not part of their course material.

The head of BHU's political science department, RP Singh, told The Hindu that "Paper-setting is done as per specialisation and expertise. It is the responsibility of the expert to set questions." A political science professor at JNU, MN Thakur, criticised the questions saying that, "Even if one seeks to investigate whether there was a taxation system similar to todays GST in the Arthashastra, it could at best be a research paper that we may judge on its merits. But in an exam that tests the knowledge of students in the areas taught, such questions have no place. Whoever set the paper has acted mindlessly."

The Indian Express report also noted that Mishra admitted to being an RSS member but said that his personal beliefs have nothing to do with his teaching.

It is not the first time that government policies have made an unexpected appearance in college curriculum. In April 2016, the Gujarat government had dictated a list of 82 topics for doctoral theses which included various State welfare schemes and programmes, according to The Times of India. The list had topics like "Swachh Bharat Abhiyan", "Comparative study of Sardar Patel Awas Yojna and Indira Awas Yojana", "Gujarat: Good governance for growth, scientific management and development  A critical study of existing pattern and future course A policy suggestions (sic)" etc. The move had been criticised by educators who had said that the government wanted the students to do the work of government servants.

That move had also sparked a piece by Monobina Gupta in The Caravan where she argued that the BJP wants universities to imbibe RSSs culture of nation building  whether by flying the national flag on central university campuses, dictating their curricula, or mandating terms of research to PhD scholars. However, this demand for unquestioning loyalty is causing confrontations in universities across India.
Ahmedabad: A special court on Wednesday granted bail to former BJP MP Dinu Bogha Solanki, an accused in the 2010 murder of RTI activist Amit Jethwa, on condition that he will stay in Diu town of the Union Territory till the court completes the hearing in the case.

Special CBI judge KM Dave allowed the bail plea on the ground that the eight key eyewitnesses in the murder case have been examined. On 30 October, the Supreme Court had cancelled his bail until the examination of eight key witnesses.

Eighteen more witnesses are expected to be examined in the case.

Solanki had surrendered before the police around a month ago. He is currently lodged in Sabarmati central jail.

The high court had ordered retrial in the matter, which was challenged by Solanki in the apex court.

Solanki is the prime accused in the murder case of Jethwa, who was shot dead in broad daylight outside the Gujarat High Court in July 2010.

The Supreme Court had in February 2014 granted bail to him considering that the probe agency had submitted a supplementary charge sheet and the trial was likely to take a long time.

The CBI had named in its charge sheet Solanki, who represented Junagadh constituency in Lok Sabha, in the case along with six others, including his nephew Shiva Solanki and sharp-shooter Sailesh Pandya.

Jethwa had filed numerous RTI applications and a PIL in the high court against illegal mining in and around Gir forest sanctuary. The case was transferred to the CBI in 2012 by the Gujarat High Court after his father alleged inaction by the state police.
The Haryana Board of School Education (HBSC) declared its open school results for classes X and XII on Tuesday, media reports said.

Candidates can access their results from the BSEH official website, http://bsehexam2017.in/.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Jagbir Singh, secretary of BSEH, said that a total of 52,226 students appeared for Class X exams in the state, out of which 13,390 students passed, an overall pass percentage of 25.62. In Class XII, the pass percentage came down to 23.67.

The examinations were held in Septemeber, the report added.

According to Times Now, the pass percentage of girls has been better than that of boys. Overall, however, more boys appeared and passed the examination.

BSEH conducts annual and supplementary examinations at secondary (Class X) and senior secondary (Class XII) levels, NDTV reported.

To check results, eligible candidates may follow these steps:

1) Visit the official website of Board of School education Haryana (BSEH)

2) Click on the respective link in the top Navigation bar for secondary and senior secondary results.

3) Enter roll number or name

4) Click on find result
Mumbai: A democratic country like India is cutting a very sorry figure with open threats being given to artists and others and with attacks on people for voicing their opinions, the Bombay High Court said on Thursday.

The high court, while referring to the Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversy-hit film Padmavati, observed that the director has not been able to release his film and an actress is facing death threats. The HC also pulled up the CBI and the state CID, which are investigating the murder cases of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare respectively, over the failure to arrest the main suspects in these cases so far.

The strong remarks were made by a division bench of Justices SC Dharmadhikari and Bharti Dangre while hearing the petitions filed by family members of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking court supervision on their murder probe. "In this country, we have come to a situation where people cannot voice their opinions. Everytime a person says he or she wants to voice their opinion, somebody or a fringe group says they would not allow it. This does not augur well for the state," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

"In which other country do you see threats given to artists and performers? It is distressing to know that a person makes a feature film and several people work tirelessly towards it, but is not able to release the film because of continued threats. What have we come to?" he said.

"Today, somebody says I will give a reward to anyone who kills an actress. Such open threats! People are taking pride in saying we will give reward to those, who will kill an actress. And even chief ministers are saying they will not allow the release of the movie in their states," Justice Dharmadhikari said referring to some states banning the release of Padmavati.

He added that if such things are happening to people with financial backings, what will happen to poor people. The court noted that this was censorship of a different kind and it was damaging India's image.

"What concerns us is India's image and reputation as a democratic country. We are the largest democracy. We cannot take pride in the happenings of such incidents day in and day out. We are cutting a very sorry figure," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

Referring to the recent case where a foreign couple was attacked in Uttar Pradesh, he said, "Somebody visits this country as tourists and they are attacked." The bench noted that states like Maharashtra and Karnataka are known for their "progressive and modern thinking".

"Maharashtra and Karnataka are known for social reformers and thinkers and with such incidents these states are cutting a sorry figure politically too," the court said. It added that in other countries when any major incident occurs, the suspect is apprehended, dead or alive, within hours.

"However, our country's agencies have not learnt anything from past incidents like the attack on Parliament and the Prime Minister," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

The court said Dabholkar was killed in 2013 and Pansarein 2015, but till date the investigating agencies (CBI and state CID) have not been able to arrest the main suspects. "We cannot allow such serious matters to linger for years. We cannot allow constitutional rights to be taken away. Enough damage has been caused already. Has any senior official from the two agencies bothered to find out why the probe is not getting any headaway?" the court asked.

It said even after these two attacks, there are persons, who are openly and boldly voicing their opinions, are being threatened. "At the core of these two crimes is the bold attempts being made by fringe groups to attack those who voice their rational views, thoughts, feelings and expressions," the court said.

"Hence, we feel that it is time to call upon the CBI and the CID to involve their superiors. If the senior officials do not wish to be summoned to court, then they should meet with the counsels appearing in court and take stock of the situation," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

The court directed a meeting to be convened with secretary of state home department, Director General of Police (DGP) and Joint Director of CBI with Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh and Ashok Mundargi, who appears for CID in the matter.

The bench has now posted the matter for further hearing on 21 December. While the CBI is probing the Dabholkar case, the Pansare murder case is being investigated by a Special Investigation Team of the CID.

Dabholkar was murdered in Pune on 20 August, 2013 and Pansare was shot on 16 February, 2015 in Kolhapur. He died on 20 February in a hospital.
India on Thursday rejected China's claim that its drone "invaded" Chinese airspace, according to a statement from the Ministry of Defence, The Indian Express reported.

An Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC in the Sikkim Sector, a Ministry of Defence statement said, according to The Indian Express.

Indian officials reportedly alerted Chinese authorities over the missing unmanned aerial vehicle, the report added. In response, Chinese side reverted with location details. Exact cause of the incident is under investigation. Matter being dealt with in accordance with established protocols, the defence ministry added.

On Thursday, Chinese defence ministry voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the "intrusion by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to New Delhi".

"The Indian move violated China's territorial sovereignty. We strongly express our dissatisfaction and opposition," deputy director of the army's western theatre combat bureau, Zhang Shuili, said in a statement.

Zhang did not give details about when or where the incident happened.

The incident comes shortly after both nations pulled back their troops to resolve the Doka La standoff.

The standoff began in mid-June after Chinese troops started building a road on the remote Doka La plateau.

With inputs from AFP.
New Delhi: India is likely to get the membership of the Wassenaar arrangement, one of the key export control regimes that deals with non-proliferation, if everything goes well at the plenary session on Thursday, Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

He also said Russia is trying to develop relations with Pakistan, "without any hidden agenda" and "in no case at India's expense". There are "very good chances of a positive action" on India's application on Thursday at the Wassenaar arrangement's plenary session in Vienna, Ryabkov said.

The two-day plenary session of the 41-member club commenced on Wednesday.

Ryabkov said the issue of India's membership to the nuclear suppliers group (NSG), another major non-proliferation group, has been "politicised", which, he termed, "unfortunate" and noted that New Delhi's application should viewed on merit.

"If everything goes as expected, I keep my fingers crossed on Thursday we may see a decision of accepting India into the Wassenaar arrangement, which is also very important export control regime," he said. The deputy foreign minister of Russia asserted that this is an example and reflection of his country's unwavering commitment and support to India in internationally recognised export control groups.the Indian application on the Wassenaar arrangement (which) could be taken on Thursday," he said while interacting with media persons at the Russian Embassy in New Delhi.

Earlier this year, India approved SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment, and Technologies) items, mandatory under the Wassernaar arrangement. Through the revised list of items, India also seeks to send a message about its larger commitment to non-proliferation.

Ryabkov said Russia has been "very straightforward" and "vocal" in supporting India in its endeavour of getting NSG membership because of the country's "impeccable and impressive record" in the area of non-proliferation. He said other countries "who only speak", should also be more proactive in helping India enter the elite club.

"The issue of India's membership has been more politicised than anything else and it is an unfortunate

development. "We want to bring the group back to its roots and make it possible for the group to consider everyone's supporting applications on its merits and this is how it should be done in case of India," he said.

China has, on several occasions, stone-walled India's bid for membership to the NSG. India is already a member of the missile control technology regime (MTCR).

China is neither the member of the Wassenaar Arrangement nor the MTCR and the Australia Group.

Membership to the Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group, another export control regime, would give India a chance for a closer interaction with member-states and also hold up its credentials, despite not being a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

The Russian deputy foreign minister said he had an extensive discussion with foreign secretary S Jaishankar on issues ranging from the volatile situation in the Korean Peninsula to India's bid for NSG membership.

On Pakistan's entry to the NSG, Ryabkov said there is no prospect for any "unanimity" with respect to the Pakistani application. "So, I don't think it will possible to interlink the application of India and Pakistan for becoming members of the NSG
Kolkata: Classes at the GD Birla Centre for Education will resume from Thursday after six days as the school management and guardians have reached a settlement over the demand for removal of principal in the wake of alleged sexual assault of a four-year-old girl.

A school managing committee spokesman told PTI that the authorities have decided to "relieve" principal Sharmila Nath from her present responsibilities with immediate effect. He said classes in the senior section will start from Thursday as agreed in the meeting between the Guardians' Forum and the management committee. The junior section classes will start from Friday, he said.

A Guardians' Forum spokesperson said after the meeting, "The Principal has been relieved of her responsibilities with immediate effect. And the classes will resume from tomorrow." Asked if the principal was removed, she said, "removal is a term which entails long legal process."

The vice-principal will be the officiating principal from Thursday, the forum spokesperson said while reading out a statement.

On 30 November, a four-year-old student was allegedly sexually assaulted in the GD Birla Centre for Education which led to the arrest of two physical training instructors. The parents of the girl had lodged an FIR against Nath on 2 December demanding the school principal's arrest for allegedly suppressing facts about the incident. Nath was summoned to the Kolkata Police headquarters in Lalbazar on Tuesday.

West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights chairperson Ananya Chakraborti, who was also present at the meeting, said, "The school will reopen from tomorrow and the principal has been relieved of her responsibilities. We are happy over the outcome."

The meeting was attended by the school management, representatives of the Guardians' Forum, senior police officers and Chakraborti. The forum's spokesperson said the management promised to look into their other demands  having no male teacher in both junior and senior sections, CCTV in school buses. Hundreds of parents assembled outside the school gate before 5:00 pm and waited for the outcome of the meeting.

The police have arrested two physical training teachers of the school in connection with the incident. It has also formed a special committee to look into the allegations of negligence and false representation on part of the school.
Madurai: The Madras High Court directed the Centre to ensure that an incentive scheme, that's aimed at reducing the dropout rate among girl students of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities after Class VIII, reaches all the beneficiaries of Tamil Nadu.

Justices KK Sasidharan and GR Swaminathan of the Madurai bench gave the direction on a petition that claimed that no girl student in the state had benefited under the National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education after 2009.

Rejecting the petitioner's claim, the Centre's counsel said it was wrong to say that funds were not given under the scheme to students in Tamil Nadu.

The amount disbursed for 2011-12 was refunded to the Centre as the state government had not provided the list of beneficiaries till November 2016, despite several reminders, he claimed.

Earlier, the petitioner had submitted that no girl student in the state had received the incentives after 2008-09. Recording the submissions, the judges said the state's principal secretary of school education should send a fresh proposal to the Union human resource development ministry and social justice and empowerment ministry, which should be considered and funds sanctioned.

Disposing the petition, the judges refused to concur with the contention of the Centre's counsel that many students would have completed their education and it might not be possible to trace them.

They also said the pending proposals should also be expedited and the eligible students of the state should get their incentives at the earliest.

The Centre had launched the scheme in 2008-09 in a bid to reduce the dropout rate among the Adidravidar and tribal girl

students and promote enrollment of girls in the age group of 14-18 in educational institutions.

Under the scheme, an amount of Rs 3,000 is deposited in the bank accounts of eligible girl students, which can be withdrawn after they turn 18 and clear their Class X board exam.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has approved the farm loan waiver of 41 lakh farmers to the tune of Rs 19,537 crore till now, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Thursday.

"Around 77 lakh online applications were received out of which action has been taken on 69 lakh applications after resolving the lacunae. The government has, uptil now, approved Rs 19,537 crore for 41 lakh farmers accounts," a statement issued by the chief minister's office said.

Out of Rs 19,537 crore, a sum of Rs 4673 crore is part of One Time Settlement (OTS), the statement added.

Fadnavis chaired a meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee to review the progress of crediting of waiver amount into accounts of farmers under the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman scheme.

The chief minister asked banks to speed up the process of actual disbursement into farmer accounts and also insisted for more coordinated efforts in implementing the OTS.

Meanwhile, the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde claimed that the figures provided by Fadnavis were "fake" and asked him to reveal the names of farmers who have benefitted from the scheme.

"This is the seventh day of our padyatra. Till now we have not met a single farmer who received the loan waiver amount," he said.

He claimed that the foot march by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) against the government will have disastrous consequences for the BJP.

Munde further said that he saw crops destroyed by bollworms when he visited a cotton farm at Pavnar village in Wardha district.

"Instead of compensating the farmer for the loss, the farmer told us that government officials asked him to sell whatever cotton was left and pay the electricity bill," he said.

Munde added that the farmer, as a mark of protest against the state government, asked him to run a plough on a grown cotton field.

"Since the farmer forced me to do so, I did it with a heavy heart," he said.
A Muslim labourer from West Bengal was allegedly burnt alive in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district for allegedly committing "love jihad", said media reports.

#BREAKING -- Horror in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district, a man burnt alive allegedly for committing 'love jihad'. The perpetrator of the heinous crime made a video of the act which was later put on social media. pic.twitter.com/AaCA4eN9vj  News18 (@CNNnews18) December 7, 2017

The accused  who was arrested, according to News18 on Thursday had shot a video of the act and uploaded it on social media. The police has also detained eight of the accused's aides and a woman, said the India Today report.

Rajsamand Love Jihad case: Police detains 8 freinds of accused and a woman.  IndiaTodayFLASH (@IndiaTodayFLASH) December 7, 2017

In the video, the accused, identified as Shambhu Lal Regar, was seen beating the victim and later setting him on fire. The accused was also seen next to the burning body making threats on "love jihad". Regar was seen saying that those who indulge in 'love jihad' would meet the same fate, said Times Now report.

#EXCLUSIVE -- The accused has been arrested, other details are yet to be known: Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria to CNN-News18 on man killed over alleged love jihad in Rajasthan pic.twitter.com/64q0W0H5Mb  News18 (@CNNnews18) December 7, 2017

It is shocking how he killed the man and made a video of it. Accused has been arrested and a special investigation team (SIT) has been set up for investigation in the case: Gulab Chand Kataria, #Rajasthan Home Minister on incident in Rajsamand where a man was burnt to death. pic.twitter.com/4d7vbPc3NH  ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017

The half-burnt body of the victim was found near a hotel in Rajsamand on Wednesday, said The Times of India report. The police later confirmed that the body was the same as seen burning in the video, added the report.

Agricultural tools used in the murder and the victim's bike were found from the location of the murder, said an India Today report. The victim has been identified by some as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh, the report added.

However, The Indian Express report said that the police identified the half-charred body as that of Mohammed Afrazul.

During preliminary investigations, we have come to know that one of the videos in which Regar makes the inflammatory statements was shot in a local temple a little while after he murdered Afrazul, Additional Director-General of Police, crime, Pankaj Kumar Singh was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

On 19 November, a controversial booklet and a pamphlet warning Hindu girls of 'love jihad' were allegedly distributed at a stall in an Hindu spiritual and service fair in Jaipur, prompting the police to order an inquiry.

The pamphlets, carrying a picture of a Bollywood actress, warned the people against 'love jihad' and also claimed that two Muslim actors had left their Hindu wives.

Amid claims that the material was handed out at a stall of Bajrang Dal, its coordinator Ashok Singh had said that it was not distributed from their stall.

With inputs from PTI
The Cleveland Fire Department is having its annual Career Showcase on Tuesday, at 6 p.m. for individuals interested or considering a career in firefighting.

The Career Showcase will take place at Fire Station 1 at 555 South Ocoee Street, Cleveland, Tn. 37311.

Fire department staff will discuss the application process, job duties, education, specialized training and the benefits of being a member of the Cleveland Fire Department. Staff will also discuss some of the many responsivities fire department staff perform daily including: fire, extrication, medical first response, haz-mat, high and low angle rescue and swift water rescues.

For questions about the Cleveland Fire Department Career Showcase, call 423 476-6753.
One of the oldest women's colleges in Patna, Magadh Mahila College, introduced a new dress code on Wednesday, whereby it banned girls from wearing jeans and Patiala suits and using mobile phones in classrooms.

According to ANI, the dress code is set to be introduced from January 2018.

Bihar: #Patna's Magadh Mahila College administration bans jeans and Patiala suits on campus & mobile phones in classrooms. Dress code to be introduced from January 2018. pic.twitter.com/yrjAEEYQrJ  ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2017

Speaking to the news agency, college principal Shashi Sharma justified the ban and said, "I was requested by the girls to bring in a dress code as there is social disparity here. Muslim girls don't wear jeans, so they never objected."

She added that dresses "worn by Hindu girls were embarrassing".

About the ban on mobile phones, Sharma said that theirs wasn't a "modern college", and that it would take 50 years to reach that point. "There's an area where phones can be used, but not in classrooms. Ours isn't a modern college that it can take such modernity. We think traditionally and are miles away from modernity. It'll take us 50 years to reach there," she said.

Furthermore, student union general secretary Laila Qazmi also said the ban on jeans wasn't new. "Ban on jeans is an old rule. Phones in classrooms were always prohibited. Girls never objected to the dress code. In fact, they requested for it in first place," she told ANI.

The Magadh Mahila College in Bihar is affiliated to the Patna University. Back in 2013, the college had banned students from wearing sleeveless tops and t-shirts in order to "maintain decorum", reported The Indian Express.

Instances of colleges imposing bizarre dress codes on students are quite commonplace in the country. In 2014, a circular issued by Nalanda College of Law in Borivali in Mumbai stated girls had to wear tops with sleeves no shorter than four inches and reaching at least seven inches below the waist. The college also banned students from sporting tattoos and piercings, according to NDTV.

Similarly, Mumbai's SNDT Women's University introduced a dress code for its students in January 2017 asking them to wear "decent and formal clothes to an educational institute", reported Hindustan Times.

Prior to that, the city's St Xavier's College had also placed a ban on students wearing ripped jeans.
New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday said it has arrested an arms supplier involved in the murder of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain in Ludhiana in Punjab.

An NIA official told IANS: "The agency has arrested Malook who is accused of providing weapons to the assailants who killed Gosain." The arrest was made during a joint operation by the NIA and the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Wednesday.

On Sunday, a team of NIA and Uttar Pradesh Police was attacked by a mob when it raided Nahali village in Ghaziabad district in pursuit of the accused.

Constable Tahzib Khan suffered a leg injury when the mob stoned the raiding team and even fired at them. The mob also damaged an official vehicle.

The NIA was also looking for Iqbal, a resident of Hapur district for giving shelter to Malook.

NIA teams are reportedly searching for him in the National Capital Region.

On Tuesday, Pahar Singh, 48, was arrested from his residence in Meerut on charges of supplying a home-made weapon to the main accused, Hardeep Singh.

The NIA earlier had arrested Ramandeep and Hardeep Singh for the murder of Gosain, 60, who was shot dead on 17 October near his house while returning after a morning RSS meeting.

The NIA took over the case from Punjab Police.
The family of a Muslim labourer who was burnt alive in Rajasthan for alleged "love jihad" demanded the death penalty for the accused and claimed that there was a conspiracy, The Indian Express reported. The victim Mohammed Afrazul's family is reportedly in disbelief, saying, "Those who killed him like an animal and showed his pictures to the world should be hanged."

"We even spoke to him on Tuesday. He used to call us everyday. We do not even know what love jihad is. He has grandchildren. They butchered my father like animals before setting him on fire. I want them to suffer in the same manner. I have seen the video and heard the cries of my helpless father while he was being killed," Rejina Khatun, Afrazuls daughter, told The Indian Express.

"There is a conspiracy and big people are involved. What can a labourer do? The manner in which the crime is highlighted on social media shows that there is a deep conspiracy and big people are involved. We have relatives in Rajasthan who are at the police station now," Zeenat Khan, Afrazuls niece, told The Indian Express.

Afrazul, who hailed from West Bengal, was burnt alive in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district. The video of the gruesome incident went viral on social media.

The accused, identified as Shambhu Lal Regar, has since been arrested, SP Rajsamand Manoj Kumar told PTI. He said that Regar, a resident of Raj Nagar, was being interrogated.

State home minister Gulabchand Kataria condemned the incident and said that the investigation has been handed over to SIT for further investigation. "The labourer died on the spot," police said.

According to the inspector general of Udaipur, Anand Srivastava, the accused was also seen shouting at the victim in the video. An investigation is on and matter is being probed for further details, he added.

On 19 November, a controversial booklet and a pamphlet warning Hindu girls about love jihad were allegedly distributed at a stall in an Hindu spiritual and service fair in Jaipur, prompting the police to order an inquiry.

The pamphlets, carrying a picture of a Bollywood actress, warned the people against love jihad and also claimed that two Muslim actors had left their Hindu wives.

Amid claims that the material was handed out at a stall of Bajrang Dal, its coordinator Ashok Singh denied that it was distributed from their stall.

With inputs from PTI
The Supreme Court collegium has recommended the appointment of 25 additional judges at permanent posts in five high courts and elevated 19 lawyers as judges in three high courts.

The collegium  comprising Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and the two senior-most judges, justices J Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi  recommended the appointments. The meeting, held on 4 December, gave its nod for the elevation of five lawyers as judges in Karnataka High Court on the recommendation of its chief justice earlier in 2017.

A candidate is initially appointed as an additional judge of the high court for a two-year period and the appointment is later made permanent if the collegium is satisfied with their judicial work, reported Hindustan Times.

Among the lawyers elevated as judges in the high court were Dixit Krishna Shripad, Shankar Ganapathi Pandit, Ramakrishna Devdas, Bhotanhosur Mallikarjuna Shyam Prasad and Siddappa Sunil Dutt Yadav.

Livelaw reported that the Karnataka governor and chief minister had objections to some of the names and these were rejected by the collegium. The governor had mentioned that some of the people recommended did not meet the requirement of efficiency in their performance. However, the collegium said that the governor had not specified the names of these people and the basis for forming such an opinion.

The collegium also took into account the disagreement between the Karnataka chief minister and certain bodies of advocates over non-representation of cross-sections of the society on the bench of the high court. The chief minister had advised that the entire proposal be returned to the high court for reconsideration.

The apex court body said the high court collegium had taken into account merit, experience, performance, character and conduct of the recommended persons and dealt with adequate representation.

With regard to Calcutta High Court, the collegium accepted the recommendation of the chief justice and gave its nod for the elevation of five lawyers as judges. The lawyers cleared for elevation are Shampa Sarkar, Sabyasachi Chaudhury, Ravi Krishan Kapur, Arindam Mukherjee and Sakya Sen.

Interestingly, Sakya Sen has been elevated even though he does not meet the age criterion of 45, says the Hindustan Times report. However, considering his ability and the shortage of judges from the bar, the collegium relaxed the age criterion in his case.

The collegium rejected the name of Advocate Piush Chaturvedi as "his average professional income is well below the prescribed minimum professional income limit. As he does not qualify the income criterion, the proposal for his elevation to high court does not inspire confidence and is, therefore, rejected", according to The Indian Express.

The collegium also recommended the elevation of nine advocates as judges at the Madras High Court while rejecting the name of two. Advocates C Emalias, PT Asha, M Nirmal Kumar, Subramonium Prasad, Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, N Anand Venkatesh, GK Ilanthiraiyan, Krishnan Ramasamy, and C Saravanan were elevated as judges of Madras High Court. One name was turned down because the person was older than 55, the maximum prescribed age for advocates recommended for elevation to the high court, said The Indian Express report.

With these appointments, the number of sitting judges in the Madras High Court is set to touch a record high but will still stay six short of the sanctioned strength of 75, according to The Times of India.

The Intelligence Bureau report on the advocates had revealed that they recommended advocates enjoyed "good personal and professional image and that nothing adverse has come to notice against their integrity," reported The Hindu.

Besides making the recommendation of elevation of advocates as judges in different high court, the apex court collegium also gave its nod for making 25 additional judges as permanent judges of five high courts.

Among those who were made permanent judges include justices Sandeep Sharma and Chander Sharma at the Himachal Pradesh High Court, Justice Narendar G at the Karnataka High Court, justices Ananda Sen and Anant Bijay Singh at the Jharkhand High Court and Justices Sanjay Agrawal and Rajendra Chandra Singh Samant at the Chhattisgarh High Court.

Eighteen additional judges were recommended for being made permanent judges in Madhya Pradesh High Court after the collegium rejected various complaints against the judges.

With inputs from agencies
An earthquake measuring 5.1 richter jolted Jammu and Kashmir early on Thursday morning. The earthquake struck 111-km northeast of Thang. There was no immediate report of any injury or destruction in parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Financial Express reported.

Another earthquake, measuring magnitude 5.5 on the Richter Scale, hit the hill state of Uttarakhand on Wednesday. The epicentre of the quake was believed to be in Rudraprayag. According to the National Seismological Centre, the earthquake took place around 8.49 pm and had a depth of at least 30 kilometres.

Moreover, tremors lasting a few seconds were also felt in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Chandigarh and Punjab.

"Reports so far, from all across the district, indicate nothing adverse. It was a mild event," a Uttarakhand Police official told The Hindu.

The tremor is considered moderate, India Meteorological Department told IANS.

This is the second earthquake in Uttarakhand in the past 24 hours. On Tuesday, a 3.3 magnitude quake was reported in the state. Uttarakhand, a part of the Himalayan region, falls under a high seismic zone.

As soon as tremors were felt, residents in various parts of Uttarakhand and other parts of north India.

#UttarPradesh: People in #Moradabad evacuated their buildings after earthquake tremors in the region pic.twitter.com/voYCLtZch8  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 6, 2017

With inputs from agencies
Shimla: Two policemen were suspended after three undertrials, charged with rape and murder cases, escaped from the Model Central Jail in Kanda, 15 kilometres from Shimla, in the early hours of Wednesday, police said.

The incident came to notice of the jail authorities in the morning at 4.15 am, a police official said.

The jail superintendent lodged a complaint in Boileauganj police station that three prisoners  Lila Dhar Kharak (22), Pratap Singh (27) and Prem Bahadur (22)  all hailing from Nepal, broke the jail and escaped.

During preliminary investigations, it was found that the inmates managed to escape due to the negligence of the two sentries on the night duty and both have been suspended, jail authorities said.

An inquiry has been ordered into the matter, Director General of Police (DGP) Somesh Goyal said.

The prisoners reportedly cut the bars of the cell with a blade, climbed the outer wall with the help of pipes and jumped out of the jail.

Goyal said that the photographs of the prisoners have been flashed, borders have been sealed and frantic search operations are on to nab the prisoners.

Kharak is an accused in a murder case, Singh has been charged with rape of a minor while Bahadur was under arrest in rape cases registered in Rampur, Goyal said.
TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbekistan and Afghanistan signed an agreement on Tuesday to extend a railroad connecting the two countries in a move which may eventually give Uzbekistan a direct link to sea ports. Landlocked Uzbekistans access to marine shipping is very limited. In 2011, Uzbek state railway company, Ozbekiston Temir Yollari, built a short link between Hairatan, a town on the Uzbek-Afghan border, and Mazar-i-Sharif, a major city in northern Afghanistan. Tashkent has since expressed interest in extending that line to Herat, another Afghan city in the northwest, and a gateway to Iran. Another link, already under construction, will connect Herat to Iran, which may eventually enable Uzbekistan to send cargoes to and from its Gulf ports. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyevs office said in a statement that he and visitng Afghan President Ashraf Ghani signed an agreement on the construction of the Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat railroad. It provided no details such as cost and funding. The original, short link was almost fully financed by the Asian Development Bank, which has also financed studies for the expansion project. Mirziyoyev and Ghani also signed 20 other deals, including an agreement on the construction of a new electric power line and deals for supplies of Uzbek agricultural products, medicines and other goods to Afghanistan.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources said amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

"The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UK's Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya," a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the government's case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, on Wednesday.

"The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the

Supreme Court of India," he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrate's court.

Mallya, who was arrested by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds
Jerusalem: Clashes between hundreds of Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops erupted across the West Bank on Thursday while demonstrators in Gaza burned posters of president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israeli and US flags.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger over Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tires on fire and hurled stones at anti-riot troops. In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians shuttered their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Trump's decision. Rallies were underway in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

There were no serious casualties reported in Thursday's clashes. But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders."

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s. But the group's capabilities are more limited now. Gaza, Hamas' stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank, many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tires, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments."

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Trump's decision. Netanyahu said Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Anger at the US has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia's royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the US ally. The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said Thursday the kingdom had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the US administration's decision," describing it "unjustified and irresponsible."

Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind. The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Trump's efforts to restart Mid-east peace talks.

US embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Trump's move, the United States disqualified itself as a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The talks, stalled in recent years, have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. In parallel, Israel has steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate a deal.

Trump's claim Wednesday that he still wants to pursue what he has called the "ultimate" Mideast deal was met with mounting skepticism.

"With its decision, the US has isolated itself and Israel, and has pushed the area into a dangerous situation and stopped the peace process," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Abbas said, "Without a doubt, this decision will not help at all in solving the problems in the area, but rather strengthen the extremists."

Abbas has not said what steps he would take if any. Later Thursday, he was to meet with his closest Arab ally, Jordan's King Abdullah II, to coordinate positions.

Jordan plays a central role in the mounting controversy and, alongside other US allies in the region, has slammed Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

The king is seen as one of Washington's most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role in Jerusalem, as religious guardian of a key Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem. Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The consultations between the monarch and Abbas will kick off a series of meetings in the Arab and Muslim world on how to respond to Trump.

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Trump's seismic policy shift.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Trump of throwing the Mideast into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom. "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Erdogan said, referring to Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankara's airport.
The two-day plenary session of the Wassenaar Arrangement regime commenced in Vienna on Thursday. One of the key export control regimes that deals with non-proliferation, the group is expected to look upon favourably on India's candidature for membership.

Russia, France, Germany and the United States are strongly supporting India's entry into the group, reports Deccan Herald. India's case is further strengthened by the fact that China  which blocked New Delhi's plea for admission into the NSG  is not a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Earlier in 2017, India approved SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment, and Technologies) items, mandatory under the Wassenaar Arrangement. Through the revised list of items, India also seeks to send a message about its larger commitment to non-proliferation.

India's strong candidature was acknowledged on Wednesday by Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov who said that India is likely to get the membership if everything goes well at the plenary session. "If everything goes as expected, I keep my fingers crossed on Thursday we may see a decision of accepting India into the Wassenaar arrangement, which is also very important export control regime," he said.

In May 2017, Germany had voiced its support for India's membership when it said, "Germany welcomed India's accession to the Missile Technology Control Regime. Germany also welcomed India's intensified engagement with the other export control regimes  the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement  and expressed its support for India's early accession to these regimes."

The US had expressed its support for India in June 2017 when it had said, "As global non-proliferation partners, the United States expressed strong support for India's early membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and the Australia Group." In the same month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte and was assured of Netherlands' support for India's membership to the agreement.

The Wassenaar Agreement

The 41-member group was established in December 1995 and has since become a measure to coordinate and harmonise policies governing exports of arms, dual-use equipment and sensitive technologies, explained an article by the Observer Research Foundation. The regulations are implemented through two lists: the Munitions List which tracks conventional weapons, and the Dual-Use Goods and Technologies List. New members are accepted based on specific criteria, including countries which produce/export arms or associated dual-use goods and technologies; establish national policies that restrict sale of arms and sensitive technologies to countries of concern; and adhere to non-proliferation regimes.

The group also ensures that transfer risks are understood by all member states. This is done by regular exchange of information and reporting arms transfers/denials on a six-monthly basis. In some cases, shorter time-frames are applicable. While the decision to transfer or deny the transfer of any item is the sole responsibility of each State, the group has agreed to a number of guidelines, elements and procedures as a basis for decision-making. The members meet regularly in Vienna where the Wassenaar Arrangement has established its headquarters and Secretariat.

The Wassenaar Arrangement Plenary is the group's decision-making body. It is composed of representatives of all Participating States and normally meets once a year, usually in December. The position of Plenary Chair is subject to annual rotation among Participating States. For 2017, the Chair is held by France. All Plenary decisions are taken by consensus.

The four non-proliferation regimes

The Wassenaar Agreement is one of the four regimes that govern transfers of potentially dangerous technologies.

The other three are the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) which controls export of nuclear material and technology, the Australia Group which restricts trade in materials used to make chemical and biological weapons, and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) which keeps a check on transfer of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of carrying a payload of at least 500 kg over a range of at least 300 kilometres.

Membership to the Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group would give India a chance for a closer interaction with member states and also hold up its credentials, despite not being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Writing for Firstpost, Sunil Raman had argued that entry into these four groups would end decades of denial of technology by the US and allow India to import high-level technology to build capability and become a suitable counter-weight to China.

India became a member of the MTCR in 2016. The membership gives India access to high-end missile technology from across the world and will allow India to purchase top-of-the-line missile systems. The MTCR has also paved the way for India to sell its supersonic BrahMos cruise missiles  developed jointly with Russia  to other countries.

The NSG focuses on stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons. India has attempted to join the NSG multiple times but has been stonewalled by China. In June 2017, China had said that India's membership bid to the NSG has become "more complicated" under the "new circumstances" as it again ruled out backing New Delhi's entry in the grouping, saying there should be non-discriminatory solution applicable to all non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory countries.

India's NSG bid was addressed by Ryabkov on Wednesday who said the issue been 'unfortunately politicised' and that New Delhi's application should viewed on merit.

The fourth group India seeks to join is the Australia Group formed in 1985 prompted by Iraqs use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War between 1980 to 1988. Australia  concerned with Iraqs development of chemical weapons  recommended putting checks on international export controls on chemical weapons and precursor chemicals. As more members joined, it expanded its focus to include chemical production equipment/technologies and measures to prevent proliferation of biological weapons.

With inputs from agencies
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For those with insurance, they must bring an insurance card and a photo ID, such as a drivers license. Insurance will be filed. If one does not have insurance, they may qualify for financial assistance. The MaryEllen Locher Breast Center receives grant funds from Avon Breast Cancer Crusade to provide women with education about and access to breast health services. Partnerships with Tennessee Breast and Cervical Screening Program and the Susan G. Komen Foundation provide eligible uninsured and under-insured women with breast and cervical screenings. If an abnormality is discovered, the diagnostic work up is covered and a financial plan is provided for any follow-up care. Women need to know their doctors first and last name.

To schedule a screening, call 423 495-4040 or 866 591-2254.


The trouble with lies is that one begets another, and then one gets caught within a vortex of falsehoods. It is painful to see the way senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal has tied himself up in knots, and a little amusing to think that the Congress believed it could get away with its strategy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

But then Congress was just being Congress. Congress "supreme leader" Rahul still resides in the 1980s. His politics remains tied to his grandmother's apron strings. He still swears by 80s-style failed socialist policies, reviles big businesses and indulges in homilies to pose as messiah of the masses. Rahul's 'killer blueprint' of resisting BJP involves doing an extensive temple run in Gujarat and blocking the temple run in Ayodhya.

The impossibility of this position may not have occurred to the dynast but in any case a Congress leader shall always be around, ready to be martyred at the larger cause of saving a Gandhi if matters go out of control. Sibal appears to be the 'chosen one' this time.

The soup that the senior advocate finds himself in right now is partly his own cooking, but the 'secret' recipe was prepared carefully at 10 Janpath which aimed to be too clever by half.

As this writer has argued before, Congress' biggest problem is that of bankruptcy of ideas: A failure to find an ideological space or a political positioning. Consequently, it tries to occupy all sorts of spacesliberal, conservative, subaltern, casteist, classist, pro-minority or majoritarianand often the inherent tension between these spaces makes its position untenable.

It is evident that Rahul felt the need to delve in soft-Hindutva ahead of Gujarat elections and went out of his way to do a round of temples and pose as a Brahmin poster boy.

'Blessed by all Gods' and the 'Prime Minister of India-to be', claim Cong's posters about 'Pandit' Rahul Gandhi https://t.co/Ng5c3Wkq2R  Republic (@republic) December 5, 2017

Once Gujarat is over, however, Congress's need for a soft-Hindutva positioning is exhausted, and it even becomes counter-productive ahead of the Ayodhya verdict where its ambiguity contrasts unfavourably with BJP's clarity on Ram Temple. Hence Sibal's submission in court that Ram Temple verdict should be postponed till after 2019 general elections.

Two motivations prompted this act. One, deny Narendra Modi ahead of his reelection the fruits of polarisation that will inevitably accompany any Supreme Court decision. Two, buy time to decide on Congress's own political position depending on the existing scenario.

It is difficult to believe that Sibala senior leader of the party and a former Union minister in UPA governmentwas acting "on his own" as a professional in defiance of party line when he submitted before the court that "decision of this case will have repercussions outside the Court and since the BJP has the issue of Ram Mandir in their election manifesto, the Bench must hear the matter only after July 2019."

Congress' counter, that BJP's senior lawyers in the past had taken professional assignments beyond party lines is a specious argument, because Sibal's pleadings before the three-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India were less legal and more of a political nature.

"I do believe that any decision in this case will have very serious ramifications and the appeals should be referred to a five or seven judge constitution bench. Do not say 'no, no, no'. Please hear the matter keeping in mind the ramifications... Please fix the matter in July 2019 and we assure that we will not seek any adjournments...", said Sibal, who was appearing for his clients, the Sunni Waqf Board.

This could have been a clever ploy, had it not been for one Haji Mehboob, the Babri Masjid Action Committee coordinator and a key member of Sunni Waqf Board which is one of the appellants in the Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid case.

Principal litigant Mehboob's criticism of Sibal's position and clear iteration that Sunni Waqf Board is in favour of an "early settlement" of the case instead of deferment till 2019 destroyed Congress' flimsy defence, took Sibal from frying the pan to the fire and set forth a chain of events which Congress might find difficult to emerge from unscathed.

Yes Kapil Sibal is our lawyer but he is also related to a political party, his statement in SC yesterday was wrong, we want a solution to the issue at the earliest: Haji Mehboob,Sunni Waqf Board #Ayodhya pic.twitter.com/CMN8MXr5ta  ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2017

Sibal has since issued statements that are easily refuted and are at odds with his stature as a senior, seasoned lawyer. He claimed that he never represented the Sunni Waqf Board in court. He told ANI: "The prime minister did not check the fact that actually I never represented the Sunni Waqf Board in the Supreme Court. And yet he thanked Sunni Waqf Board for a statement on the basis that I represented them. I request the prime minister to be a little more careful."

Documents widely available in public domain clearly show that he was, in fact, representing the Sunni Waqf Board in Supreme Court. The SC order sheet listing him as an advocate in the 2011 case has since been circulating freely in social media, and it didnt take long for BJP leader Subramanian Swami to seek Sibal's apology for "maligning the PM".

Sibal in more trouble. Thanks to Gaurav Bhatia of BJP, and SC lawyer, I find that SC Order of 5/12 lists Sibal as Advocate for Sunni Wakf Board. Apologise to Namo, Sibal!  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 7, 2017

Swamy was referring to the following tweet from BJP leader and Supreme Court advocate Gaurav Bhatia:

Hon'ble Supreme Court order shows that Mr Sibal did appear for Sunni Waqf Board.

Please see the marked section

Civil Appeal No 004192/2011

Party Name Sunni Waqf Board pic.twitter.com/qYkQYmAYvS  Gaurav Bhatia BJP (@gauravbh) December 6, 2017

Case number 4192 (as marked in the document) where Sibal's name is mentioned in the SC order sheet, refers to the civil appeal (No 4192/2011) filed by the Sunni Central Waqf Board, according to the Supreme Court of India website.

Other documents also surfaced that demolished Sibal's defence that he wasn't appearing for the Sunni Waqf Board.

Exclusive : This is the appearance slip of @KapilSibal for appellant Sunni Waqf board in Ayodhya case at Supreme court . Rare copy with me @indiatvnews CC @Swamy39 @narendramodi @jgopikrishnan70 @BJP4India pic.twitter.com/9gyFcP55kD  Manish Jha (@manishjha4u) December 7, 2017

The events took a curious turn a day after on Wednesday when Zafaryab Jilani, convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC), threw his weight behind Sibal and claimed: "Whatever Sibal has said has been stated with prior consultation with all advocates including leaders of the Muslim Personal Law Board. Sibal had discussed this. With full confidence, we can say that we completely endorse what Sibal said."

The ANI report also quoted Haji Mehboob, who now seemed to be backtracking from his earlier statement. "If Jilani saab is saying that what Kapil Sibal said yesterday was right, then I agree with him. I don't want to say anything else."

Finally on Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Board chairman Zufar Ahmed Farooqi claimed Sibal wasn't representing them. He was "representing one of the private parties involved in the suit."

It is not difficult to imagine what may have conspired behind the scenes within a span of 24 damaging hours for the Congress. The protestations and denials issued since are designed to absolve Sibal of all responsibility for his statement, leading one to wonder whom exactly was the senior lawyer representing while making that submission on Tuesday. Congress, however, felt that Sibal has done enough damage for the day and reportedly asked him to stay away from the Gujarat polls. The senior leader may understand soon enough that nobody but the family is indispensable in Congress.

The larger questions from Sibal's flippancy pertain to the trust that defines a client-lawyer relationship and the gravitas of the Supreme Court. The apex court is a temple of justice and it should under no circumstances be allowed to become an arena for politics. One hopes Sibal will come prepared with a better defence next time.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Like any other election, the Gujarat Assembly Election 2017 also saw its share of some intense political mud-slinging.

As the first phase of polling begins on Saturday, it's time to take a look at some of the most entertaining significant or controversial remarks made by politicians in the run-up to polls in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state.

'Babar bhakt'

The remark which deserves to be right on top of this list is the one made by BJP national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao, who also gets brownie points for creativity.

On Wednesday, Rao tweeted that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has "teamed up with (Asaduddin) Owaisis, (Zafaryab) Jilanis" to oppose the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.

And he then went on to call Rahul a 'Babar bhakt' and 'kin of Khilji', setting a new benchmark for online trolls.

Rahul Gandhi has teamed up with Owaisis, Jilanis to oppose Ram temple in Ayodhya. Rahul Gandhi is certainly a "Babar Bhakt" & a "Kin of Khilji". Babar destroyed Ram temple & Khilji plundered Somnath. Nehru dynasty sided with both Islamic invaders.Travesty & Perversity of dynasty!  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) December 6, 2017

            ,             " "  "  "                       !  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) December 6, 2017

'Gabbar Singh Tax'

Speaking of creativity, Rahul's filmy way of criticising the Goods and Services Tax (GST) created quite the stir. Early in November, Rahul had said that he would not rest till the five-slab "Gabbar Singh Tax" was converted into the "Goods and Services Tax" with an 18 percent cap.

"With five slabs, it is the Gabbar Singh Tax, but with one tax, it is the GST. Neither Gujarat nor India needs the Gabbar Singh Tax. The Congress had clearly told the BJP that there should be one tax with an 18-per cent cap and a simple tax (at that)," Gandhi had said.

"This Gabbar Singh Tax is looting the small people of this country. This Gabbar Singh Tax is only aimed at breaking the back of the small and medium scale industries of Gujarat and (the rest of) the country," he had added.

Modi retaliated to this remark by saying that a recently emerged "economist" was propagating a "grand stupid thought" by suggesting that GST rate be capped at 18 percent.

Hardik Patel's response to the 'sex CD' issue

Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel came up with a befitting reply to a CD which had video clips allegedly showing his sexual escapades.

In November, he had said that the people of Gujarat want to see what the BJP has done in 23 years rather than the video of a 23-year-old youth.

'Aurangzeb raj'

During an election rally in Gujarat's Valsad, Modi had called Congress' process of electing its party president 'Aurangzeb raj'.

"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," ANI had quoted Modi as saying.

The 'real' Hindutva party

Perhaps taking inspiration from The Real Slim Shady by Eminem, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday found a unique way to dismiss Rahul's temple visits. He had said that BJP was the original Hindutva party and Congress was just a "clone".

"We (BJP) are linked to Hinduism, if people imitate us then what can we do? But the basic principle is, if the original is available, why would people go for a clone?" Jaitley had said while replying to questions about Gandhi's temple visits.

Congress' 'chaiwala' barb

Showing that it had learnt nothing from Sonia Gandhi's 'maut ka saudagar' remark against Modi, Congress shot itself in the foot when the party's youth wing's online magazine Yuva Desh tweeted out a meme mocking Modi's past as a tea-seller.

Congress' online magazine tweets derogatory meme attacking PM Modi, deletes later Read @ANI story | https://t.co/4uBvxWHfBM pic.twitter.com/JhH82acg5S  ANI Digital (@ani_digital) November 21, 2017

The magazine later withdrew the tweet with the meme, but the damage was already done. BJP's national spokesperson Sambit Patra recalled the past 'maut ka saudagar' jibe and warned the Congress of electoral consequences of abusing the prime minister.

In fact, BJP leaders  including Amit Shah and Jaitley  reacted by tuning in to Modi's radio programme 'Mann ki Baat' while having tea with people across Gujarat.

Actor-turned-politician Paresh Rawal took this mudslinging a step further by tweeting that "our chaiwala is any day better than your bar-wala".

'Rome rajya'

If the Congress has not learnt anything from the 'maut ka saudagar' remark, the BJP has also clearly not learnt anything from its bad habit of trying to link Congress with Italy.

BJP MP Virendra Singh Mast on Wednesday described the upcoming Gujarat polls as a battle between "Ram rajya" and "Rome rajya", claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi symbolised the former.

"The Gujarat polls are a contest between 'Ram rajya and Rome rajya'. Modi is the symbol of 'Ram rajya' in our times. The BJP will certainly win," he had said.

Modi's new motto is 'na bolunga, na bolne dunga': Rahul

While criticising the Modi government during a rally in Gujarat towards the end of November, Rahul Gandhi had said that Modi's new motto was 'no bolunga, na bolne dunga'.

He had also said that while Modi only liked talking about his own 'Mann ki Baat', Congress wanted to listen to the people's mann ki baat.

Adityanath's dig at Congress after Uttar Pradesh civic poll results

On 1 December, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had taken a dig at the Congress and said the party which was daydreaming of winning the Gujarat Assembly polls has failed to even open an account in the Uttar Pradesh municipal corporation polls.

"Jo Gujarat jeetne ka sapna dekh rahe hain unka yahan Amethi mein bhi soopda saaf ho gaya hai," he had said, ridiculing the Congress, which lost even in the party pocket borough of Amethi.

Shiv Sena praising Rahul Gandhi

One of the most stinging remarks against the BJP came from its ally Shiv Sena. On Wednesday, the party had said that Gujarat polls had transformed Rahul Gandhi into a leader and that the Congress vice-president's temple visits was a "win for Hindutva".

"The election, which is touted by the BJP to be a sure win, seems to have tired Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as it has turned Rahul Gandhi into a leader," the Sena, a long-time but often bickering partner of the BJP, had said in an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana.

Those opposing bullet train project can take bullock carts: Modi

While lashing out at Congress for its criticism of the Rs 1.1 lakh crore bullet train project, Modi had said, "Those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts. We won't mind."

He had also said that 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," the prime minister had said.

Rahul's question to Modi about safety of women in Gujarat

On Sunday, Rahul had accused Modi of making fake promises to the women of Gujarat.

The Congress leader had pointed out that Gujarat was ranked third in human trafficking, fifth in acid attacks on women and 10th in rape of minor girls. "Why does Gujarat lag behind at 20th place in girl child education," he had asked, pointing out that gross enrollment ratio of girl child is at 20.5 against national average of 23.5 (higher education).

With inputs from PTI
Days after senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal's request to the Supreme Court to defer the Ayodhya hearing until 2019 Lok Sabha elections sparked a row, the senior lawyer claimed the CJI order clearly stated he did not represent the Sunni Waqf Board in the case and was he mentioned in reference to another appeal.

In a press conference, Sibal said, "...Before starting the proceedings, the CJI always asks the lawyer in which appeal are you represented and I responded accordingly. The CJI order says...senior counsel appearing for the appellants in civil appeal 2894 of 2011 and 7226 of 2011 contrary to the spirit of an earlier order filed a status report. So the CJI has written in its order that I am representing in these two appeals and no other. I was appearing for petitioner Mohammed Hashmi's son Iqbal Hashmi, which is clearly stated in the order by the CJI.So does the prime minister think that the CJI order is incorrect?..."

Narendra Modi in a rally in poll-bound Gujarat's had said "Yesterday in the Supreme Court, Congress MP Kapil Sibal was arguing (which is his right) for the Babri Masjid. He is entitled to do that, but is it right for him to say postpone hearing till 2019?"

"Why does he have to link a Ram Mandir (temple) with elections. Is such thinking proper?" Modi asked the crowd. He also accused the Congress of linking the Ram Temple issue with the elections. "Now Congress links Ram Mandir with elections. They are least bothered about the nation," Modi said.

Earlier, responding to Modi's remarks, Sibal said that the prime minister should be more concerned about priorities before the country rather than focusing on who represents whom in court.

The former Union minister also asked the prime minister to check facts before speaking with the public. He was quoted by PTI as saying,"I learnt that the prime minister and Amit Shah have said that I represented the Sunni Waqf Board in the Supreme Court, but I was never representing the Sunni Waqf Board in the Ayodhya issue."

With inputs from agencies
The tug of war between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the CPI, the two senior partners of Keralas ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), has taken a new turn with the latter offering protection to a Dalit family thrown out of their home this week, allegedly by CPM workers.

Mariyappan, a daily wage worker, and his family, including two girls aged between one and three, were reportedly pushed onto the street at Murikkadi near Kumali in Idukki district by CPM workers on 4 December and their house converted into an office despite an injunction issued by the Peerumedu magistrates court.

While the police have registered a case against CPM Murikkadi branch secretary Bineesh and three other party workers under Scheduled Caste Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the CPI has taken to supporting the family. The party accommodated the four-member family in the house of a party worker temporarily. CPI Kumali area secretary Saji Vempattil said the family would be shifted to a rented house soon.

Mariyappan (33) has been living in the house for the last 30 years. The CPM workers threw them out for his step-brother, who staked claim for the house after converting to Islam few years ago. We will support Mariyappan till the house is restored to the family, the CPI leader told Firstpost.

The CPI has also decided to launch an agitation in this connection. Saji said the mode of agitation will be decided in consultation with party district leadership. Meanwhile, the CPM has removed the party boards from the house following intervention by the State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Local CPM leaders denied any role in the incident. Party Peerumedu area secretary R Thilakan said the eviction was the result of a family dispute between Mariyappan and his step-brother, Muthu alias Muhammad Salman, who is working as a teacher at Murikkadi.

Thilakan said that the house originally belonged to Muhammad Salman. He allowed his step-brother to occupy it temporarily. The CPM leader told Firstpost that Mariyappan agreed to vacate the house when police called a meeting three months ago to amicably settle the dispute.

Muhammad Salman occupied the house when Mariyappan failed to keep his word. We have nothing to do with the incident. It is an issue between family members, Thilakan said, adding that the CPI was dragging his party into the incident as part of its strategy to gain political upper hand.

He said that the CPI has been trying to swell its cadre base by maligning the image of CPM. Thilakan said that his partys junior partner was making an attempt to broaden its base in Idukki district by dubbing the CPM as a party of encroachers.

The two have been at odds ever since Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stopped the eviction drive launched by the Revenue Department, which is under the control of the CPI, following the demolition of a cross installed atop a hill, allegedly encroached by a Christian evangelical group in the hilly district.

The row between the two snowballed into a constitutional crisis when the CPI boycotted a Cabinet meeting last month to protest against the alleged attempt by the chief minister and his party to shield former transport minister Thomas Chandy in the wake of adverse remarks against him from the high court over the encroachment of a lake at Kuttanad in Alappuzha district.

Though Chandy finally resigned, the issue is still haunting the Pinarayi government with the high court admitting a petition demanding the resignation of the chief minister over alleged loss of collective responsibility of his Cabinet. Citing the court observations, the petitioner has described Pinarayi as usurper of power.

Even though the Murikkadi incident is considered as a minor local issue it gains political significance from the CPIs decision to offer support to the Dalit family. Political observers believe that it may help the CPI to open a new front against the CPM over the Dalit issue.

The track record of the CPM with regard to Dalits has not been good. A series of Dalit harassment cases involving party workers have prompted human rights and Dalit activists to raise questions about the CPMs approach towards the vulnerable section of the community.

Though the party has been advocating Dalit rights, its activists have been reportedly treating them as untouchable in many places, especially in Kannur district, the cradle of communist movement in the state. A glaring case is the persistent hounding of a woman Dalit auto-rickshaw driver in Kannur district by the partys trade union wing.

The woman, Chitralekha, was forced to leave her native place after she suffered repeated attacks for 15 years. A solidarity mission commissioned by Feminists Kerala Network to determine the facts behind these attacks, found that it was part of untouchability prevailing in the region even now. Their investigation revealed that it was the result of a fascist atmosphere created by the CPM in the area, where many villages are controlled by the party.

The attitude of the CPM cadres towards the Dalits even developed into a big fight between the CPM and the Dalit groups in Kannur when the party enforced a tradition of exempting Dalit houses from an annual ritual in the Azhikkal Pampadi Aalinkeezhi Temple after it assumed control of the shrine.

Women activists expected a fair deal from the Pinarayi government since a major theme of the LDF campaign was protection of women. Their hopes were belied within a month when two Dalit girls, who complained about harassment from CPM workers, were arrested and sent to jail on a complaint by a party worker that they trespassed into their office and attacked them with sharp weapons.

The CPI is trying to project the eviction of the Dalit family from their house Murikkadi as a case of the CPMs intolerance towards the Dalits. CPI Murikkadi area secretary Chellappan pointed out that the CPM cadres had also evicted a Dalit family from their land in the area a few months ago.

Murikkadi CPM branch secretary Bineesh, against whom a case has been registered in connection with the incident, is also an accused in the case. Chellappan said his party was not expecting any action against Bineesh and others involved in the cases as "the police are under the control of the CPM". He told Firstpost that the CPI may have to wage a long struggle to ensure justice for Mariyappan and his family.
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Thursday trashed charges by opposition parties that the BJP got the EVMs tampered in the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh.

In Mainpur to attend a wedding, the former minister said had this been the case, he would not be a legislator now.

Shivpal Yadav's statement contradicts what his estranged nephew and party president Akhilesh Yadav has said. Akhilesh Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, has time and again said that the Electronic Voting Machines had been tampered with.

"I won the election from Jaswantnagar earlier this year, many of my supporters have won the urban body polls. So without proof how can I allege that the EVMs were tampered to favour the ruling party?" he asked.

Shivpal Yadav has been daggers drawn with Akhilesh Yadav and has now been more or less ditched by his elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav who has apparently bought peace with his son after initially siding with his brother.

Shivpal Yadav also took a dig at Akhilesh Yadav for the Samajwadi Party's defeat in the civic polls, demanding to know who had picked the candidates.
The Supreme Court this week resumed its hearing in the long-standing Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute. Incidentally, it was also the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the structure in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya. This week will also see the first phase of polling for Assembly elections in Gujarat. The coming together of the two meant politicians cutting across party lines used the former as a poll plank for the latter.

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Kapil Sibal set the ball rolling in the court. Sibal, who is also a senior advocate representing the Sunni Waqf Board in the dispute, told the court that its next hearing in the case should be postponed until 2019, after the Lok Sabha elections take place. Although he didn't mention the election specifically, he said the case has ramifications on polity of India".

Deferring the judgment, he said, will ensure parties don't use the issue or the verdict as a poll plank for the parliamentary elections.

Sibal said that since it's a sensitive matter and the issue is used to polarise voters, a verdict before the Lok Sabha elections wouldn't be fair. However, the court rejected his plea and set the next date for hearing on 8 February, 2018.

A day later, however, the Waqf Board disagreed with its counsel's remarks. Haji Mehboob, a member of the Waqf board, was quoted as saying by News18: "We have been fighting the legal battle for long. We want an early decision from the court. Though Kapil Sibal is our lawyer, I personally don't agree with him that the hearing be deferred beyond 2019."

Sibal's remarks also led to a flood of criticism from Opposition parties and leaders. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a rally in Gujarat, repeatedly attacked the Congress over the issue.

"In the Supreme Court, Congress MP Kapil Sibal was arguing (which is his right) for the Babri Masjid. He is entitled to do that, but is it right for him to say postpone hearing till 2019?" Modi said while addressing a rally in Gujarat's Dhandhuka on Wednesday.

"Why does he have to link a Ram Mandir (temple) with elections? Is such thinking proper?" Modi asked the crowd, later accusing the Congress of linking the Ram Temple issue with the elections. "Now Congress links Ram Mandir with elections. They are least bothered about the nation."

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy also said Sibal shouldn't politicise the issue. "He (Sibal) just gave his arguments on the political level, as they will lose the elections if they lose this case," Swamy said. "Sibal presented the view that this judgment would affect 2019 elections. He tried to give political angle to the case. They are trying delay the hearing of the case."

BJP party president Amit Shah took to Twitter to blast Sibal and the Congress party, saying that the Waqf board detaching itself from Sibal's remarks proved that the veteran leader was speaking on behalf of the Congress party and not the petitioners. "Now that Sunni Waqf board has said that they don't agree with what Kapil Sibal said in court, it is certain that Sibal spoke in his capacity as a Congress leader, with the blessings of their 'High Command'. Shameful posturing by Congress on Ram Temple issue," Shah tweeted.

Now that Sunni Waqf Board has said that they dont agree with what Kapil Sibal said in court, it is certain that Mr. Sibal spoke in his capacity as a Congress leader, with the blessings of their High Command. Shameful posturing by Congress on Ram Temple issue!  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 6, 2017

The Congress later detached itself from Sibal's remarks, saying he was a practising lawyer and was entitled to his views. "Congress has nothing to do with whose lawyer Kapil Sibal is, as it is his personal decision. Our decision is clear: Whatever decision the Supreme Court takes on Ram Janmbhoomi should be accepted by all," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.
Ahmedabad: With only two days left before Gujarat votes in the first of two-phase elections, mysterious posters have appeared in the state asking the Muslim community to vote for the Congress, projecting Ahmed Patel as its chief ministerial face, which the party says is a mischievous bid to polarise voters.

"To maintain unity within the Muslim community and to make Ahmed Patel the 'wazir-e-alam' (grand minister) of Gujarat, we request the Muslim community to vote only for the Congress," the poster said in Gujarati with Rahul Gandhi and Patel along with the party symbol of Hand.

Blaming the BJP, Patel quickly rebutted the contents of the poster and said he was not a contender for the chief minister's post and would never be.

"The moot issue is that the BJP is trying very, very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda. Hence, their reliance on lies and propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time," Patel tweeted.

"Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP. Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for the chief minister and will never, ever be."

He said the "misinformation campaign by the BJP" showed that they know they were going to lose Gujarat elections.

Gujarat is considered to be the BJP's Hindutva lab where other parties are chary of projecting Muslim issues.
What does the Congress party stand for? The party and its leadership have been clueless about their identity for some time. In the ongoing Gujarat election might lie some answers.

The new identity of the Congress, as seen in Gujarat, harks back to the original idea of the party: An umbrella organisation that contains within it disparate interest groups. Their interests often clash with each other, but the partys central leadership manages them on a day-to-day basis. In doing so, the Congress party acts as what its British founder described it as: A safety valve.

Indias size and diversity needs such safety valves to keep it together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has articulated the idea with the slogan Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas. In practice, the BJP has only been opening up rather than alleviating social tensions.

Muslims, the rural economy, the informal economy, farming, Dalits  all of them have faced a fresh new strain in the Modi era.

Whatever the result of the Gujarat elections, even if the Congress loses badly, its campaign here has shown an ability to once again be the umbrella party, seeking votes of diverse social groups known not to be very fond of each other.

This is surprising because lately, it has been the Modified BJP that has been seeking to co-opt everyone.

Veteran Gujarat commentators like Aakar Patel have written of the impossibility of Patels voting for the Congress. The Patidar community has historically been more anti-Muslim than others, and was actively alienated by Madhavsinh Solankis KHAM formula. Consolidating Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, Solanki saw the Congress win 149 seats in 1985, a record the BJP aspires to break this time.

Led by party president Amit Shah, the BJPs mishandling of the Patidar agitation for reservations has surprisingly forced many into considering the Congress as an option, never mind that voting for the Congress would make them fellow travellers with a community they detest, the Muslims.

Credit goes to the Congress party, both its state and central leadership, for their adept handling of a social alliance with the Hardik Patel-led PAAS or Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti.

Had Hardik Patel merged with the Congress, it would have been a loss for both. The Congress has shed its usual arrogance (last seen when in its bargaining with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh) and happily gone along with Hardik Patels strategy. Hardik is urging voters to vote out the BJP more than vote in the Congress, which in turn has shown the good sense to not let the Congress itself, its secularism or its KHAM alliance, become an issue before Patidar voters.

It would have been easy for the Congress to try an hijack the Patidar movement, using the opportunity to take credit for the agitation. Instead, it has agreed to play junior to Hardik, who is all of 23.

Only two PAAS leaders are contesting from the Congress. The rest of the Congress Patel candidates are its own, having earned their laurels with the PAAS movement by contributing to it in their personal capacity.

That was still easy. The Congress has done one better, co-opting OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, whose caste interests clash with the Patidars.

A public secret this election season in Gujarat is that Thakor was propped up by the BJP to counter Hardik. As the Patidars demanded reservations, Thakor led a newly formed OBC-SC-ST Manch. The OSS platform stoked the fear of OBCs losing their reservation benefits if Patidars got some quota too, since the total amount of reservations are capped at 50 percent.

Thakor, a nobody in electoral politics, became too big for the BJP atop soon. He demanded to tickets for himself and his people, but the BJP snubbed him. He joined the Congress in October at a Rahul Gandhi rally.

The Congress has given five tickets to Thakor and his men, and is likely to lose four of those. Its an electoral loss because the Congress could have given those four tickets to political heavyweights. But the Congress did the right calculation that Thakor would have caused more damage if he was with BJP than the benefits he brings by being within. The BJPs strategy to do an OBC consolidation to make up for the loss of Patel votes is dented by not having Alpesh, whom they propped up.

Even less influential is the third young man who has hit the headlines, Jignesh Mevani. The Dalit leader, earlier known only in the radical left and NGO circles of Ahmedabad, shot to fame with the Una agitation against cow vigilantes who had beaten up Dalits there.

Mevani is not even well-known amongst Dalits in many parts of Gujarat. He refused to join the Congress, wanting to contest as an independent on a seat where the Congress is strong. The Congress relented because it wants to use that as an opportunity to ingratiate itself with Dalits nationally, even if Mevani isnt of much electoral consequence in Gujarat.

Gujarats Hindu voters are more anti-Muslim than perhaps any other state. Riot after riot has polarised its geography like nowhere else. The Congress has smartly downplayed its secular and Muslim politics to be able to win over other groups.

Despite these untenable disparities in its campaign, reflected in its ticket distribution, the party is not seeing very little internal rebellion.

The Congress party, as we know it today, is not capable of smartly co-opting social movements or managing conflicting interest groups within the party fold, formally or informally. Yet, in this Gujarat election, they have done it. Even if it does not deliver them electoral fruits, the very fact that theyve been able to do this is a change from a party that has in recent elections appeared listless.

Even if it badly loses Gujarat, the party has a new way of working towards revival, and a new identity: An umbrella coalition that brings together Indias conflicting diversity. Or, as the BJP would say, Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.
New Delhi: BJP MP Virendra Singh Mast on Wednesday described the upcoming Gujarat polls as a battle between "Ram rajya" and "Rome rajya", claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi symbolised the former.

Singh, heading the party's farmer cell, cited the recent statement of the Archbishop of Gandhinagar in which the latter called for defeat of "nationalist forces".

The Archbishop had last month written a letter urging members of the Christian community to save the country from "nationalist forces" as he said the "democratic fabric" of the country was at stake, amidst growing "sense of insecurity" among minorities.

The BJP MP also lashed out at the Congress, which, he alleged, symbolised "Rome rajya".

"The Gujarat polls are a contest between 'Ram rajya and Rome rajya'. Modi is the symbol of 'Ram rajya' in our times. The BJP will certainly win," he said.

The much-anticipated Gujarat polls are slated for 9 and 14 December.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Surat: A calamity in the times of intense politics, particularly just ahead of the elections, is the worst reckoner in history. Luckily, the Cyclone Ockhi that hit the southern coast of Gujarat earlier this week is a feeble one that is expected to blow over two days before the campaign for the first phase of polls in the state ends.

But the fear of this probable calamity was a grim reminder of how the state's politics is shaped by either man-made or natural disasters in the past. There is an interesting anecdote in an outstanding book No One Had a Tongue to Speak that chronicles one of the worst floods caused by the breaking of a dam over the Machchu river that wiped out Morbi township, the countrys ceramic hub, in Saurashtra region in 1979.

The story recounted by researchers Utpal Sandesara and Tom Wooten goes thus: "Just a short distance upstream of the dam site, a small hummock  in truth, little more than a large mound of dirt  punctuated the flat plain that extended to the east from Machchu river. For years, a bald, white-bearded ascetic had made his home in a tiny hermitage on the hill. The man and the physical feature had become synonymous, such that the hill was sometimes known as Jog Bapu's hummock. People had come from miles around to seek his blessings and advice on the matters financial, medical, spiritual, familial and existential. The old man had been shocked, then, to discover that the government intended to unceremoniously inundate his living space, submerging his sacred hermitage all the way up to the triangular flag that capped its dome. He had seethed for months, his thick eyebrows furrowing and his mouth scowling somewhere behind an overgrown beard. When finally forced to relocate, he had allegedly vowed, This dam will break, Morbi will break. Joga Bapu was ignored by engineers and the state bureaucracy as an inconsequential rant of a sadhu. Joga Bapus cruse was prophetic."

The breach in the Machchu dam brought in a tectonic shift in the state politics. Though the story of Joga Bapu has become a kind of folklore thanks to meticulous research in academics, few know that the floods in Morbi had spawned a new politics in the state. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which was quite diffident in Gujarat after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi found a firm toehold in the state after this disaster.

Old-timers still recall the manner in which the RSS cadre was deployed to carry out the relief operations in the entire region. After floods that are believed to have killed over 2,000 people, Morbi became a ghost city and stinking hell. When the then prime minister Indira Gandhi visited the area, she covered her nose with a handkerchief. That image is recounted in this election to present a contrast between the Congress and those reared in the values of the Sangh Parivar.

Few, however, know that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then an RSS pracharak, was on a tour to South India at the time of the tragedy. When he heard the news, he rushed back to Gujarat and personally monitored the relief and rescue operation for months on end. His organisational skill was on full display during the crisis when he organised efforts to collect relief material from all over the state and ensured effectively delivery to victims through the RSS cadre. Of course, the Morbi disaster was the first calamity that firmly established the RSS as an organisation which needed to be adored and not shunned.

But the acceptance of the RSS did not result in the expansion of its political influence. The Bhartiya Jan Sangh (BJS) (and later the BJP) took more than a decade to consolidate its presence in the state. The obvious reason for the peoples reluctance to support either the BJS or subsequently the BJP stemmed from the absence of iconic state leaders like Madhavsinh Solanki, Chimanbhai Patel and Amarsinh Chaudhary of the Congress. It was only in the late nineties that Keshubhai Patel emerged as a powerful leader in his own right though his influence was limited to certain pockets dominated by Patels in Saurashtra. However, Modis transition from the RSS to the BJP in 1986 introduced a new dynamism which he had cultivated while supervising the rescue and relief operation in Morbi. The BJP weaved a new narrative which was an effective counter to brazen casteism known as the KHAM formula of Solanki and opportunism and corruption personified by Chimanbhai Patel. Keshubhai emerged as the popular face of the BJP till another natural disasterthe 2001 earthquakestruck Gujarat with Kutch and parts of Saurashtra practically razed to the ground.

Modi as a general secretary of the BJP at the national level rushed from Delhi to the state only to get a lukewarm response from the Keshubhai regime. He, however, organised relief camps and mobilised workers on large scale to initiate operations at a time when the state government was completely paralysed. The earthquake proved to be the undoing of Keshubhai and led to the emergence of Modi as the new leader of the state. The manner and speed in which Modi later rebuilt Bhuj, Anjar and other towns of Kutch was extraordinary. Within less than five years, the cities destroyed by the earthquake were literally resurrected from the rubble. Since then Modi has built an effective disaster management system in Gujarat that gives a robust response at the time of crisis like the Surat floods of August 2006. However, he always relies on his party workers to reach out to the victims.

There is no doubt that in the process of party-building in his unique style, Modi emerged as a cult figure in the state. Those who see Modi as an outcome of a particular brand of Hindutva tend to conveniently forget calamities that redefined the states politics and gradual assimilation of the RSS-BJP combine in Gujarats society in the past four decades. Of course, Gujarat became Modis citadel not in a day. And the party has a very powerful and dynamic organisational structure which is not cut off from the ground.

This is the precise reason why Modi invoked the cooperative spirit of Gujarati society when he appealed to party workers to fan out and assist people if Cyclone Ockhi causes any damage. He kept Wednesday  the day when the cyclone was expected to have maximum impact  off from his campaigning schedule. Rahul Gandhi and others also followed suit. Needless to say, the fear of a disaster served as a reminder for people of Gujarat about the crises that have redefined the contours of the states politics.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
The Baker Ober Health Law Group has been ranked in the American Bar Association's Health Law Section's "Fifth Annual Regional Law Firm Recognition" list.

The ABA recognizes, by geographic region, the top 10 health law firms based on Health Law Section membership. Baker Donelson ranked second in both the Southern Region and the Northeastern Region.

Earlier this year, the Baker Ober Health Law Group was also recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the "Largest Healthcare Law Firms" in 2017 and in the American Health Lawyers Association's "AHLA 2017 Top Honors" rankings of health law firms in the United States.

With more than 200 attorneys in 10 states and the District of Columbia serving the health care industry, the Baker Ober Health Law Group is recognized as a premier national practice. Dedicated client teams focus on hospitals and health systems, payors, long term care providers, ambulatory surgery centers, complex medical groups, end-stage renal disease, rehabilitation and the wide array of health enterprises that make up our health care ecosystem, said officials.
New Delhi: Election Commission has advised the government not to publicise GST rate cuts on certain popular consumables in poll-bound Gujarat as it could influence voters in the state where the first phase of elections is on 9 December.

It, however, has allowed advertisement of simplified tax procedure without mentioning any products, functionaries in the poll panel said on Thursday.

"On the first draft, the EC has advised that any publicity which could influence voters should not be done. Of course, people have to be made aware of procedures so the commission has approved of that proposal," a functionary said.

The commission has advised that advertisements on GST rate cuts can take place after the second phase is over on 14 December.

The Election Commission had earlier allowed the Centre to release the second installment of funds under the MNREGA scheme for Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat with a rider that there will be "absolutely" no publicity in this regard.

Polls in Himachal Pradesh were held on 9 November.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Shillong: Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma on Wednesday dared rebel Congress legislators to resign from the assembly ahead of next year's elections.

"We know all who will resign. We will be happy to see if they resign as MLAs. That is why we have given enough time. If somebody has the courage, let them resign as MLAs," he told the media in Shillong.

The chief minister was reacting to veteran Congress legislator Comingone Ymbon from the Cabinet.

Ymbon, who tendered his resignation on Monday, along with Congress legislators Rowel Lyngdoh, Prestone Tynsong, Sniawbhalang Dhar, and Ngaitlang Dhar are expected to contest the assembly elections on National People's Party (NPP) ticket.

Reacting to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the NPP dubbing him the "most corrupt politician", the chief minister said he would take legal recourse against making such allegations.

"It is not my job to clarify. My job is to drag them to court. People who do not have issues to raise are demonstrating their frustration and anger," Sangma said.

Elections to the 60-member assembly will be held in February-March 2018.
Patna: Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was anti-temple and that his visits to the shrines in Gujarat, sporting a "tilak", and talks of his wearing a "janeu" (a sacred thread Brahmins wear) were aimed at hiding this.

"When the country's first president, Rajendra Prasad, a son of Bihar's soil, had performed a puja at the Somnath temple in Gujarat, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a proponent of pseudo-secularism, had expressed his strong disapproval," the senior BJP leader tweeted.

"Guided by the same ideology, Congress leader Kapil Sibal is now arguing against the Ram temple before the Supreme Court," he said, referring to the former Union minister representing the Sunni Waqf Board, a party to the Ayodhya title dispute, in the apex court.

On Tuesday, Sibal had prayed to the Supreme Court for deferring the hearing on the title suit till after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

However, the Congress has distanced itself from Sibal's stand.

Taking a dig at Gandhi, who is all set to become the Congress president, Sushil Modi said he was trying to "hide his anti-temple face by resorting to tilak-janeu and temple tourism".

Gandhi's aggressive campaign in poll-bound Gujarat has drawn the ire of many NDA leaders. JD(U) president and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had recently alleged that the Congress' poll strategy in Gujarat was veering towards extremism.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases  on 9 and 14 December  and the counting of votes will be taken up on 18 December.
Chennai: The returning officer for the RK Nagar constituency on Thursday ruled out actor's Vishal Krishna's plea against the rejection of his nomination for the 21 December bypoll after holding an inquiry again into the matter.

Deepan and Sumathy, who figured in the list of 10 proposers, again appeared before him in the presence of election general observers, Returning Officer (RO) K Veluchamy said in his order.

The duo reiterated their respective earlier stand that they had not signed on the nomination paper of Vishal Krishna, the official in charge of the bypoll to RK Nagar said.

"After re-inquiry in an independent manner, I conclude that the candidature of Vishal Krishna had not been proposed by 10 candidates," the order, a copy of which was made available to the media, said.

"Hence, based on merits, the representation of Vishal Krishna cannot be considered favourably," the RO said.

On December five, the returning officer had rejected the nomination of the actor following which he made a representation to election authorities including the Chief Electoral Officer.

The re-inquiry was held following the actor's representation. A communique from the Election Commission authorities to the RO in this regard was also briefly cited in Thurday's order.
Actor Vishal is out of the contest in the by-election in RK Nagar but the electoral battle isn't short on filmy fireworks. The actor claimed the two peopleSumathi and Deepanwho proposed his name, only to subsequently claim before the returning officer, had gone missing. In a tweet, Vishal said he was worried about their safety and security. Efforts to trace Sumathi and her husband Velu at their residence in Tondiarpet locality had not borne fruit.

That's not all. The Election Commission has not covered itself with glory in this controversy. Speaking to The Hindu, Returning Officer K Velusamy accused Vishal and his team of putting "undue pressure on him". Significantly, he admits that he announced that Vishal's nomination was being accepted, before overturning that decision just an hour later.

"All of them pounced on me. In order to escape from that torture, I said that. However, I did pass the right judgment later," Velusamy said.

This makes it a fit case to remove Velusamy as Returning Officer in RK Nagar. More so because the constituency, that fell vacant after Jayalalithaa's demise last December, is likely to see candidates flouting all possible rules to undercut a rival. The Election Commission needs to put in place a returning officer who can stand up to the political clout and muscle power the candidates will demonstrate. Velusamy, a Tamil Nadu state government employee, clearly is not cut out for the task. The Election Commission will do well to appoint a non-Tamilian and someone who is not a government employee as returning officer, to reduce chances of being bullied or influenced.

Later in the evening, Velusamy put out a note claiming Sumathi and Deepan had met him separately, to reiterate that they had not proposed Vishal's candidature. In which case, the officer should file a police complaint of forgery against Vishal so that there is an independent investigation into the matter.

Jayalalithaa's niece, Deepa Jayakumar whose nomination papers were rejected as well, alleged that the ruling AIADMK had indulged in foul play and conspired to keep her out. The manner in which Vishal and Deepa, who many thought will pinch away a bit of the Jayalalithaa vote, has made people suspect that those in positions of power were pulling the strings from behind. The Leader of the Opposition and DMK working president MK Stalin has demanded Velusamy's transfer claiming that the situation in RK Nagar shows that the returning officer will act on the directions of the ruling party.

Is the state then the 12th man for Team AIADMK in the RK Nagar match? It is obvious for such a doubt to arise when AIADMK rebel TTV Dinakaran, who is contesting as an independent was denied permission by the Chennai Police to campaign in the constituency on 7 and 8 December. The reason reportedly given was that the chief minister was campaigning on Thursday. Dinakaran is another candidate who would poll some of the Jayalalithaa votes in the constituency.

The politicians of different hues are not the only ones facing the heat in RK Nagar. The Election Commission is as much on test. The last time, despite deploying Central forces, the politicians used ingenious methods to distribute Rs 4,000 for a vote in the constituency. The documents seized during Income Tax raids on Health minister C Vijaybasker's properties revealed an elaborate plan to spend Rs 89 crore to bribe the voters, with amounts allotted to all AIADMK heavyweights, including the chief minister. Unable to curb the malpractice, the Election Commission rescinded the election.

The Election Commission has not even read out the riot act to the candidates because the same faces  Dinakaran, Madhusudanan, Ganesh (DMK)  are running for office this time as well. The candidates have switched parties but the stakes remain as high. And therefore, they have every reason to make RK Nagar the mother of all ugly electoral battles.

A humiliating loss for Dinakaran would effectively kill his political career. It is important for the Palaniswami-Panneerselvam combine to make their candidate Madhusudanan win, in order to cement their position as the joint inheritors of Jayalalithaa's political legacy. The DMK will lose face if it loses because now it stands to gain with the traditional AIADMK vote getting split between Madhusudanan and Dinakaran.

Thrown into the mix is the 2G verdict that will be announced at 10.30 am on 21 December, the day RK Nagar has its date with the EVM. It may well be just a coincidence but the verdict is bound to influence the voters. If the judgment goes against the DMK duo of Kanimozhi and A Raja, it could affect the party's fortunes in RK Nagar. Alternately, if they are acquitted, the polling agents can tom-tom the court's verdict to every voter.

Then there is the inherent character of RK Nagar itself. Most believe that April spoilt them because the electorate, largely a lower middle-class population, realised the value of every vote. Chennai watchers believe RK Nagar has tasted blood and the people would put a price tag on their vote. The last four days before polling day is traditionally when candidates and parties loosen their purse strings. That is when unscheduled power cuts take place to facilitate distribution of money under the cover of darkness, the morning newspapers come tagged with a coupon to exchange for cash and the neighbourhood kirana shop starts giving grocery for free because he has been reimbursed by a candidate.

The Vishal episode was only a starter. But the main course, unless strictly monitored, is quite likely to leave a bad taste in the mouth.
The Election Commission (EC) allocated the 'pressure cooker' symbol to sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran (also spelled as Dinakaran) to contest the RK Nagar bypoll and allocated the 'hat' symbol to another party, ANI reported.

#Chennai: TTV Dhinakaran gets 'pressure cooker' symbol for #RKnagarByElection , 'hat' symbol demanded by him allocated to another party (File pic) pic.twitter.com/ggmP0u8JJZ  ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017



On Monday, the Delhi High Court rejected the plea by the VK Sasikala-Dhinakaran faction of AIADMK for the 'hat' symbol, which was allotted to them in March by the EC for contesting the bypoll. The EC froze the use of the 'two leaves' symbol in view of dispute between the AIADMK factions.

According to a report in The Hindu, the high court on Monday directed the returning officer of the EC to decide an alternative for the faction, without being affected by the poll panel's previous observation.

Dhinakaran earlier moved the high court following the EC decision recognising the unified AIADMK under Tamil Nadu chief minister EK Palaniswamy as the real party. On 23 November, the commission also allowed the Palaniswamy-Panneerselvam faction to use the 'two leaves' poll symbol.

The bypoll to RK Nagar Assembly constituency will be held on 21 December.

Dhinakaran, who filed his nomination on 1 December, will contest as an independent candidate.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P Dhanapal justified his action of disqualifying 18 rebel AIADMK MLAs when their pleas challenging their disqualification was taken up by the Madras High Court.

The decision was taken only because the legislators approached the governor before exhausting available intra-party mechanisms for redressal of grievances, senior counsel for the speaker Aryama Sundaram submitted.

Sundaram made the submissions before the first bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar. On alleged inaction against O Panneerselvam (currently the deputy chief minister of Tamil Nadu) and 10 MLAs who voted against Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswamy's motion of confidence on 18 February, the counsel said, the speaker could not act upon the complaint against them "in view of an interim order of the Election Commission of India (ECI) dated 22 March".

"The order prevented any action against the MLAs. Hence no bias/malafides/perversity can be alleged on part of the speaker in waiting to act before ECI came to its conclusion regarding which group is the real AIADMK," he said.

Justifying invoking of the anti-defection law against the 18 MLAs, the speaker said that the natural consequence of their demand to call for a floor test is the fall of the government.

The counsel claimed that the issue was an intra-party dispute and submitted that the governor of the state cannot interfere in such issues. He also said the representations made to the governor by the 18 disqualified MLAs were based on a letter issued by dissident leader TTV Dhinakaran.

The bench recorded the submission and posted the case to 18 December for further hearing.
Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Thursday said the response garnered by BJP veteran Yashwant Sinha's agitation in Maharashtra over farmers' issues should set off alarm bells for the state government.

The former Union minister, who has had frequent run-ins with the current BJP leadership, was detained on Monday evening while protesting outside the Akola district collector's office against the state government's "apathy" towards the farmers of Vidarbha.

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray had spoken to the 80-year-old leader over phone on Tuesday and discussed farmers' issues.

Sinha on Wednesday called off his three-day-old protest in Akola, saying Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had assured him that their demands will be met.

The Sena on Thursday noted that prominent leaders of the country had supported Sinha's agitation.

"We (referring to Uddhav Thackeray) too spoke to Sinha over phone. The question is about farmers' life and death and thus not worrying about what will happen to power, we supported his agitation," the party said in an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana.

The Sena said that Sinha was never a mass leader but a "bureaucrat-turned-politician".

"Yet, if farmers supported his agitation, it should ring alarm bells for the BJP and the government. The government should fulfil the demands of farmers of Akola while it has the time," it opined.

Seeking to know what issues of farmers were resolved by the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra, the Sena claimed that farm loan waiver was announced by the state government only when the Uddhav Thackeray-led party pressed for it.

"However, in reality the government spent crores of rupees on advertisements even before the actual loan waiver was implemented, to gain credit. Like the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the loan waiver is also stuck in announcements," it quipped.

The Sena asserted that it will continue to demand implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan panel, a complete loan waiver and minimum support price for farmers, because these were the promises, it claimed, on the back of which the BJP came to power.

Sinha also didn't have any new demands but only wanted old promises to be fulfilled, the Sena said, adding that the farmers stood with him because the "disappointed and victimised" cultivators do not know what to do.

Questioning those criticising Sinha, the editorial said if the former Union minister was going against his own party due to his personal grudges, how could he get such a stupendous response in Akola.

"Why did the chief minister and (revenue minister) Chandrakant Patil plead Sinha to take back the agitation? That was because this agitation could turn ugly and affect the upcoming Winter session of the state Legislature," it said.
Ahmedabad: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday said that the Congress was "playing" with the faith of the Hindu community over the issue of construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Reacting to the controversy over senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal seeking deferment of hearing on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute till 2019, he said it amounted to playing with "the Hindu belief".

"It is like playing mischievously with the Hindu belief. The Congress will have to clarify whether it wants to see the Ram Mandir constructed in Ayodhya or not," he said.

On Rahul Gandhi's claim that he is a devotee of Lord Shiva, Adityanath said the Congress had once denied the existence of Ram Setu, and termed Gandhi's claim as playing with the Hindu faith.

"The Congress government at the Centre had tried to demolish the Ram Setu which was built due to the effort of Lord Ram. When the matter was challenged in the Supreme Court, the Congress government had filed an affidavit raising question on the existence of Ram and Krishna," he said.

He also advised Gandhi to go to the temple but out of faith and not out of hypocrisy.

The BJP leader alleged that Gandhi had once said that "people go to temple to tease women".

"Rahul Gandhi should be asked that when he does not believe in Ram, Shiva, Krishna and when he said that people go to temple to tease women, then why do you go to the temple? Nothing wrong in going to temple but do so out of faith and not hypocrisy," he said.
Enroll The Region is a grass roots organization of trained volunteers dedicated to helping people enroll and obtain health insurance through the Federal Marketplace. People obtaining health insurance through the Federal Marketplace may receive help to pay for this insurance based on income, household size, and other factors. Many qualify for the Silver plan with no monthly premium and a low total cost per year.

Enroll the Region is partnering with the city of Chattanooga to help clients at 10 Youth and Family Development Center sites as well as at LaPaz for Spanish Speakers, Metropolitan Ministries and The Bethlehem Center as partners across Hamilton County.

With this week and next week through Friday, Dec. 15, of open enrollment remaining, there are 28 appointment times available for people to sign up and get help. Call 211 or 622-0974 to make an appointment. There is no cost.

Enroll The Region started in September 2013 with the vision of Cora Lanier, executive director, and Everlena Holmes as her assistant. There were five volunteers serving as staff and assisters in helping individuals to obtain health insurance for the 2014 first enrollment period. It partnered with the Dodson Avenue/ Southside Community Health Centers, Erlanger Hospital and the Tennessee HealthCare Campaign in providing the financial and in-kind support needed that enabled it to accomplish our goal. Mayor Berkes office began to partner with it during the 2015 Enrollment Period. Enroll the Region decided to become a satellite operation by going where the people needed its help the most for the 2016 enrollment Period. The mayors office made it possible for it to use the Youth and Family Development Centers throughout the city for the 2016, 2017, and now 2018 enrollment periods.

Today there are 14 people assisting at 13 locations across the Hamilton County area for this 2018 fifth enrollment period. They receive yearly training from qualified certified application counselors, navigators and assisters that include local navigator Katherlyn Geter, who is over the Southeastern region of Tennessee. Several Enroll the Region assisters are also certified application counselors, who receive additional training through the Federal Marketplace.

For more information contact Dr. Holmes at 622-0974 or John Hubbard at 432-9748.
Shivakumar Ganesan

George (not real name) was unable to sleep at night. He was haunted by thoughts of losing his job. His fear was not unwarranted considering that colleagues around him were losing their jobs. Layoffs had become common in the industry.

According to the latest sequential data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), about two million people lost their jobs between January and August in 2017. Another similar report, McKinsey & Company has said nearly half of the workforce in the IT services firms will be "irrelevant" over the next 3-4 years. As the trend of job cuts continues, there is accelerated unrest among employees in the IT industry.

Given the above scenario, most of Georges friends who were laid off were finding it difficult to get placed. Almost everyone around him was facing similar issues. There was no one he could talk to. And this led to more stress and increased pressure. Replace George with the person sitting next to you. Replace fears of losing a job with thoughts about suicide, unhappiness in life, or sense of depression.

Social Friendships

The last decade has been marked by a sharp increase in internet connectivity. Global digital report 2017 states that, more than half the world now uses a smartphone and almost two-thirds of the worlds population now has a mobile phone. Social media use has grown 21 percent year-on-year, with almost half a billion (482 million) new users signing up over the course of 2016.

India alone accounts for 55 million+ users. The growth in number of people moving online has translated into yet another good year for the worlds top social media platforms, with most companies recording another year of impressive growth. While, we are now joint at the hip with our social media friends, there still exists a level of dystopian aloofness that we have never experienced earlier.

More than ever, today, we have online communities that bring people together and help them share their lives. But on an individual level, there is a still a marked sense of loneliness.

Social networking sites have blurred the lines between flesh-and-blood and virtual friends. People fail to understand that social media interaction is a superficial experience and that it cannot replace the enrichment that one may get from the personal touch of a real interaction. Therefore, even in todays day and age when we are more connected than ever, when it comes to real conversations, we are far apart from each other.

Cloud Telephony, a simple technology that can help you reach just about anyone

A phone call is a simple tool that is available to us today. Technologies like cloud telephony help us use a simple phone to achieve something much larger, help people to whom help is otherwise unavailable or people who are reluctant to reach out.

An online counselling and emotional wellness platform, observed that 62.5 percent of the professionals with lay-off related issues showed symptoms of either anxiety or depression and 57 percent professionals suffering through a lay-off did not seek ANY support.

A WHO study released in 2015 said that, Over five crore Indians suffered from depression, a major contributor to global suicides which occurred mainly in low and middle-income countries like India Can we not put an end to this? Think about the possibility of a phone number where people could call in, talk to experts or counsellors about things that are troubling them. They could get advice on how to cope with it. And all of this can happen without compromising on anyones privacy. A lot of hesitation and awkwardness can be saved when a face to face meeting is not necessary.

Uplifting at the grassroot level. Not just a helpline but an added power tool to disseminate information

A simple phone call can prove to be the most powerful way to disseminate information. Take an example of a non-profit organisation that has been working in the space of Policy Implementation in India since 2012, whose aim is to educate parents from the economically backward sections of the society about RTE and guide them through the admission process.

Manually helping thousands of parents during the admission season is almost impossible. Strike almost. It is definitely impossible. Because most of the times, these organisations also work on limited funds. Automating phone calls and SMS during their busiest seasons helps them work with a lot more parents without any one childs admissions falling through the cracks.

Similarly, another interesting example is of a publishing house who ran a campaign of reading bed-time stories in multiple Indian languages to children in the economically weaker sections of the society with a luxury, a story on demand in the language of their choice. The pilot project was so well received by so many children (whose parents were not literate) wanting to hear bedtime stories that they received over 35-37,000 calls in five days. Over 7,000 children were able to enjoy the world of tales and stories through cloud telephony.

Power of a phone call in India. Here are some reasons why a phone call works best for countries like India

1. 24x7 Availability - Being available at all times is very important because it is the first 5 minutes when a person is suicidal or in depression that makes all the difference. It may not be possible to physically meet someone at all times. But you can always pick up the phone and call someone knowing that help is available.

2. Privacy - One of the biggest reasons people avoid getting help in a country like India is the taboo that is still associated with mental illness. A phone call powered by a technology like cloud telephony gives you the shield of anonymity that can be a gentle nudge to get help.

3. Simplicity - A phone call doesnt need anything special and works on even a simple feature phone, no internet, no special apps, no barriers.

4. Multi-lingual - In a country like India, with so many languages, a phone call makes it very simple to express a persons thoughts without any inhibitions.

So, in a country like India with a population of 1.324 billion, it is extremely pertinent to feel personally connected rather than have each individual feel like a separate island. This is the possibility and power that cloud telephony can bring and therefore make a difference to peoples lives.

The author is CEO & Founder of Exotel
IANS

In a respite for Google, a judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit from former Google employees that accused the tech giant of paying male employees more than women.

According to a report in wthitv.com late on 6 December, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Mary E. Wiss said that the allegations were "insufficient to state class claims".

The class-action lawsuit had alleged that there were "systematic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the board".

"The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they were underpaid for performing similar or better work than their male counterparts," Wiss said. The three women have 30 days to file an amended appeal.

In September, three former Google employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the tech giant accusing it of discriminating against women when it came to pay and promotions.

According to a report in Fortune, the three former employees who served as software engineer, communications specialist and manager, filed the lawsuit that said: "Google pays women in California less than men who perform similar work and assigns female workers jobs that are less likely to lead to promotions."

"While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century," Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the women, had said in a statement.

In August, James Damore  the engineer who was fired by the company over a memo criticising it's diversity efforts  has also alleged that the tech giant was discriminating in hiring practices.

"There's a place for you at Google. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you," Google's Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai told women innovators on the sprawling campus at Mountain View, California, responding to Damore's manifesto. Google, however, is facing a probe by the US Department of Labour into its pay practices.
Aditya Madanapalle

The NCRB report on crimes in India for 2016 is a vast trove of information containing details on the kind of crimes committed across the nation. The statistics for cybercrime contain various types of offences, the motives of the crimes, the locations in which the crimes were committed, and the what acts or sections of the law they were tried under.

We have converted the tables to interactive charts to allow you to easily explore the data for yourself. The charts are split into three categories, cities, states and Union Territories.

Mumbai emerged on top as the city with the most cybercrime, and Uttar Pradesh was on top of the list when it came to states with the most cybercrime. Among the Union Territories, it was predictably Delhi which came up on top. The breakdown by motive shows some interesting insights, such as Lucknow having a penchant for pranks and a high incidence of cybercrime in Hyderabad being motivated by hate.

Bengaluru and Karnataka both top the list when the crime was stealing information for espionage. Mumbai and Maharashtra top the lists when the motive was "insult to the modesty of women" or "sexual exploitation." Andaman and Nicobar islands saw a spike in cybercrime as well.

Cities

The key takeaway for the city-based data was Mumbai coming on top as the city with the most cybercrime. The population and connectivity in the city played a role, but cybersecurity experts felt that more could have been done to address the situation when it came to tackling cybercrime in the financial capital of India. In 2014 and 2015, the highest number of cybercrime cases were seen in the city of Bengaluru, which came in second place this year.

NCRB data about #CyberCrime cases is out and Mumbai tops in India.

Around 980 in #mumbai city around 790 in #Bangalore and around 530 in #Jaipur

Inspite so much resistance to register an FIR if we have 980 cases Just imagine if police starts Registering all FIRs #media #news  Adv. Prashant Mali (@CyberMahaGuru) November 30, 2017

The administration was quick to respond to the concerns over Mumbai emerging as the city with the most amount of cybercrime. The Mumbai Police has committed to setting up dedicated cyber cells in every police station by 9 December. The police cells will deal with the cases related to cybercrime, except those that require technical expertise. The police force has initiated a five-day long training program so that the personnel can handle the cyber crime cases. Hyderabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Mumbai were the 5 cities with the most cybercrime. The amount of cybercrime has been reducing significantly every year in Hyderabad. Kanpur saw a sharp decline in cybercrime incidents as well.

"Illegal Gain" was the most common motives for the crimes. The motive breakdown provides some insights into what kind of crime is perpetrated in which cities. Bengaluru and Pune each saw two cases of piracy.

The data also contains if the crime committed fell under the Information Technology Act, the Indian Penal Code (IPC), or Special and Local Laws (SLL) where the crime was committed through the agency of a computer or a machine was the target of the crime. Mumbai surprisingly did not top the charts when it came to IT Act related cases, with Bengaluru emerging in the top spot.

States

Among the 29 states in India, Uttar Pradesh saw the most amount of cybercrime with Maharashtra coming in close behind at the second spot. The two were neck to neck in 2015, and Maharashtra saw more cybercrime than Uttar Pradesh in 2014. Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Kerala saw singificant dips in cybercrime as compared to the previous years. Generally, the seven sisters, with the exception of Assam, consistently have a very low rate of cybercrime.

The Statewise breakdown also provides insights into the motives in the crimes committed in these states. Assam came up on top in cases where revenge or political motives was the intent of the crime. Uttar Pradesh saw the highest incidence of blackmail and "inciting hate crimes against a community". Uttar Pradesh clearly has an infestation of trolls as it also tops the list where the motive is "Prank/ Satisfaction of Gaining Control".

Uttar Pradesh tops the list of cases falling under the IT Act with Karnataka coming in second and Assam coming in third. Maharashtra is the clear leader when it comes to crimes falling under the IPC, with more than four times the number of cases seen in any other state. Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka top the list when it comes to crimes that fall under SLL.

Union Territories

Delhi and Chandigarh came on top of the list with the most cybercrime among Union Territories. However, Chandigarh actually saw a drop in cybercrime as compared to the previous year, the only Union Territory to do so. The amount of cybercrime in Puducherry increased again after reducing in 2015.

Chandigarh was the lone Union Territory to report a case of extortion or blackmail. Apart from "Illegal Gain" and "Others" as the motives, there were few or no cases with cybercrime in the Union Territories.

Delhi came in first, and Chandigarh came in second for all cases under the IT Act, the IPC and the SLL.

The cybercrime section of the report gives policy makers and governmental departments a picture of what kind of measures need to be put into place to tackle the situation.

The report can be found on the NCRB website.
tech2 News Staff

At the on-going Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm finally took the wraps off its upcoming flagship chipset, namely the Snapdragon 845 which will be seen on flagship Android phones in 2018. The focus with this generation of flagship mobile platform will on having improved functionality in the areas of extended reality (XR), on-device artificial intelligence (AI), improved connectivity speeds and brand new Secure Processing Unit (SPU) which will be a separate processor to take care of all the biometric security credentials.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 houses four performance Kryo 385 processor cores clocked at 2.8 GHz and four efficiency cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. It is built on the 10nm LPP FinFET process. As was announced on 6 December, Samsung will be making the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chips. It will be supporting QuickCharge 4+ technology for faster charging.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset will also come with an integrated Qualcomm Spectra 280 image signal processor and Qualcomm Adreno 630 graphics processing unit. These two, when combined, will ensure that your next flagship Android phones are able to shoot UltraHD / 4K videos in HDR at 60 fps. It will also support 720p slow-mo shooting at 480 fps and Full HD slow-mo at 120 fps. Qualcomm also promises some 64x improvement in the HDR colour range over the previous generation mobile platform and a 10-bit colour depth information.

Say hello to @Qualcomm #Snapdragon845.

This tiny chipset is going to usher us in the next wave of UltraHD video & extended reality universe. #SnapdragonSummit @qualcomm_in pic.twitter.com/9IkMHupe5v  Tech2 (@tech2eets) December 6, 2017

The in-house Adreno 630 graphics unit is expected to provide 30 percent better graphics, 30 percent power efficiency and a 2.5x display throughput. Support for room-scale 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) to map rooms in real time for VR and AR applications is also present.

The Snapdragon 845 is also expected to improve on-device artificial intelligence (AI) by up to 3x as compared to Snapdragon 835. Improvements in voice-driven smart assistants are also on the cards and the Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec will take care of ultra-low-power voice processing.

There is a big change in terms of security management. So far security was part of the chipset through 'Trusted Zone' which was on-die. But with the rise in biometric means of authentication, Qualcomm is having a separate hardware sub-system for security on the Snapdragon 845. Called the Secure Processing Unit (SPU), it will add vault-like characteristics to existing layers of Qualcomm's mobile security solutions. It will provide biometric authentication (voice, fingerprint, iris, face), user and app protection and use-cases such as integrated SIM, payments, among other things.

Qualcomm's wireless tech has also got a shot in the arm with the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, which is Qualcomm's second-generation Gigabit LTE solution. The modem supports LTE Category 18 peak download speeds of 1.2 Gbps, up to 5x carrier aggregation, License Assisted Access (LAA), Dual SIM-Dual VoLTE as well as 4x4 MIMO on up to 3 aggregated carriers.

The #Snapdragon845 will, for the first time, feature a #SecureProcessingUnit, a kind of secure vault for storing and processing sensitive data like biometrics. #SnapdragonSummit pic.twitter.com/i2Lc19vdU0  Tech2 (@tech2eets) December 6, 2017

On the wireless front, the Snapdragon 845 also supports the 60GHz 802.11ad standard along with an integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 5.0 will allow you to broadcast audio simultaneously to multiple wireless speakers, smartphones or other devices. Qualcomm also promises battery drain reduction on wireless earbuds by up to 50 percent over the previous generation.
Berlin: German chancellor Angela Merkel "does not support" the decision by US president Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, her spokesperson said on Thursday.

The German government "does not support this position because the status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter.

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, for his part, said he feared Trump's decision would lead to a "new escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians".

The decision will likely throw "fuel on the fire", he told public broadcaster ARD.

"We hope that (our) worries can be... calmed. But this about face is already a big problem."

Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital, which marks a major departure from decades of American diplomacy, prompted a wave of condemnations.
London: Arabs and Muslims across West Asia on Wednesday condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator.

The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at US president Donald Trumps decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Major US allies came out against Trumps reversal of decades of US and broad international policy on Jerusalem.

France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalems status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

Israel, by contrast, applauded Trumps move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israels first day.

He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israels capital and he urged other countries to follow Trumps example.

Trump upended decades of US policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox West Asia.

The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.

Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trumps move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator.

The last round of US-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine US interests in the region and to shun Israel.

Protests broke out in parts of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Ammans outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted.

Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

'Legally null' decision

Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trumps decision and said it did not change Jerusalems disputed legal status.

Jordan said Trumps action was legally null because it consolidated Israels occupation of East Jerusalem.

Lebanese president Michel Aoun said Trumps Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of West Asia peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability.

Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation.

Turkey said Trumps move was irresponsible.

We call upon the US administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate.

Iran seriously condemns Trumps move as it violates UN resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israels security.

British prime minister Theresa May disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said.

However, Mays spokesman welcomed Trumps stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

French president Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trumps unilateral move.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers.

France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution  Israel and Palestine  living side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said.

For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks.

I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.
LONDON (Reuters) - Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator. Palestinians burn an Israeli and a U.S. flag during a protest against the U.S. intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammed SalemThe European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Major U.S. allies came out against Trumps reversal of decades of U.S. and broad international policy on Jerusalem. France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalems status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution. Israel, by contrast, applauded Trumps move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israels first day. He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israels capital and he urged other countries to follow Trumps example. Trump upended decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East. The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek. Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trumps move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator. The last round of U.S.-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine U.S. interests in the region and to shun Israel. Protests broke out in parts of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Ammans outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted. Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness. All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday. LEGALLY NULL DECISION Palestinians react during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu MustafaEgypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trumps decision and said it did not change Jerusalems disputed legal status. Jordan said Trumps action was legally null because it consolidated Israels occupation of East Jerusalem. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trumps Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability. Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation. Turkey said Trumps move was irresponsible. Slideshow (3 Images)We call upon the U.S. Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. A few hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate. Iran seriously condemns Trumps move as it violates U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israels security. British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said. However, Mays spokesman welcomed Trumps stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trumps unilateral move. The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers. France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said. For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks. I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
On Thursday, Australia became the latest country to legalise same-sex marriage. Australia's Parliament passed a bill legalising same-sex marriage after the nation overwhelmingly voted for it in an unofficial referendum in November.

Cheers and applause broke out as lawmakers voted in favour of the bill following hours of debate and emotional speeches at Parliament House in Canberra, CNN reported on Thursday.

"What a day for love, for quality, for respect! Australia has done it," said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House. Turnbull had vowed to pass the bill before Christmas after most lawmakers agreed to honour the "will of Australians", who voted in favour of same-sex marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote.

The Thursday vote put an end to a decade-old political wrangling shortly after Australia's upper House Senate passed a bill paving way for legalising same-sex marriage on 29 November.

"We are a part of an act of acceptance, an act of inclusion, an act of respect, an act of celebration, a day when this Senate declares our acceptance of our LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex, queer) brothers and our sisters," Australia's highest-profile gay politician, Labor's Penny Wong, said at the time. "(The bill) says to so many Australians, this parliament, this country, accepts you for who you are. Your love is not lesser, and nor are you."

Australia followed neighbour New Zealand, which passed a law in April 2013 legalising gay marriage and adoptions. Around the world, 28 countries have legalised same-sex marriage nationwide or in some region.

Same-sex marriage has been legalised in countries such as Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay.

Meanwhile, Taiwan, Austria, Israel and Armenia are also preparing to legalise same-sex marriage.

With inputs from AFP
Australia's parliament passed a bill legalising same-sex marriage on Thursday, after the nation overwhelmingly voted in favour of changing the law, ending decades of political wrangling.

There were loud cheers, hugs and sustained clapping in the lower House of Representatives when all but four MPs voted in support of marriage equality, after the upper house Senate passed the bill 43-12 last week.

"What a day for love, for quality, for respect! Australia has done it," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House.

The final step is for the Governor General Peter Cosgrove, the Queen's representative in Australia, to ratify the law, which will likely take place within days.

On 29 November, Australia's upper house senate had passed a bill paving the way for the legalisation of gay marriage, rejecting conservative efforts to add religious exemptions to the legislation.

Turnbull had vowed to pass the bill before Christmas after most lawmakers agreed to honour the "will of Australians", who voted in favour of same-sex marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote.

"We are a part of an act of acceptance, an act of inclusion, an act of respect, an act of celebration, a day when this Senate declares our acceptance of our LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex, queer) brothers and our sisters," Australia's highest-profile gay politician, Labor's Penny Wong, had said at the time. "(The bill) says to so many Australians, this parliament, this country, accepts you for who you are. Your love is not lesser, and nor are you."

Australia follows neighbour New Zealand, which had passed a law in April 2013 legalising gay marriage and adoptions.
In what will go down as a defining moment in the seven decade-long Israel-Palestine conflict, US president Donald Trump will be moving his countrys embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The city has been at the heart of the Palestine Mandate that was partitioned to form a separate Jewish state in 1948. One of the holiest places in Islam and Judaism, Jerusalem holds a place of pride not only in the Zionist movement but also but also in the Palestinian liberation movement.

The unique position of the city  unparalleled in modern history  forced the United Nations to declare it international territory. But after the Six Day War in 1967, the whole of Jerusalem came under de facto Israeli control.

By choosing to shift its embassy, the US will finally be initiating a two decade-old legally-established process, which it always chose to downplay for fear of a backlash from Arab allies.

The bedrock of the US' latest foreign policy "adventure" is the Jerusalem Embassy Act, 1995, which had been in place even when the current president was a mere real estate magnate.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act, 1995

The Act that was enacted by the US Congress in October 1995, backed Washington to initiate the process to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. the de facto capital of the Jewish State.

For the uninitiated, Israels claim on Jerusalem has been contested by the Palestinian Authority and the city is not internationally recognised as its national capital. Thus, every recognised nation-state has its embassy in Tel Aviv, Israels largest city.

The process had to be completed by 31 May, 1999. However, geopolitical calculations prevented three former presidents from giving accent to the process.

Instead, every president, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama  and even Trump on one occasion  have signed waivers under Section 7 of the Act to delay the process by six months each time. Between 1998 and 2017, there have been 37 presidential waivers, with the last one expiring a week ago.

But the repeated waivers have not discouraged presidents from issuing statements committing themselves to the eventual relocation of the embassy.

In fact, Trumps Republican predecessor George W Bush, who began the 'Global War on Terror' and embroiled the US military in the Gulf for most of his term, always added the following line in his waivers: "My administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem".

But Americas romance with Jerusalem goes a long way down in history. In the run-up to the 1976, presidential polls, the Democratic Party had said, "We recognise and support the established status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with free access to all its holy places provided to all faiths. As a symbol of this stand, the US embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.'' This clearly showed that the issue has had bipartisan support.

US and West Asia ties

As mentioned earlier, the US had always been reluctant to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem owing to its geo-political and economic interests in the Gulf region as well as its pre-eminent role as a mediator in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The US has had to always walk the diplomatic tightrope to keep its disparate partners in good spirit.

On one hand, the US has maintained unusually close diplomatic ties with Israel since the 1960s. Backed by a strong Israel lobby in the US, Washington has been a financial goody bag for Tel Aviv. Israel has also a major strategic ally of the US in West Asia. "Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security," former US secretary of state Alexander Haig had said on Israel.

On the other hand, Washington also forged ties with the Arab world that was opposed to the existence of Israel. Wary of the Soviet Unions influence over the oil-rich Gulf countries, the US courted the Arab countries extensively from the 1970s onward. In the next three decades, the Arab kingdoms  and Iraq during Iran-Iraq war  became major trade partners (including arms trade) for the US. The relationship is still going strong as evident by Saudi Arabias recent $11o billion arms deal with the US.

What has changed now?

It is said that foreign policy is often an extension of the domestic policy. Trumps West Asia policy seems to be influenced by his domestic compulsions.

As noted in several media reports, his decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem will delight his loyal conservative votebank.

But the Iran factor too has played a huge role in Trumps West Asia policy. A nuclear-armed Shiite Iran has always been a major point of concern for the Saudi Arabia-led Arab world, Israel, and the Trumpian US.

Anti-Iranism seems to be the creating strange bedfellows in West Asia, as several Gulf outlets have been reporting a possible thaw in ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel in the coming weeks.

While it is to be noted the Arab League condemned Trumps latest decision as unjustified provocation against Arabs, the statement may be mere rhetoric and nothing else. This is because only two of the 22 members states of the Arab League  Egypt and Jordan  have ties with Israel. Ironically, Israel fought three wars with these two countries over the Palestinian issue. The rest of the member-states have had negligible role in the conflict.

With Saudi Arabia, perceived to be the leader of the Arab countries, focussing on countering the Iran threat, Palestine may be kept on the backburner for now.

Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is just a confirmation of the ground reality. The fact of the matter is that no Arab country can start a war to snatch Jerusalem from the militarily superior Israel. However, amid the noise over the controversial move, one question will remain: What happens to Trumps much-touted 'ultimate deal'?
11/10/2022

Recently I engaged in a discussion with a group of friends about what it means to leave a legacy. One person asked about the difference between a legacy and an inheritance. This prompted me to ... more
No one is quite clear what the urgency was for US president Donald Trump to unilaterally sign the order recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And the haste with which the US is shifting its embassy seem extraordinarily insensitive.

This is the city of the confluence of three major religions and they are cheek by jowl. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Wailing Wall (Western Wall or Kotel) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are among the most treasured sites of the Islamic, Jewish and Christian faiths.

Although in 1980, Israel termed Jerusalem as the eternal capital after it annexed the eastern portion, this move had never really been recognised by the United Nations or the international community. Even Pope Francis cautioned Trump to hold back: I cannot silence the deep concern that has emerged in recent days. At the same time, I appeal strongly for all to respect the citys status quo in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions.

In August 1980, the UN condemned the annexation of East Jerusalem and rejected the option of it being partly or wholly the capital city of Israel. It actually went on record issuing a warning to Tel Aviv and said any such claim was invalid.

Resolution 2334 was adopted on 23 December, 2016 and was passed 14-0 with only the US abstaining from the five veto powers. The resolution stated that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a "flagrant violation" of international law and has "no legal validity.

Reacting to the Trump order, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said Jerusalem's status was an issue to be decided through negotiations. "In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear there is no alternative to the two-state solution," he said.

But at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no one is listening. By walking alone Trump has literally taken on the rest of the world. This is being seen as an act of war in Palestine and Hamas has already said it is preparing for violence in what could be start of the third intifada.

Turkish leaders said the region has been flung into the ring of fire and the current conflict torn West Asia now faces a grenade from which the pin has been removed. The peace process is dead in the water and years of toil by statesmen and women has been washed away. The media has expresses rage at the crossing of the red line and believes the repercussions will be aggressive even as US embassies prepare for a brutal backlash.

France and the UK have criticised the move the general mood indicates outrage with even American ally Saudi Arabia calling it irresponsible. With Yemen already burning and the battle between the Islamic State and the coalition powers nowhere near an end, this confrontation could further destabilise the region and even eclipse the fissures in West Asia, creating not only an oil and gas crisis but also bruising most brutally commercial interests between the region and the US.

Ironically, with Iraq demanding the decision be reversed and Iran calling it an act that would "provoke Muslims" and lead to an "increase in radical, angry and violent behaviour," old enemies have found common ground and could well band together against The Great Satan in the West. The call to arms is shrill and loud is unlikely to subside. The fallout is real but unthinkable this is a very flammable situation.

In the immediate future, the Hamas call to war is a matter of top concern. While White House bravado may sound like cowboy rhetoric, it ignores the ground reality and the ever-increasing circles of anger seen today. Trump explains himself thus: I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. Its the right thing to do.

This statement is going to appease no one. On the contrary by flying in the face of the UN he has single-handedly damaged that global entity, set afire West Asia and put every American at risk.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. special rapporteur on torture urged U.S. authorities to investigate and weigh criminal charges against jail officials in Ohio, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas for the clearly gratuitous infliction of severe pain and suffering from the use of Tasers on inmates, citing a Reuters report this week. Jens Modvig, Chair of the Committee against Torture (L), Malcolm Evans, Chair of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (C), speak at a news conference at the United Nations in New York, U.S., October 13, 2017. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe/Handout via REUTERSAfter reviewing footage of jail incidents obtained by Reuters, Nils Melzer said the grave abuse from Taser use in some U.S. jails violated the United Nations prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and, in some cases, amounted to torture. He cited video footage Reuters published of 22 incidents in four jails: in Franklin County, Ohio; Cheatham County, Tennessee; Franklin County, Arkansas; and McCurtain County, Oklahoma. In my view, all of the incidents shown in this video require independent investigation and most of them are likely to merit prosecution, Melzer said in an interview. Clearly gratuitous infliction of severe pain and suffering  constitutes a grave violation of human dignity and of the universal code of conduct for law enforcement officials. His criticisms were echoed by the head of the United Nations watchdog panel that monitors U.S. compliance with an anti-torture treaty, who said the cases documented by Reuters need to be investigated thoroughly. In an article and accompanying video report published Wednesday, Reuters identified 104 cases of prisoners who died after being shocked with Tasers. Some of the in-custody deaths were deemed multi-factorial, with no single cause, and some were attributed to pre-existing health problems. But the Taser was listed as a cause or contributing factor in more than a quarter of the 84 inmate fatalities in which the news agency obtained cause-of-death findings. Of the 104 inmates who died, just two were armed when shocked and nearly 80 percent hadnt been convicted of a crime. A third were in handcuffs or other restraints when stunned. In more than two-thirds of the 70 cases in which Reuters was able to gather full details, the inmate already was immobilized when shocked  pinned to the ground or held by officers. When you use a tool like this on an incapacitated person, to me it certainly amounts to cruel and degrading treatment, Melzer said. Read the original Reuters investigation here here The weapons manufacturer, Axon Enterprise Inc, said stun guns can help jailers and inmates avoid injuries when used properly. Axon issues guidance on proper use and warns of the risks associated with its weapons, but the company said it is up to local jail administrators to set their own policies on how and when the weapons are deployed. We do not condone torture of any kind, Axon spokesman Steve Tuttle said in response to Melzers call for an investigation. Our technology is designed to protect life and reduce harm to all parties involved during high risk, violent, and response-to-resistance situations. Melzer agreed Tasers can be a justifiable tool for prison guards as an alternative to a gun to incapacitate a person who poses a threat. Melzer cited two of the 22 cases identified by Reuters to explain his belief that an investigation is warranted. One was the 2009 stunning of Martini Smith at the jail in Franklin County, Ohio. Previously unpublished video footage showed the Tasers electrified darts striking the womans chest. Smith, who was pregnant and lost her baby after being stunned, was one of nine inmates who filed a lawsuit against the county. Guards used Tasers at least 180 times from January 2008 to May 2010, often on prisoners posing no threat, the lawsuit contended. In its own reviews, the sheriffs office found no wrongdoing by guards and said the Taser use did not constitute excessive force. That looks like a case of torture, Melzer said. She was threatened she would be Tased if she didnt comply with an order. Its not that she physically resisted or would have been dangerous to the officer. The Smith footage was among dozens of videos Reuters examined of Taser incidents at the Ohio jail. Nineteen were featured in the Reuters video story. Melzer said they revealed grave abuse. No deputies at Franklin County have been charged. The Franklin County Prosecutors office said the U.S. Department of Justice did not recommend criminal charges against jail officials when the DOJ intervened on behalf of inmates in the civil lawsuit stemming from the Taser incidents. The Justice Department at no time treated these incidents as criminal conduct, the office said in a statement, noting that plaintiffs lawyers and expert witnesses in the case also did not recommend criminal charges. Asked for comment, the DOJ said it was unable to immediately respond. Melzer also cited footage Reuters obtained of deputies in a jail in Cheatham County, Tennessee, who repeatedly stunned 19-year-old Jordan Norris on November 5, 2016, while he was strapped to a restraint chair. That footage also was evidence of torture, Melzer said. One deputy, Mark Bryant, was charged in September with four counts of aggravated assault and one count of official misconduct. Bryant has pleaded not guilty. Neither he nor his lawyers could be reached for comment. Jens Modvig, chairman of the U.N. Committee against Torture, a panel of 10 independent experts, also said the incidents documented by Reuters represented blatant abuse that may violate laws. The United States, as a signatory to the U.N. Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate the cases, he said. Once you introduce them, Modvig said of stun guns, it is difficult to avoid cases of misuse.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank, deploying several new army battalions and putting other forces on standby, describing the measures as part of its readiness for possible developments. Medics said at least 31 people were wounded by Israeli army gunfire when Palestinian protests erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday. They said 11 were hit by live bullets and 20 by rubber bullets. One person was in a critical condition. Some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted: Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperilling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza. He urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the U.S decision on Friday, calling it a day of rage. Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful. Asked on Israel Radio whether there might be another intifada, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said: In my estimate Abu Mazen (Abbas) will not wreck matters. It would not be helpful to him. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. EMBASSY MOVE Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years, a move his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark, said many countries would follow the U.S. move and contacts were underway. He did not name the countries he was referring to. President Trump has immortalized himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people, he said in a speech at Israels Foreign Ministry. Other close Western allies of Washington, including France and Britain, have been critical of Trumps move. Pope Francis has called for Jerusalems status quo to be respected, while China and Russia have also expressed concern. The EUs foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said: The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both. A man walks by as the Israeli national flag and an American one are projected on a part of the walls surrounding Jerusalem's Old City December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/FilesThe United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the U.S. decision, diplomats said. Trumps decision has raised doubts about his administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. Haniyeh called on Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. Abbas said on Wednesday the United States had abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts. We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine, Haniyeh said. United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine, he said, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. EXPECTING BACKLASH Slideshow (7 Images)Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. Hamas does not recognise Israels right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005. Fearing recrimination could disrupt reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas. The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Trumps decision fulfils a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support. He said his move was not intended to tip the scale in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties, but the move was seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt towards Israel. The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. In Lebanon, Hezbollah lawmakers said the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital constituted aggression against Palestinians and resistance was the only way to recover lost rights. Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006. Protests broke out in areas of Jordans capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees, and several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday after Trumps announcement. In Pakistans capital Islamabad, about 50 members of the Islamist movement Jamaat-ud-Dawa staged a protest on Thursday to denounce the U.S. decision. A few dozen people from a trade organization joined the rally. Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan said the United States was exposing its colonial ambition in Muslim territory. Palestinians switched off Christmas lights on trees outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in protest.

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JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. Palestinian factions called for a Day of Rage on Friday, and on Thursday a wave of protest in the West Bank and Gaza brought clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops. At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets, medics said. The Israeli military said on Thursday evening two rockets had been fired towards Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, but did not cross into Israeli territory. The military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank. Medics said 11 people had been hit by live bullets and 20 by rubber bullets in the Thursday unrest. One was in a critical condition. Some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted: Death to America! Death to the fool Trump! Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angering the Arab world and upsetting Western allies. The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza. On Fridays Day of Rage, rallies and protests are expected near Israeli-controlled checkpoints in the West Bank and along the border with Gaza. Friday prayers at the Muslim shrine of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem could also be a flashpoint. Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful. Abbas on Thursday met Jordans King Abdullah, whose dynasty is traditional custodian of Jerusalems holy places. Jordan is a staunch U.S. ally but has dismissed Trumps move as legally null. Palestinian news agency Wafa said Abbas updated the king on the imminent dangers in light of the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the occupation state, and the mechanism of future steps to protect the holy city. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of their own to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. TRUMP IMMORTALISED Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years, a move his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark and said many countries would follow the U.S. move and contacts were under way. He did not name the countries. President Trump has immortalised himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people, he said in a speech at Israels Foreign Ministry. Other close Western allies of Washington, including France and Britain, have been critical of Trumps move. Pope Francis has called for Jerusalems status quo to be respected, while China and Russia have expressed concern. A man walks by as the Israeli national flag and an American one are projected on a part of the walls surrounding Jerusalem's Old City December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/FilesThe EUs foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said: The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both. The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the U.S. decision, diplomats said. Trumps decision has raised doubts about his administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. Haniyeh called on Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. Abbas said on Wednesday the United States had abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts. We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine, Haniyeh said. BACKLASH EXPECTED Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. Hamas does not recognise Israels right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005. Slideshow (7 Images)Fearing disruption to reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas. The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem and no other country has its embassy there. Trumps decision fulfils a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals. He said his move was not intended to tip the scales in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties, but the move was seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt towards Israel. The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. The president has directed me and the State Department to undertake the process to begin an effort to move the embassy, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Vienna. This is not something that will happen overnight. In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah backed calls for a new intafada and said: We are facing blatant American aggression. Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said Trumps decision was the result of normalisation steps between some Gulf Arab countries and Israel. It is also a clear challenge to the Muslim world, the Yemen-based group said. Protests have broken out since Trumps announcement in Jordan, outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul and in Pakistan. Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan said the United States was exposing its colonial ambition in Muslim territory. Palestinians switched off Christmas lights on trees outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in protest.

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GAZA (Reuters) - At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli army gunfire and rubber bullets, medics said, in Palestinian protests in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Thursday after the United States recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital. A Palestinian protester takes cover during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamad TorokmanIn the West Bank cities of Hebron and Al-Bireh, thousands of demonstrators rallied with chants of Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine, witnesses said. Some Palestinians threw stones at soldiers. Eleven protesters was hit by live fire and another 20 by rubber bullets, medics said. A military spokeswoman said soldiers had used riot-dispersal gear against hundreds of rock-throwers. In the Gaza Strip, dozens of protesters gathered near the border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. Seven protesters were wounded by live fire, one was in a critical condition, the health ministry said. Four people were wounded by live gunfire in the West Bank and another 20 were hit by rubber bullets, health officials said. An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Palestinian authorities called a general strike in protest at U.S. President Donald Trumps announcement about Jerusalem on Wednesday. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. Member of armed groups including from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass Fatah faction, appeared at a news conference in Gaza, their faces hidden by masks and called for a resumption of armed resistance in the West Bank. Abbas travelled to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to meet King Abdullah where he updated him on the latest developments, the Wafa news agency said.

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Islamabad: In some good news for the cancer-stricken wife of ousted Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the election authority on Thursday clarified that she remains a member of the National Assembly despite not taking oath after winning a bypoll in September.

Kulsoom Nawaz, undergoing treatment in London for throat cancer, remains a member of the National Assembly (NA) though she has not taken the oath, Express News quoted the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) as saying.

Responding to a letter sent by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) seeking her disqualification due to delay in Kulsoom taking the oath after winning NA-120 by-elections on 17 September, the ECP said she has been unable to take oath due to her medical condition.

The ECP further explained that there was no deadline for an elected member to take an oath in the national and provincial assemblies. However, it was mandatory for MNAs to take oath to be allowed to attend and vote in the parliament under Article 65 of the Constitution, the report said.

PTI spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry said in the letter that Kulsoom had failed to fulfill legal requirement "for the winning candidate to take an oath in the National Assembly."

Chaudhry had sought legal and constitutional views of the election commissioner, putting forth the question of the possibility of re-election after declaring NA-120 polls null and void.

Kulsoom has been battling lymphoma since the diagnosis in August. She is currently receiving treatment in London and has undergone three surgeries since August.

She contested the election from a constituency vacated by Sharif, who was disqualified by the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case. Kulsoom did not even campaign for the election, which was done by her daughter Maryam.

Sharif and Maryam are currently in London with Kulsoom after an anti-graft court allowed them to be with her for a some time before returning to Pakistan to face corruption charges in the Panama Papers scandal.

The by-election was viewed by many as a litmus test to see whether the powerful Sharif family still wielded influence in the country after the apex court disqualified Sharif and forced him to resign.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Irans allies in Lebanon have emerged even stronger from a crisis triggered by Saudi Arabia, which achieved little more than to force the Saudis main Lebanese ally - Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri - closer to Tehrans friends in Beirut. Lebanese President Michel Aoun meets with Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon's prime minister from Saudi Arabia and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Aziz TaherSaudi Arabia aimed to hurt Iran in Lebanon by forcing Hariris resignation on Nov. 4 and torpedoing his coalition deal with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its allies, using its influence over the Sunni leader to cause trouble for the Shiite group. Instead, the move backfired as Western states censured Riyadh over a step they feared would destabilise Lebanon, despite their shared concerns over the regional role of the heavily armed Hezbollah. Hariri revoked his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under the crisis caused by his announcement from Riyadh. Lebanese officials say he was put under house arrest before French intervention led to his return home. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. But while the crisis has abated, its causes - Hezbollahs growing military influence in the region and Saudi Arabias determination to counter Iran - seem likely to bring more trouble Lebanons way sooner or later. Hariri has identified possible Gulf Arab sanctions as a major risk to the Lebanese economy. Analysts also see a risk of another war with Hezbollahs old foe, Israel, which is alarmed by the groups strength in Lebanon and Syria. The episode also leaves big questions over Lebanese politics, long influenced by Saudi Arabia, a patron of the Lebanese Sunni community. One senior Lebanese politician said the experience had left a big scar on Hariri, once the the spiritual son of Saudi Arabia. After this, it will not be easy to have a normal relationship again. Meeting on Tuesday for the first time since the resignation, Hariris government indirectly acknowledged Saudi concerns over Hezbollahs role outside Lebanon. At Hariris behest, it reaffirmed its policy of staying out of Arab conflicts. A top Lebanese official said Western pressure forced Saudi Arabia to retreat from its Lebanon plan but further Saudi moves could not be ruled out: Can we restrain Saudi from going towards madness? In my view, no. A Western diplomat said Saudi measures targeting the Lebanese economy were a genuine possibility at some point though the international community would likely try to influence how tough any sanctions would be. I think the Saudis have understood from the international reaction that Lebanon isnt a pitch on which they are playing alone. There are other players who have interests who dont want to see those undermined, the diplomat said. At the same time, the international communitys patience isnt unlimited. It will be hard to protect Lebanon indefinitely if there is no tangible progress on rolling back Hezbollah. NASRALLAH SEEN SOFTENING RHETORIC Hezbollah was the only group allowed to keep its weapons at the end of Lebanons 1975-90 civil war to fight Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon. Its militia has been a source of controversy in Lebanon since the Israeli withdrawal of 2000. With Saudi backing, Hariri led a Lebanese political alliance to confront the group, but that resulted in Hezbollahs takeover of Beirut in 2008 during a brief civil war. Hezbollahs stature has grown in the chaos that swept the Arab world after 2011. It has backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and helped in the war against Islamic State in Iraq. But its role in the Yemen conflict is seen as the main factor behind the crisis in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran and Hezbollah of military support for the Iranian-allied Houthis in their war with a Saudi-led coalition. Hariri has repeatedly flagged Yemen as the cause of the latest crisis, and warned that Lebanons economy is at stake. The economy depends on remittances from expat workers, particularly in the Gulf. Any threat to inflows is seen as a risk to the system that finances the heavily indebted state. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has appeared to recalibrate his rhetoric in response to the crisis. Last month, he denied his group was fighting in Yemen, or sending weapons to the Houthis, or firing rockets at Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory. He also indicated Hezbollah could pull its fighters from Iraq. The remarks on the eve of Hariris return were seen as appeasing, a source close to Hariri said. WESTERN INTERESTS Hariri has twice led coalition governments including Hezbollah despite his enmity towards the group: five Hezbollah members have been charged by a U.N.-backed tribunal with the 2005 assassination of his father, Rafik al-Hariri. Hezbollah denies any involvement. Hariris willingness to compromise with Hezbollah was a factor behind the Saudi move against him and has drawn criticism from within the Sunni community. His status as Lebanons most influential Sunni will be put to the test in parliamentary elections next year. Ashraf Rifi, a hawkish Sunni politician, said the way Hariri reversed his resignation was a farce and a surrender to the Hezbollah project. The senior politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah may offer Hariri a gesture over its regional role but saw little prospect of the group fundamentally changing course. President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, could pressure the group a little bit to be cooler on certain issues, the politician said. But Lebanese in Saudi Arabia still had reason to be afraid for their livelihoods: I think with time the Lebanese will try to disentangle themselves from Saudi Arabia, but this will cost Lebanon a lot because revenues will be reduced. The Hariri crisis marked an unprecedented intervention in Lebanon, even in a country with a long history of foreign meddling. It also underlined the different priorities of Saudi Arabia and its Western allies in Lebanon - a major recipient of aid to help it host 1.5 million Syrian refugees. On the last day of Hariris stay in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman summoned him for a meeting and kept him waiting for hours, delaying his departure for France where President Emanuel Macron was waiting for him, the senior politician and a top Lebanese official said. Macron was calling Saad to find out where he was, said the senior politician, adding that Macron then called Crown Prince Mohammad to tell him he was expecting Hariri for lunch. Western states want stability in Lebanon, the politician said. They need Lebanon as a platform for observing the Arab world. They have invested a lot here, and if there is a civil war, (there is the question of) what to do with all the Syrian refugees.

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New York: The mystery buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Salvator Mundi," which fetched a record $450.3 million at an auction in November, is a Saudi prince, a media report said.

The revelation that Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud was the purchaser were according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The painting, a representation of Jesus Christ, was bid to the highest auction price ever achieved to date for a work of art. Christie's auction house, which handled the sale, had said that it was the only known Da Vinci piece remaining in private hands.

According to The New York Times revelation, Prince Bader is "little known from a remote branch of the royal family, with no history as a major art collector, and no publicly known source of great wealth". He is a friend and associate of the country's 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

A spokeswoman for Christie's said it did not comment on the identities of any buyer or seller without their permission.

Prince Bader did not respond to a detailed request for comment. But as The New York Times pressed for a response on Wednesday, the newly opened branch of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi tweeted that the painting "is coming to Louvre Abu Dhabi".

Documents provided from inside Saudi Arabia revealed that representatives for Prince Bader, did not present him as a bidder until the day before the sale.

In order to participate in the bidding, the prince put $100 million on deposit with the auction house, although Christie's subsequently asked for additional information, including the origin of the money he was putting up, with the prince stating simply that it came from "real estate", The New York Times reported.

The painting's previous owner, Dmitry E Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire, had paid $127.5 million for the painting in 2013, less than a third of its sale price in November, and he is still locked in litigation with the dealer who sold it to him over that price.
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak put his party on a war footing Thursday as polls loom, vowing to "fight till the end" despite a massive financial scandal that has rocked his government.

The leader told the annual assembly of his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)  which has ruled Muslim-majority Malaysia for six decades at the head of a coalition  that the country was facing a "crucial election".

"In this battle we fight till the end, in this election we will emerge victorious", he told thousands of cheering delegates wearing the red colours of his party in Kuala Lumpur.

Elections must be called by August at the latest. Najib did not hint at a date in his speech but speculation is swirling that they will be take place in early 2018.

Najib's chances of winning a third term have been dented by explosive graft allegations. Billions were looted from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund that he founded in complex overseas deals which are being investigated in several countries.

Both Najib, who made no mention of the scandal during Thursday's speech, and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The US Justice Department has led the charge in tackling the alleged pillaging, launching lawsuits through which it is seeking to recover $1.7 billion in assets thought to have been purchased with looted money, from artwork to high-end real estate.

This week US Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a conference in Washington that the 1MDB scandal was "kleptocracy at its worst".

Election race upended

The election race has also been upended by the emergence of elderly former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who led Malaysia for 22 years, as a key figure in the main opposition alliance. Mahathir, 92, has come out of retirement to try to oust the government over the 1MDB scandal, teaming up with his former nemesis, jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

In his speech at the UMNO gathering, the most closely watched event in Malaysia's political calendar, Najib, 64, accused Mahathir of having "crossed the line". "He has the audacity to unite with his political enemies," he said.

He also warned that if the opposition won the election then Muslim Malays, about 60 percent of the country's 32 million people, "will become homeless and despised in their own country".

He sought to rally Muslims over US president Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying that "the voice of Muslims in Malaysia will reverberate across the world" in opposition to the move.

UMNO has long championed the Malay cause in a country that is home to substantial ethnic and religious minorities, and has enshrined policies that favour them.

Most observers believe that Najib and the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition will edge another victory in the elections, as the opposition remains weak with leading light Anwar still in jail following a 2015 sodomy conviction his supporters say was politically-motivated.

Najib has overcome the worst of the 1MDB crisis, which peaked in 2015, purging critics from government and cracking down on dissent.

"BN, and especially UMNO, is set to win big," said Oh Ei Sun, from Malaysian think-tank the Pacific Research Center. "The opposition is definitely not shaping up for a real fight."
SEOUL (Reuters) - Two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea on Thursday amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and U.S. threats have made the outbreak of war an established fact. U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber flies in formation during a joint aerial drill called 'Vigilant Ace' between U.S. and South Korea, South Korea December 6, 2017. Picture taken December 6, 2017. The Defense Ministry/Yonhap via REUTERSThe annual U.S.-South Korean Vigilant Ace exercises feature 230 aircraft, including some of the most advanced U.S. stealth warplanes. They come a week after North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to date, which it says can reach all of the United States. North Koreas foreign ministry blamed the drills and confrontational warmongering by U.S. officials for making war inevitable. The remaining question now is: when will the war break out? it said in a statement carried by North Koreas official KCNA news agency. We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it. China, North Koreas neighbour and lone major ally, again urged calm and said war was not the answer, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said North Korea wanted direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security, something Moscow was ready to facilitate. We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. The outbreak of war is not in any sides interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people. Lavrov said he had passed on Pyongyangs desire for direct talks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the two met on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on Thursday. We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations, Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. Washington has said it remains open to talks if North Korea demonstrates it is serious about giving up its nuclear weapons, but that its recent activities showed it was not. Chinas Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zheng Zeguang was to meet Matt Pottinger, the head of Asian affairs at the White Houses National Security Council, on Thursday to discuss North Korea and trade, a senior U.S. official said. Tensions have risen markedly in recent months after repeated North Korean missile tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions and the detonation of what Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb on Sept. 3. North Koreas latest missile test prompted a U.S. warning that North Koreas leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. STRATEGIC BOMBERS A U.S. soldier takes part in a joint aerial drill exercise called 'Vigilant Ace' between U.S. and South Korea, at the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiOn Wednesday, a U.S. B-1B bomber flew from the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to join the exercises, which will run until Friday. In September, B-1Bs were among a formation of U.S. military aircraft that flew further north along North Koreas coast than at any time in the past 17 years, prompting Pyongyangs foreign minister to warn that U.S. bombers could be shot down even if they did not enter North Korean airspace. Yang Uk, a senior fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum, said that while B-1Bs carried no nuclear weapons, they would be key to any strike targeting major North Korean facilities. B1-B bombers have been regularly dispatched to the Korean peninsula over the past years; however, it seems that the U.S. Air Force might have enhanced its training to better prepare for actual warfare, he said. Thats why North Korea has been making such a big deal when B1-B bombers are flying overhead. Slideshow (2 Images)Both sides insist they dont want war, but blame each other for provocations, while saying they will act to defend themselves. U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the weekend that the possibility of war with North Korea was increasing every day. He said Trump was prepared to take action against North Korea but was working to convince China, Russia and other nations to put more pressure on Pyongyang to get it to give up its weapons programmes. U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving U.S. military dependants out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close. The Pentagon said it has no intent to move out any dependants. North Koreas Foreign Ministry spokesman accused high-level U.S. politicians of showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another, KCNA said. These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula, he said. A Russian lawmaker who met North Koreas ambassador to Russia said on Thursday Pyongyang did not want to escalate tensions but did not fear war, the Interfax news agency reported. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States and says its weapons programmes are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to North Korea by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012. Some analysts and diplomats hope his visit could spark a U.N.-led effort to defuse rising tensions. Feltman met North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Thursday, following a meeting with the vice foreign minister on Wednesday, KCNA said.

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Yangon: Prolonged displacement of Rohingya refugees in squalid Bangladeshi camps poses a "grave security risk", conflict analysts ICG warned Thursday, raising the spectre of militants recruiting among the displaced and launching cross-border attacks on Myanmar.

Raids by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 25 August sparked the vicious Myanmar army response which has forced more than 6,20,000 Rohingya to flee Rakhine state for Bangladesh.

ARSA "appears determined to regroup and remain relevant" and may draw on desperate Rohingya refugees languishing in camps for future operations, the ICG (International Crisis Group) said in the report.

The group may "shift to cross-border attacks" using Bangladesh as a base for recruitment and training, the study said, cautioning the risk of an ever-deepening cycle of violence is all too real.

"Such attacks would have profoundly negative consequences," straining Myanmar-Bangladesh relations and worsening contempt for the Rohingya "that would further diminish prospects of an eventual refugee return".

Global outcry over the refugee crisis, one of the worst in recent history, has triggered a hyper-defensive response inside the country, where anti-Rohingya attitudes have hardened since ARSA's emergence.

Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group eligible for citizenship, instead calling them "Bengali", suggesting they are illegal immigrants.

In another serious looming risk, ICG warned that Rohingya's plight has become a "cause celebre of the Muslim world" with Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and other global jihadi groups calling for attacks on Myanmar.

Myanmar's military has repeatedly used the terror threat to justify its campaign in northern Rakhine state.

ARSA has distanced itself from any wider global cause for jihad, saying it is only fighting to protect Rohingya rights.

International pressure is ratcheting up on Myanmar.

This week the UN rights chief said Myanmar's crackdown on the Rohingya showed possible "elements of genocide", as calls for the safe and sustainable repatriation of refugees grows.

Myanmar refutes any wrongdoing saying it was forced into a defensive action by ARSA attacks.

It has agreed with Bangladesh to start repatriation of "eligible" refugees within a few months.

But there are widespread doubts over how many Rohingya can prove they are entitled to return to Rakhine, or want to go back to areas riddled with communal mistrust and where their villages were razed.

China, a key strategic ally of Myanmar, is pitching itself as an arbiter in the crisis, and has repeatedly urged the international community to take a softline on Myanmar.

But pressure is mounting in the West - particularly Washington - to reimpose targeted sanctions on Myanmar military figures.

Sanctions were slowly rolled back in recent years as reward for democratic gains after decades of outright junta rule.

The ICG study said any fresh sanctions would backfire by isolating Myanmar and calcifying hatred towards the Rohingya.
DHAKA (Reuters) - Rohingya refugees continue to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh even though both countries set up a timetable last month to allow them to start to return home, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR)said on Thursday. Rohingya refugees build a school at Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Damir SagoljThe number of refugees appears to have slowed. 625,000 have arrived since Aug. 25. 30,000 came last month and around 1,500 arrived last week, UNHCR said The refugee emergency in Bangladesh is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, said deputy high commissioner Kelly Clements. Conditions in Myanmars Rakhaine state are not in place to enable a safe and sustainable return ... refugees are still fleeing. Most have little or nothing to go back to. Their homes and villages have been destroyed. Deep divisions between communities remain unaddressed and human access is inadequate, she said. Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Nov. 23 to start the return of Rohingya within two months. It did not say when the process would be complete. Myanmars security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, according to the top U.N. human rights official this week. Mainly Buddhist Myanmar denies the Muslim Rohingya are its citizens and considers them foreigners. UNHCR would make a fresh appeal to donors for funds after the end of February in next year, Kelly said.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that North Korea wants direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security from Washington, Russian news agencies reported. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov prepares for the beginning of a meeting of OSCE Foreign Ministers in Vienna, Austria, December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard FoegerLavrov said he had passed on Pyongyangs desire for direct talks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the two men met on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on Thursday, the agencies reported. We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations, Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. Our American colleagues, (including) Rex Tillerson, have heard this.

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Beirut: Russian air strikes killed 24 civilians on Wednesday in a village held by the Islamic State group near the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombing raids hit the village of Al-Jerzi on the eastern bank of the river, which cuts across Deir Ezzor province.

After reporting earlier Wednesday that the strikes killed 21 civilians, the Britain-based monitor said the toll had risen. "More people died and more bodies were found," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

"Ten children and four women are among the dead in the Russian air strikes targeting residential buildings in Al- Jerzi," he told AFP.

The monitor relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used. It says Islamic State, which used to control swathes of Deir Ezzor province, has been ousted from all but eight percent of the oil-rich region.

The jihadists have lost vast swathes of it to separate offensives by Russian-backed Syrian troops and an alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The SDF has long been backed by US-led coalition bombing of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but its Kurdish component recently said it had also received support from Moscow.

Russian warplanes had given air cover to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as they fought against jihadists in Deir Ezzor, according to the YPG and Moscow's defence ministry.

Russia first launched bombing raids in 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered forces. Those strikes have helped Assad regain control over much of war-ravaged Syria.

More than 3,40,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out in March 2011 with protests against Assad, who launched a brutal crackdown. Islamic State has also lost most of the territory it held in neighbouring Iraq.
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia on Thursday slammed US president Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city on Wednesday, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said.

"The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically neutral American position on Jerusalem."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.
Washington: Top American lawmakers, across the aisle, joined by eminent experts on Thursday slammed China for the "continued repression and human rights violations" in Tibet, even as they praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

"Tibetans inside Tibet continue to live in very, very challenging times indeed," top Hollywood star Richard Gere, chair of the International Campaign for Tibet, said in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

During the hearing, lawmakers and experts testifying before the subcommittee called for reciprocal access, religious freedom and human rights in Tibet.

Congressman Ted Yoho, who chaired the hearing, supported the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017 which proposes to deny US visas to Chinese government officials involved in restricting access to Tibet.

Alleging that human rights and personal freedoms in Tibet were "already in a poor and worsening state", Yoho said the government of China engages in "severe repression" of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic heritage by and "strictly curtailing" the civil rights of the Tibetan population, including the freedom of speech, religion, association, assembly and movement.

The authorities have used "heavy-handed and violent tactics" to maintain control in Tibet, especially in response to unrest, including "extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial detentions and house arrest", he said, he said.

"Tibet remains extremely isolated. The flow of information in and out of Tibet is tightly restricted. Tibetans are prevented from obtaining passports and moving freely, and foreigners, especially journalists and officials are frequently denied access," he said.

Congressman Brad Sherman demanded that Congress must act quickly to counter China's "repressive tactics and policies" toward Tibet.

"This is important for our own standing as leaders in world human rights," he said, as he praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

"We're trying to build a strategic relationship and partnership with India, and we've got to commend India for providing refuge to over 90,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama himself, who have had to flee Chinese repression," he said.

According to Congressman Steve Chabot, China's "decades-long oppression of Tibet is a constant example of its total disregard for religious freedom and human decency".

"Just this past weekend, another Tibetan monk set himself on fire to protest China's ongoing tyranny. China has systematically marginalised Tibet for over 50 years now," he said.

America's own national security interests dictate that it oppose China's "increasingly repressive policies" on Tibet and that the US work toward a negotiated solution and start making the treatment of the people of Tibet an important factor in our relations with Beijing, asserted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Congressman Jim McGovern, author of the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017, said the Dalai Lama can play a constructive role in negotiating a better future for the Tibetan people, but China "clearly doesn't see it that way".

"China is waiting him out and counting on his eventual departure to remove Tibet from the international agenda, so we need to move now, and we need some leverage, and that is why earlier this year, along with a bipartisan group of members, I introduce HR1872, the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act," he said.

"If China wants its citizens and officials to travel freely in the United States, Americans must be able to travel freely in China, including Tibet.

"But allowing travel to Tibet is only one step China needs to take, and there are others. Most especially, China should permit His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to return to Tibet for a visit if he so desires," McGovern said.

Gere told lawmakers that reciprocity is an important principle in diplomatic relations that should be implemented not only when it comes to trade, but also to freedom of movement and freedom of information.

"If they (Chinese) want to be the superpower they claim to be and the world leader they claim to be, these norms are to be followed," he said.

Gere said another important part of the Tibet Policy Act was to encourage the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and his representatives and the Chinese government.

"We have not done that recently, and this needs to be the forefront of what our policy is with China. It's not unreasonable, and it's actually good for China. To resolve this Tibetan issue is good for everyone, especially the Chinese," he said.
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, effectively taking sides in one of the thorniest issues in the Mideast dispute and upsetting Washingtons friends and foes alike. Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors had avoided so as not to inflame tensions. The status of Jerusalem -- home to sites that are holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions -- is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical. Palestinians accused the United States of abdicating its responsibility to try to broker peace. The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Trumps decision fulfils a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelical who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support. I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said in a speech in the White House. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. Trumps decision risks further inflaming a region already grappling with conflict in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Protests broke out in areas of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees and several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the citys outskirts, hundreds of protesters roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordans government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America. America is the mother of terror, they chanted. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. Netanyahu said any peace deal with Palestinians must include Jerusalem as Israels capital. This would be a non-starter for Palestinians in any negotiations if it means the entire city would be under Israeli control. PALESTINIANS UPSET Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday called the city the eternal capital of the state of Palestine. Abbas said Trumps decision was tantamount to the United States abdicating its peace mediator role. Jordan called Trumps decision legally null Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused Trump of a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. With Vice Pence Mike Pence looking on, U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order after he announced the U.S. would Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueTrump has tilted U.S. policy toward Israel since taking office in January. He cannot expect to side entirely with Israel on the most sensitive and complex issues in the process, and yet expect the Palestinians to see the United States as an honest broker, said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer. Pope Francis called for Jerusalems status quo to be respected, saying new tension would further inflame world conflicts. China and Russia expressed concern the move could aggravate Middle East hostilities. British Prime Minster Theresa May said: We disagree with the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement. We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it. French President Emmanuel Macron said Trumps announcement was regrettable. U.N. chief Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, There is no Plan B. Trump said his move is not intended to tip the scale in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties. Slideshow (6 Images)Seeking to soften the blow of his announcement to the Palestinians, he insisted he was not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. KEY DISPUTES Other key disputes between the two sides include the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements built on occupied land. Trump made no mention of settlements. He said he remained committed to the two-state solution if the parties want one. The president called on the region to take his message calmly. There will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement but we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a place of greater understanding and cooperation, Trump said. Trump acted under a 1995 law that requires the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. His predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, had consistently put off that decision to avoid inflaming tensions in the Middle East. Trump ordered a delay to any embassy move from Tel Aviv since the United States does not have an embassy in Jerusalem to move into. A senior administration official said it could take three to four years to build one. T The Jerusalem decision has raised doubts about the Trump administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. It has so far shown little in the way of progress. The State Department told its diplomatic posts worldwide to defer non-essential travel to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank until Dec. 20, according to a copy of a cable seen by Reuters. The Pentagon declined to comment on U.S. intelligence about any anticipated threats to U.S. embassies or consulates tied to Trumps announcement but expressed confidence in U.S. security of those facilities. We are postured, right now, to handle any threat at all of our embassies and consulates worldwide, Colonel Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters ahead of Trumps remarks.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite warnings from around the world that the gesture further drives a wedge between Israel and the Palestinians. In a speech at the White House, Trump said his administration would also begin a process of moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is expected to take years. The status of Jerusalem -- home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions -- has been one of the thorniest issues in long-running Mideast peace efforts. Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the citys eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. Trumps decision is likely to please his core supporters - Republican conservatives and evangelical Christians who comprise an important share of his political base. With Vice Pence Mike Pence looking on, U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order after he announced the U.S. would Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueTrump aides contend the move reflects the reality of Jerusalem as the centre of Jewish faith and the fact that the city is the seat of the Israeli government. Slideshow (6 Images)Trump called his decision a a long overdue step to advance the peace process. I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. Trump acted under a 1995 law that requires the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. His predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, had consistently put off that decision to avoid inflaming tensions in the Middle East. A Palestinian envoy said the Trump decision was a declaration of war in the Middle East. Pope Francis called for Jerusalems status quo to be respected, saying new tension would further inflame world conflicts. China and Russia expressed concern the plans could aggravate Middle East hostilities.

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Peshawar: Two top commanders of the Taliban were killed on Wednesday by Pakistani security forces during a raid in the country's restive northwest tribal region bordering Afghanistan, police said.

Acting on a tip-off, the security forces and the police carried out the raid in Swat's Charbagh area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, they said.

The militants, top commanders of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), opened fire after which the security forces killed them. Both the militants were wanted by the police in cases of targeted killings and terror attacks, the police said.

"The militants were being traced for their previous involvement in terrorist activities in Malakand division," the army said in a statement.

Two facilitators of the militants were also apprehended during the operation.

According to the security forces, the militants were in contact with the TTP leaders in Afghanistan.
China and Canada have "basically finished a feasibility study on a free trade agreement," after more than a year of effort, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said Thursday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, center, speaks to the media at a hotel in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017. [Photo: IC]

"Both sides have extended willing to sign the agreement," said spokesperson Gao Feng at a press conference.

Gao said progress had been made on the issue during Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to China from Sunday to Thursday.

Gao said China was willing to work together with Canada for an early start to talks on the deal.

The two countries opened the feasibility study in September last year.

Recent years have witnessed robust momentum in bilateral cooperation, which has brought benefits to both peoples and sent positive signals to the international community, Trudeau said during the visit. Canada is committed to deepening relations with China on the basis of mutual respect and mutual trust, boosting cooperation on economy, trade and people-to-people exchanges and intensifying coordination on major global and regional issues, he said.

China is Canada's second largest trade partner.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that there was no alternative to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and that Jerusalem was a final-status issue that should be resolved through direct talks. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the 9th ASEAN UN Summit in Manila, Philippines, 13 November 2017. REUTERS/Linus Escandor Ii/PoolI have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said after U.S. President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he told reporters. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.

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SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday wrestled with a bid by President Donald Trump to show that his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries is legal. FILE PHOTO: International passengers arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia, U.S., June 26, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan/Files The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in Seattle came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trumps travel ban to take effect while litigation over its ultimate validity unfolds. The ban targets people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism. The state of Hawaii, however, challenged it in court, and a Honolulu federal judge said it exceeded Trumps powers under immigration law. Trumps ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect. The same three judge 9th Circuit panel which limited a previous version of Trumps ban heard arguments on Wednesday. Some of the judges appeared more cautious toward the idea of blocking the presidents policy. Judge Michael Daly Hawkins asked Hawaiis lawyers whether Trumps latest proclamation is more sound than prior versions. The current one, he said, is based on specific findings that some foreign governments do not share enough information to properly vet immigrants. You would trust Kim Jong Un to say this person is this person, you gotta let him in? Hawkins said. Judge Ronald Gould said the court would issue a ruling as soon as practicable. Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, which caused chaos at airports and mass protests. He issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. That expired in September after a long court fight, and was replaced with the current version. The ban has some exceptions. Certain people from each targeted country can still apply for a visa for tourism, business or education purposes, and any applicant can ask for an individual waiver. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear a separate challenge to the ban on Friday, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to ultimately decide the issue in the coming months.

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Washington: The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a congressman's motion on Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump, as Democratic Party leaders argued that now was not the time to pursue the effort.

Lawmakers voted 364 to 58 in rejection of liberal Democrat Al Green's resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against the Republican president. The vote was not on the articles of impeachment themselves but on tabling the proposal.

Green had used a so-called privileged motion to force a vote on the issue. All Republicans opposed the motion, along with 126 Democrats.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that while Trump has made several statements and taken actions "that are beyond the pale for most Americans," it was important to allow congressional committees probing Russian meddling in the US election and possible Trump campaign collusion to proceed with their work.

"The special counsel's investigation is moving forward as well, and those inquiries should be allowed to continue," she added, referring to Robert Mueller.

"Now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment."

Green first introduced impeachment proceedings in October, but forced the vote yesterday.

"I love my country. For this reason I will bring articles of impeachment to a vote in the House of Representatives," Green wrote in a letter to colleagues.

In the resolution, Green argues that Trump has sewn discord among Americans "by associating the majesty and dignity of the presidency with causes rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, or neo-Nazism."

Two other House Democrats have introduced impeachment articles, but they have not reached the floor.

Democrats have debated the political merits of pressing for impeachment, and some have cautioned that an aggressive stance could provoke a backlash by Trump's conservative base at the ballot box.
Jerusalem: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday termed the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital by US president Donald Trump as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision", saying that it will help "advance peace". He said the Jewish state would maintain status quo at the holy sites ensuring freedom of worship for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

"This is a historic day. It's been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years. Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia. It has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. It was here that our temples stood, our kings ruled, our prophets preached", Netanyahu said in a statement.

Hailing Trump, he said it reflects his commitment to "an ancient but enduring truth". "Yet today's pronouncement by President Trump is such an occasion. We're profoundly grateful to him for his courageous and just decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and to prepare for the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.

This decision reflects the president's commitment to an ancient but enduring truth, to fulfilling his promises and to advancing peace, the Israeli prime minister said.

Describing the US' decision as a "new and genuine milestone" in the history of the Holy city, Netanyahu said Jews from all over the world have always wanted to return t Jerusalem, "to touch its golden stones, and to walk in its hallowed streets". He insisted that the US announcement would help achieve "dream of peace".

"The president's decision is an important step towards peace, for there is no peace that doesn't include Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. I share President Trump's commitment to advancing peace between Israel and all of our neighbours, including the Palestinians. And we will continue to work with the president and his team to make that dream of peace come true", he asserted.

The Israeli premier also called upon other countries to join the United States in "recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move their embassies here".

The status of Jerusalem, which is home to sites holy to the Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, is seen by many as the "thorniest issue" in resolving Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Addressing the concern of Muslims and Christians, Netanyahu said Israel would maintain status quo at the holy sites ensuring freedom of worship to all.

"I also want to make clear: there will be no change whatsoever to the status quo at the holy sites...Israel willalways ensure freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike," the Israeli Prime Minister said.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have called Trump's decision "unacceptable", describing the move as a "death nail" to efforts of rekindling the stalled peace process.

"If this happens, it will complicate things. It will put an obstacle to the peace process. Maybe it will be the end of the peace process," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' close aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said before the announcement. Abbas' diplomatic adviser Majdi Khaldi expressed concerns that the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would end Washington's role as a mediator in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Israel has heightened security arrangements at sensitive sites and other strategic areas in anticipation of a spate of violence following Trump's controversial announcement. Thousands of Gazans were preparing for demonstrations against the US move.

Palestinian militant faction Hamas' spokesman Hazem Qassem said the decision "confirms what Hamas has always said that "the United States has not and will not be an honest broker in any case concerning our people".

"Our Palestinian people everywhere will not allow this conspiracy to pass, and their options are open in defending their land and their sacred places," Hamas' chief, Ismail Haniyeh, said.

Widespread discontent was visible in the Islamic and Arab world even before the announcement, with regional leaders warning of escalation in violence over the announcement. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday called it a "red line for Muslims". Saudi media quoted King Salman as saying that "any declaration on the status of Jerusalem before reaching a final settlement would harm the peace negotiation process and escalate tension in the region".

Israel's neighbours, Egypt and Jordan, that have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state echoed similar sentiments.

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi warned against "complicating the situation in the region by introducing measures that would undermine chances for peace in the Middle East".

Jordan's King Abdullah called for joint efforts to "deal with the ramifications of this decision and to counter any action that undermines the Palestinian people's aspirations for their own independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital".

The Arab League called it "a dangerous measure that would have repercussions" across the region, and also questioned the future role of the US as a "trusted mediator" in peace talks. Israel's arch foe in the region, Iran, was also quick in responding to the expected Trump's declaration saying, "It is out of despair and debility that they want to declare Jerusalem as capital of the Zionist regime (Israel)".

In a landmark announcement today, Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.
The Chinese government has said it supports the establishment of a Palestinian state, and that the status of Jerusalem should be decided through consultations within the United Nations.

"China supports the Middle East peace process, and resolving conflicts in the region, including the status of Jerusalem, based on relevant resolutions of the United Nations. We also support the establishment of an independent, sovereignty Palestinian state, based on the borders decided in 1967, with East Jerusalem as the capital," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.

US President Donald Trump signs his proclamation about his controversial decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his plan to relocate the US embassy to that city, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, December 6, 2017. [Photo: IC]

Tensions have shot up in the Middle East following President Donald Trump's official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump's decision upended seven decades of US foreign policy that has resisted a recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

The Dome of the Rock at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound is seen in Jerusalem's Old City. [File Photo: IC]

Many Arab and Islamic countries, including Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have condemned the US move.

Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers have broken out in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is calling for a Palestinian "popular uprising".

The UN Security Council is expected to hold a discussion later this Friday over the major shift in the US foreign policy.




Apple has successfully stopped Xiaomi from trademarking Mi Pad tablet in Europe as an EU trademark as the name was too similar to Apples iPad. The European Unions second-highest court, the General Court has ruled against Xiaomi and said that it should not register as a trademark.

The European Union court ruling comes from the fact that the trademark might confuse consumers by the similarities in the name and signs as both the Mi Pad and Apples iPad are tablet computers. Xiaomi has filed the application with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for registration of the word sign Mi PAD as an EU trade mark in respect of electronic devices and (tele)communication services. For which Apple later has filed a notice of opposition.

In 2016, EUIPO upheld Apples opposition as there was a significant degree of similarity between the signs and concluded that differences between the two signs were not sufficient for a trademark. Xiaomi later moved this to the General Court seeking a reconsideration of the decision to which the General Court has ruled against the Chinese smartphone maker yet again and said that the company cannot trademark the sign in Europe.

The European Union General Court in a statement said:

The dissimilarity between the signs at issue, resulting from the presence of the additional letter m at the beginning of Mi Pad, is not sufficient to offset the high degree of visual and phonetic similarity between the two signs.

Source
China and the Maldives agreed to strengthen cooperation on tourism, as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with the Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom in Beijing Thursday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with the Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom in Beijing Thursday. [Photo: Xinhua]

"China has been the Maldives' biggest source of tourists for seven consecutive years, and there is huge potential for more cooperation," Li said.

He said he hoped that the Maldives would offer more conveniences to Chinese tourists, and that both countries could discuss cooperation and share their experiences in developing tourism.

Maldives, South Ari Atoll, Rangali island [Photo: VCG]

"Chinese people see the Maldives as a travel destination, and we support that since it will promote people-to-people exchanges and consolidate the two peoples' friendship," Li said.

He also called for stronger cooperation on infrastructure, civilian aviation, economy and trade, maritime research and climate change.

"China is pleased to see an increasing number of outcomes that the Maldives achieved through aligning the two countries' development strategies," the premier said.

Li spoke highly of the relations between the two countries, which was elevated to a forward-looking, comprehensive and friendly partnership of cooperation in 2014.

"China supports the Maldives' efforts in safeguarding its independence of sovereignty and its development rights and interests, and is willing to step up high-level exchanges, deepen all-round cooperation, and further boost ties, on the basis of mutual respect and equality," Li said.

Maldivian president Yameen is paying an official visit to China from Dec 6 to Dec 9. [Photo: IC]

Yameen said he was grateful for China's assistance to his country's economic and social development, and praised China's efforts to cope with climate change.

He said the two countries have had a very close and friendly relationship since bilateral diplomatic ties were established 45 years ago. Praising bilateral relationship as a "model" of country-to-country relations, he said bilateral ties have developed even rapidly in recent years.

"The Maldives is willing to respect China's core interests, strengthen cooperation with China in tourism, civil aviation and infrastructure, and expand people-to-people exchanges to further strengthen ties on the basis of equality and mutual respect," Yameen said.
LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The race to develop new immunotherapy treatments against cancer has sparked an unprecedented explosion in the oncology drug pipeline, with more than 2,000 immune system-boosting agents now in development.

The result is a scramble for patients to enroll in clinical trials, duplication of effort and the likely ultimate failure of many projects, according to experts.

Aiman Shalabi of the non-profit Cancer Research Institute said on Thursday that a global analysis, the first of its kind, had found 940 immunotherapy drugs in clinical stage development, with a further 1,064 at the preclinical stage.

This year alone, 469 new clinical studies were started, with a target enrolment of 52,539 patients, according to data presented by Shalabi at a European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Geneva and published in the Annals of Oncology.

"The field is very promising and has the potential to deliver many breakthroughs to change the standard of care of many cancer types," Shalabi and colleagues wrote in the journal. "However, it is also very crowded, fragmented and uncoordinated with significant duplication."

Roche Chief Executive Severin Schwan is convinced the mass rush into the hot new field of immunotherapy will lead to multiple disappointments.

As the world's biggest cancer drug company, the Swiss group expects to emerge among a handful of winners but Schwan also sees many failures and a wave of consolidation.

"I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams that all of these medicines will make it to the market and be competitive. There will be an enormous drop-out from all these clinical trials, which means a lot of people that invested into these trials will lose money," he said in a interview on Wednesday.

"I would expect to see a few winners and many losers."

Shalabi said there needed to be to rethink of cancer research and development, with a focus on more collaboration between both companies and academia.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by David Evans)
Dividend stocks are great options for retirees' portfolios: The best ones offer the reliability of a quarterly payment coupled with the stability of a sound business model that can support -- and hopefully grow -- those payments.

We asked three of our investors to scour the stock market and bring us back their recommendations for the best dividend stocks for retirees' portfolios now. They came back with three companies from a diverse array of sectors: automaker General Motors (NYSE: GM), food and beverage giant PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP), and oil and gas pipeline operator Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD).

A dirt cheap profit machine

Jeremy Bowman (General Motors): A company that emerged from bankruptcy less than a decade ago may not sound like an ideal stock to hold in retirement, but there are other things retirees may want to consider about General Motors. The carmaker's shares today pay a dividend yielding 4.1%, and they trade at a P/E of just 5.5, compared to the S&P 500's P/E ratio of 24.2. In other words, your cost for a dollar of GM's earnings is less than a quarter of what you'd pay for the those of the broader stock market.

Because it's in a cyclical industry, the Chevy maker's results may fluctuate more than those of a typical defensive stock in the consumer staples or healthcare sectors. However, even with the American auto market past its peak, GM still expects earnings growth to return in 2019 as it introduces a new line of full-size pickups, and its low valuation means share buybacks will go a long way to lifting earnings per share.

The car market is transitioning toward autonomous and electric vehicles, and in both of these arenas, GM appears to have a leading position. Bolstered by its acquisition of Cruise, the company plans to produce a line of self-driving vehicles for a ride-sharing service next year, and it recently released an image of a prototype Cruise AV without a steering wheel. Led by the Chevy Bolt, the company delivered 69,500 electric vehicles last year, and it plans to introduce 20 new all-electric models by 2023.

With a solid dividend yield, cheap valuation, and promising future ahead of it, General Motors looks like the kind of reliable income stock that is perfect for retirees.

Brand power

Daniel Miller (PepsiCo): Many investors sifting through the markets looking for perfect dividend stocks for retirees are probably after stable companies with track records of solid dividend growth. If that describes what you're seeking, look no further than PepsiCo, which has a slew of incredibly powerful brands, and a long history of raising its payouts.

In addition to its namesake Pepsi line, the company has 22 brands that generate over $1 billion apiece in annual revenue, including Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Tropicana, Quaker, Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos. Currently, PepsiCo dishes out $0.805 per share quarterly for a yield just under 3% -- and, incredibly, 2017 marked the company's 45th consecutive annual dividend increase.

Another factor that should appeal to retirees looking for income stocks is that PepsiCo has a wide competitive moat due to its intangible assets, cost advantages and brand power. Because it has so many billion-dollar brands, it has strong relationships with distributors and retailers. Those brands will continue to bear fruit for Pepsi as the company funnels significant resources into growth with new innovative products and creative advertising, such as its recent partnership with Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge.

There's no question consumer tastes in the U.S. are trending toward healthier products, and Pepsi understands the challenges it faces on that score. Among its plans, it has set a target of reducing the amount of sodium in 75% of its global foods portfolio to 1.3 mg or less per calorie. But given its strong brands and long history of dividend growth, if Pepsi can adapt to healthier food trend, it should remain a great income stock for retirees.

A hefty yield

John Bromels (Enterprise Products Partners): If you think a yield of 3% or 4% sounds good for a retirement account, I'll bet a 6.3% yield sounds fantastic. Better yet, this stock's payout is driven by a stable, fee-based business that's one of the largest of its kind, which makes it an excellent choice for conservative investors. The company is energy infrastructure master limited partnership (MLP) Enterprise Products Partners.

Before you rush out to buy it, though, be aware that MLP ownership isn't for everyone -- some extra tax hurdles come with those fat yields. But if you do the research and decide you can handle it, Enterprise can be an attractive investment for retirees.

The company has upped its quarterly distribution -- the MLP equivalent of a dividend -- for an impressive 53 consecutive quarters, with an average annual increase of about 5% over the last decade. That track record of growth is especially important to investors on fixed incomes, as it helps to ensure that the power of a company's payout won't get gradually eaten away by inflation. However, Enterprise Products Partners has signaled that it may ease back on that growth rate in 2018.

That's actually a good thing for investors, because a temporary distribution-growth slowdown will help the company strengthen its already-steady financial situation. It will have more cash available to finance growth projects, maintain its high credit rating, and give itself added flexibility to reaccelerate its distribution growth later, or possibly even buy back units.

For retirees looking for an excellent yield, a conservative investment, and a bright future, it doesn't get much better than Enterprise Products Partners.

10 stocks we like better than General MotorsWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has quadrupled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and General Motors 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 April 2, 2018

Daniel Miller owns shares of General Motors. Jeremy Bowman owns shares of General Motors. John Bromels has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
A Leonardo da Vinci painting of Christ that sold in New York for a record $450 million (380 million euros) is heading to a museum in the United Arab Emirates.

The newly opened Louvre Abu Dhabi made the announcement Wednesday.

The 500-year-old painting is called "Salvator Mundi," Latin for "Savior of the World." It's one of fewer than 20 paintings by the Renaissance master known to exist and the only one in private hands. Christie's auction house sold it to an anonymous buyer last month.

The New York Times reports according to documents it reviewed the mystery buyer was a little-known Saudi prince. Christie's says it doesn't comment on the identities of buyers or sellers without their permission.

The highest known sale price for any artwork had been $300 million (253 million euros), for Willem de Kooning's painting "Interchange."
The collapse of Islamic States self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant groups ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday.

The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Unfortunately, we dont see ISIS loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks, she told a U.S. Senate committee.

ISIS capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs, Shiao said, using the governments acronym for homegrown violent extremists.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014.

ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight.

Yet the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations, said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict.

As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire stray dog attacks by vulnerable people.

Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists.

This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace, said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process.

The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In a possible reference to Trumps use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS?

The answer was no.
It has been a fantastic year for defense stocks, as the promise of a post-election pickup in Pentagon spending coupled with increasing threats from North Korea and elsewhere has caused investors to bid up shares, in some cases, by as much as 30% year to date. It's tough to find value in the sector today, but investors with a long-term horizon could still benefit from buying into General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE: HII), and Leidos Holdings (NYSE: LDOS).

The logic behind the rally was sound, with the Trump administration and Congress in agreement over the need to refresh a range of key Pentagon weapons systems -- which should bring billions to the coffers of companies like GD, Huntington, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), Raytheon (NYSE: RTN), and L3 Technologies, while also benefiting government services firms including Leidos, ManTech International, and CACI International.

But given the slow and plodding nature of defense work, and the government's habit of falling behind on procurement, there's a danger the stocks have gotten ahead of themselves. Five years ago no major defense firm traded above a price-to-sales ratio of 1; now some hover around 2 times sales. And price-to-earnings multiples are at near-record highs.

An argument can be made that the lows of earlier in the decade were more the anomaly than the current valuations and that the current prices are more of a new normal than a bubble. The United States is, and figures to remain, a great market to sell weaponry -- annually spending more on defense than its five closest rivals combined. And a post-Cold War round of consolidation in the sector created a handful of multifaceted companies that are set up to be less reliant on winning a single program competition.

Even assuming this is a new normal, it's hard to be too excited right now, given how far valuations would have to stretch to provide further upside from these levels. That said, defense is an important slice of the economy that is hard to ignore. Here are three stocks worth looking at as you search for upside.

Commercial opportunities

General Dynamics, though far from cheap, is priced at a discount to rivals Northrop and Raytheon. In part this is because unlike those two defense-focused companies, GD also owns business-jet maker Gulfstream, a unit (and an industry) that was hit hard by the 2009 recession and has been slow to recover. Gulfstream shipped 115 business jets worldwide in 2016, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, down from 156 in 2008.

It's far too early to predict a return to pre-recession levels, but there is evidence that if nothing else a bottom has formed: Through the first nine months of this year, worldwide business-jet deliveries are up 1.4%. A stabilization in business jets could, if nothing else, diminish the discount the market is applying to General Dynamics shares, boosting its valuation.

General Dynamics has other things going for it as well. The company has a pristine balance sheet with net debt of just $2.2 billion at the end of the third quarter, giving it the sector's best debt-to-equity ratio. On the third quarter conference call, CFO Jason W. Aiken said that GD sees its balance sheet "as an opportunity for when and if strategic opportunities come up, that we are ready to be agile and move quickly with those opportunities."

If nothing else, absent a massive debt load, General Dynamics is free to spend its cash on shareholders. Through the first nine months it has spent nearly $1.9 billion, or nearly 120% of free cash flow, on repurchases and dividends, while still making a number of small acquisitions.

A safe harbor

Huntington Ingalls is the rare non-diversified defense prime contractor, but the shipbuilder does own massive shipyards in Virginia and Mississippi and stands out as the nation's sole builder and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. It competes with General Dynamics on other shipbuilding duties, but the U.S. Navy appears poised for an upgrade that should be a rising tide for all participants.

Last year then-candidate Donald Trump ran on a promise to boost the current 275-ship Naval fleet to 350 vessels. Such a massive jump seems unlikely, but Huntington's $23 billion backlog is a sign that the Navy is in a period of renewal.

In the third quarter, Huntington showed how profitable its core business can be; it posted earnings per share 17% ahead of consensus, thanks to margins that came in better than expected. Some of that margin beat was nonrecurring in nature, having to do more with risk retirement and other one-offs instead of a more efficient operation, but the company is lobbying the Pentagon to make multiship orders in the future to help drive down manufacturing and part sourcing costs.

The company has offered very conservative guidance, saying it expects revenue to be flat through at least 2020. But Huntington Ingalls also does not bake any repair revenue into its long-term forecasts because such contracts are hard to predict. Huntington has already won some high-profile repair work, including upwards of $500 million to repair the USS Fitzgerald Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and generally has more excess capacity at its shipyards than General Dynamics does.

Add in that the Navy has made maintenance and repairs of its existing fleet a priority, raising its operating and maintenance budget request to $51.3 billion for 2018 compared to $46.9 billion in 2016, and there is a decent chance that top-line growth at Huntington Ingalls will exceed modest expectations.

Beltway bandit

Leidos, formed from the 2016 merger between part of Science Applications International Corporation and the IT business of Lockheed Martin, provides system engineering, IT, and integration services for defense, intelligence, and civil agencies.

Coming out of the Cold War, government IT was seen as the next big growth business for the sector. But that view caused a rush of new entrants, who in turn lowered margins and created a shortage of capable (and cleared) employees. In the current market, economies of scale are massively important, and the deal that created Leidos provided that scale.

At the end of the third quarter the company reported a backlog of more than $17 billion and said it expects its margins for the year to be better than previously expected, thanks to contract wins and cost reductions. The company said it received $3.1 billion in new contract bookings in the quarter, with about 85% of that total being new business.

Those figures back up the justification company officials used to talk up the deal, and are a sign things are on track. Leidos also has contracts in place to support troops deployed in the field, and would theoretically stand to benefit from any Trump administration overseas deployments or readiness efforts.

Leidos started out with a considerable amount of debt, but in the third quarter used cash from operations to reduce its debt ratio down to its target of 3 times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), a quarter ahead of schedule. The company said that with that target reached, it will now have more flexibility to do "meaningful" share repurchases, or additional mergers and acquisitions.

Managing increasingly complex IT systems and providing other services to the government is a steady and growing business, and Leidos now has the bulk to be one of the leaders in the field.

10 stocks we like better than General DynamicsWhen 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 Dynamics wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of November 6, 2017

Lou Whiteman 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.
They may not be good for your body, but soda and cigarettes can be great for your portfolio. By manufacturing addictive products for cheap and putting the full throttle of marketing behind building a brand, these companies can mint money for shareholders.

Today, we'll compare two leaders in this field: Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and British American Tobacco (NYSE: BTI). It's impossible to say with 100% certainty which will be the better investment over the next five years. But by evaluating each on three different criteria, we can get a better idea of the forces at play. Here's how they stack up.

Sustainable competitive advantages

If you're a long-term, buy-to-hold investor -- and that's what we think you should be here at The Motley Fool -- there's nothing more critical to evaluate than a company's sustainable competitive advantages. You'll often hear this referred to as a "moat" as well.

In the most basic sense, a moat is what keeps customers coming back for more -- day after day and week after week. And all the while, a company's moat keeps the competition at bay.

For both of these companies, the key moat is provided by the strength of the brand. British American tobacco significantly increased its brand value earlier this year with the acquisition of Reynolds American. The combined entity now owns some of the biggest names in the business: Newport, Camel, Kent, Dunhill, and Lucky Strike.

Because of a string of acquisitions within the industry, the top brands have shown a remarkable ability to steadily increase prices while not losing customers.

Coca-Cola, on the other hand, is one of the most readily known brands in the world. Forbes ranks it as the fifth most valuable brand globally, and the highest for a non-technology company -- valued at $56 billion. It also owns other well-known beverages, such as Powerade, Dasani, and Honest Tea. It can use the cash that the flagship Coke products bring in to create narratives that support and build up these second-tier brands.

Usually, I would give the nod to Coca-Cola because of its superior brand awareness. But because of the incredible pricing power demonstrated within tobacco over the past decade, I'm calling this a tie.

Winner = Draw

Financial fortitude

Anyone who buys shares of either of these companies has to consider its dividend. The days of heady growth are over, and it would make sense to ask management to return as much capital as possible back to shareholders. But over the long run, that's not the most prudent approach -- for the company or its investors. That's because every organization at one point or another is going to face difficult economic times.

Those with cash on hand can emerge from such situations stronger -- by buying back shares on the cheap, acquiring smaller players, or, most importantly, outspending rivals to gain long-term market share.

Keeping in mind that Coca-Cola is valued at a 37% premium, in market capitalization, to British American, here's how the two compare.

Company Cash Debt Net Income Free Cash Flow Coca-Cola $50 million $32 billion $5 billion $6 billion British American $16 billion $20 billion $6 billion $6 billion

Investors in these companies don't have too much to worry about on an absolute basis: Both have very healthy and reliable cash flows. But if forced to choose a winner, the nod here goes to Coca-Cola. The company has a net cash position that's positive, which British American doesn't.

Winner = Coca-Cola

Valuation

Finally, we have the murky science of valuation. While there's no single variable that can reliably tell us how expensive a stock is, by taking several data points into consideration, we can get a more holistic picture. Because these are dividend-focused stocks, here are four of my favorite variables to consider.

Company Price-to-Earnings Ratio Price-to-Free Cash Flow Ratio Dividend Yield Free Cash Flow Payout Ratio Coca-Cola 24 32 3.2% 103% British American 21 23 3.4% 68%

British American takes the prize here. Not only is the company cheaper on an earnings and free cash flow basis, but it also has a slightly higher and more sustainable dividend.

For the past few years,Coca-Cola's dividend has been trending toward unsustainability -- or using more than 100% of free cash flow to pay shareholders. While the cash cushion provides enough wiggle room for now, it's a trend that investors need to keep an eye on.

Winner = Coca-Cola

My winner is...

So there you have it: We have a tie. Both companies have medium-strength moats; Coca-Cola has a stronger balance sheet, while British American has a more favorable valuation. If forced to choose one of these stocks over the other, it would be British American, as Coca-Cola's financials have been trending in a negative direction and the company doesn't enjoy the same pricing power as British American.

On the whole, however, I'm not a huge fan of either stock. Long-term trends toward healthy living create major headwinds that will keep me from buying either or making an outperform call on my own CAPS profile. There are, I believe, better places for your hard-earned cash.

10 stocks we like better than British American TobaccoWhen 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 British American Tobacco 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

Brian Stoffel 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.
The 2021-22 Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District (CFAUSD) and schools report cards were released publicly by Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) on Tuesday.

Out of nine schools, one school received the designation of Significantly Exceeding Expectations, three schools received Exceeds Expectations, and four schools received Meets Expectations.
Don't you, forget about me Don't, don't, don't, don't Don't you, forget about me - Simple Minds

Nobody likes to say goodbye. There have been countless ballads sung about it, volumes of books written about it and Academy Award winning movies dramatizing it.

But goodbyes are inevitable. And they happen in all areas of life, not only in our personal lives, but also our professional lives

In fact, if you work in Corporate America, there's a good chance you'll be saying goodbye sometime soon, and not just because a colleague quits. Corporate relocations send professionals their separate ways, too.

According to the 50th Annual Atlas Corporate Relocation 2017 Survey, 38% of companies with 5000+ employees relocated 400 or more employees last year. And a whopping 72% expect those numbers to either stay the same or increase next year.

Reeling from Relocation Although relocations invoke images of goodbye cakes eaten in conference rooms, or a stiff drink with coworkers at a favorite watering hole, theres a group of people who are seriously affected by relocations, and all too often overlooked  small businesses owners.

"In our case it was the restaurants, dry cleaners, flower shops, hotels and a few others," said Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, referring to the ripple created by Mercedes leaving his New Jersey town for Atlanta.

Corporate relocations impact a wide range of shops and firms, even if they dont do business directly with the larger corporate entity. The impact is substantial, Ghassali said.

It affects perceptions, added Oz Griebel, the president and CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Connecticut governor in 2010.

In the last 2 years, his state has faced the departure of GE from Fairfield and the decision by Aetna to move corporate HQ out of Hartford.

And the trend is not isolated to Connecticut, New Jersey or the Northeast. In California, Nestle packed up its suburban headquarters in Glendale, while in Illinois more than a few companies including McDonald's and Caterpillar left suburbia for the nation's third largest city, Chicago.

Although these and other companies cite a wide range of reasons for their moves, a common theme has emerged among them all  a belief that it will be easier to attract younger and highly skilled workers if the company is located in a major metropolis.

Tales of the City

According to a 2014 report from Nielsen, Sixty-two percent of millennials prefer living in a city environment where they can be close to shops, restaurants and offices. And 40 percent say they would like to live in an urban area in the future.

Cities are safer and cleaner than they have been in decades and provide cultural and artistic outlets, all of which appeal to college educated young professionals. Also they provide a wide range of nightlife options and an even wider range of potential life partners. The appeal is understandable.

There seems to be little research into how deeply a corporate relocation impacts small businesses. Neither the U.S. Chamber of Commerce nor the Small Business Administration, nor other state agencies were able to provide hard data.

Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, however, offered a few suggestions, for local leaders, should they find themselves faced with a major corporate relocation.

From Lemons Make Lemonade

"We formed an economic development council that helped connect small business with other large companies in the area. The bigger companies, in my area, Sharp and KPMG, were very sympathetic to what was happening and wanted to help."

Ghassali also suggests local business leaders and politicians band together and schedule informal conversations, such as coffee hours. Not only do they provide small business with a platform to express concerns, they also provide a forum for discussing ways in which the public and private sectors might come together.

From those informal coffee hours held in Montvale, Ghassali learned that small business owners in his community would benefit from a better understanding of technology and how it could help generate new business. "We held a summit where they could meet with tech companies and learn how to use tech more effectively, particularly ways in which to better leverage free services provided Google," he said.

Oz Griebel added that he sifts through data, with an eye on students who will soon graduate college in the area. Already familiar and comfortable in the environment, Griebel believes with a little prodding, many young people will want to stay. "This area can offer them great value," he said, noting that not every young person enjoys city life.

And, he added urban millennials, loosely defined as people born from 1982-2004 are getting older. In turn, he can see the interest in big cities and big city life waning in the not too distant future, as millennials start to have children. "For young families, my area offers great value, especially home value, he said. The trend will turn and when it does, we'll be ready."
Another day and another record rally for bitcoin, with the cryptocurrency on a seemingly unstoppable upward trajectory despite reports of a security breach at a cryptocurrency-mining service.

Bitcoin climbed above $15,000, a new record, early Thursday morning, but the rally didnt stop there. At 11:45 a.m. ET, bitcoin was above $19,000 according to Coinbase.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, nearly $70 million of bitcoin was stolen from cryptocurrency-mining service NiceHash following a data breach.

NiceHashs website is currently down, and on it they have a statement: Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken.

According to NiceHashs Twitter, the company is regularly conducting maintenance on its website, or is experiencing a delay in submitting payments.

While NiceHash did not indicate the amount of bitcoin impacted in this data breach, the company regularly updates bitcoin payments on payday Fridays. Usually, the company reports about 1,000 bitcoin payouts. Last Friday, the company tweeted about a 1,000 bitcoin payout worth $10 million at this moment.

Bitcoin opponents have voiced concerns about security and the potential for bitcoins to be stolen. But, this latest hack does not appear to be deterring investors.

The CBOE is scheduled to launch bitcoin futures trading on Dec. 10, and on Dec. 18 the CME will launch bitcoin futures trading.

In a FOX Business interview, Jalak Jobanputra the Founder and Managing Partner at FuturePerfect Ventures and an investor in bitcoin since 2013, noted that when Japan moved to regulate bitcoin, a price increase followed.
Frontier Airlines pilots picketed in downtown Denver Thursday in a bid for public support in their long running fight with the Denver-based discount carrier to replace their bankruptcy contract.

About 350 uniformed pilots, including a handful from other airlines, and flight attendants silently walked up and down the sidewalk in frigid weather across the street from Denver's city hall near the state Capitol.

Union rules bar them from chanting but they held signs showing wild animals like the ones displayed on the tails of the airline's aircraft including one with a bear that said "Frontier Pilots: Flying Under an Unbearable Contract." The demonstration drew some honks and shouts of support from passing cars and pedestrians while others just looked as they walked by.

The pilots are working under a 10-year-old contract that they agreed to change in 2011 to keep the airline out of bankruptcy. Talks began in March 2016 and the pilots and Frontier have been in mediation for the last year. The pilots say their pay is 40 percent below the average pay of other pilots flying Airbus planes.

Frontier said it is still actively involved with the negotiations taking place under the guidance of the National Mediation Board and has exchanged several proposals with the pilots.

"We look forward to working toward an agreement that is fair, sustainable, and provides security for our collective future," the airline said in a statement.

The pilots unanimously voted in September to authorize a strike if they can't reach a deal but union spokesman Capt. Alan Christie said that's not their intention.

The president of the Air Line Pilots Association, Capt. Tim Canoll of Delta Airlines, said either a strike or an inability for Frontier to attract pilots as it tries to expand would reduce competition at Denver's airport, where United Airlines is the dominant carrier.

"That's not good for the flying public in Denver," he said.

Federal law makes it difficult to strike in the airline industry, making demonstrations aimed at the public common. The timelines laid out in the law would also make it impossible for pilots to stage a walkout until after the busy holiday travel season.
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New Jersey lawmakers want to give the state's horse racing tracks a piece of the action on internet gambling.

The state Assembly on Thursday passed a bill that would authorize tracks to offer internet gambling on their premises if they reach a partnership agreement with an Atlantic City casino or an online affiliate of a casino.

Democratic Assemblyman Ralph Caputo says it's a way to help the struggling racing industry with new revenue.

"It would bring more traffic into the racetracks, and they need it desperately," said Caputo, a former casino executive.

Gamblers with internet betting accounts already can place bets from anywhere within New Jersey's borders, and don't need to go to a track to do so.

"The casinos should realize that absolutely nothing will happen unless they agree to allow it through an agreement with a track," said Dennis Drazin, chairman and CEO of the Monmouth Park racetrack in Oceanport. "Nobody is forcing anything on them. This is really a win-win for the racing industry and the casino industry."

Supporters envision track patrons placing online casino bets between races. The track would be compensated by the casino for drumming up new online business; the exact amount each track would get from a casino would have to be negotiated individually.

Drazin said tracks would set aside an area for customers to place casino bets over the internet. The tracks would be specifically exempted from state law banning so-called "internet cafes" that offer real-money gambling.

The Casino Association of New Jersey did not respond to a request for comment on the bill.

Internet gambling has been a bright spot in New Jersey's gambling market. On pace to win $250 million online this year, New Jersey has the largest market of the three states that currently offer internet gambling (Pennsylvania recently approved it but has not started offering it yet).

Delaware allows internet gambling through casinos based at racetracks.

The state Senate has not yet scheduled a vote on the measure, which is being considered in a committee.

___

Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Dr. Byron Maas surveys a supply of marijuana products for dogs that lines a shelf in his veterinary clinic. They're selling well.

"The 'Up and Moving' is for joints and for pain," he explains. "The 'Calm and Quiet' is for real anxious dogs, to take away that anxiety."

People anxious to relieve suffering in their pets are increasingly turning to oils and powders that contain CBDs, a non-psychoactive component of marijuana. But there's little data on whether they work, or if they have harmful side effects.

That's because Washington has been standing in the way of clinical trials, veterinarians and researchers say. Now, a push is underway to have barriers removed, so both pets and people can benefit.

Those barriers have had more than just a chilling effect.

When the federal Drug Enforcement Administration announced last year that even marijuana extracts with CBD and little or no THC - marijuana's intoxicating component - are an illegal Schedule 1 drug, the University of Pennsylvania halted its clinical trials. Colorado State University is pushing ahead.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned companies that sell marijuana products online and via pet shops and animal hospitals that they're violating laws by offering "unapproved new animal drugs." The FDA threatened legal action.

But, seeing potential benefits of CBDs, the American Veterinary Medical Association's policy-making body said last summer it wants the DEA to declassify marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug "to facilitate research opportunities for veterinary and human medical uses." It asked the board of the national veterinarians' organization to investigate working with other stakeholders toward that goal. The board is awaiting a recommendation from two group councils.

"The concern our membership has is worry about people extrapolating their own dosages, looking to medicate their pets outside the realm of the medical professional," Board Chairman Michael Whitehair said in a telephone interview. "This is an important reason for us to continue the research."

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican, became an unlikely champion of this push when he introduced a bill in September that would open the path for more clinical research. While Hatch said he opposes recreational marijuana use, he wants marijuana-based drugs, regulated by the FDA, produced for people with disorders.

"We lack the science to support use of medical marijuana products like CBD oils, not because researchers are unwilling to do the work, but because of bureaucratic red tape and over-regulation," Hatch said.

Dawn Boothe, of Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine, is waiting for federal approval to begin a study of marijuana's effects on dogs with epilepsy. The classification of marijuana products containing CBD as a Schedule 1 drug, the same category as heroin and LSD, creates a "major, major, major, terrible roadblock" for researchers, Boothe said in a phone interview.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine were studying CBDs' effects on dogs with osteoarthritis and pruritis, or itchiness, until the DEA released its policy statement.

"The ambiguity in this process has really brought us to a screeching halt," said Michael DiGregorio, director of the university's clinical trials center. "It is research that needs to be done, because there are a lot of CBD products out there."

When it clarified that marijuana CBD extracts are Schedule 1 drugs, the DEA said it was assigning a code number to those substances to better track them and to comply with international drug control treaties.

DiGregorio complained that researchers seeking federal approval to study CBD products are told to provide certain data, but that data isn't normally available until the study is done.

"If you don't have the data, you can't get the registration to do the work," he said.

On a recent morning, Maas took a break from seeing four-legged patients in the Bend Veterinary Clinic. A stethoscope dangling from his neck over green scrubs, Maas said his clients have reported CBDs help relieve pain, arthritis, anxiety, loss of appetite, epilepsy and inflammation in their pets.

"Unfortunately there's not a lot of research out there, especially on animals, on CBD compounds," Maas said. "The research is really necessary to help us understand how to actually use these compounds on our pets."

Veterinarian Janet Ladyga of the Blue Sky Veterinary Clinic, also in Bend, said she doesn't recommend marijuana products because of the unknowns.

"We don't have a lot of evidence right now, so we don't know the toxicity or the safety profile ... and we don't have any good evidence to show either if it's safe or efficacious," she said.

The study at Colorado State University aims to provide some data. The roughly two dozen dogs in the arthritis study and the 30 in the epilepsy tests are given either CBD oil or a placebo. For the arthritis study, activity monitors are attached to the animals' collars, to determine if they're more mobile when they're taking CBD.

Principal investigator Stephanie McGrath said she hopes the results will be a stepping stone for longer and more diverse studies, and that they provide useful information for human medicine.

"Every medication we're taking has been given to a dog first," the University of Pennsylvania's DiGregorio noted.

Meanwhile, Boothe said she had everything ready to start her study in January, and was waiting for a green light from federal officials.

"I don't know what's taking so long," she said.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
What happened

Reversing course from its 67% climb through the first 10 months of 2017, shares of Seabridge Gold (NYSE: SA) plunged 20% last month according to S&P Global Market Intelligence following the release of the company's third-quarter earnings report.

So what

A developmental-stage company, Seabridge is engaged in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties -- namely, gold. Since the company has no source of revenue, it's imperative that the company deftly manages its finances in order to maintain operations. Recognizing this fact, investors took exception to news that the company reported a 1.5 million Canadian dollar net loss in the third-quarter -- considerably more than the CA$0.3 million net loss that the company reported during the same period last year.

Incurring a net loss for the quarter, in and of itself, would not likely frustrate investors as long as the company was making progress in executing its strategy to grow its gold resources. In the third quarter, this was hardly the case. Management reported corporate and administrative expenses increased to CA$3.6 million in Q3, representing a 57% increase over the CA$2.3 million it reported during the same period in 2016. The culprit? According to management, the increase in expenses was largely attributable to an increase in stock-based compensation. Although it accounted for CA$0.9 million in Q3 2016, stock-based compensation totaled CA$2.3 million in the recently completed quarter -- a whopping 156% increase.

In addition, management cited environmental rehabilitation costs as another factor that largely contributed to the company's net loss. Accounting for CA$0.8 million, the source of the costs was the remediation and closure planning of the Johnny Mountain Mine site contained within the Iskut property.

Now what

Although Seabridge's third-quarter report provided cause for concern, there were some highlights. For one, the company reported progress in exploratory activities at KSM, one of the company's primary assets, where drilling at Iron Cap confirmed a major extension -- including some of the highest grades -- of the deposit. The company, moreover, reported that it completed the Iskut exploration program, and the results are expected shortly. Unfortunately for investors, these bright spots weren't enough to outshine the blemishes.

An investment in Seabridge Gold is predicated on the belief that management can successfully add to the company's gold resources, sell its projects, or find partners for projects when they reach the gold-producing stage. This represents a high-risk investment, and it presumes management will adroitly manage its finances -- something investors found to be lacking in the third-quarter.

Now, as always, a position in Seabridge Gold is highly speculative. Consequently, the stock should only be on the radars of the most risk-tolerant investors.

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President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday, a stunning reversal in U.S. foreign policy that sparked international outrage and concerns about reigniting violence in the Middle East.

The atmosphere in Israel after the White Houses announcement -- during which Trump said the U.S. embassy would be relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- was starkly different, Daniel Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told FOX Business Liz Claman.

People are satisfied, happy, of course, very much grateful and appreciative of the president, he said. It was a bold move. He made good on his promises.

Per the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, the U.S. embassy in Israel should have been established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999. To enforce that provision, it calls for the withholding of 50% of the money in the State Departments buildings and maintenance account; however, if the sitting president has a national security concern, he can waive the funding limitation for indefinite six-month periods if necessary.

The move and the official recognition fulfills one of Trumps campaign promises that he made to religious conservatives, but also risks inflaming already fraught Israeli-Palestinian tensions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the move along with several leaders of Arab countries.

Hamas, the terrorist organization the controls Palestine, called for a day of rage ahead of Trumps decision and warned that he was crossing a red line.

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has always taken the position that Jerusalem -- which both Israel and Palestine claim as the capital of their states -- is not considered part of any country until its status is negotiated in a Middle East peace deal.

This decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement," Trump said. "We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.

The U.S. embassy is currently located in Tel Aviv, and relocating it could take up to four or five years. It will be the only embassy in Jerusalem; all other countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel operate out of Tel Aviv.

This is our capital. It has always been our capital. It has never been the capital of any other country, Ayalon said. And unfortunately, we see a lot of bigotry and bias when we are the only country that cannot, according to many countries, choose which city will be our capital.
Sen. Al Franken said on Thursday he would resign in the coming weeks after facing pressure from fellow Democratic lawmakers to step down following multiple sexual harassment allegations.

Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life. I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senatornothinghas brought this honor on this institution, and I am confident that the Ethics Committee would agree. Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate, Franken said from the Senate floor.

Accusations that the Minnesota Democrat, and former Saturday Night Live comedian, groped or tried to kiss women without their consent emerged last month. Leeann Tweeden, a news personality at a Los Angeles radio station and the first to accuse Franken, alleged that he forcibly kissed and groped her during a USO tour in 2006, in a story posted on the station's website.

Franken issued an apology after Tweedens claims.

"The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thingand if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine -- is: I'm sorry," the senator said in a statement.

The senator said he would fully cooperate with a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called for following the allegations.

More women have since came forward, accusing Franken of groping them while posing for photos between 2007 and 2010.

The latest allegations come from a woman who said she was groped at a Media Matters party, which took place during former President Barack Obamas first inauguration.

Franken, who denied most of the allegations, said he recalled certain ones differently, made his announcement just two days after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) announced his retirement, following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

The senator faced mounting pressure from some of his female colleagues on Wednesday, who called on Franken to resign. Among those were Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, New Hampshires Maggie Hassan, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Patty Murray of Washington, Hawaiis Mazie K. Hirono, Kamala Harris of California, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said late Wednesday that Franken should step down from his post.

"I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments," Schumer said in a statement, "but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately."

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez also called for Franken's resignation, tweeting: Sen. Al Franken should step down. Everyone must share the responsibility of building a culture of trust and respect for women in every industry and workplace, and that includes our party.

Sen. Al Franken should step down. Everyone must share the responsibility of building a culture of trust and respect for women in every industry and workplace, and that includes our party.  Tom Perez (@TomPerez) December 6, 2017

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is responsible for filling Frankens Senate seat, though he has yet to make a decision on who he will appoint.

Events have unfolded quickly; thus, I have not yet decided on my appointment to fill this upcoming vacancy. I expect to make and announce my decision in the next couple of days, Dayton said in a statement.

Earlier, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Minnesotas Lt. Gov. Tina Smith would likely be Daytons choice to replace Franken.
The elimination of state and local tax (SALT) deductions in the GOPas tax reform bill could mean higher taxes for many Americans, especially those in high-tax states.

The reform would cap the deduction for state and local property taxes at $10,000 and Don Peebles, Peebles Corp. CEO, warned New York is already feeling the wrath of a mass tax exodus.

aNew York, last year, lost 120,000 tax payers already,a Peebles told FOX Businessa Maria Bartiromo on aMornings with Maria.a aWhile the population grows a 40,000 New Yorkers carry 45% of the tax burden a out of 8.5 million people.a

Goldman Sachs recently projected between 2%-4% of that 40,000 will relocate out of the state by 2018 as result of the elimination of SALT.

Peebles added another implication would be increased pressure on the local budget.

aSo under de Blasio in four years the New York City budget went from $51 billion to $61.7 billionathatas a 20% increase in less than four years and they added 25,000 employees to the payrolls and theyare proposing all kinds of tax increases a so itas going to create a tremendous amount of burden on New Yorkers,a Peebles said.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-L.A.) on Wednesday told FOX Business efforts to lower the top rate will help people in those states.

aEach step of the way weave worked harder to make sure that folks even in high-income states like New York, New Jersey, California and other are going to get income tax relief as well and if you look at the work thatas being done in the conference committee to try to lower the top rate, that will help everybody across the country but itas going to help especially people in those states,a Scalise said.
The list of those delving into blockchain technology seems to be expanding by the day, including investors, technology shops, banks and curious minds executing simple Google searches.

Add another to the list: the Trump administration.

We follow blockchain technologies for a number of reasons, including economic, innovation, national security and public safety," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley.

Blockchain is the mechanism that facilitates bitcoin, the digital currency that has seen a rapid rise in value, intrigue and debate. At its core, blockchain is an open-sourced, decentralized system that allows for bitcoin transactions to take place. Proponents say it's virtually impenetrable by hackers and is the modern day solution for cutting out third parties in transactions, while critics contend it also acts as an untraceable gateway for criminal activity.

Blockchain is not exclusive to bitcoin. Banks want in as well. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon appears to have a love-hate relationship with bitcoin. He announced in October a blockchain pilot program with the Royal Bank of Canada and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.

Dimon is no fan, calling it a "fraud," but he also said he does believe blockchain will be useful to speed up transactions, saying, "God bless the blockchain."

The Federal Reserves new vice chair of supervision, Randal Quarles, said the central bank is closely watching bitcoin. Quarles warned last week that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could pose dangers to the financial system as they become more wide scale. "While these digital currencies may not pose major concerns at their current levels of use, more serious financial stability issues may result if they achieve wide-scale usage," Quarles said.

Quarles believes the Fed should separate the concept of digital currencies from new innovative technologies and said that the Fed is monitoring financial industry consideration of adopting cryptocurrencies. He also warned against the Fed issuing its own digital currency.

In November, the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said for the first time the administration is "monitoring" bitcoin, citing a meeting in which Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert raised the issue. However, it's the technological evolution of blockchain that is seen as the more pressing focus.

"Blockchain has the promise to be used creatively for a number of cybersecurity and other issues, and it is important for us to remain informed on this and other new and emerging technologies," Gidley said.
Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane on Thursday said the U.S. is in the midst of a military readiness crisis.

Its beyond a problem. Fifty, 60, 70% of the aircraft are down and not flying, depending on what service were talking about. Fifty percent of that B-1 bomber fleet is down for maintenance. Were short 2,000 pilots. Were short thousands of mechanics, Keane told FOX Business Stuart Varney on Varney & Co.

Keane, who explained that the current military is the smallest the country has seen in 75 years, said aging equipment is also an issue that has factored into recent military accidents.

The operational tempo that we havewe are struggling to keep up with it. And thats why you see ships banging into each other and also pilots having mishaps, he said. Were supposed to fly 15 hours a month to keep our proficiency up. Were averaging five to seven.  We are increasing [pilots] personal risk.

Despite the operational issues with the militarys aircraft, American forces are still actively participating in exercises with South Korea on the Korean peninsula, due to the growing nuclear threat of North Korea. The five-day joint air drill features 230 aircraft, including stealth jets, and about 12,000 American troops.

Overall the message [to North Korea] was very strong with the number of airplanes that are participating, Keane said, regarding the aerial exercises.
Hugh Jackman just couldnt understand the unbelievable and crazy storylines in James Bond movies.

The 49-year-old actor told Variety he was once called to take on the role of 007, but he just couldnt get on board with the scripts.

I was about to do X-Men 2 and a call came from my agent asking if Id be interested in Bond, Jackman told Variety. I just felt at the time that the scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy, and I felt like they needed to become grittier and real.

Jackman recalled his agent telling him he doesnt get a say in the scripts and just have to sign on.

He added, I was also worried that between Bond and X-Men, Id never have time to do different things.

British actor Daniel Craig eventually took on the role of James Bond in 2006s Casino Royale. He continued the role for three other movies, the lastest one was Spectre in 2015.

Jackman said he hasnt looked back since taking a pass on James Bond, adding he always tried to do different things.

But there was a time between X-Men 3 and the first Wolverine movie when I could see the roles getting smaller. People wanted me to play that kind of hero part exclusively. It felt a little bit claustrophobic, he said.

Jackman is currently starring in "The Greatest Showman."
Minnesota Public Radios decision to end its association with former A Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor resulted from "multiple allegations" that covered an extended period of time, the organizations president said Wednesday.

One week after Keillors dismissal was disclosed, Jon McTaggart held an off-the-record meeting with MPR employees. Reporters from Minnesota Public Radio News did not attend because the meeting was declared off the record, but they compiled an account from employees who did attend.

MPR News reported that McTaggart said he alone made the decision to break with Keillor, who retired as "Prairie Home" host last year. Keillor told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he touched a woman's bare back as he tried to console her, and that he apologized.

The show continues with Keillor's hand-picked successor, mandolinist Chris Thile  although Reuters reported that it will be renamed.

Meanwhile, the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, Fla., has canceled an upcoming performance by Keillor in the wake of the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

TampaBay.com reported that Keillor was to perform at the theater Feb. 5, but the show was quietly canceled Dec. 1 by its promoter, the Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts.

Two other Florida venues  the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers and the Coral Springs Center for the Arts have also canceled their scheduled Keillor shows, the site reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
A Jewish community leader has slammed the Boston Globe for publishing a cartoon depicting Jewish billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

The cartoon by Ward Sutton, titled Murder on the Tax-Cut Express, appeared Friday. It portrayed the GOP tax reform bill  which the Senate approved Saturday  as a giveaway to Republican donors at the expense of others.

But the caricature of Adelson evokes classic anti-Semitic imagery and reinforces existing stereotypes, Robert Trestan, New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, complained to the Globe in a letter.

The drawing shows ordinary Americans as the trains freight in a packed cattle car while Adelson is portrayed as sitting with his wife Miriam Adelson in a priority passengers section, getting served a bag of cash labeled $14.6 billion.

In his letter, published Monday, Trestan writes that his group was deeply disturbed and offended by the cartoon.

The portrayal  singling out, among all the donors and interests who stand to benefit, a prominent Jewish individual, Sheldon Adelson; depicting him with an exaggerated hooked nose; linking him with money; and positioning him as hidden inside the train while others conduct  evokes classic anti-Semitic imagery and reinforces existing stereotypes, he writes.

At a time when hatred and bigotry of all forms are seeping into the mainstream, it is critical that the Globe and other responsible media outlets refrain from giving additional aid to those who no doubt will see this cartoons publication as further verification of long-established anti-Semitic views.

The Globe printed Trestan's letter Monday but did not respond. The newspaper did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.
Chelsea Handler was blasted on social media Wednesday for blaming President Trump for the wildfires burning in California this week.

Handler tweeted: Just evacuated my house. Its like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times.

Some social media users slammed Handler for mentioning Trump in the middle of a natural disaster and blaming him for the fires.

JUANITA BROADDRICK SLAMS CHELSEA HANDLER: I WAS RAPED BY BILL CLINTON

1st thought: These fires are absolutely tragic. God bless all. 2nd thought: Wow. If Chelsea Handler is tweeting about her hatred of POTUS during this critical time, shes sicker than I thought. Sad.



Chelsea Handler now says that Trump caused the California wildfires. Well he must be one powerful wizard if he can summon cat 5 hurricanes and cause massive wildfiresTo have both fire and wind stats maxed out shows he must be at a really high level! one Twitter user wrote.

Your house is literally burning down, along with many peoples homes. Peoples lives are (at) stake, and you make your tweet about Donald TrumpI feel bad for you. Its really sad. I hope everyone stays safe during the LA fires, another social media user tweeted.

Even in times of tragedy and loss, Chelsea Handler has time to continue her anti-Trump agenda. Beyond pathetic, another person tweeted.

Sweetie just think for a sec, what does a fire has to do with the president of the USA? another social media wrote.

The fires broke out in Southern California late Sunday and has destroyed nearly 200 homes and buildings. Nearly 200,000 people have been forced from their homes due to the growing wildfires.
Five years have passed since a royal nurse committed suicide after she fell victim to a radio prank and mistakenly revealed details of Kate Middleton's pregnancy when she was expecting Prince George. And the family of Jacintha Saldanha is still healing.

Saldanha killed herself in 2012 three days after two Australian radio DJs called her and impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, prompting Saldanha to share confidential details about the Duchess of Cambridges medical information. The call was recorded and broadcast.

Saldanhas daughter, Janice Pinto, told Australias WHO magazine the family is coping and getting on with our lives on the fifth anniversary of her moms death.

The first few years were the hardest, the 20-year-old said. She would call me every day at 6 p.m., just before she went to work. To check up That phone call is what I miss every day.

Her son, Junal Barboza, added, She was the sort of person who would always go the extra mile to help a family member, and weve had a number of significant letters from people within the medical profession telling us just how good she was at her job.

He said through the outpouring of support that following his moms death, hes learned about her dedication to her work.

Learning about her was a real eye-opener and has provided the stepping stone for what we want to achieve, he told WHO magazine. Whatever I do now, any achievement, will be for her and for my dad and for my family. That is the way that I kind of live my life.

After Saldanha took her own life, The Royal Palace issued a statement in support of the 46-year-old.

"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jacintha Saldanha," the Royal Family said at the time. "Their Royal Highnesses were looked after so wonderfully well at all times by everybody at King Edward VII Hospital, and their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha's family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time."

Prince William later wrote to the family, according to People, We were both very shocked to hear about Jacintha, and have been thinking a lot about her recently. Many of the nurses in the hospital spoke highly of her and Im sure you know how great a nurse she was.

The death sparked an angry backlash from those who argued the Australian DJs who carried out the hoax should be held responsible.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
It seems her role as Wonder Woman has propelled actress Gal Gadot to yet another Hollywood accolade. The actress has been named the number one star of 2017 based on IMDBs ranking.

Thanks to her dual appearances in the breakout hit Wonder Woman as well as the recently-released Justice League, the popular website measured her page as the most-viewed by its roughly 250 million monthly unique visitors in 2017. The 32-year-old stars high ranking is poetic in its way given her role as one of the most powerful women in comic books and superhero mythology. Shes earned the top spot in a year that included seven of the top 10 biggest stars on the list being female.

Only Dan Stevens, Bill Skarsgard and Tom Hardy made the list for the male camp, with Hardy coming in second place for his work in 2017.

It is no surprise that Gal Gadot is IMDbs Top Star of 2017, Keith Simanton, IMDbs senior film editor told Variety. She is the embodiment of a superhero in Wonder Woman and Justice League, and has transformed from an actor of interest into her leading role as IMDbs most viewed actress of the year.

Other prominent female stars on the list were Katherine Langford; the star of Netflixs controversial 13 Reasons Why, Pom Klementieff; the newest member of the Guardians of the Galaxy and enduring popularity titan Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones.

IMDBs top ten most popular stars of the year breakdown as follows:

Gal Gadot Tom hardy Emilia Clarke Alexandra Daddario Bill Skarsgard Pom Klementieff Ana de Armas Dan Stevens Sofia Boutella Katherine Langford

You can see the official announcement video below for clips of each stars 2017 performances.
Scientologist actor Danny Masterson has been accused of rape by four women  and the Church of Scientology claims it knew nothing of the allegations against its longtime member.

However, people deeply connected with the church say members did have knowledge of Masterson's alleged behavior way before the media reports.

Several sources told Fox News that the Church of Scientology systematically covers up misdeeds of its most prominent members  and Masterson, they say, is no exception.

Chris Shelton, a former member of the Church of Scientology and Sea Org from 1987-2012, said the church silences members who want to take complaints to law enforcement.

The church works to protect the church first, he told Fox News.

He said the next most important thing to Scientologists is to protect the members of the church and its public image.

[The Church of Scientology] considers anyone outside the church to be a wog, which is a defamatory word describing non-members... It creates an us versus them mentality [and tells] members that wogs at law enforcement wont protect them.

Tony Ortega, editor of The Underground Bunker, told Fox News Scientologists are not allowed to file a lawsuit against another Scientologist or report another Scientologist to the authorities.

Ortega said this has directly impacted the women accusing Masterson of rape.

For example, one of Mastersons accusers  went to the church in 2003 to report the incident, Ortega claimed.

Citing inside knowledge of the church, he alleged Scientology leaders asked the accuser to undergo intensive counseling from May to December 2003, going back into her past lives to find out what evil thing she did then to cause this now.

"That is how Scientology handled sexual assault, he added.

Ortega, a journalist who has dedicated his time to investigating the Church of Scientology, claimed members of the church are threatened with being ostracized from the tight-knit community if they go to authorities with sexual assault allegations.

Shelton said he saw similar practices during his time as a member of the church.

Shelton said Scientologists use an internal justice system that utilizes fear mongering to stop alleged sexual assault victims from going to the police. Shelton also said the interview sessions with alleged victims within the church are routinely filmed.

Ortega said one of Mastersons accusers was brutally interrogated by a senior member of the organization.

At the same time, Danny was being interrogated [by a senior member], Ortega claimed.  It would have been videotaped. They are manic about keeping records. To my knowledge, none of this was given to the LAPD.

Ortega said when the alleged victim took her case to the LAPD to claim the That 70s Show star attacked her, the church stepped in once again.

A little more than a year after the assault, the church bombarded the LAPD with affidavit after affidavit from church members defending Masterson. The church rallied around him.

Shelton predicts the church will stand by Masterson, even as his public image begins to crumble. The actor denies any wrongdoing.

They will keep lying, lying and lying, Shelton said of the church. Theyll cover up and double down.

Masterson was fired by Netflix earlier this week, ending his run on the streaming services series The Ranch.

He has denied the claims against him, saying in part, "Law enforcement investigated these claims more than 15 years ago and determined them to be without merit. I have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one."

In a statement to the media, the Church of Scientology denied it was involved in stifling the claims of Mastersons accusers.

The church adamantly denies that it ever ignores any allegations of criminal behavior, especially at the expense of alleged victims. What is being stated is utterly untrue. This has nothing to do with religion. This story is being manipulated to push a bigoted agenda. The church follows all laws and cooperates with law enforcement. Any statement or implication to the contrary is false.
Meghan Markle is shining as a soon-to-be royal and after the holidays, her life will get even better as she and Prince Harry escape for romantic pre-wedding vacation.

They plan to go on vacation together for more than a week, a source revealed in the new issue of Us Weekly.

The destination for the romantic getaway is currently unknown, but according the source, the couple wont be headed back to Norway for another Northern Lights display.

Expect them to come back tanned, refreshed and ready to take on a very busy 2018.

This week, Prince Harry was spotted at the Henry Van Straubenzee Memorial Fund carol concert at St. Luke's Church in London where his ex-girlfriend, Cressida Bonas, was also caroling and bringing in the holiday cheer. Markle was not with her prince which led people to wonder where the former actress was hiding.

But according to E! News, Markle is back in the states visiting her mother, Doria Ragland, in her hometown of Los Angeles and keeping out of the public eye -- at least until she has to head back to London for Christmas. Before Prince Harry can whisk away his bride to be, Markle will join the royal family for Christmas at Queen Elizabeth IIs 20,000-acre Sandringham estate.

Queen Elizabeth IIs exclusive Christmas celebration is traditionally only for family members and their spouses. When Kate Middleton was engaged to Prince William, she was not invited the royal Christmas festivities and spent the holiday with her own family. The Queen choosing to invite Markle to the familys grand holiday is yet another way Markle has broken royal tradition.

It is said that after the Christmas holiday, the newly-engaged couple is excited to get away for a bit.

"They're looking forward to some sun," a source close to Markle told E! News.

Harry and Meghan have finally been able to spend some time together, but they couple is used to managing a long-distance relationship and have learned how to stay in touch while apart from each other.

A source explained to E! News that while Markle was in Toronto working on "Suits" and Harry was in London, the couple kept their love alive via text messages and have grown accustom to FaceTime-ing "every day when they're apart." The video chat app has "played a huge role in their relationship."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are slated to be married in May 2018 at at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
President Donald Trumps reaction to former national security adviser Michael Flynns plea bargain has focused public attention once more on the issue at the heart of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation: potential presidential obstruction of justice.

This is nothing new. Since Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May and cited the Russia probe, it has been evident that the presidents actions were creating a strong case for Mueller to conclude he had tried to obstruct the investigation.

But Mueller must ultimately resolve four questions to determine the extent of what may be the worst presidential misuse of power since Richard Nixon asked the FBI and CIA to cover up the Watergate break-in.

These are the four questions:

How far did Trump go to stop the probe of potential Russian involvement with his 2016 campaign?

He began at the outset of his presidency. On Jan. 27, Comey testified under oath, the president invited him for dinner and told him, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty, a pointed statement Trump later denied. A day earlier, acting Attorney General Sally Yates advised the White House that Flynn lied to Vice President Mike Pence and others (presumably including the FBI) about his contacts with the Russians, though Comey never said Trump explicitly mentioned that.

On Feb. 13, some 18 days after Yates warning, Trump fired Flynn  after The Washington Post reported he had lied to Pence. But after Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI, Trump tweeted, I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.

Trumps lawyer, John Dowd, claimed he wrote the tweet. But it was in the presidents name, an apparent acknowledgement he knew Flynn lied before his dinner with Comey and did nothing until it became public two weeks later.

Comey said Trump told him a day after Flynn was fired: I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. Comey said he replied only that he is a good guy.

On May 10, Trump fired Comey, blaming his handling of the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clintons email server. Two days later, Trump cited this Russian thing as a factor to NBCs Lester Holt, though he added he always knew, I was going to fire Comey.

What was Trumps motive?

Despite repeated denials by Trump and top campaign officials, a number have now acknowledged surreptitious contacts during and after the campaign with Russian officials. The alleged subjects ranged from adoption of Russian babies to the Obama administrations tightening of anti-Russian sanctions.

Its unclear they intended these false statements to obscure potentially politically damaging contacts or something more sinister, perhaps stemming from Trumps commercial interests and a long relationship with Russians funding them or, even more seriously, collusion with an active Russian effort to help him win the election.

The latest clue: In December, Flynns deputy, K.T. McFarland, wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times that the Obama administrations strengthened sanctions could make it harder for Trump to ease tensions with Russia, which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him.

Who shares Flynns guilt?

Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI. But others risk exposure for perjury. So far, at least a dozen people have made misleading statements, either to Congress, in government documents or to the public, including Trump, Pence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, presidential assistant and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. Its too early to know if any will face legal charges.

What will be done about it?

Thats the ultimate question for Trumps presidency.

Dowd told Axios 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. But presidential criminal liability remains a legal gray area. The one known prosecution venue is the constitutional provision calling for removal of the president on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Congress invoked that clause in impeaching Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, neither of whom was convicted, and in forcing Nixons resignation to avoid almost certain impeachment and conviction.

What were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-California, told NBCs Meet the Press Sunday. If thats Muellers conclusion, he could recommend Congress consider impeachment. After that, the outlook becomes murkier, given that pro-Trump Republicans run both House and Senate  at least until the 2018 election.

Still, its increasingly evident potential obstruction of justice is a principal focus of Muellers investigation. But not necessarily the only one.
A porn star relentlessly bullied on Twitter after saying she did not want to have sex with someone who had shot gay porn committed suicide by hanging.

August Ames, a 23-year-old rising star in the adult film industry, died Tuesday in California. The Ventura County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Blast that Ames died of asphyxiation due to hanging.

She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me, her husband, Kevin Moore, told industry trade magazine Adult Video News (AVN), which first reported the news. Please leave this as a private family matter in this difficult time.

PHOTOS: Stars we lost in 2017

According AVN, Ames joined the adult film industry in 2013 and steadily rose to prominence mostly thanks to a large following on social media.

Close friends told The Blast that they suspect her social media presence and recent harassment may have contributed to her death.

In recent days, Ames Twitter feed has been littered with cyberbullies accusing her of being homophobic after she publicly chose to not work with an unidentified actor who had previously shot gay porn.

Whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXnews, youre shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say, she wrote in a tweet earlier this month. Do agents really not care about who theyre representing? I do my homework for my body.

The tweet garnered an onslaught of responses toward Ames, forcing her to defend her decision  and her words  against the PC mob.

NOT homophobic. Most girls dont shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety, she wrote. Thats just how it is with me. Im not putting my body at risk, I dont know what they do in their private lives.

In another tweet Ames wrote: How am I homophobic if I myself am attracted to women? Not wanting to have sex with gay men is not homophonic; they dont want to have sex with me either so byeeeee.

I dont have anything to apologize for! Apologizing for taking extra steps to [ensure] that my body stays safe? F--k you guys for attacking me when none of my intentions were malicious. I f--king love the gay community! What the f--k ever! I CHOOSE who I have inside my body. No hate, she wrote in another tweet.

After Ames death, fellow porn stars came to her defense and slammed the online mob bullying her.

A beautiful life is GONE because people like to use their fan base to bully others because THEIR opinion doesnt agree with YOURS, Brett Rossi, ex-girlfriend to actor Charlie Sheen wrote on Twitter. RIP to a sweet, kind soul Im so sad & so angry. A life wasted simply because HER opinion didnt mesh with YOURS.

Anikka Albrite wrote: Omg, I cant believe shes dead. You people should have known better than to berate her over her personal thoughts! Shame on all you for beating it into the ground. Online harassment is a real thing & it claimed another life. Someone who liked & would have even called a friend!
After rumors surfaced about actress Renee Zellweger being inappropriately linked to now disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, her representatives are firing back to make it clear that the story is not true.

The claims come from the recently filed class-action lawsuit against Weinstein by six women alleging that not only is the 65-year-old guilty of sexual assault, but that extreme measures were taken by companies around him to cover up any wrongdoing. In that suit, it is alleged that Bridget Jones actress Renee Zellweger performed sexual favors for Weinstein in order to move her career forward.

If Harvey said that, hes full of s---, a rep for Zellweger told Fox News.

Zellweger starred in a handful of projects produced by Weinsteins companies, most notably Cold Mountain, for which she won an Oscar in 2004.

Weinstein has been at the forefront of the publics conversation since October, when a litany of women came forward with allegations of harassment, assault and other misconduct.

According to the lawsuit, actresses and other women in the film industry were lured by Weinsteins promises of fame and work into hotel rooms, offices and more private meetings where he allegedly routinely harassed them.

A rep for Weinstein told Fox News that Mr. Weinstein vehemently denies these accusations and has never stated he slept with any of them," following accusations that he also slept with Gwyneth Paltrow and Charlize Theron.

"Its ridiculous that anyone would believe these talented women, academy award winners, provided sexual favors in exchange for roles they earned based on their talent and brilliant work. Its simply not true," the statement read.

Zellweger herself has not commented on the situation, but her reps seem to be making their stance clear.
Press secretary Sarah Sanders shot down speculation that President Trump wears dentures on Thursday after liberal media members and Twitter pundits started a conspiracy theory that fake teeth were responsible for slurred words during his Jerusalem speech on Wednesday.

While Trump would presumably welcome most comparisons to George Washington, having fake teeth is not likely one he'd want to emulate. However, some Trump critics decided  without any evidence  that dentures are something the two men have in common after Trump announced he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Mediaites Lawrence Bonk wrote, A close Mediaite examination of the video led us to the most likely conclusion: the Presidents dentures were slipping out of his mouth, subtly loosening, thus causing the change in speech pattern.

Bonk added that this cannot be confirmed but he is 71 years old, so it makes a fair amount of sense that he would wear dentures.

The Daily Show host Trevor Noah upped the ante, mocking Trumps speech pattern and sarcastically inciting viewers to troll the president on Twitter with the hashtag #DentureDonald.

We all know whats going on here: President Trump is wearing dentures, people. Yeah, thats whats going on, Noah said. No, this used to happen to my grandfather all the time: His dentures would start falling out, and then he wouldnt be able to finish his sentence.

Noah also charged that Trumps hair and tan are fake, alluding to the fact that his teeth must be fake also.

And by the way: Theres no shame in having dentures but there is shame in Donald Trump having dentures, because hes vain as hell, Noah said. Can you imagine how he would feel if people started tweeting #DentureDonald? Dont do it! Im just saying, can you imagine how hed feel? But dont do it, guys. Hes very sensitive, OK.

The result was an onslaught of social media vitriol.

Reporters from HuffPost and Chicago Tribune were among the online jokesters, while ABC's "The View" dedicated a segment to the ordeal.

One user tweeted, Sooo this is interesting. Trumps dentures are trying to escape his mouth as this speech is ending. Join the club dentures! Unbelievable, while another said, We all kept telling Trump to get a grip never imaging it should be Poligrip.

Sanders shot down the rumors, The presidents throat was dry  nothing more than that.

Washington only had one real tooth remaining when he was sworn in as the first president, and wore dentures for the remainder of his life.

Contrary to popular myth, his false teeth were not made of wood but of human and cow teeth as well as elephant and walrus ivory, according to his estates website.

The site also notes that Washington always treated his dental troubles as a state secret and was very self-aware of the impact that ill-fitting dentures had on his appearance. Considering how many people mocked Trump without any evidence, its a good thing social media wasnt around when Washington ran the country.

Trump will undergo a presidential physical in early 2018 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Those records will be released by the doctor following that taking place, Sanders said.
On Saturday, Angelica Selena Martinez, a 21-year-old from Miami, claimed that a local McDonalds branch fired her 19-year-old brother, Alex, who has autism, for his shaky hands.

My brother was fired from McDonalds [solely] based off discrimination, Angelica wrote on Twitter, which has since gotten more than 79,000 retweets.

Alex says that the fast food chain was aware of his condition before he was hired and that this was his first job.

[The hiring manager] told me to come back Tuesday to start training, Alex tells BuzzFeed News. On the fourth day, they sent me home early and said, Dont worry youre not fired. 

But the day before he was supposed to return to work, Alexs grandma told him that he was let go. (The branch reached out to her, rather than to Alex directly.) Alexs social worker tried to meet with a McDonalds supervisor, but they were unavailable and would not answer phone calls.

I did nothing wrong  I was always careful while handling change, my registers always had the right money, Alex says. I dont like that they didnt tell me personally. I feel like they werent treating me like a normal human being and made me feel like I was inadequate and worthless. I still havent gotten paid for the time I worked and they still havent told me when I will get paid. I just dont understand.

Angelicas tweet has drawn support for Alex on social media.

Meanwhile, the owner of the McDonalds branch, Anthony Greenwood Sr., wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed: I am working with my restaurant team to fully understand the situation. At my restaurant we have a long standing history of creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace. I am committed to providing training and development opportunities for all and value the contributions of all members of my crew.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post
An amateur fisherman in Japan learned the hard way that he should probably be sticking to catch-and-release, after he cooked and ate a pretty fish he caught, and then had to be hospitalized because the fish was extremely poisonous.

According to Sora News 24, a 60-year-old man from Nagoya decided to take a nice break from city life and enjoy a spot of fishing last week. He went to the seaside and enjoyed the scenery and he even caught a nice-looking blue and yellow fish, which he took home to have for breakfast the next day.

The man ate his fish for breakfast, and then went about his day. He probably felt pretty good about himself for having successfully caught and cooked his own breakfast. Later, though, he started to feel extremely ill. By late afternoon he was in agonizing pain in all the muscles of his body.

Doctors found palytoxin in his system, and because palytoxin is a potentially deadly toxin found in marine species, it did not take them long to figure out what had happened.

The fish the man ate for breakfast is a called a "hako fugu," and they can be very poisonous. The doctors were surprised that the man had eaten the fish, because as Sora News 24 points out, the "fugu" in hako fugu is the same as Japans famous poisonous blowfish. While several different fish have "fugu" in the name in Japanese, many of those, like the famed blowfish, are poisonous and can be deadly if not prepared by a licensed expert.

Doctors say the amateur fisherman says he knew the fish was a hako fugu, but the name does not appear to have scared him off. He just said he knew the name but didnt know much about the fish, so he ate it.

The Nagoya government issued a reminder asking residents to please not eat any kind of poisonous fish, unless prepared by a chef licensed to serve it. In general, it is not a good idea to eat things one finds, if one does not know for sure that they are not full of dangerous toxins, like fugu.
Modern birth control pills that are lower in estrogen modestly raise the risk of breast cancer, especially with long-term use, a Danish study found.

Researchers discovered a similar breast cancer risk with the progestin-only intrauterine device, and they could not rule out a risk for other hormonal contraceptives like patches and implants.

However, the overall increased risk was small, amounting to one extra case of breast cancer among 77,000 women using contraceptives per year.

Experts warned women should balance the studys findings against the benefits of the pill, which includes a lower risk of other cancers.

BREAST CANCER SYMPTOMS TO LOOK OUT FOR

"Hormonal contraception should still be perceived as a safe and effective option for family planning," said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who was not involved in the research.

Manson suggested women in their 40s should consider using non-hormonal IUDs, getting their tubes tied or talking with their partners about a vasectomy.

Studies of older birth control pills have shown a net cancer benefit because of the lowered risk of cancer of the colon, uterus and ovaries despite a raise breast cancer risk, Mia Gaudet, a breast cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, said.

There was optimism that newer, low-dose contraceptives would lower the breast cancer risk, but these results have dashed those hopes, said Gaudet, who was not involved in the research either.

Current and recent use of hormonal contraceptives was associated with a 20 percent increased risk of breast cancer. Risk increased with longer use, from a 9 percent increase in risk with less than a year of contraceptive use to a 38 percent increase after more than 10 years of use.

Researchers analyzed the health records of 1.8 million women, ages 15 to 49, in Denmark.

This is an important study because we had no idea how the modern-day pills compared to the old-fashioned pills in terms of breast cancer risk, and we didnt know anything about I.U.D.s, said Dr. Marisa Weiss told The New York Times. Weiss was not involved in the study.

David J. Hunter, a professor at the University of Oxford, told The New York Times there are no new contraceptives that are risk-free.

RISK OF BREAST CANCER RECURRENCE LASTS FOR DECADES

There was a hope that the contemporary preparations would be associated with lower risk, Hunter said. This is the first study with substantial data to show thats not the case.

Results were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Novo Nordisk Foundation funded the research, but played no role in designing the study. The foundation has ties to the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which primarily makes diabetes drugs and does not make contraceptives.

Researchers said they accounted for education, childbirth and a family history of breast cancer during the study but they were not able to adjust for several other known cancer risk factors such as alcohol use and limited physical activity, or protective factors such as breast-feeding.

Dr. Roshni Rao, a breast surgeon at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, said women with a history of breast cancer may want to consider asking about other contraceptives.

"Oral contraceptives are like any other medication," Rao said. "There are risks and there are benefits. If you have a reason to be taking them, it's perfectly reasonable to do so."

About 140 million women use some type of hormonal contraception, including about 16 million in the United States.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More than 40,000 women will be killed by breast cancer this year in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Women face a one-in-37 chance of dying from the disease, which, according to the ACS, is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women behind lung cancer.

Read on to learn about symptoms of the disease.

What are some breast cancer signs to be aware of?

Many women are diagnosed during a routine mammogram without exhibiting any symptoms, according to Dr. Laura Spring, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass.

However, some warning signs include a lump, persistent pain in one area that doesn't go away, and hardening or thickening around the breast and armpit, Spring explained.

Whats most important is for women to know whats normal for them and to be aware of changes in the breast, she said.

Stanford University Medical Center professor Dr. Douglas Blayney said patients may experience bone pain and have weakened bones and fractures if the cancer has already spread.

What else should I know?

Skin dimpling -- when it starts looking like a peeled orange -- is unusual, Dr. Parvin Peddi, an oncologist at UCLA Health, told Fox News.

It can be a sign of a cancer underneath that is pulling the skin in, she said.

Very uncommonly do women have nipple discharge or blood coming from their nipples, said Dr. Adam Brufsky, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. However, he added that bloody nipples do not necessarily indicate cancer.

Dr. Margaret Chen, a breast surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, said that asymmetry and pain are less common symptoms of cancer. She stressed the importance of routine mammograms, given that there are often no warning signs.

Skin redness and feeling warmth in the breast are both rare breast cancer symptoms, according to Spring. She advised women with any questions or concerns to see a doctor.

A new Danish study found that birth control pills that are lower in estrogen, like older pills, were linked to raising the risk of breast cancer, especially with long-term use.

Experts suggested women in their 40s should consider using non-hormonal IUDs, getting their tubes tied or talking with their partners about vasectomy.

About 140 million women use some type of hormonal contraception, including about 16 million in the United States.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Desiring model legs no longer has to come down to how many squats you can do or barre classes you can make it through  just ask your plastic surgeon.

Leg-obsessed celebs and normal folks alike are throwing money at the new plastic surgery trend called thighlighting, a group of procedures aimed at enhancing your gams.

The clever phrase is used as an umbrella term for many different leg-focused plastic surgeries including thigh lifts, liposuction, whittling down the thighs and even calf implants.

MOM BLAMES PLASTIC SURGERY ADDICTION ON 'SELFIE DYSMORPHIA'

The painful and invasive process is touted as a full leg makeover aimed at giving you legs worthy of the red-carpet, and has been picking up steam because of A-list models like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, and superstars like Cameron Diaz.

Plastic surgeon Rian Maercks of the Maercks Institute in Miami told Yahoo Style the celebs whose thighs patients are asking for theirs to look like the most are Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Karlie Kloss, Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

Cosmetic doctor Dr. Esho of The ESHO Clinic in London told the Independent that women have become more focused on the appearance of their thighs. Which is not a surprise, as there are dozens of workouts solely dedicated to achieving slimmer thighs and more sculpted quads.

"When contoured correctly, the shape of the thighs helps to elongate the legs, creating a desirable silhouette," he told The Independent. "The legs look longer and the body as a whole looks leaner.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

However, women arent looking for just skinnier versions of what is already there  they want to look sculpted and toned, and quickly.

The entire thighlighting experience isnt cheap, clocking in at more than $9,000 for a complete leg makeover.
One Taco Bell staffer in Missouri is asking more of customers than just their orders.

Drive-thru operator Bill Grimm is collecting spare change from his Taco Bell customers for Officer Ryan OConnor, who was shot in the head on Dec. 5 while transporting a suspect, KMOV reports.

LONELY WIDOWER ASKS FOR A PLACE TO SPEND CHRISTMAS, GETS A THOUSAND RESPONSES

"I figured an officer in my community, who comes into my restaurant and eats all the time, I have to help them and give support," said Grimm of OConnor, who has served the greater St. Louis area for nearly 20 years and remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Soon after learning that O'Connor had been shot, Grimm began asking his drive-thru customers for pennies while he was preparing their orders at the Tex-Mex franchises Arnold location. But patrons were much more generous  and Grimm soon had a piggy bank overflowing with donations.

AN ENTIRE COUNTRY IS HOSTING A HOLIDAY GIFT EXCHANGE

"I got a lot of ashtray change. I got dollars, five dollars and other bills given to me. It was just a remarkable thing to see people give in a time of need," Grimm said of his collection.

Describing OConnor as very mellow, nice and considerate, Grimm feels hes simply doing his part to give back to the law enforcement official who has given so much, sharing that OConnor once helped him search for a felon who chased him in a car and threw a bottle at his mothers window.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

O'Connor is also accepting donations through a GoFundMe account, where almost $23,000 of a $50,000 fundraising goal has been raised for OConnor, his wife and his four young children.
President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital is a perfect response to President Obamas benighted decision to change American policy by engineering the United Nations Security Council Resolution declaring Judaisms holiest places in Jerusalem to be occupied territory and a flagrant violation under international law. It was President Obama who changed the status quo and made peace more difficult, by handing the Palestinians enormous leverage in future negotiations and disincentivizing them from making a compromised peace.

It had long been American foreign policy to veto any one-sided Security Council resolutions that declared Judaisms holiest places to be illegally occupied. Obamas decision to change that policy was not based on American interests or in the interests of peace. It was done out of personal revenge against Prime Minister Netanyahu and an act of pique by the outgoing president.

It was also designed improperly to tie the hands of President-elect Trump. President Trump is doing the right thing by telling the United Nations that the United States now rejects the one-sided U.N. Security Council Resolution.

So if there is any change to the status quo, let the blame lie where it should be: at the hands of President Obama for his cowardly decision to wait until he was a lame-duck president to get even with Prime Minister Netanyahu. President Trump deserves praise for restoring balance in negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians. It was President Obama who made peace more difficult. It was President Trump who made it more feasible again.

The outrageously one-sided Security Council Resolution declared that any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, have no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law. This means, among other things, that Israels decision to build a plaza for prayer at the Western Wall  Judaisms holiest site  constitutes a flagrant violation of international law. This resolution was, therefore, not limited to settlements in the West Bank, as the Obama administration later claimed in a bait-and-switch. The resolution applied equally to the very heart of Israel.

Before June 4, 1967, Jews were forbidden from praying at the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site. They were forbidden to attend classes at the Hebrew University at Mt. Scopus, which had been opened in 1925 and was supported by Albert Einstein. Jews could not seek medical care at the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus, which had treated Jews and Arabs alike since 1918. Jews could not live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, where their forbearers had built homes and synagogues for thousands of years. These Judenrein prohibitions were enacted by Jordan, which had captured by military force these Jewish areas during Israels War of Independence, in 1948, and had illegally occupied the entire West Bank, which the United Nations had set aside for an Arab state. When the Jordanian government occupied these historic Jewish sites, they destroyed all the remnants of Judaism, including synagogues, schools and cemeteries, whose headstones they used for urinals. Between 1948 and 1967, the United Nations did not offer a single resolution condemning this Jordanian occupation and cultural devastation.

When Israel retook these areas in a defensive war that Jordan started by shelling civilian homes in West Jerusalem, and opened them up as places where Jews could pray, study, receive medical treatment and live, the United States took the official position that it would not recognize Israels legitimate claims to Jewish Jerusalem.

It stated that the status of Jerusalem, including these newly liberated areas, would be left open to final negotiations and that the status quo would remain in place. That is the official rationale for why the United States refused to recognize any part of Jerusalem, including West Jerusalem, as part of Israel. That is why the United States refused to allow an American citizen born in any part of Jerusalem to put the words Jerusalem, Israel on his or her passport as their place of birth.

But even that historic status quo was changed with President Obamas unjustified decision not to veto the Security Council Resolution from last December. The United Nations all of a sudden determined that, subject to any further negotiations and agreements, the Jewish areas of Jerusalem recaptured from Jordan in 1967 are not part of Israel. Instead, they were territories being illegally occupied by Israel, and any building in these areas  including places for prayer at the Western Wall, access roads to Mt. Scopus, and synagogues in the historic Jewish Quarter  constitutes a flagrant violation under international law. If that indeed is the new status quo, then what incentives do the Palestinians have to enter negotiations? And if they were to do so, they could use these Jewish areas to extort unreasonable concessions from Israel, for which these now illegally occupied areas are sacred and nonnegotiable.

President Obamas refusal to veto this one-sided resolution was a deliberate ploy to tie the hands of his successors, the consequence of which was to make it far more difficult for his successors to encourage the Palestinians to accept Israels offer to negotiate with no preconditions. No future president can undo this pernicious agreement, since a veto not cast can never be retroactively cast. And a resolution once enacted cannot be rescinded unless there is a majority vote against it, with no veto by any of its permanent members, which include Russia and China, who would be sure to veto any attempt to undo this resolution.

President Trumps decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital helps to restore the appropriate balance. It demonstrates that the United States does not accept the Judenrein effects of this bigoted resolution on historic Jewish areas of Jerusalem, which were forbidden to Jews. The prior refusal of the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital was based explicitly on the notion that nothing should be done to change the status quo of that city, holy to three religions. But the Security Council Resolution did exactly that: It changed the status quo by declaring Israels de facto presence on these Jewish holy sites to be a flagrant violation under international law that the U.N. will not recognize.

Since virtually everyone in the international community acknowledges that any reasonable peace would recognize Israels legitimate claims to these and other areas in Jerusalem, there is no reason for allowing the U.N. Resolution to make criminals out of every Jew or Israeli who sets foot on these historically Jewish areas. (Ironically, President Obama prayed at what he regarded as the illegally occupied Western Wall.)

After the UN, at the urging of President Obama, made it a continuing international crime for there to be any Israeli presence in disputed areas of Jerusalem, including areas whose Jewish provenance is beyond dispute, President Trump was right to untie his own hands and to undo the damage wrought by his predecessor. Some have argued that the United States should not recognize Jerusalem because it will stimulate violence by Arab terrorists. No American decision should ever be influenced by the threat of violence. Terrorists should not have a veto over American policy. If the United States were to give in to threat of violence, it would only incentivize others to threaten violence in response to any peace plan.

So lets praise President Trump for doing the right thing by undoing the wrong thing President Obama did at the end of his presidency.
MADISON  Its no secret that Wisconsin is a secret when it comes to most things other than cheese, farms and the Green Bay Packers.

That branding dilemma was confirmed for me two years ago when my organization worked on a Wisconsin Perception Survey that asked about 2,000 people what they thought of the state and its job opportunities.

The answer was basically the same for respondents inside and outside the state: Job diversity means choosing between careers in curds, colby or cheddar.

While the reality of job options in Wisconsin is far different than what so many people think, decades of perception are hard to change. Fortunately, a timely chance to color Wisconsins monochromatic branding slate has arrived.

The combination of a looming worker deficit and the impending arrival of high-tech manufacturers such as Foxconn Technology Group has created a moment in which Wisconsin must finally get serious about attracting more people and selling itself as a well-rounded place to live, work and play.

That was the idea behind Gov. Scott Walkers announcement of a $6.8 million marketing and advertising campaign aimed at Midwest millennials, returning military veterans and alumni of the states public and private colleges. Walker did so Nov. 29 at the Future Wisconsin Summit, produced by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, where the Wisconsin Perception Survey was unveiled two years ago.

Pending legislative approval, the campaign would promote the states industry mix, recreation, education, arts and health care, and:

Reach out to millennials in Chicago and nearby on the theory theyre reaching an age in which starting a family and leading a more balanced life is better than living in a tiny apartment and fighting rush-hour traffic. For example, multi-media ads would pose illustrated choices such as An hour in traffic  or an hour with friends?, One hour commute  or one-hour bike ride? and Shoebox on the third floor  or loft in the Third Ward?

Entice military veterans who are returning from deployments and transitioning into civilian life. Whether theyre from Wisconsin or elsewhere, those veterans often seek the same things: housing, jobs, benefits and a place to raise a family. Wisconsin offers a state property tax credit for veterans who own homes; jobs that align with technical training received in the military; and some of the most comprehensive veteran benefits in the United States. Rockwell Automation and Manpower are already gearing up to train more veterans for specific tech jobs, as I noted in a recent column.

Welcome back alums. Wisconsin graduates about 75,000 students per year from its public and private colleges and universities, but loses many to other states. Some dont know about job openings and choices  others just want to return home. There are many others, however, who left for jobs from coast to coast and who could be tempted to return for the right opportunity.

One of the best elements of the plan is that its targeted to specific groups that can be reasonably reached. Lawmakers who might question the price tag should consider how costly it is to reach people in a world where mediums are diffused and audiences are fragmented.

A point yet to be addressed is how to overcome a belief, which surfaced in the 2015 perception survey, that Wisconsin isnt very tolerant. Part of persuading people to relocate is assuring them they wont become strangers in a new land.

Skeptics will note Wisconsin has flirted with marketing efforts in the past, only to get it wrong or to fail to spend what it takes. Perhaps history will repeat itself  or maybe this time the state will recognize it must cut a big block of cheese if it hopes to attract and retain tomorrows workers.
Christmas has always been a festive time of year for the residents of Lake Ridge Commons, a senior living community in Wilmington, North Carolina.

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We had door decorating contests, wrapping paper covered doors, festive wreaths, resident Leigh Bowser told television station WECT.

But this year there will be no door decorating contests or doors covered in wrapping paper or even Christmas wreaths.

Now, Christmas is illegal, Bowser said. Any display of Christmas is banned.

For the record, residents are more than welcome to haul out the holly and hang the tinsel inside their homes  but outside is strictly forbidden.

During 2017, offensive postings were placed on some doors which were offensive to other resident (sic) and other visitors and not of an acceptable nature and some residents (sic) items were removed, Excel Property Management president Ann Hanson wrote in a letter to residents.

She acknowledged that in previous years the apartment complex had permitted folks to deck the halls with boughs of holly  but in July they advised tenants of a provision in their lease that prohibits placing items outside their apartments in public view.

Most residents have complied as requested  however recently a season wreath was placed on a door, Hanson wrote (And by season wreath I assume shes referring to a Christmas wreath).

Last month residents organized and sent a letter to the management company urging them to reconsider, the television station reported. But the management company doubled down.

Moving forward we have been advised by our legal counsel to adhere to our lease to the fullest, the management company informed the senior citizens.

Hanson wrote in her letter to residents that welcome to help decorate common areas of the complex where we can more easily supervise that.

Heaven forbid one of the Golden Girls tries to sneak in Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus.

That policy is not intended to hurt the Holiday Season, but to preserve it, Hanson wrote.

Ah yes  out of sight, out of mind.

I think its a shame because its holiday time, resident Ann Taylor told the television station. People are paying their rent. They own that door. To be told we cant put wreaths up is really horrible and a lot of people are upset.

Technically, residents do not own the doors. They rent the doors. And this is a good lesson for renters. Be sure to read the lease before you sign the lease.

Excel Property Management has every right to require residents to follow the terms of their lease. If the management company wants to turn Lake Ridge Commons into a modern-day version of Potterville  that is their prerogative.

But just because Excel Property Management has a legal right to be cold-hearted and cruel and Grinch-like, doesnt mean they should.
Why now? Thats the question being asked in Arab capitals, at the Vatican, at the United Nations, and even in Washington, after President Donald Trump declared that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Calling it long overdue, Trump described his decision as the fulfillment of a campaign pledge and nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. Thanking him, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu agreed: Jerusalem, he tweeted, has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. Israels Knesset, its parliament, is in West Jerusalem. So are its Supreme Court, its key ministries, and most key official institutions. Trump maintained that the dramatic step, endorsed by Congress in 1995 but consistently avoided by his White House predecessors, would not damage the search for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or change the status of Jerusalems geographic and political borders. Those issues would still have to be agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, the White House said.

Initial responses were angry and swift, albeit predictable. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, calling for three days of rage to protest the move, said that the U.S. had disqualified itself as a neutral broker between the Palestinians and Israelis. So did militant Islamic leaders of Hamas, which rules Gaza and which the State Department has designated as a terrorist group. Eighteen countries also denounced the change, including some of Americas usually more dependable allies. British prime minister Theresa May called Trumps decision unhelpful in the pursuit of peace. Saying he cannot remain silent, Pope Francis worried that the move would spark new tension and violence in the city revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also expressed alarm.

Perhaps of greater concern was the reaction from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, all key players in the search for what Trump has called the ultimate deala solution to the Arab-Israeli conflictand vital allies in the United States war on ISIS and Islamic extremism. All three, but particularly Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, have worked closely with Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and prime Middle East envoy. Administration officials recently promised that Trump would unveil Middle East peace plans soon. Given that ambitious and, some critics say, improbable diplomatic goal, wrote Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator, it's even more curious that Trump, seemingly committed to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would want to inject the Jerusalem issue into the mix right now. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly advised Trump against the announcement, warning that it would undermine American security interests in the region and efforts to negotiate a solution. While Trump stressed that he remained fully committed to the search for peace, his recognition of Jerusalem seems to complicate the political fortunes of the Arab allies whom he needs to accomplish his broader objective of defeating ISIS and weakening Iran.

To continue reading Judith Miller's column from the City Journal, click here.
What in the sweet name of Santa Claus is wrong with liberals?

A popular doughnut shop in Portland, Maine, was forced to apologize to the community after it offended customers by working with the Salvation Army to provide Christmas to a needy family.

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The Holy Donut had asked customers to help them with a gift drive for a local family with five children. Those customers who participated received free doughnuts.

The Holy Donut should be commended for helping a family in need and spreading a bit of Christmas cheer.

The doughnut shop reached out to the Salvation Army to find the family in need, the Press-Herald reports.

Instead of saluting the doughnut shop for doing a good deed  an online mob stormed their Facebook page. Many accused the Salvation Army of being anti-gay and discriminating against the LGBT community.

It was all untrue, of course  but the truth doesnt really matter these days.

They proselytize to the people in their programs, they reject LGBT people from their shelters, one outraged customer wrote. They have tried to scrub their image, but still discriminate.

For the record, the Salvation Army is a well-respected Christian ministry that provides shelter for the homeless, addiction programs and of course the iconic red kettles at Christmas time.

Nevertheless, some freedom-loving, donut eaters defended the popular mom-and-pop establishment.

Going after a doughnut shop because they dont like their politics is exactly why people voted for Trump, one observer wrote online.

I dont care if someone is L, G, B or T, but when they stand in the way of people helping people simply because their own personal noses are out of joint, they lose my respect and any sympathy I have for their cause, wrote another.

But the Press Herald reports that the anti-doughnut mob was unrelenting  going so far as to threaten boycotts unless the donut shop renounced its association with the Salvation Army.

In case you forgot, a solid 70 percent of your clientele is part of the LGBTQ community, one rabble-rouser wrote. Youre making a silent statement that youre completely fine with their choices.

Ah yes, nothing quite like an old-fashioned yuletide public shaming.

We do not support the Salvation Army or consider them our partner for this project, they simply linked us to a needy family, the store owners wrote on Facebook. We have nothing to gain here, we just wanted to help a family in need.

As unthinkable as it might be  a good number of the pro-LGBT protesters were upset that the donut shop dared to help a family in need during the Christmas season.

To quell the growing controversy, The Holy Donut threw themselves at the mercy of the surging mob.

We take this opportunity to sincerely apologize to anyone that we have offended, the store owners wrote on Facebook. We are an organization which prides itself on our track record of kindness and acceptance of everyone.

The Holy Donut should be commended for helping a family in need and spreading a bit of Christmas cheer.

They should also be commended for make delicious doughnuts. (Ive been privileged to sample their Maple Bacon Maine Potato Donut).

And shame on all of you folks out there for harassing these good people and spreading out-right lies about the Salvation Army. Shame!

No doughnuts for you.
After the Japanese attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii exactly 76 years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously stated: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941  a date which will live in infamy  the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Could we be headed for another surprise attack  this time a nuclear one, from North Korea?

For a clue, mark your calendar for this date: Dec. 17, 2017. Yes, just a few days away.

Why, you ask? That is when I predict North Korea will once again test its new long-range missile, the Hwasong-15, to commemorate the death of North Korea dictator Kim Jong Il on Dec.17, 2011. His son, the equally ruthless dictator Kim Jong Un, now rules North Korea.

If Im right and Kim Jong Un tests this powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) a few days from now, Washington and Pyongyang could very well be placed on a path toward war. This is a war that Kim could very well start first  with nuclear weapons being his favorite killer of choice  in a surprise strike that would make Pearl Harbor look like childs play.

I would argue that if you can look past President Trumps fire and fury comments threatening to attack North Korea, his gut tells him to try and find another path that avoids war.

The steps needed to get from a tension-filled but peaceful Northeast Asia to a potential war that could see the first time nations freely sling nuclear weapons at each other are not hard to imagine.

When Kim test fires his missile, the world will once again collectively shriek with fear and dread. And like clockwork, the normal chorus of talking heads will once again call for using the military option.

The hawks will argue, with very little specifics or anything approaching a concrete plan of action, that we are running out of time to stop Kim from attaining a nuclear weapon that can hit the U.S. homeland and that a war over there is better than here on our own soil.

President Trump will be in the worst of binds. While he might talk tough, the president has shown during the campaign and as commander-in-chief to have a pragmatic  dare I call it realist  mindset.

I would argue that if you can look past President Trumps fire and fury comments threatening to attack North Korea, his gut tells him to try and find another path that avoids war.

President Trump would need to convey a sense of toughness that makes clear the era of strategic patience is truly over and that he is taking a harder line than President Obama. But he would need to find a way to reassure South Korea and Japan, while also sending a tough message to Kim.

This is where things get tricky. President Trump could very well order a large-scale U.S. military build-up around North Korea  something on the surface that does not seem provocative, but would reassure allies and put Pyongyang on notice.

For example, the president could authorize an increase in the number of ground troops permanently stationed to South Korea, additional armor and intelligence assets. He could increase the number of F-22 and F-35 jets that operate on a rotational basis there as well as pushing South Korea to accept more THAAD missile defense batteries.

President Trump could also seek to base additional THAAD batteries in Japan. He could also deploy additional armor and air assets to Tokyo to ensure that if war did break-out, military assets would be forward-deployed and ready to go, just in case.

But there is a problem with all of this, if you put yourself in North Koreas shoes. A plan like the one I describe above  while probably seeming defensive in nature to the average American  is a nightmare for North Korea.

Kim Jong Un could very well interpret this military build-up as an indication that President Trump is really massing forces for an attack on North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile programs or something worse  preparation for a U.S. invasion to overthrow Kim and his government.

Kim would then be in his own bind. He could wait out such a move, and see if American forces halt their build-up at levels that would not allow America to attack his nuclear or missile force or potentially invade.

Or, Kim could follow through to prevent what his officials have stated time and time again he will not allow: losing his position and his life, as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi did when they were overthrown.

In that case, Kim would have only one choice: to launch a massive surprise attack with the full-range of his military arsenal before America has any chances of destroying it. That means a full nuclear, chemical and biological attack to badly damage his enemies and blunt any coming military strike or invasion that he thinks is coming.

What such a war would look like I have detailed in these digital pages on several occasions.

Imagine a surprise strike by Kim where he launches nuclear weapons at not only Seoul and Tokyo  two of the most populated cities on Earth  but also strikes U.S. and allied bases all over Northeast Asia.

Kim could also launch short and medium-range missiles armed with chemical and biological weapons at targets all over Asia, spreading death and carnage throughout the region. This would be nothing like the wars of recent past. The level of devastation would resemble something like the bombed-out cities of World War II, or worse.

And then there is the possibility of a strike on the U.S. homeland with a nuclear weapon  and not far off into the future, but right now.

Many experts doubt Kim has mastered the technology to allow an atomic warhead the ability to pass through Earths atmosphere. Recent reports concerning his most recent test claim the warhead broke up or exploded in some format during reentry, so we have every reason to be skeptical of his abilities to pull off a nuclear strike.

Thanks to a report in The Diplomat this past August, we know that U.S. intelligence officials believe that if fired in a normal trajectory  not in a lofted, more up-and-down manner like the last test, which is more stressful on the warhead  North Koreas missiles could surprise us.

According to the report, such missiles would likely perform adequately if flown on a normal trajectory to continental U.S. targets. That means North Korea, today, could have the ability to drop a nuclear weapon on New York, Washington or anywhere in the U.S.  with millions of Americans dead thanks to Kims very own nuclear Pearl Harbor.

Thankfully the above scenario is fictional and does not need to be our future. Clearly. there is only one off-ramp for America and North Korea  to sit down and negotiate.

Despite what many conservatives seem to think, numerous U.S. presidents have tried to talk to North Korea. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are all recent examples. And to be fair, those efforts have been a very mixed bag, with many success and many failures.

However, any rational person can read the tea leaves and see that the chance of a war  indeed, a nuclear war where millions of people could lose their lives  is now a very real possibility.

We owe it to future generations, indeed all of humanity, to work to deescalate this crisis. If we dont, we might just be doomed to a conflict that for generations will be considered one of the worst in history  with the recognition that it was completely avoidable.
New York's Senior Senator Chuck Schumer may not be as clever as he thinks he is  admittedly, a high bar. As they meet with President Trump, the Senate Minority Leader along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are playing hardball, balking at supporting a temporary spending bill unless it includes protections for so-called Dreamers. Trump could turn that skirmish on its head, and produce an unimaginable win for the GOP.

Democrats want the spending bill, which will keep the government funded until the spring by employing various gimmicks, to include a path to citizenship for the young people who were included in Obamas now-terminated DACA program.

President Trump has suggested hes willing to solve the Dreamer issue once and for all, in exchange for beefed-up border security and an end to chain migration.

At a dinner in September with Chuck and Nancy, Trump voiced his support for the DACA group, calling them good, educated and accomplished young people" who "have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own."

If a compromise is reached, it will be Trump signing the bill and taking credit for granting legal status to hundreds of thousands of people in the country illegally.

Just as only Richard Nixon could venture to China, it may well be that Trump, who campaigned on tougher immigration enforcement, is the lone person who can get this deal done.

If he plays his hand well, Trump could lead the country towards a smarter approach to immigration and guide Republicans towards better relations with Hispanic voters.

Reaching an agreement, especially if it were to resolve other dysfunctional aspects of our immigration system, like birthright citizenship or chain migration, could significantly change relations between Republicans and the fastest-growing voter group in the country.

Imagine what a coup that would be.

Very few want to deport people who were brought into the country by their parents and who have grown up in the U.S., a group known as Dreamers. Their cause is widely popular; a Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 86 percent of the country thinks they should be allowed them to stay in the U.S. The case for granting them permanent status has been made for decades; few would argue that young people should be sent home to a country theyve never known.

But, the same poll shows that 79 percent of Americans wants to verify that hires are in the country legally. That is, they would sign on for required use of E-verify, or some other program that guarantees that workers are documented.

Most Americans still distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. They, like President Trump, embrace the former, but not the latter. In their hostility to the White House, immigration advocates and their liberal allies have repudiated what used to be the mainstream consensus that as we welcome newcomers, we also need strong borders and effective control over who enters the country.

Currying favor with the increasing number of Latino voters, Democrats have adopted that extreme view, and blasted President Trump as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic. Ironically, President Obama is seen as a strong advocate for immigrants, even as his administration ramped up deportations and failed to conclude any lasting legislative fix for people in the country illegally. The liberal media has portrayed the Trump White House as adopting draconian measures to ferret out undocumented persons, and pointed to ICE raids early this year removing people who in some cases have been here for years. Less widely reported is that those enforcement measures were planned under the final months of the Obama administration.

The dishonesty goes further. Liberal organs like the New York Times have characterized deportation policy under Trump as radically changed; they have suggested that while Obama only tossed hardened criminals out of the country, Trumps team has targeted hard-working, law-abiding men and women. It is not true.

The Times itself reported in 2014 that Since President Obama took office, two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all. Twenty percent  or about 394,000  of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show.

The liberal media bashed Trump when he terminated the DACA program in September, though the White House argued that the presidents move allowed Congress six months to sort out its legal status. The alternative, as numerous states readied to sue over the large-scale amnesty, was an immediate shutdown of the program by a federal court. Outrage from Democrats on the Hill underscored what most Americans already believe: asking Congress to fix the nations problems is naive. Trumps tweet that day resonated: Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA."

If he plays his hand well, Trump could lead the country towards a smarter approach to immigration and guide Republicans towards better relations with Hispanic voters. Many have noted that the GOP has much to offer Latinos, many of whom are socially conservative, concerned with providing a good education for their children and eager to find jobs. It is immigration policy that has put Republicans and Hispanics at odds; that rift need not be permanent.

Democrats are already on thin ice on this issue. In September, Nancy Pelosi was heckled by immigration advocates who called her a liar over unfulfilled promises to push for DACA protections. They expect action; if no deal is reached, it will not be Trump who is blamed.
House Republicans on Wednesday voted in favor of making concealed-carry permits valid across state lines, scoring a major victory for gun-rights supporters.

But similar Senate legislation still faces an uncertain future, with top Democrats and other gun-control advocates rallying in opposition on Capitol Hill.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act passed 231-198 in the GOP-controlled House, with six Democrats voting in support.

For the millions of law-abiding citizens who lawfully carry concealed to protect themselves, for conservatives who want to strengthen our Second Amendment rights, and for the overwhelming majority of Americans who support concealed carry reciprocity, Christmas came early, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., the bill's sponsor, reacted.

Hudson had tried unsuccessfully for years to pass such legislation, which he says simply attempts to clarify the patchwork of state laws that confuse citizens who might unwittingly be arrested while going from state to state.

"Despite scare tactics by the bills opponents, concealed-carry licensees as a group have proven to be more law-abiding than the general population and even the police.  NRA statement before balloting

The three-term congressman has garnered strong support for his bipartisan legislation -- including 213 co-sponsors as well as 24 state attorneys general and the National Rifle Association.

Despite scare tactics by the bills opponents, concealed-carry licensees as a group have proven to be more law-abiding than the general population and even the police, the NRA said before balloting. We are on the eve of passing the most expansive piece of self-defense legislation in the history of Congress.

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said at a rally outside House chambers, that Hudsons bill represented a gift to the gun lobby.

Another critic is Jane Dougherty, whose sister, a teacher, was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. She said, This bill would weaken laws that I have worked hard for.

Those attending the rally continued to make the argument that the bill would put guns in the hands of criminals, and suggested that those from states with loose concealed-carry laws would be able to exercise those privileges in places like New York City that have stricter requirements.

When I go to New York, I have to follow New Yorks laws, Hudson recently told Fox News @ Night." He also maintains that the bill in no way softens background checks.

Those at the rally also contended that the House bill was combined with so-called Fix NICS legislation so it could pass. The reciprocity bill includes efforts to create maximum coordination in states providing the federal government with mental health records and other information for FBI gun background checks.

The Fix NICS Act of 2017 is a bill that applies penalties to government agencies for not reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

They are combining these to pieces of legislation together because they know the conceal carry (bill) is extremely unpopular, said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. Murphy praised Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican who sponsors the Senate version of the concealed-carry legislation, for keeping the measures separate.

Gun-control advocates are also reportedly getting $25 million from ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, through his Everytown for Gun Safety group, to block the reciprocity bill.

Cornyns bill is now in his 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.
Donald Trump Jr. declined to tell lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer after emails detailing the meeting were made public, according to the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee.

Trump Jr., the eldest son of President Donald Trump, met for more than 10 hours Wednesday with the committee, which is one of three government panels investigating whether Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential race. Trump Jr. left without speaking to reporters about what was discussed.

"I don't think you can shield conversations by only having an attorney present."  Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Trump Jr. has claimed he didn't tell the president about the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians when it happened and he declined to elaborate on what he ultimately told him after the meeting became public.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that Trump Jr. said he couldn't speak about the conversations with his father because of attorney-client privilege, telling the committee a lawyer was present when he spoke to his father about the meeting and the emails that led up to it.

"I dont think you can shield conversations by only having an attorney present," the California lawmaker said.

The Trump Tower meeting is a matter of keen interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also investigating the meddling and whether there was any obstruction of justice. Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russian operatives under the impression that they might receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Mueller is also interested in the White House response to the meeting once it became public. The White House has said the president was involved in drafting an early statement saying the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program, but emails later released by Trump Jr. showed that he enthusiastically agreed to the sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others after he was promised dirt on his father's rival. Trump Jr. later said the promised material never materialized.

Trump Jr. said during Wednesday's interview that he spoke with President Trump's communications aide Hope Hicks as early reports of the meeting emerged, according to one person familiar with the interview. The New York Times was first to report the existence of the meeting, and Trump Jr. eventually released the emails detailing the planning for it.

Hicks was with the president on Air Force One while they were writing the statement that said the meeting primarily concerned the adoption program.

Trump Jr. also told the intelligence panel that he didn't tell his father about the 2016 meeting at the time that it happened, according to the person familiar with his interview. The person was not authorized to speak about the testimony and asked not to be identified.

Trump Jr. also voluntarily testified in September before a closed session of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the meeting, which he cast as simply an opportunity to learn about Clinton's "fitness, character or qualifications," insisting to investigators that he did not collude with Russia to hurt Clinton's campaign.

The Senate intelligence committee also hopes to interview Trump Jr. before the end of the year.

British publicist Rob Goldstone, who is believed to have arranged that meeting, will reportedly talk to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees as early as next week.

Kushner has spoken to both intelligence committees. The panels have also interviewed Ike Kaveladze, who was at the meeting as a representative of a Russian developer who once partnered with Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist. A translator who was in attendance has also spoken to congressional investigators.

Lawmakers were also expected to ask Trump Jr. about his communications with WikiLeaks during and after the campaign. Last month, Trump Jr. released a series of private Twitter exchanges with WikiLeaks dating to the period during and after the 2016 election.

In the exchanges -- including some around the time WikiLeaks was releasing stolen emails from Clintons campaign chairman -- Trump Jr. is asked to release his fathers tax returns to the site.

The private messages also show Trump Jr. responding to the WikiLeaks account three times.

He also asked the site about a rumor about an upcoming leak. The messages began in September 2016 and ran through the following July.

Trump Jr. played down the exchanges as he released them.

Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak, he tweeted. How ironic!

Trump Jr.s lawyers had already released the exchanges to the congressional committees investigating Russian intervention.

In an Oct. 3, 2016, message, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent Trump Jr. an article that included critical comments Clinton had made about site editor Julian Assange and said, It'd be great if you guys could comment on/push this story.

Trump Jr. replied: Already did that earlier today. Its amazing what she can get away with.

Two minutes later, Trump Jr. sent another message: Whats behind this Wednesday leak I keep reading about?

Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone had tweeted the day thatHillary Clinton is done, referencing WikiLeaks.

The WikiLeaks Twitter account never responded, but days later WikiLeaks started rolling out emails from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podestas account. After the release, WikiLeaks sent Trump Jr. a searchable link of the emails. Trump Jr. tweeted that link two days later, on Oct. 14, 2016, according to The Atlantic magazine.

Fox News' Joseph Weber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Three federal appeals court judges who blocked President Donald Trump's second travel ban earlier this year had some skeptical questions about his third and latest set of restrictions on travelers from six mostly Muslim nations during oral arguments on Wednesday.



Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Ronald Gould, Richard Paez and Michael Hawkins heard arguments in Seattle on Hawaii's challenge to the ban.



The hearing came just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it was allowing the restrictions to go into effect at least until the 9th Circuit panel and their colleagues on the Richmond, Va.-based 4th Circuit had a chance to rule on separate lawsuits against the ban.



Debate over the restrictions has centered on whether they constitute a legitimate exercise of national security powers or the "Muslim ban" Trump promised during his campaign.



But much of Wednesday's arguments focused on a narrower point: whether the president satisfied immigration law in issuing his latest travel order, which targets 150 million potential travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.



In June, Gould, Paez and Hawkins blocked Trump's second travel ban, saying he had not made a required finding that the entry of people affected by that measure would be detrimental to U.S. interests.



Neal Katyal, the former U.S. solicitor general representing Hawaii, insisted that Trump had failed again and did not have authority to issue his latest travel restrictions.



"They have not made the findings this court called for," Katyal said. "They came back with zero."



Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hashim Mooppan noted that the government had conducted a 90-day, multi-agency review, after which Trump determined that certain countries do not provide enough information to sufficiently vet their citizens' backgrounds.



The ban is needed to keep out "foreign nationals about whom the United States Government lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose to the United States," the president said in his September proclamation announcing the latest travel restrictions.



"You might disagree with the finding, but you can't disagree that the finding was made," Mooppan said.



Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said after the hearing that determining there's insufficient information to vet the foreigners is not the same as concluding their admission to the U.S. would be detrimental.



The government, he said, "didn't tell us why the existing system isn't working."



Citing national security concerns, 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 blocked it, and courts since then have wrestled with the restrictions as the administration has rewritten them.



The latest version blocks travelers from the listed countries to varying degrees, allowing for students from some of the countries while blocking other business travelers and tourists, and allowing for admissions on a case-by-case basis. It also blocks travel by North Koreans along with some Venezuelan government officials and their families, although those parts of the restrictions are not at issue in the courts.



Mooppan argued that courts do not have the authority to consider claims that the president's actions violate federal immigration law, though he said it's conceivable courts could consider claims that the actions violate the constitution.



That assertion drew skeptical questioning from the judges, including a hypothetical from Gould: What if the president decided to bar anyone who's not a U.S. citizen?



Mooppan said even such a drastic action could not be reviewed by the courts unless Congress authorized them to do so.



Paez questioned the legitimacy of the administration's rationale for the restrictions, noting the exceptions for student visas: If those governments don't provide sufficient information, why allow anyone in?



Mooppan said the restrictions are carefully tailored to for each country, and designed in part to encourage them to be more forthcoming with the U.S. The exceptions also demonstrate the government is not engaged in banning Muslims, he said.



There was some discussion of the president's public statements concerning Muslims. Katyal noted that Trump continues to stoke anti-Islam sentiments. Last week he drew a sharp condemnation from British Prime Minister Theresa May's office when he retweeted a string of inflammatory videos from a fringe British political group purporting to show violence committed by Muslims.



Gould said the panel would rule "as soon as practical," noting the Supreme Court had suggested in its order this week that the appeals courts rule with appropriate urgency. Arguments are due to be held Friday before a full complement of 13 4th Circuit judges.
Sen. Al Franken officially resigned on Jan. 2, nearly a month after he announced his plans to step down from Congress amid numerous sexual misconduct allegations that began in November of last year.

Aides to the senator told Fox News that Franken has provided his letter of resignation to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, who is replacing Franken, is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday.

Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who has been in office since 2009, was plagued by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct over the past month and faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. The allegations began after Los Angeles radio anchor Leeann Tweeden accused him of forcibly kissing her during a 2006 USO tour.

Franken announced he would resign after more than two dozen key Democratic lawmakers called for him to step down.

Heres what will happen to his Senate seat once he leaves office, according to Minnesota election law.

1. Governor appoints a new senator

Gov. Mark Dayton would appoint a new senator to fill Frankens seat, when he resigns, Ryan Furlong, a spokesman for the Minnesota secretary of states office, told Fox News.

A Democrat, Minnesotans could expect Dayton to appoint a member of his own party.

The newly-appointed senator would be in office until at least Nov. 2018 when a special election would be scheduled. The appointed senator would not be obligated to run in that election.

Minnesota is one of 36 states where a governor will make an appointment to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

2. A special election is scheduled for November 2018

A special election would be scheduled for Nov. 2018  and the winner would remain in the Senate for the remainder of what was Franken's term. That ends in Jan. 2021.

AL FRANKEN TOLD TO RESIGN BY SEVERAL FEMALE DEMOCRATIC COLLEAGUES

If a Senate vacancy occurs less than 11 weeks before Minnesotas state primary in August 2018, then whoever the governor would appoint to the vacancy would remain until the next election, which is Nov. 2019, Furlong said.

3. The next full term begins in 2021

Whoever wins the special election in 2018 would also have to run again in 2020  if he or she so chooses  in order to serve a full six-year term, Furlong said.

The next full Senate term would then begin in 2021.
Catholic Laity Oppose Pro-homosexual Jesuit Speaker at Misericordia University



DALLAS, Penn., Dec. 7, 2017 /



The concerned Catholics note that this would be Fr. Martin's fourth speaking engagement in the diocese this year. Since he spoke at the Diocesan Congress last spring, a firestorm of controversy erupted about changing Church teaching regarding same sex "marriage," and allowing reception of Holy Communion for unrepentant and openly active homosexuals.



At a time when the Church teaching is under attack from all sides, the last thing young people at a Catholic university need is to hear a speaker who openly contradicts Church teaching and encourages others to embrace sinful styles of life. Suggesting that same-sex intercourse, same sex "marriage" and transgenderism are normal and desirable misleads young Catholics. The concerned Catholics are now asking the university to find a more authentic orthodox Catholic speaker for the commencement.



As lay men and women in the diocese, the group cites their obligation to defend Holy Mother Church when she is under attack. The wolves have entered the sheepfold and if the shepherds won't protect us then the sheep will have to fight for themselves with the help of the Blessed Mother and the Lord Jesus (cf. Canon 211 and 212 # 3).



The group notes that this is not a free speech issue. If Father Martin were not a highly placed Catholic Churchman, his opinions and where he shared them would not be as significant. The fact that the Bishop supports him without reservations is also gravely concerning.



The group plans to make reparation to Our Lord and His Blessed Mother for the offense caused by the event at a Rosary Rally on Sunday, December 17, at 1:00PM, in front of Misericordia University. It also hopes to wake up faithful Catholics to the errors being taught at supposed Catholic institutions. The petition does not in any way contain any hate for persons that say they are homosexual or transgender. On the contrary, the group believes that the best way to help them is by proclaiming the Truth of Jesus Christ as taught by the Holy Catholic Church for 2000 years.



For more information, please call Walter Camier at 570-582-6932.



Share Tweet Contact: Walter Camier, 570-582-6932DALLAS, Penn., Dec. 7, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- A group of faithful Catholics were shocked to learn that Misericordia University has invited Father James Martin, S.J. to speak at their Winter Commencement on December 17. They have come together asking Misericordia and the Bishop of Scranton to find another speaker and rescind the invitation to Rev. James Martin.The concerned Catholics note that this would be Fr. Martin's fourth speaking engagement in the diocese this year. Since he spoke at the Diocesan Congress last spring, a firestorm of controversy erupted about changing Church teaching regarding same sex "marriage," and allowing reception of Holy Communion for unrepentant and openly active homosexuals.At a time when the Church teaching is under attack from all sides, the last thing young people at a Catholic university need is to hear a speaker who openly contradicts Church teaching and encourages others to embrace sinful styles of life. Suggesting that same-sex intercourse, same sex "marriage" and transgenderism are normal and desirable misleads young Catholics. The concerned Catholics are now asking the university to find a more authentic orthodox Catholic speaker for the commencement.As lay men and women in the diocese, the group cites their obligation to defend Holy Mother Church when she is under attack. The wolves have entered the sheepfold and if the shepherds won't protect us then the sheep will have to fight for themselves with the help of the Blessed Mother and the Lord Jesus (cf. Canon 211 and 212 # 3).The group notes that this is not a free speech issue. If Father Martin were not a highly placed Catholic Churchman, his opinions and where he shared them would not be as significant. The fact that the Bishop supports him without reservations is also gravely concerning.The group plans to make reparation to Our Lord and His Blessed Mother for the offense caused by the event at a Rosary Rally on Sunday, December 17, at 1:00PM, in front of Misericordia University. It also hopes to wake up faithful Catholics to the errors being taught at supposed Catholic institutions. The petition does not in any way contain any hate for persons that say they are homosexual or transgender. On the contrary, the group believes that the best way to help them is by proclaiming the Truth of Jesus Christ as taught by the Holy Catholic Church for 2000 years.For more information, please call Walter Camier at 570-582-6932.
Sen. Al Franken will resign from the Senate Jan. 2, Fox News has confirmed.

Franken had announced Dec. 7 that he would resign from the Senate "in the coming weeks" following multiple sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Celebrities and politicians took to Twitter earlier this month to weigh in on Franken's announcement. Read their reactions below.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called Franken's speech "stunning."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., released a statement on Twitter following Franken's annoucement.

Ann Coulter also tweeted about Franken's decision to step down.

Ari Fleischer, who served as the White House Press Secretary for George W. Bush, also tweeted about Franken.

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, "...because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and God-darnit people like me. #Franken."

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted, "We have a president who acknowledged on tape that he assaulted women. I would hope that he pays attention to what's going on and think about resigning."

"Silicon Valley" Kumail Nanjani tweeted, "Al Franken resigns. Finally, we are free of all sexual predators in the U.S. government."

"Btw, I think he needed to resign," he said in another tweet. "It was the correct, and only, thing to do."

Actress Amber Tamblyn tweeted, "If youve made an effort calling for Franken to resign yet Roy Moore wins the Alabama election, you are part of the problem. Ask yourselves who youve called, who youve written, who youve bulldozed to get Moore out. Ask yourself what youve done lately to stop him."

Senator Franken made the right decision today, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party Chairman Ken Martin said as part of a statement. He has been a tireless and strong progressive leader on behalf of Minnesotans in Washington, but that in no way excuses his behavior toward the women who came forward. His resignation today is an important part of the healing process.

Today Senator Franken acknowledged that he could no longer serve in the Senate and resigned, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., said in a lengthy statement. As he and I discussed yesterday, this is the right decision.

If @alfranken is going to resign tomorrow, I think he should do it on the condition that there are congressional hearings about @realDonaldTrump s sexual misconduct allegations," actress Maggie Gyllenhaal tweeted.

I am pleased Senator Franken made the right decision for the great state of Minnesota and our country, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., said in a statement. Elected officials hold the trust of the constituents they represent, and it is crucial we cherish and honor that trust. I am hopeful this will move our society towards better behavior.

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Michael McAdams said in a statement, The NRSC is confident Republicans will be able to win this soon-to-be vacant Senate seat come November, and look forward to expanding our Senate Majority.

Fox News' Matt Finn and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
The chair of the Minnesota Republican Party told Fox News that Sen. Al Frankens resignation on Thursday is a huge opportunity for the party to win over a Senate seat.

Theres a number of great people I think that would be in the considerations to help us win a U.S. senate seat on the republican side in Minnesota that we havent held in a great number of years, said Minnesotas Republican Party Chair, Jennifer Carnahan.

Al Frankens Democratic colleague, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, released a statement after Frankens resignation.

Today, Sen. Franken acknowledged that he could no longer serve in the Senate and resigned. As he and I discussed yesterday, this is the right decision, Klobuchars statement said. As the women who have come forward to tell their stories across America have made clear, sexual harassment is never acceptable. In every workplace in America, including the U.S. Senate, we must confront the challenges of harassment and misconduct.

Franken has been accused of sexual harassment by at least eight woman. During his resignation speech on the Senate floor Thursday morning, Franken said some of the allegations against of him are not true and he had hoped they would have been thoroughly investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee.

Ahead of Frankens resignation, at least 38 U.S. senators called for the Minnesota senator to step down.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that a top Democratic official told the newspaper that Minnesotas Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, will appoint Lt. Gov. Tina Smith to fill Frankens vacant seat.

Whomever Dayton chooses to appoint will act as the sitting senator until the mid-term elections next year when voters will officially pick a new senator during a special election.

Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement on Thursday that the senator made the right decision.

He has been a tireless and strong progressive leader on behalf of Minnesotans in Washington, but that in no way excuses his behavior toward the women who came forward, Martin said. His resignation today is an important part of the healing process.
Yet another member of Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigative team is facing questions over potential bias after it emerged that she used to represent ex-Obama aide Ben Rhodes and the Clinton Foundation.

Jeannie Rhee is a former partner at WilmerHalethe high-profile law firm where Mueller worked prior to taking on the special counsel role. She is one of at least two attorneys who followed Mueller from WilmerHale.

At the firm, Rhee focused on representing people in government investigations, including white-collar criminal probes and criminal and civil fraud matters.

But this week, details of Rhees client relationships emerged, revealing that she represented Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes during the House Select Committee on Benghazis investigation of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.

Rhee's connection to Rhodes was first revealed on Fox News by Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, where the primetime host cited it as more evidence that Muellers team is biased.

Also this week, it was reported that Rhee represented the Clinton Foundation in 2015 against a racketeering lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist group Freedom Watch in 2015. Rhee also represented former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a lawsuit seeking access to her private emails.

On the Mueller team, Rhee reportedly is focused on the claims that the president tried to obstruct justice and push former FBI Director James Comey off of the Russia investigation earlier this year.

Rhee married the former Christopher Sclafani, who took his wife's last name, in 1995, after the two met at Yale University. Mr. Rhee, also an attorney, has a history of working with prominent Democrats, serving as a special assistant to then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, and as counsel to Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Rhee did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.

Aside from her personal and professional relationships with prominent political figures on the left, Rhee has a history of large political donations to Democrats. Rhee donated a total of $5,400 to Clinton in 2015 and 2016. Rhee also donated a combined $4,800 to Obama in 2008, and the same amount again in 2011. Rhee has also contributed smaller amounts of money to the Democratic National Committee and multiple Democrats running for Congress.

MUELLER PROBE: MEET THE LAWYERS WHO GAVE $$ TO HILLARY, NOW INVESTIGATING TEAM TRUMP

Rhee also was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and worked under FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife was given donations from Clinton allies while running for Virginia state Senate.

Allegations of anti-Trump bias have dogged Mueller's team, although the special counsel himself has been appointed to five Senate-confirmed positions by four different presidentstwo Republicans, and two Democrats. Mueller is said to be a life-long Republican, serving as FBI director for President George W. Bush.

Justice Department policies and federal law prohibit discriminating based on political affiliation when it comes to hiring for nonpolitical positions.

The Special Counsel's office told Fox News they had no comment on the perceived bias of the team, but pointed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's comments earlier this year.

If there were conflicts that arose, because of Director Mueller or anybody employed by Director Mueller, we have a process within the [Justice Department] to take care of that," Rosenstein said on Fox News.

But the new Rhee details emerged this week after FBI official Peter Strzok was removed from Muellers Russia probe following the discovery of anti-Trump text messages between him and another former Mueller investigator, Lisa Page.

Strzok, who was an FBI counterintelligence agent, had worked on the Mueller probe, but was reassigned to the FBIs human resources division after the discovery of the anti-Trump texts with Page, with whom he was reportedly having an affair. Page was briefly on Muellers team, but returned to the FBI over the summer.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress are calling for the disclosure of the messages. Justice Department officials are now reviewing over 10,000 texts, a process that could take weeks.

Fox News learned that Strzok oversaw the FBIs interviews with Trumps fired-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI investigators in the Russia probe. Strzok was also present during the FBIs July 2016 interview with Hillary Clinton at the close of the email investigation, shortly before then-FBI director James Comey called her actions extremely careless without recommending criminal charges.

Also this week, it emerged that investigator Andrew Weissmann praised then-outgoing acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she was fired by President Trump earlier this year for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban.

MUELLER DEPUTY PRAISED DOJ OFFICIAL AFTER SHE DEFIED TRUMP TRAVEL BAN ORDER: 'I AM SO PROUD'

An email, obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, showed that on the night of Jan. 30, Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, I am so proud.



He continued, And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.

Weissmann also has a history of Democratic donations. He donated a combined $2,300 to Obamas campaign in 2008. In 2006, Weissmann contributed at least $2,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Rhee, Weissmann and at least six other attorneys on Muellers team have donated to Democratic candidates and to the Democratic Party.

Fox News' Jake Gibson and James Rosen contributed to this report.
FBI Director Christopher Wray faced heated questions Thursday from House Republicans concerned that top officials in his agency are tainted by bias  in connection with both the 2016 Hillary Clinton email probe and ongoing Russia meddling probe  though the bureau boss cited an ongoing investigation as he repeatedly declined to address their complaints in detail.

Its important that we not jump first and ask questions later, Wray told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.

The hearing came as his bureau comes under rhetorical assault from President Trump  who appointed Wray to succeed ousted James Comey  and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill.

Sparking fresh outrage was the revelation over the weekend that FBI official Peter Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Muellers probe over the summer for allegedly exchanging anti-Trump texts with an FBI lawyer with whom he was romantically involved. Both worked at one time on the Mueller investigation.

Investigations must not be tainted by individuals imposing their own personal political opinions, committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said. We do not know the magnitude of this insider bias on Mr. Muellers team nor do we have a clear understanding of the full magnitude of bias reflected in the Russia investigation and prior Clinton email investigation.  One thing is clear, though  it is absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation.

Asked what hes doing to ensure the top ranks of the bureau are cleared of those tainted by bias, Wray said hes respecting an inspector general investigation underway covering the handling of last years Clinton email investigation. He said when he receives the findings, he will take appropriate action as necessary  and stressed that decisions must be made based on nothing other than the facts and the law, not political considerations.

Republicans have focused as much on the Clinton probe as they have on Muellers investigation that has ensnared members of Trumps 2016 campaign circle. They are particularly focused on concerns that Strzok changed Comeys early draft language describing Clintons actions regarding her private email server from grossly negligent to extremely careless.

Wray confirmed at Thursdays hearing that gross negligence is a key legal standard for potential criminal consequences.

But when Goodlatte asked whether that language was changed to ensure Clinton could not be held liable under the Espionage Act, Wray deferred to the ongoing IG probe and would not comment.

I leave it to others to conclude whether extremely careless and gross negligence [are] the same thing, he said.

Goodlatte also spoke to GOP concerns about a double standard in the handling of the Clinton and Russia-Trump team investigations, asking why Clinton aides like Cheryl Mills did not face consequences in the private email server case.

Wray cited the IG investigation in declining to comment.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the committee, attributed the mounting scrutiny on the bureau to the progress of the special counsels Russia probe, which led last week to a guilty plea for Trumps ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.

He predicted attacks on the FBI will become more  brazen as the special counsel does his work and the walls close in.

Trump over the weekend tweeted that the FBIs reputation is in Tatters in the wake of the dishonest Clinton probe.

Several House Republicans also recently asked Wray for an investigation into the FBIs treatment of Clinton and then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.

New revelations about members of Muellers team only fueled their concerns. After the Strzok reports, conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch released an email showing a Mueller deputy praised outgoing acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she was fired in January by Trump for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban.

The email, obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, shows that on the night of Jan. 30, Andrew Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, I am so proud.

Wray's start as FBI head would have been difficult enough, even without the intense scrutiny of the Russia investigation. Since he was sworn-in Aug. 2, the U.S. has had two of the deadliest shootings in its modern history and a terror attack in Manhattan.

Trump's weekend tweets created a fresh dilemma for Wray. With his bosses, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, staying publicly silent, it fell to Wray to defend the agency. But FBI directors traditionally have been low-key and stoic -- with Wray's predecessor, James Comey, a notable exception. And Trump's firing of Comey while he led the Russia probe shows the risk of antagonizing the president.

Wray's defense, in an email to FBI employees this week, didn't directly mention Trump's comments, leaving some current and former officials wishing he had pushed back more forcefully.

Wray said he was "inspired by example after example of professionalism and dedication to justice demonstrated around the bureau" and urged agents to "keep focused on our critical mission" while constantly under a microscope.

In his opening statement at Thursdays hearing, Wray also said there is no finer institution than the FBI and there are no finer people than those who work there.

Another issue for lawmakers looking closely at the agency is the controversial anti-Trump dossier that made its way to the FBI last year, and to what extent it may have been used to justify a surveillance warrant for a Trump associate.

Shortly before Thursdays hearing, Goodlatte called on the DOJ and FBI to provide the panel with all information that was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to, his office said, allegedly obtain a warrant based on politically-motivated opposition research  a reference to the dossier.

In a particularly heated exchange during the hearing itself, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he believes Strzok is the one who took the application to the FISA court  claiming that could mean opposition research was used to spy on another campaign.

That is as wrong as it gets, Jordan said. Tell us if Im wrong, but I dont think I am.

Wray said he could not discuss the matter in detail.

Separately, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has threatened a contempt resolution against leaders in both the Justice Department and FBI if they dont turn over key information related to the anti-Trump dossier and other issues. Republicans want to know what role Strzok played in that process.

Fox News has learned the DOJ is now in the process of reviewing and handing over Strzoks text messages as well.

Fox News Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Calling it the worst day of his political life, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken said Thursday he will resign from the U.S. Senate following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against him that ranged from groping to forcibly trying to kiss women.

Franken, who said that some of the complaints against him were simply not true and that he remembers others differently, also took a parting shot at President Trump.

There is some irony in the fact that I am leaving office while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full supoort of his party, Franken said, referring to Trump and Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama.

About 18 Democratic senators, staff and family members were on hand for the announcement. Some sat stone-faced while others cried during the 11-minute speech. His staff were lined up in the back of the chamber.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan was the only Republican senator present.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar were also in attendance. They were among the lengthy list of Democrats pressuring Franken to resign.

As he and I discussed yesterday, this is the right decision, Klobuchar said in a statement.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said he had a "detailed conversation" with Franken Wednesday evening.

"He did what I suggested -- and he did the right thing -- so I'm just going to leave it there," Kaine said.

It will be up to Minnesota Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton to appoint a successor.

Multiple sources reported that the likely candidate could be Democratic Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, a close ally of Franken. The successor would serve until a special election is held in 2018 to determine who would fill the final two years of Frankens term.

On Wednesday, Franken faced a tidal wave of resignation calls by members of his own party.

By mid-afternoon, 23 of them wanted him gone. By Thursday, the number had grown to 36.

Enough is enough, Gillibrand said Wednesday.

Her sentiment was echoed by Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Marie Hirono of Hawaii, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down, Harris, D-Calif., said.

Hassan, D-N.H., tweeted, It is clear that Al Franken has engaged in a pattern of egregious and unacceptable behavior toward women. He should resign."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, weighed in.

It now appears Senator Franken has lost the support of his colleagues, and most importantly, his constituents, McConnell said.

I do not believe he can effectively serve the people of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate any longer, he added.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the largest newspaper in Frankens home state, called for his immediate resignation late Wednesday. They questioned his ability to function effectively after losing the confidence of so many colleagues.

If this is to be an actual turning point in our culture, there must be real and lasting consequences to behaviors that never should have been accepted, the editorial board wrote. That these incidents came so late in Frankens life should make him all the more accountable. Instead, he has mostly offered hollow apologies that failed to acknowledge what happened.

Frankens political career has been in peril since California radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden posted a blog detailing how he kissed and groped her without her consent in 2006. She also tweeted a picture showing a grinning Franken standing over her as she sleeps, his hands over her breasts.

Franken has since apologized, but other allegations from seven additional women have surfaced since Tweedens claims.

The latest was a woman who claimed she was groped at a Media Matters party during the first Obama inauguration.

Before that, another woman accused Franken of forcibly trying to kiss her  this time after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The woman, who spoke to Politico, claims Franken pursued her after her boss had left and she was collecting her things. The woman was in her 20s at the time.

The accuser, who was not identified, said Franken tried to kiss her but that she ducked.

Franken, a former "Saturday Night Live" performer who was a host on the now-defunct "Air America" radio network at the time, allegedly followed up by telling her it was his right as an entertainer.

He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me, she told Politico. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like Wait, what is happening? But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked.

Franken has strongly denied those allegations.

The calls for Franken to step down came after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., retired following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

In Alabama, several women have accused Moore, the Senate Republican candidate, of sexual misconduct when they were in their teens, including one who said she was 14 when Moore molested her.

Moore denies the allegations.

Trump -- who had multiple allegations of sexual harassment against himself when running for president -- has endorsed Moore.

The Republican National Committee is also supporting him.
Former Democratic congressman and MSNBC mainstay Harold Ford Jr. was fired on Thursday by Morgan Stanley after he was accused of harassment, intimidation, and forcibly grabbing a woman several years ago, according to HuffPost.

The accuser was not a Morgan Stanley employee but interacted with Ford in a professional capacity, according to the report. The investment bank launched a human resources investigation after the woman accused Ford Jr. of harassment.

The results, the bank said, led to his dismissal.

He has been terminated for conduct inconsistent with our values and in violation of our policies, a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley told HuffPost.

Ford denied the claims and vowed to fight back.

"This simply did not happen," Ford said in a statement. "I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life."

The report includes details of an email the woman sent to the former Tennessee politician, asking him to cease contact because of the harassment. Ford reportedly replied to the email and essentially admitted guilt by apologizing for the incident.

HuffPost is not identifying the woman at her request but has reviewed emails that confirm her interactions with Ford and spoke to two people whom the woman confided in about the incident, the report stated.

One woman heard from Fords accuser the night of the incident and described her as distraught, shocked and frightened, and said that she was concerned about any career ramifications should she report the incident.

In Ford's statement, he said having dinner and drinks with clients and media is part of his job, and insisted he was "professional" in his dealings with the accuser.

"I support and have tremendous respect for the brave women now speaking out in this important national dialogue," he said. "False claims like this undermine the real silence breakers."

Ford vowed to sue his accuser and Morgan Stanley.

Ford regularly appears on MSNBCs Morning Joe, where now-disgraced political reporter Mark Halperin was also a frequent guest. The network parted ways with Halperin in October after he was accused of sexually harassing female colleagues.

Ford left Congress in 2007 and has been a managing director at Morgan Stanley since 2011. He comes from a prominent political family, as his father, Harold Ford Sr., served 22 years in the House of Representatives. Ford Jr. replaced his father upon retirement and kept the seat for 10 years.

Ford made an unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat in 2006 but was defeated by Republican Sen. Bob Corker.

MSNBC did not respond to request for comment.
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.
Former Pennsylvania state Rep. Marc Gergely  who resigned last month  is awaiting sentencing on corruption charges in relation to an illegal gambling machine ring.

Gergely, 48, a Democrat from Allegheny County who served in the state House for seven terms, is set to appear in court Monday for his sentencing on charges of conspiracy and violating the states campaign finance laws on cash contributions.

He was forced to step down from his state House seat in November as a condition of a plea deal he entered in August for the two misdemeanor charges.

Gergely was accused of working in tandem with liquor attorney Louis Caputo and using his position to enrich and protect Ronald Porky Melocchi  a former owner of video gaming machines.

He reportedly exerted his influence to convince business owners, skeptical of gambling, to install machines owned by Melocchi.

While other vendors could at times offer more lucrative terms in an effort to secure new stops, Melocchi would rely upon the character and business traits that he possessed as well as his connections to compete with these other vendors, the state grand jury wrote, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It added: Whereas Melocchi might not be able or willing to offer large amounts of money to the owners/operators of prospective stops, he could introduce them to Gergely and Caputo as a show of strength in terms of the people with whom he had a connection.

Prosecutor Mark Serge said in April that both Gergely and Caputo gave the appearance of Melocchi having friends in high places.

In addition to conspiracy charges, Gergely was also accused of passing along a contribution from Melocchi to another individual  in violation of the states campaign finance laws on anonymous or third-party contributions, the Post-Gazette reported.

Caputo was found guilty of criminal solicitation last summer and sentenced to five years of probation. Melocchi pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges of being involved with corrupt organizations and gambling devices. He was sentenced to 10 years of probation.

Before Gergely resigned last month he also pushed for a gambling expansion bill that would permit the placement of gambling machines at truck stops in Pennsylvania. The bill passed in October and has since been signed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

The special election to select Gergely's successor will be held Jan. 23, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Arizona Congressman Trent Franks has announced his decision to resign from Congress, according to a statement he released Thursday on the matter.

Franks said he will leave his seat on Jan. 31, 2018 following complaints from two of his employees with whom he discussed the subject of becoming a surrogate for him and his wife, who he said had difficulty with fertility.

The House Ethics Committee had previously released a statement announcing an investigation into the congressman regarding possible sexual harassment.

"Pursuant to the Committee's action, the Investigation Subcommittee shall have jurisdiction to determine whether Representative Trent Franks engaged in conduct that constitutes sexual harassment and/or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct," the statement said.

In Franks' resignation letter said he "absolutely never physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff."

"However, I do want to take full and personal responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals uncomfortable."

The congressman elaborated on his and his wife's difficulty with fertility and adoption through the years and wanted to have another child, in addition to their twins. He said because of his "familiarity and experience with the process" he "clearly became insensitive" about how discussing surrogacy "might affect others."

Franks said he learned of the committee's intention to open an inquiry into the matter and doesn't believe he'd have a fair investigation "before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story" brought criticism onto those involved.

"It is with the greatest sadness, that for the sake of the causes I deeply love, I must now step back from the battle I have spent over three decades fighting," he wrote.

Upon leaving the House floor on Thursday, Franks was consoled by fellow Republican members, including Reps. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.

Franks is currently serving his eighth term in Congress -- he was first elected in 2002.

The congressman serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee and is also a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

He's known to be a staunch fiscal and social conservative with a pro-life stance on abortion. He sponsored House-passed legislation to make it a crime for any person to perform an abortion if the age of the fetus is 20 weeks or more.

Before being elected into Congress, Franks was a small business owner and later served in the Arizona Legislature, according to his website biography.

According to the page, Franks is a strong proponent for smaller government and "believes in personal responsibility, strong national defense, free enterprise, protecting the innocent, and in the timeless truths and principles of the United States Constitution."

Fox News' Mike Emanuel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Donald Trump wont be in Alabama on Friday, but Roy Moore is happy he'll be just miles away.

Were looking forward to President Trump being on the Gulf Coast tomorrow, Ben DuPre, a Moore adviser, said at a campaign event here in the states capital, Montgomery, on Thursday.

Just days before voters go to the polls, Trump is set to headline his own campaign-style rally on Friday evening just 25 miles away from the Alabama state line, in Pensacola, Florida.

Moores campaign says the candidate is not scheduled to attend Trumps Florida event. But campaign staffers are hopeful that Trumps visit could still give them a boost as their candidate tries to claw his way to victory in the states Senate election next week.

Pensacola shares a media market with Mobile, Alabama, and is an easy car drive for Trump-supporting Alabamians  the type of voters the scandal-plagued Moore needs to energize if he hopes to defeat Democrat Doug Jones in the tight race.

"The balance of power in the Senate is very narrow."  Shanna Chamblee, Moore supporter

Trumps visit comes just days after the president officially endorsed Moore, saying he needs another Republican vote in the Senate. Thats the argument Moores supporters are making to undecideds.

The balance of power in the Senate is very narrow, Shanna Chamblee, a gun rights activist who is supporting Moore, said Thursday. President Trump needs Roy Moores support if the opportunity becomes available to appoint another Supreme Court justice.

For the last several weeks, Moore has resisted calls from top Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to drop out of the race after numerous women came forward to say Moore pursued them romantically when he was in his 30 and they were teenagers.

Even Alabamas senior Republican senator, Richard Shelby, has said he wrote-in another candidate's name rather than support Moore.

But after taking a hit in the polls, Moore has recovered in recent days. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Moore with 48 percent to Jones 45.7 percent.

This isnt the first time an Alabama Republican Senate candidate has hoped a Trump rally could make a critical difference. In September, the president traveled to Huntsville to campaign for incumbent-appointed Sen. Luther Strange, who went on to lose to Moore in a runoff.

Jones, who has not shied away from liberal positions on abortion, is now emphasizing political stances that could appeal to Republicans who wont vote for Moore.

Im a person of faith and I try to live my faith every day, Jones said in a radio ad heard in the state on Thursday.

In the same ad, the Democrat went on to say hes a gun owner, supports lower taxes, is against deficits and backs a strong military.

At the same time, even as Moore's allies say they believe he has survived the scandal, his campaign is still fighting back against the allegations.

Top surrogates for the Republican held a press conference Thursday morning near Alabamas state capitol building to denounce a pro-Jones super PAC that has been aggressively running ads against Moore.

This week, the Judge Moore campaign sent cease-and-desist letters to media around the state requesting they stop running Highway 31s shopping mall ad, which rehashes debunked myths about Judge Moore and the Gadsden Mall, from which he was never banned, said DuPre, a former chief of staff to Moore.

After the allegations surfaced, The New Yorker interviewed people who said that Moore had once been banned from the mall. The claim spread across the internet, but Moore denied it and no hard evidence has surfaced to corroborate the story.

Fox News Dan Gallo contributed to this report.
Seth Williams, Philadelphia's former top prosecutor, has been moved to a federal prison in Oklahoma to begin serving a five-year sentence for accepting a bribe.

The two-term Democrat became the city's first black DA when he won office in 2009, after serving as Philadelphias inspector general  a role that required him to oversee municipal anti-corruption efforts.

He is slated for release in November 2021.

At his Oct. 24 sentencing, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond said Williams, 50, sold his office to "parasites.

"Your profound dishonesty has to be deterred," Diamond told Williams, before ordering him jailed immediately.

A nearly two-year investigation into Williams' financial affairs resulted in a wide-ranging indictment in which he was charged with accepting cash and gifts, fraudulently using thousands of dollars from his campaign fund for personal expenses, misusing city vehicles and misappropriating money intended to fund his mother's nursing home care.

Two weeks into his June trial, amid damaging testimony about how he accepted perks such as a lavish Caribbean vacation and a Jaguar convertible, Williams pleaded guilty to a single count of accepting a bribe from a businessman who admitted giving him a $3,000 sofa and thousands of dollars in cash payments.

He had been charged with 29 counts of bribery, extortion and fraud. Although 28 counts were dismissed, prosecutors said Williams admitted he committed all the conduct.

On Monday, his lawyers say he was moved from Philadelphia to the federal lockup in Oklahoma City.

His defense team believes he'll eventually be moved to Morgantown, W.Va., to finish his term. Morgantown's minimum-security prison is about a five-hour drive from Philadelphia.

Williams' sentencing came just a year after former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected as the state's top prosecutor, was sentenced to 10 to 23 months in prison.

She was convicted on two felony counts of perjury and seven misdemeanor charges for unlawfully leaking grand jury materials in a political payback scheme and lying about it under oath.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Nearly a month after he announced plans to leave Congress due to sexual misconduct allegations that began in November, Sen. Al Franken officially resigned on Jan. 2.

Aides to the senator told Fox News that Franken has provided his letter of resignation to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton.

Franken will be replaced by Lt. Gov Tina Smith, who is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday morning.

Franken, who has been in office since 2009, was plagued by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct and faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. The allegations began after Los Angeles radio anchor Leeann Tweeden accused him of forcibly kissing her during a 2006 USO tour.

Dozens of his Democratic colleagues called for him to step aside after the allegations came to light.



Below is a timeline of key moments in the senators political career.

Prior to 2008

Before running for Senate, Franken was a comedy writer, actor, author and radio talk show host for 37 years, according to his Senate website. Frankens comedy career included time as a writer and performer for NBCs Saturday Night Live.

2008

After being tapped by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in June of 2008, Franken was elected to represent Minnesota in the Senate later that year. After a protracted recount, his opponent, Republican Norm Coleman, finally conceded to Franken -- officially ending one of the longest Senate races in U.S. history, Politico reported at the time.

AL FRANKEN DRAGS OUT SENATE DEPARTURE, ONLY MENTIONS 'TRANSITION' AFTER REPLACEMENT NAMED

2013

Franken was the primary sponsor behind a bill that allows the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the State of Minnesota to lease or transfer certain land. The bill was enacted later that year.

2014

Franken was re-elected to his Senate seat in 2014, easily defeating his Republican challenger, Mike McFadden.

Later that year, Franken endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president during an interview on MSNBC.

2015

Franken sponsored the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act of 2015, which was enacted that same year. The law increases public safety by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, veterans treatment services, mental health treatment, and substance abuse system, according to the bill.

2016

Franken visited nine different states in 2016 as part of an effort to help Clinton get elected to the White House. He traveled to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and California, where he campaigned and raised money for the Democratic presidential candidate.

Franken first met the Clintons in 1993. Hillary Clinton supported Franken in his 2008 run for Senate.

Also in 2016, Franken was the sponsor behind a bill called the Adding Zika Virus to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act. The bill, which was later enacted into law, added the Zika virus to the list of tropical diseases under the priority review voucher program.

Jan. 2017

Franken questioned Betsy DeVos, President Trumps pick for secretary of education, on several issues during her confirmation hearing. Franken later said that DeVos failed to adequately answer even the most basic questions about education policy.

Oct. 2017

Franken and Attorney General Jeff Sessions got into a heated exchange during Sessions Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Franken pressed Sessions about his meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign.

AL FRANKEN ACCUSED OF KISSING, GROPING LA TV HOST WITHOUT CONSENT

Nov. 16, 2017

Radio personality Leeann Tweeden alleged in a post on the KABC website that Franken kissed and groped her without her consent during a USO tour in 2006. Tweeden said that Franken insisted on practicing a kiss for a skit.

We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth, she said, adding that she pushed him away.

Tweeden said that in another incident, she fell asleep during a flight and later looked at a CD of photographs. Her post included an image of Franken with his hands over her chest.

I couldnt believe it, she wrote. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.

"I certainly don't remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann," Franken said in an initial statement. "As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasnt. I shouldnt have done it.

Franken apologized to Tweeden again in a longer, second statement. In it, he said that the photo was completely inappropriate and called for an ethics investigation.

Nov. 23, 2017

Franken apologized again, this time saying that he crossed the line.

Im a warm person; I hug people, Franken said in a statement at the time. Ive learned from recent stories that in some of these encounters, I crossed a line for some women -- and I know that any number is too many.

I feel terribly that I've made some women feel badly, he added, and for that I am so sorry, and I want to make sure that never happens again.

The statement came after he had been accused of groping by a total of four women.

Ultimately, eight women in all would accuse Franken of sexual misconduct.

Nov. 30, 2017

The Senate Ethics Committee said in a statement that it had "opened a preliminary inquiry into Senator Frankens alleged misconduct."

Dec. 6, 2017

Multiple Democratic senators call for Franken to step down.

Dec. 7, 2017

Franken said he would step down "in the coming weeks."

Dec. 13, 2017

Minnesota's Lt. Gov. Tina Smith was appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton to replace Franken.

Tina Smith will make an excellent United States Senator, the outgoing senator said in a statement. Franken also said that he is looking foward to working with her on ensuring a speedy and seamless transition.

Dec. 20, 2017

Fox News confirmed that Franken is going to resign Jan. 2.

Jan. 2, 2018

Franken formally hands in his letter of resignation to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton.

Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
EXCLUSIVE: A senior Justice Department official was demoted this week amid an ongoing investigation into his contacts with the opposition research firm responsible for the anti-Trump dossier, the department confirmed to Fox News.

Until Wednesday morning, Bruce G. Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as the centerpiece of the attorney generals drug strategy.

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of Main Justice.

Initially senior department officials could not provide the reason for Ohrs demotion, but Fox News has learned that evidence collected by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., indicates that Ohr met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier.

Later, a Justice Department official told Fox News: "It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focusdirector of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combating transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the attorney general."

Additionally, House investigators have determined that Ohr met shortly after the election with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS  the opposition research firm that hired Steele to compile the dossier with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. By that point, according to published reports, the dossier had been in the hands of the FBI, which exists under the aegis of DOJ, for some five months, and the surveillance on Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign, had started more than two months prior.

Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before the House in March, described the dossier as a compendium of salacious and unverified allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates. The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page.

The contacts between Ohr and Steele, and between Ohr and Simpson, have not been publicly disclosed nor shared with HPSCI staff.

The panel has issued numerous subpoenas for documents and witnesses related to the dossier but claims DOJ and FBI have stonewalled, an assertion that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seconded in a rare public statement in October.

While the agencies say they have cooperated extensively with Nunes and his team, including providing several hundred pages of classified documents relating to the dossier, it was only last weekend that DOJ and FBI agreed to make available to the committee for questioning Peter Strzok, the high-ranking FBI official who was disciplined in July for having sent-anti-Trump texts to a colleague while playing a decisive role in last years investigation into Mrs. Clintons private server.

Strzok was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and demoted to a position on the FBIs human resources division. The agencies decision to make Strzok available to House investigators came on the same day that The New York Times and The Washington Post disclosed the existence of the anti-Trump text messages, and Fox News disclosed that Strzoks conduct in the Clinton case was under review by the FBIs Office of Inspector General.

The demotion of Ohr thus marked the second time within a matter of months that the Justice Department and the FBI have disciplined for misconduct a senior official connected in some form or fashion to the Trump-Russia case.

According to congressional sources, Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trumps victory.

How exactly Simpson and Ohr came to know each other is still being investigated, but initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006.

Nunes, who has instructed HPSCI staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray  preparatory to a House vote on whether the citations should be enforced  issued a fresh subpoena on Thursday specifically covering Ohr and his files.
President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital could incite extremists in the region -- making conditions "favorable to terrorism" against U.S. targets, Iraq's government warned Thursday.

Iraqi leaders in Baghdad called for Trump to reverse his decision, saying that it could threaten stability in the Middle East.

We caution against the dangerous repercussions of this decision on the stability of the region and the world, the government's statement said.

An Iran-backed militia operating in Iraq echoed Baghdad's statement, saying Trumps "stupid decision" would be a legitimate reason to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, Reuters reported.

Trumps stupid decision to make Jerusalem a capital for the Zionist will be the big spark for removing this entity from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces, said Akram al-Kaabi, the group's leader.

The militia, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, is composed of some 10,000 Iraqi fighters under an umbrella of Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Iraq has also summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and plans to hand over a memo protesting the new policy, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian group Hamas -- recognized as terrorists by the U.S. -- threatened its own retaliation against Israel following Trump's declaration of the new U.S. policy, a separate Reuters report said.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

"The U.S. decision is an aggression, a declaration of war on us, on the best Muslim and Christian shrines in the heart of Palestine, Jerusalem."

Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2007.

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," Haniyeh added.

Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. would formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it's time to "acknowledge the obvious" as he ordered the State Department to begin moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
With his speech about moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump is following a familiar pattern.

He is taking a controversial step but not going all the waytaking a kind of halfway measure that fulfills a campaign promise but doesnt necessarily have immediate consequences.

He has become the first president since Israel's founding in 1948 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital, although other presidential candidates have talked about doing so. At the same time, he is signing a waiver to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for another six months, and officials say it could take years to build an embassy in Jerusalem.

Trump said this was just a recognition of reality and rightly noted that Congress voted to authorize moving the embassy during the Clinton administration, but it never happened.

Much of this is about the politics of symbolism, but the negative reaction in the Arab world, given Jerusalems divided status, is all too real. Some people in Gaza City and Rafah yesterday took to the streets chanting "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and "Down with Trump."

The New York Times says Trump is "upending nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and potentially destroying his efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

But the president, perhaps out of diplomatic sensitivity, didnt immediately move the embassy. He could have ordered a sign placed on the existing U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, declaring it the new embassy. Instead, he gets to declare victory on an issue important to some American Jews and evangelical voters.

This split-the-difference approach is almost a replay of what Trump did with the Dreamers program. He had Jeff Sessions announce that the administration is ending the Obama-era decision to shield immigrants who were under 18 when their families brought them here illegally, but then granted a six-month extension. The move pleased immigration hard-liners, but Trump also said he wants to negotiate a new law with congressional Democrats that would permanently protect the dreamers.

In October, the president disavowed the Iran nuclear deal, but stopped short of killing the Obama agreement. Trump refused to certify that Iran was complying with the terms, and threatened to abandon the deal, as he promised during the campaign. But he essentially kicked it to Congress.

In each case, the president has reaped the political benefit of proclaiming what he believes to be a popular stance, while at the same time limiting or delaying the practical impact.

But given the volatile nature of the Middle East, the split-the-difference approach may have more immediate consequences, especially on Jared Kushners efforts to broker some kind of peace agreement. But that didn't seem to be making much progress anyway.
FBI Director Christopher Wray is facing renewed criticism after reports surfaced that the bureau did not act on a recent tip about Florida shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz prior to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14.

In a statement, the FBI admitted to receiving a call on Jan. 5 from a person close to Cruz who contacted the FBI through its Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to express concerns about his erratic behavior, disturbing social media posts and his desire to kill people.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for Wrays resignation on Feb. 16, calling the FBIs failure to take action against Cruz unacceptable.

Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isnt going to cut it, Scott said in a statement. An apology will never bring these 17 Floridians back to life.

Officials encourage the public to see something, say something, Scott continued, but in this case, the FBI failed to act.

People must have confidence in the follow-through from law enforcement, he added. The FBI Director needs to resign.

After learning the FBI had been warned about Cruz, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered an "immediate review" of both the Department of Justice and FBIs practices.

It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed," Sessions said in a statement. "We see the tragic consequences of those failures."

Wray said the bureau would also review what had happened.

We are still investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public," Wray said in the statement. "When members of the public contact us with concerns, we must act properly and quickly."

Here's what you should know about Wray, who was tapped as FBI director after President Trump fired James Comey.

When was Wray installed as FBI Director?

Wray was formally installed as the new director of the FBI on Sep. 28, after he was confirmed by the Senate on a 92-5 vote in August. All five nay votes came from Democrats.

He was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, after he appeared before the committee. President Trump called Wray "an impeccably qualified individual" in a June statement.

What did Wray do before he was confirmed by the Senate?

Wray worked at the King & Spalding law firm, where he'd been a partner since August 2005, his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire said.

Wray also represented New Jersey governor Chris Christie during the investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane-closing case, nicknamed "Bridgegate." Two former Christie aides were convicted of plotting to close bridge lanes to punish a Democratic mayor who wouldn't endorse the Republican governor.

What about Wray's time at the Department of Justice (DOJ)?

Wray worked as an associate deputy attorney general in 2001, before he was principal associate deputy attorney general from 2001 - 2003, his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire says. From 2003 to 2005, Wray worked as assistant attorney general for the criminal division under President George W. Bush.

What do we know about Wray's career before working for the DOJ?

Wray graduated from Yale University in 1989 before graduating from its law school three years later, the DOJ says online. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Georgia from 1997 to 2001.

Before that, Wray was an associate at King and Spalding from 1993 to 1997, according to his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. From 1992 to 1993, he was a clerk for Judge J. Michael Luttig, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A stunning jewel-encrusted medal owned and worn by George Washington has gone on display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

The exhibit marks only the fourth time that the priceless medal has been publicly displayed in the U.S.

The Diamond Eagle medal is the badge of office of the president general of the Society of the Cincinnati, which was founded by Continental Army officers at the end of the Revolutionary War. The society, which takes its name from Cincinnatus, the general credited with saving the Roman republic, is the nations oldest patriotic organization and aims to preserve the memory of the American Revolution.

'THE FIRST OVAL OFFICE': MUSEUM WILL SHOWCASE WASHINGTONS REVOLUTIONARY WAR TENT

Commissioned by officers of the French Navy, the gold and silver medal is embedded with almost 200 diamonds, rubies and emeralds. The Diamond Eagle was presented to Washington in May 1784 at Philadelphias City Tavern near the current Museum of the American Revolution.

The priceless medal is surrounded by tight security at the museum, which is using a specially-designed case to display the artifact next its Washingtons War tent theater.

The medal is on display until March 3, 2018.

RARE REVOLUTIONARY WAR SWORD TO GO ON DISPLAY FOR THE FIRST TIME

The Diamond Eagle epitomizes the idea of Washington as the American Cincinnatus, the ultimate citizen-solider who put the good of the nation ahead of his own and returned his power back to the people, said Michael C. Quinn, CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution, in a statement. It is fitting for us to present it alongside Washingtons War Tent, which signifies Washingtons selfless devotion to the cause of the Revolution and his tireless support of his soldiers. We couldnt be more grateful to the Society of the Cincinnati for allowing us to present this precious artifact to the American public.

We couldnt be more delighted to see the Diamond Eagle make its return to Philadelphia, the city where it was presented to George Washington, said Jack D. Warren, Jr., Executive Director of the Society of the Cincinnati, in a statement. The Diamond Eagle embodies the idea that the American Revolution is an event of transcendent importance in world history. Remembering the Revolution is a charge that is passed down from one citizen of our republic to the next, just as the Diamond Eagle has been passed down for more than 200 years.

Pierre Charles LEnfant, the French-born military engineer who served in the Revolutionary War and is best known for designing the layout of Washington D.C., designed the societys insignia, which is based on the American Bald Eagle. LEnfant traveled to France in 1783 to have the Eagle made by Parisian goldsmiths.

FROM ROYAL STATUE TO REVOLUTIONARY WAR BATTLE: THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF 'MELTED MAJESTY' MUSKET BALL

The display coincides with the museums exhibition of a painting depicting the Continental Armys encampment at Verplancks Point, New York, in the fall of 1782. The painting, which experts have attributed to LEnfant, clearly shows Washingtons Tent.

After Washingtons death in 1799, the medal was sent to Alexander Hamilton, who, the following year, succeeded Washington as president general of the Society of the Cincinnati. Following Hamiltons death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, his widow sent the medal to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney on his election as president general of the society in 1805. The Diamond Eagle continues to be passed down to each president general.

It could not be immediately learned if the medal has been appraised.

SOLDIER'S FAITH: RARE BIBLE CARRIED AT THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL HAS MOVING INSCRIPTIONS

Revolutionary War artifacts offer a fascinating glimpse into the events that shaped America. A storied Revolutionary War musket ball that was melted from a famously toppled statue of King George III, for example, went on display at the Museum of the American Revolution earlier this year. The Museum also recently displayed George Washingtons sash from the Revolutionary War.

An extremely rare silver-hilted sword used by an American officer during the Revolutionary War is set to go on display for the first time at the Museum next year.

In August, a Revolutionary War-era knife was unearthed during an archaeological dig at Colonial Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City, Michigan, the latest in a series of amazing finds at the site.

The following month, archaeologists in Boston discovered a centuries-old outhouse that may be linked to the family of Patriot Paul Revere.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi painting, which recently sold for a record $450.3 million, will be exhibited at the new Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The museum, which opened its doors in a blaze of publicity last month, announced the exhibit in a short Instagram post and a series of tweets in English, French and Arabic Wednesday. The Louvre Abu Dhabi also announced the news in an Arabic post on its Facebook page.

The painting by the Italian Renaissance master grabbed headlines when it was sold for a record-breaking price at Christies auction house in New York.

SECRET GHOSTLY PORTRAIT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, DISCOVERED BENEATH 16TH-CENTURY PAINTING

The highest known sale price for any artwork had been $300 million for Willem de Kooning's painting "Interchange."

"Salvator Mundi," Latin for "Savior of the World, is one of fewer than 20 paintings by Da Vinci known to exist and the only one in private hands. The paintings buyer was not identified, prompting speculation about the mystery purchaser.

The New York Times claimed Wednesday that the painting was purchased by a Saudi prince.

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FAMOUS REVOLUTIONARY WAR TENT FOUND IN NEWLY-DISCOVERED PAINTING

Christies congratulated the Louvre Abu Dhabi Wednesday.

Congratulations  the Salvator Mundi is going to its new home the @LouvreAbuDhabi, it tweeted.

Salvator Mundi has raised the profile of the new Louvre museum within the art world. A decade in the making, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the centerpiece of the Saadiyat Island cultural district in the United Arab Emirates capital. The museum is supported and received contributions from Agence-France Museums.

THIS TINY DETAIL REVEALED A PAINTING WAS LOOTED BY THE NAZIS

The stunning modernist building, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, sits under a honeycombed dome of eight layers of Arab-style geometric shapes.

Arab leaders and kings, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, attended the museums inauguration last month.

Envisioned by France's then-President Jacques Chirac as a means to fight extremism with art after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is intended to be a bridge between East and West, with Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Jewish artifacts.

The construction project, however, was plagued by questions over laborers' conditions.

The Associated Press contributed to this article. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
A mutant animal has a suburban New York City community on edge, with worries about threats to pets and residents being stalked as authorities try to track down the beasts.

Police in Rockland County are on the hunt for the elusive coywolf -- a hybrid created when a coyote and a wolf mate  and are warning residents to keep their dogs on a leash and their cats indoors if you are truly concerned with its health.

DO chase them away and make noise (bang pots and pans) if you dont want them in your yard, police in Clarkstown, N.Y., warned in a Facebook post. Of course, if you dont mind them, then watch them from a window quietly so as to not scare them away.

A local plumber recently shot video footage of a coywolf prowling behind a woman taking out her trash.

It seemed to be stalking her and kind of followed her back up onto her driveway, Sean McCormack said, according to the New York Daily News.

The Rockland County coywolf is believed to be one of about 20 living in the New York City area, with most making their home in the Bronx.

When full grown, coywolves, which can travel up to 15 miles a day, can take down an adult deer.They weigh between 30 and 55 pounds.

Coyotes, by contrast, weigh between 18 and 44 pounds. They were first spotted about 100 years ago in eastern Ontario. Since then, these canines have migrated to the south and west with sightings as far west as Ohio and scientists finding traces of wolf DNA in coyote scat in Virginia.

While an accurate count of how many coywolves are roaming North America is difficult, Roland Kays, a leading coyote biologist with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, estimates there are likely more than 1 million.

Coywolves are particularly well-adapted to life in the Northeast as the canines have taken up the role of top predator in the region  a position once played by wolves. The beasts are particularly active around New York City and Cape Cod as well as areas with large deer populations such as the woods of upstate New York and Maine.

We now have a novel, large canine to take over that new role, Robert Crabtree, chief scientist of the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, told the Daily Mail. The right size is going to be selected for us by biological evolution itself.

Crabtree noted that through evolution the coywolves are becoming more wolf-like and less like their coyote counterparts in the west.

Good news for hungry coywolves. Bad news for deer, sheep, turkeys, dogs and any other animal farther down the food chain.
A police dashboard camera has captured incredible footage of a fireball streaking across the sky in New Jersey.

On Thursday the Township of Hamilton Police Department tweeted a video of the fireball that was shot in the early hours of Dec. 2. On 12/2 at 3:09 am, Sgt. Michael Virga was on patrol when his vehicle dashcam caught a fireball in the sky. it explained.

The American Meteor Society tweeted Thursday that it has received 133 reports about the fireball.

WATCH FIREBALL FLASH ACROSS MAINE SKY

The fireball was seen primarily from Pennsylvania but was also seen from New York, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, it explained, in a post on its website earlier this week.

Fireballs have also been spotted elsewhere in the U.S. this week with multiple reports in Florida on Tuesday evening, according to Fox 4.

Last year a police dashboard camera in Portland, Maine recorded footage of a huge fireball dropping from the sky.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Multiple wildfires were raging in Southern California on Thursday.

A wildfire which erupted in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles early Wednesday, called the "Skirball Fire," is just five percent contained.

Santa Ana winds have been linked to the spread of dangerous wildfires, causing evacuations and mass damage. Heres what you should know about the weather phenomenon.

What are the Santa Ana winds?

The wind is a weather condition in which strong, hot, dust-bearing winds descend to the Pacific Coast around Los Angeles from inland desert regions, the National Weather Service glossary explains.

These winds are generated by cold air descending on a Western area called the Great Basin. Air flowing from that region of high pressure spills through mountain ranges and down into Southern California metropolitan areas.

Santa Ana winds push back the normal moist and cooling influence of the Pacific Ocean, and gain warmth from compression and speed.

Earlier this fall, a wind-driven wildfire in Southern California dubbed the Canyon 2 fire burned more than 9,200 acres, the Orange County Register reported.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES FORCE THOUSANDS TO EVACUATE, NEW BLAZE ERUPTS IN LOS ANGELES

What else should I know about the winds?

"A strong surface high over the Great Basin will continue to support an extended period of moderate to strong Santa Ana winds to Southwest California through Friday," the National Weather Service said Thursday morning. "Winds are expected to increase again this morning and continue through Friday."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Scientists have discovered a supersized version of Earth that could host life on a distant galaxy.

The planet, named K2-18b, has been dubbed a rocky super earth that orbits a Sun-like star.

And it is positioned in a solar sweetspot  making it possible to host life-giving liquid water.

Researchers at the University of Texas and University of Montreal revealed the stunning findings, that could signal a perfect habitat for alien life.

K2-18b even has a neighbouring sister planet, the cleverly named K2-18c, but is unlikely to host life because it is slightly closer to its Sun.

Lead author Ryan Cloutier said: Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting.

But while the planets may already be teeming with otherworldly creatures, we will probably never know for certain.

They orbit a red dwarf star 111 lightyears away  or 625,000,000,000,000,000 miles away  in the Leo constellation.

Boffins were able to get the measure of K2-18b using data from the European Southern Observatory gathered with a High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (Harps) instrument.

Harps can help determine the mass and radius of a planet to work out its density.

They found the planet is mostly rock with a gassy atmosphere, just like earth, but more research is needed to be sure.

Mr Cloutier added: If you can get the mass and radius, you can measure the bulk density of the planet and that can tell you what the bulk of the planet is made of.

K2-18b is now one of the best targets for atmospheric study, its going to the near top of the list.

The research will be published in the journal Astronomy And Astrophysics.

This story originally appeared in The Sun.
Ancient Mars may not have been all that warm and wet after all.

The Red Planet has widespread deposits of clay minerals, which are formed via the interaction of volcanic rock and water. This fact has led some researchers to suspect that liquid water covered much of the Martian surface for extended stretches long ago  perhaps during the Noachian period, which lasted from about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years ago.

But a new study suggests that these clays could have formed even longer ago, right after the planet's formation  meaning the Noachian may well have been a mostly dry and chilly time, as other scientists have posited. [The Life on Mars Search: Photo Time Line]

"This is a very contentious and ongoing debate," said study lead author Kevin Cannon, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida but performed the study work while a Ph.D. student at Brown University in Rhode Island.

"I'd say, right now, it's sort of leaning more toward the idea that Mars was mostly cold and dry during that time, and that you just had these 100- or 1,000-year periods where temperatures got a little bit warmer  enough to have melting and runoff, but maybe not enough to significantly alter the crust and form a bunch of clays and things like that," Cannon told Space.com.

An ancient steam bath?

Cannon and his colleagues are proposing a new formation scenario for Mars' ancient clays: that most of them took shape during the first few tens of millions of years of the planet's existence.

In those very early days, Mars was likely covered by a scorching-hot ocean of liquid rock (as were the other rocky planets, including Earth), scientists say. As this rock melted, it released water vapor, carbon dioxide and other gases, generating a steamy, superhot, high-pressure atmosphere on the Red Planet.

The study team synthesized rock similar to Martian basalt, then exposed the stuff to the steam-bath conditions that likely prevailed on the Red Planet's surface way back when. After a mere two weeks, the researchers found, a lot had happened.

"It was really remarkable how quickly and extensively this basalt was altered," Cannon said in a statement. "At the highest temperatures and pressures, it ate completely through the basalt particles. It's a really intense degree of alteration."

The steam atmosphere may have persisted for up to 10 million years  long enough to create a global clay layer 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick, the researchers said. So they modeled what would happen to such a layer over the ensuing 4.5 billion years of Martian history, as volcanic eruptions covered many clay deposits and asteroid and comet impacts unearthed others.

The modeling results accord well with what orbiters and rovers actually see on the Red Planet, Cannon said.

"To put some numbers on it, clays cover about 3 percent of the oldest crust exposures on Mars," he said in the statement. "We're finding about that same order of magnitude in these models."

Getting an answer

The new study, which was published online today (Dec. 6) in the journal Nature, doesn't prove anything. But it does make some testable predictions that could help researchers learn more about the Red Planet's ancient climate, study team members said.

For example, noble gases such as krypton and xenon were likely quite common in the primordial outgassed atmosphere, Cannon told Space.com. So finding lots of these elements in the Martian clays would support the steam-bath hypothesis advanced in the new study.

Such measurements probably can't be made from orbit, Cannon added: They would require the work of a sophisticated rover on site or, even better, analysis of returned Martian samples in well-equipped labs here on Earth.

NASA's next Mars rover, which is due to launch in 2020, will collect and cache samples for eventual transport to Earth. But that return is merely conceptual at the moment; there is no mission on the space agency's books to bring such samples to our planet.

Originally published on Space.com.
Two of the biggest titans of the tech industry, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai both weighed in with concerns over the southern California wildfires, which have wreaked havoc on the lower part of the state.

Making comments on Twitter, Cook, who has used his account to weigh in on a number of political and social issues, said that Apple's thoughts are with those affected by the wildfires. "Our thoughts are with our fellow Californians affected by the devastating wildfires, and the brave firefighters working to contain themplease stay safe," Cook wrote.

Like Cook, Pichai also expressed concern and noted that Google would be pitching in to help with the efforts.

"Thinking of those affected by the fires in Southern California," Pichai wrote. "@Googleorg and Googlers are committing up to $500K in support of relief efforts."

LAS VEGAS SHOOTING: TECH EXECS, INCLUDING TIM COOK, EXPRESS CONDOLENCES

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also expressed condolences and said that Facebook would be donating $500,000 to Global Giving for relief.

The fires started on Sunday and are expected to worsen Thursday, as wind gusts of more than 50 mph went through the greater Los Angeles region. The dangerous winds are forecast to fan the flames in different directions and force more evacuations from a region where more than 200,000 people have already fled.

Residents across the region are wary after seeing nearly 200 homes and buildings destroyed since the fires broke out late Sunday.

We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event, Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the Los Angeles Times. There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds.

The Skirball Fire, which erupted Wednesday morning, has burned about 500 acres so far near large estates in the ritzy Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and is only five percent contained.

No fatalities or civilian injuries have been reported since the firestorm started Sunday, according to Reuters. Three firefighters were injured and hospitalized in stable condition as a result of the Skirball Fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

Fox News' Travis Fedschun and the Associated Press contributed to this story. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
Last Saturday Barack Obama was in Paris, what I like to call the poor man's Cleveland, where he knocked Donald Trump for pulling out of the climate deal. Hmm, I wonder if he said he grants that, at the moment, we have a temporary absence of American leadership in the issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I grant you that, at the moment, we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

He's so predictable. But so is the French audience, who laughed. They also find mimes funny.

The fact is, making a decision that bugs the French is not bad leadership. Actually, it's the opposite. Knowing you'll come off as the bad guy among our more sophisticated European peers and you still do it anyway, that's cool. And let's face it, how many times have we been right versus the French?

Trump expressed real leadership here. Remember, even environmentalists admit that the accord sucks. It takes $100 trillion -- funds that could wipe out global poverty, hunger and disease three times over -- to maybe affect a fraction of a degree over a century. It's murderous, callous virtue signaling.

Worse, as Obama jokes, terrorist plot to kill England's prime minister. Terror, remember where there was an absence of leadership on that? That's the real lesson of 2016: a priority adjustment regarding global threats. Something France could use, too. That country has suffered from so many deadly terror attacks and yet here they chuckle with a guy who, after one attack, sent them James Taylor.

But I guess in Obama's mind, ISIS was always JV and coal was always varsity.
The FBI is investigating an incident aboard a United Airlines flight, during which a female passenger claimed she was sexually assaulted by the man seated beside her.

The alleged incident took place Tuesday evening during a flight from New Jersey to Charlotte, N.C., WSOC-TV reported. Sources for the site said the woman, 37, had informed the crew of the male passengers behavior, telling them that he had placed his hands between her legs and groped her.

INTOXICATED UNITED PASSENGER PEED ON SEATMATE MID-FLIGHT, LAWSUIT CLAIMS

Flight attendants reportedly separated the two and told passengers to remain seated after landing. Upon arrival, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police arrived to remove the man, who is 73 years old, from the plane.

Federal authorities will be investigating the claim, as it happened outside of the local polices jurisdiction, Fox 46 noted.

United is also cooperating with the FBIs investigation.

"The safety of our customers is our top priority, and we are working closely with authorities as they conduct their investigation," said United in a statement.

DELTA DIVERTS PLANE BECAUSE PASSENGERS HAD TO 'GO' REALLY BAD

The suspect, from Lithuania, later told investigators that his hand merely fell into the womans lap by accident, WSOC-TV reported.

A fellow passenger who spoke to the station, however, said the man's account seems highly unlikely.

"I'm sure a woman knows the difference between a hand hitting her versus being groped," said Sherrell Ealy.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

The case is just one of several similar mid-flight groping incidents reported in recent years. In July, a 28-year-old doctor was charged with engaging in sexual conduct with a minor after allegedly groping a 16-year-old while she slept aboard a United Airlines flight.

Also this year, an Oregon woman pleaded guilty to licking and groping a female passenger aboard a 2016 Alaska Airlines flight, and a California man was accused of groping and kissing a 16-year-old girl while she slept on a separate 2016 Alaska Airlines flight.
A black female federal immigration agent in New Mexico accused a police department of racial profiling after being repeatedly pulled over by sheriff's deputies with no probable cause.

A lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico on behalf of Sherese Crawford, 38. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation agent, accused the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department of racial profiling.

The agent claims to have been stopped three times  twice by the same deputy  with no probable cause. She was first stopped in April on suspicion of driving a stolen car, despite using a rental vehicle provided by her agency, the lawsuit said.

Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Rael then pulled over Crawford later that month for tailgating. Rael recognized the agents name and said that an officer with her federal agency and a sheriff's deputy present at the first stop said she had an attitude, the lawsuit alleged.

The sheriffs deputy stopped the agent again days later, this time for driving too slow. None of the stops led to warnings or citations.

"Our client is an accomplished federal agent who was targeted for driving while black," said ACLU of New Mexico attorney Kristin Greer Love. "BCSO unlawfully and repeatedly stopped her because she fit a racial profile. Targeting people because of the color of their skin is unconstitutional and bad policing."

"Targeting people because of the color of their skin is unconstitutional and bad policing."  Kristin Greer Love, attorney for ACLU of New Mexico

The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department declined to comment amid pending litigation. The department takes seriously any accusations of racial profiling in policing and deputies who witness such incidents are required to report them to the supervisors.

The lawsuit comes as the Bernalillo County deputies are under scrutiny by civil rights groups and activists following the involvement in nine shootings in four months.

Sheriff Manuel Gonzales was also criticized after saying no one provided him data saying body camera on deputies would make the community safer.

He told media outlets last month that he objected to body cameras because the media would use the footage to criticize his officers, adding that the video evidence gives a lopsided, one-sided story, which I think is a disservice to the whole community."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The city of St. Louis  known for its Gateway Arch, the Lewis & Clark expeditions and riverboats along the Mississippi  has become a judicial hellhole whose antiquated rules have made it a favorite of personal-injury lawyers shopping for big-money verdicts, according to one legal group.

One such verdict: The $110.5 million awarded last May by a St. Louis jury to a woman who had sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming a link between the companys baby powder and her ovarian cancer. Neither the plaintiff nor defendant were from St. Louis, but four verdicts worth more than $300 million against Johnson & Johnson have been handed up by juries in the city over the past two years.

The huge personal-injury payouts have earned St. Louis courts a No. 3 ranking in the newly released Judicial Hellholes, an annual report of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), which says antiquated rules about what constitutes legitimate expert testimony is a big part of the reason out-of-state plaintiffs and lawyers like the citys courts.

Antiquated rules about what constitutes legitimate expert testimony is a big part of the reason out-of-state plaintiffs and lawyers like St. Louis courts.  American Tort Reform Association

Its the whole question of scientific evidence, Tiger Joyce, president of the ATRA, told Fox News.

Witnesses who are testifying normally cant offer opinions or theories. They can only testify about what they saw and what they actually experienced. But expert witnesses like scientists and other technical experts who testify in St. Louis have been allowed to offer theories or opinions that are outside the consensus of generally accepted science. This is very important in litigation because when a theory of a link between a product and a disease is offered by an expert witness with a Ph.D. it can be very convincing to a jury."

Missouri's governor and legislature appear poised to enact reforms in 2018 to address these issues, Joyce said. "Continuing the reform effort begun this year will lower St. Louis in future Judicial Hellhole rankings."

This years list includes states as well as cities. Florida topped the list for the first time in the 16 years that ATRA has been compiling it because of liability-expanding decisions and barely contained contempt for the lawmaking authority of legislators and the governor has repeatedly led to its inclusion in this report, the ATRA said. It also said that an aggressive personal injury bars fraudulent and abusive practices in South Florida and elsewhere have also tarnished the states reputation.

The ATRA said that despite efforts by state lawmakers to reform the judicial system, the Florida Supreme Court fought those efforts, sometimes invalidating them. In one case, the group said, the states high court nullified a state law that paved the way for plaintiffs and defendants to pursue settlements in medical malpractice cases instead of going into litigation.

The report was not well received by some lawyers groups.

Floridas recent economic experience shows that so-called "tort reform" has nothing to do with a states business climate, no matter what the corporate propaganda mills want people to believe.  Ryan Banfill, communications director of the Florida Justice Association

Ryan Banfill, the communications director for the Florida Justice Association, said in a statement to Fox News: Florida has a vibrant justice system that is working to keep Floridians safe and deter insurance companies and big corporations from taking advantage of people and small businesses.

When you look at the evidence, Floridas recent economic experience shows that so-called tort reform has nothing to do with a states business climate, no matter what the corporate propaganda mills want people to believe, Banfill said. We commend Floridas legislature for recognizing that holding corporations accountable for their actions in court provides a free-market alternative to government overregulation.

Other states on this years Judicial Hellholes list are California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Louisiana and New York because of its asbestos litigation court. Several jurisdictions were singled out for lax standards when it comes to expert witnesses, thinly veiled bias in favor of plaintiffs and giving extraordinary large monetary awards.

ATRA said that California came in at No. 2 due to its many regulations and frivolous legislating.

The report said the state is overzealous in expanding civil liability on businesses and property owners.

With another 859 new statutes added to the books in 2017, the annual average for new enactments since 2010 ticked up to more than 830, the authors wrote, making it virtually impossible for even the most conscientiously law-abiding Californians to keep up and protect themselves from costly lawsuits.

Jurisdictions singled out by Judicial Hellholes reporting are not the only judicial hellholes in the United States; they are simply among the worst, the ATRA said. The goal of the program is to shine a light on imbalances in the courts and thereby encourage positive changes by the judges themselves and, when needed, through legislative action or popular referenda.
As part of a holiday tradition thats been called a celebration of life, volunteers place Christmas wreaths on the tombstones of fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. But this year, theres a shortfall.

Wreaths Across America, a Maine-based non-profit organization, has, for 25 years now, taken on the mission of placing a wreath on a tombstone of every U.S. veteran laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, in addition to 1,200 other cemeteries throughout the world.

While many wreaths already have been donated to the cause, theres still a shortage of 25,000. The group is looking to fill the gap by Wreaths Across America Day on Dec. 16  the day that each of the tombstones at Arlington, the burial ground of roughly 400,000 veterans, is set to be decked out with a wreath.

Bre Kingsbury, of Wreaths Across America, told Fox News Channel's Happening Now last week that reaction to the organizations mission  Remember, Honor, Teach, according to its website  has been so overwhelmingly positive.

Kingsbury called the tradition a celebration of life, and noted that throughout the years, friends, families, extended friends have joined in on the ceremony.

When we walk the rows of Arlington Cemetery, theyre not necessarily well-known names, Kingsbury said. You know, movies havent been ... made about their lives, books havent been written. She added, These are just ... hardworking, honest Americans that decided to step up and do something that was bigger than themselves.

Kingsbury continued: So when they make that ultimate sacrifice, we think its time for the American people to stand up and make sure their legacy and ... their service is honored and respected.

Each wreath costs $15. Those interested in helping out can visit WreathsAcrossAmerica.com for donation and volunteer opportunities.
Two students were killed when a fellow student opened fire at a northern New Mexico high school Thursday morning, law enforcement officials said.

The gunman also was killed, a spokesman for the New Mexico State Police told Fox News. Police released very little information about the shooter, including his name, but did say he was also a student at Aztec High School.

"The families of the victims were notified immediately. They are in our thoughts and prayers," state police said in a statement on social media.

The high school, located in the northwest corner of the state near the Navajo Nation, was evacuated after a period of being in lockdown. Authorities said they cleared the buildings at the school, and students were boarding buses to another location where they could be reunited with their parents.

Initial reports indicated that more than a dozen people were injured in the shooting. However, officials later clarified that no other injuries were reported.

"It's tragic when our children are harmed in violent ways especially on school campuses. We express our condolences to those families who have been harmed," Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, said in a press release.

It wasn't immediately clear if the shooting happened inside or outside the school. The school of about 900 students was cordoned off as authorities cleared the buildings and teens were taken to another location.

On Facebook, law enforcement officials asked people to avoid the area while authorities secured the scene.

Despite the closure of all schools in Aztec, authorities said there were no other credible threats to students at the high school or other schools in the neighboring communities of Bloomfield or Farmington.

Aztec is a rural community of 6,500 people in the heart of northwestern New Mexico's oil and gas country. Its main street is lined by old brick buildings that date back more than a century.

Residents voiced disbelief on social media, while members of the New Mexico congressional delegation, state Attorney General Hector Balderas and other elected officials offered their condolences and other assistance.

"While details are still coming in, we grieve for the innocent victims in this senseless act of violence. Too many lives have been disrupted and too many futures cut short," U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan said in a tweet.

Fox News' Ray Bogan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A church in Alabama has come under fire this week for displaying a sign that compared the Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to Jesus.

WHNT-TV reported that Living Ways Ministries Church in Opelika - a small town about two hours southeast of Birmingham  was bombarded with phone calls for displaying a sign that read: They falsely accused Jesus. Vote Roy Moore.

Moore has been embroiled in accusations that he had ongoing sexual relations with teenage girls  as young as 14  while he was in his early thirties.

Under the Johnson Amendment of 1954, non-profit organizations may not  with a few stipulations  participate in political activity or endorse/oppose candidates.

Critics of the churchs endorsement of Moore argued that it should be deprived of its tax-exempt status.

President Trump called for a reapeal of the Johnson Amendment during his presidential campaign.

Trump endorsed Roy Moore on Monday tweeting, "Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," the president tweeted.

The Republican National Committee soon followed with its own endorsement.

The pastor of Living Ways reportedly requested that the sign be removed two days after it was displayed in front of the church.

The message has since been taken down.
The co-owner of an Arizona newspaper says he was poisoned last year with a chemical found in a rat toxin, and he thinks he knows who did it -- but he has no idea why.

Joseph Soldwedel, 65, the co-owner of The Daily Courier, a paper based in Prescott, Arizona, said he was poisoned with lethal doses of thallium, a heavy metal commonly found in rat poison, the Arizona Republic reported.

ARIZONA MAN GAVE GUN TO DAUGHTER, 14, TOLD HER TO KILL HERSELF, OFFICIALS SAY

It was not immediately clear if Soldwedel was targeted and poisoned intentionally. Prescott police confirmed they were investigating the case as a criminal matter. Dave Fuller of the Prescott Police Department said no arrests had been made, but he would not say if authorities had any suspects.

Soldwedel told his media outlet last week he has an idea who may have poisoned him or was behind the poisoning. He did not elaborate further on the possible suspect, but said his son, daughter and sister were not involved.

Dr. Ernest P. Chiodo, a forensic toxicology expert, told The Daily Courier that Soldwedel had elevated levels of thallium in his system, and said humans should not have any level of the chemical in their body.

OPENING ARGUMENTS IN JOE ARPAIO LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY SEN. JEFF FLAKES SON

The lab results discovered that thallium levels in the newspaper co-owners body were 15 times higher than normal. Soldwedel had the high levels in his body between Nov. 29 and Dec. 27, 2016.

He also had high levels of lithium, aluminum, barium and zinc.

Chiodo said it was possible Soldwedel was poisoned and called on police to investigate.

It is serious enough that I think someone with police powers has to investigate this, Chiodo said. There is enough suspicion, given the finding of these levels.

Since 1984, the U.S. has not produced thallium, but it was widely available for import. Thallium poisoning symptoms included headaches, vomiting and nausea.

The Daily Courier declined to comment for this article.
A naked woman fled from her burning Massachusetts home covered in blood after a domestic dispute turned violent, law enforcement said.

The woman, only identified as being 49, was embroiled in a domestic dispute Wednesday night with her 54-year-old boyfriend, police said. He allegedly violently attacked her, Boston 25 News reported.

Luckily, she was able to escape their Lynn home and ran, naked and covered in blood, to a neighbors house for help. She said she believed the home was on fire.

SHERIFF: BYSTANDER SHOOTS MAN ATTACKING DEPUTY IN GEORGIA

Her head was bashed in, neighbor Debra Oblenes told the news station. She had a lot of gashes and blood on her face, head and leg.

According to Boston 25 News, the man allegedly attacked the woman with a knife and then attempted to seriously hurt himself.

During the incident, a fire was ignited in the basement. Its unclear how the flames started.

Firefighters said when they entered the home on the dead-end street, they were greeted by an unexpected sight.

PENNSYLVANIA GAS STATION TESTS BLUE LIGHT TO DETER DRUG USE

We had a couple of pigs come out of the building, Lynn District Fire Chief Arthur Richard said. Its something unusual you dont see in Lynn. When they came out, it was like, whoa.

The woman and man were taken to local hospitals. They are expected to recover.

Potential charges against the man have not been released.
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez was murdered, his partner was assaulted and the men were left to die in a Texas culvert last month, according to an FBI agent's sworn affidavit -- the most concrete official statement indicating the agents were savagely attacked, and a firm rebuttal of a local sheriff's claim the men were injured in a traffic accident.

Martinez and his partner, identified as Border Patrol Agent Stephen Garland, were found injured in a culvert off Interstate 10 in Van Horn, Texas on Nov. 18. Both agents were suffering from traumatic injuries to their head and bodies and rushed to the hospital. Martinez died the next day and Garland recovered from his injuries, but has been unable to recall what happened to the duo, authorities said.

Unanswered questions surrounded the incident for weeks after Martinezs death. The National Border Patrol Councils president Brandon Judd told Fox News, based on accounts from agents in the area, he believed illegal immigrants ambushed Martinez and Garland and assaulted them with rocks.

But Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carillo told local media in the weeks following the incident that it could have been an accident  first explaining it as a possible fall into the culvert, then claiming the agents could have been a sideswiped by the mirror of a tractor trailer.

But the arrest affidavit says otherwise.

An FBI agent requested a search warrant for a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am he believes will contain trace evidence relating to drug trafficking, the murder of Agent Martinez and the assault of Agent Garland, according to the documents.

BORDER PATROL AGENT'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH WAS NO ACCIDENT, UNION CHIEF SAYS

The FBI investigator said an informant told a Customs and Border Protection agent that two brothers, Antonio and Jesus Munoz, who were recently smuggled into the U.S., spoke about assaulting the agents.

But upon questioning, both brothers denied any role in the attack on the agents, according to the affidavit. Daniel Munoz, however, admitted to picking up his brother, Antonio, in a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am in Presidio, Texas, around Nov. 20. Antonio Munoz told the FBI in an interview he entered the U.S. illegally sometime before that date.

Maria Gonzalez, a woman traveling with Daniel Munoz, also was interviewed and told investigators that when they picked up Antonio he looked clean cut, and was wearing clean clothes, according to the affidavit. Gonzalez also told the FBI that when she was in the car with the Munoz brothers, she overheard Antonio speaking with someone on the phone about crossing into the U.S. with methamphetamine and heroin.

The search warrant was filed so investigators could thoroughly search the Pontiac used to pick up Munoz. The car could have evidence such as clothing fibers and hair that may pertain to the investigation.

When two individuals struggle, the physical components of their person can be exchanged, as well, the agent wrote in the affidavit.

On Nov. 29, Antonio Munoz made an initial appearance before a magistrate judge on charges that he made illegal re-entry into the U.S.

Judd told Fox News earlier this week that theories Martinez and his partner sustained serious injuries by accident didnt make sense based on measurements and photos of where the incident occurred. He also pointed to the FBIs initial statement, which said the agents were investigating an intentional assault on the officers.

The FBI suspects it was a violent assault. The FBI does not suspect a sideswipe. The FBI does not suspect an accident, Judd said, citing the Nov. 21 FBI statement.

Fox News' Katherine Lam contributed to this report.
A Cincinnati man identified by police as the gunman who shot an employee of singer Nick Lacheys sports bar on Thanksgiving has turned himself in to authorities.

Lavoris Hightower, 36, turned himself in Thursday night after the Cincinnati Police Department identified him publicly as the man who shot Ellie Richardson, 27, Fox 19 reported.

Hightower's attorney reportedly said that police have the wrong man.

Hightower had already been indicted for attempted murder, felonious assault, weapons under disability and tampering with evidence in Richardson's shooting, the police department tweeted.

Richardson was leaving work at Lacheys Bar around 3 a.m. Thanksgiving morning when she was walking across the street in the citys Over-the-Rhine neighborhood when a van nearly hit her, police said.

Richardson and Hightower, who was driving the van, got into an argument before Hightower shot her in the face, according to Fox 19.

NICK LACHEY WANTS TO 'FIND SOME JUSTICE' FOR HIS EMPLOYEE WHO WAS SHOT IN THE FACE

There is a $5,000 reward to help us get Hightower arrested and off of our streets," Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said prior to the suspect turning himself in, according to Fox 19. "First, Hightower nearly runs Ms. Richardson over with his car, and then he shoots her  unbelievable.

Cincinnati has worked very hard to improve the area where the shooting occurred. This type of heartless act has the potential of ruining years of progress. He needs to go to jail for a long time, Deters added.

Richardson sustained injuries to her face and jaw from the shooting, a YouCaring fundraising page  which has, as of Thursday, received nearly $60,000 in donations  stated. A Facebook page titled Ellie Richardson Recovery said that Ellie is doing fantastic! and that the swelling and bruising near her eyes is nearly gone.

Doctors believe shell be able to go home in the next few days, according to the Facebook post, which added that shell be undergoing surgery next week to repair her cheek bone, eye socket and a few other fractures.

Former boy band star Lachey had written after the shooting that Richardson is the brightest light and she will find a way to shine through this darkness.
A woman who survived the 2012 massacre at a Colorado movie theater but lost two fingers in the rampage died unexpectedly Sunday, leaving her family looking for answers.

Heather Snyder, 31, was among a group of Red Robin workers who went to see "The Dark Knight Rises" at the Aurora movie theater on July 20, 2012 when James Holmes burst into the facility, killing 12 and injuring 70.

Her father, Rick Snyder, told The Denver Post his daughter's death "was totally unexpected." An initial autopsy did not determine a cause of death and family members may have to wait several weeks to find out, FOX 31 Denver reported.

Her father said she could not forget the fatal shooting and was reminded of it every day because it left her with an amputated index and middle finger.

She never totally recovered from it," he told the newspaper.

After surviving the massacre, Heather Snyder went on to have a daughter and later testified in court against Holmes on May 14, 2015.

In her court appearance, she said her injuries severely impacted her life.

I was thinking, Oh, my god! What is going on?  she testified about the moment gunfire rang out. In Aug. 2015, Holmes was sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years for the massacre.

A family friend told FOX 31 she was a loving, caring, and courageous woman.

"When you have a wonderful human being that is a support system for everyone that can light up your day, and theyre taken from you, its not easy. Its very difficult," Larry Martinez said.

Family members have created a GoFundMe page asking for help with a memorial service for Snyder and donations to care for her 2-year-old daughter, Kennedy.
A white former South Carolina officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for fatally shooting an unarmed black motorist in the back in 2015, wrapping up a case that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Attorneys for ex-North Charleston Officer Michael Slager said he shot 50-year-old Walter Scott in self-defense after the two fought and Scott reached for Slager's stun gun. They said race didn't play any role in the shooting and that Slager never had any "racial animus" toward minorities.

Still, Slager pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Scott's civil rights. As part of the plea agreement reached in May, prosecutors dropped state murder charges. A year ago, a state judge declared a mistrial when jurors deadlocked.

"This is a tragedy that shouldn't have happened," U.S. District Judge David Norton said.

A bystander recorded the shooting on a cellphone, and it was shared around the world, setting off protests across the U.S. as demonstrators said it was another egregious example of police officers' mistreating African-Americans.

Scott's family testified before the sentence and said they had forgiven Slager.

"I'm not angry at you, Michael. Michael, I forgive you, and Michael, I do pray for you now and for your family, because we've gone through a traumatic time," he said.

The shooting angered local African-Americans who complained for years that North Charleston police harassed blacks, pulling them over or questioning them unnecessarily as they cracked down on crime. The Scott family successfully pleaded for calm, asking everyone to let the justice system run its course.

Two months after the shooting, a young white man killed nine black church members in a racially motivated attacked during a Bible study in Charleston. The family members of the church shooting victims struck a similar forgiveness tone after that attack.

Before the sentenced was handed down, the judge had to decide whether the shooting amounted to second-degree murder or manslaughter. Norton found that it was murder.

The bystander's video started after the struggle between Slager and Scott and showed Scott running away and the officer firing eight times. Scott was hit in the back five times.

After the shooting, Slager picked up his stun gun and placed it next to Scott. Slager contends he was securing the weapon. Prosecutors think he put it there to bolster his self-defense story.

An emotional Slager told the Scott family that he was grateful for their forgiveness.

"This tragic event that occurred in seconds has changed the lives of everyone involved," he said. "With my actions that day, Walter Scott is no longer with his family, and I am responsible for that."

The judge also found that Slager, 36, obstructed justice when he made statements to state police after the shooting.

A pre-sentencing report for Slager found that he committed manslaughter and recommended 10 to nearly 13 years in prison. But the judge was not bound by that decision.

If Slager had faced another state trial and been convicted of murder, he could have been sentenced to anywhere from 30 years to life in prison.

Convictions in police officer shootings are uncommon in the U.S. and prison time is even rarer.

South Carolina has been aggressive in charging white officers who shoot unarmed black people. Four have pleaded guilty in state or federal court in the past six years. But only Slager and former state trooper Sean Groubert, who shot a man as he tried to get his wallet during a seat belt violation check, will have been sent to prison. Groubert was sentenced to five years behind bars.
An imprisoned former nurse who prosecutors believe could be responsible for the deaths of up to 60 children in Texas pleaded not guilty Thursday to murder charges in the deaths of five children in the early 1980s.

Genene Jones, 67, was arraigned Thursday in San Antonio. She was brought into court in a wheelchair and wore a surgical mask.

Jones is serving concurrent 99-year and 60-year sentences in state prison for the killing of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan and the sickening of 4-week-old Rolando Santos. Before the new charges were brought, Jones had been scheduled to be freed in March 2018 under a mandatory release law that was in place when she was convicted.

Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood said each case will be tried separately. Jones could face up to life in prison on each charge.

Children died of unexplained seizures and other complications when Jones worked at a San Antonio hospital and clinic in Kerrville, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) to the northwest of San Antonio.

"This is an enormous step in the right direction to secure justice for these slain children, their families and our community as a whole," LaHood said at a news conference Wednesday.

He said they'll first try the case of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer, who investigators say died in 1981 of a fatal overdose of an anti-seizure drug.

"Our goal, my goal is that she takes her last breath from behind bars and she meets the Lord from behind bars," LaHood said Wednesday.

Prosecutors at Jones' 1984 murder trial said the nurse lethally injected children at the Kerrville clinic to demonstrate the need for a pediatric intensive care unit at a nearby hospital. Other prosecutors theorized that her tactic was to take swift medical action and save some of her victims so she could appear to be a sort of miracle worker.

LaHood said Wednesday that today's prosecutors "don't really know" her motivation.

"To me, evil is evil is evil," LaHood said Wednesday, "All I know is these children were stolen from family."

It's not clear why Jones' actions, involving so many suspected victims, were not detected earlier. But Sam Millsap, a previous district attorney in Bexar County, told KSAT-TV in 2013 that medical records at the San Antonio hospital at one point were accidently destroyed, hampering efforts by investigators to prove their suspicions.

She was sentenced to prison in 1984 in the McClellan and Santos cases. When LaHood took office in January 2015, he approved a task force to investigate Jones. In announcing in May the indictment in the death of Sawyer  the first of the five new indictments that came this year, LaHood said his office would "attempt to account for every child whose life was stolen by the actions of Jones."
A Florida high school teacher was arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge last week, accused of inappropriately touching a 19-year-old male student.

The teacher was identified as Kevin Thomas Moglia, 61, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Surveillance camera footage from Nov. 6 appeared to show Moglia touching an adult student, authorities said, adding that the teacher was arrested Nov. 30 and released Dec. 1 after posting $500 bail, the paper reported.

The student told authorities he immediately informed school faculty after the incident, and informed the Hernando County Sheriffs Office later that day, the paper reported, citing the arrest report.

The school declined to comment on why it failed to report the incident to authorities, the paper reported.

Click here for more from the Tampa Bay Times.
A former police officer from Mexico was found guilty Wednesday in the rape of a woman in Aurora, Co., where authorities said he ordered his victim to put down her 1-year-old son prior to the assault.

Ricardo Corral-Venegas, 27, was armed with a butcher knife on Oct. 4, 2016, when he forced his way into the apartment of his 26-year-old victim, police said.

He returned days later to the same complex and tried to force his way into another apartment, but an 18-year-old girl fought him, preventing him from entering, authorities said.

Police arrested him later that day after they spotted the suspect at a Buffalo Wild Wings, the Denver Post reported.

During the interrogation he allegedly cried, saying there was something wrong with his head. Moments later he acted as if he didnt know why he was being questioned, a police report detailed. Court reports indicate that Corral-Venegas told police he had a duel personality.

According to authorities, Corral-Venegas is a former police officer from Chihuahua, Mexico where he worked for four years.

He allegedly used a red motorcycle and pretended to be a courier when sexually attacking women in Mexico  a ploy for which the Mexican media referred to him as the Motorized Rapist.

Corral-Venegas had previously been deported back to Mexico for being in the United States illegally, the Denver Post reported.

An Arapahoe County jury found him guilty of sexual assault, kidnapping, and burglary as well as using a weapon while committing a violent crime.

He is currently being held without bond where he faces a maximum of 92 years in prison.
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Developing now, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017:

The Middle East braces for fallout after President Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announces plans to move U.S. Embassy

U.S. Sen. Al Franken expected to make a statement today as calls for his resignation mount, another woman accuses him of sexual misconduct

The Justice Department is reviewing "over 10,000 texts" between two former members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigative team following the discovery of anti-Trump messages between them

Southern Calif. wildfires force mass evacuations in Los Angeles as blaze breaks out in Bel-Air

THE LEAD STORY: The Middle East is bracing for unrest after President Trump's formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ... Trump's move fulfills a campaign promise made to religious conservatives. But it could also inflame tensions across the Middle East. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to travel to Jordan on Thursday to meet with King Abdullah II and the two allies could try to coordinate a response to Trump's policy change. Meanwhile, the terror group Hamas has called for a "days of rage" in protest of Trump's move. The United Nations was also critical of Trump. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres read a statement that in part criticized the presidents new policy on Jerusalem. "From day one as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. Seven members of the U.N. Security Council have requested an emergency meeting on Jerusalem that could come as early as Friday. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley defended Trump in a Fox News interview on "The Story with Martha MacCallum," saying "Courage doesn't come by doing what everybody else says."

A POLITICAL CAREER IN FREEFALL: U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is expected to make an announcement today after a growing group of Democratic senators called for his resignation amid new sexual misconduct allegations... Sens. Claire McCaskill, Maggie Hassan, Kirsten Gillibrand, Patty Murray, Mazie K. Hirono, Kamala Harris, Debbie Stabenow, Tammy Baldwin and Heidi Heitkamp were among the Senate colleagues who called for Franken to step down Wednesday. Frankens political career has been in peril since California radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden posted a blog detailing how the Democratic senator kissed and groped her without her consent in 2006. Franken has apologized, but other allegations from five additional women have surfaced since.

TALE OF THE TEXTS: Justice Department officials are reading through over 10,000 texts between two former members of Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe, Fox News has learned, before they hand over the anti-Trump messages to the House Intelligence Committee ... Mueller's Russia investigation and FBI have been under scrutiny since it was revealed that Peter Strzok was removed Mueller's team following the discovery of his anti-Trump messages to colleague  and lover  Lisa Page. In addition to Russia probe, Strzok also had a role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Justice Department officials say the process of reading and redacting the texts could take weeks, and that the thousands of text messages between Strzok and Page span over several months. The review process comes as the House Intel committee has threatened top DOJ and FBI officials with a contempt resolution, barring an imminent breakthrough, after the agencies did not comply with a deadline to hand over long-sought information that goes well beyond text messages.

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES SPREAD: A wildfire erupted in Los Angeles' exclusive Bel-Air section, forcing mass evacuations ... The Skirball Fire  named after the Skirball Cultural Center in northern Los Angeles  burned 475 acres in the Sepulveda Pass near the Getty Center, the Los Angeles Times reported. To the north, in Sylmar, Calif., the 'Creek fire' has spread 12,605 acres and forced 150,000 people to evacuate their homes. Forecasters predict some areas to have 80 mph winds. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti has responded by declaring a local state of emergency. Hundreds of homes across the L.A. metropolitan area and beyond were feared destroyed since Monday. As many as five fires have closed highways, schools and museums, shut down production of TV series and cast a hazardous haze over the region. About 200,000 people were under evacuation orders.

AS SEEN ON FOX NEWS

RUMSFELD DEFENDS TRUMP: "We're better off today than if we had Hillary in the presidency."  Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, reflecting on the frequent criticism of President Trump, in an exclusive interview on "The Ingraham Angle." WATCH

CHELSEA, NOT-SO-LATELY: "I'm all for feminism, [But] women should be out there in front of this and not allowing this kind of stuff. Shame on you, Chelsea Handler." - Fox Business' Trish Regan, blasting TV personality Chelsea Handler's frequent bashing of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on 'The Intelligence Report.' WATCH

ACROSS THE NATION

Uber paid hacker $100G to keep data breach last year a secret.

Border Patrol agent was murdered, FBI agent contends in affidavit.

'The Story' Exclusive: Alternate juror in Steinle trial speaks out

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

Ford details plans for all-new autonomous vehicle.

Why Walmart changed its name.

Bitcoin to start futures trading, stoking Wild West worries.

NEW IN FOX NEWS OPINION

Judge Andrew Napolitano: The general and the president.

North Korea could launch its own nuclear Pearl Harbor attacking the US, potentially killing millions.

Todd Starnes: Liberals attack doughnut shop's good deed -- What in the sweet name of Santa Claus is wrong them?

HOLLYWOOD SQUARED

Lauer just wants to 'play golf and stay in the Hamptons,' source says.

'Jeopardy!' winner charged with computer crimes at small Michigan college.

Exclusive: Corey Feldman's 1993 audio files naming alleged sexual predators found by Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

Dramatic photos show Bonnie and Clyde before and after their death.

'Thighlighting' is the painful new plastic surgery fad.

Duck-dinosaur hybrid baffles scientists with mixed-up body.

STAY TUNED

On Fox News:

Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital; Rep. Jim Jordan on credibility problems surrounding Robert Mueller's Russia probe; we continue to highlight veteran-owned businesses with "Nine Line Apparel."

On Fox Business:

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Rep. Lee Zeldin sounds off on President Trump formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie give the inside story on "Let Trump Be Trump."

Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: David Rubin, former mayor of Shiloh, Israel, gives his perspective on Trump's bold new moves on Jerusalem; Olympic great Dana Torres reveals the secrets of her exercise routine

Cavuto: Coast to Coast, Noon ET: Sen. Thom Tillis on the next steps in finalizing tax reform.

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: President Trump has formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and that the U.S. will move its embassy there. While Israel's Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren is in favor of the move, David Tafuri, a former Obama campaign foreign policy adviser, argues this will put peace negotiations in danger. Also, days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel was removed from command, reduced in rank and partly blamed for not preparing his men properly. Seventy six years later, his grandson, Tom Kimmel, has taken the fight to the president's desk to restore his grandfather's title. Plus, commentary by Fox News Radio host Tom Shillue.

Want the Fox News Rundown sent straight to your mobile device? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher.

The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 am to Noon ET: Sen. Bob Corker talks tax reform, North Korea and Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

#OnThisDay

1972: America's last moon mission to date is launched as Apollo 17 blasts off from Cape Canaveral.

1941: 'A Date Which Will Live In Infamy': During a series of raids in the Pacific, Imperial Japan's navy launches a pre-emptive attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing 2,400 people, about half of them on the battleship USS Arizona. (The United States declares war against Japan the next day.)

1842: The New York Philharmonic performs its first concert

Thank you for joining us on Fox News First! Enjoy your day and we'll see you in your inbox first thing Friday morning.
A judge on Thursday denied an emergency request for relief funds by three Texas churches damaged during Hurricane Harvey that are suing the federal government over how it offers disaster aid to houses of worship.

The churches are suing the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a policy that denies disaster assistance to nonprofit organizations with facilities that are primarily used for political, athletic, vocational or religious activities.

The three houses of worship accuse FEMA of religious discrimination by denying them equal access to disaster relief grants and not treating them on terms equal to other nonprofits.

FEMA says it hasn't denied the churches' applications but has placed them on hold while a change to its policy is reviewed. Pressure to change the policy has been mounting after this year's series of devastating hurricanes damaged many churches in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

"FEMA is turning into the Grinch who stole Christmas," Eric Rassbach, an attorney for the churches, said after Thursday's ruling in Houston. "By continuing to discriminate against churches, FEMA is sending the message that churches are not full members of the community, even when they are in fact the beating heart of disaster?recovery in Texas and elsewhere."

The churches plan on appealing the decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing FEMA, didn't immediately return an email seeking comment.

In court documents filed on Monday before the federal judge's ruling, Justice Department lawyers had said the churches haven't "suffered, and will not suffer, irreparable injury, because their applications for ... grants have not been, and will not be, denied while FEMA actively works to implement a new ... policy."

In his nine page ruling, U.S. District Judge Gray Miller said he based his decision on the current FEMA policy and not on the proposed changes, which are currently "speculative and does not impact the challenge to the current policy." The review of FEMA's new policy could take up to 90 days to complete.

In addition to FEMA's proposed policy change, several members of Congress have revived legislation  first proposed after 2012's Superstorm Sandy  that would force FEMA to pay for repairs at places of worship.

Gray disagreed with the churches' claim that the current policy violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which allows individuals to freely exercise their religion.

In support of their lawsuit, the churches cited a June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that found a Lutheran church in Columbia, Missouri, had been wrongly excluded from a state grant program to install a soft playground surface made of recycled tires. The Supreme Court ruled churches have the same right as other charitable groups to seek state money for nonreligious needs.

But Gray said the churches would be using the FEMA funds to rebuild facilities used primarily to promote religious activities, which is against the current policy.

Gray said legal precedent has found "the government has a historical and justifiable interest in avoiding an establishment of religion and using public funds to support religion."

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at www.twitter.com/juanlozano70
Larry Nassar -- the disgraced ex-gymnastics doctor accused of assaulting more than 140 women and girls, including several Olympic stars -- was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in federal prison on pornography charges.

Nassar, who's pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexual assault, was sentenced in a separate case Thursday in which he was found to have received and possessed 37,000 images of child pornography and attempted to destroy pictures to avoid charges.

Federal Judge Janet Neff said Nassar, 54, should never again have access to children.

A growing chorus of accusers -- including Olympic gymnasts McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas -- as well as lawyers and Michigans Attorney General are now turning their attention towards Michigan State University, calling on the school to release its internal review of Nassar amid accusations Michigan State covered up Nassar's crimes, a charge the university "unequivocally denies."

RELATED: MICHIGAN STATE ACCUSED OF COVERING UP WORST SEX ABUSE SCANDAL IN U.S. SPORTS

Maroney and her mother, Erin, wrote victim impact statements to the judge in Thursday's case. In the letters, they called for a maximum sentence for Nassar and blasted Michigan State and other institutions for allowing Nassar to, as he admitted in court, molest women and girls thousands of times throughout his 20-year career.

Dr. Nassar was not a doctor, he in fact is, was, and forever shall be, a child molester, and a monster of a human being, McKayla Maroney wrote. It all started when I was 13 or 14 years old, at one of my first National Team training camps, in Texas, and it didnt end until I left the sport. It seemed whenever and wherever this man could find the chance, I was treated. It happened in London before my team and I won the gold medal, and It happened before I won my Silver Medal. For me, the scariest night of my life happened when I was 15 years old. I had flown all day and night with the team to get to Tokyo. Hed given me a sleeping pill for the flight, and the next thing I know, I was all alone with him in his hotel room getting a treatment. I thought I was going to die that night.

Maroneys mother wrote about the impact Nassars abuse had on her daughter:

This experience has been shattering to McKayla. She has transformed from a bubbly, positive, loving, world class athlete into a young adult who was deeply depressed, at times suicidal and essentially descended into an emotional abyss. At times I was unsure whether I would open her bedroom door and find her dead. Her father and I have been living this nightmare for years and until recently we felt hopeless. Nassar and those individuals and institutions that protected him almost snuffed out my daughter.

Erin Maroney shared a nightmare scenario she said continues to haunt her family: How many more images were on his computer at MSU? Did he trade those images with other pedophiles? Are those images on the dark web today? Will she wake up one day to find an image of her 13-year-old self being assaulted?

Michigan State spokesman Jason Cody told Fox News in a statement that Nassar's sentencing represented "another important step toward justice for the victims."

"His behavior was deeply disturbing and repugnant, as the state and federal criminal charges that he has been convicted of show," Cody said. "Allegations have been made against the university, claiming it is engaged in a cover-up by university administrators. MSU unequivocally denies this accusation. Moreover, MSU and its external counsel have consistently promised if it were to find any employee knew of and acquiesced in Nassars misconduct, it would immediately be reported to law enforcement."

But an attorney representing several of Nassar's alleged victims accused the university of engaging in "systemic protection" of the doctor.

This is one of the largest and most prestigious public universities in the country, and theyve engaged in the systemic protection of a child molester, John Manly told Fox News. Clearly Michigan State has a culture of secrecy. They have a report about 150 little girls being molested, and theyre not going to release it? That is outrageous. President [Lou Anna K.] Simon, release the report or resign.

Cody told Fox News no report exists from their work with their law firms, Skadden Arps and Miller Canfield.

But other lawyers representing Nassar's accusers say MSU officials could have prevented the scandal if they followed Title IX and mandatory reporting laws. During Nassar's tenure at MSU from 1997-2015, at least seven women or girls say they made verbal complaints to school officials.

When MSU finally conducted Title IX investigations of Nassar in 2014, the lawyers said, Michigan State botched it and allowed Nassar to continue allegedly molesting dozens of women and girls for two more years -- all under the guise of their treatment being medically appropriate.

Rachael Denhollander, the first Nassar victim to speak publicly and file a police report in September 2016, told Fox News she was absolutely confident MSU was covering this up. She was one of the last accusers to join the lawsuit because she wanted to see how MSU would respond.

We were silenced. We were mocked. And our abuser was told time and time again, Im on your side, Denhollander said. That gives me all I need to see how Nassar preyed on women and little girls for so many years.

The comments were echoed by Jamie Dantzscher, an Olympic Bronze Medalist in Artistic Gymnastics.

Michigan State University ignored complaints about Nassar going back to the 1990s, yet they continued to allow him to treat me and other Olympic athletes, Dantzscher told Fox News. How many other Larry Nassars are out there right now abusing children who want nothing more than to pursue their Olympic dreams? We may never know. This has to end.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Latest on the 76th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack (all times local):

8:15 a.m.

About 20 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor have gathered to remember those killed 76 years ago in the Japanese aerial assault.

Thursday's ceremony began with a moment of silence in honor of those who died. It happened at 7:55 a.m.  the same time the attack began on Dec. 7, 1941.

Four F-22 fighter jets from the Hawaii Air National Guard broke the silence, with one plane peeling off from the group to symbolize the servicemen still missing.

About 2,000 officials, military members and others are attending the ceremony.

Herbert Elfring remembers hearing bombs go off at Pearl Harbor. He was 19 and serving with the Army's 251st Coast Artillery down the road. The Jackson, Michigan, man is now 95.

More than 2,300 servicemen died in the attack.

___

7:45 a.m.

Pearl Harbor survivor Gilbert Meyer says he has returned to the site of the 1941 Japanese bombing because of his shipmates from the USS Utah. He says he comes to pay his respects and say a prayer for them.

The 94-year who lives near Lytle, Texas, says the anniversary of the attack reminds him that he and the other survivors are lucky they got off their ships.

He and other survivors are gathering Thursday at Pearl Harbor to remember fellow servicemen killed in the early morning raid 76 years ago.

Meyer was a fireman first class on Dec. 7, 1941 when a torpedo hit the port side of the Utah. He says he's still alive because he happened to be on the starboard side. The 18-year-old fireman first class later served in the battles at Attu, Kiska, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He witnessed Japan's surrender in 1945 from the deck of the USS Detroit in Tokyo Bay.

He says he thinks about his shipmates and how they were killed. He says it reminds him that they were lucky to get off the ship "and we've made a good country for them."

___

5:25 a.m.

Survivors will gather at the site of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to remember fellow servicemen killed in the early morning raid 76 years ago.

About 20 survivors are expected to attend Thursday's event at a grassy spot overlooking the harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. A couple thousand members of the public, Navy and National Park Service officials will join them.

Author Steve Twomey will deliver the keynote address. He wrote "Countdown to Pearl Harbor," which examines the 12 days leading up to the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.

A moment of silence will mark the time the attack began.

More than 2,300 servicemen were killed in the assault carried out by Japanese airplanes. Nearly half were on the USS Arizona battleship, which exploded and sank after being bombed.
A man who was accused of hiding his employment with a special Serbian police unit in Bosnia around the time of the Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslim Bosnians during the 1995 genocide has pleaded guilty to a U.S. immigration fraud charge.

The U.S. government accused Oliver Dragic, who has been living in Barberton, in suburban Akron, of immigration fraud in a three-count federal indictment last year.

Dragic pleaded guilty on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster to possessing and using fraudulently obtained immigration documents. He was sentenced to time served in jail since his arrest in August 2016 and was ordered deported, with a sentencing date in March.

Though Dragic claimed to be a refugee, he served in a paramilitary force during the war in the former Yugoslavia, said Justin Herdman, the Cleveland-based U.S. attorney for the northern half of Ohio.

Dragic is pleased with the outcome of his case, said his attorney, Darin Thompson.

"He looks forward to re-establishing life for himself and mother in his home country of Bosnia," said Thompson, a federal public defender.

Dragic made false statements on forms about his role in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia while applying for refugee status in the U.S., prosecutors alleged in an updated indictment earlier this year.

Dragic, 42, moved to Serbian-controlled Bosnia in 1994 after graduating from a police training school, according to the indictment. His unit was involved in combat, "including during the broader Srebrenica operations," and afterward attended an elite training school, the indictment said.

He applied for refugee status in the U.S. in 1998, saying he was a victim of the war in Bosnia. He lied by saying he had never worked and by saying he fled Bosnia in 1992, the indictment said.

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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
A New Jersey ice cream shop is changing its logo of a cartoon cow with a pronounced derriere after the play on words drew complaints that it was sexist.

Montclair studio and gallery owner Amy Tingle accused Dairy Air Ice Cream of sexualizing women to sell ice cream. The logo shows a female cow with her rear exposed eating ice cream.

The Record reports the Creativity Caravan owner wrote in an open letter to the community that she was "repulsed and offended."

The logo was not visible outside the store. But it was inside on furniture, walls and cups.

The store's manager, Natalie DeRosa, wrote on Facebook that Dairy Air Ice Cream takes the complaints seriously and is working "to change the cow to be more fun and less sexy."
Ohio police arrested a mother on Tuesday after she allegedly tried to rob a dollar store while her 1-year-old daughter was left unattended in the bathroom, reports said.

According to Fox 8, Mary Waguespack was at a Dollar General in Alliance when she allegedly attempted to make off with nearly $100 worth of store merchandise while her daughter was alone. She tried to flee the scene through the fire exit but tripped an alarm, Cleveland 19 News reported.

The little girl eventually escaped from the bathroom and was running around the store naked during her mothers alleged heist, according to a police report obtained by the outlet. The girl was eventually corralled by Waguespack, 36, Cleveland 19 News said.

GUY TAKES DATE FOR ROMANTIC DINNER, STEALS HER CREDIT CARD AN LAPTOP

Officers reportedly apprehended Waguespack and charged her with petty theft and endangering a child. The endangerment charge was raised to a fourth degree felony due to a previous child endangerment conviction in 2012, Fox 8 reported.

The little girl was reportedly picked up by Waguespacks husband, whom she was divorcing, while the mother was brought to jail, the outlet said. Child services were notified of the incident, Fox 8 reported.
Philadelphia is one step closer to getting rid of bulletproof glass in many of its small businesses as part of a larger effort to crack down on loitering, public urination and potential drug sales -- but the potential ban has triggered a backlash from shopkeepers.

The city's Public Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill Monday enabling Philadelphia's Department of Licenses and Inspections to regulate the bullet-resistant barricades that stand between customers and cash registers in many neighborhood corner stores, according to FOX29.

No establishment required to obtain a Large Establishment license  shall erect or maintain a physical barrier that requires the persons serving the food either to open a window or other aperture or to pass the food through a window or other aperture, in order to hand the food to a customer inside the establishment, the bill states. It also calls for larger establishments to have bathrooms for customers.

Several of the hundreds of deli owners told FOX29 they feel as though they are being singled out, and numerous shopkeepers are among those protesting the bill.

If the glass comes down, the crime rate will rise and there will be lots of dead bodies, Rich Kim, the owner of Broad Deli, which sells soda, meals and beer by the can, said. The most important thing is safety and the publics safety.

Kim said the glass went up after a shooting and he said it saved his mother-in-law from a knife attack.

Fox News previously reported the bill, put forward by Councilwoman Cindy Bass, focuses on stop-and-go convenience stores that act more like bars than the restaurants they are licensed to be, selling beer and shots of liquor over the counter and attracting crowds that end up becoming public nuisances, according to lawmakers.

Pennsylvania state law mandates businesses with restaurant licenses should regularly sell food and have tables and chairs to seat 30 people. But some businesses keep their seating locked up or out of reach and the grills shut down, selling little more than alcohol and forcing customers to wander outside.

Bass told Fox News in more than 90 percent of cases they are breaking the law in terms of operating outside the requirement of their license.

Bass said the bulletproof glass and partitions at some of these businesses are a concern of the citys health department -- if a customer is choking or having an allergic reaction, a barrier should not stand in the way of safety.

She also addressed the security concerns.

Thousands of businesses operate in the same neighborhoods with no Plexiglass, she told Fox News, mentioning stores such as Rite-Aid and barber shops. Ive never been to a bar with Plexiglass.

Kim objected to the claims the bill stemmed from nuisance complaints city officials got from constituents, and said calls to police often were met with slow responses.

The chairman of the Asian American Licensed Beverage Association of Philadelphia, which represents 217 beer delis in the city, also said most of the businesses being targeted are in not-as-safe neighborhoods.

A full council vote was slated for Dec. 14, according to FOX29.

The Public Health and Human Services Committee amended the bill Monday to give the Department of Licenses and Inspections until Jan. 1, 2021, to announce regulations on the barricades.

It says that the Department of Licenses and Inspections will determine no later than January 1, 2021 whether protective barriers like safety glass should exist in any large restaurant establishment and enforce any regulations stemming from that decision, Councilman David Oh said in a statement after the Monday hearing, according to NBC 10.

He added: In case there was any doubt about the Citys position, today City officials testified in support of removing these protective barriers. In other words, the City can and almost certainly will require the removal of safety glass as soon as the ordinance goes into effect."
An American hero is finally getting recognition 76 years after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ahead of Thursdays anniversary, the secretary of the U.S. Navy posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with valor to Chief Petty Officer Joe George, who died in 1996. The news comes five months after Fox News interviewed one of five living USS Arizona survivors, Donald Stratton, who urged the Navy to recognize Georges heroic actions that day.

George is credited with saving at least six sailors aboard USS Arizona as it was sinking after being struck several times by Japanese planes during the attack at Pearl Harbor.

Rear Adm. Matthew J. Carter, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, presented the medal to George's daughter, Joe Ann Taylor, during a ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Observing the ceremony will be four of the five remaining USS Arizona survivors.

In addition to Chief George's Bronze Star, the navy secretary also awarded the Silver Star Medal to Lt. Aloysious H. Schmitt for his actions at Pearl Harbor while serving on the battleship USS Oklahoma, the Navy said in a statement.

"The presentation of the medals is not only appropriate but simply the right thing to do," said Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer. "One of my highest priorities is to honor the service and sacrifice of our sailors, marines, civilians and family members and it is clear that Lt. Schmitt and Chief George are heroes whose service and sacrifice will stand as an example for current and future service members."

Donald Stratton and Lauren Bruner, another Arizona survivor, lobbied hard for George to be recognized. Both traveled to Washington, D.C., with Pearl Harbor survivors over the summer to meet President Donald Trump in the White House and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon.

In August, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution honoring Pearl Harbor hero George for rescuing six injured sailors from the sinking USS Arizona.

The resolution was cosponsored by U.S. Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

Joe George is an American hero and deserves this long-awaited honor, Gardner said. Veterans like Joe George and Donald Stratton are the best this country has to offer and I thank God every day for Americans like them.

In July, Arizona survivor Donald Stratton recalled the horror he experienced by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941.

We got hit with the big bomb and that exploded like a million pounds of ammunition. The fireball went about 60, 70 feet in the air, said Stratton, in an interview with Fox News before his visit to Washington.

The explosion could have taken us away, but it didn't and thank God we made it across, he added.

Stratton told the story of the man who passed him the vital lifeline to help him and five other USS Arizona sailors make it to safety.

Trapped aboard the sinking Arizona, Stratton and the others managed to escape the carnage, which killed 1,177 of his shipmates, with the help of a fellow sailor who threw them a lifeline from his own ship moored next to Arizona.

With burns over 60 percent of his body, Stratton had to escape his burning warship.

We proceeded to go hand over hand across the line about 70 feet, said Stratton. Today, he doesnt have fingerprints and carries scars across his body, a daily reminder of the horrors he endured at Pearl Harbor.

The toughest part was reaching the middle of the sagging line stretched across the two ships, and climbing up to the other ship.

He kept saying, "Come on sailor! You can make it," recalled Stratton about his rescuer, who remained a mystery for 60 years.

The man who rescued Stratton and his fellow sailors that day: Joe George.

In his book, "All the Gallant Men," Stratton described George as "perhaps the strongest man in the harbor, an All-Navy Boxer."

Stratton says George disobeyed his captain's order and threw Stratton the line that would save his life.

"It was kind of surreal. You grow up with your dad thinking of him as dad; you're not used to thinking of him as a hero," said Georges daughter, Joe Ann Taylor, in a statement. "But it's a wonderful story and I'm quite proud of him. Plus I've gotten to know the men he saved and have developed a real bond with the Stratton and Bruner families."

In an oral history documenting the Pearl Harbor attack conducted by the University of North Texas in 1978, George said on Dec. 7 he was settling down to read the Sunday newspaper when the General Quarters alarm was sounded. That's when he realized there was an attack underway. After seeing a Japanese plane going down, his training kicked in and he began to act.

With Japanese torpedoes striking Arizona, George recalled that the first thing he did, with help from several of his shipmates, was remove the awning covering the guns so that Vestal could fight back. Then he ran across the deck from fire to fire to help put them out.

There were "people over on the Arizona that were trying to get off, and there was fire all around," George said. "I threw a line over."

Stratton's granddaughter, Nikki, says she owes her life, in addition to her grandfather's, to that young sailor's heroic actions.

We have four generations here because of that man. We have 14 people in our family who wouldnt necessarily be here without Joe George, said Nikki Stratton.

We just kept asking, asking and asking and finally someone was able to dig through some of the archives and some of the interviews of the sailors about what happened that day and we found the name Joe George, she said.

His family asked the Navy to investigate his rescue and dig up interviews from the sailors who were at Pearl Harbor.

In 2001, Donald Stratton was attending his 60th reunion of Pearl Harbor survivors when he learned the identity of the man who rescued him. Sadly, Stratton never had a chance to thank his hero for saving his life. Joe George died in 1996.

He saved six people's lives and he didn't get anything, said Stratton in July. Somebody in Washington should have the guts and honor to take care of that.

It is a wonderful thing my father did. I am always overwhelmed by the story, Georges daughter said. Finding out what he did and how he did it  he did his duty, and its a shame he has never been recognized for it.

The Stratton family has set up a website, USS Arizona Final Salute, to help defray costs of the trip to Washington and raise money for other USS Arizona survivors to attend a future reunion in Hawaii in December.
During the last year, multiple schools across the U.S. have been impacted by shootings, which have resulted in the deaths of both students and faculty members.

Read on for a look at school shootings that have taken place within the last year.

Noblesville West Middle School, Indiana

A male student fired shots at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana on May 25, critically injuring another student and a teacher at the school.

The alleged shooter, who has not yet been identified, was taken into custody shortly after the incident occurred at roughly 9 a.m.

Sources told FOX 59 the suspect walked into a science classroom with a gun and opened fire, hitting a female. A science teacher was able to tackle the student who fired shots inside the classroom, student Ethan Stonebraker told The Associated Press.

The victims were taken to a local hospital. The extent of their injuries is unclear.

Santa Fe High School, Texas

At least eight people were killed and several others were injured following reports of an active shooter at a Texas high school on May 18, local affiliate KTRK reported. The suspected shooter was taken into custody.

"Personnel treating the injured. Info is still preliminary, but there are multiple casualties," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez confirmed.

Police officers responded to Santa Fe High School around 8 a.m. CDT after reports that a shooter opened fire inside a first-period art class. Details of the incident were not immediately available.

"Details will be released as we receive updated information. Law enforcement will continue to secure the building and initiate all emergency management protocols to release and move students to another location," the school district said in a statement.

Highland High School, California

A 14-year-old student was taken into custody after allegedly shooting a classmate at Highland High School in Palmdale, California on May 11.

The suspected gunman shot a fellow student in the arm, police said. The shooting stemmed from a dispute between the shooter and the victim, according to authorities.

The injured student is expected to make a full recovery.



Forest High School, Florida

A suspected gunman, later identified as 19-year-old Sky Bouche, allegedly opened fire at Forest High School in Ocala, Florida, on April 20. The shooting occured on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

At least one student was injured after the gunman shot through a classroom door, hitting a 17-year-old student in the ankle, authorities said. The student was later taken to a local hospital with a non-life-threatening injury.

A school resource officer, James Long, was hailed a hero after arresting Bouche just three minutes after he opened fire.

Bouche, a former student at the school, allegedly carried the weapon in a guitar case inside the school, authorities said.

Great Mills High School, Maryland

On March 20, a gunman, identified as 17-year-old Austin Rollins, shot 16-year-old sophomore Jaelynn Willey at Great Mills High School in Lexington Park, Maryland, authorities said. Willey died days later from her injuries.

Investigators believe the shooting was not random as the gunman and Willey had recently ended their relationship.

Rollins was fatally wounded during a confrontation with Deputy Blaine Gaskill, an armed school resource officer who doubles as a SWAT team member.

"Our school resource officer...pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter, fired a round at the shooter," St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said. "The shooter fired a round as well. In the hours and days to come, we'll be able to determine if our school resource officer's round struck the shooter."

Gaskill was praised because he reportedly contained the situation in under a minute, Cameron said.

Willey's parents announced on March 22 that their daughter was brain dead and that they would be taking her off of life support. She died later that night.

Jaelynn's mother, Melissa, told reporters her daughter had "no life left in her."

"On Tuesday ... our lives changed completely and totally forever. My daughter was hurt by a boy who shot her in the head and took everything from our lives," she said.

A 14-year-old boy, later identified as Desmond Barnes, was also injured in the shooting. Authorities said he was shot in the thigh but was later released from a local hospital.

Police are still investigating if the boy was shot by Rollins or Gaskill while the two exchanged gunfire.

Huffman High School, Alabama

A 17-year old girl is dead and one other person was left injured from a March 7 shooting at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama.

Courtlin Arrington, 17, was killed when shots were fired in a classroom, Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson told WBRC. A 17-year-old male student was wounded. He was taken to the hospital and released.

Birmingham Police Department announced March 8 that a student was taken into custody in the investigation into the deadly shooting. Police said evidence, surveillance video and statements were reviewed throughout the night.

Police initially called the shooting accidental, but later reviewed a video that captured the deadly incident.

"We're not saying he shot her, we're not saying he didn't shoot her," the chief said. "We're asking those questions ourselves so we can determine exactly what happened."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida

Police responded to reports of shots fired at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., around 3 p.m. on Feb. 14. Seventeen people lost their lives and 17 others were injured.

The day after the shooting, the suspected gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, told authorities he arrived at the school with an AR-15 rifle, adding that he shot "students that he saw in the hallways and on school grounds," according to an arrest affidavit.

Cruz may plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, his lawyer reportedly said Feb. 16.

Cruz was formally charged March 7 with 17 counts each of premeditated murder and attempted murder.

A 12-year-old girl was taken into custody after police said the loaded gun she brought to Salvador B. Castro Middle School in Los Angeles accidentally discharged on Feb. 1, shooting a 15-year-old boy in the head and a 15-year-old girl in the wrist.

Police interviewed the 12-year-old student and agreed the shooting was accidental. She was booked in a juvenile detention center on suspicion of negligently discharging a firearm on school grounds.

It is unclear where the girl got the gun or why she decided to bring it to her school.

Doctors said both students who were shot are expected to recover.

Additionally, an 11-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl were treated at the hospital and released while a 30-year-old woman, who is a school staff member, had only minor injuries, Los Angeles city police said in a statement.

Marshall County High School, Kentucky

A shooter opened fire at Marshall County High School in Benton, Ky., on Jan. 23, killing two people.

Students Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, both 15 years old, died.

Suspected shooter Gabriel Ross Parker, 15, was arraigned on Feb. 16, according to Kentucky State Police.

"A Marshall County Grand Jury returned an indictment on Tuesday, charging Parker with two counts of Murder and fourteen counts of First Degree Assault," KSP said.

Marshall County Circuit Clerk Tiffany Griffith told Reuters a judge entered a not guilty plea on the teen's behalf.

Italy High School, Texas

A 15-year-old girl was hurt in a Jan. 22 shooting at Italy High School in Italy, Texas. A 16-year-old male student was taken into custody, Ellis County police told Fox News.

In the school's cafeteria, the suspect "engaged the victim" and fired several shots with a semi-automatic handgun, Ellis County Sheriff Chuck Edge said during a press briefing.

The suspect was confronted by an Italy Independent School District staffer in the school cafeteria and took off, Edge said. Law enforcement later apprehended the suspect on school grounds.

The suspect was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Ellis County district attorney's office announced.

Aztec High School, New Mexico

Gunman William Atchison, 21, disguised himself as a student to get inside Aztec High School in Aztec, N.M., on Dec. 7, 2017, according to authorities. Atchison was also a former student.

State police said that Atchison killed students Francisco I. Fernandez and Casey J. Marquez.

Officials said Atchison eventually shot himself, adding that the students killed were not targeted, but were at the "wrong place at the wrong time."

Rancho Tehama Elementary School, California

A man in Northern California went on a random shooting rampage on Nov. 14, 2017, killing five people and wounding at least a dozen adults and children before authorities shot and killed him.

The gunman, who was later identified as Kevin Neal, 44, rammed a car into the gates of Rancho Tehama Elementary School and shot at its portable classrooms. He repeatedly tried to get into a kindergarten classroom but quick-thinking staff locked the school down, and he eventually stormed off.

Neal reportedly targeted the elementary school as part of a long-running feud with neighbors.

Mattoon High School, Illinois

A male student shot and injured a fellow student at a central Illinois high school on Sept. 20, 2017. The shooting unfolded in Mattoon High Schools cafeteria around 11:30 a.m., officials said at the time.

One female teacher intervened and successfully subdued and disarmed the gunman -- a move Mattoon Police Chief Jeff Branson said at the time was pivotal.

The gunman was taken into custody shortly after the incident.

Freeman High School, Washington

A 15-year-old student opened fire on fellow classmates at a Washington state high school on Sept. 13, 2017, killing one, investigators said. Caleb Sharpe, the suspected gunman, said the student who died had bullied him.

The slain student tried to stop the teen's rampage when the gun jammed, according to The Associated Press. A school janitor was hailed a hero after he was able to subdue the alleged shooter.

Three other students were wounded in the attack. According to court documents, Sharpe told officials that he brought the two guns to school to teach everyone a lesson about what happens when you bully others.

North Park Elementary School, California

A special needs teacher and a child, 8, were killed in what police said was a murder-suicide at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, California.

Police said Cedric Anderson walked into the school on April 10, 2017, and shot his estranged wife, Karen Elaine Smith. Two other students were also struck before Anderson killed himself, although law enforcement officials said they do not believe they were intended targets.

Jonathan Martinez was identified as the 8-year-old killed at the elementary school. A 9-year-old was injured.

Liberty-Salem High School, Ohio

Two high school students were injured after a fellow student allegedly fired a shotgun inside Liberty-Salem High School in Ohio on Jan. 20, 2017.

Logan Cole, who was 16 at the time, was shot twice but survived. Another student was grazed by a bullet. Champaign County Sheriff Matthew Melvin said the gunman intended to harm more students than he did.

Ely Serna, the accused gunman, was 17 at the time of the shooting but is being tried as an adult in Champaign County court. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Fox News' Nicole Darrah, Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Elizabeth Zwirz, Katherine Lam, Lucia I. Suarez Sang, Samuel Chamberlain, Kathleen Joyce, Shira Bush and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in Georgia say a bystander shot a man who was attacking a deputy who had just given him a ride to a gas station.

News outlets report Dawson County Sheriff Jeff Johnson said 52-year-old Sgt. Randy Harkness gave a courtesy ride to 30-year-old Justin Alan Foster on Tuesday, and tried to give him some money when Foster began striking him and trying to grab his gun.

Johnson said a woman got out of her car and began firing at Foster, who ran into another parking lot and assaulted an elderly woman. Bystanders subdued him until officers arrived.

Harkness and the elderly woman were treated and released. Foster was shot at least once and was brought to a hospital.

Johnson says Foster faces 14 charges. It's unclear if he has a lawyer.
The firestorm that's engulfed parts of Southern California has fire crews keeping an eye on "unprecedented" wind gusts as they work to fight the flames on what officials have described as "steep, inaccessible areas."

The National Weather Service has extended a red-flag warning through the weekend across much of the region, which indicates "critical" fire conditions exist in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, where fires have destroyed hundreds of homes since Sunday.

"If fire ignition occurs, there will be the potential for very rapid spread of wildfire with long-range spotting and extreme fire behavior that could lead to a threat to life and property," the weather service warned.

Fire officials warned those powerful winds can help to fan dangerous flames in any blaze that develops.

"These winds are pretty much unprecedented," Los Angeles County Fire Battalion Chief Trent Aronson told Fox News on Thursday.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES FORCE MASS EVACUATIONS AROUND LOS ANGELES

Aronson said the blazes this week have been particularly challenging because 60-mile-per hour wind gusts don't allow firefighters to actually fight the flames, but instead are simply taking precautionary measures to slow the spread.

At least five fires are currently tearing through Southern California, after a new blaze erupted Thursday in San Diego County. State fire officials said the Lilac Fire was "growing at a dangerous rate of spread," and so far has burned 2,500 acres and destroyed at least five buildings, according to Cal Fire.

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency late Thursday for the area, known for its equestrian facilities.

Crews battling the Skirball Fire that's burned 475 acres in LA are facing two extremes  very warm and windy conditions during the day and cold conditions at night, according to Aronson.

"These winds are pretty much unprecedented."  Los Angeles County Fire Battalion Chief Trent Aronson

In the initial days of a firefight, fire crews can work for a couple of days straight before reinforcements arrive, Cal Fire Spokeswoman Lynnette Round told Fox News.

Each incident team on the fire lines have a medical unit with them, but physical exhaustion also begins to set in for crews as the wildfire fight stretches into days, Aronson added.

RABBIT RESCUED FROM CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES BY ANONYMOUS HERO

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Peter Sanders said at a news conference Wednesday that firefighters spent much of the day trying to establish containment lines, and create fire breaks using hand crews to get as much as they could contained before the wind worsened.

"A lot of the area of this fire is in steep, inaccessible areas, inaccessible terrain that hasn't burned in decades, if not longer," Sanders said. "So some of the areas are very hard to get to during the day, it's obviously very harder at night."

Air tankers that were grounded much of the week because of high winds in Ventura County flew on Wednesday, dropping flame retardant on the Thomas Fire. Around 2,500 firefighters are working to attack the blaze about 60 miles north of Los Angeles before winds picked up again. The blaze is only 5 percent contained and has burned 96,000 acres.

"We're basically in an urban firefight in Ventura, where if you can keep that house from burning, you might be able to slow the fire down," Tim Chavez, a fire behavior specialist at the blaze, said during a news conference. "But that's about it."

Further south, crews continued to battle the Rye Fire in Los Angeles County, which as of Thursday had burned 7,000 acres and was 15 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

County fire spokesman Kenichi Haskett told Fox News on Thursday that fire crews don't usually experience blazes as seen this week so late in the year, but Southern California has not gotten any rain recently.

"It's dry, so we're faced with a lot of dry vegetation and dead trees," Haskett said.

CALIFORNIA FAMILY WHO LOST HOME TO WILDFIRE FINDS WEDDING RING AMONG RUBBLE

There is help coming to the region from other parts of California and neighboring states.

Oregon's Office of Emergency Management announced on Tuesday that 10 strike teams were heading to southern California to help, and the Oregon State Fire Marshal reported five additional strike teams are being ordered.

Portland firefighter Damon Simmons told FOX 12 Oregon everyone is still in shock over the voracity of the wildfire season. But even during the holidays, there is no question where they want and need to be.

"It's one of those things where you have those discussions and you say 'Hey look, there's a real need here in California," Simmons told FOX 12. "They need help, so maybe we can push some of those holiday celebrations back, and maybe reschedule some of those vacations because people need us."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
The relentless wind-whipped wildfires ravaging Southern California are expected to worsen Thursday, as dangerous winds are forecast to fan the flames in different directions and force more evacuations from a region where more than 200,000 people have already fled.

Winds on Thursday morning topped 50 mph in the greater Los Angeles area, keeping residents across the region wary after seeing nearly 200 homes and buildings destroyed since the fires broke out late Sunday.

We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event, Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the Los Angeles Times. There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds.

The Skirball Fire, which erupted Wednesday morning, has burned about 500 acres so far near large estates in the ritzy Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and is only five percent contained.

PHOTOS: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES RAGE

Firefighters are battling to save multimillion-dollar homes in the path of the flames while trying to evacuate residents.

"We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event. There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds."  Ken Pimlott, director of Cal Fire

These are days that break your heart, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a news conference. These are also days that show the resilience of our city.

No fatalities or civilian injuries have been reported since the firestorm started Sunday, according to Reuters. Three firefighters were injured and hospitalized in stable condition as a result of the Skirball Fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

The Getty Center and nearby Skirball Center, both on the west side of the 405 freeway opposite the blaze, did not appear to be threatened. Both facilities were closed for the day and were to remain closed Thursday, FOX11 reported. Santa Monica College and all schools in the Santa Monica-Malibu school district were also closed Thursday, according to FOX11.

CALIFORNIA FAMILY WHO LOST HOME TO WILDFIRE FINDS WEDDING RING AMONG RUBBLE

In addition to 40 charter schools, 52 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were closed citywide in response to the Skirball Fire and other blazes, district officials said.

Officials warned the color-coded system showing the expected strength of the Santa-Ana winds on Thursday driving the region's fierce wildfires had reached uncharted territory, pushing past red -- which means "high" -- into the color purple, meaning "extreme."

"We're talking winds that can be 80 miles an hour," Pimlott said. "These will be winds that there will no ability to fight fires."

Those fierce winds can instantly turn a tiny fire into a large one, or carry embers that spark new fires miles away.

Millions of cellphones buzzed loudly Tuesday night from San Diego to Santa Barbara with a sound that usually means an Amber Alert; but this time the noise signaled a rare weather warning for strong winds.

Officials hope the electronic push will keep the whole region alert and keep the death toll from the week's fires at zero.

THOMAS FIRE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOINS LIST OF DESTRUCTIVE BLAZES IN THE STATE

Melissa Rosenzweig, 47, was briefly back home Tuesday after evacuating her Ventura house, which has been spared so far while most on her street had burned in the largest and most destructive of the region's fires, the Thomas Fire. She and her husband were about to evacuate again, hoping they would get lucky twice as the new winds arrive.

"Heck yeah, I'm still worried," Rosenzweig told the AP. "We're very grateful but I know we're not out of the woods."

In what may have been an early sign of the 140-square-mile fire getting new life, several thousand new evacuations were ordered late Tuesday night in Ojai, a town of artists and resorts.

The 90,000-acre fire had been creeping there already, sweeping through mountain ridges and canyons to the sea, but an increase in winds pushed it close enough for many more to flee.

The Thomas Fire has killed more than two dozen horses at a stable and had destroyed at least 150 structures, a number that was expected to get far bigger as firefighters are able to assess losses.

Air tankers that had been grounded much of the week because of high winds flew on Wednesday, dropping flame retardant. Firefighters rushed to attack the fires before winds picked up again.

"We're basically in an urban firefight in Ventura, where if you can keep that house from burning, you might be able to slow the fire down," said Tim Chavez, a fire behavior specialist. "But that's about it."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A United Nations official who is an expert on poverty will visit the U.S.  one of the worlds richest nations  to study how the country deals with impoverished communities from coast to coast.

While the U.S. is awash in personal wealth that totals $153 trillion, according to Fortune Magazine, it also has pockets of extreme poverty.

Philip Alston, who works with the United Nations to monitor human rights and poverty that exists across the world, has been crisscrossing the country for a 15-day tour of some of the countrys poorest neighborhoods.

The U.N. official will visit Alabama this week to explore the states poverty, inequality and barriers to political participation.

Alston started his U.S. tour last Friday and will also visit California, West Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, AL.com reported.

Alston said he will go to California to investigate the states homeless problem and will visit West Virginia to look into the dwindling industrial jobs available there.

ALABAMA CHURCH COMPARES ROY MOORE TO JESUS

"Some might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States. But despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and inequality," Alston wrote in a statement.

On Thursday Alston will be visiting Lowndes County, Ala. to look into any problem the area has with health care, sanitation and gaining access to safe drinking water.

In September, a study found a small amount of people living in Lowndes County had tested positive for hookworm  a parasite that enters into the body through the skin, The Guardian reported. The parasite sucks the blood out of the host after it attaches itself to the small intestine. The parasitic disease is common in poverty-stricken areas.

ROY MOORES SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS CLOUD ALABAMA SPECIAL SENATE ELECTION

The county has 11,000 residents with an average income of $18,000 a year, The Guardian reported.

Alston will also visit Montgomery to meet with civil rights advocacy groups and civil service members in the area.

"I would like to focus on how poverty affects the civil and political rights of people living within the U.S., given the United States' consistent emphasis on the importance it attaches to these rights in its foreign policy, and given that it has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Alston said.

The U.N. official will also look into voting rights in the state and government efforts to eradicate poverty in the county, and how they related to U.S. obligations under international human rights law.

He planned to meet with government officials, people living in poverty, academic experts and civil society organizations, AL.com reported.

On Friday, Alston was slated to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C. to speak about what he found during his trip and give ideas and recommendations on how to address the problems he saw. His full report will be presented in 2018 before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The reaction at the United Nations to President Donald Trumps historic announcement on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel was swift  and critical. Minutes after the presidents address, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who rarely engages the press at the world body, came out and read a statement that in part criticized the presidents new policy on Jerusalem.

From day one as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said.

While taking no questions from reporters, Guterres said there can be no other way to peace other than the two-state solution: In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear  there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B.

Seven members of the U.N. Security Council have requested an emergency meeting on Jerusalem that could come as early as Friday. Those members include the U.K, France, Egypt and Sweden.

Earlier in the day, an outspoken critic of the U.S. and Israel, Ambassador Sacha Llorentty-Soliz of Bolivia, told reporters if Trump went ahead with his decision, it would threaten the peace process and would be a reckless and a dangerous decision that goes against international law and resolutions of the Security Council.

While President-elect, Trump took aim at the U.N.s anti-Israel stance following passage of U.N. Resolution 2334, a legally binding U.N. Security Council resolution that said Israels presence in parts of Jerusalem was illegal. The December 2016 vote resulted in the Obama administration famously changing decades of U.S. policy by refusing to veto the anti-Israel measure that said settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was a fragrant violation of international law.

A few days after the resolution passed, Trump tweeted that, We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but he continued, not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

A longtime Republican foreign policy advisor close to the White House told Fox News on background that, The Obama administration secretly helped draft and pass the December 2016 resolution denying Israels connection to Jerusalem. President-elect Trump immediately blasted the resolution and promised to end that nonsense. His speech today is exactly what he promised. It is an arrow aimed at the heart of U.N. bias against Israel. 

Concerns over the Security Council resolution and anti-Israel bias have been a consistent feature of U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haleys tenure in New York.

Haley released a statement on the presidents decision calling the move a courageous and historic step. Haley, who visited Israel in June, added, Across the globe, America has its embassy in the capital city of the host country. Israel will now be no different. It is the just and right thing to do.

Eugene Kontorovich, head of international law at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think tank, has testified to Congress on the subject, and said Trumps decision on Jerusalem is the right one.

President Trump has complete authority under U.S. and international law to recognize Jerusalem on behalf of the U.S., Kontorovich said. U.N Sec. Res 2344 is entirely non-binding. Nothing in international law prevents this. Moreover, the president has complete constitutional power to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli, as the Supreme Court ruled a few years ago in the Jerusalem passport case.

Kontorovich, who is a professor of international and constitutional law at Northwestern University, continued, This is a bold and historic decision, comparable to the President Trumans recognition of Israel as a state 70 years ago. It rectifies a longstanding absurdity and injustice  treating the capital of the Jewish state as not even part of the country. It also breaks the racist international consensus that holds that Jews cannot live in their holy citys ancient precincts. It also firmly rejects the view that the 1949 Armistice Lines have any legal status or legitimacy.

Danny Danon, Israels ambassador to the world body, hailed Trumps decision as historic and called on other nations to follow.

Now is the time for all U.N. member-states to follow the lead of our American friends and recognize our ancient capital of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, he said.
Over the skies of South Korea Wednesday, dramatic photos showed an Air Force supersonic bomber with U.S. and allied fighter jets in formation.

But there were supposed to be two Air Force bombers flying together.

In another sign of the maintenance challenges facing the U.S. military after years of budget cuts, the Air Force B-1B bomber that flew to South Korea from Guam on Wednesday was forced to leave behind its wingman.

The second bomber reported a maintenance issue while taxiing to the runway for takeoff, according to an Air Force officer who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

We only had a 30-minute launch window to meet the tanker, while flying from Guam to South Korea the officer said.

The B-1B was taking part in the annual Vigilant ACE air exercises which included fifth-generation F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter jets for the first time. Overall, more than 230 aircraft between the United States and South Korea are taking part in the five-day exercise which concludes Friday.

U.S. Air Force officials said the training mission over South Korea required only one bomber. They said the second bomber was backup, but two were scheduled to launch Wednesday.

If this had been war, that other bomber would have flown, a senior Air Force official said. It was a minor maintenance issue that was quickly corrected.

The grounded American bomber was not the only glitch this week for the U.S. Air Force. A state-of-the-art F-22 stealth fighter jet was towed from the runway after landing in South Korea this week, although the Air Force later found no problems with the aircraft, according to Stars and Stripes.

The fact only half the number of B-1B bombers were able to carry out its training mission Wednesday falls roughly in line with the mission capability rates of the Air Forces B-1 fleet. Today, only about half the B-1s in the inventory can fly. The Air Force is nearly 2,000 pilots and about 4,000 aircraft mechanics short. Spare parts are hard to come by for the bomber that first entered service in the 1980s.

The shortage has become so bad that some bomber air crews are forced to scrounge for parts in a remote desert scrapheap known as The Boneyard.

Twenty years ago, B-1s averaged roughly 1,000 flight hours on their air frames. Today, that number in many cases exceeds 10,000 hours.

When Fox News visited a B-1 base in South Dakota in 2016, a similar scene played out to the one in Guam Wednesday.

Two B-1 bombers were supposed launch from Ellsworth Air Force Base to fly nearly 1,000 miles south to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for a live-fire exercise.

On that day though, only one of the two B-1s that taxied to the runway was able to take off and make the training mission on time. The other sat near the runway for two hours. It eventually took off but was unable to participate in the live-fire exercise and diverted to a different mission, its crew missing out on valuable training at White Sands.

It is not immediately clear why a spare bomber was not available from Guam to complete the training mission.

There are only six B-1B bombers currently deployed to Guam, and today, one unable to complete the mission.
Brain abnormalities have been found in the U.S. diplomats who were victims of suspected attacks at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, according to a new report.

Doctors discovered that white matter in the brains of Embassy workers had developed changes, The Associated Press reported. White matter allows different areas of the brain to communicate.

At least 24 U.S. Embassy officials in Cuba had reported hearing loud, grating noises before experiencing ear issues, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping.

CUBA CITES LACK OF EVIDENCE IN MYSTERIOUS SONIC ATTACKS ON DIPLOMATS

Some victims knew immediately that the attack was affecting their bodies, while some developed physical symptoms within 24 hours.

Other Americans who were not working but were traveling in Cuba had also reported experiencing weird symptoms similar to those that the U.S. officials reported, the State Department said.

While investigators had initially suspected what personnel were expecting as sonic attacks, officials are now avoiding that term.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that he believes the Embassy workers were victims of targeted attacks, but noted the U.S. doesnt know who perpetrated them.

However, Tillerson did say that the blame for the attacks falls on Cuba, as its government is responsible for the safety of diplomats in their country.

FIRST RECORDING EMERGES OF HIGH-PITCHED 'SONIC WEAPON' LINKED TO ATTACKS ON US EMBASSY WORKERS IN CUBA

Cuba has denied all accusations of involvement and claimed the Trump administration was deliberately lying about the attacks.

The Cuban government has also asked that the U.S. release its findings of the attacks for Cuba to investigate. Tillerson has said that while the U.S. had released some information, the country wont release additional details that could allow the perpetrator to determine how effective the attacks were.

Most of the victims have fully recovered, officials told The Associated Press.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Beijing is objecting to an Indian aerial vehicle's intrusion into its airspace after the unmanned vehicle crashed in Chinese territory.

The official Xinhua News Agency on Thursday cited the deputy chief of the Chinese military's Western Theater Command Zhang Shuili as expressing China's "dissatisfaction and opposition" to the intrusion.

It cited Zhang as saying Chinese border troops identified the device and would continue to maintain China's sovereignty and security.

No further details were given about the vehicle or when or where it crashed.

Much of the 3,500-kilometer (2,174-mile) border between China and India is contested, and the neighbors fought a brief but bloody frontier war in 1962.
French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Qatar for a one-day trip to the country amid a boycott of Doha by four Arab nations.

Macron landed on Thursday and was to visit French troops stationed in the country, as well as talk to its ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Macron's visit comes just after a planned two-day Gulf Cooperation Council meeting collapsed in just a few hours over the ongoing Qatar diplomatic crisis.

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began their boycott in June over allegations that Doha supports extremists and has too-close relations with Iran.

Qatar has long denied supporting extremists and shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Tehran.
An "outbreak of war" on the Korean peninsula is "an established fact," North Korea said Wednesday, issuing its most stark assessment of the current crisis after Pyongyang's recent intercontinental ballistic missile test and the ongoing joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea.

The warning came hours after a B-1B supersonic bomber flew over the Korean peninsula as a show of force against Kim Jong Uns regime.

"The large-scale nuclear war exercises conducted by the U.S. in succession are creating touch-and-go situation on the Korean peninsula and series of violent war remarks coming from the U.S. high-level politicians amid such circumstances have made an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact, an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman said through the states Korean Central News Agency. The remaining question now is: when will the war break out."

The Foreign Ministry spokesman cautioned North Korea does not wish for a war but shall not hide from it. He accused the U.S. of miscalculating the Hermit Kingdoms patience and lighting the fuse for a nuclear war.

We will surely make the U.S. dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force which we have consistently strengthened," the spokesman said.

The U.S. and South Korea continued their annual Vigilant Ace drills Wednesday in a show of force. A B-1B flew from U.S. territory Guam to South Korea -- but it was only one of the two bombers supposed to head toward the peninsula. The second bomber reported maintenance issues while taxiing to the runway for takeoff, an Air Force officer said.

"Through the drill, the South Korean and U.S. air forces displayed the allies' strong intent and ability to punish North Korea when threatened by nuclear weapons and missiles," the South Korean military said in a statement.

The five-day drills began Monday and included more than 230 aircraft, including six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Even before the drills began, North Korea issued a series of missives, insisting the annual exercise brought the countries closer to a nuclear war.

White House national Security Advisor HR McMaster told Fox News Sunday: "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.
Fears of a North Korean missile accidentally obliterating a passenger plane during one of Kim Jong Uns unannounced, uncoordinated rocket launches prompted at least one airline to change its flight course this year, a spokesperson told Fox News on Thursday.

Singapore Airlines, in response to North Koreas July launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, changed its route for flights between Incheon, South Korea and Los Angeles, Calif. The new route avoided the northern part of the Sea of Japan, the spokesperson said.

"The safety of our customers and crew is our number one priority and we continuously monitor the areas that we overfly, the spokesperson added.

While Singapore Airlines have continued to avoid the area, a flight crew on a different airline last Wednesday reported seeing North Koreas latest ICBM launch. Cathay Pacific said Monday passengers and crew on the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong reported witnessing the flight of the Hwasong-15 ICBM.

The missile was far from the plane, and the plane's operation was unaffected, Cathay said, adding 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."

Korean Air pilots on two different planes also reported seeing flashes of light believed to have been the North Korean missile while flying over Japan, airline spokesman Cho Hyun-mook said. The flights, one from San Francisco and the other from Los Angeles, were both headed for Incheon, the main airport serving Seoul, South Korea.

Singapore Airlines said it was aware of reports about Cathay Pacific flight crews missile sighting and was closely monitoring the situation.

The chances of one of Kims missiles actually hitting a civilian plane is very low, experts said. North Korea likely chooses splashdown points for each stage that avoid airline routes, said Vipin Narang, an expert on nuclear strategy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"The problem is if the test goes awry in any way, and debris starts falling in...more heavily trafficked areas," he said in an email. "That would still be low probability but more risky."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli troops who deployed tear gas and stun grenades during a second day of demonstrations against U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the American embassy.

Demonstrations that began in the morning as largely peaceful and muted took a more violent turn in the afternoon as hundreds of residents in the West Bank cities of Rahhallah and Bethlehem vented their frustration with Trumps decision to break with decades of U.S. policy and long-standing international assurances that Jerusalems fate would be decided in negotiations with Israelwhich captured the eastern half of the city in 1967.

Protesters set fire to tires, hurled stones at troops in riot gear, burned U.S. flags and chanted anti-American and anti-Trump slogans. Troops fired water cannons and tear gas in Bethlehem and in Rahmallah, the seat of the Palestinian government. Fires set by protesters sent a plume of black smoke over the city. A truck reportedly plowed into a group of protesters in the city of Beit Jala.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

Hamas, a terrorist group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s. But the group's capabilities are more limited now. Gaza, Hamas' stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

The U.S. State Department advised Americans to avoid Jerusalems Old City and the West Bank in anticipation of Trumps decision.

TRUMP OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZES JERUSALEM AS ISRAEL'S CAPITAL, ORDERS EMBASSY MOVE FOR US

Trump was warned that these clashes were likely. However, the question is whether they last for a few days or morph into a sustained uprising.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments."

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although Trump's decision had no immediate impact on the city's daily life, it carried symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, welcomed Trump's decision.

Negative reaction in the Arab world and parts of Europe about Trumps decision was swift.

Turkey, where thousands of people took to the streets late on Dec. 6, called Trumps move irresponsible.

Qatars foreign minister said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all those who seek peace.

This can rock global security and stability, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, leader of the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, told a news conference in which he called for the United States to reconsider its decision, reports Yahoo! News.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he didnt support Americas unilateral move, while British Prime Minister Theresa May said through a spokesman that she disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a peace agreement could be signed in the region.

U.S. embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Trump's move, the United States disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

With its decision, the U.S. has isolated itself and Israel, and has pushed the area into a dangerous situation and stopped the peace process, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Abbas aid. Without a doubt, this decision will not help at all in solving the problems in the area, but rather strengthen the extremists.

The Associated Press and Fox News Foreign Correspondent Conor Powell contributed to this report.
Amid mounting security concerns for personnel and citizens abroad, the U.S. government is requesting that Israel restrain its response to the news that Washington will recognize Jerusalem as the countrys capital, Reuters reported Thursday, citing a State Department document.

The Dec. 6 document, which was sent to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and U.S. officials at several European embassies, specifically references Washington's concern about backlash in the Middle East.

We expect there to be resistance to this news in the Middle East and around the world," the document states, according to Reuters. "We are still judging the impact this decision will have on U.S. facilities and personnel overseas."

The communique instructs U.S. diplomats to tell Israeli officials to moderate their enthusiasm, Reuters reported.

While I recognize that you will publicly welcome this news, I ask that you restrain your official response, the document reads, outlining talking points for U.S. diplomats meeting with their Israeli counterparts.

The document contained a message for diplomats based at several U.S. embassies throughout Europe as well.

You are in a key position to influence international reaction to this announcement and we are asking you to amplify the reality that Jerusalem is still a final status issue between Israelis and Palestinians and that the parties must resolve the dimensions of Israels sovereignty in Jerusalem during their negotiations, the document says, according to Reuters.

You know that this is a unique Administration. It makes bold moves, the document continues. But it is bold moves that are going to be needed if peace efforts are finally going to be successful.

A second State Department document obtained by Reuters stated that the U.S. has set up a task force to track worldwide developments concerning its historic recognition of Jerusalem.

Such task forces are typically established when there is concern for the security of U.S. workers or citizens abroad, Reuters reported, citing a government source.

On Wednesday, Palestinian officials declared the Mideast peace process finished and Turkey announced it would host a meeting of Islamic nations next week to give Muslim countries leaders an opportunity to coordinate a response.

The Arab League scheduled an emergency meeting on Saturday, and terror group Hamas is calling for a day of rage Friday.

"The youth and the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank need to respond with all means available to the U.S. decision that harms our Jerusalem, Hamas said in a statement. Jerusalem is a red line and the resistance will not allow any desecration of it.

The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and fear that Trumps declaration essentially imposes on them a disastrous solution for one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There is no way that there can be talks with the Americans. The peace process is finished. They have already pre-empted the outcome, said Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi. They cannot take us for granted.

The U.S. decision destroys the peace process, added Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Uhuru Kenyatta signs Marriage Bill into law

Wednesday December 6 2017 Advertisement By Agencies A law allowing men in Kenya to marry as many women as they want has been signed into law by President Uhuru Kenyatta, despite criticism from women's groups. A statement from the presidency confirmed that the Bill, which it said "consolidates various laws relating to marriage", had been signed into law.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a triumphant visit to the newly liberated city of Kherson. He hailed the Russian withdrawal from the southern city as the beginning of the end of the war but also acknowledged the heavy price Ukrainian soldiers are paying in their grinding effort to push back the invaders. Retaking Kherson was one of Ukraines biggest successes in the nearly 9-month-old war and delivered another stinging blow to the Kremlin. But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are still under Russian control, and the city of Kherson itself is without water, power and heat, and remains within reach of Moscows shells and missiles. Heavy fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine.
A fundraiser Saturday featuring salsa dancing and Puerto Rican fare will raise money for residents of the U.S. territory pummeled by a massive hurricane in September.

It is the latest effort by Miguel Santiago, the owner of Linx Deli on U.S. 1 in North Stafford, to bring relief to the island that is still largely functioning on generator power.

Earlier this year, Santiago collected 12,000 pounds of supplies to ship to Puerto Rico, where many of his relatives are living. Santiago is also a major in the Puerto Rico Army National Guard.

The event on Saturday at Aquia Episcopal Church will raise money for nonprofit organizations providing aid to victims of Hurricane Maria, he said. The Category 4 storm was one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the U.S.

While water service has been restored to homes and businesses on the island, Santiago said, "It's like the 1940s. You take your clothes to the river and wash them and bring them back to the house to dry just because there's no electricity."

Saturday's family-friendly event, called a Salsa and Bohemia Evening, will include music, dancing and food from Linx Deli. Tickets, which cost $20, include admission, food and a soft drink.

The fundraiser begins at 5 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m. Aquia Episcopal Church is at 2938 Jefferson Davis Hwy.
More than 30 people, including at least two from the Fredericksburg area, have been charged as part of a massive federal investigation into drug-related criminal activity in Virginia and elsewhere, authorities said.

According to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office, the investigation dubbed Operation Tin Panda targeted Bloods gang members involved in drug dealing, illegal firearm distribution, homicide and robbery, among other things. Several federal law-enforcement agencies and multiple local ones, including the sheriffs offices in Stafford, Spotsylvania and King George counties, participated in the probe.

Twenty-eight people were arrested Wednesday in coordinated raids in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and California, the news release states.

Among those arrested were Brandon Kendall Edler, 23, of Spotsylvania and Cory Alexander Patterson, 34, of Fredericksburg.

Edler was charged with conspiracy to distribute at least 28 grams of cocaine base while Patterson was charged with conspiracy to distribute a kilogram or more of heroin and carrying a firearm while participating in drug trafficking.

Court records state that Patterson, known as Hush Money, sold large amounts of heroin and weapons to an undercover informant between April and June. Most of the deals occurred in Prince William County.

During one of the deals, court records state, authorities followed Patterson around the Fredericksburg area and then north on Interstate 95 to the meeting place in Dumfries. One of the guns Patterson sold during an April deal was later determined to have been stolen from a home in Spotsylvania.

Edler was convicted of a drug offense in Stafford Circuit Court in 2013, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison with all but six months suspended, court records show.

During the overall investigation, federal authorities said they recovered more than 70 weapons, 1,292 grams of cocaine base, 4,408 grams of cocaine, 2,152 grams of crystal methamphetamine, 815 grams of heroin and 23,838 grams of marijuana.
The Interstate 95 express lanes in Stafford County will be the scene of a criminal investigation Friday morning as police will be searching for the remains of a missing Washington, D.C., woman.

The Virginia State Police said in a release that the agency will be working with the Metropolitan Police Department in what has been reported as a search for the remains of Pamela Butler, a former federal worker who disappeared from her Washington, D.C., home on Feb. 12, 2009.

The express lanes in the Garrisonville area will be closed at 10 a.m. The search is expected to last a few hours.

The state police said the primary interstate lanes will not be affected.

A former boyfriend confessed in October to killing Butler, 47. Jose RodriguezCruz struck a deal with authorities in which his first-degree murder charge would be dropped to second degree and in exchange he would plead guilty and take police to her remains.

The 52-year-old RodriguezCruz admitted to strangling Butler to death at her home on Fourth Street in Northwest Washington on Feb. 12, 2009, according to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorneys Office. He was given a 12-year sentence.

If RodriguezCruz refuses to assist law enforcement in locating Ms. Butlers body, or if he misleads police or otherwise does not make his best efforts to provide the location, the plea agreement is to be declared null and void, and he will face the original charge in the case of first-degree premeditated murder, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in an October release announcing the plea.

Prosecutors said that RodriguezCruz and Butler were in a romantic relationship at the time of her disappearance.

He told prosecutors that the couple argued that night over his job and him holding up his end on finances. He said he punched her, then got on top his girlfriend and strangled her.

He turned off Butlers home security system and lowered her body out of a first-floor window. He then put her body in his nearby car, drove off and disposed of her remains.

In a Washington Post story about an April hearing in the case, prosecutors described RodriguezCruz as a violent man who also is suspected in another girlfriends disappearance.

This man doesnt impulsively kill. He abducts women, duct-tapes them, sexually assaults them and then holds them captive, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner. Duct tape and a gun are his weapon of choice.
A Spotsylvania man has been charged with multiple offenses in connection with an incident last month in which another man claims he was sexually assaulted after being abducted at knifepoint.

Carl Anthony Bush, 54, is charged with aggravated sexual battery, abduction with the intent to defile. malicious wounding and grand larceny. He is being held in the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

According to an affidavit for a search warrant filed by Spotsylvania Detective Sharon Williams, the victim showed up at Stafford Hospital last month to receive stitches in his ear, side and finger. He told deputies that Bush had been his friend for a couple of years and that he had planned to hang out with him and have a few drinks.

According to the complaint, the victim alleged that when Bush showed up at the home, he summoned the man into the garage then pulled the door down behind them. He then pulled a butcher knife from behind his back and said he was feeling "crazy" and was "going to do what I want."

The affidavit states that both men were cut during the ensuing struggle over the knife. Bush eventually regained control of the weapon and threatened to kill and torture the victim if he didn't comply, the affidavit says.

The victim said he was told that Bush's relatives were out of town and that he could be held hostage for several days.

The affidavit goes on to describe several sex acts that occurred while the knife was pressed against the victim's back. The victim told police he had never seen Bush act like that, but knew he'd spent many years in an Alabama prison.

During the incident, $200 was taken from the victim's pocket, according to the affidavit.

The victim stated that he finally convinced Bush to stop the attack and agreed to "forget the whole thing." They agreed to go to a friend's house in Fredericksburg, but Bush insisted on driving because he didn't trust the victim. The victim said he was warned that he'd be killed if he left Bush that night.

The victim said he finally convinced Bush to let him drive because Bush had no license. While they were switching places at a Fredericksburg location, the victim drove off, leaving Bush behind.

Bush was found by police and arrested a few days later, the affidavit states. A butcher knife with dried blood on it was recovered from his home.

Williams wrote the Bush later confirmed that there was an altercation that night, but said it was over drugs. He said he wanted to buy cocaine, while the victim wanted to buy heroin. Bush told Williams that it was his money that was going to be used for either purchase.

A preliminary hearing for Bush is scheduled for Jan. 17 in Spotsylvania General District Court.
Rondall Shiflett Sr. was locking up his house for the night late Dec. 6, 2015, when his wife told him that car lights were shining into their bedroom window.

Shiflett looked out and saw the lights and saw a second vehicle pull into his 750-foot driveway off Piney Branch Road in a secluded section of Spotsylvania County. Shiflett testified in Spotsylvania Circuit Court Wednesday that the second vehicle was there about 30 seconds before getting back onto Piney Branch Road headed toward Brock Road.

Shiflett said he grabbed a flashlight and his pistol and got into his truck to investigate the first vehicle, which was still sitting there about 70 feet off the road with its engine running and with its front passenger door wide open.

I didnt know what was going on but I had a feeling that something wasnt right, Shiflett testified. He said he called out to the young woman inside, then dialed 911 when she didnt respond.

Shifletts feeling was correct. Heather Ciccone, 21, was dead in the drivers seat, the victim of a gunshot to the back of her head.

Joshua Christopher Williams, 29, is on trial this week in Spotsylvania Circuit Court for what authorities claim was his role in the late-night slaying. Williams is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Neither Shiflett nor the first arriving deputies realized at first that Ciccone was fatally injured. Shiflett testified that he first thought the young lady was sleeping behind the wheel, and deputies testified that didnt realize the extent of the situation until they began to remove her from the car to perform CPR.

Deputy Michael Pearce said when he put his hand behind Ciccones head, it was immediately drenched in blood.

Prosecutors have spent the past three days laying out a detailed case that they hope will convince a jury that Williams was involved in the slaying. Defense attorneys contend that there is insufficient evidence tying Williams to the crime.

Evidence presented so far has indicated that the mother of Williams children, Danielle Long, became irate with Ciccone after learning that she was in a physical relationship with Williams. During the months prior to the slaying, according to the evidence, Long threatened Ciccone, attacked her on social media and at one point went to her home to confront her.

One witness testified on Tuesday that she was on the phone with Ciccone the night of her slaying. Their call was interrupted, she said, by a call from Williams, known as Face. Prosecutors say Williams made that call to set up the slaying.

Ciccone associated with several known drug dealers, including Williams, and prosecutors spent a good portion of Wednesday putting on evidence showing that certain one-time suspects were nowhere near the murder scene.

Deandre Lego Scott and his girlfriend testified that they came from King George that night to meet Ciccone at the Mark at Salem Station in Spotsylvania. Scott had contacted Ciccone earlier asking her to acquire a large quantity of marijuana for him and was coming to pick it up.

Shantece Tyler, Scotts girlfriend, said they waited for at least 30 minutes and, after being unable to reach Ciccone by phone, went back to King George.

FBI Special Agent David Church said a detailed analysis of phone records supported the stories told by Scott and Tyler.

However, Scott didnt totally escape trouble. He was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery after police found text messages between Scott and someone identified only as Cueball discussing the possibility of robbing Ciccone.

Scotts case is still pending in Spotsylvania General District Court. The other man has not been charged.

Williams trial is scheduled for five days, but there was talk Wednesday that the case may spill over into next week. Among the witnesses still scheduled to testify is Jonathan Vejarano, who is also charged with first-degree murder in the Ciccone case.

Court records show that Vejarano reportedly told inmates in the Rappahannock Regional Jail that he killed Ciccone at the direction of Williams.
The former president of Peaceable Farm horse rescue in Orange County was convicted of a single felony charge of embezzlement Thursday as part of a plea deal with the commonwealth that dismissed a dozen other counts of embezzlement.

As part of the deal, Anne Shumate Williams, 59, also dropped her appeal in a related case in which she was found guilty last month of 25 counts of animal cruelty and sentenced to 18 months in jail with another 90 months suspended.

In accepting the consolidated plea deal, Orange Circuit Judge Daniel Bouton reinstated the 18-month sentence, of which Williams will serve half of that time due to the crimes being misdemeanors.

On the embezzlement charge, Williams entered an Alford plea and the judge sentenced her to five years in jail with all of it suspended. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that there is enough evidence for a conviction.

Bouton ordered Williams to report to Central Virginia Jail in Orange at 6 p.m. on Dec. 31 to begin serving her total of nine months in both cases. Upon release, she was ordered to be on good behavior for a period of 10 years and supervised probation for five years. She cannot own any animals for five years and must pay court costs, undergo a mental health evaluation and submit her DNA.

Orange County Commonwealths Attorney Diana OConnell said Thursday that Williams diverted nearly $128,000 in donations to Peaceable Farmincorporated as a nonprofit in 2012to purchase services and horses to breed for profit. Before it closed in 2015, the horse rescue received some $4.3 million in total contributions, the prosecutor said.

OConnell contended it was the misappropriation of funds that caused the suffering of multiple animals discovered dead, dying, sick and severely malnourished on the Somerset farm as part of a Sheriffs Office raid in 2015.

Defense attorney Joseph King disagreed with that characterization in court Thursday, saying that the neglect of the animals didnt begin until late 2015, when he said everything was falling apart following Williams divorce from her then-husband, who was treasurer of Peaceable Farm.

According to King, her ex-husband was the major donor to Peaceable Farm and it was his idea to form the nonprofit when Williams had been rescuing horses for many years prior. King said Williams ex-husband agreed to purchase the horses for breeding and the associated services as an investment in the future of the nonprofit.

King addressed the squalid conditions in which Williams was living when the farm was raided, saying she had significant depression after the divorce so that she might not be able to see what was going on around her.

She was found living in her vehicle as the main house had been abandoned to cats and dogs and was in deplorable condition, the defense attorney said. A video shown at trial showed the floor covered in feces, urine and trash.

She was attempting to care for 100 animals by herselfwhich is simply impossible, King said.

Before the decline, Williams rescued horses with no economic value, he added.

There was a time when the rescue was doing really good work, King said.

Bouton, in handing down his sentence in both cases Thursday, said there was sufficient evidence to prove Williams guilt. Asked if she wanted to make any statement to the court, Williams declined.
The letter, now brittle and yellowed with age, traveled with Alice Moters mother, Frances Pratt, from her home in Port Royal to Greenbrier Apartments in Fredericksburg to The Crossings at Falls Run.

After her death in 2013, it traveled with Moter and her family from Fredericksburg back to Caroline County.

The letter is postmarked June 16, 1946, 10 a.m. Its addressed to Lieut. Richard Turner Pratt Jr., Port Royal, Va.Alice Moters father. The return address is simply The Secretary of the Navy, Washington.

When Richard Pratt received it that day in June 71 years ago, he used a finger to tear open the envelope along a short end. Inside, he read a letter addressed to My dear Lieutenant Pratt from James Forrestal, then-Secretary of the Navy.

I have addressed this letter to reach you after all the formalities of your separation from active service are completed, Forrestal wrote. I have done so because, without formality but as clearly as I know how to say it, I want the Navys pride in you, which it is my privilege to express, to reach into your civil life and remain with you always.

The letter lists the Navys achievements during World War IIbeating both the German and Japanese fleets, landing soldiers at Normandy and in Okinawa to participate in crucial invasions and carrying airpower within bombing range of the enemy.

No other navy at any time has done so much, Forrestal wrote. For your part in these achievements you deserve to be proud as long as you live ... The best wishes of the Navy go with you into your future life. Good luck!

Its probably a form letter, but stll I think this is one of the most beautiful letters Ive ever read, Moter said. I dont know of anyone who still has a letter like this.

She said her father wanted to stay in the Navy after World War II ended, but the Navy didnt need him. So this letter from his former commander must have been moving and meaningful to the lifelong Caroline resident.

Like so many men, Richard Pratt was inspired to join the armed forces after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which occurred 76 years ago today and marked the United Statess entry into World War II.

In 2016, the country began commemorating the 75th anniversary of the conflict. Caroline County is partnering with the Virginia World War I and World War II Commemoration Commission to remember men and women from Caroline who served in the war efforts.

Richard Pratt was 30 years old, a farmer, and married with three young childrenAlice and her sisters Barbara and Franceswhen the Pearl Harbor attack occurred. Because of his age, occupation and marital status, he wouldnt have been drafted, Moter said.

But he wanted to join anyway, she said. Pearl Harbor made such an impact on everyone.

When he first tried to join, he was turned down because he wore glasses and was underweight, she said. So he went home to Port Royal and tried to gain weight. In late August of 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor, he was commissioned into the U.S. Navy.

The next day, his younger brother, Beverley Pratt, 28, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. The Richmond News Leader ran an article and a picture of the Pratt brothers in their uniforms on Sept. 1, 1942.

I think it was really heroic of my grandparents to let both of them join, Moter said. They had lost their only other child, a daughter, to a drowning accident in the Rappahannock River.

Pratt was stationed in Washington, Moter said. In 1944, he joined the crew of the USS Foreman, a destroyer escort deployed in the Pacific. The ship escorted combatant ships, auxiliaries, and merchantmen between naval bases and islands in the Pacific. In March of 1945, the Foreman was ordered to the Ulithi atoll to stage for the invasion of Okinawa.

The ship was part of a fire support unit bombarding the island in preparation for troops to land there April 1. After the landings, the Foreman was assigned to anti-submarine patrol and suffered a direct hit by a lone Japanese bomber on April 3. All power and light were lost, one of her firerooms flooded to the waterline and two sailors were killed.

After being repaired at Ulithi, the Foreman returned to Okinawa and in June shot down a kamikaze before it could crash aboard. Moter said this is the only part of his war service her father ever talked about.

He didnt talk about it a lot, she said. But he did say the scariest thing about it was the kamikaze pilots.

After Okinawa, the Foreman returned to escort duty until the war ended. Pratt was discharged in 1946 and came home to Camden Farm, his familys Port Royal home.

At that time Port Royal was all farming, there was no commercial activity, Moter said.

That was starting to change, however. The auto industry was booming and highway tourism was picking up. People were starting to drive to Florida on U.S. 301, passing through Port Royal.

Pratt continued farming on his familys land but also sold used cars and Ford farm equipment at property he rented at the corner of U.S. 17 and U.S. 301. In 1960, he took out a loan to build a Hornes Restaurant on the location.

At the time, there were 60 Hornes locations all over the country, which combined sit-down diner service with a gift shop, gas station, ice cream bar and lodging for highway travelers. Today, the Port Royal Hornes, with its distinctive bright yellow roof, is the only one that remains. Moter and her sisters still own the building.

Pratt died in a car accident in 1964. His wife carefully kept the letter from Secretary Forrestal as she moved from her home to apartments and finally to a retirement community, and when she died in 2013 at age 96, it was entrusted to Moter.

World War II was such a momentous event, Moter said. Its hard to believe today what an effect it had on everyone.
ANYONE remember the significance of todays date?

Yesterday I asked a store clerk, Do you know what tomorrow is?

She smiled.

Its my day off, she replied.

Anything else?

She thought for a moment.

Your birthday?

Its Pearl Harbor Day, I said.

I dont think even that registered with her and I began to wonder if this lady, who was middle-aged, even knew what Pearl Harbor was all about.

A few days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that this was a date that would live in infamy.

Infamy, at least in the moments when America was entering World War II and four years of military uncertainty, probably seemed like it would last a very long time. Today, we have almost reached the end of that infamy.

I seriously doubt that there will be any solemn remembrances in Washington today, no packs of motorcyclists roaring down the highway in honor of the glorious dead, no prayer vigils at local churches.

Oh, the nightly news will likely make mention of the events that occurred 76 years ago and one or two cable channels will probably show movies such as Tora! Tora! Tora! which, in my opinion, is the best and most accurate film ever made about the Pearl Harbor attack. But I wager that there will not be a single prime-time TV special commemorating the occasion.

Why? Because infamy usually ends when those who were part of any tragic event are gone. Today, the vast majority of Americans were born after World War II and have no conception of the horror of the moment when the news of the Pearl Harbor attack was announced.

To students, some of whom dont even know who the combatants in the Civil War were, it is just another date in history class to be memorized until exam time and then forgotten.

We are also losing all those men and women who served in World War II, those who remembered Pearl Harbor as they fought the Japanese from island to island in the Pacific.

I recall when the last World War I soldier died and I will likely live to see the day when the last World War II soldier dies.

When that happens, Pearl Harbor Day will be even less significant and the infamy will live no longer.

Attitudes change over 76 years. For a long while after Pearl Harbor, it was acceptable to hate the Japanese for their sneak attack on our military installations in Hawaii.

Now, almost all of those who perpetrated that attack are dead and the present generation of Japanese, like the present generation of Americans, knows little of what that moment in history was all about

One day it will be the same for the Vietnam War, the 9/11 attacks and all the other conflicts in which this country has been engaged in the past 30 years.

As the generation that endured any specific tragedywhether it be Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the Sept. 11, 2001, attacksdies off, the horror and insecurity of the moment goes with them. So does the hatred for whoever perpetrated the act.

When I was a child, Pearl Harbor Day was a solemn time, much remembered and much discussed. Today it is one womans day off.

So dont listen today for the roar of bikers growling down the highway paying homage to those killed at Pearl Harbor. And dont look for any specials on TV.

But if you happen to know someone who is old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, ask them what they felt that day.

Then maybe next year Dec. 7 wont be just a day off from work.
A recount in the closely contested 28th District House of Delegates race has been scheduled for Dec. 21, though a separate legal battle over the Fredericksburg-area seat could continue into the new year.

Democrat Joshua Cole requested the recount last week after the State Board of Elections certified his 82-vote loss to Republican Bob Thomas in a race that could determine which party controls the House. The state will pay for the recount because Cole lost by less than half a percentage point.

Virginia Democrats also filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday requesting a court-ordered special election for the seat in light of reports that at least 147 voters in Stafford County and Fredericksburg had been assigned to the wrong House district.

Two other Democratic House candidates who narrowly lost on Nov. 7 also asked for recounts, which will happen Dec. 13 and 19. And a recount on behalf of a Republican House incumbent who fell short by 336 votes is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats have requested an expedited schedule for their federal lawsuit, which states that a significant number of voters in House District 28 received the wrong ballots in violation of the U.S. Constitution. They filed court papers asking a federal judge to set a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on or before Dec. 22.

The suit also seeks preliminary injunctions requiring the State Board of Elections to rescind its certification of the Republican winner and to prevent him from being seated next month. The defendants include the State Board of Elections and registrars in Fredericksburg and Stafford.

A spokesman for Republican House Speaker-designee Kirk Cox released a statement calling the suit unnecessary. But Democratic leaders said a special election is the only remedy for voters who received incorrect ballots.

At least 86 voters in the 28th District erroneously got ballots for the 2nd Districtwhich includes parts of Staffordor the 88th District, state Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes wrote in a recent report. And at least 61 voters in the 88th District incorrectly cast ballots in the 28th District.

The 88th District result is not in dispute because Republican incumbent Mark Cole won that race by more than 4,000 votes.
A Louisa County woman pleaded guilty Thursday to five counts of animal cruelty stemming from the rescue of nearly 500 animals from her property last month and was given a suspended sentence and community service.

Clara Collier, 77, was sentenced to 30 months in prison with all suspended on the condition that she makes restitution to the county for the $7,500 cost of caring for the rescued animals, according to a news release from the Louisa County Commonwealths Attorneys Office. Collier will perform 500 hours of community service to satisfy the restitution obligation.

She will also no longer be allowed to possess any animal other than two companion birds. She has agreed to allow animal control officers to check on the welfare of the birds regularly.

Collier has lived on her farm for 40 years, but has been unable to care for her pets and livestock properly since suffering a broken leg in July, the release said.

Mrs. Collier is an elderly woman who did not maliciously mistreat her animals, Commonwealths Attorney Rusty McGuire said in the release. It was an unfortunate situation in which Mrs. Collier, who was attempting to care for these animals, lost control of the situation. Unfortunately rather than reaching out for help, Mrs. Collier allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point that several of the animals were left in cruel conditions, resulting in the charges to which Mrs. Collier pled guilty.

When Louisa County officials investigated Colliers 40-acre farm Nov. 30 after receiving reports of runaway goats, they found nine animals dead and hundreds in poor condition. Animals removed from the farm include horses, emus, goats, sheep, guinea pigs, cats, rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys and a peacock.

The rescued livestock will be placed with non-profit animal rescue organizations that have been vetted by Louisa County officials and the Virginia Department of Agriculture. The companion animals will be placed with rescue groups or will be available for adoption at the Louisa County Animal Shelter once they have been medically cleared.
George Yionoulis was just beginning fourth grade at a public school in Raleigh, North Carolina, when his parents sat down with his teacher to talk about goals for the year ahead.

In past years, Georges classmates sometimes hadnt understood him because he acted differently, taking words too literally or becoming overly frustrated by small things.

His teacher wondered if George might want to make a presentation to the class to explain his autism, a condition that causes challenges with social skills, communication and in other areas.

We were like, Oooooh, a video,  said his mother, Lisa Jolley, adding that he adores making videos and music.

The result is a captivating, charming, true-life explainer of what its like for a 9-year-old to live with autism. While it was made for Georges class, its been watched tens of thousands of times since it was posted on YouTube in late November, and has made him a bit of an Internet star.

I believe its pretty awesome, George said in an interview. It makes me feel so, so encouraged. Ive been dreaming about this thing my whole life.

Jolley also posted Georges video on Facebook, and it has been shared broadly online, eliciting many supportive comments.

In the video, George talks about how he loves Harry Potter, Minecraft and tacos. And how his DJ name is Geo Yio and that hell bust out a dance move any time, any place. Then he mixes some techno beats and announces: And ... wait for it ... I have this thing called autism.

He talks about why its hard for him at times to focus on a conversation, a lesson in class or sometimes a game hes playing. Its often hard to stand still in line.

I can hear and see a lot of things and sounds all at the same time, he says in the video, which sometimes makes it hard to focus on one sound or thought.

His mother said has gone to the same school since kindergarten and has friends in his grade. Some of the girls dote on him, she said, reminding him to get in line at the right time or to grab his lunch. But George has a big personality, she said, and its been harder to connect with the boys.

While Jolley said she has always found the school to be inclusive, kids tend to be afraid of things that are different or they dont understand.

As he gets older, his peers get older, and they notice more things and are more quick to judge or laugh, she said. They could think, Hes different, I will go away, I will avoid him. We wanted to head that off at the pass.

George got a helping hand with the video from his mother, an actor who was in the Broadway production of Hairspray, and his father, Mike Yionoulis, a professional composer of theater music.

We worked on the video for a few weeks, Jolley explained. We used footage from years ago and a few weeks ago. We wanted to show how far George has come.

George was diagnosed with autism when he was 2, and didnt talk until he was almost 3. Steps such as talking, getting dressed on his own and learning how to stay on task were big celebrations.

Something a typical person inherently knows how to do, he learns how to do, Yionoulis said. We dont take anything for granted.

With help from parents, George wrote the videos script, describing some of the challenges of living with autism such as difficulty with eye contact and trouble interpreting some language.

I also tend to take what people say literally. That means if you say take a seat, you might find one less chair in your classroom, George jokes in the video.

George presented the video to his class in early October and took questions from his classmates afterward.

One of the kids asked him, So youre saying even if youre playing by yourself, youd be okay if we asked you to play?  his father recalled. Another classmate liked that George in the video invites kids to come up and ask him anything about his autism or his life. No, seriously, its OK, just come ask me abut it, he tells them.

Georges mother said making the video allowed him to communicate exactly what he wanted to say, in the way he wanted to say it.

He can get all his words in one place and say what he wants to say, Jolley said. If he were to have to say all this stuff without the video, Im not sure hed be able to get it all out. Its a perfect medium for him.

Reporter Allison Klein contributed to this report.
IN THE WAKE of a toxic presidential election and bitter partisan divides in Congress on every major issue, Americans are rightly wondering what has happened to our ability to rise above politics and do whats right for the nation.

Social media is a convenient scapegoat, with its echo chamber that can make all news seem fake if differing from what our friends think.

But blaming social media is a classic case of shooting the messenger. It wrongly assumes partisan polarization didnt exist before Facebook and that mechanisms to communicate dont always offer both promise and peril for seeking truth and solving problems.

It also redirects our energy from whats really broken: winner-take-all voting, vote-for-only-one rules with simplistic binary choices that dont work in modern America.

Lets break this down. First, our history with polarization dates to the clash between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Slavery acted as an increasing wedge such that when Abraham Lincoln was elected, he won more than 50 percent of the popular vote in 15 states, but no votes in eight Southern states. Unsurprisingly, the Civil War started soon after.

In the late 1800s, partisan-driven voting records in Congress were very similar to what we see today. Those divisions lessened over the 20th century, particularly from the New Deal through the 1970s, but that era of more bipartisanship and overlapping ideologies across the parties created a false impression that this has been our norm.

Wedge politics grounded in the use of race, gender and culture increased division once again. By 1994, when Republicans ended a 40-year unbroken chain of control of Congress by Democrats, nearly all voters began putting partisan labels over individual character in deciding how to vote.

In 1997, more than 90 percent of congressional districts leaning to one party were held by that majority party. With fewer general elections in play, the power of primary voters grewcreating a vicious cycle that makes each party scarier to the others backers.

This, of course, wasnt due to social media.

Some people likely were wringing their hands at the impact of the printing press and Martin Luthers Bible or pamphlets like Thomas Paines Common Sense that built support for the American Revolution.

The newspaper industry in the 19th century often found readers by entering the partisan fray, and cable news programs for years have created 24-7 opportunities to feed at the partisan trough.

But fundamentally, means to communicate are just that: ways for people to share information. Whisper campaigns likely plagued our cave-dwelling ancestors, but that doesnt mean language was wrong.

Books and pamphlets can divide us, but also have had massively positive effect on human understanding. The same goes for television, cable networks and radio.

With social media, its easy to spread lies, draw followers with inflammatory tweets, and hear only one side of a story. But the reverse is also true: its easier to expose lies, share thoughtful comments, and look for alternative views. Its easier to come together and organize, whether in Cairo or Chicago.

Whats really dividing us is winner-take-all, binary politics. Its easy to believe Americas voting rules have to be that way. But they dont. More Americans are breaking out of vote-for-one limitations with ranked choice voting, as used in cities with more than 2 million Americans and likely for most of Maines biggest elections next year.

Youre no longer limited to supporting one candidate with ranked choice voting. You can indicate backup second and third choices. If theres a majority winner, that candidate wins. If not, the last-place candidate is out, their ballots are added to voters next choices, and the tally continues until one candidate wins more than half the votes.

That means we can have more choices without dysfunctional outcomes and reward candidates who reach out to more voters.

As proposed in the Fair Representation Act, we can also change winner-take-all. Without changing the Constitution or size of Congress, the Fair Representation Act would create bigger districts electing more than one person and establish ranked choice voting to enable as many people as possible to help elect someone, including those in the minority. One-party domination would end literally everywhere.

Having November elections always matter and electing more Manhattan Republicans and Oklahoma Democrats would create new opportunities to work across the aisle.

Social media has its downsides, but lets support those seeking to make it work. And to really heal our broken politics, lets get to the core problem: our broken voting rules.

Rob Richie is executive director of FairVote.org, a nonpartisan electoral reform organization. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
What with seemingly endless numbers of U.S. women appearing out of nowhere to denounce men for past, unwanted sexual attentions, it occurred to me that the solution to such a problem might lie in Islam.

I refer to the burqa, hijab and niqab, each being an item of outer clothing worn by muslimahs, that taken together cover their bodies from head to toe. Such garb serves the desired purpose in Arabia. It dampens womens temptations to 'show too much, and cools down male testosterone to manageable levels.

Additionally, just as (often-pregnant) U.S. women in times past only rarely appeared outside the kitchen and laundry room, devout muslimahs do not leave the house without permission from their equally-devout husbands, without being appropriately dressed, and without the company of a family member.

Yes, indeed. Ill be looking at Islam with fresh eyes.

Ronald Parsons

Fredericksburg
Members of the Stafford County Planning Commission delayed taking any new action on a year-old cemetery ordinance after hearing from 15 people at a special meeting Wednesday night.

County supervisors earlier this year sent the cemetery ordinance back to the Planning Commission for another look after a Muslim nonprofit discovered it effectively blocked their plans to build a cemetery on Garrisonville Road. The All Muslim Association of America has contended the new ordinance far exceeds regulations set by the Virginia Department of Health, which recommends a maximum 100-foot buffer between private wells and burial grounds.

The new county ordinance calls for a 900-foot buffer, which is similar to a recommendation in a 1998 report from the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. State law also calls for 900 feet between public wells and burial grounds but places no restrictions on private wells.

David Silver, a homeowner who gets his water from a private well less than 100 feet from the AMAA property, initiated the rewrite of the ordinance in June 2016 after emailing his supervisor about contamination concerns. He was one of six Stafford residents who urged commissioners on Wednesday to make no changes to the ordinance.

Silver told how the AMAA property slopes towards his house, with water collecting in his yard after a heavy rain. He also said that his home, which he bought six years ago and plans to retire in, is just starting to gain value.

If a cemetery goes in, Silver told The Free LanceStar by e-mail, concerns for his health would force him to move. But the impact on his property value would prevent him from affording another home in the county.

Another neighbor, Glenn Patterson, also urged the Planning Commission to keep the ordinance unchanged due to health concerns and the fact that a cemetery across the street would make his home more difficult to sell. He also took issue with allegations by the AMAA that religion played a role in his opposition to the burial ground.

The Marine Corps veteran said he would fight just as hard any group that proposed a cemetery on that locationeven the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Other speakers, including more than half a dozen members of the AMAA, urged the Planning Commission to reconsider the ordinance. Debrarae Karnes, who works with the law firm representing the Muslim organization, questioned whether the county was even authorized to adopt standards that so far exceeded state health department regulations.

Karnes cited an email from the Rappahannock Area Health District supervisor that stated a 100-foot buffer between private wells and a cemetery adequately protected public health. She also shared with commissioners an email from the areas environmental health manager that states he knows of no reports of well water contamination from cemeteries.

The AMAA has operated a cemetery on Brooke Road in Stafford for 20 years without any complaints of well water contamination, members said. And a neighbor of that cemetery, Jason Hughes, told planning commissioners that hed never had an issue with his water.

My uncle is a plumber who has tested [the water], he said.

I do think we need additional information before moving forward, said Planning Commissioner Crystal Vanuch.

Vanuch is one of three members of a subcommittee who are taking another look at the ordinance. The two others, Darrell English and Tom Coen, also said they wanted more time before taking any action.

Coen stressed that the ordinance was not about any particular property but rather was taken up because the current one was outdated.

Im consistently on this body nagging we need to bring our ordinances up to the 21st century, Coen said. When this was first being raised, that got me wondering. A large part of my district is on well water. This is about updating an ordinance that is old and had many problems in it.
The SWOG study involved 226 breast cancer patients from 11 cancer centers. Patient participants, who were required to be unfamiliar with acupuncture, were divvied up into three separate arms: one received a specially designed standardized acupuncture protocol; one received sham acupuncture, in which practitioners superficially inserted needles in non-therapeutic locations; and a third group received no treatment as part of the study. Participants in the first two arms received twice-weekly treatments for six weeks then weekly maintenance for another six weeks. Results consistently showed the patients who received true acupuncture had less pain than other participants and that the pain relief continued for as long as 24 weeks.

Co-author Dr. Heather Greenlee, a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center epidemiologist, naturopathic physician, and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance called the study a milestone.

It is wonderful that we now have data from a large-scale, well-conducted trial showing that acupuncture works for managing a very specific type of pain, she said. Its a milestone for SWOG and the National Cancer Institute to support this kind of trial, and its really great for patients to have solid data to inform their treatment decisions. Were excited that a nonpharmacological agent like acupuncture has been shown to effectively reduce pain long term.

Aromatase inhibitors: a mixed blessing

Aromatase inhibitors are commonly prescribed to early stage postmenopausal breast cancer patients with estrogen-receptor-positive disease following standard treatments like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. The daily pill further tamps down the bodys ability to produce estrogen, essentially cutting off the cancers food supply.

But like some dark German fairy tale, theres a trade-off. The daily pill allows you to live longer (hopefully) but ages you before your time. As estrogen dwindles, patients experience all the side effects that come with advanced age: loss of bone density, loss of libido, insomnia, hot flashes, night sweats and, most especially, joint stiffness and pain in feet, knees, hips, shoulders, wrists, and hands. This ongoing pain makes it difficult for many patients to walk, sit, climb stairs or perform simple tasks like typing or driving, let alone exercise, which is often prescribed to breast cancer patients to reduce their risk of recurrence.

As a result, up to 50 percent of women stop taking the AI before the recommended five years; fewer still are able to endure it for 10. Studies confirm that women who stop the drug have reduced disease-free survival.

Patients tell me they feel much older, said Dr. Julie Gralow, a Fred Hutch clinical researcher and SCCA breast cancer oncologist who enrolled some of her patients in the study. They tell me, I feel slower and my joints arent moving the same. I feel like a creaky old lady. That goes along with the vaginal dryness and all the other side effects.
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The future of crop-based biofuels has potentially been dealt another blow after the EUs environment committee (ENVI) voted to withdraw their use by 2030.

The announcement is part of an ongoing review of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which will affect EU renewable energy support post-2020. Currently, it sets a binding target for European countries to source a proportion of energy from renewables (20% by 2020), some of which comes from crop-based biofuels.

The revamped RED (labelled RED II) aims to increase the contribution from renewables over the next decade, but where biofuels are concerned favours advanced biofuels over first-generation biofuels, such as bioethanol from wheat or biodiesel from rapeseed oil.

See also: Virtual Farm: Harvest 2017 results and budget for 2018

Further negotiation

The European Commission has already proposed to reduce the cap on crop-based biofuels from 7% of total road and rail transport fuels in 2021 to 3.8 % by 2030. However, it stopped short of a complete withdrawal.

The ENVI vote is not binding and there will be further negotiation between the European Parliament, Commission and Council before the RED II policy can be approved. However, if the proposed caps or a complete phase-out of crop-derived biofuels goes ahead, it may reduce future biofuel demand for wheat or oilseed rape.

Around 40% of UK oilseed rape goes to the continent, as rapeseed or as oil for processing into biodiesel, so if those markets are restricted it could shrink outlets for UK crops, says NFU combinable crops adviser Tori Morgan.

Biodiesel is the main destination for around 70% of European oilseed rape, so there are big questions over the long-term outlook for these markets and knock-on implications for protein availability if oil demand falls.

It may also affect the UKs two bioethanol producers (Ensus and Vivergo), which together account for around 2m tonnes of feed wheat annually.

However, the National Non-Food Crop Centres David Turley says there will be flexibility as to how member states limit certain feedstocks, so the reaction of other countries, particularly Germany, will influence future biofuel markets and UK export opportunities.

Only biofuels made from food crops are affected, so bioenergy crops (eg. miscanthus), waste (eg. waste vegetable oils) and by-products from crop-derived sources (eg. cereal straw, vegetable wastes) would not be, Mr Turley says.

The need to decarbonise aviation and heavy goods vehicles, where there are fewer alternatives, will support biofuel demand for the foreseeable future, while in future the focus moves to developing advanced biofuels (eg. cellulosic ethanol), he adds.

Brexit adds uncertainty

RED II determines what happens at EU level post-2020, by which time the UK is likely to have left Europe.

Domestic policies, such as the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), currently determine what happens in the UK and will continue to post-Brexit, Mr Turley says, although some harmonisation of UK policy and RED II is likely, to aid future trade.

The Department for Transport has already published plans to limit the proportion of fuels made from crops that could be used to meet the RTFO to 4% in 2018, before falling to 2% by 2032. FiT and RHI schemes also have restrictions on crop-based feedstocks.

On paper, UK targets leave sufficient headroom for UK [bioethanol] producers, Mr Turley says. The proposals will limit scope for further sector development based on current technologies and increase the pressure from imported biofuels.
News

centerpiece

Local Boy Scouts council prepares for girls to join

jenniferreynolds / JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News Joe Musick, right, a Cub Scout leader for Pack 124, presents Kaiden Herron with an adventure pin and his bobcat badge Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017 during a pack meeting at Moody Methodist Church in Galveston. Girls can join the Boy Scouts of America starting next year. jenniferreynolds / JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News Cub Scout master Cindy Marza leads a Pack 124 meeting Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, at Moody Methodist Church in Galveston. In October, the Boy Scouts of America announced it would admit girls into Cub Scouts beginning in 2018.

Local leaders are working out how to incorporate new rules after Boy Scouts of America in October announced it would admit girls into the organization starting next year, marking a significant and historic shift in policy.

The girls would join an all-girl Cub Scout den, while boys would remain in all-boy dens, officials said. It was unclear whether the organization intended to integrate groups of older children.

The details are not out yet, said Charlie Tinsley, scout executive of the Bay Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which is based in Galveston.

Boy Scouts councils also plan to recruit older girls to join in 2019 and to allow them to earn the Eagle Scout rank, but it wants them also to stay in an all-girl troop while the umbrella organization would retain the gender-specific name of Boy Scouts of America.

The Boy Scout program is all about leadership, life skills and character skills, Tinsley said. The organizations mission is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices.

The move to recruit girls did not surprise Galveston resident Kevin Moran, who is a Troop 177 committee member and a former assistant Scout leader. Scout leaders in the Galveston area have been talking about the inevitability of including girls for years, he said.

It didnt come on suddenly, Moran said. The program itself would be as good for girls as it is for boys.

The Boy Scouts of America isnt giving interviews on the topic, but an Oct. 11 announcement from the organization stated the shift was inspired by requests from families to include girls.

The BSAs record of producing leaders with high character and integrity is amazing, Randall Stephenson, the organizations national board chairman said at the time. Ive seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization. It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls.

GOLDEN GIRLS

Meanwhile, Girl Scouts of the USA, which is separate from and independent of the Boy Scouts, has not responded warmly to the Boy Scout announcement.

And its leaders point out that Girl Scouts also produces leaders.

Connie Chavez, chief external affairs officer for the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council, can rattle off a list of leaders who were Girl Scouts.

Virtually every female astronaut who has flown in space was a Girl Scout, Chavez said. Every female Secretary of State was a Girl Scout. Eighty percent of female tech leaders were Girl Scouts, and 50 percent of female business leaders were Girl Scouts. And they got their start selling Girl Scout cookies.

Chavez declined to comment about the Boy Scouts decision to admit girls.

We dont want to spend a lot of time talking about them, Chavez said.

The Girl Scouts organization also has values it teaches its members: service, courage, confidence and character. And the top Girl Scout honor is the Gold Award, comparable to the Eagle Scout rank. Earning the Gold Award can lead to scholarships, college offers and the ability to enter the military one rank higher than others.

Danielle Thompson, student body president at Texas A&M University at Galveston, earned her Gold Award when she was a sophomore in high school. Her professional adviser recently reviewed her resume that listed her top achievements, Thompson said. At the bottom of the long list was her high school-era honor of getting the Gold Award.

Thompsons adviser told her to move it to the top because it was her most impressive honor, even more impressive than being a college student body president, Thompson said.

I always come across that, she said. I could credit almost every bit of confidence I have to the Girl Scouts.

Thompson is studying maritime administration and plans to study admiralty law in the future.

IMAGE ISSUES

It seems odd that the Boy Scouts would recruit girls to join them but keep the word boy in its name, said Elizabeth Gregory, director of Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Houston.

As a former Girl Scout mom of a girl who was also in coed Little League, I see no immediate benefits, Gregory said. The Girl Scouts have great camping facilities.

Except for fathers who had been Boy Scouts and now have daughters, the market isnt obvious to Gregory, she said.

Is this an attempt to seem more progressive to cover over their misstep with gay boys and leaders? Gregory said. The Boy Scouts banned gay youth and openly gay leaders.

Its possible the Boy Scouts of America is aiming to improve its image. If thats true, its a good move, Moran said.

The Boy Scouts of America cites internal surveys it said it conducted online for its decision to admit girls.

It also cites a Pew Research Center study from 2015 that found most parents are working and more households only have one parent. The organization also said that because of that, convenient programs that serve the whole family are more appealing.

HISTORY

Both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are imports from the United Kingdom. It all started with the 1907 book, Scouting for Boys. Robert Baden-Powell wrote the book and founded the Boy Scouts.

Girls were writing in asking how they could be Scouts, said Tammy Proctor, a historian at the University of Utah who has researched those letters and other documents. She is author of Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

Girls wanted the same sense of adventure and camping experiences, and the Girl Guides organization started in 1909 in the United Kingdom, Proctor said.

It was created to keep girls out of Boy Scouts, she said.

Girls might want to join Boy Scouts because its convenient, or they find it exciting, or their brothers are doing it, she said.

In practice, it will be interesting to see how that plays out, Proctor said.
Villanueva has been consistently trailing Luna as results from last week's election continued to be tallied.
Popular Oregon group The Trail Band presents its concert, "Christmas with The Trail Band," 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Whiteside Theatre, 361 SW Madison Ave., Corvallis.

The concert, which is sponsored by the Whiteside Theatre and the Corvallis Folklore Society, features favorite holiday songs and original tunes arranged in the band's versatile and energetic style. Songs include "Joy to The World," "The First Noel," and many more. This concert, based on one that was originally produced for a TV special for Oregon Public Broadcasting, has become an annual tradition for thousands of concertgoers in the Pacific Northwest.

The Trail Band, formed by Marv Ross in 1991 at the request of the Oregon Trail Council to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the trail, is an eight-piece ensemble that creates an blend of brass and string arrangements of traditional and original music. It features five vocalists, cornet, tenor horn, tuba, fiddles, hammer dulcimer, guitars, pennywhistle, mandolin, saxophone, and more.

Tickets are $40 advance reserved, $25 general admission. Advance tickets available online at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3104193 or Grass Roots Books and Music and Corvallis Brewing Supply.
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Centers expansion plan passed a key hurdle Wednesday.

The Corvallis Planning Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council approve the hospitals proposal, which calls for annexing 17.3 acres of land into the city limits. The annexation plan, if backed by the council, would go to the voters in May.

The Planning Commission voted 6-0 on the three pieces of the proposal: the annexation, a comprehensive plan map change and a zone change. The zone change, if it goes into place, would allow the hospital to expand its campus to the north in three office buildings plus additional parking.

Nobody spoke in favor or against the plan during public testimony. One resident, Sue Powell, gave neutral testimony in which she expressed concerns that neighbors have about traffic safety in the region; Powell worried those concerns could be exacerbated if more cars use Northwest Satinwood Street going to and from the hospital campus.

The Planning Commission also was considering two other annexation proposals in a meeting at the downtown fire station that started at 5:30 p.m., 90 minutes earlier than the commission normally meets.

Commissioners held a two-hour public hearing on the Caldwell Farms Annexation, which would add 16.45 acres south of West Hills Road to the citys stock of land. Developers hope to build housing on the site, which is currently being used as a grass seed farm. Because of requests from residents to hold the record open, commissioners did not deliberate on Caldwell Farms. They are scheduled to do so Dec. 20, with those wishing to add to the record facing a deadline of 5 p.m. Dec. 13 to do so to rian.amiton@corvallisoregon.gov.

At the Gazette-Times' deadline, the commission was deliberating on a third proposal, the Marys Annexation, which would add more than 118 acres and perhaps more than 1,000 units of housing into the city.

The Caldwell Farms proposal drew strong opposition from neighbors. A total of 10 individuals either testified or ceded their time to others. Key concerns raised by the neighbors were traffic and safety on West Hills Road, wetlands issues and whether land for housing is really in such short supply in Corvallis. Also, residents said it makes no sense to develop the Caldwell Farms site when the owners of the Alberti and Taylor properties on either side have no plans to develop their rural acreage.

This is not a strategic, orderly way to develop, said Lester Taylor. Its like trying to make a sheet cake doing the middle first. Now is the time to pause. (The land) isnt going anywhere. This is haphazard, patchwork development that the Vision 2020 plan was designed to avoid.

Corvallis voter-approved annexations process remains in legal limbo. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill into law in March 2016 that limited voter-approved land acquisitions, but Corvallis, Philomath and the League of Oregon Cities have teamed up on a legal challenge to the new law, claiming that it is a violation of the home rule aspect of the city charter.

Corvallis is continuing to use its process, which refers annexations to the voters, while the legal process plays out.
A consortium of Linn County firefighters and their vehicles have deployed to California to help battle wildfires there, the Albany Fire Department reports.

The deployment is part of an interstate mutual aid agreement called the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which lets both Oregon and California send crews to each other when the need arises.

Though the agreement, California Gov. Jerry Brown sent firefighters to Oregon in August. Oregon firefighters also deployed to California in October.

The crews, from Albany, Lebanon, Sweet Home, and Tangent, will add 22 firefighters to efforts in Chino, California, where wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes. As of Wednesday, no deaths and a few injuries have been reported, but hundreds of thousands in the Los Angeles area are under evacuation orders.

In addition to the Linn County deployment, Philomath Fire responded from Benton County with two engines and six firefighters.

The Linn County contingent will comprise one of 10 strike teams requested from across the state. A strike team is a group of five vehicles of the same type, and two fire crews. The Albany Fire Department provided the five brush unit vehicles for the deployment.

All of the firefighters who deployed volunteered, according to Albany Assistant Fire Chief Shane Wooton. The fire crews will remain deployed for an undetermined amount of time.

The state of California will reimburse the various agencies for the deployment, and will also pay the overtime costs for the extra shifts required to fill the gaps during their deployment.
In response to the recent letter from Michael Stillman: Like you, I worry about my finances, but you are missing the important point: What is going on with this country?

It appears that the 35 percent who support our national disgrace are not worried about what this racist, sexist bully is doing to this country! It just seems to me that if more people were worried about what he is doing to the moral fabric of our country and speaking up, maybe something may change.

What disturbs me the most is that folks who call themselves Christian are backing our national disgrace, the least Christian person in America! How can Huckabee Sanders stand there and call herself a Christian and back a racist, sexist bully?

Current times remind me more and more of the fall of Rome, when personal interests of politicians won out over the best interests of the people.

John Larsen

Corvallis (Nov. 19)
I had no idea that the renaming of Oregon State University buildings would come to fruition. Undoubtedly, not a one of them was named to honor these men for the racist views they might have held. Those times were very different from today; Oregon was far from welcoming for nonwhites in those days. The naming was to honor their contributions to the university and the local area. It shouldn't have taken a working group and a subcommittee to make such a momentous blunder.
The economic expansion underway in Oregon and in the mid-valley continues to chug along.

Need evidence? Linn County had a 4.8 percent unemployment rate in October 2017, a far cry from the nearly 14 percent rate the county suffered from in October 2009. Look at it another way: Linn County's unemployment rate is nearly 10 percentage points lower than it was eight years ago.

Better yet, it was an increase in private sector jobs that has led the way to recovery: According to statistics from the Oregon Employment Department, Linn County's private sector employers added 1,460 jobs from October 2016 to October 2017. Two sectors that were hit hard during the recession, construction and manufacturing, each added more than 300 jobs during that time, the Employment Department said. That's been great to see.

Benton County's unemployment rate traditionally is among the lowest in the state, and that was the case again in October: The county's 3.3 percent rate was the lowest in the state. (Oregon's overall unemployment rate in October was 4.3 percent; these numbers are seasonally adjusted, to take into account normal fluctuations in the job market.)

Meanwhile, economists from the state of Oregon last week issued their latest forecast regarding the amount of tax revenue the state can expect to collect over the next few years. As you might imagine, state officials keep close tabs on these estimates, and the news was good: The economists said they expected the revenues in the state's general fund for the current two-year budget cycle to be about $20.1 billion, an increase of about $36.6 million from the previous forecast in September. That's not a huge amount in terms of the overall state budget, but it doesn't hurt.

Here's how the state economists started their report: "The economic expansion is expected to continue. Economists see few worrisome signs in the current data."

If you're thinking that's showing an unusual amount of optimism from economists, you're right.

But the economists immediately began to curb their enthusiasm: "However," they wrote, "the economy is poised to enter into a different phase of the business cycle in 2018." They added that the economy is likely to begin to run into supply-side constraints in the near future. How the economy adjusts, and how policymakers react to those changes, "will go a long way toward determining when the expansion ends," they wrote.

The tax reform currently being hammered out in Congress also could have a big impact on the state's revenue stream, the economists noted.

Other troublesome signs linger: The economic recovery in Oregon has not been as robust in the state's rural areas as it has been in urban locations. And even in a place like Benton County, where Oregon State University offers a substantial buffer against economic vagaries, the county has lost more than 6,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. (Oregon Employment Department estimates say that the county had fewer than 3,000 manufacturing jobs in 2016.)

Most of those losses occurred, of course, as Hewlett-Packard ramped down manufacturing operations on its Corvallis campus. Smaller manufacturers did pick up some of the slack: The number of manufacturing companies with 19 or fewer employees rose 70 percent in those two decades, from 279 to 473. But, of course, those smaller manufacturers are more vulnerable to economic downturns.

Here's the big takeaway from all of this: Economic trends are cyclical. Expansions eventually cool off. Economies enter downturns. To pretend, as we sometimes do, that busts won't follow the booms is to ignore history. We do that at our peril.

The best time to prepare for an economic downturn is before it happens. As they prepare for what could be a vitally important short legislative session this February, here's hoping state officials keep that firmly in mind. (mm)
LINCOLN  Former state Sen. Heath Mello will return to the Capitol later this month as the University of Nebraska's chief lobbyist.

Mello was announced as NU's new associate vice president for university affairs on Wednesday. He succeeds Ron Withem, who held the role for 20 years.

As NU's lobbyist and director of state relations, Mello will be responsible for coordinating partnerships between the university and its legislative partners, as well as its constituents throughout the state.

"Working with Heath as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I saw a talented leader who could solve problems while balancing diverse opinions and ideas," NU President Hank Bounds said in a statement.

Bounds added Mello "understands the importance of relationships in making higher education a key driver of economic and workforce development across the entire state."

An Omaha native and NU alum, Mello served eight years in the Legislature, including as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. In a statement, Mello said he was honored by the opportunity to work with the university in helping "to grow our state educationally and economically."

"I know President Bounds and the university leadership team value partnerships and collaborations to build a more prosperous future for Nebraskans and I'm excited to assist them in this noble endeavor," he said.

Galen Hadley, a former Speaker of the Legislature, applauded Mello as "someone who was fair, honest, and worked to build consensus with colleagues, our governor and many other stakeholders."

Current Speaker Jim Scheer said Mello is capable of setting politics aside to work for the benefit of the state.

"He will excel at this in his new position at the university," Scheer said.

Mello will start Dec. 18, according to the university. His annual salary is set at $165,000.
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.
An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand.




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Four job candidates seeking to become the next police chief are in Danville for the vetting process Thursday and Friday.

City officials hope to have Danville Police Chief Philip Broadfoots replacement selected and announced by the end of the year.

We have four very strong candidates, Danville Human Resources Director Sara Weller said Wednesday.

City Manager Ken Larking announced during Tuesday night's work session that the four candidates would be in Danville today and Friday.

Neither Weller nor Larking would provide details as to where the candidates are from, but Larking said they all come from the Southeastern region of the United States.

I dont want to breach anybodys confidentiality, Larking said.

In addition, Weller and Larking would not reveal whether the city is considering candidates from within the Danville Police Department.

Broadfoot announced his retirement Aug. 31 after 14 years as chief. It will be effective Jan. 1.

The city received 49 applications for the position, Larking said.

Danville hired a consultant, Developmental Associates LLC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to help recruit job candidates. The city is paying them $20,725 for the consulting services.

Danville has a history of hiring outside recruiters to help fill such key positions as city manager, deputy city manager and the public utilities director.

The four candidates will undergo a comprehensive vetting process while in Danville.

They will be evaluated by a 14-member assessment team, have interviews with the city manager, perform a written exercise, participate in role-paying activities, give presentations and hold a mock community meeting, Weller said.

To ensure selection of the best candidate, training sessions are required for the assessors themselves to learn how to evaluate the applicants  such as what behaviors to look for, Weller said.

Assessors will include department directors, community members, former city managers, and retired and active police chiefs, Weller said.

The applicants have already been scrutinized through phone interviews with the recruitment firm, online background checks through news articles and a questionnaire, Weller said.

Larking said the four applicants would be narrowed down to two, or possibly one. They would then go through a more thorough background check, Weller said.

They still have some hoops to jump through, Weller said.

The city plans to propose an annual salary of $115,000 to $149,476 to the applicant selected, she said. Broadfoots salary is $137,900.

The city manager will be responsible for hiring the new police chief.
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The former Mayor of the Estonian city of Rakvere and now city councillor Andres Jaadla (ET/ALDE) is the rapporteur of the CoR opinion on a Space Strategy for Europe , adopted at a plenary session last 10 October.

To discuss on the specific proposals the CoR has put forward, rapporteur Jaadla met Elzbieta Bienkowska , Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs last 5 November in Brussels.

Commissioner Bienkowska welcomed the proposals of the European Committee of the Regions and reiterated the potential of the European space policy to increase jobs and growth across Europe.

Both commissioner Bienkowska and rapporteur Jaadla agree on the enormous opportunities space data offers to companies and citizens and wish to continue cooperating to mobilize local and regional authorities to develop further Europe's space strategy.

The EU's assembly of cities and regions asks the Commission to further develop the regional dimension of the European space strategy so to bring it closer to citizens.

The CoR points out to the growing importance of space for regional economies and requests the Commission to reinforce integrative partnerships between civil society, business, public institutions and the science community.

Rapporteur Jaadla conveyed a clear message to commissioner Bienkowska. 'Local and regional authorities have the competence and the will to be involved in the implementation of EU's space policy. Many regions have already joined the Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies (NEREUS) and we wish to further support the development and implementation of the Copernicus programme" said Andres Jaadla.

Rapporteur Jaadla communicated to commissioner Bienkowska the will of the CoR to provide a full permanent member to the Copernicu's user forum. 'Such direct participation would feed the forum with the perspective of local actors in terms of the use of Copernicus data' said Andres Jaadla.

'The European Union has through Copernicus huge amounts of data which are valuable to the economy, for climate observation or for disaster prevention. The USA for instance requested EU assistance in obtaining data with regards to recent hurricanes and was grateful for getting it" Andres Jaadla explains.

'Local and regional authorities are essential partners to raise awareness of opportunities for start-ups, SME's an civil society to use this data, which can also be connected even more with other EU strategies such as the urban agenda and the EU transport strategy" Jaadla added.

The CoR is in line with the European Commission vision on space published in November 2016.

Space technologies, data and services ensure communication, surveillance, border and security control, rapid response to natural disasters and support for agriculture, fisheries and transport management.
They were scary days, the late 1930s.

America and the rest of the world were still mired in Great Depression, which had brought economies and nations to their knees. The Great War  what we know as World War I today  was still an emotional wound. In Germany, the shaky democracy of the Weimar Republic had fallen when Adolf Hitlers National Socialist Party was voted into power in 1932 on a promise to restore the nation to its former greatness, first by rebuilding the great military machine formed by Chancellor Otto von Bismark and the kaiser.

There was a sense in the air, an unease in the populace the world over that the Old Order was on the precipice, peering over into the abyss. Vladimir Lenin had led a revolution that toppled the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty in Russia. In Italy, a fascist strongman had been in power since the early 1920s, and in Asia, Japan was yearning to unleash its military on the whole of the continent.

And America watched nervously, safe in its isolation, as Hitlers army rolled over Poland in September 1939, as France fell in a matter of months, as Italy moved against Ethiopia and as Japan brought down unspeakable horrors on China in the Rape of Nanking. By July 1940 in Europe, only Great Britain stood against the forces of Nazi Germany, staving off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain from July 1940 to June 1941.

Americans saw the unfolding wars as over there, as in over there in Europe, over there in Africa and over there in China. Memories of the trenches and chemical warfare of The Great War were still fresh in Americans minds, and there was a deep strain of isolationism running through the American body politic.

But President Franklin Roosevelt knew better than anyone what was to come. He knew America couldnt stay out of the conflict; it was only a matter of time  and how  the United States would be dragged into the war.

That moment came in the early morning hours of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaii territories. More than 350 fighter planes, torpedo planes and bombers launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers and rained down destruction on the base, beginning at 7:48 a.m. that Sunday morning.

When the sneak attack ended, there were 2,403 U.S. dead and 1,178 wounded. The Navy lost seven battleships and cruisers and 188 aircraft. The next day, President Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress, uttering one of the most memorable lines in the history of presidential speeches: Yesterday, December 7, 1941  a date which will live in infamy  the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Within hours, Congress passed and FDR signed a declaration of war against Japan. Germany and Italy soon declared war on America in support of their ally, Japan.

And thus began World War II. America and Great Britain took the helm of democracys armies to turn back the Nazi threat, working in concert with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union. Over the next three and a half years, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of millions of civilians died.

The America of Dec. 6, 1941, bore little resemblance to the America of Sept. 2, 1945, when Japan officially surrendered. Today, we owe an unpayable debt to the men  and women  of the Greatest Generation who answered the call of their nation and of destiny.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Dec. 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd. (TSXV: "NZP" and NZAX: "CRP" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it recently provided briefing notes to a number of incoming Ministers following the recent change of Government in New Zealand.

Individual briefing notes were sent to the ten most relevant Ministers, including the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, as well as the Ministers of Energy and Resources, Environment and Economic Development, Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, Export Development, Conservation and Regional Development. It is pleasing that a number of responses have been received already.

The notes provided a succinct summary of our project and particularly its net environmental benefits and an example is included in this release to further reiterate these messages to existing shareholders and stakeholders.

"Briefing to the Incoming Minister

Minister of Agriculture, Minister for Food Safety, Minister for Biosecurity, Minister for Rural Communities

Summary

The Chatham rock phosphate project comprehensively ticks the boxes in terms of net environmental benefits, security of supply of an essential farm input, project economics and benefits to the NZ economy.

Introduction

Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd. (CRP) is a Wellington based company that proposes to dredge rock phosphate from a small part of the central Chatham Rise, about 450km offshore Christchurch.

Although it has cornerstone investors overseas and is stock exchange listed in both Canada and Frankfurt (as well as New Zealand) more than 50% of CRP is owned by over 1,300 New Zealanders.

Benefits for the Environment

Rock phosphate from the Chatham Rise has exceptional environmentally beneficial attributes relating to its properties as a reactive rock phosphate and its unusually low cadmium levels.

The directly beneficial environmental effects of using Chatham rock phosphate are reduced run off, improved water quality, a healthier soil profile, reduced heavy metals being applied to soils and much lower carbon emissions.

Ethical, Secure Supply

By recovering rock phosphate from the Chatham Rise NZ will have its own supply without depending on imports from other countries, particularly Morocco, which is mining rock from a disputed territory. Onshore phosphate mining also impacts on local communities causing well documented health issues and social and environmental distress.

Project Will Pay Taxes, Create Jobs and Knowledge

The project would result in significant tax revenue and port charges as well as create many high-value knowledge-based jobs in the port, on the mining ship, undertaking environmental monitoring and broader scientific research, in the agriculture and hospitality sectors and on the Chatham Islands.

It could lead to NZ leadership in marine technology potentially worth billions as marine mining becomes commonplace overseas.

By operating in the marine environment we will gain (and share) the knowledge to better identify conservation priorities.

Project History

The deposit, located on the central Chatham Rise, was discovered by New Zealand scientists in 1952 and extensively explored during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by a range of private and public sector scientists (DSIR, NZ Oceanographic Survey)

An estimated $70 million in current dollar terms was spent back then on at least seven different voyages, each involving several weeks. The data collected means the deposit is now very well defined.

CRP was granted a 20 year mining permit in December 2013.

The mining permit area is 450 km east of Christchurch, at a depth of around 400 metres on the Chatham Rise and in New Zealand territory. Estimated reserves are 23.4 million tonnes.

The current Exclusive Economic Zone environmental consenting regime came into force in June 2013 and CRP's initial application was among the first considered by the Environmental Protection Authority. It was declined in 2015 and CRP is currently planning to resubmit in early 2019.

We are planning for an operational start two years after receipt of a Marine Consent and completing a mining contract (to include arrangements for a vessel to undertake the mining).

CRP's mining permit assumes an initial mine life of 15 years. We anticipate further sampling during this initial mining phase will quantify the extent of additional mineable reserves within the mining permit area.

How the Phosphate Will Be Recovered

A modified version of the trailing suction hopper dredger pictured above will separate a 30cm thick seafloor layer of phosphate nodules, together with the surrounding sand, sieve the nodules from the sand on board the vessel, return the sand to the seafloor and take the nodules to the operation's home port. From there an estimated 29% of the nodules will be processed and used in New Zealand and the balance exported to neighbouring countries.

First Environmental Protection Authority Decision Recap

Main public concerns submitted

Removal of seabed and associated biota

Impacts of the sediment plume on the adjacent environment and deepwater fisheries

Interactions with marine mammals and seabirds

Trophic impacts

Mining inside a Benthic Protection Area (fishing bottom-trawling prohibited)

But in the hearing independent/opposing experts agreed that:

Marine mammals unlikely to be affected

Sea birds unlikely to be affected

Major fish stocks unlikely to be affected

Primary food chain productivity unlikely to be affected

Toxicology effects in water column will be very low

2015 Decision-making Committee's (DMC) summary

Damage to the benthic environment

Modest economic benefits compared to environmental effects

Significant effect on Benthic Protection Area

Proposed adaptive management wouldn't address fundamental concerns

The Facts

Damage to the benthic environment is not permanent and is limited to one tenth of 1% of the Chatham Rise

The economic benefits were required to be established before the mining permit was granted by NZ Petroleum and Minerals in 2013. As well as being highly profitable the project creates jobs in ports, agriculture, environmental monitoring, and scientific research

Environmental benefits include reduced carbon emissions, lower run-off into waterways and significantly lower levels of cadmium. These benefits were ignored by the DMC.

Only 5% of the Central Chatham Rise Benthic Protection Area would be affected

The DMC failed to grasp how the proposed adaptive management regime would operate.

Further Information

Much more detailed information can be supplied to back up this summary document upon request.

All of this information is already in the public arena due to CRP's continuous disclosure obligations as a reporting issuer in New Zealand and other markets.

Chatham executives would also welcome the opportunity to brief the Minister in person.

Chris Castle, CEO

November 16, 2017"

Neither the Exchange, its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined under the policies of the Exchange), or New Zealand Exchange Limited has in any way passed upon the merits of the Transaction and associated transactions, and has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

SOURCE Chatham Rock Phosphate
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Maxtech Ventures Inc. (CSE: MVT) (Frankfurt: M1N) (OTC: MTEHF), (Maxtech or the Company) is pleased to announce a signed agreement with Cairn Energy Research Advisors (Cairn ERA).

Sam Jaffe is the founder and Managing Director of Cairn ERA. He has more than twelve years experience as an analyst, consultant and executive in the energy storage industry. He is an authority on battery usage on the grid, transportation and consumer electronics. He is an accomplished public speaker and a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and events throughout the world, including Battery Power, Interbattery Korea, Stockage DEnergie and the Energy Storage Association annual meeting. He is frequently quoted in multiple press outlets, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

Manganese is a critical and irreplaceable element used in steel production, fertilizers, as well as lithium ion batteries and other clean-energy applications. Electric vehicles, off-grid power systems and other energy storage applications will require significant amounts of high-quality manganese. Maxtech is pleased to announce the Company will become a research and subscription client of the Battery and Energy Storage Subscription Service offered by Cairn ERA. The supply side of the battery industry is in need of new sources of all crucial materials, including Manganese, says Sam Jaffe. Maxtech has shown that it could become a major player in this space.

Peter Wilson, CEO of Maxtech said As we expand our global manganese exploration assets and partnerships, the Company is advancing to the forefront of the clean energy industry. Having a strong industry research group advising of current pricing, delivery and market trends is essential to this mandate. I am pleased to welcome Sam Jaffe and his firm to the advisory side of the company.

About Cairn ERA

Cairn ERA is a battery industry consulting and advisory firm and produces strategic market research, data and analysis on the supply chain, manufacturing, emerging technologies and end markets for batteries. All Cairn ERA partners have multiple years of experience working in the energy sector and have a strong and diverse network of contacts throughout the industry. The Cairn ERA approach to research and modelling has been honed over decades of experience in providing first-rate deliverables to some of the worlds most successful and demanding companies.

About Maxtech Ventures Inc.

Maxtech Ventures Inc. is a Canadian based diversified industries corporation with gold and manganese mineral properties. Its focus is on mining and the products that are derived therefrom.

For additional information see the Companys web site at http://www.maxtech-ventures.com

Email to info@maxtech-ventures.com

Phone: 604-484-8989

Further information about the Company is available on www.SEDAR.com under the Companys profile.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute forwardlooking statements or forward-looking information (collectively forward-looking information) as those terms are used in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words could, intend, expect, believe, will, projected, estimated, anticipates and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Companys current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this release contains forward-looking information relating to the business of the Company, the Property, financing and certain corporate changes. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/Maxtech12072017.pdfSource: Maxtech Ventures Inc. (CSE:MVT, OTC Pink:MTEHF)

To follow Maxtech Ventures Inc. on your favorite social media platform or financial websites, please click on the icons below.

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VANCOUVER, Dec 7, 2017 - Corvus Gold Inc. ("Corvus" or the "Company") (TSX:KOR) (OTCQX:CORVF) announces it has completed a CAD $5,253,500 private placement (the "Private Placement"). Pursuant to the Private Placement, the Company issued 2,829,130 common shares at a price of CAD $1.15 each to institutional shareholders and 1,574,803 common shares at a price of CAD $1.27 each to a key strategic shareholder. No warrants were issued. The Company expects that the proceeds of the financing will fully fund the Company's planned 2018 exploration program at its new Mother Lode project.

Jeff Pontius, President and CEO of Corvus, said, "We are pleased to have secured this important financing which will provide funding to advance and develop our new high-grade Mother Lode project through 2018. The Company intends to expand its planned 2018 drill program to 20,000 metres, to focus on expanding the new high-grade zone at the north end of the currently defined deposit. The mix of long-term and strategic shareholders in this financing is a welcome endorsement of Corvus Gold and its Nevada projects. Our shareholders can look forward to continued news flow on our development progress of the high-grade Mother Lode project."

The common shares issued in the Private Placement are subject to a minimum 6-month hold period unless otherwise registered under applicable securities laws. The Toronto Stock Exchange has granted conditional approval to the issuance of the Corvus common shares under the Private Placement.

In addition, a financial advisory fee of CAD $62,675 was paid to Industrial Alliance Securities for assistance and advice on the financing.

The foregoing securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended or any applicable state securities laws and may not be offered or sold absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of the foregoing securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About the North Bullfrog & Mother Lode Projects, Nevada

Corvus controls 100% of its North Bullfrog Project, which covers approximately 72 km in southern Nevada. The property package is made up of a number of private mineral leases of patented federal mining claims and 865 federal unpatented mining claims. The project has excellent infrastructure, being adjacent to a major highway and power corridor as well as a large water right. The company also controls 65 federal unpatented mining claims on the Mother Lode project which totals 522 hectares and which it owns 100% of.

About Corvus Gold Inc.

Corvus Gold Inc. is a North American gold exploration and development company, focused on its near-term gold-silver mining project at the North Bullfrog and Mother Lode Districts in Nevada. In addition, the Company controls a number of royalties on other North American exploration properties representing a spectrum of gold, silver and copper projects. Corvus is committed to building shareholder value through new discoveries and the expansion of its projects to maximize share price leverage in an advancing gold and silver market.

On behalf of Corvus Gold Inc.

Jeffrey A. Pontius

President & Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements regarding the potential use of proceeds from the offering, the advancement and development of our Mother Lode project and the expansion of our 2018 drill program; the full funding of the 2018 drill program as a result of the financing; updates on the development progress at the Mother Lode project; the potential for new deposits and expected increases in a system's potential; anticipated content, commencement and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the Company's inability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the Company's inability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2017 filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's most recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings in Canada may be accessed via www.sedar.com and filings with the SEC may be accessed via www.sec.gov and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties.







Contact



Corvus Gold Inc.

Ryan Ko, Investor Relations

1-844-638-3246 (toll free) or (604) 638-3246

info@corvusgold.com


VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2017 / Roughrider Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V: REL) ("Roughrider" or the "Company") has arranged a non-brokered private placement. The private placement consists of the sale of flow-through (FT) units at a price of six cents per FT unit for aggregate proceeds of up to $200,000 and the sale of non-flow-through (NFT) unit at a price of five cents per NFT share for aggregate proceeds of up to $300,000. The FT units consist of one flow-through common share and one-half of one share purchase warrant. The NFT unit consists of one common share and one whole share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder to purchase one non-flow-through common share at a price of 10 cents per common share for two years from the closing date. The proceeds of the private placement will be used for debt settlement, as well as for general working capital purposes and further work on Roughrider's Genesis uranium project.

Closing of the Private Placement remains subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. All the securities issued under the Private Placement are subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from the date of issuance.

About Roughrider Exploration Limited

Roughrider and its partner, Kivalliq Energy, are exploring the Genesis uranium project located in the Wollaston-Mudjatik geological trend extending northeast from Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin. In addition, Roughrider recently acquired an option to earn a 100% interest in the Iron Butte project in Nevada which contains a historic bulk tonnage gold resource and has now added the Silver Ace and Sterling projects in central British Columbia.

For further information, please contact:

Scott Gibson

Chief Executive Officer

604-697-0028

Neither 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.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain information contained or incorporated by reference in this press release, including any information as to our strategy, projects, plans or future financial or operating performance, constitutes "forward-looking statements." All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, geological and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include but are not limited to: fluctuations in market prices, exploration and exploitation successes, continued availability of capital and financing, changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations, expropriation or nationalization of property and general political, economic, market or business conditions. Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, us. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release, or incorporated by reference, are qualified by these cautionary statements. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

UNITED STATES ADVISORY

The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), have been offered and sold outside the United States to eligible investors pursuant to Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, and may not be offered, sold, or resold in the United States or to, or for the account of or benefit of, a U.S. Person (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the United States Securities Act) unless the securities are registered under the U.S. Securities Act, or an exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act is available. Hedging transactions involving the securities must not be conducted unless in accordance with the U.S. Securities Act. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in the state in the United States in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

SOURCE: Roughrider Exploration Ltd.
A majority of the justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are offended by the suggestion that they might rule improperly in cases involving their campaign donors. But even more than that, theyve rejected tighter recusal standards and have taken revenge on those who suggested them.In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that campaign spending on judicial elections can reach a point where theres the probability of actual bias on the part of the judge. The court in that case, Caperton v. Massey, called on states to adopt recusal standards more rigorous than due process requires.The response from the Wisconsin Supreme Court was, in so many words, nothing doing. In 2010, the year after the Caperton decision, the state court adopted rules proposed by Wisconsin business lobbyists that made recusal voluntary. Its up to each individual judge to decide whether to recuse himself or herself. Theres no formal trigger denoting circumstances that would require a judge to step aside.Recusal hasnt been a popular option in Wisconsin -- even in a case dealing with campaign finance a couple of years back, one that involved outside groups that had spent heavily on judicial races. The state Supreme Court shut down a campaign finance investigation involving their own campaign donors, says Billy Corriher, who tracks state courts at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. It was the most egregious conflict of interest you can imagine, and the current ethics rules allowed them to hear the case.There are judges in Wisconsin who dont like the current state of affairs. A group of retired judges called on the state Supreme Court this spring to change its rules. The justices balked. The idea that judges and justices cant faithfully and impartially discharge their duties is an entirely unwarranted presumption and we will not entertain it, a majority of the court said in an order this summer, shooting down the retired judges. One justice declared that all the judges in the state should be highly offended by this petition because it attacks their integrity and their character.A couple of months later, the state Supreme Court took aim at the group by putting out an order pertaining directly to retired judges. They cut off their stipends. Retired judges fill in temporarily at the circuit and appellate court level, helping to clear up cases and reduce the backlog. In order to do so, they are required to attend conferences and classes. They had been paid $454 per day to meet these continuing legal education requirements, but now the court says they wont be paid for their time. Just to be clear, reserve judges would still be able to submit expenses such as travel, meals and lodging related to attending judicial education sessions, says Tom Sheehan, information officer for the court system. It is estimated the change resulting from the courts order would save the state roughly $160,000 a year.You can always save money when you get people to volunteer their time for required functions. But few court watchers in Wisconsin believe the Supreme Court was looking to save a few dollars. Its not a financial thing, says Jay Heck, head of Common Cause in Wisconsin. Its a rebuke from judges. Theres no doubt its payback.
David Ermold, one of the men denied a same-sex marriage license by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in 2015, hopes to challenge her for the clerk's seat next year, he announced Wednesday.Davis set off an international furor when she denied a marriage license to Ermold and his partner, David Moore, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right for same-sex couples to marry.Davis, who said providing the license violated her religious beliefs, continued to withhold the license, even after a federal judge ordered her to issue it, and was jailed briefly. The issue was solved when one of her deputies, Brian Mason, agreed to issue licenses, and in 2016 the Kentucky General Assembly established an alternate license.Mason is still issuing same-sex marriage licenses, he said Wednesday."I am running to restore the confidence of the people in our clerk's office and because I believe that the leaders of our community should act with integrity and fairness, and they should put the needs of their constituents first," said Ermold, 43, who teaches English at the University of Pikeville and directs Morehead Pride, a local gay rights organization. "My commitment to Rowan County is to restore professional leadership, fairness, and responsibility to the clerk's office. I will build upon the successes of the past, and I will seek solutions for the challenges we may still face."Ermold is one of four Democrats seeking the nomination to challenge Davis, who changed her registration from Democrat to Republican in 2015. The others are James L. Jessee, Elwood Caudill and Nashia Fife, according to the Kentucky Office of the Secretary of State.Davis, who has been married to opposite sex partners four times, has already said she will run for re-election. She has been County Clerk since 2014, although she worked for her mother, who was also clerk, before being elected to the position. Her son, Nathan Davis, also works in the clerk's office.Davis processed Ermold's paperwork at the clerk's office on Wednesday, where she shook hands with him and said "may the best candidate win," according to The Associated Press.Ermold said he would bring more professionalism to the clerk's office, which includes not hiring family and friends, and do a better job helping to register voters and facilitate voting."The county clerk's office has been in the hands of the same family for almost 35 years," Ermold said. "I think there's' the potential they want to keep it in the family. But everyone should have a fair shot, it should not be something that's handed down from mother to daughter and from daughter to son."Ermold and Moore married in October, 2015 in Morehead. Ermold has two master's degrees from Morehead State University, and has worked at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College and Maysville Community College. Since 2015, he's helped organize several gay pride events in Morehead.Davis has become a darling of the religious right. For example, two months ago she traveled to Romania to urge that country to outlaw gay marriage.Ermold said Davis' position within the religious right is bringing more politics to the job.Going to Romania, he said, "she's just dragging our people through the mud over and over again," he said. "Our people want to move on."Jackie Matthews is one of those people. She moved to Kentucky two years ago, then specifically moved to Rowan County so she could marry her wife there last year. She is excited to vote for Ermold and get Davis out of office and joined him at the lightly attended event at Coffeetree Books in downtown Morehead."You have to serve all the people, not just the ones you agree with," she said. "David represents everyone."Ermold said he was also discouraged by politicians who used the Rowan rift to further their candidacies in the presidential primary. He said he's aware that Davis could get a lot of outside help in the campaign, but hopes Rowan voters will recognize the importance of restoring integrity to the office."Diversity, inclusion _ none of these things are solely one party issues," he said. "These are issues that are important to all of us."Like much of Eastern Kentucky, Rowan County has turned from a Democratic county to a Republican one; President Donald Trump won with 58.5 percent of the vote in 2016.Retired Morehead instructor Joe Sartor said the community is pretty divided over Davis, so he thinks Ermold has a shot. But Morehead resident Bill Roberts said he's one of many true blue supporters of Davis and her stance on gay marriage."She does a good job and should be re-elected," he said. "I stand by her 10,000 percent."
Getting Hispanics to vote

People, not money

Ending weeks of uncertainty, Dallas County Sheriff Guadalupe "Lupe" Valdez announced Wednesday she is running for governor, giving Democrats a Hispanic standard-bearer they hope will boost minority turnout to end their two-decade drought at winning statewide office."Opportunity in Texas ought to be as big as this great state, but it is out of reach for far too many. That's why I'm running for Texas governor," Valdez said after filing paperwork with party officials to formally declare her long-shot candidacy. "I'm a proud Texas Democrat. I believe good government can make people's lives better, and I intend to do just that."Valdez resigned as sheriff as she filed. State law prohibits her from holding one office while running for another.Speculation has swirled publicly for weeks about whether Valdez would run after she acknowledged she was "in the exploratory process" of starting a gubernatorial bid. News reports last week had her on the verge of resigning her position as sheriff to run, but she delayed that formal announcement until Wednesday.Valdez, 70, has been the Dallas County sheriff for 12 years, after earlier careers as a prison guard, a federal customs agent and a Department of Homeland Security investigator and supervisor. A San Antonio native, she is the daughter of migrant farmworkers and Army veteran who publicly acknowledged she was lesbian when she ran for sheriff.She is the second gay Democrat running for governor. Dallas businessman Jeffrey Payne filed to challenge Abbott on Monday.Valdez' announcement makes her the most well-known Democrat in the race after several more prominent Texans passed on trying to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott and break a 22-year hold by Republicans on the Texas governor's mansion. Political consultants and experts rated her chances of success as slim, at best."If you place a bet on a horse that has trouble coming out of the gate, you can probably tear up your (betting) ticket," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "She spent weeks trying to get in the race, made a head fake last week, and is now in. The Dems have been waiting for years for Hispanics to turn out in large numbers for them, and that just hasn't happened -- even when they had a Hispanic running for governor. ... She has no statewide campaign experience or organization, no fundraising network, no name ID outside Dallas. I don't see her winning."Nonetheless, Democratic Party officials applauded her candidacy as another step to turning Texas blue next year.If elected, Valdez would be the first Democrat to serve since Ann Richards was governor for one term in the early 1990s, the second woman in Texas history to hold the post.Abbott won by a 20-point margin three years ago against former state Sen. Wendy Davis, whose abortion-rights stance in a legislative filibuster briefly made her a national political star.This year, Democratic Party officials said they are confident Valdez can draw out Hispanic voters disgusted with Republican Party policies on sanctuary cities, LGBT equality and other issues.Republicans said Wednesday her positions will make her an easy target for Abbott, who polls show riding a wave of popularity despite his support of several divisive issues during this year's legislative session, including the so-called bathroom bill that pitted conservatives against business interests in Texas.Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, the son of the late former Gov. Mark White and who is expected to announce his bid for governor on Thursday, said he welcomes Valdez's candidacy because it will allow him and other Democrats to highlight Abbott's policies that he says are out of step with those of most Texans, not just the conservative GOP voters they cater to.Others who have filed as Democrats to challenge Abbott include Houston electronics businessman Joe Mumbach, Dallas financial analyst Adrian Ocegueda, retired Flint teacher Grady Yarbrough, former Balch Springs Mayor Cedric Davis Sr. and San Antonio businessman Tom Wakely.They will appear on the Democratic primary ballot next March 6.Abbott has no serious GOP primary challenger and has more than $50 million in his re-election war chest, his campaign aides say.Valdez said she was undaunted by Abbott's campaign fund-raising edge or the fact the state has voted Republican for years."I think we're going to raise whatever money's necessary," she said. "I don't believe that we need 40, 60, 90 bazillion dollars. Abbott may have the money. We're going to have the people."Abbott's campaign had no immediate reaction to Valdez's candidacy. Hours after she formally announced, his campaign team trumpeted an endorsement by the Dallas Police Association, a notable law-enforcement group in Valdez' hometown.Valdez dismissed the endorsement as not reflecting the view of the association's full membership.Hours later, Abbott's camp released a YouTube video entitled "Can the Texas Democrats Find a Match?" that mocks the party's trouble finding a high-profile candidate to run for governor in what likely is a preview of how he will portray her in the campaign.Using a mock dating website called "DHarmony," the search clicks through 10 well-known Democrats who declined to run against Abbott, from U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio to former Houston Mayor Annise Parker and Davis. "Not a match," each says."We're having trouble finding a match," the video says, before Valdez's profile pops up."I'm interested in open borders, sanctuary cities and California," her profile reads. "I think we'd be a great match."
It was widely expected, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren formally endorsed her fellow Democrat, Richard Cordray, for Ohio governor.The endorsement from the Massachusetts senator comes as little surprise because Cordray stepped down last month as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that Warren helped to set up. Also, when Cordray announced his campaign Tuesday, he released a video in which Warren and former President Barack Obama said laudatory things about him.Also Wednesday, Obama's former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also praised Cordray in a tweet."I'm so excited @RichCordray is running for Governor of Ohio. At the CFPB he gave us the strongest consumer protections in history. Now, he'll be a fearless voice for ALL Ohioans," it said.The financial protection bureau was set up in the wake of the 2008 market meltdown as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law."Everyone was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis -- but Ohio got hit really hard," Warren said in her endorsement of Cordray."Wall Street had gambled with our economy, and Ohio families paid the price with their jobs, their homes, and their life savings. So Rich Cordray fought back: He took on AIG. And Merrill Lynch/Bank of America. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His office forced Wall Street to return nearly $2 billion to the workers, retirees, and investors of Ohio."Nationally, bureau has returned almost $12 billion to consumers, its website says.Saying that Wall Street banks "have about 12 billion reasons to stop Rich Cordray from becoming governor," Warren asked voters to "stand with Rich and be one of the first supporters of his campaign to take back Ohio for working families."Also running in the Democratic primary are former U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton of Copley, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, former state Rep. Connie Pillich of Montgomery and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William M. O'Neill says he make his intentions known Friday.On the Republican side, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is running for governor with Secretary of State Jon Husted as running mate. U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci of Wadsworth and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor also are seeking the GOP nod.
Gov. Tom Wolf urged Republican state House leaders Wednesday to consider removing state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe from a committee chairmanship following controversial comments he made a day earlier.Metcalfe, a Republican from Cranberry who chairs the State Government Committee, suggested during a committee meeting Tuesday that a Democratic colleague might "like men"' after the Democrat touched him on the arm."I'm a heterosexual. I have a wife. I love my wife. I don't like men, as you might," Metcalfe told Rep. Matthew Bradford, D-Montgomery County. "You have people on your side of the aisle that might like it. I don't."Metcalfe later told the Tribune-Review that Bradford has touched his arm or shoulder often during meetings in recent months even though he has asked Bradford to stop.Wolf, a Democrat, called Metcalfe's comments "offensive and discriminatory" in a statement posted on Twitter."Unfortunately, this is part of a disturbing pattern of behavior," Wolf continued. "I urge House leadership to re-examine whether it is appropriate for him to continue controlling a committee that oversees civil rights legislation."Metcalfe, who is in his 10th term in Harrisburg, has been outspoken in his belief that homosexuality is a sin and marriage should only be between a man and a woman. He previously helped lead an unsuccessful effort to impeach then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane because she didn't enforce the state's former ban on same-sex marriage, and he once used a procedural maneuver to prevent an openly gay colleague from speaking on the House floor because he believed the colleague would "say things that I believe are open rebellion against God."In addition to Wolf, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has called for Metcalfe's resignation.Bradford said Tuesday that he had spoken with House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Marshall, about the incident. Bradford said he believes that Metcalfe owes at least an apology.A spokesman for Turzai, who Tuesday said he was not aware of plans for the speaker to address the incident, did not return phone calls or an email Wednesday.
On Wednesday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a luncheon in honour of Mr Bill Robinson AO and Mrs Shirley Robinson. Guests included: Mr Bill Robinson AO & Mrs Shirley Robinson; Mr Tim Fairfax AC & Mrs Gina Fairfax; Professor Susan Street AO; Mr Philip Bacon AM; Mr Robert Brownhall & Mrs Sarah Brownhall; Mr John McDonald; and Ms Cecily Pearson OAM.

In the evening, at Customs House, Brisbane, the Governor and Mrs de Jersey attended the Consular Corps of Queensland Annual Christmas Dinner where His Excellency addressed guests.
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GIS - 07 December, 2017: It is another remarkable achievement for the Republic of Mauritius as the Sega Tambour of Rodrigues is inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The inscription is the verdict of UNESCOs Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage which met today on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea. It is another remarkable achievement for the Republic of Mauritius as the Sega Tambour of Rodrigues is inscribed

The Committee, made up of the representatives of 24 States Parties to the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, meets once a year. It ensures the implementation of this legal instrument, which has been ratified by 175 States who have integrated the safeguarding of intangible heritage into their national legislation.

Sega Tambour of Rodrigues is a vibrant rhythmic performance of music, song and dance with its origins in slave communities. Sega Tambour is performed all over Rodrigues in the home and on the streets, at formal and informal functions. The primary bearers are the Rodrigues community, as well as the diaspora on the island of Mauritius and elsewhere, and the art is open to everyone irrespective of age, gender or status.

With its origins in defiance and resilience, Sega Tambour facilitates conflict resolution, fosters socialisation and consolidates bonds. Competitions and rehearsals are organised in community centres across Rodrigues, and the element is also performed in tourism facilities, contributing to the generation of revenue for performers. Knowledge and skills relating to the practice are transmitted from elders to youth through imitation and observation, and instrument-making skills are learned through apprenticeship with experienced craftspeople.

The traditional Mauritian sega and the Bhojpuri folks songs were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in November 2014 and December 2016 respectively.
When the economy first began unraveling during the Great Recession, most governments didnt feel it right away. Then, as revenues began to tumble, states and localities cut back on services, implemented hiring freezes and left vacancies unfilled. By 2010 and 2011, many state and local governments were shedding staff and making sizable cuts to agency budgets.The economy since then has recovered at a sluggish pace, but governments have recuperated even more slowly. Today, many jurisdictions continue to operate with staffing well below pre-recession levels. Given that this month marks the 10-year anniversary of the official start of the recession, its worth considering whether limited staffing and resources can ever rebound fully, or whether they have become a more permanent fixture of the public sector.There are about 7.5 million full-time equivalent state and local government workers, excluding those in education, according to last years Census Bureau survey of governments. That number is 3 percent below the levels of March 2008, shortly after the recession began. Taking population growth into consideration, noneducation local government employment per capita is down about 8 percent, while state employment is nearly 11 percent lower.Several compounding factors have constrained public-sector staffing levels: Income tax revenue growth remains weak; property tax collections for many jurisdictions arent keeping up with the demand for services -- hampered in some places by laws placing a cap on rate increases; and sales taxes are growing sluggishly, partially because of shifts to e-commerce and untaxed services. As a whole, state revenues just havent tracked broader economic growth, says John Hicks, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO).Rising pension and health-care costs are also making it difficult for states and localities to fill vacant staff positions. For state governments, its Medicaid thats eating up an ever-larger share of the budget. Theres a crowding out effect, Hicks says. The rest of the government has been living with flat or declining [spending levels].There arent a lot of reasons for optimism, either. Most state governments reported revenues coming in below original projections earlier this year. Governors budget proposals called for just a 1 percent uptick in general fund spending for fiscal 2018, the smallest recommended increase since 2010, according to NASBOs Fiscal Survey of States Cities find themselves in a similar situation. Christiana McFarland, the National League of Cities research director, says that shes starting to see revenues contract, signaling more difficult times ahead. Generally speaking, we may be in a new normal in terms of what personnel levels look like, she says. The associations annual survey of finance officers found cities budgeted lower property tax revenue growth and expected declines in both sales and income tax revenues this year.Personnel downsizing has extended across different areas of government unevenly. Census Bureau data shows a particularly large cutback of 9.2 percent since 2008 for those classified as state and local government highways employees, which includes most public works functions. Administrative and non-sworn police employees have suffered similarly large reductions. On the other hand, state-funded higher education has yet to experience a national slowdown in hiring. Areas such as parks and recreation, relying more on user fees, also have weathered the recession better.Some governments in states that sustained major property tax losses from the housing market collapse, including Arizona and Florida, havent come close to recovering those losses. The Census data indicate Arizona, Massachusetts and New Jersey have suffered the largest declines in combined state and local government employment, excluding education, since the start of the recession in early 2008. Only Colorado, North Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington, D.C., have seen their public-sector workforce expand more than 5 percent over that time period.In other places, the gradual shrinking of government payrolls began long before the recession. For Michigans local governments, it started in the early 2000s. Mounting cuts to aid from the state accelerated around that time. Shanna Draheim, the Michigan Municipal Leagues policy director, says the recession only exacerbated existing structural problems. The system as a whole is broken, she says, We cant track with the economy.Meanwhile, localities legacy costs continue to climb, with infrastructure, pensions and other line items siphoning away more dollars. Michigans local leaders worry the situation isnt sustainable over the long term without more state aid. I dont think any of them are accepting this as a permanent reality, Draheim says. But it has long since ceased to be a temporary phenomenon.The challenge for governments continues to be maintaining service levels with fewer resources. Some jurisdictions have responded by pursuing shared service agreements or partnerships with nonprofits, while others have sought efficiencies through technology and performance management initiatives.The publics expectations certainly havent waned. A Pew Research Center poll conducted earlier this year found 48 percent of Americans prefer a bigger government providing more services. That exceeded those preferring a smaller government with fewer services (45 percent) for the first time since late 2008. Many may be assuming, incorrectly, that their governments are fiscally strong if the local economy shows visible signs of growth.All of this raises a crucial and worrisome question: Are governments any better prepared for the next recession than they were for the last one?The good news is that states have managed to bolster their reserves. The median rainy day fund balance as a percentage of state spending has exceeded its high from the last decade, according to NASBO. And a few sources of revenue, albeit relatively small ones, are increasing. Many states are collecting more online sales taxes and expanding taxes on digital services, while others have sought additional gaming revenue.Local governments arent in a better position to weather the next downturn, but they may be more prepared in terms of management, says McFarland of the National League of Cities. Managers who worked through the last recession have proceeded cautiously. Rather than staff up, theyre relying more on contractors and temp workers.By now, suppressed staffing levels and diminished resources have persisted long enough that employees of affected jurisdictions have grown accustomed to them. Given the not-so-rosy financial outlook for many states and localities, its a reality thats unlikely to change anytime soon. There may be an acceptance of where we are right now, says Elizabeth Kellar of the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, and an effort to see what we can do under the new circumstances.
Be alert to signs of potential trouble.

Help ensure the safety of yourself and your colleagues with appropriate intervention.

Reach out for help if you're concerned with someone's behavior to help mitigate risks, and point them to resources.

(TNS)  A shooting in a small-town Texas church in November left 26 people dead and opened the eyes of many area faith leaders to a grim reality:It can happen anywhere, even in their own sanctuaries.This week, the Dodge County Sheriff's Office met with area faith leaders to address security in places of worship. Church leaders, who commonly welcome everyone with open arms, were urged to maintain their friendly atmospheres, but with a layer of security."It really didn't come up until Texas," Dodge County Emergency Management Director Matt Maas said. "Churches have to look at it in a completely different way. We've had discussions with schools and workplaces; we haven't had any with those based in faith communities."The forum was originally going to be held in the county board room in Mantorville, but Sheriff Scott Rose had to move it to Kasson-Mantorville HIgh School when more than 100 people planned to participate.Participants, many representing area churches from West Concord, Dodge Center, Stewartville, Rochester and Albert Lea  took notes and discussed their concerns over protecting their congregations."There's a need to address this (and) we want to be a resource for them," Rose said. "We want to talk about it, and we're trying to raise awareness. This is the first step. (The Texas shooting) happened in a town of 600.  It very well can happen here."Rose said that the training and open dialogue with places of worship could ultimately save lives. The training outline is the same as that used in schools and workplaces: Run. Hide. Fight.Rose said that the next step would be a site visit, where Sheriff's Office personnel would check out church layouts and establish individualized plans for safety procedures.The Rev. Dean Gunn of Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kasson said his congregation has around 130 members, and attendance averages around 70 people per service. He said he wanted to attend for forum to prepare himself with information before addressing training his own congregation."The Dodge County Sheriff's Office does a really good job with presenting this information, and we are addressing it," Gunn said. "It was really helpful to plan a presentation to the congregation without scaring them."'We have to plan and be prepared'The Nov. 5 shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, left 26 dead and 20 injured.Churches have regular schedules and multiple entrances, making them likely targets for a shooter intent on killing as many people as possible, Maas said.would choose to target a place of worship.Because a shooting happened in a town hundrds of miles away, it doesn't mean that a similar-sized church in Dodge County or anywhere in rural Minnesota could be immune from a seemingly distant incident."We have to plan and be prepared," Maas said. "You have a chance to see these warning signs. It's everyone's due diligence. They (Sutherland Springs) didn't think it was gonna happen to them.  we have to get away from that mindset."Some key points presented to church leaders:Some leaders said that their churches already have extensive security measures and safety plans in place. However, smaller congregations have limited resources, Rose said.Participants discussed limiting the number of open doors to the church, placing more ushers near the entrance to the sanctuary and determining the legalities concerning church members who have a permit to carry a firearm.The training provided through the Dodge County Sheriff's Office can be applicable to other parts of the community such as theaters, schools and workplaces."Doing this type of training helps (the public) make a difference," Maas said.2017 the Post-BulletinVisit the Post-Bulletin at www.postbulletin.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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A pilot project comprising training, check-ups and vaccinations was then launched. Training covered hygiene, nutrition, maternity, breast-feeding, child care, family planning, cancer, and health service access. Groups of doctors, social workers and teachers spent 150 hours conducting training and distributing support material, such as information leaflets, a health guide and a DVD, in the four settlements. At Drosero, 150 women and children were examined and around 100 children vaccinated, with repeat vaccinations given when needed and medical files kept at the hospital. Around 100 men and more than 300 women and their children attended discussions on sexually transmitted diseases and addiction.

Some 21 women and 40 children from Agia Sofia underwent hospital tests, with the children receiving vaccinations and their details kept on file, while 92 women and teenage girls and 81 men and teenage boys attended information days on infections, sexually transmitted diseases and addiction. Open discussion also took place and 200 food packages were distributed. In Izgrev, Vulcan and Marinovo, 80 people were vaccinated against hepatitis A and B, 50 women and 50 children underwent check-ups and over 100 people were trained on health topics. The hospital visits and check-ups contributed to diagnosis and treatment of undiagnosed problems, while the project website has become a knowledge repository on Roma health issues. The project has supported cooperation between Bulgaria and Greece and between local authorities and national health systems and established a network for raising awareness of Roma health issues and tackling exclusion.

The Roma Alert! project helps Roma in Bulgaria and Greece to use public health systems and trains them on health issues, hygiene and health system procedures. This should improve their health and quality of life, cut infant mortality and increase life expectancy. An analysis study investigated conditions in four settlements and documented problems and needs. Epidemiological research was carried out by collecting data, which can also be used by local authorities for formulating policy. Based on this, an action plan was developed setting out hygiene and health measures required in the medium and long term. Total investment for the project Roma Alert! is EUR 1 million, of which the EUs European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 930000 from the Operational Programme Greece - Bulgaria.
(TNS) - FEMA has denied a request for a major disaster declaration for the state of New York in a response to the July 1 flooding that destroyed numerous homes and flooded communities throughout Oneida County.A letter obtained by the Observer-Dispatch on Wednesday was sent from the federal agency to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office. The letter says the denial was because the damage was not severe enough."Based on our review of all of the information available, it has been determined that the damage identified in your request resulted from separate and distinct events, none of which were of the severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments and voluntary agencies," the letter said. "Accordingly, we have determined that supplemental federal assistance is not necessary."Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr. said he'd like FEMA Administrator Brock Long to come tell residents himself that the damage here and throughout the state was not that bad."I want the administrator to come and tell the people of Whitesboro, New Hartford and Kirkland that the fact that they were washed out of their homes was not severe enough," he said. "I want that to happen."Picente called the denial outrageous, saying that the municipalities, county and state already have stepped up to provide relief for their residents.He said there are millions of dollars in damage in the county, never mind the other 14 counties affected by the storm, and people lost homes, businesses and some lost most everything they owned."Our federal representatives show up, promise the world to our residents and can't even deliver the simplest of assistance to an area that got devastated?" Picente said. "I think the next time it floods, they should either stay home or say they just can't help."Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, R-New Hartford, said in a statement that she heard about the denial Wednesday afternoon and is diasppointed in it. She will support an appeal of the decision and continue to fight to ensure that property owners receive the help they need to rebuild their lives following this summer's severe flooding, the statement said.Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, D-Utica, said in a statement he doesn't understand how FEMA could make the determination that the 15 counties in Cuomo's request don't need extra help after the floods. He said he will be strongly urging the state's federal representatives to demand that FEMA take a second look at the application."It is simply incomprehensible to me that FEMA has concluded that local residents and municipalities in the Mohawk Valley and other parts of the state do not need additional resources following the devastating flooding that hit our area last July," he said. "Over the last five months, I have heard from many residents who still have not recovered from this storm."State Sen. Joseph Griffo, R-Rome, said in a statement that, "FEMA's denial of the state's request for funding is wrong, frustrating and needs to be appealed. ... I am hopeful that the federal government will revisit this decision, reverse it, acknowledge the state's request and provide much-needed financial assistance."The state has 30 days to appeal the decision, but still is deciding the next step, said Kristin Devoe, director of public information for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, in a statement."Today we were notified of FEMA's unfortunate decision to deny the state's request for a disaster declaration following the severe weather, flooding and tornados that impacted 15 counties in New York state this summer," she said. "Our experts are currently reviewing this decision in detail and evaluating the appropriate next steps."It's been more than six months since severe flooding caused millions of dollars in damage to areas in Oneida and Herkimer counties in July.Cuomo sent a letter to the White House at the end of August requesting a major disaster declaration for 15 counties impacted by summer storms and flash flooding, including Oneida and Herkimer.In the months that have passed since the July 1 flooding, Picente said, Oneida County officials have allocated $500,000 for cleanup costs and $250,000 to area households through the Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties.Picente said he had a feeling that FEMA would deny the request, which is why he chose to allocate $12 million over the next six years to pay for mitigation efforts throughout Oneida County.Because of that denial, he said he'd like to see some changes within FEMA because now the municipalities, county and state are left to deal with millions of dollars of damage and have to try to fix things on their own."Do we have to fend for ourselves?" he asked. "We shouldn't have to. Which is why I'm going to call on the system needing to be changed and balanced. ... It's very frustrating. Local taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill."Contact reporter Samantha Madison at 315-792-5015 or follow her on Twitter (@OD_Madison).2017 Observer-Dispatch, Utica, N.Y.Visit Observer-Dispatch, Utica, N.Y. at www.uticaod.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS) - Facing an active shooter situation may be as likely as getting struck by lightning, but that doesn't mean lightning never strikes.That was the warning given to University of Idaho faculty, staff and students as part of an active shooter response training session Wednesday afternoon in the Vandal Ballroom of the Bruce Pitman Center.In a short training video from the Department of Homeland Security shown that afternoon, experts emphasized the need for everyone to develop a survival mindset before being confronted with danger. In the face of a shooter, the video outlined, respondents must decide whether to run, hide or fight to stay safe.Members of the Moscow Police Department, the Moscow SWAT Team and the UI Care Team expanded on those points and spent over an hour answering audience questions about everything from open carry protocol to university-wide safety upgrades to how to fight a shooter head-on.Speaking about prevention, Matt Dorschel, executive director of public safety and security at the UI, said community members in small towns are often afraid to report suspicious behavior for fear they will damage another person's opportunity to succeed.Dorschel listed several places people can report suspicious behavior, including the UI Public Safety and Security division's website. The division works in partnership with the Office of the Dean of Students, Housing and Residence Life and the UI Counseling and Testing Center to address and receive reports."When the hair on the back of your neck stands up, go ahead and report it," Dorschel said.Those with access to the UI's VandalWeb may also sign up for Vandal Alert, the campus-wide emergency notification system, by visiting www.uidaho.edu/infrastructure/pss/emergency-management.In a situation where victims and a shooter come face-to-face, MPD Capt. Tyson Berrett said people should never attempt to negotiate with a shooter when a gun is in their face."Just remember that if it's an active shooter situation, the only thing that matters to that person is a body count," Berrett said.Members of the police department also pointed out the training police officers go through to handle such situations, reminding audience members that officers will not stop to help those who are injured until the shooter is caught.MPD Officer Keith Davis said those who are hiding from a shooter when police arrive should take care to follow police instructions, offer any information they have on the shooter and, most importantly, show their hands to indicate they are not a threat.The police also told audience members to run away from the situation if they can, continue running and changing directions to become less of a target and to get out of the shooter's line of sight. Those hiding should silence cellphones and blockade doors. Call 911 when it is safe to do so.Asked about concealed carry laws, Berrett and Davis said anyone carrying a gun during an active shooter situation could be described as a suspect to police in the moment."If you think cops are on their way, it's time for your firearm to go away," Davis said.Still, Berrett said a person with a concealed carry permit could end up saving another person's life."If he's in possession of a firearm that could end a shooting, that's a good thing," Berrett said.More information on active shooter preparedness can be found at www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness.Those interested in receiving active shooter safety training from the UI's Public Safety and Security division can fill out a request form at www.uidaho.edu/infrastructure/pss/request-training.Taylor Nadauld can be reached at (208) 883-4630, by email to tnadauld@dnews.com and on Twitter @tnadauldarg.2017 the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Moscow, Idaho)Visit the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Moscow, Idaho) at www.dnews.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS)  HESPERIA, Calif.  Aemerge RedPak officials said Christmas came early as they unveiled their "technological wonder" to the High Desert in the form of the first medical waste treatment facility permitted in California.The ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday was attended by company, city, state and regional leaders who heralded the new 37,700-square-foot plant in Hesperia as the location where "cutting edge" green technology will be used to safely treat medical waste and put people to work.RedPak's patented "Carbonizer" turns organic waste into "syngas" capable of being used for production of clean energy and carbon-based co-products, said RedPak President/CEO Adam Seger, who was at the ceremony on Tuesday along with his family and several investors.More than 95 percent of the waste processed on the 4.75-acre facility will be landfill diverted and, as a result, significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with waste hauling will be eliminated, Hesperia Economic Development Management Analyst Lisa LaMere said."Besides being the only facility in the state permitted to treat all types of medical waste as regulated by the California Department of Public Health, RedPak will have also created 30 new jobs within the community at full ramp-up," said LaMere, who added that RedPak is "truly" the first major industrial project in the city.The city remained a "strategic partner" with Seger and his RedPak team as they worked through site selection, pre-development meetings, planning, permitting, construction and the grand opening, LaMere told the Daily Press.Mayor Pro Tem Russ Blewett praised the Indiana-based company for choosing to locate to Hesperia. He also thanked the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and the California Pollution Control Financing Authority for their support of the project."I want to congratulate the state of California because, on a regular basis, I criticize them. But I want to congratulate you for getting this one right," said Blewett, as members of the Governor's office laughed.Senior Business Development Specialist Diane Banchero, with the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, said Redpak contacted the state in 2015 in an effort to introduce its patented technology for the treatment and elimination of medical waste for which a significant portion cannot, by law, be treated in California."Over the past two years, the Treasurer's Office has been able to provide over $40 million worth of tax-exempt financing to help construct this facility and to build the carbonizers that are so integral and central to this project," said Deputy State Treasurer Steve Juarez. "We are very proud of the work that we've been able to do with Adam and with RedPak over the those two years."LaMere said since 2002 she's been a part of a few "legacy projects" in the city, which have included the Super Target, the Walmart Supercenter and the G Avenue Lead rail track project. But she called the RedPak project something that is "near and dear" to her heart because of its job creation and the impact it will have in the High Desert, state and country."Although Hesperia has been particularly successful targeting retail in our economic development attraction efforts, manufacturing remains a top priority for us," Economic Development Manager Rod Yahnke said. "We are very pleased to see Aemerge RedPak, a green technology manufacturing company, locate in Hesperia."For more information on Aemerge RedPak, visit www.aemergeredpak.com
(TNS)  After the Springfield City Council tried to split the cost of green light traffic signal technology with an independent fire insurance board, the lights will "most likely" not go up before Christmas, according to Fire Chief Barry Helmerichs.In November, Helmerichs asked the city council for $105,000 to install GPS-based units at 16 intersections along the Veterans Parkway corridor, starting at Wabash Avenue heading south. Helmerichs asked for a supplemental appropriation in order to get the technology in place before the retail-heavy area was inundated with drivers. Though there wasn't a high volume of calls from the area, it took firefighters twice the average time to respond, Helmerichs told the council."Blindsiding" Helmerichs, the city council voted to amend the request, signing off on using video gaming revenue for half the cost while asking for the other half to be paid for by an independent firefighter board known as the Springfield Foreign Fire Insurance Board. Out-of-state insurance companies pay a 2 percent tax on policies they sell in state, which is collected by the Illinois Municipal League and redistributed back to a foreign fire insurance board where the policy is bought. The seven board members, one of whom is the chief, vote on expenses at quarterly public meetings.The city council asked for Springfield's Foreign Fire Insurance Board to schedule a special meeting to consider the expense to suit Helmerichs' timeline.However, since the board is made up of firefighters on different shifts, a special meeting has not yet been worked out, according to board president Capt. Tony Burton. The board does have a regularly scheduled meeting in January to consider requests from firefighters who have recently changed firehouses with the new year.Last month, the Springfield Foreign Fire Insurance Board got a check for about $235,400 for its year's take, leaving its balance at about $303,000.The board is governed by a list of "appropriate" expenditures , instead of the broad guidelines defined in state law. Nowhere on the list is infrastructure, Burton said, which he consider the traffic signal technology to be."According to the bylaws, infrastructure is not our responsibility," Burton said. He added, "I've never seen the city we have to buy half without speaking a word to us."As a firefighter who has served for more than 20 years, Burton said he has seen traffic signal technology come and go. He said he wanted to hear more about how the system would be maintained and what the efficacy of the system would be.Helmerichs admitted that past signal technology placed on traffic lights within the city was not effective. Those systems were not GPS-based, nor did they have the range that current system does."Technology has gone leaps and bounds over what we did before," Helmerichs said.Even though Springfield is in the thick of shopping season, Langfelder said in an interview that he hoped the board would still take a vote on its request."We need to move on if we have to," Langfelder said.So what does the Foreign Fire Insurance Board buy?Because all of the members are appointed, the board has policies in place to push back on the narrative that the Foreign Fire Insurance Fund is a firefighter "slush fund." In 2013, a Sangamon County Citizens Efficiency Commission panel recommended changes to Springfield's board, saying it had a lack of oversight."Some people over there call it a slush fund, but the board scrutinizes everything that's asked of it," Burton said. "Plus, the chief has veto power."Burton said the board is audited every single year and both he and treasurer Eric Jaeger have to be bonded and licensed by the state as insurance against embezzlement.In order for an item to be considered by the board, a majority of the firehouse has to approve. Whenever the city requests the board buy a piece of equipment, Helmerichs often would fill out a form and give a presentation.Oftentimes, the money is used to replace worn items in the houses and equipment. In the last three years, the most expense item on the list was $70,000 for thermal imaging cameras that accompany every fire rig. The city put in $70,000 as well for the cameras. After that, the most expensive item is remodeling a fire house kitchen for about $32,000. To replace garage doors at the firehouses was about $23,600."We live in these houses," Jaeger said. "Any given day there's fifty guys living in these houses."All of the defibrillators in the city were upgraded this year after the board approved $11,600 for the expense.It bought a Zodiac rescue boat and trailer for the dive team, which cost about $11,000 and underwater sonar system for about $4,300. In the last year, firefighters have worked to recover three people who drowned in Lake Springfield, Burton said. During that time, they had to rely on the Department of Natural Resources for sonar and boats."We are better prepared today," Burton said. "... Bringing in the bodies brings closure to the families."Every year, the board spends about $27,000 on Club Fit gym memberships for all of Springfield's firefighters. It also pays $9,000 to the city for 12 parking spots in garage attached to the downtown fire station.
The city of Fairbanks, Alaska, has signed a contract with Tyler Technologies Inc., to employ Tyler's integrated MUNIS software solution, including application software and services for financial, payroll, utility billing, business license, work order and content management. "Selecting Tyler's MUNIS solution is the result of careful consideration and analysis," states Andreas A. Bohman, IT Director for the city of Fairbanks. "The city conducted the search with our citizens' needs in mind, and we've found that Tyler's MUNIS software and services provide the most cost-effective financial and human resources solutions. We look forward to implementing MUNIS, and continuing our operations within current and future budgetary demands."
(TNS)  JEFFERSON CITY  Gov. Eric Greitens and his senior staff use an app that deletes text messages after theyve been read, raising concerns among transparency advocates that it could be used to subvert Missouri open records law.The app, called Confide, allows someone to send a text message that vanishes without a trace after it is read. It also prevents someone from saving, forwarding, printing or taking a screenshot of the text message.Because the app is designed to eliminate a paper trail, it is impossible to determine whether the governor and his staff are using it to conduct state business out of view of the public, or whether theyre using it for personal and campaign purposes.Self-destructing messages also mean there is no way to retain texts to decide whether they should be considered a public record.If I were wanting there to be no record of what I was doing, thats the route I would take, said Jean Maneke, an attorney for the Missouri Press Association.Even before Greitens took office in January, his administration has been cloaked in secrecy From refusing to divulge how much corporations and lobbyists donated to bankroll his inaugural to forcing his transition team to sign gag orders to charging fees for public records that critics argue are likely illegal, the governor has displayed a penchant for secrecy that alarms open-government advocates.Use of a secret texting app, critics contend, is yet another example of that inclination.If public officials do public business using this app, they are intentionally removing that business from public scrutiny, said Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation , a nonprofit organization that advocates for open government.Removing public records about public business from scrutiny entirely removes the ability for oversight bodies, journalists and the public to hold our officials accountable for their work on our behalf, should waste, fraud, abuse or outright criminality occur, he said. Good public policy should always be able to withstand public scrutiny.Parker Briden, the governors press secretary, told The Star via email that I dont believe anyone has (Confide) downloaded on a state-issued device.The Star then asked about the fact that the governor and most of his staff  including Briden  have Confide accounts connected to their personal cell phones, and whether the office has a policy about using the app. Briden did not respond.Among those with Confide accounts are the governors chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and a handful of other high-ranking advisers. Austin Chambers, who runs the governors political nonprofit, and Jimmy Soni, the governors former communications adviser who remains on Greitens campaign payroll , also have accounts.The use of secure messaging apps like Confide, WhatsApp and Signal is becoming more prevalent in politics, especially in the aftermath of Russian hackers targeting Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. White House staffers reportedly used Confide to keep their communications secret until former press secretary Sean Spicer explicitly banned its use, saying it was a violation of the Presidential Records Act.A conservative organization sued the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year seeking texts that government workers sent using Signal, another encrypted messaging app.Whether using these apps to conduct public business violates the states Sunshine Law or records retention law is a very, very tough legal question, said David Roland, director of litigation with the Freedom Center of Missouri , a Libertarian nonprofit that advocates for government transparency.Under state law, Roland said, a record is any document or material, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received in connection with the transaction of official business. No record can be destroyed or disposed of, he said, unless it is determined that the record has no further administrative, legal, fiscal, research or historical value.The potential hitch here is that there has been almost no litigation concerning the requirements for retaining public records, and its not clear what the penalty would be for failing to comply with the laws requirements, Roland said.A court may determine that vanishing texts on private phones used by public employees present a significant risk that those employees will try to avoid transparency, he said, but that they may not have the legal tools to hold those public employees accountable for this sort of thing.Government employees are entitled to a measure of privacy when they are not on the clock or are not dealing with public business, Roland said.I think its fine if they want to use encrypted messaging apps on their own devices, he said, so long as they are not using those apps to conduct public business.The governors use of Confide, and the legal questions it raises, is just another example of how outdated and antiquated the states Sunshine Law provisions are becoming, said Maneke, the Missouri Press Association attorney.The retention of records documenting acts of public officials in the conduct of public business is critical to ensuring that public business is conducted fairly and impartially, she said.Public business being conducted on a secret messaging app, Maneke said, isnt that much different than a public board meeting in secret.If the latter is illegal, she said, so is the former.
(TNS)  WASHINGTON, D.C.  Hackers are growing much more adept at getting people to open email infected with worms, as the network operators of Mecklenburg County government in North Carolina are the latest to discover.Practically any infected email can look like its from a trusted friend or co-worker.New techniques that a researcher unveiled this week show how hackers can strip away any sign that an email is fake, and make it virtually unstoppable by normal safeguards such as spam filters on email servers.Campaigns by criminal hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated, said Ken Spinner, vice president of global field engineering at Varonis, a New York City security firm.Its really hard to determine, if you receive an email message, whether it is legitimate or not, Spinner said. Whats happening is that the hackers are well funded, and in a lot of cases, budgets (of governments) dont keep up with the requirements of security and they dont keep up with the sophistication of exploits.A German security researcher, Sabri Haddouche, discovered the latest tactics used by cybercriminals, announcing them on a website Tuesday that shows a collection of vicious bugs used to bypass the hurdles set up on more than 30 widely used email clients, like Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft Outlook 2016.Haddouche dubbed the malware technique Mailsploit, and said hed notified major software vendors at least three months ago to protect against it. About 20 vendors dealt with the problem, but 15 either did not say if they would fix the bug or said they would not, he said.Mailsploit is a new way to easily spoof email addresses. It allows the attacker to display an arbitrary sender email address to the email recipient, wrote Haddouche, who works for a European cybersecurity firm, Wire, with offices in Berlin; Zug, Switzerland; and San Francisco.In his demonstration, Haddouche showed how he could make an email look like it was from President Donald Trump and originated from the email account potus@whitehouse.gov By sending what are known as spoofing or spearphishing emails, hackers can either include a malicious link in the mail or attach an infected document, both of which can give intruders access into a network.Governments are now falling victim to ransomware attacks just as thousands of corporations, small businesses, nonprofits and other entities, like hospitals, have worldwide.An employee of the Mecklenburg County government on Monday received an email routed from another employees account and opened it and a malicious attachment, infecting the countys network. Hackers set a deadline of 1 p.m. Wednesday for officials to pay a ransom of about $23,000 but the deadline passed and it was not known whether a ransom was paid. The computers remained down.What makes this more dangerous is that hackers are now evolving different ways of getting inside the government network and employees can be the weakest link, Bob Noel, director of strategic relationships and marketing for Plixer, a Kennebunk, Maine, firm, said in a statement.In these sophisticated attempts, it is hard, if not impossible, for government employees to recognize a phishing email as the spoofing is so professional, Noel added.Ransomware attacks have become a global phenomenon. In at least two major waves of attacks this year, tens of thousands of infected computers in at least 150 countries displayed a message saying the hard drives had been frozen and would only be decrypted if a bitcoin ransom was paid.Major corporations suffering large losses in the May and June attacks included the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, the FedEx logistics and package delivery firm, and Danish shipping line Maersk.Global ransomware damage is likely to rise from $5 billion this year to $11.5 billion in 2019, the Menlo Park, California, firm Cybersecurity Ventures said in a report last month.Spoofing emails take many forms, including what appear to be requests from within a corporation to transfer money to an outside account to pay bills.While some hackers use stolen personal identifying information to try to hack anyone, then penetrate into their workplace networks, few have targeted governments.A ransomware attacks relies on the victim being able to make a quick payment. Most government agencies would not have the capability of making a quick payment even if they wanted to, said John Gunn, chief marketing officer at VASCO, an Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, cybersecurity firm.Moreover, Gunn said, ransomware works best against victims that want to avoid a disruption of their business and the economic losses associated with losing customers. Government agencies generally dont lose customers regardless of the level of service provided.One security researcher said ordinary citizens should not feel bad if they get taken in.Even the best of us can be fooled by a specially crafted phishing campaign, said Travis Smith, principal security researcher at Tripwire, a software company with headquarters in Portland, Oregon. The next step is to ensure updates are installed in a timely manner, as malware often takes advantages of known vulnerabilities.
City of Charlotte statement on @MeckCounty security breach. pic.twitter.com/ISyoWBPXcA  City of Charlotte (@CLTgov) December 6, 2017

A variety of online public services in Mecklenburg County, North Carolinas most populous county, were running slow or unavailable, days after hackers penetrated dozens of servers and froze data. But officials said Dec. 6 that the county will not pay the more than $23,000 ransom.In a news release , County Manager Dena Diorio said the regional government is confident its backups are secure, and it has the resources needed to restore the data.It was going to take almost as long to fix the system after paying the ransom as it does to fix it ourselves. And there was no guarantee that paying the criminals was a sure fix, Diorio said in a statement. The news release indicated the agency consulted multiple cybersecurity experts.It will take time, but with patience and hard work, all of our systems will be back up and running as soon as possible, Diorio added. Achieving that goal will require the county to use its backups to rebuild applications from scratch, the county said.During a Wednesday press conference on Facebook Live, the county manager stressed that while 48 of the countys 500 servers were impacted, as well as multiple applications that run through those servers, no sensitive or confidential information is believed to have been compromised.We are open for business and we are slow, but the good news is that based on what we know today, theres no indication that any data has actually been lost, or personal or health information has been compromised, Diorio said then, noting that it may be several days before a methodical, detailed review of all servers is complete and services are completely restored.Late Wednesday, The Associated Press reported county sheriffs deputies were processing inmates by hand; a tax office had turned away electronic payments; and building inspectors had switched to paper records.The hack, which likely began over the weekend but was discovered Monday, is now affecting eight county departments including Social Services; Child Support Enforcement; Parks and Recreation; Finance; Human Resources; the Register of Deeds; the county Assessor; and the Land Use and Environmental Services Agency.Third-party experts retained by the county believe the ransomware is a new strain known as LockCrypt, and very little is known about it, the county manager said.Based on its attributes, it looks like the criminals are from either Iran or the Ukraine, Diorio said during the press conference.The county manager said that contrary to erroneous reports, the hackers are only demanding around $23,000 in ransom to release the data  but the process of establishing a cryptocurrency account and using it to meet the demands could take several days. Not paying and instead rebuilding applications could take longer still, she added.The bottom line is regardless of what direction we take, whether we pay or we dont pay, this situation will be resolved in days and not hours, Diorio said.Theres no evidence Mecklenburg County was specifically targeted, county Public Information Director Danny Diehl said  but for obvious reasons, the decision of whether or not to pay the hackers was a complicated one.Youre taking a risk when you do that, he said.The exact financial impact to the county is unclear because the situation is still developing, Diehl said, but as officials inspect its hundreds of servers, theyre giving priority to key areas.Our priorities are going to be systems that affect health and human services, like the Department of Social Services, Health Services, Child Support Services, Diehl said.Mecklenburg County, which is home to more than 1 million residents and includes Charlotte, the states most populous city, has had contact with Gov. Roy Coopers office, the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security and with companies including Bank of America, which is headquartered in Charlotte.On Twitter , Sandy DElosua Vastola, the city of Charlottes director of communications and marketing, indicated its servers are on completely different systems and were not affected by the breach.The city has severed direct connection to Mecklenburg County systems, including email, DElosua Vastola said in the statement. The citys Innovation and Technology department has taken steps to ensure the security of the citys systems.Charlotte CIO Jeff Stovall said the city is always vigilant but has increased its monitoring of any activities that are happening on our networks and on our devices, and sent out reminders to staff of the proper handling procedures for emails and attachments.The CIO pointed out that events similar to the hack in Mecklenburg County will continue to happen around the world, and require public officials to be continually on guard against cyberintruders.I wouldnt say that this particular incident is unusual in the operation of any large enterprise. I would say, really, that our roles require constant vigilance and constant reevaluation of our security posture, and, unfortunately, constant investment in modernizing and ensuring our assets are appropriate for countermeasures against this type of attack, Stoval said.Our cybersecurity infrastructure is just as important as any physical infrastructure that we have, he added.
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The project is one of several initiatives in this district aimed at allowing as many people as possible to access the job market, a new local training centre, or the St Gilles local economy unit (Guichet d'Economie Locale). This unit is based in the same street as Creche Lily and aims to socially and economically stimulate disadvantaged areas, for example by helping would-be entrepreneurs with their business plans, financing and training. The extensively renovated old warehouse is now a low-energy building, helping to reduce electricity and heating bills. Two sections of the centre provide accommodation for the children. There are also equipment rooms, toilets, a kitchen, and storage and staff facilities.

At any one time, the creche is training four people to work with young children. The aim is to boost the local economy and encourage social innovation, with the support of the local CPAS (public social services centres). By the end of 2013, Creche Lily had directly created five full-time equivalent jobs and indirectly created another four, mainly for women. St Gilles has worked with an organisation committed to reserve a third of creche places for families that are looking for work or training; the families therefore benefit from lower social fees. Eight of the centres places are allocated to the children of parents who receive financial support from the CPAS, or who are following a social or professional inclusion course in Brussels.

A new and attractive day-care centre for young children has been opened in Brussels, after renovation of an abandoned warehouse. Offering up to 24 places in the citys St Gilles district, it is a boon for local people  many of them single parents working part-time or in training. Creche Lily opened in June 2012 and caters to youngsters aged between three months and three years. Like many day-care centres in St Gilles, it allows parents to leave their children for just a few hours if required. This arrangement is ideal in a district where many people are busy single parents working part-time, or are seeking jobs or in training. Total investment for the project Creche Lily is EUR 1 million, of which the EUs European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 600000 from the Operational Programme Brussels Capital Region.
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Much of the responsibility for implementing fundamental rights and freedoms in Europe as well as rights stemming from EU citizenship is in the hands of the nearly 100.000 local and regional authorities of the European Union. The opinion adopted by the EU's assembly of local and regional authorities last 30 November responds to and defines recommendations on the European Commission's EU citizenship report published in January 2017.

Members welcome the commitment to set up a European Pillar of Social Rights as it will benefit EU citizens, but insist that strengthening social rights should be supported by adequate legal, economic and financial measures.

CoR members agree on the need to empower citizens through strong social policies, education and training, including minimum wages and access to housing and basic services as well as promoting gender equality and the fight against LGBTI groups' discrimination.

In the context of Brexit, members consider imperative to guarantee, on a reciprocal basis, the rights of European citizens and their families residing in the UK, including access to health and social services.

Rapporteur Martinez Suarez said: It is vital to strengthen citizens sense of belonging to the European project. We must pay special attention to our youth. There is a loss of confidence in the integration project and the European citizenship as a guarantee of people's personal and professional development".

EU citizenship was introduced 25 years ago by the Maastricht Treaty. EU citizenship complements national citizenship. It gives citizens rights such as free movement, consular protection, as well as the right to vote and stand as candidate in local and European Parliament elections wherever they live in the EU.

Like the Commission's report, the opinion covers four chapters: promoting EU citizenship rights and EU common values, enhancing citizen's participation in a democratic EU, simplifying citizen's daily lives and strengthening security and equality.

As regards the 2019 European Parliament elections, local and regional leaders support the proposal to establish transnational lists. The existence of different national rules governing the elections runs counter the very European essence of EP elections, members stress. Cities and regions also call for including the participation in regional elections within European citizens' rights in the future.

CoR members recall European citizens trust local and regional authorities the most. CoR members thus request a much greater role in the EU decision-making process as to better integrate citizens' views.

With the objective of reconnecting the European project with its citizens and channelling their opinion, the European Committee of the Regions is implementing the " Reflecting on Europe " campaign which has led to more than 150 Citizens' Dialogues since it was launched in March 2016. Citizens' Dialogues will continue in 2018 and contribute to boosting the participation to the European Parliament elections in 2019.

An online survey and a dedicated App that include a set of questions related to the future of EU policies are also being used to collect citizens' feedback. More than 11.000 respondents have been registered so far. The goal is to listen to citizens' concerns and report back to EU institutions via a CoR opinion on the future of Europe to be adopted in October 2018.
Employees working for the city of Green River will receive a monetary thank you from the Green River City Council later this month.

The council voted unanimously to approve a tiered stipend for employees Tuesday night. Full-time employees will receive $1,200, while part-time employees with more than 1,000 hours worked during the year will receive $750, part-time employees with between 500 and 1,000 hours worked will receive $500 and employees with under 500 hours worked will receive $250.

Green Rivers firefighters will receive $500 as will the citys three appointed positions, the city administrator, city prosecutor and municipal court judge.

According to Councilman Gary Killpack, the tiered setup originated due to some employees being what he considered full-time, part-time employees saying some workers may not get a full full-time schedule, but come in regularly day after day. He said the Council believed those employees deserved to receive more.

Thats why we broke it down to reward those part-time people, he said.

The firefighters were originally set to receive $250 for their stipend, but Councilman Tom Murphy, who is a volunteer firefighter, argued they deserved more for the work they do and training hours theyre required to achieve. He was able to convince other Council members to raise the stipend to $500. Murphy will not receive the stipend, according to the citys human resources director Cari Kragovich. She said Murphys city council duties are considered his main role for the city, not his volunteer firefighter duties. The Council is exempt from receiving the stipend, as they would have essentially voted themselves a bonus otherwise. City employees who serve on the volunteer fire department wont receive two stipends either. The employees will receive a stipend based on their job and will be excluded from the stipend to firefighters.

The stipend will also go to the solid waste employees, who are eligible to receive a severance package and the start of the year after the city ends its solid waste division.

Councilman Ted Barney said the stipends were a way of rewarding employees, whom he said tremendously impressed him with their performance despite limited resources available to them.

Killpack agrees, saying employees have gone the extra mile despite money being tight.
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The Vital Landscapes project focuses on involving local people in decisions about how their own landscape should develop in the future. In Unteres Saaletal (Germany), cultural landscape guides are trained so as to act as ambassadors for the region, informing the public about its scenic qualities. The team in Unteres Saaletal also works with local experts to identify suitable sites for maintaining the natural environment that can serve as a counter-balance for nearby areas undergoing more intensive land development. In the Austrian Muhlviertel region, the project organises landscape dialogues to ascertain what local people expect concerning the development of their village and surroundings. They collect opinions and conduct meetings where participants are invited to formulate priorities for their community and to discuss development scenarios. In the Sumava Mountains (Czech Republic) for example, regular meetings help to strengthen connections between local people and the newly created biosphere reserve.

In Ljubljansko Barje (Slovenia), local farmers also persuade suburban families of the value of local food and explain to children how they can better contribute to the sustainable development, while promoting the vital importance of an intact natural landscape. The changes that affect our landscapes often occur so slowly that they can be difficult to perceive. However, images or simulations can help stakeholders visualise threats to the landscape and demonstrate the process of change more clearly. The project uses a variety of visualisation techniques to provide an objective basis for discussion. It examines advanced methods for visualisation along with using conventional methods  like comparison of historical images and maps  as was done in Male Karpaty (Slovakia). In its efforts to preserve cultural landscapes, the project communicates ways to connect the diverse needs of regions economic development with environmental protection and social welfare. A key result of the project is to encourage dialogue between landscape-maintainers, including farmers, investors, environmentalists and residents, at both the regional and European levels.

Vital Landscapes project brings partners and stakeholders from around Central Europe together to develop solutions through regional activities and international exchanges. The centuries-old landscapes are an essential part of the regions identity, but all too often a lack of awareness of their value leads to insensitive developments. With their shared desire to preserve the quality, beauty and diversity of landscapes in central Europe, the eight partners from academia and the professional sphere associated in the project are eager to test innovative forms of citizen involvement as well as organizing more traditional transnational events, conferences, working-group meetings and study tours. They inspire stakeholders from around central Europe to discuss approaches for landscape and cultural heritage preservation and learn from one another to increase their pool of potential solutions. Total investment for the project was EUR 2 million of which the EUs European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 1,6 million from the Operational Programme Central Europe.
Two businesses evacuated

Around noon last Thursday, traffic on Uinta Drive was diverted and two businesses were evacuated after a contractor hit a gas line.

According to Darren Shepherd, Dominion Energy Wyoming spokesman, a contractor completing work near two businesses hit a one-way feed, 2-inch plastic gas line.

Those two businesses were Edward Jones and Dimensions Beauty Salon.

"Gas is lighter than air and so it rises and dissipates," Shepherd said.

Unfortunately, in this case the wind was blowing the gas right across a busy street.

Mike Nomis, Green River Fire Department chief, said the incident happened around noon and the fire department responded to help the Green River Police Department block traffic on Uinta Drive to keep vehicles away from the gas leak.

The firefighters biggest concern was the vehicles traveling by on Uinta Drive. Those cars could have sucked up the gas into their intake, which could catch a vehicle on fire.

"That's why we closed the road down, so we wouldn't have traffic going through there," Nomis said. "It blew gas close to an hour."

Another issue the firefighters had to address was evacuating employees from Edward Jones and Dimensions Beauty Salon. He said those two businesses were filling with gas. Once the businesses were evacuated, fans were brought in to air them out before employees were allowed to return.

Bob Ross, Edward Jones financial advisor, said a contractor was working on fixing the drainage problem in front of the building when they hit the line. Ross said he and his employees were evacuated until about 3:30 p.m.

When Dominion Energy employees arrived on scene, they were able to dig down to get to the damaged line to repair it.

Nomis said the fire department left the scene around 2:30 p.m.

Shepherd said Dominion Energy employees remained at the scene of the break until about 4 p.m.

Both Shepherd and Nomis agreed that this situation could have been avoided if a simple telephone call would have been made.

"Call 811 before (you) dig," Shepherd said.

He said once that number is called the utility companies will come out for free and mark all of the utility lines near the digging area. This way, a contractor will know where it's safe to dig,

"Make sure you find out where the lines are before you dig," Nomis said.

As to the identity of the contractor, Shepherd said he doesn't have the name of the contractor and even if he did they may not release because they are not done determining the details of the gas leak.

Dominion Energy will call 811 to see if a request for the project was made and if one was made when did the call come in. Usually, a request is good for two weeks after the call was made and the lines have been marked.

Shepherd said they are still trying to determine how much everything will cost, including loss of gas, damage to the line and hours needed to fix the damage.

If it turns out the contractor was at fault, Dominion Energy will tally up how much it costs to fix everything and send the contractor the bill.

Shepherd also said the local fire department or police department would be able to release the contractor's name.

Neither Nomis or Ross wanted to name the local contractor working on the project. Green River Police Department Det. and Public Relations Officer Luke Benson, said he didn't know the name of the contractor. Mark Westenskow, Director of Public Works, was also unaware of the contractor at the scene.
Frank Lake makes sure to include Christmas cards in each box.

Lines of empty boxes filled the room at the Fraternal Order of Eagles Sunday afternoon.

The boxes, which would be filled with Girl Scout cookies, candy, Christmas cards, letters and a host of other treats and items, were sent off to soldiers overseas Tuesday morning.

VFW Post 2321 Vice Commander Jim Shoemaker said they'll send off any donation they receive.

"If we can do it, they'll go," he said.

Earl McDonald, District 4 Commander and Commander of VFW Post 2321 in Green River, said the VFW spent approximately $4,500 in shipping the 241 care packages they made to locations across the world.

The postage money is raised through fundraisers the VFW hosts throughout the year. Without those donations, the VFW wouldn't be able to send the care packages off.

"If we were doing this for profit, we'd go out of business," McDonald said.

McDonald is familiar with how important those packages are to soldiers. While serving in Vietnam, McDonald received a few packages from his mother. He recalls the men would often know about a care package arriving before its intended recipient. He also remembered how a few would peek over his shoulder to see what he received from home. The packages helped boost morale during the long months away from home.

"Anything from home helps," he said.

McDonald said the VFW encourages soldiers to share the contents of their care packages with other members of their unit, saying those packages are a big deal for more than just the people they're addressed to.
Deciding whether or not to change the airports name to something more regional was a topic of discussion the Sweetwater County Commissioners werent ready to make a decision on just yet.

During the commissioners meeting Tuesday morning, Rock Springs-Sweetwater County Airport manager Devon Brubaker addressed the commissioners about changing the airports name to Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport.

As the commission is well aware, we as an airport have been making significant strides to market our airport, not just regionally for commercial air service, but nationally and internatio...
Ann Joyce Clifton, 86, of Rock Springs, passed away Nov. 29, 2017, at her home. A longtime resident of Rock Springs and former longtime resident of Colorado, Clifton died following a lengthy illness.

She was born on June 13, 1931, in Peoria, Ill., the daughter of Alfred M. Kennedy and Edna May Brayton Kennedy.

Clifton attended schools in Peoria Heights and was a 1949 graduate of the Woodruff High School. She also attended Bradley University and graduated from Illinois State University at Normal, Ill., receiving her degree in education and later earned her masters degree from Adams Stat...
Larry Dankert, 67, of Green River, passed away Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, at the Mission at Castle Rock. A longtime resident of Green River and former longtime resident of Rock Springs, Dankert died following a lengthy illness.

He was born Jan. 13, 1950, in Rock Springs, the son of Jim and Lona Dankert.

Dankert attended schools in Rock Springs and was a 1968 graduate of the Rock Springs High School.

He worked in construction for many years as a heavy equipment operator.

His interests included NASCAR and stock car racing.

Survivors include three sons, Aaron Dankert of Wisconsin, Eric Dankert...
Have you seen the Lucky Cactus Tattoo shop on Main Street? They opened just a few months ago and are very excited to be in Green River. The shop is owned by Chace Young, Regina Khisamova and Colby Moss. It conveys a welcoming environment and has three private rooms for each artist. Young said it was important for them to be able to offer a sense of privacy for their customers.

Young graduated from Rock Springs High School. He participated in advanced art classes and continued to develop his skills outside of the classroom. He started tattooing in 2008 in Denver, going through a professional...
Oct. 5, 2017, will forever be engraved in the Johnson family's minds as the day their lives changed.

Ashley Johnson said it was on that day when they found out her youngest son, James, 2, has Leukemia.

She said James had caught a cold and he just wasn't getting better. In fact, the cold turned into a double ear infection that wouldn't go away even after antibiotics were being administered. Ashley said she just knew something wasn't right. Usually, when James or one of her other children would start taking antibiotics for something, they would start getting better in two days. However, after...
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Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

"When you shake a veteran's hand today, look them in the eye and give them a heartfelt thank you," said USAF Ret. Col. Jen Fullmer, parade grand marshal, who spoke at the event.
GREENSBORO  A man and a woman were shot Thursday morning, and police are trying to figure out where the shooting happened.

Around 11:15 a.m., the victims arrived at Moses Cone Hospital by private vehicle, according to a police news release. The man is listed in critical condition. The woman is in fair condition.

Police do not have a full account of why or where the two were shot. One of the victims told police that the shooting happened in the area of East Gate City Boulevard near Murrow Boulevard.

"Officers have not located the crime scene at this point," police spokesperson Susan Danielsen said.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Greensboro/Guilford Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000 or text keyword badboyz and the tip to 274637. All calls to Crime Stoppers are completely anonymous. Crime Stoppers will pay a cash reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to the arrest or indictment of the individual responsible.
Buried in the agenda of tonights Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting is an item that could limit citizens right to know what the government is up to while also exposing the county to costly lawsuits.

The commissioners will hold a hearing and could vote tonight to pass an ordinance that would allow the county to post public notices solely on its website instead of placing them in newspapers and on newspaper websites.

The county claims this would improve transparency and access for its citizens while also providing cost savings. Both claims are questionable at best.

For starters, this is certainly not an improvement in terms of access or transparency.

The News & Record reaches far more people every day with our website, where you can read the notices at no charge. We also post the notices to www.ncnotices.com, a site developed by the North Carolina Press Association in 2016 that provides public notices from around the state.

The four Guilford newspapers that run public notices  the News & Record, the High Point Enterprise, the Carolina Peacemaker and the Jamestown News  all upload notices to the site.

But not everyone in Guilford has access to the internet. Or wants to use the internet. Some would rather read a newspaper. We serve both audiences.

As for the question of transparency, this would leave the government in control of informing the public about its own actions.

Public notices are announcements from government bodies, businesses and individuals that are meant to inform the people about things such as meeting agendas, zoning changes and jobs available for bidding. They are one of the only ways that the government and our elected officials are required to communicate with citizens. And now the county wants to control that.

When newspapers publish a public notice, we provide proof of publication. This change would put the county in the role of certifying that it has satisfied its requirements.

That raises many questions: How will the county ensure that notices are posted as required by law? Who will have control of the web page? Who will have access to the timestamps on notices?

Now, lets look at the financial side of this proposal.

The countys current plan would save taxpayers very little money  its projection shows a net savings of about $28,000 per year ($70,000 in savings minus $42,000 in salary/benefits for an additional 30-hour employee).

For context, that represents less than 1/100th of a percent of the countys 2017 budget.

It also doesnt include the time that county IT and finance workers will need to build and maintain systems for posting, archiving and displaying the notices, as well as for billing and collecting.

More importantly, this change would expose the county, and thus taxpayers, to lawsuits if the notices arent handled correctly. One of those could easily wipe out years worth of savings.

The county could choose to protect itself by invoking sovereign immunity, but that would also mean any Guilford County citizen or business harmed by the incorrect posting of a legal notice would have no recourse.

So the public could lose:

Access to notices if they are only online.

Government transparency and accountability.

The right to challenge/sue if notices arent posted correctly.

Local news sources that serve as government watchdogs.

All for what? To maybe save $28,000 a year?

We believe this is a case of government acting in its own interests as opposed to the interests of its citizens.

So if you can spare the time, show up at tonights public hearing and let the Board of Commissioners know where you stand.
EDEN  Despite rumors, no student overdosed at a Rockingham County high school on Monday, according to Superintendent Rodney Shotwell.

On Dec. 4, Rockingham County Commissioner Craig Travis said at a board meeting that a local high school student overdosed earlier that day.

The problem is real, Travis said during the comment portion of Mondays regular meeting. It's very dangerous, especially in Rockingham County. I don't know if some people know or not but we had an overdose today in a high school, so it has reached your kids.

Shotwell confirmed that, while he appreciated the intent of the message, an overdose did not occur.

We had a student who had taken a Xanax pill this morning and was out if it, which causes the student to slip and fall requiring stitches at Annie Penn, Shotwell said in an email to the school board Monday night. I believe the ambulance being called to transport him was translated by some as it was a drug overdose. However, in this case it was not.
Visiting the Old City of Jerusalem in February 2012 was truly one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

It's a place rich in historical and religious significance, echoing the presence of Abraham, David and Jesus. It's compact, where pilgrims can find holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam a short walk from one another.

I did that, visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, inserting a prayer into the Western Wall (for my daughter-in-law's safe pregnancy and delivery of a healthy baby  granted, TBTG!) and climbing to the Temple Mount).

It's also a place of tension, so often contended for over the centuries and filled with soldiers and police officers trying to keep the peace.

Potentially, another moment of crisis has arrived, thanks to President Donald Trump's announcement Wednesday that the United States now formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

This prompted a security message from the embassy:

"The recent announcement that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may spark protests, some of which have the potential to become violent. The U.S. Embassy reminds U.S. citizens of the need for caution and awareness of personal security ...

"In view of this announcement and the potential for protests, U.S. government employees and their family members are not permitted to conduct personal travel in Jerusalems Old City and in the West Bank, to include Bethlehem and Jericho."

That's sad. Jerusalem and especially Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus, are popular tourist destinations during the Christmas season. Although I felt completely safe in both places in 2012, I would think carefully before traveling there now.

Trump called his decision "something that has to be done."

Like many others, however, I don't see why it "has to be done," and certainly not why now.

Does this announcement advance U.S. interests? How?

Does it advance the cause of peace? How?

I do understand that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. West Jerusalem is its seat of government. The U.S. has a consulate there. But, like everything in the Middle East, this is a complicated issue. One must dig below the facts on the ground  almost as archaelogists are continually unearthing history buried under the Old City  to appreciate the larger issues.

Jews claim Jerusalem as their eternal capital, going back to the time of King David. But the city is older than that. David conquered it from other people, and it has changed hands many times ever since.

Jordan controlled East Jerusalem, and the Old City's holy sites, until Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of 1967. While The Washington Declaration of 1994 recognized Jordan's King Hussein as the custodian of the Temple Mount, Israeli control of the Old City has been very fair, protecting religious freedom and allowing access to the sacred places.

Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of a desired Palestinian state, but Israelis insist Jerusalem will never be divided  even as it pushes Jerusalem's de facto boundaries farther into Palestinian land.

As stated on NPR this morning by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Israel cites biblical authority to back up its claim to exclusive possession of Jerusalem  despite the international community's designation of East Jerusalem as "occupied" because it was taken in war and is still held by force of arms.

Essentially, Trump has now endorsed the Israeli view. While Trump's position does recognize the political and military reality, acting on this policy obviously upsets those who believe that the U.S. has stepped away from its traditional role as a fair arbiter of the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

Nevertheless, Trump's move is applauded by many American Jews and Christian evangelicals.

I understand American Jewish approval. As for Christian evangelicals, I think they're wrong in their beliefs.

"Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy. But most importantly, God gave Jerusalem  and the rest of the Holy Land  to the Jewish people," said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board, according to CNN.

"The rest of the Holy Land" stretches far beyond the boundaries of modern Israel. The "touchstone of prophecy" is that the restoration of Israel ushers in the return of Jesus.

But Jesus himself addressed this issue in a very different way. In Acts 1:6-8, his disciples put the question to the risen Christ:

"Then they gathered around him and asked him, 'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?'

"He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.'

There you have it. Restoring the "kingdom to Israel" has no special significance in Christianity. Jerusalem is not the "capital" of Christianity. The "kingdom" must be established "to the ends of the earth."

So Trump essentially has made an ill-advised and dangerous decision to keep a promise to evangelical voters based on mistaken biblical beliefs.

How's that for a U.S. policy?

If you're planning to visit the Holy Land, which I recommend, please be careful.
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GREENWICH  A lawsuit filed by the family of Bart Palosz, the 15-year-old Greenwich High School student who committed suicide after the first day of his sophomore year in 2013, could be placed on hold as a state court determines whether the public school system is legally immune to its claims.

At issue is the legal doctrine known as sovereign immunity, which asserts that government employees or bodies cannot be sued for their official acts.

A Superior Court judge denied the school boards claim of immunity earlier this year. That decision is currently being appealed to the state Appellate Court.

Concurrently, attorneys are fighting in court over a potential stay on pretrial discovery, and whether one should be applied while the immunity issue is being adjudicated.

In response to the appeal, the town of Greenwich, which is a defendant in the case along with the school board, issued a motion for a stay on pretrial deposition of witnesses and collection of documents, pending the outcome of the appeal. The town argued that because the school board receives an automatic stay with its appeal, the town should have one too. The employees and documents subpoenaed from the town would be the same ones subpoenaed from the school board, lawyers argued.

A Superior Court Judge in October denied the towns motion to stay.

The school board subsequently appealed that decision.

To protect its right to an automatic stay, the Board respectfully moves this Court to stay further discovery and proceedings ... against the Town until the Boards sovereign immunity claim is finally resolved, Harold Friedman, the lawyer handling the case for the town and the school board, filed in a motion to the Appellate Court.

The lawsuit, first filed in August of 2015, contends that extensive bullying contributed to Bart Paloszs decision to commit suicide. It claims school staff did not follow mandatory anti-bullying policies to protect him.

The attorney representing the Palosz family called the delays detrimental to his clients. He filed motions in late November, one in opposition to the claim for a stay, the other for a judge to find the defendants in default in the case for failure to plead.

The Greenwich community should understand the town is doing everything it can to keep from letting justice occur in this case. Its ignoring its legal obligations, the attorney, David Golub said.

Town Attorney Wayne Fox said, There are very significant immunity issues which have been raised in the lower court, which are now before the Appellate Court. Those issues, at least in theory, could dispose of the entire case, and we have an obligation to raise those alleged defects as we see them. Were acting in good faith to raise them as quickly as possible.

Fox said it is the nature of the law that cases take time, acknowledging it can be frustrating to the parties involved. We have to raise the issues we think are appropriate to the case, the town attorney said.

In his motion filed in the appellate case, Golub wrote that further delays would be unfair to his clients. With the passage of time, witnesses will become unavailable; students will move away and school personnel will move on, and their memories will fade, he wrote. The plaintiffs ability to prove their case will be seriously impaired.

Fox said the town has turned over voluminous information. We have provided extensive disclosure ... some thousand pages of documents. There has been extensive discovery.

Depositions have not been held in the case thus far.

According to Friedmans motion in the appellate court, the (school) Board is entitled to sovereign immunity and the relevant school employees were acting as an agent of the State.
Entrepreneurs know that overspending can be the death of a growing organization. This is why they look to hire new employees only when it's absolutely necessary.

Related: Want Your Company to Get Ahead? Hire People Smarter Than You.

Given how much time and money the hiring process takes, the decision to hold off on hiring ahead seems a prudent one. After all, why waste money on an employee for which there is no open job? But some leaders would disagree: Hiring ahead is the best way to find great, loyal talent, they say.

Take, for example, Karen Niovitch Davis, a partner and chief human resources officer of the New York-based public relations firm Prosek Partners. "When we see someone special, we bring them onboard whether we have a job or not," she said via email. "This allows us to gather some of the best talent in the industry. If you look for candidates only when you have a need, you'll have to compromise, since the right person may not be available at that time."

In short, this argument goes, hiring ahead might seem fiscally scary, but it's worthwhile. If you agree, here's how to find great talent even when there isn't a job open:

Go for the true believers.

Outreach is a sales engagement platform based out of Seattle. In its early stages, the company was pursuing a man named Matt as a potential customer. After learning more about the organization, Matt was so excited he asked to join the team.

"It was flattering, but scary. We wondered if we were making a mistake," Outreach CEO Manny Medina said in an email. "But the measurable impact on our business has been undeniable."

Related: When to Hire Raw Talent vs. Job Experience

After his hire, Matt found a role in the sales department. He then went on to help shape the department's excellent culture, Medina said. The company has never missed a quarter goal since he joined the team.

A person who truly believes in an organization can be invaluable. His or her enthusiasm creates a degree of engagement and motivation that will lead to success. So, do what Outreach did: Find the true believers by paying attention to people who regularly engage with your company on social media. See how sincere they are about their interest and reach out to discover whether they'd make a good addition to the team.

Trade "always be closing" for "always be interviewing."

Niovitch Davis has a strict policy about scheduling meetings with talent. She never says no. "We never want to miss the boat, so we interview every single day to ensure we find superstars," she said in an email. "We never turn away awesome candidates because 'we aren't hiring.' We're always hiring!"

Davis added that she is also quick to onboard talent if she sees potential. For her organization, it's not worth the risk to lose out on a great employee, she explained. She went on to say that some of the best people she's found came from unconventional backgrounds. On paper, they were nothing like those the company would normally consider.

So, do what Davis does: Set aside time in the day to meet with interested candidates. Have a real conversation with them. Think about what they could bring to the organization. Then consider any possible drawbacks to hiring them. If the positives outweigh the negatives, find a way to make them an offer.

Never expect people to run before they crawl.

A startup can never predict when its growth is going to explode. If a company waits until the last minute to find talent, it will have a workforce that isn't up to speed. And this can hinder expansion.

Leela Srinivasan, chief marketing officer of the San Francisco-based recruiting platform Lever, is someone who has seen many companies falter during this critical time. "Given the competition for highly skilled labor pools, companies today need to be more proactive in their hiring approaches," Srinivasan said via email. "If they sit back and rely on applicants to come to them, or wait too late to open up the role, they'll never hit their targets."

She went on to recommend that companies always have postings for evergreen positions like sales and customer service. This allows organizations to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to unexpected growth and attrition.

Tap into youth.

Having a consistent talent pipeline is especially tough in a small city. There is less talent to choose from, so when a position does open up, pickings are slim. This is when hiring ahead can be particularly helpful.

Rich Kahn, CEO and co-founder of the Middletown, Delaware-based online marketing firm eZanga, recommends creating an internship program. "It makes the vetting worthwhile to both the student and the employer, and gives the employer the opportunity to hire ahead for future needs," he said in an email, echoing a post he wrote for Entrepreneur.

Related: 4 Things You Should Do Before You Hire An Employee

An internship program also allows an organization to shape young talent, so these individuals better fit any skills gaps. When developing an internship program, think about what your interns could do. Also think about the skills and roles your company will need in the coming years. This will help you and your company's leaders effectively evaluate interns and decide just who among them deserves to be "hired ahead."

Related:

If You're Not Hiring Ahead, You've Already Fallen Behind

The 1 Question Burger King's CEO Asks Job Candidates Is Much Harder Than You Would Think

3 Great Tips on Making the Transition From Entrepreneur Back to Employee



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


DaDongs famous Peking duck. Photo: Jessica Nash

DaDong goes through a lot of ducks. Specifically: DaDong serves 1,387,000 Peking ducks per year at the restaurant chains ten locations in Beijing, four in Shanghai, and two in Chengdu, including the original location in Beijing, a restaurant that Dong Zhenxiang ran for ten years before buying it and reopening it as DaDong in 1995. Peking duck is, of course, one of the most delicious recipes known to man, and in China, DaDong is its most famous ambassador. Its public face is its chef and founder, Dong, who once cooked at Quanjude, the place that invented modern Peking duck.

The Chinese restaurants attract international leaders (the Obamas) and leading chefs (Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal), and on December 11, Dong will open his first international location (check out the massive menu here)  in Manhattan. Fans are, to put it mildly, freaking out. Heres what you need to know about the chains appeal, its fans, and its arrival in New York City.

1. Dong is really, really specific about his duck. In China, DaDong employs a man whose job is solely to monitor all aspects of the ducks from raising to slaughtering to cooking, down to how the meat is sliced at guests tables. Hes been working there since 1985. Its New York restaurant will serve special ducks that Dong reportedly tailored over two years with an Indiana farm. Those ducks will be cooked in patented ovens that they had shipped from China.

2. That duck is known for a distinctively delicious style. His duck-roasting career started in the early 1980s, and in the three decades since, hes perfected his recipe, resulting in a duck thats lean-but-moist, with the crispiest skin imaginable. Its also commonly credited with turning Peking duck into fine dining  because of its more upscale environment, Dongs attention to presentation, and his use of fancy ingredients like caviar. Its two locations in Shanghai each earned a star in the citys inaugural Michelin guide, the first for mainland China.

3. Theres a lot more to the restaurant than just duck, though. Dong opened his first restaurant in 1995, just a few years into the liberalization of Chinas economy, and that meant access to new ingredients, something frequent traveler Dong wholeheartedly embraced. This is evident in the menus 248 dishes, many of which incorporate influences and ideas from other cuisines. In New York, the menu will be smaller  80 items  that nevertheless offer a take on Chinese food rarely seen before in this city. Think Iberico ham wrapped around sticky rice like sushi, slow-cooked lobster with saffron rice, and layered pancakes with parmigiana. But as Celso Moreira, director of operations for DaDong New York, says, Whats great is, he stays true to the Chinese form.

4. It pioneered whats now being called modern Chinese food: As Chinese-food authority Fuchsia Dunlop tells Grub Street, DaDong has been at the cutting edge of modern Chinese cuisine, and is highly influential in China. Dunlop cited a recent banquet dinner that included duck webs in mustard sauce and that Iberico-ham-wrapped sticky rice. She goes so far as to say, Many Chinese chefs now use foreign ingredients, but he was definitely the pioneer of a new kind of technically accomplished, high-end, modernist Chinese cuisine, and widely imitated.

5. Its going to be a serious party scene. In China, the restaurants range from 30,000 to 60,000 square feet in size, with 12 to 15 private rooms  a massive size fit for the countrys boom years. The New York location will be a mere 17,500 square feet and contain a whopping 440 seats, including 200 outdoors, as well as private dining rooms for parties. Peking duck is food for feasting, and theres going to be plenty of room for you and, like, 50 of your closest friends to have a duck party. At the very least, even if youre just on a double date, you shouldnt have to worry about bumping elbows with strangers.

6. The quality is shockingly consistent. If nothing else, DaDong is dependable. A duck lover from Beijing says that one of the things the chain has mastered is reliability: Theres always going to be duck for you, and its always going to be good. Many restaurants falter with growth, but DaDong continues to take in accolades.

7. Itll be open for late-night pit stops. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m., theres also a more limited late-night menu with dishes like lamb skewers with cumin-chili powder and Beijing meatballs filled with mozzarella.

8. Its going to be in good hands. Dong is a busy celebrity chef in China, and along with chef Andy Xu (Cru, Atlantic Grill Lincoln Center), hes brought in five chefs from his Chinese restaurants to keep it up to snuff.

Dun Huang flowery rolls showcase the chefs flourish. Photo: Jessica Nash

Sweet-and-sour pork ribs with sugar. Photo: Jessica Nash

Seared wagyu beef with preserved Sichuan vegetables. Photo: Jessica Nash

Looking fancy. Photo: Jessica Nash

DaDong, 1095 Sixth Ave., nr. W. 42nd St.; 212-355-9600
This thing practical Instagrams itself. Photo: Starbucks

Critics convinced that Starbucks is morphing December 25 into a combo Chrismahanukwanzakah/International Refugee Day, you lose: Probably thanks partly to your whining, the coffee chain has squeezed one final, unnecessarily photogenic drink into the final weeks of 2017, and its a literal Christmas Tree Frappuccino.

Available starting today, the very festive sugar bomb is unquestionably coniferous. A several-inch tower of whipped cream dyed with matcha forms the trees leafy top part, with a peppermint-mocha base as the trunk. Its also studded with candied cranberry ornaments and strung with a long drizzle of caramel garland. A slice of dried strawberry is the tree topper. (That sound you hear is Instagrammers getting weak in the knees.)

Of course, one great irony of Starbuckss parade of increasingly elaborate drinks is, theres a certain je ne sais quoi lost in the translation to real life. The Zombie Frap afforded some leeway (zombie brains are supposed to be a mess, right?), but most people expect their Christmas trees to look sharp. Heres how the IRL versions are stacking up so far:

Stop in for your CHRISTMAS TREE FRAPPUCCINO. Its minty and chocolaty and delicious and here for only a short time!  pic.twitter.com/THZ24GRPbH  Seven Hills Starbucks (@SBUXSevenHills) December 7, 2017

It goes away December 11, so you have until then to either stay off of social media, or get your smartphone to a Starbucks with great natural lighting.
Sushi Nakazawa owner Alessandro Borgognone and chef Daisuke Nakazawa. Photo: Nomi Ellenson/Getty Images

Sushi Nakazawa has been hit with a class-action lawsuit filed by Maimon Kirschenbaum, the lawyer who has sued everyone from Mario Batali to Keith McNally over labor and wage issues. The lawsuit (view it here)  which Kirschenbaum sent to Grub  names co-owners Alessandro Borgognone and chef Daisuke Nakazawa as defendants, for allegedly willfully failing and refusing to pay them at the legally required minimum wage for all hours worked, misappropriating tips, neglecting to provide required wage notices, and for not paying overtime. The two plaintiffs named in the suit are former captains (or head waiters) Treva Willis, who worked at the restaurant from December 2015 to December 2017, and Melissa Avis, who worked there from June 2014 to August 2016.

According to the lawsuit, Borgognone held a staff meeting in 2016 during which he allegedly said that he had been to [sic] generous with staff financially, and he stated that he was setting new rules for how the restaurant would be closed and how employees would cash out each night. Then on December 1 of this year, he and Sushi Nakazawas general manager announced a new tip-pool structure that affected employees pay. During that meeting, the lawsuit alleges, Borgognone also stated that he had been meeting with lawyers to set new employment policies and announced a new mandatory arbitration policy for employees who wanted to remain working there. The lawsuit alleges that a number of managerial staff were illegally tipped out, including beverage director Garrett Smith and maitre d turned GM John Shin. A polisher who worked in the kitchen but didnt interact with customers also allegedly received tips.

Kirschenbaum serially sues the restaurant industry, contacting the media (as in this case) to gain attention for the suits. There are plenty of labor issues in the restaurant industry, and the people who work in the industry tend to, for a variety of reasons, be ripe for exploitation; the Department of Labor under the Obama administration made a point of going after wage violations in hospitality. But this suit is particularly noteworthy because of Sushi Nakazawas stature. Its considered one of the citys best places to eat sushi, and one of five restaurants awarded four stars by the New York Times.

The Trump administration has been up front about wanting to legalize tip-pooling again, and just announced plans to do as much. Under such rules, employers collect tips and, in a worst-case scenario, dont distribute them at all. But under such rules, sharing tips with a kitchen employee, like the polisher cited in the lawsuit, wouldnt be an issue.

Grub reached out for comment from a representative of Sushi Nakazawa, who wasnt aware of the details of the suit. After asking to call back, the rep followed up over email by saying, [R]ight now the comment is no comment.




Haiti - FLASH USA : Call for applications for SUSI 2018





The Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy in Haiti is calling for applications for the 2018 Study of the United States Institutes (SUSI).



This study program offers foreign participants the opportunity to deepen their understanding of American society, culture, values and institutions. The five-week courses will consist of a balanced series of seminar discussions, readings, group presentations and lectures.



You can choose to apply for one of the institutes below:



1- The SUSI for Secondary School Educators



2- The SUSI for Scholars on Contemporary American Literature



3- The SUSI FOR STudent Leaders on Social Entrepreneurship



Consult the registration conditions of these 3 institutes and more information on the various SUSI 2018 programs (in English) on : https://ht.usembassy.gov/fr/academic-professional-exchanges/



Application forms for SUSI programs can be found in the description of each program at the same address.



Deadline to submit your application : December 30, 2017.



HL/ S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Jacmel : Mayor Marky Kessa, slapped by a Justice of Peace !





A delegation led by Frantz Ulysse, the Deputy Mayor of the commune of Saint-Marc, also Treasurer of the National Federation of Mayors of Haiti (FENAMH) went to the metropolis of South-East, in solidarity with the Mayor of Jacmel Marky Kessa, victim Saturday, December 2, during an altercation, of a slap from Judge of Peace Elie Armand, substitute of the Court of Jacmel.



It should be remembered that this incident occurred at the Beaudouin Public Market, following an operation by market security officers to evict certain merchants occupying the sidewalks of the main entrance which were causing traffic paralysis. Furious at this decision, the merchants and several local residents threw stones and bottles at the municipal security agents who fired in an attempt to calm the protesters' anger. At least three people were hit by bullet, while several others were seriously injured.



A few hours later, accompanied by the agents of the Departmental Unit of Maintenance of Order (UDMO), the Justice of Peace Elie Armand, intervening on the request of one of the merchant victims to proceed to the finding of acts that would have perpetrated security officers, ordered the police to arrest, some security agents, suspected of involvement in shots that injured several people...



The situation escalated when Mayor Marky Kessa intervened and opposed the judge's decision, resulting in a heated altercation between the two men, during which Judge Armand allegedly slapped Mayor Marky Kessa. In front of this scene, a young boy identified as Dadou Laguerre, wanting to avenge the mayor slapped Judge Armand in turn before fleeing. Caught up shortly after by members of the population he was handed over to justice and jailed in the civil prison of Jacmel.



As part of a press conference, the Treasurer of FENAMH, denounced and strongly condemned the act committed by the judge on the person of Mayor Marky Kessa and appealed to the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSPJ) so that it intervene in this matter, so that justice can be done to Mayor Marky. He demands unconditionally and immediately the dismissal followed by the arrest of the Justice of the Peace by asking the Chief Prosecutor of Jacmel, Me Francoise Morailles to assume his responsibilities...



Since this incident, a situation of tension reigns in the Beaudouin market. Burning barricades are erected by individuals across several streets in Jacmel to protest the behavior of the Justice of the Peace. The latter, in a press conference, rejects with a hand of the allegations made by the Mayor of Jacmel, suggesting that he slapped him. However, he admits that his belly hit the mayor's after he was jostled by Mr. Kessa.



After former Senator Edwin Daniel Zenny who spat in the face of Justice of the Peace Bob Simonis https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-6604-haiti-politic-strong-intervention-of-senator-zenny-in-jacmel-exclusive.html ; former Senator Wenceslas Lambert who broke a tooth of a student at Jacmel Law School https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-10712-haiti-politic-wencesclas-lambert-a-senator-with-harsh-methods.html , the current senator, Joseph Lambert who had hit with the stick of his revolver the head of a student of social communication of the State University of Haiti, the city of Jacmel now, besides the qualifiers of creative city , hospitable, touristic, has become a reference where the authorities shine their names by acts and violent behavior.



HL/ HaitiLibre / Pierre Myrthel Esther (Correspondante Jacmel)






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Towards the reoccupation of the former headquarters of the FADH

Wednesday, following the remobilization of the Army on November 18, https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22741-haiti-vertieres-a-page-of-history-is-turned-a-new-chapter-opens-dixit-jovenel-moise.html , in view of the resumption of possession of the former General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FADH), currently occupied by the Ministry of Culture, Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant with Herve Denis, Minister of Defense Minister of Defense and Lieutenant-General Jodel Lesage, Commander-in-Chief of the Haitian Armed Forces, recently appointed by the Head of State https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22737-haiti-flash-president-moise-appoints-acting-commander-in-chief-of-the-army-of-haiti.html conducted an evaluation visit of the premises.



Christmas : detainees and presidential pardon

Wednesday on the sidelines of a visit to the national penitentiary, Clame Ocnam Dameus, the Government Commissioner of Port-au-Prince accompanied by Renan Hedouville, the Protector of the Citizen recalled that several prisoners, as every year during the period of the nativity, could benefit from a presidential pardon. He informed that an emergency unit composed of several actors of the judicial system will be set up to analyze the files of the potentially released prisoners and indicated that he plans a thousand releases...



Review of the DCPJ

Tuesday, Inspector Gary Desrosiers deputy spokesman of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) presented the results of operations conducted by the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) for the period from November 1 to date. He revealed that 28 individuals were arrested for raping a minor, murder, illegal possession of firearms and criminal conspiracy. He reported the seizure of 23 firearms, including 10 9mm pistols. Also the release by the police, on December 1, of a 21-month-old infant kidnapped November 9 in Pernier 40 underlining that at least 3 other victims of kidnapping in September, October and November have also regained their freedom.



Sunrise Airways adds a flight to Havana

"We are pleased to announce that from December 8, we are adding a new flight to Havana," said Haitian airline Sunrise Airways https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22771-haiti-tourism-sunrise-airways-announces-new-flights-to-curacao.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22437-haiti-economy-sunrise-airways-begins-flights-to-orlando.html



Handicap towards cooperation with Guadeloupe

Yesterday Wednesday, Gerald Oriol Jr. Secretary of State for the Integration of Disabled People was visited by a delegation from Guadeloupe, including the Mayor of the Town Hall of Gourbeyre and the President of the Board of the Regional School of 2nd Chance, who wish to collaborate with Haiti in the field of disability.



The Minister Caillot questioned in the Senate

On Tuesday, Fritz Caillot, Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications (MTPTC) was heard by the Senate Committee "Public Works" on various issues including among others that of electrical rationing and traffic jams especially at Carrefour. https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22582-haiti-development-president-moise-visits-the-site-of-the-interchange-of-carrefour.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-22686-icihaiti-work-installation-of-the-steel-beams-of-the-carrefour-interchange.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2017/12/06

Today is rich with casting news in dramaland. Let's take a look at the goodies:

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Goodie #1 - Shin Dong-hoon is appearing in "I'm Not a Robot", the MBC drama that started today. He'll be playing Kim Myeong-hoon, a warm, father-like figure from Kim Min-gyoo's (Yoo Seung-ho's) childhood.

Goodie #2 - "Mr. Sunshine" has lined up Ji Seung-hyun who has been quite busy in the film and drama circuit. He will re-unite with Kim Eun-sook with whom he worked on blockbuster drama "Descendants of the Sun" last year. Last week news dropped that he was joining the bad boys of "Bad Guys : Vile City".

Goodie #3 - Popular Japanese drama "Rich Man, Poor Woman" is getting a Korean remake and Kim Ye-won is the newest addition to the cast line-up. She'll be playing Oh Chang-seok's younger sister.

Goodie #4 - SBS drama "Return" has added Kim Hee-jung-I to its lineup and we'll be able to see her as Go Hyun-jung's assistant in January of 2018. The character is described as a straight forward woman. I'm hoping that also means competant.

Goodie #5 - Currently airing "Nothing to Lose" welcomes Yoo Seo-jin as fashion designer Myeong Soo-jin, a defendent in a pivotal court case. Recently, her first appearance earned her netizen praises.

-Yours, Lisa

Sources (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Published on 2017/12/06 | Source

Actress Lee Young-ae returned to Korea on the 3rd through Incheon International Airport from Hong Kong where the 2017 MAMA was held. She was greeted by her smiling children, which is a lovely way to come home.

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By Vasia Orion | Published on 2017/12/06

After the confirmation of Jeon So-min as the drama's heroine and the previously confirmed role for Yang Jin-sung, "Cross" adds Jin Yi-han to the mix along with character information on his and Yang Jin-sung's characters. Get ready for some spoiled rich kids, because Dramaland.

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Jin Yi-han plays Lee Joo-hyuk, an organ transplant specialist who is cold underneath his "perfect man" public persona. The standard Dramaland "genius" with a fancy background as the son of the hospital's head hides his true feelings, but apparently not his rivalry with Kang In-gyu, played by Go Kyung-pyo. Yang Jin-sung is Son Yeon-hee, a maternity specialist with strong maternal instincts and a fancy background of her own as the only child of the hospital's CEO. Her life changes drastically due to the aforementioned protagonist.

"Cross" is a series I would normally be interested in, but with writer Choi Min-seok and PD Sin Yong-hwi not having done particularly impressive work, and with the cast not being to my liking much, I don't know what to make of it yet. I also don't feel comfortable with Cho Jae-hyun after the Kim Ki-duk assault case and the conditions of the actor's participation in the incident, if the descriptions of Korean news pieces are accurate, so I have mixed personal feelings about the work in general.

While I will be sitting this one out, I wish the production and its viewers good luck. May it be solid revenge-y goodness with a fun story, a lot of suspense and good performances.

Written by: Orion from 'Orion's Ramblings'

Sources (1)
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BrewDog and Cult Wines on fast-track to success

By Jo Gilbert

Scotlands largest independent brewer, a northern pub and restaurant operator and London based fine wine merchant are the three stand out drinks companies to have made it into this years list of the UKs fastest growing businesses.

The Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 league table which ranks Britains 100 private companies with the fastest-growing sales over their latest three years, has this year featured Cult Wines, New World Trading Company (NWTC) and BrewDog as its among its ranks.

According to the annual rankings, Cult Wines saw the largest annual sales rise of the three companies over the period, rising by 69.52% over the past three years and coming in at number 40 in the list.

The South West London-based company is notable for managing international fine wine investments to the tune of 55m.

The company, which was set up by former investment banker Phil Gearing and son Tom Gearing in 2007, last year opened a base in Hong Kong, helping sales hit 34.2m in 2017.

It next plans to launch Cult Wines in China.

Meanwhile, ever-expanding upmarket pub chain NWTC came in at number 56 on the list with sales having risen by 60.56% since 2014.

Under chief executive Chris Hill, NWTC runs 20 venues, including the Botanist, famed for its herb-based cocktails, and the Smugglers Cove, a pirate-themed bar in Liverpool.

The Knutsford-based company was spun out from restaurant group Living Ventures in 2013, backed by private equity firms LDC and Hill Capital Partners, and changed ownership again in June last year, when Graphite Capital acquired the company for 50m.

Group sales grew to 40.1m this year.

BrewDog, which came appeared on the list at number 62, was notable for appearing in the list for the sixth year in a row  a record achievement.

The Aberdeenshire brewer was valued at 1bn in April after having a banner year in 2016, when the brewery saw a 97% surge in sales.

Since being founded in 2007 by James Watt and Martin Dickie, it has expanded to Australia and Asia and opened 15 craft beer venues in the UK, thanks to its Equity for Punks crowdfunding initiative.

James Watt, BrewDog co-founder said the companys six-year listing speaks volumes about the thirst for awesome craft beer both in the UK and internationally, and we couldnt have landed this incredible milestone without the support of our community of craft beer renegades.

Our focus for the next 12 months is all about taking our mission truly global with launches into Asia and Australia and beyond, whilst continuing to support the growth of the exciting, eclectic craft beer scene in Europe.








San Leonardo to make first foray into fizz

By James Lawrence

Historic Trentino estate San Leonardo has revealed it is moving into sparkling wine production in line with a trend for producers in the region replacing red grapes with varieties used for bubbles.

Making sparkling wine had been a family ambition for San Leonardo for many years, said owner Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, speaking at a landmark event at the Ten Trinity Square Private Club in London, adding the Trentino terroir was ideal for the production of high quality sparkling wines.

The proposed blend would be similar to Champagne and it was expected to be released over the next couple of years, he said.

According to his son, Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga, the estate will purchase grapes from trusted nearby growers, with the intention of crafting a traditional-method sparkling that can compete with the best of Franciacorta, and indeed Champagne.

The decision to make a foray into sparkling wine followed many growers in Trentino replacing their local red grapes such as Teroldego with varieties suitable for the production of fizz, he said, although he conceded that many producers were making charmat-style wines for early drinking.

Increasingly, growers are realising that there is easy money to made from Prosecco imitations and I expect sparkling production to increase dramatically in Trentino over the next decade, although Trento DOC remains the bastion of quality, he said.

Today Trentino DOC covers a multitude of wines, from light bodied, sweetish red Schiava to barrel-fermented Chardonnay.

According to Guerrieri Gonzaga, the estate will operate under the appellation framework in approximately two years, after many years of utilising the IGT Vigneti Delle Dolomiti and IGT Vallagarina dominations.

However, he added that the Trentino DOC was still undervalued and underappreciated, when compared to Italy's headline regions.

Overall, Trentino was still the land of cooperatives, he said.

The quality is fine, but one rarely encounters a great wine. It's my dream that one day a greater number of producers will invest in this highly diverse, and remarkable terroir.
Continuing to Doubt the North Koreans Could be Dangerous to Hawaii



News Release from Office of Rep Gene Ward, (R-Hawaii Kai) December 6, 2017

HONOLULU, HAWAII  Rep. Gene Ward (R-Hawaii Kai, Kalama Valley) said today that it is well past time to take Kim Jong Un seriously.

On November 29th, North Korea launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile armed with what it claimed was a super large heavy warhead. Analysts said the flight time and distance of the latest test clearly indicates that North Korean missiles can reach anywhere on the mainland  and certainly Hawaii. The missile soared 2,500 miles into space, staying aloft for 53 minutes in a fly-ball trajectory. It fell into the Sea of Japan 620 miles from its launch point.

Ward said America needs to stop thinking the North Koreans are not capable of creating and stabilizing a nuclear device that fits on the tip of a warhead.

This is like thinking a man pointing a gun at you wouldnt figure out how to pull the trigger and kill you, Ward said.

Ward has written to U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis and to President Donald Trump, encouraging them to keep the diplomatic pressure on North Korea. He also has written to Gov. David Ige, urging shelter-in-place drills be implemented by the Department of Education.

Now is not the time to be contemplating our navels or trying to second guess Kim Jong Un, Ward said. Its time to prepare for the worst.



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The Pop Art movement burst upon the scene in the mid-1950s, challenging the conventional subject matter and techniques of the art world. By embracing popular culture while at the same time celebrating consumerism, everyday household items, as well as celebrities, became equally likely to be the focus of the Pop artist.

But Pop Art did not remain stagnant; it has evolved throughout the decades to not only reflect changes in society but to also influence them. Pop Culture: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation on display at The Reading Public Museum traces the early innovators of Pop Art, and follows its heirs as they continually push the boundaries to maintain relevance more than 60 years later.

The exhibition includes an extraordinary array of media, including sculpture, paintings, drawings, assemblages, photography, ceramics and prints. Iconic innovators of the style  Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos and Tom Wesselmann  intermingle with more contemporary works by Richard Artschwager, Jim Dine, Gilbert & George, Red Grooms, Yayoi Kusama and Michelangelo Pistoletto, among others.

Pop Art is synonymous with Andy Warhol, and no Pop exhibition is complete without him. The Weisman Foundation has brought 10 of the colorful iconic Marilyn Monroe prints from 1967 to the museum to honor the man who many consider to be the Father of Pop Art. Other notable icons of early Pop Art included in the exhibition are Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Lichtenstein. The impact of the work from each of these pioneers during the 1960s can be seen throughout the exhibit.

As the Pop Art scene moved into the 70s and 80s, it embraced urban street culture. Graffiti art and lettering were incorporated into the art of Keith Haring, whose Untitled tarpaulin from 1983 dominates a wall with a street-influenced style. Similarly, work by street artist, Retna, appears to create his own visual language, a seemingly modern form of hieroglyphics.

Technology was embraced by the Pop Art movement. The use of television screens, video monitors and LED displays became more prominent. An early proponent of incorporating technology into art was Nam June Paik. From his earliest works in the 1960s to the Michelin Man Laser Robot (1996) on display, which uses 13 television screens projecting magnetically distorted video imagery, Paik continually has explored the connection between art and technology.

Jenny Holzers Selections from the Survival Series (1983-84) uses a hypnotic LED scroll of red diodes, spelling out provocative sayings, resembling advertising slogans. The anonymity of the messages adds to the mystery and therefore authority of the author as passersby read them. It is Holzers use of media and marketing techniques that give this piece relevance in the Pop movement by both embracing and critiquing the power of modern persuasion.

As Pop Art has moved into the 21st century, its ability to hold a mirror to society continues. Yoram Wolbergers Indian 2 (Bowman) from 2006 presents as an oversized childs plastic toy, used in a game of cowboys and Indians. The red plastic form dominates the gallery to transform a simple toy into a piece that poses serious social questions about the things we consider to be playthings. Again it is Pop Art pointing out societys mixed messages and contradictions.

Mark Dean Vecas acrylic and India ink paintings on canvas over panel from 2010, also makes statements on social and political climates. Pennybags and Uncle Scrooge uses comic book-like imagery infusing the symbols of money and greed within the characters. Using the characters from the popular Monopoly game and Disneys Uncle Scrooge McDuck, he ties childhood memories to the adult world. Using familiar, popular imagery, Veca incorporates his own perspectives of societys shifting priorities.

An observation one can make from visiting the Pop Culture exhibition is the evolution of the voice of the artists within the movement. The voice of Pop Art seems to be less hesitant to make its own statements and criticisms, it has moved from subtle messages and reflections to bold, unmistakable commentary. Walking through the nearly 70 pieces of Pop Art, spanning from the 60s to works only a few years old, the messages become more and more clear and unabashed.

One need not travel to major Metropolitan museums to see a finer collection of one of the most influential art movements in history. From the iconic and well known, to lesser known, emerging artists, Pop Culture: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation demonstrates the Pop Art movements power and its impact upon society.

Pop Culture: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation is on display through Jan. 14, 2018 at The Reading Public Museum. The museum is located at 500 Museum Road in Reading, and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the museum is $10 for adults (18-64), $6 for children/seniors/students (w/ID) and free to members and children three years old and younger. For more information visit their website www.readingpublicmuseum.org
A sweet tradition returns to St. Johns Episcopal Church on the Square in Carlisle Friday with the annual Christmas Cookie Walk.

The cookie walk will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Dec. 8, and gives visitors the chance to fill small, medium or large boxes with homemade cookies for a cost ranging from $15 to $25.

Homemade doggie treats will also be available for $5 a bag.

Carolyn Freberg, Doreen Maisano, Sandy Patsolic and Lauren Till lead the committee that organizes the event, which benefits the churchs general fund. Each woman takes charge of a different aspect of the sale. Till coordinates publicity, Masiano organizes set up, Pastolic oversees the kitchen and Freberg recruits the bakers.

It takes about 20 people per shift to make the cookie walk run smoothly. Prior to the event, other volunteers assisted with putting up posters around town.

The best thing about this fundraising event is that it involves lots and lots of people from our congregation, Freberg said.

Borrowed idea

Freberg said they borrowed the idea from a church in the Pittsburgh area that had been attended by the daughter of a St. Johns member. Now in its ninth year, the cookie walk features cookies that come from old-fashioned family recipes as well as more modern decorated creations.

We try to have 100 bakers, each baking at least 10 dozen cookies, Freberg said.

The bakers are recruited through announcements at the church, and started delivering their creations to the church Thursday morning.

We have male and female, young and old baking, Freberg said.

Volunteers take the cookies from the bakers who deliver them drive-through style at the back of the church. The containers are set up with similar cookies in the kitchen. That way the volunteers refilling the tables only need to come to the window to ask for a container of cookies with nuts, cookies with fruit, or a number of other possibilities, Pastolic said.

This is more than weve ever had on a Thursday already, Pastolic said.

Cookie room

And theres plenty more to come.

Tomorrow, this whole room will be filled with cookies, she said.

The cookies represent the backgrounds of different members of the church. Freberg, for example, baked a German lebkuchen from a modernized version of her grandmothers recipe that originally included a pound of lard and five pounds of flour.

Its still a lot even using the more modern recipe, and I dont do it more than once a year, she said.

Maisano said people will start lining up for the cookie walk as early as 10:30 a.m. Two lines will move around the tables full of cookies as people select cookies to fill either a small, medium or large box.

They choose what they want in them. They are not premade, Freberg said.

Any extra cookies at the end of the event are donated to another ministry such as the Salvation Army, Carlisle CARES or a prison ministry.
BRISTOL, Va.  A new business may be poised to move into the vacant, former Ball Corp. building.

On Wednesday, the Bristol Virginia city managers office announced City Councils potential attendance at an event next week  in compliance with Virginia open meeting laws.

Members of the Bristol, Virginia, City Council may attend an event on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 1 p.m. at the former Ball Corporation plant located at 750 Old Abingdon Highway, Bristol, Virginia 24201. No formal action by council will take place.

Contacted by phone Wednesday afternoon, interim City Manager Randy Eads refused to comment on the nature of the event or who also might attend.

I cant tell you anything. I can tell you to be there, Eads said.

He declined to answer additional questions.

City leaders have repeatedly said finding a business to move into the former beverage packaging end-making plant  which idled 230 workers when it closed in early 2016  remains a priority.

In September, Mayor Kevin Mumpower said the city was receiving serious interest from a potential firm.

Its not a done deal until its a done deal, but everybody connected with the city is working their tail off behind the scenes to try to make this thing happen, Mumpower said in September.

He didnt immediately return phone calls on Wednesday.
Former Tennessee Rep. Jason Mumpower filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against an Illinois trucking company and a Florida truck driver following a traffic crash last month on Interstate 81.

Mumpower, a Bristol resident who currently serves as chief of staff for the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, was injured Nov. 2 in a multi-vehicle crash near the 58-mile marker in Kingsport, Tennessee. He filed suit on Monday in U.S. District Court in Greeneville, Tennessee, against the truck driver, Pavel Gheleniuc, of Orlando, Sopranos Inc., of Illinois, and Gogu Trucking Express of Illinois.

As Gheleniuc approached the 58 mile marker, he was driving too fast for the conditions then and there present and was unable to stop his vehicle in time to avoid a collision with Mumpowers vehicle, the suit states.

As a result of the crash, Mumpower said he suffered serious injuries and incurred extensive medical and out-of-pocket expenses.

The complaint states that Gheleniuc failed to maintain the vehicle he was driving, failed to obey traffic-control devices, failed to keep a proper distance between his and other vehicles and failed to use due care.

Kingsport Police said a tractor-trailer, hauling frozen chicken, was traveling northbound when it came upon the slowed or stopped traffic, due to another crash. The driver swerved to the left to avoid a collision in the right lane and ended up rear-ending a Mercury sedan ahead of him in the left lane.

The Mercury, driven by Mumpower, was knocked forward and to the right into the back of a U-Haul rental truck, police said. The Mercury rolled over, but eventually ended up back on its wheels on the right side of the road.

Five people were taken to area hospitals as a result of the crashes.
The first buildings of the Carlisle Urban Redevelopment Plan are under construction at the site of the former Carlisle Tire & Wheel.

Groundbreaking for the townhomes was held in October.

Cleveland-based developer PIRHL partnered with the Cumberland County Housing and Redevelopment Authorities to develop the plan that will bring 40 townhomes, 12 flat apartments, a 2,000-square-foot community building and a two-acre park to the site. The plan also will extend B and C streets through the site as well as address stormwater issues.

A roundabout will be constructed at B and College streets as well as at B Street and Fairground Avenue as part of the related Carlisle Connectivity project, which will make improvements to roads in the area.

Construction is expected to be completed in the fall of 2018.

Also in October, Carlisle Borough Council narrowly approved a letter of support for the proposed development of Phase 2 at the site. PIRHL had requested the letter as part of its application to the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency for tax credits that the company then sells to investors in exchange for cash equity.

In Phase 2, PIRHL proposes 42 rental units at the property that will include 11 one-bedroom units, 20 two-bedroom units and 11 three-bedroom units. Rent will range from about $590 to $950 plus utilities. Twenty-five percent of the units will be dedicated to veterans housing.

As with Phase 1, the housing in Phase 2 is considered workforce housing, and is designed for people making about $50,000 a year.
A Christmas Radio-thon benefiting the Salvation Army of Carlisle will be held Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Giant Food Stores, 950 Walnut Bottom Road, South Middleton Township.

The Salvation Army partners with WIOO-FM Country Gold radio 97.9 and CenturyLink, a communications services provider, for the event, which is in its fifth year.

WIOO-FM Country Gold 97.9 radio listeners are encouraged to call the Radio-thon hotline at 717-240-0235 throughout the day to make a donation. Funds generated will support programs and services provided year-round to hundreds of local families, such as My Brothers Table feeding program, Choice food pantry, Clothing and household goods assistance and the Senior Action Center.

The Salvation Army of Carlisle has raised more than $35,000 through the Christmas Radio-thon since its inception. The goal for this years event is $12,000.

WIOO-FM will broadcast live from Giant every hour. Salvation Army staff and advisory board members will man the phones, provided by CenturyLink. Clients of Salvation Armys meal program, housing program and social services will discuss on the air how the Salvation Army has helped change their lives.

We would like to thank WIOO-FM Country Gold, Centurylink and Giant supermarket for partnering with us for the Radio-thon again this year, as well as the members of the community for their continued support, said Maj. Alma Riley, co-commanding officer of the Salvation Army of Carlisle. Funds raised through events like Radio-thon allow us to provide vital support to local residents who are struggling to make ends meet.

Listeners may make a secure credit card donation to the Salvation Army of Carlisle through its website: www.SalvationArmyCarlisle.org. Donations are also accepted through the mail. Checks can be sent to the Salvation Army of Carlisle, 20 E. Pomfret St., Carlisle, PA, 17013, with Radio-thon in the memo line. Donors should not send cash.
In a film about a mother's search for the person or people responsible for the death of her daughter, it's not actually the mystery of that crime that drives the story.

For "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," it's all about the people of the town affected by this one event (and the upheaval caused by three billboards), and how hate or kindness can shape their actions and choices.

For a movie that pits one woman against the police, there are no clear-cut villains (with the exception of one man whose presence in the small town brings up too many unanswered questions). It's easy to side with Frances McDormand's Mildred in her effort to spur police into action after seven months of inaction into the investigation.

However, the police led by Woody Harrelson's Chief Willoughby are neither inept (for the most part) or unfeeling toward the case. It's not a matter of not wanting to solve it, but rather they don't have the evidence to give them a break in identifying a suspect.

That impasse helps the drama unfold as McDormand battles against the police and others in the town who feel she shouldn't attack the department, especially one led by a man with a cancer diagnosis.

It also sets the stage for two powerhouse performances.

McDormand has proven she can carry any film, and she seems to shoulder this one with ease, portraying a grieving mother and a whip-smart woman. McDormand easily throws out the insults and obscenities that have marked the dark comedies of director Martin McDonagh ("In Bruges").

Rockwell plays an entirely different character - one slow on the uptake who can't battle McDormand or Harrelson in conversation - but one who manages to have the most drastically changing arc in the film. He manages to play the bumbling idiot, the violent racist and the penitent outcast all in one movie.

Though the two actors are clearly the best part of the film, they get plenty of support from the majority of the cast. The only exception is Abbie Cornish, whose age and native Australian accent make her stand out in a movie supposedly centered around a small town. Cornish is usually a superb actress (who can easily fake an American accent), but she's too young to play the wife to Harrelson's character, especially in a movie that makes fun of one man (John Hawkes) for dating a 19-year-old (Samara Weaving).

The film isn't without other faults - it's a little dismissive of the racial overtones without giving much substance to its black actors, and an antagonist seemingly appears out of nowhere for no reason - but it's a solid movie driven by some of the best performances you'll see in a movie all year.
President Trumps son-in-law and designated Middle East peace envoy, Jared Kushner, told the Brookings Institutions Saban Forum last weekend that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is key to solving larger goals, such as stopping Iranian aggression and Islamic extremism.

If he believes that, he has fallen into the trap numerous and more seasoned diplomats have experienced.

The most obvious impediment to peace in the region is a religious one. A visceral hatred of Jews is promoted in Palestinian media and many mosques and schools throughout the region. The destruction of Israel and elimination of Jews from land that has been historically and legitimately theirs for thousands of years is their goal. Radical Islamists believe Allah has ordered it. Why would they risk perdition by violating his command?

Duplicity and deception are the coin of the realm in the Middle East. It is why many Palestinian leaders say one thing to the West and another to their own people.

Here is one of many examples, which contradicts what Palestinian leaders say to Western ears. In a 2013 interview on Syrian TV, Abbas Zaki, a close associate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinian Authority would not enter into any peace agreement with Israel unless it includes Israels withdrawal to indefensible 1967 borders. Zaki stated: Even the most extreme among us, Hamas, or the fighting forces, want a state within the 67 borders. Afterward, we [will] have something to say, because the inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. [Rather] in stages.

In other words, incremental steps toward a shared goal: the elimination of the Jewish state, which Iranian mullahs have described as a cancer in the Middle East.

Does this sound like the language of people who wish to live in a peaceful state adjacent to Israel? A person not deceived by the mirage of a Middle East peace agreement should consider the numerous and unreciprocated concessions Israel has already made to advance the peace process, which seems more like a war process from the Arab and Palestinian perspective.

This is all about increasing pressure on Israel to do more, as if Israel were the one advocating genocide. Many Palestinian and Arab leaders hate Israel (and Jews) not for what they do or dont do, but because they exist. If Mr. Kushner believes he can be a peace broker without understanding and accepting this basic fact, he is bound to end up like all the others who have inserted themselves into the region.

What is the answer, if there is one?

Writing in the Israeli publication, Al-Monitor, following President Trumps visit to Saudi Arabia in May, columnist Akia Eldar says: ...(an) American president may be able to bring the sides to the table, if he is lucky, but they will only eat what is on it if they are dying of hunger. He would have realized that the hunger for peace only comes after the thirst for blood is quenched.

Isnt that what happened when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat decided enough blood had been spilt and made peace with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin?

As unlikely as it might seem, perhaps the road to settlement and stability might go through Riyadh. While Saudi Arabia has been a principal exporter of an extremist view of Islam through its media, funding mosques in Western countries and textbooks for school children that promote anti-Semitism, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has said he wants a return to a more moderate Islam that allows for peaceful co-existence with other religions and the world.

One eagerly awaits such a transforming message within Islam, but will other Islamic countries who also hate Jews and Israel accept this move toward peaceful co-existence when, and if, it comes?

Does Jared Kushner fully understand what he has gotten himself into?

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
Dear Editor:

I was very disappointed that on Oct. 24 Sen. Eichelberger voted in the Senate Education Committee to approve Senate Bill 2, legislation that would bring a new generation of school vouchers called education savings accounts, or ESAs, to Pennsylvania.

ESAs are a new and costly government entitlement program for families who live in the attendance area of a low-performing school. They provide families who withdraw their children from public schools with a taxpayer-funded pot of money (approx. $5,700/year) to spend on their childrens private education. The money for each students ESA is subtracted from the state funding allocated to the students school district. This drains desperately-needed taxpayer dollars from public schools and will put more pressure on property taxes to fill in the budget hole they will leave behind.

ESAs do not guarantee that children in low-performing schools will be able to attend the private school of their choice. In many cases the amount of the ESA is not enough to cover the full cost of private school tuition, so families with low and modest incomes will not be able to use them. Instead, ESAs will benefit well-to-do families who can use taxpayer dollars to supplement their childrens private education.

Also, ESAs are expensive to administer and ripe for waste, fraud, and abuse. Families can spend taxpayer dollars in their accounts on a wide variety of educational expenses. Oversight and accountability are limited.

Senate Bill 2 did not pass out of committee on Oct. 24, but this bill can be called up for a vote at any time. Sen. Eichelbergers constituents who support public education should give his office a call and tell him to oppose education savings accounts.

Kate Elkins

Newville

AAUW Carlisle Public Policy Committee
An area business man was indicted on a felony charge following a lawsuit on the matter earlier this year.

Matthew Burgess, 33, of Farmington, is being charged with a class A felony of financial exploitation of the elderly.

According to a probable cause statement, on June 14 the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services received a request from St. Francois County Missouri Division of Senior and Disability Services to investigate the financial exploitation of Emma Wessel, an elderly resident of Farmington who recently won a lawsuit against Burgess.

The initial report said Wessel entered into a contractual agreement with Burgess and Zachary Govreau of MB Land Company for the construction of a home in 2016. Wessel paid the full purchase of the home prior to its construction and construction was never completed.

On Sept. 20 an investigation supervisor with the Special Investigation Unit met with Wessel at her residence. During an interview she told the investigator she was the caregiver for her brother, who is a disabled veteran. Because of his medical conditions he was facing the possibility of having to become a resident of an assisted living facility.

Her brother asked if she would be willing to sell her current home to buy or build a home large enough to accommodate the both of them, as well as daily caregivers that would be attending to him. Wessel agreed to do so and the both of them agreed to fund the new home from an annuity held by her brother.

The report said in February 2016 sometime after seeing a model home in the St. Francois County subdivision of the Highlands she called the number displayed for the contracting company. After leaving a message she was later contacted by Govreau, a project manager with Journey Home Builders, a division of MB Land Company, and an appointment was scheduled to discuss having them build a home for her in the subdivision.

Govreau told Wessel that the owner of MB Land Company was Burgess, and that his father had been in the construction business locally for many years. Wessel was familiar with the Burgess family name and knew they had a good reputation in the community.

On March 21, 2016, she met with Govreau at MB Land Companys office located in Farmington and signed a contract for the construction of her new home. At this meeting, per the agreement, she gave Govreau a check for $3,000 as a deposit and the construction was to begin soon thereafter, with an expected completion date of three months.

Total contract cost for the completed home, not including the down payment, was to be $218,547. The home was to be built on Lot 12 off Wolf Creek Drive and the contract said it was owned by MB Land Company and a written purchase agreement was executed.

Wessel told Govreau that she would be paying the full amount at closing and that she would be setting up an escrow account to fund the project. She was told by Govreau that they set up their own account and unless she didnt trust them, they could handle the funds.

Wessel didnt think this was unusual and because she was dealing with her brothers medical issues she thought it would be easier to let them handle the escrow account. On April 20, 2016 she wrote MB Land Company a check for $218,547, which was to fund the escrow account.

Progress on the home was slow and she barely ever saw any workers on the job site. In August 2016 she was becoming very concerned about the project. After voicing her concerns to Govreau she was told a new target move-in date would be October 31, 2016.

When the home still wasnt completed by that date Wessel went to MB Land Companys office and asked for someone to call her about the project. She received a call from Burgess advising he was giving her his personal word that her home would be done within the next two weeks.

Prior to Wessel making a personal appearance at Burgesss office Govreau had told her they were waiting on a delivery of cabinets from the local Hoods store to continue completion of the home. Wessel called Hoods and they told her they had not received payment for the cabinets and they would not be delivered until the payment was received.

The next two weeks passed with no communication from either Burgess or Govreau, at which time she contacted an attorney. A civil case was filed against Burgess, Govreau and MB Land Company and as part of the civil proceedings MB Land Companys bank records were subpoenaed.

Upon receiving the records, it was discovered that MB Land Companys escrow account was never funded and Wessels check was deposited into an MB Land Company business account. All of the money was gone within eight days of her check being deposited.

It was also discovered during the civil proceedings that the property where her home sits did not belong to MB Land Company like it said in the contract. It was actually owned by Silas Properties, LLC and there is a lien on the property through First State Bank of St. Charles.

Silas Properties, LLC is registered through the Missouri Secretary of States Office as a limited liability company and lists Burgess as the registered agent.

A review of Burgess account revealed that between April 20-29, Burgess and/or Govreau made withdrawals from the account for Bill.com, Capitol One, American Express, Chase, Graham Anderson, Missouri Land Rental, Butterflieds Florist, Matt Burgess, Bret Burgess, Zack Govreau and Jessica Burgess.

None of the transactions were for payment costs associated with the construction of the house, but they were personal expenses of both Burgess and Govreau. By April 29 the balance of the account was $538.88.

As a result of the ongoing civil suit, Wessel was allowed to take possession of the home around Sept. 24 of this year. After assuming ownership, Wessel had to pay an additional $62,845 to local contractors to complete the construction of the home. It has yet to be determined as to the status of the land where the house sits.

Burgess was arrested on the warrant and posted the $100,000 and has since been released from the St. Francois County Jail.

Burgess was charged in September with four class C felonies of receiving stolen property and a class D felony of stealing. Those charges are still pending.
SHELBY  The Earl Scruggs Center presents Carolina Jazz Connections, a Lunch-N-Learn program with N.C. Humanities Council Road Scholar Larry Reni Thomas on Wednesday from noon to 1 p.m.

Thomas is a veteran jazz writer, radio announcer and historian, and his program consists of a series of interviews, stories and information about the Carolina jazz connection.

For more information, call the Earl Scruggs Center at 704-487-6233 or register online at www.EarlScruggsCenter.org to reserve a complimentary program admission.

Carolina Moonlighter barbershop chorus to present Christmas show

HICKORY  Carolina Moonlighter President Lee DeArmond announced the barbershop chorus will present A Christmas Story in Four Parts at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Joining the Moonlighters will be three groups from Catawba Valley Community College  Hawk-a-Pella, Red Tails quartet, and the CVCC Ensemble.

Admission is free, and donations will be accepted and will benefit Catawba Regional Hospice and the CVCC Choral program.

The show will be in the Drendel Auditorium at the SALT Block in Hickory. For more information, call DeArmond at 828-313-0758.

Patrick Beaver Memorial Library to host genealogy presentation

HICKORY  Join genealogist Peggy Mainess on Thursday at 7 p.m. for a workshop exploring the role of time in genealogical research.

This session will explain the calendar change, double dating and regnal dates.

Emphasis will be placed on understanding the importance of contemporary society in determining which research tools are appropriate.

The workshop begins at 7 p.m. and is free, but space is limited so registration is required.

For more information or to register, call 828-304-0500 ext. 7235.

Library to share holiday caregiving tips

HICKORY  Join Alzheimers Associations Julie Cook-Walker on Monday at 10 a.m. for a presentation about caring for those with memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimers disease during the holidays.

Cook-Walker will show that with some planning and adjusted expectations, celebrations can still be happy, memorable occasions.

The Caregiving for the Holidays program is free and open to the public, and for more information, call 828-304-0500 ext. 7235.

Hickory Jazz Orchestra to play Patrick Beaver Memorial Library

HICKORY  Take a break from your holiday planning Monday at 6 p.m. and join Patrick Beaver Memorial Library for a pleasant evening of music with a trio representing the Hickory Jazz Orchestra.

The jazz trio consists of David Wortman on saxophone, Gary Schwartz on piano and Rick Cline on drums  they will be playing traditional Christmas tunes in a jazz style.

This performance is free and open to the public. For more information, call 828-304-0500 ext. 7235.

Needlecraft Club to host meeting at library

HICKORY  Join fellow crafters for Needlecraft Club gatherings during the first and third Mondays of every month at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library.

The next date is Dec. 18 and the gathering with take place at 6 p.m. in the upstairs conference room.

Bring your latest knit, crochet or other crafty work-in-progress to this informal group  all skill levels are welcome to socialize and share techniques, ideas and patterns.

The Needlecraft Club at the library is free to join and open to the public. For more information, call 828-304-0500 ext. 7235.

Bethlehem Branch Library to host Holiday Art Festival

HICKORY  The Bethlehem Branch Library will feature Bethlehem Artists in a Holiday Art Festival on Thursday through Dec. 21, with a opening reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. that includes refreshments and seasonal music.

All art will be for sale and created by Bethlehem Artists with a portion of the proceeds supporting the Bethlehem Friends of the Library.

Art forms will range from clay, glass, visual, crafts, sculpture, fiber, wood, photography and mixed mediums.

For more information, call 828-495-8753.

Valdese to present annual Christmas event

VALDESE  Valdese will host its annual Christmas in Valdese event Friday from 6-8 p.m.

The event on the front steps of the Old Rock School will kick off with a tree lighting by Santa Claus with the help of a selected student from Valdese Elementary School.

The evening continues with a Shop Hop presented by the Valdese Merchants Association. Individuals must pick up a form at the Old Rock School and have it stamped by participating Valdese Merchants.

Once all stamps are acquired, the form must be submitted at the Old Rock School at the base of the Christmas tree  winners will be drawn from the completed forms at 8 p.m.

For more information, visit www.townofvaldese.com or call 828-879-2129.

Caldwell Mens Chorus to present Christmas concert

HUDSON  The Caldwell Mens Chorus Christmas Concert will be in the Sanctuary of Hudson First Baptist Church in Hudson on Sunday at 3 p.m.

The concert is free and open to the public, and music includes an array of secular and sacred music, including Deck the Halls, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Lay Up Your Treasures in Heaven and several other selections.

Tickets are not necessary. For more information, call 828-322-3169.

Green Room Community Theatre to present The Commedia Cinderella

NEWTON  The Green Room Community Theatre is thrilled to present The Commedia Cinderella for a one-time performance Saturday at 3 p.m.

This comedic rendition of one of the worlds most famous and loved fairytales is full of fun and magic.

Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at www.thegreenroomtheatre.org or by calling 828-464-6128 Wednesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Ticket prices are $10 for adults and $6 for children ages 12 and under.

Hickory Community Theatre hosts 12th annual A Cabaret Christmas

HICKORY  Award-winning vocalist Jackie Finley, national recording artist Noel Freidline, percussionist Rick Cline, Allen Finley, Johnny White and Carolyn Ousler will present "A Cabaret Christmas" on Dec. 18 at 8 p.m. in the Hickory Community Theatre.

The show will feature the world-renowned music of Natalie Cole, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and many other traditional Christmas favorites.

Individual tickets are $22 and are available at Hickory Community Theatre. For more information, visit www.hickorytheatre.org or call 828-328-2283.

Hudson to host Home for Christmas concert

HUDSON  The eighth annual Home for Christmas concert will be presented at the Hudson Uptown Building in Hudson on Friday and Saturday.

Special guest will be Dan Truhitte, who played Rolf Gruber in the 1965 Academy Award winning movie, The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews.

Truhitte is the only member of the 1965 movie cast to still be performing musically, and recently wrote a Christmas song, Christmas is Bustin Out Again.

The event will be catered by Box Car Grille and will feature a holiday menu of turkey and dressing, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, rolls, dessert and tea.

Tickets are $25 for dinner and the concert and $15 for the concert only  reservations are required for dinner.

Dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. and the concert will follow at 7:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at Hudson Town Hall during business hours Monday through Friday, or by calling 828-322-3169.
NEWTON  A Connelly Springs man pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and possession of a firearm during Catawba County Superior Court on Tuesday, according to a 25th District Attorneys Office press release.

Jimmy Daniel Raybon, 31, of Connelly Springs, was sentenced Tuesday by Iredell County Superior Court Judge Julia Lynn Gullett to 13 to 17 years in prison.

Hickory Police Department officers responded to a report of shots fired in May 2016 at a convenience store on Lenoir Rhyne Boulevard in Hickory, according to the release.

Three people were in a car at convenience stores gas pumps when they were approached by Raybon. After a brief verbal exchange, Raybon pulled out a shotgun and fired a round into the driver's side window of the vehicle, according to the release.

Raybon was previously convicted of common law robbery in Alexander County in June 2008, leading to the charge of possession of a firearm by felon.
HICKORY  Hickory has a new mayor.

Hank Guess was sworn in as mayor Tuesday night in front of a room packed with friends, family and community members.

Three other council members also took their oaths.

Ward 5 Councilman David Zagaroli began his second term while Ward 6 Councilwoman Jill Patton began her fourth.

The council also welcomed a new member.

Ward 4 Councilman David Williams, the first African-American to serve on the council since 2009, was sworn in for his first term.

Jeff Cline, who was appointed mayor following the death of Mayor Rudy Wright in May, administered the oath of office to Guess and the other council members.

Immediately upon taking office, Guess paid tribute to Cline, describing him as the very best person for us to have as our mayor during this time.

The other council members joined Guess in thanking Cline and presenting him with the gavel he used during his time as mayor.

Cline reflected on the past six months he has served as mayor during a break in the meeting, saying the city has stayed true to Wrights vision.

You know, we lost our mayor, our leader, our friend seven months ago, but we did not lose the vision, and we as a city have honored his memory, Cline said. Weve done exactly what he would have done had he been here, so we can be proud of all of us. Weve done our jobs.

Guess received a tribute of his own from Joan Long and other friends during the public comment portion of the meeting.

Hank, I may be old fashioned, but I believe a mayor should be a reflection and a symbol of the citizens he or she represents, Long said. When I got to know you Hank, I became convinced that you are the person.

Long went on to praise Guess as humble, hardworking and dedicated to the city.

Following her statement, Long joined others friends of Guess in giving him a Tommy Stine painting.

The agenda for the meeting was light, but the council did make some key appointments.

Councilman Danny Seaver was appointed mayor pro tempore for 2018, and John Crone was reappointed as city attorney.

At the end of the meeting, Williams expressed his gratitude for having the chance to serve.

Im so honored, and Im so grateful, and I just want to say Im looking forward to serving with each of you, and just thank you to everyone, Williams said.

Guess spoke optimistically about the state of the city after the meeting, praising its leadership and residents.

Im excited to serve, and Im just proud of the fact that weve got such great leadership in the City of Hickory, and weve got so many people that want to get involved and volunteer, and its a great time to be the mayor for the City of Hickory, Guess said.
That day in Tucson, amid a gun tragedy, one of the heroes almost got shot.

It was Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011, and a mentally ill young man who'd gotten his hand on a gun opened fire on my wife, then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her constituents at an event in a Safeway parking lot. He shot my wife in the head at close range, injured 12 others and took the lives of six people. One victim was a 9-year-old girl.

After Gabby's would-be assassin dropped the full magazine as he sought to reload his gun and continue his rampage, people tackled him, kicked his gun away and subdued him as they waited for law enforcement to arrive and brought an end to the chaos. They were heroes.

The chaos nearly continued, though. Because the man who murdered those innocent people wasn't the only one there with a loaded, concealed gun.

Joe Zamudio was shopping at a drugstore nearby when he heard the shots. Allowed to carry a concealed weapon under Arizona law, Zamudio recognized the sound of gunfire and rushed to the scene with his gun in his jacket pocket, his hand on his weapon and ready to fire. But then Zamudio -- a good guy trying to do the right thing -- almost shot another good guy.

As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. Zamudio confronted him: "Drop it, drop it!" he yelled.

But that man with a gun was a good guy, too. He was one of the heroes who had wrestled the shooter to the ground. And he was moments away from being shot for the wrong reason.

To his credit, Zamudio held his fire -- just barely. As he recounted to reporters later, "It was a matter of seconds. . . . I was really lucky. . . . I've never been in the military or had any professional training. I just reacted."

The situation that played out in the Safeway parking lot that day shows the potential for tragedy and bloodshed when untrained people carrying loaded guns react to a crisis. Even with the best intentions, an armed person without the extensive firearms training that is required to respond under pressure in a crisis will risk making the situation worse, not better.

But this week, as we approach the seventh anniversary of the tragedy in Tucson and the fifth anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School -- and after two of the five deadliest mass shootings in modern history happened in the last two months -- Congress is working hard to pass one of the big-ticket items on the National Rifle Association's wishlist, a bill that weakens our gun laws and poses serious threats to public safety.

The House is on the verge of voting to allow people permitted to carry concealed weapons to carry them into any other state regardless of what that state's law on such guns is. That would make it harder for law enforcement to do their job and allow all permit holders, even if they don't have a single shred of training, to carry loaded, hidden guns on every street in our country.

Right now, each state has the right to determine the extent to which it will recognize the concealed-carry laws of other states. Some states have strong laws, preventing dangerous people like domestic abusers and convicted stalkers from obtaining concealed-carry permits and requiring training and a thorough evaluation as part of the process. In other states, concealed-carry laws have much lower standards. The 12 states with the weakest laws, permitless-carry states, do not even require a permit. That means residents of those states may carry loaded, concealed guns in public spaces without ever having passed a background check.

The bill before Congress would allow people who have a permit issued by any state -- including permitless-carry states -- to carry loaded, concealed handguns in any other state that allows concealed carry, even though they might not meet local public safety standards. This would mean an 18-year-old high school student from West Virginia could legally carry a concealed firearm in New York City, where residents must be 21 to even own a handgun.

And what would it mean for law enforcement? Nothing good. The bill would impose a threat of personal litigation on all law enforcement officers by allowing anyone whose ability to carry a concealed gun is mistakenly questioned by law enforcement to personally sue the officer. This bill would also effectively require them to be an expert on nationwide gun laws as they work to determine if it's legal for someone from out of state to be carrying a gun in whatever state they might be visiting. Just as concerning, it will mean that more law enforcement officers will have to confront more people with guns. And think back to the tragedy in Tucson: When law enforcement officers arrive at a crime scene where multiple people are holding guns, how do they even know who the good guy is?

We need politicians to show courage and listen to the American people, who want stronger laws to make them safer, not giveaways to gun lobbyists that threaten the safety of our communities. And that's exactly what this irresponsible bill would do.

As members of Congress consider this bill, they have to ask themselves if they want to be remembered as voting to help the Washington gun lobby instead of supporting law enforcement and public safety. And they should know that their constituents are watching their decision closely.

Kelly is a Navy combat veteran, retired NASA astronaut and co-founder with his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, of Giffords, formerly known as Americans for Responsible Solutions.
DEAR ABBY: I am not a hugger. In fact, I pretty much always hate it. But people think I'm rude when I don't open my arms to hug after they've opened theirs. And they also think I'm rude when I tell them I'm not really a hugger. It happens with friends, fellow church congregants and audience members (I'm an entertainer) all the time. Although I let the hugs happen, I'm usually holding my breath the whole time.

Once I've "Hey girl'd" someone and offered my warmest smile, what more can I do? I don't want people I like to think I don't like them, or I'm not happy to see them. But I'm fed up with faking it and participating in this ritual that makes me so uncomfortable. If there's a polite, clear way to convey this to people without seeming cold or unappreciative, please let me know what it is. -- BRACING FOR THE EMBRACE

DEAR BRACING: You are not alone in feeling the way you do. Not everyone is comfortable with being hugged. I think you should simply be honest about your feelings and tell the huggers that you become claustrophobic when people hug you, and to please understand that your reluctance isn't personal. If you make it about you rather than them, it shouldn't come across as rejection.

DEAR ABBY: My son and daughter-in-law are splitting up. I'm devastated for them and my two young grandchildren, with whom I'm very close.

They live in another state, so I stay with them when I go visit. Although we've always had a great relationship, I'm terrified that my daughter-in-law will not want me to visit her after the divorce. I'm heartsick and don't know how to proceed.

What can I do to maintain a good relationship with her, while staying on good terms with my son? My grandchildren mean the world to me. -- HEARTSICK IN THE WEST

DEAR HEARTSICK: The last thing you want or need is to get caught in the middle of the divorce. Try your level best not to take sides and be sure to give your almost-ex-daughter-in-law her space.

Assure her that you care about her and that you deeply regret that the marriage with your son didn't work out. (It's true.) Tell her you have grown to love her as a daughter and hope that, in spite of the divorce, you will always be close. Do NOT discuss any intimate details or assign blame, if you can possibly avoid it, and try to keep your visits upbeat while concentrating on your grandchildren.

DEAR ABBY: My wife and I will soon attend a weekend wedding. We will be meeting a large number of people for the first time.

My problem is I have a hard time remembering people's names. I suggested to my wife that I carry a pocket-size notebook and write down names followed by a brief description. She thinks it's a great idea as long as no one catches me doing it. I think, in addition to being practical, it will provide a bit of humor to the occasion. What say you? -- SENSIBLE IN SEATTLE

DEAR SENSIBLE: I agree with your wife. Be discreet, if you can. Rather than carry a notebook, it might be less obvious if you enter or dictate the information in the notes section of your phone.

DEAR ABBY: Over the last 13 years in his job, my husband developed a "very friendly" relationship with a clerical person. Now that he has retired, she wants to continue it by meeting with him (and me) for dinner. We have had dinner together once, and when they began to talk shop, I became the odd one out.

Although I interjected myself into the conversation, it was clear there is real feeling between them. He says she's "just so nice." She continues to send emails addressed to both of us and asks me (since he is not computer savvy) to relay that she misses him greatly and he was her "ray of sunshine" every day when he would walk in the office.

Should I be worried, jealous or envious? It is only now I have become aware that she was so important to my husband at work. I had no knowledge about their relationship before. -- UNCERTAIN IN NEW JERSEY

DEAR UNCERTAIN: I don't think you have anything to worry about. That the conversation at dinner revolved around the office is not surprising. The office and the job were the basis of their relationship. Because she's sending emails addressed to both of you, I doubt she's trying to slip anything past you or make a play for your husband. Be patient, and with time, I suspect she will adjust to the loss of her "ray of sunshine."

DEAR ABBY: A group of friends and I go out for dinner. When the check arrives, we all have cash except for one woman who wants to pay her share with a credit card. She claims she "doesn't know how much she owes" and tells the waiter to use her credit card to pay her share. Abby, she then pays only for her food and beverage, no tax and no tip! I have told her in the past to bring cash, but she won't.

I think it is unfair to the waiter to have to figure out how much she owes. When we tried to talk to her about it, she reacted like she was being attacked and went to other friends and got them to agree with "her side." If anyone disagrees with her, she goes on and on until she either loses a friend or the person gives in and tells her she's right. How do we deal with someone like this? Should we just give up on her and end the friendship? -- CHECK, PLEASE

DEAR CHECK, PLEASE: I see no reason to give up on the friendship. Just stop having dinner with her if her behavior bothers you.

DEAR ABBY: I'm 12 and I'm depressed. I have been depressed for a year now. I have not told my mom that I cry in the shower. Please guide me on what to do and help get me out of this dark hole. -- SAD IN SAN DIEGO

DEAR SAD: I'm so glad you wrote. It's very important that you tell your mother or some other trusted adult that you are depressed, and how long this has been going on. You may need counseling or the intervention of some other adult to fix this problem. Please don't wait, and please DO write again and let me know how you're doing. I care.

DEAR ABBY: I have been dating my boyfriend for three years. We have lived together for the last two. We have a great life together, but there is a problem I don't know how to solve. "Jeremy" hates his job.

We met in the education department of our college, and after graduation, we both took jobs in the public school system. I enjoy my career, but he loathes his. He complains constantly without seeming to take action on the issue. I know he's miserable, but he hasn't looked for other jobs or enrolled in a new school program.

I have bad days, too, but I've reached the end of listening to the constant griping. I am usually a positive person, but he is dragging my mood down because of this. He says I need to guide him and give him some direction, but I don't know what to say. I don't think it's my responsibility to tell another adult what he should or shouldn't do with his life. I don't mind helping him talk through his choices, but he wants more from me.

This is the man I want to marry. Is there a way to get past this issue and make it work? -- UNCERTAIN AND LOST

DEAR UNCERTAIN: Until your boyfriend has settled this uncertainty about his work life, any discussion about marriage should be put on hold. I agree you are not qualified to give him career advice. However, you might ask him to tell you what exactly it is that he hates about his job, and what he would rather be doing. His answers may give both of you insight into what he may be better suited for emotionally, and stimulate him to do something positive about his future. Once he has more clarity, there may be places he can go for career counseling that can help him decide what his next steps should be.

DEAR ABBY: You have mentioned in the past that you have a booklet on writing letters, including thank-you notes. Where do I send for it? I'll need four because my grandkids are lacking in that area.

It's truly a shame that younger generations haven't been taught about the importance of such notes. A simple "thank you" can not only open doors of opportunity both socially and in employment, but also help grandparents feel appreciated after their heartfelt gift-giving. -- NANCY IN NEVADA

DEAR NANCY: If there is one subject that crops up repeatedly in my mail, it's thank-you notes -- or rather, the lack of them. I print letters about it because of the number of complaints I receive. When a gift or a check isn't acknowledged, the (unwritten) message it sends is that the item wasn't appreciated, which is insulting and hurtful.

Chief among the reasons that thank-you notes are unwritten is that many people don't know what to say. They think the message has to be long and flowery when, in fact, keeping it short and to the point is more effective. My booklet, "How to Write Letters for All Occasions," contains samples of thank-you letters for birthday gifts, shower gifts and wedding gifts, as well as those that arrive around holiday time. It also includes letters of congratulations and ones regarding difficult subjects, such as the loss of a parent, a spouse or a child. It can be ordered by sending your name, mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to Dear Abby Letters Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.) With the holiday season approaching, this is the perfect time to reply with a handwritten letter, note or well-written email.

Because the composition of letters is not always effectively taught in the schools, my booklet can serve as a helpful tutorial, one that is valuable for parents as a way to teach their children to write using proper etiquette.

DEAR ABBY: My 8-year-old daughter keeps asking me for a smartphone. I'm at a loss about who she would call besides me and her dad. She points out these different kids her age who have phones. They are the same kids I view as ones who will have no curfew, boyfriends at 12 and parents who aren't as involved as we are. At what age do you feel kids should have smartphones? -- INVOLVED PARENT

DEAR INVOLVED PARENT: I don't think there is a magic number, but your daughter is definitely too young to have one. Smartphones can be dangerous when they are used irresponsibly. A flip phone, perhaps, for her to contact you in case of emergencies, might be appropriate.

Because her friends have smartphones is not a valid reason for her to have one. Before that happens, you must be confident that it will be used responsibly, and that you and her father will be able to review its history.

DEAR ABBY: Could you help all of us guys named Shelby spread the word that Shelby is not just for the female gender? Many boys and men like me have the handle and are proud of it. -- SHELBY FROM TEXAS

DEAR SHELBY: So do some automobiles! I'm glad to relay your message. Today many women have names that were once associated only with the masculine gender -- Cameron, Bailey, Logan, Morgan, to name a few -- and turnabout is fair play. I'm reminded of the song "A Boy Named Sue."

DEAR ABBY: I'm a 17-year-old girl and a junior in high school. I have a crush on a guy who's 14 and a freshman. I know age gaps don't matter as much later on, but the difference between 17 and 14 can be drastic. "Jake" is really sweet, and he's as interested in me as I am in him (unlike the boys in my grade).

I'm friends with Jake's sister "Julie," who's a year older than me and a senior. Julie has made it clear she doesn't like the idea of a romantic relationship between Jake and me because Jake is only 14.

What can I do? Should I ignore this crush? I have judged people who have dated despite age gaps. (For example, a senior boy dating a sophomore girl.) But now I understand it. If the girl is older, does that complicate things?

I don't want to be seen as creepy or gross, but, to be honest, I'm not that experienced romantically or socially myself. (I have never even been to a real party.) Must I forget my feelings and move on, or do I talk to Julie and try to pursue this? -- TEEN CRUSH

DEAR TEEN CRUSH: Julie has already given you her answer. As you have pointed out, there is a bias against dating someone so much younger, and it could cause you problems not only with your peers, but also with the law if your relationship were to become sexual when you turn 18. That's why I'm suggesting you turn your romantic interests elsewhere. When you're BOTH adults, if you're still interested, you can pursue a romantic relationship then.

DEAR ABBY: My fiance and I are being married in a few days. We are expecting our first child a few days after that. The problem is my mother. We decided on a small ceremony, but my mother is opposed to the marriage because she doesn't like the idea of me marrying -- not just my fiance, but anyone. She has always told me a man will leave me destitute, pregnant with too many kids, and I won't be able to take care of myself. She has repeated it since I was about 10.

Because she has threatened to object at the ceremony, we decided not to invite her. We have invited his parents and my father and stepmother. Mom has said she will not allow my child to see her grandfather because "he is a bad person." She may have good intentions, but dictating who can be around my child is not her choice, considering she has had little to no contact with him in 25 years.

I wish she could be at our wedding, but she has now distanced herself from me and my fiance. Should I let her cool off and hope she comes around, or accept that this is the path she has chosen? Please advise, Abby. -- PROBLEM MOTHER IN KENTUCKY

DEAR PROBLEM MOTHER: Your mother may be anti-marriage because hers failed spectacularly. She appears to be a troubled woman. By all means, let her cool off, but do not allow her to dictate your life. If she does, her anger and bitterness could negatively affect your marriage.

DEAR ABBY: The winter months are hard for me. They remind me that another year has gone by without my father and my younger sister.

Dad had been a smoker since his teens and died from pancreatic cancer at 39. I was 13, and my siblings were younger. In those days, we didn't know that smoking was a risk factor for pancreatic cancer.

My sister smoked from the time she was 13. She died from lung cancer at 44, leaving behind two young sons.

Neither my father nor my sister got to experience the wonderful family milestones and celebrations we have had. Their grandchildren will never know them. Each year during the holidays, I feel a sadness in my heart.

I urge every smoker to make a vow to quit and carry it through, not only for their own sake but also their family's. Stay determined to quit so you won't cause your loved ones sadness and won't miss out on their futures. With all my heart, I wish smokers the best of luck in quitting. -- MISSING DAD AND SIS IN SACRAMENTO

DEAR MISSING: I'm glad you wrote because the American Cancer Society's annual Great American Smokeout will be held on Nov. 16. It's a day when millions of smokers put down their cigarettes -- just for one day -- with the conviction that if they can go 24 hours without one, then they can do it for 48 hours, 72 hours, and stop smoking for good. The idea grew out of a 1970 event in Randolph, Massachusetts, and became a national event in 1977.

Readers, I'm not going to harangue you with death threats. We are all aware of the grim statistics associated with cancer-related deaths caused by tobacco. If you're interested in quitting, this is a perfect opportunity. Call (800) 227-2345 to be connected with counseling services in your community, provided with self-help materials offering information and strategies on quitting for good, and to receive information about medications available to help you quit. This service is free and provided 24/7. Or go online to cancer.org.

DEAR ABBY: I need your help. Over the past few weeks, I have been vacationing at my mother-in-law's home. The other day I was browsing on her computer and accidentally opened her browsing history. It turns out that she regularly looks at and responds to Craigslist personals.

I was shocked when I read some of the perverted requests she has responded to. The language she used would make a sailor blush. Keep in mind, my mother-in-law is a married woman.

I don't know how to react. Should I tell my wife? Keep it to myself? Make a fake Craigslist post and catch her in the act? -- KINKS IN THE FAMILY

DEAR KINKS: If you disclose this to your wife, it could damage her relationship with her mother. If she tells her mother what you found, it will create a breach in the family. If you trap the woman by creating a fake Craigslist post and she realizes she has been made a fool of, it will not -- to put it mildly -- endear you to her. Let it lie.

DEAR ABBY: Help! I'm a 67-year-old man being relentlessly chased by a 68-year-old woman. I have told her I want to date other women and will be moving out of the country at the end of the year. Despite this, she is constantly trying to maneuver me into an exclusive relationship, probably ending in living together. I don't want to hurt her, but I'm at a loss as to how to get her to back off. -- HAPPILY UNCOMMITTED

DEAR UNCOMMITTED: Here's how. Tell her you can't handle the pressure she's putting on you and end the relationship NOW.

DEAR ABBY: I am in a predicament. My therapist is great, but sometimes I think she shares too much. Last time I went, she was running late. When I finally got into her office, she told me the previous patient was nonverbal and had painted her nails during the session. Later in the session, she confided that years ago she had been date raped.

Abby, I am in counseling because my father raped me when I was 15 (I am now 24). Her sharing has me worried because I don't want her telling others what I say or do during counseling. Further, her story of the date rape scared me. She described a situation that is not uncommon for me to be in, and it caused something almost like a flashback in me. I think what she did was insensitive, to say the least.

I have nobody else to ask, so what should I do? I'm getting counseling for free now due to my income, and it took months to get set up with a counselor. Should I report her or accept that this was a mistake and say nothing? If I need to report her, how would I go about doing that? -- CONFLICTED ABOUT IT

DEAR CONFLICTED: You should change therapists because it appears this one has more problems than you do. As to what agency you should report her breach of professional ethics to, contact the state organization that has licensed her to practice.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069
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Outside the foyer at Bikaner House, a nearly nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture is causing quite a stir. This is a triptych of forms that could be likened to dancing figures that Indian history is replete with. But in the hands of its 93-year-old creator, Satish Gujral, it carries a much more layered meaning and a visual subliminity. What does surpass the creation, however, is Gujrals own ability to speak, given his age, not just coherently but with a clear line of thought born from a near-flawless memory.

I donated the sculpture to Bikaner House because it supports my idea of public art. Something I started talking about at the beginning of my career 60 years ago. It hasnt changed since, says Gujral. The idea of public art, he explains, isnt merely associated with access or public spaces per se. I experienced the idea of public art in its birthplace in Mexico. It doesnt have to do with outside or inside [galleries and museums] it just has to be public. The same way language becomes a public language. The printing press, for example, made reading and writing a public exercise. This is an attempt to excavate that idea of public art again.

Gujral, who was born in Pakistan in 1925 and first studied Art in Lahore before a spell in the JJ School of Art in Bombay in 1944 that was cut short due to sickness, has witnessed India go through various phases of history  celebrating occasions like Independence, and at other times grieving the Partition or the years of the Emergency.

A nearly nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture outside the foyer of Bikaner House shows how the creative instinct is well and alive in Satish Gujral. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

The younger brother of the late Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, he always remained close to the political sphere, one that he has tried to mobilise for the arts. I met Nehru immediately after returning from Mexico and told him that he should assign a percentage of the budget for each government institution to art. Nehru even tabled a bill in parliament, but the bureaucracy never really followed through on it, he says.

The sculpture titled Trinity is a meditation on the three stages that are life, death and rebirth. One would assume that age and deteriorating health might have turned Gujral onto this path. But his life from the very beginning has not been without its challenges. Gujral partially lost his hearing at the age of ten. Even though it was surgically restored as late as 1998, he still needs to read lip movements or a piece of paper to understand. Mexico was a great challenge. My brother told me I should not apply for the fellowship in 1952. Imagine, India did not even have an embassy or an ambassador to Mexico at that time. The poet Octavio Paz, when he reviewed my application, said that everything that I had was what was undesirable in an applicant. I hardly spoke any English let alone Latin. Paz, however, said things could only get better. Negatives could only turn into positives, Gujral says.

His physical challenges notwithstanding, what troubles Gujral the most is memory, and in particular the memory of Partition that has shaped most of his work. My family was deeply affected by it. My brother and father were part of the freedom struggle. Bhagat Singh was practically family. I remember meeting Nehru at a refugee camp in Lahore where he was severely abused. I have a graphic memory of a meeting he called after returning from the camp. Nehru was in shock, he kept staring at the ceiling all the time, unable to believe any of it. Gujrals voice still breaks when he narrates a memory that is seemingly as clear as it is painful. Wouldnt it be easier to just forget?

It is no wonder that a man who witnessed so much at a young age, and was debilitated by his own physical restrictions, sought peace and direction in something. The idea of life, death and rebirth took place in me right after Partition when I started reading the Upanishads, Gujral says. Trinity espouses a kind of balance between hope and experience. That while lived experiences define who we are, it is the impending scythe of death that gives us direction and the possibility of rebirth that may even give us motivation to choose one way or the other.

That said, can something as morally ambiguous as Partition be forgotten? Eventually, I learned, everything comes to an end, even the pain of memory.

But given how divisive politics has reared its head again today, can this country survive another partition? Why not, we have survived so much, Gujral says, with an optimism hat many of the younger lot in the room would find hard to match.

DETAILS

What: Trinity, a sculpture that is a meditation on the three stages of life, death and rebirth.

When: Till March 31, 2018, 11am - 7pm

Where: Bikaner House, Pandara Rd, India Gate.

Nearest metro stations: Mandi House, Udyog Bhawan
The Congress played into the BJPs hands with one of its senior leaders, Mani Shankar Aiyar, calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a neech aadmi (low-class person) in a remark reminiscent of his chai wallah jibe, also aimed at Modi ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, and Congress president Sonia Gandhis maut ka saudagar (merchant of death) comment dating back to 2007, also targeting Modi.

Modi, campaigning in Gujarat ahead of the first phase of polling to the state assembly on Saturday, lost no time in terming Aiyars remark an insult to Gujarats pride.

The Congress rushed into damage control mode and Aiyar apologised after being chastised by party vice president Rahul Gandhi. He was later suspended from the primary membership of the party but the damage may have already been done.

The BJP and Congress are locked in an intense battle for Gujarat, Modis home state, where the BJP has been in power for 22 years.

Isnt it an insult to Gujarati asmita (pride)? Isnt it an insult of Indian ethos? They can call me neech jaati. Yes, I am from the poor section of the society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes, Modi said at an election rally in Surat. As the crowd chanted Modi, Modi, he said: They can keep their language and we will do our work.

Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, ismein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajneeti karne ki kya avashyakta hai? (This man is a low-life person, he isnt cultured... on this occasion, why does he need to do dirty politics?), Aiyar told a news agency earlier in the day, reacting to Modis allegation that the Congress had tried to erase Dr BR Ambedkars contributions to nation-building during a function to open the Ambedkar International Centre in the Capital.

Gandhi was quick to try and contain the damage. BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said, he tweeted.

Congress partys chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted that the party had issued a showcause notice to Aiyar and suspended him from the primary membership. This is Congress partys Gandhiwaad and sense of respect towards its rivals. Can Modiji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) ever show such conviction? he posted on the micro-blogging site.

Sensing the mood in the party, Aiyar relented, telling reporters, I never meant low-born. There is a difference in English language between words low and low-born. But in Hindi if low means low-born, I tender apology.

Senior BJP leaders, however, latched on to Aiyars remarks to attack the opposition party. Yamraj, Maut Ka Saudagar, Ravan, Gandi Nali Ka Keeda, Monkey, Rabies Victim, Virus, Bhasmasur, Gangu Teli, Goon These are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians, tweeted BJP president Amit Shah.

Addressing the rally in Surat, Modi said the people of Gujarat would answer the Congress suitably on December 18 (the day results will be declared). They called us donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede... the people of Gujarat will give a befitting reply to such derogatory language, he said.

The Aiyar-triggered controversy came to haunt the Congress just when it was seeking to wriggle out of a political row over Kapil Sibals plea in the Supreme Court  made in his capacity as a lawyer  that the final hearings of the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid should be deferred till after the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The UP Sunni Wakf Board, one of the plaintiffs, clarified that Sibal was not its counsel, a claim validated by MR Shamshad, advocate on record, who said that the Congress leader represented Iqbal Ansari in the Ayodhya case in the apex court.

In another twist to the controversy, two sets of purported appearance slips went viral on social media on Thursday -- one showing Sibal appearing for Ansari and another suggesting that he appeared for the Wakf Board. Hindustan Times could not independently ascertain the authenticity of either.

Meanwhile, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) said on Thursday that Sibal had gone by the boards instructions and advice when he sought deferment of hearing in the Ayodhya case in the Supreme Court on December 5.

The confusion over who Sibal represented arose because of a clerical error. It is true that he was counsel for Iqbal Ansari, one of the litigants, and not the board. But whatever Kapil Sibal said in the court was on the basis of the stand taken by the AIMPLB, Babri Masjid Action Committee convenor and counsel Zafarayab Jilani told HT. He said the AIMPLB was not a party in the Ayodhya case but it was bearing all the legal expenses of the case and its decision was binding on the Wakf Board too.

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The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat assembly elections ended on Thursday with a galaxy of leaders from both the BJP and Congress descending on the state Gujarat. Polling for the first phase will take place on Saturday.

The last days campaign of the BJP was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and supported by party president Amit Shah and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath among a host of party leaders.

While the top BJP leaders continued to target Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, the latter was missing from the campaign after his 3-day tour from November 5 was cancelled due to warnings of bad weather in the wake of Cyclone Ockhi. But former prime minister Manmohan Singh held an interaction in Saurashtras industrial hub Rajkot and party veteran Ahmed Patel, political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi, led the Congress counter-attack.

Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) convener Hardik Patel also led the anti-BJP campaign in Patidar-dominated Saurashtra region on Thursday. Traditional supporters of the BJP for the past three decades, the Patidars are up in arms against the ruling party over their demand for OBC quota in jobs and education and have declared their support to the Congress.

A total of 89 seats -- out of 182 -- spanning the Saurashtra and south Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including chief minister Vijay Rupani.

The Patidars can influence results on nearly 30 of the 89 seats in the first phase.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetization and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Rahul Gandhi, has mainly targeted the hollow Gujarat development model to slam Modi.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

Rahul Gandhi being greeted by supporters at a public meeting in Bhavnagar, Gujarat. (PTI Photo)

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase. Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state. Kutch is the largest district comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) -- both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJPs new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim-dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The second and final phase of the polls will be held on December 14 and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

(With inputs from PTI)
At the Ankleshwar Industrial Estate in Gujarats Bharuch district, Pradeep Patel cannot stop gushing about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If it wasnt for his development work, I would have ended up as a farmer, says the 39-year-old B.Com graduate working as an accountant at a chemical factory.

The Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) estate spreads over 1,600 hectares with 1,800 production units  a majority of which are chemical and pharmaceutical factories.

I recently bought a 4 bedroom house on loan in the city  something I wouldnt have dreamt of coming from a village, says Pradeep. Ankleshwar is one of the several industrial hubs that are visible markers of the Gujarat model of development and people like Pradeep, its direct beneficiaries.

While the BJP and Modi rode on the success of the Gujarat model in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, economists have long argued that Gujarat was a relatively well developed state when Modi came to power in 2001 and that there is little evidence pointing to an accelerated growth during his tenure.

HT travelled to two diametrically opposite districts  highly industrialised Bharuch and tribal Dahod (neither are outliers) to track the successes and failures of Gujarat.

Pradeep says, under chief minister Modi, first came roads linking his village, and as connectivity improved, so did his prospects. He enrolled into a city college and got a steady job. But data suggests that this may not be the rule. Even in an industrialised district like Bharuch, only one-third workers found jobs for most of the year, according to the 2011 census.

Perception, thus, has played an important role in BJPs political success. Pradeep admits that some of the work predates Modi  like setting up of the Ankleshwar estate. Whatever the condition was  good or bad  there was an improvement under Modi, he says.

The other side

Two hundred kilometres from Ankleshwar, at Devgadh Baria in Dahod district, there is less to show for the states economic progress. At the civil hospital, cries of young children fill the child malnutrition treatment centre (CMTC). The centre treats severely malnourished children and gets about 5 new cases every day.

The problem of malnutrition is so acute that several children who show improvement after our 14-day programme have to come back to repeat the course, says Tadvi Ajit, a nurse at the centre.

But when it comes to malnutrition, both Dahod and Bharuch show a similar propensity  their figures topping the all-India numbers.

Travelling to the interior villages further reveals the severity of the problem. In Sagtala, 25 km from Devgadh Baria, two of Raveenabens four children are malnourished. Her youngest daughter Veena, now three, was diagnosed with severe anaemia when she was barely 6 months old.

At the age of one, Veena was among eight children from the village admitted in the CMTC programme. But her family didnt complete the 14-day course. Raveenaben had to look after her other children and work in the fields so making the 45-minute daily journey to the city was not possible.

The first point of contact for health services in the village  a sub-centre, was recently constructed but is not functional yet. The anganwadi centre that provides hot meals to children between 3-6 years of age is shut on the day we visit.

The second rung is the primary health centre (PHC) that caters to a cluster of villages. Amongst other things, its field workers are supposed to track and ensure treatment of children suffering from malnutrition.

The day HT visited the nearby PHC, the staff there was leaving for the wedding of the doctor in-charge, in whose absence the pharmacist was treating the patients.

Dileep Mavlankar, director, Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, says the problem is systemic.

If you lose a war will you blame the soldiers or the general? If services are not reaching, the government has to take responsibility. In Gujarat, while there has been an improvement in health indicators since the 60s, there is under-investment and under-management in social sectors like health and education, he says.

The reduction in malnutrition figures in Gujarat over the last ten years, however, has been slow compared to the all-India average, according to the latest National Family Health Survey.

The disparities remain largely similar at the inter-state level as well. During Modis tenure, Gujarat performed well on economic indicators but lagged behind on infant mortality or sex ratio.

Development economist, Reetika Khera, who teaches at IIT-Delhi, says, Gujarat is a model for what not to do: a good development strategy must not exclusively focus on economic growth at the cost of social investments.

The political front

The opposition has been on the offensive over the BJPs I am development, I am Gujarat slogan citing the states poor social indices. This week, Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi questioned Modi over Gujarats high malnutrition and infant mortality figures.

Three of the four small factory owners that HT spoke to in Ankleshwar, including a district level BJP office-bearer, admitted there are gaps in the Gujarat story.

Gujarat was already a developed state when Modi came to power. Ease of doing business only exists on paper. A lot of the credit for development goes to industry owners, not the government, said one of them, citing grievances like water shortage, cap on expansion of units and high municipal taxes.

They say they will still vote for the BJP but not for its vikas. The owner of a chemical plant says, The one good thing the BJP ensured is the atmosphere of industrial peace.

Raveenaben, who is a member of a local womens collective, is similarly disenchanted. This time she will vote for the Congress. Service delivery has improved but that is not because of the government but due to our own initiatives and struggles.

And in this commonality between the two ends of the spectrum lies the real Gujarat story.

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Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday continued the attack on his successor Narendra Modi over last years note ban, saying he had betrayed the trust of Gujaratis.

The people of Rajkot and Gujarat trusted the prime minister and believed in the policy of demonetisation in the hope that their sacrifice would benefit India. Their faith and hopes have been shattered. Modiji has betrayed the trust that Gujaratis had reposed in him, Singh said at a press conference in Gujarats Rajkot.

Four days ago, Singh, addressing a gathering of members of Surats local business community, launched a scathing attack on Modi, saying he had failed to understand the pains his note ban and Goods and Services Tax (GST) decisions were going to unleash on the people of his own home state.

Singh has been campaigning for the Congress in Gujarat, Modis home state, which votes for a new assembly on December 9 and 14. Modi has faced criticism for pulling out 86% of the countrys cash last year and the teething problems over the rollout of the GST that some blame for a sharp drop in the countrys economic growth.

Ninety-nine percent of the demonetised currency came back to the banks. It is clear that a lot of black money got converted to white and corruption continues to flourish. One immediate impact of demonetisation has been on job sector. Therefore, demonetisation was an uninformed attack and a disastrous decision for our economy, said Singh.

He continued, I invoke memories of more than 100 people who lost their lives while standing in queues as a result of demonetisation. I say with immense pain and a sense of deep responsibility that November 8 was a black day for our economy and democracy.

Singh further said that people should demand the release of documents related to demonetisation. We must demand the government release all the documents related to demonetisation in public domain for scrutiny.

He also criticised the lowering GDP, saying: To equal the UPAs 10-year average, the economy will have to grow at 10.6% in the fifth year, I would be happy if it were to happen but I frankly do not think it will.
An FIR was lodged against 3 traders, a madrasa management and a transporter on Wednesday after a major public distribution system (PDS) scam broke out during an inspection by the district administration authorities on Tuesday. Two officers of Civil Supply Corporation, Madhya Pradesh were suspended after the revelation. The FIR was lodged with Nishatpura police station.

The team of authorities raided Karond Mandi in Bhopal on Tuesday. The team seized 781 quintals of wheat in 1562 gunny bags and 144 quintals of rice in 288 gunny bags which had a seal of PDS, from three traders in the Mandi. Empty sacks were also found in possession of the traders.

The ration was meant for physically challenged, shelter homes and madrasas in Bhopal .

Talking to media persons food controller, Bhopal Jyoti Shahu said the traders and the transporter hatched a conspiracy in connivance with the officers of Civil Supply Corporation and management of Madarsa. The traders purchased the wheat and rice priced Rs 1 per kg for Rs 8 per kg. They were planning to sell it for Rs 24 to 28 per kg.

Two officers of civil supply corporation PK Tiwari and Prakash were suspended after the raid.

According to sources, the transporter was found guilty of mixing soil and pebbles with wheat meant for the PDS. But nothing happened to improve the system. Now, the administration has cancelled the licence of the transporter.

However, Madarsa Board chairman Syed Imam Uddin refuted allegations of involvement of any Madarsa in any kind of corruption.

Syed said, The Madarsas in the state have not received any ration for the past three months. There are several unregistered Madarsas which are operating in the state. Even, the name of Madarsa the name of which was mentioned in the scam is not registered one but fake.

MP Civil Supplies Corporation swung into action after corruption came to light. The corporation chairman Dr Hitesh Vajpayee said, We will take tough action against corrupt people. I have asked authorities to register an FIR for dacoity against the accused. We will inquire the matter thoroughly.

However, opposition attacked the government for patronizing corrupt.

This is a major corruption and it cant be possible without involvement of heads of the departments. An independent probe should be ordered by the government, said KK Mishra, spokesperson, MP Congress Committee.
A 32-year-old policeman was killed by a group of men in tribal Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh after he tried to stop them from robbing some drivers on Wednesday night, officials said on Thursday.

Alirajpurs superintendent of police Vipul Shrivastava said Arvind Sen, posted at the Bori police station as the head constable, was driving his motorcycle on Jobat road when he saw some men trying to rob the drivers of a tractor and mini truck near Dekakund village.

Even though he was alone, Sen, who was in uniform, confronted the looters and fought with them. In the melee, the tractor driver and the mini truck driver escaped with their vehicles. The miscreants then caught and dragged Sen around 100 metres into a nearby field and repeatedly hit his head with stones which resulted in his death, Shrivastava said.

Police sources said shortly before killing Sen, the same group of men had attempted to rob the driver of a Maruti van and broke the windshield of the vehicle but the driver managed to escape.

Shrivastava said a manhunt has been launched to look for the robbers.

We have started combing operation in the nearby villages to trace the accused, the SP added.
As translocation of lions from Gir in Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh doesnt seem possible despite the Supreme Courts order to the effect Kuno-Palpur wildlife sanctuary to which the Asiatic lions were to be shifted, will be used as a habitat of tigers from different parts of Madhya Pradesh.

A decision was taken in this regard by Madhya Pradesh Wildlife Board at its meeting chaired by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday.

Proposed translocation of Gir lions to Kuno-Palpur is a part of an Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project initiated by central governments Wildlife Institute of India in 1995. The project was aimed at protecting the lions from the threat of epidemic, natural disasters etc and thus create another sanctuary for them. Kuno-Palpur was considered as a suitable sanctuary for the same.

However, Gujarat government has been opposing the proposed shifting of lions for long and it has led to a legal tussle too. The Supreme Court order in 2013 was in favour of shifting of some of lions to Kuno-Palpur. However, the shifting continues to be delayed on some ground or the other.

As per official spokesperson, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan instructed the authorities concerned at the wildlife board meeting on Tuesday to shift tigers to Kuno Palpur from other parts of Madhya Pradesh.

Talking to the Hindustan Times principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife) Jiendra Agrawal said, We will identify the tigers who have strayed out of their habitat and shift them to the Kuno-Palpur after tranquilising them. This is a routine exercise for us. We will manage it will.

As per the government spokesperson the meeting also took a decision on a long-term plan to conserve forest and promote the wildlife. Under the plan, 5% of the amount obtained from non-forest work under states protected areas will be deposited in Tiger Foundation Society. The amount would be spent on conservation of forest and promotion of wildlife.

CM said at the meeting, A long term plan should be made to increase the number of tigers and leopards in state. Stern action should be taken in incidents of illegal hunting of tigers and death of tigers due to electrocution. Forest department should consider tiger conservation with integrity. Efforts should be made to stop loss of life due to their entry in residential areas. Efforts should be made to increase grassland for conservation of Kharmore and Son Chiraiyya.

An approval was also granted to construct speed breakers in the areas identified to avoid injuries to loss of life of animals in road accidents.
Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor, who is currently in Uttarakhand to shoot for Dibakar Banerjees Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, was allegedly assaulted by a man. The man, a driver by profession, has been arrested.

A Times of India report said a driver approached Arjun in his vanity van in Pithoragarh on Monday and wanted to shake hands with the star. When Arjun shook hands with Kamal Kumar, the driver who was allegedly drunk, twisted the actors hands and mandhandled him, it quoted sources as saying.

The man was also booked for driving under the influence and had to pay a fine of Rs 500, the report added.

Arjun plays a 30-year-old cop from the Delhi Polices special unit in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. Arjuns character wants a promotion so he can play a more responsible role in law enforcement, and needs to undergo special training so that he can be assigned to high-profile cases.

Speaking about his role in the film, Arjun told Hindustan Times, Dibakar wanted me to understand the world the character comes from. He wanted me to be embedded in that world. I also wanted to understand the characters entire journey  from the time he was seven or eight years old till he is about 30. I wanted to know his psychology and why he is the way he is, and why he makes certain extreme choices.

10th film 1 truth...Change is the only constant !!! Cant wait to begin filming this one #sandeepaurpinkyfaraar @yrf @SAPFTheFilm pic.twitter.com/SjZJw9f8Nu  Arjun Kapoor (@arjunk26) October 31, 2017

Arjun will star with Parineeti Chopra in the film. The duo debuted together in Bollywood with Ishaqzaade and will also be seen in Namastey Canada.

Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is scheduled to hit theatres on August 18, 2018.

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Samsung India plans to hire 1,000 graduates from top engineering colleges across the country in 2018 with over 300 of them coming in from various IITs, a top company official said.

A majority of these engineers are expected to be hired for new-age domains like artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), biometrics, natural language processing, augmented reality and networks including 5G.

Apart from IITs, Samsung will also be hiring talent from premier institutes like Delhi College of Engineering, BITS Pilani, Manipal Institute of Technology and IIITs among others.

Samsung is extremely bullish on R&D in India. We have been here for over 22 years. The three R&D centres in India work on several cutting-edge technologies, Samsung Global SVP and MD of Samsung R&D Institute India, Bengaluru Dipesh Shah told PTI.

He added that the India centres not only work on innovation for Indian consumers but also contribute to global products.

Some of the India-centric features developed by the local teams include S-bike mode and Ultra Data Saving mode for smartphones and ActivWash+ for washing machines.

Samsung R&D centres in India have worked on several global products of Samsung, including the high-end camera modules for flagship smartphones, intelligent interface Bixby that was launched with Galaxy S8 and Samsung Pay, Shah said.

Last year, the Korean company had hired 800 engineers for its R&D facilities, out of which 300 were from IITs.

Samsung has three R&D centres in India at Bengaluru (largest outside Korea), Noida and Delhi. Globally, it has a total of 32 R&D centres.

While the Bengaluru centre has expertise in areas like AI, ML and IoT, the Noida facility plays key role in development of biometrics, mobile software development, multimedia and data security.

The Delhi centre works primarily on research related to high-end televisions, other consumer electronics products as well as Samsungs operating system, Tizen.
The special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged Murthal gang rapes reported during the February 2016 Jat quota violence is learnt to have told the Punjab and Haryana high court that it could neither find any victim nor accused in the case after nearly 18 months of a court-monitored probe.

The final report was submitted in a sealed cover to the court on Thursday and is yet to be made public. Sources, however, told HT that the SIT, headed by inspector general Mamta Singh, could not find anyone who could corroborate the claims that gang rapes had taken place at Murthal on the Delhi-Chandigarh National highway, which had witnessed blockades and violence by the Jat protesters.

Over 500 hundred witnesses were examined. The mobile tower dump from Ambala to Palwal (of those who travelled on fateful night) was scanned. A large number of people were also contacted. But none came forward to confirm that rapes had taken place, a top official said.

Five suspects were also held. Their DNA did not match with that of semen found on clothes at the site claimed to be that of crime, added the official.

The alleged gang rapes, according to a news report by an English daily, took place on the intervening night of February 22 and 23, when Jats seeking quota were protesting across the state. The official added that some witnesses have said that women were manhandled.

Hence, cases of molestation or sexual harassment are made out. In some FIRs, relevant sections have been added, he added. As per the SIT, their investigation is over. Now it is up to court to consider the material and make an opinion whether the case needs to be handed over to the CBI for further probe, added the official while speaking to HT.

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Delhi needs to hire more than 12,000 teachers, but that would be illegal

Over the past seven years, the Delhi public school system has created space in its budget to hire thousands of new teachers. But an intractable tangle of court cases, politics, and bureaucratic inefficiency has made it impossible to hire them. Scroll 

In that same time period, the system has actually lost full-time teachers. The total number of full-time teachers decreased from 41,118 to 38,926, according to the affidavit and calculations by the Hindustan Times.

Between January 1, 2010, and August 17, 2017, the school system created 23,822 additional teaching posts, according to an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court by Ranjana Deswal, special director in the Delhi Directorate of Education (DoE).

Note: The affidavit does not specify how many full-time teachers were employed on April 1, 2010. That figure was calculated by taking the total number of available positions, subtracting the total number of vacant positions, and then adding the total number of those vacant positions that were filled.

The school system keeps creating more positions, but it doesnt fill them

The DoE has plugged some of the gap by hiring temporary, or guest, teachers. That was supposed to be a temporary solution, but it has become something more permanent. For five years now, no new full-time teachers have been hired.

Guest teachers must live with the uncertainty of temporary contracts, and students suffer as the system constantly scrambles to provide teachers to prepare them for board exams.

The MoE would like to hire more full-time teachers, but its hands are tied. Teachers are hired through two methods: promotion from within the system and recruitment from without. Both hiring methods have been blocked

Why have promotions been blocked?

Promotions have been blocked because of a legal argument over whether state governments should be allowed to reserve a certain portion of promotions for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

The Supreme Court has ruled that such reservations are constitutional, as long as the state government can prove that SCs and STs are underrepresented in the higher ranks of government positions.

But the Delhi government is yet to produce data on SC and ST representation, and has instead decided to halt all promotions. The DoE has not promoted any new teachers since 2013.

Why has recruitment been blocked?

Rather than promoting teachers up through the ranks to fill vacancies in the higher classes, the school system can also recruit teachers from outside the system. But here, too, legal cases have incapacitated the government.

The Delhi government, led by the Aam Aadmi Party, has tried to regularise its crop of guest teachers  this was one of the promises AAP made in its 2015 campaign manifesto. Like all applicants, guest teachers must take a recruitment exam. To make it easier for them, and to account for their years of teaching experience, the AAP government would like to give guest teachers who take the exam an extra 2.5% marks.

But last year, then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung rejected the extra-marks policy, saying it violates recruitment norms. The Delhi government disagrees, saying a Supreme Court judgment in a similar case in Rajasthan supports its position.

A new Lieutenant Governor was appointed last December, but the office has not changed its mind. Unless it does, the city government cannot implement the extra-marks policy. Not wanting to disappoint the guest teachers, the city has stopped recruiting teachers entirely.

As Atishi Marlena, advisor to Delhi's education minister Manish Sisodia, put it, Delhis elected government cannot hire a school teacher.

Aman Sethi contributed to this report.
Akhila Ashokan, a woman from Kerala, while studying homeopathy, felt drawn to Islamic teachings after she shared an apartment with two Muslim students. She heard and discussed Islamic teachings with them, and in time she resolved to convert to Islam, changing her name to Hadiya.

She created a stir when she returned to college wearing a headscarf. Her enraged father, KM Ashokan, an ex-servicemen, commanded her to return home. She refused, moving in instead with a Muslim girlfriend. Ashokan filed a habeas corpus petition with the Kerala High Court alleging that his daughters conversion was part of a well-oiled conspiracy to target innocent women and recruit them to the Islamic State.

Hadiya refused again to return to her father, and the court directed that she should not stay with her Muslim girlfriend and be sent instead to a womens hostel.

She then decided to get married. On a Muslin matrimonial site she met 27-year-old Shafin Jahan employed in Muscat. When they both consented to this marriage, she was 24 years old. They invited Hadiyas parents to the wedding, but they refused. Ashokan instead again approached the high court, charging that this was a conspiracy to move her out of India.

Two days after her wedding, Hadiya appeared in court with her husband, affirming that she had married according to her wishes and free will. She appealed that her decisions should be respected. The Kerala High Court refused, and instead sent her back to the womens hostel in Kochi. It prohibited her to meet her husband, who had to leave his job in Muscat as the case stretched on.

The high court asked the Kerala Police to investigate the matter to see if her conversion and wedding had any terror links. The police reported that it could find no connection of Shafin with any criminal activity (except one complaint connected with student politics), let alone terrorist endeavours.

Despite this, the Kerala High Court annulled her marriage. It observed, A girl aged 24 years is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways. It therefore awarded custody of this adult woman to her father. Her marriage, the judge maintained, is a sham and is of no consequence in the eye of law. Her husband has no authority to act as the guardian.

It referred to Hadiya in its judgment only as Akhila. It refused to recognise the agency of an adult woman, and maintained that her choice of marriage had no legal weight because her parents had not consented to it. It awarded the custody of the adult woman to her father, giving credence to the communally-charged conspiracy theory of love jihad.

Shafin tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Hadiya. Her father confined her to his home and did not allow her to step out or meet anyone. Policemen watched her every move. Shafin appealed to the Supreme Court, and the matter was heard by a bench which included Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar. The apex court gave her no relief, and instead directed an investigation by the National Investigation Agency. The NIAs involvement is necessary to ascertain if this is really an isolated case or is there something more something wider, the bench said. The chief justice referred to the Internet game, Blue Whale Challenge, to elaborate his apprehension that such things can drive people to do anything.

The NIA claimed that Hadiyas conversion and marriage was not an isolated case, but part of a growing pattern of converting women from Hinduism to Islam as a means to recruiting them for terror crimes in Islamic State. Asking Indias top counter-terror investigation agency to enquire into the voluntary conversion to Islam by an adult woman and her subsequent marriage to a man against whom the police has found no evidence of any criminal or terror connections, smacks of astounding and whimsical prejudice on the part of many of those concerned.

The Supreme Court in its latest hearing has freed Hadiya from her fathers custody, but has not restored her marriage, not upheld her right to choose her religion and partner, and allowed investigations to continue into whether her conversion to Islam was linked to terrorism.

This astounding story of an adult woman denied the right to choose her faith and partner runs contrary to every guarantee in the Constitution.

Harsh Mander is author, Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India

The views expressed are personal

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GAIRSAIN (CHAMOLI): As many as 920 schools in Uttarakhand have no toilets. Another 221 have toilets but are without water connectivity. School education minister Arvind Pandey disclosed these poor conditions of schools at the Question Hour in the assembly Thursday.

Replying to a query of independent legislator Preetam Panwar, the minister said 43,677 schools in the state have toilets for their students. In a supplementary question, he said the government has sought funds from the Centre. When asked about the details of the funds, Pandey said the water supply department was not his portfolio.

The lack of homework and coordination among the ministers was clearly visible. Later, water supply minister Prakash Pant said he would provide the details separately.

Replying to another question of Congress legislator Harish Dhami, the school education minister said the government has decided to merge the schools with less than 10 students. He asserted the decision wouldnt affect students as the merged schools are within a radius one kilometre.

But Dhami demanded further information. I have information that some schools are as far as 3 km. The government should reconsider the decision.

During the Zero Hour, BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi informed the House that there was no arrangement for proper garbage disposal in Mussoorie. Garbage was being dumped near an academy that trains civil servants, he said.

BJP legislator Chandan Ram Das drew the governments attention to a recent incident in Bageshwar where his name was not mentioned in the foundation stone. Leader of Opposition Indira Hridayesh supported him. She added even irrigation minister Satpal Maharaj was not mentioned in the foundation stones that were laid by the Prime Minister during his Kedarnath visit.

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Tanakpur: Forest officials have finally arrived at the conclusion that the big cat that had been prowling Tanakpur, is a tiger. The cameras installed in the area have recorded the animal at the spot where it killed a woman two weeks back.

Hema Devi (49) of Naya Goth village was killed by a big cat on November 22 in Sharda forest range of Tanakpur at Indo-Nepal border in Champawat district. Forest officials were not sure if it was a tiger or leopard unless they spotted the camera image.

Rajesh Srivastava, sub divisional officer (SDO) Sharda range said, The area has about four tigers and a dozen leopards. But, it is a tiger that is returning in the area where the last kill was reported. We are also shifting location of our cameras and cages to monitor the cat.

The staff failed to identify the big cat so far, which has reportedly killed four women in the last nine months. Finally, they have recorded the animal in camera near Kakrali gate in Aaambag area.

A woman, who had gone to collect fodder, spotted the killer big cat in Sharda range on Wednesday morning. SHe somehow managed to flee the spot.

When we were collecting fodder for our animals from the forest in Kakraligate, we spotted the tiger in the bushes. Some of us could run and others couldnt as they were petrified, said Sunita, a woman from Nayagoth village near the range said. The trapped women later came out safely from the forest.
A move to promote tourism in Jauljibi and ensure livelihood for the residents by shifting the inner line has had an adverse impact with the area witnessing a surge in crime rate and outsiders establishing their business here, local have alleged.

They also claim that after shifting of the inner line, demarcated to restrict entry to the sensitive India-China border, from Jauljibi to Chiyalekh, anti-social and suspicious elements have entered the area posing risk to national security.

They are now demanding to shift the inner line from Chiyalekh back to Jauljibi --- a distance of 85 kms.

The inner line was marked at Jauljibi after Indo-China conflict in 1962. In 1999, the then Union government shifted it to Chiyalekh, 55km ahead of Dharchula. The decision was taken as the area falls along the Kailash Mansarovar route and the government wanted to promote tourism and provide livelihood opportunities to locals residing in the town that shares international border with Nepal.

When the inner line was at Jauljibi, the outsiders were allowed only three-day stay in the town and the higher reaches. However, after it was shifted to Chiyalekh, a numbers of suspicious elements started arriving in the sensitive border region putting national security at risk, claimed Birendra Singh Nabiyal, a tribal leader, who wasnt inner shifted to Jauljibi.

Those spearheading an agitation in support of the demand claimed that they will soon approach even Union Ministry of Home Affairs. We have given memorandums to administration and will soon inform the Centre about the situation persisting here, said Bhupendra Thapa, a BJP leader and president of Dharchula traders organization.

Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM), Dharchula, RK Pandey said the shifting of the inner line to Jauljibi would adversely affect the state governments plan of promoting tourism in the region. The home stay facilities being created for the tourists there will become dysfunctional, he added.

The state government is investing in home stay facilities along Kailash Mansarovar route. Besides this pilgrimage, over 1,500 trekkers reach Chiyalekh every year, Pandey said.

The local traders claim they are suffering losses as due to non-restricted movement in Dharchula town, a number of outsiders have established their businesses, selling goods in the interior villages resulting in a steep decline in profits of local traders.

The promotion of tourism in the area has adversely affected the business of locals, Kailash Rawat, a Congress leader said.

Locals even met Pithoragarh district magistrate (DM), C Ravi Shankar demanding immediate action.

Incidentally, it was on the recommendations of the then District Magistrate of Pithoragarh that the inner line was shifted from Jauljibi to Chiyalekh.
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The National Green Tribunal on Thursday held the Art of Living Foundation responsible for damage to the Yamuna floodplains caused by the World Culture Festival in 2016. The foundation, however, said it would approach the Supreme Court with the issue.

The tribunal, in its order, stated that the Rs 5 crore fine, which was paid up by Sri Sri Ravi Shankars foundation last year, will be used for restoration, DDA will be responsible for restoring floodplains.

We hold Art Of Living responsible for the damage to the Yamuna floodplains. We hold them responsible for the restoration to be carried out by the DDA, the bench headed by NGT chairman Justice Swatanter Kumar said on Thursday.

Reacting to the order, the Art of Living in a statement, said it was disappointed with the decision taken by the NGT for damaging Yamuna floodplains during its World Culture Festival. We do not agree with the verdict. Our submissions have not been dealt with or considered. We will appeal to the Honble Supreme Court. We are confident that we will get justice before the Supreme Court.

The green court had last month reserved its verdict after hearing the submissions of all parties concerned, including the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, which said that as per a 2006 environment impact assessment report, no environmental clearance was needed for the festival.

Heard. Arguments concluded. Counsel for respondent 3 (Art Of Living) has been permitted to make submission for recapitulation of points recorded earlier. Judgement reserved, the bench said.

The counsel for the DDA had informed the bench that it has plans for Yamuna riverbed beautification, afforestation, development of wetland and ecological restoration, adding that it would need 7-8 months for the tendering process for the two phases of Yamuna Floodplain Development Programme.

DDA will further assess and set quantum of damage and submit a final compensation amount. If the amount is more, it is to be taken from Art Of Living for the damage caused. If it is less, the rest of the amount will be refunded, Advocate Sanjay Parikh, who represented petitioner Manoj Misra from Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, said on Thursday.

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In a fresh case of negligence by private hospitals, the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) has directed the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) to cancel the licence of the citys Neutech Medical Centre where a young man from Uttarakhand was wrongly declared HIV positive.

According to the DMC, Salim Ahmad was referred by a tout to undergo a medical fitness test at the Neutech Medical Centre at Taimoor Nagar in south Delhi. The hospital reported him to be a case of HIV+.

Ahmad had applied for a job in Dubai and the test was part of his fitness requirement. But two subsequent tests in Gurugram and Uttrakhand reported him to be HIV- and perfectly fit.

The executive committee of the DMC examined a complaint from Ahmad, forwarded by the Medical Council of India, alleging negligence in the preparation of HIV test report by the Medical Centre, said the letter, a copy of which is with IANS.

The letter says despite repeated notices sent to the Superintendent of the Neutech Medical Centre, it failed to submit a written statement and medical records pertaining to the treatment, tests and investigation of Ahmad.

This recalcitrant attitude of the medical centre is highly deplorable and reflects poorly on the management... Prima facie it appears that the complainant has been victim of incompetence of the Neutech Medical centre as he has been wrongfully reported to be having HIV positive and declared unfit vide their report Feb 1, 2017 and made to suffer because of that, said the letter to the DGHS.

The DGHS was urged to take stringent action including closure of the Neutech Medical Centre as it is apprehended that such a centre may not be equipped or have proper qualified doctors to run lab tests, the letter added.
Candidates can access the question papers and answer keys of the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2017 on the website of the Indian Institute of Management, officials said on Thursday.

Candidates have been given a provision to challenge the answer keys after paying the stipulated fee. There is a two-day objection window, which will close on December 9 at 2pm. Candidates can login to the website iimcat.ac.in and look at the question paper for the test conducted by the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIM-L) on November 26.

An expert committee of the IIM will scrutinise the objections after the deadline and candidates whose objections are found to be valid by the panel will get a refund of their fee. If an objection raised by a candidate is found to be valid, the remedial measures taken by IIMs will be applicable to all the candidates.

The CAT 2017 results will be tentatively available online in the second week of January next year. The list of candidates shortlisted for the next level of selection will be made available on the website of the respective IIMs.

Each IIM will send interview letters to the shortlisted candidates directly. The criteria for shortlisting vary among IIMs. Candidates will have to visit the admission hotlinks of the respective websites of IIMs for further information.

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Steve Madden, who has earned a global reputation for designing shoes might just hang up his boots. The 59-year-old said he feels there is nothing he can do to improve his label and should call it quits on his career.

More now, actually. I suppose there were moments then, but really, now. I have this wonderful company, and I have these amazing people whom I taught the business, and theyre better than me. The pupils are better than the teacher, Madden told Marie Claire magazine.

And as the teacher and the builder, I have to figure out another way that I can add value to my company. So now, because Im an entrepreneur, maybe theres nothing I can do anymore. Maybe I should just quit... I have thought that. But then I have incredible days where I feel valuable.

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As the strike by workers associated with the National Health Mission (NHM), demanding a pay hike and permanent jobs, continued for the third consecutive day in the city on Thursday, the ambulance and health care services were badly hit resulting in inconvenience for patients at the Civil Hospital.

The workers, who are employed on contract, launched the strike on Tuesday seeking regularisation of service.

Himanshu Kumar, 26, was left with no option but to arrange a private ambulance to have his two-day-old premature baby shifted from the government hospital at the Civil Lines to Delhis Safdarjung Hospital.

I had to pay 2,500 for the ambulance to have my baby shifted from Gurgaon to Safdarjung Hospital. The doctors here asked me to take my baby to New Delhi, as theres not enough staff at Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) ward because of the strike, said Kumar, a resident of Jamalpur near the railway station.

He got his newborn and wife Priya, 24, admitted to the Civil Hospital on Wednesday. He said the doctors advised him to have his baby boy shifted to Safdarjung Hospital, as he was having a breathing problem. After waiting for more than three hours, he could avail of a private ambulance to take his daughter to the Delhi hospital.

A similar hassle awaited Sunil Yadav, who reached the government hospital at 2.15 pm with his child. Even though his child had high fever, the doctors refused to admit him and advised his father to head to Safdarjung instead.

This is needless harassment. We are poor people and cannot spend so much money on an ambulance, said Yadav, a resident of Sector 9.

As many as 650 contractual health workers in Gurgaon are taking part in the stir. They are deputed at the NICU ward and are also part of the ambulance and cleaning staff. There are 12,500 NHM workers in Haryana.

The protesting NHM workers said they are not planning to return to work, as the meeting with the health department officials in Chandigarh on Thursday failed, said a representative of NHM workers union.

At the meeting with health department officials in Chandigarh, we demanded a pay hike and permanent jobs for contractual workers. The government didnt agree to our demands. Hence, we have no option but to continue with our protest, Hariraj, secretary, NHM workers union, said.

Read I Gurgaon NRHM workers threaten strike if jobs are not made permanent

However, the officials at Civil Hospital claimed that the strike by the contractual health workers hasnt affected their services.

We are in control and are trying to arrange more staff to deal with emergencies. We plan to hire some drivers in the interim to resume our ambulance service in the city, said BK Rajora, chief medical officer, Civil Hospital.

Gurgaon district has a total of 16 ambulances for government hospitals. Six of them are for the Civil Hospital. Of these, three are advance life support ambulances and the remaining are basic life support ambulances.

On any given day, our ambulance service receives more than 50 calls, said Mayank Goyal, a NHM worker at the Civil Hospital who is part of the ambulance service.

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A man was allegedly murdered on Wednesday evening for objecting to verbal abuse near a petrol pump in New Colony. The incident took place just a few hundred metres from the New Colony police station when two men walking home were intercepted by a person, who started hurling abuses at them and later attacked them with bricks, the police said. One of them was killed at the scene, the police said.

A case under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code was registered at New Colony police station.

Police said the incident took place around 10pm when Surender and Ravi were on their way home. When they reached the Tikona park, an unidentified man on a scooter obstructed their way and started abusing them. Despite repeated requests, the accused allegedly did not refrain from misbehaving with the duo. This angered Surender, who retaliated, the police said.

Police said the accused was soon joined by another person and they started hurling bricks at both the victims, leaving them grievously injured. It was only after the two started shouting for help that people from nearby came to their rescue, but taking advantage of the melee, the attackers managed to get away, the police said.

Both the injured were taken to a private hospital. While Surender was declared brought dead, Ravi is being treated for injuries sustained in the attack. The deceased was an employee at a private firm and hailed from each other. The injured, too, is a private employee from Allahabad and was related to the deceased.

Read I Ryan student murder: CBI teams reach school, launch probe into 8-year-olds death

Surender used to live in a rented accommodation in Krishna colony.

Police said a manhunt has been launched to nab the accused.

Inspector Babu Lal, station house officer, New Colony police station, said that the motive for the murder would only be known after the accused are apprehended.
Two back-to-back incidents of abuse and molestation of women toll attendants at the Kherki Daula toll plaza have left the 35-member strong women workforce quite shaken.

The team of 35 started managing the toll booths from April 25 this year.

The toll management claimed that incidents of violence had reduced since the recruitment of women but off late, incidents of molestation and abuse have begun to rise.

A woman toll staffer was abused and molested by a commuter on Thursday morning and a similar incident was reported on November 21 when a few men in an SUV molested a staffer after she asked them to pay the toll.

One of the woman staffers who complained to the police said that men frequently tease them and make innuendoes and double entendres but they have learned to ignore these things as part of the job.

I am shaken and scared to work and so are the other women. The man threatened to kill me. He also used slurs and insults that would outrage the modesty of any person. I want the police to take strict action against such people, the woman staff member complained to the police on Thursday.

The women staffers also said the government and the operator should resolve the issue of toll payment by residents of 31 villages, who often enter into arguments with toll agents.

These issues also lead to tiffs and assaults by villagers, they said.

Toll operator Skylark in fact claimed that it took a lot of convincing to ensure that the women did not leave their job.

Despite posting private security men at the toll plaza, the number of such incidents is rising as violators are mostly influential and well-connected. There is a need for strict policing against such persons. Only then will things improve, said Navneet Pratap Singh, CEO, Skylark.

He, however, admitted that there has been a significant reduction in incidents of violence at the toll plaza after the women staffers were hired to manage toll collection.

Past incidents

November 21, 2017: A woman toll attendant was abused for not allowing a SUV to pass without paying the toll

October 3, 2017: A man in a black SUV opens fire at toll attendants for making him wait a few extra minutes. A case was registered by police.

April 02, 2016: A toll collector is attacked by about 50 residents from nearby Hasanpur village after he asked a villager to pay the toll. The man claimed he was from the village and was exempted from toll. An FIR was registered against unidentified villagers.

February 25, 2015: A fight broke out at the plaza after toll attendants accused a Haryana Roadways driver of damaging the toll barricades and thrashing one of them. An FIR was registered.

April 23, 2015: Two incidents of scuffle reported in a single day. In the morning, residents from Shikohpur village came to blows with a toll attendant. A similar incident takes place later in the evening.

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Hollywood actor Jennifer Lawrence has been vocal about the recent wave of sexual misconduct allegations that has hit Hollywood and now she has revealed how she felt when the report came out about film producer and longtime collaborator Harvey Weinstein.

The 27-year-old actor has admitted that it took her a moment to process the sexual harassment allegations against the disgraced producer as the disgraced mogul had always been like a father figure to her, reports People Magazine.

She said, Just speaking for myself, I had known him since I was 20, and he had only ever been nice to me, except for the moments that he wasnt, and then I called him an a-hole, and we moved on. He was paternal to me. So I needed a moment to process everything because I thought I knew this guy, and then hes being accused of rape.

Actor Jennifer Lawrence attends the mother! premiere on day four of the Toronto International Film Festival. (AP)

The mother! actor insisted that whilst she was aware Weinstein, 65, was a tough guy and a brute, she had never considered the possibility that he might have been abusing his power.

She said, We all knew he was a dog, we knew that he was a tough guy, a brute, a tough guy to negotiate with. I didnt know that he was a rapist. And its so widespread, the abuse, from so many different people - its directors, its producers - that I think everybody needed to (process it). Everybody needs to deal with this in their own way; everybody needs to heal.

Lawrence, who won an Oscar for the Weinstein-produced Silver Linings Playbook, initially said she was deeply disturbed to hear of the allegations against the Hollywood mogul.

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A Delhi court on Thursday put 11 former members of Parliament on trial for the 2005 cash-for-query scam.

Special Judge Kiran Bansal framed graft and criminal conspiracy charges against the MPs. The trial will begin from January 12.

Heres a look at how the cash-for-query scam came to light in 2005:

A sting operation by online news site Cobrapost that aired on a private TV channel on December 12, 2005, showed the 11 MPs accepting cash in exchange for raising questions in the Parliament.

Out of the 11 MPs accused in the case, six were from the BJP, three from BSP, and one each from the RJD and Congress. They were Y G Mahajan (BJP), Chhatarpal Singh Lodha (BJP), Anna Saheb M K Patil (BJP), Manoj Kumar (RJD), Chandra Pratap Singh (BJP), Ram Sewak Singh (Congress), Narender Kumar Kushwaha (BSP), Pradeep Gandhi (BJP), Suresh Chandel (BJP), Lal Chandra Kol (BSP) and Raja Rampal (BSP).

The Lok Sabha expelled 10 members, while Lodha, who was the sole Rajya Sabha member, was also expelled.

On December 24, 2005, the Parliament voted to expel the 11 MPs in a historic vote. Pranab Mukherjee , the leader of the house at the time, introduced a resolution asking for expulsion of the members while then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did the same in Rajya Sabha.

While all parties had clamoured for action against the accused MPs, the BJP walked out of the vote saying it was a kangaroo court. BJP senior leader LK Advani, who was leader of the Opposition at the time, said that while what the MPs had done was corruption, but more than that it was stupidity and the punishment of expulsion was too harsh.

In January 2007, a Supreme Court verdict upheld the Parliaments decision to expel the MPs. The MPs had filed a petition challenging their expulsion, which ignited a debate whether the court could interfere in Parliament procedures.

The Delhi High Court in 2007 directed the Delhi Police to book people involved in the offence. Two Cobrapost journalists, Aniruddha Bahal and Suhasini Raj, were also named in the chargesheet for abetting the offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, but the case against them was later quashed, with the court ruling that no one could be prosecuted for carrying out sting operations.
The Supreme Courts recent ruling that certificates issued by panchayat secretary or an executive magistrate can be used for claiming citizenship has eased the simmering tension over publication of an updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.

Setting aside a Gauhati high court order issued in February, a two-judge SC bench on Tuesday allowed certificates issued by secretaries of Gaon Panchayats (GPs) as admissible documents for claiming citizenship if issued after conducting proper enquiries.

In a separate judgement, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman stated that the issue of original inhabitant (OI) cant be linked to the process of updating NRC.

In its order, the HC had ruled that certificates issued by GPs were not admissible as proof of citizenship.

Updating of NRC in Assam, which last took place in 1951, to distinguish Indian citizens from illegal immigrants, had led to lot of apprehension and anger following the HC order.

The move affected nearly 29 lakh people, most of them women, who had submitted those documents to the NRC.

This had led to fear among these applicants, most of who belong to the minority community, about whether their names would get excluded from the updated NRC.

Threats and speculations of violence by those left out of the NRC, the first draft of which is to be released by the end of this month, had led the Assam government to seek additional security forces from the Centre.

Though the names of those who had submitted GP certificates wont get included in the first draft (as their certificates have to be verified as genuine), the SC order has been welcomed by most organizations across the spectrum.

The All Assam Minority Students Union stated that the SC verdict would remove apprehension of lakhs of women who were worried about getting left out of the updated NRC.

All Assam Students Union (AASU), the states biggest student body, and 28 organisations of indigenous communities of the state also expressed hope that the SC verdict would help detect illegal citizens.

The SC ruling has stated that certificates issued by GPs would be admissible only after proper verification and it should be corroborated with other valid identity proofs. This would identify those who had sought to be included in the NRC based on fake or forged documents, said an AASU leader.

Opposition Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) termed the SC ruling as historic and far-sighted.

The SC order is historic. It would help find a solution to the long pending issue illegal immigrants in the state, state Congress president Ripun Bora said.

A senior police official stated on condition of anonymity that though the possibility of violence has eased after the SC ruling, security forces would be on the alert to prevent any eventuality.

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EOM

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When Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu last week accused the central government of creating hurdles in completing the Polavaram project on river Godavari, many were surprised.

Naidus Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is a constituent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and his criticism was uncharacteristic. However, those in the know say the chief ministers criticism wasnt unexpected. A lot is riding on the Rs 58,000-crore Polavaram project. It will get water for drinking and irrigation and generate electricity, so its a politically crucial for Naidu ahead of the 2019 assembly elections.

The Polavaram project and constructing Andhras new capital Amaravati are the two major challenges before Naidu. If Polavaram can be completed as planned by 2018, experts say it would provide a political boost to Naidus ruling party.

But the project is progressing at a snails pace though Andhra Pradesh has spent Rs 12,000 crore on it in the past 12 years, and Naidu is beginning to lose patience. Declared a national project, the central government is supposed to bear the entire expenditure for the project under the AP Reorganisation Act of 2014, including cost escalations and rehabilitation of evacuees. Billed to be second biggest dam after the Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada in Gujarat, the Polavaram project on Godavari will result in the submergence of 276 villages in Andhra Pradesh, 100 villages in Odisha and 202 hectares of forest land in Chhattisgarh. In all, some 0.18 million people are expected to be displaced.

State officials say Naidu is frustrated since the Centre is releasing money for the project only in dribs and drabs. Some Rs 950 crore was released between 2014 and 2017 and another Rs 380 crore was released this year. The National Bank for Rural and Agricultural Development (NABARD) is also expected to extend loans for the project, to be repaid by the central government. However, Rs 1,982 crore has been made available out of the Rs 23,814 crore to be provided by 2020.

Whats the Polavaram project Project on Godavari will build the second largest dam after Sardar Sarvovar dam in Gujarat The total capacity of the reservoir is 287.47 thousand million cubic ft Will take water up to Krishna and Visakhapatnam districts, providing irrigation to over 7 lakh hectares en route Generate hydel power with an installed capacity of 960 MW

A common complaint heard in the corridors of the Andhra secretariat is that the Centre is raising a lot of queries before releasing funds for the project. Union finance minister Arun Jaitleys statement that the Centre would bear the entire expenditure for only the irrigation component of the project has also riled Andhra officials. They say that the central government has told them that if the project cannot be completed by 2018, the grant component of the central assistance will be converted into a loan.

Naidus efforts to speed up the project by calling for fresh tenders regarding certain works entrusted to a contractor has been stone-walled. The Centre wrote to him in November, arguing against fresh tenders on the grounds they may lead to litigation and cost overruns. The opposition has stepped in and Congress MP KVP Ramachandra Rao has accused Naidu of seeking kick-backs by floating fresh tenders. He (Naidu) got the project cost revised twice, Rao alleged.

Andhra officials deny the allegation, but what is undeniable is that the project is in hot water because of procedural delays and disagreements. We have been maintaining utmost restraint despite facing several problems because we are part of the NDA. But it is testing our patience, Naidu said last week. The Polavaram project is surely rocking TDP-BJP ties.

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China said on Thursday that an Indian drone recently invaded its airspace before crashing in the Chinese side of the Sikkim border, prompting it to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of its territorial sovereignty.

Recently, an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle invaded Chinas aerospace in the Sikkim section of the China-India border, spokesperson of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs Geng Shuang said at the regular briefing of the ministry on Thursday.

Geng said solemn representations against the incident was lodged with India but didnt specify whether it was filed in Beijing or New Delhi.

Geng added that the Chinese military handled the situation in a professional way. He said the China-India border in Sikkim has been delimited and the invasion violated Chinas sovereignty and wasnt conducive for peace and tranquillity in the region.

He did not share information on exactly where on the Sino-India border was the drone found or how Chinese military personnel came to the conclusion that the drone belonged to India.

Geng said China has urged India to stop the activities of such devices at the border and work with China to maintain peace at the border.

An earlier official media report by the Xinhua news agency said the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) had voiced dissatisfaction with the intrusion.

The Indian UAV intruded into Chinas airspace and crashed recently, and Chinas border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, Xinhua quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Commands joint staff department, as saying.

Indias move has infringed upon Chinas territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this, Zhang said.

We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend Chinas national sovereignty and security resolutely, he noted.

There was no immediate response from the Indian defence ministry.

The militarys charge comes ahead of Chinese foreign minister Wang Yis visit to New Delhi to take part in the Russia-India-China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting to be held on December 11. Geng told media on Wednesday that Wang will meet top Indian officials on the sidelines of the meeting.

This will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Doklam crisis and commencement of second five-year term after Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is expected to be followed by the 20th round of India-China boundary talks in New Delhi between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who are the designated Special Representatives.

The Chinese militarys claim comes about two months after the two governments resolved a 70-odd day standoff between their border troops near the Sikkim boundary.

China accused Indian troops in June of trespassing into Doklam, which the Chinese refer to as Donglang, a disputed territory on the China-Bhutan-India trijunction near the Sikkim border. Beijing claims it to be Chinese territory but Bhutan disputes it.

Beijing has maintained that an 1890 treaty between British India and the then ruling Qing dynasty in China had demarcated or delimited the Sikkim boundary.

The standoff was resolved at the end of August after India said it had agreed with China to pull back troops to end a months-long face-off along the disputed Himalayan region. Reports from Doklam also suggested Beijing has halted work on a road that triggered the row.

The decision to withdraw troops and halt work on the road ended one of the most serious disputes between the nuclear-armed neighbours who share a 3,500-km mountain frontier that remains undemarcated in most places.

Incidents involving drones have erupted before between the India, China and Pakistan.

In 2015, Pakistan armed forces shot down a drone near the Line of Control with India, which later turned out to have been manufactured in China.

The drone was recognised in Beijing as the Chinese-made DJI phantom 3, the state media had then reported.
The family of a 40-year-old man from Jharkhands Giridih district, who died while working at a high-rise building in Dubai in November, is waiting for his body for nearly a month.

The family of Sukhdev Mahto, a resident of Ambadioh village under Dumri police station, said they have been in touch with authorities but due to bureaucratic hurdles his body is still lying at the mortuary of a hospital in Dubai.

We had received news of Sukhdevs death the same day through a friend working with him. But unfortunately, we are still waiting for his body for holding last rites, Jogeshwar Mahto, Sukhdevs brother-in-law, said.

His family approached Dumri MLA Jagarnath Mahto for and the legislator said he brought the matter into the notice of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday.

I spoke to the minister soon after I received information about the case. On her directive, I have mailed her all the details provided by the family, Jagarnath Mahto told the Hindustan Times.

Sukhdev is survived by wife Urmila, daughters Anjani and Sumitra and son Rohit besides a septuagenarian mother. His family said he got a job as a mason in Dubai through a registered contract firm in February this year.

According to government figures, there are some six million Indian migrants in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman that have long been top destinations for millions of poor labourers, most of whom work in construction, transport and other low-paying sectors.

The government and non-governmental groups have received hundreds of complaints from migrant workers, ranging from non-payment of wages to torture and abuse over the years.

Sikandar Ali, who runs a support group Pravashi Bhartiya in Giridih for workers abroad, said the family is in distress and that Sukhdevs was not the sole incident of an unwanted delay in bringing back the bodies of citizens working abroad.

In another case, the body of Nunchand Mahto, a resident of Tirla village under Bagodar police station, was brought home after six months in January this year, said Ali.

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The Kerala Women Commission on Wednesday registered a case against unnamed people who shamed three hijab-clad Muslim girls for performing in a flash mob organised by the medical department on December 1 on the occasion of Worlds Aids Day.

Registering a suo motu case, the commission also directed the cyber wing of the police to book those attacked the girls with filthy comments and lewd remarks on the social network sites.

The girls, students of a dental college in Muslim-dominated Malappuram, were trolled after a video of them dancing to the tune of a popular Malayalam song Jimmki Kamml was widely circulated on social media.

A flash mob is generally an impromptu gathering of people in a public place to perform unusual act in a bid to spread awareness on social issues.

The district health department organised the flash mob-- a group dance that appear an impromptu jig on a street  at Malappuram to raise awareness on HIV/Aids. India had 2.1 million people living with HIV at the end of 2016, according to an UNAIDS report.

Some trolls even wanted clergies to issue a fatwa against them for what they called insulting Islam. Those who backed the girls were also not spared.

A Malayalam radio jockey in Doha (Qatar) was forced to apologise after he cheered the girls in his programme. He said he tendered apology after he received alarming threats and was threatened with jail under blasphemy laws. On Tuesday he posted another video saying he had merely spoken about womens freedom and no communal angle was involved in it.

The state government backed the girls and offered full support. Many also hailed the girls on social media.

It is unfortunate to give a religious tinge to portray women in bad light and degrade them. This emboldens more women to come out publically, a tweet in support of girls said.

The college did not disclose the identity of the girls.
Police will investigate if upmarket homes in Hyderabad are hiding child labourers after rescuing a 13-year-old girl who was enslaved for four years, as demand for domestic workers soars.

The Hyderabad police rescued the girl on Monday evening, following an alert by campaigners, and booked her employers - a businessman and his wife - under child labour prohibition law.

Most of the children employed as domestic servants are poor and their parents send them for employment, food and shelter, said police inspector Harishchandra Reddy of the citys Cyberabad area, where many technology companies are based.

We will now send our people to villas, apartments and gated communities to check if children are employed. We have to focus on this, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Read more | India has worlds highest number of stunted children, child workers

The police said they are still looking for the parents of the girl, who activists said was physically abused and prevented from leaving the housing complex, some 200 km from her family home, during her four-year entrapment.

Her parents ... agreed to send her to the businessmans house to work for free as he promised financial support at the time of her marriage, said Achyuta Rao, president of child rights group Balala Hakkula Sangham (BHS), who raised the alarm.

The charity has helped rescue over 300 children this year, mostly domestic workers.

Children employed as domestic workers are more vulnerable to physical, and also sexual, abuse because they remain invisible to the public eye, he said.

Indias rising affluence and growing numbers of working women have spurred demand for domestic workers, which remains a largely unregulated sector.

Earlier this year, a 12-year-old girl who worked as a maid in Bengaluru was found dead in mysterious circumstances.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates India has almost 6 million child workers aged between five and 17.

Rights activists say traffickers often target poor villages and convince vulnerable families to send their daughters away for employment.

People still do not fear laws against child labour. Hiring children as domestic helps is a regular practice, Rao said.

Photos: Its hard labour for Indias child labourers
Indias Kumbh Mela joined UNESCOs list of intangible heritage Thursday, securing the coveted status alongside a host of cultural treasures including Naples pizza twirling.

Kumbh Mela was given the nod by the UN cultural bodys World Heritage Committee, which met on the South Korean island of Jeju.

The event has its origins in Hindu mythology which tells how a few drops from a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality are said to have fallen during a fight between gods and demons on the four locations across India which host the festival--Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar--every four years.

The 55-day Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, which was last held in 2013 and occurs every 12 years, was attended by 100 million people jostling for space to take a dip in the sacred waters of Ganga. A total of 12,000 police officers were deployed, while organisers set up 35,000 toilets, 14 medical centres, 22,000 street lights, 150 kilometres of temporary roads, 18 bridges, and new sewage facilities.

It is a culturally diverse festival where knowledge and skills related to the tradition are transmitted through ancient religious manuscripts, oral traditions, historical travelogues and texts produced by eminent historians said UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage website.

The art of Neapolitan pizza making won, a horse-riding game from Iran and Dutch wind mills joined UNESCOs culture list too. Thirty-four candidates were seeking to join the list of intangible heritage, created in 2003 mainly to raise awareness, although UNESCO also sometimes offers financial or technical support to countries struggling to protect their traditions.

The list already included more than 350 traditions, art forms and practices from Spains flamenco dancing to Indonesian batik fabrics, to more obscure entries such as a Turkish oil wrestling festival and the Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels.

Saudi Arabia was among those celebrating, claiming the tag for Al-Qatt Al-Asin -- elaborate interior wall paintings traditionally done by women. The art, which promotes solidarity among women, is handed down through observation.

Bangladesh claimed victory with its tradition of Shital Pati, an intricate weaving craft using strips of green cane to produce mats and bedspreads.

Another winner was the traditional horseback game of Kok Boru in Kyrgyzstan, where players score points by putting a goats carcass in an opponents goal -- though modern day games now replace the dead animal with a mould.

An array of traditions struggling to survive will also be given special support after being placed on an urgent safeguarding list.

These include a whistled language that developed in Turkey as a way to communicate across steep mountains and rugged topography but is now being threatened by mobile phones.

Morocco will also get help to protect Taskiwin -- a martial dance that developed in the western High Atlas mountain range and involves shaking ones shoulders to the rhythm of tambourines and flutes.

UNESCO said globalisation and young peoples rejection of traditional heritage had driven the practice closer to oblivion.

(With inputs from AFP and Reuters)
India said on Thursday a UAV on a regular training mission lost control and crossed the LAC in Sikkim, hours after China expressed strong dissatisfaction over an Indian drone crashing in its territory.

China said the drone crashed in recent days but did not give a location.

Reacting to a Xinhua news article on the incident, the Indian defence ministry said: An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC in the Sikkim Sector. As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV.

The incident comes about two months after the two governments resolved a 70-odd day standoff between border troops near the Sikkim boundary.

On Thursday, China said the entry of the drone violated its territorial sovereignty. Chinas border defence forces took a professional and responsible attitude in conducting an inspection of the device, said Zhang Shuili, a senior military official in Chinas western battle zone command.

The Indian defence ministry said later: the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas.

Incidents involving drones have erupted before between India, China and Pakistan in the last few years.

In 2015, Pakistan armed forces shot down a drone near the Line of Control with India, which later turned out to have been manufactured in China.

The drone was recognised in Beijing as the Chinese-made DJI phantom 3, the state media had then reported.
Jammu and Kashmir residents will soon be able to directly get in touch with the Centres interlocutor for the state, Dineshwar Sharma, over the phone and through email, government sources have told HT.

A former Intelligence Bureau chief, Sharma was in October tasked by the Centre to talk to all stakeholders to find a solution to the 30-year-old insurgency in the border state.

Sharmas office will soon announce a dedicated phone number and email address for registering complaints of the Jammu and Kashmir residents, a government official told Hindustan Times on Wednesday. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media.

Sharma will also have three officers as point persons for three regions of the state  the Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Ladakh  to address the grievances of the local population.

The officers, likely to be drawn from the state, would remain in touch with the J&K government to ensure that all grievances were addressed in a time-bound manner, sources said.

When contacted, Sharma declined to offer comment.

In a month since his appointment, Sharma has visited the Valley and Jammu region twice and spoken to groups of youth, women and traders as also members of political parties.

The delegations that met Sharma spoke about lack of basic amenities like bijli and pani (electricity and water). Some asked for jobs. Harassment by police and other security forces was another of their major grievances, said a home ministry official familiar with the discussions Sharma has held so far.

There was a broad agreement that now was the time for healing touch and quick redressal of grievances, the official said.

The Centre hardened its hard stand against violence in the Valley before starting the dialogue process. More than 200 militants have been killed in Kashmir this year.

Sharma also managed to break ice with the Hurriyat Conference and met separatist leader Abdul Gani Bhat twice. Bhat is a former chairman of the All Party Hurriyat Conference and is now with the moderate faction of the separatist conglomerate led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a hardliner, has so far refused to talk to Sharma.

Premature revelation about Sharmas meetings with Bhat in the media forced on the back foot the other separatist leaders who wanted to talk to the interlocutor, sources said.

But officials are hopeful that other separatist leaders, too, would join the peace effort.

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The brother of a policeman, who was allegedly abducted by militants in north Kashmirs Bandipora district, returned home after a few hours on Wednesday night, police said on Thursday.

A senior district police officer told the Hindustan Times that Mudasir Ahmed, the brother of constable Farooq Ahmed, came back a few hours after reports said that he was abducted from his home by militants in Ajas village of the district.

The police are trying to find out why he was taken and then released. Our team is onto the case. We are investigating the exact circumstances, the police officer said.

Reports said that the militants could have been looking for Khan but snatched his brother instead.

Several policemen have been killed or attacked and their homes ransacked by suspected militants in recent months, seen as warnings to local police personnel to stop participating in counter-insurgency operations.

More than 1,500 police personnel have been killed in the valley since insurgency broke out in 1989. In June, a deputy superintendent of police  Mohammed Ayub Pandith  was lynched by a mob outside Srinagars main mosque.

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A male tiger has travelled over 250km in the last one year looking for a mate in the jungles of Madhya Pradeshs Dewas, Ujjain, Dhar and Jhabua districts but his quest has remained unfulfilled so far and he is again on the move worrying forest officials.

The male tiger, who is around three years old, is definitely looking for a mate and he is getting restless which is probably why he is on the move. But the problem is that there is no female tiger in this area, Ujjains chief conservator of forest BS Annigeri, who has been keeping tabs on the tiger for the past one year, said.

Annigeri said that the tiger was first spotted in the jungles spread around 40 sq km on Nagda hills near Dewas in January this year. Officials of the forest department tried to tranquilise it and though the dart hit the tiger, he escaped before the team could reach him.

He is a very intelligent tiger and after the January incident, he has stayed well away from humans, quietly feeding and growing in the area, Annigeri said.

He moved from Nagda hills to Manglia in Indore and then to Badnagar in Ujjain to Javasia village Badnawar in Dhar, across Sardarpur and into Petlawad in Jhabua. Officials said all these places have human habitation but he has managed to avoid any contact with humans.

He has been travelling in a straight line along the banks on the Mahi river, Annigeri said.

Forest officials said that for the most part of the year the male tiger spent his time in Nagda hills jungles, surviving on neelgais and pigs. But he has been on the move for the last fortnight and forest officials said that he is coming dangerously close to human habitations.

He was last spotted on Wednesday near Kasarbardi village in Petlawad tehsil of Jhabua district where he killed a cow. His photograph was also captured on the camera trap set up by the forest department and he has been in the vicinity for the past 40 hours or so.

Warnings have been issued to the villagers staying nearby to stay alert and not venture alone in the fields or go near nullahs where the tiger might come to drink water.

He ate his kill last night and we are watching what he is up to. As of now, we have not decided what to do with the tiger, Jhabuas district forest official Rajesh Khare said.

The forest department has the option of tranquilising and relocating it, as they did with another male tiger prowling in the Dewas area in January 2016.

The origin of this tiger is not known but wildlife expert and consultant to the forest department Kartikeya Singh said that it most probably came from Ratapani after being displaced by dominant males there.

By the looks of it, the tiger is shy and docile and does not go after humans. At present there is plenty of cover due to the crops, so he can stay hidden. But all this can change once the crops are cut or if he inadvertently comes in contact with humans, Singh said.

Experts say tigers do not generally attack humans, but some believe they can acquire a taste for human flesh after an initial attack.

On their part, the forest officials are hoping that the tiger goes back to Nagda hills or even to Ratapani jungles and finds a mate.

The last estimation of 2014 reported 2,226 tigers in the country accounting for 70% of big cats in the wild in the world.

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The Congress is more interested in Baba Bhole than DR BR Ambedkar these days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, in a veiled jibe at Rahul Gandhi who has been visiting temples as part of his poll campaign in Gujarat.

The Congress vice president has visited over a dozen temples in the poll-bound state even as the critics accused the party of playing soft Hindutva card.

Dedicating to the nation Dr Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi, the Prime Minister said a particular family -- an indirect reference to the Nehru-Gandhi family-- wanted to erase the contributions of Ambedkar who drafted Indias Constitution and was the first law minister of the country.

Attempts made to underplay Ambedkars efforts towards nation building proved futile as his ideas continue to inspire people, said Modi.

Attempts to erase Baba Saheb Ambedkars role failed, he has been more influential in the minds of people, much more than the family for which all this was done, the PM said.

He said the Congress had planned the centre in 1992 but it was only now during the BJPs tenure that work was completed.

The party that went to seek votes in his name, would not even know thisin any case these days they are more interested in Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Baba Ambedkar, he said.

Following a controversy over his frequent visits to temples, Rahul Gandhi had said his family members were devotees of Lord Shiva.

Gujarat is also witnessing an intense battle between the BJP and the Congress over the votes of Dalits who constitute about 7 % of the states population.

Two-phase elections for the states 182 assembly seats will be held on December 9 and 14.

The Prime Minister said Ambedkar Centre will function as a think-tank for inclusive growth and related socio-economic matters in line with Ambedkars push for socio-economic equality.

He said his government was making endeavors to not only pay homage to Ambedkar by developing places he was associated with as pilgrimage sites, but also bringing in policies such as Jan Dhan, Swachh Bharat and Ujjawala that eradicate socio-economic disparities.

He said poor people have been empowered by government initiatives such as the RuPay debit card and free gas connections to poor families.

The Prime Minister also mentioned programmes were taking off the ground either on time or ahead of the deadline.

We had said that in one year we will build toilets for girls in all government schools, we have already constructed over 4 lakh such facilities. We had said in 1,000 days we will provide electricity to 18000 villages that had no power, today ahead of that deadline we are left with only 2000 villages to electrify, he said.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said on Thursday without elaborating when it will take place.

His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Friday after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital. He planned to shift US embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv. Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

Read | US recognition of Jerusalem: India says position on Palestine consistent

Maybe I announce it here (in the show) and let you all know before everyone else Mr Modi will visit Palestine. I am told this is a reaction to the very action that has happened, the envoy said during a discussion on Rajya Sabha TV on Thursday.

The external affairs ministry didnt make any response to the ambassadors comment.

We are not aware of any planned visit at this moment. However, it would be inappropriate on our part to react to the comments made by the ambassador at this juncture, said a government official who didnt want to be named.

The ambassador didnt give a time frame for the PMs visit, leaving the officials surprised as such visits are announced in public only when the dates are finalised.

Participating in a discussion on the channel, Alihaijaa said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel but he had made a departure from the tradition of Indian leaders visiting Palestine.

Reacting to the US announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, India said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Indias position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, he said responding to a query regarding Indias position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.
A suspected cow smuggler was killed by police in Rajasthans Alwar district in the early hours of Thursday, the latest incident to rock the state hit by intermittent violence over the campaign to protect bovines.

Police said the alleged smuggler, later identified as Taleem from Nuh district of Haryana, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with a police team while trying to flee with several stray cows in a pick-up truck.

Rahul Prakash, the Alwar superintendent of police, said they had set up barricades at several places after receiving information that a group of men was trying to smuggle cows. The men fired at police at two barricades before they were halted at a third barricade in Janta Colony where the exchange of gunfire took place.

Prakash said several of the men ran away after the truck in which they were travelling was forced to halt after a bullet blew one of its tyres. They left behind an injured man who later died. The truck was carrying five cows, one of which was dead.

Alwar police admitted to firing seven rounds at the truck early on Thursday but could not specify how many rounds were fired by the suspected smugglers.

Taleems uncle Mohammed Ilyas said his 24-year-old nephew was at home till around 8pm on Wednesday. He left after that without telling us, Ilyas told HT on phone.

Alwar has been the epicentre of violence triggered by cow vigilantism. In April, a Muslim trader Pehlu Khan transporting cattle to his farm was waylaid by vigilantes and assaulted. Khan died a few days later.

Last month, a group of men transporting cows was attacked in the districts Govindgarh area, resulting in the death of one Umar Mohammed.

Cow protection features prominently in the agenda of the Rajasthan government with a cow welfare department headed by a minister. Alwar is also one of the two districts  Bharatpur being the other  where police patrol the streets regularly to combat cow smuggling.

The police said no documents pertaining to transportation of cattle were found from the truck or the victim. At the same time, the police added that no one had come forward to claim ownership of the cows being transported. The bovines have been sent to a local cow shelter.

Rajasthan DGP, OP Galhotra, said, They (the alleged smugglers) used to collect cattle left in the open at night and this was going on for many days. Police was monitoring it and had increased patrolling to nab them.

However, Ramzan Chaudhary, president of the All India Mewati Samaj, questioned the encounter. Even if they were smuggling cows, there is a law to punish them. This justice meted out on the roads is wrong, he said.

Taleem relatives, who arrived in Alwar during the day, returned to their village after the administration refused to hand over the body. The post mortem will take place on Friday. However, Taleems relatives said they will not return to take the body.
The prosecution has moved a fresh application against the acquittal of Bollywood star Salman Khan in the arms act case and sought it to be moved back to the court of the chief judicial magistrate in Rajasthans Jodhpur.

The chief judicial magistrate acquitted the 51-year-old actor on January 18, saying the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against him. Khan was accused of possessing and using unlicensed weapon to allegedly kill endangered black bucks in Jodhpur in 1998.

The Rajasthan government appealed to the district and session court (Jodhpur rural) against the Tiger actors acquittal in March.

We had filed an application in 2006 against the Salman Khan under Section 340 of CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) in the CJM court during the arms act case trial but the CJM court acquitted Salman without considering the application. We have demanded a remand of the case, public prosecutor Pokarram Vishnoi said.

Vishnoi said Khan had submitted an application and affidavit to the court in 2004 through his counsel saying that he lost his arms licence on August 8, 2003. Khan said he informed the senior police inspector of Mumbais Bandra police station about the missing licence in a letter.

However, a witness, Vijaynarayan Pandit, said in his statements during the trial that Khans arms license was not lost but the license of the revolver was deposited for renewal.

Vishnoi said that in 2006 the state government filed a criminal miscellaneous case against Khan for concealing facts but the court disposed of this case in 2016, saying that the fact will be considered in the arms act cases decision.

The public prosecutor said the CJM court did not consider the application under section 340 of CrPC while acquitting Khan in the arms act case and that is why they have sought the remand of the case.

The police filed the case against the actor in October 1998 for possessing unlicensed .22 rifle and .32 US-made revolver and using them for allegedly poaching two blackbucks in Jodhpurs Kankani village earlier that year.

District and session judge (Jodhpur rural) Ravindra Joshi has fixed January 10 as the next date of hearing in the case.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on Thursday said senior Supreme Court lawyer Kapil Sibal had gone by the Boards instructions and advice when he sought deferment of hearing in the Ayodhya case in Supreme Court on December 5.

The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board, the key litigant in the Babri-Masjid Ram-Janambhoomi case, had on Wednesday distanced itself from Sibals plea saying he was not their counsel in the matter. The confusion over who Sibal represented arose because of a clerical error. It is true that he was counsel for Iqbal Ansari, one of the litigants and not Sunni Board. But whatever Kapil Sibal said in the court was on the basis of the stand taken by the AIMPLB, Babri Masjid Action Committee convener and counsel Zafarayab Jilani told HT.

He said the AIMPLB was not a party in the Ayodhya case but it was bearing all the legal expenses of the case and its decision was binding on the Sunni Board also.

Boards general secretary Maulana Wali Rahmani, two other secretaries and some other senior members, held deliberations about the hearing that was to start a day later and discussed a four-page note prepared by senior counsel Yusuf Hatim Muchchala in this regard, he said.

We held three meetings between November and December 4, when the final note was handed over to Sibal. He asked us to remove just two paragraphs from the draft which had references to rulings by a US court, said Jilani.

The note emphasised that in case of a day-to-day hearing, the atmosphere of the country could be communalised and could also have an impact on the parliamentary elections. It was felt that this matter need not be made an election issue and, therefore, the hearing should be taken up after the completion of the election, Jilani said.

The same note was handed over to Sibal, who read a portion of it in the court, Jilani said.

Sibal was fielded by the AOR (advocate on record) of Hashim Ansari's son Iqbal Ansari, Jilani said. Hashim Ansari, one of the oldest members of Babri Masjid Action Committee and a litigant in the case, died last year at the age of 95 due to heart-related complications.

For over three years, from 2014 to 2017, the BJP government did nothing to get the case expedited but was now taking interest in it with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he said adding that Sibals stand had nothing to do with the Congress nor with the Sunni Waqf Board.
Even as Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow was trying to persuade China to let India enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Beijing said its stance on the issue remained unchanged.

Ryabkov said on Wednesday Russia was in touch with China over Indias application for New Delhis entry into the NSG.

Beijing, which opposes Indias entry into the 48-member grouping, reiterated its earlier stance.

Ryabkov, who spoke in New Delhi, also said Indias case cannot be compared to Pakistans.

Reacting to his statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said Beijing wont change its mind on Indias entry.

Chinas position on this issue remains unchanged. China supports the group NSG to follow the principle of consensus through consultation and follow fair and transparent intergovernmental process to deal with the issue, spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

Now all the members of the group support the two-step approach. First is to find a non-discriminatory solution that applies to all non-NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) contracting countries and then, on this basis, discuss the application of the non-NPT contracting countries, Geng said.

China says it is opposed to Indians entry into the bloc because it has not signed the NPT. It has also argued that if India could be allowed to join the NSG, then why not Pakistan which applied for membership right after New Delhi sent its application.

Except for China, almost all members of the NSG have backed Indias entry into the club due to its clean nuclear record.

The focus is on some non-NPT contracting countries hoping to join the group in the capacity of a nuclear weapons-free country and at the same time they will not sign the CSA (Comprehensive Safeguard Agreement) with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Geng said.

The third article of NPT says that the nuclear weapon free countries must sign CSA. At the same time, NPT and relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council also say that non-NPT contracting countries are not nuclear weapon owned countries.

I hope we can find a solution that is accepted by all relevant parties and uphold the international non-proliferation regime with NPT as the cornerstone.
Incidents of senior lawyers trying to outshout each other and allegedly attempting to browbeat judges during high-profile hearings on Thursday irked the Supreme Court, which said shouting will not be tolerated at any cost.

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which was hearing a legal question whether a Parsi woman loses her religious identity after marrying a man of different religion, was upset over the growing incidents of senior lawyers arguing on a high pitch in cases like the Babri Masjid title suit and the Delhi-Centre disputes.

What happened on Wednesday (in Delhi-Centre case) was atrocious and what happened a day before (in Ayodhya case) was more atrocious, the bench, which also comprised Justices AK Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said.

On Tuesday, several senior lawyers, including Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Dhavan and Dushyant Dave, had made high- pitched arguments in the Ayodhya case seeking adjournment of the hearing till July 2019 and some of them had even threatened to walk out.

In the Delhi-Centre dispute hearing, Dhavan had on Wednesday made submissions that were not appreciated by the bench.

Come what may, shouting in the courtroom will not be tolerated at any cost, the CJI observed today.

Lawyers are traditionally called ministers of justice. Unfortunately a small group of lawyers think they can raise their voice... argue with authority and conviction. Raising your voice just shows inadequacy and incompetence, the CJI said, adding that some senior members of the Bar have been indulging in high pitch arguments.

The court said, When lawyers argue in a manner not in tune with the constitutional language, we will tolerate it but for how long? If the Bar does not regulate itself, we will be compelled to regulate.

The courts observations came after senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who was appearing in the Parsi conversion matter, raised the issue of lawyers shouting in the court.

He said that the tendency of shouting by senior advocates was getting acute and lawyers should must exercise restraint and show respect to the judicial institution.
Hyderabad

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which manages the countrys richest religious centre, has decided to appoint Dalits, Adivasis and fishermen as priests in temples its building across Andhra Pradesh to push for social inclusion.

Earlier, Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) in Kerala reserved 32% seats for SCs, STs and OBCs in recruitment of priests in the temples under its control, in a departure from tradition.

Traditionally, only Brahmins can hold the distinguished position in the temple even as the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment stated that the eligibility for priesthood should be based on the knowledge of rites and traditions, and not the caste.

Many temples across the country even prohibit the entry of Dalits and people from other backward communities.

The TTD, which operates cash-rich Lord Venkateshwara temple in Tirumala in Chittoor district, is training in batches more than 200 people belonging to SC, ST and fishermen communities in priesthood and other Vedic rituals and religious practices.

Unlike the TDB, the Devasthanams will, however, not appoint the trained priests from the backward communities in the regular temples it operates. Instead, the trainees will be accommodated as priests in temples it is constructing in various Dalit colonies, tribal areas and fishermen villages across the state.

We are at present constructing nearly 500 temples in these areas where regular Brahmin priests are not available, TTD official spokesman T Ravi told Hindustan Times.

We have been training Dalits, tribals and fishermen under the auspices of TTD Dharma Prachara Parishad in various Vedic rituals, so that they could get appointed as priests in their respective villages, Ravi added.

In all the existing temples the independent trust operates, only traditional Brahmin priests perform the rituals and pujas.

According to TTD executive officer A K Singhal every year three batches of SCs, STs and fishermen would undergo training to perform pujas in the temples in their respective villages.

The role of Archakas (priests) is not only to perform puja as per the prescribed tenets but also to play a vital role in the propagation of Hindu dharma, he said, while presenting certificates to 30 priests belonging to backward communities who completed the training.

Though the proposal for imparting training for priesthood to Dalits and Adivasis was mooted long ago, it had taken a shape only last year.

In the past, there were short training programmes for them, but for the first time, a full-fledged training course is being conducted in Vedic rituals, so that they will be eligible to be appointed as priests in the temples in their respective areas, Ravi said.

A senior TTD official, who refused to be quoted, said the main objective of training SC, ST and BC priests and appointing them in temples in their own villages is to prevent religious conversions.

In many parts of the state, people belonging to backward communities are being lured into other religions like Islam and Christianity, because of caste discrimination among Hindus, he said.

The TTD has taken up this programme to remove the social stigma and give these people a sense of belonging in Hinduism, the official said.

A decade ago, the TTD had launched a programme called Dalita Govindam, wherein the temple authorities used to take out procession of Hindu gods in Dalit and tribal hamlets and distribute prasadam among the people.

However, the programme was stopped in 2010 as there was no follow-up action in spreading Hindu dharma in these colonies, the official added.

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The Supreme Court collegium led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra has cleared names of 19 candidates for elevation as judges to various high courts and recommended names of 23 additional judges of different HCs for being made permanent.

A candidate is initially appointed as a judge of the HC for a two-year period as an additional judge and then is conferred the status of a permanent judge after the collegium is satisfied with his or her judicial work.

The names were cleared at a meeting convened on December 4. The collegium comprises the CJI and the two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court. At present, justice J Chelameswar and justice Ranjan Gogoi are members of the collegium. Sources informed HT that the names cleared were those sent to the top court during justice JS Khehars tenure as the CJI.

The names once cleared by the collegium are sent to the Centre for approval after which a formal warrant of appointment is issued by the President. Five names were cleared for the Calcutta HC. One of the appointees, Sakya Sen, has been cleared even though he does not meet the age criterion of 45. However, considering his ability and performance and the HCs recommendation that there was shortage of judges from the bar, the top court collegiums relaxed the age criterion in his case. Recommendation of one lawyer was rejected on the grounds he did not qualify the income criterion.

Nine names were cleared for Madras HC, including that of senior SC advocate Subramonium Prasad. In the case of one advocate, AV Radhakrishnan, the collegium did not find him suitable as he is more than 57 years of age. The prescribed age limit is 55.

Five laywers were elevated as judges to the Karnataka HC. With regard to four other names, the SC collegium asked the HC collegiums to reconsider them. It shot down the recommendation of one lawyer as the panel did not find him suitable. No reasons were spelt out for such a decision.
Indias position on Palestine was consistent and independent and not determined by a third country, India said on Thursday within hours of US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, dealing a huge blow to the peace efforts in West Asia.

The decision would add to the turmoil in the region, with Trump also saying the administration would begin the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions.

Read: Uproar over Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital: Heres why

Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

He was responding to queries on Indias position on the USs move on Jerusalem that triggered a diplomatic backlash against Washington amid renewed fears of violence in region.

India was one of the first non-Arab countries to recognise Palestine.

Its stated position on Palestine is support for a peaceful and negotiated solution between Palestine and Israel, resulting in a sovereign and independent state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side and at peace with Israel, within secured and recognised borders.

Read: Arabs, Europe, UN reject Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital

Though over the years Indias ties with Israel have grown stronger, the support for the Palestinian cause has remained unchanged.

We hope for an early realisation of a sovereign, independent, united and a viable Palestine co-existing peacefully with Palestine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a message on November 25 to mark the international day of solidarity with Palestinian people.

Trumps Jerusalem move, in keeping his campaign promise, not only breaks from the long-held US position but also threatens regional stability despite stark warnings from Western and Arab allies.

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There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources said on Thursday amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UKs Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya, a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the governments case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the governments extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery.

The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India, he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrates court.

Mallya, who was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds.
Rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav on Thursday said he will challenge his disqualification from the Rajya Sabha in court and claimed that his opposition to JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar and the BJP resulted in the ouster.

He suggested that he was denied a fair play, noting that the case of embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who looted public exchequer, was sent to the Ethics Committee of Parliament but he was not allowed such an opportunity despite being a veteran parliamentarian who took up peoples causes in his career.

At a press conference, Yadav disapproved of Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidus comments defending his decision but said the institution of the Rajya Sabha was too important to him to attack Naidu.

Even Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani terrorist hanged in India following his conviction in the Mumbai terror attack case, was allowed to exhaust all appeals available to him but in his case the supreme court, an apparent reference to Naidu, gave an order straightaway without referring the matter to a parliamentary committee, he said.

Yadav, who was elected to the Lok Sabha seven times and the Rajya Sabha four times, said in a lighter vein that his new freedom will give him more time in uniting opposition parties against the BJP.

I was not shocked that I have been disqualified... I was expecting the same outcome, he said, suggesting that it was decided in advance.

Noting that he had resigned three times in past as an MP on moral ground, Yadav said had he been interested in power, then he would have been part of the government now.

The constitutional provisions invoked by the Rajya Sabha chairman to disqualify might not apply in his case, he said, noting that he would file an appeal against it in court.

My fight is for principles and democracy. I will fight it in all forums, including court, he said.

Yadav also accused the BJP of using religion to polarise voters in the Gujarat and claimed that the party will suffer defeat like it did in Bihar.

The JD(U) had sought Yadavs disqualification after he attended a RJD rally in Patna in August following his opposition to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumars decision to jettison his partys alliance with the RJD and the Congress and join hands with the BJP.

The disqualification decision came within three months of the JD(U) moving a plea, inviting criticism from opposition leaders.

Naidu, however, said on Wednesday that justice delayed was justice denied, asserting that such matters should be decided quickly.
Taking a leaf out of the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) in Bihar before the 2015 Assembly polls, two prominent Muslim organisations of Bengal have decided to initiate a joint forum of Muslim, dalits and tribals to take on BJP in the state. Though the organisations are apolitical, they want to raise awareness among the political parties to close ranks to thwart saffron designs.

Bengal is heading for rural polls in the summer of 2018. It is supposed to be a rehearsal for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls for which BJP has identified Bengal as a focus state.

Read: Mahisasur has become the rallying point of dalits and tribals in Bengal

The two organisations taking the lead in the initiative are All Bengal Minorities Youth Federation (ABMYF) and All India Sunnat al Jamayat (AISAJ). Between them, the two claim a combined membership of more than 10 lakh. In a public meeting on Wednesday in Kolkata, the leaders said the forum in apolitical so far.

The arithmetic driving the initiative is Muslims comprise 31% population of Bengal, while 29% is formed by scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and tribals. The proposed forum would be named as Shanti, Sanhati, Sampriti Mancha (Forum for peace, unity and harmony). (Though the 2011 census revealed Muslims comprise 27% of the states population, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said in a public meeting on Tuesday that the share is 31%.)

Before the 2015 Assembly elections, Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Janata Dal (United) came together to form a grand alliance. The idea was to polarise Muslim and Yadav votes against the saffron camp.

Read: Nitish Kumar resigns in blow to Mahagathbandhan, will return as Bihar CM with BJP support

We will explain to the people that BJP and the government at the Centre are not only against Muslims, but also against the dalits and tribals. They are humiliated and tortured every day, said Abdul Matin, AISAJ general secretary.

Our target if to unite the three sections on one platform, said Sukriti Ranjan Biswas, president of Samya, Shanti and Sompriti Mancha, a dalit rights activist who was present in the public meeting on Wednesday.

Our target is to create the forum at the earliest and give it shape before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. We are not really bothered about the rural polls, said Mohammad Kamruzzaman, general secretary of All India Minorities Youth Federation.

Read: Adivasis are more discriminated against than Dalits and Muslims: Ramachandra Guha

CPI(M) leaders welcomed the idea. It is a good idea. But whether it will be successful unless they push it in the political arena remains doubtful, said CPI(M) politburo member and Lok Sabha MP Md Salim.

Bengal BJP leaders scoffed at the idea. It is actually a joint conspiracy of CPI(M), Congress and Trinamool against BJP since these parties are scared of the growing popularity of our party, BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha told HT.

The forum will highlight how the Union government is neglecting development of the Muslim, dailt and tribal communities by not releasing the funds for projects specific to development of these three sections, said Mohammad Kamruzzaman, general secretary, ABMYF.

Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee said he is not yet aware of the initiative. There can always be a forum. But I have to speak to my party leaders before forming an opinion, Chatterjee said.

Incidentally, at a programme of state minority affairs department on Tuesday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee lashed out at the Centre for neglecting Muslims, dalits and tribals.

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To bring transgenders into the main stream of society, the Indira Gandhi National Open University has announced free education for them in the coming academic session.

The scheme was initially offered in July 2017. But seeing the positive response from the community, it was decided to extend it to the upcoming session. We got commendable response from the community so we have decided to extend it to the January 2018 session as well, said Dr Manorama Singh, regional director IGNOU.

Singh said the transgender community enrolling in various academic programmes of IGNOU in January 2018 session would be allotted IGNOU Study Centre at Avadh Girls PG College, Lucknow. The IGNOU Study Centre has been recently activated at this college to cater to women students of the city and adjoining area. Short-term professional programmes have been activated at the centre for students studying in the college, so that they may simultaneously enroll into these programmes to enhance their knowledge and employability.

Singh said in this context a request had been made to Zarine Viccajee, president, management of Avadh Girls PG College, Lucknow and she had given her consent to enrolling transgender IGNOU students at the Study Centre.

Dr Upma Chaturvedi, principal, Avadh Girls PG College, assured full support from the faculties to the transgender students during a meeting with Anshuman Upadhyaya and Amit Kumar Srivastava, assistant regional directors of IGNOU.

Anshuman Upadhyaya said that the IGNOU Study Centre established at Avadh Girls PG College had masters level programme in English, anthropology, philosophy and rural development, which could be pursued by women students. The IGNOU bridge course bachelors preparatory programme had also been activated at this centre. Those who had not completed any formal education could enroll into this six-months programme. The last date for admission to various programmes for January 2018 session is December 31, 2017.
A 21-year-old Dalit woman accused a Muslim man of faking his identity to establish friendship with her and raping her with a friend at a cinema hall in Mawana town of Meerut on Tuesday, police said.

Station house officer (SHO), Mawana, Deepak Mishra said after the woman lodged a complaint on Dial 100, the police chased and arrested the accused, identified as Amiruddin and Wasim.

He said Amiruddin faked his identity as Amar to lure the woman.

District office-bearer of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Saurabh Sharma termed the incident as a case of love jihad and demanded stern action against the accused.

He demanded that the state government should take effective measures to check such incidents in future.

After the death of her parents, the woman had been living with her sister in Hastinapur area.

The SHO said about two months ago, the woman came in contact with a man through phone.

The man introduced himself as Amar. Soon, they became friends and also met each other twice.

In her complaint to the police, the woman said Amar called her Tuesday morning and told her that he had got a job in Delhi and wanted to spend some time with her before leaving. He invited her for a movie in Mawana.

They went to the cinema hall where Amars friend Wasim was already waiting for them.

The duo took the woman to the balcony and gang-raped her. They threatened her and forcibly took her with them on a motorcycle.

Read| Uttar Pradesh: Woman gang-raped after being offered lift in car

The woman somehow managed to call Dial 100 after which a police patrol car chased the accused and nabbed them near the Muzaffarnagar bus stand.

During interrogation, Amar disclosed his identity as Amiruddin and said he posed as a Hindu to lure the woman.
Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board chairman Zufar Ahmed Farooqui on Wednesday said senior lawyer and Congress leader Kapil Sibal was not the boards counsel in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title case before the Supreme Court.

The UP Sunni Waqf Board case is being handled by two advocates, namely, Shahid Rizvi and Shakeel Ahmed Saed in the apex court in, he told HT. He said the Board had given no brief to its lawyers to seek more time.

Sibal, he said, was representing one of the private parties in the case and was not the counsel for the waqf board. Haji Mehboob, who has given the statement saying that Sibal was a Sunni Waqf Board lawyer, himself is not a member of the Sunni Waqf Board but an individual party in the matter, he said.

On Tuesday, Sibal had urged the Supreme Court to defer hearing in the Ayodhya title suit till July 2019 when the next Lok Sabha election will be over. However, the demand was brushed aside by the court as it fixed February 8, 2018, for commencing a final hearing in the case.

Following the Sibals statement, Congress distanced itself from the leaders stand, saying that it was his personal opinion.

For his part, Haji Mehboob, one of the litigants in the Ayodhya title dispute, also disassociated himself from Sibals statement in the Supreme Court.

Mehboob said: We want early disposal of the Ayodhya dispute. And this is only possible with day-to-day hearing of the case in the Supreme Court.

Read| Ram temple case: Kapil Sibal says PM should do a fact check after Modi criticism

When asked about Sibals statement, Mehboob said: He (Sibal) is our lawyer . It is true. But he is also a member of a political party. Views expressed by him in court are not that of the Sunni Central Waqf Board. These are his personal views.
The Maharashtra government said it has waived the loans of 41 lakh farmers in the state so far. On Wednesday, it disbursed Rs 5,580 crore to clear the loans of 16.98 lakh farmers. The amount disbursed till date has touched Rs 19,537 crore, said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

While Rs 14,864 crore has been disbursed to waive off loans of farmers found eligible by the state government, another Rs 4,673 crore has been given under the one-time settlement (OTS) scheme, which has benefited 6,05,505 farmers.

Following an unprecedented strike by farmers in June, the Maharashtra government announced a Rs 34,022 crore loan waiver package, called Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana, which was expected to cover 89 lakh farmers. The state imposed a waiver cap of Rs 1.5 lakh for each farmer family. For farmers who have been paying their loans regularly, it declared a cash-back incentive of up to Rs 25,000.

After Fadnavis announced the package, the government asked farmers to submit online application forms to avail of the waiver, and received 56.59 lakh applications, which would cover 77.29 lakh accounts. A budgetary provision of Rs 20,000 crore was also made for implementing the scheme. After the verification process, 69 lakh farmers were found eligible.

However, the verification and disbursal processes have led to a delay of over two months, for which the state government is facing severe criticism. The government, in turn, has blamed banks for providing erroneous data of loan accounts of farmers, sought for verification.

Fadnavis said the loan waiver process will continue until the accounts of eligible farmers are settled.
A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Thursday permitted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to interrogate former media baron Peter Mukerjea in connection with a money laundering case concerning the INX Media deal.

Hiten Venegaokar, the counsel for ED, approached the court hearing the Sheena Bora case, for permission to interrogate Peter in the INX Media case.

The court permitted the ED to question Peter on Friday till 12 pm and on Saturday.

The ED claimed that illicit funds worth 90 million Great Britain pounds were siphoned off to unknown offshore accounts by the Mukerjeas and routed back to UK and India through Mauritius-based foreign investors.

It also claimed that Peters son Rabin is handling the funds, purportedly held in the form of bonds in New Zealand.

According to the ED, INX Media received foreign investment totalling Rs3,053.6 million between August 22, 2007 and May 12, 2008.

This was Rs3,004.4 million in excess of the of Rs 42.2 million INX was allowed.

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Pawan Hans engineers, pilots and technicians have opposed the idea of employees bidding for the company after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in October 2016 gave in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment of Pawan Hans Limited (PHL). Today is the last day of bidding for the companys 51% stakes, while the Expression of Interest (EOI) will open on December 28.

Some of the employees are among the potential bidders, which is allegedly not supported by majority of the employees. In a letter to the PHL chairperson on November 16, the All India Pawan Hans Helicopter Engineers Guild (AIPHEG)  body of bonafied Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and licenced engineers  said the biding purchase of 51% shares as per strategic disinvestment of PHL by the government is offered to the employees of PHL as per annexure 14 of preliminary information memorandum for inviting expression of interest is totally disagreeable to us.

The government proposed to disinvest its entire equity shareholding of 51% in PHL through strategic disinvestment to investors, along with transfer of management control.

In another letter to PHL director on November 29 , joint secretary of ministry of civil aviation minister and the home ministry, (AIPHEG) favoured disinvestment of PHL. The letter stated, We would like a strong corporate house to take over the reins from the present management to run it more efficiently. We are not in favour of the purchase of shares by the employees of PHL. The EOI being applied by few employees of PHL (non-technical support staff) should not be counted as our representation as we have not given any consent.

Denying the allegation, Ram Kishan, head of corporate affairs and deputy general manager of information technology, PHL, said, Most of the employees are with the management.

A Pawan Hans official said, While handful of pilots are supporting the management, majority of them have expressed their opposition. Technicians and engineers are of the opinion that the company will progress only if a private company takes over.

A senior Delhi-based PHL official alleged, PHL has insufficient pilots, technicians and engineer hence more pilots would be hired by the winning bidder, however non-technical staff who apparently are in access could face job issues. This seems to be the reason for the management to not be in favour of disinvestment.

Sources said that interested PHL employees have approached the ministry to extend the deadline of EOI for a month in order to raise funds to bid for it.
The cyber cell of the Mumbai crime branch arrested ex-journalist Ketan Tirodkar, 52, on Thursday for posting defamatory statements against some sitting judges of the Bombay high court and other public servants, including Mumbai police commissioner, on Facebook. Tirodkar was produced in court and remanded in police custody till December 11.

On December 2, Tirodkar posted defamatory remarks about a senior police inspector of the Mumbai crime branch on his Facebook account. He made several allegations against him but posted photographs of a police constable and his family, thinking it was the inspector. Several people reacted and commented on the post, including one comment which said the constables wife threatened to commit suicide if Tirodkar would not remove the photographs.

In the past few months, Tirodkar posted several defamatory statements on social media against several public servants, and a case was registered against him on July 21.

He was arrested under section 509 (Word gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of woman), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation), 500 (punishment for deformation) 505 (2) (statement creating or promoting enmity hatred or ill will between classes), 506 (2) (punishment for criminal intimidation and if threat be to cause death or grievous hurt) of the Indian Penal Code.
State BJP vice-president and industrialist Prasad Lad defeated Congress Dilip Mane to win the by-election to a legislative council seat with 209 votes on Thursday.

Mane won 73 votes of the 284 votes polled. At least 9 Opposition MLAs reportedly cross-voted, as the expected number of votes was more than 85. Significantly, the BJP candidate got 146 votes, apart from Senas 63 from among 288 members of the Assembly.

The feat does not only mean a victory to the BJP, but the party has also proved its claim of support from invisible hands to keep the government afloat without the assistance of Sena MLAs.

The BJP secured 146 votes, which is more than the halfway mark required to prove a majority in case of a no-confidence motion against the government.

By winning the seat, which was earlier with the Congress, the BJP has taken a step ahead in its aim of gaining majority in the upper house. The number of BJP members in the legislative council has reached 18, against the NCPs 23, followed by Congress, which is at 19. By winning a maximum of 21 seats falling vacant in June-July next year, with the help of majority in the legislative Assembly and the local bodies, whose members elect the members to the council, the ruling party is set target to achieve a majority.

Prasad Lad said it was the result of CM Devendra Fadnaviss magical skills. At least 15 members from the Opposition voted for me. The seat was vacated by former Congress leader Narayan Rane, who resigned from the party and the upper house in September. Chhagan Bhujbal of NCP could not vote as he is imprisoned in graft case, while minister of state for animal husbandry and Sena leader Arjun Khotkar was ineligible as his election has been annulled by the court. Two votes were declared invalid for wrong marking, while 2 AIMIM members boycotted the election.

Nitesh, Congress MLA and younger son of Narayan Rane, and NCP MLA Ramesh Kadam, who is imprisoned in a case of financial misappropriation, did not vote for Congress Mane. Narayan Rane has his own political outfit called Maharashtra Swabhimani Paksha and I am his activist, said Nitesh.

Kadam, who was escorted by the police, said that he voted for a BJP candidate as he was jailed for doing nothing. The Congress was expecting at least 87 votes as besides its own 42 MLAs, their candidate was supported by NCPs 40, one each of Samajwadi Party and Communist Party of India (M) and Peasant and Workers Partys 3 MLAs. Even the tally of Congress and NCP makes to 83 votes, against which Mane got 73. If we leave out Bhujbals vote, the party has got nine votes fewer than expected, a Congress leader said.

Congress group leader in the upper house Sharad Ranpise, told HT, It is true that all our MLAs have not voted for the alliance candidate. We will soon hold a meeting to discuss this.
After Mumbai fared much lower than Navi Mumbai and Pune in terms of mobile application usage and citizen feedback in last years Swachh Survekshan survey, the civic body has appointed an independent agency to improve its ranking.

The agency, Feet on the Street, will approach citizens at railway stations, hospitals and markets, and ask them to download the mobile app Swachhata-MoHUA and record their feedback.

Of the 2,000 points that were up for grabs last year, 150 points were awarded on the basis of mobile app usage. Municipalities were also rated based on their promptness to act on complaints received via the Swachhata app.

Vijay Singhal, additional municipal commissioner, in charge of solid waste management, said Our aim is to increase citizen participation and receive constructive criticism so that we can improve.

According to the app data, Mumbai had 9,252 users compared to 18,246 in Navi Mumbai and 11,674 in Pune.

Of the 434 cities that participated in the 2017 survey, Mumbai ranked 29th, dropping 19 ranks below its position in the 2016 survey.

This years survey will be conducted in January.
A day after a brothel owner from Palghar confessed to killing three people, police smashed a cement slab at her house on Wednesday and recovered the skeletal remains of her husband Sahdev, whom she had allegedly murdered in 2004.

Sarita Bharati, 42, and her lover Kamlesh Chavan, stoned Sahdev to death after he caught them in a compromising position, police said.

They disposed of his body in a septic tank, which they covered with cement, said assistant inspector Mansinh Patil of Boisar police.

Police said Sahdevs upper and lower jaw are intact and his bone marrow is in good condition, which means DNA testing can be carried out at the Kalina lab.

Police are digging the surrounding areas to find the skeletal remains of the other victims.

Sarita ran a brothel in Dandipada, Boisar (East). We had arrested her and one of her customers for prostitution under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA) on Sunday. They were remanded in police custody till December 9, when they will be produced before the Palghar court, he said.

Police have not arrested Sarita for murder as they are still investigating the prostitution racket. We are on the hunt for Kamlesh, who is absconding. We will also question her son Sandesh, 25, who is a tempo driver in Palghar, he added.

Police suspect Sandesh, who was a minor then, had aided Sarita and Kamlesh when they murdered Sahdev. They are investigating his role.

After murdering Sahdev, Sarita told neighbours that he was an alcoholic who had deserted her and that is why she did not ask police to register a missing persons case.

The Boisar MIDC police said Sarita recently murdered one of her customers, a Bengali man, as she wanted to steal the Rs1 lakh he was carrying. She has not told us where she disposed of the body, said the official.

Police said Sarita practices black magic and murdered a third person as a human sacrifice.
The man who single-handedly plotted and organised the Sanpada bank heist, 47-year-old Hajid Ali Mirja Baig, has as many as 120 criminal cases registered against him in Pune alone.

Baig, a resident of Govandi, was mainly involved in house breaking theft (HBT) and robbery. He was lodged in a jail in Pune for four years before being released last year.

Thirty lockers of Bank of Barodas Sanpada branch were looted by the culprits by digging a 30-feet long underground tunnel from a nearby shop on the night of November 11. Valuables worth Rs3.43 crore were stolen.

Baig was arrested from Mumbai along with three other accused on November 18. So far, the police have arrested nine men and two women, and recovered stolen goods worth Rs1.49 crore. Four people who played key roles in the crime are yet to be arrested.

Baig had purchased the equipment to loot the bank from different shops in Mumbai. However, he bough the Chinese walki-talkies online, as he did not want to leave any clues for police. The walki-talkies were extensively used by the gang to coordinate the entire plan, as substitute for mobile phones.

Baigs family is involved in the business of selling fish in the markets of Mumbai, said Suraj Padvi, senior police inspector, Sanpada police station.

Baig, however, drew no pleasure from that business, and started looting houses in different cities, in Maharashtra and other states. In the state, he is wanted in Aurangabad, Nagpur, and Mumbai among others. Outside Maharashtra, he has criminal cases at Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, and some cities in Gujarat.

Padvi said, He would loot houses, and then sell the goods through his associates. A few years ago, he even opened a jewellery store at Zaveri Bazaar in Mumbai to sell stolen gold, but it shut down within a short span of time.

Baig was tired of petty crimes, and hence had planned to commit one major crime that would give him enough cash and comfort for the rest of his life. Another wanted accused, Deepak Mishra, had helped him recruit labourers from Uttar Pradesh, Padvi said.

An XUV that the police have recovered from the gangs possession was registered in Baigs name. He had used that vehicle for many other crimes earlier.

Baig divorced his first wife around a decade ago, and later married another woman. He has two daughters with his second wife, said another police officer.

The police have recovered 3.45kg gold from Baigs possession. He is in police custody till December 9.

Hemant Nagrale, police commissioner of Navi Mumbai, said, For now, the accused have been booked under relevant sections of the IPC. But we are in a process of applying the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in this case.

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The unseasonal showers that Mumbai witnessed on Tuesday could result in a sudden drop in temperature over the next few days and result in spread of viral infections. Doctors in the city fear that there could a rise in the cases of people having fever, cold and cough, and in even dengue and malaria cases may return.

Most doctors HT spoke to said changing temperatures are ideal for viruses to thrive.

The number of virus particles increase whenever there is a difference in temperature. Also there is higher particulate matter in the air, which increases the chances of upper respiratory infections, said Dr Anita Mathew Davis, infectious disease specialist at the civic-run Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital.

While patients have been lining up at clinics to get treated for cold and cough, doctors said they may see a rise in such cases in the following weeks.

Dr Gautam Bhansali, consultant physician at Bombay Hospital, Marine Lines, said cases of viral infection, sore throat, acute gastroenteritis and food poising are expected to rise.

People must avoid eating food from roadside stalls. Moreover, they must not have anything cold such as ice-creams in this weather, and avoid direct exposure to air conditioners as it increases the chances of getting a sore throat, Bhansali said.

Doctors are worried that water stagnation at certain locations owing to the rains will also result in a spike in mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria.

Dr Padmaja Keskar, citys executive health officer, said the pest control department has been instructed to remove all the odd articles where the water may have got collected.

We are worried about the rise in dengue and malaria cases. It may happen over the next eight to ten days. Usually, the mosquito-borne cases drop during the months of December and November, but this year we will have to monitor them closely, she said.
The state housing minister, Prakash Mehta, will now appear before the Maharashtra Lokayukta on January 8 to give his clarification in a corruption case in connection with the slum rehabilitation scheme at MP Mill compound in Tardeo.

State Lokayukta ML Tahiliyani, in his preliminary investigation, found substance in the allegations of corruption against the minister. To get the ministers version, the Lokayukta asked him to appear before him on December 6.

Mehta on Wednesday sought time for a month on the grounds that he is currently busy campaigning for the Gujarat elections, after which he will have to attend the winter session of the state legislature starting in Nagpur from December 11.

The Lokayukta has asked Mehta to file his explanation supported by an affidavit. He has also been allowed to produce true copies of the documents on which he wants to rely for his defence, senior officials said.

On the request of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the governor on September 6 ordered a Lokayukta investigation into the scheme. On November 22, the Lokayukta wrote to governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao and chief minister, informing them that he is inclined to conduct an investigation in the case based on the findings of his preliminary investigation.

The Lokayukta found the housing ministers approval to a proposal of the slum rehabilitation authority (SRA) to use section 3K of Slum Act  which allows extra building rights to be transferred to a scheme for project affected persons (PAP) -- improper. The housing minister should have rejected the proposal as the section empowers the state to issue directives related to policy making and cannot be used for a particular case, the Lokayukta said in the report.

The approval resulted in benefit of extra sale component of 10255.88sqm, the Lokayukta pointed out. In the present case, it is necessary to determine whether the minister abused his position as public servant to obtain gains for a developer or was actuated by improper motives, said the Lokayukta report.
Strongly disapproving of the manner in which Sanjay Leela Bhansalis film Padmavati has been held up, the Bombay high court called it a censorship of a different kind on Thursday. Noting the threats issued to lead actress Deepika Padukone, the court said it was an indication of what we have come to.

Here we have a situation in which a chief minister says he will not allow the film to be released, said a division bench of justices SC Dharmadhikari and Bharati Dangre. Tomorrow, people will not be able to convene meetings and express their views, they said.

The bench was hearing petitions filed by the families of rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar and Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare, who complained that the investigation into the murders of the two men was progressing slowly.

Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013. Pansare, who was shot in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015, succumbed to his injuries four days later. While the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating the Dabholkar murder, a special investigating team of the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is investigating Pansares killing.

At the core of these crimes are bold attempts being made by fringe groups to attack those who voice rational views, thoughts, feelings and expressions, the judges said.

In which other countries are artists and performers threatened? the bench asked senior advocate Ashok Mundargi, who represented the Maharashtra government, and additional solicitor general Anil Singh, who appeared for the CBI.

It is distressing to know that a person who makes a feature film, which several people work tirelessly towards, is unable to release it owing to continued threats, the bench said.

The bench said people were threatening to reward those who kill the performers. Such open threats are being televised publically. Nothing is being done about them, the judges said.

They added that what concerned them was that Indias image and reputation was being harmed. We can no longer take pride in the fact that we are the worlds largest democracy, they said.

The bench said states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka are known for their progressive thinking and their social reformers, thinkers, performers and artists. Such incidents put a dent in their reputation, it said.

The court asked the CID and CBI to speed up their probes, saying agencies in other countries ensured that those suspected of attacks were apprehended dead or alive, within hours. But, we have not learnt anything from incidents such as the attack on the Parliament or our Prime Minister. They added that such serious matters could not be allowed to drag on for years.

Mundargi and Singh assured the court that senior CID and CBI officials would meet and share information to trace the absconding accused.

The petitions have been posted for further hearing on December 21.
Two Bangladeshi men were arrested by the Thane antihuman trafficking cell on Wednesday for allegedly kidnapping a 16-year-old girl from the neighbouring country and raping her over a month. The accused  Liyan alias Saurabh Noor Islam Mulla, 20, and his uncle, Shohag Mohammed Shabib Islam, 25  were remanded in police custody till December 12.

According to the police, the girl was kept in a rented house in Bangalore and was brought to Thane on the pretext that she was being sent back to Bangladesh.

The girl was allegedly in a relationship with Mulla for a year and was brought to India last month on the promise of marriage. A police officer from the Thane station, said Mulla lured the girl with the promise of marriage. He told her that they would visit Bangalore for a month before getting married. However, after coming to India, she was forced into prostitution and raped repeatedly.

On a tip-off, the Thane police sent a decoy officer to Mulla who agreed to sell the girl for Rs75,000. Mulla was arrested from Shivaji hospital, Kalwa.

The two have been charged under relevant sections of the POCSO and IPC.

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The Ghaziabad police on Thursday arrested Malook, in connection with the attack on National Investigation Agency (NIA) and UP police teams in Nahali village of Ghaziabad on Sunday, from near Seemapuri border.

UP police officers said they have informed the NIA of the development as the accused is also suspected of supplying arms for the murder an RSS worker, Ravinder Gosain, in Ludhiana.

Gosain was shot dead by two unidentified persons on a bike outside his Gagandeep Colony residence in Ludhiana on October 17. The Punjab police registered a case and arrested two accused, Ramandeep Singh and Hardeep Singh, who were transferred to NIA custody on November 22. Hardeep is stated to be from Italy, while his ancestral residence in Amloh, Fatehgarh Sahib.

The police said the accused admitted to their involvement in eight incidents of murder and attempted murder in Punjab that have taken place since January 2016. It is also claimed that targets in the incident were members of the RSS and other Hindu organisations, apart from a Christian pastor, Sultan Masih, who was murdered in July 2017 in Ludhiana.

The NIA claimed that the murders were executed under a larger conspiracy to destabilise Punjab and was hatched by Sikh extremist elements based in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

The police said that during questioning, the duo named others from western UP who had supplied weapons for executing the murders.

Following this, the teams of NIA and UP police raided Nahali village in Ghaziabad early morning on December 3 but were allegedly attacked by villagers and a constable also suffered a bullet injury. During the melee, Malook managed to flee police custody.

The Ghaziabad police lodged a case of attempt to murder and rioting against several persons and 60 unidentified persons.

He was arrested from Seemapuri border near Delhi in connection with the attack on NIA and police teams on Sunday. We have informed NIA officials and they will be arriving to question the accused, AK Maurya, superintendent of police (rural), Ghaziabad, said.

We are still questioning him and will produce at a court on Friday, Maurya said.

Police sources said that after fleeing their custody, Malook went into hiding and stayed at railway stations, small dhabas and hotels in Ghaziabad and areas bordering Delhi.

The police also arrested Nau Bahar, Malooks brother, in connection with the attack on police teams. So far, the police have arrested five persons, including Malook, in connection with the case lodged at Bhojpur.

Following the incident, most of the young men from Nahali fled the village and have not returned, the police said.

The men may return now as the police have arrested Malook. We expect the police will release some pressure after his arrest and people will return. As of now, only women and children from the majority of families are staying in the village, said Shaukeen, a villager.

The Ghaziabad police said that as many as 11 cases are pending against Malook at Anand Vihar in Delhi, Bulandshahr, Hapur and Ghaziabad.

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To reduce congestion on the Delhi-Noida-Direct (DND) Flyway, the Noida authority has given its go-ahead for shifting South Delhi Municipal Corporations (SDMC) toll collection booths to the defunct DND toll plaza.

At present, MCD toll and environment compensation cess (ECC) are collected over a kilometre ahead of the DND toll plaza, towards Delhi. This causes congestion on the four-lane stretch from Noida to Delhi as commercial vehicles paying the toll and ECC occupy almost two lanes of the stretch.

In comparison, there are 16 lanes at the erstwhile DND toll plaza for movement of vehicles from Noida to Delhi and this can be used for toll collection, officials said. The DND Flyway has eight lanes (four-lane dual carriageway) for two-way vehicular movement.

Noida authoritys officer on special duty, Rajesh Singh, said, We have given a no-objection certificate to SDMC for shifting toll booths to the DND toll plaza. They have been told to ensure that shifting of toll booths to the DND toll plaza does not interfere with the high courts directions.

Noida authority gave its assent at a high-level meeting held between the officials of the Noida authority and Delhi government.

Two to three lanes on the left-hand side of the toll plaza, from Noida to Delhi, will be reserved for the purpose and the arrangements are likely to be finalised in a couple of days, officials said.

SDMC has already put up four porta cabins about a hundred metres ahead of the DND toll plaza for collecting the municipal and environmental taxes.

Until October 26, 2016, MCD toll and ECC were collected at one of the booths of the DND toll plaza on the Delhi-Noida border by the concessionaire, NTBCL, on dedicated lanes.

With the Allahabad high court order scrapping toll collection on the DND Flyway by the concessionaire following a petition by the federation of Noida residents welfare associations (FONRWA) that the concessionaire had already made profits after recovering construction costs, operations at the toll were stopped and the MCD toll collection booth had to be moved from the toll plaza.

Since the DND toll was scrapped, commuters have been facing congestion near the MCD toll plaza. The problem gets compounded in the night when there is a movement of heavy transport vehicles on the DND Flyway.

FONRWAs secretary-general, AN Dhawan, said the issue must be resolved between the Delhi government and Noida authority sooner than later. It has been over a year that commuters have been facing inconvenience due to the MCD toll booth on DND Flyway. Ideally, the toll booth should be in Delhi. But, if in the larger interest of the commuters, the two parties have agreed upon shifting it to the erstwhile DND toll plaza, it must be implemented soon.

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It may be coincidental, but it is perhaps only appropriate that the Gujarat elections are being held in the week of the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition. The BJP, after all, hasnt lost a single election in Gujarat over this period and the rath yatra, which led to the Babri Masjids destruction, rolled out from the state. In the aftermath of the demolition, the BJP lost elections across several north Indian states but Gujarat has remained a saffron bastion, the original Hindutva laboratory whose political narrative has been shaped by the forces that spearheaded the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Remember, it was Narendra Modi who planned the first leg of the rath yatra from Somnath through Gujarat in 1990: It was his original moment in the political sun. LK Advani, the ideological mascot and leader of the temple movement, also chose Gandhinagar as his Lok Sabha constituency, reaffirming the strong connect between the BJP and Gujarat. Many of the kar sevaks  the footsoldiers who participated in the Ram shila pujan -- were from Gujarat. The VHP in particular, enjoyed a dominant position in Gujarat: Its Gujarat-based leader Praveen Togadia was once the most-powerful man in the state. Some VHP cadres were at the forefront of the horrific 2002 Gujarat rioting to avenge the Godhra train burning.

In no other state has the BJP so unapologetically practised the politics of hard Hindutva and pushing for a consolidated Hindu vote. This year is no different. The BJP may talk loftily of vikas and the Gujarat model of growth, but on the ground, there has always been a conscious attempt to stoke religious identity. Why else would chief minister Vijay Rupani warn his voters of a return to Latif Raj if the Congress comes to power? (Latif was a gangster who was patronised by the political class in the 1980s and 90s). Why else would BJP president Amit Shah raise the issue of Rohingya Muslims in an election rally in Bhavnagar? And why would Modi refer to Aurangzeb Raj by selectively quoting Congress leader, Mani Shankar Aiyar? And why would local BJP leaders describe the young opposition troika of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mewani as HAJ or indeed, remind voters that Congress leader Ahmed Patel is a Miyan?

The potency of the BJPs Hindutva appeal has meant that the Congress has abandoned any pretence of standing by secular values in Gujarat. No Congress leader dares mention the 2002 riots for fear of stirring another Hindu-Muslim polarisation. Rahul Gandhis temple-hopping spree has been designed to send the message that the Congress is not an anti-Hindu party as the BJP has successfully managed to portray so far. The states 10% Muslims are now inconsequential to its politics.

And yet, there are winds of change blowing across Gujarats dusty tracks that have made this an unusual election. The clamour for Patidar reservations is one sign that the notion of a unified Hindutva identity is slowly beginning to crack. The demand for diluting the Goods and Services Tax is a reflection of trader anger at what is perceived as high-handed government intervention in the business cycle in a state where dhandho (business) is the ultimate driving force. When cotton farmers in Saurashtra demand a hike in the minimum support price, when students in Mehsana protest against high fees in private institutions, when businessmen in Surat insist nothing happens in Gandhinagar without a bribe, there is a genuine sense that Gujarat is no longer easily swayed by high-pitched Hindu-Muslim rhetoric. After 22 years of near-uninterrupted BJP rule, a measure of anti-incumbency has finally set in.

Which is why the BJP has been forced to play its ultimate brahmastra in Gujarat: The appeal of Modi as the son-of-the-soil who embodies a sense of Gujarati pride. The prime ministers charisma maybe fraying at the edges, but he remains a magnet for the pragmatic Gujarati who realises the benefits of having a central government that will not be hostile to Gandhinagar. The urban Gujarati in particular seems to be willing to give the BJP one more chance, one reason why the party with its strong organisational machine should still win the winter election. But even if it wins the election, the BJP must realise that it is slowly losing the narrative: the large crowds which leaders like Hardik Patel are attracting is proof that the younger Gujarati voter will no longer be taken for granted.

Henceforth, the politics of religion may be subject to diminishing returns.

Post script: In Surat, a group of traders, traditional BJP supporters, angrily castigate the government. So who will you vote for, I ask. Vote to BJP ko hee denge, hum naaraz hai, gaddar nahi! (We are angry but not traitors).

Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author

rajdeepsardesai52@gmail.com)

The views expressed are personal

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It seems that Chinas leaders have now forsaken Deng Xiaopings advice to tao guang yang hui (keep a low profile). In declaring a new era for China during Octobers 19th National Congress in Beijing, President Xi Jinping presented the Chinese system of governance as a model for other countries to emulate. Leaders who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence, Xi said, should look to China as a new option.

Developing countries, particularly in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, seem awestruck by this possibility. Chinas official news agency, Xinhua, has even suggested that as the Wests democracies falter, enlightened Chinese democracy could offer a path forward.

Amid all the lofty rhetoric, it is worth asking: what, precisely, is the Chinese model of economic and political development? And, is it actually preferable to the alternatives?

Chinas model comprises a number of key characteristics, including authoritarian governance buttressed by the perception of stability; State-guided industrial policy and finance; massive infrastructure investments; rural industrialisation backed by small-scale agriculture; and openness to foreign trade and technology. This model has, no doubt, produced rapid economic growth in China over the last three decades, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

But the implication that the first ingredient  authoritarianism  is necessary for rapid development misses the mark. In fact, it is this characteristic of the Chinese system that should give other countries the greatest pause.

Consider Chinas East Asian neighbours  in particular, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Each has achieved high growth through State-guided industrial policy, rural industrialisation, and openness to trade. But Japan achieved these objectives within the framework of its postwar democracy, while South Korea and Taiwan have been democracies for three decades. Authoritarianism, in other words, served no necessary modernising role.

Democracy is, to be sure, exasperatingly slow and often contentious. But its deliberative and electoral processes help mitigate conflicts, especially in heterogeneous and conflict-ridden societies. Even in a more homogeneous country like China, the absence of open public discourse does the opposite, as evidenced by the States mishandling of ethnic unrest among Tibetans and Uighurs.

Without a strong civil society or an independent judiciary to check government power, Chinese leaders have, on many occasions, made catastrophic errors in judgment. Look no further than Mao Zedongs Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. Xi, too, has blundered. For example, his decision to order Chinas State-owned enterprises (SOEs) to prop up Chinas falling stock market in 2015 was an epic miscalculation.

Once foreign exchange reserves held by the Peoples Bank of China stopped flowing to struggling SOEs, the market fell to the same low levels as before intervention. By that point, hundreds of billions of dollars had been wasted.

The absence of political checks and institutional mechanisms for public scrutiny has also encouraged abuse of power and high levels of corruption, contributing to high inequality, arbitrary land grabs, unsafe working conditions, food safety scares, and toxic pollution, among other problems. While Xis energetic anti-corruption efforts may stem some injustices, without fundamental political reform, his campaign against dishonest party officials is likely to be a Sisyphean task  when it is not merely a ploy to curb potential political rivals.

Economic management suffers from similar opacity. At the moment, there are few, if any, checks on debt-fuelled investment by SOEs or politically connected firms. This shortcoming, to the extent that it results in massive misallocation of capital, is and will remain a source of major macroeconomic uncertainty for China.

As Chinas economy becomes more complex, the absence of transparent and accountable governance processes, combined with frequent crackdowns on civil society and efforts to enforce conformity and discipline, will ultimately stifle entrepreneurship and innovation. It does not help that, while Chinas expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP is now quite high, much of it is in the public sector. If the SOEs remain too-big-to-fail, this will create a further drag on innovation. As China graduates from the catch-up phase of economic development, addressing this constraint will only become more important.

The lack of openness and transparency could also test political stability. In the face of crisis, Chinas leaders often overreact by repressing dissent. Collective and pragmatic leadership in recent decades has done a reasonable job of managing the problem, but Xis consolidation of power, and the cult of personality surrounding him, could exacerbate instability.

Democratic governments, for all their messiness, are less fragile, as they draw their legitimacy from pluralism and political contestation, rather than from high economic growth or nationalist appeals. Judicial decisions overturning US President Donald Trumps arbitrary travel bans in the United States, or similar rebukes of the Indian governments attempts to criminalise dissent, are examples of how institutional autonomy strengthens the resilience of democratic political systems  resilience that China lacks.

Despite the official narrative, most of the features of the Chinese system of governance that Xi has championed have little to do with him. They are vestiges of Chinas imperial or early communist governments: A performance-based meritocratic promotion system; an organisational framework that ensures top-down loyalty without compromising the quality of local governance; and a unique system of political centralisation combined with economic and administrative decentralisation.

In other words, for all its allure, the Chinese model is deficient in some basic respects, and not easily reproducible in others. Any country that takes to heart Xis invitation to emulate China but does not have a similar organisational history will likely be unsatisfied. Not only is China politically unique, but it also possesses a large and increasingly prosperous domestic market that enables it to lure foreign investment on its own terms.

So, no matter what the Middle Kingdoms newest emperor might claim, development with Chinese characteristics is really only for China.

Pranab Bardhan is author and professor, University of California, Berkeley

Project Syndicate, 2017

The views expressed are personal
Protests by the Right-wing Islamists, led by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah and its Islamist allies that disrupted daily life in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi belt, ended after the Pakistan government capitulated to the Right-wing Barelvi bigots demand that law minister Zahid Hamid resign. He was accused of committing blasphemy. The role of the Pakistani army was quite mysterious, proving once again that the military-mullah nexus, promoted by the former dictator General Zia ul-Huq, was active and flourishing.

Hamids resignation became the central demand of the protesters who had blocked a major highway and could not be dispersed either by negotiations or by the police. The court had ordered their dispersal and even threatened the interior minister with contempt of court, if the government failed to act. The protest leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, invoked an assurance from army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa while agreeing to call-off the protest. Surprisingly, the protesters beat back the police with a dozen deaths and hundreds injured. The whole episode again raised questions of Pakistani armys intervention in domestic politics and the role of the Right-wing bigots and terrorist organisations, as allies of the army.

Last month, the government pushed through an amended election bill in the National Assembly amidst protests by Opposition benches. The amendment facilitated former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to regain his position as head of his PML(N). In the same bill, the textual change in the oath was made. Thereafter, events spiralled out of control, though the government backtracked. By then the protesters dug in and refused to budge. The Pakistan government sought the armys help. The armys refusal to help can be interpreted in two ways  the army being hand-in-glove with the Islamists or reluctant to use force against its Right-wing allies. General Bajwa went public by asking the government to resolve the issue peacefully and took the position that using violence against the people would be damaging to a national institution like the army.

Blasphemy in Pakistan has led to frequent killings and is also a tool for applying pressure by the army and its Islamist allies. Even judges and lawyers involved in blasphemy litigation have not been spared. The army leverages the blasphemy tool to intimidate anyone who crosses its path, including politicians. A stray rumour floated by an interested quarter can lead to protests and murderous assault on those accused of blasphemy. Hundreds of people have been arrested and killed after being accused of blasphemy, many on false and flimsy charges.

At the core of all these problems is the ongoing power struggle between the PML(N) and the army. The ouster of Nawaz Sharif as PM was seen by many as a backroom conspiracy in which the army played a prominent role. The army wants to see the back of Sharif but the latter is not giving up without a fight, relying on his popular political support. The army remains uncomfortable with any popular civilian leader. No PM in Pakistan has ever served a full five-year term. In an earlier era, the army would simply move in and eject a civilian government in the old fashioned coup detat.

The direct coup is now passe. The army has developed more sophisticated methods of removing elected PMs who they feel have become too independent. Any PM who shows any independent streak in areas like policy towards Afghanistan and India swiftly becomes a target for destabilisation. That is how the army maintains its centrality in the power structure in Pakistan, with allies drawn from the Islamist parties whose agenda suits the army.

The military-mullah alliance is fundamental to the pervasive role of the army in Pakistans polity. This trend has led to many Islamist and terrorist organisations seeking the status of political parties, a move dubbed as mainstreaming of terrorists. Hafiz Saeed, the head of LeT and JuD, and an internationally designated terrorist, was recently released by a court, ostensibly on lack of evidence. The prosecutor was blamed by the court for not producing adequate evidence, undoubtedly under pressure from the army.

Saeed has now petitioned the UN that his name should now be removed from the international list of terrorists. Former dictator General Pervez Musharraf has publicly extolled the virtues of LeT and JuD and expressed his admiration and love for Saeed. Clearly, the army has been emboldened by Chinas consistent support and is again trying to re-engineer domestic politics and undermine Sharifs PML(N). In this current scenario there seems little hope of any improvement in India-Pakistan relations.

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty is distinguished fellow, ORF, Delhi, and served as the last Indian Consul-General in Karachi

The views expressed are personal
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday banned bursting of crackers on New Years eve and a day later in Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana, excluding areas under the national capital region (NCR).

The court also put a ban on bursting of crackers during marriages and other celebratory functions in these areas. The ban order will remain in place till January 11, the next date of hearing.

The order was passed during the resumed hearing of a suo motu petition initiated ahead of Diwali in October following reports of rising levels of pollution. The high court had then fixed the time slot of 6.30pm to 9.30pm for bursting crackers on Diwali in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. It had later restricted fireworks timings to three hours on Gurpurb, the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, on November 4.

The districts under NCR in Haryana where HC order will not be applicable are Jhajjar, Gurgaon, Mewat, Palwal, Panipat, Rewari, Sonepat, Rohtak, Karnal, Mahendergarh, Faridabad, Bhiwani and Jind. The districts where the order will be applicable are Ambala, Fatehabad, Sirsa, Hisar, Yamunagar, Kurukshetra, Dadri and Panchkula.

A detailed order is awaited in this regard.

Senior advocate Anupam Gupta, who is amicus curiae (friend of the court) in the matter, said, The order will be applicable in entire Punjab and Chandigarh and areas excluding NCR in Haryana. NCR districts have been kept out of the ambit of the order since Supreme Court too is seized of the matter.

There are no checks. Marriages are on in Chandigarh and Punjab. High court orders are being flouted with impunity. There is no compliance, the HC bench of justice AK Mittal and justice Amit Rawal observed, while directing enforcement agencies such as police, district authorities and state pollution control boards to ensure compliance of orders.

As per reports submitted by Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana before the high court, there was a considerable decrease in pollution levels on Diwali after the high court banned bursting of crackers. After the high court orders this year, authorities were allowed to issue only 20% of last years licences for setting up temporary cracker shops across both the states and Chandigarh.
The Batala police claim to have arrested an agent of Pakistans secret service agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), at a naka near Purian Khurad village on Thursday. A team of Sadar police station under SHO Mukhtar Singh had set up the naka on specific inputs from officials of the Military Counter intelligence. The accused, Gurmukh Singh alias Guri, is said to be passing information on the movement of the Indian Army and location of its camps to the ISI for the past eight years.

Two mobile phones, a passport and some pictures of army camps and army vehicles have been recovered from his possession.

Talking to HT, Batala SSP Opinderjit Singh Ghuman said, A spy Gurmukh Singh, alias Guri, has been arrested for passing on human-intelligence pertaining to the movement of army vehicles to ISI officials. Gurmukh, of Chaamka village in Mattewal police station of Amritsar district, had visited Pakistan in 2009 and 2012 as part of a Sikh pilgrimage. There, he developed a network with ISI agents.

He had been passing on sensitive information to them for the past eight years, he added.

Initial investigation shows that the accused used WhatApp and Facebook to send information across. He often made calls to contacts in Pakistan. We are yet to ascertain what damage that the information he sent across may have done to the army, Ghuman added. A case under Sections 3, 4, 5, 9 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC has been registered against him.
People promoting gangsters and their activities on social media beware!

The Mohali police plans to zero in on all such sympathisers treading on the wrong side of the law.

A senior district police officer, who did not wish to be named, said that anyone found posting videos or pictures of weapons or highlighting activities of gangsters will have to pay a price.

The criminal investigation agency (CIA) will start monitoring Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp pages and groups and maintain a list of such sympathisers, he said.

This list will be forwarded to police stations and the station house officer (SHO) concerned will visit the house of such people, who are mostly youngsters. Their families will be informed about the youngsters activities and the latter will be warned against promoting gangsters and their lifestyle.

If these people dont refrain from their activities on social media, they will be rounded up and criminal proceedings will be initiated against them, said the police officer.

On December 4, the CIA had arrested four youngsters in the age group of 19-24 for being allegedly involved in smuggling and selling of weapons through social media sites. Police said interrogation of gangsters, including Lawrence Bishnoi, revealed that such youngsters were becoming their easy targets and they were adding them to their WhatsApp groups.

A special cell in the intelligence wing of Punjab Police has also been created to curb the influence of gangsters on the youth.

17 jail officials providing facilities to gangsters zeroed in

The Mohali police have prepared a list of 17 jail officials who have been providing unauthorised facilities, such as mobile phones and other luxury items, to gangsters and other high-profile criminals in Punjab jails. Sources said the list has been prepared on the basis of interrogation of criminals brought here on production warrants. The list has been sent to the top jail officials and the Punjab director general of police. Recently, when gangster Lawrence Bishnoi was brought here from the Faridkot jail, police recovered two mobile phones from him. Over the past five months, more than 30 mobile phones have been recovered and seized from the jail, where around 25 gangsters are lodged.
The special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged Murthal gangrapes reported during the February 2016 Jat quota violence is learnt to have told the Punjab and Haryana high court that it could neither find any victim nor accused in the case after nearly 18 months of court-monitored probe.

The final report was submitted in a sealed cover to the court on Thursday and is yet to be made public. Top government sources, however, told Hindustan Times that the SIT headed by inspector general Mamta Singh could not find anyone who could corroborate the claims of gangrapes at Murthal on the Delhi-Chandigarh National highway, which had witnessed blockades and violence by the Jat protesters.

Over 500 hundred witnesses were examined. The mobile tower dump from Ambala to Palwal (of those who travelled on fateful night) was scanned. A large number of people were also contacted. But none came forward to confirm that rapes had taken place, a top official said.

The SIT was constituted under the high court order and the FIR into the alleged gangrapes was registered in April 2016 after courts intervention. Five suspects were also held. Their DNA did not match with that of semen found on clothes at the site claimed to be that of crime, added the official.

The alleged gangrapes, according to a newsreport by an English daily, took place on the intervening night of February 22 and 23, when Jats seeking quota were protesting across the state. The high court had taken suo motu note of the report in February 2016. The beleaguered state government had roped in Tushar Mehta , additional solicitor general, to defend it.

The official added that some witnesses have told that women were manhandled. Hence, cases of molestation or sexual harassment are made out. In some FIRs, the relevant sections have been added, he added, further stating that the SIT could not have probed the matter for indefinite period. As per SIT, their investigation is over. Now it is up to court to consider the material and make an opinion whether the case needs to be handed over to the CBI for further probe, added the official.

The final report has come at a time when SITs is facing criticism before court for shoddy probe. In August, a high court division bench had asked SIT to get to the bottom of the case and file a final report. The SIT has already submitted over a dozen interim reports in the HC.

The case has now been adjourned for January 2018 when the court will take up this report and decide on CBI probe. On Thursday, the government also submitted other case-related material such as case diaries and statements obtained by the police in the run-up to investigation in the court.

The HC asked the Haryana government to provide call, phone locations details of then inspector general of police (IGP), deputy inspector general of police (DIG), superintendent of police (SP) of Sonepat area and local station house officer (SHO) of Murthal for the period between February 19 and 22, 2016, by the next date of hearing.

(The story has been updated)

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A 42-year-old woman from Atti village in Goraya town of the district, who had been stuck in Saudi Arabia for past six months, landed in New Delhi on Wednesday morning.

After her arrival, an emotional Sonia Ram Murti hugged her children and husband. Speaking to Hindustan Times over phone, Sonia said, I will never visit any country again. This is my second birth and I am very thankful to Bhagwant Mann for bringing me back to my family.

Sonias husband Lal Chan said his wife had gone to Saudi Arabia after she was allegedly duped by a New Delhi-based travel agent Neha. Five months ago, she lured my wife by offering a maids job, free accommodation and a salary of Rs 20,000 per month. But she was beaten and forced to work for over 18 hours without getting any salary, her husband Lal Chand said.

Three videos of Sonia, in which she appealed the Centre and Aam Aadmi Party MP Bhagwant Mann to help her, had gone viral on social media a month back.

In the videos, Sonia had claimed of leading a miserable life and that her landlord was harassing her physically and mentally for last four months. The AAP MP later sought help of the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

My life has become hell here. I am not allowed to sleep before 2 am and have to do all household work. Bhagwant Mann ji please helps me. I will die here. I have been held hostage and am being harassed by my landlord, she was seen saying in one of the videos.
Actor Nivin Pauly plays famed highwayman Kochunni in upcoming Malayalam period drama Kayamkulam Kochunni, being directed by Roshan Andrrews. The team has been shooting non-stop over the last few months extensively in Karnataka. Amala Paul was originally roped in to play the leading lady; however, the actor chose to opt out as the dates for this project were clashing with other commitments. Apparently, the makers have brought Priya Anand as Amalas replacement and she has already shot two schedules for the film. This is Priyas second Malayalam film after she made her debut with Prithviraj-starrer Ezra, which released earlier this year.

Priyas character played a pivotal role in the life of Kochunni and whats really interesting is that she didnt play his love interest. The film will bring on screen the life of Keralas most wanted thief, who was believed to be their Robin Hood. According to industry sources, the movie will also focus on the relationships and friendships of Kochunni. Through the research, the films scriptwriter Bobby found out that Kochunni was not merely a thief but he also fought against caste propaganda and cruelty on people from backward communities. Binod Pradhan of Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag fame will crank the camera. The film went on the floors in September earlier this year in Uduppi, Karnataka where the makers shot predominant portion of the film.

Nivin Pauly, in order to play his character, got trained in Kalaripayattu, ancient martial arts form of Kerala. Nivin will be seen sporting a shot crop and a handlebar mustache. On the career front, Nivin awaits the release of Tamil film Richie, slated to release on Friday. He also has Geethu Mohandass Moothon, apart from Hey Jude and Love Action Drama in his kitty. Next year, he is expected to start shooting for Malayalam film Kairali, based on the disappearance of a bulk carrier, owned by Kerala Shipping Corporation.

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Director Vikram Kumar, best known for films such as 13 B, Manam and Suriyas 24, is currently busy with the post-production of Akhil Akkinenis Telugu actioner Hello, slated for December 22 release. On Wednesday, actor-producer Akkineni Nagarjuna, while talking to reporters in Hyderabad, confirmed that Vikram will team up with his elder son Naga Chaitanya sometime in early 2019. Impressed with his work in Hello, Nagarjuna requested Vikram to work with Chaitanya and the latter immediately gave his nod.

Speaking about Hello, Nagarjuna revealed interesting details about the film. We are really happy with the response to the trailer of Hello. In just 3-4 days, the trailer has clocked over 8 million across all social media platforms. Talking about the films premise, he said that the entire story takes place in a single day. The story is about a young boy and girl getting separated as childhood friends and reuniting after 15 years. She gives the boy a phone number when they separate and he keeps calling her every single day till they meet. Thats why the film has been titled Hello.

Nagarjuna also confirmed that the films audio launch will take place on December 10 in Vishakhapatnam on a grand scale. At the event, Akhil will sing and perform a track from the album.

Ahead of the release, Akhil will promote the film in the US on December 19 and 20. Produced by Nagarjuna, the film marks the acting debut of Kalyani, daughter of filmmaker Priyadarshan. Nagarjuna said the film has high-octane action sequences and theyll be the biggest highlight.

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Yes, from people during the 2008 campaign, with at least Hamas, and with Iran. And now? The insane left is attempting to criminalize such stuff, until the Dims do it next time.
Actor Simbu is making his debut as a composer with Santhanam starrer upcoming Tamil comedy Sakka Podu Podu Raja. The films audio launch happened in Chennai on Wednesday evening and its biggest highlight was an emotional speech by Simbu, who was recently held accountable for the losses of his film AAA by producer Michael Rayappan. At the event, Simbu clarified a few things and it couldnt have come at a better time. Reacting to the comments made by producer Rayappan on the failure of AAA, Simbu said: I know Im at fault here. I admit the film didnt do well. We did a film we thought the fans will enjoy but it did not work. It was supposed to be made as a single film but due to budget issues we decided to make it as two films. What bothered me the most is that the producer could have approached me with this issue instead of blowing it out of proportion six months after the films release.

En Kanney patrum pola iruku.. Lovable pic sir... Best moment of Sakka podu podu raja audio launch.Str sir and dhanush fans are happy and they stopped comparing u both sir. Be best frds always sir.God bleSS u both family members sir... @dhanushkraja @ash_r_dhanush pic.twitter.com/rVhccrS9Jv  Abinesh (@abioffl_) December 7, 2017

Following Rayappans explosive speech about Simbu, it was rumoured that the actor could be banned from acting. People may stop me from acting, but you cant stop me from entertaining my fans. As long as I have all your love, Im not going to give up on my fans. Amidst rumours that Simbu wont be allowed to act in Mani Ratnams next, he said: People have assumed that Im no longer part of Mani sirs film but Im told Im still doing the film. Even after all these allegations, Mani sir told me hed like to work with me. I begin shooting for his film from January 20 and Ill complete my commitment for the film in 3 months flat. Nobody can stop me from doing that film.

The events chief guest was Dhanush, who made a splash with his clean shaven look, and Simbu was all praise for the Maari star. People say I see Dhanush as my rival. When I watched the first day, first show of Kadhal Kondein with him, I told him that both of us would stars someday with over confidence. Dhanush and I share a very good friendship. Hes been very supportive and he keeps making good films.

On the decision to turn composer with Sakka Podu Podu Raja, Simbu said: I accepted this project for Santhanam. People say I introduced him but the truth is I just identified his talent and wanted to take it to people. Im musically inclined; grew up listening to music from a very young age. My dad happens to be a music director and I have to thank him first for inspiring me. Then, theres Ilayaraja sir and Michael Jackson who have had great influence on me. I also need to thank Yuvan Shankar Raja without whom I wouldnt have become a music director. I also have to thank Anirudh Ravichander and Premgi Amaran.

Speaking on the occasion, Dhanush didnt mince words to shower praise on Simbu. He was born to be a star unlike me who become a hero accidentally. 17 years ago, I was asked to watch dance videos of Simbu and learn dancing by Ashok Vijayan master who initially trained me. I dont think I can dance like him even today. Hes an all-rounder who risked directing a film at 21, Dhanush said, and requested Simbu to give his fans at least two films a year.

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Actor Vishal was all set to contest in the upcoming elections from RK Nagar but in an intriguing turn of events, his nomination has been rejected after initially being accepted. Is Vishal being set up because his opponents do not want him to hold political power? Especially now when he holds high positions at the Tamil Nadu Film Producers Council and the Nadigar Sangam? Or was Vishal caught with his hand in the cookie jar?

Vishal had announced on December 2 that he would be contesting in the upcoming bypoll from RK Nagar. On Monday, December 4, the actor submitted his nomination papers and alleges that they were accepted in his presence before being rejected. The actor, who also got support from Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was disheartened with the turn of events and took to Twitter to vent it out.

On December 5, the actor tweeted that his nomination was accepted. He wrote, After much struggle, my nomination for the RK Nagar election is finally accepted.

Not much later, the nomination papers were yet again rejected as it was revealed that two of the 10 individuals who are required to propose Vishals nomination and sign a document stating the same claimed that their signatures were forged.

Vishal tweeted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Kovind to ask why his nomination was accepted and later rejected. He then wrote, Still awaiting Democracy to lift its head up again.... God save my beloved country from this anarchy !!

On December 7, Vishal claimed that he was informed by media that the only way to get his nomination accepted was to produce the two individuals who have signed for him. He wrote, Alarming turn of events ! Just received info thru media that I have to produce the 2 people who supposedly alleged that their signature in my nomination for RK Nagar Election has been forged, in front of the Election Commission before 3 PM today. Less than 2 hours to do this

See | Vishals tweets about his nomination

Still awaiting Democracy to lift its head up again....



God save my beloved country from this anarchy !!#JusticeDelayedIsJusticeDenied  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

Alarming turn of events !



Just received info thru media that I have to produce the 2 people who supposedly alleged that their signature in my nomination for RK Nagar Election has been forged, in front of the Election Commission before 3 PM today.



Less than 2 hours to do this...  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

As time passes by, Dheepan and Sumathi, who proposed my nomination are not traceable. I'm very much worried about their safety & security....



Whether I Win or Lose, Democracy truly Lost !!  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

Twist of Tale....



Now, Returning Officer claims that we threatened him to accept my nomination the other day...



What more is to Come ?!  Vishal (@VishalKOfficial) December 7, 2017

Then he tweeted, As time passes by, Dheepan and Sumathi, who proposed my nomination are not traceable. Im very much worried about their safety & security.... Whether I Win or Lose, Democracy truly Lost !! And then, the entire thing takes very filmy turn. Even Vishal feels that it is a twist of tale.

He wrote, Twist of Tale.... Now, Returning Officer claims that we threatened him to accept my nomination the other day What more is to Come ?!

Actor Vishal had also submitted an audio clip and claimed that one of the proposers, Sumathy, was forced to withdraw her support by the ruling party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). The authenticity of this video was doubted by returning officer Velusamy, who then rejected it.

The symbols for the election should have been allotted by 3 pm and Thursday also happens to be the last date for candidature withdrawal. Since Vishal has failed to convince the RO and the election committee has also not interfered, he has lost his chance to contest in the upcoming elections.

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For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, 67-year-old Wanda and 70-year-old Marvin Brewington are the ultimate marriage goals. Many couples vow to stay together forever, but not all prevail as this couple from North Carolina (NC), US, has. Married 47 years, the couple has been through it all, according to their photographer daughter, Amber Robinson.

When Amber took to Instagram and Facebook recently to share gorgeous photos she took of her parents, with a heartfelt caption about them and what theyve been through, it caught the attention of the internet. While the photos themselves are stunning, it really is the caption Amber provided that has people reaching for tissues.

These are my parents, she wrote, married for 47 years, they have triumphed over cancer... twice. Have raised two successful daughters. They have been poor together and rich together. They have fed, sheltered, and advised countless lost souls. They love with out expectation and give freely, whatever it is they have to offer. I am SO proud to call them Mom and Dad.

Since their 1970 backyard ceremony (the couple met in 1968 at Livingstone College in Salisbury, reports Yahoo Lifestyle), the college sweethearts promises to each other still stand true. But their lasting marriage hasnt been without hardships.

Just three years after tying the knot, Marvin was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, followed by colon cancer in 1987 and prostate cancer in 2013, reports POPSUGAR. Never leaving his side through the years, Wanda was later diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 2014. Despite the hits theyve taken over the course of their relationship, giving up was never an option. Today, Marvin is a two-time cancer survivor and winning the battle with MS, while Wanda is currently beating PD.

Images by Amber Robinson/ Facebook

We made a vow on our wedding day, through sickness and health, and have always been determined that we can and will overcome anything, the couple told POPSUGAR. On the days that one of us is down, the other one picks us up.

Asked to describe her parents in three words, Amber responded with, They. Are. Amazing. And in all sincerity, amazing they are. If you could meet them, my parents are probably two of the most humble people that youll ever meet in your life/ Almost all of my friends call my mom and dad, mom and dad, she said.

Just by looking at their photos ahead, youll be able to almost feel the tenderness and love they have for each other through your screen. If Wanda and Marvin arent relationship goals, we dont know who is.

See few more of their stunning photos.

Images by Amber Robinson/ Facebook

Images by Amber Robinson/ Facebook

Images by Amber Robinson/ Facebook

Images by Amber Robinson/ Facebook

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Its not even been a week since TV actor Aashka Goradia tied the knot with long-time boyfriend Brent Goble, a weapons instructor and range safety officer in Las Vegas. While her wedding pictures and candid shots from all the functions created a lot of buzz on social media, fans cant wait to hear from Aashka how things have changed after marriage.

Taking out time for a quick chat with HT after getting hitched to the man of her dreams, an excited Aashka says, Its a fabulous feeling. I am married to the man who completes me and my life. From I to We from Me to Us  life has changed, as from now on, every action, every thought revolves around the two of us and not just either of us! Companionship and unity are now a permanent part of our lives. Its a wonderful feeling to know that I have someone by my side always in this journey ahead.

Aashka and Brent, who first met at a concert in Las Vegas and hit it off immediately, had a fairytale wedding. On December 1, the two had a Christian wedding, which was followed by a Hindu wedding with traditional rituals on December 3. Asked what was Brents reaction to the elaborate decorations and multiple ceremonies, Aashka quips, He absolutely loved it! Hes been a part of four Indian weddings in the last one year. So he was really looking forward to an eventful and elaborate wedding!

And the next big question on everyones mind  where are the newlyweds headed to for their honeymoon? Ditching the exotic destinations abroad that most just married couples resort to, Aashka and Brent have a different plan in place. It is going to be a family-moon [for us]. Its the first time that my in-laws [Brents parents] are coming to India and hence, we both wanted to spend time with them, as well as show them around our country. We will be taking them to Udaipur, Jaipur and Agra, she reveals.

Also, while the usual perception among fans is that most female actors take a sabbatical from work once they get married, Aashka has no such plans. In fact, I am looking forward to some exciting and challenging roles post marriage, she tells us.

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A signed letter written by German scientist Albert Einstein to his closest friend Michele Besso, expressing joy at the success of his theory of relativity, has fetched $106,250 at an auction.

The letter is postmarked Berlin and dates December 10, 1915. It was originally estimated to be worth $30,000.

The boldest dreams have now been fulfilled, Einstein wrote in the letter, rejoicing in his theorys success.

Einstein had set out the key elements of the general theory of relativity in four magisterial papers submitted to the Prussian Academy of Sciences between November 4 and 25, according to the British auction house Christies.

The postcard was a part of a collection of letters written by Einstein to his college friend Besso that was auctioned online at Christies. The collection of 63 letters was sold for a total of $1,234,625.

Einsteins general theory of relativity is one of most important developments of 20th-century physics.

Published in 1916, it explains that gravity is in fact curvature of space and time.

Recent observation of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space and time - successfully confirmed this theory, 100 years after it was put forward by the renowned scientist.

The postcard, written in German, opens with news of an intended journey to Switzerland, after Einstein was assured that his eldest son, Hans Albert, wished to spend time with him.

Einstein signed off the letter with greetings from your happy but rather worn out Albert.
Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator.

The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Major U.S. allies came out against Trumps reversal of decades of U.S. and broad international policy on Jerusalem.

France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalems status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

Israel, by contrast, applauded Trumps move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israels first day.

He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israels capital and he urged other countries to follow Trumps example.

Trump upended decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East.

The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.

Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trumps move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator.

The last round of U.S.-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine U.S. interests in the region and to shun Israel.

Protests broke out in parts of Jordans capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Ammans outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted.

Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehems Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

LEGALLY NULL DECISION

The Saudi Royal Court issued a statement saying that the kingdom followed with deep sorrow Trumps decision and warned of dangerous consequences of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

The statement described the move as a big step back in efforts to advance the peace process, and urged the U.S. administration to reverse its decision and adhere to international will.

Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trumps decision and said it did not change Jerusalems disputed legal status.

Jordan said Trumps action was legally null because it consolidated Israels occupation of East Jerusalem.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trumps Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability.

Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trumps undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation.

Turkey said Trumps move was irresponsible.

We call upon the U.S. Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate.

Iran seriously condemns Trumps move as it violates U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israels security.

In Southeast Asia, the leaders of Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia denounced Trumps action.

This can rock global security and stability, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, leader of the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation, told a news conference in which he called for the United States to reconsider its decision.

British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trumps embrace of Jerusalem as Israels capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said.

However, Mays spokesman welcomed Trumps stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trumps unilateral move.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers.

France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said.

For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks.

I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations.
I. Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do . . .II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly,III. And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the act of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such as would be an infringement of natural right.
Jerusalem is once again stirring powerful emotions around the world with US President Donald Trump recognising the city as Israels capital.

Here are five things to know about the divided city:

Current status

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.

The citys eastern sector contains some of the sites holiest to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Divided population

Jerusalems population is divided not only between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, but also within the Jewish population, with over a third of the citys 542,000 adult Jewish residents defining themselves as ultra-Orthodox, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The ultra-Orthodox are the fastest growing segment in the city, with over two-thirds of elementary school children enrolled in their schools in Jerusalem.

Palestinians in Jerusalem have Israeli residency and access to services. Most Palestinians do not partake in municipal elections and cannot vote in parliamentary elections. NGOs in support of them denounce what they describe as the unequal distribution of resources and services in east and west Jerusalem.

Secular life

Alongside the religious sites, institutions and people, Jerusalem is host to Israels top higher education facility, the Hebrew University, whose founding fathers include Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.

The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Sam Spiegel Film and Television School and Nissan Nativ acting studio are some of the institutions that draw Israels most talented artists.

The Palestinian National Theatre is among the rare Palestinian institutions located in Jerusalem. Israeli authorities do not allow the Palestinian Authority to operate in the city.

Tourism capital

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, 78 percent of the three million tourists who entered Israel in 2016 visited Jerusalem. The most popular destinations were the Western Wall along with the Christian holy sites at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Via Dolorosa, all in the walled Old City.

Other popular tourist sites are Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum, home to a collection of nearly 500,000 objects of art and archaeology, ancient and modern, including the Dead Sea Scrolls which date back more than two millennia and include some of the earliest texts from the Bible.

Muslim pilgrims visit the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam. The compound is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, their holiest site.

Jerusalem Syndrome

Jerusalem is one of the few cities worldwide to have a psychiatric condition named after it.

The rare condition affects tourists who come to visit holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by it all, believing themselves to be characters from the Bible, Dr. Grigory Katz, a psychiatrist at Jerusalems Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center and an expert on the syndrome, has said.

The syndrome is rare, but when it strikes, it usually affects Protestant pilgrims from small-town America or Scandinavia raised in pious families whose trip to the Holy Land may be their first ever abroad.

Many of those afflicted by the condition become convinced they are Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary or some other character from the Bible, but symptoms dont tend to last long, and medication can help bring patients back to normalcy within days.
An overcrowded boat carrying devotees capsized in a creek in Pakistans Sindh province on Thursday, killing at least 21 people, including women and children, authorities said.

The boat carrying members of the Dawoodi Bohra community capsized near to Thatta city.

Deputy commissioner Thatta Nasir Baig the accident took place as the overloaded boat lost balance and tipped over in a creek, 30 kilometres away from Bohara. He added that the boat was carrying passengers travelling to the shrine of Pir Pathai to celebrate a festival.

He said the boat was carrying 60-70 passengers.

At least 21 bodies have been recovered, Dawn newspaper quoted officials at the Mirpur Sakro Taluqa Hospital as saying.

Officials said the dead included women and children.

About 15-20 people were rescued and admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state, Baig said.

Commissioner Hyderabad Division Saeed Magnejo said that the ongoing local rescue efforts are being supported by coordination between navy and army units in the area.

According to local rescue officials, the passengers were devotees seeking to attend the annual celebration of the sufi saint. They are believed to be members of the Dawoodi Bohra community.

Chairman Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Muhammad Ali Shah, said that one boat capsized at the Bohara jetty when the boat tilted over as passengers rushed to exit it. He said there were nearly 100 passengers on board at the time.

Shah said he had received reports of at least 40 bodies being recovered. These reports, however, have not been independently verified, the paper said.
Britons who have joined the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq should be hunted down and killed, Britains new defence minister said.

Gavin Williamson said that Britons who had gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for Islamic State hated what Britain stands for, and that air strikes could be used against the estimated 270 British citizens who are still out there.

Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist cant cause any harm to Britain, Williamson told the Daily Mail in an interview published late on Wednesday.

We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat, he said, adding that he believed any British fighters who joined Islamic State should never be allowed to return to the United Kingdom.

Williamson, 41, has been defence minister for little over a month, replacing Michael Fallon after he quit in a sexual harassment scandal.

Prominent British militants such as Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, and Sally Jones, have been reportedly killed by British or U.S. forces since travelling to fight for Islamic State.

After the death of Jones, who was known as the White Widow, Fallon said that British nationals who chose to leave the UK and fight for Islamic State were a legitimate target.
China said on Thursday that an Indian drone invaded its airspace before crashing on its side of the border, an incident that New Delhi attributed to a technical problem with an unmanned aerial vehicle that was on a routine training mission. China did not say when the incident had happened.

The Chinese foreign ministry said it had lodged solemn representations with India over the incident, while the countrys defence ministry expressed its strong dissatisfaction and opposition.

Sources in Indias defence establishment said the UAV that crashed was an Israeli-made Heron, a medium-altitude long endurance drone used in mountainous terrain for surveillance and intelligence gathering along the frontiers with China and Pakistan. This is the first time a Heron has been lost in a cross-border incident, they added.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing: Recently, an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle invaded Chinas aerospace in the Sikkim section of the China-India border.

The Chinese military handled the situation in a professional way, he added. The border in Sikkim sector has been delineated and the invasion violated Chinas sovereignty and wasnt conducive for peace and tranquility in the region, Geng said.

Zhang Shuili, deputy chief of the combat bureau of the militarys western theater command, was quoted by official Xinhua news agency as saying: Indias move has infringed upon Chinas territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to thisWe will earnestly carry out our duty and resolutely defend our countrys sovereignty and security.

Indias defence ministry said the UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the LAC (Line of Actual Control) in Sikkim sector.

In line with the standard protocol, Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV, the defence ministry said in a brief statement.

In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India- China border areas, it added.

Both sides did not give the date when the incident had occurred and the Chinese side did not share information on exactly where the UAV had crashed.

Geng said China has urged India to stop the activities of UAVs at the border and work with it to maintain peace at the frontier.

The Indian Army has a fleet of about 45 Heron UAVs, made by Israel Aerospace Industries, some of which are deployed along the border with China for surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations.

These UAVs are very helpful in mountainous border areas as they feed airborne intelligence, one of the defence establishment sources said .

The Heron has a range of 350 km and can operate at a maximum height of 10 km or 35,000 feet. The UAV can remain airborne for up to 50 hours, depending on the payload, and has a top speed of 200 kmph.

This new incident with potential for causing friction along the border came about two months after the two countries resolved a standoff of more than 70 days between border troops at Doklam near the Sikkim border.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday lashed out at his US counterpart Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying it would put the region in a ring of fire.

Taking this type of step puts the world, especially the region, in a ring of fire, Erdogan said in a speech to supporters at Ankara airport before heading on a visit to Greece.

Hey Trump! What do you want to do? he said, addressing the US leader directly in one of Erdogans most familiar rhetorical habits.

What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace! he added.

There were chants of damn Israel! and boos from Erdogan supporters gathered at the airport when the president first mentioned the US move.

In a speech on Wednesday, Trump overturned decades of US policy with a decision to recognise the disputed city. He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Erdogan accused Trump of trying to be an agitator and said the decision completely disregarded the 1980 UN resolution on the contested citys status.

Turkey will hold a leaders summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday in Istanbul to discuss Trumps decision.

Turkey currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC.

Erdogan said work continued for other events planned for after this summit but he did not give further detail.

Around 1,500 people gathered outside the US consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday night to protest against Trump, chanting slogans such as down with America!.

Erdogan said he was due to speak with Pope Francis on Thursday evening or on Friday, as well as with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western allies including Germany.

This is now not just the duty of Muslims, but also of humanity to oppose the move, Erdogan added.

He hit back at Trump saying that being strong did not mean that you were automatically right but that the righteous are the strong.

Relations between Washington and Ankara have already been strained over the Syrian conflict as well as the US failure to extradite a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric blamed for last years attempted overthrow of Erdogan.
The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops deployed in the occupied West Bank on Thursday as Palestinians protested against the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Several new army battalions would be deployed and other forces put on standby, a military statement said, calling the measures part of the IDFs (Israel Defence Forces) readiness for possible developments.
Nepalis began voting in the final round of parliamentary elections on Thursday, a key step to complete a near decade-long democratic transition after the abolition of the centuries-old monarchy and the end of a civil war against Maoist guerrillas.

The first phase of the election was held on November 26, with final results not expected for about another 10 days because of the cumbersome vote-counting procedure, officials said.

Officials said more than 200,000 soldiers and police had been deployed to maintain security at polling centres after one person was killed and dozens wounded in a series of small blasts in the run-up to the polls.

Hundreds of activists, including from a splinter group of Maoists opposed to the election, have been detained for creating trouble, army spokesman Nain Raj Dahal said.

More than 15 million people were eligible to vote for the 275-member parliament - 165 through first-past-the-post and 110 on a proportional basis in both rounds.

Voters will also choose representatives to seven state assemblies for the first time since Nepal became a federal democracy under the first republican constitution in 2015.

The country will achieve political stability after the election ... and will move ahead solidly on the path of economic and social prosperity, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari said in a statement.

Nepal has seen 10 government changes in as many years. Instability has given rise to corruption, retarded growth and slowed recovery from a 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 people.

I voted in hopes for a stable government that can concentrate on development and create jobs so our children dont have to go abroad to work, Binita Karki, 57, said after casting her ballots in a Kathmandu suburb, where armed soldiers stood nearby. Her son works on a construction site in Qatar.

The election pits the centrist Nepali Congress party of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who heads a loose alliance that includes the Madhesi parties from Nepals southern plains and former royalists, against a tight-knit alliance of former Maoists and the moderate Communist UML party.

The Nepali Congress party is considered a pro-India group, while the opposition alliance is seen as closer to China.

Nepal is a natural buffer between the two and the outcome could indicate whether China or India gets the upper hand in the battle for influence in a nation rich in hydropower and home to Mount Everest.

Nepal emerged from a civil war in 2006 and abolished its 239-year-old Hindu monarchy two years later.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says President Donald Trump bound himself forever to the history of Jerusalem by recognizing the city as Israels capital.

Netanyahu claimed other states are considering following the U.S. lead and recognizing Jerusalem. He spoke on Thursday at the Foreign Ministry.

Netanyahu says that we are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition.

He says the time has come and expressed confidence that others will follow suit and move their embassies to Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it will be deploying additional troops to the West Bank ahead of Friday, when mass Palestinian protests are anticipated in response to Trumps move.

The army statement on Thursday says it will deploy several battalions to the territory while other troops have been put on alert to address possible developments.

Palestinians went on strike across the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip on Thursday and protests are expected on Friday after midday prayers.
President Donald Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., declined to discuss with lawmakers on Wednesday a conversation he had with his father about emails related to a June 2016 meeting he attended with Trump associates and Russians, a congressional panel member said.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigating allegations of Russian interference in last years U.S. election, said Trump Jr. answered the overwhelming majority of questions from committee members in his hours of testimony.

But Trump Jr. claimed attorney-client privilege in declining to respond to queries about that discussion with his father because a lawyer was in the room when it took place. The discussion between then-Republican candidate Trump and his son took place after the emails became public, Schiff said. Trump Jr. released the emails in July.

In my view there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son, Schiff told reporters after the closed-door testimony had ended.

We will be following up with his counsel, Schiff said.

Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the investigation, said Trump Jr. had answered all of his questions.

Mr Trump was cooperative at all times, Conaway said.

Trump Jr. arrived and left without being seen by reporters.

Lawmakers said they want to question him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York at which he had said he hoped to get information about the fitness, character and qualifications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who was his fathers presidential election opponent.

It was at least the second time Trump Jr. has testified to a congressional committee investigating any Russian meddling in the election and possible collusion with Moscow by the Trump campaign.

He arrived shortly before 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and was questioned for most of the next eight hours by members of the intelligence panel.

A person familiar with knowledge of Trump Jrs testimony said Trump had said repeatedly he did not remember things he was asked about, including some details about information provided by Russians during the Trump Tower meeting.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating. He has announced the first charges of Trump associates, and Trumps former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. [nL1N1O10XZ]

The House intelligence panel also released on Wednesday a transcript of testimony last week of Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and founder of the Blackwater military contractor. A focus of that testimony was a report that Prince tried to set up a back channel for communications between Trump associates and Russia. Prince denied such a plan. [nL1N1O62IW]

REPUBLICANS CRITICIZE PROBES

Trump Jr.s appearance coincided with criticism of the Russia probes from some of his fathers fellow Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and accuse investigators of bias against Trump. Other lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, say the goal of the investigations is to guarantee the integrity of U.S. elections, not to target Trump and his associates.

Trump Jr., like his father, denies collusion with Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 campaign to boost Trumps chances of defeating Clinton. Moscow denies any such effort.

Some Republicans criticized Mueller, the FBI and the Department of Justice at a news conference on Wednesday, ahead of congressional testimony on Thursday by the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray.

Republican House members accused the Justice Department and the FBI of bias against the president and having been too easy on Clinton during the investigation of her use of a private email server while leading the State Department.

However, Clinton has made no secret of her belief that then-FBI Director James Comeys announcement just before the election that the bureau was investigating potential new evidence in the lengthy email probe cost her the White House.

Also on Wednesday, Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced a hearing next week with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, citing serious concerns about reports on the political motives of staff on Muellers team.
He would wander the streets of occupied Mosul by day, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information. He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by the extremists. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and stonings, so he could hear killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes.

By night, anonymously from his darkened room, Mosul Eye told the world what was happening. If caught, he too would be killed.

But after more than three years, his double life has grown too heavy to bear. He misses his name.

His secrets consume him, sap energy hed rather use for his doctoral dissertation and for helping Mosul rebuild. In conversations with The Associated Press, he agonised over how to end the anonymity that plagues him. He made his decision.

Omar Mohammed has led a secret double life for more than three years, documenting Islamic States atrocities in the blog Mosul Eye. Now in Europe on December 5, he is shedding the mask of anonymity. (AP Photo)

Mosul Eye is Omar Mohammed, historian, scholar, blogger. He is 31.

The revelation of his identity is for his thousands of readers and followers, for all his volunteers in Mosul who have been inspired by a man they have never seen. But above all, it is for the brother who died in the final battle and for his grieving mother.

I cant be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now, he told The Associated Press.

Mohammed first posted about the Islamic State group under his own Facebook account, in the first few days after its fighters swept into Mosul, but a friend told him he risked being killed. So in those first days he made himself a promise: trust no one, document everything.

A newly minted teacher with a reputation for secular ideas, he had lost his university job.

He found another calling.

My job as a historian requires an unbiased approach which I am going to adhere to and keep my personal opinion to myself, he wrote on that first day, June 18, 2014.

Mosul Eye became one of the outside worlds main sources of news about the Islamic State fighters, their atrocities and their transformation of the city into a grotesque shadow of itself.

During Friday sermons, Mohammed feigned enthusiasm. He collected propaganda to post online later. He drank tea at the hospital, fishing for information.

Much of what he collected went on the blog. Other details he kept in his computer, for fear of giving away his identity. Someday, he promised, he would write history with them.

He stayed anonymous for more than three years, documenting Islamic States atrocities and the destruction of his city as the blogger Mosul Eye. Omar Mohammed, now in Europe on December 5, is done hiding. (AP Photo)

The most sensitive details initially came from two old friends: a doctor and a high school dropout who had joined an Islamic State intelligence unit.

Mohammeds information sometimes included photos of the fighters and commanders, complete with biographies surreptitiously pieced together during the course of his normal life  that of an out-of-work scholar living at home.

I used the two characters, the two personalities to serve each other, he said. He expanded into a Facebook page and a Twitter feed to parcel out information at a time when little news was escaping.

Intelligence agencies made contact as well and he rebuffed them.

I am not a spy or a journalist, he would say. I tell them this: If you want the information, its published and its public for free. Take it.

In March 2015, his catalog of horrors got to him.

I was super ready to die, Mohammed said. I was so tired of worrying about myself, my family, my brothers. I am not alive to worry, but I am alive to live this life. I thought: I am done.

He cut his hair short, shaved his beard and pulled on a bright red sweater. His closest friend joined him.

They drove to the banks of the Tigris blasting forbidden music. They shared a carafe of tea. Heedless of people picnicking nearby, Mohammed lit a cigarette banned by IS. Somehow, incredibly, he wasnt caught.

At that moment I felt like I was given a new life.

He resumed what he had taken to calling his duty. He grew out his hair and beard, put the shortened trousers back on.

He tested out different voices, Christian, Muslim. Sometimes he indicated he was gone, other times that he was still in the city.

Finally, after leaving Mosul a thousand times in his mind, he decided it was time to get out.

I think I deserve life, deserve to be alive.

A smuggler agreed to sneak him out for $1,000. Mohammed left the next day, the contents of his computer transferred overnight to a hard-drive that he packed with him.

For more than three years, he has been known only as Mosul Eye, an anonymous blogger documenting Islamic States atrocities. Now Iraq's Omar Mohammed wants the world -- and his family -- to know his identity. (AP Photo)

No one gave him a second look during the two days and some 500 kilometers (300 miles) it took to reach Turkey.

Once there, Mosul Eye kept at it: via WhatsApp and Viber, from Facebook messages and long conversations with friends and relatives who had contacts within IS. From hundreds of kilometers away, his life remained consumed by events back home.

By mid-2016, deaths were piling up faster than he could record. The Islamic State group was on a hunt for traitors and the airstrikes were taking an increasing toll on everyone. His records grew haphazard, and he turned to Twitter to document the atrocities. In February 2017, he received asylum in Europe.

Only after his elder brother Ahmed was killed in a mortar strike and IS was gone from the city did Mohammed reveal his secret to a younger brother  who greeted the news with a shock of pride and happiness. His sibling spoke on condition of anonymity from his refuge in Iraq because he was fearful for his life.

People in Mosul had lost hope and confidence in politicians, in everything, his brother said. Mosul Eye managed to show that its possible to change the situation in the city and bring it back to life.
State Sen. Sara Gelsers efforts in the battle against sexual harassment in the workplace have been honored by Time magazine.

Gelser, whose Senate District 8 includes Albany and Corvallis, and dozens of other women were honored as Persons of the Year by Time for breaking the silence on the issue. Time annually devotes a year-end issue to featuring and profiling a person, a group, an idea, or an object that "for better or for worse  has done the most to influence the events of the year."

In the Time story, the writers note that women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know that boundaries exist. They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.

Harvey Weinsten. Al Franken. Matt Lauer. Garrison Keillor. And Jeff Kruse.

Kruse, a state senator from Roseburg, has been accused of inappropriate touching by Gelser, who twice filed informal complaints before filing a formal one Nov. 15. Gelser alleges that Kruse touched her inappropriately multiple times from 2011 to 2017.

Gelsers charges include multiple occasions of unwanted touching, including twice on the Senate floor in which other senators intervened on Gelsers behalf. Gelser also requested seating assignments away from Kruse and instructed staffers not to meet with him or to send interns to his office.

Kruse has denied inappropriately touching her. The complaint process, which could lead to Kruses expulsion, is expected to conclude in the spring.

Gelser said she was frustrated that the conduct continued even after the informal complaints were filed. Gelser said that as many as 15 other women also have accused Kruse of unwanted touching.

Gelser traveled to San Francisco to be interviewed and photographed and praised the Time staff: It was such a thoughtful, creative group of people, she said.

At the time of the session she did not know that the story was in the running for Person of the Year. A list of potential subjects came out last weekend and Gelser made sure to check for the story Wednesday morning while she was getting her kids ready for school.

Its been pretty amazing, she said. And it is such an important conversation.

Gelser stressed, however, that the problem is not a new one.

The discussion is at a heightened level, but the problem has been around for decades, since Anita Hill, said Gelser, referring to the university law professor who in 1991 accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during Thomas confirmation process for the United States Supreme Court.

We need to believe women, Gelser said, and hold offenders accountable. The change isnt going to come from hearing from people whove experienced it. The change has to come from the attitude in which nobody thinks that they have a right to put their hand on you in the first place.

Gelser remains concerned that many women who experience harassment cant come forward because of concerns about retaliation.

That is where I will remain focused, doing what I can, she said. If I can play some small part in it thats a great thing. Its not about the women in the Time story. Its about the experiences of women all across the country. We need to keep telling that bigger story.
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that it will move its embassy to the holy city.

In doing so, Trump is breaking with longtime US policy and potentially threatening regional stability, despite warnings from Western and Arab allies.

Why is President Trump planning to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital and move the embassy there?

There has long been pressure from pro-Israel politicians in the United States to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Trump made it a signature promise of his campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

It is a decision that will likely be popular with many conservative and evangelical Christians in his political base. Many of them support political recognition of Israels claim to the city. vice president Mike Pence and David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel appointed by Trump, are thought to have pushed hard for both recognition and embassy relocation.

Why does Jerusalem play such an important role in the Middle East conflict?

Religion, politics and history.

Jerusalem is a city that is sacred to three of the great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and each has sites of great religious significance there. It has been fought over for millennia by its inhabitants, by invading Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans and the British Empire, and by the modern states of Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Israels government regards Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the country, although that is not recognised internationally.

Palestinians feel equally strongly, saying that East Jerusalem must be the capital of an eventual Palestinian state. The city even has different names. Jews call it Jerusalem, or Yerushalayim, and Arabs call it Al-Quds, which means The Holy.

A Palestinian man walks past Israeli border guards standing in Jerusalem's old city just after Damascus' Gate on December 6, 2017. (AFP Photo)

But the citys significance goes beyond the two parties most immediately involved.

At the heart of Jerusalems Old City is the hill which is known to Jews across the world as Har ha-Bayit, or Temple Mount, and to Muslims internationally as al-Haram al-Sharif, or The Noble Sanctuary.

It was home to the Jewish temples of antiquity but all that remains of them above ground is a restraining wall for the foundations built by Herod the Great. Known as the Western Wall, this is a sacred place of prayer for Jews.

Within yards of the wall, and overlooking it, are two Muslim holy places, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built in the 8th century. Muslims regard the site as the third holiest in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

The city is also an important pilgrimage site for Christians, who revere it as the place where they believe that Jesus Christ preached, died and was resurrected.

What is the citys status now and does any other country have an embassy in Jerusalem?

When British rule ended in 1948, Jordanian forces occupied the Old City and Arab East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognised internationally.

In 1980 the Israeli parliament passed a law declaring the complete and united city of Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, but the United Nations regards East Jerusalem as occupied, and the citys status as disputed until resolved by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Other countries have had embassies in Jerusalem in the past, but moved them out of the city some years ago. The King of Jordan retains a role in ensuring the upkeep of the Muslim holy places.

What is likely to happen next? Has Jerusalem been a flashpoint before?

Tensions are running high in Jerusalem, and violence has erupted before over matters of sovereignty and religion.

Reactions from world leaders to US President Donald Trumps' plans for Jerusalem. (AFP)

In 1969 an Australian Messianic Christian tried to burn down the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He failed, but caused damage. So charged was the Middle Easts political climate - just two years after the Six Day War - that there was fury across the Arab world.

In 2000, the Israeli politician Ariel Sharon, then opposition leader, led a group of Israeli lawmakers onto the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif complex. Palestinians protested, and there were violent clashes that quickly escalated into the second Palestinian uprising, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Deadly confrontations also took place in July this year after Israel installed metal detectors at the entrance to the complex following the killing of two Israeli policemen there by Arab-Israeli gunmen.

In recent days, Palestinian factions have called for protests, and Arab leaders across the Middle East have warned that a unilateral American move could lead to turmoil, and hamper U.S. efforts to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Top American lawmakers, across the aisle, joined by eminent experts on Thursday slammed China for the continued repression and human rights violations in Tibet, even as they praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

Tibetans inside Tibet continue to live in very, very challenging times indeed, top Hollywood star Richard Gere, chair of the International Campaign for Tibet, said in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

During the hearing, lawmakers and experts testifying before the subcommittee called for reciprocal access, religious freedom and human rights in Tibet.

Congressman Ted Yoho, who chaired the hearing, supported the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017 which proposes to deny US visas to Chinese government officials involved in restricting access to Tibet.

Alleging that human rights and personal freedoms in Tibet were already in a poor and worsening state, Yoho said the government of China engages in severe repression of Tibets unique religious, cultural and linguistic heritage by and strictly curtailing the civil rights of the Tibetan population, including the freedom of speech, religion, association, assembly and movement.

The authorities have used heavy-handed and violent tactics to maintain control in Tibet, especially in response to unrest, including extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial detentions and house arrest, he said, he said.

Tibet remains extremely isolated. The flow of information in and out of Tibet is tightly restricted. Tibetans are prevented from obtaining passports and moving freely, and foreigners, especially journalists and officials are frequently denied access, he said.

Congressman Brad Sherman demanded that Congress must act quickly to counter Chinas repressive tactics and policies toward Tibet.

This is important for our own standing as leaders in world human rights, he said, as he praised India for accommodating Tibetan refugees.

Were trying to build a strategic relationship and partnership with India, and weve got to commend India for providing refuge to over 90,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama himself, who have had to flee Chinese repression, he said.

According to Congressman Steve Chabot, Chinas decades- long oppression of Tibet is a constant example of its total disregard for religious freedom and human decency.

Just this past weekend, another Tibetan monk set himself on fire to protest Chinas ongoing tyranny. China has systematically marginalised Tibet for over 50 years now, he said.

Americas own national security interests dictate that it oppose Chinas increasingly repressive policies on Tibet and that the US work toward a negotiated solution and start making the treatment of the people of Tibet an important factor in our relations with Beijing, asserted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Congressman Jim McGovern, author of the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017, said the Dalai Lama can play a constructive role in negotiating a better future for the Tibetan people, but China clearly doesnt see it that way.

China is waiting him out and counting on his eventual departure to remove Tibet from the international agenda, so we need to move now, and we need some leverage, and that is why earlier this year, along with a bipartisan group of members, I introduce HR1872, the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act, he said.

If China wants its citizens and officials to travel freely in the United States, Americans must be able to travel freely in China, including Tibet.

But allowing travel to Tibet is only one step China needs to take, and there are others. Most especially, China should permit His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to return to Tibet for a visit if he so desires, McGovern said.

Gere told lawmakers that reciprocity is an important principle in diplomatic relations that should be implemented not only when it comes to trade, but also to freedom of movement and freedom of information.

If they (Chinese) want to be the superpower they claim to be and the world leader they claim to be, these norms are to be followed, he said.

Gere said another important part of the Tibet Policy Act was to encourage the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and his representatives and the Chinese government.

We have not done that recently, and this needs to be the forefront of what our policy is with China. Its not unreasonable, and its actually good for China. To resolve this Tibetan issue is good for everyone, especially the Chinese, he said.
As President Donald Trump was taking the oath of office on January 20, his then national security adviser Michael Flynn messaged a business associate the Russia sanctions would be ripped up as one of the first acts of the new administration.

This account from a whistleblower, said to be the strongest evidence the Trump administration was prepared to revoke sanctions imposed on Russia by president Barack Obama in December 2016, was given to Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings.

It also, for the first time, identifies a financial motive behind the administrations readiness to remove the sanctions. Till June 2016, Flynn was part of a business venture that was to partner Russia in building nuclear plants across West Asia. He had remained in touch with the venture since.

Our Committee has credible allegations that President Trumps National Security Advisor sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners, Cummings wrote in a letter. These grave allegations compel a full, credible, and bipartisan congressional investigation.

About 10 minutes into Trumps inaugural speech from Capitol Hill, Flynn texted to a business associate from the business venture that the project was good to go and directed him to contact business colleagues to let them know to put things in place, the whistleblower has said, recounting an encounter with this business associate later the same day in Washington.

Cummings, the ranking member of the House oversight committee that is conducting one of the congressional investigations into Russian meddling, said in his letter to the chairman of the body, Trey Gowdy, a Republican, this business associate told the whistleblower, who has not been identified, the General was making sure that sanctions would be ripped up as one of his first orders of business and that this would allow money to start flowing into the project.

Asked why the US needs to be involved in these projects, the whistleblower was told the US would provide military support to defend these installations. He also explained that this would provide a pretext for placing US military forces in these countries.

Flynn was fired by Trump after barely three weeks in office for lying to the vice president about his contacts with Russians, which the president has said was really not as egregious as lies by other leaders such as Hillary Clinton. Flynn recently pleaded guilty to lying about the contacts to the FBI as well, which is a crime.

Flynn had several contacts with then Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. In one, according to federal prosecutors, Flynn sought Russias help to block or stall a vote in the UN Security Council on Israeli settlements, which the Obama administration was prepared to allow, and did, by abstaining.

Two, Flynn asked the Russians to not retaliate against Obamas sanctions, indicating the new administration would overturn them. Russia went with it, and did not retaliate.

Flynn, cooperating with the Russia probe led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has told prosecutors both these interactions took place in December and were known to senior officials of the Trump transition team.

Cummings wrote in the letter that his office has been touch with Muellers team about the whistleblower, and waited, on its request, before making the announcement.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold two public meetings that focus on fish passage and temperature control at Detroit Dam and Lake.

Meetings will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Dec. 14 at South Salem High School, 1910 Church St. SE, and from 4 to 7 p.m. Dec. 19 at the Gates Fire Hall, 140 East Sorbin St.

Comments will be collected for consideration in the development of an environmental impact statement as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) scoping process.

The public can learn about Detroit Dam and its authorized purposes; current alternatives for downstream fish passage and temperature control; the Corps' and other interagency roles; the NEPA process; and submit written input on what to consider in the environmental review.

The purpose of this environmental impact study is to analyze effects to the human environment, including aesthetic, historic, economic, social etc., associated with the Corps' efforts to enhance juvenile passage for Endangered Species Act listed fish through Detroit Dam.

It will also analyze effects of modifying temperatures in the North Santiam and main stem Santiam rivers, below Detroit Dam, so that operational temperature targets are optimized for adult and juvenile salmonids. These actions are part of the Corps implementation of the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2008) Biological Opinions for the continued operations and maintenance of the Willamette Valley Project.

As part of the preparation of the EIS, the NEPA requires that there be an early and open process for determining the scope of the issues to be addressed.
Families can enjoy the magic of a glittering winter event as 'Glow' returns to Smithfield Square this weekend for the fourth year in a row.

An exciting lineup of family activities has been programmed by Grasshopper Events for Dublin City Council.

Lighting up the square from 2-6 pm on Saturday, 9th of December will be free family performances, comedy, music and indoor and outdoor work-shops.

Dublin City Council, Grasshopper Events and Glow have joined with local businesses Brown Bag Films, Light House Cinema and Smithfield based charity One Family to create bespoke workshops and a whole range of family activities.

2-6pm GLOW STAGE

An outdoor stage on Smithfield Plaza will host an eclectic mix of family comedy, magic, music, dance and more.

2-5pm: Maynooth Gospel Choir and Kidisco, with MC and Magician Brian Daly

5pm: Lords of Strut Family Show: Lords of Strut, heroes of hit show RIOT, stars of Brit-ains Got Talent and Street Performance World Champions will perform their hilarious, pop-tastic family show. Cian Kinsella and Cormac Mohally mix character comedy with acrobatics, slapstick for an experience that is part dance party, part soap-opera.

2-6pm GLOW TENT

A beautifully lit long barn tent on Smithfield Plaza will host workshops and interactive fun.

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2-3.30pm: Glow Doodle with Chris Judge: The annual Glow doodle is back with chil-drens author and illustrator Chris Judge. Chris will show how to doodle an alien in a special alien-themed, glow-in-the-dark doodle. Chris is best known for his madcap draw-ings in the Danger is Everywhere series of books with comedian David ODoherty and for his Lonely Beast book series.

3.30-6pm: Winter Tree Lantern Workshops with Maeve Clancy and One Family: Using The Selfish Giant story by Oscar Wilde as inspiration, artist Maeve Clancy will facilitate a storytelling and cut-paper lantern making workshop for children. The finished lanterns will decorate One Familys beautiful white Winter Tree. In association with One Family, Irelands national organisation for one-parent families.

2-6pm GLOW at Brown Bag Films, Unit C, Smithfield Square

An afternoon of free workshops and interactive activities at Brown Bag Films Studio on Smithfield Square. With artists from Brown Bag Films, including Emmy Award winning storyboard artist Marten Jonmark and others.

2-5pm GLOW at Light House Cinema, Smithfield Square

Also on Dec 9th at 2.30pm Light House Cinema will be screening THE MUPPETS CHRISTMAS CAROL as part of their Naughty or Nice Christmas family season

https://lighthousecinema.ie/showing/showing-9001

2-2.30pm: Maynooth Gospel Choir at Light House Cinema

In a special collaboration for Glow 2017 Light House Cinema will host Maynooth Gospel Choir for a free family performance from 2pm-2.30pm.

3-5pm: Indoor Artist Workshops at Light House Cinema

Also for Glow at Light House Cinema artist Fergal McCarthy will facilitate a free Mup-pets themed Dickensian City workshop where children can create their own bespoke Dickensian buildings from cardboard, complete with Muppet characters!

2-6pm Dublin City Public Libraries Mobile Library at GLOW

Winter is a great time to snuggle up and enjoy a rollicking good read. Come along to Glow with your library card and stock up with books and DVDs at Dublin City Public Li-braries mobile library on Smithfield Square. If you dont have a card sign up for one on the day and it wont cost you anything!

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For further information check out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/grasshopperevents/
Fianna Fail Health Spokesperson, Billy Kelleher has said that he finds it "simply baffling" that the National Childrens Hospital group proceeded to use the name Phoenix Hospital without checking if that name was in use somewhere else.

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Lebanon library

hosts Crafternoon

for Adults event

LEBANON  Participants ages 16 and older are invited to the Lebanon Public Library, 55 Academy St., for Crafternoon for Adults from 2 to 3 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7.

The craft will be winter watercolor and salt relief greeting cards. Participants will create wintry scene greeting cards using watercolors and salt to create a shimmery snowflake effect.

Hot cocoa will be provided.

The event is free but space and supplies are limited and registration is required. To sign up, call 541-258-4926, or stop by the main circulation desk.

String orchestra

plans Saturday

holiday concert

The Albany String Orchestra will present its annual winter concert at 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, at Albany First Christian Church, 432 SW Ferry St.

Admission is free.

The program includes an Italian Baroque concerto grosso by Manfredini featuring violin soloists from the orchestra, music by Haydn and Grieg, and many Christmas favorites.
Hugh Jackman has revealed that he turned down the opportunity to become the second only Australian actor to play the iconic role of 007.

The role instead went to Daniel Craig and the rest, as they say, is history.

Explaining his reason for turning down the life changing opportunity to play James Bond, Jackman said: "The scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy."

He added: "I was about to do X-Men 2, and a call came from my agent asking if Id be interested in Bond.

"I just felt the time that the scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy, and I felt like they needed to become grittier and real. And the response was: Oh, you dont get a say. You just have to sign on.'"

So far, one Irishman, a Welshman, two Englishmen, A Scotsman, and the Australian George Lazenby have all played the role of James Bond.

While some film buffs will no doubt point out that Bond was also played by David Niven and a host of others in the 1967 spoof comedy, 'Casino Royal', with Woody Allen playing Bond's nephew.
In a sensational, world exclusive interview with Hot Press, Kevin Spaceys brother Randy B. Fowler talks in detail about being sexually abused as a young boy by their father.

He also reveals, for the first time, that he once planned to kill their father with a gun that he found in the family home, which he describes as a house of horrors.

The interview, conducted by Hot Press senior editor Jason OToole, offers a fascinating insight into Kevin Spaceys childhood. Randy also tells Hot Press that he now wants to sit down with his estranged brother over a glass of Baileys Irish Cream this Christmas to openly discuss their past for the first time. Randy says that he always sensed that Kevin was gay  even as a shy child.
A member of the Norwegian Royal Family has come forward to reveal that the disgraced Hollywood actor grabbed him by his testicles at a function.

Royal family member Ari Behn, who is the husband of Princess Martha Louise, claims that the incident happened 10 years ago at a function in Oslo.

He was sitting right next to me. After five minutes, he says Hey, lets go out and have a cigarette  and then he takes me under the table in the middle of my balls. I got more than I bargained for," he is reported as saying in this morning's edition of The Sun newspaper.

It's certainly no laughing mater, but no doubt it probably won't be long before there's risque jokes about the alleged incident on social media about the "crown jewels" being touched or "Norwegian Wood".
Six Texans are among 32 members of Congress who received farm subsidy payments between 1995 and 2016, according to a report released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group.

"I think it's important for voters to know that members of Congress are voting in ways that might line their own pockets," said Scott Faber, EWG's vice president for government affairs. "No one's advocating the elimination of the farm safety net. We're simply advocating for reasonable limits on who can receive subsidies and the amount they can receive."

The report comes as lawmakers prepare to negotiate the next farm bill, a five-year, nearly trillion dollar spending package governing spending on agriculture and low-income nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Under the 2014 farm bill, some traditional farm support provisions were replaced with subsidies for crop insurance, the amounts of which Faber noted are not disclosed. The federal government subsidizes about 60 percent of crop insurance premiums.

"In all likelihood, members of Congress are receiving far more farm subsidies than EWG is able to tell you," Faber said.

The group analyzed more than 20 years of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture obtained through a Freedom of Information request. The USDA, by law, doesn't publicly release data on various crop insurance subsidies, which pays farmers when crops are bad or suffer natural disaster.

Retiring U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, received a total of $106,402 in other farm subsidies over the 20 years that were analyzed, the most among Texas lawmakers. A ranch he co-owns received $10,256 in disaster assistance in 2004, according to the data. He also took in $101,274 in disaster, corn, cotton, sorghum, sunflower and wheat commodity subsidies from 1995 to 2011.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, ranked second among the Texans, collecting $62,197 in disaster, corn, sorghum, wheat and livestock subsidies. The environmental group also highlighted the $1,205 that went to Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, who is taking heat for using $84,000 in tax dollars to settle a sexual harassment complaint. Farenthold took office in 2011; the subsidies he received were between 1999 and 2005.

Reps. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell; Bill Flores, R-Bryan; and Brian Babin, R-Woodville; received $453, $202. and $81, respectively.

The largest amount of subsidies, $367,763 went to Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is a Republican member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

"At least eight members of the House and Senate agriculture committees are essentially voting to enrich themselves every time they vote for a farm bill," Faber said. "Of course, every member of Congress casts a vote. So every member of Congress including legislators like Mac Thornberry and Lamar Smith are voting in ways that likely enrich themselves."

Spokeswomen for Smith and Farenthold, the two reached by the San Antonio Express-News, defended the payments.

"The congressman's family has a background in farming and ranching and the congressman received these subsidies long before he was elected," Farenthold spokeswoman Stacey Daniels said in an email. "The congressman is a supporter of farm programs that serve as a safety net for our family farms. The congressman, with his farming background, appreciates the plight of our farmers."

Smith spokeswoman Jennifer Pett said the subsidies were for operations on a 1,000-acre property that was leased to a farmer who independently decides what to plant.

"The payments were received over 22 years when there was a weather event such as a drought or when crop prices fell below the world average," she said. "These programs encourage farmers to provide food and fiber during difficult times."

Farm subsidies have been under widespread scrutiny since the environmental group in 2011 released data showing that urban millionaires - to include the New York City-based son of former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller - were getting government checks of hundreds of thousands of dollars for distant farms.

A 2012 Government Accountability Office report found that a quarter of payments were going to farmers who weren't growing the covered crops, while another 2,300 farms got checks without growing any crops at all.

The 2014 farm bill ended direct payments to farmers, which were given regardless of market prices or crop yields or market conditions, as well as counter-cyclical payments that kicked in when prices for certain crops fell below certain levels. They were replaced by two new programs: the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC), as well as an expanded federal crop insurance program.

In June, the Congressional Budget Office released cost estimates that put the cost of commodity farm subsidies from 2016 to 2018 at $22.1 billion rather than the projected $14.6 billion.

Faber said there are a number or reforms being discussed in the run-up to the new farm bill, to include means testing, payment limits and greater transparency.

"No country in the world is as generous to our farmers as the United States and that's why our farm policies are always are constantly under scrutiny by our trading partners," Faber said. "Farmers need a safety net, but they don't need a trampoline."

Advocates for farm support programs say farmers have seen commodity prices dive since the last farm bill and are up against unfair competition from foreign government subsidies. Many farmers say they are barely getting by as they make payments on equipment and gamble on high yields making up for lower prices.

"It is a system, proven over time, to stabilize farm income and preserve our ability to grow our own food and fiber. Attacks on agriculture are not about farming or the environment. They are almost always about control," said Gene Hall of the Texas Farm Bureau. "There are groups on both the left and right of the political spectrum that would like the farm bill to go away, or be drastically altered. They want to take farming decisions out of the hands of farmers and ranchers. We will always oppose that."
WASHINGTON - After years of pipeline projects getting held up or derailed by environmental concerns, the Trump administration is examining ways to get around state roadblocks that have made it increasingly difficult to build in certain parts of the United States.

In late October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission startled many state officials when it granted a construction permit for a natural gas pipeline in New York, despite state regulators turning down the developer over concerns the project would increase greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has for months discussed the possibility of using federal authority to speed infrastructure development, a potential political third rail for Republicans who have long proclaimed the sanctity of states' rights.

"This is an administration that's going to carry out its agenda by all means necessary," said Devashree Saha, director of energy and environmental policy at the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan advocate for state governments. "The New York example is the first we're seeing, but it could be a harbinger of things to come."

FERC's action comes as the oil and gas industry increases pressure on the administration and lawmakers to intervene against an increasingly visible "Keep it in the Ground" movement that is leading campaigns across the country to stop pipelines, drilling and other activities that support production and consumption of fossil fuels, the primary cause of global warming. Political leaders in a handful of Northeast states, most visibly New York, are beginning to listen, in some cases factoring climate change into regulatory decisions.

"We have to break that logjam, to stop one state from having virtual veto power," Dena Wiggins, president of the Natural Gas Supply Association, told Energy Department officials at an industry event last month. "If other states start to have a more expansive view of their (environmental authority) it could be a problem."

Balancing states' rights

But any action to use federal authority to override state decisions on energy projects poses a political risk for President Donald Trump. A contentious issue throughout U.S. history, such a move would likely draw considerable opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike, which FERC Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Trump appointee, acknowledged recently when asked about federal intervention during a public talk.

"We just have to understand the country's needs and balance that," he said, before telling the audience, "I'm a big believer in states' rights."

The White House and the Energy Department declined to comment.

Chatterjee's remarks came a month after FERC, a bipartisan commission on which four of the five commissioners were appointed by Trump, approved the construction of an eight-mile natural gas pipeline under development by Millennium Pipeline Co., even after New York environmental officials rejected the project, citing the impact on climate change and local wetlands and wildlife.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, such projects must get state approval before construction to protect against contamination. But FERC ruled New York took too long to act, a decision the state's attorneys are challenging in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"It's unusual," said James Hoecker, an energy attorney and former FERC chairman during the Clinton administration. "The Clean Water Act is something that is typically respected in a FERC (approval) process. It's not very often that FERC and the state come to total disagreement on these things."

The FERC decision got the attention of not only state officials but also pipeline companies. After Millennium, a New York company, filed its challenge of the state's denial, Williams Co. followed suit, filing an application to FERC for its 125-mile Constitution pipeline, which New York rejected last year.

Williams declined to comment. Within the pipeline industry, however, there is a growing sentiment that FERC under the Trump administration is friendlier to their projects.

"FERC is an independent agency, and I can't say we were treated poorly under past administrations," said Don Santa, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group. "But I do think the new commissioners appreciate the need for new infrastructure, and the pipeline opponents are looking for every opportunity to throw a wrench in the gears."

4-year permit process

Within the Trump administration, officials are looking for other ways to speed construction as they see a potential shortage of pipeline capacity unable to keep up with the growing U.S. oil and gas production, which Trump has made a key component of his economic agenda. At a September meeting of the National Petroleum Council, Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told the industry advisory committee that his department was examining how it might use eminent domain powers to get pipelines and other infrastructure built more quickly.

"It would be the irony of ironies. We'd have all this production and no way to move it to market," he said. "We're going to look very hard at that and determine where we might go, appropriately."

In New England, which relies increasingly on natural gas for electricity production as coal and nuclear plants have shuttered, a lack of pipelines to deliver the gas has helped make power prices there among the highest in the nation. At the same time, the sentiment against fossil fuels - and pipeline construction - is strong in the region. Last year, Houston-based Kinder Morgan halted a pipeline project across Massachusetts and New Hampshire after a swell of opposition that included Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.

More than five pipelines are scheduled to come online in the Northeast during the next year, representing 11 billion cubic feet a day of gas capacity - enough to power more than 250,000 homes - said Luke Jackson, an analyst at S&P Global Platts. But less than a third of that is under construction, leaving the possibility that environmental action could cause delays.

"It's a hell of a lot more difficult to build a pipe in the Northeast than it is in Texas," Jackson said.

Finding ways to speed the up to four years it takes to permit a pipeline has plenty of support in the Republican-led Congress. Earlier this year, the House passed two bills that would give FERC and Congress greater authority in getting international and interstate pipelines built, alleviating delays such as those that occurred when the Obama administration hemmed and hawed for years before rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.

"The regulatory delays are a problem, "said Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, one of the sponsors of the legislation, which is still awaiting a vote in the Senate. "We want to make sure there's some certainty. You're going to get a decision, so you can build or go find another route."

Perry's dueling stands

Pipeline companies, meanwhile, are lobbying Congress to restrict the criteria states can use to deny a project. But they acknowledge their path of success is a narrow one, given states' rights are a key tenet of the modern Republican Party.

But if the Trump administration is any sign, persuading politicians that expanding federal authority on infrastructure is in the nation's interests might not be too hard a sell.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry was a passionate defender of states' rights in his frequent fights with the Obama administration while governor of Texas. He even wrote a book on the topic in 2010, "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington."

"I seem to hear about it about 12 times a day," Brouillette, Perry's deputy, told the National Petroleum Council in September. "He is strong advocate of states' rights and he is very passionate about it. But he is also a very practical man, and he understands he has a different role to play today."
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Texas politicians are ramping up the pressure on President Donald Trump to pull back a federal ethanol mandate that created to reduce the nation's thirst for oil.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and other Republican senators met with President Donald Trump Thursday to discuss changes, following an announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year it would slightly increase biofuels mandates for 2018 and would not make changes to the program long sought by Republicans from oil rich states.

In a letter in late October, Cruz and eight other Republican Senators, including Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., asked Trump to meet, so they could "discuss a pathway forward toward a mutually agreeable solution."

"If your administration does not make adjustments or reforms on matters related to the renewable fuel standard, it will result in a loss of jobs around the country, particularly in our states," the letter read.

In attendance at Thursday's meeting were Trump, Chief of Staff John Kelly, EPA chief Scott Pruitt, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, and Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, as well as eleven senators, including Cruz and Cornyn.

Trump is "aware that workers in the refining sector believe the program isn't working as intended, and should be improved to reduce their compliance burdens," a White House spokesman said. "He will listen to the concerns of senators who represent these workers, with the hope of finding common ground."

During the meeting Trump encouraged senators to find a solution that was "win-win" for refineries, biofuels producers and consumers, said a lobbyist briefed on the meeting.

Cruz was granted the meeting after holding up a confirmation vote in the senate on Bill Northey, Trump's nominee to be a undersecretary of agriculture.

But the White House faces opposing pressure from politicians in the Midwest, a region for which the more than decade old mandate has created an economic boom through increased demand for corn - the principal source of ethanol in this country.

Earlier this week Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, downplayed the White House meeting with Cruz, telling the Des Moines Register, "the president keeps doing what he's told the voters of Iowa, me and Sen. (Joni) Ernst so many times  that he supports ethanol."

Right now ethanol represents about 10 percent of the nation's motor fuel supply, and refiners in and around the Houston area have long complained not only about the loss of demand for gasoline but the cost of buying the Renewable Identification Numbers - or RINs - that are required by Washington.

Traded on Wall Street, RIN prices have at times skyrocketed, a cash cow for those that blend the ethanol but costly for those required to buy the credits.

Earlier this month Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to Pruitt, asking for a waiver from the mandate for Texas, limiting ethanol to 9.7 percent of the fuel supply so as not to "inherently create a shortage of RINs."

"The escalating and unjustified RINs prices are creating a severe economic hardship for refiners, small retailers, consumers, skilled labor, and others," Abbott wrote. "The strength and resiliency of the industry and by extension, Texas' economy  is threatened by a restrictive federal mandate."
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SABINE PASS, La. - In 2011, Cheniere Energy was a little-known company with big ambitions when it signed an $8 billion contract that would transform the U.S. into an exporter of liquefied natural gas after decades of relying on foreign suppliers.

Five years later, just days before the Houston company shipped its first LNG cargo, another big deal gave a jolt to nascent U.S. industry. Royal Dutch Shell bought Cheniere customer BG Gas for $50 billion, a move that made Shell the world's largest international LNG producer and marketer and allied it with this nation's biggest LNG exporter. Shell remains Cheniere's best customer, buying almost half the production of Cheniere's massive Sabine Pass LNG terminal.

These two events have helped bring the United States to a tipping point, as LNG exports, mostly out of Texas and Louisiana, grow quickly. The Energy Department projects that LNG production capacity will quadruple by the end of 2019, making the nation the largest source of LNG after Qatar and Australia. The International Energy Agency predicts the U.S. could vault to first within a decade.

Situated on more than 1,000 acres of rural swamplands on the Louisiana side of the Texas state border overlooking Port Arthur, Cheniere's Sabine Pass complex recently added its fourth LNG unit and started shipping cargoes this fall, solidifying its position as the world's largest LNG exporting terminal outside of Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar.

The expansion comes as Virginia's Dominion Energy prepares this month to become the nation's second LNG exporter, operating from its Cove Point terminal in Maryland. Shell is buying the first Cove Point exports.

Shell is among the world's biggest energy companies increasing their bets on natural gas and LNG as pressure builds around the world to lower emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to climate change. Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal and oil and is considered by many analysts as the best complement to intermittent wind and solar energy because gas-fired plants can ramp up quickly to fill in production gaps.

"LNG will be a much more important part of the global energy mix going forward," said Steve Hill, executive vice president of Shell Energy overseeing LNG. "The way we reduce our CO2 emissions is by selling cleaner stuff."

Coming soon

The most recent Sabine Pass cargo left recently on Dynagas' Lena River vessel en route to India as Asia becomes a key destination for LNG exports. China increased its LNG purchases the most in 2017, and India was one of the fastest-growing markets as well. Europe's demand for American LNG also is growing. Poland recently agreed to start buying LNG shipped out of Sabine Pass to reduce its reliance on Russian gas.

More LNG projects will come online in 2018 and 2019. After Cove Point, Houston-based Kinder Morgan's Elba Island LNG project is scheduled next year to begin shipments out of Georgia. Houston's Freeport LNG is expected to begin operations at its Quintana Island terminal.

Delays have pushed back Sempra Energy's Cameron LNG project in Louisiana to 2019. Cheniere also plans to expand Sabine Pass and open its Corpus Christi terminal in 2019.

After this first batch of American facilities are completed, the second wave of U.S. LNG projects is on the horizon. The question is which of several potential developments will move forward.

Because of a global LNG glut that's expected to develop by 2019, it's extremely hard for proposed projects to secure the long-term contracts they need to fund construction, said Gautam Sudhaker, LNG research director at IHS Markit, a consulting firm. Buyers want more flexibility and don't want to commit to the 20-year deals that formed the foundation of Sabine Pass and other recent projects.

Global competition also keeps mounting. Shell has its own LNG complexes in Australia, as does the U.S. oil major Chevron, which just opened its Wheatstone LNG complex there. Russia-based Novatek's Yamal LNG plant commenced operations in northwestern Siberiathis month, and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of The Woodlands is pressing ahead with its Mozambique LNG project off Africa's east coast.

Qatar recently said it plans to open new production and increase its LNG exports in the coming years, even as the Middle Eastern nation feuds with Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries.

Second wave

Cheniere was failing financially after Sabine Pass was originally built to handle LNG imports, but the company made a $20 billion bet to convert it to a much larger export terminal, where it cools U.S. shale gas to liquid form at minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit to ship around the world.

The man who took that risk, Cheniere co-founder Charif Souki, was ousted two years ago in a shareholder revolt led by famed corporate raider Carl Icahn. But Souki, in a partnership with former BG Chief Operating Officer Martin Houston, launched the Houston company Tellurian, which is driving to lead the U.S. second wave with the Driftwood LNG project in Louisiana.

Other second wave projects include the Rio Grande LNG project in Brownsville, proposed by NextDecade of The Woodlands, and Magnolia LNG in Louisiana, planned by Australia's LNG Ltd., which expects to move its headquarters to Houston.

Big oil companies, including Shell and Exxon Mobil, also could build LNG projects along the Gulf Coast. Exxon Mobil and Qatar are considering converting their Golden Pass terminal, which is visible from Cheniere's Sabine Pass, into an LNG exporter on the Texas side of the border. Shell still could build its pending Lake Charles LNG project with Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, but both companies have placed funding priorities elsewhere for now.

Shell's most recent U.S. LNG project though may prove more accessible - and fun - to many Americans. The company just announced a deal with Carnival Cruise Line to supply North America's first LNG-powered cruise ships.
A top Volkswagen official in the United States was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for his role in the German automaker's decadelong scheme to cheat on diesel emissions tests.

The sentencing of Oliver Schmidt, a former Volkswagen manager in Michigan, was the latest turn in a vast scandal that has tarnished the company's reputation and has cost the carmaker more than $20 billion in fines and settlements.

The sentence, including a fine of $400,000, was imposed by Judge Sean F. Cox in U.S. District Court in Detroit four months after Schmidt, 48, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government and to violating the Clean Air Act. The sentence was in line with the prosecution's recommendation.

Schmidt, a citizen of Germany, is the highest-ranking Volkswagen employee to be convicted in the scheme in the United States. His case underscores the Justice Department's commitment to indicting and prosecuting participants in the company's efforts to rig pollution tests on hundreds of thousands of diesel vehicles imported for sale in the U.S. market.

But most of those suspected of conspiring to defraud U.S. regulators are out of reach of American justice in Germany, which normally does not extradite its citizens. Schmidt may turn out to suffer the harshest punishment for the emissions fraud even though he was hardly the only participant or the highest ranking.

Schmidt's arrest in January, more than a year after the scandal erupted, was something of a fluke. Having been transferred back to Germany, he came to the U.S. for a vacation with his wife and was seized as he waited for a departing flight in Miami. Why he risked arrest by traveling to the U.S. is still a mystery.

Schmidt had been a Volkswagen employee since 1997 and was named general manager of the company's engineering and environmental office in Auburn Hills, Mich., in 2013. He was responsible for the automaker's relations with the federal and California regulatory agencies that initially pursued the emissions cheating case.

In his comments to the judge, Schmidt - his wrists shackled and wearing a red prison jumpsuit and black-rimmed reading glasses - said he accepted responsibility for his wrongdoing. "I only have to blame myself," he said in German-accented English. "I made bad decisions, and for that I am sorry."
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David Graham had a nice little business going. His Coder Camps taught adults to do what he'd been making a living at for years: writing software. But time and again, he kept hearing this question, often from the men and women he was teaching:

"Can my kid do this? Do you have something like this for kids?"

Now, he does. Graham sold Coder Camps for an undisclosed amount in 2016 and used the profit to start Code Ninjas, a franchise business that opened its first center in Pearland earlier this year. The operation teaches coding to children between 7 and 14 years of age by showing them how to create video games.

So far, the Pearland center is the only Code Ninjas open, but Graham says he already has sold 46 franchises for 95 locations in 21 states, with a goal of 100 centers by year's end. Even though it's a relatively unproven business, the drumbeat among parents that their children need to learn to write code or be left behind is a compelling proposition.

"Parents hear that their kids need to learn how to code to be ready for jobs that don't even exist now, but will be needed in the future," Graham said. "That's one of the problems I wanted to solve for the tech-savvy parent. How can we make sure that every time their kids come here, it's a fun experience?"

Graham won't say how many students are enrolled in the program, but the CodeNinjas.com website says centers can typically enroll 30 children at a time. On a recent visit to the Pearland center, eight students were working on laptops or playing with robotics kits. Two instructors - Code Ninjas refers to them as senseis, the name for martial arts teachers - worked with the children one-on-one.

Contrarian view: Who benefits when kids learn to code?

There are two classrooms, a waiting area for parents and some support offices, including a kitchen. It's brightly lit with lots of primary colors. In essence, it looks like any small private school.

Code Ninjas' location is perfect from a marketing perspective. In a small strip center at 12810 Broadway, it sits across the street from a new middle school under construction. Just behind that is an elementary school, and a few blocks down Broadway is a high school. Perhaps thousands of parents pass by the Code Ninjas storefront every day during the school year.

"Let's just say the location was not an accident," Graham said.

Graham and his team, many of whom he brought over from Coder Camps, developed the curriculum themselves. Much of it was derived from teaching programming to Graham's own children.

Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle

At the center, kids learn to code by working on games, beginning with a programming language called Scratch and developed by MIT for young children. Borrowing from the structure of martial arts dojos, students progress through various belt levels, from white to black. They learn more advanced programming languages as they go, and even work with robotics.

Graham said the courses are structured so it takes four years for a student to ascend to the highest level.

"The goal is to end up with an app in the Apple App Store," Graham said.

Tuition isn't cheap. For its after-school program, at which students spend five days a week from 3:30 to 6 p.m., parents are charged $450 a month. Less-expensive options include a drop-in program and a "Parents Night Out" on Friday nights, as well as a summer camp offering, but kids in those programs don't necessarily progress through the various levels.

There's no sliding scale for families who can't afford the tuition. Graham says the target market for Code Ninjas is affluent parents in upper-income neighborhoods, though lower-priced programs may come later.

"Before we start helping everyone, we want to do this right ourselves," he said.

Read it: New books illustrate the basics of coding for young readers

Bulent Dogan, a clinical assistant professor of learning design and technology at the University of Houston's College of Education, said Code Ninjas is taking advantage of a growing call for teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Math skills, often referred to as STEM, to U.S. students as early as possible.

"We all know that there is a need for more STEM courses in education," Dogan said. "The U.S. is lagging behind other countries in terms of math and science rankings."

Dogan cited U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics that indicate software developers will be in high demand. The bureau's website projects 24 percent growth for software developers by 2026 and 30 percent growth for applications developers, who actually write programs.

Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle

With the Trump administration seeking to make it harder to get a work visa for technologically skilled workers from overseas to come here, Dogan said it's even more crucial that we grow a code-savvy labor force at home.

High-profile technologists such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Apple CEO Tim Cook have all called for more computer science training in schools, Dogan said, and parents are hearing that.

"Parents understand that we're not just teaching these kids to be computer scientists," he said. "Coding is very helpful in that it teaches them problem-solving."

But not everyone agrees that coding is crucial for future success. Kate Miltner, a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is researching power structures and identity in the technology industry. Not all tech jobs are well-paid, highly sought positions, she said.

"The message you hear is that coding is the future, coders are the new rock stars, that Silicon Valley is a big part of our economy and the jobs are creative and exciting," Miltner said. "But not all tech jobs are that great."

She said most tech companies are stratified, with mostly white males in the power positions. Companies such as Apple and Facebook have conceded they need to work more on diversity, but "the record is pretty abominable."

Graham acknowledges that males hold many of the top tech jobs, but he points to the fact that 40 percent of his students so far are girls. He thinks getting girls into coding early could make a difference in the industry down the road.

Most franchisees that have signed up so far also are in suburban areas, and the cost of starting and owning a Code Ninjas center runs from $128,000 to $223,000, according to the company's website. There's a $40,000 franchise fee, but that's cut in half for now for "early adopters."

Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle

Lisa Lim and her husband, Steve, bought the franchise for Bellaire and are in the process of trying to nail down a location. A commercial banker, she said she and her husband always wanted to own their own business. She said she spotted the Code Ninjas opportunity through an online ad and attended a "Discovery Days" meeting held at the Pearland center.

"It had what we were looking for," Lim said. "It had the components of education, of fun. We know about coding summer camps, and here was another alternative in a format we had never seen before."

The couple, who have three children, are struggling to find a location in Bellaire, where Lisa Lim said the vacancy rate for businesses is "very low." One promising spot was nixed when it turned out there was a competing type of business in the same shopping center that objected to Code Ninjas moving in.

Related: How tech firms have pushed coding into schools

Lim said she was aware that Code Ninjas is a new endeavor and hasn't yet proved itself beyond the one Pearland location. But she works with a lot of people buying into franchises and said, based on her due diligence, the proposition looks viable.

Anjali Dighe, who plans to open four Code Ninja centers in the Charlotte, N.C., area, also wasn't dissuaded. She and her husband, Vivek, moved to Charlotte after years of living in Washington, D.C., and wanted to start a business.

"We bought franchise numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4," she said.

She described the process of getting to know Code Ninjas as being like "dating."

"We dated Code Ninjas for months before we decided to tie the knot," Dighe said. "We took a look at the business model, at the forecasting model, and we talked to a lot of people locally: 'Is this something you'd be interested in?'"

Dighe said the couple have secured a location and are waiting on the permitting process before they can begin building out the first storefront. The other three will come later, she said.

Graham said the next Code Ninjas to open will likely be in Katy, and one in The Woodlands is getting close. Hurricane Harvey slowed down some of the franchisees, he said, and the Pearland center wound up giving refunds to some parents who needed cash for more immediate needs.

"People came in and said, 'I lost my car, I have to repair my house, I can't afford to pay 400 bucks a month right now,'" he said. "We refunded $12,000 in tuition, and we raised $6,700 for Harvey relief, giving it to teachers in the area.

"After all, we're part of this community, too."
University of Texas System regents will decide next year how to unload the 300 acres of land it purchased in Houston.

Four regents  Jeff Hildebrand, Paul Foster, David Beck and Steve Hicks  will aim to recommend a plan to the board by July, according to a memo sent last week by Chancellor William McRaven and board chairman Sara Martinez Tucker.

The Houston task force will put together a progress report in February, a preliminary report in May and a final report in July, according to a background memo on the project. McRaven scrapped the project in March amid criticism from state lawmakers and new regents.

The chancellor, a retired Navy admiral who joined UT in 2015, plans to stay on as chancellor beyond the end of his three-year contract in January, but has not asked regents to extend his contract, UT System spokeswoman Karen Adler confirmed Thursday. The Texas Tribune first reported this news early Thursday.

Earlier this year, he expressed uncertainty about his future with the system.

"If I'm not adding value to the UT System, then maybe I'm not the right guy for the job," he said at a June event, adding that he would have to see whether the board wants him to stay.

McRaven was the first UT chancellor to have a contract and does not require one to remain in his position, Adler said. He was one of the nations top-paid college presidents in the 2014-15 and the 2015-16 academic years.

McRaven and Tucker announced a second task force in their memo last Friday. This group will review its own structure, functions, activities and staffing. Its goal is to make recommendations by August, but it will provide a progress report in March.

Regents this year have been split on the question of how much money the system should spend on its own projects instead of its academic institutions'. Most recently, several expressed concerns before a vote on whether to pursue a bid to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory, saying the bid could distract the system from its academic institutions.

Four regents were named to that task force, and three of them  Kevin Eltife, Janiece Longoria and Rad Weaver  were the three board members appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year.

They have each said that the UT System should not have spent more than $200 million on the Houston land without a stated purpose for that facility. McRaven never got Abbotts support on the project.

Lindsay Ellis writes about higher education for the Chronicle. You can follow her on Twitter and send her tips at lindsay.ellis@chron.com.
More than 2,400 soldiers, sailors, Marines and civilians died in the early morning hours of Dec. 7, 1941, when 361 warplanes from the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and drew the United States into World War II.

Another 1,100 were wounded that day.

But not everyone who was wounded or killed that day was serving in the military. Families near and far lost fathers, sons and husbands.

And some, like Elaine Burt Abraham, lost a loved one who might have become her husband.

By all accounts, Abraham has led a very good life. She and her late husband, Thomas, lived on a family farm on Independence Highway  where she still resides  reared three children and enjoyed successful careers with the U.S. Postal Service.

But her life could have turned out much differently if her steady boyfriend, Robert S. Brown, a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps stationed at Hickam Air Field, had not died on Dec. 7, 1941.

He was a good Christian, said Abraham, a native of Salt Lake City. We met at church and went to church together. If he would have come home, we likely would have gotten married.

Abraham said Browns mother notified her of his death.

Browns death spurred Abraham  whose maiden name was Burt  to eventually leave Utah and enlist in the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She served for a time at the Naval Air Station Tillamook blimp hangars on the Oregon Coast.

The Tillamook base operated from 1942 to 1948 and housed eight blimps.

She and her twin sister, Betty, had volunteered during their high school years at the local USO center in Salt Lake City, where they liked to dance with the soldiers and sailors.

They graduated from high school in Ogden, Utah, in 1942. Betty got married and later moved to Pennsylvania with her husband.

Elaine worked at a local bank, and in 1944 enlisted in the WAVES.

According to a May 15, 1944, clipping from the Salt Lake Telegram, Burt was among four woman from the area who had enlisted and were headed to the U.S. Naval training school in the Bronx, New York.

In July 1944, the Salt Lake Tribune reported under the headline, War Girls  Here, There n Everywhere, noted: Orders to report at the naval air station at Pasco, Wash., have been received by Elaine Burt, seaman 2-c, who has completed her training at the naval training school in New York City.

I worked in the post office, Abraham said of her Navy career. Our ensign wanted everything to be perfect.

Abraham said working around the giant blimps was fascinating.

It took 11 men to hold them down, she said. I loved it. It was interesting to see what another life was like and I worked with other girls from all over the country.

Abraham earned the rank of seaman first class, adding that because it was her first time away from home she had to learn to get accustomed to change.

After the war ended, Abraham worked in banks and for the post office and married Thomas Abraham in 1951.

Her husband had been born and reared on the family farm on what is now Abraham Lane off Independence Highway, about six miles north of Albany.

He had also served in the Navy during the war.

They built a new home on the farm in 1964 and had three children there: Paul and Mark, who live in Benton County, and Suzann, who lives on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Dad worked at the Bureau of Mines and for the post offices in Albany and Salem, Suzann said.

She said her mother also used to write letters to soldiers and sailors during the war.

She kept many of the return letters, Suzann said. Many of them came from guys who were in battle areas and they had been censored. There were lots of words cut out or marked out by the censors.

In 1976, after the death of her husband, Elaines sister Betty moved to Albany. For 25 years the sisters volunteered as Pink Ladies at the Albany General Hospital. Betty died in 2009.

Elaine said she was honored to be named one of the grand marshals for this years Veterans Day parade in Albany.

It was very interesting, she said.

We are very proud of her, Suzann added.

Elaine had donated her WAVES uniform to a museum in Tillamook. It and other items were later moved to a museum in Madras.

But there is a plaque and photo of the WAVES at the Tillamook Air Museum, in which Elaine is included.

Asked if she thinks about the events of Pearl Harbor often, Abraham noted, "I wish I could have changed a lot of things.
The nation's top public health official traveled to Harris County on Wednesday to get a look at how the region is recovering more than three months after Hurricane Harvey.

Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spent most of the day receiving briefings from officials at Harris County Public Health, which has been on the front lines helping residents cope following the historic flooding.

IMPACT: Staggering Meyerland before and after photos

Later, Fitzgerald visited a mobile wellness unit in Galena Park, where county health workers provided residents of the flood-ravaged community in southeast Harris County with free immunizations, cleaning supplies, bug spray, canned food and other services.

Now Playing: Aftermath: Hurricane Harvey floods Houston's Meyerland neighborhood Video: Houston Chronicle

Harris County dispatched the mobile health units to more 30 locations in the weeks following the hurricane, part of a broader effort to help residents care for themselves in the midst of the devastation.Fitzgerald said she's been monitoring the county's efforts closely and wanted to see them firsthand.

"I wanted to come and see how it's going," Fitzgerald said, "and also to see what else we can do to make sure Houston recovers totally."

Although Harvey's true toll on public health is still being calculated, Fitzgerald said the CDC is committed to providing Texas with whatever resources are needed to grapple with the aftermath.

The visit comes days after the Kaiser Family Foundation released a sweeping survey that found 17 percent of those who had houses damaged or suffered income loss reported that someone in their household has developed a new or worsening health condition.

Chronic respiratory ailments resulting from mold and stress-related mental health struggles are of particular concern after flooding, health officials said, as well as the threat of mosquito-borne illnesses and other infectious diseases.

Fitzgerald said she was impressed by the resiliency of residents and public health workers she met, some of whom manned mobile health clinics just days after losing their homes to flooding.

"The work goes on," Fitzgerald said.
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The man accused of impersonating a police officer to rob pharmacies across the greater Houston area has been arrested, the Harris County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday morning.

Travis Lee Wilson, 32, is charged with aggravated robbery for allegedly holding up a Walgreens pharmacy at 2103 FM 2920 in Spring on December 4.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 4 other pharmacy robberies believed to be connected by police

According to the sheriff's office, Wilson entered the pharmacy dressed in a fake law-enforcement uniform, with "POLICE" written across the back of a black shirt, in order to gain access to private areas of the pharmacy.

Now Playing: The suspect in this video is wanted in 5 pharmacy robberies in the Houston area. One of the 5 is listed as an attempted robbery. The suspect impersonates a police officer to gain access to private areas of a pharmacy. The robberies began on Sept. 28, 2017. Video: Harris County Sheriff's Office Video: Harris County Sheriff's Office

Then, he demanded pain meds, HCSO said.

Earlier this week, HCSO asked the public for help identifying the suspect who appeared to be responsible for at least four such robberies in Houston, Friendswood and Missouri City, as well as the one at Walgreens in Spring, since September. HCSO had provided surveillance photos and videos as well as a description of the suspect and his vehicle.

In a news release Thursday, HCSO said it received information about the whereabouts of that vehicle, a Ford Expedition, which investigators found in Alvin. The Texas Rangers assisted in identifying the owner of the vehicle--Wilson--and then investigators showed the complainant Wilson's photo in a lineup.

The complainant, HCSO said, positively ID'd Wilson as the suspect.

HCSO then obtained a warrant to search Wilson's apartment and vehicle, where they found a toy gun, the black "POLICE" shirt, fake plastic badge and patches of fentanyl.

The fentanyl had been reported stolen during the Walgreens robbery.

Wilson is being held in the Harris County jail and his probable cause hearing, where his bail will be set, was scheduled for this morning.
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The mother who admitted to setting her own house on fire while her family was inside was handed a five-year prison sentence Tuesday morning.

Jamie Sarah Downs, 27, faced up to life in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree felony arson Nov. 15. She intentionally set fire to her home Jan. 13 at the GNC Trailer Park in the 13400 block of Bert Brown Road off FM 1314.

Judge Kathleen Hamilton, in the 359th state District Court, heard hours of testimony during Downs' sentencing hearing Friday but mulled her decision for a few days.

TERRIFYING: Man allegedly burned ex-girlfriend's house with children sleeping inside

Downs initially told The Courier and authorities on the day of the fire that it was caused by electrical issues, but later confessed to starting the blaze.

"The night before last, the bathroom went black," Downs said that day. "Last night, there was no stove, no dryer. Time and time again, we had trouble with electrical issues. We had told our landlord (on the phone), 'Can you come in?' And they told us to wiggle the breaker around."

The landlord, Sherri Barnett, denied the claims there were electrical problems with the house, instead saying that Downs was two months behind on her rent and facing eviction. Days later, investigators with the Montgomery County Fire Marshal's Office learned Downs intentionally started it by lighting clothes on fire near a breaker to mimic an electrical fire.

She started the fire while her husband, two young children and mother were in the home.

"Regardless of the intentions, actions, it's very dangerous to start a fire any time you have a home occupied like that, especially with small children in the home," Fire Marshal Jimmy Williams previously said. "And on top of that, you have the firefighters who have to respond and they could be injured. There's a lot of consequences to those actions. It's an unfortunate situation."

Downs was arrested days after the fire but was released on bond about two weeks later. However, her bond was revoked in early October after she tested positive for opiates and methamphetamine, court records show.

She will likely only serve a little over four years in prison because of the number of days she's been incarcerated in the Montgomery County Jail awaiting her conviction.
Six of 36 men arrested in a December child sex crime sting were indicted Thursday on felony charges Thursday.

Raymond Ybarra, 41, Alfonso Ruiz, 27, Sadam Castellanos-Reyes, 23, and Kyle Storie, 31, face second-degree felony online solicitation of a minor charges Thursday. Carlos Valdez, 29, faces a second-degree felony criminal attempted sexual assault of a child charge, while Adam Rivera, 25, has a charge of second-degree felony aggravated sexual assault of a child.

All could serve up to 20 years in prison, if convicted.

The six were arrested during a special Internet Crimes Against Children sting in fall and winter 2016, a part of what prosecutors dubbed Operation Safe Holiday. Three dozen men were arrested in the sting, and almost all of them have been indicted by a grand jury.

Now Playing: Houston has long been known as a major hub for human and sex trafficking. Video: John-Henry Perera

See all of those indicted or convicted from the sting operation in the photos above.

The ICAC Task Force consists of officers from the Conroe Police Department, all five of the Montgomery County constable's offices, the District Attorney's Office, Homeland Security Investigations, Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Attorney General's Office.

Other, unrelated Montgomery County grand jury indictments for April 13:

Richard Jackson, assault family strangulation

Anthony Amador, assault family strangulation

Nicholas Brown, sexual assault of a child

Austin Gillioun, aggravated sexual assault of a child

Gregory Whale, assault family strangulation

Nelson Arieta, online solicitation of a minor

Justin Balli, online solicitation of a minor

Isauro Flores Jr., criminal attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child

Austin Reyes, criminal attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child

Alexis Castillo, online solicitation of a minor
SAN ANTONIO - "We're so far from the Alamo and Ripley's Believe It or Not that we're off the beaten path," Emiliano Calderon was telling me on a warm afternoon this week.

Calderon, site educator at the Casa Navarro State Historic Site, actually works within walking distance of Alamo Plaza, but the home of Jose Antonio Navarro, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, is indeed off the path worn smooth by most San Antonio visitors.

The Navarro site is at the corner of Laredo and Nueva streets, on the edge of a dreary parking lot and next door to an even drearier Central Texas Detention Facility. Bad-boy rocker Ozzy Osbourne was briefly a resident of the facility after his little incident at the Alamo Cenotaph in 1982, but these days the former county jail is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Ironically, ICE detains undocumented immigrants, primarily from Mexico and other Latin American countries, in a building that looms over the home of one of the more significant Tejano figures in the state's history.

The meticulously maintained compound, one of the oldest remaining adobe structures in San Antonio, attracts less than 3,000 visitors a year. The Alamo draws 4 million.

"Every day we have people come in and say, 'I've lived here all my life and didn't know this was here,'" site manager Georgia Ruiz Davis told me. (I didn't confess to Davis, but until last week I was just as unaware.)

Our historical ignorance is unfortunate, because Navarro - businessman, legislator, rancher, statesman - was an influential actor in almost every significant phase of a state in the making. To know him is to know early Texas.

Calderon, a native San Antonian with a master's degree in Mexican-American studies, put it this way: "If you want to understand Texas history, Navarro is one of the people you have to look at. He was involved in Texas history from the Revolution to readmission to the Union. He was a very complicated man, whose life opens up a more complex understanding of this state."

San Antonio native

Navarro was born in San Antonio in 1795. His father was a native of Corsica - thus Corsicana, county seat of Navarro County - and his mother a descendant of Spanish nobility. At age 13, he suffered a mysterious "blow" to his leg and walked with a cane the rest of his life.

In the chaotic and bloody San Antonio of Navarro's youth, armies clashed by night and by day. When the Mexican War for Independence broke out during the early 19th century, rebels captured the town and in 1813 executed the governor. Spanish authorities retaliated, killing hundreds of suspected rebels in San Antonio and sending hundreds more fleeing into the countryside and beyond.

Navarro was among them, having supported the Gutierrez-Magee expedition of 1813, an early combined effort by the Mexican rebels and American adventurers to wrest Texas from Spain and attach it to the U.S. Young Navarro hightailed it to New Orleans.

He returned three years later, convinced that the only way Texas would ever vanquish marauding Comanches and Apaches, establish law and order and bring prosperity to the state was to encourage Anglo-American colonization. He became friends with Stephen F. Austin, the young impresario committed to the same notion.

Here's where the "more complex understanding of this state" comes in, particularly for young Mexican-Americans like Calderon: Both Austin and Navarro supported slavery, however reluctantly. They believed that if Anglo-American farmers from the Southern states couldn't bring their slaves with them into Texas, colonization would fail.

As University of North Texas historian Andrew J. Torget lays out in his book, "Seeds of Empire," Navarro, serving in the Coahuila y Tejas Congress in 1828, helped draft legislation designed to allow Austin and other Texas colonizers to circumvent Mexican statutes against importing slaves. The scheme redefined slavery as debt peonage. These newly defined "indentured servants" would be able to pay their masters for the cost of emancipating them, but it would take, on average, 60 years.

Signed the declaration

In 1836, Navarro became one of three Mexican signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Five years later, President Mirabeau B. Lamar persuaded the San Antonian to participate in the Santa Fe Expedition, a foolhardy venture to persuade New Mexico to join the Texas Republic. Navarro had misgivings but decided he had to say yes to prove that Tejanos were loyal to the Republic. He was painfully aware that they were losing their land, their rights, even their lives to resentful Anglo newcomers. "My participation would serve  to avoid a crisis among my fellow citizens," he wrote.

The motley group was arrested outside Santa Fe and marched to Mexico City, where they faced execution for treason. Navarro, who refused to renounce his allegiance to Texas, served 14 brutal months in a Vera Cruz prison before escaping by ship to Cuba.

In 1845, he was the only Tejano delegate to the convention called to decide annexation to the United States. An eloquent man and a forceful writer, despite his lack of formal education, he helped write the first state constitution. He also persuaded his fellow delegates - in Spanish, through an interpreter - to strike the word "white" as a requirement for voting rights.

He served two terms in the state Senate and in later years supported the state's right to secede from the Union. His four sons served in the Confederacy.

Navarro was a successful, influential man, but as historian Torget points out, he and Juan Seguin and other Tejano leaders "found themselves forced to the margins of Texas society by the transformations they helped create."

Finding a role model

On the day I visited Casa Navarro, fourth-graders from San Antonio's Hawthorne Academy were having a picnic lunch on the grounds after a half-day field trip. I asked Davis what she hoped the youngsters, almost all of them Hispanic, would get out of their introduction to the life and times of Jose Antonio Navarro.

"I feel strongly, as someone of Mexican-American descent, that you have to be able to see yourself in history, so that you know your people really matter," she said. "With these kids, even if they see that 'my grandmother has a tortilla press just like that one,' I feel that's an important thing."

Christopher Sierra has taught for 24 years at Hawthorne, a public school that focuses on the fine arts and core knowledge. He wants his young students to see a role model (despite Navarro's complexity and contradictions).

"I want them to have a sense of the change that's happening today," the veteran teacher said. "Navarro fighting for the rights of Tejanos is a direct echo of what's happening right now."

The Navarro who appeals to Sierra is the aging Tejano leader who delivered a blistering condemnation of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant "Know-Nothing" movement - officially the American Party - that had swept the 1854 San Antonio municipal elections.

"Fellow citizens," Navarro proclaimed, "at last you have risen from the slumber of indifference! At last you have remembered that you are the sons of those Hispanic Mexican builders who founded our lovely city. ..."

In San Antonio and beyond, the Know-Nothings began to wither away soon afterward. Sierra hopes the echo still resounds.
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Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, son of the late Gov. Mark White, announced Thursday he is running as a conservative Democrat against Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott.

In a mid-morning announcement in Houston, the 45-year-old first-time candidate and father of three joined a field of Democrats that now numbers eight, most of them more liberal politically in a party that White acknowledges is to his left on some issues.

"I'm willing to leave my career and run, because Texas is worth taking a chance," White said. "The future of Texas is important.  It will be a tough race. I know that."

With such a large field of Democrats running in the spring primary, and with Texas such a Republican state, political scientists rate White's chances of winning as slim. The last Democrat elected governor was Ann Richards in 1990, and the last time a Democrat was elected to statewide office was in 1994.

As a candidate, White said he will highlight how he believes Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have taken Texas politics too far to the right, and that Texans need to come together on many issues to move the state forward. "I will work with both sides," he said.

White said he supports improving public schools and opposes vouchers. He is against a so-called bathroom bill that would require people to use the restroom of their birth gender and the recently enacted state ban on sanctuary cities, as well as other legislation that he says discriminates against Texans.

He supports property tax reforms, including a change in the Texas Constitution to remove a provision that amounts to a $5 billion tax break for owners of commercial property.

He said he would use those savings to give teachers a pay raise.

As an avid hunter, he supports gun ownership rights but thinks some restrictions may be wise to improve public safety.

In a position that puts him at odds with top party officials, White has been described as pro-life, though he says abortion remains legal under current law that he is not suggesting be changed.

"If I had a label it would be that I'm a common-sense Texan who is pro-business, who will do what's right no matter the consequences," he told the Houston Chronicle.

'Wake-up call'

Those are the same words, quoting legendary Texas revolutionary Gen. Sam Houston, that his father said he used as his guiding principle when he served as governor from 1983-87, after defeating Republican incumbent Bill Clements.

Clements defeated Mark White four years later, partly over an unpopular $4 billion tax hike he pushed through to pay for teacher pay increases and other school improvements to the public education system, at a time when Texas' oil-based economy was sagging.

Andrew White said the death of his father Aug. 5 served as a "wake-up call" for him to get involved in Texas politics to curb what he views as increasing divisive and extremist policies promoted by Abbott and Patrick to appeal to GOP primary voters.

"I'm not running because Greg Abbott is a bad man, because he's not," White said. "I'm running because Texas needs a leader who will be willing to risk re-election to do the right thing.  Too many of our leaders now just want to do the politically expedient thing.

"We will never fix the tough issues we face as a state in a politically expedient way," he said.

In announcing his bid, White also faces the likelihood he will be running against the Democratic Party leadership, which declined to embrace his candidacy more than a month ago. The party's standard-bearer for governor in the 2018 elections widely is seen as former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, the daughter of migrant farm workers and a lesbian who filed as a candidate Wednesday.

Party officials said they believe she will bring out large numbers of Hispanic, gay and minority voters who could drive a blue wave of wins in the November general election.

White said he thinks having Valdez in the race is good because it allows Democrats to better showcase Abbott's divisive policies during the campaign. But he said he sees himself as the only Democrat who can face off successfully with Abbott in the November election.

"I want to bring the race to Gov. Abbott," he said.

Opposing positions

First, Democratic activists said Thursday, White must explain his positions to primary voters that are contrary to party ideals.

"How does an anti-choice, conservative Democrat appeal to the thousands of progressives, women and people of color who lobbied, rallied and marched this year?" said Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, an organization of progressive Democrats in Austin. "He needs to explain his positions: What does it mean to be a conservative in the era of Trump? If the Legislature passes an anti-abortion bill, would he sign it? Conservatives actively oppose LGBTQ equality, from the bathroom bill to the recent Texas Supreme Court ruling that Houston can deny spousal benefits to same-sex couples. Where does he stand on that?"

Harold Cook, a veteran Democratic Party strategist, echoed that sentiment.

"I have to see how several of his positions fit with those of Democrats, and I've been unsuccessful so far," Cook said. "I guess if you squinted your eyes just right, you might be able to imagine there are enough Democratic primary voters who will vote for the candidate they think will win the general election, even if you don't agree with them, and I think that's dead wrong. Primary voters vote their own values, and that won't help him."

Born in Houston, White grew up in Austin while his father served as secretary of state, then attorney general and then as governor. Raised in a family that had "tons of teachers" in it, White attended public schools in Austin and graduated from Lamar High School in Houston.

A religious-studies graduate from the University of Virginia, with a masters in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin, White has started six businesses in Houston and has headed Sweat Equity Partners LP since he started it in 2010.

He said he plans to manage his campaign "like a startup."

During Hurricane Harvey's devastating flooding in Houston in August, White worked for days ferrying dozens of stranded Houstonians out of submerged houses in his 16-foot bass boat. He said that reaffirmed his appreciation for Texans' legendary spirit of can-do accomplishment, no matter the circumstances, and since has underscored how he believes state leaders have failed to tap the $10 billion savings account to expedite the recovery.

Abbott has said he wants the state to use its approximately $100 billion, two-year budget to help with the recovery, after which the Legislature can return in 2019 for a regular session to allocate money from the account without the costs of a special legislative session.

His target support

To win, White said he believes he will have to raise at least $3 million to $4 million to win the Democratic primary next March, and $30 million to $40 million for the general election. Abbott has upward of $50 million in his campaign war chest.

White's target for support in his campaign: Conservative and "common-sense" Democrats himself who are disgusted with divisive Texas politics, along with moderate Republicans who will cross over to vote for him.

"I'm a guy who can get elected," he said.

Others besides White and Valdez who have filed as Democrats to challenge Abbott include Houston electronics businessman Joe Mumbach, Dallas financial analyst Adrian Ocegueda, retired Flint teacher Grady Yarbrough, former Balch Springs Mayor Cedric Davis Sr. and San Antonio businessman Tom Wakely.
The federal government's funding will run out on Friday at midnight, unless Congress passes a short-term spending package between now and then.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump acknowledged that a shutdown "could happen," and preemptively singled out a culprit, in case it does.

"The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country," Trump said.

He elaborated: "They want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country."

This was, apparently, a reference to the Democrats' hopes that any such continuing resolution include protections for the roughly 800,000 unauthorized immigrants affected by his administration's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in 2012.

Some Democrats have demanded that such protections be included in any short-term spending package Congressional leaders come up with, and have said that they will refuse to vote for one that does not.

On Monday, John Cornyn, our senior senator, blasted such demands as "a hysterical and cynical ploy," during a speech on the Senate floor.

Cornyn is among the leading Republicans who have joined Democrats in calling for a long-term solution for the "Dreamers," but has argued that it should be pursued separately from any short-term spending fix - and that at this point, it will have to be.

"How can you claim to care about the 800,000 undocumented immigrants that this program protects through work permits and deportation relief but then turn your back on the 322 million people who need to know that their government is still able to function?" Cornyn asked.

The question is not merely academic. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but will need some votes from their Democratic colleagues to pass a continuing resolution - even if all the Republicans are committed to doing so, which they are not.

According to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, nearly two-thirds of voters - including 61 percent of Republicans - want Congress to do whatever it takes to avoid a shutdown.

Still, many are willing to take such a risk over various priorities, including reauthorizing the Children's Health Insurance Program, which expired in September, or authorizing disaster aid to the states and territories that sustained severe damage during this summer's storms.

What a mess, huh?

Unlike Cornyn, I harbor no particular delusions about whether our federal government is still able to function. But I do agree with him on the issue at hand.

Congress should pass a DREAM Act, as soon as it can. And their progress on tax reform, over the course of the past two weeks, suggests that they do have the capacity to act lickety-split.

But it's unrealistic to expect Congress to pass a DREAM Act by Friday, given that they also have to try to try to avoid a government shutdown, and figure out what to do about Al Franken. And it would be reasonable to ask Democratic leaders, frankly, why they haven't prioritized this issue yet.

Dreamers are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from young Americans, except that they happen to be unauthorized immigrants.

Texans tacitly recognized that back in 2001, with the passage of a law making such immigrants eligible for in-state tuition at the state's public colleges and universities, commonly referred to as the "Texas Dream Act."

And advocates have been calling on Congress to pass legislation providing Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship, or at least legal status, for more than a decade.

In theory, the idea of doing so has always had bipartisan support, and rightly so. In practice, it has always become ensnared by politics.

In June 2012, Janet Napolitano, then the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a memorandum setting out the administration's policies for enforcing the nation's immigration laws against young people who came to the United States when they were under the age of 16, provided they had subsequently maintained a clean criminal record and had met certain criteria, such as graduating from high school or serving in the military.

Such immigrants had not actually been targeted for enforcement prior to this, for the simple reason that they were not actually a threat to public safety, nor were they economic migrants competing with native-born workers in certain industries. And Napolitano's memo was, at first glance, merely articulating a common-sense consensus on the subject.

"Additional measures are necessary to ensure that our enforcement resources are not expended on these low-priority cases but are instead appropriately focused on people who meet our enforcement priorities," she wrote.

The memo also formalized that consensus, however, by stipulating that immigrants who qualified for relief from immigration enforcement, under the criteria laid out, should also be eligible to apply for work permits, which would be renewable every two years.

Perhaps three million people were eligible for relief, according to these terms, and some 800,000 people have been authorized to work in the United States since then.

An overwhelming majority of Americans would agree that - in addition to having done nothing wrong - these young people are an asset to the country and to the communities in which they live. In September, a survey from the Washington Post-ABC found that 86 percent of Americans believe they should be allowed to remain in the country.

The president, in theory, is among them.

"We are going to deal with DACA with heart," he said in February, shortly after being sworn in.

But on Sept. 5, the Trump administration announced that it was rescinding the policy, and would no longer accept new applications for work authorizations, although it would accept renewals for six months, until March 5.

This was, according to Trump, not inconsistent with his previous comments. Many advocates would disagree with him. But the fact is that DACA is a program, not a law. And Trump did give Congress six months to create a durable version.

There is, unfortunately, plenty of reason to doubt that the Congress will do the right thing.
Faith leaders and activists mourned the death of a Fort Bend County youth Wednesday as they gathered to announce an initiative to raise the age of juvenile offenders in Texas from 17 to 18.

Emmanuel Akueir, 17, died of an apparent suicide last week in the jail, where he had been held for several weeks.

"We know that raising the age protects our high school juniors and seniors from the trauma that inevitably follows from spending any time in an adult jail with the increased risk of victimization, abuse and suicide," said Jay Jenkins, an attorney for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, which is pushing to raise the age. "We have to stop this from happening."

Akueir's family Wednesday told the Chronicle he should have been in an juvenile jail.

"Emmanuel was a minor who was put with adults who've lived the criminal life and are well aware of right and wrong," said sister Iman Akueir. "He was a child and treated like an adult. There's no excuse about what happened. Children are children."

Akueir, who was arrested for aggravated robbery and evading arrest, was in the adult jail instead of a juvenile detention facility because he was 17, the age of adulthood in Texas, although he was not old enough to vote, enlist in the military or buy tobacco or lottery tickets.

A high-profile group of faith leaders gathered Wednesday in front of the Broken Obelisk sculpture at Houston's Rothko Chapel to back efforts to change state law to raise the age for adulthood.

Rabbi Samuel Karff, of Congregation Beth Israel said he brought a message of support from Catholic Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza and Baptist Rev. William Lawson, who had worked together study the issue and supported the change.

He said politicians from opposite sides of the aisle are finding themselves in agreement on some criminal justice issues.

"One, because of the surging, staggering cost," Karff said. "And two, this system woefully fails to reduce, in any significant way, the level of recidivism."

Others, including Rev. Steve Quill, from TRUTH Houston, Bishop James Dixon and former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia, spoke about what they have seen in their work.

Quill told of providing counseling decades ago to a 17-year-old parishioner who was assaulted in an adult jail.

"I spent countless hours with he and his family, we got him therapy, because he had been abused," Quill said. "This has become a very personal issue for me. My experience with parishioners and family has convinced me that we need now to raise the age."

Critics have said they worry about exponentially expanding costs of diverting 17-year-olds from adult jails across the state to juvenile detention facilities.

State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat well-known as the voice of legislation on criminal justice, said earlier this week that the expense would likely keep it from passing the senate.

The Chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, Whitmire said it costs $30,000 to jail an adult for a year and $150,000 for a juvenile. He said current estimates are that it would cost Harris County about $50 million.

Advocates say the state will save money in the long-run, however, because of less recidivism. Also, Jenkins said, it is unlikely that the 17-year-old inmates in the Harris County Jail, about 100 at any given time, would be held in the juvenile detention center, which only holds suspects accused of the most severe felonies.

He said it would probably mean an increase of 10 or fewer detainees at the juvenile detention center.

"Ninety-five percent of these 17-year-olds are committing low-level nonviolent crimes," Jenkins said. "In the juvenile system, those wouldn't result in detention at all. The ultimate result may be 2, 5 or 10-some low number-of 17-year-olds that need detention."
This story published online Thursday, Dec. 7 and appeared in print Saturday, Dec. 9.

Inside a squat, brick building at the base of Barker reservoir, Richard Long tossed and turned in his cot near midnight.

Dread and adrenaline kept him from drifting off.

Water levels at the Addicks and Barker dams west of Houston, the city's primary defense during a major storm, were rising faster than he'd seen in his 38 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Addicks had climbed 28 feet since Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the central Texas coast on Aug. 25, two days earlier. Barker had risen 22 feet. Both dams likely would break their record pool levels within 24 hours.

Richard Long U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Natural Resource Manager Addicks/Barker. Long, 61, has been with the Army Corps since the 1970s and has warned for years that development upstream of the reservoirs is harmful.

After decades of successfully taming Buffalo Bayou by impounding storm runoff inside the reservoirs until the skies cleared, the Corps had finally faced its Sophie's Choice with Harvey: release water during a monster storm and doom houses along the bayou, or risk letting the water flow out from around the ends of the dams and over the emergency spillways  perhaps triggering a much bigger disaster.

Uncontrolled flows would risk erosion and failure of the earthen berms, potentially sending a catastrophic wall of water into the heart of the nation's fourth-largest city. If the dams failed, thousands could die.

The Corps had announced that releases would start at 2 a.m. at Addicks  two hours away. But the reservoirs were rising faster than engineers had predicted.

And even with the releases, the Corps' models showed the reservoir pool would climb so high that water would flow around the north end of Addicks for the first time in the dam's 70 years of operation.

The releases also wouldn't spare homes built within the footprint of the reservoirs as the water level climbed toward the spillway. Many of those homes were doomed, too, Long knew.

Rain thrashed the roof.

Long's mind raced from the dams to his wife, who was with his 89-year-old father at their home in Fulshear, 20 miles away, watching the water rise in the streets.

Suddenly, the dam's captain, Chuck Ciliske, appeared at Long's door. The parking lot was flooding. The Corps' own building would be next.

"Richard," he said, "We've got to go."

Between midnight and 1 a.m., after Long and Ciliske abandoned the office, two groups of Corps employees climbed onto metal platforms that hold the control panels for the flood gates. Standing in the unrelenting rain, they opened the gates, the platforms vibrating as they sent murky stormwater downstream and into the already raging bayou.

The trillion gallons of water that Harvey dumped on Harris County during four days in August  enough to fill the Astrodome more than 3,300 times  revealed the downside of Houston's dynamic economy. The region's growth formula, which relies heavily on abundant, cheap housing and lax regulation, suddenly had a death toll in the dozens and a price tag in the billions.

Houston's deference to developers was evidenced by the thousands of homes built in known flood plains and floodways, clogging the path of rushing floodwater and causing it to rise. Developers not only had built out to the bases of the reservoirs that once sat on the far western flank of Harris County, but inside them  within their flood pools  and right up to their emergency spillways. Over time, Houstonians became desensitized to the risks of living about 50 feet above sea level.

Prompted by a national flood insurance program that encouraged them to build in vulnerable areas, residents built closer and closer to the bayou that carries floodwater away from the reservoirs and out to the Gulf of Mexico.

The county's extensive network of drainage channels  enough to stretch from Los Angeles to New York  could not keep up with the average of 34 inches that fell within four days. Some portions of southeast Texas recorded 60 inches of rain.

The National Weather Service had to add two more shades of purple to its maps to show how much water had fallen from the sky.

Before Harvey, proposals for major infrastructure projects, such as a third reservoir and dam and a dike for Galveston Bay, had gained little traction in Congress because of their multibillion-dollar price tags. The condition of Addicks and Barker had deteriorated so much that they were on the list of the country's most dangerous dams.

All of this left local leaders to contend not only with the most rainfall in U.S. history, but with the consequences of decades of political inertia.

RELATED COVERAGE: The Chronicle takes a closer look at Houston's biblical flooding during Hurricane Harvey.

Interviews and records obtained by the Houston Chronicle show that, within a span of 72 hours, officials faced one agonizing decision after another as each inch of Harvey's rain increased the flooding and spread the misery.

Harvey was Houston's reckoning. Nature ruled. Man reacted.

***

Jeff Lindner sank into one of the 98 chairs on the floor of the windowless emergency operations center, a cavernous building near Interstate 10 and the 610 West loop.

Lindner, meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District, had watched Harvey intensify on the radar over a span of 40 hours from an ordinary tropical depression into a Category 4 hurricane  the first to strike the Texas coast since Ike in 2008.

Harvey's eye made landfall at 10 p.m. the night before on San Jose Island, northeast of Corpus Christi. Winds peaked at 130 mph, and the storm surge reached 12 feet.

Jeff Lindner Harris County Flood Control meteorologist. Lindner, whose home is the Addicks reservoir spillway, became one of the best-known figures during Harvey, handling hard questions on the flooding. His home did not flood.

Most hurricanes typically move inland, away from the coast. But Harvey was predicted to stall over southeast Texas for days.

The National Weather Service was forecasting rainfall totals for Harris County of 20 to 30 inches, with isolated totals of 35 inches or more.

Lindner, 35, knew Harvey's forecast was unprecedented. He'd done his best in TV appearances to explain what to expect. But how do you explain what 30 inches of rain looks like?

Lindner checked the county's rainfall gauges. More than 2 inches had fallen within an hour near his house near Addicks reservoir.

He was grateful that his wife, Lillie, and two children, ages 3 and 5, had left for Smithville, up near Austin, the day before.

He needed to focus.

***

Long, 61, had started working for the Corps of Engineers in the 1970s, back when development upstream of the reservoirs had just started and they were largely surrounded by pastures and rice fields.

For years, he'd warned that every inch of concrete poured upstream of the reservoirs made flooding into Addicks and Barker worse.

Long sent emails internally opposing the construction of the Grand Parkway upstream from Addicks in 2011, warning of negative impacts from more development upstream.

"Additional impervious surfaces within the Addicks and Barker watershed will increase the volume of flows into the reservoirs, the rate at which flows get to the reservoirs, and the size of the pool generated within the reservoirs," he warned. It was built anyway, and more subdivisions sprouted near it.

Flood control officials said they had worked with Harris County commissioners to strengthen flood mitigation requirements upstream of the reservoirs last spring. But there were already thousands of homes inside the reservoirs, in the spillways and near Buffalo Bayou, which runs through Houston's energy corridor and downtown before dumping into Galveston Bay.

The city blamed the county. The county blamed the city. Everybody blamed Congress.

Long was planning to retire once the Corps finished a $75 million construction project to replace the aging outlets on the dams, which discharge stormwater through gates into the bayou.

The old outlets, still in use, had been reinforced and grouted since the Corps found voids and seepage beneath them in 2009. But those were temporary fixes: The Corps had ranked Addicks and Barker among the six most dangerous dams in its inventory of more than 700, calling them "extremely high risk."

For years, Corps officials have requested $3 million for a study that would re-evaluate the future of the reservoirs in light of all of the development around them and address lingering safety concerns.

Harris County flood control officials had agreed to pay for half the cost, planning to examine what could happen if water went over the emergency spillway or around the ends of the dams. They also had proposed studying the impacts of higher rates of release from the dams on neighborhoods downstream.

The Corps and the county never got those answers. The study was not funded.

On his computer monitor, Long watched the reservoirs rise. He'd been amazed in 2016 by how fast they'd climbed during the Tax Day storm, which set records for pools for both dams.

Addicks had reached 102.65 feet, its flood pool within a foot of the height where it would have reached neighborhoods built in the reservoir. Barker topped out at 95.24, roughly 2 feet away from the level at which it would have reached homes.

At their peak, the reservoirs held a record 68 billion gallons of water  enough to fill the Astrodome 222 times.

Long thought he'd retire without seeing another storm like that. But it was clear from the gauges that Tax Day had nothing on Harvey.

Addicks was up to 86 feet. The gauge at Barker had broken.

Lindner and National Weather Service meteorologists traded messages in a chat room.

"Plan is to issue a Flash Flood Emergency to include parts of S and SW Houston in Harris County and parts of E Fort Bend County," a weather service meteorologist wrote.

"I agree," Lindner wrote.

Brays Bayou is rising rapidly, Lindner warned three minutes later. The bayou runs from south of Barker Reservoir east through neighborhoods that include Meyerland and Braeswood Place.

"Jeff," the NWS meteorologist replied, "going out with warning on Brays."

The southeast side of the city, stretching down to Galveston Bay, was getting pounded. Gauges in Friendswood southeast of Houston showed 6.6 inches of rain in an hour. South Houston had 5 inches in a hour. Stretches of Interstate 10 flooded. Parts of downtown were underwater.

"Life threatening conditions developing," Lindner tweeted. "Stay at your location."

In a metro area of 6.6 million people, hundreds of thousands were threatened by flooding.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, 68, took to the lectern in the operations center for a hasty news conference at 10:40 p.m.

Emmett, the top elected official in the county, had suffered a mild stroke two weeks earlier and temporarily lost his vision. He was hospitalized and then released, his vision restored, and told to take it easy. Emmett had followed doctor's orders, mostly, until Harvey hit.

The mayor and police chief barely made it in time; they had to abandon their vehicles near Old Katy Road and wade into the emergency operations center on foot. Behind them, the storm radar swirled on a big screen. Harvey was living up to the dire predictions.

Judge Ed Emmett The countys top executive. Emmett, 68, had a stroke weeks before Harvey. His youngest daughter and her family evacuated their home in an airboat.

Emmett spoke to a cluster of reporters and to his audience on Facebook live. "This," he said, "is what we've been worried about."

***

Police Chief Art Acevedo, who stands 6 feet tall, waded through waist-high water in Greenspoint around 1 a.m. in his uniform, helping evacuate two apartment complexes that had flooded near Greens Bayou.

"Stay in twos!" Acevedo yelled.

"You got the baby?" he yelled.

Yes, someone yelled in the darkness.

Acevedo had mobilized all his officers on Friday night as Harvey approached. He waited in the rain on a Houston Fire Department boat, his uniform soggy from the downpour and fetid bayou water. Officers instead commandeered two buses from the airport and loaded the evacuees.

Thousands of people called 9-1-1, panicking.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo Acevedo spent days out in the storm helping evacuate flood victims. His hardest decision came with the death of one of his officers.

Water reached the ceilings of some single-story homes along Interstate 45 and in southeast Houston. 9-1-1 overloaded.

Some callers got no answer. Others were put on hold as they watched the floodwater rise.

Acevedo arrived at the operations center in the darkness, prepared to order all of his officers to start working 24-hour shifts until further notice.

As he peeled off his uniform shirt, cockroaches jumped off him and scurried across the floor.

***

Bob Royall and Rodney Reed, assistant chiefs with the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office, took calls from local fire departments from their seats near Lindner in the emergency center. They'd assembled a database of more than 40 boats and dozens of high-water vehicles owned by local fire departments, not including Houston's.

A man was clinging to the Texas 225 bridge in rushing floodwater.

Royall called the U.S. Coast Guard. The helicopter pilot couldn't reach the man but spotted a pregnant woman and child who had climbed up on a roof. The crew flew them to safety.

Royall and Reed enlisted constables with airboats to reach stranded ambulances.

Rodney Reed Assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshals Office. He ran the fire desk with Bob Royall in the countys Emergency Operations Center.

Bob Royall Assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshals Office. He ran the fire desk with Rodney Reed in the countys Emergency Operations Center.

At daybreak, Royall stood next to Harris County Emergency Management Director Mark Sloan and stared at a big-screen TV with the radar of the storm. Another band of rain swirled over the city.

His phone buzzed with requests from local fire departments begging for boats and rescue vehicles.

He had none left. It was the emptiest feeling of his life.

He picked up his cellphone and texted his wife and two grown sons.

When you wake up in the morning, he typed, I want you to understand this has been the worst night of my career.

RELATED: Harvey laid bare lack of resources, training at Houston Fire Department

Hurricane Harvey high-water rescues The Houston Fire Department responded to more than 7,800 calls for help from residents trapped by high water during Hurricane Harvey. More than 4,000 calls came in on Aug. 27 during the storm's peak. The map below shows areas in Meyerland and along Buffalo Bayou where most the rescues took place during Aug. 27. Click the map below to see how HFD responded minute-by-minute.

Reed, 35, ducked into the emergency center library, feeling helpless. He bumped into Gray Stansell with Harris County Risk Management.

"We might as well call in civilians," Reed grumbled to Stansell.

"You should tell the judge," Stansell replied.

"Tell the judge what?" asked Emmett, who had just walked into the library.

Reed turned around and saw Emmett, who had only slept two hours the night before. Frustrated with the Red Cross, the judge had spent the last day trying to get shelters open, and he was taking heat from the media about not calling for an evacuation.

"To where?" he had asked. No one knew where the rain was going to be the heaviest.

His youngest daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren had evacuated on an airboat from their Braes Heights neighborhood, where floodwater had reached some roofs and the middle of stop signs.

Gov. Greg Abbott had assured Emmett that morning that trucks and boats were ready to help. But they were just outside of the county, and the roads were impassable.

"Can we put a call out to citizens?" Reed asked Emmett.

"Well," Emmett replied, "what's your plan?"

Reed said they'd have volunteer rescuers call the emergency center. The operators would write down names, where the volunteers were, what kind of rescue equipment they had. They'd make sure they had life vests and then send them to the nearest fire department staging spot. That way, instead of people out there doing their own thing, there would be some order to it, he said.

"That's a good idea," the judge said. "You'd better hurry up, because I'm going downstairs and I'm going to brief the media."

***

Roughly 400 miles northeast of the heart of the storm, Aaron Byrd's phone vibrated during Sunday school at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vicksburg, close to the Mississippi River. Byrd, a 40-year-old civil research engineer in the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, glanced down and saw it was an email from the lab's director, who was on assignment to the Corps' Operations Center.

Oh no, he thought.

The Addicks and Barker dams are among the most critical dams in the Corps' inventory, the email read. We need information on them now.

Byrd helped develop an inundation modeling technology that can forecast flood depths up to five days in advance.

Aaron Byrd Civil research engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Miss. Byrd and his team of researchers used a supercomputer to predict and map inundation during the storm.

The Corps' technology collects data on the water levels on the ground, topography, forecast rainfall and other factors. Then a supercomputer calculates millions of math equations that produce maps showing the flow of water.

The Corps had used it during hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012. That Friday, Byrd and his team had used it to monitor Harvey as it hit the Texas coast.

At that point, the forecast included in the Corps' bulletin on Addicks and Barker was relatively unremarkable: 10 to 15 inches of rain. No overtopping was expected, the bulletin said.

But Harvey had defied that forecast.

Byrd stood up in Sunday school and walked to the door, heading for the lab.

***

Emmett stood at the lectern in the press room, his glasses on the tip of his nose.

The county had deployed "every available rescue asset," he said. People were still stranded and needed help. State resources couldn't get in because of the flooding.

"We can't wait for assets to come from the outside," he said. "So those of you who have boats and high-water vehicles that can be used in neighborhoods to help move people out of harm's way: We need your help."

Harvey 911 dispatches, minute by minute The Houston Emergency Center received more than 120,000 emergency calls during the five days that Hurricane Harvey pounded Houston with relentless rainfall. The map shows minute by minute where Houston Police Department officers were dispatched to assist residents crying for help. Click on the map to begin the animation and double click the map to pause.

Lindner, the meteorologist, followed Emmett at the lectern, looking solemn in a white button-down shirt.

"We're facing a catastrophe that we haven't faced before. This is unprecedented, like the judge said," Lindner said. "Every single watershed, all 22 of our watersheds, are over banks."

The rain was starting to let up a bit, but Lindner and the Corps were closely watching the water levels in Addicks and Barker, which were still climbing.

To the northeast, near the San Jacinto River, neighborhoods in Kingwood and Humble were flooding. The San Jacinto River Authority was releasing 39,600 cubic feet per second from the Lake Conroe Dam, a record.

Greenspoint, in north Houston, had flooded so badly that people waded through neck-deep water.

Lindner's home had flooded when he lived there in 2001 during Tropical Storm Allison. He kept thinking about it, how helpless he felt as the water poured in, and he panicked, lifting things to counters, seeing what he could save.

"I know what you're going through," Lindner said during the news conference. "I know you're scared. I know you're panicked. I know you feel a desperation right now. But know that help is coming."

***

Byrd, the civil research engineer in the Corps' lab, pulled together data on the dams.

How did they work? What kind of condition were they in? Where was the water going to spill, if it went around the edges of the dams?

When Addicks and Barker were built in the 1940s, the original plans called for three reservoirs, not two, and a levee on Cypress Creek north of Addicks. A system of canals was supposed to carry water from Addicks and Barker to Galveston Bay.

But the discharge canals were shelved because rapid development made the land too costly. Since the 1940s, Houston's population swelled from about 385,000 to more than 6.6 million, including its surrounding suburbs.

The levee was never built.

As originally designed, four of the dams' five outlets had no gates. That allowed for a combined, uncontrolled discharge into Buffalo Bayou of 15,700 cubic feet per second. As the land near the bayou developed, people complained of damage from the discharges. By the 1960s, all of the outlets had gates to allow for controlled releases from the dams.

Now, with heavier development, it is allowed to release only 2,000 cubic feet per second combined from the two dams, as measured by a gauge in Buffalo Bayou at Piney Point, about 10 miles downstream from Barker. In order to exceed 2,000 cfs, the dam operator needs permission from Corps officials in Dallas. Some streets and homes downstream of the reservoirs flood when the combined release rate from the reservoirs exceeds approximately 4,000 cubic feet per second, flood control records show.

That means the dams are holding more water than originally intended, and for longer.

Their design is unusual, Byrd noted, in that they don't tie into hills. Each is miles long and shaped like a V. So once the depression fills up, the dams are vulnerable to "flanking flows"  water going around the ends.

Byrd's job was to answer one question: where would all the water go once it hit the ground?

Byrd ate bacon cheddar potato chips from the vending machine for dinner at his desk, marveling at Harvey's rainfall totals and the forecast, which called for more rain.

***

Police Chief Acevedo rode in the passenger seat of a Hummer, heading north on deserted Interstate 45, past flooded cars, and into downtown, trying to reach police headquarters. It was Day 2 of heavy rain.

Police were still having trouble reaching some people who needed to be rescued, but the hundreds of volunteers with boats had made a huge difference.

"Now the dams are about to open," he said. "That's not music to my ears."

The water levels in the reservoirs climbed faster than the Corps had anticipated when it announced plans to start releases at 2 a.m. at Addicks and 11 a.m. at Barker.

Seconds before midnight, a Corps hydraulic engineer sent an email to local officials and Corps employees: "We are beginning releases on both reservoirs right now."

The releases would start at 800 cubic feet per second from each reservoir, for a combined 718,000 gallons per minute, the Corps official wrote. During the next 10 hours, the goal was to increase that to 8,000 cubic feet per second, or 3.5 million gallons a minute.

Francisco Sanchez, the county's emergency management public information officer, awoke on his cot in the emergency center to pounding on the door.

A voice resounded in the hallway: "The water is going out!"

***

Byrd had a model running that took into account the flooding already occurring, the rainfall, the releases and the forecast.

The flooding would not just be "one home here, one home there," he saw. "It was going to be miles and miles of homes."

The Corps asked Byrd to run a second model. People had built homes inside the reservoirs, he was told. Some of them would start flooding within hours, once the flood pool reached 103.4 feet in Addicks.

At 9 a.m., it was at 103.37.

Addicks is built to hold water up to 108 feet above sea level before it flows around the north end of the dam; above 111.5, the water would top the emergency spillway. The math is simple. Some of the homes would be nearly 8 feet underwater if the reservoir level reached the spillway.

Barker had the same problem. The emergency spillway was at 105.1 feet. The lowest homes were 97.1 feet.

The Corps wanted to know which homes were going to flood, and where, to get the information to first responders.

Byrd pulled up Google Earth. He felt like falling out of his chair. He called another researcher over to his computer.

It showed row after row of homes in the flood pools, thousands of them.

Byrd scanned the area near Addicks' spillway. There was a commercial center and sprawling subdivisions with two-story homes at the bottom of the spillway.

"How did they get permission to build there?"

Edmond Russo with the Corps took to the lectern, reading from a prepared statement.

Water behind both dams had reached record levels, he said. Addicks was at 104.36 feet. Barker had reached 98.59 feet. Homes in both flood pools started taking on water.

The discharge rates for Addicks reached 2,600 cubic feet per second. Barker reached 2,100 cfs. The Corps was trying to ramp the releases up, he said.

"We would prefer not to let the water build up in the dam and go over the spillways because at that point we will not have control over the water," Russo said.

Buffalo Bayou was holding steady, Lindner said at the news conference.

The releases were not expected to result in a rise in the bayou  not at the current rates. But it had already reached record levels, and it wasn't dropping.

Lindner studied the models of Addicks and the map of the spillway.

If the pool hit 109.5 feet, the Corps had warned that the uncontrolled releases around the north end of Addicks would become stronger and spread faster and farther.

He and his wife knew when they bought a house in a neighborhood near the Addicks spillway that this was possible. He just didn't think it would ever really happen.

Lindner called his wife, Lillie, in Smithville.

"We might get water in the house," he said.

He heard her catch her breath.

***

Acevedo, the police chief, stared at the floodwater below the overpass at Hardy Toll Road and Beltway 8, still 16.5 feet deep.

Detectives had traced Sgt. Steve Perez's vehicle here but couldn't be sure he was below.

His wife had reported the 34-year veteran missing after he left home around 4 a.m. Sunday in the pouring rain. He never made it to his command post.

Acevedo wanted to send in a dive team, he said, but he feared it was too dangerous because it was already dark. He couldn't justify risking lives for what he knew would be a recovery mission, not a rescue.

Acevedo said a prayer for Perez's family and his soul. He left the car underwater until daybreak.

***

Addicks had reached 108.1 feet. It was full.

Water started flowing around the north end of the dam, at the rate of a few thousand gallons per minute.

The drainage system outside the reservoir, near the intersection of Brittmore Park and Tanner Road, had been able to absorb much of it. It was starting to threaten two subdivisions, Twin Lakes on Eldridge and Lakes on Eldridge.

Barker had reached 101.5 feet. Some homes in the reservoirs had 5 feet of water in them.

Discharges had reached 7,300 cubic feet per second, Russo said, up from 4,700 the previous afternoon.

***

Russo read from another prepared statement:

Addicks had reached 108.9 feet. Barker was at 101.46.

"Earlier today, we had to make the decision to make more aggressive releases than what we told the public before in order to maintain the functionality of our structures," Russo said. "We understand the frustration this has caused for many people and pray for the safety and well being of those who have been impacted."

The current discharge rate, Russo said, was a combined 13,000 cubic feet per second. The goal was to reach 16,000 cubic feet per second, he said.

Flooding along Buffalo Bayou was increasing, Lindner said at the news conference. The gauge at Dairy Ashford showed it had risen 1 foot and was expected to rise another 1.5 feet that night.

Flood control officials had seen it from a helicopter earlier that day, Lindner said. There was "massive inundation never before seen in that portion of the bayou watershed."

A third of Harris County  an area the size of Austin  was underwater.

Epilogue

Addicks climbed to 109.09 feet, just 0.41 inches from reaching the benchmark the Corps feared involving potential for heavier flows around the north end of the dam, before starting to drop on Aug. 30. Barker also peaked that day, reaching 101.56 feet.

Flooding along Buffalo Bayou continued for days. Mayor Sylvester Turner issued evacuation orders for homes and apartments with standing water in them along the energy corridor south of Addicks and east of Barker, citing the Corps' releases from the dams.

Lindner's home in a neighborhood near the spillway did not flood. Gray Stansell's home in Bellaire did flood.

Sgt. Perez was laid to rest at a funeral attended by thousands.

Releases from the Lake Conroe dam peaked at more than 79,000 cubic feet per second.

The Corps announced the reservoirs were empty on Oct. 17. It is being sued by more than 1,000 plaintiffs in state and federal court.

Who's who Richard Long U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Natural Resource Manager Addicks/Barker. Long, 61, has been with the Army Corps since the 1970s and has warned for years that development upstream of the reservoirs is harmful. Jeff Lindner Harris County Flood Control meteorologist. Lindner, whose home is the Addicks reservoir spillway, became one of the best-known figures during Harvey, handling hard questions on the flooding. His home did not flood. Judge Ed Emmett The countys top executive. Emmett, 68, had a stroke weeks before Harvey. His youngest daughter and her family evacuated their home in an airboat. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo Acevedo spent days out in the storm helping evacuate flood victims. His hardest decision came with the death of one of his officers. Aaron Byrd Civil research engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Miss. Byrd and his team of researchers used a supercomputer to predict and map inundation during the storm. Rodney Reed Assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshals Office. He ran the fire desk with Bob Royall in the countys Emergency Operations Center. Bob Royall Assistant chief with the Harris County Fire Marshals Office. He ran the fire desk with Rodney Reed in the countys Emergency Operations Center.

About our investigation: "Developing Storm"

Hurricane Harvey was the most destructive storm in Houston's history. The late-August storm dumped up to 60 inches of rain on southeast Texas, but the resulting damage was multiplied by actions taken  and not taken  during the past 50 years. Our seven-part series explains why the storm's damage was both a natural and man-made disaster.



Susan Carroll joined the Chronicle in 2006 and works as an investigative/projects reporter. Along with colleagues Matt Dempsey and Mark Collette, her 2016 work on the danger posed by chemical plants in southeast Texas won awards from the National Press Foundation and Investigative Reporters and Editors. Carroll previously covered the U.S.-Mexico border for the Arizona Republic and the Tucson Citizen. She can be reached by e-mail at Susan.Carroll@chron.com or by Twitter: @_SusanCarroll

Multimedia by Houston Chronicle staff

Interactives by John D. Harden and Rachael Gleason

Audience engagement by Rachael Gleason

Design by Jordan Rubio

Get engaged

 Where do we go from here? Seven Houston-area leaders discussed flooding causes and solutions at a Greater Houston After Harvey forum hosted by the Houston Chronicle in early December. Watch Wednesday night's keynote address by Jim Blackburn, co-director of Rice University's Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. Read his thoughts on living around water.

 Sign up for our Facebook community to share your Harvey story, engage with other community members and ask our reporters questions.

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WASHINGTON  The U.S.-North Korea confrontation is nearing another tense inflection point, with North Korea signaling that it could be ready for negotiations with Washington soon, even as it moves toward becoming a full nuclear-weapons power.

When such diplomatic standoffs get resolved, it's often by allowing each country to claim it's entering negotiations on its own terms. In this case, North Korea would assert its status as a nuclear-weapons state, while the U.S. would insist the dialogue is about eventual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. This may sound like an unbridgeable divide, but that's what diplomacy is for.

But as 2017 nears its end, the two countries still appear to be on a collision course. Kim Jong Un's bellicose rhetoric matches President Trump's. There's an odd mutual fascination, too, which one foreign diplomat describes as "love/hate."

Speculation about talks increased, paradoxically, after North Korea's latest missile test on Nov. 29, which appeared to demonstrate Pyongyang's capability to strike the continental United States. In a statement, Kim announced "with pride that now we have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force."

To some analysts, Kim was declaring victory  and preparing a pivot. Russian emissary Vitaly Pashin told Interfax news agency on Dec. 1, after a visit to Pyongyang, that senior officials there "told me that the North was prepared to sit at the negotiating table." The Tass news agency said North Korea affirmed it is "ready for talks with Washington on the condition that it is recognized as a nuclear power."

North Korea's insistence on its nuclear-weapons status was conveyed to Song Tau, a senior Chinese emissary who visited Pyongyang on Nov. 17. The North Koreans are said to have reminded Song that since 2012, the North Korean constitution has formally characterized the country as "a nuclear state."

Pyongyang seemingly wants negotiations with America, but on its own terms. Analysts speculate that to justify keeping its existing stockpile of several dozen nuclear weapons, North Korea might promise not to share its nuclear technology with others, and not to attack the U.S. The U.S. would be wary of such assurances, given Pyongyang's history of broken promises and proliferation.

North Korea evidently wants to be like India and Pakistan, which became de facto members of the nuclear club after building weapons secretly. It doesn't want to be like Libya or Iraq, whose leaders were deposed and killed after giving up their nuclear programs.

The Trump administration has publicly dismissed the latest overtures. A State Department spokesman said Sunday: "We do not see any indications of North Korea being committed to or interested in credible talks for denuclearization." And on Monday, State again rejected, as it has for months, Chinese and Russian calls for a mutual "freeze for freeze" on North Korea testing and U.S. military exercises: "It is not enough for [North Korea] to stop its program where it is today."

An interesting visitor to Pyongyang this week is Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. undersecretary-general and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state. He's the highest-ranking U.N. envoy there in six years. What's he up to? Diplomats aren't talking.

The U.S. strategy for pressuring North Korea remains centered on China, and the hope that the Chinese will tighten sanctions so much that they squeeze Pyongyang into backing down. Many analysts are skeptical this will work: The North Koreans resent Chinese interference, and they have stockpiled a year or more of energy supplies to cope with such pressure tactics.

China doesn't want a nuclear North Korea; but it doesn't want a U.S. strike on its border, either. It seeks a diplomatic solution that will resolve the irreconcilable. That's been a U.S. desire for three decades, too, with no success yet.

History tells us that an unconventional solution was found to avert nuclear war 55 years ago, and interestingly, Washington and Beijing are reviewing those very lessons. According to a senior Pentagon official, a high-level Chinese-American military gathering last week in Washington conducted a joint case study of the Cuban missile crisis.

Has North Korea crossed the nuclear threshold? Pyongyang's recent statements suggest they have, but some analysts have doubts. North Korea hasn't shown it can control an ICBM's re-entry, and it hasn't fitted an actual warhead atop a missile, sources say.

Will the Trump administration try to block North Korea from crossing this final goal line, by military means if necessary? Or will it seek a diplomatic formula that could, over time, leave all sides better off than the cataclysm of war? At this holiday season, that conundrum is hidden in the dark box in the corner.
When it came time for an 11-year-old boy to face his abuser, Christopher Snyder, he couldn't bring himself to talk about what he suffered. The boy pushed the microphone away and began to cry with his head buried in his hands, according to the Comal County District Attorney's Office.

The victim was called to the stand Tuesday after Snyder, 54, pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child. The jury sentenced him to 50 years in prison and a fine of $10,000.
AUSTIN - Ending weeks of uncertainty, Dallas County Sheriff Guadalupe "Lupe" Valdez announced Wednesday she is running for governor, giving Democrats a Hispanic standard-bearer they hope will boost minority turnout to end their two-decade drought at winning statewide office.

"Opportunity in Texas ought to be as big as this great state, but it is out of reach for far too many. That's why I'm running for Texas governor," Valdez said after filing paperwork with party officials to formally declare her long-shot candidacy. "I'm a proud Texas Democrat. I believe good government can make people's lives better, and I intend to do just that."

Valdez resigned as sheriff as she filed. State law prohibits her from holding one office while running for another.

Speculation has swirled publicly for weeks about whether Valdez would run after she acknowledged she was "in the exploratory process" of starting a gubernatorial bid. News reports last week had her on the verge of resigning her position as sheriff to run, but she delayed that formal announcement until Wednesday.

Valdez, 70, has been the Dallas County sheriff for 12 years, after earlier careers as a prison guard, a federal customs agent and a Department of Homeland Security investigator and supervisor. A San Antonio native, she is the daughter of migrant farmworkers and Army veteran who publicly acknowledged she was lesbian when she ran for sheriff.

She is the second gay Democrat running for governor. Dallas businessman Jeffrey Payne filed to challenge Abbott on Monday.

Valdez' announcement makes her the most well-known Democrat in the race after several more prominent Texans passed on trying to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott and break a 22-year hold by Republicans on the Texas governor's mansion. Political consultants and experts rated her chances of success as slim, at best.

"If you place a bet on a horse that has trouble coming out of the gate, you can probably tear up your (betting) ticket," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "She spent weeks trying to get in the race, made a head fake last week, and is now in. The Dems have been waiting for years for Hispanics to turn out in large numbers for them, and that just hasn't happened - even when they had a Hispanic running for governor. ... She has no statewide campaign experience or organization, no fundraising network, no name ID outside Dallas. I don't see her winning."

Getting Hispanics to vote

Nonetheless, Democratic Party officials applauded her candidacy as another step to turning Texas blue next year.

If elected, Valdez would be the first Democrat to serve since Ann Richards was governor for one term in the early 1990s. Richards was the second woman in Texas history to hold the post.

Abbott won by a 20-point margin three years ago against former state Sen. Wendy Davis, whose abortion-rights stance in a legislative filibuster briefly made her a national political star.

This year, Democratic Party officials said they are confident Valdez can draw out Hispanic voters disgusted with Republican Party policies on sanctuary cities, LGBT equality and other issues.

Republicans said Wednesday her positions will make her an easy target for Abbott, who polls show riding a wave of popularity despite his support of several divisive issues during this year's legislative session, including the so-called bathroom bill that pitted conservatives against business interests in Texas.

Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, the son of the late former Gov. Mark White and who is expected to announce his bid for governor on Thursday, said he welcomes Valdez's candidacy because it will allow him and other Democrats to highlight Abbott's policies that he says are out of step with those of most Texans, not just the conservative GOP voters they cater to.

Others who have filed as Democrats to challenge Abbott include Houston electronics businessman Joe Mumbach, Dallas financial analyst Adrian Ocegueda, retired Flint teacher Grady Yarbrough, former Balch Springs Mayor Cedric Davis Sr. and San Antonio businessman Tom Wakely.

They will appear on the Democratic primary ballot next March 6.

Abbott has no serious GOP primary challenger and has more than $50 million in his re-election war chest, his campaign aides say.

People, not money

Valdez said she was undaunted by Abbott's campaign fund-raising edge or the fact the state has voted Republican for years.

"I think we're going to raise whatever money's necessary," she said. "I don't believe that we need 40, 60, 90 bazillion dollars. Abbott may have the money. We're going to have the people."

Abbott's campaign had no immediate reaction to Valdez's candidacy. Hours after she formally announced, his campaign team trumpeted an endorsement by the Dallas Police Association, a notable law-enforcement group in Valdez' hometown.

Valdez dismissed the endorsement as not reflecting the view of the association's full membership.

Hours later, Abbott's camp released a YouTube video entitled "Can the Texas Democrats Find a Match?" that mocks the party's trouble finding a high-profile candidate to run for governor in what likely is a preview of how he will portray her in the campaign.

Using a mock dating website called "DHarmony," the search clicks through 10 well-known Democrats who declined to run against Abbott, from U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio to former Houston Mayor Annise Parker and Davis. "Not a match," each says.

"We're having trouble finding a match," the video says, before Valdez's profile pops up.

"I'm interested in open borders, sanctuary cities and California," her profile reads. "I think we'd be a great match."
Net neutrality shouldn't be a controversial issue.

Pipelines and power grids, telephones and railroads, all must comply with common carrier regulations that prohibit discrimination and special treatment.

There's little reason for the internet to be any different. Comcast shouldn't be allowed to give special treatment to MSNBC.com, which it owns, over FoxNews.com. AT&T shouldn't be allowed to sell mini versions of the internet where you can only see a limited selection of websites.

The promise of the internet exists in its open, unrestricted nature. Established players like Amazon and Netflix have to compete on a level playing field with new startups. Ending net neutrality would allow tech giants to buy a faster lane and preferential treatment, threatening to quash competition in the cradle. If that happens, say goodbye to the internet as we know it.

Nevertheless, the Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote on rolling back its net neutrality regulations on Thursday, Dec. 14.

Protesters across the nation are taking to the streets today to voice their disgust with this decision. Here in Houston they'll be outside the Verizon Store in downtown Houston at 930 Main Street starting at 5 p.m.

The tech trade group Internet Association is pushing for the FCC to delay its vote.

This would be a smart move. The upcoming decision on net neutrality has been tarnished by questions about whether official public comments to the FCC were littered with fraudulent submissions.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman found that hundreds of thousands of comments may have illegally impersonated New York residents. An analysis of the public record by data scientist Jeff Kao estimates that more than one million comments in support of net neutrality repeal may have been "spam" - fake comments. And around 50,000 consumer complaints appear to have been excluded from the public record, according to a Freedom of Information Act filing by the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has received a letter signed by 28 Democratic senators asking him to conduct a thorough and fair evaluation of the public's views before moving forward with a vote.

"These reports raise serious concerns as to whether the record the FCC is currently relying on has been tampered with and merits the full attention of, and investigation by, the FCC before votes on this item are cast," they wrote.

Don't expect Pai to acquiesce.

The former associate general counsel for Verizon has made it clear that he thinks net neutrality rules stifle innovation by telecommunications companies.

That's true, to a certain extent. Net neutrality does stifle some kinds of innovation. It prevents telecoms from using the sort of gimmicks that allow banks to develop new and fascinating ways to charge fees on your checking account, or the bizarre synergy schemes involving free valet parking at the Hobby Center if you drive a Lexus.

If we lose net neutrality, expect to see more corporate contraptions designed to promote Wall Street concerns and squeeze consumers for cash in exchange for worse service and fewer options. Don't like it? Too bad, you might be stuck. More than 50 million U.S. households lack any competition in the broadband market. If Pai wants to see innovation, maybe he should start by breaking up these lumbering corporate giants.

The internet doesn't exist to serve as a cash cow for telecoms and the American people must not tolerate regulations that allow these near-monopolies to occupy the internet with their own private toll booths.
"Shots fired, officer down! Shots fired, officer down!"

Those dreaded words were shouted out last summer in Baton Rouge, La., after sheriff's deputy Nick Tullier and five other law enforcement officials were gunned down in an ambush attack. Tullier barely survived three bullets, one to the head.

After Tullier's doctor in Louisiana suggested that the family discuss whether to remove the feeding tube, his family moved him to TIRR Memorial Hermann, one of a very few rehabilitation hospitals offering specialized programs to assess and treat patients like him.

As reported by Mike Hixenbaugh in the Chronicle series "Alive Inside," TIRR doctors determined Tullier wasn't in a coma or a vegetative state, as previously thought. The 41-year-old knew who he was and where he was but could do little to show it. He was drifting in the netherworld between consciousness and brain death.

Tullier is not alone; an estimated one quarter of a million people with consciousness disorders are warehoused in acute care facilities and nursing homes across the country. In "Alive Inside," Hixenbaugh raises important questions, such as: What is a life worth living? And who gets to decide? Is it right to remove a feeding tube or a ventilator from someone who might, on some basic level, be aware of what's happening?

As a society we are still finding our way to these answers, just as Tullier and his family are still fighting their way to recovery.

However, one thing is as crystal clear as Tullier's bravery: Congress needs to take care of our first responders like Tullier, as well as military personnel who are injured in the line of duty. In an ideal world, all of the minimally conscious should have their needs met. Given limited resources, Congress should at least accept responsibility for those whose lives were unalterably changed while protecting society from harm.

As a first step, U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chair of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, and Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member, should appoint a blue ribbon committee of scientists, faith leaders, ethicists, medical personnel and families to study the minimally conscious state and to establish a set of protocols for patients with consciousness disorder.

Tullier has indicated that he wants to keep doing rehab even on days when it appears to be causing him pain. Yet, despite the deputy's significant progress, the company that manages his insurance plan sent notice that it was cutting him off from inpatient rehab and around-the-clock nursing care.

There's nothing wrong with insurance companies asking questions and demanding proof of improvement to continue to fund rehab, but brain injuries don't heal quickly. These patients should have the time needed to recover.

Following a public outcry, insurance officials agreed to let Tullier continue to receive some hours at TIRR's outpatient clinic in Houston, but only after his family endured a period of agonizing uncertainty. It's wrong that there's no guarantee how long his rehab will continue to be funded.

Tullier's girlfriend, Danielle McNicoll, found a text the deputy had written after a sniper shot a dozen police officers in Dallas last year, killing five. He'd told her he was angry that cops had been targeted, but he refused to go to work fearing for his life.

"I promise that if and when that time should come, I won't die easy," Tullier had written to her. Tullier is fulfilling that promise to McNicoll and to his family. He's doing his best by undergoing the hard and painful rehab required to make progress.

Now it's on Congress and our nation to do our part to give him and others like him the opportunity to return to their lives.
Growing deficit

Regarding "Hot-check GOP" (Page A14, Wednesday), Republican strategist Grover Norquist famously said the GOP wanted to make the federal government small enough to drown it in a bathtub. President Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon says they plan to deconstruct the administrative state (federal government).

The strategy seems to be as follows: Trump appoints various heads of the federal government who seem to have the goal of limiting the normal functions of various federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department. The GOP passes a budget that cuts various social programs. The recent GOP federal tax plan is constructed under budget reconciliation rules, which require a simple majority for passage. They give large reductions in taxes to corporations and the wealthy and thus go against their own deficit reduction vows knowing their $1.4 trillion increase in deficits, when passed will additionally activate various future pay-as-you-go cuts, such as large automatic cuts to Medicare, etc.

The normal GOP response when all the cuts they themselves have caused are implemented - and a realization hits that the future deficit is still too large - is to go back to their original Grover Norquist pledge: The GOP will not raise taxes. Thus more cuts to federal budgets.

Ron Curtis, Houston

Get a grip

Regarding "Fire up Congress" editorial (Page A14, Wednesday), the editorial board has lost all sense of perspective in its editorial. To advocate defaulting on our federal financial obligations because you do not like the pace and amount of money that the U.S. Congress has provided to the state of Texas for Hurricane Harvey relief is not just juvenile but irresponsible.

There are 330 million citizens who count on our federal government to work and stay open for them. If the process takes time and does not have the results that you want, that is the political system and form of government that you have supported along with its elected and appointed representatives for decades.

To spite all for a few when the state of Texas and local governments have not given all that they can is a bankrupt idea and ridiculous.

Brandt Mannchen, Humble

Dems at fault

Regarding "Hot-check GOP" editorial (Page A14, Wednesday), the editorial takes off on the Republicans as if they are the culprits on deficits, while eight years of Obama administration borrowing and spending was so massive that it resulted in a horrifically ineffective economy.

Do not even begin to tell anyone that the Democrats are not out-of-control borrowers. Both are too aggressive in spending, but the Dem's have the title by far.

Reagan Sirmons, Houston
Seventy-six years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese fleet surprise-attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the home port of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Japanese carrier planes killed 2,403 Americans. They sunk or submerged 19 ships (including eight battleships destroyed or disabled) and damaged or destroyed more than 300 planes.

In an amazing feat of seamanship, the huge Japanese carrier fleet had steamed nearly 3,500 miles in midwinter high seas. The armada had refueled more than 20 major ships while observing radio silence before arriving undetected about 220 miles from Hawaii.

The surprise attack started the Pacific War. It was followed a few hours later by a Japanese assault on the Philippines.

More importantly, Pearl Harbor ushered in a new phase of World War II, as the conflict expanded to the Pacific. It became truly a global war when, four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The Japanese fleet had missed the three absent American carriers of the Pacific Fleet. Nonetheless, Japanese admirals were certain that the United States was so crippled after the attack that it would not be able to go on the offensive against the Japanese Pacific empire for years, if at all. Surely the wounded Americans would sue for peace, or at least concentrate on Europe and keep out of the Japanese-held Pacific.

That was a fatal miscalculation.

The Japanese warlords had known little of the tireless efforts of one Democratic congressman from Georgia, Carl Vinson.

For nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, Vinson had schemed and politicked in brilliant fashion to ensure that America was building a two-ocean navy larger than all the major navies of the world combined.

Vinson had assumed in the mid 1930s that fascist Japan and Germany posed existential threats to the United States. For America to survive, he saw that America would need mastery of the seas to transport its armies across the Pacific and Atlantic.

From 1934 to 1940, Vinson pushed through Congress four major naval appropriations bills. The result was that the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which Japan thought it had almost destroyed in December 1941, was already slated to be replaced by a far larger and updated armada.

A little more than seven months after Pearl Harbor, the USS Essex - the finest carrier in the world - was launched. Essex was the first of 24 such state-of-the-art fleet carriers of its class to be built during the war.

Vinson's various prewar naval construction bills also ensured the launching of hundreds of modern battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. As bombs fell at Pearl Harbor, ships of the new American fleet were soon to be deployed, under construction or already authorized.

Vinson's foresight would save thousands of American lives in the Atlantic and Pacific. American naval power quickly allowed the United States to fight a two-front war against Japan, Germany and Italy.

Vinson, a rural Georgian, was an unlikely advocate of global naval supremacy.

Before World War II, the battleship was still thought to be queen of the seas. Yet Vinson emphasized aircraft carriers over battleships. That decision would result in absolute American naval supremacy of the oceans within two years of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Stranger still, Vinson had fought for naval expansion in the middle of the Great Depression, at a time when the U.S. government was already deeply in debt and poor Americans had no desire for large peacetime defense spending.

Vinson lived in the heart of impoverished rural Georgia, not on the East or West coasts, the traditional homes of U.S. warships. He was elected for 26 straight congressional terms. For 50 years, Vinson insisted on military preparedness, especially through naval power, to ensure deterrence and thereby keep the peace.

Vinson's remarkable congressional career began in 1914, before the American entry into World War I. He championed a strong Navy during the Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the start of the Vietnam War and the Cold War before retiring in 1965 at the age of 81.

Prior to Vinson, the U.S. Navy was basically a small coastal patrol force fueled by coal. But as the chairman of House Naval Affairs Committee and later the House Armed Services Committee, Vinson ensured that American sea power - eventually led by behemoth nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (including the USS Carl Vinson) - would win wars and keep the peace through its global reach.

Vinson would live 16 years beyond retirement, dying at the age of 97 in 1981.

Today, most Americans do not recognize Vinson's contributions to American security. But the real strategic story of the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor was that Japan foolishly bombed a mostly obsolete fleet, soon guaranteeing terrible revenge from its far greater and more modern replacement armada - thanks largely to the global visions of a rural Georgia congressman.

Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Texas is set to receive $209 million in Volkswagen settlement funds after the company was caught cheating on emissions regulations.

Governmental entities across the state are looking into potential projects that reduce nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that contributes to ozone formation - a fitting use given that VW sold diesel vehicles with pollution emissions up to 40 times that allowed by the United States.

The resulting air pollution was responsible for hundreds of early deaths and other health consequences - including in Houston, where ozone exceeds federal standards.

So it makes sense that the city of Houston submitted a $18 million proposal to the state last month to spend its share of the funds on replacing 85 old, diesel garbage trucks.

Their size and weight, fuel economy, and stop-and-go driving patterns make waste trucks heavy emitters of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants such as particulate matter. Because these trucks drive through our neighborhoods, Houstonians feel this pollution at home.

However, the city's proposal is not the best it could be.

The city has asked for 71 "clean diesel" trucks and 14 compressed natural gas trucks - but no all-electric, zero-emissions vehicles.

The term "clean diesel" is a misnomer. Pollutants from diesel emissions can be reduced using technology called selective catalytic reduction, but SCR requires engine temperatures to remain over 200 degrees to effectively reduce emissions. This could be difficult to achieve given a waste truck's stop-and-go usage.

In contrast, an all-electric waste truck emits zero tailpipe pollutants no matter the condition.

In fact, even if the city gets what it requested from the state, it won't meet the goal it set for itself. The section on fleets in Houston's 2016-2020 Capital Improvement Plan states: "the City must strive for at least 25 percent of non-emergency on-road vehicles purchased annually to be non-diesel or gasoline-powered (e.g., compressed or liquified natural gas, propane, electric-powered, etc.)  to reduce fuel purchases and to decrease carbon emissions."

Houston's waste truck proposal fails to meet this requirement because only 16 percent of vehicles proposed for purchase are non-diesel.

Switching over to electric vehicles can also save the city money despite their higher up-front costs. In Chicago, battery-powered electric waste trucks save $63 per vehicle per day in fuel costs, and they reduce carbon emissions by 68 tons.

Houston has been a leader in green energy and was honored in October by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Power Leader. Houston has the nation's third-largest municipal hybrid vehicle fleet and has been recognized for its green light-duty fleet. Mayor Sylvester Turner, an outspoken advocate for the climate, serves as co-chair of the Climate Mayors network and has vowed to honor the Paris climate agreement. Houston should continue this commitment to clean power and transportation by using settlement funds to purchase electric waste trucks that will reduce dangerous air pollution that harms human health, helps Houston reach the federal ozone standard by reducing NOx pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that leads to climate change.

Houston already feels the effects of climate change, and a group known as the Houston Climate Movement is asking for climate resiliency and carbon reductions at the city level. If the city doesn't address its climate risk, it may face downgrades from credit rating agencies or lost economic opportunities.

It's great that the city wants to make use of these funds to help improve air quality. We encourage the mayor and City Council to include zero-emissions electric trucks that both reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions while providing cleaner air on our streets.

The VW Settlement is an incredible opportunity for the city, and we urge citizens to contact their City Council members and urge them to support cleaner vehicles.

Thomas is an organizer with Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that champions the public interest on energy, the environment and ethics in Texas.
We Americans who are increasingly appalled at the embarrassingly inept, unprepared, unpresidential, and constantly lying behavior of President Donald Trump and are clamoring for his impeachment need to consider the results of such an action: Who's next in line to occupy the Oval Office: VP Mike "the bobble-headed yes-man" Pence. (Do we really think he's any better than the present nincompoop holding the office?)

As if that weren't enough, next would be "President Paul Ryan." Are you quite mad? Another option might be censure. A vote of no confidence should shake Trump's haughty self-image and maybe put a lid on his offensive, BS-laden tweets and his dangerous feud with North Korea.

It was ironic to note that Trump's meeting with the Navajo code-talkers was held under a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the president who initiated the "Trail of Tears," and who was an outspoken bigot and racist. But wait, maybe it's not that ironic after all ("Pocahontas"?).

"Ol' Hickory" woulda been proud.

Douglas Bauer

Albany (Dec. 5)
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Adams Fire Snuff Out Columbia Street Fire

The Adams Fire Department put out a small fire in a home on Columbia Street that required the highway to be closed for a short time.



Mutual aid companies also arrived at the scene.

ADAMS, Mass.  The Fire department quickly knocked down a small fire at 246 1/2 Columbia St. on Wednesday.

Fire Chief John Pansecchi said the call came in late morning and once firefighters arrived at the single-family home, they were able to contain the blaze to one room that was used for storage by the owner.

"Knockdown was fairly quick once we got there and after we just had to do some overhaul," Pansecchi said. "It was pretty much contained in one room and there was some smoke and water damage."

Pansecchi said although the cause of the fire is still under investigation, it does not appear to be suspicious.

There were no injuries and they were able to retrieve a pet cat.

"There was a cat missing and they do like to hide but once things calmed down we were able to retrieve it," he said.

Pansecchi said because the call came in during the day when manpower is often an issue for volunteer departments, North Adams, Clarksburg, Savoy and Cheshire were automatically toned.

"They all arrived but we did not need them," he said.

He said the other departments did offer support and covered the station while the Adams Fire Department put out the fire.

Adams Ambulance and Police Department were also on scene.
Carr Hardware is the only business in Massachusetts to make it to the quarterfinals of the "Independent We Stand Small Business of the Year Award."

Carr Hardware In Quarterfinals For Small Business Of Year Award



Vote for the Independent Small Business of the Year Award here. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Carr Hardware is the only business in Massachusetts to make it to the quarterfinals of the "Independent We Stand Small Business of the Year Award."

And, if it wins, the local company plans on donating that money right back into the community.

Carr Hardware says the small business organization Independent We Stand is giving out $5,000 to this year's winner. If Carr gets it, it will be donated toward building a new splash pad at Clapp Park.

"It is perfect for the kids. It gives them a safe and healthy place to go to," said Director of Marketing Geoffrey Webb. "This is just another way to give back to the community."

A customer had previously nominated Carr Hardware for the award and on Nov. 20, the Berkshires-based business found out it was in the top 25 of 249 businesses across the country after a first round of voting.

"I am very proud of our team members, at each of our six locations, which were instrumental in helping us be recognized by Independent We Stand by their commitment to providing superior service to our customers," said Vice President Bart Raser in a statement.

"I encourage folks to log onto the website often and vote for Carr, if we do receive the Indie Award I have committed to donate 100 percent of the cash proceeds towards the rebuild the new Splash Park project in Pittsfield."

Webb said the contest puts a lot of emphasis on what small businesses do for the community. Carr Hardware next year will be entering its 90th year since it was founded and prides itself on being a community partner. It operates stores in Pittsfield, Lee, Great Barrington, and North Adams in Massachusetts, and stores in Avon and Enfield, Conn.

"This year's quarterfinals represent the independent businesses from across the country who go above and beyond to support their local economies," said Bill Brunelle, co-founder of Independent We Stand in a statement. "This award is our way of honoring the contributions they've made to their communities."

The splash park project is part of an ongoing effort to revamp Clapp Park. Both the Rotary Club and the Buddy Pellerin Field Committee are supporting a number of park improvement projects eyed for the park. Carr Hardware is a member of the Rotary Club, which has specifically eyed the creation of the new splash pad.

"It is one of the causes the Rotary Club is behind," Webb said.
A group of veterans gathered at the Veterans Memorial to remember those who served in World War II. Fran Tremblay. The Rev. Michael Wood gives the benediction. Tony Pastore sings the national anthem. Tom Landry reads President Roosevelt's address to Congress requesting a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. George Moran reads the names of Central Berkshire residents who were at Pearl Harbor. A volley is shot off in honor of those who served. The annual event recognizes those who served in World War II. PreviousNext

Pittsfield Remembers Pearl Harbor



Veterans Services Office Jim Clark provides thoughts on the attack. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  One hundred and 10 minutes.

That was how long the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, lasted.

"In the time it would take to watch an average full-length movie at our local movie theater, over 350 Japanese aircraft traveling nearly 400 miles thundered over Hawaii dropping bombs in an unprovoked act of war against the United States. That attack claimed the lives of nearly 2,400 Americans, including two of Pittsfield's own. It nearly destroyed our Pacific fleet but it would not shake our resolve," said Veterans Services Office Jim Clark on Thursday morning as local veterans groups gathered at the War Memorial on South Street to recognize the anniversary of the attack.

During those 110 minutes, Roman Sadlowski and Edward Burns, both of Pittsfield, were killed while stationed at the naval base. As the battleships were sinking or severely damaged, across the nation people were preparing to enlist in the armed forces to defend the nation.

"We pay tribute to the souls lost 76 years ago. We salute those who responded with strength and courage in service of our nation," Clark said.

Now, three-quarters of a century years later, what is known as the Greatest Generation is not forgotten. Every year, no matter cold, snow, sleet, or sun, the Veterans Coalition gathers at the memorial to remember.

"Today with solemn gratitude we recall the sacrifices of all who served during World War II, especially those who gave their last full measure of devotion and the families they left behind," Clark said.

This year had warmer weather than most Pearl Harbor Remembrance days. The Rev. Michael Wood of St. Charles' Church gave the invocation and benediction. Tony Pastore sang the national anthem and Tom Landry read the famous address President Franklin Roosevelt delivered to Congress the day after the attacks.

George Moran read aloud the names of the 44 people from central Berkshire County who served at Pearl Harbor. The event also included taps and a volley.
Climate Smart Agriculture

Sacramento, California - We ended our Climate Smart Agriculture delegation visit last week by visiting the La Serena region of Chile. This region, North of Santiago, is a cool season agricultural region very similar to Ventura and Salinas, California. This region received little rain during the drought and there is an overall downward trend in how much water the region has been receiving over time.

The Government has worked to build several small reservoirs and on-farm irrigation ponds in this region to ensure agricultural needs. One reservoir we visited provides 50,000 acres with water and is capable of holding water to overcome short term droughts and floods that can impact the communities that live in the region. Specialty crops grown here include lettuce, table grapes, grapes for pisco (distilled alcoholic drink) and citrus. At this particular reservoir, operation managers collect weather data and share this information with the growers through smart phone apps. Management of the reservoir was moved from a public project to a privately operated system, after construction, with growers and others paying for operation and maintenance costs.

The La Serena region is also home to a few of the research stations associated with the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA). Very similar to the University of California Research Extension Centers, INIA focuses on on-farm agricultural research and extension services distribution to farmers through field days (irrigation efficiency and pesticide applications were among the top priorities). Grower outreach and on-farm adaptation of new technologies and practices has proved challenging in the small farm community, but INIA remains dedicated to providing assistance to small farmers in helping them adapt to a climate change.

In reflecting on the California-Chile Climate Smart Agriculture mission, I am very happy at the outcome, humbled to travel with a wonderful group of intelligent and curious stakeholders and look forward to additional information sharing to come through webinars and other activities between California and Chile.
Navy Announces 2018 Navy Week Schedule

Millington, Tennessee - From Springfield, Massachusetts to Sacramento, California, to Bossier City, Louisiana, America's Navy will sail into 14 cities across the country in 2018 as part of the Navy Week outreach program.

Navy Weeks, coordinated by the Navy Office of Community Outreach (NAVCO), are designed to give Americans the opportunity to learn about the Navy, its people and its importance to national security and prosperity. Since 2005, the Navy Week program has served as the Navy's flagship outreach effort into areas of the country without a significant Navy presence, with 210 Navy Weeks held in 74 different U.S. markets.



"Navy Weeks allow us to showcase the sons and daughters of America who serve in today's Navy. We focus on sharing in communities across the U.S. who often have little to no contact with Sailors," said Cmdr. Linda Rojas, NAVCO's director. "We've found that these exchanges have gone a long way for raising awareness of the Navy and establishing and maintaining relationships with the people we serve."



Navy Weeks are scheduled for the following cities in 2018:

- San Antonio, Feb. 19-25

- Waco, Texas, April 2-8

- Birmingham, Alabama, April 9-15

- Tampa, Florida, May 7-13

- Chattanooga, Tennessee, June 11-17

- Reno/Carson City, Nevada, June 17-23

- Sacramento, California, July 16-22

- Fargo, North Dakota, July 23-29

- Milwaukee, Aug. 6-12

- Louisville, Kentucky, Aug. 20-26

- Cleveland, Aug. 27-Sep. 2

- Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sep. 10-16

- Springfield, Massachusetts, Sep. 17-23

- Bossier City/Shreveport, Louisiana, Oct. 29-Nov. 4



Navy Weeks bring a variety of events, equipment and personnel to a single city for a week-long series of engagements with the public, key influencers and organizations representing all sectors of the community.



"During a Navy Week, 75 to 100 outreach events are coordinated with corporate, civic, government, education, media, veterans, community service and diversity organizations in the city," said Lt. Cmdr. Brett Dawson, NAVCO's event planning department head. "We bring in as much of the Navy as we can to raise awareness of the Navy, its mission and its importance to the public."



The Blue Angels; the Navy Parachute Team "The Leap Frogs"; bands; divers; Seabees; explosive ordnance disposal teams; naval aviation aircraft and aircrew; Sailors from ships and submarines with namesake ties; hometown Sailors; Navy Medicine personnel; USS Constitution Sailors and equipment; Naval History and Heritage Command; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and environmental assets; the Navy Ceremonial Guard; and Navy recruiting assets all have participated in the Navy Week program in various capacities over the life of the program.



Navy Week cities are chosen based on a variety of factors, including Gallup data on Navy knowledge and awareness, Navy recruiting data, demographic information, namesake ties of ships and submarines, past outreach history in the market and geography, to ensure events are dispersed across the country.



Last year's Navy Week program, through the execution of more than 1,000 individual outreach events, showcased the Navy, its mission and its people to a combined audience of approximately 150 million Americans.
Visa Restrictions on Individuals Responsible for Undermining Cambodian Democracy

Washington, DC - As the White House stated in a November 16, press statement, the United States is taking concrete steps to respond to the Cambodian governments actions that have undermined the countrys progress in advancing democracy and respect for human rights. These actionswhich run counter to the Paris Peace Agreements of 1991 that ended a tragic conflict and accorded the Cambodian people democratic rightsinclude the dissolution of the main opposition political party and banning of its leaders from electoral politics, imprisonment of opposition leader Kem Sokha, restriction of civil society, and suppression of independent media.

In direct response to the Cambodian governments series of anti-democratic actions, we announce the Secretary of State will restrict entry into the United States of those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia. In certain circumstances, family members of those individuals will also be subject to visa restrictions.

We call on the Cambodian government to reverse course by reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities. Such actions could lead to a lifting of these travel restrictions and increase the potential for Cambodias 2018 electoral process to regain legitimacy.

We will continue to monitor the situation and take additional steps as necessary, while maintaining our close and enduring ties with the people of Cambodia.
My pal Roland teaches all day in an intense inner-city school. He's very focused on his kids and his work. When his day is done and he's getting ready to drive home, he often texts me something to the effect of "Did Trump have a bad day?" or "Did he blow up the world yet?" We travel a lot-- often to off the beaten track places like Timbuktu, Yangon, Tirane, Sidi Ifni, Abu Simbel. These days, I'd rather go to Paris, Bali or Florence again. He's always suggesting Ulan Bator, Mandalay or Calcutta. Lately he's been lobbying for Korea. I never wanted to go there but I've been fending him off with the current volatile political situation and the chances of it being ground zero in an escalation been Senor Trumpanzee and Kim Jong Un. Roland's answer-- and his feeling of safety in L.A.-- is that "we" can shoot down their missiles. Like many Americans, he was reassured when the Saudis-- or whomever-- shot down a missile lobbed their way by the Houthis in Yemen a few weeks back.

Impressive, right? According to thesources, not really . It was worse than too close for comfort, despite the official line from Senor T and the Saudis. The Patriot missile defense system (which Trump was trying to hawk on the international market while he was bragging about how effective it was). "Our system knocked the missile out of the air. Thats how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now were selling it all over the world," the orange-hued imbecile boasted. He was, as usual, lying.

[A]n 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.













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... is believed to be a Burqan-2, a variant of the Scud missile used throughout the Middle East. It traveled about 600 miles.





...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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





"You shoot five times at this missile and they all miss? That's shocking, she said. That's shocking because this system is supposed to work.
Continued Violence in the Central African Republic

Washington, DC - The United States remains concerned about ongoing violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), and condemns in the strongest terms the continued targeted attacks against civilians, peacekeepers, and humanitarian actors. We further emphasize our strong support to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), in its efforts to protect civilians from violence, prevent atrocities, and help stabilize the country.

Fourteen UN peacekeepers have been killed in CAR since 2017 while providing support and protecting the CAR population from predatory armed groups that target, exploit, and kill civilians. These deaths are a tragic reminder of the high cost of violence and the price that peacekeepers, civilians, and humanitarian actors continue to pay.

We call on armed groups to put down their weapons and engage, without preconditions and in good faith, with the CAR government. We firmly oppose impunity for human rights violations, and support the Special Criminal Court to promote justice for victims and accountability for those responsible for atrocities.

The United States stands with the CAR Government, MINUSCA, and all Central Africans, as they strive for peace, justice, accountability, and the prevention of future atrocities in CAR.




This Isnt Our Last Love Letter



Dear Don Don,

Way back in 92



I walked into the room and knew



Never felt this way before



I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes



And the feeling grew



As I took a seat I knew



A love that would have my heart



Forever



I knew



Way back in 92





They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true



We were the exception to that rule



Our love had no where to hide



A spark set fire



As if this is how the universe started





I never doubted our love or what we could do



Together we grew



Forming a bond everlasting



That became our glue



My euphoria was YOU



Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared



For how fortunate we were :



to have and to hold

through sickness and in health

Til death do us part



Until we are together again



This isnt our last love letter



I love you with all my heart and soul



Yours forever,



Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)





Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.









A True American Hero

I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.



I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.



I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.

But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.

In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.



Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.

I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.

I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.

No one will ever do what he did.

I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO





David Jurist

IMUS IN THE MORNING

FIRST DAY BACK!
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Clara Amfo has stepped in to co-present Top of the Pops' Christmas and New Year specials after Reggie Yates stepped down from the BBC show.

Amfo will now front the show alongside Fearne Cotton - the specials will feature performances from Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Rita Ora.

In a statement, the Radio 1 presenter said: "I'm so happy and honoured to be presenting Top of the Pops alongside Fearne.

"It's an iconic show that I've grown up with and continue to enjoy watching, especially during the festive scene. 2017 has been a rich year in pop and I can't wait to celebrate it with the artists, Fearne, and everyone at home."

Yates announced he would no longer co-present after comments he made on the Halfcast Podcast caused controversy last month.

The presenter and documentary maker said it was "great" to see how grime artists were no longer being managed by "some random fat Jewish guy from north-west London".

Yates was accused of anti-Semitism on social media and later made a statement addressing the comments.

"On a recent podcast, during a discussion about grime artists, I made some ill-considered remarks which have hurt many people. I can see clearly that the words I used reinforced offensive stereotypes, and there is no context that would justify such remarks.

"My comments are no reflection on how I truly feel, and I would like to apologise unreservedly to the Jewish community, people in the music industry and anyone else I have offended.

"This has been, and continues to be a huge learning experience for me, and on reflection I have taken the decision to step down from hosting Top of the Pops."
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A United Nations agreement that would have called for specific, internationally-agreed goals to tackle plastic waste in our oceans has been rejected by the US.

Several countries, including China and India, also refused to include in the resolution a call on nations to adopt any reduction targets, but US officials were clearly leading the discussion on this, a source at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi told The Independent.

Countries did agree that the world needs to stop plastics from entering the sea, but the final resolution published on Wednesday has no timetable and is not legally binding.

Governments will instead establish an international taskforce to advise on what UN environment chief Erik Solheim has dubbed an ocean Armageddon.

China is by far the biggest producer of plastic waste. In 2010 it is estimated to have mismanaged almost nine million tonnes of it. However the US fails to feature in the top 10, according to World Atlas.

A deal was eventually struck that keeps a demand for a reduction target out, in exchange for a pledge that stresses the importance of long-term elimination of plastics going into the oceans.

 Sea creatures at bottom of world's deepest point have eaten plastic

Instead of targets, the resolution urges all actors to step up actions to by 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds and encourages member states to prioritise policies that avoid marine litter and micro plastics entering the marine environment.

Politicians say the agreement is important because it will clear the way for much tougher policies and send a signal to governments and business.

Vidar Helgesen, Norways environment minister and a leader of the UN debate on plastic pollution, told the BBC it was a breakthrough for zero emissions of plastic into the ocean, but admitted it was only the start of the action that will be needed.

Mr Solheim, UN environment head and undersecretary-general, said: We need to phase out what we don't need, make what we do need with better materials, and recycle all the plastics that we use.

"I'm very optimistic that in 20 years, we will see a much more circular economy."

Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Show all 11 1 /11 Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Plastic as far as the eye can see Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Plastic cutlery floats in the sea Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas An underwater view of the rubbish that sits on the top of the ocean Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas The plastic pollution is only getting worse in the ocean Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Plastic pollution in the sea looks like a pathway through the ocean Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Underwater view of a plastic bag in the sea Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Plastic floating in the sea Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Sea level view of the plastic pollution Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas A collection of plastic spreads across the sea Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Another view from in the ocean of the plastic floating Caroline Power Photography Vast sea of plastic and pollution in the Caribbean: in pictures Plastic pollution plaguing our seas Large quantities of trash gather in the sea Caroline Power Photography

More than eight million tonnes of plastic goes into the oceans every year. With an estimated 300 million tonnes of it now littering our seas, it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish by 2050.

It is thought our seas now contain about 51 trillion microplastic particles  500 times more than the number of stars in our galaxy.

This pollution is harming more than 600 species worldwide amid what many are now regarding as the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.
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Superfood trends come and go - but it looks like moringa might be the new wellness additive that's here to stay.

Just like most trendy "new" superfoods, the health benefits of the moringa tree have been known in various cultures for hundreds of years, but have just recently found their way into mainstream wellness culture - where you are about to see a lot more of it. According to Google Trends, interest in moringa has been growing steadily for the past five years.

The fast-growing, drought-resistant tree is native to the sub-Himalayan areas of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan isometimes referred to as the drumstick tree. The moringa tree has various healing properties, health benefits and uses, according to WebMD, and it is basically capable of curing all your ailments - kind of.

According to a study published in the journal Phytotherapy Research, the bark, sap, roots, leaves, seeds, and flowers of the moringa tree have all been traditionally used to treat a variety of ailments including: edema, swelling, stomach disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, epilepsy, thyroid disorder, anemia and sickle cell disease, and bacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic infections.

As if that wasn't enough incentive, the miracle tree has also been linked to having positive effects on liver function, skin and hair, bone health, immunity, cardiovascular health, kidney function, eye health, and cancer prevention.

Proving it is worthy of its nicknames, the versatile plant has proven to be equally important as a food, especially in parts of the world where malnutrition has been an issue.

Because it can be grown cheaply and easily, and the leaves retain lots of vitamins and minerals when dried, moringa has been used in India and Africa in feeding programs to fight malnutrition, the study by the University of Agriculture, in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

In mainstream wellness circles, moringa has become popular because the leaves contain more Vitamin A than carrots, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more potassium than bananas.

The superfood moringa

Additionally, the protein in the moringa leaves rivals that of milk and eggs.

And, as if you needed another reason to ditch your kale, moringa actually has a surprisingly pleasant taste which is why food companies have been quick to include the beneficial tree in pressed juices, nutrition bars, kombucha, and other healthy snacks.

The super-nourishing moringa oil is also expected to make its way into beauty products in the coming year, so if youre wondering whether you should incorporate the superfood into your lifestyle, it looks like it definitely couldnt hurt.
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Are you a natural-born leader or follower?

As it turns out, it doesnt matter, because anyone can behave like a leader if they want to, a new study has found.

Researchers at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands videotaped a series of meetings between project management teams who had never met before and unveiled a series of behavioural signals that led people to identify them as leaders, reports New Scientist.

Psychology professor Fabiola Gerpott and her team monitored the participants behaviour for a period of seven weeks.

Afterwards they concluded that every person was either a leader or a follower based on a variety of leadership signals that some showed and others didnt in the meetings.

Next, the videos were edited into 42 short muted clips and were subsequently shown to 18 different people.

As these people watched the videos, the scientists monitored where on the screen each viewer was looking and for how long they looked there.

They concluded that the viewers looked more frequently at the participants in the video who were later identified as leaders and they also looked at them for longer.

So, what were the leaders doing that made them so much more engaging to watch?

Firstly, they used active gestures when they spoke i.e. they moved their hands a lot when they talked.

Recommended The scientific reason you should stop using emojis immediately

Secondly, they also exhibited positive body language in the meetings and faced people when they spoke to them.

Speaking a lot at the beginning of the meeting also showed strong leadership skills, the scientists said.

When problems arose during the meetings, the researchers noted that the leaders in the group were the ones suggesting solutions.

As for things that an aspiring leader should not do  which the scientists noticed all of the followers doing  its best not to yawn, frown or stare into space, as these are considered passive facial expressions that are not engaging.

Interestingly, smiling made no difference in terms of who was perceived as a leader or a follower  so hopeful leaders neednt worry about forcing a giant grin if they dont fancy it.
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A North Carolina couple have celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary with a photoshoot  and the heart-warming pictures have gone viral online.

Not only have Marvin and Wanda Brewington been married for an impressive amount of time, but the pair have also beaten cancer together on two occasions.

The pictures of the 70 and 67-year-olds have been widely shared online, after their daughter Amber Robinson  who also happens to be the wedding photographer that captured the images  shared them on her Facebook page.

According to Robinsons post, the inspiring couple have successfully raised two children, helped one another through financial struggles and lived a charitable lifestyle together.

I am SO proud to call them Mom and Dad, she writes.

They are the epitome of where I strive to be in my own marriage and a constant reminder that a wedding is only a day, but a marriage is forever.

Recommended Nine dating mistakes people make at the start of a relationship

If you are one of the millions in love, or maybe one of the millions of broken-hearted that need a visual reminder that love always endures, I would love for you to share this as a way of letting my mom and dad know, they are an inspiration to anyone who wants, believes, or is in love.

Both Marvin and Wanda have faced severe health struggles over the course of their marriage, Essence reports.

In 1973, Marvin was told that he had multiple sclerosis and was diagnosed with colon cancer just four years later.

Meanwhile, in 2013 doctors informed him that he had prostate cancer and less than 12 months later, his wife contracted Parkinsons disease.

However, their unrelenting health battles seem to have only made their relationship stronger, as the lovable images from their celebratory photoshoot demonstrate.
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The president of the Confederation of British Industry has delivered a scorching warning to government ministers over Brexit, saying that for the corporate world Rome is burning.

Paul Drechsler, who is also chair of the shipping company Bibby Line, said around 60 per cent of firms with Brexit contingency plans will activate them by Easter 2018 unless the UK gets the green light from the European Union to begin trade talks by the time the European Council meets on 14 December.

Theres no time to waste, he told a City of London audience.

 Theresa May's EU deal under threat from DUP over Northern Ireland border dispute

In the immediate term, business needs to know the details of any transition deal  Rome is burning on that issue.

The Roman emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned in a great fire in AD64.

The UK Government has said that it wants to negotiate a transition deal to commence in April 2019, whereby the UK would remain in the EU single market and customs union for at least two years to avoid seismic disruption for UK firms.

But the EU will not even begin talks on the terms of such a transition deal until there is sufficient progress on the issues of EU citizens rights, the Brexit divorce bill and the Irish border.

An agreement in principle on the Irish border collapsed on Monday after the DUP, which is propping up Theresa Mays minority Government, said it would not approve her proposals for regulatory alignment between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

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

Today, Brexit uncertainty looms over almost every aspect of doing business in the UK. Every day, companies are having to plan for worst while hoping for the best, said Mr Drechsler.

They are making choices that will determine new jobs, new plants and new investments in the years ahead. Businesses will press snooze for as long as they can  but the alarm will go off.

He also blasted those sections of the Conservative Party who maintain that the UK could simply walk away from the Brexit talks without serious economic harm as grossly irresponsible.

To those politicians suggesting we walk away from the negotiating table, I have a simple message: careless talk will cost jobs. Its intolerable at a time when we all need to be working in the national interest. We cant walk away when the going gets tough, he said.

We cant enter into negotiations that affect the future of millions of people and then leave at the first sign of trouble. It would be an act of gross irresponsibility to walk away.
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The UKs ability to attract talent has already taken a hit because of Brexit, the chief executive of one of the countrys biggest banks has said.

Standard Chartered boss, Bill Winters, told the BBC that his bank is preparing for the worst and that plans by some lenders  like his own  to turn branches in European cities into official subsidiaries, were inconvenient and expensive.

London will take hits in the context of Brexit I think big parts of the euro-denominated corporate banking business will be forced into Europe, Mr Winters told the broadcaster.

Recommended Bank bosses concerned over Brexit rewriting contracts

Its possible that through the Brexit negotiations that there is some sort of extended passporting rule but none of us are expecting that quite frankly, or preparing for that, he added.

Passporting refers to banks ability to sell their services across Europe from a UK base.

We have to prepare for the worst lets hope for the best, but were prepared for the worst, the chief executive said.

He said that Standard Charters ability to attract top talent was already being curtailed as a result of the EU referendum outcome  for example through the restriction on student visas.

Some of the best talent that we can have in the UK marketplace is coming from students that have chosen to study here and then stayed for some extended period afterwards Weve noticed thats been impacted already, Mr Winters said.

More through a sense from non-UK [people] that this might not be such a hospitable place any longer  its more psychological than contractual.

Bosses of many of the worlds largest banks have issued repeated warnings about the possible impact of Brexit.

Goldman Sachs, chief Lloyd Blankfein, has repeatedly taken to Twitter to comment on the UKs departure from the EU. Last month he tweeted of a tough and risky road ahead in light of Brexit.

Many of the big banks have already committed to relocate some staff out of London and to the European continent to ensure that they can continue servicing all clients seamlessly after Brexit.
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Shares in the owner of Poundland lost well over half of their value on Wednesday, after the South Africa-based company said it had launched an investigation into accounting irregularities and that the chief executive had unexpectedly tendered his resignation.

Shares in Steinhoff, which is listed in the Netherlands, plummeted almost 63 per cent. The group said that it had approached professional services firm PwC about undertaking an independent investigation into its accounts and that it would update the market as that investigation proceeds.

It said that it would publish the audited 2017 consolidated financial statements when it is in a position to do so and that it would also determine whether any prior years financial statements would need to be restated.

CEO Markus Jooste will leave the company with immediate effect and the supervisory board has appointed its chairman, Christo Wiese, to take over on an interim basis.

Steinhoff also said that it was advising its shareholders and other investors to exercise caution when dealing in the securities of the company.

Steinhoff is a sprawling corporation which operates approximately 12,000 retail outlets across 30 countries. As well as Poundland, it owns Benson for Beds, Harveys Furniture and Pep&Co in the UK.
Vietnam Airlines welcomes 200 millionth passenger

The national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines organised a ceremony to welcome the 200 millionth passenger at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, on December 5.









Nguyen Truong Chinh, the 200 millionth passenger of Vietnam Airlines, was welcomed at Tan Son Nhat International Airport (Source: Vietnam Airlines)







This marks a milestone in the carriers development history of more than two decades.



The 200 millionth passenger was Vietnamese Nguyen Truong Chinh, who took Flight No VN223 from Hanoi to HCM City. The flight landed at Tan Son Nhat International Airport at 10.10am.



Duong Tri Thanh, Vietnam Airlines General Director, said: Recording 200 million passengers in more than two decades since the foundation is a milestone for Vietnam Airlines."



Todays achievement is thanks to the trust of millions of domestic and international passengers. The ceremony to welcome the 200 millionth passenger is our tribute to every passenger who puts their trust in Vietnamese Airlines on every flight.



Thanh pledged that the national carrier will continue to improve its services.



During the 1995-2017 period, Vietnam Airlines operated more than 1.6 million flights on both international and domestic routes and posted an average passenger growth rate of 11 percent per year.



The national carrier earned a total of more than 777 trillion VND (34 billion USD) in revenue in the past 22 years, with average growth of 15.62 percent per year.



It earned pre-tax profit of nearly 18 trillion VND (792 million USD) in the 22-year period and contributed 41 trillion VND (1.8 billion USD) to the State budget.



At the event, Vietnam Airlines also officially launched Flights of Love  an activity for the good of the community to support projects aimed at better living. Owners of Flights of Love cards would be provided free tickets on all flights to implement their projects.



The first three projects of Flights of Love were Flood Housing Relief, Heart Foundation and Operation Smile.



Thanh said social responsibility was important in the development strategy of Vietnam Airlines, and hoped that Flights of Love will contribute to building a sustainable development community.
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A 20-year-old Florida man was responsible for the large data breach at Uber last year and was paid by Uber to destroy the data through a so-called bug bounty programme normally used to identify small code vulnerabilities, three people familiar with the events have told Reuters.

Uber announced on 21 November that the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 drivers in the United States, were stolen in a breach that occurred in October 2016, and that it paid the hacker $100,000 (74,769) to destroy the information. But the company did not reveal any information about the hacker or how it paid him the money.

Uber made the payment last year through a program designed to reward security researchers who report flaws in a companys software, these people said. Ubers bug bounty service - as such a program is known in the industry - is hosted by a company called HackerOne, which offers its platform to a number of tech companies.

Reuters was unable to establish the identity of the hacker or another person who sources said helped him. Uber spokesman Matt Kallman declined to comment on the matter.

Newly appointed Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi fired two of Ubers top security officials when he announced the breach last month, saying the incident should have been disclosed to regulators at the time it was discovered, about a year before.

It remains unclear who made the final decision to authorise the payment to the hacker and to keep the breach secret, though the sources said then-CEO Travis Kalanick was aware of the breach and bug bounty payment in November of last year.

Mr Kalanick, who stepped down as Uber chief executive in June, declined to comment on the matter, according to his spokesman.

A payment of $100,000 through a bug bounty program would be extremely unusual, with one former HackerOne executive saying it would represent an all-time record. Security professionals said rewarding a hacker who had stolen data also would be well outside the normal rules of a bounty program, where payments are typically in the $5,000 to $10,000 range.

HackerOne hosts Ubers bug bounty program but does not manage it, and plays no role in deciding whether payouts are appropriate or how large they should be.

HackerOne chief executive Marten Mickos said he could not discuss an individual customers programs. In all cases when a bug bounty award is processed through HackerOne, we receive identifying information of the recipient in the form of an IRS W-9 or W-8BEN form before payment of the award can be made, he said, referring to US Internal Revenue Service forms.

According to two of the sources, Uber made the payment to confirm the hackers identity and have him sign a nondisclosure agreement to deter further wrongdoing. Uber also conducted a forensic analysis of the hackers machine to make sure the data had been purged, the sources said.

One source described the hacker as living with his mom in a small home trying to help pay the bills, adding that members of Ubers security team did not want to pursue prosecution of an individual who did not appear to pose a further threat.

The Florida hacker paid a second person for services that involved accessing GitHub, a site widely used by programmers to store their code, to obtain credentials for access to Uber data stored elsewhere, one of the sources said.

GitHub said the attack did not involve a failure of its security systems. Our recommendation is to never store access tokens, passwords, or other authentication or encryption keys in the code, that company said in a statement.

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS

Uber received an email last year from an anonymous person demanding money in exchange for user data, and the message was forwarded to the companys bug bounty team in what was described as Ubers routine practice for such solicitations, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Bug bounty programs are designed mainly to give security researchers an incentive to report weaknesses they uncover in a companys software. But complicated scenarios can emerge when dealing with hackers who obtain information illegally or seek a ransom.

Some companies choose not to report more aggressive intrusions to authorities on the grounds that it can be easier and more effective to negotiate directly with hackers in order to limit any harm to customers.

Ubers $100,000 payout and silence on the matter at the time was extraordinary under such a program, according to Luta Security founder Katie Moussouris, a former HackerOne executive.

If it had been a legitimate bug bounty, it would have been ideal for everyone involved to shout it from the rooftops, Moussouris said.

Ubers failure to report the breach to regulators, even though it may have felt it had dealt with the problem, was an error, according to people inside and outside the company who spoke to Reuters.

The creation of a bug bounty program doesnt allow Uber, their bounty service provider, or any other company the ability to decide that breach notification laws dont apply to them, Moussouris said.

Uber fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, and a deputy, attorney Craig Clark, over their roles in the incident.

None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it, Mr Khosrowshahi, said in a blog post announcing the hack last month.

Mr Clark worked directly for Mr Sullivan but also reported to Ubers legal and privacy team, according to three people familiar with the arrangement. It is unclear whether Mr Clark informed Ubers legal department, which typically handled disclosure issues.

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.

Mr Sullivan and Mr Clark did not respond to requests for comment.

In an August interview with Reuters, Sullivan, a former prosecutor and Facebook security chief, said he integrated security engineers and developers at Uber with our lawyers and our public policy team who know what regulators care about.

Last week, three more top managers in Ubers security unit resigned. One of them, physical security chief Jeff Jones, later told others he would have left anyway, sources told Reuters. Another of the three, senior security engineer Prithvi Rai, later agreed to stay in a new role.

Reuters
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Failures in the regulation of vaginal mesh implants put women at risk of serious infection and chronic pain, experts have said.

Researchers found that lax rules on medical devices, which allow products to be approved on an equivalence basis if theyre similar to an already approved device, allowed 61 mesh implants to be marketed based on evidence for two older products.

While regulators have plans in place to tighten up oversight, including requiring clinical trials for each medical device in line with drug approval, these will not be fully in place until 2020.

The academics from Oxford University argue that a public registry for all invasive medical devices should be established to allow long-term follow up with patients to assure device safety.

The unfolding scandal around transvaginal mesh implants (TVM) has been branded the most serious womens health failing since thalidomide.

Vaginal mesh implants are given to around 15,000 women every year to tackle complications following childbirth like urinary incontinence and prolapse  where the weakened pelvic muscles mean the organs can bulge into the vagina.

More than 100,000 women in the US are involved in a class action lawsuit with manufacturers after suffering complications, and legal proceedings in the UK involve around 500 hundred women with 2,000 set to join.

Complications are relatively rare, but independent academics say they are more common with the mesh implants for treating prolapse and surgical repair is likely to be more effective.

The authors report that, of the 110 formally reported, mesh-related adverse incidents recorded by the UKs medical device watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), since 2005, 65 were for the device breaking off into vagina, 21 related to infections, 39 related to pain and 16 related to organ perforation.

The Independent has followed the growing public outcry on mesh implants in the wake of the Governments refusal to ban the devices or launch a public inquiry into their use following a national report on the issue.

This week has also seen the first reported death as a result of a TVM device.

 Cross-party call to end mesh procedure ends in disappointment

Canadian mother and mesh campaigner Chrissy Brajcic died after developing an antibiotic-resistant infection from her implant.

The paper, published in the BMJ Open today, used data for devices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

In an analysis, the authors said: We traced marketing clearance for 61 mesh devices back through a chain of equivalence claims to only two unique originating devices approved in 1985 and 1996.

We found no evidence of any new clinical trial data at the time of device approval for all of these 61 devices, with empirical evidence of effectiveness from randomised trials emerging on average five years after approval.

It warns that this family tree of equivalence approvals meant devices with different designs were put on the market without safety evidence, and when the changes should have alerted regulators that equivalence wasnt applicable.

The authors warned that in Europe devices can also be approved on equivalence grounds, with approval granted by centres across the European Union.

But, unlike the US applications, EU approvals are not public, making them impossible to scrutinise.

The studys lead author said he hoped that after Brexit the UK would have a more rigorous approach that incentivised evidence backed devices and put patient safety first.

Professor Carl Heneghan at Oxford Universitys Centre for Evidence Based Medicine said patients might wait longer for treatments and companies might lose market share, but added: We could, and should though, lead the way by having regulatory systems that incentivise the production of high-quality evidence at the time of approval for implantable devices  those deemed to be the riskiest.

In particular ensuring those devices that do make a difference and are safe are made available. And for those that arent safe, ensuring they do not make it onto the market in the first place.

Later this month, Englands National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) will publish final guidance on the devices.

The watchdog could either say the devices are no longer recommended for use; that they should only be used for research purposes; or they should only be used when clinicians have had certain conversations with prospective patients about possible side-effects or complications.

 Cross-party debate on mesh procedure

Independent academics backed the plan for a registry and tightening regulation, especially as implanted devices are often life-long.

Professor Cathryn Glazener, retired emeritus professor at the Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, did not contribute to the paper and flagged that the BMJ paper didn't appear to account for safer, and more effective, mesh implants for incontinence.

But she added: I do agree with the authors of the article, however, that regulation of new device use needs to be tightened up, in line with the much more rigorous scrutiny already in place for new drugs.

The MHRA, which continues to recommend mesh devices, citing insufficient evidence of widespread complications for a ban, said it is part of a group looking at such a registry and encouraged women to report any complications.

John Wilkinson, MHRA director of devices said: Patient safety is our highest priority and we recognise some women do develop serious complications which can be very significant for the affected women.

We also know many women gain benefit from these surgical procedures for what can be extremely debilitating conditions.

We continue to work closely with NHS England, NICE and professional bodies, and we are all committed to helping address the serious concerns raised by women who have experienced complications. "

Additional reporting by PA
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Scientists have found a previously unknown ability in microbes that could also be found in alien life forms.

Discovered in Antarctica, they have the ability to sustain themselves by extracting the energy and carbon they need to survive from trace gases in the air, such as hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

The finding that living things can survive on nothing but air provides scientists with clues about life in extreme conditions, such as those found on other planets.

The research team led by scientists from Australia's University of New South Wales, made the discovery while researching microscopic life in the continents dry coastal regions.

"Antarctica is one of the most extreme environments on Earth, said the study's lead author, Professor Belinda Ferrari, after the findings were published in the Nature journal.

Most of Antarctica is covered in snow and ice, parts of it are dry and ice-free, making them particularly hostile to life, yet the cold, dark and dry desert regions are home to a surprisingly rich diversity of microbial communities," she added.

Professor Ferrari and her team wanted to understand how Antarctic microbes could survive with very little water, low levels of carbon in the soil and little sunlight during the long winter months.

All of these resources tend to be vital for life, but the lack of them in Antarctica has not held these microbes back.

Antarctica team endures extremes in hope of showing the way to Mars Show all 3 1 /3 Antarctica team endures extremes in hope of showing the way to Mars Antarctica team endures extremes in hope of showing the way to Mars SU-24-antarctica1-getty.jpg Getty Images Antarctica team endures extremes in hope of showing the way to Mars SU-24-antarctica2-AFP.jpg AFP Antarctica team endures extremes in hope of showing the way to Mars SU-24-antarctica3.jpg

Microbes that can survive in extreme environments such as boiling water and acid  known as extremophiles  are often used by scientists seeking to understand how extra-terrestrial life might live.

To arrive at their conclusions, the scientists took soil samples from two pristine polar deserts along the coast of eastern Antarctica, and studied the DNA of the microbes living in them.

They found the dominant species in the soil samples possessed genes that gave them the capacity to extract hydrogen and carbon monoxide from their surroundings, allowing them to literally live on air.

"This new understanding about how life can still exist in physically extreme and nutrient-starved environments like Antarctica opens up the possibility of atmospheric gases supporting life on other planets," said Professor Ferrari.
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Scientists have found what they believe is the oldest eye ever discovered in a 530-million-year-old fossil.

The remains of the extinct sea creature includes the early form of an eye, which is seen in many animals that exist today, including bees and dragonflies.

An international team of researchers made the find while examining the fossil of a species called a trilobite unearthed in Estonia, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Trilobites, hard-shelled ancestors of crabs and spiders, lived in coastal waters during the Palaeozoic era between 541-251 million years ago.

Scientists discovered the species, called Schmidtiellus reetae, had a primitive form of compound eye, an optical organ consisting of tiny visual cells called ommatidia.

This exceptional fossil shows us how early animals saw the world around them hundreds of millions of years ago," said Professor Euan Clarkson, of the University of Edinburghs School of GeoSciences who was part of the research team.

Remarkably, it also reveals that the structure and function of compound eyes has barely changed in half a billion years.

An examination of the fossil revealed the species likely had poor vision compared to many modern animals, but it could still identify approaching predators, researchers said.

Its eye consists of approximately 100 ommatidia, which are situated relatively far apart compared to contemporary compounds eyes, they added.

The fossils eye does not have a lens, unlike modern compound eyes, because the species lacked parts of the shell needed to form one.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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The team also revealed that only a few million years later, improved compound eyes with higher resolution developed in another trilobite species from the present-day Baltic region.

This may be the earliest example of an eye that it is possible to find, said Professor Brigitte Schoenemann, of the University of Cologne, which conducted the study along with the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia.

Older specimens in sediment layers below this fossil contain only traces of the original animals, which were too soft to be fossilised and have disintegrated over time.
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A birds-eye view of Saudi Arabias mysterious structures

For nearly a decade, David Kennedy marvelled from behind his computer screen at thousands of mysterious stone structures scattered across Saudi Arabias desert. With Google Earths satellite imagery at his fingertips, the archaeologist peeked at thousands of burial sites and other Works of the Old Men, created by nomadic tribes thousands of years ago.

But he was unable to secure permission to visit the country to observe up close the ancient designs that he and amateur archaeologists had studied from their desktops.

Last month, after announcing he had identified nearly 400 stone gates, Kennedy received the invitation of a lifetime from Saudi officials to investigate the hidden structures from a helicopter. From 500 feet, you can see the vital details of structures that are invisible in the fuzzy image on Google Earth, said Kennedy, who recently retired from the University of Western Australia. Over the course of three days, he snapped more than 6,000 aerial photographs, lifting the veil on the ancient wonders.

In Saudi Arabia, he explored 200 sites from the air across the regions of Harrat Khaybar and Harrat Uwayrid. The structures he observed ranged in shapes and sizes, which he describes as gates, kites, triangles, wheels and keyholes.

Of the 400 structures he describes as gates that he had identified on Google Earth, Kennedy studied about 40 from the helicopter and found that the structures were not randomly put together. Rather, each long bar was actually made up of two parallel lines of flat slabs placed on their edges facing each other with small stones filling the space in between. They are much more sophisticated than I was prepared for, he said.

Some were larger than 1,000ft long and 250ft wide. He suspects the oldest of the gates may be 9,000 years old. He thinks they may have been used for farming purposes.

Huw Groucutt, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, said the new images can help show how humans societies have modified the landscape.

Nicholas St Fleur

Wine from prehistoric Georgia with an 8,000-year-old vintage

Raise a glass to the nation of Georgia, which could now be the birthplace of wine.

The country, which straddles the fertile valleys of the south Caucasus Mountains between Europe and the Middle East, may have been home to the first humans to conquer the common grape, giving rise to chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, and thousands of other reds and whites we enjoy today.

In a recent study, researchers found wine residue on pottery shards from two archaeological sites in Georgia dating to 6000BC. The findings are the earliest evidence of wine made from the Eurasian grape, which is used in nearly all wine produced worldwide.

Talk about ageing of wine. Here we have an 8,000-year-old vintage that weve identified, said Patrick McGovern, a molecular archaeologist from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and lead author of the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings push back the previous date for the oldest evidence of winemaking by about 600 to 1,000 years, which McGovern previously identified in Iran. But it does not dethrone China as the location of the earliest known fermented beverage, which McGovern dated to 7000 BC. That drink, however, was most likely a cocktail consisting of rice, honey, hawthorn fruit and wild grapes, unlike this most recent finding which was pure grape wine.

Nicholas St Fleur

How snapdragons beckon bees with more than one colour

In the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain, wild snapdragons bloom each spring. Their petals scream for pollination  with colour, not sound. A bit of bright contrast brushed over the centre of the flowers lower lip advertises the nectar behind it.

Bees follow the patterns and enter the mouths of the snapdragon. On one side of the mountainous landscape, one subspecies of snapdragon has magenta lips with yellow accents. On the other side, another subspecies offers the opposite: yellow lips with magenta accents. In the land between, hybrid flowers try it all. These hybrid patterns cannot be as effective for attracting pollinators, or youd see an expanding strip of hybrids.

Researchers suspected colouration genes from the two subspecies were not mixing well, and that natural selection  assisted by bees and their floral preferences  was favouring the survival of both magenta and yellow flowers independently, not the hybrids.

But how did the snapdragon cousins create accented patterns that appeared to be equally effective in the same environment? To find out how colour differences in these snapdragons arose, scientists compared the genomes of the subspecies in a study published this month in Science.

They found that the magenta-yellow plants and their yellow-magenta mirrors shared most of the plants 30,000-some genes  but not a handful related to colour. Those genes behaved like artists painting billboards with different techniques and palettes. And nature appeared to respond to the colourful expressions of these genes. Bees favoured a couple of patterns and neglected plants with other colour schemes, the researchers believe, selecting for certain genetic combinations.

Joanna Klein

A population of billions may have contributed to this birds extinction

North America was once a utopia for passenger pigeons. When European colonisers first arrived, as many as five billion roamed the continent.

When they migrated, they swept across the entire sky. Then, in just a few decades, the inconceivable happened: Commercialised and excessively hunted, the birds vanished.

A paper published in Science this month sheds new light on why the creatures went extinct so swiftly and thoroughly. Analysing the DNA of preserved birds, the researchers found evidence that natural selection was extremely efficient in passenger pigeons.

This might have made the pigeons particularly well-suited for living in dense flocks but unable to cope with living in sparse groups once their numbers started to plummet, the authors suggest. Biologists generally assume that a large population corresponds to high genetic diversity, which acts as a buffer to extinction, said Susanne Fritz, an evolution expert at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt, Germany, who was not involved in the research.

But passenger pigeons were so plentiful and so mobile that beneficial genetic mutations spread and detrimental ones disappeared very quickly throughout their population. This caused a loss in overall genetic diversity, which meant less raw material for adapting to human-induced change.

In the new study, a team of evolutionary biologists compared the genomes of four passenger pigeon specimens from different geographic regions with those of two band-tailed pigeons, a close living relative, and saw signatures of remarkably efficient natural selection in the passenger pigeons.

The researchers found typically high genetic diversity in regions of the genome that tend to get chopped up and rearranged between generations, but extremely low diversity in regions that do not. Under strong natural selection, when beneficial mutations occur in these latter regions that do not get scrambled as much, large swaths of neutral or even slightly harmful DNA get fixed along with the good genes, suppressing genetic variation, said Beth Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an author of the study.

The passenger pigeon illustrates that even species with colossal population sizes are not safe from disappearing.

Steph Yin

Chimps Tailor Alarms to What Other Chimps Know

Three scientists testing wild chimpanzees in Uganda reported 15 November in the journal Science Advances that chimpanzees can do something that previously had only been known in humans. They change the way they are communicating to take into account what their audience knows.

Catherine Crockford and Roman M Wittig of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Klaus Zuberbuhler of the University of St Andrews in Scotland were studying wild chimpanzees in Uganda, so the subject of their communication was snakes. When a chimp saw a realistic model of a snake, the animal would make more sounds  called hoos  and make a greater effort to show where the snake was if it seemed that other chimps in the area were unaware of the danger. If it seemed other chimps already knew about the snake, it would make fewer calls and stay a shorter time at the danger.

To run the experiment, the researchers put a model snake on a path chimpanzees used. When a chimp came along, before it reached the snake, they would play two different chimp calls  either a rest hoo or several alert hoos. The rest hoo would be made by a chimp that was resting, not aware of any danger. The alert hoos would indicate the chimp who made it had seen something dangerous, like a snake. So the chimp on the trail would know either that its neighbors were clueless or aware of danger.

Shortly after the researchers played the calls, the chimp on the trail would encounter the realistic model of a snake. After hearing alert hoos, chimps that encountered the snake made their own alert hoo. But chimps that thought their fellows were unaware of the road hazard made more alert hoo calls.

James Gorman

The Dream Chaser space plane takes flight and aces its landing

If you miss Nasas space shuttles, you might like the Dream Chaser. The compact space plane carries no crew, but will transport cargo to the International Space Station in the years ahead and conduct other missions in orbit around the Earth. This month, the vehicle completed an important milestone in its development.

A helicopter lifted Dream Chaser more than 2.3 miles off the ground, then dropped it. Over the course of one minute, the craft accelerated to 330 mph, made a couple of turns and glided 10 miles to a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It touched down at a speed of 191 mph, rolling 4,200 feet before coming to a stop.

The vehicle is in perfect shape, no issues, Mark N. Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, maker of the Dream Chaser, said in an interview.

Sirangelo said he thought no more glide tests would be needed. If Nasa agrees, the very next flight of the Dream Chaser might be a return from orbit two or three years from now at the end of a mission taking cargo to and from the space station. It is to land on the same runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that the space shuttles once used.

The Dream Chaser is an autonomous, self-flying spacecraft, and this iteration will not carry any people. Saturdays test demonstrated that the software that guides the vehicle worked as designed.

Kenneth Chang

 New York Times
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The UK now has one of the highest number of recorded acid attacks per person of any country in the world, and the figure is expected to rise further, police have warned.

Senior officers believe the horrific crimes are not always being reported, meaning the unprecedented number of known assaults using corrosive substances may be a fraction of the true total.

More than 400 such attacks were recorded in the six months to April  an average of two a day.

Recommended Acid attack survivors walk the runway in charity fashion show

Two people have so far died as a result of acid attacks, with many more left with life-changing injuries, and pressure has been mounting on authorities to act.

Rachel Kearton, the Assistant Chief Constable of Suffolk Police and National Police Chiefs Council (NOCC) lead on corrosive attacks, said officers were struggling to respond to the spike without dedicated laws.

The UK now has one of the highest rates of recorded acid and corrosive substance attacks per capita in the world and this number appears to be rising, she told a briefing in London.

It appears that in 2017 we will again exceed previous records for the number of attacks [but] I strongly feel that this is an under-reported crime at this time.

Ms Kearton said accident and emergency departments are treating far more people for corrosive injuries than are reporting the attacks to police.

 CCTV captures suspected acid attack in east London

She said that domestic violence victims and people involved in gang crime may be reluctant to come forward and called on anyone affected to contact police.

The Home Office is currently drawing up draft legislation targeting acid attacks, which could bring in punishments for anyone carrying corrosive substances without justification and restrict purchases.

But the current law means that police officers need adequate suspicion to stop potential attackers or proof of malicious intent, and are unable to test seized substances in the street.

There are increasing levels of concern among officers because there does appear to be an escalation in these incidents, Ms Kearton said.

I am keen on legislation to be developed to place the onus on the individual to justify why they are carrying that substance.

We have to bear in mind that these are legitimate substances that often have household uses, that are probably owned by all of us.

Ms Kearton said between 15 to 20 different substances are so far known to have been used in attacks but that there are likely to be more.

Youve got bleach, chemical irritants  anything you might find in a kitchen cupboard, she warned. Its very difficult to control all substances.

Offenders are concealing the weapons by carrying them in squeezy soft drinks bottles, making them almost impossible to identify without chemical analysis.

The Metropolitan Police ran a pilot over the summer seeing officers using litmus paper to test liquids in east London, but the NPCC said the trial had been unsuccessful as although they were shown to be acid or alkaline, they were not proven to be harmful.

The results of the pilot are under review and Scotland Yard said it was looking to develop new technology.

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Police have stressed that acid attacks are not a new phenomenon in the UK, with the first report dating back to 1736, but the past year has seen offences increase and divert from domestic violence into robbery and hate crime.

Ms Kearton said the dominant trend now sees men attacking other men, but that offenders appear to be getting younger as links are drawn with existing gangs and initiations for younger members.

A secondary effect appears to be the isolated use of fake acid attacks in hate crimes or robbery, where an innocuous liquid is thrown on a victim with the aim of panicking them into letting go of possessions.

Many high-profile attacks have happened in London and other cities  where moped riders have been a frequent target - but Ms Kearton said the use of corrosive substances was spreading to rural areas.

As recently as Wednesday night, an officer in her home force of Suffolk was called to an incident where an officer described the skin on that victim as bubbling, she added, warning: This is happening across the UK.

Statistics showing the scale and distribution of corrosive attacks are difficult to obtain because recording is spread through other crimes, including grievous bodily harm, robbery and hate crime.

But police are currently carrying out a survey across England and Wales, with the results due in February, and the Home Office has commissioned separate research seeing convicted attackers interviewed to learn more about their motivations.

The first aim is for us not to have any survivors at all, and to prevent this activity taking place, Ms Kearton said.

Police are mounting projects with youth and community groups to combat the use of corrosive substances, while agreements are already in place with some retailers to stop the sale of the most harmful liquids or impose age restrictions and identification checks.

The emergency services have developed a joint protocol to ensure they can provide the same first aid to victims and preserve evidence at the scene, while every police officer in the country is being given specific training over the coming 12 months.

A Home Office spokesperson said: We are consulting on banning the sale of the most harmful corrosive substances to under 18s and introducing minimum custodial sentences to those who are repeatedly caught carrying corrosive substances without good reason, which mirrors the laws on carrying knives.

"This sends the clear message that the cowards who use these as weapons will not escape the full force of the law."
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A convicted sex offender has been found strangled and partly dismembered alongside his murdered daughter in his home.

Noel Brown, 69, and Marie Brown, 41, were found dead in the early hours of Monday morning after police responded to concerns over welfare.

Investigators believe Mr Brown was attacked first, with a strong possibility his daughter was killed after disturbing his killers as they attempted to dismember the body.

Detective Superintendent Paul Monk said there was no known motive for the gory killings, and Mr Browns conviction in 1999 for a sex offence, for which he served four years in prison, was not screaming out as a possibility.

He said that nothing in Mr Browns life in the 18 years since the conviction suggested it was the reason for the murder, adding: The offence was a sex offence; he was convicted and served time and was released in 2004 but Im not prepared to give any more details.

He had not committed any other recorded offences after leaving prison, and police contact had been limited to convictions linked to the sex offenders register.

Officers found no signs of a break-in, indications of a struggle or evidence that Mr Brown and Ms Brown had been restrained.

Mr Monk said there was not yet any evidence to suggest the motive was burglary or robbery, or linked to gambling winnings, and that the killer or killers may have known Mr Brown.

New Butt Lane, Deptford, where the bodies were found (Google Streetview)

At this early stage we are keeping an open mind regarding the motive, he added. One of our key lines of inquiry is to establish if the suspect or suspects were known to Noel and if Marie disturbed them.

One of the key strands of our investigation is understanding all we can about Noels life. He was well known and liked locally.

A neighbour saw him alive and well at his home in Deptford at around 8pm on 30 November, and his daughter visited the flat to check up on Mr Brown at around midday two days later.

She did not return home in Southwark and a relative contacted police shortly after midnight on Monday, with officers forcing their way into Mr Browns flat at 2.45am and finding their bodies.

Mr Monk said Mr Brown, a regular gambler who placed very small bets every day at a shop in Deptford High Street, did not visit the bookmakers on Friday, making it possible he was killed before his daughters arrival.

I dont know whether he was dismembered at that point or whether he was dismembered after Marie was killed, he added. Theres some attempt to cover up the crime; its a strong possibility that Marie had disturbed them.

Attempts have been made to dismember his body. Its possible Marie has made attempts to disturb that and its possible shes been killed. There was no attempt to dismember Marie at all.

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Police are appealing for information on Mr Browns life and associates, while urging two men seen on CCTV visiting Mr Browns flat in the days before he was found dead to come forward.

I am keen to hear from anyone who saw Noel in the days leading up to his death, or saw anyone or anything unusual in or around New Butt Lane during that time, Mr Monk said.

This is a deeply distressing time for Noel and Maries family as they come to terms with their loss.

Post-mortem examinations confirmed that both victims died as a result of strangulation and specialist officers are supporting their family.

Anyone with any information is asked to call police on 020 8721 4205, via 101, by tweeting @MetCC, or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Additional reporting by PA
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The number of white people arrested on suspicion of terrorism has risen dramatically as the total hits a new annual high, statistics show.

The Home Office said 400 suspects were detained and more than 850 searched under the Terrorism Act in the year to 30 September.

Police arrested 12 people in connection with the Westminster attack, 23 in connection with the Manchester Arena bombing, 21 related to the London Bridge attack, one following Finsbury Park and seven linked to the Parsons Green bombing.

The perpetrators of the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge attacks died while carrying out the atrocities and none of those arrested have been charged.

The brother of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi could be prosecuted if he is returned to the UK from Libya but his extradition has been repeatedly delayed.

Around 15 per cent of those detained were women and girls  the highest proportion on record  and the number of arrests across all age and ethnic groups increased.

The largest rise was seen for suspects of white ethnic appearance, the Home Office said, with the number of arrests rising by 77 per cent since the previous year to 143, making up 36 per cent of the total.

 MI5 chief warns that Britain is facing an unrelenting terrorist threat

The spike may partly be accounted for by crackdowns on the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action, which has several alleged members due in court.

Among them are British soldiers accused of joining the organisation  which was banned last December  and a man who allegedly plotted to murder a Labour MP with a machete.

The biggest ethnic group among terror suspects was Asian, standing at 44 per cent (174 people) in the same period.

Of those arrested in the year, 69 per cent considered themselves to be of British or dual nationality.

The number of arrests linked to international terrorism, involving foreign groups such as Isis, jumped from from 212 to 292.

Arrests for domestic terrorism, with no connection to international groups or Northern Ireland, was up to 73 from 20 the previous year.

Under a third were prosecuted for committing a crime and more than a half were released without charge, with others freed on bail or facing alternative action.

A total of 78 terrorism trials saw just nine people acquitted and almost 90 per cent convicted.

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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

There were 213 terrorists in custody  a quarter up on the previous year  with the vast majority holding Islamist extremist views, followed by the far-right and others.

Security minister Ben Wallace said Britain was facing a shift, rather than a short-term spike in the threat.

These statistics we are publishing today demonstrate the breadth of work that they undertake, alongside the rest of the criminal justice system, day in and day out to keep us safe, he added.

Recommended UK security services preparing to launch new crackdown on terrorism

But this is not the totality of our work. The whole of society must come together to challenge the terrorist threat.

The public must remain alert but not alarmed and report any suspicions they have about unusual activity or behaviour to the appropriate authorities.

The Government is reviewing its counter-terror strategy in light of recent attacks, amid warnings that the threat from Isis is continuing to rise as it loses territory in Syria and Iraq.

A report by David Anderson QC, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, found MI5 had missed opportunities that could have prevented the Manchester attack.

He said two pieces of evidence that should have sparked an investigation were dismissed as non-terror-related in the months before the bombing.

At the same time Khuram Butt, the ringleader of the London Bridge attack, was being monitored for suspected attack-planning but spies failed to detect his plot.

Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary, said Labour was deeply concerned about falling police-officer numbers amid the continued threat.

A review found MI5 missed opportunities to prevent the Manchester attack (Getty)

As the recent Anderson report showed, counter-terrorism police and security services want to move towards greater reliance on community policing but that has been undermined by 20,000 police officers being cut under the Tories, she added.

There has been a record number of terrorism-related arrests but no comparable increase in the number of charges for terrorism offences which suggests problems about the quality of intelligence and a lack of police resources.

The figures were released after the head of MI5 revealed that nine terror plots have been foiled since the Westminster attack in March.

In the latest case, a man appeared in court this week accused of planning to bomb Downing Street and assassinate Theresa May.

Security services currently have 3,000 people under active investigation who are perceived to be an imminent threat, as well as a wider pool of 20,000 who have previously appeared on their radar.

The Government has been attempting to bolster its controversial Prevent strategy, which saw thousands of children among the 7,631 people referred to in a year.

It has also been increasing efforts to combat the presence of online propaganda and communications between militants using encrypted messaging-apps.

As well as domestic extremists, security services are attempting to manage the threat posed by returning foreign fighters.

The arrival of up to 300 British jihadis from Isis former territories in Syria and Iraq was initially feared, but the actual number is now expected to be significantly lower.

Of around 850 people who left the UK for Isis, around half have already returned and an unknown number have been killed.
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An Afghan interpreter who was due to be deported imminently has had his removal from the UK halted after the High Court ordered he be released from detention.

Hafizzulah Husseinkhel had been scheduled to be removed within days after the Home Office handed him removal papers and sent him to a detention centre last week.

But the 26-year-old will now be released today after the Home Office failed to contest a bail application lodged by his barrister.

It comes after his plight was revealed by The Independent, prompting an outcry from members of the military who served alongside him and campaign to let him remain in the UK.

Mr Husseinkhel served on the front line for the British Army between 2010 and 2012, when he worked as an interpreter between British and Afghan officers. He spent several years working for Nato forces prior to that.

He fled Afghanistan in 2014 after receiving death threats from the Taliban, and arrived in the UK a year later. His father was shot in the leg when he refused to reveal his whereabouts.

Paul Turner, Mr Husseinkhels barrister, was mid-way through making his submission in court when Becket Beford, representing the Home Office, intervened, saying: We are willing to release the claimant once we can confirm the address where he will reside.

It was subsequently confirmed that arrangements had already been made for him to live with Steve Cooke, a friend of his from Derby, who was also present in court. Justice Peter Lane then closed the proceedings.

Mr Turner will now put forward a fresh claim to grant Mr Husseinkhel the right to remain in the UK, arguing that the Home Office is currently not transparent about the status of Afghan interpreters who have worked for UK forces.

Since Mr Husseinkhels case became public, between 15 and 20 former soldiers who worked in Helmand Province have come forward to urge that his removal from the country would be wrong. They argue that they had been under the impression while serving in Afghanistan that all interpreters would be supported by the UK Government.

Recommended Afghan man who worked for British Army faces deportation in days

Two of them, who were present in court to give evidence to support the 26-year-olds bail application, told The Independent Mr Husseinkhel was owed a huge amount by the UK Government. They added that there was now mounting pressure from the military community to ensure interpreters are offered the same support as soldiers after working in war zones.

Former troop leader Toby Mossop, who worked with Mr Husseinkhel for six months, said: We owe Hafis a huge amount. He put his life on the line in the same manner British soldiers put their life on the line. We owe him as much as we owe any soldier.

He was very loyal to us. We had a lot of interpreters working with Nato forces but Hafis was really almost a cut above the rest. He was first choice for squadron operations.

Peter Gordon Finlayson (left) and Toby Mossop, who both served the British Army in Afghanistan working alongside Mr Husseinkhel, were in court to give evidence to support his bail application (May Bulman)

Peter Gordon Finlayson, who also knew Mr Husseinkhel while working as a captain on the front line in Helmand, said: All of our interpreters were an integral part of our team. They came out on the ground on patrol with us. They shared the same dangers that we did. They were instrumental in helping us form a clearer understanding of the battle picture.

We are very lucky in that we came home and under the military covenant were able to enjoy support for any psychological difficulties we might have had. Poor Hafis spent much longer going through the same things we did, but hes not had any of that support that was awarded to us.

Theres a lot of people behind this now. Every officer out there had an interpreter, so were talking about a lot of people taking an interest in the issue. Then youve got reservists and soldiers families. Potentially hundreds and thousands of people will be getting behind this.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 17 November 2022 Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, for the House of Commons to deliver his autumn statement PA 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 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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 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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 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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Speaking to The Independent after the ruling, Mr Turner said: The Home Office conceded. They caved in halfway through submissions because they knew they were going to lose, and knowing that decided that theyd give in.

The next step is to amend the claim to challenge arbitrary nature in the manner of which the Home Office grants Afghan interpreters status, then make application for disclosure directly to the Government in respect of any and all policies relating to Afghan interpreters.

Since his case has acquired publicity, about 15 to 20 army officers have come forward and said that they were essentially telling people that they could have status and would be looked after. Theres a hidden government policy here, and this is what we need to find out. This is a wider issue.

A petition launched by campaigners demanding Mr Huseeinkhel be allowed to remain in the UK has so far garnered nearly 11,000 signatures, out of a target of 15,000.
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Britons who have fought for Isis should never be allowed to come back to this country, the Defence Secretary has said.

Gavin Williamson said those who were intent on bringing "destruction, death and bloodshed" onto the streets of Britain were being "hunted down" and that threat "eliminated".

He told the Daily Mail: "A dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain."

In October, the terror laws watchdog said authorities should look to "reintegrate" the "young" and "naive" jihadis who travel to warzones, rather than prosecute them, on their return to the country.

Max Hill QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, spoke of "losing a generation" of men and women by automatically using the courts to punish them.

But Mr Williamson said the armed forces were working "right across the globe" to ensure jihadis are never able to come back to the country in the first place.

He said: "I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country."

Mr Williamson told the paper the role of jihadis in foreign fields should not be underestimated, with "much of what is done to activate" threats to Britain done in places such as Libya, Iraq and Syria.

He added: "Our job in terms of eliminating will not stop this year, will not stop next year, it is something we have got to continue to pursue."

Hundreds of British citizens are known to have travelled to Syria to fight with Islamist groups during the course of the six-year conflict.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is due to deliver a speech on Thursday in which he will praise British efforts around the world to tackle terrorism.

He will say: "Every day around the world I can tell you that British serving men and women are putting their lives at risk to roll up terrorist networks, to expose what they are doing, to thwart them and bring them to justice.

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

"They are making good on what the Prime Minister has rightly called the unconditional commitment of the British people to the security of our European friends, not just in this continent but beyond."

On Tuesday, the director general of MI5 told the Cabinet that a total of nine Islamist terrorist plots have been thwarted in the UK over the past year.

PA
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The Government is facing a legal challenge in the High Court over its decision to collect data on school pupils nationality and country of birth.

Since last September, guardians and carers in England have been asked to state whether their children are foreign nationals as part of the school census.

It emerged shortly after the policy was introduced that the Department of Education (DfE) had agreed to share the personal details of up to 1,500 schoolchildren a month with the Home Office, as part of the Prime Minister's hostile environment agenda towards migrants.

Campaign group Against Borders for Children (ABC), which is bringing forward the case represented by human rights group Liberty, argues that the new policy should be overturned because it is a violation of the rights of children and their families to a private life.

The group says it is unlawful that parents were not told the data would be shared with the Home Office, and argues that the collection of the data serves no identifiable educational purpose.

The policy sparked a widespread backlash when it was introduced last year, with cross-party MPs labelling the system racist after schools were found to be demanding parents hand over passports as proof of their childrens nationality.

It has been condemned by the House of Lords and by numerous organisations, including the National Education Union, Privacy International, the Refugee Council and Liberty.

Following pressure, ministers dropped plans to introduce ethnicity and nationality data collection for nursery school-age children last year, but the census continues to take place in primary and secondary schools.

The Independent revealed last year that schools were being told to guess the ethnicity of pupils and collect their passport numbers and expiry dates as part of the controversial new policy.

The legal challenge, which will begin with the issuing of proceedings at the High Court in London on Thursday, has been supported by a crowdfunding campaign launched last month on CrowdJustice, which has so far raised more than 4,000.

Ahead of the court hearing, Wasi Danju, a spokesperson for ABC, said: For more than a year we have pointed out that this policy has nothing to do with education and everything to do with creating a hostile environment for migrants and their children.

We tried to persuade the Government to do the right thing, but they have refused to listen to concerns from parents, teachers and young people. We do not believe there is an acceptable basis for it in law, and the courts will now have to rule on that issue.

There is a strong desire out there to do everything we can to protect the safety and privacy of children in English schools, and unfortunately that now means legal action is required. We are optimistic about the prospects for success in this case."

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

Lara ten Caten, lawyer for Liberty, said the organisation was proud to be representing ABC in their challenge to the toxic policy, adding: Schools should be safe places for every child  but the school census has turned sanctuaries of learning and development into places of fear.

"The Government cannot even explain why it needs to know childrens nationality and country of birth in order to educate them. Teachers have been transformed into immigration officers, but have told us they would not ask these pointless questions if the Government did not force them to.

"Everyone has a right to an education regardless of their family history and this case is vital to dismantling the Home Offices hostile environment."
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Storm Caroline is pummeling parts of the UK, with gales of up to 90mph and forecasters warning of a danger to life - and snow expected across huge swathes of the country.

The Met Office has issued an amber be prepared alert for the north of Scotland and warned that strong winds could lead to flying debris.

A yellow alert has also been issued for parts of central and southern Scotland and the north of Northern Ireland, where gusts of up to 70mph are expected.

The warnings, which are in place from 8am on Thursday morning until midnight, cover most of the Western Isles, the Northern Isles and most of mainland Scotland.

Steve Ramsdale, the Met Offices chief meteorologist, said: The strongest winds will reach the northwest of Scotland early on Thursday, extending to northeast Scotland and the Northern Isles in the afternoon.

During Thursday winds will start to ease in the west with the strongest of the winds becoming confined to the Northern Isles in the evening.

With strong winds already picking up in the early hours of Thursday morning, train services in the north and west of Scotland have been cancelled.

Traffic Scotland has warned of potential disruption to drivers.

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

The Met Office has said damage to buildings is possible as well as short-term power loss and disruption to road, rail, air and ferry services. People in coastal areas should also be aware of large waves and spray.

As Storm Caroline moves away from the UK much colder air is expected to spread across the country down into England.

A yellow warning for snow has also been issued by the Met Office, with 2-5cm widely expected across much of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and northern England.

The storm has already triggered an evacuation of workers from a North Sea oil rig.

Almost half of the 159 people working on CNR Internationals Ninian South platform, about 240 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, were brought ashore.
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Sheffield City Council has suspended Uber's licence to operate in the city from 18 December after the company failed to respond to requests for information about its management.

Uber's existing licence is in the name of an employee who is leaving the company.

The ride-hailing app has already submitted a new application to be able to run minicabs in Sheffield, but the company faces not being able to operate in the city over the Christmas period if it is not processed in time.

A Sheffield City spokesperson said: Ubers licence was suspended last Friday after the current licence holder failed to respond to requests, made by our licensing team, about the management of Uber.

It is legally allowed to operate up to 18th December, and if it chooses to appeal this suspension it can continue to operate until the appeal is heard. If it decides against an appeal the suspension will come into force.

We received a new application, for a licence to operate taxis in Sheffield, from Uber Britannia Limited, on 18 October 2017 which we are currently processing."

An Uber spokesperson said the company informed the council on 5 October it needed to change the name on its licence.

But the council told the app it could not swap the name on the existing document "as most other councils have done", the spokesperson said.

Instead, Uber was told it needed a new licence, which it applied for on 16 October, the spokesperson said.

"While we are in regular contact with the council, we did not receive the correspondence the council refers to as they send the letters to an incorrect address," the spokesperson added.

"We hope this administrative error can be quickly resolved so we can continue serving tens of thousands of riders and drivers in Sheffield.

"If the new application can't be resolved by 18 December we will of course submit an appeal so we can continue to serve people in Sheffield."

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA

Uber is still fighting a ban in London after it lost its licence there in September.

Transport for London (TfL) criticised the firm's record on reporting criminal offences and carrying out driver background checks.

TfL decided not to renew Uber's London licence after it deemed the firm "unfit" to run a minicab service.
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Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised for claiming that linking Britains foreign interventions to rising Islamist extremism plays into the jihadi narrative.

In a speech entitled The struggle against Islamist terror: How global Britain is helping to win, the Foreign Secretary will point at countries that have been affected by attacks but not gone to war in the Middle East.

To assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples  Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh  with no such history in the region, he will tell diplomats and academics gathered at the Foreign Office in London later today.

Critics pointed out that Mr Johnson himself previously claimed the Iraq war was driving extremism  a position frequently taken by Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Johnson will argue that repressive states breed terrorism, rather than Western foreign policy, as the world faces jihadism with the addictive power of crack cocaine.

The speech aims to reassure European allies and global partners that the UK stands shoulder to shoulder with them in the fight against Islamist terror, amid ongoing uncertainty surrounding security cooperation after Brexit.

It came as senior security officials warned that the threat of further terror attacks in Britain is continuing to increase as Isis loses territory in Syria and Iraq, with nine plots foiled so far this year.

Chris Nineham, vice chair of the Stop the War Coalition, said Mr Johnsons speech ignores all the available facts and cited the former head of MI5s assertion that the invasion of Iraq substantially increased the terror threat in Britain.

 Michael Fallon mistakenly condemns Boris Johnson statement on terror

Mr Nineham blamed British interventions for causing untold destruction and generating a series of failed states. Each of the countries Britain has attacked is still at war, he told The Independent. While the Foreign Secretary has clearly failed to learn anything from the last 16 years of carnage, the majority of ordinary people in Britain want to see an end to our foreign wars.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, a former director-general of MI5, told a public inquiry in 2010: Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.

Critics have pointed out that Mr Johnson himself drew a link between foreign intervention in extremism in a Spectator article after the 7/7 attacks in London.

The Iraq war did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists, though the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country, and given them a new pretext, he wrote at the time.

The Iraq war did not introduce the poison into our bloodstream but, yes, the war did help to potentiate that poison.

And whatever the defenders of the war may say, it has not solved the problem of Islamic terror, or even come close to providing the beginnings of a solution.

You cant claim to be draining the swamp in the Middle East when the mosquitoes are breeding quite happily in Yorkshire.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

Analysts, campaigners and politicians have all drawn a link between British interventions  including Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya  and the strengthening of jihadi groups.

The UK has been accused of allowing violence and extremism to flourish by destabilising nations  with Isis itself formed during the Iraq war and spreading in subsequent conflicts  as well as fuelling hostile ideologies that exploit civilian casualties.

Terrorist groups frequently use images of alleged massacres by the US-led coalition in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in propaganda aiming to incite anger and support their narrative of defensive jihad.

Isis has frequently called for retaliation against the West and claims for several terror attacks  including those in the UK - have claimed they were a response to calls to target citizens of Coalition countries.

But the group has also claimed that stopping foreign intervention would not prevent its atrocities, with a propaganda article from 2016 claiming it was only a secondary motive.

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you, Isis said in its official English magazine.

A former Isis fighter interviewed by The Independent is among those claiming that the perceived need to protect the Sunni Muslims was one of the factors drawing him to the group.

Harry Sarfo, who has been jailed, claimed the US-led bombing campaign would aid Isis recruitment, adding: For every bomb, there will be someone to bring terror to the West.

The debate over potential links between British foreign policy and terrorism reignited after the Manchester attack (AFP/Getty)

The debate re-ignited in the wake of the Manchester attack in May, when Mr Corbyn said the War on Terror was simply not working.

The Labour leader said the responsibility of government is to minimise the chance of attacks by giving police the resources they need and to ensure foreign policy reduces rather than increases the threat to this country.

An exclusive ORB survey for The Independent found 75 per cent of British people believe interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have made atrocities on UK soil more likely.

Recommended Terror attacks likely to rise in the UK despite Isis defeat in Raqqa

But Mr Johnson will insist that British foreign policy is not part of the problem but part of the solution to terrorism.

Above all we will win when we understand that we means not just us in the West but the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who share the same hopes and dreams, who have the same anxieties and goals for their families, who are equally engaged with the world and all its excitements and possibilities, who are equally determined to beat this plague, he will say.

The Foreign Secretary is to stress the need for more engagement with Muslim-majority countries, to foster a stronger sense of national identity over sectarianism, womens empowerment and reform.

He will praise British forces active in current conflict zones for putting their lives at risk to roll up terrorist networks and help bring them to justice, adding: They are making good on what the Prime Minister has rightly called the Unconditional Commitment of the British people to the security of our European friends  not just in this continent but beyond.
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Boris Johnson is expected to visit Iran this weekend in an attempt to convince the Iranian government to release Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The British-Iranian mother has been imprisoned in the countrys capital, Tehran, for almost two years after being arrested during a family holiday.

Mr Johnson provoked outcry last month after telling a parliamentary select committee that the Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran  a claim that could lead to her jail term being doubled to 10 years. In reality, she was visiting family in the country.

The visit would mark Mr Johnsons first to Iran since taking over as Foreign Secretary last year. He is likely to meet with senior government officials, including the countrys foreign minister, Javad Zarif, and will attempt to secure the British womans release.

However, a swift resolution to the saga is unlikely, because Iran has refused to recognise Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes British citizenship and is treating her as an Iranian.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has warned that she is suffering from depression, insomnia and panic attacks. She is also said to have been "periodically suicidal".

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

Commenting on news of Mr Johnsons trip, Amnesty International UKs director, Kate Allen, said: Were cautiously hopeful that this could be the light at the end of the tunnel for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

As weve been saying over and over, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a charity worker whos been jailed for five years after enduring solitary confinement and a deeply unfair trial.

The Iranian authorities have a record of toying with the fate of prisoners being held for political reasons, so its still very hard to feel confident that her release is imminent.

We fervently hope the Foreign Secretarys visit can secure her speedy release, but if it doesnt well go on campaigning. This is a gross injustice and it must be set right.
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Britain must agree to stay under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights if it wants a trade deal with the EU, Brussels will insist  in a move likely to trigger another row with right-wingers in the Conservative party.

A leaked draft European Parliament motion obtained by The Independent and due to be published in the coming weeks spells out a series of new demands from the bodys Brexit leadership for the next phase of talks  and threatens that it will use its veto if they are not met.

Stipulations include that the UK continues to guarantee fundamental human rights as laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights as well as other demands to automatically implement new EU laws created after 2019, and a ban on opt-outs from Brexit for Britains car-making and financial services industries.

Recommended No Brexit deal in Brussels after DUP torpedoes Irish border agreement

The motion says that the Parliament will accept a framework for the future EU-UK relationship as part of the withdrawal agreement only if it is in strict concordance with the list.

Another section of the leaked motion gives an insight into negotiations so far, revealing that the UK has guaranteed the rights of the families of EU citizens living in the UK, including as-yet unborn children, and accepted European Court of Justice jurisdiction over their rights. It also shows that the EU has accepted that British citizens living in the EU at the point of Brexit will be able to move freely between other countries  a point especially important to frontier workers.

Theresa Mays position on the European Court of Human Rights is unclear; last year she said the UK should leave the court regardless of the referendum result, arguing that it can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals.

The Conservative 2017 manifesto however said the UK would not leave the ECHR while the process of Brexit is under way although it did not rule out leaving it after the process is complete.

Following that manifesto commitment and a further terror attack, however, the Prime Minister said in a speech ahead of election day 2017 that if human rights laws get in the way of her security policies she would change them  calling into question the earlier pledge.

Whatever the Government decides, however, increasingly influential elements of the Conservative Party are set on leaving the convention. Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the bookies favourites for the next Tory leader, has said ECHR rulings have no support from the democracy of the United Kingdom and that allowing foreign judges to rule on our laws lacks legitimacy. Former Justice minister Lord Faulks in April urged Ms May to use the opportunity of Brexit to quit the convention.

Though the Parliament is not directly conducting Brexit negotiations, it holds a veto on any final deal, and its Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt has been working closely with the European Commissions chief negotiator Michel Barnier.

Theresa May is having difficulty bringing the DUP's Arlene Foster on side with her vision of Brexit (PA)

The motion, which is almost certain to be passed by a large majority, was due to be unveiled and voted on during a European Parliament session in Strasbourg next week. The Independent however understands that voting on it could be postponed because of the difficulties the Prime Minister is facing over the issue of the Northern Ireland border.

Theresa May has said she will return to Brussels this week for more talks after further consultation with the DUP, who blocked a deal when she travelled to the EU capital on Monday for a working lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker. No date or time for her arrival has yet been set, however.

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

The European Court of Human Rights, whose seat is in Strasbourg, enforces the convention upon its signatories.

The UKs domestic law also extends the conventions reach with the Human Rights Act, which allows British courts to deal with cases before they go to Strasbourg and also makes a wider range of public authorities liable to it.
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Theresa May is edging towards securing a new withdrawal settlement with the EU amid intense negotiations with both Brussels and her Northern Irish political partners.

While a deal on the first withdrawal phase of Brexit negotiations was not confirmed on Thursday night, The Independent understands the UK is on the brink of securing broad approval for a final text.

In a sign of progress, officials scheduled European Council President Donald Tusk to make a statement on Friday morning, while Brussels confirmed Ms May had spoken to the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker.

Recommended UK companies are already preparing for a no deal Brexit

Downing Street are unwilling to speak publicly about any progress until a deal is completely locked in, after being burnt by the Northern Irish DUPs public torpedoing of her previous effort to secure a settlement. One UK Government source said: We're not there yet.

But sources close to Mr Tusk indicated he had agreed to a final text, something which prompted him to set up his statement on Friday.

Meanwhile, members of the European Parliament are also due to meet on Friday to discuss the matter.

Mr Junckers spokesman Margaritis Schinas said the Commission President had a telephone conversation with Ms May on Thursday evening and added that an early morning meeting was possible.

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

He tweeted: We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night.

The Independent understands that Ms Mays Europe advisor Olly Robbins has been in constant contact with Sabine Weyand, who works for the EUs chief negotiator Michel Barnier, to agree the final wording of the settlement  specifically around the vexed issue of what will happen to the Irish border.

Ms May had been hoping to make a new offer by Friday on the border to satisfy both Ireland and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her Government.

A mooted agreement between the UK and EU on divorce issues including the Irish border, which would allow talks to progress to the future trade relationship, was blocked on Monday by the DUP.

The party objected to plans for regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic to maintain a soft border between the two, arguing it would amount to the drawing of a new frontier with the UK mainland in the Irish Sea.

But as efforts to cement a withdrawal deal continued on Thursday, a senior Irish official said: It is moving quite quickly at the moment. Negotiations are continuing.

 Hard Brexit would hurt the UK much more than the EU, Dutch PM says

I think we are going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK Government to close this off. I say hours because I think we are very close.

The DUPs chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: Discussions are ongoing.

Pressure is mounting on Ms May to see that leaders of the EU 27 member states declare at a European Council summit on December 14 that sufficient progress has been made on withdrawal issues to pave the way for trade talks to begin.

If she cannot show that progress on trade is being made by Christmas, business chiefs are warning that companies will activate contingency plans that will cost Britain jobs.

Ms Mays own position will also be put under greater pressure, with rebels in her own party having stated that progress in talks is a key test for her continued leadership.
 Close Labour MP Barry Sheerman: 'The food and farming sector is terrified about the impact of leaving the EU'

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Theresa May is facing a race against time to make progress in Brexit talks amid a deadlock over the Irish border.

The Prime Minister is hoping to make a new offer by Friday to satisfy both the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her government and scuppered a deal on divorce issues this week.

Pressure is mounting on Mrs May to get leaders at the 14 December European Council summit to declare sufficient progress has been made to pave the way for trade talks to begin, with business chiefs warning companies will activate contingency plans that will cost Britain jobs if there is further delay.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte have made clear the EU will not compromise and allow the Irish border to be kicked down the road to phase two of the talks, even under threat of Britain crashing out with no deal.

After a phone call with Mrs May on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar said the PM was hoping to return with a new formal written offer "tonight and tomorrow", but warned if there was no agreement talks would be picked up in the New Year.

Mrs May also spoke with DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose rejection of plans for "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic led to the collapse of a proposed deal on Monday.
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The European Union has set in stone a midnight Sunday deadline for Theresa May to reach a Brexit deal on the Northern Ireland border ahead of a make-or-break summit in Brussels.

Margaritis Schinas, the chief spokesperson for the European Commission, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday that Theresa May was welcome back in the EU capital any time this week for discussions  after her last attempt at a deal was vetoed by the DUP.

So far, no white smoke. We stand ready to receive Prime Minister May at any moment in time when theyre ready, Mr Schinas said.

This would have to happen this week. In this building, we work for a full week, 24/7, and our week includes Sunday.

He added: The stories that we read this morning on the alleged prolongation of the deadline into next week are not correct.

I want it to be very clear: if we are going to prepare for the summit properly, there is a certain sequence of events that has to be followed.

European Council president Donald Tusk is set to make a statement on Brexit in Brussels early tomorrow morning, amid stalling progress.

After her failure to make a breakthrough on Monday the Prime Minister said she would return to Belgium this week, but as night fell on Thursday no announcement of any future visit was forthcoming on either side of the channel.

The difficulty appears to be on the British side, with the UK Government struggling to bring the DUP  who the Conservatives rely on for a majority in the House of Commons  onside with a solution for the Irish border. The European Commission said earlier this week that the show is now in London as far as Brexit talks are concerned.

Matters appear to be complicated by the DUP dragging its feet on whether and when it will meet with Ms May face to face.

Asked whether there were active efforts to arrange a meeting with Theresa May, Mr Schinas said the teams were in touch.

But he would not be drawn on whether the Sunday midnight deadline was Brussels or London time, stating only that both are perfectly valid.

Theresa May relies on the DUP for a majority in the House of Commons, giving leader Arlene Foster (right) an effective veto (PA)

Asked about whether the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was still optimistic about talks reaching a deal, as he claimed to be on Monday after talks with Ms May collapsed, Mr Schinas said: President Juncker is a born optimist and I think that being an optimist served him well in his long political career spanning 35 years, but it takes two to tango, it takes two to be optimistic.

If Ms May does not reach sufficient progress on a deal on the three separation issues  EU citizens rights, the Northern Ireland border, and the divorce bill  ahead of next weeks Brussels summit, the next opportunity to progress to a deal will be in March.

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

Such an eventuality will massively throw off the Brexit talks timetable, with the UK set to crash out of the bloc without a deal in March 2019 if not enough progress is made.

To complicate matters, the EU also says it needs six months to ratify any deal, cutting the deadline down even further.
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Theresa May will put forward a fresh offer to solve the Irish border dispute within hours, as the EUs Brexit negotiator said Friday was the deadline to rescue a deal.

Michel Barnier put pressure on the Prime Minister by insisting diplomats of the 27 member states must sign off any potential agreement on Friday, if the talks are to move onto trade at a summit next week.

It set the scene for further frenzied negotiations between London, Brussels, Dublin and Belfast today to set down guarantees that a hard Irish border can be avoided after Brexit.

However, the Democratic Unionist Party signalled that it believed a deal was still some way off  with Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, yet to have face-to-face talks with Ms May.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was facing a growing civil war in her own party over her approach to the negotiations, as pro and anti-EU Tories traded insults.

Around 20 Conservative MPs wrote to the Prime Minister, urging her to stand up to highly irresponsible Brexiteer colleagues who want her to walk away from the negotiating table.

But Bernard Jenkin, a leading Eurosceptic, accused those MPs of being ready to vote down Ms Mays negotiating strategy  and turned his fire on Brussels for obstructing trade talks.

He dismissed concerns about a hard border and painted the Irish government as a Brussels pawn, saying: Dublin is being used as a proxy by the European Union.

Hopes of a deal rose after Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, told Ms May he was willing to look at a new text and potentially shift Dublins position.

A deal fell apart on Monday when the UKs pledge of regulatory alignment across Ireland  to avoid border customs checks and posts - was vetoed by the DUP.

Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar suggested alignment need not apply to everything, but only to areas of north-south trading activity, and promised a positive and open attitude.

I want us to move forward if it's possible next week, he said. It was a very good call. We were willing to look at any proposals the UK have.

However, DUP sources said an agreement was far away, despite David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, saying regulatory alignment would apply across the UK, rather than treat Northern Ireland differently.

In Brussels, Mr Barnier agreed that EU ambassadors must discuss any proposed new agreement at a meeting on Friday evening, if it is to be on the table at the EU Council next Thursday.

The ambassadors want sufficient time to take it back to their capitals for scrutiny  or the summit is likely to rule that sufficient progress has not been made on the divorce issues.

A failure to agree to move onto trade talks would be a devastating blow for the Prime Minister, with business leaders increasingly angry at the damage looming.

It would also increase pressure from Tory Brexiteers for her to walk out of the talks and prepare for a no deal Brexit.

However, one EU source told The Daily Telegraph that Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU Commission President was willing to meet Ms May as late as next week, to rescue a deal.
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A former top prosecutor has called the Defence Secretary juvenile after he said all Britons who have fought for Islamic State should be hunted down and killed.

Gavin Williamson sparked controversy when he said the fighters threatened destruction, death and bloodshed and should never be allowed back in the country.

A dead terrorist can't cause any harm to Britain, he told the Daily Mail  prompting questions about whether the Ministry of Defence had drawn up a kill list.

Recommended Conservatives threaten revolt over defence cuts

But Ken Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, criticised the notion of trying to kill every fighter, saying: That is a juvenile response.

Its not a serious grown up policy response for a senior government minister, he told the BBC Radio 4s World at One programme.

Lord Macdonald, the DPP for five years until 2008, said Mr Williamson appeared to be putting forward a policy that belongs in a Netflix series.

In the interview, Mr Williamson said: I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country.

But the comments clashed with advice from the terror laws watchdog, who said Britain should aim to reintegrate some of the naive jihadis who travel to warzones.

And, just weeks ago, Home Office proposals  called Operation Constraint  to de-radicalise returning IS fighters, by giving them council houses and other support, were leaked.

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, also condemned the comments as appearing to endorse a clear breach of humanitarian law.

It is not difficult to see that any member of the military that followed his advice could be subjected to court martial and prosecution, said Lord Campbell.

And Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's Director, warned it was often unclear if a targeted person in a war zone was carrying out hostile acts.

Deliberately killing fighters whove surrendered or whove been captured or incapacitated is absolutely prohibited. It violates the laws of war as well as international human rights law, and is a war crime, she said.

It is thought that around 270 of the 800-odd UK passport holders who have travelled to Syria and Iraq remain in the region.

Mr Williamson said the impact the of jihadis in foreign fields should not be underestimated, with much of what is done to activate threats to Britain carried out in places such as Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Our job in terms of eliminating will not stop this year, will not stop next year, it is something we have got to continue to pursue, he added.

Max Hill, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, called for reintegration of jihadis where there is insufficient evidence to prosecute them.

Today, he tweeted: "My only comment on the Defence Secretary's views about UK citizens fighting for IS: criminal prosecution inevitable in most cases where UK citizens return, and where evidence of committing serious criminal offences.

Asked whether Theresa May backed Mr Williamson, her official spokesman said people fighting for IS had made themselves a legitimate target.

But he added: There are existing powers in relation to foreign fighters who seek to return to the UK.

"They include expulsion orders that allow the UK to cancel an individual's passport.

In instances where people do return to the UK, we are clear they should face the consequences of their actions, which include investigation by police and possible prosecution.
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The chaos surrounding Northern Irelands border in the Brexit negotiations is the product of incompetence and arrogance from the Government, David Miliband has told The Independent.

Discussing the drama surrounding the current Brexit negotiations, Mr Miliband said rhetoric may get Theresa Mays government through the week but there was a bigger picture about the chaos that Brexit was causing.

The former Foreign Secretary separately urged Theresa May to take Russian interference in UK politics seriously, claiming it was possible that Moscow was significantly involved in the Brexit referendum.

The Irish problem is actually a Brexit problem and especially a hard Brexit problem. Brexit has not been thought through and hard Brexit threatens the integrity of the UK. Words may get the Government through this week but there is a bigger lesson, Mr Miliband told The Independent.

Brexit is a rupture that has untold risk and mis-sold rewards. The problems his week are not just the product of incompetence and arrogance of process, they are integral to the substance of Brexit.

The negotiations with the EU have come to a grinding halt after the trade bloc's leaders demanded Ms May guarantee there will no hard border in Ireland before talks proceed.

Ms May was forced to pull the plug on an agreement with the EU after it was rejected by the Democratic Unionist Party, which currently props her up through a confidence and supply agreement.

Responding to the drama Mr Miliband said the chaos was integral to Brexiteers pushing to leave the single market and the custom union.

This is a canary in the mind for what is to come. Across every issue from chlorinated chicken to atomic energy, we are going to have similar sets of issues, Mr Miliband said.

The former Foreign Secretary quit front line politics in 2013 after losing the Labour leadership election to his brother, Ed Miliband, and has since moved to New York to become the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.

He has since kept a relatively low profile and has opted not to discuss UK politics in much depth, giving muted responses to questions about a potential return to Westminster.

Despite not being overly vocal about UK politics, Mr Miliband did urge the Government not to ignore Russian interference in the recent Brexit referendum.

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. 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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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We should take the allegations that the Russians were significantly involved in the social media side of the referendum very seriously," Mr Miliband said.

In Germany in the last two weeks of the general election 90 per cent of social media tweets were from Russian bots. Its extraordinary and the German authorities did quite a good job of telling people to beware but not quite a good enough job."

Mr Miliband was in the UK to speak at the Cambridge Literary Festival to discuss his book, Rescue: Refugees and the Political Crisis of Our Time.

The Cambridge Literary Spring Festival will run from 12  15 April 2018.
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Donald Trump Jr has refused to provide a congressional committee with details of a July telephone conversation with his father about a meeting last year at which Trump campaign officials had expected to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton.

Testifying in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee, Trump Jr claimed that his conversation with his father, two days after The New York Times disclosed the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was protected under attorney-client privilege because lawyers for both men were on the call.

What, if anything, Donald Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting as a presidential candidate - and his role in drafting a misleading statement about it once he was president and it became public - are key questions for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the election.

Recommended Donald Trump has cause for concern as Robert Mueller follows the money

Donald Trump Jr had agreed to the meeting after receiving an email stating that a Russian government lawyer would provide incriminating facts about Clinton as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr Trump. He has said that no damaging information was delivered.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said after Wednesdays session that Donald Trump Jr acknowledged that he had discussed the Trump Tower meeting by telephone with his father on 10 July 2017. The congressman said that Trumps lawyer, Alan Futerfas, had asked the committee for more time to answer questions about that conversation because both he and a lawyer for the president were privy to it.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

While he refused to recount his conversation with his father, the younger Trump told the committee about his earlier discussions with White House adviser Hope Hicks about how to respond to the coming Times article, first published 8 July. His statement said the Trump Tower meeting was primarily about the ability of Americans to adopt Russian children. It made no mention of any promise of incriminating information from the Russian government against Clinton.

The New York Times
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Donald Trump's administration has said it would oppose public sector unions in a major case currently before the US Supreme Court, reversing the view taken by the Obama administration in an identical dispute.

The Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the unions in a case brought by a non-union government employee in Illinois that targets fees his state and many others compel such workers to pay to unions in lieu of dues to fund collective bargaining and other organised labour activities.

He is arguing that such fees violate the free speech rights of non-union members.

Recommended Trump administration official sent to overhaul State Department quits

The high court heard a similar challenge from California in January 2016 and had appeared headed toward ruling the fees unconstitutional.

But conservative justice Antonin Scalia died a month later and the short-handed court ended up with a 4-4 split in April 2016 that left the law intact but set no nationwide precedent. In that case, the Obama administration filed a brief backing the unions.

Addressing the change of position, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said in the court filing that after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the new case the government reconsidered the question and reached the opposite conclusion.

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 Trump administration has already adopted opposing positions to those taken by the Obama administration in other major cases pending at the Supreme Court, including another labour case on whether employers should be able to require workers to sign contracts that prevent them from making class action claims.

The administration also reversed an Obama administration stance by supporting Ohio in its bid to revive a state policy of purging people from voter-registration lists if they do not regularly cast ballots.

Reuters
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An Indiana police force placed a female captain on paid administrative leave after she told a fellow officer that he benefited from "white male privilege".

A vote on Captain Carri Weber's future with the Plainfield Police Department is scheduled for a commissioner's meeting on Thursday, according to WRTV.

The incident occurred at a 1 November training seminar on how police should interact with transgender people in their communities, led by a US Department of Justice representative and a United States attorney.

During the presentation, an officer who spent 28 years with the department questioned a statistic presented at the conference, that members of the transgender community are 3.32 times more likely to be the victim of police violence than non-transgender people, according to WRTV.

The statistic comes from the 2012 annual report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, which describes itself as an advocacy group for "local LGBTQ communities".

Video of the event, obtained by several local news stations through an open records requests and later published on YouTube, included audio of the exchange.

An unnamed male officer questioned the statistic.

"My wife has never been part of police violence," he said. "Most of the people that I know have never accused the police of violence. So I guess I don't get where that statistic comes from."

"'Cause your white male privilege, so you wouldn't know," said a woman's voice. The woman was identified as Ms Weber by local media outlets.

"I'm sorry?" a man asked.

"Your white male privilege," the woman repeated.

"Chief, you gonna let [unintelligible] get away with that? Seriously? I'm asking a legitimate question here, and I'm getting [unintelligible] white privilege?" the man said, his voice rising.

"Are you serious?" the man then yelled. "I find that extremely offensive."

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

"White privilege" and "male privilege" are terms that have been around for years but were popularized in recent years by a 1988 paper written by Peggy McIntosh, according to the New Yorker. Ms McIntosh, who was then a women's studies scholar with Wellesley College, asserted that both white people and men have certain inherent social advantages in life based on those factors alone.

The phrase "white male privilege" or "white privilege" is now embroiled in identity politics, sometimes employed to suggest that because of their "privilege" white males have more difficulty understanding the grievances of other groups.

The unnamed officer filed a complaint against Weber on 10 November, WRTV reported.

"I was racially and sexistly slurred by Captain Carri Weber while I was asking a question of the instructor in training," the officer wrote in the complaint. "I am now firmly aware of the discriminatory belief she just verbally communicated. There is no place in the Plainfield Police administration or supervision for someone who holds and espouses her discriminatory views."

Ms Weber was placed on administrative leave on 16 November. She was previously suspended in August for violating a department policy by driving her squad car within eight hours of drinking alcohol and for having alcohol in her squad car, according to WISH.

Neither Ms Weber nor the Plainfield Police Department could be reached for comment.

Washington Post
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At least two high school students are dead after a gunman reportedly opened fire on a school in northern New Mexico.

Police officials said that the gunman had been killed Thursday morning after the attack, though it remained unclear how they had been killed. More than a dozen more people were injure during the incident, according to an official, but it wasnt immediately clear how those individuals had sustained their injuries.

After the shooting began, the school was placed on lockdown, and police swept through the buildings, clearing them one by one. Students were later evacuated from the area on school busses.

Recommended Hunter dies after wild boar he was trying to shoot gored him

Other schools nearby were also put on preventative lockdown after word spread of the attack, and the public was warned to stay away from the area if possible.

The school, Aztec High School, is located in the Four Corners region of the state, and closet to the Navajo Nation.

Its tragic when our children are harmed in violent ways, especially on school campuses. We express our condolences to those families who have been harmed, Russel Begaye, the president of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the United States, said in a press release.

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

Specific details of the shooting were not immediately known, and officials did not indicate whether the attack occurred inside or outside the school.

Federal agents and state police are helping to investigate the matter.
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When Albuquerque police officer Ryan Holets responded to a 911 call from a local convenience store, the last thing he expected was to walk away with a new family member.

The police officer was handling a reported theft at the shop when he noticed a couple shooting up heroin in the grass outside. He approached the couple, body camera on, and asked them what they were doing.

It was then that he noticed the woman was pregnant.

"You're going to kill your baby," a stunned Mr Ryan can be heard saying in bodycam footage obtained by CNN. "Why do you have to be doing that stuff? It's going to ruin your baby."

The woman, 35-year-old Crystal Champ, told him that she was eight months pregnant and addicted to heroin. At the time, she told CNN, she was thinking: How dare you judge me, you have no idea how hard this is.

But instead of chastising her further, Mr Ryan did something remarkable: He volunteered to adopt her baby.

Ive gotten tired of seeing so many situations where I want to help but cant, said Mr Ryan, an Albuquerque native. And in that moment, I realised that I had a chance to help.

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 Ryan and his wife, Rebecca, already have four children at home. Nevertheless, the officer said his wife agreed immediately to take in the strangers child. Both Mr and Ms Holets are religious, and said they felt called by God to help the struggling woman.

Mr Ryan went to the hospital three weeks later to see his baby daughter born. The infant was born a month early, and suffered painful withdrawals from a heroin addiction developed in the womb. She had to receive treatments and medication for the symptoms, and stayed in the hospital for a week and a half.

These days, Mr Ryan said, the baby is gaining weight, sleeping well, and eating well. The family has named her Hope.

Hopes biological mother is still struggling with addiction, but told CNN she is happy her baby is in a better place.

Her father and me love her very much, and we did not give her up because we dont want her, Ms Champs said, adding: I just want her to be safe and secure, and be in a family and be loved.

Shortly after his CNN interview, Mr Holets told the Washington Post that he did not want any donations sent to his family as a result. He asked that anyone inspired by Hopes story contribute to a local drug rehabilitation centre or adoption organisation instead.
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While debating a land-use bill at a state government committee meeting on Tuesday night, Pennsylvania state Representative Matt Bradford laid his hand - for just a moment - on the left forearm of the colleague sitting next to him.

That colleague was conservative Representative Daryl Metcalfe, who interrupted Bradford mid-sentence with a personal bit of information.

Look, I'm a heterosexual. I have a wife, I love my wife, I don't like men - as you might. But stop touching me all the time, Metcalfe told Bradford, who then began laughing.

[Pennsylvania state lawmaker says he's a heterosexual and doesn't like men touching his arm]

Several other members of the committee, which Metcalfe chairs, giggled and smirked.

Keep your hands to yourself, said Metcalfe, a Republican from Butler County. If you want to touch somebody, you have people on your side of the aisle who might like it.

I don't.

In the wake of Metcalfe's comments, an openly gay member on the committee and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party have called for Metcalfe's resignation. On Wednesday, Governor Tom Wolf urged Republican House leaders to consider removing Metcalfe as chairman of the committee, which in part oversees civil rights legislation, in light of his "offensive and discriminatory" statements.

Metcalfe is a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage who has said he does not believe in civil-rights protections based on sexual orientation.

Bradford, a Democrat, appeared to be stunned by his colleague's comments on Tuesday.

Okay, chairman, chairman, he told Metcalfe during the meeting, grinning as committee members laughed. One member appeared to conceal her face from the camera with her hand.

We're officially off the rails, Bradford said. My intent was just to beg for your permission for about 30 seconds.

Then beg, don't touch, responded Metcalfe, who is serving his 10th term in office. Bradford continued to laugh.

I don't know where we go from here, really, said Bradford, who is married with four children, according to his online biography.

Neither Bradford nor Metcalfe could be reached for comment.

Wolf said in a statement on Twitter that Metcalfe's comments were part of a disturbing pattern of behavior.

Metcalfe responded Wednesday to the governor's comments and said they were a partisan attack made partly in response to Metcalfe's criticisms of him, according to Philly.com. Wolf and Metcalfe differ on social issues  particularly those involving protections based on sexual orientation.

I think it should be offensive to everyone in this state, and they should really question whether or not this governor has any principles at all that he would stand on the side of a perpetrator, he said.

Metcalfe told Philly.com that he does not think Republican House leaders will remove him his position as committee chairman. As for the Democratic Party's call for his resignation, Metcalfe said that it wasn't the first time the party asked him to step down and that he has no intention of doing so now.

To try and label people as being sexist, homophobic, or racist, or whatever they want to use as their label the fact is the majority of men in our culture will not want a man who they dont know touching them, Metcalfe told Philly.com.

Pennsylvania's first openly gay legislator, Representative Brian Sims, sits on the state government committee and turned to Facebook to express his outrage toward Metcalfe, whom he called the Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus's head bigot.

PA State Representative Daryl Metcalfe disrupted a State Government Committee meeting this morning - about a land use bill! - to loudly declare his heterosexuality! wrote Sims, a Democrat. You can't make this stuff up! The most homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, xenophobic member of our government is using legislative time, and tax payer dollars, to interrupt a meeting to announce his sexual orientation.

Brandon Cwalina, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, in a statement Tuesday said that Metcalfe was a "walking, talking embarrassment to Pennsylvanians and doesnt deserve the honor of serving in public office.

In an interview with TribLive, Bradford said Metcalfe's comments were unpleasant and awkward and appalling.

In this day and age, that's really inappropriate, he said.

When asked by TribLive if he meant to suggest that Bradford is gay, Metcalfe said he did not know.

I don't know what [Bradford's sexuality] is, he said. But I know from him touching me all the time that he indicates he likes to touch men.

When informed of Metcalfe's response, Bradford told TribLive he often tries to calm Metcalfe down during contentious committee meetings and smooth disagreements between Metcalfe and other members.

I speak with my hands, Bradford said. I've tried to calm him down.

Metcalfe has repeatedly spoken out against same-sex marriage. In 2013, he invoked a House rule to stop Sims from speaking about the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage rulings.

For me to allow [Sims] to say things that I believe are open rebellion against God are for me to participate in his open rebellion, Metcalfe told the Associated Press at the time.

Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Show all 8 1 /8 Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP

He also led the charge to impeach then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who he said created a constitutional crisis by refusing to defend the state's same-sex marriage ban, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

When the Supreme Court recognised same-sex marriages across the country in 2015, Metcalfe said the justices displayed judicial tyranny, according to PennLive.

It shows what tyrants they are when they think that they can place themselves above God's law, above natural law, and above the will of the American people as we've seen it expressed in state after state after state, Metcalfe said.

The Washington Post
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The Kremlin-backed Russian Internet Research Agency operated dozens of Twitter accounts masquerading as local American news sources that collectively garnered more than half-a-million followers. More than 100 news outlets also published stories containing those handles in the run-up to the election, and some of them were even tweeted by a top presidential aide. These news imposter accounts, which are part of the 2,752 now-suspended accounts that Twitter Inc. has publicly disclosed to be tied to the IRA, show how the Russian group sought to build local communities of followers to disseminate messages.

Many of the news imposter accounts amassed their following by tweeting headlines from real news sites, while others sought to represent certain communities. They targeted a diverse set of regions across the political spectrum, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Several of the accounts were impersonating local news outlets in swing states, like @TodayPittsburgh, @TodayMiami and @TodayCincinnati.

There were about 40 news imposter accounts out of the 2,752 Twitter accounts that the company identified as being tied to the IRA. Twitter has deactivated all of those accounts and removed any data on the accounts from third-party sources. Information on the details of the accounts was gathered from Meltwater, a data intelligence firm that monitors social media. Details on the contents of the tweets are from Facebook posts that were synced with the users Twitter accounts. Some of the followers of the accounts could be bots, and the same bots or users could have followed multiple imposter accounts.

Twitter did not verify any of the 2,752 accounts, according to a company spokeswoman. Twitter says it's taking steps to stop malicious actors on its platform.

"We take seriously reports that the power of our service was misused by a foreign actor for the purpose of influencing the US presidential election and undermining public faith in the democratic process," the company said in an emailed statement. "Twitter believes that any activity of that kind - regardless of magnitude - is intolerable, and we agree that we must do better to prevent it."

Weslie Viddaurri is one of the people who followed one of these fake news accounts, @TodayNYCity. He had no idea it was linked to the Russian-based troll farm. The account had more than 60,000 followers and claimed to be "New York City's local news on Twitter. Breaking news, sports, events and international news." Many of the account's tweets linked to breaking news stories from legitimate local news sites, like The New York Daily News and The New York Times.

Viddaurri signed up for Twitter three years go. He lives in the small town of Spavinaw, Oklahoma, where he's a machinist at a company that makes airplanes. He used to check Twitter almost every day to read the news, until he decided to quit last month (though he didn't delete his account). Twitter recently revealed that more than 36,000 Russian-linked accounts generated about 1.4 million automated, election-related Tweets. Viddaurri says the recent revelations have turned him away from Twitter.

"I assumed that there was more real people and real stuff on social media than there really is. It's just so fake. It has been disheartening. I wish Twitter had been more vigilant on vetting people that become members," said Viddaurri, who is 50. "I don't trust Twitter news anymore."

Viddaurri followed almost 4,500 Twitter accounts. He followed news sites, public figures and politicians on all sides of the political spectrum. Bloomberg is developing a global breaking news network for the Twitter service.

Lawmakers berated social media companies for taking too long to recognise the seriousness of manipulation. People tied to the Russian government used Facebook, Google and Twitter to spread content crafted to sow social discord in America. By operating fake news accounts targeted toward certain regions, the IRA was able to amass followers in specific populations and push messages to them.

@BlackNewsOutlet, one of the fake accounts, had more than 40,000 followers and had a description of "Freedom is never given; it is won. #BlackLivesMatter." Tweets from this account frequently posted news about social unrest or headlines to incite anger. A retweeted post from @BlackNewsOutlet on 19 October 2016 read: "How many more black lives needed to change the rotten police systems?"

The accounts amassed influential followers. Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, had retweeted several posts from @tpartynews, one of the Kremlin-linked accounts that had more than 20,000 followers. At the end of 2016 Gorka retweeted a post from@tpartynews that read: The era of the pajama boy is over January 20th and the alpha males are back. The post refers to one of Gorkas catchphrases. Pajama Boy refers to a meme that advocated for the legislative agenda of Barack Obama. Trump was inaugurated on 20 January.

There were both left-leaning and right-leaning accounts. One of them,@redlanews, which had almost 10,000 followers, said its author was Red Louisiana News, with a biography that read: Conservative; Right and proud; Christian. Love my country and will stand against liberals and socialists. The account tweeted news from outlets like Breitbart and wrote incendiary posts before the election. One of them read: Hillary Clinton believes in white supremacy. The only racist here it's her Corrupt lying politician #HillarysEmails. Another tweet from the account in early 2016 tagged Trump in the post: "@realDonaldTrump Ted Cruz will destroy our economy and military might with his plans. The only way to fight Islamists is Trump way! The @MissouriNewsUS account, which had almost 6,000 followers, had a description of one hashtag: #NeverHilary. Another handle, @NewYorkDem, said it was for New York, uniting Liberals since 1624!"

From the beginning of 2016 until Election Day, Tweets from those accounts were cited by more than 100 news organisations. One month after the election, the Washington Post included an embedded tweet from @ChicagoDailyNew.

The opinionated news accounts like @redlanews and @tpartynews followed a similar strategy to the @Ten_GOP account linked to the IRA, which posed as a group for Tennessee Republicans. It had over 100,000 followers, was retweeted by some of Trump's aides, and posed as a patriotic American. It overtly lauded Trump while attacking Hillary Clinton. This account was a focus of the House Intelligence Committee during the November hearings on social media companies. Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, asked Twitter to give a complete catalogue of tweets that came from the pro-Trump @Ten_GOP account.

It's hard for researchers to know why the news imposter accounts were created, since the full history of tweets is gone. Researchers have concluded that many of the IRA-linked accounts were created to sow social discord, by trying to "put left-wing people further to the left and right-wing people further to the right," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab. "It's that attempt to amplify the differences in society."

Researchers say another purpose of the accounts was to establish them as trusted news sources, and then activate them later to spread propaganda and disinformation. Troll factories have taken that approach before. During the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, Nimmo observed various online forums and platforms linked to Russian troll factories that would ingratiate themselves in the pro-Ukrainian community by posting favourable information. Then after gaining credibility, those sites would shift their tone to write stories that expressed discontent with Ukraine.

In fact, Nimmo says these news imposter accounts may have been created for an operation that never happened. A US intelligence report concluded that the Russian government was expecting Hillary Clinton to win the election and were prepared to call into question the validity of the results. Pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP on election night in anticipation of her victory, according to the report. These news imposter accounts could have aided those efforts to undermine the election results by promoting certain hashtag and topics like voter fraud or rigged election." By having a network of local news accounts across the country, the Kremlin would be able to distribute propaganda at scale that could galvanise local populations to protest, according to Nimmo. A Russian-linked Facebook group attempted to organise anti-immigrant and anti-Hillary Clinton protests in Texas shortly before the November elections.

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 majority of the imposter news accounts were created more than a year before the 2016 US elections. The history of tweets and engagement with real users improves the placement of the account and its posts in Twitter's search results, according to Kris Shaffer, a data scientist doing research for University of Mary Washington and the Data for Democracy. That means that if the account does push major disinformation campaigns, it is less likely to be blocked.

Shaffer's analysis of the accounts found that several of the imposter news accounts also tweeted during the French presidential election. He surfaced about 41 Tweets from accounts including @WorldNewsPoli,@TodayMiami, @DetroitDailyNew, and @ChicagoDailyNew. Most of the posts were retweets of local news articles, but more than a quarter of them included stories from truthfeed.com, a known disinformation site, according to Shaffer. Those stories were mostly attacking Emmanuel Macron, who won the election, and biased toward Marine Le Pen, a far-right politician in France.

After the revelations of Russian influence, Viddaurri said he no longer knows what to believe online. With Twitter out of his regular routine, he only checks Facebook occasionally to stay in touch with friends and family. Thanks to the whole election of 2016, social media got ruined, Viddaurri said.

Bloomberg
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Calls for Al Franken to leave Congress have dramatically increased, with the leader of Senate Democrats, the majority of his caucus and the head of the Democratic Partys campaign arm urging the embattled senator to step aside.

As another woman came forward to accuse Mr Franken of sexual misconduct, Democrats had seemingly made a calculation that they could not stand by their Minnesota colleague. Seven women in the Senate released statements urging Mr Franken to resign, issuing their pleas at roughly the same time in a sign of a coordinated effort. By the end of the day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did as well.

The list of Democrats joining them grew steadily throughout the day. Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois also prodded Mr Franken to step down, as did Vermont independent Bernie Sanders.

Im shocked and appalled by Senator Frankens behavior, Senator Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement. Its clear to me that this has been a deeply harmful, persistent problem and a clear pattern over a long period of time. Its time for him to step aside.

Adding to the pressure on Mr Franken, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez echoed the calls for his resignation  signaling that the Democratic campaign organisation is trying to avoid being associated with an accused sexual harasser heading into the 2018 election.

Everyone must share the responsibility of building a culture of trust and respect for women in every industry and workplace, and that includes our party, Mr Perez said on Twitter.

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

Multiple outlets reported that Mr Franken plans to make a formal statement on Thursday. His office repudiated a report from Minnesota Public Radio saying Mr Franken had made the decision to step aside, saying in the late afternoon that "no decision has been made".

After the initial allegation against the Senator emerged, with broadcaster Leeann Tweeden saying he kissed and groped her against her consent, Mr Franken swiftly took responsibility and apologised. As more women have come forward alleging unwanted sexual advances, Mr Franken has pledged to cooperate with a Senate ethics investigation.

A spokesman said that he has never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct, and Mr Franken has denied as categorically not true a former congressional aide's claim that Mr Franken tried to kiss her following a taping of his radio show in 2006.

A national backlash against sexual misconduct has spurred a round of accusations against members of Congress and already led to the retirement of John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, a long-serving member who denied allegations of unsolicited advances by multiple women.

Representative Ruben Kihuen, a Nevada Democrat, has resisted calls to resign  including from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee  as he rejects a former campaign staffers claim of sexual misconduct. Texas Republican Blake Farenthold has acknowledged reaching an $84,000 settlement with a former staffer who accused him of sexual harassment but has denied any wrongdoing.
ELKO  Since the Christmas Bird count began over a century ago, it has relied on the dedication and commitment of local volunteers to gather data on winter bird populations. The Christmas Bird Count is a long-standing program of the National Audubon Society. This year marks the 118th for the national count and is the 28th Elko Christmas Bird Count.

It is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across the U.S., Canada and many countries in the Western Hemisphere go out over a 24-hour period on one calendar day to count birds. There is no charge to participate.

This year the Elko Christmas Bird Count will be held on Dec. 16. There is a specific methodology to the CBC, and all participants imust make arrangements to participate in advance with the CBC compiler, Lois Ports, but anyone can participate.

Each count takes place in an established 15-mile diameter circle, and is organized by a count compiler. Count volunteers follow specific routes through the circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. Its not just a species tally  all birds are counted, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day.

The Elko Count Circle includes portions of Elko, Spring Creek and South Fork Reservoir. Those meeting in Elko will meet at 7:30 a.m. at 1050 Sewell Drive. Those wishing to do portions of the circle on the Spring Creek side will be assigned specific routes prior to the count date. Those who are new to participating will be partnered with an experienced birder.

Everyone interested should contact Ports at cell and text 775-753-2569 or email bristleconeaudubon@gmail.com. Once your route has been assigned you will be emailed a detailed map for your area and the official tally sheet that must be used.

If your home is within the boundaries of our CBC circle, then you can report the birds that visit your feeder on count day as long as you have made prior arrangement with Ports. She will give you the specific method required to submit a bird feeder count. You will still need to use the official tally sheet.

Since each CBC is a scientific census, and since the 15-mile diameter circle contains a lot of area to be covered, single-observer counts cannot be allowed.

Most observers are able to complete their sections in 4 to 6 hours. There will be a potluck dinner that evening. During the dinner all the tally sheets are totaled and everyone shares stories of the birds they have encountered that day.

Last year 55 species of birds were counted. There were 11,652 individual birds.

The European starling made up over half of the counted birds (6,543) followed by Canada geese (1,337), house sparrow (1,104), and Eurasian collared doves (554). Since there was a significant amount of open water there were 16 waterfowl species seen. Raptors counted included bald eagle, golden eagle, northern harrier, sharp-shinned hawk, Coopers hawk, red-tailed hawk, rough-legged hawk, American kestrel, and prairie falcon.

Records from all previous Christmas Bird Counts can be found on the National Audubon webpage.

Even if you are not able to participate in this CBC you can help by keeping your bird feeders full for the next two weeks. It helps counters to have active bird feeders which allow the birds to congregate for easy counting.

If you see people out driving and walking your neighborhoods with binoculars on Dec. 16 remember they are just counting the birds.
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Democrat Senator Al Franken has resigned after facing a string of sexual misconduct allegations from a number of women, including claims of groping.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Mr Franken called some of the allegations "simply not true" while others he said he "remembered very differently".

Mr Franken said his earlier apology statement gave people a "false impression that I was admitting to things I had not done".

I know in my heart that nothing I've done as a senator - nothing - has brought dishonour on this institution, Mr Franken said. Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.

He also pointed out the "irony" of his departure as a "man who bragged on tape of his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has preyed on underage girls is running for the Senate with the full support of his party, He was firstly referring to a 2005 videotape, that surfaced last year as President Donald Trump was running for the White House, where Mr Trump was heard bragging about kissing and touching women. Mr Trump apologised for the remarks, but called them private locker-room talk and said he had not done the things he talked about. Mr Trump has also faced claims of sexual misconduct from at least a dozen women. The White House and Mr Trump have denied the allegations. The White House's official position is that the women accusing Mr Trump of sexual assault or harassment are lying.

Mr Franken was also referring to Roy Moore - running for the vacant Alabama Senate seat - has been accused by has been accused by several women of sexual assault or misconduct when they were teenagers and Mr Moore was in his early 30s. Mr Moore, 70, has denied the accusations. He is getting funding from the national Republican party for his campaign.

Mr Franken, former Saturday Night Live cast member said the recent conversation surrounding sexual harassment and misconduct - which started with numerous women coming forward and accusing blockbuster Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein - was "long overdue."

He said he was "hopeful that it would result in real change" but "then the conversation turned to me."

He said he was "shocked" by the accusations of Leeann Tweeden, a Los Angeles radio host, who in November accused him of forcibly kissing her, and then groping during a 2006 USO tour in Afghanistan.

Several women followed with accusations of how Mr Franken allegedly tried to grope or forcibly kiss them. He issued a statement at the time: "Ive learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women  and I know that any number is too many. Some women have found my greetings or embraces for a hug or photo inappropriate, and I respect their feelings about that".

Talking abut the apology on the Senate floor, Mr Franken said: "In responding... I wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation," , adding that "all women deserve to be heard and their opinions taken seriously."

While having acknowledged and apologised for some inappropriate behaviuor,Mr Franken strongly denied the latest accusation that came from a former Democratic congressional aide, who said he tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006. The woman, who was not identified, told Politico that she ducked to avoid his lips but Franken told her: It's my right as an entertainer. Mr Franken said the idea he would claim such conduct as a right was preposterous. However, the allegation was enough for Democratic Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, Claire McCaskill, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown and seven others to publicly call for his resignation. Mr Franken is among a host of public figures accused of sexual misconduct, including fellow Democrat and Representative John Conyers who also resigned this week after several women came forward with stories about his alleged inappropriate behaviour. Mr Conyers has denied any wrongdoing. Mr Franken had earlier called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the allegations, however today he said that he "cant sit through the committee process and be an effective senator for" the people of Minnesota. He thanked the junior Senator from his state Amy Klobuchar, who he credited for his success in Congress, as well his "brilliant" young staff. "There is a big part of me that will always regret leaving this job when there is so much work to be done," he said. The Senator from expressed how proud he is to be from Minnesota and reminisced about his first election, which he won by just 312 votes.

"It wasnt easy and it wasnt always fun," Mr Franken said in an emotional speech about his time on Capitol Hill, but added that "even on the worst day of my political life, its all been worth it."

Mr Franken urged his colleagues to "have political courage" in the face of the Trump administration and quoted former Minnesota senator, the late Paul Wellstone: "'The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard' its still true and it will always be true."

The departure of Mr Franken presents an opening for Republicans to recapture a seat they lost when Mr Franken won election in 2008, and to build on their 52-48 Senate majority.

The election to succeed him, however, will not be held until November 2018. Minnesota's Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, will appoint someone to take Mr Franken's place until then, ensuring Democrats hold the seat for now. Mr Dayton said he expected to announce his decision "in the next couple of days".
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Questions have been raised around why Donald Trump slurred his speech during an address announcing the US would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The change in the President's pronunciation seemed particularly to affect "s" and "th" sounds, and appeared to worsen in the closing stages of the address.

It led viewers to suggest the President may have suffered a medical problem.

The 71-year-old did not appear otherwise impaired and following the speech immediately moved over to a table and signed a declaration.

A White House official told CNN Mr Trump was "perfectly healthy".

They added: "He's been working in meetings all day and in fact is still here working now."

In the footage Mr Trump can be seen adjusting his mouth a number of times.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. 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Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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Speech pathologist Michael de Riesthal told the broadcaster the US leader was "working hard to speak" as though he was "having a denture fall or some other alternative explanation".

While Mr Trump completed the majority of his address without any noticeable divergence from his normal speech patterns, footage appears to show him making the adjustments from about four minutes in.

His deputy press secretary, Raj Shah, told The Los Angeles Times: "His throat was dry. Theres nothing to it."
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Eyeing this month as the last, best chance for a deal to ensure that nearly 700,000 Dreamers be granted reprieve from deportation, thousands of protesters have descended on the US Capitol to demand action on the contentious issue.

Waving signs of all shapes, sizes, and colours, demonstrators from all over the country rallied near the Senate chambers Wednesday to urge Congress to see their humanity. They asked the government to pass a version of the DREAM Act that could preserve the sense of normalcy that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program  which President Donald Trump has tasked Congress with dealing with  granted them.

Daca has opened up so many doors for me, Ricardo Aca, a 28-year-old who was brought to United States illegally when he was 14, told The Independent in a phone interview. Mr Aca said that Daca had allowed him to go to college, where he is now pursuing a degree in public and international affairs.

Recommended Trump demands progress on Mexican border wall before helping Dreamers

Once Daca was implemented, that allowed me to have more goals, and more hopes for my family, he continued. I want to be able to one day  if I can become a citizen  work, maybe become a councilman, maybe become a lawyer.

Mr Aca is just one of the 800,000 undocumented immigrants who have benefited from the program, allowing them to feel much more comfortable in a country they had come to as children, and one they call home.

Mr Trump threw their future into uncertainty in September, when he announced that he would end Daca, which his predecessor implemented in 2012. Mr Trump, in announcing the end of the program, told Congress to find a solution by March 5, at which point estimates indicate 1,000 Dreamers would begin to lose Daca protections daily.

Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Show all 8 1 /8 Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP

Dreamers and activists working on their behalf are hoping that Wednesdays protest, alongside others being held at Congressional offices around the country, will help tip the scales and pressure Congress to pass the Dream Act bill, which is generally supported by Democrats, and has some support from Republicans.

The activists in Washington Wednesday are hoping that Democrats will force Republicans to agree to the bill in exchange for their support on an upcoming spending package, which Republicans need support from Democrats to pass.

The reason Im out here today is that Im tired of playing these political games with my life, and Congress needs to realize that the only way to move forward on this issue is to pass the Dream Act, and pass these protections as soon as possible, Juan Escalante, a 28-year-old Daca beneficiary who has been advocating for immigrants rights for 10 years, told The Independent.

Mr Escalante said that his family brought him to the US when he was 11-years-old, running from violence in their home Venezuela. Since receiving Daca protections, he said, hes been able to achieve something that just 9 per cent of Americans manage: He earned his Masters degree.

In some ways, the first year of the Trump administration seems like an unlikely opportunity for meaningful progress on an immigration bill that has dogged Congress for years, but the Dreamers in Washington Wednesday said that Mr Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric wont deter them.

I think, right now, were just living in the moment and we have to be as loud as we can, Mr Escalante said. They want to suppress us. They want to keep us quiet.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked Donald Trump for recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - while other Middle East leaders have condemned the US Presidents decision, saying it could embolden terrorist organisations.

Thank you President Trump for today's historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful, Mr Netanyahu said.

This move, he added, reflects the President's commitment to an ancient but enduring truth, to fulfilling his promises and to advancing peace.

There is no peace that doesn't include Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Mr Trump's decision, saying the move will aid extremist organisations.

These procedures do also help in the extremist organizations to wage a religious war that would harm the entire region which is going through critical moments and would lead us into wars that will never end which we have warned about and always urged to fight against, he said in a televised address.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the decision disqualified the United States of America to play any role in any peace process, even though Mr Trump called the change in Jerusalems diplomatic status a step towards working for a lasting agreement between Israel and Palestinians.

Jordanian King Abdullah also joined the chorus of disapproval of Mr Trumps move.

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

There is no alternative to a two-state solution, and Jerusalem is key to any peace agreement, said King Abdullah, speaking in Ankara - the capital of Turkey - alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is also opposed to Mr Trumps decision.

According to CNN, the Jordanian King added that any such agreement must allow for an independent Palestinian state and that ignoring Palestinian Muslim and Christian rights in Jerusalem could fuel terrorism.

The news outlet reported that Mr Erdogan said a wrong step taken by the Trump administration on the Jerusalem issue would catalyse a reaction across the Islamic world that could destroy the foundations for peace.

Regarding Mr Trump, Mr Erdogan said, No one person's personal ambitions should be allowed to alter the fates of billions of people. Any such move would only embolden terrorist organizations.

French President Emmanuel Macron called Mr Trumps decision regrettable, saying it goes against international law and all the resolutions of the UN Security Council.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Mr Macron told reporters at a news conference in Algiers.
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Michael Flynn is said to have told a former business associate shortly after Donald Trumps inauguration that the new administration would dissolve sanctions on Russia, clearing the way for a plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East, according to a whistleblower.

The whistleblowers account was described by Rep Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, who said in a letter to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy that the exceptionally troubling claims of grave abuses merited a new round of subpoenas to try and illuminate the allegations.

Mr Flynn, a top campaign surrogate and short-lived national security adviser to Mr Trump, has become a key figure in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Mr Flynn recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Democratic legislators have already probed whether Mr Flynn sought to advance a joint US-Russian plan to bolster nuclear power in the Middle East while he was in the White House. They have sought more information about Mr Flynns 2015 trip to the Middle East which involved the plan.

The journey was underwritten by the firm ACU Strategic Partners, according to a September letter from House Democrats citing a confirmation from ACUs managing director Alex Copson. Now Mr Cummings is presenting what he calls a credible allegation that Mr Flynn was communicating with Mr Copson after Mr Trump became President.

His letter relays a whistleblowers account of meeting Mr Copson at an Inauguration Day event, during which Mr Copson allegedly said he had received a text message from Mr Flynn stating the project was good to go and instructing Mr Copson to contact business colleagues.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

According to the whistleblower, Mr Copson faulted sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration for undercutting the deal and said Mr Flynn had conveyed his intention to ensure the sanctions would be ripped up.

Saying he had coordinated with Mr Muellers office in sharing the account, Mr Cummings asked Mr Gowdy to subpoena Mr Flynn and others said to be involved in the nuclear reactor proposal.

 Trump-Russia investigation: who has been charged in the Mueller probe

I believe our Committee can and should pursue these allegations against General Flynn, Mr Cummings wrote.

An attorney for Mr Flynn did not immediately respond to The Independents request for comment. In a letter responding to Mr Cummings, Mr Gowdy said the allegations should be investigated by different committees or by Mr Mueller's team.
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Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis has said he will not participate in the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum because President Donald Trump will be there.

President Trumps attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum, Mr Lewis, who was scheduled to speak at the event, said in a joint statement with Representative Bennie Thompson.

The Representatives added: After President Trump departs, we encourage all Mississippians and Americans to visit this historic civil rights museum.

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The museum has been in construction since 2014, and is scheduled to open in Jackson, Mississippi on Saturday. The event will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony and speeches from civil rights leaders and elected officials. Mr Trump plans to participate in the opening as part of his tour through the American South, White House officials confirmed on Tuesday.

The announcement drew outcry from several activist groups, including the highly influential NAACP. The nearly 100-year-old civil rights organisation called Mr Trumps visit an affront to the veterans of the civil rights movement in a statement.

Civil rights in the US Show all 6 1 /6 Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US Martin Luther King Jr Rex Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US Motel sign at the National Civil Rights Museum Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US NCRM exhibit Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US MLK's birth home James Duckworth Civil rights in the US Civil rights in the US Martin Luther King Jr's tomb James Duckworth

As a freedom fighter and contemporary of Emmett Till, Trumps visit is an insult, NAACP board member Amos Brown said. He has never been a supporter of civil rights or equal opportunity or justice. Hes been silent on civil rights issues, and his silence speaks volumes.

Other activists said they will protest Mr Trumps attendance at the event  a move White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called very sad.

I think this is something that should bring the country together to celebrate the opening of this museum and highlighting [the] civil rights movement and the progress that weve made, she said. And I would hope that those individuals would join in that celebration instead of protesting it.

 Donald Trump challenges, and cherry-picks, coverage of his Charlottesville statements at rally

Mr Trump has been criticised by civil rights leaders for his defence of Confederate monuments, and for his response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After a 34-year-old counter-protester was killed at the rally, Mr Trump blamed the violence on both sides.

Mr Lewis previously refused to attend Mr Trumps inauguration, claiming he did not see the former businessman as a legitimate President. Mr Trump responded by telling the Representative to focus on his district in Georgia, which he claimed was in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).

Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the US, Mr Trump tweeted in January. I can use all the help I can get!
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The Director of the FBI has contradicted President Donald Trumps claim that his agency is in "tatters", defending the bureau's reputation as quite good.

Director Christopher Wray spoke out at a House Judiciary Committee hearing just days after Mr Trump launched a Twitter tirade against his agency. On Sunday, the President tweeted that the FBIs reputation was at its worst in history after years of leadership by former Director James Comey.

Asked how Mr Trumps tweet would affect the FBI, Mr Wray said his staff members were big boys and girls who were accustomed to taking criticism from all corners. But, he added: "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good."

The FBI that I see is people, decent people, committed to the highest principles of integrity and professionalism and respect, Mr Wray said earlier in the hearing. The FBI that I see is respected and appreciated by our partners in federal, state and local law enforcement, in the intelligence community, by our foreign counterparts, both law enforcement and national security.

Mr Wray also defended Mr Comey, saying that he had considered his predecessor a smart lawyer and dedicated public servant when the two worked together in the early 2000s.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

Days earlier, Mr Wray had sent an email to FBI staff to boost their morale in the wake of the President's tweet. Though he did not mention Mr Trump by name, he told the staff he was inspired by their professionalism and dedication.

Because of the importance of our mission, we are also entrusted with great power, and we should expect  and welcome  people asking tough questions about how we use that power. That goes with this job and always has, he wrote in an email obtained by CBS.

 Trump: 'Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life.'

Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May, and nominated Mr Wray to replace him in June. Even after seeing his own nominee confirmed as FBI Director, however, Mr Trumps criticism of the agency did not stop.

Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems, he tweeted early last month.

That same day, he lamented the fact that he was not supposed to get involved with the FBI and direct them toward investigating Hillary Clinton.

"I am really not involved with the Justice Department. I'd like to let it run itself. But honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats," he said of the agency that is currently investigating his campaign's ties to Russia.

He added: "A lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me."
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US President Donald Trump is said to have not fully understood the consequences of his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that "the decision wasnt driven by the peace process...the decision was driven by his campaign promise.

Mr Trump was more concerned with seeming pro-Israel and making a deal, according to advisers who spoke to the Washington Post.

This has gone on long enough. Other presidents have put it off, put it off. Were not going to put it off, Mr Trump reportedly said at a New York event during which he gave a preview of the decision.

Recommended Hamas calls for new intifada after Trump recognises Jerusalem

During his announcement, Mr Trump said the decision was long overdue and "nothing more or less than recognition of reality.

Mr Trump had repeatedly promised to be more cognisant of Israeli concerns during the 2016 campaign, painting himself as far more pro-Israel than his predecessor President Barack Obama - who had an openly cold relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The President had been advised by Vice President Mike Pence, as well as son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner to go through with the plan.

Mr Kushner is a longtime family friend of Mr Netanyahu, and his parents have contributed to Israeli settlements in territories in dispute with Palestinians.

The President appointed his daughter Ivankas husband as the lead on brokering a Middle East peace deal, despite Mr Kushners total lack of foreign policy experience.

Its insane. Were all resistant...He doesnt realise what all he could trigger by doing this, one source, called a confidant of the president told the newspaper.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defence Secretary James Mattis were among senior officials who advised Mr Trump against breaking decades of US foreign policy.

They and others feared it would be the beginning of chaos and violence in the region as a Hamas spokesman said it "opens the gates of hell".

The decision on Jerusalem will not succeed in changing the fact that Jerusalem is an Arab Muslim land," said the spokesman of the militant group that controls Gaza.

Phone calls to Jordan and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas were notifications rather than discussions after a series of meetings during which the President was reluctant to listen, according to sources that spoke to the newspaper.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Mr Abbas, said that despite the leaders objections and reasoning, Mr Trump just went on saying he had to do it.

The same type of one-sided conversation took place with ally Jordanian King Abdullah II, according to a Washington-based official who was briefed on the call.

The embassy move will likely require at least three to four more years of planning, construction, and budgeting.

Mr Trump clarified in his announcement that the move is "not intended in any way to reflect a departure from" a mutually acceptable peace deal and a two-state solution, should "both sides" agree to it.

The "US remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement," Mr Trump noted during the announcement.

However, allies are still in the dark about Mr Kushners manoeuvring on that peace deal and protests broke out in and around Jerusalem this morning.

Hamas called the decision about the city - home to holy sites for Jews, Muslims, and Christians - "a red line".

The statement was unequivocal: "the resistance will not allow any desecration of it."

The group has also repeatedly called for a Palestinian "day of rage" on 8 December.
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A former senior manager at Volkswagen has been sentenced to seven years in prison in the US over the emissions scandal that has cost the company $30bn (22.5bn).

Oliver Schmidt was sentenced by a Detroit court after it emerged that the car company had installed secret software in nearly 600,000 of its vehicles to enable them to avoid pollution limits.

The vehicles were set up to produce different results during tests than they did during normal road use.

Eight of the companys executives have been charged over the scam but Schmidt is only the second to be sentenced. He made a plea deal that saw him given the seven-year sentence and fined $400,000.

Schmidt, a German national, was sent to the US in 2015 but failed to disclose the existence of the software, which allowed the vehicles to falsely pass emissions tests. He also misled investigators and destroyed documents, the court heard.

During sentencing, US District Judge Sean Cox told him: "I'm sure, based upon common sense, that you viewed this cover-up as an opportunity to shine  to climb the corporate ladder at VW. Your goal was to impress senior management."

Schmidt had been a key conspirator in the scandal, he added.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

After pleading guilty, the former VW executive told the court: "For the disruption of my life, I only have to blame myself... I accept the responsibility for the wrong I committed.

Lawyers for Schmidt, who led Volkswagens engineering and environmental office in Michigan between 2012 and 2015, said he had only become involved in the scam in 2015, when it had already been running for almost a decade. The scheme was first hatched in 2006.

Many of the other Volkswagen employees who have been charged in connection with the case remain in Germany.

The company has already agreed to pay $4.3bn (3.2bn) in penalties as well as spending billions more on buying back the vehicles involved.
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Sadiq Khan pointed out "home is south London" in response to the suggestion that his visit to Pakistan was a "homecoming".

On a visit to South Asia the London Mayor defied Foreign Office advice by making the symbolic crossing from India to Pakistan.

During the tour, the chief minister of Punjab told the Tooting-born London Mayor: "We consider you one of our own. We see it as a homecoming"

Recommended Sadiq Khan calls on Government to apologise for colonial massacre

On Mr Khan's arrival in Pakistan, BBC journalist Karl Mercer referred to the statement, asking: "Does it feel like coming 'home'?"

"Home is south London, mate", the mayor responded. "But it's good to be in Pakistan, it's good to come from India, home of my parents and grandparents."

Mr Khan's mother and father were among the Muslim Indians who moved from India to Pakistan after Britain carved up the Indian empire in 1947, prompting horrific violence along religious lines.

His parents moved from Pakistan to Britain in the 1960s, where Mr Khan and his siblings were born.

The mayor's response received a largely positive response on social media.

Mr Khan is believed to be the first Western politician of his generation to make the journey between India and Pakistan on foot.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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We were advised against going to India and Pakistan on the same trip, Mr Khan told reporters. There are tensions between the two countries, there are diplomatic challenges. The land crossing is symbolic.

During his visit to India, Mr Khan called on the British Government to make a formal apology for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which nearly 400 Sikhs were shot dead by British Indian army soldiers.

A BBC spokesperson said: Our reporter asked the Mayor a question in the context of the trip being referred to by senior politicians in the region as a homecoming. The full answer the Mayor gave shows he understood the context of the question.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii occurred on Dec. 7, 1941. I have visited Pearl Harbor and the memorial aboard the USS Arizona, and I also served in the United States Naval Reserve. As a tour guide at the Nevada State Museum, I have had the opportunity to show visitors to the museum the beautiful Silver Service from the Battleship USS Nevada (BB-36).

Judge Chuck Weller has written the history of the ship in great detail and I thank him for much of the information in this article.

When the people of Nevada learned there would be a battleship named for the State of Nevada, they wanted to express their pride by presenting the ship with a very special present. The ship was launched on July 11, 1914. Tonopah silver mines were in full production at that time and they contributed 5,000 ounces of silver. Likewise, Goldfield mines contributed sufficient gold to trim the silver service with gold.

During the attack on the naval fleet in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S.S. Nevada sustained major damage but was the only battleship in the fleet to get underway and move toward the sea during the attack. Heavily damaged and in danger of sinking, she was purposefully beached on the western side of the harbor so the entrance would not be blocked.

In a future article, I will tell more about the battle, but for now I, want to tell about the magnificent silver service that was aboard the ship and survived the attack relatively unscathed. The silver service set is one of the largest and most elaborate ever made. It has a 15-gallon punchbowl with 24 punch cups, all lined with gold. One silver tray is engraved with an image of Lahontan Dam. Another bears the engraved image of Abraham Lincoln, who was President when Nevada became a state. Still another tray depicts the mines at Tonopah and yet another portrays Virginia City. Other pieces include goblets, candelabra and a tea set.

Before being presented to the ship, the silver service went on a 15-day tour of Nevada in a private train car. The train stopped in Carson City, Tonopah, Goldfield, Las Vegas, Caliente, Pioche, McGill, Ely, Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock, Sparks, Reno and Yerington. The population of Nevada was about 80,000 at that time. Forty thousand people viewed the silver service during this tour. The silver service and a large Nevada State flag were presented to the USS Nevada at her commissioning in March 1916.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Nevada underwent extensive repairs and returned to active duty for the remainder of WWII. She fought at the Aleutians, the D-Day Normandy invasion, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and others. Two of the USS Nevada crew members received the first Congressional Medals of Honor awarded in World War II.
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Tens of thousands of pounds have reportedly been allocated by South Korea for a special forces decapitation unit it is training to overthrow North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

The allocation of 340m won (around 231,000) formed part of the country's defence budget passed by the countrys parliament earlier this week, according to state news agency, Yonhap.

The creation of what defence officials described as a decapitation unit was announced in September, shortly after North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test.

The money will be spent on purchasing equipment for the special forces," a defence official told the Korea Herald newspaper. "The equipment includes suicide drones, surveillance drones and grenade machine guns.

The 1,000-strong unit is tasked with removing the Norths top command-and-control personnel if conflict breaks out. However, some reports have suggested that its role could include cross border raids at night.

The Herald reported that the force was not yet fully operational and lacks specialised aircraft to insert soldiers into North Korean territory.

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

Talk of so-called decapitation missions by South Korea surfaced in summer 2015, after Washington and Seoul agreed a new format for war planning, the Associated Press reported.

The budget announcement comes after months of simmering tension with the North.

Pyongyang has traded barbs with US President Donald Trump all year as it has launched a series of ballistic missile tests in defiance of United Nations resolutions.

After its most recent  and most powerful  launch, the US and South Korea carried out aerial drills which the North called confrontational warmongering.

 North Korea TV shows video of ballistic missile launch

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is to visit China next week for talks. He has repeatedly said he hopes for a diplomatic solution to the peninsulas crisis.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang also recently urged all relevant parties to "maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other."

He said: The outbreak of war is not in any sides interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people.

A UN envoy is also currently Pyongyang to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Australian MPs burst into song after a historic bill legalising same-sex marriage was passed in the House of Representatives.

The move comes one month after 61.6 per cent of Australians voted in favour of the change.

The announcement was met with cheers and even a song, as onlookers sang I am Australian while waving rainbow flags.

We are one, but we are many, they sang, with several politicians joining in. And from all the lands on earth we come. Well share a dream and sing with one voice. I am, you are, we are Australian.

Australias governor-general is expected to approve the bill within a few days, marking its passage into law.

What a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said after the country became the 26th country in the world to legalise same-sex ceremonies.

This is Australia, fair and diverse, loving and filled with respect.

Votes were not counted because the majority was not questioned, but fewer than five MPs registered their opposition. The Senate passed the same legislation last week by 43 votes to 12.

The laws, which will also recognise same-sex marriages solemnised in foreign countries, will take effect from Saturday.

But because a months notice is required for the state to recognise a marriage, the first legal same-sex unions will be in January.

Religious organisations and conservative lawmakers voiced strong opposition and proposed dozens of amendments to law, pressing during parliamentary debate for broad protections for religious objectors, among them florists and bankers, to refuse service to same-sex couples.

But the amendments were all defeated during three days of debate, although the issues may be considered at a later date.

The government has also appointed a panel to examine how to safeguard religious freedoms once gay marriage is a reality in Australia.
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A former Russian cabinet minister today delivered his final word in a bribery trial that has electrified the country and split its ruling elite. Alexei Ulyukayev, his voice between angry and trembling, used his 12-minute speech to ask for forgiveness.

He was guilty  he said  but not of the absurd allegation of accepting a $2 million bribe: Im guilty of doing too little for my country. I made too many compromises, was a hypocrite, and was too fond of receiving, and giving, presents. Forgive me.

Until a sting operation late in the evening of 15 November 2016, Mr Ulyukayev, 61, held the important portfolio of economic development. Overnight, he became the first serving minister to be arrested since Joseph Stalins henchman Lavrenty Beria in 1953. Prosecutors have asked for a sentence of 10 years hard labour.

Mr Ulyukayev insisted he was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused. The state prosecutors case was an inconsistent, black affair, strung together with a bit of white thread. The trial had become somewhat akin to a public circus, where an aged gladiator with a cardboard sword tries desperately tries to wave off very real threats.

The public would be watching to see what kind of verdict would be delivered, he said.

During his short monologue, the former minister cited Socrates and Fidel Castro, and referred to the dark days of Soviet terror. Andrey Vyshinsky has got nothing on this, he said, in reference to the infamous state prosecutor of Stalins show trials. Dont ask for whom the bell tolls  it tolls for you.

On Monday, prosecutors claimed Mr Ulyukayevs guilt had been proven completely. They surprised many with harsh demands for a sentence of 10 years of strict labour colony and a fine of 500m roubles (6.3m).

Mr Ulyukayev said that at his age, such a term was the equivalent of a death sentence.

The trial, now in its 21st session, has pitted the former economics minister against Igor Sechin, the all-powerful head of state oil company Rosneft, and a close Putin confidante. As the man who organised the sting operation, Mr Sechin was a key witness in the trial. He was summoned four times by the defence. On three occasions, his staff refused to accept the summons; on a fourth, Mr Sechins press secretary said he was too busy and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

In court, Mr Ulyukayev said the Rosneft chief was a master of dubious deeds, and suggested his failure to appear as a witness was because he had nothing to say. If anyone should be facing trial it was Mr Sechin, he said  for giving false evidence.

Such open confrontation is highly unusual for the Russian elite, and highlights serious divisions within the Kremlin. While President Putin was said to be aware of Mr Sechins sting operation, it is not clear if he played any role in devising it. Some analysts have suggested that the Rosneft chief may have overplayed his hand. On several occasions, evidence showing Mr Sechin in a less than favourable light has since been mysteriously leaked to the media.

Last year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described his ministers arrest as a difficult event  beyond my comprehension. Anatoly Chubais, the influential former deputy prime minister, also rubbished the prosecution claims. They are saying Ulukayev was threatening Rosneft, he wrote on Facebook. Have I suddenly stopped understanding something about this world?

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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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. 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The direction and severity of any verdict will say much about Mr Putins real position in the dispute, as well as providing clues about Mr Sechins current standing.

The verdict is expected at 10am on 15 December.
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Around 45,000 protesters have taken to the streets outside EU institutions in Brussels in support of Catalan independence.

The demonstration is partly in solidarity with exiled and disputed president Carles Puigdemont, who has himself fled to the EU capital in Belgium and is resisting extradition attempts.

But the Thursday march is also aimed at putting pressure on EU institutions to support the regions cause  support which has so far been totally absent.

Recommended Spanish authorities seek arrest warrant for Catalan leader Puigdemont

Police figures suggest the protest was over twice as large as expected, with official predictions before the march that just 20,000 demonstrators would show up.

In the grey and damp Belgian weather, demonstrators carried Catalan flags, sang songs, and chanted Wake up Europe. Others carried banners with EU flags emblazoned with Shame on you  a criticism of the EUs support for the government in Madrid.

Some locals who joined the march also carried the yellow lion rampant flags of Flanders, the wealthy Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Flanders, like Catalonia, has a separatist movement and its separatist parties are allies at the European level with Catalonias.

That alliance led to one Flemish immigration minister suggesting Mr Puigdemont could apply for asylum in Belgium  though he has not formally taken up the offer.

More protesters descend on EU institutions (Jon Stone/The Independent) (Jon Stone for The Independent)

The protest was overwhelmingly peaceful, with families with children present in large numbers. Helicopters could be seen and heard overhead along the route of the march.

Belgian police were joined by soldiers with assault rifles  a common sight on the streets of Brussels in light of recent terrorist attacks  to guard the route of the march, which gathered at a large park near the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission, before snaking through the capital.

A large proportion of the protesters arrived by chartered coach, taking the 12-hour drive through France from Catalonia.

The demonstration is the first show of force by Catalan independence supporters in Brussels, where small pro-Madrid demonstrations have been a common feature of Mr Puigdemonts public appearances.

The European Commission has so far said it supports Spains constitution; it has not offered to mediate the dispute.

A European arrest warrant sought by the Spanish government was cancelled by a Spanish judge earlier this week after he ruled that Mr Puigdemont was not applicable for one.

The disputed regional president has said he will stay in Belgium until at least the 21 December Catalan elections, called by Madrid after the central government suspended home rule in the region.

Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Show all 17 1 /17 Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man faces off Spanish Civil Guards outside a polling station in Sant Julia de Ramis Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police form a security cordon around the Ramon Llull school in Barcelona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police evict a young woman during clashes between people gathered outside the Ramon Llull school in Barcelona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Spanish Civil Guard officers break through a door at a polling station in Sant Julia de Ramis Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Spanish National Police clash with pro-referendum supporters in Barcelona on Sunday AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Crowds raise their arms up as police move in on members of the public gathered outside to prevent them from voting in the referendum at a polling station where the President Carles Puigdemunt will vote later today Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters People confront Spanish Civil Guard officers outside a polling station Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Three man hold each other as they try to block a Spanish police van from approaching a polling station AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A woman shows a ballot to a Spanish Civil Guard officer outside a polling station Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man wearing a shirt with an Estelada (Catalan separatist flag) and holding carnations faces off with a Spanish Civil Guard officer Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Police try to control the area as people attempt to cast their ballot at a polling station in Barcelona Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man is grabbed by officers as police move in on the crowds Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Two women argue with a Spanish National policeman during clashes between Catalan pro-independence people and police forces at the Sant Julia de Ramis sports centre in Girona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Sant Julia De Ramis in Spain Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Confrontation outside a polling station in Barcelona, where police have tried to stop people voting AFP/Getty Images Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A Spanish National Police officer aims a rubber-bullet rifle at pro-referendum supporters in Barcelona AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police clashed with voters as polls opened in Barcelona Sky News

He and other members of his former government are facing charges of sedition, rebellion, and misuse of public funds relating to their calling of an independence referendum on 1 October and a later unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament. Some ministers have returned to Spain to face their charges, while a core remain with him in Brussels.

The referendum was declared illegal by Spains constitutional court in Madrid and national police were dispatched to the province to storm government ministries to look for evidence of wrongdoing, seize ballot boxes, and close down polling stations by force.
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Greece and Turkey squared up over old disputes during a state visit to Athens by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that quickly descended into verbal sparring over a list of historical grievances.

Designed to boost relations between the two nations, the first visit of a Turkish president in 65 years quickly turned into a blunt grudge-fest between the Nato allies.

The two countries agreed to revive a consultation process for confidence-building measures, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said.

The topics ranged from discrimination against Muslims in northern Greece to Turkey's military presence in ethnically split Cyprus and loose interpretations of an international treaty defining the borders of the two countries.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne covered an array of issues and defined the borders of modern-day Turkey, and by extension, Greece.

Mr Erdogan told Greek media outlets before he even landed that the treaty needed a revision, putting Greeks in a defensive mode.

In an unusually candid exchange at a welcoming ceremony, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos ruled out any change to the treaty while a stern-looking Mr Erdogan, seated beside him, said there were details in the treaty which required clarity.

Though Mr Erdogan focused on religious rights of the Turkish Muslim community in northern Greece, he said there were also problems on "military topics".

"The truth is I'm a little confused regarding if what he is putting on the table is to modernise, to update, to comply with the Lausanne Treaty," Mr Tsipras said at a news conference as Mr Erdogan stood at his side.

The long exchange between Mr Erdogan and the Greek president was the show-stopper, however.

"This is the bedrock of our friendship," said Mr Pavlopoulos, referring to the treaty and pointedly telling his VIP guest he was a Professor of Law.

"It has no flaws, it does not need to be reviewed or updated," he said.

Mr Erdogan responded by saying it was a treaty signed 94 years ago and did not apply only to Greece or Turkey but also included countries such as Japan. It was also supposed to protect the Turkish minority in northern Greece, whom Erdogan said were still discriminated against.

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. 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"You can't find such treatment of my Greek citizens in Turkey," Mr Erdogan said in a 30-minute, back-and-forth exchange where notes were slipped to both he and Mr Pavlopoulos by ministers.

"Mr Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Athens since 1952. He is now doing his best to make sure that the next visit will not take place in the next 150 years," said Wolfango Piccoli, Co-President of Teneo Intelligence.

In Northern Greece, Mr Erdogan said Greece insisted on calling the Turkish community there Muslim rather than using the term "Turkish". There are more than 100,000 of them in the area known as Western Thrace.

"They can't accept the word "Turk" being written outside a school," said Mr Erdogan, who is due to visit the region.

Mr Tsipras told Mr Erdogan he too had sensitivities on religious freedoms. The Greek government, he said, had moved ahead with the reconstruction of a series of mosques around the country.

"Yet not once did it cross our mind to hold an Orthodox religious ceremony in Fethiye mosque (in Athens) as wrongly, in my view, is taking place repeatedly in Hagia Sophia," he said of the imposing structure in Istanbul that was once a church, converted into a mosque and now a museum. There have been readings of the Koran in Hagia Sophia in recent years.

The Nato partners teetered on the brink of war in 1974, 1987 and 1996 over long-running disputes on ethnically divided Cyprus, mineral rights in the Aegean Sea and sovereignty over uninhabited islets in that sea.

"We allowed your re-entry to Nato," Mr Erdogan told Mr Pavlopoulos, referring to the departure of Greece from the bloc in 1974 after Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in response to a brief Greek-inspired coup.

It rejoined in 1980. "If it wasn't for us, you wouldn't have been able to (rejoin)," Mr Erdogan said.

While relations have improved, many Greeks believe Turkey has territorial aspirations against their country, an issue Mr Erdogan said on at least two occasions was not the case.

Reuters
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All 28 EU foreign ministers warned Donald Trumps chief diplomat against moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in a face-to-face meeting the day before the president made the announcement, the European Commission has said.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday in Brussels Federica Mogherini, the EUs high representative for foreign affairs, said Mr Trumps announcement had the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in.

I discussed this with Secretary Tillerson during his visit to Brussels on Tuesday. Ive made clear our disagreement with this decision as did all the foreign ministers of the 28 member states of the European Union that met him with me the same day, she said.

Recommended Hamas calls for new intifada after Trump recognises Jerusalem

The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both the state of Israel and Palestine.

President Trumps announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact. It has a very fragile context and the announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in.

In a speech on Wednesday, the day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met the EU, Mr Trump announced he would be relocating the embassy  reversing decades of US policy in the region.

Clashes immediately broke out in the West Bank as Palestinians took to the streets over the decision and staged strikes and protests. Israeli troops have been deployed onto the streets after Islamist group Hamas called for a new intifada against the illegal occupation.

Ms Mogherini urged all relevant actors in the Israel-Palestine conflict to avoid to further escalate tensions on the ground

The worst thing that could happen now is an escalation of tensions around the holy places because what happens in Jerusalem matters to the whole region and the entire world, she added.

The issue of the embassys location is a fragile one in the Middle East conflict. Israel unilaterally claims Jerusalem as its capital, despite it being partly located in Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

While Israel locates its governmental institutions in Jerusalem, practically all foreign countries choose to keep their embassies in Tel Aviv and do not recognise Jerusalem as the countrys capital.

Supporters of a two-state solution too the conflict also see the city as a potential future capital for a Palestinian state.
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Following Donald Trumps decision to recognise the contested city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Hamas leader has called on the Palestinian people to rise up in a new intifada.

We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy, Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech from Gaza on Thursday.

This will not stop until the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, he added.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The statement comes amid worldwide outrage over the US decision to move their embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognise the city as the capital of the Jewish state.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day war, a move that was never internationally recognised.

Israelis claim the entire city as their capital - as do Palestinians. Control of it remains one of the major stumbling blocks in any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Palestinian and Israeli civilians and the Israeli armed forces alike are bracing themselves for Hamas declared Day of Rage on Friday.

More protests and strikes are expected - and the Muslim holy day is often a test for whether such demonstrations turn violent.

What does 'intifada' mean?

Intifada is an Arabic word that translates literally as shaking off. It has been used to refer to legitimate means of resistance against oppression across the Middle East for decades.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, it means a concerted Palestinian effort to shake off Israeli power and gain independence. The movements employ various forms of violence.

An intifada cannot be called or commanded by Palestinian leaders. While both Fatah and Hamas have encouraged such movements in the past, the previous two uprisings grew out of grassroots mass support of Palestinians of all walks of life.

When was the first Palestinian intifada?

The first intifada broke out in 1987 after four young Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in Gaza and the shooting of a 17-year-old boy during an unarmed protest.

The uprising was for the most part made up of unarmed Palestinians. It was known as the war of stones because of images of young men throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

It ended in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo accords which established the Palestinian Authority ruling body and Israeli withdrawals from West Bank.

And the second?

The second intifada lasted began in 2000 and was known as the al Aqsa intifada.

It was sparked by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharons visit to the al-Aqsa mosque complex, known as the Temple Mount in Judaism.

Access to the Temple Mount site has always been a hugely contentious issue. While it is located in East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in 1967, the Muslim-administered site is operated by neighbouring Jordan in order to avoid conflict.

Hamas, which had grown by then into a well-armed movement, led the charge - including suicide bombings and other sophisticated terror attacks aimed at civilians.

It fizzled out in 2003-2004 with the death of the former chair of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat, and left people on both sides sceptical of successful peace talks.

Hasnt the violence in Jerusalem in recent years been referred to as the third intifada?

Jerusalem has seen an upswing in stabbings and shooting attacks in the last three years in what has been dubbed the Jerusalem or silent intifada.

The unrest has largely been attributed to the breakdown of the 2013-2014 peace talks, the increased rate of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, and a lack of economic opportunity for Palestinian youth.

In July this year there were intense clashes over access to al-Aqsa after the Israeli authorities installed security cameras, x ray machines and other security measures in what was viewed as an attempt to control the site.

What could a third intifada mean for the region?

Both previous intifadas eventually affected proved to be political turning points in the conflict as Israeli forces struggled to deal with the scale of the uprisings.

While much has been made in the last few days of Mr Trumps decision killing the peace process, talks between the two sides have in reality been dormant for years.

There have been small clashes and protests across West Bank cities on Thursday and both sides are bracing themselves for Friday.

The Muslim holy day is often a flashpoint where protests morph into violence but it is too early to tell yet whether the Palestinians will take up Hamas call and launch a full-blown intifada.
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Several Western foreign ministries, including the UK and US, have issued travel warnings for the Middle East and North Africa following US President Donald Trumps announcement that his country would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The move, designed to satisfy Mr Trumps domestic right-wing voter base, has been met with anxiety and furious protest in the rest of the world.

People took to the streets in demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza as well as in Amman, Rabat, Beirut, Cairo and as far afield as Pakistan.

Of all the USs shocked allies, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had perhaps the sharpest rebuke for what he said was Mr Trumps reckless move.

Mr Trump should retreat from that decision in order to stop a dangerous escalation that leads to extremism and creates an atmosphere which helps terrorism, the Iraqi leader said.

With Isis almost defeated in the country  with the help of US air power  Mr Abadis words should serve as a strong warning.

Islamist movements across the world view the recognition of the Holy City as Israels capital at the expense of Muslims as a call to arms.

Recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital presents opportunity for jihad, Oxford University analyst Elisabeth Kendall warned on Twitter.

Israel: From independence to intifada Show all 7 1 /7 Israel: From independence to intifada Israel: From independence to intifada 26973.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26974.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26975.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26976.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26977.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26985.bin Robert Capa/Magnum Israel: From independence to intifada 26986.bin Robert Capa/Magnum

Isiss daily media dump on Thursday released mocked-up images of Mr Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed, blaming them for the destruction of the holy Muslim site.

Al Qaeda also quickly moved to capitalise on the current outrage with a statement designed to garner support. Jerusalem is not Trumps property to give away to Jews, one release read.

Recommended Trump has failed to bring peace to the Middle East

Al Qaeda-linked east African group al-Shabab also urged all Muslims to raise arms and defend the blessed al-Aqsa from the Zionist occupiers supported by America, because what was taken by force can only be restored by force.

Similar statements were issued across several Taliban media outlets in Afghanistan, while Hezbollah-friendly Lebanese newspaper al Akhbar declared death to America from its Thursday front page.

Closer to home, on Thursday Hamass leader Ismail Haniyeh called on the Palestinian people to rise up in a new intifada  or uprising against oppression.

We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy, he said in a speech from Gaza.

This will not stop until the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Palestinian and Israeli civilians, as well as the Israeli armed forces, are bracing themselves for Hamass declared Day of Rage on Friday.

Whether any violence tomorrow will morph into a full-blown uprising remains to be seen.
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Several people have been injured across the West Bank and Gaza Strip after protests against US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital turned violent.

Schools and shops across the Palestinian Territories were shuttered on Thursday as young men in several cities including Ramallah and Bethlehem took to the streets in demonstrations against the move.

Hundreds of extra Israeli troops were dispatched to occupied areas, with minor clashes breaking out at checkpoints and in city centres. Palestinians threw rocks and other projectiles and set tires on fire as Israeli troops reportedly fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets to disperse crowds. The Israeli Ministry denied live fire had been used.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that 17 people had been lightly injured as a result of tear gas inhalation and one person was in a critical condition thanks to live fire.

US President Donald Trump shocked even some of the US closest allies on Wednesday by announcing that his administration would formally recognise the contested city as Israels undivided capital.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day war, a move that was regarded as illegal by the international community. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the holy city as their undivided capital.

Mr Trump's Wednesday announcement upended decades of US policy. While welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, many other world leaders have expressed concern the controversial move could spark renewed violence in the region and wider Muslim world.

Israel: From independence to intifada Show all 7 1 /7 Israel: From independence to intifada Israel: From independence to intifada 26973.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26974.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26975.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26976.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26977.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26985.bin Robert Capa/Magnum Israel: From independence to intifada 26986.bin Robert Capa/Magnum

Several US allies - including the UK, France and Saudi Arabia - have publicly disagreed with the move, and there have been solidarity protests across the Middle East and north Africa.

On Thursday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on the Palestinian people to rise up in a new intifada.

We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy, he said in a speech from Gaza on Thursday.

This will not stop until the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, he added.

Palestinian and Israeli civilians, as well as the Israeli armed forces, are bracing themselves for Hamas declared Day of Rage on Friday.

 Palestinian official on Jerusalem: Trump 'is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims [and] hundreds of millions of Christians'

More protests and strikes in Jerusalem are expected - and the Muslim holy day is often a test for whether such demonstrations turn violent.

An intifada cannot be called or commanded by Palestinian leaders. While both Fatah and Hamas encouraged the two previous uprisings, the movements grew out of grassroots mass Palestinian support.

Is too early yet to tell whether protesters will take up Hamas call. Observers remain hopeful the low levels of violence seen on Thursday mean Friday will also pass without major incident.
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The leader of Hamas has called for a new uprising against Israel after US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy," Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech from Gaza on Thursday.

"This will not stop until the liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, he said, calling on ordinary civilians to rise up.

Schools and shops across the Palestinian Territories were shuttered on Thursday in protest against the US' move.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," he said.

"United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine," Mr Haniyeh added, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Mr Haniyeh, who was elected as Hamas' leader earlier this year, also called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from the peace process.

He reiterated the militant group's call for a "day of rage" across the Palestinian Territories on Friday.

While Hamas made no mention of utilising its own arsenal to attack Israel, fears of violence in the volatile region are growing. More protests and strikes are expected on Friday - and the Muslim holy day is often a test for whether such demonstrations turn violent.

 Theresa May says she will talk to Donald Trump about Jerusalem

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday. Other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments".

A spokesperson for Hamas said on Wednesday night that Mr Trump had "opened the gates of hell" by taking the unprecedented step of calling the contested city Israeli.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day war, a move that was never internationally recognised. Israelis claim the entire city as their capital - as do Palestinians.

Control of it remains one of the core stumbling blocks to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Like many presidential hopefuls before him, on the campaign trail Mr Trump promised to recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to relocate the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Over the last year, the new administration has delayed a decision on the issue.

Mr Trump's Wednesday announcement, however, upends decades of US policy: the current US position is to recognise the status of Jerusalem in a final peace agreement.

The move has been almost universally condemned by the international community - including a rare rebuke from key US ally Saudi Arabia.

Observers worry such a symbolic move could spark renewed violence in Israel and fan the flames of terrorism across the Muslim world, and risks showing the US is no longer interested in pursuing a two-state solution.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision as an "historic landmark", Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday that the move signals a "withdrawal" from the peace process.

The US has been seeking to resurrect talks between Israel and the Palestinians since Mr Trump took office. The president has previously described brokering an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict "the ultimate deal".
ELKO  Mining engineer and wildland firefighter Ruby B. Johnson wants to add another title to her resume: Miss Nevada USA.

Representing northeastern Nevada as Miss Elko County, Johnson plans to compete for the designation at the Miss Nevada USA pageant in Las Vegas on Jan. 7.

Its very unconventional to have a mining engineer in a pageant, Johnson said.

A win in the Nevada contest would mean competing for Miss USA and possibly Miss Universe. The last time a Nevadan won the Miss USA crown was 2014, but no Nevada winner has won the top title in the programs 66-year history.

I feel it is time for the Battle Born State, Johnson said.

Nevada winners are rare, as are contestants from outside of the Las Vegas area. Johnson said she hopes to change that while shining a spotlight on the states mining industry and women in engineering.

Its a wonderful mining state, she said, and its a wonderful place to be a mining engineer.

Johnson works as one of four mining engineers employed by the U.S. Forest Service. She is stationed in Elko at the Mountain City, Ruby Mountains, Jarbidge Ranger District office. Her position requires her to provide technical assistance such as information about ground stability and hydrology to mines on public lands.

Ruby represents the vast diversity of Elko County and the importance of mining in the community with her mining engineer background, said Susan G. Summer Elliott, minerals and geology program manager for the U.S. Forest Service Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. We are so proud to have Ruby representing Elko in the pageant. Ruby is a gem and can best represent our gold country heritage in the silver state of Nevada.

Pageants might be unfamiliar with the mining industry, but Johnson is no stranger to the stage. In 2012, Johnson won the title of Miss Sierra Leone USA while studying engineering and minoring in womens studies leadership at Virginia Tech.

Johnson was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, in 1990 in the midst of a civil war. Seeking safety and a better life, her mother moved to Maryland while Johnson and her father waited in Nigeria.

Her goal, like most parents, was I want my children to have a better life than me, she said, explaining that she moved to the U.S. when she was 12 years old and became a U.S. citizen.

A desire to connect with the Sierra Leone community and love of service led Johnson to enter the Miss Sierra Leone USA pageant. At first, her mother lovingly laughed at her daughters goal because Johnson didnt like wearing makeup or smiling. To prepare, Johnson said she watched YouTube videos of past pageants, practiced her talent of belly dancing and performed for family. She even started wearing makeup at age 21. Now, she smiles almost nonstop.

When Johnson won Miss Sierra Leone, 10 years after she moved from that country, the crown also came with the prize of an international trip. Her Sierra Leonean homecoming, as she called it, included visiting a diamond mine, as the country is rich in minerals and a top diamond producer. Wanting international mining experience, the newly crowned Miss Sierra Leone asked the mining company for an internship.

Im pretty sure they thought I was joking, Johnson said.

Johnson wasnt joking. She landed the internship and returned to Sierra Leone to serve in the mines quarry, drilling, blasting and surveying. Being a woman in mining, being from the country where she worked and wearing the Miss Sierra Leone crown turned heads.

That made them proud, too, Johnson said, because they were like, Look, this is one of our own.

When not working in the mine, Johnson took time to meet with local girls to encourage them to pursue a field in science, technology, engineering or math, just like she was doing.

I realized the power of using the crown for a good cause, Johnson said. Growing up, I didnt see examples of women in engineering. I love that girls get to see that [now]. It gives me a bigger platform.

Johnson said she appreciates the Miss Universe competition for recognizing that a pageant winner needs to be more than a beauty icon. Confidently Beautiful is the program motto, and Elliott said Johnson meets that criterion.

Ruby is full of life and is everyones best friend, Elliott said. She is especially caring and humble, always looking for opportunities to help those in need. She is ready to go for whatever life has to offer and can transform herself from a day in the field with a hard hat and steel-toed boots to polished evening gowns.

Paraphrasing a quote popularly attributed to Marilyn Monroe, Johnson said, Its all about giving a girl the right shoes, and she will conquer the world.
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Protests have erupted across Gaza in response to Donald Trump's historic and hugely controversial declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

The announcement shattered decades of US foreign policy and triggered an angry response from Palestinians, who took to the streets burning flags and tires and chanting anti-American slogans.

Protests also broke out in parts of Jordan's capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Amman's outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Mr Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

Recommended Trump has proven how little he understands with Jerusalem decision

"Down with America...America is the mother of terror," they chanted.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus' traditional birthplace.

A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

Palestinians took to the streets with flags in Gaza City (EPA)

In Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians turned out to demonstrate against the decision, which risks inflaming tensions in the region.

Similar scenes were witnessed in the main square of Gaza City, where protesters waved national flags and pictures of late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, and in the southern Gaza strip.

Mr Trump made the announcement that the US would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - and begin efforts to move its embassy there - during a televised address on Wednesday evening.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The move triggered a wave of condemnation from world leaders, with objections coming from a wide array of presidents and prime ministers.

Only the Phillipines and the Czech Republic signalled they may follow Mr Trump's lead and move their embassies from Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Mr Trump's announcement as an "important step towards peace", and Israeli opposition leaders echoed his praise.

However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Mr Trump's shift serves extremist groups that want religious war and signals US withdrawal from being a peace mediator.
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Large military drills being carried out by the United States and South Korea and US threats of a preemptive war against Pyongyang have made the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact, North Korea's foreign ministry said.

A spokesman for the North's foreign ministry also blamed confrontational warmongering remarks by US officials for pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.

The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?" the spokesman said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency.

We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, he said.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Korea's latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of international pressure and United Nations resolutions.

North Korea said last week it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, which was capable of reaching 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

White House national security adviser HR McMaster said at the weekend the possibility of war with North Korea was increasing every day.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving US military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close.

On Wednesday, a US B-1B bomber joined the joint US-South Korean military exercises, which are called Vigilant Ace and will run until Friday.

North Korea, which regularly threatens South Korea, the United States and their allies, has denounced the exercises.

 US air force carries out drill over Korean Peninsula triggering Pyongyang nuclear war warning

Recently, as the US is conducting the largest-ever joint aerial drill on the Korean peninsula targeting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its high-level politicians are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another, the North's foreign ministry spokesman said, using North Korea's official name.

These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula, he said.

The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level UN official to visit North Korea since 2012.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Guk met Feltman in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Wednesday and discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, KCNA said.

Reuters
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The challenge with choosing where to splash out for some shut-eye in New York, the city that never sleeps, is that theres no shortage of places to rest your head  especially since each district of this dynamic city has its own distinct personality, and discerning travellers can now stray from Manhattans thoroughfares in almost any direction.

So how to sift the wheat from the chaff? Pick a neighbourhood and decide whether you want to stump up for something fancy or if youre happy to go back to basics, as long as its stylish. Here are the hotels that combine soul and style, that ditch buttoned-up service, and feel steeped in the spirit of this caffeinated city.

The best hotels in New York are:

Best for art: The Whitby,Booking.com

The Whitby,Booking.com Best for design: The High Line Hotel, Booking.com

The High Line Hotel, Booking.com Best for value: The Marlton, Booking.com

The Marlton, Booking.com Best for families: The Carlyle, Booking.com

The Carlyle, Booking.com Best for hipsters: The Ludlow, Booking.com

The Ludlow, Booking.com Best for views: Standard High Line, Booking.com

Standard High Line, Booking.com Best for shopping: The Mercer, Booking.com

The Mercer, Booking.com Best for eco chic : 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, Booking.com

: 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, Booking.com Best sense of place: The Wythe, Wythehotel.com

The Wythe, Wythehotel.com Best for New York first-timers: INNSIDE Nomad, Booking.com

INNSIDE Nomad, Booking.com Best for a touch of class: Soho Grand, Booking.com

Soho Grand, Booking.com Best for some zen: MADE Hotel, Booking.com

MADE Hotel, Booking.com Best for atmosphere: The Bowery, Booking.com

The Bowery, Booking.com Best for longer stays: Loews Regency, Booking.com

The Whitby is close to MoMA, but has many artworks of its own (The Whitby Hotel)

Best for art: The Whitby

Neighbourhood: Midtown

Tim and Kit Kemp of Firmdale Hotels were smart to create a Midtown sibling (two blocks north of MoMA) for their popular Crosby Street Hotel. Their London-centric design formula may be familiar  a slick 16-floor, 86-room newbuild filled with characterful design  but as in their other hotels, the interiors are a tonic of colour and textures thanks to Kits artful imagination (minimalists steer clear). Specially commissioned witty artworks and larger than-life-sculptures are scattered throughout the building. A wall glows with artist Martha Freuds votive ceramics, each etched with different New York landmarks. In the bar, the cocktails are first class  try a tangy Whitby Paloma (Ocho Blanco tequila infused with house-made marmalade, fresh pink grapefruit, lime, agave and soda)  while the leafy Orangery terrace is a blissful retreat from the concrete jungle. JK

Price: Doubles from $801 (612)

Book now

A former seminary, The High Line Hotel is furnished with Victorian and Edwardian antiques (The High Line)

Best for design: The High Line Hotel

Neighborhood: Chelsea

In the heart of Chelseas gallery district, this neo-Gothic former seminary with its Intelligentsia coffee truck and bar parked outside is an expert at blending heritage with hip. eBay-sourced Victorian and Edwardian antiques are among the furnishings, perfect for the Instagram generation.

Not to be confused with the much flashier Standard High Line, which is a few blocks south, this is off the tourist trail on Tenth Avenue, a block from the High Line park and close to Chelsea Markets many foodie delights. Service and facilities come with a light touch; in the absence of a concierge desk, this quirkier spot is suited to seasoned visitors to the city who dont need their hands holding by the kind of brass badge-flaunting staff in starched suits you get at the big chain hotels. JK

Prices: Doubles from $385 (295)

Book now

The Marlton in Washington Park is great value, with doubles from 150 (

Best for value: The Marlton

Neighborhood: Greenwich Village

Hotelier Sean MacPherson is a master of creating a seemingly historical hotel that fits into the fabric of a once-seedy district  look no further than his most famous project, the Bowery Hotel, for evidence. For The Marltons 2013 opening, he gave this nine-storey, 1900-built building a new lease of life  a world away from its original incarnation as a student dorm.

A block north of Washington Park, the 107 rooms are small but well designed, exemplifying MacPhersons shtick of crisp quality bed linens, Persian rugs and seemingly vintage yet utterly modern bathrooms. The sociable lobby lounge and bistro at the back make it a favourite with the music and fashion pack, and service is friendly but unashamedly low key. JK

Prices: Doubles from $295 (225)

Book now

The Carlyle has a number of famous childrens books for kids to enjoy ( (The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel)

Best for families: The Carlyle

Recommended The ultimate New York City guide

Neighborhood: Upper east side

Having the top-hatted bellhops at this Beaux Arts brick building (now owned by Rosewood Hotels) open the door to you in the same way they do for high-profile dignitaries is enough to give you a thrill. Find your way to one of its 188 rooms and suites, and you dont know which VIP or celebrity you might pass; last time I was there, Daphne Guinness was getting a blow-dry in the salon.

The eye-popping cityscape views from the upper floors evoke sweeping opening scenes from the movies. George Gershwin spent time here in the 1930s, and today Woody Allen is known as a weekly regular, having played the clarinet with Cafe Carlyles resident jazz band. Although it recently underwent a refurb, Bemelmans Bar is as atmospheric as ever, with murals hand-painted by  and named after  Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline childrens books, who painted the bar in return for living here in the 1950s. Because of the link, the hotel is a good bet for well-heeled families, with Madeline-themed packages and good provisions for children. JK

Price: Doubles from $800 (600)

Book now

Read the full The Carlyle review

It's see and be seen at the Standard High Line (Standard Hotels)

Best for views: Standard High Line

Hip hotelier Andre Balazs may have sold his pop culture-loving hotel brand, but its most iconic 18-floor high-riser still straddles the High Line in the heart of the Meatpacking District, an arms length from Chelseas galleries and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Voyeurs and exhibitionists alike appreciate the wall-to-wall windows in the 338 rooms, which ensure you can see and be seen (remember that, as you reach for your bathrobe).

The Standard Grill steakhouse is another place to see and be seen, as is the street-level German pub, Biergarten, complete with ping pong tables. The rooftop Le Bain bar is as exclusive today as it was when it opened  non-residents have to queue, and though hotel guests arent guaranteed admission, they get priority. JK

Prices: Doubles from $295 (220)

Book now

The Ludlow, New Yorks Lower East Side

Best for hipsters: The Ludlow

Neighborhood: Lower East Side

Part of the gentrification of the once gritty Lower East Side, the Ludlow opened in 2014 opposite Katzs Delicatessen. The days of artists living in cheap lofts are long gone, but the hotel lobby evokes a louche 1980s vibe of dive bars and underground recording studios, with a sociable work-rest-and-play space with low-slung leather sofas and giant Marshall speakers.

Bedrooms are bright and breezy, and most have incredible views over the city. A perk of staying in this place is that you can also leapfrog the techpreneurs and art-world hotshots who hang out here to get into the popular ground-floor restaurant, Dirty French, which is always booked up. JK

Prices: Doubles from $195 (145)

Book now

The Mercer has long been one of Manhattan's most stylish hotels (The Mercer)

Best for shopping: The Mercer

Recommended 10 of the best luxury hotels in New York

Neighborhood: SoHo

If the hotel industry had its own almanack, the birth of this 75-room hotel (Andre Balazss creation) in 1998 would be catalogued as having set the blueprint for the boutique trend. Twenty years on, the exposed brick and wooden floorboards in the bedrooms are as on point as ever. Here, near Apples HQ, in a 1890 Romanesque Revival mansion, SoHos media and music wranglers and fashion luvvies still head to chef Jean-Georges Vongerichtens Mercer Kitchen restaurant down below to schmooze, booze and make their moves. JK

Prices: Doubles from $600 (445)

Book now

Incredible views of the East River from 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge (1 Hotels Brooklyn Bridge)

Best for eco chic: 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge

Neighborhood: Dumbo

Barry Sternlicht declares this the best hotel hes ever created  and as the founder of W Hotels, he knows what hes talking about. A 25ft living wall of figs and ferns in the lobby, decor made from reclaimed materials, wind-powered electricity and a dedicated triple-filtered drinking water tap in every room confirm that this a seriously eco-friendly hotel  theres even a Tesla available for local transfers. The bedrooms are a warm and welcoming tableau of upcycled wood and natural, organic fabrics. Be sure to book one which enjoys epic views over the Brooklyn Bridge and East River, but for the full scene in high definition head to the tenth-floor rooftop where theres also a pool. JK

Prices: Doubles from $350 (260)

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The Wythe is the place for a hyper-local focus (Wythe Hotel)

Best sense of place: The Wythe

A former textile factory, The Wythes pine-beamed, brick-walled, cast-iron-columned bedrooms overlook Brooklyns (current) beer brewery, making this the most authentic of the crop of hip hotels in this corner of Brooklyn. Its also the most appealing, thanks to the attention to detail by the owner Andrew Tarlow, the man behind hipster delicatessen, Marlow & Sons. The minibars are packed with superior snacks, and theres a tip-top brasserie, Reynard.

In the rooms, specially made wallpapers by local artists reference the neighbourhood, while Goldies natural soaps are among the hyperlocal amenities. Cocktails should be taken on the Manhattan-view rooftop bar  the hotel is only a couple of blocks from the East River. JK

Prices: Doubles from $300 (225)

Book now

INNSIDE Nomad comes with superb views (INNSIDE Nomad)

Best for New York first-timers: INNSIDE Nomad

Neighbourhood: Chelsea

This hotel is the United States first INNSIDE, a sub-brand of Spanish company Melia, which has several outposts across Europe. On the periphery of Broadway, the INNSIDE Nomad is a sleek addition to the streets of Chelsea, which doubles as both a cosy bolthole for tourists and a handy base for business travellers working in Midtown.

Its well-designed and bright guest rooms, fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows, offer superb views of Midtown and the Freedom Tower; while signature restaurant The Wilson does a neat line in fresh seafood dishes. The 24-hour fitness centre and proximity to Midtown will suit business travellers, but it's first-time visitors to New York that the hotel really caters for. The hotel offers the INNSIDE Urban Guide, packed full of New York tips from locals, to make the most of your stay. JS

Prices: Rooms from 132

Book now

Best for a touch of class: Soho Grand

Neighbourhood: SoHo

Soho Grand (sohogrand.com)

The gorgeous interiors at this celeb hangout channel old-school New York glamour. Draperies, velvet couches, vintage rugs and plush fabrics all recall the Gilded Age, while the The Parlour  found at the back of the genteel Club Room  is like a cosier version of a gentlemans club, replete with roaring fire and leather recliners. What the guestrooms lack in space, they make up for in style: think wood floors, leather headboards, Frette robes, and great views of Manhattan landmarks (if you score a high floor). Soho was once famed for artists lofts, but today its probably the chicest part of Lower Manhattan: known for expensive boutique stores and NYC food icons Balthazar and Dominique Ansel Bakery (home of the cronut). LC

Prices: Rooms from $185

Book now

Best for some zen: MADE Hotel

Neighbourhood: Nomad

MADE Hotels (MADE Hotels)

Though its plum in the middle of the Midtown madness just north of Madison Square Park  and just five blocks from the Empire State Building  the airy design at this boutique address says ... and relax. Wall-to-wall reclaimed wood, handwoven textiles and abundant greenery make the surroundings earthy-luxurious, extending even to the bedrooms, where mattresses sit on trendy wooden platforms, and pendant lights dangle from concrete ceilings. The 18th floor tiki bar, Good Behaviour, offers floor-to-ceiling Manhattan views, but gets unbearably crowded. Our advice: head here early, before diving into the hustle and bustle beyond the lobby. LC

Prices: Rooms from $250

Book now

Best for atmosphere: The Bowery

Neighbourhood: Lower East Side

The Bowery (Annie Schlechter)

Theres something irresistibly cinematic about the lobby at The Bowery, all low lighting, wood-panelled walls, worn Turkish rugs and red velvet. Its precisely how a hotel lobby should look, and youll want to spend as much time here as possible, sipping cocktails on sumptuous couches, and keeping your eyes peeled for the odd A-lister. Bedrooms have a completely different vibe: white painted brick walls and factory windows reference the edgy neighbourhood outside, and the bathrooms, while small, are contemporary-luxe (marble, brass, rain shower). Do tear yourself away from that lobby at some point: the LES is a brilliant nightlife district, and bar-hopping the narrow streets below East Houston is equally atmospheric. LC

Prices:Rooms from $395

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Best for longer stays: Loews Regency

Neighbourhood: Midtown

The signature suites of Loews Regency New York are ideal for long-stay guests (Loews Regency New York)

Following a recent $100m renovation, the ritzy Loews Regency on New York's Park Avenue gained six bespoke signature residences fitted out with a living room, dining area, kitchen, bedroom and balcony, ideal for longer stay guests in search of a place to decompress. Elsewhere in the hotel there's even an entire floor dedicated to its spa, which should help return calm after a day wandering nearby Central Park; and the Art Deco-in-feel Regency Bar & Grill, which serves its much-loved Power Breakfast. It's a convenient base for exploring Midtown or the museums of the Upper East Side. With the look of a classic New York City apartment block, returning to Loews Regency is like coming home. JS

Prices: Rooms from 524

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Two black musicians claim they were kicked off a British Airways-branded flight in South Africa to make way for a white woman.

Thabo Mabogwane and Bongani Mohosana, who make up the Black Motion duo, had bought business-class tickets from Cape Town to Johannesburg on Comair on Monday 4 December. The airline flies in BA colours in South Africa.

The musicians say that after a white woman complained that her seat was broken and she needed to move, they were asked to downgrade to economy class.

In an Instagram post, Bongani "Murdah" Mohasana said: Black Motion happened to be the only two young black men in the British airline business class.

We were embarrassed and removed from business class just because a white lady complained about a broken seat.

After they objected to being moved, they say, the captain ordered them to leave the aircraft.

We were told they cant risk to fly us as they are avoiding 9/11. In their eyes we are terrorists the captain said indirectly, the post continued.

They were allowed to travel on a later flight on the same airline.

 Tamika Mallory describes getting kicked off American Airlines flight

Comairs chief executive, Erik Venter, has apologised unreservedly to the passengers.

A spokesperson for Comair told The Independent: The situation arose as two damaged business class seats were not removed from the check-in system, as should have happened. As a result two customers were checked-in and allocated seats in which they could not fly.

Law of motion: Instagram post from Bongani Mohosana of Black Motion (Bongani Mohosana)

These customers were both silver card frequent flyer members, who are prioritised as a matter of global policy. In considering who could be asked to downgrade, the airport staff then identified non-frequent flyers travelling on discounted business class fares. This is common airline practice on rare occasions when downgrades occur. It was on this basis that two other customers in business class were approached.

Understandably they were upset. The crew was under pressure because the flight was already delayed, but should have handled the situation better.

Comair will not tolerate racism, which is why we have taken the allegations very seriously and investigated swiftly and thoroughly. We have asked the customers if they would like the investigation independently reviewed.

The left-wing EFF, the third-biggest party in South Africas parliament, called for the entire crew to be suspended and face the full might of the law.

The partys national spokesperson, Mbuyiseni Quintin Ndlozi, said: British Airways can go fly in its colonial and ever racist Britain. Whomsoever is white and not willing to treat black people with dignity and respect must simply leave our country.

The airline says on its website: As franchise partner of British Airways and a member of the Oneworld alliance, Comair offers seamless connections to the international route network and continues to serve local premium customers with the same standards in mind.
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British Airways will not revert to complimentary catering for short-haul economy passengers, the airlines chief executive has said.

But Alex Cruz conceded that the introduction of the controversial Buy on Board policy could have been handled better.

In January, Mr Cruz ended BAs long-established practice of providing drinks and food free of charge to all passengers. The airline brought in Marks & Spencer to provide sandwiches starting at 3.90, while the traditional inflight gin-and-tonic is priced at 6.

Speaking at an Aviation Club lunch in London, the British Airways boss said: It was absolutely the right decision for BA to take, and I absolutely admit it was very difficult at the beginning.

Some very short flights had limited take-up. But on a number of longer European flights, particularly returning to the UK, passengers complained that little choice was available or that supplies had run out.

Weve made apologies for that, and we have fixed it, said Mr Cruz. To be honest, the demand for the product completely surprised us. We had planned similar levels of adoption as some of our sister airlines.

Mr Cruz was responding to a question from John Hutchinson, a retired BA Concorde pilot, who described the new policy as a complete disaster for British Airways and asked how it would be modified. The question earned a round of applause from some of the audience of past and present aviation professionals.

Im not going to modify it, said Mr Cruz. Every carrier in the world will be offering food-to-buy for on very short flights as we do.

The chief executive promised that long-haul economy-class passengers, who still receive free food and drink, will see significant upgrades to catering from January.

Mr Cruz said airlines must learn from companies such as Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo about how to respond when things go wrong.

They are incredibly wonderful on how they recover from any problems they may have. They are fast, generous and they leave you with a sensation that they really will do everything in their power to fix whatever problem and to make sure it never happens again.
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I knew things were bad in LA when Tuesday yoga got cancelled due to bad air quality and people in Santa Monica started donning gas masks to shop in Wholefoods.

Not many of us are up at 4am - LA is a city of early risers, yoga bunnies and (organic) almond milk latte drinkers, scorning the late night bar-hopping scene and 24-hour diners of other US cities. But I was up uncharacteristically late on Tuesday evening, lured over to North Hollywood to a love interests house, a night which lingered into the early hours of Wednesday when I suddenly remembered the early class and three annoyed pets I had waiting back home.

I ran to my car and sped off on empty roads. The Santa Anas - those hot, dry, persistent winds which had created the conditions for the new fires bordering LA - had been blowing hard all day, but by 4am theyd stopped completely, and the city felt still  neither asleep nor awake, in a kind of twilight zone, holding its breath just for a second.

The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Show all 11 1 /11 The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA A member of a fire team hand crew monitors embers to prevent fire from jumping to the west side of the 405 freeway, at the Skirball Fire near the Bel Air area of Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA A house is threatened by wildfire along Linda Flora Drive during the Skirball Fire in Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. The "Skirball" fire ignited before 5 a.m. (1300 GMT) and quickly engulfed some 50 acres, with forecasters predicting the 25-mile-per-hour winds could cause further spreading, threatening multi-million dollar homes and the acclaimed Getty Center museum. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Firefighters work to save burning houses along Linda Flora Drive during the Skirball Fire in Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Flames from the Skirball Fire spread on a hillside in a wealthy neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 6, 2017 REUTERS The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Brent Thomas of Cassiano Road waits for a police escort to take him back to his evacuated home on Cassiano Road in the Bel Air district of Los Angeles, CA in order to pick up medication. Brent has no idea when he can return home after being evacuated due to wild fires this morning. Ruth Iorio The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Firefighters stop for a quick bathroom break on Moraga Drive and Sepulveda, close to the Getty Center in Los Angeles, CA, at around 4pm on Wednesday December 6 2017, after fighting the wild fires in Sylmar and Bel Air for over thirty hours. Ruth Iorio The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Smoke from the Skirball Fire rises above the 405 freeway near the Bel Aire area of Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA LAFD Firefighter Allen Janzen puts down smoldering embers in the Bel-Air section of west Los Angeles, California to protect home against the Skirball Fire, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA Firefighters work to save burning houses along Linda Flora Drive during the Skirball Fire in Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA A firefighter works to save burning houses along Linda Flora Drive during the Skirball Fire in Los Angeles, California, December 6, 2017. AFP/Getty Images The 'Skirball Fire' takes hold in LA A home burns as a wildfire dubbed the Skirball Fire moves through a wealthy neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS

I remember an uneasy orange glow in the sky: a sharp reminder of the "Creek fire" just a few miles north in Sylmar and Sun Valley. My throat felt thick and my chest hurt, but I figured it was because of the time - I'm an early riser, like all of us Angelenos, normally in bed by 10pm and up at 5:30am for my four times a week commute to Santa Monica College on the Westside.

Recommended Southern California wildfire forces thousands out of their homes

But by the time I got home to my cottage in Downtown LA, I knew it wasnt the late night. It was the air  thick, ashy and warm. I fell asleep, and woke up at 9am to find my phone had text after text from amber alerts (weather warnings sent to all mobile phone users), college alerts (telling me not to go in to class) and the emergency services.

Bleary, itchy-eyed and cold, I stumbled onto social media to check if my friends were OK, and found the now-famous iPhone video of the Skirball fire  the enormous wildfire threatening the Getty Center and lavish Bel Air homes (including, it was rumoured, a home belonging to Rupert Murdoch).

The video was shot from the 405 freeway  one of LAs busiest motorways  just an hour after Id driven home on empty freeways on the opposite side of town. It shows the morning commuters packed bumper to bumper, gazing up at the hillside bordering the freeway  a hillside which now resembled a scene from the apocalypse, some unearthly war zone, flames engulfing it, raging unchecked. The road had been closed for about five hours. I grabbed my camera and decided to drive over.

By the time I got there, heading north from Santa Monica to the Getty Center, it was noon and the freeway had reopened again. At the Getty Center, where those apocalyptic scenes had been shot a few hours before, I found scorched, black landscapes, ominous wisps of smoke rising from black brittle branches, fire scars which nearly touched the road, ending inches from its concrete barriers.

Fire engines lined the freeway, helicopters buzzed overhead, news crews drove aimlessly around, the turn offs for the Skirball Center and the Getty Center were blocked by police and highway patrol, and one lone plume of water rose steadily in an arc from a fire truck, landing on a smouldering building on the side of the hillside between the Sunset Boulevard and Getty Center exits.

I pulled off at Sunset, and found my way to Moraga Drive, an affluent area with lavish family homes, where around 10 residents lingered at the gas station, ash floating down gently around us like delicate specks of snow. I spoke to Brent Thomas, a gentleman in his sixties, who had been woken at 5:30am by his neighbour knocking on his door. Hed glanced out of the window of his bedroom, only to find his normal views of the canyon were obscured by a wall of flames.

The fire raged through the ritzy neighbourhood of Bel Air (REUTERS)

He had been given no indication when he could move back, and simply wanted to get home to Cassiano Road to pick up medication with a police escort, then return to his friends home, where he had evacuated.

As I talked to Brent an exhausted fire crew arrived for a toilet break. They said theyd been awake at that point for 30 hours, first fighting the Creek fire, napping for a couple of hours on their rig, before being woken again at 5:30am for a call over to the Skirball Fire. They smiled, tired, downed Gatorade, and set off again to tackle a new blaze.

The police werent letting me past the barricade, and I was beginning to feel light-headed and nauseous - my lungs aching as if Id smoked 60 cigarettes. The fire at Skirball, they said, was under control now, and reporters had either headed back to the Creek Fire or Ojai - the fires in nearby Ventura County are now threatening the popular weekend resort for LA residents - or back home to sleep and wait for the next round of Santa Anas to bring more devastation to our city.

I drove back to Santa Monica in my beat up Volvo, past people bustling by in gas masks and wheelie suitcases, shiny Priuses and glittering, brand-new SUVs, and did what every self-respecting Angeleno does when your city is burning.

I took a yoga class.
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When things keep spiralling into chaos, the only way is to step back and take a hard look at the fundamentals. This week has tossed another couple of spoilers into the already fraught situation of the Middle East. The most notorious is President Donald Trumps self-serving announcement that the United States will recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upending seven decades of careful international consensus on the unique nature of the city, and on the part its status has to play in honouring the rights of the Palestinians. The other is the news from Yemen of another blood-soaked development in its devastating war, with the rupture of the Houthi-Saleh alliance leading to the latters death and the prospect of more factional fighting.

The Trump announcement on Jerusalem has drawn almost universal opposition. The Gulf states who had been pinning hopes on a return of American interest in their security, are appalled at the gratuitousness of a move that feeds popular resentment of the United States, and makes a partnership all the more costly for them, as it does for all Muslim countries. The UAE has been conducting quiet diplomacy to improve the situation in Gaza, as the most urgent humanitarian need in the complex process of reaching a peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel. The Jerusalem announcement jeopardises that.

The choices facing the countries of the region were already complicated enough. Though Isis may now have been defeated in territorial terms, jihadist insurgency in the region is not, as the recent atrocity in Northern Sinai attested. The measures taken against Qatar by four Arab states were in protest at what they saw as its continuing support for militant Islamist factions, described under the inaccurate title of the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia meanwhile has made confronting Iran the centrepiece of its regional policy, finding common cause with Israel.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Iranian power in Arab lands has indeed increased as a result of the joint military effort to defeat Isis in Iraq and Syria, in which Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iranian-sponsored militias have played a major part. The Damascus regime remains critically dependent on them for its survival. In Lebanon, Irans proxy, Hezbollah, continues to hold the country hostage and to alarm Israel.

What is driving these conflictive tendencies? There is certainly a strong dose of ideology in the mix. Though Iran may no longer be claiming to export the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it does see itself as the protector of Shia minorities in the region. Saudi Arabia, for its part, sees itself as protecting Sunni Islam from Iranian encroachments. Israel has to contend with the militant ideology of the settler movement. President Trumps Christian Zionist base panders to his compulsive self-aggrandisement.

A stronger driver though is self-protection, and a memory of existential vulnerability. This is certainly the case with Israel. For Iran too: Saddam Husseins unprompted aggression in 1980, which the UN Security Council infamously failed to condemn, and the eight years of devastating war that followed egged on by the major powers, left Iran convinced that only by acquiring strategic alliances with Iraq and Syria could it hope to defend itself in future. Saudi Arabia and its allies see this forward defence as aggression: the classic formula for an avoidable war. Israels constant threats to destroy Iran and its nuclear capability have led Iran to build up Hezbollah as a deterrent, which with its reported 160,000 missiles it probably now 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

Looking behind these essentially psychological factors, what is the reality of these threats? Is Iran intrinsically an existential threat to Israel? Is Israel intrinsically an existential threat to Iran? Is conflict between Iran and its Arab Gulf neighbours inevitable? Does it have to be so? Is it beyond human intelligence to find a better way?

Respected Israeli security veterans have been arguing the need to talk to Iran. They should be heeded, and the debate opened up. Respected American voices have been calling for an end to the demonisation of Iran: the US administration should recognise that President Rouhani offers the best opportunity for diplomatic solutions, and Congress should not fall into the trap of imposing further sanctions. Honest advice needs to be given to Saudi Arabia about the best way to build regional security. The Europeans should stick to their guns on preserving the nuclear agreement with Iran, and Britain should come off the fence about the future of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Outside powers should learn to heed what the region is saying. Largely unnoticed, some countries, notably Egypt, the UAE and Oman, have been consistently arguing for de-escalation and for intelligent diplomacy. They need active support from the major powers, and the Permanent Five need to fulfil their responsibility for international peace and security. Not in the old, discredited way of imposing self-serving outcomes, of the kind President Trump has just inflicted. But by upholding principles that are the only foundation for peace, and by respecting the voices of a region too-long traduced by external power-plays.

James Watt is a former British ambassador to Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and now works in London as a partner in the political risk consultancy the Ambassador Partnership LLP
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I was called by an Irish radio station in Dublin to respond to President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. What did I think was going on inside the US Presidents mind, I was asked? And I replied immediately: I dont have the key to the lunatic asylum. What might once have seemed an outrageously over-the-top remark was simply accepted as a normal journalistic reaction to the leader of the worlds greatest superpower. And re-listening to the speech that Trump made in the White House, I realised I should have been far less restrained. The very text of the document is insane, preposterous, shameful.

Goodbye Palestine. Goodbye the two-state solution. Goodbye the Palestinians. For this new Israeli capital is not for them. Trump did not even use the word Palestine. He talked about Israel and the Palestinians  in other words, of a state and of those who do not deserve  and can no longer aspire to  a state. No wonder I received a call in Beirut last night from a Palestinian woman who had just listened to the Trump destruction of the peace process. Remember Kingdom of Heaven? she asked me, referring to Ridley Scotts great movie of the 1187 fall of Jerusalem. Well its now the Kingdom of Hell.

Its not the Kingdom of Hell, of course. The Palestinians have been living in a kind of hell for a 100 years, ever since the Balfour Declaration declared Britains support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, when a single sentence  in which our beloved Theresa May takes such pride  became a textbook for refugeedom and the future dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs from their lands. As usual, the Arab response this week was sickening, warning of the dangers of Trumps decision, which was unjustified and irresponsible  this piece of fluff produced by King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the so-called protector of Islams two holiest places (the third being Jerusalem, although he didnt quite manage to point that out)  and we can be sure that in the coming days many an emergency committee will be formed by Arab and Muslim institutions to deal with this danger. They will, as we all know, be worthless.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

But it was the linguistic analysis of Noam Chomsky when I was at university  he later became a good friend  which I applied to the Trump speech. The first thing I spotted was, as I mentioned above, the absence of Palestine. I always put the word in quotation marks because I dont believe it will ever exist as a state. Go and look at the Jewish colonies in the West Bank and its clear that Israel has no intention that it should exist in the future. But thats no excuse for Trump. In the spirit of the Balfour Declaration  which referred to Jews but to the Arabs as existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine  Trump downgrades the Arabs of Palestine to Palestinians.

Yet even at the start, the chicanery begins. Trump talks about very fresh thinking and new approaches. But there is nothing new about Jerusalem as Israels capital, since the Israelis have been banging on about this for decades. What is new is that  for the benefit of his party, Christian Evangelicals and those who claim to be American supporters of Israel  Trump has simply turned away from any notion of fairness in peace negotiations and run with Israels ball. Past presidents have issued waivers against the 1995 Jerusalem Congress Act, not because delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace but because that recognition should be given to the city as a capital for two peoples and two states  not one.

Then Trump tells us that his decision is in the best interests of the US. But he cant explain how  by effectively taking America out of future peace negotiations and destroying any claim (admittedly dubious by now) that the US is an honest broker in these talks  this will benefit Washington. It clearly wont  though it might help Trumps party funding  since it further lowers American power, prestige and standing across the Middle East. Then he claims that like every other sovereign nation, Israel has the right to determine its own capital. Up to a point, Lord Copper. For when another people  the Arabs rather than just the Jews  also want to claim that city as a capital (or at least the east of it), then that right is suspended until a final peace comes into existence.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

Israel may claim all of Jerusalem as its eternal and undivided capital  as Netanyahu also claims that Israel is the Jewish state, despite the fact that more than 20 per cent of the people of Israel are Muslim Arabs who live inside its borders  but Americas recognition of this claim means that Jerusalem can never be the capital of another nation. And heres the rub. We dont have the slightest idea of the real borders of this capital. Trump actually acknowledged this, in a line that went largely unreported, when he said that we are not taking a position on  the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. In other words, he recognised the sovereignty of a country over all of Jerusalem without knowing exactly where that citys borders lie.

In fact, we dont have the slightest idea of just where Israels eastern border is. Does it lie along the old front line that divided Jerusalem? Does it lie a mile or so to the east of east Jerusalem? Or does it lie along the Jordan river? In which case, goodbye Palestine. Trump has awarded Israel the right to a whole city as its capital but hasnt the slightest idea where the eastern border of this country is, let alone the frontier of Jerusalem.

The world was happy to accept Tel Aviv as a temporary capital  as it was to pretend that Jericho or Ramallah was the capital of the Palestine Authority after Arafat arrived there. But Jerusalem was not to be recognised as the Israeli capital even though Israel claimed it was. Then we have Trump stating that in this most successful democracy, people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience. I trust he wont be telling that to the more than two and a half million Palestinians in the West Bank who are not free to worship in Jerusalem without a special pass, or the population of besieged Gaza who cannot hope to reach the city. Yet Trump claims his decision is merely a recognition of reality. I suppose his ambassador in Tel Aviv  soon, presumably, in Jerusalem (if only, so far, in a hotel room)  believes this tosh; for it was he who claimed that Israel only occupied 2 per cent of the West Bank.

And this new embassy, when it is eventually completed, will become a magnificent tribute to peace, according to Trump. Given the bunkers into which most US embassies in the Middle East have turned, its going to be a place with armoured gates and pre-stressed concrete walls and lots of inner bunkers for its diplomatic staff. But by then, I suppose, Trump will be gone. Or will he?

As usual, we had the Trump waffle. He wants a great deal for the Israelis and Palestinians, a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides  even though this is not possible when hes recognised all of Jerusalem as Israeli before the so-called final status talks, which the world still fondly expects to take place between both sides. But if Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in these talks, if there was going to be disagreement and dissent about his announcement  all of which he said  then why on earth did he make the decision at all?

Only when he descended into Blair-like verbosity  that the future of the region was held back by bloodshed, ignorance and terror  did it really become too much to stomach any more of these lies. If people are supposed to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate, not violence, what is the recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital supposed to produce? A debate, for heavens sake? Is that what to rethink old assumptions means?

Enough of this twaddle. What more folly can this wretched man dream up and lie about? So what was going on in his befuddled mind when he made this decision? Sure, he wants to follow up on his campaign promises. But how come he decided to honour this promise but could not bring himself to say last April that the mass murder of a million and a half Armenians in 1915 constituted an act of genocide? He was obviously frightened of upsetting the Turks, who deny the first industrial holocaust of the 20th century. Well, hes sure upset the Turks now. Id like to think hed taken that into account. But forget it. The guy is crackers. And it will take many years for his country to recover from this latest act of folly.
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Amid the cacophony of reports, comments and tweets by Middle East analysts and world leaders on the US Presidents recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, and plans to relocate the embassy to the holy city, one broad conclusion seems to be shared by most: that it will serve as a death knell for the peace process. The decision, so the thinking goes, not only sends a signal to the Palestinians that the US is no longer an honest broker, but also prevents the possibility of a compromise over Jerusalem, one of the more contentious issues within negotiations for a final peace agreement.

However, as with so much thinking within the echo chamber of the elite about root causes of the impasse between the two parties, the alarmist reaction to the announcement from Washington regarding the injurious impact on peace seems divorced from reality, and ignores facts which run counter to the conclusion.

Here are five reasons why you should treat such claims with scepticism:

It doesnt impact potential Israeli concessions over Jerusalem

The Presidents announcement noted that his administration was not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders.

Indeed, even Israeli leaders who use rhetoric about an undivided Jerusalem have, in reality, made painful concessions about the future status of the city.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

For instance, despite the fact that, in 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel, his peace offer to Mahmoud Abbas that same year included a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem.

It does not change facts on the ground in Jerusalem

Though Israelis from across the political spectrum enthusiastically support the change in US policy, and view it as a mere recognition of reality (Jerusalem is where Israels legislature, Supreme Court and most government ministries are located), most realise that its value is largely symbolic.

Life in the city, for both Israelis and Palestinians, will go on as usual. Despite incendiary rhetoric from Palestinian leaders suggesting the decision is a declaration of war, the fact is that Muslim access to holy sites such as the Temple Mount, as Israels Prime Minister made clear in a video message today, will not change.

The embassy move is not inconsistent with Palestinian aspirations in Jerusalem

It seems virtually certain that the new US embassy, when its built a few years from now, will be located in west Jerusalem  in itself representing US recognition of Palestinian aspirations for a capital in east Jerusalem.

It may force Palestinians to engage in serious peace talks

A lot of Palestinian discourse denies not only Jews rights and history in the land of Israel, but erases the 3,000-year Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat, during peace talks in 2000, even reportedly denied that there was ever a Jewish temple in the city. Such deeply offensive and ahistorical claims sow serious doubts for Israelis that the Palestinians are genuinely committed to a peace that can only really be achieved through recognition of Jews inextricable connection to the land.

US affirmation of Jewish claims to their holiest city may help convince Palestinians that a campaign to rhetorically wipe Jerusalem off the Israeli map will not succeed, and that only by acknowledging Jews legitimate claims will they receive reciprocal Israeli recognition of their claims.

It may give Israelis more confidence about the peace process

Israelis have long viewed the denial of the right granted to every other nation to name their capital as not only a historic injustice, but an illustration of the international communitys systemic bias against the Jewish state.

Israelis soured on the peace process (though not on peace itself) in large part because of the Second Intifada, as well as the disastrous impact of territorial withdrawals, but also due to concerns that theyre always held to higher standards than the Palestinians.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

Whereas every new home built across the green line prompts outrage by the US, EU and UN, Israelis believe that Palestinians are granted a kind of moral impunity which allows them to escape rebuke for even the most egregiously irresponsible actions and rhetoric.

Contrary to oft-repeated media narratives, Israelis have not moved right; they have merely grown sceptical that peace can be achieved without a commitment by the West to impute moral agency to the Palestinians and demand that their leaders cease inculcating their people with propaganda denying Jewish history and Israels unreserved rights to the land.

Whatever ones views of the intentions of the 45th president, the message sent yesterday from the White House represented hope for Israelis, much needed tough love for the Palestinians and a clean break from the conventional wisdom which has governed, and arguably doomed, the peace process for decades.

Adam Levick is the managing editor of UK Media Watch
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As with a number of things that have outraged many outside the White House, it all started with a campaign promise.

President Donald Trump promised that he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and on Wednesday, nearing the end of his first year in office he finally followed through.

Administration officials had refused to confirm the announcement until the day before Trump took to the podium in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, despite numerous reports.

Recommended Protests erupt in Gaza as Palestinians respond to Jerusalem decision

Condemnation, which had become a running theme during the previous few days, came in a torrent after Trump had spoken. Fittingly, it was diplomacy that many other world leaders had worried about  with Mr Trump seeking to overturn decades of American foreign policy by declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel in addition to the embassy move.

Leaders from the region and beyond can rightly wring their hands in anxiety at the thought of protests  and potential violence  as well as progress lost in a peace process that was already looking difficult. There appears to be little immediate political gain for Trump, seemingly the one reason to upset the balance of one of the most thorny issues in world affairs, but to Trump that seems to matter little.

 Donald Trump officially recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Two of the things the President built his run to the White House on are being different from the political status quo, and the number of definitive promises he made to his base. Some of those, such as the border wall with Mexico and the repeal of Obamacare rely on many others, and some have floundered. But here was a decision that he could make alone and nobody could say Trump does not have the confidence to believe his way is right.

It is an easy win for Trump in terms of his supporters, and keeping his word, but also sets him at odds with previous presidents  a place he likes to be. While he signed a new six-month waiver deferring the moving of the US embassy  as every president has done since Congress passed a measure mandating the move in 1995  he made clear that the waivers didnt work. He portrayed himself as the man that would be the one to take the step his predecessors couldnt, even if some of them supported the move before making it into the White House.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

That reticence of previous presidents is a pointer of the difficulties that persist over Jerusalem and its place as part of a larger peace accord. But Trump may also believe that he can use such a dramatic change to bring about that peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The fact that the President sought to reassure the Palestinians and other nations in the region that he was not trying to declare a final decision on the status of Jerusalems disputed borders would suggest that his advisers had made clear that such a radical shift in policy needed some nuance. And that bigger difficulties  bringing the Palestinians back to the table in the wake of the announcement  lie ahead. Meanwhile, the fact that almost every other nation bar Israel condemned the move to various degrees shows that Trump may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Trump has always said that he would back himself to make a deal. But it is a massive  and seemingly ill-advised gamble  that has the potential to cause suffering for a great many without tangible reward.
iStock/Thinkstock(CHARLESTON, S. C.) -- Former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager has been sentenced to 19 to 24 years in prison for the deadly shooting of unarmed black man Walter Scott.



U.S. District Judge David Norton ruled today that the former officer committed second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. The judge's sentencing decision comes after Slager, who is white, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights offense.



Slager shot and killed Scott on April 4, 2015, while Slager was an officer with the North Charleston Police Department. Witness video that surfaced shortly after the encounter appeared to show the moment Slager fatally shot Scott as he ran away. He was fired from the force after the shooting.



Slager was charged in South Carolina with murder and pleaded not guilty. During the murder trial, Slager's attorney said his client shot Scott because he was in fear for his life. In 2016, the case ended in a mistrial. The state retrial and federal trial were expected to take place this year, but instead, in May Slager pleaded guilty to violating Scott's civil rights in federal court, ending the federal case against him and also resolving the state charges that were pending after the mistrial.



The judge's ruling today followed several days of testimony, including from Feiden Santana, the witness who filmed the shooting, and Judy Scott, Walter Scott's mother.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
ELKO  The Elko Planning Commission rejected a proposal Tuesday to ban marijuana sales in the city through a zoning amendment, in a narrow 4-3 vote.

The proposal was passed down to the Elko Planning Commission for recommendation after an initial vote by Elko City Council at their Oct. 24 meeting. Councilman John Patrick Rice was the only one on the five-member council to oppose the ban.

Now the proposal will return to the council, which may adopt the ban in spite of the planning commissions recommendation.

It is really rare for the City Council to go against the planning commissions recommendation, but we have done it before, Rice told the Elko Daily Free Press. My opinion on the issue is that the people of Nevada voted for it, so the people of Elko deserve the same liberties as they have. I dont think the vote will change at council, but we will be discussing it.

Police Chief Ben Reed assembled news articles and research that indicated there would be further strains on local law enforcement if the amendment was not passed.

As officers we take an oath to uphold the state, local, and federal laws, said Lt. Ty Trouten in presenting Reeds notes to the planning commission. When these laws do not align, then it creates issues for the Elko Police Department. There have been mixed studies that do not show the benefits of marijuana. It interferes with cash transactions for any business and that leads to more targets for robberies, accompanied by DUI issues and traffic control problems for those businesses if it did not pass, and complaints for minors would rise if this passed. Law enforcement is not in favor of either should we be at liability, as there would be no additional funding to provide resources to the additional law enforcement to address these problems.

Commissioner Stefan Beck brought up several questions about how the zoning amendment would affect the states rights versus the citys view of the issue. Beck also commented on how other businesses in different cities in the state have licenses to sell, and then questioned how the state could also potentially stop the drug from coming across the border or limiting the illegal drug trades in the state.

Commissioner Kevin Hodur commented throughout the hearing how the two options sitting in front of the council troubled him, as the only barrier on the issue seemed to be the federal law which prohibits it.

City Attorney Dave Stanton was present to answer questions regarding the difference between state, local and federal laws on the issue, as well as identify the key differences between a zoning ordinance and the business licensing procedures for the City of Elko.

This is to prohibit business and its currently unlawful under the Federal Controlled Substance Act, said Stanton. We also have to keep in mind the neighboring Indian tribe as a sovereign nation who operates under different regulations and who tabled the issue of a dispensary recently. Also, its just a very complex issue, but the land use would enable people to make plans for their subsequent property. It just needs to be addressed one way or another.

Assistant City Manager Scott Wilkinson also commented to the commission that if they didnt address the issue it would leave the City of Elko open to litigation at any time on the issue of marijuana businesses.

Commissioner Jeff Dalling commented that people could easily drive to Las Vegas or Reno to purchase the drug. Commissioner David Freistroffer talked extensively about weighing the option to revisit the issue to address the business licensing aspect and its potential for the city.

The more access there is to a drug, the more usage there is, said Commissioner Aaron Martinez toward the end of the discussion.

Hodur moved to forward a recommendation to city council to not approve the amendment. Beck seconded the motion.

Dalling, Martinez, and Tera Hooiman voted against the motion. Freistroffer and John Anderson voted with Hodur and Beck to pass the motion.

The planning commission is a recommending board to the city council, Rice told the Elko Daily. They take a closer look at these things and look to follow and interpret statutes pretty closely. Theres part of the statute that says that they cannot issue a business license if they are not in compliance with local, state and federal law.

The Elko City Council will have a second public hearing on the amendment at their next meeting Dec. 12, taking the Planning Commissions recommendation into account.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. is eliminating at least 90 local jobs as part of its plan to move some operational functions from Winston-Salem to Charlotte and London.

The company filed Wednesday a WARN Act notice with the Winston-Salem mayors office and the N.C. Commerce Department. The company said it will take until July to complete the elimination of what it called administrative support jobs, a term it did not further define.

Krispy Kreme has 150 employees at its Knollwood Street headquarters and 554 employees overall in Forsyth County, according to its last count to the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce.

That means the company is eliminating about 16 percent of its local workforce.

Krispy Kreme said in the WARN notice that all affected employees have been notified, and they will remain on the payroll with benefits for at least 60 days. They also will receive their share of the companys 2017 bonus payments.

In both the notice and a statement to the media, Krispy Kreme said it will keep its global headquarters in Winston-Salem. The company is also maintaining its Ivy Avenue production plant and its equipment production facility off U.S. 311.

While a majority of employees will remain in the area, some Winston-Salem-based employees will relocate to new locations, according to the statement.

The company confirmed in October that it would create an operational presence in Charlotte.

The company did not have a response Wednesday when asked about which jobs  and how many  are going to Charlotte.

Sources have told the Winston-Salem Journal that senior management, marketing, training, construction and design headquarters employees would be among those moving to Charlotte or being hired there, while finance and information technology headquarters jobs would be moving to a smaller space in Winston-Salem.

Employees have told the Journal that Krispy Kremes international business is expected to move to the companys operations in London. The statement appears to confirm a transition of some international operations by referring to a new office in London in 2018.

We have spoken with our employees for several months about the journey that Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is on to transform into a global company, the company said in its statement.

We told employees that as we chart our path forward, we know that the structure we have today is not the structure we will need to accomplish this ambitious mission.

That includes enhancing its digital and international infrastructure and revenue opportunities, the company said.

To create the most awesome doughnut experience imaginable, we must succeed in new arenas, such as digital evolution, as well as focus significant efforts behind consumer convenience and new product innovation.

In order to best position our talent and infrastructure to enable that growth, we are making necessary, but difficult, changes to our business.

The company said it continues to deeply value our heritage and attachment to Winston-Salem, and will continue to invest in the area.

Krispy Kreme has been privately held since July 2016 when it was bought for $1.35 billion by JAB Beech, a subsidiary of German private-investment group JAB Holdings Inc.

When JAB Beech bought Krispy Kreme, it pledged to retain local management, the local headquarters and the local workforce.

The company has been based in Winston-Salem since being established by Vernon Rudolph in Old Salem in July 1937.

The sources say a potential move to Charlotte would be part of an overall JAB effort to raise Krispy Kremes profile as a premium brand.

I certainly feel empathy for each of the individuals who are being displaced and wish them well in finding other positions, Mayor Allen Joines said.

I am pleased, of course, that the corporate headquarters will remain in Winston-Salem, as will the manufacturing operations.

Joines said in October that chief executive Mike Tattersfield indicated the company would require less space in Winston-Salem as part of establishing a presence in Charlotte. He said Tattersfield mentioned the possibility of creating a company museum at whatever new site it takes in Winston-Salem.

We told him we would be happy to work with them on whatever issues they have, and he said he would give us that chance, particularly with the new space needs, Joines said.

Joines said he has heard, and sources have told the Journal, that Krispy Kreme is saying it is struggling to find skilled workers in Winston-Salem, and that some officials new to the company say Winston-Salem is proving to be a challenge to recruiting potential employees accustomed to living in a bigger city.

It could come down to a preference of senior leadership on what presence Krispy Kreme keeps in Winston-Salem, Joines said.

Gayle Anderson, president and chief executive of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, said that while we regret the loss of any jobs, we are pleased the headquarters will remain in Winston-Salem.

We are confident that local employers will be interested in hiring many of the experienced professionals who will be leaving Krispy Kreme and wish to remain here.
Homelessness has declined in Indiana, according to the latest national estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While overall homelessness increased by 0.7 percent nationally since 2016, since 2010 there has been a national decline of 13.1 percent. HUDs 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress found the following regarding homelessness across Indiana:

 5,438 people were homeless, an overall 6.2 percent decrease from 2016 (360 individuals) and a 15.7 percent decrease from 2010 (1,014).

 4,869 homeless persons (89.5 percent) were located in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs while 569 (11.7 percent) were unsheltered.

 The number of unsheltered homeless individuals in 2017 (541) decreased by 18.8 percent from 2016 and by 36.5 percent from 2010.

 The number of families with children experiencing homelessness in 2017 (1,815) declined by 8.1 percent (159 families) since 2016 and by 36.6 percent (1,049) since 2010.

HUDs national estimate is based on data reported by approximately 3,000 cities and counties across the nation.
When I was in college, I was sexually harassed by two male professors.

The first was an economics professor. He was from a part of Africa that I can no longer recall, and he had a very thick accent. On one particular day, the topic this professor discussed in class was especially confusing. The complexity of the subject matter coupled with the professors thick accent that was difficult for me to understand led me to stay after class to try to get a better understanding of the days curriculum and clarity on the homework he assigned.

As I began speaking, the professor had a strange look on his face. Today I would describe the look as sinister, but as a college sophomore, I just thought he was weird. The professor explained the lesson in a way that I could understand. He told me he wanted me to succeed, so if I was dedicated to working one-on-one with him for an hour after each class, he believed hed see a big improvement in my comprehension. Excited that I finally understood the lesson and eager to continue on that path, I immediately agreed.

The next time I stayed after class for my one-on-one session, the professor had that same weird look on his face, but I also noticed his eyes would wander up and down my body. I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I disregarded his invasive stares. During the third private session, the professor began speaking very direct to me. He flirted openly and he made inappropriate comments. I never met him for the one-on-one sessions again. One day after class, the professor stopped me as I was leaving. He told me he knew economics was not an easy subject for me and that he would give me an A in the class if I visited him off campus.

That scared me. I quickly told him no and left.

During the next few classes, he would do lewd things while looking at me in class, things some people might dismiss, like licking his lips or resting his folded hands in front of his groin. I didnt dismiss his actions, because with each gesture he had that disgusting look on his face.

I felt exposed even though I was in a room full of other students. Eventually the stress of his inappropriate behavior got the best of me. Rather than endure any more uncomfortable feelings, I dropped his class.

It took me over a year before I told anyone the real reason I dropped his class. Instead, I told my friends and family it was because the course was difficult and I had a hard time understanding him because of his strong accent.

The other professor who sexually harassed me also said inappropriate things. He even looked up my info in the mass communications department database and called me at my apartment once. I told that professor I wasnt interested in his advances. I wasnt in his class, but he was an up-and-coming professor in my department, so I would often see him. Though he didnt call me again, from time to time when we passed one another in the hallway or any other area, he would make very suggestive comments.

I never reported either professor.

I often wonder why I didnt report the men. I think it was a myriad of reasons: I was a busy college student who also worked full time; I didnt want to worry my mother, who was hundreds of miles away; and I didnt have any proof to support my claims of harassment, so I thought no one would believe me over two esteemed professors. If I am honest, I also think I dismissed their actions as something dirty old men do.

Now I know better.

Throughout my career, I have had men sexually harass me  either through words or certain gestures. However, unlike the shy, quiet college student, I asserted myself and was very direct in communicating how I disapproved of their inappropriate behavior.

By asserting myself, I thwarted their efforts. I am fortunate to have been able to keep sexual advances at bay, however, some women arent as lucky.

This is why the #MeToo movement is so monumental.

After the allegations surrounding Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein surfaced, women around the world began telling their stories of sexual harassment, and the #MeToo movement intensified. Weve seen dozens of celebrities fall from grace as their accusers came forward. In many instances, the celebrities have been suspended or terminated by their employers. While I do believe some claims need to be substantiated, it is good that employers are denouncing such actions. Hollywood is sending a clear message of intolerance. The political realm should follow suit. The fact there are so many politicians whose victims have come forward, yet the elected officials have been defiant in their refusal to step down, is sickening. The fact that we have an American president who has a demonstrated history of sexual harassment is even more appalling.

It is long past time we address the horrifying reality of sexual harassment. However, with movements like #MeToo (TIME Magazines person of the year) in full swing, I think we are well on our way.
More than six million people call Indiana home, and new laws impacting all of them will be passed during the upcoming session of the states 2018 General Assembly.

When that session begins next month, the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus (IBLC) will lead efforts to address several urgent concerns.

Formed in 1979, the IBLC supports sound policies for all Hoosiers, but specializes in advocating solutions to the unique challenges facing residents of color throughout the state. The Caucus includes African-American and Latino members of the Indiana House and Senate.

Last week, the IBLC received national attention as it completed a four-day conference with the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) in Indianapolis, which welcomed lawmakers from across the country to develop solutions to pressing problems and promote interest in government among youth.

We want to be more visible around the state, particularly in African-American and minority communities, said Rep. Cherrish Pryor, DDistrict 94, current chair of the IBLC. I want people to know that we are there for them, and if they have issues we can assist with, we will.

Pryor told the Recorder that the caucus will be focused on several critical issues during the upcoming session. Those issues were developed largely from concerns expressed by residents throughout the state, especially those who participated in the IBLCs town hall meetings earlier this year.

For example, IBLC members will present new legislation to address rising concerns in urban communities about gentrification, the displacement of an areas poor residents after urban renewal brings an influx of wealthier people to the area.

Pryor stated that the IBLC is concerned about how that process affects longtime residents in older areas of Marion County, such as Center Township, who are in danger of losing their homes, especially those living in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

They have seen the assessed value of their properties go up, along with an increase in property taxes, Pryor said. Its making it difficult for them to pay those taxes, because oftentimes the houses are owned outright with no mortgage. So they are having to come up with a huge amount of money two times a year.

Another issue the IBLC will address is relief for the shortage of available nutritious food, or food deserts, which is a challenge not only in rural areas, but also urban communities where higher than average numbers of minorities reside. Efforts to address that issue have been led largely by Rep. Robin Shackleford, DDistrict 98, vice-chair of the IBLC.

This issue is having a major impact across the board, especially with the recent closings of grocery stores, Pryor said.

She also mentioned concerns about high diabetes rates among African-Americans and noted that the IBLC will present legislation to require more data to be collected by the state to help reduce those rates.

Pryor noted that IBLC member Rep. Greg Porter, DDistrict 96, has focused on the possibility of legislation to require the use of special prosecutors to examine cases involving police-action shootings.

In addition, the IBLC will strongly support renewed efforts to pass a comprehensive hate crimes bill during the session. Currently, Indiana is one of only five states that does not have a hate crimes law that prohibits specific crimes based on hate and intolerance.

We have been trying to get hate crimes legislation passed for years, and we will present that again along with racial profiling legislation, Pryor said.

The IBLC will also make its voice heard during a likely debate over the licensing policies for firearms, particularly handguns.

As it goes into the 2018 General Assembly, the IBLC has 14 members, mostly from Lake and Marion counties. However, the caucus has gradually expanded its numbers and is returning to its historical position of having seats outside of those counties.

For example, in 2016 the IBLC welcomed Rep. Joe Taylor III, who became the first African-American elected to the legislature from South Bend (in St. Joseph County) since Rep. Valjean Dickinson served during the 1960s.

For the past 20 years, all members of the IBLC have been Democrats. Therefore, they operate as an important unit of the general Democratic caucus, led by Tim Lanane, DDistrict 25, in the Senate and Rep. Terry Goodin, D-District 66, in the House.

Goodin was elected as Democratic House Minority Leader last month, and one of his first official acts in that capacity was to recognize the imminent retirement of Rep. Charlie Brown, DDistrict 3. Brown, who was first elected in 1982, is the senior member of the IBLC and recently announced that he will leave the legislature next year.

Pryor said Brown played a key role in the establishment of the Healthy Indiana Plan and has been a champion for civil rights legislation, childhood immunization, smoking reduction and assistance to seniors in purchasing affordable drugs through the Hoosier Rx program. Goodin joked that most people could not imagine a stranger couple of friends than a good old boy from southern Indiana and a sophisticated gentleman from the big city, yet that has been the case for him and Brown.

I could not imagine a better person to introduce me to the wilds of the legislative process, and I have not had a better friend in my time serving in the Indiana House, Goodin said.

Several community organizations throughout the state have stood in solidarity with the IBLC in addressing certain issues. Most recently, the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana and the Indy Chamber held a press conference at the Indiana Statehouse to join the IBLC in support of a new hate crimes bill.

From a business perspective, were looking at inclusion and the perception of our state overall, said Tim Brown, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Indy Chamber. We want to make sure that Indiana is always looked at as a welcoming state and is open for business to include all.

He said the chamber is in solid agreement with the IBLCs endorsement of a law that says the state will not tolerate crimes that demonstrate hate, bigotry or intolerance because of an individuals race, religion or beliefs.

Tim Brown added that the Indy Chamber is also looking forward to working with members of the IBLC on issues such as early childhood education, restoring eligibility for in-state tuition for foreign-born students who graduate from state schools, and the creation of local option income tax to address unemployment.

Tim Brown said an average of 162,000 people enter Marion County from surrounding counties to work and conduct business but do not contribute revenue from their income to the local tax base, because they are taxed where they live.

It is important to look at what that does for our infrastructure, the criminal justice system, and roads and bridges as people come into Marion County, he said.

For more information about the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus and to receive updates via email and social media, visit indianahousedemocrats.org/iblc.

Black Caucus
For two decades, a group of Christians and Muslims have gathered every Wednesday at noon at Shapiros Delicatessen in Indianapolis for dialogue and deli sandwiches.

They are part of the Focolare Movement, founded when the leaders of two religious movements  Imam W. D. Mohammed of the American Society of Muslims based in Chicago, and Chiara Lubich of the Focolare Movement based in Italy  asked their followers to begin a discussion. Encouraged by St. John Paul II, who was pope at the time, Lubich and Mohammed brought together their followers to know each other. This created an interfaith family with mutual love of brothers and sisters.

Our interfaith group began in 1996 when Imam Mohammad traveled to meet Pope John Paul II. While he was there, he was introduced to Lubich, said Michael Saahir, one of the founders of the Indianapolis interfaith movement. Lubich founded a movement that dates back to 1943. She began to put her life in peril to help other people, not knowing they were starting a movement. She based her work on the Bible verse reading, in part, that all of them may be one, Father.

The beginning

Following their teachings, Saahir and three other men met with Focolare leaders from Chicago when they were in town. They met for dinner at Shapiros. After the Chicago guests left town, the Indy men met again. And again. And again. Every week for 20 years, the growing interfaith group has met for lunch to share their experiences.

Interfaith is the new religion for humanity, said Saahir. I say that because were living in a smaller world because of communication, travel  which makes family closer together. Having a group that recognizes that is very important.

Saahir is a lifelong resident of Indianapolis and has been Imam of the Nur-Allah Islamic Center for almost 25 years. He retired from the Indianapolis Fire Department in January. He is the author of two books and has also taken the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca.

Our group is predominantly Muslim, Baptist and Catholic. Along the way weve had people from the Jewish community. People have come from the military. Weve even had cult members, said Saahir.

Saahir said the group does not talk about religion a lot, but instead searches for commonality.

What we have learned is, after we take a step to have commonality, that builds a foundation to now have more freedom or latitude in this conversation and trust. As a result of that, we found out what our differences are, but we were just saying the same thing in a different way, he said. Now we have communication, trust, better understanding of terms and phrases. Then we can go further  how we can help and affirm each other in our faiths?

The group was also fueled by a background of profound conflict and religious differences  the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the war in Iraq, the never-ending conflicts beween Israel and Palestine  but the group evolved to focus on personal events such as high school and college graduations, weddings and funerals.

Interfaith is life

Michael Wilson, a retired Army colonel and chaplain, was drawn to the interfaith group after his son-in-law, who is Muslim, told him about it.

I came to Indy in 1985 initially, but I went off of active duty around 94 and I met my wife, Annie, who has passed. Annies son is Muslim, and I wanted to meet with an interfaith group that included Islam as a part of it. They were meeting at Shapiros, and I suspect it was in the late 90s that I started meeting with them every week. Weve been together 20 years. I started meeting with them when I was a chaplain with St. Vincent, said Wilson.

As an army chaplain, Wilson has had lots of experience with people of different faiths.

My life is interfaith, he said.

In the Army, Wilson supervised chaplains of other faiths. He wore a cross, while Jewish chaplains wore a tablet and Muslim chaplains wore a crest.

For a long time, chaplaincy looked more Christian and not (inclusive) to other faiths, Wilson explained. Our insignias and everything else I have seen has changed for the better. It has changed to be interfaith.

A milestone

Amidst 20 years of political and religious turmoil, against all odds, the group has survived.

We never would have thought wed be doing this 20 years later, said Saahir. We did something we didnt think would work or last.

The group has evolved over time. In the beginning, they had to overcome racial divides, while now they deal with political and religious strife.

We are living during the Trump era, where he has taken direct aim at Muslims. When I first started coming to Shapiros we went to war because Muslims had hijacked planes and flew them into the World Trade Center. We have endured during all of that and dialogued with each other rather than war with one another, said Wilson, adding that getting along within the group is simple.

We just do it. We dont make it complicated, he said. This is where were at. This is what were about. This is what we do. We come together on whats common. It helps serve as a model for others who may not be secure in their faith.
ELKO  Slow internet speeds affecting Spring Creek customers were brought to the attention of a team from Gov. Brian Sandovals office Wednesday, who are searching for ways to improve data service to the growing community.

At a meeting of business and government leaders Dec. 6, Jojo Myers Campos, broadband manager for the Governors Office of Science, Innovation and Technology, and members of the E-Rate Central Nevada team discussed options for Spring Creek and Elko County residents to receive high-speed internet.

The goal for the meeting was to examine a whole community approach, Myers Campos said, and lay a strong enough foundation and a thick enough foundation  for our future progress.

Including Spring Creek in the discussion was important to tie in  and connect the dots to prevent having a fragmented community, she said.

Myers Campos also cautioned that it could take some time before results of the meeting could be seen.

Nothing in broadband happens fast, she said. Were just now starting this journey.

Jessie Bahr, Spring Creek Association president and general manager, said Spring Creek residents have been dealing with slow internet speeds for years and asked the team for guidance in resolving problems with Frontier Communications, the areas main provider.

We have a population thats growing, Bahr said. [The population] is rivaling Elko. Its coming up quickly.

Currently, an urgent care is under construction and a new elementary school  both in the Marina Hills area  is set to break ground next year. The projects increase the need for stronger internet service, along with homeowner and business owner needs, Bahr said.

What can we do? Our homeowners are crying out to us and they are in such frustration, Bahr said.

Its a constant headache for some residents who take online classes, she said, explaining that she has met with Frontier representatives and is working with the Attorney Generals Bureau of Consumer Protection to resolve the matter.

More than 50 complaints about Frontier have been received by the BCP, Bahr said. We dont know what route to go.

Myers Campos said Frontier Communications provides a four-gigabyte circuit to Spring Creek, but they dont have the equipment on the other end for that four-gig circuit.

M. Duane Barton, computer systems director for the Elko County School District, told the team that potential fiber optic cables needed for the schools could be used by other businesses as a transport back into town.

The cables would go up to Spring Creek High School, Barton said; however, there were plans to extend it to the new elementary school in Marina Hills.

Rise Broadband is another option for Elko/Spring Creek customers, Bahr said, but she wasnt sure about their capacity.

Rise is in the process of building an enterprise system, said David Kirkham, vice president of information technology at the Elko Federal Credit Union, adding it would service business customers in Elko. Where that project is right at the moment, I have no idea.

Ken Krater, owner and developer of Ruby Vista Ranch in Spring Creek, said he has been in talks with Southwest Gas Corp. for a natural gas pipeline to service a planned residential area next to the association, and believes the trench could be used for a fiber optic cable.

[It] affords the opportunity to jointly trench and put in a conduit for fiber optic lines and bring that right into the heart of the Spring Creek area, Krater said.

Another goal is to find out who wants to be a player in talks to be an internet provider. Myers Campos said AT&T is not interested because Frontier is the primary in the area, leaving AT&T a wireless solution only, and I would be shocked if Frontier wants to be a player.

Myers Campos said she attended the consumer session in September and said she wanted to help.

Right now, we want to keep the whole community approach, she said.

The team is in Elko for two days of meetings with community members who represent public safety, health care and businesses.

Clarification: This article has been changed to explain how AT&T serves the area.
The 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation reminds me of my visit to Sudan in the mid-1990s. One of my hosts was a Sudanese Anglican priest. He took me to three Lutheran churches in the large Sudanese refugee areas in Khartoum. The refugee areas were the result of the Sudanese Civil War. It was there that he shared how he had been called to become a Lutheran. He said Martin Luthers teachings on the communal life as an approach to mission work attracted him to Lutheranism. Michal Valco identifies this teaching by Luther this way: United in faith to Christ, believers are moved by the Holy Spirit away from religious schemes of merit to a theocentric, communal vision of life in true devotion, which not merely produces new obedience but entails it.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was an Augustinian friar and Biblicist who was inspired by church leaders like St. Augustine of Hippo Regis. St. Augustine was North African and lived from 354 to 430 A.D. He was also a Roman Catholic bishop of North Africa. St. Augustine is viewed as one of the most important church fathers and theologians in Western Christianity. He emphasized the primacy of the Bible over church officials and developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. Martin Luther, like Augustine, also believed that humans could not reach salvation by their own acts, but that only God could bestow salvation by his divine grace.

These historic Christian perspectives remind us that we are called to live together graciously with a vision of community inside and outside of churches. Luther looked again to Africa as a historic source for thinking about and engaging this vision. Recently the Rev. Dr. David Daniels of McCormick Theological Seminary, a Bishop with the Church of God in Christ, argued for this. He stated that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, established in 333 A.D., was an important contributor to this.

Daniels makes four claims about Luthers encounter in 1534 with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. One of the claims is that Luther had a theological conversation with an Ethiopian cleric named Michael the Deacon. A second claim is Martin Luther extended full communion to Michael the Deacon and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In his third claim, Daniels states that Luther held Ethiopian Christianity in high esteem. More specifically, Daniels points to Luthers alignment with certain claims of the church.

In sum, Martin Luther embraced certain perspectives of church leaders in Africa and invited a new community of church relationships outside of the familiar Eurocentric church communities he primarily associated with. These lessons of advancing community in African refugee areas and among diverse racial-ethnic churches in Africa and Europe should inspire us anew to do likewise. In so doing we advance a world that can help us end hunger and poverty. May this season of the 500th anniversary inspire us anew.

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan-African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World in Washington, D.C.
ELKO  Nevada Health Link and the Governors Consumer Health Advocate will host an enrollment event Dec. 11 in Griswold Hall as the deadline for enrollment approaches.

Participants will be able to ask questions about the program and get information about coverage. Spanish-speaking representatives will be available.

If you already have insurance, we can make sure it meets your familys needs and is the most affordable you can qualify for, stated the groups.

The event runs from 2-7 p.m. at 701 Walnut St., Room 31. Refreshments will be provided.

Dec. 15 is the last day to sign up for the state-run insurance plan.
On the eve of his arrival, Erdogan demanded changes to the Treaty of Lausanne, questioned the competence of the Greek judiciary in handling his extradition request for eight Turkish military officers, and referred to the Muslim minority of Thrace as Turkish compatriots, triggering a stern response from the Greek
At a critical moment for the region, with tensions and a migration crisis, with Syria and EU-Turkey ties, it is our duty to construct a dialogue so as to find a solution to complex problems and challenges, Alexis Tsipras told the Turkish
Confirmed: Trump to Declare Jerusalem Israels Capital

By Stephen Lendman

December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Declaring it will flagrantly violate international law. Jerusalem is an international city under a UN protectorate. Israel wants it entirely Judaized for its exclusive capital, Palestinians shut out.

For Zionists, the city is politically important, calling it the historic Jewish capital, its national and religious center, as well as the symbol of Judaisms revival and prominence.

For Christians, its where Jesus lived and died. For Muslims, its their third holiest site (the Al-Aqsa Mosque) after Meccas Sacred Mosque and the Mosque of the Prophet in Madina.

Candidate Trump disgracefully pledged recognizing the city as Israels capital. On Wednesday, hell deliver, a White House statement saying hell make a major announcement on Jerusalem at 1:00PM EST  infuriating Palestinians, the Arab street and world community.

According to unnamed White House officials, hell sign a waiver, delaying the move of Americas embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by six months for logistical reasons, a US consulate maintained in the city.

He may delay it again, an administration official saying it could take years before completing the move. His address later on Wednesday will exclude a timeline.

His decision is further proof of the peace process hoax, the latest chapter dead before initiated. East Jerusalem as Palestines exclusive capital is fundamental for Palestinians. The issue is nonnegotiable.

Without it, peace is unattainable  precisely what Washington and Israel want, pretending otherwise. A legitimate peace process never existed, for sure not now with Ziofascists infesting the Trump administration.

Claiming to seek regional peace is a useful fiction, giving Israel maximum time to steal all valued Judea and Samaria land for exclusive Jewish development.

Palestinians are increasingly confined to isolated cantons, their fundamental rights denied, Gazans besieged by suffocating blockade, the Strip invaded and terror-bombed at Israels discretion.

The world community largely ignores a decade-long Israeli atrocity, two million Gazans victimized by its ruthlessness. So are all Palestinians, including diaspora ones, denied their fundamental right of return.

In his Wednesday address, Trump is expected to express support for Palestinian statehood. So have previous US presidents, saying one thing, delivering nothing but endless pain and suffering for millions of Palestinians  viciously oppressed by a ruthless occupying power, its high crimes supported by Washington.

Other than Saudi Arabia and perhaps a few other despotic states, the world community strongly opposes Trumps move.

Reportedly, he and Netanyahu conspired in advance, other leaders he spoke to not informed until Tuesday.

Following his announcement on Wednesday, Netanyahu will deliver an address on the move  two bad actors plotting against fundamental Palestinian rights, pretending to want peace, undermining it by their actions.

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi blasted Trump, saying hes hell-bent on annihilating the chances of peace and destroying the stability and security of the entire region and beyond, provoking violence and playing into the hands of extremists and terrorists around the world.

His action is illegal (and) designed to inflame religious and spiritual sentimentsraising the specter of sectarianism and religious strife.

Oslo promised Palestinians East Jerusalem as their exclusive capital. No country has its embassy in the city, America the sole outlier if Trump makes the move.

Americans for Peace Now called the plan pyromaniacal, a gift to Zionist extremists, wanting to blow up (the latest chapter of the) peace process before it begins.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Abbas said recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital and moving Americas embassy there would end the peace process.

Fire and fury Trump warned North Korea about could erupt in Occupied Palestine and the Arab street.

Israels claim of the city as its exclusive capital has no validity. Nor does Trumps action, aimed at inciting conflict, not resolving it.

Stephen Lendmann - My newest book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III. - www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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Palestine leader Abbas: The US has chosen to go against all bilateral and international agreements

Why Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel : Israeli jurisdiction and ownership of Jerusalem, is not recognised by the international community, including the United States.

Palestinians Declare Three 'Days of Rage' Across West Bank; Arab World Outraged

Abbas and Haniyeh close ranks on Trump declaration : Hamas leader tells Al Jazeera he and Abbas agreed during phone conversation on need to stage protests over Trump's expected declaration on Jerusalem;

Prepare for violence : The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem instructed U.S. government personnel and their families not to travel to the Old City or to the occupied West Bank.

Progressive U.S. Jews Slam Trump Over Jerusalem Move : Jewish American groups blamed the president of ignorance and of 'irresponsible' decision-making

House passes legislation to restrict US aid to Palestinians

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Slapstick In Kiev

By Moon Of Alabama

December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Today a slapstick comedy played out in Kiev. It's background though is mysterious.

In 2015 the billionaire currently ruling the Ukraine by the grace of Washington, Petro Poroshenko, invited the disgraced former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, to run the city and region of Odessa. Saakashvili is charged in is home country Georgia with abuse of office and he has lost his Georgian citizenship.

The administration of Odessa is as corrupt as any other in the Ukraine but the money was flowing into the wrong pockets. Saakashvili set out to change that. He soon stepped on the sensible toes of some mighty people. After a year Poroshenko dismissed him. Saakashvili moved to the capital Kiev and started a ruckus against his former benefactor. Soon he was under investigation and accused of this or that criminal deed. When as he traveled outside of the country his Ukrainian passport was revoked and his reentry into the Ukraine was prohibited. Saakashvili entered anyway under the protection of some mysteriously paid supporters and moved back to Kiev. He recently led several protests marches against Poroshenko. Saakashvili was again indicted, this time for allegedly being paid by Moscow to arrange for a "Russian winter" coup against Poroshenko in Ukraine. Today the police went to arrest him at his apartment in Kiev.

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When the police arrived Saakashvili fled onto the roof of the eight story house where he was caught (vid) by the police.

He was brought to the ground and pushed into a police van.

His supporters, who somehow had arrived in mass, blocked the road. After an hour and some clashes with the police they freed him (video) from the vehicle.

Saakashvili and his supporters went to hold a protest in front of the parliament. At the same time the Ukrainian Prosecutor General reported inside the parliament of tapped phone-calls in which some Russian middleman agrees to pay Saakashvili half a million for running more protests. Local TV transmitted a split-screen live stream of both.

One wonders what this really is about.

Who pays Saakashvili and his "protesters"?

What does Saakashvili, or the people behind him, want?

Why doesn't Poroshenko arrest Saakashvili in some unsuspicions moment?

Why not let him have an 'accident'?

Why not deport him to Georgia where he would likely go to jail?

This article was originally published by Moon Of Alabama -

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Home The Silence of the Empires Lambs Half of our Tax Money Goes down the Rabbit Hole of Military Spending By Philip A Farruggio December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - In Jonathan Demmes superb 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, homicidal manic Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) asks FBI agent Sparrow (Jodie Foster) about the killing of the Spring lambs. She relates how the lambs all went to their slaughter in silence. Such it is with most of our Amerikan public, under the command of our current empire. Many go forth to their demise in relative apathetic silence: Half of our tax money goes down the rabbit hole of military spending , with few complaints or perhaps even FULL RECOGNITION of this fact from the Congress, the mainstream media and of course John and Joan Q Public.

This new Tax Reform Bill AKA Giveaway to the Super Rich, the Corporations and the Pentagon will cut more and more of the once cherished Safety Net while not one word of how much is still being spent on the military.

The propaganda spin that We are at war will continue to mesmerize most of the public and of course the media and Congress.

We have NOT been officially At war since Congress last declared war was in 1941.

Our military operates out of over 1000 bases in over 100 different countries, and we still occupy Afghanistan and parts of Iraq ILLEGALLY!

All of our sporting events still spend the opening minutes in celebration of our military even though we are NOT at war!

Many of our neighbors drive around with cars carrying specialized license plates honoring our military, as if we are still At war.

Ever notice how the born again right wingers love to huddle around Jesus, as if he would ever condone our immoral and illegal invasions/occupations? Or if he would ever condone this obscene current system which celebrates the super rich? Any of those holy rollers remember their New Testament: As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? There is still one thing you havent done, he told him. Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.At this the mans face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God! This madness is frightening to say the least. It is as if fewer and fewer Amerikans will stand up to this craziness that is actually bankrupting us! Cutting taxes on the super rich and the already super rich corporations (where CEOs and top executives earn in the MEGA MILLIONS) while the overwhelming majority of working stiffs like you and me are a few paychecks away from financial desperation is almost criminal! Meanwhile, the drumbeat for more phony wars continues. This time take your pick: North Korea, Syria or Iran maybe soon they will con you once again into another Cold War with Russia. God forbid they even try to factor in China, because those folks will pull out of our bonds and T-bills and really bankrupt us! What is the solution to this mess? This writer plans to once again get out on the street corners of my town in a weekly peaceful protest. You see, it is NOT just about the new Caretaker for the Military Industrial Empire. Yes, this new guy is really bad news. Alas, if Mrs. Clinton was now in office ( as with Mr. Obama ) this  Military madness  would be just as bad. My sign will read: Save our Cities..Our Troops.. Our Safety Net. End this Military Industrial Empire!! Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research ,Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show,  Its the Empire Stupid with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net ) ==== Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. This website encourages readers to use the "Report" link found at the base of each comment. When a predetermined number of ICH readers click on the "Report" link, the comment will be automatically sent to "moderation". This would appear to be the most logical way to allow open comments, where you the reader/supporter, can determine what is acceptable speech. Please don't use the report feature simply because you disagree with the author point of view. Treat others with respect, remembering that "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."- Benjamin Franklin. Please read our Comment Policy before posting - Search Information Clearing House === Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.
An Arab Nightmare

By Robert Fisk

December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Amid three catastrophic Middle East wars, it would be difficult to imagine anything more provocative, dangerous  or just plain insane  than for the Americans to move their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Yet that is just what Donald Trump is this week thinking of doing. In a way, we should have expected this: mad presidents do mad things.

But is there no one in the White House able to restrain him? Not even Jared Kushner, who is supposed to be Trumps Middle East hand? Or is Kushner too bound up in his latest scandal  just revealed by Newsweek, that he failed to disclose his co-directorship of a foundation funding illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank when he filed financial records with the Office of Government Ethics this year  to speak out?

For its not that the embassy itself is just a symbolic move. It means that the United States would acknowledge that the city of Jerusalem, sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians, is the capital of the Israeli state, and that the Palestinians can never share it. The slovenly peace process  abandoned by the Israelis, then by the Palestinians and then by the Americans years ago, although statesmen still talk about it in the dream world in which they live  would no longer exist even in our imaginations.

Thats why everyone from Macron to Erdogan, from the Saudis to the EU, and of course the poor old Palestinians, have been variously criticising and condemning Trumps potential decision. If he doesnt sign the old waiver  which has to be renewed every six months  to the US law to move the embassy, then he will indeed, to quote the Palestinian leadership, be risking an ethnic conflict.

Arent there enough wars in the Middle East to keep even the crazed White House busy? Trump has long ago taken the Sunni side in the Sunni-Shia conflict  but now he risks turning up the heat by infuriating both of them. The Arabs all know  and many Israelis agree  that President Trump is bananas. But the ramifications of any movement of the embassy  or acceptance by Trump that Jerusalem is indeed the capital of Israel  will be enormous. It will tell the Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, that their second most holy city belongs to the Jews of Israel and not to them. It will tell the Iranians the same. It will mean the same to all the Muslim countries of the world.

Could Trump expect another warm welcome and traditional sword dance in Riyadh? Would the Saudis choose to buy all those billions of weapons from the US if it hands Jerusalem to the Israelis? Muslims generally believe that the Prophet, born in Arabia, ascended from Jerusalem to heaven.

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In the West, it will further tear apart the relationship between Washington and the EU, it will damage Canadian-American relations  for Ottawa is surely not going to follow Washingtons move  and the EU, still fondly believing in the famous peace process, is certainly not going to respond by moving its own embassies to Jerusalem. There are, of course, European consulates in Jerusalem  but to cover the East Jerusalem and the West Bank, not Israel.

Bibi Netanyahu and his extraordinarily right-wing Israeli government will certainly be happy, for it will unleash a new and far greater expansion of Jewish colonies  which we still oddly call settlements  on Arab land, further aggravating the Palestinians. The Israelis have been stealing land from their legal Arab owners for years, but President Trump would be taking from them even the hope of a capital in East Jerusalem.

And how would the Palestinians of the refugee camps in Lebanon respond? There is scarcely a Palestinian home without a photograph of the Al-Aqsa mosque on the wall. How will Hezbollah respond? Can they merely satisfy themselves with rhetoric  or will they need to fire some missiles over the Israeli-Lebanese border to express their fury?

And the Russians, the greatest ally of Syria  where Bashar al-Assad would surely declare his regime the standard bearer in a new battle for a liberated Jerusalem  can scarcely let such a moment pass without taking the Arab side. And selling them the warships, fighter aircraft and missiles which they have hitherto bought from the Americans.

An Israeli dream might come true if Trump announces Jerusalem as Israels capital. But so will an Arab nightmare. At least when Jerusalem remained the subject of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Arabs of the West Bank could believe in the vague hope of a share of the city. But if Trump goes ahead, then America can never field another peace process, even an imaginary one. A colossal blunder will be the least the world will say about the United States if Trump does not sign the waiver.

This article was originally published by The Independent -

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Home Cambodia Keeps Perverting its Own History, for Cash By Andre Vltchek December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - I have already written a lot about Cambodia, but each time I return to this ancient and scarred country, I get so outraged by the cynicism that confronts me there, at every corner, that I have to start writing again, re-addressing the same essential issues that I have already been covering for years and decades. One question always comes back to my mind: How could a nation that suffered so much, losing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of sons and daughters (official number stands at 1.7 million), accept a totally twisted narrative fabricated in Washington, London, Paris and other Western capitals? And not only accept  Cambodia is actually profiting greatly from helping to spread vitriolic anti-Communist propaganda on behalf of its lethal handlers. In all the bookstores around the country, the official Western propaganda narrative (Khmer Rouge killed them all  style) is on display and on sale: Pol Pots biographies, gruesome accounts from the so-called Killing Fields, from the torture chambers at the former high school S-21 in Phnom Penh, as well as countless and detailed testimonies of the victims. I asked the owner of a bookshop in Siem Reap: What about some books about the atrocities committed by the West? Do you have some volumes about the US carpet bombing of Cambodian countryside, which alone killed several hundreds of thousands of people? Me, not have, she replied, somehow defiantly. Do you have books about how millions of Cambodian people were displaced by the carpet bombing of the US and its allies; how they were forced to flee because of unexploded bombs and so-called bombies? Anything about those people starving to death? No have, came the answer. Why not? I asked, politely. I dont know, she said, by now clearly annoyed. Outside, my local driver was ready to pitch his services, taking me around, in search of the minefields. He thought I was European. Chinese mines, Russian mines He took long breath, made dramatic pause, and exhaled: Khmer Rouge no good. Instead of engaging in a historical debate, I simply asked: This city  Siem Reap  has 230,000 inhabitants. Is it producing anything? The driver hesitated for a while: Why should we produce anything? It is cheaper to import goods from Thailand, China and Vietnam. Well, there is some farming outside of the city He was correct. I checked several sources. Even Wikipedia describes the situation in no uncertain terms: Economy: Tourism is a very important aspect of the economy of Siem Reap  it was estimated in 2010 that over 50% of jobs in the town were related to the tourism industry A large number of NGOs and other not-for profit organizations operate in and around Siem Reap, and they play a vital role in the economy, as well as helping to develop it for the future. Thousands of expatriates call the city home and they also have a significant impact on the economy Siem Reap is fully dependent on Westerners; on millions of tourists visiting the nearby Angkor, but also on the experts who come here to tell locals how to run their communities, how to think and how to perceive their own present and the past. The entire country is dependent on handouts, and shamelessly subservient. Most of its teachers, journalists and artists are producing what they are told to produce, say what they are expected to say. Most of them have already lost ability to form their own opinion. What I never told my driver was that I had already covered almost the entire country, for more than 20 years, visiting all of its corners, talking to the victims, to former Khmer Rouge soldiers, even to personal Pol Pots guards. I worked in the minefields near Vietnam, and on Thai-Khmer border, and at the ill-fated and until now disputed temple of Preah Vihear. In Cambodia, like in Rwanda, I wanted to understand how the Western narrative is born, how it gets manufactured, how it gets alimented and finally, how it domesticates, managing to dominate the brains of people all over the world. * When in 2014 I was visiting a stronghold of the former commander Ta Mok (once a right-hand man of Pol Pot, who later split the Khmer Rouge movement) deep in a jungle, a friend of mine  a leading international lawyer Christopher Black  contributed to my report, basically confirming what many victims in Cambodia had already said to me: The UN-backed war crimes trials of Khmer Rouge leaders are show trials designed to once again demonize communists, and to scapegoat them for the millions of Cambodians who were killed by the American bombing of Cambodia. What the world needs are trials of the American leaders and officers for war crimes for the carpet-bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (We had the Bertrand Russell war Crimes Tribunal in the 70s but it could not enforce its judgments). San Reoung, a former personal security man of Mr. Ta Mok, confirmed that all that propaganda about Communist massacres by Khmer Rouge was absolute nonsense: It was really not about the ideology We did not know much about it. I was, for instance, very angry with the Americans. I became a soldier at the age of 17. And my friends were very angry, too. They joined Khmer Rouge to fight Americans, and especially the corruption of their puppet dictator Lon Nol, in Phnom Penh. Had the killings taken place; did people die during the Khmer Rouge reign? But of course! But the proportions were totally different: many more died because of the bombings and starvation, which followed the displacement of the peasants. In the area of the so-called Killing Fields, 20,000 graves were found. That is a lot; that is truly terrible. But we were told that 1.7 million Cambodian people died. The numbers somehow do not match. The B-52s were clearly incomparably deadlier than the rifle butts of Khmer Rouge. After almost a quarter of a century, Im convinced that since I first began writing about Cambodia, the world public is fully and irreversibly indoctrinated by cliches and half-truths coming from Western mainstream media and academia. It is time to revisit a few facts and testimonies that I collected in the past. Some of them are already included in my book Exposing Lies of the Empire. After one of the visits to the notorious and above-mentioned S-21, I wrote: After Vietnam ousted Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh at the end of 1978, this torture center was converted to a Museum of genocide by the Vietnamese and East Germans, who were using their experience from setting up Auschwitz Museum in Poland. They kept interrogation cells (originally classrooms) intact, with bloodstained floors, chains and shackles, as well as primitive machines for electric shocks. Thousands of black and white photographs of inmates eerily stare at visitors, their eyes expressing horror and resignation. Some of the most terrifying images are those created by Vann Nath, a painter and former prisoner of S-21, one of the very few who managed to survive because of his talent and ability to draw complimenting portraits of Pol Pot and of officials who were in charge of the interrogation center. After the Vietnamese invasion, Vann Nath transferred the most terrifying memories onto canvases; a mosaic depicting the barbarity and insane brutality of interrogators  a mother whose baby is being assassinated in front of her eyes, a man whose nails are being extracted by pliers, a woman having her nipple cut off. But even Van Nath, in a conversation we had almost ten years ago, claims that Khmer Rouge killed around 200,000 people during its reign, a number which he also uses in his book A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouges S-21 (White Lotus Press). And among Khmer survivors, there is a consensus that the majority of people died not because of Communist ideology and not because of direct orders from Phnom Penh to exterminate millions, but because of the officers and local cadres in the provinces who ran amok, taking their personal vengeance out on deported city-dwellers and elites whom they blamed for both the savage American bombing from the past, and for supporting the corrupt and savage pro-Western dictatorship of Lon Nol. It was more than 20 years since I sat down with Mr. Vann Nath, and since we had a series of long and frank talks. I spoke to many people in Cambodia, from the poorest peasants to the PM Hun Sens wife, inside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. The testimonies that convinced me about the total erroneousness of the official narrative did not come exclusively from Cambodian people, both the victims and perpetrators. At some point I realized that the official narrative is designed for the general public only: not even Western ideologues themselves believe in it. In 2006 for instance, I spent an entire evening discussing the issue with a high-level EU official, during his long work visit to Phnom Penh. He did not want to be identified (if his name were to appear under such statements, he claimed, it would mean the end of his career), but he asked me to use his testimony anonymously: Khmer Rouge killing more than a million Cambodians? Impossible! They had no capacity to kill so many people. Sure, between one and two million people died between 1969 and 1978, but that number includes 500,000 or more of those massacred by the US carpet bombing before Khmer Rouge took over Then, most of the people died because of starvation and illnesses. Furthermore, terrible massacres did not happen because of the communist ideology of Khmer Rouge. It was never on that level. U.S. carpet-bombing and Lon Nols brutal dictatorship fully sponsored by the West pitched local people against each other. Killings were performed out of vengeance, not on ideological bases. Peasants went insane from enduring B-52 carpet bombings. Many were tortured, massacred and disappeared during Lon Nols reign. Country folks hated city dwellers, blaming them for all misfortunes and horrors they had to endure, as well as for collaborating with foreigners. And most Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres came from the countryside. * After Vietnam liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, the West, particularly the US kept supporting Pol Pot and his clique, demanding at the United Nations the immediate return of legitimate government. The West was willing to do basically anything to prevent the Communist and pro-Soviet Vietnam from becoming a truly regional power. The US unscrupulously supported a ruthless, corrupt and fascist government in Phnom Penh; it murdered hundreds of thousands of Cambodian peasants by brutal carpet-bombing, and even supported the deranged and confused Khmer Rouge army It would have done much more if needed; it would have done anything, to stop the real Asian left from taking power! If necessary, it would have arranged for the killing of further millions, as it already had done in Indonesia, after the 1965 coup. As a result of this policy, at least 1.5 million Cambodian people died. Not as a result of some imaginary Communist genocide, but because of the single-minded policy of terror, which the West has been implementing everywhere  a policy designed to prevent Communist movements from winning elections as well as revolutions; a policy that has already killed tens of millions all over the world, but particularly in Asia and Latin America.* Now the chief (and very well paid) job of Cambodian intellectuals, as well as of book publishers, booksellers, teachers, journalists and tour guides, is to uphold the official Western narrative about their countrys past. Promoting Washingtons interpretation of the Khmer Rouge Genocide is tremendous business, while exposing the true genocide committed by the U.S. and its allies here and all over Southeast and North Asia is something that pays absolutely nothing and could easily ruin lives and careers; to make a person unemployable, or worse. Mass tourism brings millions of already indoctrinated, instructed individuals, who are ready for hair-raising stories and genocide monument selfies. In Cambodia, they encounter thousands of willing guides who will provide, for a fee, further details and pre-approved stories. Like this, nothing will ever change. The truth can be found far away from the monuments and museums; it is hiding in the jungle, in humble villages all over the country, and near the border with Vietnam. There, people know, they remember and are willing to talk. But no one, it appears, lately, is willing to listen to them. Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to The Great October Socialist Revolution a revolutionary novel Aurora and a bestselling work of political non-fiction:  Exposing Lies Of The Empire . View his other books here . Watch Rwanda Gambit , his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism . Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter . This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook - ==== Join the Discussion It is not necessary for ICH readers to register before placing a comment. This website encourages readers to use the "Report" link found at the base of each comment. When a predetermined number of ICH readers click on the "Report" link, the comment will be automatically sent to "moderation". This would appear to be the most logical way to allow open comments, where you the reader/supporter, can determine what is acceptable speech. Please don't use the report feature simply because you disagree with the author point of view. Treat others with respect, remembering that "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."- Benjamin Franklin. Please read our Comment Policy before posting - Search Information Clearing House === Click Here To Support Information Clearing House Your support has kept ICH free on the Web since 2002. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load.
War is Peace

By Gilad Atzmon

December 06, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - No one has utilised the Orwellian dictate that War is Peace better than Donald Trump. In Orwells1984, the Party maintains stability at home by waging constant war elsewhere.

Some contend that the American president is illiterate and ignorant. Others argue that it his intellectual skills that are limited. I have read some negative assessments of the Presidents mental condition. But no one can really dispute Trumps achievements. Against all odds, Trump became president. Despite relentless efforts to evict him from office, he has managed to cling to the White building. He regularly makes unpredictable unpopular decisions that make no sense to most reasonable, intelligent people. He communicates with the world by means of snippets and tweets. Yet miraculously, he prevails.

For a person who allegedly hasnt read an entire book in his life, Trump has managed to achieve quite a lot. How does he do it? What goes in his mind? War is Peace appears to be at the core of Trumps survival strategy. War is Trumps comfort zone.

From his first day in office, the American president has not missed an opportunity to threaten global conflict. He provoked Iran, he enraged North Korea and now he aims to upset the Palestinians. The ostensibly deprived North Korea was highly functional in countering American aggression. It took Kim Jong-uns engineers only a few months to present ballistic capability that could reduce American cities to dust. North Korea is too dangerous for Trump. As a regional superpower, Iran is also not an ideal enemy. Trump needed to launch a new battle against a substantially weaker foe. The Palestinians made the perfect antagonists.

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War in Palestine is peace of mind in Washington. This seems to fit the Trump doctrine. But are the Palestinians really ideal for the role? Israeli commentators believe that Arab and Muslim leaders wont side with Palestine. The risk is that the Arab and Muslim masses react very differently. The situation could quickly become volatile. And the crucial question that Americans must ask themselves tomorrow morning is how Trumps War is Peace makes America Great again? It doesnt. This is simply a survival tactic on Trumps part. It benefits Trump and Trump alone.

As far as I can tell, Trump is doing a great job obliterating what is left of Americas world hegemony. Give Trump another year in office, assuming that the planet can take it, American prestige and influence will shrink to none. Some may well argue that this alone makes Trump a positive force in contemporary world politics.

Gilad Atzmon writes on political matters, social issues, Jewish identity and culture. Gilad is a British Jazz artist and author. Gilad was born in Israel in 1963 and trained at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/

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A court has sentenced 13 terrorists to death for launching deadly terrorist attacks against the people of Egypt.

Egypt s Giza Criminal Court on Thursday ordered that 13 convicts be executed for launching terrorist attacks against security forces, official MENA news agency reported.

The convicts were from a disbanded militant group that referred itself as Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt).

They were charged with installing explosive devices.

The explosive devices targeted various venues which included checkpoints, police stations, vital institutions and public properties as well as murdering policemen and citizens.

On October 8, Giza Criminal Court referred the files of the 13 defendants to the countrys highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding Islamic legal opinion on their execution.

The case started in July 2014 and it includes 44 defendants in total.

The execution verdict comes about two weeks after a terrorist attack against a mosque in North Sinai killed at least 310 Muslim worshippers and wounded over 120 others.

This is the deadliest terror operation and the first against a Muslim mosque in Egypts modern history.

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.

This came as a response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt focused on targeting police and military men in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group.

Ajnad Misr pledged allegiance to the IS in 2014, a year before its founder was killed as announced by the Egyptian police in April 2015.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military and police have killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the countrys anti-terror war declared by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsis removal.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) who charged a businessman with money laundering, have on Thursday, seen him forfeit a total of $700,000 out of the $1.9 million to the federal government.

A judge of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, Rilwan Aikawa, has ordered a Congo-based businessman to forfeit $700,000 out of the $1.9 million he allegedly laundered to the Federal Government, Premium Times reports.

Paulinus Ani, who initially claimed to be a Congolese, entered into a plea bargain arrangement with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after the anti-graft agency charged him with money laundering.

The judge had on October 25, ordered Mr. Anis arrest for refusing to appear in court after the EFCC filed a two count-charge marked, FHC/L/161c/2014, against the businessman over his failure to declare the sum of $1, 909,140, which he allegedly laundered from the Republic of Congo to the men of the Nigerian Customs Service.

However, at the resumed hearing of the matter on Wednesday, the accused person owned up to the alleged offence after entering into a plea bargain agreement with the EFCC.

Reviewing the fact of the case after Mr. Anis guilty plea, EFCCs lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo, said the defendant was handed over to the commission following his arrest on February 23, 2014, with $1, 909,140 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport by men of the Nigeria Customs Service.

He said the defendant disclosed in his statement that the money was given to him by one Ikechukwu Frank for delivery to one Jude Okoye.

The lawyer added that the businessman was arrested by men of the NCS while attempting to deliver the money without going through any financial institution.

Mr. Oyedepo also displayed a letter from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showing that the money is in its custody. He also revealed that the Commission had signed a plea bargain agreement dated December 4, 2017, with the accused person.

He subsequently urged the court to convict the defendant in view of his plea and overwhelming evidence against him.

Sentencing the accused person, the judge ordered that the businessman should forfeit $700, 000 to the Federal Government out of the seized money.

A breakdown of the money to be forfeited by the defendant showed that he was given an option of fine of $50, 000 while he is also to forfeit $650, 000 to the Federal Government.

According to the judge, the money which is to be paid from the recovered $1, 909,140, that was kept in the safe custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is to be credited to the consolidated fund of the federation.

The remaining sum of $1, 209, 140 should be released to the defendant through a designated financial institution in strict compliance with the provisions of Section 1 (a) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011, as amended.

The defendant shall within seven days after the payment of the fine imposed by the court, enter into a bond with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) never to be involved in economic and financial crimes within and outside the shores of Nigeria, Justice Aikawa held.

The two count charge against the accused person reads: That you, Ani Paulinus Onyeka, on or before February 10, 2014, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this court, while transporting in cash the sum of $1, 909,140, from Republic of Congo to Nigeria, failed to declare the said sum of $1.909,140, to Nigerian Customs Services (NCS), as required under Section 12 of the Foreign Exchange (Monitoring and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act Cap. F34, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and Section 2(5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011, and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 2(5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012.

That you, Ani Paulinus Onyeka, on or before February 10, 2014, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court, transported the cash sum of $1, 909,140, from Republic of Congo to Nigeria, with intent to carry out specified unlawful activity to wit: avoiding lawful transaction under the law through financial institution in respect of the sum of N1, 909,140 and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 4(5) of the Advance Fee Fraud and other related Offences Act, 2006.
Maryam Sanda who reportedly stabbed her husband to death over a disagreement was today ordered back to be held in prison.

A FCT High Court judge in Jabi today ordered that Maryam Sanda who allegedly murdered her husband, Bilyamin Bello, son of a former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) be sent back to jail.

The judge refused the oral application for bail made on behalf of Maryam Sanda and ordered her returned to prisons pending her re-arraignment next Thursday.

According to DailyTrust, the FCT Police Command in a two-count charge accused Maryam, the daughter of a former Executive Director of Aso Savings and Loans, Hajiya Maimuna Aliyu Sanda, of killing her husband, Bilyamin Bello, the son of Alhaji Bello Halliru Muhammad, a former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

They alleged that Maryam had caused the death of Bello by stabbing him on the chest with a broken bottle which eventually led to his death and you did with the knowledge that your act is likely to cause his death.

Upon her arraignment on November 24, the court had ordered that she be remanded in prisons after she pleaded not guilty to the charge levied against her.

However, at the resumed hearing today, police Prosecutor, CSP James Idachaba informed the court an amended charge has been filed before the court where Maryams mother, Maimuna Aliyu has been added as defendant together with two others.

He however said all efforts to serve the charge on Maimuna and the others have proved abortive.

He asked the court to adjourned the matter to Thursday, December 14 to enable the Police bring all the defendants to court so they can take their pleas together.

After this, Maryams new lawyer, Chief Joseph Daudu (SAN), a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), asked the court to listen to the bail application filed on Maryams behalf.

However, Idachaba urged the court to also adjourn the bail application to December 14 after new pleas must have been taken.

The trial judge, Justice Yusuf Halilu ruled in favour of the Prosecutor and said the bail would be taken after the re-arraignment.

Again, Daudu pleaded with the judge, this time orally, to release Maryam on bail pending the Thursday.

He said the prisons conditions is unwholesome for Maryams six-months old baby.

It is unfortunate that a life has been lost already, but we should not take more lives, the senior lawyer pleaded.

However, after another objection by the police Prosecutor, Justice Halilu held that he is not disposed to grant the oral bail application since issues have been joined on the formal application for bail.

The defendant in the main time shall be returned to the prisons pending Thursday, December 14, the judge held.

Earlier, the judge had ordered that Maryams daughter in the custody of a relative be taken out of court after the babys persistent crying.

The baby continued crying outside the court room throughout the court proceedings.

Source  DailyTrust
The Managing Director of the Nigeria Export and Import Bank, Mr. Abba Bello has assured the Governor of Rivers State, Ben Ayade that his proposed N1. 3tn budget for 2018 is attainable.

Bello stated this on Wednesday in Calabar at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding and a financial service agreement between the bank and the state government.

While expressing delight at the ambition and aggression being shown by the state with regards to its industrialisation drive, he stated the commitment of NEXIM Bank to help the state get the funds to actualise its 2018 budget.

Bello stated, This is the first time a state government in Nigeria will present a budget of N1.3tn. It, therefore, becomes very important that the state will be able to achieve the revenue that will support the expenditure.

I was taught earlier in my career that to achieve dreams, you have to be audacious and I believe that you start with having a target, and for you, the target today is the budget. I must stand behind you sir to ensure that the budget is achieved.

Bello said NEXIM Bank had gone ahead to start attracting investments into the state even before the signing of the financial service agreement with the government.

He added, We have already contacted some investors in the garment industry and already, three Spanish companies have indicated interest in the Cross River State Garment Factory and I believe that we should be able to close that deal immediately.

As we were coming, we brought one of our customers that is innovative, in the sense that it is an outsourcing company. We supported them and encouraged them to move part of their call centres to Cross River State and on that basis, we have visited the Tinapa Knowledge City and they have expressed willingness to start work that will create employment for 1,000 youths.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Six new private universities have been approved for establishment by the Federal Government.

The decision was reached at a meeting of the Federal Executive Council held on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, briefed State House correspondents at the end of meeting which was presided over by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.

President Muhammadu Buhari is currently on an official visit to Kano State.

With the approval, private universities in the country are now 74.

Adamu listed the newly-approved private universities to include Admiralty University, Ibusa, Delta State; Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia; Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan; Pamo University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt; Atiba University, Oyo State; and the Eko University of Medical and Health Sciences, Lagos.

The minister said the National Universities Commission has been asked to henceforth be tough on universities that operate below standard.

There are some more applications and I believe we (Ministry of Education) will still bring more for council approvals.

The NUC is going to take the issue of accreditation very seriously and if any university fails to meet their (NUC) standard, we are going to deregister their courses and if enough courses are deregistered, it will lead to the closure of the university, he said.

Adamu also spoke on the industrial action embarked upon by non-teaching staff unions in the universities under the umbrella of the Joint Action Committee, saying some of the issues raised had been thrashed out.

He said, As far as I know, we had sat down with the unions, we met and these issues had been thrashed out. I dont know that there was a problem that arose later because I travelled out of the country and came back yesterday (Tuesday).

But as far as I am concerned, these things had been addressed before I left and the formula that was used to share the money was agreed by them.

They sat down with the officials in the Ministry of Education and agreed. So, the money was not for ASUU alone, it was for all the unions.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, told reporters that he briefed FEC members on Buharis recent visits to Cote dIvoire and Jordan as well as the governments recent decision on Libya slave trade.

He said, On the issue of Libya, of course, it has been in the news in the last two weeks on trading in slaves; also, the imprisonment in various detention centres of Nigerians.

What we have done is that first of all, we have got our Charge D Affairs in Tripoli to come to Abuja to give us the full details of what is actually going on there. How many Nigerians are in detention and are trying to come home?

Source:( AFP )
Suspected hoodlums on Tuesday night stormed a popular viewing centre, Kaneworld Resort in Uyo, Akwa Ibom, and shot dead a final year student of the University of Uyo ( UNIUYO ) while watching the UEFA Champions League matches.



Our correspondent gathered that a three-man gang, stormed the viewing centre located at 17, Idak Okpo lane, few minutes to the end of the matches involving Manchester United, Chelsea and Bayern Munich and shot the victim.

The heavily armed gunmen reportedly ordered viewers to lie face down while they searched for their target.

When they (the criminals) ordered everyone to lie down, the deceased struggled with his Infinix phone and was shot at close range, Effiong Akpan, a Manchester United fan told our correspondent.

According to him, the deceased, Dominic Ubiat, a final year Microbiology student from Ibiono Ibom local government area of the state was shot on his groin at close range.

He ran with patches of blood from the viewing centre and was chased by the hoodlums to his house located about 500 metres and died before help could reach him, another fan added.

The Nation gathered that youths from the area arrived a little too late to take him to the hospital where medics confirmed he died from excessive loss of blood.

His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ubiat, who visited the scene of the incident on Wednesday, lamented that all the years of their son in the university was in vain and vowed to go the extra mile to avenge his death.

Look at the blood of my son, Mr. Ubiat lamented, vowing that the blood of my son shall haunt those behind this dastardly act of cowardice.

The deceaseds mother, accompanied by other family members and school mates, wondered why her son could be left to die after being shot.

From every indication here, help did not come early enough, otherwise my son would have survived if he had been rushed to the hospital at the right time, she lamented.

Confirming the incident, the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Elkana Bala, described the incident as a pure robbery attack.

Source = Ebiwalismoment
Former President, Obasanjo was pictured at the classroom defending his PhD thesis at the National Open University before an intellectual panel.



Chief Olusegun Obasanjo looked confident today at a lecture room at the National Open University where he was bracing up to defend his doctoral thesis.

The topic of his research work is currently unknown but the 80-year old Ogun State native was seen looking boldly into his laptop screen with a fairly large audience aroound him.

Obasanjo is a former Nigerian Army general who was President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. Obasanjo was a career soldier before serving twice as his nations head of state.

See photos:

Source:
The son of the Peoples Democratic Party, Plateau State Damishi Sango, has been abducted by unknown gunmen.

Also kidnapped with him are his son, driver, a prominent chieftain of the PDP in Plateau State and another victim that is yet to be identified.

Although the details of the incident were still sketchy as at the time of filing this report, sources said they were abducted on Wednesday evening along Jere Road in Kaduna State on his way to Abuja to attend the PDP national convention scheduled for Saturday, December 9.

The Publicity Secretary of PDP in Plateau State, John Akans, confirmed the incident in an interview with The PUNCH in Jos on Thursday.

He said, Yes, our chairman, Chief Damishi Sango, and five other persons, including his son, driver and a chieftain of PDP in Plateau State were kidnapped by unknown gunmen on Wednesday evening.

It was the Police who called his family and intimated them of the incident because his sons phone was seen inside the vehicle.

Akans said the kidnappers have not contacted the family or PDP members.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Editor:

The existing House of Representative rules do not allow for unauthorized spending; no funding without accountability, so WHO authorized this? Speaker of the House has the say on the rules and whether or not they are enforced, so, in regard to the heretofore secret taxpayer-bankrolled slush fund, which no one knew existed, it protected Congressmen from public exposure of sexual and predatory misbehavior, even though millions of hush-dollars were paid out.

I believe:

All disgraced public servants should immediately resign; all should be required to reimburse the taxpayer for any monies extended that allowed them to keep their cushy jobs and to keep deceiving us, their employers, and some restrictions or penalties should apply to their golden retirement parachutes.

In fact, this should be policy rule: if incriminated, you will be suspended; if proven guilty, you will IMMEDIATELY vacate, not just as the head of a committee but your entire seat in Congress.

Instead, a panacea is proposed for the good old American taxpayer to provide sex-education training, a bandage to excuse their misdeeds with no guarantee of future offenses-violation. Its time to quit slapping their hands, or shaking a finger at them, and throwing a cover over their entire mess  its time to kick their butts, out of office.

It should not be our responsibility to take on the financial burden of teaching them common decency and morality which they should have learned at their mothers/fathers knee, in church, or since most are lawyers, in the tutelage ethics portion of their college curriculum. They should pay for this themselves. (No one but me ever paid for continuing education classes for my profession.)

But education should not stop there. There is not a Congressmen in office who would not benefit from a mandatory class on the U.S. Constitution, its history, and the fact that we are a republic, not a democracy, and it is time we began living under its proper interpretation. Congressional corruption causes the American public to suffer, financially, morally and spiritually.

It is truly time to DRAIN the Congressional CESSPOOL.

Thelma Homer

Elko
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has been ordered by the Federal Government, to ensure that the fuel scarcity currently being experienced across the country does not extend beyond this weekend.

The directive was given to the minister on Wednesday during the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who is currently on an official visit to Kano State, could not attend the meeting.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the governments position known while answering questions from State House correspondents at the end of the meeting.

He said Kachikwu was initially scheduled to join him at the briefing but could not do so because he needed to attend an important meeting as part of efforts aimed at resolving the fuel supply crisis.

Mohammed allayed the fears in some quarters that the government might be planning to increase the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, also known as petrol.

He added that Kachikwu assured members of the council that the country had enough stock of petrol that could last till the end of January 2018.

Mohammed said, One, the government has no intention at all to increase the pump price of PMS. Two, the minister (Kachikwu) assured the council that we have enough products till the next one month, even till the end of January.

Thirdly, this is the winter period. There is always more demand for refined petroleum products during the winter period in the colder countries, this is what we are experiencing now.

The council gave him (Kachikwu) a matching order that this fuel scarcity should not last beyond this weekend and they are going to work very hard to ensure that it is curtailed. He assured council that there is actually no cause for alarm.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Wednesday did not respond to enquiries as to what it was doing to clear the fuel queues in many states across the country.

Efforts to get the corporations spokesperson, Ndu Ughamadu, to state if the oil firm had met with marketers in order to address the lingering fuel scarcity were not successful, as he neither picked calls to his mobile telephone nor replied a text message sent to him on the matter.

It was observed that black marketers of PMS had returned to the streets of Abuja and neighbouring states, selling the product in plastic containers at higher prices.

One of our correspondents observed that the black marketers sold a 10-litre worth of petrol for as high as N2,500, in contrast to N1,450 it would have cost at the pump.

Petrol seekers also formed long queues in front of the few filling stations that dispensed the product on Wednesday, as many other outlets did not dispense PMS.

In Lagos, fuel depots, including that of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation at Ejigbo, recorded low activities as loading dropped, though the queues in filling stations were not as long as the situation was on Tuesday.

The PUNCH had reported on Tuesday that many of the private depots in Apapa, Lagos, where many marketers get petroleum products from for distribution to other states, did not have PMS while those that had were doing skeletal loading.

During a visit to some of the depots on Wednesday, many dealers were stranded as they complained that they had not been able to get PMS after making payments for the product.

It was gathered that loading at the NNPCs Ejigbo depot had dropped by about 50 per cent with about 20 to 30 tankers getting petrol daily, compared to 50 to 60 before now.

The Executive Secretary, Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, Mr. Olufemi Adewole, said some of the depots decided to reduce the rate of loading so as to spread it over a longer period.

He stated, Ask the NNPC how many of their ships have come in this week, then you will know whether we have received products or not. If the NNPC tells you that they have one ship coming in, the petrol inside the NNPC vessel is eight days plus before it gets to any petrol station.

If the NNPC tells you it has products on the vessel, add a minimum of five days before it gets to the depots.

A top official at one of the depots in Lagos, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no new vessel had come to any jetty in Apapa this week, adding that a vessel belonging to the NNPC was being expected to berth on Thursday or Friday.

He said, The import vessel always brings from 30 to 35 million metric tonnes. There is currently a vessel at Oando SPM that has been discharging petrol to major marketers, including Oando, Total and MRS, since last week.

The PPMC has promised us that within the next 48 hours that a vessel will come in.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Two middle-aged men have been sentenced to life in prison by a Bauchi State High Court on Wednesday for raping a 40-year-old woman and plucking her eyes.

The Judge who presided over the case, Justice Rabi Umar, said that the convicts  Mohammed Sani Alias Bambi, 30; and Sabo Rabo alias Bullet, 40 of Dass and Toro local government areas, conspired and raped the woman at Yelwan Dawani in Toro town on March 1, 2014.

Umar, also the Chief Judge of Bauchi State, recalled that the two men were brought before her on March 4, 2015 charged with conspiracy, rape, causing grievous hurt and attempt to commit culpable homicide.

She said that the convicts and two others currently at large, also removed the right eye of their victim, who is a cripple, and damaged her left eye.

The judge added that one of the defendants, Bitrus Yakubu alias Japan, died at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi while on remand, while Usman Sambo alias Galambi, 35, also implicated in the matter, was, however, discharged and acquitted for lack of evidence.

She noted that prosecution had proved his case beyond reasonable doubt, therefore, the court has no option than to sentence the two convicts to life in prison without an option of fine.

I have heard the plea for leniency but I will be quick to say that the first and second defendants deserve no sympathy because their action reveals how callous and barbaric they are.

I, therefore, could best describe you as devils in human skins who must be taken away from the streets.

The State Counsel, Mrs Asabe Yusuf, had earlier told the court that the victim was attacked and raped along a footpath in the bush in Dass Local Government of the state while returning from a ceremony on March 1, 2014.

Yusuf said that the defendants, after raping the victim, used a knife and removed her right eye, damaged the left eye and left her unconscious.

She said that the offences were contrary to sections 96, 282, 229 and 253 of the Penal Code of Bauchi State.

The prosecution had during the trial, called four witnesses who testified in favour of the victim and tendered the knife used by the defendants in removing the eye as an exhibit.

The defence counsel, Mr Jonathan Adams, had during the trial, called three witnesses in defence of the convicts.

The convicts, who had earlier pleaded not guilty to the charge through their lawyer, pleaded for leniency after the judgment was read to them, but the judge turned down their requests, noting that their acts were heinous and must be punished accordingly.

(NAN)
Former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar has been banned from voting at its December 9 national convention, which holds at the Eagle Square, Abuja.

It says this is because of the provision of the partys constitution that deals with new entrants into the party.

However, the party said Atiku would be allowed to speak at the convention.

The Publicity Secretary of the National Caretaker Committee of the PDP, Dayo Adeyeye, who spoke with journalists at a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, said the partys constitution should be used as a guide on the issue.

All you need to do is pick up the constitution of the party and see whether Atiku is qualified to vote or not, Adeyeye stated.

When pressed further, he said, First of all, I can tell you that we are happy with Atiku coming back to the PDP. It is very exciting for all of us. It is a good omen to everybody in the PDP.

He was one of the founding fathers, one of those who built this party and he is coming back home. His room was never occupied, so we have opened it for him.

He will be part of this convention. He will even make a speech at the convention but he may not be voting at the convention.

Chapter 2 (Part 1) of the partys constitution deals with admission of members into the party.

On Procedure for rejoining, Sections 8 and 9 explain, A person, who desires to rejoin the party after leaving it shall apply to his Ward Secretary for re-admission; and unless given a waiver by the National Working Committee, he willbe placed on probation for a period of not less than one year.

Subject to the provision of Section 8(b), a member on probation shall have the right to attend all meetings of the party, but shall not be entitled to vote at such meetings, nor shall he be eligible to contest elective office on the platform of the party.

One of our correspondents gathered that the party was planning to amend the above sections at the convention.

The expected amendment will place returnees on six months probation before they could contest any position or be voted for.

Atiku, who was a foundation member of the party, defected to the All Progressives Congress in 2014, claiming that the then opposition party would be his last bus stop.

However, he left the APC about a week ago, and returned to the PDP on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Adeyeye has alleged that some agents of the Federal Government were planning to disrupt the partys national convention.

He said the former ruling party had what he described as credible information that some overzealous elements in the government were planning to disrupt the convention.

Stating that there was nothing to show that President Muhammadu Buhari was part of the plot, the spokesman pleaded with the President to intervene and caution the unnamed aides.

Adeyeye added, They have been trying every effort but we are happy that we have no information that it is coming from the very top.

But some overzealous elements in the administration are bent on disrupting it. It is very credible information. They are doing everything possible to make sure that this convention is disrupted.

They are afraid that if the PDP should hold a successful convention, that their days in government are numbered.

By the time we hold this convention and our officers are elected and they take offices next year, there will be a floodgate of people even from the APC to the PDP.

This is credible information and that is why we are appealing to President Buhari to please rein in his aides. We have evidence that the President is aware of this.

It is happening and we are calling on him to do his own investigation and to call those who are trying to cause this problem to desist because it is capable not only of destroying this democracy but also capable of destroying the country.

In another development, the Chairman of the Convention Planning Committee, who is also the Governor of Delta State, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, has summoned all the 37 state chairmen of the party to an emergency meeting.

The meeting, which will hold in Abuja on Friday, it was gathered, would enable Okowa to discuss the delegates list.

There are rumours that some persons are planning to tamper with the list.

Adeyeye, however, said there was no truth in the allegation, stating that the list would be made available to each aspirant at least 48 hours before the convention.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
The ELFIKE Film Collective, a partnership between EbonyLife Films, FilmOne Distribution, Inkblot Productions and Koga Studios, organised a viewing of The Wedding Party 2: Destination Dubai, for members of the press on Wednesday, December 6, at Filmhouse Cinema, Lekki.

After months of anticipation, the production will finally be released on Friday, December 15 in every film theatre across Nigeria. The Grand World Premiere will take place on December 10, at Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos. Tickets for the event are still in high-demand, despite having being sold-out a month before the date. The film will also be released in key markets such as the UK, USA, Canada, Middle East, east Africa, west Africa, southern Africa and francophone African countries.

In a slight departure from the first feature  the highest-grossing Nollywood movie of all time  The Wedding Party 2 focuses primarily on the accidental proposal and subsequent wedding of returning characters, Nonso Onwuka and Deardre Winston, played by Enyinna Nwigwe and Daniella Down. Fans will see the hilarious consequences of their cross-cultural marriage unfold and catch up with the lives of their favourite characters. Banky W and Adesua Etomi are Dozie and Dunni, Ali Baba and Sola Sobowale are Bam-Bam and Tin-Tin Coker, Richard Mofe-Damijo and Ireti Doyle are Felix and Obianuju Onwuka and Patience Ozokwor is Adanna, a feisty new addition to the cast.

Mo Abudu, CEO, EbonyLife Films, was pleased with the robust turnout. Were grateful for the relationships with our media stakeholders. It was a pleasure having them be the first to view the film. Their support is important to us and we always count on it, she said

Moses Babatope, COO, FilmOne Distribution, is optimistic, following the warm reception from local media. We are looking forward to similarly successful press screenings abroad, as the film opens in other key markets.

The Wedding Party 2: Destination Dubai will have its cinema release on December 15 in Nigeria and across Africa. The premiere on Sunday, December 10 is completely sold out. For more information, visit www.ebonylifefilms.com

Source: Linda Ikejis blog
A BudgiT official who was arrested for allegedly sensitizing citizens of Niger state on constituency projects has narrated the excruciating pain he suffered in the hands of policemen.

Moses Motoni, an official of a civic organisation, BudgIT, has narrated how his legs were chained and his hands handcuffed to a seat by some policemen who arrested him in Kaduna for holding a town hall meeting in Bida, Niger State, on budget tracking.

Motoni was released by the police in Abuja on Wednesday, after uproar on the social media. He revealed that he saw hell in the hands of police personnel, who dehumanised and treated him like a criminal.

Speaking to journalists on his experience, Motoni explained that he was not informed about his crime, adding that the policemen simply said he was arrested for inciting the populace and trying to impeach the Emir of Bida.

According to a report by Punch, Motonis troubles began when he visited Niger State last Saturday to sensitise residents of the Niger South Senatorial District to the zonal intervention projects awarded to their constituency in the 2017 budget.

The projects were the installation of transformers and electrification of Nowanya-Tawadzuru, Tiffin-Emitswachi-Tawadzuru and Tako communities in the Gbako Local Government Area, Niger South Senatorial District, Niger State as stated in the 2017 Appropriation Act.

Moroni was arrested on Tuesday after he was tricked into visiting the DHL office at Markafi Market, Kaduna, to pick a parcel.

He was reportedly forced into vehicle and brought to Abuja by policemen who disguised as DHL personnel.

The BudgIT worker explained that he simply enlightened the people about the constituency projects and how to track the budget, noting that he was surprised by the allegations that he wanted to incite the public and impeach the traditional ruler in the area.

He said, I was arrested in Kaduna and our journey from there to Abuja was hell for me because I was handcuffed on both legs and my elbows were handcuffed to a chair, which dislocated my joints.



I wasnt sitting; I squatted from Kaduna to Abuja, which was a journey of about two and a half hours. It was when I got to Abuja that I was told about the reason for my arrest.

Motoni denied that his engagement with the Bida community would lead to a breach of the peace, noting that the idea of budget tracking was to encourage the community members to engage their representatives at the National Assembly and ensure that the projects were implemented.

They (policemen) said they got a complaint that I was trying to incite the public, create a breach of trust and impeach the Emir. But this is not true; I went to the community to educate the people on how they can engage their representatives on the implementation of the projects, he stated.

The civic worker said he was not cowed by his detention, noting that he would still visit Niger State to continue his advocacy.

The team lead, BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, explained that the budget tracking project was meant to simplify the budget and create citizens awareness about the fiscal document so they could demand accountability from their representatives.

He condemned Motonis arrest, which he alleged was instigated by the NASS representatives from the area.

He explained that shortly after the town hall meeting, a senator had made a phone call to Motoni, inviting him to a meeting in his house, which he declined because BudgIT tracking personnel were not allowed to meet with public officials privately.

Onigbinde said, After this, we believe the senator reached out to the Nigeria Police Force and accused Motoni of plotting to topple the Emir of Bida following which he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to SARS office in Abuja.

We condemn this abuse of power by the police and we plan to take up the issue with President Muhammadu Buhari and the Senate President; we will also reach out to the United Nations and the United States on this issue,he added.
The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, the councils leadership announced Wednesday.

The talks  requested by eight nations  will begin at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), but there are other items on the agenda, so the Jerusalem issue may not come up until the late morning, said Japan, which holds the councils rotating presidency.

Bolivia, Britain, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden and Uruguay requested the talks. They have also asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to open the meeting with remarks.

After Trumps announcement, Guterres said Jerusalems final status could only be resolved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Guterres added that he had consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures.

There is no alternative to the two-state solution.

Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz called Trumps move a reckless and a dangerous decision which goes against international law, the resolutions of the Security Council.

Its a threat not just to the peace process, but also its a threat to international peace and security, said the envoy.

Source : (AFP)
Ucoms mobile customers will benefit from the best internet roaming rate of 8 AMD/MB when travelling to Georgia, Egypt or the UAE

Ameriabank Launches Google Pay and Google Wallet Support for Card Users in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases.

UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Google Ad

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces
Registration is now open for the 2018 Inside Self-Storage World Expo, the industrys largest conference and tradeshow. The event will take place April 3-6 at the Paris Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas. Created for self-storage developers, investors, managers, owners and suppliers, the annual expo comprises four days of education, exhibits and networking opportunities.

Early-bird rates, which provide a discount of more than 25 percent on the shows three registration packages, are available until Jan. 30. Discounted room rates are available through the Paris Hotel and subject to availability. Attendees are encouraged to make reservations early.

The 2018 event will include six education tracks, eight workshops, several networking events, and two days of product and service exhibits. The concurrent seminar program includes 45 sessions covering industry construction, development, finance, investing, management, marketing, ownership, risk management, sales, staffing and more. Itll also feature a a full-day International Program focusing on self-storage across the globe as well as several sessions in Spanish.

Attendees can choose from several immersive workshops, including the revamped Development Workshops. The morning workshop will focus on the planning phase, while the afternoon event will focus on the building phase. The Sales-Skills Workshop will return for a second year. Additional favorites include the two Legal Workshops, Management Workshop, Online-Marketing Workshop and Owner/Operator Executive Workshop. Participants can purchase these options individually or be eligible to attend all of them by purchasing the All-Access Pass.

Scheduled networking opportunities include the Self-Storage Q&A, evening cocktail reception, roundtable discussions, Self-Storage Legal Q&A, and the Buyers & Sellers Meeting. These events are included with all registrations.

The exhibit hall will feature nearly 200 suppliers representing all segments of the industry. The expo floor will be open 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on April 4 and 1 to 5 p.m. on April 5.

For more than 26 years, ISS has provided informational resources for the self-storage industry. Its educational offerings include ISS magazine, the annual ISS World Expo, an extensive website, the ISS Store, and Self-Storage Talk, the industrys largest online community.
Yesterday we told you about Swiss Re acquiring 1.1 million life insurance policies from British financial services firm Legal & General Group. While its an exciting accomplishment for Swiss Re s UK closed life book consolidator ReAssure, it wasnt welcome news for more than 500 Legal & General employees in Hove.A Brighton and Hove News report said staff were told about the sale following the companys London Stock Exchange announcement. Needless to say, some reassuring had to be done as those working at Legal & Generals mature savings unit face the prospect of being let go.Following todays [December 06] announcement, it is important to stress that it will be business as usual in our mature savings business for 18 months  until the summer of 2019  which gives us time to hold discussions with staff about other opportunities, including at L&Gs offices in Hove, said Legal & General, as quoted by the report.Chief executive Nigel Wilson himself described the move as not being easy.This was a difficult decision as with-profits savings has been a part of Legal & Generals UK business for over 50 years, said Wilson when the firm announced the ReAssure deal. However we have in Swiss Re a great partner, who will be an excellent steward of the business and its many customers and policyholders.Selling mature savings is the right decision for us  another important, measured, step in growing our company and updating our products. It will drive further earnings growth by allowing us to focus on our successful market-leading businesses and to accelerate the scaling up of our growth businesses.Meanwhile trade union Unite is not too happy either, demanding an urgent meeting with the management of Legal & General to not only get full understanding of the transaction with Swiss Re but also to raise staff concerns. Anger was Unites word for its reaction to the announcement.The news of the sale of the profitable mature savings business is an utter surprise to the loyal Legal & General workforce in Hove, commented Unite regional officer Ian Methven. There had been no warning that this sale was on the horizon and today [December 06] there is total confusion across the site as staff try to digest the information of their jobs being sold.Methven added: This is no way to treat a highly loyal, committed, and highly skilled workforce.
A case currently being challenged in the Maryland Court of Appeals in Annapolis could potentially throw open the door to more asbestos claims in the province.Currently, Maryland law allows for a 20-year deadline for workers or their families to make claims of illness or death from asbestos exposure.However, a case heard Friday in the Court of Appeals, involving a steamfitter who died from medical complications from exposure to asbestos more than 40 years ago, could potentially alter the system.Although the steamfitter, James F. Piper, was initially exposed to asbestos at his work in a Maryland power plant in the 1970s, he only recently died from asbestos-induced mesothelioma  a form of lung cancer.If Pipers estate wins the case, it could set a precedent in the state and allow more individuals  who have developed asbestos-related health issues after the 20-year limitation  to file lawsuits, advocates have said. A coalition of unions and trade associations estimated that the number of such claims could be in the tens of thousands.Pipers case has already failed in Baltimore City Circuit Court and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the Baltimore Sun reported.Daniel Brown, an attorney for Pipers estate from Brown Gould Kiely, said that if those rulings are upheld by the Court of Appeals, mesothelioma victims who worked in the construction industry will be denied access to the courts.Donald Gifford, the Jacob A. France professor of torts of the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, told the Baltimore Sun that there have been more than 1 million asbestos cases in Maryland courts, though that number has dwindled as the use of asbestos has become less prevalent.Theres plenty at stake for both plaintiffs and defendants, Gifford pointed out. It certainly is going to affect more than one case, and more than a few, he added.An attorney with the Law Offices of Peter Angelos testified before state legislators recently, saying that there are 22,000 pending active cases and another 7,000 inactive cases from workers who have yet to fall ill, but have filed paperwork to reserve their right to sue once they do develop complications.
A 20-year-old Florida hacker was responsible for a large data breach at Uber last year, according to Reuters. The company paid the hacker $100,000 to destroy the stolen information.Uber announced last month that a hacker had stolen the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 drivers in the US, in a data breach that occurred in October 2016. The company also announced that it had paid the hacker to destroy the information.Ubers new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, fired two of the companys top security executives at the same time he announced the breach. The incident, Khosrowshahi said, should have been disclosed to regulators when it was discovered a year ago.While its unclear who authorized the payout to the data thief, sources told Reuters that then-CEO Travis Kalanick, who stepped down in June, was aware of both the breach and the payment.The payment was made through a bug bounty program designed to reward security researchers who report software flaws, Reuters reported. Ubers bug bounty service is hosted by a company called HackerOne. That company merely hosts Ubers program, however; it has no say in how large payments can be or to whom they go. One former HackerOne executive told Reuters that a payout of $100,000 would be an all-time record, and that paying extortion money to a hacker whod stolen information would also be highly unusual on the platform.
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Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Announces Funding to Close on ELMS Assets

BREA, Calif. - November 17, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN) ("Mullen" or the "Company"), an emerging electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, announces today receipt of $150 million on Nov. 16, 2022, which will be used in part to close on ELMS assets.

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EV Companies on the Rise: (NASDAQ: MULN) (NASDAQ: TSLA) (NYSE: NIO) (NASDAQ: RIVN)

Vancouver, Kelowna, Delta, BC - November 16, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investor Ideas Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV stocks releases a special report on the continued growth within the sector

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Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires UK-based Forecasting Innovator Predictive Black To Help SMEs Optimize Cash Management

NEW YORK, NY - November 15, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow (some call SMEs), has acquired Predictive Black Ltd, a UK-based innovator of real-time cash management, financial insights and business wellness for SMEs.

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New Fashion Designer Launches this Holiday Season in Kelowna and Online; Sweet Dees Creations  Fun, Flirty and Affordable

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Ryanair shares fell marginally yesterday on news that its Italian-based pilots are headed for strike action later this month and rival carrier Easyjet saying it will increase competition in the German market, which is seen as the next battleground for international low-cost operators, writes Geoff Percival.

Italian pilots union Anpac said its members working for Ryanair are scheduled to strike for four hours on December 15; the latest fallout from the airlines September rostering failure which led to 700,000 customers being affected by flight cancellations.

In October, Ryanair said that its rostering problems would not affect its full-year earnings but would result in the company improving how it pays and treats its pilots.

Ryanair does not recognise unions and has long managed to avoid industrial action. However, pilots have mobilised in the wake of the September problems.

The Italian strike is to take place from 2pm to 6pm on the day in question. Anpac has 280 members, representing around 40% of the Ryanair pilots based in Italy. Anpac said it was not yet clear how many of its pilots were scheduled to fly at that time.

Ryanairs shares were down by nearly 0.5% yesterday.

Meanwhile, Easyjet has said it will start competing with Lufthansa on domestic German routes from Berlin next month, following its planned takeover of parts of insolvent Air Berlin.

Easyjet currently flies from Berlins Schoenefeld Airport to destinations outside of Germany, but the Air Berlin deal will see it move into the larger inner-city Tegel Airport.

The British carrier said it plans more routes from Tegel for the summer flying season, which begins in late March. Easyjet will therefore go head-to-head with Lufthansas airlines in competition for German business customers.

Ryanair didnt bid for Air Berlin and also suspended its sole German domestic route after its rostering problem but it too is set to expand in Germany. It is prepared to take over slots at Tegel and base nine aircraft there, which will enable it to almost double its annual passenger numbers at Tegel to 10m, it said last week.

According to a Ryanair statement this is the sixth time FIT/CISL or ANPAC has announced strikes by Ryanair pilots, only to postpone/cancel them later.

They went on: "We expect this latest threatened strike will also be postponed/cancelled since both FIT/CISL and ANPAC are Alitalia unions with no role in Ryanair."
By Ann OLoughlin

A nine year battle to prevent four companies being liquidated over Revenue debts exceeding 1m has ended with a Supreme Court order permitting their winding up to proceed.

The three judge court unanimously found, no matter how sincererly Martin Power, the "moving spirit" behind the companies, believed otherwise, the evidence did not establish the Revenue sought winding up for ulterior motive or improper purpose.

The "express, obvious", purpose was to gather together hundreds of thousands of Euro due to the State and, therefore, the public, Mr Justice John MacMenamin said.

The Revenue presented winding up petitions in July 2008 for the four companies- Tweedswood Ltd, Global Test and Survey Technologies Ltd, M.J. Power Construction (Wexford) Ltd and Groupco Management Services Ltd.

They were adjourned to October 2008 when the High Court ordered the winding up of three. In December 2008, it ordered the fourth company, Tweedswood Ltd, be wound up.

The companies lodged appeals in 2009 and a stay applied on the winding up orders pending that appeal.

For reasons including objections by the companies and delays in the court system, the appeal was not heard by the Supreme Court until this year. No blame attached to the Revenue for the delay, the court said.

Giving the courts judgment, Mr Justice MacMenamin noted the events took place well before the Companies (Amendment) Act 2014 was enacted but the winding ups will proceed under that Act. He refused to put a further stay on the winding up orders.

He ruled the companies had not established evidence from which the court could infer the Revenue and other persons, who were not parties to the litigation, were part of a "conspiracy" to "stifle" the companies. Nor had they established the Revenue acted for ulterior motive or improper purpose.

One of the main issues in controversy was a series of transactions concerning the Custom House Quay site in Wexford town, he noted.

In a 2008 affidavit, Mr Power claimed that, in February 2002, Tony Dempsey, then a Fianna Fail TD who held a 50 per cent shareholding in Tweedswood, sold his interest in the Custom House Quay block to Tweedswood.

Having conveyed the property in 2002, Mr Dempsey began a process of "reversing" or rescinding the sale in September or October 2002 and the Revenue had wrongly approved that, Mr Power alleged.

It was alleged, in dealing with Tweedsood re VAT, the Revenue treated the sale as closed but, in its dealings with Mr Dempsey, it treated the sale as rescinded by him. Mr Power claimed, as a result, Mr Dempsey benefited financially and was able to make appropriate returns as to his financial interests to the standards in public office authorities.

The Revenue denied it acted unlawfully in its treatment of the VAT transactions and denied the winding up petitions were an effort to cover up what it allegedly did.

The judge stressed Mr Dempsey was not a party to this litigation and had had no chance to answer the claims concerning him which could not be taken as established fact. The allegation must also be seen in light of proceedings brought by Mr Dempsey concerning a contract for sale of the Custom House Quay building, which High Court case settled in 2008 on terms including Mr Dempsey getting judgments totalling more than 864,000 against Tweedswood and Mr Power.

The complaints concerning the Revenues handling of the Custom House transaction dated back to 2002/3, some five years before the winding up petitons were initiated, and well before the settlement of Mr Dempsey case in 2008, he noted.

A "mass" of "new material" presented in the appeal concerning the validity of the assembly of a site for government departments in Wexford town was "speculative" and suggested "clutching at straws", he also said.

An inquiry ordered at Wexford County Council found no evidence of impropriety in relation to assembly of the site and there was no "chain of connection" between that and the winding up petitions which would establish ulterior motive on the Revenues part.
Innovations in Canada were unveiled at last months big Agri-Trade Equipment Expo in Alberta.

One of the awards went to Arnold Innovations for their hydraulically-assisted cylinder-reversing wrenches, which grain growers can use to make clearing plugged combine harvesters an easier job.

Farmer Richard Arnold came up with this solution to his own experiences with combines.

Having suffered an injury using the factory-supplied wrench, Richard and his son Doug researched and developed a better method.

He now sells a kit costing 2,300-2,600, which uses a ratcheting system with a long handle, connected to the combines hydraulics, with which the combine driver can rock the cylinder to break the lump which is blocking it, and then engage the ratchet in reverse to free the cylinder.

Its faster and safer than wrenches supplied with the combines.

Arnold Innovations makes these reversers for New Holland and Claas Lexion combines, and is working on versions for New Holland and John Deere machines.

Another award-winning innovation at the Agri-Trade Equipment Expo was the ScherGain Drop Pan which can be mounted on any make or model of combine and used for calculating grain loss.
Armenian Apostolic Church has not expressed a position on Jerusalem

According to Arabologist Hayk Kocharyan, the Armenian Church should also express its position on the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A letter was sent to US president Donald Tramp, signed by the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem's Christian communities. The expert welcomed the Armenian patriarchate's step and said: "Jerusalem does not belong to any nation or any other country, it is a cultural heritage, it is the center of three religions. We have a great heritage there and we should stand for it. The situation will be tense there." US President Donald Trump's statement on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has caused a great stir not only in Turkey, but also in all neighboring countries, and even the US colleagues have been deeply concerned and protested. According to Mr. Kocharyan, this step of Trump was conditioned not only by the pre-election promise, but also by the influence of the Jewish lobby. "The groom, who is also his advisor, is known for his personal ties with the Israeli government, and I believe that this has played an important role. There are many other factors, but the fact is that there is already a statement, and we should deal with the consequences of it." This statement will increase the tension in the Middle East and we will witness the collapse of the fragile security system.
Gardai are renewing their appeal for help in finding an elderly man missing from Rathfarnham in Dublin.

71-year-old Brendan Burke was last seen outside the Permanent TSB in Rathmines on November, 15.
The country's top child protection expert wants to jail adults who groom children to carry out crimes.

Special reporteur, Geoffrey Shannon, says a new law named after the villain 'Fagin' in Oliver Twist, should be introduced as soon as possible.
The number of whiplash claims is significantly higher in Ireland than a lot of other European countries.

That is one of the main findings of the Personal Injuries Commission set up last January to examine the sharp rise in the cost of motor insurance.
The row over Cork citys boundary extension has been torturous, but in the end it looks like a mature attitude and a sound approach has won out, writes Aodh Quinlivan

We change our behaviour when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change

 Henry Cloud (author).

THE issue of the local authority boundary in Cork has been described as a saga.

As a saga can be defined as a long and involved story, the Cork controversy certainly fits the bill. In fact, the current dispute can be traced back to the 1960s.

The protracted tale of Corks last boundary extension began with a sworn public inquiry in May 1961.

It culminated with the coming into force of an extension in July 1965.

In February 1967 the compensation package between the city and council was agreed and the last payment

was received by the county council in 1982.

The more recent version of the great Cork boundary question has been ongoing since at least 2012 when Phil Hogan, then the local government minister, declared, there would appear to be a good case in principle for considering a boundary alteration in Cork with a view to creating a wider metropolitan area. In the intervening five years, we have had reports, controversies (some of which were unearthed through freedom of information and reported in the Irish Examiner), misinformation, scare-mongering and pettiness.

This has taken from the important work of both local authorities, a point referenced by Jim Mackinnon at the end of his report  Cork is not benefiting from the current hiatus. The long-standing question-mark and uncertainty over local government arrangements in Cork has distracted both local authorities from their core mandate. In the meantime, the world is moving on, with new challenges and opportunities presenting themselves.

While the outside view has been that the boundary battle in Cork is an unholy mess, I remained optimistic over the last few difficult months that reasonable voices in City Hall and County Hall would hold sway and that a compromise agreement would be reached.

As I write, that appears to be the case, as evidenced by the joint statement issued yesterday by Lord Mayor, Cllr Tony Fitzgerald, and County Mayor, Cllr Declan Hurley.

Both are to be commended for the conciliatory and mature nature of what they said  in contrast to much of the hysteria over recent months from people who should know better.

The Lord Mayor referred to the historic opportunity for both Cork City and county to grow and prosper.

Tellingly, the County Mayor noted: Both councils acknowledged that it was unlikely that they would each achieve all that they individually sought to achieve.

Todays developments provide a solid basis to move forward on a joint collaborative basis.

These words reflect the famous and oft-quoted statement by Otto von Bismarck: Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable  the art of the next best.

The road to get us to this point has been torturous and potholed and many people who set out on the journey are tired, battered and bruised.

Nonetheless, however we got here, we should be encouraged that there is a roadmap. We should also be encouraged that common sense and evidence has won the day in that the deeply flawed proposal to merge the city and county councils has been discredited to such an extent that it will hopefully never see the light of day again.

Professors Peter John and Colin Copus are two of the leading worldwide experts on the size of local government and they have concluded: Common folklore in local government is that bigger is better and more efficient, a conclusion not borne out by research.

My own research, conducted with two colleagues in Dublin, examined more than 400 cases worldwide of local government mergers, with the evidence pointing to the fact that in a majority of cases the mergers not only failed to achieve efficiencies but they generated significant diseconomies of scale.

This evidence fell on deaf ears for three members of the original Smiddy Committee and within the corridors of the Custom House where officials clearly had their own agenda.

Today is a day of hope and it is also a day of vindication for UCCs Prof Dermot Keogh and Theresa Reidy (the two dissenting members of the Smiddy Committee and writers of the minority report) who refused to bow to extreme pressure.

Hopefully, we have seen the end of the snide dismissals of the minority report as an academic piece of work.

At times during the recent controversy, an ugly anti-intellectual bias has been evident.

While today I am optimistic, I am also cautious.

It seems that a reasonable compromise has been reached but it is not necessarily optimal.

Frank Crowley, of UCCs Spatial and Regional Economic Research Centre, argues that the boundary movement should be towards the harbour for more efficient and integrated services and a higher population density.

We also need to demonstrate patience at this point  in many ways, having come off one torturous and potholed road, we are about to start travelling another one.

Over the coming months, we need to see service plans both for the expanded city and the reduced county.

The transfer of administrative functions and other handover issues will take years to complete. There will be difficulties and we will hear hurlers on the ditch say, the councils should be merged or there should not have been a boundary extension.

I dont like to end on a sour note but there is a bigger issue here which a boundary extension does not solve.

Local government is significantly constrained and is suffocated by central government. Changing the structure of a weak, dysfunctional, under-powered and under-resourced system of local government alters nothing.

You simply have a new structure which cannot disguise the fact that the system remains weak, dysfunctional, under-powered and under-resourced.

Aodh Quinlivan is the director of UCCs Centre for Local and Regional Governance and a lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics.
The world should prepare itself for the erosion of the rules-based trading system enshrined in the World Trade Organisation, writes Daniel Gros.

Free trade seems to have few supporters these days. Though actual trade volumes are recovering from the post-crisis recession and drop in commodity prices, globalisation has become increasingly contentious, as exemplified by the election of US President Donald Trump on the back of a promise to rip up international agreements and get tough on trade partners.

What does this mean for the future of the rules-based trading system?

Some 60 years ago, when the current rules-based global trading system was conceived, the US was the worlds sole economic hyperpower, possessing unquestioned dominance in the days most advanced manufacturing industries.

With enough power to impose rules, and enough dominance to be able to count on accruing the largest share of the benefits, it could  and did  perform the role of benevolent hegemon.

As Japan and Europe recovered from the Second World War  with the latter getting an added boost from economic integration  Americas lead began to dwindle, and by the 1970s and 1980s, the US was sharing power over the worlds trade agenda with Europe. Nonetheless, because the US and Europe share so many common interests, they generally adhered to a co-operative approach.

It was not until imports began to overwhelm a growing number of industries in the US, fuelling the emergence of large and persistent external deficits, that the countrys trade policy became more defensive, creating friction with many of its partners.

Even then, US leaders understood the value of the liberal multilateral trading system, and supported the establishment, in 1995, of the World Trade Organisation as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

The WTOs creation amounted to a major step forward, as it addressed not just tariffs, but also other trade barriers, including indirect barriers arising from domestic regulations.

Given the complexity of assessing how domestic regulations might impede trade, especially compared to judging whether a tariff has been correctly applied, the WTO needed effective dispute-settlement mechanisms, with members agreeing to binding arbitration.

The system worked, because its major members recognised the legitimacy of independent panels, even if they sometimes deliver politically inconvenient judgments.

This recognition is now increasingly in doubt. Consider what type of economy would support a rules-based system. After the Second World War, the US supported such a system, because of its unassailable economic supremacy.

An open rules-based system would also be highly appealing in a world comprising only small countries, none of which could hope to gain by relying on its relative economic power.

Things become more complicated when the global economy includes a small number of economies of similar size, larger than small economies from the previous example, but not large enough to dominate the system alone.

That is the scenario Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman considered in a 1989 paper on bilateralism, in which he reported a world consisting of three major trading blocs constitutes the worst constellation for trade, as a lack of explicit cooperation among all three would lead to increasing trade barriers.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the situation in which the global economy finds itself today.

US president Donald Trump with Chinese president Xi Jinping during an official US visit to China in November 2017.

There are three dominant economies or trading blocs  China, the EU, and US  with very similar trade volumes (exports plus imports) of around 4 trillion each. (Japan, which was a strong contender 25 years ago, now has a much smaller trade volume.) Together, the G3 economies account for 40% of world trade and 45% of global GDP.

With economic power distributed in this way, explicit co-operation by all three actors is crucial. Yet there are compelling reasons why they would be reticent to pursue such co-operation.

Even if Trump werent president, the current global trading system would present problems for the US, whose trade policy has long focused on manufactured goods. (Trade in raw materials has always been relatively free, and trade in agricultural goods has usually been considered special, and thus not subject to rules like the most favoured nation principle, which applies to manufactures.)

Because the US is now self-sufficient in energy, it needs to export fewer manufactured goods than industrialised countries with no domestic energy resources. Annual US exports of manufactured goods thus now amount to only about 1 trillion annually  significantly less than both the EU and China, which export almost twice as much in manufactured goods, despite having somewhat smaller economies.

To be sure, Trump is unlikely to start an outright trade war, because any US tariff would harm the interests of the countrys largest companies, which have invested huge sums in production facilities abroad. Yet no individual firm will be willing to give up much of its political capital to defend the rules-based system, either, because it would have to bear the losses, while its competitors shared the gains.

The same goes for the G3 trading blocs: If the EU expends political capital to stop the US from undermining WTO mechanisms, China (and the rest of world) will reap most of the gains.

That dynamic goes some way towards explaining why Chinas leaders, despite having proclaimed their support for the multilateral rules-based trading system, havent taken concrete action to reinforce it. Their reticence is probably intensified by the assumption that, within the current generation, their country will dominate the global economy; at that point, they might no longer want to be bound by somebody elses rules.

It does not help matters that the Communist Party of China has recently been empowered even further in all areas of the economy, with all major firms now having to accept a CPC representative on their board.

It is difficult to see how a dominant economic power governed by a single party  especially one with such extensive control over the economy  would accept the primacy of international rules and procedures over domestic considerations.

The conclusion is clear. The world should prepare itself for the erosion of the rules-based trading system enshrined in the WTO.

Daniel Gros is director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.
OSCE omissions are discussed in Nalbandian's speech (video)

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian addressed the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict in his recent speech at the OSCEs 24th Ministerial Conference, blaming the Azerbaijani leadership for hampering the internationally-mediated peace efforts. In his speech at the meeting in Vienna, Armenias top diplomat also enumerated nine major reasons accounting for the failure to end the long-lasting land dispute. His full speech, published by the Foreign Ministrys press service, is provided below: Mr Chairman, Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank the Chairmanship-in-Office for leading the organization throughout the year, good organisation of the Ministerial Council and the warm hospitality. Armenia has always been a strong advocate for advancing the indivisible security in the OSCE area and has continuously contributed to the discussions aimed at reinvigoration of the framework of arms control and CSBMs. Building trust and confidence does not rest only with the first dimension. We strongly believe that the economic and environmental basket of our Organization has an untapped potential. In this regard the OSCE could be a natural platform for promoting an inclusive dialogue between participating States, including on regional integration processes. About two weeks ago Armenia signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It vividly demonstrated that the membership to one integration framework, in the case of Armenia to the Eurasian Economic Union, does not preclude cooperation with the others. We hope that pragmatic and result oriented dialogue will be the driving force of the economic cooperation in the whole OSCE area. We would also like to emphasize Armenias contribution to the human dimension of our activities and highlight in this regard our effective cooperation with the OSCE institutions. The April Parliamentary elections in Armenia demonstrated that the progress achieved in upholding fundamental freedoms is irreversible and sustainable and we acknowledge the contribution of the OSCE institutions in this regard. We are glad that the theme of protection of the ethnic and religious groups from identity based violence and atrocities especially in our neighboring region  in the Middle East, is getting more and more attention within the OSCE. Armenia has been among the first to raise this issue and support the strengthening of the OSCE commitments in this regard. The further development of effective measures to counter hate crime and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions was the main focus of the recent high-level conference in Yerevan, co-organized by the OSCE Chairmanship and ODIHR with the support of the Armenian Foreign Ministry. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Ministerial Councils provide an opportunity to talk about the achievements and vision for the future. However, it is equally important not to omit to address the setbacks of the Organization in an open and candid manner. The consequences of the closure of the OSCE Office in Yerevan pertain to very essence of the OSCE, which is designed to settle the issues through dialogue and cooperation and never through imposing the position of one participating State at the expense of all others and the entire Organization. It created a very negative precedent. The refusal of Azerbaijan to join the consensus on the extension of the mandate of the Office damaged not merely the integrity of the field missions of the OSCE, but its capacity of inclusive cooperation. Azerbaijan failed to respect the OSCE commitments and eliminated the OSCE Office in its own country before it attacked and closed the last OSCE full-fledged mission in the region. It is particularly deplorable that the Office was closed against the will and consistent efforts for its preservation exerted by the host country and all participating States with one exception - Azerbaijan. We would like to recall that both German and Austrian Chairmanships rejected the accusations of Azerbaijan against Yerevan Office. It does not come as a surprise that Azerbaijan found itself in isolation in challenging the OSCE Office in Yerevan. We are determined to continue our close cooperation within the OSCE framework. The Armenia cooperation programme opens good opportunities in this regard. Mr Chairman, Ten years ago the Basic Principles for the Peaceful Settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict were presented to the sides by the Minsk Group Co-Chair countries in the margins of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid. Two years later the Athens Ministerial Council of the OSCE adopted a statement on behalf of all participating States that strongly supported the Basic Principles and noted the commitment of the parties to reach an agreement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution based upon the principles of Non-Use of Force or Threat of Force, Territorial Integrity, and the Equal Rights and Self-Determination of Peoples. The presidents of the Co-Chair countries in their five joint statements issued since 2009 reiterated their support to these principles and main elements for the conflict resolution which were presented by them as an integrated whole. Since then the Co-Chairs have reaffirmed this approach on many occasions, including during almost all OSCE Ministerial Councils and most recently in their joint statement made in Hamburg. On numerous occasions Armenia has continuously reiterated its readiness to continue negotiations based on these principles and elements with the aim of the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict. There are several reasons why till now it has not been possible to advance the peace process despite numerous meetings on the presidential and ministerial levels, many rounds of negotiations, the tireless mediation by the Co-Chair countries, and the strong endorsement of the OSCE and all others who have supported the efforts and approaches of the Co-Chairs. First, Azerbaijan made a step back and has refused the abovementioned three principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution as a basis for the conflict settlement. Second, Azerbaijan adopted a selective approach towards the elements proposed by the Co-Chairs, who have continuously warned against such practice, since they conceive their proposals as an indivisible whole, and made it clear that any attempt to select some principles and elements over others would make it impossible to achieve a solution. Third, Baku does not comply with the reached agreements and backtracks from them, as it happened during many rounds of negotiations, most notably during the Summits in St. Petersburg (June 2010), Astrakhan (October 2010), Sochi (March 2011), Kazan (June 2011). The pattern of refusal by Azerbaijan to honor prior agreements seriously questions Bakus credibility as a negotiating party. Fourth, almost constant profanation of the Co-Chairs efforts and the attempts to shift the mediation to other formats have been illustrative of Azerbaijans intentions to derail the negotiations. It does not come as a surprise that the Co-Chairs in their public statements called on Baku to reverse this stance. Fifth, the use or threat of use of force by Azerbaijan, regular ceasefire violations and provocations, unnotified military exercises in a blatant noncompliance to the OSCE Vienna document, bellicose statements of the high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan demonstrate that Baku considers the war as a viable option. The Co-Chairs have appealed to Azerbaijan to refrain from the escalation of the situation, to reaffirm the commitment to peaceful settlement. Nobody doubts that it is Azerbaijan that constantly violates the ceasefire and resorts to the escalation of the situation. Sixth, a serious damage was caused to the negotiation process by Azerbaijans aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in April 2016 that was accompanied by the grave violations of international humanitarian law, atrocities against the civilian population, including children, women and elderly persons, mutilation of the bodies, DAESH-style beheadings. Seventh, after April aggression the Co-Chairs organized two summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg with the participation of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to address the consequences of the war. Azerbaijan refused to implement what had been agreed upon and emphasized in the framework of these Summits particularly on the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict, full adherence to the 1994-1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements, which do not have time limitations, creation of mechanism for the investigation of ceasefire violations, expansion of the team of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office with the aim to increase efficiency of the monitoring capacities on the ground. The reported goal of these agreements was to create conditions for the advancement of the peace process, thus, by rejecting them Baku intentionally hinders the negotiations. Eighth, Azerbaijan continues to practice anti-Armenian hate speech, it calls all Armenians of the world its enemy number one, it writes in the textbooks that Armenians are genetic enemies of Azerbaijan, it erases all traces of indigenous Armenian cultural heritage and religious sites, it claims that allegedly territories of Armenia are ancient Azerbaijani lands. Azerbaijan has long blacklisted the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, and then it started to put in the blacklist all those who visit Nagorno-Karabakh. Those who genuinely aspire for peace do not do such actions. Ninth, after many years of negotiations on the Basic Principles, Azerbaijan started to claim that there is no need for adopting them, in a sheer disrespect to other negotiating parties, to the Co-Chair countries and huge efforts and time invested in the process. Azerbaijans uncompromising and maximalist stance has become a serious obstacle to the advancement of the peace process and has heavily contributed to the preservation of the status-quo. The Co-Chairs conflict settlement proposals are a way that could bring to the change of the status-quo. However, Azerbaijan rejects those proposals, doing everything to keep the status-quo intact at the same time claiming that allegedly it is advocating for the change of status-quo. Azerbaijans intentions can be easily tracked by its expenditures: Baku spends billions to buy influence in the world capitals, as once again became obvious through notorious Laundromat affair, it spends much more for purchases of advanced weaponry, but it has not invested anything so far to prepare its population for peace, as the Co-Chairs have been continuously urging. If Baku abides to the calls of the Co-Chairs to strictly respect the ceasefire, implements previously reached agreements, reiterates its adherence to the principles of the conflict resolution proposed by the Co-Chairs and constructively engages in the negotiations that will pave the way to move the peace process forward and change the status-quo. We are convinced that there is no alternative to the peace talks and there is a need to conduct intensive negotiations based on the proposals of the Co-Chair countries. It is with this understanding that I met six times with my Azerbaijani colleague during past year and the last one was just yesterday in the framework of this Ministerial Council. The meetings between the Ministers and the able mediation of the Co-Chairs helped to prepare the Geneva Summit of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on October 16th, 2017. This was the first meeting between the Presidents after about sixteen months interval and it passed mostly in a positive mood. For the first time in about four years at the Geneva Summit it was possible to adopt, although quite brief, a joint statement. On numerous previous occasions Armenia expressed its readiness to join the statements of the Co-Chairs, however, Azerbaijan always refused to have a common statement. This joint statement reflected what Armenia has been long advocating for: to take additional steps to reduce tensions on the Line of Contact. These steps have been identified in the statements made at the Vienna and St. Petersburg Summits of 2016. The Geneva statement also stressed the necessity to intensify the negotiation process, and this too has always been strongly advocated by Armenia. Unfortunately, just after the Summit Baku again resorted to its language of groundless accusations and warmongering. Yesterdays meeting with my Azerbaijani colleague generally passed in the positive mood. We will see the developments after it. Mr Chairman, Next year people of Nagorno-Karabakh will mark 30 years of their struggle for the right to choose their destiny, for human dignity and freedom. In three decades people of Artsakh despite the devastating war and all difficulties, succeeded to create a society based on the respect of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic institutions. The settlement of the conflict should respect all inherent rights of the people of Artsakh and should ensure their unhindered implementation. Mr Chairman, In conclusion, I would like to assure Italy, the incoming Chair that it can count on Armenias support. I would also like to welcome Slovakias joining the Troika.
Giving asylum seekers the right to work is not just about money, its also about the restoration of human dignity, writes this anonymous author who lives in direct provision.

NELSON Mandela once said: When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

This sentiment resonates greatly as I look at the current debate on asylum seekers right to work in Ireland.

For some people, this may seem like a relatively new issue, but the truth is, in some circles, this issue has been a topic of conversation from as far back as 2006.

Yet more than 10 years later, the State wants more time to decide, because they want to avoid unnecessary administrative work due to a flood of work permit applications.

But, how much time is needed for the State to act humanely and not waste taxpayers money through unnecessary court appeals? Because this water has been boiling long enough.

The right to work is not just a question of money, it is enterprise, it is the restoration of human dignity, and the ability to provide for oneself and ones family. It cannot be bought or overlooked.

So, as I seek thoughts to convey my plea for the right to work, all I ask for is a moment of consideration. It is rare for science and religion to find common ground, but both affirm the immense benefits of working. Working means growth, independence and the ability to walk with pride.

Recently, a man told me I was living for free in Ireland and I should go back to where I am from. For a moment I was offended but I realised that minus the slur, he was telling the truth.

How much do people really know about the system we are forced to live under, where we are practically infantilised? I believe people often confuse the call for humane treatment and adequate living conditions with ingratitude.

The depth of gratitude every single person granted asylum in Ireland has is immeasurable, because it was either we fled or we died, maybe not from conflict, but because we had lost hope for positive change.

A person who loses hope eventually gives up the will to live and the only option left is to seek asylum and that bit of hope for the possibility of a better tomorrow.

Yet, do people know asylum seekers are qualified individuals who have been practically begging to be allowed to work, to contribute to society?

The absolute work ban and reluctance to reach a decision communicates that we are living for free and inadvertently allows others to toss insults. Though I can contribute, I am being denied that opportunity.

The direct provision system is worse than war-torn countries because it accepts people and gives us a glimpse of hope, but, once settled, you start hearing peoples stories.

How they have lived in the hostel for 10 years plus being denied the right to work and forced to survive on 21.60. Hope then becomes a curse as you wait for a reply that never seems to arrive.

In a conflict zone, you expect to lose autonomy, but when I arrived, all I had heard previously about Ireland championing human rights was challenged.

The State has devised a system that deliberately excludes people from the community by placing asylum seekers in isolated centres removed. Yet, we are asked how we have assimilated.

Are we a social ill to be hidden away and not talked about, are we not suitable to live among the community?

Criminals are the only other group isolated. Does our treatment place us in that category? If granted the right to work, we would hope to be judged on our capabilities and to challenge prevalent stereotypes. Our forced circumstances are a barrier to proving our worth and to people learning who we truly are.

Also, most children in the hostel are denied the chance to cultivate survival skills because the ability to learn responsibility, and manage time and money is learned from an early age.

When our children are denied the chance to further their education, they are practically trained to become dependent on social welfare. Moreover, the lack of space and privacy is often disheartening and dehumanising, particularly for families who are forced to live in one room.

Where is the dignity in a parent dressing or undressing in a bathroom or in front of their children? Where is the humanity in a child being forced to do their homework on a toilet seat because there is nowhere to do it on the single table servicing the whole family?

How do you restore the innocence of children who mistakenly see their parents having relations?

The right to work would mean autonomy; it would mean restoration of dignity and self-worth, it would mean us being able to afford rent in houses where our children have bedrooms. How are we expected to cope after we have left the hostel?

I have met some of the most compassionate people in Ireland, who have made a huge difference in my life by making me feel welcome. I only ask that more people offer unreserved welcome and challenge inaccurate preconceived notions regarding the assistance we receive.

Often, when we leave the hostel we become state burdens because we never got the chance to develop coping mechanisms, and are suffering from emotional and mental turmoil as a result of waiting for a decision on our status.

Truth is, we were taught to repay kindness and welcome with hard work, and all that we eat, not forgetting the roof over our heads, because we have worked for it; therefore, my final plea is, let us work and regain our sense of self-worth and self-respect.

Allow us to show our appreciation and regain our true selves that circumstance has almost extinguished. We are here and all we humbly ask for is that you give us a chance to live a fulfilled life.

As Confucius rightly said: A wise man has dignity without pride, a fool has pride without dignity.

We are laying our pride aside and asking you not to deny us the hope for a better tomorrow, because right now, hope is the only thing we have left.

The author currently lives in a direct provision centre. Her identity has been protected for fear this opinion article would affect her asylum application process.
There was what some might regard as a preliminary postmortem on Frances Fitzgeralds ministerial career yesterday, writes Michael Clifford.

It took place in Committee Room 2 in the bowels of Leinster House, before the Oireachtas justice committee.

As an inquiry, it didnt emerge with many new facts. Instead, a straw man was presented to the assembled parliamentarians for a pummelling. There was also the presentation of not one but two separate inquiries as choice deflections from answering real questions.

In the round, the hearing of over three hours did little to allay fears that the Department of Justice requires some major changes, both cultural and operational.

One thing that did emerge yesterday was that nobody is still perpetuating the misplaced notion that the former justice minister Minister for Justice had not had sight of effective briefings that informed her in broad terms what Maurice McCabe was being subjected to at the OHiggins Commission in 2015. This involved an attack on McCabes character at a time when both the minister and commissioner were publicly praising him.

The opening statement of the acting secretary general of the department, Oonagh McPhillips, again emphasised the point that Fitzgerald the former minister had waved around as her tenure at Cabinet floundered. She could not interfere in OHiggins irrespective of what she had been told was afoot there.

McPhillips told the committee it would have been wholly wrong to do so.

It would be unsustainable for the minister of the day to suggest that the defences or arguments which they [the gardai] could offer to the commission could change or be circumscribed.

This, as was illustrated by committee members yesterday, is a straw man. Nobody suggested she should have interfered.

The minister would have been doing nothing wrong if she had assembled those copied [on the email informing her of what was going on at OHiggins] and said I want to discuss this, Fianna Fails Jim OCallaghan put to McPhillips.

Our view is that any minister should not involve themselves, she replied.

The reality was that the minister showed a stunning lack of curiosity about what was going on behind closed doors.

Fitzgerald has had to answer for that in the political arena. But the failure to discover the emails at the centre of last weeks row  dating from May 15 and July 4, 2015  to the Charleton tribunal is most certainly a matter for the department.

A number of committee members couldnt get their heads around this. After all, the tribunal had been set up by the justice minister Minister for Justice.

And her own department couldnt manage to provide the tribunal with all it required to do its job?

Mick Wallace explored the matter but the response he received was that we could have dumped thousands upon thousands of documents down in Dublin Castle.

It was pointed out by assistant secretary John OCallaghan that the department had complied with orders of discovery from the tribunal. This neatly sidesteps the bigger issue.

In February, Judge Peter Charleton appealed for anybody with any information that might be of relevance to come forward. The department had been dealing with McCabe for years. It had also had extensive contact with the OHiggins commission.

A relatively small amount of work would have been required to check what exactly was on file in the Garda section of the department that might be of use to Charleton.

After all, once the Taoiseach ordered a trawl in the department, the response was back in just five days. In a properly run department, intent on assisting the judge by all possible means, the trawl could have been conducted last February or March and the results conveyed to Charleton post haste.

Labours Alan Kelly said he found the departments response to the tribunal alarming. Were basically finding out from the Department of Justice that they didnt provide the information, he said.

Further inquiry into the extent of discovery of documents to the Charleton tribunal was headed off with stern assertions that a senior counsel is to be appointed to examine how everything was handled and woe betide anybody who drifts onto the counsels patch.

The other deflection de jour was the tribunal itself. Repeatedly the officials from the department said they could not answer any questions that might stray into the inquirys remit.

So it went at this attempt to penetrate the cast iron walls of the department.

None of the committee members appeared to be satisfied with the quality of answers they received.

As for the officials, they had all the hallmarks of people forced to endure an exercise for the sake of a quiet life, before getting the hell out of there with a sense of relief theyve got past that one.
There are increasing fears that the US be will be led  deliberately or accidentally  into a nuclear war, writes Elizabeth Drew

MUCH of Americas capital has entered a state of near-panic. In recent days, President Donald Trump has been acting more bizarrely than ever, and the question raised in the mind of politicians and civilians alike, though rarely spoken aloud, has been: What can be done with this man?

Can the United States really afford to wait for special counsel Robert Mueller to wrap up his investigation (on the assumption that hell find the president guilty of something)? That could still take quite a while.

The question of timing has become increasingly urgent, given the heightened danger that the US will deliberately or accidentally end up in a war with North Korea. That risk, coupled with Trumps increasingly peculiar behaviour, has made Washington more tense than Ive ever known it to be, and that includes the dark days of Watergate. To put it bluntly: The worry is that a mentally deranged president might lead the US into a nuclear war.

In just the past week, evidence of Trumps instability has piled up. During an Oval Office ceremony to honour Native American heroes of the Second World War, he offended them by issuing a racist comment. He picked an unprecedented and unnecessary fight with Theresa May, the prime minister of Britain, supposedly Americas closest ally, by retweeting a British neo-fascist groups anti-Muslim posts. In an effort to win a Democratic senators vote for his pending tax-cut bill, he travelled to her state and told lies about her record (though the tax bill was so tilted to the richest 1% of Americans that no Democratic senator voted for it).

And he continued to bait North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who seems equally unstable.

At the same time, both The Washington Post and The New York Times ran articles containing disturbing stories about the presidents private behaviour. Trump, it was reported, told people close to him that he considers the infamous Access Hollywood recording of him joking, off-camera, about grabbing womens genitals to be a fraud, even though he admitted its authenticity and apologised after the Post released it in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

Trump has also been revisiting his mendacious claim about Barack Obama having not been born in the US  the bogus allegation that launched his political career, which, under pressure from advisers, hed renounced prior to the election. He said in a tweet that he had turned down Time magazines suggestion that it would name him Person of the Year, because it wasnt definite. (Trump sets great store by such appearances on Times cover). However, a Time official said that no such thing had occurred.

The American Psychiatric Association has a rule that its members may not offer diagnoses of people they

have not examined. But, given what some psychiatrists see as a national emergency, many have broken the rule and spoken or written publicly about their professional assessments of Trumps mental state.

The most widely accepted view is that he suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, which is far more serious than simply being a narcissist. According to the Mayo Clinic, such a disorder is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.

Moreover, behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem thats vulnerable to the slightest criticism. This definition is all too reflective of traits that Trump regularly exhibits.

Numerous Republican members of Congress are deeply worried about Trumps capacity to handle the presidency  an incredibly demanding job. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson, rumoured to be replaced soon, is said to have called Trump a moron.

Trumps heightened erratic behaviour in recent days has been attributed to his growing anxiety about Muellers investigation into his and his campaigns possible collusion with Russia in the Kremlins effort to tilt the 2016 election in his direction  an investigation that could end in a charge of conspiracy.

(Trump appears to be the only significant figure in Washington who wont accept that Russia interfered.)

And that increasingly bizarre behaviour came even before the news broke, on December 1, that Trumps first national security adviser and close campaign aide, retired General Michael Flynn, had agreed to plead guilty to one count of lying to the FBI in exchange for his co-operation with the investigation.

What made this highly significant was that Flynn is far and away the highest former official whom Mueller has flipped. Indeed, the generous plea deal makes it clear that Flynn is prepared to name figures higher than he was in the campaign and the White House.

Thats not very many people. It has already been speculated, with reason, that Flynn will point a finger at Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. But Trumps several earlier efforts to steer prosecutors away from Flynn were strong signals that Flynn knows something that Trump desperately hopes that prosecutors wont find out. We may learn what that is fairly soon.

Meanwhile, American and the world nervously await Trumps reaction to this latest very bad turn of events for him.

Elizabeth Drew is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixons Downfall.
The dramatic US policy shift on contested Jerusalem is seen by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership as a dangerous betrayal and game changer that is bound to propel them into a risky confrontation with the US and Israel on the global stage.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has not decided yet whether to formally abandon US-led negotiations with Israel, a troubled process that after two decades has failed to bring the Palestinians closer to statehood.

However, those close to Mr Abbas say a Middle East era of stop-and-go negotiations and Washington's monopoly as mediator is now over.

Here is a look at what could come next.

Why Jerusalem matters

US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital contradicts longstanding international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the holy city will be determined in negotiations. With Mr Trump's sharp pivot, the US is seen as siding with Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem, including the Israeli-annexed eastern sector the Palestinians seek as a future capital.

The dispute over Jerusalem forms the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but transcends a mere real estate argument. The city, home to Judaism's holiest site, is also sacred to billions of Muslims and Christians worldwide, and perceived slights to their claims have triggered major protests or violence in the past.

Abbas's response so far

Mr Abbas has been trying to rally international support, reaching out to leaders from Pope Francis to the EU foreign policy chief and Arab leaders. He warned Mr Trump in a phone call that the US shift will rock the region and threaten Washington's plans for a Middle East peace deal.

In a speech after Mr Trump's announcement, Mr Abbas said the US has effectively removed itself from any role as a Middle East broker, but he did not say what immediate steps, if any, the Palestinians plan to take.

Mr Abbas is to hold internal consultations with officials from the Palestine Liberation Organisation and his Fatah party, and plans to meet with his closest Arab ally, King Abdullah II of Jordan.

A moment of truth?

The crisis over Jerusalem may push Mr Abbas, the most steadfast Palestinian champion of seeking statehood through negotiations, to a point he avoided for so long - acknowledgement that the "peace process" is not working, at least in its current format.

Critics have argued that endless negotiations mainly serve Israel by providing diplomatic cover for its expansion of settlements on war-won lands. Mr Abbas also derived some political legitimacy from the process, positioning himself as the only leader with a shot at delivering statehood.

Mr Trump says he remains committed to brokering a Middle East deal, despite the Jerusalem pivot. However, those close to Mr Abbas say it is time to look for alternatives.

Any talks with US officials are now "superfluous and irrelevant", said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO official. "The peace process is finished."

Mr Abbas has warned in the past that a failure to achieve a so-called two-state solution could prompt Palestinians to pursue a single state for two peoples, a prospect most Israelis reject.

The Palestinian leader may be reluctant to break away from his longstanding policies or lack the political courage to do so, but not shifting course now would be worse, said analyst Bassem Zbaidi.

"It's time for the Palestinians to say no before coming under pressure to accept" future US proposals that could fall far short of their minimal demands, he said.

Other options?

Some PLO and Fatah officials suggested shifting from co-operation with the US and avoidance of conflict with Israel to a more confrontational approach.

Fatah supports halting contacts with the US consulate in Jerusalem, closing the PLO office in Washington and filing a complaint against the US at the UN Security Council over plans to start a multi-year process of moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, said senior Fatah official Nasser al-Kidwa.

The Palestinians could also try to press

prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes, including over settlement building, others said.

Mr Abbas has refrained from such a step until now, under apparent US pressure.

The ICC prosecutor is currently conducting a preliminary examination of the situation in the Palestinian territories, but this is a more open-ended review and could take years. The probe was triggered by "Palestine" becoming a member state of the court. The status change, in turn, was made possible by the 2012 UN General Assembly recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.

Help from Europe?

The Palestinians are increasingly looking to Europe for help, encouraged by the harsh criticism of Mr Trump's Jerusalem policy by European leaders.

European states in the past were relegated by Washington to the role of paymaster, sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to support the Palestinian self-rule government and help manage the long-running conflict.

European states often take a more critical view of Israeli policies than the US, especially on settlements, but have failed to challenge Washington's monopoly as mediator.

Palestinians now hope the growing rift between European leaders and the US over Jerusalem will earn them diplomatic points. An immediate goal is to persuade influential Western European countries to recognise a state of Palestine.

Risk or opportunity?

For Palestinians, Mr Trump's policy shift offers both risk and opportunity.

Jerusalem has repeatedly been a flashpoint for violence, and Palestinian protest marches planned later this week could lead to clashes with Israeli troops.

Such confrontations can spin out of control, as they did more than a decade ago when they escalated into an armed uprising. Mr Abbas staunchly opposes violence as counterproductive, but he may not be able to contain widespread public anger.

Some say Mr Trump's policy shift may create a moment of clarity and help end years of paralysis - by making it impossible to perpetuate the idea that statehood is possible under the old paradigm.

"That option is now off the table and that's a good thing," said Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser of the Palestinian self-rule government. "This had really held us up for so many years."

AP
Detective Garda Pat Condon said the water amenity officer was on duty near the damn at Inniscarra, Co Cork, on May 25 when he approached Constantin Balan, who lives at an apartment at Neptune, Hartys Quay, Rochestown, Cork.

Balan pleaded guilty to producing the air pistol to intimidate the fisheries officer.

Pat Barrett, defending, said the accused was never in trouble in his life, came from Romania to Ireland four years ago, and has a full-time job.

This was an uncharacteristic moment of madness He is a man of impeccable character, said Mr Barrett.

In fairness to the defendant, Detective Garda Pat Condon agreed that it was very much out of character.

The detective also said that the air pistol did not constitute a weapon and it was not illegal to have it. However, the charge was brought on the basis of it being produced in a manner that could intimidate.

But I do agree, it does appear to be out of character, said Det Garda Condon.

The detective said it was only held by the fishermans side and was never pointed or used in any other way.

Mr Barrett said the angler only had the air pistol for innocent purposes.

He would shoot it in the stream, not at anything, just a way of letting off steam, said Mr Barrett.

Judge Olann Kelleher said he was conscious of what the investigating garda had said and he directed the preparation of a probation report.

The judge put the matter back until February 14.
Despite warnings from unionists that Irelands hardened stance on a guarantee for a frictionless border is dangerous, Mr Varadkar said there is solidarity from EU states on the issue.

After a meeting in Dublin with Mr Varadkar last night, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said a good deal on the border is essential and that firm commitment is needed from Ms May.

The support from Mr Rutte comes after a flurry of phonecalls yesterday over the latest Brexit impasse, caused after the DUP this week forced Britain to drop out of a deal.

It had all been but agreed that regulations, in Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland, of the border would be aligned, thus avoiding a hard border. This deal would likely have allowed talks to move on to trade.

Mr Varadkar revealed details of his call with Ms May yesterday. He said he was willing to consider changes to the deal as long as any new language is consistent with the original terms.

The idea of new text in a deal was discussed, he confirmed , and he had an open mind. Ms May could come back to him as early as today, he told a press conference. If she wants to come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow, I expressed my willingness to consider that, said Mr Varadkar.

But I also said that when it comes to the substance or the meaning, I cant depart from that.

Mr Varadkar warned of the consequences of endangering the peace process as well as Irish-Anglo relations.

I wouldnt like to be the Taoiseach and I know she wouldnt like to be the prime minister that began the slow unravelling of all the progress that has been made in the last 20 years.

Mr Rutte said if there is no deal on this or the other two two main issues of citizenship and Britains exit bill, then negotiations would have to move into January.

Mr Varadkar thanked EU members for their unity and solidarity on the issue last night.

The EU and Britain have just days to patch up the deal before an EU summit next week otherwise talks will spill over into January, thus threatening a no-deal outcome.

DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds accused Mr Varadkar yesterday and the Irish Government of playing a dangerous game and of increasing the risk of a no-deal scenario.

Earlier, Sinn Feins leader in the North, Michelle ONeill, warned her DUP counterpart, Arlene Foster, to not speak on behalf of the people of the North.

After a phone conversation with Ms May, Ms ONeill said: I made it clear to the British prime minister that the DUP do not speak for the majority of the people of the North.

Ms ONeill also made it clear that most people in the June 2016 Brexit referendum voted to remain in the EU.
The development comes as the Department of Justice was yesterday swayed at the Oireachtas Justice Committee into asking the Charleton Tribunal if it wanted the department to conduct a widespread trawl to unearth remaining paper documentation and to extend searches to include private emails and mobile phones.

A response by Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan to a parliamentary question from Social Democrats joint leader Roisin Shortall confirmed that the trawl last month of department emails revealing details of the former garda commissioners legal strategy against whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe did not include Ms Fitzgeralds accounts.

While the email accounts of the then tanaiste and minister for justice and equality and her advisers were not specifically examined as part of the recent trawl for documents, I can confirm that the email accounts of officials working in relevant areas of the department were searched and that this exercise would, of course, encompass emails sent from or to the then minister and her advisers on any such matters, the minister replied.

Ms Shortall said the latest information raises some disturbing questions.

The first question is why on earth were the ministers and the advisers emails not searched, she said.

We dont know whether there was an email conversation between the minister and her advisers in relation to this.

You cant get the full answers to questions as to what she knew without knowing what happened between her and her advisers.

The Government has announced that a senior counsel is to be appointed to investigate issues around the discovery of documents in the department to the Charleton Tribunal, which is investigating a smear campaign against Sergeant McCabe.

At the close of an intense three-hour appearance before the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday, acting secretary general of the Department of Justice, Oonagh McPhillips, said she would ask the tribunal did it want the department to conduct a full trawl of its documentation, as well as private emails and mobile phones that might relate to its investigation.

She took the step after a direct request from chairman Caoimhghin O Caolain and after sustained pressure and criticism from deputies on a range of issues and specific calls for a full trawl.

Labour TD Alan Kelly  whose PQ revealed the first email last month  said the mobile phones and private emails of relevant civil servants should also be included in a full trawl.

Ms McPhillips rejected claims from Mr Kelly and suggestions from Fine Gael senator Martin Conway that the department willfully withheld documents.

Along with John OCallaghan, assistant secretary general for policing division, Ms McPhillips insisted throughout the session that the department had fully complied with disclosure orders from the tribunal.

Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy said this position was incredible given recent actions in the department, on foot of parliamentary questions and a Taoiseach-ordered trawl, had uncovered further documentation.

Ms McPhillips and Mr OCallaghan said that if they had given the tribunal every document that made some sort of reference to people affected by the tribunal it would be effectively dumping thousands and thousands of documents on the inquiry, which they said would not be helpful to it.

Independents4Change TD Mick Wallace said that should have been a call for Mr Justice Charleton.
During August and September, the number of families exiting homelessness services was greater than those accessing them, Minister Eoghan Murphy said yesterday.

In October, the number of new families accessing homelessness services increased by one family and while it was one family too many, said Mr Murphy, 87 no longer needed them.

He was speaking at a seminar organised by Focus Ireland to launch two reports, Keeping a Home and Finding a Home.

The charity also announced it prevented 240 families from becoming homeless over the first ten months of this year.

Mr Murphy admitted the number of families becoming homeless was still far too high but it now looked as if efforts to deal with the problem in Dublin were working.

He indicated the Government and other agencies involved could face the homeless challenge in Dublin and actually get a grip on it, they could begin to arrest the rise in homelessness nationally as well.

Focus Irelands director of advocacy Mike Allen said there were about 80 families becoming homeless every month in Dublin this year.

Mr Allen said more than a third of families were becoming homeless because their landlord was selling up.

So it is the single largest reason why families are becoming homeless, he said.

Mr Allen said homelessness in Dublin appeared to be stabilising because families were being moved out of homelessness more quickly.

We still feel the Government continues to underestimate the scale of the problem, he said.

He believed the 20,000 homes that the minister said would be built next year would not be enough.

Until we hit at least 25,000 to 30,000 new homes a year the problem will continue to escalate and I dont think they [the Government] have fully grasped that.

They are celebrating successes that we havent yet achieved and that causes me great anxiety in terms of their recognition of how serious the problem is.

Mr Murphy also spoke about family hubs, saying they offered a pathway for families to stable, secure accommodation.

There are 10 family hubs in Dublin and one in Limerick that support 300 families experiencing homelessness.

Mr Murphy said four new hubs will be established in Dublin before the end of the year and they would support another 100 families. Two further hubs would open in Dublin in early 2018 for 55 families.

Two more hubs would open in Limerick before the end of the year for 34 families and another hub would open in Cork early in the New Year for 19 families. A hub for Galway was also being developed.

Mr Murphy said he would be announcing new guidelines later this month for the build-to-rent sector to encourage more apartment building.

The minister also said he was writing to local authorities to tell them what their targets were going to be for next year.

We are going to have another housing summit in January where they [local authorities] are going to tell me how they are going to use their existing land banks to meet those targets.

Risk factors

Reasons given by 34 families:
Representatives from Facebook were addressing cyber security for children and young adults before the joint committee on children and youth affairs and faced sustained questioning over its p[olicies, and particularly over whether or not they were robust enough when dealing with issues such as violence and bullying.

However, TDs and senators told the Facebook representatives they did not believe they, as public representatives, were afforded the same protections as private individuals, citing repeated online abuse. Julie de Bailliencourt, Facebook head of safety policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the company was looking into the issue, particularly the abuse suffered by women in politics and public life.

Niamh Sweeney, head of public policy for Facebook Ireland, said the company did not tolerate bullying or harassment. We do allow people to speak freely on matters  and people  of public interest, but we remove content that targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them, she said.

Following questions from committee members Siobhan Cummiskey, who leads Facebooks content policy team, said regarding people in public life there are different standards, while stressing that Facebook takes a hard line on hate speech and credible threats.

Senator Catherine Noone referenced a rape threat she had received, which Ms Cummiskey said was unacceptable.

Senator Noone said: We in public life are busy people and we are inundated with negativity on social media. She said politicians were much maligned, and very unfairly, adding, regarding online abuse: I dont think its acceptable, I really dont. More has to be done in this space, it just has to be.

She said she did not have time to report every instance of online abuse and Ms de Bailliencourt said Facebook was looking at womens safety and particularly women in politics and public life, adding: I can guarantee you we are working on these.

Committee chairman Alan Farrell TD queried why a 2015 video of a fight among teenagers in Balbriggan was allowed to stay on Facebook for a month before being taken down, yet comments underneath the same video could be swiftly removed if they were seen as bullying or mocking.

Ms Cummiskey said the term fight videos covered a vast array of content and said: There are instances where people can share pics of videos of people being hit or assaulted in certain circumstances, referring to places such as Syria. Mr Farrell said the Dublin case was a brawl and Ms Cummiskey said she was glad it had been removed.

The company representatives said they aimed to target any harmful material within 24 hours of it being reported and Ms Sweeny outlined one case where a young user of the platform expressed a desire to self-harm.

It was reported by us in minutes, we reported to guards and they responded within minutes, she said.
Who cares about culture when people are hungry? - a Gyumri resident (video)

"I do not like to say to Gyumri, Leninakan is different. When I opened my eyes, I saw Leninakan. There are a huge difference between these two," says Samvel Matosyan, a driver from Gyumri. "It's not a life. I was a member of the Congress, I was a honored driver, I got a high salary, so, my pension should have been high, but everything is destroyed and leveled to the ground." The new generation did not see Leninakan. "I'm from Gyumri," says fifteen-year-old Liana, "I love my Gyumri very much and I see my future in my city. Parents are trying to do everything for their children, but they should have an opportunity, as they get paid less." Nelly Kalashian has not been to Gyumri for five years, currently, she is working and living in Russia. "I have come to see my relatives and go," says Nelly. "I love my city and regret that there is no hope to come back. It would be good if the government focused its attention on culture. We have very good young people who just "shine" in foreign countries.They do not have a prospect of staying here." What expectations do the residents of Gyumri have? "Our expectations and prospects depend on our desire. It is not just only about complaining," says Liana. Economist Mrs. Gohar has no expectations and does not want to hide her anger. "The situation of the people is getting worse. Poverty has increased. There are no jobs. Corruption does not disappear in any way. Theft has increased. Crimes are not revealed," said Mrs. Gohar. "They want to develop a culture. Who cares about culture when people are hungry?" Children have some expectations. They are waiting for the New Year and gifts. Monica does not expect Santa Claus because she does not believe in Santa Claus. She does not expect a surprise from her Mother and Dad, as she knows that the gift will be a new cloth. Nonetheless, she likes New Year so much. Driver Samvel just wants peace in the world, good service and return for our soldiers. and all the best for the people. "Leninakan for me is a purgatory, I'm going there to get cleaned, once again to see me, to remember me, not to forget me again, to gain strength, to be smart, not to lose my humor," once said Frunzik Mkrtchyan for his world center Gyumri. 29 years ago, this day divided the Leninakan-Gyumri city's years before and after the earthquake ...
In a report responding to concerns raised during public consultations on the planned 140m scheme for the city, the OPW and consultants Arup said the majority of proposed defence walls in the city centre would be no higher than knee height.

The prospect of replacing and heightening quay walls in and near the city centre has sparked considerable opposition. One campaign group wants a tidal barrier built instead, saying that doing so 10km downstream of the city centre would cost about 140m.

As previously reported by the Irish Examiner, however, the OPWs assessment of the tidal barrier option has ruled it out on cost grounds. In the report published yesterday, it said any tidal barrier would have to be located further downstream.

The furthest upstream location it suggested would be at Little Island, but that would cost nearly 1bn. An alternative location at either side of Great Island in the outer harbour would be technically feasible, but the OPW estimates the cost at over 1.7bn.

Addressing the potential impacts of the proposed flood relief scheme, the OPW and Arup said over 20m is being committed to carefully restore the historic quay walls. In many cases, these walls are at risk of collapse, which happened at Grenville Place during the 2009 flood that caused an estimated 90m of damage.

The report said solid river wall heights would increase to 1.2m in some areas on the rivers north channel, but river views would be maintained in all cases.

Views of and connection to the river will be significantly enhanced with approximately 1km of new river walkway and cycleway being created as part of the scheme, it said.

It said areas with historic features like ornate railings, such as North Mall and Sullivans Quay, are being redesigned to preserve existing railings and features in-situ.

The OPW/Arup report said they considered alternative proposals, including changes to the operations of the hydroelectric dams upstream of the city on the River Lee at Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid.

Such submissions are premised on a large number of incorrect assumptions and are based on a proposed operating regime which would jeopardise dam safety by significantly increasing the risk of overtopping, states the report.

Minister of State Kevin Boxer Moran said the OPW has listened to concerns, and he looks forward to the start of the first phase. Cork City Council will submit it for planning in early 2018 as part of an integrated public realm project for the Morrisons Island area of the city centre.
Leo Varadkar moved to strongly dismiss any notion of the DUP being the only party that should have a say in Brexit negotiations, suggesting all parties should be given negotiation documents.

Mr Varadkar told the Dail that British prime minister Theresa May is now managing difficult issues but is acting in good faith and wants to come to an agreement.

His comments came after DUP leader Arlene Foster accused the Irish Government of holding back the text of Mondays failed agreement on the border, a claim which was denied.

He said that there are many voices in Northern Ireland and even some unionists had been very much behind the proposals put forward.

We should listen to all parties in Northern Ireland and not accept the idea, which seems to be gaining prevalence in some parts of London and perhaps other places, that there is only one party in Northern Ireland which speaks for everybody there, Mr Varadkar said.

He told the Dail that the Government wants to move to phase two of talks, but he would be willing to wait until the new year if a solid deal cannot be agreed upon before next weeks European Council meeting in Brussels.

The Taoiseach said he will not begin any negotiations with the DUP on Brexit claiming it is now up to the UK government.

We are not negotiating with a political party in the North, in Britain or anywhere else. This is a structured negotiation  on the one side, the EU taskforce led by Mr Michel Barnier and into which we have a very strong input, and, on the other side, the UK government. This is how this will be concluded.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan asked whether it would have been better to have stayed quiet on Monday until the deal was fully signed off.

Mr Ryan said: I was involved in negotiating the creation of an all-island electricity market with Ms Arlene Foster and Mr Nigel Dodds. I mention this because of the lessons that were learned. We got the market over the line by saying nothing in public, by building trust and by doing the work behind the scenes.

However, the Taoiseach claimed that while a press conference had been organised and then rearranged he had maintained a studied silence throughout Monday and only spoke out when things had gone awry in Brussels.

Deputy Eoin O Broin said Sinn Fein was not in favour of any back-sliding to placate the DUP over the border Brexit concerns.

Given our experience with the DUP in their unreasonableness in implementing existing agreements, I think the Government would need to be very, very, careful to give any indication they will entertain the DUP on such serious issues.
Adam OKeeffe faced a single charge, accused of murdering Amy McCarthy, a 22-year-old mother of one, at 36 Sheares St, on April 29/30, 2017.

Detective Sergeant Shane Bergin testified that he formally arrested Mr OKeeffe in the precincts of the courthouse on Washington St at 9am yesterday.

The detective said Mr OKeeffe was given a copy of the charge and was told he did not have to make any response to the charge but that anything he might say would be written down and could be given in evidence. OKeeffe made no reply.

Mr OKeeffe arrived in the dock in the centre of Court-room 1 at Cork District Court yesterday at 12.30pm.

He immediately bent over, almost double, looking at the floor, and was hardly visible in the dock.

Members of the family of the deceased were present for the brief hearing. A number of them wept and were comforted by other family members.

Inspector Adrian Gamble said directions had been received from the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute Mr OKeeffe on indictment at the Central Criminal Court. The DPP said if the accused entered a plea of guilty, he could be sent forward for sentence at the Central Criminal Court.

Solicitor Eddie Burke was appointed to represent the accused on free legal aid. Mr Burke said a book of evidence would be required.

Judge Olann Kelleher said the accused did not have the right to apply for bail at the district court, that that could only be done before the High Court. The judge remanded him in custody for one week, until December 13, at Cork District Court, for service of documents.

Mr Burke applied to have Mr OKeeffe remanded in custody to Wheatfield Prison. Judge Kelleher said that would be a matter for the prison authorities.

The body of Ms McCarthy was found in a second-floor room in a vacant office block on Sheares St, at the rear of the Mercy University Hospital, by paramedics at around 7am on April 30.

The paramedics had been called after the emergency services were alerted by a man in a derelict office building after he tried to wake Ms McCarthy but failed to rouse her.

Ms McCarthy was treated at the scene but paramedics were unable to resuscitate her. She was pronounced dead at the scene by a local doctor and gardai were called.
David OSullivans parents Con and Carmel are due to jet out from Cork to California today to join one of the single largest co-ordinated search efforts for their son who vanished on April 7 while hiking the epic Pacific Crest Trail on the US west coast.

Dozens of volunteers, including expert hikers and members of the Irish expat community in San Diego, will be involved in the massive operation from Saturday in an area about the size of Cork county.

The ground teams will be supported by an aircraft equipped with specialist search cameras.

Con said he and Carmel, who live on the outskirts of Midleton, want to do whatever they can to find their youngest son, whose 26th birthday was in August.

It just has to be done. We are hoping to find him. We want to find him alive but there have been no sightings of him for eight months, he said.

And we have had that conversation. We are bearing up but theres no doubt about it, we are under pressure.

Christmas is at a standstill really. This is just our cross to bear at the moment.

We are just hoping now to finalise this but we are not sure if we can.

Davids parents Carmel and Con OSullivan.

David studied English and Philosophy in UCC. He worked in a filling station on the Cork Road in Midleton, and was inspired to take on the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from southern California to Canada, after reading the book Wild last year.

He left Ireland on March 20 and set off on the hike alone from the American/ Mexican border on March 22.

He hoped to find himself, Con said. We had concerns. Of course we had concerns. But he had hiked before a lot in Ireland.

He is fit, disciplined and hes a black-belt in karate. Hes quiet, but once you started talking to him, and found common ground, he couldnt stop talking. He was a good steady lad.

David had hiking gear, a very distinctive backpack, a non-smart phone, and a tablet. However, he had no international phone plan and was relying on local wifi spots to contact his family.

He reached the town of Idyllwild near Big Bear City, close to San Bernadino in California on April 5. Davids parents received an email from him on April 7 detailing his hike so far. There has been no contact or sightings of him since.

His family raised the alarm about a week later, and following contact between gardai, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Interpol and the US authorities, a missing person alert was subsequently issued in California.

However, despite investigations which revealed no banking activity, no activity on his mobile phone from March 22, and several searches of the Pacific Crest Trail around Idyllwild involving specialist search teams, there has been no sign of or trace of David, or his distinctive rucksack.

The group of volunteer searchers who will join a massive search for David this weekend.

Murietta Police Department believe he may may have gone off the trail to avoid heavy snow.

Con said this weekends searches for David, organised by a local volunteer, Cathy Tarr, will focus in and around the area in which he was last seen.

However, he said it is extremely remote and challenging terrain with the trail a one-hour drive by jeep along dirt trails from the nearest town, and at an altitude of around 2,500m in desert-like mountains.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance.

Con, who was involved in the massive search for the body of Robert Holohan in Midleton in 2005, said his family is now grateful for all the help and support theyve received from people in Midleton and beyond, from the gardai, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the US police and local volunteer search teams, especially

Ms Tarr.

Now friends of the OSullivans, Padraig ONeill and Brian Schafer, have launched a fund to help the family cover some of the costs associated with the ongoing search operations.

The donations page can be found here.

The IBAN is IE04 BOFI 9027 0963 2988 36.

Davids older brother, Niall, a trainee teacher, said every single cent will be used to help find David.

Any extra money will be donated, he said.
The request was granted by the Government on foot of a request by the commission in its third interim report.

In that report, completed in September, the commission notes while there are detailed death records available in relation to mother and baby homes, there are also significant gaps in the information available about the burial s of babies who died in a number of the institutions it is examining.

The Commission is continuing to make inquiries about burials and burial records but it appears that this is an area in which it will be difficult to establish the facts, states the report.

The report also acknowledged significant gaps in available records, noting there was one institution for which records are probably not available and another whose records may be available but are very difficult to extract from a larger collection of records.

However, the Irish Examiner understands progress has been made on the records and the commission will be able to resolve the issue of extracting the records which are part of a larger collection.

Paul Redmond of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors (CMABS) said he was horrified at the delay and many survivors would die without seeing truth or justice.

Many hundreds of Survivors have died since the Tuam 800 story broke in May 2014. Hundreds more are now doomed to death without justice and truth because of this disgusting delay.

CMABS demands that the Government and Taoiseach immediately acknowledge the well-documented abuse in Mother and Baby homes and offer an apology and interim redress to the elderly and dying survivors while there is still time. Shame on anyone who denies survivors truth and justice.

Childrens Minister Katherine Zappone announced her intention to establish a collaborative forum to support former residents in developing solutions to the issues of concern to them. This will run in tandem with the investigation.

Ms Zappone said the Government will invite the UN special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence, Pablo deGreiff, to visit Ireland.

Kathy McMahon of Irish First Mothers welcomed the time extension as a practical and pragmatic initiative but said there would be some disappointment at the delay.

Mothers in our group are naturally disappointed that there will be further delay.

But, under Minister Zappone, this process is at last properly involving those affected and also recognizing the international human rights context to the treatment of women in Mother and Baby Homes. These are heartening changes of approach by this Government, she said.
Stephen Alexander, 49; his parents Lily Ryan-Alexander and Doug, both 75; and his brother Doug Jnr, 52, were all killed when their car collided with a lorry on the N25 at on the New Ross to Ballinaboule road at Begern at around 6.30pm on Monday.

The family were in Ireland to attend the funeral of Ms Ryan-Alexanders sister.

Stephen was a father of two girls, aged 11 and 10. His partner, Susan Verden Schulze, posted a short tribute to him online.

I can never express the happiness Steve gave me. He showed me true love. I am so blessed to be a part of his life. I love you Steve and I will love you forever and a day, she said.

A statement issued by the Bolingbrook Police Department in Illinois said Mr Alexander was a proud father whose daughters were his pride and joy.

It said he was a 17-year veteran who graduated from the Cook County Police Academy in 2001 and was the class valedictorian, receiving the Top Marksmen award at the academy.

Steve was a decorated officer who had received numerous department commendations, said Bolingbrook Police.

Steve devoted his time to the community and taught self-defence classes and self-confidence skills to women and girl scouts at the Bolingbrook Park District.

Steve was a member of Beat the Heat, a non-profit organisation which focused on community outreach to improve driver safety and police community relations.

He also enjoyed racing his vintage Camaro drag racing car and talking to children about vehicle and driving safety.

Steve recently hosted and organised a Squad Car Night at the Bolingbrook Promenade in partnership with the Illinois Special Olympics which attracted police vehicles from all over the state, read the statement.

Steve was an exemplary officer who took great pride in his law enforcement career and who devoted himself to protecting and serving the citizens of Bolingbrook, said director Ken Teppel.

Steve will be missed by all those who had the pleasure of knowing him and we will forever keep the Alexander family in our thoughts and our prayers, he added.
Michael Jacob, whose daughter disappeared in 1998 from Newbridge, Co Kildare, attended an event to mark National Missing Persons Day and stood up at the end of the ceremony to challenge how cases are handled.

He was not a scheduled speaker but took to the podium to make his remarks.

This event gives the families of the missing a good feeling for a couple of hours but its only today and then we wait for another year to come around, said Mr Jacob.

To the Minister for Justice, Mr Flanagan, you are looking at a very small group of people that have had a life-changing and a life-shattering happening visited on them by a family member going missing. There is only so much we can do. We need help.

Family members of people who are missing gathered at the annual Missing Persons Day in Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park.

Mr Jacob also addressed the deputy commissioner of An Garda Siochana, John Twomey, who was also in attendance.

The help that is required is sufficient resources made available to An Garda Siochana so you, Deputy Commissioner John Twomey, can put in place a full-time, dedicated team of determined investigators to investigate the missing. A team that will engage with families in a sympathetic, sensitive and inclusive manner, said Mr Jacob.

He described the current method of investigation as hit and miss.

There are many cases of people missing for 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and, as we hear today, 70 years, with little or no progress being made, all because of a hit-and-miss practice of investigation, due in the main to a lack of resources, said Mr Jacob.

When times pass in a missing case, it is probably left to the determination of a single guard, that is if he or she is left in that area and this is not good enough.

Turning to Mr Flanagan and Mr Twomey, Mr Jacob asked: What do you think?

Anne Morgan and Denise Mathers, sister and niece of Seamus Rudy whose remains were found in France in May.

This question was met with loud applause from the crowd which was mostly made up of the relatives of missing people.

He finished by asking for a new approach to investigations.

When he finished the crowd gave Mr Jacob a standing ovation.

Would you, Mr Flanagan, and you, deputy John Twomey, please consider the suffering that the families of the missing endure, day after day, waiting and waiting.

I plead with you both to implement a new approach in the investigation of the missing, said Mr Jacob.

His comments were echoed by Patricia OReilly, whose mother, Alice Clifford, went missing from a Dublin hospital in 1979.

In her scheduled speech, she said families of missing people end up feeling disheartened and questioned yesterdays ceremony in the absence of concrete assistance.

What good are days like this to us families if there is no practical help at hand? We need more communication between government bodies. Families feel helpless and have no one to go to for advice, said Ms OReilly.

Family members of people who are missing at the annual Missing Persons Day in Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park yesterday

Thirty-eight years now she is gone. She has 26 grandchildren and many more great-grandchildren. We owe it to her to find her. I am disheartened by the system and the lack of communication. Fatal mistakes are still being made and its just not acceptable.

Mr Twomey also spoke yesterday and acknowledged the endless grief that the relatives of missing people experience.

He described yesterdays annual event as one of the saddest days in the calendar of An Garda Siochana.

In Ireland, we all have different coping mechanisms to deal with death and that subsequent feeling of loss. We have our rituals of keening to get us through the agonies of grief. But when someone close to you goes missing, its a different kind of pain. A shapeless terrifying kind of pain that never ends.

However, Mr Twomey stated that each case receives forensic care.

Each missing person case receives thorough, forensic, and in-depth attention by An Garda Siochana. This level of detail can sometimes take time and on occasion more time than we would like but it is time that is necessary and needed, he said.
The last of those recessions came at one of the worst possible times for the traditional newspaper industry as it was accompanied by declining circulation figures and the emergence of new technology.

Yesterdays announcement marks the coming together of two of the countrys strongest media entities to ensure the Irish Examiner will continue to provide strong, independent news coverage for many years to come.

It also marks the end of involvement in the company for one of the countrys strongest media families, the Crosbies.

The company continually expanded under the guidance of five generations of the Crosbies starting in 1842 with Kerry native Thomas Crosbie who, aged 15, joined the then Cork Examiner newspapers staff while it was under the ownership of John Francis Maguire. The MP and barrister had opened the newspaper just a year earlier. The young Crosbie made an instant impression as a gifted newspaper man and rapidly ascended to the editors position. When Maguire died in 1872, Thomas Crosbie became proprietor.

He turned the newspaper from a three-evenings-per-week publication to a six-mornings-per-week title which it remains today. He also launched the companys other landmark title, the Evening Echo, in 1892.

Four more generations not only consolidated the products under Thomas Crosbie Holdings but also oversaw what was, at one point, Irelands fastest growing media organisation, acquiring a newspaper almost every year in a buying spree of media assets including radio stations.

In 2000, The Examiner cemented its national intentions by rebranding as the Irish Examiner before making one of TCHs most noteworthy acquisitions, another national newspaper, The Sunday Business Post , from Trinity Mirror for 10m in 2002. At one point, the group owned 18 newspapers.

However, the acquisitions came at a cost. The portfolio growth was led by TCH managing director Anthony Dinan, who was given shareholdings in the new purchases.

He was asked in 2005 whether the group was for sale as there was increasing UK publisher interest in buying Irish newspapers. He reiterated TCHs expansionist plans saying: Rather than be acquired. We are acquisitive. The healthy results across the groups portfolio of businesses means that TCH is well placed to continue the acquisitive path.

But there was concerns in some quarters that, for all the millions being spent on new titles, not enough was being invested in the cash generating titles, the Irish Examiner and the Evening Echo which were delivering significant profits right up to the most recent economic crash.

However, from entering 2006 debt free not least due to the sale of the Irish Examiners long-standing home in Academy Street, the company found itself with a total bank debt of 27m at the start of 2011.

So what changed? Without doubt, the economic crash hit the newspaper industry hard and the TCH titles were no different.

With Mr Dinan gone from the company in 2010, his replacement Tom Murphy, current Landmark Media Investments chief executive, set about making cutbacks, not least by selling off or closing loss-making titles.

He also set about streamlining, as well as strengthening operations within the titles and businesses which remained.

However, by 2013, it became clear a complete financial restructuring was required.

Thomas Crosbie Holdings went into receivership on March 6, 2013, and was acquired by a new Crosbie-owned company, Landmark Media Investments. That restructuring was carried out with the support of the groups banker AIB, which provided working capital and resources for investment. It also marked a parting of the ways with The Sunday Business Post leaving the group.

The restructuring secured the jobs of 554 staff across the company and, as Mr Murphy pointed out, at the time: Following a prolonged period of uncertainty, todays developments represent an important opportunity for the Irish Examiner and associated titles and media to make a fresh start. In a challenging environment, this restructuring and consequent acquisition provides a stable platform from which to build a sustainable business.

A move to offices at Blackpool on the northside of Cork City was accompanied by the introduction of a new cloud-based system specially tailored to a 21st-century media organisation determined to be relevant on every media platform.

The streamlining of operations has continued over the last four years.

Earlier this year, Wexford Echo Limited which was a part of the Landmark Media Group and which included the Wexford Echo, Gorey Echo, New Ross Echo and the Enniscorthy Echo, was put into liquidation.

Staff numbers have dropped from 554 at the time of the restructuring to a current total of 410  260 in Cork and 150 in other locations across the country.

The changes the company has made to the way it presents its media product have paid dividends.

Landmark Media Investments recorded a profit before taxation of 287,000 for the 12 months ending January 1, 2017.

The Irish Examiner has also been to the forefront of the news agenda, particularly in the last two years, not least in leading the coverage of the garda controversies thanks to Special Correspondent Michael Clifford and in recent months, Political Editor Daniel McConnell and Political Correspondent Fiachra O Cionnaith won a Newsbrand Ireland Journalism Award for their dedicated coverage of the Grace scandal.

As chairman and principal shareholder Tom Crosbie says: There has been a cold wind blowing for a long time in the traditional media industry. This move will make sure the Irish Examiner and its sister titles are blown in the right direction.

Landmark Media statement

I am delighted to announce that the Irish Times DAC has agreed to purchase the entire business of the Landmark Media Group.

The Irish Times DAC will own The Irish Examiner and Evening Echo and all other group newspapers, websites, Recruit Ireland and all of its radio interests once the contract conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals, is completed.

The transaction is subject to a number of conditions including receipt of regulatory approvals from The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment as well as The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (for the radio interests). It is expected that these approvals could take at least 4 months to procure.

I would like to place on record my personal appreciation and the appreciation of the board of Landmark Media to all staff members for their support, understanding and particularly for their patience. We acknowledge that throughout this delicate and sometimes public process that it has been a difficult period for all staff members, reading and listening to commentary, much of it uninformed and speculative. For our part, we believe we have done everything possible to make and implement the right decisions in relation to the Landmark business and all of its stakeholders, particularly our very valued and loyal staff colleagues.

I believe that a sale of the Landmark Media business to The Irish Times is in the best interest of all of our newspaper and other media companies and assets and that it is the correct outcome also for The Irish Times and the Newspaper and Media industry generally in Ireland. Consolidation within the industry is an inevitable outcome and both Irish-owned groups will be best positioned to survive and prosper as part of a larger, stronger and better resourced and unified entity. The Irish Times has been in existence since 1859 and its Management, Board and Trust are well aware of and suitably resourced to enable them to meet and navigate the challenges of the industry today.

Our Bank, AIB have been with us on this journey for some time now and I must acknowledge and thank them for their support, resourcefulness and patience in enabling us to pursue and achieve the outcome being announced today.

From an operational standpoint, it is business as usual for all of us. We must continue to be focused on putting out the best newspapers we can, selling the greatest numbers of newspapers possible and also, most importantly, selling the greatest possible amount of advertising, as we work our way to formal contract completion, hopefully, before the Summer.

Irish Times statement

The Irish Times DAC and the owners of Landmark Media Investments have signed a share purchase agreement whereby The Irish Times will acquire all of the publishing and media interests of the Landmark group. As part of the acquisition, the companys bankers, AIB, have supported a significant debt restructuring. The Share Purchase Agreement was signed on December 5, 2017.

The acquisition will require separate and consecutive filings to both the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (the CCPC) and the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment. This process is expected to take between four and six months to complete.

The publishing and media interests include the Irish Examiner along with the Evening Echo, regional titles, digital and radio assets. The opportunity to acquire Landmark Media is an important strategic decision for The Irish Times. It is the intention to retain the core identity and independence of the respective news publishing titles. Each will retain their editorial integrity.

The overall increase in audience allows the group to build a digital platform with a strong reach, countrywide and internationally. The consolidation also presents the opportunity to strengthen and grow existing print advertising revenues and helps to secure contract print revenues.

If the application to the CCPC and to the Minister are successful, The Irish Times is fully committed to working with the respective Union groups in each company on any restructuring proposals that will need to be made. The Irish Times has a proven track record of achieving cost savings, maintaining quality content while also working with staff and their representatives in a consultative partnership model.

The combination of the two groups brings together two organisations with a quality focus and strong ethos. The combined scale provides opportunities for consolidation, secures existing revenues and provides a platform to build and grow new digital readers and revenues. It is a positive step in the protection of two Irish-owned media organisations, and will help ensure their long-term futures.

 Liam Kavanagh

NUJ statement

THE National Union of Journalists notes the decision of The Irish Times to purchase the assets of Landmark Media Group, including The Irish Examiner, The Echo and seven regional newspapers.

In a reaction to the announcement Seamus Dooley, Irish Secretary said: We are seeking a meeting with management to explore the implications for staff and will be seeking assurances regarding security of employment in the newspapers and radio stations involved in the proposed acquisition.

We welcome the assurance by Liam Kavanagh, Managing Director that the editorial integrity and independence of the titles will be maintained and I have already got an unambiguous assurance that trade union recognition will continue. Workers employed by Landmark Media Group have been operating under a cloud of uncertainty and todays development will help ease the fears of our members.

Obviously we will be examining every aspect of the proposed acquisition, including the implications for media diversity and plurality but these assurances provide a constructive starting point.

Irish Times staff will be seeking specific assurances about the maintenance of the distinct editorial character of The Irish Times. This is a major departure for the company and the NUJ will be entering into discussions with management on the potential implications for employees of the parent organisation.

Pending the approval of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Minister for Communications, and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Landmark staff will be employed by that company and we will continue to represent their interests. Members who may have concerns are being encouraged to contact the company.

Regulatory steps to be completed

Stephen Rogers

Before a media merger can be implemented, it must be approved by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) and the minister for communications, climate action and the environment under the Competition Act 2002.

In addition, separate approval of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland will be required in relation to change of ownership in any media business that holds a broadcasting licence (i.e. a radio station) The approval must first be sought by the CCPC. It will carry out an initial investigation during Phase 1 of the process. It can decide to grant approval at that point but cannot decide on prohibition in this phase.

CCPC must decide over a 30-working period of Phase 1 whether to grant approval or push into a phase 2 period of investigation. During that 30 working day period the CCPC may request information from the parties, which will have the effect of resetting the phase 1 investigation period to when the parties respond in full to that request. The period for conclusion of the Phase 1 investigation may be extended to 45 working days if the parties submit proposals to address potential concerns with a view to them becoming binding if the CCPC approves the merger at Phase 1.

If the merger is pushed into Phase 2, the CCPC has 120 working days from the date of notification (or, if the CCPC made a request for information in Phase 1, the date of response to that request) to make its final decision.

That 120 working day period may be paused where the CCPC makes a request for information and resumes when the parties respond to that request. After the 120 working day period it can decide to either grant approval unconditionally; grant it with conditions or prohibit the merger.

Once the CCPC has concluded its investigation (whether at Phase 1 or Phase 2), the parties must then notify the merger to the Minister within 10 working days.

While the role of the CCPC is to consider whether the merger will substantially lessen competition, the Minister is looking at the public interest implications (i.e plurality of the media and concentration of ownership) .

Again, he has a 30 working day period to make an initial decision. He can approve the merger at that point or ask the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to carry out a full (or phase 2) investigation. There are also provisions for the setting up of an advisory panel by the Minster to assist the BAI.

Again, there is a 120 working day period from date of receipt of the application or of information submitted by request, to make a final decision - grant conditionally, grant unconditionally or prohibit.

In the case of radio interests in a merger, the BAI consent will also be required and there is no fixed timetable for this process.
Theyre in the middle of a Netflix binge, glued to The Crown, the streaming services award winning original series about the British Royal family.

Its a scene the Queen likes to imagine, anyway. Thats the TV version of Elizabeth II, of course  actress Claire Foy, whos back for a second series playing the monarch, alongside Matt Smith as her husband Prince Philip.

We used to have a fascination of the idea of there being a Royal Gogglebox, and that you could record them watching us back... reveals the 33-year-old star, with a loud laugh.

In person, Foy and Smith seem to have a chemistry between them, that has possibly contributed to making their on-screen characters so believable.

Add to that their perfectly poshed-up accents, the juicy drama behind the historical events and dont forget the millions of pounds spent on the show by Netflix.

It has, as one may say, paid off. Series one  which focused on a young Queen Elizabeth II learning how to rule  was the runaway success of 2017.

The second instalment is set in the decade beginning in the mid-1950s and is expected to offer just as sumptuous viewing.

Although this time around, Smith says, we learn more about the other individuals in the show. There is a huge focus on Prince Philip and how he is forced to confront his own insecurities with his role, as his 10th wedding anniversary looms.

But Smith isnt worried about portraying Philip in a potentially negative light. I think whats good about this show is that Peter Morgan is tough on the characters, and they can be really ugly, he says.

We spend time with them at their weakest. I think that is where we learn the most about them, and actually where we come to like them the most.

But Smith, best known for his role as Doctor Who, experienced some consternation over the Duke of Edinburghs transformation in

episode two.

When sent away on board the Royal Yacht Britannia for a five-month world tour, a beard-growing competition takes place  and the facial hair the prince ends up sporting is quite something.

The new series, which starts at the height of the Suez Crisis, and ends with the resignation of Harold Macmillan amid the Profumo scandal, is set against a period of huge social change.

And Foy was determined to continue to push herself in the role.

The thing Ive found most challenging second time round was not getting complacent and not presuming I knew everything about her, and I was just trying to keep my mind alive, she explains. I think thats the exercise when you play a character again. You have to keep it living and breathing and not just go, Oh, you know, Ive done this before so I know everything, because you really dont.

They will both be replaced by new actors as the royal couple move into the next stage of their lives.

Its obvious that Foy and Smith will miss working together, but will they miss their characters?

I think its more difficult [to let go of a character] when you are playing a part and theyre closer to you, and so much of yourself is in it that you cant really see where one thing ends and the other begins, says Foy.

But with these two, theyre so different. And thats what I loved and thrived on, was being in scenes with Matt and watching Matt. We totally believed ourselves sometimes.

The Crown season two premieres on Netflix on Friday.
Or it could have been his father because they were both called Samuel Woods but his father would probably have been too old. It was a family affair in any case, because Samuel is recorded drilling with Thomas Kee, a relation by marriage.

I discovered this by accident while doing a bit of idle research into my familys roots. I found it shocking. I hate to think of any relation of mine drilling with a paramilitary group. It doesnt fit with what I know about that educated and generous family.

And it sure as hell doesnt fit with me. I was brought up as a constitutional nationalist. My parents hero was John Hume and my fathers favourite historical figure was Wolfe Tone.

How does this all add up? How does Samuel Woods become me? Easily, if you think about it with the imaginative empathy which has been lacking in the conduct of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, UK prime minister Theresa May, and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier in the past week.

Samuel Woods felt threatened by the Home Rule Bill of 1912 and I would have felt the same in his place. Ever since his tiny Presbyterian community had settled in Ballybofey/Stranorlar

sometime around 1610 they had felt threatened by the natives.

The Mayflower sailed in 1620. The English and Scottish Dissenters who were helped out of their homes by a British administration had much the same sense of being settlers in alien territory.

I have always been fascinated by this migration, ever since an aunt told me her ancestors brought their gravestones with them because they knew they werent going back.

When the Woods family arrived in Ballybofey/Stranorlar they had no church, though theirs was the second Presbyterian community established in Ireland, in 1649.

There are records of the community requesting a Presbyterian minister as early as 1675 because they have of late become more willing to receive the Gospel than before

Today their website ascribes the reason they didnt get a minister until 1709 to their wretched poverty as well as the scarcity of ministers and ongoing repression by the Church of Ireland.

The informal Meetin hoose was replaced with a church in 1800 and the current church, still on Meetinghouse St in the village of Stranorlar, was built in 1906, just in time to house the community as they endured the horrors of the first world war.

My grannys family is all buried there and the graveyard is full of the names of families into which her family married and with whom they traded and went to school.

This was an incredibly cohesive community despite large-scale emigration to the US. In fact, that very cohesion must have sent many adventurous and original souls packing.

Such an emigrant was Samuel Woodss uncle Matthew Woods, who was sent a copy of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin as a 14-year-old schoolboy and promptly ran away to fight in the American Civil War with seven other boys from Ballybofey.

It is through him I have gained an insight into the psychology behind Samuel Woods and his UVF drilling.

I found through an antiquarian bookshop in the US a two-volume travelogue which Matthew Woods wrote when he returned as a middle-aged, successful doctor to the village of Stranorlar in the 1880s.

It is a fascinating, but terrifying, memoir. This man who ostensibly ran away from home to fight to free black slaves is shocked by the poverty he sees in Ireland.

But 30 years after the Great Famine he ascribes this poverty simply to the poor moral fibre of the natives.

Travelling around his home village with his brother Samuel, he describes the contracted cabins of more contracted people and adds: Now and then we encounter groups of two or three barefooted women sitting on the naked rocks, or squatting on the roadside, knitting and exposing their lank, measly shins to the knee.

"You come upon them so unexpectedly, too, that you are startled, as their scant clothing is the colour of the rocks and the ground and they are as motionless as lizards, except their hands, and as quiet as mutes or else, with faces entirely void of expression, as irresponsive as stones.

"They keen, weird, melancholy strains that pierce you to the soul, like the wail of lost spirits mournfully crying from the dust for vengeance.

My forebear wrote that and not so distant a forebear either  my Granny knew Uncle Matt in his old age.

In his discussion of Home Rule he says, What is the use of Home Rule without homes? and adds that if he were an Irish patriot he would start by teaching the people to use soap.

This throws a certain light on my Grannys description of the reason for The Troubles: jealousy.

Donald Tusk and Leo Varadkar discuss the future of the Irish border earlier this month.

Imagine what it was like for this community to find itself suddenly cordoned off in the Irish Free State in 1921, despite the advice of the Boundary Commission that Stranorlar should be in the North.

My grandparents, teachers, were faced with an incomprehensible  and inferior  National Curriculum.

They would have been asked to provide for the teaching of a language which they regarded as a peasant patois spoken by the poor people who lived in frightening numbers beyond the mountains.

Partition was a bomb which exploded under the family and they begin to scatter, some north and some south. Bitterness and bigotry remain.

I have seen and heard absolutely no emotional empathy with this history from British or Irish politicians in the past week.

If it is really true that Arlene Fosters DUP did not see the text of the proposed agreement between Britain and the EU that there would be regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU in the event of a hard Brexit, that was not only a diplomatic failure, it was wrong.

It is true, as our columnist Gerard Howlin wrote yesterday, that the DUP has the mentality of a frontier people and that is not suprising.

We are simplifying their history if we add, as he did, that they regard anything emanating from continental Europe as a cess pit: my uncle Matthew Woods laments the scattering of his mothers Huguenot ancestors from their native France by religious repression.

His descendant, this writer, dreams of a united Ireland which gives full expression to Samuel Woodss history and culture.

But if chance had thrown me into a Presbyterian home north of the border I would be a Unionist.

I might not be out drilling with paramilitaries. But I would be hurt by the vision of the prime minister of the UK clashing glasses with the EU over a deal which could make Ireland a customs union and create a border between Ireland and the rest of the UK.

I would be threatened by a Taoiseach celebrating the deal and a Tanaiste who says he may see a united Ireland in his lifetime. Hurt and threatened enough to care little for the economic consequences of pulling the whole deal apart.
AN Isle of Wight police officer has been honoured at a special ceremony for the help he gave to those whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Irma.

PC Stuart Woods was one of the team of ten from Hampshire Constabulary and Thames Valley police who dropped everything at short notice to fly out to the British Virgin Islands after disaster struck in September.

With no running water or mains electricity, no roof on their accommodation and dangerous criminals on the run after the prison was severely damaged, the team was honoured for its "great determination and bravery" helping those in need.

During their three week deployment they helped to secure the prisoners, assisted the military with establishing water and electricity supplies and cleared dangerous debris from neighbourhoods.

Most days saw the team working at least 16 hours a day and any 'downtime' saw officers back out in the community, helping residents rebuild their homes.

This was all done in searing 40 degree heat wearing uniforms designed for British weather, not the Caribbean.

Food was also in short supply and the team relied on basic rations to get them through.

They even refused to leave when a second category five hurricane hit the island, insisting that they wanted to be there for those who needed them most.

Hampshire's Chief Constable Olivia Pinkney and Thames Valley's Chief Constable Francis Habgood presented the awards on behalf of both forces.

Chief Constable Pinkney said: "It was a tremendous honour to present these awards to officers who are a true credit to the policing family and the communities they serve.

"These officers have dealt with some of the most challenging situations that any officer can face and they have shown nothing but great professionalism and compassion."
Newly enacted rental ordinance back on agenda The town council is considering the formation of a working group to potentially amend the ordinance that governs short-term rentals, which was passed unanimously in August. Ron Ratcliffe, serving as...

LITTLE WOMEN, BIG STAGE The Jamestown Community Theatre will perform a five-show production of the Broadway musical Little Women, a coming-of-age-story based on the classic 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott. The story follows...

Fire chiefs want to boost tax breaks for volunteers In an effort to attract new volunteers and preserve its current membership, the fire department is proposing to increase tax abatements for its membership. Volunteerism is a dying breed right...
Chapel Hill is losing another local retailer in the Blue Hill, or Ephesus-Fordham, district.

Twig, which sells environmentally sustainable and fair-trade goods, announced on Tuesday it would not be renewing its lease at the Village Plaza shopping center on South Elliot Road.

Owner Shawn Slome, 64, said he has decided to retire rather than sign a new lease at the shopping center. Slome, who has run the store since 2007, said Village Plaza owner Regency Centers offered him another space in the shopping center, but he didnt feel the price was worth the move.

They offered to relocate me to one of the new spaces, but it didnt make sense for me, he said. (The rent) would be 40 percent more. I couldve made it work but it is not something I wanted to go into. I didnt want to start over again and worry about making rent ... there was more downside than upside.

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The store will have a liquidation sale starting Thursday, Dec. 7, Slome said.

Twig is the latest of a number of locally-owned stores to close in the Ephesus-Fordham district, a 190-acre district where the town wants to encourage redevelopment. Construction in the district that meets established guidelines is not subject to Chapel Hill Town Council votes or public hearings.

Longtime jeweler Grimball Jewelers, which is also located in Village Plaza, is closing at the end of the year, its owner said last month. Grimball, like Twig, had a short-term lease with Regency that expired at the end of the year.

Regency Centers, along with several other developers, have attempted to rebrand the district as the Blue Hill District, part of an ongoing effort to make the area a commercial and residential destination.

Developers have put more than $125 million into new development in the Blue Hill District in the past three years, which now has more than 35 retail shops and 20 restaurants, businesses and apartments. But number of longtime tenants have also moved from the area or closed since the Blue Hill District was announced, including Grimball Jewelers VIP Print and Signs, Village Plaza Dry Cleaners and The Childrens Store.

Attempts to reach Regency for this story were unsuccessful.

Slome said that Regency wants to redevelop several of the smaller store fronts in the shopping center, which is anchored by a Whole Foods, into larger spaces. The landlord has said in the past it was interested in bringing a restaurant to Village Plaza.

(Regency) have been civil to me. They have treated me reasonably well, Slome said. I dont really hold any resentment  it is just the reality of the economics. If they can get someone to come in and pay 50 bucks per square foot then they should, but I am out.

Slome said he would be interested in passing the business to another owner, if an interested party emerges.

Its a good business; it is profitable from an investment standpoint, and it would be attractive to someone who would want to go into retail, he said.

Zachery Eanes: 919-419-6684, @zeanes



2017 The Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.)

Visit The Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.) at www.heraldsun.com

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R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. received a partial, but pivotal, legal victory last week in its fight against making millions of dollars in annual Master Settlement Agreement payments to Florida on traditional cigarette brands that it no longer owns.

Andre Broussard, a chancellor in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, ruled Nov. 30 that ITG Brands LLC  the current owner of the brands  has not met its obligation to use its reasonable best efforts to reach an agreement with Florida on assuming responsibility for the MSA payments.

The state of Florida is pursuing legal action to make either Reynolds or ITG responsible for payments on the Kool, Maverick, Salem and Winston cigarette brands.

The landmark MSA was reached in November 1998 between the top U.S. tobacco manufacturers and 46 state attorneys general. The manufacturers agreed to pay $206 billion over 20 years to those states to help pay for health-care expenses related to smoking. The payment amounts are based primarily on cigarette sales and market share.

The Kool, Maverick, Salem and Winston brands represented in 2016 about 8 percent of the U.S. market share for traditional cigarettes.

Reynolds divested Kool, Salem and Winston in June 2015 in order to gain regulatory approval of its $29.25 billion purchase of Lorillard Inc. Lorillard agreed to divest Maverick.

Reynolds argues that its MSA obligations on the brands ended with the closing of the Lorillard deal and the simultaneous sale of the brands to ITG parent company Imperial Brands Plc for $7.1 billion. The Reynolds-Imperial deal included language that called on ITG to use its reasonable best efforts to reach an MSA settlement with Florida.

ITGs legal argument is that because it didnt reach an MSA agreement with Florida before the closing of the Reynolds-Lorillard deal, the payment obligation remains with Reynolds.

In January 2017, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi filed an enforcement action against both Reynolds and ITG.

Bondis motion asks for a court order requiring payments of $48 million to Florida from one or both manufacturers from June 2015 to the filing of her motion.

She also project payments of $30 million for 2017 and annually thereafter.

The sale of major, pre-existing tobacco brands to another company for billions of dollars does not cause the payment obligations to vanish like a puff of smoke, Bondi said in a statement accompanying her motion.

Reynolds has refused to include the sales of these cigarette brands when making annual payments to Florida, despite not having been released from its payment obligations, Bondi said.

ITG has similarly refused to make any payment to Florida even after agreeing with Reynolds to assume the payment obligations for these iconic brands.

The manufacturers dispute on who is responsible has gone on two different legal paths.

Reynolds is participating in the lawsuit filed by Bondi in Florida Circuit Court for Palm Beach County. Reynolds said this week that a trial is set to begin Dec. 18. The lawsuit is separate from Bondis enforcement action.

For its part, ITG chose to go to the Court of Chancery in Delaware, an often-used venue to settle corporation clashes.

I find that Reynolds interpretation is supported by the plain language of the asset purchase agreement, and that ITG Brands interpretation is not, Broussard, a chancellor of the court, said in his ruling.

He said ITG continues to receive the benefit of the sales to which those payments relate.

ITG said in a statement this week that the chancellor ruled on a narrow technical issue which does not settle the underlying dispute. This was simply an interim ruling.

Reynolds said it had no comment on the ruling.

Bondis enforcement action would require Reynolds and ITG to provide the necessary information to accurately calculate the amounts owed pursuant to reporting requirements under the settlement agreement.

The exact same cigarette brands continue to be sold to Floridians, thus imposing the very public health-care expenditures that the settlement payments are intended to compensate, Bondi said.
A federal judge has sentenced a Kernersville man to prison after he pleaded guilty to bank fraud, authorities said Wednesday.

Judge Loretta Biggs of U.S. District Court sentenced Kevin Lee Myers Jr., 33, on Monday to serve five years and 10 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in March to two counts of bank fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Biggs also gave Myers five years of supervised release after he serves his prison sentence and ordered him to pay $150,000 in restitution, the Justice Department said.

Myers was accused of misrepresenting himself to Ally Bank as an agent of Myers Enterprises Inc. in an application for credit to buy a Dodge Ram Truck valued at $45,000, the Justice Department said.

Myers also is accused of misrepresenting himself to the First National Bank of Omaha, using the information of another person, to acquire services valued at $46,256.
LEXINGTON  A Lexington man has been charged with incest and statutory rape of a child.

On May 21, the Davidson County Sheriffs Office began an investigation into the alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old juvenile. The initial report stated that the 14 year juvenile was forcibly raped on March 12 by Thomas Jason Knapp. Following a forensic interview conducted at The Dragonfly House Childrens Advocacy Center in Mocksville. Upon further investigation, detectives found evidence that Knapp had sexually assaulted the juvenile.

Knapp, 40, was taken into custody and charged with incest, statutory rape of a child less than 15, statutory sex offense of a child less than 15 and indecent liberties. He was placed in the Davidson County Jail with bail set at $1,000,000.

Knapp is scheduled to appear in Davidson County District Court on Jan. 11.
To dig or not to dig, thats the question in a federal lawsuit that several environmental and civil rights groups filed this week involving coal ash pollution from a large storage basin at the Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for North Carolinas Middle District seeks an order requiring Duke Energy to remove all coal ash from the Belews Creek basin within a reasonable amount of time and store it in an appropriately lined, industrial solid-waste landfill away from surface waters and separated from ground water.

Plaintiffs that include the Appalachian Voices North Carolina environmental group, the North Carolina conference of the NAACP and the Stokes County branch of the civil rights group also call for cleaning up groundwater in the area and removal of various pollutants from the nearby Dan River, Belews Lake and nearby tributaries.

Duke Energys long history of polluting the water in this community with its coal ash at Belews Creek must stop, said Myra Blake, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center that is handling the case.

The civil rights groups are involved because the Stokes coal ash site sits in the middle of a predominantly African American community near Walnut Tree, North Carolina.

This is a quintessential example of environmental justice, said the Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, state NAACP president. In a county thats predominantly white, Duke Energys polluting coal ash sits in the middle of a black community of limited means.

Duke Energy counters that that community is about 2.7 miles away from the steam plant and not adversely affected.

The lawsuit actually is about a campaign by environmentalists to keep Duke Energy from closing out some of its coal ash storage basins by capping them in place under a waterproof cover that costs less than a landfill, causes less disruption and is just as effective at preventing coal ash pollution, said Erin Culbert, a spokeswoman for the utility who focuses on environmental issues.

In general, the foundation of all these actions that SELC has taken is really an effort to upend federal and state policy that permits cap-in-place technology as an effective alternative measure, Culbert said of the environmental law group.

Culbert said that environmental activists typically understate the prolonged disruption and length of time it takes to excavate and relocate decades of stored coal ash, and the potential impact on surrounding communities.

Operating since the early 1970s, the Belews Creek plant has a large ash basin that holds millions of tons of waste that Culbert estimated would fill about 600,000 dump trucks and take at least 12 years to excavate.

SELC did not respond to an email from the News & Record on Wednesday seeking comment on Culberts perspective.

The lawsuit makes good on a notice that the three plaintiffs filed in court two months ago, alerting the Charlotte-based utility that it would be sued if the Belews Creek coal ash situation were not remedied.

The lawsuit cites numerous examples of potentially harmful chemicals linked to coal ash that it alleges have been found in surface and groundwater near the plant, ranging from the known carcinogen arsenic to antimony, barium, bromides and about 20 other potentially harmful constituents of the power-plant waste product.

Culbert said that the lawsuit does not mention several steps being taken under the supervision of the state Department of Environmental Quality to resolve coal ash issues.

She said that groundwater contamination linked to coal ash has only been found in one area outside the power plants boundaries and that the utility is completing a network of interceptor wells to stop it.

In addition, the still-active plants distribution system for water used in the power-making process also is being redesigned so that it no longer flows into the Belews Creek ash basin, but is stored instead in a lined retention pond, Culbert said.

Thats a preliminary step before removing all water from the ash basin in preparation for whatever would be the final fate of its now-submerged ash, she said.
GREENSBORO  Bennett College leaders publicly laid out their plans Wednesday for keeping the school open and meeting the expectations of its accrediting body.

Bennett learned Tuesday that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges had extended its probation for a second year. The womens college will keep its accreditation for now but could lose it a year from now if its unable to deal with chronic financial problems.

College leaders put on a positive face before reporters Wednesday. Bennett will survive, they said. Bennett will thrive.

Were not going to close, President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins said. Were not even thinking that way.

Though Bennett remains on probation, college leaders said Wednesday that the commission could have removed the schools accreditation. But that didnt happen  and thats good news, they said.

SACS saw the progress we had made and felt certain that we could balance our budget and grow our enrollment in the next 12 months, said Gladys Robinson, a Bennett graduate, a state senator and the chairwoman of the colleges board of trustees.

Some other positive signs: Enrollment is up. Financial deficits are shrinking. Fundraising has increased. Campus improvements are in the works.

Were excited about the months ahead, Robinson said. Were confident the next 12 months will be successful.

Here are some of the key areas Bennett will focus on over the next 12 months:

Enrollment

Bennett has 410 undergraduates  a 2.5 percent increase from a year ago and the first uptick in enrollment in seven years.

But Bennett has lost more than 40 percent of its students since 2010. The colleges first-year classes have been shrinking, and its retention rate  the percentage of freshmen who return for their sophomore year  has been below 50 percent since 2015.

The college hired an enrollment management firm a year ago to bolster the colleges recruiting efforts. It seems to have helped.

Bennett brought in 180 first-year students this fall  an increase of 36 percent over fall 2016. Applications for next falls first-year class have more than doubled. The college also has sent offers of admission to nearly 700 students  compared with six at the same time in 2016.

Admissions officers are helping applicants fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, the complicated form that families must complete to qualify for financial aid. The college also increased the amount of its scholarships and this fall introduced its first full-tuition scholarship.

Dawkins said Bennett is more aggressively recruiting students on purpose. Students who get acceptance letters and financial aid packages early in their last year of high school, she said, will be more likely to consider Bennett.

The college hopes to boost enrollment to between 450 and 500 students by fall 2018. Enrollment of 600  its goal for the 2019-20 year  means the college can balance its budget without other revenue sources.

Ultimately, Bennett hopes to have 800 students on campus.

Finances

The commission flagged Bennett for being unable to balance its budget. In 2015-16, the college ran a $1.5 million operating deficit. Last years deficit was smaller  just $1.1 million.

Bennett is projecting that it will balance its $12 million operating budget this year and perhaps finish the fiscal year in June with a small surplus of somewhere around $250,000. Most of the money to pay faculty, staff and other operating costs comes from tuition paid by students.

To reduce its deficits, the college has cut 40 jobs through layoffs and attrition and eliminated 11 degree programs since 2014. The college has just 37 full-time faculty members and operates only three of its seven residence halls. Last fall, Bennett borrowed $500,000 to cover expenses until students paid tuition for the spring semester. The college has since repaid that money.

If revenues dont meet projections this spring, Dawkins said, the college has a contingency plan to balance its budget that could result in more expense cuts.

Fundraising

Bennett alumnae contributed $1 million to the college last year  an increase of about $250,000 from previous years.

But college leaders say they need more than that. Bennett hopes to raise $4 million this year by reaching out to local, North Carolina and national philanthropists.

College leaders say they will deliver two messages to potential donors: Bennett has an annual economic impact on the Greensboro region of nearly $30 million, according to a 2015 study, and the college has a long, proud history of graduating accomplished African-American women.

We know theres a need for African-American women in so many professions, Robinson said. We produce those women.

The money raised will go to two main purposes: to help pay the colleges expenses not covered by tuition revenue, and to close the gap between what families can afford to pay and the financial aid the college can offer.

Dawkins said students usually leave Bennett because they cant come up with the money to pay their tuition bill. In many cases, students are only a few thousand dollars short.

More scholarships, Dawkins added, will help attract and retain more students and thus increase enrollment.

Leadership

When the Southern Association accreditation body put Bennett on probation a year ago, it cited concerns over the colleges governing board. The commission, apparently satisfied with recent changes to the board, dropped that finding in Tuesdays announcement.

The colleges board of trustees has experienced some turnover because of resignations and expired terms. Robinson, a former member of the UNC Board of Governors, became chairwoman only a year ago. Several new members are from the Greensboro area and have professional financial backgrounds.

Robinson on Wednesday expressed confidence in Dawkins leadership through this crisis.

Dr. Dawkins is the right president. We decided that in July when the college removed her interim title, Robinson said.

Dawkins, the former provost at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, was named Bennetts provost in late 2015 and became interim president less than a year later.

Campus life

Improving campus life for Bennett students is another key area.

This fall, the college extended curfew hours for first-year students and, for the first time, allowed male visitors to visit Bennett students in their dorm rooms.

The college also wants to upgrade its residence halls and reopen more of its dorms if enrollment increases. About 60 percent of Bennetts students live on campus.
A cyberattack slowed county government to a crawl Wednesday in North Carolinas most populous metro area as deputies processed jail inmates by hand, the tax office turned away electronic payments and building code inspectors switched to paper records.

Data was frozen on dozens of Mecklenburg County servers after one of its employees opened an email attachment carrying malicious software earlier this week.

County manager Dena Diorio said late Wednesday that the county will not pay the $23,000 demanded by the hacker believed to be in Ukraine or Iran. Diorio said it would have taken days to restore the countys computer system even if officials paid off the person controlling the ransomware.

I am confident that our backup data is secure and we have the resources to fix this situation ourselves, said Diorio.

In the meantime, county departments were scrambling to conduct business without access to digital records.

We are slower, but we are up and running, Diorio said.

The county of more than 1 million residents includes Charlotte, but the city government appears not to have been compromised by the attack. The city issued a statement that its separate computer systems have not been affected and that it severed direct connections to county computers.

The computer problems havent affected the processing of emergency calls because they are handled by the city, said Mecklenburg County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Anjanette Flowers Grube.

But its caused delays for the county jail and disrupted other county services ranging from domestic violence counseling to tax collection. Sheriff Irwin Carmichael said its taking longer to manually process arrestees, as well as inmates due to be released.

Calls to a county domestic violence hotline are rolling straight to voicemail, so counselors are checking messages every 15 minutes, officials told reporters. And the social services department is working to recreate its daily itinerary of 1,600 rides for elderly patients with medical appointments. Recurring appointments that account for most of the rides are less of a problem than those for patients who make one-time reservations.

Patty Eagan, director of Mecklenburg County Social Services, said there are 300 trips that are medical demand, and thats when someone has scheduled a trip a week ago, two weeks ago. We are not able to see what trips have been scheduled.

Meanwhile, payments to the tax office must be made with a check, cash or money order, and code inspectors are slowed down by using paper records, according to a list of affected services.

Diorio said county computers began to suffer Monday from the attack, which was publicly revealed the next day. A forensic examination shows 48 of the countys 500 servers were affected, Diorio said, adding that county government officials believe that the hacker wasnt able to gain access to individuals health, credit card or social security information.

The compromised servers have been quarantined, and even potentially healthy parts of the system were shut down to avoid spreading the malicious program, said Keith Gregg, the countys chief information officer. But without getting the compromised servers unlocked, the county will have to rebuild significant parts of the system.
WASHINGTON  Kathy Manning, a former immigration lawyer and fundraiser from Greensboro, was told to expect a wild ride in her first campaign for office.

She got a shock on her first day.

Manning filed her candidacy Wednesday for the Democratic nomination in North Carolinas 13th District, a seat now held by first-term Republican Rep. Ted Budd. Mannings announcement was first reported by The News & Record in Greensboro.

But Budds campaign already claimed kathymanningforcongress.com, offering its assessment of The Real Kathy Manning and labeling her as an establishment Democrat insider with ties to national Democratic political figures such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

Everybody told me this would be difficult and I would come against things that would be unexpected. I didnt expect dirty tricks before I even announced, Manning said Wednesday afternoon. If Ted Budd wants to spend his time playing political tricks instead of doing his job, thats his choice.

A Ted Budd for Congress logo is in the upper left-hand corner of the site. It includes a picture of Manning with former President Bill Clinton, a place to enter your email address to join Budds team and a link to donate.

We see it as a fun way to highlight Kathy Manning and her background and what shes going to bring to the race and what Ted is going to bring to the race. We had some fun with it. I dont know if its as fun for their campaign, said Andrew Bell, Budds campaign adviser.

Manning established her own site at kathymanning4congress.com.

Manning said she has been active in the community, supporting preschool programs for underprivileged kids and job retraining and mortgage support programs for those impacted by the recession. She said the dysfunction in Washington made her jump in the race  citing problems with health care, tax and immigration policy.

I decided its time to stop worrying and stop complaining and try to make a change, Manning said. Ive been totally overwhelmed with the excitement and support Ive gotten from people I know all over this community. The calls, emails and offers of help Ive gotten have been incredibly gratifying. They know me. They know the work that Ive done. They know the values I have.

The purchase of domain names as a campaign tactic surfaced in last years presidential race, targeting candidates including Republicans Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy.

These were President Franklin Delano Roosevelts opening words when he addressed Congress and the nation the day after the surprise attack. These six words would become the rallying cry for the American people in the ensuing months and years as the United States fought its way across the Pacific and eventually defeated the Japanese.

Dec. 7 marks the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is fitting that on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day we remember the U.S. sailors, Marines, soldiers, airmen and civilians who gave their lives that fateful day.

The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning while many sailors and Pearl Harbor residents were still in bed. At 8:06 a.m., a Japanese bomber dropped an armor-piercing shell atop the forward ammunition magazine of the USS Arizona. Within seconds, a catastrophic explosion tore the mighty warship in half and ignited a fire that would burn for two days. Of the 1,512 crew members on board, only 334 survived.

Less than two hours later, the attack was over. The butchers bill was ghastly: 2,403 Americans lay dead or dying, with an additional 1,178 wounded.

The fleet was devastated: 17 ships sunk or damaged, including all eight battleships in port. One hundred eighty-eight aircraft were destroyed and 159 damaged, many as they sat on the ground.

Amid the tragedy were countless acts of valor and self-sacrifice  men and women who fought back amid the flames or risked their lives to save others. Pearl Harbor exemplifies the very best of the American fighting spirit and how our nation responds to tragedy.

There stood Navy Steward Doris Miller, the first African-American sailor to be awarded the Navy Cross. He manned a machine gun and shot down a Japanese bomber, even though he had never been trained to do so.

There rushed Grace Lally, the chief nurse of the hospital ship Solace. Seeing the attack unfold, she led her staff of nurses through a hail of bullets and bombs to reach Solace, the only ship with facilities to care for the wounded. She and her staff treated more than 300 wounded that day.

Julio DeCastro, a civilian shipyard worker, risked his own life to save the men trapped aboard the USS Oklahoma. Swimming out to the capsized ship, DeCastro heard the tapping of survivors. Within 24 hours, he and his team succeeded in cutting holes in the hull and saving the lives of 32 servicemen.

Rather than demoralizing the American people, the fires of the USS Arizona galvanized the nation with an unshakable resolve to defeat our enemies.

Recruiting centers were crowded with volunteers seeking to enlist and fight on ships, in airplanes or on the battlefields of the Pacific Islands or Europe. Millions more were just as crucial to the war effort, toiling in the factories and shipyards to build the ships, aircraft, tanks and guns our servicemen needed to fight and win.

On that December day in 1941, our forces were badly beaten. But that defeat determined the course of history in a way not imagined by our enemies. It stirred and mobilized the American people and set in motion a united national effort that produced future victories in battle and ultimately the war. It forged a new destiny and identity for America  that of a world leader resolved to challenge any aggressor who tried to attack our freedoms or those of our allies.

Pearl Harbor should remind us that America, our military  and especially our Navy  must be ever vigilant and always ready to fight and win against any potential adversaries.

Even today, oil continues to leak from the wreck of the Arizona. Survivors call these oil drops slowly rising the waters surface the black tears of the Arizona. These tears serve as a reminder to every visitor to the Arizona Memorial of the sailors who perished 76 years ago and remain entombed in her hull.

Each passing year, leaves us with fewer and fewer Pearl Harbor survivors to tell their tales and those of their lost shipmates. It falls to every American to ensure the next generation, our children and grandchildren, know their stories and why this day in American history matters so very much.

Thomas Callender, a 20-year veteran and former director of capabilities for the Navy, is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
This is an updated version of an editorial we published on Dec. 7, 2006.

Seventy-six years ago today, Japanese air and naval forces attacked Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging much of Americas Pacific fleet, killing more than 2,400 American troops and civilians and dragging the United States into World War II.

That day of infamy was followed by other dark days: by a quick German declaration of war, by the fall of the Philippines, the loss of enormous amounts of Allied shipping in the North Atlantic and by setbacks across the Pacific and in Europe.

But the spirit and strength of the United States and its allies never waned. Less than four years after Pearl Harbor, both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany lay in ruin, and the allies were victorious. For the time being, at least, the world had been saved from fascism.

The men who fought on Dec. 7, 1941, and survived Americas first battle of World War II went on to fight in many more battles and then, with the return of peace, to build this country. Today, the survivors are scarce in number and are dying off quickly.

Many Americans are terrible students of history, a fact so aptly noted by the late comic John Belushi in the movie Animal House. To rally his fraternity brothers, he asks whether the U.S. quit after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, many American students might not, today, get the joke.

While our schools push for higher math and reading scores on standardized tests, history and civics are often overlooked. But maybe today, on this 76th anniversary of a day Americans should never forget, we can all take a few minutes to reflect on the sacrifices made by the World War II generation, and by other Americans in other wars.

Our Pearl Harbor vets deserve at least that much from us.
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] Cyber Unit announced [press release] Monday that it has obtained an emergency asset freeze against Dominic Lacroix, Lacroixs partner Sabrina Paradis-Royer, and his company, PlexCorps, after filing charges [complaint, PDF] alleging that the companys initial coin offering (ICO) for the cryptocurrency PlexCoins was a cyber scam.

Lacroix, Paradis-Royer and PlexCorps have been charged with violating anti-fraud provisions of US federal securities laws. Lacroix and PlexCorps were also charged with violating the registration provision of the federal securities laws. Lacroix has previously pleaded guilty in a Quebec court for securities fraud.

The ICO has so far raised $15 million since August and involves investments from thousands of individuals. The PlexCoins were marketed as being able to provide a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days. Lacroix and Paradis-Royer are accused of misappropriating $200,000 of the funds raised on extravagant personal expenditures. Despite PlexCorps claims that the PlexCoin is a cryptocurrency, the SEC has stated that they are securities within the meaning of the US federal securities laws.

This is the first set of charges made by the SECs Cyber Unit, which was created in September. The unit is meant to focus on misconduct involving distributed ledger technology and initial coin offerings, the spread of false information through electronic and social media, hacking and threats to trading platforms.
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases on Wednesday morning.

The first case involves award of attorneys fees in civil rights cases. In Murphy v. Smith [transcript, PDF], Chris Murphy, a prisoner at an Illinois correctional facility, was badly beaten by two guards while he was handcuffed, crushing part of his eye socket, choking him until he was unconscious, and leaving him naked face-down in his cell until a nurse came to check on him 30 minutes later. Murphy brought suit against the guards and was awarded $307,733.82 in damages, in addition to attorneys fees. However, under Prison Litigation Reform Act 42 USC  1997e(d)(2) (PLRA) [text], courts disagree whether the statute requires 25 percent of the awarded damages be diverted to paying attorneys fees, or whether the district court has the discretion to decide. The statute reads:

Whenever a monetary judgment is awarded in [a prisoners civil rights suit in which fees are awarded under 42 USC  1988], a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorneys fees awarded against the defendant.

Here, the district court interpreted the statute to give judges the discretion, but the appeals court judge.

At oral argument Wednesday, both sides argued that section 1997e(d)(2)s plain language supports their conclusion. Murphy argued that the statute is not subject to any mandatory language, so the phrase not to exceed is a suggested ceiling, rather than a fixed percentage. The guards, however, argued that the word satisfy creates an obligation to fulfill the 25% requirement. The Supreme Court is tasked with settling the dispute as to who should pay attorneys fees in successful civil-rights cases brought on behalf of prisoners.

Marinello v. United States [transcript, PDF], the second case heard by the Supreme Court Wednesday morning, concerns the limits of tax-law obstruction-of-justice charges. In this case, Carlo Marinello, a freight service operator, operated his business in cash. Without the direction of the IRS, he shredded bank statements and other records, without filing tax returns, but he did not withhold employment-related taxes such as payroll taxes.

At oral argument, Marinello argued that the omnibus clause of 18 USC  1503 [text] lacks any limiting language, and without the judiciary limiting the statute, this felony could be tacked onto any tax misdemeanor charge or could potentially criminalize otherwise legal tax-planning. The government disagreed, stating that the language  1503 is clear: obstruction of due administration of justice requires interference with court proceedings. The court must decide whether Marinello can be found to have corruptly obstruct[ed] the due administration of the tax law.
The US House of Representatives [official website] voted 423-3 [roll call] on Wednesday to approveH. Con. Res. 90 [text, PDF] condemning ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and calling for an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma. The resolution, submitted by Representative Joseph Crowley [official website] of New York, also called on President Donald Trump [official profile] to impose sanctions members of the Myanmar military and security forces for human rights abuses.

The resolution begins by highlighting that the Rohingya people have lost, with the support of the Burmese Government, their civil and political rights to a point in recent decades that they have become a stateless people. It then refers to the recent actions of the Myanmar military, security forces and private mobs resulting in the displacement of over 600,000 [JURIST report] Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh, and quoted an Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] report finding that: Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar.

The resolution also endorsed characterization [JURIST report] of the actions as grossly disproportionate [to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation army attacks on government military targets in Rakhine] and as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing offered by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official profile]. While acknowledging the the attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army as equally unwarranted and condemning the same, the measure says that those attacks did not justify the unrestrained response that has resulted in severe human rights violations, murderous ethnic cleansing, and atrocities against civilians. The House further noted the failure of Aung San Suu Kyis civilian government to address the violence and reiterated US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons call to stop [Reuters report] the violence and persecution.

The House expressed appreciation and admiration for the government of Bangladesh for providing refuge to those fleeing violence and attacks and pledged of $32 million in humanitarian assistance to address the urgent needs of Rohingya fleeing violence from Rakhine State into Bangladesh, as well as the needs of internally displaced persons in Rakhine State and host communities in Bangladesh.

In closing, the House called on the Myanmar military, security forces, and the government at large to allow unimpeded humanitarian access to refugees and internally displaced persons and permit refugees to voluntarily return to the country without undue restriction.
Nepals political elites hail the countrys transition from civil war as a success. But commissions for Truth and Reconciliation and on Enforced Disappeared Persons are not independent, and have not so far done their job. Many cases of civil war abuses filed before both national courts and UN bodies have not been adequately followed up, and victims are still waiting for justice.

On this Human Rights Day (December 10), let us call on all political actors in Nepal to respect victims right to truth, access to justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition for a peaceful future.

The Maoist revolt in Nepal between 1996 and 2006 left thousands dead, as well as many disappeared. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2006, the Maoists joined mainstream politics, entered parliament and participated in the first Constitutional Assembly election in 2008. A new Constitution was finally adopted in 2015, ending a protracted transition. But thousands of victims of conflict-related crimes, political and structural violence remain in need of justice. The situation of victims and minorities is worse than ever. The transition period has been a lost opportunity to address social injustices and uphold citizens rights.

Crisis of legitimacy

The Supreme Court of Nepal has ruled favorably for conflict victims on several occasions (1 June 2007, 2 January 2014 and 26 February 2015), but State authorities never implemented those rulings. There have been many documentation efforts, both official and unofficial, of human rights violations during the conflict in Nepal. National human rights bodies, the UN OHCHR, victims organizations, and civil society organizations have all undertaken documentation efforts. The two transitional justice mechanisms (Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons) have so far have registered over 60,000 cases of abuses from the conflict.

However, after three years, and mere months from the end of their mandate (February 2018), both commissions face a crisis of legitimacy. They have been characterized throughout by low performance, passivity, political loyalty, poor investigative modalities, mistrust from civil society, internal conflict, and incompetence. They have always lacked a clear vision, adequate resources, and have consistently ignored serious cases of human rights violations. They are seen as serving the interest of the State to legitimatize state-protected perpetrators. Although thousands of violations have been recorded, there is a risk that the evidence of those abuses -- documented by victims and victims associations  could even be destroyed.

Hundreds of complaints have also been submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) and UN Human Rights Committee concerning violations of ICCPR provisions on torture and enforced disappearances. But despite this, there has been no serious follow-up by the UN agencies regarding these issues. In its unwillingness to hold the State accountable, both to its own promises and to international norms, the international community is failing the Nepalese people. So, on this Human Rights Day, let us also call for the UN to do more to help bring justice for victims of the civil war in Nepal.
China touted its political and development model as it hosted an inaugural global human rights forum on Thursday, even as activists slammed the country's own abuses.

President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society since taking power in 2012, targeting everyone from human rights lawyers to celebrity gossip bloggers.

Hundreds of activists have been detained in the past five years while internet censorship has intensified.

And China became the first country since Nazi Germany to allow a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in state custody when democracy activist Liu Xiaobo succumbed to liver cancer under heavy police guard in July.

But some 300 participants gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to hear about the country's "human rights development path with Chinese characteristics" at the South-South Human Rights Forum.

Some attendees came from countries with their own checkered human rights record.

"There's no one size fits all approach in human rights practices," said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "No one is in a position to lecture others on human rights."

He highlighted China's achievements in poverty reduction as an example of the country's efforts to improve rights.

Beijing says it has reduced its poverty rate to four percent and seeks to eradicate poverty by 2020.

But forum attendee Zhu Liyu, deputy director of the Centre for Human Rights at Renmin University, pointed out that such calculations were based on the country's official poverty line, much lower than that of other nations.

"The standard for poverty here is very low. I think we should raise it," he told AFP.

The overseas NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Thursday that China's focus on economic development had taken a toll.

"In the past few decades, this 'China model' has left behind countless people in China, victimised by breakneck growth at the expense of basic protection from discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of power," it said in a statement.

"The 'secret' of the 'China success' hinges on squashed protests, silenced complaints, and swollen jails and extrajudicial holding cells," it added.

- 'China's answer' -

The inaugural forum comes two months after Xi outlined his vision of turning China into a major superpower by mid-century at a Communist Party congress that confirmed his status as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.

In November, Donald Trump repeatedly praised Xi during his state visit to Beijing during which the US president did not publically address China's human rights record.

The forum included diplomats, scholars and government officials from developing countries, as well as representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization.

"This is China's answer to the question of where human society is heading," Wang said of the forum.

Representatives of countries such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan with questionable human rights track records of their own took to the podium to extoll the Chinese model.

Burundi's presidential office spokesman Willy Nyamttwe said he was honoured to attend the forum as his country sought "solutions that can counterbalance Western diktats that through their propaganda instruments, the media and NGOs, are tarnishing the image of developing countries."

Last month, UN human rights investigators said they believed Burundi's top leaders had committed crimes against humanity.
Feature: Locally and Merci Buco Juice Drinks

I'm a juice and tea person. I don't drink soda that's why when we dine out, my default order would always be iced tea or fruit juice. I also have a stock of my favorite teas and juices at home that I enjoy drinking during meal times. I've tried all the flavors available on the market but haven't explored on our 'own' flavors.When I say 'own', those are the local fruit flavors that can be found here in our country. Some flavors are hard to find before because you can only get them where they are produced but now a brand calledbrought the best of Philippine flavors here in the metro. Know more about Locally and the exciting flavors they have in every can and bottle!
DESHLER  Reinke has recognized Deines Irrigation in Gering as one of the top ten highest selling dealerships throughout the United States and Canada, in acknowledgment of the companys marketing year success.

Deines Irrigation was also recognized as a top five highest selling dealership in the West Central Territory, and the company received a Diamond Reinke Pride award. The dealership was honored during Reinkes recent annual convention held in Omaha.

Congratulations to Deines Irrigation on receiving this recognition, said Reinke Vice President of North American Irrigation Sales Mark Mesloh. We appreciate the dedication that they show to their agricultural community and are happy to have them representing the Reinke brand.

Reinke dealerships from across the United States and Canada gather each year to attend the companys sales convention. The convention awards ceremony recognizes select Reinke dealerships for their hard work and dedication to sales and marketing throughout the past year.

The Reinke Pride awards are determined as part of an incentive program that distinguishes superior achievement levels according to an evaluation based on a dealerships exterior and interior housekeeping and maintenance, indoor and outdoor displays, safety, retail environment, merchandising, professionalism, promotions and event participation, and market share.
ELWOOD  An Elwood woman faces life in prison for allegedly receiving methamphetamines in the mail.

Deborah Scharf, 52, is charged in Gosper County Court with felony possession of methamphetamine, felony possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and an infraction of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Court records say the Nebraska State Patrol received notice that Scharf was receiving methamphetamine packages in the mail from California. The State Patrol then informed the U.S. Postal Service.

Court records say that a postal inspector retrieved a package from California dated Nov. 14 to be delivered to Scharf. A K-9 allegedly had a positive drug sniff of the package. Upon opening the package on a warrant, the postal inspector allegedly found 115 grams of methamphetamine.

On Nov. 20, court records say the postal inspector delivered the package to Scharf, who allegedly retrieved the package from her mailbox.

Court records say the investigator then searched Scharfs home and located drug paraphernalia and 7.8 ounces of methamphetamine.

Scharf was arrested and jailed in the Dawson County Jail where she remains on 10 percent of $500,000 bond.

Her preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 15 in Gosper County Court.

If convicted and not placed on probation, Scharf faces 20 years to life in prison on the methamphetamine charge and up to two years in prison on the controlled substance charge.

@erikadpritchard
KEARNEY  A Kearney man accused of having sex with an underage girl wants his case to go before a jury.

Mario Mendez Jr., 23, is charged in Buffalo County District Court with felony first-degree sexual assault of a child younger than 12 years of age, sexual penetration, and third-degree sexual assault of a child younger than 14, sexual contact. The incidents involve the same alleged victim and allegedly took place in April and May 2016.

Details about the incidents are sealed. The case was bound over on Nov. 28 from Buffalo County Court where Mendez has asked for a jury trial.

Mendez was arrested on a Buffalo County warrant in November. He posted $50,000 bond and is free.

No trial date has been set, although an initial court appearance hearing is scheduled for January.

As a condition of his release, County Judge Gerry Jorgensen said Mendez cant have contact with anyone younger than age 18.

If convicted on both counts, and if he isnt placed on probation, Mendez faces a minimum of 15 years in prison.

@HubChic
KEARNEY  National Cattlemens Beef Association leaders described a roller-coaster first year working with the Trump Administration.

At the Nebraska Cattlemen Convention Wednesday, NCBA President Craig Uden of Elwood and NCBA Director of International Trade and Market Access Kent Bacus of Washington, D.C., said highlights have been the re-opening of Chinas market to U.S. beef and rollbacks of Environmental Protection Agency regulations and public lands initiatives.

The big setback was President Trumps decision to withdraw the United States from the multi-nation Trans Pacific Partnership. Its not certain whether the North American Free Trade Agreement will meet the same fate.

China is the shining light, Bacus said, because the first shipments of U.S. beef in 14 years were allowed last summer. That market was closed after the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was confirmed in a Washington dairy cow in December 2003.

Its still going to take us a while to develop this market, Bacus said. China has a population of nearly 1.4 billion and a growing middle class.

Pork and poultry remain the main proteins, he said. But beef is the hot commodity item. Most of the beef they have now is finished on grass ... from Brazil, Uruguay and also Australia and New Zealand.

Bacus added that the U.S. Meat Export Federation estimates that China could be a $300 million market for U.S. grain-fed beef over the next couple of years.

Although beef sales continue to grow in Japan, the top export market for U.S. beef at $1.5 billion, opportunities to sell more there and throughout Asia at lower tariff rates were lost with the TPP withdrawal.

Bacus said NCBA strongly supported the agreement.

Unfortunately, were still going to have to deal with the ramifications of this, he said. If TPP is not a solution, we have to have a bilateral agreement.

Trump has said he wants better bilateral deals with Japan and other TPP countries, but Bacus said there havent been any meaningful negotiations. One reason is Japanese officials arent very interested because they are focused on TPP.

Thats unfortunate because we have fought hard for some of the beef terms we could have in Japan, Bacus said.

Japans tariff on U.S. frozen beef imports was raised Aug. 1 from 38.5 percent to 50 percent. That rate will continue through March 31.

Bacus said that Australia, a major U.S. competitor in that market, does not face those high tariffs because it has a free trade agreement with Japan.

Under TPP, Japans tariff is 27 percent and will step down to 9 percent over the next 16 years. Bacus said trade officials from Japan and the European Union are in negotiations that could also set a 9 percent rate for EU beef.

Korea, NAFTA sales

Two other highly successful trade deals for the U.S. beef industry have been criticized by Trump.

Bacus said the 2012 Korea Free Trade Agreement has allowed an 82 percent growth in U.S. beef sales to South Korea, which now is a $1 billion export market. Costco officials decided to purchase all U.S. beef for the companys South Korea stores.

The key in South Korea was getting a U.S. free trade agreement ahead of Australia, Bacus said.

Uden said dealing with export markets is tough, but the opportunities are great. He said that in five years, Korea went from protesting U.S. beef imports to being a $1 billion market.

Although negotiations have started to modernize NAFTA  both Mexico and Canada are $1 billion markets for U.S. beef  the presidents withdrawal threat remains.

The last thing we want to do is lose that access, Bacus said, adding that NAFTA negotiations may take many months.

He said beef organizations in the three countries are united in the goal to see valuable ag-related parts of the agreement preserved. Their message to the U.S. and Mexico presidents and Canadas prime minister is to not revert to failed trade policies of the past.

Farm bill

As part of his NCBA presidents report, Uden said a new U.S. farm bill probably will be ready for Congress consideration early in 2018.

He said the top issue for beef producers is funding  $150 million a year for five years  for a foot-and-mouth disease vaccine bank.

Uden said that over a 10-year-period, an outbreak could have a $200 billion impact on livestock and grain producers because of closed export markets.

NCBA officials also will work to keep current U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation and disaster programs and to fight any additional cuts in research. Were going to push hard on the vaccine bank and try not to go backwards on the other things, Uden said.

Other focus topics ahead for NCBA are issues management to protect interests of beef producers and processors, consumer education about beef production, and meeting needs of domestic markets that include more online food purchases and home delivery services by retailers.
This week we learned from the Nebraska Farm Bureau and Nebraska Cattlemen that members of the two organizations are pondering the unthinkable  surviving without the North American Free Trade Agreement.

With markets for livestock and grain already depressed, farmers and ranchers are under extreme financial stress, and yet President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon NAFTA unless Canada and Mexico give him what he wants in a new deal. Nebraska farmers and ranchers have good reason to be concerned.

They saw Trump walk away from talks on the Trans Pacific Partnership that would have opened up new markets for U.S. agricultural products. Ditching TPP cost Nebraska producers millions, but the damage from losing NAFTA would be far more severe.

During its gathering in Kearney this week, Farm Bureau said Nebraska farmers and ranchers would lose somewhere around $2.9 billion if Trump bungles the NAFTA negotiations.

The Farm Bureaus economist sees per-farm losses ranging as high as $55,468 in Hub Territory if producers lose key trade partners in Canada and Mexico. Agricultural nations around the globe would gladly provide what our neighbors need if the United States suddenly couldnt be trusted to stand by its agreements.

Locally, the losses from a NAFTA walkout could be devastating. Farmers are already struggling, but we wonder how they would survive if confronted with the crippling financial situation without NAFTA markets.

The idea of withdrawing from NAFTA is unfathomable, Farm Bureau president Steve Nelson of Axtell said. That would be a disaster for Nebraska and American agriculture. The same could be said of any renegotiations that would weaken agricultures trade position in the agreement.

U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer has spoken to Trump about NAFTA, but weve not heard of Sen. Ben Sasse or Nebraskas U.S. House members standing up for their constituents. That would include central and western Nebraskas Rep. Adrian Smith, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has so much sway over trade, the NAFTA crisis should be Smiths defining moment.

We urge readers to write Fischer, Sasse and Smith. Its time to head off a disaster in farm and ranch country by keeping NAFTA in place.
Each spring, Nebraska farmers head to their fields to plant and prepare for their fall harvest. Their individual success depends on many factors and is a key part of our states overall economic success. Our farm and ranch families are the foundation of our states number one industry. To grow Nebraska, we have to continue to grow opportunities for those families.

In 2017, Ive continued to make growing agriculture a priority for my administration by expanding trade, encouraging livestock development, and promoting the biofuels industry. Ag commodities trade generates more than $6 billion annually for Nebraska. Our efforts to expand trade led our trade delegation to Canada this year. On the trade mission, I met with Agri-Plastics to encourage them to choose Nebraska. This fall, Agri-Plastics announced they will be expanding their calf-housing line by opening a production facility in Sidney  their first in the United States.

In September, we had a similar opportunity to maintain and build trade relations with Japan. Japan is already our largest source of direct foreign investment and were eager to grow that relationship. During that trip Sagami Restaurant Chain signed a letter of intent with Smithfield to source more of their pork from Nebraska farmers.

Weve been able to open new markets as well as expand opportunities with current partners. This year, China agreed to open its beef market to the United States for the first time since 2003. For years, Nebraskans have been working together with federal officials to reopen this market, and my administration continued that work with two visits to China in 2015 and 2016.

This year, I led a coalition which urged the Trump Administration to continue to focus on growing market access as they negotiate NAFTA. I have also advocated for immediate negotiations on bilateral agreements with some of our key trading partners such as Japan.

One of the best ways to grow our industry here at home is through livestock development. Our work this year included breaking ground on the $300 million Costco chicken processing project near Fremont.

Were also expanding programs that make investment and growth in the agriculture industry accessible and easy. Biofuels also play a critical role in the states agriculture industry. Nebraska is the second largest producer of ethanol in the country. In the past two years, ethanol plants in Jackson, Fairmont and Adams have invested approximately $190 million in new technology. These investments have increased the capacity and product diversification of their operations.

In 2017, I have had the privilege of serving as chairman of the Governors Biofuels Coalition. Serving as chairman gave me the opportunity to encourage the EPA for a timely release of the 2018 proposed targets under the Renewable Fuel Standards. Last week, the Trump Administration announced the final volume levels in a timely manner with minimal changes. Their decision provides much-needed predictability, which helps ethanol producers plan for their businesses and spur growth in the biofuels industry.

More work lies ahead as we rise up to seize the opportunities and face the challenges our farm and ranch families work through to feed a growing world.

Pete Ricketts is governor of Nebraska.
This image provided by the Pantone Color Institute shows the Pantone Color of the Year for 2018, called "Ultra Violet." The color experts at the Carlstadt, New Jersey-based Pantone say the deep purple shade was chosen to evoke a counterculture flair, a grab for originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking. Ultra Violet follows Pantone's 2017 Color of the Year, "Greenery." (Pantone Color Institute via AP)
Logs are stacked at Murray Brothers Lumber Company woodlot in Madawaska, Ontario on Tuesday April 25, 2017. The United States International Trade Commission has unanimously voted that the American lumber industry has been harmed by Canadian softwood lumber imports.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017 file photo, Itir Esen, 18, smiles after being crowned Miss Turkey 2017 in Istanbul. Turkish prosecutors are seeking a maximum one year prison term for former beauty queen Itir Esen, who was stripped of her crown over a social media posting deemed to be "insulting" to the victims of last year's failed coup, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday Dec. 7, 2017. (AP Photo, File)
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FILE - In this May 9, 2017, file photo, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rides in the Bears Ears National Monument with local and state representatives in Blanding, Utah. Zinke is strongly disputing a claim by outdoor retailer Patagonia that President Donald Trump "stole" public land by shrinking two national monuments in Utah. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)
In this photo taken on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017 French Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld, left, and his wife Beate look at the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris. The story of Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld is well known in many ways _ and has even spawned a Hollywood movie. Yet, not all has been told of the steely married coupleAos quest to bring down some of the Third ReichAos most infamous villains including Klaus Barbie, the so-called AuButcher of Lyon.Au ParisAo Shoah Memorial is this week hosting the worldAos first ever exhibit into their story _ called AuBeate and Serge Klarsfeld, Fighters for Memory.Au(AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Opposition Labor Party Senator Penny Wong, left, celebrates with former Olympic champion swimmer Ian Thorpe, center, and Sen. Janet Rice at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Australia's Parliament has voted to allow same-sex marriage across the nation, following a bitter debate settled by a much-criticized government survey of voters that strongly endorsed change. Champagne and tears of flowed in the halls of Parliament House as gay celebrities including Olympic champion swimmer Ian Thorpe and actress Magda Szubanski hugged lawmakers and ordinary folk in a party atmosphere. (AP Photo/Rod McGuirk)
U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs Jeffrey Feltman, center, meets with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The senior United Nations official is on a four-day visit to the country at the invitation of the North Korean government. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)
Hamas supporters stage a protest against the possible U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, in Jebaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. President Donald Trump is forging ahead with plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Why, this week  when the world seems to be collapsing around us and an American president seems singularly incapable of catching it  should I write about Finland?

Its a nice enough country, way up there on the way to the Arctic, and it is now one of the most solid democracies in the world. Its a loyal member of the European Union  an enthusiastic member, which is something in itself in this age of doubt and indecision  and it seems mysteriously to have learned, after two centuries of travail, how to get along with its troublesome neighbors the Russians.

This week, peaceable Finland is celebrating its 100th birthday. For two days, the entire country will be illuminated with blue and white lights, its national colors. And the descriptive phrase theyre using for the celebration is with dignity and joy.

But there is more to my interest in Finland than its centennial. Let me share some stories.

It was a high-winter day in Helsinki in the early 1990s, gray as a battleship, and we were going out for  what better?  a ride on an icebreaker, smashing through the thick ice to the seas west of Turku. One might think this would be a charmless voyage, but no.

We boarded the ship, also gray, at 10 in the morning, and the party was already on. A band was playing, people were drinking and dancing, and when the revelers needed a refreshing break from all that giddiness, they retired to the sauna.

We were on our way to the Aland Islands, which sit smartly between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea and between Finland and Sweden. You have never heard of the Aland Islands? Neither had I. But it seems that these isles were the center of a number of military dramas in their time. From the early 1800s on, Sweden, Russia and Finland all claimed them, and a perfectly bloody ruckus ensued until the countries involved finally came to a negotiation.

Today the islands are an example of a wisely split difference. Officially, they belong to Finland, but Swedish is the formal language and Swedish culture is highly respected. Russia is out of the picture.

In 1987, just before the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, I got clues about what was about to happen and why from interviews with two young diplomats in the foreign office in Helsinki.

The Russians by then owed the Finns 800 million rubles (about $800 million). Leif Forgeros, one of the diplomats, told me that day: We tell the Russians, You have to pay us. Were a small country. We cant subsidize a superpower.

And that conversation was one of the first solid indicators I had that the all-powerful Soviet Union was falling apart, in hock to a country it had dominated since the 19th century.

The special inner wisdom of Finland  and what I am celebrating on this 100th birthday  goes beyond its successful escape from the clutches of the marauding Russian bear. It even goes beyond Finlands brave fight against the Russians in the legendary Winter War of 1939, when white-uniformed Finnish soldiers on skis swept out of the Finnish snows to stagger their adversaries.

What impresses me most is that, not only did Finland become free when the Soviet communist state collapsed in 1991, but through all of the dark times, the Finns never lost their spirit and common sense.

Whereas so many countries and peoples are busy making the worst out of the best, the Finns have always made the best out of the worst. I offer as a prime example our frolic on the icebreaker.

Another day in Helsinki, the famous Finnish historian Max Jakobson mused with me how, even through Finlands dark decades, her social fabric remained intact, and the continuity of her political institutions unbroken ... an achievement that transcends the conventional meaning of such terms as defeat in history.

I cant think of a better way to say, Happy Birthday, Finland!

Georgie Anne Geyer has been a foreign correspondent and commentator on international affairs for more than 40 years. She can be reached at gigi_geyer@juno.com.
At a time when many states wonder how they will cope with the uncertain economic future that engulfs them, Wisconsin can take a step back to reflect. Our state is booming, and we in Southeast Wisconsin are going to prosper as a result.

Construction of the Foxconn Technology Group campus in Racine County will first bring a small army of construction and trades workers to the area. There will be significant increases in business for landlords and restaurants, of course. Renters and sellers of all kind of construction materials, supplies, equipment, fuel and tools will also feel the bump in business. Estimates suggest the project will mean $1.4 billion in business for Wisconsin companies and suppliers.

On the day the gates open at the Foxconn facility, thousands of employees will start earning paychecks for jobs that dont exist today. That money, for the most part goes back into the economy  one way or the other. In addition to paying mortgages and car payments, even groceries and gasoline, some of that money will also go into savings and investments  the fuel that ultimately drives our economy.

In the short term, there will be times when Foxconn construction and local infrastructure improvements to support it wont be in sync. It will be frustrating.

But the total investment by the Taiwanese electronic company will ultimately reach $9 billion. It will, in time, bring the entire community to a higher level of economic well-being.

When you add the other big-time projects announced this year for the region, such as the first North American production facility for German candy maker Haribo, you can see that global manufacturing companies are giving Wisconsin serious consideration. A number of major manufacturing and logistics companies have already given Pleasant Prairie and Kenosha a thumbs-up by choosing our community for billions of dollars of new investment in the past 10 years.

The decision of many companies to relocate to Southeast Wisconsin got a boost from Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. And a sincere thank you to the governor is in order for both Foxconn and other recent announcements.

WEDC has its own issues with bookkeeping, not to mention a lack of transparency, even in dealings with its own members. In the bright light of the success of the Foxconn agreement, we hope Gov. Walker will take steps to make the dealings of WEDC more open. Having a completely transparent state economic development agency should convince even more companies, manufacturers, and job-creators that Wisconsin is the welcoming business environment they seek.

In just a few years, well be enjoying Wisconsin cheese and Gummy Bears while we watch the Green Bay Packers on our locally manufactured flat-screen TVs. In the short term, it makes the thought of bumpy roads not feel so bad.
A High Court action over the proposed sale of a mansion in Co Kilkenny is not proceeding.

The case had been brought by Edward Magan, a beneficiary of the Eaglehill family trust which owns Castletown Cox, who had objected to the sale of the south Kilkenny estate on 513 acres by the current trustee of the estate, DW Trustees.

Mr Magan failed earlier this year via a court hearing in Jersey in the Channel Islands to stop the marketing of the property for sale.

The Jersey court ordered DW Trustees could proceed with facilitating marketing of, and access to Castletown, the estate agent, Knight Frank, was instructed to proceed with the sale.

The beneficiaries of Eaglehill Trust, which is governed by Bermuda law, are Edward and Henrietta Magan, children of Lord George Magan, a retired banker who purchased the estate in 1999.

Lawyers for Eaglehill then sought injunctions at the High Court in Dublin to stop the Irish Times Newspaper publishing an article about the sale of Castletown Cox.

In a ruling Mr Justice Paul Gilligan refused to restrain the newspaper publishing the article but gave permission for Mr Magan to serve short notice of proceedings for an injunction preventing the trustees taking steps to promote or market the sale of Castletown Cox and its demesne.

The matter which had been adjourned on several previous occasions returned before the High Court on Wednesday when a motion by DW Trustees to dismiss the case on the grounds the Irish High Court did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case was listed for hearing.

Following talks between the parties Rossa Fanning SC, for DW Trustees told Mr Justice Gilligan the matter was not going ahead

Counsel said the parties had agreed the Irish courts lack the jurisdiction to hear Mr Mangan's action, and that all previous orders made in the case could be vacated.

Niall Fitzgibbon SC, for Mr Magan, said that his side was consenting to the orders.

Previously the court heard the case, and proceedings in other jurisdictions including Bermuda and Jersey,were put on hold to allow a mediation due to take place in London last September.

However that process was not successful, and the trust wished to proceed to sell the property to another party.

The Eaglehill Trust assets are valued at between 45m-50m, with Castletown Cox representing the significant property portion of those assets.
The Newpark Hotel on the citys Castlecomer Road attracted over 200 people on Friday night for the Lions Club annual wine, beer and whiskey fair.

And the clientele didnt disappoint digging deep to provide much needed funds for the Lions Club Christmas appeal.

The Lions continue to strengthen communities in the city through humanitarian projects where they give to the less well off through a number of charities including the St Vincent de Paul and the Good Shepherd Centre.

On Friday, over 70 exhibitors showcased their products.

Dara OReilly-Daly, Marketing Manager of The Wine Centre said they were delighted to be involved in the project and stressed how important it was for us, as a society to look after the less well off.

The president of the Lions Club in Kilkenny, Mr Brian OCallaghan thanked her for organising all the wholesalers from Dublin, Cork and Limerick and said he knew what a difference events like the fair made in the lives of people who were struggling to make ends meet in the run up to Christmas.

He assured everyone present that every cent from the initiative would go straight to the poor and needy and that there were no administration costs.

Since its inception in 1999, the wine, beer and whiskey fair has gone from strength to strength and plans are already under way for 2018.

Kilkenny Lions Club will be using the former Arts and Crafts Shop, Upper Patrick Street, Kilkenny, beside the Club House Hotel, to display a selection of items that will be auctioned on KCLR on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The shop will open until Saturday from 2 to 6pm each day.

It will also be used as a collection point for the purchasers of all general auction items.

Mr OCallaghan thanked the owner, Maura Kenealy, for allowing the shop to be used by the Lions Club during the auction.

The items for auction appear on Page 76 of this weeks Kilkenny People and to bid just call 056-779622.

There are many bargains and remember you are supporting a worthy cause.
Irish Water says it will send out over 100,000 emails to customers who have already registered for Irish Waters Online Account Management, and 30,000 texts to customers to ensure the process of refunding water charges is as efficient as possible.

The refunds process is reportedly progressing well and it is expected that 90% of refunds will be processed by Christmas. However, Irish Water is reliant on customers providing correct details to ensure that the cheques are sent to the right address.

Irish Water has identified almost 19,000 customers who have registered for Online Account Management who need to provide additional details to receive their cheque. There are also a number of people, who may have moved and not yet notified Irish Water, who also need to update their details.

According to Irish Waters Head of Customer Operations, Eamon Gallen, the response has been very positive so far.

There has been a great response to our appeal to customers to update their details," he said.

"To date Irish Water has received over 50,000 calls from members of the public updating their details or seeking advice regarding the refunds process. We are making a final call to anyone who has not yet updated their details to do so as a matter of urgency.

Irish Water are making every effort to ensure that our customer details are as accurate as possible and have encouraged customers to contact us where necessary through media, radio and digital advertising campaigns and via our website and social media channels.

We are now going to email those who registered for Online Account Management, a service where customers can see how much they paid in water charges and check that their account and contact details are correct.

Because there have been attempts at phishing emails, whereby fraudulent attempts were made to gain personal details of customers, Irish Water is encouraging people to CallSave 1850-448448 to update their details where necessary rather than clicking on links or replying to texts from unfamiliar sources.

The public should be aware that Irish Water will never ask customers for personal financial information over email. If a cheque has already issued, customers can still contact us to update their details and arrange for the cheque to be cancelled and re-issued.

There are extensive questions and answers about the refunds process at water.ie/refunds.
Tourism leaders including those from Kilkenny have heard Ireland details of Tourism Ireland's marketing plans to promote the Ireland overseas in 2018 at an event in Dublin.

This year is set to be another record year for Irish tourism, surpassing all previous records; by year end, 10.65 million people will have visited the island of Ireland, spending 5.78 billion. For 2018, Tourism Ireland aims to build on this years performance  growing overseas tourism revenue to 6 billion and visitor numbers to 10.8 million.

Building on this years success and sustaining growth into the future is at the heart of Tourism Irelands strategy for 2018. Factors working in our favour include new flights to Ireland  including the first ever direct flight from the Asia-Pacific region, with a new Cathay Pacific service from Hong Kong set to launch in June, as well as new Aer Lingus flights from Seattle and Philadelphia.

Latest estimates indicate that, by year end, revenue generated by international visitors will be around 5.78 billion, a 6.7% increase over last year, helping to sustain some 282,000 valuable jobs in communities across the island.

"I am delighted to report that we have seen growth from all our main markets around the world, with the exception of Britain  with record numbers arriving here from North America, Mainland Europe, Australia and developing markets, said Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland.

Throughout the year, Tourism Ireland undertook a packed programme of promotions, to bring Ireland to the attention of travellers everywhere. Thousands of opportunities were created for potential visitors around the world to read, hear or watch positive messages about Ireland; Tourism Ireland estimates that this media exposure is worth an estimated 327 million in equivalent advertising value.
HANOI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0418 GMT.

December 7 USD/VND mid-point 22,445 USD/VND interbank 22,713/22,714 USD/VND unofficial 22,760/22,780 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.27/36.49

Interbank offered rates Overnight 1.0-1.6

1 week 1.3-1.8

1 month 2.2-2.7

3 months 4.5-4.8

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016, the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.

For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
* Nov index at 78.0 vs 76.7 in Oct

* Sentiment bolstered by exports and tourism

* Consumers felt less worried about politics - university

BANGKOK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Thailand's consumer confidence rose for a fourth straight month in November, boosted by a stronger economic outlook as exports and tourism remained robust but low commodity prices were still a concern, a private survey showed on Thursday.

The index of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce rose to 78.0 in November from 76.7 in October.

Consumers were also less worried about the political situation and expected more stability in the future, the university said in a statement.

Private consumption accounts for half of Southeast Asia's second-largest economy, but has been crimped by high household debt.

The government offered a shopping tax incentive from Nov. 11 to Dec. 3 to help spur spending before the year-end. Third-quarter growth, however, beat expectations, growing 4.3 percent on the year and 1.0 percent on the quarter, thanks to robust exports and tourism.

The state planning agency has forecast GDP growth of 3.9 percent for this year and 3.6-4.6 percent for 2018. Last year's growth was 3.2 percent, less than that of regional peers. KEY DATA The Overall Consumer Confidence Index reflects views on the economy, job opportunities and future income. The survey is usually done in the last week of the month.

Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar 78.0 76.7 75.0 74.5 73.9 74.9 76.0 77.0 76.8

LINKS:

For details, see the university website: /

($1 = 32.51 baht)

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thailand's consumer confidence ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Kitiphong Thaichareon; Writing by Chayut Setboonsarng; Editing by Sunil Nair)
* Vietnam's robusta at $65-$75/T discount to London March contract

* Weak demand from buyers while beans not ready due to weather

* Indonesia premium gains further at $110-$120/T to Jan contract

By Mi Nguyen

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Demand for robusta coffee beans was slow this week in major producer Vietnam at a time when erratic weather slowed down bean processing in the country's Central Highlands, traders said on Thursday.

Farmers in Vietnam's main coffee-growing province Daklak were offering coffee beans at 37,300-37,600 dong ($1.64-$1.66) per kg, compared with last week's range of 37,100-37,700 dong, traders said.

The 5-percent black and broken grade 2 robusta was quoted at a discount of $65-$75 per tonne to the ICE March futures contract .

That compared to a discount of $50-$65 a week ago, but independent analyst Nguyen Quang Binh said trading was thin as buyers hesitated.

"Demand from buyers was strangely weak," Binh said. "They have only bought beans for contracts due for delivery."

Another trader, based in Ho Chi Minh city, said exporters accepted higher prices to secure contracts, while coffee roasters were not looking to buy and farmers held back beans to wait for better offers.

Coffee roasters, the main buyers of robusta, were discouraged by weather changes which slowed down the drying process.

"Trading would pick up when beans harvest goes back on the rails and coffee roasters started buying," the trader said.

Traders estimated 90,000-95,000 tonnes of Vietnamese coffee beans were shipped in November, after started low last month at the beginning of the 2017/2018 crop year. In Indonesia, the grade 4 defect 80 robusta was set with a $110-$120 a tonne premium to the January contract.

A trader in Lampung, the main coffee growing province in Indonesia, said prices rose in line with the London market and traders were becoming more speculative in setting prices amid depleted stocks.

"The price jump did not have any effect (oo trade)," the trader said, adding that no transaction took place this week.

($1 = 22,713 dong)

(Reporting by Mi Nguyen; Additional reporting by Mas Alina Arifin in Bandar Lampung; Editing by Manolo Serapio Jr.)
SAO PAULO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Brazil's central bank has identified no risks stemming from cryptocurrencies at this time, the head of the bank said on Thursday, after a more than 10-fold rise in the price of bitcoin this year stoked debate over the safety of such assets. This week, Brazil's central bank and securities regulator issued an official warning that cryptocurrencies are not under official oversight. Central Bank Governor Ilan Goldfajn on Thursday said international organizations have not found it necessary to introduce regulation, according to a transcript of his speech published to the bank's website.

(Reporting by Bruno Federowski Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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.
HONG KONG, Dec 7 (Reuters) - China central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan has said keeping prices stable and controlling systematic risks in the financial sector are two core targets for the bank. The People's Bank of China would maintain efforts on deleveraging as debt levels in the economy declined, while following a prudent and neutral monetary policy, Zhou Xiaochuan said in an article seen on Thursday.

(Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

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.
PARIS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - France's central bank chief said on Thursday he supported a deal among financial regulators on bank capital rules because it was "fair, reasonable and final".

European banks have long worried that a compromise proposal would hit them particularly hard and a deal was reached on Thursday after Paris relented when a long phase-in period was proposed. "Any good agreement is a compromise. I am ready to support this one, as it is fair, reasonable, and final," Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said in remarks sent to Reuters after the agreement was reached.

He added that implementation of the new rules was gradual enough to avoid "excessive capital increases" and that the agreement would stabilise rules for the sector, which had long complained about the uncertainty in the absence of a deal.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; editing by Michel rose)
(Kitco News) - Gold and silver prices are lower in early U.S. trading Thursday, as a lack of fresh, bullish fundamental news and very little risk aversion in the marketplace emboldens the sellers. Gold prices dropped to a four-month low overnight, while silver hit a nearly five-month low. A rebound in the U.S. dollar index this week is also working against the precious metals market bulls. February Comex gold was last down $8.10 an ounce at $1,258.00. March Comex silver was last down $0.095 at $15.86 an ounce.

World stock markets were mostly higher overnight. U.S. stock indexes are pointed toward firmer openings when the New York day session begins. World stock indexes that are at or near record or multi-year highs show there is keen risk appetite in the marketplace at present, which is a big negative for the safe-haven gold and silver markets.

Traders and investors are monitoring U.S. government lawmakers negotiations with President Trump over a stop-gap measure to keep the federal government in operation. Its expected the stop-gap funding bill will be implemented later this week.

In overnight news, the Euro zone third-quarter GDP came in unrevised at up 0.6% from the second quarter and up 2.6%, year-on-year. Those numbers were very close to market expectations.

The other key outside market Thursday morning sees Nymex crude oil futures prices firmer. However, the price uptrend in crude oil has stalled, which begins to suggest a near-term market top is in place.

The U.S. economic report highlight of the trading week will be Friday mornings November U.S. employment report from the Labor Department. The key non-farm payrolls number is forecast to be up 195,000. Wednesdays U.S. ADP national employment report for November showed a rise of 190,000 jobs.

U.S. economic data due for release Thursday includes the weekly jobless claims report, the Challenger job-cuts report, and the consumer credit report.

Technically, February gold futures bears have the overall near-term technical advantage and have gained more power late this week. Bulls next upside technical objective is pushing and closing prices above chart resistance at $1,280.00. Bears' next near-term downside price breakout objective is closing prices below solid technical support at $1,250.00. First support is seen at todays low of $1,257.70 and then at $1,250.00. First resistance is seen at the overnight high of 1,266.80 and then at Wednesdays high of $1,271.80. Wyckoffs Market Rating: 3.5.

March silver bears have the solid overall near-term technical advantage. The next upside price breakout objective is closing futures prices above solid technical resistance at $16.50 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at the July low of $15.225. First resistance is seen at $16.00 and then at Wednesdays high of $16.17. Next support is seen at the overnight low of $15.805 and then at $15.75. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 2.5.
The combination of a stronger U.S. dollar and technical factors has gold under pressure, but the metal could derive support from the Trump administrations decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, says Afshin Nabavi, head of trading at trading house MKS (Switzerland) SA. As of 7:56 a.m. EST, Comex February gold was $8.90 lower to $1,257.20 an ounce and bottomed at $1,255.50, its weakest level since July. Nabavi points out that gold has fallen as the U.S. dollar strengthens ahead of the U.S. monthly jobs report Friday and a potential U.S. rate hike next week. When gold broke down below $1,260, traders continued to liquidate bullish positions. Nabavi says he would favor buying on dips, however, citing in geopolitical factors. In particular, he called U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel very, very, very dangerous for the Middle East region. Already, the Islamist group Hamas has urged Palestinians to launch a new uprising against Israel. Overall, I would prefer to buy on dips myself, rather than sell on rallies, Nabavi says.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Commerzbank: Palladium Premium Over Platinum Highest Since 2001

Palladiums premium over sister metal platinum is now the widest since 2001, says Commerzbank. Platinum historically was more expensive before palladium gained the upper hand this fall, helped by a wide annual supply deficit while most analysts describe the platinum market as not far from balanced. Both metals are used for catalytic converters, with palladium going into vehicles with gasoline-powered engines that are popular in the large auto markets of the U.S. and China. As of 7:57 a.m. EST, spot platinum was down $1.85 to $898.15 an ounce and was below $900 for the first time in five months. Meanwhile, spot palladium was up $7.55 to $1,001.55. Ever since platinum fell below the technically important 200- and 100-day moving averages at the end of November, the price has been on a pronounced downward trajectory, Commerzbank says. By contrast, palladium is holding its own at around $1,000 per troy ounce, widening the price differential between palladium and platinum to $100. The last time it was any higher was in April 2001.
By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - A Turkish-Iranian gold trader testifying for U.S. prosecutors in a criminal trial involving sanctions against Iran said on Thursday that he was removed from a New York federal jail after another inmate threatened to kill him for cooperating with authorities.

"He said that he had received instructions to kill because I was cooperating," the trader Reza Zarrab told jurors in a Manhattan courtroom. He did not identify the person or say when the threat was made. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zarrab said that after the encounter, he was transferred from Brooklyn, New York's Metropolitan Detention Center to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The account came near the end of Zarrab's testimony, which began last Wednesday and concluded on Thursday afternoon.

Zarrab, a Turkish and Iranian national, pleaded guilty in October to charges that he schemed to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

Zarrab is testifying for U.S. prosecutors against an executive from Turkey's majority state-owned Halkbank who is accused of taking part in the scheme with Zarrab.

The executive, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, has pleaded not guilty and the bank has said that all of its transactions complied with international regulations.

U.S. prosecutors have charged nine people in the case with conspiring to help Iran evade sanctions. Only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by U.S. authorities.

Earlier on Thursday, a lawyer for Atilla, Cathy Fleming, sought through cross-examination to undermine Zarrab's credibility. Zarrab conceded under her questioning that he had lied repeatedly in the course of business, including to Atilla.

However, when Fleming asked Zarrab about a letter he signed to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledging to aid in "economic jihad," Zarrab denied making such a pledge. He said he did not read Farsi and had signed the letter without knowing what it meant.

Zarrab also denied telling his uncle in a telephone call from jail "that in this country you have to admit to something you haven't done in order to become free." A summary of that call was included in a court filing by Atilla's lawyers earlier this week.

Over his seven days of testimony in Manhattan federal court, Zarrab said Turkish officials took bribes and helped Iran launder money. The case has strained ties between the United States and Turkey, both members of the NATO military alliance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cast the trial as an attempt to undermine his country and its economy. (Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
MUMBAI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - State-run Union Bank of India launched a share sale to institutions on Thursday to raise at least 10 billion rupees ($155 million), sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

If demand is strong, the deal can be increased by up to another 10 billion rupees, with the proceeds aimed at helping the bank to boost its capital ratio, said the sources, who declined to be named as the details are not public.

The bank is looking to sell the shares at 154.65 rupees each, said one of the sources. Union Bank shares closed at 157.60 rupees on Thursday.

The bank, in a stock exchange filing earlier on Thursday, confirmed it had launched a share sale, but did not give details of the fundraising plan. As part of the government's more than $32 billion recapitalisation plan for state banks, the lenders are required to raise about 580 billion rupees from share sales by March 2019. Edelweiss, ICICI Securities, Jefferies and Yes Securities are the banks managing the Union Bank share sale.

($1 = 64.5700 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy and Suvashree Choudhury; Editing by Mark Potter)
PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith (Source: VNA)



He held a reception for Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith on December 6th, who is in Vietnam for the annual consultation between the two Foreign Ministries.

Prime Minister Phuc appreciated the success of the consultation between Vietnamese Deputy PM and FM Pham Binh Minh and the Lao FM, saying that the mechanism has proven effective in enhancing the cooperation between the two ministries.

He urged the two ministries to keep close coordination via the Intergovernmental Committee of Cooperation to timely address arising problems.

The PM lauded the efforts made by the two ministries to boosting the two nations relationship, contributing to consolidating the comprehensive cooperative ties over the past years.

For his part, Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith extended his congratulations on Vietnams success in hosting the APEC 2017 Economic Leaders Week in Da Nang.

The Lao FM briefed PM Phuc on the outcomes of his working visit to Vietnam, saying that the two Ministries have jointly reviewed the agreements signed between leaders of the two Parties, States, Ministries, sectors and localities.

He stressed that the two sides acknowledged existing problems in bilateral cooperation and agreed on solutions to them.

The two Ministries will also boost communication work to help young people of the two countries understand more about the Vietnam -Laos special friendship and comprehensive cooperative ties, according to the Lao FM./.
OSLO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Norwegian central bank will offer an F-loan for December 11-20, it said on Thursday. The deadline for bids is Thursday at 1415 CET.

(Reporting by Oslo newsroom)

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.
OSLO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Norway's $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund has made its first real estate investment in Asia by acquiring a 70-percent stake in five properties in Tokyo, it said on Friday.

The fund will pay 92.75 billion yen ($823.20 million) for its stake, valuing the portfolio at 132.5 billion yen, while partner Tokyu Land Corporation will acquire the remaining 30 percent, the fund said in a statement.

The agreement was signed on Dec. 7 and is scheduled to be completed at the end of December. The venture plans to finance 49 percent of the acquisition with a bank loan, the fund added.

($1 = 112.6700 yen)

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Terje Solsvik)
MANILA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Philippine central bank on Thursday released the preliminary data on gross international reserves (GIR) as of end-November.

GIR Nov Oct Sept Aug Jul Jun in bln $ 80.313 80.419 80.962 81.725 81.065 81.321 NOTE: The October figure has been revised.

- The level of reserves is the lowest since November 2015 when they stood at $80.17 billion

- The central bank attributed the decline in reserves to "outflows" arising from payments by the government of its obligations.

- The end-November reserves can cover 8.4 months worth of imports, the central bank said in a statement.

- The central bank said in June reserves were expected to be at $80.5 billion by the end of the year, below its earlier estimate of $84.7 billion.

- The central bank expects the country's current account balance this year to be in $600 million deficit on expectations of surging imports.

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Sunil Nair)
Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

GOVERNMERNT RESHUFFLE

Senior politicians from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party will meet in the afternoon in Warsaw to discuss a reshuffle of the government.

PiS party spokeswoman said on Tuesday that it was not a secret that the candidacy of Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to become the new prime minister has emerged, but she said no decisions have been made yet.

PRESIDENT MEETING

President Andrzej Duda has announced on social media that he has called a meeting of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, ruling PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and himself for 0830 GMT.

NON-CONFIDENCE VOTE

The opposition will try to pass a non-confidence vote against Prime Minister Beata Szydlo on Thursday, which is expected to fail as the ruling party has enough votes in the lower chamber of parliament to block it.

STADLER

Swiss train maker Stadler has won a tender and will supply 71 trains worth 2.2 billion zlotys ($615.38 million) to Polish rail operator Koleje Mazowieckie.

LUFTHANSA

Germany's Lufthansa plans to open in Poland in co-operation with MTU Aero Engines an engine servicing plant worth 150 million euros that is to start functioning in 2020 and employ 800 people, Puls Biznesu reported.

DATA

Polish central bank to publish November FX reserves at 1300 GMT.

****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.****

For other related news, double click on: Polish equities E.Europe equities Polish money Polish debt Eastern Europe All emerging markets Hot stocks Stock markets Market debt news Forex news For real-time index quotes, double click on: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX ($1 = 3.5750 zlotys)

(Reporting by Warsaw Bureau)
DUBAI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Qatar's central bank said on Thursday it had sold 1.15 billion riyals ($315 million) of Treasury bills in a monthly auction, with yields rising from last month's sale. The bank sold 550 million riyals of three-month bills at a yield of 2.30 percent, 450 million riyals of six-month at 2.49 percent, and 150 million riyals of nine-month at 2.62 percent. In early November, it sold 1.4 billion riyals of T-bills: 550 million riyals of three-month at 2.26 percent, 750 million riyals of six-month at 2.45 percent and 100 million riyals of nine-month at 2.52 percent.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia)

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.
ST PETERSBURG, Russia, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Russian finance ministry plans to issue treasury bonds denominated in Chinese yuan with "medium-term" maturities, a finance ministry official said on Thursday.

Petr Kazakevich, deputy head of the finance ministry's debt department, said the yuan-denominated bonds were likely to have maturities of five years or shorter.

He did not say when Russia plans to issue the bonds.

(Reporting by Yelena Orekhova; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Jack Stubbs)
BRATISLAVA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Slovak financial markets on Thursday.

ALL TIMES GMT (Slovak Republic: GMT + 1 hour)

=========================ECONOMIC DATA========================

Real-time economic data releases.................. Summary of economic data and forecasts......... Recently released economic data................ Previous stories on Slovak data.......... **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: ========================NEWS==================================

IMMIGRATION: The European Union's executive will sue Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the bloc's top court for their refusal to host asylum-seekers, two EU sources said on Wednesday.

Story: Related stories: ====================PRESS DIGEST===============================

AUTOMOTIVE: German carmaker Porsche , part of the Volkswagen Group , plans to build a new factory in Piestany in western Slovakia, a local TV station reported.

The company has bought land near Piestany and will decide next year what kind of factory to build on it, Porsche's Slovak subsidiary director said. /

(Reuters has not verified the stories nor does it vouch for their accuracy.)

For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX Main currency report TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets News editor of the day: Jan Lopatka +420 224 190 476

E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com

(Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
The following company announcements, scheduled economic indicators, debt and currency market moves and political events may affect South African markets on Thursday.

ECONOMIC EVENTS

- Central bank publishes fx reserves figures for November. 0600 GMT.

- October mining production data release by Statistics SA. 0930 GMT

COMPANIES

- No major announcements.

SOUTH AFRICAN MARKETS

South African stocks fell to their lowest in more than a month on Wednesday after Steinhoff shares plummeted when the company announced an investigation into accounting irregularities and its chief executive officer resigned. The rand retreated. GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian shares hovered near two-month lows on Thursday as softer oil and copper prices and uncertainty over U.S. policy kept many investors on the sidelines, even as some high-tech bellwethers bounced back after a searing sell-off. WALL STREET

The S&P 500 fell a tiny bit on Wednesday, with Microsoft and other technology stocks making modest gains but not quite offsetting losses in energy shares after oil prices dropped more than 2 percent. GOLD Gold prices were mostly steady on Thursday amid a firm dollar, trading within sight of a two-month low hit earlier this week.

Spot gold XAU= was nearly unchanged at $1,263.21 an ounce by 0406 GMT. It marked its lowest since Oct. 6 at $1,260.71 on Tuesday. EMERGING MARKETS

For the top emerging markets news, double click on - - - -

Some of the main stories out in the South African press:

BUSINESS DAY

- Logistics utility Transnet's board to be subpoenaed by parliament in corruption probe.

- Redefine expands into Poland.

BUSINESS REPORT

- South Africa's poultry association worried about forced labour at Brazil farms.

Keywords: SAFRICA MARKETS/FACTORS
STOCKHOLM, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Sweden's central bank bought 1.075 billion Swedish crowns ($127.50 million) worth of government bonds in a reverse auction as part of its quantitative easing programme, it said on Thursday. It bought 575 million crowns of 2022 bonds at an average yield of -0.247 percent and 500 million crowns of 2028 bonds at 0.665 percent. Investors offered to sell the Riksbank 1.550 billion crowns and 1.600 billion crowns in the two bonds respectively. ($1 = 8.4313 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Johan Sennero)

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.
STOCKHOLM, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Swedish central bank Deputy Governor Martin Floden said on Thursday that he was not overly concerned about the impact of a recent slowdown in the Nordic country's housing market on the broader economy.

"That a slowdown would be completely unproblematic, I don't think anybody has really expected that," he told reporters on the sidelines of a presentation.

"But then the question is whether this would lead to bigger macro-economic troubles or not, and there I don't see any reason to be very worried, at least not so far."

The residential property market has shown signs of slowdown in recent months, above all in the capital Stockholm, after two decades of nearly uninterrupted price increases that have left Swedish households among the most indebted in Europe.

(Reporting by Johan Sennero and Daniel Dickson; writing by Niklas Pollard; editing by Johannes Hellstrom)
Overview of the training course (Photo: qtv.vn)

The trainees are officials directly involved in cultural and tourism activity management in localities and related Departments and sectors.

At the first session, they were introduced to the history and culture of New Zealand, the customs of the Maori people (native people of New Zealand), and the University of Auckland, the second largest of the seven universities in New Zealand.

They will also take a short tour on campus of the university. The training course is designed with significant interaction, demand for creativity and built-in real-life situations.

Through the class, the trainees will be able to improve their knowledge and skills on tour guiding, management and developing sustainable tourism activities.

The course will last until December 15th./.
BUDAPEST, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Hungary sold 54 billion forints ($202.47 million) worth of government bonds at an auction on Thursday, 4 billion forints more than planned, the Government Debt Management Agency (AKK) said . Series: A200923C Issue status: Auction data: AUCTION DATE 07/12/2017 23/11/2017 TOTAL BIDS (bln HUF) 67.35 75.50 ALLOTTED (bln HUF) 25.00 30.00 AVERAGE YIELD (pct) 0.58 0.57 Series: A221026B Issue status: Auction data: AUCTION DATE 07/12/2017 23/11/2017 TOTAL BIDS (bln HUF) 32.44 57.58 ALLOTTED (bln HUF) 20.00 30.00 AVERAGE YIELD (pct) 1.07 1.04 Series: A311022A Issue status: Auction data: AUCTION DATE 07/12/2017 12/10/2017 TOTAL BIDS (bln HUF) 14.83 18.09 ALLOTTED (bln HUF) 9.00 10.00 AVERAGE YIELD (pct) 2.80 3.28 ($1 = 266.71 forints)

(Reporting by Sandor Peto)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
ISTANBUL, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Here are news, reports and events that may affect Turkish financial markets on Thursday.

The lira stood at 3.8530 against the U.S. dollar at 0517 GMT, little changed from a close of 3.8500 on Wednesday.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond was at 12.00 percent in spot trade on Wednesday and at the same level in Thursday-dated trade.

The main BIST 100 share index fell 0.90 percent to 105,303.94 points on Wednesday.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian shares hovered near two-month lows on Thursday as softer oil and copper prices and uncertainty over U.S. policy kept many investors on the sidelines, even as some high-tech bellwethers bounced back after a searing sell-off. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was barely changed. It has slipped 4.7 percent from a 10-year peak hit on Nov. 23 as investors booked profits after robust gains this year. ERDOGAN TO GREECE

President Tayyip Erdogan will depart Ankara on a visit to Greece (0700 GMT). He will meet the Greek president and then the prime minister, with whom he will hold a joint news conference.

YILDIRIM

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will attend a high consultative council meeting of the TUSIAD business association (0800 GMT).

CASH BALANCE The Treasury will announce cash balance data for November (1430 GMT).

DEMIRTAS COURT CASE

A Turkish court holds the first hearing in the case of Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), parliament's third largest party. He is facing terrorism-related charges.

For other related news, double click on:

Turkish politics Turkish equities Turkish money Turkish debt Turkish hot stocks Forex news All emerging market news All Turkish news For real-time quotes, double click on:

Istanbul National-100 stock index , interbank lira trading , lira bond trading (Writing by Daren Butler)
Dec 7 (Reuters) - Britain's FTSE 100 index is seen to open 11 points higher at 7,358.6 on Thursday, according to financial bookmakers.

* ROLLS-ROYCE: Air New Zealand Ltd on Thursday said it would cancel and delay some international flights over the coming weeks because engines on its Boeing Co BA.N 787-9 jets manufactured by Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC required early maintenance. * ROYAL MAIL: Britain's Royal Mail said on Wednesday its mediated talks with the Communications Workers Union (CWU) to end a row over plans to replace the firm's defined benefit pension scheme were advancing. * UNILEVER: Italy's antitrust agency said on Wednesday it had fined Unilever's , Italian unit more than 60 million euros ($70.7 million) for abuse of its dominant position in the country's ice cream market. * OIL: Oil prices inched higher on Thursday after a data report showed a decrease in U.S. crude inventories, but rising gasoline stocks and crude production weighed on the market. * GOLD: Gold prices edged lower early on Thursday, hovering close to a two-month low hit earlier this week, amid a steady dollar. * COPPER: London copper edged up on Thursday but was still not far two-month lows amid signs that growth in China's property and power sectors, both major copper consumers, is tapering into the year end. * BRITAIN-EU: The Irish and British Prime Minister agreed to speak again over the coming days after Irish premier Leo Varadkar reiterated his firm position on the Irish border in a call with Theresa May on Wednesday, his spokesman said. * EX-DIVS: Babcock , Mediclinic , Next will trade without entitlement to their latest dividend pay-out on Thursday, trimming 0.46 points off the FTSE 100 according to Reuters calculations * The UK blue chip index rose 0.5 percent to 7,364.05 points on Wednesday, as Brexit negotiations dented the pound, while Costa owner Whitbread got a late boost when activist investor Sachem Head declared a stake in the company. * For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets

* UK CORPORATE DIARY: DS Smith PLC Half Year 2018 Earnings Release

TODAY'S UK PAPERS

> Financial Times > Other business headlines Multimedia versions of Reuters Top News are now available for: * 3000 Xtra : visit * For Top News : (Reporting by Harish Bhaskar)
(Updates with announcement)

* DEA struggled to expand in UK, US due to Russian sanctions

* BASF to control 67 pct of new firm

* IPO is possible after deal closes in H2 2018

By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Ron Bousso and Ludwig Burger

FRANKFURT/LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Chemical giant BASF agreed to merge its oil and gas unit Wintershall with DEA , a vehicle of Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, to create one of the largest independent oil and gas firms in Europe, the companies said.

Fridman and his partners in the LetterOne investment vehicle made billions by selling their Russian oil empire in 2013 but have since struggled to expand in the United States and Britain due to sanctions imposed on Moscow despite not being under sanctions themselves.

By folding DEA into Wintershall and creating Germany's first oil champion, cash-rich Fridman could create new opportunities for growth in large Western markets.

For BASF it represents a second chance to diversify outside Russia where it is heavily present via ventures with gas monopoly Gazprom . BASF already tried to buy DEA in 2014 from German utility RWE but lost the race to Fridman.

"Wintershall DEA will be one of Europe's largest independent exploration and production companies, with the scale needed to generate sustainable growth long into the future," said Lord John Browne, the executive chairman of LetterOne Energy.

"Wintershall DEA, will be a German and European energy champion which can compete with those in France, Italy, and Spain. Very rarely do you have the opportunity to create a company of this type," Browne, a former chief of BP , said in a statement.

The new company will produce around 590,000 barrels per day from fields mainly in the North Sea, Africa and Russia and have combined proven reserves of 2.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

BASF will control 67 percent of the new firm while Fridman's LetterOne will own the remaining 33 percent.

BASF could increase its stake in the company at a later stage by folding into it its pipeline business, which was left outside the initial merger.

The new group would consider an initial public share offering (IPO) upon completion of the merger, which is expected in the second half of 2018.

In May, Kurt Bock, BASF chief executive, said profit contributions from its oil and gas unit were diminishing further amid weak oil prices. As a result, the group would focus on boosting profitability at its chemicals and crop protection businesses. The drop in profits came amid a slump in oil prices and turmoil in Libya, one of Wintershall's key sources of oil, following the fall of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

DEA became a growth platform for Fridman and his partner BP sold Russian oil venture TNK-BP for $55 billion in 2013 to state-controlled oil major Rosneft .

DEA's expansion in Britain and the United States has been hampered by Western sanctions on Russia with DEA unable to close a deal to buy gas fields in Britain's North Sea as well as shale oil and gas companies in Texas.

German daily Handelsblatt had earlier reported a deal was imminent.

(Editing by Adrian Croft)
(Adds Odinga comment, U.S. Embassy statement)

By John Ndiso

NAIROBI, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Swearing in an alternative president of Kenya would be an act of treason, the country's attorney general said on Thursday, days before an opposition leader expects to be inaugurated by an unofficial people's assembly.

Such an inauguration would worsen the rifts opened by an acrimonious election season, when more than 70 people died in political violence. The extended campaigns eventually led to President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election.

Attorney General Githu Muigai did not name anyone, but opposition leader Raila Odinga said last month that he would be inaugurated by a people's assembly on Dec. 12 - Kenya's Independence Day .

Unless a candidate was declared the victor in an election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the swearing-in was conducted by the Kenyan chief justice, Muigai told a news conference, such a inauguration is "a process wholly unanticipated by the constitution and is null and void".

"The criminal law of the Republic of Kenya stipulates that sort of process is high treason," he said. "It is high treason of the persons involved, and any other person facilitating that process."

Under Kenyan law, treason is punishable by death.

Muigai said people's assemblies proposed by the National Super Alliance, Odinga's opposition coalition, were illegal as well.

"These institutions are unconstitutional they are illegal, they are null and void. The persons involved in their creation are involved in extra-constitutional activity and may be visited by the full force of the law," he said.

So far, 12 Kenyan counties have passed motions supporting the formation of a people's assembly, most of them counties that had backed the opposition in Kenya's protracted voting.

Odinga and Kenyatta faced off in an election in August that Kenyatta won. But the Supreme Court nullified the result, and a repeat election was held on Oct. 26. Odinga boycotted that vote, saying reforms needed to avoid "illegalities and irregularities" had not been made. Kenyatta won again, with 98 percent of the vote .

The United States had urged opposition leaders to work within the law and avoid actions like the proposed "inauguration ceremony", a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi said on Wednesday, following a visit to Kenya by Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

Without directly mentioning the ceremony or the United States, Odinga said on Thursday that Kenyans should be left to solve their own problems.

"Our friends can give us advice ... in privacy. Don't come and shout at us, and tell us that we are going to violate the constitution. Which constitution, my foot," Odinga told reporters in Nairobi.

(Reporting by John Ndiso, Addtional reporting by Humphrey Malalo and George Obulutsa, writing by George Obulutsa, editing by Larry King)
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
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy this afternoon. Morning high of 36F with temps falling to near 25. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low 12F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
By Yoon Ja-young



A special committee to bolster economic cooperation with Eurasian countries was established Thursday, as part of the Moon Jae-in administration's initiative to find new growth engines and secure peace on the Korean Peninsula.



It will prepare a roadmap for economic cooperation with the countries by April next year, based on the "New Northern Policy" of President Moon.



The Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Cooperation held its first meeting with Chairman Song Young-gil and advisers as well as related ministries participating.



"Economic cooperation with Eurasian countries will help ease tension in Northeast Asia and lead to joint prosperity," Song said. The countries Korea seeks partnership with include Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Ukraine and Mongolia among others, as well as the three provinces of northeastern China.



"President Moon has a strong vision for northern economic cooperation, and he agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin on diverse programs," Song said.



"With the Korea-China summit scheduled soon, we expect the New Northern Policy to cooperate with China's One Belt, One Road, leading to joint prosperity."



With abundant natural resources and a large population, the region has been getting the spotlight for its huge growth potential. Countries there have been accelerating regional integration while opening their markets, as seen in the launch of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Russia's New East Asia Policy, and China's One Belt, One Road.



Korea started advancing to the north by forming diplomatic ties with the former Soviet Union in 1990 and with China in 1992. While trade and investment with China have increased explosively since then, economic cooperation with Eurasian countries including Russia has fallen short of expectations.



The committee, which will be the nation's control tower in northern economic policies, will set up high-level channels with partner countries, including signing an MOU with the Development of the Russian Far East.



The committee will also lead the "nine-bridge strategy," which President Moon suggested at the Eastern Economic Forum in Russia in September. He suggested Korea-Russia cooperation in nine sectors: shipbuilding, arctic shipping, gas, railways, electricity, jobs, agriculture, fisheries and harbors. The committee will prepare joint project plans with its Russian counterpart, the Development of the Russian Far East.



The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced at the meeting that it will push for the Northeast Asia Super Grid project, which will link electric power lines so that Korea, China and Japan can use the abundant energy of Russia and Mongolia.



In shipbuilding, Korea plans to help Russia modernize its Zvezda Shipyard.



It will also seek joint projects with China, Mongolia and Russia using the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. With the Central Asian countries and Mongolia, Korea will expand cooperation to manufacturing and ICT on top of supporting sectors Korean businesses are interested in, which include petrochemicals and road construction.



With nations of western Eurasia such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the focus of cooperation will be on cutting-edge technologies and setting up a joint startup ecosystem.



With the EAEU, Seoul will prepare to start negotiation for free trade agreement (FTA), diversifying trade market.


By Park Si-soo







Two foreign envoys here and two business executives won Korea CQ awards for their contribution to promoting South Korea overseas, said the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI), a Seoul-based NGO, on Thursday.







Korea CQ is the name of a forum CICI launched in 2006 to promote Korean culture and business to foreign opinion leaders here. CICI hosts 10 forums a year.







Indian Ambassador to Seoul Vikram Doraiswami won the CQ Communication Award, while the CQ Cooperation Award went to Latvian Ambassador to Seoul Peteris Vaivars.







Erwan Vilfeu, CEO of Nestle Korea, received the CQ Hand-in-Hand Award. The CQ Friendship Award went to Bang Eu-gene, country head director of DBS Bank Korea







The award ceremony will be held at Grand Hyatt Seoul Hotel Thursday evening, featuring quiz and other recreational events. Sixty people were invited to the event, including New Zealand Ambassador to Korea Clare Fearnley, Singapore Ambassador to Seoul Yip Wei Kiat, Turkey's Ambassador to Seoul Arslan Hakan Okcal and Chevron Korea Country Chairman Bill Miner.







The CICI was founded in 2003 by Prof. Choi Jung-wha at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. It has hosted various cultural events, bringing together opinion leaders living here to share their cultural experiences in Korea. It has recognized individuals, groups and others that have contributed to enhancing the image of Korea around the world since 2005.


By Jun Ji-hye



North Korean missile tests have been a source of concern to international airlines amid the possibility of a ballistic missile encroaching on busy commercial air routes.



Since its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, July 4, the Kim Jong-un regime launched two more ICBMs, July 28 and Nov. 29, into the East Sea.



The North, a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), is required to give prior notice of activities that could threaten the safety of civil aviation. But the repressive state did not do so ahead of the three tests.



In response to the repeated tests, Singapore Airlines has taken practical measures by rerouting the airline's Seoul-Los Angeles flights, according to the company. The new route goes further north to avoid flying over the East Sea.



The company said the measure was put in place following the July 28 ICBM test, during which the missile flew 998 kilometers for 47 minutes after reaching an altitude of 3,724 kilometers.



A publicity manager of Hong Kong-based carrier Cathay Pacific Airways also said, "We are closely watching the situation, though we have yet to change our routes."






Rise Global CEO Barry O'Callaghan / Courtesy of Rise Korea



By Kim Bo-eun



Korea's thriving private education industry is criticized for undermining the public education system and perpetuating the gap between the haves and have-nots.



Efforts and calls to regulate the industry continue.



However, a global education business CEO says the private sector can be an agent of innovation for the public education system.



"There is a stigma in many parts of the world that for-profit education is bad, that education is a social contract that should be paid for by the state," Rise Global CEO Barry O'Callaghan told The Korea Times in an interview in Seoul last week.



"However, if that becomes the exclusive mandate of education systems, they tend to be slow to reform and innovating change."



O'Callaghan has been in the education business for the past 20 years. In 1999, he established Riverdeep, which provided math programs in middle schools, targeting underperforming students in U.S. public schools. The company later merged with two of the largest textbook businesses in the U.S., creating Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH).



In 2011, O'Callaghan left the company and established Rise China, an English-language-learning business. Its success led him to begin a similar business in Korea and other Asian countries, including Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, under the brand Rise Global. The CEO was in Seoul for parent seminars to promote Rise Korea before the new academic year.



O'Callaghan said Korea's mature, sophisticated market for English education made it a good test-bed for his business.

Yet at the same time, he acknowledged this was a problem.



"The biggest anomaly in Korea's education market is the disconnection between the public school system and private education," he said.



"It makes no sense to have a child in a hagwon studying a curriculum that is two to three grade levels beyond what they are doing during the day."



While the scale of Korea's private education is considered disproportionate, some countries have nothing other than a public school system.



The CEO said private education's role should be somewhere in between these two extremes.



Along the same lines, O'Callaghan said rather than brutally regulating the private sector, there should be collaboration to promote it with the public system.



"The two should create a natural synergy rather than undergo disconnection," he said.



Korean education system



O'Callaghan said Korean students excel academically and Korea is among the top countries sending students to Ivy League schools in the U.S., as well as attaining doctoral degrees.



"The Korean education system has produced a very well-educated academic community, but whether that translates into success in the corporate, professional world, it is debatable," he said.



"Korea's prowess is not seen in the number of executives at top multinationals or in terms of the number of Korean companies that have become global leaders."



The rigid public education system is often cited as a reason Korean students' strengths are mainly limited to academic achievement.



The entire 12-year school system is geared toward preparing for the College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT).

"A one-day test being the way to benchmark 18-year-old students is not fit for purpose," O'Callaghan said.



He said modern teaching standards around social skills and emotional intelligence can support hard academic output.



"Social skills and EQ, as well as IQ, need to be developed, which go beyond university academic studies into the workplace, to compete on a global level," he said.



Rise Korea



O'Callaghan said Rise Korea aims to turn abstract grammatical English into real-life applications.



"The best way is through projects and an immersive environment using interactive software built in English," he said.

Rise Korea hosts leadership training programs and debating competitions and plans to set up student-run radio stations _ an initiative at Rise China's centers.



What further distinguishes Rise Korea's English learning centers from its competitors, the CEO says, is its global presence and access to quality learning tools.



It has its global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, Asian headquarters in Singapore and a business in Korea, as well as joint ventures throughout Asia. It also holds a perpetual license to HMH to use its products.



Rise Korea is attempting to promote exchanges between students of learning centers based in different countries.



"There is an online program where students of various countries can provide input and we are preparing to host an international competition next year," O'Callaghan said.



"Students of Rise Korea, as well as China and Japan, will compete, and they will be able to check their performance at a global level."




Senior citizens pass through ticket barriers at Bukhansan Ui Station in Seoul. More than one third of all passengers who use the new Ui-Sinseol Line, which connects the station to Sinseol-dong Station, are holders of a senior free pass. / Yonhap



Senior free pass has become bone of contention amid rising tax burden



By Jung Min-ho



When the government started allowing seniors (aged 65 or older) to use the subway for free in 1984, they accounted for less than 4.3 percent of the country's population.



Today the proportion is more than 14 percent. Amid the increasing burden on taxpayers, many young people are demanding change.



According to railway operators across the country, losses from the welfare benefit last year were 554.3 billion won ($507 million), a jump from 423.9 billion won in 2012. In some cities, including Gwangju and Busan, more than a quarter of their subway users have free passes. By 2020, total losses are expected to reach 728.1 billion won.



Not all seniors use the subway by necessity. Over the past few years, "silver subway delivery" businesses have boomed. Seniors are their employees, who use their free pass on the Seoul subway to shuttle parcels to buyers.



A 67-year-old man, surnamed Shin, is one of them. He makes between 600,000 and 800,000 won a month by delivering products from one district to another. "I don't feel lonely thanks to the job, which keeps me moving around. It is also a good exercise," he said.



But some young people complain that they feel "overburdened" because of the free riders.



"I was upset when the city government decided to increase the subway fare two years ago," a 28-year-old Seoul subway commuter, who declined to be named, said. "Whenever I hear news about a next fare hike, I don't feel good. I think the government should charge seniors to share the burden and reduce unnecessary subway use."



Money is not the only reason for such calls. Young people also complain that some senior citizens make the subway more crowded during rush hours and behave rudely to other passengers.



"I often see seniors argue with young people over seats," a 27-year-old jobseeker, surnamed Jung, said. "In our culture, young people feel they should offer their seats to the elderly. I do not mind giving my seat to seniors but feel bad when they ask for it as if they owned it. So I don't usually take a seat when there are seniors around to avoid such conflict."



In some countries, including Japan and France, not all senior citizens are entitled to free or cheaper subway travel. Those who earn more than a certain amount cannot receive the benefit.



Some scholars here, including Dongyang University Professor Park Jung-soo, also believe the government should not give out free subway passes to all elderly people. They say the current age for the free pass is too low and should be raised to 70 as people today live longer than 26 years ago, when the government introduced the benefit.



But other scholars, such as Ajou University Professor Yoo Jung-hoon, said gains from the policy are larger than what they seem, considering indirect effects for old people and society.



According to his recent study, the country can reduce healthcare costs for senior citizens hugely by allowing them to use the subway for free. He said the free system is helpful for their mental health. He concluded the gain-loss ratio is about 1:1.2.






South Korea should push for a summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the first half of Moon's term, a senior ruling party lawmaker said Thursday.



Rep. Lee Hae-chan of the Democratic Party made the suggestion in a speech set to be delivered at a security conference, saying 2019 will be good for a summit because the year is meaningful as the 100th anniversary of the 1919 nationwide uprising against Japanese colonial rule and the establishment of a provisional government.



"If possible, it's important to push for a South-North summit in the first half (of Moon's five-year term)," Lee said during the conference organized to mark late former President Kim Dae-jung's winning of the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize following the first inter-Korean summit ever earlier that year.



"If a summit takes places in the second half, it would be difficult to guarantee its effectiveness," he said.



The two Koreas have held two summits so far, the first in 2000 between then-President Kim and then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, and the other in 2007 between then-President Roh Moo-hyun and the North's leader. Inter-Korean relations have since worsened seriously under the two successive conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye.



Despite the nuclear and missile tensions, Lee said that Seoul should make efforts next year to restore dialogue channels with the North and foster an atmosphere for talks so that a summit can take place the following year.



"Even in the middle of a situation dominated by nuclear and missile provocations and sanctions, we need to have a flexible strategy so as to induce dialogue and negotiations," Lee said. "We have to encourage North Korea's participation in efforts to make the PyeongChang Olympics a peace Olympics and suspend military exercises during the period to create an atmosphere for dialogue."



Seoul should consider sending a special envoy to the North to ask for its participation in the Winter Olympics, Lee said. He also said that the two Koreas should restore a hotline to prevent accidental military clashes. (Yonhap)




Hundreds of pizzas were delivered to the Ministry of Finance and Strategy office on Wednesday. / Yonhap



By Chyung Eun-ju, Park Si-soo



President Moon Jae-in hosted a rare pizza party for finance ministry officials on Wednesday.



Cheong Wa Dae delivered 350 pizzas to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in Sejong City, along with hundreds of bottles of soda and side dishes.



"It is also a gift to encourage the officials to continue to work hard on stabilizing the economy and household debt," a Cheong Wa Dae official said.



The pizza party, the first of its kind thrown by Moon, was to celebrate the passage of the 428.8 trillion won ($394.4 billion) budget for 2018, and a bill for tax reform, at the National Assembly on Wednesday.



The bills got final endorsement after days of fierce debate between the ruling and opposition parties, which were often disrupted by the boycott-threatening naysayer, the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP).









The on-off political showdown dragged on for days and ended with the bill winning final parliamentary endorsement four days after the legal deadline of Dec. 2.



The LKP tried to cut out or reduce the money earmarked for some of what it called "populist" or "budget-guzzling" policies, including creating thousands of new government jobs, expanding welfare programs and increasing the minimum wage.



To fund the increased spending, the ruling party pushed forward bills designed to raise the corporate and income tax rates for big businesses and top earners, which were approved on Wednesday.



Cheong Wa Dae said the pizza party cost 4 million won. It bought the pizzas at Pizza Maru, a local brand with 530 outlets across the country.



Asked why it chose the brand, Cheong Wa Dae said the company "is seeking to expand overseas in a win-win cooperation with its suppliers." It said Pizza Maru is an enthusiastic social contributor that has donated 100,000 pizzas to underprivileged people.





Officials eat the congratulatory pizza sent by President Moon on Wednesday. / Yonhap
By Lee Kyung-min



Fear is growing over a possible tuberculosis outbreak in Noryangjin, Seoul, after a man, 23, who attended a class with up to 500 students was later confirmed to have contracted the highly infectious disease.



Noryangjin is an area where many young people live and study to pass various state-administered exams.



According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), officials there are conducting chest X-rays on the possibly affected students, following an on-site inspection Nov. 30, the day after the man was confirmed to have the airborne disease.



TB is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread by breathing air an infected person has contaminated. It can quickly spread if not isolated and treated early. It generally affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body.



The KCDC said it would conduct the first round of tests on the students for identification of latent TB infection next week, and a second round next February.



Those with latent TB infection are not infectious and cannot spread it to others.



With only about a week left before the civil servant exam, students attending academies in the vicinity are outraged, saying they were not informed about the infected man.



"I am angry that the academy failed to notify us about the infection when our physical condition largely determines the outcome of the test," a student preparing for the exam said.



"I only became aware of this after reading it in the news. Who would take responsibility for me when I get sick and mess up my test?"



Academy officials said they did not take measures as no health authority officials advised them.

"We have not received any direction from the company headquarters. We have no plans to make students stop coming to class." The comment apparently reflects fear of possible financial losses following students' possible demands for refunds.



Experts said the academies should have canceled classes, implying the health authorities might face consequences.

"The TB tests should be conducted not only on the students but also those who came into contact with them."

The KCDC said it has no plans to issue a statement regarding the delay in informing the academies for the time being.








By Kim Bo-eun





MBC CEO Choi Seung-ho
By Lee Jun-Youb





As a Korean American, I've been curious about the Korean Chinese. I've been pondering what happens to my Korean identity when I cross the Pacific, and what happens to Koreans who crossed the Tumen River demarcating China and Korea, only five meters wide in some places? Unlike Koreans who became Americans fresh off a boat or an airplane, Koreans walked and waded to become Chinese.



The first wave of Korean immigrants arrived as slaves to the marauding Manchus in the 17th century. The second wave, including the poet Yun Dong-ju's grandparents, was because of a refugee crisis in the late 19th century when famine struck northern Korea. The turn of the century saw the influx of Korean independence activists and my great grandfather who drove trucks for his Japanese overlords in the puppet state of Manchukuo.



Many Koreans including my grandmother returned to Korea after Japan surrendered, but the majority of them stayed put as Manchuria had become their new home. As most Korean Chinese were peasants, they unwittingly sided with the communists during the Chinese Civil War and were granted autonomy in the early 1950s. Today, about a third of some two million residents of the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture are ethnically Korean.



To my dismay, Korean culture was confined to cuisine and Korean signs in the prefectural capital of Yanji. I've traversed the Silk Road and the Tea Horse Road, and despite Beijing's efforts to maintain its empire through ethnic erasure, Uyghur mosques and Tibetan temples stood proudly as reservoirs of culture. I didn't spot any Korean temples in Yanji.

So I visited the Yanbian Museum, and it was surreal to see Korean culture preserved in wax figures wearing Korean garb. The museum felt like a state sponsored compensation for the lack of Korean culture in everyday life, but I also learned a few factoids about my motherland. A museum sign stated bluntly that "Koreans like to sing and dance," and it was not just talking about K-pop.



Korean Chinese reached the stratosphere of Chinese arts that Korean Americans can only envy. The composer of the anthem of the People's Liberation Army is the late Korean Chinese Zheng Lucheng. China's father of rock Cui Jian whose songs became anthems of the student protestors in that tragic summer of 1989 is Korean Chinese. China's premier choreographer who turned into the first transgender celebrity Jin Xing is also Sino Korean.



Koreans are the 14th largest among the 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China, and one of the most highly educated and wealthiest minorities as they are in America. Koreans first landed in America as sugar cane workers in Hawaii, and then as students, independence activists, then laundry and restaurant owners in continental America. Just as North Korea's founding father spent his formative years in northeastern China, South Korea's founding father spent his formative years in northeastern America. Given the current stalemate on the Korean Peninsula, perhaps the Korean Diaspora in the two superpowers can help broker a detente.





Lee Jun-Youb is a freelance writer and translator based in Seoul. Write to junyoub.lee9041@gmail.com


By Donald Kirk





WASHINGTON  You have to wonder about Michael Flynn, the retired army lieutenant general who served as President Donald Trump's national security adviser for 24 days before he was forced to resign.



He had spent his 33-year military career as an intelligence officer but was dumb enough to lie to the FBI about his contacts with Russians before Trump's inauguration, and now he's pleading guilty to having made "false, fictitious and fraudulent" statements.



How could a guy have reached such heights in the U.S. military establishment and turn out to have been such a liar? For that matter, what "intelligence" was he offering during his long career, in which he rose to director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and chairman of the Military Intelligence Board? Did he know what he was talking about  or just how to play politics on the military ladder? And what did he think he was doing serving as an analyst for RT, Russia Today, infamous for broadcasting propaganda directed at the U.S., then breaking bread with President Vladimir Putin and accepting hefty fees for talks in Moscow?



The questions surrounding Flynn go to the heart of the Trump presidency. The reason he agreed to plead guilty was that he will then be willing to testify in the growing investigation that Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, is conducting surrounding Trump's Russian connections. By cooperating, Flynn may get off with a wrist slap  a suspended sentence  rather than jail time.



The net surrounding the Trump presidency, however, is tightening. Trump now denies he ever asked James Comey, the FBI director whom he later fired, to let up on Flynn. Trump also persists in trying to deflect attention by raving on about the "lies" that Hillary Clinton made as secretary of state. Clinton may be no angel, but Trump is the one who's in trouble.

As a witness, though, Flynn may not be reliable. He has demonstrated his lack of both integrity and intelligence by his response during the FBI investigation before and during his brief tenure as national security adviser. Trump's best hope, rather than defending Flynn, may be to show this career "intelligence" officer was not only not intelligent but also not trustworthy.



That does not mean, however, that some of the other retired military people whom Trump has appointed are not to be trusted. As Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, a retired Marine general, has mingled tough talk with warnings of the holy hell that attacking North Korea, even in the form of a surgical "preemptive strike" on its nuclear and missile facilities, would provoke.



As testimony to the regard in which Mattis is held, I would refer to a conversation with William Perry, defense secretary during the Clinton presidency, who wrote a widely quoted report at the time of what to do about North Korea. Perry, now 90, balances caution with calls for strengthening U.S. forces in Korea for defensive purposes. When I asked Perry, after a talk at the Arms Control Association here, what he thought of Mattis, he told me he knew him and believed in him. He did not think that Mattis was eager for war but knew the risks.



Perry seemed less sure, however, of Flynn's successor as national security adviser, H.R McMaster. Like Flynn, McMaster rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the army. Unlike Flynn, Master is yet to retire. He is still an army general, meaning he's not fallen into the pit of easy money from the Russians or other dubious sources. He has, however, acquired a reputation as a hawk, labeling "the rogue regime in North Korea" as "the greatest immediate threat to the United States and to the world" after the North's latest ICBM test and warning the "potential for war increases day by day."



That's not to say that McMaster's views on North Korea are incorrect. Between them, Mattis and McMaster, and the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, also a retired Marine general, may have exercised a restraining influence since Trump at the United Nations talked about inflicting "fire and fury" on North Korea.



Some knowledgeable observers believe that Trump, having known nothing about Korea until becoming president, may now be aware of the need for weighing the odds. "We have to deal with North Korea as it is, not as we wish it would be," said Perry in his talk at the Arms Control Association. Luckily Trump will not be taking advice from the non-intelligent Flynn while facing the complexities of what to do about North Korea.





Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has been covering war and peace in Asia for decades.


Workers demonstrate an industrial internet of things system for smart factories by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) at the business support center in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, Tuesday. / Courtesy of ETRI



By Yoon Sung-won



Korean researchers have developed a technology to remotely control smart factories using cellular telecom networks, according to the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Wednesday.



The institute said it has successfully demonstrated the industrial internet of things (IIoT) service, which enables control of factory automation systems on mobile devices, for the first time in Korea.



ETRI said it will continue to develop IIoT service technologies such as industrial telecom base stations and energy-efficient IoT devices, aiming at fostering small- and medium-sized enterprises here.



"The new IIoT service will expedite deployment of smart factory systems for manufacturing automation," ETRI's fifth-generation (5G) service research unit head Chung Hyun-kyu said.



"We will concentrate on improving telecom stability in remotely controlling complex manufacturing lines to make the service better adopted at smart factories."



Backed by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the institute has researched and developed the technology since March under cooperation with KT and the Korea Institute of Industry Technology.



Before the new IIoT technology, factory operators have used wired communication infrastructure to control manufacturing equipment. Despite its high reliability, the wired network-based system didn't offer mobility and thus had problems in safety and applicability. Local area wireless networks such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have also been considered unfit for smart factories due to their short communicable ranges.



ETRI said it has applied cellular telecom technologies based on smartphones to the new IIoT service to allow factory operators to control the equipment even when they are away from the machines.



Earlier in February, the institute produced a prototype of narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) device that meets global standards. Because NB-IoT devices are capable of long-range telecommunication while consuming a small amount of electricity, workplaces have increasingly been introducing them.



Once the new IIoT service is released in the market, it can collect operational information of manufacturing equipment through detachable sensors and manage and analyze the data on wide-range networks. Operators can also use the 5G telecom technologies and robots to change the production on real-time demand, enabling true tailor-made manufacturing, according to the institute.




By Lee Min-hyung



Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S series has undergone turbulent ups and downs to establish its brand identity as the world's top-selling premium Android smartphone.



The Samsung flagship handset lineup made its debut at the 2010 CTIA telecommunications tradeshow in the United States.



Its initial market response was stunning enough to earn the nickname "Android iPhone killer." But as the device was Samsung's first foray into the untapped territory, its product maturity - in terms of such factors as battery efficiency and managing overheating problems - was not good enough to compete with its Apple iOS counterpart.



Sales for the first Samsung flagship smartphone topped 25 million on the global market. Given Android's then-weak ecosystem, the result was cited as a decent success.



Under the theme of "how to live smart," the company unveiled its second flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S2, at the world's largest mobile show, Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 in Barcelona. The company enhanced its basic functionalities such as handle grip and display size.



The device was particularly praised for its sturdiness, compared to the glass-covered iPhones. For such positive market responses, the S2 also set a new sales record of 40 million on the global market.



The device also served as another noteworthy record-breaker for Samsung, allowing the electronics giant to beat Nokia in global handset sales. The company has since continued its winning streak by building its mobile identity as the world's largest and most influential Android smartphone manufacturer, forming a neck-and-neck rivalry with Apple.



In 2012, Samsung unveiled its third smartphone, the Galaxy S3. The round-cornered device also drew keen attention from the global tech community by adopting the world's first quad-core chip. Even if the device did not come with a

string of wow factors, sales of the S3 also exceeded its predecessor, topping 65 million.



But another record, which has yet to be broken, came the following year when the company launched the Galaxy S4. Accumulated sales of the device have so far reached 70 million. Against the backdrop of its years-long mobile success, the company showed off its confidence by holding its unpacked event in New York for the first time, in what critics say was a move to intensify its rivalry with the country's home-turf competitor Apple.



But an unexpected setback hit Samsung Electronics in 2014, as its new flagship Galaxy S5 failed to win as much customer satisfaction as its predecessors. The device is estimated to have sold no more than 50 million. The dwindling sales also drove down the firm's 2014 annual operating profit to 25 trillion won, down 32 percent from the previous year.



Weak innovation and intense rivalry with the iPhone 6, which underwent a drastic design shift, are cited as the biggest reasons to put the brakes on the series' continued success.



Hit by a sense of crisis in the Samsung mobile unit, the company focused on bringing about innovation by launching dual flagship phones, Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.



Even if the devices also failed to rev up its earnings, it served as a turning point for Samsung to establish its design identity. This is because, starting with the S6, the company began manufacturing its much-touted curved-display smartphones.



Because the curved edge design on each side was not considered a mainstream handset design at that time, the device did not serve as a game changer for the company in terms of sales. The weak software optimization with its hardware is also cited as another root cause behind its lukewarm reception.
Seen is a capture from a video Hyundai Mobis will present to introduce its car technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next year. / Courtesy of Hyundai Mobis



By Yoon Sung-won



Hyundai Mobis will showcase diverse future car technologies such as autonomous driving and eco-friendly vehicles at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next year, the company said Thursday.



As the world's top electronics fair is increasingly becoming the motor show of the future with top global carmakers and car component manufacturers participating, the Hyundai Motor Group vehicle technology affiliate also plans to offer visitors a glimpse into the future of the car industry.



"We will present a whole new experience that our technologies will allow potential customers to experience at the CES next year," Hyundai Mobis' R&D unit Executive Vice President Yang Seung-wook said.



"We will promote our differentiated technologies and boost our R&D capabilities to take the leadership in the future car market."



Hyundai Mobis will set up its booths at the expo and exhibit technologies including autonomous driving, biometrics and intelligent digital assistant, as well as the core electric vehicle-charging technology called "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G).



A large screen will project a video introducing fully autonomous cars, advanced car infotainment systems and the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) system that provides information such as location and traffic flow.



The company will also introduce its new technologies in a special experience zone, providing holography and augmented reality visual aids. In this zone, visitors can ride a concept car where they follow the introduction of a virtual digital assistant to learn how drivers and passengers will interact with smart cars.



In the eco-friendly car section, the company will exhibit an advanced electronics wheel it calls the "e-Corner" module, which is capable of acceleration, braking, steering and suspension.



The electronics wheel is designed for eco-friendly vehicles because it doesn't need an engine, hydraulic brake lines or drive shaft. For this reason, carmakers can design a vehicle in unorthodox ways using this module, according to Hyundai Mobis.



The e-Corner module's features are controlled by a self-driving car's main electronic system. A car can be built simply by connecting four e-Corner modules in a chassis and putting battery system and the central control unit.



In the second floor of the exhibition hall, Hyundai Mobis will set up business meeting rooms for potential customers.



In particular, the company will hold its first technology briefing session. On Jan. 10 on the second day of the show, it will invite the press and industry officials to introduce its autonomous driving, eco-friendly cars and infotainment component technologies. The next day, it will brief about the detailed progress of its R&D projects and product roadmaps.


The head of Korea Electric Power Corp. has offered to quit, the company said Thursday, after South Korea's state-run utility firm was selected as the preferred bidder in a project to build a nuclear power plant in Britain.



Cho Hwan-eik said he thought that by stepping down he can "pave the way" for the younger generation and he is pleased to "leave the company in good spirits," as KEPCO is one step closer to winning a deal to build two nuclear reactors in Moorside, northwest England.



Cho is set to leave the company in a ceremony scheduled on Friday.



The former vice minister of trade, industry and energy took KEPCO's top post in December 2012 and won a second term that was set to end on March 27. In South Korea, it is not unusual for a leader of a public company to step down before his or her term ends.



Cho's announcement on Thursday came soon after KEPCO said it was selected as the preferred bidder of Toshiba Corp.



The Japanese industrial giant has a 100 percent stake in the NuGen consortium in charge of building the nuclear power plant in Britain.



Britain has launched a program to inject more into its energy sector, as many of its nuclear reactors are coming to the end of their operational life cycles.



Currently, 20 percent of Britain's electricity generation comes from nuclear power plants.



KEPCO said it is set to hold negotiations with Toshiba for months to work out details in buying Toshiba's stake in the NuGen consortium.



Toshiba said in a brief comment to Yonhap News Agency that the company has chosen KEPCO as its preferred bidder, but it declined to give any further details.



In 2009, a South Korean consortium led by KEPCO won a US$20 billion deal to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates in the country's first export of nuclear reactors. (Yonhap)








Korea Electric Power Corp. President Cho Hwan-ik / Courtesy of KEPCO
Antlers are catching up on ginseng in South Korea's nutritional supplement markets as top ingredient. / Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons



By Ko Dong-hwan





Ginseng has been dominating South Korean nutritional supplement markets, coming in various types like pills, above. / Korea Times file

Ginseng has long dominated South Korea's nutritional supplement market but a new player is capturing the attention of pharmaceutical companies: antlers.



There have been mixed opinions about the benefit of antlers, or antler velvet, harvested from deer, moose, caribou or elk. While some people believe in their nutritional value  calcium, magnesium, zinc, amino acids and anti-inflammatory prostaglandins  others say they can cause obesity if taken excessively or affect the brains of children.



Use of antlers has been criticized as unsanitary or inhumane. This has come about because some people in the countryside traditionally sawed off the antlers of live animals and drank a bowlful of blood, believing it was good for their health.



Ginseng, on the other hand, has not been subject to reports of major side effects or nutritional risks. While there are now over 200 brands of nutritional supplements using ginseng, pharmaceutical companies are turning to the controversial ingredient.



But the antlers the companies are eyeing are not South Korean but from New Zealand. While Korean farms raise the animals in enclosures due to a lack of pasture, those in New Zealand roam freely. The Western farms are also certified by national standards, making it easy to trace the antlers' origins, allowing buyers to be sure where the products come from. This is not the case for farms in China and Russia.



"If South Korean pharmaceutical companies purchase antlers from New Zealand and control their manufacturing and distribution process, consumers' trust in the ingredient will improve from the past," a pharmaceutical company official said.





Some popular South Korean nutritional supplements contain mixed ingredients of antlers and ginseng, like ones above in syrup type.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, left, shakes hands after presenting a medallion to Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, during a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, July 18, 2017.



By Liu Zhen




North Korea's latest missile launch last week came within sight of a Cathay Pacific passenger plane.



By Danny Lee




TWIN LAKES  A homicide suspect told authorities he shot and killed two Twin Lakes brothers because he was drunk and angry that someone had thrown something at his pickup truck.

Nathan Kivi, 25, was charged Nov. 28 with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the shooting deaths of brothers Kenneth and Richard Samuel.

His bond was set at $2 million.

This is another one of those situations where a small argument in a bar leads to a homicide, Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said.

Police have called the Nov. 24 incident the first homicide in Twin Lakes in about 30 years.

Records show Kivi admitted to police that he was blackout drunk, irrationally angry, and armed despite his status as a convicted felon, when the shooting occurred.

According to the criminal complaint, Kivi had gone to the Beach Bar, 402 S. Lake St. in Twin Lakes, with two friends. At about 2 a.m., witnesses said, there was an argument in the parking lot.

The criminal complaint states several witnesses heard people arguing, and that Kivi fired a shot into the air. Kivi and one of his friends then got into Kivis pickup, and someone threw a bottle at the truck, breaking a window.

Richard, shot four times, died at the scene. Kenneth, shot twice, died during surgery at Burlington Hospital.

When he was taken into custody near Tomah about six hours later, Kivi told Wisconsin state troopers that they had the right person, that he did it, and that he would cooperate, according to the complaint.

He told them the gun he used  a black 9mm Ruger  was in the center console. There were also 125 rounds of ammunition in the truck.

In an interview with a Twin Lakes detective, Kivi said he was angry that someone had thrown something at his truck, according to the complaint.

Hell, yeah, I was pissed off. I was blackout drunk. I didnt sober up until 7 this morning, he told the detective.

Kivi told the detective that he gets angry when he is drunk.

Get me drunk, and its ugly. Its not all the time, but when I start drinking, dont piss me off, he said.

As a convicted felon, Kivi was not allowed to possess a weapon. Out on bond for a felony domestic violence charge, he was barred from consuming alcohol. He was also on active supervision for a previous burglary conviction.

Along with the two first-degree homicide charges, Kivi is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and two counts of felony bail jumping. He faces two life sentences for the double homicide.
Exercising during holiday season combats calories, improves mental health The cookies are baked and that glass of milk has been set out for Santa but you find yourself low on energy and need to combat those holiday blues. The...

Winter an ideal time to beef up lawns, plant new additions The recent week-long visit of late-summer warmth may have been a distraction from the seasonal change on the horizon, but the piling up pin oak and maple droppings  combined...
PRESS RELEASE

Tulsi Gabbard: Try Diplomacy with North Korea, Not Regime Change

Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) wrote yesterday that Dec. 1, the day when Hawaii began monthly "nuclear attack" warnings to the citizens, "marks a dark day for Hawaii, 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 theyll be reminded every month with nuclear warning siren tests that any moment, we, our children, our families, and our precious aina [peace and harmony] will be vulnerable to a nuclear attack from North Koreawith mere minutes notice. "Ive been raising the issue of the increasing threat from North Korea ever since I came to Congress,"

she said,

"because the people of Hawaii have long known that North Koreas continued growing capabilities put us squarely within range of their ICBMS."

Gabbard calls it a "travesty and a total failure of leadership by both Republican and Democratic administrations" over the past 40 years that "have left the people of Hawaii and this country... 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...with North Korea and Kim Jong Un; understand why hes holding on so tightly to their nuclear weaponsit 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.s track record, and how we ovethrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq because of intelligence 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 wouldnt go after him, we went after him anyway and took him out. He looks at [us] trying to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad...and how the Trump administration and others in Congress are increasing their rhetoric to go after Iran and overthrow the government."

She concludes,
PRESS RELEASE

ITER Director-General Is Lobbying the White House for Increased Fusion Funding

Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Director-General Bernard Bigot is appealing to President Trump to increase U.S. fusion funding so that the U.S. can meet its commitments to ITER. Bigot is in Washington, Reuters reports, to talk with the Administration about the budget. He is explaining that the 2017 U.S. ITER budget was cut from a planned $105 million to $50 million, and that the Administrations Fiscal Year 2018 request, at $63 million, is a cut from the previously planned level of $120 million. In fact, the higher numbers are each tens of millions of dollars less than what is needed to meet U.S. hardware contributions to building the ITER tokamak, which needs minimally $150 million per year.

Bigot said that French President Emmanuel Macron wrote a letter to Trump in August asking his administration to reconsider the fusion funding level. (ITER is being built in France.)

"We hope for a decision this weekend," Bigot said. He explained that when Trump cut the Energy Departments budget, the department reduced the funding for ITER.

Today, ITER released a statement by Bigot on the progress of the project. ITER has reached the milestone of completing 50% of the total construction work, Bigot reports. The statement summarizes ITERs status, and then the Director-General says:

"Looking ahead, we will need the commitment and support of every member to maintain this performance.... A shortfall in the commitment of any member, if it impacts the delivery of that members components, will have a cascading effect in delays and costs to all other members."

(Hint, hint).
PRESS RELEASE

We Could Have Been Mining Helium-3 on the Moon by Now, and We Still Can, Says Harrison Schmitt

Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt outlined what the U.S. could have been accomplishing in space by now, if the Johnson Administration had not cut NASAs budget and cut back production of Saturn V rockets, which decision was then confirmed by the Nixon administration. What that decision meant, New Mexico native Schmitt told the Albuquerque Journal in an interview, is that "we really gave up on deep space exploration." "No question we would have a settlement on the Moon and would seriously have a program going to Mars, if not already there." Journal Senior Editor Kent Wala interviewed Schmitt on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Dec. 7 launch of the final, Apollo 17 mission, which took Schmitt to the Moon.

Schmitt has been an ardent promoter of a return to the Moon (and wrote a book with that title), and has worked closely with scientists working on fusion using helium-3 fuel. There are many resources in the lunar soil, he said in the interview.

"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." Although we have not yet exploited this resource, which we have known about for many years, he said, "its still there and its not going anywhere." He explained that rougly 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 possible."

Although Schmitt poses competition from China as an overriding geopolitical rationale for a visionary U.S. space program, he concludes that,
PRESS RELEASE

Responses to Trump Announcement To Move Embassy to Jerusalem

Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)President Donald Trump announced today that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but he plans to delay actually moving the embassy from Tel Aviv due to logistical constraints.

Ynetnews reports that Trump will "dash hopes in the Israeli government by signing a waiver that will keep the U.S. Embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv" for three or four years.

Trump has already discussed this with both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In response to the move, Abbas called world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Pope, in a bid to increase pressure on Trump to desist from making the Wednesday announcement.

For Netanyahu it served as some welcome relief between police interrogations over the allegations of corruption that could send him to jail. Ironically, this morning the news was not the number-one story in Ynet, Israels largest news portal. The number-one story is the interrogation of Coalition Chairman, and top Netanyahu ally, MK David Bitan on allegations of corruption.

Another official claimed the 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.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkatsaid that moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could take "two minutes" if the U.S. converted one of its existing assets in the city, such as its consulate located in western Jerusalem.

"They just take the symbol of the consulate and switch it to the embassy symboltwo American Marines can do it in two minutes, and give the ambassador David Friedman a space to sit in,"

Barkat told Israel Radio.

There is widespread fear that the announcement could trigger violence and demonstrations throughout the region. Arab and other leaders have been voicing their concern. Jordanian King Abdullah II called Palestinian President Abbas to stress

"his full support with his Palestinian brothers in respect to their historic rights inherent in Jerusalem and of the need to work together to face the consequences of Trumps decision and halt whatever will harm the hopes of the Palestinian people to build a state with East Jerusalem as its capital."

Jordan also plans to convene emergency meetings of the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation next Saturday and Sunday to discuss the "dangerous" consequences of Trumps decision, the foreign minister said.

The Moroccan King Muhammad VI sent Trump a memo saying that "Jerusalem needs to continue to be a place of coexistence and equality." Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi told Trump there was no need to "complicate" matters in the Middle East, after Trump phoned him to talk about his decision, a Cairo presidential statement said. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Dec. 6 that the move was "unlawful."

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "This could go as far as cutting our diplomatic relations with Israel. You cannot take such a step," Erdogan told a parliamentary group meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). "Mr. Trump! Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims."

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has slammed Washingtons decision to relocate U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as incompetence and failure, according to Reuters.
PRESS RELEASE

Senior UN Official in North Korea for Talks

Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)While the U.S. provocative air force exercises continue, UN Undersecretary General Jeffrey Feltman is in Pyongyang for four days of talks on "issues of mutual concern" with top North Korean officials, including Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk, diplomats, and UN staff in the country. The UN said Feltman, who arrived yesterday, is visiting in response to "a long-standing invitation from the authorities in Pyongyang for a policy dialogue with the UN," reports the German DW news service.

Feltman was a leading official in the U.S. State Department from 2009-12, before moving to the UN. Although not representing the U.S. on this mission, it could be seen playing a role in the very active diplomacy now going on behind the scenes between Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea and the Trump Administration.

The Chinese are praising Feltmans visit to North Korea. China is pleased the United Nations is playing a constructive role in trying to push forward a resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Tuesday.

Before going on to Pyongyang, Feltman had exchanged views regarding UN affairs and other issues of common concern with Vice-Foreign Minister Li Baodong in Beijing. Chinese experts said Feltmans visit is "necessary and constructive" to ease heightening tensions on the peninsula, and it will help magnify the UNs role in resolving the peninsulas nuclear issue as an international organization, reported the China Daily.
The deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is asking a federal judge for an injunction to install her as the agencys acting chief in place of President Trumps appointee, Mick Mulvaney.

The Wednesday night legal filing by Leandra English is the latest in the legal battle for control of the bureau and comes after U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied her request last week for a temporary restraining order to remove Mulvaney.

Kelly did not rule on the merits of the case, which centers on a dispute over which statute governs the appointment of an acting director. Englishs attorney, Deepak Gupta, had said his client planned to file for an injunction, which, unlike the restraining order, could be appealed if not granted.

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Ms. English has a clear legal entitlement to the position of Acting Director of the CFPB, the filing said. She asked the court to declare her the lawful acting director and that any actions Mulvaney takes in the position shall have no force or effect.

Kelly has set a hearing on the injunction for Dec. 22 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The dispute began on Nov. 24 when Richard Cordray, a Democrat, stepped down as bureau director. 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.

Within hours of Cordrays resignation announcement, Trump appointed Mulvaney to fill the post under the Federal Vacancies Act of 1998. The administration said that law allowed Trump to appoint an official who already had been confirmed by the Senate in another capacity to also serve as the bureaus acting director.

Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has moved into Cordrays office and acted quickly to put his stamp on the bureau despite protests from Democrats and consumer advocates. The bureau writes rules and enforces consumer protections against banks and other financial institutions.

A former Republican congressman and an outspoken bureau opponent, Mulvaney told reporters Monday 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.

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 said he has no intention of firing English, but said he has not met with her and does not plan to because of the legal dispute. Mulvaney said he has emailed her, asking that she please cease holding yourself out as acting director.

English has not responded to the emails, he said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera
Click. Click. Click.

The sound comes from deep inside Michael Luwoyes mouth, near the back of his tongue. Its not intentional. The Hamilton star clicks when hes trying to order his thoughts, place objects spatially or respond to somebody who says something profound.

Its like a period or some sort of punctuation mark, he explains, adding a click at the end of the sentence for emphasis. I dont know what it is. It just happens.

Hes sitting poolside in a shaded cabana on the roof of his Hollywood home, a 22-story luxury apartment building with a sweeping view of the city, including the iconic needle at the top of Capitol Records and, if you look in just the right direction, the long yellow banners advertising Hamilton on the sides of the Hollywood Pantages Theatre.

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As the title character in one of the biggest musical tours of all time  the guy who a spokeswoman confirmed Thursday will be the next Alexander Hamilton on Broadway come January  Luwoye could be forgiven for running to the side of the building and yelling, Im the king of the world! with true James Cameron flair. But hes not that guy.

Im an introverted man, Luwoye, 26, says seriously, his voice a rich baritone, his posture impeccable. I always felt like I was on the outside in the theater world.

Now, as he prepares to wrap the L.A. leg of the shows tour on Dec. 30, hes the insider. When he was cast as the alternate for the role of Alexander Hamilton on Broadway in 2016, he was the first black actor to take on the role. (Miranda and his original alternate were of Puerto Rican descent.) That fall he became the first actor to portray both of the musicals leading male roles in the same day when he performed as Hamilton at a matinee and as Aaron Burr at night.

I always felt like I was on the outside in the theater world.  Michael Luwoye

He got to drop alternate from his title when the national tour kicked off in San Francisco in March. The Alabama native had never been to the Bay Area before, or Los Angeles. Also new: all the attention, the hype, the love and the adoration, the sense of responsibility as a black man in the spotlight. These are not things Luwoye expected in his life.

And now that hes been given the opportunity to play the role full-time on Broadway, hes even more amazed by his fortuitous trajectory.

I havent given myself enough space to actually process it, he says. I feel like I could cry about it.

Luwoye wasnt even sure he wanted a career in theater until he was at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

I was not the stereotypical theater person, Luwoye says. I didnt grow up listening to original soundtracks or have posters hanging up in my room.

The youngest of four children born to Nigerian immigrants who somehow landed in Alabama in the 1980s, Luwoye dabbled in the arts. He liked to draw. He tried his hand at journaling. He flirted with the piano and the violin before settling for the guitar. His mother, an engineer, had a sneaky fascination with The Sound of Music, and the epic musical often played in his home on Saturday afternoons.

My mom always wanted us to be like the Von Trapps, Luwoye says, explaining that music figured prominently in the household despite his personal ambivalence.

Ice cream was the other constant in Luwoyes life. Luwoyes father owns a small business called Goody Cream, and in addition to being an ice cream distributor, he sold ice cream off a truck when Luwoye was a kid. If Dad had a new flavor and needed a childs perspective, Luwoye was more than happy to offer his services. (Ice cream, he says, is no longer my mainstay if Im going for dessert. Too much of a good thing.)

In high school he began to zero in on music theory and composition, particularly the idea of scoring The Legend of Zelda. Its his all-time favorite video game, he says, opening his shirt collar just a bit to reveal a Legend of Zelda necklace.

Luwoye admits to being quirky. Hes extremely comfortable with that part of himself. But he wasnt always. For a long time he would hide his quirks in rehearsal and audition rooms. He didnt come to embrace them until after he graduated from college and landed a role in Marley, about the life and music of Bob Marley, at Baltimores Center Stage in 2015. Something about that show freed him, and he started being himself in front of fellow actors.

Lets see what happens if I click and gesticulate and move my fingers and map and place things in a certain order in rehearsal? he recalls thinking. Nobody said anything negative, and it helped him to learn. He continued doing it. I felt confidence in my weirdness and my oddities and my insecurities.

Thats when the world of theater cracked open for him, and he caught his stride. He was receiving positive attention for his role in Invisible Thread at Second Stage Theater in New York when he began thinking about Hamilton.

His first audition for the Broadway incarnation of the show was the worst. It was the day after Hamilton won a Grammy for musical theater album, and Luwoye was going for the roles of Hercules Mulligan/James Madison. He had auditioned off-Broadway, and not wanting to stress himself out, he steered clear of the material in the days leading to the audition, figuring he already knew it.

Turns out the script had changed in the leap to Broadway.

I remembered one of the raps, but everything else was a train wreck. It was all new material with different melodies and completely new verses, he recalls, shaking his head. I left with my tail between my legs.

Michael Luwoye has the distinction of playing the title role in the touring production of the hit musical, Hamilton. Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times )

I felt confidence in my weirdness and my oddities and my insecurities.  Michael Luwoye

It felt like a miracle when he got called back numerous times. He went to one audition  the one that ultimately put him on Broadway as the Hamilton alternate  in the clothes he was wearing for his catering job. By the time he was buttoning his tuxedo to start work that night, his agent called him with the news.

What in the world is this experience? he remembers thinking, barely comprehending what had happened.

Seventeen months later, he still hasnt quite wrapped his mind around his journey.

I see whats happening, I see how people are responding to it. Yes, its an out-of-body experience, but I dont know what body Im going to land in, he says.

The body hes in now, however, is black. And he feels a profound responsibility to put his best foot forward for all the children of color looking up to him, realizing  maybe for the first time  that they too can accomplish great things.

We have to treat this with such care  treat them with such care, he says of those kids, and of the attitude that his fellow actors of color carry. Its not something were taking for granted or tossing away as just a job. Because you know people have their eyes on you.

jessica.gelt@latimes.com

@jessicagelt

MORE THEATER:

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Carter Burwell is comfortable with irony. The New Yorker is best known for his work with Joel and Ethan Coen (beginning with 1984s Blood Simple), where he has accompanied the duos black humor and self-deluded characters.

So when another regular collaborator, Todd Haynes, asked him to score the earnest and decidedly un-ironic Wonderstruck, Burwell wrote something that, in terms of things like earnestness, just raw emotional sincerity, it is probably as far as Ive gone, he said, because thats just not the genre that Im typically asked to assay. Its also the hardest for me.

Burwells previous score for Haynes Carol received an Oscar nomination.

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One of the interesting things about working with Todd is that hes often pushing me out of my comfort zone, the composer said with a laugh.

 The trailer for Todd Haynes Wonderstruck.

WATCH: Video Q&As from this seasons hottest contenders 

Wonderstruck tells the intertwined stories of a young girl and boy, separated by 50 years but connected by some mystery. They are also both deaf.

Music is often playing the role that dialogue might in another film, said Burwell. A question that we had to solve was, how to have music that is there all the time, but not over-informing you. Because the storys a mystery thats hiding things from you all the time, so the music has to do that as well.

For 1970s Ben, Burwell wrote a theme for guitars and fretless bass, apt for a kid whose home is filled with the sound of David Bowie. As the story paths begin to converge, Bens music intersects with Burwells theme for 1920s Rose, written for percussive instruments  glockenspiel, marimba, celesta  in keeping with her puzzle-solving mind.

The percussion, which was played by a London virtuoso who is herself deaf, also removes you a little from the emotion of the scene because those instruments are devoid of sentiment, he noted. You can see her in situations that are very emotional, but youre playing those instruments, and it saves us from sentimentalizing.

Because the score needed to fill nearly every minute, and because the film was about kids dealing with loss, Burwell took pains to avoid gooey melodrama.

I spent so much time pulling it back and pulling it back, so that it wasnt over-informative, he said. It is a very emotional movie, and the music is playing that emotion. But I have to say, from my perspective, its underplaying.

Another 2017 film, Martin McDonaghs Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, found Burwell in a more natural habitat. Its also rooted in loss  Frances McDormands character has lost her daughter to a violent rape and spends the film at war with the local police  but as with McDonaghs other films (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths), its mingled with severe violence and pitch-black comedy.

I think you could perfectly well have done that film without music, and it would have been completely engaging.  Composer Carter Burwell on Three Billboards

I think you could perfectly well have done that film without music, and it would have been completely engaging, Burwell said, because of the way he orchestrates his drama and comedy. Youre constantly thrown off balance as a viewer. Whatever your expectation is, its confounded, but in a way thats always fulfilling.

McDonagh clearly thought it needed music, and actually left more open space for the score than in his previous films. Burwell first tried approaching it like a spaghetti western, where each character got their own distinctive motif, but quickly realized that it simplified them too much.

And also, Martin just thought it was too ironical, he said. You were just sort of commenting on what was happening, rather than actually being in the film.

He did respond to the western-like setting and story with rustic music for acoustic guitar and mandolin. When McDormands character goes into Missouri housewife battle mode, girded in her blue jumpsuit, Burwell accompanied her with a march  but more like a march you would hear in a Baptist church, he said, with guitar and stomping and clapping.

The other main theme is for the loss that pervades the film, and in this mode the score is just as earnest as Wonderstruck.

McDonagh writes the most appalling violence into his work, and he loves that as a subject, as a tool, said Burwell. He loves violence in a way that Scorsese or Joel and Ethan do, he really does. But he is a softie at heart.

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No one expected Jordan Peeles low-budget horror/comedy Get Out to make $253 million worldwide, while charming practically every film critic. And no one had heard of its composer, Michael Abels.

Peele specifically wanted a composer of color for his Twilight Zone-esque tale of a young black man named Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) who visits his white girlfriends family, as well as someone capable of making new sounds. He found Abels through YouTube, landing on the composers concert piece Urban Legends.

Abels, 55, has been composing since he was a child. A graduate of USC Thornton, he has written music for gospel choirs, orchestra and various ensembles. By day, he runs the music department at New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica. But he had never scored a film.

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 Get Out director Jordan Peele says, The sunken place is this metaphor for the system that is suppressing the freedom of black people.

You could tell from that track and your research that hes a fluent musician and composer in many different genres of music, Peele said. This movie is a hybrid of genres itself, and the monstrous operation that the movies about, the coagula procedure, is in itself a hybridization. Michael was my guy, and I really never looked any further.

The first thing they talked about was the importance of voice.

He said to me: I want the African American voice in this film, said Abels. And he meant that both literally and figuratively. We came up with this concept of, I was looking for gospel horror. I think any film composer would be completely inspired by a chance to do something that, by definition, doesnt exist.

We talked about how the voices represented the souls of the departed, of the disenfranchised, of lynching victims, and slaves and any person of color who had been victimized throughout the ages, Abels added. Theyre supposed to be informing the lead character and trying to warn him.

Abels wrote a choral piece with such phrases as Listen to the ancestors and Save yourself that are sung, chanted and whispered  all in Swahili.

Not only would that force people to listen to the emotion of the words rather than the actual lyrics, said Abels, but it also relates to this idea of the unfamiliar being whats scary.

Those voices haunt much of the score, moaning or atonally blues riffing. In the scene where Bradley Whitfords character preps for surgery, some clearly white voices ominously juxtapose the two cultures at play.

One of the scores featured instruments is solo harp, normally used for delicate beauty but here providing a vulnerable and unsettling atmosphere for Chris horrific odyssey.

The film is meant to be classic in the sense of Hitchcock or de Palma, said Abels. And because its themes are so profound, it has the potential to be considered that. So the score needed to have a classic sense, that youre watching a movie from maybe an earlier time. And one thing you can say about the harp is its classy.

The film opens with a fiddling motif, which was actually performed on a cello (Abels instruction to the player was to make it sound like a clucking chicken). He wrote a watch-ticking motif for tuned bowls to accompany Chris unwilling hypnotism, a slow theme for deep string chords for the sunken place, and a doomed love theme for Chris and Rose performed by solo cello and surrounded by an electronic nighttime shimmer.

It was clear to me that Jordan, in writing his script, has this really deft way of hitting you over the head with subtlety, if that makes any sense.  Michael Abels

Everything on the score other than the voices and the strings (recorded remotely in Budapest) is electronic or digital samples.

It was clear to me that Jordan, in writing his script, has this really deft way of hitting you over the head with subtlety, if that makes any sense, said Abels. So the score needed to be present, but it couldnt ever be stronger than what was actually on the screen.

Peele called the score the soul of the movie and already planned to reteam with Abels  when he got a phone call from Steven Spielberg.

He said, You know, Michael Abels, that guy is great. Youve got to use him again. Its like me and John Williams, Peele recounted. I would have absolutely used him again, but after Steven Spielberg, it made me feel so validated and so happy.

calendar@latimes.com
So there are awards for original score and original song. But whither the category to honor musicals and their song scores? No such award has been given since Prince won for Purple Rain more than 30 years ago.

EGOT winner Robert Lopez, co-composer of a key song used several times in this years Coco, says, For me, the primary difference between a song score and [an instrumental] score is when you write a song score, you need to develop the songs along with the story. Were talking about a much deeper level of commitment, a longer commitment.

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His Oscar-winning co-composer (and wife) Kristen Anderson-Lopez says, Were part of the creation of the story. Its a five-to-seven-year process. Were there for the germ of the idea.

The film academys award for song scores, adaptation scores and original musicals has gone through many changes over the years, honoring the likes of Dumbo, Camelot and Let It Be. The original musical category is the surviving version, requiring at least five original songs by the same composer or team to be substantively featured and further the storyline. It has yet to be awarded since it was reinstated 17 years ago.

This year, a number of seemingly qualified candidates with wildly varied approaches have emerged.

I wanted to show people theres so much more than mariachi; what a rich history and cultural treasure. Its a kaleidoscope of styles coming from Mexico.  Coco composer Germaine Franco

Coco is largely built around the multiple meanings and the truth behind one song (Remember Me), but the film is full of other Mexican-flavored songs that define the experience.

Composer Germaine Franco employed her expertise to fill out the films musical setting: I wanted to show people theres so much more than mariachi; what a rich history and cultural treasure. Its a kaleidoscope of styles coming from Mexico.

On the other end of the budget spectrum is the indie Becks, about a musician (played by Tony winner Lena Hall) devastated by a breakup and retreating home. Halls delivery is so convincing, one would think she wrote the songs. The actual composer, Alyssa Robbins, demurs about how much of the plot and songs are directly based on herself, but her collaborator, Steve Salett, blows her cover: I would say almost all of it, the songs coming from the character, are autobiographical.

The songs, almost entirely accompanied by solo guitar (also Hall) and captured live, are intimate without being too obvious, low-key while occasionally soaring.

 Listen to Lena Hall perform Home from the movie Becks by songwriters Alyssa Robbins and Steve Salett.

I think there was no other way to do it, to tell this story, says Robbins of the lo-fi production and arrangements. That character was figuring ... out. You dont put a full orchestra behind that kind of raw emotion.

Another indie with music woven into its fabric is Band Aid, writer-director-co-composer-star Zoe Lister-Jones bare-knuckles look at what it really means to be married for a long time. Luckily, the screen couple has a sense of humor  and some musical ability.

I was toying with the idea of a film that looked specifically at the way couples fight, says Lister-Jones, who learned bass for the role. Weve seen how couples fall in love and fall out of love, but fighting is so integral in staying in love. So I thought, What if its a couple who fights through their songs? 

The lyrics can be cutting and hilarious.

Most of the songs are comedic in tone because theyre part of the storytelling, she says, but one she delivers solo, Desire, is the most earnest, probably the one Im most proud of. Its about the heartbreak of growing up and what it means to really confront all your baggage.

The thing that we talked about and worked tirelessly on was making sure the next day youd wake up humming the tunes.  The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey

But while all those loosely defined musicals had tunes in their DNA, the very-much-a-musical The Greatest Showman wants its melodies to be a virus.

The songs had to be so undeniably memorable the studio would back an original musical, says director Michael Gracey. The thing that we talked about and worked tirelessly on was making sure the next day youd wake up humming the tunes.

He says the songs affected everything about the film; theyd display visual elements from the scenes while Oscar winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul composed.

The Greatest Show starts the film. It has a hip-hop beat. Its the showman backstage, hyping himself up before he goes out. Its got a bit of the imagery of Steve Jobs backstage, all those people stomping their feet. Its got a bit of Queens We Will Rock You. And Hugh Jackmans first words are, Ladies and gents, this is the moment youve been waiting for.

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The actress Hedy Lamarr appeared in close to three-dozen films during Hollywoods Golden Age, but her life had more drama than any of them.

As detailed in Alexandra Deans timely documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, the actress who played Delilah to Victor Matures Samson and the woman Charles Boyer romanced in the Casbah in Algiers had a secret identity.

Like someone who was a business tycoon by day and a crime fighter by night, Lamarr may have made a living as one of the worlds most beautiful actresses, but her passion was invention.

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Not only did she love coming up with ideas (Inventions are easy for me to do, we hear her say; I have an inventive mind) but she was exceptionally good at it.

In fact, as Bombshell explores, Lamarr, in collaboration with avant-garde composer George Antheil, of all people, came up with a way to ensure secure radio signals, a frequency-hopping technology that has been called the basis for such up-to-date innovations as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Though one of the most recognized faces in the world, Lamarr, executive producer Susan Sarandon has said, was never seen for who she was.

Yet what makes Bombshell intriguing is not just Lamarrs gift for invention, its also what a fiery individualist she was, someone who had no regrets about her eventful life (You learn from everything), not even its racy, tabloid elements.

There were so many sides, so many faces, says son Anthony Loder. Even I didnt know who Hedy Lamarr was.

One thing Lamarr was not was mesmerized by her own beauty.

Yes, she was the model for Snow White, the inspiration for Cat Woman and the woman of Mel Brooks dreams, but her friend Robert Osborne, in one of his last interviews, says she had no pretenses, she was fun to be with.

Lamarr herself, in a celebrated quote, put it this way:

Any girl can look glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.

Given that Bombshell inevitably uses a good deal of stock footage, director Dean was fortunate to have tracked down cassette tapes of a telephone interview Lamarr, a recluse in her last days, had given to Forbes magazine journalist Fleming Meeks in 1990 when she was 76.

Born Hedwig Kiesler to a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in Vienna  her father was a banker who encouraged her interest in invention  Lamarr decided at age 16 that she wanted to be in the movies, but one of her first films did not turn out as she expected.

With its nudity and simulated sex, (Lamarr says she was tricked into the scenes) 1933s Ecstasy became so enormous a scandal that even the pope was moved to denounce it.

Lamarr married at age 19 to a munitions tycoon so jealous he tried buy up and destroy every print of the film. Frustrated by his surveillance, she managed to sneak out of house and marriage and flee to London in 1937.

Still determined on a film career, she booked passage on the Normandie, the ocean liner MGM head Louis B. Mayer was taking from Europe to the U.S., and by the time the vessel docked she had a studio contract and her new name.

Algiers made her a star, but the parts she was offered were not always the best. And, as the studio did with Judy Garland, MGM pushed her extremely hard, including a regimen of pills to go to sleep and pills to wake up and work.

Bombshell mentions several of Lamarrs more celebrated roles, including playing the exotic Tondelayo in White Cargo (a performance later mercilessly mocked by Lucille Ball) and goes into detail about her numerous unhappy marriages.

In her later years, the drugs the studio provided became habitual and seemed to affect Lamarrs life. She was arrested for shoplifting and even sent her stand-in to appear for her in a divorce proceeding, which did not amuse the judge.

She was a woman of extremes, her son says, and even though that made his life more difficult, you can also detect a note of admiration in his voice.

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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Playing: Landmarks Nuart, West Los Angeles

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kenneth.turan@latimes.com

@KennethTuran
When Mariska Hargitay took on the role of Det. Olivia Benson on the NBC series Law & Order: SVU, she didnt expect the letters from sexual assault survivors that started pouring in. It became Hargitays mission, through her Joyful Heart Foundation, to advocate for survivors, including tackling the problem of untested rape kits.

That work is manifested in the documentary I Am Evidence  produced by Hargitay, who also serves as an on-screen guide, and directed by Trish Adlesic, a documentarian and former SVU producer, and Geeta Gandbhir.

I Am Evidence is a searing, lucid film that never shies from tough details, especially when survivors share their attacks in a powerful bearing of witness. The film is also a legal thriller focusing on three American cities  Detroit, Cleveland and Los Angeles  grappling with tens of thousands of untested rape kits. Los Angeles is far behind the other cities in even addressing the issue.

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Though I Am Evidence processes a tremendous amount of data and information, its a deeply personal and intimate film. However distressing it may be, it leaves room for hope, showing how rape kits bring justice and presenting instances where law enforcement training has evolved to better serve victims.

Ultimately, it positions the system as the villain, with journalists and filmmakers as necessary allies to expose problems in order to effect change. It couldnt be more timely.

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I Am Evidence

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena

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Its hard to single out just one image from Yuri Ancaranis beautifully photographed experimental documentary The Challenge that stands out above the others, but one of the films first shots is especially memorable. On a journey to the desert for a falconry competition, one of the avian athletes is seen wearing an elegant hood and sitting on a fancy perch, while staring out the window of its owners private plane  a very different kind of bird in flight.

At no point in The Challenge does Ancarani attempt to explain anything about the falcon-obsessed Qatari sheiks hes following for this film, or to describe their contests. The movie eschews narration and captions, and instead just strings together one stunning scene after another of inconceivably wealthy oil men indulging their passions.

Footage of luxury SUVs driving through desolate landscapes  and opulently robed men sitting in tents watching big-screen TVs  makes it seem like The Challenge was filmed not just in another country but on another planet. When Ancarani cuts to POV shots of falcons in flight, the effect is magical.

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Some more journalistically minded viewers may wish this movie had more to say about the politics and economics that allows Ancaranis subjects to live so extravagantly, with animals they undoubtedly treat better than their underlings. But thats the wrong way to think of The Challenge. This movie is more like a gallery exhibition of moving portraits  each more astonishing than the last.

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The Challenge

In Arabic with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 7 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills, beginning Dec. 8; selected Laemmle theaters, Dec. 11-12

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No matter what youre expecting, Foxtrot is not the film you expect it to be. Its better.

Certainly anticipation for this Israeli feature couldnt be higher. It won the Silver Lion at Venice, took eight Ophir awards (Israels Oscars) including best picture, best director and best actor, and is its countrys submission for the foreign language Academy Award.

And for those who remember it, writer-director Samuel Maozs last feature  the brilliantly claustrophobic 2009 Lebanon, a savage antiwar film that places you inside an Israeli tank and doesnt let you out  is reason enough to look forward to what hes done next.

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Foxtrot, however, is nothing like Lebanon. In fact, in the ambitious, even daring way it combines intense emotional drama with visual pizazz and bursts of unexpected surrealism, its nothing like almost anything you can think of.

An intricate, dazzling cinematic dance, Foxtrot goes both deeper in and further out than standard-issue cinema. Its profound and moving and wild and crazy at the same time, simultaneously telling a specific story and offering an emotional snapshot of a country whose very soul seems to be at risk.

In a film with as many complexities and layers as Foxtrot, even that seemingly straightforward title turns out to mean a number of different things.

[Lior Ashkenazi] puts all of his skill and experience to work as he plays a profoundly lost man raging against the storm.

Because the Israeli army is a key player in the narrative, foxtrot  as those whove seen more than their share of old American war movies know  is a word that functions as an identifier in military radio conversations.

But the foxtrot is also a dance, and as such it leads to both a snazzy out-of-nowhere visual sequence of a soldier partnering with his rifle as well as a quieter moment, poignant and almost despairing, between a husband and wife.

Foxtrot begins at the door of a high-rise apartment in Tel Aviv. A disembodied finger pushes the buzzer and Daphna (Sarah Adler) answers.

We see dread on Daphnas face before a word is spoken, and soon a soldier is telling her husband, Michael (Lior Ashkenazi), the words every Israeli parent dreads: Theres no easy way to say this. Your son Jacob was killed in the line of duty.

The first part of Foxtrot is spent almost exclusively with Michael as he tries to get used to the reality of a nightmare he can never awaken from.

Ashkenazi, perhaps Israels top star, has won the Ophir for best actor three times for very diverse roles, starting in 2001 with Dover Kosashvilis Late Marriage, moving on to Joseph Cedars Footnote and finally here.

The actor puts all of his skill and experience to work as he plays a profoundly lost man raging against the storm, striking out at all and sundry because of the great pain hes in.

Yet one of Ashkenazis strongest scenes has him nominally doing not very much at all.

The camera holds a close-up on the actor as soldiers describe what will be happening with his sons funeral arrangements. On the surface, nothing is going on, but Ashkenazis face is processing an enormous amount of emotion.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, the film pivots and switches gears and deposits us in the remotest of remote Israeli outposts, where four young soldiers man a checkpoint that seems truly in the middle of nowhere.

As opposed to the overflow of emotion that is threatening to drown Michael, these young men are bored beyond tears by the infinite tedium of soldiering. Even the fact that the large metal container they are all sleeping in seems to be sinking does not break through the morass.

Every once in a great while, a car carrying random Arabs drives up to the checkpoint, and the soldiers, more or less oblivious to the casual humiliation they are inflicting, have to inspect their identification before letting them pass.

In telling these interlocking stories, filmmaker Maoz makes excellent use of cinematographer Giora Bejach, whose work includes numerous visually arresting moments, from random camels wandering into the scene to disorienting overhead shots of a geometrically patterned apartment floor. If there is an ordinary way to present things, Foxtrot is not interested.

One of the things this film is concerned about, though it in no way forces the issue, is the state of mind of the state of Israel. It shows how agonizing the loss of a single life can be and the toll constant war can take on a nations psyche. There are no answers here, there couldnt be, but Foxtrot understands the importance of asking the questions.

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Foxtrot

Rating: R, for some sexual content including graphic images, and brief drug use

Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Playing: Laemmles Royal, West Los Angeles

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kenneth.turan@latimes.com

@KennethTuran
Writer-director Scooter Corkles feature debut Hollow in the Land is an earthy Canadian small-town thriller that recalls Debra Graniks Winters Bone  a movie more filmmakers should emulate. Corkles film isnt as assured, but its a well-told story, with a strong sense of place.

Glee favorite Dianna Agron stars as Alison Miller, a factory worker and stubborn iconoclast, who shrugs off her neighbors disdain for her homosexuality, her imprisoned father and her wayward teen brother Brandon (played by Jared Abrahamson). When an old Miller family nemesis turns up dead, Alison launches her own investigation into what happened, pitting her against the powerful elites and skittish ordinary citizens in her blue-collar Canadian community.

The mystery plot in Hollow in the Land isnt that well-drawn, mainly because Corkle falls into the common indie trap of fleshing out the back story at the expense of the plot. But Agrons experience and charisma bring warmth to a steely character; and shes well-supported by Shawn Ashmore as a sympathetic sheriff.

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Plus, as someone who spent a decade working in crews of over two dozen low-budget productions, Corkle has a rare command of craft. His narrative is slim, but its delivered unpretentiously, with an understanding that a good cast and a vivid locale preclude any need to get flashy.

Like Winters Bone, the film is at its best when it follows its heroine closely, letting the audience understand more about her life with each step closer to danger.

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Hollow in the Land

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Playing: AMC CityWalk, Universal City

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The chorus to Cola, the hit dance track by British house producers CamelPhat and vocalist Elderbrook that last month earned a surprise Grammy nod, is sticky enough to become an ear-worm after a single listen. She sips a Coca-Cola, Elderbrook sings in beautiful tenor, She cant tell the difference yet.

Wait, what?

She cant tell the difference between the Coca-Cola and what? Is the songs protagonist, whom the vocalist describes in an earlier verse as someone who looks for trouble, a Pepsi woman in a Coke dance club? Is her beverage missing an ingredient? Or worse, has it been tainted, and if so, with what and by who?

Its been misinterpreted in a lot of strange ways.  Alex Elderbrook Kotz

Its been misinterpreted in a lot of strange ways, said vocalist and co-writer Alex Elderbrook Kotz, who wrote the lyric during a songwriting session earlier this year with CamelPhat producers Dave Whelan and Mike Di Scala.

And while numerous critics and commentators have expressed misgivings about the lyrics, it hasnt slowed the songs ascent. Driven by a 122 beats-per-minute rhythm influenced by classic Chicago house  CamelPhat recently issued another track on the legendary Chicago imprint Relief  the song earned spins in global party center Ibiza over the summer, and hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance charts in September.

Which is to say, that chorus  She sips a Coca-Cola  she cant tell the difference yet  has propelled dance floors across the world.

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Kotz was only in the studio with CamelPhat for three or so hours. As they were starting, they went through a few CamelPhat instrumentals, including the track that became Cola.

Kotzs writing process was pretty basic: I sat down and wrote all the lyrics on my phone, stood up and then sang all the lyrics in, and then that was it.

On the track, Elderbrook sings:

Thats what youre coming for and

They dont want to let you in and

You drop your bag to the floor and

You ask her whats happening

Its getting late now, hey now

Enough of the arguments

She sips a Coca-Cola

She cant tell the difference yet

Kotz did vocals for two other songs during the session, and a few months later the British house label Defected picked it up for release.

Describing it as an underground Ibiza dance tune, Kotz said that we never in a million years thought that it would take on a mainstream life of its own.

But what do the lyrics mean, and how should they be interpreted in a post-Cosby, post-Weinstein world? (Read all of them.)

Kotz took an audible breath. Hes explained his train of thought when writing the lines in a few other recent interviews, and he sounds a little tired to have to explicate his lyrics again.

I guess the story is about somebody that goes on a night out but has maybe enjoyed themselves a bit too much before they actually left the house.  Alex Elderbrook Kotz

I guess the story is about somebody that goes on a night out but has maybe enjoyed themselves a bit too much before they actually left the house and then cannot get in to any of the clubs, Kotz explained.

Theyre having an argument with the bouncer about basically being too under-the-influence to be allowed in the club. And then the bouncer kindly gets her a bottle of Coca-Cola to sober her up, but she thinks its Rum & Coke.

Kotz described the lyric as strangely specific, if you know what I mean.

But it may not be specific enough.

Quite frankly, this is triggering, wrote Rebecca A. Gowns on the popular music site the Singles Jukebox, noting that the song appears to be about slipping a substance into a womans drink.

Asked whether he understood why people might misinterpret the chorus to reference a spiked drink, Kotz said he did.

Usually in songwriting you would tie it all together with a big old this is what its about, Kotz said, but we all thought it worked, just leaving it as it was.
French apparel and accessories brand the Kooples brought its Parisian-chic meets rock-n-roll ethos to the Chateau Marmont this week to celebrate the launch of its most recent collaborative collection with model, actress and Blurred Lines star Emily Ratajkowski.

The label, founded by three brothers from the south of France  Laurent, Raphael and Alexandre Elicha  derives its name from the French slang for the couples, which perfectly encapsulates the gender-fluid nature of its designs as well as its penchant for partnerships with other brands and stylish tastemakers: Puma, Waris Ahluwalia and Richard Orlinski, among them.



For the record: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the number of standalone bricks-and-mortar the Kooples has in the Los Angeles area. There are two, not three.

The brothers Elicha, who first partnered with Ratajkowski on a fall 2017 range of handbags, were on hand Dec. 4 to celebrate the new seasons offerings, celebrated in one of the West Hollywood hotels sixth-floor suites that had shimmering golden Christmas lights strung from floor to ceiling, white candles and lots of red roses (unfortunately no Chris Harrison, host of The Bachelor, to announce the final rose) with music played by D.J. Mike Nouveau adding to the festive feel.

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The stars of the show, though, were the spring and summer 2018 additions to the Emily by the Kooples bag lineup, which includes 30 new styles (think faux crocodile, faux python and denim fabrications and an assortment of new colors including lemon yellow, pistachio green and lilac purple). Also new to the mix is a belt bag that riffs on the classic fanny-pack silhouette.

The Emily bag, with its built-in accordion-folio-style compartments that allow you to go sans wallet, might be the perfect choice for the woman with the multifaceted day, allowing a seamless transition from day to night.

I literally looked at bags in my own closet and I thought about when I was 13 and the bags that I dreamed of, Ratajkowski said. I loved my grandmothers vintage bags. I still have them. That was the entire inspiration.

The spring/summer 18 bags will be available at the Kooples bricks-and-mortar stores, including the Robertson and Santa Monica doors locally, select department stores, including Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue, and online at www.thekooples.com, starting at the end of January. Prices range from $375 to $495.

For me, forever, I couldnt afford the bags that I wanted, Ratajkowski said. But what I love about this collaboration, they are all made in Italy in a tiny factory but they are affordable. They are not a months rent, but they are that quality. That is what makes these so special and why I am so proud of them.

The Kooples reached out to Ratajkowski because they wanted a strong and fun woman that spoke to the essence of their brand.

She is feminine, feminist and an actress that you can love, Alexandre Elicha said.

Emily Ratajkowski (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times )

The Kooples, which started in Toulouse in 2008, has expanded across the globe over the last decade, opening its first U.S. standalone store on Robertson Boulevard in 2014 and adding one more L.A. store in the years since.

The Kooples take on L.A.? The brothers believe its a rock-n-roll city that is constantly inspiring them and pushing fashion boundaries.

To that end, who better to Koople up with than L.A. native and ascendant fashion darling Emily Ratajkowski?
Orin Cadwell was operating on two hours of sleep when he drove through flames on either side of the 101 near La Conchita en route to the Santa Monica farmers market at 3 a.m. today. Usually, that route belongs to Barbara Whyman, who has worked Tutti Fruttis farm stand every Wednesday in Santa Monica for years, but on Tuesday, Whyman was one of 27,000 residents in Ventura who were forced to evacuate, and one of two employees of Tutti Frutti Farms to lose their homes to the Thomas fire in Ventura County, so Cadwell was called to fill in.

Many of the farmers and farmworkers who are familiar faces at Los Angeles area farmers markets work, live and farm in the areas affected by the Thomas fire  one of multiple wind-driven fires raging now in Southern California. Stories like Whymans circulated down Arizona Avenue this morning, where a thinner than usual crowd shopped amid falling ash, many wearing paper face masks. Six of the markets 75 vendors were missing, leaving noticeable holes in a market that is usually vibrant and jam-packed.

One of those holes was left by Mud Creek Ranch, a citrus and avocado farm in Santa Paula known for growing more than 200 varieties of organic citrus. On Instagram, Matthew Smith, son of ranch owners Steven and Robin Smith, posted a photo of the blaze nearing the familys property with the caption sounds like a jet engine. Hours later he posted a video of destruction on the ranch, updating followers that while many structures on the property were destroyed, they managed to save the house and the garage. By phone, his sister Marguerita confirmed that some of the orchard was damaged as well.

Mark Carpenter of Coastal Farms in Santa Paula was also missing from todays market. He and his wife Pernille posted a series of harrowing images on Instagram, the latest of which said that while his vegetable farm was unharmed, his landlords lost 50% of their avocado orchard; much of the farm equipment was destroyed.

Next to the empty space usually occupied by Coastal Farms stand on Second Street, Coleman Family Farms table display was eerily small. Where you would normally find an ocean of lettuces and crates spilling out of a box truck and 20 feet of tables piled high with greens, there was a modest collection of crops from the familys Carpinteria property. According to one worker, it was about 200 crates less than the usual Wednesday haul.

Farmworkers were unable to pick kale and lettuces from Romeo Colemans second property that sits adjacent to Highway 33 in Ojai, where fires have been raging. The Coleman table worker said Coleman and a neighbor took a fire hose to the fields Tuesday in an effort to spare his crops from the encroaching flames.

Nick Brown of Rincon del Mar Ranch, whose cherimoya and avocado groves are not far from Colemans Carpinteria property, learned at 10:30 a.m. that the fires had reached the perimeter of his familys ranch. According to Market Manager Laura Avery, he leapt into action upon hearing the news, left behind his unsold produce and headed back to the farm early. (At the close of the market, at 1 p.m., the status of many farms was uncertain.)

For some farmers, it wasnt the fire but the wind that threatened their crop and kept them from the market. Emily Thacher, who grows Ojai Pixie and other citrus at Friends Ranch in Ojai, told Avery, our whole crop is on the ground right now.

As the market drew to a close, one of the most pressing questions for many farmers who travel south to Santa Monica was whether they would be able to get home.

Cadwell from Tutti Frutti joked that he might go to a Clippers game if the roads were closed. Even if he could get home, he has five refugees from the Thomas fire camped out on his floor.

It looks like a Dust Bowl camp, he said of his place. Woody Guthrie should be playing the ukulele.

food@latimes.com

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Thomas fire victim loses her home but saves the most important thing -- her children

Gabriela Gutierrez was at home in Santa Paula watching a childrens program and snuggling with her 18-month-old daughter and 3-year-old son Monday evening when she took a call from her babysitter Adriana.

Hey, Gaby. Have they knocked on your door? Theres a fire. They are going to start evacuating. Get your important stuff and clothes, the babysitter told her.

What fire? Gutierrez thought to herself. It was 9:01 p.m.

The 32-year-old ran outside her mobile home on Wheeler Canyon Road into a wall of gray smoke. She panicked. Minutes later, a law enforcement official knocked on her door. He told her she had a few minutes to pack up and evacuate.

Frantically, she packed diapers for 18-month-old Genesis, a pair of shoes for 3-year-old Osiel. She grabbed clothes for all of them, medical cards, her U.S. citizenship naturalization certificate.

Gabriela Gutierrez, 32, and daughter Genesis take refuge from the Thomas fire after her home burned. (Cindy Carcamo / Los Angeles Times)

Her husband, Alex, froze, unwilling to accept that the fire was heading toward them.

Dont worry. The wind is blowing in another direction, he told her.

Still, she threw her belongings and blankets into the car. Thats when she saw flames approaching. She buckled in her two children in one car. Her husband jumped into another vehicle. They headed to Gutierrezs mothers home.

On Tuesday morning, she returned to a steel shell of what appeared to be her mobile home. Everything was gone. The only way she could tell her two-bedroom home apart from the others that had burned were a pair of tire rims her husband planned to sell.

Alex refused to believe their home was gone. Instead he headed to work as usual at a nearby ranch, where he irrigates strawberry fields. He finally accepted the news when Gutierrez texted him photos of their charred home.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gutierrez wrangled her tots as she attempted to eat a tamale at the Santa Paula Senior Center, which served as an evacuation center for fire refugees.

Her sister, Maricela Martinez, a landscaper, kept her company and helped her care for the kids.

Oh, no, she said suddenly. Martinez had just gotten a text message from one of her clients.

Hello, our house burned down today so we will not be needing yard service in the near future. I prepaid you through January, we can work it out later, the text message said.

Martinez shook her head.

So many people have lost their homes, she told her sister.

Gutierrez, who was recently laid off from her job picking strawberries after the company went out of business, worried about finding a new home and paying upcoming bills. She doesnt have rental insurance. The $700 in cash shed saved up for Christmas presents and stored on a shelf in her home was gone. Framed pictures of her sons baptism and daughters birth were destroyed. Her eyes welled with tears as she thought of the photos.

Still, she said shes thankful for her health and what she was able to salvage from her home.

I saved the most important thing, she said. My kids.

Gutierrez said she was thankful she didnt have to stay overnight at the evacuation center. She could stay with family, she said. Others werent as lucky.

Just outside the center, homeowners in a neighborhood across the street hosed down their roofs. They watched as white and gray smoke billowed up as helicopters carrying fire retardant and water flew past. From just half a mile north, the Thomas fire headed their way.
The magnitude of the wildfire siege in parts of Southern California continued to worsen Wednesday, with more than 100,000 people forced from their homes and authorities warning of the return of dangerous winds on Thursday.

As predicted, the winds picked up Thursday morning, with gusts topping 50 mph in some areas. That pushed the various fires in different directions, forcing new evacuations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

In anticipation of the heavy winds, all Los Angeles Unified schools in the San Fernando Valley as well as 17 schools on the citys Westside will be closed for the rest of the week, district officials said Wednesday afternoon.

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The decision closes at least 265 schools in neighborhoods affected by the wildfires raging in and near Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, firefighters and residents from Ventura County to Los Angeles used the calmer conditions to try to make headway in advance of Thursdays expected winds.

Brent Clark, 58, stood on the roof of his Faria Beach home in northern Ventura County and began watering it down. Not far away, past the railroad tracks and Highway 1, flames made their way down the hillsides as they burned through acres of chaparral.

Looking at the flames, Kay Clark, 58, turned her attention to a cypress tree across from their home.

That tree worries me, she said.

Everything depends on what the winds do, Brent Clark said.

On Tuesday night, residents of Faria Beach were told to evacuate as flames made their way over the ridge of the canyons and approached the small beach community.

Among those who evacuated was Joe Ruffner, 65.

The wind was blowing north, south, sometimes it seemed like it was doing both at the same time, Ruffner said.

Nearby, Jim Petit, 82, used a generator to keep power flowing to his home. He said he put five gallons of gasoline into the generator that morning and was using a timer to keep track of how much it took and when he needed to refuel it.

Petit and Kay Clark shared one certainty.

Were not out of it yet, Petit said.

Were not out of it. Were still not out of the woods, she said.

Fears of more winds were also evident in the neighborhoods of Sylmar hit hard by the Creek fire.

That fire started about 4 a.m. Tuesday and quickly raced out of control as powerful Santa Ana winds pushed it toward houses below.

The fire has destroyed at least 30 homes and scorched 12,605 acres, authorities said.

As crews continue to fight the blaze, some residents are beginning to assess the damage to their foothill properties.

The blaze was 5% contained, and residents had been evacuated from an area covering more than 20 square miles. The fire jumped the 210 Freeway and burned in Shadow Hills to the south, where residents scrambled to evacuate hundreds of horses, alpacas and other animals. About 20 of the 30 homes that have burned were in Little Tujunga, Kagel and Lopez canyons, officials said.

Farther north, in Santa Clarita, firefighters were making significant gains against the Rye fire that had burned toward Magic Mountain on Tuesday afternoon. The fire briefly shut down access to the 5 Freeway from Highway 126 and triggered mandatory evacuations.

Roy DeFilippis, 69, and his wife, Yolanda, 66, were on vacation and excited to spend a nice, relaxing afternoon at a campground west of Santa Clarita when the Rye fire started.

The couple have been on a road trip for weeks, starting out at their home in Nova Scotia and traveling to Simi Valley to spend Thanksgiving with their daughter and her family.

Driving thousands of miles, they faced several challenges. Their RV broke down in Kingman, Ariz., and again as they were traveling in California toward Simi Valley. Roy DeFilippis almost lost control going down a mountain.

On Tuesday afternoon, he was watching TV, considering whether to drink more coffee or switch to cold beer.

And all of a sudden, we hear sirens and sirens, and police came out and told us we had to evacuate, he said.

Walking out of their RV, the couple saw flames as tall as their motor home.

They ditched the Honda Civic theyd been hauling. There was no time.

They ensured that their most precious cargo  their eight Yorkies: Spike, Zoey, Lacey, Madison, Spencer, Mickey, Sammy and Snickers  were in the RV, and they rushed onto Highway 126.

Late Wednesday morning, they were parked on a gravel lot between Santa Clarita and Fillmore, waiting until the campground was reopened at noon. They werent sure whether their car survived.

But Roy DeFilippis, a retiree from Florida, felt that because they were safe from the fires, it just made for a good story to tell his friends.

Life is a true adventure, isnt it? he said.

The Rye fire has burned 7,000 acres and was 5% contained Wednesday. All evacuations and road closures have been lifted.

Times Staff Writers Anna M. Phillips, Joy Resmovits, Cindy Carcamo and Sonali Kohli contributed to this report.
Santa Ana winds returned to Southern California with a vengeance, spreading multiple fires and burning some structures overnight, but they were not as bad as forecasters expected.

The difference was a small but important boost in the firefight  which stretched from Ojai to Bel-Air.

Bill Murphy, a public information officer with Cal Fire, said that over Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the fire burned north of Ojai, moving to the northwest.

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Essentially for Ojai, the fire has skirted both sides of the community, Murphy said. Fire continues to burn west of Highway 33, near Carpinteria, and although the winds werent creating as much of a challenge, the fuel bed and hilly terrain were, Murphy said.

The winds that were forecast for last night  it was windy on the ridge tops  the wind didnt surface quite as much down low, Murphy said. Most of the fire behavior that was observed last night was as a result of topography and fuel conditions.

The 80 mph winds expected in Los Angeles late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning did not materialize either.

The Skirball fire, burning just east of the 405 Freeway, remained 5% contained Thursday morning and had burned 475 acres, fire officials said. A portion of a fire perimeter is considered contained when firefighters have cleared a broad area to form a fire break or hauled in hose lines that will stop the blaze from advancing.

Winds reached speeds of 40 mph overnight, but the steep canyons east of the 405 worked in firefighters favor, sheltering the fire from the strongest gusts and preventing embers from sparking new spot fires, said Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief Armando Hogan.

Although 95% of the Skirball fire is not contained, that does not mean the blaze is burning out of control, Hogan said. Many of the tallest flames have been knocked down, he said, adding that some active fires are still burning but nothing that is raging and roaring, like we saw the other night.

Some deep canyons have decades of heavy brush growth that is highly flammable and is burning off, LAFD spokesman David Ortiz said. Those areas are smoldering with embers that firefighters call cat eyes because they glint in the darkness with a certain feline quality.

Some canyons have 70-degree inclines, too steep to accommodate firefighters at all. Fire crews are dropping water on those areas with one airplane, and another is on the way, LAFD spokesman Peter Sanders said.

If the firefight goes well Thursday, with winds of 20 to 25 mph, officials may consider allowing some evacuated residents to temporarily return home to pick up clothes and medication, Hogan said.

What we dont want to do is pull the trigger prematurely, Hogan said.

Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry downslope winds in Southern California and northern Baja California. They originate inland in desert regions and occur mainly in the fall and winter but can arise during other seasons.

Most Santa Ana wind events are caused by high pressure in the Wests Great Basin and lower pressure off the coast. Air from areas of high pressure flows toward that of lower pressure, and the gradient, or difference, causes the intense winds.

Air from areas of high pressure over high ground inland flows down toward sea level in Southern California. The sinking air heats up, loses moisture and speeds up, especially as it squeezes through canyons.

The severity of Santa Ana winds varies by year. Some years see less strong winds than others. The winds in some years  such as 1993, 2003 and 2007  have produced multiple destructive fires.
As firefighters continue to battle the Creek fire Thursday, hundreds of workers are holding down the fort  and fork  at base camp.

On the third day of the fire, firefighters, inmates and support personnel lined up at Hansen Dam Recreation Center at 5 a.m. to grab breakfast.

Inmate crews had helped to prepare and serve nearly 2,000 meals, with prep beginning at midnight.

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The chow for this morning is going to be eggs and those eggs arent going to be just your one or two you normally have at home, said Capt. Chris Reade of L.A. County Fire Department.

We have 10,000 eggs being prepped here this morning, 9,000 sticks of French toast and 4,500 pieces of bacon, Reade said. Thats just for this morning.

More than 1,500 personnel are working the Creek fire, with some starting their day with the 5 a.m. breakfast.

There are several hundred inmates who help with preparing and serving food, and also working on the fire line.

Theyre a huge intricate part of this fire camp and making sure it runs and making sure everyone gets fed, Reade said.

This is a unified fire, so its not just the firefighters showing up to put out the fire. It trickles all the way down to all these other individuals.

Some firefighters grabbed breakfast and then lined up elsewhere to grab a sack lunch to take out into the field. These 10,000-calorie lunches, Reade said, make for the biggest lunch bag youve ever seen.

One of the brown bags being handed out Thursday included a turkey sandwich, a pickle, Nutella, Smuckers Uncrustables sandwiches, a chimichanga, protein shakes, beef jerky and Tapatio.

You dont go to school and get a lunch like that, Reade said. He said this should last them for lunch and dinner. Theyre working 24 hours so theyre not actually coming back here at nighttime, Reade said.

Some people think, Youre feeding these guys a bunch of junk food, ... but theyre high-calorie meals to be able to replace what guys are burning out there... Sometimes youve got to give them a little bit of junk food.

Reade added, with a laugh, that he tries to steer clear of the 5-pound brown bag lunches.

I try not to eat them, because you just sit here and get fat, Reade said. We all dont have the opportunity to get our morning workout in.

Not too far from the chow line, along trailer row, Randy Smith and Ronnie Frazee, both telecommunications technicians for the California Office of Emergency Services, worked on radio repair.

They began working at 5 a.m., focused on radio cloning to ensure that firefighters hand talkies were all using the right frequency  especially important when individuals come from all over the state.

When firefighters arrive, they will plug another persons radio into their own and push a button that uploads the profile for this incident. This way, everybody can be on the same page. Theyve cloned hundreds of radios for this fire and stressed the danger when firefighters cant communicate.

Thats how people die, Frazee said. If you cant talk, you dont know the fires coming toward you.


Gusty Santa Ana winds and bone-dry conditions continued to stoke major wildfires in Southern California on Thursday as Ventura County fire officials said the battle there could last well over a week.

By Thursday evening, the Thomas fire had consumed 115,000 acres, destroyed 427 structures in Ventura and damaged at least 85 more, authorities said. An additional 12 structures were destroyed in unincorporated areas of Ventura County.

As the blaze intruded on Santa Barbara County, residents living in Carpinteria, Summerland and other nearby coastal communities were told to prepare to evacuate, even in areas under voluntary evacuation orders.

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The Thomas fire has been burning fast, at one point moving nine miles in 12 hours, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Were trying to get the word out to everybody that lives along the coast that they really need to start thinking about [evacuating] right now, Brown said. Make sure your cars gassed up. Make sure your irreplaceable documents, photographs, all that stuff, box it up. Even if you dont load your car up, just have it ready to go.

Authorities said the fight could last a couple of weeks.

Until the wind stops blowing, theres really not a lot we can do as far as controlling the perimeter, Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said as crews battled flames for the third day.

That grim outlook came just hours after authorities said they discovered the body of a woman in a burn area, and after heavy winds prompted residents to flee the coastal community of Faria Beach. As smoke billowed overhead and palm trees burned, a police officer drove through the settlement with a megaphone blaring warnings: Mandatory evacuation, and, Please go the other way, the road is closed.

In Ojai, 40 mph winds pushed flames to within a mile of the city.

We are mounting an aggressive aerial assault, Ventura County Fire Capt. Robert Welsbie said as he observed the flames from Ojai. The fire is suddenly widespread due to the velocity of erratic winds.

The Thomas fire was one of a half-dozen wildfires burning in Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties Thursday.

Though it is not rare for Santa Ana winds to blow this time of year, weather experts say its unusual for them to be combined with such dry conditions.

With relative humidity in the single digits along the coastal mountains, the air is the driest its been here in recorded history, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.

The [relative] humidities right now along the coast are much drier than what youd normally see in the interior desert in the summertime, Swain said. Once you get down to 1% or 2%, youre down almost as low as is physically possible.

Firefighters are concerned that the Thomas fire will push into Santa Barbara County and threaten the city of Carpinteria, said Ventura County fire spokesman Rich Macklin.

Were going to start moving with it, Macklin said of the flames, adding that about 2,000 firefighters are battling the blaze.

Crews are concerned about erratic winds near the water that are reaching between 30 and 40 mph, he said, with gusts of 45 to 50 mph.

As he spoke, plumes of smoke shifted toward the ocean, obscuring visibility so badly that it was difficult to see a few hundred feet ahead. Distant booms went off in the distance  what Macklin attributed to a tank of something releasing.

The National Weather Service predicted winds of 28 to 35 mph with gusts up to 50 mph in the Faria Beach area until 5 or 6 p.m., meteorologist Todd Hall said.

If they get through the afternoon portion, itll start turning around, Hall said. A mild onshore breeze could help firefighters battle flames at Faria Beach on Thursday night, he said, but the rest of Southern California can expect sustained Santa Ana winds for the rest of the day.

Authorities also urged residents to evacuate forested areas near Ojai, at the wildfires northern front.

There, tornadoes of flame climbed the slopes of a remote box canyon that Jayson Kaufman calls home. To the chagrin of Ventura sheriffs deputies who issued a mandatory evacuation order the previous night, Kaufman was among 15 to 20 Matilija Canyon dwellers who refused to leave their rustic cabins and geodesic domes tucked in dry brush.

Were monitoring the situation  and the clarity of the air  closely, Kaufman said, eyeing clouds of smoke filling the skies on both ends of the densely forested canyon. This morning, the sky was super clear until about 10 a.m. Now, were playing it by ear.

That kind of talk rankled authorities, who were concerned about the status of the holdouts but unable to divert equipment and firefighters into the 5-mile-long canyon early Thursday morning because Highway 33 north of Ojai was strewn with downed power lines, telephone poles and boulders.

It also worried other Matilija Canyon residents who had heeded the evacuation order but could not check the status of the holdouts because communications systems were not working.

I left the canyon almost immediately after sheriffs deputies banged on our door and told us to get out, said Michael Kampman, 31, among a half-dozen people gathered at a roadblock down mountain, awaiting word of the status of their neighbors. I know several people who stayed behind.

A womans body was found Wednesday night at the site of a car accident on Wheeler Canyon Road. The cause of death and the womans identity have not been determined, Ventura County Sheriffs Sgt. Kevin Donoghue said.

Throughout Southern California, winds that officials feared would blow over trees, knock down power lines and push fires closer to endangered communities were not as strong as anticipated Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the weather service said.

But the winds were still dangerous and erratic, and powerful enough to drive major fires in the area.

A lot of these signals that we look at are not quite as impressive as wed seen earlier, said meteorologist David Sweet. Gusts of 80 mph are now gusts of 60 to 65 mph. Its not that much of a difference, but I guess anything downward is a good thing.

In Sylmar, where the Creek fire is burning, 12,605 acres had been destroyed and the blaze was 10% contained by Thursday morning. Authorities have confirmed 15 structures destroyed and another 15 damaged, with 2,500 structures still threatened. There are 110,000 people evacuated because of the fire, Los Angeles Fire Capt. Branden Silverman said.

Two firefighters have been hospitalized after battling the Creek fire, Silverman said  one was injured while operating a dozer and the other when a propane tank exploded. Both are expected to recover.

The Creek fire ignited in the Angeles National Forest around 3:45 a.m. Tuesday, then Santa Ana winds pushed it west, Silverman said.

Firefighters are challenged by high winds, poor access and steep, rugged terrain, said a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection report.

There are still homes at risk outside the active fire area, said Nathan Judy, an information officer with the Angeles National Forest.

If that fire does hop our containment lines, there are homes in the area, in the west-southside area, Judy said. So were going to be keeping an eye very close on that this afternoon to make sure that the wind doesnt blow those embers into those homes.

The Skirball fire in Bel-Air, which has destroyed four homes and damaged 11 others, remained at 475 acres with 20% containment as of late Thursday morning. Everyone in the 3.2-square-mile evacuation zone  about 700 homes  was still being told to stay away, said L.A. fire spokesman Peter Sanders.

If you are a developer in the fire zone in Bel-Air, get the hell out and dont come back until evacuations are lifted, said Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, adding that construction crews should not be working right now.

Firefighting efforts Thursday focused on preventing the blaze from jumping the 405 Freeway toward the Getty Center and Brentwood, as Santa Ana winds have the potential to push the fire west.

Everyone in those areas should be ready to evacuate, officials said. Overnight and into the morning, firefighters focused on continuing to establish a containment line around the fire and putting out hot spots within the burn area.

The forward progress of the fire has been stopped, Sanders said. The wind is a big concern for today.

On the other side of the 405, residents west of the fire were ready to evacuate if needed but thankful the winds were weaker than expected.

As a gust blew dried leaves into the air in Brentwood, Bob Greer, 81, opened the trunk of his white Toyota.

It was filled with suitcases, photographs, documents and medication. The one thing you cannot replace are photographs, he said.

Greer and his wife both served in the Air Force. Greer retired 15 years ago.

Im ready to go in a minute if we need to evacuate, he said. When youre ready, youre not scared.

Times staff writers Sonali Kohli and Alene Tchekmedyian contributed to this report.

Times staff writers Matt Hamilton, Louis Sahagun, Laura Nelson, Brittny Mejia and Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this report.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATvives

sonali.kohli@latimes.com

Twitter: @Sonali_Kohli

joseph.serna@latimes.com

Twitter: @JosephSerna

UPDATES:

7:50 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information from fire officials.

6:20 p.m.: This article was updated with new information about structures lost and acres burned.

2:15 p.m.: This article was updated with information about the Thomas fire.

12:40 p.m.: This article was updated with information about wind conditions, the Thomas fire, Faria Beach and the Skirball fire.

11:05 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the Thomas fire and wind conditions.

9:45 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the Creek and Skirball fires.

This article was originally published at 8:30 a.m.
The Thomas fire rampaged toward La Conchita early Thursday, sending some holdouts who had defied evacuation orders fleeing the small seaside town.

Shortly before 2 a.m., flames rolled down the hillside just off the 101 Freeway, near Faria Beach Park, before jumping northbound lanes and igniting weeds in the center divider. Drivers swerved to avoid the flickering flames, with smoke making it hard to see farther than a few feet at times.

Visibility problems triggered a full shutdown of the freeway, according to the California Highway Patrols online incident log.

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Authorities said theyd been to the neighborhood  where theres only one way in and one way out  twice ordering people to leave, telling them it was too dangerous to stay.

Were going to do a drive-by out there ourselves, Ventura County Sheriffs Capt. Garo Kuredjian said early Thursday. It wasnt clear whether flames had reached homes.

The town, a few miles from Carpinteria, is surrounded by dry chaparral and other vegetation that has not burned for decades. Two-story and single-story homes sit along the base of the hillsides. The buildings sit next to each other with very little space in between.

A resident tries to battle a shrub fire as the Thomas fire burns in the town of La Conchita early Thursday morning. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times )

As the Thomas fire grew near, some residents watered down their roofs, and others packed up cars and trucks. A few focused on getting their horses out of a nearby stable.

This isnt the first time the town of a few hundred people has been rocked by a disaster. In 2005, 400,000 tons of mud slid down the bluff behind La Conchita, killing seven adults and three children. A decade earlier, the hill collapsed and destroyed nine homes.

As the fire burned around the beach community, homemade sprinklers connected to the roofs of homes were left on to protect against blowing embers.

Among them was the home of Jesus Perez, 43, who used PVC piping and a Rain Bird to install the sprinkler on the roof.

It took me four hours to make it, he said.

Perez said it was important to do everything he could to protect his home for his wife and three kids.

I just dont want to lose my house, he said.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek

Vives reported from La Conchita, Tchekmedyian from Los Angeles.
A Los Angeles County jury awarded $3.6 million to the family of a 28-year-old man who was killed by sheriffs deputies in a controversial videotaped shooting that drew widespread attention in 2015, attorneys said Wednesday.

The unanimous verdict was returned Monday in federal court in favor of the children of Nicholas Robertson nearly two years after he was shot and killed by deputies in Lynwood, according to a statement released by the Cochran Firm, which represented the family.

Robertson was carrying an unloaded handgun in December 2015 when he was confronted by deputies as he walked toward an Arco gas station near Long Beach Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue. Police have said Robertson ignored commands to drop his weapon prior to the deputies decision to open fire.

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Footage of the shooting appears to show Robertson walking, and then crawling, away from the deputies as they let off repeated bursts of gunfire. Robertson, a married father of three, died a short time later.

Brian Dunn, an attorney with the Cochran Firm, said in a statement that the deputies fired 33 rounds, striking Robertson more than a dozen times. Only the last two shots proved fatal, he said.

He could have lived if they had just not kept shooting him again and again and again and again. He could have lived because he suffered 15 non-life-threatening gunshot wounds and only two fatal and they were at the very end, Dunn said in the statement. We looked at the sheriffs training. They are trained to shoot in two or three round bursts and then reassess. They did not do that here.

An email to the Sheriffs Department seeking comment was not immediately returned.

The Los Angeles County district attorneys office found that the deputies who opened fire, Richard Ochoa-Garcia and Jasen Tapia, acted in self-defense and declined to prosecute, according to a memorandum made public this year.

Both deputies said Robertson pointed the weapon at them before they opened fire, and one said he found Robertson holding live rounds in his hand after he was shot, according to the memorandum.

An autopsy found that Robertson was shot 16 times and was under the influence of marijuana and PCP at the time of the incident, according to the memorandum.

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.
Two days after the Supreme Court allowed President Trump to enforce his travel ban, a federal appeals court appeared skeptical that it complied with the law.

During a hearing in Seattle before a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued the revised ban issued in September was based on careful study and tailored toward specific conditions in various countries.

Hashim M. Mooppan, arguing for the Trump administration, noted the ban allows for waivers and must be reviewed every 180 days.

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The restrictions are not one-size-fits-all, he said during the videotaped hearing, which was streamed live on the 9th Circuit website.

The ban blocks visitors and immigrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea and limits travel for some officials from Venezuela.

The three 9th Circuit judges, who previously struck down an earlier version of the ban, appeared dubious of several of the governments arguments, including a contention that the court had only limited power to review Trumps action.

The hearing primarily focused on whether the ban violated a 1965 immigration law that prohibited discrimination based on nationality.

Judge Richard A. Paez said that law appeared to require restrictions on entry to the U.S. to be time-bound, but that Trumps order was indefinite.

The proclamation just seems to disregard everything Congress has laid out, Paez said.

Lawyers representing the challengers said the administration failed to provide an adequate rationale for why the restrictions were needed.

The ban bars more than 150 million people, mostly Muslims, from the U.S., Mitchell Reich, representing Hawaii, told the court.

The 9th Circuit is considering a ruling by a Hawaii judge who blocked nearly the entire ban on the grounds that it plainly discriminates based on nationality.

The Honolulu-based judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state of Hawaii.

The 9th Circuit panel includes Judges Michael Daly Hawkins and Ronald M. Gould in addition to Paez  all Clinton appointees  and had previously limited the scope of the Hawaii decision.

The panel had decided that the latest version of the ban could be enforced except against visitors who had close personal or professional ties to a person or entity in the U.S.

The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, leading to Mondays decision allowing full enforcement while the lower courts hear challenges.

The high courts decision, issued in a brief order with only two dissents, strongly suggested that it believes the current travel ban does not exceed Trumps powers or amount to unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims.

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Va., will hear arguments on a different challenge to the ban on Friday.

Both circuit decisions are expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Gould said the 9th Circuit would rule as soon as practical.

Judges are randomly selected to sit on cases, but Democratic appointees on the 9th Circuit outnumber Republican-named judges by about 2 to 1.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan

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There is no question that Abel Hidalgo has committed some awful crimes. As a gang member in Arizona, he accepted $1,000 in 2001 to murder auto repair shop owner Michael Cordova and also killed another man, Jose Rojas, who showed up at the shop at the wrong time. It took a year and an informants tip to lead police to Hidalgo, who by then was in federal prison for the drug-related murders of two women (one of them a former girlfriend) on a Native American reservation in Idaho.

Hidalgo is just the kind of person from whom society needs to be protected, and he should be locked away. Few would disagree about that. A more complicated question  even for those who support capital punishment  is whether an Arizona jury was right to sentence him to death.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states must design their capital punishment statutes so that only truly egregious crimes are punished by death. But Hidalgo argues that Arizona has added so many aggravating circumstances  factors that turn a run-of-the-mill killing into a capital crime  that pretty much any murder in Arizona can now qualify for the death penalty.

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The Times opposes the the death penalty under all circumstances.

Hidalgos argument circles back to two key Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s. The 1972 Furman decision struck down the death penalty entirely on the grounds that it was being applied so arbitrarily that it violated the 8th Amendments prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. States then began rewriting their death statutes to try to reduce their arbitrary application, and in 1976 the court ruled that the death penalty could resume in states with statutes limiting the death penalty to particularly atrocious crimes.

Now Hidalgo argues that Arizonas list of death-eligible crimes is so expansive that its entire capital punishment system is unconstitutional, and he has a point. If nearly every murder can be eligible for a death sentence, then the system has swung back to arbitrariness  leaving the decision whether to seek capital punishment up to the whims of prosecutors, and its application to juries. On that, Arizona shares some common ground with California, which has three dozen special circumstances that can make a murderer subject to the death penalty.

The Times opposes the the death penalty under all circumstances. We take a Green Eggs and Ham approach  we dont like it here, there or anywhere. But if states are going to engage in such a barbaric practice, they must at least follow the Constitution, and we hope the Supreme Court accepts the case and, at the very least, strikes down such broad definitions of death-eligible crimes.

But Hidalgo raises another, even more challenging issue and could conceivably lead to an even more radical decision. The death penalty, Hidalgo argues, is inherently unconstitutional because the nation has been unable to use it without descending into an unreliable system in which the poor and minorities are disproportionately affected, and too many innocent people have been sentenced to death. (There have been 117 death row exonerations since 1989.) The problems with the convictions range from prosecutorial misconduct to erroneous witness identifications to confessions gained through coercion or by playing on the inadequacies of the intellectually disabled. Exonerations often dont come until years after conviction. Meanwhile, executions often occur so long after the underlying crime was committed that they serve no penological purpose. So far this year, 23 people have been executed after spending an average of 19 years on death row.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer invited this sort of review in his dissent in the 2015 Glossip decision upholding use of the drug midazolam in lethal injections. Rather than try to patch up the death penaltys legal wounds one at a time, he wrote, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution. Whether Hidalgos case is the one that will finally get the court to recognize the fatal flaws in the death penalty is hard to say. But we hope so. Its a medieval system too fraught with human error to be relied upon for determining whether someone should live or die.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
Farewell, Al Franken, the latest well-known American public figure to see his career upended  very possibly destroyed  amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

His case was a complicated one. For one thing, most of the alleged incidents of groping and forcible kissing occurred before he became a U.S. senator. He has not been accused of harassing subordinates in the workplace or of breaking any laws. Whats more, the Minnesota Democrat still has not conceded that the allegations against him are true  rather, he has denied some and said he remembered others very differently.

But the writing was on the wall. Women in his own party  including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)  turned against him; Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer apparently decided it was time for him to go. The politics were such that Franken quickly realized his time had come, so he acknowledged that he could no longer effectively serve the voters of his state and said that he would resign during the next few weeks.

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It would have been wrong for Democrats to turn a blind eye to Frankens misbehavior because of his progressive politics.

What are we to make of it all? Naturally, some conservative commentators have dismissed the Franken episode as a bit of political theater crafted to give Democrats some sort of moral authority over Republicans. According to this argument, it was easy for Democrats to throw Franken under the bus because they know hell be replaced by another Democrat appointed by Minnesotas Democratic governor. Meanwhile, they have freed themselves to attack the many Republicans who are still backing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of molesting underage girls when he was a young prosecutor. And theyll be able to turn up the heat on the partys top office holder, President Trump, who has bragged about getting away with groping and unwanted kisses.

No doubt theres some truth to that cynical view. But it misses the bigger point: What Franken is accused of  a pattern of groping and forcibly kissing women, attested to now by six different women  is not just spirited hijinks or locker room talk. Nor are the people who find it repugnant merely puritans or prudes. Groping isnt sex; its aggression. Yes, on the scale of sexual misconduct, an opportunistic butt squeeze or a tasteless photo taken on a USO tour is a far cry from child molestation. But it is unacceptable, boorish, creepy and should not be ignored.

Whether Frankens alleged transgressions should qualify as career-enders is debatable. Certainly there are gradations of sexual misbehavior and not all allegations merit the same kind of response.

But the fact is, the country is in the midst of a tremendously important cultural reckoning that is more healthy than unhealthy, more to be applauded than lamented. It would have been wrong for Democrats to turn a blind eye to Frankens misbehavior because of his progressive politics.

The ongoing mistreatment of women at the hands of powerful men is real, and the scope and scale of the problem has been ignored for far too long. As we have said repeatedly on this page, the best outcome of this remarkable moment-in-time would be for women to feel empowered to come forward about sexual harassment and misconduct  and for men to understand that such misconduct has consequences.

Of course, the nation is still feeling its way through the new landscape, which makes it difficult to know with any degree of certainty what is the correct response in each case. Thats why its so important that there be standards and a functional process for properly evaluating allegations in the workplace (including Congress). Many of the current processes, such as the one employed by the U.S. House, seemed designed to discourage, rather than facilitate, reporting of sexual harassment. Thats changing, thank goodness. Zero tolerance for sexual misconduct does not mean every offense requires the same severe response, only that every offense should be given credence and dealt with appropriately.

We can speculate about whether the Democrats in the Senate would have ushered Franken out as quickly if Minnesota had a Republican governor. Frankly, it seems unlikely. Nevertheless, Frankens resignation sends a message that the #MeToo movement isnt just a fleeting vogue, but a shift, we hope, toward a fairer society in which one gender doesnt have to accept mistreatment at the hands of another.

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Large, high-intensity wildfires are an inevitable and natural part of life in California. The destruction of our communities is not. But many of the political leaders we elect and planning agencies we depend upon to create safe communities have failed us. They have allowed developers to build in harms way, and left firefighters holding the bag.

The fires raging in Los Angeles County and Ventura are an urgent signal that we need to start asking the hard questions  about the true cost of expanding the local tax base with new residences in high fire hazard zones. We need to stop having the same conversation over and over again, a conversation laced with non-sequiturs and focused on outdated, ineffective solutions. The devastating loss of life, the destruction of so many family homes, and the dangers faced by those who protect us demand nothing less.

Some blame the current rash of wildfires on dead trees in forestseven if those fires are nowhere near a forest, or dead trees. (Members of Congress seem to have bought this explanation and theyre now pushing a bill sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman [R-Ark.] that would encourage more logging in the West.) Some blame climate change, claiming, for example, that rising temperatures are responsible for the devastating Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa in October  despite the fact that a bigger and just as fierce fire burned much of the same area in 1964. (Climate change is making our fire seasons worse, but it isnt responsible for every big fire.) Yet others blame firefighters for creating dense stands of chaparral in fire suppression effortswhen thats the only way chaparral naturally grows, dense and impenetrable.

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We need to recognize that fire disasters arent natural, theyre social. And they require social solutions.

The standard procedure to reduce wildfire risk is to clear habitat. We have spent millions of dollars doing this for nearly a century. Nevertheless, our homes keep burning. Thats because while vegetation management such as fuel breaks and prescribed burns can help during non-extreme fire events, they do little to suppress extreme events. But if anyone questions vegetation management in the backcountry, the typical response is that the projects will work as designed for 90th percentile weather conditions. Thats absurd. Imagine if we designed buildings to withstand only 95th percentile earthquake movements, or what you would feel as a result of a magnitude 2.5. We need to protect communities from fires that actually do the damage.

How do we do this? As University of Colorado geographer Gregory Simon has observed, since we are choosing to spread cities farther and farther out into wildland areas, we need to recognize that fire disasters arent natural, theyre social. And they require social solutions.

Planning agencies need to push back against pro-development forces in government, whose willingness to build in known fire corridors borders on criminal neglect. The recent devastation of the community of Fountaingrove in Santa Rosa, for example, was both horrible and predictable. (The area has now burned twice in 53 years.) Local leaders need to restrict development in such areas.

In the smaller picture, local governments need to impose strict fire codes in new communities throughout California, require older communities to retrofit their properties, and enforce proper defensible space regulations. That means 100 feet of thinned vegetation, not bare ground. Hundreds of feet of bare ground make a home the target for wind-driven embers.

Such policies would cost significantly less than the $9.4 billion wildfire-related claims submitted statewide as of Friday.

We also need to examine the best practices of other fire-prone regions. Communities in Australia often install external, under-eave/rooftop sprinklers, which have proven quite effective in protecting structures during wildfires. (Australians understand that wet homes do not ignite.) Such systems should be standard in all new developments in high fire hazard zones. It is likely they would have protected many of the homes consumed in Venturas Thomas fire this week.

Agencies like Cal Fire need to begin addressing the question, How do we protect lives and property? rather than How can we stop a wildfire? Right now, Cal Fire is focused on the latter, with its misguided Vegetation Treatment Program. A focus on the former would mean at least noting land-use problems in planning documents. It would mean spending as much time and money on helping people retrofit homes as they do on vegetation treatments. Communities including Idyllwild and Big Bear have taken advantage of FEMA pre-disaster grants to replace flammable roofing and install ember-resistant vents. Such long-term solutions, unlike fuel breaks, do not require costly maintenance.

Trees, shrubs, grasses or homes will all provide the necessary fuel for a wildfire. Its part of Californias story. As we do with earthquakes and floods, our goal should be to reduce the damage when wildfires arrive, not pretend we can prevent them from happening at all. That mindset starts at the planning department, not the fire station.

Richard Halsey is the director of the California Chaparral Institute.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
To the editor: As a card-carrying member of the #MeToo society, I am disgusted with the Democratic Partys clean line in the sand over Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who announced his impending resignation on Thursday. (Al Franken says he will resign from the Senate after multiple allegations of sexual improprieties, Dec. 7)

Its already clearly understood that there is a major difference in approach to the issue of sexual assault between the parties (President Trump being a case in point). I would have been satisfied to see the allegations against Franken considered by the Senate Ethics Committee, as Franken himself suggested. But in what I view as a blatantly political push, Senate Democrats do not want to be put in the position of answering questions about Franken in their own elections.

I would have liked to have heard the accusers cases and Frankens defense. I believe a great injustice has been done to Franken, the people of Minnesota, Americans and, yes, the women of the #MeToo movement.

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Sharon Solomon, Murrieta

..

To the editor: The times we are living in are truly mind boggling.

With Franken now resigning  the latest instance of a man losing his job over allegations of sexual harassment  one cannot help but note the irony that the current president, who basically confessed on tape to having committed sexual wrongdoings, is not only still in the White House, but is also supporting a Senate candidate (Roy Moore) who has been accused of a much more frightening kind of assault.

And if thats not odd enough, the GOP is now spending money to help Moores campaign.

That Trump and Moore continue to push forward as others around them fall is disgraceful to our politics and society as a whole.

Conrad Angel Corral, Cathedral City

..

To the editor: Sorry as I am to see whats happening to Franken, I applaud the Democrats for taking the moral high ground on the problem of sexual harassment, even when that could cost them an important vote in the Senate.

Now lets see an equal number of Republicans take the same moral high ground against a possible future senator who is an accused sexual predator, and against a president who is a self-admitted sexual abuser.

Im dreaming, of course.

Myra Sosin, Irvine

..

To the editor: It appears that Franken will be a noteworthy alumnus of the two most outrageous comedy shows of the past half-century: Saturday Night Live and Congress.

Nels Norene, Camarillo

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Al Franken announced Thursday he will resign his Senate seat, falling to a whirlwind of sexual misconduct allegations like those that have enmeshed other politicians, business leaders and media figures across the country in recent months.

Hours later, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, a Republican who is the ideological opposite of the Minnesota Democrat, announced his resignation after the House Ethics Committee revealed it had opened an investigation of sexual harassment allegations against him. In a statement, Franks admitted he had asked two female subordinates about bearing a child for him by surrogacy.

In a brief but emotional speech on the Senate floor, with 22 Democratic colleagues and one Republican looking on, Franken invoked the accusations that have swirled around President Trump and the Republican candidate in next weeks special election for an Alabama seat in the Senate, Roy Moore.

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There is some irony that I am leaving while a man who bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who preyed on young girls runs for Senate with the full support of his party, Franken said.

The criticism of Trump set the tone for an unusual resignation speech. Frankens remarks did not include an apology  indeed, he appeared to have pulled back from a Nov. 16 statement in which he said he was ashamed of behavior that was completely inappropriate when it came to one of the women who has accused him of misconduct.

On Thursday, Franken said his past statements, in which he said women who raise such allegations should be heard, had given people the false impression that he was admitting guilt.

Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember differently, he said. And he drew a distinction between behavior before he was sworn in in 2009  most of the accusations were said to have occurred by then  and afterward.

Nothing I have done as a senator  nothing  has brought dishonor on this institution. And I am confident that the Ethics Committee would agree, he said.

The second-term senator once seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020 or beyond, earlier had said he would not resign but instead would submit to a Senate ethics investigation into his behavior.

On Thursday, however, he said he would leave office because Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus with all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day.

Franken did not set a specific day for his departure but said it would occur in the coming weeks.

His fate appeared sealed on Wednesday, when more than half of Senate Democrats issued calls for his resignation in an uprising led by female senators. That choreographed move came as yet another woman came forward to accuse Franken of unwanted advances before he was elected to the Senate, and Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York privately met with Franken to tell him the time had come to quit.

Franken made no mention of those demands in his remarks, other than to urge his colleagues to push back against Trump.

I have faith, or at least hope, that members of this Senate will find the political courage necessary to keep asking the tough questions, hold this administration accountable, and stand up for the truth, he said.

The resignation of Franken and Franks brought to three the number of lawmakers to step down this week in the rapidly spreading sexual misconduct scandal on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday, the senior member of the House, Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, quit after multiple complaints by aides that he had sexually harassed them.

Neither of the latest resignations will change the balance of power in Congress. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a fellow Democrat, will appoint a replacement for Franken to serve until a special election can be held in November 2018.

In a statement, Dayton said that events have unfolded quickly; thus, I have not yet decided whom to appoint, but added that he would make an announcement in the next couple of days.

A major question for Dayton is whether to appoint a caretaker who would fill the seat but not run in November  allowing Democrats to compete in a primary on an even field  or name someone who could build a record over the next 11 months and run as an incumbent. Whoever wins the special election will hold the seat until what would have been the end of Frankens second term, in January 2021.

Franks represents a heavily Republican district in the Phoenix suburbs.

Frankens departure marks the end of a legislative career that began when he squeaked into office on an exceptionally narrow win  a 312-vote victory he mentioned Thursday  then was reelected more easily and emerged as a well-regarded member of the partys growing liberal wing.

Franken had recent star turns on Capitol Hill: It was his questioning of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions at Sessions nomination hearing in early 2017 to become attorney general that spurred the Alabaman to assert that neither he nor others on the Trump campaign had any conversations with Russian officials during the campaign. That has been shown to be false.

A politician with an unusual entree into politics  an occasionally raunchy comedy career that included his years on Saturday Night Live  Frankens fall was as swift as his rise.

The first claim against him came from Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden, who on Nov. 16 accused him of aggressively kissing and groping her during a 2006 USO tour of the Mideast in which the two worked as performers. She also made public a picture taken of Franken with his hands outstretched near her breasts while she slept on a military plane as the performers returned from overseas, as if mocking the act of groping her.

Franken issued two statements apologizing to Tweeden and expressing disappointment with his own actions.

I respect women. I dont respect men who dont, Franken said. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.

Four days later, a woman named Lindsay Menz said that Franken placed his hand on her buttocks as they posed for a picture at the Minnesota state fair in 2010, when he was a senator.

Franken, in a statement, said that he had taken thousands of pictures at the fair and did not specifically remember Menz. He was sorry that she felt disrespected, he said.

Additional accusations continued through Wednesday, when Politico reported that a former congressional aide had come forward to claim that Franken had tried to kiss her when she accompanied her boss to an appearance on Frankens radio show in 2006.

The allegations against Franken came as a conversation about sexual harassment has spiraled nationally. Since early October, when movie producer Harvey Weinstein was forced out of his company after accusations of sexual harassment, abuse and rape surfaced, charges of sexual misconduct have ended  or severely damaged  the careers of many prominent men. On Capitol Hill, women have recounted numerous incidents of groping and unwanted advances from men, including officeholders, and said that Congress does not sufficiently protect them.

Besides Conyers, Franks and Franken, Rep. Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, another Democrat, has been accused of sexual aggression against a former campaign aide. He issued a limited apology and said he would not resign.

Another member of Congress, Texas Republican Blake Farenthold, is accused of harassing an aide who received an $84,000 taxpayer-financed settlement, which was revealed last week. The Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that it would open an investigation of his case as well.

Trumps alleged behavior was a central issue in last years presidential campaign after more than a dozen women accused him of inappropriate behavior, including sexual assault. Trump has consistently denied the accusations, despite boasting on a 2005 video made by Access Hollywood of his ability to grope women in a predatory manner. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed again last month that the president contends that all of his accusers are lying.

In recent weeks, Trump flung insults at Franken via Twitter.

The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps? Trump tweeted, misspelling the name of the fictional character, after Tweeden released the photo of Franken.

The Democrats handling of Franken unspooled slowly. Several senators immediately condemned him and said they would return campaign donations from Franken, who had transferred his pre-political celebrity into a high-profile fundraising role for party candidates. Few initially said that he should resign, instead either remaining silent or arguing that his case should be heard by the Ethics Committee.

The timing of the Franken accusations was highly uncomfortable, coming in the midst of a Democratic effort to defeat Moore, the Republican from Alabama who has been accused of making advances on and molesting teenagers as young as 14 when he was a local prosecutor in his 30s.

As the number of women accusing Franken rose, female Democratic senators in particular reached what one of them called a judgment that enough is enough. Risking party divisions, they unleashed their demands on Wednesday, and waited for a response.

In departing, Franken proved to be a party loyalist, as he sought to shift the focus on the freighted issue back onto Republicans.

For more on politics from Cathleen Decker 

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

ALSO:

Franken to announce plans as cascade of Democrats demands his resignation over groping allegations

The latest from Washington

Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

4:30 p.m.: This article with updated with the news of Rep. Trent Franks resignation and other additional details.

11:15 a.m.: This article was updated with additional detail on Minnesota Gov. Mark Daytons plans and other analysis.

9:30 a.m.: This article was updated with quotes from Frankens speech.

The article was originally published at 9 a.m.
Amid the talk of draining swamps, restoring political might to blue-collar America and turning off the spigot of taxpayer cash that showers Washington, a familiar battle cry is ricocheting through this city: Move the bureaucrats out.

It has the ring of a Trumpian fantasy. Dislodge arms of the federal government from Washington and reattach them in faraway places, spreading the wealth generated by these well-paid agency workforces and forcing senior bureaucrats to face the people they affect.

But the idea has established populist roots that spread across party lines, and they are reemerging at this unique political moment.

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The swaggering Interior secretary from Montana is putting the finishing touches on his plan to move the headquarters of three large public lands agencies to the West. The Stanford economist representing Silicon Valley in Congress sees opportunity to strategically seed regions of the country with pieces of the federal bureaucracy that can benefit them  and that they can benefit. The unlikely prospect of locating the Department of Transportation in Los Angeles is dangled by Republicans eager to show this crusade has bipartisan cred.

There hasnt been so much buzz about getting Washington out of Washington since Franklin D. Roosevelt sent 30,000 federal workers to the Midwest after a presidential commission advised such moves would ensure the prototypical federal employee remains one of the people in touch with the people and does not degenerate into an isolated and arrogant bureaucrat.

We need to find out what we can move, said Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Youngstown, Ohio, who is seeking to create a commission that would identify parts of the bureaucracy that could be moved to economically distressed regions like his. A fellow Ohio congressman and political rival, tea party activist Warren Davidson, has mounted a parallel bureaucracy migration push. He calls it the Drain the Swamp Act.

None of it is going over well with die-hard Washingtonians. Many scold that the idea will flame out the same way it did when the Clinton administration pondered and then dropped a big relocation initiative, and the Reagan administration did the same before it.

When the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee passed a Divest D.C. resolution this year that calls on all agencies to investigate moving out, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting House representative for Washington, warned that it would cost taxpayers a fortune, spread dysfunction throughout the bureaucracy and economically devastate the region.

Her Democratic allies on the committee were not impressed by the suggestion of the measures sponsor, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), that maybe it could lead to the Department of Transportation moving to the traffic capital of the nation, liberal Los Angeles.

Other Democrats, though, are intrigued by the possibilities of a redistributed bureaucracy.

There is a lot of wisdom outside the Beltway, said Rep. Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley Democrat. He wants agencies to more aggressively tap into it, as the Defense Department did when it set up a shop in Silicon Valley. Khanna, a Stanford economist, is among several in Washingtons intellectual circles who say fading factory and farm towns are well positioned to benefit from the kind of relocations envisioned in plans like Ryans.

There are other reasons the movement has regained steam of late. Although only 15% of the federal workforce is in Washington, it is where most of the top decision makers live and work. David Fontana, a professor at George Washington University Law School who is writing a book about decentralizing the federal government, says their bubble is growing evermore insulated from reality.

When you have this concentration of important people all in a single place, they form their own tight networks immune to other influences, he said. Decentralizing that power away from the capital has long been a trend in other countries, Fontana said. This is not a crazy idea.

The Trump administration will probably put it to the test soon. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a Montanan, is aiming to move the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation out of Washington as soon as logistically possible. Western politicians like Sen. Corey Gardner (R-Colo.) are cheering him on.

Ninety-nine percent of the nearly 250 million acres of land managed by BLM is west of the Mississippi River, and having the decision makers present in the communities they impact in Colorado or across the region will lead to better results, Gardner wrote in an email. He wants the bureau headquartered in his state, and Colorados Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, has joined Gardners lobbying campaign.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who held a hearing Thursday to examine Zinkes plan, said in an interview that his constituents are so distrustful of what they see as a heavy-handed National Park Service that he had to abandon his plan to elevate Dinosaur National Monument to a national park, a move that he hoped would lure a world-class research center to the state and boost tourism. Hes hopeful Zinkes blueprint would ultimately ease those tensions by bringing more public lands management out west.

Some Democrats, though, see a sham at a time Zinke has also been unabashed about his plans to shrink the Interior Departments workforce, which includes pushing workers out by relocating them. This reorganization is an exercise in weakening the Department of Interior by driving employees out, said Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Once theyre gone, the extractive industries will be able to check off the top item on their wish list  getting the stewards of public land out of their way.

A lot of the broader relocation debate is familiar. And some scholars project that though a few hundred jobs might get moved here or there, the broader vision of moving large pieces of Washington officialdom hundreds or thousands of miles away will end up in the shredder, as tends to happen with outsize plans to reinvent and reimagine government. The politics are messy, the logistics are tough, and the status quo is entrenched.

While this has perennial appeal, it is hard to pull off, said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College in Maine.

There is also the danger that it could create problems instead of solving them. Matt Lee-Ashley, a public lands expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, warns that accountability is undermined when agencies move away from the lawmakers and federal investigators who watch over them. He points to the scandal that enveloped the Minerals Management Service during the administration of George W. Bush. It had been set up in suburban Denver with a mandate to conduct the business of collecting $10 billion in royalties like a private company. It turned into a cesspool of corruption and bad behavior, according to federal investigators.

Of course, the argument that Washington is the cure for corruption and bad behavior can be a tough one to make. And the headaches and expense of shoehorning so many agency headquarters into this costly, congested town keep growing.

The projected costs of a new FBI headquarters in suburban Washington escalated until they hit close to $2 billion. The whole project was canceled over the summer amid the rising price and difficulties pulling off the land swap it was designed around.

There is all this unused office space outside of Detroit where the FBI could build for not much money, said Paul Kupiec, a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. That city, unlike suburban Washington, desperately needs the economic surge such an agency would bring, he said. Why are we spending billions of dollars on these headquarters in Washington?

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper
House Republicans approved legislation Thursday to keep the government running  something theyve rarely been able to do on their own. The Senate followed suit shortly thereafter, ensuring that a weekend shutdown would be averted.

Most House Democrats refused to support the stopgap measure, which extends government operations through Dec. 22. In a 235-193 vote, only 12 House Democrats voted yes.



For the record: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect House vote tally.

In the Senate, the vote was 81 to 14; all opposed were Democrats.

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Typically, House GOP leaders, even when they hold the majority, have been unable to pass spending measures without significant support from Democrats. They face problems because Republican deficit hawks often refuse to vote for any legislation that adds to the debt without slashing spending elsewhere, while GOP defense hawks demand more money for the military.

The House Democrats move put pressure on House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to assemble the votes from his own party.

Congress faced the possible shutdown threat because it failed to approve full government funding at the start of the fiscal year in October. Now another temporary measure will allow negotiations to continue.

Earlier Thursday, President Trump invited Ryan, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and the Senate leaders to the White House to begin outlining the contours of a broader deal to fund the government through fiscal 2018.

We hope that were going to make some great progress for our country, Trump said at the start of the meeting in the Oval Office.

But Congress faces a time crunch to reach agreement amid broad divisions. Thursdays vote essentially punts the potential crisis to right before the Christmas weekend.

Republicans, who have the majority in both houses of Congress, are expected to offer another stopgap measure at that time that would keep the government running into January. Leaders hope by then they will have a deal through September.

We hope we can come to an agreement, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the White House. Funding the government is extremely important. Helping our soldiers is very important and helping average citizens is very important. So were here in the spirit of Lets get it done. 

To pass a government funding bill Thursday without Democrats help, Ryan reached a deal with various factions earlier the week to secure the GOP votes.

Under the agreement, the next package, on Dec. 22, would increase military funding through the end of the fiscal year in September 2018 and extend an expiring surveillance program. But it included no fixes for Obamacare and immigration, as Democrats and some Republicans wanted.

It also included a commitment to consider deeper spending cuts in the new year.

To woo Democrats, the next package would also include money for the childrens healthcare program and emergency disaster funds for hurricane and wildfire recovery.

Thats not likely to be enough, though, to win over Democratic votes. Democrats also want a deal to help young immigrant Dreamers avoid the risk of deportation as Trump ends the DACA program that allows them to stay and work in the U.S.

And by January, some GOP lawmakers who met with Ryan will now expect to see big spending reductions  likely in welfare-related programs  before passing the final package.

The defense hawks and the fiscal hawks have come together, said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), who helped broker the deal as the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

The outcome, though, remains highly in doubt, in part because Republicans cannot yet guarantee they have the votes, and Democrats have not signed off on that deal. Pelosi was withholding the Democratic votes Thursday to extract priorities in the broader talks at the White House.

Even though some Democratic  and an increasing number of Republican lawmakers  have said they will block funding bills unless there is relief for immigrants, Pelosi insisted Thursday they wanted to reach a solution.

We will not leave here without a DACA fix, Pelosi said about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Pelosi said that if the temporary measure does not include any of the priorities they are negotiating for, Republicans will have to pass the bill on their own.

They either have the votes or they dont, she said. We have been outspoken about what our priorities are.

The White House meeting came after Pelosi and Schumer backed out of a session last week when Trump tweeted that he saw no deal to be reached with Democrats.

No deal was reached with Trump on Thursday, officials said, but talks will continue.

Trump and GOP leaders made the push for boosting defense funds, evening relocating the meeting to the Situation Room for a briefing from Defense Secretary James N. Mattis.

Republicans want to boost defense spending by $54 billion, avoiding automatic cuts from a previous budget deal, with a $37 billion increase in non-defense accounts. Democrats are making the case for parity.

The White House and GOP leaders also balked at linking the immigration issue to the year-end budget deal.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said they stressed that negotiations on immigration should be held separately on a different track, and not as part of the government funding bill.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

@LisaMascaro

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UPDATES:

3:30 p.m.: This article was updated after the Senate vote.

2:30 p.m.: This article was updated after the House vote to approve the spending measure.

This article was originally published at 6:25 a.m.
Four days after President Trump tweeted that the FBIs reputation was in tatters, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray staunchly defended the federal law enforcement agency Thursday, telling Congress there is no finer institution.

We are determined to be the very best at protecting the American people and upholding the rule of law, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.

Asked about Trumps disparaging tweet, Wray answered carefully.

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There is no shortage of opinions out there, he said. The FBI I see is tens of thousands of brave men and women that are working hard. The FBI that I see is people, decent people, committed to the highest principles of dignity and professionalism and respect.

He also acknowledged he doesnt use the presidents favorite form of social media.

My folks would tell you Im not really a Twitter guy, Wray said. Ive never tweeted, do not have any plans to tweet, dont really engage in tweeting.

The FBI has been buffeted by Republican criticism of the special counsels investigation of the Trump campaigns contacts with Russian officials, which Trump has called a hoax, and by Trumps more personal attacks on Wrays predecessor, James B. Comey.

In the hearing, Republicans pushed Wray to block any anti-Trump biases in the FBI while Democrats pressed him to stand up to the White House and keep the bureau independent.

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 president tweeted on Sunday that Comeys four years at the helm of the FBI left the bureaus reputation in Tatters  worst in History!

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the House committee chairman, appeared to back that view, saying Thursday that it does appear to me that, at the very least, the FBIs reputation as an impartial, nonpolitical agency has been called into question.

After Trump fired Comey in May, he said he made the decision because of what he called the Russia thing, the investigation into whether any of Trumps associates had aided Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was named special counsel and took over the probe in the political tumult that followed Comeys ouster.

Since then, Mueller has filed criminal charges against four of Trumps former aides. Two, including his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the committees ranking member, urged Wray to stand up to Trumps criticism.

I believe that these attacks on the FBI will grow louder and more brazen as the special counsel does his work and the walls close in around the president, and evidence of his obstruction and other misdeeds becomes more apparent, Nadler said.

Critics called the FBIs impartiality into question after Mueller removed Peter Strzok, a senior agent, from the case in the summer for sending text messages that could be considered anti-Trump. The agent previously had worked on the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server.

We do not know the magnitude of this insider bias on Mr. Muellers team, Goodlatte said. He called it absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation.

Wray defended Mueller, however, calling him very well respected and saying he concurred with a recent tweet by Comey that called the FBI honest, strong and independent. Wray likely would take over the Russia probe if Trump moves to fire Mueller.

Wray was confirmed by the Senate on Aug. 1. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Georgia and was a high-ranking Department of Justice official in President George W. Bushs administration. He was in private practice when Trump tapped him for the post.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

Twitter: @chrismegerian

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12:33 p.m.: Updated with additional quotes from the hearing.

8:40 a.m.: Updated with quotes from the hearing.

This story was originally published at 3 a.m.
Personally, I almost always believe the woman  any woman who accuses a man of sexual misbehavior or worse.

Its instinctive. To not, it seems to me, would be intellectually dishonest, especially in the political world. Partisan affiliation has nothing to do with sexual predation, whether it involves President Trump or Bill Clinton, Roy Moore or Rep. John Conyers Jr.

No political party has a monopoly on truth, justice and decency. There are nasty apples in every barrel.

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In Sacramento, where political pros of the opposite sex are looking at each other kind of funny amidst all the harassment accusations, I believe the female lobbyist who says she was trapped in a Las Vegas hotel bathroom last year by a California legislator who masturbated in front of her. She says he kept asking her to touch his genitals, and she refused. He finally ejaculated into the toilet, she says.

They were separately attending a co-ed bachelor party.

The lawmaker she named, Assemblyman Matt Dababneh (D-Woodland Hills), flatly denies her accusation. I asked him if anything about it was true.

No, he told me Tuesday. Im shocked, dismayed, heartbroken. I never even went to the bathroom.

But my thinking  and everyone elses Ive talked to  is this: What would any lobbyist hope to gain from lying about a legislator committing such an offensive act?

More from George Skelton 

Its a lobbyists job, after all, to persuade lawmakers to vote the way her clients want. Good relations and trust are the coin of the Capitol. (Yes, so are campaign dollars.) Theres nothing to be gained by a lobbyist alienating any legislator.

I asked Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who heads a sexual harassment subcommittee, what she thought lobbyist Pamela Lopez, 35, could achieve by lying.

Nothing, Friedman replied. Coming forward was disruptive of her career. Shes very courageous.

Then Friedman referred to all the women  legislative aides, lobbyists  who accused legislators of sexual harassment at a recent committee hearing she chaired.

I find these women to be credible, she said.

You look into their eyes and what they had to say was painful for them. I stand with them. I believe their stories.

I asked Dababneh, 36, why Lopez would lie. He replied: I have no idea. I dont know her that well. When youre a public figure, you know people can make accusations about you.

In his case, however, two women now have accused him. Jessica Yas Barker, 34, worked for Dababneh when he was the district office chief for U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch) in 2009. At a news conference with Lopez on Monday, Barker accused Dababneh, who is not married, of repeatedly regaling her with stories of his sexual exploits and telling her she dressed like a lesbian.

I considered Jessica a friend, Dababneh told me. In the past, she invited me to her birthday parties.

But listening to Dababneh, it sounded like he was thinking seriously of resigning  following the path of other lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct such as Conyers and former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima).

I know that Im innocent, he said, but I am looking into whats best for my district and best for the Assembly and best for me. Im weighing all my options and talking to advisors about them. Peoples opinions of me in Sacramento have to weigh on this because you need a good working relationship with colleagues.

Hes pretty much toast and seems to know it. For one thing, Dababneh faces a potentially tough reelection race next year. For another, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) has said that if an outside investigation substantiates Lopezs charges, I will ask for his immediate resignation and move for his expulsion if he refuses to resign.

Dababneh already has lost the chairmanship of the potent Assembly Banking and Finance Committee. Its a politically valuable juice committee that attracts piles of campaign donations from financial interests.

Coverage of California politics 

Asserts Friedman, whose San Fernando Valley district is next door to Dababnehs: If these serious allegations are found to be more than likely true, I do think it would be appropriate  to decide whether or not to expel him.

Should he be?

I think he should, she says. Personally, I think he should step down. Someone guilty of that shouldnt be representing their community.

Dababneh should probably give it up.

And legislative leaders should move swiftly to write a new sexual harassment policy, protect whistleblowers and install an independent investigation system. Also  equally important  publicly expose culprits.

Senate leaders shouldnt tarry in hiring an independent team of investigators to probe accusations of improper behavior against Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Los Angeles), who denies them. He also has lost his juice chairmanship of the Insurance, Banking and Financial Institutions Committee.

Senate Democrats apparently have taken one timely action that could help the fight against sexual harassment. They seem to have settled on Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) to be the first female president pro tem in the states history. Shes in line to replace termed-out Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) early next year.

Atkins would also be the first openly gay leader of the state Senate. And shed be the first former Assembly speaker in 146 years to become pro tem. There were two  Ransome Burnell and James T. Farley  back in the early years of statehood.

There werent many women around the Capitol back then. Todays much better. But some men still need to join the 21st century.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter

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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
The revolutionary gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 is best known for helping scientists edit a strand of DNA more precisely and efficiently than ever before.

Now, researchers have demonstrated another use for the CRISPR complex: changing which genes are expressed without altering the genome itself.

For the first time, researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego were able to use CRISPR to activate beneficial genes in live mice suffering from muscular dystrophy, Type 1 diabetes and acute kidney injury.

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In more than 50% of test cases, the animals health improved after the CRISPR intervention, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Previous work already had demonstrated that CRISPR could be used to alter gene expression in cells in a petri dish, but the new study represents the first time the technique has worked in a live animal, the scientists said.

The feat is significant.

We moved this technique one big step toward human therapy, said Hsin-Kai Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at Salk and co-first author on the paper.

Alexis Komor, a biochemist at UC San Diego who was not involved with the work, agreed. This is a really thorough in vivo study that begins to bridge the gap between using CRISPR-based tools in cells in a dish and using them translationally, she said.

CRISPR-Cas9 has been described as the Swiss Army knife of gene editing because it performs several different functions.

To start, it works like a search button on your word processor. Scientists can easily program it to find a specific string of letters in a DNA sequence.

Once it finds those letters, the complex morphs into a pair of molecular scissors. An enzyme, usually Cas9, binds to the chosen region and makes a two-stranded break in the DNAs double helix.

To replace a faulty gene with a functioning one, scientists also attach a string of DNA to the CRISPR complex. The hope is that the cell will use the new DNA to repair the cut to its genome.

This works a lot of the time but not all of the time, and it can lead to accidental deletions or insertions in the genetic code.

To circumvent this danger, researchers have experimented with using a handicapped version of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to deliver instructions that turn a specific gene on or off.

In this version of CRISPR, the Cas9 enzyme is deactivated. It still can bind to DNA, but it cant make a cut. Instead, it brings molecules along with it that can tell the cell it is time to activate a particular gene.

Aside from removing the possibility that mutations will make their way into the genome, other advantages of this technique are that its impermanent and adjustable, said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a developmental biologist at Salk and the principal investigator on the paper.

It also mimics the process that cells already use to tell their genes to turn on.

This is very close to what a cell normally does to activate a gene, so its not abnormal whats happening, he said.

Scientists have been trying to use CRISPR to give a cell marching orders since at least 2013. But it wasnt until now that anyone was able to make it work in a live animal.

The challenge, scientists said, was working out the delivery system.

Researchers often use a virus to insert new material into cells of living animals. However, this transport system has a size limit. It works only with relatively small molecules. The instructions that scientists used to activate genes on cells in a petri dish were too large to be transported by the virus.

To overcome this hurdle, the researchers separated the Cas9 from the instructions. They inserted the Cas9 into the cell with one virus and the marching orders with another one.

It took about four years of trial and error, but eventually they were successful.

Fumiyuki Hatanaka, a postdoctoral researcher at Salk and the other first author on the paper, recalled the first time he saw the physical results of his experiments. He was working with mice with weakened muscles to see whether he could use the systems to turn on genes that would promote muscle growth.

The first time we saw the muscle change, it was very obvious from the outside, he said. I remember I was really excited because nobody had ever demonstrated this phenotype in an animal before.

Belmonte said the whole lab was thrilled.

It was an important moment, he said.

Over the following months, the research team used its system to treat mice with other ailments, such as acute kidney injury, Type 1 diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

There is still much work to be done before this method can be used in human patients, however. Researchers said the next step is to see how it works in larger animals. Also, the safety of the system will need to be tested repeatedly.

Our final goal is treatment of disease, so we want to make sure this technique is really working, Hatanaka said.

Komor said the work is exciting, but she noted that the end result would be a disease treatment, rather than a cure.

So a patient would likely require repeated treatments depending on the particular disease, she said.

The benefit, though, is that the treatments can be tailored to a specific individual, the study authors said.

They also said their technique can be used on many diseases, including Alzheimers and perhaps the aging process overall.

When you do a medical act, you try to help, not hurt, Belmonte said. If we dont cut the genome, we dont introduce a problem, and that is the main advantage of this technique.

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Its the most wonderful time of the year  the time when the flu makes its presence known in the United States.

You may not have given influenza much thought, but thats OK  health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been doing it for you. They say the virus had been lying low through October, but thats changed since early November.

So far, the dominant strain of influenza here is of a sort that usually produces more misery. Its also the type thats less vulnerable to flu vaccines. Even so, health experts recommend that you get your annual flu shot, if you havent done so already.

Peak influenza activity usually occurs in the U.S. between December and February. In other words, the flu could strike at any time. Its time to start paying attention.

Heres a look at where things currently stand, courtesy of experts from the CDCs National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. They published an update Thursday in the agencys Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

7,039

Thats the number of flu specimens that have been confirmed by laboratory tests between Oct. 1 and Nov. 25. It may sound like a lot, but its a small fraction of the nearly 144,000 samples that have been tested.

90%

Thats the percentage of influenza A virus samples that were subtyped and found to be of the H3N2 variety. The other 10% were H1N1 viruses, remnants of the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

H3N2 was the most common strain of flu in Australia during its 2017 flu season, which just ended. Preliminary estimates from health officials there suggest the flu vaccine did a poor job of protecting people, with an effectiveness of just 10%. Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health warned that Americans could be in for a similar showing.

In recent past seasons in which A(H3N2) viruses predominated, hospitalizations and deaths were more common, and the effectiveness of the vaccine was lower, the CDC experts wrote in Thursdays Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

5

Thats the number of novel viruses that have been found in people for the first time. All five of these viruses are strains of influenza A, and all of them appear to be variants of flus that are known to circulate in pigs.

The people who were sickened with them were from Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio. Three of the five victims had recent, direct contact with pigs; the others were exposed to sick people, raising the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission. All five patients have fully recovered from the flu, though two required hospitalization.

3

The number of flu medications that are effective against the flu strains currently in circulation. They are: Tamiflu (oseltamivir), Relenza (zanamivir) and Rapivab (peramivir). The drugs stop new flu viruses from leaving their host cell and finding new cells to infect.

4

The number of states with widespread flu activity during the week ending Nov. 25. Three of them (Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina) had high numbers of patients with influenza-like illnesses, and one (Georgia) had moderate flu activity.

Flu and flu-like illnesses were judged to be low in 10 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia). The remaining 36 states had minimal flu activity.

The state of flu activity in Puerto Rico is unclear, the CDC monitors reported.

566

The number of patients hospitalized for a laboratory-confirmed case of the flu. That translates to an incidence of 2 patients per 100,000 Americans. About half of these patients were 65 years old or older.

5

The number of children who have died of the flu since Oct. 1. In past flu seasons, the total number of pediatric flu-related deaths has ranged from a low of 37 to a high of 171. During the swine flu pandemic, 358 children died of influenza between April 15, 2009, and Oct. 2, 2010.

Millions

The (rough) number of Americans who could be spared the flu by getting a flu shot, even if the vaccines effectiveness is somewhere between 30% and 60%. Vaccination would also prevent tens of thousands of flu-related hospitalizations.

38.6%

The percentage of Americans over the age of 6 months who had gotten a flu shot by early November. Thats slightly lower than it was at the same time last year, when 39.8% of Americans had been vaccinated.

Flu shot producers expect to make between 151 million and 166 million doses of vaccine this flu season. More than 148 million doses have been distributed already.

0

The number of universal flu vaccines approved for use. But scientists are working on them. They would train the immune system to recognize and attack parts of the flu virus that are common to all strains of influenza. That would eliminate the need for yearly flu shots.

karen.kaplan@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan and "like" Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Teachers instruct children how to make pastries at a kindergarten in Hohhot, capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Nov 30. The event, as part of a series of activities to celebrate the Banjin Festival, aimed to carry forward traditional Chinese culture and virtues, as well as to enrich the spiritual and cultural life of children. Banjin means "birth" or "thriving" in the Manchu language. On the 13th day of the 10th month in the Chinese calendar, the Manchu ethnic group celebrates the Banjin Festival with singing and dancing. [Photo/nmgcb.com]
Some weeks, I have to go looking for column ideas. More often, they come looking for me: typos in my reading material, questions from friends, oddities in my editing work.

For example, I keep seeing lead in place of led in my online reading and social media feeds. That is, when someone wants to use the verb to lead in the past tense, instead of saying, A beach cleanup effort led by local environmental groups removed three tons of trash, someone would write of an effort lead by environmental groups.

Its a very easy mistake to make. After all, lead the metal rhymes with led the past tense of the verb to lead. Because lead is a homograph with two different pronunciations, thats double the reason to get it wrong.

This is why careful writers should make an effort to get this one right. Lead when you mean led is a famously treacherous pitfall we should know to watch out for.

Heres a harder error to catch (I know, because I blew right past it in my editing work recently): The 500-thread-count linens, marble-appointed bath and expertly curated artworks envelope guests in luxury.

Im relieved to report that I caught the error on a second read. (Note to aspiring typo slayers: One pass is never enough).

The error is envelope. Thats a noun meaning a piece of paper folded to encase another piece of paper. The verb that means to surround, immerse or engulf is envelop. No E at the end. Make a note of it.

Another language issue that sought me out last week came in the form of an email from my friend Tracy. Shes an editor for hire, and her corporate clients sometimes challenge her wisdom. She turns to me for backup. Here, slightly disguised, is a sentence that one of her clients wanted to argue about.

We welcome the childrens visits because we have lots of elderly people here, like my husband and I, who dont get out as often as we used to.

Tracys question, which you may have seen coming, is whether that I should be me.

My answer, which you also may have seen coming, is yes. It should be me.

Harder to guess, however, is why. Grammar sleuths might begin by parsing the sentence or dropping my husband and to see how each pronoun would look all by its lonesome. This works great, because you can clearly see that like me is better than like I.

But theres another way to get to the correct answer, requiring only a basic knowledge of prepositions.

Prepositions take objects: until tomorrow, with cheese, at him, to her. Most personal pronouns have two forms: subject and object. I and me, he and him, we and us, they and them  in each pair, the first is a subject, the second an object.

Like, in our sentence, is a preposition. (Yes, it can also be a verb or an adjective, but not this time.) The object of a preposition, by definition, must be in object form. Thats why like my husband and me is right. The preposition like requires the object me instead of the subject I.

Our final came-looking-for-me grammar issue arrived via a friend who sent me a transcribed Prairie Home Companion sketch with a funny take on common grammar errors. Most of the sketch was exactly right, but there was one place where the grammar went wrong.

In the sketch, Garrison Keillors character told a waitress irregardless isnt a word.

Thats just not true. It is a word. True, its probably born of an error  a blending of irrespective and regardless. But irregardless is listed in most dictionaries. It means regardless.

Of course, its a terrible choice  preferred over regardless by exactly no one in the whole wide world. But that doesnt mean irregardless is not a word.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of The Best Punctuation Book, Period. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.
After weeks of practice, about 55 area students will perform in the American Ballet Theatres production of The Nutcracker starting Thursday at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.

Students from the American Ballet Theatre William J. Gillespie School at the Segerstrom Center will join a cast of professional dancers such as Misty Copeland, ABTs first African American principal dancer.

Ava McLarand, 15, right, of Newport Beach rehearses for The Nutcracker at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. (Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer )

Tais Vinolo, a student at the Gillespie School, said participating in the production for a second time has helped her enjoy rehearsals for the shows.

The 14-year-old, who is originally from France and now lives in Costa Mesa, performs as a soldier in a battle scene and wears a tall black and gold hat.

Tais said she always dreamed of moving to Los Angeles and pursuing a career with the American Ballet Theatre.

Im more confident and excited this year and less nervous, she said between rehearsals this week.

Alaine Haubert, principal of the Gillespie School, said there wouldnt be a Nutcracker performance without the students who auditioned for the production.

The students of the ABT Gillespie School are receiving pre-professional training, which means they are not only fine-tuning technical skill but also are aware that they are learning an art form where their creativity is encouraged, Haubert said.

Owen McLarand, 11, of Newport Beach gets ready this week for his role as a mouse in the American Ballet Theatre production of The Nutcracker, running Thursday through Dec. 17 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. (Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer )

Ava McLarand of Newport Beach  a Gillespie student and a polichinelle, or clown, in the show  said rehearsing with the professional dancers is an unreal experience.

That may be me up there one day, living like one of them, said Ava, 15.

This is her third time participating in The Nutcracker.

Her brother Owen, 11, who plays a mouse, said his favorite part is playing with props.

The Nutcracker runs Thursday through Dec. 17 at the Segerstrom Center, 600 Town Center Drive. For more information, call (714) 556-2787 or visit scfta.org.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella

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While the raging Creek fire is miles away from Glendale and Burbank, its influence is still being felt in the two cities as ash and smoke from the flames have impacted air quality.

Authorities warned residents in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding area to stay indoors as the air quality dropped to unhealthy levels because of the fire. The South Coast Air Quality Management District said people living in the impacted areas should avoid vigorous indoor or outdoor activities, and they should keep all doors and windows closed.

Driving over the hill into Burbank this a.m. , miles from the fires, yet smoke so visible. My prayers w/ my SoCal neighbors whose homes are under threat. #CreekFire #VenturaFire #SkirballFire pic.twitter.com/XkcYzedDcz  Amy Aquino (@aquino_amy) December 6, 2017

Local schools have taken heed of the warning.

Matt Hill, superintendent for the Burbank Unified School District, said in a statement the worsening air quality led the citys public schools to keep students indoors on Thursday.

Glendale public schools are following suit, with Glendale Unified School District advising school officials to avoid strenuous outdoor activities for students and staff.

GUSD schools and EEELP programs are operating on regular schedules today. All schools have been advised to avoid strenuous outdoor activity due to poor air quality.  Glendale Schools CA (@GlendaleUSD) December 7, 2017

As of noon Thursday, the Creek fire had burned more than 12,000 acres with 10% contained. According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, the fire broke out early Tuesday morning near Little Tujunga Canyon Road in the Sylmar area, where it spread rapidly as a result of dry conditions.

The fire has directly affected approximately 150,000 L.A. County residents, and a mandatory evacuation order was set up for residents living north of the Foothill (210) Freeway between Glenoaks Boulevard in Sylmar and Haines Canyon Avenue near the western edge of La Crescenta.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc
Students from near and far had a ball at La Canadas Jet Propulsion Laboratory Friday, participating in an annual Invention Challenge that pits innovative youth against JPL engineers and scientists to see who can build the smartest, most efficient machine.

And while the answer may seem like a foregone conclusion, students on some 21 teams smoked their adult counterparts in the 20th annual event, the Wiffle Ball Loft Contest, which required competitors to craft a device that could load 10 plastic balls into a plastic tub exactly 6 meters away within one minute.

Devices had to be operated by a single movement, such as cutting a string or pulling a pin, and no human power could be used to start the machine. Winning the top prize were Diamond Bar High School students Megan Ho and Joshua Chou, both 14, whose machine Project Defying Gravity landed eight balls into the tub in 28.94 seconds.

By comparison, Austin DeShong was the top performer among JPLers, sinking three balls in 56.38 seconds.

Last year, a boys team traveled from their school in Tanzania to compete as guests of event founder and JPL employee Paul MacNeal. This year, three international teams  one Tanzanian and two from Ethiopia  competed alongside top performers in a Nov. 18 regional qualifying competition.

Other newcomers included student teams brought by Heart of Los Angeles, a nonprofit group that provides after-school programs for underserved youth. A team from L.A.s New Village Girls Academy placed third in the regional contest with a device operated by a kicking mechanism.

When it was their turn inside the arena, the machine disappointed with only one ball hitting the bucket. Katherine Garcia, 16, explained how the team built LEGO models and prototypes before selecting their final design.

I think it wasnt strong enough, or wasnt shooting the way we wanted it to go, she said of the devices JPL performance.

Team member Kenia Rivera, a senior, guessed they performed 50 or more test runs for the regional competition. By the time they got to the NASA facility Friday, she was a ball of nerves.

I didnt want to compete, because I was so nervous, Rivera said, adding that the challenge was frustrating but also fun and surprising. I never thought we were going to build something like this.

Cristian Bonilla, a 16-year-old student at Orthopedic Hospital Medical Magnet High School, competed as part of HOLAs boys team, which had a fair regional showing but also sunk just one ball Friday. Studying with hopes of becoming a nurse, Bonilla said the program helped him understand how doable engineering can be.

Being at JPL has brought it into my horizon, he said. Even though we didnt do as great as other people, it feels great to come this far.

MacNeal said over the years, student teams have begun to beat out the JPL contingent, proving the whole point of the contest.

Engineering is fun, he said of the events raison detre. Thats it.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
La Canada Unified School District swore in three new board members Tuesday, then immediately got to work appointing a new president, vice president and clerk and outlining the next steps on Measure LCF following Novembers approved bond vote.

Incumbents Dan Jeffries and Kaitzer Puglia and newcomer Joe Radabaugh took their oaths of office, and outgoing board member David Sagal praised the efforts of the board and school district in a poignant farewell address.

It was one of the best times of my life, serving on this board, Sagal said.

During the reorganization, Puglia was appointed to be the next board president, with board member Brent Kuszyk appointed vice president and Radabaugh selected to serve as clerk. Supt. Wendy Sinnette praised outgoing President Jeffries for his diplomacy, fairness and legal acumen.

We are truly blessed to live in such a great community, Jeffries said. Our work is cut out for us. The community expects funds to be spent wisely.

Getting down to business, the board approved a workshop, for Jan. 29 from 6 to 8 p.m., to cover the timeline for implementing the districts facilities master plan, partially funded by the Measure LCF bond. David G. Casnocha, of Stradling Yocca Carlson and Rauth, the districts bond counsel, will be on hand at that workshop.

Sinnette said the district has received a 30-day timeline from county registrars office that the governing board must accept the election results.

This is an important trigger, she said. Once we certify election results, the district has 60 days to install a bond oversight committee.

The board will need to determine when first issuance of funds would be the most timely, Sinnette said, a discussion that will take place in the January workshop discussion. Chief Business and Operations Officer Mark Evans said the district has developer fees and capital improvement funds that can be spent before tapping into the bond dollars.

Sinnette added the district will send mailers and issue a press release to LCUSD stakeholders explaining the bonds program.

Also Tuesday, officials approved a resolution rescheduling municipal elections from odd to even year elections, which shifts the 2019 governing board election to 2020. The La Canada City Council approved a similar switch Tuesday, complying with the 2015 California Voter Participation Rights Act.
Theres no mistaking Naomi Wu amid Shenzhens deliverymen and investors.

Her long, auburn-dyed hair falls over tight, low-cut tops; her miniskirts reveal more. Wu often wears these outfits in do-it-yourself videos that show her devising an LED-lit skirt or creating heels that hide hacking tools.

Wu calls herself a sexy cyborg. She also calls herself a maker, the term for tech hobbyists who build creative DIY projects. Her endeavors have earned Wu 157,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 43,000 Twitter followers in a country that blocks both platforms. She has more than 700 supporters on Patreon, a crowd-funding site.

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But in recent weeks shes received even more attention  first from skeptical online commentators and then from Dale Dougherty, a California executive who helped launch the maker movement. They accused her of fraud.

Their remarks not only challenged her brand, they dismissed her ability. They took unsupported aim at an aspiring woman in a male-dominated industry  and, in particular, a young Chinese female who likes to dress revealingly.

That set off a social media tirade that spread across continents, underscoring the rigidity of gender stereotypes and the Internets powerful role in determining a persons fate.

It doesnt make sense, said Wu, 23, speaking in rapid-fire English outside one of the worlds largest electronics markets. Competent women never doubted me.

Wu works as a freelance web developer in Chinas electronics manufacturing hub, a southeastern coastal city that grew from a collection of fishing villages into one of the countrys wealthiest metropolises.

The city is home to Tencent, the social media company that temporarily surpassed Facebook in market value. Apple recently established a research and development center here. Wu takes pride in her city, like she does in her creations.

Most of her projects center around wearable technology for women, such as LED eyelashes or a makeup case that holds a tiny computer. She also tests products in her videos, and films 360-degree tours around Shenzhens tech spaces.

Naomi Wu purchases components in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhens electronics mecca. (Jessica Meyers/for the Los Angeles Times )

Im determined, diligent, and I work hard, Wu said, striding through Huaqiangbei, a mecca of electronics goods shipped throughout the world. Wu, clad in a sea-green jumpsuit and white lace-up boots, ignored the male eyes peering from beyond mountains of mouse pads and microchips. Visibility is very important to me, she said.

Even before the accusations, online comments questioned Wus near fluent English (she was an English major) or her technical skills (she taught herself to code because she was an English major and needed work).

But the attacks grew more pronounced this fall, when an anonymous blog post claimed Wu was the face of a boyfriends operation. Wu insisted the projects were her own creations.

Then Dougherty got involved. Hes often referred to as the father of the movement, which promotes everyday creators from basement tinkerers to inventors of talking robots. Dougherty also runs Maker Media, a San Francisco media company that publishes Make: magazine and organizes events for the industry known as Maker Faires.

Wu had criticized Dougherty online for excluding her from such events and attacked him personally. He responded in November.

Naomi is a persona, not a real person, he tweeted. She is several or many people.

Dougherty told his nearly 26,000 followers to send him a direct message for more information. Then the small spat turned into an international battle.

Wu said employers started pulling out of potential deals or asking more questions about her work.

Other makers began demanding Doughertys resignation. Andrew bunnie Huang, an American researcher and hacker, wrote a 2,345-word defense of Wu on his blog.

Its not a big leap for me to accept Naomi as a Maker, he said in the post. I do my best engineering when sitting half-naked at my desk.  I dont have the strength to challenge these social norms that associate certain dress with intelligence. Secretly, Im glad someone is.

Naomi is just a flash point ...because she is extremely vocal and not ashamed of her femininity.  Andrew bunnie Huang, an American researcher and hacker

Two days after his tweet, Dougherty apologized. He followed it with a more comprehensive mea culpa in Make:, calling his comments completely inappropriate.

His words, he said, reflected my unconscious biases; and the negative impact of my tweets were amplified by the fact that I, a white, Western, male CEO of a key company in the Maker community publicly questioned a young, female, self-employed Chinese maker.

He offered to put Wu on the cover of the magazine and include a story about her work. He also invited her to participate in an advisory board for events in China.

Dougherty, in an email, confirmed the magazine is working on a piece about Wu for the next issue, but declined to say more.

Dale was wrong, and he knows that, said Sherry Huss, vice president of Maker Media. It was really just an unfortunate situation.

Huss, who helped start Maker Faires 12 years ago, said the movement is by nature an inclusive one. Its people that are curious and have a creative mind, thats the group were trying to appeal to, she said.

Maker Media partners with another company for the Shenzhen fair, which Huss attended in mid-November. Event organizers pulled together a meeting of 13 women to discuss their experiences.

The conversations have started and the healing has begun, and thats a good sign, Huss said.

Wu considers the situation resolved  although it refuses to die on the Internet.

Naomi is just a flash point for the issue because she is extremely vocal and not ashamed of her femininity, Huang said in an email. Its kind of disappointing that it takes someone so far from the average to make progress.

Mao Tse-tung, the founder of modern China, encouraged women to join the labor force in his quest for an industrialized society. Despite that legacy, Chinese women still struggle to achieve top positions in academia and politics. No woman has reached the highest rung of power, a seven-member leadership panel. Only one serves on the 25-member Politburo.

Chinese women find more success than those in the U.S. when it comes to tech, according to a 2016 report by Silicon Valley Bank. Nearly 80% of Chinese startups include one high-level woman, it concluded, compared with 54% of American startups.

Zhou Qunfei, founder of touch-screen maker Lens Technology, labored in factories before she ran them. Now shes the worlds richest self-made woman. Hu Weiwei, a 35-year-old former journalist, heads Chinas hugely successful bike-sharing service, Mobike.

That advancement only goes so far. The World Economic Forums global gender gap index ranks China at 100 out of 144 countries, above Turkey and Korea but below Tajikistan and India. Despite Chinas increasing affluence, its spot has fallen for nearly a decade.

Discrimination persists in more nuanced ways, analysts say, from not hiring a woman near childbearing age to assuming a foreign male has more expertise.

Theres this perception that if you are the woman, you must be the translator, said Law Yee Ping, founder of Hong Kong Innovation Services, which works with makers in Shenzhen.

Law admitted to her own bias when she first heard about Wu. On second thought, I said, We have a right to choose what we wear.

Much like her wearable designs, Wu considers her visibility a tool to defy norms of appearance and profession. That commitment, she said, has only intensified.

Every day now, Im doing everything I can to promote women in tech, she said, before resuming her shopping  for a new microcontroller.

Meyers is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @jessicameyers

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Across Taiwan, his image and name are everywhere  on statues and street signs and at a lavish memorial hall in the capital. Chiang Kai-shek was long heralded as a national hero who worked to unify China and fought both the Japanese and the communists.

But now many Taiwanese view Chiang as a despot who repressed island culture and unleashed a deadly campaign against dissent. This week, Taiwans parliament passed a bill calling for a full investigation into the authoritarian rule of the late strongman while erasing his name and likeness from landmarks across the island.

The parliament dominated by a party that opposes Chiangs Nationalists approved a transitional justice bill late Tuesday to review what became known as the White Terror, a period that elders still remember in horror.

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In the normal course of things, we havent done enough for justice, said Yang Chen-lung, 65, executive director of the Memorial Foundation of 228, a nonprofit for victims of the crackdown. Thats because there was no law that lets us pursue this, so its something weve looked forward to. Clearly Chiang was the mastermind behind White Terror, he said.

The foundation takes its name from Feb. 28, 1947, when protesters took to the streets of Taipei a day after government agents beat a woman who was selling unlicensed cigarettes and shot and killed a passerby.

As many as 28,000 people were believed killed after Chiang ordered a massacre of participants in protests against his rule in 1947.

Others suspected of questioning his rule were killed or sent to prison in the decades that followed, the period known as the White Terror. Some studies say 140,000 people were imprisoned and thousands were executed. Chiang died in 1975 and Taiwan embraced democracy in the late 1980s.

Chiangs Nationalists had fled to Taiwan in the 1940s after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Tse-tungs Communists.

The bill to investigate Chiangs rule was proposed this year because the Nationalist Partys chief opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party, controls the presidency as well as parliament. The Nationalists had controlled one or both until May 2016.

President Tsai Ing-wen backs the legislation and is expected to sign it by years end.

In February she called for opening classified documents from Chiangs rule and within three years completing a report on suppression of protests that began Feb. 28, 1947.

Chiang Kai-shek in 1943, before the Nationalists fled the Chinese mainland for Taiwan. Among his many titles was generalissimo. (Anonymous / AP )

The bill would allow that investigation to proceed, said Liu Chao-hao, a ruling party lawmaker who worked on the legislation.

People harmed during the White Terror expect the bills outcome to give them a sense of justice, Liu said. This is totally positive, 100%, he said.

Many Taiwanese welcome the chance to assess Chiangs rule.

I believe the majority [of Taiwanese] prefer to fairly and reasonably and apolitically review what Chiang did, not to hunt down his past in a parochial and political way, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the College of International Affairs at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

The legislation will require government offices and schools to remove statues of Chiang. Schools as well as streets bearing his name across the island of 23 million people should eliminate those references, according to the bills text.

Under then-President Chen Shui-bian, who was modern Taiwans first non-Nationalist leader, the government encouraged schools and other institutions to remove the balding, smiling effigies of Chiang from their campuses. About 200 statues were removed and ended up in a park in Taoyuan, where they are a tourist attraction.

Tourists pass statues of the late Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek at a park in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan. Tributes to Taiwans former leader would be removed across the island under legislation approved by lawmakers. (Sam Yeh / AFP/Getty Images )

An untabulated number of other institutions retain their statues, while roads in most cities bear Chiangs nickname Zhong Zheng. The name is ubiquitous, as common as Broadway or Main Street in the U.S.

The bill passed in line item form, making it hard to calculate a vote percentage, but ruling party lawmakers say most of their members favored it.

Chiangs legacy is complicated, to say the least. Over the decades the U.S. viewed him as an ally, but also with suspicion.

Chiang succeeded Sun Yat-sen as the leader of the Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang, which helped overthrow Chinas last imperial dynasty and establish the Republic of China. When the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, they repressed local languages and customs.

In recent years, Taiwan removed his name from Taipeis international airport and his likeness from currency.

Jennings is a special correspondent.
The High Court of Justice in London has dismissed the claims filed by Stockman Interhold S.A. (British Virgin Islands) challenging the awards rendered in the London Court of International Arbitration proceedings between Arricano Real Estate Plc (Cyprus) and Stockman (the LCIA Arbitration).

The LCIA Arbitration concerns a dispute over the ownership of Assofit Holdings Limited, a holding company, which held the Sky Mall shopping center and in particular, the transfer of Stockman's shares in Assofit to Arricano.

According to a report of Arricano on the website of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the High Court of Justice issued its judgment on November 30, 2017.

In particular, the court upheld the Seventh award dated 5 May 2016. By the award, the tribunal ruled that Stockman must transfer, or procure the transfer of the option shares to Arricano within 30 days of the award, and Arricano shall pay Stockman the option price minus damages, which nets out to nil.

The court rejected Stockman's applications to set aside or remit the Fifth and Seventh Awards. The court agreed with the tribunal's determinations on jurisdiction and found that it did have jurisdiction to order the relief it did in the Seventh Award.

"This result wholly vindicates our position and the previous Awards made by the High Court. Stockman's challenges have all failed and it is now in the interests of all parties in Ukraine to put an end to this matter," CEO of Arricano Mykhailo Merkulov said.
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on Thursday denounced as political persecution a judges demand that she be arrested on suspicion of treason for allegedly covering up Irans purported role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here.

This is an invented case about acts that dont exist, Fernandez, recently elected a senator, told reporters at the national Congress as allied lawmakers surrounded her. What is unfolding is an absurdity, charged Fernandez, who was president from 2007 to 2015.

Earlier Thursday, a federal judge had asked Argentinas Senate to remove Fernandezs immunity as a lawmaker so that she could be arrested on suspicion of treason.

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Fernandez was elected to the chamber in October and will take office Sunday.

The widow of former President Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez has been a polarizing figure in Argentine politics for more than a decade and faces several other criminal charges, including corruption, money laundering and financial mismanagement while in office.

The treason allegation unveiled Thursday represented the first time that a judge had requested Fernandezs arrest.

The judge, Claudio Bonadio, alleged that a 2013 deal reached while Fernandez was president helped shield Iranians allegedly involved in Argentinas worst terrorist attack: the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Assn. center in Buenos Aires. The attack killed 85 and wounded hundreds.

The aftermath of the bombing has left a legacy of swirling allegations and broad mistrust in the nations political and law enforcement systems.

Irans government has repeatedly denied any role in the attack and refused to hand over suspects in the case.

Fernandez has called her mounting legal woes a political vendetta and denied all wrongdoing. Still a key figure in the Argentine left, she blamed her major political antagonist, President Mauricio Macri, a center-rightist, for orchestrating these maneuvers and ... persecution.

Macris Cabinet chief, Marcos Pena, said the treason case was strictly judicial in nature and required a well-done investigation and thorough defense of those accused.

In his request for the ex-presidents arrest, the judge backed a finding by a former prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, that the 2013 agreement brokered during Fernandezs administration ensured that no charges would be pursued against Iranians allegedly linked to the attack. Fernandez defended the accord as a comprehensive effort to solve the mystery of the terrorist strike.

Nisman, 51, was found dead in his apartment here on Jan. 18, 2015, of a gunshot wound to the head. His death came days after accusing then-President Fernandez of covering up Irans role in the bombing.

Authorities initially ruled the prosecutors death a suicide. But Argentine officials are investigating the possibility that Nisman was killed.

The case of Nismans death has become a highly charged political issue here. Fernandez says her government had no role in the death.

On Thursday, several former aides of Fernandez were arrested on the same treason charges that the prosecutor is pursuing against the ex-president. Former Foreign Minister Hector Timerman was being held under house arrest because of failing health, authorities said.

It is unclear whether the Argentine Senate will honor the judges request and move to strip immunity from Fernandez, who still has a substantial political base despite her legal problems.

Special correspondent DAlessandro reported from Buenos Aires and Times staff writer McDonnell from Mexico City.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

UPDATES:

3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting, including reaction from Fernandez.

11:10 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 6:30 a.m.
Protests erupted throughout the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and cities across the Middle East on Thursday in what was dubbed a day of rage after President Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Trump announced on Wednesday that he would officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, sparking worldwide condemnation, including from Washingtons closest allies in the region. Some Palestinian leaders called for a new intifada, or uprising, in response to the move.

In the wake of his speech, Palestinian factions called for a general strike on Thursday, and the Palestinian Education Ministry canceled classes so that students and teachers could participate in the demonstrations.

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Thousands of residents poured into major thoroughfares in Ramallah, Jericho, Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank as well as East Jerusalems Damascus Gate.

Although both sides have long claimed their right to Jerusalem, recent iterations of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have designated East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

How can the president of the United States flout international resolutions and ignore the feelings of millions of Arabs and Muslims? asked Suha Arrar, a 43-year-old employee at the Palestinian Ministry of Health. She said she had come out to protest the unprecedented arrogance of the U.S. administration.

Ahmed Ghneim, a leader with the Palestinian faction Fatah, expressed his rejection of the Trump decision, adding that the honeymoon between Trump and Netanyahu would not come without costs.

For 30 years, the Palestinian leadership thought the U.S. was the key to the solution, he said. Trumps decision proved this key is not suitable for any solution.

Mustafa Barghouthi, a Palestinian politician in the West Bank, insisted that Trumps decision forbids Palestinians from having any contact with the U.S., which, he said, has completely lost its role as a broker of the peace process.

We must now unite behind an uprising that is based on nonviolence as Palestinian protests succeeded in removing the electronic gates at the entrance to the Aqsa Mosque in the summer.

Clashes flared between the protesters and Israeli troops, who deployed water cannons and fired what appeared to be rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

At Qalandiya, the checkpoint for Palestinians crossing between the West Bank and East Jerusalem, young Palestinian men hunkered behind garbage containers before hurling rocks at nearby Israeli soldiers firing tear gas.

Video uploaded to social media showed a throng of Israeli soldiers racing through a deserted thoroughfare in Hebron while others grabbed a number of demonstrators and led them away.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement on Thursday it had treated more than 108 wounded in Gaza and the West Bank, adding that a number had been shot with live ammunition.

In the largely Christian town of Beit Jala, a man was taken into custody after he rammed a truck into several vehicles, injuring at least seven people and damaging at least 22 vehicles, witnesses said. In protest, residents blocked a main road, demanding that Palestinian police provide them with proper protection. Some speculated that the unidentified driver, who fled the scene and was later captured by Israeli forces and turned over to Palestinian authorities, targeted Christians because of Trump, but that could not be confirmed.

Ismail Haniyah, head of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, said Trumps announcement marked a new equation in the Satanic alliance between the U.S and Israel that could only be confronted by launching the spark of a new intifada. He added that Jerusalem was unified, and was Palestinian.

There is no existence for Israel on the land of Palestine. It has no presence on the land of Palestine for it to have a capital, he said. We declare that what is called the peace process has been buried and forever.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority president and head of Fatah Mahmoud Abbass began a round of diplomatic maneuvering by meeting Jordans King Abdullah in Amman on Thursday, where police had cut off roads leading to the U.S. Embassy in the West Amman neighborhood of Abdoun to prevent protesters from reaching its grounds.

Both leaders, according to a statement issued by Jordanian state Petra, affirmed that any measure to tamper with the historical and legal status of Jerusalem is null and void and will only lead to more tension and violence in the region and the world.

Other regional governments echoed the sentiment, with Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying on Thursday it was a step that would throw this region into a ring of fire.

What would you like to do [with this step], Mr. Trump? What kind of stance is it? said Erdogan in a press conference in Ankara, according to Turkish state news operator Anadolu.

The Iraqi foreign ministry also summoned U.S. ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silliman to register its displeasure.

Even arch-rivals Tehran and Riyadh, in a rare moment of unity, described the decision as a bad one, with Tehran saying it would incite Muslims, spark an uprising and encourage extremism, and Riyadh calling it an irresponsible and unwarranted step.

Still, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif couldnt resist taking a jab at the Saudis on Wednesday, tweeting that if half the money spent by some of the rulers of the area to encourage terrorism, extremism, sectarianism and incitement against neighbors had been spent to liberate Palestine, we would not today be facing this American advance.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his historic announcement, insisting that other countries would soon follow suit and move their embassies to Jerusalem.

The Czech Republic, indeed, declared West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel shortly after Trumps statement.

Good morning and welcome to Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state of Israel, said Netanyahu to a group of diplomats on Thursday in Jerusalem, according to the local daily newspaper Times of Israel. If you werent aware of that until yesterday, you are now. But weve been aware of it for 3,000 years.

In his speech, Trump said it was time for the many [in the region] who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. Yet the move appeared to have emboldened the very forces Trump seeks to undermine.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist groups Yemeni branch, said in a statement on Wednesday that Trumps decision was nothing more than the result of the steps toward normalization between a number of governments in the region, especially those in the [Persian] Gulf, and the Jewish occupation.

Another Al Qaeda arm, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb  which operates in Algeria, Mali and Mauritania  also blamed the traitorous apostate [Arab] rulers.

Despite the escalation in rhetoric from Palestinian factions, some believed the announcement represented nothing new.

People just woke up now and realized Jerusalem is occupied? Its been under full Israeli control for decades, said Manal Abboud, a 39-year-old schoolteacher and resident of of East Jerusalem standing near the Damascus Gate.

The U.S. Congress had passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, which stipulated the embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Since then, presidents have utilized a six-month waiver to postpone the move.

But others saw Trumps decision as proof that, despite recent overtures from Arab leaders to the president, Arab nations have become a nonissue for the U.S.

Look at all the things the U.S. has done in the last 40 years, the only conclusion in the way they treat us is that we are dispensable: The oil is flowing, the arms sales are continuing, the terrorists are pretty much contained, and so we just dont matter, said Rami Khouri, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative.

Khouri said Trumps actions told him and other Palestinians that Im a piece of dirt, I have no rights, no voice, no meaning, no relevance, no strategic value  nothing.

Listening to Trumps speech, Khouri said, I had the feeling of total nonexistence that I havent felt since June 1967, when Israels forces annexed Jerusalem.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @nabihbulos

UPDATES:

3:42 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 9:15 a.m.
The Finance Ministry of Ukraine is assessing the influence of the switch of state-owned banks to international financial reporting standard IFRS9, Deputy Finance Minister for European Integration Yuriy Butsa has said.

"We have asked all state-owned banks to analyze the influence of IFRS9 on their indicators, as some assets there are assessed in a new way, not as it was done before. Now the analysis is being conducted and soon we will understand the figures," he said.

Earlier bankers said that the switch of banks to IFRS9 could result in the large increase in the sum of reserves.
Kyiv Court of Appeal, as an interim measure, has arrested two land plots and a car owned by Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Minister Ihor Nasalyk.

The respective court ruling of November 22 was published in the state register.

The plaintiff, as part of a lawsuit with which the minister's property was arrested, demands the repayment of $1.249 million as debt under a contract of July 10, 2017, as well as UAH 2.749 million as interest on it.

Although the names of the owner of the arrested property and the plaintiff are hidden, however, the inventory of property completely coincides with Nasalyk's income declaration. In particular, the court arrested land plots with an area of 0.12 hectares in the village of Protsiv (Boryspil district, Kyiv region), an area of 0.037 hectares in Kozyn (Obukhiv district, Kyiv region), and a 2015 Mercedes Benz S500L 4Matic car.

According to the media, businessman Petro Dyminsky might be the plaintiff in this case.
AGCO, a global leader in production and supply of agricultural machinery and equipment, will start selling tractors on the Ukrainian market in 2018 under the Valtra trademark.

"We have plans to launch one of the main brands of Valtra Corporation in Ukraine in 2018. The Valtra plant in Finland already produces tractors for European countries, including for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Georgia," Marketing Director of AGCO Eastern Europe Anton Kostyrko said at the Agrarian Olympus Congress in Kyiv.

After the introduction of the new trademark to the Ukrainian market, AGCO plans to optimize and balance its distribution system.

"Distributors who sell Fendt equipment will also sell Valtra. We will comply with the European distribution system, because when focusing on a particular brand, it focuses on the supply of spare parts, the appropriate service tools and the correct distribution of human resources for servicing," Kostyrko said.

According to him, in 2017 the market of imported tractors in Ukraine grew by 17% compared to 2016.

"In 2018, amid a decline in the yield of sunflower and corn in some regions of Ukraine we do not predict a large increase in sales of agricultural machinery," the representative of AGCO said.

He said that now AGCO does not consider the possibility of localizing production of machinery in Ukraine, despite the program of 20% state compensation for purchased Ukrainian agricultural machinery.

AGCO sells a wide range of tractors, combines, feed processing equipment, self-propelled sprayers and tillage machines, attachments and original spare parts.

The AGCO machinery is sold under the Challenger, Fendt, Massey Ferguson and Valtra trademarks.

AGCO is headquartered in Duluth (the United States).
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a draft agreement with the European Union on the allocation of EUR 50 million for a program to support Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The respective decision was made at a government meeting on Wednesday. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman read out this decision among those adopted by the government at the meeting without discussion.

The agreement foresees the funding by the European Commission of measures aimed at promoting peace, economic recovery and reconciliation in eastern Ukraine.

The funds will be used to improve local self-government, stimulate employment and economic growth by supporting the development of micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses, supporting community initiatives, as well as health, education and critical infrastructure reforms.

The government authorized Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivan Klympush-Tsintsadze to sign the agreement.
Following precedent-setting court decisions in his murder conviction, Qu'eed Batts wants to take a sentencing deal in his 2006 Easton case.

Batts has twice been sentenced to life without parole for killing 16-year-old Clarence "C.J." Edwards with two point-blank shots to the head and wounding Cory Hilario, 19, during a front porch ambush in February 2006.

Batts, of Phillipsburg, was 14 at the time and was being initiated into the Bloods street gang. He is 26 now.

On Thursday, Batts' attorney Phil Lauer said his client has agreed to take a sentencing deal offered by prosecutors. The deal would be for sentences of 30 years to life in prison for first-degree murder, and 10 to 20 years in prison for attempted murder.

The two sides could not agree if the sentences will run back-to-back or at the same time, and that will be up to Northampton County Judge Michael Koury.

Batts is also not waiving his appellate rights, which seemed to be a sticking point for Koury. Koury said he will take that into consideration when he decides if he will accept the deal.

A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 23.

Batts was in county court for the hearing, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and shackles. Batts did not make any statement, other than confirm that he wanted to be sent back to state prison after the hearing.

After the hearing, Lauer said it's still an emotional case for him, years after working through the appeals process.

"He had an exceptionally difficult life," Lauer said. "To go through what he did, do what he did, in my opinion, under enormous duress, and then face the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail. It's something that just shouldn't happen to anybody. I'm happy he's going to find his way out the other end."

First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck said he did not discuss waiving appeal rights as part of the deal.

"It was my position from the beginning that this kid should spend the rest of his life in jail. It is not my issue that the courts are relaxing their decision when it comes to juvenile offenders. I couldn't disagree more with this belief. These guys are criminals, every bit as criminal as anyone 21 years of age or older. This kid should be going away the rest of his life," Houck said.

"I'm just trying to keep the sentence now in conformity with what the appellate courts want. It was very clear that the supreme court of Pennsylvania did not want this kid going away for life. Very clear," he added.

Batts was convicted in 2007 of first-degree murder, attempted homicide and aggravated assault, and was sentenced by Judge William Moran to life in prison.

After his conviction, Batts appealed and in 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court made it unconstitutional to mandate such sentences for juveniles.

Moran has since retired, and Batts went before Northampton County Judge Michael Koury in 2014. Koury re-sentenced Batts to life in prison, saying he believed expert testimony that Batts was incorrigible.

"Mercy for Mr. Batts will have to come from God. May God have mercy on your soul," Koury said from the bench.

Batts appealed that sentence, and in June the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sent the case back to Koury for Batts to be re-sentenced again.

In September, Houck said he wouldn't seek life in prison again.

Houck said the state Supreme Court's standard of reserving a life-without-parole sentence for "rare and uncommon" juveniles who demonstrate "permanent incorrigibility" was too tough to meet.

State guidelines called for 25 years to life in prison for juvenile murder offenders.

Houck also cautioned that whatever the minimum, Batts may end of serving more than that in prison.

"We will continue to object to (Batts being paroled). I'm going to object to (that) to my grave," Houck said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Wednesday announced changes to Pennsylvania's standardized testing schedule meant to reduce the tests' impact and length.

It is welcome news for educators, parents and students, who've expressed concerns that children are spending too much time on high stakes testing and not enough time learning.

During his tenure, Wolf has made improving standardized testing a top priority.

This school year, the state has already shortened the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment testing window by two days.

Next year, the testing window will be condensed from three weeks to two and pushed to later in the school year giving students more classroom learning time before taking the PSSAs. This will also give districts more flexibility in setting their school calendars.

David Volkman, the state Education Department's executive deputy secretary, said in a news release that the agency was responding to pressure to refocus on learning.

"This improved schedule, along with the changes we made to the structure of the tests earlier this year, will address those concerns while maintaining the accuracy of the assessment," Volkman said.

The department is building upon changes made this year that remove a math and English section of the test and cut down on the number of science tests.

"After reducing the classroom time devoted to the PSSA and moving the test window to later in the school year, students and teachers will have more classroom time to focus on learning before taking the test," Wolf said as he announced the change at Colonial Middle School in Montgomery County.

This year's three-week PSSA testing window starts April 9. The PSSA changes enabled the department to shorten this testing window to two weeks.

The changes Wolf announced Wednesday will allow districts to begin the testing in the future as late as April 25.

This means districts can avoid having students take some of the PSSAs, go on holiday break and return for more testing, which can be challenging for students and teachers, department spokeswoman Casey Smith said.

Since districts have already set their school calendars, the new testing window starts with the 2018-19 school year.

Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Joseph Roy said he is grateful Wolf and state education Secretary Pedro A. Rivera continue to take steps to reduce the negative impact of too much standardized testing.

"The reduction in the length of the test, the reduction in the number of weeks required to administer the test, and the later date in the school year for testing combine to significantly increase the amount of instructional time teachers will enjoy with students starting in the 2018-2019 school year," Roy said.

Dolores McCracken, president of the state's largest teachers' union, praised the changes.

"Gov. Wolf gets it on standardized testing," said McCracken, who heads the Pennsylvania State Education Association. "He's heard and understands what teachers, parents and students have been saying for a long time -- that PSSA testing schedule should be pushed later into the academic year, to allow for more quality instructional time."

The Wolf administration also noted that the Keystone Exams, which test knowledge at the end of courses, are being delayed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A sting operation led to the September arrest of an eastern Pennsylvania deputy coroner, for allegedly trying to solicit sex from an undercover agent posing as a 14-year-old boy.

Now the former death investigator for Carbon and Schuylkill counties faces charges for sexual contact with a real victim, a boy who was 14 and 15 years old at the time of the assaults, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office said Wednesday.

Edward C. Smith, 60, of Willing Street in Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, is being held in prison in lieu of a combined $500,000 bail in the two cases.

"There's a special place in hell reserved for deviants who sexually assault children," Attorney General Josh Shapiro said via Twitter in announcing Smith's arrest. "We will aggressively investigate & prosecute anyone who abuses children -- no matter who they are."

There's a special place in hell reserved for deviants who sexually assault children. We will aggressively investigate & prosecute anyone who abuses children - no matter who they are pic.twitter.com/qU7AA09a0T  AG Josh Shapiro (@PAAttorneyGen) December 6, 2017

At the time of his initial arrest, investigators discovered on Smith's cellphone images of a male child, Shapiro's office said in a news release. Smith identified the child to authorities, who interviewed the victim and learned he'd been sexually assaulted by Smith beginning in 2015 at Smith's home, the release states.

Smith allegedly paid the victim to pose for the photos Smith took on his phone and for sexual favors under the guise of receiving payment for legitimate work.

"This child was horrifically assaulted on multiple occasions," Shapiro says in the release. "I have zero tolerance for the sexual abuse of children in Pennsylvania ... . Thanks to the thoroughness of the agents and prosecutors in our Child Predator Section, this criminal is behind bars."

Smith remained Wednesday in Luzerne County prison under the original charges, with a dispositional hearing scheduled Jan. 5 in Luzerne County Court.

He was arraigned Monday in the more recent case on two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of a victim less than 16, in addition to single counts of unlawful contact with a minor (sexual offenses), statutory sexual assault, indecent assault of a victim less than 16, contact/communication with a minor (sexual abuse), recording images on a computer of a sex act involving a child and corruption of minors.

A preliminary hearing on these charges is tentatively scheduled Dec. 19 before District Judge Stephen J. Bayer in Schuylkill County.

Shapiro invites the public to report suspected child predators to the Office of Attorney General's Predator Hotline at 800-385-1044. Individuals who suspect an online predator or abuse can also send anonymous tips by texting PAKIDS + (your tip) to 847411.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Two more inmates at New Jersey's troubled women's prison charge they were the victims of repeated sexual assaults or abuse by several guards, and faced retaliation when they complained.

In a lawsuit filed in state Superior Court, the inmates--both serving lengthy sentences for robbery--said they were forced into sexual acts with a number of corrections officers, including two who have already been criminally charged in cases involving other women incarcerated at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Union Township, Hunterdon County.

And they claimed that administrators knew what was going on, but did nothing about it.

The complaint, filed Monday, declared that "a pattern and practice exists in the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility where sexual assault is prevalent and frequently perpetrated by corrections officers on inmates," with the knowledge and acquiescence of prison officials and administrators.

Among those named as defendants included four corrections officers, the current and former prison administrator, the state's Department of Corrections commissioner, and numerous unnamed "John and Jane Does" working at the state prison.

"We are just scratching the surface of the number of sexual assaults that have been committed by correctional officers, due to other correctional officers and administrators turning a blind eye and therefore condoning these acts," said attorney Mark Frost of Philadelphia, who represents the two women.

Matthew Schuman, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, declined comment.

"We do not comment on pending litigation," he said.

A spokesman for the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's office, which has an ongoing investigation at the prison, also declined comment.

A number of other female inmates at the prison have filed similar lawsuits in recent months. Over the past three years, at least five corrections officers and once civilian employee at Edna Mahon have been criminally charged with sexually abusing inmates--including Brian Y. Ambroise and Thomas Seguine, who were both named in the latest lawsuit.

An attorney for Ambroise, James Wronko of Somerville, was aware of the lawsuit.

"He denied the allegations when he was indicted. He still denies it and the case will be tried next year," he said.

Seguine pleaded guilty to official misconduct in February and has been sentenced to three years in prison. Ambroise is awaiting trial.

An NJ Advance Media special report earlier this year drew scrutiny to abuse claims at the women's prison, disclosing that officials had quietly fired three officers in 2010 after one was accused of abusing more than a dozen inmates. There are 613 women currently incarcerated at Edna Mahon, according to Schumann.

Contact between an inmate and an officer is considered sexual assault under state law, which recognizes that prisoners cannot consent to sexual relationships with those charged with overseeing them.

Aleks Kajstura, legal director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan Massachusetts-based group that advocates for prison reform, said that nationally, females account for 7 percent of sentenced prison inmates, but "represent 33 percent of all victims of staff-on-inmate sexual victimization in federal and state prisons." The numbers are even higher in local jails, where she said females represent only 13 percent of inmates in local jails, but account for 67 percent of all victims of staff-on inmate victimization incidents.

"It's a pervasive problem everywhere," Kajstura said of sexual assaults or abuse of women in prison. "But it's something that doesn't get reported very often because of the power dynamics at play--who is the person you're going to report it to? The person who assaulted you."

Those who do report it often end up in solitary confinement for their own protection, she added.

"If the state takes you under their jurisdiction, there should be an additional burden not to rape people," Kajstura said.

Women inmates move between the areas of the maximum and medium security compounds at the Edna Mahan Women's Correctional Facility in Clinton. (Jerry McCrea | Star-Ledger file photo)

In the latest lawsuit, a 22-year-old Elizabeth woman charged that Ambroise pursued and harassed her, and performed oral sex on her several times a month. She said other guards frequently opened the curtain to the bathroom while she was showering. After she complained to investigators from the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's office, she said officers retaliated by destroying her possessions.

A second inmate, a 24-year-old Cherry Hill woman, claimed Seguine had sex with her, and that they began corresponding with each other by letter on a regular basis. She said another officer gave her a vibrator and told her he wanted to watch her use it on herself. She also alleged that other guards also pulled open the shower curtain to see her naked, and that one later touched her under her clothes on her genitals.

After Seguine was criminally charged, she was placed in protective custody against her will.

Attorneys for the two women said the actions by the corrections officers, and inaction by prison administrators, violated the inmates' constitutional right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.

"The acts committed by the defendants shock the conscience and constitute intentional misconduct, excessive use of force, assault/battery, cruel and unusual punishment, deliberate indifference to (the plaintiffs), and an unnecessary, wanton infliction of harm for no good faith purpose," the lawsuit stated.

According to the filing, at least 16 women have been assaulted by prison officers in the past five years, while the prison for years reported no cases or under-reported cases of sexual abuse.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Terrafina LLC, maker of snacks ranging from gummy worms to sun-dried tomatoes, is relocating its operations to East Stroudsburg from the Bronx in New York City, Pennsylvania officials announced Wednesday.

The company is creating 120 new Pennsylvania jobs with the investment of more than $4.1 million in the 72,000-square-foot facility, Gov. Tom Wolf said.

"The strong economic climate in Pennsylvania, combined with our prime location in the heart of the Northeast and low cost of doing business, provides manufacturing companies that choose to locate here with a distinct advantage over their competitors," Wolf said in a statement. "I welcome Terrafina to Pennsylvania and to Monroe County and look forward to continue to work the company to help them achieve even greater success."

The company cited lower operating costs in Pennsylvania and space constraints in New York as reasons for the move, according to Wolf's office.

Terrafina was founded in 2005 and is described as "a sustainability-focused food manufacturer offering a variety of healthy snack options under its own brands and under private labels. Its core business is blending nuts, dried fruits and trail mixes, and offers a number of packaging options from tubs, bags and displays to private, contract and bulk packaging," according to Wolf's office.

The company plans to move in during the first quarter of 2018, said Paul D. Miller, vice president for sales at Terrafina. The company purchased the building at 401 Oak St. for nearly $2.6 million in November, Monroe County property records show.

"For us, this is a long-term move," Miller said.

Terrafina founder and CEO James Locke said in a statement: "As we have aggressively expanded in the last couple of years, we are excited to take the next step and increase our production capabilities at least five-fold to grow and provide even more amazing products for our rapidly expanding customer base.

"The acreage, strategic location for production, and distribution amenities offered in East Stroudsburg in northeast Pennsylvania fit our expansion plans perfectly," he continued in the statement provided by the governor's office. "Also, as we consider sustainability and our carbon footprint in our growth model, we're pleased that more than half of our energy needs will be met by a solar panel system on the roof."

Terrafina's investment includes purchasing the building, renovations and new equipment, computers and furniture.

"We began working with Terrafina on their project in June and are so pleased they have chosen Monroe County for their expansion," Chuck Leonard, executive director of the Pocono Mountains Economic Development Corp. said in a statement. "This project brings life back to a building that has been vacant for some time and will offer job opportunities for our residents. We look forward to continuing our work with them and welcome them to the community."

The company received a funding proposal from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development for $240,000 in Job Creation Tax Credits to be distributed upon creation of the new jobs and $54,000 in WEDnetPA employee training funding. The company has also been encouraged to apply or a $2 million low-interest loan from the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority to assist with building and equipment costs, Wolf's office says.

"One of my top priorities as a state lawmaker has been to foster job creation by improving the business climate in Pennsylvania," state Sen. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe/Northampton, said in a statement. "When a company such as Terrafina is looking to expand and chooses our region, it shows what can be done when those businesses feel welcome."

There was no immediate announcement on a timetable for the move.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The U.S. Supreme Court is taking on a case that pits a baker's religious-freedom rights against a gay couple's freedom from discrimination.

At the heart of the dispute is a wedding cake -- one that didn't get baked by Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado. Phillips told a gay couple planning their wedding that he would not bake a cake for the occasion because his Christian beliefs consider gay marriage sinful.

The couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullin, filed a discrimination complaint and won. State courts upheld the decision.

The case has far-reaching implications for retailers, professionals and service providers: May they refuse a request that conflicts with their religious principles? If so, where does the Supreme Court draw the line?

Gay-rights advocates say a reversal would not only open the door to discrimination, but begin eroding the Supreme Court's landmark ruling upholding same-sex marriage.

What do you think? Do business owners have a right to deny service based on religious beliefs? Are those objections trumped by freedom from discrimination? Have a say in our informal poll, and feel free to join the conversation in the comments section.
As Phillipsburg police were zeroing in on the suspects in a carjacking early Monday morning in town, New Jersey State Police this week released tips on how to avoid becoming another victim.

"The New Jersey State Police and the Office of the Attorney General want you and your families to be safe this holiday season and beyond," state police said Wednesday on Facebook. "We talked with experts from our Interstate Theft North Unit to gather a list of important safety tips that can help you protect yourself from carjacking and auto theft."

The NJSP and @NewJerseyAG @cporrino want you and your families to be safe. Check out these safety tips to protect yourselves from auto theft and carjacking. https://t.co/KvHwb9vo5B pic.twitter.com/xbSyxOTSUh  NJSP - State Police (@NJSP) December 6, 2017

Authorities investigating Monday's carjacking in Phillipsburg found the stolen vehicle on Tuesday in Greenwich Township. The suspects, both township residents, were picked up in Newark.

Alfatir Kelly, 19, of the 1100 block of Monroe Drive, and 18-year-old Davion Smith, of the 500 block of Madison Street, were being held Thursday in Warren County jail, according to police.

The victim reportedly told Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission personnel that two men had taken his silver 2012 Hyundai Sonata about 4:15 a.m. Monday near Fourth and Broad streets.

No one was reported injured.

Kelly is charged with carjacking, robbery, possession of a weapon, theft and simple assault. Smith is charged with carjacking, robbery and theft.

Here is what state police and Attorney General Christopher Porrino's office say to keep in mind to steer clear of carjackings and auto theft:

What carjackers look for:

Intersections controlled by stop lights or signs.

Garages and parking lots for mass transit, shopping malls and grocery stores.

Car washes and self-serve gas stations.

ATMs.

Highway exit and entry ramps, or anyplace else where drivers slow down or stop.

Steps to minimize risk of a carjacking:

Know your surroundings.

Be alert.

Watch for Bump & Jack/Bump & Rob ploys.

Keep doors and windows locked.

Leave space to maneuver when stopped.

If you are victimized:

Do not fight.

Give the attacker anything they want.

Remember they want the car not you, though they may take phones and other valuables.

Keep in mind property can be replaced.

Get somewhere safe and dial 911.

Give the 911 dispatcher as much information as you can.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Michael Jacob the father of missing Newbridge woman Deirdre Jacob made a direct plea to gardai yesterday that more needs to be done for families of missing people.

He made the impromptu speech at the fifth National Missing Persons Day, which was held in Farmleigh House in Dublin yesterday, December 6, 2017.

I felt very strongly about it, said Michael speaking to the Leader today.

I only decided to address the crowd after the last persons speech, which was the Deputy Garda Commissioner. I had planned it but only Bernie knew I was going to say something.

Michael highlighted the fact that more garda resources needs to be given to missing persons and to their families.

I said that I felt that there are many areas during the investigation that needs to be improved, he said.

As the investigation is ongoing family members need to be more involved and not just by being kept updated but by having more of an input. When there is a sighting for example the description is often given third hand so mannerisms and characteristics of that person are not communicated. A family member will know very quickly from a description but when the information given is third hand it often doesnt resonate.

He added that he felt not enough gardai are aware of the importance of keeping a lookout for a missing person in their area.

This is because gardai move stations a lot and there is no dedicated unit for missing cases as opposed to cold cases for example. When a person goes missing the local gardai are on it and in some cases this will be the first missing case they have worked on. If you look at Newbridge has someone gone missing since Deirdre? if someone goes missing it is often a new venture for the gardai. The training in Templemore should have a number of modules on how to handle a missing persons case.

Deirdre was 18-years-old at the time when she went missing on 28 July 1998. She was last seen walking into Newbridge town to get a bank draft. Despite numerous public appeals over the years, no trace of Deirdre has ever been found.

Michael directed his speech to the Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan and Deputy Commissioner John Twomey, and said that there is only so much the families can do.

"We need help, he said. "I picked up on the fact that there are many cases of missing people for five, ten, 20, 30, 40 and even one case for 70 years, with little or no progress made. I was speaking for all the families of missing people I didnt mention Deirdre. Gardai across the country need to be much more proactive in advertising the fact that a person has gone missing - a notice board outside the station with information about the missing person and contact numbers. Gardai should also be active on select days on the street searching for information about the missing person.

He explained that the help that is required is sufficient resources made available to An Garda Siochana, to put in place a full-time, dedicated team of determined investigators to investigate the missing. A team that will engage with families in a sympathetic, sensitive and inclusive manner.

Meanwhile Deputy Commissioner John Twomey also addressed the ceremony, describing the pain felt by families of the missing as shapeless and terrifying.

He said the hope that comes with possible developments in a case can be a torture, particularly when nothing comes of new information.

Although he said investigations take more time than gardai would like sometimes, he told families this time can be necessary to ensure the job is done properly.
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Norway has allocated EUR 950,000 (10 million crones) for the implementation of the Council of Europe projects for Ukraine, Ambassador of Norway to Ukraine and Belarus Ole Terje Horpestad has said.

Norway allocates an additional EUR 950,000 in 2017 to ensure a transition between the current and future plans of action, he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

The ambassador noted that these funds would allow continuing the implementation of the activities of the Council of Europe after the completion of the action plan for Ukraine envisaged for 2015-2017 and a new action plan for 2018-2021, the draft of which has already been developed.

Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine Morten Enberg noted that the past plan supported constitutional reform, the functioning of democratic institutions, judicial reform, police and penitentiary system reforms, along with gender equality.

According to him, the planned implementation cost of this action plan is about EUR 28 million envisaged for four years.
The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine intends to recover almost UAH 1 billion from the Russian owners of Lysychansk oil refinery as recourse on the lawsuit of Agrocomplex company lost in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Ministry of Justice Pavlo Petrenko has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"Next week a big claim from Ukraine will be in Ukrainian court against the company with the owners from the Russian Federation on recovering UAH 1 billion in recourse," he said.

Petrenko said the matter concerns the events of the mid 1990s-early 2000s, when a large array of objects, including the oil refinery, was seized through the judicial system and the influence of executive authorities on it, after which the affected company has been suing for more than ten years in the ECHR and won the dispute against Ukraine.

"We have been preparing an evidentiary base for a year, and we are composing a lawsuit against the company, which currently owns part of those facilities that were expropriated. It turned out that this company is managed by Russians," Petrenko summarized.

The minister did not specify which company will be sued, although in an interview published in the Business Capital (Dilova Stolytsia) edition on November 20 the minister said the defendant was Rosneft.
The Verkhovna Rada has extended the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land until January 1, 2019.

Some 236 people's deputies voted for relevant bill No. 7350 at a meeting on Thursday. According to the explanatory note to the bill, before the introduction of agricultural land in Ukraine, it is first necessary to develop and adopt a legislative base for the formation of a developed network of farms and agricultural cooperatives.

"The abolition of the moratorium in the conditions of martial law and the economic crisis ... without the legal regulation of the procedure for the turnover of agricultural land, is a threat to both national and food security of our state," the explanatory note of the bill says.

The authors of the document believe that the extension of the moratorium will remove the social tension that has arisen in the society amid political speculations on this issue and will provide some time for the development of a mechanism for introducing a transparent market of agricultural land.

As reported, the Verkhovna Rada in late October 2016 extended the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, introduced in 2002, until 2018. Parliament also instructed its committees and the profile ministry to develop the necessary bills within six months.

The government planned to register a draft law on agricultural land turnover in the autumn of this year. To date, this bill has not been submitted to parliament. First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food said that the government would register a bill on land turnover, when the Verkhovna Rada supports it.
The World Bank is concerned about recent attacks on the independent Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions, such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), as this threatens their ability to fight corruption and recover stolen assets, the World Bank said.

"It's critical they have the legislative framework and resources to fulfill their mandate," the World Bank said in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Thursday under a photograph of a meeting between World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and NABU chief Artem Sytnyk.

It was reported earlier that the International Monetary Fund was concerned that the independence of Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies could be questioned.
Oakland city workers will strike for a third day Thursday after the City Council was unable to agree on a deal to get them back to work.

The council planned to try again Thursday to arrive at a plan that could halt the strike by nearly 3,000 workers and lead to a resumption of talks with union negotiators. Until that happens, libraries, day care centers, recreation spots and other nonemergency city services will remain closed, as employees picket City Hall to push for better pay raises and working conditions and other demands. Police, fire and 911 services will stay open and staffed.

The strike started Tuesday at 7 a.m., with workers picketing through the evening outside a downtown campaign fundraiser by Mayor Libby Schaaf, who has called the strike unlawful.

The picket swelled Wednesday afternoon, taking over 14th Street and Broadway in downtown Oakland outside City Hall, as council members discussed labor negotiations in closed session.

The strike brought to a standstill street cleaning, senior centers, the hauling away of illegal dumping, fire and building inspections, parking citations, after-school programs, and the filing of non-emergency crime and traffic reports.

No remedies or decisions came out of a 2-hour City Council meeting Wednesday afternoon. The council will meet again Thursday afternoon.

All I can do is apologize, Councilman Larry Reid said to families affected by the strike. This is all part of labor negotiations. And so hopefully, tomorrow, well get the issue resolved.

Other council members declined to comment. All appeared frustrated as they hurried out of City Hall.

Its disappointing that families have been impacted for what will be right now three days, Schaaf said. But it would be more disappointing, more horrific, if families were permanently damaged because we had to permanently reduce city services as well as potentially lay off city workers.

The mayor was referring to a new memo from the citys financial analysts, who said the demand by unions on a two-year deal  with a 4 percent wage bump each year  would create a deficit of nearly $20 million and require a staff reduction equivalent to 150 full-time employees. The unions own analysis, however, points out that Oaklands expected revenues in recent years have been under-forecast, while its expenditures have been over-projected.

The city has offered the union a 4 percent bump in the first year, retroactive to July 1, but increases after that would be tied to the citys revenue growth under its proposal.

The city, as long as Ive been here, theyve always said theyre broke, said Felipe Cuevas, a heavy-equipment mechanic for the Public Works Department and chapter president of Service Employees International Union Local 1021. Thats a given. Sometimes they are, sometimes theyre not.

The threat of layoffs in exchange for salary increases was offensive intimidation, said Rob Szykowny, the chief negotiator for SEIU Local 1021. In his bargaining unit alone, Szykowny said, the city has about 300 vacant positions that are budgeted as if they were filled. And new revenue streams from things like cannabis taxes are also unaccounted for in the citys projections, he said.

The city countered that over-reliance on turbulent revenue gains or approving only the agreed-upon one-year deal  as the union has requested  could hurt Oaklands credit rating.

SEIU Local 1021  the citys largest union  called for the strike after Oaklands negotiators rejected the one-year compromise or bringing in former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, as an informal mediator. Schaaf said he wouldnt have been a neutral party, but agreed to have a mediator whom both sides approve.

Another union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, approved a solidarity strike. Members of other unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, were refusing to cross the picket line.

We had thought wed be back at work tomorrow, so were disappointed the council couldnt get it done, Szykowny said. We have confidence in the rational, forward-thinking folks on City Council to pass a deal to bring everyone back to work.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
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On the night of the fatal fire at Ghost Ship, party organizers blocked a passageway on the second floor of the Oakland warehouse with a giant tent like inflatable projection screen, the first witness in a preliminary hearing in the criminal case said Wednesday.

I made a comment saying, What the hell is this thing, recalled Oregon musician Aaron Marin about the inflatable screen that he said he had to push his way around to get to a window to escape during the fire. Marin had been visiting the collective on Dec. 2, 2016, when fire broke out in the middle of an electronic music concert on the warehouses second floor, where dozens of people were gathered.

Initially, Marin testified that the screen was blocking one of the stairways, but then backed off that statement.

Marin described the interior of Ghost Ship during a hearing in the courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Horner, who will decide if there is enough evidence to try Derick Almena, 47, and Max Harris, 27, on involuntary manslaughter in connection with the fire that claimed 36 lives. Almena was the master tenant of the unsanctioned artist space that doubled as a residency and electronic music venue, despite lacking permits for either. Harris was creative director for the Ghost Ship. Prosecutors allege Harris rented the second floor of the warehouse to the promoter on the night of the fire.

Now Playing: One year after the fatal Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, former residents still face severe housing problems leaving them wonderingAwhether they can stay in the Bay Area. Video: Los Angeles Times

It was a beautiful space that was created, Marin said as Assistant District Attorney Autrey James showed him photos of the warehouse. Spectators in the courtroom included relatives of the victims. It was a place where artists and specific members of the community would play music, get together.

Itd be like going to Disneyland. Its very large. I didnt get to see all of it.

Marin said the afternoon before the party, artists set up a bouncy thing that was an elaborate screen projector that blocked some access to one of the stairways connecting the second floor to the first. He later said it did not block the stairway but a passageway to a kitchen area on the second floor that had a window, from which he jumped to escape the fire. Marin, who had slept on a loft on the second floor, said the screen was so bulky he had trouble getting to and from his loft.

He described it as a giant tent like structure for slides and visuals.

At one point, James read testimony from an interview Marin had with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the weeks after the fire. Marin told ATF investigators that the back stairway had been blocked with amplifiers so that no one could enter Almenas room, James said. Marin said he didnt remember saying that.

I could have said a lot of things, Marin said. I just barely survived.

James took Marin through the timeline of events that started when Marin smelled smoke the night of the party. Marin did not take part in the party but was in a music studio on the first floor of the warehouse during the fire.

I immediately screamed fire and ran upstairs, he said, adding that he pushed amps out of the way so he could get to the party. Flames appeared to be coming from behind a turntable and also appeared to be coming up through a floorboard, he said. Someone tried to pass him a plastic water bottle but Marin said when he saw how big the flames were he realized it wouldnt help.

My heart dropped, Marin told the court. At that time everything was sheer panic and chaos.

He said about 20 people were screaming, heading for the front stairs. Instead of going toward the stairs, he remembered the bouncy thing, and pushed past it to enter an area where there was a window. The thick smoke irritated his eyes and he could hardly breathe as he closed his eyes and reached out for a window that he pushed open. He called outside for help saying, theres people dying and asked for a ladder, but it did not come. He eventually jumped out the second-story window, unharmed, Marin told the court.

Jose Avalos, a woodworker who lived at the Ghost Ship, was the second witness called to testify. He appeared visually shaken on the stand, often stopping to reach for tissues to wipe his eyes, and occasionally sniffling.

Avalos described fleeing the building with his dogs after smelling smoke in his room around 11:15 p.m.

Somebody yelled out, Fire. Get an extinguisher, Avalos recalled. He said he grabbed an extinguisher but before he made it downstairs the voice cried out a second time to just get out of the building instead.

Flames just pushed through the hallway. I could feel them  as I was running out  on top of me, Avalos said. Drops of fire kept raining from the ceiling.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley has said Almena and Harris knowingly created a firetrap.

Almena, who became the propertys leaseholder in 2013, moved his family into the warehouse, violating city and state safety codes. He soon sublet areas of the space for $350 to $1,400, according to the declaration.

His responsibility as the leaseholder, under the California Fire Code, included installing fire-suppression systems, smoke alarms, exit signs and sprinklers. He did not take the proper safety measures, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors accuse Almena of encouraging the use of unconventional, flammable building materials such as dry recycled wood, which in turn created an extremely dangerous fire load.

Harris, who moved to the warehouse in 2014, helped Almena remodel the building by adding a makeshift restroom, cutting a doorway in the wall, and cutting a hole in the roof without going through proper inspection and permitting procedures, according to prosecutors.

Most fire victims were trapped on the second floor, prosecutors said. They allege Almena made the staircase narrow and unsafe using wooden planks. The stairs could only be descended in single file.

Harris is accused of blocking off a second stairwell during preparations for the event, leaving only one exit  which his defense attorneys deny.

The men have been labeled by prosecutors as the proximate cause of the deaths of the 36 fire victims. The exact cause of the fire has been deemed undetermined due to the extent of the fires damage, prosecutors said. Investigators had tracked the origin of the fire to a shared kitchen in the back of the buildings first floor.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
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Amid an effort by the Trump administration to ease rules on the oil and gas sector, 26 companies said they will take voluntary steps to ratchet down emissions on a potent greenhouse gas the Obama administration tried to regulate.

This week, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas lobbying group in Washington, announced the launch of a program aimed at reducing emissions of methane from oil and natural gas production.

The program overall is set up to continuously improve the environmental performance for onshore operators throughout the country through the process of learning, collaborating and taking action, said Erik Milito, director of upstream and industry operations for API. This is a very robust program.

However, some environmental groups called the initiative, titled The Environmental Partnership, too little, too late given the industrys embrace of Trumps deregulatory agenda.

Its somewhat amazing that the industry hasnt already put forward its own standard, said Chase Huntley, director of energy and climate at The Wilderness Society.

Oil and gas firms participating in the program, which includes such heavyweights as Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil onshore subsidiary XTO Energy, have agreed to cut pollution by monitoring and repairing leaks and replacing or retrofitting high-bleed pneumatic controllers, identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a top spot for the release of methane. Its a very targeted, surgical approach, Milito said.

Methane is between 28 and 36 times more effective than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere over a 100-year time period, according to the EPA. The measures are also meant to curb the release of volatile organic compounds, which can act as a precursor to ground-level ozone, a component of smog linked to heart and lung problems.

The voluntary program, in which 23 of the top 40 U.S. natural gas producers by volume are participating, focuses on the process of producing natural gas, not the final product - that is, not on the amount of methane actually released into the atmosphere. Under the program, API will publicly report on its progress, with the first report coming in 2019.

Energy firms have a financial incentive to work together, as they are under this program, to capture as much methane as possible. Because methane is the main component of natural gas and can be burned for fuel, every molecule of methane emitted is lost energy - and lost revenue.

The Obama administration, through rules issued by the EPA and the Interior Department, attempted to rein in methane emissions. But President Donald Trump has put both agencies policies under review, a move API and other industry players welcomed.

For example, the Bureau of Land Management, finalized a rule in late 2016 designed to curb the practice on public lands of venting and flaring - or burning off some gas as it arises from a natural gas well - that the new API program leaves unaddressed.

After Congress narrowly voted against repealing the BLM rule, Interior decided to take action itself. Its expected to announce a two-year delay in the implementation of that rule before the end of the year, according to Huntley from The Wilderness Society.

We suspect the timing is not coincidental with the administrations next step of seeking to significantly revise the rule, Huntley said of APIs announcement.

The launch of APIs program follows a similar announcement earlier this month by eight large oil firms, including Exxon, BP and Shell, that they would significantly shrink the amount of methane emitted across the natural gas supply chain.

For years, many in industry have argued against government action to address their climate impact, touting voluntary corporate pollution reductions as a substitute for regulations, Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group that helped those firms develop that plan, wrote in a blog post.

EDF says there is one important difference between the two initiatives: Their plan emphasizes that regulations are needed, while APIs does not. Were looking at this outside of the regulatory scope, APIs Milito said.

The last several months have produced a number of good examples of what leadership in reducing methane looks like, said Matt Watson, EDFs associate vice president of climate and energy. At a time when API is aggressively putting its full weight into tearing down federal methane rules, this weak initiative does little to show that API is serious about tackling the methane problem.

The divide: Compliance with regulations is more costly for independent operators extracting gas domestically than it is for such multinationals as Exxon, BP and Shell. In general, while industry giants may prefer watered-down rules, smaller players are more likely to favor little to no regulation at all.
Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference 'I don't Give Bribes! How to Foster Intolerance to Corruption'

On Thursday, December 7, at 10.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference, entitled "I don't Give Bribes! How to Foster Intolerance to Corruption." The participants include Executive Director at Transparency International Ukraine Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Director of Ilko Kucheriv Democratic initiatives Foundation Iryna Bekeshkina, NABU's representative (8/5a Reitarska Street). Registration requires press accreditation. Details by phone: (050) 352 9618.
A former Oakland Fire Department captain was sentenced to 150 days in jail after pleading guilty to one count of possession of child pornography, officials said Wednesday.

Richard Chew, 58, who was arrested in September, was also sentenced to three years probation and ordered to register as a sex offender.

Chew, currently free on $200,000 bail, was ordered to surrender to authorities in the next few weeks to begin his jail term, said Paul Graves, senior Contra Costa County deputy district attorney.

Chew was initially facing two counts for possession of child pornography, but in a plea deal prosecutors agreed to drop one of the charges, Graves added.

The two counts are essentially the same thing, Graves said. They are both possession counts.

The Contra Costa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force began investigating Chew in August. The task force is composed of the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office, the district attorneys office, and Lafayette and Concord police departments.

ALSO Oakland fire captain charged in child porn investigation

Details on what prompted the investigation were not released.

Search warrants were served on Chews Lafayette home and his office at the Oakland Fire Department, according to the district attorneys office.

Photographs and videos depicting children engaged in sexual activity were found on Chews personal laptop computer and storage devices, Graves said.

It was a significant amount, Graves said. The guy was doing something he shouldnt have done.

Chew was charged on Sept. 7 with two counts of possession of child pornography. He was immediately placed on administrative leave when the fire department became aware of the investigation.

I am appalled by the disturbing nature of these charges, Oakland Fire Chief Darin White said following Chews arrest.

City emails made public in March revealed that Chew blew the whistle on dangerous conditions at a West Oakland halfway house about three months before a deadly fire broke out there. He recommended to his superiors that the San Pablo Avenue halfway house be shut down after he responded to a call there and found a nonworking alarm system, a padlocked fire escape door, and open piles of garbage on the third floor.

Despite his email, the building remained open and on March 27, a fire, started by a candle, erupted at the building, killing four people and displacing 80 others.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Power outages frequently darkened the Ghost Ship warehouse during the two years before a fire killed 36 partygoers, a witness and former resident of the artists collaborative told an Alameda County court Thursday.

Jose Avalos, a woodworker who moved into the Ghost Ship two years before the Dec. 2, 2016, blaze, said warehouse residents would enter the auto body shop next door to reset the breaker whenever the power went out.

There was a long period of time we didnt have steady power, Avalos said during the second day of a preliminary hearing in Alameda County Superior Court. We had to be careful. There were times it happened day after day. Sometimes itd be like once a week.

Authorities were unable to determine what started the deadly fire that trapped concert-goers  many of them on the second floor  of the two-story warehouse, which was not permitted to serve as a residence or performance venue.

Judge Jeffrey Horner will decide whether the prosecutions evidence in the involuntary manslaughter case against Derick Almena, 47, and Max Harris, 27, is sufficient to go to trial. Both men appeared in court wearing red county jail jumpsuits seated next to their attorneys.

Curtis Briggs, an attorney representing Harris, asked Avalos if he ever felt unsafe in the Ghost Ship, which was also known as Satya Yuga.

With all these power outages, you never felt like Satya Yuga was in danger of going up in flames? Briggs asked.

No, Avalos said.

Another witness and former resident of Ghost Ship, Nicolas Nico Bouchard, said he had a falling out with Almena, whom he said laughed off Bouchards safety concerns about the place. He also said Almenas attitude changed after he began to heavily use methamphetamines.

Another witness and former warehouse resident pushed back as prosecutors tried to pin her down on who was in charge of the warehouse.

We didnt have an in charge, Leah Danielle Vega said. We had a collective. We all did our best.

Vega said she stayed at Ghost Ship when she had nowhere else to go.

The building was not intended for humans, Vega said. It was like a stone hut or something.

Prosecutors say Almena and Harris were primarily responsible for the warehouse. Almena, the master tenant, sublet areas in the space for between $350 to $1,400, according to a probable cause declaration. Harris collected rent from the residents, and prosecutors said he rented the second floor of the warehouse for the electronic music concert the night of the fire.

Although Harris collected the rent, Avalos and defense attorneys said he was incorrectly portrayed as second in command to Almena.

A point of contention remains whether Harris purposely set up amplifiers to block the way to Almenas room  inadvertently blocking some access to back stairs  as prosecutors allege. A second set of narrow wooden stairs in the building crafted by Almena could only be descended in single file.

The warehouse violated several rules under the California Fire Code: lacking adequate fire-suppression systems, smoke alarms, exit signs and sprinklers, according to prosecutors. Almena is accused of fostering an environment in which highly flammable materials were welcomed building materials. Both he and Harris remodeled the warehouse without going through proper inspection and permitting procedures, prosecutors allege.

The defense has sought to portray the warehouse as an affordable space for artists to be accepted amid the rising rents in Oakland. In the events aftermath, the Fire Department came under scrutiny when records revealed that for two years officials did not adequately respond to repeated complaints and calls for service at the warehouse.

Defense attorneys have argued that the criminal case targeted their defendants in lieu of other culpable figures with greater means.

Testimony in the hearing resumes Monday.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
The quest for good books is eternal, and with the hundreds of books published each year, it's easy to overlook a few. This month we feature three notable titles that didn't get the spotlight when they hit shelves this year - but shouldn't be missed.

The narrator of Robin Sloan's "Sourdough" (MCD) is Lois, a programmer at a San Francisco startup. Her company's goal is to make robotic arms so good at tasks that they replace workers. One day, sick of her daily meal of slurry - a liquid dinner meant to energize you without all those pesky things like carbs - she orders spicy soup and sourdough from a takeout place. For a time, the food, and her relationship with the two brothers who run the business, are a small kernel of joy. When visa problems cause the brothers to return to Europe, Lois is devastated. Their parting gift to her is a culture of their special sourdough starter and instructions to keep it alive by feeding it and playing it music. With email guidance from her friends, Lois begins to bake and soon ends up in a secret world that merges food and technology. Sloan's prose is sharp, and his critiques of capitalism, Silicon Valley and foodie culture are finely cut.
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters

By Ursula K. Le Guin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 215 pp. $22

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Don't Save Anything: Uncollected Essays, Articles, and Profiles

By James Salter

Counterpoint. 303 pp. $26

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"No Time to Spare" and "Don't Save Anything" collect, respectively, the recent essays and the freelance journalism of two distinguished, but very different American writers. There are, however, at least three reasons to link Ursula K. Le Guin, an outspoken feminist and award-winning creator of imaginary lands and ambiguous utopias, and James Salter, the courtly chronicler of fighter pilots, intense love affairs and dissolving marriages.

First, each writes fiction of wondrous serenity and authority. Just consider the opening paragraphs of Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" or the final one of Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime." The language is limpid, the sentences deliberate and grave, their cumulative power ... immeasurable. Go see for yourself.

Second, both Salter and Le Guin are moralists. Courage and heroism, the testing of character, doing the right thing, the acceptance of responsibility, the getting of wisdom - these themes run through all their writing.

The third connection is personal: Salter and Le Guin are both deeply woven into my own bookish life. In one of my earliest reviews, I wrote about Salter's "Solo Faces," concluding that this novel about mountain climbing "exemplifies the purity it describes." A decade later, when Book World's editors were settling on titles for an online book club, I picked "The Left Hand of Darkness," Le Guin's science fiction classic about a society where everyone is both male and female. In 1990, I reviewed her autumnal fantasy "Tehanu," in which she enlarged her Earthsea Trilogy, originally marketed for young adults, by revealing what happened to its hero and heroine in old age. When Salter's correspondence with his friend - and my mentor - literary journalist Robert Phelps was published as "Memorable Days," I contributed the introduction. More recently, I've lectured on Le Guin for the National Endowment for the Arts's "Big Read" program, having written its introductory guide to "A Wizard of Earthsea."

All this obviously means that I'm hardly objective about these two writers. Nor do I need to be. Their oeuvres demonstrate their worth - the 88-year-old Le Guin is now in the Library of America; as for Salter, who died in 2015 at age 90 two years after completing his magnum opus "All That Is," one need simply quote novelist Richard Ford: "Sentence for sentence, Salter is the master."

"No Time to Spare," deriving from Le Guin's online essays, covers just about anything that crosses her mind, from "lit biz" to cats to the Oregon landscape. Still, old age, sexual and national politics and our dismal future predominate. Here's Le Guin in 2010:

"When my kids were young I could still hope we might not totally screw up the environment for them, but now that we've done so, and are more deeply sold out than ever to profiteering industrialism with its future-horizon of a few months, any hope I have that coming generations may have ease and peace in life has become very tenuous, and has to reach far, far forward into the dark."

In a 2012 polemic, "Lying It All Away," Le Guin writes scathingly of "growth capitalism" returning to its origins and "providing security for none but the strongest profiteers." She notes that "I have watched my country accept, mostly quite complacently, along with a lower living standard for more and more people, a lower moral standard. A moral standard based on advertising." Can America, she wonders, continue "living on spin and illusion, hot air and hogwash, and still be my country? I don't know." After all, our country is now run by corporations "of which Congress is an almost wholly owned subsidiary."

Might there be truth to the commonplace that science fiction writers are prophets? All these cris de coeur were originally produced in the Obama era, long before our divisive last election with its appalling consequences. A year ago I argued that Le Guin deserved a Nobel Prize in literature. In fact - what a fantasy! - she ought to be running the country.

In the essay "Why I Write," Salter declares that "there comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real." In "Don't Save Anything," despite its paradoxical title, Kay Eldredge Salter assembles her late husband's bread-and-butter journalism - yet how delicious good bread and butter can be! Included are an introduction to Isaac Babel's "Red Cavalry" stories, profiles of Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene and Antonia Fraser, and a long biographical essay on Gabriele D'Annunzio, fin-de-siecle Italy's great poet, lover and madman:

"He was anything but handsome. He was short, baldheaded, with bulging eyes and a prominent nose. ... And yet, women wrecked their lives for him and, abandoned, remembered him forever."

Salter himself recalls how he nearly crashed as a young Air Force pilot and outlines, with considerable admiration, Dwight D. Eisenhower's military career. He spends time with climber Royal Robbins and ace skier Toni Sailer (later mining what he learned from them for "Solo Faces" and the film script that became "Downhill Racer"), then reminisces about an incandescent love affair in Rome and his later years in Aspen and Boulder, Colo.

As always, Salter emphasizes simple, vivifying details. To understand the challenge of ascending the vertical rock face of Yosemite's El Capitan, "Imagine a wall more than twice as high as the Empire State Building." Describing a hospital lab technician, he writes, "She has blond hair and the decent, American face of a girl in the emergency room who is there when your eyes open and you love her from then on."

I sometimes wonder what these two extraordinary writers thought of each other. Not that it really matters: Our literature is lucky to have them both.
Last year I enthusiastically described Peter Morgan's "The Crown" with the word "scrumptious." Season 2 of this lavishly made, approximately true biographical series about the young Queen Elizabeth II deserves an upgrade in praise, while also recognizing that the show has discovered its top and gone a little over it.

So now it's ... scrumpdillyicious, perhaps? In striving to be more, "The Crown," which delivers 10 robust new episodes Friday on Netflix, intermittently becomes too much.

But I doubt you'll hear fans complain as they devour each and every bit of it - the way Elizabeth (Claire Foy) slathers butter on her baked goods as a means of quietly tormenting her VIP guest, Jacqueline Kennedy (Jodi Balfour), during a teatime tete-a-tete between two women with markedly different approaches to 20th-century fame. This is the kind of show you watch with hopes that it will give you a bit too much of everything.

That said, "The Crown" brings surprisingly less oomph this time around and takes noticeably more liberties with historical fact and chronology. We return more or less where we left off in the late 1950s: Winston Churchill has been replaced (which sadly means no more John Lithgow) by a rapid sequence of milquetoasty prime ministers (Jeremy Northam as Anthony Eden; Anton Lesser as Harold Macmillan), while Elizabeth and her husband, Philip (Matt Smith), have fallen into a cyclical pattern of marital frostiness followed by periods of detente long enough to produce another two sons.

She's certain he's cheating; the palace cognoscenti are certain he's cheating; viewers are certain he's cheating; yet "The Crown" remains coy about catching Philip in the act. "We all know how it works," Philip complains, when forced to fire his chief confidante and fellow playboy (who is going through a public divorce that threatens to shame the palace). "There is no room for mistakes, there is no room for scandal. There is no room for humanity."

He means the humanity in his trousers. There's quite a bit of this macho misery in the first few episodes, which focus too much on Philip's wounded ego and his extended goodwill cruise around the British Empire (where temptations abound and cheap spirit-gum costume beards are applied as Philip's all-guy ship symbolically traverses the frigid Arctic).

After that, "The Crown" becomes more like its old self, namechecking historical events (the Sputnik launch, the Profumo scandal, African colonies in revolt), but always sticking close to family affairs. The fifth episode, "Marionettes," recounts the palace's reckoning at last with its own stodgy image, as the Second Baron Altrincham (John Heffernan) pens an editorial in the National and English Review that sharply criticizes the queen's remote style of rule and the stiff delivery of her dreadfully snobby speeches. Hailed by progressives and derided by loyalists, Lord Altrincham manages to have an impact on public opinion and, eventually, the queen herself.

Here, Foy gets to show off her greatest skill, which is transmitting Elizabeth's near-wordless disappointments and vulnerabilities through all that power and stiff-upper-lip resolve. She still rules, but, as the Queen Mother (Victoria Hamilton) astutely observes, the Empire is shrinking and her daughter must learn to become more of a symbolic queen than an actual one - a puppet for the people. This means she'll have to start doing live TV addresses instead of radio; she'll have to get out there and meet more of the common folk. She's on the precipice of a change that will define her long reign.

Yet for every step forward, a setback. After she acquiesces to a new, shorter and more modern hairdo, Philip is there to undermine her confidence. "I thought you were hoping for more children from me."

"I am," Elizabeth replies.

"Then why on Earth would you do something like that to your hair?"

"What's wrong with it? I thought it was tidy and sensible."

"Adjectives to stir the loins."

A visit from President John F. Kennedy ("Dexter's" Michael C. Hall) and Jackie has both an enlivening and intimidating effect on the royals; Elizabeth learns a thing or two from the first lady about the uses of celebrity distraction in diplomacy. Her sister Margaret (Vanessa Kirby), meanwhile, continues to suffer ever so exquisitely, as if in a dress rehearsal for the life of Diana 30 years down the road.

Margaret's woes are ameliorated by the arrival of Antony Armstrong-Jones ("Downton Abbey's" Matthew Goode), who is only too happy to tweak convention with a modern marriage that is more style over substance. Sadly, Goode's knack for playing sympathetic cads doesn't quite register - or smolder - here; he's not having his usual fun.

As before, I recommend taking "The Crown" in small doses - no more than an episode or two at a time - because it works best when savored as a series of short but extravagant films about a dysfunctional family facing a unique set of problems.

Overall, this season of "The Crown" works best in story lines that handle both the past and the future: Shy, jug-eared Prince Charles (Julian Baring) is shipped off to the dreary, bully-filled Gordonstoun School in Scotland, his father's alma mater. While Charles suffers, the viewers at least get to flash back to the unenviable details of Philip's adolescence, which was rife with tragedy, neglect and (you guessed it) Nazis.

Where is the queen in all this? Excellent question. Foy certainly dominates the many scenes she's in, but the show seems more interested this time in developing every other character but hers, perhaps as a way of preparing viewers for a bigger shift next season, when "Broadchurch's" Olivia Colman is expected to take over the role of an older queen with a fresh set of issues to face. If nothing else, "The Crown" makes it abundantly clear that Elizabeth's job is a lifelong - and often redundant - burden.

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"The Crown" (10 episodes) returns Friday on Netflix.
Over 2,750 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"Over 2,750 Ukrainian soldiers, including almost 2,400 from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, gave their lives for Ukraine, for every piece of native land," the president said at the premiere of the film "Cyborgs" in Kyiv late on Wednesday, December 6.

As reported, on October 28, 2017, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that combat casualties of the Ukrainian army had reached 10,710 servicemen since the start of the anti-terrorist operation in Donbas in April 2014, and 2,333 of them had been killed.

"As of October 28, 2017, combat casualties stand at 10,710 servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including 2,333 irreversible casualties, and 8,377 servicemen wounded or injured during fighting," the General Staff said on its Facebook account.

A total of 212 Ukrainian servicemen were killed and another 1,277 were injured in fighting in 2016, it said. At the same time, the number of non-combat losses was 65% lower than the number of combat losses.

"This year, 2017, sees a tendency toward a considerable decrease, by 50%, in non-combat losses in units of Ukraine's Armed Forces," the General Staff said.

Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said on December 5 that non-combat losses in the Ukrainian Armed Forces had shrunk by five times.

"The problem of non-combat losses exists in all armies around the world and in our country. If we compare it with previous years, the number of such losses has decreased by five times. This year, we have 90 such cases, and this is a progressive trend. However, not everything has yet been done by commanders and specialists in the selection of personnel," he said in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency and the 1+1 television channel.
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When the Laredo Veterans Coalition approached City Council this October to speak about the seven-years-stagnant veterans museum project, they argued it should not be built at its formerly agreed-upon site  the Farias building in downtown Laredo  but instead at the undeveloped park land adjacent to North Central Park.

There are a few people arguing that the museum should still be put in the Farias building, but the most outspoken of the project's opposition say the museum just should not go in North Central Park.

On Wednesday morning, Laredo's chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars announced that it was withdrawing its support for a museum at the park.

RELATED: City officials discuss moving proposed veterans museum to North Laredo park

VFW Post 9194 Commander Robert Lara Jr. said he spoke with officers and several members of the group, and that they feel uninformed about this project.

"A decision was reached to withdraw support until all facts are known and after the public agrees to its construction," the press release states.

This VFW post was on the brink of being dissolved due to inactivity, but was reestablished in August and now has 80 members, Lara said.

Local veterans advocate Gabriel Lopez said this proposed museum has become a turning point, and that the majority of veterans are slowly coming to grips with the fact that this proposed museum is encroaching on people's rights.

In the two months since council's unanimous vote to put the museum next to North Central Park, the Rio Grande International Study Center and a new group that started on Facebook, Friends of North Central Park, have been gathering at City Council meetings imploring the city to choose a site for the project that wouldn't infringe on the Laredo's dwindling green space.

This remained the case at Monday's meeting, where a group of about 30 people in matching white T-shirts that read "Save North Central Park" gathered at the dais before council.

Danny Gunn, a U.S. Navy veteran who served from 1954-1958, spoke first.

"I am for a veterans museum, but not at North Central Park. That is one of the worst places to put it. There's too much wildlife out there to be considered," Gunn said.

Citizen Beatriz Vidales said North Central Park was created for kids and the community.

"There is a lot of space in Laredo. ... Why don't we find another area? I imagine that there are many places in your district that would be happy to have a museum close by," she told council in Spanish.

MORE ON LMTOnline.com: Studies explore race and ethnicity's hidden impact on PTSD for Hispanic veterans

Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center, noted that in 2007 District 6, where North Central Park resides, was the only district in the city with a surplus of park space, according to the National Recreation and Parks Association. The association recommends five acres of park space per 1,000 people.

Only three years later in 2010, District 6 had a deficit of park space according to this guide. By 2015, 10,000 more people were living in District 6 than in 2007, bringing the park space deficit to 33 acres.

Cortez said natural parks serve their own purpose, and museums are traditionally placed in museum districts that are accessible to tourists.

Councilman Charlie San Miguel represents District 6 and along with the Laredo Veterans Coalition, advocated for putting this museum at North Central Park.

READ MORE: Local World War II veteran, parade marshal reminisces time in war

He told LMT that he will soon be meeting with the commanders of the 12 local veterans groups, not only the Laredo Veterans Coalition, to take a vote on where the museum should go. He said he would absolutely be open to putting the museum elsewhere as long as it's what the veterans want.

"Once a vote is determined I think they'll all be united. But I'm taking marching orders from them," San Miguel said. "I don't mind all the lies said about me on social media when these men were actually willing to give their lives up for me."

San Miguel said people believe that he wants to destroy the walking trails at North Central Park to build this museum, which is not true.

"The area we selected is an open field that nobody goes to. We would never do anything to destroy that park or its trails," he said.

He thinks the museum would complement the park and even enhance the space with the plan to build 300 trees to represent each of Laredo's fallen soldiers. And they would use very little concrete around the museum itself, he said.

San Miguel emphasized that he would never do anything to hurt the park, and that the city has worked very hard for many years to preserve it. In fact the city acquired this land adjacent to North Central Park last year when it was being proposed for a housing development.

"It's ludicrous for someone to say I want to destroy it," he said.

Melissa Cigarroa, board vice president the Rio Grande International Study Center, thanked San Miguel on Monday for finally meeting with this group of concerned citizens.

RELATED: More than 170 turn out for event providing medical services to veterans, families

But she took issue with his idea that the proposed site is not part of North Central Park, and that the veterans will be making the ultimate decision as to where the museum goes. She expressed that they would like to see the city hold a town hall so that all the residents who go to the park can have a say on the issue.

Cigarroa also pointed out that most of the city's veterans live south of Clark Boulevard, and no bus route runs near North Central Park.

"If they do not have a car, they will not be able to access this site. So it seems very short-sighted," she said.
Ukraine and Belarus have decided to develop navigation across the Dnipro and Pripyat Rivers.

The press service of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine said Minister Volodymyr Omelyan gave the information after a meeting with Minister of Transport and Communications of Belarus Anatoly Sivak, which took place in Kyiv on December 5, 2017. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the EU Delegation to Ukraine.

The infrastructure minister said that Ukraine and Belarus are giving priority attention to the development of transport communications between the two countries, in particular, the work on improving navigation on common waterways is being intensified and is expanding.

"One of the priority areas for the development of relations between Ukraine and Belarus is to ensure conditions for the transit of goods by water transport across the territory of Ukraine, including using the river-sea class vessels," Omelyan said.

He also pointed out the joint work of the two countries on the restoration of navigation between Ukraine and Belarus, in particular the E-40 waterway, and the creation of safe shipping conditions on the Dnipro and Pripyatrivers.

The minister of infrastructure of Ukraine thanked the minister of transport of Belarus for constructive and fruitful work on the approval of the road map project, which was signed at the ministerial meeting.

"The presidents of our states pay special attention to this issue. Today we have signed the road map with details and stages of the implementation of projects to develop navigation on the Dnipro and Pripyat rivers," Omelyan said.

The implementation of the provisions of the road map requires financial resources that are planned to be drawn from international financial institutions (IFIs) and donors.

The parties pointed out a positive pace in the growth of road transport and confirmed their interest in further increasing freight turnover between the countries. They also discussed other issues in the transport sector.

In addition, the parties agreed to increase the quota of permits for international transportation of passengers and goods by road to 65,000 units, and division by types of permits will be carried out taking into account the needs of carriers of the two countries.

In addition, the participants in the meeting spoke about the development of the North-South transport link across the territory of Ukraine and Belarus with the goal of providing optimal logistics schemes for the delivery of goods using the infrastructure of Belarus and Ukraine.
The Shape of Water is writer-director Guillermo del Toros first real attempt at a masterpiece since Pans Labyrinth in 2006, and he comes closer this time than last. It is, frame by frame, a beautiful-looking film, and not only beautiful, but of a piece. Del Toro imagines a whole world, one that has never existed before, and then creates it with a meticulousness and fidelity that can inspire awe.

As in Pans Labyrinth, it is a world of pretty surfaces and underlying evil, an evil that hates innocence and purity. It wants to destroy the good, the pure and the defenseless, and although del Toro is emphatically on the side of the angels, there is something in his artistic impulse that is irresistibly drawn to scenes of violence against the weak. How you see those scenes will determine how you ultimately feel about The Shape of Water.

To some, the film will seem like a modern myth, a brand-new fairy tale, with Sally Hawkins  as a cleaning woman in a government laboratory  its heroine. I see it as something darker, as a cruel fantasy given a veneer of wholesomeness through its unrelenting pathos. The poignancy, the little smiles and gentleness are a cover for the movies aggression, so that even if del Toros mind is with Hawkins, his heart is somewhere else and cant be controlled.

This lack of control, this sense of our watching a wildly unconscious document that has been, at the same time, committed to film with precision and planning, makes The Shape of Water a movie to be reckoned with. Even if you see it as a film with an ugly spirit  as ugly as its filmmaker believes it to be pure  and even if you see it as phony and not on to itself, its a fascinating look inside its creators mind.

It takes place in the early 1960s. John F. Kennedy is president, and the Cold War is at its most lethal. Elisa (Hawkins) is mute and lives in a small apartment on top of a movie theater with green seats. In fact, everything is green in The Shape of Water. Elisa wears a green hat. Men wear green suits. The city buses are green, and all the interiors are green. Del Toro expects us to notice. At one point, Michael Shannon, as a government security expert, tries to buy a green Cadillac, only to be told by the dealer that the car isnt green. Its teal.

One day at work, Elisa and her friend and co-worker (Octavia Spencer) are brought in to clean a secret lab, where they discover that an amphibian man (Doug Jones) is being held captive. He is going to be studied by the government and then destroyed. In the meantime, he is being tortured by Strickland (Shannon), just for fun.

Slowly, but inevitably, Elisa strikes up a friendship with the big-eyed, soulful-looking amphibian fellow. Both cant speak, but they communicate a shared dislocation and goodwill. For Hawkins, Elisa is an almost entirely silent role, but within those limits, she is able to convey profound depths of feeling. Mawkishness may be the strategy of The Shape of Water, but Hawkins occasionally finds her way into something real and moving.

Here and there, del Toro locks into a perfect, poetic moment, as when Elisa sits at a table, in her humble apartment, and fantasizes being able to speak, and then being able to sing. The movie lifts into a black-and-white dance number  a brief re-creation of the set and choreography of Lets Face the Music and Dance (from the Astaire-Rogers film Follow the Fleet). And then the scene settles back into mundane reality, except that now we know: This reality is not really mundane, because its elevated by love and longing.

Yet as in Pans Labyrinth, del Toro cant contain an impulse toward cruelty, though at least he does a better job of hiding it this time. Theres a core creepiness here, an unwholesomeness that cant be disguised by the filmmakers unconvincing assertion of loves eternal power.

The Shape of Water is brilliant, but sick  or maybe its sick, but brilliant. In any case, its something to see.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle

The Shape of Water

Fantasy drama. Starring Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. (R. 123 minutes.)
The deadpan irony and seemingly dispassionate air of Finnish director Aki Kaurismakis movies certainly arent for everyone, but they are a taste worth acquiring. His latest, The Other Side of Hope, expands his usual mordant vision of his homeland with a compelling look at Finlands immigration issue.

The film tells two stories that eventually intersect. Wikstrom (Sakari Kuosmanen) is a disaffected middle-aged salesman who abruptly leaves his wife, wins a pile of money in an illicit poker game and buys a comically shabby restaurant called the Golden Pint, which employs a small crew of misfits.

Khaled (Sherwan Haji) is a young Syrian who has arrived in Helsinki hiding in the coal bin of a ship. Hes a refugee of terrible Middle Eastern violence, and he hopes to stay in Finland, recounting his sad tale to a stone-faced female immigration official. Hes turned down, but goes underground before he is deported. Meanwhile, he has a run-in with right-wing bullies who fancy themselves the Finnish Liberation Army.

By chance, the two men meet, and, surprisingly, Wikstrom  who seems far from the bleeding-heart sort  offers Khaled a job and a storeroom in which to sleep. A friendship develops.

Theres no shortage of the filmmakers patented laconic humor, as the restaurants crew tries to boost the failing business by transforming it into a sushi restaurant. The staff decks itself out in Japanese costumes, and when they run out of fresh fish, begin substituting salted herring. Their chances of success? Nil. Its one of Kaurismakis many gibes at what he views as the Finnish national character.

Kaurismaki fans will also relish his use, as in previous movies, of rock, blues and other popular music forms, sometimes with a political tinge, rendered with gusto by Finnish musicians who are the antithesis of conventional celebrities.

The filmmakers drollery sometimes has the feeling of silent comedies, in which slapstick and sight gags often have serious or even tragic undertones. It works well in a story that mixes social satire with a decidedly unfunny tale of an immigrants undoing.

What sticks with us in the end is something beyond the black humor and even Khaleds sorrows  its the touching relationship between the two principals, and the Finnish mans quiet commitment to doing whats right.

Walter Addiego is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: waddiego@sfchronicle.com

The Other Side of Hope

Comedy-drama. Starring Sakari Kuosmanen, Sherwan Haji. Directed by Aki Kaurismaki. In Finnish, English and Arabic with English subtitles. (Not rated. 98 minutes.)
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Students, teachers and family members came together on Dec. 2 to fight cystic fibrosis at the Don Ford Stadium with a theme called Superheroes Fighting Cystic Fibrosis.

The project was created by Caroline Hemphill, a New Caney High School student who is part of the Skills USA program.

The walk is part of a community service project organized by Hemphill, Daira Rodriguez and Dayana Salgado. Hemphill was inspired to do the project for her cousin, Rhyan Rosenbach, 9.

"My cousin, he actually has cystic fibrosis," said Hemphill.

Hemphill says she also chose to focus on cystic fibrosis because it is not as commonly known as other diseases.

"He was diagnosed two weeks after he was born," she said.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder known to affect the lungs among other organs that can cause those afflicted by it to suffer from difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus from frequent lung infections. There is no known cure for the disease and victims tend to have life expectancies from 40 to 50 years.

Those who participated in the walk had sponsors contribute $1 for each lap around the track at the Don Ford Stadium, which is located in Porter, Texas.

"If I walk 20 [laps], they give me $20," said Hemphill.

Those who walked 25 laps also received a free T-Shirt.

"We had close to about 20 to 30 people," said Hemphill.

Participants were also encouraged to dress up as superheroes, though many opted to wear superhero theme T-shirts with logos such as the Superman or Wonder Woman symbols.

Local law enforcement from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and Pct. 4 Constable Rowdy Hayden's Office also joined the walk alongside members of the New Caney Volunteer Fire Department and the Porter Fire Department.

Rosenbach's mother, Kati Simmons, discussed how cystic fibrosis has affected her family and her son.

"The last few years he was in and out of the hospital," she said. "It can be a rough road."

Simmons says Rosenbach may need lung transplants in the future. However, he proves to be strong and full of energy despite the disease.

"He's a fighter," said Simmons. "He's one of the strongest people I know."

Simmons also expressed her thanks to those who participated in the event.

"It means a lot for people to fund-raise and support trying to find a cure," she said.
One of America's most popular tax breaks is about to be rendered nearly useless. And there are few economists rushing to defend it.

The $64 billion mortgage-interest deduction has long been touted as fuel for U.S. homeownership. Yet as the real estate industry fights the Republican tax plan that's set to diminish its use, finding economic supporters of the perk is tough, even among affordable-housing advocates. John Weicher, a 79-year-old former official with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says he's one of the few who believes in the break.

"We're about as common in the economics profession as Republicans are in the District of Columbia," said Weicher, now director of the right-leaning Hudson Institute's housing center in Washington, a city where only about 4 percent of voters chose President Donald Trump in last year's election.

While Republican lawmakers aren't directly killing the mortgage benefit, their tax plan would make it worthless for most homeowners by doubling the federal standard deduction, making it less likely that a typical person would itemize write-offs of any kind. Almost 38 million American households who would otherwise itemize would opt for the standard deduction under the new tax plan, according to Moody's Analytics Inc.

The bill's passage would be one of the greatest defeats for the National Association of Realtors, Washington's second-most powerful lobbying group, which had for decades successfully fended off criticism of the benefit. Detractors argue that the tax perk inflates home prices for first-time buyers and favors families with bigger incomes and bigger mortgages (including for discretionary vacation-home purchases).

It's "not an effective way to support homeownership," Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics, said of the mortgage-interest deduction, or MID. "I think my views on the MID are in the consensus."

Opposition to the deduction has created strange bedfellows.

In February, Diane Yentel, chief executive officer of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and Mark Calabria, then working at the libertarian Cato Institute, co-wrote a column in The Hill calling for Congress to kill or reform the deduction.

"No longer a political 'third rail,' experts from across the ideological spectrum are increasingly calling it what it really is: a wasteful use of federal resources," they wrote.

When the column ran, Sarah Mickelson, director of public policy for the NLIHC, said she got surprised emails from colleagues that her organization could find something to agree on with Calabria, who's now the chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence.

"People were shocked," Mickelson said.

The agreement only goes so far. While Mickelson's group wants to reinvest the savings from limiting the mortgage-interest deduction into help for low-income renters, neither bill in Congress does that.

Both the Senate and House bills increase the standard deduction to $24,000 from $12,700 for a married couple filing jointly. The House plan also caps the home-loan write-off to mortgages up to $500,000 instead of the current $1 million limit. The plans have other elements that stand to disrupt the housing market, from shifts in capital-gains levies on home sales to limiting deductions on state, local and property taxes.

While housing lobbyists' furious opposition to the tax overhaul didn't emerge until the last few months, the industry's tax breaks have been vulnerable for much longer, said Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst with Compass Point Research & Trading.

"The die was largely cast the minute the GOP swept the 2016 election," said Boltansky, who said getting rid of or lessening the value of itemized deductions was always going to be a target of a tax bill in order to save money for broader cuts.

Jon Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he opposes the GOP tax plan because it adds to the deficit at the benefit of the wealthy, but that the mortgage-interest deduction isn't something that should be saved. The perk would cost the government almost $80 billion by 2019, according to Congress's nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The government could spend much less, for example, on a permanent tax credit for first-time buyers, Gruber said.

"If the goal is middle-class homeownership, you could just as well be throwing $100 billion in the ocean," Gruber said. "At least then you'd have a landfill and you could build a house there."

Gruber co-wrote a July working paper, "Do People Respond to the Mortgage Interest Deduction?," using Denmark's sharp cut in its mortgage deduction for top-rate earners in the late 1980s to make the case.

"The mortgage deduction has a precisely estimated zero effect on homeownership," the paper concludes. "The largest effect of the mortgage deduction is on household financial decisions, inducing them to increase indebtedness."

Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said he's skeptical of studies that use very different mortgage systems in other countries to make conclusions about the U.S. Without the deduction, the homeownership rate would drop by one or two percentage points, he said.

It's "simple logic" that the deduction is one of many factors that encourages purchases, Yun said. A study that his group commissioned said home prices in the short run could decline 10 percent with the elimination of the deduction, as potential buyers stop factoring it in to how much they can pay.

Weicher, the benefit's backer, said economists who oppose the mortgage-interest deduction tend not to have studied it themselves and merely take that view because it's what other economists they know believe.

The last time the deduction was under assault, a few years ago, he was popular with newspaper opinion pages. He said he wrote op-eds that appeared in a handful of publications as they got interested in having columns, both pro and con, running side by side.

"Nobody else has an MID op-ed that takes the pro side," Weicher said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Light in Washington at jlight8@bloomberg.net, Prashant Gopal in Boston at pgopal2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net, Kara Wetzel

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
CARPINTERIA, Calif. - Fire continued to tear across southern California on Thursday, surrounding communities and shrouding much of the region in searing flame and thick, choking smoke.

And where there was no fire, there was fear.

Fear of what could come next as wildfires ravaged the state for a fourth day. Fear of what could happen if the winds shifted, if the flames moved, if new blazes erupted and were strengthened by the powerful gusts already fueling the infernos burning across the region.

Tens of thousands of people fled their homes, running from fires without any idea of when they could return or what they might find when they do. They grabbed pets, clothes and mementos before hurrying off in search of shelter.

Veteran firefighters described some the blazes - at least five separate fires in the region - as unlike anything they had ever encountered. Thousands of firefighters and other first responders fanned out to save lives, protect homes and shepherd people to safety, joined by reinforcements that flocked in from other parts of the country.

Authorities had not reported any deaths due to the blazes by Thursday, but they spoke bluntly about the danger that remained through week's end. While the most severe winds are forecast to slacken Friday and Saturday, lessening the fire danger some, the National Weather Service cautions the risk of fires will remain elevated through Sunday as conditions remain abnormally dry and breezy.

"We are a long way from being out of this weather event," Ken Pimlott, director of Cal Fire, said at a briefing Thursday. "In some cases, the worst could be yet to come in terms of the wind."

The National Weather Service warned that if new fires do begin, they could spread rapidly. The warning appeared to be borne out on Thursday in San Diego County, where a blaze, dubbed the Lilac Fire, grew to 2,500 acres in just a few hours and prompted mandatory evacuations. Officials warned it was growing dangerously fast and said it threatened 1,000 structures. Aerial footage taken from a news helicopter showed it burning through what local news reports identified as a retirement community.

The massive Thomas Fire, the state's biggest active blaze, continued to burn actively with what officials said was "extreme rates of spread," across 150 square miles in Ventura County on Thursday.

Flames from that fire surrounded Ojai, the popular winter retreat that is home to about 8,000 people, on Thursday morning, officials said. Most of the Ojai Valley had been placed under a mandatory evacuation order.

More than 100 firetrucks from several states had parked at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, firefighters standing or sitting aside their equipment as they took breaks from battling fires in nearby Ojai the night before, winds whipping in off the ocean as they rested.

"This breeze is nothing," said Shane Nollsch, who had traveled from Lyon County, Nev., arriving at 3 a.m. Wednesday. "Yesterday, you had to chew the air before you breathed it."

Chris Mason, a firefighter from Carson City, Nevada, said those who came to help had to adjust to different terrain and a new environment. Different winds. Different fuels.

"It's a sharp learning curve," Mason said. "Fire is coming down the mountain at you, especially at night, when it's hard to see and you don't know where the streets are."

La Conchita, a tiny town hard against coastal Highway 101 northwest of Ventura, was threatened by flames early Thursday. The town most commonly faces danger from mudslides, but those same cliffs that give way with rain are now a rich "fuel bed" for the wildfires. Fire crews managed to keep the blaze from the town's edge, but new lines, fanned by off-shore winds, remained a peril.

That blaze - the Thomas Fire - extended dozens of miles from near Santa Paula in Ventura County to the edge of Carpinteria, a city of 13,000 people, a stiffening wind posing the most threat. Gusts picked up flames low on coastal mountain slopes and drove them up and over hills toward several towns along the Pacific Ocean.

Santa Barbara County began urging evacuations, ordering hundreds of people to leave areas along the Pacific Ocean between the larger cities of Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Along Rincon Mountain Road a few miles south of Carpinteria, fire crews fought several lines of flames overnight Wednesday and throughout Thursday, focused on protecting homes and ranches. A dozen Ventura County fire engines staged along the road near midday, the fire burning in the avocado and citrus orchards along the ridge-line above.

Tall stands of eucalyptus shook with the strengthening wind, which was driving the flames toward several multimillion-dollar homes, a brewery and a small vineyard. Two helicopters buzzed overhead, tailing "bambi buckets" beneath. The buckets open from the bottom, scooping up loads of water from the Pacific and Lake Casitas to drop near threatened homes and buildings. In all, about 30 homes were in immediate danger.

Fred Burris, a Ventura County Fire Department battalion chief, was finishing a 24-hour shift that included helping to protect La Conchita. Only one outbuilding was lost early Thursday, he said, but new fire lines were popping up along a 15-mile stretch of Highway 150 between Ojai and Carpinteria.

"We're basically defending an area with homes and ranch infrastructure, seeing a new fire emerge along this stretch, then splitting off resources to send there - that's the strategy," said Burris, a 36-year veteran of the department. "Everyone says, 'Yeah, this is the worst,' but it really is the high-water mark for me. We've never seen a fire with this much speed and range."

The California National Guard said it had mobilized more than 1,300 personnel to help confront the wildfires.

In Los Angeles County, firefighters responded to threats on multiple fronts. The Rye and Creek fires continued burning through a combined 30 square miles north of Los Angeles, while the Skirball Fire's smaller reach forced evacuations in ritzy Bel Air and caused the University of California Los Angeles to cancel classes on Thursday, just two days before final exams.

At an afternoon press conference, city officials sounded a more optimistic note than recent days, saying that the majority of residents evacuated from homes near the three fires would be soon allowed home. Still, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, D, cautioned that it was "still an insecure time," and warned that high winds could pick up again at any time. Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas said that the forecast of the city's weather and humidity conditions for Friday still put it in the "extreme range" of fire risk.

In the Sunland area of Los Angeles near the Creek Fire, Ken Villegas, a horse farm owner, said earlier in the week he saw the flames jump from across the street and enter his property, burning some of his foliage but no structures.

"It was crazy," the 56-year-old said with a laugh. "The wind was blowing so hard it would've knocked you over."

Warning of "extreme" fire behavior, authorities said those fighting the Creek Fire were facing multiple difficulties because of the winds, poor access to the fire, and steep, rugged terrain.

To the southwest, the Skirball Fire's continued impact could be seen traveling down Interstate 405, the famously congested roadway shut down by the flames a day earlier. Mountains to the east of the 405 that had been swathed in flame were charred, while those on the freeway's west side were spared.

About 10 miles south of Carpinteria, Richard Floyd watched flames burn down a steep hillside toward his aunt's 32-acre avocado orchard, flaring with the wind gusts. For hours, the fire was close enough to his cabin, set in a bowl between hills, that you could hear it crackle and pop.

Helicopters dropped water on the hillside above the orchard for more than an hour, two working in tandem: As one dropped a load and swung south to refill in Lake Casitas, the second could be seen in the near distance.

The crews were "doing great, just great," Floyd said. But the flames persisted and he remained uneasy.

---

Berman reported from Washington. Noah Smith in Los Angeles; Soo Youn in Ventura, Calif.; and Travis Andrews, J. Freedom du Lac, Jason Samenow and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.
The Gaza Strip's militant Hamas rulers called for a new uprising against President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while protesters burned American flags and pictures of the U.S. leader in demonstrations across the West Bank.

"We demand, call and will launch an intifada in the face of the Zionist occupation," Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech Thursday broadcast by Al Jazeera television. "Jerusalem is being kidnapped and ripped from us."

Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis died in two previous uprisings.

While it's unclear if there is appetite for a new uprising, or intifada, anger runs deep in Palestinian territories and among Muslims elsewhere against Trump's decision to break with decades of U.S. policy, which includes plans to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, and previous U.S. administrations had resisted moves that could risk inflaming Muslim passions and alienating Muslim allies.

"We will not accept your patronage of the peace process any more," Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said of Trump. "We will confront you with unity, and Palestine will return to its 1967 borders with holy Jerusalem as its capital," he said, referring to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

The Israeli and Palestinian stock markets, no strangers to turmoil, were little changed.

In taking the decision, Trump has put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back in the spotlight in a region roiled by multiple wars and political turmoil since the 2011 Arab Spring. But while U.S. officials said they were recognizing a reality, ignoring Arab opposition to the move suggests Trump is betting that key allies are more keen on U.S. support against Iran and Islamist extremists, or are too distracted by regional disputes to take drastic action.

Aside from Jordan, which has been vocal in condemning Trump's decision and where mass protests are planned for Friday, official reactions from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have been largely restrained.

"Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. highly value the relationship with Trump and will not do anything to undermine it," said Ayham Kamel, head of the Middle East and North Africa department at Eurasia Group. "They will prioritize maintaining the relationship with the Trump administration."

Some European leaders were more critical.

"The announcement has the potential to send us backward to even darker times than the ones we are already living in," said European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini. "This move could diminish the potential role that the United States can play in the region and create more confusion around this."

The president "is simply carrying out the will of the American people," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Vienna. "The reality is Israel's government offices, its courts are all in Jerusalem today, so it is just acknowledgment of what is reality on the ground."

With a "day of rage" called across the West Bank, Israeli security forces braced for unrest. The army ordered the deployment of additional battalions to the West Bank, and more troops were put on standby, the military spokesman's office said.

Palestinians burned tires and hurled rocks at Israeli soldiers in various West Bank cities, and troops responded with tear gas. A strike shuttered shops and schools across the West Bank and Gaza.

"The ground is definitely going to burn," Effie Sharon, a 41-year-old owner of a Jerusalem kiosk, said late Wednesday. Yehuda Blackman, a 21-year-old working at a nearby bar, said any violence would be worth it "if it brings a certain recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, which there hasn't been so far."

The ferment spread across the Muslim world:

- Al Jazeera television reported that influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr called on resistance groups to meet urgently to discuss military action against Israel.

- Protests were scheduled in Jordan, which has a predominantly Palestinian population and is the custodian of the fought-over Jerusalem shrine that's the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque and the biblical Jewish temple.

- Saudi Arabia called on the U.S. to reverse its decision, calling it a "drastic regression in the efforts to move the peace process forward."

Demonstrations have also been called in various Muslim nations after the main prayers on Friday, often a flashpoint when passions over Jerusalem are kindled.

An Israeli police spokesman didn't have immediate information on whether access to Al-Aqsa would be curtailed Small protests took place in Egypt, outside the journalists syndicate and at some universities, though the response was muted Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called for protests in the group's southern Beirut bastion on Monday, and urged Muslim countries to summon U.S. ambassadors and cut all contacts with Israel

In Tunis, hundreds protested outside the headquarters of the main labor union, which had called on the public to respond to Trump's decision. One of them, Mariam Barbary, said Arab anger was directed at their own "hypocritical" governments as well as the U.S. "We have lost confidence in these Arab regimes and it is up to the Arab street to act and pressure for a change in this decision," she said.

"We understand and expected the emotional reaction," U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in an interview with Fox News Thursday. But people who are demonstrating "did not listen carefully enough," he said. Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is "the best path for peace," he said, adding that the U.S. is taking appropriate precautions to protect Americans abroad.

The State Department has issued warnings to personnel in sites where unrest is anticipated, including Jerusalem, the West Bank and Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital.

The full impact of Trump's decision won't be known until his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveils a peace plan he has been working on. But that may take too long.

"President Trump has delivered a message to the Palestinian people: the two-state solution is over," the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said in an interview published in the Haaretz daily, taking a divergent view from Palestinian Prime Minister Hamdallah. "Now is the time to transform the struggle for one-state with equal rights for everyone living in historic Palestine, from the river to the sea."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing foreign diplomats, predicted other countries will move their embassies to Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the Czech Republic issued a statement saying it recognizes west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but isn't considering moving its embassy at this time. Israel Radio, without saying where it got its information, said the Philippines was considering an embassy relocation.

---

Bloomberg's Margaret Talev, Donna Abu-Nasr, Fadwa Hodali, Saud Abu Ramadan, Zainab Fattah, Jonathan Tirone and Jihen Laghmari contributed.
The Federation of Employers of Ukraine has said that a new type of illegal seizures has appeared in Ukraine.

"A new type of illegal seizure  private associations  has appeared. For example, International Anti-Corruption Court. There is a non-governmental association which using frame-up is achieving the opening of criminal cases against companies. Then it sends relevant applications to the authorized agencies of other countries," Director General of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine Ruslan Ilyichev said at a government meeting on Wednesday.

The steps are made by these associations when companies refuse paying membership fees.

Ilyichevv said that at present five or seven Ukrainian companies faced this type of illegal seizure.

"In the situation with Borschahivka chemical and pharmaceutical plant requests to all medicinal services where Ukraine exports medicines were sent. They say that the enterprise is unfair and makes counterfeit products. For example, export of medicines to Vietnam has been blocked for 30 days," he said.

He said that in these cases there are no schemes to influence these associations and it is hard to prove that the enterprise is stable and produces good products.

Borschahivka chemical and pharmaceutical plant is a member of the Association Manufacturers of Medications of Ukraine.
TOKYO - Three more empty boats were found along Japan's west coast on Thursday, a day when the snow and the rain made sure the temperature never really rose above freezing. Two bodies reduced to skeletons were found near one, which was upturned on the shore near the city of Oga.

Another, much bigger boat, was found not far away. And the third, bearing Korean writing, was caught in fishing nets near Sado Island, just off the west coast.

The previous day, an equally freezing Wednesday, a rickety old wooden boat which also bore a sign written in Korean was found bucking around in the rough seas. Found nearby: two dead bodies.

Another body, mostly just bones, was found up the coast in Akita prefecture Tuesday, and before that, three bodies were found near a wooden boat - two of them wearing pins showing the face of Kim Il Sung, the "Eternal President" of North Korea.

Almost every day for the last month, grisly discoveries like these have been made all along Japan's western coastline, across the sea from North Korea. One boat even had a slogan in Korean declaring: "September is a boat accident prevention month."

North Korean "ghost ships" had previously washed ashore from time to time, but the sudden spike over the last month - there were a record 28 in November, compared with only four the previous November, according to the coast guard - has many people here wondering what is going on? And does it tell us something about the state of North Korea?

As with so many things about North Korea, it's difficult to know for sure. But many analysts think it's a reflection of food shortages, which in turn are the result of tougher sanctions on North Korea imposed to punish the regime for its continued nuclear defiance.

"North Korean fishermen have to work harder than ever before and they have to go further out into the sea, but they don't have new boats," said Atsuhito Isozaki, associate professor of North Korean studies at Keio University.

Most of the boats washed up in Japan are about 32 feet long and wooden so they have trouble withstanding the rough winter seas. Many of the bodies are decomposed or just skeletons, likely a reflection of the storms and difficult seas in the area in October.

"Plus, North Korea doesn't have enough gasoline anymore so they're running out of fuel," Isozaki said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been aggressively promoting fishing as a growth industry and started this year by ordering a "dynamic drive for catching fish" with "modern fishing vessels."

"Fishing boats are like warships, protecting the people and the motherland. Fish are like bullets and artillery shells," the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party, wrote in an editorial last month. Winter fishing was an "important battle" to meet annual seafood quotas, the paper said.

North Korea's seafood exports to China grew by a whopping 75 percent between 2015 and 2016, hitting $190 million last year, according to figures from the South's trade promotion agency. This made it one of North Korea's biggest sources of revenue.

But in August, in response to the launch of North Korea's first intercontinental ballistic missiles, the U.N. Security Council banned seafood exports from the rogue state. The following month it slapped limits on the amount of refined petroleum products that could be exported to North Korea, all part of a strategy to make the regime think twice about pursuing nuclear weapons.

While it is still too early to see the full effect of those sanctions - and the extent to which neighboring China is implementing them - analysts said they do appear to be causing North Korea some pain already.

"Fishermen usually have a set quota and they used to sell the seafood to China," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, emeritus professor at Waseda University. "Now with the new sanctions, they can't sell the seafood overseas but the quota still exists so fishermen need to go fishing. They probably stay out too long to catch more fish."

North Korea is reported to have sold the fishing rights along its coast to China so, to meet their quotas, North Koreans appear to be fishing illegally in the Yamato shallows, a rich fishing ground inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. If they run out of fuel, the strong northwesterly winds from China will blow them towards the Japanese coast.

Others say the increasing number of fishermen washing up in Japan might be evidence of food shortages in North Korea, with fishermen pushing themselves to extremes in search of a good catch.

"The food situation is getting worse, so fishing is encouraged in order to fulfill people's needs," said Sotetsu Ri, a North Korea expert at Ryukoku University. "Fishing is one way to deal with the economic situation."

The Mainichi Shimbun, a left-leaning Japanese newspaper, said that the sudden spurt in "ghost ships" showed the tyranny of the North Korean regime.

"The Kim administration says that its policy focus is on nuclear development and improving the lives of its citizens," it wrote in an editorial this week. "But in reality, the administration's policy of nuclear and missile development has led to the deterioration of the lives of the North Korean public, forcing them to undertake ill-advised fishing excursions."

Not all the boats have contained corpses. A total of 42 men have been found alive, with one boatload of eight telling Japanese authorities they were looking for squid when their engine failed.

In another incident, 10 North Korean men sought shelter in a hut on an uninhabited islet in northern Japan. But after they broke in, they stole a TV, refrigerator and rice cooker. When the Japan Coast Guard spotted their wooden boat, the men dumped the appliances into the sea.

All of the men found in recent weeks have asked to be returned to North Korea and the Japanese government is in the process of sending them back

The arrival of North Koreans is causing jitters along the coastline, the same stretch of land from which Japanese citizens were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

"It doesn't really make us feel great," said Kazuhiro Asai, head of the Oga branch office of the Akita Fisheries' Cooperative Association, located near where eight men were found alive recently.

"In the past, there was a case where North Koreans came to kidnap someone nearby and that was scary. I guess these guys aren't out to kidnap but we don't know what they're here for and that makes me worried."

For others along the coast, where North Korea has been landing many of its missiles in the water, this is another unwelcome encroachment from a hostile neighbor.

"We have an uneasy feeling," said Sakari Nishimura of Yamagata Prefectural Fisheries' Cooperative Association. "These days we not only need to watch out for missiles falling from the sky, now we have to watch out on the sea, too."
Little more than a century ago, the French novelist Andre Gide was asked to name France's greatest poet. "Victor Hugo, alas," he replied. Gide's rascally but revealing answer comes to mind with the news of Johnny Hallyday's death Wednesday at the age of 74. Finally succumbing to a lung cancer he had carefully cultivated all of his life with Gitanes, Hallyday was, helas, France's greatest rocker.

Inspired by Elvis Presley, Hallyday went on to become the most famous Frenchman Americans never knew. (Though his failure to take America by storm was not for lack of trying: He made several spectacularly failed attempts to win over an American audience - including an album produced by Quincy Jones - climaxing in his sublimely ridiculous 1996 escapade, when he spearheaded an invasion of Las Vegas by 5,000 of his hometown fans - who paid tens of thousands of francs each - filling what otherwise would have been a cavernously empty Aladdin Theater.)

Tragically, Hallyday also came to embody a certain idea of France that quite a few French never knew and that, like Hallyday, now seems condemned to a slow and terminal death.

Born Jean-Philippe Smet, he was the offspring of a Franco-Belgian couple who had abandoned him and one another shortly after his birth in 1943 in occupied Paris. Fourteen years later, Smet stumbled onto his road to Damascus in a movie house in the red-light district of Pigalle. The teenager, who had dropped out of school and frequented music halls, bought a ticket to see "Loving You," the movie that introduced Elvis Presley to the world in full Technicolor.

The storyline - Presley plays a deliveryman discovered by a country music publicist - certainly appealed to the ambitious young man, but no less compelling were Presley's swiveling pelvis and smoldering pout. It was, Smet recalled, "le flash." Donning tight jeans, a black leather coat, and the Americanish name Johnny Hallyday, he set out to conquer France.

In one sense, he seems to have succeeded: in an official statement, President Emmanuel Macron declared to a mourning nation (riffing on one of Hallyday's early hits "Quelque chose de Tennessee," or "Something of Tennessee") that "we all have something of Johnny in us." But - and herein lies the hidden meaning of Hallyday - some French have much more of Johnny in them than others.

It so happens that those same French also seem to have much less of a future in France than the others.

Hallyday mostly puzzles Americans who have listened to his music and watched his shows. While his personal life and professional career resemble Edith Piaf's, he lacks - at least to our ears - Piaf's brilliant voice and commanding charisma. For this reason, American media habitually refer to Hallyday as the French Elvis.

This phrase, however, conceals as much as it reveals. After all, Gloria Steinem read The Second Sex, but that did not make her "the American Simone de Beauvoir" - she lacked the philosophical and left-wing ideological credentials for that. (Nor would de Beauvoir have followed Steinem in going undercover at the Playboy Club had she read Ms. Magazine.)

Ultimately, though Hallyday glommed on to aspects of Presley's music and mannerisms, from riding Harleys onto the stage to moving his hips (and falling off stages), he never tapped into the King's musical genius. By any measure, he was clueless about the African-American roots of rock 'n' roll. While James Brown could hail Presley as a "soul brother," he would have been nonplussed by Hallyday.

But Hallyday was so much more than an Elvis impersonator with a thick Gallic accent. Instead, Hallyday managed to transpose Presley's idioms to connect with a disadvantaged, and otherwise forgotten, slice of France - what the Hallyday biographer Philippe Boggio calls "l'autre France" (the other France) and the sociologist Christophe Guilluy identifies as "la France peripherique" (peripheral France).

In his writings, Guilluy presents a grim and controversial analysis of a France as deeply divided as red and blue America. Yet the division is not along traditional geographical, ethnic or religious lines, but instead between what Guilluy calls "metropoles" and "peripheries." While the professional classes in Paris and Grenoble surf the great waves of technological and commercial change, the peripheral spaces have stagnated into tidal pools for those washed to one side. Unable to compete in the rapidly evolving job market and unable to afford life in increasingly expensive cities, these men and women, avoiding suburbs where immigrant populations have settled, instead migrate to the exurbs and rural zones. This is an increasingly raw and reactionary socioeconomic group mostly ignored by the traditional left, as well as Macron's centrist La Republique En Marche, and which has become the choice recruiting ground for the extreme left and right.

Hallyday's horde that occupied the Aladdin was the advance (though aging) guard of France's own silent majority. This France was heaved into existence during the student revolt of the summer of 1968. The revolutionaries, the offspring of a modernizing middle class created by France's postwar economic boom, went on to impose their cultural and political dominance in 1981 with the presidency of the Socialist Francois Mitterrand. It was this professional and increasingly cosmopolitan class that congregated in "metropoles" like Paris, Toulouse, and Grenoble.

Hallyday happened to be sunbathing at Saint-Tropez when the student revolt burst into existence. Pas de probleme, declared his fans. These fans, unlike the "metropolitans," hailed from traditional industries undermined by the end of the so-called "30 glorious years" of economic growth. This threatened class overlapped, in turn, with marginalized communities like the hundreds of thousands of French Algerians who were repatriated to France after 1962.

While they could not afford to join Johnny on the Cote d'Azur, they admired their idol's ability to do so. In fact, they admired Johnny's conspicuous consumption (of drugs and alcohol as much as of fast cars and young women) far more than they did the bourgeois students playing at revolution on the barricades. While the Paris of intellectuals and students was seeking, in the era's famous phrase, "the beach below the cobblestones," the provinces of Hallyday's fans wanted to join Johnny on a real beach. Paris returned the incomprehension and irritation of the provinces in spades. They scorned Hallyday as the embodiment of a foreign way of life - aka American pop culture - that they found as menacing as communist totalitarianism.

For the last half century, "l'autre France" has been Johnny's France. Hallyday's politics have always pulled to the right. Just as Elvis found a friend in Richard Nixon, Johnny embraced Nicolas Sarkozy, making a star turn at Sarko's notorious bash at Fouquet's following his election as president in 2007. But Hallyday's political arc closely tracks those who collect his albums, congregate at his concerts, and carry the same tattoos. These communities, increasingly estranged from Paris, heard their lives in Johnny's songs (mostly written by others) and saw their dreams in Johnny's life (mostly lived in the glare of paparazzi cameras). Battered in the great churn of globalization, those dreams mostly died before Hallyday himself did. But they will not be surrendered easily. As one of his fans, who joined the growing press gathering outside Hallyday's house, declared: "His death is as important for me as de Gaulle's or Mitterrand's. I hope he'll be buried at the Pantheon: he deserves it."

The Pantheon might prove a bridge too far. When Hugo died in 1885, a grateful republic saw him off with a massive funeral march beginning at the Arc de Triomphe, filing along the Champs-Elysees and ending at the Pantheon. While plans are now afoot for a similar cortege for Hallyday - a member of Macron's party has described Hallyday's death as being as momentous as Hugo's - the president might draw the line at the Pantheon. Who knows? Just as there is now a French Disneyland, a French Graceland might soon be in the offing.

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Zaretsky is a professor of history at the University of Houston's Honors College. His most recent book is Boswell's Enlightenment.
Washington

Donald Trump Jr. refused to tell lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer after emails detailing the meeting had become public, according to the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

Speaking to the committee behind closed doors on Wednesday as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump Jr. said he didn't tell the president about the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians when it happened and he declined to elaborate on what he ultimately told him after the meeting became public.

California Rep. Adam Schiff said that Trump Jr. said he couldn't speak about the conversations with his father this summer because of attorney-client privilege, telling the committee a lawyer was present when he spoke to his father about the June 2016 meeting and the emails that led up to it.

Schiff said that wasn't a valid excuse not to talk, saying "the presence of counsel does not mean communications between father and son are privileged."

The Trump Tower meeting is a matter of keen interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also investigating the meddling and whether there was any obstruction of justice. Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russian operatives under the impression that they might receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Mueller is also interested in the White House response to the meeting once it became public. The White House has said the president was involved in drafting an early statement saying the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program, but emails later released by Trump Jr. showed he enthusiastically agreed to the sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others after he was promised dirt on his father's rival. Trump Jr. later said the promised material never materialized.

Trump Jr. said during Wednesday's eight-hour interview that he spoke with President Donald Trump's communications aide Hope Hicks as early reports of the meeting emerged, according to one person familiar with the interview. The New York Times was first to report the existence of the meeting last July, and Trump Jr. released the emails detailing the planning for it several days later.

Hicks was with the president on Air Force One while they were writing the initial statement that said the meeting primarily concerned the adoption program.
Deputy Minister of Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Hryhoriy Tuka has said Ukraine can benefit from Croatia's experience in removing military mines.

"Yesterday evening we met with our Croatian colleagues and discussed issues which will be made public during our official presentation. As someone who was in charge for a year of Luhansk Military-Civilian Regional Administration, let me tell you I didn't even imagine how much we have in common with our Croatian friends with issues involving demining operations," he said on Thursday during a meeting with a delegation from the Croatian center for demining activity in Kyiv.

Tuka said in 2014 a Croatian citizen was wounded from a mine blast, even 20 years since the conflict there.

"We have been trying for about a year to jointly study the experience of various countries to solve the problem. It would be negligence to ignore it," he said.

Croatia's Ambassador to Ukraine Tomislav Vidosevic said his country is ready to share its experience in demining operations.

"If you need something extra, we are at your disposal, as an embassy. This was the instruction of our head of government, that we exchange expertise with you on this issue," Vidosevic said, adding that a delegation from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada is scheduled to visit Croatia in 2018.
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Voters on Saturday will choose among runoff candidates for Houston ISD Board of Trustees and for a trustee spot with the Houston Community College's District IX.

Four candidates are vying for the final two positions on the Houston ISD Board of Trustees and two candidates face off in the runoff election for HCC's board.

Polls open Saturday at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

The ISD race

District I candidate Elizabeth Santos, who fell just short of winning the seat outright in November, will seek to hold off Gretchen Himsl, while District III candidates Sergio Lira and Jesse Rodriguez will square off after emerging from a four-person general election.

Four other candidates - Wanda Adams, Sue Deigaard, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca and Anne Sung - won their seats on the nine-person board in November after earning at least 50 percent of the vote in their districts.

Both races feature active educators running against candidates touting their involvement in advocacy and community groups.

Santos teaches English literature at Northside High School, while Himsl is a policy analyst for Children at Risk, an education and child-welfare advocacy nonprofit. Lira is an assistant principal at Bellaire High School, and Rodriguez has worked as a United Airlines customer care manager for nearly two decades.

Santos, 35, has taught in Houston ISD since 2008, spending seven years at Sam Houston Math, Science and Technology Center before moving to Northside High School two years ago. She said her areas of focus include investing more money in classrooms and teachers, promoting the community schools model and offering better representation to diverse voices in the northwest Houston district.

"I have first-hand knowledge of what actually goes on in schools as a student, as a volunteer and as a teacher," Santos said. "Our community wants a change. They want someone other than a Heights mom to represent them."

Himsl, 46, said she believes her experience as a Houston ISD parent - her two daughters attend district schools - is resonating with voters. She added that her work in policy at Children at Risk and the Texas House Appropriations Committee, where she was a staff member, differentiates her from Santos.

"I've learned that to have good, effective policy, you really need to listen to all sides and stakeholders in an issue - parents, teachers and the administration," Himsl said. "My strength is as a collaborator and listener, to keep all voices together and reach a consensus on the best policy decision."

Santos received 45 percent of the vote in general election, with Himsl earning 34 percent. Lira and Rodriguez are vying to fill the District III seat of former trustee Manuel Rodriguez Jr., who died of a heart attack in July. Rodriguez received 40 percent to Lira's 34 percent in the general election.

Rodriguez, 63, has served on several nonprofit and advocacy group boards, in addition to a decade-long stint as a volunteer radio host for KPFT. He said his priorities include driving down the district's dropout rate, engaging more with parents and improving the board operations through better communication.

"The board is in disarray. The board members aren't working together with the superintendent," Rodriguez said. "I want to build bridges. I want to work together as a team. I think I have a great disposition in regard to working on personal and professional relationships."

Lira, 56, was an assistant principal in Pasadena ISD from 1999 to 2006, when he took on the same role in Houston ISD. Lira touted his experience in dealing with campus budgets, collaborating with educators and building strong schools with limited resources.

"We need to take politics out of this election and focus on the kids," Lira said. "The school board will become stronger with educators that know the issues and can work quickly. My whole experience as a classroom leader, that's what distinguishes me."

HCC seat at stake

Two candidates running to serve as Houston Community College's District IX trustee will face off on Saturday after a week of early voting.

In the District IX race for Houston Community College trustee, Pretta VanDible Stallworth and Eugene "Gene" Pack are running to replace Christopher Oliver. Oliver has not attended a Houston Community College board meeting since his guilty plea to bribery was unsealed in July.

Pack, a retired auto broker, and Stallworth, a business consultant, beat out community college teacher David Jaroszewski in the November election. Pack edged out Stallworth by less than 400 votes, but neither earned the majority of the votes, forcing a runoff.

Stallworth, an HCC trustee from 1989 through 1993, said in the League of Women Voters of Houston election guide that she would advocate for increased ethics training for board members. Administrators should review employer needs regularly to assess what HCC should teach, she said.

Pack has pledged to enhance financial aid policies to keep students enrolled after Hurricane Harvey if he is elected. He also proposed several accountability measures for the board, including shortening trustee term lengths to four years from six and pushing for ethics reform in board contracts and procurement.

Oliver was appointed to an open board seat in 1995 and has served as a trustee ever since. He remains on the board, though he has not attended a meeting since July. Oliver said he took about $12,000 in cash and Visa gift cards between June 2015 and February 2016 in exchange for his influence over college contracts. The college is investigating procurement and administrative practices after Oliver's plea was unsealed.

Incumbent candidates Carolyn Evans-Shabazz and Robert Glaser both won their bids in November.

Early voting in all races ran from Nov. 29 to Dec. 5.
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It's been a while since Houston has seen snow, but weather experts say some could be on the way.

The National Weather Service for the Houston and Galveston area predicts light rain mixed with sleet will hit East Texas on Wednesday night, which could last all the way to early Friday morning.

REMEMBER WHEN?: That time in snowed in Houston in 2008 and everyone was so excited

"We're mainly going to have light rain. There is a chance we can get snow or sleet," NWS meteorologist Paul Lewis told Chron.com. Lewis did not elaborate more on how likely it will be that Houstonians will see snow.

Thursday afternoon saw more rain in east Texas, with temperatures reaching the upper 40s and low 50s, according to NWS. Temperatures are expected to fall into the 30s by midnight on Thursday, with the chance of rain turning into sleet and snow.

Near or below freezing temperatures are projected to continue going into Friday morning along with rain, increasing the possibility for sleet and rain.

Now Playing: Snow falls in Lubbock, Texas on Dec. 4, 2017. Video: Houston Chronicle

Friday could see a high of 49 degrees and the sun emerging again. Friday night is projected to have a low of 36 degrees. By Saturday, NWS is expecting 61 degrees and sunshine.

PUG LIFE: Houston home boasts adorable pug murals for Christmas decorations

Lewis notes even if it does snow in Houston, it's unlikely that it'll stick as it probably won't get cold enough for things to freeze.

Scroll through the gallery above to see what Houston was like the last time snow hit Houston.





Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter.
German Ambassador to Ukraine Ernst Reichel believes that the decision by the Verkhovna Rada to amend the article on the language of instruction in the law on education at the last moment was a mistake and Ukraine is now paying the price for it.

"I think that the change at the last moment of Article 7 of the law on education [on the language of instruction] was a mistake, and I think that Ukraine is now paying the price for this mistake," he said during a round table discussion entitled "Relations with EU Neighbors: Seeking Neighborhood Policy for Ukraine" in Kyiv on Thursday.

The ambassador noted that he does not support Hungary's position, but believes that before the adoption of this decision, Ukraine should have discussed this provision with its neighbors.

"When I say that it was a mistake, please do not get me wrong. I'm not saying that the reaction, in particular, of Hungary was or is adequate," Reichel said.

The German diplomat added that due to the law, in particular, the Romanian and Hungarian minorities will lose the current status quo and their children will be "largely taught in the Ukrainian language, which many of them do not speak."

"If I were a parent of a child from the Hungarian minority, then I would be concerned," he said.

At the same time, the ambassador noted that citizens of Ukraine should know the Ukrainian language, but, in his opinion, this means an increase in the study of the Ukrainian language, but does not necessarily mean "studying mathematics or physics in Ukrainian."

Reichel said he regretted that the generally good reform law had become the subject of international relations of Ukraine.

As reported, the Ukrainian law on education came into force on September 28.

Among other things, the law stipulates that the state language is a language of learning at educational institutions, but one or several subjects in two or more languages, namely, the state language, English and other European Union official languages can be taught in compliance with the educational program.

People, who belong to ethnic minorities, are guaranteed the right for learning in the native language along with the Ukrainian language in separate groups of municipal pre-school and primary school institutions.

On September 28, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry sent the education law for examination by the Venice Commission.
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The snow that began to fall west of San Antonio before sunset Thursday has reached the Alamo City, according to photos sent from readers and shared on social media.

Tim Morrow, the CEO of the San Antonio Zoo, shared photos of snow at the Rim shopping center about 6 p.m. Thursday and reported a power outage at his home shortly afterward.

Morrow is one of the more than 60,000 customers that without power as of 9 p.m., according to the CPS energy power outages map.

RELATED: Almost 60,000 customers without power in San Antonio

Now Playing: Snow begins to accumulate in Boerne and the Hill Country, Thursday Dec. 7, 2017. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Snow accumulations had reached an inch in the Stone Oak-area, according to the National Weather Service.

Earlier Thursday, the NWS had warned that black ice and snow were possible in the San Antonio-area through the night.

Temperatures were expected to drop into the 30s around midnight, bringing the possibility for ice on roads in the Hill Country and the I-35 corridor to New Braunfels, the National Weather Service reported. Snow flurries were also possible south of I-10 and east of I-37, though no accumulation is expected.

The National Weather Service had issued a freeze warning for a number of counties across south-central Texas, including Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, Comal, Hays and Travis counties.

RELATED: Freezing temperatures possible in San Antonio tonight

The weather service warned in its report that young children, elderly San Antonians, and sensitive pets and plants are at a greater risk during cold weather. Elderly people and children could suffer hypothermia if exposed in extremely cold temperatures for a long period of time.

"Exposed water pipes could break," reads the report.

Meteorologists advised taking "extreme caution" if driving overnight, especially on bridges and overpasses.

Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
Now Playing: "The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please dont ask why. No one quite knows the reason. Seguin PD needs your help. We are in a pinch. Identify this What-A-Burger GRINCH!" Video: Seguin Police Department

Police are looking for a Grinch who stole some Christmas spirit from a Seguin Whataburger.

On Tuesday, just after midnight, a man in a Seattle Seahawks jersey visited the fast food restaurant. While no one was looking, the man stole a decorated Christmas tree and rant out of the store.
WASHINGTON - As Donald Trump delivered his presidential inaugural address last January, his national security adviser Michael Flynn told a former business associate in text messages that a private plan to build nuclear reactors in the Mideast was "good to go" and that U.S. sanctions hobbling the plan would soon be "ripped up," a whistleblower told congressional investigators.

The witness did not specify which sanctions Flynn was referring to in his texts. But the nuclear project that Flynn and his business associate had worked on together was stymied by U.S. financial sanctions on Russia.

The witness's account, made public Wednesday by the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, raises new concerns about the extent to which Flynn may have blurred his private and public interests during his brief stint at the White House.

Trump fired Flynn in February, saying he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, pleaded guilty in federal court last week to one count of making false statements to the FBI and is now a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into possible coordination between Trump's campaign and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 election.

Urges subpoenas

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday the whistleblower's allegations raise concerns that Flynn improperly aided the nuclear project after joining the White House as one of Trump's top national security officials.

Cummings detailed the whistleblower's allegations in a letter to committee chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and urged Gowdy to authorize subpoenas to Flynn and his business associates to learn more about his efforts.

In a reply late Wednesday, Gowdy said he had shared Cummings' letter with Texas Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Midland, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman and ranking Democrat heading the House intelligence committee inquiry into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Gowdy spurned Cummings' request for subpoenas, echoing his replies to previous Cummings subpoena requests.

"If you have evidence of a crime, you should provide it to the Special Counsel immediately," Gowdy wrote.

Sent from Capitol steps

Flynn had been a paid consultant for the venture before he joined the Trump campaign last year. The plan, backed by a group of investors, nuclear power adherents and former U.S. military officers, was to construct dozens of nuclear reactors across the Mideast with aid from Russian and other international private interests.

House Democrats noted that a federal ethics law requires White House officials to refrain for a year from dealing with any outside interests they had previously worked with on private business.

"Our committee has credible allegations that President Trump's national security adviser sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners," Cummings said.

The whistleblower told House Democrats that while Trump spoke in January, Flynn texted from the Capitol steps to Alex Copson, the managing director of ACU Strategic Partners and the nuclear project's main promoter. The whistleblower, whose identity was not revealed in Cummings' letter, said that during a conversation, Copson described his messages with Flynn and briefly flashed one of the texts, which appeared to have been sent 10 minutes after Trump was sworn in as president.

"Mike has been putting everything in place for us," Copson said, according to the whistleblower. Copson added that "this is going to make a lot of very wealthy people." The whistleblower also said that Copson intimated that Flynn would ensure that U.S. financial sanctions hobbling the nuclear project were going to be "ripped up," allowing investment money to start flowing into the project.

Attorneys for Flynn and Copson did not immediately return requests for comment.

In Flynn's plea agreement last week, prosecutors said he lied to FBI agents about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition.
AUSTIN  Two statewide education groups are demanding the Texas Education Agency suspend its $4 million contract with a data company analyzing the confidential records of students with disabilities.

Disability Rights Texas and the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education asked the department to temporarily halt a project that examines Individual Education Plans (IEP), which detail a student's disability, his or her education needs and how a school intends to meet those needs. IEPs often contain sensitive medical and psychological information.

"A temporary suspension of the project is the only appropriate action given the questions surrounding it at this time," the two organizations wrote in a letter to Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath Tuesday.

The agency will not stop the project, a TEA spokeswoman said in a written statement. She said the organizations have appeared to be supportive of the project until now.

"The project has been optional for districts and continues to be," said Lauren Callahan, the spokeswoman.

The request comes as the project continues to roil the state education department after its former special education director filed a federal complaint alleging the state improperly awarded a contract to SPEDx, a Georgia-based data company leading the analysis.

TEA officials repeatedly have said the department followed all the proper procurement procedures. They say the project is necessary to improve education outcomes for special education students in Texas, but some parents and advocacy organization have privacy concerns and question if the money spent on the project could be put to better use.

The IEP Analysis Project is intended to identify specific approaches to individual education plans that show the most promise for our students," said Lauren Callahan, a TEA spokeswoman. "With this information in hand, Texas school districts will be able to significantly improve the academic resources available to teachers who support our special education students."

TEA invited districts across the state to participate in the analysis, which is designed to find trends and patterns in the kind of educational services provided to students with disabilities. Districts would be paid thousands of dollars for sharing the information.

The advocacy organizations, including parent groups, were made aware of the project "from its inception," Callahan said, adding that the two organization that want the contract canceled had encouraged districts and parents to participate.

Steven Aleman, a policy specialist with Disability Rights Texas, said the organization wrote a Facebook post in October informing parents that the state hired SPEDx to interview parents about what needs to change in special education. The organization encouraged parents to reach out to a SPEDx employee. But a TEA official told Aleman that the interview process was intended for select parents, not volunteers.

"Making reference to an opportunity for parents themselves to speak firsthand about their special education experience is consistent with our mission and totally separate from the core project of collecting and doing IEP analysis," Aleman said.

He said the organization has never expressed support of the project, and is "disappointed but not surprised" with TEA's response.

Calls to halt the project come two weeks after TEA fired its special education director, Laurie Kash. TEA officials said they fired Kash last month because of allegations that she covered up the sexual abuse of a 6-year-old girl in her previous school district. Two former employees filed a civil lawsuit making the allegations in Oregon days before Kash was fired.

Kash denies the allegations. Kash's lawyer contends TEA is using the Oregon lawsuit as a cover and believes Kash was fired because she was outspoken about the SPEDx contract.

Alejandra Matos covers politics, education and immigration policy. Follow her on Twitter. Send tips to alejandra.matos@chron.com
Raising two children by herself while practicing medicine at a time when many women didnt even work outside the home, Dr. Frankie Nell Nations Forist was ahead of her time.

A farm girl who grew up in the tiny South Texas town of Goldfinch, Forist graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in the late 1950s and, as an anesthesiologist, practiced at every hospital in San Antonio.

Marrying in 1962, Forist lost her husband to heart disease just five years later and never remarried.

She said there was no need, said her daughter, Renelle Sellers. He was the love of her life.

More Information Dr. Frankie Nell Nations Forist Born: Aug. 1, 1926, Goldfinch Died: Nov. 26, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Husband John William Forist; son John Blake Forist; parents Frankie Avant and John Carroll Nations; two brothers; and two sisters Survived by: Daughter Renelle Sellers and son-in-law Kelly; three grandchildren Services: Visitation at 2 p.m., funeral at 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Fred J. Tips Mausoleum Chapel, Mission Burial Park North Cemetery, 20900 Interstate 10 West See More Collapse

Already raising a son with a congenital heart problem, Forist adopted a daughter in 1969 and made sure both of her children saw the world.

She took us everywhere she could, her daughter said. We went to Europe, Hawaii, North America, South America and the Holy Land.

Forist, 91, died at home Nov. 26.

A tomboy in her youth, Forist was seldom seen wearing a dress.

Out hunting one day when she was about 10, Forist shot at a wild boar, but missed.

The wild boar came running after her, Sellers said. She ran, dropped the gun and climbed a tree.

After waiting out the boar for four hours, she was finally able to get down and go home.

Deciding to go into medicine at the suggestion of one of her teachers, Forist attended Baylor University for one year with the help of her family, but had no idea how to finance the rest of her education.

Her best friends father came to the rescue, offering to pay for the rest of her schooling.

When Forist tried to pay him back years later, the man refused, telling her to pay it forward to other struggling students.

That, combined with her Christian faith, strengthened Forists already altruistic nature.

She was very giving to everybody, her daughter said. If anybody needed anything, Mom would step up and help.

Completing her residency in Oklahoma City, Forist eventually moved back to San Antonio to be closer to family.

Forist loved being around children, her own and their friends.

We had kids at our house all the time  the more the merrier, Sellers recalled. There was never a no to someone spending the night. She loved it; it brought a lot of joy to her.

Retiring from her practice in the 1990s, Forist continued to stay busy by working at the citys health clinics.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
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Before Christopher Johnson, 65, became sick 18 months ago, he was unfamiliar with the idea of a long-term specialty hospital, until a friend made what Christopher and his wife Jennifer Johnson now say was a life-changing suggestion.

At times comatose, sedated, and hooked to tubes, Christopher spent three months at Acuity Hospital of South Texas before being transferred to a rehabilitation hospital, after he was strong enough to breathe without the help of a ventilator or tracheostomy.

On October 30th, Christopher and Jennifer, of San Antonio marked the one-year anniversary of Christophers discharge from Acuity, and visited the doctors, nurses, and physical therapists who treated him and who, the couple believe, contributed to the miracle of saving his life.

Long-term acute care hospitals specialize in the care of patients that have been in an ICU and need additional care before going to rehab or home. Acuity Specialty Hospital of San Antonio, which is located downtown in a modern building with 30 beds in private rooms, provides complex care to critically ill patients for long durations.

Christophers healthcare crisis began back in May 2016 when he was rushed to the emergency room of San Antonio Medical Military Center in San Antonio. He was experiencing aches and pains, and was flush with fever. He also had a sore on his toe that was causing a great deal of pain.

After doctors ran a series of tests, he was diagnosed with leukemia and was admitted to the hospital.

While there, he received his first round of chemotherapy. Soon after, during an endoscopy, he showed signs of distress. He had trouble breathing and was transferred to the intensive care unit. During his 71-day there, his kidneys failed and he was put on dialysis.

He also was intubated three separate times, was connected to a ventilator, and was placed on a rotational bed that helps alleviate lung pressure and restore normal breathing.

While his wife watched from the wings, Christophers body continued to fail, until the medical team was forced to use extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which provides long-term breathing and heart support. The procedure is used when all standard treatments have been tried. After he stabilized, palliative care was then recommended.

After visiting Acuity, Jennifer had Christopher transferred and admitted. She says she put her trust in her faith that the staff would be able to heal her husband. Though, everyone at Acuity contributed to getting Christopher back on his feet, the couple say Mary Hasler, a respiratory therapist, was at the top of her game and made a true difference in the couples lives.

While her husband was there, Jennifer discovered she had Stage 1 breast cancer during a free mammography screening. She was treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

The couple are both in remission from their cancers. In the near future, Christopher will receive a bone marrow transplant from his brother.

We wish Christopher and Jennifer continued strength and love from their Acuity family.

To learn more about Acuity Hospital of South Texas, click here or call 210.572.4646.

Editors Note: This content is made possible by Acuity Healthcare . It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com.
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Sanctions against Russia to remain in place until Russia leaves Donbas, returns Crimea to Ukraine

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that Crimea-related sanctions against Russia will remain in place until Russia transfers control of the peninsula to Ukraine.

"Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine," he said at a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna on Thursday.

"In eastern Ukraine we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbas (region) and meets its Minks commitments," Tillerson added.
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The Obolonsky District Court in Kyiv has decided to summon President Petro Poroshenko for being questioned as a witness in the case in which ex-President Viktor Yanukovych is accused of high treason.

The court made the decision granting the prosecution's motion on Thursday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

In announcing the list of witnesses to be questioned in the courtroom, Presiding Judge Vladyslav Deviatko mentioned Poroshenko among them.

The prosecution had earlier asked the court to summon Poroshenko to be questioned as a witness in the Yanukovych high treason case. Poroshenko was not questioned during the pretrial investigation.

"I am asking you to summon Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko to the court as a witness for the prosecution. The prosecution realized that it had to question this witness while examining the evidence at the court hearing on December 6, 2017," Prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office said after the list of witnesses for the prosecution who were questioned during the investigation was announced.
Cars

In this update on Asia-Pacific fishing, we start with a look left at the Australian-built Maritimo M62 sportfishers sold by Eric Koh of SG Boating in Singapore, show satellite-tagged marlin tracks from tournaments Down Under, report on the oil rig fishing expeditions out of Hong Kong, backed by Asia-wide Simpson Marine which offers big Vikings and nippy Barracudas, and suggest various other options to wet a line.

Dec 07, 2017 | By Yacht Style

WORDS Bruce Maxwell

Fishing is the worlds most popular pastime. In every country, people fish. Creeds and customs dont matter. Even in land-locked places, angling in fresh water rivers and lakes replaces the bounty of seas and oceans. Wetting a line or net is the truly transcendental act that binds us together.

At one end of the scale, there is subsistence fishing by people who simply fish to survive. No shortage of them amid Asias many island and coastal villages. And then there is heavy-tackle commercial fishing, dominated in Asia-Pacific by the formidable, far-roaming North Asian fleets of Japan, Korea and China, co-ordinated by high-tech mother ships.

Prolific fish farming in recent decades has eaten into the market share of wild offshore catches. Together they now total about 100 million tons a year, says the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Fishing for pleasure, perhaps for a simple feed of fish, or to catch-and-release, has thus receded to a tiny sliver of todays high-tech intake, yet it remains an important part of our lives. Enough varieties of fish are left to make private angling quite interesting, even therapeutic, and a real test of skills.

In places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, beach and rock fishing, bottom fishing over reefs, and offshore trolling are all practiced. There are expeditions from boat clubs and marinas. Competitions are run. Fishing charters are offered.

For more esoteric exeriences, keen fisherman Carmine Vastola set up Hong Kong Deep Sea Fishing Charters some years ago. He bought a 90-foot, aluminium, three-screw vessel called Fortuna from treasure hunters in the States, refitted her as a recreational fishing vessel in New Jersey, and she is presently based in Kwun Tong.

Fortuna is able to sleep 30 passengers and six crew. She cruises at 15 knots, and has a range of 800 nm. Her longest trips are two-night affairs to oil rigs off the China Coast. The rigs act as Fish Activation Devices, or FADs, because marine growth on the legs attracts small fish, which attract bigger fish, and so on. Cost for the three-day voyage is a very reasonable HK$4,000, and there are other shorter options from as little as HK$1,500  $2,000.

This vessel can be hired for a private charter, or in open boat mode, when the payment above is accepted for a single berth. At least those booking alone can assume that their fellow charterers will likely know a bit about fishing.

Vastolas other boat is a 32-foot Boston Whaler called Thai Lady, also purchased in the States and shipped to Hong Kong. Based at Clearwater Bay Marina, very near inshore fishing waters, she carries four passengers and two crew, has twin 250 Verado 4-stroke engines, and a 300 nm range. One of the worlds most successful fishing boats ever, the Boston Whaler has done more than 100 trips to closer offshore rigs.

Fish hooking up include marlin, sailfish, barracuda, mackerel, wahoo, mahi mahi, yellowfin tuna, amberjack, rainbow runners, trevally, snapper, garoupa and a variety of others. Some trolling, others bottom fishing.

Supporting his endeavours is Simpson Marine, Asias largest and oldest boat dealer, which offers Barracuda and Viking fishing boats. The latter is one of Americas best-known brands, and has an impressive pedigree in tournaments and private charters around the world, although she is classed as a convertible, allowing the family and friends to have full range of the vessel when not in fishing mode. Po Kee Fishing Tackle is another strong backer of these ventures.

Hong Kongs Mandarin Sport Fishing Club was formed decades ago, and originally included mostly expats from Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Aircraft and Engineering, who had the time and means to fish tournaments in Japan, Philippines, Thailand and further afield at Kailua-Kona in Hawaii, Cairns-Lizard Island in Australia, Mauritius, Kenya and other exotic places.

Mandarin SFC members nowadays are mostly Chinese, although many expats continue to wet a line too. A tournament was held at Taiwan-controlled Pratas Reef or Dongsha, 165 nm SE of Hong Kong, for five years in the late 1980s to early 1990s, which was covered by the US Marlin magazine, anointing it as the worlds furthest offshore event.

This was sponsored by Hatteras, which with Bertram were the two biggest names in sport fishing boats at the time. Those yards still produce very upmarket models. Pratas, however, was over-fished by nearby Chinese and Taiwan trawlers, and has been reclassified as a marine park to recover. The Mandarins now hold two China Coast events in the lull between the noreast and souwest monsoons, and after summer, as cooler noreasters begin again.

Singapore has followed much the same pattern. Expeditions fanned out to the Indonesian Riaus, into the South China Sea, and particularly into Malaysia, be it Tioman and Terengganu in the east, or off Penang and Langkawi. Some big pelagic fish have been boated in these equatorial waters.

Like the Mandarins, Singapore anglers formed teams to contest tournaments abroad. We particularly recall running into Shaw Vee King at one lively event in Mauritius in his younger days. Bob Kwan of Sinbad fame is a scuba diver and fisherman too.

Other superyacht owners, like Brian Chang and Goh Cheng Liang, are also very accomplished fishermen. Transom platform of the

61m White Rabbit E at Marina at Keppel Bay, for example, can be fitted with a fighting chair, which is kept aboard, although he prefers to use auxiliary craft. David Lieu in Hong Kong, owner of the 65m

Van Triumph, fished far and wide, including at now-disputed Scarborough Shoal.

Phuket has been a beacon for Southeast Asian fishing tournaments for several decades, although whether fish are the principal attraction is open to question. One of the regular organisers, Uwe Shittek, comes up on Skype most days, and there are many options for private fishing charters available from larger boat dealers. Try Asia Marine, Lee Marine, Derani Yachts, Simpson Marine etc. Also check out Phuket RendezVous exhibitors in January.

Elsewhere, some world record pelagic fish, confirmed by the US International Game Fishing Association (IGFA) have been hooked and boated in the Philippines, notably in the mid-Sulu Sea east of Palawan. Southern parts of this sea are not recommended due to the insurgency, and be careful anywhere. Eminent restauranteur Vic Vic Villavicencio has been the Philippines leading light. Manila and Subic Bay Yacht Clubs are good places to assess options, as are Puerto Galera and Cebu.

Japan Game Fishing Association (JGFA) holds an annual tournament, usually somewhere around Sagami Bay south of Tokyo, so if Ginza has been ones focus, worth trying the coast as well, and the fishermen are friendly. Former Mandarin SFA President Noel Jones, whose wife Chiko is Japanese, has been a regular, and his boat is named Kajiki, Japanese for marlin.

The Hawaii International Billfish Tournament on the Kona Coast of the Big Island, Hawaii itself, in progress as I write this mid-September, has long been the worlds most famous event, and the location offers fairly flat water and big billfish year-around, give or take Kilauea volcano which is presently erupting in spectacular flows of fiery red lava. The fishing is a good hours drive away.

American former superyacht skipper Joe Gallegos runs a Hawaiian big money sportfishing tournament, for those inclined to have a wager, a month or two earlier. His Hawaii Open is scheduled 15-17 July 2018, with the Kona Shootout immediately after. Some prior exerience helps at these sort of events, but basically, one can hire a boat at Honokohau Harbour anytime.

Last but by no means least, Australias Great Northern 31st Lizard Island Black Marlin Classic takes place 21-28 October. If you want to know anything about game fishing in the Pacific or Indian Oceans, this is the place to be, and like Hawaii, the heavy tackle tournament offers the chance to fight so-called granders, 1,000lb billfish. Fiji and New Zealand are other great sport fishing destinations, including casting for salmon, but unfortunately this issue space precludes. Tight lines.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin had discussed with Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom the possible deployment of a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission to eastern Ukraine during a meeting of foreign ministers of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe member states in Vienna.

"The interlocutors discussed the necessity to use international sanctions against Russia for occupation of Ukrainian territories, as well as the inadvisability of any measures to reinstate the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) if it does not fulfill PACE resolutions adopted from 2014 to 2016 on restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Ukraine's Foreign Ministry website said.

The main issues of the conversation involved issues about supporting Sweden, which will remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council during 2018, Ukrainian initiatives, as well as the possible UN peacekeeping mission throughout territories in Donbas, including those not under Ukraine's control.

According to Klimkin, Ukraine recognizes the steadfast support of Sweden in light of Russian aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.
Kyiv-based company Zbroyar, a private rifle producer in Ukraine, is conducting training work with units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on mastering small arms of the NATO model, the company has reported.

"In particular, in 2017, the company conducted eight training seminars for more than 170 servicemen from four units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces," the company said in a press release on Wednesday, December 6.

It notes that the main purpose of these events is preparing Armed Forces soldiers for work with small arms, which was created on the basis of AR-10 (an American automatic rifle, created in 1954-1955 by Eugene Stoner) and AR-15 (an American semi-automatic rifle with 5.56 x 45 mm cartridge). Produced since 1963, it is put on sale as firearms for self-defense, hunting, etc., and is a police weapon. In the early 1960s, the automatic version of the AR-15 was adopted by the U.S. Army as M16 and is used by servicemen of NATO members.
The great Gold Rush Music Festival returns to the township of Waihi, with the first nuggets of gold dropping for the highly anticipated return of the 2023 festival.
Ukraine's foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin and United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met in Vienna to discuss all of Ukraine's main problems and U.S. help in solving them.

"I met with U.S. counterpart Rex Tillerson. We discussed everything: from our joint work on the UN peacekeeping mission in occupied Donbas to energy security to U.S. support for an efficient and independent anti-corruption system in Ukraine," Klimkin wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ministerial Council is meeting in Vienna.
Beijing : The Chinese military today voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the recent "intrusion" of an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) into China's airspace, according to a media report. The military said the UAV had crashed and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification of the drone.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department. He did not provide the exact location of the crash site. The People's Liberation Army's western theatre command's jurisdiction include Tibet's border region with India.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency. "We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said. PTI
Norway considers independent anti-corruption institutions necessary for carrying out reforms in Ukraine, Ambassador of Norway to Ukraine and Belarus Ole Terje Horpestad has said.

I can only say that independent anti-corruption institutions are necessary for Ukraine to carry out reforms, he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

The ambassador noted that Norway supports the need to create an independent Anti-Corruption Court in Ukraine.
Events in Catalonia in the last two months represent the biggest challenge ever faced by the Spanish regime since its establishment in 1978. The explosion of the masses on to the scene has acquired at points insurrectionary features. Where does this movement come from? What is its character and how can it move forward in the face of Spanish state repression?

On October 27, 2017, the Catalan Parliament, following the mandate of the October 1 independence referendum, proclaimed the Catalan Republic. The reaction of the Spanish state, which had declared the referendum unconstitutional and had used brutal police repression to prevent it from taking place, was swift and decisive. The Spanish Senate authorized the Rajoy government to use Article 155 of the Constitution to sack the Catalan government and disband the democratically elected Catalan Parliament. Eight members of the Catalan government have been remanded into the custody of Spanish prisons and European arrest orders have been issued against the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other members of his cabinet who are currently in Belgium.

Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart are political prisoners / Image: Anticapitalistes

These leaders together with members of the Presidency of the Catalan Parliament have been indicted on charges of rebellion, sedition, and the misuse of public funds for their part in organizing the referendum and the proclamation of the Republic. These crimes have been inherited without almost any amendment from the Franco era and could result in jail sentences of up to fifty years. The National Courtwhich is trying members of the Catalan governmentis the lineal descendant of the Franco-era Public Order Tribunal, itself the continuation of an earlier Special Tribunal for the Repression of Communism and Masonry. The Spanish state has taken over the day-to-day running of Catalan institutions.

The Catalan independence referendum saw unprecedented scenes of mass civil disobedience. Hundreds of thousands organized to occupy school buildings to guarantee that they could be used as polling stations in the face of police threats to seal them off. Thousands of polling stations were defended against brutal police repression on election day. In some instances, the people managed to push the police forces back. In some towns they were expelled by angry crowds. Firefighters played a key role in the defense of polling stations and in some cases clashed with the police. Dockers in Barcelona refused to handle a cruiseliner used by the authorities to host thousands of police officers sent to Catalonia to crush the referendum.

In the run-up to the referendum, 40,000 people surrounded the building of the Catalan government's Finance Department in Barcelona to protest a search of the premises by Guardia Civil, the Spanish military police. The crowd prevented officers from leaving for over 12 hours. For their part in this mass mobilization Jordi Sanchez (secretary of the Catalan National Assembly) and Jordi Cuixart (secretary of the Catalan cultural institution Omnium Cultural) were arrested on charges of sedition and denied bail.

Catalan referendum rally in Barcelona / Image: fair use

Despite the Spanish states attempt to seize ballot papers and ballot boxes prior to October 1, the arrest of 14 high-ranking officials of the Catalan government, the threat of sealing off polling stations, harassment of activists flyposting for the referendum, the closing down of referendum information websites, threatening the media against running publicity about it, and the brutal repression on October 1 itselfdespite all this, over two million Catalan people exercised their democratic right.

A general strike combined with a civic stoppage brought Catalonia to a standstill on October 3, with 750,000 people marching in Barcelona and tens of thousands in smaller towns and cities across the country. On November 8, a second general strike saw the irruption of the Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDRs), which organized over fifty mass pickets to blockade Catalonias main highways, border crossings, and major railway stations. There are now over 280 such committees coordinating nationally.

The 1978 regime

These events represent the biggest challenge yet faced by the regime established at the end of the Franco dictatorship, a regime forged in a pact between the dictatorships state apparatus and the leaders of the main workers parties (Santiago Carrillo for the Communist Party [PCE] and Felipe Gonzalez for the Socialist Party [PSOE]).

The Spanish ruling class feared that the growing movement of workers and youth in Spain would lead to a revolutionary overthrow as had happened in Portugal in 1974. They realized they needed to make serious concessions yet managed to extract a number of their own demands in exchange. The leaders of the PCE and PSOE were happy to oblige. They accepted the impunity for the crimes of the Franco regime, the monarchy (which had been restored by Franco), the Spanish flag as opposed to the Republican tricolor of the workers and democratic movement, as well as articles in the Constitution providing for the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common and indivisible fatherland of all Spaniards to be guaranteed by the Armed Forces.

This so-called model transition to democracy constituted in reality a major betrayal of the Spanish workers democratic and revolutionary aspirations. The result was limited bourgeois democracy in the form of a parliamentary monarchy. The Popular Party (PP), having been set up by seven of the dictators ministers, is a direct continuation of the Franco regime. Reactionary Spanish nationalism is a key pillar of the 1978 regime, which includes the denial of the right of self-determination. From this point of view, the struggle for a Catalan Republic is a progressive democratic struggle, challenging the 1978 regime. For this reason, it must be supported.

The backward character of the Spanish ruling class and the origins of Catalan nationalism

Historically, the backward and reactionary character of the Spanish ruling class meant that the bourgeois democratic task of unifying the Spanish nation was never fully carried out. The unity of the country was guaranteed not by the progressive pull of the development of the productive forces, but rather by the generals sword, the policemans truncheon, and the petty impositions of the state bureaucracy. By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century this led to the development of national movements in Catalonia (the most industrialized part of Spain) and, to a lesser extent, in the Basque Country and Galicia.

The Catalan bourgeois always aspired to have a say in the running of Spain as a whole and used nationalist agitation as leverage. In 1917, the leader of the Regionalist League, Francesc Cambo launched a campaign against the monarchy by convening an Assembly of Parliamentarians in Barcelona. To give his campaign more clout he approached the main workers organizations, the socialist Union General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the anarcho-syndicalist Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which agreed to call a general strike.

Afraid of the dangerous turn events were taking, Cambo and the Catalan bourgeois quickly backtracked, eventually reaching a deal with the monarchy. During the Civil War of 1936-39, Cambo and his League sided with the fascists, funding Francos armies and organising for them a spy network in Catalonia. For the Catalan bourgeoisie class interests have always trumped national interests.

Francisco Franco brutally repressed Catalonia / Image: Anonymous, Zoeken Fotocollectie, Dutch National Archives

Thus, the leadership of the Catalan national movement passed from the bourgeoisie to the petty bourgeoisie of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC). It was the ERC who became the government party in Catalonia during the Second Republic of 1931-39 when they proved indecisive in their struggle for Catalan national rights and against the threat of fascism in Spain. On October 6 1934, during the entry of a pro-fascist party into the Spanish government, Catalan president Lluis Companys declared the Catalan State of the Spanish Federal Republic. Without the support of the main workers organization (the CNT, which the ERC whilst in power had repressed) and refusing to arm the Workers Alliance, the uprising folded in less than ten hours with the Catalan government surrendering to the Spanish army.

The 40-year-long Franco dictatorship was a black period for Catalan national rights. The Catalan Generalitat government was suppressed, Catalan language and culture subject to repression and banished from schools and the state administration.

In the 1960s, a combination of factors (the opening up of the economy to foreign investment, massive migration of Spanish workers abroad, and so forth), led to a sustained growth of the Spanish economy. Catalonia, especially, experienced explosive industrial growth. A massive exodus from the countryside to the cities took place and millions of people from the poorer regions of Spain moved to Barcelona, creating a young and dynamic working-class.

The 1970s upsurge of the workers movement had epicenters in the red belt of working-class towns and neighbourhoods around Barcelona. The county of Baix Llobregat had the highest trade union density of any place in Spain. The struggle for social and democratic rights was closely interlinked with the demand for national rights for Catalonia and the other oppressed nationalities. The workers movement played a crucial role in the mass demonstrations on Catalan National Day (September 11) of 1976 and 1977.

The growth of the Catalan independence movement

However, the workers parties betrayal of the democratic aspirations of the nationalities cleared the way for a revival of the bourgeois nationalists. For forty years (with the exception of a disappointing left coalition government between 2003-10), Catalonia was ruled by Convergencia i Unio (CiU), a bourgeois nationalist coalition. In the best traditions of the Catalan bourgeoisie, the CiU made deals with the ruling parties in Madrid (including both the right wing PP and the left-wing Socialist Party (PSOE)). Pro-independence sentiment remained low in Catalonia throughout this period, hovering around 14 percent. It was the combination of the deep economic crisis of 2008 and the destruction of the Catalan Estatut (Constitution) of 2006 by the Spanish regime in 2010 that led to an explosion of support for Catalan independence and massive demonstrations for self-determination and independence.

At the beginning of the resurgence of the Catalan independence movement, the CiU Catalan government was against the ropes. There were massive demonstrations against austerity cuts in healthcare and education, as part of a budget which the Catalan government passed with the support of Rajoys PP. The Generalitat had used brutal repression against the indignados (enraged) movement and others. But this time, CiU was already mired in dozens of damaging corruption scandals. It was at that point that the leadership of CDC (CiUs main coalition party) decided to adopt independence as a goal.

This was clearly a cynical move designed to reinvent itself in order to stay in power, but it set off a chain of events that escaped from their control. The Catalan bourgeoisiethe capitalists, businessmen and bankersare firmly against independence. In the last few months they have used their economic muscle in a bullying campaign of threats against a Catalan Republic. For instance, they have changed the legal residence and in some cases the fiscal residence of their companies outside of Catalonia. Those who are their political representatives however, for their own selfish reasons of political survival, are riding the tiger of the independence movement.

The indignados and the anti-austerity movements found a political expression in the rise of Podemos in the 2014 European elections and then the victory of broad anti-austerity lists in the 2015 council elections, including in Barcelona, Sabadell and Badalona. In the case of Sabadell and Badalona, broad coalitions were formed which included anti-austerity parties and organizations working together with the anti-capitalist pro-independence Candidatures dUnitat Popular (CUP). En Comu Podem (a coalition including United Left and Podemos) came first in Catalonia in the 2015 and 2016 Spanish elections. However, when it became apparent that Podemos was not going to come to power in Spain in the short term, many saw Catalan's independence as the shortest route to get rid of austerity policies.

CUP and PODEM_Image: Naciodigital.com

In 2014 the Spanish state banned a planned self-determination referendum called by the Catalan government, which then retreated converting it into a non-binding consultation. The turnout was one point nine million people. The Spanish state indicted the Catalan president and other high profile political figures for having promoted the consultation. CDC then upped the ante and declared the 2015 early Catalan elections were going to be a plebiscite on independence and cajoled ERC into a joint slate called Junts pel Si (United for Yes).

In the 2015 elections, the pro-independence parties (JxSi and the anti-capitalist, pro-independence CUP) got an overall majority of seats and forty seven point five percent of the votes, a decidedly larger vote share than that of the parties that opposed independence (which got thirty-nine percent). This, after months of negotiations, led to the formation of the JxSi government of Puigdemont with outside support from the CUP (which was sharply divided on the issue). This new government committed itself to calling an independence referendum and abiding by its results. This is what led to the October 1 referendum.

Three players in the conflict

The current conflict has three main players. On the one hand, there is the Spanish state, which is determined to prevent Catalonia exercising its right of self-determination at all costs. It views any attempt in that direction as a challenge to the whole of the 1978 regime. This has meant that the main Spanish parties (the ruling PP, its Ciudadanos allies, and the opposition PSOE) have fallen into line in support of brutal police repression as well as Article 155 suppression of Catalan institutions.

Mariano Rajoy / Image: Flickr, EPP

On the other hand, there is the Catalan government, made up of bourgeois nationalists (PDeCAT, the new brand name for the CDC) and petty-bourgeois nationalists (the social-democratic ERC). In their struggle for a Catalan Republic they have gone further than they ever intended. They probably calculated that a serious challenge to Spanish legality combined with peaceful mass mobilization in the streets would force the international community, i.e. the European Union (EU), to intervene and bring Spain to a negotiation.

This was wrong on two counts: The EU, which is based neither on principles of democracy nor on solidarity amongst European peoples (as some in the Catalan government fondly imaged) backed Spain completely. The Spanish state was unprepared to make any concessions. The Catalan government nevertheless stuck to this strategy by, for instance, declaring the Republic on October 10 but immediately suspending it to allow time for negotiations with Spain to take place.

A third actor, however, has emerged on the scene in a powerful way: the mass mobilization and self-organization of the people against repression and for democratic rights. The Committees for the Defence of the Referendum and other ad-hoc groupings made sure the referendum went ahead by physically defending the polling stations, thereby thwarting the Catalan governments attempt to call it off at noon on October 1. The masses came out on the streets and paralyzed Catalonia on October 3 to protest repression, leaving the Catalan government with no room to retreat. On October 26, when Puigdemont was ready to call early Catalan elections instead of proclaiming the Republic, it was thousands of students in the streets (representing pro-independence public opinion) who prevented him from going along that path.

Carles Puigdemont / Image: Flickr, Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya



In the end, the Catalan bourgeois and petty-bourgeois politicians in the Generalitat decided to proclaim the republic on October 27. But this was a mere political act, lacking in practical consequences. There was no plan to defend the Catalan Republic; there was no appeal to mass action in its defense. Their justification for this course of action is twofold: they were not ready and the structures for a Republic were not in place. Had they gone ahead, they claim, the Spanish state would have unleashed an even greater wave of repression.

They are right on both counts. First of all, despite having talked for years of preparing state structures, little was actually done. Some Catalan ministers did nothing in this respect simply because they did not believe in independence, as, for instance business minister Santi Vila has admitted. Others probably thought the Spanish state would intervene decisively and stop the process in its tracks, so there was no need to prepare for something which was not going to happen. The mass mobilization of the people from below upset their calculations.

Secondly, with regard to Spanish state repression, they were also correct. The general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, revealed they were given trustworthy information that, if they went ahead with establishing a Catalan Republic, [the state would have] used firearms, not just rubber bullets as on October 1. Adding, we were told there would be blood. A report has also been published detailing the Spanish states plan to use special operations groups to storm the Catalan Parliament by land, air, and through the sewers if the Catalan president had barricaded himself in.

The Catalan government however, did not explain this to the people on the day when they proclaimed the Republic and then folded. It is clear that they were unprepared to lead an insurrectionary movement in the streets, which could have escaped their control. Having declined the option of mass resistance, civil disobedience, the occupation of official buildings, a general strike, etc., there was only one possible course of action: surrender in the face of the threat of force.

Struggle for self-determination as a revolutionary task

In a nut-shell, this summarises the position in Catalonia. Against the Spanish 1978 regime, the exercise of the right of self-determination is a task which can only be accomplished by revolutionary means. The Catalan bourgeois and petty-bourgeois politicians are not prepared to use revolutionary means. Some of them are not even committed to a Catalan Republic, other than as a threat with which to extract concessions from Madrid. The only way forward in the struggle for a Catalan Republic is a battle to remove the current leadership of the movement and replace it with one firmly based on the workers at the head of the petty-bourgeois masses: a leadership prepared to use revolutionary means to face and bring down the 1978 regime.

This brings us to another key question. The Catalan working class is divided on the question of an independent Catalan Republic. There is a layer of Spanish-speaking Catalan workers who are either against or mistrust the independence movement for reasons of identity, but also out of a healthy class distrust of the bourgeois politicians of PDeCAT.

Catalan National Day / Image: Flickr, Ivan McClellan

This explains the geographic differences in the results of the October 1 referendum. Overall turnout was around forty-three percent, a very good result considering the referendum had been declared illegal and there was brutal police repression. And, of those who voted, ninety percent voted for independence. This means that those opposed to independence overwhelmingly stayed away. Turnout was very high in the counties of the interior: in Girona (fifty-three point three percent) and Lleida (fifty-two point eight percent), but it was well below the average in the highly populated areas where the Spanish speaking working-class is concentrated, such as Barcelona county (thirty-five point nine percent), Baix Llobregat (thirty-two point nine percent), and Tarragones (twenty-eight point six percent).

The Spanish ruling class is attempting to mobilize these layers behind reactionary Spanish nationalism and flag-waving. The danger of a division and confrontation within the Catalan working-class along national and language lines is genuine and must be avoided at all costs, as it would have seriously reactionary consequences. This can only be averted by giving the movement for a Catalan Republic a clear anti-austerity and anti-capitalist character. The CUP has correctly linked the slogan of a Republic with a slogan of bread, housing and jobs. That line must be strengthened and developed further. On the other hand, it is necessary to link the struggle for a Catalan Republic more clearly to the idea of a struggle against the 1978 regime as a whole and to make a clear appeal to workers in the rest of Spain to join in a common struggle with their Catalan class brothers and sisters.

The slogan of a Catalan Socialist Republic as a spark for the Iberian revolution sums up these two ideas.

Article originally published in Platypus Review 102.
LONGMEADOW -- A homeowner's best tools for fixing a foundation crumbling now because it was built decades ago using tainted concrete from a Connecticut quarry are the phone, the pen and the email send button, according to one advocate.

"Let's make this story get the attention it deserves," said Tim Heim, president of the Connecticut Coalition Against Crumbling Basements, a grassroots advocacy group of Connecticut homeowners beset by failing foundations.

Homeowners dealing with the issue need to contact their state representatives and senators, their town boards, mayors and city councilors and members of Congress, he said.

That's the only way, he said, homeowners can get satisfaction from reluctant insurance companies, or get relief from their state government and possibly even the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It's also their best way to make sure they don't get ripped off by unscrupulous contractors.

"Ask for help," he said Wednesday. "You need help."

The now-defunct JJ Mottes concrete company used stone from a Willington quarry containing the mineral pyrrhotite from 1983 until 2017, according to reports prepared by the state of Connecticut. Over time the iron-laden mineral reacts with water and air, causing concrete to crack and bubble. Eventually, it loses structural strength and collapses.

In the last few years, more than 590 Connecticut homeowners -- including Heim, whose home is just a few miles from the quarry -- have reported failing foundations. Experts believe pyrrhotite may be present in the foundations of as many as 34,000 Connecticut homes.

Now it is showing up in Massachusetts.

A Longmeadow couple -- Russell and Tatiana Dupere -- say their home has lost half its value after they discovered concrete crumbling from their basement walls. In East Longmeadow, a couple sold their home for about half what it had been worth after pyrrhotite damage showed up in a home inspection.

The Dupere's homeowner's insurance has denied their claim.

Pyrrhotite-contaminated concrete could force homeowners into foreclosure if they can't get money for repairs and can't live in the home. Many can't borrow money to fund repairs because there is no value in their home to use as collateral.

The pyrrhotite might impact municipal budgets, too, as homeowners seek tax abatements to reflect homes that have lost value. A report released earlier this year by the Hartford-based Capitol Region Council of Governments put the estimated waived taxes over 15 years in just eight Connecticut towns with affected homes at over $70 million.

Fixing the problem can cost $150,000 to $350,000.

The Longmeadow and East Longmeadow cases are not the only ones Heim, featured in a 2016 New York Times story on the subject, said he knows of in Massachusetts. He's planning to host an informational meeting for Massachusetts homeowners in a few months.

"Connecticut will help Massachusetts," he said. "Massachusetts is where Connecticut was two-and-a-half years ago."

Above, excerpts from the Dec. 4, 2017 Longmeadow Select Board Meeting. Video footage courtesy of Longmeadow Community Television.

The Dupere family worries neighbors living in their development of homes, all built at about the same time by the same contractor, will try and downplay the problem, fearful that speaking up will hurt their property values.

Heim says that's the wrong approach.

"It's OK to have this problem," he said. "If you have this problem, you did nothing wrong."

He's aware he sounds a little more like the leader of a self-help group than someone advocating on behalf of homeowners with a very concrete problem, in every sense of the word. He said the impacted homeowners need emotional support, too.

"This is like AA for concrete," he said. "One day at a time. It's kind of weird."

There is a practical aspect to the meetings Heim hosts for homeowners. He talks about finding a good contractor. Homeowners fear that unscrupulous people are trolling the towns where failing foundations are common, selling cheap fixes that don't work and preying on homeowner desire to get things done quickly.

Insurance issues

William Trudeau, president of Insurance Center of New England in Agawam, said he is still learning about the problem. But his advice would be for anyone with concerns to first have a well-regarded contractor look at their foundation.

Insurance claims in this area are tricky. Policies don't often pay for faulty materials used in construction. But they will pay sometimes for damage caused when those material fail.

That means the claim needs to be centered not around replacing the foundation, but on all the other damaged caused by a sagging foundation, said insurance consultant Frank Lombard of Chicopee. That would be the doors that won't shut, cracked tile work and tilting floors.

Lombard has represented homeowners in Connecticut in pyrrhotite-related claims.

"Companies are going to fight it, no question about it," he said. "But the insurance company has to show them how it's not covered."

The Duperes were denied by their carrier, Liberty Mutual. Company spokesman Glenn Greenberg answered questions Wednesday in an email that said: "We empathize with everyone impacted by crumbling foundations due to defective concrete. While each claim is adjusted on its own merits, there are coverage issues arising out of these circumstances."

Trudeau, meanwhile, said he hasn't had one of his customers at Insurance Center of New England file a claim for tainted concrete. But he wouldn't be surprised if they start coming in.

"It's a big mess," he said. "It's something we need to talk about and understand."
SPRINGFIELD -- Smith & Wesson parent company American Outdoor Brands said its third-quarter net sales were down 36.4 percent compared with last year, when personal safety concerns and pre-election jitters had consumers buying handguns.

The company's net sales were $148.4 million for the quarter that ended Oct. 31, the Springfield-based firearms giant announced Thursday.

That's within range of what management told investors to expect, but disappointing compared with the same three months of 2016, when net sales were $233.5 million.

Adjusted for expenses related to the company's purchase of Gemini Technologies, a manufacturer of firearm sound suppressors, American Outdoor Brands reported net income of $6.3 million for the quarter. That is 11 cents per share -- compared with $39.1 million, or 68 cents per diluted share for the same three months in 2016.

American Outdoor Brands stock, which trades under the symbol AOBC on the NASDQ, traded at $14.3 a share at the end of trading Thursday, down 69 cents a share or 4.89 percent on the day.

The stock is well off its high of the last year of $24.49 a share recorded in June 2017.

The numbers from a year ago were also adjusted for the company's previous purchases. In a news release, James Debney, American Outdoor Brands Corp. president and CEO said the company faces "challenging market conditions".

"Lower shipments in our firearms business reflected a significant reduction in wholesaler and retailer orders versus the prior year, and were partially offset by higher revenue in our Outdoor Products & Accessories business," Debney said. "Total revenue for the quarter faced a challenging comparison to last year, when we believe strong consumer demand was driven by personal safety concerns and pre-election fears of increased firearm legislation."

He said the company cut back on production this fall.

"For the second half of fiscal 2018, our focus remains on ensuring that our internal manufacturing resources are aligned with demand," he said. "In addition, we intend to introduce several exciting new products, and execute on long-term organic growth initiatives that support our vision of being the leading provider of quality products for the shooting, hunting, and rugged outdoor enthusiast."

Matt Buckingham, president of Smith & Wesson's firearms division, resigned in Novemeber, according to documents Smith & Wesson field with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Smith & Wesson holdings changed its name to American Outdoor Brands in December 2017 to reflect its efforts to diversify into camping equipment, knives, gun smithing and gun accessories like scopes and sights, and camping equipment.

Smith & Wesson has 1,758 full-time employees, according to its annual report. Some 1,462 work in manufacturing, and most of those workers are at the company's factory on Roosevelt Avenue in Springfield.

In general, demand for guns falls when a Republican is in the White House. Having a Democrat in charge makes gun enthusiasts afraid of new regulations, so they stock up.

But there is one indication that demand is rising. The FBI processed 203,086 background check requests for gun purchases on the Friday after Thanksgiving -- the highest daily total ever. Background checks are a general indicator of firearm demand, but there is no one-to-one ratio of checks to sales.
Harry L. Chandler minces no words. He fears our nation is on the brink of war, and he's not happy.

"With what's going on in the United States today, it's almost impossible to think about anything else," Chandler says in a telephone interview from Florida. "I am 96, going to be 97 soon, and I've never seen anything like this. We're losing our country. We're becoming a totalitarian state. There's no doubt in my mind, shall we say, (that) a king and his princes and princesses are running the country now."

Seventy-six years ago this morning, Chandler, who grew up in Holyoke and now lives in South Hadley, was a witness to the day that launched the U.S. into World War II.

In the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was "a date which will live in infamy."

As Chandler and some of his fellow Navy hospital corpsmen raised the flag outside their barracks overlooking Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on that bright Sunday morning, they paused before going to breakfast to marvel as a fleet of aircraft flew over Ford Island.

Then, smoke rose from the harbor and they saw the planes dropping things the young sailors first thought were chemical bombs being used to fight a blaze below.

When one of the planes was shot from the sky, everything changed.

"Pops," a 32-year-old sailor who watched over his much younger corpsmen, including Chandler, "started yelling, 'Take cover. Take cover. This is no drill,'" Chandler remembers. As the minutes unfolded, he and the other sailors found themselves rushed into trucks bound for Pearl Harbor and the core of the destruction wrought by Japan upon the U.S. Navy.

By the time the attack was over, the Japanese had torn into the heart of America's Pacific fleet. Twelve ships, including three battleships, were sunk or beached; nine others were damaged. The attack killed close to 2,500 Americans and injured 1,200 more. The loss of the mighty battleship USS Arizona -- now the site of a U.S. Park Service memorial -- accounted for the loss of 1,177 lives.

What he experienced that morning as he tended to the dead and dying, their charred bodies being pulled from the harbor, is never easy for Chandler to recall. His flow of conversation will come to an abrupt halt as he reflects on the carnage he saw, touched and smelled.

"The funny part of it is you weren't scared while working," he says. "Before, you were nervous, while it's happening you're doing what you were trained to do. But, afterwards ... it was a case of realizing what happened and how you could have been killed."

Macular degeneration is robbing Chandler of his sight these days, but it's only one of the ways in which he knows too well the toll being taken each year on the men with whom he spent much time over the past seven decades, united as veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack. Department of Veterans Affairs statistics indicate as many as 372 veterans of World War II die each day, with fewer than 560,000 of the 16 million Americans who served in the war still alive. Some estimates put the number of Pearl Harbor survivors now at fewer than 2,000.

In August, Robert Greenleaf, of Westfield, longtime president of the Pearl Harbor Attack Veterans Post 1, died at the age of 94. Eight months earlier, Joseph Mieleszko, of Hatfield, died at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke at the age of 93. And, in 2015, one of the region's most well-known Pearl Harbor veterans, Edward Borucki, died at 94.

It's one of the reasons that Chandler shares his recollections. He wants to ensure the lessons to be learned from the past are not lost for the future. Especially the stories firsthand witnesses like him can offer.

"We have our own Dec. 7 coming up," Chandler says. "I just can't explain how we have lost the country we had. I hope the person holding the satchel, holding the nuclear bag, doesn't wake up some morning and think, 'I'm going to (take on North Korea).' We are in peril."

"This is the whole thing: If you don't look back on history, you're just going to repeat it. I'm not a Democrat, (and) I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent, and I'm thinking independently right now," he says, explaining how the country to which he returned home and where he raised his family has all but disappeared.

"Everybody was helping everybody. It's just become through the years tribal, in a word. Now, people don't know their next-door neighbor, never mind someone on another street. It used to be that when someone passed away, you began cooking for the family. You took the kids in. It was another world altogether."

Chandler enlisted in the Navy in 1940, long before the potential threat from Japan was in the public consciousness. He'll joke that he wanted to be a sailor from childhood, always asking his mother to get him a sailor suit. He was 20 and had been working for his father when he went to the recruiting station in downtown Springfield to sign up in the summer of 1940.

Although he was initially told there was no spot available for him and he'd have to wait six months to a year, it was just two days later that the Navy came calling for Chandler. The specter of war was lingering at the time.

"I didn't give it too much thought," he remembers. "All you had to do was read the headlines and you'd know we might get into a war. You had a despot over in Europe, and people just knew something was going to happen."

It was his company's leader at Navy basic training in Newport, Rhode Island, who told him, correctly it turned out, "You must listen to what I say and do what I tell you to do because some day we're going to fight the Japanese."

"That was the first time I even thought of fighting the Japanese," Chandler says as he reflects on his service. He got interested in hospital corps duty, he says, when he became ill during boot camp. After medical training and an internship at the Chelsea Naval Hospital, he was assigned to duty with a mobile hospital unit and headed to Hawaii, where he arrived in September 1941.

"It was a beautiful island," Chandler recalls. "Oh, God, it was what every sailor would want."

Until the morning of Dec. 7.

Westfield observance

Today will mark the first time that Westfield's Pearl Harbor observance will have no veteran of the attack casting a wreath of remembrance into the Westfield River.

But Dominic Grimaldi Jr. will be at the Great River Bridge, just as he has been each Dec. 7 for decades. This will mark his 10th year of being there without his father, Dominic Grimaldi, who was an Army Air Corps veteran of Pearl Harbor, stationed that long-ago morning at Hickam Field. The ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m.

While his dad was like many other veterans who didn't freely share stories of what happened to them in the war, the younger Grimaldi knows well just how much that date meant to his father. When they traveled together to Pearl Harbor on the 52nd anniversary, it was, he says, one of the very few times he saw his father weep. The tears came when he arrived at the same spot where he had been standing as the Japanese attackers bore down on Pearl Harbor.

The senior Grimaldi had been due to be discharged in a matter of days, but wound up staying in the service for three more years on war duty.

That morning, he'd headed to breakfast with some friends but had forgotten something, so they went on without him while he returned to his barracks, his son said.

"Two or three of his friends were shot down by the Japanese planes," he said. "He lost a lot of friends in that battle."

That sense of loss inspired the elder Grimaldi to do all he could to ensure Pearl Harbor would not be forgotten, his son says. Now he intends to carry on that duty.

"He just always wanted to show remembrance for them. It's amazing how it continues, and I'm so happy Westfield does keep up the tradition," said Dominic Grimaldi Jr. "It was always important to my dad, and so it's important to all of us in our family."
BOSTON - Three men were shot Wednesday evening at about 8 p.m. when a gunman opened fire on Tremont Street near the Tobin Community Center in Roxbury. One of the victims has died, and two others are hospitalized, WCVB-TV reported.

According to Boston police, the three were on the street when the shooting erupted. One victim was found on Tremont Street. He was taken to Boston Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. One victim was found in the community center and the third on Sewall Street.

All three shooting victims were in their late-teens, police said.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Boston police.
The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) blames the courts for delaying the consideration of a petition to hold a special pretrial investigation against fugitive MP Oleksandr Onyschenko and blocking the process of his extradition to Ukraine, SAPO's press service has reported.

On November 10, a NABU detective, in agreement with the prosecutor, applied to the investigating judge with a petition to conduct a special pre-trial investigation against suspect Onyschenko and five other people, most of whom, according to investigators, are in Russia.

"At the present time, despite the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, not only the ten-day period for considering the petition has expired, but almost a month has passed. The next hearing of the petition is scheduled for January 16, 2018, that is two months after the detective's appeal to the investigating judge and, as a whole, the period six times longer than the period given by the Criminal Procedure Code for the conduct of this procedural action," the report says.

In this regard, SAPO prosecutors decided to withdraw the abovementioned petition so as to send it to court again.

In addition, prosecutors claimed "systematic sabotage on the part of the judicial system in all episodes of the so-called 'gas business.'"

For example, SAPO said that the court had accepted for consideration a complaint from suspect Onyschenko's lawyer against the actions of the NABU detective regarding the petition for the extradition of the fugitive MP, which was sent by the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine to the competent authorities of the Kingdom of Spain.

"Despite the fact that the request, along with the detective's petition, was sent back in December 2016, only now, when the Spanish courts began considering the issue of Onyschenko's extradition, the lawyer filed a complaint about the actions that are not contested, and the investigating judge, in turn, partially granted the complaint," SAPO said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin believes that an alternative to the introduction of the UN peacekeeping mission into Donbas is exclusively the freezing of the conflict.

"Lavrov [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov], for example, spoke about the role of the OSCE that a possible peacekeeping mission in Donbas is actually a desire to create an occupation administration. I later told my colleagues that the occupation administration already exists there for three years and a half. The goal is that Russia withdraws from Donbas together with its occupation administration, and the international component enters there, reaches the minimum level of security, takes control of the whole territory and gradually begins to prepare this region for the elections," Klimkin said in his video blog from the OSCE Ministerial Meeting in Vienna, published on the YouTube channel on Thursday.

"And this is the only way forward, for the alternative is really freezing, and we fairly well understand that there are no any other alternatives," the minister said.
KYIV. Dec 7 (Interfax-Ukraine)  The involvement of businessmen in the fight against corruption can seriously affect the situation in this area, and entrepreneurs need to show a personal example, Executive Director at Transparency International Ukraine Yaroslav Yurchyshyn has said.

"The Ukrainians already understand that without their participation the fight against corruption will not be effective. On the other hand, they do not understand how [to participate in this process]. We believe that there are several categories of the population that can critically affect the situation. These are entrepreneurs and business representatives who work most closely with the state and with the sphere most susceptible to corruption," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

Yurchyshyn spoke about the launch of the second part of the communication campaign "I Don't Give Bribes," which already includes over a hundred stories of ordinary Ukrainians that they do not give bribes.

"How can we unite at least 10% of people who are ready to fight corruption? If business owners, using their example, demonstrate to employees that they can live without corruption schemes, this will be one of the main aspects. Fighting corruption anonymously is ineffective. Every successful case of the struggle should be made public. This has become the basis of our campaign," he said.

Director of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation Iryna Bekeshkina, in turn, noted that according to a survey conducted by the foundation together with the Ukrainian Sociology Service, most Ukrainians believe that the main problem in the country is corruption.

"Over half believe that this is the most serious problem. A further 36% consider it simply a serious problem. They consider the method of [imprisonment] as the main way to overcome corruption, but about a third of the population has been giving bribes over the past few years. Some 54% paid for medical services, and 75% gave money or valuables directly to the doctor," she said.

According to the survey, only 30% of respondents believe that corruption in the country can be overcome, and almost 30% believe that it cannot.

According to Ukrainians, today the fight against corruption does not yield any results, because fighters with corruption themselves are corrupt (49%), because no one is punished for corruption (40.4%), and because this phenomenon is rooted (40.8%).

At the same time, most of them are not ready to join the fight against corruption. Some 50% are sure that citizens and public organizations should become more actively involved in this struggle, while only 23% are ready to join in person, and 60% are not ready.

The survey was conducted in September-October 2017 in all regions of Ukraine, except for Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea. A total of 2,000 people were interviewed. The poll's margin of error does not exceed 2.3%.
The practice run, held by 1 Million Cups https://www.1millioncups.com/missoula (meets every other Wed. at the Loft at 9AM) in downtown Missoula, served as a preview for Thursday nights EPIC Pitch Competition, hosted by the College of Business and Blackstone LaunchPad at UM.

There, eight finalists selected from a field of 17 entrants will pitch their ideas and, in doing so, compete for more than $3,000 in cash prizes. For some, the funding could be enough to advance their product and get their business idea off the ground.

The EPIC Pitch Competition takes place Thursday, Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. in the Gilkey Building at UM.
"There is no corner of the state of Montana thats untouched by you and your students," Smith said. "You make Montana a better place to live."

For 41 years, Montana State University architecture students http://arch.montana.edu/cdc/ have been helping communities across the state solve problems.

By Gail Schontzler Chronicle Staff Writer

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/montana_state_university/msu-architecture-students-help-montana-towns-solve-real-problems/article_6ac587c4-dcf9-5c5a-a3a5-8538c2f8b548.html
The Internet of Things security crisis persists, as billions of inadequately secured webcams, refrigerators, and more flood homes around the world. But IoT security researchers at Microsoft Research have their eye on an even larger problem: the billions of gadgets that already run on simple microcontrollerssmall, low-power computers on a single chipthat will gradually gain connectivity over the years, exponentially expanding the internet of things population. And that connected electric toothbrush needs protection, too.

Lily Hay Newman

https://www.wired.com/story/project-sopris-iot-security/
Literacy Bitterroot http://literacybitterroot.org/ has served almost 4,000 students since its inception in 1987, and is celebrating 30 years of programming on Friday.

Dixie Stark, executive director, said the program is no longer under the Montana Office of Public Instruction, but a community-based organization providing locally controlled and accessed services.

She said Literacy Bitterroot has taken a shift of services to provide more than an endpoint for high school education. When Literacy Bitterroot started, the program tutored adults who wanted to learn to read.

In 2016, Literacy Bitterroot moved into 303 No. Third St. and underwent a year of remodeling. A change of grant application rules made them ineligible for the usual funding and the Rob and Terry Ryan Foundation granted them the money the covers about half the needs. The program still does fundraising and this year has scholarships to pay for all student testing, thanks to the Ryans foundation.

MICHELLE MCCONNAHA [email protected]

http://ravallirepublic.com/news/local/article_67aa44e5-ad9c-5c6b-8b69-89215b8b0f2a.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

***

Literacy Bitterroot receives $200,000 grant from the Rob and Terry Ryan Foundation to help ease budget shortfall http://www.matr.net/article-79605.html
Gov. Bullock joins students in Billings & Plevna to highlight job opportunities in Computer Science Fields.

On Wednesday 12/5, Governor Bullock joined students learning coding as part of the America Campaigns Teachers Teaching Tech initiative. He also announced that he was joining the Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science, a bi-partisan coalition of Governors working with Code.org to improve access to computer science in our K-12 schools.

Press Release here: http://governor.mt.gov/Newsroom/governor-bullock-celebrates-computer-science-education-week
Five wilderness study areas left in legislative limbo for 35 years would be released to multiple use planning under a proposed bill by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana.

Hes on a single-minded mission to minimize wilderness protections everywhere in the state, Nickas said. This bill is a classic example of it. Just because he wore a backpack once upon a time doesnt make him a wilderness advocate.

ROB CHANEY [email protected]

http://missoulian.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/daines-bill-would-release-wilderness-study-areas-for-other-uses/article_8db30111-c9a1-5061-ac18-efc52322b8ed.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
A teacher from West McDowell Middle School got the experience of a lifetime when she visited Shaw Airforce Base in Columbia, S.C. She was invited by the Aerospace American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics.

Susan Higdon is a sixth grade science teacher at West. She serves as on the Aerospace Advisory Board for the next years through the National Science Teachers Association. With the support of her teachers and principals, she promotes aerospace programs in her classroom.

During her visit, her and seven other people met with Major Brian Raffa the Air Force base and toured the facility, met pilots of F-16s and got to sit in one of the fighter jets. She also sat in on a meeting about ballistic missile defense and military air power. Shaw Airforce Base is the largest base in the world and houses at least 79 jets at a time, Higdon said.

I got to look in the cockpit of the F-16 and a soldier told us of how many pounds of missiles it could handle and the number of rounds that could be shot by the gunner. He told us that the missiles were not heat activated, but by the pilots head in his helmet turning to a certain position, Higdon said. The day I was there I saw F-22's and carrier jets, too. The jets take off in pairs.

She said at many points they were not allowed to take pictures, have her cellphone or write anything down.

It was amazing what we as Americans take for granted. We are so fortunate many people like those in the Fighting 55th division are willing to keep us safe and to help protect our nation, said Higdon. I have always had the utmost respect for the military. Now it is a whole another level for those that are willing to drop everything, leave to go defend and even die for us.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, defying warnings from other Middle East countries and some U.S. allies in a politically risky move that he insisted would not derail efforts to broker a peace deal.

But in a sign that the move could backfire, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas slammed Trump's announcement as a "declaration of withdraw" by the United States from the peace process, according to the Associated Press.

In a midday speech at the White House, Trump defended his decision as "long overdue" recognition of reality given that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel's parliament, supreme court and prime minister's office. He argued that an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians has remained elusive for more than two decades even as his predecessors declined to recognize the contested Holy City as Israel's capital.

"Some say they lacked courage, but they made the best judgment based on the facts as they understood them," Trump said, speaking in the Diplomatic Reception Room. "Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades, we're no closer to a lasting peace agreement."

Trump added that "it's folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula will produce a different or better result."

The announcement came a day after senior White House aides previewed Trump's decision, and the president also ordered the State Department to begin planning to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a process that administration officials said would take several years. After his remarks, Trump signed another six-month waiver to maintain the embassy compound in Tel Aviv, which senior aides said was meant to ensure funding was not eliminated under a 1995 law even as planning for a new embassy would commence.

Trump emphasized that despite his decision he remained committed to helping broker a peace agreement. The White House is working on a peace plan to be unveiled sometime next year.

"The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides," Trump said. "I intend to do everything in my power to forge such an agreement."

The announcement set off a flurry of reactions in Washington, Europe and the Middle East. Trump spoke with Abbas on Tuesday to inform him of the decision and Abbas told him his government would not accept the move.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the president's announcement, calling it "a historic day" and stating that his nation is "profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision."

Other Middle East nations and some U.S. allies condemned the decision ahead of Trump's speech, suggesting the shift in policy would inflame regional tensions and make the process of brokering a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians more difficult.

"We think it's an unwise step and a counterproductive step. If we want to solve at some moment the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, we need a two-state solution, and a one-sided step is not going to help," Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra said Wednesday.

"I don't think we can use another conflict in this very explosive region," Zijlstra said, adding that he had conveyed his concerns to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Brussels, during a NATO meeting.

But Tillerson insisted such concerns were misguided. Attending the meeting in Brussels, Tillerson said: "We continue to believe there is a very good opportunity for peace to be achieved."

"The president is very committed to the Middle East peace process," Tillerson said. "He has a team he put into place. That team has been working very diligently."

Trump campaigned on a promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem, a move popular among evangelicals. A slew of evangelical leaders, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, released statements of praise on Wednesday.

In Washington, Trump drew bipartisan support on Capitol Hill from Republicans and some Democrats.

In a statement, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called the announcement "an important step in the right direction" and added that "unequivocal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital will be complete when the U.S. embassy is officially relocated there."

Rep. Eliot L. Engel, N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the decision "helps correct a decades-long indignity."

Yet House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Trump's move was premature and warned of "mass protests." Late last month, the State Department sent a memo to embassies in the Middle East warning of potential unrest.

"In the absence of a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem now may needlessly spark mass protests, fuel tensions, and make it more difficult to reach a durable peace," Pelosi said.

White House aides emphasized that Trump's decision would make clear to Middle East countries that the president, who campaigned on promises to move the embassy, keeps his word. Senior adviser Jared Kushner and other top administration officials are working on a proposed peace plan for the region, but aides said it is not imminent and the team would have time to factor in public reaction to Trump's speech.

One administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the Palestinians would likely threaten to reject peace talks. But this person said the White House recognized that peace deals often are not linear in how they are negotiated and that such deals are often presumed dead more than once before they reach the finish line.

"By overturning a decades-long policy adopted by administrations of both parties, President Trump is casting aside America's role as a mediator in the Middle East conflict [and] harming our Muslim allies," said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights group.

In his remarks, Trump acknowledged that "there will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement, but we are confident ... that when we work through our disagreements we will arrive at a peace and a place of far greater understanding and cooperation."

The Jerusalem municipality announced ahead of Trump's speech that it would illuminate the ancient walls of Jerusalem Old City with an Israeli and an American flag, "as a token of appreciation to President Trump for his recognition of Jerusalem." The city said that American flags would be hung on the streets surrounding the U.S. consulate.

---

The Washington Post's Rick Noack in Berlin, Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem and Carol Morello in Brussels contributed to this report.
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BANGALORE

December 7, 2017

/PRNewswire/ --

The child was suffering from Irido corneal dysgenesis syndrome, a rare congenital eye disease



Lara Waleed, a four-year-old from Yemen, was suffering from a rare complex eye disorder called corneo lenticular adhesion syndrome. Irido corneal dysgenesis is a condition wherein there is an adhesion between cornea iris and lens. The condition disrupts vision and if left untreated can lead to permanent loss of vision. In the case of Lara Waleed, she was suffering from Irido corneal dysgenesis in her right eye from birth. Her condition was such that, apart from cornea iris and lens being stuck to each other, her lens had cataract, which obstructed her vision. Further, owing to the syndrome, she had also developed glaucoma.



Egypt

Bangalore

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616150/Dr_Agarwals_Eye_Hospital.jpg )As it was a rare disorder, the parents took her tofor treatment. At the age of one, she had to undergo two surgeries. While the surgeries helped in correcting her glaucoma, it did not correct her vision. The treatment went on for two years. But Lara's condition continued to worsen and she was not able to see anything. This led the doctors to inform her parents to discontinue Lara's treatment because any further surgical intervention could lead to Phthisis (Shrinking) of her right eye.The family did not give up hope. Their search for an advanced treatment for their child led them to Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital in. On arrival, the child had very minimal vision. In fact, she could barely see light with her right eye. After detailed examination, Dr. Bindiya Hapani, Cataract Surgeon and Medical Retina Expert, Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital and team identified that the child was not only suffering from Irido corneal dysgenesis and cataract but also from persistent pupillary membrane (a condition wherein bits and pieces of the pupillary tissue strands remain in one's iris) along with ciliary process pulled in the pupillary area. Ciliary processes are formed by the inward folding of the various layers of the choroid, the area between the retina and the sclera. Though a high risk case, as the condition was progressing towards permanent loss of vision, Dr. Bindiya and team decided to take up the case and give Lara a chance to vision. They administered a complex eye surgery that lasted for four hours. Today, the child has not only been cured of her rare condition, she has started identifying objects.Elaborating about the treatment, Dr. Bindiya Hapani, Cataract Surgeon and Medical Retina Expert, Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital, said, "Apart from treating the Irido corneal dysgenesis, the biggest challenge in Lara was the tendency of her eyes to shrink. Further, being young, the tissues inside the eyes are very minute and tender, the treatment called for multiple interventions on these tiny tissues that also posed a high risk. We opted for a systematic approach that lasted around four hours. First, we cleared the pupillary membrane, removed cataract and fixed IOL (Intraocular lens). Then we addressed the ciliary process, released them and restored her vision."Sharing their joy, Mr. Waleed (father of the patient) said, "Last four years have been frustrating. We have been mentally and physically drained. We had completely lost hope of saving our daughter from becoming visually challenged until we met the doctors at Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital. I am thankful to the ophthalmic experts for not only restoring the vision but also for giving us back our cheerful Lara."The case of four-year-old Lara is not only a testimony of medical expertise; it also stands as a tall example of how compassion and care cannot be restricted by boundaries.

About? ?Dr.? ?Agarwal's? ?Eye? ?Hospital:



Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital a comprehensive eye hospital offering a one-stop solution for eye ailments; was started in the year 1957. Now the hospital is in its 57th year of offering quality services in eye care. It has 15 branches in Chennai and a visible footprint in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, Andaman and Rajasthan. A tertiary eye care centre at Mauritius, marks its first step towards establishing an international presence extended upto 13 branches covering the Indian Ocean region, African countries and East Asia.



The hospital has received various awards for its inventions and services. In March 2006, Late Dr. J Agarwal, Founder-Chairman, was awarded Padma Bhushan by the former President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for his dedicated services to the poor and downtrodden. The hospital received visibility in the global arena for its inventions - Micro-Phakonit (Cataract surgery with 0.7 mm size incision) in 1999 and 'Glued Intraocular Lens Implant' performed on a four-year-old girl in January 2008 by Prof. Amar Agarwal. In February 2009, the world's first Anterior Segment Eye Transplant Surgery was performed on a four-month-old child to treat corneal disorder. In November 2013, for the first time in the World, Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital, Chennai transplanted a one-year-old donor cornea giving a new lease of sight to a 60-year-old man through the new technique PDEK (Pre Descemet's Endothelial Keratoplasty).



For more information, visit: http://www.dragarwal.com/



Media Contact : Jayati Meena jayati.meena@dragarwal.com +91-9840168417 Marketing, Dr. Agarwal's Eye Hospital




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Treatment is further complicated by the fact that medulloblastoma is not a single disease but classified into subgroups with different prognosis and survival. Little is known about the most aggressive and most common form of the disease, and better knowledge on how to identify and treat those patients could improve prognosis.Lead researcher Professor Silvia Marino from QMUL said: "We've identified a new weakness in a subgroup of aggressive medulloblastomas, which potentially means that they could be susceptible to drugs which we did not know could be used to treat this type of cancer."Those drugs are already being tested in clinical trials for other tumors, so if we're able to confirm their efficacy in medulloblastoma patients, they could be brought in as treatments quicker than if we would have to develop a new drug."Dr Kieran Breen, Director of Research, Brain Tumor Research, said: "Brain tumors are the largest cause of cancer deaths for those under the age of 40, yet there are still very few effective treatments available and not everybody will respond to these. We need more effective and targeted drugs. The results from this study will allow for the identification of tumor subtypes which we can target with individual agents and ultimately increase the survival rate for people with this type of tumour."The research, published in Cell Reports, used mouse models and human cells derived from medulloblastoma tissue samples to look at the levels of two proteins, known as BMI1 and CHD7, in these tumours.The team found that high levels of BMI1 in combination with low levels of CHD7 were associated with a poor prognosis in aggressive human medulloblastoma and that this was due to overactivation of a pathway which controls tumor growth and division.The results mean that these two protein levels could be used as biomarkers for identifying which patients may benefit from drugs that inhibit this pathway.The findings could also be used to develop new therapies for patients with this subgroup of medulloblastoma. BMI1 is a highly druggable molecule, so drugs could be identified that are able to inhibit BMI1, and prevent the high BMI1 levels seen in the aggressive form of the tumor.The researchers caution that further research and clinical trials in humans will be needed before confirming these drugs' potential.Source: Eurekalert
CANBERRA, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- A spokesperson at the Chinese Embassy in Australia on Wednesday condemned the "fabricated" news reports by Australian media in recent months.

"Over the recent period, some Australian media have repeatedly fabricated news stories about the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia. Those reports, which were made up out of thin air and filled with Cold War mentality and ideological bias, reflected a typical anti-China hysteria and paranoia," the spokesperson said in a statement published on the embassy website.

In June, some Australian media reported that China has been attempting to "infiltrate" Australian politics to promote Chinese interests.

"The relevant reports not only made unjustifiable accusations against the Chinese government, but also unscrupulously vilified the Chinese students as well as the Chinese community in Australia with racial prejudice, which in turn has tarnished Australia's reputation as a multicultural society."

"Some Australian politicians and government officials also made irresponsible remarks to the detriment of political mutual trust between China and Australia," the statement said.

"We categorically reject these allegations."

The spokesperson said that China has been committed to developing its friendly relations with other countries on the basis of mutual respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in each other's internal affairs, which is one of the main principles of Chinese foreign policy.

"China has no intention to interfere in Australia's internal affairs or exert influence on its political process through political donations. We urge the Australian side to look at China and China-Australia relations in an objective, fair and rational manner."
MIDDLETOWN  The Oddfellows Playhouse Teen Company will open their original adaptation of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.

Performances will continue through Dec. 16. Actors ages 12 - 18 will be joined by Peter Loffredo, local actor and theater teacher, as Scrooge in this unique production. Appropriate for all ages the production will feature set, sound design, costumes and poster art by local artists.

In these times, youth are concerned about the world they are growing up in. This project has engaged these young actors in a classic text that asked similar questions back in 1834. How we live in the world together is a timeless theme and in this story, Dickens answers that question through Scrooges transformation, said director Kristen Palmer, in a written statement.

Actors have been engaged in choosing sections from the original text and have contributed to the staging and final execution.

The Teen Company at Oddfellows Playhouse is open to youth ages 12-19. The company produces 2 - 3 mainstage productions each year, auditions are open to all and actors who commit to the process are cast in a speaking role. Sliding scale, workstudy and financial aid are available to any student in need. The next project this season is a co-production with ArtFarm, As You Wish, a circus theater event. Auditions will be held Dec. 12 and Dec. 19; go to www.oddfellows.org for more information.

Founded in 1975, the Playhouse's mission is to promote the growth of young people, in skills, knowledge and self-confidence, through the performing arts. It is committed to the art of theater at its most adventurous; to education in the broadest sense of nurturing every student's full potential; and to social justice, building an equitable community and providing opportunities for all children.

Tickets for youth and seniors are $8, adults $15.Full schedule and tickets available at www.oddfellows.org, info@oddfellows.org, or 860-347-6143

Oddfellows Playhouse, is located at 128 Washington St., Middletown.
WINDSOR  The core seven Republican gubernatorial hopefuls kicked off the 2018 campaign on Wednesday night, promising to change the states penchant for taxes and drastically cut government spending.

During a two-hour forum sponsored by the Republican State Central Committee, the candidates criticized the number of state employees and their benefits. They charged that Democratic majorities in the General Assembly over the past 20 years have bloated the size of government and state-employee benefits.

Its not just a manner of which agencies you cut, said Dave Walker of Bridgeport, a former comptroller general of the United States under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Its grown too big, promised too much, needs to be restructured, he said. The USS Connecticut is sinking.

Every state agency should be audited and each of them should be downsized 124 percent, said Peter Lumaj of Fairfield, an Albanian-born immigration lawyer.

Steve Obsitnik of Westport, a tech consultant, said that DMV transactions should not take four hours like it did with his father-in-law recently.

Tim Herbst, former Trumbull first selectman, said his first target would be to revamp the DMV and the second would be the Department of Transportation. He believes half a billion dollars can be saved by allowing non-profit social-service agencies to take over more.

We need to attack the regulatory environment in our state, Herbst said, vowing to appoint an inspector general if he is elected to root out waste throughout government. We can transform government, make it smaller and smarter.

Mike Handler, Stamfords chief financial officer, said he was proud to privatize the citys nursing home, the Smith House, keeping the facility open while saving the city $5.5-million a year.

Why dont we get out of the pension business once and for all, he said, suggesting that the current state employee retirement plans be converted into 401(k) plans.

State Rep. Prasad Srinivasan of Glastonbury, a physician, said he wants to revive Connecticut and make Connecticut prosperous again.

All six of the candidates called for major changes in the state tax codes. Lumaj, however, went the farthest, saying that the income tax should be repealed for families making $100,000 and less and proposing a lower sales tax.

More than 500 people attended the forum, which was moderated by Jenn Bernstein of Fox 61 TV and Christopher Keating, The Hartford Courants state Capitol bureau chief.

The candidates took the stage in the auditorium at Windsor High School at 6 p.m., holding microphones, walking freely around the stage, then resting on stools with small desks.

In response to the debate, state Democratic Party Chairman Nick Balletto said that every GOP candidate carries baggage from Washington.

"The shadow of Donald Trump hangs over each and every Republican candidate on that stage tonight, Balletto said in a statement before the event. All of them have shown time and again that, when given the choice between fighting for Connecticut families or following Trump and his national GOP allies, they will choose Trump every time.

After the first hour, during a brief break, state Sen. Toni Boucher of Wilton arrived. She admitted that while she has filed an exploratory committee, she has not committed to any particular office, including governor.

During a segment on the expansion of casino gambling, Boucher said tax policy is the over-arching concern. Bridgeport does deserve to decide on their own which way they want to go with this, she said of the effort by MGM Resorts to possibly locate a facility there.

All seven of the hopefuls said they oppose the legalization of marijuana for adult recreation use.

I think public safety trumps a little revenue, Walker said, suggesting that the number of afflictions for which patients could be eligible for the states medical-cannabis be expanded including post-traumatic stress, which is already part of the program.

We have to learn from other states, Srinivasan said.

Perhaps I think we have a lot of decision makers (who) are using too much of the product, Herbst quipped, before stressing that the state is in the middle of an opioid crisis that threatens public safety.

Those interested in possibly running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, including Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton; Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti; Bob Stefanowski, a Madison financial executive; David Stemerman, a Greenwich hedge fund millionaire; Peter Thalheim, a Greenwich builder; and Joe Visconti of West Hartford, a failed 2014 gubernatorial candidate, did not attend the event.
(Xinhua) 07:38, December 07, 2017

Vice-Premier Wang Yang (front, center) and prominent political, economic and academic leaders attend the Fortune Global Forum on Wednesday in Guangzhou. FENG YONGBIN / CHINA DAILY

BEIJING/GUANGZHOU, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday told world business leaders gathering in China that the country would continue to open up and improve its business climate to create more opportunities and make a greater contribution to the world.

Xi made the remarks in a congratulatory letter to the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, which opened in the southern China city of Guangzhou Wednesday.

In his letter, Xi said China would develop the open economy to a higher level, promote the Belt and Road Initiative, and push for a new pattern of all-round opening up.

Looking forward, he said China would enjoy robust development momentum, the people would have a greater sense of gain and the country would be more integrated into the world.

The president said China's economy had the foundation, condition and impetus to maintain stable growth and sound momentum.

He reiterated that China would not close its door to the world, and would only become more and more open, with its business environment becoming more open, transparent and regulated.

"China will continue to forge global partnerships, expand the common interests with others countries, further liberalize and facilitate trade and investment, and push for an economic globalization that is more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all," Xi said.

Xi welcomed global businesses to invest in China to share the opportunities brought by the country's reform and development.

The three-day 2017 Fortune Global Forum has chosen "Openness and Innovation: Shaping the Global Economy" as its theme, drawing 1,100 participants, mostly world business leaders, including senior executives from the world's top firms such as Alibaba, Tencent, Ford, HSBC and JP Morgan.

It is the fifth time that a Chinese city has hosted the forum. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill addressed the opening.

Vice Premier Wang Yang delivered a keynote speech, in which he highlighted the significance of sticking to globalization, innovation and inclusive growth.

"China's economy is undergoing profound transformations, and the country's future development will prioritize quality and efficiency, which will be driven by innovation and openness," Wang said.

He attributed China's growth to opening-up and promised to stick to this path.

"China will substantially ease market access and formulate a timetable for opening up in key areas," Wang said, adding that country would protect the rights and interests of foreign businesses, and create a fair market environment.

Alan Murray, editor-in-chief of Fortune magazine, said the forum comes at a time when technology is reshaping the business world in ways never seen before, and rising nationalism and growing distrust in businesses and other institutions are posing a threat to globalization.

Jing Ulrich, managing director and vice chair of Asia Pacific at JPMorgan Chase, said it was very important for China to say it would hold on to developing an open economy, especially at a time when global protectionism is on the rise.

"Some countries turned to protectionism. By opening up, China asserts its leadership position as the world's second largest economy and a champion of globalization," she said, at the sidelines of the forum. "China shows the world a correct path to development."
A fire that has already claimed a handful of homes in Los Angeles County and threatens hundreds of others is stirring up memories of a massive 1961 blaze that burned 16,090 acres and destroyed the homes of some of America's biggest celebrities of the day.

The Skirball Fire burning in Los Angeles County near the Getty Center off Interstate 405 is threatening the upscale Bel-Air neighborhood  the site of a fire 56 years ago that destroyed 484 homes, including those of Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
(Xinhua) 07:39, December 07, 2017

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- China will further integrate government information systems and enable more information disclosure on the allocation of public resources, according to a decision made at the State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.

The government will work to consolidate and integrate the national data sharing and exchange platform to enable connectivity across networks, data and administrative services, the meeting has decided.

This move is part of the government effort to streamline administration, enhance compliance oversight and provide better services, with the aim of delivering greater benefits to the public with easier and faster access to administrative services.

Chinese leaders have stressed the importance of integration, sharing and disclosure in the running of government information systems on multiple occasions.

President Xi Jinping said that the integration of information resources should be pushed forward to break information silos and develop a national information resources sharing system.

Premier Li Keqiang said that the integration and sharing of government information systems should be accelerated to deliver better administrative services.

According to a decision at the meeting, the contents and modality of data sharing across State Council departments will be clearly defined to ensure public access to information that can be released.

The 40 vertical information systems run by the State Council bodies will be made open to governments at various levels by the end of this year, which will enable the sharing of service information on some 500 data items, including the identity verification of natural persons and enterprises, tax payment certificate, real estate registration, and diploma certification.

The government will encourage multi-purpose service stations to raise efficiency and cut the legwork of the public and businesses in seeking government services from different departments.

The security of information sharing will also be a priority, with measures set to be introduced to enhance the security management system and risk assessment.

In the establishment of any new government information system, sharing shall be a guiding principle to prevent duplication and new information silos. The government will also step up technical safeguards for such public infrastructure as the National E-Government Network and the national data sharing and exchange platform.

"We should use the integration of government information systems to achieve connectivity of data and government services, and break the barriers to our reform to streamline administration, enhance compliance oversight and provide better services. Such integration will also help spur social creativity, foster a more favorable business environment and bring greater conveniences to our people. This effort meets the public expectation and will help strike a proper balance between the government and the market," the premier said.

A new guideline, which specifies a set of requirements for government information disclosure on the allocation of public resources, was also approved at the meeting.

The guideline, issued as part of the plan by the Communist party of China Central Committee and the State Council to push forward government information disclosure comprehensively, has identified a number of key areas for information disclosure, including housing, transfer of state-owned land use rights, transfer of mining rights, government procurement, transaction of state-owned property rights and tendering of engineering construction projects.

Information disclosure in these areas will be conducted through government portal sites, mobile Internet platforms, or the press by the competent government departments or the state bodies, government-affiliated institutions or enterprises that undertake the allocation of these public resources.

"More transparency in the allocation of public resources can help reduce corruption and unfair distribution. It can also lower cost, raise efficiency and enhance government credibility." Li said.

The use of high and new technology should be prioritized in integrating government information systems and releasing government information on public resources allocation on the basis of ensuring information security,he added.
China calls for caution on issues concerning status of Jerusalem

(Xinhua) 07:42, December 07, 2017

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang (Photo source: fmprc.gov.cn)

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday said that the status of Jerusalem is sensitive and complicated, and urged all parties concerned to exercise caution for peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks when asked to comment on U.S. intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

A senior U.S. administration official said President Donald Trump is expected to announce that the United Statesrecognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there.

"We pay close attention to the developments of the situation and are concerned about the possible intensification of regional conflicts," Geng told a routine press briefing.

He said all parties concerned should exercise caution and avoid rocking the basis for the settlement of the Palestinian issue, which may trigger new regional confrontation.

China firmly supports the Middle East peace process and the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate rights and interests, said Geng.

He said China supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty and independence on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

China calls on all parties concerned to abide by relevant UN resolutions and commit themselves to resolving differences through negotiations and promoting regional peace and stability, said Geng.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017. In the final remarks that concluded his first visit to the region, U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is "possible". (Xinhua file photo/JINI)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"I am determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said Trump, adding he judged "this cause of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

"This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement," Trump said, arguing his announcement is just a "recognition of reality," and is "not intended in any way to reflect a departure" from the U.S. commitment to a lasting peace agreement "acceptable to both sides" of Israel and Palestine.

"We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the resolution of contested borders," he said. "Those questions are up to the parties involved."

Earlier, the Palestinian authorities have reiterated their stance that there will be no sovereign state of Palestine without East Jerusalem as its capital.

Speaking of the relocation of the U.S. embassy, Trump said the State Department will immediately begin to hire architects, engineers and planners, so as to make the new embassy "a magnificent tribute to peace" when it is completed.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Dan Mahaffee, vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency, told Xinhua that Trump's decision reflects a willingness to "shake up the peace process" and the push to make a deal, "despite the offense to Arab nations and the risk of inciting further violence in the region."

Ilan Goldenberg from the Center for New American Security said, "if you're about to launch a major peace plan, the last thing you want to do is to take this highly sensitive question of Jerusalem and just throw it into the mix."

Although the U.S. Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.

The status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So far, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries base their embassies in the city.
[December 07, 2017] Frost & Sullivan Recognises Outstanding Companies at the 2017 Australian Excellence Awards in Sydney

SYDNEY, Dec. 7, 2017 /CNW/ -- Frost & Sullivan recognised top companies in Australia at the annual Australia Excellence Awards banquet on 7 December at the Hilton Hotel, Sydney. Mr. Mark Dougan, Managing Director, Frost & Sullivan Australia, said that the awards, now in their 12th consecutive year, seek to recognise companies and individuals that have pushed the boundaries of excellence to rise above the competition and demonstrate outstanding performance in the Australian market. "We at Frost & Sullivan believe in the importance of recognising best practices and notable achievements and the 2017 Frost & Sullivan Australia award recipients are certainly well-deserving. We hope this recognition will continue to help drive innovation and excellence in the Australian market," he added. The recipients of the annual Frost & Sullivan Australia Excellence Awards were identified based on in-depth research conducted by Frost & Sullivan's analysts. The award categories offered each year are carefully reviewed and evaluated to reflect the current market landscape and include new emerging trends. The short-listed companies were then evaluated on a variety of actual market performance indicators which include revenue growth; market share and growth in market share; leadership in product innovation; marketing strategy and business development strategy. For more details on the 2017 Australia Excellence Awards log-in http://www.frost-apac.com/ausawards/. You can also connect with Frost & Sullivan on social media, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for the latest news and updates. We also invite you to join the conversation using #FrostAwards or #FrostAUAwards Frost & Sullivan congratulates all the recipients of the 2017 Frost & Sullivan Australia Excellence Awards:







AWARD TITLE AWARD RECIPIENT Australia Cloud Construction Collaboration Vendor of the Year ACONEX Australia Medical Billing & Practice Management New Product Innovation ACSS HEALTH Australia Anti-DDoS Solutions Vendor of the Year AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES Australia Cloud Video Conferencing Growth Excellence Leadership BLUEJEANS NETWORK Australia Data Centre Services Competitive Strategy, Innovation & Leadership CANBERRA DATA CENTRES Australia Medical Billing & Practice Management Technology Innovation Leadership CLINIC to CLOUD Global Customer Experience Testing Platform Vendor of the Year CYARA Australia Contact Centre Services Growth Excellence Leadership DATACOM Australia Medical Billing & Practice Management (Secondary & Tertiary Care) Company of the Year DXC TECHNOLOGY Australia Smart Agriculture Technology Innovation Leadership EXPERT 365 Australia Customer Interaction Management Solutions Vendor of the Year GENESYS Global Cell Therapy Technology Leadership MESOBLAST Australia Data Centre Service Provider of the Year METRONODE Australia Enterprise Communications Solutions Growth Excellence Leadership MITEL Australia Critical Communications Service Provider of the Year MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS Australia Cloud Contact Centre Services Growth Excellence Leadership NewVoiceMedia Australia Data Centre Services Growth Excellence Leadership NEXTDC Australia Healthcare Information Technology Growth Excellence Leadership ONEVIEW HEALTHCARE Australia Patient Engagement Solutions Growth Excellence Leadership ONEVIEW HEALTHCARE Australia Fixed Broadband Service Provider of the Year OPTUS Australia Enterprise Mobility Vendor of the Year SAMSUNG Australia Hospital Asset Tracking Solutions Vendor of the Year SATO Australia Smart Waste Management Entrepreneurial Company of the Year SMART CITY SOLUTIONS Australia Customer Contact Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year STELLAR ASIA PACIFIC Australia Hosted Customer Contact Service Provider of the Year TELSTRA Australia Enterprise Mobility Service Provider of the Year TELSTRA Australia Enterprise Communications Service Provider of the Year TELSTRA Australia Managed Security Services Provider of the Year TELSTRA Australia Mobile Service Provider of the Year TELSTRA Australia Drone Solutions and Services Growth Excellence Leadership TERRA DRONE Australia Customer Contact Optimisation Solutions Vendor of the Year VERINT SYSTEMS Australia Financial Accounting SaaS Vendor of the Year XERO

About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organisation prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us: Start the discussion Media Contact Carrie Low

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned and rejected on Wednesday the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital, saying the move "violates all international and bilateral resolutions."

Abbas made the remarks in a speech aired live on the official Palestinian Television shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The declaration will not give any legitimacy to Israel in this matter, Abbas said, adding that Jerusalem is eternal Palestinian capital.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent Palestinian state, while Israel wants all Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of the state of Israel.

"Our national Palestinian cause is at a crossroads after the U.S. decision on Jerusalem," Abbas said.

"The Palestinians will remain a united front defending Jerusalem and peace and freedom and winning the rights of our people to end the occupation and achieve its national independence," he added.

He also condemned the United States as ignoring and contradicting "the international consensus expressed by the positions of various countries of the world."

Abbas clearly stated that the declaration represents a withdrawal of U.S. role in sponsoring the peace process, adding that the move encourages Israel "to pursue the policy of occupation, settlement and ethnic cleansing."

The Palestinian leader said the recognition is "serving the interest of extremist groups trying to characterize the conflict in our region for a religious war."

He confirmed that the Palestinian leadership "is constantly monitoring the developments of the situation, and is working on drafting appropriate decisions and procedures in consultation with the Arab brothers and friends."
A US court has sentenced former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt to seven years in prison for his role in the German automaker's "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal.

Schmidt, who led Volkswagen's US regulatory compliance office from 2012 to March 2015, was also ordered by a federal judge in Detroit to pay a USD 400,000 fine.

He had pleaded guilty in August to charges he conspired to commit fraud and violate the US Clean Air Act.

Schmidt, 48, the second and most senior employee to plead guilty in the affair, is among eight current and former VW executives that US prosecutors have charged so far.

In exchange for his plea, federal prosecutors dropped multiple counts of wire fraud, which carry a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Schmidt has agreed to be deported back to Germany after his sentence is completed.

In August, the same court sentenced James Liang, a Volkswagen engineer who had cooperated with investigating authorities, for 40 months and a USD 200,000 fine for his role in the affair. Six VW or Audi executives remain at large.

VW admitted in 2015 to equipping about 11 million cars worldwide with defeat devices, including about 600,000 vehicles in the United States, which allowed them to deceive emissions tests but emit up to 40 times the permissible levels of harmful nitrogen oxide during actual driving.

A study published in May found that excess nitrogen oxide from improperly configured diesel vehicles had contributed to about 38,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2015.

The scandal has so far reportedly cost the auto giant as much as USD 30 billion in fines, settlements and remediation.

In arguing for a seven-year sentence, prosecutors last month said Schmidt had participated in "one of the largest corporate fraud schemes in American history" and led efforts to cover up the company's misconduct in the summer of 2015.

Schmidt travelled to the US as the scandal was breaking on a mission to lie to US and Californian authorities so Volkswagen could obtain regulatory approvals to sell 2016 model year diesel vehicles in the United States, according to prosecutors.

"Schmidt sent detailed updates to VW management in Germany apprising them of precisely what he had said, and making it obvious that he was following the script of deception and deceit that VW, with Schmidt's input, had chosen," prosecutors told the court last month.

Defense lawyers had sought a sentence of only 40 months and a USD 100,000 fine, saying Schmidt's participation in the conspiracy had not occurred until nine years after it began and that he had expressed remorse.

In March, VW brought an end to Washington's criminal pursuit of the company, agreeing to pay USD 4.3 billion in civil and criminal fines and plead guilty to charges it likewise had defrauded the United States and violated the Clean Air Act.

But the company continues to face legal challenges in Germany and elsewhere.
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NOTICE is hereby given that a meeting of the Committee of Independent Directors of Bloom Industries Limited ('Company') will be held on Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 11:00AM at the registered office of the Company situated at 5, Devpark, Opp. Chandan Cinema, JVPD Scheme, Juhu, Vile-Parle (W), Mumbai - 400049, to approve the following:Recommendations of the committee of independent directors ('IDC') on the open offer by Mr. Rajendra Prasad Gupta, Mr. Vikash Gupta and Mr. Akash Gupta ('Acquirers') to the public shareholders of the Company under regulation 26(7) of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011, as amended.Kindly disseminate the said information.Source : BSE

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The meeting of Board of Directors of our Company is scheduled to be held on Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 05:30 P.M. at the Registered Office of the Company situated at Madhav House, Plot No. - 04, Nr. Panchratna Building, Beside Amul Apartment, Subhanpura, Vadodara - 390 023 for the following businesses:1. To consider, approve & take on record the Standalone and Consolidated Un-Audited Financial Results of the Company for the quarter ended on September 30, 2017 as per Regulation 33 of the Listing Regulations.2. Any other business as Board deem fit to discuss.In this connection, as per the Company's Code of Conduct to regulate, monitor and report trading by insiders, adopted by the Board pursuant to SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015, the trading window for dealing in the securities of the Company will be closed for the Specified Persons from Friday, December 08, 2017 to Sunday, December 17, 2017. The Trading Window will be re-opened from December 18, 2017 onward.Source : BSE

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SYDNEY, Dec. 6 (Peoples Daily Online)--On Dec. 6, the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Australia said Australian media reports about the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia reflected a typical anti-China hysteria and paranoid and the Australian side needed to take a more objective view of the two countries relationship.

The spokesperson said some Australian media had repeatedly fabricated news stories, which were made up out of thin air and filled with cold war mentality and ideological bias. The relevant reports not only made unjustifiable accusations against the Chinese government, but also unscrupulously vilified the Chinese students as well as the Chinese community in Australia with racial prejudice, which in turn has tarnished Australia's reputation as a multicultural society.

Some Australian politicians and government officials also made irresponsible remarks to the detriment of political mutual trust between China and Australia. We categorically reject these allegations, the spokesperson said.

China has been committed to developing friendly relations with other countries on the basis of mutual respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in each other's internal affairs, which is one of the main principles of Chinese foreign policy.

China has no intention to interfere in Australia's internal affairs or exert influence on its political process through political donations. The Australian side is urged to look at China and China-Australia relations in an objective, fair and rational manner, the spokesperson added.
A view of Jerusalem's old city. US officials have said that 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 there. Trump's point-man on the Middle East, son-in-law Jared Kushner, later said the president hasn't decided yet what steps to take. (PTI)

Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator.

The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Major U.S. allies came out against Trump's reversal of decades of U.S. and broad international policy on Jerusalem.

France rejected the "unilateral" decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalem's status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution.

Israel, by contrast, applauded Trump's move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was "an important step towards peace" and it was "our goal from Israel's first day".

He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israel's capital and he urged other countries to follow Trump's example.

Trump upended decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East.

The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.

Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the "eternal capital of the State of Palestine" and that Trump's move was "tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator."

The last round of U.S.-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a "flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people". Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to "undermine U.S. interests in the region" and to "shun Israel".

Protests broke out in parts of Jordan's capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Amman's outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. "Down with America...America is the mother of terror," they chanted.

Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus' traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday.

"LEGALLY NULL" DECISION

Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trump's decision and said it did not change Jerusalem's disputed legal status.

Jordan said Trump's action was "legally null" because it consolidated Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trump's Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trump's undertaking was a "death sentence for all who seek peace" and called it "a dangerous escalation".

Turkey said Trump's move was "irresponsible".

"We call upon the U.S. Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate.

Iran "seriously condemns" Trump's move as it violates U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel's security.

British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trump's embrace of Jerusalem as Israel's capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said.

However, May's spokesman welcomed Trump's stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trump's "unilateral" move.

"The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations," Macron told reporters in Algiers.

"France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states," he said.

"For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks.

"I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said. "I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations."
A vituperative campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls that saw emotive issues of religion and caste competing with that of development as the main rivals, BJP and Congress, launched no-holds-barred attacks on each other ended this evening.

The sparring between the two parties while canvassing for the polls, dubbed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon- to-be Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, continued till the very end with Manishankar Aiyar's "neech aadmi" jibe at Modi triggering a controversy.

A total of 89 seats -- out of 182 -- spanning the Saurashtra and south Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Polling will be held on Saturday.

Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) B B Swain said around 2.12 crore of the 4.35 crore voters of the state were expected to exercise their franchise on Saturday.

The Election Commission (EC) had earlier announced that Gujarat would be the second state after Goa where the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system would be used, along with electronic voting machines (EVMs), at all the 50,128 polling booths.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties' campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

The poll narrative kept changing with issues such as the Ayodhya title suit, Gandhi's imminent elevation as the Congress president and his visits to temples being raised by the BJP brass.

The campaign mainly shaped up as a duel between Modi and Gandhi, with the latter emerging as the Congress' pivot to take on the might of the prime minister on his home turf.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Gandhi, has mainly targeted the "hollow Gujarat development model" to slam Modi.

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state.

Kutch is the largest district in Gujarat, comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Of the 58 seats in Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP had won 35 in the 2012 Assembly polls and the Congress 20. Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the now-defunct Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) of Keshubhai Patel and one by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

In 2007, the tally of the BJP and the Congress in Saurashtra and Kutch stood at 43 and 14 respectively, while the NCP had bagged one seat.

Of the 35 seats spread across the seven districts of south Gujarat, the BJP had won 28 and the Congress six in the 2012 polls. The remaining seat was won by "Others".

The 2009 tally for the BJP and the Congress stood at 19 and 14 seats respectively in south Gujarat, while two constituencies had gone to "Others".

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) -- both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJP's new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim- dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The contest for the 12 seats in Surat, the diamond and textile hub of the country as well as a BJP bastion, is being viewed as a referendum on the note ban and GST, as the BJP is facing a stiff opposition from the trading community.

The campaign was marred by a number of controversies, with the latest being Aiyar's off-the-cuff remarks against Modi, which the latter termed an "insult to Gujarat" while addressing a rally in Surat.

Earlier, a row had erupted over the Youth Congress' online magazine tweeting a meme of Modi, mocking his English speaking skills and raising his "chaiwalla" past.

Similarly, Gandhi's visit to the famous Somnath temple had triggered a controversy over his faith.

Shedding his "reluctant politician" persona, Gandhi, during his campaign, had interacted with the traders in Surat, who vented their ire against demonetisation and the "complicated GST structure".

Subsequently, the Congress vice-president had attacked the Modi government over the "four-tier" GST structure and sought rationalisation of the indirect tax rates.

For the BJP, Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani had held the fort to defend the GST and note ban, while trying to allay the concerns of the traders and textile merchants during their interactions with them.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 15 rallies, while Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

BJP president Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the saffron party, had also addressed a number of rallies, mainly targeting the Congress and Gandhi.

The BJP had also drafted in Union minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The Congress had fielded former prime minister Manmohan Singh and prominent leaders such as P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, to name a few, for canvassing.

A big takeaway for the Congress from these polls is ensuring the support of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an umbrella organisation of the numerically strong Patidar community, which has traditionally formed the bedrock of the BJP's support in Gujarat.

In its bid to form a caste bloc against the BJP, the Congress has won over Alpesh Thakor, Patel and Jignesh Mewani, who have emerged as the young Turks representing the OBCs, Patidars and Dalits respectively.

The Congress, in political wilderness in Gujarat for nearly 22 years, is desperate to break the jinx. It has raised issues such as the BJP's "hollow development model", "the prime minister's proximity with select industrialists", besides demonetisation and GST, at the hustings.

Polling for the second and final phase, comprising 93 seats spanning north and central Gujarat, will be held on December 14. The counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
Almost two years ago the government woke up to the issue of pollution across India with an aim to curb pollution from coal based thermal power plants; the union environment ministry notified stricter emission standards for them. Not only did they tighten emission norms but also fixed water consumption parameters.

The deadline for implementation of these norms was to end today. However, two years on and most power plants are yet to implement these stricter emission standards.

To protest the lack of implementation, non profit organisation, Greenpeace India held a silent protest today. So will the government take action against these power plants for non compliance?

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Priyavrat Bharti, Programme Director-Energy at CSE and Sunil Dahiya, Senior Campaigner of Greenpeace India discussed this further.
Ten leading automotive component manufacturers from India will participate in an exposition in Egypt to explore opportunities in the Egyptian and North African markets.

The companies form a part of the global supply chain for the majors like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Isuzu.

"India is emerging as a global hub for auto-components sourcing. The Indian auto-components are known for its cost effectiveness and quality. With the rapidly growing transport sector in Egypt, Indian auto-components industry is well positioned to cater to the needs of the Egyptian market through trade and investment collaborations," India's Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya said.

The Indian auto-components industry is set to become the third largest in the world by 2025 and is expected to grow by 8 to 10 per cent in 2017-18.

Higher localisation by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), higher component content per vehicle, and rising exports from India would be the key growth drivers for the industry which is projected to register a turnover of USD 100 billion by 2020. By 2026, exports of these products are likely to range between USD 80 to USD 100 billion.

The Indian Pavilion is being organised by the Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC India), the premier trade and investment promotion organisation in engineering sector sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in association with the Embassy of India in Cairo.

In auto-components sector, India is among the top six exporting countries to Egypt.

India exported more than USD 75 million worth of auto- component products to Egypt in 2016, constituting 7.5 per cent of the total imports of Egypt for the product.

"Our participation in the prestigious exposition would further cement India's ties with Egypt and the entire North Africa," said Bhaskar Sarkar, Executive Director and Secretary, EEPC India.

The Autotech 2017 in its 24th edition is expected to attract over 300 exhibition brands and 5000 visitors even as six new Product Sectors are added to the largest and most comprehensive trade show for the auto aftermarket industry.

It provides the platform to connect with top decision makers specialised in automobile spare parts, accessories, motorcar workshops, service station equipment and feeding industries.

Egypt has traditionally been one of India's most important trading partners in the African continent.

During the year 2016-17, bilateral trade between India and Egypt was to the tune of USD 3.23 billion.

India is Egypt's 10th largest export destination and also the 10th largest import source.

The governments and the business communities in India and Egypt are working closely to promote the dynamism in bilateral economic relations.

The participation by EEPC India delegation in Autotech 2017 is part of the embassy's efforts to expand bilateral commercial and economic relations in general and machine tools sectors in particular.
Toyota Valuation: $53.4 billion Change in valuation: 6 percent Change in rank: 0

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today said it is considering to increase prices of its models by up to 3 per cent from January, to offset impact of rising input costs.

The company considered the price rise after reviewing input and freight costs periodically, which is also a general industry phenomenon, TKM said in a statement.

"There has been an increase in the cost of manufacturing of vehicles. Frequent fluctuation in the global commodity prices and foreign exchange rates have continued to impact our input costs, from both domestic as well as import fronts," a company spokesperson said.

TKM has been absorbing the additional costs all this while, protecting the customers from price increase, the spokesperson added. "However, due to the continued pressure of high costs, Toyota is considering a price increase of up to 3 per cent across models with effect from January," the spokesperson said.

The company sells models ranging from hatchback Etios Liva with price starting at Rs 5.2 lakh to Land Cruiser 200 priced at Rs 1.35 crore (ex-showroom Delhi) Yesterday, Honda Cars India announced to hike vehicle prices by up to Rs 25,000 from January to offset the impact of rising input costs.

Earlier this month, Isuzu had announced to increase prices of its models by up to Rs 1 lakh. Last month, Skoda Auto India announced that it will hike prices of its vehicles by 2-3 per cent across the entire model range from January 1.
UIDAI, the authority which issues Aadhaar, said today that the deadlines for verifying bank accounts, PAN cards and mobile SIM cards with the biometric ID stand "valid and lawful", and there is no change in them.

While the deadline for verifying bank accounts and income tax Permanent Account Number (PAN) by providing Aadhaar is December 31, for SIM cards it is February 6.

Refuting social media messages, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that as on date there is no stay from the Supreme Court on Aadhaar and its linking to various services.

"That Aadhaar Act being in force, all notifications for requiring Aadhaar for various welfare programmes, verifying bank account, PAN card and SIM card with Aadhaar stand valid and lawful," it said in a statement.

"Today's legal position is that there is no stay as on December 7, 2017 from the Supreme Court on Aadhaar and its linking to various services," it added.

The government has made it mandatory for verifying bank account and PAN to weed out black money and bring unaccounted wealth to book. The same for SIM has been mandated to establish identify of mobile phone users.

"The mandatory requirements of Aadhaar for PAN, bank accounts, welfare programs, and SIM cards have been challenged in the Supreme Court and no stay has been granted. Therefore, it is clear that the video is outdated because it does not reflect the latest legal position as on today (December 7, 2017)," the statement said.

UIDAI said the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 was passed by the Parliament on March 16, 2016 and notified in the Gazette of India on March 26, 2016.

"Therefore, subsequent notifications issued under section/s of Aadhaar Act for requiring Aadhaar as primary identifier by various ministries and departments of Government of India and States/UTs Governments for various services, benefits and subsidies hold the field today," it said.

UIDAI asked people not to get misled by an outdated video doing rounds in the social media and Whatsapp and said "people should instead verify their banks accounts, investment accounts, SIM cards, etc as per the current laws and deadlines as early as possible to avoid any inconvenience."

"UIDAI has clarified on a video circulated purportedly out of context of a lady lawyer on WhatsApp, Twitter and Social Media and said that the video refers to an order passed by the Supreme Court on August 11, 2015 when the court had restricted use of Aadhaar to only few programs," the statement said.

The video, it said, does not reflect "true legal position" as it stands today, because after the said Supreme Court order of 2015, Aadhaar Act was passed by Parliament in 2016.

Subsequent to the Act, notifications have been issued making Aadhaar mandatory for availing various welfare benefits such as public distribution services (PDS), cooking gas LPG, MNREGS, scholarships and pensions.

The Income Tax Act was amended in March 2017 to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards. On June 1, 2017, PML Rules have been amended to make Aadhaar mandatory for linking all bank accounts, insurance, pension, mutual funds and DMAT accounts.

"Supreme Court too in Lokniti Foundation case through an order passed in February 2017 has approved verification of all SIM cards with Aadhaar," UIDAI said.

The Apex Court has upheld the linkage of Aadhaar with PAN in the case of Binoy Viswam vs Union of India which mandates Aadhaar for income tax returns and PAN.
US President Donald Trump has taken a "courageous" and "historic" step by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, America's Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has said.

Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital yesterday, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city, in a major announcement which many Arab leaders warned could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

Indian-American Haley said that for 22 years, there had been an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favour of moving the US embassy in Israel to its rightful place in the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem.

"Today, the President took a courageous and historic step that was long overdue. Across the globe, America has its embassy in the capital city of the host country. Israel will now be no different. It is the just and right thing to do," she said yesterday.

Noting that the Trump Administration was committed to seeing Israelis and Palestinians come together at peace, Haley said but at the same time it will do what it does in every other country and put the embassy in the capital.

"Courage doesn't come by doing what everybody else says. Courage does by coming what you know is right. This is the right thing to do. And what the president is doing is he's showing leadership," Haley told Fox News.

"And will there be those that have negative feelings about what we're doing? Yes, of course. But could this possibly lead to a peace process? Absolutely. And that should be our hope and that should be what we strive to do," she said.

"This is following members of Congress. This is doing what the American people said. But we are also taking Jerusalem out of the discussion because the two sides have to come together on how they're going to see Jerusalem, what they're going to see as their capital," she said.

Haley said several top American lawmakers have described Trump's decision as "provocative" and "counterproductive".

In a joint statement Congressmen David Price, Peter Welch, John Yarmuth, Barbara Lee and Earl Blumenauer said Trump's announcement demonstrates "his complete disregard" for long-standing American and international diplomatic practice.

"It unilaterally undermines prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and recklessly endangers US, Israeli, and regional security. For more than 50 years, Republican and Democratic Administrations have recognised that the US should stand as a good faith arbiter for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians," they said.

The lawmakers said that recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel outside the framework of a final status agreement between the parties does more to sabotage than to advance peace.

Congressman Alcee Hastings warned that the ramifications of the decision could be profound.

"I fear that the President made his decision based on political expediency rather than sound foreign policy," he said.

However, Senator Ted Cruz supported the move.

"I encourage countries around the world to now engage in their own moment of historical moral clarity, to follow America's lead in recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, immediately begin the process of moving their embassies to Jerusalem, and stand with the US and Israel in voting against any future effort in international forums that attempts to deny historic truth," Cruz said.

"President Trump's decision sabotages relations with the Palestinians, stokes even more conflict in the Middle East, and further embarrasses the US in the world," said Congresswoman Betty McCollum.

"The President is wilfully abdicating the US' role as a peacemaker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ending any hope of a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state," she alleged.
Allowed | Data and call centres for government activities. (Image: Moneycontrol)

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Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS), the business process management services arm of Hinduja Group, is betting big on the e-commerce sector in India as a sector that will drive business growth for the company. While banking and insurance is being touted as the next biggest sector for the company, regulatory norms prescribe that a lot of activities in these sectors cannot be outsourced.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Partha DeSarkar, Chief Executive Officer, Hinduja Global Solutions said that their aim is to create a bigger footprint near the US through a near-shore presence.

The company is already present in Jamaica and is looking to further expand in the Latin American market. We are of the belief that we have a good scope to offer Spanish language support from the near-shore facility for the Hispanic community in the US, said DeSarkar.

The company is bullish on India as a market, even though the India domestic market has faced some volatility in the telecom sector which has led to pressure on volumes.

Srinivas Palakodeti, Chief Financial Officer, HGS said that that in terms of India domestic market, they are trying to re-balance the portfolio and focus on consumer-led, non-telecom businesses.

When it comes to the banking and insurance sector, both the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as well as Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) have barred Indian entities from outsourcing core activities to outside players.

DeSarkar said, We will be able to bring best practices from other markets if we are allowed to get business from banking and insurance players in India. Unfortunately, the regulatory regime has not been conducive to this.

Regulators like IRDAI have been clear about not letting data from Indian insurers to be outsourced due to privacy concerns since it will be stored in a cloud server abroad.

In terms of the global business, DeSarkar said that apart from Latin America and the Caribbean Islands, South Africa and East Africa are also attractive markets. In South East Asia, we have done a recce in Vietnam but have not taken a decision to enter the market yet, he added.

In its results for the quarter ended September 2017 declared recently, HGS posted a 42.5 percent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 53.4 crore for the September quarter, backed by broad-based demand across verticals and geographies including the US and the Philippines. DeSarkar said that the revenue growth which averages around 10-11 percent could be a little lower this year.
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Homegrown FMCG major Emami announced to acquire 30 percent stake in Lifestyle, which owns male grooming brand 'The Man Company'.

The stake will be acquired by December 31, 2018, through the infusion of required funds in Helios, the Kolkata-based company said in a statement.

The size of the deal was however not disclosed.

"The acquisition of stake by Emami is significant as it marks the companys entry in the fast-growing online male grooming segment," it said.

Emami is present in the male grooming segment through its brands Fair and Handsome and HE.

"Rapidly growing male grooming portfolio supported by digital marketing & online sales is an emerging growth segment in the FMCG space," said Emami Director Harsha V Agarwal.

The Man Company offers premium men's grooming products in Bath & Body, Beard management, Shaving & Perfumes category and is sold online majorly through the company's own website  www.themancompany.com.

"Emami not only has very deep industry experience but also believes in our vision to make The Man Company a global brand," said Rohit Chawla, co-founder, Helios Lifestyle.
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State-owned gas utility GAIL India today said it has awarded job contracts for laying a 520-km stretch in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal under the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga gas pipeline project.

With these awards, major contracts for phase-II of the Jagdishpur-Haldia and Bokaro-Dhamra Natural Gas Pipeline (JHBDPL) project have been finalised.

In a press statement, GAIL said it has awarded the laying contract for 520-km pipeline connectivity from Dobhi (in Bihar) to Durgapur (in West Bengal) including a 120-km line to Jamshedpur (in Jharkhand).

The prestigious 2,655-km long JHBDPL project, also known as the 'Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga' project, will pass through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha.

"The project will usher in industrial development in east India by supplying environmentally clean natural gas to fertiliser and power plants, refineries, steel plants and other industries," it said.

The company said city gas network laying activity in Varanasi and Bhubaneswar has already commenced and activities in other cities, namely Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Cuttack and Kolkata will start by next month.

City gas distribution will provide clean fuel to household, transportation and other commercial sectors.

GAIL Chairman and MD B C Tripathi said the project activity of phase-I is at the advanced stage of construction, which will supply gas to Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Patna and Barauni.

"Though certain hindrances are being encountered in RoU (Right of Use) opening, GAIL is putting all-out efforts to overcome the hindrances and complete the phase-I before the scheduled completion of December 2018," he said.

With the award for pipeline to Durgapur and Jamshedpur, GAIL till date has already awarded contracts over Rs 6,000 crore covering phase I and II of the project, he said.

GAIL, Tripathi said, is executing 4,000 kms of natural gas pipeline, which will cover Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka.

The state-owned Maharatna is making huge investment in the pipeline to fulfil the government's vision of the National Gas Grid. The capex of GAIL for the next financial year is expected at over Rs 6,000 crore, a jump of more than 50 per cent over the current financial year, he said.

With these, the activities of phaseII of JHBDPL and city gas projects along the pipeline route will also gain momentum and GAIL is committed to completing the project within the cost and schedule.
(Xinhua) 09:26, December 07, 2017

CAIRO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital drew strong condemnation from the Arab states and the Islamic world, despite Israel hailing the move as "courageous and just decision."

Defying all warnings, Trump announced his official recognition and instructed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Shortly after Trump's announcement, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned and rejected the U.S. decision in a speech aired live on the official Palestinian Television, saying the declaration will not give any legitimacy to Israel in this matter.

He said the United States is ignoring and contradicting "the international consensus expressed by the positions of various countries of the world."

Abbas clearly stated that the declaration represents a withdrawal of U.S. role in sponsoring the peace process, adding that the move encourages Israel "to pursue the policy of occupation, settlement and ethnic cleansing."

Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat also slammed the move, saying "the destiny of Jerusalem is not determined by the U.S. president."

Meanwhile, mass rallies, demonstrations and protests took place in most of the Gaza Strip area, rejecting the U.S. decision.

Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said during a Hamas march in Gaza City that "we are ready to sacrifice our souls for Jerusalem, and we will not accept the aggression against Jerusalem which is the eternal capital of our people."

Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas movement said the U.S. decision will not change the facts of history and geography. The Palestinian people know how to respond appropriately to the disregarding of their feelings and sanctities.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent Palestinian state, while Israel wants all Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of the state of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital as "historic," saying that it showed U.S. commitment to "an ancient but enduring truth."

Jerusalem, which is home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Trump's controversial move is expected to enrage the Muslim world, which has warned of serious consequences.

Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said that the move is in violation of the international legitimacy resolutions and the UN charter.

The minister said Jordan rejected the decision, which will increase tension and strengthen the occupation. "The decision, which preceded any results of the final status negotiations, fuels outrage and provokes the feelings of the Muslims and Christians across the Arab and Islamic world," he said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani slammed the move as "illegal" and would further destabilize the Middle East, holding Israel "responsible for all the insecurity and instability" in the region.

During a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Rouhani called on Islamic states to join hands in opposing the "dangerous" move.

Turkey condemned the U.S. decision as "irresponsible," saying it bears the risk of completely destroying the ground for peace.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also calls upon the U.S. administration to reconsider this faulty decision and avoid harming the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem.

Egypt reiterated that such unilateral decision violates the international legitimacy, adding the decision will not change the legal status of Jerusalem as an occupied city.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry said the decision will also have negative impacts on the future of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis, as Jerusalem is one of its major issues.

Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said that "this decision reversed the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis for decades and killed every attempt that has been made to bring the points of view closer."

Aoun called on Arab states to take "a unified stance to bring back the Arabic identity of Jerusalem and to restore the international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative as the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace that restores the rights to their owners."

Qatar also warned of "dangerous repercussions" of the U.S. decision, as its Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani said the move could contradict with international law and legitimacy, in addition to all the peace efforts based on a two-state solution.

Other regional countries including Algeria, Iraq and Syria also voiced condemnation against the U.S. move.

Jerusalem is home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

While Israel took over East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war and declared the whole city as its eternal indivisible capital in 1980, it has not been recognized by the international community.

The Palestinians insist that they should establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the final settlement.

Under the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, the status of Jerusalem should be determined through the final-status talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

All countries, including the U.S., have so far located their embassies in Tel Aviv, in order to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Trump's three predecessors repeatedly halted the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem despite the passage of a law by U.S. Congress in 1995 to do so, citing it could derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As part of the companys Next Billion Users Initiative, Google is set to expand its free Wi-Fi service beyond railway stations in India to include entire cities.

The search engine giant announced plans to spread out its free public Wi-Fi service called Google Stations to other railway stations across India under the Google RailWire project.

The project started back in 2015, saw Google partner up with CBN and FiberStar to bring high-speed public Wi-Fi to hundreds of locations across Indonesia and has plans to expand in more areas across the world.

Presently, Google has 227 railway stations covered through Google Stations that aims to provide high-speed connectivity (Courtesy: Google)

Caeser Sengupta, Vice President of Googles Next Billion Users Initiative claimed that 7.5 million users were using Google Stations to access high-speed Internet.

By the end of 2018, Google is planning to connect all 400 stations in India.

At the event, Google India also launched its first suite of products and features aimed to help more people discover how the Internet can make "life easier and more convenient".

"These products and features are India-first, but they are not India-only. When we build better products for India, we ultimately build better products for everyone," added Sengupta.



40% lesser data consumption does not mean 40% lesser results. Get the answers you asked for with #GoogleGo. #GoogleForIndia https://t.co/V4wi0sRzVl pic.twitter.com/hpdcokPkWB

 Google India (@GoogleIndia) December 5, 2017

Citing the example of the bike mode on Google Maps and addition of bill payment feature in Tez, Sengupta said, "These additions both speak to the specific lifestyles of a large number of Indians".

Google has also bagged the Wi-Fi deal for Pune Smart City Development project, which is valued at Rs 150 crore and will see Google working with companies like Larsen & Toubro, IBM and Indian Railways telecom arm RailTel.

Google said that it does not have any plans for immediate monetisation but is testing out advertising and possible paid upgrades to create a sustainable model for the Googe Station Wi-Fi, reported The Hindu BusinessLine.

Sengupta also added that the initiative will soon go beyond just railway stations.

In India, Google partnered up with RailTel to provide free Wi-Fi at Bengaluru Railway Station back in 2012. By 2016, Google claimed it was offering free Wi-Fi across 100 stations in the country.

Apart from this and several other announcements, Google also launched the Android Oreo Go edition for budget smartphones that will come with a file size of 512 megabytes. Partnering with the Foundation For Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND) set up by Tata Trusts, Google also plans to offer employment opportunities to rural women.

(With additional inputs from PTI)
The group, called Indiatech, will begin its operations early next year. Chief among its agenda is to coax the government in New Delhi into passing regulations to help local companies dominate the country's internet market, industry sources told CNBC.

Many of India's top tech start-ups are establishing a lobbying group to push for governmental regulations to put an end to global companies' continued success in the country.

The group, called Indiatech, will begin its operations early next year. Chief among its agenda is to coax the government in New Delhi into passing regulations to help local companies dominate the country's internet market, industry sources told CNBC.

The new group represents an aggressive new strategy for a local industry that has been scrambling to compete with global giants  and repeatedly come up short. If the lobbying efforts are successful, they could benefit domestic firms while squeezing out big-name companies like Amazon and Uber from the hugely promising market.

Online retailer Flipkart, Uber rival Ola and messaging app Hike are among the Indian tech companies behind the new lobbying effort. Local grocery marketplace Grofers, travel booking service MakeMyTrip, online classifieds platform Quikr and VC firms Matrix and Kalaari have also joined the organization, people familiar with the matter said.

"If one of the participating members went to the government with a proposal of this kind, it will not be taken seriously," said one source with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to the press. "But if an industry lobby body, which represents nearly all of the local giants, makes a suggestion, it will be heard."

Stumbling unicorns

On paper, Flipkart appears to have moved beyond its 2016 struggles to raise money: It secured $4 billion from a myriad of global investors including SoftBank, Microsoft and eBay this year  albeit at a valuation of $11.6 billion from $15 billion two years ago.

But while Flipkart was struggling to raise capital, rival Amazon doubled down on its India bet by pumping $3 billion into the local operations. The announcement bolstered Amazon's total planned investment in the country, which it entered in 2013, to $5 billion.

The results of that strategy are clear: During the important festival of Diwali, a period traditionally crucial for retail companies in the country, Amazon India surpassed Flipkart in sales for the first time.

E-commerce isn't the only sector seeing a showdown: Other Indian unicorns such as ride-hailer Ola and messaging app Hike are also struggling to put up a strong fight against global rivals, such as Uber and Facebook's WhatsApp, respectively. Those firms, along with others from the U.S., China and Europe, have entered India with huge supplies of capital at their disposal.

The darlings of India's tech startups have attempted to put up a brave front by offering lofty discounts and expanding their portfolios, but the formation of the lobbying group shows their new strategy is to seek the government's protection from the global onslaught.

The organization would convince the government to make the "right policies, and bring to their notice the interventions and some decisions that will help us," an executive at one of the founding members of Indiatech said. "The end goal is to help Indian companies get preferential treatment," the executive added, requesting anonymity.

It's worth noting that many of the start-ups seeking protectionist regulation have benefited from international investors. In fact, some of the biggest-name members in the lobbying group  Flipkart, Ola, Hike, Grofers and Quikr  share Japan's SoftBank as an investor.

"Our intent is to work with the government to support the development of the rapidly evolving Internet ecosystem in the country and we hope the organization would facilitate this," a SoftBank spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

Flipkart, Hike and Grofers declined to elaborate to CNBC about the rationale behind participating in the Indiatech group.

Protectionism

Calls for the Indian government to intervene and protect local companies are part of a narrative in the making for more than a year. Notably, at a conference last December, Sachin Bansal, co-founder and executive chairman of Flipkart, suggested that the Indian government should do "what China did 15 years ago and tell the world we need your capital, but we don't need your companies."

Also in attendance at that conference, Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO and founder of Ola, echoed Bansal's suggestion: "There is a narrative of innovation that non-Indian companies espouse, but the real fight is on capital, not innovation. The markets are being distorted by capital," he said at the time.

Their views were met with a mixed response from industry leaders, some of whom pointed out the irony that both Flipkart and Ola have raised much of their capital from foreign firms. Regardless, some say the stakes are too high for government inaction.

"If the government doesn't wake up, it will see Silicon Valley kill off a large segment of its entrepreneurship ecosystem and challenge its leading retail and technology companies," Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur and distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, told CNBC.

"Foreign companies will gather massive amounts of private data about every Indian citizen  even more than the Indian government has. Facebook and Google will have the tools to sway Indian public opinion and affect elections. This is dangerous for any democracy," he added, saying he believed the government should learn from China, which he says realized very early on that if it allowed Silicon Valley giants to dominate its internet, they would hurt local companies.

Chinese companies are now rivals to Silicon Valley, and firms like Tencent and Alibaba lead the nation's internet market. Last month, China's Tencent hit a market capitalization of $500 billion.

Along those lines, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of e-commerce and electronic payment company Paytm, recently said in a Twitter post that "India is effectively letting modern world East India Companies own its Internet."

Alibaba-backed Paytm is facing heat from services by global companies. Its wallet application, used by over 200 million users in the country, has seen strong growth of late, but other companies are interested in moving in on the market. Google introduced Tez payments app for India in September, and it has already amassed 12 million customers, the company said. On top of that, Facebook's WhatsApp, used by more than 200 million users in India, is said to be considering plans to integrate a payment option in its app. Paytm declined to comment for this story.

Some warn, however, that replicating an approach similar to that of China could go terribly wrong.

"It is counterproductive to look at China selectively and cherry-pick parts of protectionism we like," said Prasanto Roy, vice president and head of the Internet, Mobile and E-commerce Council at the National Association of Software and Services Companies  an industry group set up in 1988 for India's then-nascent software and IT industry.

"Protectionism is a double-edged sword and any attempt at raising trade barriers could hurt more than help India if there is reciprocal action. Keep in mind that the $150 billion IT industry (two-third of it software and services exports) is premised on an open, non-protectionist global marketplace," he added.

Eyes are on the government now, but not everyone believes New Delhi would pass new laws to help local tech firms.

"The government wants investors and foreign companies to come to India and create more jobs and opportunities in the country. I don't think the government would take any action to hurt foreign companies in any way," said Satish Meena, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Officials at the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion weren't available to comment.

A market in flux

The recent arrivals of Amazon, Uber and Netflix in India and the aggressive expansions of businesses by Facebook, Microsoft and Google have changed the dynamics of the local market. Those global firms bring some services to the table that no Indian company rivals, but they're even gaining traction in categories in which domestic firms had a first-mover advantage.

In 2015, Flipkart and Snapdeal together accounted for 75 percent of the online retail market in India, according to financial services firm Morgan Stanley. Today, however, much has changed: Flipkart and Amazon India are jockeying to be market leader, and Snapdeal, which recently ended merger talks with Flipkart to no avail, has seen its market share collapsing.

In October, Amazon India announced it had more than 44 percent of total customer share and more than 42 percent of total transactions during the festival of Diwali, citing third-party data from market research firm Kantar. Amazon credited its Prime subscription service, which it launched in India last year, for helping it bolster sales.

Similar is the fate of ride-hailing service Ola, which has been somewhat successful but only by burning capital at a fast clip to keep Uber at bay. It raised $1.1 billion this October from investors including Tencent and SoftBank at an estimated valuation of $7 billion, and it expects to raise an additional $1 billion in coming weeks.

That investment, a source familiar with the matter said, will be led by SoftBank, which plans to bet another $600 million on the company.

Ola maintains its market-leading position in the country, serving in more than 100 cities, but Uber is quickly catching up. Both the companies are trying to boost the number of rides on their platforms by subsidizing the cost of rides.

"We are growing incredibly fast, focusing on the metrics and features that matter the most: reliability, quick arrival times and the best customer service experience," an Uber spokesperson said. Ola declined to comment.

Uber India and Amazon India, for their part, have also fiercely slammed the notion that they are not Indian companies. Amazon India is a "completely India registered entity, and as Indian as any other," a spokesperson said. "We have consistently maintained our support for free support for capital movement. Free flow of capital is not only good for customers but also helps create jobs, develop infrastructure, aids the growth of small businesses and facilitates India's economic development."

Uber India said it is "led and staffed by local teams who know their cities better than anyone. We bring global expertise to India, but wouldn't have been able to get where we are today without a local-first approach."

Uber has invested north of $1 billion in the country, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at a recent conference that the company is in heavy investment mode in India.
Markets regulator SEBI on Thursday imposed a penalty of Rs 10 lakh on Tata Steel for the delay in making a necessary disclosure about its increased shareholding in a group firm, Tinplate Company of India Ltd.

Tata Steel currently holds nearly 75 percent in Tinplate, a separately listed group firm, which is among the country's largest producer of tinplate and its products are used for canning and packaging of processed foods, paints, beverages, dairy and other products.

In an order passed on Thursday, SEBI said Tinplate in September 2009 had announced an issue of 4,31,90,851 equity shares on a rights basis to its existing shareholders, together with the issue of 1,79,96,188 fully convertible debentures in the ratio of 5 fully convertible debentures for every 8 equity shares.

It was observed that as part of the rights entitlement in terms of the rights issue, Tata Steel had subscribed to and was allotted 1,33,12,500 equity shares and 55,46,875 fully convertible debentures.

Further, pursuant to its undertaking to apply for equity shares and fully convertible debentures, Tata Steel had also subscribed to and was allotted an additional 86,73,599 equity shares and 1,17,00,093 fully convertible debentures.

On October 12, 2009, Tinplate allotted 2,19,86,099 equity shares to Tata Steel as part of its rights entitlement in terms of the rights issue. This led to Tata Steel's stake in Tinplate increasing from 30.82 percent to 42.88 percent.

Upon this increase, Tata Steel was required to make the necessary disclosures within two working days to Tinplate as required under SEBI regulations. However, it was alleged Tata Steel made the said disclosures belatedly on July 2, 2012.

Further, on April 1, 2011, Tinplate again allotted 3,13,58,123 equity shares to Tata Steel pursuant to the rights issue and in terms of the letter of offer dated September 3, 2009. As a result of this, Tata Steel's stake increased from 42.88 percent to 59.44 percent.

This disclosure was also required to be made within two working days, but Tata Steel disclosed the rise at stake only on May 13, 2011.

Subsequently, Tata Steel's stake in Tinplate rose to 73.44 percent in September 2012 following an open offer, and further to 74.96 percent in May 2014 pursuant to a scheme of amalgamation, but time disclosures were made for these.

Regarding the alleged lapses in first two cases, Tata Steel submitted before SEBI that there was no actual or effective breach of the disclosure requirements as the underlying purpose of the regulations was fulfilled by virtue of the information being present in the public domain by way of compliance with other applicable statutes by the two firms.

SEBI further said that Tata Steel's further submissions reiterated these points and suggested that the lapse on its part was technical in nature and the same should be condoned or a nominal penalty may be imposed on it.

Noting that Tata Steel has admitted the violation by making the prescribed disclosures with a delay on both occasions, SEBI said it does not "find any merit in the submissions of the noticee that no irreparable harm or injury has been occurred either to investors or to the public at large dealing in securities due to the said delayed disclosures".

SEBI's adjudicating officer for the case said the material available on record that any quantifiable gain or unfair advantage accrued to Tata Steel or the extent of loss suffered by the investors as a result of the default cannot be computed, but the defaults were "repetitive in nature".

As regulations seek to ensure fair treatment by mandating timely and adequate disclosures to enable investors to make an informed decision, Tata Steel was found to be liable for a monetary penalty by failing to make the necessary disclosures within the prescribed timelines, SEBI's order said.

Accordingly, SEBI imposed Rs 10 lakh fine, saying it is commensurate with the defaults committed by the company.
Demonetization, digital India gave a positive push to financial services sector and will continue to aid the sector, said Sundeep Sikka, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Reliance Mutual Fund.

He further said that digital India and disruptive technologies will enhance the reach and scope in the Financial Services industry.

The impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives of demonetisation and Digital India has been positive in terms of increasing financial penetration in India  the financial services sector has gained, while Jan Dhan has introduced the vast unbanked segment of Indias population to structured financial institutions.

These initiatives have fostered increased financial penetration in India, said Sikka.

"We have the opportunity of growing even more, by leveraging digital and disruptive technologies to do what is right for the investor," he added.

Sikka was speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Financial Distribution Summit 2017, held in Mumbai.

The Summit is CIIs initiative for the Financial Distribution community across the Mutual Fund, Insurance, Banking & related sectors, with the theme, Redefining Distribution: Converge, Digitize & Achieve.

Sundeep Sikka pointed out that the paradigm had changed; from a time when 90 percent of investments in financial products like mutual funds were from the top 10 cities in India.

In the past couple of years 50 percent of investments have come from tier 2 and 3 cities. Describing the scope for growth in terms of the reach and scope of the Financial Services Industry as a phenomenal opportunity, he stressed on the need to leverage technology to achieve this. "Government initiatives have created a new growth paradigm in financial services sector; we need structured distribution channels to ensure further growth," he said.

Stressing on the importance of keeping things simple, Sikka said creators of the financial services products as also the distributors need to ensure that investment products were simplified where complex, while ensuring that simplistic things were not unnecessarily complicated.

The CIIDeloitte Report on Financial Distribution Sector was released at CII Summit.

Kalpesh Mehta, Partner, Audit and Assurance and Leader  Financial Services, Deloitte India, in his address, highlighted the various challenges faced in distribution of financial services.

He further said that the unreached segment of customers presents an opportunity to transform the reach and scope of the Financial Services Industry, he pointed out.

Stressing on the importance of financial inclusion, he said the digital channel was ideal to engage with the vast base of the pyramid, while pointing out the importance of technology to drive inclusive growth.
December 07, 2017 / 10:01 PM IST

Aadhaar

favourable

data-scayt-word="criticises" data-scayt-lang="en_US">criticises

# Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, defying allies, foes, reports Reuters

22:00 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.

21:52 No law provides change of woman's religion after marriage: SC

The Supreme Court today said the law does not sanction the concept of a woman's religion getting merged with her husband's faith after an inter- religion marriage.

A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was dealing a legal question whether a Parsi woman loses her religious identity if she marries a man from a different religion.

21:28 Congress suspends Mani Shankar Aiyar over neech remark

Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar was suspended by his party on Thursday after kicking up a row when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech" (vile man).The comments drew a sharp reaction from the prime minister who dubbed it as an "insult" to Gujarat and a reflection of "Mughal mentality."Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi too disapproved of Aiyar's remarks and said both he and the party expected the senior leader to apologise.

"He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," Aiyar, who has often courted controversy with his off-the-cuff remarks said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in BR Ambedkar's name but trying to erase his contribution to building India.

21:18 ANI Tweets| They can call me 'Neech'- Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, Tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language, we will do our work: PM Modi in Surat

Congress suspends #ManiShankarAiyar from party's primary membership. pic.twitter.com/B1rMhuSb6K All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) December 7, 2017

21:07 Vijay Mallya's defence brings in banking expert at trial

Vijay Mallya's defence on Thursday brought in a banking expert at his extradition trial as a witness to analyse the documents used by the liquor baron to seek loans from Indian banks for his then-struggling Kingfisher Airlines and emphasise that he had no intention to act "fraudulently".

Paul Rex was deposed on day three of the ongoing trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London to determine whether the 61-year-old businessman can be forced to return to India to face charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crores.

20:56 General Electric to cut 12,000 jobs in power business revamp

General Electric Co announced on Thursday it was axing 12,000 jobs at its global power business as the struggling industrial conglomerate responds to dwindling demand for fossil fuel power plants.

The US company launched the cuts to save USD 1 billion in 2018, saying it expected current difficulties in the sector to continue.

20:45



.@HMOIndia @RajnathSingh asks five eastern states sharing boundaries with #Bangladesh to be extra vigilant against influx of #Rohingyas, illegal immigrants through porous Indo-Bangla border.  All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) December 7, 2017



20:41 Indian hospital operator Shalby's $79 million IPO subscribed nearly 3 times

Indian hospital operator Shalby Ltd's initial public offering to raise 5.1 billion rupees (USD 79 million) was subscribed 2.8 times on the last day of the sale on Thursday.

Institutional investors bid for 4.5 times the number of shares reserved for them, while the retail portion was subscribed 2.93 times, data as of 6:00 PM (1230 GMT) showed.

20:24 Ex-Volkswagen executive gets 7 years in jail for 'dieselgate' emissions scandal

A US court has sentenced former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt to seven years in prison for his role in the German automaker's "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal.

Schmidt, who led Volkswagen's US regulatory compliance office from 2012 to March 2015, was also ordered by a federal judge in Detroit to pay a USD 400,000 fine.

He had pleaded guilty in August to charges he conspired to commit fraud and violate the US Clean Air Act.

20:10 Future Supply Chain IPO subscribed 72% on Day 2

The initial public offer of Future Supply Chain Solutions, the logistics arm of the Future Group, was subscribed 72 per cent at the end of the second day of bidding today.

The public issue, which targets to garner Rs 650 crore, received bids for over 49.62 lakh shares against the issue size of more than 68.49 lakh scrips, a subscription of 72 per cent, data available with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed.

20:06 Trade setup for Friday: Top 10 things you should know before the Opening Bell

The wait for a pullback rally is finally over as bulls remained in control of D-Street throughout the trading session on Thursday and made a strong bull candle, which also resembles a bullish belt hold kind of pattern on the daily candlestick charts.

A bullish belt hold pattern is formed when the opening price becomes the lowest point of the day and is significantly lower than the closing price.

Read our full story here

20:00 Love could finally conquer hate as Padmavati may release just before Valentine's Day

It looks like film lovers will have a lot to look forward to in 2018, especially in the first half. After the Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar-starrer 2.0 got an April release date, it now appears that Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversial film Padmavati is likely to release in February next year.

Padmavati could hit theatres on February 9 after a schedule sent out by distributors to overseas chains like US/Canada mentioned this date for the films release, according to a Box Office India report.

Read our full story here

Despite registering a 3 percent rise in overall revenues, the countrys second largest airline Jet Airways today reported a 91 percent year-on-year drop in its net profit for the September quarter.

The main reason behind the fall in profit was a drop of over 700 basis points in the companys operating profit margin for the quarter under review. Operating profit in absolute terms came in at Rs 261.51 crore, 59 percent lower than in the same quarter last year.

. @jetairways Q2 | Net profit at Rs 49.6 Cr Vs Rs 549 Cr (YoY) pic.twitter.com/GiaeSz7wUg CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) December 7, 2017

19:29 Railways record 5% jump in freight, passenger traffic in last 8 months

The Indian Railways has registered a rise in both its freight and passenger business during April-November as compared to the same period last year, according to a data with the national transporter.

The freight traffic, which essentially serves the revenue of the railways, recorded an almost 5 percent jump in loading during April 1-November 30, 2017, as compared to 2016.

19:08 Guj

BJP

BJP contestant from Dabhoi Assembly seat in Gujarat, Shailesh Sotta today courted controversy by allegedly saying that the population of "topi and dadhiwalas", an apparent reference to Muslims, should be "reduced".

He also said that he came to Dabhoi to "instill fear" and that if sporadic communal clashes were not stopped a "befitting reply" would be given.

18:52 Alibaba

BigBasket

Alibaba will pump in up to USD 300 million in online grocery player, BigBasket, according to industry sources.

The deal, which is expected to be announced in the next few weeks, will give BigBasket more muscle to compete against rivals like Grofers and e-tailing giant Amazon, they said.

State-owned gas utility GAIL India today said it has awarded job contracts for laying a 520-km stretch in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal under the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga gas pipeline project.

With these awards, major contracts for phase-II of the Jagdishpur-Haldia and Bokaro-Dhamra Natural Gas Pipeline (JHBDPL) project have been finalised.

IIT

The country's third largest car maker Tata Motors has partnered with IIT Varanasi to launch innovative programs in education and research,aimed at bridging the gap between academic excellence and business know-how.

As a first step of this technological collaboration, the two entities will work in areas of mutual interest, with an aim to cater to the future engineering needs of the industry and academia, as per a release issued today.

An analysis of the affidavits of candidates in fray for both phases of the Gujarat Assembly polls has revealed that 38 Congress candidates face serious criminal charges.

This, the analysis shows, is a 10 per cent rise in candidates with serious criminal charges when compared to the party's candidates for the 2012 assembly polls.

18:20 ArcelorMittal's $1 billion India joint venture to get green light next week: Sources

State-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) is set to approve a long-proposed $1 billion joint venture with ArcelorMittal at its board meeting next week, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The decision to approve the deal was reached after talks between ArcelorMittal's billionaire Chairman Lakshmi Mittal, India's Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma and SAIL Chairman P.K. Singh at a meeting last week in New Delhi.

The much-delayed collaboration to make automotive-grade steel is nearing realisation after legal teams from SAIL and ArcelorMittal finalised a joint term-sheet in talks mediated by a government think-tank in the past two weeks, the sources said.

17:51 Centre plans border protection grid to check influx of Rohingyas, B'deshis

A border protection grid on the lines of Unified Command set up in insurgency-hit states will soon come up in five eastern states sharing borders with Bangladesh to check illegal immigrants including Rohingyas.

At a meeting of chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura here, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the concept of the grid has been planned as a multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure the 4,036-km-long Indo-Bangla border.

A pro-Kannada organisation took out a march here today, in protest against Bollywood actress Sunny Leone's scheduled visit to the city on December 31 for a New Year's Eve show, saying it would be an "assault" on the city's culture.

The Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV) also staged a demonstration and burnt the pictures of Leone, demanding the cancellation of her programme.

Jallianwala

Bagh

The UK has sidestepped London mayor Sadiq Khan's call for an official apology on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, saying the government has "rightly condemned" the "deeply shameful act" in British history in the past.

The UK Foreign Office statement comes after Khan during his visit to Amritsar yesterday said the British government should apologise for the mass killing.

Pregnant women exposed to air pollution from road traffic are more likely to give birth to babies that are underweight or smaller than they should be, a study conducted in the UK warns.

However, when it comes to traffic-related noise, the study of more than half a million infants, published in The BMJ, found no conclusive effect on babies' health.

Hegde

Karnataka

A case has been registered against Union Minister Ananthkumar Hegde for allegedly using derogatory words against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in a speech at Kittur in Belagavi district recently, police said today.

The case was registered by Mysuru police on the direction of a court based on a complaint by Mysuru district Congress president B J Vijay Kumar, a senior police official said.

17:37 Patnaik

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today urged the Centre to release funds under National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) without imposing any conditions.

The CM's missive to Prime Minister Narendra Modi came in the wake of a letter received by the state government from the Ministry of Rural Development over disbursement of pension, under the NSAP scheme, through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) platform.

17:36 Emami

Indian FMCG major Emami today announced to acquire 30 per cent stake in Helios Lifestyle, which owns male grooming brand 'The Man Company'.

The stake will be acquired by December 31, 2018 through infusion of required funds in Helios, the Kolkata-based company said in a statement.

Aiyar

apologise

Modi

Rahul

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi strongly chastised Mani Shankar Aiyar for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "low-life person", saying he does not "appreciate the tone and language" used by Ayiar, India Today reported.

"Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Rahul added, even as his used the opportunity to hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party for "routinely " using "filthy language to attack the Congress party."

A Delhi court today issued a production warrant against a British national, in custody on charges of allegedly recruiting youths for al-Qaeda to carry out terror activities, after the NIA sought his presence in the court.

Shamiun Rahman, who is of Bangladeshi origin and against whom the warrant was issued for tomorrow, was arrested in September by the Delhi Police for his alleged involvement in recruiting Rohingya Muslims for the terror outfit and train them to fight against the Myanmarese army.

17:17 DMK

DMK working president M K Stalin today claimed that a state governor does not have the authority to tour districts and inspect work for people like ministers.

"As regards the governor, as per constitutional norms, it is said that he does not have either authority or right to inspect or undertake district wise tours to oversee work for the people," he told reporters.

FRDI

An online petition against the bail-in provision in the FRDI bill has got thousands of signatures even as the finance ministry said that the proposal, under consideration of a joint parliamentary committee, is depositor friendly and provides more protection.

An online petition on Change.org against the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, 2017, has gone viral on social media, seeking public support against what it terms as an attempt to "allow a government entity to use depositors' money to save a bank on the verge of bankruptcy".

17:10 Trinamool

BJP's

Dilip

Ghosh

West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh today alleged that the Trinamool Congress had come to power in the state via democratic process but since then it is looting democracy in every sphere.

The Trinamool Congress has become the property of two persons and others are merely employees of the party, he said without naming anybody.

Parshwanath

Sebi

Ahmedabad-based realty firm Parshwanath Corporation has settled a case, related to alleged violation of capital market norms, with regulator Sebi after paying Rs 6 lakh.

According to an order dated December 6, the realty firm had filed an application to settle the "proposed adjudication proceedings" for the alleged violation of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules.

16:58 Aiyar

In controversial remarks, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar today called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi" (vile man), who does "dirty politics".

"He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," he said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's but trying to erase his contribution to building India.

Posters appealing Muslims to vote for Congress to make Ahmed Patel the chief minister came up in some minority-dominated areas here on the last day of campaigning for first phase of Gujarat polls, but Patel called it a "dirty trick" by the BJP and said he was not in the race.

Patel, who is Congress President Sonia Gandhi' political advisor, stressed that he was never a candidate for the chief minister's post and "never will be"

BJP

Rajnath

BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh here today and urged him to look into the law-and-order situation in West Bengal.

Singh is in the city to chair a meeting of chief ministers of the states bordering Bangladesh.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today said it is considering to increase prices of its models by up to 3 per cent from January, to offset impact of rising input costs.

The company considered the price rise after reviewing input and freight costs periodically, which is also a general industry phenomenon, TKM said in a statement.

recognises

Kumbh

Mela

India's Kumbh Mela has been recognised by UNESCO as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity", a tweet posted today by the international organisation said.

The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage under the UN body inscribed Kumbh Mela on the "Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" at its 12th session in Jeju, South Korea.

Essar Ports' Bulk Terminal in Paradip has achieved an average productivity of 90,000 tonne per day, registering an over 20% rise in cargo handling so far this fiscal, reports PTI. The CQ3 terminal at Paradip Port, operated by Essar Bulk Terminal Paradip (EBTPL), handled 2.8mmtpa till November this year as against 2.3mmtpa during the same period a year ago, a senior Essar Ports official said.

Chinas foreign exchange reserves rose for a 10th straight month in November, though slightly less than market expectations, as tight regulations and a strong yuan continued to discourage capital outflows. Capital flight had been seen as a major risk for China at the start of the year, but a combination of tighter capital controls and a faltering dollar helped the yuan stage a strong turnaround, bolstering confidence in the economy. Reserves rose $10 billion in November to $3.119 trillion, compared with an increase of $700 million in October, central bank data showed on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected reserves to rise by $11 billion to $3.120 trillion.

5bn

Frances trade deficit increased to stand at around EUR 5 billion ($5.90 billion) in October compared to EUR 4.6 billion in the previous month, showed seasonally adjusted data published on Thursday by the customs office. The increase in the trade deficit was due partly to an increase in imports in the automobiles sector, and a dip in exports towards Asia of sales of products in the aerospace industry.

B-1B

Two US B-1B bombers took part in joint US-South Korean military drills on Thursday, an official at Seouls defence ministry told Reuters, exercises which North Korea has said are taking the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. The planes, which scrambled from a US air base in Guam, joined some 20 fighter aircraft of the two countries which have been staging a large-scale aerial exercise in South Korea since Monday, the official said. One bomber joined the exercises on Wednesday.

JLR reported a 10% increase in retail sales at 52,332 units in November as compared with the same month last year. The company said sales during the month were primarily driven by the introduction of the new Land Rover Discovery and the Range Rover Velar. Besides, retail sales of Jaguar's all new compact SUV, the E-PACE, began in the UK and Europe during November, JLR said in a statement.

The Jaguar brand reported retail sales of 13,688 units last month, down 6.3% from the year-ago period as strong sales of the long wheel base XFL in China were more than offset by lower sales of XE. Land Rover saw sales of 38,644 vehicles in November up 17.2%, primarily reflecting the sales ramp up of the all new Discovery and the introduction of the Range Rover Velar. However, sales were partially offset by softer sales of Range Rover Sport.

Leelaventure

Hospitality firm Hotel Leelaventure reported a net loss of Rs 24.44 crore for the quarter-ended on September 30, 2017, against that of Rs 8.95 crore in the same period of the previous fiscal. Total income of the company stood at Rs 149.25 crore for the quarter under consideration against Rs 173.86 crore for the same period year ago, it said in a filing to the BSE.

Ladakh

A moderate intensity earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter Scale hit Jammu & Kashmir's Ladakh region in the early hours of Thursday, MeT officials said. The tremors were also felt across the Kashmir valley. The epicentre of the quake was near the India-China border in the Ladakh region, officials said.

"The earthquake of 5.4 magnitude on the Richter Scale was recorded at 4:59 am today. The epicentre of the earthquake was at a depth of 35 km near the Jammu & Kashmir-Xingjian border in the state's Ladakh region," a Meteorological (MeT) Department official said. No damage to property or casualty was reported, the police said.

Indias environmental authorities are likely to cancel a plan by a state steel company to dig for more iron ore from a massive reserve located in a lush green forest roamed by elephants, sources told Reuters, as the government aims to halt mining in the area. Steel Authority of India (SAIL) was banking on the mine in the countrys east to supply a big chunk of its raw material needs for a multi-billion-dollar expansion of its steel production capacity.

SAIL produces only around 800,000 tonne a year from a section of the Chiria mine but was targeting to raise that to 7 million tonne in the next few years, to lift its steel capacity nearly four times to 50 million tonne by 2030-31. Getting forest clearance for the mine under existing guidelines is a challenge, Sunil Kumar Barnwal, the mines secretary of Jharkhand state where the mine is located, said.

German industrial production fell unexpectedly in October, the Economy Ministry said, adding that public holidays at the start of the third-quarter that prompted many workers to take long weekends had significantly contributed to the fall. Industrial output decreased by 1.4% after falling by a revised 0.9% in September. In August output rose by 2.6%, which was the biggest increase in more than six years. The October reading compared with the mid-range forecast in a Reuters poll for a rise of 1%. A breakdown of the data showed that output fell in all industrial sectors except for energy.

Ochki

Three bodies were recovered on Thursday morning off the Kerala coast, taking the death toll due to Cyclone Ockhi to 36 even as rescue operations are going on in full swing to trace the 96 missing fishermen, reports PTI. Sources in the Thiruvananthapuram state control room monitoring the rescue operations, said with the recovery of three more bodies, the death toll in Kerala due to the cyclone has gone up to 36 and 96 fishermen are yet to be traced.

While a body was recovered near Alappuzha by the Marine enforcement wing, two bodies were found by Coast Guard ship Vaibhav off Alappuzha-Kochi coast on Thursday morning, defence sources said. An Air Force aircraft AN 32, flying between Kozhikode-Kochi coasts had sighted a fishing boat with about 15 fishermen this morning following which Navy has sent a Dornier aircraft and ship to the area which is close to Lakshadweep islands, the sources said.

13:56 JLR

Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover launched its latest SUV model, Range Rover Velar in India priced between Rs 78.83 lakh and Rs 1.38 crore (ex-showroom Delhi). The company will start deliveries of the model by end of January 2018. It expects the Range Rover Velar to be one of its main volume drivers in the SUV segment. "The Velar fills a gap in our Range Rover portfolio between Evoque and Discovery Sport.

This is a product which will help us tremendously in the market and we expect this to be one of our mainstays in SUV segment," Jaguar Land Rover India President and MD Rohit Suri told PTI. The new model will be available in three engine options of 2-litre petrol, 2-litre diesel and 3-litre diesel. The 2-litre engine variant in both petrol and diesel options are priced between Rs 78.83 lakh and Rs 91.86 lakh; while the 3-litre diesel variant is tagged at a price ranging from Rs 1.1-1.38 crore (all prices ex-showroom Delhi).

330cr

Media services firm Prime Focus said its board has approved raising Rs 330 crore through issuance of share warrants on preferential basis. "The Board of Prime Focus has approved to issue and allot, on a preferential basis, share warrants worth Rs 330 crore primarily to a promoter entity (Rs 300 crore) and balance to a non-promoter investor (Rs 30 crore)," the company said in a BSE filing.

It said the funds raised would be used largely towards debt reduction. "The allotment would be a total of 3,11,32,076 warrants at the price of Rs 106 per share, with a right exercisable by the warrant holder to subscribe for one ordinary share per warrant which option shall be exercisable on or after April 1, 2018, but not later than 18 months from the date of issue of warrants," the company added. The promoter holding, on full conversion, will increase to 40% from 35% as on September 30, 2017.

The battle for Rajkot-West seat, the traditional BJP fortress, could be a cliff-hanger for its high-profile contestant and Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani who is facing a challenger in Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru, reports PTI.

Earlier known as Rajkot-II, the seat is considered as 'safe' for the saffron party which has been representing it since 1985.

Though Rajkot-West is a stronghold of the RSS, the Congress has mounted a strong challenge by bringing in Rajyaguru, the sitting MLA from Rajkot-East, to rework the caste combination in the party's favour.

To retain his seat, Rupani has to surmount the angry Patidars as well as the trading community, which is smarting under the impact of demonetisation and rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Palestine has condemned United States President Donald Trump's decision to recognise the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

In a televised address, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said, "These procedures do also help in the extremist organizations to wage a religious war that would harm the entire region, which is going through critical moments and would lead us into wars that will never end, which we have warned about and always urged to fight against".

In a statement, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "President Trump just destroyed any possibility of a two-state (solution)".

Speaking to CNN, Erekat said "President Trump tonight made the biggest mistake of his life".

FY18

Footwear and apparel brand Woodland is eyeing a revenue growth of 15% in the current financial year. Aero Club, manufactures and retailers of the brand, is also trying to popularise the hi-fashion formal luxury brand 'Woods' in India. "Our revenue in the last financial year was Rs 1,200 crore from operations in India, Hong Kong, West Asia and CIS nations," MD of Aero Club, Harkirat Singh said.

He said the topline would grow by 15% this fiscal, despite a slump in sales in July and August due to implementation of the GST. Singh said the company currently has 600 stores, mostly owned, and its products are also available in 5,000 multi-brand outlets. "We plan to add 30 to 40 stores each year."

12:27 Shalby

The initial public offer of Shalby, the Ahmedabad-based multi-specialty hospital chain, was oversubscribed 1.13 times in noon on the last day for receipt of bids. The IPO, which aims to raise Rs 504 crore, received bids for 1.64 crore shares against the total issue size of 1.45 crore shares - a subscription of 1.13% - data available with NSE showed. The initial share sale, which opened to public subscription on December 5, will close today. The price band has been fixed at Rs 245-248. At the upper end, the public issue would fetch Rs 504 crore.

Aadhaar

The Centre today informed the Supreme Court that it was willing to extend till March 31 next year the deadline fixed for mandatory linking of Aadhaar for availing various services and welfare schemes, reports PTI. The Supreme Court now will be setting up a five-judge Constitution Bench next week to hear several pleas seeking an interim stay on the Centre's decision of mandatory linking of Aadhaar.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was informed by Attorney General KK Venugopal that the Centre was willing to extend the deadline of December 31 to March 31 next year for linking of Aadhaar with various services and schemes. The Attorney General, however, made clear that February 6 next year would remain the deadline for linking Aadhaar for availing uninterrupted mobile services as it had been mandated by the apex court.

12:03 Rahul

Modi

Taking forward his 'question a day' campaign, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the problems afflicting the farm sector and farmers, reports PTI. Asking his 9th question in the series, he asked, Neither loan waiver, nor remunerative price for produce, neither received crop insurance benefit, nor were tubewells installed.

The Congress leader also used the 'Gabbar' jibe to target the prime minister. "Agriculture hit by Gabbar Singh, land snatched and the (annadatta) farmer was rendered useless. PM sahib should explain why such step-motherly treatment with the farm labour," he also said on Twitter.

Gandhi had earlier termed the Goods & Services Tax as Gabbar Singh Tax to attack the government. Under the ongoing offensive, the Congress leader is using the tagline 22 saal ka hisab, Gujarat maange jawab (22years of account, Gujarat demands answers), in the run-up to Gujarat elections starting December 9. (Picture courtesy: PTI)

Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the final phase of campaigning on Thursday to retain power in his home state and stave off the most serious challenge yet from a combined opposition, reports Reuters. The election for a new legislature in Gujarat this weekend is turning out to be a greater challenge for Modi than anticipated, the polls show, as rival parties seize on discontent caused by a slowing economy.

Modi has thrown himself into the campaign, addressing dozens of rallies over the past month, saying he alone could deliver on development. On Thursday, he was due to address party colleagues on their mobile phones to ensure a strong voter turnout.

Gujarat is where Modi earned his spurs as a business-friendly chief minister who cut red tape and graft and turned it into an economic powerhouse. But an unpopular national tax and a shock move last year to withdraw most currency in a fight against graft has hurt Gujarat, like the rest of the country, and its businessmen are making loud complaints.

Three big polls carried out in the run-up to the vote on Saturday and next week have predicted a victory for Modis ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but with a greatly reduced majority. An ABP-CDS poll this week gave the BJP 91-99 seats in the 182-member state house and the main opposition Congress 78-86, suggesting a close fight. To win a party needs 92 seats.

The surveys have often gone wrong, though, and Modi himself remains far more popular across the country than his rivals including Rahul Gandhi who is leading the Congress charge to weaken Modi in his home base.

favourable

Many of India's top tech start-ups are establishing a lobbying group to push for governmental regulations to put an end to global companies' continued success in the country. The group, called Indiatech, will begin its operations early next year. Chief among its agenda is to coax the government in New Delhi into passing regulations to help local companies dominate the country's internet market, sources told CNBC.

The new group represents an aggressive new strategy for a local industry that has been scrambling to compete with global giants  and repeatedly come up short. If the lobbying efforts are successful, they could benefit domestic firms while squeezing out big-name companies like Amazon and Uber from the hugely promising market.

600cr

HPCL

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) said its a wholly-owned subsidiary has bagged an order worth Rs 1,600 crore from Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL). "L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering, a wholly-owned subsidiary of L&T, has won an order worth Rs 1,600 crore from Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Visakhapatnam Refinery," the engineering and construction major said in a BSE filing. L&T said the project is part of HPCL Visakh Refinery Modernisation Project (VRMP).

The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly quelled a congressman's resolution to impeach President Donald Trump as many Democratic Party leaders questioned its timing and termed the move as "premature", reports PTI. The lawmakers voted 364 to 58 in rejection of Texas Democratic lawmaker Al Green's resolution to start impeachment against Trump.

The Republican Party, which enjoys a majority in the lower chamber of the Congress, was joined by a large number of lawmakers from the Opposition Democratic party to defeat a move to impeach Trump on Wednesday. Prominent among those included Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny H Hoyer, who also issued a joint statement against Green's push to impeach Trump.

Mallya

There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government officials told PTI, amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him. "The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UK's Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya," a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the government's case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea. The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, on Wednesday.

"The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India," he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrate's court. Mallya, who was arrested by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth GBP 650,000.

10:40 GMR

250m

A GMR group company along with its partner, Manila-based Megawide, is in the race for the $250 million Clark International Airport new terminal building project in Philippines. According to a statement issued by the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) of the southeastern nation, seven firms submitted the bid documents for the design, engineering, and construction of the Clark International Airport new terminal building in Philippines.

"The firms which submitted the bid documents are China State Construction Engineering Corporation, China Harbour Engineering Company, Sinohydro Corporation, the joint venture of Megawide-GMR Infrastructure (Singapore), DDT Konstract, R-II Builders and Tokwing Construction Corporation," BCDA said in a statement.

The technical proposals of the eligible firms will be opened today and it will be subject to thorough evaluation by the SBAC (special bids and awards committee), it said.

President Donald Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, declined to discuss with lawmakers on Wednesday a conversation he had with his father about emails related to a June 2016 meeting he attended with Trump associates and Russians, a congressional panel member told Reuters.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigating allegations of Russian interference in last years US election, said Trump Jr answered the overwhelming majority of questions from committee members in his hours of testimony.

But Trump Jr claimed attorney-client privilege in declining to respond to queries about that discussion with his father because a lawyer was in the room when it took place. The discussion between then-Republican candidate Trump and his son took place after the emails became public, Schiff said. Trump Jr released the emails in July.

criticises

China expressed strong dissatisfaction with India on Thursday after the recent crash of an Indian drone in what the Chinese military said was Chinese territory, an incident that could cause further friction along the two countries disputed border, reports Reuters. This action by India violated Chinas territorial sovereignty. We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition, said Zhang Shuili, a senior military official in Chinas western battle zone command, according to a Defence Ministry statement.

Chinas border defence forces took a professional and responsible attitude in conducting an inspection of the device, Zhang said, adding that the military would resolutely defend national sovereignty and security. It said only that the drone crashed in recent days and did not give a location.

09:52 Arun

Jaitley

Moving swiftly to address growing disquiet over provisions in the Financial Resolution & Deposit Insurance (FRDI) bill pending before Parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hinted that the government may backtrack on some of its controversial provisions, reports PTI.

Taking to the microblogging site Twitter, Jaitley said: The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017 is pending before the Standing Committee. The objective of the government is to fully protect the interest of the financial institutions and the depositors. The government stands committed to this objective.

The bill has received flak from various stakeholders for some of its controversial provisions including a bail-in clause which suggests that depositor money could be used by failing financial institutions to stay afloat.

Shares of IRB Infrastructure Developers fell over 5% in the opening minutes as investors reacted negatively to a chargesheet filed by CBI. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday filed a charge sheet against 16 people including senior officials of IRB Infrastructure in the Pune Sessions Court in connection with a land scam exposed by slain RTI activist Satish Shetty in 2009.

CBI prosecutor Vijaykumar Dhakane said the 2,000-page charge sheet names 16 persons including IRB Chairman and Managing Director Virendra Mhaiskar, Deepak Gadgil, authorised signatory of Aryan Infrastructures (a subsidiary of Ideal Road Builders), revenue officials, land agents, lawyers and some farmers.

Based on documents received under the Right to Information Act, Shetty had filed a cheating and forgery case with Lonavala police in October 2009 against Mhaiskar and others, alleging illegal purchase of government land in Ozarde and Pimploli villages in Maval tehsil of Pune district.

Investments in the Indian capital market through participatory notes (P-notes) climbed to Rs 1.31 lakh crore at October-end after hitting an over eight-year low in the preceding month. P-notes are issued by registered foreign portfolio investors to overseas players who wish to be part of the Indian stock market without registering themselves directly. They, however, need to go through due diligence.

The total value of P-notes investment in Indian markets - equity, debt and derivatives - rose to Rs 1,31,006 crore at October-end from Rs 1,22,684 crore at the end of September, according to the Sebi data. P-note investments were on a decline since June and hit over eight-year low in September. This was in view of stringent norms put in place by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Of the total investments in October, P-note holdings in equities were at Rs 90,161 crore and the remaining in debt and derivatives markets.

KCNA

Large military drills being carried out by the United States and South Korea and US threats of a pre-emptive war against Pyongyang have made the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact, North Koreas foreign ministry told Reuters. A spokesman for the Norths foreign ministry also blamed confrontational warmongering remarks by US officials for pushing the peninsula to the brink of war. The remaining question now is: when will the war break out? the spokesman said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Koreas official KCNA news agency. We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, he said.

An almost two-year long study of the Chinese financial system by the International Monetary Fund found three major tensions that could derail the world's second-largest economy, reports CNBC. Those tensions emerged as China moves away from its role as the world's factory to a more modern, consumer-driven economy, the IMF said. The financial sector is critical in facilitating that transition, but in the process it evolved into a more complicated and debt-laden system.

The first tension in China's financial system, according to the IMF, is the rapid build-up in risky credit that was partly due to the strong political pressures banks face to keep non-viable companies open, rather than letting them fail. Such struggling firms have, in recent years, taken on more debt to achieve growth targets set by the authorities.

The second tension identified by the IMF is that risky lending has moved away from banks to the less-regulated parts of the financial system, commonly known as the "shadow banking" sector. That adds to the complexity of the financial sector and makes it more difficult for authorities to supervise activities in the system, the IMF said.

And the third issue identified by the international organisation is that there's been a rash of "moral hazard and excessive risk-taking" because of the mindset that the government will bail out troubled state-owned enterprises and local government financing vehicles.

Britain will guarantee rights for as yet unborn children who join EU parents after Brexit and accept EU judges rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The document, drafted on Monday for a vote next week before an EU summit that may launch talks on a future EU-UK free trade pact, also confirms that British Prime Minister Theresa May has secured agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit.

The resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement May was about to sign on Monday before objections from her allies in Northern Ireland forced a postponement due to concerns on a plan to keep regulatory alignment between the province and the EU to ensure no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland.

A wide-ranging reform of European financial markets called MiFID II will cost European investment banks around 2.6% of annual revenues, equating to $4.4 billion a year, according to industry analytics firm Coalition. The new rules set to come into force on January 3 are aimed at making European markets more transparent and provide better value for investors, but are expected to drive down banks profits as a result, reports Reuters.

Coalition said in a report, based on banks internal estimates of the effects of MiFID II on more than 25 investment banking products, that its findings suggested banks will be able to cope with the hit to profits. Everyone has been painting a very negative picture, MiFID II will of course disrupt the industry but our report suggests the impact will be manageable, said Eric Li, research director at Coalition.

07:32 Uber

A 20-year-old Florida man was responsible for the large data breach at Uber Technologies last year and was paid by Uber to destroy the data through a so-called bug bounty programme normally used to identify small code vulnerabilities, sources told Reuters.

Uber announced on November 21 that the personal data of 57 million passengers and 600,000 drivers were stolen in a breach that occurred in October 2016, and that it paid the hacker $100,000 to destroy the information. But the company did not reveal any information about the hacker or how it paid him the money.

It made the payment last year through a programme designed to reward security researchers who report flaws in a companys software, sources said. Ubers bug bounty service - as such a programme is known in the industry - is hosted by a company called HackerOne, which offers its platform to a number of tech companies.

Oil prices inched up on Thursday on a decrease in US crude inventories, but rising gasoline stocks and crude production weighed on the market, reports Reuters. Traders said the higher prices came as US crude oil inventories fell by 5.6 million barrels in the week to December 1, to 448.1 million barrels, putting stocks below seasonal levels in 2015 and 2016.

recognises

President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of US policy and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperilling West Asian peace efforts and upsetting Washingtons friends and foes alike, reports Reuters. Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark, but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical.

Bitcoin rocketed higher on Thursday, crossing the $14,000 mark less than 24 hours after topping $12,000, reports CNBC. The landmark happened on the Coinbase exchange just before 4:30 am, and it traded as high as $14,400 on that platform. That said, there are often significant price differentials on different bitcoin exchanges. CoinDesk, a widely regarded industry site, didn't show the cryptocurrency crossing the $14,000 level until about 6 am, according to its average of prices across leading exchanges.

The digital currency's gains accelerated after crossing the psychologically key level on Wednesday morning. Bitcoin now has a market value of more than $230 billion, meaning it would rank among the 20 largest stocks in the S&P 500. The latest swing higher came as bitcoin topped $12,000 on Wednesday morning in a rapid recovery from a 20% drop last week. The digital currency began the year below $1,000 and its gains have accelerated as investor interest grows.
(Xinhua) 09:30, December 07, 2017

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reads a statement at the UN headquarters in New York, on Dec. 6, 2017. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he was "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians." He made the remarks immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."

"From day one as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," the UN chief told reporters immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said.

"I understand the deep attachment that Jerusalem holds in the hearts of so many people. It has been so for centuries and it will always be," he said. "In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B."

"It is only by realizing the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace, security and mutual recognition, with Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Palestine, and all final status issues resolved permanently through negotiations, that the legitimate aspirations of both peoples will be achieved," the UN chief stressed.

"For my part as the United Nations Secretary-General, I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations and to realize this vision of a lasting peace for both people," he concluded.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump formally announced his Jerusalem decision, despite warnings from Arab countries and the European Union against such a move that would inflame tensions and fuel violence in the Middle East.

Ahead of the move, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned of "dangerous consequences" on the peace process, security and stability in the Middle East region and the world.

China said on Wednesday that the status of Jerusalem is sensitive and complicated, and urged all parties concerned to "exercise caution" for peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks when asked to comment on U.S. intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Qatar Airways today agreed a deal to buy 50 Airbus 321 planes during a state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The contract, which includes an option for the Gulf carrier to buy another 30 planes, comes as the emirate is hit by a trade and diplomatic boycott by neighbouring countries in the region's worst political crisis in years.
Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com told CNBC-TV18, "Yes Bank is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 305 and target of Rs 321. Punjab National Bank is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 170 and target of Rs 182. GAIL India is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 465 and target of Rs 480."

"If you are short you need to cover otherwise you will get your head handed to you by evening."

"Maruti Suzuki is now in a blue chip category, so any sort of small 5-7 percent correction should be used to buy into. So, that way I think nothing unusual but a stock making a new high before the market does that, that is extremely positive and chances are you will see further new highs on the stock," he said.
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The S&P BSE Sensex which hit record highs earlier in the year 2017 lost some momentum towards the closing of the year weighed down by both local as well as global factors. But, there are plenty of stocks which have hit double-digit returns in at least 4 out of 5 years.

If not the whole market Santa Claus rally is seen in 7 stocks on the BSE which have given double-digit returns of up to 54 percent in the last 4 out of 5 years, according to data from Capitaline showed.

Most of the stocks belong to the small and midcap segment but a consistency of returns on year-on-year period makes them stand out. The year 2016 was a washout year as benchmark indices closed on a flat note; hence not many stocks gave stellar returns.

Stocks on the lucky 7 list include names like Alankit, Chowgule Steam, HBL Power Systems, 3i Infotech, Bartronics India, Vikas Ecotech, and Mahamaya Steel.

Topping the charts is Alankit which has given double-digit returns in all the five years along with Chowgule Steamships Ltd. Alankit Ltd is the flagship company of Alankit Group which is a leading e-Governance service provider in India.

Major services offered by the company is TIN Facilitation Center and PAN Center, authorized person for National Insurance, UID enrolment (Aadhaar), Aadhaar Seeding, Printing of PVC Aadhaar card etc. among others.

Other companies on the list include 3i Infotech which is a global information technology company committed to empowering business transformation. The company also provides solutions for other verticals such as Government, Manufacturing, Retail, Distribution, Telecom, and Healthcare.

HBL Power Systems Ltd which is in business since 1977 gave up to 31 percent return in the month of December alone in 4 out of 5 years. Their expertise are in batteries generated opportunities.

The first products selected and successfully developed were Aircraft batteries - eventually leading to HBL offering the worlds widest range of specialized batteries.

Bartronics is engaged is engaged in the business of Bar Coding and Smart Card technology, the company made a foray into the field of Automatic Identification & Data Capture (AIDC) solutions.

Vikas Ecotech which has given up to 40 percent return in the last 4 out of 5 years is an emerging player in the global arena of the high end specialty chemicals players.

Mahamaya Steel deals with the manufacturing steel structures in the shape of Angles, Beams, Joist, Channels, Rounds, Flats, Railway sleepers etc. It has high capacity structural rolling mills with full-fledged supportive SMS.

Mahamaya is one of the few in the country who manufactures 600 MM joist and 250 MM angles, and the turnover of the group is close to Rs1000 crore. The stock gave up to 30 percent return in last 4 out of 5 years in the month of December.

December challenges:

Unlike the rest of 2017, the month of December might be tough on bulls. The S&P BSE Sensex which climbed Mount 33K is now trading around 32,700 levels.

Benchmark indices climbed to record highs in the month of November but since then the trend shifted downwards.

It looks like market participants prefer to be on the sidelines ahead of key events such as US Federal Reserve policy meet and back home, the outcome of state election results. However, analysts advise investors to buy stocks on dips whenever possible as the structural bull market is still intact.

Nilesh Shah, MD, and CEO of Envision Capital sees a shallow correction for the Street. It looks like there could be 4-5 percent correction ahead. That is how markets have behaved and it is unlikely to move in some other way. This could be year-end profit booking, Shah told CNBC-TV18 in an interview.

Will political outcomes from state and general elections ahead make any impact on the market ahead? Shah said he wont be surprised if political debate takes over the market between 2018 and 2019.

Frontline indices are going through a corrective phase, with the Nifty shedding around 300-350 odd points from record highs.

While some investors could raise concerns over it, but market veterans such as Madhusudan Kela see this time as a positive thing.

There are plenty opportunities which are there in the markets, both in midcaps and large-caps. Corrections like these give investors to capture the opportunity,Kela told CNBC-TV18 in an interview.

Further, he said that such a correction was long overdue as there has not been one since Niftys levels of around 7,800.

Speaking on the impact of upcoming Gujarat elections, Kela believes that if the verdict goes, either way, a meaningful correction is unlikely.
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Moneycontrol Research

Our Diwali Portfolio has generated an alpha of 16.9 percent in little over fifty days. In our endeavour to generate superior return for our investors, we scrutinise every position carefully. As a part of that exercise we are recommending a change in the portfolio whereby MOIL (Managanese Ore India Ltd) replaces IRB Infrastructure.

Since the time we recommended IRB Infrastructure in our Diwali Picks Portfolio at Rs 206 per share, it has corrected by almost 1.4 percent. While we remain positive about the structural story in the road sector and the strength of the company in terms of the balance sheet, execution capabilities and strong cash flows, we are replacing IRB Infrastructure with MOIL in light of the legal risk emerging in IRB post CBI filing a charge sheet against its Chairman and Managing Director Virendra Mhaiskar and 17 others in the case of land acquisition. The company in its statement to exchanges has denied all the allegations and has reassured its cooperation with the authorities.

Read More: A tweak in our Diwali Portfolio: Switch to Vidhi Specialty Food Ingredients from Bhansali Engg Polymers

Post the significant correction in stock price, the state-owned company MOIL is looking attractive as the stock is now trading at 10 times its FY19 estimated earnings offering a 3.5 percent dividend yield based on FY19 estimates. MOIL, the largest manganese ore producer in India, is amongst very few commodity businesses that commands high core business return on equity in excess of 30 percent. It is a debt-free company consistently making high positive operating cash. The company is benefiting because of the higher manganese prices as a result of pick-up in domestic steel production. Recently in the month of October, the company has taken a price hike and benefit of the same will be reflected over the next two quarters.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) holds fire as expected and leaves key rates unchanged. The big takeaway from banks is Governor Patel announces faster recapitalisation of public sector undertaking (PSU) banks, says the move will reform state-run banks.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Dinabandhu Mohapatra, MD & CEO, Bank of India (BoI) discussed about the same.

Government has made it very clear that recapitalisation will be mixed with reform and it will depend on the performance and potential of the bank. As far as performance is concerned, BoI in particular is doing extremely well for the last two quarters in non-performing assets (NPA) management and in profitability, he said.

Some of the big accounts under National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) are provided at 100 percent, he added.

According to him, in next two quarters banking industry will see a lot of upswing.

We are planning to go to market for Rs 3000 crore of qualified institutional placement (QIP), said Mohapatra.

The bank has reduced its corporate exposure from 52 percent to 48 percent, he further mentioned.

Speaking on loan growth, he said that he expects loan growth to be at 6-7 percent over the next 2 quarters.

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.

Latha: The announcement from the governor was that first banks will have to go and raise their own capital and then, the performing ones will be rewarded by the government. What has been your qualified institutional placement (QIP) plans? How successful are they?

A: Government has made it very clear that recapitalisation will be mixed with reform and recap will depend on your performance and potential. As far as performance is concerned, Bank of India in particular, for the last two quarters, doing extremely well in non-performing asset (NPA) management, in profitability, all key areas we are doing well. And potential wise, Bank of India having the pan-India presence and internationally present in 22 countries, we are poised for wholesale banking with international presence. So both way, we will be benefitted.

And one of the key advantages Bank of India is having today, the 65 percent of NPA is already covered by provisions. So that gives a good leverage to Bank of India. And some of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) accounts where there is a likelihood of resolutions and in those accounts, some of the big accounts, we have already covered 100 percent. If resolution happens in the month of January, February, Bank of India will get back, write backs of a huge amount of provisions. That will benefit Bank of India.

As far as banking industry is concerned, definitely, RBI made it very clear that this capital will be frontloaded and that will help the entire banking industry. And if you see, growth is also starting to raise its head, so all banks are showing better results. Going forward, next two quarters, banking industry will see a lot of upswing.

Sonia: So do you expect to see a better performance as far as asset quality is concerned? From this 12 percent mark of gross NPAs, can we see you do less than that next quarter?

A: Naturally, it is moving in that direction. But, if you take into account some of the developments in some of the banks, based on the recent initiatives of NCLT and the response to NCLT, there may be some review of some of the old assets, those who are really standard as in today, but taking the benefit of NCLT and other things, regulators and other agencies, other banks may take a fresh look. But that will be in the right direction and that will definitely give a good comfort level to the market and banks can take a call and take a view on capitalisation as well. So that will be a positive for all banks.

Latha: What is the capital you need?

A: Actually, as on today, calculation is going on. Before recapitalisation, we requested the government for Rs 2,500 crore from them and rest we had planned to raise from the market. But after recap announcement, we have started calculating again and we are discussing with the government. That will be decided. On our own, we are planning to go to the market for Rs 3,000 crore QIP. Board has already approved, so we are planning to raise that from the market as well.

Latha: You saw a decent growth in advances in the last quarter. How are you likely to end the year in terms of advances growth?

A: I always mention this in all forums. The topline growth per se, may not be good indicator. Within that topline, if rebalancing of asset and no capital light asset you are building up, that will give good profit and good revenue. If you see, even if Bank of India has not grown, the topline more or less same level, but our retail has grown around 16 percent, SME around 5-6 percent, agriculture around 5-6 percent. So growth is happening and we have reduced our corporate exposure from 52 percent to 48 percent. So rebalancing of entire asset and capital light asset build up we have started. going forward, since generally on-season starts from October and we see a little bit demand from the market, so next two quarters, there will be some growth though it will be less than double digit growth, but there will be some growth in next two quarters.

Latha: But you did only 0.3 percent in the previous quarter. So you still think you can get to high single digits?

A: If you see, even 0.3 percent growth in topline, but profit is improving and everything is also improving, interest income is also improving because of the rebalancing of the entire portfolio. That we have started from very beginning. That has helped us to post better result. And going forward, it will be around 6-7 percent plus growth for the next two quarters.

Latha: The NCLT exposure first list is Rs 8,000 crore and the second list is Rs 6,600 crore. Have you provided for all of them, 50 percent?

A: First list is Rs 8,300 crore, but second list only Rs 3,300 crore.

Latha: And provided fully?

A: Bank as a whole, we have provided 65 percent of the entire NPA portfolio. First list, we are definitely more than 55 percent. But some of the big accounts, those who are on the verge of resolution, there we have provided 100 percent. So those cases we will be writing back the provisions. That is one of the biggest advantages for Bank of India. And second list also, we have provided more than 50-55 percent depending upon the resolutions on the first list, we will definitely get some traction in the second list.

Latha: Aircel and Reliance Communications are exposures for you and are they provided for?

A: No, Aircel we do not have exposure to. In that respect we are lucky. But the other account, we have some exposure, but things are going on. We are confident that it will be resolved as per the expectations.
JSPL is the stock on the radar after global metal prices trade weak in Shanghai for as second day as an increase in global inventories weighs on commodities.

Sharing his outlook on prices and business going forward, Naushad Akhter Ansari, CEO-Steel Biz, JSPL told CNBC-TV18 that domestic steel prices are expected to rise by Rs 1500-2000 per tonne in the near-term on back of rise in raw material prices.

However, margins may remain at current levels because even though prices are going up the cost push is also higher.

There is no threat from imports due to increased prices because it is not exorbitant and is justified, said Ansari.

A meaningful increase in Angul plant capacity will only happen after basic oxygen furnace (BOF) is commissioned, which is likely by middle of this month, he said.

On the business outlook, he said despite higher working capital requirements because of better management of working capital, we dont require debt.

With regards to capacity utilisation, he said in the next quarter Raigad will be operating close to 100 percent capacity that is 3.4-3.5 million tonnes and with regards to Angul once the BOF is commissioned, the capacity would go up to 5 million tonnes but by end of this financial year it would run at 60 percent of the capacity. So, the EBITDA per tonne should increase by Rs 1000/tonne going ahead. Currently, it is around Rs 9000/tonne, said Ansari.

Therefore, meeting Rs 950 crore quarter interest payment will not be an issue from here on because there are also other plants operational to make sure that debt level is maintained at a comfortable level. We are also looking at monetising some non-core assets to pare debt.

With regards to sale of power assets, he said the deal with JSW Energy is still on the table.
jayalalithaa_68541462

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam on Thursday launched the campaign for December 21 by-election to the prestigious R K Nagar assembly constituency, seen as an acid test for the ruling AIADMK.

As AIADMK flags fluttered along the campaign route, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam canvassed for party candidate E Madusudanan from an open jeep. All along the campaign, party workers waved images of a smiling Amma (Jayalalithaa) engraved on a plastic clipboard like material.

Featuring the late party supremo in her favourite green in such publicity materials, party functionaries also held the party symbol two-leaves which was cast in the same colour.

Addressing the electorate, Palaniswami said after Amma won from the assembly segment, she announced several welfare schemes for RK Nagar and brought amenities for the people.

Inaugurating the campaign at Korukkupet, Palaniswami appealed to the people to help Madusudanan win with a huge margin to "continue the good work of Amma."

Hitting out at DMK Working President M K Stalin, he alleged that when the Leader of Opposition in the assembly was the city Mayor he did not bring amenities or devise schemes for the people of RK Nagar.

The Chief Minister accused the DMK leader of not introducing schemes for the constituency when he was a Minister. A resident of North Chennai, Madusudanan who won from the same constituency in 1991 was a Minister for Handlooms during 1991-96 when late J Jayalalithaa was the Chief Minister.

Sporting a bright white shirt, dhoti and a tilak on his forehead, Madusudanan sought votes with folded hands all along the campaign trail. Panneerselvam said Madusudanan is a popular leader whom the people across the constituency knew very well.

He has been working for the people for decades together. After winning in 1991, he did a lot of good work for the RK Nagar people, he said. Earlier, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam inaugurated a party election campaign office, held discussions with party functionaries and visited a local temple.

State Ministers including Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar, an AIADMK strongman of North Chennai where RK Nagar falls, C Vijayabaskar and SP Velumani were among those who accompanied the top two ruling party leaders. DMK candidate N Marudu Ganesh has begun campaign in R K Nagar by going door-to-door seeking votes.

The by-poll to the assembly seat was necessitated after the death of legislator and chief minister J Jayalalithaa. The by-poll was earlier scheduled to be held on April 12.

However, it was rescinded by the Election Commission following complaints of money distribution. Madhusudhanan was then the candidate of the Panneerselvam-led rival AIADMK faction, while Dhinakaran was contesting on the then AIADMK (Amma) camp.

Later, the factions led by Panneerselvam and Palaniswami merged in August. The Election Commission awarded the 'Two Leaves' symbol to the unified AIADMK on November 2.
MarcBruxelle/iStock/Thinkstock(DAVENPORT, Fla.) -- A Florida mayor has been arrested for allegedly using the handicap placard of a woman who died in 2012, authorities said.



Davenport mayor Teresa Darlene Bradley, who is known professionally as Darlene Bradley, was arrested Tuesday and charged with criminal use of a deceased person's ID, possession of an altered or counterfeit decal and unlawful use of a handicap placard, according to a press release from the Polk County Sheriff's Office. Davenport is located about an hour southwest of Orlando.



Bradley was booked into the Polk County Jail and was later released after posting a $2,250 bail, the sheriff's office said.



Last month, the sheriff's office received information that Bradley was parking in various handicap spots although "she was not known to be handicapped or have a placard issued to her," according to the press release.



Deputies allegedly observed Bradley parking in one of the designated handicap spots. She placed the placard on her mirror before exiting the car and then removed it upon returning before she drove away, authorities said.



Video taken in the parking lot to Davenport City Hall on Monday appears to show Bradley parking her Ford Crown Victoria in a designated handicap spot on Monday, but she exits the car with no assistance. She then removes a large briefcase on wheels from the trunk and then walks into City Hall for a meeting, authorities said.



Police were able to determine from photos taken from the property handicap placard placed on Bradley's vehicle displayed an expiration date of "10-18," according to the sheriff's office. The placard had been issued to Evelyn King Letterman, who died on Aug. 29, 2012, and had a true expiration date of Oct. 30, 2013, authorities said.



While executing a search warrant at her home, deputies found two handicap placards, the one belonging to Letterman and another belonging to a person who died in 2015, the sheriff's office said.



"We expect our elected officials to set the proper example," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement. "She not only violated the law, she embarrassed the citizens of Davenport with her illegal conduct."



Bradley did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment.





Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
(Xinhua) 09:32, December 07, 2017

CAIRO, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday in defiance of strong opposition from the Muslim world is set to backfire as it will inflame the tensions in the Middle East.

In a dramatic departure from his predecessors' foreign policy, Trump not only recognizes Jerusalem as Israeli capital, but also starts the process of moving the U.S. embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv. Though welcomed by Israel, the move will enrage the whole Muslim world which has already warned against the dangerous repercussions.

The status of Jerusalem, revered by Muslims as the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site by Jews, lies at the core of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

Under the Oslo peace process, Jerusalem's status should be decided in the Israeli-Palestinian final-status talks. The Palestinians insist that they will establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the final settlement.

Though Israel took over East Jerusalem during the 1967 war and Israel's parliament passed a law in 1980 to unilaterally declare the holy city as its eternal indivisible capital, the international community by large does not recognize the Israeli move.

All countries, including the U.S., have so far located their embassies in Tel Aviv instead of Jerusalem, in order to let Israel and the Palestinians to decide the final status of Jerusalem through negotiations.

Even after the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1995 to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump's three predecessors repeatedly ordered to halt the move by presidential decrees, so as to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Trump, with a Jewish son-in-law, has widely publicized his pro-Israeli stance even since the start of his presidential campaign by promising to move the embassy to Jerusalem.

But his decision to change the status quo of Jerusalem is not only a misjudgment, but also a dangerous step.

By taking the step, Trump seems to have placed a bet on the division among Muslim countries in the Middle East which he hopes will prevent them from uniting against the U.S. over Jerusalem.

Indeed, the division has been well illustrated by the recent standoff between Qatar and a Saudi Arabia-led Arab bloc, and the growing rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Meanwhile, many Arab countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, are plagued by constant threats from terrorism and political instability.

But Trump has apparently underestimated the great sensitivity of the Jerusalem issue and the risks of changing its status quo. Jerusalem is one of a few issues that can rally all Muslim countries against the U.S. despite their differences and disputes.

The Palestinians, already disappointed with the protracted stalemate in the peace process since 2014, could resort to violence to express their anger and despair.

Furthermore, the rage of Muslims worldwide at the U.S. move and their sympathy with the Palestinians could be taken advantage of by terrorists and extremist groups to win Muslim support to their causes, including attacks against U.S. targets.

Renewed violence in the Palestinian territories, further instability in the Middle East, and a possible surge in terror attacks will certainly backfire. In the end, the U.S. will have to pay a heavy price for it.
Vijay Mallya

There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources said today amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

"The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UK's Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya," a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the government's case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, yesterday.

"The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India," he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrate's court.

Mallya, who was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds.
The World Bank approved the latest loan for Egypt of just over USD 1 billion to support the country's economic reform program and reduce poverty.

The loan is the last in a three-part package worth a total of USD 3.15 billion that started in 2015, the World Bank said in a statement.

The loan will support "home-grown inclusive reforms" aimed at shoring up the economy and creating jobs, the bank said.

"We are privileged to support the country on its path to achieving its full potential and improving living standards for all Egyptians," senior World Bank official Asad Alam said.

The African Development Bank is providing parallel financing of USD 500 million and Britain added USD 150 million.

The International Monetary Fund last month reached an agreement with authorities in Cairo to release the third USD 2 billion tranche of a USD 12 billion loan package agreed in November 2016, and the IMF board is expected to approve the release of the funds by the end of the year.

Since the 2011 revolt against Hosni Mubarak, the Arab world's most populous country has seen a sharp decline in tourism revenue and reduced foreign investment, caused by political instability and security issues.

To obtain the IMF lifeline, Cairo undertook drastic reforms, adopting value added tax, cutting public energy subsidies and in November floated the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound.

The World Bank praised the country as a model on how to maximise finance for development, including "mobilising USD 17 billion of private investment in the energy sector."

The bank focuses on projects to help Egypt reduce poverty, including social safety nets, transport, rural water and sanitation, agriculture and irrigation, housing, health care, and financing for micro and small enterprises. It currently has a portfolio of 19 projects in the country with a total commitment of USD 7.8 billion.

The country's International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr welcomed the World Bank announcement of support for the "transformational economic reform agenda."

"Egypt's program to help improve its attractiveness for private investment, creating jobs especially for youth and women," Nasr said in the statement.
Indian real estate has a paradoxical reputation as an asset class. On the one hand, it is the countrys preferred choice of investment, with nearly 70% of total Indian household wealth parked in flats, plots, land and other properties, and the Indian property boom is widely acknowledged as one of the great wealth creators in the world today. On the other, Indian real estate is seen as a time-consuming and complicated investment, requiring local knowledge, substantial effort and no small amount of luck to come out on top. As a result, most property investments are localized, with investors buying real estate where they  or their family  live.

One company is changing all that.

Meet SmartOwner, India's largest marketplace for real estate and other high-value assets. Founded in 2012, the Bangalore-based company makes investing in Indian real estate (almost) as easy as playing the stock market.

How? Believe it or not, basic economic theory. SmartOwner has redefined what it means to be a buyer in a high-ticket transaction, bringing together hundreds of individual investors and negotiating an institutional-grade deal with major developers on their behalf. This way, each SmartOwner client gets an amazing rate of return without having to do the heavy lifting of dealing with developers, giving them access to opportunities that are normally only accessible to the ultra-wealthy. Each opportunity is both rigorously vetted and incredibly easy to participate in, with the entire transaction taking place online.

The end result? An investment that combines the simplicity of the stock market with the return potential of a well-chosen property purchase.

A complete package

SmartOwners secret lies in its comprehensive approach to sourcing, selling, and exiting real estate deals. Not just any deals, mind you  the company estimates that it goes ahead with less than 1% of the deals it examines. In order for a particular property to warrant the companys capital, it must pass an incredibly rigorous due diligence checklist, ensuring that every SmartOwner investment is sound from a legal, financial, and project-specific perspective.

Once a property passes the due diligence process, SmartOwner funds a large part of the project in exchange for exclusive terms. For developers, this is preferable to a high-interest bank loan. For SmartOwners clients, this represents access to a rate theyd never be able to negotiate themselves.

Sourcing and deal-making arent all SmartOwner takes care of. Each deal is discretized and passed along to individual investors, who simply need to wire the funds in, sit back, and watch their money grow. A state-of-the-art control panel lets investors track their SmartOwner portfolio in real time, providing transparency in a notoriously opaque industry. On top of this, the company has a division focused on obtaining exits, transforming Indian real estate into a true turn-key investment.

The true power of SmartOwners approach, though, is most visible in the investment flexibility it offers. Real estate is traditionally thought of as a lumpy asset, with a long holding period and an appreciation-based payday. However, SmartOwners unique investment model can be structured in several different ways, allowing the company the ability to tailor the offering to the needs of different types of clients.

Just getting started

This exceptional approach to Indian real estate has allowed SmartOwner to sustain rapid growth for years, and the company is now the undisputed leader of Indian property marketplaces. To hear them tell it, though, theyre just getting started.

Historically, most of our clients have been HNIs and ultra-HNIs, although we do have several clients in the mass affluent category as well reveals Vikram Chari, SmartOwners CEO. According to Chari, this flexibility has allowed clients who would traditionally be priced out of the market to participate in exclusive opportunities.

Flexibility isnt the only new development coming out of SmartOwner. The company recently funded its first commercial project, and Chari is positive that the basic business model  redefining being an investor in high-ticket transactions  can work with any high-value asset. Were not particularly picky when it comes to the underlying type of asset. While real estate is our core competency, weve examined cars, yachts, planes, you name it. As long as the assets fundamentals are sound, and the numbers are good for our clients, well look into it, explains Chari.

More than anything else, it is this undying commitment to the investor that fuels the companys remarkable growth. With an 80% reinvestment rate, SmartOwner has succeeded in creating an investment service that keeps people coming back for more.

For SmartOwner, though, theres always room for improvement. When we reach 100%, laughs Chari, Ill be happy.
BHU website

While examinations are usually a testing experience for students, questions that come from outside the syllabus are tougher to handle. This is exactly what students of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) experienced when they sat for their first semester MA Political Science examination.

The students who appeared for the subject Social and Political Thought of Ancient and Medieval India' were bombarded with confusing and out of syllabus questions that connected Indian philosophers Manu and Kautilya to current world events like the GST implementation and globalisation.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the questions were allotted 15 marks in the 70 mark examination. And to get these 15 marks, the students were asked to write about either the 'Nature of GST in Kautilya Arthshashtra' or 'Manu is the first Indian Thinker of Globalisation.'

While students within the university campus had been taught about the topics and had taken down notes, those from affiliated colleges have been left clueless. These ridiculous and unpalatable questions in our paper are really disheartening. We are being taught these fictitious concepts just to validate the policies of the present government, a student was quoted saying in the report. Another student said that they cannot question their teachers as they would be targeted during the rest of the course.

However, Professor Kaushal Kishore Mishra, who set the question paper thoroughly defended his decision. It was my idea to introduce these examples to students. So what if these are not in the textbook? Isnt it our job to find newer ways to teach? he said. According to him, he was only trying to link the thoughts of ancient Indian philosophers to present events.

As per Mishra, Kautilyas Arthashastra is the first Indian book which hints at the current concept of GST by propounding national economic integration, while Manu was the first thinker to have introduced the tradition of globalisation in the world.

Mishra is also supported by Head of Department R P Singh, who came forward to defend his colleague by saying that the questions were not out of syllabus.
The Bombay High Court rejected the bail plea of former stockbroker Ketan Parekh on Thursday, an accused in cases linked to the 2001 securities scam.

Justice AM Badar observed that Parekh had shown a disregard for previous proceedings against him and missed several hearings in the special court.

The court said that Parekh was an accused in several cases related to the securities scam and it was likely that if granted bail, he might not appear during the trial of these cases.

Parekh had approached the high court in November this year after a special Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) court rejected his bail plea and sent him to judicial custody.

The SEBI court too had taken note of the fact that Parekh had failed to appear in courts and before the SEBI regulator several times in the past.

Before rejecting Parekh's bail, the Special Court had also issued a proclamation against him after he failed to appear before the SEBI regulator on multiple occasions.

Parekh was convicted in 2008 for indulging in circular trading and stock manipulation. SEBI is prosecuting Parekh for related offences.
Ram Nath Kovind, nominated presidential candidate of Indias ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), delivers a speech during a welcoming ceremony as part of his nation-wide tour, in Ahmedabad, India, July 15, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave - RTX3BL0Y

President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday said the overall gender imbalance in scientific and technological institutions was a matter of concern.

He said that the true test of India's progress lay in the access and opportunities it provided to girls in education.

He was addressing the faculty and students of Andhra University College of Engineering for Women here after laying the foundation stone of an e-classroom building and an incubation centre.

"The overall gender imbalance in our scientific and technological institutions continues to be a concern," he said.

"A true test of India's progress is in the access and opportunities we provide to our daughters when it comes to education," Kovind said.

He exuded confidence that this centre would enhance the countrys capacity to produce high-quality women engineers and technologists.

"I am happy to note that 40 percent of students in Andhra University are girls," he said.

"Some of our leading defence and space scientists who have powered our missile programmes and rocket launches are women. Last week, I was privileged to felicitate Tessy Thomas, known as the Missile Woman of India, at Agra University," the President said.

The President, who also declared open the Centre for Defence Studies at Andhra University, said research related to defence and military applications and technologies had multiple benefits.

"As experience in other countries has shown, research in defence technologies can also lead to innovations that have diverse civilian applications," he said.

Kovind said that the Internet, information technology and space technologies have changed the human society and all of these have either originated in or seen accelerated research in defence technologies.

He said that it would provide a "tonic" to the Make in India programme to innovate, develop and manufacture military technology and equipment.

Lauding the Andhra University professors and researchers for their collaborative efforts in defence projects, including the Brahmos missile development programme, the President hoped the university would continue to be a technology hub for the country.

Andhra Pradesh Governor E S L Narasimhan, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Union Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju, Deputy Chief Minister N China Rajappa, Visakhapatnam MP Kambhampati Hari Babu, AU Vice-Chancellor Nageswara Rao were among others who attended the function.
An acute water crisis has affected various parts of the country, right from the parched fields of Maharashtra to the dry taps of Chennai. Here are what policymakers are suggesting to turn replenish vessels, water tanks and reservoirs across the country. (Image: Reuters)

The Maharashtra government has released funds only for 1.7 million farmers so far under the farm loan waiver scheme that was announced by the state government in June, reports Mint.

The loan waiver initially intended to help 8.9 million indebted farmers in the state but was later reduced to cover 5.6 million farmers.

Maharashtra Co-operation Minister, Subhash Deshmukh said on Tuesday at the State Secretariat that state government has disbursed Rs 10,332 crore to banks to distribute to more than 1.7 million farmers.

As of December 5, the banks had deposited Rs 5,143 crore to 943,000 accounts after inspection.

While admitting to the fact that there was a delay in farmers receiving the benefit, Deshmukh said that most of the issues that have cropped in the initial stages have been sorted and the implementation has gathered pace.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced the Rs 34,022-crore farm loan waiver on June 24 after farmers strike in Western Maharashtra, Nashik and Ahmednagar.

The state has asked farmers to link their Aadhaar numbers and bank accounts to the online application system which helped to weed out almost 2 million bogus accounts.

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) ally Shiv Sena, along with opposition parties, have made the loan waiver a political issue ahead of winter session of the state legislature that begins on December 11 at Nagpur.
Delhi government will not give any exemption to women when it implements the odd-even policy to combat pollution in the city. The change in stance regarding the odd-even policy came to notice after the state submitted its action plan to combat pollution to the National Green Tribunal on Wednesday.

Besides the change in stance regarding the odd-even policy, the plan according to The Indian Express report includes several strict measures to curb the rising air pollution levels in the capital.

These measures include complete stopping of all construction activities when the pollution level reaches the severe category. All entry of trucks and burning wastage will be completely banned in the NCR. Also, the immediate closure of all pollution causing industries has also been recommended by the state government to the tribunal.

Also Read: Pollution back to haunt Delhi, pollutants 10 times the permissible limit



The change in the stance regarding the odd-even policy is, without doubt, the biggest highlight of the new action plan. Earlier in November, the state government had to call off the odd-even plan after the NGT ordered the withdrawal of exemptions given to two-wheelers and woman only vehicles.



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Explainer | COP27: 2022 has been a year of extremes, what does it mean for India? The NGT had made it clear that only emergency vehicles such as fire engines and ambulances can be granted an exemption. However, the state government had rejected this as they did not want to make any compromise when it came to the safety of women in the capital.

The NGT had asked the governments of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan last month to submit an action plan that will be used to tackle the air pollution menace. However, inaction on the part of the Delhi authorities and the decision to conduct an international test match in the capital led to severe criticism on the part of the tribunal.NGT has now asked the Delhi government along with the governments of Haryana and Punjab to file a detailed report today regarding measures it will take to tackle pollution.
A destroyed target by Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter aircrafts is seen during the IAF fire power demonstration 2007 at Pokhran in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan December 8, 2007. IAF air warriors pounded and blasted away an array of assorted targets with impunity that included mock enemy radar sites, troops, ammunition dumps, convoys, petrol, oil and lubricant (POL) dumps with rockets, laser-guided bombs, missiles and front guns at the fire point demonstration held at the air-to-ground weapons firing range at Pokhran on Saturday. REUTERS/Vijay Mathur (INDIA) - GM1DWTRKYRAA

India has made significant progress in building laser weapons capability, or Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), reports The Economic Times. DEWs are primarily used to damage or destroy enemys facilities, aircraft, anti-personnel weapon systems, missiles based on electronic circuitry.

The newspaper said that the countrys premier defence R&D firm, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), had recently carried out a successful test of a laser system mounted on a truck, and is planning to develop more powerful laser with a longer range.

High-powered laser and microwaves are the two types of DEWs which are part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Private players like Kalyani Group and Rolls-Royce are also looking to build DEWs in the country.

In August, DRDO conducted a 1KW laser weapon system test which hit a target situated 250 metres away at Chitradurga in Karnataka in the presence of Defence Minister Arun Jaitley. The laser took 36 seconds to make a hole in the metal sheet.

Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS) and Laser Science & Technology Centre (LASTEC) laboratories of DRDO are presently building the source for producing the laser. The plan is to test a higher powered laser of 2KW  hit a target at 1km  mounted on a truck against a metal sheet.
Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court has set aside the Central Information Commission (CIC) order declaring ministers as "public authorities" under the transparency law.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru overturned the March 12, 2016, order of the CIC, declaring the "ministers in the Union Government and all State Governments as public authorities" under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

"There was no occasion for the CIC to enter upon the question as to whether a Minister is a public authority under Section 2(h) of the Act. Further, directions issued by the CIC are also wholly outside the scope of the matter before CIC.

"In view of the above, the order dated March 12, 2016, cannot be sustained and is, accordingly, set aside," it said.

The court's order came on the Centre's appeal against the CIC order.

The CIC directive that ministers were answerable under the RTI Act would mean that people can directly send questions to a minister by filing an RTI application which will be answered by a public information officer in his office.

The case emanates from the application filed by a man on November 20, 2014, before Additional Private Secretary, Minister of Law and Justice seeking to know the time period of minister or minister of state meeting the general public.

As the information sought was not received, he filed an appeal in January 2015, to which the Central Public Information Officer sent a response on January 16, 2015, informing him that "no specific time has been given for the meeting of General Public with the Minister. However, as and when requests are received, appointments are given subject to the convenience of the Minister".

Thereafter, the RTI applicant filed a second appeal with a principal grievance that he had not received the information sought for within the specified time and therefore, prayed that certain action is taken against the concerned CPIO.

Presented with this appeal, the CIC went on to frame the questions whether the minister or his office was a "public authority" under the RTI Act and whether a citizen has right to information sought and whether the minister has the corresponding obligation to give it.

The questions were answered in the affirmative by the CIC which also passed a string of directions and recommendations.

The CIC issued directions to the government to provide the necessary support to each minister including designating some officers or appointing some as Public Information Officers and First Appellate Authorities.

It had also directed that ministers be given an official website for suo motu disclosure of information with periodical updating as prescribed under Section 4 of the RTI Act.

The Commission had recommended that the oath of secrecy which is required to be taken by the ministers be replaced with the oath of transparency.

While hearing the appeal filed by the Centre, the Justice Bakhru observed, "this court finds it difficult to understand as to how the questions as framed by the CIC arise in the appeal preferred by the respondent no.2 (man)".

"The information as sought was provided to him and there was no dispute that he was entitled to such information. The only grievance voiced by him was regarding the delay in providing him with the information as sought by him.

"Thus, the only prayer made by respondent no.2 before the CIC was that action be taken against the CPIO and the First Appellate Authority under the provisions of the Act," it said, adding that "directions issued by the CIC were wholly outside the scope of the matter before the CIC".
(Xinhua) 09:34, December 07, 2017

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Li Wenge, one of China's most wanted fugitives, has returned to China and turned himself in, the anti-corruption authority said Wednesday.

Li, a former taxation bureau worker in southwest China's Yunnan Province, was suspected of contract fraud and fled to Canada in August 2013, according to a statement released by the Communist Party of China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

In April 2015, Interpol's National Central Bureau of China released a list of 100 fugitives suspected of involvement in corruption, all of whom are on Interpol's "Red Notice" for international arrest.

Many of the fugitives are former government or state-owned enterprise employees.

Li was number 28 on the list and the 51st to return so far.

"As the 14th International Anti-Corruption day falls Saturday, China is willing to join hands with the international community to fight corruption and capture more fugitives in the future," the statement said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) members of the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat today and listen to their concerns on Cyclone Ockhi, which may hit the state.

The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Assembly polls in Gujarat, Modi's home state, is scheduled to come to an end today.

The prime minister will connect with the party workers on their mobile phones through the "audio bridge" technology and directly interact with the divisional heads of the party's SC and ST units in the state.

About 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend Modi's call, the BJP said in a statement today.

On Diwali, Modi had extended his greetings to around 23,000 BJP workers in Gujarat through tele-conferencing.

He had also spoken to around 2,000 party workers in his Parliamentary constituency, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, using the same technology.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14 -- and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
In an interview with Moneycontrol, Srinivasan CR, Senior Vice President, Global Product Management & Data Centre Services, Tata Communications, talks about how the perception around cybersecurity is changing, especially in light of Aadhaar-related discussions, and why the company plans to invest USD 50 million in the space in the next three years. Edited excerpts:

How has the managed security services space panned out this year for Tata Communications, and how do you see opportunities going forward?

Tata Communications comprehensive managed security services portfolio delivers security for the cloud and from the cloud to global enterprises helping them effectively manage business risk in todays digital economy. Our capabilities include risk and compliance, cloud security, identity and access management, and analytics to predict cyber-attacks and ensure network & infrastructure security. We bring all aspects of this offering as a service on 24x7 basis, to help our customers fight cyber threats.

Currently, we have a team of over 100 cybersecurity experts  out of which 80 percent are in India. We have had upwards of 50 percent year-on-year growth in security services and we expect that to continue.

Security needs continuous management, and adapting to the current scenario of the market. We are helping our customers work through the changes they see and supporting them on a constant basis.

What kind of investments is Tata Communications looking to put into this segment?

Tata Communications will hire 400 people and invest USD 50 million in our cyber security services business in the next three years, as companies look to combat the rise in cybercrime and data theft in India and globally.

Tata Communications is gradually establishing a global presence that provides customers advanced insights on cyber security threats. We have security operations centres (SOCs); we call them the cyber response centres, in India and we are adding more centres regionally because we realise that every region has data residing locally.

We are looking to add cyber response centres across the APAC region (Singapore), Middle East, USA and the UK to be able to help customers in these geographies with handling their security infrastructure.

Our main focus in India is on the BFSI sector as they have the most crucial data and, as a result, the maximum budget allocated for security services. Were also focused on the telecom sector.

In addition, we are working to see how we can develop cybersecurity as a skill. We are partnering with select universities in India and Singapore to introduce additions to curriculum focused on cybersecurity.

What according to you is the weakest link in a system from the point of view of cybersecurity?

Almost 80 percent of breaches are from some known source or the other. Data protection is going to be a major challenge in the future for all enterprises, particularly in terms of who owns the data and where it is stored. Plenty of efforts will go towards ensuring that data is restricted to the geography it originates from. In terms of threat, data is the new currency. Compliance to global standards and requirements will be a big challenge. This will in turn lift the standards of data security worldwide.

The finer nuances of such attacks are often best understood in terms of local geography. Thus, we're also looking to expand our technologies and intelligence across the world. We are focusing on identity and access management, and cloud security, which are some chief areas that require more attention in the near future. It's pretty safe to say that in today's times, data security and protection is one of the fastest-growing businesses we have.

In light of the recent damaging cyberattacks, how have clients outlook towards security changed? Are there any significant differences in the way MSSP contracts are structured?

To-date many businesses have been in denial mode, thinking that a cyber-attack will never happen to them. Next, to address cybersecurity, too many of them will simply buy cyber-attack insurance, which is really just about passing the ownership to a service provider.

Following the WannaCry attack, we found that only about 10-15 percent of businesses worldwide were well prepared with the right security and latest patches and updates. NotPetya exploited the same vulnerability on Windows systems as WannaCry did, meaning that organisations that updated patches for this vulnerability were unlikely to have been affected by this attack.

Clearly, security updates are key. Additionally, a strong security infrastructure is not just about a secure network, as investments need to be made in detection and predictive tools and services.

Experienced personnel should constantly be on standby to identify any weaknesses quickly. Its crucial that victims look towards the expertise and support of security partners like a managed security services provider (MSSP) or an internal cybersecurity team to respond appropriately to the security incident.

How does the Indian market differ from the global security market, if at all?

The security industry in India is still at a nascent stage but cybersecurity is fast becoming a mandate leading to an increase in demand. Discussions such as making Aadhaar a single point of information for easy access have brought renewed focus on cybersecurity in the country.

The recent ransomware and DDoS attacks that we have seen have ensured that security is no longer an afterthought and that organisations are paying more attention to it.

Looking forward, the trends we are seeing globally are similar to what were seeing in India. Security breaches will now increasingly be thought of as inevitable, rather than something that can be completely avoided.

The widespread adoption of smart technology, smart city initiatives and the Internet of Things (IoT) have made safeguarding customer data even more important.

In addition, as technologies progress...the challenge is to train cyber-security professionals so that they can deal with threats as quickly as possible and also adapt their skills as needed. Its now up to governments, universities, schools and businesses to collaborate in order to bridge this substantial skills gap.
Representative Image

An analysis of the affidavits of candidates in fray for both phases of the Gujarat Assembly polls has revealed that 38 Congress candidates face serious criminal charges.

This, the analysis shows, is a 10 percent rise in candidates with serious criminal charges when compared to the party's candidates for the 2012 assembly polls.

The Congress's percentage went from 12 percent to 22 percent, said the analysis conducted by two NGOs - Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Gujarat Election Watch(GEW).

In 2012, 21 Congress candidates out of 171, that is 12 percent, were facing such serious charges. This time, as many as 38 candidates out of 174 candidates, that is 22 percent, are facing such charges, the analysis showed.

The BJP's percentage, at 13 percent, has remained the same, the NGOs said. In the polls of 2012, out of total 180 candidates analyzed, 24 BJP candidates were facing serious charges, said the comparative analysis released on Thursday.

This time, out of the total 175 BJP candidates analyzed, 23 candidates are facing charges related to murder, attempt to murder, robbery, abduction and rape.

The two NGOs, the ADR and GEW, released the analysis of the affidavits of 822 candidates, out of the total 851 in fray for the second phase of Gujarat Assembly polls, to be held on December 14 for 93 assembly seats.

The analysis showed that 101 candidates, accounting for around 12 percent, were facing criminal cases, including serious charges.

The analysis also showed that a total of 64 of the 101 nominees of the second phase are facing serious criminal cases.

It includes seven candidates who were facing attempt to murder charges, three facing kidnapping charges while two have been accused of rape.

A party-wise analysis found that 13 out of 86 BJP candidates were facing serious criminal charges, while the Congress gave tickets to as many as 18 such candidates for the second phase of the polls, the report of the NGOs said on Thursday.

The two main parties were followed by two candidates from the BSP, three from the NCP and seven from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and 14 independents, it said.

Earlier this week, these NGOs had released the analysis for the first phase of polls, to be held on 89 seats on December 9.

As per that analysis, 137 candidates in fray for the first phase were facing criminal cases, including 78 who are facing serious charges such as murder, kidnapping and rape.

Though there are 182 seats in Gujarat, the NGO said it could not analyze some affidavits of both the parties, be it of 2012 and 2017, due to bad scanning or other technical reasons.
Indias External Affairs Ministry may soon raise the issue of deteriorating quality of water in transnational rivers with China. This comes after reports suuggesting worsening pollution in the Siang River, which runs through the frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who will meet the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on sideline of Russia-India-China trilateral talks, is likely to take up the issue, sources told the Deccan Herald.

The river turns black

The recent development in Siangs pollution has rung alarms as the river is one of the principal tributaries of Brahmaputra, a key trans-boundary river in Asia, which runs through China, India and Bangladesh.

Siang is the lifeline of Arunachal Pradesh and connects with Lohit and Dibang rivers downstream, turning into the Brahmaputra in Assam. Brahmaputra has in recent months made headlines for allegedly being subjected to Chinese attempts at diverting the rivers water to the arid Xinjiang region.

Chinas stake

The matter is crucial as the Xinjiang region in China needs vast amount of water especially for cotton farming. It has long been diverting water from Kazakhstans Illy River to partly meet its requirement.

But the Chinese state-run media had vocally refuted the allegation of water diversion attempts on the Brahmaputra and accused India of trying to incite anti-China sentiments.

The current rise of sludge in the Siang entails fears as China could use its strategic hold on Tibet to regulate water-flow of rivers running into India.

However, a report in the Chinese state-run media Global Times said that China would not harm the said river as the country considers the river to be its own along with staking claim on Arunachal Pradesh, which it sees as being part of its disputed territory of Southern Tibet.

Earlier China had delayed in transferring India the hydrological data on floods as reconstruction work in its hydrological stations had deeply affected India.

As per Deccan Herald, India may propose widening of its ties with Beijing regarding the hydrological data sharing project and work together to monitor and contain water-quality deterioration of the trans-boundary rivers.

While India is increasingly worried about Chinese attempts at controlling its river water in the North-East region, nothing much has been done so far. However, now it aims to resolve the issue with trilateral talks.

Congress has already slammed the BJP-led Centre for lagging in action. Arunachal Congress MP Ninong Erring, has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the rise in turbidity of Siangs water. He underlined that Siang turned alarmingly muddy following some media reports about China's plan to build a 600 Km-long underground tunnel to divert water from the river to Taklamakan desert in its north-western region, as per a report in the Economic Times.

Former Assam minister and Assam Congress vice-president Pradyut Bordoloi on Monday said, There is every possibility that slushy water might spread downstream. Nobody knows whether slushy water carries toxic material. We have been reading reports of Chinas plan to divert Brahmaputra in upper reaches in Tibet."

The latest water sample was acquired on November 27 and the follwing report by Executive Engineer Bimal Welly said that Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) of the water was 425 NTU, while the safe range is 0-5 NTU. NTU represents the concentration of particulate matter that is suspended and/or dissolved in water and has the potential of harming aquatic life in the long term.

Swaran Singh, professor at the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote in the Mint recently raising concerns about interntional contamination. Despite China having 50% spatial share of this 3,000km-long water system, low precipitation and desert conditions mean that Tibet generates only 25% of its total basin discharge, while India, with 34% of the basin, contributes to 39% of the total discharge. So, it is not Chinas water diversions, but intentional flooding or contamination that should be a major concern for India, he wrote.

However, Arjun Ram Meghwal, the Water Resources minister, reportedly said there was possibility that recent earthquake and landslide in Tibetan region had turned Siang water turbid.
An Ehang 184 autonomous aerial vehicle, designed to carry one passenger, is seen at the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China. (Reuters)

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Indian Army crashed around Dokalam in the Sikkim sector after it "crossed" the border into China following a technical problem, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India.

Sources in Delhi said on Thursday that the Indian security forces in Nathu La immediately informed the Chinese army over the hotline about the UAV's technical problem and crossing the Line of Actual Control(LAC).

The Indian defence ministry said its border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location. It, however, did not give details of when the UAV had crashed but sources in Delhi said the incident happened around 10 days ago.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Delhi to attend the Russia-India- China trilateral meeting on December 11.

In Beijing, China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China- India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

The Indian defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

"An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector," it said in a statement released in Delhi.

It further said, "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty, said, "I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited."

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73 day long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area. The face-off ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", Geng said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the LAC and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

Wang's visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A sea plane seen at the Girgaon Chowpatty in Mumbai. (PTI)

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during the felicitation of Gallantry Awardees and Distinguished Service Medal Winners at a function at Raj Niwas in New Delhi. (PTI)

A BRO snowcutter removes snow from a road after fresh snowfall, at Rohtang Pass. (PTI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the "Gujarat Vikas Rally" in Surat. (PTI)

Humanoid robots developed by UBTECH perform a synchronised dance at the World Intelligent Manufacturing Summit in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China. (Reuters)

A photo taken from the International Space Station and moved on social media by astronaut Randy Bresnik shows smoke rising from wildfire burning in Southern California, US. (Reuters)

US President Donald Trump with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, speaks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Meeting Room of the White House in Washington. (PTI)

Houthi Shiite rebels walk amid the rubble of the Republican Palace that was destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen. (PTI)

A motorists on Highway 101 watches flames from the Thomas fire leap above the roadway north of Ventura, California. As many as five fires have closed highways, schools and museums, shut down production of TV series and cast a hazardous haze over the region. About 200,000 people were under evacuation orders. No deaths and only a few injuries were reported. (PTI)



Actor Richard Gere, chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Campaign for Tibet, pauses during a House Foreign Affairs, Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, entitled "US Policy Toward Tibet: Access, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights." (PTI)

Amidst tear gas fired by them earlier and flares and fire from firebombs brown by protesters, riot police hold their positions during clashes in Athens. Clashes erupted as protesters marked Wednesday the ninth anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens that sparked the worst rioting Greece had seen in decades. (PTI)
US Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons and F-35 Lightning IIs participate in a training mission near Kunsan Air Base in preparation for VIGILANT ACE 18 in South Korea. (Reuters)

Large military drills being carried out by the United States and South Korea and U.S. threats of a preemptive war against Pyongyang have made the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula "an established fact", North Korea's foreign ministry said.

A spokesman for the North's foreign ministry also blamed "confrontational warmongering" remarks by U.S. officials for pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.

"The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?" the spokesman said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency.

"We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it," he said.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Korea's latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of international pressure and United Nations resolutions.

North Korea said last week it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, which was capable of reaching the United States.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the weekend the possibility of war with North Korea was "increasing every day".

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving U.S. military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close.

On Wednesday, a U.S. B-1B bomber joined the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which are called "Vigilant Ace" and will run until Friday.

North Korea, which regularly threatens South Korea, the United States and their allies, has denounced the exercises.

"Recently, as the U.S. is conducting the largest-ever joint aerial drill on the Korean peninsula targeting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its high-level politicians are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said, using North Korea's official name.

"These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula," he said.

The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Guk met Feltman in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Wednesday and discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, KCNA said.
Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines has changed the travel routes of some of their flights travelling over the troubled Korean peninsula. The decision comes after Pyongyangs continuous missile tests in the Sea of Japan disregarding international opposition.

The world-renowned carrier changed the flying route of its Seoul- Los Angeles flights since last July as a safety precaution against the North Korean missile tests, stated a report in Channel NewsAsia. The move was made as a response to the missile launch by North Korea into the Sea of Japan on 27th July.

Also Read: Cathay flight crew 'saw' North Korea missile from plane

"Singapore Airlines is aware of the reports on the sighting of the North Korean missiles and is closely monitoring the situationcurrently, our flight routings do not transverse in the vicinity of the missile trajectory as we have taken earlier steps to avoid the northern part of the Sea of Japanthe safety of our passengers and crew are our utmost priority and we will re-route our flights when necessary," a spokesperson from the Singapore Airlines was quoted saying in the report.

While tensions around the world about the possibility of the escalation of conflict in the Korean peninsula is pretty widespread, the ongoing missile tests by the North Korea regime is even more worrying for carriers conducting service across the North Pacific region.

Countries are required to give warnings about their upcoming missile tests as per International agreements. North Korea has consistently failed to follow this norm while conducting its tests. Even the condemnation of this activity that by

The International Civil Aviation Organization in October had condemned the missile tests as it threatened the safety of commercial flights but it had little effect on the North Korean regime.

Several of its missiles have been spotted by commercial aircrafts travelling dangerously close to the missile's trajectory. The most recent incident was when the crew of Cathay Pacific and Korean Air spotted the Hwasong 15 missile launched last week by North Korea. The airlines witnessed the blow-up and disintegration of the missile close to their location.
A view of Jerusalem's old city. US officials have said that 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 there. Trump's point-man on the Middle East, son-in-law Jared Kushner, later said the president hasn't decided yet what steps to take. (PTI)

Opposition National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah condemned the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital by US President Donald Trump, saying it was unfair, unjust and oblivious to historical facts and the goal of reconciliation and peace in the Middle East.

Trump's announcement was in contradiction to history and the sentiments of millions of Muslims across the world, including in India, he said in a statement.

At a time when the world was grappling with instability and hostility, especially in the Middle East, an arbitrary announcement of this nature was fraught with the risk of alienating people and adding to the widespread sense of injustice, the former Union minister added.

He said the move had hurt the sentiments of Muslims all over the world and made the goals of cooperation and stability farther and harder to achieve.

The Srinagar MP, while strongly condemning the announcement, said the global community was obligated to deliver justice to the people of Palestine and that no responsible power should take any step which would hurt the sentiments centred around historical disputes.

The Government of India was also obligated to strongly and unambiguously oppose the move, in line with the country's historical foreign policy stand, which was committed to the people of Palestine in their quest for justice and peaceful existence and also pivoted on the policy of non-alignment and objectivity, he said.

The condemnation from the Centre should be unequivocal and India should take a stand in consonance with its values and its place in the comity of nations, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said.

Stating that India had traditionally and consistently supported the cause of the Palestinian people, Abdullah said the foreign policy of the country had always noted East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state.

"A failure of the (Narendra) Modi government to strongly reiterate this commitment and stand would be a great disservice to our country's independent foreign policy goals and our commitments at the global stage," he said.
Tianjin to build intercity railway linking to Xiongan New Area

11:05, December 07, 2017 Xinhua

North China's Tianjin Municipality is planning to build an intercity high-speed railway to connect with Xiongan New Area in north China's Hebei Province.

The authorities are doing the preliminary work and will strive to start construction at an early date, said Song Liwei, head of the Tianjin Urban and Rural Construction Commission, Wednesday.

A CRH bullet train runs on a railway track. [File Photo: VCG]

Meanwhile, Tianjin is scheduled to start construction of its sections of two high-speed railways linking Beijing with the Binhai New Area of Tianjin and Tangshan in Hebei next year, Song said.

Beijing also plans to build an expressway and two high-speed railways, including an intercity railway, to link with Xiongan.

In April, China announced plans to establish the new economic zone about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing. It covers Hebei's Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin counties.

Following the success of the country's economic zones in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions, Xiongan is expected to promote the formation of a world-class city cluster in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area.

China plans to build Xiongan into a region led by innovation-driven development and a demonstration area for new urbanization in China. A number of administrative bodies, large enterprises, colleges and research institutions in Beijing are expected to move into the area.
With less than two weeks until Thanksgiving, its time to talk turkey  literally. Rising costs due to inflation, coupled with the spread of a contagious avian flu, could make it tougher for families planning large gatherings and holiday meals. While increases to food prices have slowed after nearly a year of steady inflation, almost []
State officials announce $2.85M for new police station in Upper Moreland
China accounted for 98% of the total growth of global patent applications, said a report issued at a news conference at the United Nations Office in Geneva on Dec. 6.

The annual World Intellectual Property Indicators showed that global innovators filed a total of 3.1 million patent applications over the last year, up 8.3% for a seventh straight yearly increase.

The number of patents applied by Chinese innovators outnumbered the combined total from the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and the European Patent Office.

China is increasingly amongst the leaders in global innovation and branding, said World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Francis Gurry.

According to him, the latest figures charting a rise in demand for intellectual property rights confirm a decade-long trend, where developments in China increasingly leave their mark on the worldwide totals.

Chinas State Intellectual Property Office received the highest number of patent applications in 2016, a record total of 1.3 million. Asias share of all applications filed worldwide has increased from 49.7% in 2006 to 64.6% in 2016, primarily driven by strong growth in filings in China.

Gurry believes that the huge population and market in China, as well as improvements in the intellectual property protection system, have helped the country be innovative.
Thanks to Nigel the Nutcracker from The Warehouse, we are granting wishes across the country!
The Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Trustees this week broke an impasse between district and charter school administrators, agreeing to report to the California State Finance Authority that Charter School of Morgan Hill is in good standing and in compliance with its charter for purposes of the Prop. 51 funding.

At the stroke of midnight, six hours into its Dec. 5 meeting, the school board voted unanimously to allow the charter school to apply for $11.5 million in state funds to renovate the old Encinal campus, where the school has been located for more than a decade.

A portion of the money from Proposition 51, approved by California voters last November, is reserved for California charter schools. Of the funds sought by the charter school, half would be considered a loan and would have to be paid back to the state.

The board action rejected its district staff contention that the local charter continued to be in violation of certain conditions attached to its charter renewal, including those surrounding its finances, lack of diversity in student population and failure to sign a Memorandum of Understanding.

We did not ever declare the CSMH not in good standing. That was not our determination. That was the state fiscal agency, said Morgan Hill Supt. Steve Betando, whose comments were scoffed at by the swarms of charter school parents in attendance.

Betando explained how the state agency came to its own conclusion on the charters standing with its authorizer. He said his staff, namely Assistant Supt. Kirsten Perez, had simply supplied the state with details about the conditions of the schools petition and whether standards were met.

We did not make that determination, and the next thing we know were being accused of claiming they are not in good standing, added Betando. Our simple determination was that there were unmet conditions of the resolution, including the MOU, which was very significant.

Trustees David Gerard and Gino Borgioli did not buy Betandos explanation, and instead said he was simply mincing words.

They are trying to reframe what is a very simple issue, an issue directly related to the everyday health and safety of over 650 children who attend one of our public schools, said Gerard. He asked the board to stand by its May 16 decision to support the charters application that would result in clean classrooms and clean bathrooms for those students.

Gerard called for an inquiry into what led to the superintendent and staff to not only ignore but also subvert the governing boards May 16 decision. He also wanted some sort of accountability for those actions.

Charter leaders said they were blindsided by the districts claims of noncompliance since those concerns were never brought up to them during their annual audit presentation, nor at any point before or during the application process. The charters renewal petition was unanimously approved by the board in Sept. 2015.

District officials are reluctant to support the charter schools use of Prop. 51 funds for two reasons: MHUSD would be on the hook for the remaining balance if CSMH defaults on the loan; and only another charter school would be able to use the facilities funded by Prop. 51, if CSMH was to relocate for any reason.

Trustees offer different insights

Trustee Mary Patterson was not in agreement with Gerard or Borgioli. She said there were valid arguments for both sides and no purposeful wrongdoings.

There are two completely divergent approaches to the decision we have before us, Patterson said.

Borgioli, who read from the letter Perez penned to the CFSA that led to its decision to disqualify the local charter from state funds, said that the district supplied the state agency with all the ammunition it needed to derail the charters application.

If I received a letter like that, I would think Im not in good standing, said Borgioli, who drew a loud applause when he pointed to other documents submitted by the district to the state that knocked the charter school for having a budget deficit. Well, if good standings definition is that, then were not in good standing as a district, either.

Morgan Hill, like other districts throughout the state, is in its second year of deficit spending. Its administrators announced at a previous meeting that they will look to shed $5.5 million from the budget next year as a corrective measure.

Borgioli, who was skeptical of the districts resolution attached to the Dec. 5 agenda, also believed that many of the noncompliance issues brought up by the district were either petty or could be cleared up, including agreeing on an MOU. Borgioli also helped craft a separate resolution Tuesday night directing the district and charter school staffs to meet, resolve their issues and sign an MOU to be brought back within two months. That motion was passed by a 6-0 vote.

Trustee Teresa Murrillo left the meeting early and was not part of either vote.

While charter proponents immediately cleared the room after the decision was made in their favor, the schools executive director, Paige Cisewski, was not 100 percent sure if the new board resolution crafted that night would satisfy the state finance authoritys requirements and keep them in the running for Prop 51 funds.

This has been an incredibly difficult issue as a trustee, said Trustee Tom Arnett, who hoped the district and charter officials could have worked things out before coming back to the board. We dont have that type of collaborative relationship between the school and district as it stands right now. I think thats incredibly unfortunate, and I really think we need a reset.

While the school boards public session began a little after 6pm, discussion on the charter school item did not get started until after 9pm. Some of the charter proponents had been waiting three hours to be heard and learn the schools fate, which resulted in many tense moments throughout the evening.

At one point, Trustee Ron Woolf scolded the crowd for their disregard of parliamentary procedure and for shouting out comments in reaction to what was being said by members of the district staff and school board.
Foreign political and business leaders participating in the 2017 Global Fortune Forum in Guangzhou have hailed Chinese President Xi Jinpings book on state governance as a strong explanation of Chinas rise, noting that the book will promote Chinese dreams around the globe.

I think the book is quite important given the significant rise of China and its re-emergence as a global power. People need to understand what the priorities are of the leadership of the Communist Party of China, as well as their future intentions, Andrew John Robb, former Australian Trade Minister, told Peoples Daily Online.

Its not only about [Chinas] economic management and trade, but also other issues, and Xis book is a good contribution to [this cause], he added.

Published in both Chinese and English on Nov. 7, the second volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is also in the process of being translated and published in other languages including French, Russian, and Spanish. The 566-page book contains excerpts from 79 speeches, talks, and interviews by Xi, along with a rich assortment of photographs, according to Xinhua.

The second volume depicts the practices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Xi at the core in uniting and leading Chinese people to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era. It also reflects the development and main contents of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Many foreign participants of the 2017 Global Fortune Forum noted that the new book provides Chinese wisdom and solution for developing a community with a shared future for mankind, as well as in promoting peace and development.

In China we see stability, we see a long-term approach. As Xi said, China needs socialism with Chinese characteristics, and in the future we will see more Chinese influence in the world. For instance, the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as new institutions established under the Chinese leadership, such as Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others. I think China is taking a very benign approach to globalization, and it is a new force of globalization, Frank-Jurgen Richter, Chairman of Horasis, a Switzerland-based think tank, told Peoples Daily Online.

According to Richter, following the retreat of the US in the international arena of globalization, China is likely to call for a multilateral system based on trust, friendship, and dialogue.

I personally live in Switzerland, a small country, I prefer the Chinese approach compared to the current US one. We had American dream a century ago, when people went to US to realize their dreams. China is not only focusing on its own people, but also developing an international culture, he said, adding that the Chinese dream is more like a global dream, which everybody can join in.

The first volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China has sold 6.6 million copies in 24 languages around the world since it was published in 2014.
Fidelitys announcement last week that it will be adding a performance element to research costs under the upcoming Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) has rocked the fund management industry. The company said it will move investors to a new variable share class with significantly lower costs but with a new performance fee  which is refundable if the funds fail to beat the benchmark.

In the last few weeks alone, a raft of asset managers finally confirmed that they will - no doubt after much debate and discussion - absorb the costs of equity research themselves, rather than pass them on to investors in their funds. The likes of Schroders, Janus Henderson and Invesco have all publicly reversed their decisions in recent days, having previously made public their intention to pass on research charges to investors; they are now prepared to take the hit themselves.

Our view at Morningstar is that the issue of passing on research costs to investors shouldnt even be a discussion. Morningstar global ratings leader, Christopher Traulsen, made this very clear when he published an article in May with the premise that fund managers need research to do their job well, for which the investors are already paying them a management fee. Why would an investor, who is already paying a premium price for active management, pay anything additional for research?

Why Should Investors Pay More?

MiFID II is much wider-reaching than the unbundling of equity research and trading fees, though. There is a raft of new data points that asset managers will need to disclose for funds offered to the market. Granted, these two areas have been consuming much time and effort by asset managers, as the regulators clarify exactly what data points they need to provide. Whats less talked about is that, in addition to disclosing new data points, asset managers will also need to review their own investment products on a regular basis, in much the same way as distributors need to periodically review their product lineup.

Chapter Three of the Delegated Directive requires the investment firms of member states to check whether their own funds are still fit-for-purpose and relevant for todays investors and that they offer good value. They will need to check that their products function as intended and not wait for any detriment to occur. They will now be obliged to review their products when they become aware of an event that could materially affect the potential risk to investors. Not only do investment firms need to carry out these checks, they must prove that theyre doing this as part of a regular review of products. There is no timeline or frequency specified in the Directive; we believe a best practice would be to do this at least on a semiannual basis, although we think its more likely that it will be done annually.

We think all firms would do well to follow the approach of the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom. The FCA is adopting a 'gold plating' approach to the directive: It is proposing to adopt a number of enhancements to its own regulations from those that have been set out in MiFID II, with investors interests and protection fully at the forefront - the aim being to ensure best practice. Although the FCA already implemented changes following the Retail Distribution Review in 2012, the addition of new fund data points, such as those relating to target market and suitability, should enable advisors to improve the quality of advice even further.

Complacency Among Asset Managers

We like the fact that MiFID II will shift the focus of product distribution from product sales to the investor, and that the FCA is wholly supportive of this. Having watched the number of share classes of funds available for sale in Europe grow at an exponential rate in the last decade, I confess to harbouring some hope that this requirement on the asset managers, which must be proved through an audit trail, will eventually lead to the closure of some long-established funds - relics of the 80s and 90s that still exist because the assets are sticky but where it can be argued that indifference has set in. Even though some of the funds have less relevance in todays investing world, and notwithstanding the fact there would be costs involved in fund closures, there is complacency among asset managers. Investor inertia - or lack of awareness - also plays a role.

We believe investors would certainly benefit from the asset management industry taking a long, hard look at the funds it offers and asking itself these questions: is every fund in its lineup relevant? Are they priced competitively? Does the firm have the right skill set and expertise to manage these funds well? However, not all asset managers will fall into the scope of MiFID II, and thus they wont be obliged to undertake this review. For example, those that have been authorised as Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and are marketing or managing the AIFs for which they are an AIFM are not in scope. Firms that have been authorised as UCITS management companies under the UCITS directives are also out of scope when managing or marketing the UCITS funds for which they act as UCITS manager.

A further challenge for MiFID II is that, as a directive, it requires adoption into local law by each European Union member state, and this can lead to differences among those states as they choose to interpret or implement it in their own way. We think it is important for both manufacturers and distributors alike to review funds through the same lens, using the same inputs, irrespective of how the directive is adopted locally. So, we have developed a range of due-diligence scorecards to facilitate exactly that. Whether youre the asset manager looking at your products or an advisor looking at the funds you recommend, our due diligence scorecards give a consistent framework through which to do this analysis.

Weve based our scorecards on the proprietary five-pillar rating methodology that underpins our Morningstar Analyst Rating. The scorecard assesses a lineup of funds using a multitude of data points on a quantitative basis and gives them a peer group ranking. This means the manufacturer can see exactly how its funds are being assessed by the distributors, and any flaws, such as high fees, will stand out. Given the need for those firms that fall under MiFID II to show proof of an audit trail of these assessments, questions will soon be asked if such flaws are evidenced regularly as part of that review, yet repeatedly ignored. Any positive action on the back of such a review, which shows a clear benefit to the investor, will potentially see greater interest by investors and their advisors, as that firm will be demonstrating good stewardship of investor assets.

Take the recent announcement from Barings that it is closing a handful of funds because of their lack of viability - Baring UK Growth Trust, in particular. That fund sits in the UK Large-Cap Blend Equity Morningstar Category, in which five funds carry an Analyst Rating of Silver, and seven a Bronze rating. In other words, theres no shortage of good funds in that category. The Barings fund has existed since late 1987, yet its asset base is low. It has underperformed its category peer in six of the last seven calendar years, and its ongoing charge for the older A share class is around 1.7%. Those high fees are in part a function of the small asset base. Nonetheless, it is good to see an acknowledgement by the firm that the management of a UK equity fund is not its core skill set. That fund would have been flagged up multiple times in our due-diligence scorecards, with performance issues as well as fees.

MiFID II Will Benefit Investors

For the distributor, best-interest advice can only be given if you start with the best investments. Morningstars independence makes us well-placed to assist, as our research is fully independent. We say it how we see it. Advisors can rely on us to help them find the best investing ideas through our Morningstar Analyst Ratings. Weve been assessing funds for more than 30 years and therefore support MiFID II, as it aligns so well with our views. Weve always advocated transparency for investors, and we have always put investors interests first. We believe that the industry developments brought about by MiFID II will be good for investors. High fund fees will be exposed, and the manufacturer will no longer be able to ignore the continued existence of funds that have lost their way.

We have always viewed price as a key component in a funds success or failure. The increase in fee transparency, brought about by MiFID II, is very welcome, in our view. Asset managers will be required to break down costs into four main components for a fund: the ongoing charge; one-off fees such as entry and exit fees; incidental fees, such as any performance fees; and the transaction fees related to the investment product. This will give investors a clearer picture of what theyre paying for, which in turn will help them decide if theyre getting value for money.

The implementation of the Retail Distribution Review in the UK saw the introduction of a ban on inducements, meaning investors can now see the cost of the advice theyre receiving, and know that there is no undue influence on that advice. This is not as clear-cut in Europe under MiFID II.

For example, the German government is taking the stance that its nations banks have wide-reaching branch networks providing services and financial advice that their clients might not otherwise have access to; so, Germany will allow the banks advisors to continue to receive inducements on the view that the banks' scale effectively improves the quality and reach of advice they are able to offer. We wonder how long Germany will be able to retain this stance and demonstrate that this does indeed hold true.

We welcome the regulatory changes that MiFID II will bring, and we see so many positives that can and will arise from it. It is far more than just a compliance exercise. At the heart of the directive is the objective to make investors more informed in a way that is comparable, and to give them better-quality advice that matches their suitability and needs. That should lead to a better investing experience, and when the investor wins, we all win.

Learn more about how Morningstar can help financial professionals prepare for MiFID II
Investors are increasingly choosing passive solutions when allocating capital into emerging markets, according to strategists. Private and professional investors alike have turned positive on the sector after a stellar 2017.

Generally, the fortunes of emerging markets have ebbed and flowed on the whim of commodities markets. Hence, when the oil price crashed in 2014, so did emerging markets equities.

This year, the oil price has stabilised. That, alongside a deterioration in the US dollar, has given emerging markets renewed confidence - but commodities are no longer the key driver of emerging markets.

The Changing Face of Emerging Markets

The MSCI Emerging Market Index has powered ahead since hitting a seven-year low early 2016, thanks to a few powerful Chinese names in the technology space. Carlos Hardenberg, manager of the Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust (TEM), likely to be tech, rather than commodities, that affects the index in future.

"We are seeing the cultivation of a new generation of innovative companies located in emerging markets, he explains. This is diversifying their economies and the opportunitie set for investors.

A comparison between the emerging market index in 2011 and today illustrates this changing of the guard. Six years ago, the information technology sector accounted for around 13% of the index, according to Franklin Templeton. Now, it accounts for more than a quarter.

Three of the four most valuable emerging market companies in 2011 were resource-based. A further three were financials, alongside two telecoms firms and two tech giants in Samsung (005930) and Taiwan Semiconductor (2330).

Todays list contains seven tech companies, including Chinas BATs  Baidu (BIDU), Alibaba (BABA) and Tencent (00700)  and South Africas Naspers (NPN), which many see as a proxy for Tencent. That collection of businesses looks extremely investable to us, says Ben Gutteridge, head of fund research at wealth manager Brewin Dolphin.

As a result, Gutteridge says he now favours passives as a large-cap emerging market strategy, as the index weighting is the weighting a canny investor would want to replicate.

The index is dominated by the large companies and those businesses are earning well and doing a very good job at this juncture, he explained.

This view goes against the generally accepted wisdom that, due to inefficiencies in emerging markets, active managers should be better placed to outperform indices.

Active EM Funds to Add Value

However, Gutteridge admits Brewins strategy has not done away with active funds entirely. In some places, active fund managers can add value, particularly down the cap scale to smaller sized companies.

Having switched into emerging markets earlier this year, Guy Foster, head of research at Brewin, says, as contrarian investors, expects his teams biggest positioning decision in 2018 is being able to escape from the very crowded areas of Europe and emerging markets before a growth wobble in China.

A slowdown in Chinese growth being the base case, Gutteridge says two of his fund picks are more defensive in nature.

A recent addition to Brewins fund list is Morgan Stanley Asia Opportunities, which has only been around since March 2016. However, it had returned a healthy 35.78% as at 30 September 2017 compared to its MSCI All Country Asia ex Japan benchmarks 22.25%.

It has some of this tech disruptive play, but its predominantly a defensive consumer play, Gutteridge explains. While its two largest holdings are Tencent and Alibaba, its actually underweight the IT sector.

It has big overweights to the consumer discretionary, consumer staples and healthcare sectors, holding soy sauce manufacturer Foshan Haitan Flavouring (063288), pharma Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine (600276) and wine maker Jiangsu Yanghe Brewery (002304).

Its not a million miles away from the funds that have been the rewarders of the past, adds Gutteridge. When youve had growth issues the consumer staples have done well.

He also likes Fidelity Emerging Markets, a Morningstar Bronze rated fund run by Nick Price. Its top two holdings are Naspers and Taiwan Semiconductor. They account for almost 14% of the funds 2.3 billion of assets. Other top positions include financials AIA (01299), HDFC Bank (500180) and Sberbank of Russia (SBER).

While they are attempting to position themselves to exit emerging markets at the opportune time, Foster acknowledges that there will be a time down the line when an opportunity will come up to get back in.

Gutteridge says that a hedge against much better outcomes for emerging market growth than were anticipating is Morningstar Bronze Rated M&G Global Emerging Markets, run by Matthew Vaight.

Vaight tells Morningstar he believes people are paying too high a price for quality characteristics. "Yes, I have some exposure to quality names, but they aren't consumer staples. Instead I look for quality industrials, quality financials, quality materials names."

He says the most exciting part of his portfolio lies within those more value-based companies that have a low return on capital today but can grow that in the future.
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Swiss watch brand Audemars Piguet has long been a supporter of the arts, as well as of conservation and other causes. For the past three years, the Le Brassus brand has been involved in Art Basel Miami and Art Basel in Switzerland, as well as in other projects. Now, the brand announces its third Art Commission  just in time for the early December Art Basel in Miami Beach event (December 6-10). Joining forces with a California-based artist, the third Audemars Piguet art commission is entitled Slow-Moving Luminaires by Lars Jan.

Working in collaboration with artistic director and guest curator, Kathleen Forde, Audemars Piguets new exhibit with Lars Jans work is a large-scale installation that will be displayed on the Miami Beach ocean front  much like the brands first initiative three years ago with Theo Jansens Strandbeests.

Lars Jans Slow-Moving Luminaries is being presented in a pavilion site spanning 100 feet by 50 feet. The immersive kinetic exhibit hosts a labyrinth of space on two floors and invites visitors to traverse both decks  the lower one filled with a maze of flora and scrim, and the upper one a shallow reflection pool that will feature emerging and receding buildings (similar to a skyline). The buildings will rise out of the water at different speeds.

The concept, essentially, is to explore the conflict between states of meditation and crisis via manipulations of view, reality and change. Visitors will participate or perform in an experiential adventure as they interact within the artistic installation.

Lars Jan  Audemars Piguet

According to Jan, this marks the fist time that he will not have control over the performers movements. The piece will be totally experiential for the view and go beyond the simple act of contemplation, says Jan. Its a visceral response to the water, says Jan. I find it exquisitely beautiful, but I have a kind of anxiety about it. I came into this commission thinking about time, but also the cycles of the planet versus the cycle of human behaviour and our built environment  the changing of our world converging with the changing of the biosphere.

Guest curator, Kathleen Forde invited seven artist, including Jan, to submit ideas for the third Audemars Piguet Art Commission. Four of the artists were invited to the Audemars Piguet workshops to familiarize themselves with the brand and its values. Because Jan works in cross-disciplines, including performance, art and technology, he was able to conceive of something Audemars Piguet feels reflects its values and ideas.

Kathleen Forde and Lars Jan  Audemars Piguet

The Audemars Piguet Art Commission was formed to help support global artists as they explore innovative methods of combining art, science and precision. In addition to monetary support, the Art Commission also equips the selected artist with state-of-the-art, sophisticated technology to help bring their works to fruition.

According to Olivier Audemars, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for Audemars Piguet. Artists have a capacity to see things differently; as if they have special glasses that one can borrow and see what they can see. One of the reasons we were so impressed by Lars [work] is that its quite strongly linked to something that we know: our environment is very fragile.

The 39-year-old Lars Jan grew up on the East Coast in Massachusetts and then relocated to Los Angeles. He is known as an activist, artist, designer, writer and filmmaker - all of which help him in the translation of reality to art and self-immersion. In addition to creating the Slow-Moving Luminaries and other important works such as Holoscenes and Abacus that have been presented in the Whitney Museum, Sundance Film Festival and other places,

he founded the Early Morning Opera, a performance and art lab that explores techniques, live audience behavior and more.
Egypt's army chief of staff General Mohamed Farid discussed Egyptian-UAE military cooperation with his Emirati counterpart Hamad Mohammed Al Rumaithi in Cairo on Thursday, the Egyptian military said in a statement on Thursday.

Al Rumaithi is currently visiting the Egyptian capital with an Emirati delegation.

The two officers discussed recent developments in the region as well as means to bolster cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.

They also looked at measures to coordinate efforts in the face of current challenges in the Middle East, mainly the war against terrorism, the statement added.

The United Arab Emirates is one of strongest allies of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, and like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia has provided his government with billions of dollars in aid to stimulate the country's ailing economy.

El-Sisi visited Abu Dhabi in September where he discussed joint counterterrorism efforts and bilateral relations with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.



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Virtual reality has arrived in Midland.

Pandoras Box Virtual Reality Arcade, 4200 W. Illinois Ave., opened Friday afternoon and is one of a handful of businesses nationwide that cater to the growing VR gaming trend.

Theyre really a new beast, spokeswoman Evelyn Sitz told the Reporter-Telegram.

There isnt a set model on how to set up a VR arcade because the variety of hardware on the market offer different features.

Pandoras Box, is going to have five stations running the HTC Vive headset, Sitz said. Each station will have its own computer system and will feature at least two games considered a feature title, and each client will have access to our entire game library beyond the feature titles.

Some of those featured titles include Audioshield, in which the user hits approaching balls to the beat of the music; Chair in a Room, which is an escape-the-room style horror game; and a first-person shooter called Bullets and More. Also featured will be Doom and Fallout 4 when theyre released.

Gone are the slow, polygonal days of 1990s VR. VR back then featured bulky equipment that cost between $50,000 and $200,000, according to a 1991 ABC News report on YouTube. Todays graphics are rich and the movement is smooth. Plus, the price has come down significantly as VR has advanced. A basic HTC Vive setup costs $599 at BestBuy.com.

Evelyn Sitzs husband, Shea Sitz, co-owns Pandoras Box with his mother, Catherine Sitz. They got the idea of opening an arcade after owning their own system and enjoying the wonderment of friends and family after they tried VR for the first time.

Every time weve shown it to someone, theyre speechless, Evelyn Sitz said. They cant put into words what its like because its so different from anything theyve ever done.

The Sitzes are starting small to test the Midland market but have hopes of someday owning a warehouse-scale VR arcade.

The current facility is kept as dark as possible to facilitate immersion, Sitz said. Plus, we keep the temperature down a little bit so you dont get overheated while playing.

Pandoras Box targets more than gamers, however.

Were also trying to get the ball rolling with the medical field and some businesses to provide rehabilitation services, training services and team building, Sitz said. We have a mobile unit built for companies that want team or training exercises on site at their company.

The company is also in contact with schools for field trips because Pandoras Box offers educational experiences, as well, she said.

To get a spot with at Pandoras Box, its best to book online, Sitz said. Prices are $20 for a half hour, $35 for an hour and $65 for two hours, plus taxes and fees. Operating hours are: noon-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; noon-midnight Friday; 10 a.m.-midnight Saturday; and 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday.

For more information, visit pandorasboxvr.com.
West Texas has a perception problem.

When people east of Interstate 35 think of West Texas, they think of tumbleweeds, terrible weather and ghost towns, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President Dr. Tedd Mitchell said Wednesday at the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliances annual meeting.

Mitchell, a native of Longview, said getting the public to realize how important West Texas is to the states economy is a challenge for several reasons, but a big factor is population.

The area makes up 12 percent of the population, but we have about 49 percent of the geography that we try to cover, he said in regard to TTUHSCs efforts to provide health care to West Texas.

West Texas is largely rural, and studies show those who live in the rural areas of Texas have a greater amount of health problems, such as heart attacks and cancer. If you live in rural Texas, you have a lot more medical problems than your compadres in the metropolitan areas, Mitchell said. However, its the people in rural areas that drive the states economic success.

Mitchell cited several statistics about what is produced in West Texas:

 65 percent of beef.

 67 percent of sheep.

 67 percent of corn.

 85 percent of cotton.

 90 percent of peanuts.

 98 percent of sunflowers.

 88 percent of wheat.

 66 percent of grapes for winemaking.

 91 percent of wind energy.

 81 percent of onshore oil production.

We provide the food, fuel and fiber for the state, he said. It is our job to constantly remind cousins in east Texas of that. When it comes to health care, these farmers, these ranchers, these oilfield workers need us. We need them, and the rest of the state needs them.

Mitchell said better health care in West Texas will require upgraded facilities, more scholarships and better training.

Most of the folks that were trying to recruit come from places that have health-related institutions already there, he said. Im talking about young kids, people in their 20s. They have the option of living in Austin or uptown in Dallas or high-rises in Houston. Weve got to have the facilities to attract them, weve got to have scholarships to bring them out here, and we have to have rich training environments for them.

Plus, there are the perceptions about West Texas.

Its not that when people get out there they dont fall in love with the place; theres a notion that people have of the place that have never seen it, Mitchell said. Its one of those things that when it comes to businesses and recruiting people to our various schools, there is a perception that theyll have whether or not theyve ever been out there, and there are things we have to do to get around this.

Mitchell said part of the issue lies historically in transportation infrastructure. Interstates were overlaid atop the old U.S. highway system, which was overlaid atop the old railroad system. Look to the eastern part of the state, and transportation infrastructure runs in all direction.

Out in West Texas, the roads mostly run east and west. This makes people think West Texas is full of towns that you go through, not towns that you go to, he said. Thats a perception we have to change. All of these things were built to come through here, not to here. This is what were up against. This is an area that is rich in natural resources, things we should all be proud of. From a health perspective, these are people we need to take care of.

The perception, at least in terms of health care education, is changing. There is high demand to get into TTUHSCs various medical programs. In Midland, we have a physician assistant program that has 60 positions per year and 1,600 applications for it. Theyre not just applying here, but there are 1,600 kids want to get in and have an average GPA of 3.5, Mitchell said. Our nursing program has over 2,000 applications for just 225 slots, 42 of them are in the Permian Basin. This is highly competitive for these kids to get in here.

Mitchell said hes working hard to promote West Texas, a motive counter to the culture.

In West Texas, whats the mantra out here? You dont brag on yourself. You just do hard work, and good things will happen. Thats what West Texas is all about, he said. My job is to brag, and I say this as a graduate from (the University of Texas). The folks at UT and (Texas) A&M are never beyond bragging about what goes on. West Texans just quietly do the job. My job is to make everyone sure who we are and how good we are with the work that we do.
A delegation of editors of Egyptian newspapers on Wednesday visited an Egyptian man in a Kuwaiti hospital who was brutally assaulted at his workplace in the Gulf state earlier this week, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported, after the incident trigged an online outcry in Egypt.

Wahid Mahmoud Refaie, who works at a shop that sells motorcycle spare parts in Kuwait, was severely beaten by a Kuwaiti customer, allegedly for telling the latter the shop staff was on break.

CCTV footage of the incident circulated online on Tuesday, sparking fury from Egyptian social media users and prompting the foreign ministry to intervene in the matter. The video shows the Kuwaiti man repeatedly punching the victim in the face, hitting him with an object and kicking him in the head.

The Egyptian editors who visited the victim included editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Weekly Ezzat Ibrahim, editor-in-chief of daily Al-Masry Al-Youm Mohamed El-Sayed Saleh, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram's Siyassa (International Politics) magazine Ahmed Nagy Kamha, and the Cairo editor of Kuwiti Al-Seyassah newspaper Abdel Ghany Salah.

The men were in Kuwait City to cover a key regional summit by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.

Egypt's Immigration Minister Nabila Makram Ebeid is scheduled to arrive in Kuwait on Friday to visit Refaie.

Egypt's foreign ministry said Wednesday that Kuwaiti authorities have arrested the assailant and were listening to the victim's testimony about the incident.

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Steve Henry will take over command of the Midland Police Department on Jan. 1, and that is when the community will start the process of getting to know the citys new top law enforcement official.

A few Midland residents might have met Henry when  as a finalist for the position  he took part in a get-to-know-the-candidates forum. Others might have read a Reporter-Telegram question-and-answer with Henry in an ensuing edition. The Q-and-A took place when Henry was just a candidate.

However, Henrys arrival in Midland could create a change in mindset, because it appears his point of view on State Senate Bill 4 might be different than his predecessor, Price Robinson.

Senate Bill 4 was a measure that calls for local police departments to take a greater role in enforcing federal immigration laws. The Texas Legislature passed the bill during the 2017 legislative session. According to the Texas Tribune, as passed, SB 4 allows local law enforcement officers to question the immigration status of people they detain or arrest and punishes local government department heads and elected officials who dont cooperate with federal immigration detainers  requests by agents to turn over immigrants subject to possible deportation  in the form of jail time and penalties that exceed $25,000.

More for you Q&A with MPD's new police chief Steve Henry

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in late August halted several parts of the bill, according to the Tribune.

Robinson was on the record that SB 4 would create a distrust of law enforcement. He was part of the Legislative Committee for the Texas Police Chiefs Association, which signed a letter expressing united opposition to the so-called sanctuary cities bill, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Robinsons opposition to SB 4 was also in direct opposition to Midlands representatives in the Legislature  state Rep. Tom Craddick and state Sen. Kel Seliger, who voted for the legislation.

Local law enforcement should not be mandated to enforce federal immigration laws, Robinson told the Reporter-Telegram in a statement earlier this year.

Published reports show Henry supported Arizona Senate Bill 1070, an immigration measure that passed through the state legislature, and according to the Arizona Republic newspaper, was whittled away in subsequent federal court rulings that said immigration control was the business of federal government, not individual states.

The Phoenix paper reported all that remained of the law was two clauses in Section 2, known as the show me your papers clause.

Section 2(b) requires law-enforcement officers to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of people stopped for other reasons if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.

Section 2(d) allowed law enforcement to transport illegal immigrants to federal custody.

In September, the Casa Grande Dispatch reported that an alleged watchdog website, Judicial Watch, reported Henry was disqualified from a police chief job in Colorado, allegedly because he supported an Arizona law that required law enforcement to determine a persons immigration status. The city, according to the newspaper report, countered and stated immigration policy was not a factor in reviewing any of the positions candidates.

Henry was not quoted in that story. It was announced this week that Henry will not do interviews regarding his selection as Robinsons successor until he has had a chance to serve in (the position) and make a fair assessment. The city also turned down repeated requests to interview City Manager Courtney Sharp about Henrys selection.

As far as whether Henrys support for past legislation will change the approach of Midland law enforcement when it comes to state law, a city spokeswoman told the Reporter-Telegram, The police department is charged with enforcing the law, she said via email. In city government, the role of the Police Chief is to enforce the laws which the governing bodies enact. Exactly what shape that takes will be something the Chief starts evaluating in conjunction with City leadership once he arrives. The goal of law enforcement is to facilitate communities which are safe, thriving places free of crime. Residents can expect that any strategy or initiative pursued by the police department is in service of that goal.

She also said Senate Bill 4 and Henrys support for Senate Bill 1070 were not brought up in the interview process and that the line of questioning was focused on questions such as fostering a professional environment in the police department and experience in community partnership, not political stances.
A criminal court in Egypt's Giza has sentenced 13 members of the terrorist group Ajnad Misr to death after the country's top Muslim legal authority consented to the punishment, following their conviction for attacking security forces.

The court issued preliminary death sentences against the defendants in October and referred them the grand mufti, whose opinion is legally required in death penalty cases but is not binding.

The court on Thursday issued a final verdict after the mufti endorsed the sentencing recommendation, which can still be appealed within 60 days.

Ajnad Misr, or Soldiers of Egypt, emerged in early 2014, claiming responsibility for a number of attacks on security forces mainly in the Egyptian capital. The group was designated a terrorist organisation by the Egyptian government in the same year.

Its leader was killed by security forces in 2015, and many of its members are in jail.

The defendants were convicted of charges including murder of security forces, attempted murder, joining an outlawed group, and possessing firearms, for events that took place between 2013 and mid-2015.

Seventeen others of a total of 44 defendants in the same case have been sentenced to life imprisonment, while five were acquitted. The rest received between 5-15 years in jail.



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Russia's President Vladimir Putin will visit Egypt on Monday, the Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said on Thursday.

During the visit, Putin will have talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, on enhancing bilateral relations and cooperation on economic, political, trade, and energy files, the spokesman added.

"The visit comes per Egypt's and Russia's interest to enhance historical and strategic relations between both countries, the statement added.

The two presidents will also consult a number of regional files of common concern, the presidency said.

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President Trumps announcement is sparking controversy across the world, nation and even Central Florida.

Locals exress support, disagreement of Jerusalem announcement

Gov. Rick Scott expressed support of move



Muslim leaders worry decision will spark holy wars

The American Muslim Leadership Council feeling blindsided by such news.



Why now, why the move? I believe it is just another President Trump stunt at this point, said Imam Helmi Agha, American Muslim Leadership Council.

Jerusalem is an occupied territory, and therefore in order for us to move forward for any peace of process, the President pretty much put the death sentence on it.



But not everyone is upset, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando.



We support the Presidents action to recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. We have long supported that, the Jewish community is pretty unified on the point, said Ben Friedman, Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando. We recognize every country has the right to decide for itself where its capitol is. And its important that we as the United States, and an ally of Israel, honor that decision.



But the status of Jerusalem has always been a contentious point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



I am sure you have heard in other parts of the world, they have called for three days of anger. Where people will march and go out to the streets displaying their anger, and expressing their objections to such a move, said Imam Agha.

Anytime there is violence it is because the person who is violent makes the decision to be violent, and there are thousands of Israelis and Palestinians, who live in peace, who want to live in peace. And we shouldnt assume the worst of any of them, Friedman said.

Standing with the President is Governor Rick Scott who is currently in Israel on trade mission.



This is a great day, a day that President Trump is going to declare the capital of Israel to be Jerusalem, and complete the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. I stand with Israel, I stand with all the citizens of Israel. The state of Florida stands with all the citizens of Israel. This is an outstanding day for both Israel, and for the citizens of the United States of America, said Scott.

Violence locally has yet to be seen, but protests could happen in the days to come. The worry among Muslim leaders is that this announcement will cause extremist organizations to wage holy wars.
The State Attorney will seek the death penalty in the trial of the man accused of an Orlando homicide and thought to be connected to another on the same street.

The Death Penalty Review Panel unanimously recommended pursuing death in the case of Jimmy Gary Merritt, who faces a first-degree murder charge in the slaying of 64-year-old Benny Clyde Hallmark.

Firefighters found Hallmark's body Oct. 20 in a recliner in his home on the 3000 block of Lauressa Lane in Orlando. He had been shot to death.

While investigating that case, homicide detectives found a badly decomposed body wrapped in plastic and blankets under a pile of items in the garage across the street from the home Hallmark was found in.

Orlando Police identified that person as 60-year-old Billy Wayne Deaton.
The protesters, who numbered in the dozens, chanted slogans against the Israeli occupation and the US and in support of Palestine, Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Security forces cordoned off the area where the syndicate in located in downtown Cairo while the protest was underway.

The protesters chanted: "Generation after generation, we consider you an enemy, Israel, and "Jerusalem is Arab."

The syndicate had issued a statement earlier on Thursday condemning the decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the "racist Israeli state."

"The decision gravely undermines peace efforts and entirely destroys peace efforts in the Middle East, the statement read.

Egypt has also condemned the US decision to move the embassy and asked jointly with Bolivia and six other UN member nations for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the US decision, which Trump announced in a speech on Wednesday.

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Iran "seriously condemns" the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, the Islamic Republic said Wednesday in a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried by state media.

The move by the U.S. violates international resolutions, the statement said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States is trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel's security.

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Homelessness has shot up in California and elsewhere on the West Coast over the past two years, a federal report said Wednesday, as rising rents and other housing pressures forced more people from the margins onto the street.

Californias homeless population went up 14 percent, to 134,278  the most by far of any state, and representing 31 percent of all the individual homeless people in the U.S., according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. New York had the second-largest homeless population, at 89,503, a 4 percent increase.

Homelessness also went up significantly in Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle and Los Angeles, according to HUDs annual snapshot assessment of street populations nationwide. San Francisco was an exception  its homeless population has stayed virtually flat at about 7,499.

The federal counts were based on one-night tallies done since 2015. HUDs totals for 2016 included counts done that year and the year before.

Now Playing: Like so many displaced people, Ronald Weeks has lost everything he owns more than once. He is one of about 50 people living in a homeless encampment along Wood St. in Oakland. Recently, he has dedicated his time to building homes for the people in his community. His first one, which he built for himself, is nearly complete. Unfortunately, Weeks may lose it before he has the chance to move in. A developer has purchased the land on which it sits and has given him, and others, two weeks notice to vacate the property. Despite the setback Weeks remains hopeful. "I'm not going to give up", he says, "I'm not giving up on any of these people." He hopes to continue his mission of helping himself and others by building homes elsewhere. Video: San Francisco Chronicle

HUD said that throughout the United States, 553,742 people were homeless this year  a 1 percent increase over 2016, and the first time the national count has risen since 2010.

Officials caution that such counts are rough estimates at best, but that absent a more comprehensive system, they at least give indications of where work is needed.

And that work, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Wednesday, should be aimed at building more housing  especially along the West Coast and in big cities elsewhere. Overall, 30 states showed declines in homelessness and 20 showed increases.

If you eliminated those places (the large cities with increases), youd see a downward trend, Carson said in announcing the new tallies. But the commonality in those places is rising rents. Were going to have to really concentrate on, how do we answer the problem of affordable housing?

The most troublesome areas along the West Coast included Oakland, where homelessness has gone up 39 percent since 2015, and Los Angeles, where the street count increased 26 percent, to 55,188, since 2016.

The biggest driver in the increase in homelessness across the nation was in the unsheltered population, meaning those who are not in shelters, rehabilitation programs or other emergency beds. That went up 9 percent nationally, offsetting improvements in the sheltered counts.

A Chronicle examination of homeless counts throughout California in the summer found that surging housing prices and rents, and stagnant wages, were driving indigence up not just in most urban areas, but in rural communities as well.

Matthew Doherty, head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, said Wednesday that the rising rents and other housing pressures are the big contributors to homelessness in the most troubled regions, such as California.

Limited supply and skyrocketing rents are impacting our ability to see such progress in some parts of the country, Doherty said as he announced the new numbers with Carson.

He told The Chronicle that San Franciscos more encouraging count could be attributed to the citys consolidation of efforts on supportive housing and services over the past year, through the creation of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

The head of that department, Jeff Kositsky, said it was a relief not to be singled out as a problem area. In particular, he noted that the citys unsheltered proportion of the homeless population is at 58 percent, compared with the states overall proportion of 68 percent.

San Francisco has often been pointed out as the city thats struggling with various issues, and Im glad that now were not showing up on the lists as having the biggest increases, Kositsky said. This isnt cause for celebration. Well celebrate when the number is zero.

But its an indication that our work is working, and that Mayor (Ed) Lees vision of creating a single department to better amplify the citys previous efforts is showing results.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com
Here is the full text of US President Donald Trump's Wednesday speech on Jerusalem, in which he recognized the disputed city as Israel's capital:

When I came into office, I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city -- and so importantly -- is Israel's capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law's waiver, refusing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.

Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace.

Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time.

Nevertheless, the record is in.

After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace.

It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem -- the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.

Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.

Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world.

Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.



However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done.

That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.



In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement.

We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.

We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement.

Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.

In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.



Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With today's action, I reaffirm my administration's longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region.

There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation.

This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable.

Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach.

So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.

I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud, and diverse, vibrant and strong.

But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance, and terror.



Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.

It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations, and people, to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate -- not violence.

And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities.

And finally, I ask the leaders of the region -- political and religious; Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish and Christian and Muslim -- to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians. And God bless the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you.



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A San Antonio man who operated websites selling camping and outdoor-sporting gear that racked up hundreds of consumer complaints has landed in the states cross hairs.

Attorney General Ken Paxton last week filed a civil lawsuit against Robert Markum Jr., who has has done business as Outdoors Online and campingingandfishingoutlet.com, alleging he sold counterfeit Yeti products and didnt deliver items to consumers altogether.

Efforts to locate Markum for comment were unsuccessful. The lawsuit lists an address for him on Wilderness Paw in San Antonio, but he apparently no longer lives there.

RELATED: Yeti Coolers sues competitors Axis Cups, Bayou Ice Boxes

Both the OutdoorsOnline.com and campingandfishingoutlet.com websites are no longer in operation, the attorney general said in its lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the attorney general declined to comment. The suit was filed in Bexar County district court.

The Better Business Bureau issued a warning about both websites earlier this year after receiving hundreds of complaints and dozens of negative reviews from consumers in 44 states. The BBB never received a response from the businesses despite multiple phone calls and messages, it said in a statement in January.

Since that statement, BBB regional director Miguel Segura said it received 768 additional complaints about Outdoors Online.

RELATED: After settlement with Yeti, Rtic announces redesigned coolers, tumblers

Some consumers detailed problems they encountered with the websites in sworn statements filed with Paxtons lawsuit.

Lori McGettrick of Washington state said in an August affidavit that she spent $40 for a 30-ounce Yeti cup on campingandfishingoutlet.com. She later returned to buy a 20-ounce Yeti cup for $30.

More than two months after her first order, she said, received a package shipped from China that contained the 30-ounce cup.

After I opened the package and inspected the cup, I was immediately suspicious, she said in her statement. She then compared the cup with a Yeti cup that belonged to a friend. I was certain the cup I had received was not an authentic Yeti, she said.

RELATED: Whataburger releases official YETI Rambler Tumbler

McGettrick requested a refund for both cups but never received a response. I have been unsuccessful in recovering the money from my credit card company, she added.

Yeti Coolers, based in Austin, was alerted to the outdoorsonline.com website and purchased a Yeti-branded 20-ounce pink tumbler. Jeni Zuercher, Yetis global brand protection manager, declared the item counterfeit, according to a declaration she gave in July. She noted the item was of inferior quality and had misspelled labeling and incorrect markings.

A call to the company was not immediately returned.

Paxton sued Markum under the states Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The attorney general is asking the court to impose civil penalties of up to $20,000 for each violation and to issue an order directing Markum to turn over any ill-gotten gains.

RELATED: Yeti puts big dollar signs on bags and buckets

Segura of the BBB said consumers should be be alert for fake websites that target shoppers through advertisements on social media sites. Outdoors Online advertised on Facebook, the lawsuit says.

If youre already looking for an item, they can ping you and start targeting ads to you. Theyll offer a steep discount, he said.

News researcher Misty Harris contributed to this article.

pdanner@express-news.net
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More than 1,600 Houston property owners who flooded during Hurricane Harvey likely will be forced to elevate their homes if they want to continue living there.

The city's Public Works Department is preparing to notify property owners in floodplains that their structures have been declared "substantially damaged" and will require additional repairs to comply with current building codes. For most, that will mean physically raising their homes, a pricey upgrade that can cost well more than $150,000.

The 1,611 letters that start going out this month will be the "first batch" for properties identified as damaged so severely that repairs would cost more than 50 percent of the market value of the structure, not including the land.

The department said 30,523 structures that lie within Houston's 100-year floodplain or floodway took on some flooding during Harvey. The substantial damage designation applies only to properties in these areas, which are spread throughout the city.

Now Playing: Aftermath: Hurricane Harvey floods Houston's Meyerland neighborhood Video: Houston Chronicle

The department does not have a final tally of properties that will be classified that way.

"Houston Public Works is still working with FEMA on that," the department said in an email, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

While some Houstonians who receive the letters may already have been planning to raise their homes, others may not have the resources to elevate.

More Information By the numbers 30,523: Number of structures in Houston's 100-year floodplain or floodway that flooded during Harvey. 1,611: Letters in the first batch of notices alerting property owners their structure is "substantially damaged" and may need to be raised. $65-$70: Typical cost per square foot to lift a property out of the floodplain. Source: Houston Public Works Department, Arkitektura Development Inc. See More Collapse

"The expense is tremendous," said Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Cohen, who represents District C, which includes Meyerland, Braeswood Place and other affected neighborhoods. "It's difficult, but there are going to be decisions that have to be made."

All property types

The properties in the first batch determined to have substantial damage are all single-family homes, but the designation could apply to any type of property, according to Public Works.

FEMA said it would not disclose the affected homes' addresses due to privacy laws.

Longtime Meyerland resident Ed Wolff received his letter Tuesday. He said he requested the substantial-damage designation because he needed it to be eligible for a mitigation loan from the Small Business Association to elevate his house, which flooded for the third time in three years.

The cost to repair or replace the home is 70 percent of the structure's value, according to the letter.

All properties declared substantially damaged will be flagged by the city's permitting staff. Requests for building permits will require evidence the home is compliant with the city's elevation standard, which is 12 inches above the base flood elevation in a 100-year floodplain, or 18 inches in a floodway, the letter explains.

"The letter of substantial damage is a tool for the city of Houston to ensure people are not repairing houses that really shouldn't be repaired," said Wolff, who works in real estate and has been consulting with city officials on Harvey-related matters.

Wolff plans to elevate his house six feet, three feet above the water line from Harvey.

The cost to elevate the 3,500-square-foot structure, which was built in 1965, will be more than $270,000.

After everything is done, the project will still be cheaper than building a new house, he said.

Some homeowners may be eligible for up to $30,000 in federal funds to help with the cost of raising the home.

Appeal, buyout options

Arkitektura Development Inc., a Kemah-based firm that specializes in elevating houses, said it typically costs between $65 and $70 per square foot to raise a home.

Since Harvey, the company has taken orders to elevate houses in neighborhoods including Meyerland, Linkwood, Westbury, Bellaire, Maplewood, Nottingham Forest, Willow Meadows and Braes Heights, said owner Phillip Contreras.

In most cases the homeowners have flooded at least twice. Some have been inundated as many as five times.

"They're all saying the same thing," Contreras said. "They're like, 'We're done with this.' "

The ZIP codes with 90 or more substantially damaged properties in the first batch of letters are 77096, 77099, 77089, 77078, 77092 and 77339, according to initial data.

Homeowners have the option to appeal the substantial-damage designation.

They can submit their appeal to the city's Floodplain Management Office with documentation showing the structure is not substantially damaged. That can include a private appraisal of the home to determine the pre-damage market value or an elevation certificate demonstrating that the structure meets the requirement that the lowest floor is 12 inches above the base flood elevation and other floodplain requirements.

Otherwise, Public Works suggests contacting the Harris County Flood Control District about requirements or eligibility for a buyout.
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The restaurant known for its larger-than-life menus and questionable taste in interior design is gifting lucky customers with free slices of cheesecake Wednesday.

Cheesecake Factory is giving away an eye-popping 10,000 cheesecake slices on what it's calling the "Day of 10,000 Slices."

The promo is not without some limitations, of course. The free slices of cheesecake are only being included with Cheesecake Factory orders via delivery service DoorDash.

READ ALSO: The Cheesecake Factory has embraced being 'one of the most horrible-looking places around'

Now Playing: If youve eaten at the Cheesecake Factory with a group of friends and split the bill, you may want to check your receipt. Veuer's Natasha Abellard (@NatashaAbellard) has the story. Video: Buzz 60

Customers who know and use the promo code ("10000SLICES") with DoorDash that day will find themselves with a sliver of cream cheese goodness.

The Cheesecake Factory could certainly use a bit of good PR these days, after the chain was recently accused of recommending high tips on its bills. A lawsuit was filed against the company in August that suggested that when bills were split amongst a group, the suggested tip amounts remained the same on each receipt despite the smaller bill amount.

If you're looking to get your own free slice of cheesecake, keep in mind the promo won't work for takeout or dining-in  it's solidly a delivery-only promo. The restaurant chain is also offering free delivery for the week, no promo code needed.

To check to see if Cheesecake Factory delivers in your area, head over to thecheesecakefactory.com/delivery.
Albany

There's plenty to dislike about the Republican tax reform plan, which is almost certain to become law before the end of the year.

It will probably exacerbate income inequality. It should do more to help working-class families. It seems designed to help GOP donors more than workaday voters. It will worsen the deficit.

But the tax plan is producing one unexpected benefit: It is causing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to lose his mind  and revealing even more about the nastiness of his character.

Rather than simply debating the tax plan, our loquacious governor called the House members from New York who voted for it "modern-day Benedict Arnolds." They are guilty of treason, Cuomo claims.

Off with their heads!

The governor also said that even the New York Republicans, including the North Country's Elise Stefanik, who voted against the bill should resign.

Resign? A real head-scratcher, that one. Maybe Cuomo would be satisfied if Stefanik demonstrated the fathomless depth of her opposition by chaining herself to a podium. Or went on a hunger strike.

That would show the bastards. Think about it, Elise.

Last week, in an conference call with newspaper editorial writers, Cuomo went lower: He said the tax plan is an attempt to, get this, "rape and pillage" New Yorkers.

More Information Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse

C'mon. That's pretty ugly, even for our tetchy governor.

Cuomo is guilty of far more than the usual political hyperbole with this stuff. He's slipping into screeching hysteria with a side of character assassination.

If you can't beat them, demonize them. That's modern politics.

"It's not surprising, because this has been his pattern," said John Faso, the Republican congressman from Kinderhook. "But it is disappointing."

Don't flee in fear. Faso isn't one of the Huns trying to pillage New York. Like Stefanik, he voted against the tax plan. I asked him if he's taking Cuomo's advice and hammering out a resignation letter.

"It isn't in the mail just yet," Faso said.

There are two GOP tax plans, one from the House and the other from the Senate. Both would eliminate the tax deduction for state income tax payments and cap the deduction for property taxes at $10,000.

It's the elimination of those so-called SALT deductions that has Cuomo in a tizzy. To listen to the governor and some special-interest groups, you would think that getting rid of the deduction will plunge New York into a dystopian nightmare.

In reality, the change is likely to affect only relatively high-income homeowners concentrated in the suburbs of New York City  some of the wealthiest counties in the country. Generally speaking, those are people who can afford to pay more.

Meanwhile, many middle-income earners in the Capital Region are likely to see a tax cut under the plan, even though the reform can rightly be criticized, at least nationally, for helping the wealthy more.

According to E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a family earning the median Capital Region income of $83,100 annually will save about $1,900 under the House version of tax reform.

Hmm. I wonder if those families will feel pillaged?

The most obvious negative local impact, McMahon added, will be the hit taken by mansion dwellers in places like Loudonville and Slingerlands, who will see their property values decline when the property-tax deduction disappears.

I don't think anyone will be crying for the mansion owners.

That isn't to say there won't be important statewide ramifications. Higher tax bills could cause more big earners to pull a Golisano and decamp for low-tax states, fueling an ongoing trend and resulting in a grim scenario for the state budget.

That's Faso's primary worry. He wishes Cuomo had partnered with the state's congressional Republicans to defeat the elimination of SALT deductions. Instead, the governor went grumpy toddler on them.

"Stomping your feet doesn't accomplish anything," Faso said. "He demonized the people who voted for the bill. And he demonized people who voted against the bill."

As I said, the dueling tax plans have significant faults. They should include a larger child tax credit, and a smaller tax cut for businesses. It's terrifying that Republicans, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility, have abandoned caring about the deficit.

But the essence of Cuomo's argument, seven years into his tenure, is that tax reform will have an outsized effect on New York because the state's taxes are still so burdensome  arguably higher than anywhere in the country.

Well, whose fault is that?
A group of conservative students at UC Berkeley, frustrated that administrators have so far denied them the privileges of a recognized student organization, has asked a federal judge to intervene in the campus dispute.

The students want the judge to force the campus to rescind its decision that the Young Americans for Liberty, a local chapter of a national group, is so similar to the Cal Libertarians, an existing student group, that the newcomers cant be formally recognized until both of them discuss the possibility of merging.

On Monday, the students responded by suing UC President Janet Napolitano, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and other campus officials in U.S. District Court in Oakland.

The students lawyers, based in Washington, D.C., argue in their lawsuit that without formal recognition for Young Americans for Liberty, the students will lose campus fees that recognized groups receive, wont be able to meet on campus, and will be barred from sponsoring guest speakers.

The suit says UC Berkeley has about 1,000 recognized student groups and that the decision to deny or delay recognition for Young Americans for Liberty violates the students constitutional rights to free speech, association and equal protection. The suit accuses UC Berkeley of favoring liberal groups over conservative ones and says many of those appear to overlap: Cal Berkeley Democrats and Students for Hillary, for example, and the Queer Student Union and the Queer Alliance & Resource Center.

UC Berkeley categorically rejects the idea that it considers any groups political beliefs when deciding its status, according to a statement released by the campus in response to the lawsuit. It has never happened in the past, and will never happen in the future, said the statement from spokesman Dan Mogulof.

As an example, he said, the campus recently recognized the Berkeley Conservative Society.

As for the status of Young Americans for Liberty, no final decision has been made, as the process is not yet complete, the statement said. Because the groups application was very similar to the other groups, all they need to do is confer with the Libertarian organization and decide if they want to combine or remain separate.

Attorneys for the students did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit comes as free speech on campus has emerged as a divisive issue across the country, particularly in the era of President Trump. Conservative students say they are being sidelined on the nations campuses, a claim championed in September by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

At UC Berkeley, the dispute had explosive  and expensive  consequences this year. In February, masked rioters caused $100,000 in damage on campus when they stopped Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing provocateur, from delivering his planned speech at the invitation of the Berkeley College Republicans. The group sued the university in April, claiming the UC Berkeley administration was biased against conservative students after it restricted when and where another right-wing pundit, Ann Coulter, could speak on campus. She never showed.

A judge sidelined that lawsuit in September, days after Yiannopoulos returned to campus for 15 minutes  and prompted UC Berkeley to spend $800,000 on security.

In their suit, Young Americans for Liberty claims they have suffered irreparable harm and are asking for unspecified monetary damages, including attorneys fees.

The suit asks the judge to halt the practice of denying recognition to student groups that are too similar to existing groups, and prevent the campus from collecting student fees until it produces an exhaustive list of criteria for distributing such fees.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
Hurricane Harvey's winds and rains have passed, but the destruction it left has not.

Displaced and jobless is how Hurricane Harvey left a single mother, Samantha Vejsiri, in Cypress. Vejsiri and her two sons, 3-year-old Chandler and 13-year-old Ethen, spent five days trapped in her second-story apartment before she and her sons were rescued, but she lost her job and her home because of the flood.

Hurricane Harvey prevented Vejsiri from getting into work, so she lost her job, which led to her losing her apartment due to not being able to pay her rent.

"I lost everything, and when it is a natural disaster it is out of everyone's control," Vejsiri said. "Due to road closures and not being able to leave my apartment, I lost my job after not being able to attend (work) in a matter of eight days. I filed for unemployment."

Vejsiri and her sons are now in their new home, funded with a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Section 8 voucher, thanks to assistance from HUD and its partner agencies.

In late August, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, announced HUD will speed federal disaster assistance to the State of Texas and provide support to homeowners and low-income renters forced from their homes due to Hurricane Harvey.

After Hurricane Harvey, Vejsiri received FEMA temporary assistance to live in a hotel. She has a new job, but still did not have a home for her family to live until late November. The family stayed in a hotel for 35 days.

"We had a HUD Housing authority from a different state that provided us 50 House Choice vouchers from HUD, which is a permanent subsidy," Anthony Landecker said, HUD Disaster Response Lead. "I went to bat with her and worked her through applying for a home. In the meantime, she was fighting to get FEMA temporary sheltering assistance, which is the TSA Hotel Program. She finally had that, so at least she could go into a hotel with her boys."

The single-mother of two cried when the HUD lead at the Austin Joint Field Operation called her to inform her that she and her sons could move into their new home on Nov. 30.

Landecker's disaster team, along with working with various community partners, have put effort into 203 families to help locate housing, provide vouchers, work with landlords, and work with Red Cross to receive unmet needs assistance for security deposits, utility, and transportation.

"HUD has helped the entire way through this hard time. I was exhausted mentally and physically," Vejsiri said. "Without their assistance and guidance, I don't know where I would be. I have learned that there is a true meaning to natural disaster. You lose hope, and you are scared mostly after the fact and don't realize how it truly affected you."

HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination, and transform the way HUD does business.

"A lot of people are suffering right now and a lot of people need help, and there are resources out there," Landecker said. "It just takes a little bit of effort and outreach to get that help that they may need."

The director of the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center in Katy made HUD aware of the displaced mother's case. Upon learning about the single-mother's case, HUD then worked with the Plymouth, Michigan housing authority to secure Samantha a HUD section 8 voucher, which could be used in the Houston area.

"There have been 70 different Housing Choice vouchers. There has been a majority of the families that we have provided this Housing Choice Voucher to that have come from Houston," Landecker said. "We continue to work with the Homeless Coalition of Houston to make sure our efforts are aligning and any pre-disaster, pending, or post-disaster homeless families are taken care of and provided options and housing solutions."

HUD is assisting the State of Texas and local governments in re-allocating existing federal resources toward disaster relief, granting immediate foreclosure relief, making mortgage insurance available, making insurance available for both mortgages and home rehabilitation, and offering Section 108 loan guarantee assistance.

"We are working directly with the Houston Housing Authority to ensure that current Section Eight participants that have been displaced are getting expedited inspections and expedited reissued vouchers," Landecker said. "If they find properties, we are working with the Housing Authority to make sure they are getting inspected so that the landlords are getting the payments on time. We continue to work with Harvey survivors who are coming into the Disaster Resource Center with alternate housing options."

HUD contacted the Texas Homeless Network to find a source for the displaced mother's $1,200 security deposit. they The Houston Coalition for the Homeless agreed to supply the funds. The housing department also contacted FEMA to make sure the mother and her children's temporary hotel assistance was not cut off until she moved. After contacting FEMA, the department then contacted the Harris County Housing Authority to request an inspector be scheduled as soon as possible so the family could move in before Dec. 1.

"I feel like my life has come back together, and I have faith now," Vejsiri said. "I didn't think that I would ever get back on my feet due to a disaster that I had no control over. I lost my apartment, job, and I have two children. It was a different kind of rock bottom."
The State Department will immediately act on President Donald Trump's order to prepare to relocate the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday.

"The State Department will immediately begin the process to implement this decision by starting the preparations to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," Tillerson said in a statement shortly after Trump's landmark announcement.

Trump decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has sparked warnings that it could unleash more violence in the Middle East and Tillerson said his department had taken measures to protect American nationals in the region.

"The safety of Americans is the State Department's highest priority, and in concert with other federal agencies, we've implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions," said Tillerson, who is on a visit to Germany.

Although Trump's decision has been met with widespread criticism in the region, the top US diplomat said that the US president had only acted after widespread consultation with allies.

"We have consulted with many friends, partners, and allies in advance of the president making his decision," he said.

"We firmly believe there is an opportunity for a lasting peace," he added.

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BUENOS AIRES - A federal judge on Thursday indicted Argentina's former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on treason charges and sought her arrest over allegations that she covered up possible Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

In court documents, Judge Claudio Bonadio accused Fernandez of obfuscating the Iranian role in the attack, which killed 85 people, in exchange for a potentially lucrative trade deal. The court requested the lifting of her immunity from prosecution, a protection she enjoys as a sitting senator.

Underscoring the seriousness of the charges, authorities conducted raids linked to the case Thursday, arresting three of Fernandez's former aides and associates. Hector Timerman, her former foreign minister, was placed under house arrest.

The charges stem from an investigation initially conducted by Alberto Nisman, a crusading prosecutor who accused Fernandez of a coverup in 2015 and later was found dead in the bathroom of his apartment with a bullet in his right temple.

Although rare, the lifting of parliamentary protection is not unprecedented. In October, the National Congress voted to lift the protection afforded to her former planning minister, Julio De Vido, who was facing charges of fraud and corruption.

Fernandez, a Peronist, served as president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and once formed part of a cadre of left-leaning leaders in Latin America, including Venezuela's late Hugo Chavez. She has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing while in office, and on Thursday she lashed out at the fresh charges.

"This has nothing to do with justice or democracy," Fernandez told reporters in Buenos Aires. "There's no cause, no crime, no motive. There was a judgment without cause. God knows it, the government knows it, President [Mauricio] Macri knows it, too."

There is little precedent for prosecuting treason in Argentina. Local media outlets have reported that the country's only previously applied charge of treason dates to 1936, when Maj. Guillermo Mac Hannaford was accused of selling information to Bolivia and Paraguay.

And although Fernandez has only about a dozen hardcore supporters in the Argentine Senate, observers say it does not appear probable that the chamber will revoke her immunity. Some argue that such a move could risk turning her into a political martyr for a left-wing Peronist movement that has been losing traction in Argentina since Macri took office in 2015.

The charges come a month after a new police report reignited the Nisman case, which has captivated Argentina. His mysterious death came days after he alleged that Fernandez and Timerman had colluded to shield Iran's role in the car-bomb attack on the AMIA Jewish community center. In 2005, Nisman concluded that Ibrahim Hussein Berro, a Hezbollah operative from Lebanon with Iranian backing, had carried out the act of terrorism.

An initial report concluded that Nisman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But a new police report obtained by the Associated Press in November listed key evidence that suggested foul play. Nisman's nasal septum, for instance, was broken, and he had suffered blows to his hip and elsewhere. A strong anesthetic was found in his body.

Before his death, Nisman reportedly wiretapped officials and uncovered information in connection with a "Memorandum of Understanding" that Argentina signed with Iran on Jan. 27, 2013, in Ethiopia. He argued that it outlined a plan to "collaborate with Iran on its goal to accelerate and support nuclear development" in exchange for an oil-for-grain trade deal and a finding by Argentina that the Iranians were innocent in the 1994 attack, official court documents said.

However, the timing of Fernandez's indictment also focuses the spotlight on Bonadio, the judge. He is under investigation over allegations of money laundering and illicit enrichment, with some critics suggesting that he may be targeting Fernandez as a smokescreen.

"The higher his profile, the more involved he is in politically sensitive cases and the less able anyone will be to bring him down for corruption," said Mark Jones, a fellow of political science at Rice University's Baker Institute. "He'll be able to deflect them as being politically motivated."

- - -

Faiola reported from Miami.
Alabama Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones and his allies are trying to finalize plans to bring in several high-profile current or former African American elected officials, including Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., to campaign for him this weekend, as he wages an aggressive final push to turn out black voters in a Tuesday special election with national stakes.

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., has been leading the effort to organize a slate of Sunday campaign events including a rally in Birmingham that is expected include her, Booker and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., according to Sewell's spokesman, Chris MacKenzie and a Jones campaign official.

A third Democrat, who was familiar with Booker's plans and was granted anonymity to speak candidly, confirmed that he intends to campaign for Jones in Alabama.

Sewell is also trying to cement plans for former Massachusetts Democratic governor Deval Patrick, Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., and Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., to campaign for Jones on Sunday, MacKenzie and the campaign official said.

The specific events and attendees are not yet final, MacKenzie and the Jones official said. They hope to have the details ironed out by Friday.

"Terri Sewell has invited some of her friends and colleagues down to help and we look forward to the weekend," said Giles Perkins, the chairman of the Jones campaign.

Jones has been trying to piece together a delicate coalition built on support from core Democrats and some crossover votes from Republicans not drawn to their party nominee, Roy Moore. Crucial to that plan is strong turnout by African-Americans, who make up about a quarter of Alabama's electorate.

In recent weeks, however, African-American elected officials, community leaders and voters have expressed concern that there has has not been much energy in the black community for Jones or the special election.

Recent polls show a competitive contest between Jones and Moore. While Moore has come under criticism from Senate GOP leaders amid allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s, he has the support of President Trump and the Republican National Committee.

Moore has denied the allegations he has faced.

Trump will travel to Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, which is just across the state's border with Alabama. There, he could encourage Alabamians to turn out for Moore.

Aides to Booker, Patrick, Richmond, Bishop and Lewis did not immediately comment.

- - -

The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe contributed to this report.
OJAI, Calif. - The flames came from all sides, tearing across cliffs and roaring down mountains, burning through homes and engulfing cars. Entire communities were evacuated, forcing people to grab what they could and flee as raging wildfires spread rapidly across Southern California on Wednesday.

Yet even as they scrambled for shelter from the choking smoke and flames that shrouded idyllic communities in apocalyptic imagery, many worried about the dangers still to come. Officials warned that the wildfire threat could increase through the end of the week, with the same conditions fueling the fires forecast to intensify.

The wildfires in Ventura and Los Angeles counties have forced tens of thousands to vacate and have destroyed hundreds of structures, emptying homes, hospitals, schools and multimillion-dollar mansions alike. In Ventura County, the Thomas Fire burned across 90,000 acres on Wednesday evening, spreading through an area roughly the size of Detroit. Los Angeles County faced comparatively smaller blazes in the Rye and Creek fires, both of which erupted Tuesday north of downtown Los Angeles.

A new blaze, known as the Skirball Fire, began burning Wednesday morning in Bel Air, shutting down Interstate 405 - one of the country's busiest freeways - and forcing evacuations across the posh neighborhood and areas near the University of California at Los Angeles campus. Officials confronted that growing fire while still facing the Creek Fire, which had crept into the city.

"Our plan here is to try to stop this fire before it becomes something bigger, so that we don't have to have . . . a two-front war," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, D, said at a news briefing. "These are days that break your heart. But these are also days that show the resilience of our city."

That resilience could face serious tests in coming days. The National Weather Service said that increased winds are expected overnight into Thursday, which could make Southern California vulnerable to new fires and "extreme fire behavior," with conditions potentially worsening throughout the day. The dangerous fire conditions have been fueled by Santa Ana winds, dry weather and parched vegetation - the combination enabling wildfires that have grown wildly.

Not far from the Skirball Fire, residents and visitors alike were weighing whether to stay. Two roommates who live in the Brentwood area packed their bags and were "just hanging tight," said one of the men, Wes Luttrell, 23. Montevis Price, who was visiting Los Angeles from Miami, promptly checked out of his hotel when he saw the blaze.

"I saw the little mountain on fire, and that was it," Price said. "You can prepare for a hurricane, but you can't prepare for something that happens all of a sudden."

California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, declared states of emergency in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to the fires, and his office said the blazes threatened thousands of homes. By Wednesday afternoon, officials said no deaths have been recorded as a result of the blazes, but some areas were not yet accessible.

Day appeared as night along the coast, the smoke-masked sun casting a deep red light. Flames burned down chaparral-covered cliffs toward Highway 101 along a four-mile stretch in Ventura County, with the blaze blowing over in nighttime winds from the valleys to the east.

Officials said the wildfire that forced evacuations of portions of Ojai, a popular winter retreat with about 8,000 residents, began burning toward Santa Barbara County on Wednesday.

For some, the flames had already consumed nearly everything they had.

The fire began beneath David and Theresa Brock's house in upper Ojai about sundown Monday, jumping the road and sprinting up toward them. But a shifting wind pushed it away within a few hundred yards, and the couple believed their home of 12 years was safe. They stayed up through the night, smoke covering the grounds around them.

"I thought we were doing great, real great," said Brock, a state-certified operator of public water systems.

About 4 a.m. Tuesday, the winds shifted again. The fire raced toward them, covering five miles in 15 minutes. Brock turned to Theresa and said, "Let's get outside in the dirt." The couple keeps cattle, and the wide grazed area outside their hilltop home acted as a natural fire break.

"At least out here," he told her, "there's nothing to catch fire."

As the couple watched the flames approach, a transformer exploded adjacent to their home, igniting a pepper tree. Sparks were sucked into their attic.

"Then we saw smoke coming out of the vent," Brock, 57, said. "And I thought, 'Well, that's it, we can't save it now.' "

Brock pulled his Ford Torino and tractor out of the garage, keeping them in the fire break, and with the help of firefighters, managed to pull a few items out of his house.

"But what do you take?" he said. He chose a few family photos, but the cedar chest where Theresa kept the family documents burned.

"Then I just stood back and watched," he said. "You see these people on TV who have lost everything, and you can't imagine it, until it's you. Now I am that person. I have the clothes on my back."

Others felt the fear of what could come next.

"I'm scared," said Beth Dorenkamp, a 25-year Ojai resident. "I saw the fire start at the east end of town, like a plume, but I never thought it would end up like this."

Dorenkamp and Kathe Hanson huddled on a chilly morning at the Riverview Ranch in the Meiners Oaks neighborhood, which had been threatened but spared Tuesday as the Thomas Fire grew. The women keep horses at the ranch and spent a mostly sleepless Tuesday night keeping watch over them.

"We all have trailers ready to go, but all of the roads are closed," said Hanson, masked against the falling ash, holding the reins of her horse, Mozart. "So we're sleeping in the barn and waiting to see what happens."

Around the property, Ford F-250 and Toyota Tundra pickups were hitched to trailers, ready to evacuate some of the 80 horses stabled there. The escape route had narrowed significantly, though, with some of the roads north into Santa Barbara County threatened by fire.

Word of mouth appeared the most common form of neighborhood newsgathering, with cellular service spotty in the best of times in these high canyons, the power unstable because of the fire and the Internet out in parts of the city.

The Carver family fled their home in Meiners Oak on Tuesday morning with flames less than half a mile from their property.

"We'd been up all night watching it," said Cindy Carver, who moved to Ojai about eight years ago with her husband, Thomas, and their two children, Caleb and Danika.

Preparations began before dawn.

Thomas, a family therapist, let the turkeys, goats and chickens the family raises loose in their pens. He and Cindy grabbed the passports, a couple wedding photos, a little cash and jewelry and corralled the kids into the camper. They also grabbed Hondo and Jetta, two rescue dogs, their four cats and 10 kittens.

"There was a point where I just thought I was going to lose it, and then we all said, 'It's just stuff,' " Thomas said.

Caleb, 12, and Danika, 8, attend Ojai Valley School, which was closed, like the others in the area. The upper campus was damaged Tuesday, when a girls dormitory burned down along with several other buildings.

But the students had been evacuated early, a decision that Cindy Carver praised.

Caleb Carver said he was amazed that as they left home, everything around him seemed to be taking place as it did any other day - a man riding his bicycle through the smoke, a hiker on a nearby nature preserve trail.

"How are people so normal about this?" he said.

---

Berman reported from Washington. Noah Smith and William Dauber in Los Angeles; and Eli Rosenberg and Jason Samenow in Washington contributed to this report.
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers clashed Thursday in Jerusalem, Ramallah and other places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with some demonstrators burning American flags and posters of President Donald Trump a day after he sided with Israel by announcing U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

But at nightfall, after the skirmishes died down, the region was bracing for worse.

More than 100 people were injured Thursday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent, despite the deployment of several extra battalions of Israeli troops. The critical test comes Friday, when larger demonstrations are expected as crowds leave mosques after the weekly noon prayers.

In Gaza, the Islamist movement Hamas urged its followers to ignite a third intifada, or uprising, against Israel. The Palestinian Authority called for a general strike. Shops were shuttered in Jerusalem's Old City.

Trump's announcement Wednesday that he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his declaration that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital reversed a decades-old U.S. policy. But the status of the city - holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews and struggled over for millennia - is a deeply charged issue that resonates beyond the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

The backlash rippled across the wider region, with hundreds of demonstrators gathering outside the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Jordan holding placards reading "Decision Rejected" and "No to U.S. arrogance." Criticisms continued to flow in from governments in the Middle East, Europe and beyond, with U.S. friends and adversaries alike voicing disapproval and alarm.

Turkey's president predicted that the region would ignite in a "ring of fire," while European leaders reiterated their opposition to the policy, and 86-year-old Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu declared, "God is weeping."

In Israel, the decision has been widely welcomed by politicians, who see it as long-overdue recognition of reality and of their historic claim to the city. Palestinians say it is a dangerous breach of U.N. resolutions and international law that ignores their right to a future capital in East Jerusalem.

On the edge of the Palestinian city of Ramallah on Thursday, Israeli forces fired dozens of rounds of tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of Palestinian protesters airing their anger over Trump's statement, moving quickly to disperse the crowd.

"This will be bad," said an ambulance driver in Ramallah as young men burned tires and pelted the soldiers with stones. Emergency vehicles ferried the injured away.

In some places, notably Gaza, protesters set fire to images of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to U.S. and Israeli flags.

"Donald Trump said Jerusalem is for Israel, and I tell him, 'No way, go to hell,' " said a 43-year-old woman in the crowd, a traditional Palestinian scarf wrapped around her face. "Jerusalem is for Palestine, forever," said the woman, who declined to give her name.

"Trump made the wrong decision," said Sarah Louay, 15, who was making her way toward the demonstration carrying a Palestinian flag. "We will raise our voices for Jerusalem."

Clashes also erupted in East Jerusalem and at the border fence between Israel and Gaza. In Bethlehem, tear gas filled streets that were strung with festive lights for Christmas. At one of the main checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah, soldiers fired sponge bullets at children throwing stones from behind metal trash containers.

The Israeli military reported that at least three projectiles were fired at its territory Thursday from Gaza but that two fell short and the third caused no damage.

In response, Israeli jets and tanks struck two Hamas military sites in Gaza, the Israeli army said in a statement. The army "holds Hamas responsible for hostile activity . . . against Israel from the Gaza Strip," the statement said.

How long the demonstrations will last remains unclear. Some Palestinians said they felt emboldened after a perceived victory last summer that followed two weeks of protests over metal detectors installed at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called for a new uprising in the Palestinian territories and declared Friday a day of rage.

"Tomorrow should be a day of rage and the beginning of a broad movement for an uprising that I call the intifada of freedom of Jerusalem," he said.

He called on the Palestinian Authority to halt security coordination with Israel and "enable the resistance in the occupied West Bank to respond to this blatant aggression."

Israel's army said it was preparing for an increase in violence in the coming days and had increased its strength in the West Bank, reinforcing its combat intelligence and territorial defense units. Israeli police said three people were arrested in connection with "disturbances" near Damascus Gate, a main portals for Jerusalem's Old City.

U.S. institutions in the region were also preparing for possible violent fallout. Reuters reported that the State Department sent a note to diplomats at the embassy in Tel Aviv with talking points to convey to Israeli officials.

"While I recognize that you will publicly welcome this news, I ask that you restrain your official response," Reuters quoted the document, dated Dec. 6, as saying. "We expect there to be resistance to this news in the Middle East and around the world. We are still judging the impact this decision will have on U.S. facilities and personnel overseas."

The State Department restricted travel for U.S. government employees in Jerusalem and the West Bank, warning U.S. citizens to avoid crowded areas.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the U.S. move would galvanize the Palestinian struggle for independence.

After Trump's announcement, Abbas said the United States could no longer be a fair mediator in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. Eight of the U.N. Security Council's 15 member countries called for an emergency meeting Friday on the matter.

Despite the note of caution from the State Department, the mood in Israel was buoyant, with government ministers and pundits declaring a diplomatic victory for the Jewish state and for Netanyahu.

Speaking at a Foreign Ministry conference in Jerusalem on Thursday, the prime minister heralded Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as a "historic statement."

"President Trump has always linked himself to the history of our capital," he said. "His name will now float along with other names in the context of the glorious history of Jerusalem and our people."

Netanyahu said he has been in contact with other countries that were also ready to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I have no doubt that as soon as the American Embassy moves to Jerusalem, and even before that, many embassies will move to Jerusalem," he said. "It's about time."

- - -

Eglash reported from Jerusalem. The Washington Post's Hazem Balousha in Gaza contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - In the secretive system that governs most sexual-harassment settlements in the House, no single lawmaker or committee has a full picture of how many complaints were settled or how much public money was spent to resolve them.

Neither the speaker of the House nor party leaders are briefed on how many offices each year settle harassment complaints, which members are involved or how much they pay.

Neither are leaders of the House Ethics Committee, the body charged with enforcing a high standard of conduct among lawmakers.

The secrecy surrounding Capitol Hill is mandated under a law that shapes how workplace complaints are handled. Confidentiality agreements are routinely signed as part of the arrangements.

While settling cases does not in itself indicate wrongdoing, the lack of disclosure keeps congressional leaders in the dark about behavior by members or staff that might be stopped with earlier intervention.

"There is no transparency," said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit focused on government ethics. "How would you even know there was a pattern of misbehavior, by either a member or a staffer?"

Issues with the 20-year-old Congressional Accountability Act, which sets up Congress' process for handling complaints, will come into focus Thursday at a House hearing on ways to improve the system. Several members have proposed bills that would rewrite parts of the law, responding to a public outcry over sexual harassment and use of taxpayer funds in resolving complaints.

Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., chairman of the House Administration Committee, said he wants to improve the process for handling sexual harassment and discrimination.

"Real reforms have not been made to this law since it was established in 1995, and our Committee believes reforms are long overdue," Harper said in a statement.

Questions about the process have been building for weeks since the congressional Office of Compliance said that it had paid out more than $17 million insettlements through a Treasury Department fund set up to handle disbursements for harassment and other workplace complaints in Congress. But the payments were hardly a full accounting of money used to deal with harassment.

Last month, BuzzFeed reported that Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., had used his office budget to settle with a former female aide who accused him of inappropriate touching and unwanted advances. His office disguised the $27,000 settlement in his office payroll. Conyers, who resigned this week, has denied wrongdoing in that case and other similar ones.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., in 2015 settled a hostile work environment complaint for more than $48,000 out of the operating budget of a committee he oversaw, according to a report in the Washington Times. Asked for comment, a committee spokesman pointed to an op-ed piece in which he wrote that the woman's claims about his office were untrue. The two signed a nondisclosure agreement that prevents him from describing the situation further, he wrote.

Both lawmakers have said they acted on advice from the Office of House Employment Counsel, which provides confidential legal advice and representation to lawmakers.

Victims' advocates and lawmakers pushing to overhaul the system say there is no systematic tracking of how often lawmakers pay employees in exchange for silence about workplace complaints.

Settlements that come through the federal Office of Compliance must then get sign-offs from leaders of the Committee on House Administration, a panel that oversees the chamber's operations.

The committee's top Republican and Democrat members are presented with descriptions of each case, without names of the accused or accuser. They review the legal and financial recommendations for each settlement, and weigh how further litigation could pose risks to the House.

A request to pay Conyers's 2015 settlement was apparently rejected by then-Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., who led the Committee on House Administration from 2013 through 2016 and remembers reviewing a settlement for about $27,000.

Miller said she rejected three or four proposed sexual-harassment settlements during her tenure as chairwoman.

If members' settlements are denied and they decide to pay accusers through their office budgets, committee leaders are not notified, Miller said.

"My posture on that was pretty consistent, which was: 'You have got to be kidding. You seriously think we're going to use taxpayer money to cover up these behaviors of Congress?' " Miller said. She said she did approve settlements involving other workplace claims, such as age or disability discrimination.

Miller said she once inadvertently discovered the identity of a member whose settlement she had rejected. The member's aide followed one of her staffers into a bathroom to urge a change of mind. Miller would not identify the member to The Washington Post and could not recall specific details of the case.

"We weren't supposed to know who it was, so they didn't tell us who it was," she said.

The few individuals who know the details and names in each case are taxpayer-funded House attorneys. They negotiate formal and informal settlements on behalf of the member offices, and say they are duty-bound to keep details confidential under attorney-client relationships with each office they represent. But as the recent cases show, lawmakers can waive their client protection and disclose their payments publicly.

Lynne Bernabei, an employment lawyer who has represented congressional employees, said the majority of her cases involving the House were resolved long before her client filed a formal complaint with the Office of Compliance, the office that carries out the required counseling and mediation process for accusers.

In most cases, Bernabei said, the settlements came directly out of the lawmaker's office budget, known officially as the Members' Representational Allowance (MRA).

"They were resolved before getting to the official House stage," she said of the complaints.

The most detail offered by the Office of Compliance comes in its semiannual reports to House and Senate administrative and appropriations committees. But those documents provide little clarity. In its May 2017 semiannual report, obtained by The Post, the office stated that "miscellaneous public" funds were paid for "awards," without specifying who received the money or which members were involved.

"The speaker has made clear that any report of harassment is deeply troubling, as all House of Representatives employees have the right to feel safe in the workplace," said AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Democratic lawmakers are debating provisions in a wide-ranging bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., that aims to increase transparency, including by making public the names of member offices that reach settlements and requiring lawmakers to pay settlements out of their own pockets.

But victims' advocates have warned that eliminating public funds could decrease the amount of money available to recompense those harmed. Federal agencies, for example, also use public funds in their budgets to pay for settlements, awards or damages.

The proposal aims to prohibit one-sided agreements that can bind only the accuser to silence. But it also aims to allow accusers to request confidentiality if they want their cases to remain private.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, "believes there should be significantly more transparency in this area, and the Congress is finally engaging in significant discussions about how to provide it, keeping the privacy concerns of the victims in mind," said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi.

Too much disclosure could reveal the identities of victims who prefer to be anonymous or lawmakers who are falsely accused, exposing them to unfair consequences, government ethics experts and former committee aides said.

Attempts to crack down on "severance" settlements could also jeopardize the broad authority lawmakers have historically exercised over their office budgets, experts said.
Protests broke out on Wednesday in areas of Jordan's capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, witnesses said.

Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city's outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan's government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. "Down with America.. America is the mother of terror," they chanted.

King Abdullah's Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes in the status of the city, whose eastern sector was captured by Israel from Jordan in a 1967 war. Many people in Jordan are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948.

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During a recent trip to Bangladesh, I met Israt, whose family comes from Myanmar's Rakhine state. Last month, the tragedy of the conflict in her country literally came home to Israt, when her family arrived in Bangladesh as refugees fleeing devastation. They had lost their home and, most horrifically of all, two of their children.

The events still unfolding in Myanmar (also known as Burma) are not without precedent. The scale of the attacks, the bloodshed, the alleged use of rape as a weapon of war, the persecutory basis of the atrocities, the inability of international institutions to halt the crisis - these are all components of genocide that have been seen in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Yazidi region of Iraq, to name a few. With each new atrocity, the international community's promise of "never again" rings ever more hollow.

Our capacity to prevent mass killings will only be as robust as our ability to understand, predict and tackle their causes. Talk of universal human rights means little if we do not acknowledge and act on the warning signs of impending massacres. And our disgust at impunity for these horrendous crimes can be measured by the strength and effectiveness of the mechanisms aimed at bringing justice and reconciliation to the victims and survivors.

This week, as we mark World Genocide Commemoration Day, we must ask ourselves whether the international justice system is fit for purpose. Sixty-nine years ago, the United Nations convention on genocide was adopted, declaring that all countries have an obligation to prevent and punish genocide. How then will we respond to the recent events in Myanmar?

I visited Rwanda with then-first lady Laura Bush in July 2005. Eleven years earlier, 100 days of bloodshed had been unleashed by the Hutu majority, who murdered more than 800,000 Rwandans in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. On the last day of my visit, I was invited to witness a trial of accused genocidaires at a session of a gacaca court, part of a traditional system of community justice.

The Rwandan government resorted to gacaca courts because national courts lacked the capacity to try the 1.2 million Rwandans accused of crimes committed during the genocide. The official court system was in a shambles, not least because the vast majority of judges and prosecutors had been killed or had fled the country. Survivors' voices were at the heart of the gacaca process, both as witnesses and accusers. Sentences reflected the need to achieve the almost unfathomable: enabling survivors and perpetrators to live together as neighbors once again and to rebuild their fractured country.

At the session I attended, survivors of the genocide - including widows and orphans of those murdered - stood face-to-face with the alleged perpetrators to seek the truth of what had happened to their loved ones. Remembering the victims and establishing what really happened was critically important then, and remains vital now. No one suggests that these courts were perfect, but they clearly played a pivotal role in bringing a sense of unity and reconciliation to a bloodied and divided nation. That the country has not slipped back into conflict, 23 years on, is testament in part to the contribution of the gacaca courts.

Even so, it was clear that domestic trials and gacaca sessions had their limits. In the aftermath of the genocide, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This internationally supported tribunal sought the prosecution of "Category 1" defendants - the alleged architects of the genocide and those accused of the most serious crimes committed in 1994. Efforts to set up a similar mechanism to address the crimes committed in Myanmar have already begun. The Yazidis, by contrast, are still waiting.

My visit to the gacaca court session in 2005 took place more than a decade after the end of the genocide. As much time has passed again, and yet many suspected genocidaires continue to walk free in parts of the world to which they fled after committing their crimes. While Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany have all extradited suspected genocidaires to Rwanda in recent years, progress is slow. In the United Kingdom, the High Court this year blocked the extradition of five suspected genocide ringleaders, meaning that we may see them tried in British courts instead. In France, which has long struggled to come to terms with its own role in the genocide, attempts to extradite or prosecute suspected genocidaires have been thwarted by the state. Even after France volunteered to try cases transferred from the U.N. tribunal, those individuals never faced charges in court.

Justice delayed is truly justice denied. The conspiracy of silence around unresolved cases of genocide is a prime example of international indifference that perpetuates pain and suffering. It gives succor to those who would devalue or destroy human dignity, such as in Myanmar, and extinguishes hope for a world without genocide. Morally and legally, no country should allow itself to become a haven for perpetrators of this crime of crimes.

"Never again," the mantra repeated instinctively after every atrocity, means delivering justice for past tragedies. This should be within the capacity of the international community. We can start by applying the lessons we should have learned from Rwanda. Otherwise the roll of victims will only continue to grow.

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Blair is chair of Omnia Strategy LLP, an international law firm that is on Rwanda's panel of legal advisers.
NEW HAVEN  Following several conferences and help from the court, the city Wednesday was ordered to have the exterior of a Westville home abated of lead paint with the costs of the work and an expert to review it ultimately paid for by the landlord.

Superior Court Judge Sheila Ozalis on Monday had ordered that the five-member Guaman family be moved out until the abatement of 1323 Whalley Ave., a two-family home, is completed.

The agreement signed by the parties indicated that the exterior will be covered with vinyl siding and the interior of the second-floor apartment will be checked again by the city, as well as a consultant from Eagle Environmental, and abated if needed, as well as the soil on the property.

The order estimates that the work should be finished and the family moved back in by Dec. 22.

While there was agreement on the specifics of the abatement of the Guamans home, the attorney for landlord Jong Hee Heo generally questioned the thrust of the lead laws which he felt should better protect children.

Attorney Helen Li, who worked with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, counsel for the family, said they were content with the results, but it also had lingering concerns.

(W)e think there may be a systemic issue in New Haven with the way that the city deals with lead inspections abatement and we dont want this (settlement) to stop them from doing an interim review to make sure everything else is going OK (with lead abatements) in the city, Li said.

Li said she doesnt want the city to continue the status quo as far as these policies are concerned.

If there is anything else like this (the Guaman case) happening, she said New Haven should not view this case as unique.

Kevin Casini, Heos attorney, said his client will pay for the consultant, while the city will cover the cost of the abatement with Heos property liened. New Haven will be paid back when the home is sold, if not sooner, Cassini said.

The cost of relocating the Guamans into a unit at the New Haven Village Suites is being covered by the city, to be reimbiursed by Heo.

Casini said Heo is still working on a federal Housing and Urban Development loan to help pay for the work, but the attorney was not sure whether that resource was applicable in this case.

Casini wanted Ozalis order to include a check of the first-floor apartment as to whether it also should be abated. But because the NHLAA suit only represented the Guamans, who lived on the second floor, the city argued this.

Jason Guaman at age 2 in 2015 was found to have blood lead levels seven times the reading associated with permanent brain injuries and was the main party represented in the suit against New Haven for allegedly not following state and city lead laws.

Im kind of ambivalent right now because the work is not really done. We need some type of long-term global solution, not only for the tenants on the second floor, ... but the tenants on the first floor too, Casini said.

A family with at least one child under age six lives in that apartment.

An attorney for the city and Casini were shouting at each other in the hallway of the court after the morning session about a review of the first-floor apartment, with the city asserting that Heo is free to order testing himself.

Casini said his client expects to do that.

This is outside of the bounds of the legalities of it, I guess, but it doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me that we wait for a child to demonstrate that there are elevated lead numbers in his or her blood for the municipalities to get involved, Casini said after the settlement was signed.

I know they are not obligated to do anything until that happens. It just seems to me that logic should dictate that if we know something has already happened on the second floor, we prevent that from happening on the first floor. But that is not the way they (the city) sees it, Casini said.

He would have preferred that the judge include all the tenants in the building in the order, which possibly could help with the HUD loan.

Action is triggered, according to the law, after a child under age six has been poisoned by lead ingestion, Li said. The Centers for Disease Control puts the danger level over 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter (ug/dl) of blood.

At age 2, Jacobs blood lead level was 36 ug/dl. Recently it had dropped to 17. The state measurement reference is higher than the CDC guidelines.

Asked how Ozalis ruling affects the Guaman family, Li said the damage to Jacob is permanent. She said there is nothing that will reverse the damage, although it is a condition that qualifies a child for special education.

Li said there is solace that anybody else who rents the apartment will be living in one that is lead-free.

The citys Department of Health lists lead-free apartments on its website, but a recent check found that it had included the second floor of 1323 Whalley Ave. Shelley White, litigation director for NHLAA, said it is extremely important that the list be accurate as families depend on it.

A request seeking a response from the department as to why it was listed as lead-free was not answered.

Two requests submitted to the states attorneys office for a warrant for the landlords arrest were both rejected. Ozalis said getting the property abated made more sense than arresting Heo.

Li, who was sworn in as an attorney on Monday, was brought into the case by NHLAA after it found out that her area of study as a fellow at Connecticut Legal Services was lead poisoning cases.

Li said she chose Eagle Environmental because they do risk assessment and project planning, as well as abatement. They work closely with the Connecticut Childrens Medical Center Healthy Homes program, she said.

White said in a case brought on behalf of Junita Sumler in May of this year, her agency sued the landlord, Mt. Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, for not abating lead.

She said at that time Housing Judge Anthony Avallone questioned why the city itself had not forced compliance earlier, White said.

We are really going to make a push in the coming months to identify other families who have children who may have been lead poisoned and whether or not they are getting the correct compliance, White said.

She said she wants to make sure an abatement plan is being enforced in a timely manner and made part of the land record. A 2008 abatement plan for 1323 Whitney Ave. was not filed with the city clerk for eight years and the copy was not signed.

White said another big issue is relocating families when necessary.

Ozalis was repeatedly concerned at how long it was taking to resolve the lead issue at 1323 Whalley Ave. after the landlord was ordered to correct it in August.

No abatement plan was issued in 2015, when Jason Guamans high blood lead levels were discovered. Nor was one issued in 2016, according to testimony and none this year, but the judges order will change that.
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Getting to skip classes because of a wildfire may not be such a great thing when youre supposed to be studying the Theory of Relativity. Relatively speaking. For real.

Ryan Chan, a sophomore at UCLA, said he planned to spend the day studying Einsteins theory on his own.

Its going to be on the final next week, he said, whether we have classes today or not.

Chan was one of 45,000 UCLA students who found themselves with a day off, sort of, when the university decided to cancel classes on Thursday because of the wildfires sweeping through Southern California, including the Skirball fire a mile or so north of campus.

Now Playing: 'Skirball Fire' burns 475 acres; 5% contained; 4 homes destroyed as of Thursday morning. Video: Fox2Detroit

Given the array of uncertainties caused by the fire, UCLA has canceled classes, read the announcement in a bright red box on the university web page.

The array of uncertainties has left Los Angeles in disarray. Roads are closed, smoke hangs in the air, the fabled, horrendous commutes take twice as long.

But calling off class wasnt really necessary in his opinion, Chan said.

A lot of students were complaining yesterday about having to go to class and I guess they just wanted to keep the students happy, he said.

At UCLA, some students were walking around the brick-walled campus in surgical masks, as if heading to an appendectomy.

Freshman Alex Jordan said he had a math final coming up, on differential equations, and he was off to the library to get the hang of dy/dx = e to the At power times x.

Id rather be going to class, he said. This material isnt easy.

Thomas Smith, a first-year mathematics graduate student , said he had upcoming finals in real analysis and complex analysis, which are not the same analysis. He was strolling across the near-empty campus to the library, too.

I have to study both, he said. I could take the day off if I wanted to, but I dont want to.

In nearby Westwood Village, which is less a village than a collection of coffee joints, pizza joints and boutiques and Stan's Corner Doughnut Shop  one of the Valhallas of all things donut  business seemed down. The main indicator of that was that street parking, normally impossible to find, wasnt.

Chronicle Staff Writer Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.
PIGEON  For a community that prides itself on the quality of its roadways, officials are looking into recent damage to various stretches of roads.

At this weeks Winsor Township board meeting, council discussed the damage caused during the construction of the Apple Blossom Wind Farm, under the direction of Sempra Renewables.

Ive always said that our roads are the best in the county, said Clerk John Walsh.

Probably the best in the state, added Supervisor John Kohr.

In response to the damage, Kohr said he recently met with Huron County Road Commission officials. At this weeks board meeting, he passed around an estimate by the road commission with a breakdown of the damage amount sustained as a result of large cranes and cement trucks using certain township roads to get to wind farm projects.

First of all, you have to realize that these are not brand new roads and they were going to be in need of some work eventually  sooner than later, Kohr said.

According to the road commission, the estimated amount of damage incurred during the project that the company should reimburse the township, came in at $473,000.

Kohr said Sempra officials have yet to agree on that amount, however.

I really did expect about $500,000, Kohr said. But we got talking about it and I feel good with this amount.

As part of the townships preliminary road project, a total of seven miles of roadway would be repaired in 2018: Three miles of Brown Road, two miles of Notter, and a mile each of Geiger and Richardson.

With the nearly 12 miles of roads that were redone in 2017, the township could have almost 20 miles of new roads completed in two years. Kohr said there are only 87 miles in the entire township.

In 2019, sections of Geiger, Weale, Riskey and Pobanz roads would also be redone.

I think its going to work out good for us, Kohr said.

In other business, the board:

 Passed a resolution in opposition to Michigan House Bills 5096, 5097 and 5098 regarding utility construction in the road right-of-way. The resolution was suggested by the road commission.

 Discussed looking into what to do with some junk yards that have been popping up around the township and are causing blight issues.
ISTANBUL - Allies and adversaries of the United States found common ground Thursday in rejecting President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move reckless and likely to reignite violence in the region.

Criticism of the move, which breaks with decades of U.S. policy, was particularly sharp across the Middle East, with officials, religious leaders and activists of many political persuasions issuing statements of condemnation.

Turkey's president said it would plunge the region into a "ring of fire," and Lebanon's Hezbollah called it "malicious aggression." Late Wednesday, Egypt said the decision would inflame anger in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The grand imam of Egypt's al-Azhar, the premier seat of Sunni learning, also rejected the move, accusing Trump of denying Palestinians their right to Jerusalem.

"This administration does not respect the dignity or values of others," Hezbollah's secretary general, Hasan Nasrallah, said in a televised address Thursday night. He urged Palestinians and other Arab nations to withdraw from peace talks until the decision was reversed and advocated protests on the streets and in social media.

Iran, which backs Hezbollah, also weighed in, with its army chief calling Trump's decision "unwise" and a clear violation of international law, Iran's state news agency reported. If conflict follows, he said, it will be the fault of the United States and Israel.

Even stalwart U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - otherwise admirers of Trump's presidency - criticized the administration over the new policy.

The Saudi government described the decision as an "irresponsible and unwarranted step," according to the state-run news agency. Qatar, too, warned of "serious repercussions" for stability in the region.

Jerusalem, although divided, is considered holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and Palestinians envision the eastern part of the city as the capital of any future Palestinian state. Israelis, for their part, see Jerusalem as their own eternal, undivided capital.

Previous U.S. administrations kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, pending a final peace agreement that would determine Jerusalem's status.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has partnered closely with the United States in the fight against the Islamic State, said the move could lead to "dangerous escalation" in the region.

"The U.S. administration must reverse this unjust decision," Abadi said Thursday. Iraq's Foreign Ministry also said it had summoned U.S. Ambassador Douglas Silliman to receive a formal letter of protest.

In Turkey, where relations with Washington were already strained over U.S. support for Kurdish militias in Syria, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim likened Trump's recognition of Jerusalem to pulling "the pin on a bomb ready to blow in the region."

Speaking at a conference in the capital, Ankara, Yildirim said that Turkey, a NATO member, would not recognize the decision, Reuters news agency reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara urged Americans to stay away from planned protests outside the embassy, as well as from consulates in Istanbul and Adana.

At the U.S. Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Thursday, protesters denounced the United States, chanting against the decision and holding signs that read: "No to U.S. arrogance."

"Before, the U.S. was a partner in peace to solve the problem in Palestine. Now, Jordanians see the U.S. as part of the problem," said 60-year-old Hafeth Khawaja.

"All of the moderates in this region that stood by America and put their faith in America for so many years now look like fools," he said. "We have been betrayed."

Beyond the region, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday restated her opposition to the policy. "It is clear that in the framework of negotiating a two-state solution the status of Jerusalem also needs to be dealt with," the Associated Press quoted her as saying. "In that context, we disagree with the decision yesterday."

Merkel's remarks were in line with critical statements earlier from major European allies of the United States such as Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

In Pakistan, Islamists protested in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi called the move "a serious setback to the rule of law" and against "international norms."

He urged the United States to "revisit its decision as soon as possible in order to avoid the potentially grave repercussions in the region and beyond."

And in Johannesburg, ailing Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said in a rare public statement: "God is weeping over President Donald Trump's inflammatory and discriminatory recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

The 86-year-old former archbishop added, "It is our responsibility to tell Mr. Trump that he is wrong," the AP reported.

Elsewhere, militants who have fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq took the opportunity to condemn both Israel and the United States.

Akram al-Kaabi, head of the Iran-backed Nujaba militia in Iraq, called Trump's decision "foolish" and predicted that it would spark an uprising. He added that the move legitimizes attacks on U.S. forces, of which there are thousands in Iraq.

Moqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shiite cleric who has long opposed the United States, said governments should expel Israeli diplomats and temporarily close American embassies.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman said in an emailed statement that the decision will "fan the flames of conflict in the entire world."

Trump, the spokesman said, has exposed U.S. support for a "policy of occupation and colonization of Muslim lands."

- - -

El-Ghobashy reported from Baghdad. Mustafa Salim in Baghdad, Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul, Taylor Luck in Amman, Louisa Loveluck in Beirut and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON - A majority of Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for the resignation of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., after determining that they could no longer tolerate his presence in their midst as a growing number of women accused him of sexual harassment.

They turned on one of their party's most popular figures with stunning swiftness, led by the Senate's Democratic women, who were joined in short order by more than half of the Democratic caucus.

"Enough is enough," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said at a news conference. "We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go."

Franken's office said he would make an announcement about his future on Thursday. Minnesota Public Radio reported Wednesday afternoon that Franken planned to resign, but Franken's office quickly denied it on Twitter. "Not accurate," the tweet stated. "No final decision has been made and the Senator is still talking with his family."

If he steps down soon, a replacement would be appointed by Minnesota's Democratic governor to serve until the 2018 election.

The drive to purge Franken, coming a day after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., resigned under pressure in the House, was a dramatic indication of the political toxicity that has grown around the issue of sexual harassment in recent months.

It also stood as a stark - and deliberate - contrast with how the Republicans are handling a parallel situation in Alabama, where Roy Moore, their candidate for U.S. Senate in next week's special election, is accused by women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

Although most of the alleged actions took place before he was a senator, Franken was becoming a growing liability to his party, and Republicans had seized upon the allegations against him.

At Moore's Tuesday night rally, conservative pundit Gina Loudon declared that Republicans did not need lectures on morality from Democrats who had struggled with their own sex scandals, and cited both Conyers and Franken.

President Trump. himself the target of multiple allegations of sexual assault, has enthusiastically endorsed Moore, and the Republican Party is once again pouring money into the race after pulling back.

Leading Senate Republicans have also toned down their negative comments about Moore, saying his fate should be up to the voters of Alabama and - if he is elected - the Senate Ethics Committee.

"I'm looking for where are the Republican voices? Where is their outrage?" Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said on CNN.

Republican leaders remained quiet amid the developments.

Asked about Franken, Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn, Texas, said he would "leave it up to [Democrats] to deal with members of their own party."

The move by Senate Democrats to oust Franken marked a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the onetime "Saturday Night Live" star. The Minnesota senator had emerged as one of the Trump administration's sharpest foils on Capitol Hill - and as a potential 2020 presidential contender.

Over the past three weeks, more than a half-dozen women have accused Franken of unwanted advances and touching. He apologized, saying in some cases that he had not intended to give offense and in others that he did not recall events as the women did.

The latest allegation against Franken came in a report published Wednesday by Politico. A former congressional aide whose name was withheld by the publication claimed that Franken had tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, two years before his election to the Senate.

The woman claimed that Franken had told her, "It's my right as an entertainer."

Franken's alleged offenses were arguably less serious than those attributed to Moore, or to Conyers, the longest-serving member of Congress, who was accused of demanding sexual favors from the women who worked for him. Until late last week, it appeared that Franken's fellow Democrats would allow his case to work its way through the Senate Ethics Committee, a process that would take months and perhaps years to reach a resolution.

As recently as Nov. 26, Sen Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, had argued on CNN: "Al Franken has acknowledged what he did was wrong, and it was wrong. He has also submitted his whole case to the Senate Ethics Committee. I think that was the right thing to do. Let's have a hearing, an investigation. Let's let this really reach whatever conclusion it is going to reach, but through a due process."

But on Wednesday, Durbin expressed no such forbearance. "Senator Franken's conduct was wrong. He has admitted to it. And he should resign from the Senate."

Even as Senate Democrats expressed support publicly for leaving Franken's fate in the hands of the Ethics Committee, his female colleagues were increasingly unsettled as new accusers went public.

"People were at the edge of their patience with this. They'd had enough. One more allegation was going to be it," said one senior aide, who was granted anonymity to describe private deliberations.

Another said the Democratic women senators had been discussing it among themselves "on the Senate floor, even in the ladies' room."

"Many people have been talking about this for some time," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said. "It wasn't coordinated. It just happened."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has served in the Senate longer than most of her female colleagues, said it was "significant that the women on his side of the aisle led the way," and added that she believed the latest allegation was "in some ways the final straw for people."

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who had stood by his friend in the wake of the allegations, called Franken after the Politico story broke early Wednesday and told him directly he had to resign, according to a person familiar with the call, who added that this came before other senators began calling for him to step down.

Schumer also met with Franken and his wife at the leader's apartment early afternoon to discuss resigning. The session ended without a firm commitment from Franken to do so, said the source, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the private exchange.

In recent days - before Wednesday's report - Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has known Franken for nearly two decades, had also told Franken he needed to step down, aides familiar with their discussions said. On Wednesday, Warren issued a short public statement, saying, "I think he should resign."

Franken had staved off public calls for his ouster last week, according to a person who has been in touch with the senator and his staff in recent days.

There was a "mad rush" last week to call on Franken to resign when more allegations surfaced, said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about private discussions. "I think that people were talked off the ledge at that point and wanted to recollect and figure out if the Senate Ethics investigation should just move forward."

But, "I'm pretty sure that Al should have known that if there was another story that came out that there'd be a mass exodus away from him."

Outside the chamber, growing numbers of Democrats had been making the case that it was untenable for Franken to remain in the Senate if their party hoped to maintain the high ground on the issue.

Among those calling for Franken to step down was Doug Jones, Moore's Democratic opponent in Alabama.

And though she did not mention Franken by name, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had declared a policy of "zero tolerance" when she called last week for Conyers to leave the House. On Wednesday, Pelosi declared that she was "very proud of the fact that people are taking this matter head on and are trusting women who come forward, what they have to say."

More and more lawmakers are saying their concern over sexual harassment allegations should not be overridden by politics, or by the respect they have for each other's records and their shared positions on important policy matters.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., noted on Tuesday that her own efforts as a civil rights and immigration rights activist could not have succeeded without the early work of Conyers.

Despite that legacy, "I also hope that we can be clear about what our standard is for sexual harassment and make it very, very clear to every woman who is out there that you do not have to put up with this. It is not right, and most of us as women - I can tell you - know exactly what this has all been about," she said. "We've all been through various forms of this and I think it's essential that if people come to work in this body that they know that they have a safe environment. We have to be clear about that, whether it's a Republican, a Democrat, someone we love or someone we find distasteful."

Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., seen as a future caucus leader in the House, said this week's actions should serve as a warning to those who have been or may be accused of sexual wrongdoing.

"If you are a sexual harasser, go away. We don't want you, we don't want you as our colleague," she said Wednesday. "Our interns don't deserve that, our staff doesn't deserve it. The women members of Congress don't deserve it."

"Everybody's got to speak for themselves," she added later, "but this is not a place to be a sexual harasser."

---

The Washington Post's David Weigel in Mobile, Alabama, and Sean Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

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Video: A majority of Senate Democrats on Dec. 6 called on Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to resign as he faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment. (Bastien Inzaurralde, Jordan Frasier/ The Washington Post)

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NORWALK  As men in white protective suits worked inside a building that had begun to cave in on Chestnut Street, Diane Lauricella and Ernie Dumas, of the South Norwalk Citizens for Justice, gathered outside overgrown property to air concerns Wednesday afternoon.

Lauricella pointed to an asbestos abatement project design for the state Department of Health released in July 2015. The report recommended the vacant industrial site where neckties were once stored be demolished by licensed asbestos abatement workers and supervisors on site, and that all people in the work areas wear disposable clothing and respirators.

The building is currently under a notice to demolish by the city of Norwalk and has been deemed unsafe for occupancy, she said.

Two-and-a-half years later, the same asbestos abatement project design has been resubmitted, and the permits to begin the process of removing the building has begun.

We want an investigation as to how this happened, and why it took so long, Lauricella said. What we would like to explore in a meeting is what fines should this company have for the length of time they were allowed to let this dangerous building languish?

However, others say the problem is safely being taken care of.

Both Keith Brown (a managing member of Sono Metro LLC, which owns the property) and William Ireland, Norwalks chief building official, said abatement and demolition are underway. Brown estimated the asbestos abatement would take a week or two and demolition would be completed two weeks afterward.

We are working with the town, Brown said. He added the Big East Environmental, an environmental consulting firm, had procured the necessary permits from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and would have a licensed project manager on site to monitor air quality throughout the process.

No, it hasnt been delayed, Ireland said.

He said the state handles the abatement process, not the city, and the owner had responded immediately after the condemnation board hearing in September of this year.

One state permit required to demolish a building with asbestos is a Alternate Work Practice, which must be mailed with a $200 fee to the Connecticut Department of Health. Big East Environmental, which helped acquire the permit, said the project received a permit in 2015, but it expired after one year. The project designer filed for a new permit on Sept. 8, 2017.

As for why it sat so long  that part, we dont know, said Steve DiNapoli, a company representative. However, he said the time the building has remained intact has not posed a health threat to neighbors because most of the asbestos are contained in the roofing.

Youd have to tear it, grind it up, for that to get in the air, DiNapoli said. That type of roofing, flat membrane roofing, is relatively stable.

Lauricella, a consultant for South Norwalk Citizens of Justice, passed out packets including emails that the group has sent Mayor Harry Rilling voicing concerns about the building. Rilling did not respond in time to comment.

Lauricella said the problem was greater than asbestos or buckling walls. The main issue is the enforcement system in this city is broken when it comes to violations.

She pointed to the asbestos abatement project design, which described the building as in poor condition due to a partial roof collapse with several areas unsafe to enter. Buildings lacking adequate maintenance are against Norwalks city code and can in warnings, citations, hearings, fines and abatement by the city.

There was no reason for this to occur other than that it was in South Norwalk. If it were in Cranbury, East Norwalk, Rowayton, it would be down by now. And we just want fair enforcement, Lauricella said.

A neighbor who lived caddycorner from the site, Sammy Ward, who was also a member of South Norwalk Citizens for Justice, agreed. It diminishes our quality of life  its not right, he said. It diminishes our property values. ... The only thing were fighting for is equality, like everyone else.
Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said its mission to oust Islamic State jihadists from Syria has been "accomplished" and the country is "completely liberated" from the group.

"The Russian armed forces' goal to defeat armed groups of ISIL terrorist organisation in Syria has been accomplished," senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi told a briefing, using an alternative acronym for the group.

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One of the most contentious issues in restaurants, at least in higher-end restaurants, is the pay disparity between the tipped servers and hourly cooks. The U.S. Department of Labor has just proposed new regulations to help narrow that gap, but critics say the Trump administration's rules go too far: They would allow employers to control all tips, potentially legalizing a practice that is now considered wage theft under the law.

The regulations are "not just about sharing tips with the back-of-the-house staff - that part would be okay - but employers would have the right to decide what to do with the tips," said Saru Jayaraman, president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, or ROC, an advocacy group for restaurant workers.

Allowing employers to distribute tips as they see fit, Jayaraman added, would end the Labor Department's practice of treating gratuities as the property of workers, a custom that dates to the 1974 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Labor Department officially published the proposed regulations Tuesday in the Federal Register, and the public has 30 days to comment on them. The rules would roll back some Obama administration-era regulations from 2011 that had expressly prohibited employers from splitting server tips with traditionally non-tipped employees, such as cooks and dishwashers. Back then, the agency was concerned server tips could, among other things, be used to pay the hourly wages of back-of-the-house employees.

The Obama regulations instigated a number of federal lawsuits, including ones from National Restaurant Association and other regional hospitality trade groups. The groups argued the Labor Department had overstepped its authority with the 2011 regulations, which were issued more than a year after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that employers could split server tips with traditionally non-tipped employees, but only if the businesses directly paid workers at least the full minimum wage and did not claim a federal tip credit. A tip credit is the portion of tips that employers are allowed to use to cover a worker's minimum wage.

Before the 2011 rule change, some in the restaurant industry questioned whether all employers were required to follow the Fair Labor Standards Act's rules on tipped employees. Some assumed that only restaurants that took advantage of the tip credit would have to heed the rules. Among other things, those rules require employees to retain all of their tips or take part in a tip-sharing pool that includes only "employees who customarily and regularly receive tips," a group that does not include back-of-the-house cooks and dishwashers.

Federal courts - sometimes the same one - have issued conflicting rulings on whether some businesses don't have to follow the act's rules for tipped employees. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with the Labor Department and its 2011 regulations, reversing its own ruling from 2010.

To muddy the waters more, the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit earlier this year held that some employers could rightfully claim servers' tips and use them as they want. The clashing legal decisions could compel the Supreme Court to take up the National Restaurant Association's case this term and clear up the confusion.

In the meantime, the Trump administration's proposal seeks to remove some of the Obama-era prohibitions on tip-sharing. A Labor Department spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not challenge criticisms that the rules would transfer control of tips from employees to employers. "This proposal would give workplaces the freedom to share tips among more employees," he said.

While the proposal sounds promising in principal - a way to balance inequities between, say, fine-dining servers and bartenders earning nearly six figures a year and their colleagues in the kitchen earning $13 an hour - critics say the new rules could invite trouble. The rules, they say, would allow employers to distribute the pooled tips to anyone, including salaried managers or even themselves. (Worth noting: Some restaurants have opted out of the messy tipping system altogether; instead, they add a service charge to checks to pay employees equally.)

In recent years, high-profile chefs and restaurateurs have been sued for alleged wage theft, including Mario Batali, Daniel Boulud and Jessica Biel.

Molly Elkin, an attorney who represents workers in cases brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act, said it's delusional to think that employers will take server tips and share them only with back-of-the-house employees, instantly creating one happy restaurant family. She compares the pay-equity fantasy to the trickle-down economics that the Trump administration and the GOP are promising with their tax bill.

"I just don't see that happening in reality," emailed Elkin, a partner at the Washington law firm Woodley & McGillivary. "The proposed rule does nothing more than authorize wage theft on the part of the employer. The employer can simply pocket the tips, and Trump's [Labor Department] will not care."

Jayaraman, the ROC president, said the new rules could have an even darker side. More than two-thirds of tipped employees in American restaurants are women, and they don't all work in upscale restaurants with leather banquettes, 200-bottle wine lists and genteel diners. They work at IHOP, Applebee's and similar national chains, Jayaraman said. They earn, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average annual wage of $24,410, though the agency's figures may be lower than the actual incomes due to underreporting.

Regardless, Jayaraman points out that women in the restaurant industry, especially those in tipped positions, are routinely subject to sexual harassment. In 2014, ROC and Forward Together issued a report, "The Glass Floor: Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry," based on nearly 700 surveys of current and former restaurant workers.

In a recent investigation on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, The Washington Post found women were frequent targets. For example, in 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 5,431 complaints of sexual harassment from women. Of the 2,036 claims that listed an industry, 12.5 percent came from the hotel and food industry, more than any other category, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Jayaraman said allowing employers to distribute tips will make a bad situation worse for female servers who already tolerate inappropriate behavior from customers to receive decent tips.

"That will exacerbate a problem that already existed," Jayaraman said.

It's not clear how many restaurants the new rules would actually affect. In the proposed rules, the Labor Department assumes that "30 percent of all waiters and waitresses and bartenders work in states that prohibit employers from obtaining tips received by employees," and therefore wouldn't be affected by the change of rules. Elkin, the attorney, said that in her experience, most large companies don't pay their employees the full minimum wage, so they wouldn't be eligible under the new rules to control the workers' tips.

"They better not get confused and start stealing tips from workers," she added, "because they're going to get in trouble."
WASHINGTON - Donald Trump Jr. met behind closed doors for roughly seven hours Wednesday with the House Intelligence committee, fielding extensive questioning about contacts he had with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Committee members queried President Donald Trump's eldest son about a June 2016 meeting he held with a Russian lawyer after he was told she would provide damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He was also asked about his contact with WikiLeaks in October 2016, around the time the group was releasing hacked Democratic emails, according to people familiar with the session.

Trump Jr. told the committee that he had not informed his father about his meeting with the Russian lawyer at the time it took place. He also said he had not told Trump that he exchanged private messages with the WikiLeaks Twitter account, according to the people.

His day-long interview came as multiple investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election focus on members of Trump's inner circle.

Trump Jr. had met with investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, but that session took place before prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller III filed criminal charges against former Trump advisers.

His Wednesday session with the House committee was longer and more expansive, and was the first opportunity elected lawmakers have had to ask Trump Jr. questions directly, instead of leaving that to investigative staff.

Trump Jr. told the committee that he did not speak to the president directly in July 2017 as the New York Times prepared to report his meeting with the Russian lawyer for the first time. Instead, he told the committee he had communicated only with Trump communications director Hope Hicks to discuss how to respond to the Times' inquiries.

At the time, Hicks was on board Air Force One with Trump, returning home from the Group of 20 Summit in Germany.

The Washington Post has reported that the president dictated the statement Trump Jr. released that day about the meeting. The statement omitted key facts about the session with the Russian lawyer, indicating it was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by American families.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Trump Jr. told the committee he did speak with his father about the Trump Tower meeting several days later, after emails showing he had accepted the meeting after being offered "dirt" on Clinton were made public. However, Trump Jr. declined to detail the conversation to the committee, indicating a lawyer had been present and he believed it was subject to attorney-client privilege.

"In my view there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son," Schiff said, adding he intended to follow up with Trump Jr.'s attorneys, who had "asked for more time to deliberate on the claim."

"This particular discussion revolves around a pivotal meeting," Schiff said, noting it was "a central issue that we need to fully investigate."

Trump Jr. also told the committee he had been unaware that national security adviser-designate Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions during phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. At the time, Trump Jr. served on the transition team's executive committee.

Flynn last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Kislyak.

Rep. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, who is leading the House investigation, told reporters after the session concluded that Trump Jr. had answered all of the committee's questions.

Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Trump Jr., declined to comment.

While the 39-year-old held no official role with his father's campaign, he was closely involved in internal discussions and served as a prominent surrogate for Trump.

Trump Jr. also interacted at least twice with Russians who had showed interest in Trump's campaign - encounters that are of keen interest to investigators.

In addition to the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer, Trump Jr. also exchanged greetings at a dinner during a May 2016 National Rifle Association convention with a former Russian senator named Alexander Torshin, who is now the deputy head of the Central Bank of Russia.

Trump Jr. told the committee he had been introduced to Torshin by a friend, but said he could not recall which one.

Since the election, Trump Jr. has been helping run the Trump Organization in his father's absence, while also traveling the country delivering paid speeches.

He has reacted to the scrutiny of his Russian contacts with defiance, taunting critics online. "Keep coming at me guys!!!" he wrote on Instagram after his messages with WikiLeaks became public, declaring the handful of notes to be "nothing burgers" advanced as part of a "false narrative."

- - -

The Washington Post's Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
Syrian government negotiators will return to Geneva this weekend to rejoin United Nations-backed peace talks, after leaving the city in protest last week, the UN envoy said Thursday.

"The government has informed us that they would fly back to Geneva on Sunday the 10th of December", UN mediator Staffan de Mistura told reporters, confirming information reported by the Syrian state news agency SANA.

The government delegation is scheduled to stay until December 15, when the eighth round of the faltering UN-brokered talks is due to wrap up.

The negotiations aimed at ending nearly seven years of bloodshed in Syria reopened last week.

The talks were halted over the weekend before resuming Tuesday, but without the government team headed by Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari.

Jaafari had criticised the talks before his departure, saying there were "big problems in this round", a reference to the opposition's insistence on President Bashar al-Assad's removal.

The opposition, united in one delegation for the first time, has so far defied calls to give up its demand that Assad step down before any peace deal can be reached.

Jaafari described that position as "provocative" and "irresponsible", warning that "there will be no progress" if the opposition maintained its stance.

For several days, government sources had said officials were still deliberating whether they would come back to Geneva.

De Mistura has met with the opposition's delegation in the meantime.

De Mistura said he expected both sides to "seriously engage" in negotiations next week, which will be focused on shaping a new Syrian constitution and organising UN-supervised elections.

He also issued a thinly veiled warning over a new diplomatic track being pushed by Syria's key ally Russia, which has announced plans to host a new peace conference at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in coming months.

The opposition and Western diplomats are concerned that the Sochi meeting might be part of an effort by Moscow to circumvent the UN talks and impose a solution favourable to Assad.

"There are many initiatives that are being planned and can be planned in the future, but we shall assess the behaviour of both sides -- government and opposition -- in Geneva", de Mistura said.

He underscored that the UN would be watching to see if these other initiatives were supportive of the UN talks, "or a sabotage".

He warned that if one side was "de facto sabotaging the process and the progress of Geneva, that would have a very bad impact on any other political attempt to have processes elsewhere", an apparent reference to the proposed Sochi meeting.

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Russia expressed "serious concern" Thursday over US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, saying the move threatened security in the region.

"Moscow views the decisions announced in Washington with serious concern," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that it risked aggravating already complicated Israeli-Palestinian ties as well as security risks.

"In light of this we call on all involved parties to show restraint and forgo any action that would be fraught with dangerous and uncontrollable consequences," the foreign ministry said.

Moscow reiterated its long-held view that a solution to the dispute over Jerusalem's status should be negotiated through "direct Palestinian-Israeli talks".

Trump's defiant move, making good on a core campaign pledge, ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the city, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Moscow said earlier that it considered East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state, and the west of the city the capital of Israel.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, and later annexed East Jerusalem in a move that has never been recognised by the international community.

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A giant washed up sea monster, a woman trying desperately to knock a takeout box from a man's hands, and a home filled with creepy mannequins were just a handful of the weirdest Texas headlines in 2017.

Hurricane Harvey generated a handful of these headlines, including one dog who was captured on photo carrying his bag of food around flooded streets and a river of fire ants found on Texas' Gulf Coast.
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NEW BRAUNFELS  Former mayor Stone R. Williams has pleaded guilty to felony burglary charges arising from an incident last year in which police say he forced his way into a local residence, assaulted a romantic acquaintance and also slashed her vehicles tires.

Stoney Williams, New Braunfels chief executive from 1999 to 2002, faces up to 20 years in prison when sentenced in March by state District Judge Dan Mills, who accepted his guilty plea Thursday. Defense attorney Sam Lock declined comment.

Prosecutor Clay Hearrell said afterward that the state agreed not to seek enhanced punishment over the alleged possession of a deadly weapon, a handgun, by Williams during the episode in exchange for the guilty plea to two counts of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit assault.

Dropping the deadly weapon claim reduced the offenses from first degree felonies to second degree felonies.

Police were called around midnight on Sept. 2, 2016, about a man armed with a holstered gun banging on the door of a Comal Avenue residence, yelling and vandalizing a car.

The suspect was gone when they arrived, they said, but he later returned and allegedly assaulted the woman, prompting the property owner to fire a warning shot into a wall with his own gun.

Williams, 51, was arrested as he left the residence and later was released from jail on $5,000 bond. He is president of a heating/air conditioning firm in New Braunfels.

The two-count indictment handed down Jan. 4 accused Williams of intentionally or knowingly entering a habitation without the effective consent of the owner with the intent to commit assault, or attempting to commit assault, against Kathy Black (pseudonym).

The married ex-mayor has declined to discuss the nature of his relationship with the woman, an Austin area resident who was 28 at the time of the incident, according to local news accounts.

Mills, formerly judge in the 424th district, took Williams case after local judges recused themselves.
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Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff, on probation since March in a 2016 driving-while-intoxicated incident, will continue to be monitored after failing a court-ordered drug test.

Wolff recalled being surprised when his probation officer informed him of the positive test during an October meeting.

Ive done everything thats been asked of me, and I have not been drinking and wont, he said. Ill continue to do what is asked of me.

In March, the Republican pleaded no contest to a driving-while-intoxicated charge and accepted a years probation and a breath monitor, which was required to be used for six months.

RELATED: Video shows Kevin Wolff in underwear stumbling, falling over during Whataburger DWI arrest

A supplemental report issued to the court Monday by Wolffs probation officer indicates that since his sentencing, Wolff has not had any blow violations, but has had 24 skipped tests between May 17 and June 17 of this year. He had been allowed by the court during that time to travel and had been told to take the portable alcohol monitoring device and continue compliance, though Wolff, at some point, said that the unit wouldnt function properly.

Wolffs drug tests in April, May and June tested negative; however, he then tested positive for alcohol and benzodiazepine on his urinalysis in August, the report states.

The defendant has prescribed medication for his benzodiazepine and is under psychiatric care, but denied alcohol use when CSO (community supervision officer) confronted him about it at his October visit, the report states.

Because he had completed his DWI classes, community services and paid his fees, Wolff had been placed on reporting every other month at the August visit, but when his urinalysis came back positive, he was placed back on monthly reporting, and use of the mobile testing unit was extended until Jan. 2, the report states.

Wolff said hes not sure what led to the result, but he has an idea of what might have happened.

MORE: Kevin Wolff pleads 'no contest' to DWI charge

During his urinalysis test in August, Wolff said he had not produced enough of a sample to match the required amount. Wolff offered to retake the test the next day, but the attendant told him his first sample might work.

I tell the guy, I guess Ill come back tomorrow, Wolff said. And he goes, well, maybe this will test, lets see. And so he sends it off. I dont think anything of it.

Two months later, Wolff said his probation officer informed him of the test result.

She immediately tells me, you violated on your last urinalysis, Wolff said. And Im like, What are you talking about? She goes, Yeah, your last urinalysis came back positive. I said thats not possible. And she immediately got defensive and said, Well, the test doesnt lie.

Wolff said he was not happy that it took two months to hear about the positive test, which hes never seen.

Bexar County District Attorney Nicholas Nico LaHood said Wolff could face jail time if it is determined that the failed test is considered a parole violation.

Any defendant who violates the terms of their probation could have their probation revoked and they would have to serve their jail sentence, LaHood stated in a text message. Alternatively, the court could continue the defendant on probation and impose a jail sanction as a condition of continued probation.

J. Charles Bunk, Wolffs attorney, said if the allegation that his client was drinking is proven, it could be a violation. But he echoed Wolffs denial, saying the commissioner did not consume alcohol in August.

Wolff said hes unsure whether he can challenge the test results, but might consider doing so if its an option. According to Wolff, he passed his breath monitor test around 6 a.m. the day of the urinalysis test, then took the test a few hours later  a window during which it would make little sense to be drinking.

The commissioner said hes never failed a breath monitoring test, which hes required to take during designated windows three times a day, seven days a week. Many of the skipped tests in May and June resulted from a trip to China, Wolff said, where he and his wife, Sandi, visited their daughter for her 20th birthday. Wolff said the monitor failed to transmit his results, noting he was in remote areas of the country.

Wolffs DWI troubles began on July 31, 2016, when he was arrested around 3 a.m. after twice rear-ending a car in a Whataburger drive-thru. He told authorities at the time that he drank cocktails made of vodka with peach tea, and also took three prescription drugs, including the sleep aid Ambien.

As part of the plea agreement, the DAs Office lessened the charge from a Class A misdemeanor. Wolff was sentenced by County Court-at-law Judge Jason Garrahan to a 180-day jail term, which was probated for a year, and fined $650.

Serving as Precinct 3 commissioner since 2008, Wolff announced in early November he would not seek the U.S. District 21 seat being vacated by Rep. Lamar Smith, a seat he said hed had his eye on for years.

ezavala@express-news.net | jscherer@express-news.net
Police are asking for the public's help finding an 84-year-old woman who has been missing since Monday.

Simona Pineda, who suffers from a medical condition that requires medication, was last seen in the 5800 block of Liberty Bell. She has straight, ear top-length hair.
A San Antonio woman convicted of murder in October was sentenced Thursday to 45 years in prison for fatally shooting a deaf man on the porch of her East Side apartment in 2016.

After contradictory statements Michelle Chase made to police were shown to a Bexar County jury at her trial, it took the panel three hours to find her guilty of murder for shooting William Farr, 50, either on Feb. 6 or Feb. 7, 2016.

Authorities found his body in front of her apartment in the 600 block of South Rio Grande Street on Feb. 8.

Chase, 51, said Farr demanded money from her and attacked her when she did not give it to him. Initially she said she did not shoot the man and did not have a gun. But in a video interview played at her trial, Chase told officers that she kept a gun by the front door and when Farr attacked her, she fired a gun toward the man, and did not mean to kill him. She left the scene shortly after.

Her attorney, J. Anton Hajek III argued that Chase shot Farr in self-defense because he said the man stalked her.

Prosecutors Gretchen Flader and Madeline Flosi argued that Chase shot an unarmed man, noting that Farr, who could not speak, had a pen and notebook on him and was found resting on a note that said sorry.

Judge Jefferson Moore, who presided over the case in the 186th state District Court, formally sentenced Chase on Thursday. She will have to serve at least half of her sentence before she is eligible for parole.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
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Border Patrol agents found 30 people inside a tractor trailer stopped at a checkpoint Tuesday night, according to a news release from the agency.

This discovery was made when the 18-wheeler occupied by two American citizens pulled up to the Falfurrias checkpoint. A Border Patrol K9 alerted agents to check the cargo area of the truck, where agents found 30 undocumented immigrants hiding among the cargo, officials said.

RELATED: Convicted child killer enters not guilty plea in new indictments

Medical attention was offered to them, but was decline, according to the Border Patrol. The citizens were arrested and the truck was seized.

Earlier in the week, 12 undocumented immigrants were found in a similar scheme, according to the news release.

The discovery comes days after the Border Patrol has rolled out a new campaign called Operation Big Rig.

RELATED: Details of driver James Matthew Bradley Jr., charged in deadly immigrant case emerge

The initiative is meant to put a spotlight on human smuggling and reducing its prevalence.

The Border Patrol warned truck drivers, saying anyone convicted of human smuggling charges would be disqualified from driving commercial vehicles for life.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
San Antonio police are looking for two suspects after a woman was shot in the head outside a South Side gym early Thursday morning.

Officers were called to Southwest General Hospital to talk to the 21-year-old shooting victim around 4:40 a.m., according to preliminary information provided by the department.
Police on Monday arrested a 21-year-old man accused of prostituting two juvenile girls out of a Northeast Side hotel for about a week.

The alleged pimp, Elijah Maleek Teel, was charged with trafficking a minor. He was booked into the Bexar County Jail on Tuesday on a $100,000 bond.

RELATED: Police: Teens shot attempting to steal during meetup to buy jewelry

According to his arrest affidavit, Teel met the girls in late September after they ran away from the a San Antonio rehab center.

Teel and another man, who is only identified as "Rocky" in the document, allegedly agreed to rent the girls a room at an EconoLodge in the 10800 block of Interstate 35 North, as they were not old enough to do so themselves.

Later that day, the men returned to the room and told the girls they could help them make some money, the affidavit says. They then took photos of the girls posing in their underwear and posted the photos to Backpage.com, a website often used for paid sex, authorities said.

RELATED: Meth-addicted man pleads guilty to sexually assaulting child in Comal County

On Oct. 1, one of the victims' mothers reported her missing daughter's location to police, and when officers arrived to the EconoLodge they found the two girls and began their investigation. After hearing the girls' stories, Special Victims Unit detective gathered surveillance camera footage from the motel and spoke with employees about the two suspected pimps, officials said.

Authorities were eventually able to tie Teel to the trafficked juveniles through his license plate number and phone number, according to his arrest affidavit.

Police secured a warrant for his arrest, and he was jailed this week. Due to the age of the victims, Teel faces a first-degree felony charge, according to the Texas Penal Code. If convicted, he faces up to 99 years in prison.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs is a crime reporter for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here.| cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns
A San Antonio man who is under a doctor's care and requires medication went missing Wednesday, according to police.

Faris Hodge Jr., 64, was last seen wearing a white and blue over shirt above a blue St. Johns shirt and blue jeans, according to the news release.
"The number of injured Palestinians continues to climb on Thursday as clashes with Israeli forces continue to escalate across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, in response to U.S. President Donald Trumps announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," the Palestinian mnews agency Ma'an reported.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health and a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, there are upward of 50 injuries in total, nine of which are injuries with live ammunition, Ma'an said.

According to the agency, in Gaza, four Palestinians from the southern district of Khan Younis were injured with live ammunition, and one Palestinian from northeastern Gaza was injured.

In the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, medics told Maan that at least three Palestinians were injured with rubber-coated steel bullets while two, including a young boy, were treated for severe tear-gas inhalation.

In the Kafr Qaddum town of the Qalqiliya district in the northern West Bank, five injuries were reported, four of which are tear-gas related, and one with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

In Hebron city, clashes erupted following a march in the city. Israeli forces raided the city, firing tear gas and chasing down dozens of Palestinian youths who were throwing stones.

Thousands of demonstrators in Hebron and Bireh had rallied with chants of "Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine", witnesses said. Some Palestinians threw stones at soldiers.

Palestinian authorities had called a general strike in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement about Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Thousands of Palestinians are expected to hold rallies again tomorrow after Friday prayers in a "Day of Rage."

Member of armed groups including from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, appeared at a news conference in Gaza, their faces hidden by masks and called for a resumption of armed resistance in the West Bank.

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WASHINGTON - Donald Trump Jr. refused to tell lawmakers about conversations he had with his father regarding a controversial 2016 Trump Tower meeting after emails detailing the meeting had become public, according to the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

Trump Jr. spoke to the committee behind closed doors on Wednesday as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Trump Jr. said he didn't tell the president about the meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians when it happened and he declined to elaborate on what he ultimately told him after the meeting became public.

California Rep. Adam Schiff said that Trump Jr. said he couldn't speak about the conversations with his father because of attorney-client privilege, telling the committee a lawyer was present when he spoke to his father about the June 2016 meeting and the emails that led up to it.

The Trump Tower meeting is a matter of keen interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is also investigating the meddling and whether there was any obstruction of justice. Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, attended the meeting with several Russian operatives hoping to receive damaging information about the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Mueller is also interested in the White House response to the meeting once it became public. The White House has said the president was involved in drafting an early statement saying the meeting primarily concerned a Russian adoption program, but emails later released by Trump Jr. showed that he enthusiastically agreed to the sit-down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others after he was promised dirt on his father's rival. Trump Jr. later said the promised material never materialized.

Trump Jr. said during Wednesday's eight-hour interview that he spoke with President Donald Trump's communications aide Hope Hicks as early reports of the meeting emerged, according to one person familiar with the interview.

Hicks was with the president on Air Force One while they were writing the statement that said the meeting primarily concerned the adoption program.

Trump Jr. also told the intelligence panel that he didn't tell his father about the 2016 meeting at the time that it happened, according to the person familiar with his interview. The person was not authorized to speak about the testimony.

Both the House and the Senate intelligence committees have been interested in the Trump Tower meeting and have interviewed several participants. The Senate Judiciary Committee is also investigating the meeting, and interviewed Trump Jr. behind closed doors in September.

In that interview, Trump Jr. cast the 2016 meeting as simply an opportunity to learn about Clinton's "fitness, character or qualifications," insisting to investigators that he did not collude with Russia to hurt Clinton's campaign.

The Senate intelligence committee also hopes to interview Trump Jr. before the end of the year.
LONDON - Counterterrorism officers thwarted a terrorist attack targeting the British prime minister, Theresa May, prosecutors said when two suspects in their early 20s appeared in court on Wednesday.

Word of the planned attack coincided with what the authorities have depicted as mounting concern about the intensity, scale and pace of conspiracies by violent extremists.

There have been five terrorist attacks in Britain this year alone, killing dozens of people in total. An official report on Tuesday said the worst of those assaults - at a concert by the pop star Ariana Grande in Manchester in May - might have been averted "had the cards fallen differently."

The planned attack on May was to begin with a bombing of the security gates that protect 10 Downing Street - the home and office of British prime ministers - as a prelude to an attempt to stab her to death, prosecutors said.

Two suspects - Naa'imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, and Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21 - were arrested Nov. 28. Rahman, a resident of north London, is accused of planning the bombing and knife attack. Imran, from Birmingham in the English Midlands, is accused of preparing acts of terrorism by traveling to Libya to join the Islamic State militant group.

Mark Carroll, a prosecutor, told the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday that Rahman had planned to set off explosives at the gates of 10 Downing Street. In the ensuing chaos, he hoped to gain access to May's office and stage a "secondary attack" using "a suicide vest, pepper spray and a knife."

The two accused suspects did not indicate how they would plead when the case went before a higher court at the Old Bailey facility on Dec. 20.

In Parliament on Tuesday, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, said 22 Islamist plots had been prevented in the past four years, nine of them since March, when an assailant in a sport utility vehicle mowed down pedestrians and stabbed a police officer outside Parliament. Five people died in that attack, including the assailant, a 52-year-old Briton, Khalid Masood.

In May, Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old Briton of Libyan descent, blew himself up outside the concert hall in Manchester, killing himself and 22 other people.

In June, three men - Khuram Shazad Butt, a British citizen born in Pakistan; Rachid Redouane, a failed asylum-seeker who said he was Moroccan or Libyan; and Youssef Zaghba, an Italian of Moroccan ancestry - drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then used knives to attack people around the nearby Borough Market. Eleven people died, including the three assailants, who were shot by the police.

Later that month, a British man, Darren Osborne, drove a van into a crowd of worshippers outside Finsbury Park mosque in London. One man died soon afterward, and Osborne has been charged with murder.

Rudd said on Tuesday that Britain's security services were embroiled in more than 500 investigations involving more than 3,000 people.
The United States has primed a bomb in the Middle East with its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Thursday.

Yildirim said Turkey's stark differences with Washington, which have already strained ties between the NATO allies, meant that an overwhelming majority of the Turkish people were now unsympathetic toward the United States.

"The United States has pulled the pin on a bomb ready to blow in the region," Yildirim told a conference in Ankara.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and promising to move the U.S. Embassy there.

Following the decision, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul; on Thursday, there was a heavy police presence with uniformed soldiers patrolling the roof.

"Today, more than 80 percent of our citizens are cold towards the United States and they are right to be so," Yildirim said, without giving a source for the figure.

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If there is a common denominator explaining so many recent events in the Middle East  actions by Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Syria, Israel and Yemen  it can be expressed in one word: Iran. Everyone has Irans growing power and influence in the region on the mind  including Iran  and that obsession is making a lot of people crazy.

For instance, the Trump administration, like Barack Obamas, actually wants to get away from the Middle East  as much as possible  but while leaving as little Iranian influence behind as possible.

Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, wants to get ahead in the Middle East and reform his economy for the 21st century  while curtailing as much Iranian influence in the region as possible.

And the Iranians want to get wide  to expand their influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean  not by creating a successful and attractive development model at home that Arabs and other Muslims would want to emulate, but rather by forcing their way into Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq through local Shiite militias that have created states within these states.

So pro-Iranian militias control a bunch of bad neighborhoods in Beirut, Sana, Damascus and Baghdad. Tell me, what is second prize? What are they really winning?

Iran has a richly talented population, and rich Persian culture. But instead of unleashing both and enabling Irans youth to realize their full potential  and making the country influential that way  the ayatollahs are suppressing those talents at home and unleashing the power of Shiite mercenaries on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and compelling influence that way instead.

The greatest thing that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia could do is to stop working each other into a lather over this Iranian threat and to focus on their domestic reform agendas.

For starters, American, European and Arab leaders should all be encouraging MBS to keep pursuing his stated goal of reversing the religious right turn that the kingdom took in 1979, after the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Muslim extremists.

If MBS fulfills his vow to bring Saudi Islam back to moderation, it will surely improve the status of Muslim women, the quality of education in Muslim communities and the relationship between Muslims and other faiths across the globe.

But for MBS to advance that agenda requires a strong, economically healthy Saudi Arabia, but its trajectory in recent years has been sharply downward.

Wise friends of MBS would also be telling him that its great to arrest thieving Saudi billionaires and throw them in the Ritz-Carlton, but it has to be done with transparency and within a rule of law. They also have to stress to him that to be an effective anti-corruption campaigner, he has to be open to criticism himself and live modestly.

On foreign policy, MBS real friends would also tell him that while Iran has expanded its influence across the Arab world, the Saudis do not have the muscles to take it on head-on right now.

Meanwhile, the Saudis wrote checks to Sunni militias, who never stayed bought. Or they bought big weapons systems that are useless in this age of irregular warfare  and only lead to the kind of Saudi aerial bombardments of Yemen that have led to so many civilian deaths, disease and starvation  and a costly stalemate for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia needs to end that war  now  even if it means leaving some Iranian influence behind.

Because it has so much deferred reform to undertake  before its oil money runs out  the biggest question is not if MBS is too brash, too brutal, too power-hungry or too imperfect. Its whether hes too late  that Saudi Arabia is now un-reformable. I think not, but that is why, with all of MBS flaws, we need to help increase his chances for success. If he can turn Jiddah into another Dubai, where so many Iranians now love to vacation and bank, he will do more to increase his influence in the region and diminish Irans than anything else he could do.
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When at least three dozen Democratic senators called on fellow Democrat Sen. Al Franken to resign Wednesday, the #MeToo movement hit a powerful milestone by showing that politicians  like people in other walks of life  are able to follow their conscience and call out friends and allies for inappropriate sexual behavior.

Its clear the American people dont look lightly on these kinds of actions, no matter who theyre committed by, and the number of complaints against Sen. Franken is a concern. I think resignation is the right thing for him to do, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein tweeted Wednesday, joining the states other senator, Kamala Harris, in calling for him to leave. Franken, who has been accused of inappropriate touching by six women, has scheduled a major announcement for Thursday.

That said, the Senate Democrats move has a politically expedient dimension, too.

It is monumental that so many Democrats, and so many Democratic women in the Senate, came forward, said Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University and a leading researcher on gender and politics. Without the national outcry and all of these other industries calling out their own, it might not have happened.

But it is also the politically right thing to do, too, said Lawless, co-author of Women on the Run: Gender, Media and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era. They will have a far stronger leg to stand on if Roy Moore wins and theyre going to call on him to not be seated, she said of the Senate candidate from Alabama who has been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women when he was in his 30s. That election is Tuesday.

But Wednesdays game-changer seems to be largely confined to Democrats.

President Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 16 women, has endorsed Moore, largely because the president doesnt want an additional Democrat in the Senate. This week, the Republican National Committee reversed its decision not to support Moore.

Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, I believe the women who accused Moore of misconduct. But in recent days, McConnell has toned down his comments. He now says he would let the people of Alabama make the call, as to whether Moore should become a senator.

And even though Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, has admitted using $84,000 in taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment case, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., hasnt asked Farenthold to resign, noting that the independent Office of Congressional Ethics investigated the claim against Farenthold and dismissed it.

Until Wednesday, politicians typically called for a colleague accused of sexual impropriety to step down only if he were a member of the opposite party. Democrat and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was widely criticized for calling Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., an icon when asked about allegations of his sexual impropriety. Days later, Pelosi called for him to resign, and on Tuesday, Conyers said he was retiring.

The Franken situation accelerates the dynamic of holding fellow party members accountable.

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating allegations by six women that Franken touched them inappropriately. Franken, D-Minn., has apologized while denying that his actions were intentional.

Frankens repeated apologies werent enough for his fellow Democrats, even those he was close to, like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

In a detailed statement on her Facebook page Wednesday, Gillibrand wrote that she was shocked and disappointed to learn over the last few weeks that a colleague I am fond of personally has engaged in behavior toward women that is unacceptable.

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

However, even though she said she has enjoyed working with him in our shared fights, Gillibrand wrote: This moment of reckoning about our friends and colleagues who have been accused of sexual misconduct is necessary and it is painful. We must not lose sight that this watershed moment is bigger than any one industry, any one party, or any one person.

Gillibrand said she has spent a lot of time reflecting on Frankens behavior.

Enough is enough, she wrote. The women who have come forward are brave, and I believe them. While its true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore or (movie producer) Harvey Weinstein or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong and should not be tolerated by those of us who are privileged to work in public service.

Hearing words like that is important for women who aspire to public office, said Maimuna Syed, executive director of Emerge California, which trains Democratic women to run for office. The organization has seen an 87 percent increase in the number of applications it has received this year; Syed attributes that increase to frustration and anger toward Trump.

If we, as a Democratic Party, are going to lead on this issue, we have to be comfortable calling out our own, in addition to calling out the Roy Moores of the world, Syed said. Weve allowed men who harass women to police themselves, and the media has provided cover for them. None of that encourages women to come forward and tell their stories.

Wednesdays actions show that the issue has reached a critical mass of Americans  at least on one side of the spectrum, said Kim Nalder, director of Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State University, where she is a political science professor. But, she added, Im concerned about whether it lasts or not. Im concerned with a backlash coming.

At the current moment we dont have a sense of proportionality, even though Harvey Weinsteins actions are far worse than Al Frankens. All we have is this zero-tolerance reaction. Theres not a scale established where at 100 on the scale you lose your job and at 10, you get scolded.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli Podcasts: sfchronicle.com/podcasts/
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Thursday and expressed serious concern about Washington's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

Both leaders agreed that further escalation of tensions in the Middle East cannot be allowed, and that the focus should be on finding compromises, including on Jerusalem's status, the Kremlin said in a statement.

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BULAWAYO woman masqueraded as a police boss before storming into the ordinance stores in anti-riot gear where she allegedly ordered a subordinate to give her a police uniform, a badge and cap for the rank of a superintendent, a magistrate heard yesterday.

Bulawayo magistrate, Mr Isheunesu Matova, heard this when Lorraine Mpofu (38) of Mpopoma suburb appeared before him facing charges of fraud and impersonation.

She was remanded out of custody to January 8, 2018 pending the commencement of her trial.

Prosecuting, Mr Carlington Dhliwayo said on August 15 this year at around 10AM, Mpofu, who was dressed in anti-riot gear, went to the Matabeleland North police ordinance stores in Bulawayo.

She approached one Sergeant Esnath Govo and requested to see the officer-in-charge.

Mpofu was told that the officer-in-charge of ordinance stores was on leave.

The court heard that Mpofu introduced herself as a superintendent before she allegedly requested to be given uniforms by Sgt Govo.

Sgt Govo phoned her officer-in-charge who authorised her to go ahead and give Mpofu the regalia she wanted, said Mr Dhliwayo.

Mpofu was issued with the uniform which comprised a three-piece winter suit, a summer skirt, grey shirt, a badge, jacket, a cap and a pair of riot trousers all valued at $202,50.

On August 28 this year at around 11.45AM, Mpofu went to the office of one Inspector Elison Phiri, the officer-in-charge of ordinance stores in Bulawayo. Mpofu was in the company a junior cop only identified as Constable Mutamba, said Mr Dhliwayo.

The court heard that the accused person introduced herself as Superintendent Mpofu from Police General Headquarters operations department. She requested to be given a peak gold cap for the rank of a superintendent.

Insp Phiri asked to see Mpofus police identity card. Mpofu told Insp Phiri that she left the document at her home.

Insp Phiri then requested Mpofus force number and the accused person gave him 982398 Z as her number.

Insp Phiri made an inquiry with Police General Headquarters and the Salary Service Bureau to establish whether Mpofu was indeed a genuine cop. It emerged that no such name existed in the Zimbabwe Republic Police, said Mr Dhliwayo.

A report was made at Bulawayo Central Police Station leading to Mpofus arrest. Further investigations led to the recovery of the police regalia.

Mpofu is being represented by Mr Byron Sengweni of Sengweni Legal Practice.

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THE late health advisor to the president and cabinet, Dr Timothy Stamps, will not be interred at the Heroes Acre in Harare despite being declared a national hero. According to the family, the decision was in line with the former health ministers wishes.

What I can tell you is that, according to his wishes, and because he loved this country so much, we are also as his sons. He (Dr Stamps) had wished to stay in Zimbabwe; so, his remains will remain in Zimbabwe, although he is now in heaven, said son Kenyon this Wednesday.

He was speaking at a memorial service held in Harare Wednesday for the widely respected national hero. Dr Stamps succumbed to lung infection about 10 days ago, a few days after his boss, former president Robert Mugabe resigned in a militarised power transition.

Health minister David Parirenyatwa said a plaque would be erected in honour of Stamps who fought against racial discrimination during the war of independence advocating for equality on access to social services.

The plaque will be erected on a half grave. If you remember that is what happened with Edison Sithole (whose body was not found), said Parirenyatwa responding to questions soon after the memorial service.

In the speech read on his behalf, Mnangagwa said Dr Stamps was a selfless man who endangered his life on several occasions for the benefit of others, particularly the marginalised and vulnerable.

He joins a rare breed of a very few fellow citizens who have been bestowed the highest honour on our land who lie buried at the sacred shrine, the national shrine. Indeed, the according of the national hero status to the late Dr Stamps attests to the role we all can play as Zimbabweans in developing our country regardless of ethnic origin.

Dr Stamps was dismissed from his position as chief medical officer of Salisbury, now Harare, for working to improve health services for the marginalised blacks. He also established the Stamps foundation to alleviate the plight of people living with chronic illness and was passionate about disability issues.

Sons Telfan and Kenyon Stamps said paid tribute to former president Robert Mugabe for inviting their father to serve Zimbabwe in a sector he was passionate about.

His excellency was the first president, if not the only one, who took my father and my father came more than willingly to go to the very furthest corners of Zimbabwe. Together, they had a heart for the people in the remotest places to give them what they needed, said Kenyon.

Dr Stamps widow, Cindy, also her late husband as a corruption-free person who was devoted to serve the public even when the reward was insignificant and his life was threatened.

WHO country director David Okello added, We remember him as one of the longest serving minister of Health not just in Zimbabwe but in Africa, a mark of confidence and good work. He played an invaluable role in demystifying HIV at a time no one wanted to associate with it.

Among the high-profile figures who attended the memorial were Harare province minister of state Miriam Chikukwa, speaker of parliament Jacob Mudenda, Sydney Sekeramayi, Sekai Holland, Zanu PF politician Goodwills Masimirembwa and former cabinet minister Tshinga Dube.

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President Emmerson Mnangagwas top priority is to ensure Zimbabwe has its own currency so as to stimulate economic growth and build investor confidence in the country, an official has said.

Special Advisor to the President, Chris Mutsvangwa, said this on Tuesday during a meet the people rally to introduce his wife Monica Mutsvangwa as new Minister of State for Manicaland.

Monica takes over from Mandi Chimene who was expelled from Zanu PF and government and is believed to be holed up in Mozambique after President Robert Mugabe was forced to resign following a coup code named `Restore Legacy`.

One thing for certain which touched Presidents heart was the issue of re- introducing our own currency; that matter has generated a lot of interest amongst investors from South Africa, China even in the European Union who want to see this country progressing.

President Mnangagwa is being accepted across the world with various countries pledging to work and assist the country to retain to its former glory.

He has the goodwill to do it. That goodwill will give confidence for the re- introduction of our local currency. We will then start to rebuild our country with a stable currency so that we develop as people, said Mutsvagwa.

Mutsvangwa praised locals for giving a safe passage to President Mnangagwa into Mozambique following reports that his life was under threat after his dismissal as Vice President.

We thank you the people of Manicaland for giving our President safe passage into Mozambique when he was about to be killed by the G40 so that he comes back alive to lead the country. I would like to applaud you for being bold enough.

We would have lost our President if you did not accord him the opportunity to escape, said Mutsvangwa.

He said the G40 faction tried to use Grace Mugabes marriage certificate to usurp President Mugabes powers, adding now Mugabe is a powerless old man who was relegated to the Blue Roof by people to rest.

He described Chimene as a drug addict who could not make decisions that would bring any meaningful developments and investment to the province.

Manicaland province should develop because its an export gateway to the world kwete zvefodya zvaiitawa with one of our sisters here, said Mutsvangwa.

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The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian factions called for a "Day of Rage" on Friday, and on Thursday, a wave of protest in the occupied West Bank and Gaza brought clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops.

At least 50 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets, Palestinian media said.

The military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank.

Some protesters chanted: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!"

Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angering the Arab world and upsetting Western allies.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

On Friday's "Day of Rage," rallies and protests are expected near Israeli-controlled checkpoints in the West Bank and along the border with Gaza.

Friday prayers at the Muslim shrine of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem could also be a flashpoint.

Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful.

Abbas on Thursday met Jordan's King Abdullah, whose dynasty is traditional custodian of Jerusalem's holy places. Jordan is a staunch U.S. ally but has dismissed Trump's move as "legally null".

Palestinian news agency Wafa said Abbas updated the king on "the imminent dangers in light of the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the occupation state, and the mechanism of future steps to protect the holy city".

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of their own to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Protests have broken out since Trump's announcement in Jordan, outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul and in Pakistan.

Palestinians switched off Christmas lights on trees outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in protest.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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THE Dzamara family has petitioned President Emmerson Mnangagwa, demanding that he launches an urgent and sincere investigation into the case of missing Itai and account for his disappearance. The petition was handed over by missing journalists brother Patson on Wednesday and was received by an officer who identified himself as Dube at Mnangagwas office.

Itai was abducted in Glen View almost two and half years ago after he had staged a series of demonstrations against the former president Robert Mugabe calling on him to step down accusing him of running down the country. Patson said he was asking Mnangagwa to act because of the indifference of the former government in which he (Mnangagwa) was vice president and Justice Minister.

To date, nothing has been done to assist us as a family to at least come to a closure. Even though Itai Dzamara openly opposed the former government and some of its policies, his security and right to life remains a direct and unquestionable responsibility of the government, said Patson to New Zimbabwe.

He added, Ever since Itai Dzamaras disappearance a lot has transpired and various theories have been promulgated. However and in spite of that, I am of the view that by now some headway should have been made if everyone involved and concerned acted in good faith, especially the government through the responsible ministries.

He said their position regarding the involvement of state security agents particularly the military intelligence in the abduction of Itai Dzamara has not changed.

As you might be aware, Sir, Itai Dzamara petitioned your predecessor, Mr. Mugabe to step down for failing to run the country well. Unfortunately, since that day receiving threats on his life from security agents became the norm and he was subjected to serious torture at the hands of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and other private sources within your Zanu PF political party.

Patson added, He (Itai) was beaten, arrested and received death threats by state security agents several times even though his activities were well within his Constitutional rights.

We may not agree on many other things but we have to agree on this one thing, a human being cannot disappear just like that. I am thoroughly convinced, Sir, that with your assistance and that of your government, in good faith, we can make some headway on this matter, Itai Dzamara must be released to us, his family, dead or alive.

Patson further said as the President of Zimbabwe sworn to protect every citizen, Mnangagwa should immediately issue a statement over Itais disappearance.

That as the Head of State and government you order whoever is keeping Itai Dzamara in captivity to release him immediately, dead or alive. That as the Head of State and Government and the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces make a commitment and public announcement that the state security agents shall intensify their efforts in uncovering the mystery surrounding Itai Dzamaras disappearance and make sure he is released immediately, dead or alive.

And, That as the President of Zimbabwe and a concerned leader, you should ensure that your government, through the responsible ministries, engages the Dzamara family and walks with us through this austere experience. Itai Dzamaras disappearance cannot be treated as not being important.

Patson said in the event that Mngangagwa chose to ignore the familys demands and request, he shall engage all progressive Zimbabweans within a week and protest in various ways in a civil, peaceful and resolute manner as provided for within the Constitution.

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After being snubbed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa when he appointed his Cabinet, opposition parties are now ganging up against the new Zanu PF leader who has indicated that the country would go for elections in seven months time.

Amid indications that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai turned down overtures to join Mnangagwas Cabinet, the Coalition for Democrats (Code) has assigned Zapu leader Dumiso Dabengwa to lead talks for the formation of a broader coalition.

Presently, there are three major coalitions: Code led by Elton Mangoma, MDC Alliance led by Tsvangirai and the Peoples Rainbow Coalition (PRC), led by former vice president Joice Mujuru.

After the euphoria died, we are now focusing on the elections. We need to prepare for the elections because we all realise the task ahead of us and if we are not united we could end up playing second fiddle. Dabengwa is presently engaging churches so that they meditate in unity talks with other coalitions, said Code spokesperson Mjabisi Noko.

Prior to Mnangagwa announcing his Cabinet, the opposition parties had hoped that the new Zanu PF leader will take on board his rivals in a transitional authority of sorts.

This did not happen.

Mnangagwa included in his Cabinet some technocrats that are his associates to work alongside ministers from his Zanu PF party.

Now, with Mnangagwas stock rising after an inspiring inauguration speech, and having masterminded former president Robert Mugabes downfall, the MDC led by Tsvangirai said it is now trying to convince Zimbabweans that the war has not been won as the Zanu PF entrenched system is still intact.

We had put eyes off the ball but now we are back to basics. We are going ahead with plans for 2018 elections and are occupying ourselves with voter registration  that is our main focus for now.

We dont want to lose focus, other issues are subordinate to that, people were almost losing sight of the ball, we want reforms first, this is the end game, this is a build up to the end game, said Obert Gutu, MDCs spokesperson.

On Monday when he swore-in Cabinet ministers, Mnangagwa indicated that the country would go for elections in the next six to seven months.

He called on Zimbabweans from across the political divide to unite and grow the economy, which had almost collapsed under the stewardship of his predecessor.

But there is no room for such niceties in the opposition, with PRC saying while removing Mugabe was one giant step towards tackling a system that previously rigged elections, the task ahead now is to ensure that Zanu PF is defeated by a united coalition come 2018.

He said Mnangagwa, who succeeded Mugabe because of legal provisions in the Constitution, should now level the playing field before seeking his own mandate.

We are still trying to reach out to other players. But after Mugabes fall it should be noted that the Mugabe must go mantra has not been the correct identification of the problems that Zimbabweans are facing, Mugabe was representing a failed system  that system is made up of several layers which amongst other saddening facts is none mitigated interference in civilian matters by the military. Clearly it is a remiss to suggest that Mugabe was responsible for this crisis on his own without those who were with him taking collective responsibility, those who served with Mugabe to make this country suffer also have a collective responsibility to step down with him. The euphoria was a bit misplaced, said Gift Nyandoro, Mujurus spokesperson.

And as the country hurtles towards the crunch 2018 polls, Nyandoro said there is need for the Mnangagwa administration to put in place requisite political reforms.

We believe that among the key demands to the new administration is the issue of electoral reform agenda, there are several issues that cannot be realised in the next seven months such as the economy but on elections he must deliver. Mnangagwa is not a product of an election but of a legal process that nominated him so in order to assert himself he needs that mandate from the people and not a technical one, said Nyandoro.

Ahead of next year elections the opposition is demanding that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission flushes out military personnel within its tanks, level the electoral playing field and also allow Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to vote.

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The Ministry of Home Affairs and Culture has ordered the police to abolish unnecessary road blocks and work on regaining public confidence.

This comes as the new government is on a massive drive to rebuild the countrys economy by eliminating corruption and other malpractices.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has over the past few years been viewed as unpopular by ordinary citizens due to its policies regarding road blocks which were all over cities and major highways.

It is against this background that Home Affairs and Culture Minister Dr Obert Mpofu met with all police commanders to redefine their mandate as a police force.

Dr Mpofu said the deployment of rude and bribe seeking traffic police officers has soiled the image of the ZRP adding the force must with immediate effect do away with all unnecessary road blocks.

The road blocks have been condemned by the government and other stakeholders for threatening the tourism industry and the general public.

He said the ministry is overwhelmed by reports of corruption adding the force must adopt a positive culture and be professional in line with the vision of the President.

The Home Affairs and Culture Minister also took a swipe at the immigration and the Registrar General departments for being lackadaisical in the discharge of their duties.

Minister Mpofu told the ZRP command that they must familiarise themselves with President Emmerson Mnangagwas speech at the inauguration and understand the road map of the new government.

The high level meeting was attended by all departments under the Ministry of Home Affairs and Culture and were all given a good lecture on the importance of Operation Restore Legacy.

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Zimbabwe is engulfed with superstitious rumours alleging that the State House  former President Mugabes official residence throughout his 37 years of ruling this nation  is allegedly haunted.

The rumours have gone into overdrive after it emerged that the recently inaugurated President Emmerson Mnangagwa is yet to move into the residential side of State House.

The official government statement is that it is undergoing renovations. Presidential spokesperson, George Charamba, however, poured cold water on the rumours that Mnangagwa could be spurning occupation of State House for superstitious reasons. Some have claimed he wants a cleansing ceremony first.

Is there a prescribed period in which the president should move in? When was Cabinet sworn in? Charamba asked rhetorically, further inquiring why the Daily News was concerned over the moving in of Mnangagwa into the State House.

Meanwhile, on Sunday 11 August 2002, The Londons Sunday Times, a British highly respected newspaper, reported that Zimbabwes embattled president, believes he is haunted by the ghost of a former rival who berates him for mismanaging the country.

The paper wrote: For six months, Mugabe has been seeing Josiah Tongogara, a former guerrilla leader who was expected to become president in 1980, but died in a car crash. Mugabe is said to be tormented by his accusations that the revolution for which they fought has been destroyed.

The Londons Sunday Times further reported: Staff at the presidential palace say that in an effort to placate Tongogara, Mugabe sets an extra place at dinner each night and orders food to be served for him. He has sought help from witchdoctors, a rain goddess and an oracle. Dr Vlad Rankovic, a government psychiatrist, has prescribed anti-depressants to help Mugabe, 77, overcome his anxiety. The presidents wife, Grace, is understood to believe his psychological deterioration began after parliamentary elections last year, when Mugabes supporters resorted to violence to help him secure a narrow victory over the Movement for Democratic Change.

When the Daily News approached the presidential spokesperson, George Charamba, he dismissed rumours that President Emmerson Mnangagwa will not move into State House until it has undergone cleansing rituals.

The State House is for offices and the Zimbabwe House is the boarding facility. That place has not been used for a long time, its undergoing renovations. That whole complex is being repainted, Charamba said.

Special Advisor to the President, Christopher Mutsvangwa said Mugabe made a huge blunder by deserting the State House while he was still the President. This indicates that he too had supposedly found it uncomfortable to spend nights in State House, as he would put up for the day at his privately residence, The Blue Roof, in Borrowdale Brook.

That was part of his caprices which eventually made him lose power. The president (Mnangagwa) is going to move in. This is his designated place of rule. I wouldnt know when he will move (in but) he will move in soon, said Mutsvangwa.

ALSO READ: REPORT: Mugabe and Chombo paid US$10 million to Israeli snipers to kill Chiwenga and his generals?

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A High Court action over the proposed sale of a restored Georgian mansion and estate near Carrick-on-Suir is not proceeding.

The case had been brought by Edward Magan, a beneficiary of the Eaglehill family trust which owns the Castletown Cox house and estate of 513 acres located off the Cregg Road about four miles from Carrick-on-Suir.

Mr Magan had objected to the sale of the south Kilkenny estate by the current trustee of the estate, DW Trustees.

Mr Magan failed earlier this year via a court hearing in Jersey in the Channel Islands to stop the marketing of the property for sale.

The Jersey court ordered DW Trustees could proceed with facilitating marketing of, and access to Castletown, the estate agent, Knight Frank, was instructed to proceed with the sale.

The beneficiaries of Eaglehill Trust, which is governed by Bermuda law, are Edward and Henrietta Magan, children of Lord George Magan, a retired banker who purchased the estate in 1999.

Lawyers for Eaglehill then sought injunctions at the High Court in Dublin to stop the Irish Times Newspaper publishing an article about the sale of Castletown Cox.

In a ruling Mr Justice Paul Gilligan refused to restrain the newspaper publishing the article but gave permission for Mr Magan to serve short notice of proceedings for an injunction preventing the trustees taking steps to promote or market the sale of Castletown Cox and its demesne.

The matter which had been adjourned on several previous occasions returned before the High Court on Wednesday when a motion by DW Trustees to dismiss the case on the grounds the Irish High Court did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case was listed for hearing.

Following talks between the parties Rossa Fanning SC, for DW Trustees told Mr Justice Gilligan the matter was not going ahead

Counsel said the parties had agreed the Irish courts lack the jurisdiction to hear Mr Mangan's action, and that all previous orders made in the case could be vacated.

Niall Fitzgibbon SC, for Mr Magan, said that his side was consenting to the orders.

Previously the court heard the case, and proceedings in other jurisdictions including Bermuda and Jersey,were put on hold to allow a mediation due to take place in London last September.

However that process was not successful, and the trust wished to proceed to sell the property to another party.

The Eaglehill Trust assets are valued at between 45m-50m, with Castletown Cox representing the significant property portion of those assets.
The housing crisis in Clonmel will see people take to the streets in January to protest at the alarming number of people on housing waiting lists, homeowners facing repossession and people living in poverty trying to pay exorbitant rents in the private sector.

The desire to take the issue to the streets was expressed at a public meeting on the housing crisis and homelessness held in Clonmel on Wednesday night.

At the meeting Deputy Seamus Healy, who organised the meeting, was called on to stage a Dail walkout to highlight the issue.

Deputy Healy said he would have no problem taking such a stand and would invite like minded TD's to a meeting to make such a proposal.

At the meeting volunteers involved in soup kitchens in Clonmel and with the River Suir Suicide Watch Patrol voiced their frustration at the failure of local authorities to respond to the situation on the ground.The failure of Tipperary County Council to build social houses and what was termed a disjointed approach in the county to people presenting as homeless with those presenting inThurles met with by a social care worker while those presenting in Clonmel were not.

Two speakers June Looby Dermot Donovan hit out at the council for failing to respond to basic requests to help out.

June Looby of the Clonmel Suicide Watch Patrol said they had come across people at night sleeping rough who did not have sleeping bags and a request to the council to provide them fell on deaf ears.They met with four people sleeping rough during Storm Ophelia in Clonmel.

Dermot Donovan said he had set up a soup kicthen with other volunteers and up to twenty people were availiang of the service six evenigns a week. They had approached the council to provide a container that they could serve from but no help was given.

"Nobody helped us, the council was asked and refused.it was absolutely disgraceful" said and the group involved at the time could not continue.

Sean Carey told the meeting he was a former engineer with South Tipperary County Council. It was not that long ago that the council had engineers,adequate staff and maintenance crews and were actually involved in building houses.

"That is all gone now, no houses are being built, the numbers of engineers, housing staff,maintenance crews that used to be there were done away with.The administration of the council is nuts now " he said.

Cllr.Martin Browne,Sinn Fein said there were nine public repreeentatives in the Clonmel area and only one (the only Clonmel Borough elected representative to attend was Cllr.Pat English) attended the meeting and he wanted to know why they did not come.

Former Workers and Unemployed Action Group councillor Billy Shoer said there should be a Dail walkout to highlight the housing crisis.

Deputy Healy said he would arrange a meeting of TD's and try and get an agreement for such a protest and he told the meeting that he would organise a public protest march in Clonmel in January to highlight the housing crisis.

The two guest speakers at the meeting Mike Allen of Focus Ireland and Dr.Rory Hearne, Economic and Inequality Think Tank,addressed the attendance on the national housing and homeless crisis.
By IANS

NEW DELHI: India on Thursday said it had informed China about a drone that crashed in Chinese territory, after Beijing claimed the Indian UAV had "intruded" in its area. India will go through diplomatic channels and ask for return of the drone.

Sources said the drone was an Israeli Heron UAV, and it crashed on the Chinese side of the border across north Sikkim. The source said the drone had gone missing earlier this week, but the exact date of the incident was not revealed.

The Defence Ministry in a statement said that the Indian UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the Line of Actual Control in the Sikkim Sector.

"As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," the statement said.

ALSO READ: China says Indian drone 'invaded' its airspace, crashed

The Chinese side got back with the location details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the Defence Ministry said.

"The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocol through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," the statement said.

A report from China's Xinhua news agency on Thursday quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, as saying that an Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed.

China did not give any exact location or time of the crash.

The newly-created Western Theater Command is the largest of the five military divisions in China. Tibet which shares a border with India comes under it.

Shuili said the development "infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this."

The incident comes months after a two-and-half-month long stand-off in Doklam along the border in Sikkim, close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction. The stand-off started on June 16, when the Indian Army stopped a PLA party from its road construction activity in Doklam area. Both sides announced disengagement on August 28.

The strong reaction from China also comes days ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India for the Russia, India and China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting. Wang will arrive in India on December 10.

NEW DELHI: India on Thursday said it had informed China about a drone that crashed in Chinese territory, after Beijing claimed the Indian UAV had "intruded" in its area. India will go through diplomatic channels and ask for return of the drone. Sources said the drone was an Israeli Heron UAV, and it crashed on the Chinese side of the border across north Sikkim. The source said the drone had gone missing earlier this week, but the exact date of the incident was not revealed. The Defence Ministry in a statement said that the Indian UAV was on a regular training mission inside Indian territory when it lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the Line of Actual Control in the Sikkim Sector. "As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV," the statement said. ALSO READ: China says Indian drone 'invaded' its airspace, crashed The Chinese side got back with the location details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the Defence Ministry said. "The exact cause of the incident is under investigation. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocol through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas," the statement said. A report from China's Xinhua news agency on Thursday quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, as saying that an Indian UAV intruded into China's airspace and crashed. China did not give any exact location or time of the crash. The newly-created Western Theater Command is the largest of the five military divisions in China. Tibet which shares a border with India comes under it. Shuili said the development "infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this." The incident comes months after a two-and-half-month long stand-off in Doklam along the border in Sikkim, close to the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction. The stand-off started on June 16, when the Indian Army stopped a PLA party from its road construction activity in Doklam area. Both sides announced disengagement on August 28. The strong reaction from China also comes days ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to India for the Russia, India and China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting. Wang will arrive in India on December 10.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said today without elaborating when it will take place.

His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting tomorrow after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

"I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine," the ambassador told Rajya Sabha TV.

He, however, did not elaborate when the visit will take place.

Participating in a discussion on the channel, he said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

ALSO READ: Donald Trump Jerusalem move sparks Palestinian protests, clashes

In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel.

Reacting to the US' announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India today said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said today without elaborating when it will take place. His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting tomorrow after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East. "I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine," the ambassador told Rajya Sabha TV. He, however, did not elaborate when the visit will take place. Participating in a discussion on the channel, he said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution. ALSO READ: Donald Trump Jerusalem move sparks Palestinian protests, clashes In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel. Reacting to the US' announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India today said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country. "India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.
By IANS

JAIPUR: In a horrifying video going viral, a man is seen being burnt alive in Rajasamand district of Rajasthan, for allegedly committing "love jihad". Police arrested the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Shambunath Raigar, on Thursday.

According to SP Manoj Kumar, the person killed has been identified as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh. Interrogation of the accused is on, he added.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.

Meanwhile, police are keeping an eye on the law and order situation in the state.

Initially, Raigar made a video of his brutal act and it was uploaded on social media. The video went viral when the police were conducting their investigations.

The video shows the perpetrator hitting the man with an agricultural tool, and then pouring kerosene on his body and burning him alive. Raigar is seen warning that those indulging in 'love jihad' will meet the same fate.

CLICK BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO:

In another video, which is also going viral, Raigar is seen justifying the act as an endeavour to save a girl from 'love jihad'.

Speaking to IANS, SP Manoj Kumar said the police received information about a semi-burnt body lying in Ragnagar in Rajsamand district.

Without delay, he along with ASP Manish Tripathi and DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location where they found a badly disfigured body. Immediately the forensics team and dog squad were summoned. The agricultural tool used for murder, the victim's motorbike and his slippers were found at the crime scene.

"The video is gut-wrenching. Strict action will be taken against him (the perpetrator) once caught. Despite knowing the consequences, he made the video viral," Home Minister Kataria told ANI.

Meanwhile, Afrazul's mother while speaking with news agency ANI said, "I spoke to my son in the morning before he was killed. I don't know the reason behind his murder. I have seen the video, guilty should be punished.

According to a report in the Indian Express, Afrazul who has been working as an unskilled labourer in Rajasthan for the last 12 years was supposed to go home later this month to make arrangements for his youngest daughter's wedding.

We want those who killed my husband so brutally and showed it to the world be hanged. I want Insaaf (justice). He was only killed because he was a Muslim. Yesterday, at around 3 pm, we received a call from Rajasthan Police and were told that my husband has been murdered, said Gul Bahar Bibi, speaking to The Indian Express over the phone.



JAIPUR: In a horrifying video going viral, a man is seen being burnt alive in Rajasamand district of Rajasthan, for allegedly committing "love jihad". Police arrested the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Shambunath Raigar, on Thursday. According to SP Manoj Kumar, the person killed has been identified as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh. Interrogation of the accused is on, he added. Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case. Meanwhile, police are keeping an eye on the law and order situation in the state. Initially, Raigar made a video of his brutal act and it was uploaded on social media. The video went viral when the police were conducting their investigations. The video shows the perpetrator hitting the man with an agricultural tool, and then pouring kerosene on his body and burning him alive. Raigar is seen warning that those indulging in 'love jihad' will meet the same fate. CLICK BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO: In another video, which is also going viral, Raigar is seen justifying the act as an endeavour to save a girl from 'love jihad'. Speaking to IANS, SP Manoj Kumar said the police received information about a semi-burnt body lying in Ragnagar in Rajsamand district. Without delay, he along with ASP Manish Tripathi and DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location where they found a badly disfigured body. Immediately the forensics team and dog squad were summoned. The agricultural tool used for murder, the victim's motorbike and his slippers were found at the crime scene. "The video is gut-wrenching. Strict action will be taken against him (the perpetrator) once caught. Despite knowing the consequences, he made the video viral," Home Minister Kataria told ANI. Meanwhile, Afrazul's mother while speaking with news agency ANI said, "I spoke to my son in the morning before he was killed. I don't know the reason behind his murder. I have seen the video, guilty should be punished. According to a report in the Indian Express, Afrazul who has been working as an unskilled labourer in Rajasthan for the last 12 years was supposed to go home later this month to make arrangements for his youngest daughter's wedding. We want those who killed my husband so brutally and showed it to the world be hanged. I want Insaaf (justice). He was only killed because he was a Muslim. Yesterday, at around 3 pm, we received a call from Rajasthan Police and were told that my husband has been murdered, said Gul Bahar Bibi, speaking to The Indian Express over the phone.
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)
By AFP

PARIS: Australia's ambassador to France wasted little time Thursday after his country adopted same-sex marriage, popping the question to his longtime partner just hours later in a video posted on Twitter.

"HE SAID YES!" Brendan Berne wrote along with a video of his proposal.

"As ambassador to France, this is a great day for my country Australia which has passed marriage for all. But also for me personally," Berne wrote.

Today was a great day for Australia and for me. HE SAID YES! #MarriageEquality pic.twitter.com/liaXiw0FYh  Brendan Berne (@AusAmbFR) December 7, 2017

In the video, Berne stands outside his partner Thomas Marti's Paris office in the Australian embassy with the Eiffel Tower in the background, saying: "Now it's my turn to confirm my relationship with my partner of 11 years, Thomas."

Berne, 47, then heads into 37-year-old Marti's office, turning briefly to the camera to say "deep breath" before taking the plunge.

Admitting to being "a little nervous" and speaking in heavily accented French, Berne says: "I'd like to ask you a question. Would you please marry me?"

Aside to the camera: "I hope I got the question right."

In response Marti gets up from his swivel chair for a long embrace with his new fiance.

Marti is a Swiss-Australian who works for Australia's foreign affairs and trade ministry, according to the embassy.

The couple met on a tram in Amsterdam and speak French at home, embassy spokesman Romain Parlier told AFP.

The tweet came less than four hours after the same-sex marriage bill sailed through parliament in Canberra.

Among other Australians soon to tie the knot will be the Liberal Party's Tim Wilson, who proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger while speaking on gay marriage on the floor of the House of Representatives this week.

Same-sex marriage is now recognised in more than 20 countries, of which 16 are in Europe.

Austria's top court on Tuesday authorised same-sex marriage by 2019 at the latest.

PARIS: Australia's ambassador to France wasted little time Thursday after his country adopted same-sex marriage, popping the question to his longtime partner just hours later in a video posted on Twitter. "HE SAID YES!" Brendan Berne wrote along with a video of his proposal. "As ambassador to France, this is a great day for my country Australia which has passed marriage for all. But also for me personally," Berne wrote. Today was a great day for Australia and for me. HE SAID YES! #MarriageEquality pic.twitter.com/liaXiw0FYh  Brendan Berne (@AusAmbFR) December 7, 2017 In the video, Berne stands outside his partner Thomas Marti's Paris office in the Australian embassy with the Eiffel Tower in the background, saying: "Now it's my turn to confirm my relationship with my partner of 11 years, Thomas." Berne, 47, then heads into 37-year-old Marti's office, turning briefly to the camera to say "deep breath" before taking the plunge. Admitting to being "a little nervous" and speaking in heavily accented French, Berne says: "I'd like to ask you a question. Would you please marry me?" Aside to the camera: "I hope I got the question right." In response Marti gets up from his swivel chair for a long embrace with his new fiance. Marti is a Swiss-Australian who works for Australia's foreign affairs and trade ministry, according to the embassy. The couple met on a tram in Amsterdam and speak French at home, embassy spokesman Romain Parlier told AFP. The tweet came less than four hours after the same-sex marriage bill sailed through parliament in Canberra. Among other Australians soon to tie the knot will be the Liberal Party's Tim Wilson, who proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger while speaking on gay marriage on the floor of the House of Representatives this week. Same-sex marriage is now recognised in more than 20 countries, of which 16 are in Europe. Austria's top court on Tuesday authorised same-sex marriage by 2019 at the latest.
By Associated Press

JERUSALEM: US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday could have deep repercussions across the region.

READ | Why Jerusalem, newly crowned by US as Israel's capital, is unique

Recognition of Israel's control over the city will be welcomed by Israel, a close American ally, and be popular with pro-Israel evangelical Christian voters who make up a key part of Trump's base. But it could also trigger violence in the region, derail a developing U.S. Mideast peace plan before it even gets off the ground and infuriate key allies in the Arab world and in the West.

Here is a look at why Jerusalem is such a sensitive issue:

Conflicting claims

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim the city's eastern sector, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future independent state. These rival claims lie at the heart of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conflict is focused largely on the Old City, home to Jerusalem's most important Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, and in particular on a hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. The compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the spot where the biblical Jewish Temples stood thousands of years ago and is considered the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock.

While Israel controls the city and its government is based there, its annexation of east Jerusalem is not internationally recognized. The international community overwhelmingly says the final status of Jerusalem should be resolved through negotiations.

Why is Trump doing this

On the campaign trail, Trump took a strongly pro-Israel stance and promised to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, where most countries keep their embassies, to Jerusalem. Since taking office, he has learned that such a move is easier to talk about than to carry out.

Under American law, the president must sign a waiver every six months that leaves the embassy in Tel Aviv. In June, Trump renewed the waiver, as a string of predecessors has done. This week, another six-month deadline passed without Trump renewing it.

On Wednesday, however, Trump ordered the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the U.S. Embassy to the holy city.

"This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality," he said.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital could allow Trump to say that he kept a campaign promise. It also will thrill Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of Trump's biggest supporters on the global stage.

What effect will his declaration have

On the ground, very little will change. Netanyahu's office and official residence are in Jerusalem, as are the country's parliament, Supreme Court and Foreign Ministry. Visiting world leaders immediately travel to Jerusalem for meetings with Israeli officials.

Much of Jerusalem is an open city where Jews and Palestinians can move about freely, though a separation barrier built by Israel more than a decade ago slices through several Arab neighborhoods and requires tens of thousands of Palestinians to pass through crowded checkpoints to reach the center of the city.

Interaction between the sides is minimal and there are large disparities between wealthier Jewish neighborhoods and impoverished Palestinian ones. In addition, most of the city's more than 300,000 Palestinians do not hold Israeli citizenship and instead are "residents."

But a U.S. declaration carries deep symbolic meaning by essentially imposing a solution for one of the core issues in the conflict.

How will this be received

Beyond the electoral concerns, there seems to be little upside for Trump in making a change.

Trump likes to call an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement "the ultimate deal," and he has invested significant effort in laying the groundwork for a peace initiative in the coming months. His son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, is leading that effort and a close aide, Jason Greenblatt, has crisscrossed the region for talks with Israelis, Palestinians and other Arab leaders.

The Palestinians have warned that changing the status of Jerusalem would mean the end of those peace efforts. They also have warned of mass street protests  something that could easily erupt into full-scale violence.

International opposition to the move, including from key American allies, also has grown increasingly strident. In recent days, the European Union, Germany and France have all implored Trump not to take action on Jerusalem.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation said changing Jerusalem's status would amount to "naked aggression" against the Arab and Muslim world, and the head of the Arab League said it would be a "dangerous measure that would have repercussions" across the entire Middle East.

Perhaps most significantly, Saudi Arabia spoke out strongly against the possible American step. The Saudis are a key American ally necessary for any attempt to forge a region-wide peace.

Will there really be violence

Israeli security officials say they are monitoring the situation and prepared for all scenarios. Israel and the Palestinians also maintain discreet security ties in the West Bank that have helped prevent violence from escalating in recent years.

Still, much of the violence between Israel and the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank over the past 20 years has been connected to tensions in the holy city.

The city experienced deadly riots in 1996 after Israel opened a new tunnel in the Old City. The second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount. More recently, the city experienced a wave of Palestinian stabbings in late 2015 in part because of growing numbers of visits by Jewish nationalists to the Temple Mount, and last summer, the city again experienced weeks of unrest when Israel tried to install security cameras next to the Al Aqsa Mosque after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli police officers.

JERUSALEM: US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday could have deep repercussions across the region. READ | Why Jerusalem, newly crowned by US as Israel's capital, is unique Recognition of Israel's control over the city will be welcomed by Israel, a close American ally, and be popular with pro-Israel evangelical Christian voters who make up a key part of Trump's base. But it could also trigger violence in the region, derail a developing U.S. Mideast peace plan before it even gets off the ground and infuriate key allies in the Arab world and in the West. Here is a look at why Jerusalem is such a sensitive issue: Conflicting claims Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim the city's eastern sector, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of a future independent state. These rival claims lie at the heart of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is focused largely on the Old City, home to Jerusalem's most important Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, and in particular on a hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. The compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the spot where the biblical Jewish Temples stood thousands of years ago and is considered the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock. While Israel controls the city and its government is based there, its annexation of east Jerusalem is not internationally recognized. The international community overwhelmingly says the final status of Jerusalem should be resolved through negotiations. Why is Trump doing this On the campaign trail, Trump took a strongly pro-Israel stance and promised to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, where most countries keep their embassies, to Jerusalem. Since taking office, he has learned that such a move is easier to talk about than to carry out. Under American law, the president must sign a waiver every six months that leaves the embassy in Tel Aviv. In June, Trump renewed the waiver, as a string of predecessors has done. This week, another six-month deadline passed without Trump renewing it. On Wednesday, however, Trump ordered the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the U.S. Embassy to the holy city. "This is nothing more or less than the recognition of reality," he said. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital could allow Trump to say that he kept a campaign promise. It also will thrill Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of Trump's biggest supporters on the global stage. What effect will his declaration have On the ground, very little will change. Netanyahu's office and official residence are in Jerusalem, as are the country's parliament, Supreme Court and Foreign Ministry. Visiting world leaders immediately travel to Jerusalem for meetings with Israeli officials. Much of Jerusalem is an open city where Jews and Palestinians can move about freely, though a separation barrier built by Israel more than a decade ago slices through several Arab neighborhoods and requires tens of thousands of Palestinians to pass through crowded checkpoints to reach the center of the city. Interaction between the sides is minimal and there are large disparities between wealthier Jewish neighborhoods and impoverished Palestinian ones. In addition, most of the city's more than 300,000 Palestinians do not hold Israeli citizenship and instead are "residents." But a U.S. declaration carries deep symbolic meaning by essentially imposing a solution for one of the core issues in the conflict. How will this be received Beyond the electoral concerns, there seems to be little upside for Trump in making a change. Trump likes to call an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement "the ultimate deal," and he has invested significant effort in laying the groundwork for a peace initiative in the coming months. His son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, is leading that effort and a close aide, Jason Greenblatt, has crisscrossed the region for talks with Israelis, Palestinians and other Arab leaders. The Palestinians have warned that changing the status of Jerusalem would mean the end of those peace efforts. They also have warned of mass street protests  something that could easily erupt into full-scale violence. International opposition to the move, including from key American allies, also has grown increasingly strident. In recent days, the European Union, Germany and France have all implored Trump not to take action on Jerusalem. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation said changing Jerusalem's status would amount to "naked aggression" against the Arab and Muslim world, and the head of the Arab League said it would be a "dangerous measure that would have repercussions" across the entire Middle East. Perhaps most significantly, Saudi Arabia spoke out strongly against the possible American step. The Saudis are a key American ally necessary for any attempt to forge a region-wide peace. Will there really be violence Israeli security officials say they are monitoring the situation and prepared for all scenarios. Israel and the Palestinians also maintain discreet security ties in the West Bank that have helped prevent violence from escalating in recent years. Still, much of the violence between Israel and the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank over the past 20 years has been connected to tensions in the holy city. The city experienced deadly riots in 1996 after Israel opened a new tunnel in the Old City. The second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount. More recently, the city experienced a wave of Palestinian stabbings in late 2015 in part because of growing numbers of visits by Jewish nationalists to the Temple Mount, and last summer, the city again experienced weeks of unrest when Israel tried to install security cameras next to the Al Aqsa Mosque after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli police officers.
By Associated Press

PARIS: Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital has drawn sharp criticism, with the significant exception of Israel.

Here are key reactions from around the world:

- Israel salutes 'historic' day -

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's recognition as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision".

Netanyahu also pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

- No longer a peace broker -

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the US could no longer play the role of peace broker after Trump's decision.

"These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts," Abbas said in a speech.

- 'Destroys two-state solution' -

The secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said Trump had destroyed any hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"He destroyed the two-state solution," Saeb Erekat, who long served as the Palestinians' top negotiator, told journalists.

- 'Open gates of hell' -

Hamas said Trump's decision would "open the gates of hell" on US interests in the region.

"This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region," Ismail Radwan, an official with the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, told journalists. READ | Hamas says Trump's decision on Jerusalem opens 'gates of hell'

- 'Unjustified and irresponsible' -

Saudi Arabia slammed Trump's move as "unjustified and irresponsible" and said the decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people".

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

- 'New intifada' -

Iran condemned the US move, saying it threatened a "new intifada", or uprising, against Israel.

"The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," the foreign ministry said on its website.

- UN against 'unilateral measures' -

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres implicitly criticised Trump's announcement, warning that Jerusalem's status must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

"From day one as secretary general of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardise the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said.

- 'Palestinian cause' -

The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed Trump's move, saying in a statement it would not dim the "Palestinian cause".

"The future of Jerusalem is not set by a state or a president, but by its history, will, and the determination of those loyal to the Palestinian cause which will stay alive in the conscience of the Arab homeland until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," it said.

- 'Rejected by Arab world' -

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed his country's "highest degrees of solidarity with the Palestinian people and its right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".

"The American decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the embassy there is a step that is rejected by the Arab world and risks spilling dangers over into the region," he said.

- 'Violation of international law' -

Jordan condemned Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as amounting to a violation of international law and the UN charter.

"The decision of the American president to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of the US embassy to this city constitutes a violation of decisions of international law and the United Nations charter," said government spokesman Mohammed Momani.

- Indonesia summons US ambassador -

Indonesian president Joko Widodo, who leads the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, said he "condemned" Trump's decision on Jerusalem, and ordered the US ambassador in Jakarta to be summoned over the move.

"Indonesia strongly condemns the United States' one-sided recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and asks the US to reconsider this decision," Widodo said in televised remarks.

- 'Irresponsible, illegal' -

Turkey also slammed Trump's Jerusalem announcement.

"We condemn the irresponsible statement of the US administration... the decision is against international law and relevant UN resolutions," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter.

- 'Unhelpful for peace' -

Prime Minister Theresa May said the British government disagreed with Trump's decision, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts.

"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement. "We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region".

- 'Avoid violence' -

French President Emmanuel Macron branded Trump's stance as "regrettable" and called for efforts to "avoid violence at all costs".

Macron affirmed "the attachment of France and Europe to the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states".

- Merkel 'does not support' -

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said through her spokesman that she "does not support" Trump's reversal of decades of US policy.

"The status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter.

- 'Serious concern' -

The European Union's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced "serious concern" at Trump's new stance on Jerusalem.

"The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states," Mogherini said, referring to Israelis and Palestinians.

PARIS: Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital has drawn sharp criticism, with the significant exception of Israel. Here are key reactions from around the world: - Israel salutes 'historic' day - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's recognition as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision". Netanyahu also pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. - No longer a peace broker - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the US could no longer play the role of peace broker after Trump's decision. "These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts," Abbas said in a speech. - 'Destroys two-state solution' - The secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said Trump had destroyed any hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "He destroyed the two-state solution," Saeb Erekat, who long served as the Palestinians' top negotiator, told journalists. - 'Open gates of hell' - Hamas said Trump's decision would "open the gates of hell" on US interests in the region. "This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region," Ismail Radwan, an official with the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, told journalists. READ | Hamas says Trump's decision on Jerusalem opens 'gates of hell' - 'Unjustified and irresponsible' - Saudi Arabia slammed Trump's move as "unjustified and irresponsible" and said the decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people". "The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. - 'New intifada' - Iran condemned the US move, saying it threatened a "new intifada", or uprising, against Israel. "The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," the foreign ministry said on its website. - UN against 'unilateral measures' - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres implicitly criticised Trump's announcement, warning that Jerusalem's status must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. "From day one as secretary general of the United Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardise the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said. - 'Palestinian cause' - The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed Trump's move, saying in a statement it would not dim the "Palestinian cause". "The future of Jerusalem is not set by a state or a president, but by its history, will, and the determination of those loyal to the Palestinian cause which will stay alive in the conscience of the Arab homeland until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," it said. - 'Rejected by Arab world' - Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed his country's "highest degrees of solidarity with the Palestinian people and its right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital". "The American decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the embassy there is a step that is rejected by the Arab world and risks spilling dangers over into the region," he said. - 'Violation of international law' - Jordan condemned Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as amounting to a violation of international law and the UN charter. "The decision of the American president to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of the US embassy to this city constitutes a violation of decisions of international law and the United Nations charter," said government spokesman Mohammed Momani. - Indonesia summons US ambassador - Indonesian president Joko Widodo, who leads the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, said he "condemned" Trump's decision on Jerusalem, and ordered the US ambassador in Jakarta to be summoned over the move. "Indonesia strongly condemns the United States' one-sided recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and asks the US to reconsider this decision," Widodo said in televised remarks. - 'Irresponsible, illegal' - Turkey also slammed Trump's Jerusalem announcement. "We condemn the irresponsible statement of the US administration... the decision is against international law and relevant UN resolutions," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter. - 'Unhelpful for peace' - Prime Minister Theresa May said the British government disagreed with Trump's decision, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts. "We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement. "We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region". - 'Avoid violence' - French President Emmanuel Macron branded Trump's stance as "regrettable" and called for efforts to "avoid violence at all costs". Macron affirmed "the attachment of France and Europe to the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states". - Merkel 'does not support' - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said through her spokesman that she "does not support" Trump's reversal of decades of US policy. "The status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter. - 'Serious concern' - The European Union's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced "serious concern" at Trump's new stance on Jerusalem. "The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states," Mogherini said, referring to Israelis and Palestinians.
By AFP

LOS ANGELES: Replica Tuscan castles, minimalist mansions and country cottages in the rarefied Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles could soon be reduced to ashes, their owners' fame and wealth providing little immunity against California's latest raging wildfires.

"We're evacuating the street you must leave!" a police officer barked into a bullhorn, amid the din of helicopters and airplanes dropping fire retardants.

"The fire is at the end of this street," added one of his colleagues.

The officer knocks on each door on the street -- home to the likes of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, pop superstar Beyonce and media magnate Rupert Murdoch -- to make sure no one is left behind.

The luxurious multi-million homes here are threatened by the fire named "Skirball", a blaze that destroyed 200 hectares (500 acres) in less than 24 hours.

At least four homes were already reduced to ashes, while Murdoch's property, along with his vineyard, was surrounded by flames.

Evan Klein, a photographer in jeans and a white t-shirt, locked his door taking only his cameras and his dog, who waited for him on the passenger seat of his vintage sedan. His wife was already at work.

"We woke up at 5:30 (Wednesday) morning and the fire was on the hill and was coming right towards us," he told AFP.

IN PICS: California wildfires rage forced more than 200,000 people to flee, luxury mansions threatened

"It was pitch black out and you were seeing orange on that hill, and it became enormous at the end of the street," he said.

He hoped that the fire would remain contained -- even as authorities said the wind was expected to dramatically pick up as Thursday progressed.

- Like a car on the highway -

Sheldon Shire had just turned the ignition on his car and was getting ready to head over to his son's house. He and his wife Joni were nervous.

They are taking "papers, valuables, works of art, letters from our grandchildren, photos of our weddings, passports, computer passwords," she said.

"It's hard to choose. All of a sudden everything has a lot of value," adds the brunette with a bob cut and round glasses.

Greater Los Angeles has been struck since Monday evening with several blazes like the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, about 45 minutes' drive from the city.

It has claimed one life and swallowed more than 80,000 acres and 150 buildings.

Local fire chief Captain Anthony Valdez said conditions were the worst he'd seen in 20 years "because of the low humidity and the wind -- it was blowing at 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour) with gusts up to 80 mp/h," he explained as branches and vegetation devoid of moisture popped noisily in the background.

The Rupert Murdoch estate, multiple opulent mansions and a vineyard surrounded by heavy gating, was threatened by several blazes.

By dawn, Skirball, which has already threatened the Getty Center museum and its collection of masterpieces, was "was coming to you as fast as a car on the highway" with flames higher than 10 meters, said Valdez.

As he and his team battled the blaze, they "took down the door of a house and hid there until the fire passed us," he added.

He gestured to two houses that have already been razed to the ground on the hills at the end of the adjoining Moraga Lane.

A firefighter for the past 30 years, Valdez had already spent nearly 48 hours on his feet, but this was far from his first rodeo.

"We do cat naps of 10 to 20 minutes," he added, preparing for a long night ahead.

The last Bel-Air fire in 1961 left 500 homes destroyed and prompted revision of the city's fire code.

LOS ANGELES: Replica Tuscan castles, minimalist mansions and country cottages in the rarefied Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles could soon be reduced to ashes, their owners' fame and wealth providing little immunity against California's latest raging wildfires. "We're evacuating the street you must leave!" a police officer barked into a bullhorn, amid the din of helicopters and airplanes dropping fire retardants. "The fire is at the end of this street," added one of his colleagues. The officer knocks on each door on the street -- home to the likes of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, pop superstar Beyonce and media magnate Rupert Murdoch -- to make sure no one is left behind. The luxurious multi-million homes here are threatened by the fire named "Skirball", a blaze that destroyed 200 hectares (500 acres) in less than 24 hours. At least four homes were already reduced to ashes, while Murdoch's property, along with his vineyard, was surrounded by flames. Evan Klein, a photographer in jeans and a white t-shirt, locked his door taking only his cameras and his dog, who waited for him on the passenger seat of his vintage sedan. His wife was already at work. "We woke up at 5:30 (Wednesday) morning and the fire was on the hill and was coming right towards us," he told AFP. IN PICS: California wildfires rage forced more than 200,000 people to flee, luxury mansions threatened "It was pitch black out and you were seeing orange on that hill, and it became enormous at the end of the street," he said. He hoped that the fire would remain contained -- even as authorities said the wind was expected to dramatically pick up as Thursday progressed. - Like a car on the highway - Sheldon Shire had just turned the ignition on his car and was getting ready to head over to his son's house. He and his wife Joni were nervous. They are taking "papers, valuables, works of art, letters from our grandchildren, photos of our weddings, passports, computer passwords," she said. "It's hard to choose. All of a sudden everything has a lot of value," adds the brunette with a bob cut and round glasses. Greater Los Angeles has been struck since Monday evening with several blazes like the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, about 45 minutes' drive from the city. It has claimed one life and swallowed more than 80,000 acres and 150 buildings. Local fire chief Captain Anthony Valdez said conditions were the worst he'd seen in 20 years "because of the low humidity and the wind -- it was blowing at 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour) with gusts up to 80 mp/h," he explained as branches and vegetation devoid of moisture popped noisily in the background. The Rupert Murdoch estate, multiple opulent mansions and a vineyard surrounded by heavy gating, was threatened by several blazes. By dawn, Skirball, which has already threatened the Getty Center museum and its collection of masterpieces, was "was coming to you as fast as a car on the highway" with flames higher than 10 meters, said Valdez. As he and his team battled the blaze, they "took down the door of a house and hid there until the fire passed us," he added. He gestured to two houses that have already been razed to the ground on the hills at the end of the adjoining Moraga Lane. A firefighter for the past 30 years, Valdez had already spent nearly 48 hours on his feet, but this was far from his first rodeo. "We do cat naps of 10 to 20 minutes," he added, preparing for a long night ahead. The last Bel-Air fire in 1961 left 500 homes destroyed and prompted revision of the city's fire code.
'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.
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Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich).
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New Delhi: In what may come as a major relief to electricity-dry areas and tighten the noose around power distributors, minister for power and renewable energy RK Singh on Thursday said the ministry is working on a law in co-ordination with states to provide 24x7 power to all, in the absence of which penalties will be levied on discoms.

We are aiming to provide 24x7 power for all by March 2019. We will also propose a law in which the discoms will be levied monetary penalties in case of load-shedding, unless its caused by an act of God. We will first send the proposal to all states, said the power minister.

Ministry of power is also looking to remove complete human interface for metering. Ninety percent of the meters will be prepaid and the remaining relatively larger power consumers will have smart metering with modes of payments largely being mobile phones as explained by the power minister. This could mean that the age-old practice of queuing up for paying bills is nearing its end.

The move comes at a time when the power ministry has gone whole hog declaring the nation as coal surplus and claim to have provided electricity 595,321 villages (99.6%) out of 597,464 census villages with states of Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir having logistics troubles. However, state discoms have reported losses in the recent past.

To address the problem of stressed assets, Singh also capped the total losses to 15% to ensure efficiency and continuous supply of power. The direct fallout of which might be on per unit rates of electricity.

State power ministers met the Union minister in a closed-door conference today where they also decided to bring down the number of rate slabs for electricity to 10-12. This will ensure transparency and efficiency, said the union minister.
Mumbai: The World Gold Council (WGC) on Thursday called for implementation of mandatory hallmarking in a phased manner in the country.

The government has indicated that it is planning to make hallmarking along with carat count mandatory for the gold jewellery sold in the country from January.

"We believe that a gradual roll-out of mandatory hallmarking would prove most beneficial to India, structured in three phases. The first phase could cover India's 22 largest cities, from Mumbai and New Delhi to Nagpur and Patna," the WGC said in its report here.

"The second phase, beginning a year later, can cover around 700 district headquarters. The third phase would begin in (next) one or two years to roll out programme across India," the report said.

The report, `Mandatory hallmarking: Global practises and road map for India', is about the current state of gold hallmarking in India and a holistic study of the country's gold market.

WGC India Managing Director Somasundaram P R said: "The gold industry in India is at the cusp of transformation, as transparency, standards and infrastructure begin to define the next phase of reforms. It is time to take hallmarking forward along the path to mandatory enforcement, leaving no room for debate around purity and safeguarding the interests of the consumer."

According to the WGC report, despite the introduction of hallmarking standards in India 17 years ago, there are only 15,000 licensee jewellers supported by some 500 assaying and hallmarking centres (AHCs) which is inadequate.

Retailers need to take responsibility for hallmarking in India in the short-term and in the long-term manufacturers should assume responsibility for hallmarking, the report said.

All major cities should have at least one AHC to ensure that hallmarking can be effectively rolled out in metropolitan centres, it said.

To effectively supervise the industry, the Bureau of Indian Standards needs to increase its capacity 60-fold, the WGC report said.
Apparently, women cant be angry. And if they are, they better not write about it on Facebook. Otherwise, the social media giant is likely to ban them. Yep.

According to a report by the Daily Beast, Facebook is banning accounts of women for saying innocuous things like men are trash or even men are ugly in response to male trolls.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many women have taken to Facebook to express their frustration and disappointment with men. In response, Facebook has silenced them. Sometimes even for a week.

Here are some of the comments that Facebook has banned women for-- Men aint shit, All men are ugly, all men are allegedly ugly, and men continue to be the worst  and men are scum.

Kayla Avery, a comedian in Boston, told The Daily Beast that in the last one month, she has been banned about 10 times. When she was flooded with sexist messages from male trolls, Avery posted what was on her mind, exactly what Facebook asks its users to. Her post Men continue to be the worst got her banned. Avery wanted to report a guy who was threatening to find her house and beat her up. Before she could report him, Facebook banned her. No, nothing happened to the troll.

The comedian has now created a website called FacebookJailed.com to document the experiences of other women who have been punished for such comments, or sometimes even standing up to trolls.

Incidentally, when people posted women are scum, and had them reported too, there were no consequences.

So, why is Facebook punishing women? A spokesperson said that it was a threat and hate speech toward a protected group and so it would rightfully be taken down. An earlier investigation by ProPublica had revealed that white men are listed as a protected group by Facebook.

All this is happening even as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is worried that there might be a backlash against women in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement.

In an FB post, Sandberg wrote about her own experiences with harassment, including a hand on my leg under the table at a meeting, married men offering career advice alone late at night and, most alarming, a man at a conference who came to her hotel room late at night and banged on her door until she called security.

Sexual harassment has been tolerated for far too long in the halls of government and companies large and small. For the first time in my professional life, it feels like people are finally prepared to hold perpetrators responsible. Im cheering, she said.

But Sandberg is also worried that about workplace repercussions that could limit the opportunities women have in their careers. I have already heard the rumblings of a backlash: This is why you shouldnt hire women. Actually, this is why you should, Sandberg wrote.

The world has always been run by men, and it still is today. Only thirteen countries and 6 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Just 13 percent of police officers are women, and only a few hundred are police chiefs. And less than 20 percent of the U.S. Congress is female.

These numbers reveal a power structure that has marginalized women and others for far too long. We need to see more women in these roles  and more people of color, LGBT individuals, and members of religious minorities and underrepresented groups of all kinds. She wrote.

Thanks for the thoughtful message Sandberg, but what about women who want to express anger on Facebook? Is banning them the answer?
A BJP MLA from Ramgarh in Rajasthans Alwar district once famously went to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and counted the number of used condoms. Apparently, it meant girls and boys dance naked at cultural programmes in JNU.

In 2014, Dr Harsh Vardhan, then Union health minister, suggested that AIDS can be prevented with Indian values, not condoms. During an AIDS campaign, he said, that spreading information about condoms sends a wrong message that you can have any kind of illicit sexual relationship, but as long as you are using a condom, its fine.

Harsh Vardhan, it seems, was taking a cue from Sushma Swaraj. In 2003, when Swaraj was the health minister under the Vajpayee government, she had preached abstinence, self-control and single-partner sex for the prevention of AIDS. She had specifically said that condom is against Indian culture, resulting in taking off condom advertisements from television.

By now we are pretty much aware that the country would rather have a billion-plus unmanageable population than utter the C word. Because, that C word is seen to be a shame, a sign of illicit relationships and against Indian values. Because, who cares about sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancies right?

Now, the condom is at the centre of attention, yet again.

This time, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has been given the task of deciding whether condom advertisements with explicit sexual content should be shown during prime time on Indian television or should they be restricted to air between 11 pm and 5 am.

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has sought the ministrys suggestions after a number of complaints from the viewers. The ASCI has received letters from consumers who have complained that the content of the advertisements of condoms was meant for adults and should not be aired during primetime.

The root of the problem is reportedly Manforce, a condom brand that has had a history of making suggestive commercials with Sunny Leone as the star. The hoardings of the ad had sparked protests in Gujarat, after a Surat-based group took offence to its message. The message in Gujarati on the hoarding read Aa Navratri a ramo, parantu premthi (This Navratri, play but with love). According to the protestors, it insulted the religious sentiment. It clearly didnt end with the condom brand withdrawing its hoardings.

It hurt the sentiments of some viewers so much that they dont want to see anything that has anything to do with condoms. And that raises too many questions. Isnt the primary purpose of condom ads to educate people and families?

For years now, we have seen extremely suggestive advertisements that have nothing to do about sex or condoms. We have been told, repeatedly, that deodorants are packaged as tools to attract the opposite sex. We have been told that the only way to eat mangoes is to eat it the way Katrina Kaif does. Spill some, lick some. You get the hint. In fact, recently, we learned that even toothpastes need to be sold with sexual undertones.

But apparently, advertisement about a product that actually has to do with sex, cant show sex.
New Delhi: India has reacted to US President Donald Trumps announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital. Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said, Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests and not determined by any third country.

But some analysts believe that the message was not categorical enough.

They said that since Indias relations with and support for Palestine dates back to even before its own independence, hence it was important for New Delhi to send out a clear and unambiguous message in support of Palestines sovereignty.

Others believe India is treading a fine line and in that context the statement was measured as it ought to be.

Former secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Rajiv Sikri told CNN-News18 that Trumps decision was part of his pro-Israel policy to remove hesitation that some other countries would have in recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital. But through its statement India has made it clear that it wont follow suit, at least not immediately.

Sikri points out that even though on paper India has not acknowledged Jerusalem as Israels capital but through its move it has  implicitly implied so. The fact that PM Narendra Modi in the first visit ever by an India Prime Minister to Israel held meetings with President Reuven Rivlin and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv is a pointer to that direction.

There have also been several high level visits from India to Israel since 2014, by Home Minister Rajnath, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and President Pranab Mukherjee indicating the growing bonhomie between the two sides which have only this year marked the 25 years of diplomatic relations.

But in September this year, during an intervention in the NAM Ministerial Meeting on Palestine, Swaraj said, For independent India, support for the Palestinian cause has been a reference point of its foreign policy. She had said that Indias commitment to the Palestinian cause and its solidarity with the Palestinians can never be undermined.

Swaraj categorically spelt out what India sees as a possible solution  The path to this clearly lies in an early negotiated solution between Israel and Palestine based on mutual recognition and security arrangements.

Similarly, earlier this year when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited India, Prime Minister Modi said, We hope to see the realization of a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestine, co-existing peacefully with Israel. He also said that he discussed extensively the situation in West Asia and the Middle East Peace Process. It is this Peace Process that many feel risks being derailed by Trumps announcement.

Will India go any further in spelling out where does it see the Middle East Peace Process heading now? There was no mention in the Indian statement on whether New Delhi sees an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital as a viable solution. India has firmly been on the Palestinian side for a long time though. India was also one of the first countries to recognize the State of Palestine in 1988. Before that, India became the first Non-Arab State in 1974 to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. And so, perhaps Palestines expectations from India might be a little more in view of the current development.
Kolkata: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asked all the eastern states to be extra vigilant to check the influx of Rohingya and illegal immigrants through the IndoBangladesh border.

Singh - who held a meeting of chief ministers and senior officials of West Bengal, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura in Kolkata  assured a Border Protection Grid (BPG) similar to Unified Command which was set up in Naxalite-affected areas.

He said, this BPG  in coordination with all the eastern bordering sates  will be effectively able to stop illegal immigrants including Rohingya.

This BPG will be fool-proof mechanism to secure the 4,036-km-long Indo-Bangladesh border. There will be several division in the BPG which include physical barriers, non-physical barriers, surveillance, system, Intelligence agencies, state police, BSF and other state and central agencies, Singh said.

He said, Beside illegal immigrants, special measures will be taken to prevent extremists from entering India. We can only prevent such elements from entering our country through joint effort of eastern states and the Centre. This target cannot be achieved alone.

India maintains healthy relationship with neighbouring countries and it is our duty to facilitate trade while securing our borders. Fake Indian currency, cattle smuggling and drugs is also a concern for us and need to be curbed, he added.

Arrest of Bangladeshi terrorists from Kolkata was also raised during the meet.

At the end of the meeting, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee welcomed all the decision taken by the Singh and assured all assistance for any joint operation.

States like Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram which shares the border with Bangladesh - out of sanctioned fencing area of 1538.22km, nearly 327.22km stretch is still laying unfenced.

At Indo-Myanmar border, India shares an unfenced border of 1643 km adjoining the North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh (520km), Nagaland (215km), Manipur (398km) and Mizoram (510km). Worryingly, the Centre has so far manages to fenced only 4km in Manipur at three border posts, out of 398km.

The Indian side of the Indo-Bangladesh border passes through West Bengal (2216.7 Km), Assam (263 Km), Meghalaya (443 Km), Tripura (856 Km) and Mizoram (318 Km).
New Delhi: US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But does Trumps move come as surprise? Not really.

Like his predecessors, Trump, during his election campaign promised that he would move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The only difference, now that we see it, is that Trump delivered on his promise and the other Presidents did not, considering the international repercussions of such a decision.

Historically, most Presidential debates in the US have addressed the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this is the first time that a US President has openly advocated Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

As Trump said it is the recognition of reality and this is the right thing to do, the US President made it clear that he had accepted the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which the Congress had passed for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and called for the latter to be identified as an undivided city and the Israeli capital.

The Act was kept aside by previous Presidents, including Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama, who said that the Congress was trying to encroach on executive authority.

The international repercussions of such a move and the possible failure of international diplomacy is believed to be one of the prime reasons why Presidents never implemented this Act, until today, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Jerusalem has been a bone of contention between Israel and Palestine for the longest time, with Israel claiming it as its undivided land and Palestine claiming that the eastern part of Jerusalem is their capital.

Donald Trumps move to shift the US embassy to Jerusalem is expected to fuel tensions further, with violence being seen as a possible outcome.

Failure of American Foreign Policy

Trump, in his statement, has claimed that the United States will work towards a two-state solution as long as the parties are ready. The statement, however, is being seen as rhetoric by many.

Considering the reactions from other international players, there seems to be negligible support for Trumps move, which many categorize as unilateral. The move of course has been hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called this a historic day.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has, however, called Trumps speech a declaration of withdrawal from the role the US has played in the peace process. Additionally, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a leaders summit later this month to discuss the move.

Trumps move further delegitimizes American foreign policy and this is nothing but an exercise of hegemonic arbitration of power. The fact that he has made such a unilateral decision going against the opinion of international diplomacy will not work well for anyone, including the United States. From where I see it, I think a tremendous emotional mobilization and religious radicalization will emerge not only from the Palestinian territories but other parts as well, said Dr Khinvraj Jangid, an assistant professor at the Jindal Centre for Israeli Studies, OP Jindal Global University.

Trumps statement on two-state solution is just rhetoric. The location of the US embassy is the least of all concerns in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The renunciation of violence from Hamas and ending of occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel are two of the major concerns. But the fact that Trump has chosen to focus on the least important of concerns without talking about peace for Palestinians, renders his talk of solution rhetorical, Jangid said.

He added that it was also imperative to note that there have been highlights and achievements in American foreign policy discourse with regards to international conflict such as the Madrid peace conference. Trumps move kills all previous moves made by the US in mediating in this conflict.

During the Gulf War of 1991, the way the US acted against Saddam Hussain for Kuwaits independence is still considered as a fine example of peak diplomacy victories.

Moreover, when Israel and Palestine signed the Oslo Peace Agreement, it was on the White House lawns in the presence of then President Bill Clinton. Trumps move kills that effort, which came to be known as the Clinton Parameters. Trumps reckless move, as Jangid points out, has rendered the Clinton Parameters as a useless piece of paper.

India Must Tread Carefully

While Trumps move significantly fails American policy at various levels and invites sharp criticism, where does India stand? As of now, nowhere. Reacting to Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India on Thursday said its position on Palestine is independent and consistent.

Considering the convoluted stance that India has on national interest, like many other countries, it is likely to wait for other international players, like China, the United Nations, European Union and the Arab world before it makes a proper, detailed statement on Trumps move.

His decision puts India in a very uncomfortable diplomatic position, considering its warm relations with Israel. It is imperative to note that Netanyahu is expected to arrive in the country early next year for a state visit.

Indias relations with Israel have only moved from strength to strength, especially with Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent visit to Israel.

Trumps decision provokes India to take a stand and this particular case is like a hot potato in their hands. At best, India is going to take no position and release diplomatic statements only, Jangid said. And indeed, all that India on Thursday said was that its position on Palestine is independent and consistent.

India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, said in a statement.

Modi is also believed to have close ties with Donald Trump too, most recently with Trumps daughter and adviser Ivanka leading the US delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

Combine that with Indias growing closeness with Israel, this rising possible trilateral between the three nations was being talked about in international power corridors. Indias response will also be looked at with reference to this particular aspect.

India must make sure, before it makes any decision, that it cant ignore the Arab world in this situation. India has more strategic reliance on the Arab world than the US does. The cost of what it might lose from adhering to the USs current stand on recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital is far greater than what its stand can gain, Jangid said.

On Wednesday in New Delhi, during an international conference on Zionism, a question was asked Where is the capital of IsraelTel Aviv or Jerusalem. Trump has answered that question now and how many international players, including India, agree to that is yet to be seen.
New Delhi: Rajiv Gandhi had a proposal to amicably resolve the Ayodhya dispute that would have involved five Supreme Court judges with a secular composition, determining whether there was any evidence that Babri Masjid was constructed after the demolition of a living Ram temple.

All India Babri Masjid Action Committee (AIBMAC) Convenor Zafaryab Jilani, who held a series of meetings with the Congress leadership at the peak of the Ayodhya dispute, told News18 that the request was turned down as the CJI cited insufficiency of judges to handle the case.

Since our counsel was Siddhartha Shankar Ray, after Rajiv Gandhi was defeated, Gandhi asked Ray that he wanted to meet us. So, I and Mr Mushtaq Ahmed Siddiqui, members of the action committee, both of us went, under the instruction of Siddhartha Shankar Ray on the condition that we will not talk in the presence of Buta Singh. Rajiv Ji asked his secretary to bring a typed letter. He gave that to us in which the proposal in the SC that we ask to give its opinion whether there was any living Ram Temple in the disputed place, said Jilani who is now the counsel for All India Muslim Personal Law Board in the Babri Masjid case pending at the Supreme Court.

According to Jilani, Rajiv Gandhis suggestion was that five senior most judges of the SC form a commission and decide this matter to see whether there was any evidence to the effect that Babri Masjid was constructed after the demolition of a living Ram temple. The letter was sent to the Chief Justice of India and the CJI replied that there werent sufficient judges.

I had put a question to Rajiv Gandhi why do you think that five senior most judges will be secular and impartial? Then he asked us not to worry. Then he told us that in the commission one will be Hindu, one will be Christian, one will be Muslim, one will be Sikh and the other would be Parsi. It is then we kept quiet, said Jilani.

Zafaryab Jilani, then a young lawyer, who became the convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee after it was formed in 1986, told News18 that, The tacit deal allegation by Arif Mohd Khan has been made several times and is not new and if Rajiv Gandhi would have been alive then the Babri dispute would have been resolved peacefully.

Former Union Minister, Arif Mohd Khan in a recent article for News18 stated that a legislation overturning Shah Bano Verdict and to suppress agitation by the Babri Masjid Action Committee was a part of tacit deal between the personal law board and the Rajiv Gandhi government. Jilani who was one of the founders of the action committee rejects any suggestions of a quid pro quo between the the government and AIMPLB.

On 1 February 1986, Faizabad District Judge KM Pandey ordered the Babri Masjid be unlocked. He observed, [...] Muslims are not going to be affected by any stretch of imagination if the locks of the gates are opened and idols inside the premises are allowed to be seen and worshipped by pilgrims and devotees. Heavens will not fall if the locks of the gates are removed.

When this meeting was held with Rajiv Gandhi on the issue of personal law and the draft of that act was discussed, at that very time, Maulana Ali Mian had asked Rajiv Gandhi that in the manner you have settled this issue, settle the Babri issue too. Gandhi had promised to solve that issue too. So, there was no question of any bargaining. Otherwise what the use of the December 1990 resolution by the Personal Law Board. Rajiv Gandhi was alive at that time and Prime Minister Chandrasekhar was in support of Gandhi, said Jilani.

Arif Mohd Khan has also stated how Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, the then Chairman of the MPLB was severely critical of the Babri masjid Action Committee and movement.

If we read the autobiography of Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, the then Chairman of the MPLB carefully then one is struck by the strong language he has used against the leaders of the Babri Masjid Action Committee and movement. In Volume 4 on Page 130, he squarely blamed these leaders for provoking Hindu revivalism and described their movement as leading Muslims on the path of collective suicide, said Khan.

However, Jilani said that any such comment was completely false and baseless.

Maulana Abdul Hasan Ali Nadvi was the president of the board when the resolution was taken. In 1990, the board had taken a decision that not an inch of the Babri masjid land can be given or bartered or be surrendered. The PLB meeting held in Delhi in 1990 December had resolved that whatever has been done by the Babri Masjid Action Committee and the Babri Masjid Women Committee must continue with their efforts and this was the endorsement of the activities of the action committee by the board when Nadvi was himself the president. No such observation has ever been made by Nadvi blaming the action committee, said Jilani.

Jilani, who was a part of secret meeting with Shankracharya of Kachikot refuted any such observation. Before the 1990 resolution, in 1986 itself there was an effort by two governors, Mr Krishna Kant and Mr Yunus Salim to have a meeting of Maulana Nadvi with Shankracharya of Kachikot. This meeting took place sometime in August that year and after the meeting, I was called along with Mr Azam Khan, and Advocate Abdul Mannan, all members of the action committee. In closed room Shankracharya had said that if the property in dispute is given in his charge till the final decision of the case, then he will ensure that a wall is constructed around the structure and no one can perform any puja or namaz there. He would also ensure that it would remain in his custody. We agreed with his proposal as the property would be in the custody of the receiver, Shankracharya and had no objection to it, said Jilani.

Shankracharya had asked for a draft to this effect and we came back to the residence of Advocate Abdul Mannar and prepared a one page draft to this effect and handed it over to Maulana Ali Mian. The next day we met Shankracharya and he said that he was helpless as he was prevailed upon by Ashok Singhal, Jagraj Kishor, and other leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and that I should not be interfering in the matter. This was told to us later by Ali Mian too and that is what he refers to in his book too, said Jilani who believes that Khan has always been accused of being at loggerheads with the Muslim leadership.

Jilani maintains that the unlocking of the gates to Babri Masjid had happened before the government had taken the decision to introduce any such bill to overturn the verdict in the Shah Bano case in the parliament.

The government had not announced its decision to reverse the SC verdict on January 15, 1986, but made such an announcement subsequent to it. This is because, the meeting of the Muslim Personal Law Board to take a stock of situation was held on February 2, 1986, at Delhi. I was a part of the meeting, and in that meeting it was resolved that we will start our agitation, so if the government would have made any such announcement then there was no need for us to agitate. So the entire theory of Arif Mohd Khan is misplaced, said Jilani.
Kolkata: The brother of the Muslim labourer from Bengal who was hacked and burnt alive in Rajasthans Rajsamand district said on Thursday that there appears to be more to the brutal murder than just a monetary dispute.

Mohammad Kausar, who live in Malda district, said, I dont think my brother was killed only because of monetary issue. There is something more in to it and we want death penalty of the accused for such a heinous crime.

He suspected that his brother Mohammad Afrazul may have learnt about some dubious dealings involving the accused, Shambulal Regar, and was killed for it.

Shambulal had made a video of the murder that has since gone viral. In the video, which was recorded by a friend, he clobbered Afrazul with an axe and later set him on fire. Afrazul was crying for mercy throughout the video. Shambulal has been arrested and charged under section 302 (murder).

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has demanded a high-level inquiry in the case. We strongly condemn the heinous killing of a labourer from Bengal in Rajasthan. How can people be so inhuman? Sad, she tweeted.

Sources said she also took up the matter with union home minister Rajnath Singh during her meeting with him at the state secretariat on Thursday.

Speaking to News18, DSP Rajsamand, Ratan Lal said the Bengal police will investigate the matter. He said a preliminary inquiry revealed the victim allegedly took some money from the accused and was killed after he failed to repay the amount.

The Rajasthan government, on the other hand, has set up a Special Investigation Team after reports that there could be a communal angle.

The presence of a young girl in the video has fuelled rumours that it could be a case of love jihad and that the labourer was in an alleged illicit relationship with the accuseds sister.
New Delhi: There was a 6% rise in the number of cybercrime incidents recorded in 2016, as compared to the previous year, with Uttar Pradesh recording the maximum number of cases.

Experts that News18 spoke to have, however, weighed in on the numbers put forth by the agency. While they acknowledged the trend of rising incidence of crime, they also raised doubts on how the agency arrived at these numbers.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released its annual crime data last week and according to it, there were about 12,317 cybercrime cases in 2016. This is a 6% rise as compared to 2015.

Uttar Pradesh, with 2,639 cases reported the highest number of cases of cybercrime accounting for 21.4% of the total, followed by Maharashtra with 19.3% or 2,380 cases and Karnataka with 8.9% or 1,101 cases in 2016.

However, experts say about 90% of cybercrime cases go unreported.

Recording Cyber Crimes

Earlier this year, a 26-year-old woman walked into Delhi Polices cyber cell to report a fake profile of hers on a dating/hook-up website. The case resulted in a complaint, but not an FIR. The case was eventually closed after the social networking site refused to divulge details of the accused persons to the police.

For the woman, she was glad that her complaint was lodged and properly looked into, as she was told by the police officials. In layman terms and as per the laws of the country, this amounts to a cyber case. However, chances of the case counting among number of cases mentioned in the National Crime Records Bureau data are bleak.

The NCRB relies on police records, which in turn categorises a case as a cybercrime incident only if there was an FIR.

Kislay Chaudhary, a cyber security expert said FIRs make all the difference for a case of cybercrime to be counted in the NCRB data.

This doesnt show the real picture. The fault lines are at various levels, starting from how the crime is reported and taken forward, Chaudhary said.

Chaudhary added that over the past year, he has received over 20,000 calls seeking help for various cyber issues.

Many of these complainants may have gone to the police but could never file an FIR, thus taking the NCRB data at much lesser numbers, he added.

Leading cyber lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal seconded Chaudharys concerns and said that most of the times the police would not record the complaint at all as they do not know how to deal with it or investigate.

There is a huge need for capacity building. Police force in the country does not know how to deal with a cybercrime nor does it have the necessary knowhow of the laws. They are not well-equipped to handle these cases, which often leads to under reporting, he added.

Duggal further said that the accused, at times, have often been traced to foreign territories, which again falls beyond the realm of the Indian police authority, thus further cementing their lackadaisical attitude in solving a cyber case.

Apprehension in Taking Case Forward

Chaudhary gave an example of a young Vaishali-based resident who approached the police with a complaint regarding her social media profile. The police, in turn, told her registering an FIR would mean involving her parents too.

Nowhere in the law does it say that an FIR amounts to the complainants family being involved. But the girl was told this and she got scared. Women want to ensure their identities are guarded, but sadly the authorities do very little to assure them that, said Chaudhary.

For many complainants, he added, the immediate step is to get primary relief like getting the fake Instagram account deleted or get their morphed image removed from Facebook.

Not many want to get to the bottom of the case, which is a big deterrent in recording of cybercrimes, he said.

Duggal added that about 90% of the cases go unreported.

Of the 10% that are reported, only 1% or less translates into a FIR. Now, that miniscule percentage cant be symbolic of the whole problem, he said, adding that he has been dealing with cases on a regular basis and that there is no way that the NCRB data shows what the true picture is. The situation is far worse, he said.
New Delhi: Write an essay on the nature of GST in Kautilyas Arthshastra?. This was a question in the first semester Political Science paper for MA students of Banaras Hindu University.

Dr. Kaushal Kishor Mishra, who is a professor in Political Science, has set the paper titled Social and Political Thought: Ancient and Medieval India. He said this will make students proud of Ancient India, so that they know that ancient wisdom is not useless.

Mishra told News 18.com, We teach ancient political thought then why cant we locate GST in Arthshastra? Those who cant do this should leave research. The teachers who cannot differentiate between Kautilya and Chanakya should leave teaching. Arthshasrta is way ahead of its time  I will also be teaching about RTI, Judicial Review in Arthshastra in my next classes. The students need to be told how great ancient India was.

He said, Kautilya gave the idea of one tax one nation. He believed taxation to be a unifying factor. We can locate these trends in Arthshastra along with the taxes he determined for different products like  gold, food, vehicles in those times etc.

The question paper also asks about Manu as the first thinker of Globalization. Mishra has done his PhD in Manusmriti main Rajtantra.

He talked about his other paper as well Indian Political System  in that question paper he has asked about the political parties rise and fall. Some of the questions he told News18.com are: BJP ke ubhav aur vikas pe likhiye (Write on the rise of BJP). Congress ke parabhav pe likheye? (Write on the decline of Congress). AAP kya hai? (What is AAP?).

I have also set these questions for the Indian Political System paper and all those who think it is a prachar or promotion of any political party then it is their problem. We have Political Parties in our syllabus so cant we discuss the contemporary political parties?, Mishra said.

Some BHU teachers, who did not wish to be quoted, said they were amused at the content in the question papers on GST and Kautilya, Manu and Globalisation.

Mishra stands firm. Desh badal raha hai  Question papers bhi badlenge. Our Prime Minister goes to Times Square and speaks in Hindi It has never happened before, he added.
New Delhi: There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources have said amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UKs Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya, a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the governments case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, on Wednesday.

The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India, he said, quoting proceedings in the

Westminster Magistrate's court.

Mallya, who was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on

bailon a bond worth 650,000 pounds.
A candle vigil was held outside veteran actor Shashi Kapoors ancestral home, near the historic Qissar Khwani bazar, on Wednesday. The Kapoor Haveli, situated in the Dhaki Nalbandi area in the interiors of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, was built by Kapoors grandfather Dewan Basheswarnath Singh Kapoor in the early 20th century, who lived in the city.

Cultural Heritage Council (CHC) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa paid tributes to the Hindi cinema star, who passed away on December 4 at the age of 79. The meet was attended by several people from different walks of life, including cinema lovers.

Speaking on the occasion, CHC secretary Shakeel Waheedullah said the veteran actor always remembered Peshawar as the home of his ancestors.

It was the love for his roots that prompted Kapoor to visit the city back in 2000.

Shakeel added, Peshawarites have great love and respect for the Kapoor family and Bollywood actors belonging to the ancient city.

Besides the Kapoor family, actors Dilip Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Vinod Khanna, Amjad Khan and Anil Kapoor have roots in Peshawar.

Historian Mohammad Ibrahim Zia, who has penned Peshawar Ke Fankaar, a book on Bollywood actors hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, threw light on the Kapoor clans connection with Peshawar.

He said Prithviraj Kapoor, father of Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor and Shashi, used to go to Bombay (now Mumbai) from Peshawar to work in films.

It was in 1942 that the head of Kapoor family sold the house and migrated to Mumbai.

Despite leaving Peshawar, the Kapoors always fondly remembered the city. Raj Kapoor had even expressed desire to visit his childhood home before his death.

Zia recounted meeting the Junoon actor in 2014, when he visited India and found the actors response cordial.

He said that Kapoor was happy to make the acquaintance of the guests from Peshawar in his Mumbai home.

Though he was ill at time when we met in 2014, happiness was clearly visible on his face, the historian recalled.

Zia added a CHC delegation will soon visit India to meet the bereaved Kapoor family and convey condolences to them from the people of Peshawar.

(Image Credits: Twitter/@ammarawrites)
Ahmedabad: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Wednesday that the Congress was "playing" with the faith of the Hindu community over the issue of construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Reacting to the controversy over senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal seeking deferment of hearing on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute till 2019, he said it amounted to playing with "the Hindu belief".

"It is like playing mischievously with the Hindu belief. The Congress will have to clarify whether it wants to see the Ram Mandir constructed in Ayodhya or not," he said.

On Rahul Gandhi's claim that he is a devotee of Lord Shiva, Adityanath said the Congress had once denied the existence of Ram Setu, and termed Gandhi's claim as playing with the Hindu faith.

"The Congress government at the Centre had tried to demolish the Ram Setu which was built due to the effort of Lord Ram. When the matter was challenged in the Supreme Court, the Congress government had filed an affidavit raising question on the existence of Ram and Krishna," he said.

He also advised Gandhi to go to the temple but out of faith and not out of hypocrisy.

The BJP leader alleged that Gandhi had once said that "people go to temple to tease women".

"Rahul Gandhi should be asked that when he does not believe in Ram, Shiva, Krishna and when he said that people go to temple to tease women, then why do you go to the temple? Nothing wrong in going to temple but do so out of faith and not hypocrisy," he said.
New Delhi: BJP MP Virendra Singh Mast on Wednesday described the upcoming Gujarat polls as a battle between "Ram rajya" and "Rome rajya", claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi symbolised the former.

Singh, heading the party's farmer cell, cited the recent statement of the Archbishop of Gandhinagar in which the latter called for defeat of "nationalist forces".

The Archbishop had last month written a letter urging members of the Christian community to save the country from "nationalist forces" as he said the "democratic fabric" of the country was at stake, amidst growing "sense of insecurity" among minorities.

The BJP MP also lashed out at the Congress, which, he alleged, symbolised "Rome rajya".

"The Gujarat polls are a contest between 'Ram rajya and Rome rajya'. Modi is the symbol of 'Ram rajya' in our times. The BJP will certainly win," he said.

The much-anticipated Gujarat polls are slated for December 9 and December 14.
Bengaluru: Karnataka BJP president B S Yeddyurappa's past differences with his party came back to haunt him on Thursday. The ghost of his erstwhile party -- the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) -- lingers on, he discovered much to his discomfiture.

A local BJP worker 'staged' a coup of sorts on Yeddyurappa, leaving the latter red-faced with anger and embarrassment as he addressed a rally in Aurad in Bidar district in north Karnataka.

The BJPs 'Parivarthana Yatra' led by the former Karnataka chief minister saw some drama unfold in Aurad where party MLA Prabhu Chavan was in-charge of the rally. Yeddyurappa found to his embarrassment that there was another stage erected at the same venue by Dhanaje Jadhav  a party member who is then seen being physically removed from the event by policemen.

Jadhav  a 'leader' who once contested against Chavan as the candidate of the erstwhile Karnataka Janata Party that Yeddyurappa had briefly headed  set up a separate dais with his own supporters.

This led to a tug of war between supporters of BJP and former 'KJP leaders' who said they wanted their political sacrifices and loyalties to be noticed.

Although the two parties are one since 2014, some leaders like Dhanaji Jadhav have alleged that the parent party has been neglecting them and their contributions. Jadhavs attempt to highlight this to on Thursday even led to an altercation between the two groups.

Yeddyurappa is said to have express his disappointment at the turn of events to Bidar MP Bhagavanth Khuba.

A fuming Yeddyurappa took district party leaders (including party MP Bhagavanth Khuba) to task about the two dais', before going ahead with the rally.

Though the KJP had made no significant gains in the state during last assembly elections with just six seats, the party under Yeddyurappas leadership had secured about 10 % of the total votes polled -- which broke into the BJP's votebank in a large number of other constituencies and limited the BJP to just 40 seats in the 224-member Assembly.

Bidar's rally brought to the difference between MLA Chavan and those who had backed Yeddyurappa in troubled times who want their share of importance (and perhaps tickets for Assembly elections in 2018).

Even when the two parties merged ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, some of the KJP leaders had openly expressed their displeasure over joining hands with the BJP -- so the discontent was perhaps simmering.

While Chavan brushed off the differences saying, "Both BJP and KJP are together -- we are all here to welcome Yeddyurappa," what unfolded on stage and in the audience was different. There were one bunch of followers holding Chavan's posters, another bunch displaying Jadhav's.

Yeddyurappa, in his speech, prevailed upon the crowd to "help Chavan win in 2018 with an even bigger margin than the last time," thus effectively snubbing Jadhav and making clear whose side he is on.

"If you are really BJP workers -- and true followers of Narendra Modi, then let's work together to take forward his goals successfully," Yeddyurappa told the gathering.
New Delhi: Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not caring about the country's future and being concerned only about electoral politics.

He also alleged that the Prime minister was making statements without checking facts and urged him to be careful in future and verify before he stated things like he appeared for the Sunni Waqf Board before the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya case.

Sibal said he appeared for Mohd Iqbal Ansari, whose lawyer M R Shamshad had engaged him to appear for him, and not the Sunni Waqf Board.

Noting that the country is passing through "a difficult phase", the former union minister said the Prime Minister making a national issue of who he appears for as a lawyer in the Supreme Court "speaks only of his mindset and his priorities for the nation".

"I feel sad that we have a Prime Minister who doesn't care for the future of India but is only concerned with electoral politics.

"Let us unite rather than divide the country. Let us take it forward instead of pulling it back by making statements that do not behoove the status of the office of the Prime Minister," he told reporters.

Alleging that the Prime Minister is given to making statements "without checking facts", which he repeated on Wednesday, he said, "He (PM) should have verified before making a statement that I appeared for the Sunni Waqf Board before the Supreme Court."

Sibal said he also should have verified whether Haji Mehboob, whom Modi thanked, is a member of the Sunni Waqf Board.

"It is also surprising that my appearing for a party in a court proceeding, which is my professional right, has eclipsed all other issues which are of immediate national concern. I don't think that I am important enough for the Prime Minister to make it a national issue as to who I appear for in court proceedings," he said.

Noting that the country is passing through a difficult phase, he said demonetisation "robbed" poor people of their legitimate money leading to loss of lives, livelihood and jobs, while GST "destroyed" businesses from which one is yet to recover.

"It impacted GDP and cost the economy over 3 lakh crore. This is actual and not presumptive loss," he said.

The Prime Minister, he said, must address the nation on the following national issues: farmers are committing suicide and agricultural output has gone down, exports have declined, the youth is jobless, textile workers are up in arms, the informal sector is in utter disarray and despair, education and healthcare need urgent attention.

He alleged that healthcare is inaccessible to the poor, people can't breathe in many cities in India.

"The people of Gujarat now realise that the Gujarat model of development has led to the poor getting poorer and the rich enjoying the benefits of BJP's policies. The Prime Minister's schemes have also not delivered. All these issues are not important for the Prime Minister. What is more important is who I appear for in a litigation," the former minister said.
Hyderabad: Jana Sena party chief Pawan Kalyan on Thursday launched a scathing attack at the Bhartiya Janta Party at the Centre along with Telugu Desam Party-led state government for not fulfilling their poll promises and ignoring the problems of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

The Telugu actor-turned-politician took on BJP-TDP alliance in Vishakhapatnam, where he reached to extend support to striking employees of Dredging Corporation of India, who have been agitating against the privatization of the company.

Addressing the gathering, Kalyan said, "I am here to question both BJP and TDP because I feel they have failed in keeping their promises. BJP and TDP can run away from their responsibilities. But I cannot, as I had come here in 2014 and asked for your votes."

Questioning both governments, he added, "If you are not able to solve peoples problems, then you have no right to ask for votes in 2019.

Kalyan's support for BJP-TDP alliance in 2014 assembly elections played an important role in increasing the vote share. However, for past many months, the equation between the two have changed.

"People used to tell me Chandrababu Naidu will use you, betray you. What do you think I did not know all this? If I had not sensed it much before, why would I enter politics or form my own party? I was also new to politics then. I extended my support to BJP-TDP because they were the best option at that time. I personally met PM Narendra Modi also, and felt he can bring in change. But now I am questioning these people since people in the state are not happy," he said.

This year, he even announced that he will fight 2019 Andhra Pradesh assembly elections from Anantapur district. Kalyan has been criticizing and questioning the union and state governments for denying promised special status to Andhra Pradesh.
Ahmedabad: With just two days left before Gujarat votes in the first of two-phase elections, posters asking the states Muslim population to vote for the Congress to ensure its senior leader Ahmed Patel becomes the chief minister have appeared all over Surat.

Patel, a close aide of Sonia Gandhi and Rajya Sabha MP from the state, said the party had nothing to do with the posters and called it a mischievous bid by the BJP to polarize the election.

The posters feature a smiling photo of Patel with Rahul Gandhi and Congress poll symbol, the hand. Below the pictures, written in Gujarati is an appeal to the Muslim community.

To maintain unity within the Muslim community and to make Ahmed Patel the 'wazir-e-alam' (grand minister) of Gujarat, we request the Muslim community to vote only for the Congress," the poster reads.

Blaming the BJP, Patel quickly rebutted the contents of the banner and said he was not a contender for the chief minister's post and would never be.

The moot issue is that the BJP is trying very, very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda. Hence, their reliance on lies and propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time, Patel tweeted.

"Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP. Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for the CM and will never, ever be, he added.

Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP. Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for CM and will never, ever be Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) December 7, 2017

He said the "misinformation campaign by the BJP" showed that they know they were going to lose Gujarat elections.

BJP, too, denied that it had anything to do with the posters. Party spokesperson Bharat Pandya said it has become a habit for Congress to level baseless allegations. First they create posters and make them viral and then blame us. They blamed us even for the fake candidates list that went viral," he said.

The BJP also disowned another set of posters that have cropped up in the state. These feature chief minister Vijay Rupani, BJP president Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Below the photos of the three, their initials are taken to spell out RAM.

The poster also has photos of the three young caste leaders in Gujarat who are supporting the Congress - Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani. Their initials below their pictures spell HAJ, the Muslim pilgrimage.
Ahmedabad: With the campaign for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections drawing to a close, politicians from across the spectrum  from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi scurry to address back-to-back rallies. But one man missing from the spotlight is Shankarsinh Vaghela.

The former Gujarat Chief Minister, who split from the Congress in July this year and formed the breakaway Jan Vikalp Morcha, has been conspicuous by his absence on the campaign trail. It is not that Vaghela isn't travelling the state. But instead of holding rallies, he is holding meetings with sympathisers and supporters, trying to keep decades-old connections and networks alive.

'Bapu', as he is known by his followers, isnt aiming to "win" the upcoming election. With just 76 candidates in the fray, his Jan Vikalp Morha can, at best, hope to be a "kingmaker". His explicit aim is to create a model of "alternate" politics, different from both the BJP and the Congress.

And, sure enough, he has introduced some new ideas. He had recently announced that those who want to contest elections on a ticket from his Jan Vikalp Morcha can apply for them on the internet. The party uploaded a three-page form on its website. Once forms were filled, some candidates were shortlisted. Those shortlisted candidates then received a text message giving them details of the time and place at which they had to appear before the Jan Vikalp Morchas Parliamentary Board.

But some say Vaghela is a man scorned and one of his motives is to hurt the party that made him exit. "You have to understand that Bapu felt disrespected in the Congress. He never wanted to leave. Some people, like Ahmed Patel and Madhusudhan Mistry, who surrounded Sonia Gandhi were wary of his power in Gujarat. So they effectively pushed him out," said a source.

Vaghela, another source said, was now working to "teach a lesson" to the Congress. According to an aide, Vaghela's disillusionment with the party began even before the last Assembly elections.

"He wanted to contest from his home district of Gandhinagar in 2012, but the party asked him to contest from Kapadvanj in Kheda district. He not only agreed but because of him, the party won 32 seats in Central Gujarat around Kapadvanj. The Congress would have not won those seats had it not been for Bapus influence.

Soon, people close to him in the party started to leave and join the BJP. Vaghela has claimed that he tried to stop them from leaving but got no support from the high command. Since Vaghela thought he had delivered "results" for the party, even though the Congress lost the 2012 election to then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, he expected that the party would announce before the 2017 polls that he would be the Chief Ministerial candidate to take on Vijay Rupani.

Vaghela, sources suggested, expected to have a free hand in running party matters in Gujarat. Some even said he hoped, at least, for a Rajya Sabha seat. But when it was clear that the RS ticket would go to Ahmed Patel, who was said to be Vaghela's arch rival within the party, the path was clear for the former CM.

A month after Vaghela left the Congress, Ahmed Patel won a contested Rajya Sabha election. In the days leading up to the election, Vaghela had kept the Congress guessing over whether he and his band of rebels would support Patel or not. Eventually, he did not and Patel won narrowly. Patels victory, say sources, opened old wounds for the former Gujarat CM.

One source said, "Take this example. One Congress MLA, a Muslim, owes his career to Bapu. He had told Bapu that he would vote against Ahmed Patel but in the end, did not do so. Bapu has not forgotten that. This time, Bapu has fielded another Muslim candidate against him to hamper his chances. He has done this in several places, to hurt people who crossed him."

Vaghela, who understands North Gujarat better than most in the state, can hamper the Congress's chances severely. North Gujarat is where the battle is said to be most hotly contested and with Vaghelas spoilers in the fray, the BJP has reason to rejoice. And for Vaghela, a BJP victory is not a high price to pay.

"A leopard can never change its spots. A man who has been in the Sangh will never truly leave the Sangh," said a veteran Gujarati journalist, who knows Vaghela from his years of covering politics in the state.

Before Vaghela became CM with support from the Congress, before eventually merging his Rashtriya Janata Party with the Grand Old Party, Vaghela was a BJP man. He spent the early years of his public life as a committed RSS pracharak and cut his teeth in politics with the Bhartiya Jana Sangh, the BJP's predecessor party. Since resigning as leader of opposition, he has not been openly critical of Narendra Modi. He has, however, accused both the BJP and Congress of "political match-fixing" during the Ahmed Patel election.

But if the Congress without Vaghela is struggling, Vaghela without Congress is a shadow of his former self. Sources said a part of the reason he is not holding rallies in the state or fielding candidates on all seats is because his infant partys treasury is running dry and he no longer has the organisational strength of the Congress, the oldest national political party in India.

There were rumours that Vaghela's son Mahendrasinh Vaghela would receive a BJP ticket, but that did not come to pass. The junior Vaghela is said to be waiting it out before making any moves and has joined neither the BJP nor his father's new political outfit.

But what does the future hold for the Bapu of Gujarat politics? According to an aide, "He doesn't need anything in life. He has been an MLA, a Chief Minister, Leader of Opposition and a Member of Parliament. He is not a man in a hurry."
Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit out at the Congress on Thursday after Mani Shankar Aiyar called him a low-life person, saying the comments reflect the Mughal mindset of the party and the people of Gujarat would give them a befitting lesson through the ballot box.

Addressing a poll rally in Surat, Modi said he was proud of his humble background and had done nothing neech so far. He said the Congress has aimed all kinds of insults at him, but he would not stoop to their level.

What all have they called us - donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede They insulted me when I was the CM. They called me Maut ka Saudagar and wanted to jail me, he said.

The Prime Minister said he had not sought revenge against Congress for its deplorable language in the last three years, and would not want it now too. Let us not use bad words against the Congress. Our answer will come through the ballot box, he said, adding, Congress can keep its language, we will do our work.

Aiyar, while speaking to reporters in Delhi on Thursday, sparked a political row by saying that Modi was a low-life uncultured man who practices dirty politics.

Mujhko lagta hai ki ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, isme koi sabhyata nahi hai, or aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai? (This man is a low-life person, he isn't cultured... at this moment why does he need to practice such dirty politics?)

Modi used the comments to appeal to Gujarati pride and urged the people to show their resentment by voting for the BJP. Congress called us "neech but we are living according to our traditions. People of Gujarat will not tolerate this kind of language. People will give befitting reply on 9 and 14, he said.

He further said he was not ashamed of his background and will continue to serve the state. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, dalits, tribals and OBC communities. I dont feel hurt. I have given up my life for this land. I have given my life to this land, he added.
Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Thursday said the response garnered by BJP veteran Yashwant Sinha's agitation in Maharashtra over farmers' issues should set off alarm bells for the state government.

The former Union minister, who has had frequent run-ins with the current BJP leadership, was detained on Monday evening while protesting outside the Akola district collector's office against the state government's "apathy" towards the farmers of Vidarbha.

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray had spoken to the 80-year-old leader over phone on Tuesday and discussed farmers' issues.

Sinha on Wednesday called off his three-day-old protest in Akola, saying Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had assured him that their demands will be met.

The Sena on Thursday noted that prominent leaders of the country had supported Sinha's agitation.

"We (referring to Uddhav Thackeray) too spoke to Sinha over phone. The question is about farmers' life and death and thus not worrying about what will happen to power, we supported his agitation," the party said in an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

The Sena said that Sinha was never a mass leader but a "bureaucrat-turned-politician".

"Yet, if farmers supported his agitation, it should ring alarm bells for the BJP and the government. The government should fulfil the demands of farmers of Akola while it has the time," it opined.

Seeking to know what issues of farmers were resolved by the BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra, the Sena claimed that farm loan waiver was announced by the state government only when the Uddhav Thackeray-led party pressed for it.

"However, in reality the government spent crores of rupees on advertisements even before the actual loan waiver was implemented, to gain credit. Like the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the loan waiver is also stuck in announcements," it quipped.

The Sena asserted that it will continue to demand implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan panel, a complete loan waiver and minimum support price for farmers, because these were the promises, it claimed, on the back of which the BJP came to power.

Sinha also didn't have any new demands but only wanted old promises to be fulfilled, the Sena said, adding that the farmers stood with him because the "disappointed and victimised" cultivators do not know what to do.

Questioning those criticising Sinha, the editorial said if the former Union minister was going against his own party due to his personal grudges, how could he get such a stupendous response in Akola.

"Why did the chief minister and (revenue minister) Chandrakant Patil plead Sinha to take back the agitation? That was because this agitation could turn ugly and affect the upcoming Winter session of the state Legislature," it said.
Tech giant Wipro Limited is going to expand its operations in London by setting up its third office in the UK capital. Announcing this at a press conference today,organised by London & Partners (L&P),Rajan Kohli, senior vice-president and global head of Wipro Digital, said "Our latest Wipro Digital pod in London is a significant milestone in our continued growth journey, helping attract great design and engineering talent to serve clients in the United Kingdom and Europe.

"Kohli said the additional presence in London would allow the company to serve the digital clients better. David Slater, Director of International Trade and Investment at L&P, said Wipro is among a host of Indian tech firms to make significant investments in London. He said the Indian tech businesses are expected to create over 400 new jobs in London this year. He also announced that London & Partners would set up an office here to explore the business potential for London as well as Bengaluru.

Slater said, "London and Bengaluru are hotbeds for innovation and creativity and we see a fantastic opportunity for UK and Indian tech companies to do business across the markets." "Our decision to open a new office in Bengaluru will help us reach key decision makers in India and support our continued drive to help Indian businesses expand and internationalise in London," he added.

Watch: Honor 7X First Impressions Review | Honor Has an Ace up Its Sleeve
Jerusalem/Gaza: The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank, deploying several new army battalions and putting other forces on standby, describing the measures as part of its "readiness for possible developments".

Protests so far have been scattered and largely non-violent.

But dozens of Palestinians gathered at two points on the Gaza border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. Inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" and burning tyres.

Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperilling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.

The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

Haniyeh, elected the group's overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the U.S decision on Friday, calling it a "day of rage".

Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful.

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed Trumps announcement as a "historic landmark", said on Thursday many countries would follow the U.S. move and contacts were underway. He did not name the countries he was referring to.

"President Trump has immortalized himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people," he said in a speech at Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Other close Western allies of Washington, including France and Britain, have been critical of Trump's move. Pope Francis has called for Jerusalem's status quo to be respected, while China and Russia have also expressed concern.

The EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: "The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both."

Trump's decision has raised doubts about his administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations.

The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the U.S. decision, diplomats said.

"STRATEGIC DANGER"

Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. Hamas does not recognise Israel's right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005.

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," Haniyeh said.

"United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine," he said, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Haniyeh called on Western-backed Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration.

Abbas said on Wednesday the United States had abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts. Palestinian secular and Islamist factions have called for a general strike and rallies on Thursday.

Fearing recrimination could disrupt reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas.

The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.

Trump's decision fulfils a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support.

He said his move was not intended to tip the scale in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties, but the move was seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt towards Israel.

The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters.

Protests broke out in areas of Jordan's capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees, and several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday after Trump's announcement.

Protests are expected on Thursday in Pakistan, where the government said of Trump's move: "It is a serious setback to the rule of law and international norms. It signals a severe blow to the Middle East peace process."

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan said the United States was "exposing its colonial ambition in Muslim territory".

Palestinians switched off Christmas lights on trees outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in protest.
Washington: The United Nations Security Council has convened a meeting on Friday in the wake of the US President Donald Trump announcing his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and France - the two permanent members which closely align themselves on most of the global issues - joined by other non-permanent members -- Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay -- asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.

The UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres is expected to address the Security Council on Friday. Earlier in a statement, Guterres said that Jerusalem was the final status issue and must be resolved through direct negotiations.

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," he said, adding that he has consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would "jeopardise" the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said. Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city. He also directed the State Department to immediately begin the process of construction of a US Embassy in Jerusalem. His announcement has outraged several countries. Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement said she disagreed with the US announcement to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it," she said. May stressed that the status of Jerusalem should be "determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis the Palestinians".

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," she said, adding that "Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states". "In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories," May said.
He would wander the streets of occupied Mosul by day, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information. He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by the extremists. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and stonings, so he could hear killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes.

By night, anonymously from his darkened room, Mosul Eye told the world what was happening. If caught, he too would be killed.

But after more than three years, his double life has grown too heavy to bear. He misses his name.

His secrets consume him, sap energy he'd rather use for his doctoral dissertation and for helping Mosul rebuild. In conversations with The Associated Press, he agonized over how to end the anonymity that plagues him. He made his decision.

Mosul Eye is Omar Mohammed, historian, scholar, blogger. He is 31.

The revelation of his identity is for his thousands of readers and followers, for all his volunteers in Mosul who have been inspired by a man they have never seen. But above all, it is for the brother who died in the final battle and for his grieving mother.

"I can't be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now," he told The Associated Press.

Mohammed first posted about the Islamic State group under his own Facebook account, in the first few days after its fighters swept into Mosul, but a friend told him he risked being killed. So in those first days he made himself a promise: trust no one, document everything.

A newly minted teacher with a reputation for secular ideas, he had lost his university job.

He found another calling.

"My job as a historian requires an unbiased approach which I am going to adhere to and keep my personal opinion to myself," he wrote on that first day, June 18, 2014.

Mosul Eye became one of the outside world's main sources of news about the Islamic State fighters, their atrocities and their transformation of the city into a grotesque shadow of itself.

During Friday sermons, Mohammed feigned enthusiasm. He collected propaganda to post online later. He drank tea at the hospital, fishing for information.

Much of what he collected went on the blog. Other details he kept in his computer, for fear of giving away his identity. Someday, he promised, he would write history with them.

The most sensitive details initially came from two old friends: a doctor and a high school dropout who had joined an Islamic State intelligence unit.

Mohammed's information sometimes included photos of the fighters and commanders, complete with biographies surreptitiously pieced together during the course of his normal life  that of an out-of-work scholar living at home.

"I used the two characters, the two personalities to serve each other," he said. He expanded into a Facebook page and a Twitter feed to parcel out information at a time when little news was escaping.

Intelligence agencies made contact as well and he rebuffed them.

"I am not a spy or a journalist," he would say. "I tell them this: If you want the information, it's published and it's public for free. Take it."

In March 2015, his catalog of horrors got to him.

"I was super ready to die," Mohammed said. "I was so tired of worrying about myself, my family, my brothers. I am not alive to worry, but I am alive to live this life. I thought: I am done."

He cut his hair short, shaved his beard and pulled on a bright red sweater. His closest friend joined him.

They drove to the banks of the Tigris blasting forbidden music. They shared a carafe of tea. Heedless of people picnicking nearby, Mohammed lit a cigarette banned by IS. Somehow, incredibly, he wasn't caught.

"At that moment I felt like I was given a new life."

He resumed what he had taken to calling his duty. He grew out his hair and beard, put the shortened trousers back on.

He tested out different voices, Christian, Muslim. Sometimes he indicated he was gone, other times that he was still in the city.

Finally, after leaving Mosul a thousand times in his mind, he decided it was time to get out.

"I think I deserve life, deserve to be alive."

A smuggler agreed to sneak him out for $1,000. Mohammed left the next day, the contents of his computer transferred overnight to a hard-drive that he packed with him.

No one gave him a second look during the two days and some 500 kilometers (300 miles) it took to reach Turkey.

Once there, Mosul Eye kept at it: via WhatsApp and Viber, from Facebook messages and long conversations with friends and relatives who had contacts within IS. From hundreds of kilometers away, his life remained consumed by events back home.

By mid-2016, deaths were piling up faster than he could record. The Islamic State group was on a hunt for traitors and the airstrikes were taking an increasing toll on everyone. His records grew haphazard, and he turned to Twitter to document the atrocities. In February 2017, he received asylum in Europe.

Only after his elder brother Ahmed was killed in a mortar strike and IS was gone from the city did Mohammed reveal his secret to a younger brother  who greeted the news with a shock of pride and happiness. His sibling spoke on condition of anonymity from his refuge in Iraq because he was fearful for his life.

"People in Mosul had lost hope and confidence in politicians, in everything," his brother said. Mosul Eye "managed to show that it's possible to change the situation in the city and bring it back to life."
Islamabad: Pakistans parliament on Thursday passed a unanimous resolution condemning US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In a highly controversial decision, Trump also decided to shift the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

The Treasury and opposition benches in the National Assembly joined hands to pass the resolution which termed Trumps decision as a direct attack on Muslims at a time when the Middle East is already beset with wars and conflicts.

It said the US move violates the international law, several resolutions of UN Security Council over the matter, and global consensus on how to resolve the Palestine conflict.

The National Assembly also demanded the United States to immediately revoke its decision.us

Earlier, the Foreign Office in a statement condemned Trumps decision.

"Pakistan joins the international community in expressing its strong opposition and condemnation at the decision of the US Administration to recognise the occupied city of Al Quds Al Sharif (Jerusalem) as the so-called capital of Israel and the plan to relocate its Embassy there," the Foreign Office said.

Pakistan said that it was deeply regrettable that pleas from countries across the globe not to alter the legal and historical status of Jerusalem have been ignored, "more out of choice than necessity".

It said the decision represents a serious violation of international law and applicable UN Security Council resolutions, particularly UNSCR 478.

Pakistan said it was a serious setback to the rule of law and international norms and signals a severe blow to the Middle East peace process as well.

Pakistan shares the international outrage and is deeply concerned over the implications of this decision for international peace and security, especially in the Middle East and calls upon the UN Security Council to take cognizance of this situation and take steps in accordance with the UN Charter.

The FO also urged the United Sates to revisit its decision as soon as possible in order to avoid the potentially grave repercussions in the region and beyond.
Jerusalem: Palestinians seethed with anger and a sense of betrayal over US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Many heard the death knell for the long-moribund US-sponsored talks aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They also said more violence could erupt.

"Trump wants to help Israel take over the entire city. Some people may do nothing, but others are ready to fight for Jerusalem," said Hamad Abu Sbeih, 28, an unemployed resident of the walled Old City.

"This decision will ignite a fire in the region. Pressure leads to explosions," he said.

Jerusalem -- specifically its eastern Old City, home to important shrines of Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War then later annexed it in a move not recognised internationally. Palestinians want it to be the capital of a future independent state and resolution of its status is fundamental to any peace-making.

Trump is due to announce later on Wednesday that the United States recognises the city as Israel's capital and will move its embassy there from Tel Aviv, breaking with longtime policy.

"This is insane. You are speaking about something fateful. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine and neither the world nor our people will accept it," said Samir Al-Asmar, 58, a merchant from the Old City who was a child when it fell to Israel.

"It will not change what Jerusalem is. Jerusalem will remain Arab. Such a decision will sabotage things and people will not accept it."

Palestinian newspapers also decried the move.

"Trump Defies the World," thundered Al-Ayyam. Another, Al-Hayat, roared "Jerusalem is the Symbol of Palestinian Endurance" in a red-letter headline over an image of the city's mosque compound flanked by Palestinian flags.

Palestinian leaders have also warned the move could have dangerous consquences. Although winter rains dampened protests called for East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, few doubted fresh bloodshed now loomed.

Israeli security forces braced for possible unrest but police said the situation in Jerusalem was calm for now.

That could quickly change, given the religious passions that swirl around the Old City, where Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine, abuts the Western Wall prayer plaza, a vestige of two ancient Jewish temples.

Palestinians mounted two uprisings, or intifadas, against Israeli occupation from 1987 to 1993 then from 2000 to 2005, the latter ignited by a visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the shrine area, known to Jews as Temple Mount.

Violent confrontations also took place in July when Israel installed metal detectors at an entrance to Al-Aqsa compound after Arab gunmen holed up there killed two of its policemen. Four Palestinians and three Israelis died in ensuing violence.

ANGRY IN GAZA

In the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza, demonstrators chanted "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and "Down with Trump". They also burned posters depicting the US, British and Israeli flags.

Youssef Mohammad, a 70-year-old resident of a refugee camp, said Trump's move would be a test for Arab leadership at a time of regional chaos and shifting alliances.

"Let him do it. Let's see what Arab rulers and kings will do. They will do nothing because they are cowards," the father of eight said.

The Jerusalem uproar could affect Egyptian-brokered efforts to bring Gaza, which has been under Islamist Hamas control for a decade, back under the authority of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who favours negotiation with Israel.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Trump's planned moved showed the United States was biased.

"The United States was never a neutral mediator in any cause of our people. It has always stood with the occupation (Israel)," he said.

He said Abbas' administration should "rid itself of the illusion that rights can be achieved through an American-backed deal".
Moscow: Russia's defence ministry today said its mission to oust Islamic State jihadists from Syria had been "accomplished" with the country "completely liberated" from the extremist group.

"The Russian armed forces' goal to defeat armed groups of the ISIL terrorist organisation in Syria has been accomplished," said senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi, using an alternative acronym for the group.

"There is not a single village or district in Syria under the control of ISIL. The territory of Syria has been completely liberated from fighters of this terrorist organisation," he told reporters.

There has been an "unprecedented" involvement by Russia's airforce in recent days, he said, with warplanes making 100 sorties and staging up to 250 strikes daily.

At the same time, special forces were active on the ground directing planes and "destroying the most odious leaders of militant groups behind enemy lines," he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said Thursday that IS still holds about eight percent of Deir Ezzor province.

Rudskoi said "separate sabotage bands of ISIL" could still be operating but would be fought by Syrian government troops, indicating that Russia's involvement would be scaled down.

"With the liquidation of armed bands of the ISIL terrorist group in Syria, the Russian contingent will concentrate its main efforts on providing aid to the Syrian people in rebuilding peace" and ensuring ceasefire commitments were met, he said.

Russia began its bombing raids in September 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered forces.

Those strikes have helped Assad regain control over much of war-ravaged Syria.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin said efforts to end the war were entering a "new stage" as the focus shifts from military intervention to political reform.

More than 340,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out in March 2011 with protests against Assad's rule that sparked a brutal crackdown.
London: Ancient bones said to belong to St Nicholas, the fourth-century saint who inspired the legend of Santa Claus, may indeed be from the Father Christmas himself, Oxford scientists have found.

The remains of St Nicholas, one of the most revered Orthodox Christian saints, have been held in the Basilica di San Nicola church in Bari, Italy since 1087 AD.

Over the years relic fragments have been acquired by various churches around the world, calling into question how the bones can all be from the same person.

Using a micro-sample of bone fragment, Professor Tom Higham and Georges Kazan, from Oxford University in the UK, have for the first time tested one of these bones.

The radio carbon dating results pinpoint the relic's age to the fourth century AD - the time that some historians believe that St Nicholas died (around 343 AD).

The results suggest that the bones could in principle be authentic and belong to the saint, researchers said.

"Many relics that we study turn out to date to a period somewhat later than the historic attestation would suggest," said Higham.

"This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself," he said.

St Nicholas is thought to have lived in Myra, Asia Minor, which is now modern day Turkey.

According to legend, he was a wealthy man who was widely known for his generosity, a trait that inspired the legend of Father Christmas as a bringer of gifts on Christmas Day.

Believed to have been persecuted by the Emperor Diocletian, the saint died in Myra, where his remains became a focus of Christian devotion.

His remains are said to have been taken away by a group of Italian merchants and transported to Bari, where the bulk of them sit to this day in the Basilica di San Nicola.

The bone analysed is owned by Father Dennis O'Neill, of St Martha of Bethany Church, Shrine of All Saints in Morton Grove Illinois, US, the researchers said.
Vienna: The United States would "badly" like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties.

Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop.

"We've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine," Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. "It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalising the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do."

On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticised Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies' intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West.

The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that "all the responsibility is with Ukraine" as far as violence in the east was concerned.

In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia's involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence," Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine.

"Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission."

While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was no sign of progress at Thursday's meeting.

"We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence," Tillerson told the news conference.

In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

"In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments," Tillerson said.

He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

"We will never accept Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine," he said.
London: Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday said the British government disagreed with US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts.

"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

The prime minister reaffirmed that Britain's embassy to Israel would remain in Tel Aviv and her government's belief that the status of Jerusalem "should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians".

"Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states," said May. "We regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories." But May, who sparred with Trump last week over the US president's retweeting of a British far-right group, said she shared her counterpart's "desire to bring an end to this conflict".

"We welcome his commitment today to a two-state solution negotiated between the parties, and note the importance of his clear acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including the sovereign boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

May urged the US to submit "detailed proposals" for an Israel-Palestinian settlement and called on all sides to refrain from violence.

Trump's declaration -- met by fierce regional condemnation -- ends seven decades of deliberate diplomatic ambiguity about the final status of a holy city vociferously claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Holding a banner with a Turkish, led and a Palestinian flag, right, protesters chant anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration near the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey on December 6, 2017. U.S. President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said: No one has the right to play with the fate of billions of people for the sake of personal whims. Erdogan warned warned that the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital will lead to "public unrest" in the Islamic world." (Image: AP)
KING George VI Barracks, which houses the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) and Air Force of Zimbabwe (AFZ) headquarters, was yesterday officially renamed Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks at a colourful ceremony presided over by Commander-in-Chief President Emmerson Mnangagwa.



The ceremony was the first of a series of events the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces will preside over. The President is expected to preside over unveiling ceremonies for the National Defence University (renamed to Alfred Nikita Mangena), Headquarters 3 Infantry Brigade (renamed Herbert Chitepo) and Flyde Air Force Base (Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo).



All army barracks have been renamed after national heroes as Government moves to address the colonial nomenclature of key military cantonments by venerating Zimbabwes former freedom fighters. KGV1 Barracks built around 1972 were named after Albert Fredricks George, former King of the United Kingdom and dominions of the Commonwealth.





He was the Commander-in-Chief when the Rhodesian Army was established. President Mnangagwa first inspected a guard of honour before unveiling the plaque and delivering his keynote address. The event was also complete with a 21-gun salute to honour General Tongogara, a military strategist who was the ZANLA chief of defence.





Gen Tongogara died in a car accident on December 26, 1979 just a few months before the country gained independence after vanquishing the Settler regime of Ian Douglas Smith. Speakers spoke highly of Gen Tongogara, who was also a member of the Dare reChimurenga and ZANLA High Command.





They narrated how Gen Tongo had provided unparalleled leadership to the armed struggle for the emancipation of the people. The Tongogara family, led by his widow Angeline and several children, was present to witness the momentous occasion. Mrs Tongogara said her husband had led from the front during the liberation struggle although he did not live to see the fruits of his sacrifice.





This makes this honour deeply meaningful to the family and the nation. Words are not enough to tell you how grateful we are for this recognition that will continue to recognise and teach the values of the liberation struggle through this honour bestowed on its commander. As Zimbabweans, we hold our heads high with pride in our nation and its Government and in our Defence Forces who guard this legacy, she said.





Defence, Security and War Veterans Minister Cde Kembo Mohadi said the renaming exercise was long overdue.

This is an occasion that breaks the shackles that have been tying us to the colonial past. He was my Commander and I knew this gentleman and his family long back before some of you knew him. We were together in Zambia when I joined the struggle in 1971. We worked together. As someone who was in the intelligence side of ZAPU, he used to come to Zimbabwe House and give me some tasks to do. I am saying this today and have never told this to anyone. He did not know that there was ZAPU and there was ZANU, he was above party politics. This is the man we are giving these Barracks today. I am not going to tell you the missions that he used to send me to do, he said.





He added: This is one of the most important days of my life and standing before you as a Minister of Defence, Security and War Veterans, I feel I am home because I am part of this family. I have long been in the wilderness and today I feel I am home with my own.





A member of the ZIPRA High Command Cde Ambrose Mutunhiri said: I am actually excited. At least this is something that has been missing in recognition of some of our great military leaders. The history of Zimbabwe without mentioning some of the people who have been mentioned here, General Tongo included, is incomplete. I am grateful.





The ceremony was attended by Cabinet Ministers, traditional leaders, service chiefs, freedom fighters and members of the Tongogara Foundation.Herald
Government is committed to improving conditions of service for members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF), especially in the area of institutional accommodation, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said.



Addressing joint command staff course number 30 graduates at Zimbabwe Staff College yesterday, President Mnangagwa, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the ZDF, said Government could leverage on abundant engineering skills in the sector to achieve this undertaking.



I am aware of the challenges you are currently facing and wish to assure you that my Government will do everything in its power to improve the conditions of service for the defence forces. As the economy improves, it also gives us the room to improve your conditions of service, particularly in the area of institutional accommodation where we can leverage on the abundant engineering skills among the ZDF members, he said.





President Mnangagwa reiterated that the new era would be dominated by robust and fast economic recovery programmes, saying his priorities would be to effect cost-cutting measures, stamp out corruption and plug all resource leakages. He said the ZDF had demonstrated the overarching need to preserve national security in its various forms through continuous training and widening of professional competencies.





I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the ZDF, in general, for effectively carrying out their constitutional mandate of maintaining peace and stability within our motherland, Zimbabwe. Such emphasis on training and development has over the years enabled the ZDF to develop a wide range of critical skills across both public and private sector administration, he said.





The ZDF has excelled and earned high national, regional and international repute in their role as guarantors of peace and security.





He urged the ZDF to preserve the African culture and maintain their identity.

I, therefore, salute the Zimbabwe Staff College for taking the initiative to inculcate moral and cultural values into the mindsets of student officers so that they conscientiously discharge their responsibilities to the wider communities that they serve, he said.

President Mnangagwa said he was happy that the Staff College was keeping abreast with modern academic developments.





The College has, in line with other military colleges across the globe, incorporated basic studies in national security in its Joint Command and Staff Course curriculum, he said.

It is therefore pleasing to note that 41 of the graduating students also graduated with diplomas in Defence and Security Studies from the University of Zimbabwe. I am confident that this additional qualification will further enlighten the officers and enable them to easily tap into contemporary civic-military developments.





He further added that the objective of the course was to nurture the officers skills in preparation for the assumption of enhanced responsibilities in command and staff matters. President Mnangagwa also took time to thank countries like Botswana, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia for hosting the graduands during their one week external study tour.





He further extended his gratitude to the Peoples Republic of China for providing invaluable technical assistance to the Staff College through the secondment of professional staff at the institution.





Of the 54 students, 28 were from the Zimbabwe National Army, 10 from the Air Force of Zimbabwe, two from the Presidents department. The Zimbabwe Republic Police and Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services provided one student each. The remaining 12 are from other sadc allied countries, as well as the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Squadron Leader Alex Chiduwa from the Air force of Zimbabwe was the overall best student. The ceremony was attended by the Minister of Defence, Security and War Veterans Cde Kembo Mohadi, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr Martin Rushwaya, ZDF Commander General Constantino Chiwenga and other service chiefs. Herald
Air Vice Marshal Shebba Shumbayaonda has replaced Perrance Shiri as Air Force boss on an acting basis, President Emerson Mnangagwa said at the unveiling of the name change of KG VI to Josiah Magama Tongogara barracks in Harare yesterday.



Shiri is now Lands minister in President Mnangagwas new Cabinet sworn in on Monday.

A former Air Commodore, Shumbayaonda was promoted to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal in April 2011. He joined the Airforce of Zimbabwe as Air Sub Lieutenant on April 1, 1980, rising through the ranks.





It is not clear who has replaced Major General Sibusiso Moyo, who appeared on State television on the morning of November 15 to announce the military intervention with the memorable words the situation in our country has moved to a new level. Moyo is the new Foreign minister.



Efforts to get a comment from Mnangagwa at the ceremony if Moyo and Shiri had resigned from the armed forces were futile.



Mnangagwa said Aaron Nhepera is now the acting director general in the Presidents Department, replacing Happyton Bonyongwe who served briefly as Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister.



Bonyongwe became one of the shortest lived Cabinet ministers after he was replaced by Zvimba West legislator, Ziyambi Ziyambi, a month into the job.



Yesterday, the Daily News correctly reported a shake-up was looming in the security sector as Mnangagwa moves to fill in the vacancies occasioned by the elevation of top service chiefs before and after the dramatic exit of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.



By virtue of their Cabinet appointments, Shiri and Moyo automatically relinquished their positions in the security service.



Section 106(2) of the Constitution does not allow vice presidents, ministers and deputy ministers to directly or indirectly hold any other public office or undertake in any paid work during their tenure of office.



In the secret service, the office of director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation has been vacant since October when Bonyongwe was appointed Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister by Mugabe.



Meanwhile, Mnangagwa said his priorities on economic recovery is to introduce cost-cutting measures, stamping out corruption and plugging all resource leakages wherever they have occurred.



This includes the compelling need to ensure that all those who looted State resources return them or else the long arm of the State will catch up with them.



As the economy improves, it also gives us the room to improve your conditions of service particularly in the area of institutional accommodation where we can leverage on the abundant engineering skills amongst ZDF members, Mnangagwa said later at the graduation ceremony at Zimbabwe Staff College. Daily News
President Emerson Mnangagwa must pursue a package of comprehensive reforms aimed at underpinning the sea political change won in the military-led intervention with economic gains, economic experts said yesterday ahead of the National Budget presentation today.



Scrapping bond notes, attracting investment capital, widening the tax base and creating opportunities and jobs are a constant demand by younger Zimbabweans frustrated that economic progress has not matched the political transition ushered by the uprising that ousted autocrat Robert Mugabe as president.



It is a delicate balance for the new government. Mnangagwa swore in his new Cabinet on Monday, attracting much disappointment on the make-up of the team.



But economists are mostly interested in the medium-term moves of under-fire Ignatius Chombos successor as Finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa.



Chinamasa, who had previous experience as Justice minister, was sacked from the Finance portfolio in early October after four years in the job over his vocal opposition to the most destructive policies in the late stages of Mugabes time in office: the bond notes and the Indigenisation law.



On Monday, as his Cabinet took office, Mnangagwa was emphasising the importance of economic progress.









I want (Zimbabweans) to be united, we must grow our economy, he said.

A military operation undertaken in Harare in the second week of last month, which resulted in the stepping down of Mugabe, ignited a heavy stocks sell-off on outlook optimism.





The initial shock saw industrials shed 40 percent in value before partial recovery.

NKC African Economics analyst Francois Conradie said while expectation was that Mnangagwa will seek support for his policies at the Zanu PF congress on December 12, he said Chinamasa will give some clearer indication of what can be expected in terms of policy changes when he presents his 2018 National Budget today.





Government spending in Zimbabwe has been out of control in recent years: with a budget deficit forecast of $1,5bn in 2017 or 8,7 percent of GDP as the government continues to pay out high amounts in wages to a bloated civil service while it struggles to tax the slow-growing economy. Problems with ghost workers on the State payroll make matters worse.

Government has had trouble borrowing money from abroad as prospective lenders have had doubts over Zimbabwes ability to repay.





This explains the rapid loss of value of the bond notes in September and October: Government simply printed notes that were not backed by hard currency, and traders started charging premiums to shoppers using the notes.





The International Monetary Fund said last week it will dispatch a staff mission to Zimbabwe in the coming days to meet with officials of the new government and assess the countrys fiscal and economic situation, IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice said.





Rice told a news briefing the regular staff visit to Harare will update our assessment of Zimbabwes fiscal position, foreign exchange developments and enquire about the new administrations economic plans.





In late November, some automated teller machines were again issuing US dollars  a clear indication that Mnangagwas transition team has been able to borrow something.

We expect that means he has made some promises on policy reform to potential investors, and that he will announce these reforms on Thursday (today), Conradie said.

Former Finance minister Tendai Biti told the Daily News that Zimbabwes bond note currency must be scrapped pronto.





Bond notes should be demonetised, nobody has confidence in anything that resembles the Zimdollar, Biti said.





It has become an instrument of arbitrage, we dont need bond notes, we must stick to the multiple currency regime, perhaps join the Rand Monetary Union. We should stimulate exports, earn more.





You cant have an instrument not backed by any value. Zimbabweans were traumatised and raped by the Zimdollar. You cant put a tanker against the economy.

Businessman and financial engineering expert Mutumwa Mawere said: They (bond notes) should be dead. However, there is a physical problem of cash in motion. What is the most durable cure?





The moment that people in government realise how powerless they are and should be on matters that fall outside their control, the better.





Cash is a product of effort and willing buyer and willing seller transactions.

Cash that is a consequence of value addition should never be stolen in the name of a mistaken and self serving interest.





Introduced by Mugabes government last November as part of a desperate bid to starve off a cash flow crisis, the notes are supposed to be traded 1-1 with the US dollar but are trading at anything up 1-1,3.





Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2008 and officially adopted the American currency.





But continued economic uncertainty led people to stash dollars outside the country, prompting a critical shortage.

Mnangagwa has proclaimed an amnesty for people to return money stashed abroad in the country.





Conradie said: Although we have reservations about Mnangagwa, who stands accused of a lot of crimes that happened under the Mugabe government, and we worry about the prospects of a free and fair election in August, we are fairly confident in our expectation of economic reforms that will improve the business environment and attract investment.

Conradie said he expected that Chinamasa will announce some reforms that aim to attract investment capital and to widen the tax base.





Key target areas should be reforming or repealing the Indigenisation law, which has hampered investment, and scrapping the bond note scheme in favour of hard currency borrowed abroad, he said.





Economic policy to attract foreign direct investment and build up a tax base should focus on agriculture  which produces far below potential and where much land is essentially lying fallow, mining, where a parallel State under Mugabe kept production secret to avoid paying any money to Treasury and services in general  tourism is an easy early play here. Daily News
Idaho Cops:

Actually, There

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to the Community
The mystery buyer who shattered art auction records by paying $450 million for a Leonardo da Vinci painting last month has been revealed as an obscure Saudi prince not previously known for collecting artor for being incredibly wealthy. Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saudidentified by the New York Times as the buyeris, however, close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and might be exempt from his crackdown on corruption. Documents seen by the Times show that Bader, one of 5,000 Saudi princes, told officials at Christie's auction house that he made his money in real estate.

Bidding for "Salvator Mundi," the only da Vinci in private hands, was down to Bader, bidding anonymously through a representative, and another bidder after $260 million. Bader won with a $30 million jump for his final bid. The Washington Post notes that one of the things that makes the buy surprising is the fact that the painting is of Jesus. He is considered a prophet in Islam, and most Muslims consider visual portrayals of the prophets to be sacrilege. The BBC reports that the 500-year-old painting is headed not for Saudi Arabia, but for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened last month. The emirate's ruler is a close ally of the Saudi crown prince. (Read more Leonardo da Vinci stories.)
Rep. John Conyers is retiring from the House seat he held for 52 years, and he wants his son to replace himbut voters in Michigan's 13th District may be wary of replacing a man accused of sexual misconduct with one accused of domestic violence. John Conyers III, 27, was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence in Los Angeles County earlier this year but not prosecuted after his then-girlfriend suffered knife wounds during an argument, the New York Times reports. A restraining order against him is still in effect. According to a police report seen by NBC News on the Feb. 15 incident, the woman told police that Conyers, after accusing her of cheating, "body-slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her."

The woman told police that Conyers chased her into the kitchen, where she threatened him with a knife and told him to leave the residence. She said he took the knife and swung it at her, cutting her on the arm. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office dropped the charges after deciding it couldn't be proven that the injury wasn't accidentally sustained while Conyers was disarming the woman. Conyers tells the Times that after a verbal disagreement got out of hand, she pulled a knife and was injured as he tried to take it away from her. He says he regrets his role in escalating the situation. Conyers says he was caught off guard by his father's endorsement and doesn't know if he's going to run for the seat. If he does, he will be competing against his uncle's 29-year-old great-nephew, Michigan state Sen. Ian Conyers. (Read more John Conyers stories.)
War on the Korean Peninsula is now inevitable thanks to America's "confrontational warmongering remarks," North Korea warned late Wednesday. A statement from the country's foreign ministry said the outbreak of war is an "established" fact and the only remaining question is when it will happen, Reuters reports. "We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, and should the US miscalculate our patience and light the fuse for a nuclear war, we will surely make the US dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force which we have consistently strengthened," the statement said.

The statement also slammed US officials including CIA Director Mike Pompeo for "impudently criticizing our supreme leadership, which is the heart of our people." The statement came as the "Vigilant Ace" military drills involving hundreds of American and South Korean aircraft continued, with a US B-1B supersonic bomber flying over the peninsula Wednesday, the AP reports. The South Korean military said the drill, in which the US bomber simulated land strikes, "displayed the allies' strong intent and ability to punish North Korea when threatened by nuclear weapons and missiles." (On Tuesday, a senior UN official visited North Korea for the first time since 2011.)
A judge has sentenced a Volkswagen senior manager to seven years in prison for covering up a scheme to evade pollution limits on US diesel vehicles, calling it an astonishing fraud on American consumers. Oliver Schmidt, who is the second person to be sent to prison over the scandal, was dispatched to the US from Germany in 2015 to meet with suspicious California regulators, the AP reports. But he didn't disclose rogue software that had long fooled authorities into believing that VW was meeting emissions rules on nearly 600,000 vehicles. He also misled American investigators and destroyed documents. US District Judge Sean Cox called Schmid, former general manager of VW's US engineering and environmental office, a "key conspirator" in the deception.

"I'm sure, based upon common sense, that you viewed this cover-up as an opportunity to shineto climb the corporate ladder at VW," Cox said Wednesday. The diesel vehicles were programmed to trigger certain pollution results only during testing, not during regular road use. Schmidt, 48, was arrested in Miami in January while trying to return to Germany after a vacation. He's been in custody without bond. "I accept the responsibility for the wrong I committed," Schmidt told the judge. Engineer James Liang cooperated with the FBI and was sentenced to 40 months in prison last summer. Six others at VW or Audi were charged, but they are in Germany and out of reach of US authorities.

(Read more Volkswagen stories.)
Disturbing details have surfaced in the case of Mariah Woods, the North Carolina 3-year-old found dead days after she disappeared from her mother's home. According to court documents seen by the Jacksonville Daily News, Earl Kimrey, the mother's live-in boyfriend, was accused of sexually abusing the girl and beating her two brothers, ages 5 and 10. Alex Woods, Mariah's biological father, provided Child Protective Services documents that state one of the boys saw Kimrey abuse the girl. The boy allegedly told CPS that mother Kristy Woods knew about the abuse, as well as Kimrey's use of drugs, including heroin and methamphetamine.

Kimrey was arrested Dec. 1 in connection with the disappearance and faces charges including concealing a death, although prosecutors have yet to accuse anybody of killing the girl, the News & Observer reports. According to court documents, the two boys were placed in the care of their maternal grandmother Nov. 27, the same day Mariah was reported missing. WRIC reports that authorities confirmed Wednesday that a body found in a creek Saturday is that of the toddler. Investigators haven't disclosed how she died, though the case has been described as a homicide investigation and arrest documents accuse Kimrey of secretly disposing of the body, the New York Daily News reports. (Read more sexual abuse stories.)
There was no shortage of reaction to President Trump's decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel on Wednesday, but one word that was floating around was an unexpected one: dentures. There was much social media chatter over the president's apparent slurring of the word "states" at the conclusion of his speech, in which he said, "Thank you, God bless you, God bless Israel, God bless the Palestinians, and God bless the United States." While USA Today reports that some raised concerns about his health, others suspected something more innocuous: loose dentures. The White House's line is that his throat was simply dry. "There's nothing to it," White House spokesman Raj Shah told the Los Angeles Times, which pressed him on the issue. Shah reiterated, "I know what youre getting at. Im saying theres nothing to it."

Also pressing the issue: late-night hosts. A sampling:

Trevor Noah: "As disturbing as it was today to watch Donald Trump add fuel to the Middle East conflict, it was even more disturbing to watch the conflict between Donald Trump's teeth and his tongue. It seemed like someone hit him with a blow dart just before he went out to make the speech. ... He sounds like he just had a drink with Bill Cosby, what's going on there, man? ... We all know whats going on here. President Donald Trump is wearing dentures, people. This used to happen to my grandfather all the time. ... Think about it: Have you seen Trump eat an apple or a pear? Or fruits and vegetables of any kind?"

Stephen Colbert: "He managed to get every word in the speech right, except the last one. ... I am really looking forward to this Jan. 30. We're live when Trump addresses a joint session of Congress for the 'Shtshh' of the Union."

James Corden: "I knew he had a screw loose, I didnt know he had a tooth loose. That video contains the three things that make up our worst nightmares: public speaking, losing teeth, and Donald Trump."

(Read more President Trump stories.)
The dinosaur was the size of a turkey and had a neck like a swan, teeth like a crocodile, forelimbs similar to a penguin's flippers, and clawed feet ideal for use on land. It's such a strange assortment of features that researchers who identified the new species from a fossil used X-rays to make sure the nearly complete skeleton wasn't a jumble of unrelated bones. "It looked like an alien," Vincent Fernandez, co-author of a new Nature study, tells the New York Times. "It's like a mixture of things that could have been put together." That was a legitimate concern, as the 75-million-year-old fossil found in southern Mongolia was sold on the black market before an international team of researchers got their hands on it. They say the fossil is indeed real and identify the creature as Halszkaraptor escuilliei, a relative of the velociraptor and perhaps only the second swimming dinosaur ever found.

Researchers explain H. escuilliei's snout, similar to that of a goose, had sensory nerves like those crocodiles use to detect movement in water. The dinosaur's hooked teeth and long neck also would've helped it snatch fish from the surface of lakes and rivers it navigated with flipper-like forelimbs. The long digits of its non-webbed feet may have helped it swim, too, though researchers say the dinosaur likely would've laid its eggs on land, per National Geographic. The fossilexplore a virtual 3D image at Live Scienceis now in Belgium but will be returned to Mongolia. For researchers, it represents all of the surprising dinosaur discoveries still to be made. Says study co-author Philip Currie, "Even in very well-known sites, we can still find new animals and show that they have an incredible diversity of forms that we never even expected before." (This equally old fossil held another surprise.)
The Kentucky county clerk who made headlines two years ago for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples is up for re-election next yearand one of the men she denied a license to has announced plans to run against her. Reuters reports that David Ermold of Morehead will run as a Democrat against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who said she was simply sticking to her Apostolic Christian beliefs in 2015 when she turned down Ermold's request for a license to marry his partner, David Moore. "It's official. I'm in!" Ermold, a University of Pikeville professor, wrote Wednesday in a Facebook post announcing his candidacy, adding afterward in a phone call to Reuters that "we need to restore the integrity of that office" and that "I wasn't treated fairly myself."

Davis spent five days behind bars in September 2015 for not issuing the license to Ermold and Moore, as well as other same-sex couples after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide that summer. After Kentucky lawmakers took county clerks' names off of the marriage licenses, Ermold and Moore received theirs and married on Sept. 26, 2015. Davis, who originally won her clerkship as a Democrat but switched to Republican after she got out of jail, was photographed Wednesday helping Ermold with his candidacy papers; a tweet featuring the photo went viral. "I shook his hand and told him, 'Congratulations, and may the best candidate win,'" Davis told Reuters in an email. As for Ermold, he tells ABC News: "The message I want to send out is one of bringing people back together. People are just hurt, people are angry, and we don't have to follow this path  We can change." (Read more Kim Davis stories.)
Amid a flurry of weddings expected to follow Australia's legalization of same-sex marriage Wednesday, there was also to be one divorce: Back in June 2015, Nick Jensen wrote an editorial explaining he and his wife of 10 years would dissolve their marriage as a "matter of conscience" if the government approved same-sex marriage. A Facebook event called "Celebrating Nick and Sarah Jensen's Divorce" was created in response and attracted more than 183,000 attendees, the Advocate reported at the time, but it seems the split will not come to pass. Continuing to argue that "a redefinition of marriage changes the agreement under which we were originally married," Jensen tells News.com.au his "previous public comments regarding civil divorce never envisaged me separating from my wife, but rather our marriage from the state."

But he says "the legislation currently makes it untenable for us to do this under the law." Jensen did not elaborate, and said he would make no other comment. He previously explained any divorce from his high school sweetheart and "perfect match" was to be in legal terms only and the couple would still consider themselves "married by the Church and before God." Australian lawyer Michael Tiyce says he offered to help the couple navigate hurdles en route to their goal, including an initial one-year separation required under Australian law. "My firm does quite a bit of pro bono work in family law each year in the gay, lesbian and trans community. I thought offering assistance to Nick and Sarah would be an excellent way of reaching out across communities," he tells News.com.au, adding the couple did not accept his offer. (Read more same-sex marriage stories.)
In the span of just three days, MSNBC fired then rehired Sam Seder over a tweet the liberal contributor made eight years ago after it was discovered by a "far-right provocateur," the Intercept reports. The Washington Post states the whole bizarre situation "perhaps says something about the fraught politics of the moment." Here's what Seder tweeted in 2009: "Don't care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene." Seder says the tweet is a satirical criticism of people defending Polanski. Mike Cernovich, who propagated the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory during the election and has claimed date rape is something made up by liberals, disagreed, claiming recently that Seder was endorsing rape.

MSNBC sided with Cernovich and fired Seder on Monday. That led to a wave of criticism from journalists and others. One senior MSNBC employee tells CNN the decision to fire Seder was "really weak" and "pathetic." On Wednesday, MSNBC reversed course, with president Phil Griffin offering Seder his old gig back. Sometimes you just get one wrong, Griffin says. Seder has accepted the offer. "I appreciate MSNBCs thoughtful reconsideration and willingness to understand the cynical motives of those who intentionally misrepresented my tweet for their own toxic, political purposes," Seder says. And it's safe to say the incident hasn't softened him on Cernovich. "Mike Cernovich is not everything that's wrong with society, but he is definitely the low hanging fruit of what's wrong with society," Seder says. (Read more MSNBC stories.)
Japanese Emperor Hirohito's WWII memoir was expected to fetch as much as $150,000 at auction in New York Wednesday. It instead sold for $275,000, but the sale price is potentially less interesting than the buyer: Dr. Katsuya Takasu, a man the BBC describes as an accused Holocaust denier. It points to a 2015 tweet in which Takasu reportedly called Auschwitz a "fabrication." He assigned the same descriptor to the Nanjing massacre, which occurred at the hands of Japanese troops in China beginning in late 1937. He tried to clarify his stance to the Japan Times on Thursday, saying that while he is against Nazism and does believe the Nazis killed people, he does not think "toxic gas" was employed at Auschwitz.

In an interview with Reuters , he also emphasized that he thought the death tolls in both instances were inflated, "a stance common among Japanese ultra-nationalists," per Reuters. He says, "What I wanted to say was that it is said that 6 million or 7 million were killed [in the Holocaust], but was that not several tens of thousands?" The Times notes Takasu is a widely known cosmetic surgeon in Japan, in part because he appears in TV commercials that run almost daily. As for his motivation in buying the 173-page memoir, reportedly written at the behest of Gen. Douglas MacArthur , he says, "I really wanted to see the original because the published text could have been edited. On top [of] that, I slightly felt something like indignation because it was sold in an overseas auction." More on what the memoir says here

(Read more World War II stories.)
A white former South Carolina officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for fatally shooting an unarmed black motorist in the back in 2015, wrapping up a case that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Before US District Judge David Norton announced the punishment, he had to decide whether Michael Slager's shooting of Walter Scott in April 2015 was manslaughter or murder; he ruled it was second-degree murder, and the guidelines recommended Slager spend 19 to 24 years in prison, reports the AP. "No matter what sentence I give, neither the Scott family nor the Slager family is going to think that it's right," the judge said.

Scott's mother, Judy Scott, said through tears that her faith in God gives her the ability to forgive Slager. Scott's brother Anthony Scott echoed that sentiment. "I'm not angry at you, Michael. Michael, I forgive you, and Michael, I do pray for you now and for your family, because we've gone through a traumatic time," he said. Attorneys for the ex-North Charleston officer said he shot 50-year-old Walter Scott in self-defense after the two fought and Scott reached for Slager's stun gun. They said race didn't play any role in the shooting and that Slager never had any "racial animus" toward minorities. Still, Slager pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Scott's civil rights. As part of the plea agreement reached in May, prosecutors dropped state murder charges. A year ago, a state judge declared a mistrial when jurors deadlocked.

(Read more Michael Slager stories.)
In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday, Al Franken did what sources had been saying he would since Wednesday: resign his seat in the wake of mounting sexual misconduct allegations. "Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life," Franken said. "I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought dishonor on this institution, and I am confident that the ethics committee would agree."

Still, "in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate," he said, explaining that he doesn't feel he could carry out his duties while dealing with the ethics investigation. He did take one swing, per the New York Times: "I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party." (Read more Al Franken stories.)
A shooting at a New Mexico high school left two students dead Thursday morning, KRQE reports. Authorities say the shooter at Aztec High School in Aztec is also dead. According to the Farmington Daily Times, neither the victims nor the shooter have been identified. It's unclear if the shooter was also a student, KOB reports. The New Mexico State Police tweeted that no other injuries were reported, but the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President stated 15 others were hurt in the incident.

"Our hearts break for the victims and their families," New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement. "We pray for the survivors, and are grateful to the brave first responders for their heroic actions on the scene." Nearby schools were briefly locked down during the incident. Aztec Mayor Sally Burbridge says there's no additional threat to the community, CNN reports. Thursday's shooting appears to be the most serious in a New Mexico school in years. Two students were wounded in a shooting at a Roswell middle school in 2014.

(Read more school shooting stories.)
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Vadodara:

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) contestant from Dabhoi Assembly seat in Gujarat, Shailesh Sotta today courted controversy by allegedly saying that the population of "topi and dadhiwalas", an apparent reference to Muslims, should be "reduced".

He also said that he came to Dabhoi to "instill fear" and that if sporadic communal clashes were not stopped a "befitting reply" would be given.

"If any 'topi, daadhiwala' (anybody wearing a cap and sporting beard) is sitting here (in the crowd), then pardon me, but there is a need to reduce their population. Many leaders asked me not to say this, as it may go against me, but if 90 per cent of people are supporting me, then why shall I stop speaking about the 10 per cent people?" Sotta purportedly said at what appeared to be a small gathering in Dabhoi town in Vadodara district.

The video of the speech he made in Gujarati has gone viral.

"(They say) don't talk about the community in which you are born (Hindu), and if you want to talk about that (the community), then don't contest election. But I will fight election for the religion in which I am born," Sotta purportedly said.

Sotta, a Vadodara councillor who is contesting Assembly polls for the first time, said they (Muslims) will have to stop sporadic clashes (communal incidents) or they will get 'eent ka jawab pathhar se (tit for tat response).

Dabhoi is going to polls in the second phase on December 14.

"There was a meeting of a peace committee in which a 'tadipaar' (externed criminal) said that he is scared of the BJP candidate (Sotta). There is nothing wrong in this," he said.

He said he came to Dabhoi to "scare people" and not the other way round.

"I came here to scare people. I am here not to get frightened, but to make others frightened. And if anti-social elements remain scared, then it is required for this place," he said.

Sotta could not be contacted on phone for his reaction. He is pitted against senior Congress leader Siddharth Patel.

After Sotta's video was aired by some news channels, Ahmedabad-based social worker Nishant Varma filed a complaint with the State Election Commission against Sotta over his "highly communal and instigating" comments against the Muslim community and for "violating the poll code".

Also read: BJP leader Vinay Katiyar claims Delhis Jama Masjid was originally Jamuna Devi temple



"He (Sotta) is clearly heard saying that Muslim population must be reduced in the area, and that Muslims will face 'eent ka jawab pathhar se'. He is saying all this to appease 90 per cent (Hindu) voters and not the rest 10 per cent," Varma said in his complaint.

Also read|Gujarat polls 2017: PM Modi to address over 10000 BJP's SC-ST members on last day of campaigning



"He (Sotta) is referring to Muslims as 'topi and daadhiwala' which is completely unacceptable and a clear violation of the model code of conduct as well as various provisions of the CrPC and IPC," he said.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a poll rally in Surat of Gujarat on Thursday.

The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls will come to an end on Thursday.

A total of 89 seats -- out of 182 -- spanning the

Saurashtra and South Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Voting will be held on December 9.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 14 rallies, while congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

Later in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST)members of the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat tomorrow and listento their concerns on Cyclone Ockhi, which may hit the state.
New Delhi:

My boss today touched me at back. He immediately said sorry and pretended as if it happened mistakenly. But this was not first time. I am getting negative vibes at my office, a friend working in a media organisation told me this few months back.

She was not the only one, I have heard this from several girls, so many times.

I remember another friend working in a well-known media organisation, once told me that his boss used to call girls for interviews even when there were no vacancies.

Incidents of bad touch, unwelcome sexual conduct, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature at workplaces are quite common world-wide.

However, they dont get reported at such extent as people who indulge in such a disgusting crime are often powerful and influential.

Also, we, as a society are not in the practice at this task.

But this year in 2017, the much needed debate on sexual abuse and harassment at workplace started. Thanks to few high profile cases that came in public domain and turned the attention of entire world towards this very serious issue.

Also Read | Being exploited by employer? Time to know your rights as an employee

In a country like India where rapes have become almost a tradition, people, especially our women, need to be aware.

There are existing laws that protect them from such workplace horrors.

Vishaka Guidelines 1997

In a landmark decision in 1997, the Supreme Court clearly defined the ambit of sexual harassment at the workplace.

These guidelines said, Physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexual coloured remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal

Conduct of sexual nature comes in the ambit of sexual harassment.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and redressal) Act, 2013

In 2013, the Manmohan Singh government passed Indias first law against sexual harassment at workplace.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and redressal) Act defined sexual harassment beyond Vishaka guidelines.

Now, presence or occurrence of circumstances of implied or explicit promise of preferential treatment in employment, threat of detrimental treatment in employment, threat about present or future employment, interference with work or creating an intimidating or offensive or hostile work environment, or humiliating treatment likely to affect the lady employees health or safety could also amount to sexual harassment.

Also Read | Know Your Rights: How to adopt a child in India; Read rules and laws

Under the law, employers having more than 10 staff were asked to set up an Internal Committee (IC) to address the complaints and grievances of victims in a safe environment.

If they dont set up an IC, there is a provision of fine of Rs 5o thousand.

So, all the working ladies out there, break the social barriers, dont bear such misconduct in your office any more. Go raise your voice and report to IC if you have ever faced this.
Ahmedabad:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday said that the Congress was "playing" with the faith of the Hindu community over the issue of construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Reacting to the controversy over senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal seeking deferment of hearing on the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute till 2019, he said it amounted to playing with "the Hindu belief".

"It is like playing mischievously with the Hindu belief.

The Congress will have to clarify whether it wants to see the Ram Mandir constructed in Ayodhya or not," he said.

On Rahul Gandhi's claim that he is a devotee of Lord Shiva, Adityanath said the Congress had once denied the existence of Ram Setu, and termed Gandhi's claim as playing with the Hindu faith.

"The Congress government at the Centre had tried to demolish the Ram Setu which was built due to the effort of Lord Ram. When the matter was challenged in the Supreme Court, the Congress government had filed an affidavit raising question on the existence of Ram and Krishna," he said.

He also advised Gandhi to go to the temple but out of faith and not out of hypocrisy.

The BJP leader alleged that Gandhi had once said that "people go to temple to tease women".

"Rahul Gandhi should be asked that when he does not believe in Ram, Shiva, Krishna and when he said that people go to temple to tease women, then why do you go to the temple? Nothing wrong in going to temple but do so out of faith and not hypocrisy," he said.

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New Delhi :

Campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly Elections ended on Thursday evening for legislative seats where polling would be held on December 9.

Campaigning for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly polls is being seen as a litmus test for both ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Opposition Congress. It is considered as high stake for BJP as it is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and for Congress because it has been out of power for over two decades.

On December 9, voters of 89 Assembly seats out of 182 will cast their votes to decide the fate of 977 candidates.

Key districts going on polls in the first phase are Junagadh, Rajkot, Morbi,Amreli, Kutch and Surendranagar.

Out of 977 candidates in fray from 50 political parties as well as independents, 57 are women. Polling will take place across 24,689 polling stations.

News Nation Ground Zero Poll Survey: Saffron surge in Gujarat, Rahul fails to impress voters

PM Modi and Rahul Gandhi led aggressive campaign for BJP and Congress, respectively.

Also read| Gujarat polls 2017: PM Modi to address poll rally in Surat

PM Modi during the campaign period addressed at least 14 rallies, while Rahul Gandhi spent more than seven days in south Gujarat and Saurashtra.

The BJP in the first phase poll campaign projected the work of its state and union government, while the Congress party targeted its opponent over the fulfilment of claims and joined hands with social leaders including Hardik Patel and other Dalit leaders.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) members of the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat on Thursday and listento their concerns on Cyclone Ockhi, which may hit the state.

The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Assembly polls in Gujarat, Modi's home state, is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday.

The prime minister will connect with the party workers on their mobile phones through the "audio bridge" technology and directly interact with the divisional heads of the party's SC and ST units in the state.

About 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend Modi's call, the BJP said in a statement. On Diwali, Modi had extended his greetings to around 23,000 BJP workers in Gujarat through tele-conferencing.

He had also spoken to around 2,000 party workers in his Parliamentary constituency, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, using the same technology.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14 -- and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Hours before the end of campaigning for the first phase of Gujarat assembly elections, Mani Shankar Aiyar once again did what the Congress was trying to avoid in Gujarat.

Led by party vice president Rahul Gandhi, Congress was giving a neck to neck fight to BJP for the first time in last 22 years in Gujarat. And the reason behind this was partys sensible campaign against BJP and PM Modi on the grass root issues.

However, Aiyars remark not only brought the Congress in a defensive mode, but also triggered a controversy that could be avoided.

While inaugurating International Baba Saheb Ambedkar Centre in Delhi, PM Modi had accused Congress of disparaging Baba Sahebs contribution for endorsing the interests of one family.

Reacting to PM Modis accusations, Aiyar, using derogatory language called PM Modi a Neech Aadmi.

Referring to PM Modi, he said, "This person is a 'Neech Aadmi'. He is not civilised and in a situation like this, there is no need to practise such dirty politics."

Though, the Congress criticising Aiyar, distanced itself from his statement, the BJP termed the remark as an insult to the whole of Gujarat and alleged the remark was made on Rahul Gandhis directions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also slammed Mani Shankar Aiyar for calling him neech and said his comment showed the Mughalai Mindset of the Congress.

Modis attack and aggressive BJP

While addressing a rally in Surat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday slammed Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar and said, They can call me 'Neech'- Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, Tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language, we will continue doing our work.

Modi was quick enough to say that the people of Gujarat will answer Aiyar when they vote for assembly elections on December 9 and 14.

Modi said, I beg to the people of India- please let them be. Let them keep calling me 'Neech' we will not respond. We do not have this mindset and want to congratulate them for theirs. If anything- we will answer them for their mindset with our votes on 9th and 14th.

Also Read | Modi slams Aiyar over 'neech' remark, says it shows Congress's 'Mughlai Mindset'

Distancing from personal attacks

Learning from the political damage in 2014 Lok Sabha election cause by personal attacks against PM Modi, Rahul Gandhi had given clear guidelines to Gujarat Congress leaders not to resort to attacking Modi personally.

In 2014, Mani Shankar Aiyar had called Modi a Chai Wala and his remark triggered a massive controversy and the BJP had termed the statement as an insult of poor. Hence, Congress had to face humiliating defeat.

This was the reason, Rahul Gandhi used issues like GST, demonetisation, jobs, education and health in a bid to counter BJP in Gujarat.

More or less, Rahul has succeeded in his strategy as BJP was also hitting back Congress only on these issue.

Also Read | Mani Shankar Aiyer apologises to PM Modi after Rahul Gandhi's rebuke

The damage control of Rahul Gandhi by suspending Aiyar

Hours before the end of campaigning for first phase of Gujarat polls, Aiyars controversial remark against PM Modi brought Congress back in the defensive mode, but Rahul Gandhi interfered timely and stopped the controversy from escalating.

Learning lessons from the mistakes of past, Rahul rebuked Aiyar and hours later Congress suspended him from partys primary membership.

Congress also issued a show cause notice to him for calling PM Modi a Neech Aadmi.

Also Read | Congress suspends Mani Shankar Aiyar after Rahul Gandhi's rebuke

Rahul said, I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the Prime Minister and both Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.

He said, BJP and PM Modi routinely use filthy language to attack Congress but this is not our partys culture and heritage.

This was not the first time Aiyars has sparked a controversy by using derogatory language against PM Modi. Earlier, during 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he had called Modi a "Chai wala", and the BJP had taken advantage of the controversy by terming it insult of poor.

Click here to read this story in Hindi

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Patna:

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was anti-temple and that his visits to the shrines in Gujarat, sporting a "tilak", and talks of his wearing a "janeu" (a sacred thread Brahmins wear) were aimed at hiding this.

"When the country's first president, Rajendra Prasad, a son of Bihar's soil, had performed a puja at the Somnath temple in Gujarat, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a proponent of pseudo-secularism, had expressed his strong disapproval," the senior BJP leader tweeted.

"Guided by the same ideology, Congress leader Kapil Sibal is now arguing against the Ram temple before the Supreme Court," he said, referring to the former Union minister representing the Sunni Waqf Board, a party to the Ayodhya title dispute, in the apex court.

On Tuesday, Sibal had prayed to the Supreme Court for deferring the hearing on the title suit till after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

However, the Congress has distanced itself from Sibal's stand.

Taking a dig at Gandhi, who is all set to become the Congress president, Sushil Modi said he was trying to "hide his anti-temple face by resorting to tilak-janeu and temple tourism".

Gandhi's aggressive campaign in poll-bound Gujarat has drawn the ire of many NDA leaders. JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had recently alleged that the Congress' poll strategy in Gujarat was veering towards extremism.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14 -- and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

Xiaomi is all set to officially launch Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus on Thursday. The company is hosting a mega event in Beijing and Xiaomi fans can watch live streaming of the launch on the companys official website.

One can watch live launch of the smartphones by clicking on Change Location and selecting Mainland China.

Prices of Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus were reportedly revealed on Wednesday, a day ahead of the official launch. As per AliExpress, Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus is priced at $199-$249 which is roughly around Rs 12,500 and Rs 16,000 respectively.

Redmi 5

Talking about its features, it is expected that Redmi 5 will sport a 5.7-inch HD display with an aspect ratio of 18:9 and a resolution of 1440x720.

As per latest reports, it is expected to come with two variants of 3GB and 4GB and powered by Snapdragon 450 SoC which is more powerful than its predecessor.

It is rumoured to have 5-megapixel camera in the front and 12-megapixel lens on the back with pretty decent picture quality.

Xiaomi Redmi 5 will reportedly have 3200 mAh battery and runs on Android Nougat 7.1

Redmi 5 Plus

It is expected to have a 5.9-inch FHD display with 1080x2160 resolution with an aspect ratio of 18:9.

Redmi 5 Plus will come in two options of 3GB and 4GB with 32GB and 64GB respectively. It is tipped to be powered by a Snapdragon 625 or 630 SoC processor.

Talking about its camera, Redmi 5 Plus will support 5MP camera in front along with LED flash and 12MP rear camera.

Redmi 5 Plus is expected to have a powerhouse of 4000mAh battery.
Sydney:

Gay couples will be able to legally marry in Australia after a same-sex marriage bill sailed through parliament on Thursday, ending decades of political wrangling.

There were loud cheers, hugs and sustained clapping in the 150-seat lower House of Representatives when all but four MPs voted in support of marriage equality, after the upper house Senate passed the bill 43-12 last week.

"What a day for love, for equality, for respect! Australia has done it", Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the House.

"Every Australian had their say and they said it is fair, get on with it!"

The historic reforms will commence on Saturday, when same-sex couples can a lodge a notice to marry. They will then have to wait a month before tying the knot.

Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten hailed the passing of the bill as a uniting moment for Australia, adding: "Now is the time for healing".

"A time to build, a time to love, and is now at last a time for marriage equality", he said.

Same-sex marriage campaigners converged outside parliament in the nation's capital Canberra to celebrate the historic occasion, which sees Australia join more than 20 other countries in recognising such unions.

The bill was tabled in parliament by the conservative government after Australians last month endorsed the reforms in a controversial voluntary postal vote.

Nearly 80 per cent of eligible voters took part in the poll, and almost 62 per cent of the 12.7 million people who participated chose "yes" on their postal ballots.

The ballot had been called by Turnbull, a moderate who backed gay marriage, in the face of opposition from hardliners who refused to back a national plebiscite on the issue.

Read more: China claims Indian drone violated its airspace, crashed

It was opposed by proponents of same-sex marriage, who wanted direct legislative action and argued a poll would expose gay people and their families to hate speech.

Just under five million people voted "no", with conservative politicians using their rejection of gay marriage as a catalyst to push for religious exemptions to be included in the bill.

But after lengthy debate, both houses of parliament knocked back amendments to the bill, including from former prime minister and staunch "no" campaigner Tony Abbott, on religious freedom.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

The United Nations Security Council has convened a meeting on Friday in the wake of the US President Donald Trump announcing his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and France -the two permanent members which closely align themselves on most of the global issues - joined by other non-permanent members -- Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay -- asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to address the Security Council on Friday.

Earlier in a statement, Guterres said that Jerusalem was the final status issue and must be resolved through direct negotiations.

"In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B," he said, adding that he has consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would "jeopardise" the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres said.

Also Read| US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital: White House

Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.

He also directed the State Department to immediately begin the process of construction of a US Embassy in Jerusalem.

His announcement has outraged several countries. Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement said she disagreed with the US announcement to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

"We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it," she said.

Also Read| Trump delays Jerusalem verdict as pressure mounts

May stressed that the status of Jerusalem should be "determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis the Palestinians".

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians," she said, adding that "Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states".

"In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories," May said.

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Riyadh:

Saudi Arabia on Thursday slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision goes against the "historical and permanent rights of the Palestinian people", the royal court said, calling on Trump to reconsider his decision.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move," the statement said.

"The US move represents a significant decline in efforts to push a peace process and is a violation of the historically

neutral American position on Jerusalem."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Trump's announcement appears to have cast a pall over relations between Saudi Arabia and the US, which have warmed in the months after his election, with the president choosing the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.

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Narita International Airport near Tokyo is looking to ease congestion at one of its terminals.

The airport corporation opened the low-cost carrier terminal in 2015. Nearly 4 million people used it during the first half of this year. That's 17 percent more than the same period last year.

The company has been getting complaints from travelers about long lineups for security checks.

It plans to install a new inspection system in 2019.

The system will pick out carry-on luggage considered suspicious and allow other baggage to pass through. Officials say this will boost handling by about 20 percent per hour.

The company also plans to reduce loading time for checked baggage by X-raying it on the way to the plane.


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In a large tank filled with cold water, an orphaned beluga calf slurps and gulps with gusto six times a day. Feeding time for this bouncing baby boy in the 24/7 critical care unit of the Alaska SeaLife Center involves buckets, tubes and rubber nipples originally intended for livestock. Tyonek, as the 11-week-old is known, guzzles formula made from powdered milk substitute supplemented with salmon oil and herring filets and pureed in a Vitamix blender.

The calf was rescued in late September after stranding on a quicksand-like flat on the remote western edge of a frigid arm of water near Anchorage. And his rescue represents a collaborative, creative and extreme effort - by experts in Alaska and others who traveled thousands of miles to contribute to his care - to help save a species: The endangered Cook Inlet Beluga.

With a population of only about 300, the species needs every individual. Even if Tyonek lives in captivity for the rest of his life, the baby beluga will provide data about health and behavior critical to saving his species. But to get to that point, the whale must first grow.

So how exactly does one bottle-feed a whale calf? It actually takes three humans to prepare the delicious (to a beluga) and nutritionally sound meal and then bottle feed about a liter to the cetacean. In the wild, a baby beluga would swim alongside its mother to nurse. In the center's cleverly named I-Sea-U, things are a bit less natural.

"The calf swims up, and we present the bottle," said the center's director of husbandry, Brett Long. The little guy then pushes his tongue forward, rolls it "into a little taco" around the nipple and, usually, starts suckling.

Caregivers feed the baby around the clock, filling his belly with about six liters of the fishy formula each day. If he doesn't take enough on his own, they use a soft, flexible feeding tube that delivers the magical mix directly to his stomach.

It's working. Tyonek, whose name means "little chief" in the local language of the village near where he was found, weighed 135 pounds when he was found. He's since packed on about 60 more.

That progress certainly wasn't guaranteed when Carrie Goertz, the center's animal health director, got to him.

The first person to spot him on that sunny Saturday was a keen-eyed officer from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He and a pilot had flown in a helicopter that morning with Goertz to perform a necropsy on another whale that had died after stranding. After dropping Goertz back at the center in Seward, about 90 miles away, the officer caught sight of the baby beluga from the air.

The officer and pilot landed and tried to push the calf back out into the water. It didn't work, so they went back for Goertz.

When she arrived, she noticed damage to the beluga's fluke, or tail, probably from pecking birds and cuts from rocks. She guessed he'd been there at least two hours, but maybe as long as 12. But he was breathing, and his eyes were in good shape.

Still, Goertz knew the calf wouldn't survive without help, even if they could get him to deeper water.

"I thought, maybe we can do something for this guy," she said. "It's great to be able to learn from the dead, but being able to help the living has its own rewards."

She went into problem-solving mode. A pickup by boat would take hours and add additional danger. So Goertz and the NOAA officers scoped out the back of the helicopter and moved things around. They measured the calf - he was more than five feet long - and figured he'd fit, and then hoisted him inside.

It would not have worked if the animal resisted. But he didn't. They bolstered him with soft objects and took off for Anchorage. Two hours away at the center, staff prepared for the calf's arrival, moving a young rescued walrus named Aku into another room.

Twenty minutes later, they transferred the little whale into a truck where he was made comfortable on a thick foam mat. A caravan headed south along the Seward Highway, which, for part of the way, hugs the harsh waters of Cook Inlet. Beluga experts from five aquarium partners - Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, SeaWorld San Diego, Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut and Vancouver Aquarium in Canada - immediately said they'd come to help, too, and some arrived within 24 hours.

"There is a significant effort in studying this population," Long said. Being in a position to respond quickly to individual animals, and possibly aid in the species' recovery, is crucial, he said.

The rescue was very unusual for the SeaLife Center. It is often called on to rehabilitate seals, sea otters and other animals (like Aku, who was found orphaned in Nome, Alaska, in the summer and has since moved to SeaWorld Orlando), but rarely cetaceans. A one-day-old beluga calf it took on in 2012 was in very poor shape and did not survive.

But Tyonek didn't have significant injuries. Caregivers focused on feeding him every two to four hours, tweaking the recipe for his formula and making sure he didn't sink in his tank - a common problem for exhausted and weak cetaceans. "We needed him to . . . float well, which is not always the case with cetacean rehab," Long said.

Fortunately, he said, "we're not having to reinvent a lot of wheels," when it comes to feeding. Having lots of expertise devoted to the case helps, Long said. So does the fact that the calf already knew how to nurse.

Nobody manufactures beluga nipples, so the team has had to make do with some created for cows and sheep. Caregivers meet every morning at 8 a.m. to discuss Tyonek's daily weigh-ins, his temperature, and the ins and outs of his digestion (which they monitor by ultrasound). Ultrasound imaging also helps the team monitor the growth of his important blubber layer. And then there's the constant cleaning and sanitizing.

"There's not a lot of idle time," Long said.

Now the baby is on a reliable schedule. He hams for the camera with a cuteness that rivals that of the world-famous Fiona the hippo. And in early November, he moved to an outdoor pool that, at about 30 by 50 feet, gives him more room to grow.

Tyonek will stay in intensive care for another month and then continue to be looked after 24 hours a day. The National Marine Fisheries Service will determine whether he's a candidate for release. It's a long shot. In the wild, his mother would have given him two years of education in survival skills.

But for now, the baby beluga seems content with his caregivers. He head butts them in the water and chirps and clicks to them. "He's very tactile," Goertz said. "Typically a beluga calf is touching his mom most of the time . . . He's definitely looking for that type of interaction."

She says he'll turn his body to get rubbed in a particular spot. "Not to be anthropomorphic," she said, "but you get the feeling he's saying 'Oh yeah, that feels good,' or 'Now scratch this spot.' "

When it comes to helping a terribly rare Cook Inlet beluga, Goertz added, "every day is a victory."

- - -

Jazynka is a freelance writer, children's book author and animal lover in Washington, D.C. You can find her online at @KitsonJ.
SHERMAN  The former president of the Jewish Community Center described in court Thursday how the organization almost went bankrupt after a former executive director stole more than $38,000 two years ago.

Russ Whiteman, the centers president when Anne Marie Stockmeyer was hired in September 2014, said he felt that she targeted it because of its status as a small nonprofit with only a few staff members.

Stockmeyer, who served as director for less than a year, pleaded guilty to several charges in October, including first-degree larceny and several counts of second-degree forgery.

At first we thought Anne Marie was a great find, Whiteman told a judge. I do believe that she is a talented woman and she could have been a tremendous asset.

Stockmeyer has a pending arrest warrant for similar allegations that occurred in Maryland before she was hired at the JCC. Authorities there said she bilked the American Youth Chorus out of more than $20,000 before leaving the state. Charges are still pending in that case.

More News Former director Stockmeyer of Sherman JCC to be sentenced for...

In hindsight its clear to me that Anne Marie had created a business model in that small nonprofits like ours were good targets, Whiteman said. In that sense, I feel this was a premeditated crime. This almost forced the JCC into bankruptcy and we are still struggling to survive.

While Stockmeyer was set to be sentenced on Thursday, Judge Thomas Welch continued the case because her attorney wasnt available.

Stockmeyer, who spoke briefly in court, said she wanted the matter to move forward out of respect for the process and the victims.

Stockmeyer purchased more than $5,000 worth of personal items using the organizations credit cards, including airfare and electronics equipment, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. She also forged about $28,000 worth of checks paid out to herself.

According to court records, Stockmeyer left the organization in July 2015 after the center hired a new bookkeeper. The organization was left with unpaid bills and only enough cash on hand to operate for several months. The case was continued to Dec. 18.

dperrefort@newstimes.com
Canada may be just six months away from creating a nationwide, legal marijuana industry.

The last hurdle is in the Canadian Senate, where a bill has been introduced to finalize creation of a regulated medical and recreational marijuana industry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supports the measure and made legalizing marijuana a part of his campaign for office in 2015.

Sen. Tony Dean, who sponsored the bill, told CNN Money "I think it's broadly recognized that criminalizing cannabis has been a failure." If this last legislative hurdle is cleared as expected, legal marijuana sales could begin in July 2018.

Backing of the marijuana legalization by Trudeau and top Canadian officials stands in contrast to the anti-marijuana stance taken by some in the Trump Administration in the United States. And Canada is about to reap the benefits.

Related: 9 Business Ideas for People Looking to Cash in on the Marijuana Boom

A $5 Billion Industry?

Estimates vary on how big the legal marijuana industry could grow in Canada.

A Deloitte study famously predicted a more than $22 billion a year industry. On a more conservative note, Marijuana Business Daily, an industry publication, projected between $2.3 billion to $4.5 billion by 2021.

Related: Will New York or Illinois be Next to Legalize Recreational Marijuana?

A 2016 report from the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated a $5.5 billion to $5.8 billion annual retail market in Canada.

While Trudeau has framed the legalization issue around health and safety rather than finances, the country stands to take in hundreds of millions of dollars in marijuana tax and fee revenue.

Private businesses also are seizing on the potential of this new market, including hotels in one Canadian province.

Related: How Will Businesses Handle Legalized Marijuana in the Workplace?

Alberta Hotels

The Canadian province of Alberta is taking steps to lead the pack on allowing cannabis consumption in hotels.

That's an issue not only in Canada but across the United States. People can travel to Colorado and Washington -- and soon California and Massachusetts -- and legally buy recreational marijuana. However, they can't use it outside of a private home.

Related: The Cannabis Industry Has Had Explosive Growth in Business Expos and It Isn't Slowing Down

That's led to local residents renting out "cannabis friendly" places to stay through sites such as Airbnb, but it still presents a big issue, especially for tourists. Denver is putting a pilot project in place to allow marijuana use in licensed cannabis establishments. But, Alberta is taking it a step further.

Officials in the province are considering a law allowing marijuana consumption in hotel rooms where tobacco use already is permitted. Hotels would have the right to not allow cannabis use. But, some already see a huge opportunity.

Passing such a law would give hotels in Alberta a competitive edge over the rest of the country, David Kaiser, president and CEO of the Alberta Hotel &; Lodging Association, told Marijuana Business Daily. "A lot of hotels might be interested," he said. "If there's a potential market there that we could provide, it could be important for tourism and we would be interested in those opportunities."

Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said it's not such a bad idea for native Albertans, either. She said province officials recognize not all province residents would necessarily have a private home where they could legally consume cannabis. Renters, for example, could face prohibition against marijuana use from landlords. In those cases, a cannabis-friendly hotel could come in handy.

Alberta is home to the cities of Edmonton and Calgary, as well as Banff National Park, a major tourist destination.

Related: Some Universities Offer Classes On Marijuana. LSU Plans to Grow It.

Related: What Is Schedule I and Why Is Marijuana on the List, Anyway?

To stay up to date on the latest marijuana related news make sure to like dispensaries.com on Facebook

Related:

Canada Is Creating a Multi-Billion Dollar Legal Marijuana Industry

Will New York or Illinois be Next to Legalize Recreational Marijuana?

Cannabis Advocates Want 'Unjust' Federal Tax Code Changed



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


The memorable day began at the Air Transat check-in counters at Montreal-Trudeau, Toronto-Pearson, Vancouver and Paris-CDG airports. The festivities continued on to the boarding gate, where a number of activities awaited everyone before take-off. Once in the sky, a surprise guest soon appeared in the cabin: Santa himself!

"For Air Transat, this event has become a real tradition just before the holiday season," said Jean-Francois Lemay, President, Air Transat. "The Santa Flight holds a special place in our employees' hearts and in our corporate responsibility initiatives."

"When a child is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, the life of the entire family is affected," shares Chris Kotsopoulos, Chief Executive Officer of the Children's Wish Foundation. "Today, we're not just providing respite from hospital visits, we're creating wonderful memories and holiday magic to cherish, that are unique to our Wish Families."

During this magical day, Air Transat announced a donation of $116,000 to Children's Wish, which represents the amounts collected over the past year as part of the air carrier's Small Change, Big Hearts program and other initiatives, and is in addition to the over $5 million raised for Children's Wish since the inception of the partnership between both organizations in 2004.

The annual Flights in Search of Santa are made possible thanks to the volunteer efforts of Air Transat employees and the generous collaboration of several partners including Montreal-Trudeau, Toronto Pearson, Vancouver airports and Paris Aeroport.

For more information, follow the #SantaFlight hashtag on social media.

About Small Change, Big Hearts

The Small Change, Big Hearts program is supported by the donation of pocket change from Air Transat passengers at the end of each flight. Since December 2009, funds raised through the program have been donated in equal parts to The Children's Wish Foundation and to SOS Children's Villages, an international organization that assists orphaned and abandoned children in 134 countries. Since November 2017, it has also been possible to contribute to Small Change, Big Hearts when booking a package online on transat.com, with a travel consultant or with a Transat call centre agent.

About Children's Wish Foundation of Canada

Children's Wish Foundation of Canada is the largest and only all-Canadian wish granting charity dedicated to granting wishes to Canadian children between the ages of 3 and 17 who are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. For more than 30 years, Children's Wish has worked tirelessly to grant heartfelt wishes to more than 25,000 children and their families  that's three wishes each and every day, all year long!

Children's Wish has chapter offices and professional staff in every province, and each wish family is assigned a dedicated Wish Coordinator who is able to personally and carefully structure each heartfelt wish experience to meet the particular needs of the child and their family. Travel wishes include all siblings 21 years and under living in the same household, and families travel worry-free thanks to exclusive Blue Cross insurance.

Our newly expanded reach, which includes children diagnosed with a serious neurological or genetic illness, means continued strong wish referral support through our medical community. Wish referrals continue to increase year over year, and we are proud to maintain our 'no waiting list' policy, thanks to our generous donors.

Now more than ever, we are encouraging Canadians to donate and support Children's Wish Foundation of Canada. Help us grant the next single-most heartfelt wish. Visit www.childrenswish.ca for more information and to donate.

About Air Transat

Air Transat is Canada's number one holiday travel airline. It flies to some 60 destinations in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, offers domestic and feeder flights within Canada, and carries nearly 4.5 million passengers every year. Based in Montreal, the company employs 3,000 people and operates a fleet of Boeing narrow-body and Airbus wide-body jets. In 2017, Air Transat was named the second-best leisure airline in the world, and the best in North America in the same category for the sixth consecutive year, by Skytrax. In recent years, the carrier has earned multiple distinctions for its efforts to reduce its environmental footprint. Since 2011, it has consistently been ranked number one in North America for energy efficiency, and in the Top 20 worldwide, by the Atmosfair Airline Index. Air Transat is a business unit of Transat A.T. Inc., a leading integrated international tourism company specializing in holiday travel and offering vacation packages, hotel stays and air travel. Transat was awarded Travelife Partner status in 2016 in recognition of its commitment to sustainable development. The vacation travel companion par excellence, Transat celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2017.

Source:

www.transat.com

www.childrenswish.ca

SOURCE Transat A.T. Inc.

For further information: Odette Trottier, Transat, Director, Communications and Corporate Affairs, 514 908-8891, [email protected]; Alexandre Rehayem, Children's Wish Foundation, National Manager, Marketing and Communication, 416 848 2238, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.transat.com


SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. >> Californias newest huge wildfire advanced on thousands of homes Wednesday, feeding on drought-stricken vegetation and destroying an untold number of structures as it expanded to nearly 47 square miles.

Flames climbed the flanks of the San Gabriel Mountains toward the town of Wrightwood, where authorities said that only half of the communitys 4,500 residents had complied with evacuation orders.

Officials estimated that more than 34,000 homes and some 82,000 people were under evacuation warnings.

This is not the time to mess around, said Battalion Chief Mark Peebles of the San Bernardino County Fire Department. If you are asked to evacuate, please evacuate.

Less than 24 hours after the blaze began 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the fire command assembled a fleet of 10 air tankers, 15 helicopters and an army of 1,300 firefighters, many of them just off the lines of a wildfire that burned for 10 days just to the east.

At a dawn briefing, half the firefighters raised their hands when an official asked how many had just come from the earlier blaze, part of a siege of wildland infernos up and down California this year.

The fire erupted late Tuesday morning in Cajon Pass, a critical highway and rail corridor through mountain ranges that separate Southern Californias major population centers from the Mojave Desert to the north.

Countless big rigs were parked on both sides of the pass, waiting for Interstate 15 and a web of other roads to reopen. Alternate routes involved significant detours. The pass is a major route for travel from the Los Angeles region to Las Vegas and also carries significant daily commuter traffic for high desert residents.

The speed of the fires spread astonished those in its path.

This moved so fast, said Darren Dalton, 51, who along with his wife and son had to get out of his house in Wrightwood. It went from Have you heard theres a fire? to mandatory evacuation before you could take it all in. This is a tight little community up here. Always in rally mode. Suddenly its a ghost town.

Hundreds of cars packed with belongings and animals left the town. The air for miles around the blaze was filled with smoke. The sound of explosions  possibly from ammunition stored in homes  could be heard in the distance.

Shannon Anderson of Blue Mountain Farms horse ranch in Phelan had to evacuate 40 horses as the fire approached. Its raining ash, Anderson said, breathing hard.

The fire erupted in a landscape ready to burn after years of drought. The weather at the time was hot, dry and windy  conditions not expected to begin easing until late Thursday or Friday.

Devouring ranchlands, the blaze surged west to the Los Angeles County line and north to the Mojave Desert.

Eric Sherwin of the San Bernardino County Fire Department confirmed Tuesday night that the flames had burned at least a dozen buildings, some of them homes. He said he had seen all kinds of things burn, including the Summit Inn, a historic diner near I-15.

Im looking up here and Im seeing buses. Im seeing outbuildings. Im seeing houses, he said.

The blaze was among several large fires burning up and down California, from Shasta County in the far north to Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego County. It came after several steady weeks of major fires around the state, even though the full force of the traditional fire season has yet to arrive.

Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in the area within hours of the latest fire breaking out, a move that more often comes after a blaze has done several days of destruction.

Six firefighters were briefly trapped by flames at a home where the occupants had refused to leave, forcing the crew to protect the house, fire officials said.

We were fully engulfed in smoke, firefighter Cody Anderson told KCBS-TV. It was really hard just to see your hand in front of your face.

We just hunkered down and sat there and waited for the fire to blow over, he said.

Anderson and another firefighter were treated for minor injuries.

As that fire surged, a major blaze north of San Francisco was fading, and about 4,000 people in the town of Clearlake were allowed to return home.

Their relief, however, was tempered with anger at a man who authorities believe set the blaze that wiped out several blocks of a small town over the weekend along with 16 smaller fires dating back to last summer.

Investigators in Northern California said Tuesday that they had been building a case against the suspected arsonist, 40-year-old construction worker Damin Anthony Pashilk, for more than a year. But they did not have enough evidence to make an arrest until the weekend blaze ripped through Lower Lake.

The fire destroyed 175 homes and other structures in the working-class town of Lower Lake.

What Id do to him, you dont want to know, said Butch Cancilla, who saw his neighbors home catch fire as he fled on Sunday. Cancilla still does not know the fate of his own home.

A lot of people want to hang him high, his wife, Jennie, added.

An attorney listed as representing Pashilk did not return a call requesting comment. Pashilk is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.
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ANSONIA  The Ansonia Police Departments heroes in blue received a financial shot in the arm Wednesday.

The efforts of a fundraising event dubbed Honoring Ansonia Blue held in September by the First Baptist Church culminated in donations amounting to $15,006.96. The Rev. John Hinson and his wife, Maude, presented Police Chief Kevin Hale with a giant check at Wednesdays Board of Police Commissioners meeting at City Hall.

We began this fundraising challenge with a question They show up  will you? said Maude Hinson. And you responded yes in a big way!

The amount raised by the generosity of numerous individuals, local and corporate businesses, ranging from McDonalds to Mohegan Sun and even the New York Yankees and NASCAR organizations, doubled the amount raised last year, according to the Hinsons.

As we close out 2017  we can think of no better time to express our heartfelt thanks to all those who participated in making (the fundraiser) a success, Maude Hinson said. We thank the corporations, businesses, individuals and churches from Ansonia, the Valley and beyond for opening their hearts and checkbooks and giving so generously of their time, energy and ideas.

The money will be used toward the purchase of some life-saving equipment for the police, including ballistic shields and Automated External Defibrillators, or AEDs, for the police cruisers. Both items are rather pricey, Hale had said, and statistics show sudden cardiac arrest kills more than 350,000 people each year in the United States, and AEDs aid in the chain of survival before a patient can get to an emergency room.

Hale was overwhelmed by the support from both the Hinsons, church members and the public and business community at large.

I dont know anyone who has worked harder in this campaign and effort than the Hinsons, said Hale. This is such an incredible show of support for our department.

Maude Hinson said there were countless people and sponsors to thank who contributed to the success of the churchs 2nd annual Honoring Ansonia Blue block party event, which in part featured live music, pony rides, loads of food, bounce houses, raffle prizes and more.

Last year, in a relatively short period of time, the Hinsons helped raised enough money to purchase trauma kits for each officer. The kits, worn on the officers belts, provide tourniquets and quick-clot agents designed to save lives by slowing down or stopping the bleeding in people critically injured.

The Rev. John Hinson said the police deserve everyones appreciation, and the church and the community will continue to rally around them to show how much their hard work and efforts on a daily basis mean to Ansonia and beyond.

We are all part of Team Blue and while we wish we could name everyone who helped, please know how much each and every one of you is appreciated, said Maude Hinson. It is our sincere hope that all of you will partner with us again in 2018 to raise the bar even higher to ensure that when one of our officers leave their home and family to protect our homes, families, businesses and places of worship, they have the necessary tools to return home safely at the end of their shift.

Anyone wishing to donate or get involved in the planning of next years police appreciation fundraiser can contact jmh2r1@gmail.com.

jean.sos@snet.net
HAMDEN  Around 600 homemade stockings, stuffed to the brim with hats, games, coloring books and stuffed animals, were placed upon the altar Thursday morning at an all-girls Catholic high school in an annual act of kindness that has become a holiday tradition.

Since 1972, students and faculty at Sacred Heart Academy, 265 Benham St., have taken part in the schools yearly stocking drive. Spearheaded by the student council, students are given a tag with the gender and grade of a less fortunate child in the area at five local schools. They will then use their own money to fill a stocking with gifts, such as toys, school supplies and winter clothing, which will then be distributed to that child.

Theres a face that goes with every tag, said Sandra DAmbroseio, who works as a moderator for the stocking drive, recounting an anecdote of when she was on the receiving end of the stocking as a teacher in a public school. She said she would watch these children get these stockings and literally go Christmas shopping for their families, planning on re-gifting the contents of the stockings to their mothers, their fathers, their siblings.

We do stress to the students who are assembling their stockings that this is probably the only thing theyre going to be getting for Christmas, noted Beth Griffin, director of public relations, who described the annual stocking drive as the schools most cherished traditions.

Megan Cunneen, treasurer of the student council executive board, said she and her friends really enjoy buying these stockings for those kids, explaining they always get to buy for their families, but this is their way to give back to the community. Avishan Montazer, president of the student council executive board, said with a laugh that the hardest part is actually stuffing the stockings, explaining that everyones is filled to the top.

Its not really about getting anything out [of it], but more like knowing that [the kids are] really happy about it, Cunneen said. Weve seen pictures of them when theyve gotten them, and so thats what really matters.

New this year is the Christmas Stocking Challenge, which encourages alumnae of the school to continue the long-standing tradition and donate to a charity in their area. Sister Shelia ONeill, who came up with the idea, said, I thought since this is such a rich tradition and such a big part of our history that it might be nice to challenge our alums to do it. So weve challenged our alums all throughout the world, theyre doing it in their particular place; they dont have to send them back here. The idea is just to serve people in their area in need.

Caroline Raynis, director of alumnae relations, said since the stocking drive is such a big part of students time at the school, they have had an outpouring of response from alumnae. She noted alumnae from Maine, Hawaii, California, Pennsylvania and Florida have all come forward, explaining those who are not able to come to us, we said,  why, dont you bring a little bit of Sacred Heart Academy to your local community?

Unlike the schools stocking drive, the stocking challenge the alumnae are participating in is slightly different. Raynis said its more about giving back to the community, however the alumnae define it, as opposed to simply stuffing a stocking full of school supplies to give to in-need children. She mentioned one alumna is planning to donate her stocking to her local homeless shelter while another collected supplies for a local animal shelter and a third got her entire office involved.

As an alumna of the school herself, Raynis said its nostalgic for people to return and take something thats particularly unique to Sacred Heart Academy and bring it forward to their lives now. Its like being home, she said.

jessica.lerner@hearstmediact.com; @jesslerner on Twitter
NEW HAVEN  New Haven Promise on Wednesday announced a partnership with Southern Connecticut State University that will cover the costs of on-campus housing for 10 New Haven first-year students annually.

Officials announced the Promise Community Ambassadors program will be launched at SCSU beginning with the New Haven schools class of 2018. Of those 10 students, five will develop programs to connect current Promise scholars and the other five will reach out to high school students to educate them about the Promise program.

SCSU President Joe Bertolino said 339 New Haven Promise scholars have enrolled at the university to date, more than any other.

This new leadership development program will help build on that story, Bertolino said. Even at this young age, they will be paying it forward.

Mayor Toni Harp said she is excited to see three Connecticut universities partner with New Haven Promise. She said she interprets the support and partnerships as evidence that officials in the higher education system believe in one of the citys hallmark educational programs.

SCSUs partnership with Promise makes it the third university to partner with the scholarship program; Yale University has been a major financial contributor to the public-private program and is an initial partner, and, in 2015, the University of Connecticut pledged $5,000 in scholarship money per year to New Haven Promise scholars attending the school.

I havent met a mayor who doesnt wish they had a Promise program, she said.

Iline Tracey, a director of instruction for NHPS and a graduate of SCSU, said the families in the community are looking forward to this.

Our families need this, she said, because many students have post-graduate aspirations but demonstrate financial need.

One of the students looking forward to Promise offerings is Ariel Leak, a junior at New Haven Academy. Wednesdays announcement, he said, means that SCSU has become a viable option for him.

Patricia Melton, president of New Haven Promise, said the first class of 10 ambassadors will be announced in 2018.

Tracy Tyree, vice president of student affairs at SCSU, said the cost to the university is as much as housing for the 10 students, and the university already has residential life and program staff to work with the students.

We already have robust programs that are happening, she said.

The 10 ambassadors will participate in a six-week leadership training program before their first semester, hosted by SCSU.

Since 2010, New Haven Promise has fully or partially covered the cost of tuition for more than 1,200 Elm City high school graduates with attendance over 90 percent, a minimum 3.0 grade point average and 40 hours of community service.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
A new Starbucks opens in China every 15 hours, but not all of them look like this.

Starbucks announced Monday it will open a Reserve Roastery in Shanghai, making it the first of the company's high-end cafes to open outside the U.S.
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DERBY - Big Y Foods Inc. is coming to the city, with plans to open a World Class Market in the former Walmart Plaza on New Haven Avenue.

Thats according to a press release issued Wednesday from corporate headquarters that said ,a 60,000-square-foot grocery store is slated to open sometime in 2019, bring in 150 new jobs and a $5 million investment in the shopping center, located at 656 New Haven Road, or Route 34.

We are excited to announce this addition to our Connecticut community of stores, Charles DAmour, Big Y president and CEO, said in a statement. We look forward to bringing Big Ys world class service, quality and selection closer to shoppers in Derby and surrounding communities.

The new Derby store will serve as the Springfield-based grocery chains 71st Big Y market, with locations throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts. There are several Big Y stores already in New Haven County including in Ansonia, Branford, Cheshire, Guilford, Meriden, North Branford, North Haven, Naugatuck and Shelton.

The new store represents an investment of more than $5 million by Big Y into the local community, and is part of an overall, soon-to-be-developed 177,000-square-foot retail center, according to the news release.

The shopping center, which formerly housed two anchors  Walmart and Adams grocery store  is being redeveloped and marketed by DLC Management Corporation of Elmsford, N.Y. As part of the project, DLC plans to overhaul the center with a multimillion-dollar renovation to include facade modernization, parking lot repaving/restriping, sidewalk repairs, streetscape and landscape enhancements, along with lighting improvements, according to the press release.

We at DLC are extremely thrilled about this project, Chris Ressa, DLC senior vice president of leasing, said in a statement. To bring a brand like Big Y to Derby will have such a profound impact on the local community and economy. We are honored to be a part of this development and remain committed to making Derby a remarkable place to live, work, shop, and dine.

Newly-elected Mayor Richard Dziekan was thrilled by the news Wednesday.

The mayors office is pleased that Big Y Market has chosen to take over the former Walmart site, said Dziekan. Kudos to DLC and Big Y for getting a deal done. I look forward to seeing the renovations to the complex and we will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the process. Its great news that 150 jobs will be coming to our city. Upon walking during the campaign, I heard from many residents who wanted to see a grocery store go back into that plaza and now they will get their wish. I cant wait to see the aesthetic changes to the property and to help cut the ribbon for Big Y.

Big Y, according to its website, promises locally sourced fruits and vegetables, fresh sushi, numerous gluten-free and organic items along with other locally produced offerings.

According to a report by the Valley Independent Sentinel, despite rumors, Ansonia officials said there are no plans to close the Ansonia store on Main Street, which recently underwent renovations.
Former vice-president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has arrived in Minna, the Niger state capital, to meet with former Military Head of State, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.Atiku was welcomed at the Minna International Airport by Niger state Deputy Governor, Ahmed Ketso and the State PDP Chairman, Barrister Tanko Beji, among other dignitaries.His visit comes barely a day after Babangida said there is nothing wrong with the former vice-president dumping the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the People Democratic Party (PDP) (http://dailypost.ng/2017/12/06/ibb-speaks-pdp-convention-atikus-defection/), insisting that constitution allows it.IBB said: Atiku is a Nigerian, he is allowed to go to any party and our constitution allows it, so, it is not new and there is nothing wrong for politician to move from one party to another.Babangida disclosed this during a visit on Wednesday by Governor Okowa of Delta, Ahmed Makarfi and top officials of the party at his home in Minna, Niger State.He also assured that Governor Ifeanyi Okowa-led convention organising committee of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, will conduct a best, free and fair convention come Dec. 9th.I have here, the chairman of the caretaker committee, former chairman of Kaduna State, the Chairman of convention planning committee, the Governor of Delta State with the officials for the convention, I am glad they are working hard and I have seen that they want to make sure that the convention of the PDP is rancour free, transparent and everybody will be given a level playing ground.PDP will see one of the best convention like never before. IBB added
President Donald Trump

The Czech Republic on Wednesday evening followed in the footsteps of U.S. President Donald Trump and said it recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

The Czech Republic currently, before the peace between Israel and Palestine is signed, recognizes Jerusalem to be in fact the capital of Israel in the borders of the demarcation line from 1967, said a statement issued by the Czech foreign ministry.

The statement also stressed that the Czech Republic considers Jerusalem to be future capital of both states, meaning the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine.





The Ministry can start considering moving of the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world, it added.

Trump had earlier on Wednesday announced that the United States officially recognized the city of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and announced that the American embassy in Israel would be relocated to Jerusalem.

"After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result," Trump said.





"Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The Czech Republic is one of Israel's strongest allies. Its predecessor state, Czechoslovakia, was one of 33 countries to vote in favour of the 1947 UN Partition Plan recommending the establishment of a Jewish state, and was among the first countries to recognize the State of Israel.

Czechoslovakia also supported the beleagured new Israeli state with critically needed arms. Relations were cut off during most of the years of Communist rule, but were re-established after Czechoslovakia's split into two countries.
The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), has attributed the ongoing scarcity of fuel across the country on a cabal in the downstream sector.The group said that tanker drivers were not on strike.NUPENG, in a release yesterday, said its members were not responsible for the present shortage of petroleum products being experienced nationwide.According to its president, Mr Igwe Achese, Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of NUPENG are working and lifting products to the nooks and crannies of the country.Achese said, NUPENG is not responsible for the present shortage of petroleum products being experienced nationwide.Our members in the Petroleum Tanker Drivers, PTD, branch of NUPENG are working and lifting products to the nooks and crannies of the country.The statement further blamed the policy makers of the country for not adhering to its calls for the urgent need to rehabilitate the nations four refineries to get them working optimally.NUPENG stated that the cabal in the downstream sector are at work sabotaging all efforts to make products available through revamping of the nations four refineries.
President Muhammadu Buhari has said he put many people in prison for corruption, while he was Military Head of State.

President Muhammadu Buhari has said he put many people in prison for corruption, while he was Military Head of State.

Buhari stated this on Wednesday, when he paid homage to the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II in his palace, as part of his two-day visit to the state.





When I was the military head of state, I have arrested many people and jailed them for alleged corruption and in the end, I also ended in a jail, he said.





Buhari also lamented that from 1999 to 2014, Nigeria got so much wealth but it was misused.





They squandered the money and we still dont have a constant power supply, no good education for our children and we dont have good hospitals and roads, he said.





The President added that his government had played significant roles in restoring peace and harmony in the North East.





We have recorded tremendous successes in our efforts to achieve the three agenda of my government; security, economy, and fight against corruption.




Political leaders, traditional rulers, various social groups of Ikwerre ethnic nationality in Rivers on Wednesday endorsed Governor Nyesom Wike for a second term in office.The endorsement was made during a visit to the Governor in Port Harcourt. Wike is also a member of the ethnic group.The President-General of Ogbakor Ikwerre Socio-cultural Organisation Worldwide, Prof. Simeon Achinewhu said that the endorsement of Wike was predicated on his outstanding achievements, since he became the governor two and half years ago.NAN reports that the visiting groups include: Ogbakor Ikwerre Cultural Organisation Worldwide, Supreme Council of Government Recognised Ikwerre traditional rulers and Ikwerre Chiefs and Elders.Others are Ikwerre Gospel Ministers Forum, Iwhuroha Womens Association, Ikwerre Daughters National Congress, Ikwerre in Academia, Ikwerre in the Media and Okpo Club (Ikwerre Lawyers).The Ogbakor Ikwerre Convention President-General lauded Governor Wike for his state-wide projects, adding that the Ikwerre people are proud of him.The Ogbakor Ikwerre unanimously urges you to accept the call from other ethnic nationalities, various organisations and well meaning Nigerians to run for a second term in office as a result of your numerous achievements, he added.The good people of Ikwerre Ethnic Nationality have asked me to notify Your Excellency that they have resolved to organise a civic reception and to install Your Excellency as Ikwerre custom demands as the Dike-ogu of Ikwerre land, Prof. Achinewhu said.In his response, Governor Wike restated the commitment of his administration to the people of Ikwerrre ethnic nationality to continue to work for the development of all communities in Rivers.The Governor urged the groups to always act in defence of their democratic rights, despite the antics of those he labelled as agents of the government at the centre.Governor Wike said the State had made tremendous progress in projects delivery.He attributed his success to the unrelenting support of the Rivers people, despite provocations by political opponents.He accused the Federal Government of constantly undermining his administration in the last 30 months.If we can achieve this in two and half years, despite the legal challenges we faced, then we will do more for the people of Rivers State, he said.We give God the glory that we moved ahead in the interest of our people. The Federal Government has done everything to derail this administration, but we are always succeeding, Wike added.The Governor reiterated his support for true Federalism, adding that he is in support of the other South-South Governors calling for restructuring of the country.
The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) yesterday explained what necessitated the fresh scarcity of the Premi...

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) yesterday explained what necessitated the fresh scarcity of the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in some parts of the country.Its national vice president, Abubakar Maigandi, who spoke with newsmen, alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was delaying the loading of independent marketers trucks at its depots.He added that the private depots that were opened to the independent marketers were selling above the official pump price.His words: In the NNPC, there is serious delay in loading. Then the private depots are selling above the government stipulated rate. This has stopped most of the independent marketers not to buy it.They are selling between N141 to N145 per litre in the depots in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar and Warri. This is the serious issue why we are having serious challenges. If care is not taken, there will be serious scarcity. Government needs to quickly intervene for the sake of the people.But, a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) survey around the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) showed that the queues resurfaced early yesterday morning at a few stations, especially in the central area.A drive around the metropolis showed that some of the fuel stations, which hitherto had idle pump attendants, now had queues to attend to.Commercial motorists in Aba, the commercial hub of Abia State, yesterday lamented the sharp increase in pump price of PMS.When our source went round the commercial town on Monday, some marketers around Park Road and Milverton area sold a litre of PMS between N144-N145. Transporters were yesterday greeted with a new pump price, which sells between N148-N150.Some of the transporters, including Mr. Kelechi Chukwu, expressed fears that if nothing was done by the Federal Government and the NNPC to ensure adequate supply of the product, there would be high cost of transportation fare this festive season.A marketer, who spoke with newsmen added that they were selling the product depending on the part of the country, where they sourced the product from.Some petrol stations in Benin City metropolis sold PMS for between N150 and N160 per litre yesterday.Motorists, who did not want to purchase from petrol stations, opted to stay in long queue where fuel was sold for N145 per liter.At Ekenwan Road, only one petrol station was seen selling at the normal approved pump price.At many petrol stations along Akpakpava road such as Total, Oleum, Oando and Conoil, fuel was sold for N145 per litre.At the NNPC mega station along Sapele road, petrol was sold for N143 per litre.Two marketers said they increased the pump price because they bought fuel from depot at N144 per litre.
The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, has admonished his colleagues in the Muhammadu Buhari administration to stop blaming former Pr...

The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, has admonished his colleagues in the Muhammadu Buhari administration to stop blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan.Mr. Amaechi said it is time for administration officials to concentrate on delivering good policies to the citizens rather than dragging the former president for Nigerias woes.I agree with those who said we should stop criticising the last government and that we should do our own, The Nation newspaper quoted Mr. Amaechi as saying during a meeting at his office Tuesday.The minister decried Nigerias infrastructure deficit, drawing a comparison with other relatively new countries like Singapore.We need to leverage on what we know. People are shouting intermodal transport; I went to the new airport in Singapore and I didnt find one person at the airport.As you walk in, technology takes over, Mr. Amaechi said.He called for an urgent renaissance in Nigerias infrastructure, especially in the area of information and communications technology.They also said in the next few years, they would introduce driverless cars. We should also think outside the box about how to improve our transport sector and think less about how sun and moon affect the sector or building more bus stops.We should see how much investment we can put in the area of ICT. Intelligence transportation should not be ignored, he added.If heeded, Mr. Amaechis call would mark a shift in Buhari administrations approach to public engagement.Since assuming office in 2015, President Buhari has led his appointees and party members to blame Mr. Jonathan for failing to properly direct the countrys affairs during his tenure.Allegations such as senseless looting of public funds, nepotism, economic mismanagement and gross abuse of power are regularly directed at Mr. Jonathan.In June, Mr. Amaechi slammed Mr. Jonathan for allegedly failing the Igbo during his years, saying the former president left the region in a state of disrepair.President Jonathan went to Onitsha and danced and promised to construct Onitsha bridge. Right? After that nothing happened, Mr. Amaechi said at a social media forum in Lagos on June 13.Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesperson for the APC, revealed that the call was appropriate.Enough of blaming the previous administration, Nigerians want us to focus, the spokesperson said.Mr. Abdullahi said the wrongdoings of Mr. Jonathans government would remain in the memories of Nigerians, but that the current administration was not voted to amplify them.Yes, there were problems created by the previous administration, but Nigerians didnt vote for us because they want us to be telling them whos responsible. They want us to be solving problems, he said.
Justice Adeniyi Ademola who was among eight superior court judges that were arrested after a sting operation the Department of State Se...

Justice Adeniyi Ademola who was among eight superior court judges that were arrested after a sting operation the Department of State Service, DSS, conducted in October last year, has voluntarily retired from the Federal High Court bench.A source disclosed to newsmen that the Judge tendered his resignation letter to the National Judicial Council late in the evening on Wednesday after he had presided over several cases, four of which were criminal matters. He had earlier fixed today (Thursday) to deliver judgment in a terrorism charge the Federal Government entered against alleged Boko Haram members.Although there was no detail as to his sudden decision to voluntarily bow out of the bench, the embattled judge was however quoted to have cited happenings in the judicial sector as the cardinal reason behind his action. His decision came a day after the NJC which is headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen, met in Abuja. The NJC which is expected to deliberate on its recent controversial recommendation for the elevation of 14 new Justices for the Court of Appeal, had adjourned to conclude its meeting today. It was however not clear if the case of Justice Ademola was discussed by the Council. It will be recalled that the NJC earlier went before the Court of Appeal in Abuja to challenge an order restraining it from investigating corruption allegation against Justice Ademola.The Council, urged the appellate court to set-aside the restraining order that Justice Ademola secured against it on July 7. The order was contained in a judgment that was delivered by Justice John Tsoho of the same high court where Ademola is currently serving. In its notice of appeal dated August 14, the legal body, argued that Justice Tsoho erred in law when he barred it from inviting Justice Ademola to answer to allegations contained in a petition that was lodged against him. Justice Tsoho had in the said judgement, stopped NJC from investigating Ademola over the petition that was filed by one Hon. Jenkins Duvie Giane Gwede but subsequently withdrawn. The high court maintained that NJC could no longer open investigation into the matter or invite Ademola to prove his innocence to a petition that was voluntarily withdrawn by the petitioner since 2016. However, NJC, in the appeal it filed alongside three members of its investigative panel- Justice Umar Abdullahi (retd), Justice Babatunde Adejumo and Mrs. Rakiya Ibrahim  raised 10 grounds it urged the appellate court to consider and set aside the high court verdict.It accused Justice Tsoho of assuming jurisdiction in the case where the National Industrial Court of Nigeria has exclusive jurisdiction. The council insisted that Justice Ademola being a serving judge was under its supervision and regulation, saying the planned probe was in line with its statutory function. The restraining order followed a suit Justice Ademola filed against the NJC which had already constituted a three-man panel to commence investigation into the said petition.The embattled Judge had contended that allowing the NJC to go ahead with the investigation when the petition had been withdrawn, would amount to gross abuse of his rights. He told the high court that the NJC earlier invited him through a letter dated July 25, 2016, to appear before the three-man investigative panel on August 8 and 9, 2016. He claimed that the petitioner on his volition withdrew the petition on July 27, 2016, on the ground that it was written in error and based on misinformation. According to him, withdrawal of the petition was backed with affidavit evidence that was deposed to by the petitioner himself, in which he clearly stated reasons he decided to abandon the matter. Ademola told the court that on September 26, 2016, when he appeared before the NJC panel, he was asked to still prove innocence to allegations that have been withdrawn by the petitioner.He told the court that all entreaties to the NJC panel that there was no petition against him any longer proved abortive as the panel insisted that he must go ahead to establish his innocence. Consequently, he urged the court to prohibit the NJC from inviting him for investigation in a petition that had been withdrawn, on the ground that his right to fair hearing would be violated in view of the fact that the respondents cannot be the accuser, prosecutor and judge in the matter. Specifically, the petitioner alleged that the embattled Judge collected $200, 000 to discharge a garnishee order that was granted in his favour. In his judgment, Justice Tsoho agreed that the right of the plaintiff would be violated by the respondents on the strength of the withdrawal of the petition and the filing of affidavit in support of the withdrawal by the petitioner.He therefore stopped the NJC and its three-man panel from taking any further action in respect of the withdrawn petition so as not to violate the right of the plaintiff to fair hearing as enshrined in Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended. The court held that insistence of the NJC that Justice Ademola must appear before the panel was contrary to the provisions of Section 36 (5 and 6) of the 1999 Constitution and therefore unconstitutional, illegal and unlawful. It will be recalled that Justice Ademola was hitherto suspended from the bench by the NJC.He was later prosecuted by the Federal Government on an 18-count corruption charge alongside his wife, Olabowale and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Joe Agi. FG alleged that Ademola who is a grandson to a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, had in the discharge of his official duties, received bribe from Agi to the tune of N38.5million and perverted the course of Justice. Nevertheless, the trial court, in a judgement that was delivered by Justice Jude Okeke on February 5, discharged the defendants on the premise that FG failed to prove its allegations against them.Having been cleared by the trial court, the NJC which is headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen, at the end of its meeting on June 1, directed Justice Ademola and five other Judges to resume sitting on June 7.
A 27-year old Libya deportee, Obehi Diamond, has described Libya as the best country where a young man can work and earn good money if th...

A 27-year old Libya deportee, Obehi Diamond, has described Libya as the best country where a young man can work and earn good money if there was a central government in the country.Obehi said he lost all his earnings and savings in Libya because there was no way he could send money back to Nigeria.He said he was tricked to Libya by a lady he gave N520,000 to take him to Europe in 2011 by flight but the woman abandoned him in Libya.Speaking to our reporter in Benin City, Obehi said he was kidnapped four times but he bailed himself out with 4000 dinars on each occasion but never contemplated going to Europe because work was good for him in Libya.Obehi stated that he would not attend any training organised by the Edo State Government because he was already a professional.He said the N20,000 monthly stipend Governor Godwin Obaseki promised to pay Libya deportees was not what many of them need but good tools to start life again.His words, I left Nigeria in 2012. I paid money for flight but the women betrayed me and took me through land to Libya. I paid her N520,000 in 2011. She kept on promising me that I will soon leave. She later asked me to go to Libya that there was somebody to receive me until I will leave for Europe. When I got to Libya, Richard told me I could not travel by air because there is on government in Libya.I started working in Libya and earning 1,500dinars every month but Richard was collecting 1000 dinars every month from the money. He kept collecting money from me for four months.I later told him that I cannot be working and he will be collecting the money. Richard told my boss to stop paying me. He told me to leave his house and I started sleeping in the street inside abandoned vehicles. I later met a boy who took me to his house in a mechanic workshop. I got a job somewhere and was earning 2000 dinars. From there I was sending money to my parents in Nigeria to take care off themselves. My friend found a job for me in Tripoli and I was working well.In 2014, I was going to take measurement for a job, policemen stop the vehicle I was in. I was the only black inside. After interrogation, they tore my papers. I spent eight months in four different prisons. I got a phone to call my friend and he told me to look for a policeman to bail me out. In Libya, there is no lawyer to bail you. A policeman helped me out and I paid him 120,000 dinars. I started working again in Tripoli till 2016 when fight started. I found another place to work in downtown due to fighting in Tripoli. After a month, I asked my boss to calculate the money and it was 4000 dinars. He wanted it pay me 600 dinars and I refused. I stopped the work because I am a professional. I could get work easily because people used to call me for work. The man pursued me and said I must work for him. He took thugs to pursue me and for my safety I decided to work for 600 dinars.When I was arrested in Tripoli, I spent 15 months in prison before I was deported. I was not planning to go to Europe. In Libya, there is work. Libya is the best country in aspect of money and work. There is no country to compare to Libya. The problem is the lack of government. Libya is the best place for a young man to work and survive. There is money in Libya if you are a good workman. There is future in Libya for those that are not lazy.Since 2015, there was no means to send money home. Libyans know that we blacks do keep money at home. When they caught me, they went to my house to collect my money. They took my property. I lost everything. They took huge money from me. If I had come home with that money, I would not have depend on government to help me, I will just open my shop immediately.If the state government help me to open my shop, I will not think of traveling again. The pattern of aluminum work in Libya is different so I had to learn from an Egyptian.There is nobody that go to Libya that does not have skills except the Benin boys. The Benin boys are lazy. I dont play with my work when I was in Libya even on Fridays.The training from Obaseki is out of point. I dont want to under go any training here in Edo. If I have my money, I will go to Lagos and start working immediately. I cannot collect N20,000 monthly from Obaseki. That is no money. That is what I work in Libya in two days. I dont need any training. What I need is money to start off. My fiancee is still in prison in Libya. I am expecting her to be brought back soon.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, says some Nigerians in Libya have refused to come home despite the ongoing slave trade. ...

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, says some Nigerians in Libya have refused to come home despite the ongoing slave trade.

Onyeama disclosed this to State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided by Yemi Osinbajo.





According to him, the Federal government is currently in talks with officials of Nigerias Charge DAffairs in Libya to repatriate more Nigerians, but that some Nigerians are unwilling to come back home





He said, The Federal government currently in talks with officials of Nigerias Charge DAffairs in Libya to ascertain the number of Nigerians held up in Libya detention centers so as to expedite action in bringing them back home.





The charge daffaires officials have said a number of Nigerians, not all of them, do not want to come back home.





Certainly, it has to be only those that want to come back home.








Here is the full text of US President Donald Trumps Wednesday speech on Jerusalem, in which he recognized the disputed city as Israels...

Here is the full text of US President Donald Trumps Wednesday speech on Jerusalem, in which he recognized the disputed city as Israels capital:When I came into office, I promised to look at the worlds challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city  and so importantly  is Israels capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago. Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the laws waiver, refusing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital city. Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time.Nevertheless, the record is in.After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result. Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. Long overdue step Ive judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement. Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem  the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries. For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year. Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Right thing to do However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all. But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. Its something that has to be done. That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace. No position on specific boundaries In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides. In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalems holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Our greatest hope is for peace Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With todays action, I reaffirm my administrations longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region. There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation. This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach. So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts. I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud, and diverse, vibrant and strong. But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance, and terror. Noble quest for peace Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations. It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations, and people, to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate  not violence. And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future. So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities. And finally, I ask the leaders of the region  political and religious; Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish and Christian and Muslim  to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace. Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians. And God bless the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you.
The Federal Civil Service Commission of Nigeria (FCSC) on Thursday announced nationwide recruitment into various Ministries, Departments an...

The Federal Civil Service Commission of Nigeria (FCSC) on Thursday announced nationwide recruitment into various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

All qualified Nigerians who currently hold OND, HND, BA/BSc are advised to apply on the commissions website.









According to the FCSC in a statement released to newsmen in Abuja, forms are available in all Geo-political zones.





The statement reads in part:





The Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) wishes to announce vacancies in the following MDAs:

(i) Federal Ministry of Information;

(ii) Federal Ministry of Environment;

(iii) Federal Ministry of Justice;

(iv) Federal Ministry of Trade and Investments; and

(v) Bureau of Public Procurement.





On how to Apply: Qualified Applicants can access Application Forms on-line on FCSC Website: www.fedcivilservice.gov.ng.





Collect FCSC Forms from Chairmen of the States Civil Service Commissions in the Following Geo-political Zones:

(a) North-West (Kaduna);

(b) North-East (Yola);

(c) North-Central & Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mabushi (Abuja);

(d) South-East (Owerri);

(e) South-South (Port Harcourt);

(f) South-West (Ibadan).

FCSC Headquarters, 4 Abidjan Street, Wuse Zone 3, Abuja.





For avoidance of doubt, the application form is free. Completed Application Forms must be submitted where collected on or not later than six (6) Weeks from the date of this Publication (Advertisement).





All Application Forms should be submitted in a sealed envelope clearly stating the Ministry, the post applied for and addressed to the: Hon. Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,4 Abidjan Street, Wuse Zone 3, Abuja.




A policeman attached to the Igbuzo Police Division, identified simply as Sergeant Abua, is allegedly on the run after shooting a student...

A policeman attached to the Igbuzo Police Division, identified simply as Sergeant Abua, is allegedly on the run after shooting a student at the Delta State Polytechnic, Sofia Ogogo, and a civil servant, Victor Emeagwai, at a checkpoint in the community.The victims were in a Toyota Corolla, driven by an estate agent, Jerry Akinlabi, when the incident happened. Ogogo and Emeagwai are Akinlabis girlfriend and friend respectivelyIt was learnt that a team of five policemen, including Abua, had flagged down Ogogo at a checkpoint along Igbuzo Market.One of the policemen, identified as Nwokolo, was said to have demanded money from Akinlabi and the driver told him that he did not have N200 to give him.Nwokolo reportedly said he would take one of the N1,000 notes Jerry had on him.As Akinlabi drove off from the checkpoint, Abua reportedly shot at the car and bullets pierced the back of the vehicle, hitting Ogogo, who sat at the back seat.The bullet also grazed the back of Emeagwai, who was at the passengers seat.Akinlabi told our correspondent that four cops, including the team leader, one ASP Akhabue, were detained by the police, while Abua evaded arrest.He said, On Sunday, November 17, 2017, I was driving to the Igbuzor Market and on getting to a checkpoint, I met the policemen. We knew one another some months ago when I had an issue concerning a property at the station. I sounded the horn to greet them, but they did not respond.One of them used his gun to hit the boot and I reversed. He said I wanted to beat the checkpoint. I told him that I assumed that they knew me very well and apologised. He demanded money. I wanted to give him N100 or N200, but it was N1,000 notes I had on me and I explained to him.He said, Am I too small to collect N1,000? When I declined to give him N1,000, he asked me to pull over, which I did. As the argument over N1,000 got heated, I entered my car and drove off. What I heard next was three gunshots aimed at my car.A bullet pierced into the car, hit my girlfriends body, came out and hit my friend in the back.The 22-year-old indigene of Oyo State said he took the victims to a general hospital in Igbuzo, from where Ogogo was referred to the Federal Medical Centre, Asaba.He said he called a senior police officer at Asaba who notified the state Commissioner of Police of the incident.He said, The CP and the DPO of the Igbozo Police Station came to the FMC and deposited N100,000, but I have spent much more than that. Meanwhile, the policeman who shot at us had gone to drop the gun at the station and fled. The other four policemen were detained at the command headquarters. My friend and I wrote our statements there.Akinlabi explained that a police officer asked him to drop his car key to aid investigation. He added that he handed over the car key, but activated the steering lock because he suspected foul play.He said he met with the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 5, Benin, Edo State, who assigned a policeman to take his statement, adding that the policeman came down to the police command, Asaba, the following day.As I was returning from Zone 5 on Monday, I received a call from the Investigating Police Officer at the police headquarters in Asaba and he asked for the steering key. The IPO and a policeman came down to the hospital and I told them I would have to look for the key when I got home.The policeman sent from Zone 5 invited my friend to the police headquarters in Asaba to write his statement too. When he got there, he saw some policemen moving the car. He called to ask me if I gave them the key to unlock the steering and I said no. When I called the IPO, he confirmed what my friend said and he told me that there was no cause for alarm.He said the command returned his car washed, with the bullet holes on the vehicle covered and painted, lamenting that he had not heard from the command and zone 5.Akinlabis girlfriend, Ogogo, who spoke to newsmen from the hospital, said she was on the telephone when the bullet hit her.That was the last thing I remembered until I found myself at the hospital, she added.Emeagwai urged the police authorities not to sweep the case under the carpet, saying the policemen must be punished.He said, I dont see any reason for the shooting. I have been going to the FMC to treat the gunshot injury for about three weeks now. The policemen should not go scot-free.Harrison Gwamnishu, the Coordinator of Behind Bars, a rights group, which Akinlabi contacted on the matter, said the group would institute a legal action against the police.He said, We want to charge the case to court as a civil matter. It is barbaric. Why did the police wash the bloodstains in the car and covered the bullet holes without the consent of the owner?The Delta State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Andrew Aniamaka, said the policemen would be brought to book if found culpable after investigation.He said, The case is being investigated. However, our utmost concern is that the injured victim gets proper treatment. The Area Commander and the DPO of the division in question are involved in the matter.The case is being investigated by Zone 5. Where somebody is absent from duty for 21 days without any reason, we declare such a person a deserter. So, there is no anxiety that the policeman is on the run. Rest assured that the right thing will be done.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday, condemned the resurgence of slavery in some parts of Africa, saying that the development was worrisome.Speaking at the 2017 Annual Conference of the Comptroller General of Immigration held at the MITROS Residences in Abeokuta, Obasanjo said that slave trade in the 21st century should be condemned in the strongest term possible.The theme for the conference was : Managing Migration and Facilitating Trade and Development in 21st Century Nigeria: NIS Perspective.The former president noted that the current development in Africa should be a sober reflection for African leaders.He explained that the leaders must feel a sense of regret on what they ought to do, what they had done and what they had not done.I believe that slave trade in the 21st century should be condemned in the strongest language possible and nobody who is involved in it should be excused.What can we do and what must we do? We must ensure that conducive atmosphere is created for genuine exchange of goods and ensure development within our country, sub-region, continent and the world which we live.But then today, migration has a very nasty connotation particularly when you watch the television and you hear the story of thousands of our youths daring to go through the desert.Then after they have embark on such perilous journeys, some of them are sold as slaves. Slaves in the 21st century, Africans being sold by Africans and maybe to Africans.All of us as leaders must feel a sense of regret and have sober reflection on what we have done or what we have not done to bring this about to our own people,  he said.Obasanjo, charged the men of the NIS to imbibe the culture of training, professionalism, integrity, loyalty, and service, saying that all these must not be taken for granted.In his address, the Comptroller  General of NIS, Muhammad Babandede, said that the service was committed to safe and regular migration of Nigerian citizens and foreigners.He disclosed that the current issue being witnessed in Libya was not new to the NIS and it had regularly engaged in measures and activities to reduce the menace.Babandede however warned travel agencies, individuals and officers in the passport offices at various borders who are engaged in smuggling of migrants to desist from it, saying anybody found wanting would be made to face the law.He said that the service have some cases of smuggling under investigation, urging his men to step -up their activities through intelligence gathering, speedy investigations to allow the law to take its full course .Babandede added that starting January, 2018, the National Identity Number would be part of requirements for issuance of Nigerian passport with the National Identity Management Commission.He noted that the aim of the conference was to review the E- passport, after 10 years of its introduction in order to better the services they rendered.I wish to state that NIS is committed to safe and regular migration to prevent the sad stories of loss of lives and sources of Nigerian citizens and others, occasioned by the desperate journey through the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea.The recent media revelations of the sad events in Libya are not new to the NIS and we had regularly engaged in measures and activities to reduce the menace in collaboration with partners and stakeholders,  he said.Earlier, Gov. Ibikunle Amosun who declared the conference open, also condemned the resurrection of slave trade in Libya, saying that African leaders should rise to condemn the act.Amosun charged all the participants at the conference to see the programme as an avenue to brainstorm and come up with practical solutions that would be of benefits to the Nigerians and the country.
Moved by the outpouring of affection from the people of Kano State at the beginning of a two-day official visit, President Muhammadu Buh...

Moved by the outpouring of affection from the people of Kano State at the beginning of a two-day official visit, President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, vowed to overwhelm any opposition to his undeclared 2019 re-election prospects.The Presidents assertion, coming a week after he hinted in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, of the possibility of seeking re-election, has put the camp of possible presidential hopefuls in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in palpable confusion.Among the prospective APC chieftains believed to be waiting in the wings on Buharis intentions are Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Senator Rabiu Kwankwanso and Governor Aminu Tambuwal, all of who have denied any presidential aspiration in the meantime. Senator Kwankwaso, the immediate past governor of Kano State, who came second in the contest for the 2015 presidential ticket of the APC, was not in town for the first presidential visit to his home state, yesterday.Kwankwaso, who is enmeshed in an increasingly ugly political conflict with his hand-picked successor, Umaru Ganduje, was said to have travelled to Egypt, purportedly to settle the fees of some Kano State-sponsored students in that country. Comrade Aminu Abdulsalam, who served as Kwankwansos commissioner for inter-governmental affairs, told newsmen, last night, that the former governor and his associates were not invited for the functions relating to the Presidents visit. Senator Saraki on his part, had last week, affirmed on the sidelines of the launch of a book written by his political disciple, Bolaji Abdullahi, that his political outlook on 2019 would not be made known before next February.Governor Aminu Tambuwal, who had contemplated a presidential run in 2014 before settling for the governorship of his home state, stated that 2019 was still a long way off. President Buhari first gave an indication that he would contest the 2019 presidential election when he met with the Nigerian community in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week.Eight days after that hint, Buhari who had run four presidential campaigns, again let slip the possibility of another campaign when emotion came over him at the sights and sounds of the enthusiastic Kano crowd that welcomed him to the Emirs Palace. Im overwhelmed by the sea of heads I see, and by what I see today, if elections are contested, I have no doubt I will win it, he said at the palace which was the first port of call as soon as he arrived Kano.Reacting, yesterday, to the presidents seeming inclination, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, spokesman, Prince Dayo Adeyeye said: The crowd that supposedly welcomed President Muhammadu Buhari is not a reflection of what will happen in 2019.Make no mistake about it. Governments come and go all over the world. For the President to continue to blame the PDP for his failure to perform almost three years into his mandate, shows how ill-prepared he is for the leadership of this great country.They were not elected to blame but to serve the people. What project have they commissioned since they came into power? Nigerians are aware of what the PDP was able to do but can we say the same thing of the APC? The president, who was received by Emir Muhammad Sanusi II, said he was determined to do the needful, even as he called for patience on the fact that there is a difference between a military regime and a democratic administration.He was accompanied by his host, Governor Ganduje, Governor Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa State and the deputy governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Ibrahim Wakala. Buhari said: When I was military head of state, I arrested many people and jailed them for alleged corruption and in the end, I also ended in jail.Since I joined politics in 2003, I contested for president three times but I could not get it right until the fourth attempt in 2015. I was in court for 30 months challenging the 2007 election and in 2011, I also spent 16 months in court.He lamented that from 1999 to 2014, Nigeria earned so much money which, according to him, was frittered by preceding administrations.The countrys wealth was squandered by those that ruled the nation at that period of time due to corruption and when we came, we said things must change for the better, the President said. Buhari, however, assured that his administration will not relent in its people-oriented projects. We are determined to better the life of our people, he stated, as he commended the Kano Emirate which he said consistently supported him in all the public offices he occupied.I am commending this royal house, for there was nothing I became without consulting the royal house. I was a governor, a Minister, Head of State and now the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But in all that I did, I was making consultations with this Emirate Council. I must, therefore, acknowledge and commend the house, he said.
Turkey on Wednesday slammed as irresponsible and illegal the announcement by US President Donald Trump that Washington was recognising J...

Turkey on Wednesday slammed as irresponsible and illegal the announcement by US President Donald Trump that Washington was recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital.We condemn the irresponsible statement of the US administration the decision is against international law and relevant UN resolutions, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter.Ahead of Trumps widely-flagged announcement Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned after a meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II that the move would play into the hands of terror groups.Erdogan has already called a summit meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul on December 13 to discuss the issue.The Turkish foreign ministry added in a statement that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can only be solved through the creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.It warned that the decision by Trump will have negative reflections on the peace and stability in the region and risks completely destroying the ground for peace.We call on the US administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes, it added.
World leaders reacted with concern and anger to U.S. President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

World leaders reacted with concern and anger to U.S. President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Israel itself was the only country celebrating the announcement that its American ally would be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv.





In his reaction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: these reprehensible measures constitute a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts.





Abbabas also said that the action represents a declaration that the United States has withdrawn from playing the role it has played in the past decades in sponsoring the peace process.





Reacting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Trumps decision was an important step towards peace.





There is no peace that doesnt include Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel.





I share President Trumps commitment to advancing peace between Israel and all of our neighbours, including the Palestinians, Netanyahu said.





A Saudi government spokesman said: the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hopes that the U.S. administration will reverse this action, and support the international will to enable the Palestinian people to regain their legitimate rights.





German Chancellor Angela Merkel while reacting said: the government does not support this stance because the status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution.





Also, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states.





British Prime Minister Theresa May said: we disagree with the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.





We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region.





In a statement, Egyptian Foreign Ministry said: such unilateral decisions violate international legitimacy resolutions and will not change the legal status of the city of Jerusalem as being under occupation.





Also, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia called on the U.S. to consider withdrawing the decision.

Widodo said: such unilateral recognition violates various resolutions of the UN Security Council of which the U.S. is a permanent member.





It could also shake global stability.





Lebanese President Michel Aoun said: [It is] dangerous and threatening the credibility of the United States as a sponsor of the peace process in the region.





In his reaction, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said: the future of Jerusalem is not determined by a state or a president, but by its history and the will and determination of the loyal people to the Palestinian cause





NAN reports that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that there was no alternative to the two-state solution to the lingering conflict between Israel and Palestinian.





The UN chief stressed that Jerusalem was an issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the parties.





In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution.





There is no Plan B, Guterres said while speaking to the press at UN Headquarters in New York.





The UN chief stressed the need to realise the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace, security and mutual recognition, with Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Palestine, and all final status issues resolved permanently through negotiations.





According to him, it is only through that realisation that the legitimate aspirations of both peoples would be achieved.





I understand the deep attachment that Jerusalem holds in the hearts of so many people. It has been so for centuries and it will always be, he added.




A church pastor is accused of sexually assaulting four minors over a 16-year period.

Harry L. Thomas, a pastor at Come Alive Church in Medford, has been charged with sexually assaulting minors.

Harry L. Thomas, 74, of Medford Township, faces charges of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.

The alleged assaults came to an end two years ago. Thomas is currently the pastor of Come Alive Church in Medford. He is also a co-founder of the Creation Festival, said to be the nation's largest Christian rock festival, first held in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Authorities said the assaults took place between 1999 and 2015 in Medford.

Thomas was arrested Wednesday, and remains in a medical facility for treatment, where a county department of corrections officer is guarding him. A first appearance in court will be scheduled in the near future.

Phone calls to Come Alive Church went unanswered Thursday morning. An email seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A federal grand jury Thursday indicted the former Bordentown police chief on charges including using excessive force during an arrest, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Frank Nucera, 60, who is retired from the Bordentown force, was arrested last month and charged with a hate crime assault as well as deprivation of civil rights under the color of law. He is also accused of making false statements.

Authorities say Nucera has a troubling history of using racial epithets when referring to African-Americans, including the n-word. His alleged behavior came to light during an arrest in 2016 when he is accused of slamming an 18-year-old youth's head into a doorway while he was handcuffed.

Following a public records request, Bordentown officials identified the youth as Timothy Stroye, who was a Trenton resident at the time. A 16-year-old girl was also arrested, allegedly for failing to pay a hotel bill.

Hours after the arrest, one of the officers who was present during the incident recorded Nucera making racially hostile comments about the teens and African Americans in general, according to documents filed in connection with the case.

Nucera abruptly stepped down from the chief's post in February.

Staff writer Kevin Shea contributed to this report.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
No charges will be filed against a cop in Chesilhurst, Camden County for shooting a disabled senior citizen's apartment resident in the leg after he approached him with a meat cleaver, the Camden County prosecutor said Thursday.

Daniel McOsker, 60, did not sustain a life-threatening injury from the shooting. He was charged after the incident with two weapons offenses, terroristic threats and criminal restraint. Two employees at B'nai B'rith Chesilhurst House, the senior citizen residential facility where the incident occurred, had called police after they said McOsker threatened them in the management office with the meat cleaver.

An initial police report from the incident at 4:41 p.m. on Aug. 2 said McOsker had held one of the employees captive at knife-point.

The prosecutor ruled Thursday the responding officer was "legally justified" in shooting McOsker during his arrest. The officer was not identified by authorities.

McOsker had returned to his third-floor apartment when the officer arrived on scene. McOsker refused to surrender and leave the apartment, officials said. The prosecutor said surveillance cameras recorded the encounters in the management office and the third-floor hallway near McOsker's apartment.

McOsker finally exited the apartment crawling on his knees toward the officer. The patrolman shot him in the thigh when he raised the cleaver in close proximity to him, officials said.

Officials later discovered McOsker was crawling because he was disabled.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A Chinese firm is investing in Newark.

Beijing Ideal Group, a investment and development company, purchased most of One Newark Center, a 22-story building on Raymond Boulevard near Military Park and Newark Penn Station, commercial realtor JLL announced this week.

The financial details of the company's purchase from its previous owners, Mack-Cali Realty Corp. and The Praedium Group, were not disclosed. But, Cushman and Wakefield, a real estate services firm, announced earlier this month it had secured $66.58 million in financing for the Chinese company to buy the sixth through 22nd floors of the building. The first five floors will remain Seton Hall Law School, and were not part of the sale.

Morgan Stanley put up the 10-year, fixed rate financing for the sale, Cushman and Wakefield said.

The portion of the building sold includes 423,028 square feet of office space, and an attached 10-story, 945-space parking deck connected to the building. The building long housed the swanky Newark Club, which shut its doors earlier this year, with news that the building's owners were putting it up for sale.

"Spurred by Newark's progressively transforming landscape, One Newark Center was one of New Jersey's most sought-after investments in 2017," JLL Managing Director Thomas Walsh said in a release about the sale.

"Prospective buyer profiles ran the gamut, and included institutional investors, regional operators and even foreign funds."

The sale marks what may be a trend of foreign investment in the state's largest city. In December of last year, a Kuwait-based investment fund bought Two Riverfront Plaza in Newark. Earlier this year, the city's mayor, Ras Baraka, launched a campaign aimed at Chinese investors, asking them to consider Newark as the "logical next step" for investment, as prices continue to rise in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

"The fact that another international buyer has invested in a Newark office building speaks volumes about the evolution of the market," said Brian Lindenberg, vice president of asset management at Praedium.

"The perception of the city continues to improve in the eyes of international investors, attracted by Newark's connectivity to New York and the rest of the tristate region."

Mack-Cali and the Praedium affiliate have been trying to sell the property since 2012 to pay off a $91.7 million loan on the property, dropping the asking price several times since then, according to a March report in Commercial Real Estate Direct, a subscription website.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Authorities on Wednesday announced a reward of up to $10,000 for tips leading to an arrest and conviction in the killing of a man who was gunned down in front of his wife and 8-year-old son during an apparent robbery attempt outside his Irvington apartment.

Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura's Crime Stoppers program offered the reward in the murder of Marco Angamarca-Yupa, 29, according to officials.

A man was killed outside this Irvington apartment building Monday night, authorities said. (Taylor Tiamoyo Harris | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Two assailants apparently confronted Angamarca-Yupa around 11 p.m. Monday after he arrived at his apartment in the 800 block of Grove Street, family members previously said. Angamarca-Yupa's wife and young son were with him when he was shot.

Angamarca-Yupa, who is from Ecuador and moved to the area about four years ago, was fatally shot, according to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. The circumstances surrounding the slaying remained unclear.

Prosecutor's office spokeswoman Katherine Carter said the agency had no updates on the investigation Wednesday afternoon. Investigators believe more than one person was involved, but did not confirm accounts provided by the slain man's family or area residents.

"The child, he saw everything happen," said Pedro Qubzada, the family's landlord.

Candles were left at the scene of the shooting in the apartment driveway Tuesday and police stationed officers near the home.

The killing marked Irvington's sixth homicide of the year compared to four murders in 2016, according to records.

Irvington reported 227 robberies, including 123 holdups that involved a firearm, as of October this year, records from the New Jersey State Police show. Last year, the township of approximately 54,000 people logged 128 gunpoint holdups out of 236 robberies in the same period.

Anyone with information on Monday's killing was urged to call the prosecutor's office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force tips line at 1-877-847-7432 or 1-877-TIPS-4EC.

Taylor Tiamoyo Harris and Karen Yi contributed to this report.

Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc and on Facebook.

Have information about this story or something else we should be covering? Tell us: nj.com/tips
University Hospital in Newark, where a nurse was stabbed in a parking lot on Nov. 26.

A Rahway man admitted he stabbed a nurse after trying to rob her in a parking lot outside a Newark hospital last month, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday.

The revelation came during a detention hearing when Brian K. Anglin, 56, was ordered held on aggravated assault, robbery and weapons charges stemming from the Nov. 26 attack at University Hospital on South Orange Avenue.

Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare granted a motion by the Essex County Prosecutor's Office that Anglin remain at the Essex County Correctional Facility pending presentation of the case to a grand jury.

Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Jamel Semper told the judge that Anglin was captured on surveillance video near the scene a short time after the Sunday night attack, and that Anglin later acknowledged it was he on the tape and that he had stabbed the nurse.

Anglin entered a not guilty plea during his initial appearance following his arrest last week, according to the prosecutor's office.

Semper said Anglin approached the nurse and demanded money, then stabbed her in the upper abdomen before she had a chance to comply with his demand.

The nurse, a 25-year veteran of University Hospital who is in her 60's, was headed to her car after working a shift in the hospital's labor and delivery unit. She survived the attack and staggered to the hospital's emergency room for treatment.

Semper said Newark police arrested Anglin near the scene the following day, when he was found with a box cutter. He said Anglin had an extensive criminal record that included burglary and drug possession convictions in New Jersey, as well as prior offenses in the State of Georgia.

The attack prompted a call for increased security by the Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the nurse's union. Rutgers officials said they would boost patrols.

The Rutgers University Police Department, which patrols University Hospital, was working with hospital officials to enhance security for staff and visitors, a university spokesman said after the incident.

Anglin's public defender for the hearing in Newark, Donna Scocozza, had told the judge that her client was living in Rahway with his sister. Scocozza said Anglin was employed with a local company, helping to support the household, and that keeping him behind bars would be a hardship on the family.

The judge was unmoved, however, and ordered her client held.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have information about this story or something else we should be covering? Tell us: nj.com/tips
JERSEY CITY - The police officer who shot an emotionally disturbed man inside a mental health facility has been placed on administrative leave, officials said.

Monday's shooting occurred at the Jersey City Medical Center's Liberty Park Residence at 9 Nunda Ave. at about 4:15 p.m., authorities say.

Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said the 41-year-old man was inside the outpatient psychiatric facility threatening workers with a large piece of glass. Police arrived and tried to "de-escalate" the situation with pepper spray.

When that didn't work, one officer shot the man in the abdomen, Suarez said.

Jersey City has declined to identify the officer - who was treated for shortness of breath and tinnitus following the incident - but said he has been placed on administrative leave. The leave is a standard practice in police shootings.

Meanwhile, the police union is "fully supportive" and "proud of the bravery" the officers displayed in a "dangerous situation," a spokesman for the Jersey City Police Officers Benevolent Association said.

The 41-year-old man has been charged with aggravated assault, making terroristic threats, and weapons offenses. A spokeswoman for the city said he remains at Jersey City Medical Center in stable condition and is being treated in hospital's psych ward.

A spokeswoman for Jersey City Medical Center said the Nunda Avenue facility is a "15-bed specialized residence providing care to individuals with severe and persistent mental illness."

A man at the scene Monday afternoon said he heard a single gunshot come from the building before a cop came running outside. The 41-year-old was alert and handcuffed to a stretcher when he was brought to the hospital, the man said.

The man who was shot has not yet made his first court appearance and is listed by jail's records room as having no bail.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Westbound traffic in the Holland Tunnel was briefly shut down this afternoon when a woman got out of her vehilce and began running toward the exit, police said.

Port Authority police spokesman Joe Pentangelo said the north tube, which takes motorist from New York to New Jersey, was shut down for about 10 minutes after a 31-year-old woman had an apparent panic attack while driving.

The woman got out of her car at about 2:35 p.m. and ran on the catwalk toward the exit. Westbound traffic was temporarily stopped while police responded and brought the woman out of the tunnel, Pentangelo said.

The woman was evaluated by EMS but declined further treatment, Pentangelo added.

Traffic began moving again at 2:47 p.m. after a security sweep of the tunnel was completed, the spokesman said.
UPDATE: Defense attorney takes aim at Lillo

NEWARK -- A disgraced ex-cop provided four hours of damning testimony today in the federal trial of Francis Styles, a Bayonne police officer accused of covering up a police brutality incident in 2013.

Domenico Lillo, the former city police officer who admitted to striking a man with a flashlight during an arrest in 2013, testified that he fully expected Styles and other cooperating officers to cover up his use of excessive force on the night of the incident.

As part of a plea deal he struck with the government, Lillo is testifying against Styles, who faces one count of falsifying records in a federal investigation and one count of "misprision of a felony" -- or acting to conceal a federal offense.

"It was my understanding... (that) when the incident report was written the flashlight strike would be omitted," Lillo told the jury.

The 47-year-old pleaded guilty in September 2015 to using excessive force during the arrest of Brandon Walsh, who later sued the city in federal court in 2014. In a separate legal matter, The Jersey Journal has sued Bayonne to get a copy of the legal settlement between the city and the Walsh family.

On Dec. 27, 2013, officers Lillo, Styles and James Wade arrived separately at Walsh's home near the corner of Avenue C and West 53rd Street. Walsh, 25 at the time, had an arrest warrant out of Sussex County for failing to appear in court.

Lillo's testimony was coupled with shot-by-shot analysis by the prosecution of video footage from the night of the incident.

Lillo can be seen in the footage striking Walsh with a flashlight three different times. The footage shows Lillo hit Walsh in the forehead with his flashlight in clear view of Styles and Wade, who were also escorting Walsh away from the scene.

Walsh required 15 stitches following his arrest, prosecutors say.

"I was aggravated, upset," Lillo said sullenly during his testimony.

The prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jacques Pierre and Lee Cortes, then began questioning Lillo on events that immediately followed.

Due to his injuries, Walsh was taken to Bayonne Medical Center, said Lillo, who rode in the ambulance with Walsh. Styles arrived at the hospital shortly thereafter, Lillo added.

The prosecution presented Lillo's phone records as evidence and noted that he sent a photo of Walsh's forehead injury to Styles with the caption "Whoop whoop, that's the sound of the police," a reference to a popular KRS-One song.

"Look what happens when you f--- with us," Lillo told the jury when asked what his message to Styles meant.

Lillo said he meant to have a "silent conversation" off the record with Styles about his use of excessive force, adding that he "didn't want to vocalize what had happened."

Lillo said the two officers made their way back to police headquarters, and on the way, Lillo said he tried insinuating to Styles that the use of force not be included in the official report.

"I said (to Styles), 'Holy s---, I can't believe I did that,'" Lillo said.

At headquarters, the officers completed separate reports. Lillo said he filed the pepper spray exposure report, the use of force reports on behalf of the three officers, and the arrest reports. He said Styles began authoring the incident report -- the document at the center of the case that prosecutors say Styles edited to cover up Lillo's brutality against Walsh.

While it was never openly spoken about at headquarters, Lillo told prosecutors that he fully expected the use of his flashlight to be swept under the rug.

During his testimony, the prosecution also re-examined the video footage to show that the immediate events that transpired when Walsh discovered he was being apprehended did not match the narrative of Styles' report, which stated Walsh had fallen down his stairs and hit his forehead on a wall.

In addition to pleading guilty to the charges surrounding 2013 incident, Lillo also admitted to assisting in the filing of a false report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help a relative fraudulently obtain a federally funded home rehabilitation loan.

When cross-examination by defense Attorney Jack Arseneault began at roughly 4 p.m., Lillo was asked about circumstances of his HUD charges prior to the incident. However, U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty adjourned for the day.

Lillo will return to the stand tomorrow morning.

A previous version of this story said that Brandon Walsh was 20 years old at the time of the incident. He was 25.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @coreymacc. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- If you're looking to beat the political machine, just call the Boggianos.

The three adult children of recently re-elected Councilman Rich Boggiano have helped engineer four election victories for their father, first-ballot and runoff wins this year and in 2013, all against the well-funded political machine of Mayor Steve Fulop.

So how did a speech therapist and two guys who developed an early-education app become master political operatives? Much of the credit, they say, belongs to their dad.

A retired police detective and longtime activist in the Hilltop neighborhood, Boggiano, 74, has spent 40 years building up good will among residents of Ward C, and that has translated into his recent electoral success, his youngest son, Chris, told The Jersey Journal. Boggiano's team had as many as 60 supporters working on get-out-the-vote efforts yesterday, most of them unpaid but "passionate" about getting his dad re-elected, he said.

Voters, Chris said, know his father is "uncorruptable."

"There's no amount of money that can corrupt him," he said. "He wants nothing. He wears my old high school sweaters."

Boggiano won re-election to a second term in yesterday's runoff against Fulop ally John Hanussak. Boggiano won 60 percent of the 2,936 votes cast, to Hanussak's 40 percent. He won about the same votes as he did four years ago, when he unseated Fulop ally Nidia Lopez.

It's not clear how much Fulop's team devoted to Hanussak's campaign specifically, but Boggiano had a massive financial disadvantage. In the days before Election Day, Fulop's council team had $350,000 at its disposal. Boggiano had $30,000.

Even the Fulop machine's efforts to help Hanussak by stockpiling mail-in votes before polls opened yesterday didn't work: Boggiano won mail-ins two-to-one over Hanussak.

Chris said he and his brother, Jon, were the "foot soldiers" on the campaign answering to the "general," their sister, Katrina. The brothers handled "back office" matters, often on plane trips to and from their North Carolina home, while Katrina was the ground game expert, he said.

The councilman, who will begin his second term on Jan. 1, also cited Katrina's assistance when asked to explain yesterday's victory.

"My daughter could run a presidential campaign," he said.

Boggiano is known locally for his often ornery personality. A joke flier hanging in the council office includes his picture and a "warning" to keep away from him because "he is considered loud and dangerous."

"People know he's rough around the edges but he's a genuine person," Chris said.

Gerry McCann, a city code enforcement official and former councilman and mayor, credited Boggiano's lengthy tenure of local activism and a dedication to constituent services that did not stop even as people were voting yesterday.

"In the middle of the election he calls me up about a problem in his ward," he said.

A political operative and ally of Fulop, McCann said he knows of only one way to conquer Boggiano at the polls.

"The way to beat Rich Boggiano is to run someone like Rich Boggiano," he said.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- The final tab for the property revaluation Jersey City halted in 2013, plus the city's legal fight to break its contract with the company conducting the long-delayed reval, is $3,784,198.

The amount became official last week when Jersey City finally issued payments to Realty Appraisal Co., the West New York firm hired to conduct the aborted 2011 reval. A judge in April 2016 ordered the city to pay the company, but the city appealed, lost the appeal and in September the New Jersey Supreme Court said it would not hear the case.

Steven Rubenstein, a partner at Realty Appraisal along with his brother Neil, said they are "gratified" that the dispute with the city is over. Rubenstein has argued Fulop halted the reval to protect homeowners in affluent Downtown neighborhoods who are expected to see steep tax hikes.

"We're sorry that we did not have the chance to complete the revaluation back in 2013," he said in an email. "Realty Appraisal Co. now looks forward to providing New Jersey municipalities with quality revaluations, as we have done for the past 62 years."

The $3.8 million tab for the canceled reval includes:

$1,980,000, the amount Realty Appraisal was paid before Fulop halted the reval;

$1,156,000, the remainder of Realty Appraisal's contract the city was ordered to pay, plus interest;

$479,210, the amount the city paid law firm Shain, Schaffer & Rafanello to defend the city in court;

$168,988, legal fees the city was forced to pay Realty Appraisal after the city declined a pre-trial settlement offer of $750,000.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Steve Fulop said the administration has "no regrets" about canceling the 2011 reval.

"For the last four years we have kept taxes stable, while expanding the police department, building new parks and stabilizing the city's finances," city spokeswoman Hannah Peterson said. "The route it was on in 2013 was extremely dangerous for the city and its residents, and we now feel that this process is being done properly. We made the right decision."

Fulop canceled the reval in 2013 soon after he was elected mayor, expressing concern about the impact Hurricane Sandy had on property values and the length of time the process was taking. Fulop later said the company's hiring of a former city tax assessor soon after he retired from the city represented a corrupt conflict of interest.

Realty Appraisal, which had nearly completed the process, sued for breach of contract and won. The judge presiding over the case dismissed the city's arguments about the former tax assessor and said Fulop halted the process because he did not want to proceed with the reval.

The state in April 2016 ordered the city to proceed with a reval. Five months later the council approved a $4.4 million contract with a new firm, Appraisal Systems, to conduct the new reval, which is expected to wrap up next year. None of Realty Appraisal's data from the old reval was usable.

On Saturday Fulop said on Twitter that he would meet this week with Appraisal Systems to determine if the federal tax overhaul under consideration by the U.S. Congress "has the expected impact on home prices." Peterson declined to clarify whether that means Fulop is seeking to delay the current reval.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- A witness at the murder trial of Froylan Lopez said he was not truthful with homicide detectives when he was initially interviewed about a fatal stabbing in 2015.

Instead, Herman Sierra told investigators that he saw nothing the night Troy Brandon, 26, was stabbed to death at Monticello and Storms avenues in Jersey City on Dec. 5, 2015.

"I didn't want to get myself into trouble," Sierra said of his initial interview with Hudson County Prosecutor's Office detectives. After speaking to his attorney, he contacted the investigators to set up a second interview.

Sierra owns a restaurant adjacent to the location where Brandon was killed. After giving a statement to police on Dec. 6, he said he learned that an employee of his restaurant who also gave a statement, had said he was outside at the time.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Sierra said "I explained the situation to (the lawyer) and that the worker that was there had said that I was outside... I know that this is complicated, so I went and and he advised me to tell the truth so I would not have any problems."

Prior to the homicide, security video shows an argument between two men at the location. A man described by the defense as a friend of Lopez is knocked out by a single punch during the altercations.

Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Lanzot described Brandon as a good Samaritan and said he checked on the man's condition, stood beside him, dialed 911 and tried to flag down a police car.

Lanzot said that when Lopez, 30, saw Brandon standing beside his injured friend, rather than help, he "took a knife and plunged it into the side of Troy Brandon, puncturing his lung and ultimately his heart."

On the stand today, Sierra said he was in the yard beside his restaurant and saw the argument. He said that after the man was knocked out, he went back inside. But he said that after some time passed and he had heard no ambulance, he went back into the yard to take a look.

Sierra said he saw Lopez's SUV parked across the street and Lopez opened his trunk, closed it and then crossed the street toward the restaurant. He said his view of Lopez was then blocked by the restaurant building.

Sierra said he heard screaming a few minutes later before Lopez went back to his vehicle and drove away.

Lanzot said security video shows Brandon running a short distance before collapsing. He was pronounced dead at the Jersey City Medical Center about 40 minutes after the incident, which occurred around 10:15 p.m.

When interviewed again on Dec. 10, 2015, Sierra did identify Lopez as man seen in security video standing behind the vehicle where the man had been knocked out. After being knocked out, the man fell behind a car and was out of view. Sierra said he never saw Lopez standing near the man.

The trial began an hour lunch break at 12:30 p.m.

Sierra's wife, Angela Ferruina, took the witness stand after her husband and said at the end of her work day she left the restaurant and saw the man unconscious on the street as she walked to the nearby door leading up to the family's apartment.

She said that once upstairs she worried that whatever had happened might mean trouble for the business. Ferruina said that as she looked down from the front windows of her 25-year-old son's bedroom, she saw Lopez

"I saw the young man. I saw he was helping." She said she also saw Lopez get out of a vehicle across the street. Ferruina said she pointed at the unconscious man, identified as Miguel Enriques, and "I said to him, 'Froylan, Miguel is there.'" She said she then left the window.
As part of the ongoing Kid's Page series, NJ Advance Media asks students in kindergarten through the eighth grade to answer questions or complete a sentence. This week's question is: Dogs or cats? Explain why you prefer one over the other, or neither.

In my opinion I like dogs better than cats. One reason is that dogs do their business outside and not inside the house. Another reason is that dogs can do very cool tricks. Dogs can even open doors with their paws. Cats can't do very good tricks. Next, dogs can run super fast, but cats can't really run. Cats usually walk. I have a dog and he is very cute. His name is Tiny Tim. He is the best dog I have ever had. That is why I like dogs better than cats.

Leonor Casorla

Grade 4

Milford Public School

If I had to choose among dogs or cats I would choose a dog. I would choose a dog because dogs usually want to play with you and cats, not so much. Also you can take dogs for walks. You can take them to a pond or lake to take a swim in the water. You can swim along with them. The most important reason I don't like cats is because I'm allergic. Whenever I'm around cats I get itchy, my face starts to puff up, and I can't breathe. That is why I'd rather choose a dog instead of a cat.

Madelyn Fisher

Grade 4

Milford Public School

I like cats more than dogs because cats are so much smaller. Cats don't make any noise. (When they meow you can hear them.) Dogs will get excited and jump on you. Cats will just sit next to you. That is why I like cats more than dogs.

Payton Honan

Grade 4

Milford Public School

This is why I love cats and dogs. Well I don't exactly like dogs; I'm more of a puppy person. I have a puppy named Max; he's pretty wild and is always playing with my dog, Madison. Max is pretty smart and is a hog when it comes down to food. I don't really remember my cat that died very well anymore, but I remember his color was ginger-like. His name was Jose; he did not like hugs. Jose was 15 or 16 years old when he died; I was very sad when I heard.

Zac Woolf

Grade 4

Milford Public School

I like dogs and cats but I prefer dogs. First, I think dogs are very cute and cuddly. When dogs hop on the couch and cuddle you and tilt their heads it's adorable. Sometimes dogs bring toys to there owners. My dog even sleeps on my shoulders like a parrot. Also, dogs are very active and playful. You play with them outside. You can even throw toys for them. Dog like to go on hikes and play tug of war with you. Dogs are the very best pets!

Alora Schwartz

Grade 5

Round Valley School

I prefer cats because I have a Tiger cat at home. My cat Stevie Pie is sweet and loving. For example, every once in awhile he purrs for me. He lays and watches tv with me. He curls into a ball. Additionally, when I come home he greets me at at the door. The cat is curious to find out who is at the door. He closes his eyes and smiles when I come home. He also meows. Furthermore, my cat is playful and active. In the morning I feed him. When I open the cupboard where the food is, he runs in. Another thought, he likes to run and chase me around the house. He is the most special fur baby in the universe. That is why I prefer cats over dogs.

Owen Apgar

Grade 5

Round Valley School

If I could have a pet I would get a dog. First, I like to play with dogs. I would play catch with the dog. I could take the dog for a walk. Next, I like to cuddle with a dog. I like to sleep with dogs because they like to sleep with me. I would like to watch TV with my dog.I love dogs.

Jonathan Rezk

Round Valley School

Grade 5

Round Valley School

Which do I prefer?I prefer dogs.One of the reasons I prefer dogs is because they are more protective. I mean when was the last time you saw a cat not scared with a bunch of people it did not know? Also when a stranger pulls into your driveway cats will just go hide but dogs will start barking and defend.Another reason I like dogs better is because cats just roam around and do things we don't know of.When dogs will play with you.One other reason I like dogs better is because they like being around people and cats don't.I am really glad I like dogs better because I'm allergic to cats.These are the reasons why I prefer dogs.

Aedan Dorwart

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Which one will I pick cats! They are so cute and the way they purr is awesome,and they make me smile. I can't get a cat because my mom is allergic. Our whole family wishes for a cat because they love to to snuggle and play with them.I wish I had a cat so I can train it to do cool tricks and also so I can snuggle with her, and have fun with her, and help her grow.My mom said if she gets me a cat for Christmas I have to keep her in my room and keep her occupied,and take her to the bathroom. My mom said she will get me a kitten and help her grow up into a cat...only if I can show responsibility before Christmas which is right around the corner.That is why I would pick cat.

Miriam Baldwin

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I would choose a dog because I wouldn't want to clean up a litter box and make my house smell. The good thing about dogs is that they don't make your house smell because they go outside. Another reason I prefer dogs is that they will sleep with you. I have two dogs, at night they both curl up and sleep with me. And in the morning they lick my face to wake me up. I love my dogs and I always will.

Noah Dominguez

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Dogs or cats? Dogs all the way! I prefer dogs because they are super loving and loyal, lots of people like dogs because of these great traits. Also they are very intelligent and easy to train. These are a few reasons I like dogs.

Cassie Lincoln

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I prefer a dog instead of a cat because they are so fun to play with. You can play fetch with them or you could play tug-u-war with them. Also they are very loveable. They will cuddle with you and they make you feel better when you're sad. Another thing is that they are very furry and soft and fun to pet. There are also a lot of types of dogs. Like a German Shepherd which I have one, a Beagle, a Labrador Retriever, a Golden Retriever, and so on. They all make very good friends. That is why I would prefer a dog instead of a cat.

Kate Johnson

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Dogs or Cats Which one do you prefer? I pick dogs because I have one his name is Murphy! My family used to have two cats but they peed everywhere and they shed so much we gave them to this cat lady! Murphy is the nicest and such a humble dog . He will cuddle with you all the time. He also will sleep through the night and will not wake up. That is why I like dogs better!

Ashley Krushinski

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

If I had to pick my favorite animal out of a dog or cat, I would choose my dog because first dogs are good emotional support animals. Next if you are hurt or sick they will take care of you. Finally they will save you if there is a fire or if someone is trying to harm you. That's why I would choose a dog. Who would you choose??

Ella Ortiz

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Which do you prefer, cats or dogs? I prefer dogs more. I prefer dogs more because dogs love to cuddle with you. Most cats get mad when you try to cuddle with them. Dogs are also good at making you feel better if you are sad. I have 2 dogs, their names are Mickey and Macie. They are really good at making me feel happy. That is why I prefer dogs.

Dina LoIacono

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Dogs or cats? I'll prefer a dog because they are loyal. Second reason because I could train dogs to do things like brings things or open doors for me.Third reason because when I'm sad they could cheer me up.Last reason because that are really fun to play with.That's why I prefer a dog.

Gabie Reyes

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

What pet do you think is best dog or cat? I think that it is a cat because they are loyal to the very end. Also if you don't like going outside you don't have to walk your dog to go to the bathroom. If you don't want to lose your cat you can make him/her indoor and you can't do that to a dog. You can also train your cat to use the toilet and flush so you don't have to clean the litterbox because that is not fun. That is the reason why cats are better.

Cailey Gilligan

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

Dogs or Cats? I prefer cats because I have one. The second reason I choose cats is because they are fluffy and cute. The next reason is that when they are small they cuddle with you. Also cats don't wake you up so early like dogs do! That is why I choose cats.

Becca Lynch

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I choose cats because cats are my favorite animal, and cats don't slobber all over you like dogs. Cats still play with toys like dogs, but cats can sleep on your bed no matter how big or small they are because cats are small. Dogs may be too big to fit on your bed unless it's a puppy. Cats are also calmer.

Jenna Cirigliano

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

Dogs are better because my dad is allergic to cats.Most of our family has dogs and dogs, and cats do not go well together. Dogs play a lot more than cats. Dogs can also be sleepy so you can cuddle with them.

Colin Lavish

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I like dogs better than cats because dogs lay with you, and cats always run away.Also, dogs will let you pet them, but cats will not.My mom will not let me get a dog because she said they make a big mess.

Lilly Rynearson

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

Over the top, dogs. Yes, it is aggravating when they bark at absolutely nothing and when they want to play with you while you're working. Otherwise, it's nice when they cuddle up next to you and warm you up, when they stick their head through the curtains while your showering. One more, when they walk into the room with a toy stuffed in their face. Dogs are definitely the way to go.

Payton Fisch

Grade 7

Readington Township School

I like dogs more than cats because they are way more nicer than cats. Dogs lick you and protect you while cats bite and scratch you and do nothing.

Alex Roses

Grade 7

Readington Township School

I like dogs way more than cats. If you have a dog he/she is loyal and will play with you. Cats constantly seem like they want to kill you and then run away and hide. That is why dogs are way better than cats.

Luke Moore

Grade 7

Readington Township School

I don't know what to choose well dogs are playful,loyal, and comforting. They would lick your face with joy. On the other hand cats are quiet and won't bother you when your working on something important, the purring is nice and their fur too. In conclusion, I think both are good pets, but in the end I like Turtles.

Nithin Vasan

Grade 7

Readington Township School

Even if cats are the last living things on Earth, I would still choose dogs. Dogs are loyal,friendly, playful, and so much more. Cats don't get excited when you leave and come back or how they always follow you until you give them all your love. Dogs on the other hand, always stick to you and be your best friend to the end. You will never fell bored or lonely when you with them. Dogs is always my favorite.

Ananthi Elumalai

Grade 7

Readington Township School

I like little dogs better than cats. But I like cats too. I like little dogs better because they are small, and you can take them on walks. Cats you can't take cats on walks. You can play fetch with dogs, and you can not play catch with cats. Dogs can play in the mud with dogs. Cats won't like it because they hate water.

Hunter Heffernan

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

A cat is good, but I prefer a good dog because its a better pet. A dog can save a life and can help in situations, but a cat can not. A dog can be played with while a cats are just lazy. A dog can show a lot of responsibility, but a cat does not. Dogs are one of the most loved animals, like my dog Noni. He is in training, but he is good for is a golden retriever. I think a cat is boring, they can not do anything to help or have much fun. That is why I prefer a dog.

Alexander Rosenberg

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I prefer dogs more than cats because I would rather be playing and running around my house with my dog than sitting inside and watching my cat lick herself or watch a cat saunter around my house. Dogs to me are like my free place, everyday after school my dog is waiting at the door and I just live to see my dog Birdie's cute face and to see her jumping up and down at my door and to have her like me and to have her as a pet is just worth so much to me and my family and honestly I think my life would be really different without her because her and my family are the light of my life and I don't think my life would be the same with a pet cat. Because when I would get home there would just a pet cat sitting there for me, no jumping up on her hind legs or no liking or barking cause she's happy, there would just be a pet cat sitting and I don't even really know how much fun I would have without going to the dog park and racing my dog and congratulating her when she beats me (because she always does) and there would be no running around the living room to chase her stuffed monkey or even no tail hitting her chair. That's why I prefer dogs.

Kevin Cornyn

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I like cats better because I grew up with two cats. I learned how to take care of them, feed them, and brush them. I learned to like them and I got used to them. A few years later I fostered four kittens. They ran all around the house. Once the food was put out, they ran to it and they ate it quickly. After a few months, somebody adopted all four of them.

Kelsey Messinger

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I prefer dogs because they don't scratch you, your furniture, or your clothes. Dogs are also easier to train. Dogs are more active, and they have a longer lifespan than cats. Dogs have more breeds, and more choices of dogs to pick from for adoption.

Rachel Rechowicz

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I like dogs because dogs do things. Cats don't do anything. Dogs run, and cats don't. Dogs can work, cats only catch mice. Dogs can herd sheep. Cats can't.

Liam Beck

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I think cats are better than dogs for a lot of reasons. One reason is because their eyes glow. My friend's cat hides under furniture, and her eyes look super cool. Another reason I like cats is because they can jump really high. I like to watch videos of cats jumping up to get a toy. I also love cat's fluffy fur. Almost all cats are fluffy except hairless cats. I think cats are very calm. They could sit on your lap forever. Those are some reasons I think cats are the best.

Ella Kovacsofsky

Grade 4

High Bridge Elementary School

I think dogs are better than cats because you can play fetch with them,hunt, do tricks with them, and run with them. You can brush them and walk them.

Neil Brinkerhoff

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

In my opinion I think that dogs are better than cats. I think that dogs are better than cats because dogs like to play with you and run around. Cats just scratch you and hide from you. Also, dogs will lay with you and relax, but sometimes when you try to relax with a cat they usually end up scratching you. That is why I like dogs better than cats.

Tye Falkenstein

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I prefer dogs.One reason I like dogs is they're playful,easy to train,and love to snuggle. Another reason is I have a dog. My dog and I wanna are best buddies and do obedience training together. We're almost on the next level.

Gwendolyn Taffera

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I like dogs more than can because you can hunt with them. They will retrieve a dead animal or find a alive animal. You can take a walk with them. A cat would not want to have a collar on and be hooked up by a leash. As you can tell I like dogs more than cats.

Codey Blanchard

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I prefer cats over dogs. I like cats better because they cuddle with you, and they do this really cute thing where they press on where they are going to sleep. Dogs just lay down. Plus, my mom says that dogs are too loud because they bark when someone is coming through the door. Cats don't mind someone coming in because they want to be cuddled with.

Amy Dolores

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I think cats are better than dogs because my cousin's cat just crawls on your face when you're sleeping,and well I know dogs play. Cat's just sleep,but I wish I had a cat to cuddle up, read, and fall asleep with.

Izzy Marinelli

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I like dogs better because cats will not jump up on you. Dogs will cuddle with you on your couch. Also,dogs will be waiting for you when you get home from work or school. Plus cats will get hair all over you if they sit on up on you. Also, I like that dogs are bigger.

Madison Apgar

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

I prefer neither cats or dogs because I love them both. My favorite type of dog is a pug. I've always wanted one, but on the other hand I LOVE cats. My favorite type of cat is a British Short-hair. They're so cute! That's why I can't pick.

Rohan Calliste

Grade 4

Kingwood Township School

In my opinion, I like a cat better. Cats are better because they can play with yarn. Also, they like to sleep all day! Why don't you tell me what you like, meow?

Andrew Hamilton

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dog is my favorite because I like furry dogs.

Bella Shallo

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like dogs because they are cute and cuddly. You only have to throw a stick.

Juliet Neiman

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

A dog. It is cute. They are playful.

Anika Tekchandani

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I would do cats because my cats jump up on my bed and get cozy.

Nicholas Zamrok

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs because they can play fetch.

Corey Bunnicelli,

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like cats. I like cats because I have cats.

April Adair

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs. Loyal. They keep you safe. They are fun to play with. Breeds. Cute. Loving.

Paris Lipka

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs play more than cats. So that's why I like dogs better.

Savannah Pittenger

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs, because my Dad is allergic to cats.

Gavin Mortorana

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are better than dogs because they are quiet. You don't need to take them for a walk. They go to the bathroom inside. They don't drool. Cats are fun!

Kirsten Mackenzie

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

A cat is better. You do not take it on a walk. Cats kiss you. Cats love you.

Madingly Shanklin

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Oh, cats! Because I don't like dogs. I don't like when they jump on my couch. I like cats because they don't get too cloe to me or jump on me. Cats are just cats.

Erin Bielenberg

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better. Dogs scare bad people by barking from entering your home.

Lahari Boggarapu

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs, because they play with me and they are nice.

Elizabeth Warsop

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better because they are so cute. I love when they play with their squeaky toys.

Patrick Cree

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Kittens are better, they are cuter than anything. Cats are cute when they play. Sometimes cats will scratch you by accident.

Gregory Jack

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs because they run a lot.

Brennan McQuilken

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats are better because they only meow every 100 seconds and dogs bark every 5 seconds. And because they kill mice.

Joseph Simoes

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

I like cats better because they do not jump on me.

Derek Steele

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs because they are fluffy and playful.

Kai Lawrence

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs. They are furry and protect people.

Alexandra Wysocki

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cat is better because it says "meow" and it drinks milk.

Laasya Boggarapu

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

I think dogs are better because they protect us.

Nela Barkoci

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats are cuter.

Nadia Lazovick

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats are because they have sharp claws and run fast.

Samantha Poehnelt

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

If I could pick dogs or cats I would choose cats because I like their cute little eyes and they are so soft. I like when cats roll over and I can pet their tummy.

Molly Holmes

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs. Because if you have a dog and there was a cat in your front or backyard, the dog will chase that cat into the forest.

Jake Schlicher

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I would choose a dog because my Aunt Christine has one dog. Casey is sweet and cute.

Hannah Ives

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better because they play with you.

Liana Husenaj

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are cuter.

Liam Byrnes

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better. They lick the floor clean.

Julianne Magron

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are better because they are soft and they snuggle with you!!!!

Seth Bennett

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I think dogs are better because you can teach dogs tricks. They are so fluffy and they are very very cute. Declan Lynch

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I think dogs are better because they play a lot and cats hide.

Amy McCool

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs because they make great pets and they are so cute and good to cuddle with. They are cool. They are nice and they are awesome. A lot of people like dogs. They are the number one pet.

Graham Henneman

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Both because they are cute.

Zion Stadulis

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like dogs because they are adorable and when they lick you it tickles.

Amelia Konta

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats because they don't jump on you.

Nicholas Casasnovas

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs because you can walk them.

Jackson Ahimovic

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats because they aren't loud.

Brayden Ahimovic

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

A cat is better because they snuggle.

Luxe Odendahl

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like dogs better because I like to play with them and throw the ball.

Caitlin Passafaro

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are best because I'm allergic to cats. I had one when I was a baby. Now I want a new dog.

Emmanuel Fortino

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are better than dogs because they are gentle and cute. I'm happy when cats purr.

Claire Jun

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better because they are fun to play with.

Julia Matos

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I think dogs are better because they are cuter. Dogs also protect me. It is fun to play fetch with dogs which you can't do with cats.

Charlie Warrington

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are better because their ears are smaller then dogs ears and she has whiskers and they are cute.

Jessica Zhang

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better. My dog does not bite. My dog listens. My dog is trained.

Jackson Russo

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats, because cats are fluffy and cuddly. They don't jump all over and they are quiet.

Samuel

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats are better because they have cool designs on their fur.

Maya Visicaro

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

I like dogs because they are fun to play with.

Inga

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs, because we can take them outside and throw a toy and they bring it back.

Lauren Mastrangelo

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs because I like my Aunt's dog, Gypsy.

Griffin Llull

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better because it keeps your house safe.

Reet Grewal

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

I love cats because they drink milk. Kids like to play with cats. People go to the pet shop to buy cats. I love to take care of cats.

Sruthi Nagisetti

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs, because they scare cats and they like to play around. And for dog houses, too.

Parick Panos

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Cats are better because they are cute. They are really fluffy. They are cute when they roll around. Cats are better because they go potty in a litter box.

Emeline Jebsen

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like both dogs and cats, but I prefer dogs. I think they are better. Dogs save people's lives, they are loyal and good friends. They also guard you and keep you safe and protected. Therefore dogs are my favorite pets.

Nicholas Koniashvili

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats are better than dogs beause they can climb trees.

Alex Annenko-Dobrianski

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats because they are cute when they are just born.

Scarlett Penyak

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

I like dogs better because they have floppy ears.

Halle Rutkowski

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I think a dog is better because I think they are cuter. They are cuter because its tails are so furry.

Laila Hesser

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better because they are fun.

Jack Kappus

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like both because I have two cats and my MeMe has a dog.

Wilson Eide

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I think cats are better because they are small and cute. They are fluffy.

Gabriella Combs

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Dogs because you get to play.

Emily LaBrutto

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like dogs because I have a dog and my dog is fun.

Cole Ross

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

I like dogs. Dogs always like to be petted and most are larger than cats. Dogs rule!

Quinn Piekarski

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats, because they jump every high.

Jeremy Angeles

Kindergarten

Spruce Run School

Dogs are better. They are cute, fluffy and useful.

Henry Butcher

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

A cat is better because it spreads less hair. Also my Auntie's cat loves me.

Reagan Lee

Grade 1

Spruce Run School

Cats because they are calm.

Julianne

Grade 1

Spruce Run School
Seventh District Task Force Officers arrested Martel Williams, left, on Monday, (Dec. 4) and booked him on an outstanding warrant in connection with an armed carjacking out of Gonzales, La. NOPD say they are searching for Dejuan Noel, right, in connection with a New Orleans East carjacking reported Nov. 8.(NOPD)
Former President Donald Trump is preparing to launch his third campaign for the White House with an announcement Tuesday night. Trump is looking to move on from disappointing midterm defeats and defy history amid signs that his grip on the Republican Party may be waning. The former president had hoped to use the GOP's expected gains in last week's elections as a springboard to win his party's nomination by locking in early support and keeping potential challengers at bay. Instead, Trump now finds himself being blamed for backing a series of losing candidates in last week's midterm elections.
Welcome to non league daily news now - your number one spot for all things relating to the National League System. Our dedicated reporters have come straight from the sidelines to bring you news fresh from the dugout - but not before theyve stopped off at the burger van first!

We know that non league football fans are full of heart, passion, and belief. You trust the manager, you believe in the team, and, for some strange reason, you trust those rickety stands, too! Here at Non League Daily, we hope we can become your trusted non league news resource - a platform thats just as passionate about non league daily news now as you.

Come rain or shine, well be out reporting on the latest non league fixtures. Well also be scouring the news, refreshing social media, and sourcing information from team websites in the hopes of finding the latest breaking non league daily news for our readers.

As youll soon see, weve got exclusive match reports on the Vanarama National League, weve got transfer speculation thatll affect the National League South, weve found great stories thatll spice up the National League North, and weve even got news on the latest giant killers of the FA Cup.

We may not be able to agree on who is going up this year, but we can all agree that any news on the NLS worth knowing will be published here, at Non League Daily.
Saying "our greatest hope is for peace," President Donald Trump has reversed decades of U.S. policy, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and setting in motion the process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient holy city.

"Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality," Trump said in a highly anticipated speech from the White House Diplomatic Room.

"It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done. That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," he said in the internationally televised 11-minute speech.

However, the president said, the move "is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement."

Trump added, "We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved."

The president called on all sides to "maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision a "historic landmark." In a Facebook video, Netanyahu said Israel's "historical and national identity is receiving important expressions every day, but especially today."

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trump's plan is tantamount to the United States abdicating it's role as a peace mediator. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said, "Our Palestinian people everywhere will not allow this conspiracy to pass, and their options are open in defending their land and their sacred places."


CEDAR FALLS  A Cedar Falls man whose twin baby daughters had fractured bones and signs of malnutrition has been sent to prison.

Court records say 29-year-old Jason Olomon was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison. He'd pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment causing injury and misdemeanor child endangerment. He'd been arrested in February 2016.

Police say Waterloo hospital employees became suspicious during a September 2013 visit with Olomon's then 3-month-old daughters because they seemed to be in pain while being fed. Both were underweight, and X-rays revealed they had fractured bones.

The girls' mother, Lucy Schnieders, was sentenced to prison in 2014 on child endangerment charges.
Preparing students for the jobs of the future was the focus of the Council Bluffs Community Education Foundations annual luncheon Wednesday at the Mid-America Center.

The event, sponsored by the foundation and Council Bluffs Community School District, featured remarks by Acting Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg and Council Bluffs Superintendent Vickie Murillo.

More than 300 people attended the Education Is Everyones Business luncheon  more than double last years turnout, said Chris LaFerla, executive director of the foundation and member of the school board.

Iowas economy is in good shape, and its unemployment rate is only about 3 percent, Gregg said.

Most economists would say thats full employment, he said. Were at the point where our unemployment rate actually poses a challenge  and thats filling the openings we have.

About 50,000 Iowans are looking for work, and the number of job openings in the state fluctuates from 50,000 to 70,000, Gregg said. Some employers have trouble finding people with the right skills, he said.

The economy is changing very fundamentally, he said. The world is changing, and its changing very rapidly. Were using more technology to produce our goods.

Gregg said he and his family recently visited Legoland during a vacation to southern California. He bought a drink that came with unlimited refills and found out the cup had an embedded microchip that could receive information about whether the drink was paid for and whether it included refills.

The chip could be read by a sensor at concession stands so he could obtain free refills.

I think that means we need to refigure and rethink our job retraining efforts, he said. We also need to make it easy for all Iowans to prepare and compete in the global economy.

The Future Ready Iowa goal is for 70 percent of the states workforce to have education or training beyond high school by 2025, Gregg said. Right now, the number is 58 percent.

This will take a greater public-private investment, he said.

Following Gregg, Murillo picked up on the theme of employability.

It is our responsibility to build up the training so our students are ready to take those jobs, she said.

Murillo told guests about her plan to start an early college academy for high school juniors and seniors who qualify in January at Iowa Western Community College. The students would attend classes at the college but could still participate in activities at their high schools.

They will graduate from high school with their diploma in one hand and their degree in the other, she said.

Murillo also wants to expand the districts internship and job-shadowing opportunities.

It is our job as a community to remove every barrier that could keep a student from achieving their very best, she said.

LaFerla highlighted the Council Bluffs schools accomplishments and reputation for excellence.

There are amazing things happening in our classrooms every single day, LaFerla said. The schools and community must work together to promote student success  and that benefits all of us, even if we dont have children in school.
An electrical fire at St. Albert Catholic School resulted in one man being injured and activities being canceled Wednesday night.

School officials announced on Facebook Wednesday night that classes today and Friday are canceled.

School President David Schweitzer said routine maintenance on electrical equipment was being done around 4:30 p.m. when the fire began.

Council Bluffs Fire Department Assistant Chief Jim Wheat said the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction or accident. He said the injured worker was with Bluffs Electric, Inc. and had suffered burns.

"He was conscious and talking to us while being transported," Wheat said. The man was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The extent of his injuries is unknown.

The fire did not spread and was confined to the electrical equipment, Wheat added. Smoke had to be cleared out.

Students and staff had been evacuated for about 15 minutes before they were given the all-clear to return inside.

Crews concentrated at the back of the school where the fire originated, Schweitzer said. The nights CCD classes and after-school activities were canceled, as was KidsCare.

Parents were asked to come pick their kids up.
AVOCA  A local couple is currently raising funds for orphans in Mariupol, Ukraine, to benefit children who have suffered in the wake of conflict between Russian-supported separatists and Ukrainian loyalists.

Mark Lander and his wife, Anna, have set up a Go Fund Me online drive to raise funds for the Solnishko orphanage in Mariupol, which is Anna Landers hometown.

Mark Lander said the goal is to provide food, clothes and toys for the 96 orphans there, many of whom have been impacted while Mariupol is the frontline of the war, in time for Christmas.

Life is especially difficult for these youngsters, Lander said.

All of the proceeds from the fundraiser will be used for the orphans. Food will be purchased from a reputable local import company vetted by Anna Landers family in Mariupol, he added.

Lander said the entire region has been hit hard by the war, and Mariupol has become home for many refugees.

Children are left there, parents having been killed. Its a horrible situation, he said.

In 2009, Mark Lander traveled to the Azovmash Wrestling Club in Mariupol for training when he met Anna while she worked as an interpreter. Hes visited the city many times since then and said Ukraine is a misunderstood  and beautiful  country.

Anna is helping to make sure the proceeds go to buy clothes, shoes and stuff for the kids. There are several orphanages in the city, so the more we raise, the more we can help, Lander said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Go Fund Me campaign had raised $850 of its $2,500 goal. On Dec. 17, or when the goal is reached, the money will be sent to Mariupol. Anna Landers family will create a video of the event when the presents are brought to the orphanage, he said.

For more information, go to gofundme.com/mariupol-ukraine-orphan-christmas.
An electrical fire at St. Albert Catholic School resulted in one man being injured and activities being canceled Wednesday night.

School officials announced in a Facebook post Wednesday night that Thursday and Friday classes were canceled.

School President David Schweitzer said routine maintenance on electrical equipment was being done around 4:30 p.m. when the fire began.

Council Bluffs Fire Department Assistant Chief Jim Wheat said the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction or accident. He said the injured worker was with Bluffs Electric, Inc. and had suffered burns.

He was conscious and talking to us while being transported, Wheat said. The man was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The extent of his injuries is unknown.

The fire did not spread and stayed to the electrical equipment, Wheat added. Smoke had to be cleared out.

Doors were propped open around the school to vent smoke out of the building. Students and staff had been evacuated for about 15 minutes before given the all-clear to return inside.

Crews concentrated at the back of the school where the fire originated, Schweitzer said. The nights CCD classes and after-school activities were canceled, as was KidsCare. Parents were asked to come pick their kids up.
The number of homeless individuals and families in the Council Bluffs/Omaha area seems to agree with a national estimate claiming homelessness in Iowa has declined.

A one-night survey last January in Nebraskas Douglas and Sarpy counties and Pottawattamie County found 1,389 individuals and families living mostly in emergency shelters, including domestic violence shelters, with a small fraction in unsheltered conditions, according to statistics from Heartland Family Service.

A similar survey the previous year, 2016, found 1,509 people dealing with homelessness, the statistics showed.

A newly-released estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that Iowa has experienced a 10 percent decrease since 2016 when it comes to people experiencing homelessness on a single night. Homelessness among families with children declined 17.4 percent across the state since 2016, according to the HUD estimate.

However, Joanie Poore, Heartlands vice president who works in Council Bluffs, said such one-night statistics are just a snapshot and cant correlate with what agencies see on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, most of Heartlands programs are serving homeless numbers similar to the past, according to Poore.

Its been steady or stable, she said.

Meanwhile, as other local communities in Iowa report the number of persons experiencing long-term chronic homelessness went up this year, efforts in Council Bluffs seem to be going in a more positive direction.

We are making an impact for ending homelessness for people who have been chronically homeless for years, Poore said.

The Rev. Harry Wallar, founder of New Visions Homeless Services in Council Bluffs, had similar comments, mentioning a new approach in dealing with homelessness, especially for men.

Its about housing them more quickly, Wallar said.

He credits the Veterans Administration with new programs, such as low-demand housing, that get men off the street first, then providing the services to keep them off.

The key is to provide the services immediately, Wallar said.

It seems to be working in this area through the efforts of his and many other agencies, he added.

Nevertheless, homelessness remains a concern, especially now with colder weather on the horizon. His homeless shelter, with 68 beds at his complex on North 15th Street, has been full since in opened in 2008, Wallar said, with an average of 50 extra men sleeping on mats on a nearby floor. During one recent cold spell, 67 needed mats for the evening.

We only had three extra mats remaining that evening, said Brandy Wallar, New Visions clinical director.

At Wallars MOHMs Place, where once 3,000 meals were served every month, that number today has grown to 9,000 per month, Harry Wallar said.

Combating homelessness takes the effort of not just one agency, but many, he said.

It takes all of us together as a team, Wallar said.
The Council Bluffs Public Works Department will hold a public information meeting to discuss the second segment of the West Broadway Reconstruction Project.

The meeting for businesses, property owners and the general public is planned from 5 to 7 p.m. Dec. 7 in the commons area of Thomas Jefferson High School, according to a release from the city.

The projects second segment includes 32nd Street to 28th Street. Construction on the segment is expected to begin in early 2018, with utility relocations already underway.

The completion of segment one on schedule and under budget is in large part due to excellent planning by the project team, Mayor Matt Walsh said in a release. Were looking forward to the same level of success for construction of segment two.

The public meeting will address design details specific to segment two only, the city said. Maps depicting segment two design will be available for review, as well as the anticipated construction schedule and proposed detours for the area.

Project representatives will be on-hand to discuss project improvements, construction staging and access. Thomas Jefferson High School is located at 2501 W. Broadway.

For more information on the renovation project, go to wbreconstruction.com, email the project team at info@wbreconstruction.com or follow the West Broadway Reconstruction Project on Facebook.

The five-phase, five-year construction project to rebuild and improve West Broadway from 15th Street west to 36th Street started in the spring of this year.

The state contributed $20 million toward the project as the city took over control of West Broadway. The Iowa West Foundation is covering $7.93 million for beautification work.

 Reporter Jon Leu contributed to this report.
Truck convoys: People around in the 1970s might remember them along with leisure suits, shag carpets and eight-track cassette players during a brief spotlight for the trucking business via movies and the CB radio fad.

But groups of trucks traveling together are making a 21st century comeback using much more sophisticated technology.

Trucking companies are calling it platooning. The idea is to group long-haul trucks into sections of at least two vehicles, improving fuel economy for both  attributable to decreased resistance for the trailing unit from lower air pressure that also creates a modest gas mileage boost for the leading one.

Theoretically, an unlimited number of trucks could be so grouped, linked digitally by forward-looking radars and automatic braking systems that apply whatever maneuvers are made by the lead driver to all trailing vehicles. Some people are even saying drivers in trailing vehicles could catch up on rest as required by road safety regulations.

The technology purports to generate fuel savings in the 10 percent range, said Larry Gross, a transportation industry analyst for Gross Transportation Consulting. I think you will see some large carriers using it next year.

So far, Nebraskas major truckers are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Omaha-based Werner Enterprises, one of the nations largest trucking companies with about 7,000 vehicles, says it has been following developments in the past nine months or so. We are open to testing it out, said Chad Dittberner, an executive vice president at Werner.

There are plenty of opportunities to do so, with many major truck-industry suppliers jumping in with the equipment and software required to digitally tether two or more trucks.

Market participants include a California-based company called Peloton, which specializes in vehicle automation technology; truck and auto maker Daimler; and many others well known in the business such as Navistar and Cummins.

One novel aspect is that a truck from Company A going solo could hook up with a truck from Company B that is also without a partner using an electronic invitation broadcast over the highways, byways, truck stops and roadside cafes. If the matchmaking succeeds, the participating trucks digitally talk to each other to coordinate a range of aspects such as horsepower, torque, braking force and vehicle weight.

But matchmaking is still tough. To be worth it, a lot of ducks have to line up in row, Dittberner said, such as destinations, routes and the other variables that make up a freight trucks itinerary.

There are suggestions that a very high percentage would apply, but I would say 50 percent would be an aggressive target, Dittberner said. The percentage would drop even lower if the concept were applied only to one trucking firms own vehicles, he said.

Wirelessly connected trucks made their European debut in April. Manufacturers of the platooning technology systems say convoys could be on American roads within a year.

At Fremont Contract Carrier, President Tim McCormick said the technology has promise, and might be an early indicator of how successful autonomous-driving trucks will be.

But we are not currently using this method and will wait for it to become more mature before we start investigating, McCormick said of tandem trucking. I believe the technology would help with fuel economy, but I believe driver acceptance will not be widespread.

Lincoln-based Crete Carrier is also not using platooning, said Chief Executive Tonn Ostergard.

The technology, while it exists, I would categorize it as still emerging, Ostergard said. At this point we really are not exploring deploying its use.

Ostergard said he can also envision public relations problems.

I think there could be some concern of the general public, if not just perception, as they see and interact with a convoy of platooned trucks, Ostergard said. Operationally, this would require assembling the platoon of trucks all at the same origin, going the same direction on a similar schedule and for a long enough segment that provides value for the cost of organizing and deploying the platoon.

Ostergard said he doesnt doubt the technology will work, albeit in a relative small portion of the business.

Gross, the transportation industry consultant, agrees that platooning might be an interim step between what we have now and autonomous vehicles, or high-tech trucks with many automated navigation, steering and safety systems and an overseer who is more akin to a pilot than a driver.

It is a gateway technology, Gross said. Remember, we have the worlds most efficient logistics system, and the reason is because business is always looking to do the job better.
The following editorial was published in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier on Nov. 27:

Iowa once envisioned four private companies managing its formerly state-run $4.3 billion Medicaid system, which serves 600,000.

Thats down to two with one at capacity, leaving 215,000 people recently abandoned by a departing company in the lurch. Federal rules require more than one choice.

The Medicaid health program was established in 1965 (along with Medicare) to assist those with low incomes, the disabled, children and people living in nursing homes.

The federal government and states share costs. The program initially was administered by state employees, but is now managed by private companies in various degrees in 39 states, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The PwC consulting firm reported 54.7 million of the 70 million enrolled in Medicaid were in privately managed programs in 2016.

Iowas switch from a well-run state program to privatization was the brainchild of former Gov. Terry Branstad  without legislative input  in December 2015. He cited undocumented savings of $51 million in the first six months, $110 million the first year and $232 million the next  fanciful then and now.

Companies were required to spend at least 88 percent on health services  a monthly allotment for each person managed determined by numerous factors, including disability level. The remaining 12 percent  around $500 million  was for administrative expenses.

Iowa contracted with WellCare, AmeriHealth Caritas, Amerigroup Iowa and UnitedHealthcare of the River Valley to manage Medicaid.

Before the transition in April 2016, WellCare was out.

An administrative law judge recommended rejecting it for failing to disclose three executives were convicted of misusing Medicaid money and it had paid $138 million to resolve overbilling Medicare and Medicaid.

Earlier this year, the remaining three companies complained about staggering losses, each exceeding $100 million during the first year: AmeriHealth Caritas nearly $300 million; Amerigroup Iowa, $133 million and UnitedHealthcare of the River Valley more than $100 million.

Now AmeriHealth Caritas is gone, too.

The Philadelphia-based company managed care for 215,000, including most of the severely disabled. Its departure followed a dispute with the Iowa Department of Human Services, which wouldnt provide the data to justify Medicaid payment rates.

According to the Des Moines Register, AmeriHealth market president Cheryl Harding wrote then-DHS Director Chuck Palmer in June that the states rates do not support a sustainable Medicaid managed-care program.

The dispute focused on 11,250 people in the Intellectual Disability Waiver program requiring expensive services, including adult daycare to remain at home.

Based on a consultants report, AmeriHealth  which managed 80 percent of that group  maintained it was shorted $53 million for nine months in 2016.

On the other hand, AmeriHealth didnt make a great impression.

It had threatened to stop reimbursing the 2,000 physicians and practitioners in the Mercy Health Network, a group of Catholic hospitals and clinics including Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo and Sartori Memorial Hospital in Cedar Falls.

Neal Siegel, a former West Liberty financial consultant who suffered severe brain injuries after a hit-and-run bicycle crash, sued the state after AmeriHealth cut his home health-care reimbursement from more than $7,000 to nearly $3,000. Six other Medicaid recipients are part of that action.

Amerigroup has informed the state it cant take any AmeriHealths patients, which  even if UnitedHealthcare can  violates federal rules requiring more than one option.

Meanwhile, privatization complaints have abounded, including the failure to pay providers in a timely fashion and cuts in services.

During a three-month period ending last March, they soared from 343 to 1,268.

Earlier this month, UnityPoint Health, which includes Allen Hospital in Waterloo, notified its nearly 54,000 Medicaid patients they could need new health-care providers because of a contract impasse with Amerigroup. (The Mercy Health Network resolved contract differences with AmeriHealth last spring after warning its 123,000 Medicaid patients.)

Now the DHS has given the Medicaid reins to Michael Randol, formerly head of KanCare, Kansas privatized Medicaid program, which the Obama administration determined was substantially out of compliance.

The Wichita Eagle reported, The states failure to ensure effective oversight of the program put the lives of enrollees at risk and made it difficult for them to navigate their benefits, the investigators found. They cited concerns about the transparency and effectiveness.

Among the findings, Public feedback consistently describes a lack of engagement and adversarial communication from the state.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback blamed political bias, but Rachelle Colombo, the Kansas Medical Societys director of government affairs, disagreed. These are not new issues that are being brought to light. They deserve serious reconciliation, she said.

That doesnt inspire confidence in Randol, aside from Kansas mind-boggling governmental incompetence.

With Gov. Kim Reynolds predicting, We are anticipating another tough budget year, it will be imperative for privatization supporters to right the Medicaid ship as soon as possible.
Beijing's new move to assert air control over the disputed South China Sea risks alarming countries that had agreed last month to work out differences diplomatically.

State-run China Central Television and one English-language news outlet said last week the military had deployed domestically built J-11B jet fighters to Woody Island in the Paracel archipelago.

Hangars in the island chain would improve China's overall control of the sea, the television network said, quoting a Chinese military expert. The country eventually could intercept foreign aircraft, it said.

Five other governments, all militarily weaker than China, contest Beijing's claims to about 90 percent of the 3.5 million-sq.km sea that's prized for fisheries, marine shipping lanes and undersea fossil fuel reserves.

China's aircraft deployment will raise alerts among the other claimants as well as the United States, which has more fire power than China and insists the sea remain open to all, analysts believe.

But China and Southeast Asian states, which are used to Chinese maritime maneuvers and recipients of Chinese economic support, are expected to remain friendly.
Given the current emphasis on our burgeoning opioid addiction crisis, the word preposterous seems best to describe the fact that an opioid is legal for use in the United States and can be purchased without prescription  and without question.

Kratom, according to C. Michael White, professor and head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Connecticut, lies at the intersection between natural product and drug of abuse.

Thousands of people take kratom, which grows naturally in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to relieve pain, believing a natural herb to be safe, White noted. But he was quick to add that too little is known about the herb to deem it safe or effective.

What is known is that kratom has a very mild pain-relieving effect and a slight stimulant effect. It is also thought to carry a low risk of stopping breathing, the main risk of stronger opioids. Research has shown the opioid effects from kratom come from two potent chemicals, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitgragynine in kratoms leaf. Mitragynine is the more prominent and has very mild opioid effects, while 7-hydroxymitragynine is, milligram for milligram, 13 times more potent than morphine.

While kratom is considered less dangerous than heroin and fentanyl, it is not free from adverse effects and can be equally addictive, according to White.

Largely because of the questions surrounding kratom, the Drug Enforcement Agency tried to ban the herb last year. That effort was met by an outcry from users and a bipartisan group of 51 congressmen from around the country. While kratoms use is already banned in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin and Louisiana, the DEA has since dropped its attempt to ban kratom.

Unlike prescription drugs, the quantities of the active ingredients in unregulated kratom products can change over time or can be adulterated with other products. In an assessment of several kratom products commercially sold in the Western world, the concentrations of 7-hydroxymitragynine were substantially higher than could be achieved naturally, which negates the safety benefits of using kratom versus other opioids.

Kratoms safety profile  at least compared to other opioids  has led people to recommend kratom as a substitute for people who became addicted to opioids. This belief was the main reason for the outcry against the proposed DEA ban in 2016. But as a researcher for the past two decades, White does not believe there have been any high-quality studies assessing how well kratom actually works or the best way to use it.

While a ban on kratom would prohibit its study as an effective and safe substitute for people addicted to prescription opioids  a study that should be completed  Congress could, and we think should, require kratom products to contain a standardized amount of the active ingredients.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un toured a powdered potato factory in Ryanggang Province near the border with China on Wednesday, well away from the state-of-the-art U.S. fighter jets that are buzzing his southern border.

Normally Kim stays out of sight during massive U.S.-South Korea military drills, preferably cooped up in a bunker.

One source said, "Ryanggang Province and neighboring Chagang Province have escape routes to China as well as deep tunnels dug under mountains that can provide refuge in case of a surprise bombing."
A celebration of Silver Linings will help Great Plains Health purchase robotic simulators.

More than 350 guests attended the Great Plains Health Care Foundations gala, which also celebrated the foundations 25th year.

Silent and live auctions at the event, hosted at Quality Inn & Suites on Friday, raised more than $16,000. The auction featured items such as vacations and jewelry, said Jodi Lowe of the foundation office. The Radio Band from Denver performed for guests.

Funds from this years gala will help the hospital reach its $85,000 goal to purchase two robotics simulators. The simulators, named Victoria and Baby Super Tory, simulate real-life scenarios during and after childbirth, according to a May 2017 story in The Telegraph.

The simulators will provide in-depth training for professionals at the North Platte hospital, as well as to anybody in the region, Lowe said.

The foundation formed 25 years ago to help support Great Plains Healths mission, according to a press release from the foundation. It aims to advance and expand health-care services, facilities and technology, according to the release.

Lowe said the galas Silver Linings theme represented that despite being in a hospital, patients benefit from the donations and all the generous donors in the area.
A pregnant inmate was denied bond in Lincoln County District Court on Monday.

Stephanie Shields, 32, appeared on a probation violation.

Shes not going to run. Shes been here for every hearing, said her attorney, Michael Nozicka.

Expecting a child in late January, Shields has employment in North Platte and hopes to attend doctors appointments, Nozicka said.

Lincoln County Deputy County Attorney Tanya Roberts-Connick said that the county pays for necessary medical care, and that Shields had not been forthcoming about her pregnancy to either the probation office or in a child custody case.

There have been numerous inquiries if shes expecting a child, Roberts-Connick said. She said no.

Roberts-Connick added that on probation, Shields continued to test positive for methamphetamine.

Shes basically been using the entire time, she said.

Judge Richard Birch told Shields that should she express interest in receiving treatment, he will consider modifying her bond.

 Ryan Chambers, 26, pleaded no contest to possession of a financial transaction device and second-degree forgery. Prosecutors said Chambers was in a car that was pulled over for going 103 miles an hour. In the car, law enforcement found forged checks and a counterfeit license. He was sentenced to one year of probation, which will be transferred to Colorado where he lives, and 28 days in jail. Chambers served 31 days; the extra three will go toward court costs.

 Aaron Thomas, 39, pleaded no contest to his third offense of theft by deception, $500 or less, and received one year of probation. Prosecutors said Thomas passed a fake bill at a liquor store.

 Terry Barthel, 38, pleaded no contest to his fourth DUI. He was sentenced to three years of probation, a 15-year license revocation and 120 days in jail. He was given credit for 68 days served.

 Chrystal Lowe, 35, had her probation revoked and was sentenced to 265 days in jail. She was given credit for 81 days served.
Seventy-six years after they died in the watery shallows of Pearl Harbor, the men of the USS Oklahoma finally are coming home  often to be buried next to deceased parents or brothers and sisters by relatives who know them only from faded photographs.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agencys lab at Offutt Air Force Base hit a milestone last month when it identified the 100th sailor or Marine from the big battleship.

Of the 429 men killed when the ship was struck by torpedoes during a surprise Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet Dec. 7, 1941, only 35 were identified at the time. The bones of the rest would lay for decades in 46 graves marked Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu until 2015.

Thats when political pressure from Congress, as well as USS Oklahoma survivors and their families, prompted the agency to dig them up and ship them to its new laboratory at Offutt.

Since then, a team of anthropologists led by Dr. Carrie Brown, director of the USS Oklahoma Project, has separated, labeled, classified and logged nearly 13,000 human bones from about 400 people. They have sent off about 5,000 DNA samples to a Defense Department laboratory in Delaware.

The result has been a steady stream of identifications  102 as of Wednesday, with 292 still unknown.

Only one of the 20 missing sailors from Nebraska and western Iowa has been IDd so far. Petty Officer 3rd Class Eli Olsen of Exira, Iowa, was a storekeeper aboard the Oklahoma at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. His identity was confirmed in September.

His family expects to bury him in his hometown  just north of Interstate 80, about halfway between Omaha and Des Moines  sometime next spring, said John Tibben of Jewel, Iowa, Olsens nephew.

Im going to try to put him next to his brother, Tibben said.

Olsen was one of nine children born to Chris and Inger Olsen, who had immigrated from Denmark and farmed near Exira. Five boys in the family served in the military during World War II. All survived except Eli.

Gary Olsen, 70, of Exira, knew his Uncle Eli died at Pearl Harbor, but not much more than that.

My grandfather had his picture up, Olsen said. In terms of talking about him  they never did.

Tibben, 76, was born three months before the Pearl Harbor attack. His parents lived in California near where his uncle was stationed.

Eli was down at Long Beach, Tibben said. He would come up to visit on the weekend. He used to bounce me on his knee.

After the attack, Olsens parents received a survivors check from the government each month for the rest of their lives.

Grandma always called it the blood money,? Tibben said.

The family kept a burial plot for Olsen in the Audobon Cemetery, not far from Exira, for years, just in case. Eventually, another relative was buried there. Instead Eli Olsen is memorialized on his parents gravestone.

About four years ago, a forensic genealogist working for the Navy tracked down the family.

Gary Olsen and Tibben sent in DNA samples.

Ruth Tibben, who was Eli Olsens last living sibling, did too. But hearing his name brought back painful feelings.

Mother said, I dont want to know anything about it. Ive put that behind me,? John Tibben recalled.

Ruth died in April, at age 100. She was buried in the Exira Cemetery. Soon, the brother she loved will be buried near her.

With modern technology, John Tibben said, Eli will be coming home.

He wont be the last. Carrie Brown is currently reassembling numerous USS Oklahoma skeletons on tables in the Offutt lab, built around bones identified through DNA testing. She said these will be the next official identifications.

Were being very successful with the process, Brown said. She said the Oklahoma Project is expected to continue for another three years.

Among the Nebraskans still unaccounted for are Leo and Rudolph Blitz, 20, identical twins from Lincoln who both died aboard the Oklahoma. Their bones are presumably among those awaiting identification in the Offutt lab.

Brown said their case presents a puzzle for anthropologists, because their DNA is identical. In life, they looked so much alike that they sometimes traded places on dates. Its not clear whether anthropologists will be able to tell the twins apart in death.

I am looking forward to seeing how we can sort them out, Brown said. This will be the first time weve had to do that.

The USS Oklahoma represents the second-largest group of Pearl Harbor victims after the USS Arizona. Most of the 1,177 sailors and Marines who died on the Arizona are permanently entombed within the battleships hull at the bottom of the harbor. It is a national memorial and will remain permanently undisturbed.

But the missing from two other Pearl Harbor battleships are expected to be identified soon.

In the past year, the accounting agency has disinterred 35 graves believed to contain 38 sets of remains from the USS West Virginia. Only 25 of its sailors are unaccounted for, so agency officials believe the graves may contain the remains of sailors from other ships who died on the West Virginia.

These bones are currently being inventoried at the agencys main laboratory in Hawaii. No identifications have been announced.

Maj. Jessie Romero, a spokesman for the agency, said permission is expected soon to disinter 25 graves tied to the USS California. Twenty sailors remain missing from that ship.

The 49 USS Oklahoma identifications fueled the biggest year yet for the accounting agency. Officials said 201 missing or unknown service members were identified during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

It is the first time the agency has met a goal set several years ago by Congress of at least 200 identifications per year. The accounting agencys budget is $131 million.
Tax reform is our main focus in Congress right now, and many beneficial provisions for the agriculture economy are advancing with this effort. We know farmers and ranchers are weathering uncertain times, and as we get closer to putting a tax reform bill on President Trumps desk, we also need to get moving on the farm bill.

Over the past few months, I held farm bill listening sessions across the Third District. These open forums led to constructive discussions about what has and has not worked in the current farm bill. I have already shared the feedback with a number of my colleagues in Congress.

Last week, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway reached out for my input on the priorities we should focus on for the next farm bill. I highlighted four main themes from my ongoing discussions with Nebraska producers.

First, we must maintain an adequate safety net by keeping crop insurance programs available and affordable for producers. Many attendees of my farm bill listening sessions stressed the importance of this public-private partnership to their operations. The 2014 farm bill prioritized crop insurance, which requires buy-in from producers and greatly reduces the need for costly ad hoc disaster payments. Protecting both producers and taxpayers, crop insurance is a cornerstone of responsible agriculture policy.

Second, we need to ensure the Title I farm commodity provisions such as Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) remain available to producers during times of economic stress. With the lack of predictability in the agriculture economy, we must keep risk management tools in place.

Third, we should remember the needs of livestock producers in the development of the farm bill. They face unique challenges, some of which must be resolved outside the bills framework, such as expanding market access for their products through trade negotiations. On the Ways and Means Committee, I continue to work on strengthening and increasing trade opportunities for all producers. Through the farm bill, we can provide valuable tools like the Market Access Program for export assistance while also addressing issues such as disaster assistance and disease prevention.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, we need to complete the farm bill on time. There is already too much uncertainty for producers with low commodity prices and an uncertain trade environment. We should not leave them guessing about what the next farm bill will look like when we know they need the information to make decisions about their operations.

The 3rd District is the top-producing agriculture district in the country due to the hard work day after day, rain or shine, of the farmers and ranchers who put food on our tables and steward the land. Their industry has inherent risks, but they take those risks because they know how vital their work is to the health and well-being of people across the globe. Our focus must be on helping to relieve some of the burden of these risks through sound policies.

I look forward to more discussions with Chairman Conaway as we move the farm bill forward. As chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, I will be working closely with the Agriculture Committee on issues related to the farm bill, namely the nutrition title. We must look carefully at its effectiveness, ensuring it is focused on those in need while enabling producers to provide more Americans with nutritious food.

We depend on farmers and ranchers for food, feed, fuel and fiber, and they are depending on us to get a farm bill to the presidents desk. Lets give them the tools they need to continue to meet the wide-ranging demands of a growing world.
The Parramatta Eels got an education of their own when they visited the School of the Air during their pre-season training camp in Alice Springs.

Eels players visited the School of the Air on Thursday, one of two such education centres in the territory which offers a wide range of services and activities to isolated school children.

Most students who attend the school live on cattle stations, but also come from indigenous communities, mining camps, road houses and national parks.

Learning is via satellite broadband to the students from pre-school to Year 9 in order to give the children the best education possible.

"We have students that mainly live in the Northern Territory, but some also over the borders and into Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia," said principal Kerrie Russell.

"These are kids that live so far away schools and towns, that the only way they can do their schooling is to be part of School of the Air."

While the kids got an enormous lift from their rare chance to meet NRL players, Eels hooker Cameron King said it was an eye-opening experience for the blue and gold squad.

"To come here with a bit more of a relaxed environment and to be able to go around to the schools to make a difference and give the kids something that they don't have access to, is special for them, but it's pretty special for us," King said.

Video - VkcmNsZDE6V11dGx0rqDSlmHmMKDo3rZ



French and Gutherson briefed on Hayne

Eels leave their mark in NT

Norman denies Eels speculation

Eels primed for Top End training

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Korean power monopoly KEPCO has been chosen as the preferred negotiating partner with Japan's Toshiba for a stake in the U.K.'s NuGen nuclear project in Moorside, northwest England.

Toshiba holds a 100-percent stake in the project involving the construction of three 3.8 GW nuclear reactors by 2025.

KEPCO was competing for the stake with a Chinese company. The deal comes even as the Moon Jae-in government has pledged to scale back reliance on nuclear energy at home.

KEPCO plans to use its own APR 1400 reactor design, the same that was used in a massive project Korea won in the UAE. It will only get paid when the reactor is completed through proceeds from electricity sales.

KEPCO plans to put together a consortium and expects to sign the final deal next year.


JOIN A WINNING TEAM right here in northwest indiana We have been covering Northwest Indiana for over 100 years and were still growing. We are, by far, the main source of news, information and advertising in the Region and are looking for great people to join out team. Whether youre just starting out or looking for a place to step up,TheTimes has opportunities you need to explore. PAGE DESIGNER TheTimes Media Co., located 20 miles from downtown Chicago, is looking for highly motivated, creative page designers who can bring a new dimension to our brand of local newspapers and magazines. As our design center has expanded, so has our drive to find designers with innovative newspaper and magazine design and illustration skills. Our energetic design staff is working hard to change the perception of designers as merely visual people. We work with the belief that good content drives readership, and we push our staff to be content editors. If you possess the heart of a journalist and an innovative mind, we want you to join our close-knit, talented design team. Our ideal candidates will have experience in design at a newspaper or magazine, understand the fast-paced, newsroom environment, have the ability to manage several tasks simultaneously, and are experienced in information and content design. Candidates also must display a strong instinct for problem solving, a sense of urgency, and a passion for news. Experience with InDesign and Photoshop is preferred. In this position you must be willing to work a varied schedule with night hours. TheTimes Media Co. is one of Lee Enterprises 46 daily newspapers. Lee also publishes 300 weekly newspapers, shoppers and classified and specialty publications. In addition, Lee provides a wide variety of associated online services. EOE Call Center Representative (Part-time 30-39 hrs/wk) We have immediate openings for experienced Customer Service Representatives (CSRs), for our call center operations atTheTimes in our Munster & Crown Point, Indiana locations.TheTimes of Northwest Indiana is part of Lee Enterprises which is a leading provider of local newspapers, information and advertising in primarily midsize markets, with 46 daily newspapers and a joint interest in two others, along with rapidly growing digital products and nearly 300 specialty publications in 21 states which includesTheTimes of Northwest Indiana. Our call center agents are the backbone of our business. When customers call us, our CSRs answer the phone, make connections, answer questions, solve problems, and get people happily on their way as quickly as possible. As a Lee Enterprise Call Center Customer Service Representative, youll handle heavy call volumes daily in our fast paced call center, while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. When you join Lee Enterprises, you will enjoy:  Instantly becoming part of our family of diverse people focused on making really good customer experiences happen.  Ways to earn more every single month through bonus and incentives.  A clear path and the tools you need to progress with more responsibilities and promotions  Earning paid time off which includes vacation, sick and personal days, along with paid holidays  Eligibility for Medical, Dental, Vision, & Life Insurance, along with a 401K Match! Bring it.Youre qualified if you:  Love to help people  Have experience performing comfortably in a fast paced, deadline oriented environment.  Are proficient with MS Excel, Word & Outlook & have the ability to navigate thru various software programs efficiently  Above average typing skills (50+wpm)  Have sales ability and experience with inbound/ outbound customer service Learn more or apply online at www.nwi.com/timesjobs. EOE Distribution Assistant  Temporary/Seasonal TheTimes is currently looking for part-time Distribution Assistants to work in one of our Distribution Centers, working an average of 35 hours per week.These positions are temporary, seasonal positions that may continue through January 2018. Our centers are located in Valparaiso, Merrillville, and Hammond, IN. Work hours are in the early morning and include holidays and weekends. The work consists of:  opening and closing the distribution center  stacking bundles on tables  assisting with the delivery of newspaper routes  other duties assigned by the District Manager Candidates must have a valid drivers license and good driving record, as well as a reliable vehicle and proof of auto insurance. Mileage reimbursement is available if asked to use your vehicle for work purposes. Other requirements include basic computer skills and the ability to lift up to 40 pounds. The starting hourly wage for this position is $12.00/hour. This is an excellent entry level position for a company with a history of promoting from within. TheTimes is a drug-free workplace and all candidates offered a position will be asked to complete a pre-employment drug screen. Interested candidates should apply online at www.nwi.com/timesjobs. Equal Opportunity Employer Multi-Media Sales Executive  Outside Sales Base Salary PLUS Un-capped Commissions Join a winning team! We reach more consumers than we ever have before through NWI.com and our award winning print products. Consumer in NW Indiana rely onTheTimes and NWI.com for local news and information that no one else can deliver. Over 75% of all adults in NW Indiana connect with us through our on-line and print products on a weekly basis. We deliver 1.6M unique visitors per month with over 12.6M page views and 8.2M mobile sessions per month! We are looking for Multi-Media Sales professionals who possess the drive and passion to help local business owners increase market share through real time solutions and products that deliver superior results! We offer:  Competitive base salary  Un-capped commissions  On-going incentives and spiffs  Mobile phone  Mileage reimbursement  Benefits including: 401K (matching too), medical, dental, vision, paid vacation and personal time, life insurance, flexible spending accounts  Laptop and tools to be successful Our Multi-Media Sales professional manage an existing base of wellestablished accounts along with the responsibility and ability to hunt and develop new accounts... we want HUNTERS. Plus work alongside a team of sales professionals in a competitive market serving 6 counties! You Are:  Competitive  Driven to be the best  Results and goals oriented  Mentally tough  Possess a strong work ethic  Tech savvy  High character  Want to grow a great career  Willing to have fun! Ideal candidates possess:  3 + years of sales experience with a demonstrated track record of success  Prospecting & cold calling experience in successfully opening new accounts  Excellent communication skills  Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high transactional sales environment  College degree preferred  Valid drivers license, good driving record and access to a reliable vehicle Were willing to train the right candidate! If you bring the heart and desire to succeed we will equip you with the tools and knowledge to be successful! Drug Free Workplace Equal Opportunity Employer APPLY AT NWI.COM/TIMESJOBS
Wayne Puchkors, director of Hammond Community Theatres You Better Watch Out, undertook no small amount of searching for the right show for their annual holiday production.

We wanted to do something that no one had seen before, he said. I read about 15 different plays and this one had a lot of humor and a nice message at the end, and I thought well, thats what our audiences need for Christmas.

Opening Friday and running through Dec. 17, Watch follows the heartwarming and humorous tales of a handful of staff and guests at the Willow Inn on Christmas Eve, a bed and breakfast in Wisconsin. They are kept indoors due to a torrential snowstorm.

Watch was penned by American playwright Dan Hodgins. He directed its debut performance, which was staged in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Puchkors described the humor in Watch as a cross between the classic comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show and the '90s hit Mad About You.

The thing I like about this particular play is that there arent any really nasty characters in it, he said. Theyre all lovable and redeemable. I think that that is going to be interesting and refreshing  I hope that (audiences) walk out feeling good about human nature and family.

Puchkors cast for Watch is made up of Mark Aken and Kristen Duncan as bed and breakfast hosts Tom and Jenny, respectively, Mike Johnson as Jennys father, Art, Brendon Hearne as the inns maintenance worker, Pat Pohrte as businessman Rudy, Christina Biancardi as Rudys partner, Marsha and Warren Lee Ellis as the peculiar Mr. Smith.

The cast is doing fine, Puchkors said. Theyre working hard on it and Im pleased with how theyre coming along."

Next up for Hammond Community Theatre is a production of Agatha Christies The Unexpected Guest, scheduled to open at Beatniks on Feb. 9.
When it comes to programming his annual holiday concert, Troy Webdell, maestro of the South Shore Orchestra, seeks to balance longtime staples with new additions each year.

There are, of course, pieces that we'll do the same from year to year so that the audience can expect a tradition from that, he said. But there's also new things that we like to add.

The annual Holiday Pops concert at Valparaisos Memorial Opera House will be presented Dec. 15. Webdell and South Shore Orchestra members have crafted a Christmas show that should appeal to a variety of musical tastes.

Kicking off with Leroy Anderson's "A Christmas Festival, which has become a tradition for the orchestra, this years show will include sing-a-longs and holiday-time favorites such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, O Come All Ye Faithful and Deck the Halls. Newer favorites, such as selections from Disneys 2013 smash Frozen, will also be brought to the stage.

New to the orchestras annual end-of-year show is a performance of The Fantastic Toyshop Ballet, which was penned by early 20th century Italian composer and violinist Ottorino Respighi.

South Shore Orchestra will also perform selections to coincide with its upcoming trip to China. Webdell and the orchestra are scheduled to leave for China Dec. 26 and perform more than a half dozen shows before returning home Jan. 8.

South Shore Orchestras 2017-18 China excursion marks its sixth in the organizations 12-plus year history.

I think the biggest highlight is interacting with Chinese musicians and the audience members, and proving that music is a universal language that everybody understands, Webdell said of the upcoming trip. It's a cultural exchange.

This year marks the third Holiday Pops concert South Shore Orchestra has performed at Memorial Opera House, which is its new home base.

Being at the opera house, I think, adds nostalgia to the holidays (for some audience members), Webdell said. Adding orchestral music to it makes it special, I think.
GARY  Gary school board President Rosie Washington has resigned her position on the board effective Dec. 31, leaving one year on her term.

"I do not do well just sitting somewhere and looking like I'm doing something and I'm not," she said Wednesday. "When I campaigned for this position, I promised the people of the 6th District certain things.

"I don't see any of us being effective. Everything is being dictated to us by the state. I just don't operate well under those circumstances. I'm not deserting the children of Gary. I feel like there are other ways I can help the children, but sitting on the school board is not one of them."

Washington's resignation follows that of Gary schools Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt, who said last week she would resign effective Feb. 2.

Gary School Board members have repeatedly expressed concern about their lack of power during meetings.

The Gary Community School Corp. and Muncie schools are the first two school districts to be taken over by the state due to amassing debt. Gary has more than $100 million in debt and is failing academically. Both school districts are under the authority of the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board.

Senate Enrolled Act 567 required DUAB to appoint an emergency manager. DUAB appointed longtime educator Peggy Hinckley, a Gary native who now lives in Schererville, as the emergency manager, along with MGT Consulting.

The law gives Hinckley near-total authority to implement academic and financial changes, negotiate contracts and run the Gary school district, subject only to review by a local advisory board and DUAB oversight.

Pruitt, along with the elected trustees of the Gary Community School Corp., have no official say in decisions made by the emergency manager. The law also limited the number of school board meetings to one monthly.

The process to replace Washington requires 6th District candidates to submit an application and the current board members would vote on a replacement.

DUAB Executive Director Courtney Schaafsma couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

Most other Gary school board members said they have no plans to resign.

Third-district representative Nellie Moore, who was elected in November 2006, said she is not considering resigning.

"My commitment is to fulfill my term of office," she said. "My desire is to turn this district around and do what is necessary for our children. My term ends Dec. 31, 2018, and if the Lord is willing, I plan to complete that assignment."

Moore, like Washington, is a retired Gary school teacher, having retired in July 2005.

"I am still hopeful the state will recognize the fact that public school districts in Indiana need additional support regarding the method in which schools are funded. The only remedy we presently have is going out for a referendum, and I don't think that should be the only remedy.

"We need to look at how public schools can function with the state's support of vouchers and charters. If you're going to have choice, you need to find a way to fund choice other than destroying public schools," Moore said.

School board members Robert Buggs and Norman Bailey said they have no intention of retiring. School board members Carlos Tolliver, James Piggee and Darling Pleasant could not be reached for comment.
CROWN POINT  James Lohnes, who is accused of strangling two women last year at their home in Calumet Township, remains institutionalized while doctors determine if he will be able to stand trial for murder.

Lohnes, 46, of Crown Point, has been under observation for the past three or four weeks at Logansport State Hospital, his defense attorney said at a court hearing Thursday.

Lohnes was determined earlier this year by court-appointed doctors to be mentally incompetent, and therefore unable to stand trial for the killings of Velia Taneff, 86, and her daughter, Lana Taneff, 63.

The mother and daughter were found strangled to death Jan. 17, 2016, at their property in the 2300 block of West 44th Avenue in Calumet Township, according to police.

Lohnes, an occasional handyman for the women, was arrested by Ohio State Police after he was discovered driving drunk in Velia Taneff's blue 2003 Cadillac near Montpelier, Ohio, police said.

Judge Samuel L. Cappas ordered July 7 that the defendant be held at a mental institution until such time he is determined to be competent.

A new court hearing for Lohnes is scheduled for Feb. 6.
EAST CHICAGO  A 58-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to 106 months in prison as part of a major federal investigation into a drug trafficking operation.

Jeffrey Sims, of East Chicago, was first arrested in December 2016 and pleaded guilty in June to possession with intent to distribute crack and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, court records show.

As part of his sentencing terms, Sims must also serve two years of supervised release.

According to documents filed in this case, the DEA intercepted texts and calls between Sims and his supplier during an investigation into a drug trafficking organization operating out of a social club in the East Chicago's Calumet neighborhood, court records show.

Police on Sept. 23, 2016, intercepted text messages between Sims and another individual purportedly showing Sims agreeing to buy $450 worth of drugs, court records show.

Twice that day, police said they observed Sims at the person's residence in the 4900 block of Melville Avenue, and text messages and phone calls between the two suggest drug deals had occurred, court records show.

Utilizing code language, Sims would order crack cocaine from his supplier on a regular basis for delivery to customers on behalf of the drug trafficking organization, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Indiana.

Law enforcement approached Sims and arrested him after finding him in possession of crack cocaine and a firearm.

This case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration in cooperation with the East Chicago Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Thomas McGrath.
CROWN POINT  A 24-year-old man is accused in a robbery at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond.

Khiran A. Perkins, of Merrillville, was charged Wednesday in Lake Criminal Court with robbery resulting in bodily injury, a level 3 felony.

An undergraduate student at the university told campus police he agreed to meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday with someone he met through social media to sell his cellphone, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The student and suspect met in the vestibule area of Porter Hall, the records state, and the suspect pretended to use the phone to call a third person.

The student became suspicious and attempted to take his phone back, at which time the suspect pushed him, which caused him to hit his back on a door handle, the affidavit states.

The suspect fled on foot, but police determined the social media account used to contact the student was registered to Perkins, the affidavit states.

The student identified Perkins as the suspect by looking at his photograph, according to the affidavit.

Perkins was previously convicted for felony theft in March and misdemeanor resisting law enforcement in October 2015.

Perkins is not afforded bail in the case, according to court records.
Police have arrested two juveniles in connection with Friday mornings pursuit that led to the cancellation of all Crown Point schools.

The incident began when police responded to a suspicious vehicle and possible shots fired in the 100 block of 128th Place, according to authorities.

Police said the caller reported he saw the two subjects getting into a vehicle and was able to provide a description of the car. The caller also said they thought they heard gunshots from the same area.

Police said arriving officers spotted the car and as they attempted to conduct a traffic stop, it began to flee. The vehicle eventually crashed into a utility pole and rolled over, coming to rest on its roof. Both occupants managed to exit the car and flee from the scene, prompting a ground and air search by multiple law enforcement agencies.

During the investigation, the vehicle was found to have been stolen out of Valparaiso, according to police. Additionally, officers recovered a handgun which was reported stolen out of Orland Park, Illinois.

Police said one of the suspects was located still in the area and the other was found at his residence. Both had suffered injuries from the crash and were taken for medical treatment.

According to police, the juveniles are both 17. One is a resident of Valparaiso with the other from Hammond.

Each was housed at the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center on charges of auto theft and resisting law enforcement, police said.

Crown Point detectives are working with the Orland Park Police Department, who will handle the stolen handgun charge. Detectives are continuing with their investigation into any crimes the suspects may have committed in Crown Point, they said.

This was an incident that could have very easily turned out much worse for our officers and citizens who happen to be in this area," Crown Point Police Chief Pete Land said. "The Police Department was in constant communication with the school corporation to ensure the safety of the kids as they were preparing to go to school.

Crown Point police were assisted by the Lake County Sheriffs Department and the Indiana State Police.
Singapore Airlines changed the route of its Seoul-Los Angeles flights in July due to concerns over North Korean missiles, Singapore's Channel NewsAsia reported Tuesday.

An official at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said, "It appears that Singapore Airlines is flying over Busan and the east coast of Japan rather than flying through Gangwon Province and the East Sea."

North Korea often lobs its missiles into the East Sea.

When the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile late last month, pilots from two Korean Air passenger planes said they spotted the engine blasts and reported the sighting to the Japanese aviation authorities.

Any missile launches must be reported to the International Civil Aviation Organization to assure the safety of civilian aircraft. North Korea joined the ICAO in 1977, but the last time it warned the organization of an impending missile launch was in February 2016.
CROWN POINT  A 17-year-old boy is accused of raping a male teenager last year at a home in Hobart.

Joshua L. Holtz-Debold was charged Wednesday in Lake Criminal Court with rape, a level 3 felony. Holtz-Debold is charged as an adult for the offense.

The male, also 17, told police Holtz-Debold raped him Sept. 28, 2016, while they were wrestling in a bedroom, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The teen said it had happened on multiple occasions while adults weren't home, the affidavit states.

Holtz-Debold is currently incarcerated at a juvenile facility in Pierceton, Indiana, according to court records.

The courts have issued a detainer ordering he be transported to Lake County, records state. His surety bond is $30,000.
INDIANAPOLIS  A second long-serving state representative will not seek re-election next year and instead will run for a local government office.

State Rep. Kathy Richardson, R-Noblesville, announced this week that she's giving up the Indiana House seat she's held since 1992, representing Indianapolis' northeast suburbs, for a shot at becoming Hamilton County clerk.

Richardson is known by county clerks, election officials and many others throughout the state for her work as the former longtime chairwoman of the House Elections Committee.

Since 2000, she also has presided over private meetings of House Republicans, and was the first woman elected caucus chair of either political party in state history.

Her departure echoes that of state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, who began his legislative career in 1982.

Brown last month said he will not seek another term at the Statehouse next year so he can run for a seat on the Lake County Council.
INDIANAPOLIS  Gov. Eric Holcomb joined 20 other Republican state chief executives Thursday calling on Republican congressional leaders to approve "meaningful tax reform legislation and send it to the president's desk."

In a letter sent to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the governors claim numerous state examples confirm the notion that reducing tax rates produces an economic boom.

"We've proven in our states that you can cut taxes, create jobs and generate budget surpluses all at the same time. If it can work in our states, it can work for America," Holcomb and the other governors said.

Their letter does not address specific components of the tax legislation that federal lawmakers are hoping to merge and adopt by the end of the year, following approval of separate proposals by the House on Nov. 16 and the Senate on Dec. 2.

It also ignores the fact that portions of the Senate measure were illegibly handwritten in the margins of the legislation mere hours before U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., voted in favor of the plan, and U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., voted no.

Instead, Holcomb and the other GOP governors, excluding Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, who did not sign the letter, advocate for general streamlining of the tax code and reducing corporate tax rates to drive economic expansion.

"We need a tax plan that will allow entrepreneurs and small businesses more room to improve, invest and expand, propelling economic growth and creating more family-supporting careers, all while freeing up Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money," they write.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation projects the Senate-approved tax plan will grow the economy by 0.8 percent per year over the next 10 years, while producing $1 trillion in budget deficits during the same period.

That revenue shortfall would come on top of the expected $10 trillion growth between 2018 and 2027 in the national debt, which currently totals more than $20 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Editor's note: 3 Floyds Brewpub's appearance on Travel Channel's "Food Paradise" was scheduled to air tonight. Check your TV listing for times. Below is The Times story when the TV crew filmed at the brewpub.

MUNSTER  If you've ever stepped foot into 3 Floyds, chances are it was because of its reputation as a world-renowned craft beer company. But have you ever stopped by  just to sample its eclectic food menu?

Probably not. And Travel Channels Food Paradise" is hoping to change that.

The popular brewery and pub at 9750 Parkway in Munster closed its doors for lunch Wednesday so a nine-person production team for the major television network could have free reign during filming for an upcoming culinary documentary TV episode.

The bar/restaurant later reopened its doors that same afternoon and put a callout on social media letting patrons know they can stop by if (they) want to try to get on TV.

Yes, they do great beer, but they also put out great food, said Justin Harvey, a Los Angeles-based field producer with O'Malley Productions that contracts with the Travel Channel to produce "Food Paradise. These chefs here are everything we look for. This is big, fun food worth talking about. Class Midwest dishes with a twist.

When the episode airs in winter 2018, it will highlight two mouthwatering recipes whipped up by 3 Floyds head chef Pat Niebling and chef de cuisine Scout Hughes, producers said.

Region natives Hughes and Niebling are known for rolling out new food menu items each season featuring local ingredients and crafted with specialty beers.

An eclectic menu

Its fantastic to be recognized for 3 Floyds food menu, Hughes said. Much like its craft beer, the brewpubs food menu is always rotating based, in part, on the locally sourced produce that's available, he said.

The eclectic menu's current lineup includes a salt-baked pork belly sandwich, a ribeye paired with cinnamon Himalayan rice and a scotch egg dish that stars pork sausage, dijonnaise, cornichon and mustard seed relish.

Theres the Mac and Cheese dish with sharp cheddar bechamel and housemade lardons, and chimichurri toasted panko. Another menu item is the dry coffee rub wings  brined and smoked, with pickled watermelon and celery leaves.

Its awesome, Hughes said. The pub has sort of always been in the shadow of beer and 3 Floyds reputation as a beer company, but we also want to step out of that shadow and stand out as a standalone restaurant.

The Travel Channel likes to keep secret the dishes they plan to feature so the episode is fresh and exciting for television viewers, Harvey said.

Not long after 3 Floyds reopened its door Wednesday, nearly every seat in the brewpub was filled with people anxious to be on TV. As people entered the building, they were asked by production crew members to sign release forms  just in case they wind up in the final edit.

'I was nervous at first'

Cousins Julie Dobrinski, 30, and Emily McEowen, 31, of Homewood, Illinois, were among the lucky few asked to take part in an on-camera interview as they sampled two of 3 Floyds menu items.

Dobrinkski and McEowen sat at a center table near the bar as field producer Harvey walked them through a number of takes, the camera rolling.

I was nervous at first because no typically talks in front of a camera like that, but they helped prompt us and they gave us some ground rules, she said.

Travel Channels Food Paradise show is far from scripted and the production crews primary job is to document, Harvey said.

Before the doors reopened Wednesday, Harvey and Niebling were in the back kitchen going through a few takes highlighting one of the two featured dishes.

Niebling joined the 3 Floyds staff seven years ago before working his way up from line cook to executive chef. He said he is excited to see the episode air.

These guys were really professional, putting everything together. Me and Scout are not really camera guys, but they were super cool and theyll make us look good," he said.
MICHIGAN CITY  Two women were taken to a hospital early Thursday after their SUV slid into a utility pole and careened into the path of a westbound South Shore Line commuter train, officials said.

The crash about 4:50 a.m. damaged and delayed westbound Train 104 and caused delays on another westbound train and one eastbound train, said John Parsons, spokesman for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.

The driver of a 2005 Jeep Liberty spun out while trying to negotiate a curve while heading east on 11th Street toward Cedar Street, said Kevin Urbanczyk, chief of operations for Michigan City police.

"It was snowing, and the road conditions were icy at the time of the crash," he said.

The right front side of the Jeep hit a NIPSCO pole at the intersection of East 11th Street and Cedar Street before spinning back onto the road and into the path of the train, which runs down the middle of East 11th Street, police said.

The train, which was moving slowly, hit the Jeep. The Jeep's 30-year-old driver and 28-year-old passenger, both of Michigan City, were taken to Franciscan Health Michigan City hospital for complaints of pain to the head and neck, police said.

No injuries were reported among the four passengers and four employees on the South Shore train, which consisted of six cars, police said.

The Jeep was totaled and towed from the scene. The NIPSCO pole was damaged but did not need to be replaced, police said.

The front of Train 104 was damaged in the crash, and it had to be returned to a maintenance facility at Carroll Avenue, Parsons said. After repairs were made, Train 104 continued west about an hour behind schedule. The crash also delayed westbound Train 6 by about a half hour, he said.

Train 104 arrived late to Chicago and headed back east as Train 205, which also was delayed.
LaPorte County Sheriff John Boyd has announced the most recent graduate of the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. Deputy Dan Kesling graduated from the police academy last month.

Kesling was a member of the 38th session of the academy which was 15 weeks long with training that covered all facets of law enforcement including firearms, defensive tactics, emergency vehicle operations, criminal and traffic law. Kesling was recognized at the graduation ceremony for outstanding achievement after having achieved a perfect score on his criminal law test; he was the only member of his class to do so.

Kesling is a 2012 graduate of New Prairie High School and attended IUSB. He is a military veteran having served three years of active duty in the United States Army. He is currently a member of the Indiana National Guard.

We are very pleased with Deputy Keslings success at the police academy and welcome him among the ranks of our departments patrol division," Boyd said.
MICHIGAN CITY  A paramedic turned policeman got the chance to see and talk to the girl whose life he saved from a dog attack with a smile on her face after five surgeries.

Winter Morgan, 12, broke down reliving the experience but quickly perked up after her mother, Ruth Hall, stepped in to shed light on the nightmare and express a whole lot of gratitude.

''Officer Combs is an angel in disguise,'' Hall said.

Scott Combs was given a lifesaving award during a Wednesday news conference along with a pat on the back and firm handshake by Michigan City Police Chief Mark Swistek.

Winter was presented with a new bicycle and gift card as early Christmas gifts from the department.

She revealed her first ride on the light blue and purple bicycle will be to her grandfather's residence.

Winter almost bled to death Nov. 10 when she was attacked by a 140-pound bull mastiff at Dunewood Trailer Park along Ind. 212.

According to police, the dog belonged to a friend whose mobile home she walked to so they could wait for the school bus together.

The girl broke loose and ran inside her friend's home but the dog followed and resumed the attack.

Combs was first to arrive.

He wrestled the dog off her and locked it inside a room then started applying towels given to him by Winter's friend to slow the profuse bleeding from the gaping wound on the victim's left bicep, police said.

Only the girl's face and left leg were not bitten.

Combs was an emergency medical technician with LaPorte County Emergency Medical Service prior to entering law enforcement several years ago.

''It's amazing. It's really awesome,'' said Combs on seeing Winter giggling and so full of energy.

The dog has been euthanized, said Swistek, who did not disclose the name of the owner because of the ongoing investigation.

He said criminal charges are possible.

Winter said she can't open a two liter bottle of pop right now but her mother said after a year or more of physical therapy she expects her daughter to regain full use of her left arm.

''She's a very strong little girl. She does what she needs to do,'' Hall said.
A semi driver died after running off the road into a ditch Wednesday on eastbound Interstate 94 near Michigan City, the Porter County coroner said.

Howard Pruitt, 66, of Joliet, may have suffered a medical condition before the crash, Indiana State Police said.

Pruitt stopped at a weigh station on eastbound I-94 before running off the highway about five miles down the road, just west of the U.S. 421 exit, a coroner's release said.

The red 2012 Freightliner semitrailer went into the south ditch and stopped. No other vehicles were involved in the crash about 1 p.m., officials said.

Pruitt had no visible injuries, but was unresponsive, police said. State troopers immediately began first aid, and Porter EMS continued the efforts.

Pruitt died while he was being taken to Porter Regional Hospital, the release said. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday, and toxicology results were pending.

The truck remained upright during the crash and sustained minor damage, police said.
PORTAGE  Two Chicago men were arrested Wednesday afternoon after they allegedly led police on a high-speed chase along the Indiana Toll Road from Portage to Hammond.

Marc Lewis, 20, and Anthony Harris, 24, are being charged with auto theft, resisting law enforcement, criminal recklessness, possession of marijuana, reckless driving and never receiving a driver's license.

The incident started about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday when police received a report that someone was attempting to break into a storage container behind Walmart, 6087 U.S. 6, according to a police report.

As the two fled, police said authorities spotted a Ford Fusion going north on Willowcreek Road. Police attempted to stop the car, but the driver ran the red light at Central Avenue and Willowcreek Road, hopped the curb in front of Burger King to avoid police, drove through the grass and then back onto Willowcreek Road at a high rate of speed.

The chase then began as the car turned onto the Indiana Toll Road, striking the toll gate, breaking it and then going westbound, police said.

Portage officers, joined by Indiana State Police, continued the pursuit, which topped 100 mph, according to police.

State police deployed stop sticks at the 7-mile marker, which punctured the two front tires. A Portage officer performed a maneuver that caused the stolen car to stop along the guardrail in the Hammond area, police said.

Police approached the car with guns drawn. Neither man would open the locked doors, according to the report, and officers had to break out the rear window to gain entry. Both men were in the back seat. They were removed and taken into custody.

The car was reported stolen from Evergreen Park, Illinois.

Both men were transported to Porter County Jail. Harris was taken to a local hospital for cuts to his face from the glass and was medically cleared.
The European Union has placed Korea among 17 countries on its blacklist of offshore tax havens alongside such far-flung island nations as Samoa and African banana republics like Namibia. Korea is the only major economy on that shameful list.

The EU defines offshore tax havens as countries that charge unusually low or no taxes and are hotbeds of corporate tax evasion and hidden assets. But Korea is a member of the G20 and the world's seventh-largest trading country. This is simply mind-boggling.

The EU's decision does not meet global standards and lacks common sense. It accuses Korea of "potentially harmful preferential tax regimes," but its criteria for the decision are arbitrary and do not conform with those used by the OECD and other international organizations. None of it makes any sense.

Korea has tax treaties with all 28 members of the EU as well as the U.S. and Japan. It has fully opened its economy to foreign investors and is the only country to have free trade agreements with the world's top 15 economies, including the EU. It is considered a model country when it comes to free trade, yet it has been blacklisted as an offshore tax haven. No company or wealthy investor would turn to Korea to evade taxes or hide assets.

What was the government doing when the EU reached this absurd decision? The EU has been working on the blacklist since September last year and asked 92 countries to submit information. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance claims the EU did not give it enough time to rebut the accusations, but surely it should have been more active. Korea has around 30 government officials at EU headquarters in Brussels. What have they been doing? Why is taxpayers' money being spent to keep them there? What on earth were they thinking?


Juvenile charges are being pursued against 10 Valparaiso middle school students accused of breaking into three local elementary schools undergoing renovations and causing $10,000 in damages, according to police.

The break-ins occurred over several months, beginning with the discovery of vandalism Sept. 10 at Memorial Elementary School, 1052 Park Ave., according to Valparaiso police Sgt. Mike Grennes.

Damage was discovered Nov. 20 at Central Elementary School, 305 Franklin St., and Nov. 27 at Northview Elementary School, 257 Northview Drive, he said.

Police believe the students gained at least some of their access to the buildings through the more vulnerable, boarded-up areas of construction, Grennes said. Access to one site was gained through a screen window.

The students are accused of spraying a fire extinguisher in the hallway at Memorial and throwing other items around the building, he said.

When police arrived to investigate at Central, they found windows and glass blocks broken or damaged in the construction area, Grennes said.

Northview had several items damaged within the school and construction areas, he said. Items damaged included duct work, copper piping and metal doors.

It is believed a combination of the same 10 students played a role in each of the three break-ins, Grennes said. All the students are local.

Charges being pursued against the students range from trespassing to criminal mischief, he said.

"It is highly unusual for our kids to do this," Valparaiso Community Schools Superintendent Ric Frataccia said.

Frataccia would not say what in-house actions, if any, the schools are taking against the students.

He did say the contractors carrying out the renovation work have been asked to do a better job at "buttoning up" their work sites when they leave.
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Community colleges provide a gateway to higher learning and a variety of educational opportunities serving todays diverse student body. Not far from Northwest Indiana, Joliet, Illinois, is home to our nations first public community college. Launched in 1901 and originally housed inside Joliets main high school, Joliet Junior College provided a two-year option beyond 12th grade  placing higher education within improved reach of individuals by anchoring it in ones community.

Envisioned by University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper, the junior college model cast a wider net affording more people opportunity to pursue higher education. Initially, junior colleges offered only liberal arts studies, mirroring the first two years of university undergraduate coursework.

By 1947, the Truman Commission Report  Higher Education for American Democracy  proved instrumental in reshaping post-secondary education by aligning it with Americas role as leader in the post-World War II era.

The reports recommendations included establishing a network of public, two-year, community-based colleges to best serve local higher education and workforce training needs.

Connected through the shared goals of access and service, junior colleges  now referred to as community colleges  assured open admissions and affordable tuition as a common mission. Two decades later, the Higher Education Act of 1965 supported wide scale construction of public colleges and affordable ways for students to fund their education. Today, community colleges educate more than half of all American undergraduates.

Fully accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, Ivy Tech Community College is the United States largest singularly accredited comprehensive community college. Ivy Tech has 19 campuses and 26 learning sites serving 75 Indiana communities. Indianas largest institution of higher education, Ivy Tech remains highly responsive to local needs and workforce development.

The modern workforce is comprised of professionals with technical know-how, interpersonal skills and an ability to critically think in a work environment no longer resembling dingy factories of the past.

Two-thirds of new jobs require education beyond high school. Needed postsecondary education is increasingly in the form of an industry-recognized credential or certificate dovetailing into a two-year degree.

Credit earned at Ivy Tech also can be transferred to partnering four-year colleges in our Region and across Indiana, saving a student upward of $10,000.

Internship opportunities provide students with valuable workplace experience by the time interns finish their degrees. Ivy Tech also works with skilled trades apprenticeship programs and enhances Hoosiers job skills to meet local employment and industry needs.

Northwest Indiana has three Ivy Tech campuses. The Lake County campus consists of facilities in Gary, East Chicago and Crown Point. The Valparaiso campus is centered in Porter County. The Michigan City campus and its LaPorte site serve LaPorte County. Innovative initiatives, such as the one-year Associate Accelerated Program (ASAP), expedite completion of concentrations including elementary education teacher certification  starting June 2018 at the Michigan City campus.

The Steelworker of the Future degree is offered through Lake County Campus, and the Industrial Technology Maintenance Training program is available at Valparaiso campus.

With a rich community-centered history, we invite you to experience Ivy Tech Community College.
Northwest Indiana leaders and this editorial board have regularly praised our Region's unprecedented work to unify behind commuter rail expansion.

Now a voice from the highest executive authority in state government can be added to the chorus.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb visited with The Times Editorial Board last week, and he had plenty of good things to say about our Region.

His glowing comments are seated in fact.

As our Region awaits decisions on federal funding for expanding South Shore Line commuter rail from Hammond to Dyer and double-tracking lines between Gary and Michigan City, Holcomb heaped on praise.

"We need to align ourselves regionally in other parts of the state. You guys have a head start on that," Holcomb said of Northwest Indiana's ability to unite often-fragmented municipalities, state and federal leaders behind the rail project.

Holcomb noted the benefits of an upgraded commuter rail service in drawing potential new residents to the state from the greater Chicago area.

"When you factor in the low cost of living and the high quality of life, your dollar goes a lot further here than in Chicago," Holcomb told us. "I want to attract that talent to live on this side and improve their quality of life."

But just as important as the new economy the train expansion would offer is the teamwork our Region has shown in making its pitch, Holcomb said.

That's high praise from a Republican governor of a Region most often politically aligned with his opposition party.

It's a clear reminder that party lines shouldn't matter when considering a greater good.

We all should be proud of the governor's assessment as we await word on federal funding for the project. And our leaders should be thinking of ways to share this model of regional partnership with all corners of the state.
Farewell to the London taxis

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2017-12-07 16:04

The London cabs began to hit the streets of Shanghai in October 2014. [Photo/Kankanews.com]

Time to farewell to the London cabs launched in Shanghai three years ago, as the manufacturing and sales of the car model (Geely Englon TX4) have already been discontinued.



Back in 2014, Shanghai launched 200 London-like taxis to provide an accessible way for wheelchair users and other disabled passengers. Officially known as the Geely Englon TX4, the cabs clad in an eye-catching gilded paint scheme were produced domestically by China's Geely Automotive and operated by Qiangsheng Taxi. Compared to regular cabs, the London taxis are more spacious and user-friendly for the disabled.

The London cabs are spacious and user-friendly for the disabled. [Photo/Kankanews.com]

However, as time went by, drivers found the vehicles to be oil-consuming. Worse still, supplies of the repair parts were insufficient as the production was discontinued in September. According to a staff member of Qiangsheng Taxi, the cost of Geely Englon TX4s repair parts is four times more than that of a Nissan or Touran.

Aside from the costly repair, each London taxi has served passengers for three years, covering a mileage of 300,000 kilometers. Therefore, it is time for them to be replaced. Next, Qiangsheng Taxi will roll out two brand-new taxi models (one regular and the other premium) as a replacement for the old London cabs.


Kampala based socialite Bryan White has donated items worth millions of shillings to patients of Mityana hospital.

The donated items included mosquito nets, sugar, toilet paper, milk, salt, soda and cooking oil among others.

Some of the items donated to the patients

The donation was done under his Bryan White Foundation that he says is all about supporting those that are not position to help themselves.

While his focus has been on unemployed youths, last week he and his team did a charity drive to Mityana hospital and donated items who's amount the team did not reveal, saying it was all about helping people and not bragging about numbers.

Bryan White who has been living in Italy came into the limelight for his philanthropy and will to dish out money.
Shanghai has over 3.5 million volunteers

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2017-12-07 16:08

Back in 2010, the hardworking and dedicated volunteers serving at the Expo 2010 Shanghai impressed visitors from all over the world. Apart from them, there are many volunteers in Shanghai who come from all walks of life. Shanghai has seen a surge of volunteers over the past few years.



As the latest statistics reveal, the number of registered volunteers in Shanghai has exceeded 3.5 million, with over 40% of them aged between 20 and 50. According to a report, voluntary services in Shanghai cover more than 22 fields, including senior care, exhibition guide, career development, patrol and traffic control, and are benefiting more and more people in need.



Li Jin, a corporate executive, is one of the volunteers. As a director in an automobile company who drives a BMW to work, he is regarded as a golden-collar worker. However, in his spare time, instead of hanging out with friends, he serves as a volunteer. Last year, upon hearing that the Yuz Museum was recruiting voluntary workers, he enlisted as a volunteer and worked there for four months. Every day, with little time to have supper, he had to drive from work to the museum and offered help to visitors from 6:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. As he is good at speaking English and is well-informed about art, he has received high acclaim from the visitors. Each volunteer come here on their own. Though the work is tiring, we never complain, said Li Jin.

The volunteer team Li Jin works for was founded three years ago. So far, it has grown into a big organization with 31 squads. Some of its members are famous people in Shanghai, including TV hosts and celebrated Peking opera actors.


Weve all got our physical flaws and learn to live with them. Well, some dont, but thats what plastic surgery is for. There is one person in Zimbabwe who not only relishes his ugliness but also get awards for it. William Masvinu from Epworth has been crowned Zimbabwes Mr Ugly 2017 and couldnt be prouder! Its his fourth title, and hes fully convinced his claim is undisputed.

William was happy with the recognition in general but especially pleased to wrest back the title he lost to another contestant last year. Winning ugly contests apparently requires preparation, just as beauty pageants, and the 43-year-old unemployed man will now be prepping to wow the world in the Mr Ugly World competition set to take place next year in South Africa.

William was quite rattled to lose to Maison Sere in 2015, protesting that his rival had nothing going for him except missing teeth. The 2016 edition was canceled, so William had to wait for two years to regain his title.

Last time, complacency cost me a lot, but this time I came well prepared for the contest and I am happy I have reclaimed my trophy, William said. No one can dispute that I am the ugliest person in Zimbabwe. I now want to take my ugliness outside the country. If there is Mr Ugly World, I am confident I will bring the crown to Zimbabwe.

The audience, however, was anything but happy for William. According to local media reports, people suggested a rally to protest against his monopoly of the title. The crowd also proposed that he should be prevented from entering future contents so that others can get a shot at winning.

So what does the title of Zimbabwes Ugliest Man get you, apart from bragging rights? This year, William pocketed $500 and took home a cow. Runner-up Fanuel Musekiwa collected $200, while previous winner Maison Sere received $100.

If you believe the contenders, being ugly may be a natural thing but winning contests takes more than just showing up. Fanuel is determined to put in the work.

I will be working hard on my looks and the way I present myself, come next year I am going to take over the crown, he vowed.



As we know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so some may not find the contestants all that ugly. Its all subjective, but its good to know that sometimes physical flaws can actually provide a confidence boost. A win is a win, right?


Ari Mittleman

Keystone Strategic Advisors has inked a $450K one-year pact with the governor of Eastern Libya, which is under the control of renegade General Khalifa Haftar and based in Benghazi.

Headed by Ari Mittleman, a former aide to Pennsylvanias Democratic Senator Bob Casey, Keystone is to provide strategic political and communication counsel to Gov. Al Mair.

That advice will include developing policy and foreign policy goals and assistance in creating a democratic and multi-ethnic Libya.

Vladimir Petrovic, Serbias former ambassador to the US, handles Keystone push, which began Dec. 1. He also worked as political organizer and campaign consultant for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama's Senate run.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Libyan prime minister Fayez al Sarraj on Dec. 1, and reaffirmed US support for Libya's Government of National Accord, which is based in Tripoli.

He thanked the PM for his governments support in fighting ISIS and conveyed Americas commitment to supporting the Libya peoples efforts to build a unified and prosperous future.


Andrew Essex

Traditional advertising is becoming obsolete, inexorably headed down the path of the blacksmith and typewriter businesses, according to Andrew Essex, former CEO of creative ad agency Droga5, but the need to buy/sell things and to find out whats new remains as strong as ever.

In his dandy, little, thought-provoking book, The End of Advertising, Essex rails against lazy, superfluous and stupid ads that bombard and mostly irritate people 24/7.

To him, ads must add value to peoples lives. Advertising must compete with primary content, not secondary intrusion. It must become the thing, not the thing that sells things, wrote Essex.

Marketers spend $200B a year for advertising in the US, and estimate that about half of that amount doesnt work.

What if a good chuck of that money was used for infrastructure projects?

Essex views Americas roads, bridges, interstates, railroad stations and airports as the new whitespace for creative directors and advertising copywriters.

Consider the impending shutdown of New York Citys L subway line, the main artery in and out of Brooklyns Williamsburg hipster haven.

The New York Times predicted the 18-month shutdown of the L to fix damage from superstorm Sandy will be among the largest disruption in transit system history.

What if JPMorgan Chase launched a branded ferry service to carry the millennials of Williamsburg, a demographic much desired and extremely elusive to marketers?

Or if Hewlett Packard Enterprise renamed the crumbling Brooklyn Queens Expressway as the HPE and ran it from the cloud?

Ford Motor, which claims to be in the mobility business, could make its case by adopting NYC Mayor Bill de Blasios plan to build a 16-mile trolley line connecting Brooklyn with Queens.

And think of the buckets of wasted money that marketers shell out for their own ego-satisfying ads that run during Super Bowls. Re-hab housing, fix schools instead.

The infrastructure program would face plenty of pushback from governmental bureaucrats and advocacy groups.

But the current status quo isnt working. Why not applaud advertisers looking to add value to peoples lives rather than annoy them? wrote Essex

He lauds Citibank for doing the right thing, bankrolling the Citi Bike bike-share program in NYC.

Every one of the 6,000 bikes painted blue with the banks signature Pantone 286C gradient is an ad for the parent company.

Citibank coughed up a budget of $41M, rather than squandering that eight-figure investment on useless pollution, they built something additive that actually reduces our carbon footprint.

When a corporate behemoth expands its communications strategy from traditional commercials (which, in all fairness, Citibank still makes) to providing bikes for six thousand New Yorkers to pedal across the Brooklyn Bridge, the time-space continuum has changed forever, wrote Essex.

Marketers should hop on a Citi Bike and follow Citibanks lead.
Former South Carolina Cop Sentenced To Prison For Death Of Walter Scott Elijah C. Watson Elijah Watson serves as Okayplayer's News & Culture Editor. When

The former South Carolina police officer who fatally shot unarmed black man Walter Scott has been sentenced to 19 to 24 years in prison.

READ: Former South Carolina Cop To Plead Guilty In Walter Scotts Death

U.S. District Judge David Norton ruled today that Michael Slager committed second-degree murder and obstruction of justice, according to a report from ABC News. Prior to this, Slager had pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges as a part of a deal where South Carolina prosecutors dropped a pending murder charge against him.

The defendant willfully used deadly force even though it was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances, the plea agreement stated. The defendant acknowledges that during the time he used deadly force, he knew that the use of deadly force was unnecessary and excessive, and therefore unreasonable under the circumstances.

Initially, Circuit Judge Clifton Newman had declared a mistrial in Slagers shooting of Scott, with the jury of 12 people unable to come to a unanimous decision on the case.

The trial lasted for five weeks, in which the jury deliberated over whether to convict the former North Charleston police officer that pulled over Scott during a traffic stop and ultimately shot him five times in the back as he tried to run away.

One of the 12 jurors withheld their vote to convict Slager, leading to the mistrial.

The incident between Slager and Scoot took place on April 4, 2015, while Slager was an officer with the North Charleston Police Department. A witness video that captured the altercation showed the exact moment the former cop fired at Scott as he ran away during a traffic stop.

Source: abcnews.com
While I wasnt paying attention, Ika Ramen got hot.

Owner Jose Dionicio has, since I last visited in early 2016, refined and improved his ramen and added much to the menu. And thats not the only change for the better hes made in Benson.

Dionicio closed Taita, his sushi-focused restaurant, and moved Ika to that location, at 6109 Maple St. Hes reinvented the former Ika space, 6324 Maple St., as Taqueria Chingon. And hes hired barman Alex Diimig, formerly of Laka Lono and V. Mertz, to remodel the basement below Ika as Kaitei, an underground sake and cocktail bar, open since October.

Its enough change that I knew I had to revisit, and Im glad I did.

When a restaurant is packed at 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday, like it was when I visited the first night, you know something is up. And indeed, it was. We waited about 10 minutes for two spots at the bar. By the time we were seated, groups in winter coats and hats waited outside for a seat.

Id taken a look at the specials menu earlier  its updated daily on Facebook  and knew I wanted to try the squash broth ramen, an autumnal take on the shops chicken ramen with squash added to the chicken broth and served with noodles, fried chicken, green onion and a marinated, soft boiled egg.

The menu boasts lots of add-ons for the bowls, and I added tofu to my order. We also got the classic tonkotsu ramen, with pork belly, egg and noodles in a rich, pork-based broth.

Both were stellar. The pork ramen broth had incredible depth and great spice. The squash and chicken broth had a creamy finish and a lighter texture. Proteins, including the rich, crisp-tender belly, meaty dark chicken with plenty of spice, and mild tofu all pleased.

The regular special bowls, Dionicio said, are a collaborative effort. The one I tried was inspired by a marriage of squash bisque and chicken ramen. Dionicio said the kitchen is always working on new menu items, and a full menu change will be released soon.

Problems I encountered during my review a year ago  broth too greasy, too salty or under-seasoned  are gone. And Dionicio has done away with an upcharge on protein; now, bowls come with chicken, pork or other meats already calculated into the price, and if a diner wants even more, its available for an additional few bucks. All the add-ins, plus definitions of some of the menus trickier words, are displayed on a big chalkboard on the west wall of the dining room.

Dionicio raised the prices from around $8 a bowl to between $11 and $13, and I think its more than fair.

The shishito peppers I tried in 2016 are still on the menu, and theyre better than ever  hot and just spicy, tossed with a kicky vinaigrette.

Though you might have reached your limit on Brussels sprouts, you simply must try the spicy charred version at Ika. Spicy-sweet, super crisp leaves filled part of the bowl next to whole crisp-tender sprouts drizzled with a salty sauce. They renewed my excitement for the vegetable, and Ive been thinking about them since that last dinner. Theyre that good.

Also good: the steamed buns. We tried the chicken version, which came with tender meat, a fluffy bun and slather of sweet sauce.

The house kimchi ramen is no joke when it comes to spice  the menu says the broth is spicy, and it really is  and the house kimchi is great, salty and briny with plenty of pickled kick. Also in the bowl: soft egg, roasted pork, green onions.

If youre in the mood for something lighter, I can highly recommend the donburi bowls. I tried the chirashi don, which came with finely cut pieces of raw bluefin tuna, salmon and hamachi. Each fish had its own distinct flavor and sat amid lightly sauced white rice, a hunk of wasabi and tamago. I finished it to the last grain. Sushi is in Dionicios wheelhouse, and this bowl is no exception.

Dionicio told me that since hes moved Ika down the street, sales have tripled. He had to let go of his first Omaha restaurant, Taita, for that to happen.

For me to move forward, I had to let go of one of them, he said. But lovers of Taita neednt despair; he says theres hope for the seafood and sushi spot to open elsewhere in the future.

Ika is more laid back and less expensive than Taita was. For a location smack in the heart of Benson, it seems an especially smart fit.

We were doing business for over a year in the old Ika location and people didnt even know about us, he said. Weve pushed into doing better food and weve seen a lot of new faces.

Dionicio has found the right atmospheric balance at the new Ika. Its funky and rough around the edges in a good way. Anime cartoons play on a television in one corner. Rap music is the soundtrack. Bright murals cover the walls. A petite open kitchen fills one corner, and diners can sit at a small table, at a long bar on the east side or at a tiny ramen bar with a few seats with a view of the kitchen. If a restaurant were made to fit the Benson vibe, Ika is it.

Ika has a wide selection of sake now, and a few cocktails, including a whiskey sour made with yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit. On the second visit, I saved my cocktail indulgence for a visit to Kaitei, where bartender Diimig is serving a diverse list of sake, craft beer and Japanese-inspired drinks.

The word Kaitei has a few definitions in Japanese, and Diimig said hes pulling inspiration from two of those: one is under the sea, a good fit considering part of Ikas menu; the other is change and revision, a nod to Kaiteis changing drink menu.

I want it to be approachable but also always shifting and evolving, he said.

To that end, hell consistently change the graffiti art that lines the walls, and the cocktail menu, too. For now, the list is short and a work in progress, though all of what we tried was creative and tasty. Diimig plans for it to be seasonal in nature.

Dionicio has long wanted to open a bar in the basement of his space, and Diimig said that personality-wise, its a good fit.

I have rarely, if ever, changed my mind so much between reviews as I have with Ika. Everything we experienced, top to bottom, is great. Dionicio has always been a creative chef; with the newest iteration of Ika, hes found his sweet spot in Benson.

Ika Ramen and Izakaya

Address: 6109 Maple St.

Phone: 402-558-2482

Hours: Monday noon to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday noon to 3 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Hits: Across the board, Ika has improved: Ramen is better, with more depth. Appetizers, including steam buns and charred Brussels sprouts, among others, are excellent. Donburi, which is rice with different toppings, is a lighter entree alternative.

Misses: The cocktails on the restaurant menu arent as tasty as the ones served in the basement.

Drinks: Ika recently opened a basement bar, Kaitei; save your cocktail experience for after dinner.

Prices: Donburi  rice bowls  and ramen are around $11. Appetizers and small plates are between $5 and $9.

Other things to know: The menu also features raw fish and skewers. Ika is popular, and you might encounter a wait. There is noise in the restaurant, but it doesnt impede conversation.
COUNCIL BLUFFS  An electrical fire at St. Albert Catholic School resulted in one man being injured and activities being canceled Wednesday night.

School officials announced Wednesday night that classes today and Friday were canceled.

School President David Schweitzer said routine maintenance on electrical equipment was being done when the fire began.

The injured electrical worker was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The extent of his injuries is unknown.
WASHINGTON - In a powerful demonstration of support for his accusers, Senate Democrats pushed Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to the brink of resignation Wednesday over mounting allegations that he sexually harassed women, raising the possibility he will become the second lawmaker to step aside over accusations of inappropriate behavior.

In a movement led by the Senate's Democratic women, a surge of members said that Franken should leave Capitol Hill roughly three weeks after he was first accused of inappropriate behavior. In total, more than a half-dozen women have accused Franken of unwanted advances or touching. He has denied intentional wrongdoing and has apologized.

"Enough is enough," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told reporters at a news conference Wednesday after Politico published another allegation against Franken. "We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go."

Franken's office said he would make an announcement about his political future on Thursday. No other details were provided.

The sudden cascade of opposition came the day after Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., ended his 52-year career in Congress over accusations he behaved inappropriately toward female aides. As the nation grapples with allegations of persistent sexual harassment by powerful men, the resignation of not just one but possibly two prominent Democratic lawmakers would suggest tolerance for lawmakers accused of harassment is waning on Capitol Hill, which has been criticized as soft on perpetrators compared with the private sector.

Senate Democrats of all stripes called on Franken to resign. They included Claire McCaskill, Mo., Heidi Heitkamp, N.D., Joe Donnelly, Ind., and Sherrod Brown, Ohio, who face uphill battles for reelection next year in states won in 2016 by President Donald Trump. They included Senate leaders such as Whip Richard Durbin, ll., and Assistant Leader Patty Murray, Wash., the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the upper chamber. And they included liberals such as Elizabeth Warren, Mass., and Kamala Harris, Calif.

No Senate Democrat defied the consensus that Franken should step aside, and at least one predicted Franken would resign Thursday.

"It is the right thing to do given this series of serious allegations," tweeted Ron Wyden, Ore.

Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, also joined the calls for Franken's ouster. "Everyone must share the responsibility of building a culture of trust and respect for women in every industry and workplace, and that includes our party," he wrote on Twitter.

The developments reached as far as the hotly contested Senate race in Alabama. In a sign of the potency of sexual harassment as a political issue, Democrat Doug Jones also called on Franken to resign. Jones is running against Republican Roy Moore, who faces multiple accusations of pursuing romantic relationships with teenage women when he was in his 30s, including one who said he touched her sexually when she was 14.

"Senator Franken should resign. This is not a partisan issue. Roy Moore should stop changing his story, stop calling the women he abused as young girls liars and own up to what he's done," Jones said in a statement.

The calls for Franken's resignation came after a woman told Politico he tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, before his election to the Senate.

The woman, a former Democratic congressional aide, said Franken pursued her as she left the station. When he tried to kiss her, he told her, "It's my right as an entertainer," she said. Politico withheld the woman's name when it wrote about her allegations on Wednesday.

Another allegation surfaced later in the day. Writing in the Atlantic, journalist and former congressional staffer Tina Dupuy claimed Franken touched her inappropriately while posing for a photo with her in early 2009.

"He immediately put his hand on my waist, grabbing a handful of flesh. I froze. Then he squeezed. At least twice," she wrote.

Until Wednesday, Franken had managed to avoid any direct calls to resign from Democratic colleagues in the Senate. His swift fall from grace, coupled with Conyers's resignation, could place new pressure on other accused members to step aside.

One, Rep. Ruben Kihuen, D-Nev., apologized Friday after he was accused of making unwanted advances toward one of his campaign aides in an article published by BuzzFeed. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have called on him to resign.

Another lawmaker, Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, settled a sexual harassment complaint against his former communications director in 2014 for $84,000 in public funds. He denies wrongdoing, and said this week he would reimburse taxpayers for the amount.

Allegations of sexual harassment and rumors about settlements have consumed Capitol Hill for more than a month. Both the Senate and House will now require members and staff to undergo anti-harassment training, and lawmakers are considering whether to change the system for filing complaints.

Franken has faced a steady trickle of new allegations since Nov. 17, when his first accuser, LeeAnn Tweeden, said he "forcibly kissed" her and grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping on a USO tour to the Middle East.

From the moment Tweeden shared her account, Democratic senators and their aides began debating whether Franken ought to step aside. The conversations only intensified as more women came forward with allegations.

The "tipping point," came early Wednesday when Politico published its account, according to several aides who were granted anonymity to describe private talks.

Within minutes of the article appearing online, senators began conferring among themselves on the phone, via email, text and in person, the aides said. Some senators already seated at committee hearings were tracked down and alerted to what was coming.

"People were at the edge of their patience with this. They'd had enough. One more allegation was going to be it," said one senior aide.

Gillibrand first called for Franken's resignation in an op-ed posted to Facebook. It came online just minutes before she was set to headline a news conference on a bill to help sexual harassment victims in the private sector by voiding forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts.

In response to questions from reporters, Gillibrand argued the Senate Ethics Committee is not equipped to deliver "the kind of accountability the American people are searching for," though Franken has promised to cooperate with its investigation into his behavior.

"I think it would be better for the country for him to offer that clear message that he values women, that we value women and that this kind of behavior is not acceptable," she said.

By the time the news conference ended, half-a-dozen female Democrats had called for Franken to resign.

Murray said the flood of statements wasn't coordinated but that Franken's future had been the subject of private talks for several days.

The Washington Democrat, who was elected in the wake of the 1991 sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, said 2017 is another turning point for women.

"This is a historic moment, where women who have been silenced for too long are standing up and speaking out. And I think it's time for our culture to change, and that includes elected officials," she told reporters.

If Franken resigns, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, D, would pick his replacement, who would serve until a November 2018 special election to fill the final two years of Franken's term.

Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor Party has a large and largely female bench of potential replacements. Three women - State Rep. Tina Liebling, State Rep. Erin Murphy, and State Auditor Rebecca Otto - are seeking the party's 2018 gubernatorial nomination, and have been speculated about as possible senators should Franken be forced from office, as has Attorney General Lori Swanson. Otto called for Franken to resign in November, after the first accusations of sexual harassment were published, while other leading Minnesota politicians have reserved judgment.

Franken's fellow Minnesotan in the Senate, Amy Klobuchar, failed on Wednesday to address the question of whether he should resign.

"Senator Klobuchar personally spoke with Senator Franken this morning," Klobuchar state director Ben Hill said in statement. "As has been reported, he will be making an announcement tomorrow morning."
LINCOLN  Foster care numbers in Nebraska have climbed for a second straight year, according to a new state report.

The Foster Care Review Offices latest annual report shows that, between July 2016 and this June, 5.1 percent more children across the state wound up in out-of-home care through the child welfare system.

Some areas of the state saw much steeper increases  22.5 percent in the west, 12 percent in the southeast  while numbers held steady in the Omaha area.

It is striking, and it is concerning, said Julie Rogers, Nebraskas inspector general of child welfare.

She called for interested parties to get together and look for ways to reverse the trend, noting that it could result from more children entering foster care or children staying longer in foster care.

Officials with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services attributed the increase to parental substance abuse.

HHS spokesman Russ Reno said child welfare officials are responding by reviewing the array of services available to children and families and working with state behavioral health officials to address substance abuse.

But Katherine Bass, research director for the review office, which is an independent state agency, said she doesnt have answers about why more children are in foster care or why trends differ across the state.

Thats hard to pinpoint, she said. I dont think were in a place where we can say what caused it.

The recent growth followed a year in which Nebraska children in out-of-home care, including foster homes, group homes and other settings, increased by 7 percent.

Foster care numbers had been declining previously, as child welfare officials worked to keep abused and neglected children safe without the trauma of being taken from their homes.

Nebraska historically has removed children at one of the highest rates in the nation.

In June this year, the child welfare system had 4,123 children in foster care on any given day.

For the same month, the juvenile probation system had another 1,014 youths in out-of-home care. The numbers of foster youths in the probation system decreased 0.9 percent over the year.

In total, the report showed that 7,923 Nebraska children spent at least a day in out-of-home care through the child welfare and probation systems during the year that ended June 30.

Bass said 63 percent of foster children whose child welfare cases were reviewed by the office in the last year had been placed in state care because of parental neglect.

She said neglect often reflects other problems, such as parental mental health issues, substance abuse, mental deficits, domestic violence or poverty.

Substance abuse was the next most common reason for removal  showing up in 56 percent of the reviewed childrens cases  and methamphetamine was the most commonly abused drug.

There may be multiple reasons for removal.

As in previous years, review office officials raised concerns that 16 percent of foster children in the child welfare system have been through four or more out-of-home placements.

Among them are 6.9 percent of the children age 5 and younger. Nearly 34 percent of teenagers have been through that many placements.

National research shows that children who experience four or more changes in placement are likely to suffer permanent damage from the instability and trauma of broken attachments.

Bass raised concerns that 40 percent of children who changed foster homes also changed schools, which adds to their instability.

Caseworker turnover produces another source of instability. Among the cases reviewed, 16.8 percent of children had five or more caseworkers while in their latest episode of out-of-home care. An additional 36.8 percent had three or four caseworkers.

Among other findings:

 African-American and Native American children are overrepresented among out-of-home youths in the child welfare and probation systems. African-Americans account for 6.2 percent of the states child population but 15.4 percent of foster children in child welfare, while Native Americans account for 2.3 percent of children in the state but 5.5 percent of foster children.

 A significant proportion of foster children in the child welfare system (42 percent of those reviewed) have been professionally diagnosed with mental health- or trauma-related conditions. The report said finding needed services can be difficult, especially in rural parts of Nebraska. Among probation youths in out-of-home care, the proportion was even higher (81 percent of those reviewed).

 Almost all (96 percent) of cases reviewed had court-ordered plans with specific services and tasks identified, which Bass said was a big improvement over the 87 percent last year.

 In about 600 cases, children could have quickly left foster care by returning to their parents or having an adoption or guardianship finalized if the child welfare system had been meeting their needs. In the other 83 percent of cases, the reviews concluded that out-of-home care was still needed.
WASHINGTON  Omaha attorney Steve Graszs path to the federal bench looks clear.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-9 along party lines Thursday to advance Graszs nomination to join the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

He still must be confirmed by the full Senate, but that appears likely. A procedural vote is scheduled for Monday evening.

In supporting Grasz, Republicans on the committee dismissed the American Bar Associations not qualified rating of Grasz  a rating they view as the product of liberal bias within the organization.

The ABAs not qualified rating of Mr. Grasz appears nothing more than a hit job on an exceptionally well-qualified nominee, simply because the nominee is pro-life and conservative, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee chairman, said before the vote.

Democrats on the committee complained generally about President Donald Trumps judicial nominations and the fast pace of approvals.

On Grasz, they pointed to the bar associations poor rating of him based on confidential interviews with his Nebraska colleagues. They indicated concerns over whether he could set aside his conservative ideology and rule impartially.

The panels top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, noted that the bar association rating of Grasz was unanimous, which is rare. There was one abstention.

She said his record in Nebraska, including his time as the states deputy attorney general, fuels concerns about his impartiality. A specific example she cited was an advisory opinion he wrote that referred to the moral bankruptcy which is the legacy of Roe v. Wade.

Based on these factors, I share the concerns that Mr. Grasz will be unable to detach himself from his deeply held social agenda and political loyalty, Feinstein said.

Feinstein also referred to a 2015 complaint Grasz filed accusing Vince Powers of improperly undermining an applicant for a Nebraska Supreme Court vacancy.

Powers, who has denied the accusations, was then chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party and a member of the commission reviewing applicants for the vacancy.

The ABA previously suggested that Grasz used confidential material in that complaint, an action that would be contrary to Nebraska law.

In supplemental letters released Thursday, the ABA said that Graszs actions were injudicious but that it had not concluded they were illegal. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson has said Grasz did not break the law.

Grasz has said his filing of the complaint was an attempt to rectify what he saw as an improper political manipulation.

The committees approval of Grasz was welcomed by Sens. Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse, both Nebraska Republicans, who jointly recommended Grasz for the position. They have criticized the ABA and defended Grasz throughout the confirmation process.

Sasse, a member of the Judiciary Committee, praised Grasz during a Senate floor speech following Thursdays vote.

Sasse noted that Grasz has the backing of Democrats such as Deb Gilg, who served as U.S. attorney for Nebraska under President Barack Obama.

I hope that when his nomination comes to the floor of the Senate, we will take to heart all of the support that he has across the political spectrum and from well-respected lawyers across our state, Sasse said.

Fischer also praised Graszs ethics, credentials and bipartisan support.

I hope Steves nomination will swiftly move to the Senate floor for a final vote so he can put his skills to work for the American people.
A Nebraska state law that establishes a legal buffer zone for protests near churches, mortuaries and cemeteries during funerals strikes an appropriate balance between rights and needs.

A 2011 revision of the law to expand the buffer zone still respects the need of family members and friends to grieve the loss of a loved one without having funeral services disrupted by protesters hurling reprehensible language about the deceased. And it does so without meaningfully restricting the right to free speech, which must be protected.

Protests by members of Westboro Baptist Church at military funerals in Nebraska and elsewhere prompted the Legislature to craft the original law in 2006. The 2011 amendment expanded the buffer zone to 500 feet from 300 feet, a reasonable distance.

During their protests, members of the Kansas-based church wave signs and spout slogans with vile messages about sexual preference, other religious beliefs and fallen Americans. Under the First Amendment, such demonstrations cant be banned, but they can regulated.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that it was reasonable for the State of Nebraska to limit the time and location of funeral picketing, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused last week to consider the churchs challenge. The appeals court ruled that banning protests within 500 feet of a funeral service from one hour before the rites to two hours after was not an unreasonable means for the state to protect mourners vulnerable physical and emotional conditions.

As Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said, Nebraskas law strikes the appropriate balance between First Amendment free speech rights and the rights of grieving families to bury their loved ones in peace.

The Legislature did an impressive amount of homework to craft a law that would withstand scrutiny. The legal outcome shows the value of that legwork.
Throughout her career, the late Frances Ryan was a trailblazer. She achieved many firsts  including being named the first female editor-in-chief of the Marquette Law Review and the first female faculty member at Creighton School of Law.

But the professor is best remembered for her work recruiting, mentoring and advocating for minority law students.

Ryans dedication to minority students is perhaps the most visible today through a scholarship fund for minority students in her name.

Born in 1920 as the oldest of seven children, Frances Ryan grew up on a series of family farms in northeastern Nebraska. Ryan was no stranger to hard work or personal discipline before she came to Creighton in 1973 as the School of Laws first female professor. She had graduated first in her class from Briar Cliff College and Marquette Law School, taught high school mathematics, and received a masters degree in taxation from the University of Michigan.

These varied experiences are what led her to become a champion for diversity, former law professor and longtime Ryan friend and colleague Barbara Green mused in a reflection published in Creighton Law Review after Ryan died in 1998. On the farm, Ryan experienced that hard work and talent do not inevitably lead to success, Green wrote, and Ryan encountered discrimination firsthand after law school when she had difficulty finding employment and was mistaken for a secretary at meetings.

Affirmations of Welcome

In the mid-1970s, law schools across the country took a variety of approaches to address affirmative action, as a result of the Baake v. University of California decision, and increase diversity on campuses.

Former School of Law Dean Lawrence Raful wrote in a 1999 edition of Creighton Law Review that Frances Ryan understood, better than anyone I ever met, that affirmative action meant some sort of action by the school  that was more than simply a willingness to do business with all.  To Frances Ryan, affirmative action meant going out into the world and affirmatively proclaiming, You are welcome here! Please come and join us!

Before retiring in the early 1990s, Ryan served as an advisor to the Black Law Students Association, coordinator of the Graduate and Professional Opportunities Program and chair of the Minority Affairs Committee, in addition to hosting picnics at her home for students and their families.

By following Ryans example of recruiting and mentoring minority students, the Creighton School of Law has continued to increase its diversity over the decades. In the entering class of 2017, 36 percent of students are women and 26 percent are minorities.

Read profiles of Ryan Scholarship recipients here.

Creighton University offers a top-ranked education in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition. Read more about the university, and connect with Creighton on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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A. Morrie Craig

A Benton County judge has ordered Oregon State University to halt termination proceedings against a longtime professor accused of sexual harassment and bullying.

The order signed late Tuesday by Judge Matthew Donohue arrives days before the university's trustees were set to hear A. Morrie Craig's last-resort appeal to save his job. Donohue previously ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to review Craig's firing.

The court case is perhaps the first-of-its-kind in Oregon's new era of independently-operated public universities. Donohue's decision to take the case could pave a new avenue for people to challenge Oregon universities in court.

Oregon State must now turn over its records in the case so that the court can consider whether or not Craig's firing was appropriate.

"Both of us, the university and I, are in uncharted waters," said Dan Armstrong, an Albany attorney who represents Craig.

Oregon State President Ed Ray fired Craig on Oct. 30, acting on the recommendation of a faculty committee that held a two-day hearing into the allegations against the professor. Craig, 74, teaches toxicology courses and gained tenure in 1982.

Steve Clark, an Oregon State spokesman, said the university would comply with the court orders, adding that the school still had not received copies of them as of midday Wednesday.

Clark said the university is not aware of any prior court orders that have stayed the university's employment processes.

The court's about-face centers on the question of jurisdiction.

Craig petitioned the Benton County Circuit Court on Nov. 6 for a "writ of review" of his firing. Writs of review typically challenge decisions made by cities and counties, not state agencies.

Challenges of state actions often land at the Oregon Court of Appeals, not the circuit court system. Writs of review are considered a swifter process.

Donohue initially concluded that Oregon State University was a state agency and denied Craig's petition. But Armstrong, Craig's attorney, wrote a letter to the judge Tuesday asking him to reconsider. The attorney pointed to 2015 law that said public universities with their own boards are not state agencies.

All of Oregon's public universities now have their own boards. The Legislature began to grant them autonomy from a central statewide board in 2013.

"The question is, 'Where do these universities fit now?'" said C. Robert Steringer, a Portland attorney who represents public institutions in legal matters.

If Craig's writ of review case continues to move forward, other circuit courts may follow in its footsteps. Eventually, the Oregon Court of Appeals or the Oregon Supreme Court may weigh in on whether circuit courts indeed have jurisdiction, said Portland attorney Michael Rose.

"It's not precedent, but it certainly is the beginning of a potential new approach," Rose said.

Rose represented a Portland State student who challenged his expulsion, a case heard by the Court of Appeals.

To be considered under Oregon's writ of review laws rather than by the Court of Appeals, people must show that a lower quasi-judicial body -- such as a local zoning board -- appears to have improperly reached a decision.

Craig's petition contends that Oregon State fits that description. He says the university did not follow procedure, made a finding that wasn't supported by evidence and, ultimately, came to an unconstitutional conclusion.

As one example, Craig points to the university's sweeping redaction of records, which blocked him from evaluating the evidence for himself. The court petition includes several pages of email messages that the university turned over; large passages are concealed by large black boxes labeled "Privileged."

Craig also argues that the university's general counsel played an outsized role in the faculty hearing by advising the four professors who were on committee, as well as writing both the charges and findings against him.

If Craig's assertions are true, then the process that led to his firing may not have been fair, said Craig Robson, a California attorney who has studied higher-education employment law.

Robson, who worked for two years in the general counsel's office at Texas A&M University, said the general counsel ordinarily acts on behalf of the administration and presents its case. The faculty committee hearing the case is supposed to decide it impartially, without direct influence from the general counsel.

What little is known about the allegations against Craig comes from his court filings. The heavily redacted emails that he submitted in support of his petition provide an incomplete timeline of the case.

One email says that a student's allegations of "inappropriate behavior" reached the president's office at least as long ago as February 2016, nearly two years before President Ray decided to fire Craig.

The professor sent two emails in fall 2016 saying the dean of the veterinary school asked him to attend training by the university's Equal Opportunity and Access office, which investigated the February 2016 allegations.

It's unclear whether he completed the training and what revived the university's investigation.

However, an email sent in April by the veterinary school dean refers to an anonymous complaint submitted by a second-year veterinary student in Craig's toxicology course.

The faculty committee recommended his firing Oct. 23.

He remains on campus pending the outcome of the civil court case, his attorney said.

-- Molly Young
The Associated Press

(Above: Instead of prescribing pain pills for low back pain, the American College of Physicians recommends that patients try exercise, psychological therapy, manipulation or acupuncture first.)

BY LYNNE TERRY

THE OREGONIAN | OREGONLIVE

If youre in pain, you want relief. But prescription painkillers, long a go-to fix, are now considered a last-resort option by pain specialists.

The reason? They cause addiction and can kill, with 15,000 fatalities in 2015 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Instead, pain specialists often rely on over-the-counter products as their initial treatment, including ibuprofen and topicals.

ibuprofen is widely used as it can reduce inflammation, but the tablets also can cause gastrointestinal bleeding over the long term.

Enter topicals, an increasingly popular solution.

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Lynne Terry/The Oregonian/OregonLive

(Above: Stores offer a wide range of pain relief products.)

Topicals come in many forms, such as creams, sprays, patches and gels. Some ease muscular, nerve or arthritic pain. And yes, some are a waste of money.

A good topical penetrates the skin but not all do, said Dr. Kim Mauer, medical director of Oregon Health & Science Universitys Comprehensive Pain Center.

There are a lot of them out there that dont work as well as others because they have molecules in them that dont cross the skin barrier very well, Mauer said.

Some topical products can stain clothes, so beware of that. Also, its important to follow the instructions, Mauer said. If used incorrectly, over-the-counter treatments can be toxic.

Not all products will be effective for everyone and some might not work at all, depending on the type of pain and the person.

Over-the-counter treatments are not as well-studied as prescription drugs but Maurer said theres good evidence that menthol and peppermint-based topicals are effective for pain relief. She said other effective remedies include lavender and lidocaine, an anesthetic that blocks nerve signals.

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Lynne Terry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

(Above: Some common lidocaine-containing brands include Salonpas, Icy Hot with lidocaine and Aspercreme.)

Lidocaine-based products, including patches, creams, and liquids, are available over the counter for treating muscular pain and joint issues. They produce a numbing effect but do not penetrate deep enough to combat disc pain and wont work for discrete nerve injuries, Mauer said.

Over-the-counter products usually contain 4 percent lidocaine. Higher concentrations require a prescription.

Some common brands include Salonpas, Icy Hot with lidocaine, Aspercreme and store brands. These products usually cost under $10.

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Lynne Terry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

(Above: Tiger Balm contains menthol.)

Topicals containing menthol, made synthetically or obtained from mint-based oils like peppermint, eucalyptus and corn mint, are often used for muscular soreness and pain, particularly after a strenuous workout. They can relieve minor aches and pains.

They stimulate cold receptors and cause blood vessels in the area to swell, which draws blood and allows other medications in the topical to do their work.

The overall sensation is cool and warm.

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Lynne Terry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

(Above: Biofreeze, Stopain and Tiger Balm contain menthol, which has been shown to ease aches and pains.)

Over-the-counter brands include Biofreeze, Ben Gay, Icy Hot and Stopain. They cost about $14 or less.

Theres also good evidence for lavender-based products for pain, Mauer said. You may have to hunt online for them or go to a specialty store.

Some topical pain products are expensive. One, Soothe Serum, which contains lavender, peppermint and arnica oils, among other things, costs $39. Basic Jane, which has menthol and peppermint, is $33.

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Lynne Terry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

(Above: Stores specializing in "natural" products, often sell homeopathic medication.)

Arnica, which comes from a plant in mountains in Europe and North America, has long been used to treat sore muscles, strains and arthritic pain. Studies have found that it's effective though some people can develop an allergic reaction.

Other natural products are also among pain-management options, including homeopathic products in which the main component is diluted. They are often taken orally.

But if none works, physicians can prescribe pills and topicals stronger than those available over the counter. Not all, however, are covered by insurance, Mauer said.

Its kind of random, she said.

She said pharmacists can help. And if the pain persists, see a health care provider.

-- Lynne Terry

lterry@oregonian.com

@LynnePDX
We've narrowed the field to 27 candidates for 2017 Person of the Year for your consideration. As you'll see, they aren't all heroes. Some of them are controversial figures; some were involved in tragic stories; some are longtime leaders and some you may never have heard of.



And one is not a person at all.



The finalists all have local or regional ties, and at one point or another captivated readers or encapsulated issues that proved to be defining moments for Oregon in 2017.



Read about the candidates below (listed in alphabetical order) to refresh your memory, then make your pick. You may vote once per day until the poll closes at 12:30 p.m. Dec. 13.

We will take the Top 10 vote-getters and have a second round of voting to pick a winner.

Note: We have limited voting to one a day per IP address for the entirety of the voting timeline.

Editor's note: We've gotten lots of feedback on 'person of the year'; here's our response

Oregon Newsmaker of the Year Top 10 candidates: Vote for a winner

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Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche

Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche were hailed nationally as heroes after they stood up to racism and died in a horrific attack on a Portland MAX train that shook the city and challenged its progressive image.

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Sam Blackman

He was arguably Oregon's most successful tech entrepreneur in a generation, building a video software company, Elemental Technologies, that sold in 2015 to Amazon for $296 million. Blackman had become an increasingly important voice on issues of education, transportation, housing and the environment before he died suddenly in August at 41.

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Niko Boskovic

Niko Boskovic, then 15, finished first in an essay contest sponsored by North Portland's Peninsula Odd Fellows Lodge. As the winner, he was given the opportunity to join 300 other winners from around the world for a trip to New York and the District of Columbia. He and his mom fought back against the national Odd Fellows after he was told he could not go on the trip because of his autism. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long

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Julia Brim-Edwards

Julia Brim-Edwards won a seat on the Portland school board in May, returning to district leadership after 12 years as both critic and supporter. She immediately began to leave her mark by demanding more transparency and more accountability from district leaders on crises such as lead in schools. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long

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Kate Brown

Kate Brown, a year into her first term as elected governor, has turned over many state agency leaders as she faces a challenge in the coming election year. Photo by Anna Marum

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Esther Choo

Esther Choo, a Portland emergency room doctor, set off a national conversation about race after she tweeted about her own experience with Portland patients refusing to be treated by her because of her race. Photo via OHSU/Kristyna Wentz-Graff

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Chloe Eudaly

Chloe Eudaly, newest commissioner for City of Portland, rode into office on a wave of populist fervor for tenants' rights but quickly hit the shoals in the limelight of city politics, exacerbated by her sometimes brittle response to critics. Photo by Beth Nakamura

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Micah Fletcher

Micah Fletcher, who survived the MAX attack after he intervened to help two girls, became a symbol of the fight against racist violence as he carried gruesome scars along his neck. Photo by Dave Killen

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Sara Gelser

Sara Gelser, Oregon state senator, spoke up about sexual harassment in the Capitol, setting off a firestorm of criticism around Sen. Jeff Kruse, whom she says more than a dozen women have complained about, and around what some complain was an insufficient response to the women's concerns. Photo by Denis C. Theriault

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Joey Gibson

Joey Gibson's Patriot Prayer protest group clashed with the left in high profile faceoffs in liberal enclaves on the West Coast, provoking controversy for his group and himself. Photo by Jim Ryan

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Guadalupe Guerrero

San Francisco transplant Guadalupe Guerrero succeeds Carole Smith as superintendent of Portland Public Schools and cleans house, hiring an entirely new leadership team in his attempt to clean up persistent academic and personnel problems. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long

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Jay

After Oregon health officials passed one of the nation's most progressive transgender healthcare policies, The Oregonian/OregonLive began looking for someone willing to tell the story of their quest for gender reassignment surgery. Jay, then 15, let a reporter and photographer follow his journey, educating Oregonians about the inner-most struggles and triumphs of trans teens. Photo by Beth Nakamura

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Greg McKelvey

Greg McKelvey became the face of PDX Resistance, a near-ubiquitous figure at protests throughout 2017 and on social media. Photo by Jim Ryan

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Jeff Merkley

Jeff Merkley found his voice as a strong and early critic of President Donald Trump, forging a higher national stature and prompting speculation about his ultimate ambitions. Photo by Dave Killen

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Katy Millard

Chef Katy Millard, the former world traveler who put down roots in a cozy outpost on the flanks of Mount Tabor, drew raves at Coquine, the restaurant rated No. 1 in Portland by The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2017. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long

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The New Millennial

Portland's economy may be the hottest it's ever been. The reason? Economists say it's because of smart, young people moving here from elsewhere. Portland is outpacing nearly the entire country in economic growth. Economists call it "astonishing," with household growth soaring and the number of high-wage jobs booming. Not coincidentally, Portland now has one of the most highly educated populations in the nation  a major switch from just 10 years ago. Photo by Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

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Nora the Polar Bear

The plucky star at the Oregon Zoo starred in a five-part series and documentary film by The Oregonian/OregonLive, putting a bow on the polar bear cub's popular tenure in Portland before she was shipped off to Salt Lake City. Photo by Dave Killen

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Oregon Firefighters

They took on treacherous terrain and daunting winds to fight the Eagle Creek fire with grit and muscle, battling for weeks to save Oregon's beloved gorge trails and monuments such as the Multnomah Falls Lodge. Photo courtesy of Taylor Sluman

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Danielle Outlaw

An outsider from Oakland, Danielle Outlaw becomes Portland's first African American woman police chief at a time when community and police relations are strained and the force faces a daunting list of federally mandated reforms. Photo by Stephanie Yao Long

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Fatemeh Reshad

Fatemeh Reshad, an Iranian baby once barred from entering the U.S. to receive heart surgery, became for some a symbol of President Donald Trump's sweeping travel ban. Portland surgeons at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital, successfully operated after politicians and others applied pressure. Fatemah is doing well since undergoing the operation, according to the office of Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore. Photo courtesy of Samad Taghizadeh

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Dennis Richardson

In a reliably blue state, Dennis Richardson became the first Republican to win election to his statewide office in 30 years. He has brought a novel, if controversial, approach to the job. Timothy J. Gonzalez/AP Photo

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Chanpone Sinlapasai

Chanpone Sinlapasai, a former refugee turned lawyer, spent long days and nights greeting refugees at the Portland airport in the days after the announcement of President Donald Trump's executive order limiting immigration. Photo by Beth Nakamura

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Sgt. Matt Swanson

Matt Swanson, a Clackamas County sheriff's sergeant, blew the whistle on a detective's failure to follow up on rape and sexual abuse allegations, bringing at least the possibility of justice for some victims before the statute of limitations runs out. He says in return he suffered retaliation.

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Brenda Tracy

Brenda Tracy, a rape survivor and advocate in Oregon on issues related to campus sexual assaults, rose to national stature on the subject, visiting universities and speaking to teams as well as putting pressure on the NCAA. She gained appointment to the NCAA's first ever Commission on Sexual Violence and helped shape its new policies.

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Judge Xiomara Torres

Xiomara Torres, who was born in El Salvador, represents an effort to change the largely homogenous face of the state's judiciary, rising to the bench from a difficult childhood as a foster child and an immigrant without legal status. She put herself through law school and became a U.S. citizen. Photo by Beth Nakamura

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Ted Wheeler

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler had a busy first year, starting with the city's flawed response to ice and snow. The year of protests, concerns about police tactics and increased attention to Portland's homelessness problem marked 2017. Photo by Jim Ryan

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Ron Wyden

Ron Wyden, Oregon's senior senator, used his influence in Congress to shape policy during the Trump administration and put pressure on White House officials to be accountable to ethics norms. Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

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<a href="https://polldaddy.com/poll/9886314/">2017 Oregon Person of the Year</a>

VOTE
I am a physician assistant working in family medicine at the Virginia Garcia Clinic, a nonprofit community health center that provides low-cost medical care for thousands of Oregonians. Many of our patients are insured by the Oregon Health Plan. They are refugees, immigrants, homeless Oregonians, people with mental illnesses, and other barriers to health care. About 20% of our patients have no health insurance.

I am writing to recommend that Oregonians vote "yes" for Measure 101. This measure continues funding for the Oregon Health Plan. It brings Oregon closer to ensuring that all Oregon residents will be covered by health insurance: 95% of Oregonians, and all children will have health insurance if Measure 101 passes.

As a physician assistant, I know firsthand how important the Oregon Health Plan is for the health of my patients. Patients who are insured by the OHP can afford their medical care, so they come to their medical appointments regularly. They can afford to take their medicines, and can afford to go to the specialists I refer them to.

I have personally seen many patients who stopped taking their medicines and stopped coming to the clinic because they lost their health insurance. Their diabetes, hypertension, and other illnesses rage out of control, and ravage their bodies. Eventually, many uninsured patients end up in the emergency departments of hospitals with life-threatening illnesses, costing both them and taxpayers unnecessarily. We cannot afford to go back to a time when only the wealthy could have quality health care.

Measure 101 saves everyone money: patients, hospitals, insurers, and Oregonians. If Measure 101 fails, Oregon could lose billions of dollars in federal matching funds, possibly up to $5 billion, and 1 in 4 Oregonians will be at risk of losing their medical coverage.

Please vote "yes" for Measure 101.

Jon Tardiff, North Plains
During the 2018 legislative session legislators have the chance to save lives.

They will be presented with a bill created to raise tobacco excise tax in Oregon. Research has shown that raising taxes does indeed decrease smoking rates. Raising taxes can seem unfair to those living on a fixed-income but it is the hope that raising taxes will encourage Oregonians to quit using tobacco products. In addition to providing a financial incentive, the tax increase would generate revenue that would be put towards cessation programs for Oregon residents.

As a public health official who studies tobacco use, I see the grave importance of raising the tobacco excise tax. In Oregon, each year we spend $1.4 billion on tobacco related medical expenditures and $1.1 billion in lost productivity due to premature tobacco-related deaths, according to the Oregon Health Authority. In addition, 7,000 Oregonians die from tobacco related illness each year. Raising taxes may cost more now but if it reduces smoking rates, it can save money in the bigger picture.

I urge everyone to express support to raise Oregon's tobacco excise tax. Seeing great support of this bill will hopefully sway legislators to vote in favor of a tax increase, leading Oregonians to a healthier tomorrow.

Jessica Barker, Corvallis
The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed the conviction of a former lawyer who was found guilty in 2002 of sexually touching a 10-year-old girl in the kitchen of a McMinnville home, in a case riddled with questionable evidence.

Although Bradley Christopher Holbrook has already served a 6 -year prison sentence, the reversal means he will no longer be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and carry that stigma. It also means that he wont be a convicted felon anymore and could reinstate his law license.

Thats if the state of Oregon decides against appealing Wednesday's ruling to the Oregon Supreme Court. And if the Yamhill County District Attorneys Office -- which originally prosecuted him -- doesnt decide to pursue a conviction again in a new trial.

Holbrook said he is elated by the Appeals Courts decision.

Im just trying to grasp it all, process it all, said Holbrook, 50. Its been a long battle.  I wish this on no one. It destroys every aspect of a persons life.

Holbrook has been appealing his first-degree sexual abuse conviction for 15 years.

In 1999, Holbrook was 32 when police arrested him after the 10-year-old girl told her mom and later child-abuse investigators that Holbrook had brushed up against her vaginal area and buttocks while she was clothed. There were no witnesses -- and it was the girl's account versus his.

Problems with her account, however, soon surfaced. In her only taped interview, she told investigators that it could have been an accident, that Holbrook probably didnt mean to and that she couldnt, like, feel it.

Holbrook was featured in a 2008 investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Read that story here.

After Holbrook was tried for the first time in 2001 and the jury deadlocked, four of the jurors were so troubled by the pursuit of charges against Holbrook that they filed sworn statements complaining about the prosecutor. They also did something virtually unheard of: They helped Holbrooks defense lawyer prepare for the second trial.

A second jury, however, convicted him in 2002 of touching an intimate part of the girl.

Wednesday, the Appeals Court ruled that defense attorney Kent Gubrud inadequately performed by failing to do enough to stop then-prosecutor Cal Tichenor from asking a specific line of questions to Holbrooks character witnesses. The questions were based on unconfirmed rumors, and cast an unsavory light on Holbrook.

Among Tichenors questions was whether the witnesses knew if Holbrook had ever carried on secret correspondence with a 14-year-old girl; come home to his wife at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. without explanation; or come home with hickeys on his stomach.

Holbrooks character witnesses said theyd heard none of that.

Gubrud did object to the prosecutors questions, but Yamhill County Circuit Judge Richard Barron allowed them. The Appeals Court found that Gubrud should have done more to prevent the prosecutors questions -- such as in a pre-trial hearing or during a hearing outside the presence of the jury.

The Appeals Court found that one of the prosecutors questions -- whether the witnesses knew Holbrook was suspected of having a relationship with a little girl and secretly writing her letters -- was unfairly prejudicial against Holbrook and tainted the trial.

During an investigation into Tichenor by the Oregon State Bar, Tichenor admitted that at least some of his questions were based on rumors. He also said he had tried to substantiate some of the information he had heard but he had been unable to. A bar trial panel found that Tichenor violated one of the rules of professional conduct for lawyers.

But Tichenor appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and won, after the high court ruled in 2006 that the bar had pursued Tichenor under the wrong disciplinary rule.

Matt McHenry, the Portland attorney who represented Holbrook on his latest appeal, said hes never in his career seen a defendants appeals go longer than Holbrooks, other than death-penalty appeals that can go on for decades.

Its vindication, McHenry said. Hes an innocent man and hes been trying to establish that for 15 years now.

At the time of Holbrook's arrest in the late 1990s, Holbrook lived in California, and had been in Oregon visiting his dying 10-year-old niece when he met her friend, who was also visiting.

After his conviction, he said he lost his civil law practice and law license after the California State Bar disbarred him.

Holbrook said it was frightening going into prison.

Its a horrific experience to get locked up, being deprived of your liberty, he said. I knew going in it was going to take everything I had to survive.

Holbrook, who had worked as a high-school teacher in California before coming a lawyer, said his prison time was made more palatable by spending his time helping other inmates learn to read or earn their GEDs. He said he also helped some inmates who had legitimate legal beefs.

Holbrook said once he was released, he worked a series of manual jobs, including helping people move and painting houses. Then he set up his own business working as a paralegal -- a job he could do even with his felony conviction, he said.

Holbrook now lives in Newberg. He said he is married and has two young children.

Wednesday's Appeals Court decision was made by judges Douglas Tookey, Roger DeHoog and Robyn Aoyagi. Read the opinion here.

-- Aimee Green
With little advance notice, former Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Friday left his job as director of the U.S. branch of a D.C.-based environmental think tank.

His departure from World Resources Institute comes one month after former mayoral staffer Cevero Gonzalez alleged that Adams made sexually inappropriate comments in the work place, drank heavily and behaved erratically. Willamette Week first reported Adams' departure.

Adams told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a text Wednesday that he had been thinking about leaving for a while. He said his decision to leave is not related to Gonzalez's allegations, which he called false.

Leaving the job now "is a natural inflection point in terms of the work flow," Adams said.

He provided an email he sent World Resources Institute Employees Monday. He touted what he called a "wonderful whirlwind three-years," during which the group created and grew the United States program that he headed.

Adams informed World Resources Institute management last week that he planned to leave, according to a statement by the institute's communications director, Michael Oko.

"Sam's departure is not due to sexual harassment nor allegations made by Cevero Gonzalez," Oko wrote.

Adams, 54, served as mayor of Portland from 2009 through 2012. Allegations that he was romantically and sexually involved with a teen while serving on the City Council went public just weeks into his term, diminishing his power. Then Oregon Attorney General John Kroger decided not to prosecute the former mayor after the teen gave contradicting statements, but Adams chose not to run for a second term.

Adams would not say what he plans to do next.

"I have some options," the former mayor wrote. "Stay tuned."

--Jessica Floum

503-221-8306
Portland's Office of Equity and Human Rights director is leaving, the mayor announced in a press release Thursday. Dante James's last day will be December 15.

James decided to leave the city so that he could pursue options in Denver, where his wife and son are, the director told The Oregonian/OregonLive Thursday. He turned in his notice at the end of last month.

"It was always my desire to lay the foundations and institutionalize this work, but Portland was never my next long-term home," James said.

Created in 2011, the equity office works with other city bureaus to create policies and best practices to break down systemic barriers for people of color and people with disabilities around the city and within the city's own workforce.

Former Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Amanda Fritz hired James in 2012.

James said his accomplishments at the city were not always quantifiable or policy-related. He's most proud, he said, of the dialogue that's been started.

"The conversation around racial equity and disability equity is now just a part of the norm," James said. "It's in the lexicon of how the city talks and evaluates everything that it does."

James will be the seventh bureau director to leave since Mayor Ted Wheeler took office in January. The mayor's office announced his departure in the same press release in which staffers disclosed that Portland Housing Bureau Director Kurt Creager is leaving.

"Dante's work was instrumental in creating the budget equity tool, and our plan to enhance equitable workforce development in city construction projects through the Community Equity and Inclusion Plan, which was unanimously adopted by (the) city council this year, among many accomplishments," Wheeler said in a statement. "His leadership at the helm of (the equity office) will be missed."

Koffi "Jean-Pierre" Dessou will serve as interim bureau director. Currently a program manager at the equity office, Dessou has worked for 23 years for public and private organizations, including for the U.S. Department of State at the American Embassy in Togo for 16 years.

"The office will be in good stead and continue to do its work under his leadership quite well," James said.

--Jessica Floum

503-221-8306
If Albuquerque, New Mexico Police Officer Ryan Holets had his way, this story would have never gone viral. CNN would not have learned that Holets while on duty had agreed to adopt a baby from a homeless drug addict about to shoot up heroin in broad daylight.

And CNN would have never had the chance to chronicle that encounter, drawing the attention of millions of people around the world to the story of how Holets's family grew by one on Oct. 12.

Holets, a religious man who values his privacy, didn't do it for the attention. He did it because he felt a calling from God. He knew it was the right thing to do.

"We didn't do this to have a story," Holets said in a phone interview Tuesday. "That is entirely not why we did it, but after talking to some close friends whom I trust, we realized this was a way to put a face on the drug problem and maybe encourage other people to adopt."

Ryan Holets says hello to his daughter, Hope, at the hospital. The Holetses have four other young children. Courtesy of Rebecca Holets.

On Sept. 23, Holets responded to a call about a possible theft from a convenience store in Albuquerque. By the time Holets and his recruit arrived at the scene, the suspect was no longer there, but Holets noticed some commotion on the grassy area behind the store.

Holets spotted a woman about to inject a needle into her companion's arm. The woman, 35-year-old Crystal Champ, was eight-months pregnant.

With his body camera on, Holets approached the couple and confronted them, "Why are you doing this stuff? It's going to ruin your baby. You're going to kill your baby."

Champ began to sob.

"How dare you judge me? You have no idea how hard this is," Champ told CNN about how she felt. "I know what a horrible person I am. I know what a horrible situation I'm in."

In an interview with the Post, Holets admitted that he initially judged Champ and her partner, Tom. But he said he soon learned how badly Champ longed for her child to go a good family. He realized Champ wanted someone to adopt her baby.

Holets offered to do just that.

"His entire being changed," Champ said to CNN. "He just became a human being instead of a police officer."

Holets took about six weeks off from work and he and his wife, Rebecca, were at the University of New Mexico Hospital when Champ gave birth to a baby girl, Hope, on Oct. 12 - one month earlier than her due date.

Doctors needed to give Hope treatments and medication to help her through withdrawals - "It was very difficult to watch," Holets said - but she was able to leave the hospital after a week and a half.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall incidence of such withdrawal, known as neo-natal abstinence syndrome, has increased almost 300 percent between 1999 and 2013 in the 28 states that the 2016 study included.

"She's gaining weight, eating well, sleeping well," Holets said of Hope. "We're just praying and hoping for the best for her. As far as development goes, we won't know the effects until she's older."

When Sgt. Jim Edison learned what Holets did, he was floored. In his 10 years as a police officer, he has seen many "heroic acts," but none like what Holets did, Edison said.

"This guy wasn't just taking a call, he was changing everybody's life around him," he said. "It's so unselfish. I was just humbled."

Edison wrote a memo nominating Holets for outstanding service for the city of Albuquerque, but felt that didn't suffice. It's his job to reward and encourage his men for doing the right thing and so Edison signed Holets up to do an interview for CNN's "Beyond the Call of Duty" series without telling Holets.

"Everyday he calls me to ask for forgiveness," Holets said with a chuckle. "And I keep assuring him that we're fine. We didn't quite realize it would get this response, and neither did he. . . .But we all realize it's a really good thing, and some really good things can come of it."

Holets, 27, was born and raised in Albuquerque and joined the city's police department six years ago. He and his wife already had four young children of their own before bringing Hope into their lives.

The couple had wanted to adopt a year or two down the road, and so when Holets approached his wife while on duty that day in September to break the news to her, Rebecca's jaw dropped.

"I was shocked and surprised but just super, super excited," she said.

One of Holets's conditions when he agreed to CNN's interview was that his superiors would not set up a GoFundMe page for the family. He instead urges those who want to offer support to find a local drug rehabilitation center or adoption organization and donate to them.

Holets has also been helping Champ and her partner find the right rehabilitation center and gave them a tablet computer so they can receive photos of Hope over email.

To Holets's knowledge, the pair, who have not responded to a Post interview request conducted through Holets, are not clean. It was his ultimate goal from the beginning to help them through rehab.

Holets is hopeful it will happen. It seems to him meant to be.

Shortly after Holets named his baby, Champ informed him of something he didn't know. Her middle name is Hope.

--The Washington Post
OJAI, Calif. -- The flames came from all sides, tearing across cliffs and roaring down mountains, burning through homes and engulfing cars. Entire communities were evacuated, forcing people to grab what they could and flee as raging wildfires spread rapidly across Southern California on Wednesday.

Yet even as they scrambled for shelter from the choking smoke and flames that shrouded idyllic communities in apocalyptic imagery, many worried about the dangers still to come. Officials warned that the wildfire threat could increase through the end of the week, with the same conditions fueling the fires forecast to intensify.

The wildfires in Ventura and Los Angeles counties have forced tens of thousands to vacate and have destroyed hundreds of structures, emptying homes, hospitals, schools and multimillion-dollar mansions alike. In Ventura County, the Thomas Fire burned across 90,000 acres on Wednesday evening, spreading through an area roughly the size of Orlando. Los Angeles County faced comparatively smaller blazes in the Rye and Creek fires, both of which erupted Tuesday north of downtown Los Angeles.

A new blaze, known as the Skirball Fire, began burning Wednesday morning in Bel Air, shutting down Interstate 405 -- one of the country's busiest freeways -- and forcing evacuations across the posh neighborhood and areas near the University of California at Los Angeles campus. Officials confronted that growing fire while still facing the Creek Fire, which had crept into the city.

"Our plan here is to try to stop this fire before it becomes something bigger, so that we don't have to have . . . a two-front war," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, D, said at a news briefing. "These are days that break your heart. But these are also days that show the resilience of our city."

That resilience could face serious tests in coming days. The National Weather Service said that increased winds are expected overnight into Thursday, which could make Southern California vulnerable to new fires and "extreme fire behavior," with conditions potentially worsening throughout the day. The dangerous fire conditions have been fueled by Santa Ana winds, dry weather and parched vegetation - the combination enabling wildfires that have grown wildly.

Not far from the Skirball Fire, residents and visitors alike were weighing whether to stay. Two roommates who live in the Brentwood area packed their bags and were "just hanging tight," said one of the men, Wes Luttrell, 23. Montevis Price, who was visiting Los Angeles from Miami, promptly checked out of his hotel when he saw the blaze.

"I saw the little mountain on fire, and that was it," Price said. "You can prepare for a hurricane, but you can't prepare for something that happens all of a sudden."

California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, declared states of emergency in Los Angeles and Ventura counties due to the fires, and his office said the blazes threatened thousands of homes. By Wednesday afternoon, officials said no deaths have been recorded as a result of the blazes, but some areas were not yet accessible.

Day appeared as night along the coast, the smoke-masked sun casting a deep red light. Flames burned down chaparral-covered cliffs toward Highway 101 along a four-mile stretch in Ventura County, with the blaze blowing over in nighttime winds from the valleys to the east.

Officials said the wildfire that forced evacuations of portions of Ojai, a popular winter retreat with about 8,000 residents, began burning toward Santa Barbara County on Wednesday.

For some, the flames had already consumed nearly everything they had.

The fire began beneath David and Theresa Brock's house in upper Ojai about sundown Monday, jumping the road and sprinting up toward them. But a shifting wind pushed it away within a few hundred yards, and the couple believed their home of 12 years was safe. They stayed up through the night, smoke covering the grounds around them.

"I thought we were doing great, real great," said Brock, a state-certified operator of public water systems.

About 4 a.m. Tuesday, the winds shifted again. The fire raced toward them, covering five miles in 15 minutes. Brock turned to Theresa and said, "Let's get outside in the dirt." The couple keeps cattle, and the wide grazed area outside their hilltop home acted as a natural fire break.

"At least out here," he told her, "there's nothing to catch fire."

As the couple watched the flames approach, a transformer exploded adjacent to their home, igniting a pepper tree. Sparks were sucked into their attic.

"Then we saw smoke coming out of the vent," Brock, 57, said. "And I thought, 'Well, that's it, we can't save it now.' "

Brock pulled his Ford Torino and tractor out of the garage, keeping them in the fire break, and with the help of firefighters, managed to pull a few items out of his house.

"But what do you take?" he said. He chose a few family photos, but the cedar chest where Theresa kept the family documents burned.

"Then I just stood back and watched," he said. "You see these people on TV who have lost everything, and you can't imagine it, until it's you. Now I am that person. I have the clothes on my back."

Others felt the fear of what could come next.

"I'm scared," said Beth Dorenkamp, a 25-year Ojai resident. "I saw the fire start at the east end of town, like a plume, but I never thought it would end up like this."

Dorenkamp and Kathe Hanson huddled on a chilly morning at the Riverview Ranch in the Meiners Oaks neighborhood, which had been threatened but spared Tuesday as the Thomas Fire grew. The women keep horses at the ranch and spent a mostly sleepless Tuesday night keeping watch over them.

"We all have trailers ready to go, but all of the roads are closed," said Hanson, masked against the falling ash, holding the reins of her horse, Mozart. "So we're sleeping in the barn and waiting to see what happens."

Around the property, Ford F-250 and Toyota Tundra pickups were hitched to trailers, ready to evacuate some of the 80 horses stabled there. The escape route had narrowed significantly, though, with some of the roads north into Santa Barbara County threatened by fire.

Word of mouth appeared the most common form of neighborhood newsgathering, with cellular service spotty in the best of times in these high canyons, the power unstable because of the fire and the Internet out in parts of the city.

The Carver family fled their home in Meiners Oak on Tuesday morning with flames less than half a mile from their property.

"We'd been up all night watching it," said Cindy Carver, who moved to Ojai about eight years ago with her husband, Thomas, and their two children, Caleb and Danika.

Preparations began before dawn.

Thomas, a family therapist, let the turkeys, goats and chickens the family raises loose in their pens. He and Cindy grabbed the passports, a couple wedding photos, a little cash and jewelry and corralled the kids into the camper. They also grabbed Hondo and Jetta, two rescue dogs, their four cats and 10 kittens.

"There was a point where I just thought I was going to lose it, and then we all said, 'It's just stuff,' " Thomas said.

Caleb, 12, and Danika, 8, attend Ojai Valley School, which was closed, like the others in the area. The upper campus was damaged Tuesday, when a girls dormitory burned down along with several other buildings.

But the students had been evacuated early, a decision that Cindy Carver praised.

Caleb Carver said he was amazed that as they left home, everything around him seemed to be taking place as it did any other day - a man riding his bicycle through the smoke, a hiker on a nearby nature preserve trail.

"How are people so normal about this?" he said.

-- The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Department of Homeland Security officials said Thursday they will establish an office to better protect the United States from potential large-scale terrorist attacks.



Newly confirmed DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was sworn in Wednesday, said the goal of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Office will be to "elevate and streamline DHS efforts to prevent terrorists and other national security threat actors from using harmful agents, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material and devices to harm Americans and U.S. interests."



The CWMD office will be led by James McDonnell, a former Navy officer appointed by President Donald Trump last summer to head DHS' Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.



In a statement Thursday, Nielsen said McDonnell will oversee a consolidation of the 240,000-employee agency's efforts to plan for and protect the nation from major attacks.



"The United States faces rising danger from terrorist groups and rogue nation states," Nielsen said.



"That's why DHS is moving towards a more integrated approach," she added. "As terrorism evolves, we must stay ahead of the enemy and the establishment of this office is an important part of our efforts to do so."



Several of the 22 sub-agencies at DHS are central to U.S. counterterrorism efforts, including the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard.



Nielsen, who has a background in cybersecurity and disaster preparation, was picked for the job by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who was DHS secretary from January to July. Nielsen worked as Kelly's chief of staff at DHS and then as his deputy at the White House.



Kelly stood beside her as she took the oath of office in a White House ceremony Wednesday.



On Tuesday, senators voted 67 to 32 confirming Nielsen as the sixth DHS secretary. The agency was created in the aftermath of 9/11.



In its statement Thursday, DHS cited intelligence indicating terrorist groups continue to seek weapons of mass destruction, while using "battlefield environments" to test them. The groups may be seeking to deploy those tactics "in ways we have not seen previously," the statement added.



Although DHS did not mention specific threats, U.S. lawmakers have increasingly raised concern about the ability of would-be terrorists to arm aerial drones with explosives or other weapons. Inexpensive drones have been deployed widely and lethally by Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.



The new DHS office will centralize the agency's efforts to protect the country against the potential use of a nuclear device or other powerful weapon, according to Thursday's announcement.



"Certain weapons of mass destruction, once viewed as out-of-reach for all but nation states, are now closer to being attained by non-state actors," the DHS statement said. "A terrorist attack using such a weapon against the United States would have a profound and potentially catastrophic impact on our nation and the world."

-- The Washington Post
New Seasons Market workers involved in a unionization effort are accusing the Portland grocer of retaliating against them and hiring a "union-busting" consulting firm.

Their complaints were outlined in a Thursday letter that was signed by "New Seasons Workers United," but not by any individuals so it is not clear how many workers have complained. New Seasons has disputed the claims.

Thursday's letter comes just over a month after workers announced they are attempting to organize a union. In a statement, the grocer denied any retaliation.

B Corp status

The letter was addressed to B Lab, the Pennsylvania nonprofit that awarded New Seasons its B Corp certification. The designation is awarded to businesses that "meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency," according to the B Corp website.

The New Seasons workers, backed by grocery union UFCW Local 555, says the company doesn't deserve B Corp status. The letter asks B Lab to investigate New Seasons' compliance with the B Corp principles and to decertify the grocer if found in violation.

The B Corp designation, like the LEED stamp for environmentally friendly buildings, is often used as a marketing tool. When New Seasons earned the B Corp certification in 2013 - the first grocer in the world to do so, it said - it sent out a press release, promising to "constantly (improve) business operations that benefit people and the planet." It touts its B Corp status on its website and in a YouTube video.

To earn the certification, B Lab assessed its practices, governance, environmental and community impacts, staff benefits and culture. According to B Lab's 2017 evaluation, New Seasons earned a score of 25 in the workers category. B Lab's scoring system is complex, a spokesman said, so it's hard to say what the possible category score was. But the median score in that category for other B Corp companies is 18.

The complaints

The unionization drive was largely sparked by a rollback of health care coverage. New Seasons has said it is working with employees to ensure they qualify for care if they need it.

But since workers began talking about unionization, two workers involved in the efforts say they have been fired. Terra Bosart and Adrian Mendoza said they have both filed formal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. They say New Seasons fired them because of their involvement in the unionization efforts. Retaliation is prohibited under federal law.

The Oregonian/OregonLive has requested the complaints from the board but has not yet received them.

Adrian Mendoza, left, and Terra Bosart, right, are former New Seasons workers who say they were fired because they took part in union organizing efforts.

New Seasons declined to confirm Bosart or Mendoza were employees or say whether they were fired, saying personnel matters are confidential. But photos on the company's Instagram account show Mendoza with a nametag and apron. One even features them alongside the grocer's chief executive Wendy Collie.

In a statement provided through a spokeswoman, the grocer said it had a strict no-retaliation policy. "We would never penalize any staff member for expressing their point of view or engaging in legal activity," it said.

Thursday's letter also accuses New Seasons managers of interrogating employees about their involvement in the unionization effort, and of using an employee's involvement as a reason to block their promotion.

The grocer denies these claims. It says it respects workers' choices and has taken "extensive measures" to make sure workers have the ability to make up their own minds.

The letter also criticizes New Seasons' move to hire Cruz & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in labor relations.

In a statement, New Seasons employee Sean Lilly said he was disappointed that the grocer spent money to hire a "union-busting" firm.

As reported by Willamette Week, it's the same firm President Donald Trump's hotel company hired recently in an attempt to halt union organizing at his Las Vegas hotels.

New Seasons said it hired the firm to conduct "voluntary information sessions" to "objectively inform" its workers.

According to Cruz & Associates' website, its objective is to help its clients "achieve increased profits and higher levels of service, while ensuring that the goals of the employees and the organization remain aligned."

In Thursday's letter, workers complained that Collie and directors with majority owner Endeavour Capital have refused to meet with union organizers.

New Seasons said it has responded directly to staff members and continues its commitment to its "speak up culture."

The group has not been elected or certified by the National Labor Relations Board, and it is unclear how many of New Seasons' 3,500 workers are involved in the organizing effort.

-- Anna Marum

amarum@oregonian.com

503-294-5911

@annamarum
R Bindu also said the quality of education in Kerala had not dipped contrary to the opposition's claims.
As the 8th Director of the Otago Museum, Dr Griffin has inspired a greater focus on science engagement within the Museum and led the development of the Museums planetarium which opened in December 2015.

In this special seminar, Dr Griffin will talk about chasing the Southern Lights, or Aurora Australis, a passion which has led to many late hours photographing the lights in cold remote locations across New Zealand. It has also driven Dr Griffin to do some remarkably silly, yet inspiring things, such as hiring a Boeing 767 in search of his elusive quarry.

Download the poster (PDF 815KB)

Date Friday, 8 December 2017 Time 1:00pm - 2:00pm Audience All University,Public,Alumni Event Type Special Lecture

Campus Dunedin Department Pathology (Dunedin), Medicine (Dunedin), General Practice and Rural Health (Dunedin), Preventive and Social Medicine (Dunedin), Surgical Sciences (Dunedin) Location D'Ath Lecture Theatre, Department of Pathology Cost Free of charge Contact Name Dr Euan Rodger Contact Email euan.rodger@otago.ac.nz

Save this event
Thursday 7 December 2017 12:05pm

A strikingly intricate portrait of a young Maori chief is making its way home after being acquired by the University of Otagos Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hakena.



The purchase of Atay, Chief of Otargo, New Zealand, made with the blessing of local runanga, is a real coup for the Hocken.



The portrait of Atay, Chief of Otargo, New Zealand by artist Charles Rodius.

Librarian Sharon Dell describes the charcoal, graphite and watercolour work as "exceptional.



The incredibly detailed and engaging portrait was drawn in 1835 by German-born artist Charles Rodius.

"It is so well drawn, the young mans personality leaps from the page. There is nothing like it in our collection.



Funds for the purchase came from the librarys endowment trust, which Ms Dell says is carefully managed and used judiciously.



"Thanks to the generosity of past benefactors, we have trust funds that allow us to act in these exceptional cases to make sure materials so important to our community are secured.

"The endowment trust is the only funding we have for the purchase of manuscripts and archives, artworks and photographs so we are incredibly thankful to the people who have made donations in the past and continue to leave bequests to the Hocken,



After being passed by descent to a private Melbourne collection, the Hocken bought it at an auction in Auckland last week.



University Director of Maori Development Tuari Potiki is pleased that the piece will be coming back to Otago and that its preservation and protection is now ensured. He looks forward to the artwork being shared with the community.



Local Ngai Tahu and the Hocken intend to work together to discover who Atay is and what became of him.



The auction house, Mossgreen Webb, describes the piece as remarkable in how it conveys the dignity and self-worth of the subject.



The true identity of Atay is unknown, but Rodius drawing shows the character of his subject by the strength of his gaze and jut of his jaw. A full moko, which has been recorded with care and respect, on such a youthful chief suggests he was well known.



What makes the portrait even more significant is that it depicts a young Maori chief in the years before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.



After studying in Paris, Rodius was deported to New South Wales in 1829 for allegedly stealing items from a womans handbag. However, his artistic talent made him useful to the Department of Public Works, which granted him an exemption in 1832. He was then free to make a living painting and drawing portraits.



This work was drawn in Sydney at a time when there were a number of Maori in the city and a stream of people moving between New Zealand and Australia on trading vessels.



Rodius drew several other Maori around the same time and identified them with the phonetic spelling of their names.



Despite a lot of recent emphasis on contemporary work, especially around the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship 50th anniversary, Ms Dell says the Hocken is still developing its historical collections and the piece is a remarkable addition.

For more information, please contact:

Sharon Dell

Hocken Librarian

Tel: +64 3 479 8874

Email: sharon.dell@otago.ac.nz
Thursday 7 December 2017 2:14pm



A collection of posters and ephemera donated from the public.

From Cadbury packaging and Dunedin music posters, to family histories and historic maps, the Hocken Collections continues to benefit from public generosity with a fantastic amount of donations received over the past year.



The public donates hundreds of items to the Hocken every year which enables it to remain relevant to the community, as well as ensure the material is safeguarded and available for present and future generations.



Hocken Music and AV Curator Amanda Mills says some of the "stand out donations were live cassette recordings of 'Dunedin Sound bands.



These recordings, donated by Andy Ellis, feature bands from the 1980s and 1990s, while Dr Graeme Downes made a "substantial deposit" of live recordings of The Verlaines from 1981 to 1992.



Complementing this was a donation of 1980s and 1990s Dunedin music posters.



Ephemera Curator Katherine Milburn describes Ross Notmans donation as "very exciting" as it augments the Hockens existing collection of Dunedin Sound material.



Other interesting items received include World War 1 diaries and letters; Home Circle, a lifestyle magazine that began publication in Oamaru in 1898; 1990s Cadbury chocolate wrappers; a 1913 poster featuring Captain Robert Falcons Scotts last message; and about 70 maps largely of New Zealand and the Pacific from the late 1600s to early 1900s.



Donors will be thanked at an event on Saturday, 9 December. While there, they will also have the opportunity to view the CONTINUITY & CHANGE: The Hockens art across time exhibition, currently open to the public until 27 January 2018.

Donor highlights:

Archives and Manuscripts:

Peter and Elizabeth Moroney - manuscript of Christine Clement Brown, describing her experiences as a nurse at the New Zealand General Hospital, Brockenhurst

Stuart Gray - records relating to Methvens Limited

Elizabeth Collins - family papers relating to Sir Garfield and Lady Grace Todd. Sir Garfield was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1953 to 1958 and later became an opponent of white minority rule

Rosemary Hudson - travel diaries of Harry Hamish Pattle

Diana Newbery - papers of Beverley Shore Bennett, stained glass artist

Pictorial:

Ed Dwyer - prints and panoramas of Dunedin and Central Otago

Ian Marechal - Opoho Festival floats. Seventeen photographs of floats created at the Dunedin suburb of Opoho for the Dunedin Festival

Kay Clausen and her brothers - Davey Gunn album. An album of photographs relating to Davey Gunn who worked as a run holder and track controller in the Hollyford, Martins Bay and Big Bay area during the 1950s

Sizemore family - two postcard albums of cards relating to the South Island and overseas. Originally collected by Madge Smith of Gore, c.1910-1920

Brett McDowell - Lesson in morbid anatomy. A cabinet card showing a class of six male students and a staff member gathered around a cadaver, c.1897

Brett McDowell - Martin Thompson

Linda Tyler - Anne Hamblett, Pangatotara Tobacco Field, 1943, pencil on paper

Roger Collins - Lloyd Godman, Nude 230-5 (1986), Selenium toned Silver Gelatin Print, printed in 1988

Zuna Wright - Zuna Wright Untitled [red sky] 2015 gouache on paper; Untitled [landscape] n.d. gouache on paper; Untitled [landscape] 2013 gouache on paper; Untitled [still life] c.2016 gouache on paper; Market Gardens on a Volcanic Landscape c2007 gouache on paper

Neil Frazer - Neil Frazer, Evolution (2002) oil & alkyd on canvas

Maps:

Paul Dirks - Whanau of the late Thomas Joseph Tipa, Mosgiel. Moeraki Native Village reserve 1907

Emeritus Professor A. Keith Jeffery - plan showing in what manner the land within a radius of seven miles of Auckland has been appropriated; Mare del Sud. Nuove scoperte fatte nel 1765, 67 e 69 nel. Venezia 1776 Preffo Antonio Zatta; Carte de la Nouvelle-Zelande visitee en 1769 et 1770 par le Lieutenant J. Cook Commandant de l'Endeavour vaiseau de sa Majeste. Carte von Neu-Seeland welches in den jahren 1769 und 1770 / untersucht worden vom Lieutenant J. Cook. Paris [1774?]; Chart of the Antarctic Polar circle with the countries adjoining according to the new hypothesis of M. Buache ; from the memoirs of the Royal Academy at Paris. 1763; Southern Hemisphere. London, Wyld, [1843?]; Dunedin, Chalmers, 1889 (Nlle. Zelande) lith. A. Simon. [Paris] Minist`ere des Travaux Publics, Ecole des Ponts et Chausees,[1889]

Publications:

Gay Buckingham on behalf of the Power Company Ltd - The grand electrification of the south: a history of the Power Company Limited and its predecessors, the Southland Electric Power Board and the Southland Electric Power Supply (1914-2015)

Alice Hunt - Greetings from Samoa: early twentieth century postcards and a tribute to photographer, Alfred Tattersall: Hunt family collection

Prof. James Beattie (Waikato) - Bringing China home: Chinese stories and objects in Hawke's Bay

Peter Mackenzie - Imagery of the Larnach Family Mausoleum

Tony Harris - Dominic's dynasty: the story of Dominic and Winifred Harris of Heyward Point, Otago and descendants

Ken Thomlinson - Courageous and free

Inger Gledhill on behalf of Heritage Roses Otago - Project rescue

Roger Collins - La genereuse et tragique expedition Laperouse

Roger Collins - Terre Napoleon: Australia through French eyes, 1800-1804

Roz Mickelson-McKechnie - From Sharragh to Sharrow, Tipperary to Otago: the history of the Wilkins family

Paul Aubin - Home Circle

Graeme Berry - Air New Zealand timetables, NAC timetables, a railways timetable and some recipe books

Angela Mcerlane - Photographic view album; NZ South Seas exhibition.

Nicola McCloy - SPEC Radio one magazine from 1991 and 1992

Roger Pryde - Pine Hill News

Wayne Sutherland - Antipodean Holmesian Society Newsletter

Music and AV:

Tony Renouf - Otago pts. 1 and 2 LP

Tony Moir - Hail Gracious Majesty, Heretaunga Maori Choir 10

John Gertson - A century of Austin in Otago, CD-rom

Scott Campbell  Brown, Brown, CD

Alastair Galbraith  Plain Song, John Dickson, CD

Paul Kerridge - Criterion quar., Annie Laurie, cylinder

Andy Ellis  selection of tapes from deposit, various artists, cassette

Graeme Downes  various tapes from deposit, The Verlaines, cassette

RNZ Music Department  Never Say Die, Bunny Walters, 45rpm disc

Jenny Dickson  Ultra Commercial, 12 disc

Graham Siddle  When Music Sounds, Graham Parsons (score)

Ephemera:

Ross Notman  JPS Experience star and Strange Loves poster

Polly Higham - Waikouaiti Rifles ephemera

Ian Marechal - Cadburys packaging, sticker, display material

Irene Fagan - Sheila Natusch funeral service card

Joan Gooseman - Tragedy of the South Pole poster

Health Sciences Library - Cervical smear poster

Various - 2017 election ephemera

For more information, please contact:

Robyn Notman

Head Curator, Pictorial Collections

Hocken Collections, University of Otago Library

Tel: +64 3 479 5600

Email: robyn.notman@otago.ac.nz
Thursday 7 December 2017 4:51pm



Retail crime is becoming more violent and organised, shows a joint University of Otago and Retail NZ study.

A new study by Retail NZ and the University of Otago shows retail crime costs about $1.1 billion a year, and retailers are facing increasingly organised and violent criminals.



Greg Harford, Retail NZs General Manager for Public Affairs, says retail crime is a massive issue which has a disproportionately high impact on small businesses and high street retailers.



University of Otago Department of Marketing Senior Lecturer Dr John Guthrie says a concern is that retail crime is increasing, and becoming increasingly organised and more violent.

The research shows that 38 per cent of retailers have noticed changes in the profile of retail crime in the past 12 months, and are seeing more brazen criminals than in previous years. Theft by employees is also growing in significance, accounting for 18 per cent of losses now, compared to 12 per cent at the time of the previous survey in 2003.



Department of Marketing Senior Lecturer Dr John Guthrie.

Mr Harford said retailers are worried criminals are more aggressive than in the past.



Retail crime no longer involves just petty theft from stores. Retailers are reporting a sizeable number of violent and aggressive incidents every year, as well as more sophisticated fraud incidents.



This shows that retailers need to be more alert to a range of criminal activity, as well as taking steps to protect their employees and customers from the threat of violence.



Dr Guthrie says the total cost of crime is far greater than the $1.1 billion reported in losses.



Our research shows that retailers are spending around $514 million a year on crime prevention, plus crime takes a massive toll on the individuals who face violence, intimidation and who are fearful about going to work.



However, the research also shows that money spent on preventative measures does pay off. The biggest retail firms, who spend the most on crime prevention have a noticeably lower rate of recorded crime overall, so its a good idea for retailers to review their security arrangements and do what they can to make it tough for the criminals.



Its really important that all crime is reported to the Police, Mr Harford said.



The survey shows that, overall, just 31 per cent of retail crime goes unreported, either because there is a perception that the Police wont act, or because it is time-consuming and difficult to do so. It is heartening that 63 per cent of retailers think Police do an okay or great job of managing crime, but an online tool or app would go a long way towards making it simple and easy for retail crime to be reported.



Retail NZ is renewing calls for Government action to help manage retail crime by establishing a dedicated Retail Crime Reduction Taskforce within the Police, funding a social change programme to make it clear that crime is not acceptable, and bringing in an infringement ticket style offence for petty theft to ensure that there are consequences for people beginning their life of crime, Mr Harford says.



Retail NZ sees early intervention and real consequences as key to stopping the cycle of crime.



The 2017 Survey fo Retail Crime ttp://www.retail.kiwi/advocacy/retail-crime

For further information, please contact:

For Otago:

Dr John Guthrie

Email: john.guthrie@otago.ac.nz

Tel: +64 3 479 8159

For Retail NZ:

Greg Harford

Email: advocacy@retail.kiwi

Tel: 0800 472 472

Web: www.retail.kiwi
Some Midland Camera Club members' Michigan nature photos will be displayed in the Michigan Department of Transportation's Clare Welcome Center through late December.

Landscape photos by Charles Bonham and Thomas A. Clark and bird photos by Stuart Frohm have joined a longstanding display of Mackinac Bridge and bald eagle photos by Midland Camera Club member Robert Spears.
We woke up on Sunday morning expecting it to be an ordinary Sunday. Thanksgiving was over and Christmas was coming. But the calendar said Dec. 7, 1941, and that was the day our world changed.

Stories of battles in war are the stories of men who made the decisions and the men who fought the battles. The attack on Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu was no different. Men in charge made wrong decisions in the early morning hours of Sunday, Dec. 7, but it didnt really matter because the Japanese planes were already headed to Pearl Harbor.

A minesweeper named Condor was on patrol just two miles off the entrance to Pearl Harbor when the officer on deck spotted something off the port bow. It was a submarine periscope and the time was 3:42 a.m.

No submarine should have been in the waters around Oahu. The Condor sent a message to the U.S. destroyer Ward about the sub with the Ward reaching the area by 6:45. At 6:53 the naval station at Pearl Harbor got a message that the sub had been sunk.

At 7:02 a young private at the Opana Mobile Radar Station looked at the radar screen and couldnt believe what he saw and asked the other private with him what he saw. Radar was a new tool and the privates found it hard to believe that they were seeing something like 50 blips on the radar screen. They called Fort Shaffer, the hub of the radar network, informing them of what they had seen heading toward Pearl Harbor.

It was now 7:21 a.m. and when the Army lieutenant at Fort Shaffer got the Opana radar station report about the massive amount of blips on the radar, he said, Well, dont worry about it. He knew that a flight of B-17 bombers would be coming from California to Pearl Harbor but he couldnt tell the two privates because of security reasons.

By now the surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was underway. Already, at 6:10, Flight Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was in the air and could see the Japanese aircraft carriers having trouble keeping the planes on the decks with a high wind making the sea choppy. Planes had to be physically held on the decks by crewmen so the planes wouldnt go overboard. The carriers turned into the wind and the first wave of 183 fighters, bombers and torpedo planes took off with the Japanese pilots following a Honolulu radio stations music as a guiding beam.

By 7:49 a.m., Fuchida was over Pearl Harbor and his telegraph operator tapped out: Attack, surprise achieved.

Commander Logan Ramsey was at the command center on Ford Island and looking out a window he saw a plane flying low. At first he dismissed it thinking it was a U.S. pilot flying too low but while he stood at the window he saw something black fall out of that plane. It was now 7:55 a.m.

Ramsey ran to the radio room and ordered the telegraph operators to send a message to every ship and base: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.

Wheeler Field, north of Pearl Harbor, and Hickam Field, near Fords Islands Battleship Row were attacked simultaneously. American war planes on the ground were parked wingtip to wingtip and most were destroyed.

At 8:10 a.m. the USS Arizona was pierced by a high altitude bomb setting off more than 1 million pounds of gunpowder creating a fireball that killed 1,177 men. It took just nine minutes for the Arizona to sink to the bottom.

It took the USS Nevada battleship 45 minutes to head for the open sea, with its anti-aircraft guns blazing. The second wave of Japanese planes bombed the Nevada knowing it would bottle the fleet up in the channel but the captain of the Nevada deliberately grounded the ship rather than risk that. It was now 8:50 a.m.

The second wave of the surprise attack consisted of 35 fighters, 78 bombers and 54 high altitude bombers. By now there was heavy anti-aircraft fire in a futile attempt to stop the surprise attack. The USS Pennsylvania was hit by a bomber and another hit oil tanks between the destroyers Cassin and Downes and ammunition on board the ships exploded. Raleigh, a light cruiser, was torpedoed in the first wave and bombed in the second wave of planes.

By 10 a.m. the attack was over and Japanese fighters and bombers rendezvoused off Oahu and flew back to the carriers. The Japanese were exultant with the success of their mission. They had lost only 29 planes. The pilots wanted to make a third strike and hit the gasoline tanks at Pearl Harbor but their superiors ruled out the third strike. They left for home and left the wounded, the dying and the dead behind them.

Even before the Japanese planes left, nurses and doctors were taking care of the men from the ships and airfields. Hospitals were so overwhelmed with casualties that they had to lay some of them out on the lawns. Barracks, dining halls and schools became temporary hospitals.

Our losses at Pearl Harbor were staggering. Five of eight battleships, three destroyers and seven other ships were either sunk or severely damaged. More than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,390 Americans were killed and 1,200 wounded.

Back home we heard the news over stuttering radio broadcasts as regular programming was halted by the shocking news. Everyone alive that day remembered for the rest of their life where they were when they heard the news.

On Monday, Dec. 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that a state of war now existed between Japan and the United States. He said, Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941  a date which will live in infamy  the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind. And suddenly we were in World War II.

Roosevelt called for 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 anti-aircraft guns and 8 million dreadnaught tons of merchant shipping. Factories went on shift work and worked 24 hours a day. Women were hired to replace the men who had left to fight. Air raid sirens were installed and blackout drills were ordered.

School children went through air raid drills and said the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. Radio and television stations signed on and off with The Star Spangled Banner. Rationing books were issued to everyone. Sugar, coffee and gasoline were the first things to be rationed.

Small silk flags appeared in windows everywhere signifying that someone in that house was in the service. Sometimes the blue star was changed to a gold star and that meant the serviceman had died in battle.

Little green circles on the map in the Pacific Ocean became important and we learned names like Okinawa, Ulithi, Iwo Jima, Midway, Bataan, Corregidor, Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. Countries an ocean away became familiar names to everyone. And on June 6, 1944 a battle named D-Day turned the tide of war in favor of the Allies.

Television commentator Andy Rooney once wrote a column about war and those who lived through that war. That there was something good about a war. Dec. 7, 1941, brought our country together in a way it had never been before. And in a way, it has never been since.
Shirley Palmer is being interviewed for Midland Remembers and Shirley, her daughter Sandy Zilincik, her son Joe Palmer and me are seated around the table. Shirley is talking about growing up in logging camps, living in tar paper shack mounted on skids so they could be moved easily from one logging camp to logging camp. Describing the primitive conditions of a logging camp, her son asks, "Mom, what did they call a privy?" Shirley looks at her son and replies, "An outside toilet."

That reply is typical of Shirley Palmer's grasp of life as she lived it. One room shacks. Water from a pitcher pump. Blankets hung to divide the one room into bedrooms and living quarters. She doesn't complain about the sparse living conditions the families had to contend with while the men worked as loggers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Close family ties bound the extended Stefanski and Clark families together and they took the good times with the bad times.

Shirley was born in 1931 to Joe and Thelma (Clark) Stefanski in the small town of Raber in the Upper Peninsula, north of Detour. Raber was named by German and Swiss-Germans apparently as an occupational name for a turnip grower. The German name for "turnip" is "rabe." At the time that Shirley was born there, Raber had a combination bar and restaurant and a post office.

Joseph Stefanski Jr. was born to Mary and Joseph Stanley Stefanski Sr. in Unionville. Pennsylvania. Joseph Sr. was born in Poland and emigrated to America with two sons, Rudy and Tony, leaving his wife Mary and small son Frank in Poland until he had money enough to pay for passage for them to come to America. The Stefanskis settled in Unionville, Pennsylvania where a fourth son was born and named Joseph Stanley Stefanski Jr.

Joe Sr. moved his family to Chicago where he got a job working in the Chicago stockyards. A daughter they named Kate was born in Chicago. From there, apparently, the family moved near Raber in the Upper Peninsula. A young Polish Priest in Raber was encouraging Polish immigrants to move there where farming and logging meant work.

Joe Stefanski Jr. was living on a farm when he met Thelma Clark, whose dad was Malcolm Clark who was born in Tillsonberg, Canada. Malcolm was a logger. His wife was Dora Gaslow. Joe Jr. met Thelma and they fell in love, marrying on Aug. 14, 1930.

Malcolm Clark, Thelma's dad, found his way to the Standish-Sterling area in Michigan and then moved to Gaylord where he met and married Dora Gaslow. They had Ivan, Thelma (Shirley's mom), Bertha, Russell and a son they named after a Biblical city Ai. (Pronounced just like it looks Ai with both letters pronounced.)

Malcolm decided to move his family to Raber in the Upper Peninsula where his daughter Thelma met and married Joseph Stefanski Jr. Thelma remembers moving to the Upper Peninsula with the family and a team of horses crossing the Mackinac Straits during a storm and at one point the horses reared up, spooked by the waves crashing over the barge and Thelma was sure they were all going to die before getting to solid ground.

Shirley said, "Malcolm was just as poor as everybody else was."

While the men worked as loggers, the Clark and Stefanski families lived in the tar paper shacks mounted on skids for easy moving from logging camp to logging camp. Wells for fresh water were found by driving a "point" into the ground, topped by a 24 inch screen to filter the water and then five or six feet of pipe was attached and a pitcher pump perched on top to provide water. Kerosene lamps were used. There was no electricity available. Blankets strung on wires divided the one room into bedrooms and living areas, providing a little privacy but not much. Heat was provided by a wood stove as was the stove used for cooking. Outside toilets were the norm in logging camps.

There was a bunk house for the loggers who weren't married. Dora Clark, Malcolm's wife, cooked for the loggers and provided them with three meals a day. Breakfast consisted of eggs, sausage, pancakes, coffee with the meal topped off with giant-sized cookies. Logging was hard work and required good food.

Shirley remembers that she and her cousin Jeanette liked staying with her Clark grandparents because their grandmother Dora was such a good cook. Shirley and Jeanette slept in the same room as Malcolm and Dora with the grandparents sharing a bed while the girls slept on the floor.

Jeanette, Shirley's cousin and the daughter of Ivan and Kate Clark, wrote a short story about life in the logging camp. She wrote that her grandmother Dora Clark attended her birth and when Jeanette was born she had six "fingers." The sixth "finger" was a nubbin of skin but no bone. Jeanette's grandma took her embroidery scissors, sterilized them over the lamp chimney and snipped the nubbin off.

Christmas in Jeanette's eyes was magical in spite of the conditions they lived in. Her mom, Kate Clark, hung a curtain on a wire across the room and decorated the Christmas tree behind the curtain. In the morning, the Christmas tree was revealed, complete with lighted candles on the branches with tinsel and silver stars. In the evening her dad, Ivan Clark, would bring in a block of wood and a hammer to crack nuts. Christmas also meant oranges, apples, candy canes, popped corn and Cracker Jack.

Jeanette ended her story with these sentences, "Our children do not experience the joys of the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, I am 70 years old but I remember those Christmas memories as if it was yesterday."

The Clark and Stefanski men worked on their farms in the summer and did logging in the winter when it was easier to skid the logs out of the woods on snow.

Logging camps meant swampy land and a bumper crop of mosquitoes in warm weather. A smudge was made so it was possible to be outdoors without mosquitoes swarming around. Green vegetation was gathered and piled up with matches lighted to start a fire. Because the green vegetation wouldn't burn with a clear flame like wood, it would smolder, creating a "smudge" to keep the mosquitoes away.

Malcolm and Dora's family would walk seven miles through the woods, carrying a lantern to light their way, so they could see a movie in the small town of Hulbert. Tickets were a nickel and after the movie was over, they walked the seven miles back home.

(Part II of the Shirley Palmer story will continue in two weeks.)
City officials say they are looking for ways to ease frustration of residents affected by the ongoing closure of Washington Street to accommodate environmental cleanup in the area.
NORMAL  More than 150 people gathered on the Illinois State University quad at noon Wednesday to protest tax reform legislation pending in Congress, particularly its impact on education.

Most of them then walked to uptown Normal for a second rally.

Among provisions that have triggered the most opposition is one in the House version of the bill that would tax tuition waivers received by graduate students.

Ben King, an ISU grad student in applied economics, said, It would more than double what I pay in taxes.

That is not an exaggeration.

Amy Hurd, director of ISU's graduate school, said university officials have run the numbers and found taxes for graduate students would go up 100 percent if the House provision makes its way into the final version of the bill.

Hurd said the average graduate assistant makes about $1,000 a month on a nine-month contract. But the House provision would tax them on $17,500 that they never get to see on a paycheck, said Hurd.

King said, I'm going to do what I can to stay in school, but added it would be difficult.

Rachael DiSciullo, a graduate student in biology from West Chester, Pa., said the tax changes would make grad school an elitist endeavor.

ISU senior Michelle Hunt of Bloomington, who returned to school for a bachelor's degree after a stint in the Navy, said she hopes to go to graduate school and that she and her husband worked and planned so they would not have to go deeply in debt.

With this looming grad tax on tuition waivers, all those plans are about to go up in smoke, said Hunt, who spoke at the second half of the rally in uptown Normal.

More than half of those attending the campus rally walked to the office of U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis in uptown Normal, chanting Kill the bill and No grad tax.

Davis, a Republican from Taylorville, voted for the bill but opposes the provision regarding taxation of tuition waivers and hopes to see it eliminated when the House and Senate bills are reconciled.

Marchers found the congressman's office was closed and continued the rally on Uptown Circle with several more speakers.

Other elements of the tax bill that critics have attacked are ones that would tax employees who receive employer-funded tuition assistance and end deductions for student loan interest, state and local taxes and for teachers who buy supplies for their classrooms.

This government is going to ruin education, said Jenna Campbell, a graduate student in social work from Bloomington.

Julie Webber, a professor of politics and government, said the bill would probably wipe out many graduate programs at major research universities.

Many at the rally also criticized the tax plan as a whole, saying it helps corporations and higher-income individuals at the expense of middle- and lower-income families and the most vulnerable.

King said it's a bad bill that would increase the deficit with no evidence that the corporate tax cut would spur growth.

Several speakers reminded those in attendance that there is still time to prevent the tax bill from becoming law and urged them to contact their representatives and congressional leaders. They also urged protesters to stay involved and be sure to vote.

Although tax measures passed in both the House and Senate, differences in the bills must be ironed out in a conference committee before it can be sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.

I am here because there is still hope, said Samantha Case of Normal, who recently received her master's degree in social work. We need to remind our legislators what we the people stand for.

Arlene Hosea, a Normal Township board member and retired ISU Dining Services director, said: We need to stick together. It's not about what's good for me; it's what's good for us.

Among those involved in sponsoring the rallies were the progressive group Voices of Reason, the Service Employees International Union group working to unionize graduate students, YWCA McLean County and College Democrats at ISU.
JERUSALEM  Hundreds of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops across the West Bank on Thursday while demonstrators in Gaza burned posters of President Donald Trump over his widely denounced decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger, as the demonstrators torched American and Israeli flags.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tires on fire and hurled stones at Israeli troops. In Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd, in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus' birth. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians shuttered their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Trump's decision. Rallies were underway in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

"We are here. We believe in our rights," said Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were lightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Friday, the Muslim holy day when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers, could prove more violent.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders."

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s. But the group's capabilities are more limited now. Gaza, Hamas' stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank, many of its members have been arrested. Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets in Gaza capable of striking much of Israel.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments."

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Trump's decision. Netanyahu said Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said Thursday.

Anger at the U.S. has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia's royal court condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the U.S. ally. The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said Thursday it had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administration's decision," describing it "unjustified and irresponsible."

Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind. The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Trump's efforts to restart Mideast peace talks.

U.S. embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Trump's move, the United States disqualified itself as mediator, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The stalled talks have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel has meanwhile steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate.

Trump's claim Wednesday that he still wants to pursue what he has called the "ultimate" deal was met by mounting skepticism.

"With its decision, the U.S. has isolated itself and Israel, and has pushed the area into a dangerous situation and stopped the peace process," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Abbas aide.

At a meeting Thursday with his closest Arab ally, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Abbas said he is rallying international opposition to Trump's decision, which he called "an unacceptable crime."

Jordan, alongside other U.S. allies in the region, has slammed Trump's decision on Jerusalem. The king is seen as one of Washington's most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role as religious guardian of a major Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem. Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Trump's announcement "has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the one we are already living in."

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Trump's seismic policy shift.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Trump of throwing the Mideast into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom. "It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Erdogan said, referring to Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankara's airport.

-- Associated Press writers Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
NORMAL  The Illinois attorney general's office is looking into a shuttle service that serves college students for possible state Human Rights Act violations.

Suburban Express, a Champaign-Urbana-based transportation company, came under scrutiny after an ad sent via email listed among its advantages, Passengers like you. You don't feel like you're in China when you're on our buses.

Another email, responding to complaints about the ad, questioned the number of Chinese students at the University of Illinois, stating that the number of nonnative English speakers places a variety of burdens on domestic students.

Although the ad targeted U of I students  prompting a number of complaints  the company also serves other campuses, including Illinois State University.

The buses run on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays between ISU's Bone Student Center in Normal and two suburban Chicago locations.

ISU spokesman Eric Jome said the university had not received any complaints regarding Suburban Express but he characterized the company's comments as patently offensive and inappropriate in any context.

We are an open and inclusive campus and diversity is one of our core values. This runs counter to the values of our institution, said Jome.

He said ISU officials are watching the story as it unfolds.

In a statement posted on its website, Suburban Express said it welcomes students of all nationalities and said, We apologize for our insensitive statement, and we hope to do a better job of unifying the campus community in the future.

The civil rights office of the attorney general's office has subpoenaed documents and other information from Suburban Express to help determine whether the company's policies and practices violate the Illinois Human Rights Act.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan said, I am concerned that this advertisement may reflect that Suburban Express is discriminating against potential customers.

She noted, Under the law, access to transportation must not be impacted or based on a person's race of national origin.

The statement from the bus company said an incident in 2013, which the company believes unfairly caused it to be labeled as racist, resulted in many students from countries in Asia abandoning Suburban Express.

The company said that's why we mentioned that Suburban Express riders would not encounter Chinese exchange students on our buses. However, the company added that the statement was ill-advised  because it upset the very people we were sad to have lost.
In June 2006 I traveled to a country about which I knew very little. I landed at the airport in Lviv early one morning looking forward to spend five weeks teaching English at the Catholic University of Ukraine. On the most recent Feast of Christ the King, Pope Francis greeted pilgrims from Ukraine, especially as they remembered the millions who died of starvation from 1932 to 1933 under Stalins rule. Estimates reveal that between seven to ten million Ukrainians died when the Soviet regime seized Ukrainian farmland provoking a terrible famine called the Holodomor. This man-made event was part of Stalins strategy to break the Ukrainian spirit, and kill their desire to be independent from the Soviet Union.

Pope Francis prayed for Ukraine so that the strength of faith can help heal the wounds of the past and promote paths of peace. In 2006, I found a nation that was still coming to terms with its tumultuous recent past, a reality that has continued to the present day. The struggle is not over. Ukraine has been in the news in the past few years as Ukrainians battle for the future vision of their country, whether it points to Western Europe or to Russia. The president of the Catholic University of Ukraine, Father Borys Gudziak, explained to us, the eighteen English immersion program volunteers, that the university not only wished to provide rigorous academic training, but to transform and heal Ukrainian society. He spoke of the deep wounds which caused most people to walk the streets of Lviv with their heads down. He spoke of his desire to help Ukrainians rediscover their rich heritage, including their language, which the Soviets desperately tried to eradicate. As the first Catholic academic institution to open in the East after the fall of the Soviet Union, Father Gudziak has overseen a new springtime in the growth and development of the Catholic Church especially in Western Ukraine. While I was there, a new seminary blessed by Pope John Paul II was about to open, and five of my nine English language students were seminarians.

My students had participated with great enthusiasm in the 2004 Orange Revolution where a series of peaceful protests led to the annulment of a rigged election. There was great hope among them when a pro-Europe president was elected. However, in 2010, the disgraced pro-Russia presidential candidate from 2004 was elected president, only to be ousted by violent protests in 2014 and the Russian annexation of Ukrainian provinces. As I followed the news about Ukraine a few years ago, I thought of the unattained hopes of my students and the difficulties ahead in regards to healing the wounds of the past.

Both the Church and various governments stand in solidarity with Ukraine as its people seek a better future. The US State department declared on the anniversary commemoration of the Holodomor, the United States stands with the people of Ukraine as we commemorate this Soviet-manufactured tragedy and condemn efforts to deny it as a historical fact. We also reaffirm our commitment to a secure and prosperous Ukraine, free from external aggression and occupation, and able to choose its own future.

Pictures are mine, all rights reserved.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, known for his political hackery with his lifelong history of surviving on the bones thrown at him by his political masters, i.e., the Gandhi family, finally crossed the line that put his leaders in a corner leaving them with no choice but to suspend him from the primary membership of the Congress Party.

Couldn't have happened to a better person.

This man, who was born with a chronic foot in the mouth disease, to prove to his masters that no one was a bigger and loyal suck-up to the Gandhi family than he, called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'Neech', or a lower caste person (remember Modi was a 'chai-walla'?) who has essentially forgotten his 'aukat'.

In a widely condemned message to an audience of one (Sri Sri 108 Rahul Gandhi Ji Maharaj) our 'oonch kism ka aadmi' Aiyar Sir said, "Narendra Modi is a 'neech kism ka aadmi'.

Realizing the blowback to the party in view of the highly-publicized Gujarat Assembly elections, Congress leaders moved swiftly by first condemning Aiyar's statement and then suspending him from the party.

The crown prince of the Grand Old Party himself condemned Aiyar's 'well-thought-out' statement and demanded from him to issue an apology to the Prime Minister.

Afraid to raise the ire of his master, Aiyar, like a professional spinmeister that he is, said that it was because of his poor understanding of the Hindi language that he used the word 'neech' adding he was "sorry" if he'd inadvertently offended the Prime Minister.

The non-apology apology began with "I am a freelance Congressi, I hold no post in the party, so I can reply to PM in his language." But when that only added fuel to the fire, the man who represented the Mayiladuthurai constituency in Tamil Nadu in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections only to finish fourth and lose his deposit, said the following:



"I am told that 'neech' has many meanings, many connotations in Hindi, and if Mr. Modi chooses to distort it to claim that it means low born, then all I can do is to apologize for having used a word that could be interpreted as low born. But that was not my intention at all and certainly not a part of my culture," he told the reporters.

"I am told?" Who told you? Are you an Indian? Are you saying you don't understand Hindi? If yes, then you have no business commenting about anyone in Hindi. Stick to the language you know and speak. I have read many of your tirades on NDTV and have come to the conclusion that the only language you know is the language of a world-class sycophant. And you are undoubtedly very good at it. I have yet to come across a bigger 'chamcha' than you in the Indian politics. JD-U's Sanjay Singh and Neeraj Kumar come very close but you take the cake!

Remember, this is the same man that right before the last Lok Sabha elections said that Narendra Modi could never become the Prime Minister of India, but he was qualified enough to sell tea at the All India Congress Committee meetings.

But if the people think that the Congress did the right thing by asking Aiyar to apologize to the PM and then later by suspending him, then they should think again.

What could have been a simple move by the Congress that could have possibly helped the party in the Gujarat elections, its spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, once again trying hard to impress his employers at the AICC, spoiled the very essence of the apology when he tried to put a political twist on it.

"This shows the Congress party's Gandhian leadership and respect for rival political parties. The Congress has issued a show-cause notice to Mani Shankar Aiyar and suspended him from primary membership of the party. Will Modi ji ever show this kind of courage?" this 'neech', a Jat (OBC), said in a tweet.

Lesson for you, Surjewala-ji  Never use a conditional clause like 'if' in an apology. NEVER! And never try to capitalize on an apology. Just let it be! While Aiyar's apology was far from perfect, you made it even worse by giving it a second layer of political spin! With the party bubbling with idiots like you and Aiyar, no wonder Congress is in tatters.
Patna: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former movie star Shatrughan Sinha, after offering his prayer at the High Court 'Mazaar' (tomb) in Patna on Wednesday to mark the Urs festival, once again took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he did not appreciate the language he was using against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Apparently referring to Modi's recent comparison of Gandhi to Mughal ruler Aurangzeb, Singh said that he did not support such language and the Prime Minister should choose his words carefully.

"Such language like comparing someone to Aurangzeb or calling someone 'Shahzade Sahab' are not conducive in any way and can hurt the party even after the elections are over. Similar language was used in Bihar when leaders were referring to DNA to score political points over their opponents," he said.

Sinha, a BJP MP from Patna Saheb, also complained about his party's attempt to drown his voice in the noise, saying since he was not being given an opportunity to voice his opinions, he had no choice but to go to Twitter to express his feelings towards his own party.

The former actor also offered support to yet another disgruntled BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha on his agitation in favor of farmers in the state of Maharashtra.

"The former minister was raising a very important issue in Maharashtra that concerned the farmers of the state but his voice was muzzled when the Maharashtrian government detained him on Monday forcing him to end his agitation today. Mr. Sinha is right about the GST and demonetization because when he raises an issue, you can be rest assured he has done quite a bit of research into it," the BJP leader said.
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Erdogan Says U.S. Trying To 'Blackmail' Turkey With Iran Sanctions Case

12/06/17

Source: RFE/RL

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the New York trial of a Turkish banker accused of conspiring to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions "blackmail" and a "blemish" on his country. His comments in Ankara on December 5 came as the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla continued with a fifth day of testimony by the U.S. government's star witness and alleged mastermind of the scheme to evade sanctions.



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

(by Iranian cartoonist Mohammad Tahani)



Erdogan said the trial was a ploy to distract Turkey while Washington makes plans to strengthen Kurdish groups in Syria that Turkey considers to be "terrorists" allied with armed separatists in Turkey.



"Turkey has no plans against the United States, but it is clear that the U.S. has plans against us," Erdogan said. The Iran sanctions "case has nothing to do with law, justice, or trade, it's an acrobatic spectacle," he said.



Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim has called Turkish accusations that his prosecution is politically motivated "ridiculous."



The government's star witness, wealthy Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, conceded in testimony on December 5 that he had a proclivity to pay bribes to get what he wants, under cross-examination from Atilla's defense attorney, Cathy Fleming.



But Zarrab said he never paid Atilla a bribe and that Atilla never asked him for money.



According Zarrab's agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to some charges in exchange for leniency, Zarrab paid bribes to foreign officials and corporate representatives between 2002 and March 2016 in return for personal benefits, favorable business dealings, and the protection of government officials.



Zarrab estimated that he made from $100 million to $150 million between 2010 and 2016 by carrying out various illegal schemes, including helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.



As part of the plea deal, Zarrab has agreed to give up any illicit profits. He testified that he might be permitted to be released on bail once the trial is finished.



Zarrab's testimony likely will win him leniency against charges that otherwise could carry a prison term of up to 130 years.



Turkish authorities have detained 17 people linked to Zarrab in an investigation launched after he cooperated with U.S. authorities and agreed to testify in the case.



Some of those detained in Turkey are accused of sending documents to the United States to help with the case.



With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
Iran: Reformist MPs Call on Science Ministry to Allow "Starred" Student Activists to Attend University

12/07/17

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Students accused of engaging in peaceful activism continue to be banned from attending university in Iran despite President Hassan Rouhani's election campaign promise that he would lift the ban. On November 30, 2017, the reformist newspaper Jame-e Farda reported that between 150 and 200 graduate and PhD-level students were blocked from enrolling in Iranian universities in the current academic year because they had "stars" on their records. However, the actual number is likely much higher.

The report added that according to an anonymous source in the Science Ministry, many students have not publicized their situation hoping instead to solve the problem privately.

Since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, student activists have been denied higher education through various methods. During President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term (2005-13), students accused of engaging in political activities received a star on their application, which blocks people from enrolling in Iranian universities.

Reformist member of Parliament Mahmoud Sadeghi told Jame-e Farda that Science Minister Mansour Gholami had told lawmakers that "more than 100" "starred" students are currently barred from enrolling in university.



Reformist member of Parliament Mahmoud Sadeghi

Jame-e Farda reported that some students had been able to resume their studies by signing a pledge not to engage in political or religious activities. But MP Sadeghi noted that the pledge offers no guarantees.

"Even if they are signed willingly by the students, such pledges have no legal basis," he said. "They deny students their freedom and civil rights that allow them to engage in lawful activities such as membership in student organizations."

"The [reformist] Hope block in Parliament has made a recommendation to Mr. Gholami to set up a committee to take serious steps to resolve this issue," he added. "We are also determined to pursue the matter with the Parliamentary Committee for Education."

It is unclear if Science Minister Gholami has agreed to follow up on the recommendation.

During his first presidential campaign, Rouhani promised to get rid of the star system introduced under Ahmadinejad.

"We have to stop tagging students with stars," he said at an election rally in June 2013. "Students should be free to carry out political and scientific activities unless they cross the red line against national interests."

In October 2017, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) interviewed Mahdieh Golru, a formerly imprisoned student who has been banned from enrolling in university since 2007 because she received a star on her record for engaging in peaceful political activism.

"I am using every available avenue to tell Mr. Rouhani and his Intelligence Minister [Mahmoud Alavi] that my right is being violated," said Golru. "I hope they are listening."

In December 2016, Golru posted an open letter to Rouhani on Facebook, reminding him that he had not yet fulfilled his campaign promise of allowing expelled political students to resume their studies.

"Three years after your promises, I am still banned from entering the university," she added. "There is still a star next to my name. I keep asking myself: Where's the honor you promised to bring back to university students?"
When I think of robots, I think of I, Robot, a film Will Smith starred in that was based on robots living and acting like citizens to help keep humans safe. Sophia is a robot that was created and has recently been named a citizen of Saudi Arabia and all I can think of is how incredibly mind blowing it is that we have come to accept a non-breathing product as almost human like.

The idea of having robots living in our world and being citizens and simply being built to help better our world is slightly creepy to me. It makes me wonder what if. In movies, robots tend to be portrayed as evil and simply looking out to rule the world. I cant help but think what if they did rule the world? What then?

CNBC conducted an interview with Sophia before she had been made a citizen in Saudi Arabia. In the course of the interview they asked her various questions, questions that wouldnt necessarily make a viewer raise a brow. That is however, until CEO of Hanson Robotics Dr. David Hanson asked her if she would want to destroy humans and her answer was, Okay I will destroy humans. What caused this robot to answer with this? I dont know, but it was quite eerie. The facial expression that Sophia also displayed was serious. Based off her answer, Id be terrified if all of a sudden there was mass production of robots being done and they were all built like Sophia. We just wouldnt know what would happen to the human race if we had to co-exist with robots who are being considered citizens of the world.

Business Insider UK also conducted an interview with her and asked her if she liked humans. For a brief moment, she really thought about her answer, before responding with I love them. It was quite interesting to see how this robot really thought about it and made actual facial expressions before answering. It seemed so human that it was quite creepy.

I would like to think that robots wont become smart enough to take over the world and essentially destroy humans but everything in life is unpredictable. Maybe robots just might become incredibly knowledgeable to the point that they remedy some of the hate and violence in the world. Id say our world definitely needs some love and peace.

All that being said, I dont think Sophia will revolutionize the way we define what it means to be a person. That word alone and the meaning behind it should strictly stick to human beings. Although robots could eventually get to a certain level of knowledge and become able to do things humans do, theyre simply not human, theyre machines.

The thought of robots taking over the world is intriguing, thats how films are made and how people begin to think about endless possibilities. Do films reflect reality? Not always. Hollywood has a way of making the unfathomable seem possible. However, after watching Sophia talk, its safe to say that sometimes life does imitate art.
THE expatriate business community in Ghana has lauded government for stabilizing the economy within 11 months of assuming office, and creating the enabling environment for their businesses to thrive.



Expressing their confidence in the Ghanaian economy, the expatriates assured government of their commitment to meeting their obligations in Ghana to ensuring the continued protection of their investments.



Speaking at the maiden Expatriate Business Awards in Accra, graced by President Nana Akufo-Addo, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Intercom Programming & Manufacturing Company (IPMC, Ghana), Mr Amar Deep Singh Hari said Mr President we are happy to say that in the past 11months the cedi has relatively stabilized and the power has also stabilized and we are indeed grateful for your efforts.



Mr Singh recounted how in the peak of the energy crisis, coupled with the Ghana cedis turbulence, the appetite for investment shrunk as many businesses including one his own were on the brink of collapse.



Govt, GIPC commended for promoting foreign businesses

Ghana, he noted provides an excellent business environment. He commended the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) for its efforts at promoting the interests of foreign businesses.



Im not aware of any other country which has established such an entity, an official institution under the office of the President to welcome foreigners and in Ghana this has been happening all these years.



The ease of doing business has permitted us to grow even out of Ghana. Most companies of expatriates have their head offices in Ghana, we keep our families here but we spread out our businesses in neighbouring countries and we have together proven that Ghana is truly a gateway to West Africa.



Ghana needs good governance to sustain gains

Wishing him good health and Gods protection, the IPMC boss appealed to the President to subscribe to good governance in his style of leadership.



This nation is bound to grow, to flourish and to progress. What you need is good governance and for this we pray for Gods blessings and good health to our President, he said.



Mr Singh described as a unique development the organisation of an Awards event specifically for expatriates working in Ghana with the aim of recognizing their contribution to the Economy of Ghana.



An expatriate awards event has never happened in any African country before. Today, history is being written as Ghana awards its expatriates and the rest of Africa looks on with delight.



Allianz Insurance MD says Ghana is open to global businesses

Managing Director of Allianz Insurance Company Ghana Limited, Mr Prado Patrick said Ghana is not only a business friendly environment, but also a country which is open to global businesses.

We trust and believe in Ghana, the atmosphere is conducive for investment, after eight years in the country, we are confident that business environment is investor-friendly, he told this reporter.



The company, he recalled started as a non-life insurance entity and is due to expand further, launching a life insurance company before the end of 2017.



We are now having two companies in Ghana, one non-life and the other life so it shows the trust we have in Ghana, Mr Prado said.

The Allianz boss was confident of good prospects in 2018, noting that the political stability in Ghana was enough haven for foreign investments.



Director of Lakeside Estates says govt is doing the right things

Touting the achievements of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Director of Lakeside Estates, Alhaji Salah Kweku Kalmoni said the current President, Nana Akufo-Addo has been doing the right things since he assumed office.



The reduction of interest costs on Ghanas external loans has been phenomenal; the abolition of tax on real estate was welcome news for those in that industry he observed.



He told this paper that 2017 has been a tough year, noting that theGhanas economy has been under economic decline in the last two years and has not done too well this year.

Source: The Finder









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Ghana Home Loans (GHL), the nations market leader in mortgage financing, today becomes Ghanas latest universal bank. The new company is known as GHL Bank.



GHL Bank was granted a universal banking license by the Bank of Ghana on the 23rd of June this year.



Commenting on the official launch of GHL Bank in Accra today, Mr. Dominic Adu, CEO of GHL Bank, said: As a universal bank, we are working with government and building partnerships to make mortgages affordable and creating the environment to making home ownership much easier.



Mr. Adu noted that the processes to transform the mortgage market leader into a universal bank have already begun, saying: We have hired a world class team and invested in systems and processes ready to provide a one-stop bank for financial services at every stage of your life  anchored by our core vision to be the foremost bank for wealth creation.



The Board Chairman of GHL Bank, Mr. Albert Essien, commented that, GHL Banks entry into the universal banking space has been long awaited. We have taken time to develop a very strong and effective corporate governance structure and we are poised to execute unflinchingly on the many expectations of our clients, shareholders and regulators.



Mr. Essien further stated, that the Bank of Ghana minimum capital requirement of GHS400m will be met and deployed prudently.



Building on the impressive foundation of Ghana Home Loans, GHL Bank will deliver unique experience to clients, with a comprehensive range of personal, private and business banking products.



It will be the foremost institution for wealth creation in Ghana.



GHL Bank currently operates from its Airport Residential Area head office and has plans to roll out its branch network at strategic locations throughout the country.



The bank currently employs about 160 professionals and will offer a full bouquet of universal banking services.



Ghana Home Loans, now GHL Bank, was established in 2006, focusing exclusively on providing mortgage products.



In 2007, it became the national leader in the mortgage industry.



Over the past decade, it has served over 3,000 households with approximately US$190 million in home financing. In doing so, it has transformed the housing finance industry, addressing systemic challenges that previously made mortgages almost unobtainable in Ghana.



The company has also placed Ghana on the international finance map, sourcing over US$200 million in long-term funding from a formidable list of institutions such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Dutch Development Bank FMO, IFC, the Paris-based Proparco, Germany's DEG, ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Ghana International Bank and Shelter Afrique.



In 2012, the Dubai-based private equity fund Abraaj acquired a majority stake in Ghana Home Loans, now GHL Bank.



Ghana Home Loans is a member of the prestigious Ghana Club 100.





Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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About 700 power consumers on Wednesday massed up on the premises of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Project Office in Accra to express concern over their inability to buy credit for their prepaid meters.



It was a scene of confusion and anger, followed by a barrage of criticism of the operations of the only power distribution company in the country.



While some of the angry customers called for the sacking of the top management of the ECG, others rained curses and insults on the organisation and welcomed its planned concession to a private entity.



Sell the ECG and sack all unproductive members of staff was the chorus on the lips of many of the consumers.



All of them should be booted out. I do not think a private company will allow its customers to go through this pain, Francis Atiso, a resident of Dansoman, told the Daily Graphic.



The ECG customers from different suburbs of Accra converged on the ECG Project Office near the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange after they had been directed there by ECG officials in the suburbs for anomalies on customers prepaid cards to be rectified.



Almost all those who spoke to the Daily Graphic said they had been sleeping in darkness since last Friday due to their inability to upload their prepaid electricity cards from vendors and ECG offices.



The prepaid cards, they said, were not recognised by the electronic system that controlled the prepaid purchasing system and that, in most cases, the system classified their cards as error.



Charged atmosphere



The customers formed long queues as they desperately tried to get their prepaid cards repaired by workers of the ECG.



Most of them, however, waited for hours without being attended to and the thought of spending another day in darkness made them lose their cool.



It was a charged atmosphere as the customers started shouting and calling on the ECG staff, whom they claimed had barricaded themselves in their offices, to come out and serve them.



I went to buy credit but was told there was a code on it and that I must bring it here for it to be reset. But I have been in a queue for four hours and I guess I have to go home and sleep in darkness again, Richardson Appiah, a customer from Sowutuom, said.



Some of the customers intimated that they would resort to illegal connections if the ECG failed to adequately address the problem.



If the company does not want its customers to pay for its services, then we will resort to illegal connections. A serious company with proper management will never entertain such inefficiencies, a young woman who gave her name only as Ama, a resident of Agege, said.



Police intervention



With the crowd of customers growing by the minute and the ECG staff overstretched to their limits, the situation could have easily degenerated into a riot had it not been for the timely intervention of the Ghana Police Service.



About 20 policemen were dispatched to the scene to restore law and order, but some of the customers were not enthused about that development.



So now I have to be chased and harassed by a policeman just because I want the ECG to fix a problem associated with my prepaid card. It is really a pity, James Dua, a resident of Chorkor, lamented.



ECG responds



Meanwhile, in an interview, the Public Relations Officer of the ECG, Mr William Boateng, said engineers of the company were working around the clock to resolve the issue.



Our engineers are working day and night to solve the problem and normalise the situation, he said.



According to him, the problem started last Friday when one of its servers crashed and failed to respond to customers data on its old build, operate and transfer (BOT) prepayment system.



He said customers on its new smart prepayment system, which allowed credit to be bought online, had not been affected.



The problem, he said, only affected customers in four districts in the companys Accra West Region, namely, Kaneshie, Dansoman, Korle Bu and Achimota.



On how the ECG was resolving the issue, Mr Boateng explained that affected customers data were being migrated onto a new server, but due to the number of people involved, there was a little delay.



He, however, assured the affected customers that they could deposit their cards at the ECG Project Office with their telephone numbers, so that after the problem had been rectified, they would be called to come for them.



We will work on all the cards, but we also advise people not to mass up at the project office but rather leave their cards with us and we will work on them, he said.

Source: Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is holding a thanksgiving service today to mark the one-year anniversary of the partys massive victory over the then ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).



The all-white interdenominational service, to be attended by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his vice Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, will take place at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC).



According to the party, almost all appointees, including Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, National Executive Council members, among others, are expected to grace the occasion.



The Journey



President Akufo-Addo made history last year when against all odds, he defeated incumbent John Dramani Mahama with a margin of over one million votes, after a keenly contested general election on December 7, 2016.



While then candidate Nana Akufo-Addos votes appreciated significantly, that of NDCs John Mahama dropped and eventually, Nana Akufo-Addo widened the gap with some 1,002,749 valid votes.



The then opposition candidate polled 5,716,026 which translated into 53.85% while incumbent Mr. Mahama managed 4,713,277, representing 44.40%.



There was spontaneous and wild jubilation all over the country when the Returning Officer of the presidential poll, who is the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei, declared the 72-year-old legal gem the president-elect.



Some Ghanaians even referred to the historic victory by the NPP as the second independence of Ghana.



John Jinx



After Ghana had transitioned into democratic rule in 1992  after 11 years of military dictatorship (Provisional National Defence Council)  all those who occupied the presidential seat had their first names as John.



Nana Akufo-Addo thus became the first person to break the chain of the Johns since the 4th Republican Constitution was promulgated in 1992.



Historical Facts



He is the first son of an ex-president (Edward Akufo-Addo) to be president of Ghana.



He is also the first person to maintain one running mate (Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia) for three consecutive elections  2008, 2012 and 2016.



President Akufo-Addo is the first opposition leader to win one-touch (over the 50% plus 1 as mandated by the Constitution) in Ghanas electoral history.



He is also the first opposition leader to stop an incumbent president (Mahama) from winning a second term in office.



2008 Episode



In 2008, Nana Akufo-Addo, who was then the incumbent NPP candidate, led then opposition NDCs Professor John Evans Atta Mills in the first round of poll but could not hit the 50% plus 1 vote to win outright to enable him to succeed exiting John Agyekum Kufuor as president.



As a result, the election entered into a second round and Nana Addo lost to the NDC candidate, thereby returning the NDC  which had ruled from 1992 to 2000  to power.



Presidential Death



Unfortunately for the NDC, Prof Mills died suddenly on July 24, 2012, when he was preparing to contest again for a second term, and his then vice, John Dramani Mahama, had to continue until the December 7, 2012 contest when he (Mahama) was fielded by then ruling NDC against the NPPs Nana Akufo-Addo, who was contesting for a second time.



The 2012 election was bizarrely called for Mr. Mahama by then EC Chairman Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan, in spite of widespread irregularities and fraud the opposition NPP complained about.



Election Petition



As a result, the NPP, through Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia and then Chairman Jake Otanka Obetsebi Lamptey (now deceased), filed a presidential election petition at the Supreme Court, challenging the validity of President Mahamas declaration by the EC.



The case, which was telecast live, travelled for about eight months and on August 29, 2013, the court, in a 5:4 majority, dismissed the petitioners case and upheld the ECs declaration of Mr. Mahama as then president-elect.



It was the first time the EC was using a biometric voters register to conduct elections in the country.



NPP Determination



However, in 2016, the NPP vowed never to allow irregularities to dominate the process and appeared to have policed the process, using a very sophisticated technology in the independent compilation of its version of the results.



The strict supervision given by the opposition party ensured that the EC was compelled to play by the rules as against what had transpired in 2012.



Then ruling NDC, it later emerged, could not even collate its own results and had reportedly tied their hopes on the platform run by the EC, which failed on election day when the result transmission was in progress.



The EC, therefore, had no other option than to declare the opposition leader winner of the presidential poll.





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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Youth in the Brong Ahafo Region remain defiant in their resolve to travel to Libya en route to European countries regardless of the recent expose on slavery and the murder of black youth from others parts of Africa.



The youth, especially, those from Nkoranza, Techiman and Berekum are still bent on travelling to overseas through Libya despite the dangers involved.



This was disclosed by the Chief Superintendent of Immigration in charge of the Migration Information Centre at Sunyani, James Hayford Boadi yesterday in an interview with the DAILY GUIDE.



He said even though the centre is trying its best to convince the youth from embarking on such dangerous trips, their response has persistently been their preference for hardship in Libya to hunger and joblessness in Ghana.



Brong Ahafo tops the other regions in terms of youth migration to Europe through the North African countries. So far, Nkoranza, Berekum and Techiman are the leading producers of illegal immigrants most of whom have little or no knowledge about what awaits them on the way and their final destination, he said.



There are more than 1, 500 illegal Ghanaian immigrants in Libya, he said adding that between January and October 2017 a total of 3,669 Ghanaians returned from Libya. The breakdowns are 406 Greater Accra, 536 Ashanti, 129 Central and 164 Western. The rest are 155 Volta, 151 Upper West, 224 Upper East, 298 Northern, 180 Eastern and 1,426 Brong Ahafo.



He explained that in the wake of the crisis, the government through the Ghana Immigration Service evacuated 127 Ghanaians on 29th of November 2017 into the country. 29 from Brong Ahafo, 6 from Eastern, 2 from Northern, 3 from Volta, 18 from Ashanti and 30 from Western. The rests are, 5 from Greater Accra, 23 from Central and 11 from Upper East.



He said each returnee was given GH 400 to help them get to their respective homes in the country. He pleaded with the youth in the region to listen to travel advice from the centre adding that Libya is not safe. He appealed to the youth in the region to engage in farming because there are fertile lands in Brong Ahafo which are good for cash crops like cashew and cocoa.



The Migration Information Centre was set up in February, 2016 to educate youth in the region about the dangers of illegal migration and is funded by the European Union and the International Organization for Illegal Migration and the Japanese government.

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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Director of Elections for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Samuel Ofosu Ampofo is calling on religious bodies of the country to implore President Nana Akufo-Addo to declare his position on the issue of homosexuality.



According to him, the President's interview on Al Jazeera last Sunday implied that homosexuality is illegal in Ghana because there hasn't been a strong coalition to push for its legislation.



And he believes the President is setting an agenda for the homosexual community to rise and stir agitations for legalization of the practice.



President Akufo-Addo in an interview with Qatar-based TV station, Al Jazeera further added that activism to shore up support to reform the culture and laws of the country in support of homosexual practices is "bound to happen".



This is a social, cultural issue, I dont believe that in Ghana so far, a sufficiently strong coalition has emerged which is having that impact on public opinion that will say change it, lets now have a new paradigm in Ghana.



"I grew up in England; I went to school as a young boy in England and I grew up at a time in England when homosexuality was banned there, it was illegal and I lived in the period when British politicians thought it was anathema to think about changing the law and suddenly the activities of individuals, of groups, a certain awareness, a certain development grew and grew and grew stronger and it forced a change in law. I believe those are the same processes that will bring about changes in our situation.



At the moment, I dont feel, I dont see that in Ghana there is that strong current of opinion that is saying this is something we need to deal with. It is not so far a matter that is on the agenda, he stated.



But commenting on the issue on PeaceFM's "Kokrokoo" Tuesday, the NDC Natioanl Vice-Chairman opined that President Akufo-Addo's inability to stand his ground and firmly state that Ghana will not legalize homosexuality, is dangerous.



He explained that the homosexual fraternity has powerful backing from certain influential leaders in the world and the President's submissions may potentially engineer their course.



Hes setting the agenda. The President shouldnt set the agenda because its a very dangerous platform hes createdIt is wrong for the President to set that agendaThe problem the President has created is he has set the agenda



The agenda is dangerous. If were not careful, were going to have a challenge in this country. And LGTB and its allied forces will marshal all resources to influence the laws of this country, Mr. Ofosu Ampofo stated emphatically on Peace FM.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Audio Attachment: Listen to Kweku Baako Jnr. on Peace FM's 'kokrokoo'

Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr. has made a strident appeal to President Nana Akufo-Addo to clamp down on all persons who engage in premix fuel diversion.



Speaking on 'Kokrokoo' on Peace FM, Kweku Baako decried the spate of corruptible practices in the premix fuel business.



According to him, the business is as cancerous as illegal mining - galamsey - and "if the President and his government don't exercise firm control of the situation, the menace will continue to fester".



He called on the government to discipline any individual or company found culpable in the illegal diversion of premix fuel without favour.



"We dont have the luxury of an alternative. Otherwise, forget it," he stated.



Mr. Baako noted that there are powerful and influential people, some of which are party activists, business moguls, government cronies and so forth behind the illegal activities of premix fuel and the corruption thereof.



Theres money there. Its just the same as galamsey. They all talk openly that they want to solve the problem. Once their party is in office, what they do is to capture the initiative, capture the infrastructure, capture everything and use it for themselves. Thats what is happening. Its happening today. It happened yesterday and if were not careful, it will happen tomorrow, he said.



To him, the government must take the bull by the horn to crack the whip on every culprit.



Its like galamsey. When their party is in office, (they) their people; their top people, Regional Chairmen, constituency Chairmen . . . all of them are part of it. And very soon, these things will be made clear. The names and their identities will come out . . . theres no need to compromise or hid things on this matter



Meanwhile, fourteen (14) oil marketing companies (OMCs) found culpable in the illegal diversion of premix fuel have been banned from the distribution of premix fuel supplies.



The joint decision by the Ministries of Energy and Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the National Premix Fuel Committee (NPFC) was reached after they discovered colossal diversions of premix fuel at the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).



Also addressing the issue on 'Kokrokoo', the Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Allotey Jacobs proposed other alternatives that could help curb the premix situation.



He called for a restructuring of the premix Secretariat and checks and balances to check any corrupt practice by the oil marketing companies and individuals.



"....government must not remove the subsidies on premix fuel....but since fisherfolks find it difficult to make ends meet; it is prudent that the commodity (premix fuel) is sold at a much cheaper price to them," he stated.



The Ashanti Regional Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party, also touching on the topic, called on the Fisheries Ministry not to spare the indicted OMCs.



He stated that the companies should be prosecuted in the court of law to serve as deterrent to other potential perpetrators.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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WASHINGTON - The animal experts could tell there was something off with the adult bald eagle as soon as it was brought to City Wildlife, a rehabilitation center in northwest Washington, D.C.

The bird wasn't flying and wasn't using its legs properly.

And it was feisty.

All signs, experts said, pointed to lead poisoning, and a blood test confirmed that the eagle had high levels of lead, said Paula Goldberg, executive director of City Wildlife.

Experts had treated the raptor and hoped it would recover. But they had noted that its prognosis was "guarded."

On Thursday morning, experts said the eagle had died sometime Wednesday night.

In an email, Goldberg said for wildlife, "there are no guarantees.

"In this case, we knew the bird had lead poisoning but it may have had other issues as well."

The eagle was brought to City Wildlife Tuesday by an officer with the Maryland Natural Resources Police who found it in Nanjemoy, in southern Maryland. Goldberg said the bird was found in woods, sitting on its haunches, about 100 feet from a road.

"There was clearly something wrong with it," Goldberg said. Wildlife veterinarians at City Wildlife examined the bird. Goldberg said it is not uncommon for bald eagles to have elevated levels of lead.

Raptors are susceptible to lead poisoning because they often eat dead animals that have been hunted with ammunition that contains lead. Goldberg said, for example, that if a bald eagle eats a deer that has been shot with lead ammunition instead of copper, the lead stays in the deer's body and then is digested when an eagle eats the deer.

Goldberg said her staff thinks that's probably what happened to this bald eagle.

In California, politicians signed a ban on lead in hunting ammunition.

Kristy Jacobus, the City Wildlife clinical director and veterinarian, said the eagle that was found in southern Maryland had lead levels measuring 24.5 micrograms per deciliter in its blood. An animal would show signs of being symptomatic at anything above 20, she said.

City Wildlife said this is the third bald eagle that the rescue operation has taken in since in the summer and the only one with lead poisoning.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post * Dana Hedgpeth
New nine-foot menorah at the home of Rabbi Hershy Gourarie in State College replaces one that had been stolen in October.

A 12-foot menorah will be lit in front of Old Main at Penn State University at the start of Hanukkah, six weeks after a large menorah in a rabbi's yard was stolen.

A ceremony will be held to light the large menorah at 5 p.m. on Dec. 12, the first night of Hanukkah, announced campus officials.

Four students were charged Nov. 20 with taking the nine-foot menorah from the yard of Rabbi Hershy Gourarie, who is co-director of Chabad of the Undergrads at Penn State.

The menorah was found damaged in front of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, but those charged were from other fraternities.

This year's event celebrating of Hanukkah and Jewish pride is larger in response to the theft of the menorah, Rabbi Gourarie said.

The new 12-foot menorah was purchased with money raised in a GoFundMe campaign and is similar to the one that had been taken, Gourarie said. This will be the third menorah lighting in front of Old Main.

"We had to increase the light. The menorah is traditionally placed in a place which is viewable by the public in order to publicize the miracle, with its message of hope and religious freedom, to all. Today, to people of all faiths, the Chanukah holiday serves as a symbol and message of the triumph of freedom over oppression, of spirit over matter, of light over darkness," he said.

There will also be three other menorahs on campus: In front of the municipality building, the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and the Gourarie home.

The new nine-foot menorah at the Gourarie home was donated by Arnold Hoeflich and family.

The event in front of Old Main will feature music, dancing, prizes and traditional food such as jelly donuts and fried potato latkes.

"The eternal message of the Menorah lights has attained particular significance in light of current world events where the forces of oppression and darkness are ever-present," said Rabbi Nosson Meretsky, director of Chabad of Penn State.

"As we experience additional countries and entire regions being freed of their oppressors, we relive the experience of Chanukah in our very own times. It is the story of a little light pushing away an empire of darkness, human sensibility defying terror and brute force, life and growth overcoming destruction."

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, recalls the victory more than 2,000 years ago of a militarily weak but spiritually strong Jewish people over forces that had overrun ancient Israel and sought to impose restrictions on the Jewish way of life.

Upon recapturing the Temple, the Jewish people found one jar of oil, enough to burn only one day, lasted for eight days, and ever since, the Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah for eight days by lighting an eight-branched menorah.

Additional activities will include a second public lighting in front of the State College Municipal Building Dec. 17. And on Dec. 12, 13 and 14, Chabad will have tables in all the dorm commons where students will have a chance to light their very own menorah from 5:30-7:30 pm.
A Virginia man is charged in a Lancaster County crash that killed a tow truck operator and the driver he was assisting.

Anthony Caldwell

Anthony W. Caldwell, 30, was charged Wednesday with two counts of homicide by vehicle in the Sept. 10 crash on Route 222 in West Earl Township, authorities said.

Caldwell surrendered and was arraigned late Wednesday, and was placed in Lancaster County Prison in lieu of $750,000, said the Lancaster County district attorney's office.

Ralph Waltrous, 44, of Elizabethtown, who was the tow truck operator, and Robert Buckwalter Jr., 46, of Ephrata, died after Caldwell's van hit them on Route 222.

According to crash reconstruction, Caldwell's van veered from the right lane on Route 222 north across a fog line, striking both men, who were outside the vehicles.

Caldwell told police he had been drinking alcohol at a friend's house prior to driving and the 1:45 a.m. crash, said the district attorney. His blood alcohol level was 0.088 percent, and the legal limit in Pennsylvania is 0.08 percent.

Caldwell also was not licensed to drive, police said. He had a learner's permit from Virginia, which required an adult to be with him, but he was driving alone when the crash occurred.

A witness heading north on Route 222 at the time of the crash told police the van had been driving erratically, swerving from lane to lane, and did not move into the left lane as required by law when an emergency vehicle with lights activated is on the shoulder.

Caldwell is charged with two counts each of vehicular homicide, homicide by vehicle while DUI, DUI, causing an accident involving death while not properly licensed and five summary traffic violations.

Vehicle homicide while DUI counts each carry a mandatory three-year minimum prison term upon conviction.
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.

Daniel Khalil Clary

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.
Isaac George was getting ready to go to breakfast on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

He never got it.

Instead, he found himself trying to survive as dive bombers, torpedo bombers and fighter planes of the Imperial Japanese Navy staged their surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

"We were coming out of the barracks to go to breakfast," said George, who was then a 19-year-old enlisted man in the Army Air Corps. "We saw the red balls on the wings of the (Japanese) planes and we knew we were in desperate trouble."

Indeed.

The attack killed more than 2,000 American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and civilians and thrust the nation into the maw of World War II.

Seventy-six years later, George, 95, of New Castle was among three Pennsylvania Pearl Harbor survivors who gathered in the state Capitol Thursday afternoon for the annual commemoration of the attack arranged by Naval Support Activity Mechanicsburg. Joining him were 95-year-old retired Lt. Col. William Bonelli of Philadelphia, and 94-year-old Richard Schimmel of Allentown.

They are a rare breed that is getting rarer by the year. It is estimated that only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen who were in Hawaii during the attack are still alive.

For Bonelli, the attack, the entire war, really, was a major turning point. He was an aircraft mechanic when the Japanese struck. He ended the war as an officer and a pilot flying bombing raids over Nazi Germany.

Bonelli said his Pearl Harbor experience was "unbelievable."

When the first Japanese planes swooped over, he, like so many others, thought a military exercise was going on. He kidded a pal that now they were at war.

He quickly realized it was no joke.

"I could see them hitting the ships," Bonelli said. "I could see the aircraft dive-bombing the harbor."

By any gauge, the Pearl Harbor attack was an American disaster.

Most of the U.S. aircraft military fields around Hawaii were destroyed on the ground. The battleships and other warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were decimated.

The Japanese lost just 29 planes, barely a scratch by comparison.

Bonelli wasn't keeping a tally at the moment, though. He was busy dodging the machine-gun fire from strafing enemy planes.

"I was just trying to protect myself and find out what I could do to help," he said.

Afterward, he was on guard duty outside the base hospital. "They were digging a trench...to throw the body parts in," Bonelli recalled. "That really got to me."

George said the attack "was too much of a surprise to be terrifying" when you were in the thick of it.

His station was in the control tower at Hickam Field, an Army Air Corps base on the shore of Pearl Harbor. From there, he watched the battleship USS Arizona explode from a bomb hit.

"The whole thing blew up...and it was thrown up out of the water," George said.

In that instant, 1,177 sailors died. The Arizona, now topped by a memorial pavilion, remains where it sank at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

Schimmel, an Army enlisted man who was stationed at the main information center, knew how dire the situation was because "I saw all the top brass running around."

His motivation for being in the service, both before and after the attack, has remained the same through all the intervening decades.

"I love my country. And I was doing what I wanted to do for my country," Schimmel said.

The three survivors were the stars of Thursday's ceremony in the Capitol's East Wing Rotunda. American flags were draped from the balcony overhead.

Lt. Gov. Mike Stack praised them, and by extension all members of the American military, for their past and continuing service.

"We owe the greatest debts for their sacrifice, their resilience, their toughness and their determination to defend freedom and democracy," said Rear Admiral Jonathan A. Yuen, commander of the Naval Supply Systems Command. "Let us take strength from their example and wisdom from their experience."

Speaking from experience, George said there is a key lesson from Pearl Harbor that remains relevant: It doesn't pay to let your guard down.

"I think they should keep in mind that it could happen again," he said.
By James P. Bond

There is overwhelming evidence why the United States should abolish capital punishment.

Former President Jimmy Carter in his 2014 book, "A Call to Action," said have done so.

The only nations in Europe, North, Central and South America that still execute its citizens are the United States, Belarus and Suriname.

In 2007, Nebraska became the 19th state to abolish the death penalty.

The Michigan Law School has a registry of 1728 exonerated folks who had been incarcerated for an average of 11 years for crimes they did not commit.

Since there is no fail-safe example of a way a jury can reach a verdict of first degree of murder, there is an enormous danger of taking the life of an innocent person.

Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana, Texas was executed for the arson murder of his three children based on false evidence.

More than three years later, the Houston Chronicle, with input from The Washington Post, detailed how Willingham's conviction was based on false testimony of a jailhouse snitch to benefit himself through a lesser sentence and the prosecution misconduct of two district attorneys.

Middleweight boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, spent 19 years in prison. He was accused of murdering three white people in New Jersey, and convicted by an all-white jury, mostly on the testimony of two thieves who later recanted their stories.

Following his release, he found injustice until he died in 2014 at the age of 76. Fortunately, he had received life without parole instead of the death penalty.

To quote Carter, "Perhaps the greatest argument against the death penalty is its extreme bias in its use against the poor, minorities, and those with diminished mental capacities.

Although homicide victims are six times more likely to be black than white, 77 percent of death penalty cases involve white victims".

In 2002, the United States Supreme Court banned capital punishment of the intellectually disabled and in 2005 adolescents under the age of 18. Studies have shown it is not a deterrent.

Violent crime defined as murder, rape, and armed robbery reached its peak in 1990 and has dropped remarkably since with 58 percent in Washington D.C., 70 percent in Dallas, 74 percentin Newark, 75 percent in Los Angeles.

What caused the previous peak?

An investigative reporter, Kevin Drum, from Mother Jones wrote, "The American real criminal element was lead."

A HUD counselor, Rick Nevin, noted there was a link between lead exposure and juvenile delinquency.

Also there is a marked fall in the IQ of children when exposed to lead. Lead is known to be toxic to brain neurons and causes shrinkage in the size of the frontal cortex responsible for judgement leading to antisocial behavior and adult violence.

Graphs of blood lead levels from 1937 to 1986 show it peaked about 23 years before the violent crime peak in 1990.

The biggest source in the post-war years was not lead paint but leaded gas. In the 1920's, General Motors, in order to prevent engine pinging and knock, added tetraethvl lead to gasoline.

In 2000, Nevin concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from autos explained 90 percent in the variation in violent crime.

In 2007, Nevin showed lead data curves peaking 20 years or so before violent crime; this fit astonishingly well in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, Finland, Italy and West Germany. During the 1970's and 80's stringent environmental agency regulations led to less pollutants as did the catalytic converter.

Ending capital punishment means that some guilty of the most heinous crimes and serial killers will remain in prison for life.

Dr. James P. Bond is a retired oncologist who previously practiced in Bryn Mawr, Pa. and currently lives in Beaumont, Texas. He is a retired Pennsylvania Prison Society member.
By Carl Choper

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that threatens to redefine the concept of religious liberty in America to the point that some people's ability to freely practice religion will be threatened.

A Christian bakery in Colorado, Masterpiece Cakeshop, claims that it has a First Amendment right to refuse to sell a cake to a gay couple as part of their same-gender marriage celebration--in violation of a Colorado non-discrimination law and disregarding the religious freedom of its customers.

To insist that freedom of religion means the right to hinder someone else's free practice of religion turns the concept of religious liberty on its head.

Let us suppose, for example, that there is but one commercially-available banquet hall for rent in a particular isolated small town in the Western United States.

Let us suppose that this banquet hall is owned and operated by a Christian who believes that his religion is the one true way to life and that all other faiths are a path to death and eternal damnation.

Further, let us suppose that this Christian believes that he must love his neighbor to the point that he cannot do anything to facilitate them walking down these paths.

Now let us suppose that in this same isolated town there is a small Jewish community, and into that community, a baby boy is born.

On the eighth day of that baby's life, the family and its community want to celebrate a bris, a ceremony of entering the Jewish covenant involving the ritual circumcision of the boy, followed by a seudat-mitzvah, a traditionally-mandated banquet meal celebrating the joyous occasion.

The Jewish community would want to rent the only commercially-available banquet hall.

But in the name of his own religious liberty, the Christian banquet hall owner refuses to rent his hall to the Jewish community, which is effectively prevented from holding its traditionally-mandated banquet.

Does the business owner have the right to prevent the small Jewish community from observing their faith?

There have been cases in Pennsylvania where rape victims have come to emergency rooms only to be denied access to emergency contraception because the hospital disapproved.

Suppose there is a Jewish family living in a rural part of Pennsylvania where the only local hospital is a Catholic hospital. Suppose there is some tragedy and a Jewish woman from that family is brought into the emergency room with a condition requiring treatment involving contraception.

Catholic teaching and Jewish teaching diverge on this matter. Does the Church which owns the hospital have the right, protected by religious freedom, to prohibit the Jewish patient from following the teachings of her own religion?

This danger to religious liberty also extends potentially to Christianity, if a non-Christian business owner claims a religious objection to being involved in any way with the activities of a church.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop and similar cases, the same-gender couple may understand their own wedding in religious terms--a religious moment which the baker happened to disagree with.

Each of these examples involves one party depriving another party of religious liberty in the name of protecting their own religious liberty. In such cases, whose right should be protected?

The Constitution guarantees each American the right to freely practice religion and states that the government cannot compel an individual to violate the teachings of his or her own faith without some compelling need. Additionally, though, the state has a Constitutional obligation to provide equal protection of the laws for all persons.

The government has a compelling and constitutionally-based reason to uphold equal rights for all its citizens in the public realm. The government cannot allow merchants doing business with the public to serve only those with whom they are in religious agreement.

Just a few decades ago it was common practice for many hotels to refuse service to Jews.

Such a practice is illegal today, but it could become legal again if the hotel owner is a Christian who claims that it is a violation of religious liberty, based on medieval readings of the New Testament, to be forced to lodge Jews.

A legal system under which such religious discrimination was allowed would be failing in its obligation not to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Is the state, in this case, however, compelling the banquet hall owner to violate his right of religious practice by insisting he must do business with everyone regardless of his own personal religious judgment?

No, because the government has not forced the banquet hall owner to be in that business.

If he cannot in good conscience run a banquet hall in a manner that allows for the compelling social need that every person must enjoy equal protection of the laws, perhaps he should not be in that business.

Or perhaps he should modify his business in some way.

A businessperson who does not feel he can serve people with whom he has deep religious disagreements cannot expect that the larger society will abandon its principles of equal protection of the laws in matters of public accommodation.

In a just society, businesses cannot refuse to serve certain customers because of who they are or how they celebrate who they love.

Rabbi Carl Choper is a community rabbi in Harrisburg, and president of the Interfaith Alliance of Pennsylvania. He writes from Harrisburg.
By Brent Vernon

When Pennsylvania communities submitted proposals last month in the continent-wide competition to land Amazon's coveted second headquarters project, it signified more than just local confidence in a state whose $724 billion GDP ranks it as the world's 19th-largest economy.

Brent Vernon (Commonwealth of Pa. photo)

It showcased the formidable strength of Pennsylvania's business climate under Gov. Tom Wolf's leadership.

Many factors magnify the strength of the commonwealth, all set against the backdrop of our comprehensive infrastructure.

The commonwealth's strategic proximity to the commercial heart of the Northeast places it within a day's drive of nearly 40 percent of all U.S. markets (including six of the 10 largest markets) and 60 percent of Canadian markets.

With an outstanding network of interstate highways, four of North America's seven class I freight railroads, six international airports, and three major ports accessing the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, Pennsylvania's infrastructure is perfectly positioned for business and global trade.

Pennsylvania's highly skilled workforce fortifies this economic success story.

While the state ranks fifth nationally in the most STEM graduates, eighth in largest tech employment and 10th for technology and innovation, Governor Wolf has accelerated training initiatives to further meet the needs of companies competing in today's global marketplace.

There's no doubt Pennsylvania today is setting a new standard for economic development. Communities that once depended on single-source, heavy-industry employers are being revitalized through technology and innovation.

Investments in incumbent training programs over the past three years has assisted more than 120,000 employees in more than 2,200 businesses statewide.

Additionally, Gov. Wolf established the Apprenticeship and Training Office which has significantly expanded the apprenticeship footprint in Pennsylvania, bringing the total number of registered programs to 750 and the total number of registered apprentices to 15,201 statewide.

In just three years, the Wolf administration - delivering on the promise of jobs that pay, schools that teach, and government that works - has provided a solid foundation for this strong business climate.

That started with the elimination of burdensome taxes such as the final Capital Stock and Franchise Tax, and continuing with targeted investments in economic growth.

The successful recapitalization of the Business in Our Sites initiative has reallocated funds from underutilized programs to grow Pennsylvania's inventory of pad-ready sites for business development.

Administered through the Commonwealth Finance Authority, Business in Our Sites is a valuable tool for businesses seeking prepared locations conducive to ready growth. It's no wonder Site Selection magazine named Pennsylvania the No. 1 Northeast state for business investment.

Focused infrastructure development is making it easier for manufacturers to transport their products and to access low-cost energy, which has emerged as another prime mover for economic growth. Pennsylvania sits atop the Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas field in the United States and the third largest on earth.

Fast-developing pipeline infrastructure has been boosted by Governor Wolf's Pipeline Investment Program to make more natural gas available to manufacturers who see the great value of doing business here.

Pennsylvania's quality of life must not go unnoticed amid this business powerhouse. The state boasts the lowest cost of living in the Northeast, affordable real estate, prominent world-ranked universities, and premier health-care and cultural institutions.

Looking ahead, we should certainly welcome the intriguing possibility of adding huge projects like Amazon's HQ2 to our economic landscape.

But dare to look beyond them. Look across the state. Pennsylvania's strong business climate is right now attracting a diverse array of enterprises that - in concert with our schools, our workers, and our communities - are primed to grow, thrive, and succeed.

And our economic success story has just begun.

Brent Vernon is executive director of the Pennsylvania Governor's Action Team. He writes from Harrisburg.
State government's efforts to go after tax cheats and scammers is paying off to the tune of millions.

The stepped-up efforts begun in 2015-16 to prevent the issuance of fraudulent and erroneous tax refunds, along with a renegotiated software contract to help flag potential fraudulent or erroneous tax returns, saved the state more than $29 million in the last fiscal year alone.

By the end of 2018-19, this initiative is expected to have saved $80.5 million over four years for the state's general fund, said Revenue Secretary Dan Hassell.

"The Department of Revenue's top priority is protecting taxpayers. That is why we are constantly strengthening our processing system and fraud filters to try to catch scam artists attempting to use stolen information to file fraudulent tax returns," he said. "We're going to do everything we can to enforce the law."

The number of personal income tax returns that have been flagged so far this year add up to more than 61,000, which is nearly double the 31,336 flagged, according to the department. In 2015, that number was 8,521 and in 2014, 1,132.

Among the errors or fraudulent efforts detected include overstating expenses, incorrectly reporting wages, creating fake dependent identities, or providing W-2s that incorrectly state the amount of taxes that have been remitted to the state, department officials said.

Armed with software from Pembroke, Mass-based Revenue Solutions Inc., the department's Fraud Investigation Unit, created last year, prevented $23.7 million in refunds that were fraudulent, erroneously filed or in need of adjustment.

The remainder of last year's savings came from the department renegotiating its contract with the software company to go to a fixed rate of about $1 million. Previously, the company was paid a percentage of the fraudulent and refunds their software intercepted.

Additionally, Hassell said the Fraud Investigation Unit has partnered with state and federal tax administrators and tax preparers to address the rise in fraudulent tax returns filed by scammers. It also established new procedures to assist potential victims of identity theft to ensure further damage to their credit or identity do not occur that involves personal contact by the unit via phone and a letter.

"These new procedures are helping us assist victims of identity theft and combat tax refund fraud in a more cost effective way," he said.

But protecting people's confidential information is a team sport involving government agencies, the IRS, tax preparers, businesses, and taxpayers themselves, Hassell said.

Taxpayers' role includes safeguarding themselves from being a scammer's victims protecting their information and identities by:

Using firewall and anti-virus software,

Using secure wireless networks when accessing the internet,

Looking for the "s" following the "http" in a website's URL when providing personal information,

Choosing strong passwords that avoid your name, birthday, or common words,

Being on the lookout for phishing emails from your bank or tax software,

Not letting sensitive personal information lay around, and

Not allowing a tax preparer take your refund and then pay you directly.

If you suspect a scammer used your identity to claim a tax refund, call the Department of Revenue's Fraud Investigation Unit t 717-772-9297 or emailing Ra-rvpitfraud@pa.gov.

This effort by the revenue department is part of the Gov. Tom Wolf's GO-TIME initiative, which since 2015 has resulted in state agencies saving more than $373 million as it works toward reaching a $500 million goal in savings by 2020, said GO-TIME director Sharon Ward.
Not only will elementary and middle school students spend less time taking state exams, next year they will take them closer to the end of the school year.

Gov. Tom Wolf delivered that bit of good news about the high-stakes Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams in math, English literacy and science given to third through eighth graders at a Montgomery County middle school on Wednesday.

"We are continuing to respond to the concerns of students, parents and teachers about the amount of classroom time spent of standardized tests," he said to those gathered at Colonial Middle School. "After reducing the classroom time devoted to the PSSA and moving the test window to later in the school year, students and teachers will have more classroom time to focus on learning before taking the test."

In August, Wolf announced that the state exams to be administered this coming spring would be shortened by the removal of a section from the math test and one from the English test as well as reducing the number of questions on the science exam.

This allows the testing period to be condensed from three weeks to two weeks, allowing the exams to be pushed back to later in the school year. But since school calendars for the current school year are already set, this won't begin until next school year.

This move buys teachers extra instructional time to ready students for the exams, which are used in teacher evaluations as well as to meet the federal accountability requirements. So instead of the testing period starting April 9 as is the case in 2018, they will begin as late as April 25 in future years.

Maggie Cierpilowski, data and instruction specialist at Central Dauphin School District's South Side Elementary School, praised the move.

READ MORE: Coming this spring: a shorter PSSA

"As an educator, I feel the changes to the PSSA testing length and timeframe are beneficial to both educators and students. A more concise test allows educators to better gauge student understanding of state standards opposed to a lengthy test that may not accurately portray students' ability due to possible testing fatigue and/or test anxiety.

"Pushing back the testing window will afford teachers more instructional time to cover more content at a deeper level prior to assessment," she added. "As a public school teacher, I appreciate the efforts at the state level in reviewing current practices given the emphasis on these high stake tests."

It also drew similar praise from Pennsylvania State Education Association President Dolores McCracken, who said when it comes to standardized testing, "Governor Wolf gets it."

She said Wolf "understands that less time spent on testing allows for more time spent teaching and learning. This is great progress, and we look forward to continuing work with the governor on this issue."

The changes to the test and testing period grew out of comments made at meetings that the state Department of Education officials held over the past year or so as it put together the state's accountability plan to meet the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

"For years, we have heard from many education stakeholders - especially parents and teachers - about the need to refocus on learning," said David Volkman, a former Susquehanna Township School District superintendent who now is an executive deputy secretary at the education department. "This improved schedule, along with the changes we made to the structure of the tests earlier this year, will address those concerns while maintaining the accuracy of the assessment."
David Decary-Hetu, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Montreal, is seen on Friday, November 3, 2017 in Montreal. Technological advances in artificial intelligence are fuelling a new race between hackers and those toiling to protect cybersecurity networks.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
Justice Minister Mark Furey arrives at a news conference to provide details about cannabis legalization in Halifax on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. The province plans to use the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission for distribution and set the legal age to buy and possess marijuana at 19. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
In this May 26, 2017, photo, leaders of the G7, from left, European Council President Donald Tusk, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. President Donald J. Trump, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pose during a group photo for the G7 summit in the Ancient Theatre of Taormina ( 3rd century BC) in the Sicilian citadel of Taormina, Italy. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Andrew Medichini
Local historian and heritage advocate Fred Bradley at the Alberta Provincial Police Barracks historical site in Coleman, Alberta, November 24, 2017. A notorious 1922 police shooting in southwestern Alberta and the sensational trial that followed caused many to wonder whether enforcing alcohol prohibition was worth the trouble.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol
FILE - This undated file photo shows the Brothers Home compound in Busan, South Korea. A South Korean commission has urged lawmakers to set up an investigation into the enslavement and mistreatment of thousands of people at a vagrants' facility during the 1970s and '80s. The country's dictators ordered roundups to "purify" the streets, sending the homeless, disabled and children to facilities where they were detained and forced to work. No one has been held accountable for the hundreds of deaths, rapes and beatings the Associated Press documented at Brothers Home, the largest of dozens of those facilities. The AP report in 2016 was based on hundreds of exclusive documents and dozens of interviews with officials and former detainees. (Yonhap via AP, File)
In this photo provided by South Korea Defense Ministry, U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber, far left, South Korea and U.S. fighter jets fly over the Korean Peninsula during the combined aerial exercise, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. The United States flew a B-1B supersonic bomber over South Korea on Wednesday in part of a massive combined aerial exercise involving hundreds of warplanes, a clear warning after North Korea last week tested its biggest and most powerful missile yet. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP)
Chinese Foreign Minster Wang Yi speaks during the South-South Human Rights Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. China opened a human rights forum attended by developing countries Thursday in its energetic drive to showcase what it considers the strengths of its authoritarian political system under President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP)  Alaskas lone individual insurance carrier has reached an agreement with the state Division of Insurance to make a one-time $25 million reimbursement.

Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska announced on Friday that its reimbursement will go toward funding high-cost health insurance claims through the Alaska Reinsurance Program, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

The state-operated reinsurance program aims to stabilize customers premiums by covering claims in the individual health care market for those with one or more of the 33 previously identified h...
Exxon jumping in to Mexico fuel market with first U.S. cargo. Foreign refiners can now sell fuel without buying from Pemex. Pemex operated at lowest level in 27 years due to disruptions.

Exxon Mobil Corp . is joining Chevron Corp . and other U.S. refiners to supply the newly free Mexican fuel market.

Exxon sent two cargoes totaling 120,000 barrel of diesel and gasoline Wednesday from its refinery in Beaumont, Texas, to a private terminal in San Luis Potosi. The company is moving cargoes along Kansas City Southern Railway Co. 's network and plans to utilize the San Jose Iturbide terminal in Guanajuato state, which is being expanded, to bring in more supplies. Eventually, it aims to move product from all of its refineries along the Gulf Coast.

Exxon Mobil is the first company to compete in the Mexican fuel market in an integrated form, Carlos Rivas, general director of fuel for the company in Mexico, said Wednesday in a phone interview.

An increasing number of foreign firms plan to invest in ports terminals, fuel-storage facilities and other logistics infrastructure to compete with state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos , the country's primary fuel vendor and distributor. After years of preparation, last week Mexico finished liberalizing prices for gasoline and diesel across the nation.

Mexico is aiming to boost its fuel-inventory capacity to 30 days worth, in line with an international recommendation for 36, Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said Wednesday in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Abundant Supply'

U.S. Gulf refineries have seen increasing utilization rates, they are cheaper and more efficient than they were previously and they have abundant supply for the Mexican market, said Alejandra Leon, Latin America upstream director at IHS in Mexico City. More private infrastructure projects would be ready in the next several years, making it easier for private companies to import fuel without going through Pemex, she added.

Exxon Mobil also indicated Wednesday that it will open 50 service stations by the end of first quarter and invest more than $300 million in Mexico's energy sector. Rivas added that another cargo will arrive at San Luis Potosi with around 60,000 barrels of fuels.

Exxon could use Pemex pipelines or other facilities, and will also consider adding pipelines and more terminals than the two it has already announced, Rivas said.

Last week, Chevron said it will bring products from its California refining system to Mexico to supply its gas stations once the infrastructure becomes available. Koch Supply and Trading Mexico is shipping diesel by tanker from the U.S. to the port of Veracruz on Mexico's East coast.

Rail Shipments

Kansas City Southern, which handled Exxon Mobil's diesel and gasoline cargo, said in November that it was seeking an agreement Pemex's trading arm PMI to import U.S. fuels via rail into its San Luis Potosi terminal. Pemex would then transport fuels via pipeline to supply the Mexico City area.

Imports accounted for almost 74 percent of Mexico's gasoline and diesel sales in October as Pemex's six refineries operated at their lowest volume in nearly 27 years because of unplanned stoppages, disruptions and maintenance. Delays in the restart of the Minatitlan and Madero refineries could also contribute to higher imports, said Ixchel Castro, senior analyst at energy consultant Wood Mackenzie in Mexico City.

The expansion of Mexico's private fuel import market could result in the crowding out of domestic gasoline production, Carlos Serrano and Arnulfo Rodriguez, analysts at BBVA, wrote in a Dec. 1 research note.

Looking ahead, we expect the oil trade deficit to continue widening, although at a slower pace, as higher local demand for oil-related consumption and intermediate goods will more likely be met by imports rather than local refineries' output.
Companies operating in Argentina are looking at a new way to deepen their ties to the country and access capital: list locally.

Energy and mining firms based abroad but operating in-country are leading the way. Canada-domiciled oil and gas explorer Madalena Energy is preparing to list in early 2018 , and several lithium companies are hoping to follow suit.

A desire to expand beyond commodities-focused investors is the impetus and Argentina itself has become a draw, according to Banco Santander Rio SA. The country has returned to the foreign investor limelight since President Mauricio Macri resolved a 15-year default and removed capital controls. The proof: the Merval benchmark index has jumped 44 percent in dollar terms year-to-date.

"Argentina is an attractive investment thesis, and listing locally identifies a company with the Argentina brand, beyond its sector like commodities or mining," said Walter Chiarvesio, head of equity research at Banco Santander Rio SA. "When a market becomes bullish or trendy, becoming associated to that brand is a plus."

Since taking office two years ago, Macri has taken steps to stoke foreign direct investment as a way to boost growth. One such move was to offer shale oil and gas incentives . The reforms were among the reasons that prompted Madalena Energy to start talks with the local regulator.

"A local listing would be a signal of commitment to the country and its local market-- and it makes sense given that all our assets are in Argentina," said Madalena Chief Executive Officer Jose David Penafiel. "It will help give our stock exposure to local investors and offer us access to an additional venue for a potential capital raise locally."

The Merval's meteoric rise is also an attraction, says Marcelo Etchebarne, a partner at law firm Cabanellas Etchebarne Kelly. His firm structured a 2010 local listing by Andes Energia, now Phoenix Global Resources .

"The rally is just beginning, and a local listing is a way of capturing the public that is following Argentina's opening to the world," said Etchebarne, who added that he's in talks with several companies looking to list.

Lithium, A New Sector

Lithium companies are among those looking for a piece of the action. They've been garnering attention as prices of the light metal rise along with electric-vehicle demand. Another of the Macri administrations changes -- the elimination of mining export taxes -- is also helping drive an influx of interest in lithium deposits . Lithium Americas Corp opened a Buenos Aires office this year and is weighing local and U.S. listings.

"Our attention right now is on finalizing the double listing of LAC on the NYSE and during 2018 we will evaluate doing it in Argentina, said Gabriel Rubacha, Lithium Americas' head of South American operations. "Raising capital in Argentina is a possibility but more importantly, we would like to have a strong presence in the local market and be seen as Argentine."

Brisbane, Australia-based Orocobre, with operations in Jujuy, was reportedly considering a local listing this year.

"While Orocobre is not currently considering a listing in Argentina, it is not something that the company would rule out," said Richard Seville, the company's chief executive officer when asked for comment in November. Orocobre "is supportive of the economic transformation that the Macri government is overseeing in the country," he added.

There are currently no mining stocks listed in Argentina, said Ernesto Allaria, president of stock operator BYMA. Foreign stocks can be traded via Cedears, certificates representing ownership in foreign companies, similar to American Depositary Receipts. Miners Barrick Gold and Goldcorp are among the Cedears, which tend to be illiquid.

Other industries are looking at local listings. Argentina's largest company, online retailer MercadoLibre, is waiting for a capital markets reform before making a move.

Still, Argentina's local market is small versus peers. While average year-to-date turnover on the Merval index rose 84 percent from 2016, stocks that have American Depository Receipts and local shares trade twice as much abroad, according to data compiled by the Instituto Argentino de Mercado de Capitales. That's one of the concerns that has Vancouver-based Advantage Lithium hesitating.

"The last thing one wants is to list on a market and not have any liquidity," said David Sidoo, Advantage Lithium's chief executive officer. "We're watching to see more institutional players in the market in Argentina and continued support from the government. We would consider it further down the line."
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
Want to preserve as much of your privacy as possible: Be diligent about revealing your preferences when shopping online, and turn off geolocation functions unless you need them to actually get somewhere. Read more

A study out from Accenture this week found that half of Philadelphia respondents were creeped out by intelligent services running on their digital devices, by software tools they both rely on and fear. Because that smart stuff gets to know so much about them and then eerily anticipates their needs.

America's relationship with technology has often been a love-hate, give-and-get thing, for as long as I've been observing the scene  first as a teen of the 1960s, then as a young adult journalist covering the nascent tech landscape of the late '70s.

I've always been an advocate for change, for the hot new thing, even though I know it's a dance with the devil that could eventually cost me dearly. Disruptive innovations often scare people, as it makes their old reliable stuff seem passe while new improvements seem dangerous. The hue and cry over the "horseless carriage" and the automatic elevator seem especially ripe to recall just now, while many are freaking out over the looming arrival of self-driving cars.

"The only constant is change" scenario can be a positive. I have drawers stuffed with yesterday's gear  personal digital assistants, digital still cameras, microcassette recorders. and MP3 music players  that have all been incorporated into and surpassed by the latest smartphone in my pocket.

Besides clutter reduction, new tech's added polish saves time and energy. As a cub reporter, I toiled on a gray Royal manual typewriter (just as in All the President's Men), writing on "copy books" with three carbon copies for editors to scribble over, and send along (via a vacuum-powered tube chute) to the hot-lead typesetters in the composing room. If a story required more than a little revision, I had to retype the whole thing. And if I needed topic research, I had to ask the in-house librarian to send down an envelope filled with smelly old clips  archives that Temple University now preserves.

Had the word-processing computer and internet search engine come sooner, I might have avoided some stressful situations. Will never forget the time I was caustically dressed down by the legendary John Houseman, just as he regularly did to his students as a law prof on The Paper Chase TV series, because I had only a half-hour to cram before our hastily scheduled interview. "You'd have known the answer to that question if you'd read my two autobiographies!" Houseman fumed.

But with today's added efficiencies also come added demands and compromises. There's no time to rest in the world's voracious 24-hour, digital-first news cycle. Score the scoop or lose the clicks (and your job!).

Media obsession with the latest/greatest has also sped up the refreshing of tech products, not necessarily a good thing. While old-school company founders like Sony's Akio Morita, Bose's Amar Bose, and Lutron's Joel Spira all professed their reasoned code of "serve no product before its time," today's quarterly-returns-obsessed CEOs aren't all so pro-consumer. I'm convinced the rush to rapidly renew a product line is a core reason we've seen cellphones spontaneously blow up and poorly engineered major appliances wear out after just a few years of service.

And as that Accenture study found, a tech-obsessed populace now conditioned to demand a deluge of online content for "free" is asking for trouble if they don't also consider the consequences and plan accordingly. There's still "no such thing as a free lunch." One writer recently suggested that even cars might someday be given away to consumers, because the snooping software loaded onto the vehicle's computer will profit from monitoring and marketing your every move, pointing you toward a favored restaurant or a specific hospital's ER facility if you've taken ill.

One choice is to either relax and enjoy the useful guidance of modern tech, or don't leave a thick trail of crumbs. Accenture Strategy's Tom Jacobson notes that the more you search for an item, the more likely sellers will pick up your scent. If you're really "just browsing," don't put an item in your basket. And be aware that the ability to snoop keeps improving as sellers, using Artificial Intelligence, work to connect the dots, get a bigger picture of who you are, what you want and need.

To stay private, turn off geolocation features on your phone and tablet when you don't absolutely need the help to get someplace. Diligently search for and clear out the "cookies" that attach themselves to your accounts and gear when you visit a site. And instead of relying on Google, post inquiries to an alternative, "privacy first" search engine like DuckDuckGo, based in Paoli, which doesn't store and share users' IP addresses and online journeys.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests. Read more

When President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday  the first American president ever to do so  he claimed he was abandoning the "failed strategies of the past" that were unable to deliver peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Yet the president outlined no new strategy for peace that would include his new position on Jerusalem. Indeed, his move  along with his directive to the State Department to begin preparations to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv  seemed more oriented toward pleasing his evangelical base (and key Republican donor Sheldon Adelson) than achieving peace.

Moreover, it undermines any slim chance First-Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, along with Trump lawyer David Greenblatt  who have been traversing the Mideast for months in order to devise a new peace plan  will produce the "ultimate" deal Trump has requested.

To understand why, let's take a look at what the speech did and didn't say.

The president claimed he was only recognizing reality  "that Jerusalem is Israel's capital." And indeed, western Jerusalem was the Jewish state's capital from the time of its inception, just as ancient Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people in the biblical era (something many Palestinians deny).

But what the president didn't say  and one reason why no country that recognizes Israel also recognizes Jerusalem as its capital  is that the city's eastern sector consists mainly of Arab areas that were annexed after the 1967 war between Israel and the Arabs. Indeed, an estimated 40 percent of Jerusalem's residents do not have Israeli citizenship  because they are Palestinians.

The Palestinians also want Jerusalem to be the capital of their state  meaning if there ever were peace, Jerusalem would have to be divided.

What the president also didn't say is that the Old City of Jerusalem (which Israel also regained after the 1967 war) is territory that is hotly contested, because it contains sites holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

That is why the issue of who controls Jerusalem's sovereignty is so sensitive, and must be negotiated in any peace talks. It is also why any hint that Trump supports permanent Israeli sovereignty over Muslim holy places can set off violence in the Islamic world.

No wonder Trump's CIA director and secretaries of state and defense all opposed Trump's making this speech now.

True, the president stated near the end of his speech that he was "not taking a position" on the specific Jerusalem boundaries that Israel would retain if peace were negotiated. He said "the resolution of contested borders" was up to the parties involved. And he added that "the United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides."

But those last comments must be taken with more than a grain of salt. Israel is constructing settlements in Palestinian areas around the edges of Jerusalem that have almost sealed the city off from the Palestinian population of the West Bank. This will make it nearly impossible to imagine any two-state solution that would permit Palestinians to establish their capital within the city's boundaries.

Those Jewish settlements  and their clear purpose  have been a source of friction with previous Democratic and Republican administrations. But the word settlement never appeared in Trump's speech. Indeed, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Trump's lawyer friend David Friedman (the third member of the Kushner-Greenblatt team), is avidly pro-settlement. Friedman says West Bank settlements "are a part of Israel."

So to endorse Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while ignoring the complex question of its Arab population, or the settlement ring around the city, is disingenuous. Israeli officials have already made clear they see Trump's speech as vindicating their positions. The speech eliminated any minimal prospect, if such still existed, that Trump or Kushner could be seen as impartial negotiators. Full stop.

Already rumors are circulating in the Israeli and Arab press that the Kushner plan will tilt heavily toward Israel, proposing a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty over noncontiguous parts of the West Bank without East Jerusalem as its capital. This is a proposal that has little meaning and will never fly.

It may be that in an era of Mideast chaos there is no strategy that can deliver a two-state solution. And it may be that there are no Israeli or Arab leaders able or willing to deal at this time. In that case, the best option for the United States would be to promote a strategy that left open a chance for two states after the Mideast calms down.

But Trump's Jerusalem speech  far from delivering a new approach  closes the door to negotiations in the near term or the long term. It advances a one-state "solution"  something Trump has said he wouldn't mind  where Palestinians will outnumber Jews in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. At that point, Israel will have to decide whether to give them citizenship or rule over a disenfranchised majority.

Trump called his speech "very fresh thinking." That it is not.

Trudy Rubin will be reporting from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, beginning Sunday.
Members of the Forum of Executive Women line up for a group photo in the 1980s. Forum officials couldn't identify all the women, but among the six women in the front row are Donna Brennan, Stephanie Naidoff, and Linda McAleer. Among the four Forum members in the back row are Rosemary Greco and Jane Pepper. Read more

Forty years ago, Judith von Seldeneck made a luncheon reservation for 60 in her husband's name at the Philadelphia Racquet Club  then a strictly all-male gathering spot.

Boy, were they surprised when dozens of women arrived for lunch.

"I'm sure they were all rolling their eyes," von Seldeneck recalled. "But they were very gracious."

That was the start of the Forum of Executive Women, celebrating its 40th anniversary Thursday at the Please Touch Museum.

Forty years ago, she and cofounder Lee van de Velde said, Forum members never talked about the kind of sexual-harassment cases in the news today, even though they met monthly and developed deep friendships. Both said they had never experienced it themselves. "I've flirted and been flirted with," von Seldeneck said, "but I never had anyone make an inappropriate pass."

Complaining was probably useless, she said. "Nobody could do anything about it. People were afraid to speak up because they were afraid they'd lose their jobs. And they probably would have. So, they shrugged and soldiered on.

"It's taken a tsunami where, finally, women are feeling safe enough to talk about it. I think there's a real opportunity now. It's on everybody's mind and things are starting to happen to these folks, like consequences," she said. "If all this starts to hurt the bottom line, believe me, that will get the attention of management and boards of directors."

Over the years, the topic came up more frequently, said Sally Stetson, a former Forum president and a founding partner at Salveson Stetson, an executive search company in Radnor. "I think the Forum can make a difference, as a safe place for women to have very personal discussions."

Stetson said she experienced harassment as a young professional when her boss' boss developed a crush on her and followed her around like a puppy  so much so that it embarrassed her and her coworkers laughed about it. She complained to her boss and human resources. They listened, but advised her to confront the man directly. "I felt supported because they listened, but I didn't like the advice."

She gathered her courage and told the executive his behavior was embarrassing both of them and had to stop. "He was so embarrassed. He apologized and backed off," she said.

Stetson said she thinks the Forum should consider a program that would ask members: "What happened to you and how did you handle it? How do you wish you had handled it?"

In 1977, von Seldeneck and van de Velde, then her business partner, assembled the women at the Racquet Club as a way to build a talent pool for their recruitment agency, Distaffers, which specialized in recruiting women for executive positions in for-profit companies looking to diversify their leadership teams.

"We had that lunch and it was like magic," recalled von Seldeneck, who now leads Diversified Search, a Philadelphia-based executive head-hunting company.

The Forum now numbers 450, runs a mentoring program for young women executives, and publishes an annual report detailing the number of women serving as executives or on the boards of Philadelphia's largest publicly traded companies, as well as on boards and in leadership in the region's largest nonprofits.

And that's the point, says the Forum's current president, employment lawyer Margaret "Peggy" McCausland.

"Primarily, our focus is trying to get more women in positions of leadership," she said. "If we can accomplish that, much of what we are seeing would take care of itself."
If you are worried that any of your behaviors could be misinterpreted, fear not. Here is handy list of FAQs about socializing after hours with your offices womenfolk. Read more

This year has been, to put it mildly, a weird one.

Besides everything happening in the White House  which maybe you're into, maybe you're not  this is the year when everyone from Harvey Weinstein to Matt Lauer to Garrison Keillor lost their jobs after accusations of sexual assault or harassment.

Now, according to a recent article in the New York Times, one of our most time-honored holiday traditions  getting drunk on the company's dime  could be at risk. Some managers interviewed for the Times' piece would like to cancel office holiday parties altogether, while others suggest neutering them to the point that everyone would prefer to work.

With women empowered to call out inappropriate behavior, some companies predict that boozy after-work events for the holidays could be combustible this year. While many companies used to have the parties on Thursday or Friday evenings, some are moving them to late Monday or Tuesday afternoons, said Sarah Freedman, the vice president of operations for 23 Layers, an event planner in New York whose clients include Google and West Elm.

Open bars are being replaced with game zones. One client recently asked for an extremely watered-down "John Daly" to be the party's signature drink, which Ms. Freedman found strange but probably wise.

This is, of course, ridiculous, as the overwhelming majority of humans know how not to sexually assault someone.

But if you, like the men interviewed by the Times, are worried that any of your behaviors could be "misinterpreted," fear not. Here is handy list of FAQs about socializing after hours with your office's womenfolk.

I just got to the holiday party and noticed that she looks really nice. Can I tell her?

When deciding what you should and shouldn't say to your female coworker, pretend for a moment that she's Clark from IT. Would you, straight man, tell Clark that he looked good? Probably not, but if so, you would likely say something along the lines of, "That's a nice blazer, Clark." You would not say, "Wow, someone cleans up nice. You look amazing in that blazer, Clark." Comment on her outfit only if you are genuinely interested in said outfit and would be comfortable telling this boldface lie to Santa.

She smells really nice, too. Can I tell her?

No. Presumably, you have smelled many things throughout the day and didn't comment on them. This is no different. You shouldn't tell her she smells good for the same reason you didn't walk in the conference room and ask who farted  you're an adult at work, and adults don't do that at work.

What amount of touching is appropriate at a holiday party?

Let's bring Clark back for a minute. Would you shake his hand? Yes  handshakes among coworkers are always appropriate. Gentle, congenial shoulder tap? Sure. Lingering shoulder tap? Doubtful. Lingering shoulder tap with slight rubbing? Absolutely not. Any tap below the shoulder area? Stop that right now.

So you're saying I shouldn't grab her by the you-know-what?

No. Unless you're the president of the United States of America, this will almost assuredly cost you your job.

What about drinking? Is drinking OK?

After the past 12 months we've had, drinking is definitely OK. Drink as much or as little as you would like, then call an Uber as needed. If, however, drinking causes you to sexually assault women, stop drinking immediately and forever.

And what about dancing  is dancing OK?

With very few exceptions, it is almost never a good idea to dance at the office holiday party  these days, even Carol in accounting knows how to post a video to Facebook. But again, as long as you refrain from sexually assaulting anyone while doing so, you're good.

Not to get off track, but might this conversation be a bit privileged? With all of the violence being committed against women, it seems irresponsible to waste this space talking about holiday party etiquette.

This is a great point. Some people will say that you can care about both having your ass grabbed in the mailroom and about Cyntoia Brown, a child sex-trafficking victim serving life in prison for killing her abuser. Others would say this is an ugly symptom of white feminism, which has long failed to address  and has at times knowingly and systematically added to  the struggles faced by women of color. Wherever you fall here, know that Cyntoia Brown is spending Christmas in a Tennessee prison.

Glad we cleared that up. About the after-party: Is it OK to invite women?

Yes! In fact, it's more than OK  it's really important. As empowering as it's been to see companies finally firing predatory creeps, it's worrisome to think that men might simply stop socializing with female coworkers. Lunches and happy hours are where the real networking happens, and women need to be part of these conversations. So, yes, invite them to the after-party, have a good time, and keep them in mind when a great new position arises on your team. (Signs you're one of the predatory creeps? You're trying to turn that last sentence into a dirty joke.)

Monica Weymouth is a writer and enthusiastic supporter of the office party. @iproposetoast.
Jesus Pagan Torres (left) and Moriama Cortes (right) are part of a team of faculty and staff of Escuela Delia Davila de Caban who continue to distribute water and emergency relief in neighborhoods still without power and water. Escuela Delia Davila de Caban has served as a distribution point for the Puerto Rico Recovery Funds emergency relief efforts since it was established days after the storm. Read more

I could see it from the sky above Puerto Rico. The island was no longer a rolling blanket of lowland and highland forests. A rare Category 5 hurricane, Maria, had ripped nearly every leaf from every kapok, tree fern, palm, and courbaril. But when I got on the ground, underneath the brown tangles of trunks and branches, I spotted bright new shoots of green.

I crisscrossed the island over five days, photographing hurricane relief carried out by people, communities, and nongovernmental organizations.

In the small town of Punta Santiago, every home and business sustained damage. Houses that did stand up to 155 mile-per-hour winds were soaked in up to five feet of brackish water. But the hurricane didn't end just because the rain and wind had moved on. Floodwaters had contaminated most of the food and stored water.

Cut off from rescue and help, the 5,000 residents of Punta Santiago knew what they had to do. They gathered salvageable food, collected water and medicines, and shared what they had collected with their neighbors in greatest need. For 10 days they cooked communal meals with help from a nonprofit named Programa de Educacion Comunal de Entrega y Servicio (PECES), which for two decades has provided programs in three core areas: education, prevention services for at-risk populations, and entrepreneurship and development training. The nonprofit reopened its campus as soon as it cleared debris from its front gate, offering shelter and whatever supplies had been spared by the storm.

Twelve days after the storm, help came to them from the skies. A nonprofit named the Center for a New Economy, with partner Espacios Abiertos, dispatched helicopters to drop food and supplies. A think tank with deep connections to stateside nonprofits and Puerto Ricans everywhere, CNE had quickly established the Puerto Rico Recovery Fund. Because of its reputation, CNE raised more than a million dollars in the week after the storm. They not only provided food and relief items, but also developed a multitiered distribution network of community-focused organizations. When the communities were unreachable by truck, CNE found helicopters to fly relief to them.

Schools, community centers, and nongovernmental organizations quickly activated volunteers and staff to save lives in the days after the storm. The immediate emergency has passed, but many Puerto Ricans now realize how vulnerable they are. As Juan Jose Gonzalez Colon in Salinas considered the previous two months of living with his family in one small leaky room without electricity and water, he said: "We never knew how poor we were until Maria."

As I traveled, I heard people say they don't simply want to recover but intend to rethink issues of energy independence, sustainability, and transparent governance. Toward that end, CNE, PECES, and many other nonprofits will continue to provide relief while also pursuing a new mission  rebuilding Puerto Rico as a stronger and more prosperous place.

Lori Waselchuk is a visual artist in Philadelphia who coordinates special projects, community programs, and exhibitions at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. She traveled to Puerto Rico on a commission from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. loriwaselchuk@gmail.com
Mike Manning, CEO and founder of CarePartners Plus, shown here in his Horsham office, reinvented himself from an Army officer and hospital CEO to engineer software that helps veterans like himself access healthcare and benefits, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. Called GetVetsHelp, the app was in pilot testing at the VA here in Philly. JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer . . Read more

Michael Manning reinvented himself from an Army officer and hospital CEO to found a medical software company  with a new app that helps fellow veterans access the oft-criticized Veterans Administration.

The software application, GetVetsHelp, was tested this fall by veterans at both the VA and the Veterans Multi-Service Center in Center City. If the VA accepts GetVetsHelp, the software app could go live next year.

"The idea is sitting on the VA secretary's desk, just waiting for his signature," Manning said.

GetVetsHelp functions like an early warning system. Veterans log in through a tablet or computer at the VA or local veterans center, and type in what services they need, whether for substance-abuse help, suicide prevention, or apartments to prevent homelessness. GetVetsHelp can even order a Lyft car-share so the veteran can reach a nearby VA hospital.

With a fully transparent software system that tracks vets' pleas for help, "we can end the suicide of 20 veterans a day," Manning said. "The data trail creates transparency in the VA system."

Questions remain, however. The app was tested on just 175 veterans. Can it be scaled up? And will it actually improve connections to the VA system?

The idea grew out of 2014 hearings held by City Councilman David Oh, a retired Army second lieutenant, on how to improve the VA, which was digging out from scandals involving years-long backlogs of appointments and disappearing patient paperwork.

GetVetsHelp aims to solve that, one veteran at a time: Think of it as SurveyMonkey meets medical records, plus a data trail. GetVetsHelp keeps tabs on all the vets' requests for help and services. And if they don't get what they need, someone up the chain of command could be held accountable.

"The VA needed to be fully modernized across 1,700 facilities, and I know that happens with technology," Manning said. "I talked to the VA in Philadelphia, and they are wonderful. But they had that thousand-yard stare in their eyes. Technology could prevent patients from falling through the cracks."

Manning, 63, has worked for decades as a hospital executive, an Army medic and supply officer, and health-care administrator; all of that experience came together with the new, privately held company CarePartners Plus, based in Horsham. A native of Frankford in Northeast Philadelphia, Manning said he graduated from Archbishop Ryan High School as "a poor kid from a poor neighborhood."

He joined the Army and became a medic, serving from 1974 to 1989 and leaving as a captain. His first job out of the military was as a hospital administrator in Pittsburgh, and between 1989 and 2006 Manning worked in corporate middle and upper hospital management positions, both nonprofit and for-profit.

"I was a corpsman for a little while and learned my way around medicine that way. Plus, I learned how hospitals made money as the materials manager. I did all the contracting, all the negotiating for goods and services, and then in 1991, as the hospital business was entering the managed-care era, contracting with insurance companies for large groups of people."

After stints in Pittsburgh and Louisiana, Manning returned to Philadelphia in 2000. He founded CarePartners Plus in 2007 with several partners. Its software to survey patients about their care began popping up in doctors' offices at the University of Pennsylvania and Carilion Health System in Virginia, the firm's largest customer. CarePartners Plus, which now has 17 employees, commercialized its patient engagement platform and raised money from institutional investors including BioAdvance, an early-stage life sciences fund.

"Patients' answers  all saved as computer data  drive the outcomes for their health care," said Manning.

That same software has been adapted for VA useunder the app GetVetsHelp.

"The VA staff and medical professionals are amazing," Manning said. "But the veteran comes in and tells his story, over and over and over again. Traditionally, their story is all reduced to a paper report. But in the meantime, he or she needs a home, a drug counselor, a doctor's appointment. It's all manual, it's all paper. The VA has a computerized system but doesn't cover everything."

The new VA secretary, David Shulkin, a Philly-trained physician who worked at Penn and Temple, wants to keep a promise of "same-day access" for veterans, particularly after some died while languishing on secret wait lists at VA hospitals, or as calls to the VA suicide hotline went unanswered.

Said Gordon Woodrow, an IT specialist at CarePartners Plus: "We create a data trail that makes someone responsible. At the end of a three-minute questionnaire on GetVetsHelp, the veteran answers complex medical, mental, and social questions, and they now understand there's a chain of command. Now they know it will be harder for them to fall through the cracks."

"Also, the higher-ups know what's going on because the computer software keeps track of everything," Manning said. "Now if you're suicidal or homeless, you can be screened electronically and the VA can intervene faster. We'll find out if the VA really wants that."

Manning, for his part, has endured many ailments, including an autoimmune disorder that has forced him to walk with a cane. But he's employing veterans on the GetVetsHelp project, such as Phillip Clark, who tested the pilot and helped about 50 other vets try it as well.

"My caseworker told me about the pilot, and a lot of vets stay away from the VA because they get there and have all kinds of issues, and when you go to an environment where you're treated like cattle, you don't want to go back," said Clark, a Marine, firefighter, and first responder who ended up homeless. "This is so much better. It's one-stop shopping. If this is implemented, I don't have to repeat my story to every individual. It helped me better understand how useful it would be for all veterans."
A man wanted for allegedly attempting to murder a Philadelphia woman last month has been captured by authorities while trying to cross into Mexico, officials announced this week.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection field operations officers at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, Texas, apprehended Leovigildo Alvarado Castanon, also known as Francisco Hernandez, 32, of Warminster, on Monday, officials said in a news release.

Castanon, a Guatemalan citizen, was wanted on a five-count outstanding warrant in connection with the Nov. 8 attempted homicide of the unnamed 36-year-old woman. He was identified by U.S. authorities after Mexican immigration officials found that he did not have proper entry documents to get into their country.

Phoenixville police allege that Castanon stabbed the woman multiple times in the chest in a parked car along the 100 block of Main Street.

The victim underwent surgery at Paoli Hospital following the incident, according to the Pottstown Mercury.

"Our frontline officers maintain strict vigilance while conducting their inspectional duties, and that dedication and attention to detail resulted in the apprehension of a man wanted for attempted homicide in Pennsylvania," Petra Horne, director of the Brownsville Port of Entry, said in the news release.

Castanon is awaiting extradition to Chester County.
A 13-year-old seventh-grader has been charged as a juvenile with firearm offenses after he brought a loaded semiautomatic handgun to one of the city's top public schools, the Gen. George A. McCall Elementary School, in Society Hill, police said Thursday.

The boy, a student at the school on South Seventh Street near Delancey, had brought the gun in his backpack to the K-8 school Wednesday morning. He was arrested after another student alerted school officials, who called police. The school was placed on lockdown for about 35 minutes.

A police source said Thursday that the teen did not say why he brought the gun to school, but there was no indication he intended to use it there. The .40-caliber pistol was loaded with 15 bullets, the source said.

The boy lives in East Falls with his mother and told police that he found the gun in an alleyway while walking one day, the source said. It was not clear when or where he allegedly found it.

The gun had been reported stolen in 2013, the source said. The circumstances of the theft were not immediately known.

The boy, whose name was not released because he was charged as a juvenile, did not give police a formal statement.

Officer Troy Brown, a police spokesman, said the boy was charged with carrying a firearm without a license, a third-degree felony, as well as three misdemeanor charges  illegally carrying a gun on the street, possession of an instrument of crime, and possessing a weapon in school. He was released from custody and will face a hearing in Family Court.

School District of Philadelphia spokesman Lee Whack said in a text message Thursday that because the student is a minor, he could not say what changes the school might make because of the incident, why the student attends McCall even though he lives outside its catchment area, or whether he will return.

McCall Elementary was awarded a 2017 National Blue Ribbon for its high academic achievements from the U.S. Department of Education in September, and was named the top-performing K-8 in Philadelphia by the School District last year. The school, which educates 700 students, takes students from neighborhoods including Society Hill and Chinatown.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker at the Camden County Historical Societys Ancestral Remembrance Ceremony on Nov. 27, 2017. Read more

Alabama Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones and his allies are trying to finalize plans to bring in several high-profile current or former African American elected officials, including Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) to campaign for him this weekend, as he wages an aggressive final push to turn out black voters in a Tuesday special election with national stakes.

Rep. Terri Sewell (D., Ala.) has been leading the effort to organize a slate of Sunday campaign events including a rally in Birmingham that is expected include her, Booker, and Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), according to Sewell's spokesman, Chris MacKenzie, and a Jones campaign official.

A third Democrat, who was familiar with Booker's plans and was granted anonymity to speak candidly, confirmed that he intends to campaign for Jones in Alabama.

Sewell is also trying to cement plans for former Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D., La.), and Rep. Sanford Bishop (D., Ga.), to campaign for Jones on Sunday, MacKenzie and the campaign official said.

The specific events and attendees are not yet final, MacKenzie and the Jones official said. They hope to have the details ironed out by Friday.

"Terri Sewell has invited some of her friends and colleagues down to help, and we look forward to the weekend," said Giles Perkins, the chairman of the Jones campaign.

Jones has been trying to piece together a delicate coalition built on support from core Democrats and some crossover votes from Republicans not drawn to their party nominee, Roy Moore. Crucial to that plan is strong turnout by African Americans, who make up about a quarter of Alabama's electorate.

In recent weeks, however, African American elected officials, community leaders and voters have expressed concern that there has has not been much energy in the black community for Jones or the special election.

Recent polls show a competitive contest between Jones and Moore. While Moore has come under criticism from Senate GOP leaders amid allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s, he has the support of President Trump and the Republican National Committee.

Moore has denied the allegations he has faced.

Trump will travel Friday to Pensacola, Fla., just across the state's border with Alabama. There, he could encourage Alabamians to turn out for Moore.

Aides to Booker, Patrick, Richmond, Bishop, and Lewis did not immediately comment.
The second version of the firehouse on Queen Street near Second Street was built in the 1850s. It was first home to a volunteer fire department and changed over to a paid unit after the citys first fire department organized in 1871. It was replaced by a third version, which opened in the 1890s. Read more

The former fireman walked toward his old firehouse concealing a weapon  and cradling a grudge.

"Is Jimmy upstairs?" asked George Washington Fletcher.

Fletcher and James "Jimmy" Hanley had recently clashed over Fletcher's alleged sexual assault of a child, which led to his unemployment.

He had been out drinking all night Nov. 3, 1875, when he found himself outside the three-story brick Engine No. 3 Firehouse at Second and Queen Streets.

What followed was murder.

Vicious fellow

The men were companions from boyhood, and in 1875, both were in their early 30s.

Both were members of the old Marion Hose Company of the Volunteer Fire Company. When the volunteer outfits transitioned into paid departments, both caught on with Engine 3 on Queen Street.

NEXT WEEK: Learn more about the history of the Weccacoe Firehouse and development in its Queen Village neighborhood.

Hanley was described as kind, peaceable, sober, and honest.

Fletcher, on the other hand, was known since boyhood as a "vicious, idle fellow, quarrelsome and unruly," according to The Inquirer.

At age 11, he apparently cut tails off pigs at Allburger's Yards, which once sat at Sixth and Wharton Streets. For the offense, he was temporarily committed to the House of Refuge, a juvenile detention center. A few years later, he stabbed a man in the side with a knife during a scuffle.

After the outbreak of the Civil War, Fletcher followed the First Pennsylvania Reserves to the Army of the Potomac. Before long, he deserted his company. After a trip around Europe, he returned to the city and worked as an oyster shucker at the Spruce Street wharf and as a political mercenary. He was appointed a member of the paid Fire Department unit, eventually landing on Queen Street with his buddy Hanley.

In the 1870s, he was arrested numerous times for violent and disorderly behavior but always saved through his political affiliations.

In 1874, Fletcher was charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. Enough strings were pulled to achieve an acquittal, but he lost his job with the department.

Fletcher blamed Hanley for his downturn. He claimed that his boyhood friend had told the girl's father about the assault, and in doing so instigated his prosecution.

The night of the murder, Fletcher ran into the girl.

Their discussion grew heated, and there was a scuffle. She bolted. She claimed Fletcher attempted during the struggle to goad her into admitting Hanley's involvement.

Hours later, Fletcher returned to the firehouse.

He shot me!

Hanley descended the stairs, finding Fletcher waiting a few feet inside the door. The two men walked into the night.

Fletcher slid his arm around Hanley's neck. He drew a pistol with his other hand, pointed it at Hanley's chest, and fired.

Hanley staggered backward.

"My God," Hanley screeched. "He shot me!"

Hanley was pulled into the firehouse, bleeding profusely from the left side of his chest.

He died minutes later.

Fletcher fled to a neighborhood tavern, where he was found hiding in a closet.

After a trial that ended in January 1876, the jury deliberated for 45 minutes before convicting him of first-degree murder. Fletcher was sentenced to be hanged and was executed in June 1877.

Extraordinary efforts were made to shield the murderer from his punishment, from accusing jurors of holding conflicts of interest to fighting for a second-degree murder charge in the Supreme Court. But the former firefighter's political buddies could not save his life.

Within months of the trial's conclusion, the teenage girl died of "galloping consumption," the 19th-century term for tuberculosis.

When he was read his death warrant, Fletcher replied: "I'm sorry the time isn't sooner."

Search the archives of the Inquirer and Daily News for yourself and subscribe for full access.
It was the most provocative allegation yet in the increasingly bitter public war between rapper Meek Mill and Philadelphia Judge Genece E. Brinkley  that the judge, whose decision to send him back to prison sparked nationwide protests, was herself under FBI investigation.

That assertion, tucked without detail inside a court filing Monday and fanned by Mill's lawyers and publicists, seemed designed to call into question Brinkley's integrity and to embolden their claim that she could not be counted on to impartially rule on his fate.

But it told only part of the story, according to three sources familiar with federal authorities' involvement in the matter.

It was Mill himself who last year pressed the FBI to investigate the judge who had repeatedly concluded that he had violated the terms of his probation, the sources say. And it was Mill who brought the short-lived review to a halt by ending his cooperation.

Agents wanted the rapper to surreptitiously record conversations with Brinkley, who he alleged had tried to extort favors from him in exchange for leniency, the sources say.

But Mill refused  and the inquiry faded away.

Separate federal law enforcement sources have confirmed that there is no active investigation into the judge. But even a fleeting mention of the now-closed inquiry was bound to raise eyebrows in a city where a number of judges have been convicted of crimes or ousted in ethical scandals in recent years.

Now, supporters of Mill  whose legal name is Robert Williams  have made it a focal point of their effort to remove Brinkley from his case. That campaign has escalated in recent days as the 30-year-old rapper's publicity machine has circulated opposition research encouraging reporters to ask questions about Brinkley's state financial disclosure filings and other matters unrelated to Mill's probation.

In their court filing Monday, Mill's lawyers argued that Brinkley's mere knowledge of the 2016 FBI inquiry poses a conflict that should prompt her to recuse herself  even if the probe was initiated by Mill and then dragged into public view this year by the rapper's defenders.

"The existence of a federal investigation involving Judge Brinkley's conduct regarding Mr. Williams, combined with Judge Brinkley's awareness of that investigation, raises further doubt as to her ability to preside impartially," their motion said.

Mill's attorneys, Joseph Tacopina and Brian McMonagle, declined to answer questions this week about their knowledge of the 2016 probe.

All three sources who described that inquiry for the Inquirer and Daily News spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

Each said that they felt compelled to come forward because they believed that the nature, extent, and driving force behind Mill's contact with federal agents had been publicly mischaracterized  including in a widely cited report last month by Page Six, the gossip column of the New York Post, in which an unnamed source said Brinkley was the target of an ongoing probe.

The Inquirer and Daily News sources say that Mill's complaint to the FBI began after a February 2016 meeting in Brinkley's chambers during which the rapper claimed the judge made a number of inappropriate requests.

The transcript of their conversation has been sealed since last year at the request of Mill and his then-lawyer Frank DeSimone.

But Tacopina has alleged in court filings that during the meeting Brinkley urged Mill to drop his current management company, Jay-Z's Roc Nation, and return to Philadelphia-based Charles "Charlie Mack" Alston, who worked with Mill earlier in his career. She also asked Mill to record a cover of a Boyz II Men song and to mention her name in it, Tacopina has said.

The agents who asked Mill to record conversations with the judge in 2016 had hoped to corroborate the rapper's claims about what he believed to be Brinkley's attempt to extort him, the sources familiar with the inquiry say.

Mill has rapped in the past that he's no snitch, including in a 2013 track "Heaven or Hell:" Before I snitch y'all gotta burn a hole in my tongue. His refusal to tape the judge brought an end to the federal probe, the sources say.

It remains unclear what other steps  if any  agents might have taken to investigate the matter before Mill ended their cooperation.

Brinkley has not responded to the rapper's claims regarding their February 2016 in-chambers conference or his lawyers' efforts to oust her based on the FBI inquiry  a recusal request on which she herself must rule.

Mill, meanwhile, remains incarcerated in a state prison in Chester, serving the two-to-four-year sentence Brinkley imposed last month for repeated violations of his probation on a 2008 drug and gun case.

The judge has denied him bail while his lawyers continue to appeal her decision to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
Here is the tweet I sent to Al Franken Wednesday night:

He obviously didn't listen. I suppose one lonely tweet from the Sarah Palin of Philadelphia paled in comparison to his Senate colleagues, particularly the ones who have ovaries and daughters and "D" after their names.

Franken is the latest, but clearly not the last, piece of road kill on the hashtag highway, a dangerous and very slippery stretch of road where badly behaved men go to die. Rest In Perfidy.

The senator from Minnesota resigned Thursday after having been pushed to exit from the stage by his own tribe, liberals who showed that they were just as capable of eating their own as they are of going after Trump and his motley crew. In a way, that says something good about their equal-opportunity opposition.

I'm as conservative as they come, but I look at this from an entirely different perspective. As I've written before, this #MeToo moment has gotten unwieldy and unforgiving, mixing all sorts of conduct together and retroactively stigmatizing acts that  until the social media age  were considered boorish and brutish but not capital offenses.

Now, the white gloves are off, and women have decided that it is time for payback in full.

I know that many people disagree with me, and take the position that anything that makes a woman feel uncomfortable should not be sanctioned. The bar for social shunning has been lowered to the point where men are now afraid to shake a woman's hand.

Some conservatives are thrilled about what's happening to Franken and others like him and to see the resurrected female ghosts of the Clinton era. I can't really blame my tribe for this tendency to exult, because we've been tarred and feathered as the people who hate women and want to use their bodies as incubators for an unlimited supply of babies, who can be turned into conservative footsoldiers.

But I'm angry that the people who should see through the dangers of agitprop and exaggeration are themselves falling victim to it because, now, the other guys bull is getting gored. Out the window fly the values and principles we supposedly hold dear, because a liberal is being vilified. I see the newsfeeds on Facebook and Twitter and wonder what happened to the idea of personal responsibility and due process.

I'm not denying that women have been abused and assaulted. Again, I have intimate knowledge of women who have been bruised, bloodied and bludgeoned. It happened, it still happens and it will continue to happen unless we make sure that the perpetrators are arrested and convicted.

But an old man in a wheelchair copping a feel is not a predator. An 80-year-old actor who made lascivious comments four decades ago to an intern is not a predator.

A senator who, as a comic, played fast and loose with his female colleagues is not a predator. He was a smarmy, supercilious comic who liked to ridicule conservatives, and he's a person who regularly looks down his nose at those who don't share his progressive ideals. (Although I agree that sloppy kisses are probably on the outer edge of those accepted ideals). I put him in the "he's too smart for us" category.

But he is not a sexual predator.

There are too many real predators out there, and we make it easier for them to blend into the background when we shine a spotlight on the famous men who transgress. Lisa DePaulo said as much when I interviewed her on my radio show last week. Lisa made the excellent point that it's the waitress, the nurse, the office intern that we need to worry about, not the woman who can hire Gloria Allred for a photo op.

She's right. Trying to hook the big, shiny, wriggling marlins for a public feast helps us to ignore all the other predators in the sea. This #MeToo moment is an exercise in revenge, not redemption.

I'm sorry Franken folded.
Defending Congress' plan to eliminate the estate tax the other day, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) declared that getting rid of it recognizes those who invest their money "as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze, or women, or movies."

By Grassley's rationale, if you could somehow avoid sneaking a beer into the theater to see Justice League with your girlfriend Friday night, you'd be well on your way to creating a $22 million estate that could be passed on to your heirs, free of inheritance taxes.

While some politicians issue so-called dog whistles  stealth swipes at minorities or other groups audible only to like-minded thinkers  Grassley's utterance was more of a fog horn.

Low-income people  the poor and much of the working class  are disdained.

And this week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker piled on, announcing his desire to make his state the nation's first to drug-test adults applying for food stamps.

"We don't trust people who need help, and we classify the poor as criminals," said James Ziliak, an economist and the director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky. "It's an old play out of a playbook from the mid-1800s. I do a lot of heavy sighing these days."

That the poor are scorned isn't merely opinion, but a matter of scientific fact.

Susan Fiske, psychology professor at Princeton University, designed tests in which people were placed in neuroimaging machines and shown photos of the poor. Their brains responded as though the photos depicted things, not humans  a sign of revulsion.

Disliking the poor, in fact, is the most negative prejudice people report, Fiske said, greater even than racism.

In the United States, Fiske recently wrote with a coauthor in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, the poor are often stereotyped as substance abusers, while blue-collar people are generally seen as incompetent. And any people who receive federal benefits are believed to be undeserving.

The fact that the vast majority of food-stamp recipients are children, the disabled, and the elderly doesn't seem to enter into critics' thinking.

Nor can people point to evidence that the poor take more drugs than anyone else.

In fact, when Florida instituted a drug test for all cash-welfare recipients, it was struck down in 2014 as being unconstitutional. (States are allowed to drug-test individuals only if drug use is suspected, not simply for applying for benefits.)

The Florida case was instructive. It turned out that around 2.5 percent of people applying for cash welfare tested positive for illegal drugs  not a big number when you realize that 8 percent of the U.S. population has tested positive for illegal drugs, according to federal figures.

So, what's the rationale for a proposed law like Walker's, which would only add to state expenses?

This is where we get into "people say" territory, as in, "People say anyone who needs government help is on drugs."

Back in 2007, Pennsylvania State Rep. Mike Turzai, a Republican from Allegheny County, proposed a law to fingerprint and drug-test anyone receiving cash welfare or food stamps, now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). He said he wanted to weed out fraud, but was unable to describe any fraudulent welfare cases he'd discovered.

"A lot of it is anecdotal," he said.

In 2013, Pennsylvania lawmakers took another crack at writing a bill to drug-test cash-welfare recipients. The spokesman for a cosponsor acknowledged that there was no proof that welfare recipients do more drugs than others. But, he said, the issue "gets taxpayers upset."

No bill has been passed so far.

Why do so many people believe that low-income people are less human than the rest of us?

It has to do with stubborn complexities of the mind, said John Dovidio, a Yale University psychologist who studies how people think about the poor.

It goes like this:

In order to survive psychologically, people need to see the world as fair  that we live in a just system in which people get what they deserve.

Everything I have, people reason, I earned through talent, self-control, and discipline.

And those who are disadvantaged deserve their place in life because they must be lazy, impulsive and incautious.

"This is insidious thinking," Dovidio said, "because it's all about blaming the victim."

And it overlooks how low-income people are victimized by a lack of jobs, inefficient schools, unsafe neighborhoods, and myriad other problems that prevent people from moving up the socio-economic ladder.

"Let me tell you something," said Sam Wolfgong, a longtime volunteer at the West Chester Food Cupboard. "Nobody wants to come to a food cupboard to have to eat.

"And the people I see don't have money for movies, booze, and women."
Lydia Macy, 17, left, and Mira Gottlieb, 16, both of Berkeley, Calif., rally outside of the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday heard the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court case of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple because gay marriage was against his religious beliefs could change how Philadelphia and places across the country enforce laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination.

A ruling in favor of the baker  depending on its scope  has the potential to weaken those city and state laws and make governments less likely, or less able, to pursue cases in which religion and sexual orientation clash. Justices heard the case Tuesday and could decide it by late June.

"The business in this case is claiming that the Constitution gives it a right to discriminate, even when state law makes that discrimination illegal," said Tobias Barrington Wolff, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who filed an amicus brief in opposition of the baker's actions. "If they win on that claim, then other businesses could try to assert the same defense when cities or states enforce their antidiscrimination laws."

New Jersey and 20 other states prohibit businesses from denying service due to a person's sexual orientation. While Pennsylvania does not prohibit that, Philadelphia does. The city's Commission on Human Relations also has the power to temporarily shut down businesses that repeatedly violate the law.

"The country has been making progress for decades in creating civil rights laws that protect oppressed groups of people," said Rue Landau, the commission's executive director. "If the Supreme Court decides in favor of the baker in this case, they're going to be reversing much of that work."

The case goes back to 2012, when Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig stopped in the Lakewood, Colo., shop of Christian baker Jack Phillips. In a brief exchange, Phillips said he could sell the couple other goods, but not a wedding cake, because same-sex marriage ran against his religious beliefs. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which sided with them.

After Tuesday's arguments, justices appeared divided. The impact on antidiscrimination laws will depend not just on whether the justices decide in favor of the baker, but why. Rutgers-Camden law professor Perry Dane, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, offered some possible outcomes:

The Supreme Court rules in favor of the baker based on his right to free speech.

This would be a blow to the LGBT community. It means a business could object to serving a same-sex couple, even if that objection isn't rooted in religious beliefs. On the flip side, the court could rule that commercial businesses are in the public realm and must serve any customer, regardless of an owner's personal beliefs. In that case, "The bakers who object to neo-Nazis would also lose, presumably," Dane said. He considers both of these outcomes unlikely, because they are so broad.

The court rules in favor of the baker based on his right to free exercise of religion, but not free speech.

This means a business owner or employee's objections must be religiously-based.

The court rules in favor of the baker based on either free speech or religion exercise rights, but only when it pertains to custom-made goods.

This means a business can deny service only for custom-made goods (in this case, a custom-made wedding cake), but not for products that are already available or on the shelves.

The court rules in favor of the baker based on either free speech or religion exercise rights, but only when it pertains to same-sex weddings.

This means a business can refuse to sell a product for a same-sex marriage or a related event, such as a wedding anniversary, but cannot deny service to LGBT people as a whole.

The court rules in favor of the baker, because at least one justice thinks Colorado was intolerant of Phillips' religious beliefs.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who could cast the deciding vote in the case, suggested Tuesday that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had been "neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips' religious beliefs." In this scenario, any businesses reprimanded for denying service to a same-sex couple would have to prove they were being reprimanded because a municipality, or state, was intolerant of their religious beliefs. Simply denying service on religious grounds wouldn't be enough to protect a business.

The court rules in favor of the couple and upholds the government's ability to enforce the antidiscrimination laws that prevent businesses from denying service based on a person's sexual orientation.

This is a broad ruling and a win for LGBT rights. It's a loss, however, for business owners who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.

Dane said he expects a more narrow ruling  one that may not be as extreme as each side fears.

"Even if [the justices] ruled in favor of the baker, there would be some important effort to draw the lines that keep more general antidiscrimination laws in place," Dane said.

President Trump's administration has supported Phillips in his argument that he can't be forced to create a cake that violates his religious beliefs. It appears to be the first time the federal government has asked the justices to carve out an exception from an antidiscrimination law.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Palestinian protestors burn tires as they wave national flags in Gaza City on Wednesday after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital. Read more

The leader of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, called for a third uprising against Israel after President Trump declared contested Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Israel reinforced its troop deployment in the West Bank.

"Jerusalem is being kidnapped and ripped from us," Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech Thursday broadcast by Al Jazeera television. He equated Trump's policy shift as a "declaration of war" on the Palestinians.

Haniyeh called for action after Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy to recognize the city holy to Muslims, Jews, and Christians as Israel's capital, and set in motion plans to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Previous U.S. administrations had resisted moves that could risk inflaming Muslim passions and alienating Muslim allies.

"This evil coalition that decided unilaterally on Jerusalem's status requires a clear stance from us," including a unified Arab and Muslim boycott of the U.S. administration, Haniyeh said.

Palestinians and Israelis suffered thousands of fatalities in two previous uprisings.

Israeli security forces braced for unrest, with the army ordering the deployment of additional battalions to the West Bank, with more troops put on standby. They'll be backed by beefed-up intelligence and territorial defense personnel, the military spokesman's office said.

Mickey Levy, a member of Knesset and former police commander of Jerusalem and the West Bank, said in radio interviews that police brought reinforcements into the city and its environs.

"The ground is definitely going to burn," said Effie Sharon, a 41-year-old Jerusalem-born owner of a downtown kiosk, late Wednesday. Yehuda Blackman, a 21-year-old working at a nearby bar, said any violence would be worth it "if it brings a certain recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, which there hasn't been so far."

The State Department sent alerts to embassies and consulates in Muslim-majority countries last week warning about possible unrest linked to the announcement. On Thursday, the American consulate in Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, canceled non-essential movement of all government staff in the city through Sunday over anticipated protests related to Jerusalem. The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem had earlier barred government employees and their families from personal travel in the Old City and in the West Bank.

The full impact of Trump's decision won't really be known until his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveils a peace plan he has been working on. But that may take too long. The risk of violence is looming, and the chief Palestinian negotiator told Israel's Haaretz daily that the talks for a two-state solution are over.

"President Trump has delivered a message to the Palestinian people: the two-state solution is over," Saeb Erekat said in an interview published Thursday. "Now is the time to transform the struggle for one-state with equal rights for everyone living in historic Palestine, from the river to the sea."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing foreign diplomats, said Israel was in contact with other countries that will similarly recognize Jerusalem as its capital and predicted "many" of them will move their embassies to Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the Czech Republic issued a statement saying it recognizes west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but isn't considering moving its embassy at this time. Israel Radio, without saying where it got its information, said the Philippines was considering an embassy relocation.
HARRISBURG Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday called on legislators to send him a bill that would expand the list of crimes that cause state employees to lose their pensions.

"Providing pensions to those who have committed crimes related to their elected offices is a betrayal of the public's trust," the Democratic governor said in a statement. "Public officials should be held to the highest possible standard and we should expect more out of them and our government."

His remarks came the same week the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette broke news that a state board voted to restore the more than $245,000 annual pension for longtime state Sen. Robert Mellow, who was convicted of federal corruption charges.

State law currently requires public employees, including legislators, to automatically forfeit their pensions if they are convicted of a state crime that falls into one of 23 categories or a federal crime that is "substantially the same as" those crimes. Mellow lost his pension but got it back after a board voted 6-5 that his federal crime didn't require him to lose the money

A bill sponsored by Rep. Scott Petri (R, Bucks) would expand that list to include "any crimes related to public office or public employment" and felonies or other crimes that could result in a prison term of more than five years. That bill passed the House in May and has remained in a Senate Finance committee.

A spokeswoman for Senate Republicans, who control the chamber, said she expects the bill to come up in the coming weeks, possibly early next year.

Sen. Scott Hutchinson (R, Venango) said he supports the bill and noted that a nearly identical bill sponsored by Sen. John DiSanto (R, Dauphin) passed through his committee and to the full Senate floor earlier this year. It has not yet left that chamber.

Hutchinson said he would like to see one of the bills advance. When he learned that Mellow's pension was being restored, "I was taken aback.Just on the face of it, I was blown away."
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump pose for a photo with members of the clergy during a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in May. Read more

President Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and vow to move the U.S. Embassy there drew a mix of jubilation and anger from members of Philadelphia's Jewish and Muslim communities Wednesday.

Trump said the move was necessary for achieving peace, casting it as a simple "recognition of reality" and giving assurances that the decision was not a departure from the United States' commitment to facilitating peace talks in the Middle East.

Some supporters applauded Trump for doing what his predecessors did not. But many Jews and Muslims alike expressed concern that the president's decision will spark violence in an already unstable region and threaten the possibility of a two-state peaceful solution.

"Of course many of us would love Jerusalem to be announced the capital, but at what cost?" asked Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of Nafshenu, a progressive congregation in Cherry Hill. "If we want peace for Jerusalem, which is always what we've wanted, this seems counter to the objectives we're looking to meet. This is not the time to be playing with people's lives."

Jerusalem is sacred to three major religions. Trump's move reverses 70 years of U.S. policy. His power to move the embassy comes from a 1995 act passed by Congress that recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and said the U.S. embassy must be moved there by 1999. But President Clinton used a waiver to extend the life of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv by six months, and every president since has done the same every six months. Now, the Trump administration has said the president will sign the waiver for the next six months, because moving the embassy will take several years.

Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital fulfills one of Trump's campaign promises. Leaders in the Middle East along with others from Pope Francis to British Prime Minister Theresa May have condemned his decision.

The decision "prejudges one of the most sensitive issues in negotiations and isolates the United States internationally," said Michael Merryman-Lotze, Middle East program director at American Friends Service Committee, a national peacebuilding organization based in Philadelphia with offices in Israel and Palestine. "It kind of takes the U.S. out of play as a negotiator of a solution to the conflict."

Noting historical instances of protest and unrest in Jerusalem, he called Trump's decision "extraordinarily reckless."

Mazem Khalil, a Palestinian-American activist in Philadelphia, scoffed at Trump's claim that the move would bring peace and security. His response to Trump's declaration was simple:

"We existed there, we've been there, and we're going to still be there," he said. "We're not going nowhere, simple as that."

The news divided Jewish communities that have long split on the Israel-Palestine conflict, often along liberal and conservative political lines. A protest was planned for 4 p.m. Friday at JFK plaza. Meanwhile, others supported the president's decision.

Rabbi Albert Gabbai, who has led Mikveh Israel congregation in Center City for 30 years, called the day "jubilant."

"Many presidents before promised and they didn't deliver. This one promised and he delivered," said Gabbai, who will attend a conference of Orthodox rabbis in Jerusalem at the end of December. "They're going to threaten violence but you should not be held to blackmail."

In Yardley, students at Abrams Hebrew Academy attended a 1 p.m. assembly to watch Trump's speech, at times erupting into applause.

"I think they understood they were watching history today," said Rabbi Ira Budow, the school's director. "After 22 years of trying to do it one way and not recognize Jerusalem for the sake that something good would come from the non-recognition, finally someone stood up to the plate."

Steve Feldman, director of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, watched a live feed of celebrations at the Western Wall following the speech. He called claims that the decision will lead to violence "disingenuous.

"It's a lack of recognition of the incitement every day," he said. "Do we want everybody to be held up and nothing to progress?"

The decision will sharpen the divide among Jews who fall on different sides of the issue, predicted Philadelphia-based Rabbi Linda Holtzman, a member of Jewish Voices for Peace. She and others also said the announcement could have precedent-setting implications.

"The idea of making it easier for Israel to annex more land is something that even many people who are deeply supportive of Israel are trying very hard not to encourage," she said.

That could upend international precedent, noted Marwan Kreidie, executive director of the Philadelphia Arab American Development Corporation.

"The whole post-World War II world consensus is we don't allow war to dictate the acquisition of territory," he said. "If we accept Israel's annexing of a place that they took through armed conflict, then what's wrong with the Russians taking Ukraine? What's wrong with other people taking land by force?"

Like others opposed to the decision, Kreidie viewed the move as a play to evangelical Christians in Trump's right-wing base rather than a step towards peace.

"Remember, Jerusalem is a special city," Kreidie said. "It's a city that's holy to three religions. It's supposed to be the city of peace. You don't give it to one side."
Edward C. Adleman, 93, of Voorhees, N.J., who with his brother, Stanley, ran a trucking and film shipping and storage business, died Saturday, Dec. 2, of bladder cancer at his home in Lions Gate, a retirement community in Voorhees where he had lived for 10 years.

For 65 years, Mr. Adleman and his brother were business partners in New Jersey Messenger Service in Philadelphia and the related entity, States Film Services, in Camden. The trucks carried movies to theaters for showing, and then back again to various storage depots scattered across the country and in Canada. The business is now defunct. Stanley Adleman died in 2013.

In addition, Mr. Adleman forged a business relationship with Tasty Baking Co. starting 1932. The trucks carried Tastykakes and other baked goods to distribution points nationwide.

Known for a wonderful sense of humor and genial manner, Mr. Adleman was a magnet for people. He had numerous friends, including fellow worshipers at Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill, which he joined in 1947.

His affability made him a natural for volunteer work. He was active in the Variety Club, a charity which serves handicapped children. He also served as president of the Motion Picture Pioneers of Philadelphia, a professional organization.

Born in Camden, he was the son of Meyer and Fanny Adleman. He attended public high school and Temple University before performing military service in the Army.

A busy civic worker, Mr. Adleman was a past president of the Jewish Geriatric Home, an honorary board member of Jewish Senior Housing and Healthcare Services, and a board member of the Jewish Community Foundation, all in New Jersey. He served on Temple Beth Sholom's executive board and was still participating in many of the synagogue's committees and activities into his 90s.

Mr. Adleman had myriad hobbies and interests. A stamps aficionado, he was founding president of the American Israeli Numismatic Society of South Jersey. He was also an amateur ventriloquist and was active in many philanthropic activities.

For 63 years, he was married to Cynthia Fisher Adleman. Two years after she died in 2008, he became friends with Janice Diamond Smith.

"He often expressed how fortunate he felt to have had two such wonderful women in his life," said his son, Andrew.

Smith and Mr. Adleman were avid Phillies and Eagles fans, and followed them on TV. They traveled to Paris, London, and enjoyed many ocean cruises.

Mr. Adleman was preceded in death by his two brothers, a sister, and a nephew.

In addition to his son and friend, he is also survived by daughter Judith "Jude" Hobbs, a granddaughter, and nieces and nephews.

Services were Dec. 4 in Cherry Hill. Interment was in Crescent Memorial Park, Pennsauken.

Memorial donations may be made to the Cynthia and Edward Adleman Teachers Endowment Fund at Temple Beth Sholom, 1901 Kresson Rd., Cherry Hill, N.J. 08003.
Pennsylvania is no stranger to partisan gerrymandering disputes. In a blockbuster 2004 case, the Supreme Court declined to strike down the congressional map then in effect. The court didn't quite hold that the map was lawful; rather, it couldn't think of a workable standard for evaluating the map's validity.

Another gerrymandering suit is now making its way through the Pennsylvania courts, with a decision expected by the end of the year. But unlike its predecessor, this suit is based on a manageable test as well as a mountain of damning evidence. Perhaps for this reason, it has thoroughly flummoxed the state's lawyers and experts.

What's changed since 2004? In recent years, political scientists have developed powerful new tools for evaluating district maps. These tools indicate how skewed a map is in a party's favor, how likely this skew is to persist in the future, and whether the skew has a legitimate explanation (like a state's political geography). In the Wisconsin case now pending before the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs used these tools to craft a simple test for gerrymandering:

First, was a map designed to benefit a particular party?

Second, has the map actually exhibited a large and durable tilt in this party's direction?

Third, is this tilt bigger than we'd expect given the spatial patterns of the state's voters?

It's virtually undisputed that Pennsylvania's congressional map satisfies this test. The map was drawn in secret by Republicans using reams of sophisticated data. It was then jammed through the General Assembly, largely on party-line votes, in a matter of days. In the 2012, 2014, and 2016 elections, the map set a modern record for partisan unfairness. According to one metric, it was more skewed, on average, than any other congressional map in the country since 1972.

This enormous Republican advantage is likely to endure for the rest of the decade. It would take a five-point swing for Democrats to capture just one more seat. For the map's skew to disappear, Democrats would need to improve on their 2016 showing by 14 points  a bigger wave than Pennsylvania has seen in generations. And the map's tilt can't be explained by the clustering of Democratic voters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In hundreds of computer-simulated maps, Democrats usually win nine or 10 of Pennsylvania's 18 districts. The state's underlying geography is thus close to neutral.

This evidence doesn't just satisfy the proposed test. It also confirms that the test is manageable. If it weren't, we'd have no way of knowing whether Pennsylvania's congressional map passes or fails the test. But we do know that the map falls on the wrong side of the constitutional line it intentionally, severely, durably, and unjustifiably discriminates against Democratic candidates and voters. The political scientists' tools make the legal analysis easy and reliable.

Precisely because the map is so egregious, the state's lawyers and experts have resorted to increasingly desperate tactics in their efforts to defend it. The lawyers first tried to stop the litigation until the Supreme Court decides its gerrymandering case. After they were rebuffed, they sought to move the proceedings to federal court  even though the plaintiffs only allege violations of Pennsylvania law. When this ploy failed too, they asked the court to exclude information (all publicly available) about how the map was designed.

The state's experts, similarly, make a series of weak arguments in the reports they filed earlier this week. Professor Nolan McCarty, for example, claims that Republicans should only be expected to win 10 of Pennsylvania's House districts. But they actually won 13 in 2012, 2014, and 2016. And they did so because of a variable  incumbency  that McCarty ignores. If every incumbent suddenly retired, Democrats might have a shot at fairer representation. If wishes were horses, beggars might also ride.

Next, Professor Wendy Tam Cho observes that the hundreds of computer-simulated maps might not be representative of all possible lawful maps. This is true but irrelevant. Academics continue to explore the properties of redistricting algorithms. But no legal issue hinges on these features. Even if the simulated maps aren't perfectly representative, they still prove the existence of hundreds of fairer alternatives to the enacted map. They still prove, that is, that Pennsylvania's geography didn't cause the enacted map's pro-Republican skew.

The state's final expert, Professor James Gimpel, points out that the enacted map achieves certain nonpartisan goals. Its districts are equal in population, it splits three fewer counties than its predecessor, it creates a black-majority district in Philadelphia, and so on. The map's drafters deserve a gold star for not violating any other legal requirements. But their compliance with nonpartisan criteria obviously doesn't mean that their creation isn't a partisan gerrymander. A map can be valid on one ground yet clearly unlawful on another.

Why are the state's lawyers attempting one unlikely gambit after another? And why are the state's experts aiming for the capillary rather than the jugular? The questions answer themselves. Pennsylvania's congressional map may be the most extreme gerrymander of the last half-century. One's only choice is to distract when one is trying to defend the indefensible.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at the University of Chicago, will be among the panelists discussing "Gerrymandering and the Future of American Democracy" at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the National Constitution Center. To register, visit constitutioncenter.org/debate or call 215-409-6700.
For KPLO, Korea is developing a package of 4 science instruments totaling about 25 kilograms:

LUnar Terrain Imager (LUTI) will perform high-resolution imaging of the lunar surface to map future landing sites and other "interesting places." The principal investigator is Haeng-Pal Heo of KARI.

will perform high-resolution imaging of the lunar surface to map future landing sites and other "interesting places." The principal investigator is Haeng-Pal Heo of KARI. Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) will perform polarimetry in three UV/visible wavelengths (320, 430, and 650 nanometers), studying the lunar surface at phase angles from 0 to 120 degrees. The principal investigator is Young-Jun Choi of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

will perform polarimetry in three UV/visible wavelengths (320, 430, and 650 nanometers), studying the lunar surface at phase angles from 0 to 120 degrees. The principal investigator is Young-Jun Choi of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). KPLO Magnetometer (KMAG) is a flux gate magnetometer that will map the lunar magnetic field and focus particularly on lunar swirls. The principal investigator is Ho Jin of Kyung Hee University (KHU).

is a flux gate magnetometer that will map the lunar magnetic field and focus particularly on lunar swirls. The principal investigator is Ho Jin of Kyung Hee University (KHU). KPLO Gamma Ray Spectrometer (KGRS) will map the surface distribution of major elements (including Mg, Ni, Cr, Ca, Al, Ti, Fe, Si, O, U, and He-3) and water. The principal investigator is Kyeong-Ja Kim of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM).

In addition, NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division (which is part of the human spaceflight side of NASA, not the science side) is providing one instrument:

ShadowCam is a 10-kilogram camera with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera heritage but 800 times greater sensitivity, which has the goal of imaging inside permanently shadowed craters near the poles. The principal investigator is Mark Robinson of ASU.

The mission is also focused on developing some enabling technologies, like disruption-tolerant networking. KPLO will be launched on a commercial space launch vehicle, but no contract has been signed yet. (When I began the research for this article, I thought it was launching in a year; now that the launch has been delayed to 2020, it makes a lot more sense that the rocket hasn't been bought yet.)

One of the challenging hurdles in front of an organization graduating from operating in near-Earth to deep space is telecommunication. KARI will update an existing satellite communication center to be compatible with NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). KARI is also working with NASA to prepare to archive their data to standards compatible with NASA's Planetary Data System and ESA's Planetary Science Archive. There wouldn't be any reason to do that unless they planned on sharing their data with the world, so that's welcome news.

Following a hopefully-successful KPLO, South Korea has plans for several future missions. A second Chandrayaan-2-like mission could have an orbiter, lander, and rover, but it seems the details are still up in the air. The second mission would nominally be launched on Korea's own rocket, the KSLV-II. A major goal of a second mission would be to demonstrate a domestically-produced upper stage for the KSLV-II, so the launch date for a second lunar mission is tied to that development effort.

Here is Gwanhyeok Ju presenting the Korean lunar program and KPLO to the NASA Exploration Science Forum in July. It opens with the acknowledgment of the recent impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-Hye. Since KPLO was initiated under her watch, it apparently was not obvious that it would continue after the impeachment, but Ju confirmed that the mission was going forward, albeit with a delayed launch date. (I don't think the launch delay is connected with the political turmoil in any way.)
Photo: Getty Images

In a world where mass shootings and copycat events prevail, music festival organizers, public officials, and law enforcement are currently grappling with how they might better protect event venues from mass killers.

But the realityas the recent Las Vegas shooting at a Jason Aldean concert provedis that no amount of planning and preparation is guaranteed to stop every lone wolf shooter.

In Vegas, Stephen Paddock executed an unprecedented attackhe opened fire on a country music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, leaving 58 people dead, and wounding and injuring an estimated 546 more.

Attorney Steven Adelman, who focuses on event security, says it's impossible to plan for an emergency that has never happened before. "There is no previous shooting like this one. It is literally unprecedented in the world of live events," he says. "You would have to go back to 1963, with Lee Harvey Oswald up in the Dallas book depository, to get the nearest analogy to the Las Vegas shooting. There is no way that anyone could have planned for thisnot the hotel, not the concert venuebecause this has never happened before. No one plans for things that have never happened before. There is nothing before this event that would have clued in organizers of an outdoor festival that they should plan for a shooter across an enormously wide intersection, 32 stories up."

Acts One, Two, and Three

Adelman dissects the event by likening it to a three-act play involving security, the venue, and the shooter himself.

Act One: The venue, in this case the Route 91 Festival property. "There is really no security enhancement that would have reduced the likelihood of people getting shot from across the strip because the shooter never came onto the concert property at all," he says. "He didn't even approach the security perimeter."

He explains this event vastly differs from the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL, where Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 58 others. "In this incident, the shooters shot their way into the club," he says. "But in Las Vegas, that didn't happen at all, so the thing venue operators and promoters pay close attention to, which is the venue security perimeter, was never challenged; it was never even approached."

Act Two: The shooter's location, in this case the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. There are those who believe that if the hotel had had better security, its security officials might have been able to identify the shooter before he did anything. "He would have been identified, they say, as not just one of thousands of people going in and out of the venue, but as someone who was setting up to commit a crime," he says.

However, Adelman points out that the subsequent investigation of this event has shown that Paddock took extreme measures to "make himself innocuous and disappear into the crowd."

Greg Pearson, CEO of global risk consulting firm FocusPoint International, suggests in a Vice.com article that advanced technology could help concert security teams respond more quickly to an active shooter situation. He put forth that gunfire detection systems could have stopped the shooting in its tracks, while other experts suggested facial recognition systems might have identified Paddock as a threat long before he did anything.

"Yeah, maybe facial recognition software or some other wonderful bit of technology could identify someone [as a threat], but only if that person was already in the system," says Adelman. "This shooter wasn't. He wasn't in anyone's system. He wasn't on anyone's radar; not prior to him starting to rent hotel rooms near concert venues and not during the time he was getting set up on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay."

Adelman adds, "This guy intended to fly below the radar, was a very careful planner, and successfully executed his plan to remain below the radar. There is nothing the hotel could have done to identify this guy because he looked, acted, and carried things just like everyone else. There was simply no reason for a security professional to come up to him and question him about what he was doing or what he was carrying.

"The major hotels on the Las Vegas strip set the gold standard for hotel security; they do security better than virtually anywhere else," he continues. "So, as we can see, if someone is intent on passing beneath the radar of extraordinary security, they can do so."

Act Three: The shooter, in this case, Paddock. Adelman says the question to ask is what turns a person, someone who looks ordinary and acts unobtrusively, into a shooter? There are no clear answers.

Adelman believes there is very little chance of a copycat following in Paddock's footsteps. "I'm convinced that a copycat shooter is unlikely because this took a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of planning, and a lot of flying under the radar to execute," he says. "That's not a likely combination to reoccur." For the most part, the security measures that are already put in place for major events should remain unchanged. But event organizers should know how to react if an attack occurs. Photo: Getty Images

Because of this, Adelman says, "Though this was the worst mass shooting incident in U.S. history, it would be a mistake to radically change the resource allocation and emergency action plans that are already in place to prevent a future incident like this."

Back to Basics

The question becomes then: What are the reasonably foreseeable threats that people should be paying attention to? To this Adelman answers, "The same stuff as before the Route 91 festival shooting."

When planning security for any event, there needs to be a site-specific analysis based on geographic risks. What are the risks inherent at the event in question?

"One risk is the crowd demographics," says Adelman. In a sporting event, for example, if there is a strong rivalry between two teams, police can make a reasonably confident assessment about the makeup of the crowd and the behaviors they might

expect.

"Not to engage in gross stereotyping, but these are useful rules of thumb," says Adelman. "If it's a country music show, your primary food and beverage concern is alcohol, and people getting drunk, unruly, engaging in fist fights, and driving under the influence after the event. But at an electronic dance festival, there might be much more worry about illicit drugs, so you might need to plan more for medical intervention in case of an overdose. Or, for example, when the San Francisco 49ers play the Arizona Cardinals, we know there's an unusual number of fights between the fans of these two teams, so event security needs to plan for that."

He adds, "These are the sorts of risk assessments that event planners and law enforcement have always done, and they should remain the risk assessments that are done now."

Perimeter security is another area worthy of consideration. Event patrons now expect to have their bags checked before entering a venue, if they are even allowed to carry a bag in. They know that they will be wanded or asked to walk through a magnetometer for screening. "I think most people shrug these things off as the cost of living in the public in 2017," Adelman says. "These basic protections of an event perimeter should not change because of the Las Vegas shooting; the security perimeter in this case was not breached."

News reports suggest that this event could lead pre-event surveillance sweeps, hiring more off-duty undercover police officers to surveil event venues, and even taking over floors of the facility for security purposes. "The costs of this would be enormous," Jason Porter, eastern region vice president for global private security firm Pinkerton, told Vice.com.

Adelman agrees, saying, "I've heard talk about how every outdoor show should do reconnaissance of tall buildings near the festival grounds so there isn't a shooter with a good line of sight. Now that we know the threat, we would be foolish not to pay attention to it, but I don't think it's going to be a profitable line of investigation most of the time."

He explains that at a large outdoor event that takes place across from a hospital, for example, completely locking down security is difficult at best. "The organizers of the event do not control the hospital, nor the occupants inside. It's unlikely that they are going to be able to do much in terms of security there," Adelman says. And the event may be held near "taller structures where conceivably someone could get in with weapons. Controlling that would be beyond the control of the ownership group and event organizers, and that is usually going to be the scenario. One controls their own property, not adjacent properties."

News reports also called for putting snipers on the tops of taller buildings to take out a shooter if need be.

"I'm a realist," says Adelman. "I don't think it's practical for most event organizers to consider these things. There are lots of big ideas going around, and none of them are bad ideas; they all should get some consideration because we don't want this to happen again. But if we change much of what we do in response to something that in this case is literally unprecedented, then I think we will have reacted too much and created a new system that will then have to be fixed because it won't be well suited to the ordinary risks that we know happen on a regular basis."

Time is Not on Your Side

According to a New York Times article on the timeline for the mass shooting in Las Vegas, the shooting started at 10:05 p.m. and it ended by 10:22 p.m., after more than 900 rounds were shot into the crowd. Officers could not get to the 32nd floor easily as they first had to determine where the shots were coming from, then circumvent barriers Paddock had put into place.

The unfortunate reality is that these shootings take very little time, and in most cases, law enforcement is reacting to an event that will be over before there is time to respond. Consider the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech where in 11 minutes, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at the university, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before committing suicide. Police were on the scene within minutes, but by the time they gained entry to the building the event was over.

"Police couldn't have done a better job," says Phillip Chainman, staff director of the Virginia Tech Shooting Review Panel at the 9th Annual Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference and Exposition. "They made immediate entry. But it was game over by that time."

Notes Adelman, police cannot get there quickly enough, and generally cannot prevent these tragedies. For this reason, he advocates law enforcement helping to teach event planners, organizers, and security personnel what to do when an event arises.

Law enforcement can help event organizers by teaching them what to do during an active shooting. Photo: Getty Images

"The usual response that we are all taught is to run, hide, fight. If you can run away from the shooter, do it, because it's by far the best choice," Adelman says. "If you can't run away, hide behind whatever is available, and if neither of these is an option, fight the shooter with whatever you have. Throw your coffee cup, your phone, a book. These are the rules; the problem is they are hard. There are many impediments to people running, hiding, or fighting, particularly in live event spaces."

The first problem is that most people cannot identify gunfire. "They have never heard it live," says Adelman. "Even people who go to a shooting range haven't heard it without hearing protection. So, hearing live fire, close, is something most people have never heard in their lives. Therefore, you often hear from survivors of active shooter situations that they thought it was fireworks or pyrotechnics on the stage. This means people will have some delay in recognizing gunfire as a live threat."

The second problem, as was the case in the Las Vegas shooting, is people are unable to identify where the shots are coming from. "Run, hide, fight is based on knowing where the shooting is coming from and knowing what direction to run," he says. "But if people cannot figure out where the bullets are flying from, they don't know where to go, and if they do, they are then faced with something new and very frightening. And most people in those situations freeze up and don't do much of anything."

In addition, event goers' responses may be impaired by alcohol or drugs that affect or slow their decision-making process.

Here, law enforcement can help event organizers by teaching them what to do during an active shooting. This training should cover what an AR-15 sounds like by surprising them with recorded gunfire, says Adelman. "In the middle of my talks, I always play the AR-15 sound on automatic and semi-automatic," he says. "I do it over and over to fix it into their brains."

By training event organizers to recognize shots and where they come from, the casualties of such an event might be minimized. They will be able to quickly identify that a shooting is occurring and move people to safety.

Many event organizers also design apps to help people navigate and enjoy the festivities. These apps can also be equipped to deliver emergency messages to patrons, and Pearson says that these apps can notify people quickly about shots being fired and from where, and guide them to exit points.

"Event personnel need to be taught how to safely move people quickly and decisively toward a safe place. That's ordinary crowd management. There is nothing active shooter-specific about it," says Adelman. "But it's really important. We need to teach the people working these events how to be shepherds, by first explaining to them how people react in emergencies, giving them active shooter training, and then teaching them how to get people to safety."

Ronnie L. Garrett is a freelance writer based in Fort Atkinson, WI. She has written about law enforcement for 22 years, and has been writing about active shooter situations since the school shooting at Columbine in 1999.
A suspect was killed and a deputy was injured after an early-morning altercation Thursday, the Adams County (CO) Sheriffs Office said.

A deputy responded about 3:30 a.m. on a welfare check, KDVR reports.

While at the scene, the deputy heard a disturbance in a neighboring apartment. A suspect left the apartment and when the deputy tried to apprehend him, a fight began. During the fight, the deputy fired his gun, striking the suspect. The deputy suffered injuries to the head and neck, the sheriff's office says.
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Donald Trump Jr. admitted that he and his father had a discussion about last summers secret meeting between key campaign officials and the Russians, but he refused to provide details of that conversation with the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

Trump Jr. claimed client-attorney privilege to justify his refusal to divulge what he and his father talked about, and top Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff, was having none of it.

Video:

Rep. Schiff discusses Donald Trump Jr. interview: In my view, there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son https://t.co/6BENFlzaQ9 pic.twitter.com/0yyuwqwDBj  The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) December 6, 2017

Schiff blasted Trump Jr.:

There was one significant area, though, where [Trump Jr.] declined to answer. He acknowledged having discussed the June 9 meeting and the emails that went into establishing that meeting after those emails became public. He acknowledged discussing that matter with his father, but refused to answer questions about that discussion on the basis of attorney-client privilege. In my view, there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son. This particular discussion revolves around a pivotal meeting, that is where representatives of the Russian government who were portrayed as providing dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government effort to help Donald Trump to the campaign, and therefore is a central issue that we need to fully investigate.

As Schiff noted in his statement, it is critical to know exactly what Donald Trump knows about his sons secret meeting with the Russians during the campaign, and what they talked about after it took place.

The fact that Trump knew anything at all about the private contact suggests that the now-president was not totally out of the loop with respect to his campaigns coordination with Russia, as he has repeatedly claimed since taking office.

As we learn more about what happened behind the scenes during last years campaign, the more its apparent that the president was not ignorant of his teams work with the Russians. The information Don Jr. kept from investigators on Wednesday could be key in proving that.
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Rachel Maddow connected more dots in the ongoing Russia scandal on Wednesday, saying that there is no longer any doubt what the Russians wanted to get out of their many contacts with the Trump team during the campaign.

According to the MSNBC host, each revealed meeting between Trumps campaign and Russian operatives had an underlying focus on the U.S. lifting sanctions for Russia if Trump was successful in defeating Hillary Clinton.

Video:

Rachel Maddow Nails Trump Campaign For Repeatedly Promising To Lift Russian Sanctions #Maddow pic.twitter.com/8Adiu5uSKh  Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) December 7, 2017

Maddow said:

Bottom line, that weird Flynn nuclear deal appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The secret Ukraine peace deal cooked up by Trumps personal lawyer and a Russian guy  appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The Seychelles secret meeting with Erik Prince and the Russian guy appears to have been about Russian sanctions. The Trump Tower meeting was about sancations. What Flynn lied to the FBI about. Sanctions. What Vice President Mike Pence lied to the American public about. Sanctions. Now, apparently what the president and his son are pretending to be lawyers about is how they cooked up their public statements about that meeting, that was about sanctions. So a lot of news going on right now.  But with the news we got today, it at least finally seems clear that we at least now know what Russia was after from their side. It seems indubitably clear what the quo was that they were trying to get in any quid pro quo from the Trump campaign.

Clearly, at multiple points during the campaign, Trump-connected associates were suggesting they would lift sanctions that have been crippling Russia. This is something we now know to be undeniably true.

The major question left to be proven is what the Trump team was expecting in return  what they would get (or got) for promising to lift these crippling punishments imposed by the previous administration.

The more we learn about the Trump campaigns relationship with Russia and the longer the Robert Mueller investigation goes on, the more it looks like what the presidents team was getting in return was help in defeating Hillary Clinton last fall.
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Donald Trump can continue telling himself that the ongoing investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia is a liberal witch hunt, but a new poll shows that his own party thinks his campaign acted improperly with the Russians during last years election cycle.

According to the CBS News survey, 43 percent Republicans feel that its either very or somewhat likely that Trumps team had an inappropriate relationship with Russia. Its the latest proof that there is bipartisan agreement among the American people that the controversy surrounding the Trumps campaigns links to Moscow is neither partisan nor fake  its a massive scandal.

CBS News also noted that the recent development that Michael Flynn lied to the FBI is another serious concern for voters, even those who consider themselves Republicans.

According to the poll, Most Americans think former National Security Adviser Michael Flynns guilty plea and cooperation with the special counsel is a serious issue for the Trump administration, including a third of Republicans.

At the end of the day, CBS News found, most Americans think the whole situation is an important issue to the country.

Each time Trump claims this is all a non-issue, hes simply expressing his own wishful thinking. In reality, the majority of the country is appropriately concerned that a sitting President of the United States worked with a foreign adversary to undermine the presidential election in his favor, and that hes now trying to cover it up and obstruct any investigations into the matter.

Aside from hardcore Trump voters, who will stand by this dangerous president no matter what, this is a major concern for U.S. voters.

Donald Trump can and will likely continue calling this massive Russia scandal fake news and accuse those investigating him of waging a politically-motivated witch hunt, but the American people see right through it  and they want answers.
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Donald Trump showed why this White House is most definitely not run by the best people, as he managed to misquote FDRs famous speech after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Pearl Harbor Day.

Trump tweeted:

;

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day  A day that will live in infamy! December 7, 1941  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2017

The actual quote from the speech is, Yesterday, December 7, 1941a date which will live in infamythe United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

It is just a word, but it highlights Trump lack of detail in everything that he does. The President is shallow and so unconcerned with accuracy that he tweets things out without checking their truth or accuracy. Donald Trump could be one of the least intelligent people to ever hold the presidency, but what is more dangerous than his lack of intellect is Trumps reckless lack of attention to detail.

You dont have to be bright to be responsible, and there has never been a more irresponsible person in the White House. Trump cant get a tweet about Pearl Harbor right, so no one should expect him to have any ability to solve the nations real problems.
A house concert is one of the most intimate ways to enjoy live music since it takes place in the comfortable confines of a household living space. The musician may just be feet away, and the audience can really focus on the songs. Most house concerts are one-off shows, but one local company has been hosting them for years.

Camelback Concertshas been one of Rochesters best-kept secrets since Joanne Martin and Tim Hildebrandt first opened their Rochester home to host concerts in 2011. Over the years, theyve hosted many musicians including Sally Barris, a well-known Nashville song writer whose songs have been covered by stars like Kathy Mattea and Tricia Yearwood. Theyve also featured Ronny Cox, famous for his role as Drew Ballinger in the film "Deliverance."

"My role is to book the talent and invite the audience, and then prepare for the concert," Martin says. "Tim does the heavy lifting setting up chairs and the sound system."

Though Camelback Concerts is a small local venue, it gets support from membership in larger organizations. Martin says they are Folk Alliance International members. This group, in its mission to nurture the folk music community, has negotiated an agreement with professional rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP that allow house concerts in private homes to avoid music licensing fees. They also belong to Concerts in Your Home, a network that connects touring musicians with house concert hosts.

For Martin, the best thing about hosting a house concert is "knowing that at the end of the evening, the artists connected with your guests and everyone had a good time."

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The next show from Camelback Concerts will feature Wyatt Easterling performing a Sunday show on Dec. 10. Easterlings recent album, "Divining Rod," was ranked as the number 5 Top Folk Album earlier this year in an online folk forum.

Easterling took some time to answer a couple questions for 507 Magazine readers.

You started working on your most recent album, "Divining Rod," in 2016. What was the process of making this record like?

I wanted to record a CD away from the influence of Nashville and found the perfect fit with producer/artist Chris Rosser in Asheville, NC. We had a blast recording what became "Divining Rod" over the course of a year. Id go up to Asheville and work for four or five days then head home with the results. It took a while, but it was worth it to me. For the most part, we only used musicians from NC.

What inspired the title?

The title "Divining Rod" came about when I found I didnt have a song in the batch that captured the essence of the whole collection of songs. I recalled a blog where I had used a divining rod as an analogy of some sort, and it seemed to fit what I was trying to say in a number of the songs. A divining rod or dowsing rod has been used for hundreds of years to find the spot to dig for water, or as I learned reading up on the practice, to find lost objects and to even ask the great unknown for answers to lifes mysteries. I found the cover photo online from a photographer in Australia and that sealed it for me."
Thanksgiving may be over, but for you die-hard turkey fans theres still plenty of the bird left to be found  and devoured  at area restaurants.

If its straight-up comfort food you seek, a handful of local eateries feature open-faced turkey sandwiches on their menus, complete with traditional trimmings. And whats more, all of these dishes can be had for less than $14.

Chesters Kitchen & Bar,111 S Broadway #108, Rochester,has a turkey-laden sandwich on its lunch menu year round. It comes with mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, gravy (which they call good juice for a reason), on white bread. "Its amazing," says front of house manager James Zelton. "Its a very popular item for us."

If youre closer to Saint Marys Hospital, hit the tried-and-true Canadian Honker,1203 2nd St. SW, Rochester, for their turkey sammy. Theres no time limit here either, since the sandwich is a year-round featured menu item. "Its always a popular dish, but you do see the numbers go up this time of year," says manager Corey Hirlston. "Its kind of a comfort food type of meal."

At Glynners Pub,1643 1/2 N Broadway Ave., Rochester, the hot turkey plate is a Thursday-only specialty item. Manager Matt Floen says its a good one, especially in the wintertime. Its popular enough to warrant being held over from November into December.

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Whistle Binkies Olde World Pub,3120 Wellner Dr. NE, Rochester, has a year-round open-faced turkey sandwich that is the joy of joys for many diners. Some opt for the half-sized portion, says manager Chrissy Abraham, because "turkey with the trimmings can sometimes be a little filling. Its a little surprising, too, after Thanksgiving how many we sell. People love their turkey."

If you prefer a non-traditional turkey-heavy meal, no worries. Rochester again has you covered.

Back at Chesters, set your stomach right with either the turkey avocado melt or the turkey avocado burger. "Both are really popular options," says Zelton. At Glynners, the Texas turkey melt is a fan favorite. And at Whistle Binkies, check out the new turkey broccoli salad concoction, which is winning over more and more diners the longer its on the menu, Abraham says.

Dooleys Pub has the turkey bacon avocado wrap as one of its most long-standing menu items, according to assistant manager Alex Greising. "Its one of our specialties," he says. "Its been on the menu for probably six years. Its definitely a popular one year-round."

At Tonic Local Kitchen & Juice Bar, 217 2nd St. SW, Rochester, a standard go-to is the Our Rachel sandwich, which features local, whole-roasted turkey, house kraut, scratch thousand island dressing, and baby Swiss, piled on cranberry and wild rice bread. Delish!

Then theres Porch, 20 4th St. SE, Rochester, which is well regarded for its fried chicken. But dont overlook the smoked turkey BLT, which is served on caraway rye bread during lunch only.

If you dont have time for a sit-down meal, head to Potbelly Sandwich Shop,318 1st Ave. SW, Rochester, for a turkey club. Served with bacon and cheddar cheese, and topped with lettuce, tomato, and mayo on multigrain bread, this sammy comes in at 740 yummy calories.

How popular is turkey? Well, according to the National Turkey Federation (and yes, there is one), 88 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving. Last year, 736 million pounds of turkey were consumed on Thanksgiving alone. Thats a lot of bird!
RED WING  After debating an updated ordinance for disorderly conduct at its Nov. 27 meeting, the Red Wing City Council will hold off on enacting the ordinance until after the new year at the earliest.

Red Wing Mayor Sean Dowse said the city has taken a second reading of the ordinance off its Dec. 11 agenda and will include discussion of the topic during a workshop in January.

Because the ordinance was not enacted within 14 days, according to city charter, an update to the ordinance, even if unchanged from what was on the Nov. 27 agenda, would need to go through a first and second reading in the future.

Proponents of the updated ordinance said it allows the city to enforce order at public meetings. The issue arose after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled the disorderly conduct ordinance of Little Falls concerning council meetings was unconstitutional. Because that ordinance, similar to many across the state, is based on state code that was struck down, cities are looking for ways to deal with people disrupting public meetings.

Opponents said the updated Red Wing ordinance could violate citizens' right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

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Amber Eisenschenk, staff attorney with the League of Minnesota Cities, said Red Wing's amended ordinance might be the first of its kind in the state after the Supreme Court decision in the Little Falls case.

However, in September the Rochester City Council unanimously passed an updated ordinance stating that anyone who knowingly causes a disruption is "guilty of Disturbing An Assembly or Meeting.'
ALBERT LEA  Amidst rising tensions in Albert Lea, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Mayo Clinic have made dueling allegations of unfair labor practices.

SEIU leadership announced this morning that a one-day strike will be held outside Mayo Clinic Health System's Albert Lea campus. The Dec. 19 strike includes 79 SEIU members employed as certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, sterile processing staff and utilities and materials management workers.

That bargaining group voted to authorize the strike last month. They'll now be joined by six skilled maintenance workers who have been working without a contract for more than two years.

At issue is Mayo's insistence on including a clause that allows Mayo to change employee benefits without the union's approval. Mayo describes it as "standard contract language," common among other bargaining units, but SEIU has balked at accepting it.

SEIU has accused Mayo of unfair labor practices as the two sides have worked since 2015 to hammer out new contracts. The National Labor Relations Board recently sided with Mayo in the contract dispute, but SEIU President Jamie Gulley said he plans to file new complaints against Mayo in the near future.

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"What frustrates me is that at the bargaining table we have been willing to give and give and give, and when it is Mayo's turn to compromise, they haven't given an inch," said SEIU member Marlene Baseman, who has been a housekeeper at the Albert Lea hospital for 27 years. "They seem to want to throw away all of what we have now. They offer us pennies and cut back at our hospital while we see them spending big bucks in other places."

Mayo spokeswoman Ginger Plumbo said this morning that Mayo hasn't yet received formal notice of SEIU's plans to strike, which legally requires a 10-day notice.

"It is unfortunate that the union would put out a press release prior to fulfilling their legal obligation," Plumbo said via email. "If in fact the union has decided to call a strike, it is regrettable that they would deliberately subject our hard-working employees to uncertainty, anxiety and lost wages at this time of year."

Plumbo says Mayo filed its first in history unfair labor practices complaint against SEIU last month, citing the union's "regressive labor bargaining tactics." Mayo's complaint was filed Nov. 28 with the National Labor Relations Board.

"It's rare for employers, and it's a first for us," Plumbo said.

The Post Bulletin has reviewed an internal email sent Nov. 17 by Mayo Clinic Health System  Austin and Albert Lea leadership to staff that expressed disappointment in SEIU's course of action. The email noted that the union hadn't requested a negotiating session since May. Mayo warned employees that participating in a one-day strike would create the need to hire contract workers for a minimum of one week.

"It is our intent to not compromise patient care in any way due to this decision (to authorize a strike)," MCHSAA CEO Mark Ciota wrote. "Striking employees are not paid for the time they are on strike and benefits may be discontinued during a strike. Striking employees may be replaced temporarily and in some instances permanently.

"Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea has historically had a positive relationship with the members of this Union, and it is our desire to maintain this relationship moving forward," the email said.

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SEIU's news release announcing plans to strike noted that its members had "little choice but to stand up and fight back" after receiving Mayo's email. The union described it as "a threat to stop workers at the hospital from making their voices heard through their legally protected right to strike."

"It is very troubling that Mayo decided to causally threaten employees with a Christmas lockout," Gulley said. "I know working people, and the whole Albert Lea community, won't be intimidated by threats from Mayo executives.

"Over the last few years it has become crystal clear that Albert Lea workers, patients and community members are ready and willing to fight for good jobs and good healthcare in our community. It is time Mayo actually listens to families in Albert Lea instead of apparently only focusing on their bottom line while sitting in their executive suites."

The contractual debate is playing out while Mayo moves forward with consolidation plans that would shift most inpatient services from Albert Lea to Austin. The first step of that plan was taken in October over criticism from a number of elected officials at the city, county and state level.

On Tuesday, an independent health care consultant shared a 70-page report that said a full-service, acute-care hospital was feasible "under the right conditions." The consultant was hired for $75,000 by the city of Albert Lea, Freeborn County and Save Our Hospital.
Jinny Halverson, 73, of Shakopee, passed away at her home on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017. Born Virginia Frances Cassidy in Rochester on Aug. 12, 1944, to Rachael (McIntire) and William Cassidy, Jinny was always brainy, often mischievous, sometimes precocious, and occasionally just plain naughty. After graduating from Rochester John Marshall High School in 1962, Jinny went on to attend the Minnesota School of Business, often the lone female in her accounting- focused classes. She spent most of her career working in the flour milling industry for Peavey Company/Con-Agra. Ultimately, Jinny retired from the IRS, but she never quit working. Many in Shakopee are familiar with her smiling face, often seen under a green cap handing out samples at Sam's Club where she has worked for several years.

Jinny's kind heart was bigger than most, and she spent most of her time trying to make someone else smile and doing for others. Sharp as a tack, it was her intelligence and resourcefulness that she was known for as a career woman before there was such a term. Although she and her first husband, Steve Bolstad, weren't meant to be, they raised their daughter with the same resourcefulness and tenacity. Later, Jinny married John Halverson, who was truly the love of her lifetime. John's untimely passing shortened their time together, but Jinny never let their love story perish. At long last, they are together again.

Jinny's family meant everything to her. She is survived by her daughter, Kristine Anderson, of Shakopee; and grandchildren, Rachael Isle, of New Orleans, Taylor (Emily) Isle, of Salt Lake City, Cecily (Pat) Theis, of San Diego, and Brennan Isle, of Brooklyn Park. She is also survived by three sisters, Maureen Robertson, of Mesa, Ariz., Marilyn Cassidy (Ed Crawford), of Phoenix, and, Colleen Valente (Steve Butenhoff), of Red Wing; and one brother and a niece, Jerry (Rhea) Cassidy, of the Philippines, and their daughter, Clementine. Jinny was preceded in death by her mother and beloved stepfather, Cecil Morris; her father; and Kristine's father.

Visitation will be from noon to 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, followed by a prayer service at 1 p.m., all held at McNearney-Schmidt Funeral and Cremation, 1220 3rd Ave. E., Shakopee, 952-445-2755. Presiding is the Rev. Peter Hughes. Interment will be at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, Minneapolis.

Condolences may be shared at www.mcnearneyfuneralhome.com.
That is a question I never thought I would need to ask. But, via InstaPundit, law professor Randy Barnett makes an alarming point:

Democrats #Resistance is creating a genuine constitutional crisis in which governmental power is not allowed by them to be peacefully transferred after a lawful election. The potential for escalation is very very dangerous. https://t.co/vPRjzbhwPI  Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) December 6, 2017

Barnett was responding to this tweet:

.@CFPBDirector reverses policies at @CFPB, #Resistance forms Dumbledores Army," uses text messages and encrypted apps to secretly communicate about government business https://t.co/7H0YgzdNl8 pic.twitter.com/LbVtAv82kz  Josh Blackman (@JoshMBlackman) December 6, 2017

Administrative employees are nominally subject to the control of those appointed by politicians who have won elections, but Democrats embedded in the federal bureaucracy have proclaimed themselves part of the resistance to President Trump, and are using their positions to undermine his administration. Bureaucrats thus frustrate the will of the voters. President Trump has been in office for nearly a year, and has yet to take control over the federal bureaucracy that nominally reports to him.

I agree with Professor Barnett that this is a constitutional crisis. The most powerful branch of todays government is the Fourth: the permanent federal bureaucracy that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The Trump administration can best be viewed, perhaps, as a struggle to the death between American voters and the federal employees who are paid to serve them.
If you want to understand the news that has been swirling around the FBIs Peter Strzok, who played a key role in both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and Robert Muellers wide-ranging Russia probe (including interviewing General Flynn), you should watch this riveting seven-minute video of Congressman Jim Jordan interrogating FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier today. Wray was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee.

Jordan does a beautiful job of tying together the Strzok-related stories that have bubbled to the surface in recent days. He keeps it clean, too, not even mentioning that Strzoks anti-Trump messages were exchanged with his illicit lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who also was discharged from Muellers team. Jordan expresses the suspicion that Strzok, on behalf of the FBI, collaborated with the Clinton campaign and, ultimately, Russian sources to produce the fake Trump dossier. Jordan further suspects that it was Strzok, a virulent Trump-hater, who took the false Russian information in the dossier and dressed it up as a FISA court application, which in turn generated an order allowing the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign. Wray refuses to comment.

Jordan acts like he knows something we dont. If he is right, this is the biggest scandal in American political history:

UPDATE: Andy McCarthy asks a question that I, too, have wondered about: why cant Jeff Sessions, or Donald Trump, simply order the FBI to comply with Congressional requests for information, and fire anyone who disobeys?

Love my friends @jhinderaker & @Jim_Jordan, but elephant in room here is POTUS could order that FISA application be disclosed to Congress. Why beat up Wray? Why not ask why POTUS not disclosing info that would prove dossier misused? https://t.co/KNI2vyYzlZ via @powerlineUS  Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 8, 2017

Maybe there is a good answer, but I have no idea what it could be.
Thats the headline of an article in the New York Times. To which I say, ya think.

The point is so obvious that it took three Times reporters  Anne Barnard, Ben Hubbard, and Declan Walsh  to make it. They write:

[A]s Arab and Muslim leaders raised their voices to condemn [Trumps decision on Jerusalem], many across the Middle East wondered if so much had changed in recent years that the real Arab response would amount to little more than a whimper. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine joins Palestinian refugees are going back home one day in the lets-hope-it-will-happen-but-it-never-will department, Mustapha Hamoui, a Lebanese blogger, wrote in a rueful tweet.

The Times explains:

While Arab leaders have continued to pay lip service to the Palestinian cause, it has slipped in importance, displaced by the Arab Spring uprisings, the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the threat of the Islamic State, and the contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional dominance. Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, more concerned about their rivalry with Iran, have found their interests increasingly overlapping with those of Israel.

Unless youre John Kerry, or maybe Jared Kushner, you can understand why war, revolution, and the imperial ambitions of a powerful state are more important to regional leaders than what the capital of Israel is.

But what about the Arab street? In Egypt, the Times suggests, it has been forcibly disappeared by the regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, combined with broader anxiety over regional stability.

If a regime can make the Arab street disappear, you have to suspect a regime can also conjure it up. The Times notes that Arab leaders have often used the Palestinian issue as a reliable way to appeal to their people, and sometimes as a distraction from domestic problems, including lack of political freedoms and economic opportunities.

Thus, the Arab street, insofar it is fixated on the Palestinians and Jerusalem, is to some extent manufactured. End the manufacturing, and the street looks different.

Im not denying that a great many ordinary Arabs care about the Palestinians, or that they should. But it takes more than caring to take to the streets on a sustained basis. Hamas call for a day of rage may be heeded in substantial portions of the Arab world. But sustained, meaningful rage is another matter.

Thus, the prediction from a Twitter user in Libya with which the Times concludes its article seems quite plausible:
I have to admit that I dont understand bitcoin. Go ahead: read the Wikipedia entry for how bitcoins are mined and see if you can understand it. The price of it is soaring again on the market today, to over $15,000 now $18,000 now $19,000 (this movement happening as I write this item!) in what looks like a classic bubble. I think Ill stick with my hypothesis that bitcoin, and its correlative phenomenon, blockchain, are really an advanced Bond villain plot to crash the worlds markets somehow, sort of a clever remake of Goldfinger.

I gather that bitcoin is mined in the digital equivalent of gold or silver mining, and that the quantity of bitcoin is therefore finite in some way. But theres another problem: it may destroy the planet! Naturally environmentalists will worry about this, as this article from Grist explains:

Bitcoin could cost us our clean-energy future . . . Bitcoin is slowing the effort to achieve a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Whats more, this is just the beginning. Given its rapidly growing climate footprint, bitcoin is a malignant development, and its getting worse. . . Digital financial transactions come with a real-world price: The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has created an exponential demand for computing power. As bitcoin grows, the math problems computers must solve to make more bitcoin (a process called mining) get more and more difficult  a wrinkle designed to control the currencys supply. Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the U.S. for one day. And miners are constantly installing more and faster computers. Already, the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the worlds 500 fastest supercomputers combined. . . In just a few months from now, at bitcoins current growth rate, the electricity demanded by the cryptocurrency network will start to outstrip whats available, requiring new energy-generating plants. And with the climate conscious racing to replace fossil fuel-base plants with renewable energy sources, new stress on the grid means more facilities using dirty technologies. By July 2019, the bitcoin network will require more electricity than the entire United States currently uses. By February 2020, it will use as much electricity as the entire world does today.

Of course this is just the kind of ludicrous projection that environmentalists would swallow, though if it is remotely true it heralds a dotcom-style bust for bitcoin in the not too distant future.

But if climatistas are seriously worried about the clean energy implications of the digital world, theyd have long ago turned their sights on Google, etc. It was calculated several years ago that every Google search released the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle of waterabout 7 grams of CO2. This will have changed some with the decline of coal and rise of natural gas, but not by that much.

What happens if you Google bitcoin? I suspect Al Gore gets indigestion. Speaking of Bond villains.

JOHN adds: I dont understand bitcoin either. But the most surprising aspect of this post, for me, was the revelation that Grist still exists. Who knew?
Jay Kaganoff, writing in the Washington Post says: Fellow conservatives, its time to call on Clarence Thomas to resign. No it isnt. The controversy over Anita Hills allegations against Justice Thomas has nothing material in common with the cases of Al Franken, John Conyers, or Roy Moore.

First, Thomas categorically denied Hills allegations. Franken admits to some of the allegations against him. Moore admitted, at least initially, that he dated one or more of the girls in question and doesnt deny that some of the handwriting in Beverly Nelsons yearbook is his.

Second, Hills case was classic he said, she said. No one else testified that Thomas engaged in inappropriate behavior towards Anita Hill or any other female employee.

There are multiple witnesses against Franken, Conyers, and Moore.

Kaganoff says Hill had witnesses whom Joe Biden, then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, refused to call. In fact, there was only one witness who was prepared, initially, to testify that Thomas behaved inappropriately. That was Angela Wright.

But Wright was not a credible witness. During her interview with Senate Judiciary Committee staff, she refused to answer questions about her previous allegations against a former boss who, like Thomas, had fired her. The former bosss supervisor told the Judiciary Committee:

I am struck by the startling parallels between what Mrs. Wright did [to my surbordinate] and what she is doing now. She vowed vengeance on a former supervisor for dismissal on the basis of incompetence. . . The entire process suggested a last-ditch attempt to stop the advancement of someone she resented.

Had Wright testified before the Committee, she could not have declined to answer questions about this without shattering her credibility. Thus, she would either have had to lie under oath or admit to a pattern of seeking revenge for firings by accusing former bosses of misconduct.

Accordingly, she elected not to testify. As Mark Paoletta has shown, the decision was hers, not Joe Bidens. Indeed, says Paoletta, Wright signed a document memorializing this. (For more from Mark about Hills claims against Thomas, go here and here).

Third, Hill never accused Thomas of sexual touching or of demanding sex in exchange for career advancement. By contrast, Franken stands accused of multiple gropes. Conyers stands accused, among other things, of groping and seeking sex in exchange for advancing employees. Moore stands accused of molesting a 14 year-old.

Hills harassment accusations against Thomas are, essentially, that he asked her out on dates and talked to her about sex on occasion. These allegations have nothing in common with the allegations against Franken and Moore.

Nor do they materially resemble the allegations against Conyers. Both pertain to the working relationship between supervisor and subordinate[s] and both have something to do with sex, but the similarities end there.

Conyers is accused by multiple women of making their working life hellish. He did so through, among other things, sexual touchings, demeaning comments, demands for sexual favors, and exposing himself.

Conyers misconduct led to formal complaints against him that resulted in financial payment to victims. Hill never filed any sort of charge or complaint against Thomas. Her allegations against him came years after the fact during a contentious confirmation battle over a spot on the Supreme Court.

Nor did Thomas make Hills working life hellish. She followed him from one job to another and, as I understand it, the two remained on friendly terms for years, until she brought her allegations. Conyers victims got out of Dodge as quickly as they could.

All that really binds Thomas case with the others is that partisans and sloppy thinkers lump all of them under the rubric of sexual harassment. However, its almost certain that Hills belated allegations of Thomas  all of which he denied  would not state a claim for sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment occurs when a supervisor demands sexual favors in exchange for an employment benefit. Thats called quid pro quo harassment. As we have seen, Hill did not allege that this ever happened.

Sexual harassment also occurs when the employer creates a hostile work environment. An employer does this when harassment is severe or pervasive.

Hill alleged nothing more than requests for dates  apparently rebuffed with no consequences  and occasional comments of a sexual nature, such as mention of pornographic movies Thomas allegedly had seen. This does not satisfy the severe or pervasive standard.

If this isnt obvious, consider the factors courts examine to determine whether a workplace is hostile for purposes of establishing sexual harassment. They are:

1) the frequency of the conduct; (2) the severity of the conduct; (3) whether the conduct is physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance; and (4) whether the conduct unreasonably interferes with the employees job performance.

All Hill alleged was the occasional offensive utterance. As far as I remember, she never claimed that Thomass conduct unreasonably interfered with her job performance. Indeed, no stable employee would be less able to perform her job as a result of occasional comments about pornography. Moreover, Hill no doubt considered her performance fine and there is no indication that it wasnt.

In considering hostile work environment claims, courts look at the totality of the circumstances, and view the harassing conduct in context, not as isolated acts. The context here is a lawyer who followed her boss from one job to another, thrived under his supervision, and never filed a complaint against him.

And remember, Thomas denied Hills claims, and she was unable to produce any witness who claimed Thomas engaged in sexual harassment.

Jay Kaginoff says, I believe Anita Hill. Thats fine. Many do. But for the reasons set forth above, its not sufficient reason for Clarence Thomas to resign.
As residents prepare themselves for holiday celebrations by shopping and other errands, the Dearborn Heights Police Department reminds them to exercise caution and common sense.

Its a busy time of year, but its particularly important for everyone to stay safe as they go about their holiday activities, Police Chief Lee Gavin said. This is a great time of year with all the get-togethers with family and friends. But its still important to keep personal safety in mind.

One of the most important issues we want to remind residents of, particularly during this time of year is that alcohol consumption and driving simply do not mix. If your holiday or New Years celebration plans include alcohol, please give your car keys to a designated driver who hasnt been drinking. Even alcohol in small amounts will impair your driving ability. Its not worth the risk of endangering yourself, a loved one, or an innocent stranger by driving impaired.

Gavin reminds residents that the Dearborn Heights Police Department  in addition to state, county and other local law enforcement agencies  will have plenty of officers out over the holidays enforcing the citys zero-tolerance policy toward alcohol consumption and driving.

Residents should also exercise caution during their holiday shopping. Gavin recommends that even though you are rushed and thinking about a thousand things, stay alert to your surroundings. Pay attention to whats going on around you. This is prime-time for pickpockets, purse snatchers, and con artists  particularly in malls and shopping centers.

He suggests a few common sense steps that will help reduce the likelihood of becoming a target:

* Dress casually and comfortably.

* Avoid wearing expensive jewelry.

* If possible, avoid carrying large purses or wallets. If you do carry one, be extra careful. They are the prime targets of criminals in crowded shopping areas, transportation terminals, bus stops, on buses and other rapid transit. Keep them fastened, and stored in a front pocket.

* Avoid carrying large amounts of cash, and keep it in your front pocket. When paying, keep it out-of-sight from other shoppers as much as possible.

* When possible, pay for purchases with a check or credit card.

* Notify your credit card issuer immediately if your card is lost, stolen or misused.

* Keep a record of all of your credit card numbers in a safe place at home.

* Avoid overloading yourself with packages. It is important to have clear visibility and freedom of motion to avoid mishaps.

* Beware of strangers approaching you for any reason. At this time of year, con-artists may try various methods of distracting you with the intention of taking your money or belongings.

* Shop with a friend  particularly during the evening hours.

* Park in well-lit spaces where there is plenty of traffic and activity. If something doesnt look just right (such as people loitering in the parking lot), trust your judgment and park somewhere else. Keep your car windows shut and doors locked at all times.

* Store packages or other valuables (GPS devices, Ipods, etc.) in the cars trunk or out of sight. Articles left in plain sight on car seats are an inviting target for thieves.

* When you return to your car, have your keys in hand and ready (dont fumble for your keys). Also, take a moment to check the interior of the car before you get in.

* If you are shopping with small children, make sure they understand to seek a security guard or store clerk if you become separated.

Gavin also urges residents to use care in and around their homes during the holidays, and offers a few tips to help reduce the chance your home will be the target of a home invasion:

* Keep doors and windows locked  whether you are outside for just a few minutes, or even while youre in the basement.

* While youre out, leave some lights and a radio or television on. Your house will appear occupied and a less likely target for break-in.

* Keep packages and gifts out of sight from windows and doors as much as possible.

* Be wary of solicitors coming to your door and asking for charitable donations. Instead, help the charitable organizations you are familiar with.

* Keep in touch with your neighbors, and watch out for each other. If something doesnt look right in your neighborhood (such as strangers hanging out near a friends home), dont hesitate to call the police.

* Keep your car doors locked, whether parked in the street or in your driveway  and do not leave valuable items in plain sight in your parked car, especially overnight.

Gavin also reminds Dearborn Heights residents who are vacationing during the holidays to take advantage of the police departments vacation check program. All the resident needs to do is give us a call and give us some basic information he said. All we need is the address, the dates youll be out of town, and a contact number where someone can be reached if

needed. Well send an officer to the residence periodically for a brief check around

the outside for any signs of disturbance. This is a free service offered to all Dearborn Heights residents.

While he said there is no absolute or foolproof way to protect yourself, your family, home or your possessions, taking a few common-sense steps will help reduce the risk greatly.

Source: City of Dearborn Heights
TRENTON  The Middle Township School District has received a grant that could lead to it creating an addiction-recovery high school for South Jersey.

The district will receive as much as $100,000 to assess, research and plan a program to become the third recovery high school in the state, the state announced Wednesday.

We can read in the paper every day where the opioid addiction and other addictions continue to grow and continue to be a problem in every community  not just South Jersey, but across the state, Middle Township Superintendent David Salvo said. Our greatest resource is our children. We need to help them find their way and get back on track, and it starts with a high school diploma.

The Recovery High School Planning Project grant is part of the states anti-opioid campaign to create or enhance opportunities for addiction prevention, treatment and recovery.

Salvo credited Director of Curriculum Toni Lehman, lead grant facilitator, with helping the district receive the award.

She worked with many members of our community to discuss the possibilities of applying for this grant and what this grant could do for us, Salvo said.

The grant will cover costs associated with assisting all students in South Jersey, not just the immediate area, who face addiction to catch up on their education, Salvo said. The district is looking to host the school at an off-campus facility somewhere in Cape May County, he said.

The options are limited here as compared to other counties for students and families that deal with addiction. We thought, well, this is just one more way of helping those students and families get whats most important to them and thats an education, Salvo said.

The existing recovery schools  Raymond Lesniak ESH Recovery High School in Union County and KEYS Academy in Matawan-Aberdeen in Monmouth County  each received $1.3 million to increase the number of students able to attend the programs.

Education Commissioner Kimberley Harrington said schools teach social and emotional skills as well as academic material.

By providing schools with these opioid curriculum resources and expanding the educational opportunities for students battling substance abuse, New Jersey children will know more about the health risks associated with opioid use, persevere through recovery and be empowered to seek help for themselves or others, she said.
ATLANTIC CITY  Vicky Gold Levi still remembers selling war bonds on the citys Boardwalk as a 5-year-old girl.

I was dressed in my (Womens Army Corps) uniform and worked with Miss America, she said.

Seventy-five years later, Gold Levi, a prominent Atlantic City historian, she knows she lived in the resort during one of the most important eras in its history.

In the summer of 1942, Atlantic City transformed from one of the nations premiere vacation resorts into a military stronghold as Americans prepared to fight Germany and Japan, which attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941.

The United States had officially entered World War II, and thousands of Americans were sent to Atlantic City for advanced training.

At the time, it was known as Camp Boardwalk.

Many of those service members would come back wounded for treatment at the citys Thomas England General Hospital.

Decades later, that building would become the first legal casino in Atlantic City  and still stands today as Resorts Hotel and Casino.

Atlantic City went through one of the most dramatic changes of any American community during the war. Summertime parades were replaced by marching soldiers, while the beach was used for training. Hotels were taken over by the military and became barracks at the cost of $1 per room per day.

John Palmentieri, a World War II veteran who was wounded in the European theater, said his family kept pictures and told him stories of what the city was like while he was deployed.

All you saw up and down the Boardwalk was military uniforms. It was beautiful, he said. There were 2,000 guys doing calisthenics in Convention Hall and others on the beach. I really think they enjoyed their stay in Atlantic City.

There were nightly curfews, with all lights turned off so German submarines lurking off the coast could not see the city.

Bader Field was an important asset for the Army Air Force, which practiced maneuvers and war scenarios over the city while also searching for German submarines.

The most amazing wartime change among American towns is in Atlantic City, said a 1943 article in the Saturday Evening Post. That cluster of plush hotels and salt-water-taffy stores on the Jersey coast, where once horse-betting parlors played to capacity crowds and the biggest Easter parade in the world took place every year. Atlantic City has shucked its perpetual sports-coat and donned the grey-green jacket of the Army Air Forces. The military has taken over the big hotels, and the best accommodations civilians can get are smaller side-street rooming houses.

Six aircraft crash rescue boats were stationed at what is now called Gardners Basin. They also served as rescue boats for seamen who survived torpedo attacks from the German subs.

Dozens of U.S. ships were sunk by German submarines right off New Jersey.

Bess Myerson, then Miss America, visited wounded soldiers in the hospital. The Miss America pageant was still held during the war because it embodied the spirit of America and boosted soldiers morale, according to reports at the time.

Palmentieri said a friend of his named George met his wife while being treated at the hospital. She belonged to the United Services Organization and came to visit him in the hospital every day, Palmentieri said.

Life carried on like this in Atlantic City until the war ended in 1945. All that remains is a plaque in Resorts commemorating the hospital and pictures around the city.

In 1992, a major summer celebration marked the 50th anniversary. Nothing has been scheduled so far for the 75th anniversary this year.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  Betty Morgans friends know her passion for horses and riding.

Morgan has been a therapeutic horseback riding instructor for children and adults with disabilities for more than 10 years, but a bad hip has held her back from more  until now.

Morgan, 52, of Mullica Township, received a free hip replacement Tuesday at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Centers Mainland Campus as the first in New Jersey to benefit from Operation Walk USA, a volunteer medical service organization.

I was in a lot of pain right up until the surgery, and I was thinking, How am I going to go on like this? How will I get through the winter? Morgan said. When I went to Dr. (Zachary) Post, he said, You need a new hip, and were going to make it happen, and I just started crying.

Morgan and her husband, Joseph Jay Morgan Jr., do not have their own health insurance and have paid for annual health visits and minor procedures out of pocket.

Since being diagnosed with arthritis in her hip several years ago, Morgan has managed the pain by limiting physical activity and getting cortisone injections. The couple had not considered surgery, knowing the estimated $40,000 replacement was out of their reach, she said.

Her surgery Tuesday and recovery care since she came home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon is made possible because Rothman Institute Orthopedics and AtlantiCare partnered with Operation Walk USA to select her for the free procedure.

Every December, Operation Walk USA provides for a knee or hip surgery, hospitalization, materials, pre- and post-operative care to patients who may not qualify for government health coverage, have no insurance or cannot otherwise afford surgery.

While the condition wont kill you, it can affect your lifestyle if you dont have the financial means to pay for a replacement, said Post, a Rothman orthopedic surgeon at AtlantiCare. A replacement can help people go back to the lifestyle they were living before, but it sometimes doesnt get covered.

Post and other surgeons perform hundreds of hip replacements a year at AtlantiCares Musculoskeletal Institute.

Morgans procedure included an anterior hip replacement, which should need minimal recovery time and little to no physical therapy.

Post said the hospitals participation in the program was a good way to give back, especially to someone like Morgan.

In addition to helping children and adults with disabilities at the Hearts Therapeutic Riding Center in Egg Harbor Township, Morgan volunteers for the South Jersey Horse Rescue and the Atlantic County 4-H, where she helps kids learn equestrian skills.

She also works as a school bus driver in the Downbeach area.

Before the surgery, Morgans hip pain became so severe at times she had to limit her training with a rider or was stuck in a paddock, unable to lift her leg and crying out of pain and frustration.

Morgan said she looks forward to a new year moving without pain, training her own horses and working with adults and children who are recovering from and treating injuries, diseases, developmental disorders and physical impairments.

Im so grateful, Morgan said. I didnt think it was in the cards for me before, but this has really changed my life.
TRENTON  James T. Plousis, the former Cape May County sheriff, will lead the Casino Control Commission for the next five years as Atlantic Citys gaming market continues to rebound following the closing of five casinos since 2014.

The state Senate approved Gov. Chris Christies nomination Thursday. Plousis will replace Matthew Levinson, son of Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, in the $141,000-a-year position.

Plousis said during his nomination hearing that the primary goal of the commission is to uphold the integrity of the gaming industry.

Ive been reading the annual reports of the Casino Control Commission, and they do some forecast where they (show) where the competition is, so we do some analysis of what is happening around the country, said Plousis, who has served on the state Parole Board for the past seven years.

Senate panel to interview Plousis for Casino Control Commission job TRENTON  The state Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hear the nomination of James T. Plo

Plousis said he will take a regional approach to expanding the business by trying to attract vacationers from neighboring Cape May County.

Ive had a number of mayors who have already called me saying, Were looking for cooperation, not competition with Atlantic City, he said.

Dennis Levinson has claimed the reason his son was not reappointed was because Atlantic County is suing the state over its share of the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILOT, plan Atlantic City casinos are locked into for 10 years. Matthew Levinson was renominated by the late Sen. Jim Whelan in February, but he never got a hearing in the Senate and was not reappointed by Christie. Levinsons term as chairman expired in August, but he has remained on while a new chairman is appointed.

During Plousis hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, R-Monmouth, recognized Matthew Levinson for his work during his tenure and assured the committee Plousis is qualified and a right fit for the job.

He follows a good man, his predecessor Matt Levinson, Kyrillos said. (Levinson) is a well-respected, well-regarded guy and a good friend of mine. We will miss him, but this nominee will do an outstanding job.

The commission, described as somewhat of a judicial panel, has up to three members appointed by the governor and is in charge of licensing New Jersey casinos and their key employees.

The members serve five-year terms and can only be removed for cause. By law, no more than two commissioners can be of the same political party, according to the commissions website.

The commission is scheduled to meet at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 19.
TRENTON  The state Senate has approved the nomination of Sarah Beth Johnson, wife of outgoing state Sen. Colin Bell, as a Superior Court judge in Atlantic County.

Im humbled and honored to follow in the very large footstep of my father, said Johnson, the daughter of Atlantic County Superior Court judge and Boardwalk Empire author Nelson Johnson, during a hearing Thursday.

Republicans have criticized the nomination, saying Bell is looking to line his pockets before leaving the Senate in January. Bell did not vote on his wifes nomination.

The Atlantic County Democratic Committee selected Bell to take the seat of Sen. Jim Whelan, who died in August. Republican Assemblyman Chris Brown defeated Bell in the election Nov. 7.

I would like to express my gratitude for the guidance and support given to me and my family by Sen. Jim Whelan, said Johnson, an attorney from Margate. Sen. Whelan was a great advocate for not only my family but the people of Atlantic County, and he was an excellent role model of public service.

In a letter obtained by The Press of Atlantic City, Johnson was contacted by the state director of appointments June 24, 2016, saying her name was submitted as a potential candidate as a Superior Court judge.

If I have the honor of being confirmed and appointed, I will strive to perform my goal as a judge that will honor (Whelans) legacy, Johnson said during her hearing.
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ATLANTIC CITY  Local World War II veteran Jim Thomas can still vividly remember going to a Navy recruiting center in Philadelphia with his brother and father in 1940 when the country was on the brink of war.

Thomas father, Adam, was a World War I veteran who served in the Navy for nearly 30 years starting in 1912. There was no doubt his sons would follow in his footsteps.

No one ever walked this planet who loved the Navy more than my dad, said Thomas, who has lived in Atlantic City his entire life. It became his family, and he stayed in until he retired.

How a German submarine attack forever changed Cape May The USS Jacob Jones moved at a steady 15 knots off the Cape May coast Feb. 28, 1942. Then ca

So when Adam Thomas and two of his sons  Robert, who had just turned 18, and Jim, who was six years younger  walked into the recruiting center to talk about Robert signing up, the recruiter ignored the sons and only asked their father some questions.

(He) just looked at my dad and said, Well, what do you think, Mr. Thomas? Should we sign him up for four years or six years? Thomas said. And my dad immediately said six years without hesitation.

Just over a year later, Robert Thomas, called Barney by his family and friends, was in the water at Pearl Harbor picking up survivors after Japanese forces bombed the naval base Dec. 7, 1941, and thrust the United States into World War II.

Robert Thomas spent his time at Pearl Harbor and the entire war stationed on the USS Pennsylvania. Leading up to the attack on the Hawaiian naval base, the Japanese had identified the Pennsylvania as one of its primary targets because it was one of the flagship battleships of the fleet and the sister ship of the USS Arizona.

Just days before, however, the Pennsylvania was moved to a dry dock for repairs and was spared from being destroyed. The battleship that took the place of the Pennsylvania in the harbor, the USS Helena, was bombed and heavily damaged that day.

(My brother) spent the entire war on the USS Pennsylvania, which I think was one of the luckiest ships out there, Jim Thomas said.

The Pennsylvania was involved in some of the heaviest fighting in the Pacific Theater, which included the bombardment of Guam, the Philippines, Saipan and Kwajalein Island.

Just days before Japan surrendered, the Pennsylvania was torpedoed by a submarine that opened a 30-foot hole in the stern. Emergency repairs were done, but the ship had to return to the United States traveling three knots an hour.

When he returned home to Atlantic City, Robert Thomas opened Thomas Motors on Albany Avenue. He died in 1977.

Jim Thomas, 89, served in the Navy during WWII in 1944 and 1945 and opened Jim Thomas Motors at Annapolis and Ventnor avenues. He still lives in Atlantic City with his wife, Dolores.

I like to think that when my brother made his last cruise to heaven, there was another sailor there with seven hash marks that said, Come aboard, son, you brought honor to your family and your country, Jim Thomas said.
WILDWOOD  Three men were arrested Wednesday as a SWAT team seized more than 1,200 bags of heroin at a residence in the 200 block of East Youngs Avenue, police said.

The Cape May County Regional special weapons and tactics officers had been investigating drug distribution in the area for six weeks. The heroin was packaged in plastic bags and estimated to be worth $12,000, police said.

Edgardo Rivera-Valentine, 26, Jayson Lopez-Acevedo, 29, and Luis Correa, 22, were charged with second- and third-degree possession and distribution, including distribution of heroin in a school zone, police said.

Lopez-Acevedo was also charged with possession of a hypodermic syringe and possession of drug paraphernalia, police said. Drug paraphernalia and cash believed to be proceeds of narcotic sales were also seized.

The suspects were taken to the Cape May County jail, police said.

In New Jersey, second-degree crimes carry a penalty of five to 10 years in state prison, and third-degree crimes can be punished with three to five years in prison.

 Jack Tomczuk
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160513/367297LOGO )

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616532/Alimentaria_Logo.jpg )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616533/Alimentaria_Hub.jpg )

With a net exhibition space of over 100,000 sq. m, the joint organisation of the show with Hostelco, the International Exhibition of Equipment for Restaurants, Hotels and Mass Catering, offers both the retail and HoReCa sectors the most comprehensive offering to date. Some 4,500 exhibiting firms - some 300 coming from Asia- and more than 150,000 professional visitors are expected.

Performing a strong growth, China is the most dynamic external market for Spanish products, with 1,1 billion in 2016, with an increase of 49% of the purchases, according to the Spanish Federation of Food and Drink Industries (FIAB). Pork meat, wine and live oil are the most exported goods. On the other hand, Thailand -with 72 million spent in Spanish food products- is becoming an attractive market as it experienced a growth of 36% in its purchases from Spain, especially frozen fish, fish flours and olive oil. Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia are other Asian key markets for Alimentaria.

Gastronomic and innovative Excellence

Boosting innovation and gastronomic quality remain two major hallmarks of Alimentaria. Consequently, as well as promoting business opportunities the show's activities are geared towards identifying the main trends and enhancing the connections between the food, gastronomic and tourist industries. Thus, in the area The Alimentaria Experience over 200 workshops, tastings and cooking shows will take place, with a selected group of chefs that own close to 40 Michelin stars (Carme Ruscalleda or Andoni Luis Aduriz, among others), while top international wine experts such as Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander will participate in the Vinorum Think event. On the other hand, the area The Alimentaria Hub will become a knowledge, trends, innovation and business centre, in which some 11,200 meetings between international buyers and exhibiting companies from more than 70 countries will be developed.

SOURCE Fira de Barcelona
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160513/367297LOGO )

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616532/Alimentaria_Logo.jpg )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616533/Alimentaria_Hub.jpg )

With a net exhibition space of over 100,000 sq. m, the joint organisation of the show with Hostelco, the International Exhibition of Equipment for Restaurants, Hotels and Mass Catering, offers both the retail and HoReCa sectors the most comprehensive offering to date. Some 4,500 exhibiting firms - some 300 coming from Asia- and more than 150,000 professional visitors are expected.

Performing a strong growth, China is the most dynamic external market for Spanish products, with AAAAAAasAAAAasAA1,1 billion in 2016, with an increase of 49% of the purchases, according to the Spanish Federation of Food and Drink Industries (FIAB). Pork meat, wine and live oil are the most exported goods. On the other hand, Thailand -with AAAAAAasAAAAasAA72 million spent in Spanish food products- is becoming an attractive market as it experienced a growth of 36% in its purchases from Spain, especially frozen fish, fish flours and olive oil. Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia are other Asian key markets for Alimentaria.

Gastronomic and innovative Excellence

Boosting innovation and gastronomic quality remain two major hallmarks of Alimentaria. Consequently, as well as promoting business opportunities the show's activities are geared towards identifying the main trends and enhancing the connections between the food, gastronomic and tourist industries. Thus, in the area The Alimentaria Experience over 200 workshops, tastings and cooking shows will take place, with a selected group of chefs that own close to 40 Michelin stars (Carme Ruscalleda or Andoni Luis Aduriz, among others), while top international wine experts such as Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander will participate in the Vinorum Think event. On the other hand, the area The Alimentaria Hub will become a knowledge, trends, innovation and business centre, in which some 11,200 meetings between international buyers and exhibiting companies from more than 70 countries will be developed.

SOURCE Fira de Barcelona
LONDON and ROME, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Banca Generali, is a leading banking group in Italy, has recently won two Global Brand Magazine Awards. They were awarded as a winner for the Best Private Banking Brand, Italy & Mr. Gian Maria Mossa as Best CEO - Private Banking, Italy.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160518/369255LOGO )



Global Brand Awards honours Banking Brands who have performed extraordinarily well and responded to changes quickly. The companies were awarded this honour for their exceptional commitment to Branding, Performance, Quality, Customer Service & commitment and providing a robust banking system.

Gian Mossa's, CEO, Banca Generali SpA, said, "We are honored to receive this recognition from Global Brands Magazine, which is a reference point within our community. Award enhances the extraordinary work of our professionals, alongside customers to accompany them in their life projects, and the dedication of all to Banca Generali in trying to bring ever more quality and innovation to the challenges of long-term wealth protection."

About Global Brands Magazine

Global Brands Magazine is the one of the world's best loved branding publication. The Magazine is head-quartered in United Kingdom. For More information please visit http://www.globalbrandsmagazine.com.

About Banca Generali

Banca Generali is a leading player in Italy in financial planning and wealth management for clients, leveraging on its top-of-the-industry network of financial advisors and versatile and innovative asset management services. The bank manages 52.1 billion (at 30 June 2017) for more than 250,000 customers through networks of about 1,900 professionals across Italy. The Company's mission is having "trusted professionals always by the Customer's side, developing and looking after their life plans". Banca Generali's customizable offer is made up of: banking services, investment solutions, advisory and wealth management. The Company can count on: two distribution networks segmented by target customers (Banca Generali Financial Planner and Banca Generali Private Banking); a range of over 5,200 top financial instruments of more than 50 leading international management firms, exclusively available to Banca Generali Group's customers; an advanced system of digital contact service for the operations. Founded in 2000, Banca Generali has been listed on the Milan stock exchange since November 2006 and is a subsidiary of Assicurazioni Generali, synonymous with reliability and security for over 180 years. For more information, visit http://www.bancagenerali.it/site/home.html

SOURCE Global Brands Publications Limited
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev received a letter from Vicente Loscertales, Secretary General of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). The head of the BIE thanked Mr. Nazarbayev for successfully holding the Astana EXPO 2017 exhibition and emphasized appreciation of EXPO 2017 organization by countries participating in the event.

"I received feedback from countries which took part in the exhibition. In their opinion, EXPO 2017 became a remarkable event and the most successful specialized exhibition ever. I am confident that this will encourage further development of all future EXPO specialized exhibitions. There is no doubt that the success of Astana EXPO 2017 is due to your personal support and active involvement in the implementation of this exciting project," says the letter.

Vicente Loscertales pointed out that the Government and the National company "Astana EXPO-2017" headed by Akhmetzhan Yessimov made every effort to ensure that the infrastructure of the exhibition was ready to welcome the guests and that all international participants experienced special Kazakh hospitality.

"On this occasion, I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for the honor you gave me by awarding me the High State Award, the Order of Dostyk (Order of Friendship) of the Republic of Kazakhstan. I was deeply touched when I was told about this decision. The possibility of close cooperation with you for six years was the most valuable experience in my career. I hope to visit Astana to see the area of the exhibition and the heritage of EXPO 2017 which was created not only for the people of Kazakhstan, but also for the whole world," emphasized the head of BIE.

About Astana EXPO 2017

The International Specialized Exhibition Astana EXPO 2017 dedicated to Future Energy is an expositional and recreational event held between June 10 and September 10, 2017 in Astana. The exhibition lasted 93 days and became one of the most spectacular cultural venues in 2017.

As part of Astana EXPO 2017, global policy documents were drafted in order to promote an energy-efficient lifestyle and wide use of renewable energy sources.

Follow us on social media:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9-D1aUUN1oQGyUUbZv1zXg

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Expo2017AstanaInternational/timeline

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Expo2017_Int

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/expo2017astana_intl/

Weibo: http://weibo.com/p/1006065901042853/home?from=page_100606&mod=TAB&is_hot=1

National company"Astana EXPO-2017"

For more information, please contact: Natalia Kostikova, expo2017@m-p.ru, +7(903)209-35-00

SOURCE National company Astana EXPO-2017
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Carl Data Solutions Inc. (CSE: CRL, FSE: 7C5, OTC: CDTAF) (the "Company"), has entered into a letter of intent (the "Letter of Intent") to acquire cryptocurrency mining hardware from Connected Fintech Inc. ("Connected") and partner with Connected with respect to the joint development of a first of its kind IIoT BlockChain technology for integration into the Carl Data's machine learning, predictive analytics and operational metrics for cryptocurrency mining hardware.

Greg Johnston, Carl Data President and CEO, stated, "Consistent with our business plan to acquire new complimentary products and services, our partnership with Connected Fintech Inc. will allow us to develop the first IIoT BlockChain. The technology will allow us to build in accountability, transparency and security into the transactions of data from various measurement devices. We are very excited to introduce this new technology into the IIoT space and know it will be of tremendous value for our customers and all consumers of environmental monitoring data."

Jiang (Jay) Yu, Connected Fintech Inc. President and CEO, stated, "I am excited to partner with Carl Data Solutions to build out the infrastructure for their cryptocurrency mining facility. We also plan on developing IIoT BlockChain Technology for Carl, a vertical within the Cryptocurrency and BlockChain space that not many are focusing on. Having a partner like Carl, a big data company that has the infrastructure and ability to make sense of this fast growing sector within fintech."

In connection with the Company's proposed acquisition of cryptocurrency mining hardware, the Company has agreed to pay Connected $250,000 and issue to Connected up to 2,000,000 common shares in the capital of the Company (each, a "Share"), such subject to the following milestones: (i) 1,000,000 Shares to be released upon signing of a definitive agreement; (ii) 500,000 Shares to be released upon the Company's facility and infrastructure being made fully compatible with cryptocurrency data miners; and (iii) 500,000 Shares to be released upon final installation of Connected's cryptocurrency mining hardware. In connection with the proposed technology development partnership between the Company and Connected, the Company has agreed to pay Connected a retainer of $4,000 per month and will grant a 15% royalty on the Company's gross revenue generated from cryptocurrency mining activities for an initial term of one year.

The Letter of Intent contemplates that a definitive agreement will be entered into on or before January 2, 2018.

About Connected Fintech Inc.

Connected Fintech Inc. with offices in Vancouver B.C. and Wall Street N.Y.C, is a diversified financial technology company focused in the fastest growing sectors of Cryptocurrency, BlockChain Technology, Payment Solutions, Data Intelligence, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics.

Connected Fintech Inc. plans to purchase its own real estate and land for developing large scale Cryptocurrency mining facilities in Canada and the United States. Worldwide launch of Connectedcoin ATMs, which offer bi-directional functionality, enabling both the purchase of cryptocurrencies as well as redemption of cash. Connected Fintech Inc. provides Technical Professionals in Hardware and Software build out of Cryptocurrency data mining infrastructures and facilities. The company is creating a portfolio of Intellectual Property (IP) in the space of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Payment Solutions, Cryptocurrency and BlockChain Technologies. http://www.ConnectedFintech.com

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 http://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.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements in this press release related to the Offering and the securities issuable thereunder are forward-looking statements and are prospective in nature. Forward-looking statements are not based on historical facts, but rather on current expectations and projections about future events, and are therefore subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "may", "should", "will", "could", "intend", "estimate", "plan", "anticipate", "expect", "believe" or "continue", or the negative thereof or similar variations. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding the proposed acquisition of cryptocurrency mining hardware by the Company and the expected terms of such acquisition, the Company's proposed partnership with Connected and the expected terms of such partnership, the entering into of a definitive agreement and the timeline for same and the expected benefits of the Company's foray into the cryptocurrency mining and Blockchain spaces. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding the Company's ability to complete the Offering, including the risk that the Offering may not be completed as expected or at all and other factors beyond the control of the Company. Such forward-looking statements should therefore be construed in light of such factors, and the Company is not under any obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact: Kimberly Bruce, Corporate Communications, Carl Data Solutions Inc., Telephone: (778) 379-0275, Email: kimberly@carlsolutions.com

SOURCE Carl Data Solutions
(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616853/Alfen_Solar_Global_Storage.jpg )

Solar Global develops and services solar photovoltaic (PV) farms and rooftop PV installations, and currently has some 100 MW capacity under service. "The battery system will accumulate energy from the sun to be available when there is a lack of power in the grid and electricity needs to be released." says Vitezslav Skopal, the main shareholder and founder of the Solar Global Group.

Andreas Plenk, global sales director energy storage at Alfen, says: "Our modular and standardized storage system made it possible to deliver and implement our system within two and a half months after having received this order. Alfen has experience with many types of storage applications, ranging from smoothening large scale renewable energy sources to load balancing for the charging of electric vehicles. Combining renewables with energy storage is gaining momentum throughout Europe. Parties such as Solar Global are realizing that storage will enhance the return-of-investment of solar PV and wind farms. And we're only at the beginning of this trend."

Dutch Ambassador: Kees Klompenhouwer adds: "I'm proud that the energy storage technology of a Dutch company is supporting the Czech transition towards renewable energy."

Implementing innovative solutions

Frantisek Smolka, CEO of Solar Global explains why Solar Global selected Alfen for this project: "Alfen's proven technology and multiyear experience with utilities throughout Europe ensures that we are implementing the most innovative and reliable system in the market. The energy revolution is in energy storage, renewable sources and electromobility. We look forward to leverage Alfens vast experience with state-of-the-art applications throughout our business."

Next year, Solar Global plans to build a 10 MWh system at Ochoz in the Olomouc Region, which will be the largest BESS in Central and Eastern Europe.

About Alfen

With smart grid solutions, energy storage systems, charging stations for electric vehicles and a diverse portfolio of other products, systems and services, Alfen has a central and connecting role in the energy grid.

Alfen's transformer substations provide millions of households and companies with energy, while thousands of electric vehicles make daily use of Alfen's charging stations. The Alfen energy storage system is used for applications such as load balancing, energy trading, frequency regulation and creating autonomous electricity grids in combination with solar or wind energy.

With its large range of in-house developed products and vast experience as systems integrator, Alfen is building the electricity grid of the future: reliable, sustainable and innovative.

SOURCE Alfen
LONDON, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

After the biggest UK airline collapse in years, the administrator of the bankrupt Monarch Airlines has struck a deal with the International Airlines Group (IAG) over slots at Gatwick airport, valued by experts at over 68 million.

The sale has sparked outrage among passengers left stranded or without holidays by the airline collapse, the majority of whom are yet to receive any flight compensation, which according to SKYCOP should total 291 million.

After a favourable decision by the court, the administrator of the bust Monarch Airlines, KPMG, signed a sales deal with IAG, owner of the UKs flag carrier British Airways, over airport slots at Gatwick International Airport. This deal fulfils the long-standing British Airways' goal of expanding its presence at one of the major European aviation hubs, however, KPMG has not yet reported whether the estimated 68 million will go as far as handling the debts of Monarch Airlines.

Giedrius Kolesnikovas, partner at law firm Motieka & Audzevicius, says best practice of bankruptcy administration shows that first and foremost, the administrator should settle debts with airline employees and deceived passengers, before switching to creditors and suppliers.

"The contract goes to show that the administrator is doing everything in its power to gather capital. However, employees and stranded passengers are yet to be compensated for their moral and physical struggle and have been left waiting," explains G. Kolesnikovas.

Since Monarch Airlines has gone bankrupt, the flight disruption and compensation process is handled outside of the renowned EU 261 law, which would have seen all 860,000 passengers entitled to travel compensation. Nevertheless, flight compensation company SKYCOP has already contacted the administrator and the UK's CAA in order to ensure that the IAG deal money goes straight to compensating passengers.

"According to the administrator, almost 2000 of Monarch Airlines' redundant employees are due to receive the money they are owed, which is great. However, hundreds of thousands of passengers have seemingly been pushed aside after they were rescued from abroad by the UK authorities," says Marius Stonkus, CEO of SKYCOP.

"According to our estimates, if the EU law applied in this case, the passengers would be receiving over 291 million to make up for all of the stress, panic and moral struggle these travellers have been through."



For more information, contact:

Marius Stonkus

press@skycop.com

+370-685-72454



SOURCE SKYCOP
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All businesses have to pay tax for income they earn in Vietnam









Analysts estimate that the agents earn trillions of dong from the Vietnamese market, but dont pay one dong of tax.



Le Thi Ai Lien from Sai Gon Mui Ne Tourism recently spoke at a dialogue between MOF and businesses on tax and customs procedures.



She said her company signed a contract with Booking.com, headquartered in the Netherlands. The Vietnamese taxation body says in this case, the foreign partner has to pay foreign contractor tax (FCT) and Sai Gon Mui Ne has to withhold money for FCT before paying Booking.com for the websites services.



However, Booking.com did not accept this, saying that it can have tax exemption in accordance with the agreement on double taxation avoidance between Vietnam and the Netherlands.

Analysts estimate that the agents earn trillions of dong from the Vietnamese market, but dont pay one dong of tax.

The problem for Sai Gon Mui Ne was that the company could not collect more from customers because the prices were quoted, while the foreign partner would break the contract if the company withheld money as requested by the taxation body. Finally, the company had to pay FCT with its own money to Vietnam.



Later, Sai Gon Mui Ne sent all necessary documents, including Booking.coms residence certificate, to the Binh Thuan provincial Taxation Agency and asked for tax refunds in accordance with the agreement on double taxation avoidance. However, the taxation agency said the case was not subject to tax exemption.



The taxation body said Booking.com has two resident units in Vietnam, one in Hanoi and one in HCMC. Therefore, it is not subject to tax exemption, Lien said.



However, according to Lien, the two offices of Booking.com are set up just to explore public opinion and conduct market surveys, and they dont pay for contracts or do business.



In reply, Cao Anh Tuan, deputy general director of GDT, said in this case, the Binh Thuan provincial taxation agency is right, explaining that once the website sets resident units in Vietnam, it has to pay tax in Vietnam.



According to Tuan, besides Booking.com, other websites that provide online booking services have been earning big money in Vietnam from the commission paid by Vietnamese travel firms and hotels. But they dont pay tax.



In late 2016, Vntrip.vn, a website which has operations similar to Agoda, accused Agoda of evading tax.



Vntrip.vn estimated that the revenue from hotels in Vietnam alone may reach $21 billion by 2020, of which 50 percent would be from online websites, or $10.5 billion. This means that the state could fail to collect trillions of dong worth of tax.





RELATED NEWS

Agoda.com accused of tax evasion

Finance Ministry tells online hotel booking services to pay tax





Buu Dien
San Francisco, Dec 5 : The Los Angeles City Attorney has sued global ride-hailing app Uber, saying that the company broke California law when it failed to disclose a data breach that exposed the license numbers of 600,000 Uber drivers.

Mike Feuer filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of California residents, Los Angeles Times reported late on Monday.

"We're taking action because we believe very strongly in the importance of protecting consumers," Feuer said during a news conference.

"The case will focus on Uber's failure to disclose the data breach to Uber's California drivers," he was quoted as saying.

The lawsuit seeks $2,500 for each violation of the law.

"The company 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," an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.

In a blog post last month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed that the company in late 2016 became aware that two individuals outside the company had inappropriately accessed user data stored on a third-party Cloud-based service that it uses.

The company suppressed information about the breach and paid the hackers a hefty $100,000 ransom to delete the data they had illegally obtained.

The breach included the names and license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the US and some personal information of 57 million Uber users around the world.

Regulators of at least five states in the US have said they will question the company for staying silent after the hack.

"At least five states including Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Connecticut stated that they would investigate the matter," ReCode reported.

This report comes at a time when the ride-hailing company is already battling a slew of other civil and criminal probes.

An Israeli court has ordered global ride-hailing app Uber to stop two of its services in Tel Aviv in the absence of proper travel insurance.

The court banned UberDay and UberNight, the company's private-car services, while UberTaxi that takes requests via licensed taxi drivers has not been affected, Jerusalem Post reported late last month.
United Nations, Dec 5 : UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman will arrive in North Korea on Tuesday to meet authorities of the Pyongyang regime, according to an official statement.

Feltman will be in the country till Friday for a wide-ranging discussion on policy issues with North Korean authorities and analyse "issues of mutual interest and concern", Efe news quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday night.

This is the first time that a high-ranking UN politico will travel to North Korea since former Under Secretary-General Lynn Pascoe's visit in February 2010 and that of UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos in 2011.

Dujarric added that Feltman's visit comes in response to an invitation that has been pending for some time, and which aims to maintain a dialogue between Pyongyang and the UN.

Feltman is currently in Beijing reinforcing contacts with Chinese authorities.

On Monday, he met Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Li Baodong, and from Beijing he will go directly to the North Korean capital.

The spokesman said that the visit was confirmed with Pyongyang authorities on November 30.

He will also speak with diplomats accredited in Pyongyang and with the UN team in North Korea, where six UN agencies operate with some 500 international civil servants.

Dujarric avoided going into detail about the matters to be discussed in those conversations, only saying that a wide range of subjects would be touched upon.

He also said that there were no plans for Guterres to visit North Korea, though next week he will make an official visit to Japan.

Feltman's visit comes after the outrage sparked by the Kim Jong-Un regime over its latest ballistic missile trial on November 28.
New Delhi, Dec 5 : Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday moved a step closer to be the Congress chief as he was the only candidate left in the fray in the election for the post after all 89 nominations filed in his favour were found to be valid on scrutiny.

"A total of 89 nomination papers, all proposing the name of Rahul Gandhi, have been received. These nomination papers have covered all the states.

"We have scrutinised each nomination paper and found all the 89 papers valid. There is now only one validly nominated candidate, i.e., Rahul Gandhi, left in the fray for the election of Congress President," said Returning Officer for the election Mullapally Ramachandran in a statement.

The last date for withdrawal of candidature is December 11 and Gandhi is expected to be declared the new Congress chief on that day.

He filed papers at the Congress headquarters here on Monday.

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.

The 47-year-old Gandhi will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party after his great great grandfather Motilal Nehru, great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.
New Delhi, Dec 6 : Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cancelled another programme on the Ram Mandir issue on Wednesday, saying it wanted to "maintain communal harmony".

The event "Reclaiming the Republic" was organised by the JNU Students Union where Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Prakash Karat, women rights activist Kavita Krishnan and economics professor at JNU Jayati Ghosh were scheduled to speak, among others, on the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.

"The competent authority has cancelled public lectures/talks on the issue of Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid in the campus on December 6 in order to maintain communal harmony and peace and stability," a letter from the Dean of Students read.

"Academic discussions on various themes are always permitted that contribute to knowledge enhancement and social order," it added.

Another lecture "Why Ram Mandir in Ayodhya" on the same issue was cancelled by the university late on Tuesday evening. In a letter issued by the Senior Warden Koyna Hostel, where it was listed to take place, the varsity had ordered the cancellation without citing any reason.

BJP parliamentarian Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said his lecture on the Ram Mandir issue was cancelled by the JNU authorities because they feared his "powerful" arguments in favour of the temple.

The events were scheduled on Wednesday for the day marked 25 years of demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.
New Delhi, Dec 6 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said 39 per cent children in Gujarat were malnourished and sought to know if this was the "wonder" of the BJP government's healthcare policy in the state.

This was Gandhi's eighth question as part of a Congress strategy wherein Gandhi would put up one question daily to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the Gujarat Assembly polls.

Gandhi also flayed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for its decision to give Bhuj's government hospital on lease to the Adani Group for its medical college.

In a tweet, the Congress leader said: "Thirty-nine per cent children in Gujarat are victims of malnutrition. Infant mortality rate is 33 per 1,000, rising healthcare prices, shortage of doctors."

Gandhi said: "In Bhuj, a government hospital was given on lease to a friend (Adani Group) for 99 years. Is this the wonder of your healthcare policy?"

Gandhi has been putting one question every day in a bid to take on the Vijay Rupani-led government in Gujarat, where polling will take place on December 9 and 14.

He previously put out posers on unemployment among youths, women safety, education, "undue benefit" to power selling companies, state debt and the Prime Minister's flagship 'Housing for All' scheme.
Cairo, Dec 7 : Egypt condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Egypt rejects this move as well as the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem, Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump announced that the the country formally recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while ordering to immediately begin the process of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Egypt reiterated that such unilateral decisions violate the international legitimacy, adding such decisions will not change the legal status of Jerusalem as an occupied city.

Egypt also referred to many Jerusalem-related resolutions taken by the international legitimacy, including United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which demands Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem.

There is also the UNSC Resolution 478 of 1980 that rejected Israel's attempted annexation of Jerusalem as well as its declaring the city as Israel's capital, the statement said.

The statement said that Egypt is extremely concerned over the possible consequences of this decision on the stability of the region, warning that it will stir the feelings of the Arab and Islamic peoples for the historical, spiritual and cultural status of Jerusalem.

The decision will also have negative impacts on the future of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis, as Jerusalem is one of its major issues, according to the statement.
Amman, Dec 7 : Jordan on Wednesday rejected US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said that the move is in violation of the international legitimacy resolutions and the UN charter, Xinhua cited state-run Petra news agency as saying.

He stressed the situation of Jerusalem is to be decided via negotiations and all unilateral Israeli measures should be considered as void.

The minister said Jordan rejected the decision, which will increase tension and strengthen the occupation.

"The decision, which preceded any results of the final status negotiations, fuels outrage and provokes the feelings of the Muslims and Christians across the Arab and Islamic world," said Momani.

He added that Jerusalem was among the final status issues that need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which ensures the creation of an independent Palestinian state at the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.

"All Israeli measures seeking to alter the status quo are invalid and void as stipulated by UN resolutions," said the minister.

Jordan will continue to exert all possible efforts in cooperation with the international community to reach a solution and realize the aspirations of the Palestinians in achieving their legitimate rights.

Jordan will continue its diplomatic efforts at all regional and international arenas to push for efforts to end the Israeli occupation.
Rome, Dec 7 : The future of relations between NATO and the European Union was under the spotlight at a conference taking place in the Italian capital Rome on Wednesday where speakers were to include Italy's defence minister Roberta Pinotti and chief of defence staff Claudio Graziano.

The 'NATO-EU Cooperation - What Future?' conference is being held at the Italian Senate upper house of parliament and is being organised by the Italian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Italian geopolitical think-tank Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

"This is a key challenge, also in light of the significant developments emerging in the area of European defence thanks to our government and especially to our minister of defence," said the Italian delegation's president Andrea Manciulli.

He was referring to a plan agreed to on 13 December by 23 EU states for permanent structured military co-operation.
Geneva, Dec 7 : Donor governments on Tuesday pledged an initial $857 million to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR to help some 67 million displaced or stateless people worldwide next year, UNHCR said late on Tuesday.

"A year of no peace and much war is about to end," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

"Refugee crises grow. Refugee needs grow as well," Grandi stressed.

The pledges, made at an annual meeting in Geneva, amount to around 11 per cent of UNHCR's total 2018 funding needs of over $7.5 billion, the agency said.

The funds committed this year are considerably higher than the $701 million pledged at the end of 2016, the agency said noting a widening gap between the cash it has received and the needs of refugees amid new crises that have seen record numbers of displaced people.

This "means that UNHCR has to prioritise, sometimes mercilessly," Grandi said.

"Some (refugees) will be left to fend for themselves during the harsh winter months and others won't get the assistance they need to reintegrate upon return," he underlined.

Grandi especially thanked the countries and communities hosting refugees.

"In terms of space, in terms of resources, in terms of the socio-economic and political cost of hosting refugees, they are some of the largest donors in support of refugees," Grandi stated.

UNHCR said it relies almost entirely on voluntary contributions from governments, intergovernmental organisations and, increasingly, from individuals, corporations and foundations to keep up its life-saving work in some of the biggest emergencies around the world.

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are crisis zones where UNHCR is continuing to give vital assistance, the agency said.

UNHCR urged "flexible and early contributions" from donors to sustain and increase support for its work and allow it to channel funds to those in greatest need.
Beirut, Dec 7 : Lebanon's President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital is "dangerous" and hurts the country's credibility as a peace sponsor.

Aoun said that "this decision reversed the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis for decades and killed every attempt that has been made to bring the points of view closer," Xinhua quoted a statement as saying.

He warned that that the US decision "could cause reaction that threatens the stability of the region and perhaps the whole world."

Aoun called on Arab states to take "a unified stance to bring back the Arabic identity of Jerusalem and to restore the international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative as the only way to achieve a just and comprehensive peace that restores the rights to their owners."

For his part, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri stressed that Lebanon "refuses the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the American decision."

Hariri met at his residence with a Hamas delegation, which delivered a letter from Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Ali Baraka, the Hamas movement's representative in Lebanon, and Ziad Hassan, head of Hamas' political relations, attended the meeting.

Hariri said that Lebanon will take diplomatic and political measures with the Arab and Islamic states as well as the international community "to support the cause, the Arabism of Jerusalem and the refusal of the biased American decision."

Baraka said Hamas regards the US decision on Jerusalem as "an aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also against the Arab and Palestinian nation and against the Muslim and Christian sacred sites."

"This American decision reflects the US bias towards the Zionist entity and will put the region in a new phase of struggle of which no one knows the extent," he said.

He added that Hamas calls for an Arab and Islamic unified stance to confront this American stance and to defend Jerusalem and the Palestinian cause, "which is the central cause of the Arab and Islamic nation."
New York, Dec 7 : A memoir by former Japanese Emperor Hirohito about the country's slide into World War II has fetched $275,000 at an auction in New York, a media report said on Thursday.

The 173-page document, written in pencil by an aide to the emperor in the spring of 1946, was sold by the auction house Bonhams on Wednesday to Japanese plastic surgeon Katsuya Takasu, reports Kyodo News.

Takasu tweeted that he will hand over the memoir to the imperial family.

Also known as "The Emperor's Monologue", covers events ranging from the 1928 assassination by Japanese militarists of Zhang Zuolin, the Chinese warlord who ruled Manchuria, to Japan's defeat in the World War II in August 1945.

According to Bonhams, the two-volume notebooks are the only full record of the Emperor's spoken memoirs and "constitute a key resource" for understanding Japanese history.

The document was first published in Japan in 1990, a year after the Emperor, who reigned between 1926 and 1989, died at the age of 87, Kyodo News reported.

In the memoir, the Emperor said that if he had refused to accept the Cabinet decision to launch the Pacific War, Japan would have been thrown into disarray and perished.

Hidenari Terasaki, who transcribed the recollections, is a diplomat who served as an interpreter during a meeting between the Emperor and Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied Powers after the war.
San Francisco, Dec 7 : In a respite for Google, a judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit from former Google employees that accused the tech giant of paying male employees more than women.

According to a report in wthitv.com late on Wednesday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Mary E. Wiss said that the allegations were "insufficient to state class claims".

The class-action lawsuit had alleged that there were "systematic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the board".

"The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they were underpaid for performing similar or better work than their male counterparts," Wiss said.

The three women have 30 days to file an amended appeal.

In September, three former Google employees filed a class-action lawsuit against the tech giant accusing it of discriminating against women when it came to pay and promotions.

According to a report in Fortune, the three former employees who served as software engineer, communications specialist and manager, filed the lawsuit that said: "Google pays women in California less than men who perform similar work and assigns female workers jobs that are less likely to lead to promotions."

"While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century," Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the women, had said in a statement.

In August, James Damore -- the engineer who was fired by the company over a memo criticising it's diversity efforts - has also alleged that the tech giant was discriminating in hiring practices.

"There's a place for you at Google. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you," Google's Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai told women innovators on the sprawling campus at Mountain View, California, responding to Damore's manifesto.

Google, however, is facing a probe by the US Department of Labour into its pay practices.
Beijing, Dec 7 : The Chinese military alleged on Thursday that an Indian drone "intruded" into China's airspace and has "crashed".

"The Indian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) intruded into China's airspace and crashed recently, and Chinese border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle," Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theater Command's joint staff department, as saying.

The newly-created Western Theater Command is the largest of the five military divisions in China. Tibet which shares a border with India comes under it.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this.

"We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he added.

India is yet to react to the Chinese claim which comes ahead of its Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi on December 11.

Wang will attend the foreign ministerial meet of Russia, India, and China.

Indian and China were locked into a 73-day military stand-off at Doklam in the Sikkim section, which was resolved on August 28.

The stand-off put a new strain between India-China ties.
Rio De Janeiro, Dec 7 : Argentine midfielder Dario Conca is poised to return to Shanghai SIPG after an unspectacular loan spell with Brazilian giants Flamengo.

Conca's representatives dismissed speculation of a possible move to his former club Fluminense in 2018 and said the 34-year-old will travel to China later this month, reports Xinhua news agency.

The playmaker joined Flamengo on a year-long loan in January but played just three matches, having struggled to recover from a knee ligament injury.

"On Wednesday he trained with Flamengo for the last time," the Globo newspaper said, citing confirmation from Conca's agent Marcos Motta. "He already has his bags packed and will return to Shanghai SIPG on December 27."

Conca, who joined Shanghai SIPG from Fluminense in 2015, is contracted to the Chinese Super League club until December 2018.
Riyadh, Dec 7 : Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital amid growing international criticism of the move.

The Saudi Royal Court in a statement warned of serious consequences of such an "irresponsible and unwarranted step", including further complicating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Trump on Wednesday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital reversing decades of US policy. He also instructed moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city.

"The decision represents a great bias against the historic and permanent rights of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem, which have been affirmed by international resolutions and recognized and supported by the international community," the Saudi statement said.

Calling the decision a pivot from the "historically impartial position" of Washington in regard to the issue of Jerusalem, the statement said the decision exemplifies a drastic regress in efforts to move the peace process forward.

Saudi Arabia called on the US administration to reverse this action and support the international will to enable the Palestinian people to regain their legitimate rights.

Eight of the 15 nations who are currently members of the UN Security Council called for the body to hold an urgent meeting on the US decision by the end of the week.
Mumbai, Dec 7 : Actor Shahid Kapoor, one of the three lead actors of controversial film "Padmavati", hopes the audience understands his part as Rawal Ratan Singh. He feels it's a character that would make people want to be "better" in today's time.

The actor stressed on the need for inspiring characters while discussing his role as Rani Padmavati's husband and a warrior king Rawal Ratan Singh in "Padmavati" with GQ India for December 2017 issue, a statement said.

"I remember when 'Gladiator' came out and Russell Crowe played Maximus, the character felt too good to be true. But it inspired me so much. That was a strong reference for me because I wondered how you play a character who is so noble and good, and make him connect with people today," Shahid said.

"Sometimes cinema has the power to make us aspire to be something better. Of course, there's a lot of value in playing something that's real; I'm coming from 'Udta Punjab', where I played a coked-out, crazy pop star - not at all the kind of guy you would want to be, not even the kind of guy you would want to be in a room with.

"With him, I wondered how to get people to understand someone so off-the-hook, this free radical jumping all over the place. But people got him. I hope they get Rawal Ratan Singh as well. He's extremely powerful, but always steady in all kinds of high-pressure situations.

"I've always admired people who can do that. We're living in a time where we need to be inspired by characters who make us want to be better, because there's a lot happening in the world."

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's attempt to bring alive the story of Rani Padmavati on the silver screen with his movie "Padmavati" hasn't gone down well with Hindu groups backed by the BJP. It also features Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh in pivotal roles.

"Padmavati" is being slammed for alleged distortion of historical facts about the Rajput queen. The film was scheduled to release on December 1, but it was deferred.

Shahid also spoke about how Ratan Singh protects his wife from invader Alauddin Khilji, essayed by Ranveer.

He said: "The most difficult part was that he is the least known among the three characters. There are several gaps in our knowledge, and it was up to me to fill them appropriately. It was important to understand what type of king I was playing - we've had great kings, we've had terrible kings, we've had blunderers, kings who've become saints.

"Ratan Singh was a warrior king who falls in love with this exceptionally beautiful woman. They get married and are very happy together when another man (Alauddin Khilji) enters the picture. It's a story about a husband and wife, but also a king and a queen."
Srinagar, Dec 7 : Militants on Thursday released the brother of a police constable they had abducted a day earlier in Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora district.

Police said Mudasir Ahmad Khan, the brother of Constable Farooq Ahmad Khan, was seized at gunpoint by the militants on Wednesday evening in Ajas village. He reached home safely on Thursday.

"The exact circumstances that led to Mudasir's abduction and release are being ascertained," a police officer said.

The militants had barged into the house of the constable but he was not present. So they took away his brother.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : From wearing a T-shirt over a gown to clubbing it with a sari or wearing it as a T-shirt dress -- there are many ways one can experiment with a T-shirt to up the fashion ante, say experts.

Aakansha Agrawal from Gulaal Creations, Megha Jain Madaan from Abstract and Vikas Jain, director of youth clothing brand Integriti, list down some ways.
Bengaluru, Dec 7 : A 65-year-old Bengaluru woman, who lost her hands and vision due to leprosy, was enrolled for an Aadhaar card without the mandatory biometrics of her iris and fingerprints to restore her monthly welfare pension, her doctor said.

"Sajida Begum who has been living at the Leprosy Hospital (in Bengaluru) was enrolled on Tuesday for an Aadhaar card as a special case without biometrics, as she had lost their fingers and vision due to leprosy," the hospital's Administrative Medical Officer, Dr. Ayub Ali Khan Zai told IANS.

Begum, who had contracted leprosy at a young age, had been living at the state government-run hospital in the central part of the city for over a decade.

"I receive about Rs 1,000 pension every month, which stopped coming to me for the past four months," Begum told IANS.

She uses the money she receives from the state government as a welfare pension which is given to citizens above 60 years, to buy necessities like hair oil, bathing soap, occasionally some clothes and some snacks and tea from the hospital's canteen.

"She had complained to us few days ago that she wasn't receiving her monthly pension. We were later told by the women in the hospital that she had received a letter from the bank asking her to link her pension account with Aadhaar number," the doctor recalled.

The state-run Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) requires one to provide with biometric information -- ten fingerprints and two iris (flat, coloured ring-shaped membrane of the eye) scans and a facial photograph -- to be issued with an ID card. The existing rules made Begum incapable of receiving an Aadhaar number -- and thereby her pension.

With the hospital authorities approaching the local UIDAI centre, Begum and six others from the Leprosy Hospital were considered as special cases and were enrolled for the identity number.

"We had taken just the person's facial photographs and a photograph of his/her eyes at the hospital, as getting biometrics wasn't possible," multitask officer at the UIDAI's regional headquarters in the city L. Somashekhar told IANS.

As Begum and the others living in the hospital didn't have any proof of residence, the hospital had provided with an authentication letter, Zai said.

"Most of the patients here have been abandoned by their families and have no homes to go back to. So, we provided them with the authentication letters of their residence here," the doctor explained.

With a lot of social stigma surrounding the disease, many who have been living in the hospital depend upon the welfare pensions, he said.

"Sajida is unmarried and doesn't know the whereabouts of her parents as she has been living in leprosy homes for a long time now. The UIDAI officials had got their equipment to the hospital for the enrolment," Zai added.

The hospital is now also working towards assisting all of its 59 patients in registering for pensions if they are eligible and is helping out with the documentation, he said.

"Sometimes, Sajida and other patients remember their homes and families and cry. We've seen Sajida also go into depression many times. As a hospital, we want to help them in whatever way we can in letting them lead their lives," Zai reiterated.

(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)
Ghaziabad, Dec 7 : A CBI court on Thursday pronounced businessman Maninder Singh Pandher and his aide Surendra Koli guilty for the rape and murder of housemaid Anjali in 2006.

The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment in the ninth case of what has come to be known as Nithari killings on Friday, prosecution lawyer J.P. Sharma said.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday thanked the team of the upcoming Hindi film "Aiyaary" for constant support to the Armed Forces Week and Armed Forces Flag.

The "Aiyaary" team expressed their gratitude towards the armed forces, and tweeted: "Week of generosity, recognition and active support is about to end. Don't let this chance go to support the families of men who guarded us while we slept! Armed Forces Flag Day."

To this, a post from the Defence Minister's official Twitter account read: "Thank you Team 'Aiyaary' for your continued support to Armed Forces Flag Day and Armed Forces Week. You can contribute towards the welfare of disabled ex-servicemen, war widows and children of martyrs by logging on to http://ksb.gov.in. Jai Hind!"

"Aiyaary", set in Delhi, London and Kashmir, revolves around two strong-minded Army officers having completely different views, yet right in their own ways. It is a real-life story based on the relationship between a mentor and a protege.

Presented by Plan C and Jayantilal Gada (Pen), the project is produced by Shital Bhatia, Dhaval Jayantilal Gada, Motion Picture Capital.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Cloud platform GoDaddy on Thursday launched "Website Security" platform and added McAfee protections for small, independent businesses in India.

Powered by security platform Sucuri, "Website Security" offers malware removal and website protection.

"As part of our online security awareness programme, we are offering these new security online solutions to help further protect your online presence," Nikhil Arora, Vice-President and Managing Director, GoDaddy India, said in a statement.

GoDaddy "SSL Certificates" are now offered with added security protection with McAfee and allows small businesses to display the "SECURE" trustmark on their websites to show credibility and build trust among customers.

"The McAfee integration with our SSL Certificates and security protection powered by Sucuri gives our customers access to robust and reliable resources of professional online security protection for small business websites," Arora added.

With continuous monitoring, fast response time and daily malware scanning, the new solution detects known security holes or issues on a website.

With more than 17 million customers worldwide, GoDaddy has nearly 73 million domain names under management.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Kumbh Mela, the mass Hindu pilgrimage of faith, has been inscribed on the Unesco's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage under Unesco inscribed Kumbh Mela at its 12th session at Jeju in South Korea, the External Affairs Ministry said on Thursday.

This inscription is the third in two years for India following the inscriptions of yoga and Nouroz.

The Unesco Convention for Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2003, defines intangible cultural heritage as the practices, representations, expressions as well as knowledge and skills that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage.

According to the ministry, the Intergovernmental Committee observed that Kumbh Mela is the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth.

The festival, held in Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, represents a syncretic set of rituals related to worship and ritual cleansing in holy rivers in India, Unesco said.

"As a religious festival, the tolerance and inclusiveness that Kumbh Mela demonstrates are especially valuable for the contemporary world."

The statement said that the Committee "also took note of the fact that knowledge and skills related to Kumbh Mela are transmitted through the Guru-Shishya 'parampara' (guru-student relationship) by way of saints and sadhus teaching their disciples about traditional rituals and chants in order to ensure the continuity and viability of this festival in perpetuity".
New Delhi, Dec 7 : The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a notice to Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Ramachandra Prasad Singh and the Election Commission (EC) on a plea filed by the Sharad Yadav faction of the party, challenging the poll panel's order of granting the party's "Arrow" symbol to the faction led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Justice Indermeet Kaur sought a response from the Commission and Singh, a Rajya Sabha member from the party, on the plea and posted the matter for hearing on February 19.

K. Rajasekaran, the newly-appointed President of the Sharad Yadav faction of the JD-U, filed the petition, seeking that the November 25 order of the Commission, by which it granted the Arrow symbol to the Nitish Kumar-led faction, be set aside.

Earlier, legislator Chottubhai Vasava of the Sharad Yadav faction had moved the high court against the poll panel's November 17 order rejecting their claim to the JD-U symbol.

On Vasava's plea, the high court had asked the Commission to pass a reasoned order in the matter and on November 25, the poll panel had passed the order giving details of the decision.

The EC had recognised the Nitish Kumar faction of the JD-U as the "real party" and hence entitled to use the party's Arrow poll symbol.

The poll panel had said that the group led by Nitish Kumar had demonstrated overwhelming majority support in the legislature wing as well as in the National Council of the JD-U -- the apex organisational body of the party.

Sharad Yadav, a former President of the JD-U, broke away from the Bihar Chief Minister and JD-U President Nitish Kumar after the latter joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in July this year.

The Election Commission had referred to the Supreme Court's verdict wherein the apex court had upheld the principle of test of majority support in the organisational and legislative wings.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Paving the way for a trial, a court here on Thursday framed charges against 11 former MPs in connection with the 2005 cash-for-query case.

Delhi Police has chargesheeted the 11 -- Chhatarpal Singh Lodha (BJP), Anna Saheb M.K. Patil (BJP), Pradeep Gandhi (BJP), Suresh Chandel (BJP), Chandra Pratap Singh (BJP), Ram Sewak Singh (Congress), Manoj Kumar (RJD), Narender Kumar Kushwaha (BSP), Lal Chandra Kol (BSP), Y.G. Mahajan (BJP) and Raja Ram Pal (BSP) -- for allegedly taking money to ask questions in Parliament.

After the accused pleaded not guilty, Special Judge Kiran Bansal fixed January 12, 2018 to begin the recording of the statement of prosecution witnesses in the case.

The court on August 10 said that prima facie charges dealing with criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act were made out against the accused.

The court has also framed charges against one Ravinder Kumar, while proceedings against one of the accused has been dropped as he has died.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava alleged that the former Members of Parliament misused their office. They were caught on camera, during a sting operation, seeking money for asking questions in Parliament in what came to be known as cash-for-query scam.
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 7 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will on December 14 visit the coastal villages near the Kerala capital that faced the brunt of Cyclone Ockhi, in his first visit to south India after taking over as the party chief.

He was slated to be here on December 1 to take part in the valedictory function of Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala's state-wide yatra, but his visit was postponed due to bad weather due to the cyclone.

Gandhi will first visit the coastal villages at Vizhinjam and Poovar and then address a public meeting at the Central Stadium here, Chennithala told reporters here on Thursday.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Veteran politician Sharad Yadav on Thursday said there was pressure from "all sides" to disqualify him from the Rajya Sabha, and that he knew it was a foregone conclusion.

"I knew this (disqualification) is going to happen. Some media persons also wrote about it. I had mentally prepared myself for this. I have no regrets," Yadav said here.

This is not the end and the battle of principles will continue, the former Union Minister added.

However, Sharad Yadav refrained from attacking Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu for his disqualification and called him an "old friend".

"He is an old friend of mine. But in politics, circumstances change. I still have immense respect for the institution (Rajya Sabha Chair). Persons come and go, but institutions remain and we must respect them," he said.

A disqualification notice was served on Yadav around 10.30 p.m. on Monday at his residence while he was touring Gujarat.

Yadav wondered if Vijay Mallya's case could be referred to the house Ethics Committee for consideration before disqualifying the absconding business tycoon, and if 2008 Mumbai attacks convict Ajmal Kasab could be given a chance to exhaust all legal options before his execution, why was such hurry shown in his case.

"I can understand there must be pressure from all sides," Yadav said when asked if he thought Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United President Nitish Kumar had pulled some strings to expedite his expulsion from the upper house.

"But I don't see it as an expulsion. I see it as a break. Now I will dedicate myself full time to party activities," Yadav, a former President of the united JD-U, said.

Yadav broke ranks with Nitish Kumar after the Chief Minister broke away from the grand alliance in Bihar, comprising Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress, and the JD-U and aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party in July-August.

Thereafter, the Nitish Kumar faction of the JD-U petitioned the Rajya Sabha Chairman for Yadav's disqualification.

In a swift move that political observers called "unprecedented" in such cases, Naidu disqualified Yadav and another JD-U MP Ali Anwar Ansari in less than three months of that plea.

In a related development, the Delhi High Court, acting on a plea by Javed Raza, on Thursday issued a notice to the Election Commission and the Bihar Chief Minister in the "Arrow" symbol case decided by the poll panel in the latter's favour last month.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday asked senior party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar to apologise for his "neech" barb against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Expressing his thoughts on Twitter, Gandhi said that it is not the Congress party's culture to use such language against political opponents.

"BJP and Prime Minister routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the Prime Minister. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Gandhi tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Aiyar called Modi a "bahut neech kisam ka aadmi" who is practising "dirty politics".
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, who takes fitness seriously, will now endorse Apollo Munich Health Insurance.

As the brand ambassador, he aims to make more Indians aware of health insurance.

"I am someone who takes fitness very seriously but at the same time, I feel that we live in a very stressful world. When we talk about our parents' generation and before them, the times are very different. The world is so fast now.

"If we see the lives of people and their sleeping patterns, heath issues start at a younger age than it used to for people of generation before us," Farhan said here on Thursday.

So, he feels it is important to have health insurance at a young age.

On associating with Farhan, Antony Jacob, CEO, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, said: "We have a few values - honouring commitment, innovation, relationships which go beyond a particular transaction and to be accessible at all times. We found all these qualities in Farhan."

Apollo Munich Health Insurance also announced a new category called Winsure with its health insurance plan called Health Wallet.
Mumbai, Dec 7 : Actor Purab Kohli says he was often lauded for his films after they premiered on TV.

Purab feels people sometimes refuse to go to the theatres to watch a movie after reading the reviews.

"What happens is that a lot of people decide not to go to a theatre sometimes because they have heard a review. Very often in some of the films I have done, the reviews have not been so great or the audience has not had the chance to see it in the theatre, because it runs out fast," Purab said in a statement.

"But when it (the film) comes on TV is when I start getting messages about how good the film is or how they enjoyed watching it," he added.

Purab was last seen onscreen in "Noor", which will have its TV premiere on Sony MAX on Friday.

"'Noor' is a great film, especially for an urban audience. It will be quite interesting to watch. It's a good character to make the story on and it's got good twists and turns," Purab said.

Featuing Sonakshi Sinha in the title role, "Noor", which released earlier this year, is based on Pakistani novel "Karachi, You're Killing Me!"
Gaza, Dec 7 : The Islamic Hamas movement on Thursday called for a Palestinian "popular uprising" against the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The call came amid mass demonstrations across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

"Tomorrow will be a day of public anger and the launching of an uprising under the name of Intifada of Jerusalem Freedom," said Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh during a public speech.

He said Friday would be "the beginning of a new movement" to fight Israel's plan of occupation of West Bank and Jerusalem, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Trump will regret this decision," said Haniyeh. He also called for a general Palestinian meeting to discuss the current situation and to reach an agreement on future Palestinian politics.

Describing Trump's recognition as "a turning point in the history of the Palestinian cause", the Hamas leader stressed that Jerusalem "has always been the source of victory, the beginning of revolutions and the starting point of uprisings".

He reiterated that Hamas would never recognize the legitimacy of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

On Wednesday, Trump officially announced his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his intention of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city.

The US leader's declaration triggered a wave of popular anger and outrage among Palestinians. The Palestinian factions and political powers declared a general strike in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Some set fire to the US flags and pictures of Trump in Gaza.

Shops were closed and the business of local markets was affected by the comprehensive strike.

Protests erupted mainly in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, East Jerusalem as well as in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of youths expressed anger over Trump's move by setting tires on fire for hours at night in various parts of Gaza.

Also in Gaza, three Palestinians were reportedly injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Imphal, Dec 7 : Union Home minister Rajnath Singh is set to meet the Chief Ministers of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur on the contentious issue of framework agreement signed between the Central government and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) in 2015.

Meanwhile, normal life was thrown out of gear on Thursday at Thangmeiband in Manipur's Imphal west district as there was a shutdown and sit-in protest demanding disclosure of details of the agreement.

Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh is on his way to meet his Assam and Arunachal Pradesh counterparts Sarbananda Sonowal and Prema Khandu before the meeting with Rajnath Singh.

There have been protests in these three states amid fears that the framework agreement compromises their territorial integrity.

Manipur's former Chief Minister Radhabinod Koijam on Thursday said: "Time is overdue to sink all political differences and find a solution. Instead of holding talks with some particular groups, all stakeholders should be involved."

Congress spokesperson and legislator K. Joykishan said Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju's statement that the details of the agreement cannot be disclosed because of their sensitivity is "unacceptable".

Pradip, Secretary of Thangmeiband United Club, which organised the protest, said: "Though we had invited all political parties to take part in the protest just three parties sent their representatives."

Opposition Congress has been holding such protest meetings for some days demanding details be disclosed. The framework agreement was signed by the NSCN-IM leaders and the central interlocutor R.N.Ravi at the residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 3, 2015.

Official indications are that the agreement will soon be implemented as a "Christmas gift". There is apprehension among the three states that even though their territorial integrity may not be affected, some "autonomy" may be granted to the NSCN-IM in Naga areas.

Inaugurating the hornbill festival in Nagaland on December 1, President Ram Nath Kovind said that a final solution will be achieved soon.
Vienna, Dec 7 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday accused Russia of instigating unrest in eastern Ukraine, where violations against an agreed ceasefire have increased in recent weeks.

Tillerson's comments came during a speech on the first day of a Ministerial Council of the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the Austrian capital, Efe news reported.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence," said the top US diplomat. "Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces in Ukraine."

Tillerson was expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov later in the day.

He pointed out that more civilians had died in the conflict in 2017 than last year and that ceasefire violations in Donetsk and Luhansk had risen by 60 per cent.

In a speech delivered shortly before Tillseron's, Lavrov had denounced what he said was the reckless expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and the deployment of US anti-aircraft missile systems in Europe.

The Russian official said his country was worried about the violation of basic laws, interference in internal affairs by other countries and apparent support for coup d'etat.
Bhubaneswar, Dec 7 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday urged the Centre not to impose the bank payment system on pension disbursement under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) but allow his government to disburse the money in cash.

"In view of special circumstances prevailing in Odisha, especially the fragile nature of the network of financial institutions and telecommunications, I firmly believe that disbursement of pensions in cash as per convenience and choice of beneficiaries is in their best interest," Patnaik said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Any imposition of the system of bank payments will cause undue and unavoidable hardship to the vulnerable beneficiaries, he added.

Patnaik claimed that Odisha, according to the NSAP guidelines, has been disbursing pensions in cash on a fixed day (15th of every month, even if it's a holiday) at the gram panchayat and urban local bodies headquarters in an open and transparent manner.

This was done in view of the difficulties faced in accessing banking services in the state, he said.

"Regular cash disbursement on a fixed day of the month entails burden on state administration but ensures the desired outcome of providing social security to the most vulnerable sections of population. The state is discharging its responsibility in the interest of the beneficiaries," the Chief Minister said.

He said 4,376 gram panchayats in Odisha had no banking facilities and existing banks find it difficult to take on the burden of a large number of pensioners due to staff shortage.

"Payment of pensions in bank accounts will not serve the desired purpose due to difficulties in withdrawing money from banks. In view of their impecunious condition, pensioners need cash urgently to meet their daily needs and not deposits in their bank accounts. Cash for disbursement of pension ensures achievement of the basic objective of social security for the vulnerable pensioners," he added.
Brussels, Dec 7 : Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Brussels on Thursday to show their support for Catalan independence, weeks ahead of a regional election that would see it regaining autonomy from the Spanish government.

By the time the demonstration was underway, the Brussels police said 45,000 people clad in the yellow, red and blue of the independence movement's flag gathered in the Cinquantenaire park despite the usual rain.

The demonstration was partly in support of exiled and disputed Catalonia President Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium and is resisting extradition attempts, the Independent reported.

"If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain," Carles and Rosses, a couple from Catalonia at the demonstration, told Efe news.

Besides private vehicles and commercial flights, organisers said 250 buses and at least five chartered flights had been organised to transport demonstrators from Catalonia to Belgium.

The march started at the Cinquantenaire Arcade, built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium's independence, and was set to move around the European Quarter, a district in Brussels that holds many European Union institutions.

The route, expected to finish close to the European Parliament, brought protesters just around the corner from the European Commission, where its Vice President Frans Timmermans told a press conference that the atmosphere he had witnessed was very positive and determined.

The demonstration was organised by Omnium Cultural and the Assemblea Nacional Catalana, two pro-independence groups, and was attended by political figures from the region, including the deputy leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the party currently leading the polls for the December 21 election.

Following the region's unilateral declaration of independence on October 31, the Spanish government triggered Article 155 of the Constitution, which saw Catalonia's autonomy reeled back and its Parliament dissolved.

Puigdemont faces charges of sedition, rebellion, misuse of public funds and disobedience in Spain, though the charges were brought against him after he fled to Belgium along with four of his Cabinet ministers.

Several other members of the Catalan government, including former Vice President Oriol Junqueras, remain in preventative prison in Spain as they await trials for sedition and rebellion.
Ranchi, Dec 7 : A 55-year-old tribal farmer, Buddhu Oraon, on Thursday committed suicide by jumping into a well after 80 quintals of his paddy crop was burnt in Jharkhand's Gumla district, police said.

Buddhu was under depression after some persons burnt his paddy crop on December 4, leading to a loss of around Rs 2 lakh. Buddhu had taken loan from some people in order to grow the crop.

He was a resident of Murgu Naktitola Kamta village, situated under Sisai police station of Gumla district, around 130 km from Ranchi.

Buddhu had sought assistance from the district administration of Gumla district to get over the losses. According to villagers, he sank into depression after not getting any assurance from the district administration.

Buddhu is the eighth farmer from Jharkhand to commit suicide this year.

Since creation of the state in 2000, this is first time that the number of farmers committing suicide has touched this figure.

Gumla is the home district of Jharkhand Assembly Speaker Duinesh Oraon. On Thursday, Speaker Duinesh Oraon visited the village of the dead farmer and handed over Rs 10,000 for his last rites.

"I will raise the issue in the state Assembly during the winter session so that the farmer can get compensation," he told reporters.
Seoul, Dec 7 : The UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs met North Korea's Foreign Minister in Pyongyang on Thursday.

The meeting between Jeffrey Feltman and Ri Yong-ho took place barely a week after North Korea launched its most sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile to date, an action that may lead to a new round of UN Security Council sanctions, Efe news reported.

Feltman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday and it is the first trip by a UN official to the isolated country in over seven years. Ri held a conversation with Feltman, who also paid a courtesy visit to the Supreme People's Assembly (North Korea's Parliament).

The UN official was scheduled to meet other representatives of the North Korean regime to discuss matters of mutual interest and concerns.

He will also meet diplomats in Pyongyang as well as the UN team in North Korea, where the UN operates six agencies with 50 international staff.
Chennai, Dec 7 : DMK leader M.K. Stalin on Thursday said the party will hold peaceful protests against Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit in districts where he goes for review of development works.

In a statement here, Stalin said Purohit should stop his political work of reviewing projects in various districts and order Chief Minister K. Palaniswami to prove his government's majority in the Assembly.

Stalin's statement came after Purohit met officials of the cyclone-hit Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts. He earlier held meetings with district officials of Coimbatore and Tirupur, Stalin said.

On November 20, a statement from the Governor's office quoted Purohit as saying that his recent review meeting with officials of Coimbatore was within the framework of the Constitution and he would continue to hold such meetings.

"There was no attempt to short-circuit the official channels or force a meeting," the statement said. "While conducting such meetings, the Governor never violated any law or the constitution," the Raj Bhavan said.
Surat/New Delhi, Dec 7 : Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday triggered another storm calling Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi", while the Prime Minister said describing him as "neech jaati" was an insult to Gujaratis who will vote out the Congress in the state assembly elections.

In a quick damage control exercise, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi deprecated Aiyar's language against the Prime Minister and asked him to apologize which the former Union Minister did, claiming his knowledge of Hindi was not good. He also maintained that he never called Modi a "low born".

As Aiyar's remarks that Modi was a "neech aadmi" (low man) in the context of his criticism of the Congress vis-a-vis B.R. Ambedkar snowballed, the Prime Minister referred to it in an election meeting in Surat and attacked the Congress leader, saying he called him a "neech jaati" (low caste).

"They can call me 'neech jaati'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work," Modi told an election rally here.

Modi said Aiyar came from a good family, has a number of university degrees, was a diplomat for a number of years and remained a Minister in the Manmohan Singh government, but was resorting to such insults. "This is an insult to Gujarat. Not just to Gujarat but to the entire nation."

He said Aiyar was speaking out of the "Mughlai mindset" that "sees everyone as 'neech'".

"They called us donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede...the people of Gujarat will give a befitting reply to such derogatory language. The Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in democracy.

"We have seen enough insults from them. They insulted me when I was the Chief Minister. They called me 'maut ka saudagar' and wanted to jail me. But our value system is strong. We have nothing to say to such elements. Our answer will come through the ballot box.

"I appeal to all BJP activists not to retort. But answer them on December 9 and 14 (voting days). My people should not lower their standards. We will teach them a lesson. Voting results would mean what low caste means when everyone votes for the BJP. You have lost your mental balance. I am not upset because I work for the people."

As the row became an embarrassment for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to disapprove of Aiyar's language.

"The BJP and the Prime Minister routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the Prime Minister. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologize for what he said," Gandhi said.

Reporters got around to Aiyar at a function in Delhi's WWF Auditorium Hall and asked him about Modi's attack and Gandhi's suggestion to him to apologize.

"Yes, I used the word 'neech'. Now, I am not a Hindi speaker and I translate from English to Hindi. So I used 'low person', I translated 'low' in my mind. If it happened to mean something else. I apologize. 'Neech' as I understand is a direct translation of 'low'.

"I never meant 'low born'. In English there's a clear distinction between 'low' and 'low born'. It is very possible that in Hindi -- which is not my natural language and which I learned after much effort -- I translated 'low' as 'neech'. But if neech also means 'low born' then I apologize that I used a word which can be interpreted in many ways, and in the way Modiji is interpreting it, I have nothing to do with that.

"I don't think he is low born but his language is very, I'll say in English, is very low language. Why would he use such a low language for the Congress on such an occasion. Whatever I say they want to misinterpret. As far as I am concerned the bulk of my remarks dealt with Modi's very, very nasty remarks about the Congress, particularly with Gandhi's relationship with Ambedkar."

Wading into the controversy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Aiyar's "neech" remark displayed a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the "neech".

"The Congress Party has challenged the weaker and backward sections of India by calling the Prime Minister as 'neech' . The strength of India's democracy will be displayed when a person of humble background politically defeats the dynasty and its representatives," he said in tweets.

Jaitley later told reporters that it was part of a Congress strategy to belittle the Prime Minister every day and then say "I will retract".

"If you are unsure of the language or facts, then you are unfit to be in politics," he said.
Mumbai, Dec 7 : Amidst speculation of cross-voting by some opposition legislators, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Prasad Lad won the by-election to Maharashtra Legislative Council here on Thursday.

Securing 209 votes, he trounced his sole rival, Dilip Mane of Congress who bagged only 73 votes in the 288-member legislature.

The bypoll to the upper house was necessitated after former Congressman and former Chief Minister Narayan Rane resigned his seat and launched his own Maharashtra Swabhiman Party which allied with the ruling NDA last September.

Rane was hoping to be nominated by the BJP for the seat he vacated but pressures from the ally Shiv Sena ensured Lad got the nomination, though he is a new entrant to the party.

With the BJP's 122 legislators, Shiv Sena's 63, and seven independents, the ruling side's strength was 192.

However, one Sena legislator, Minister of State for Textiles Arjun Khotkar, could not vote as his election as MLA from Jalna was recently annulled by the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad Bench, so the effective ruling alliance strength was 191.

On the Opposition side, Congress has 42 legislators and the Nationalist Congress Party 41, totalling 83. But since two NCP legislators - Chhagan Bhujbal and Ramesh Kadam - could not cast their votes as they are currently in jail, so their effective strength was 81.

Besides, two AIMIM legislators, Waris Pathan and Imtiaz Jalil, did not vote.

Speculation is rife in political circles over which legislators from the opposition ranks cross-voted, since Mane secured only 73 votes against the expected 81 and Lad got 209 votes, more than the expected 191.

Incidentally, Lad, a wealthy businessman often referred to as the "billionaire legislator" of the state, was formerly with the NCP and trusted by its senior leader Ajit Pawar, before he defected to the BJP last year and became a close confidante of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : A court here has allowed the plea of environmentalist R.K. Pachauri, accused of sexually harassing a colleague, seeking copy of statements of 13 TERI employees which were not filed by Delhi Police during submission of chargesheet.

Additional Sessions Judge Suresh Kumar Gupta in a order on December 4 allowed Pachauri's plea seeking copy of documents which were collected by the prosecution during the course of investigation but not replied upon while filing chargesheet in the case.

The order, delivered on December 4, was made available on Thursday.

"The prosecution is duty bound to supply these statements to the accused for a fair trial. The right of the accused to have copies of these statements cannot be curtailed as accused has to built up his defence on the basis of the documents supplied to him by the prosecution," the court said.

However, the court observed the prosecution has not relied upon on these statements as they nowhere advance the case.

Pachauri's counsel Ashish Dixit told the court these documents were concealed by Delhi Police while filing chargesheet. He said the copy of these statements would favour the accused in order to reveal the truth.

"These statements will help Pachauri to prepare his defence as 13 employees have recorded their statements saying they never felt any discomfort or exploitation with Pachauri," the defence counsel told IANS.

Delhi Police has chargesheeted the former chief of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) under the Indian Penal Code's sections 354A (advances involving unwelcome and explicit sexual overtures), 354B (using criminal force against a woman), 354D (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 341 (wrongful restraint).

Pachauri was accused of sexually harassing a female colleague in 2015. He stepped down as chairperson of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February 2015 and proceeded on leave from TERI, where he was the director general. Later, he also stepped down from his post in TERI.

Pachauri has denied the charges against him.

On February 26, 2017, a trial court passed an order making it mandatory for the media houses to publish or telecast the coverage of the case with a rider "in any court the allegations have not been proved and they may not be correct".
Chennai, Dec 7 : City-based Tube Investments of India Ltd on Thursday said it has signed a definitive agreement for acquisition of two cycle companies in Sri Lanka for an undisclosed sum.

In a statement, the company said it had signed a definitive agreement for acquisition of a controlling stake in Creative Cycles (Private) Ltd and Great Cycles (Pvt) Ltd, Colombo.

Creative Cycles and Great Cycles have manufacturing facilities in the Katunayake Export Processing Zone, Colombo, with a capability to produce a wide range of bicycles, from kids to performance cycles and from steel to alloy bikes.

"With this acquisition, we will be able to grow the market for premium cycles and our market share in the premium segment even more aggressively.

"Our goal has always been to offer the finest products and experience to Indian consumers and this is one more step in that direction," L. Ramkumar, Managing Director, Tube Investments, said in the statement.
Washington, Dec 7 : US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital prompted a global diplomatic backlash and sparked protests in Palestinian territories on Thursday as fears grew of fresh bloodshed in the volatile Middle East.

Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers in Ramallah and other places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority called for a general strike. In Gaza, the Hamas movement appealed for a mass uprising.

Palestinian shops in east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as in the West Bank were largely shut and schools were closed on Thursday.

At a checkpoint near Ramallah, Israeli forces fired dozens of rounds of tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of protesters gathered to vent their anger over Trump's announcement that has upset even Washington's allies.

Youths burned tires, pelted soldiers with rocks and burned American flags. Clashes also erupted in East Jerusalem and at the border fence between Israel and Gaza. The Palestinian Red Crescent said at least 43 people were wounded.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh declared Friday a "day of rage".

Israel deployed hundreds of extra troops in the West Bank amid rising tensions. US institutions in the region readied themselves for a possible violent fallout.

In a landmark speech in Washington on Wednesday, Trump reversed decades of US policy in defiance of warnings that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital will derail the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process and spark further unrest.

Trump said he would tell the State Department to begin preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but that the US still supported a two-state solution to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the decision, calling it "an important step towards peace".

But outraged Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas dubbed it "deplorable" and said Trump had disqualified the US from its traditional role as peace broker.

Demonstrations also broke out outside the US consulate in Istanbul and Amman.

The decision was met with global dismay, drawing criticism from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and more. Western allies of the US such as Britain, Germany, Canada and France refused to side with Washington. China and Russia too expressed displeasure.

The UN Security Council will discuss the issue on Friday after eight of the 15 nations called for an emergency session. The Arab League will meet on Saturday.

The Saudi Royal Court warned of serious consequences of such an "irresponsible and unwarranted step". The United Arab Emirates expressed "deep concern" about the repercussions.

President Hassan Rouhani said Iran "will not tolerate a violation of Islamic sanctities. Muslims must stand united against this major plot". Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it would put the region in a "ring of fire".

Kuwait and Qatar also came out against the US move.

India declined to comment, saying its position on Palestine "is independent and consistent".

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to "make it clear that we strongly oppose" the US move. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo too slammed the US decision.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, its final status is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks.
Kohima, Dec 7 : The Nagaland Legislators Forum on Thursday resolved to urge the Election Commission to conduct elections to the Assembly only after a solution is found to the decades-old Naga insurgency.

Naga leaders including present and former MLAs and MPs met at Regional Centre of Excellence for Music and Performing Arts and resolved to request the members of the Nagaland Assembly to pass a resolution to this effect.

Governor P.B. Acharya has summoned a two-day session of the Assembly on December 14-15. Election to the 60-member Nagaland Assembly is scheduled in February-March 2018.

Adopting a four-point resolution, the Forum urged the Indian government and other stakeholders to resolve the Naga political problem well before the Assembly elections.

The resolution signed by Chief Minister T.R Zeliang, Assembly Speaker Imtiwapang Aier and T. Khongo, President of Ex-Parliamentarians Association, said the Assembly elections must be held "only after an honourable and acceptable solution is reached in regard to the Naga political problem".

The Forum placed on record its deep sense of appreciation of all the positive steps taken by the Indian government and other stakeholders.

Zeliang, who addressed the gathering, called for 'one vision, one mission and one goal' in finding a lasting solution to the vexed Naga political issue at the earliest.

Lauding the efforts of the Church, Civil Societies and NGOs, the Chief Minister recalled that with their contribution and cooperation, the Democratic Alliance of Nagaland government since March 2003 had accorded highest priority to the Naga political issue.

"Efforts at bringing about better understanding between the different six Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) and drawing them closer to each other has been made while numerous resolutions were passed by the Nagaland Assembly and other forums to give the right impetus to the Peace Process from time to time," Zeliang said.
Kolkata, Dec 7 : Stating that international border security is of top priority to the government, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said a multi-layered "Border Protection Grid" (BPG) will be set up across the country's border.

"The total length of India-Bangladesh border covering five states is 4,096 km, of which 3,006 km has been fenced. But the remaining 1,090 km of border is not fenced yet.

"We have decided to implement technological solutions in this region which can also be termed as non-physical barrier," Singh said after holding a meeting here on developmental security issues at the India-Bangladesh border with the chief ministers of states bordering Bangladesh.

"Of the non-fenced areas, 684 km would be secured with fence and related infrastructures. The remaining 406 km of border area would come under non-physical barriers as fencing in these places is not feasible," he said, adding that the non-physical barriers would be first implemented in the Dhubri sector of Assam.

The minister said that apart from the physical and non-physical barriers, the entire India-Bangladesh border would be brought under a "Border Protection Grid" for fool-proof security.

"The grid will comprise various elements including physical and non-physical barriers, surveillance systems, intelligence agencies, state police, Border Security Force (BSF) and other state and central agencies," Singh said.

According to him, the implementation and functioning of BPG would be supervised at the state level by a standing committee chaired by the respective state's Chief Cecretary.

"Although bulk of infrastructure is in place or under construction, the building of infrastructure in some parts is yet to commence mainly due to land acquisition issues," a statement said, adding that the Home Minister urged the chief ministers to take personal interest to expedite land acquisition in the interest of national security.

Terming the border inhabitants as strategic assets to the country, the Home Minister said bringing quick development in the bordering areas while maintaining the security was the focus of the present regime.

He said major issues like cattle smuggling, human trafficking, cross-border smuggling of arms, drugs and fake Indian currency notes were discussed at length at the meeting and urged the concerned states to be more vigilant on issue of infiltration.

"We share a friendly relationship with Bangladesh, but security environment is a dynamic issue. Also, not having a completely fenced border is a problem. The terrorist organisations can misuse the land of neighbouring Bangladesh. That's why we need to be extremely vigilant," Singh pointed out.

Claiming that the insurgent forces in the northeast India had been largely brought under control, Singh said the government was keeping an eye on the insurgent groups that had taken refuge in the neighbouring country.

"The issue of insurgency in the Northeast is largely under control but there are a few insurgent groups have taken refuge in the bordering areas of Bangladesh. Because Bangladesh is our friendly country, we would take their help to keep these groups under strict surveillance," he added.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : A number of prominent Muslim organisations, including the Jamat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), on Thursday condemned the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and said the move will hamper a "comprehensive resolution" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

JIH Vice President T. Arif Ali said the Trump administration's decision was "a clear violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions, especially United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 478 of 1980".

"We are deeply concerned and deplore the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shift the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," he said.

"It would destabilise the region, create conflict, offend religious sensibilities of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims and delay a just and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Ali said.

Condemning the US decision, JUH General Secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani termed it "highly provocative".

"This move will not only create unrest in the region but in entire Muslim community across the world. The US has not only ignored the international law but also ignored the international apprehensions on the issue. This move has also subverted the efforts to usher in peace in the region," Madani said.

"We also exhort the United Nations to convene an urgent meeting on the issue and protect the interest of the Palestinians, in keeping with its past rulings and conventions," he added.

Madani also exhorted the Arab world to "review" their diplomatic relations with the Unites States.

All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat President Naved Hamid said this "misadventure" by the US President Donald Trump needed to be condemned in the strongest words.

"The US is playing a dangerous game that would lead to unrest not just in the Middle East and West Asia but across the world. Being the place of the third holiest shrine of the Muslims -- Masjid Al-Aqsa -- Jerusalem holds a special sentimental value for the community," Hamid said.

On Wednesday, President Trump government recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said it would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The US would be the first and the only country so far in the world to do so.

Several past US Presidents insisted that the status of Jerusalem -- home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions -- must be decided through negotiations between the two sides.

Trump's policy reversal has drawn flak from leaders across the world with both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron saying that their countries did not support the move and Canada asserting that its embassy would not move to Jerusalem.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : In a damage-control move, the Congress on Thursday night suspended senior party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar from its primary membership and slapped a show cause notice on him for his "neech" remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has mushroomed into a massive controversy just ahead of the Gujarat polls.

Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala broke the news through a tweet.

"The Congress party has suspended Mani Shankar Aiyar from party's primary membership and issued him a show-cause notice," Surjewala said.

"This is Congress party's Gandhiwaad and sense of respect towards its rivals. Can Modiji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) ever show such conviction?" he added.

Earlier in the day, Aiyar has called Prime Minister a "neech aadmi" (despicable person) but apologised later when Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the Congress party does not endorse such language and expected Aiyar to apologise.

Aiyar said that he could not understand the actual implications of the word "neech" when he used it as he is not a Hindi speaker.

Condemning Aiyar's remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said his remark reeked of Congress' feudal arrogance and sycophancy.

Modi gave the "neech" remark a casteist twist, telling a campaign rally in Gujarat that Aiyar had called him "neech jati" or from a low caste.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : The Delhi High Court has set aside the Central Information Commission (CIC) verdict declaring ministers as "public authorities" and answerable under the Right to Information law.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru quashed the CIC landmark judgment last year, saying the order was "wholly outside the scope" of the matter before it.

The court said: "There was no occasion for the CIC to enter upon the question as to whether a Minister is a 'public authority' under Section 2(h) of the Act... In view of the above, the order dated March 12, 2016 cannot be sustained and is, accordingly, set aside."

The high court's order came on the Central government's appeal against the CIC order. The case stems from an application filed by a Maharashtra resident who wanted to know how to get an appointment with the Union Law Minister.

In November 2014, the man moved an application before Additional Private Secretary, Minister of Law and Justice seeking to know the time period of minister or minister of state meeting the general public. As the information sought was not received, the matter reached the CIC.

Here the commission went on to frame the questions whether the minister or his office was a "public authority" under the RTI Act and whether a citizen has the right to information sought and whether the minister has corresponding obligation to give it.

The CIC said each minister should get a website of their own where they can disclose information on their own as mandated under the transparency law.

The high court, however, said that the commission could not have gone into the above question.
Kochi, Dec 7 : The Indian Navy's search-and-rescue operations and humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi continued on Thursday, with nine naval ships and four types of aircraft participating.

Boeing P8I surveillance aircraft, Dornier aircraft, Sea King and Advanced Light Helicopters, along with the ships, continued with these operations, the Navy said.

On Thursday, INS Jamuna provided over 12,000 litres of fresh water at Kavaratti even as work is in progress to repair the damaged desalination plant. The ship would be providing fresh water to the island for the next five days.

INS Sharda reached Minicoy on Thursday morning with fresh water, medicines, food, clothings, and blankets.

The ship also carried essentials like emergency lights, petrol, portable 10-KVA power generators, UPS, rechargeable torches, tarpaulin, electrical tool kits, boiler suits and public address system with speakers.

However, the items could not be delivered during the day due to non-availability of a barge from Minicoy. The relief material will now be delivered on Friday.

INS Shardul, while proceeding from Minicoy to Kochi, encountered a stranded Singapore- registered tugboat "Bes Power" 35 miles off Minicoy. The tug was on way from Oman to Maldives when it ran into bad weather due to the cyclone. Since the drifting vessel had exhausted its fuel, INS Shardul gave 45 tonnes of fuel to it to continue its journey to Maldives.

INS Kalpeni, with six local fishermen onboard, undertook guided search for fishing vessels in distress for the second day at Bassas de Pedro, a traditional fishing area.

The fishermen who went onboard INS Kabra returned after not finding fishing vessels in distress or survivors. INS Kabra is continuing its planned search operations in the southeast Arabian Sea.

"Normalcy will be restored on a war footing at Minicoy, with the naval contingent working 24X7," a Navy statement said.

A relief camp was established to distribute relief material ferried by naval ships to all 11 villages through village heads, as requested by Lakshadweep authorities.

Other maintenance activities such as clearing of fallen trees, cleaning of jetty area, Navodaya school, relief camp and Fisheries Department premises will be undertaken by naval personnel there.

Meanwhile, based on information about a fishing boat with 15 fishermen onboard off Lakshadweep, Coast Guard ship Abhinav approached it and provided fresh water and provisions to those onboard. FB Thiru Churulai boat is since on way to Kochi on its own.

Earlier in the day, two bodies were recovered by Coast Guard ship Vaibhav about 100 nautical miles off Alappuzha, which were handed over to authorities at Vizhinjam.

A total of 12 ships -- including two from Mumbai and two types of aircraft, Dornier fixed wing and Chetak helicopter -- have been deployed by the Coast Guard for the operations.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : An invention -- Vaxibeads -- which tracks vaccination details for the users with the use of a smartphone won two Indian students a paid internship to three universities in New Zealand in a competition, New Zealand Education said on Thursday.

The 'New Zealand - India Sustainability Challenge' was held by Education New Zealand, in association with "premier" New Zealand universities and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) on Thursday.

A total of 90 teams from India had participated with the number later whittling down to six finalists.

The winning team, VaxiBead from 'Manipal Institute Of Technology', presented its project on 'Sustainable Lifestyle' and won an all-expense paid internship for three weeks at the New Zealand partner universities -- University of Canterbury, University of Otago and University of Waikato.

Team AlphaQ from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Chennai were the first runner-up and Team Green Computing from Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai were the second runner-up.

The other projects included innovations such as photovoltaic cells-equipped window blinds to produce energy, video game application to promote awareness on sustainability, and use of biomass for cremation instead of wood, and another which used garbage to produce electricity.

"A sustainable world is the need of the hour, through these steps we aim to create awareness about a cleaner environment and use of sustainable resources amongst youth, which is something New Zealand as a country is very passionate about," Joanna Kempkers, New Zealand High Commissioner to India, said at the event.

TERI Director General Ajay Mathur called the competition a "one-of-a-kind opportunity" for the students of the two countries to solve "real-life sustainability problems".

"I am confident that these students will continue to practice the elements of sustainability and innovation that they have learnt in future as well," he said.

The Regional Director of Education New Zealand John Laxon said more Indian students are choosing to study in the country down under with their number increasing this year by 24 per cent.

"This is a world-leading initiative to promote sustainable thinking amongst our youth. An internship at New Zealand's universities will offer Team VaxiBead - the winners from today - an opportunity to further their knowledge and gain New Zealand's perspective on sustainability related disciplines," Laxon said.
Kolkata, Dec 7 : The West Bengal BJP leaders on Thursday met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to apprise him of the situation in Darjeeling hills and appealed him to urge the state government to withdraw "fake cases" against exiled Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (JMM) chief Bimal Gurung.

Singh was in the city on Thursday to hold a meeting with the chief ministers of states bordering Bangladesh on the developmental security issues along the India-Bangladesh border.

"We informed him about the Bengal government's double standards in dealing with the issues of Darjeeling hills. In spite of having same charges against them, GJM leader Binay Tamang has been rewarded by the Bengal government, while Bimal Gurung has been exiled.

"It goes on to show how the state government's policies are politically motivated," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national secretary Rahul Sinha, who met Singh, told IANS.

"We appealed him to urge the state government to withdraw all false cases against Bimal Gurung and his associates and work towards bringing permanent peace in the region," he said.

The Bengal Police has charged Gurung under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and issued a lookout notice against him in the wake of three-month-long agitation for separate state of Gorkhaland.

Sinha claimed the situation in Darjeeling was still vulnerable and could become tensed again if the massive police posting there was withdrawn.

"The Bengal Chief Minister is claiming that peace has been reinstated in Darjeeling, but in reality the situation there is still vulnerable. The state government has posted thousands of police personnel there to control the situation. It might become hostile the moment the extra forces are withdrawn from Darjeeling," he said.

The BJP leader said they had also talked to the Home Minister about the police atrocities on their activists and the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

"The law and order situation in Bengal is in a shambles. The only job of the police is to charge BJP activists with false cases and jail them. We informed Rajnathji about it," Sinha stated.

"We also told him that the Bengal government and the state's ruling party leaders are involved in the cattle smuggling happening across the India-Bangladesh border," he added.
Surat/New Delhi, Dec 7 : Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday triggered a major storm calling Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi" (base), which the Prime Minister gave a caste angle, telling an election rally in Gujarat that describing him as "neech jaati" (low born) was an insult to Gujaratis who will vote out the Congress in the assembly elections.

In a damage-control move, the Congress on Thursday night suspended Aiyar from its primary membership and slapped a show cause notice on him for the remark that mushroomed into a massive controversy - two days ahead of the Gujarat first-phase polls.

Earlier, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi deprecated Aiyar's language against the Prime Minister and asked him to apologize, which the former Union Minister did, claiming his knowledge of Hindi was not good. Aiyar clarified that he never called Modi a "low born".

As Aiyar's remarks that Modi was a "neech aadmi" (low-life) in the context of his criticism of the Congress vis-a-vis B.R. Ambedkar snowballed, the Prime Minister referred to it in an election meeting in Surat and attacked the Congress leader, saying he had called him a "neech jaati" (low caste).

"They can call me 'neech jaati'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work," Modi told an election rally.

Modi said Aiyar came from a good family, has a number of university degrees, was a diplomat for a number of years and remained a Minister in the Manmohan Singh government, but was resorting to such insults. "This is an insult to Gujarat. Not just to Gujarat but to the entire nation."

He said Aiyar was speaking out of the "Mughlai mindset" that "sees everyone as 'neech'".

"They called us donkeys, neech, gandi naali ke keede...the people of Gujarat will give a befitting reply to such derogatory language.

"I appeal to all BJP activists not to retort. But answer them on December 9 and 14 (voting days)... Voting results would mean what low caste means when everyone votes for the BJP."

As the row turned into an embarrassment for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to disapprove of Aiyar's language.

"The BJP and the Prime Minister routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the Prime Minister. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologize for what he said," Gandhi said.

Reporters got around to Aiyar at a function in Delhi's WWF Auditorium Hall and asked him about Modi's attack and Gandhi's suggestion to him to apologize.

"Yes, I used the word 'neech'. Now, I am not a Hindi speaker and I translate from English to Hindi. So I used 'low person', I translated 'low' in my mind. If it happened to mean something else. I apologize. 'Neech' as I understand is a direct translation of 'low'.

"I never meant 'low born'. In English there's a clear distinction between 'low' and 'low born'. It is very possible that in Hindi -- which is not my natural language and which I learned after much effort -- I translated 'low' as 'neech'. But if neech also means 'low born' then I apologize that I used a word which can be interpreted in many ways, and in the way Modiji is interpreting it, I have nothing to do with that.

"I don't think he is low born but his language is very, I'll say in English, is very low language. Why would he use such a low language for the Congress on such an occasion. Whatever I say they want to misinterpret. As far as I am concerned the bulk of my remarks dealt with Modi's very, very nasty remarks about the Congress, particularly with Gandhi's relationship with Ambedkar."

Wading into the controversy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Aiyar's "neech" remark displayed a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the "neech".

Jaitley later told reporters that it was part of a Congress strategy to belittle the Prime Minister every day and then say "I will retract".

"If you are unsure of the language or facts, then you are unfit to be in politics," he said.

Later in the evening, Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted that Aiyar has been suspended from the party.

"The Congress party has suspended Mani Shankar Aiyar from party's primary membership and issued him a show-cause notice," Surjewala said.

"This is Congress party's Gandhiwaad and sense of respect towards its rivals. Can Modiji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) ever show such conviction?" he added.

The development comes as Rahul Gandhi is set to go to Gujarat on Friday for two days of campaigning for the second phase of polls, slated on December 14.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Even as the DCW said a woman was beaten up and paraded naked here on Thursday after she helped in a raid in north Delhi against illegal sale of liquor, police denied it and said two women have been arrested for physical assault.

Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal said Praveen, 30, was beaten up and paraded naked after she helped the panel raid a house in Narela a day earlier.

"A brave lady beaten and paraded naked in Delhi by the liquor mafia. Her video is made -- all because she dared to raise her voice against crime and helped the DCW catch people selling illegal liquor in their home 50 metres from the police chowki. Is there any law and order in Delhi? Shame DelhiPolice," Maliwal tweeted.

Maliwal summoned Rohini Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajneesh Gupta to appear before it regarding the incident.

Gupta, however, told IANS that the woman was not paraded naked but that her clothes were torn during the assault. He said a case had been registered and two women taken into custody.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the incident was shameful.

He tweeted: "Utterly shocking and shameful that this is happening in India. I urge honorable Lt Governor to immediately intervene and take action against local policemen and ensure everyone's safety."

A Delhi Police Spokesperson said: "Incorrect that the police post is 50 metres away. Nearest police post from the place of incident is about 5 km away."

Gupta said Praveen had been associated with police during action against bootleggers and that she was taken to hospital in a police vehicle.

A DCW statement said: "The DCW team along with women residents were openly threatened by the liquor mafia of dire consequences. One of the woman was attacked by the men, who assaulted her with iron rods and paraded her naked in the area. The entire incident was filmed and a video shared in the area," a DCW statement said.

According to the DCW, on Wednesday, police was called to the spot and over 300 bottles of liquor confiscated from the house barely a few metres from the area police post.
Gandhinagar, Dec 7 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will once again be in Gujarat, landing in the state on the eve of the first-phase polls, to campaign in north and central Gujarat regions for the second phase of the state Assembly elections.

Gandhi, who had to cancel his previous campaign visit after visiting just one place in Anjar in Kutch due to bad weather and the 'Ockhi' cyclone alert, will be addressing more public meetings than scheduled during his two-day visit.

On Friday, the Gandhi scion will be visiting Chota Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Kheda and Anand districts, regions of the second phase of the elections. And on the following day, he will visit Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts.

Rahul Gandhi will be addressing a public meeting at APMC ground in Pavi Jetpur in Chhota Udepur district on Friday noon. Continuing with his temple visits, which the ruling BJP party has been scoffing at, Gandhi will go to the Mogal Dham Mandir in Ranesar in Ahmedabad district. Later in the afternoon, he will address a public gathering at the ground opposite Super Gas in Ranesar.

In the early evening hours, Gandhi will hold a corner meeting in Anand district's Tarapur and later another corner meeting at Kheda district's Limbasi near the Rice Mill.

In Anand district, Gandhi will be welcomed by local Congress leaders in Mangrol and Sojitra Chokdi regions, after which he will address a public gathering at Vyayamshala Ground, Loteshwar Bhagol in Anand. His night stay will be in Vadodara.

On Saturday, the day of polling for the first phase, Gandhi will be in Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts, the region said to be the Patidar bastion.

He will arrive in Patan district's Chanasma by chopper from Vadodara and hold a public a meeting at Harij around at noon. He will reach Banaskantha district's Vadgam by chopper and address a public meeting in Chappi in the afternoon. Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani is contesting as an independent from Vadgam constituency.

From Vadgam, Gandhi will fly by chopper to Vadnagar, the home town of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and address a public meeting in at around 4 in the evening. The place falls in the Unjha Assembly seat of Mehsana district. From Modi's hometown, Gandhi will take a Yatra Bus to Vijapur, another place in Mehsana district, the region believed to be a Patidar fortress.

At 6 p.m., Gandhi will address a large gathering in Vijapur on the Ladol road in Mehsana. The Mehsana Assembly constituency seat is held by the Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat, Nitin Patel.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday released a book on the late Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) chief Ashok Singhal, who played a key role in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Calling Singhal "one of the finest proponents of Hinduism", Naidu said he had sacrificed 75 years of his life for the benefit of the future generations.

"Despite being asked by many in Congress party to join the Freedom Struggle under leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Singhal chose to side with K.B. Hedgewar's Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh and dedicated his entire life to Sangh," Naidu said, according to an official statement.

He said that the book - "Ashok Singhal: Staunch and Perseverant Exponent of Hindutva", by Mahesh Bhagchandka - elucidates life, philosophy, vision, and ideas of Singhal, who was the VHP's international working president for over 20 years.
London, Dec 7 : Queen Elizabeth II commissioned Britain's biggest warship, the future flagship aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, into the Royal Navy on Thursday at a ceremony in the Portsmouth naval base.

The British monarch was accompanied by her daughter Princess Anne along with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Xinhua news agency reported.

After addressing the crowd at the ceremony, the Queen watched as the iconic White Ensign was then raised, symbolizing the commissioning of the HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy's fleet.

The Queen said the ceremony was taking place close to where the Royal Navy's famous warship, Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory stands, describing it as a flagship of Britain's seafaring past.

Like HMS Victory, HMS Queen Elizabeth represents the best in technology and innovation, she said.

HMS Queen Elizabeth will head to the US for initial flight trials off the coast in autumn 2018. There are currently 150 Royal Navy and RAF personnel training in the US on 13 F-35 jets.

Defence Secretary Williamson said an extraordinarily busy year for the Royal Navy has seen it name the second carrier -- HMS Prince of Wales.

The navy initially estimated both ships would cost 3.5 billion British pounds ($4.7 billion) to build, but the total figure was revised to 6.2 billion British pounds.

The second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, was named in Rosyth and is now structurally complete.
Jaipur, Dec 7 : In a horrifying video gone viral, a man is seen being brutally hacked to death and set on fire in Rajasamand district of Rajasthan, for allegedly committing "love jihad". Police arrested the accused, Shambunath Raigar, on Thursday.

The person killed has been identified as Afrazul, hailing from Malda district of West Bengal, police said. Earlier, police had identified him as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.

A case of murder has been registered and more cases would be registered under relevant sections as and when new facts emerge in this case, police said.

The victim was a labourer in his late 40s. According to the mother of Afrazul, she had spoken to him on Wednesday morning, and soon after that he was murdered. She was terrified to see the video of her son's murder and has demanded harshest punishment for the accused.

In fact, when police reached the crime venue on Thursday, dogs and carrion birds were seen feeding on the body.

According to reports, Raigar who was friendly with the victim lured him to come to fields with him where he hit him repeatedly with a long pick-axe and a scythe. He then poured petrol on Afrazul and set him alight. The entire gory incident was videographed by Raigar's nephew, who is a minor, and uploaded on the internet. He also left a three-page letter at the site.

Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar said the accused could be seen speaking on issues such as love jihad in the video. He is also seen stating that he was "avenging" the insult being meted to his sister.

According to police, Raigar had bought a new pick-axe with an intention to murder the victim.A

Raigar was arrested from Kelwa when he was going to a temple on his Scooty.

SP Kumar said that interrogation of Raigar is on and police are keeping an eye on the law and order situation. Police have stopped all internet services in Rajasamand. Extra police force has been deployed in and around the town to prevent any untoward incident.

Talking to IANS, Kumar said police received information about a semi-burnt body lying in Ragnagar in Rajsamand district.

Without delay, he along with ASP Manish Tripathi and DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location where they found a badly disfigured body. Immediately the forensics team and dog squad were summoned. The agricultural tool used for murder, the victim's motorbike and his slippers were found at the crime scene.

Terming it a "cold-blooded murder", DGP O.P. Gelhotra said police will demand toughest punishment for the accused. "We will ask that the accused be hanged to death," he said while terming the murder as "rarest of the rare case".

He praised the efforts of Rajasthan Police who arrested the accused within 24 hours of the incident.

"Interrogation is on in the matter. New facts are emerging in the case and the investigation is hence proceeding in that direction," he added.

Asked if the murder was aimed at denting the state's harmony, Gelhotra said the murder should not be linked to any such thing as it seemed to have been done by a "psycho person".

The DGP said the police would take all necessary steps to ensure that the atmosphere of peace and tranquility in Rajasthan is not disturbed.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje condemned the murder and directed that the criminal be prosecuted in the shortest possible time. "This is a deplorable act which needs to be condemned in strongest possible terms," she said.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also condemned the murder. "We strongly condemn the heinous killing of a labourer from Bengal in Rajasthan. How can people be so inhuman? Sad," Banerjee tweeted.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was in Kolkata for a review meeting on India-Bangladesh border issues on Thursday, refused to make any comment on the issue. "Now you are asking a political question. Thank you very much," he said when asked for his reactions on the incident.

Meanwhile, Afrazul's relatives said: "We want justice. The government must punish the culprit. Hang him! It is a lie that he was involved with a woman. One of uncle lived with him and he never complain about the alleged relation."
Lucknow, Dec 7 : A Congress leader from western Uttar Pradesh on Thursday alleged that he wanted to contest the presidential election in the party against Vice President Rahul Gandhi but was prevented from doing so.

Talking to reporters, Ayub Ali said that he had gone to meet the Congress' Central Election Authority chairman Mullpally Ramchandran and was not only disallowed to file the nomination papers for the post but also shouted at.

"I was told that I cannot contest the polls and that Rahul Gandhi was the only candidate for the top post... he (Ramachandran) also asked me to get out of the office.... how is this a democracy?" he questioned while airing his disappointment at being mistreated by the party's returning officer for the presidential election.

After the scrutiny of the nomination papers, Rahul Gandhi is the sole candidate in the fray. Last date of withdrawal of nomination papers is 3 p.m. on December 11. Elevation of Gandhi to the top party post is now just a foregone conclusion.

The polls have however been mired in controversy as Congress leader from Maharashtra, Shehzaad Poonawala had questioned the procedure and had said that the entire process was a farce as this was a "selection and not election".
ABCNews.com(HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla.) -- A Florida judge has ordered the parents of a suspected serial killer to appear in court next month to explain why they shouldn't be penalized for refusing to speak to investigators.



In a Hillsborough County courtroom Thursday morning, Judge Margaret Taylor ordered Howell Donaldson Jr. and his wife, Rosita Donaldson, to return to court next month to show cause for why they should not be held in civil contempt of court.



Their 24-year-old son, Howell Donaldson III, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in connection to the recent slayings that terrorized Tampas Seminole Heights neighborhood.



State prosecutors say the Donaldsons have willfully refused to provide testimony and answer questions about their son, despite a subpoena that ordered them to do so. Florida state law does not allow for parent-child privilege.



We are seeking to conduct a thorough investigation of the matters involving the violent loss of four lives. And as our statutory obligation, our ethical obligation dictates us to exhaust every lawful investigative avenue," assistant state attorney Jay Pruner told the judge Thursday morning. "We are seeking testimony that would only be within Mr. and Mrs. Donaldsons access of knowledge. Thats the purpose of this motion ultimately; thats our intent and our hope they would comply and answer our questions."



Howell Donaldson Jr. and Rosita Donaldson were subpoenaed to speak with investigators Monday. The couple appeared at the state attorney's office Tuesday but refused to answer any questions related to the investigation of their son's alleged involvement in the killings, according to court documents.



Defense attorney Ralph Fernandez told the judge the Donaldsons are "devastated" and have received death threats since their son's arrest last week.



Admittedly, they knew when they went they were not going to answer questions that would lead to the execution of their son, Fernandez told the judge Thursday morning. Thats why this is a difficult cause because of the fact that from the inception thats why the Donaldsons have been devastated. Not only the personal tragedy, but they have extended their condolences repeatedly to the victims that suffered greatly."



Prior to Thursday's hearing, Fernandez told ABC News that the Donaldsons were "fully advised" on their actions and are "ready to take the consequence." He described their situation as "tough" and "complex."



"I think it shocks the conscience of Americans to be part of a system of justice that is identical on this issue as North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Iran, where parents are compelled to testify against their children and children against their parents," Fernandez told ABC News Wednesday.



Howell Donaldson III was arrested Nov. 28 after his manager at a McDonald's restaurant in Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood alerted police to a McDonald's food bag containing a handgun. Investigators later matched the firearm to the same weapon used in a string of fatal shootings in the Seminole Heights neighborhood between Oct. 9 and Nov. 14.



The first three victims were killed within 11 days in October. Benjamin Mitchell, 22, was killed Oct. 9, and the body of 32-year-old Monica Hoffa was found Oct. 13, half a mile from where Mitchell was killed. Anthony Naiboa, a 20-year-old man authorities described as having mild autism, was killed Oct. 19 after taking the wrong bus home from work, according to police.



The fourth victim, 60-year-old Robert Felton, was fatally shot from behind in the early hours of Nov. 14.



Howell Donaldson III, a Tampa native and graduate of St. Johns University in New York City, is being held in a Hillsborough County jail without bond. A pretrial detention hearing scheduled for Tuesday was canceled because the case has not yet been assigned to a division. He has not yet entered a plea.



Investigators are still unsure of a motive behind the four killings and do not yet know of a connection between Howell Donaldson III and the neighborhood where the killings took place. Police do not believe there are any other suspects in the case.



The Donaldsons held a news conference last Friday, stating their "devastation" at the news of their son's arrest and how they prayed for the families of the victims.



"I prayed for those families when it first started," Rosita Donaldson said, holding back tears. "And then when they arrested my son, devastation, because I love my son and it was disbelief that this was happening to our family. And we question why."

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
New Delhi, Dec 7 : The proposed Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill is designed to protect the rights of depositors, the government said on Thursday.

The bill, which seeks to deal with the insolvency of financial service providers, had been tabled in August in the Lok Sabha and has currently been referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament, a Finance Ministry statement said here.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in a tweet, said: "The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017 is pending before the Standing Committee. The objective of the government is to fully protect the interest of the financial institutions and depositors."

The bill provides for the setting up of a resolution corporation with powers relating to transfer of assets to a healthy financial firm, merger or amalgamation, liquidation to be initiated by an order of the National Company Law Tribunal.

According to the statement of objects and reasons of the bill, the resolution corporation can also designate certain financial providers as systematically important financial institutions, the failure of which may disrupt the entire financial system.

The government said the FRDI Bill provides additional levels of protection for depositors as compared to other legislations.

"The provisions contained in the FRDI Bill, as introduced in the Parliament, do not modify present protections to the depositors adversely at all. They provide rather additional protections to the depositors in a more transparent manner," the statement said.

"The FRDI Bill is far more depositor friendly than many other jurisdictions, which provide for statutory bail-in, where consent of creditors or depositors is not required for bail-in," it added.
London, Dec 8 : Briatin's Foreign Secretary on Thursday called for the President of the United States to show leadership in order to push on with the peace process in the Middle East, after the latter recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In a statement to the press at the Foreign Office, Boris Johnson said Donald Trump's decision was unhelpful for the peace process but the US had the power to influence the region, Efe news reported.

"I think, this decision having been announced by President Trump, the world would like to see some serious announcements by the US about how they see the Middle East peace process and how to bring the two sides together," said Johnson.

"If we are going to have a move of the US embassy, then let?s also see some moves towards the long overdue resolution of the Middle East peace process," he added.

Johnson said that the US was the "eminent power that can now show leadership," and that he hoped the US administration would present policies and programs "to bring parties together".

The diplomat said the UK government's position had not changed and that the status of Jerusalem had to be determined by an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians.

He said recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was "premature".

Trump on Wednesday broke with international consensus in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordering that the US embassy be moved there from Tel Aviv, an announcement that has been met with criticism from across the globe and led to increased tension in the region.

In making the announcement, Trump turned the US into the only country in the world to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
New York: Official Spokesperson of Ministry of External Affairs Raveesh Kumar addresses during 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Sept 17, 2017. Image Source: Mohammed Jaffer/IANS

New Delhi, Dec 8 : India has become a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, that controls the global trade of conventional weapons and dual-use goods and technologies, the External Affairs Ministry announced on Friday.

"The plenary meeting of the Wassenaar Arrangement held on December 6-7, 2017, in Vienna, Austria, has decided to admit India, which will become the Arrangement's 42nd participating state," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in his weekly media briefing here.

"The necessary procedural arrangements for India's admission will be completed shortly," he stated.

The Wassenaar Arrangement was established in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability, by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations. The aim is also to prevent the acquisition of these items by terrorists.

Participating states seek, through their national policies, to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals, and are not diverted to support such capabilities.

Asked what benefits would accrue to India by becoming a member of the Arrangement, Kumar said that it would help facilitate high technology tie-ups with Indian industry and ease access to high-tech items for defence and space programmes.

"While membership of the arrangement would not automatically entail any preferential treatment from other Wassenaar Arrangement members, it would create the grounds for realignment of India in the export control policy framework of other Wassenaar Arrangement members, including eligibility for certain licensing exceptions," he said.

"Our entry into the arrangement would be mutually beneficial and further contribute to international security and non-proliferation objectives."

On Friday, Ambassador of France Alexandre Ziegler tweeted his country's congratulations. "As president of the Wassenaar Arrangement this year and co-rapporteur of India's candidacy, France warmly congratulates India for joining the Arrangement.

"One more recognition, after MTCR, of the growing role India plays in today's world," he said, tagging India's Ministry of External Affairs, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

"Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) participating states reviewed progress of a number of current membership applications and agreed at the plenary meeting to admit India which will become the arrangement's 42nd participating state as soon as the necessary procedural arrangements for joining the WA are completed," the grouping said in a statement.

India'a membership of the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies comes more than a year after becoming a member of the Missile Technologies Control Regime (MTCR).

Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said here that India was likely to get membership of the grouping during the plenary in Vienna.

India has still to get membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Australia Group.

Last year, India gained entry into the MTCR which paved the way for it to get critical missile technologies and also export its missiles.

Russia, France, Germany and the US had backed India's entry into the Wassenaar Arrangement.

China, which has repeatedly blocked New Delhi's bid for membership of the NSG, is not a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Wednesday discussed India's entry into the Wassenaar Arrangement with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov.
Veracruz, Mexico, Dec 8 : At least six people died after gunmen opened fire inside a carwash in the Gulf coast port of Coatzacoalcos, authorities in Mexico's Veracruz state said on Thursday.

The attackers left behind a message claiming responsibility for the assault on behalf of the Zetas cartel and threatening further violence against the rival Jalisco Nueva Generacion group, Efe news agency reported.

Five people were pronounced dead at the scene and a sixth victim died at a nearby hospital.

State police seized a vehicle left inside the carwash.

More than 1,500 people have died in drug-related violence in Veracruz state during the past 11 months.

Nationwide, homicides climbed by 62 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, according to figures published by the National Public Safety System.

The Zetas, Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Gulf cartel are battling in Veracruz to control not only the drug trade, but other criminal activities such as human trafficking, kidnapping and protection rackets.

Veracruz, the heartland of the Mexican oil industry, is also an important agricultural region and boast the country's second-busiest cargo port.
Washington, Dec 8 : FBI Director Christopher Wray defended his agency on Thursday amid sharp criticism from US President Donald Trump.

"There is no finer institution than the FBI," Wray told a House Judiciary Committee hearing in response to questions over Trump's attacks on the agency, Xinhua reported.

The director's comments came days after Trump slammed the agency as a biased institution whose reputation is in "tatters" and "worst in history".

Wray also faced questions over revelations that an FBI agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller' team because of anti-Trump texts. Mueller is leading an investigation of possible Trump campaign links to Moscow.

"There is no shortage of opinions out there," Wray said of the agency that he has led for four months. But he conceded that agents do make mistakes, adding that there are processes in place to hold them accountable.

Besides, Wray said Trump has not asked him to pledge his loyalty to him nor spoken to him about Mueller's investigation.

Wray predecessor, James Comey, has said that Trump asked him for his loyalty and asked him to halt an FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI investigators over his contacts with former Russian ambassador to the United States.

Comey was fired by Trump in May.

Wray was sworn in early August. During his four-month tenure, the country has experienced two of the deadliest shootings in its modern history.
London, Dec 8 : Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will raise the case of a British mother jailed in Iran when he travels to the country this weekend.

The dual British Iranian national from north London was sentenced to five years in prison in the country in 2016 over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, Sky News reported.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested during a family holiday, a trip in which the 38-year-old was showing her baby daughter Gabriella to her parents.

Johnson's two-day trip -- his first to Iran -- will include talks with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and is aimed at improving ties between Britain and Iran.
Crown Automotive Group Packaged Over 100,000 Meals For Feeding Children Everywhere One in five children in Pinellas County does not have adequate access to food. No child should have to go hungry. Our combined efforts will ensure that fewer children will have to go to bed on an empty stomach this holiday season.

Crown Automotive Group packaged nearly 103,000 meals for underprivileged children in Pinellas County. The St. Petersburg-based automotive dealership teamed up with Feeding Children Everywhere on Saturday, Dec 2, for its annual volunteer event to end hunger in the county.

Our goal was to package 100,000 meals  and we exceeded that, said Dan Morris, General Manager of Crown Acura.

The dealership and its volunteers packaged a total of 102,990 meals during the event, which was held at the Crown Acura dealership at 18911 Us Hwy 19 N., in Clearwater. Many of Crown's 650 Pinellas County employees participated.

We're thankful to have had the opportunity to give back and partner with Feeding Children Everywhere, which is such an incredibly worthy organization that does so much good within our community, said Jim Myers, President and COO of Crown Automotive Group.

One in five children in Pinellas County does not have adequate access to food. No child should have to go hungry. Our combined efforts will ensure that fewer children will have to go to bed on an empty stomach this holiday season, he added.

Following the event, the meals were sent to St. Pete Free Clinic, FEAST Food Pantry, and Florida Dream Center for local distribution.

This was the seventh hunger project event Crown has organized. To date, the dealership group has provided more than 560,000 meals through various volunteer events.

Click to learn more about Feeding Children Everywhere

About Crown Automotive Group

Over the last 40 years, Crown Automotive Group has grown into one of the largest privately owned dealership groups in the nation with operations in Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Every Crown Automotive dealership features an extensive selection of new, certified, and meticulously inspected pre-owned vehicles with financing options for every budget.

Customers can also expect superior service from a team of highly trained technicians at Crown's signature award-winning service facilities. Driven by four core values: Customer Focus, Teamwork, Integrity and Growth, the group is committed to providing each customer with "The Better Way To Buy."
ETM partner school students perform at recent event. We could not be more thrilled to be featured on top of the tallest building in the United States.

The spire of One World Trade will be lit purple to help bring attention to NYC nonprofit Education Through Music (ETM), and the need to provide music as a core subject to all children, the evening of December 12, 2017. Prior to the spire lighting, 90 choir students from ETM Queens partner school PS 154 will perform on the 64th floor of One World Trade at 3:30 p.m. for tenants in the building.

We could not be more thrilled to be featured on top of the tallest building in the United States, said Katherine Damkohler, Executive Director of Education Through Music. When people see ETMs signature purple color on top of New York Citys skyline, we hope they will join us in raising awareness of the need for quality music education programs for all children.

It is magnificent to see One World Trade and the commercial real estate community support Education Through Music, as its mission is so important to our citys present and future success in education, said Richard Bernstein, Executive Vice Chairman of Cushman & Wakefield and Board Chair of Education Through Music. As board chair, I am grateful for the opportunity to spread awareness of the organizations efforts to provide access to music education to all students.

Education Through Music partners with 57 schools throughout New York City in all five boroughs, serving 30,000 students. The Education Through Music program seeks to restore comprehensive music education programs to urban schools. ETM students receive over 1 million hours of music classes each year. ETM partners with urban schools where 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, 20% of students have special needs, 14% are English language learners, and 92% are students of color. The ETM program is extremely cost effective, as ETM spends only $180 to provide an entire year of music education for one child.

We are proud to host ETM at One World Trade Center, said Jonathan (Jody) Durst, President of The Durst Organization. For nearly three decades ETM has been spreading the joy of music to New York Citys public school children and we are thrilled to partner with them in the lighting of the spire and are honored that they are holding a concert for our tenants.

About Education Through Music

Education Through Music was founded in 1991 to promote the integration of music into the curricula of disadvantaged schools in order to enhance students academic performance and general development. ETM forms long-term partnerships with at-risk elementary and middle schools to develop sustainable, long-term music programs.

The ETM model currently serves nearly 30,000 students in urban schools in New York City, and our model reaches another 12,000 children through the work of our licensed affiliate organization in Los Angeles. ETM's comprehensive, sustainable music education network has garnered the support of corporations, public policy makers and foundations, including The Music Man Foundation, CMA Foundation, The Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Steinway & Sons, William Randolph Hearst Foundation and D'Addario Foundation. For more information visit ETMonline.org.

About One World Trade

One World Trade Center sets new standards of design, construction, sustainability and beauty and heralds the revitalization of Lower Manhattan. Managed, operated, and leased by The Durst Organization, One World Trade Center is a center of innovation and creativity, and is the most recognized office address in the world.
AcctTwo Employees at the Houston Food Bank We're grateful for the opportunity to donate our time to both Samaritan's Purse and the Houston Food Bank, and now we're very excited to be able to make a cash donation to those wonderful organizations.

AcctTwo, a leading consulting firm and provider of cloud-based financial management and managed accounting services, announced that it will donate $20,000, or 5% of all September subscription sales, to the hurricane relief efforts of Samaritan's Purse and the Houston Food Bank. The firm made the announcement last week during its two-day Open House event at the company's headquarters in Houston.

AcctTwo and its employees have deep roots in the area and wanted to support ongoing relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The company's Open House had to be rescheduled after the hurricane disrupted businesses and lives in Houston in August and September. AcctTwo's employees spent the original Open House dates volunteering with Samaritan's Purse and the Houston Food Bank (watch video).

"While donating time and effort is equally important, we wanted to make a monetary contribution to relief efforts as well," said Marcus Wagner, AcctTwo Founder and CEO. "We're grateful for the opportunity to donate our time to both Samaritan's Purse and the Houston Food Bank, and now we're very excited to be able to make a cash donation to those wonderful organizations."

About Samaritan's Purse

Samaritans Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Samaritans Purse mobilizes staff and equipment and enlists thousands of volunteers to provide emergency aid to victims of tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters in the United States. The organization often stays behind after the initial response to rebuild or restore houses for families in need. Visit https://www.samaritanspurse.org for more information.

About the Houston Food Bank

The Houston Food Bank is Americas largest food bank in distribution to its network of 600 hunger relief charities in 18 southeast Texas counties. Named top charity in Texas by Charity Navigator for financial performance and accountability, the Houston Food Bank provides 83 million nutritious meals to food pantries, soup kitchens, senior centers, and other agencies, feeding 800,000 people each year. Visit http://www.houstonfoodbank.org for more information.

About AcctTwo:

AcctTwo is a leading consulting firm and reseller of cloud-based accounting, ERP, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software. Our sophisticated systems solve the issues growing middle market companies and nonprofit organizations face today. AcctTwo also provides Managed Accounting Services (MAS), allowing clients to focus on the core competencies of their business. We provide the people, processes, technology, and office facilities to perform these functions, while allowing clients to collaborate interactively through an on-line portal.

AcctTwo is headquartered in Houston, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.accttwo.com or call 713-744-8400.

Contacts:

Peter Wagner

Director of Marketing

AcctTwo

Cell: 512.415.6846

Email: pwagner(at)accttwo.com
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hodnett Cooper Real Estate is pleased to announce that DeAnne Cohrs has recently joined the team of professionals at the Brunswick location.

A 10-year veteran of the multi-family property management industry in Florida and Georgia, Cohrs brings a wealth of experience to her real estate practice.

Cohrs is an active member of the Golden Isles community and in her spare time, enjoys the outdoors  going to the beach, fishing, and scalloping with her family. She believes that saltwater cures everything and truly loves introducing buyers to life in the Golden Isles.

DeAnne has joined our team and has really hit the ground running! She shares our vision for the future and our commitment to our clients, said Pat Cooper, President and Broker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hodnett Cooper Real Estate. She is an exciting new member of our team at the Brunswick office and I cant wait to see her grow her real estate career with us.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hodnett Cooper Real Estate, which is independently owned and operated, became a member of the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices brokerage network, operated by HSF Affiliates LLC, earlier this year. Since that time, it has earned a host of honors and welcomed several new professionals to the highly successful real estate team.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Hodnett Cooper Real Estate

Hodnett Cooper Real Estate is a family-owned and operated company with three offices throughout the Golden Isles offering a full range of real estate services including real estate sales, residential rentals, property management and commercial sales. The brokerage is the premier real estate company in southeast coastal Georgia with a professional and diverse team of agents. Visit http://www.BHHSHodnettCooper.com.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, based in Irvine, CA, is a brand-new real estate brokerage network built for a new era in residential real estate. The network, among the few organizations entrusted to use the world-renowned Berkshire Hathaway name, brings to the real estate market a definitive mark of trust, integrity, stability and longevity.

About HSF Affiliates LLC

Irvine, CA-based HSF Affiliates LLC operates Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Prudential Real Estate and Real Living Real Estate franchise networks. The company is a joint venture of which HomeServices of America, Inc., the nations second-largest, full-service residential brokerage firm, is a majority owner. HomeServices of America is an affiliate of world-renowned Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Everything is straightforward, accurate and user-friendly. The content is academically challenging yet written in a way my students and I can understand.

The term "holiday movies" tends to conjure up images of made-for-TV flicks with Candace Cameron Bure and a series of holiday mishaps. But this season, Shmoop (https://www.shmoop.com), an award-winning digital publisher, is diving into the less-Lifetime-more-AMC holiday movies of the bunch.

Shmoop's Movie Learning Guides examine all aspects of classic holiday movies. They analyze Die Hard's John McClane as a "reluctant hero" and dig deep into the film's very Christmasy soundtrack. And for people who think Home Alone was just a silly kids' movie, Shmoop has an entire section analyzing the story as a defense of the traditional American Christmas. Who knew Joe Pesci could be so deep?

Shmoop even tackles the ultimate Christmas classic: It's a Wonderful Life. Once its copyright ran out, the movie was picked up and packaged as Christmas programming by cash-strapped public television stations, who couldn't afford expensive, flashy Christmas specials starring Lori Loughlin. By the time its copyright was restored in 1993, millions of families had already made it their holiday tradition to watch this flick. Shmoop adds even more to the conversation, including an analysis of the cast, genre, production studio, and more.

Stacey Carlough, a teacher in Philadelphia, is a big fan of Shmoop's content. "Everything is straightforward, accurate and user-friendly," she says. "The content is academically challenging yet written in a way my students and I can understand."

Shmoop offers courses for aspiring film buffs, including an ACE CREDIT recommended Film Studies course, accessible to all subscribers. Schools and districts can get bulk discounts on already-below-market rates by contacting sales@shmoop.com.

About Shmoop

Shmoop offers hundreds of thousands of pages of original content. Their Online Courses, Test Prep, Teaching Guides, Learning Guides, and interactive Study Tools are written by teachers and experts and balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous concepts. Shmoop sees 16 million unique visitors a month across desktop and mobile. The company has won numerous awards from EdTech Digest, Tech & Learning, and the Association of Educational Publishers. Launched in 2008, Shmoop makes the magic happen from a labradoodle-patrolled office in Mountain View, California.
The Boston Center for Facial Rejuvenation is excited to announce that Leonard Miller, M.D. and Sean Doherty, M.D. have both been named as Top Docs for 2017 by Boston magazine. The annual list honors the best medical experts in the city, providing a valuable resource for consumers and patients. Dr. Miller and Dr. Doherty are honored to be ranked among the Top Docs in Boston magazines December issue.

Once a year, Boston magazine puts together its much-anticipated listing of the areas Top Docs. The physicians are chosen using an unbiased approach, through nominations from their colleagues and peers. Each Top Doc provides top-notch medical care, brings an exemplary bedside manner and maintains a flawless safety record. Area-physicians, from more than 50 major specialties, are considered for the award. Only the best clinicians, meeting Boston magazines rigorous standards, make the list.

As two of this years Top Docs, Dr. Miller and Dr. Doherty offer their patients the full range of surgical and noninvasive aesthetic procedures for the face and body. Dr. Miller brings an innovative array of techniques for restoring and maintaining a refreshed, youthful face and neck. Addressing needs for the breast and body, Dr. Dohertys customized treatment plans achieve sculpted, natural-looking curves and physical proportion.

Dr. Miller is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons. With more than 25 years of plastic and cosmetic surgery experience, Dr. Miller is known for developing his own, cutting-edge noninvasive techniques for improving the appearance. These procedures, including ThermiTight and medical microneedling, can significantly postpone the need for surgical intervention. As founder of the Boston Center for Facial Rejuvenation, Dr. Miller is one of the most sought after cosmetic surgeons in New England.

Dr. Doherty is a true humanist, striving to form a connection with each of his patients as a real person. Known for combining his artistic eye with innate technical precision, Dr. Doherty offers his patients the best in restorative techniques for the body, including breast augmentation, liposuction and gynecomastia correction. A graduate of Columbia University and Tufts University School of Medicine, Dr. Doherty is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons and routinely presents at conferences around the globe.

For more information on the rejuvenating procedures offered at Boston Center for Facial Rejuvenation, contact the office at 617.735.8735 or send an email to robyn(at)leonardmillermd(dot)com. Consultations with Dr. Miller and Dr. Doherty can be made in either the Boston or the Brookline office. Go to Boston magazine to see the full list of Top Docs for 2017.
Monetize your blog today! We pride ourselves on being creative problem solvers here at Groove, said Ethan Giffin, Founder and CEO. When we heard several BigCommerce clients express the need for an easy way to feature their store catalog in their WordPress blogs, we knew we had to create a solution.

Groove, an elite BigCommerce partner, announced today the release of version 2 of their Wordpress plugin, BigPr.es. BigPr.es v2.0 is the #1 way to integrate Bigcommerce and Wordpress, allowing eCommerce merchants to monetize their crucial blog traffic.

This updated version of their popular plugin takes this product to a new level. Including a suite of customization tools, now you can promote products from your BigCommerce store and match the styling of the blog for a seamless experience. And because BigPr.es uses shortcodes, your blog will always reflect the most up-to-date pricing and product data - no changes necessary.

Groove developed the plugin after hearing the same complaint from BigCommerce users for years: theres no easy way to feature products within blog content. For some ecommerce merchants, their blog drives the majority of their traffic - which means they had no method to convert their blog readers into buyers. Until today.

We pride ourselves on being creative problem solvers here at Groove, said Ethan Giffin, Founder and CEO. When we heard several BigCommerce clients express the need for an easy way to feature their store catalog in their WordPress blogs, we knew we had to create a solution.

This unique premium plugin is available at http://www.BigPr.es. For a limited time BigCommerce store owners can save 75% off the price.

Groove is an integrated digital agency that provides a suite of services to online storefronts including eCommerce website design and development, managed eCommerce consulting, and digital marketing. Groove is based in Baltimore, Maryland and can be found on the web at https://www.gotgroove.com
New patients with dental fear in the Randolph, NJ, Morris County area are now welcome to receive minimally invasive care and sedation dentistry, from Drs. Hal and Adam Kimowitz, with or without a referral. Dedicated to offering comfortable care, Drs. Kimowitz offer four different kinds of sedation at their Denville Dentist practice: IV, nitrous oxide, oral sedation and local anesthetic.

Around 30-40 million Americans avoid seeing the dentist because of dental fear. Whether it stems from a traumatic childhood dental experience or from any other experience, dental anxiety can be crippling and can lead to poor oral health. In an effort to help patients feel more comfortable in a dental care setting, Drs. Kimowitz offer custom sedation dentistry at their Denville practice. They also offer minimally invasive care intended to treat patients with gentle and effective techniques. The staff at Denville Dentist offer four types of sedation: oral, local anesthetic, nitrous oxide and IV sedation. They help patients select the ideal solution based on the severity of anxiety they experience.

Oral sedation is administered in tablet form prior to the appointment. It induces feelings of well-being and relaxation in patients so they do not feel anxious during treatment. Local anesthetic is typically injected in and around the immediate treatment site to numb the area. It does not cause relaxation but can ease fear because it prevents the treatment site from processing pain. Nitrous oxide is also commonly referred to as laughing gas. It is odorless, safe, and gives patients an immediate sense of calm and relaxation. IV sedation is only administered in the most severe cases, and it is also referred to as sleep dentistry. It allows patients to rest comfortably throughout treatment with little to no memory of the procedure afterward. Drs. Kimowitz offer sedation dentistry paired with a variety of services, including cleanings, dental implants and full mouth reconstruction.

Drs. Kimowitz encourage patients with dental fear in Randolph, NJ and surrounding areas to learn more about the benefits of sedation dentistry. To schedule a consultation in a relaxed, pressure-free environment, patients are invited to call Denville Dentist at 973-627-3363 to schedule a custom consultation.

About the Doctor

Denville Dentist is a general and cosmetic dental practice offering personalized dental care to patients in Denville, New Jersey. Denville Dentist upholds a philosophy of providing leading preventative care to ensure patients reach and maintain proper oral health. Dr. Hal H. Kimowitz is a Fellow and Diplomate in the International Congress of Oral Implantology, Diplomate in the American Society of Osseointegration, Fellow in the Academy of General Dentistry, graduate of the Misch Institute of Implant Dentistry and member of numerous professional organizations. Dr. Adam S. Kimowitz is a graduate, Alumni President elect and lecturer at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine and founder and president of the Grassroots Dental Study Club. He is also a credentialed Fellow of the International College of Oral Implantologists and a credentialed Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry. Drs. Kimowitz offer the latest techniques in a variety of services including implant, cosmetic, and laser dentistry. To learn more about Denville Dentist, Drs. Kimowitz or the services they offer, visit http://www.denvilledentist.com or call 973-627-3363 to schedule an appointment.
The International Symposium for Testing & Failure Analysis (ISTFA) 2017, the annual conference and exposition organized by the ASM Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society, took place from November 5-9 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, CA. It was the highest attended ISTFA in 10 years, attracting over 860 attendees and featuring a mix of new technology, exhibits, technical programming, and networking events geared toward the electronic device failure analysis industry and the theme Striving for 100% Success Rate.

The ISTFA 2017 technical program highlighted the latest research and industry insights from more than 120 industry experts and 18 sessions over the conference duration. Technical programs on the show floor showcased plenary speaker, Adam Steltzner, Team Leader & Chief Engineer EDL, NASA Mars Rover Curiosity, and the panel discussion: Striving for 100% Success Rate. Steltzner gave his presentation The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership and High Stakes Innovation to over 300 attendees.

The exhibit show floor housed 115 booths for the two-day exposition. Attendees were able to network with industry professionals while being exposed to the latest technologies in electronic device failure analysis. Additional conference highlights comprised of two educational short courses focusing on techniques and tools for failure analysts, a Tools of the Trade Tour that included 10 exhibiting companies and 200 registered attendees, and a networking event with a Mexican flare at the Westin Hotel. The event had over 300 people in attendance who enjoyed a Mariachi band, caricature artists, and more.

Overall, the event was a huge success and paved the way for the 2018 ISTFA Conference and Exposition in Phoenix. To find more information on the 2018 conference and exposition, visit: http://bit.ly/ISTFA18

or to learn about other ASM International conferences and events, visit: http://bit.ly/ASMEvents

Interested in exhibiting at ISTFA 18 in Phoenix? The exhibit floor space is already filling up, so dont hesitate. Contact ASM National Sales Manager, Erik Klingeman, at exposales@asminternational.org or call 440.338.5151 ext. 5574.

ASM International is the worlds leading professional organization for materials scientists, engineers, and technicians. ASM delivers professional development and improved materials performance for over 25,000 individual members, and over 7,000 corporations served by ASM members worldwide. ASM engages and connects members to a global network of peers and provides trusted materials information through reference content, education courses, international conferences, and applied research.

To learn more about ASM International, visit http://www.asminternational.org or call 440.338.5151 to speak with an ASM International representative.
Throughout the month of October, Homes & Land magazines across the United States doned pink ribbons on their covers in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in order to raise money for cancer research.

Magazine publishers and advertisers joined forces on a local level, while Homes & Lands corporate office contributed with a $10,000 donation. The brand showcased its support through ribbon sponsorships, featured agent pages, pink listings, and more.

The American Cancer Society predicts an estimated 252,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer to be diagnosed in women in the U.S. in 2017, along with 63,410 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer. Despite these high numbers, breast cancer death rates have been decreasing over the past decade as a result of early detection, more advanced research, better treatment options, and increased awareness.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is intended to further increase the scope of the disease by keeping breast cancer at the forefront of the public eye, while also raising money for detection and research through various events throughout the U.S. during the entire month of October.

Several market magazines reported their money earned last month toward cancer research, with more results still to come.

Andrea Barrett-Casterano, Owner and Publisher of Homes & Land of Tucson submitted a magazine with 100 percent of its pages decorated with pink ribbons, totaling $840 towards research.

Another local publisher, Jo Anne Torkildson, raised approximately $4,725 between her two markets which was donated to a local Northern Colorado organization, Hope Lives. Homes & Land of Malibu also contributed roughly $5,000 to be donated toward local cancer research.

We are so very proud of our publishers who put their heart and soul into raising donations for this very important cause, Brand Leader Doug Smidley said. Not only did they help make sure that we would be donating $10,000 nationally by filling their magazines with pink ribbons, but they also raised significant donations for their local breast cancer organizations.

Homes & Land is one of the most trusted brands in real estate and a leading marketer of properties for sale in print and online at HomesAndLand.com. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, the company supports a franchise network of more than 230 Homes & Land-affiliated magazines in over 22,000 communities throughout the United States and Canada. Homes & Land distributes more than 27 million magazines a year and provides its agent customers with a comprehensive integrated marketing program and buyers and sellers with one of the most recognizable and reliable real estate resources.

For more information about the Homes & Land Cares campaign or the company, contact Rosanna Beron, Director of Product & Brand Management at rberon(at)npmg.com.
Miramar Global Executive Search Consultants LLC, a leading global search firm who recently underwent a merger with US based company DES recruitment, are supporting the charity Future for Heroes through the Work for Good organisation. They have announced double success in the work they have been doing with the charity.

Work for Good is an organisation who connect charities to businesses to help them with funding or services. Members, like Miramar Global, will choose one or more charities to support that fit with their own mission and values. Miramar have been working with Future for Heroes since 2015. The charity organisation serves the Armed Forces and Veterans of all ranks returning to civilian life. Miramar Global works with Future for Heroes to support and place military veterans into positions ranging from board members and CEOs for mid-market companies through to Directors and Managers for larger corporates.

With quality experience in identifying and acquiring executive leaders for businesses worldwide, Miramar have been successful in managing candidates associated with Future for Heroes through interviews and selection processes. Recent successes include the appointment of not one, but two individuals, Sean Taylor and Christian Yates, as Trustees at the charity.

Graham Brown, CEO of Future for Heroes commented, Future for Heroes is hugely grateful to Miramar Global Executive Search for all their support over the years for what we do. Most recently and to notable success was their finding of two excellent Trustees who have recently joined our Board. More routine is Miramars continuing advice and support [for example] in marketing and social media. Many thanks to all at Miramar, long may our relationship continue and thrive.

Miramar Global and Future for Heroes will continue to partner and provide ongoing support to Armed Forces and Veterans who are returning to civilian life and work.

About Miramar Global Excutive Search Consultants LLC: Miramar Global Executive Search is a leading search firm working across the TMT, industrial, life sciences, media and technology and energy sectors. They work with businesses around the world to identify and acquire the most qualified inidviaudsl for executive leadership positions.

If you would like further information on Miramar Global Executive Search then please visit https://www.miramar.global.
Technology is an increasingly competitive and fast changing industry. A common challenge faced by technology providers is the challenge of maintaining its day-to-day activities while simultaneously innovating and creating new strategies to grow their businesses.

Kalleo Technologies has announced that Dallas-based cloud service provider ManageWatch has chosen the company as its technology service provider. Under this agreement, Kalleo will provide help desk support to all ManageWatch clients.

As a cloud service provider, ManageWatch helps clients transform their business by helping them save money, grow their company and increase their prosperity by transiting traditional, on-premise network environments to a Cloud Area Network. ManageWatch leverages Microsoft Azure and other prominent cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to help its clients perform more, secure its data, improve business continuity and compliance while reducing costs and improving IT reliability. To be successful in this increasing complex and competitive industry, ManageWatch recognized it had to invest more of its time in innovation while simultaneously improving the flexibility and efficiency of its internal operations and customer support and response. Kalleos technical support team will become a seamless part of the ManageWatch support team to provide its clients with a superior customer experience, whether they need routine troubleshooting or enhanced technical support. By alleviating their staff of these critical, yet time-consuming high touch activities, ManageWatch will focus its internal staff on innovative cost-saving transformational cloud service business.

The decision to transition to the cloud can be overwhelming for businesses, explains T. Sean Teague, CEO of ManageWatch. We help our clients evaluate the benefits that private cloud and hybrid cloud environments can deliver to their organizations. There is no doubt the cloud will save most companies money and increase their growth and valuation. We pride ourselves on the depth of our knowledge of the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. In addition to helping our clients migrate their traditional, on-premise networks to Azure, we ensure their cloud environments are properly optimized to deliver the most efficient, cost effective solution to maximize their return on investment. This new business relationship with Kalleo will allow us to continue to deepen our level of expertise in the cloud while maintaining the high-quality help desk support our clients expect from us.

Technology is an increasingly competitive and fast changing industry, says Jim Crocco, Senior Vice President of Kalleo Technologies. A common challenge faced by technology providers is the challenge of maintaining its day-to-day activities while simultaneously innovating and creating new strategies to grow their businesses. Kalleo eliminates the operational burdens often associated with IT. We can provide 24x7x365 technical support with a team of highly-trained customer service personnel. By outsourcing this critical, yet time consuming and expensive business unit to Kalleo, ManageWatch will simplify the complexity of its internal operations enabling its team to focus on its core cloud competency, concludes Crocco.

To learn more about the services Kalleo Technologies provides to technology partners, please visit our website at http://www.kalleo.net/technology-partners/.

About Kalleo Technologies:

Kalleo Technologies is where technology goes for support. Kalleo was founded on the principle that the combination of a talent rich Micropolitan IT Factory synced with highly trained IT Consultants, and System Engineers in Urban Markets would revolutionize the delivery of next generation IT Services. Since our inception, we have taken this vision and proven that the model was not only effective but highly scalable. Kalleos IT Support Packages are purpose built and customer specific. We help clients in the healthcare, transportation, government and technology verticals choose the level of support that is right for their organization and its unique needs.
On Second Thought (OST) today announced its partnership with Ultra Mobile to bring message delay and recall technology to Ultra Mobiles global network of subscribers.

Ultra Mobile subscribers will now be able edit, delay and recall messages in real-time using OSTs patented technology. The new features will be available to all Ultra Mobile service subscribers at no additional cost.

We are thrilled to partner with Ultra Mobile to bring premium features like our delay and recall technologies to their valued subscribers, said Maci Peterson, CEO and co-founder of OST.

Ultra Mobile praised OSTs ease of implementation, cost efficiency and the "stickiness" of the product.

We are committed to keeping friends and families connected with an effortless customer experience, said Sherrie Simmons, Ultra Mobiles chief operating officer. Only through innovations, like On Second Thoughts message recall technology, will we be able to do this while preserving our affordability.

Since its founding in 2014, OST has driven revenue growth through major partnerships in the telco, peer-to-peer payments and unified communications industries, and is set to become the definitive delay-recall mechanism for mobile communications platforms.

The partnership links OSTs mission  to increase clarity and understanding to deepen communications and bridge global relationships  with Ultra Mobiles focus on the estimated 40 million foreign-born people living in the United States who call or text internationally to stay connected with family and friends.

In partnering with Ultra Mobile, OST adds a global network across 200 countries to its expanding service reach, while offering an effortless benefit for Ultra Mobile subscribers.

About On Second Thought

Founded in 2014, On Second Thought (OST) provides control over conversations and communications for a truer digital self. Its highly scalable API gives users a patented, tangible means to recall and edit their messages in real-time. OST believes clarity and understanding build stronger bonds that bridge global relationships  because no one deserves a permanent, easily sharable, and undeletable record of their missteps. OST was featured at Google Demo Day and won several pitch competitions including #StartupOasis at South by Southwest. It has been called "The Texting Savior" by AT&T and featured on the TODAY Show, NPR, Inc, USA TODAY, Forbes, NYLON, Refinery29 and other media outlets around the world.

About Ultra Mobile

Founded in 2011, Ultra Mobile is a non-contract nationwide mobile carrier, focusing on delivering innovative, cost effective mobile voice, text, and data services for people living in the United States who regularly call or text internationally. Its international services reach over 200 destinations, providing convenient and affordable solutions that connect people with their extended families, friends and colleagues living around the world. In an effort to further democratize communications for all, Ultra Mobile launched mobile wireless provider Mint SIM in 2016, a service for the savvy internet shopper who are looking for flexible options at incredible value. In 2015, Ultra Mobile ranked #1 on the Inc. 500 as the fastest-growing private company in the United States. Ultra Mobile is co-headquartered in New York City and Southern California, with more than 150 employees based in USA, Europe, and Asia. The company offers customer support in English, Chinese, and Spanish. For more information, visit: http://www.ultramobile.com.

Press Contact

On Second Thought

Shannon Barr

sbarr@rogersandcowan.com

310.854.8120
"Solyo makes any product smarter and sets a new standard for customer engagement practice."

Connecting the Smart Product technology of Solyo with the high-touch business of My French Cellar delivers truly remarkable interactivity with wine lovers around the globe. Using the Solyo platform and NFC or QR tags, each bottle can engage a unique conversation with consumers, tailored to each moment of their needs: in store or at home.



In a store, bottles will typically present pre-sales information with enlightening details, telling stories, presenting ratings, tasting note or e-coupon relevant to specific stores.

At home, richer content is made available such as videos of vineyards, the wine maker or the various awards won over the years. Solyo also delivers Add to cart buttons from retailers or stores nearby to expedite the refill.

My French Cellar helps wine professionals to import and distribute French wines in the US. They orchestrate the entire importation and distribution. Thanks to Solyo, a story now comes across the ocean with the bottle, a story about people, places, time and culture.

We want our customers to truly connect with the wines we represent, to form a bond with the vineyard itself, the wine maker, the winery and their history. Solyo gives us the platform to quickly and effectively bring robust, interactive experiences directly to the mobile devices of our customers, in the comfort of their own home. Together, My French Cellar and Solyo are delivering the next-generation experiences that delight customers and generate significant additional sales for all our partners and retailers states Delphine Le Devehat, founder and CEO of My French Cellar.

She continues, Our clients are facing tremendous pressures to elevate their customer engagement practice, brand awareness, social interactions, mobile penetration and overall customer loyalty. With the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality, the partnership between Solyo and My French Cellar could not have been formed at a better time. Together were able to bring exciting and engaging mobile experiences to market quickly, efficiently and affordably.

About My French Cellar:

Founded in 2013 in Cupertino, My French Cellar imports and distributes French wines in California for brands and individuals. Forming a direct connection between the winery and the consumers, Solyo gives My French Cellar the opportunity to delight its consumers, while enabling its retailers and brands. To learn more about My French Cellar, please visit: https://www.myfrenchcellar.com.

About Solyo:

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Solyo provides a first-class solution to disrupt the customer engagement space, engaging consumers with stunning mobile experiences, at the right moment of need. Whether a boutique retailer, or a major producer of consumer goods, Solyo has a solution that will wow your customers and leave your competition behind. By making every product smarter, across industries such as cosmetics, food & beverages and fashion, Solyo is changing the way brands and retailers reach, and keep their valued customers. To learn more about Solyo, please visit: http://solyo.io.
Dentist in Lutz, FL, Dr. Sarah Jockin, Speaks at Dentsply Sirona World Dental Meeting in Las Vegas, NV Every general dentist who does extractions should incorporate grafting into their practice.

Esteemed general dentist in Lutz, FL, Dr. Sarah Jockin, highlights the benefits of bone grafting, including the importance of socket preservation and platelet rich fibrin (PRF), during her interview with Dentsply Sirona World News. Dr. Jockin and her experienced team at Lake Park Dental offer general and cosmetic dentistry services, laser-assisted treatment, and dental implants at their state-of-the-art facility.

Patients who experience tooth loss may also discover that adjacent teeth are shifting, or the jaw bone ridge of the empty tooth socket is sinking. When a tooth root is no longer present to stimulate the jaw bone, it begins to recede and create further problems to the area and surrounding teeth. Bone grafting can successfully restore adequate volume back to this area of the jaw bone to prepare for dental implant placement. Technology of today enables dentists to provide patients with highly effective and safe bone material and PRF to accelerate healing and integration of the bone grafting site.

Patients who require a tooth extraction can benefit from socket preservation. Socket preservation is a grafting procedure that doesnt take very much time or a big inventory, but its a fabulous service to the patient, said Dr. Jockin during her interview. Socket preservation involves taking safe bone material and filling the empty tooth socket to reestablish the original bone volume in the jaw. Adequate bone volume is generally necessary before a dental implant can be placed.

PRF is a substance made from a patients blood and placed in the bone graft site to encourage integration of the new and old bone and faster healing. Dr. Jockin has received extensive training in hard and soft tissue grafting, and her team utilize PRF in bone grafting procedures and other surgeries to increase the rate of success and provide better long-term results for patients.

Dedicated to offering her patients the treatments they need to restore the look and function of their smiles, Dr. Jockin stated, Tooth replacement is my passion. Every general dentist who does extractions should incorporate grafting into their practice.

Dr. Jockin and her team at Lake Park Dental welcome new patients with missing teeth and patients in need of tooth extractions to experience the benefits of bone grafting, socket preservation, and PRF. Patients looking for a new dentist in Lutz, FL, can call Lake Park Dental during normal business hours at 813-527-9890.

About the Practice

Lake Park Dental is a general dental practice offering personalized and experienced dental care to patients in Lutz, Florida. Drs. Sarah Jockin, Sara Spear and Ashley Nati understand how important receiving comfortable and reliable dental care is, which is why they strive to create a welcoming and enjoyable environment at their state-of-the-art practice. Lake Park Dental offers skilled and comprehensive care utilizing the latest advancements in dental technology all at one office to provide convenient treatment patients can depend on. Dental implants, cosmetic dentistry, Invisalign and laser dentistry, among other services, are all offered at Lake Park Dental. More information about Drs. Jockin, Spear and Nati or the services they offer can be found on their website at http://www.implantdentisttampa.com. Those interested in scheduling a consultation can call (813) 527-9890.
Sun Tribe Solar, a leading Virginia-based solar energy company, announced today that their team will be working with the Virginia Association of Independent Schools to bring solar solutions to its members. The partnership will mean special offers for VAIS member schools to incorporate solar into their sustainability portfolios and into their classrooms.

The Virginia Association of Independent Schools is a non-profit membership association, comprised of 95 accredited and candidate schools. VAIS performs a variety of services for its members, including safeguarding the interests of these schools in matters of legislation and regulation, and also acting as an accrediting organization for independent schools in Virginia. Sponsor relationships, such as the one with Sun Tribe Solar, offer the member schools resources for services, as well as help to underwrite VAIS professional development programs.

Sun Tribe Solar has developed a special solar solution offer for members of VAIS, which includes a solar energy workshop for teachers to incorporate renewable energy into their curriculum. The workshop provides lesson plans and activities which allow students to understand how the solar array on their school is providing energy and the ways it is helping the environment.

We are so pleased to begin our partnership with Sun Tribe Solar and are encouraged by the potential impact the company will have on our environment through working with our schools, said Betsy Hunroe, Executive Director of VAIS. This will be yet another example of how VAIS connects, collaborates, and leads!

One of Sun Tribe Solars goals is to continually find ways to move renewable energy forward in Virginia, said Devin Welch, partner at Sun Tribe Solar. Working with schools gives us the unique ability to not only add more solar into the Virginia landscape, but to also educate future generations on the importance of renewables and reducing our carbon footprint. We look forward to working with the member schools and the great team at VAIS.

Sun Tribe Solar plans to hold informational webinars for VAIS members and will also be attending the VAIS Heads of School Conference in January. Please visit https://www.suntribesolar.com/vais for more information on the partnership.

About Virginia Association of Independent Schools (VAIS)

Since 1973, the Virginia Association of Independent Schools (VAIS) has served as the Commonwealths first resource for independent pre-collegiate (Pk-12) education, promoting educational, ethical, and professional excellence in its member schools. VAIS is an approved accrediting body recognized by the Virginia Board of Education and the National Association of Independent Schools and is a nonprofit voluntary membership organization of 96 independent schools across Virginia. For more information, go to http://www.vais.org.

About Sun Tribe Solar

Sun Tribe Solar is a leading solar energy company based in Charlottesville, VA. The Sun Tribe team has over 550MW of renewable energy design and installation experience and has worked with organizations such as the University of Virginia, Carilion Health System, and St. Annes-Belfield School to help them achieve their renewable energy goals. Sun Tribe Solar is one of the fastest growing private solar energy companies in Virginia and is a fully insured, Class A Alternative Energy Systems contractor licensed in the Commonwealth. For more information on how Sun Tribe Solar can help strengthen your financial operations while reinforcing your brands commitment to sustainability, please visit http://www.suntribesolar.com.
Residence 1 from McCaffrey Homes in the Santerra at Riverstone community in Madera, Calif. received a 2018 Silver Award from the National Association of Home Builders Were honored to have received two awards recognizing our architecture and design teams in one of the industrys most important award programs  Ash Knowlton, McCaffrey Homes

McCaffrey Homes, a leading local family homebuilder in Californias Central Valley, has been honored with two prestigious 2018 Silver Awards in The National Sales and Marketing Awards from The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Competing with homebuilders from across the nation, McCaffrey was recognized for excellence in architectural design and interior merchandising.

Known as The Nationals, NAHBs annual new home sales and marketing awards salute the best in the building industry for their determination, integrity, creativity and endurance.

"The Nationals are the most prestigious awards of their kind, setting the benchmark for innovations in new home design, marketing and sales," said Meredith Oliver, chairperson of the Nationals. "NAHB's commitment to recognizing originality, imagination and success has been exemplified by its award winners since the competition's inception."

Silver Award winners are the top vote recipients in each category and are finalists for the Gold Awards, to be presented January 10, 2018 at The International Builders Show (IBS) in Orlando, Florida.

McCaffrey Homes was honored in the category of Best Architectural Design for a Single Family Detached Home from 2,501 to 3,000 square feet. The award recognizes The Ivy at Riverstone  Residence 3, designed by Bassenian Lagoni Architects. The Ivy at Riverstone community is a collection of 106 single-family homes with four all-new, single-story and two-story floor plans that set fresh new standards for housing design.

The third-generation home building firm was honored with a second Silver Award  for Best Interior Merchandising of a Model Priced from $300,000 to $500,000  for the Residence 1 model in the Santerra at Riverstone community. Three additional model homes are located in Santerra at Riverstone, as well.

Were honored to have received two awards in one of the industrys most important award programs, said Ash Knowlton, president of construction for McCaffrey Homes. Both are a testament to the vision and skill of our extraordinary architecture and interior design teams.

These two distinctive new neighborhoods in the Riverstone community celebrate California living at its best, Knowlton added. Our new home designs artfully blend indoor and outdoor space in creative, beautiful and useful ways that will provide years of comfort and enjoyment for homeowners.

Started in 1982 as the Institute of Residential Marketing, The Nationals award program continues to recognize superior new home sales and marketing achievements. With 57 categories across various disciplines of the new home industry, the awards honor excellence in product and community design, advertising, marketing and sales achievements by individuals and sales teams.

During a three-day judging process, a panel of seven industry professionals from across the country determined the Silver and Gold award winners from a field of over 1,300 entries.

To view silver award winners or to order tickets to the event, visit http://www.thenationals.com.

About McCaffrey Homes

McCaffrey Homes is dedicated to building homes that last a lifetime while meeting the needs of homebuyers at every stage of life. With three generations of experience, the McCaffrey team has built more than 9,000 homes and been honored nationally and locally for the quality of its construction and service.

Currently, McCaffrey Homes is building three neighborhoods in Madera and Clovis, California: the Santerra and Ivy neighborhoods at Riverstone, a new master-planned community in Madera  and Santerra Clovis, the companys newest community in Clovis, Calif. McCaffrey has also broken ground on Tesoro Viejo, their own 1,600-acre master-planned community in Madera, which won the 2016 Outstanding Planning Award in Innovation in Green Community Planning.

For more information, visit https://www.mccaffreyhomes.com/ and http://www.tesoroviejo.com/.
Compassion International, a leading authority on child sponsorship which releases children from poverty globally, will be bringing its tour, The Compassion Experience, to the Clarksburg area December 8-11. The event will educate visitors about the realities of life in poverty as well as provide an international experience to visitors who may not ever have the opportunity to travel abroad to a developing country.

The Compassion Experience

The four-day event will be hosted by Clarksburg Church at 22820 Frederick Road in Clarksburg, Maryland from December 8-11. There, visitors will be invited on a self-guided journey where they will be immersed in the lives and stories of three children living in the Guatemala, Uganda, or the Philippines. Each childs story starts in hardship but ends in hope.

The experience includes 3,000 square feet of exhibit space, featuring replicas of the homes and environments of these three Compassion beneficiaries. The event is free and family-friendly.

We built The Compassion Experience in order to really bring the developing world to America, said Mark Hanlon, Compassion Internationals senior vice president of global marketing and engagement. When people think of poverty, they often think of the lack of things, the lack of stuff, the lack of money. Those are all symptoms of poverty. The real issue of poverty is the lack of hope. Through our holistic child development program, Compassion stirs hope in children. And youll see that hope come to life at this event."

The Poverty Problem

The tour is highly interactive, using individual iPods and headsets to offer visitors a sense of what life is like in extremely poverty-stricken areas around the world where the World Bank estimates that 700 million (9.6 percent of the global population) live on less than $1.90 a day (USD). In the areas Compassion serves, nearly one in five children die before the age of five, mostly from preventable causes, and 124 million children worldwide do not attend school, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

Tour-goers will have the opportunity to change the story of children living in poverty by learning more about the issue, as well as Compassions child sponsorship program, which tackles global poverty one child at a time. Compassion currently serves more than 1.8 million children in 25 of the world's most impoverished countries.

We are so excited to host such an amazing and life-changing event for the city of Clarksburg, MD. It is not only life-changing for the children whose stories we will hear and see, but for every single person who walks through this interactive event. We realize that being hosted on the parking lot of a church can be a turn off for many, but this event isnt about the church, its about the children and families who are living without hope in third world countries. - Beth Wolff, Lead Teaching Pastor, Clarksburg Church http://www.clarksburgchurch.com/beth-wolff-lead-teaching-pastor

For more information about The Compassion Experience, visit http://www.CompassionExperience.com, @compassion_exp on Twitter, and http://www.facebook.com/CompassionExperience on Facebook.

About Clarksburg Church

Originally named Lakewood Church of God, Clarksburg Church was founded in 2014 and is led by Teaching Pastor, Beth Wolff. Clarksburg Church is a campus of Fairfax Community Church, located in Fairfax, VA. Their mission of creating relevant environments in which to gather equipped and empowered people to love God and love others is changing the City of Clarksburg, surrounding cities and people across the world through international partnership TeacHaiti, Heart for Lebanon, Wycliffe, IJM, Partners in Hope, Villages of Hope, Maketplace & Development Enterprises, Kima International School of Theology, World Relief. For more information, visit http://www.clarksburgchurch.com or follow them on Facebook or Instagram @clarksburgchurch.
"We're always searching for innovative technologies that increase energy efficiencies while reducing the environmental impacts of energy production," said Ben Fowke, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy.

Powerphase today announced that it has closed an investment from strategic investors including Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL), the nations top wind energy provider. In addition to the investment from Xcel Energy, Powerphase is welcoming ClearSky Managing Director James Huff to its Board of Directors. This latest investment will be used to grow global sales of the Powerphase products through expanded strategic partner relationships.

Powerphase was founded in 2012 by energy industry veteran Bob Kraft. The company has multiple global installations of its flagship product, Turbophase, a quick response time and cost-effective way to upgrade new or existing gas turbines to produce more power, more efficiently while increasing grid operational flexibility. Krafts previous company, PSM, was first acquired by Calpine, a U.S. independent power producer, then in 2007 by the global manufacturing conglomerate, Alstom, for $241 million.

As an energy provider serving millions of customers, were always searching for innovative technologies that increase energy efficiencies while reducing the environmental impacts of energy production, said Ben Fowke, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy. Were pleased to partner with Powerphase, a company that shares our commitment to providing quality products and services to customers.

Natural gas power generation is increasing at record rates globally, creating an attractive market for turbine enhancements. Powerphases Turbophase technology drives gas turbine efficiency and savings through a modular system that can be used both to upgrade existing generators and augment new installations. The Turbophase product benefits from three macro trends in power: increasing renewable energy, increasing use of natural gas, and increasing distributed generation.

The power industry is moving rapidly in the direction of natural gas power generation, and Powerphases groundbreaking patented air efficiency technologies are leading the way in innovation, with significant market-changing potential. Powerphase is looking forward to introducing its disruptive turbine enhancement products to leading energy providers around the globe, said ClearSky Managing Director and Powerphase Board member, James Huff.

About Powerphase

Powerphase has commercialized advanced quick response aero-thermal technology for power generation and industrial applications to use air more efficiently and effectively in combustion turbines leading to revolutionary advancements in renewable energy support and grid efficiency. The management team has leading expertise in combustion turbine design and technology, combined with deep experience in the power industry. There are 10 patents awarded and more than 80 patents pending on the companys technology. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Jupiter, Florida. For more information, visit powerphase.com.
FDA's Regulation of Regenerative Medicine including Stem Cell Treatments, Tissue Engineering and Gene Therapies

ComplianceOnline, the leading governance, risk and compliance advisory network with over 500 experts in various regulatory subjects, today announced a seminar on FDA's Regulation of Regenerative Medicine including Stem Cell Treatments, Tissue Engineering and Gene Therapies. The two-day seminar led by Gwen Wise-Blackman will be held on February 1 and 2, 2018 in San Francisco, CA.

This training workshop will provide a historical context for the use of stem cells in medicine, where the field has been and where it is going.

For more information or to register for the seminar, please visit the event website:

http://www.complianceonline.com/fda-regulation-regenerative-medicine-stem-cell-tissue-engineering-gene-therapies-seminar-training-80340SEM-prdsm?channel=PRWEB_12072017

Speaker Gwen Wise-Blackmans career focus has been in High-Throughput Screening, Cell-Based Assay Method Development and Validation, and Quality Assurance. Gwen has a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from M.I.T and a PhD in Pharmacology from UVa. She is a member of ASQ and AAPS.

This two-day workshop will host discussions on fundamentals of stem cells and on how the FDA regulates regenerative treatments and therapies. The various sessions will also address drug and biological approval process, applicable good manufacturing and good laboratory practices, and FDA and other federal agency enforcement action. In addition, the course will provide the various examples of FDA approved use of stem cells in medicine and what is needed for the field to progress.

Dates:

Thursday, February 1, 2018 (8.30 AM- 4.30 PM) and Friday, February 1, 2018 (8.30 AM- 4.30 PM)

Location: San Francisco, CA

Registration Cost: $1,899.00 per registration

Early bird discounts: For discounts on early registrations, please click here.

Register by phone: Please call our customer service specialists at +1-888-717-2436 or email customercare(at)complianceonline.com

For more information on ComplianceOnline or to browse through our trainings, please visit our website.

About ComplianceOnline

ComplianceOnline is a leading provider of regulatory compliance trainings for companies and professionals in regulated industries. ComplianceOnline has successfully trained over 35,000 professionals from 9,000 companies to comply with the requirements of regulatory agencies. ComplianceOnline is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and can be reached at http://www.complianceonline.com. ComplianceOnline is a MetricStream portal. MetricStream (http://www.metricstream.com) is a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions for global corporations.

For more information please contact:

A Reuben Bernard

Associate Director - ComplianceOnline

2600 E Bayshore Rd

Palo Alto CA USA 94303

Phone - +1-650-238-9656 | +1-888-717-2436

Fax - 650-362-2367

Mail: reuben(at)complianceonline.com

Website: http://www.complianceonline.com
Tractor ploughing a field Charles Hooker says, Our software is easy to use, flexible and has created a central repository for AF to store invoices and other corporate data. It's an excellent example of where EDMS really delivers commercial value given a manual paper-based way of managing invoices has been removed."

Filestream announces that the largest not-for-profit agricultural purchasing organisation in the UK, AF Group, is using its electronic document management software (EDMS) to manage all the storage and indexing of invoices which total around 480,000 per year.

With a turnover in excess of 230 million annually, The AF Group (AF) purchases around 10% of the UKs total farm inputs on behalf of its 3,500 stakeholder members. Working with 1,900 suppliers, it procures 200,000 tonnes of fertiliser, 80 million litres of fuel, 105,000 tonnes of livestock feed, 500 cars and over 2 million worth of tyres. In addition, AF manages 14,000 mobile phone and 5,o00 fixed lines contracts.

With its headquarters in Norfolk, AF formed in January 2003 as a result of the merger of two long established buying groups - Loddon Farmers and Mid Norfolk Farmers.

Alex Morton, AFs operations manager, says, We get greater buying power for our members through economies of scale, with an efficient back office service reducing their administrative overheads. It means farmers can get on and farm rather than dealing with all the invoicing and accounting tasks related to the purchasing of equipment and supplies for their businesses.

EDMS solves the paper handling process each month

With so many transactions and a membership growing year on year, managing the invoice process was a paper handling headache given that most came by post. Each month, AF used to collate all the invoices from suppliers, photocopy and then post the members the originals as a printed consolidated pack with a statement outlining the amount due. Self-evidently, this was hugely laborious, time-consuming, inefficient and error prone.

To solve this, AF has worked closely with suppliers so that many now submit invoices electronically  via either email or XML  with an EDMS from Filestream purchased to store and index them. Today, 40% of invoices are processed via XML up from 20% in 2015. Error rates with billing are just 0.4% - an impressive figure given the quantity of invoices received. Paper invoices received are scanned and stored in File Stream, too.

File Stream integrates with AFs bespoke built CRM called AFi which allows all staff in the office to view any invoice related to a supplier or member at the touch of a button. The use of XML also means that staff avoid having to rekey information into its systems thereby improving data capture.

Alex Morton says, Were trying to extract more data from our invoices so we can complete further analysis about what were buying. Historically, if an invoice was received with 20 or so line items, for example, this would be entered as 1 line and coded to machinery, which is not very useful. Now we use a tool called Esker to extract all the detail from a PDF invoice and then business intelligence and data analytics software from Tableau to interrogate this

further. This means ultimately well be in a better position to assess at a granular level precisely what were buying and then negotiate better prices with suppliers on behalf of our members.

The use of an EDMS to store copies of all invoices helps AFs back office staff to automate the generation of members eBilling packs each month.

Alex Morton says, Our eBilling process has become quite advanced, allowing us to consolidate 40,000 invoices each month and send packs to each member, 75% of which are e-mailed. Members can also view invoices via a portal called AF Interactive, and then download accounts data straight into their own software packages like Farm Plan.

While 95% of the content stored in File Stream is invoice related, AF is also using the software to manage other corporate information such as membership renewal forms, contracts and order confirmations.

EDMS delivers clear return on investment

File Stream is delivering five key benefits to AF:

1. Productivity is enhanced through the removal of paper-based processes. Compared to the volumes in 2003, AF processes about ten times as many invoices each month but with the same number of administrative staff;

2. Service to members is improved as billing information is provided accurately to them and on time.

3. Levy costs to members per transaction have been maintained due to the increased efficiency of AFs back office operation.

4. Access to accounting and corporate information is quick and easy and available at a touch of a button.

5. Data retention policies can easily be set in the software so that auditing and compliance rules are met.

Charles Hooker, Filestreams managing director, says, Our software is easy to use, flexible and has created a central repository for AF to store invoices and other corporate data. It is an excellent use case example of where EDMS really delivers commercial value given a manual paper-based way of managing invoices has been removed.

About Filestream Limited

Based in Wokingham, Filestream Limited is a supplier of electronic document management software. First developed in 2003, Filestreams EDMS is written in-house by developers using current Microsoft technology including MS SQL and .net framework. It integrates with and has the same look and feel as Office 2010. The software is suitable for use in any industry by any size of company up to 1,000 staff or as a departmental solution in larger organisations. For further information, please visit http://www.filestreamsystems.co.uk

For further information, please contact

Tom Herbst

Tom Herbst PR

T:07768 145571

Email: tom(at)tomherbstpr.co.uk
 Orders received increase by 6.3 percent to 4.4 billion



Profitability in core business strengthened further, Groups net result at an all-time high (596 million)

Sales remain stable at 4.2 billion

Implementation of the digital agenda going according to plan

Electromobility roadmap presented

After a good fiscal year 2016/17, the Voith Group is entering a new growth phase strategically, operationally and financially strengthened. Orders received in the previous year improved by 6.3 % to  4.4 billion and so exceeded expectations. The Voith Paper Group Division made a particular contribution to that, growing its orders received strongly by 24%. Orders on hand at the end of the fiscal year remained at a high level of  5.2 billion (previous year:  5.3 billion). Sales at the Group were  4.2 billion and so, as forecast, were able to be maintained at the high level of the previous year, despite a challenging market environment.

Operating business developed positively in the companys 150th anniversary year with a further increase in the profitability of its core business. The profit from operations at its three traditional Group Divisions Voith Hydro, Voith Paper and Voith Turbo rose to a total of  304 million (previous year:  295 million); Voith Paper stood out here in particular, posting a hefty in-crease of 40 %. However, the profit from operations reported for the Voith Group fell to  241 million ( 275 million), mainly due to the planned start-up costs for Voith Digital Solutions. The Groups net result climbed to an all-time high of  596 million (previous year:  29 million).

The high proceeds from the sale of KUKA meant a significant improvement in the Groups financial position in the past fiscal year. The equity ratio in the Group reached a historic high of 27.3% (previous year: 14.9 %). The Voith Groups financial strength also improved sharply. Net liquidity increased in the same period to  648 million (previous year:  168 million).

Fiscal 2016/17 was a good year for Voith  with a clear confirmation that our operational earnings power has grown sustainably, a comfortable financial position and a significant improvement in our balance sheet. Were fully on track to achieve our goal of positioning Voith as a significant shaper of the digitial industry, stated Dr. Hubert Lienhard, President and CEO.

Clear focus on issues of the future

The Group pressed ahead with implementing its digital agenda in the past fiscal year. All initiatives at the Voith Digital Solutions Group Division are going according to plan. In the two fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18, Voith invests a total of around  100 million in developing digital products and services, on top of the around  225 million the Group spent on research and development (in fiscal year 2016/2017). The Group thus increased its forward-looking investments appreciably. Expenditure on research and development amounted to 5.3% of sales.

However, Voith is not only making massive efforts to drive its digital transformation across all Group Divisions, but is also investing in other issues of the future with great potential for growth. In the past fiscal year, the Voith Turbo Group Division presented a strategic roadmap for tapping the market for electric drives. In the field of electromobility, the company aims to become a system vendor for electric drives and digital vehicle and fleet management systems in the coming years. It is to present its own fully electric drive for buses and a dynamic fleet management system to the trade public at the 2018 IAA Commercial Vehicles show.

Outlook: Voith Group on a good footing for future growth

The Group anticipates perceptible growth in sales and a further increase in orders received for the 2017/18 fiscal year that has just started. The profit from operations in core business is also expected to improve. Voith will continue to shoulder the high start-up costs for the Voith Digital Solutions Group Division, which is to unfold greater dynamism in the current fiscal year, from current operations. Even taking into account these additional investments, which are once again expected to be well in the double-digit million range as in the previous year, the Voith Groups profit from operations is to increase slightly.

About Voith

Voith is a global technology group. With its broad portfolio of systems, products, services and digital applications, Voith sets standards in the markets of energy, oil & gas, paper, raw materials and transport & automotive. Founded in 1867, Voith today has more than 19,000 employees, sales of 4.2 billion and locations in over 60 countries worldwide, and is thus one of the largest family-owned companies in Europe.
Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD) Names Deaf-Owned Mozzeria First Business Partner of Its Social Venture Fund  the First of Its Kind in the United States

CSD Investment to Establish First Deaf-Owned and Operated U.S. Franchise

Communication Service for the Deaf (CSD) announced today that Mozzeria  a Deaf-owned Neapolitan pizzeria - is the first-ever business partner of its Social Venture Fund, with the goal to expand the Mozzeria brand into a franchise. Based in San Franciscos Mission neighborhood, Mozzeria opened in 2011 as the citys first Deaf-owned restaurant and remains one of only a handful of Deaf-run businesses today in the United States.

The CSD Social Venture Fund is the first-ever social impact fund and incubator for Deaf-owned businesses in the United States, according to CSD. CSD created this multi-million dollar fund in 2017 to help address the 70% unemployment and underemployment rate among Deaf Americans. CSD is the worlds largest nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and cultivating greater opportunity for millions of Deaf people worldwide.

Melody Stein created Mozzeria with her husband Russ who also is Deaf. Their business soon expanded to include catering, delivery and mobile food trucks. The franchise idea became apparent to us as more Deaf visitors from all across the United States and other countries expressed the wish that they had a Mozzeria in their own hometowns, said the Steins. We saw an opportunity with CSDs Venture Fund to extend our business model and increase the Deaf workforce. With CSDs support we now have the opportunity to significantly grow and expand our business and create more opportunities for Deaf businessowners.

The best way to combat the unacceptable and massive employment gap for Deaf Americans is to showcase the exceptional talents and successes of people who are Deaf, said CSD Chief Executive Officer Chris Soukup. This is one of the primary reasons we established our fund and I can think of no better first-recipient than Mozzeria. Without question, Melody and Russ are an extraordinary success story and an inspiration to all of us.

As part of the CSD fund and incubator program, Mozzeria will receive capital funding and resource support, as well as develop training materials in American Sign Language (ASL) modeled on the success of Mozzerias San Francisco location. Additional fund partners will be named by CSD at a later date.

Key fund selection criteria include: creating an impact and aligning with CSDs commitment to prosperity among Deaf people everywhere; having the potential to grow and be scalable; demonstrating leadership through a clear and far-reaching vision; and offering innovative products and services that provide a unique spin on traditional approaches, or that are entirely new innovations.

There is a clear and demonstrated need for this kind support within the Deaf community, as the Fund received 50 proposals during the first round, said Soukup.

About the Steins

Melody was born in Hong Kong and learned the business from her parents who owned restaurants in Hong Kong and San Francisco. Russ is a third-generation New Yorker. Russ and Melody met while attending Gallaudet University and bonded over a common love of food. When they first moved to San Francisco in 1995, Russ realized he missed the Italian restaurants and pizzerias of New York. Any way you slice it, the rest is history.

About Mozzeria

Mozzeria has an all Deaf staff and nearly everything in the restaurant was designed or built by Deaf people, including all the artwork on the walls. For more information on the restaurant, catering services, food truck and menu items please visit http://www.Mozzeria.com.

About CSD

For more information on the CSD Social Venture Fund and CSD please visit http://www.CSDSVF.com.

Contacts:

Alana Cowan

alanacowan5(at)gmail(dot)com

973-809-4858

Brandi Rarus

Communication Service for the Deaf

brarus(at)csd(dot)org
ApplyConnect.com My clients feel more secure submitting their information to ApplyConnect, knowing it's secure!

ApplyConnect, a secure, consumer-initiated background screening solution, is constantly working to improve and ensure high security standards within their tenant screening reports for real estate agents and landlords. With security qualifications like the annual Experian independent 3rd party assessment, data encryption and data protection procedures, the company continues to provide a safe and easy online tenant screening solution for real estate brokers.

Before the real estate agent and landlord user sends out a link to complete ApplyConnects online rental application, the user verifies their identity and creates a password-protected account. Each potential tenant that completes the online rental application will verify their identity and have access to view their background check while simultaneously sharing it with the real estate agent. ApplyConnects tenant screening report includes a full Experian credit report (with VantageScore 3.0), a nationwide background check with eviction, criminal history, and sex offender registry search, however, all social security and tradeline account numbers are masked from the real estate agent and property owners reports. The company assures that all data is encrypted.

Cyndi Mino, an agent from First Team Real Estate raved, My clients feel more secure submitting their information to ApplyConnect, knowing it's secure! I will get the copy of the report I need but it doesnt have any information they dont want me to have. I also love that I don't have to wait for the background report!

Alongside the companys secure consumer-initiated tenant screening reports, ApplyConnect annually undergoes an Experian Independent 3rd Party Assessment and has FTC-approved data disposal methods in place. Data security is a top priority with every ApplyConnect report, and the company assures that as new cyber threats emerge they are continuing to enhance the security of the tenant screening platform.

For more information about ApplyConnect for landlords visit https://www.applyconnect.com/tenant-screening-services and start screening today!
We chose these particular courses with the confidence that they will have a profound impact on the lives of the students, empowering them to quickly gain the education needed for a successful career.

Career Step, an online provider of career-focused education and professional training, welcomes Mid-Coast School of Technology to its academic partner network consisting of over 150 education institutions.

Mid-Coast School of Technology is passionate about providing resources for adults in their community who are looking to transition careers, said Glade Tidwell, Career Step Vice President of Academic Partnerships. We are excited to partner with them because this goal aligns well with Career Steps own mission. We believe this partnership will provide the community of Rockland, Maine with valuable training that will empower them to succeed in the workplace.

Mid-Coast School of Technology joins a network of Career Step's academic partners with more than 150 other educational institutions across the country. Included in that network are colleges and universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, West Texas A&M University and Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana.

The new partnership adds two Career Step courses to Mid-Coast School of Technologys catalog of online programs: Pharmacy Technician and Computer Technician. Both of these programs are designed to help students gain the career skills they need to start working in their chosen field in a year or less.

We are excited to partner with Career Step in offering these career-focused programs to our students, said Marianne Doyle, Director at Mid-Coast School of Technology. We chose these particular courses with the confidence that they will have a profound impact on the lives of the students, empowering them to quickly gain the education needed for a successful career.

The academic partnerships Career Step has established over the past decade have allowed students across the country to benefit from the quality career training courses offered. Together these partnerships have enabled students to successfully prepare to enter growing in-demand fields and make a difference in their community.

More information about Career Steps partnership with Mid-Coast School of Technology is available at CareerStep.com/mcst. To learn more about Career Steps academic partnership program, please visit CareerStep.com/partner.

About Career Step

Career Step is an online provider of career-focused education and professional training. The company has trained over 100,000 students for new careers as well as more than 100,000 healthcare professionals through its various continuing education courses. More than 150 colleges and universities nationwide have partnered with Career Step, and the company provides training for several of the largest and most respected healthcare employers in the nation. Career Step is committed to helping students and practicing healthcare professionals alike gain the skills they need to be successful in the workplaceimproving lives, advancing careers and driving business results through education. More information can be found at http://www.careerstep.com or 1-800-246-7837.
Transforming Infectious Disease Diagnostics with Genomics Our goal is to create a single test that can quickly help physicians deliver a potentially life-saving diagnosis, especially in cases where time is critical.

Karius, Inc., a life sciences company focused on transforming infectious disease diagnostics with genomics, is pleased to demonstrate the ability of the Karius Digital Culture TM test to rapidly and accurately identify pathogens in immunocompromised patients after a stem-cell transplant. Results from the DISCOVER Trial, a collaboration between Karius and researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, will be presented at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting in Atlanta on December 9.

The DISCOVER Trial demonstrates the utility of the Karius test in patients whose immune systems are weakened after a stem-cell transplant, said Mickey Kertesz, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Karius. We are excited to share these findings with the clinical community -- identifying Staphylococcus aureus and Chlamydia trachomatis well before other testing methods did. Our goal is to create a single test that can quickly help physicians deliver a potentially life-saving diagnosis, especially in cases where time is critical.

Diagnostic tests that accurately identify a breadth of potential pathogens are needed to inform more effective and targeted therapy, said David Hong, M.D., Medical Director at Karius. The results of our trial show that the Karius test can identify a broad range of pathogens in stem-cell transplant patients using a single blood test. This and other ongoing trials indicate the potential for the Karius test to become a standard of care in helping doctors diagnose challenging cases, including fastidious pathogens and invasive fungal infections.

The presentation at the 59th ASH Annual Meeting demonstrates the potential of the Karius test as a broad and rapid method for clinical diagnosis of infectious disease in immunocompromised patients.

About the Presentation at ASH

The DISCOVER Trial: Application of the Karius Plasma Next-Generation Sequencing Test for Pathogen Detection in Allogeneic Stem-Cell Transplant Patients (Publication #1937) Presented by Monica Fung, M.D., University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

This study prospectively enrolled 20 stem-cell transplant (SCT) patients to evaluate the Karius test for the monitoring and diagnosis of infections over time. Patients had blood drawn for the Karius test prior to SCT, at regular intervals after transplant, and at onset of fever episodes.

Results from the Karius test were then compared to the results obtained by conventional microbiologic tests. When compared to a conventional cytomegalovirus test (CMV qPCR), the Karius test showed 100% (26 of 26) concordance with results above the lower limit of quantitation for qPCR. The Karius test was also able to detect Staphylococcus aureus prior to blood culture and Chlamydia trachomatis a full 30 days before identification by a targeted assay.

This pilot study demonstrates that the Karius test can identify many co-infections in SCT patients. The use of the Karius test in SCT patients could result in earlier detection of pathogens, enabling timely targeted therapy for this vulnerable population.

About the Karius Digital Culture TM Test

The Karius test uses next-generation sequencing (NGS) and analytics for the broad and rapid detection of microbial cell-free DNA through a standard blood draw. Unlike conventional culture and panel testing methods that identify a narrow range of pathogens, the Karius test can detect more than 1,250 pathogens including bacteria, DNA viruses, and eukaryotic organisms such as yeasts, mold, and protozoa. Results are typically available within one day of sample receipt. See the full list of microorganisms detected by Karius. Through Karius CAP-accredited and CLIA-certified laboratory service, the test empowers doctors to diagnose infections quickly and provide more targeted treatment to their patients.

About Karius, Inc.

Karius is a life sciences company focused on transforming infectious disease diagnostics with genomics. The companys next-generation sequencing test for microbial cell-free DNA provides clinicians with a comprehensive test capable of identifying more than 1,250 pathogens directly from blood and helping industry accelerate drug development. For more information, visit kariusdx.com and follow us on Twitter at @kariusdx.

Contacts

Karius, Inc.

Denise Terry

650-409-5007 x160

media(at)kariusdx(dot)com
Save Our Hospital - Albert Lea, MN On behalf of my constituents served by Albert Leas hospital and in light of the Quorum report, I support community efforts to bring an alternative provider to Albert Lea. - Dan Sparks, Minnesota State Senator

Elected officials, business leaders, and SAVE OUR HOSPITAL (SOH) will now use the newly released proforma to clear hurdles and pursue an alternative provider for 55,000 people in the Freeborn County area. The report shows that another entity could operate the hospital in a different, more cost-effective manner, and would be profitable to at least $4.4 million annually. Furthermore, inpatient revenue that is currently being transferred to Rochester could be added back into Albert Leas economy.

This encouraging report signals to medical providers in the Midwest to come to Albert Lea, because not only is the county designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area (Appendix A), but also patients would be extremely welcoming of a better performing organization.

Elected and community leaders recognize the need for a second provider scenario. Dan Sparks, Minnesota state senator, District 27, stated, On behalf of my constituents served by Albert Leas hospital and in light of the Quorum report, I support community efforts to bring an alternative provider to Albert Lea. I will work with my colleagues in the Minnesota Senate to ensure any legislative roadblocks are lifted. I also believe competition is sorely needed in Southeastern Minnesotas health care market, and patients could receive high-quality health care at lower prices with another provider.

The market is controlled by only one provider with the highest overall costs in Minnesota and no clear quality differentiation. Research shows that health care monopolies dont serve patients well. This is driving up the cost of health insurance for businesses and individuals by 30-40% or more compared to the metro area.

Gerry Vogt, president and founder of Mrs. Gerrys, a major employer in the city, stated, Since our first plant opened in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in 1973, Mrs. Gerrys has innovated and expanded in every way. Our continued success depends on our ability to recruit and retain talent, and we need to ensure we offer our employees high-quality, affordable health care as part of our benefits package. I support efforts to bring an alternative provider to the city, and I look forward to working with providers to offer the most attractive health care benefits to our 200 employees in Albert Lea.

An alternative provider would gain market share and attract both physicians and patients. Patients like Don Sorensen are motivated to seek a new provider. It appears that our dominant health care organization is doing everything possible to steer patients away from Albert Lea, but there are other very qualified facilities available. I want to go to a different provider, he observed.

Reports also indicate that rural communities such as Wabasha and Belmond are successfully attracting physicians, debunking generalizations about physician shortages.

A ripple effect is spreading across southern Minnesota because of Save Our Hospitals efforts in Albert Lea. Citizens who desire local input in their communities health care choices have formed the Rural Healthcare Coalition and will take their voices to the legislature this session.
Our expansion in California throughout 2017 has been remarkable and we are elated to have found such great operations to further our expansion in the west. stated AssuredPartners President and COO Tom Riley.

AssuredPartners, Inc. is pleased to announce that Owen-Dunn Insurance Services of Sacramento, CA has joined the agency, marking its 26th completed acquisition of 2017. Owen-Dunn, founded in Sacramento in 1949, provides a wide range of insurance services throughout California to businesses and individuals, including property/casualty, surety, workers comp, employee benefits, loss control and claims management. The staff of 50 employees will continue operations under the leadership of President Owen Taylor. The current executive team will remain intact and no staffing changes are planned with this transition. The agency currently reports approximately $10.5 million in revenues.

We have been approached by agencies looking to acquire Owen-Dunn many times. This is the first time the new partnership appealed to our shareholders, stated Owen Taylor, President of Owen-Dunn. AssuredPartners is unique in their strategy of acquiring high-performing agencies and allowing them to continue to operate in the manner that has made them successful. Our success is rooted in providing a higher-level of customer services than our competitors. With AssuredPartners, none of that will change.

We have been looking to establish a platform agency in California. Owen-Dunns captive expertise, unique high-touch client service model, and sophisticated operations systems make the firm an ideal lead agency for our expansion in the state. stated AssuredPartners President and COO Tom Riley. Our expansion in California throughout 2017 has been remarkable and we are elated to have found such great operations to further our expansion in the west.

For more information on Owen-Dunn Insurance Services, please click here: http://www.owendunn.com

ABOUT ASSUREDPARTNERS, INC

Headquartered in Lake Mary, Florida and led by Jim Henderson and Tom Riley, AssuredPartners, Inc. acquires and invests in insurance brokerage businesses (property and casualty, employee benefits, surety and MGUs) across the United States and in London. From its founding in March of 2011, AssuredPartners has grown to over $900 million in annualized revenue and continues to be one of the fastest growing insurance brokerage firms in the United States* with over 200 offices in 30 states and London. Since 2011, AssuredPartners has acquired more than 190 insurance agencies. For more information, please contact Dean Curtis, CFO, at 407.708.0031 or dean.curtis@assuredpartners.com, or visit http://www.assuredpartners.com.

Business Insurance in the July 2017 edition, featuring the 100 largest brokers of U.S. business.
Propper is opening a new showroom inside their headquarters to serve the local law enforcement community. Proppers law enforcement products fit what patrol officers, detectives, and SWAT teams need on an everyday basis.

Law enforcement and tactical gear manufacturer Propper International is opening a new showroom inside their St. Charles County headquarters to serve the local law enforcement community. The new 2,000 square foot facility is adjacent to the in-house Design Lab located inside Proppers corporate headquarters at 17 Research Park Drive in the Missouri Research Park, at the corner of I-64 and Highway 94 in Weldon Spring.

We want to offer a place where local law enforcement can browse and check out not just our products, including Class B uniforms, but many other LEO necessities such as holsters, duty belts, and pouches, said Mark Marino, territory manager for the St. Louis area. We are also expanding our offering soon to include flashlights, gloves, knives, and other gear.

The showroom opens December 15 with a Holiday Welcome Event open to the public from 9:00am-4:00pm.

As a former police officer, Marino knows firsthand what officers look for in gear. Proppers law enforcement products fit what patrol officers, detectives, and SWAT teams need on an everyday basis  from shirts, pants, and boots to concealed and tactical armor.

In addition to a wide range of apparel and gear options, the new showroom will offer embroidery, hemming, and other services for local departments.

Started in 1967 by William S. Propper, the companys first contract was making the iconic white Dixie Cup hats for the US Navy. Over the next five decades, Propper grew to become the largest supplier of military BDUs and ACUs. Building on its success as a military supplier, Propper added a commercial division in 1991 and today has a strong presence in the law enforcement and civilian tactical industries with offerings that include mens and womens tactical pants and shirts, jackets, boots, everyday carry bags, backpacks, and a full selection of NIJ-certified concealed and tactical body armor, including the innovative 4PV 4-panel vest line.

About Propper

Propper is proudly celebrating 50 years in business in 2017. Making tactical gear with a purpose has been a way of life for Propper since their first U.S. Navy contract in 1967. Today, Propper designs and manufactures tactical clothing and gear that keeps military, law enforcement, and public safety professionals protected whether theyre in the service, on the job, or off for the weekend.

For more information, press only:

David Workman

636-685-1062

davidw(at)propper(dot)com

For more information on Propper:

http://www.propper.com
Blue Nile once again proves itself as the best online source for certified diamonds... Were extremely pleased to give them our highest rating in 2017.

TopConsumerReviews.com recently gave their top ranking to Blue Nile, a market leader among online retailers of Diamonds.

Choosing a diamond is an exciting experience. From a classic pair of solitaire studs, to a one-of-a-kind wedding set, having the perfect diamond can make all the difference between a treasured heirloom and jewelry that collects dust in a box. This search for the best stone takes into account such factors as size, certification, symmetry, color, and, of course, price. However, the majority of retailers in brick-and-mortar locations carry a limited selection, leaving some shoppers frustrated. Fortunately, the widest array of loose diamonds, as well as stones already in settings, is available online. This allows even the most discriminating shoppers the opportunity to find the ideal gemstone for their needs - often at prices that are considerably lower than their local jeweler.

Blue Nile once again proves itself as the best online source for certified diamonds, explained Brian Dolezal, of TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC. Every year, their selection expands, now reaching an all-time high of more than 175,000 stones from which to choose in every imaginable shape, color, and quality. Their prices have a wide range in order to meet every customers needs, from an extremely affordable $330 to an impressive $4 million. No matter how you look at it, Blue Nile is the only store that offers that level of selection, and their guarantee ensures that customers are completely happy with their purchase. Between their excellent shopping experience and their solid reputation, including an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, Blue Nile is our top pick among online retailers of Diamonds. Were extremely pleased to give them our highest rating in 2017.

To find out more about Blue Nile and other online retailers of Diamonds, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the Diamonds category of TopConsumerReviews.com at http://www.topconsumerreviews.com/diamonds/.

About Blue Nile

Blue Nile is the leading online retailer of diamonds and fine jewelry, delivering the ultimate customer experience: providing consumers with a superior way to buy engagement rings, wedding rings and fine jewelry. Founded in Seattle in 1999, Blue Nile offers in-depth educational materials and unique online tools that place consumers in control of the jewelry shopping process.

About TopConsumerReviews.com

TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC is a leading provider of independent reviews and rankings of hundreds of consumer products and services. From Diamonds to Perfume and Jewelry Stores, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make purchasing decisions easier.
Dawn Patrick is a Tax Partner with Cherry Bekaert and has over 25 years of public accounting experience.

Regarded as one of the top public accounting firms in the nation, Cherry Bekaert LLP (the Firm) is pleased to announce Dawn G. Patrick, CPA, has been named Managing Partner of the Firms practice in Nashville, Tennessee. In this capacity, she will oversee the execution of the Firms growth strategy and ensure a coordinated and seamless service experience for clients throughout the Nashville market.

Cherry Bekaert recently entered the Nashville market via an acquisition of the well-known CPA and consulting firm Frasier, Dean & Howard, PPLC. Nashville was a strategic expansion target of Cherry Bekaert due to its growing economy and innovative business climate that nurtures and attracts companies in the technology, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and transportation/logistics sectors.

Dawn is the perfect match to lead our growth and branding efforts in Nashville, remarked Kip Plowman, Managing Partner of Cherry Bekaerts Strategic Markets. Dawn is well-known in the Southeast for her work in the technology and health sciences arena, and her 25+ years of public accounting experience will allow us to expand our reach in working with leading entrepreneurs and growth companies in the Nashville metro area.

Dawn is a Tax Partner with Cherry Bekaert and serves as the Leader of THInc, the Firms specialty practice focused on the innovation needs of clients in the technology; health and life sciences; and industrial sectors. Her depth of experience advising and working with emerging and growth companies in these sectors, and their private equity and venture capital investors, will allow Cherry Bekaert to quickly expand its market presence in the Nashville market.

Patrick received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting at Auburn University. She has held numerous leadership positions and been involved with technology-oriented organizations such as the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), Women in Technology, Venture Atlanta as well as Launch Tennessees 36|86 conference. She will quickly immerse herself in the technology, healthcare and entrepreneurial scene in Nashville.

About Cherry Bekaert LLP

As a nationally recognized, growth-oriented firm, Cherry Bekaert has the resources to take your business as far as you want to go. The Firms industry specialists already know your marketplace, so they can help you make the most of emerging opportunities while minimizing compliance headaches. With their down-to-earth style and wealth of practical advice, you will find Cherry Bekaert an indispensable part of your team.

Ranked among the largest accounting firms in the country, Cherry Bekaert specializes in offering solutions that impact their clients ability to grow. For 70 years, global corporations, private businesses, government entities, nonprofits, emerging firms and successful individuals have relied on Cherry Bekaert to guide them forward as their growth partner.

Cherry Bekaert LLP is an independent member of Baker Tilly International. Baker Tilly International is the worlds 8th largest accountancy and business advisory network by combined fee income of its independent members. Baker Tilly International member firms specialize in providing accountancy and business advisory services to entrepreneurial, growing businesses and mid-market listed corporates worldwide. | cbh.com
Artifex Software, Inc. and Hancom, Inc. announced today a confidential agreement to settle their legal dispute. Case No. 3:16-cv-06982, filed by Artifex in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, concerned the use of Artifexs open source software Ghostscript under the GNU General Public License. While the parties had their differences in the interpretation of the open source license, the companies were able to reach an amicable resolution based on their mutual respect for and recognition of the copyright protection and the open source philosophy. Terms of the settlement remain confidential.

About Artifex Software, Inc.

Artifex Software is a leading provider of core technologies for document handling and management. For over 20 years, Artifex has provided premiere software products to top-level global customers. The list of global customers/partners who depend on Artifex technology include HP, Kyocera, Ricoh, Adobe, IBM, Intel, Xerox, Google, Ernst & Young, Dropbox, BlackBerry, Siemens, LG Electronics, and many more. Artifexs major product offerings include Ghostscript (PDL Interpreter that is an industry leader in PDF, PostScript, PCL, and XPS rendering and conversion), MuPDF (lightweight PDF and XPS interpreter that offers all the interactive features for PDF), and SmartOffice (mobile document productivity suite for viewing, editing, creating and printing MS Office documents and related files). Artifex is headquartered in Novato, CA, with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit: http://www.artifex.com.

About Hancom, Inc.

Hancom is a leading provider of productivity software and solutions which support users and organizations maximize the productivity of creating, editing, sharing and securing documents. During the 27 years of business, Hancom established the highest reputation in Korea with its word processor Hangul. At the same time, Hancom is providing "Thinkfree office NEO" to more than 20 countries. Hancom is also a major software and solution supplier of Korea e-Government which aims to implement innovation of government services by using information and communication technologies. Hancom is headquartered in Pangyo Techno Valley, South Korea, with offices in the USA, Belgium, China, and other countries of Asia. For more information, visit: http://www.thinkfree.com.
Year-end is a key time for financial and tax planning among the millions of employees who have stock compensation or holdings of company shares. In 2017, year-end financial and tax planning can be tricky because of the major tax changes that are likely to occur in 2018 under legislation now in Congress. To help, myStockOptions.com provides education and guidance on major issues, decisions, and innovative financial-planning strategies for the end of 2017 and the start of 2018. This content is available in the website's section Financial Planning: Year-End.

At year-end, with tax changes likely in the near future, multi-year planning is especially valuable with equity compensation. "You can control the timing of stock sales and option exercises, and you know when restricted stock/RSUs will vest," notes Bruce Brumberg, the Editor-in-Chief of myStockOptions.com.

Tax Brackets And Rates Affect Year-End Planning For Equity Compensation And Company Shares

Along with the financial- and tax-planning concepts that apply at the close of every year, in 2017 people with equity comp and company shares must still consider the ongoing impact of the tax changes that took effect under the American Taxpayer Relief Act and the Affordable Care Act.

Employees should also consider the major tax changes that are currently in Congress and are likely to be adopted soon, perhaps taking effect in 2018. These may include a simplification of individual income tax rates and the elimination of the AMT, which could result in a tax cut for many people who are now in the top tax bracket but also could result in a tax increase for others. For example, under the bill in the House of Representatives some taxpayers currently in the 33% tax bracket would move into the 35% bracket for compensation income and short-term capital gains. The current (2017) 33% tax bracket for married joint filers goes from $233,350 to $416,700 of taxable income. The income range for the proposed 35% bracket would start at $260,000, so income above that threshold would move you up to the 35% marginal tax rate.

Timely year-end guidance is particularly crucial for people who are considering option exercises or stock sales at the end of 2017. "Employees with equity grants and company shares should be aware of the 2017 and 2018 thresholds for higher tax rates on compensation income and capital gains, the additional Medicare tax on compensation income, and the Medicare surtax on investment income," notes Mr. Brumberg. "They may want to consider keeping their income below those known thresholds, if possible. If you are convinced that your tax rates will be lower in 2018 and beyond, you may want to defer income into the future and accelerate deductions into 2017."

However, caution is warranted, warns Mr. Brumberg. "Even if you predict that your tax rates are likely to change in the future, many experts maintain that tax rates should never be the only reason for exercising options or selling shares, or waiting to do so, at the end of the year. Instead, make investment objectives and personal financial needs, not tax considerations, the driver of your decisions."

Details about tax reform and its impact on stock compensation are available in the related FAQ on myStockOptions.com.

Year-End Content Provides Education And Guidance

At myStockOptions.com, the section Year-End Planning has been fully updated for 2017. Its content includes the following articles and FAQs.

Articles



Top Ideas For Year-End Tax Planning With Stock Compensation (Parts 1 and 2)

Year-End Strategies For Restricted Stock, RSUs, And Performance Shares: Seven Ideas To Consider

Year-End Strategies For Employee Stock Purchase Plans: Ideas To Consider

Stockbrokers' Secrets: Year-End Planning For NQSOs, Restricted Stock, And RSUs

Stockbrokers' Secrets: Year-End Planning For ISOs

Top Advisors Reveal Strategies For Equity Comp And Company Stock At Year-End

Making Gifts And Donations Of Company Stock

How The Trump Presidency And Tax Reform May Affect Stock Compensation

FAQs

What are some year-end strategies for restricted stock and stock options?

Next year I may be in a higher tax bracket. I am thinking about exercising my nonqualified stock options before then to accelerate income into this year. What issues do I need to think about?

My income next year will trigger higher taxes, including the 3.8% Medicare surtax on capital gains. If I sell stock this year, I can avoid these taxes and then next year repurchase the stock to reset the basis. What issues should I consider?

Alongside the core year-end articles and FAQs, other FAQs in the year-end section answer advanced related questions, including:

How can employees defer income to years when they are in a lower tax bracket?

How do the additional Medicare taxes on high earners affect planning for stock compensation?

How do employees harvest capital losses against capital gains from company stock holdings?

Are there strategies for using capital-loss carry-forwards from prior years?

What risks are posed by the wash sale rule?

What year-end strategies can help to minimize alternative minimum tax with incentive stock options?

How can employees save taxes on company stock by making gifts and donations, including those to private foundations or grantor-retained annuity trusts?

All of these questions, and many others, are answered in the section Financial Planning: Year-End Planning. In addition, the calculators and modeling tools at myStockOptions.com allow users to play out various "what if" scenarios with different tax rates and stock prices.

For similar education and guidance on year-end planning for nonqualified deferred compensation, employees can turn to myNQDC.com, a separate sibling publication of myStockOptions.com.

Corporate Licensing Available

For companies, education is vital for ensuring that stock compensation motivates and retains highly valued employees and executives. The expert yet reader-friendly content at myStockOptions.com is ideally suited for licensing by companies and stock plan providers for their stock plan participants. A customized version of the website's award-winning content can be seamlessly woven into companies' HR, benefits, and/or compensation portals. Accessible through any internet browser, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, licensed content from myStockOptions.com lets stock plan participants answer their own questions about their stock grants whenever they need to learn moresaving time for the stock plan staff and costs for the company. For more information, visit http://www.mystockoptions.com or call 617-734-1979.

About myStockOptions.com

With exclusive articles, 800+ FAQs, podcasts, videos, the Tax Center, interactive quizzes, the Learning Center with courses for CE credit, the Global Tax Guide, an extensive glossary, a smartphone app for iOS and Android devices, and dynamic patented tools, myStockOptions.com is the premier online resource of educational content and tools on stock options, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance shares, stock appreciation rights, and employee stock purchase plans. myStockOptions.com is written and managed by leading experts in equity compensation, and is produced by a company with a long history of successful publications explaining complex legal and financial subjects in plain English.

The accounting journal CPA Wealth Provider selected myStockOptions.com among companies "that have taken the lead through innovation, efficiency, initiative, or growth in the financial-planning area." The Specialized Information Publishers' Foundation honored MSO Pro with one of its Editorial Excellence Awards in the category of Best Interactive Content among niche publishers. The influential consumer magazine PC World has ranked myStockOptions.com among "the most useful sites ever" that "deliver top-notch information, support, and services."

myStockOptions.com has also received extensive favorable coverage in the media, including BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe, and on CNN, National Public Radio, PBS, Money.com, and MarketWatch.com.

myStockOptions.com has a related website on nonqualified deferred compensation at http://www.myNQDC.com. The staff also created the successful insider trading prevention video series Think Twice, available at http://www.insidertradingvideos.com.

For more information, please contact Bruce Brumberg and Matt Simon at 617-734-1979.
Seal Software and State of Flux, the global procurement and supply chain management consultancy, today announced an official partnership, established to help mutual clients extract value from their supplier contracts.

The combined strength of Seals contract analytics solution and State of Fluxs consulting services provides an end-to-end technology solution to support clients dealing with GDPR regulations. The service will make it easier to quickly identify suppliers with access to personal data and analyse relevant clauses within supplier contracts. In addition to assisting with compliance, for minimal extra effort and cost, the scope can be increased to look for hidden value in supplier contracts.

State of Flux and Seal have a track record of working together on large contract management projects and this is formal recognition of the ongoing partnership. State of Fluxs consulting, training and technology services deliver enhanced supply chain capabilities, drive best practice and deliver real business value to large multi-national organisations. Seals Artificial Intelligence and machine learning platform enables enterprise clients to find, centralise and analyse unstructured data such as that contained within supplier contracts to reduce risk, ensure compliance, and discover hidden revenue opportunities and cost savings.

The combination of Seals contract discovery and analytics software and State of Fluxs consultancy services provide a solution that is a faster, more accurate and more effective means of meeting regulatory and contract management challenges. The off-the-shelf managed services shorten the time to results and remediation, which is of value in the case of regulatory compliance and legislative change.

In a climate of numerous regulatory challenges, State of Flux was looking for a contract analytics partner to help support their clients review processes for compliance with the GDPR, serving multinational clients across global regions. Seal was selected because of its leading AI platform which offers the widest capability and scalability in the industry.

We are always looking to help our clients get more value from their supplier network. Working with Seal incorporates leading edge technology with our expertise in supplier management, commented Nick Hyner, Managing Director Europe, State of Flux.

State of Flux is an authority on supplier relationship management, and has the expertise that ensures that their clients build their SRM programme on a solid foundation. By supplementing their service offering with solutions such as Seal, we believe that their clients can access revenue generating and cost saving actionable insights, said Dan Daehler, Vice President Alliances, Seal Software. In addition, our collaboration ensures organisations get their arms around their contracts to ensure they are prepared in the ever-evolving regulatory landscape. Were thrilled to be working with them.

About Seal Software

Seal Software is the leading provider of contract discovery, data extraction, and analytics. With Seals machine learning and natural language processing technologies, companies can find contracts of any file type across their networks, quickly understand what risks or opportunities are hidden in their contracts, and place them in a centralized repository. Based in San Francisco, Seal empowers enterprises around the world to maximize revenue opportunities, reduce costs, and mitigate risks associated with contractual documents, systems, and processes. For more information, visit Seal Software at http://www.seal-software.com.

About State of Flux

State of Flux is a global procurement and supply chain consultancy. Head quartered in London with offices in Chicago and Sydney, supporting large multi-national clients in procurement for over 13 years. As the global expert in supplier relationship management (SRM), State of Flux help large organisations achieve both financial and non-financial value benefits, through working with strategic suppliers to identify innovative and collaborative ways to compete in an ever-changing market environment.

Their annual SRM research has 9 years of insight into supplier relationship management practices. Gathered from more than 1,800 global companies and over 1,000,000 data points. Visit http://www.stateofflux.co.uk

Contact:

Patrice Day

State of Flux

+44 207 694 4004

enquiries(at)stateofflux.co.uk
Visitors to the ASI booth will see the latest iMIS 20 features that can manage member data, events, product sales, certification programs, email marketing, online payments, websites and more in one cloud-based, mobile ready and PCI-validated system.

Advanced Solutions International (ASI), a leading global provider of software and services for associations and not-for-profits, today announced that it will demonstrate the newest iMIS 20 Engagement Management System (EMS) features in booth #513 at the ASAE Technology Conference & Expo on December 12-13 in National Harbor, Maryland. See ASIs full schedule of events at http://www.advsol.com/PRevents.

ASAE Technology Conference & Expo

December 12-13, 2017

Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center

National Harbor, MD

ASI Booth: #513

Visitors to the ASI booth will see the latest iMIS 20 features that can manage member data, events, product sales, certification programs, email marketing, online payments, websites and more in one cloud-based, mobile ready and PCI-validated system. Theyll also receive a complimentary copy of the third edition of ASIs book, The Association Execs Guide to Improving Organizational Performance, thats just been updated with new data and hands-on tools to help associations meet technological, economic and operational challenges. Copies of ASIs Data Security Best Practices and Strategies whitepaper and fun new pop-out cell phone grips will also be offered in the booth.

About ASI

Advanced Solutions International (ASI) is a global software company and recognized industry thought leader that focuses on helping associations and nonprofits increase operational and financial performance through the use of best practices, proven solutions, and ongoing client advisement. Since 1991, ASI has served nearly 4,000 clients and millions of users worldwide, both directly and indirectly through a network of more than 100 partners, and currently maintains corporate offices in the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Learn more at http://www.advsol.com.
As a precaution, Pacifica Graduate Institute has closed its Lambert campus in Carpinteria, and its Ladera campus in Santa Barbara, as of 2:15 pm today, December 6, due to extraordinary conditions from the Thomas fire. Pacifica Graduate Institute plans to reopen Monday morning, December 11, 2017. Classes will not be held December 6 - December 10.

For additional information, please contact Heidi Townshend, Director of External Affairs, Pacifica Graduate Institute at 310-804-0095.

Pacifica Graduate Institute, with two campuses in Santa Barbara, California, is a WASC-accredited graduate school offering masters and doctoral degree programs in depth psychology, mythological studies, and the humanities. The Institute has established an educational environment that nourishes respect for cultural diversity and individual differences, and a rigorous academic community with a spirit of free and open inquiry. Students have access to an impressive array of resources including the OPUS Archives and Research Center.

The mission of Pacifica Graduate Institute is to foster creative learning and research in the fields of psychology, the humanities, and mythological studies, framed in the traditions of depth psychology. Consistent with and supporting this vision, Pacifica Graduate Institute is employee-owned, and practices shared stewardship.

Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association

Opus Archives and Research Center

Pacifica Bookstore
As a marketer, I am drawn to technology that improves the customer experience, and Movable Ink sets the standard for personalization at scale.

Movable Ink, the leading provider of intelligent content software, announced today that marketing veteran Dee Anna McPherson has joined as Senior Vice President of Marketing. She will be based in San Francisco and lead global marketing strategy and programs to drive growth for the companys intelligent content platform.

McPherson brings years of experience building and scaling high-performance marketing teams and category-defining software brands from early stage through valuations of more than $1 billion.

Dee Anna has a strong track record of building world-class marketing teams and programs, said Vivek Sharma, CEO of Movable Ink. Were fortunate to have her join as our latest Inker to help build our brand and scale our business.

Previously, McPherson was Vice President of Marketing for Hootsuite, where she led its marketing team through rapid growth, global expansion, product line extensions and a brand refresh. Under McPhersons marketing leadership, Hootsuite grew into one of the most recognized social media brands with more than 15 million users, 8 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of engaged fans on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Prior to Hootsuite, McPherson was Vice President of Marketing at Yammer, where she established Enterprise Social Networking as a new category of software and helped position the company as a market leader, with 300% annual growth and a $1.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft. She has also served as President, CMO and co-founder at mom.life; Partner at Horn Group, a digital communications agency; head of public relations for PeopleSoft, and Senior Vice President at both Edelman and Ogilvy.

Movable Ink is an innovative company with passionate customers who want to deliver personalized experiences to consumers, said Dee Anna McPherson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Movable Ink. As a marketer, I am drawn to technology that improves the customer experience, and Movable Ink sets the standard for personalization at scale.

McPherson holds a BA in communications from Purdue University.

About Movable Ink

Movable Ink is the leading provider of intelligent content software, which enables marketers to personalize email content at the moment-of-open. Marketers use Movable Ink to provide consumers with engaging on-brand experiences to grow revenues with every customer interaction. Since 2010, consumers have engaged with over 400 billion intelligent content impressions from more than 400 leading brands, including Delta, eBay, Spotify, and The Wall Street Journal. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in London, San Francisco, and Sydney. For information about how your brand can benefit from Movable Ink or to request a demo, visit http://www.movableink.com.
Construct-A-Lead is an online construction lead service that helps contractors, service providers, manufacturers and suppliers gain information on all large scale construction projects. The service features apartment construction, hotel construction, retail construction, medical construction, school renovations & more, including those hard-to-find private project leads, to help bid on construction, from planning stage- completion.

Construct-A-Lead, the industrys most comprehensive construction lead service, announces the following medical projects will go forward. Construct-A-Leads advanced search feature allows the user to find their leads or key contacts by project type, location, bid stage, dollar value, company, or keyword.

Users are able to track projects status, save searches, put personalized notes on projects, email a project to a colleague or customer, reach out directly to the decision maker and download construction leads with a one-touch feature.

Interested parties are invited to visit Construct-A-Lead.com and sign up for a no obligation test drive, where they will be able to experience these newly integrated features. Users will be able to receive regular alerts on new and updated construction projects, in accordance with the individuals preference.

An example of the medical construction leads available within the database is listed below. Reference the Project ID to utilize the new site features and to obtain direct contact information for each construction lead:

Tysons, VA  The Mather Arbor Row - Plans call for the construction of a 668,435-square-foot senior living community with 300 independent living units, 78 assisted living, memory support and skilled nursing beds, and more than 18,000 square feet of retail and restaurants. Amenities include multiple dining options, a fitness center and day spa, and social and educational programming. Construction start: Q1, Q2, 2019. $110,000,000. Project ID: 1402839

Oak Lawn, IL  DaVita Oak Meadows Dialysis  Plans call for establishing a 12-station ESRD facility in 6,660 square feet of space. Construction start: Q3, 2018. $4,100,000 Project ID: 1402540

Lubbock, TX -Health Sciences Center at Texas Tech University  Plans call for the addition of 185,000 square feet, including a 100,000-square-foot extension of the current building that will feature research labs and a gross anatomy lab. Plans also call for a 14,500-square-foot conference center and a 58,142-square-foot building that will house classrooms, offices and collaborative spaces. Construction start: Q3, Q4, 2018, $91,000,000 Project ID: 1402757

Orlando, FL  Conway Lakes Health and Rehabilitation Center  Plans call for building a new community nursing home of up to 110 beds. Construction start: Q3, 2018. $25,000,000 Project ID: 1402255

Kansas City, MO  Children's Mercy Hospital Hill - Plans call for adding a new nine-story, 398,512-square-foot expansion to the existing hospital. Construction start: Q4, 2018, Q1, 2019. $130,000,000 Project ID: 1402796

Greenwich, CT  Discovery Outpatient Facility  Plans call for building a new health care facility with outpatient & partial hospitalization services for adults suffering from eating disorders. Construction start: Q3, Q4 2017 $10,000,000. Project ID: 1401180

Construct-A-Lead is an online database that connects users to large-scale commercial construction projects, including those hidden, private project leads.

The service features hotel construction, office buildings, retail construction, medical facilities, school renovations and much more, to help bid on construction including those hard-to-find private project leads, from planning stage through completion. Construct-A-Leads daily updates of commercial construction project leads are an ideal solution for those who want to put their product or service into commercial, government and religious structures.

For more information, visit Construct-A-Lead.com online or call 855-874-1491.
We use Shmoop as a verb in class now. Kids ask if we are going to Shmoop in class all the time!

In honor of Computer Science Education Week, the Hour of Code is encouraging students everywhere to take an hour out of their lives and learn to code. Yep, in a single hour. Shmoop (https://www.shmoop.com), an award-winning digital publisher, is helping that mission by offering computer science courses that are relatable for anyone wanting to scratch that programming itch.

People who think C++ is basically just a D- or that CSS is one letter away from a TV crime drama can use Shmoop's programming courses, which include 15-lesson tutorials on HTML, CSS, C++, Java, JavaScript, R, Python, and more. Anyone who wants to take things beyond that first hour (or few) can use one of Shmoop's semester-long options, like Foundations of Programming. For the younger (or just more Luddite-leaning), there's an introduction to coding through Scratch. If that feels too beginner, Shmoop offers a course in Pencil Code. And things continue to level up from there, progressing through various programming languages and coding tutorials all the way up to AP Computer Science A.

Even with its conversational tone and relatable examples, Shmoop understands that committing to an online course can be daunting. That's why they offer an appetizer in the form of free Computer Science Learning Guides, which teach everything from boolean logic to sorting algorithms to recursion and more. They even have one called "How Programming Works." Hey, gotta start somewhere.

"We use Shmoop as a verb in class now," says Jade Clukey, a teacher at Carrabassett Valley Academy in Maine. "Kids ask if we are going to Shmoop in class all the time!" Just throwing it out there: Shmooping Iterative Loops sounds like a cool band name.

So for noobs who think that conditionals are part of a grammatical structure and loops are only found on roller coasters, it's time to embrace the Hour of Code. Shmoop subscribers get access to dozens of coding courses, along with hundreds of other technology and life skills courses. Schools and districts can contact sales@shmoop.com for bulk discounts on already-below-market rates.

About Shmoop

Shmoop offers hundreds of thousands of pages of original content. Their Online Courses, Test Prep, Teaching Guides, Learning Guides, and interactive Study Tools are written by teachers and experts and balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous concepts. Shmoop sees 16 million unique visitors a month across desktop and mobile. The company has won numerous awards from EdTech Digest, Tech & Learning, and the Association of Educational Publishers. Launched in 2008, Shmoop makes the magic happen from a labradoodle-patrolled office in Mountain View, California.

The "Hour of Code" is a nationwide initiative by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org to introduce millions of students to one hour of computer science and computer programming.

AP is a registered trademark of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.
Confident Woman Blended Cannabis PreRoll This is the first time that two dispensary organizations, in partnership with two brands of Arizona cannabis, have come together to not only create a product, but to benefit the greater good of the community- locally and nationally.

Monarch Wellness Center, Scottsdales premier and leading medical marijuana dispensary, announced that it has partnered with three notable Phoenix-based organizations to launch a Confident Woman campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence. Monarch Wellness Center, The Giving Tree Wellness Center and Huxton, have partnered to create the first-ever collaborated medical marijuana product to benefit a nonprofit organization. This collaboration is the first time two dispensary organizations and cannabis brands have come together to launch a hybrid product, called Confident Woman. The Confident Woman campaign and the proceeds from the Confident Woman product sales will benefit Chrysalis Domestic Abuse Shelter.

This pioneering partnership between Huxton, one of the first experience-based cannabis brands in the U.S., and The Giving Tree Wellness Center, a state-licensed medical marijuana dispensary that produces a majority of its own flower, have merged two of their most prominent cannabis strains to create the Confident Woman blend. Confident Woman is a blended product of The Giving Tree Wellness Centers "LA Confidential" and Huxtons "Wonder Woman, which are both Indica strains regarded for their quality and remedy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and restlessness. These two prominent Indica strains have been harvested, blended together, and packaged to be sold in PreRolls.

We are honored to partner with The Giving Tree to create the first ever co-branded product and give back to our community, said Jennifer Dresbach, operations manager of Monarch Wellness Center. This is the first time that two dispensary organizations have come together to not only create a product, but to benefit the greater good of the community. Monarch is passionate about the responsible development of our industry for the goodness and care of our community- locally and nationally.

The Confident Woman blended flower is evenly distributed to two half- gram PreRolls for $15. Fifty percent of all Confident Woman product sales will benefit the Chrysalis Domestic Abuse Shelter. The Confident Woman PreRolls are now available for purchase at Monarch Wellness Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, and The Giving Tree Wellness Centers locations in Mesa and Phoenix, Arizona.

I launched The Giving Tree in 2013 with the mission to make a difference in the community, said Lilach Mazor Power, the co-founder and managing director of The Giving Tree Wellness Center. Partnering with Monarch Wellness Center, Huxton and Chrysalis continues that mission. It is important that women empower and support each other to make a difference, not only in the cannabis industry, but in the world.

Nonmedical marijuana patients and residents outside of Arizona can join the Confident Woman cause by making a donation online on the Confident Womans website, http://www.confidentwoman.us.

"Chrysalis is proud to be part of a collaboration that is bringing businesses together to help raise awareness of domestic abuse and raise funds to provide services to people impacted by abuse, said Patricia Klahr, president and CEO of Chrysalis Domestic Abuse Shelter.

For more information or to learn more about Confident Woman and the cannabis partnership between Monarch Wellness Center, Huxton and The Giving Tree Wellness Center benefiting Chrysalis Domestic Abuse Shelter, please visit http://www.confidentwoman.us.

ABOUT MONARCH WELLNESS CENTER:

As Scottsdale, Arizonas first state-licensed medical marijuana dispensary, Monarch Wellness Center was launched in 2013 and is recognized as one of the top medical cannabis dispensaries in the U.S. Owned and operated by a Phoenix-based family, Monarch Wellness Center aims to elevate the perception of the cannabis industry through its space design, family-centric values, exceptional product selection, and patient education. Monarchs creation of innovative operational concepts and standardized product testing for patient safety and product quality, has earned it national cannabis industry recognition. To learn more about Monarch Wellness Center, please visit http://www.monarchaz.org.
"The diverse background and expertise of our new board members will benefit Gilbane as we seek continued profitable growth and expansion," Thomas F. Gilbane, Jr., Chairman of Gilbane, Inc.

Gilbanes Board of Directors is pleased to announce the appointment of three new Board members  Glyn F. Aeppel, Richard K. Allen and Michael E. McKelvy. "The diverse background and expertise of our new board members will benefit the company as we seek continued profitable growth and expansion. We have appointed industry leaders whose innovative perspectives and strategic thinking will add value for our shareholders, employees and clients," stated Thomas F. Gilbane, Jr., Chairman of Gilbane, Inc.

Glyn F. Aeppel is President, CEO and Founder of Glencove Capital, a hotel investment and advisory company that acquires, restructures and rebrands independent lifestyle hotels in major markets in the U.S. and Europe. Ms. Aeppel has more than 30 years of global experience developing and building hotel brands, raising capital and investing in hotel companies and assets for major companies. Prior to founding Glencove, she served as Chief Investment Officer for Andre Balazs Properties and has held executive leadership roles with numerous renowned domestic and global hotel and resort establishments. Ms. Aeppel has sourced, closed and financed investments totaling more than $2 billion throughout the United States and Europe. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, and earned her Masters degree in Business Administration with an emphasis on International Business and Finance from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Ms. Aeppel currently holds board committee positions with Simon Property Group, Inc., AvalonBay Communities, Inc. and Exclusive Resorts, LLC and is an Advisor to Mosaic Real Estate Investors.

Richard K. Allen is the former Chief Operating Officer for Stantec Inc., where his leadership focused on the aggressive growth and profitability of their 400 global-wide locations. As former President and CEO of Dufresne-Henry, Inc., Mr. Allen led their major growth initiative in the Northeast region and later the sale of that company to Stantec in 2005  transitioning into his COO role. Prior to that, he practiced law for 17 years with Gadsby Hannah, LLP in Boston, serving as an associate, partner and leader in the firms national design and construction law practice group. A registered professional engineer in numerous U.S. states, Mr. Allen earned his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute; a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle; and his Juris Doctor from the University of New Hampshire. Mr. Allen is a construction dispute arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association and a Fellow in the American College of Construction Lawyers.

Michael E. McKelvy joined Gilbane Building Company in 2014 as President and Chief Operating Officer. In 2016, his role was elevated to President and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining Gilbane, he was Chief Delivery Officer at CH2M HILL Companies, Ltd., and for 27 years served in a variety of senior executive roles and assignments around the world. He has construction experience in more than 20 countries and expertise in a variety of delivery methods. Mr. McKelvy has 36 years of experience in design and construction and is a Registered Architect in 16 U.S. states and a certified member of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Dedicated to improving safety in the construction industry, Mr. McKelvy represents Gilbane on the Incident and Injury-Free (IIF) CEO Forum. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Design from the University of Oklahoma, a Bachelor of Architecture from Louisiana Tech University and has completed the Advanced Management Program at the University of Chicagos Graduate School of Business. Mr. McKelvy is currently Chairman of the Board for Meeting Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Previously, he served on CH2Ms Board of Directors; as Chairman of the Board for CWI, LLC and for CH Plateau Remediation Company (CHP); and as a board member for the Professional Services Council (PSC).

Gilbane, Inc., based in Providence, Rhode Island, is one of the largest privately held family-owned construction and real estate development firms in the industry. Founded in 1873, the company has active participation from the 4th, 5th and 6th generations of the Gilbane family. Concentrating in select markets throughout North America and internationally, Gilbane is an industry leader in construction and real estate development. Learn more at http://www.gilbaneco.com
Paul Baker, Orthopaedic Consultant, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: We are delighted to have won. We saw the potential for the geko device to significantly improve current care pathways for our surgically treated ankle fractures."

UK-based medical devices company, Sky Medical Technology and the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, have been crowned winner of the Healthcare Project of the Year for 2017 at the prestigious Bionow Awards.

The title was awarded for their breakthrough work in partnering to generate clinical and health economic data which directly led to the adoption of the geko device for the control of pre-operative oedema reduction in ankle fracture patients, reducing the time to surgery for ankle fracture patients, demonstrating significant patient benefits, NHS cost savings and an NHS derived heath economic business case that is now generating revenues internationally.

Sky Medical Technologys innovative geko device has been clinically proven to reduce pre-operative oedema in ankle fracture patients, saving two bed days per patient on average when compared to all other methods, and saving an average of 569 per patient. Associated benefits include accelerated readiness for theatre, improvement to patient wellbeing, improved theatre time scheduling and accelerated recovery as rehabilitation can begin sooner.

CCO Andrew Thelwell, collecting the award on behalf of Sky Medical said, I would like to thank Bionow and TRUSTECH, sponsor of the award, for recognising that our project demonstrates excellence in collaboration and partnership between industry and the NHS. We are directly partnering with clinicians who are ready to challenge the status quo with innovative new solutions. The success of this project wouldnt have been possible without the partnership with the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and reinforces that collaboration really is key to bringing forward new treatments that have the potential to solve some of our most pressing and costly modern healthcare challenges.

Commenting on behalf of the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Paul Baker, Orthopaedic Consultant says: We are delighted to have won. We saw the potential for the geko device to significantly improve current care pathways for our surgically treated ankle fractures. Working collaboratively with Sky Medical, our study findings show the geko device can be used safely and effectively in this patient population and has streamlined care.

Bernard Ross, CEO Sky comments, Bionow celebrate outstanding leaders and innovators in the life sciences sector in the North of England  a sector that is worth 11bn to the Norths economy. It is an honour to be recognised by Bionow and TRUSTECH. The oedema control project is a prime example of the huge potential of collaborative innovation and partnership in healthcare settings and illustrates Skys highly effective route to market which has led to UK and International market penetration for the geko device, in a growing number of application areas.

Andrew continued: I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bionow and to congratulate all the shortlisted companies. The awards event has been a true showcase of some of the inspiring work in healthcare in the North of England and were proud to be a part of it.

The award marks a highly successful year for Sky Medical Technology, also shortlisted for Bionow Investment Deal of the Year and Project of the Year Awards.

About Firstkind and Sky Medical Technology Ltd

Sky Medical Technology, the parent of Firstkind Ltd, is a highly innovative UK based medical devices company that has developed a ground-breaking neuromuscular electrostimulation technology platform, OnPulse. The company develops a range of products tailored to the needs of different medical application areas selling both direct and through strategic partnerships or distributors in each major clinical area. Clinical areas of interest include oedema control, DVT prevention, wound healing and elite sport recovery. The goal in each clinical area is to improve clinical outcomes and patient care whilst saving health system resources.

Worn at the knee, and easy to use, geko is a battery powered neuromuscular electrostimulation device designed to increase blood flow in the deep veins of the leg. The geko device gently stimulates the common peroneal nerve, activating the calf and foot muscle pumps resulting in increased blood flow and the reduction of oedema. http://www.gekodevices.com/

About South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is the largest hospital trust in the Tees Valley serving the people of Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Hambleton and Richmondshire and beyond.

The Trust runs The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough and the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton as well as community services in Hambleton and Richmondshire, Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland.

They have a workforce of around 9,000 providing a range of specialist regional services to 1.5million people in the Tees Valley and parts of Durham, North Yorkshire and Cumbria, with a particular expertise in heart disease, trauma, neurosciences, renal services, cancer services and spinal injuries.

About Bionow

Bionow supports business growth, competitiveness and innovation within the biomedical and life science sectors across Northern England. Their membership services add value and cost-efficiency to scientific, clinical and business operations within early stage and growth-oriented firms.

Their membership base includes start-ups and early stage firms as well as established growth-oriented companies. Bionow's membership offering focuses upon the specific needs of firms at their different stages of development, including dedicated business support programmes, shared procurement schemes with significant cost savings, exclusive insurance benefits, recruitment and training services, local and national events and access to a vibrant network of businesses. http://www.bionow.co.uk

About TRUSTECH

TRUSTECH is an NHS organisation. They are the NHS Innovation Experts. TRUSTECH bridge the gap between NHS Providers / Commissioners and the commercial, academic and international healthcare sectors. Their aim is to improve the way in which the NHS operates by encouraging the development or adoption of innovative techniques, solutions, technologies and services for the benefit of all patients.

TRUSTECH provide innovation services for NHS organisations based in the North and help Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups to develop, protect and commercialise novel products and services from within their own communities, and identify and adopt technologies and ideas from elsewhere. http://www.trustech.org.uk/
Cayne and Collin Shaw At Fresh Coat, we want to build relationships with our customers and we know the best way to do that is to exceed expectations. Were excited about the future of Fresh Coat here in Oklahoma City.

Retired veteran Collin Shaw is excited to announce that hes launching a new professional painting company in Oklahoma City  Fresh Coat Painters of Oklahoma City.

Fresh Coat offers residential and commercial painting services including interior and exterior painting, wood staining and finishing, and other services for nearly every protective coating application. Their professional painters are background checked and insured and Fresh Coat only uses high-quality materials. The company offers a 24/7 receptionist, online scheduling and detailed quotes. Fresh Coat of Oklahoma City serves Downtown, Midtown, Uptown, Bricktown, The Village, Nichols Hills, Lake Hefner, Del City and the surrounding communities.

Fresh Coat is different than other painting companies because we are professionals. Not only are we licensed, bonded and insured, but we are also committed to respecting your time; giving you a firm, detailed quote based on materials, labor costs and the size of your job; and doing everything we can to put you at ease. Its always stressful to hire contractors and bring people into your home  we want to change the perception by being the professional, organized painting company in Oklahoma City, Shaw said.

As part of their commitment to customer service, Fresh Coat also offers a 3-3-3 customer service pledge, so calls will be answered by a live person within three rings, a quote will be delivered within three days (customer schedule permitting) and the job will be started within three weeks.

Shaw recently retired from the United States Navy and found Fresh Coat while looking for his next step. His son Cayne, who is studying business at the University of Central Oklahoma, will be joining Shaw in the business. Shaw said hes looking forward to working alongside his son after years of being away with the military and raising the bar in the painting industry.

Paint is an amazing way to transform a space and add value to your home. At Fresh Coat, we want to build relationships with our customers and we know the best way to do that is to exceed expectations. Were excited about the future of Fresh Coat here in Oklahoma City, Shaw said.

Fresh Coat was founded in 2004 as part of Strategic Franchising Systems. Since 2015, Fresh Coat has been included in the Bonds Top 100 and named to Entrepreneur Magazines Franchise 500 list. Fresh Coat is also part of the International Franchise Association, the Small Business Associations Franchise Registry, VetFran and Minority Fran. All Fresh Coat employees are trained, dependable, fully insured and background-checked and Fresh Coat of Oklahoma City is bonded and insured.

For more information about Fresh Coat of Oklahoma City, call (405)402-1100, email CShaw@FreshCoatPainters.com or visit http://www.FreshCoatOklahomaCity.com.
iJET International, Inc., a recognized leader in integrated risk management solutions, is pleased to announce the release of its new Developer Center, an online application development portal that enables the company's partners to more easily design and enhance their solutions by leveraging iJET's robust library of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In addition, iJET is releasing its Health Security Assessment Rating (HSAR) API, enhanced Country Security Assessment Rating (CSAR) API and Alert APIs.

The Developer Center provides iJET's partners with resources and reference documents, including API documentation, release notes and FAQs, so that application developers can easily search for and find the information they need in support of development efforts. The portal also includes a sandbox for testing, and iJET expects to add a support forum so developers can share knowledge and ask questions of iJET and other partners.

"We built iJET's new Developer Center to assist our partners in accelerating the development and delivery of meaningful solutions for their customers," said Theresa Thomas, senior vice president of Powered by iJET, the company's business unit focused on supporting and enabling partner companies. "The portal provides ready access to resources and information, along with a way to quickly test code, enabling our partners to iteratively and continuously improve their applications."

With access to iJET's intelligence APIs through the portal, the company's partners can now enhance their solutions by exposing country and health ratings on their own web and mobile pages, and partner customers can filter those ratings by location, range and updated-since date. In addition to delivering an overall country or city rating, the APIs also provide sub-ratings on such areas as crime, civil unrest, risk of trauma, and health infrastructure. And, the enhanced Alert API enables partners to share iJET alerts by language, severity level, location, intelligence category, content level and date.

"iJET is committed to meeting the needs of our partners and supporting them with the technology and intelligence they need to deliver value to their customers," said iJET International CEO Ben Allen. "We will continue to innovate and work with our partners to ensure they can best meet the needs of their customers worldwide."

###

About iJET

iJET International (iJET) provides intelligence-driven, integrated risk management solutions that enable multinational organizations to operate globally with confidence. iJET's end-to-end, tailored solutions integrate world-class operational threat intelligence, innovative technology, and response services to help organizations avoid threats, mitigate risk and protect their people, operating locations, and reputation. Founded in 1999, iJET is a privately held company headquartered in Annapolis, MD, U.S. with offices in London, Singapore and Cape Town. For more information, please visit http://www.iJET.com.

iJET Media Contacts:

MULTIPLY

Jessica Davis

jessica.davis(at)wearemultip.ly

202.292.4567

iJET International

pr(at)ijet.com

410.573.3860
Smile Brands Winner of Glassdoor's Best Place to Work Dentistry is a people business and its undeniable that when employees are aligned around a common mission, patients benefit.

Smile Brands Inc. has been honored with a Glassdoor Employees Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2018. The Employees Choice Awards program, now in its 10th year, relies solely on the input of employees, who elect to provide feedback on their jobs, work environments and companies via Glassdoor.

Smile Brands, a leading dental support organization with over 350 affiliated practices across 15 states, has a deeply rooted culture founded in the companys mission to deliver Smiles for Everyone. Co-founder and CEO, Steve Bilt has a 97 percent approval rating on Glassdoor.

Dentistry is a people business and its undeniable that when employees are aligned around a common mission, patients benefit, explains Bilt. To be named one of Glassdoors Best Places to Work is a validation of our operational model which is based on the premise that good things happen when everyone has a reason to smile. I believe that culture should be on top every CEOs agenda if they care about attracting and retaining talented employees.

On Glassdoor, current and former employees of companies worldwide can share insights and opinions about their work environments. When sharing a company review on Glassdoor, employees are asked to rate their satisfaction with the company overall, and key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation, benefits, work/life balance, senior management, as well as culture and values. In addition, employees are asked to describe the best reasons to work at their companies as well as any downsides.

The Best Places to Work are determined using company reviews shared by U.S.-based employees between November 1, 2016 and October 22, 2017. To be considered for the large category, a company must have at least 1,000 or more employees and have received at least 75 ratings. The final list is compiled based on Glassdoors proprietary algorithm, and takes into account quantity, quality and consistency of reviews.

For the complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work in 2018, please visit: http://www.glassdoor.com/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm.

About Smile Brands

Based in Irvine California, Smile Brands Inc. is one of the largest providers of support services to dental groups in the United States. Smile Brands Inc. provides comprehensive business support services through exclusive long term agreements with affiliate dental groups, so dentists can spend more time caring for their patients and less time on the administrative, marketing, and financial aspects of operating a dental practice. Smile Brands supports 350+Bright Now! Dental, Monarch Dental, Castle Dental, A+ Dental Care, OneSmile Dental, and Johnson Family Dental offices in 15 states, including Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. Smile Brands is a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors (Gryphon), a leading middle-market private equity firm based in San Francisco, CA. For more information, visit http://www.smilebrands.com.

About Glassdoor

Glassdoor is one of the largest and fastest growing job sites in the world today. Set apart by the tens of millions of reviews and insights provided by employees and candidates, Glassdoor combines all the jobs with this valuable data to make it easy for people to find a job that is uniquely right for them. As a result, Glassdoor helps employers hire truly informed candidates at scale through effective recruiting solutions like job advertising and employer branding products. Launched in 2008, Glassdoor now has reviews and insights for approximately 700,000 companies in more than 190 countries. For labor market trends and analysis, visit Glassdoor Economic Research. For company news and career advice and tips, visit the Glassdoor Blog and for employer-related news and insights to help employers hire, visit the Glassdoor for Employers Blog. Visit Glassdoor.com or download our apps on iOS and Android platforms.

Media Contacts:

Jody Martin,

jody.martin(at)smilebrands(dot)com

714.428-1299

Alison Sullivan

pr(at)glassdoor(dot)com
Actress Christine Evangelista, Dr Scarlett Magda of Veterinarians International, Asher Jay Nat Geo Explorer and Model Tommy Maksanty EEHV is the number 1 killer of elephants in the US, and one of the leading causes of baby elephant deaths in Asia. We are grateful to all who came to support VI. We are now at 20% of our $100 000 goal, which we hope to reach by December 31st.

One-hundred-sixty luminaries came out to Veterinarians Internationals Little Trunks, Big Hearts event hosted by actress Christine Evangelista on December 5 at West NYC in the Flatiron District. A moving presentation describing the crisis facing baby elephants by Founding President Dr. Scarlett Magda brought guests to tears, but ended with words of hope and commitment. Guests enjoyed cocktails by Snow Leopard Vodka, Curious Elixirs, Soto sake, a live performance by award-winning artist Gabriel Royal, exquisite cuisine by Krisp Events, and beautiful printed images by Japan Printing and Graphics. A limited-edition photograph "Skin-Eye-of-the-Elephant" by National Geographic Explorer Asher Jay was auctioned.

The evening focused on VIs EEHV (Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus) disease surveillance program for baby elephants at risk of this fatal virus, which can kill within 24 hours. The program supports early disease detection for 70 baby elephants and stockpiles medication for emergency treatment.

EEHV is the number 1 killer of elephants in the US, and one of the leading causes of baby elephant deaths in Asia. We are so incredibly grateful to all who came to support this desperately needed elephant veterinary care program. We are now at 20% of our $100 000 goal, which we hope to reach by December 31st."

Special guests included model Tommy Maksanty, Andy Arons, Flavio Zegarra, Luis Torres (Director of Retail USA, Davidoff of Geneva), Dr. Anthony Rossi, Zelda Penzel, and philanthropist Elizabeth Shafiroff (Global Strays). Special thanks to ambassadors Christine Evangelista, Dwayne Hill, and Asher Jay who helped us bring awareness to the Asian elephant crisis, which doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

VI would like to thank its Partners and Sponsors:



West NYC,

Krisp Events,

Soto Saki,

Snowleopard Vodka,

Curious Elixirs,

Japan Printing and Graphics,

Gabriel Royal,

Marc Lesleah Photography,

Moises De Pena/LMC

Visit us on Social Media:

Facebook Instagram Twitter

For press inquiries, please contact Jessica Hollander at Jessica(at)vetsinternational(dot)org, (m) 604 833 1300
A Saudi prince has been revealed as the buyer of the world's most expensive painting, priced at a staggering $450 million in an auction at the world-famous Christie's Auction House in November.

Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud has been identified as the mystery buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," according to a New York Times report published Wednesday. Prince Bader, part of a distant branch of the wealthy royal family, is not generally known as a major art collector or someone with a large source of wealth, according to The Times.

Christie's representatives attempted to identify Prince Bader and his source of finances before the sale, after he gave a $100 million deposit to qualify for the auction, The Times said. Pressed for more information, Prince Bader reportedly gave a terse reply, saying he was in the real estate business and was one of the country's 5,000 princes.

Prince Bader is also reportedly a friend and associate of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who recently embarked on a countrywide crackdown on corruption that touched $100 billion and implicated over 200 people, including members of the royal elite. The nature of the painting  a rendition of Christ  and the timing of the purchase  less than two weeks after the corruption purge  calls into question whether the Crown Prince has been selectively targeting people in the crackdown, The Times reported.

Although Prince Badar did not respond to The Times' detailed request for comment, the Louvre in Abu Dhabi  a museum in the United Arab Emirates  tweeted Wednesday that the "Salvator Mundi" was "coming to Louvre Abu Dhabi," The Times said.

Le Salvator Mundi de Vinci ... @ Louvre Abu Dhabi
The flu has claimed over 7 lives in the Kumasi Academy high school located in the the Ashanti region of Ghana

READ ALSO:Meet the daughters of Millionaires in Ghana

Sources at the KNUST Hospital where majority of the affected students were transferred upon falling sick in school is reported to have said the many deaths are as a result of Influenza virus type A which causes the H1N1 flu.

Currently, students have been put on a cocktail of antibiotic medication administered free of charge to all students of the school including teachers and other non teaching staff.

Also people in the general population of Kumasi who have come into contact with sick Kumasi Academy students have been advised to proceed to the school premises to take part in the ongoing vaccination process.

The school is scheduled to shut down on Friday 8th December to allow for proper on site investigations by health authorities and WHO officials.
Work began in 2007 on the 645 million-euro ($767 million) airport under former president Abdoulaye Wade, but unforeseen problems and a change of construction company have repeatedly delayed the project and ballooned costs.

Blaise Diagne -- named after the Senegalese MP who was the first African elected to France's parliament -- is at the heart of Sall's "Emerging Senegal" plan, which includes the construction of a new city, Diamniadio, close to the site in Diass.

As the country invests more heavily in tourism, Senegal is also betting on the facility's strategic position close to several beach resorts that are already heavily frequented by European holidaymakers.

"The airport will be key in the promotion of 'Destination Senegal'," Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne said in a speech on Tuesday, adding that airport services at the site would contribute to the development of the special economic zone nearby.

With a capacity of three million passengers, Blaise Diagne will still rank far below the busiest African airports and a long way off challenging Nigeria in the west African region, though plans for up to 10 million travellers are in the pipeline, according to officials.

Uncertainty for new airline

Passenger numbers have increased in recent years at Dakar's current airport in the middle of the city, leading to long waits at security and contributing to chronic traffic jams, and the old Leopold Sedar Senghor airport will become a military airfield from Friday.

The new airport boasts six footbridges direct to flight cabins, and will be able to service a range of aircraft including Airbus's massive A380s.

Work was completed on the 4,500-hectare site -- with 2,000 hectares unused in case of required expansion -- by Turkish consortium Summa-Limak after a disagreement with Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden construction derailed the final stage of preparations.

But bets on whether Blaise Diagne would open on time have lasted until the last minute amid complaints by major European airlines over fuel capacity and regulations.

Summa-Limak will now operate the airport for the next 25 years, furthering ever-closer economic ties between Ankara and Dakar.

A train linking the airport with the city is not expected to open for years, leaving taxi drivers in pocket but ordinary travellers nervous of arriving on time for flights in a city with unpredictable traffic.

Backed by loans from France's development agency the African Development Bank (ADB), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and Islamic lender the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), officials are celebrating the airport's completion -- but the future of Senegal's new airline is less certain.
After President Donald Trump slurred a few words at the end of his Jerusalem speech on Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the slip-up occurred due to a dry throat.

"The president's throat was dry  nothing more than that," Sanders said at Thursday's press briefing, calling the questions "ridiculous."

people pointed out that the president appeared to be struggling to deliver his final words during Wednesday's speech.

"Thank you, God bless you, God bless Israel, God bless the Palestinians, and God bless the United States," Trump said.

Trump noticeably slurred his final words, and people on Twitter started to theorize that he may have been wearing dentures or some other form of dental prosthetics.

When asked about Trump's apparent verbal slip, a White House spokesperson told Quartz on Wednesday that Trump had a case of "dry mouth," a response that Sanders echoed.

Trump has frequently touted his health throughout his campaign and presidency, and producing a letter signed by his personal physician of 35 years to prove his point.
Though the Palestinian cause may not be as powerful of a call to protest as it has been in years past, both Wednesday and Thursday saw widespread demonstrations and skirmishes as people took to the streets from Jerusalem to Pakistan.

Here are 13 dramatic photos of the aftermath of Trump's Jerusalem announcement:

Palestinian protesters gathered at Jerusalem's ancient Damascus Gate, where they were met by Israeli police officers. The Palestinian Authority called for a general strike on Thursday, and Palestinians complied  shops in the Old City remain closed.

Source: ,

Elsewhere in Israel, thousands of people took to the streets in the West Bank, with the largest demonstrations taking place in Ramallah and Bethlehem.

Source: ,

Protesters marching near Ramallah were met with tear gas and rubber bullets fired by Israeli soldiers. In response, Palestinians threw rocks and burned tires.

Source: ,

A Palestinian group's Twitter account said nine people were injured when a car with Israeli plates plowed into a crowd of Palestinian protesters in the West Bank town of Beit Jala.

Source: ,

In the Gaza Strip, the militant group Hamas called on Palestinians to initiate a third intifada, or uprising. Two rockets were reportedly fired at Israel from Gaza but did not reach their target.

Source: ,

At least 31 people were injured in Thursday's clashes, with one critical injury. Four of these injuries occurred when Israeli soldiers opened fire with live ammunition in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Source: ,

The demonstrations also extended beyond Israel and the Palestinian territories  in Cairo, protesters directed their rage at not just US President Donald Trump but also Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Source:

Protesters in Ankara, Turkey, demonstrated in front of the US Embassy where American Marines remained on high alert.

Source: ,

Demonstrators also aired their grievances in Amman, Jordan, which sits not far from Israel and the West Bank.

Source:

Anti-American sentiment was high in Tunis, Tunisia. Protesters burned US flags and called for Palestinian control of Jerusalem.

Source:

Trump's announcement stoked tensions as far away from Jerusalem as Pakistan. Supporters of an Islamist party in Karachi burned American and Israeli flags in protest.

Source:

Demonstrators also burned US flags in Peshawar, Pakistan, which has close connections with neighboring Afghanistan.

Source:

Sunnis also gathered in Baghdad, Iraq, to protest Trump's move. "Jerusalem is our identity, Jerusalem is Arab," one of the protest leaders said.
After years of public debate, a $122 million voluntary postal survey that delivered an overwhelming yes, and a private members bill from gay Liberal senator Dean Smith that managed to survive multiple attempts to amend it unchanged, Australias parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of same-sex marriage today.

And people celebrated that historic moment. The achievement. The sense of righteousness in the decision. The floor of the parliament and gallery erupted in cheers and applause before the gallery managed to serenade the politicians with a very unparliamentary rendition of I am Australian without censure from the speaker.

And amid the tears of joy, the backslapping, the rare show of unity between Labor and Liberal MPs who shook hands and embraced, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition leader Bill Shorten, there was the moment Labors Linda Burney leapt into the arms of Liberal Warren Entsch.

It captures a humanity in politics thats rarely seen in the pantomime of partisan conflict, but says so much about this debate.

Entsch is you typical knockabout Queensland bloke. He spent a decade in the RAAF, working as a fitter and welder, then as a croc farmer and grazier before turning to politics. Hes a 21-year veteran of Canberra who, for more than a decade, swam against the tide of his party, campaigning in support of same-sex marriage as far back as 2004. He was dubbed a progressive redneck and in 2006, first tried to introduce a private members bill to parliament in support of changing the marriage act, before biding his time and trying again in 2015, only to be shut down by his then leader, Tony Abbott.

During debate on the issue this week, it was Entsch who stood again and again to speak in support of the legislation as many of his Coalition colleagues tried, unsuccessfully, to amend the bill.

Sydney-based Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman, the first openly gay politician in the lower house paid tribute to the 67-year-old late in todays debate saying Entsch should be considered an honorary gay.

On the other side of the house, Linda Burney delivered one of the parliaments most extraordinary and moving speeches as she spoke in favour of the bill.

The Sydney-based MP has just returned to Canberra after taking leave following the death of her 33-year-old son, Binni Kirkbright-Burney, on October 24.

Fairfaxs Tony Wright captures the poignancy of the moment in this account, but in a week of small confessions, it was Burneys acknowledgement of her son that had many listening and watching holding their breath.

We borrow from Wrights account:

And then, a gear shift: "I support marriage equality as someone who has and has had loved ones who identify as LGBTI."

Suddenly you knew, watching her, that this was no mere politician giving just another speech. The voice teetered on the edge of breaking before this mother of a lost son willed it back under control

"To them," she said, "Marriage equality would mean so much."

Ms Burney looked up from the dispatch box, her eyes seeking the camera that was broadcasting her speech beyond Parliament, making sure no one missed her purpose.

"I honour these people," she said.

"In particular my late son, Binni."

This has been a long road, with pain for many too, but suddenly, just a minute before 6pm on December 7, the clouds parted. And there was joy.

And hugs and love.
Santa Barbara is now threatened by the rapidly-growing Thomas Fire, as thousands of firefighters battle several infernos burning through Southern California.

The fire grew by 50,000 acres on Sunday as dry Santa Ana winds continued, triggering evacuation orders throughout Santa Barbara County. One death has been blamed on the Thomas Fire: the body of 70-year-old

Over 9,000 firefighters are working across the region to contain the blazes. Over 1,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed, and 98,000 people have been forced to evacuate since the fires started a week ago.

Here are the numbers as of Monday morning, according to Los Angeles Countyofficials and Cal Fire, a state fire-safety agency:

Thomas Fire in Ventura County:

Creek Fire in Sylmar:

15,619

Rye Fire in Santa Clarita:

93

Skirball Fire in Bel Air:

Lilac Fire in San Diego County:

The first and largest blaze, the Thomas Fire, started Oct 4 in Ventura County. Its flames reached the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday. Several cities in the Ojai Valley were under mandatory evacuation orders on Saturday, though some of those orders have been lifted. Officials issued a new round of evacuations for residents in Santa Barbara on Sunday, however, and warned that they may order more on Monday.

Mandatory evacuation orders now affect nearly 100,000 people, down from 200,000 last week.

The Skirball fire in Bel Air threatened the Getty Center art museum, though firefighters had contained 85% of the blaze by Monday morning and the museum remained unharmed.

Officials called the combination of dryness and powerful winds a "recipe for explosive fire growth." Wind gusts of up to 80 mph were recorded on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mark Lorenzen, the Ventura County fire chief, told reporters that the fires' spread had been "absolutely exponential."

The region is still under a "red flag" advisory. Forecasters expect the winds to subside this week, though there is still no rain in the immediate forecast.

"We're chasing the fire trying to get ahead of it, trying to get in front to provide structure defense," David Richardson, the Los Angeles County deputy fire chief, told the LA Times.

"There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds," Ken Pimlott, California's fire chief, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. "At the end of the day, we need everyone in the public to listen and pay attention. This is not 'watch the news and go about your day.' This is 'pay attention minute-by-minute  keep your head on a swivel.'"

Lorenzen told The LA Times on Thursday that if rains don't fall on the region, the Thomas Fire could continue burning for weeks. That prediction has held up as of Monday, as the fire continues to grow.

Officials urged residents to wear masks outside, as the air quality near the fires was rated "hazardous"  the worst classification.

Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency, freeing up state funds to help tackle the wildfires.

"This fire is very dangerous and spreading rapidly, but we'll continue to tackle it with all we've got," Brown said. "It's critical residents stay ready and evacuate immediately if told to do so."

Brown called the fires a "new normal," over the weekend, since this year's devastating wildfire season is part of a larger trend fueled by climate change.

Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles' mayor, told reporters on Friday, "these are days that break your heart, these are also days that show the resilience of our city."

Hours before the blazes started on Monday, the NWS warned that there would "be the potential for very rapid spread of wildfire" and "extreme fire behavior." Fire danger was rated a 296 on the brush burning index on Thursday  a record, according to CNN. The figure is calculated based on moisture levels, wind, humidity, and a range of other factors. A rating above 162 is considered the most extreme risk.

California has been ravaged by wildfires in recent months. In October, a series of fires destroyed communities in Northern California's Napa and Sonoma counties in what is considered the deadliest wildfire in the state's history. Experts said at the time that it would take years for the state to recover.

Here's a map of the location of the current fires:
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The five major blazes have scorched over 250,000 acres across Southern California. Over 9,000 firefighters have been deployed to combat the fires, and authorities have shut down major highways, closed schools, and ordered close to 100,000 people to evacuate.

The first and largest blaze, the Thomas Fire, started Monday night in Ventura County. The Creek Fire near Sylmar and the Rye Fire in Santa Clarita broke out in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and the Skirball Fire, centered in the wealthy Bel Air neighborhood in Los Angeles, started Wednesday morning.

Here are the locations of all the fires, as well the most recent total acreage burned as of Monday.

Thomas Fire, Ventura County

The Thomas Fire is burning acres and has damaged or destroyed

Firefighters have contained 15% of the blaze as high winds continue to whip the fire.

Officials ordered further evacuations in Santa Barbara County as high winds pushed the fire closer to populated areas on Sunday.

Creek Fire, Sylmar

The Creek Fire has burned 15,619 acres, and officials estimate it has destroyed or damaged at least 89 out of at least 2,500 threatened. Firefighters had managed to contain 95% of the blaze as of Monday morning.

All evacuation orders have been lifted in areas around Sylmar.

Rye Fire, Santa Clarita

The Rye Fire has burned 6,049 acres near Santa Clarita, and firefighters have contained 93% of the fire as of Monday.

Skirball Fire, Bel Air

The Skirball Fire, near the wealthy Bel Air neighborhood in Los Angeles, has burned 421 acres and is 85% contained as of Monday, according to Los Angeles Fire Department officials.

The fire threatened the Getty Center, one of the world's most popular art museums, though the flames moved away from it on Thursday. Six structures were destroyed and another 12 were damaged.

Lilac Fire, San Diego

The Lilac Fire started in San Diego County Thursday evening. It's stretching 4,100 acres and is 75% contained as of Monday. It prompted a new round of evacuations and multiple school closures throughout San Diego last week.

As of Monday morning, 151 structures were destroyed and some local road closures were still in effect, but mandatory evacuation orders were lifted.

These areas are under a "red flag" warning for fire risk as of Monday. The high-risk zone extends from the Mexico border to Santa Barbara.

The dry winds have turned the region into a sort of tinderbox, and officials warn that even a small spark can still ignite a massive blaze.
Mutawakilu Adam believes that the number of students in the school has increased and hence there is a spread of illnesses which eventually leads to death.

Eight students have died so far in the school. Four died earlier this year, whilst the other four died in just one week.

READ ALSO: Angry parents besiege Kumasi Academy as student death increase to 8

This has left parents worried. The parents have called on the school authorities to allow them to take their children back home or hold intensified prayers as they suspect the happenings could have spiritual undertones.

Health officials in the Ashanti Region have ruled out Meningitis as the cause of the recent deaths at the school. The officials, however, suspect a bacterial infection in the school.

Speaking on the issue on TV3s New Day on Wednesday, the MP for Damongo said: The overcrowding [in the school] might have caused the deaths.

It is an epidemic and it is a cause for worry and by now, the Ghana Health Service should have set up an emergency unit in the school. We needed to have an emergency unit there for quick response.

He added: In the state of panic and fearyou dont know whether it is as a result of congestion. So it is good parents went in to take their wards. If you have your ward under your care, you can take him to any proper hospital for treatments.
The "Kakai" has made more enemies for himself since he re-branded from Bandana to Shatta Wale because he built the brand Shatta Wale through the divide and rule strategy.

The latest to launch missiles at Shatta Wale's camp is former member of the former group, VIP, Promzy. The artiste left Ghana for the US after he broke out from the group.

Although he tried a solo project, he woefully failed at it. His group BP which was formed by himself and Bright of Buk-Bak fame could not see the day of light.

In a post on Facebook announcing his return to the country, he warned Shatta Wale to be weary of Nima and be thoughtful about his comments at the hood because he will not take it lightly with him if he disrespects Nima.

He posted (unedited) "Now u watch how talk about nima son,i dnt hate u but i can cripple u easy,kumordgie n abass they my boys.respect the hood son am in gh now fuck around lets play .i will sshow u am your boss".

Shatta Wale who is not bothered and believes Promzy wants to ride on his fame to build himself up in a series of posts on Facebook has been teasing Promzy for trying to benefit from his shine.
The verdict against the accused who was arraigned on a five-count charge of felony, obstruction, assault, slapping and kidnapping, was given on Wednesday, December 6, 2017.

Sunday Osanyintuyi, the prosecutor on the case revealed that Adekanmi committed the alleged offences on Tuesday, November 14, 2017, around the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital (OAUTH), the Daily Post News reports.

The accused who pleaded not guilty to the charges was denied an application for bail made by his counsel, Samuel Judge. The arbitrator, Magistrate Olalekan Ijiyode insisted on a written request as opposed to one made orally.

He is being held at the Ile-Ife Prison until his counsel complies with the court order.

Nigerians are angry at the police

Not a lot of people will feel sympathetic over the alleged assault on the policemen for obvious reasons. The #EndSARS campaign has gained support from every Nigerian including revered personalities who all had at least a tale to share concerning a sad experience with the police.

The security personnel representing the SARS in particular have experienced the fury of the populace based on their intimidation and sometimes murder of innocent citizens.

Some members of the SARS team were described to have applied force in a bid to collect money from those they were sworn to protect. A recent video saw one operative accosted by a group of people who insisted on an explanation as he tried to arrest a man on domestic duties.

The officer concerned however failed to give a response but was seen holding on to the victim the way a predator grips a prey.

Shockingly, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) considers those calling for an end to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad as armed robbers. SPJimoh Moshood, the NPF's Public Relations Officer made this assertion on the its website.
The award-winning porn star allegedly took her life following the myriad of backlash she had to suffer after the refusal to act with a gay man and a subsequent warning to other porn stars to desist from acting with gay men.

Ventura County Medical Examiner said August Ames hanged herself and was only found in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

READ MORE: Driver receives award for refusing to blare his car horn for the past 18 years

In her last Tweeter post before the alleged suicide August Ames wrote: Whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, youre shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say Do agents really not care about who theyre representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body After facing criticism for her comments she later added: NOT homophobic. Most girls dont shoot with guys who have shot gay porn, for safety. Thats just how it is with me. Im not putting my body at risk, i dont know what they do in their private lives.
In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, he said the Central Bank must have evidence to support its claims that Menzgold is receiving deposits then it can sanction them.

He added that if the BoG fails to punish Menzgold after finding them guilty, it will only be giving room for such acts to be repeated.

READ ALSO: Parliament approves budget without minority

At the moment, the situation appears confusing because of the BoG notices especially the latest one clearly states that it appears that the institution is taking deposits notwithstanding the earlier warnings that youve given them. So if it appears that they are still taking deposits, then what more.

Unless that phrase appears is that in reality, they are not taking deposits, but it is only apparent. If it is only apparent, then probably they do not have evidence in law. But if it is real then they are taking deposits, then they are breaking Act 930 and they have to be sanctioned and the regulator is the one who has got to tell us exactly what to expect now, he added.

His comments follow the latest directive from the Bank of Ghana cautioning the public against depositing money at Menzgold.

This is the third time such a caution has been issued in 2017 alone. According to the BoG Menzgold has not been licensed to do so.

READ ALSO: Here are the dates public workers will be paid in 2018

But the company has on each occasion, dismissed any such claims.
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This development has become a hindrance to the fight against teenage pregnancies.

READ ALSO: National thanksgiving service to be held on December 7

Some give sex and take fish for their aged parents to sell to augment incomes.

She added that such young pregnant girls were usually anaemic and suffered complications during birth.

Their children are also usually malnourished and they perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

She was speaking at a forum on teenage pregnancy in Cape Coast organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) with support from the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).

The forum was to empower queens in the fight against teenage pregnancy in the region.

In the Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem (KEEA) municipality alone, a total 497 teenagers got pregnant between January and September this year.

In the Abura Asebu Kwamankese district, 280 teenage girls were recorded pregnant by health facilities in the district for the first half of the year.
According to Accra-based Starr FM, the estate agency ordered the family to leave the apartment on Thursday (December 7, 2017).

Asked if she was given any explanation, she said before the disturbing incident she was given a three-month notice to leave the apartment by the lessor.

But the owner wants me outside the house immediately, she disclosed.

She said she has lodged a complaint at the East Legon Police who dispatched with her some of its officers to her apartment in order to secure her access to her apartment.

Haddad Rabih, was arrested around 11:45 pm on Sunday after he allegedly raped his house help around 5 pm on Saturday in the absence of his wife and other occupants of his household.

The victim, whose name has been withheld said ever since she started work in November, she has been harassed by him for sex anytime his wife was not at home.

READ ALSO: Personnel sue NSS over new insurance package

She was, however, advised to report the matter to the East Legon District Police Command a day after the incident, where she was given a medical report on Sunday to undergo a medical examination.

Meanwhile a bail application by Mr Raphael Poku-Edusei, the lawyer for the suspect, Rabih Haddad, was dismissed by an Accra Central District Court on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction to grant bail.

The lawyer for the 39-year-old Lebanese alleged to have raped his 19-year-old house help made attempts to get bail for his client but failed.

According to Mr Edusei, his client had a serious medical condition and would die if remanded in police custody.

He said Haddad had a heart condition and had once fainted in police custody.

We risk trying a dead man. To confine him to a police cell means the next thing is a burial, he said.
A bail application by Mr Raphael Poku-Edusei, the lawyer for the suspect, Rabih Haddad, was dismissed by an Accra Central District Court on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction to grant bail.

According to Mr Edusei, his client had a serious medical condition and would die if remanded in police custody.

READ ALSO: Former Attorney General vows to seek justice for woman raped by Lebanese

He said Haddad had a heart condition and had once fainted in police custody.

We risk trying a dead man. To confine him to a police cell means the next thing is a burial, he said.

But the court, presided over by Ms Arit Nsemoh, refused the bail application and rather advised his lawyer to apply for bail at the High Court.

I do not have original jurisdiction and so apply for bail at the High Court, she said.

The presiding magistrate has since remanded the accused into police custody and adjourned the case to December 19, 2017.

The victim, whose name has been withheld said ever since she started work in November, she has been harassed by him for sex anytime his wife was not at home.

According to her, last Saturdays event was the fourth time the suspect had raped her.

She said the suspect threw her out of the room after raping her twice on Saturday and she bled profusely.

She was, however, able to get help from some police officers on duty at a nearby house, who arrested the suspect and took him to the Airport Police Station.

But a policewoman on duty led the team back to the suspects house and allegedly took GH350 from the suspect as the salary for the victim for the month of November 2017and gave it to her.

The victim subsequently packed her belongings out of the suspects home and went to her fathers.
Speaking on Accra-based Adom FM, he Allotey Jacobs said the defeat was just like rapture.

He said the saddest part for him was when he realised the NDC had lost 16 parliamentary seats in the Central Region where he worked tirelessly to ensure they won.

READ ALSO: MPs demand better salaries for effective discharge of duties

2016 election defeat was a sad day for the NDC; it was very difficult for me when at 2: am I realized I had lost 16 seats in the Central region. It was very pathetic.

NPP had a similar experience in 2000 as it is part of politics but the magnitude of the defeat in 2016 was massive he added.

He, however, said they are re-organizing the grassroots to regain power in 2020.

Had I know is always at last; we have learnt our lessons and we are working hard to win election 2020.

He said no one in the NDC anticipated defeat given the numerous infrastructural projects undertaken by the Mahama-led administration.

Exactly a year today, December 7, 2017, Ghanaians went to the poll to elect a president and their Members of Parliament.

Three-time lucky New Patriotic Party (NPP) leader, Nana Akufo-Addo polled 5,716,026 to beat incumbent President John Mahama who had 4,713, 277 Electoral Commission Chairperson, Charlotte Osei announced Friday (December 9, 2016) evening.
On the campaign trail, Akufo-Addo vowed to change the country dramatically and since taking office on January 7, the countrys 5th President of the 4th Republic has indeed shaken up the system.

Its probably too soon to tell how Akufo-Addos administration will go, as he has three more years to achieve his campaign goals. Nevertheless, he has made some greater changes. You may tend to disagree with some of them, but here they are:

Big government

President Akufo-Addos decision to appoint some 110 Ministers including deputies and regional ministers, generated mixed reactions among Ghanaians, as this was the highest number of appointees any government has had since the Fourth Republic. It came as a surprise to many, with others suggesting that the president was only rewarding party loyalty by giving out those positions. But Nana Akufo-Addo defended the move, saying that additional talents were needed to ensure success in critical sectors.

Free SHS

President Akufo-Addos much-awaited free SHS gained world recognition when it launched in September this year.

In this flagship programme, which has benefited over 400,000 students, the government of Ghana foots all bills including feeding fees, tuition fees, and any other accompanying charges.

But right after its introduction, a lot of criticisms were raised against it by some Ghanaians and political critics.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party had expressed worry that the initiative will drain the economy. For them, and many others, the president should rather focus on the quality of education by improving the available infrastructure in most schools.

And just three months into the policy, challenges associated with infrastructure and logistics have been a major issue. But the president has promised to ensure that the programme is sustained despite those challenges.

Agriculture (One District, One Factory)

President Nana Akufo-Addo on Friday, August 25, 2017, launched its other flagship programme dubbed One-District, One-Factory at Ekumfi in the Central Region. This marked the formal introduction and implementation of the governments industrialisation policy.

The fruit processing factory at Ekumfi which was launched by the President will create a ready market for pineapples cultivated in the Ekumfi area and its environs.

The objective of this policy is to establish one factory across all 216 districts in the country. What is more, strong links are being created among industry, agriculture and other natural resources for job opportunities to ease the unemployment burden on the entire economy.

Planting for Food and Jobs

Just like the One District One Factory, Akufo-Addos Planting for Food and Jobs has already begun receiving wide acceptance and support.

The policy, which is expected to create in excess of 750,000 jobs to Ghanaians is also to help address the declining growth of Ghanas agricultural sector. The five-year-long policy is aimed at increasing food production and ensure food security for the country as well as reduce food import bills to the barest minimum. It is also an avenue to modernize agriculture and make it a source of employment for the teeming youths.

Dumsor improved

The countrys frequent power outages, which is believed to have caused an excess of $3 billion has surely improved this year. There has been some back and forth as to whether dumsor has really ended and under whose regime it did. But there is no doubt that it has greatly improved this year. Now, the burden facing the government is the about $2.4 billion energy sector debt which the Akufo-Addo government has assured of clearing or refinancing.

Port business made easier

Doing business in Ghana has not been an easy task for many over the years. The process of clearing goods at the Tema ports has been tedious, taking so many weeks with clients suffering at the hands of some middlemen. The result has been massive corruption at the ports. But to reverse this, the Akufo-Addo government on September 1 began the implementation of the paperless clearing system. It is to speed up the process of clearing goods from two weeks to four hours, and ensure order at the port.

Even though some freight forwarders protested over the system saying they have not been well educated about the process, it still took off creating a revenue collection improvement of 56 percent.

Revenue at the ports increased from GHc130 million in the first week of September 2016, to GHc213 million in the same period for 2017, the vice president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia indicated.

More oil

Ghana will be able to generate more investments in the oil and gas sector with the starting of oil production from the valve of the Floating Production Storage and Offloading Vessel (FPSO) John Agyekum Kufuor at the Sankofa-Gye Nyame oil fields.

The fields would produce altogether 45,000 BOPD of oil and 170MMSCFD through 18 wells, using the floating production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) John Agyekum Kufuor.

Corruption fight

Despite the red flags raised by the Minority members of parliament and some civil society groups over the Special Prosecutor Bill, it was finally passed in parliament in November. The setting up of the office of the Special Prosecutor which is aimed at tackling corruption was one of the major campaign promises made by Nana Akufo-Addo ahead of the 2016 election.
The 5 are Minister for Railways Development, Minister of Labour and Employment, Minister for Works and Housing, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources and Minister of Regional Reorganisation and Development.

This led to an abrupt end of proceedings of Parliament.

However, the Second Deputy Majority Chief Whip, Moses Anim, said the five minister had written to Parliament to explain why they were unable to attend Thursdays sitting but did not give the reasons.

I hold in my hand responses from the ministers to the table office that the table office just submitted to me. So the ministers have responded.

However, the Deputy Minority Chief Whip, Ahmed Ibrahim, who was dissatisfied at the response said: I cant take the response given by the deputy whip serious because the Ministers knew they had to appear before the House Thursday.

Is he [Second deputy majority chief whip] telling this house that all the five ministers of state have written letters that none of them; not even one can avail himself before the house and responds to the questions that are being asked of them? he questioned.

Today is 7th December and it was 7th December that Ghana went for elections. Just within one year and five ministers of state, not even one is before the House to answer questions. Government business must be taken seriously and this is the House of parliament, this is the heart of democracy, this is why 7th December Ghanaians went to queue to vote, he said.

We cant take this and we cant believe this. , if you cant handle the power give it to us we are ready, he added.

Second Deputy Speaker, Alban Bagbin who presided over proceedings said the five ministers cannot unilaterally decide not to appear before the House.
In a post on Facebook, Dr Bawumia said that the Akufo-Addo government is committed to fulfilling the pledge it made to Ghanaians during the 2016 election campaign.

A year ago today, we lined up in our millions, unmindful of the Sun and rain, and took the decision to effect a change in our national fortunes.

My boss Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the NPP and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to serve mother Ghana and implement destiny-changing policies and programmes.

We will remain faithful to our pledge to the good people of Ghana, and ask for your constant prayer and support as we continue on the quest to move Ghana to her rightful place in the comity of nations. May God bless our homeland Ghana.

Akufo-Addo beat ex-president John Mahama and five other candidates in the December 7 election by securing 53.85 per cent of valid votes cast to win the contest for the presidency.
That verdict was the culmination of a strangling of dissent in Cambodia, with CNRP president Kem Sokha jailed for treason in September as part of a crackdown that has also seen media outlets shuttered, journalists jailed and activists harassed.

In response, the State Department will restrict entry to "those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia." In some cases, their relatives will also face visa restrictions.

The department declined to say which Cambodians are being punished, in particular Hen Sen himself, and said visa issuance is confidential.
The slogan "free Palestine" was daubed on a consulate wall while protesters hurled plastic bottles into the compound. A piece of paper with a representation of an Israeli flag was also burned.

They chanted slogans including "murderer US, get out of the Middle East", "down with America!" and urged Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to "strike Israel".

"Jerusalem is for Muslims and will remain forever," the organisers said in a statement. Protesters also lit flares and waved Palestinian flags.

However the protest passed off largely peacefully and demonstrators dispersed.

A similar protest took place outside the US embassy in the capital Ankara, with people holding images of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ahead of Trump's widely-flagged announcement Erdogan had warned after a meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II that the move would "play into the hands" of terror groups.

Erdogan has called a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul on December 13 to discuss the issue.

Last year, Turkey and Israel ended a rift caused by Israel's deadly storming in 2010 of a Gaza-bound ship that left 10 Turkish activists dead and led to a downgrading of diplomatic ties.
Thousands of police and soldiers had been deployed ahead of polling day in the capital Kathmandu and the populous lowlands, with the build-up to the vote hit by violence that has left one dead and dozens injured.

The south is home to a mosaic of ethnic minorities who say a new post-war constitution denies them political representation, a cause that has sparked bloody protests in recent years.

More than 12.2 million people are eligible to vote in the the second phase elections, which come 10 days after the country's mountainous north cast their ballots.

The streets of Kathmandu were eerily quiet as polls opened, with vehicles banned from the roads due to security concerns.

The vote will elect the country's first provincial assemblies, devolving power away from a top-heavy central government that has cycled through 10 leaders in the last 11 years.

"Now there will be specific people responsible for different parts of the country it will be more accountable," said Bishwa Shrestha, 46, after casting his ballot in Kathmandu.

The newly-elected assemblies will be tasked with naming their provinces, which are currently referred to by number, as well as choosing capitals and negotiating budgets with Kathmandu -- all sensitive considerations that could rekindle tensions in the ethnically-diverse south.

"How the politics will unfold will depend on how the new parliament addresses the problems and how well the provinces can function," said political analyst Chandra Kishor Jha, referring to the challenges facing Nepal as it enters uncharted territory as a federal state.

"If they cannot fulfil their promises then the groups that have been part of the struggle will not stay quiet. There is possibility of conflict again."

Politically marginalised

Years of political turbulence have hampered development in the impoverished Himalayan nation, which is still recovering from a powerful earthquake that hit two years ago, killing 9,000 people and destroying over half a million homes.

It took nine years after the end of a decade-long civil war to agree to a new constitution. The charter adopted in 2015 mandated a sweeping overhaul of Nepal's political system to give greater autonomy to the provinces.

But it also sparked deadly protests in the south by ethnic minority groups who say it leaves them politically marginalised, and have demanded amendments to the charter.

The Communist CPN-UML party is expected to sweep the polls, buoyed by its alliance with the main Maoist party comprised of former rebels who fought government forces for a decade.

But the nationalistic CPN-UML has strongly opposed amending the constitution to address the demands of ethnic minorities that it views as being more closely aligned with India.

Many in the southern lowlands share close linguistic and cultural ties with Indians across the border.

Nepal's powerful neighbour to the south has long played the role of big brother in the landlocked country.

But in recent years Kathmandu has played diplomatic ping-pong with its two large neighbours, India and China, who use big-ticket infrastructure projects to vie for influence.
The US leader is due to make the announcement at 1800 GMT from the White House, upending decades of US policy and ignoring warnings that it could trigger a surge of violence in the Middle East.

An outpouring of emotions is expected after Trump speaks, with a major protest set for the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday and the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip Hamas calling for a day of rage Friday.

But already ahead of the announcement there were signs of the rising tensions.

Hundreds of angry Palestinians in the Gaza Strip burned American and Israeli flags and pictures of Trump at demonstrations.

Meanwhile there were relatively small clashes at the entrance to the Al-Arroub refugee camp near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

In Jerusalem itself the situation was calm on a cold and wet Wednesday morning -- with Palestinian responses varying from fury to resignation.

"How can he bring the embassy from Tel Aviv to here?" 50-year-old Mohammed Nabarak said.

"There will be new problems again. There will be a new intifada," he said, referring to the two previous bloody Palestinian uprisings.

"The Western countries are even more against it than the Arabs."

Salah al-Shawish, 49, said that the decision would "make things worse".

"It is natural for the corrupt Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, because the Arab world is torn and its leaders weak," he said.

'It is about time'

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most hotly contested issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel seized control of the east of the city in 1967 and later annexed it in moves never recognised by the international community.

Israel considers the city its undivided capital, but Palestinians believe the east is illegally occupied and see it as the capital of their future state.

There are no clear walls or barriers separating east and west, only invisible lines known to the residents.

In the Old City, populated largely by Palestinians, heavily armed Israeli forces patrol the streets and control access to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a key site for Muslims.

"If they recognise Jerusalem as the capital or they don't, what will change? We are living under occupation," Abu Abed, a Palestinian in the Old City, said Wednesday.

At least until Trump's announcement, no countries currently fully recognise Israeli control over the city, with all foreign embassies located in Tel Aviv.

For Israelis in Jerusalem the Trump announcement was a major moment.

Emmanuel Posen, 44, said he had been smiling all morning after hearing the news.

"It is about time -- 3,000 years later than it should have been," he said, referring to the long Jewish history in the city.

He insisted he was not concerned about potential violence as Palestinians react to the move.

"If I was afraid for every step I am making (because of) what the Arabs will do I wouldn't do anything," he said.

Eugene Kontorovich, a campaigner for moving the embassy and head of international law at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem-based conservative think-tank, lauded it as an "extraordinary development of historic proportions."
Speaking at the 2017 Annual Conference of the Comptroller General of Immigration held at the MITROS Residences in Abeokuta, Obasanjo said that slave trade in the 21st century should be condemned in the strongest term possible.

The theme for the conference was :  Managing Migration and Facilitating Trade and Development in 21st Century Nigeria : NIS Perspective.

He explained that the leaders must feel a sense of regret on what they ought to do, what they had done and what they had not done.

I believe that slave trade in the 21st century should be condemned in the strongest language possible and nobody who is involved in it should be excused.

What can we do and what must we do? We must ensure that conducive atmosphere is created for genuine exchange of goods and ensure development within our country, sub-region, continent and the world which we live.

But then today, migration has a very nasty connotation particularly when you watch the television and you hear the story of thousands of our youths daring to go through the desert.

Then after they have embark on such perilous journeys, some of them are sold as slaves. Slaves in the 21st century, Africans being sold by Africans and maybe to Africans.

All of us as leaders must feel a sense of regret and have sober reflection on what we have done or what we have not done to bring this about to our own people,  he said.

Obasanjo, charged the men of the NIS to imbibe the culture of training, professionalism, integrity, loyalty, and service, saying that all these must not be taken for granted.

In his address, the Comptroller  General of NIS , Muhammad Babandede, said that the service was committed to safe and regular migration of Nigerian citizens and foreigners.

He disclosed that the current issue being witnessed in Libya was not new to the NIS and it had regularly engaged in measures and activities to reduce the menace.

Babandede however warned travel agencies, individuals and officers in the passport offices at various borders who are engaged in smuggling of migrants to desist from it, saying anybody found wanting would be made to face the law.

He said that the service have some cases of smuggling under investigation, urging his men to step -up their activities through intelligence gathering, speedy investigations to allow the law to take its full course .

Babandede added that starting January, 2018, the National Identity Number would be part of requirements for issuance of Nigerian passport with the National Identity Management Commission.

He noted that the aim of the conference was to review the E- passport, after 10 years of its introduction in order to better the services they rendered.

I wish to state that NIS is committed to safe and regular migration to prevent the sad stories of loss of lives and sources of Nigerian citizens and others, occasioned by the desperate journey through the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea.

The recent media revelations of the sad events in Libya are not new to the NIS and we had regularly engaged in measures and activities to reduce the menace in collaboration with partners and stakeholders,  he said.

Earlier, Gov. Ibikunle Amosun who declared the conference open, also condemned the resurrection of slave trade in Libya, saying that African leaders should rise to condemn the act.
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#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...
Israel salutes 'historic' day

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's recognition as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision".

Netanyahu also pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

'Undermining peace'

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the US could no longer play the role of peace broker after Trump's decision.

"These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts," Abbas said in a speech.

'Destroys two-state solution'

The secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said Trump had destroyed any hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"He destroyed the two-state solution," Saeb Erekat, who long served as the Palestinians' top negotiator, told journalists.

'Open gates of hell'

Hamas said Trump's decision would "open the gates of hell" on US interests in the region.

"This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region," Ismail Radwan, an official with the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, told journalists.

'New intifada'

Iran condemned the US move, saying it threatened a "new intifada", or uprising, against Israel.

"The provocative and unwise decision by the US... will provoke Muslims and inflame a new intifada and an escalation of radical, angry and violent behaviour," the foreign ministry said on its website.

UN against 'unilateral measures'

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres implicitly criticised Trump's announcement, warning that Jerusalem's status must be resolved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

"From day one as secretary general of the United-Nations, I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardise the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians," Guterres said.

'Palestinian cause'

The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed Trump's move, saying in a statement it would not dim the "Palestinian cause".

"The future of Jerusalem is not set by a state or a president, but by its history, will, and the determination of those loyal to the Palestinian cause which will stay alive in the conscience of the Arab homeland until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," it said.

'Rejected by Arab world'

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed his country's "highest degrees of solidarity with the Palestinian people and its right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".

"The American decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the embassy there is a step that is rejected by the Arab world and risks spilling dangers over into the region," he said.

'Violation of international law'

Jordan condemned Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as amounting to a violation of international law and the UN charter.

"The decision of the American president to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of the US embassy to this city constitutes a violation of decisions of international law and the United Nations charter," said government spokesman Mohammed Momani.

'Irresponsible, illegal'

Turkey slammed Trump's Jerusalem announcement.

"We condemn the irresponsible statement of the US administration... the decision is against international law and relevant UN resolutions," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter.

'Unhelpful for peace'

Prime Minister Theresa May said the British government disagreed with Trump's decision, saying it was "unhelpful" for peace efforts.

"We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital," she said in a statement. "We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region".

'Avoid violence'

French President Emmanuel Macron branded Trump's stance as "regrettable" and called for efforts to "avoid violence at all costs".

Macron affirmed "the attachment of France and Europe to the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states."

Merkel 'does not support'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said through her spokesman that she "does not support" Trump's reversal of decades of US policy.

"The status of Jerusalem can only be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution," spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter.

'Serious concern'

The European Union's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced "serious concern" at Trump's new stance on Jerusalem.
Since 2004, Nigeria was reported to have lost about $230 billion to illicit financial outflow, and a major part of it is expatriated to offshore tax-havens across the world.

Based on agreements between these off-shore tax havens and major financial centres, it is easier to get the fund to advanced countries from there.

According to the Global Witness, there are top five jurisdictions implicated in the papers. Majority of these locations are United Kingdom Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies.

As a result, here are top five locations Nigerian public officials warehouse stolen funds without most people knowing.

The British Virgin Islands

The British Virgin Islands is noted to house 452,000 international businesses. This is second to only to Hong Kong in presence of international businesses.

In this country, there is no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Also, there is no public record of any owners of a business and no accounts. Hence, the identity of whosoever is operating these businesses and accounts is unknown.

Bailiwick of Jersey

Jersey is the largest of British Channel Island and globally acknowledged as the richest offshore tax shelter.

The capital city of the Island country, St Helier, is noted to be home to major global investment, finance and management consulting firms such as Credit Suisse, Citi Bank, HSBC, Societe Generale, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

At present, there is no inheritance tax, capital gains tax or standard corporate tax in the island country. This made Jersey a popular tax haven and estimated to house over $5 billion worth of assets per square mile.

The Isle of Man

The Isle of Man, just like other British Channel Islands and tax-havens, has no capital gains tax, turnover tax or capital transfer tax. It is also noted that the country has great benefits for pension funds.

According to Crystal Stranger of 1st tax Inc., many multinationals have their pension funds in this country in order to enjoy a tax lax and other benefits considered as taxable income.

Many international companies have their employee pension plans held in accounts in this small country due to asset protection and the ability to take benefits from the age of 50 onwards, said Stranger.

The Bahamas

The tourist country of Bahamas is globally noted as a safe haven for funds and assets. The country is an ideal location for individuals and corporations seeking to gain tax advantages with confidentiality. One which many Nigerians utilized this to their advantage, as funds from the country found their way there.

An interest thing about Bahamas' tax haven is that it incorporates asset protection, estate planning, tax mitigation and privacy.

All accounts and companies in the country are treated in privacy and anonymity, so it is a safe location for stolen funds from Nigeria.

The Anguilla

Anguilla is one of the Britain Overseas Territories, and it is reputed as a respected tax haven. In the country, there are zero taxation levies for all income generated from outside of its jurisdiction.

The country is a pure tax haven with no income taxes, estate taxes or capital gains taxes on individuals or corporations. All offshore entities incorporated in Anguilla are exempted from paying stamp duty, thus making it one of the preferred destinations for funds from the Africas largest economy.
The White House has been informed of a newly developed cruise missile that proponents say could knock out North Korean missile launches in their tracks without killing anyone, NBC News reported on Monday.

The missile  a Boeing AGM-86B air-launched cruise missile with a payload known as the Counter-electronics High-power Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or Champ  launches from planes, just like the nuclear variant commonly found on B-52s.

But instead of a nuclear payload, the Champ payload fires microwave pulses that are designed to disable electronics in their path. It has successfully shut down electronics in multistory buildings in previous tests.

David Deptula, a retired US Air Force general who ran the US's air war in Iraq, told NBC's "Nightly News" that the new missile could "quite possibly" shut down a North Korean missile on a launchpad.

"Command and control centers are filled with electronic infrastructure, which is highly vulnerable to high-powered microwaves," Deptula said.

Politicians say the Pentagon doesnt like change

Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, one of several civil and government officials who support the Champ system, told NBC the missile hadn't been accepted or widely deployed because of roadblocks within the Pentagon.

"The challenges are less technical and more mental," said Heinrich, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding that "the tendency within the Pentagon is oftentimes to continue to try and perfect something," like existing missile defenses and weapons, rather than employ a new technique.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed that sentiment.

Hunter said last month that "it's hard to get things through" to the Defense Department that are "doable, that are easy, that are cheap, that are efficient, and that already exist, because that makes nobody happy."

Hunter blamed a broken defense industrial complex for the difficulties in adopting new technologies.

"There's not retired general that works for Company A that says, 'I would like to do that thing that costs no money and it doesn't get me a contract,'" Hunter said, according to Inside Defense. "No one says that."

Champ is an interesting option, not a silver bullet

But while the Champ system may represent advantages over existing missile defenses that fire interceptors after a missile has launched, exited the atmosphere, and separated into possibly several warheads, it's not without disadvantages.

The system has to get close to its targets before knocking them down, meaning it could have to violate North Korean airspace, which could be perceived as an act of war.

And if North Korea spotted the incoming cruise missile, which looks exactly like a nuclear-capable cruise missile, it may respond automatically, regardless of the missile's nonlethal nature.

Military equipment has redundant wiring and insulation to harden it against electronic warfare and attacks like the Champ, so the system would most likely need more work before it could be certified as capable of shutting down a missile launch  if it could achieve such a thing.

For now, NBC reports, officials have briefed the White House on the Champ system and its availability. Whether it fits into President Donald Trump's strategy of "maximum pressure" against North Korea remains to be seen.

Watch a video explainer on Champ:
Devin Nunes met with Blackwater founder Erik Prince earlier this year and discussed Nunes' investigation into the unmasking of Americans' identities in US intelligence reports, Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in an interview last week.

The meeting, which took place over "the summer or early fall," has raised eyebrows given Nunes' recusal from the Russia investigation and Prince's status as a witness in that probe. Prince was questioned by the committee on November 30 about his meeting with Emirati government officials and a Russian hedge fund manager in Seychelles just before the Inauguration.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff asked Prince during the hearing why he had not responded to a documents request sent to him by the committee on May 17. Prince insisted that he never received the letter and said the first time he heard from the committee was "only weeks ago" when a staffer, Kash Patel, asked if he would testify.

Asked if he had "any subsequent communication with any of the members or staff of the committee," Prince replied that he "had seen Chairman Nunes." Prince said later that his meeting with Nunes was actually the first time he learned that the committee wanted him to testify.

"He had talked about coming in for a hearing," Prince said. "And one of his staff members was there as well."

Asked whether Nunes had gotten into "the substance of your testimony in any way," Prince replied that the conversation revolved around Nunes' "investigation into the unmasking of intelligence on Americans."

"He said I should come in and talk to him about that," Prince said.

Nunes stepped aside from the Russia investigation in early April following his decision to brief Trump and the press on classified intelligence  without telling his fellow committee members.

But he quickly began conducting his own investigation into "unmaskings" of Trump associates by the Obama administration, which he has alleged were politically motivated. Prince echoed many of the same arguments Nunes has made in the past about the unmasking process, asserting that "unlawful leaking" from the US intelligence community about the names of American citizens caught up in intelligence reports constituted "abuse."

Nunes wrote in a July letter to the Director of National Intelligence that he had "found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes."

A spokesman for Nunes did not respond to questions about whether Nunes and Prince discussed the substance of Prince's testimony, or coordinated in any way, prior to his November 30 hearing.

Prince, for his part, seemed convinced that The Washington Post learned of his meeting with Emirati officials and the Russian banker in the Seychelles from US intelligence officials who had leaked his name to the press.

It is illegal for intelligence officials to reveal the names of unmasked Americans. But Republican and Democratic congressional aides told news outlets in April, shortly after Nunes stepped down from the probe, that Obama administration officials did not act inappropriately in trying to unmask officials on Trump's transition team whose conversations with foreign officials were incidentally collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations.

Prince told Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell that he "went to see [Nunes] in his office about Afghanistan."

"When was that?" Swalwell asked.

"Well, I don't know," Prince replied. "I wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. I was asked to come into the White House a couple times to talk about that. And so it was sometime, I don't know, over the summer or early fall."

"How did unmasking come up?" Swalwell asked. "Did he bring it up, or did you?"

"No," Prince said. "I asked him what the committee was doing to investigate illegal leaks and illegal unmasking of American citizens doing business abroad. And he said: You ought to come in and talk to the committee about it sometime."
Turmoil at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is ongoing nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump moved to place Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the independent agency.

In one example, a group of CFPB employees calling itself "Dumbledore's Army" is seeking to quietly resist Mulvaney, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing a pair of sources. The reference is from the "Harry Potter" series in which "Dumbledore's Army" served as a secret resistance force.

Other employees, some of whom are in senior leadership, have welcomed Mulvaney, even though he has publicly lambasted the consumer watchdog agency that was formed in the aftermath of the financial crisis. A CFPB official told Business Insider last week that senior leadership "unanimously" complied with Trump's pick.

"All of the senior leadership is firmly behind Mulvaney," they said. "Whether they truly are behind him or not is a different story."

Mulvaney has already moved to rapidly change the agency, which he promised upon taking the reins. The acting director placed a moratorium on the approval of payments to some financial crime victims, froze hiring and all new rules and regulations, and called for a reviews of all active investigations and litigation.

"This place will be different, under my leadership and under whoever follows me," Mulvaney said.

The skirmish over the CFPB's future began the Friday after Thanksgiving when outgoing director Richard Cordray named his deputy, Leandra English, as acting director. Trump then announced Mulvaney as acting director.

Both sides then battled over who had the legal authority to name the successor. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who championed the creation of the agency, and her allies cited language in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act as proof that Cordray, nominated by President Barack Obama, was in the right, while the Trump administration and its allies said the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act usurps Dodd-Frank.

Dodd-Frank says the bureau's deputy director shall "serve as acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director." The heart of the legal dispute is whether "absence" or "unavailability" in Dodd-Frank means a vacancy, as is the case here.

The general counsel for the CFPB sided with the Trump administration on the matter.

English filed a lawsuit in federal court on Sunday in which she called herself the "rightful acting director" and sought a temporary restraining order to prevent Mulvaney, who once called the agency a "sick, sad" joke, from fulfilling Trump's appointment. A judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration last week, and the issue is being further litigated.
FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted Thursday that the FBI's reputation was not "in tatters," days after President Donald Trump suggested was the case in a weekend tweet.

Wray was pressed on Trump's tweet during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. A pair of Democratic members  Reps. Jerold Nadler of New York, the ranking member of the committee, and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas  asked about Trump's tweet.

"There is no shortage of opinions out there," Wray said. "What I can tell you is tens of thousands of agents and analysts and staff working their tails off to keep Americans safe from the next terrorist attack, gang violence, child predators, spies from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The FBI that I see is tens of thousands of brave men and women who are working as hard as they can to keep people that they will never know safe from harm."

In a weekend tweetstorm, Trump blasted the FBI for having what he believed to be a "double standard." It came after his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was charged lying to the FBI, while 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did not face punishment as a result of the investigation into her use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state.

Trump also retweeted reports that a top FBI investigator on special counsel Robert Mueller's team was removed from the investigation for exchanging text messages that could be construed as anti-Trump.

The investigator, Peter Strzok, had a prominent role in the FBI's Clinton investigation.

"Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump tweeted.

"After years of" former FBI Director James "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."

Our reputation is quite good

Given the opportunity to publicly address Trump's comments, Wray pushed back on the idea that the FBI's reputation is "in tatters" and the "worst in history."

"The FBI I see is reflected in folks like the new class of agents I swore in in Quantico two days ago," he said. "Hard-charging, high integrity people. People like the hostage rescue team and SWAT teams that we send out into all sorts of danger with almost no notice."

He added that he sees an agency that is "respected and appreciated" by their foreign and domestic law enforcement, national security, and intelligence partners.

"That's the FBI I see," Wray said. "Now do we make mistakes? You bet we make mistakes. Just like everybody who is human makes mistakes. When we make mistakes, there are independent processes like the independent, outside inspector general that will drive and dive deep into the facts surrounding those mistakes. And when that independent fact finding is complete, we will hold our folks accountable if that's appropriate."

Asked by Jackson later in the hearing about what affect Trump's tweet had on officials in the bureau, Wray said FBI staffers "are big boys and girls" who "understand that we will take criticism from all corners."

"And we are accustomed to that," he said, adding, "My experience has been that our reputation is quite good."
LONDON  Philip Hammond has been criticised after linking low productivity rates to higher amounts of disabled people working in the UK.

The chancellor told MPs at the Treasury Select Committee that "very high levels of engagement in the workforce" of disabled people "may have had an impact on overall productivity measurements."

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the committee, said the remarks were "appalling" and "ignorant" in a tweet.

Anna Bird, director of policy and research at disability charity Scope, told HuffPost: These comments are totally unacceptable and derogatory.

Asked about a fall in productivity rates in 2017, Hammond replied that: "The consequences of high levels of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, will be felt for many, many years to come.

"It is almost certainly the case that by increasing participation in the workforce, including far higher levels of participation by marginal groups and very high levels of engagement in the workforce, for example of disabled people - something we should be extremely proud of - may have had an impact on overall productivity measurements."

Mann tweeted: "Appalling. Chancellor just linked low productivity growth to the labour market and specified the increased employment of disabled people.

"My experience of employing disabled people is that they are brilliant employees. The chancellors comments are ignorant."

Bird said the remarks "fundamentally undermine the Governments policy to get more disabled people into work, and the ambition set out by the Prime Minister just a week ago. The Chancellor must urgently withdraw them and offer a full apology."

Labour productivity measured by output per hour fell 0.1% between March and June, according to ONS figures. The fall came despite more people being in work and working more hours.

The government aims to get one million more disabled people into work over the course of a 10-year plan, halving the difference between employment rates for disabled and non-disabled people, which stood at 32% in 2016.

Labour's shadow disabilities minister Marsha de Cordova tweeted that it was "shocking that Philip Hammond is trying to blame disabled people for low productivity!

"Disabled people contribute enormously and disability employment gap has barely changed since productivity started to stall. Disgusting scapegoating!"

@scope As a disabled person... @ Marsha de Cordova MP
WASHINGTON  After Senate Democrats calling for Sen. Al Franken to resign over sexual misconduct allegations snowballed on Wednesday, Republicans across the aisle gave mixed responses on what to do, as an incoming colleague is facing a massive scandal of surrounding similar accusations himself.

When yet another woman came forward accusing Franken of misconduct on Wednesday, several Democratic women in the Senate demanded he resign. The move prompted more senators to call for the Minnesota Democrat's resignation, leading Franken to announce a press conference for Thursday morning, during which he is expected to address his political future.

Senate Republicans have been hesitant to join Democrats in demands that Franken step down

"The women in the Senate have sent a pretty clear message," Sen. Steve Daines of Montana told Business Insider, who when pressed further said, "I respect their position and it seems to be a pretty strong message and pretty unified."

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley dodged questions on Franken.

"I think I ought to give [Franken] the courtesy of listening to what he has to say tomorrow," he said. "I think I'll do that."

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman suggested the process should play itself out regarding Franken, noting the investigation underway by the Senate Ethics Committee.

"My understanding is they've started an ethics investigation and I strongly support that," Portman said. "And we should see what the ethics investigation finds out but if it finds out that he's engaged in this behavior, then yes [Franken should resign]."

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina echoed Portman's take on Franken in wanting a complete and thorough ethics investigation before any decision is made.

"I think we need to be consistent and I think that the allegations against Mr. Franken are pretty significant," Tillis said. "The fact that we had 10 Democrat members call for his resignation today suggests that they even have information that weve not yet seen. That needs to be a subject of the Senate investigation and if the allegations are true, he should go."

However, some Republicans agreed with the avalanche of Democrats that Franken should resign outright.

John Thune, one of the top Republicans in the Senate, said, "That's a decision obviously that Senator Franken has to make between him and his constituents" adding, "I think that's the right call given kind of what we know."

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott echoed what he said about Roy Moore, the GOP's embattled Senate candidate in Alabama who is facing accusations of sexual misconduct himself.

"I would say the same thing about Senator Franken that I said about Roy Moore, which is both need to find something else to do," he said.

While President Donald Trump endorsed Moore this week and the Republican National Committee reinstated financial support for him, he will immediately hit a wall in the Senate, as many Republicans noted.

Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said that while Republicans would have no choice but to seat Moore if he wins, "it probably doesn't bode well" for his future to be faced with so many allegations of sexual misconduct.

Tillis said "if the election in Alabama produces a win for Mr. Moore it too needs to be subject to an ethics investigation and we go from there," echoing the same hesitancy he has with the case with Franken.

"I think each case should be determined on its own facts," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said.

Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said commenting on Moore "would be speculation."

"I don't want to speculate until the voters get done," he said. "When it comes to Roy Moore and me, I didn't endorse him so I didn't have to withdraw my endorsement."

"I don't support his candidacy," Sen. Lindsey Graham said. "I don't like the RNC doing it, but that's their decision to make."

Graham noted that Moore will not just face his own problems in the Senate, but will be a stain on Republicans up and down the ballot in the coming election cycle next year.
The Japanese assault began around 8 a.m., resulting in the deaths of 2,403 Americans, numerous injuries, and the sinking of four battleships, and damage to many more.

Surprised US service members who normally would have slept in on that Sunday morning or enjoyed some recreation found themselves fighting for their lives.

In 2013, the US Navy remembered the "day of infamy" with a series of photo illustrations overlaying scenes from that horrifying date with present-day photos.

Now, 76 years after the attack, here's what Pearl Harbor looked like then and now.

Paul Szoldra contributed to an earlier version of this story.

Defenders on Ford Island watch for planes during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

The battleship USS California burns in the foreground as the battleship USS Arizona burns in the background after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Defenders on Ford Island watch for planes.

Sailors on Ford Island look on as the Mahan-class destroyer USS Shaw explodes.

A view of the historic Ford Island control tower from 1941. The tower was once used to guide airplanes at the airfield on the island. It is now an aviation library.

The USS Shaw explodes during the attack.

The battleship USS Arizona burns during the attack, as viewed from Ford Island.
Theresa May has criticised Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital as Israel, calling the provocative move "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

The status of Jerusalem is hotly disputed, with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority laying claim to the city as their capital. Every other country does not recognise it as the capital of Israel, and instead base their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump announced that the United States now recognises Israel's claim, and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the holy city  sparking immediate protests and risking inflaming tensions in the region.

In a statement, the British prime minister said that the government disagreed with the American decision, and will keep its own embassy in Tel Aviv.

"Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing; it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states," May said.

The decision was, she said, "unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region."

Statement from Theresa May ... @ Raf Sanchez

French president Emmanuel Macron also criticised the move, saying in a statement: "France does not approve the US decision. France supports the Two-State Solution, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States. We must prefer appeasement and dialogue."

"Jerusalem: France does not... @ France Diplomacy#emo##emo#

"My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians," Trump said when he announced the decision. "Ive judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians."
The US embassy in Jordan published a security warning telling US citizens that Trump's decision may spark protests which "have the potential to become violent." The statement urged US citizens to avoid large gatherings and to maintain a "high-level of vigilance" as tensions rise in the region.

The embassy, located in Jordan's capital Amman, also temporarily suspended public services, and instructed US personnel to keep a "low profile."

All embassy travel outside of Amman was temporarily suspended, and children of US officials were instructed not to attend school on Thursday.

In Turkey, the US embassy in Ankara stated that it was aware of plans by several groups to stage public protests, and urged US citizens to avoid areas of large gatherings, particularly around US outposts in Ankara, Istanbul and Adana.

"Even gatherings intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and escalate into violence," the statement read.

The US embassy in Egypt said that Trump's announcement has "generated significant media attention," and Americans in the country are urged to stay vigilant. The US State Department has warned US embassies across the globe to increase security.

US Marine units are on call if added security is needed in capitals across the world, the publication Marine Times said.

We have contingency plans in place, in the event that violence breaks out across our area of operations, US Central Command spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques told the Marine Times.
At age 36, Markle is best known for playing the role of Rachel Zane in the series "Suits." But a closer look at her career history reveals some surprising and impressive gigs, from United Nations women's advocate to lifestyle blogger and fashion designer.

Below, we've listed the highlights of Markle's resume thus far.

Before playing Rachel Zane on "Suits," Markle appeared in the soap opera "General Hospital" in 2002 and the sci-fi drama "Fringe" in 2009, as well as the comedy "Horrible Bosses" in 2011.

Source: ,

Markle is a United Nations women's advocate and she gave a speech at UN Women's 2015 conference.

In the speech, she recalled being outraged at age 11 when she saw a soap commercial with the slogan, 'Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.' So she wrote a letter to the soap manufacturer as well as to Hillary Clinton and other powerful figures. The commercial subsequently changed its slogan to, 'People all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.'

Source:

Markle is an ambassador for Canada's World Vision Clean Water campaign. She traveled to Rwanda in 2016 to help spread the mission.

Source:

Markle founded lifestyle blog "The Tig," which she shut down in 2017. She wrote on the site: "I knew that girls were checking the site to see fashion tips or how to get a stellar blow dry, but in reframing the beauty content to include think pieces about self-empowerment, or feature dynamic women such as Fatima Bhutto, I was hoping to integrate social consciousness and subjects of higher value than, lets sayselfies."

Source:

At age 20, Markle interned for a few months at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires.

Source:

Markle worked as a freelance calligrapher. She did the calligraphy for Robin Thicke and Paula Patton's wedding invitations, and for Dolce and Gabbana's notes to celebrities over the holidays.

Source:

Markle was also one of the briefcase girls on "Deal or No Deal." She said it was a way to "make ends meet" while she was auditioning for other roles.

Source:

Markle also designed two collections for the Canadian retailer Reitmans. A cashmere blend poncho and faux leather leggings were bestsellers.

Source: ,

Soon, she'll embark on a new career as a member of the British royal family. Markle and Prince Harry are expected to wed in spring 2018.
The three largest blazes  the Thomas Fire, the Creek Fire, and the Rye Fire  are burning around Ventura, Sylmar, and Santa Clarita, with no signs of stopping. The fires have already destroyed hundreds of homes, and prompted the evacuation of 200,000 people across region.

Because the flames have been fed by strong, dry Santa Ana winds of up to 80 mph, authorities have not been able to contain the fires.

The blazes have caused highways to shut down, schools to close, and halted activity in the region as firefighters work to contain the destruction. California

Below are some of the most horrifying images from the ground.

The fires forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes around Los Angeles and in suburbs throughout the region.

Downtown Santa Paula was darkened by a power outage as strong winds pushed the Thomas Fire across thousands of acres.

The fire continues to threaten homes as it burns along the 101 freeway.

101 remains open, but authorities are advising people to avoid driving there.

The burned remains of cars lined a country road near Santa Paula.

Embers blew from a tree shortly before it fell near burned cars in Santa Paula.

Despite the violence of these images, no fatalities from the fires had been reported as of 2pm PT on Wednesday.

The fires destroyed over 150 structures and are threatening thousands more homes as of Wednesday afternoon.

Emergency crews blocked roadways in Ventura on Wednesday.

Ventura was hit hard by the Thomas fire, the first and largest of the blazes. The remains of a home are seen here after it burned to the ground.

On Wednesday, Ventura resident Bree Laubacher sifted through rubble at her home.

Entire neighborhoods there were leveled.

In this dystopic image, smoke obscures the surroundings of a destroyed apartment complex in Ventura.

In the early morning on Tuesday, the Creek Fire broke out in the Kagel Canyon area in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles.

A local man was seen praying on Wednesday morning near the Creek Fire in Sylmar.

Thousands of firefighters are working to contain the blazes.

But the fires showed no signs of stopping on Wednesday afternoon.
Last May, Oracle suffered a well-publicized loss in its years-long lawsuit against Google over Android. Oracle appealed the verdict and the first hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

The trial was watched closely by the computer industry and included testimony from a who's who in Silicon Valley, including Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt, and Oracle CEO Safra Catz. At once point Oracle's Larry Ellison even called Page "evil" over the situation.

While each side has won various stages of the legal fight, the upshot is: Google has yet to be told it is on the hook to pay Oracle for Java, much less the massive, multi-billion dollar fine Oracle has been hoping for.

If the appeals court upholds the last jury verdict, which found in favor of Google, that would likely severely hamper Oracle's attempts to keep going on this case. Google had attempted to get the Supreme Court to jump into the case in 2015 and issue a definitive ruling, but the Supreme Court declined to do so at that time, leaving it to wind its way through the lower courts first.

The trial was so technical that the judge overseeing the trial, Judge William Alsup

Oracle and Google have been battling it out for years in two separate court cases over whether Google must pay Oracle billions of dollars for bits of code copied from Java (a programming language Oracle owns) and used in Android (the language Google controls).

At issue were parts of the code called application programming interfaces (APIs), the technology that allows different computer programs to talk to each other. In May 2016, a jury ruled that Google's use of the disputed code was "fair use."

These lawsuits caused a lot of hand-wringing in the software industry, with pro-Google sides worrying that if Oracle won the suit, it would be awful for the software industry. Those folks worried that an Oracle win would make APIs the subject of more lawsuits and make APIs more difficult to create and share.

For those in search of more details on Oracle's potential next moves, a policy blog from the Computer & Communications Industry Association called The Project-Disco blog has posted an interesting analysis of the case.
The drama surrounding embattled venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar has taken yet another turn.

The PR company that Pishevar is suing has filed a motion to dismiss. And in that motion the company makes all sorts of claims about the motives behind the lawsuit, including allegations that the lawsuit was being used to suppress women from speaking out against Pishevar with allegations of sexual misconduct.

Specifically, Pishevar has sued Definers Public Affairs, alleging it is conducting a smear campaign against him.

Tim Miller, the head of Definers' Silicon Valley office,denied all allegations and called Pishevar's claims "delusional." On Wednesday Definers formally responded by filing a motion to dismiss.

Definers is known in Washington, D.C. as a Republican-leaning opposition research group. Opposition research is often thought of in terms of digging up dirt on political opponents. Definers recently opened a Silicon Valley office, mostly to offer public relations and government regulation consulting services.

Pishevar filed the lawsuit shortly before several damaging news stories about him were published. This included a news story about being arrested in London when a woman accused him of rape. Pishevar was released, never charged with a crime and the police said they didn't have enough evidence to pursue it.

Since then, five women came forward alleging sexual misconduct by Pishevar, recounting allegations such as groping or showing them lewd pictures.

On Tuesday, Pishevar announced he was taking a leave of absence from all of his business interests including his investment firm, Sherpa Capital, as well as his role on the board at Virgin Hyperloop One, and the boards of his portfolio companies.

Besides denying that it had anything to do with a smear campaign against Pishevar, Definers also claims that Pishevar "has used this suit to harass and intimidate one woman whom the press has named as one of his alleged victims by serving her with a subpoena to depose her."

However, there have been oddities involving all of this. While Pishevar fully admitted that the London arrest had taken place, it turns out that a police report circulated to journalists was fake, according to the London Police. Business Insider has also seen emails from anonymous tipsters using hard-to-trace email addresses involving Pishevar.

In other words, there is some evidence that someone has been attempting to get reporters to look into Pishevar. But, so far, as Definers points out, Pishevar's lawsuit hasn't included much in the way of proof that links Definers to such deeds.

One person close to the situation told Business Insider that the main purpose of the suit would be to dispose people.

Pishevar is perhaps best known as an investor in Uber who has vocally supported former CEO Travis Kalanick. He's also invested in companies like Airbnb, Slack, and many others.

Pishevar declined comment on this motion to dismiss.

When commenting about the motion to dismiss, Miller doubled down: "Our response indicates once again that Mr. Pishevars claims were delusional and entirely without merit. We had no knowledge of and communicated with no one about the events Mr. Pishevar lays out in his complaint. He has completely fabricated that Definers or anyone working for Definers had any role in this matter," Miller said.
While speaking to journalists after the meeting which was presided by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu announced the names of the six universities.

The Minister listed the newly-approved private universities to include Admiralty University, Ibusa, Delta State; Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia; Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan; Pamo University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt; Atiba University, Oyo State; and Eko University of Medical and Health Sciences, Lagos.

Goodluck Jonathan approved 12 Federal Universities

Recall that in 2011, the former President, Goodluck Jonathan approved the establishment of 12 Federal Universities.

However, a panel set up by the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu in May to audit the take-off grants of the new Federal Universities has submitted its reports about 12 new universities in Nigeria.

The panel reports about the institutions indicate that all is not well yet in the newly established universities as they still have issues with accommodation and accreditation of courses.
"Johnny Hallyday has left us. I write these words without believing them. But yet, it's true. My man is no longer with us," said Laeticia Hallyday, 42, in a statement made in the early hours.

"He left us tonight as he lived his whole life, with courage and dignity."

While he was never taken seriously abroad, Hallyday broke from France's classic "chanson" tradition in the late 1950s, selling more than 100 million albums and headlining 50 major tours.

Born on June 15 1943, he attempted suicide in 1966, collapsed on stage in 1986 and married five times, twice to the same woman, the daughter of one of his oldest friends and songwriters.

"There is something of Johnny in all of us," the French presidency said in a statement on news of his death.

Rumours of Hallyday's passing had flown online in recent weeks after he was admitted to hospital in Paris with breathing problems.

Hallyday, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Smet, spent six days under medical care before returning to rest at his home in Marnes-la-Coquette, west of the capital.

"Until the very last moment, he held firm against this illness that had afflicted him for months, teaching us all extraordinary life lessons," said Laeticia Hallyday.
Looking good around the holiday period is always about elegant simplicity, playing it chic, sensual, flirty and so on for the brunches/cocktails and those last minute parties where you want to look good and effortlessly too.

There are loads of styles that work for this period; sheer details, maxis, ruffles and other flirty details to stand you apart.

We have a round off of some Nigerian brands with stunning pieces you can snag around this period and the cater to varying pockets (who doesn't love a bargain). So go on splurge or save on pieces from the brands listed below.

Almost borderline obsessed with pieces from Style Temple, this Abuja based brand creates exquisite designs with intricate detailing, sheer, appliques, beadwork and more beautiful bits are found on their looks.

Style Temple pieces don't come cheap but they are sure worth every penny.

ALSO READ:Mai Atafo on why he goes dramatic to close his shows

2. Lisa Folawiyo for Vlisco

Lisa Folawiyo's pieces are understated elegance but come flirty enough to rock the holiday season and the collection she worked on for Vlisco are pieces to snag. They don't come cheap but they are worth the tag.

Eman Zazar boasts of sensual, fluid and flattering easy to wear looks and they come perfect for this season. The brand offers premium and r-t-w options so pieces come affordable.

Ejiro Amos Tafiri does beautiful and elegant pieces that work on different body types, there's are prerry Grecian inspired looks to pick up from the top brand.

Mel by Fashpa is one of the coolest brands to own right now! The styles are trendy and chic yet effortless and they come pretty affordable. It's Fashpa's diffusion line.

Maju always comes through with affordable, trendy pieces and for the holiday season there's something (clothing and even accessories) to pick up.

7. Knits & Imo
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the index rose by 580.88 points or 1.51 per cent to close at 39,075.30 against 38,494.42 achieved on Tuesday.

Mallam Garba Kurfi, the Managing Director, APT Securities and Funds Ltd., told NAN that the growth, in spite of the forthcoming Yuletide celebration, was due to renewed confidence of foreign investors in the market.

He said that they were increasing their stake in stocks with strong fundamentals, noting that most equities on the exchange were trading below their fair value.

Some stocks are grossly trading below their intrinsic value when compared with their Earnings Per Share (EPS), Kurfi said.

Mr Ambrose Omordion, the Chief Operating Officer, InvestData Ltd., attributed the development to increasing foreign inflow into the bond and stock markets.

Omordion said that yields on bond was still looking up, while many stocks remained attractive on the stronger numbers emanating from companies.

He said that positive economic data and the rising external reserve contributed to the growth.

Similarily, the market capitalisation inched N202 billion or 1.51 per cent to close at N13.608 trillion compared with N13.406 trillion achieved on Tuesday.

Further analysis of the price movement table indicated that Okomu Oil Palm led the gainers chart with a gain of N2 .78 to close at N70 per share.

Nigerian Breweries garnered N2.40 to close at N140.40 , while Flour Mills Nigeria added N1.60 to close at N34.70 per share.

Unilever gained N1.45 to close at N44.40, while National Salt rose by N1.38 to close at N17.12 per share.

On the other hand, GlaxosmithKline topped the losers chart, dropping by N4.14 to close at N21.66 per share.

Julius Berger trailed with a loss of N1 to close at N27, while PZ dropped 89k to close at N22.01, and Red Star Express, 13k, to close at N4.91 per share.

The volume of shares traded closed higher, appreciating by 34.71 per cent as investors bought and sold 703.68 million shares valued at N7.29 billion transacted in 6,125 deals.

This was against the 522.35 million shares worth N7.52 billion exchanged in 5,150 deals on Tuesday.

Custodian and Allied Insurance was the most active with 131.82 million shares valued at N494.40 million.

UBA sold 92.46 million shares valued at N986.68 million, while FBN Holdings accounted for 86.45 million shares worth N732.07 million.
This is coming as the National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu told newsmen recently, that there is no automatic ticket for the President.

The youth group, who described those endorsing Buhari as sycophants, said the move is anti-democratic.

According to Daily Post, the spokesman of the group, Salihu Dantata Mahmoud said Democracy gives room for a level playing ground, we dont succumb to endorsement. We think endorsement is anti-democracy. You provide a level playing ground, that is why in every political party, there is room for primaries where you allow even the list candidate to participate.

Recently, I got to know that some groups have been endorsing Baba Buhari; its too early. This is the same mistake we made in the past administrations that brought us to where we are today.

Just like Tinubu said recently that the Buhari he knows will not succumb to the tactics of endorsement, I think its a game by sycophants, who are out for gains or to get some form of compensation.

My fervent advice to Baba Buhari is to allow primaries to hold in the APC, endorsement doesnt make democracy to strive. Mind you, we are in third world democracy which is still nascent, which only got stable in 1999 when Obasanjo took over.

We should not abuse it; we saw what happened in Zimbabwe where President Mugabe that had history of fighting for the independence of the country in 1980 was shown the way out by his boys in the Military, though they slapped him with one hand and made him laugh with another hand by giving him immunity from prosecution.

ALSO READ:

In Arewa Youths for Peace and Security, we dont give room for endorsement, we are realist. We present the record the way they are and we believe that Buhari should not succumb to the antics of some sycophants.

We go with the position of Tinubu that there should be primaries fot all party members. In our own opinion, we are not disposed to the antics of endorsement.

Okorochas endorsement

The Imo state Governor had earlier announced that President Buhari is the best candidate that APC can field during the 2019 election.
Amaechi advised his colleagues in the president's cabinet to shun the blaming game and get to work.

The former governor of Rivers state said it is time for officials to concentrate on delivering good policies to the citizens rather than dragging the former president for Nigerias woes.

I agree with those who said we should stop criticising the last government and that we should do our own, Amaechi told The Nation newspaper.

We need to leverage on what we know. People are shouting intermodal transport; I went to the new airport in Singapore and I didnt find one person at the airport.

As you walk in, technology takes over, Amaechi said.

The politician also called for a renewed interest in Nigerias infrastructure with special emphasis on information and communications technology.

ALSO READ: Buhari blames Jonathan for current economic crisis

They also said in the next few years, they would introduce driverless cars. We should also think outside the box about how to improve our transport sector and think less about how sun and moon affect the sector or building more bus stops.

We should see how much investment we can put in the area of ICT. Intelligence transportation should not be ignored, he added.

The blame game

Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has been severally blamed for the current situation Nigeria and her citizenry have found themselves under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.

From the incumbent President to the information minister, Lai Mohammed to Finance minister and even minister for Agriculture, the past administration had always been given as the reason for the failures in the country and all ministries.
The Minister of Education, Alhaji Adamu Adamu, announced this while briefing the State House Press Corps at the end of the FEC meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

According to him, the approvals are a result of the memo submitted to FEC by the ministry.

He said the universities were Admiralty University in Ibusa, Delta state, owned by the Naval Holding Company, Spiritan University in Nneochi, Abia state and Precious Cornerstone University in Ibadan.

Also approved are PAMO University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt, Atibe University in Oyo town, Oyo State and Eko University of Medical and Health Sciences, Lagos.

Adamu said more applications were received by the ministry which would later present them to the Council for approval.

The minister said that FEC had directed the National Universities Commission (NUC) to look into the quality of courses offered by new and existing universities in the country.

According to him, government will withdraw the registration of any university that fails to met the standard set for courses being offered.

Also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, spoke on the recent visits by President Muhammadu Buhari to Cote dIvoire and Jordan.

He said that the Abidjan meeting involved top AU and EU nations and Heads of State who discussed on investing in the youth and sustainable development.

There was a joint Africa Union  European Union declaration made, condemning the issues of slavery in Libya and an agreement for the two regions to put together a force to address slavery and human trafficking in the country.

He said both the EU and AU agreed to cooperate and address the challenges the two regions were facing with regards to the migration of large number of Africans trying to get into Europe.

Onyeama also said the EU was developing a programme, with the private sector, to invest in Africa so as to increase job opportunities for the youth.

He noted that great emphasis was also placed on the relationship between AU and EU on the basis of mutual respect of the sovereignty of countries in both continents.

He said that President Buhari had meetings with some leaders of West Africa where they discussed political stalemates in Togo and Liberia.

He added that Buhari also met with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to discuss the issue of Nigerian illegal migrants in Germany and the arrangement for their repatriation.

On the Jordan visit, he said that Buhari co-hosted the Akbar meeting with the King of Jordan on the processes dealing with finding solutions to terrorism especially in West Africa.

He said that the summit discussed methods that would stop the radicalization of the youth, the strengthening of the military in West African countries and other measures to secure their borders as well as evolving cyber policies to counter propaganda by terrorists.
Buhari, who made the remark at an interactive session with community leaders in Kano, said the federal government would remain resolute in the fight against corruption in the country.

The fight against corruption is the most difficult task of the present administrations agenda since its inception over two year ago, he said.

Buhari, who spoke at length on his experiences on the fight against corruption when he was Military Head of State, said the federal government had directed for the sale of assets confiscated from corruption officials with a view to putting the proceeds into the governments coffers.

We are Planning to sell all confiscated properties so as to put the proceeds into government coffers.

This is because I learnt a lesson when I was military head of state. The assets confiscated from corrupt officials were returned to their owners after we were removed."

He said he would continue to pursue the All Progressives Congress (APC) agenda to ensure justice and fairness to all for the development of the country.

Buhari urged Nigerians to continue to exercise patience and support the federal government in its determination to tackle the various challenges in the country.

He said his administration would continue to give priority to education and urged state governments to also focus on sector for socio-economic development of the people of their respective states.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the interactive session was attended by the Minister of Interior, retired Lt-Gen. Abdurrahman Dambazau and members of the State and National Assembly from the state.
Mr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the UNOWAS made the call at a conference in Abuja on Thursday.

The conference organised by the ECOWAS Parliament and the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), focuses on legislative action for the containment of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALWs) proliferation and terrorist financing.

Chambas said that the conference was an opportunity for representatives of member states to examine the status of implementation of harmonised legal texts aimed at combating SALWs and related crimes that led to conflicts.

He said that since the establishment of the ECOWAS Small Arms Convention in 2009, both countries had yet to create the national commissions on small arms.

The UNOWAS representative, however, commended the Nigeria Presidential Committee on SALWs established in 2003.

He urged Nigerian representatives to provide the committee with legal status and enhance its institutional capacity.

Chambas emphasised that the proliferation of small arms was responsible for 90 per cent of victims in armed conflicts globally.

He added that more than 50 per cent of weapons proliferating in Africa were thought to be used in terrorism, trafficking, robbery and other crimes.

Approximately 35 million dollars of authorised and reported small arms enter West Africa each year underlining the critical importance of their oversight and governance.

Some seven to 10 million illicit SALWs are believed to be circulating in West Africa.

He further stressed that addressing the deficits in governance would tackle the root causes of conflicts which give effect to small arms proliferation in the region.

The proliferation of small arms proliferation can be traced to deficits in governance at community and state levels.

Proliferation of illicit arms and violent extremism are symptoms of deep-seated contestations; as long as there are deficits in governance antagonistic relations and violent conflicts inevitably arise.

In the absence of small arms, conflict wold still occur, using other tools of violence: cutlasses, stones, bows and arrows, and even bare fists if necessary.

Strategies for addressing SALW proliferation should therefore be placed within a broader governance framework that is predicated on the rule of law.

Chambas also advised member states to address insecurity in the sub-region using a human security approach based on home-grown initiatives that would ensure inclusive solutions.

He advised members enhance security and protect the rights of citizens in border communities to ensure they were not exploited by armed groups and extremists.

The UNOWAS representatives also called on participants at the conference to review the domestication of the ECOWAS Counter-terrorism Strategy and provide concrete proposals to strengthen the role of parliamentarians in its implementation.
The governor's decision to name his sister, Ogechi Ololo, as the Commissioner for the new ministry has been heavily criticised by Nigerians on social media since the announcement on Monday, December 4, 2017.

In a press statement signed by the governor's Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, on Thursday, December 7, 2017, he said the idea for the ministry was well thought-out before it was created for the benefit of Imo people.

The statement read, "At the end of the day, the achievements of the new Ministry of Happiness and Purpose Fulfillment will be so amazing that the critics of the initiative, will not only be shocked but will also regret to have drawn the curtain for the new Ministry even before it takes off.

"We accept all the criticisms in good faith and commend the critics. That is what makes the society dynamic and our democracy juicy. The truth is that, the new Ministry is not an accidental discharge but a well-thought out idea that will benefit Imo people in particular and all men and women of goodwill in general. We only ask the critics to give us time."

In an earlier statement on Tuesday, December 5, the governor had explained that he created the ministry because people are still bitter and angry at government policies.

"Governments at different levels have created several ministries and departments to achieve this, yet people are bitter, angry with hate speeches which lead to crisis, war and even terrorism.
The physically challenged who are members of an umbrella body in the Southwest, The Association of the Physically Challenged Southwest, made the plea in Lagos during a solidarity visit to the Aare Ona Kakanfo designate, Dr Gani Adams.

Speaking through their spokesman, Prince Paul Adelabu who said there are over 25m physically challenged in the country, the physically challenged said a separate ministry for them would enhance their welfare and allow government cater for them better.

Insisting that the 25m figure increases on daily basis, Adelabu said motor cycle accident victims add to the figure regularly, stressing that it is imperative that government begin to consider the welfare of the people in the category.

Appealing to the Aare Ona Kakanfo to make case for the physically challenged in the Southwest, the spokesperson said it was jubilation galore among members when news got to them about Adams as the choice for the 15th Aare Ona Kakanfo.

According to him, Adams is better positioned more than ever before to cater for the physically challenged just as they thanked the Aare for his previous assistance.

Reacting, the Aare Ona Kakanfo designate promised to do all within his best to ensure an improved life for the physically challenged.

ALSO READ: Physically challenged people protest in Port Harcourt

He stated that it is important for government to take good care of its physically challenged, adding that if a country is in turmoil, it is as a result of what it's government should do that it is not doing.

Submitting that the country can afford to take care of its physically challenged like the European governments, Adams explained that before now, his Gani Adams foundation has been organising programs for the physically challenged adding that he will do more than before as the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land.
The Administrative Secretary of the Commission, Alhaji Muhammed Umar, disclosed this at a stakeholders meeting in Jalingo.

According to him, over 26,000 of the PVCs have not been collected by their owners in Jalingo town alone.

He advised the affected persons to visit their respective Council Areas secretariats and claim their PVCs.

Umar said the proposed Feb. 10, 2018 would be subject to the approval of INEC headquarters.

The stakeholders had earlier in the meeting agreed on Feb. 10, 2018 as date for the bye election.

The State PDP Chairman, Mr Victor Bala, had appealed to the commission to reschedule the election from mid Jan. to Feb. 10, 2018 as his party was pre occupied with preparations for its national convention.

Mr Augustine Kunnini, the States All Progressives Congress (APC) Treasurer, agreed with Balas position, saying that the date would give the parties ample time to prepare for the election.

The Speaker, Taraba House of Assembly, Mr Abel Diah, had on Nov. 20, declared vacant the seat occupied by late Abdulmalik Dame, the former member representing Ardo-Kola in the assembly.
He was among the first inside the red chamber as soon as the doors were unlatched. A silky smooth operator, he had perfected his strategy months before.

By mid-afternoon, Saraki had become President of the eight Senate against all odds and against the wishes of his party, the APC.

Disobeying the party

57 senators from the opposition PDP who had smuggled themselves into the chamber, unanimously elected Saraki Senate President at a time the other 51 APC senators were still plotting to elect Ahmad Lawan into the position at the International Conference Center.

The problem with Sarakis election was that his political party didn't see it coming and never backed him for the top job--an anomaly in the nation's political playing field.

As a consequence, recriminations from APC hierarchy were inevitable.

"The purported election of Senator Saraki and Dogara as the Senate President and Speaker respectively, is a clear transgression of both the tenets of democracy and Party politics. The APC must come down strongly to mete out sanctions and punishments against treacherous members that perpetrated this ugly charade," APC publicity secretary for Lagos, Joe Igbokwe, fired off in a press statement the day after Sarakis election as Senate President.

Senator Remi Tinubu did her best to openly disrespect the senate president in the early days of the eight senate and Saraki was soon dragged before the code of conduct tribunalfor charges bordering on false declaration of assets and corruption.

Witch-hunt

The senate president wasted little time labelling his trial a witch-hunta ploy by his political party to punish him for going against their decision and joining forces with the opposition PDP to emerge senate president.

When it comes to the APC, Saraki has long accepted he can do no right.

Most people talk about the Senate Presidency position, but this was not my only offence. I have also been accused of helping to frustrate some peoples opportunity to emerge as running mate. But I have no problem with anybody, Saraki said a year after his election.

My concern was that it would not be politically smart of us to run with a Muslim-Muslim ticket. I doubt if we would have won the election if we had done this, especially after the PDP had successfully framed us a Muslim party.

I felt we were no longer in 1993. Perhaps, more than ever before, Nigerians are more sensitive to issues of religious balancing. This, my brother, was my original sin. What they say to themselves, among other things, was that if he could conspire against our ambition, then he must not realise his own ambition as well.

Estranged

Since the events of June 9, 2015, Saraki has somewhat functioned as an estranged member of the governing party--quite like the recalcitrant daughter who is only being tolerated within the family pending when a suitor comes calling.

While he has maintained a harmonious working relationship with President Buhari, the Southwest wing of the APC would rather not touch him with a ten foot pole.

Saraki has been sneered at by core APC loyalists, regarded as a snake who still has PDP blood flowing in his veins by some sections of the governing party and hes been handed a raw deal by the Southwest press who still sway public opinion in Nigeria.

With Atiku Abubakar formally defecting to the APC from whence he came, will Bukola Saraki follow suit ahead of the 2019 general elections?

Presidential ambition

Saraki has never concealed his intention to become Nigeria's president someday.

After doing his time as governor, senator and senate president, the 54-year-old suave and urbane politician must consider himself ready for the nations top job and theres no way hes going to nick that from the current APC set up.

Asked about his political plans at a recent function, Saraki gave little away.

"Anytime next year from February, you can ask us about what are my intentions in 2019 or whether I want to come back to the senate", the senate president said.

While Saraki has been characteristically coy as it pertains to his probable defection to the PDP, the opposition party has been brazenly wooing him to return to the fold.
In a statement by his spokesperson, Mukhtar Zubairu Sirajo, on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, Makarfi denied reports that he would seek the PDPs presidential ticket.

The attention of Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi has been drawn to reports in some sections of the media, which seem to suggest that he has confirmed an interest in seeking to fly the flag of PDP in 2019.

This is not a very true reflection of what the Distinguished Senator gave out in a chat with some newsmen couple of days ago, the statement read in part.

ALSO READ:

Earlier reports claimed Makarfi had shown interest in securing a presidential ticket under the Peoples Democratic Party.

The PDP chairman insisted that he was not asked whether he was planning to seek the partys ticket but rather was asked what threat the return of Atiku Abubakar to the party portended to the aspirations of others who had either made their intentions known.

His answer was that Atikus return would not, in any way adversely affect the rights of any member of the party to aspire to any position, adding that there were no preconditions to the return as Atiku Abubakar did not ask for, neither did the party offer any concessions to him beforehand, the statement added.
Ahead of the motion, Szydlo described it as "a pile of nonsense, lies and slander" before lawmakers voted 239-168, with 17 abstentions, to defeat the opposition bid to topple her government.

Szydlo left early to discuss an expected government reshuffle with President Andrzej Duda and PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country's most powerful politician and the man believed to be calling all the shots.

Development and Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is tipped by many as a possible successor to Szydlo, though PiS spokeswoman Beata Mazurek said Thursday that "no decision has yet been made".

Kaczynski himself is another name being tossed around, including by the leader of the liberal Civic Platform (PO), the main opposition party.
"President Trump's announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact. It is a very fragile context and the announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we're already living in," Federica Mogherini told a press conference in Brussels.

The EU, along with other major international powers, has repeatedly voiced deep concern this week about Trump's declaration. His move upends seven decades of US ambiguity on the highly contentious status of the holy city, which is claimed by both Palestinians and Israelis.

Trump's announcement sparked a Palestinian general strike and a call for a new "intifada" or uprising. The Israeli military deployed hundreds of more troops to the occupied West Bank.

The EU has long supported a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Mogherini said the 28-member bloc would keep working with both sides -- as well as regional players such as Egypt and Jordan -- to restart direct talks.

Mogherini, who meets Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Brussels on Friday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, called for cool heads, saying demonstrations against the decision should be peaceful.

"What we truly need in these difficult times is wisdom and to listen to the wise voices calling for peace and peaceful reactions," Mogherini said.

"We believe this difficult moment calls for an even stronger engagement for peace. The most urgent priority now is that all relevant actors avoid to further escalate tensions on the ground," she added.

Netanyahu's visit, which is to include an "informal" breakfast with EU foreign ministers, was planned before Trump's announcement, but the Jerusalem issue is now set to dominate the meeting.

British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Trump's decision made it all the more urgent that what he called "the long-awaited American proposals on the Middle East peace process" were brought forward.

In recent months Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been working with a small team to develop a new US proposal to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombing raids hit the village of Al-Jerzi on the eastern bank of the river, which cuts across Deir Ezzor province.

"Twenty-one civilians were killed, including nine children, very early Wednesday in Russian air strikes targeting residential buildings in Al-Jerzi," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The Britain-based monitor relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

It says IS, which used to control swathes of Deir Ezzor province, has been ousted from all but eight percent of the oil-rich region.

The jihadists have lost vast swathes of it to separate offensives by Russian-backed Syrian troops and an alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The SDF has long been backed by US-led coalition bombing of IS in Iraq and Syria, but its Kurdish component recently said it had also received support from Moscow.

Russian warplanes had given air cover to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as they fought against jihadists in Deir Ezzor, according to the YPG and Moscow's defence ministry.

Russia first launched bombing raids in 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered forces.

Those strikes have helped Assad regain control over much of war-ravaged Syria.

More than 340,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out with protests against Assad's rule in March 2011 which were met with a brutal crackdown.
"Upon the conclusion of the general staff's situation assessment, it was decided that a number of battalions will reinforce in the area of (the West Bank), as well as combat intelligence and territorial defence," the military said in a statement.

"In addition, more standby forces were defined, as part of the (military's) readiness to possible developments."

Large numbers of Israeli troops were preparing at the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and the northern West Bank on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip, called for a new intifada over the announcement, while protests were planned for the West Bank.
In a televised interview, Erdogan suggested that airspace and territorial borders could "be improved" and called for the revision of the peace treaty which defined the borders of the two states in 1923 -- souring the mood at the start of the historic two-day trip.

Athens reacted with barely contained anger, with Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos noting that Erdogan's comments raise "serious worries and questions".

"The Greek government and the Prime Minister hope the visit is an opportunity to build bridges, not walls," Tzanakopoulos said.

Relations between Turkey and Greece have been fraught with territorial disputes in the Aegean, with the two NATO allies nearly going to war in 1996 over uninhabited islands.

"Airspace and territorial waters and the different measurements can be improved," Erdogan told Greece's Skai TV on Wednesday.

Erdogan, who visited Greece twice as prime minister in 2004 and 2010, is to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Greece's foremost military monument which includes mentions to victories over Turkey in the 1912-13 Balkan War.

He will hold talks with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. On Friday he will travel privately to the northeastern region of Thrace, where a sizeable Greek Muslim minority of Turkish origin lives.

'Delayed justice'

Erdogan actually has a relatively warm relationship with Tsipras, the leftist politician who became Greek prime minister in 2015 and generally eschews nationalist rhetoric against Turkey.

But a recent bone of contention is Greece's failure to extradite eight Turkish officers who fled to its territory last year after allegedly participating in the attempted coup against Erdogan.

"(Tsipras) said he was going to follow up the situation, and not later than a fortnight they shall be extradited to Turkey. That was what he said. But, unfortunately, right now, they are still in Greece," Erdogan said in Wednesday's interview.

The Greek Supreme Court has blocked the extradition of the officers, and Erdogan lamented that taking the legal route "takes longer".

"Terrorists, when they are detained in Greece, they should be extradited to Turkey. If you leave it in the hands of the judiciary no outcome can ever be cultivated and you won't be able to cultivate any results," he said.

"Delayed justice is no justice."

Tsipras appeared to try to smooth over any tensions ahead of Erdogan's visit, telling Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency that suspected coup plotters "were not welcome" in Greece and emphasised the importance of dialogue between Turkey and the EU.

'A wide divide'

The uneasy relations between Turkey and Greece date back to the creation of the modern Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

But Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power in 2002, sought a more pragmatic relationship based on trade and tourism, and Greece became a key backer of the Turkish bid to join the EU.

"Erdogan's visit can be seen as part of the long phase of rapprochement between the two countries that began in 1999," Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, director of the Centre for International and European Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, told AFP.

But he added that while Greek-Turkish relations can be seen as "relatively robust", none of a whole range of outstanding issues between the two sides have been resolved.

"Beyond the pragmatism, a wide divide exists between the two countries," he said.

Athens is unhappy over Turkey's upkeep of Byzantine heritage in Istanbul, the former Constantinople, including the Hagia Sophia, which is officially a museum but has seen an uptick in Muslim worship in the last few years.

Another festering sore is Cyprus, where the northern portion of the island is still occupied by Turkish troops following the 1974 invasion in response to an Athens-inspired coup aimed at uniting it with Greece.

Much-touted peace talks this year to reunify the island ended without a breakthrough.

In a move seen by Turkish commentators as a gesture to Ankara ahead of Erdogan's visit, nine suspected members of the Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), branded a terrorist organisation by Turkey, were last week charged by a Greek prosecutor.
"Airspace and territorial waters and the different measurements can be improved," Erdogan told Greece's Skai TV on Wednesday, ahead of what will be the first official visit by a Turkish president in 65 years.

"And I think there are certain problems that can be easily surmounted, and I think if we can surmount those challenges both of the countries will be relieved," said Erdogan, who last visited Greece in 2010, when he was prime minister.

Relations between Turkey and Greece have been fraught with territorial disputes in the Aegean, with the two NATO allies nearly going to war in 1996 over uninhabited islands.

Greece claims sovereign airspace extending 10 miles (16 kilometres) from its coastline and islands, but Turkey recognises only six miles, arguing that under international law Greece's airspace should match its limits for territorial waters.

As a result, there are often confrontations when Turkish warplanes enter airspace that Greece claims as its own, prompting Greek authorities to scramble jets in response.

To Athens's annoyance, Turkey also says there are a number of Greek islets and islands whose sovereignty remains unclear.

In the interview, Erdogan also repeated his view that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, one of the defining documents in Greek-Turkish relations, should be revised.

"I think during the course of time, all of the treaties need a revision, and Lausanne in the face of the recent developments needs to be spruced up, a revision if you will," Erdogan said.

"This revision is not only for Turkey, but also it's for Greece, it could be mutually beneficial."

Earlier this week, a Greek government spokesman said Athens was hoping for a "substantial improvement" in relations to emerge out of Erdogan's visit.

But he also emphasised that the treaty of Lausanne was "binding" and "in force".

In an interview with Turkey's Anadolu news agency, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said relations with Turkey had to be based on "mutual respect and international law, with full respect to the treaty of Lausanne."

But Erdogan said existing territorial waters were "quite problematic" for Turkish maritime liners plying the Aegean, "and this is not something that we can live with."

He did not give further detail.

He also repeated a request that eight officers who fled to Greece after allegedly participating in the attempted coup against him last year should be extradited.

"(Tsipras) said he was going to follow up the situation, and not later than a fortnight they shall be extradited to Turkey. That was what he said. But, unfortunately, right now, they are still in Greece," Erdogan said.

The Greek Supreme Court has blocked the extradition of the officers, and Erdogan lamented that taking the legal route "takes longer".

"Terrorists, when they are detained in Greece, they should be extradited to Turkey. If you leave it in the hands of the judiciary no outcome can ever be cultivated and you won't be able to cultivate any results," he said.
The national flag will be flown at half-staff from December 14-16, which will coincide with the return of his body from Switzerland to the castle north of Bucharest where he was born.

His coffin will then be transferred to throne room at the former Royal Palace in Bucharest, before being buried at Curtea de Arges, where his father Carol II and grandfather Ferdinand are buried.

Michael, who died Tuesday aged 96, had largely withdrawn from public life after announcing last March that he was seriously ill with leukaemia.

But he remained a revered monarch for many Romanians, with candles and flowers being placed outside the Royal Palace as well as at his residence, Elisabeta Palace, in Bucharest.

His death prompted an outpouring of accolades from top officials, with Prime Minister Mihai Tudose calling the former king "a model of morality and dignity".

Michael, a descendant of the German Hohenzollern dynasty, ruled Romania twice, from 1927-1930 and then from 1940-1947, when he led a coup that ousted marshal Ion Antonescu and saw Bucharest join the allied forces against Hitler.

But the postwar communist government ended the monarchy in the Balkan country and Michael was forced to abdicate and go into exile in December 1947.

Stripped of his citizenship, he eventually settled in Switzerland, where he earned a modest living as an aircraft mechanic and farmer.
But the jihadists still hold areas on the east bank in the north of oil-rich Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Daesh no longer has a presence on the western side of the river," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"Its biggest presence is on the eastern side of the Euphrates, where it still holds around eight percent of Deir Ezzor province," he said.

State news agency SANA said late Wednesday that Syrian troops and allied forces had captured around two dozen towns and villages on the west side of the river.

East of the Euphrates, IS is under attack by both government troops and Kurdish-led militia.
"The Syrian government delegation will arrive in Geneva on Sunday to take part in the eighth round," state news agency SANA reported, citing a foreign ministry source.

"The delegation will return to Damascus on December 15," the source added.

Negotiations were paused over the weekend and resumed on Tuesday, but without the government delegation headed by Syria's UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari.

Jaafari had criticised the talks before his departure, saying there were "big problems in this round", a reference to the opposition's insistence on President Bashar al-Assad's removal.

The opposition, united in one delegation for the first time, has so far defied calls to give up on its demand that Assad step down before any peace deal can be reached.

Jaafari described that position as "provocative" and "irresponsible", warning that "there will be no progress" if the opposition maintained its stance.

For several days, government sources had said officials were still deliberating whether they would come back to Geneva.
A top cabinet member in Putin's government, Ulyukayev is the highest-ranking official arrested during Vladimir Putin's 18 years in power.

He is accused of receiving a $2 million bribe from Igor Sechin, chief executive of the state oil giant Rosneft, who is considered the second most powerful man in Russia.

A judge is expected to deliver the verdict in his trial on December 15.

Ulyukayev, who is under house arrest, voiced his regret that he had not paid enough attention to the plight of ordinary Russians while in office.

"I am guilty of too often agreeing to compromise, of choosing the easy way, and all too often preferred my career and prosperity to standing up for principles," he said.

"It's only when you yourself face misfortune that you come to realise how hard people's lives are, what injustices they encounter."

"But when everything is good you shamefully turn away from people's grief. Forgive me for that, people. I am to blame towards you."

He appeared calm but regularly wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

He compared Sechin -- who has refused to appear in court despite being repeatedly summoned -- to the devil, and expressed his amazement that Sechin had effectively "disappeared into thin air".

"Only the smell of sulphur has remained in the air," he said.

Prosecutor Boris Neporozhny called earlier this week for Ulyukayev to serve a 10-year sentence in a "harsh regime" penal colony and pay a fine of 500 million rubles ($8.5 million).

It would be the harshest punishment ever for a top official in modern Russia.

Ulyukayev, 61, said that he might not survive a decade in prison but said that "history will vindicate me".

He was arrested last year while still a minister, allegedly caught red-handed in a sting operation supervised by the FSB security service in which Sechin handed him a bag of dollars.

According to the prosecution, Ulyukayev asked for a $2 million bribe to approve Rosneft's acquisition of a stake in Bashneft, another state-run oil company.

Ulyukayev's arrest stunned the country's elites, with Putin eventually sacking him from the post he had held since 2013.
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RKH Qitarat is joint venture based on a consortium between RATP Dev and Keolis, France, which has a 49% stake, and the Qatari Hamad Group, with the remaining 51%.

Lusail's 32km four-line light rail network, which will have 37 stations, will serve a new town and connect with the Doha metro. The first line is expected to open by the end of 2018 followed by the remaining three lines in 2020. Alstom is supplying 35 LRVs, and installing catenary-free electrification, power supply, track, signalling, telecommunications and train control.

The fully-automated Doha metro is being built in two phases. Phase one involves the construction of the Red, Gold, and Green lines of the four-line network, which are expected to open in 2020. Dynamic testing started in September of the first of 75 three-car trains being supplied by Kinki Sharyo.

Phase two will see the addition of the Blue Line and extensions to the initial lines to create a 75km 60-station network by 2026.

For more detailed information on global metro and light rail projects, subscribe to IRJ Pro.
The NTSB analysis of the 2016 Amtrak backhoe accident on the Northeast Corridor at Chester, Pa., that killed two m/w workers and injured 39 has missed the mark. This incident is by no means the first of its kind.

NTSB issued Safety Recommendation R-08-06, after a 2007 accident near Woburn, Mass., in which two Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) maintenance-of-way employees died: Require redundant signal protection, such as shunting, for maintenance-of-way work crews who depend on the train dispatcher to provide signal protection.

In 2013, NTSB reiterated Safety Recommendation R-08-06 to FRA after an accident in which a Metro-North maintenance-of-way employee was struck and killed by a train in Connecticut.

And now, as a result of the 2016 accidentthe third accident in less than a decade under remarkably similar circumstancesNTSB reiterated the same recommendation a third time. Stronger action is needed to prevent future incidents, particularly in Positive Train Control (PTC) territory, or else the 2016 accident most likely will not be the last.

As part of R-08-6, the mention of shunting as part of the recommendation is, unfortunately, a serious distraction. Shunting is not considered failsafe by the railroad industry, and the practice can cause other problems. From an FRA report on roadway worker protection (downloadable at the link below):

In response to FRAs request for comment regarding a potential redundant protection requirement, AAR, NTSB, SEPTA, BMWED/BRS, APTA, MTA, NJT, and an individual, submitted comments. NTSB urged FRA to add a provision in this final rule requiring using redundant forms of protection such as shunting. AAR urged FRA not to adopt such a provision, indicating it would be counterproductive from a safety perspective. AAR stated such a provision would be counterproductive because shunting cannot be relied on due to: (1) the characteristics of track infrastructure that lead to periodic loss of shunt for certain equipment; (2) the susceptibility of shunts to work only intermittently when used near signal islands; and (3) the lack of reliability of individual locomotives or roadway maintenance machines to shunt. AARs comment pointed to the safety issues shunting presents in some circumstances, specifically grade crossing warning device malfunctions and signal system interference, and to concerns related to cost, training, and the practicality of shunting requirements (e.g., trying to shunt as a roadway worker conducts walking track inspections or mobile weed spray operations).

Nor is applying GPS devices onto maintenance vehicles, as suggested by recommendation #2 of the NTSB report (downloadable from the link below), a fully effective solution. David Schanoes addressed this issue directly:

So  getting back to Chester, Pa., we can in fact put GPS receivers on track equipment. As a matter of fact, I bet lots of m/w equipment is already equipped with GPS receivers so the movements can be tracked for budgetary purposes. But even with that, its a timing issue. Does the dispatcher see the occupancy indication in time?

We can even integrate the occupancy indication with the train control system, so that the obstruction of the track triggers a downgrade of signal or authorized speed indication, but again, thats a timing issue: the train is rounding the curve at 110 mph, a hi-rail vehicle gets on the track 300 feet on the other side of the curve, it takes one second for the obstruction to be processed and transmitted to the train, two seconds for the train brakes to set up, (even without any free run time), and guess what? Location/occupancy technology to the contrary not withstanding, the phones ringing and its not someone yanking your chain.

Rather than simply reiterating itself, NTSB should have paid more attention to the AARs objection and should have revised recommendation R-08-6 to remove the mention of track shunting. Instead, a more effective solution that would actually solve the problem should have been recommended. The right approach to Require redundant signal protection (R-08-6) would be to make Employee in Charge (EIC) or TFT (Track Forces) terminals mandatory for all PTC installations.

By using EIC terminals to request and obtain electronic work authorities, engineering employees would have a ready means to ascertain whether they have the track or not, and the PTC system would protect the work crews, to ensure that appropriate routing restrictions and speed limits are enforced. Once a track force has the EIC or TFT, then the electronic authority could be relayed electronically to the GPS on board each of the work crews vehicles. This would allow an equipment operator to be warned if they are approaching the limit of or exceeding their authorization. Conceivably, the foreman could also be notified.

BNSFs Hy Rail Compliance system already integrates GPS data with track occupancy authority data and could be a model for the industry on how to effectively integrate GPS data for protecting work forces.

Currently, FRA does not require EIC terminals on the Northeast Corridor, since Amtrak only uses Exclusive track authorities, not Permissive authorities that trains can pass through. FRA has only been requiring EIC only for Permissive work authorities in Vital PTC territory.

Currently, FRA does not require EIC terminals on most freight railroads that are using I-ETMS, since I-ETMS is only approved as a non-vital PTC system. FRA has not been requiring EIC terminals as a condition of non-vital PTC certification, since the requirement for such certification is only to improve safety, not to provide an absolute assurance of safety.

As a result, only a handful of PTC railroads are actually using EIC terminals today. NTSB should have recommended that FRA make EIC terminals mandatory for all PTC implementations. If this is not possible, then FRA should at least make EIC terminals an absolute requirement of Vital PTC certification without any exceptions. In conjunction with EIC terminals, railroads could and should additionally implement supplemental protection to the level of the individual workers, as SEPTA and Metro North have already done on their respective territories.

Chip Kraft is Director of Operations Planning at Transportation Economics & Management Systems Inc.
Sound Transit, Seattle, and Brookville Equipment Corp. have agreed to terms on a $26.5 million contract awarded Nov. 16 for design and manufacture of five Liberty Light Rail Vehicles for operation on a 2.4-mile extension of the agencys 1.6-mile Tacoma Link line.

In addition to the five-vehicle base order, the contract includes 10 option vehicles, five for Sound Transit and five for the City of Portland, Ore.

The Sound Transit Tacoma Link LRVs feature an eight-foot-widewide carbody with seating for up to 34 passengers, and a fully loaded capacity of 100. The new fleet will be ADA compliant with deployable bridge plates for easy boarding and more than 70% low-floor available standing area.

The Sound Transit agreement marks the sixth order for Brookvilles flagship Liberty platform, including fleets currently operating in Dallas and Detroit, and vehicles currently on order for Oklahoma City and Milwaukee. In 2016, Brookville won a six-vehicle order from Valley Metro, Arizona, for the Tempe Streetcar. Upon delivery of the Tacoma Link fleet, Brookville will have delivered 32 modern LRVs and streetcars to American cities and transit agencies.

We are eager to support Sound Transit with an all-new Liberty LRV fleet for its expanding Tacoma Link system, said Brookville Vice President of Business Development Joel McNeil. These vehicles will be designed and manufactured right here in the U.S. using the latest rail-proven technologies and systems, and serving as a rail transit vehicle solution that we hope will have broad appeal to the agency and its growing ridership.
After going from living on the streets to becoming a famous photographer in his home country of Ghana, Tacitus Bailey-Yabani moved to Muskegon in 2014. Now, the owner of the Abeshi shop in the downtown Western Market has set his sights on changing the world by connecting people, breaking down barriers, and building communities through his art, his food, and his uplifting energy.

As Tacitus Bailey-Yabani walks around downtown in Novembers frigid autumn air, he cant go more than a couple steps without someone yelling out his name, or more often, shouting fyah, fyah, fyah!

Yeah, man, fyah, fyah, fyah! Bailey-Yabani, who moved from Ghana in West Africa to Muskegon in 2014 and is the owner of Abeshi Fotos + Crafts, a photography, art, clothing, and jewelry business that operates in one of the new chalets at the downtown Western Market, will yell back, smiling and pumping his arm in the air as he says the phrase thats become a mantra in his own life.

Im a street boy; I lived on the street in Ghana. You have to do your best to survive on the street, so fyah, fyah, fyah means your energy, your love, your hustle, says Bailey-Yabani, who moved to Muskegon to be with his wife, Jessica, whom he met at a music festival in his home country. Its the fire thats coming out; its the fire that people are enjoying with love.

As Bailey-Yabani has become a familiar face throughout Muskegon, hearing this succession of fyahs has become increasingly commonplace. A couple weeks ago, when we were interviewing him outside his Western Market shop, passersby regularly shouted the phrase, to which Bailey-Yabani would raise a hand in greeting and laugh as his friendsdowntown shop owners and brewers and politiciansemphatically waved to him before disappearing into the warmth of places like Rootdown and Unruly Brewing.

Everyone around here knows me, he says, explaining the flood of hellos he receives. They know me and love me, and I love them.

Tacitus Bailey-Yabani's shirts emblazoned with his mantra of "fyah, fyah, fyah." Photo by Jenna Swartz

And its true: in a matter of just a couple years, Bailey-Yabani has become something of a local celebrity, with everyone from Muskegon Mayor Stephen Gawron (whom the shop owner calls one of his favorite people) frequenting Abeshi to Unruly Brewing naming a beer Fyah fyah fyah, a chocolate coconut stout, in his honor this past summer.

Tac is this to-the-top brimming over vessel of love and excitement, Gawron says, using Bailey-Yabanis nickname. Youre coming down the street, and you hear, yah man, yah man, yah man and up, up, up from him. Abeshi means I am here; we are here, doing this together. If that doesnt tie into the idea of Muskegon, into Muskegon rising, I dont know what does.

Its always a joy to be in his presence, Gawron continues. Tac and his fellows at the Western Market are that physical manifestation of what were doing together, how were creating that sense of place Its the realization of a lot of hard work over a decade of really re-creating that place that we know as downtown Muskegon.

Tacitus Bailey-Yabani in front of the Abeshi chalet at the Western Market in downtown Muskegon. Photo by the Michigan Municipal League.

Western Market debuted downtown this past summer and features 15 locally-owned businesses operating in colorful chalets lining Western Avenue. City officials gave their stamp of approval for the market in order to offer affordable rent to area entrepreneurs, as well as to grow pedestrian traffic in Muskegons downtown.

Spend any time with the Abeshi owner, and its evident why hes become so well known so quickly throughout the city and why hes a rising star in the citys growing entrepreneurial landscape: hes charming, honest, funny, and poignant. And he wields words powerfully. A conversation with him can, within minutes, move from stories of him living on the street in Ghana as a teenager to his internationally acclaimed photo exhibitions in Accra, the capital of Ghana, to moving a little more than 5,700 miles from his home in Ghana to Muskegon.

Tacitus Bailey-Yabani holds one of the necklaces he sells at Abeshi. Photo by Jenna Swartz

When I first got to Muskegon, I thought to myself, This is a big place with big chances, big opportunities, he says. The people are wonderful here. I wanted to bring my culture, my heritage here, so I started selling thingsGhanaian art, jewelry, my photographs of Ghanaat the [Muskegon] Farmers Market. Then the [Western Market] chalet opportunity came, and I wanted to do that.

I love talking to people in the shop; theyre very interested about my country and my life, Bailey-Yabani continues. People really love the store. They want to talk about my country, learn about where I grew up. I want to tell my story to the world.

Growing up in Ghana

Bailey-Yabanis story begins in Accra, a city of about two million people situated on Ghanas Atlantic coasta space that for centuries was known as part of the Slave Coast, where millions of Africans were forced onto boats and sent to lives of enslavement in North America, South America, and the Caribbean between 1525 and 1866.

A photo Tacitus Bailey-Yabani took of Jamestown in Ghana.

Now known as West Africas music capital, Accra is a sprawling city pulsing with energy; countless artists, musicians, and chefs call the metropolis home. It is there, Bailey-Yabanai explains, that youll find some of the most vibrant street life and marketplaces youll ever encounter. And it is these spaces, the streets and the markets, that propelled him to fame; Bailey-Yabani became a prominent photographer in Ghana and was most well known for capturing images of life on the streets he knew intimately well.

Several photos he took of Jamestown, now one of Accras liveliest areas thats teeming with fishermen and street vendors selling everything from barracuda to motorcycles, are framed on the walls of his home in Muskegon. They are of life as Bailey-Yabani knew it in Jamestown: a world of boats and fishing and art and tantalizing scents. Like so many places in West Africa, it is a place filled with life, but it is also a place filled with a horrific history in which millions of peoples lives were destroyedsomething Bailey-Yabani, and Ghanaians as a whole, do not forget.

You know Jamestown? This is where there were slaves, he says, pointing to his photo of Jamestowns coastline, a place home to the James Fort, which the British built in the 17th century and which was used hold more than a million slaves before they were forced onto boats to travel across the Atlantic Ocean.

A photo Tacitus Bailey-Yabani took of homes in Accra.

Bailey-Yabani was born at Tema General Hospital in Accra in 1985. His mother, Margaret Akita, died when he was four years old, and his father, Osoronko Nana-Yabani, left his mother before Bailey-Yabani ever had a chance to know him.

After my mother died, I went to live with my grandmother, Victoria Merley Bekoe, and shes the one who taught me everything: how to be a man, how to cook, how to hustle, says Bailey-Yabani, who grew up with his one brother, Spinoza Nana-Yabani, one of many family members still in Ghana. Grandma was very wealthy. Shes the one who was paying for my school fees, for everything for me to study.

Following his grandmothers death in 2000, Bailey-Yabani ended up living on the streets, parking cars to make money. Then, around 2006, he met a man who would forever change his life and become a godfather to him: Emmanuel Owusu-Obonsu, an acclaimed Ghanaian-Romanian musician and film director who found Bailey-Yabani a place to live. Then, at about 20 years old, Bailey-Yabani moved into the Pidgen House, a space in Accra filled with musicians and artists. Owned by Panji Anoff, a music producer and all-around cultural icon in Ghana who too ended up transforming Bailey-Yabanis life, the Pidgen House was where Bailey-Yabani ended up falling in love with photography. From there, his life became a roller coaster of adventure, from traveling West Africa with big-name musicians to interning at the Pidgen Music label, owned by Anoff, and becoming a famous photographer.

Tacitus Bailey-Yabani in Ghana. Photo courtesy of Tacitus Bailey-Yabani.



One of the photos Tacitus Bailey-Yabani took of children in Ghana, now framed in his home office. Photo by Jenna Swartz

Within a matter of years, Bailey-Yabanis images became known throughout Ghana. Just before he moved to the United States, his photography was featured in a 2013 exhibition in Accra, Trotro Adventure, which also included work by the German photographer Sofia Mitre. He also had his work presented in The African Child exhibition, which highlighted his photos of children living on the street in Ghana.

When I started taking pictures, the children inspired me because they reminded me of myself when I was hustling on the streets of Accra, Bailey-Yabani says. Im drawn to taking photos of the kids, of the marketplaces, of the street life. Being on the streets taught me so much; I am proud to be an African child.

Moving to Muskegon

In 2014, Bailey-Yabani decided to take a major leap and leave his home country for Muskegon, in order to be with his wife, Jessica; the two now live in the Nims neighborhood with their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Damiannamed for Damian Marley. (Bailey-Yabani is a huge Bob Marley fan; hes even hung out with Damian Marley and the Marley family on numerous occasions in Jamaica.)



Tacitus, Jessica, and Damian Bailey-Yabani. Photo courtesy of Tacitus Bailey-Yabani.

A photo of Damian on Tacitus Bailey-Yabani's colorful office wall in Muskegon. Photo by Jenna Swartz

The universe, the Jah, will always bless me; my wife is my blessing, Bailey-Yabani says. The family I never had growing up, I now have. I have my own family, my own house, my own business. Im very proud. My grandmother still comes to me in my dreams, and I think she is really happy and would be proud of me too.

Upon arriving in Muskegon in 2014, Bailey-Yabani immediately began to sew himself into the fabric of the city, and he started operating Abeshi at the Muskegon Farmers Market that year. As he continues to do with Abeshi at the Western Market, Bailey-Yabani sells his own artwork, such as his photography, as well as goods from Ghanaian artists, including handmade jewelry, clothing, patchwork sneakers, hand-sewn backpacks, and paintings. He then sends the proceeds from those goods back to the artists in Ghana.

Ghanaian shoes and backpacks are sold at Abeshi. Photo by Jenna Swartz

Tacitus Bailey-Yabani partners with artists in Ghana and sells their goods in Muskegon. Photo by Jenna Swartz

I want people to know what Abeshi is about, Bailey-Yabani says of his business, named for a word in Ga, his mothers native language that is spoken in and around Accra, that essentially translates to, Im here.

I want people to know were here; were into changing humanity, he says. For us to move forward as mankind, we have to live in respect. If we can live in peace and harmony, we can do anything. Thats what Abeshi is all about.

Now, Bailey-Yabani, who works at UPS when hes not running Abeshi, and his wife are hoping to expand the business and offer Ghanaian food and a series of cooking classes, titled A Taste of Abeshi, at Kitchen 242, the culinary incubator located at the Muskegon Farmers Market. [To see some of his current culinary offerings, click here.]



Necklaces from Abeshi. Photo by Jenna Swartz

Eventually, the Bailey-Yabanis would love to open their own Ghanaian restaurant to introduce Muskegon to the tastes of Ghana: a culinary world filled with fried plantains, yams, maize, a vast array of rice dishes, and cassavaone of the worlds most drought-tolerant crops that is a key ingredient in a number of Ghanas popular spice-filled stews.

The idea behind the food expansion follows Bailey-Yabanis entire outlook on life: its about connecting with people, building relationships, forging a world filled with individuals who want to get to know others different from themselves.

Meeting people, sitting down with people, thats what life should be, Bailey-Yabani says.

This story is part of Rapid Growth's "On the Ground-Muskegon Lakeshore" series, which aims to amplify the voices of the community members who make up Muskegon's waterfront neighborhoods. Over the next three months, our journalists will be embedded in the city's lakefront communities in order to dive deeper into topics important to residents, business owners and other members of the community. To reach the editor of this series, Anna Gustafson, please email her at [email protected], or connect with her on Facebook.

Support for this series is provided by Downtown Muskegon Now, the Muskegon Business Improvement District, the Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Pure Muskegon, Watch Muskegon, and the Community Foundation for Muskegon County.

Photography by Jenna Swartz, unless otherwise noted. To connect with Jenna, visit her website and Facebook page.
Russian citizen gets 13 years in prison for shooting at police officers

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI, Yulia Glozman)  The Supreme Court of Russias Republic of Tatarstan has sentenced a 59-year old local resident to 13 years in prison for shooting at police officers, the Interior Ministrys regional press service reports Thursday.

The man has been found guilty of ammunition trafficking and infringement on life of a law enforcement officer.

According to investigators, the man suspected of arson attack on vehicles started shooting when police officers were going to arrest him in his country house. Nobody was injured during the incident. The criminal has decamped. However, he was arrested soon.
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U.S. court dismisses Deripaskas appeal in libel lawsuit against Associated Press

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI)  The U.S. Federal District Court of Columbia has dismissed appeals filed by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and the Associated Press news agency after the sides had recalled their appeals in a libel lawsuit over an article about alleged interference of Russia in U.S. Presidential elections, the case documents read on Thursday.

In May, Deripaska lodged a libel suit against the Associated Press over an article called AP Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin. He stated that this piece about alleged business relations between the businessman and Paul Manafort, a campaign manager for Donald Trump, contained false and defamatory statements.

Russian tycoon believes that the article implied that his commercial dealings during the period from 2005 to 2009 were related to the election campaign of Donald Trump.

In October, the U.S. Federal District Court of Columbia dismissed the plaintiffs argument stating that he is not a limited-purpose public figure in the context of controversy, noting that the businessman is known as Russian oligarch and that he has been the subject of more than a decade of media coverage on topics related to his wealth and his relationship with the Russian government. In addition, the court found no evidence of malice in actions of the Associated Press.

According to the courts ruling, the article in question did not contain any single statement as false that is both capable of verification and capable of defamatory meaning. As such, reformulation of Deripaskas arguments did not address this fact and the lawsuit was dismissed.

In late November, the businessman appealed the ruling, and the Associated Press filed a counter-appeal. This Wednesday, however, the sides notified the court about recall of both appeals.
Moscow court to announce sentence for Ulyukayev on December 15

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI)  The Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow will announce sentence for Russias ex- economy minister Alexey Ulyukayev, charged with bribery, on December 15, RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom on Thursday.

Earlier, a prosecutor demanded to sentence the defendant to ten years in a high security penal colony and fine him 500 million rubles (nearly $8.5 million). Defense asked the court to acquit Ulyukayev.

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, Ulyukayev threatened to create obtrusions for Rosneft with the use of his position. On November 15, 2016, he 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.
Participant of unauthorized March 26 rally sentenced to 1.5 years in prison

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI)  Moscows Tverskoy District Court on Thursday sentenced a participant of the unauthorized March 26 rally in Moscow, Dmitry Krepkin, to 1.5 years in prison for assaulting a police officer, his lawyer Ilnur Sharapov told RAPSI.

A prosecutor earlier asked the court to sentence the man to 3 years in prison. Defense in turn insisted on acquittal.

Earlier, several other men, Andrey Kosykh, Yury Kuliy, Alexander Shpakov and Stanislav Zimovets, have been convicted and sentenced for violence against law enforcement officers during the rally. Kosykh has been sentenced to 4 years in prison. Kuliy has been given 8 months in a penal colony settlement. Shpakov received a 1.5-year prison sentence. Zimovets has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.

The Interior Ministry reported that about 500 people had been arrested during the unauthorized rally on March 26. Overall number of people present in the area at the time was estimated at as high as 8,000 people. One of the police officers received injuries; a criminal case was launched over this incident.

According to the Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, arrested during the rally, Moscow authorities refused to greenlight the rally in the citys center and proposed alternative areas only a day before it was to take place. Navalny said that in this case Russian legislation allows organizers to hold an event at the area, which was listed first.
Russian Authors Society ex-head to be released on parole

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI)  The Ryazan Regional Court has upheld a lower courts ruling to grant parole for Sergey Fedotov, former Director General of the Russian Authors Society (RAO), who had been sentenced for 1.5 years in prison for large scale fraud, the courts press office told RAPSI on Thursday.

Moscows Meshchansky District Court convicted and sentenced Fedotov, who had pleaded guilty, in June. The convict was to serve 6 months in prison because the time he had spent in detention was included in the length of the punishment.

As previously reported, employees of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have revealed fraud scheme over illegal alienation of RAOs property. Damage caused to the RAOs property has been estimated at 500 million rubles (about $8.5 million at the current exchange rate).

However, Fedotovs defense team insisted that the damage amount reached about 297 million rubles ($5 million). His lawyer Denis Baluyev also claimed that his client was a victim of calumniation.

The Russian Authors Society is a non-governmental organization created in 1993 for collective management of authors rights. At this moment over 25,000 people are listed as its members.
Rosneft and Bashneft file $2.2 billion lawsuit against AFK Sistema

MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI)  Russian oil corporations Rosneft and Bashneft have filed a lawsuit with the Bashkortostan Republics Commercial Court seeking to recover 131.6 billion rubles (about $2.2 billion) of damages from AFK Sistema and Sistema-Invest.

According to the Rosneft statement, Sistema used various financial schemes, including payment of unprecedented dividends, to transfer funds out of Bashneft before return of the latter company to the state property. These funds were needed for the latter companys normal, continuous and safe functionality, Rosneft asserts.

This situation resulted in violations of terms and quality of repair services, deterioration of equipment and accidents on several plants, requiring additional expenses, Rosneft stated, noting that it attempted to reach settlement in this case.

On August 23, the Commercial Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan recovered 136.3 billion rubles (about $2.3 billion) from AFK Sistema in favor of Rosneft. Sistema considers the ruling unlawful and unreasonable saying it plans to challenge it in the Eighteenth Commercial Court of Appeals. Rosneft sought to recover 170.6 billion rubles (about $2.8 billion).

On June 23, the Commercial Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan seized 31.76% of MTS mobile operators shares owned by AFK Sistema and its subsidiary Sistema-Invest as well as 100% of Medsi Groups shares and 90.47% of Bashkir Power Grid Companys (BESK) as part of 170.6 billion rubles (about $3 billion at the current exchange rate) lawsuit filed by Rosneft, Bashneft and Republic of Bashkiria against the companies.

On August 7, AFK Sistema appealed the seizure with the Eighteenth Commercial Court of Appeals.

Press service of Rosneft has said previously that the lawsuit is connected with alleged siphoning of assets. Actions of AFK Sistema allegedly led to decrease of assets at this sum.

Initially, Rosneft sought to collect 106.6 billion ($1.8 billion) in damages from Sistema. Later the oil giant increased its claim to 170.6 billion. The plaintiff revised the claim damage upwards taking into account currency fluctuations, according to a companys representative.

According to AFK Sistema, the plaintiffs demands are illegal and groundless.
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From Alto to Audi, get car discounts of up to Rs 900,000

If you are planning to buy an Audi, it could be a very good Christmas gift, with the carmaker giving a discount of up to Rs 9 lakh on the A6 model.

Carmakers have rolled out steep discounts and promotional offers - much higher than last year - to dispose of inventory manufactured in 2017.

Even for an entry-level car such as an Alto, a buyer could get a discount of up to Rs 35,000.

German luxury carmaker Audi has a cash discount of Rs 341,000 on the Audi Q3, which is now on sale for Rs 29.99 lakh.

Calling this a limited period offer on limited stock, the company is giving a discount of Rs 5 lakh on the A3, which now comes at Rs 26.99 lakh.

The steepest discount of Rs 885,000 is being offered on the Audi A6, now priced at Rs 44.99 lakh.

This is not all. Customers also have additional advantage to buy an Audi in 2017 and start paying in 2019.

These limited-period, specially curated offers provide an incredible opportunity for the aspiring Audi customers to become a part of the Audi family, the company said.

The countrys biggest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, has discounts on most of its entry-level small vehicles.

There is a discount on the Ciaz sedan also; its sales have been affected because of the high Goods and Services Tax (GST) on hybrid vehicles as well as competition from the new Honda City and Hyundai Verna.

There are discounts and benefits worth Rs 35,000 on Marutis most affordable car, Alto.

The prices of Alto 800 begin at Rs 246,000, while the AltoK10 starts at Rs 326,000.

There are discounts of Rs 30,000-40,000 on the WagonR, Rs 15,000-25,000 on the Swift and up to Rs 90,000 on the diesel Ciaz.

However, there is no discount on bestsellers such as Brezza and Baleno.

The benefits offered by Maruti and other companies are in the form of cash discounts, free accessories and discounted insurance.

Korean carmaker Hyundai, the second player in the domestic market, has rolled out its December Delight offers, which it describes as biggest car bonanza of the year.

On its entry-level Eon, the company is giving benefits of up to Rs 65,000 against a benefit of Rs 55,000 in December last year.

Similarly, on the Grand i10, the value of benefits has gone up to Rs 80,000 against Rs 45,000 last year.

The benefit on Elite i20 has gone up to Rs 55,000 from Rs 40,000.

The new Xcent, launched early this year, has benefits worth Rs 60,000. There is no discount on the new Verna and Creta.

Hyundai is also offering additional savings worth Rs 10,000 on vehicles with infotainment systems.

Car models made in one calendar year find fewer buyers the following year.

Manufacturers were not very successful in liquidating the 2016 inventory last year because of demonetisaion, which was announced on November 8, 2016.

Last year, sales were sluggish in spite of the offers in December.

"There was shortage of currency in the economy after demonetisation and that prevented many buyers from making purchases. We expect a better response this year, said an executive with a Maruti Suzuki dealership in the capital.

Tata Motors, which has launched three new cars - Hexa, Tigor and Nexon - in 2017, is giving benefits of up to Rs 32,000 on the Tigor sedan and up to Rs 78,000 on the Hexa SUV.

There is a benefit of Rs 26,000 on the Tiago.

The customers gave an extremely encouraging response during the 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 Rs 1 through our attractive finance offers.

"They will also enjoy savings on our cars through our insurance scheme at Rs 1 and exchange bonus, said Vivek Srivatsa, head of marketing (passenger vehicle business) at Tata Motors.
Analysts say IT major cleaning up act before new CEO takes over; regulator might take a year

Infosys on Wednesday said it had approached market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), to settle issues arising out of alleged disclosure lapses in the severance package paid to former chief financial officer (CFO) Rajiv Bansal.

The company, led by former chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka, had sanctioned the severance package of Rs 17.38 crore in October 2015.

Bansal was sacked over differences with Sikka over the acquisition of Israeli technology firm Panaya for $200 million.

Sikka had reportedly not taken approval of the nomination and remuneration committee (NRC) and the audit committee of the Infosys board before sanctioning the package, leading to questions on disclosure norms of the company.

This also prompted Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy, along with others, accusing then chairman R Seshasayee for failing in governance norms and seeking his replacement.

The public spat led to Sikka and Seshasayee quitting Infosys in August and the return of its co-founder Nandan Nilekani at the helm.

The settlement application process is based on an undertaking that the applicant will neither admit nor deny the finding of fact or conclusion of law, said Infosys in a regulatory filing to the BSE on Wednesday.

Analysts, however, have a different view. The fact that Infosys has gone ahead with the settlement application to Sebi means that the company is admitting there were disclosure violations, said Shriram Subramaniam, founder and managing director of InGovern, a proxy advisory firm in Bengaluru.

It also means that Infosys wants to put the ghost of the past behind ahead of its new CEO coming on board.

Last week, Infosys said it had hired Salil R Parekh, a former executive of its global rival Capgemini, to be its second non-founder CEO and managing director.

He will join Infosys in January next year. Legal experts said Sebi could take as long as a year to settle this case.

The regulator needs to look at the merit of the application before it sends it to the high-powered advisory committee (HPAC).

The committee makes a recommendation to the Sebi board, of which two members will take a final decision.

With the application to settle the issue with the market regulator, Infosys is looking to put an end to a two-year saga.

It cut its annual forecast in October, citing slower business in the second half of the financial year.

Infosys, however, would continue to fight an arbitration case Bansal had initiated in April, after the firm stopped paying the former CFO part of the severance pay, said a company spokesperson.

Bansal had invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal, for which a former Supreme Court judge R V Raveendran is the arbitrator.

Infosys had suspended payments after initially giving Rs 5 crore as part of the deal.

The deal with Bansal led to speculations that there could be wrongdoing in the acquisition, with an anonymous whistle-blower writing to the Infosys board and market regulators calling for an investigation into the deal.

Three independent panels gave clean chits to Sikka on the acquisition and the severance pay, but the firm did not disclose the full reports, citing that these contained sensitive and confidential information.

Chairman Nilekani in October reviewed the findings gave a clean chit to Sikka, saying there was no wrongdoing, but declined to heed to Murthys request of making the probe reports public.

Photograph: Vivek Prakash/Reuters
'The time is ripe for a merger of eight fund houses indirectly owned and controlled by the central government,' says N Sundaresha Subramanian.



Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Mutual funds never had it better.

Assets under management has crossed Rs 20 lakh crore.

Inflow numbers have begun to look like what used to be the size of the entire industry.

Taking advantage, one of the large private fund houses has hit the bourses and had a decent listing.

Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) flows continue to be robust. Data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India show monthly addition of 0.89 million SIP accounts during 2017-2018, the average size being Rs 3,250.

Interestingly, the non-SIP flow also remains high.

Last month, the total collected through SIPs was Rs 5,621 crore, over a third of the Rs 15,218 crore that came into equity funds.

Some credit should go to the industry, which has run an aggressive 'Sahi Hai' campaign to take it to the masses. But a lot of credit also goes to the lacklustre performance of realty and gold, amid the crackdown on unaccounted money and the rising markets.

Sentiment remains so upbeat that people feel MFs are the answer to almost anything.

Such euphoria usually calls for caution but could also be used to push long-pending reform measures.

Though the private sector has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade or so, the government continues to have a large presence in the sector.

Of the 42 fund houses, eight are indirectly owned and controlled by the central government. There are six bank-sponsored fund houses -- SBI MF, Canara Robeco, Baroda Pioneer, IDBI, Bank Of India AXA and Union MF.

Punjab National Bank, which had a minority stake in its joint venture with Principal, has since exited the venture.

However, the second largest public sector bank has a minority stake in UTI, along with SBI, Bank of Baroda and the Life Insurance Corporation.

LIC itself separately runs another fund house, for which it had partnered with Japanese financial major Nomura.

Apart from SBI, which has assets of Rs 1.88 lakh crore, and UTI (Rs 1.5 lakh crore), the others have not been able to build meaningful scale.

Canara Robeco and Baroda Pioneer were among the older crop which tried to reinvent themselves with foreign partners.

Bank of India, IDBI and Union Bank are relatively new entrants.

The capital strapped banks have been talking about exiting non-core businesses, even as talk of bank mergers have been floating around.

It will not be a bad idea to merge these fund houses to create a behemoth, as the government has been trying to do in oil & gas.

These eight fund houses have a combined corpus of about Rs 4.5 lakh crore, roughly a fourth of the sector. There are foreign partners which need to be provided exits or compensation. Concerns of staff need to be addressed.

But the benefits of such a merger would far outweigh the negatives, it appears.

There will be a lot more clarity for bank staff selling MFs -- they can sell one brand.

The move will also address the continuing non-compliance with the 'one sponsor, one fund house' rule by SBI, LIC and BoB, as they hold stakes in UTI MF in addition to their own fund houses.

Listing such a market leader could fetch a handsome premium in the market.

It is not a completely new idea, first floated over a decade ago and has come up in various forms over the years. Perhaps the time is ripe now.
'Reduce the perks and privileges of MPs, but let there be no reduction in the money spent on the education of martyrs' children,' says former BJP MP Tarun Vijay.

IMAGE: Colonel M N Rai's daughter gives the Gorkha regiment's war cry as she salutes her father who made the ultimate sacrifice for the motherland fighting terrorists in south Kashmir's Pulwama district in January 2015. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Sometimes, perception is bigger than reality. Ten thousand rupees per month for a child's education is not a small amount. I could not have afforded it when my children were of school-going age. But I was not a soldier and I was not martyred. And there can't be any cap on the value of sacrifice. Period.

There are many martyr families who send -- and would like to send -- their children to the best schools and those schools are expensive.

This is what they dream about and they have a right to dream big. It is indeed our privilege and honour to ensure that their dreams come true.

I would say reduce the perks and privileges of MPs, but let there be no reduction in the money spent on the education of the children of our martyrs.

Limiting the educational grant for martyrs' children is a setback -- even if they are a minuscule number -- and spreads a false perception that the government is not doing enough for them.

Some perhaps harbour the rich man's perception that visualises martyrs' children going to government schools as if the privilege of expensive public schools is reserved for the rich, bureaucrats and politicians. This class mentality must be destroyed. Why should we think so low, so self defeatingly?

Is that the way to think about the children of our martyrs?

Is martyrdom a small sacrifice that we should hurt the sentiments of our brave just to save some insignificant amount of money?

It must go to the Modi government's credit that in acknowledgement of the unabashed hardships the jawans face, the government has more than doubled the risk and hardship allowance for soldiers posted on the Siachen glacier and hiked the same for security forces deployed on counter-insurgency operations and in Naxal-hit areas.

This week, it doubled the honorarium for armed forces personnel who have received gallantry awards.

No other government has taken such financially bold decisions for the armed forces.

The Modi government has done much more than all previous governments put together for our armed forces. Our finance minister, our defence minister respect and worship the armed forces like gods. The defence ministry's assurance that the capping decision will be reviewed is welcome.

Such a sensitive response can occur only within this government, a government that has taken major steps to help soldiers including the approval of OROP that was kept in abeyance for four decades.

In all, approximately 3,000 martyrs' children get educational support. The amount the government spends on them is in the vicinity of Rs 15 crores per annum.

The saving after capping financial support for each child will be about Rs 3.5 crores per annum.

To save this amount, allowing an incorrect perception to gain ground would be ironical.

We must admit there are heartbreaking stories which need care and warmth.

I know of a young army officer from Dehradun who married his childhood friend. He was martyred in the line of duty in Kashmir.

Their son, a sweet, bright, boy, is dyslexic. He was his dad's darling and his father would speak to him every night wherever he was posted.

With his martyrdom, a great support was lost. When his last rites were performed in Dehradun, the then Uttarakhand chief minister sent an office assistant to lay a wreath. The city's luminaries were absent at the martyr's funeral.

The biggest concern that arose was the continuation of the child's education. The mother was shattered, she needed psychological counseling, and family support to take care of her child.

The child needed a hostel so that he could concentrate on his studies and overcome the impact of the catastrophe that had befallen his family.

The then army chief's wife tried to help the martyred officer's widow. Dyslexia made it difficult for the boy to get admission in a school with special educators. Not all schools have this facility.

Finally, a school in Dehradun agreed to admit the child but his mother had to pay a large fee for this.

The school authorities did not show any special consideration for the martyred soldier's child. But the boy's education was possible as the government bore the entire expense.

Now his education will be critically affected.

Life for a martyr's widow is a challenge every day. Not all of them remarry. The widow lives alone, guided by her himmat (courage).

People, often, sarcastically tell a martyr's widow 'you must have got a handsome amount from the government after your husband's death in action.'

She has to hear such cruel remarks and wipe her tears.

Bureaucrats weighing martyrdom against money often remain oblivious to the fact that India has yet to evolve a uniform policy for grants by state governments for martyrs' families.

It varies from state to state. It all depends on the situation and the chief minister.

Even if the salaries of armed forces personnel is reduced, millions of parents continue sending their children to become faujis.

Such is the spirit of patriotism and nationalism connected to being a fauji family among the people of India.

On Friday, December 9, the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, will have its passing out parade. I have seen scores of families coming to watch their beloved sons passing out of the IMA at its famous Chetwode Hall.

We live and die for sentiments.

A piece of cloth in a different colour scheme is called our national flag -- we fight to our last drop of blood for it.

It is the sentiment of being honoured by the nation that keeps the sense of pride in the hearts of our soldiers. Let that not be diminished.

Thank you Mr Prime Minister for assuring the nation that the capping decision will be reviewed. That's the difference people love and respect you for.
Surat -- Gujarats diamond city and the epicentre of the Patidar quota movement -- is set for a tough assembly poll battle as the Congress has added the face of the Patidar agitation Hardik Patel to its arsenal this time.

IMAGE: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the city, considered to be a BJP bastion, twice last month to understand the plight of those who were hit by GST and note ban. Photograph: @OfficeofRG/Twitter

Amid issues like implementation of the Goods and Services Tax and demonetisation, apart from the Patidar factor, it is to be seen for whom the large trading community of this diamond and textile hub will vote, when the city goes to polls in the first phase on Saturday.

Though Ahmedabad is the largest city of Gujarat, Surat is a favoured destination of political heavyweights in this poll season.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the city twice last month to understand the plight of those who were hit by GST and note ban.

During his visit, Gandhi also addressed a huge rally in the citys Patidar strongholds -- Varachha and Katargam.

On December 3, quota agitation leader Hardik Patel led a mega road show in Varachha. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani led the BJPs road show in Majura area the same day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month addressed a rally at Kadodara, located on the citys outskirts.

The Congress is hoping to snatch some seats from the Bharatiya Janata Party this time by capitalising on the anger factor of Patidars and the traders.

On the other side, the BJP is confident of retaining its bastion, as its leaders claim the ground reality is different from what the Congress is projecting.

Out of the total 12 constituencies in Surat city, nearly half of the seats -- Varachha Road, Kamrej, Katargam, Karanj, Olpad and Udhna -- have a concentrated population of Patidars, who mostly migrated from Saurashtra.

The remaining six seats are -- Surat-East, Surat-North, Surat-West, Choryasi, Limbayat and Majura.

To some extent, Surat-North and Majura seats also have a significant population of Patidars, who are into various businesses, including diamond cutting, polishing, trading and in different trades associated with textiles.

The city has been a bastion of the BJP since long.

But, the political scenario in this bustling business hub seems to have changed after Hardik Patel started the agitation to get reservation for his community two years back.

At that time, Surat witnessed large scale violence and arson, mostly in Varachha and adjoining areas.

Out of the two sedition cases lodged against Hardik, one was registered in Surat. Since then, the Hardik-led agitating body -- Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti -- is up in arms against the ruling BJP and has vowed to defeat it.

Notably, BJP president Amit Shah had to cut short his speech at a function in Varachha area in September when some PAAS agitators created chaos by shouting slogans and throwing chairs.

IMAGE: Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti convenor Hardik Patel meeting with his supporters during Jankranti Maharally in Surat. Photograph:PTI Photo

Now, in an apparent bid to thwart the anti-incumbency factor following the Patidar anger, the BJP has dropped six of its sitting MLAs - from Kamrej, Surat-East, Surat-North, Karanj, Udhna and Katargam seats.

These leaders include sitting MLA of Katargam, Nanu Vanani, who is a minister in the Rupani government.

Out of the nearly 1.98 lakh voters of Varachha Road seat, the Patidars are in the driving seat with their number being over 1.5 lakh.

In Kamrej, where the total electorate is about 4.28 lakh, the Patidars alone account for over two lakh.

In Katargam, having around 2.77 voters, the Patidars are in a dominating position with over 1.18 lakh electorate.

Besides the angry Patidars and traders, there are various other factors which could breach the hull of BJPs ship in this coastal city.

Since a large population, mostly Patels, of this city belongs to Saurashtra region, the agrarian crisis back home could also add fuel into their anger, Surat city Congress president Hasmukh Desai said.

Many decades back, Patels and other communities from Saurashtra region started settling here. Since they still own agricultural land back home, they are holding the BJP government responsible for their dwindling farm income. It is possible that their anger could reflect in the voting here, Desai said.

Apart from Patidars, the Congress is also banking on small traders and entrepreneurs whose businesses were claimed to have been hit by demonetisation and the implementation of GST by the BJP-led government at the Centre.

In July, the textile traders of Surat city called a massive strike against the GST.

The Congress was quick to take up the issue and party vice president Rahul Gandhi held two back-to-back visits last month.

On one side we are getting full support from the Patidars, while on the other the trading community and the shopkeepers, who are spread across the city, are seeing a ray of hope in Congress after Gandhis visit. All the factors are in our favour, Desai claimed.

However, the BJP discarded the argument, claiming that the ground reality is totally different.

Though traders were unhappy initially, they now understand the benefits of GST. This so-called anger will never convert into votes. If the people were still against us, then why so many had turned up for the chief ministers rally? BJPs sitting MLA from Majura, Harsh Sanghvi, asked.

Meanwhile, the PAAS members have already hit the streets in the Patidar-dominated areas to convince people not to vote for the BJP.

According to PAAS convener for Surat, Dharmik Malavia, they have set a target of defeating the BJP on at least five seats - Varachha Road, Karanj, Kamrej, Olpad and Surat-North.

When we tell people do not vote for the BJP, it implies that vote for Congress if you want to uproot the party which committed atrocities on us, Malavia said.

The people are in our support and the BJP candidates are finding it difficult to even enter into the Patidar societies for canvassing, he claimed.

The 182-member Gujarat assembly will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and 14 -- and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
An unmanned aerial vehicle of the Indian Army crashed around Doklam in the Sikkim sector after it 'crossed' the border into China following a technical problem, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India.

Sources in Delhi said on Thursday that the Indian security forces in Nathu La immediately informed the Chinese army over the hotline about the UAV's technical problem and crossing the Line of Actual Control.

The Indian defence ministry said its border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

It, however, did not give details of when the UAV had crashed but sources in Delhi said the incident happened around 10 days ago.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Delhi to attend the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting on December 11.

In Beijing, China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing in Beijing.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a 'professional and responsible attitude' to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

The Indian defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

'An Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over (to) the LAC in the Sikkim Sector,' it said in a statement released in Delhi.

It further said, 'As per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response, the Chinese side reverted with the location details of the UAV.'

Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China-British Treaty, said, "I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited."

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

The armies of India and China were engaged in a 73-day-long standoff in Dokalam after Indian troops stopped Chinese soldiers from building a key road in the area.

The face-off ended on August 28. Dokalam is located in the Sikkim section of the India-China border.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", Geng said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has 'intruded' into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction over the incident.

The Indian UAV 'intruded' into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the LAC and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

Wang's visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Doklam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat elections, viewed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon-to-be Congress president Rahul Gandhi, will come to an end on Thursday.

Heres everything you need to know about the polls -- from candidates to the constituencies.

A total of 89 seats -- out of a total 182 -- spanning the Saurashtra and South Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani. Voting will be held on 9 December.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the goods and services tax rollout, the Congress -- galvanised by an assertive Rahul Gandhi -- has mainly targeted the hollow Gujarat development model to slam Modi.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal. Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

In 2012, the BJP won Gujarat for the fifth consecutive term. The BJPs vote share was 47.9 per cent against Congresss 38.9, the difference being 9 per cent. Compared to 2007, the difference is down by 0.49 per cent. In 2007, the BJPs vote share was 49.12 per cent against 39.63 per cent of the Congress, the gap being 9.49 per cent.

The erosion in the vote shares of both the parties was attributed to the four-month-old Gujarat Parivatan Party led by Keshubhai Patel, which had cornered 3.6 per cent of votes.

The highest difference in the vote shares of the BJP and the Congress was 10.4 per cent in 2002, when polls were held in the aftermath of post-Godhra riots. The BJPs vote share then stood at 49.85 per cent, its highest ever during its 17-year rule in Gujarat.

Not in many years has an assembly election in Gujarat promised a contest as close as it does this year. In 2017, the Congress, out of power for 22 long years, may well have its best shot at supplanting the BJP from power.

The BJP has consistently secured 40-49 per cent of the vote in Gujarat since 1995, the year it first came to power. A combination of caste calculations, Hindutva, and Narendra Modis charisma has kept it in power for the past 19 years.

The Congress vote share, too, has been consistent: it clocked a high of 39.28 per cent in 2002, in the elections that were held about ten months after the communal riots. In 2012, it secured 38.93 per cent. Its base has held steady, and this years poll is perhaps the partys best chance at breaking the BJPs hold over Gujarat.

Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the BJP received more than four times as much from donors in Gujarat than the other five national parties put together.

The BJP received Rs 80.45 crore in 2,186 donations above the Rs 20,000 threshold, while the Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the CPI, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Nationalist Congress Party received a combined Rs 17.10 crore in donations from the state during the same period, according to a five-year report released by Gujarat Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms.

One hundred and thirty-seven candidates, accounting for around 15 per cent, are facing criminal cases, including serious charges such as murder, kidnapping and rape.

A party-wise analysis found that 10 out of 89 BJP candidates were facing serious criminal charges, while the Congress gave tickets to as many as 20 such candidates for the first phase of the polls.

Mahesh Vasava, son of former Janata Dal-United MLA, Chhotu Vasava, has topped the chart with 24 cases against him, including two of murder and one of attempt to murder, the report said, adding that he was also facing charges related to dacoity, robbery, rioting, assault, theft and kidnapping.

Meanwhile, of the total of 997 candidates contesting the first phase of Gujarat assembly polls, 198 nominees, belonging to different political parties as well as independents, are crorepatis'.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has given tickets to 76 crorepati candidates, the opposition Congress has fielded 60 such nominees. They are followed by seven from the Nationalist Congress Party, six from the Aam Aadmi Party and two from the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
Hitting out at the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said parties seeking votes in B R Ambedkars name tried to erase his contribution in nation building and did little to build the Ambedkar International Centre conceived 23 years ago.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to the crowd as Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Thaawar Chand Gehlot looks on, at a ceremony to dedicate Dr Ambedkar International Centre. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Modi, who inaugurated the centre in the heart of the national capital in Janpath, also took a jibe at Rahul Gandhis comment on being a Shiva devotee and said some parties talked more of Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Babasaheb.

Such was the incredible strength of Ambedkar that his philosophy and contribution in nation building could not be erased despite the efforts of some people, the prime minister said in his address.

Such was his incredible strength that when years after his demise efforts were made by such people to crush his philosophy, when efforts were made to erase his contribution towards nation-building, his ideals could not be wiped out from peoples memory, he said.

He said he would not be wrong in saying that more people are still influenced by his ideas than the family for which such efforts (to erase his contribution) were made.

IMAGE: Modi unveils a plaque to dedicate Dr Ambedkar International Centre to the nation in New Delhi. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

The prime minister said the idea to construct the centre was conceived in 1992.

Then nothing happened for 23 years... when our government came, we not only laid its foundation (in April 2015), but are also dedicating it to the nation today.

In a broadside against the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, who is poised to become party president, he said political parties who seek votes in the name of Ambedkar were perhaps not even aware that the project was pending.

It is a different matter that they are thinking more of Baba Bhole than Babasaheb... even that is okay, he said.

The Congress vice president recently evoked Lord Shiva in reply to the Bharatiya Janata Partys criticism that his temple visits in Gujarat are an election gimmick.

I am a devotee of Shiv. The BJP may say anything, but I will remain honest, he had said in Ahmedabad.

The prime minister said in his address that there are forces trying to divide the country on caste lines.

Caste divisions, he added, put brakes on the pace of development.

IMAGE: People clicking pictures of a statue of Dr BR Ambedkar, installed at Dr Ambedkar International Centre, that was dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister in New Delhi on Thursday. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Modi also lamented that Ambedkars dream of social democracy -- where all have a say -- is still unaccomplished.

But I see hope in todays generation... things are changing... the ills of society are being removed, he said.

He said the centre will be an inspiration for the promotion of the Dalit icons thoughts and teachings and an important place for research on social and economic issues.

Modi added that the government had developed five places related to Babasaheb Ambedkar into pilgrimage spots.

The five pilgrimage spots -- in Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Mhow and London -- were like a homage from the present generation.

I think that this centre is for the youth... where they can see and understand the vision of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the prime minister said.

The centre, he said, was a fusion of Buddhist and modern architecture.
"Today weve voted for love, for equality. Its time for more marriages, more love, more respect. This belongs to us all. This is Australia," said Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister after the announcement.

IMAGE: A woman smiles as she gathers with a crowd of people to watch a large television screen at Federation Square as it is announced that same-sex marriage will be legal in Australia with Parliament agreeing to change the Marriage Act and end the ban on gay and lesbian couples marrying. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Same-sex marriage will officially be legalised in Australia after both houses of Parliament voted in favour of the historic change.

Netherlands The first country to legalise equal marriage rights in 2001

The House of Representatives voted to pass same-sex marriage into law on Thursday afternoon after a months-long public debate that has created tension and division.

What a day, what a day for love, for equality, for respect. Australia has done it! an impassioned Malcolm Turnbull said immediately following the announcement.

IMAGE: Same-sex couples will now be able to be legally married in Australia from January 2018.

Photograph: Daniel Munoz/Getty Images

Today weve voted for love, for equality. Its time for more marriages, more love, more respect. This belongs to us all. This is Australia.

More than 7.8 million Australians -- about 62 per cent of voters -- gave their support to the reform in a voluntary postal survey.

IMAGE: Alice Bennett and her partner Miranda Hill kiss as they gather to celebrate the news of same-sex marriages being allowed in Australia. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

The bill, which passed the Senate in late November, will now go to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove for royal assent. It will become law in days.

The first weddings are expected to be held in early January, because couples are required to give 30 days advance notice for nuptials under existing laws.

IMAGE: The legislation was passed after Australians voted 'Yes' in the Marriage Law Postal Survey for the law to be changed in November. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

In 2017, there are still over 70 countries that consider homosexuality as illegal and dont recognise same-sex marriages.

In Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, homosexuality is still punishable by death, under sharia law. The same applies in parts of Somalia and northern Nigeria. In two other countries -- Syria and Iraq -- the death penalty is carried out by non-state actors, including Islamic State.

In India, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes sex with persons of the same gender punishable by law.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen riding a brown bear in medieval armour, cuddling a puppy and dressed as Santa Claus  its not his latest series of publicity photos, but rather artwork at a new Moscow exhibition focussed on Russias leader.

IMAGE: People look at the paintings depicting Russian president Vladimir Putin at the "SUPERPUTIN" exhibition in Moscow. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Coincidentally, the exhibition called SUPERPUTIN opened on the day that he announced his bid for a fourth term as Russias president. It features around 30 paintings and sculptures of the Russian leader in a variety of different styles, all of which were made by Russian artists.

The Russian president made the announcement in a speech to workers at a car factory in the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod.

I will put forward my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian federation, he said.

IMAGE: A woman poses for a picture with a sculpture depicting Russian president Vladimir Putin riding a bear at the "SUPERPUTIN" exhibition. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Putin has been in power since 2000, either as president or prime minister. If he wins the March election he will be eligible to serve until 2024.

Putin is popular with many Russians, who see him as a strong leader who has restored Russia's global standing with a decisive military intervention in the Syrian civil war and Russias annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

IMAGE: The exhibition runs from today in the UMAM museum in Moscow until January 15. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

But his critics accuse him of facilitating corruption and illegally annexing Crimea, which has led to international condemnation.

Putin is pitted against a number of candidates, including TV host Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of late St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who was Putins boss in the 1990s.

IMAGE: A woman walks past busts depicting Russian president Vladimir Putin in the colours of the Russian national flag at the "SUPERPUTIN" exhibition. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Another contender is Alexei Navalny, who previously intended to seek office before getting arrested in June. His conviction, which he calls politically motivated, bars him from running.
The national capital also reported 38.8 per cent of the total number of crimes under the Indian Penal Code.

Delhi, the national capital, is also the crime capital of India.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Delhi accounts for nearly 40 per cent of rapes reported, 33 per cent of crimes against women and the highest crime rate in 2016.

It also has the dubious distinction of topping the NCRB list in cases of murder, kidnapping and abduction, juveniles in conflict and economic offences.

Using the data provided by the NCRB, Rediff Labs has generated a chart of the most unsafe cities for women.

As per the graph, one can see that Delhi is the most unsafe city for women, recording 13,803 complaints of which 1,996 are of rape.

Delhi also accounted for nearly 29 per cent of cases of cruelty towards woman by husband and his relatives (3,645) and dowry deaths (162), the NCRB data revealed.

The financial capital of India, Mumbai comes in second when it comes to rape complaints with 702 while Pune was third with 354 rapes.

Delhi also reported 38.8 per cent of the total number of crimes under the Indian Penal Code, followed by Bengaluru (8.9 per cent) and Mumbai 7.7 per cent.

The chart above shows which city has recorded the most crime cases. The NCRB data reveals that the national capital recorded the highest crime rate at 182.1 compared to the national average of 77.2.

Delhi reported the highest number of kidnapping and abduction cases (5,543), the highest number of murders (479) and also the highest number of cases of juveniles in conflict with law.

For more data driven journalism, check out REDIFF LABS
'The Congress will not make a difference in the life of a Patel, but only to teach the BJP a lesson we will vote against it.'

IMAGE: The BJP has made the mistake of thinking that the BJP and Modi are the same. Gujarat loves Modi, but the same can't be said of the BJP, says Jigar Patel. Photograph: Kind courtesy @narendramodi/Twitter

In 2014 when Narendra D Modi was elected prime minister of India, Jigar Patel, an engineer, was elated. He believed in Modi's promise of more jobs, better governance and 'achche din'.

of late, the engineer, who is in his mid-30s, is unhappy with the PM.

He tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf why this Gujarat election is all about teaching the BJP a lesson.

Two years ago everything happened all of a sudden for me. My surname 'Patel' was suddenly splashed on the front pages of newspapers and hogged headlines everywhere.

This change occurred when Hardik Patel began his agitation seeking reservation for Patels in education and government jobs.

The demand was justified because we, as Patels, had always supported the BJP. Therefore, we felt this party would not betray us in our demands.

Unfortunately, as events unfolded I realised that the BJP was not doing justice to Patels.

During the agitation, 14 Patels died in police firing. No action was taken against the policemen. The only action taken by the BJP then was against then chief minister Anandiben Patel who many believe was pressured into resigning her post.

Two years have passed and I am still to see any action being taken against the policemen. Now, I believe the BJP has taken the Patel vote for granted.

The Patel community stood by the BJP like a rock, but have only been getting empty promises from them.

I am not voting for the BJP. My vote will go to anyone who is opposing the BJP, not necessarily the Congress party.

The BJP has made the mistake of thinking that Modi and the BJP are the same. The people of Gujarat love Modi, not the BJP.

In case Modi forms a new party, the people of Gujarat will vote for him. But the same can't be said for the BJP.

This time, if you notice, all the Patels are saying that they will vote for the Congress to defeat the BJP as this party has done injustice to the Patels.

The condition of Patel farmers has been the same for the past five years. Despite big talk about the Gujarat model of development, these people have seen no improvement in their lives.

IMAGE: 'The Patel, who was a powerful entity in the village, is today powerless.'

Hardik Patel, the face of the Patel agitation, at an election rally. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

The entire Gujarat development model has been concentrated on constructing big highways and not on creating jobs.

And before someone talks of the development that the state witnessed under Modi's regime in Gujarat, all of it was restricted to big cities such as Ahmedabad, Surat and Rajkot.

Even a city like Vadodara only saw development when Modi became prime minister in 2014.

Villages in Gujarat are completely untouched by the 'development model'. There is a crisis of jobs among the rural youth.

Youngsters in rural Gujarat have moved away from villages to the big cities and are jobless or are doing odd jobs.

There is no stability of income for the youth of rural Gujarat.

There is sufficient water and electricity for farming, but crop-related issues are yet to be solved by the BJP. The government has failed miserably in trying to control the prices of seeds and pesticides.

And to make the situation even worse for farmers is the fact that the middlemen reap all the profits, leaving nothing for the farmers. It was only in 2016 that the BJP started providing a minimum support price to farmers.

The Patel farmers in Gujarat face huge burdens of debt. For instance, the compound wall of my neighbour's house in my village collapsed three years ago. However, he is unable to repair it as he has no money.

Modi should have solved these problems, but he and his government in the state continue to ignore the plight of the farmers.

The Patel, who was a powerful entity in the village, is today powerless.

When it comes to education too, the Patels are not receiving any benefits.

Even after securing more than 90 per cent in schools, they are unable to get into colleges of their choice.

Ten years ago, I secured 70 per cent, but I did not get computer engineering though I stayed in south Gujarat. I had to go to north Gujarat to do my engineering.

This was not the case for my other friends who had OBC (other backward class) certificates. They got admission in south Gujarat whereas I had to travel to north Gujarat.

The Congress will not make a difference in the life of a Patel, but only to teach the BJP a lesson we will vote against it.
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 Killing of Former President Saleh Could Worsen Yemen's War

Publisher International Crisis Group (ICG) Author April Longley Alley Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as International Crisis Group (ICG), The Killing of Former President Saleh Could Worsen Yemen's War, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a28f72b4.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.

What exactly happened and what led up to this sudden twist in Yemen's devastating war?

On 4 December, Huthi fighters killed Yemen's former president and their erstwhile ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh. His violent death and the military defeat of his loyalists in Sanaa were the culmination of months of growing tensions between Saleh's General People's Congress party (GPC) and the Huthis. Before coming to blows, the Huthi-Saleh alliance had fought the Saudi-led coalition, which is backing the internationally recognised government of Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to a stalemate. After nearly three years of war, including a punishing air campaign and a policy of economic strangulation, they still controlled the north, where the majority of Yemen's population lives. It came at a high human cost: Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world with seven million on the brink of famine, over three million internally displaced and an expected one million cases of cholera by the end of the year.

The Huthis and Saleh had a history of distrust and violence, fighting six rounds of conflict between 2004 and 2009. As partners against the Saudi-led coalition, they fought over positions in the government, accused each other of corruption and engaged in an off-and-on again war of words in the media. Overtime, the Huthis consolidated control over the military-security apparatus, but the exact balance of power in the tribes and loyalties within some military units were unclear. By August 2017, when Saleh staged a rally in Sanaa to celebrate the GPC's 35th anniversary, the Huthis suspected he was planning to turn against them with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To his followers' disappointment, Saleh failed to act, but four months later he did, a decision that would cost him his life and confirm the Huthis' military superiority.

The trigger for the violence was a 29 November clash between Saleh fighters and Huthi loyalists over control of the Saleh Mosque, a major landmark in the capital that was built and opened by Saleh a decade ago. Local mediation failed to cool tensions and on 2 December, Saleh lit a match by calling his followers to take up arms against the Huthis. He also announced his willingness to "turn a new page" with the Saudi-led coalition, a statement that confirmed his treachery to the Huthis and played poorly with some of his base, who oppose the Huthis but Saudi military actions in Yemen even more.

For a brief moment, it looked like Saleh could win. The GPC and Saudi-led coalition media outlets reported victories in Sanaa, saying that Saleh's Republican Guard forces had taken over the airport, strategic military bases and government buildings. But their euphoria was short-lived. On 3 December, the Huthis responded militarily and by 4 December a short, bloody battle on the streets of the capital had turned the tables on Saleh's forces. Critically, the tribes around Sanaa failed to come to Saleh's defense. Most remained neutral, allowing Huthi reinforcements to enter the city. While Saleh and his party enjoyed a great deal of popular support and sympathy, this did not translate into a hard-power advantage.

What has been local players' reaction to his death?

The most common reaction is shock. Saleh has been part of Yemen's ruling structure since he became president in 1978. He was known as a wily political survivor, hated by some and loved by others. Many had been calling on him to leave political life since the political uprising against him in 2011, but his violent death and the lack of any clear leadership for his party will likely complicate the conflict.

For the GPC, Saleh's death and his forces' military defeat in Sanaa are devastating political and military blows. Saleh's son and former Republican Guard Commander Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh is in exile. His nephew and former Special Forces Commander Tareq Saleh was also killed in Sanaa. The party had already suffered a series of defections in the popular uprising against his rule in 2011, and it is very possible that it will fragment even further. During the current war, some prominent members supported the Hadi government, although most stayed with Saleh. With Saleh gone, some may join Hadi's side, while many in Sanaa will support the Huthis, mainly from a mix of fear, lack of better options and common hostility to the Saudi air campaign.

For the Huthis, his death is viewed as a victory. Many in the group had long wanted revenge for the death of their leader, Hussein Badr al-Deen al-Huthi, at the hands of President Saleh's forces in 2004. Equally important, they see it as a justified response to Saleh's about-face against them.

Does this alter Yemen's local balance of power?

For the moment, the Huthis are the winners and it is possible that they will continue to consolidate military and political control of the north. They have defeated their only real competitor on the ground and in doing so have intimidated those who may want to oppose them in the future. But there also are important risks for them. Killing Saleh, his family members and high-ranking party members, plus continued Huthi raids on homes and detention of GPC officials suspected of taking up arms against them, is feeding future cycles of revenge.

The Huthis are aware of the political risks of alienating the GPC even further and are publicly making a distinction between Saleh supporters who took up arms against them and the rest of the party, whom they say they will not hold responsible for recent events and still consider brothers. But statements cannot undo actions. The majority of the GPC is afraid and deeply resentful, creating a situation in which the Huthis may increasingly have to rely on force and intimidation to maintain control.

There is a chance that the military balance in the north could still shift - albeit a small one. Some are pinning their hopes on Saleh's son Ahmed who vowed revenge for this father's death. The UAE kept him under "soft" house arrest in Abu Dhabi during the war to have him available as back-up, a kind of wild card, for a moment like this. While he is influential within the old Republican Guard, the most recent events demonstrated these forces' weakness and disarray. Opposing the Huthis militarily would require some reconstitution of these troops, support from the tribes around Sanaa and cooperation between Ahmed Ali and his bitter enemy, Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the vice president under Hadi, who commands forces in Marib.

Thus far, and despite media bluster from Hadi calling for troops to march on Sanaa or for Yemenis to rise up against the Huthis, there is little indication that troops are prepared for such action. Instead, the coalition has intensified its air campaign in Sanaa, something that will not dislodge the Huthis and works to their advantage by increasing anti-Saudi sentiment.

How does the splintering of the Huthi-Saleh alliance affect the regional actors engaged in the war and the prospects for peace?

It is difficult to see how this result plays to the advantage of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Their policy of trying to split the Huthi-Saleh alliance has backfired dramatically, resulting in a Huthi military victory. As Crisis Group warned in a September 2017 briefing, the result of a clash between the two sides would be unlikely to redound in Saudi's favor. More likely, it would produce a Huthi win or a protracted fight in the north.

If Saudi Arabia wanted to support a negotiated end to the war, the prospects for doing so now have become bleaker. The Huthis have said they are ready to talk, but their substantive demands will no doubt be even more out of line with what Saudi Arabia and their Yemeni allies are willing to accept. It is difficult to see Saudi Arabia encouraging compromise and negotiation at this stage now that the Huthis are clearly in charge.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE may try to find a silver lining in recent events. From their perspective, without the cover of Saleh's GPC and the veneer of nationalism that came with it, the Huthis will be exposed as the narrow, sectarian Iranian project that the coalition and their Yemeni allies accuse them of being. To some extent, they are right that the GPC provided important political cover and the appearance of political inclusion. But the narrowing of political support for the Huthis will not necessarily trigger the popular uprising that the coalition hopes to incite.

In fact, absent a clear military advantage for the anti-Huthi side or an end to the war and a return to politics, populations in the north are now far less likely to oppose the Huthis, lest they face the same fate as Saleh. Over time, opposition to the Huthis may well rise, especially if they fail to govern adequately, but this does not guarantee revolt. Also, the split with Saleh's GPC does not erase widespread and deep popular resentment toward the Hadi government and the coalition for a brutal air campaign and economic blockade that are killing the country. As long as these policies continue, the Huthis will have the opportunity to stand behind the banner of nationalism and defending Yemen.

Iran once again stands to gain. While the Huthi-Saleh fighting was an internal power struggle not of Iran's making, Tehran will benefit if the Huthis succeed in consolidating their control of the north, including the capital. Politically isolated, the Huthis are allies but not puppets of Iran. There is increasing evidence of Iranian military support to the Huthis, including for their missile program. The 4 November rocket attack on Riyadh's international airport shows the significance of this capability. The Huthis have threatened the UAE as well, claiming to have launched missiles in its direction. Iran's relatively low-cost investment is paying off in spades, bogging Saudi Arabia down in a war that is unwinnable, costly and damaging to its reputation.

What can be done to advance the cause of peace in Yemen now?

At the moment, the prospects for peace are slim to none. That said, the need for a political solution is ever more urgent. Yemen is already the world's worst humanitarian crisis, but following the 4 November missile strike on Riyadh, the situation deteriorated dramatically as the Saudi-led coalition shut off all access points to Huthi-controlled areas. Then, just as they started easing up on the blockade, fighting broke out in Sanaa between Saleh and the Huthis, and this once again curbed even humanitarian flights into the country.

Regardless of the course of the war, all ports of entry should be fully opened to humanitarian and commercial goods, including Hodeida port and Sanaa airport, which has been closed to commercial fights since August 2016. Saudi Arabia already had signalled that doing so will require additional security checks, but will be even more insistent now to address the coalition's concerns about weapons shipments to the Huthis.

At the political level, recent developments should confirm that the current military approach toward the Huthis is failing and that new thinking is needed. Attempting to shift the military dynamics against them would require significant ground troops and cohesiveness on the anti-Huthi side that has been absent thus far. Most importantly, if attempted, it would come at an extraordinary human cost.

Yemen's war is going from bad to worse. Instead of watching the next chapter unfold, the UN Security Council should pass a resolution calling on all sides to agree to a ceasefire and political negotiations. This will require compromises from all sides. While this may be unappealing to the coalition and the anti-Huthi bloc, a return to politics, not a continuation of the war, is arguably the best way to counter-balance the Huthis. It is certainly the only way to avoid famine, the spread of cholera and further economic devastation - and the long-term instability that these will cause.
Uzbekistan: Starting to Grapple with Labor Migration Issue

Publisher EurasiaNet Publication Date 28 November 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Uzbekistan: Starting to Grapple with Labor Migration Issue, 28 November 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a28fa744.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 recent murder of an Uzbek migrant in the Moscow region was stunning for its pettiness and brazenness. The reaction both in Russia and Uzbekistan was out of the ordinary.

In broad daylight on October 13 in a drab village southwest of Moscow, a man in his mid-20s allegedly stabbed hairdresser Dostan Adehanov repeatedly in the chest with a skewer. The suspect had been teased mercilessly by his friends over the haircut given to him by Adehanov, a 24-year old native of Uzbekistan, so he decided to take revenge in an act caught on a surveillance camera.

It's not particularly unusual for Central Asian citizens in Russia to fall victim to fatal workplace accidents or racially motivated crimes. But this particular episode gained more attention than usual because one of Adehanov's customers happened to be the friend of a prominent politician.

"Danya worked in a cheap Moscow region hairdresser. That's why his prices were low. Despite his golden hands, Danya couldn't get a job in a more expensive establishment. And that is because Danya was a migrant laborer," Anton Belyakov, a member of the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, wrote on his Facebook page.

The sense of indignation was felt in Uzbekistan, too.

Back in the days of President Islam Karimov, who died just over a year ago, the woes of the country's army of migrant laborers - the vast majority of whom work in Russia - rarely got much attention inside Uzbekistan itself. On the contrary, they received only disdain from the president.

"Those people who go to Moscow to clean the streets are just lazybones. You just feel disgust when Uzbeks go there just to earn a crust of bread. Nobody is dying of hunger in Uzbekistan," Karimov said in June 2013.

This was remarkably harsh language considering the contributions made to the economy by expatriate laborers. In 2016 alone, they sent home $2.7 billion from Russia. Remittances from laborers abroad keep many of their struggling friends and relatives back home above the poverty line.

And so it is being taken as evidence of yet more change happening inside Uzbekistan that Adehanov's murder sparked a surge of public reaction. Local media devoted ample coverage to the killing, while social media users collected funds needed to cover the cost of returning the young man's body to his impoverished family in the Ferghana region. Only in the event of mass casualties - as in major vehicle collisions - does the Uzbek government typically organize the repatriation of victims' remains.

The 1.5 million person-strong Uzbek diaspora in Russia can use all the help it can get.

Bureaucratic hurdles have become increasingly complicated since 2015, when Russia began requiring labor migrants to obtain a work permit. That same year, Kyrgyzstan joined the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, freeing their citizens of the requirement to obtain the permit. The removal of that requirement made Kyrgyz migrants a far more attractive proposition for employers in Russia, thus additionally shrinking options for would-be Uzbek migrants.

Many Uzbeks have long sought to avoid the hassle of paperwork - and the $58 fee levied monthly for the work permit. Thus, they tend to opt for to reside in Russia illegally, making them prey for police. According to figures from Uzbekistan's Agency for External Labor Migration, around 400,000 Uzbeks overall have at some point been deported from Russia and been included on a travel blacklist.

The government has now turned its attention to cutting through this muddle of problems.

"Uzbekistan is changing its attitude to the issue of labor migration at its very roots and recognizing the contribution made by these migrants to the economy of Uzbekistan and to development in the country where they are working. We intend from the very outset to protect their rights and interests," Karim Bahriyev, spokesman for the Agency for Foreign Labor Migration Affairs, told Eurasianet.org.

During his state visit to Russia in April, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev dwelled at length on the issue of labor migration. The trip produced two bilateral documents of note that strive to better regulate migration.

One sets the terms of data to passed between the Russian and Uzbek governments. Moscow will provide advance information to Uzbekistan about available jobs and the specializations it needs to have filled. Uzbek authorities will in turn assist in selecting qualified personnel, help candidates obtain medical insurance and test applicants for knowledge of Russian.

The other document requires Uzbekistan to open additional consulates across Russia and establish branches of the Agency for Foreign Labor Migration Affairs in many major cities - including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. Meanwhile, a Center for Pre-Vocational Training supported by both nations' governments opened in Samarkand in early November. Another is expected to begin operating in Tashkent by the end of the year.

The prospect of enhanced legal and job security will be eagerly welcomed by those for whom work in Russia is an indispensable lifeline.

Farkhod Djalilov, 38, the oldest of three brothers and a native of the Kashkadarya region, has for 15 years been working alternately in Moscow and Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

"My [monthly] earnings are around $500. I don't spend money on accommodation and food, because those costs are covered by my employer. I work in a factory producing plastic windows and doors. I send most of my income home, where I have a wife and three children. I could only dream of money like that back home," Djalilov told Eurasianet.org.

But there is also cause for tempering expectations. As Sergei Abashin, a St.Petersburg-based historian who has written extensively on migration issues, told EurasiaNet.org, the government in Uzbekistan will only be able to process a fraction of those wishing to work in Russia. And the demand may not be there on the legal job market.

"Russia has not set itself the unequivocal goal of attracting migrants from Central Asia. It is believed rather that their numbers should be contained and their presence limited in time. It might be easier for Uzbek migrants if the country decided to enter the Eurasian Union," Abashin said. "But I don't think accession to this organization is on the agenda for the Uzbek authorities."

Copyright notice: All EurasiaNet material  Open Society Institute
Kazakhstan: Is New Military Doctrine Response to Russia or the West?

Publisher EurasiaNet Publication Date 30 November 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Kazakhstan: Is New Military Doctrine Response to Russia or the West?, 30 November 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a28fc154.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.

Kazakh troops participate in the Collective Security Treaty Organization's "Combat Brotherhood 2017" exercise in Tajikistan in November 2017. Although Kazakhstan adopted a new military doctrine partially designed to respond to threats from Russia, the country remains tied to its neighbor through Moscow-led security organizations like the CSTO

In late September, Kazakhstan adopted its fifth military doctrine. The document outlines a shift in strategic thinking that seems, at least in part, designed to respond to potential threats emanating from Kazakhstan's neighbor and ally, Russia - even though analysts close to the Kazakhstani government argue that it is the actions of the West that pose the greatest danger to the country's sovereignty.



The cautiously articulated document describes its contents as the product of expert analysis of the global military-political situation, and of the "change to the character of military conflicts."



Some of the language in the doctrine allows for a flexible interpretation about the identity of the perceived opponent and threats. First among the main conditions posing a potential strategic danger to Kazakhstan is the "intensification in the confrontation between global and regional powers in an effort to change the existing world order."



Georgy Dubovtsev, a military affairs expert at the state-affiliated Kazakhstan Institute of Strategic Studies, said it was clear that this language reflected the experience of countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, which he described as theaters for proxy wars. None of the unrest that those nations experienced in recent decades was initiated by Russia, but was rather stoked by Western governments, and promoted under the cloak of "promoting democracy" and "fighting against tyranny," Dubovtsev told Eurasianet.org.



But some novel features of Kazakhstan's defensive doctrine are strongly suggestive of being motivated by another set of issues altogether. In contrast to the last approved doctrine, from 2011, Kazakhstan's military planners now express concern over the possible deployment of "hybrid methods." And then there are the references to the threat of "incitement and escalation of armed conflict on the Republic of Kazakhstan's border space."



Those passages, along with warnings about separatist movements and cyberattacks, quickly bring to mind the measures employed by Russia to sow instability in Ukraine.



"The new Kazakh military doctrine is a clear reference to Ukraine. The Kazakh doctrine is very similar to the doctrine Belarus adopted in 2016, but Minsk was more explicit about learning lessons from Ukraine," Deirdre Tynan, Central Asia project director for International Crisis Group, told Eurasianet.



In the aftermath of the 2014 Euromaidan events that brought about the downfall of Ukraine's then-president Viktor Yanukovych - who played a strategic double-game in his foreign relations but generally leaned more heavily toward Russia - the Kremlin moved quickly to annex the Crimean Peninsula. While those events proceeded with relatively little violence, it was a different picture in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where pro-Moscow separatist movements were suddenly bolstered by the injection of vast amounts of weaponry and covert armed forces generally agreed to have flooded in from Russia. The conflict that ensued continues to this day.



While spooked by all those developments, Kazakhstan has on paper remained a steadfast ally to the Kremlin. President Nursultan Nazarbayev was not shy in adopting Moscow's talking points in the weeks after the Crimean annexation, essentially attributing Ukraine's ailments to "an unconstitutional coup d'etat" and Kyiv's "discrimination against minority rights."



But political affairs commentator Ruslan Zhangazy said that this may simply have been a way for Astana to buy time.

"We exercised caution and avoided adopting our [new military doctrine] immediately after the Russian military aggression, that is to say during the period of most acute conflict. We waited until after the attempts to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict," Zhangazy told Eurasianet.



Back in 2014, if Astana was not anxious already about Crimea's fate, Russian President Vladimir Putin finished the job by making remarks that August, in which he referred to Kazakhstan as a "state on territory where no state had ever existed."



"The Kazakhs had never had statehood. He created it," Putin said, referring to Nazarbayev in comments that were widely read as a veiled warning against Kazakhstan displaying too much diplomatic independence.



Whatever their intent, the result of Putin's words has been a surge in nationalist-lite messaging inside Kazakhstan and a renewal of efforts to boost the status of the Kazakh language. This shift is also informed by demographic developments in the northern regions of Kazakhstan, which are seen as being at most risk of becoming hot-spots for separatism.



At the moment, non-Kazakh ethnic groups are heavily represented in those regions. According to the state statistics committee, the proportion of ethnic Kazakhs living in Petropavlovsk, the administrative center of the North-Kazakhstan Region, is a mere 27.6 percent. In the city of Kostanay, that figure is 37.5 percent. In Oskemen, the capital of the East-Kazakhstan Region, that rises to 40.6 percent, and in Pavlodar, another city near the border, it is 44.5 percent. In industrial cities of the north and east, like Rudny, Lisakovsk and Ridder, it is 28.4 percent, 24.8 percent and 13.9 percent, respectively.



But the makeup of Kazakhstan is undergoing important changes. On the one hand, the rising rate of outward migration is primarily the result of ethnic Russians departing for their perceived historic homeland. The movement is happening in parallel with concerted efforts by Kazakhstan's government to relocate families - ostensibly of ethnic Kazakh origin - from southern regions to the north. The stated goal of this policy is to alleviate labor surplus in the south and support the economic potential of the north. To sweeten the pot, the government has been issuing advantageous mortgage terms and welfare benefits to those wishing to make the move.



Demography may be the strongest card in Kazakhstan's deck, since although the country's strategic posture may be evolving to take greater account of Russia's potential for threat down the road, Astana's military expenditure has tended toward the anemic.



According to economy think tank Ranking.kz, Kazakhstan's defense budget fell by 3 percent in 2016 compared with the year before. And that was in figures calculated in tenge, which has experienced dramatic downward volatility over the past two years. Ranking.kz reported in February that defense spending came in at 440 billion tenge ($1.3 billion at the current exchange rate) last year and is projected to reach an even lower 408 billion tenge ($1.2 billion) in 2017.



Perhaps just as significantly, the budget for law enforcement is seen on the rise - from 453 billion tenge ($1.37 billion) in 2016 to 482 billion tenge ($1.5 billion) this year.



Allowing for the fluctuation of the national currency presents a more ambivalent picture, but the broad trend indicates a growing emphasis away from conventional defense to internal order.



In the broader scheme of things, Kazakhstan is in no position to turn away from Russia and remains wedded to its neighbor economically, as well as in terms of security, through bodies like the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO. In this context, the adoption of a more defensive military doctrine looks more like an insurance policy than a radical change of tack.



"Kazakhstan is a member of the CSTO, it has a high level of cooperation with Russia through the CSTO and bilaterally," Tynan said. "By enhancing the relationship, Astana may feel that these agreements manage Russia's expectations, and establish Kazakhstan as an equal entity, not somewhere like Ukraine."

Copyright notice: All EurasiaNet material  Open Society Institute
What Libya's "slave auctions" tell us about the humanitarian system

Publisher IRIN Author Nanjala Nyabola Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as IRIN, What Libya's "slave auctions" tell us about the humanitarian system, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2900a94.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 the wake of the CNN report on human auctions in Libya, there has rightly been a surge in concern for the thousands of Africans languishing in inhumane conditions in detention camps.

Political leaders in Europe and Africa, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, have condemned the situation.

Notable also has been the spontaneous attention of African and African-American celebrities in the face of the silence by official Hollywood goodwill ambassadors for various international organisations.

After years of flailing diplomacy and lonely advocacy, it seems the world is finally ready to talk about the humanitarian disaster in Libya.

But while this new wave of attention is welcome and necessary, it does raise key questions.

Why did it take so long to have this near-unified voice of condemnation on a well-researched and well-covered issue that has been in the public domain for the better part of the last decade? Why now and not before? And more importantly, what does this delayed reaction say about race and racism in international humanitarian work?

The CNN film has had such a major impact in part because of the starkness of the imagery - the visuals reminiscent of the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trades.

Although the men in the videos are not shackled, they are certainly imprisoned and, in a later part of the film, they detail the dire conditions in which they are held. Rape, beatings, starvation and murder all recur with alarming frequency in this contemporary slave trade.

The impact of injustice

Yet this information is not new. International organisations, politicians, and journalists have all reported the dire conditions facing African migrants in Libya from at least 2010.

Rather, this new urgency can be attributed in part to the rise of new forms of organising for racial justice.

Specifically, the Black Lives Matter movement has broadened the concerns of global racial solidarity, not just in the United States where it was born, but also across other racially divided societies like South Africa and Brazil.

African diasporas in France and in the United Kingdom have also organised chapters to fight local racial battles. The call for a new global compact for racial justice demanded in the streets of Baltimore, New York, Paris, Johannesburg, and Tel Aviv is finally being heard in offices in Geneva and New York.

Is global humanitarianism ready to talk about race?

It should be, considering that anti-black racism is the elephant in the room when it comes to the protection of refugees and migrants.

The vast majority of the world's refugees and migrants today are Asian and African, unlike in the 1940s when the original instruments of protection were negotiated.

Most of these people remain in their region of origin. South-South migration is common in Africa where, for example, 20,000 Ethiopians and Eritreans try to reach southern Africa every year.

It's important to situate contemporary human mobility in its proper place. With the notable exception of the cruel and inhumane global slave trade, the search for better opportunities, particularly in young men negotiating patriarchal masculinities, is - and has long been - common.

But the rules have changed.

In the 19th century as more and more young men took to the sea from southern Portugal as part of exploration and colonisation missions, the women they left behind would sing mournful songs, lamenting their departure and willing them to return safely, songs collectively known as Fado.

Now, hundreds of thousands of young African men and women die on their journeys abroad - from the North African deserts to the Mediterranean Sea, primarily as a consequence of increasingly inhumane policies towards human mobility. They are unmourned except when families finally get word that they have gone missing.

Criminalising migrants

Unlike European men in the last century who were celebrated for leaving home in search of opportunity or even adventure, young African men today are criminalised and punished, especially when they try to enter predominantly white societies.

Take another example. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh and have been largely welcomed, if under-resourced, while Australia expends much force and energy to keep hundreds of refugees violently contained on Manus Island. The same can be said of South Americans attempting to cross into the United States, and of course the frame of existential crisis that populist parties in Europe reserve for Muslim refugees from the Middle East.

If there is a global crisis of migration it is that societies are resorting to increasingly draconian measures to keep "The Other" out.

Contrast this panic with the treatment of predominantly white migrants or "expats". Most countries in the world have migration policies that favour immigration by "expats" while penalising similar migration from predominantly black and brown populations.

This includes African countries like Kenya, which has kept half a million Somali refugees encamped with no legal status or pathway to citizenship for over 25 years.

On the campaign trail earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron emphatically offered France as a "second home" to American climate scientists concerned about the anti-science proclivities of Donald Trump's administration.

But when African and European leaders met in Abidjan last week, Macron was equivocal in offering the same emphatic welcome to African migrants held in the detention centres in Libya - regardless of their qualifications.

Everyone wants "good migrants" - where "good" means primarily white and/or wealthy.

Ignoring the suffering

At the same time, consider that the barter of African bodies in Libya is not a question of a handful of criminals in the desert. It is a global system that rises to the highest level.

Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi routinely used the threat of allowing mass migration of black Africans to Europe in negotiations for improved political relations.

European governments have repeatedly paid African countries to take and keep African migrants and refugees in Africa. Black and brown bodies are constantly on sale in the modern era, but it is couched in the polite language of diplomatic negotiation and "helping them where they are".

And the very act of feigning shock at information that has been in the public domain - reported by survivors and journalists alike - for so long speaks to an unwillingness to see the suffering of Africans.

Race and racism are at the heart of the ongoing refugee and migrant crisis, but, to date, humanitarianism has been reluctant to talk about it in stark terms.

The preferred language of protection is dry and technical, linked to statutes and conventions that were drafted at the time of Jim Crow and independence movements around the world.

Consider that the refugee convention entered into force in 1951 when most of Africa and the Caribbean was still colonised and three years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated US schools.

New voices

The convention was not designed with ethnic minorities in mind and has struggled to adapt as the dynamics of refugee protection have shifted. It responded to the white-on-white crimes of World War II and is predicated on the goodwill of states towards citizens that arguably has never been extended to black or brown people.

Which is probably why, less than a week later, the momentum triggered by the CNN film is already fading. The United States has pulled out of the new global compact on migration, and the document agreed upon by EU and AU leaders in Abidjan is widely viewed as weak.

The stark visuals of the CNN report have forced a conversation on humanitarian protection to be openly and explicitly framed as a question of racial justice.

This has allowed new voices and new advocacy into the conversation. It remains unclear if this new momentum and direction of thought will translate into more meaningful action for those on the move.
RSF reiterates call for independent probe into Maltese journalist's murder

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF reiterates call for independent probe into Maltese journalist's murder, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2902424.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.

Following this week's announced arrests of ten suspects in Malta's investigation into anti-corruption journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder on 16 October, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its call for a full and independent investigation to bring those responsible to justice.

Under European Union pressure for results, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced on 4 December that ten suspects had been arrested. They were the first arrests in the case, in which the government has been accused of both political interference and incompetence.

Caruana Galizia's family has issued a statement expressing astonishment that the arrests were announced by the prime minister and not by the police, as should be the case in this kind of investigation.





The statement also draws attention to other irregularities, including the fact that the names of the suspects were released and that the magistrate who issued the arrest warrant was not the investigating magistrate in charge of the case.





The family also said it was concerned that "a number of people who could be implicated continue to receive political cover for crimes they are widely reported to have committed." As there was no sign that the investigation was being conducted in an independent manner, the family would continue to demand an "independent and impartial investigation," the statement added.





"In the nearly two months since Daphne Caruana Galizia's death, the authorities have been unable to show that they are conducting their investigation in an impartial manner, so we support the family's request and we call for an independent international investigation to establish all the facts of her shocking murder," said Pauline Ades-Mevel, the head of RSF's EU-Balkans desk.





The murder of Caruana Galizia, who often accused both Maltese government and opposition of corruption on her blog, has raised EU concerns about the rule of law in Malta.





A European Parliament delegation tasked with examining the situation in Malta made an exploratory visit to the capital, Valetta, last week and confirmed its concerns on its return. There was also grave concern about the death threats made against members of the delegation ahead of the visit.





Malta is currently ranked 47th out of 180 countries in RSF's World Press Freedom Index.
RSF concerned about reporter missing in Tanzania

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF concerned about reporter missing in Tanzania, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2902ae4.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) urges the Tanzanian police to speed up their investigation into the disappearance of Azori Gwanda, a newspaper reporter who went missing in the eastern Pwani region two weeks ago.









Gwanda is a correspondent of Tanzania's leading Swahili-language newspaper, Mwananchi, and its English-language version, The Citizen, which are published by the Nation Media Group.





In a statement issued by the publisher, his wife said that she last saw him on 21 November in a white Toyota Land Cruiser with two men, and that he seemed very frightened. Since then, no one has answered any of his three telephones.





In recent months, Gwanda had been investigating a series of mysterious murders of policemen and local officials by men on motorcycles in the Pwani region, which lies just to the east of the Dar es Salaam region





"We join the Nation Media Group in calling on the police to step up the investigation and do everything possible to locate this journalist," RSF said. "The conditions in which the media operate in Tanzania have worsened, partly because of the government's behaviour, and ensuring that this kind of attack does not go unpunished is essential to avoid undermining journalism as whole."
UN Committee tells Cameroon to put an end to torture by security forces in the fight against Boko Haram

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, UN Committee tells Cameroon to put an end to torture by security forces in the fight against Boko Haram, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2906344.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.

Cameroon must act swiftly on the recommendations published today by the UN Committee against Torture and put an end to the widespread use of torture by security forces fighting Boko Haram, Amnesty International said.

The Committee expressed deep concerns about the use of secret torture chambers documented by Amnesty International in July, and its failure to clarify whether investigations were being carried into these allegations, as well as other reports of killings of civilians and enforced disappearances.

"With the Committee against Torture now also demanding an end to the use of torture in Cameroon, it is becoming impossible for the world to ignore the widespread practice of torture in the country," said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International's Lake Chad researcher.

"The clamour for justice is growing and Cameroonian authorities should respond by taking these reports of torture far more seriously and launching an independent and efficient investigation into these horrific practices."

Based on submissions from organisations including Amnesty International, the UN Committee noted that large numbers of people from Cameroon's Far North region are likely to have been held incommunicado and tortured by members of the military and the intelligence services in at least 20 illegal detention facilities between 2013 and 2017.

The Committee also raised concerns that this torture took place with the likely knowledge of senior BIR and intelligence officers at one military base, and that dozens of people may have died following torture and inhuman conditions of detention.

In its recommendations the Committee called on Cameroon to publish a declaration from the highest state level affirming an absolute prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment and put an end to the practice of incommunicado detention.

It also called for effective, independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of torture, incommunicado detention and death in custody, and for alleged perpetrators and accomplices of such acts, including those in command responsibility, be prosecuted and sentenced in proportion to the seriousness of the offences.

Elsewhere in its concluding observations, the UN Committee also echoed concerns raised by Amnesty International and others in relation to human rights violations committed in the Anglophone regions of the country, including by demanding an investigation into the deaths of at least 20 people killed in October in clashes between the security forces and protestors.

The Committee criticized the failure of Cameroon to provide information on the number of people still detained following protests in the regions, or whether investigations had been launched into the excessive use of force.

UN experts also noted their concerns that journalists such as RFI correspondent Ahmed Abba had been charged under counter-terrorism laws, and that some had been subjected to torture while in detention. The Committee also criticized the regular use of military courts in trials of civilians.

"The UN's anti-torture experts have recognised that there is a major problem in Cameroon, and their warnings should be heeded. There should be no tolerance of human rights violations like torture, and we hope that the Cameroonian authorities and international community will respond to this report with the seriousness it deserves," said Ilaria Allegrozzi.



Background

On 7-8 November, the Committee against Torture convened in Geneva, where among other things it completed a two-day review of Cameroon's fifth periodic report on its implementation of the provisions of the Convention against Torture covering the period 2010-2015.

The Committee - which is comprised of 10 independent experts - engaged in a dialogue with the Cameroonian delegation which included representatives from the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Police, and the Permanent Mission of Cameroon to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Cameroon is among the 162 state parties to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Turkey: Parliament Opposition Party Leader on Trial

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 6 December 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Turkey: Parliament Opposition Party Leader on Trial, 6 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2907824.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 prolonged pretrial detention of the leader of a parliamentary opposition party in Turkey challenges basic democratic principles and is part of a wider pattern of repression against government critics, Human Rights Watch said today.

The trial of Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is scheduled to begin in the Sincan prison campus courthouse in Ankara on December 7, 2017, 11 months after he was indicted. Demirtas has been in pretrial detention since November 2016. The HDP, known as a pro-Kurdish party, is the second-largest opposition party in the parliament.

"Holding the leader of a major opposition party in pretrial detention for over a year on flimsy charges is another example of the political abuse of the criminal justice system we are repeatedly seeing in Turkey," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Keeping Demirtas in jail for months on end not only denies his right to political association, participation, and freedom of expression, but it disenfranchises those who voted for him and his party."

The 500-page indictment against Demirtas accuses him of being a leading member of the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK/KCK), of spreading terrorist propaganda, and of praising crimes and criminals. It accuses him of inciting enmity among the population and inciting the population not to obey laws and to commit crimes, and of organizing, participating in, and provoking unauthorized demonstrations. The charges came eight months after a May 2016 decision to strip him and other members of parliament from his party of their immunity from prosecution. If convicted, he could face a 142-year prison sentence.

The evidence cited against Demirtas relies heavily on his speeches. In addition, many pages of transcripts of wiretapped calls and intercepted conversations are used as evidence to suggest Demirtas's association with a nongovernmental group in Diyarbakr, in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish region, called the Democratic Society Congress (DTK). The prosecutor alleges that the group is part of the PKK/KCK, though none of the information seems to point to anything approaching criminal activity.

The evidence also includes a public statement by the HDP on October 6, 2014, calling for protests against the Turkish government's approach to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) assault on the northern Syrian town of Kobane. The prosecutor describes this statement as incitement to armed insurrection, although the statement did not call for violent protest. The indictment lists in detail the consequences of these protests, which resulted in up to 50 fatalities in towns throughout the southeast and widespread destruction of property.

While the authorities have a duty to investigate the deaths and any criminal activities that occurred, there is no evidence that the violence was the result of the HDP call for protest or that the party could reasonably have been expected to foresee the violent events that would unfold.

Other HDP members of parliament face similar charges, and eight others are currently held in pretrial detention while the cases against them are heard. In March, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the crackdown on the HDP and a related local party, The report examined the criminal charges and dismissals affecting elected representatives and assessed the resulting rights violations.

"The evidence against Selahattin Demirtas consists largely of his political speeches and lacks any compelling evidence of criminal activity," Williamson said. "It's hard to conclude otherwise than that the case against him is the Turkish government's politically motivated attempt to undermine the parliamentary opposition."

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Libya: New Wave of Attacks Against Sufi Sites

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 7 December 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Libya: New Wave of Attacks Against Sufi Sites, 7 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2907e44.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.

On November 28, 2017, unidentified assailants set fire to Zawiyat Sheikha Radiya, a historic Sufi mosque in Tripoli, heavily damaging it. This attack follows the October 20 destruction of Sidi Abu Gharara, another historic Sufi mosque in Tripoli. Sufism is a form of mysticism that some Muslims follow. Some other Muslims condemn Sufism, and the veneration of the tombs of Sufi spiritual leaders as heterodox.

"Successive interim authorities since the 2011 uprising and across Libya have failed to protect Libya's Sufi religious sites from attacks and destruction by extremist militias," said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The unpunished attacks on Sufi mosques are endangering one of Libya's historic minority communities."

Since 2011, armed groups across Libya, motivated by religious ideology, have attacked and destroyed dozens of Sufi religious sites, including mosques, shrines, tombs, and libraries containing ancient scriptures. Armed groups have kidnapped and killed Sufi adherents, including sheikhs, with impunity. The November 28 attack came on the eve of the feast marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

The October attack on the Sufi mosque in al-Ghararat neighborhood took place during several days of clashes between the Special Deterrence Force (SDF), which is linked to the Interior Ministry for the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, and local armed groups that the SDF accused of drug-trafficking. A religious scholar with ties to the Sufi community in Tripoli said it was the SDF, which had gained control of the neighborhood, that intentionally damaged the 16th-century Sidi Abu Gharara Sufi mosque. On October 20, the SDF issued a statement denying responsibility and pledging to hold those responsible to account.

While the SDF has denied responsibility, neither of the two governments vying for legitimacy, territorial control, and international support, has condemned recent attacks against Sufi sites, nor moved resolutely to stop them. Previous interim authorities were equally dismissive of these attacks, and at the height of them in 2012 the interior minister at the time refused to intervene under the pretext of not wanting "to kill people over a grave."

In September, the family of Abdelmatloub al-Sarhani, a Sufi civil activist from Benghazi, said in a news interview that unidentified forces in eastern Libya had kidnapped al-Sarhani due to his religious beliefs. He remains missing. According to the news site Al Wasat, 21 followers of Sufism, including al-Sarhani, were kidnapped by unidentified forces in eastern Libya between August 1 and 27. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify the names or the number of those kidnapped.

The same Sufi-affiliated religious scholar, who met with Human Rights Watch in Tripoli on October 28, said attacks against Sufis and Sufi sites have become widespread, particularly since 2012, resulting in fear and intimidation among the Sufi community and leading some to leave Libya for fear of persecution.

The attacks on Sufi sites began in October 2011 with the destruction of the al-Masry shrine in Tripoli, and continued the next month with an attack on the Girgaresh cemetery in Tripoli, destroying tombstones, and damage to the Sidi Nasr shrine also in Tripoli.

In January 2012, an armed group damaged the Sidi Obeid cemetery and the tomb of Sidi Obeid, a figure revered by Sufis, both in Benghazi. In July 2012, assailants detonated an explosive device at the Sahaba Mosque in the eastern city of Derna, which resulted in damage to the mosque. On August 24, 2012, unidentified assailants attacked the Sidi Abdul-Salam al-Asmar al-Fituri mosque in Zliten, inflicting heavy damage and destroying 700-year-old texts. The shrine of Sidi Ahmed Zaroug in Misrata was also destroyed in August 2012.

On August 25, 2012, an armed group attacked the Sidi Sha'ab mosque in the center of Tripoli in the presence of law enforcement units from the now-dissolved Supreme Security Committee, which at the time reported to the Interior Ministry. Using bulldozers, the attackers destroyed parts of the mosque and some of the tombstones inside. On August 28, 2012, armed assailants used bulldozers to damage extensively the Uthman Basha mosque in Tripoli's old town. The attack destroyed 30 graves within the compound. The historic site, which serves as a school of religious learning, also includes a library that was looted and damaged.

As a result of armed conflicts in both eastern and western Libya, central authority collapsed, and three competing governments emerged, now reduced to two. These are the Interim Government based in the eastern city of al-Bayda, which is aligned with the Libyan National Army and supported by the House of Representatives, and the United Nations-backed, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Key institutions, most notably law enforcement and the judiciary, are dysfunctional in most parts of the country, and basic services have collapsed. Armed groups with a Salafist ideology have spread in Libya and are notably part of both forces in east and west.

Other religious monitories in Libya remain at risk from attacks.

In July 2017, the Supreme Fatwa Committee under the General Authority for Endowments and Islamic Affairs, the religious authority of the Interim Government, issued a religious edict or fatwa stating that 'Ibadis, a minority sect of Islam, were "a misguided and aberrant group. They are Kharijites with secret beliefs and infidels without dignity." Kharijites is used to describe Muslims who rebelled against the Caliphate in the early ages of Islam.

In February 2015, an armed group that pledged allegiance to the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), executed 21 people, most of them Egyptian Coptic Christians held captive by the group because of their religion.

The UN special mandate holders for freedom of religion, cultural rights and minority issues in 2012 condemned the destruction of Sufi religious and historic sites in Libya.

The director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, also voiced her deep concern in 2012 about attacks against places "of religious and cultural significance."

As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Libya is obligated to ensure the freedom of everyone, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to practice their religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, and teaching. Authorities are under a specific duty under this treaty to ensure that members of religious minorities can profess their religion in public in community with others. This means that all places of worship and religious importance should be protected when under threat.

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Yemen: Coalition Blockade Imperils Civilians

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 7 December 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Yemen: Coalition Blockade Imperils Civilians, 7 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2908584.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 Saudi-led coalition's broad restrictions on aid and essential goods to Yemen's civilian population are worsening the country's humanitarian catastrophe, Human Rights Watch said today. Unless the coalition immediately stops blocking aid and commercial goods from reaching civilians in Houthi-controlled territory, the United Nations Security Council should impose travel bans and asset freezes on senior coalition leaders, including the Saudi crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman.

The coalition has imposed a naval and air blockade on Yemen since the current conflict began in March 2015 that has severely restricted the flow of food, fuel, and medicine to civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law. The coalition closed all of Yemen's entry points in response to a missile strike on Saudi's Riyadh airport on November 4, 2017, by opposing Houthi-Saleh forces. While the coalition eased some restrictions in late November, it continues to prevent much aid and nearly all commercial imports from reaching Houthi-controlled ports, which has an unlawfully disproportionate impact on civilians' access to essential goods.

"The Saudi-led coalition's military strategy in Yemen has been increasingly built around preventing desperately needed aid and essential goods from reaching civilians, risking millions of lives," said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. "The Security Council should urgently sanction Saudi and other coalition leaders responsible for blocking food, fuel, and medicine, causing hunger, sickness, and death."

Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, depends heavily on imported food, medicine, and fuel for 80 to 90 percent of the population's needs. As of November, seven million people were dependent on food aid to survive, and nearly a million may have cholera. Diphtheria, a disease that should be preventable, was spreading, and had already killed more than 20 people and infected nearly 200. An estimated 2 million children are acutely malnourished. Half the country's hospitals have been closed and nearly 16 million people lack access to clean water.

Reopening all of Yemen's land, air, and sea ports to commercial shipments, which before November made up 80 percent of all imports, is crucial to any effort to address what the UN has described as the world's "worst humanitarian crisis," Human Rights Watch said.

Claiming a need to strengthen vetting procedures, the coalition halted all humanitarian flights and shipments to Yemen for several days following the November 4 attack and halted all humanitarian flights and shipments to ports in Houthi controlled territory for about three weeks. On November 22, the coalition announced that it would allow humanitarian flights to resume to the capital, Sanaa, and "urgent humanitarian and relief materials" to begin moving to the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida.

Major restrictions on the delivery of essential goods to the civilian population remain, Human Rights Watch said. While a limited number of food shipments have reached Houthi-Saleh ports on an ad hoc basis since November 22, the coalition has not indicated whether it will allow seaports under Houthi-Saleh control to reopen to commercial shipments, including fuel and medicine. The World Food Programme estimated that even with a partial lifting of the blockade, an additional 3.2 million people would be pushed into hunger and 150,000 malnourished children could die in the coming months.

On December 2, the heads of seven humanitarian agencies issued a joint statement calling on the coalition to lift restrictions: "Without the urgent resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines, millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death," they said.

Fighting broke out in Sanaa on December 1 between the Houthis and formerly allied forces loyal to former longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Dozens of people, including civilians, were killed and wounded in the fighting. On December 4, Houthi forces killed Saleh under circumstances that remain unclear. During the fighting, civilians already facing shortages of essential goods were reportedly rapidly running out of food, fuel, and medicine. Humanitarian organizations were unable to reach their warehouses to deliver aid to those in need.

Coalition military actions have violated laws-of-war prohibitions on restricting humanitarian assistance and on destroying objects essential to the survival of the civilian population. These violations, as well as the coalition's disregard for the reported suffering of the civilian population, suggest that the coalition may also be violating the prohibition against using starvation as a method of warfare, which is a war crime.

The UN Security Council should impose a travel ban and asset freeze on senior leaders of the coalition, including Mohamed bin Salman, for their role in violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen, Human Rights Watch said. Under Security Council Resolution 2216, the Yemen Sanctions Committee can designate "individuals or entities" for targeted sanctions if they are "engaging in or providing support for" acts that "[obstruct] the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Yemen or access to, or distribution of, humanitarian assistance in Yemen."

The Sanctions Committee has already imposed sanctions - including asset freezes and travel bans - on five leaders of formerly allied Houthi-Saleh forces, including Saleh. No one from the coalition has been designated for sanctions, despite information on repeated coalition violations, including the obstruction of aid, gathered by the UN Panel of Experts, which provides information on implementing the resolution.

"UN Security Council members, particularly the United States, United Kingdom, France, and other coalition allies, have shielded Saudi Arabia from serious international scrutiny even though the Saudi-led coalition has committed numerous atrocities in Yemen," Ross said. "The Security Council urgently needs to act against coalition leaders who have added to Yemen's humanitarian catastrophe or share in the blame."

Yemen's Deepening Humanitarian Crisis

Since March 2015, Human Rights Watch has conducted dozens of interviews with health professionals and humanitarian workers in Yemen regarding restrictions on access to aid and essential goods and their impact on the civilian population. Human Rights Watch also has reviewed coalition statements and UN and humanitarian community assessments on Yemen. Human Rights Watch previously documented actions by both the Saudi-led coalition and formerly allied Houthi-Saleh forces that impeded aid delivery to civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law.

Impact of Fuel Shortages

On November 6, the Saudi-led coalition imposed a full blockade on Yemen, which was partially lifted over the ensuing days and weeks. A humanitarian agency official said the "most immediate impact" of the November blockade was on fuel supply. Fuel was already often not available throughout Yemen - including in areas under Yemeni government control, such as Aden, which has repeatedly experienced fuel shortages. On November 23, the World Food Programme estimated that supplies of fuel and diesel in the country could run out in the coming weeks. The lack of fuel also makes it more difficult to pump clean water, run hospital equipment, and safely store vaccines.

Houthi and Saleh forces also contributed to the fuel shortages. The UN Panel of Experts reported in June that Houthi-Saleh forces had earned up to US$1.14 billion from fuel and oil distribution on the black market. They also use imported fuel for military purposes.

Officials at five hospitals in the Yemeni governorates of Hodeida, Taizz, and Sanaa told Human Rights Watch that after November 6 the lack of fuel was having a "catastrophic" impact on their operations. Four of the five hospitals - including the two largest in Yemen - were entirely dependent on generators, powered by fuel, to operate. The hospitals serve thousands of people.

Dr. Nasr al-Qadsi, the general director of Yemen's second-largest hospital, in Sanaa, said the hospital needed 60,000 liters of fuel a month to power its generators, generate oxygen, and run its ambulances and buses for staff. After November 6, the hospital's water supplier stopped providing water, telling the hospital it would have to supply the fuel to get more water. "Water and electricity and oxygen are very essential," al-Qadsi said. "And we have problems getting all of them."

Dr. Abdul Latif Abu Taleb, the head of Yemen's largest hospital, which serves 800 to 1,000 patients in Sanaa, said that the November 6 decision "caused us great panic direct[ing] all our concerns to the pursuit of the necessary diesel material to keep the hospital working." He added: "I have 105 patients in the intensive care unit on monitors and respirator devices. If the hospital power supply stopped, a disaster will happen."

Fuel is also crucial to provide access to clean water in the country. Less than a week after the November blockade was put in place, the UN reported fuel prices had increased by 60 percent in Sanaa and trucked-water by 133 percent. Three weeks after the blockade began, hospital officials in two governorates reported huge price increases - up to 300 percent - if fuel was available at all. "The prices jumped to the sky, so we couldn't afford buying it," one doctor said. Other doctors said they had diverted all hospital revenue, much of which they would normally have spent on medicine and medical supplies, to buy diesel.

Rising fuel prices, according to the UN, have caused trucked water prices to spike - up to 600 percent in some places. Nearly 17 million people in Yemen depend on public water networks - some of which are shutting down due to a lack of fuel - or commercial water. In late November, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that nine cities lacked the fuel needed to run water treatment plants. Clean water is needed to avoid water-borne diseases, like cholera.

The lack of fuel also increases food scarcity. Civilians have had to spend their limited money on water, giving them less income to purchase food and "further increasing the risk of widespread food insecurity and ultimately famine," according to the UN. Fuel is needed to transport "what little food remains in Yemen, or food will be stuck in warehouses while innocent people starve nearby," said Oxfam.

Closing Sea Ports in Houthi-Controlled Territory

Between November 6 and November 26, the Saudi-led coalition refused to allow any ships to travel to Houthi-controlled ports. On November 6, the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM) sent an email, viewed by Human Rights Watch, to vessels asking them to immediately leave the Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Saleef. Hodeida is a key port that receives food, fuel, and other goods, while Saleef is primarily for food imports. Documents shared by port officials said that vessels forced to leave were carrying wheat, fuel, and other cargo. The email said UNVIM was suspending clearance operations "until further notice."

A few days after the complete blockade was announced, the coalition allowed vessels to travel to ports under Yemeni government control, including Aden and Mukalla. On November 26, the coalition allowed a ship carrying food to sail to Houthi-Saleh-controlled ports for the first time in three weeks. During the following week, the coalition allowed several more ships carrying food to enter Hodeida and Saleef. However, four aid officials said in early December that the coalition was still severely restricting the flow of essential goods into both ports, including food, fuel, and medicine.

Since November, the coalition has refused to allow nearly all commercial ships to travel to ports under Houthi control. In June, the coalition shut down the fuel port of Ras Isa, significantly curtailing fuel deliveries to the country. UNVIM has not cleared a vessel to enter Ras Isa since May. Deliveries were diverted to Hodeida until November. Ras Isa was designed for diesel imports and has a greater capacity than Hodeida, which was incapable of making up the lost capacity even before being closed to imports in November.

Closing all three ports to all shipments for three weeks and continuing to severely curtail the shipment of commercial goods to the ports deprives the civilian population of essential goods. Yemen's population depends on commercial imports of food, fuel, and medicine for survival.

Before November 6, about 75,000 metric tons of the 350,000 metric tons of food imports Yemen requires - or about 20 percent - were humanitarian supplies, leaving 80 percent to come through commercial imports, according to the UN. The UN estimates Yemen's fuel needs at 544,000 metric tons per month - almost all commercial imports that reached Yemen via one of its six ports, making the fuel supply particularly vulnerable to naval or commercial disruptions.

The coalition has repeatedly contended that ships can be diverted to ports under the control of the Yemeni government, which it backs, but these two ports are not sufficient to meet the civilian population's needs.

Aden port, the most used after Hodeida and Saleef, does not have the capacity to receive the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of food, fuel, medicine, and other imported goods Yemen depends on for survival. Aden currently has the capacity to take in about 50,000 metric tons of fuel and 80,000 metric tons of food a month, according to the UN - well under the country's needs.

Allowing ports in Houthi-controlled territory to continue functioning is crucial to addressing the humanitarian crisis, Human Rights Watch said. Eighty percent of all imports - humanitarian and commercial - came through Hodeida and Saleef ports before November 6. Combined, the two ports had the capacity to take in about 150,000 metric tons of fuel, 295,000 metric tons of food, and 90,000 metric tons of non-food items each month.

When asked in early 2017 why the coalition had refused to allow imports of materials to repair or replace damaged infrastructure at Hodeida, including four US-donated cranes, then-spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asseri said the coalition "sent back those cranes because we don't want to continue to enhance the capabilities of the Houthis to generate money and to smuggle weapons."

The UN has concluded: "Even at reduced capacity there is no viable substitute for [Hodeida] port." If commercial traffic continues to be blocked, "there continues to be a grave risk of further death, disease and starvation."

Coalition Restrictions on Essential Goods to Houthi Ports

The November restrictions are only the latest move by the coalition to unlawfully impede access for goods essential to the civilian population's survival to reach Houthi-controlled territory, Human Rights Watch said.

In 2015, Human Rights Watch documented that the coalition had withheld permission to fuel tankers to travel to Yemen. In 2016, in recognition of the need to ensure that commercial imports could enter Yemen, the UN established the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism to inspect and issue clearances for all commercial shipping vessels traveling to ports under Houthi control.

The coalition has repeatedly undermined the work of UNVIM. Since 2016, after ships were cleared by UNVIM, they would proceed to a demarcated "coalition holding area" in the Red Sea and wait for the coalition to inspect or give them permission to go to port. Over a four-month period in 2017, Human Rights Watch documented seven cases in which the coalition arbitrarily diverted or delayed fuel tankers headed for ports under Houthi control after the UN cleared and granted permission to each ship to proceed. The coalition has also repeatedly diverted and delayed commercial ships carrying humanitarian cargo.

A doctor in Hodeida told Human Rights Watch the hospital had been given expired or near-expired medication: "When we started to ask why, we've been told that the goods are taking too long at sea for inspection and the procedures for permission." He said some medicines had "vanished from the market." While a few goods came up from Aden, it was with extreme difficulty, in very small amounts and with increased prices, in a situation where we "don't have the ability to buy even at regular prices."

A Sanaa-based businessman said that friends could not obtain medicine for chronic illnesses, including kidney failure:

Medicine is a disaster, people are dying left and right. You'll find medicine, but most of it is smuggled. Medicines need storage specifications. When these guys try and smuggle it through land, use bad warehousing, the medicine is either useless or it kills you.

Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly raised concerns about the coalition diverting all imports through government-controlled Aden. Transporting goods north from Aden requires crossing front lines and increases the risk of diversion and travel time by up to three weeks while raising costs by up to US$30 to US$70 per ton, making goods much more expensive for average Yemenis, according to the UN. In addition, armed forces affiliated with the Yemeni government and the United Arab Emirates, a coalition member, compete for control of the city, including its seaport and airport.

A source in Sanaa collected food prices from a grocery store in the city considered to have relatively low prices before the November 6 announcement and about two weeks after the full blockade was imposed. Most staple food prices - including cooking oil, flour, and rice - spiked by about 25 percent. A can of beans nearly doubled in price. A businessman in Sanaa said that his family has seen food brands disappear over past months. UN documents tracking prices, which Human Rights Watch examined, also noted severe price hikes across goods and governorates after the coalition's November closures.

Even before the conflict, nearly 40 percent of Yemen's population lived on less than US$2 a day. The collapse of the Yemeni riyal and the failure to pay civil servants' salaries, including in some governorates under government control, exacerbates the impact of any price increase on average Yemenis' ability to purchase food, fuel, and medicine.

Coalition Restrictions on Humanitarian Access

The Saudi-led coalition has increasingly restricted humanitarian access to Sanaa, Yemen's largest city, which is under Houthi control.

The coalition suspended all commercial flights to Sanaa in August 2016. Twelve aid agencies called on the coalition to reopen the country's main airport, noting that commercial flights "often bring in vital supplies and allow the free movement of civilians." Mwatana, a leading Yemeni human rights organization, documented cases of people with chronic illnesses unable to travel abroad for treatment, including one woman needing heart surgery who died.

In May, the coalition tried to restrict passage on UN flights to Sanaa to UN passport holders. But non-UN passport holders include crucial staff of aid organizations, human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, and journalists. The UN was able to negotiate for staff of humanitarian organizations to continue taking the flights, but not others.

The coalition has frequently interfered with aid groups' ability to work in Houthi-controlled territory. In August, the coalition informed the UN that international staff needed two visas - one from the Houthis and one from the Yemeni government - to travel on UN flights. The coalition had previously imposed a similar requirement on journalists, before blocking them from the flights. The Yemeni government then required all humanitarian organizations to conclude new agreements with ministries in Aden, even if they had an existing agreement with the Yemeni government. In October, the coalition again informed the UN that only UN passport holders could take UN flights. When the UN refused to ask aid groups to cease using the flights, the coalition responded by grounding flights for two days, humanitarian workers in Sanaa told Human Rights Watch.

As part of the November 6 closures, the coalition refused to allow humanitarian flights - carrying personnel or cargo - to land in Sanaa. On November 22, after eight days of negotiation, one flight was permitted to carry out a lifesaving medical evacuation of a critically ill foreign aid worker. Humanitarian flights to Sanaa resumed on November 25.

The coalition has repeatedly called for humanitarian agencies to move their operations to government-controlled Aden. In its November 6 announcement, the coalition called upon "civilian and humanitarian crews" to avoid "areas and ports exploited by [the Houthis] to smuggle weapons." The announcement also said that humanitarian workers should avoid "areas populated by" the Houthis.

The Coalition Blockade and International Humanitarian Law

International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, prohibits deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and attacks that cause disproportionate harm to civilians compared to the expected military benefit. Blockades are permitted during armed conflict that do not cause disproportionate civilian harm. However, parties to the conflict must allow and facilitate the rapid passage of humanitarian aid for civilians in need and not arbitrarily interfere with it. Parties must also ensure the freedom of movement of humanitarian workers, which can only be restricted temporarily for reasons of imperative military necessity.

Warring parties are also prohibited from carrying out attacks on objects that are indispensable to the civilian population. These can include food stores, drinking water installations, and port facilities.

The laws of war prohibit using starvation as a method of warfare, and require parties to a conflict not to "provoke [starvation] deliberately" or deliberately cause "the population to suffer hunger, particularly by depriving it of its sources of food or of supplies."

Since the start of the conflict, the Saudi-led coalition has unnecessarily hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid and the free movement of aid workers. Opposing Houthi and Saleh forces were also responsible for blocking and confiscating aid, denying access to populations in need, and restricting the movement of ill civilians and aid workers, with an acute impact on Yemen's third largest city, Taizz.

During the three weeks in November that humanitarian flights to Sanaa were refused, the UN was forced to cancel more than 30 flights, stranding 220 humanitarian staff from nearly 50 agencies outside Yemen and 310 in Yemen. One humanitarian official said that 80 percent of their operations were in areas affected by the Sanaa airport closure. Another said their organization had used the airport to import vaccines and other essential medical items that require cold chain storage.

The coalition has damaged or destroyed objects that were indispensable to the survival of the civilian population in Houthi-controlled areas. In August 2015, coalition airstrikes struck Hodeida port, damaging essential port infrastructure. The coalition has refused to allow the port to replace destroyed infrastructure or import spare parts for repairs, a port official said. In January 2016, coalition airstrikes damaged Ras Isa port's Floating Storage and Offloading terminal, closing part of the facility, Reuters reported.

The full blockade announced on November 6 immediately and predictably exacerbated existing food shortages in Yemen. For instance, a doctor in Hodeida said that prices of fuel, food, and medicine went up "wildly." His hospital saw more severe acute malnutrition cases than moderate acute malnutrition cases, which is "not a good indication." "It means people reach a critical condition very quickly," the doctor said. "Most people do not have food, not even water Hospitals are about to close. Why all this, why? People were already at the bottom, and this last decision has ended everyone."

The coalition sought to justify the full blockade on grounds that it needed to tighten access to prevent foreign-made arms, particularly from Iran, from reaching Houthi forces. Security Council Resolution 2216 permits the coalition to inspect cargo bound for Yemen if there are "reasonable grounds" to suspect that the cargo contains weapons and other prohibited items - but not to block all cargo.

The November blockade was unlawfully disproportionate in that the expected harm to the civilian population exceeded any apparent military benefit. Taken together with the limits on humanitarian aid and the destruction of objects indispensable to the civilian population, the action suggests the coalition may have used starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. The partial lifting of the blockade could have lessened but has not ended the risk of widespread starvation and other civilian harm.

Individuals who willfully commit serious violations of international humanitarian law may be prosecuted for war crimes. This would include deliberately using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival and by impeding humanitarian aid. Military commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about the commission of such crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.

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EU Making Aid Efforts More Inclusive

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 7 December 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, EU Making Aid Efforts More Inclusive, 7 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2909f44.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 European Union is taking important steps to ensure that EU-funded humanitarian assistance reaches people with disabilities, the European Disability Forum, Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Refugee Council said today. People with disabilities in humanitarian crises face massive problems in getting even basic services such as food, water, sanitation, shelter, education, and safety protection.

At the 4th European Parliament of Persons with Disabilities on December 6, 2017, Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management, announced a number of measures that would considerably improve access to humanitarian aid worldwide for people with disabilities.

People with disabilities are among the most at-risk groups in humanitarian situations. Yet, they are also among the most overlooked, in part due to insufficient knowledge about including people with disabilities and a lack of clear standards on how to carry out inclusive humanitarian action.

"Aid actors sometimes consult organizations of persons with disabilities, but may not consider that we can also help directly in humanitarian operations," said Yannis Vardakastanis, president of the European Disability Forum. "After all, we know what it means to live with a disability and what we need. This must change. Nothing about us without us."

Fifteen percent of the world's population - or one in seven people - has a disability. This figure is likely to be even higher in emergency situations because of conflict or disaster-related injuries and lack of health care and other services.

In South Sudan, Greece, and the Central African Republic, Human Rights Watch has documented that people with disabilities face neglect, abandonment, and barriers to basic services in refugee and displacement camps. One man with a physical disability in a camp for internally displaced persons in Central African Republic said he needed to crawl into the latrines: "I have to walk with my hands and I don't have gloves. I must wrap my hands in tissue if I can find it. Most of the time I can't find it. Honestly it makes me pity myself."

Research conducted by the European Disability Forum among refugees in Greece also found a lack of access to services, including medical care, and insufficient access to assistive technology. EDF's national member, the National Council of Persons with Disabilities, is now directly involved in providing support to refugees with disabilities and their families, in cooperation with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Commissioner Stylianides announced that starting in 2018, requests for proposals from the European Commission's humanitarian agency (ECHO), which funds the operations of humanitarian organizations on the ground, will highlight that applicants must include people with disabilities in their actions. In addition, ECHO will develop standards for addressing the needs of people with disabilities in all EU-funded projects.

Commissioner Stylianides also promised to consult people with disabilities and their representative organizations in designing and carrying out these initiatives, in line with the principle of "Nothing about us without us."

"This is a real turning point in global efforts to 'leave no one behind,'" said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. "If the EU makes these changes, it could improve the lives of millions of people with disabilities who need aid in emergency situations around the world."

The EU has a clear responsibility to include people with disabilities in the humanitarian operations it funds, the groups said. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by the European Union, requires the EU to ensure the protection and safety of people with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies without discrimination. In addition, the EU has endorsed the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, making a commitment to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities in aid programming and policy, and to ensure that people with disabilities have access to aid and services.

To bring the voices of refugees with disabilities to policymakers in the EU, the European Disability Forum, Human Rights Watch, and the Disability Intergroup of the European Parliament organized a roundtable panel in the European Parliament in March. At the event, Nujeen Mustafa, a young refugee with a disability from Syria, addressed Commissioner Stylianides: "It's kind of a sad fact that in the 21st century, toilets and basic services are considered a luxury for some people. All of us, and especially people with disabilities, deserve much better."

While governments, donors, and aid agencies are overwhelmed with many competing priorities during emergencies, the needs and concerns of people with disabilities can and should be addressed right from the planning stage, the European Disability Forum, Human Rights Watch, and the Norwegian Refugee Council said. This should include making sure that aid workers, peacekeepers, and local and national authorities are sensitive to the rights and needs for protection of people with disabilities and strengthening the workers' capacity and skills to identify and include people with disabilities in systems both for preparedness and response to emergency situations.

"As one of the world's largest humanitarian donors, the European Union has tremendous potential to press its implementing partners to include people with disabilities in their activities and become a leader on the inclusion of people with disabilities in the humanitarian space," said Edouard Rodier, Europe director of the Norwegian Refugee Council. "We call on all donor agencies to follow ECHO's example and make sure that the needs of people with disabilities in crisis situations are no longer overlooked."

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Russian Military Mass Mobilization: Fact or Bluff?

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Aleksandr Golts Publication Date 6 December 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russian Military Mass Mobilization: Fact or Bluff?, 6 December 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a290bf44.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.

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Based on the words of the Russian leadership and the actions of local officials, the country has entered a new stage of confrontation with the West and now has to prepare for looming war. Speaking, on November 22, at a meeting of defense ministry leaders and the heads of defense-sector firms, President Vladimir Putin focused on the theme of "mobilization preparations." Notably, he declared that one of the main goals of the Zapad 2017 military exercises (September 14-20), which provoked a sharp negative reaction from member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was to check "our mobilization readiness and ability to use local resources to meet troop requirements. Reservists were called up for this exercise, and we also tested the ability of civilian companies to transfer their vehicles and equipment to the armed forces and provide technical protection to transport communications" (Kremlin.ru, November 22).

Until recently, Moscow repeatedly argued that the scale of Zapad 2017 was restricted to participation of only 12,700 Russian troops. Nothing was ever officially mentioned about practicing mass mobilization of reservists; this aspect only featured occasionally, in fragmentary reports. Local press reported, in particular, about mobilization being done in complete secrecy in the Kaliningrad region-reservists had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (Novyi Kaliningrad, August 30; see EDM, September 18). Some hazy reporting on "mobilization actions" in Kursk region also appeared (Seim, August 18). The call-up of reservists was supposed to replace the need for transferring troops from elsewhere in the country. However, while addressing the defense ministry, Putin noted that these mobilization activities during the Zapad exercise were unsuccessful and will need to be corrected (Kremlin.ru, November 22).

A bit later in his speech, Putin made a second notable announcement: "I want to say that the economic ability to increase the production of defense products and services quickly is a vital element of military security. All strategic and simply large companies, regardless of the type of ownership, must be able to do this" (Kremlin.ru, November 22). Such a policy would imply the government intends to return to the Stalinist-era model of a mobilization economy. In accordance with Joseph Stalin's industrialization plans, every enterprise producing civilian goods-even pasta or baby toys-had to switch to military production quickly during a prewar period.

That mobilization concept allowed the Soviet Union to dramatically raise military production during World War II. But the same concept ultimately played a crucial role in the collapse of the Soviet economy in the 1980s. "Civil" enterprises were forced to create and maintain parallel redundant production lines and hire excessive workforces. Moreover, industry had to unify all main components to suit both military and civilian production. Huge reserves of strategic materials had to be kept stockpiled for industry during wartime. All this created massive imbalances in the economy, and the cost of military production was included in the price of already-produced civilian goods. One of the most important functions of the Gosplan (the Soviet state planning commission) was to artificially balance prices to achieve some semblance of profitability, burdened by the "mobilization task." As a result, in the period before the collapse of the Soviet Union, industry regularly produced thousands of tanks, aircraft and missiles, but the government could no longer pay for these weapons (see EDM, September 29, 2016).

This system was doomed to collapse with the introduction of a market economy. Private owners could not pay for the maintenance of mobilization capacities. A complex chain of sub-contractors also collapsed. Since military production was unprofitable, many defense contractors created specialized enterprises. Consequently, 5-7 years ago, the government planned to abandon the old mobilization plans. In 2012, the federal tax service estimated that annually Russia lost several hundred billion rubles due financial machinations connected to mandated mobilization preparation (Izvestia, July 30, 2012). The country was to move to more sober and modern standards, reducing the burden on private enterprises. But today, the rhetoric has turned 180 degrees, argued the head of the Gaidar Institute's military economy laboratory, Vasily Zatsepin (Novaya Gazeta, November 29. Another well-known economist, Vladislav Inozemtsev, asserts, in a piece for RBC, that the Kremlin is preoccupied with propaganda goals and not with real intentions to put all Russian industry on military alert (RBC, November 28).

Nonetheless, there is every reason to believe that the Kremlin is seriously prepared to place the country on a war footing. Since everything related to mobilization programs is secret, the public receives only fragmentary information-such as the leaked letter from the Krasnoyarsk region Ministry of Education, outlining educational instruction priorities during wartime (Newsru.com, November 27). Moreover, turning the country into a besieged fortress will create the necessary background for the re-election of President Putin. It is also clear that convincing everyone Russia is preparing for war is seen as an important element of military deterrence against the United States.

At the same time, the domestic defense industry arguably cannot cope with the tasks set by the Kremlin. The defense industry is evidently experiencing difficulties with the mass production of weapons (Jamestown.org, June 27, 2016). In attempting to realize these tasks, the authorities risk further damaging the Russian economy. To achieve its goals, in the first phase, the government will likely resort to "administrative" methods: using threats of criminal punishment to try to force businesses to produce military products. But participation in military production does not bring profits. And because of US sanctions, the participation in military production could destroy the civilian part of the business. Thus, if threats fail to increase military production, the Russian government might try to nationalize the industry-which could easily spiral into general autarky and systemic shortages, including of food.

The idea of mobilizing industry contradicts Putin's remarks a month ago, when he declared that the government would be moving away from a conscript army. After all, if the number of reservists is to be significantly reduced, such large-scale serial production of military equipment makes little sense. The most likely conclusion from these contradictory statements is that there is a fierce, behind-the-scenes struggle within the Russian government over whether or not to adopt all key aspects of the mass-mobilization model of defense. Today, it is still unclear which side will win.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Belarus in a Love Triangle With Russia and the West?

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Grigory Ioffe Publication Date 6 December 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Belarus in a Love Triangle With Russia and the West?, 6 December 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2913034.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.

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Belarus openly admits to pursuing a multi-directional foreign policy. And Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei has made multiple statements about the difficulties of balancing between East and West under growing tensions and belligerent rhetoric from both sides (see, for example, Belta, June 2). But if Belarus's foreign minister is willing to admit to such "balancing" behavior on the part of Minsk, then what is a fitting metaphor for the major external actors' relationships with that country?

The November 28 episode of "Mesto Vstrechia" ("Meeting Place"), a popular political talk show on the Russian TV channel NTV, which broadcasts into Belarus, put forward some suggestions. Specifically, Belarus was referred to on the show as a "cheating wife" and a "prostitute," and its president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, was accused of blackmail. Representing Belarus, Andrei Dmitriev, a co-chairman of the Speak the Truth civic campaign, tried his best to explain to the audience that Belarus's relations with the West are not being pursued at the expense of its relations with Russia; but he was booed. The NTV channel is owned by Russian Gazprom, largely a state-run corporation; and in Russia, TV talk shows are major conduits of official propaganda. No wonder then that the main Belarusian daily, Belarus Segodnya, responded angrily, accusing unnamed "puppet masters" of bad taste. It also did not escape the attention of the critics that whereas previously Russia regularly portrayed itself as Belarus's older brother, today it calls itself the husband (Belarus Segodnya, December 1).

This humiliation of an ally was exacerbated by news pertaining to a bilateral agreement on the joint reinforcement of a regional grouping of troops to be deployed in Belarus in case of military threat (Pravo.by, December 1). According to this agreement, signed one year ago but enacted on November 14, Russia obtains the right to relocate its weaponry and troops to Belarus. This deployment is contingent on a "mounting military threat," whose very definition in the age of "hybrid" wars has become less straightforward than ever before. That is why the Belarusian military observer Alexander Alesin claims the agreement is a step back in Belarus's quest for true independence (Tut.by, December 1).

If Belarus is a disloyal wife cheating on Russia with the West, then the latter is an uncommitted lover at best. In the 21-page declaration of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit (held in Brussels on November 27), Belarus is mentioned three times and Russia not at all. This appeared to be a clear concession to Belarus's demand, indirectly acknowledged by Makei (following his meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov), and a setback for Ukraine. The declaration confirms progress in Belarusian-European Union relations and in negotiations on transit (Tut.by, November 24). At the same time, the EU again conditioned the beginning of cooperation talks with Minsk on political reforms in Belarus. In the opinion of Denis Melyantsov, expressed on behalf of the Minsk Dialogue initiative, this approach is yet another relapse of double standard, as no such concessions were demanded from Azerbaijan. And it further undercuts Minsk's interest in the EaP, he continues. At the same time, positive outcomes include a commitment to implement Minsk's idea to harmonize digital markets and to expand the Trans-European transportation network, which promises some investment on infrastructure projects. The EaP initiative continues to lose its political ambition, Melyantsov asserts. For practical purposes, the agenda of bilateral, Belarus-Europe, contacts is now more forthcoming than that of the EaP as a whole, he claims (Minskdialogue.by, November 30).

That subversive designs are no longer expected from European partners has become evident from the closure of the so-called White Legion case (see EDM, March 27). It was launched following Lukashenka's March 21 statement that armed insurgents allegedly trained by Western advisors had been apprehended. Thirty-five Belarusians were, indeed, arrested and Belarusian TV, together with the main government daily, conducted a campaign against the purported nationalist underground. However, in June, the KGB terminated its investigation and began to release those arrested. In late November, the Investigative Committee, a joint unit of pre-trial probing, subordinated to the president of Belarus, ruled that although "the acts of the defendants formally contain signs of creating an illegal armed formation," they "do not pose a public danger [] because they did not cause significant harm" and "were not aimed at [bringing about a] forcible change of the constitutional order" (Sk.gov.by, November 11). Considering the low frequency of acquittals in the Belarusian judicial system, such a decision was prone to generate multiple political interpretations (see, for example, Svaboda.org, November 30). Be that as it may, a widely publicized suspicion of nationalist disorder instigated with the help of the West was put to rest, if only for the time being.

This outcome stands in contrast to current tensions between Belarus and Ukraine (see EDM, November 28). On November 20, the authorities announced the arrest of Pavel Sharoiko, a Ukrainian radio correspondent. Sharoiko turned out to be a Ukrainian intelligence colonel, who allegedly gathered information about government institutions and Russian military objects in Belarus and acted under the supervision of Igor Skvortsov, an advisor of the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk. Skvortsov was declared persona non grata, and Ukraine expelled a Belarusian diplomat in return (News21.by, November 27). All of this might be downplayed as a nuisance be it not for a public statement made by Lukashenka. During his visit to the Gomel region, he declared that both Sharoiko's arrest and the expulsion of a Ukrainian diplomat took place more than a month ago (YouTube, November 25). During Lukashenka's November 2 meeting with Petro Poroshenko in the United Arab Emirates, the two leaders had agreed to keep mum about those events. According to Lukashenka, however, the Ukrainian side violated this agreement and leaked the information to the press. The coincidence between this leak and the run-up to the EaP meeting in Brussels looks troubling, particularly if one takes into account some of Ukraine's own tensions with the EU. In any case, it is in response to this breach of agreement that the Belarusian side decided to publicize its own view of the situation, according to the president of Belarus. With this in mind, Sharoiko's confession and his apology were broadcast on Belarusian TV.

In summary, if courting Belarus is what some influential external centers of power do, the advantage of the East is still largely unchallenged. The other side may need to become more creative.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Will Khartoum's Appeal to Putin for Arms and Protection Bring Russian Naval Bases to the Red Sea?

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Andrew McGregor Publication Date 6 December 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Will Khartoum's Appeal to Putin for Arms and Protection Bring Russian Naval Bases to the Red Sea?, 6 December 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2913674.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.

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Though Sudan's national economy is near collapse, the November 23 visit of Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir to Russia's top leadership in Sochi was dominated by expensive arms purchases and Sudan's appeal to Russia for "protection from aggressive actions by the United States" (TASS, November 23; see EDM, November 29). A suggestion that Khartoum was ready to host Russian military bases took most Sudanese by surprise, given that Washington lifted 20-year-old economic sanctions against Sudan in October and relations with the US finally seemed to be improving.

Al-Bashir expressed Sudan's interest in purchasing the highly maneuverable Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 and Su-35 fighter jets during the Sochi visit. And in fact, an unknown number of Su-35s were reportedly delivered days ahead of al-Bashir's visit, making Sudan the first Arab country to have the aircraft (RIA Novosti, November 25; al-Arabiya, November 20).

Khartoum announced its intention to replace its Chinese and Soviet-era aircraft in March, when Air Force chief Salahuddin Abd al-Khaliq Said declared Sudan would henceforth be "fully dependent on Russia for its air armament" (Defenceweb, November 29).

The Su-35, deployed in Syria by the Russian Air Force, is one of the best non-stealth fighters and missile-delivery platforms available, but at an export price of as much as $80 million each, cash-strapped Khartoum may have to provide other forms of compensation. It may have been no surprise then that Sudan's delegation in Sochi expressed willingness to host Russian naval bases along its 420-mile Red Sea coastline (Sputnik News, November 28). However, there are few suitable places for such bases on the coast, where transportation infrastructure is poor.

Suakin, the coast's historic port, was replaced in 1909 by the newly built Port Sudan, able to accommodate the large steamers Suakin could not. Otherwise the coastline has only a handful of small harbors (sharm-s) suitable only for dhows and fishing boats. Sailors must cope with coral reefs, shoals and numerous islets. Gaps in the large reef that runs parallel to the coast determined the location of both Suakin and Port Sudan. The entire coast is notoriously short of fresh water, a problem that must be accounted for before the construction of any large facilities. Though Egypt's own military ties with Russia are growing, Cairo is unlikely to welcome a Russian naval base on the Red Sea coast, where Egypt currently contests possession of the Halaib Triangle with Sudan.

Djibouti, with its vast harbor and strategic location on the Bab al-Mandab strait would make a far better base for Russian naval operations in the Red Sea. Russian Cossacks first tried to seize the region in 1889, but now existing US, French and Chinese military bases there (along with an incoming Saudi base) make such a proposition unlikely. Russian naval ships on anti-piracy operations in the Red Sea have used Djibouti for resupply and maintenance.

Moscow is also providing Khartoum with 170 T-72 main battle tanks under a 2016 deal; and the latter has expressed interest in buying the Russian S-300 air-defense system as well as minesweepers and missile boats (Xinhua, November 25). Though Sudan still uses a great deal of military equipment of Chinese and Iranian origin, al-Bashir opened the possibility of hosting Russian military personnel when he claimed, "All of our equipment is Russian, so we need advisors in this area" (RIA Novosti, November 25). The BBC's Russian service has reported unconfirmed rumors of Russian mercenaries operating in Sudan or South Sudan (BBC News-Russian service, December 4).

Two other factors weigh in on Khartoum's improving relations with Russia:

Gold: President Putin was reported to have confirmed Russia's continuing support in preventing US- and British-backed United Nations Security Council sanctions on exports of Sudanese gold due to irregularities in Sudan's mostly artisanal gold industry in Darfur (SUNA, November 23). Since Sudan's loss of oil revenues with the 2011 separation of South Sudan, gold has become Sudan's largest source of hard currency, but Khartoum's inability to control extraction has led to huge losses in tax revenues and has helped fund regime opponents in Darfur (Aberfoylesecurity.com, October 15). Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour explained that it was in this context that al-Bashir's remarks regarding "Russian protection" were made (Sudan Tribune, November 25).

War Crimes: Al-Bashir recently learned that Washington does not want to see him seek another term as president in the 2020 elections (Sudan Tribune, November 27). The 73-year-old has ruled Sudan since 1989, but retirement seems elusive-al-Bashir's best defense against being tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Darfur is to remain president. Russia withdrew from the ICC in November 2016, calling it "one-sided and inefficient" (BBC News, November 16, 2016).

Khartoum's request for Russian "protection" was best explained by Sudanese Deputy Prime Minister Mubarak Fadl al-Mahdi, who said the outreach to Moscow was intended to create a new balance: "We can at least limit American pressure, which cannot be confronted without international support But with Russia's support at international forums and the Security Council, American demands will be reasonable and help in accelerating normalization of ties" (Asharq al-Awsat, December 3).

However, the Sudanese regime's nervousness over how this abrupt turn in foreign policy will be received at home was reflected in a wave of confiscations by the security services of Sudanese newspapers that had covered al-Bashir's discussions in Sochi (Radio Dabanga, November 30).

Jibril Ibrahim, the leader of Darfur's rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), insisted that al-Bashir's request for Russian protection and willingness to accommodate Russian military bases had destroyed attempts to normalize relations with the US and was an opening to bring down the Khartoum regime (Sudan Tribune, November 27).

Is Sudan playing a double game here? Foreign Minister Ghandour claims "there is nothing to prevent Sudan from cooperating with the United States while at the same time pursuing strategic relations with China and Russia" (Sudan Tribune, November 25). Nonetheless, al-Bashir has so far avoided becoming anyone's client and is likely aware that pursuing this new relationship with Russia to the point of welcoming Russian military bases could be his undoing as he seeks to reaffirm his rule over a restless nation in 2020. For this reason, Russian military bases on the barren and furnace-like Sudanese Red Sea coast seem unlikely for now.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Russian Overreach Calls Into Question Baku's Balanced Foreign Policy

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Paul Goble Publication Date 5 December 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russian Overreach Calls Into Question Baku's Balanced Foreign Policy, 5 December 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a29148ed.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.

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Like his father Heydar Aliyev before him, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev remains committed to a balanced foreign policy, one that seeks to maintain good relations with both the Russian Federation and the West. But a series of Russian actions that Baku views as hostile have called that approach into question, leading to a dramatic cooling off in bilateral ties and potentially re-ordering the geopolitics of the South Caucasus-or possibly even more than that.

In late November, the Azerbaijani government told Russia that it would not accept the latter's proposed new ambassador, putting the two countries "on the edge of a diplomatic scandal," according to a Russian news agency (Regnum, November 28). That may have surprised some in the West, but it should not have come as one to those who had been paying close attention. Indeed, the latest spat reflects Moscow's increasingly Soviet-style in its diplomatic relations with the former Soviet republics. Moreover, it follows a series of progressively more offensive Russian actions, at least from Baku's point of view.

During the Cold War, Moscow often dispatched ambassadors to its satellites in Eastern Europe without the niceties of the agrement process that governs diplomatic relations between most states. That is, the Soviet capital announced an ambassador without checking with or obtaining the approval of the country to which Moscow's diplomat was going to be sent. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow was particularly careful to observe that requirement of diplomatic life in its dealings with the newly independent states. But now, it appears, the Russian government has reverted to the Soviet approach of dealing with its satellites: Moscow decides on an ambassador without the agrement process, and expects everyone to go along. That is what seems to have happened in this case; and not surprisingly, the Azerbaijanis were offended. Similar diplomatic scandals are likely to become more frequent unless the Russian government returns to playing by the internationally accepted rules of state-to-state behavior.

The deeper causes of the present Russian-Azerbaijani conflict lie elsewhere, however. In the last month, Moscow has taken three actions and threatened another that are deeply offensive to Baku. It, therefore, seems probable that President Aliyev decided to use this recent "diplomatic" occasion to send a message. First and most disturbing from Baku's point of view, the Russian and Armenian militaries are in the midst of staging the largest joint exercises in their history, something that calls into question Moscow's claims to be a neutral player in the region and thus the primary supporter of a resolution of the Karabakh dispute (Kommersant, December 3). It is far from clear whether the Western powers are prepared to exploit this opportunity to change the Minsk format of talks; but Azerbaijan is clearly sending a signal that it does not view Russia as a balanced player, let alone one on its side at present.

Second and related to the first, recently the Turkish government has openly placed the blame for the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict on Russia, a point of view that some well-placed Azerbaijani commentators have picked up (Topwar.ru, Vesti.az, December 2). Ankara has suggested, and many in Baku appear to agree, that Moscow is responsible not only for the fact that the conflict broke out in violence in 1988, when Mikhail Gorbachev clearly tilted toward Armenia against Azerbaijan, but has made sure that no settlement has been achieved since that time. Many Western analysts have suggested as much in the past, but officials in Ankara and Baku have generally been careful not to say this lest they make any further progress impossible. That has now changed; and not surprisingly, the Azerbaijani government is angry.

And third, in a development that would seem far removed from the above-cited issues, on November 28 the Russian government finally concluded the liquidation of the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress. Moscow earlier declared that institution a "foreign agent" because it received Azerbaijani money, even though its primary goal was to serve as a link between the more than one million ethnic Azerbaijanis in the Russian Federation and the Russian government (Nazaccent.ru, November 30). That action might not have riled Baku as much as it did save for one thing: Ilham Aliyev's daughter was the moving force behind and a key leader of the Azerbaijani Congress. Thus, by attacking the Congress, Moscow was attacking the Aliyev family personally. It is entirely possible that the Azerbaijani president views this as an impermissible act of lese majeste and decided to send the Kremlin a message by blocking its choice of ambassador.

Making all this worse is an indication that Moscow may be planning to interfere in Azerbaijan's domestic affairs by stirring up the ethnic minorities of that country-in particular, the Talysh (Realtribune.ru, December 1). This issue has stayed on the back burner for the last several years. But Russians are again discussing it and encouraging their allies within these communities to do the same. No significant red lines have been crossed yet, but Baku has always viewed such talk as not only unfriendly but dangerous.

What will happen next? The diplomatic spat over the Russian Ambassador to Baku is likely to resolve itself. Azerbaijan and Russia have too many common interests to keep a key post vacant in either capital. But Baku has clearly signaled that it is more skeptical about Moscow than many had thought and thus opened the way for a more active policy by Western countries in the South Caucasus than in the recent past. The Russian government knows the present situation represents a risk to its interests in the region, so almost certainly it will try to recover its position by making a bigger tilt of some kind toward Baku than it had planned-exactly what Azerbaijan will be hoping for.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Crimea as a Playground for the Russian-Ukrainian Spy War

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Ridvan Bari Urcosta Publication Date 5 December 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Crimea as a Playground for the Russian-Ukrainian Spy War, 5 December 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 157, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2917a84.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.

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A Russian court in occupied Sevastopol sentenced Ukrainian former military expert Dmitry Shtyblykov, on November 16, to five years imprisonment in a strict penal colony (Regnum, November 16). Shtyblykov worked at the think tank Nomos, which, prior to the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, operated in Sevastopol. On November 9, 2016, he was apprehended in that Black Sea port city, together with two other suspects-Vladimir Dudtko and Alexey Bessarabov (the latter had also worked at Nomos) (Krymr.com, November 10, 2016). All three men are former Ukrainian officers. According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), these "subversive and terrorist groups" of the Ukrainian Intelligence Service "were aiming to commit acts of sabotage on the military infrastructure facilities and livelihood of the Crimean peninsula" (Fsb.ru, November 10, 2016). The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense denied these allegations, labeling the Russian charges "fake-omania." The defense ministry in Kyiv further asserted that the Russian authorities were using a database of former Ukrainian officers to claim they were detaining spies and active-duty Ukrainian military personnel on the Crimean peninsula (Ukrinform.ua, November 24).

The Russian-Ukrainian spy war in and around Crimea dates all the way back to the initial annexation. Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of conducting such provocative acts; but because of the secrecy and sensitivity surrounding intelligence operations, it is particularly difficult for independent analysts to judge the veracity of any individual incident. Official allegations and counterclaims by the authorities are often all one can go by. Moreover, the reported cases appear in the media sporadically and tend to be analyzed only in terms of the human rights situation in Crimea. Nevertheless, it is possible to provide at least a partial list of the episodes reported on in the media over the past few years and try to draw some conclusions about the ongoing intelligence and counter-intelligence operations in Crimea.

Possibly the first reported case dates back to May 2014, when the FSB apprehended four Ukrainians members of the far-right group Right Sector-O. Sentsov, S. Afanasyev, A. Chirny and A. Kolchenko. They were convicted of attempting to commit "acts of sabotage and terrorism" (Fsb.ru, May 30, 2014), but Kyiv considers them political prisoners (Mfa.gov.ua, November 17, 2017).

A year later, in two minor incidents, the FSB captured an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and accused him of carrying out reconnaissance of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol (RIA Novosti, May 19, 2015). Additionally, a member of the Ukrainian "Azov" volunteer battalion was arrested in Crimea for allegedly carrying out attacks on a mosque and planning to blow up a local prosecutor's office in Simferopol (News.sevas.com, May 1, 2015).

In mid-2016, Russian authorities claimed a Ukrainian "sabotage group" had tried to infiltrate Crimea and organize provocations and even terrorist attacks in order to disrupt the tourist season on the peninsula. According to the Federal Security Service, one FSB agent and a soldier died in the operation to capture the alleged saboteurs and several Ukrainians were arrested and were undergoing interrogation. Ukrainian officials denied all such allegations and accused the Kremlin of spreading disinformation (RBC, August 8, 2016).

Several incidents also came to light this year. In February, the FSB alleged a "diversionist" from the Crimean Tatar civil society group "Asker" tried to enter Crimea from the mainland (Krymr.com, February 21). Whereas, on June 30, two Russian border guards were caught by the Ukrainians in Kherson region and were imprisoned (Interfax July 11). Strikingly, on October 3, two Ukrainian border guards were arrested on Russian territory near Ukraine's Sumy region (northwest of Kharkiv). Kyiv's official position is that those border guards were abducted by Russia in order to exchange them for the two Russian border guards arrested by Ukraine in Kherson (Racurs.ua, October 25).

On August 12, Genadiy Limeshenko, identified as an agent of the SSU, was arrested by the FSB in Crimea and accused of trying to damage power lines in the Sudak-Novy Svet area as well as purportedly planning to start forest fires nearby (TASS, August 15). That same month, an extraordinary case was reported in Sevastopol, where the local FSB headquarters (formerly housing the SSU) was besieged by Russian Special Forces and the National Guard. The incident was apparently not a training exercise (Sevastopol.su, August 14).

In October, another example surfaced of apparent attempts by Ukraine to infiltrate the Russian military stationed in Crimea. Reportedly, two former Ukrainian nationals who decided to stay in Crimea after the annexation and took Russian citizenship were accused of spying for Kyiv and collecting information on the Black Sea Fleet (Novayagazeta.ru, October 2). Finally, on October 31, several natural gas pipeline explosions occurred near the coastal town of Alushta, and a number of power lines were destroyed. The FSB has not excluded sabotage as the cause (Gazeta.ru, November 1). Interestingly, in September 2016, Russia established anti-sabotage units in the 47th Territorial Defense Division, based out of Sevastopol (Voyennoye.rf, September 15, 2016).

Based on these cases, Russian authorities see a danger to Crimea coming from various sabotage and diversionary groups, including members of the Ukrainian military, representatives of Crimean Tatar organizations as well as members of Hizb ut-Tahrir both in and outside of Crimea, Ukrainians who still maintain their national identity in occupied Crimea, not to mention individuals who oppose or disapprove of the official political line. The types of operations Moscow sees itself guarding against vary broadly. They include attempts to undermine the security of the Kerch Bridge and Kerch Strait; bids to breach the security of military facilities in Crimea; as well as attempts to cross the Crimean border from the Ukrainian mainland or infiltrating Crimea's coastline and territorial waters-of particular concern being the bays of Sevastopol and Donuzlav, where Russia has installed its main naval facilities on the peninsula.

Since the annexation, Russia has invested substantially in building up Crimea as a military stronghold by restoring the bulk of the military facilities on the peninsula dating back to Soviet times (see EDM, December 9, 2014; November 14, 2017). Yet, alongside its military and geostrategic value, Crimea remains an important tourism destination, and many of its residents depend on this sector for their livelihood. Considering this vulnerability, Russia faces a political conundrum of how to safeguard "fortress Crimea" while keeping it open to civilians. How long Moscow will be able to maintain this balancing act clearly depends on both external and internal factors. And the periodic incidents stemming from the Ukrainian-Russian spy war underscore that both sides understand this dynamic.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
UN rights chief calls for probe into attacks against Rohingya, says genocide 'cannot be ruled out'

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN rights chief calls for probe into attacks against Rohingya, says genocide 'cannot be ruled out', 5 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a292a994.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 United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international criminal probe into the perpetrators of the widespread and brutal attacks that have driven more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar since August, noting that "elements of genocide" against the minority could not be ruled out.

Rohingyas have faced decades of statelessness, policies of dehumanizing discrimination and segregation, and the horrific violence and abuse, along with the forced displacement and systematic destruction of villages, homes, property and livelihoods, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.

"Given all of this, can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present?" he told the Human Rights Council in Geneva in a special session convened in response to the ongoing exodus of Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

"Ultimately, this is a legal determination only a competent court can make. But the concerns are extremely serious, and clearly call for access to be immediately granted for further verification," he added.

The High Commissioner urged the Council to consider making a recommendation to the UN General Assembly that it establish a new impartial and independent mechanism, complementary to the work of the fact-finding mission into the latest wave of violence and abuses, to assist individual criminal investigations of those responsible.

By 2 December, an estimated 626,000 refugees - or more than half the estimated number of Rohingya living in Rakhine state - had fled to Bangladesh since October 2016, and particularly since August 2017. The Myanmar Government has said its latest campaign in northern Rakhine was in response to attacks by insurgents.

The High Commissioner reported that his Office (OHCHR) had sent three teams to Bangladesh this year to monitor the situation and interview refugees. He said witnesses reported acts of appalling barbarity committed against the Rohingya, including deliberately burning people to death inside their homes; murders of children and adults; indiscriminate shooting of fleeing civilians; widespread rapes of women and girls; and the burning and destruction of houses, schools, markets and mosques.

Mr. Zeid said he had reported to both the Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council about the persistent allegations of serious human rights violations by security forces. Yet, he added, prosecutions for alleged acts of violence against them, including sexual violence - whether committed by security forces or civilians - appeared to be extremely rare.

Refusal by international as well as local actors to even name the Rohingyas as Rohingyas - to recognize them as a community and respect their right to self-identification - is yet another humiliation, and it creates a shameful paradox: they are denied a name, while being targeted for being who they are," he added.

"The world cannot countenance a hasty window-dressing of these shocking atrocities, bundling people back to conditions of severe discrimination and latent violence which seem certain to lead in the future to further suffering, and more movements of people," Mr. Zeid said.
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Amid alarming spike in violence, looming famine, Yemen gripped by uncertainty  UN officials

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 5 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Amid alarming spike in violence, looming famine, Yemen gripped by uncertainty  UN officials, 5 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2936984.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.

Yemen remains gripped by uncertainty after the assassination of the former president and a spike in brutal violence in and around its capital, Sana'a, the United Nations envoy for the war-torn country said Tuesday.

"The situation is reaching a new adverse development with the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and a number of GPC [General People's Congress] leaders," Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, told a closed session of the UN Security Council Tuesday.

"These events will constitute a considerable change to the political dynamics in Yemen," he added.

Briefing alongside Mr. Cheikh Ahmed was the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, who underscored that the humanitarian situation in the country remains severe, with millions on the cusp of the largest famine in modern times.

Intense fighting - including airstrikes and rocket attacks - have devastated the country and brought incredible hardships on its people. Over 17 million Yemenis (close to two-thirds of the population) is food insecure while a staggering 8.5 million people are on the brink of starvation.

In all, close to 21 million people across Yemen are in need of humanitarian or protection support.

The violence has also devastated basic services in the country, all but destroyed its water and sanitation system, and sparked a deadly cholera outbreak that has claimed thousands of innocent lives - including children.

Making matters much worse is that aid workers are not able to carry out their vital mission to save lives due to the scale of fighting and insecurity.

Overnight, 25 air strikes had targeted the Republican Palace, bridges and civilian infrastructure in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, forcing humanitarian agencies, including the UN, the Red Cross and non-governmental organizations into a lockdown.

Against this backdrop, the top UN relief official in the country, Jamie McGoldrick, had appealed Monday for a "humanitarian pause" today from 10:00 AM to 16:00 PM (Yemen time) to allow desperate civilians reach assistance and safety as well as for aid workers to reach them.

Speaking via telephone, from Sana'a, to journalists at a press briefing in Geneva today on his request for a pause in fighting, Mr. McGoldrick expressed that while he does not expect full compliance by all the parties, he hoped for some respite in the fighting to allow civilians to access supplies and medical care.

The "hallmark of the crisis," he noted has been the general disregard for international humanitarian law.

The UN and reiterated, time and again, reiterated the obligation of the parties to the conflict to ensure civilians are protected, and health and aid workers, and civilian infrastructure not be subjected to attacks.
Thailand: Absurd lese-majeste charges against 85-year-old scholar for comments on 16th Century battle

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Thailand: Absurd lese-majeste charges against 85-year-old scholar for comments on 16th Century battle, 7 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2937c02.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.

Following the decision today by the Bangkok Military Court to postpone a decision on whether to indict Sulak Sivaraksa, on charges of lese majeste for comments he made about a battle in 1593, James Gomez, Amnesty International's Director of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said:

"To prosecute a scholar for comments he made about a battle that took place more than four centuries ago would be patently absurd. This case is an ugly reminder of the Thai authorities' increasing use of the lese majeste law as a tool of suppression.

"Aside from being an outrageous attack on freedom of expression and academic freedom, Sulak Sivaraksa's case appears to be based on a wilful misinterpretation of the existing repressive law on lese majeste. While it should doubtless be abandoned in its entirety, the law as it currently stands does not apply to historical members of the monarchy.

"The Thai authorities must end their gross misuse of this law and immediately drop these ridiculous charges."

Background

Sulak Sivaraksa has been charged for comments he made on October 5, 2014, at Thammasat University in Bangkok, questioning the historical account of a 16th-century elephant battle between the Thai King Naresuan and the Burmese Crown Prince Mingyi Swa. If found guilty he could face up to 15 years' imprisonment.

He is a long-time critic, scholar and the author of many books on Thai politics, society and culture. He is also a veteran activist in the promotion of human rights, Buddhism and peaceful approaches to the solution of political conflicts. Since 1984 he has repeatedly faced charges under Article 112 of the Penal Code: Thailand's lese majeste law.

Since Thailand's military government took power in a coup d'etat in May 2014, an unprecedented number of people have been charged and convicted under the lese majeste law. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and international human rights organizations have called on Thai authorities to stop using the lese majeste law to criminalize freedom of expression and to repeal or amend or the law on the basis that it is incompatible with Thailand's international human rights obligations.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Social media company Facebook has been named the best tech company to work for in 2018 by career listing and employee review site Glassdoor. Facebook earned a similar honor in 2017, when it ranked as the top tech company, but landed second overall to Bain and Company in Boston.

Its place atop this year's list is the result of numerous current and former employees' reviews of the company across eight categories, including overall company rating, career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management, work/life balance, recommendation worthiness, and six-month business outlook.
The top executives of two brand-name national firms come together in what they promise will be an explosive merger, creating a supermarket of services for consumers who would save hugely and have access to the best information in one place.

One is an aggressive, publicity-loving visionary who heads a historic Hartford insurer but favors New York culture. He melds his company with a larger corporation that has thousands of retail locations.

Aetnas Mark T. Bertolini joining forces with CVS?

No, it was the creation of Citigroup 19 years ago. Sandy Weills Travelers Group merged with Citicorp in what was then the largest ever acquisition.

And it failed miserably.

Like Aetna-CVS, it was touted as a match made in heaven, not just strategic, not just financial, but both  plus a whole new way of serving customers under one roof. Like Aetna-CVS, it tested the bounds of antitrust rules.

The cultures clashed. Marketing staffs didnt cross-sell. Clients didnt see the need for investment banking, insurance, brokerage services, commercial lending and retail branches under one red umbrella. Investors sent the shares down nearly 30 percent in 10 years.

The same could easily happen to CVS and Aetna. On Monday, the CEOs failed to give a convincing argument beyond a lot of soaring but ultimately meaningless rhetoric.

We will use our high-touch connectivity to become the front door to health care consumers, said Larry J. Merlo, the CVS chief executive, who started his career as a pharmacist.

Say what? Thanks, Larry, but my doctors office already fills that role.

I stopped into my local CVS after the merger conference call and it felt more like an old-fashioned general store, with candy at the cashier counter and rows of sundries.

Our combined data and analytics will provide a more holistic view of each individual, Bertolini said. Think of the Genius Bar at Apple, this ability to go into the store and get help.

OK, Im starting to catch on. Aetna and CVS both have millions of terabytes of medical records which, when combined, tell them what they need to sell me and whether they even want me as a customer. I definitely see how that helps them  less so, me.

Two questions come to mind: First, why cant they do that now, without merging into one company that threatens to muscle out other players such as doctors, smaller pharmacists and competitors? Aetna contracts with CVSs Caremark for pharmacy benefits management on behalf of its 22 million members. Why cant they increase their joint offerings in a creative way?

We both agreed that a combination was an important enabler, Merlo said.

Owner economics matter here, Bertolini said. How you track matters.

Think about that. What theyre saying is that they can only really drive cost out of the health care system  their stated purpose in the deal  by joining forces in a way that gives them more market power.

Which leads us to the second question: Market power to what end? Remember, as it stands now, the two companies reach an arms-length contract where each one protects its own interests. Thats good for the consumer and now it will be lost.

The patient is sort of caught in this vice, said Robert Lamb, a professor of finance and management at the Stern School of Business at New York University, who studies mergers. The specific arrangement that the two organizations have with each other means that you dont have, one, freedom of choice but two, theyve already made an agreement that there will not be outsiders, there cannot be outsiders.  Thats the problem.

There has to be scrutiny to make sure that consumers actually benefit, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Monday, but such guarantees are tough to lock down.

Merlo made a point that competing health insurers will not be locked out. Thats a factor the U.S. Department of Justice will examine in scrutiny thats likely to lead to approval.

The bigger question is how promises like this from Merlo  Clients through the combined entity will be able to help address the growing cost of treating chronic conditions  will work for the market.

It failed for Citigroup. We are watching.
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DANBURY - A tenant of the Matrix Corporate Center has filed a lawsuit in Danbury Superior Court against the buildings owner and receiver of rents seeking compensation for damages and to be relieved of its lease obligations because of the structures deteriorating state.

The law firm Chipman, Mazzucco, Land & Pennarola, a tenant at the Matrix since 2011, cites the declining tenant roster and failure to properly and safely maintain the complex among the reasons for the lawsuit. The firm has signed a lease to relocate into another building in Danbury due to its dissatisfaction with the Matrix.

(The law firm) has experienced worsening conditions in the Matrix Corporate Center during the term of its tenancy, the complaint reads, and has registered innumerable complaints and notices of default  which defaults have not been cured in a reasonable time, and which defaults remain uncured.

The complaint alleges breach of the office lease for several reasons, including failure to maintain security systems and personnel, consistent heating and cooling, food selection, road signage, structural elements, janitorial services and safe access to the building.

As a result of the foregoing breaches  (Chipman & Mazzucco) has suffered and will continue to suffer money damages  the complaint reads, further alleging the inferior premises and amenities are of far less value, than when the lease was signed.

The Matrix Corporate Center is a 1.3 million-square-foot office complex in west Danbury. It was built in 1982 as the headquarters for Union Carbide, which once had thousands of employees in the building. When Union Carbide was acquired and dissolved, the building was converted into a multi-tenant complex.

It was purchased in 2009 for $73 million by Matrix Realty Group and renamed Matrix Corporate Park. Glen Nelson, CEO of the Long Island-based real estate group, died in a car accident in December 2015. Ownership of the building transferred to his familys estate under an entity called Gera Danbury.

Since then the building has lost major tenants such as Praxair, Boehringer Ingelheim and General Motors. According to a recent Fitch report, the building is 34 percent leased, but only 16 percent physically occupied - a number that will decline further when GM and Chipman & Mazzucco leave.

Deutsche Bank Trust foreclosed on the property earlier this year and the commercial real estate firm CBRE was appointed as the receiver of rents. The foreclosure process is not complete. Gera Danbury, CBRE and Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas are named in the complaint.

CBRE officials could not be reached for comment.

Chipman, Mazzucco, Land & Pennarola allege in the complaint that monetary damages exceed additional rent due for the remainder of the lease term. It seeks unspecified damages of more than $15,000, attorney fees and to be relieved of the lease.

We are deeply concerned about the direction of the Matrix Corporate Center, Ward Mazzucco, partner with Chipman & Mazzucco told Hearst Connecticut Media on Wednesday. If rent from the remaining tenants is not sufficient to operate the building and to pay the landlords debt, then most current and prospective tenants would not consider this a stable long-term environment.

cbosak@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3338
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WASHINGTON  A week before the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, the bus of 60 from Newtown traveled to D.C. expecting a more-or-less normal round of legislative meetings and attendance at an annual vigil at a church on Capitol Hill.

But the delegation, including a number who drove down separately, instead found itself in the maelstrom of a live gun controversy  a House vote Wednesday to approve an NRA-favored bill on concealed carry.

It is and outrage, it is an offense and it is wrong, said Rep. Elizabeth Esty shortly before she voted against the measure. In this House, the so-called peoples House, were not going to be doing the peoples bidding today. Were going to be doing the gun lobbys bidding. And that needs to stop.

Connecticuts Democratic congressional delegation had been heartened by progress of the Fix NICS bill in the aftermath of the Sutherland Springs, Texas, mass shooting last month.

Fix NICS would offer carrots and sticks to states and federal agencies to add records to the FBIs National Instant Criminal Background Check System  NICS. Such records would pop up to disqualify offenders from purchasing weaponry from licensed firearms dealers, or owning any guns at all.

But the optimism turned to dismay when the House packaged Fix NICS" with the National Rifle Associations top legislative goal -- a bill requiring concealed-carry reciprocity.

Under the bill, approved by the House 231-198 late Wednesday, states with tough gun laws such as Connecticut would have to permit visitors to carry concealed, loaded weapons under the possibly weaker laws of their home states.

Shame on (House Speaker) Paul Ryan for allowing a vote on this dangerous NRA bill, and shame on every member of Congress for supporting this gun lobby bill that will make America more dangerous for all of us," said Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Alliance, at a rally outside the U.S. Capitol before the vote. Its crystal clear they are interested in protecting the NRA blood money rather than protecting innocent Americans anywhere and everywhere.

Packaging of the bill actually caused the NRA some heartburn because some gun-rights advocates characterized the joining together of concealed carry reciprocity and Fix NICS as a capitulation to the gun-control side.

The NRA, which supported the combining of the two, found itself in the unlikely position of defending a rare bipartisan piece of legislation that was written jointly by Sen. Chris Murphy and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas.

An NRA spokeswoman put FAKE NEWS ALERT in the subject line of an email warning to disregard those on the pro-gun side who opposed the package.

At the rally, Murphy said that the joining of the two measures actually is a demonstration of how far the gun-violence-prevention movement has come in a few short years.

House Republicans know that they face political liability if they force this through, so they are trying to dress it up with a politically popular piece of legislation, he said. They werent worried about the optics of the NRA agenda three years ago. I know it may be no consolation but it is proof that this movement is getting stronger by the day.

Murphy said he doubted the concealed-carry bill would pass the Senate. It would need 60 votes, an unlikely outcome given the Senates 52-48 Republican majority even if a few Red-State Democrats supported it.

In any case, Cornyn has said that the two bills should be voted on separately in the Senate.

The Newtown delegation was to be the mainstay of the Fifth Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence, held Wednesday night at St. Marks Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. The vigil is one of many marking the upcoming anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, that took the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members.

The sister of one of those staffers, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, told the gathering outside the Capitol that after the Newtown tragedy, I made Mary a promise; I told her that I would do whatever it took to make changes  Every day for the past five years, I figured out some way to keep that promise to my sister.

The sister, Jane Dougherty, said Sherlach died running toward a disturbed young man with an AR15. I figured if she could do that, I could do this. Im here trying to save others from getting that terrible phone call.
The Torrington Police Department reported the following arrests:

NARCOTICS: Michael Refalo, 55, of 412 South Main St., Torrington, was arrested Dec. 3 and charged with possession of narcotics. He was released on a misdemeanor summons and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 11.

NARCOTICS: Michael E. Carroll, 46, of 72 Meadow St., Winsted, was arrested Dec. 3 and charged with possession of narcotics. He was released on a $2,500 non-surety bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 15. Carroll was also charged with second-degree failure to appear and given $5,000 bond in a separate Dec. 3 arrest.

LARCENY: Edward W. Lasch, 31, of 3 Sasso Lane, Windale, N.Y., was arrested on a warrant stemming from Dec. 5, 2016, and charged with third-degree larceny, first-degree criminal mischief and second-degree criminal trover. He was held in lieu of a $25,000 surety bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 5.

FAILURE TO APPEAR: David F. Dolan, 54, of 217 Moore Drive, Torrington, was arrested Dec. 4 and charged with first-degree failure to appear. He was given $20,000 bond.

HARASSMENT: Christopher Russo, 27, of 239 East Main St., Apartment 1, Torrington, was arrested on a warrant stemming from Nov. 3 and charged with second-degree harassment. He was released on a $1,000 surety bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 4.

LARCENY: Peter Lejeune, 30, of 146 Grove St., Torrington, was arrested Nov. 30 and charged with sixth-degree larceny. He was released on a promise to appear and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 11.

LARCENY: Christopher Main, 36, of 245 18 Oak Ave., Thomaston, was arrested on a warrant stemming from Aug. 14 and charged with two counts of sixth-degree larceny. He was held in lieu of a $1,500 cash or surety court-set bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 4.

FAILURE TO APEPAR: Benjamin P. Holko 29, of 239 East Main St., Apartment 1B, Torrington, was arrested Dec. 2 and charged with second-degree failure to appear. He was released on a $1,000 surety bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 11.

BREACH OF PEACE: Dwight E. Maloon, 51, of 26 Victoria St., Apartment 3, Torrington, was arrested on a warrant stemming from Nov. 12 and charged with second-degree breach of peace. He was released on a $2,500 non-surety bond and scheduled to appear in court Dec. 11.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: Christopher E. Granger, 32, of 4339 Hope Plantation Drive, Johns Island, S.C., was arrested Dec. 1 and charged with second-degree breach of peace and third-degree criminal mischief. He was released on a $1,000 non-surety bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Torrington Dec. 4.
East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 12/06/2017 --Nowadays Komodo National Park receives an increasing amount of tourists from both Indonesia and abroad and scuba diving is right at the heart of it; offering experience's that can only be described as "Once in a lifetime" things to do. Of course, every diver knows that it's always best to take a local guide who knows the area well, but what if these local guides had gone out and sought the necessary training and experience to be the "creme de la creme" of their immediate diving area.



Firstly it's important to meet those at the absolute top of this amazing industry and know where to find these highly professional divers. There are many indigenous Manggaari dive professionals operating in Komodo National Park; all of whom have spent years developing their personal knowledge, skills, confidence and pure professionalism within the recreational diving industry. As well as immersing themselves within everything and anything in the dive industry, the following Manggarai professionals chose to travel to the Gili islands to take the PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC) with Multiple Award Winning Platinum PADI Course Director Holly Macleod.



Juvens is from Ruteng, Flores and has been working in the industry for well over 10 years. Nowadays as well as being a role model for up and coming dive professionals he also plays a massive role in the development of divers from the local community. Having been a scuba diving instructor for over 6 years, Juvens can now be found running some of the best liveaboards operating in Komodo National Park including those operated by Divine Diving and Komodo Dive Center. In his spare time, Juvens operates his own snorkeling and tour business.



Marsel; also from Ruteng, Flores, was a direct product of Wicked Good, a community-based project training local people to become dive professionals. After working as a professional dive guide, local manager and senior dive instructor for Wicked Diving, Marsel went on to become a Scuba Diving Instructor, Dive Manager and Liveaboard Cruise Director with Wonderpus Livaboards, another of Komodo's premier liveaboard operations. In his spare time, Marsel runs his own boat operation offering tours and snorkeling activities around Flores.



Rian whose town is close to Ruteng, Flores has been working for Dive Komodo, one of the slickest and longest established high street dive operators in Labuan Bajo, Flores offering the full range of dive services. Rian has spent most of his active career with Dive Komodo and worked his way up through the system and has now been a scuba diving instructor for over 2 years. Today Rian can still be found at Dive Komodo running their world-class Liveaboard vessel and teaching PADI courses.



Another Manggarai dive professional is Eko, an experienced dive guide, trip director, dive manager and a scuba diving instructor at Blue Marlin Dive Komodo. Eko is the absolute best dive professional to be found at Blue Marlin Dive and specializes in organizing and conducting private and group charters, having the experience to create unforgettable experiences for certified divers.



Hila is another great dive professional from Ruteng and originally moved to Labuan Bajo to start a career in the tourism industry. Working a variety of jobs including cleaning, maintenance, and general resort work, Hila saw a growing diving industry and wanted to be a part of it. Working for Divine Diving Komodo, Hila has undertaken the entire variety of roles around the dive shop, whilst also learning how to dive. Now Hila has worked his way up within the company as a highly experienced dive guide and an experienced PADI Scuba Diving Instructor. Now Hila can still be found at Divine Diving as the senior Instructor and Trip Director. Ito; again from Ruteng in Flores has also been working at Divine Diving and is now a senior Instructor working alongside and under direct mentorship of Hila. Both Hila and Ito are fantastic musicians and can often be found playing the guitar and singing some of the world classics.



To see these guys in action during their previous training on the PADI IDC Indonesia with Multi Award Winning Platinum PADI Course Director Holly Macleod check out the PADI IDC Komodo Gili Facebook page. And for more information on the program check out the PADI IDC Komodo-Gili TripAdvisor Reviews.



Contact:

JT Dive Advice

Dive Publications

idc@trawangandive.com

+62 (0)821-4785-0413

http://www.idc-gili.com/
Finding the Perfect Perspective

As I reviewed some of my lighthouse photography tips, I found that finding the right place to take the photo is a very important part of my tips. On a recent trip to the Florida panhandle I found some good examples of using this tip.





Our first stop was in Port St. Joe where I photographed the Cape San Blas lighthouse. The first photo I took was the view as I left our car. It is a straight on look at the lighthouse with the keepers house to the side. You can see that photo at the top of this article. I think it is a good photo and many people would stop with that view. I enjoy finding different perspectives so I took a walk around the lighthouse. I found a small lake behind the lighthouse and walked around the lake looking for the best shot. I took a new photo every few feet and got a lot of good views. The one below is one I particularly like. It shows the lighthouse reflected in the lake.

Living in a Lighthouse

While we were in Port St. Joe I went to look for another lighthouse I had read about. This lighthouse is on private property and not open to the public, but I found directions to an area where I could get a photo. This lighthouse is called St. Joseph Point lighthouse and is now a private residence off county road 30a. Here is a photo I took from the street. Wouldn't it be fun to live in a lighthouse? I imagine you might get a better perspective of this lighthouse from the water but I was limited to taking it from my car. This was taken from the street in front of the lighthouse.

So remember next time you go to take a photograph of a lighthouse (or anything for that matter) don't stop at the first view you find. Take the time to look for some different perspectives.

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. As an Amazon Associate I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.
Cambodias government on Thursday urged the U.S. to reconsider visa restrictions announced in response to an ongoing crackdown against the political opposition and freedom of expression, but maintained that the move would not influence the internal affairs of the nation.



On Wednesday, Washington announced visa restrictions on individuals responsible for undermining Cambodian democracy in response to the September arrest of opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) President Kem Sokha on charges of attempting to topple the government and a decision by the Supreme Court last month to dissolve his party for its alleged role in the conspiracy.



The U.S. State Department said the move was part of a series of concrete steps aimed at pressuring Cambodia to reverse course that included a decision last month to withdraw funding for general elections set for July 2018, adding that in certain cases family members of the individuals deemed responsible for the crackdown would also be subject to visa bans.



Reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities  could lead to a lifting of these travel restrictions and increase the potential for Cambodias 2018 electoral process to regain legitimacy, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement accompanying the announcement.



On Thursday, ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) spokesperson Sok Ey San called on the U.S. to reconsider the visa restriction, accusing the State Department of having double standards by contradicting what he called U.S. President Donald Trumps policy of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.



It affects our feelings, and the U.S. [government] should reconsider this issue, because Cambodia is a tiny country that doesnt possess even tiny missiles, let alone nuclear weapons, he said.



Therefore, we request this superpower country to kindly permit tiny Cambodia to live in peace.



The decision made by the State Department clearly shows the U.S. is using its influence to put pressure on Cambodia on behalf of the opposition party, Sok Ey San said, referencing accusations that Kem Sokha had colluded with Washington to bring down the CPP, which the U.S. embassy has denied.



He reiterated that Kem Sokhas arrest, the decision to dissolve the CNRP, and other actions his government has taken against NGOs and the media in recent months were simply meant to reinforce the rule of law, and that the CPP had made great efforts to build Cambodia into a country that truly respects democratic principles.



Sok Ey San said that if the U.S. will not reconsider the visa restrictions, it is not a problem, and noted there are many other meetings outside the U.S. that [Cambodia] can join.



Cambodia has increasingly looked to China for loans and investment, preferring Beijings policy of offering assistance without conditions, unlike the U.S., which has called on Phnom Penh to improve its human rights record.



Government spokesperson Phay Siphan said the restriction of visas appears to be in opposition to the democracy that Cambodia has worked so hard to build over the past 20 years and could undermine stability in the country, calling the decision disappointing.



Nevertheless, they must serve their own interests, even though those whom they support are among a rebel group who have been working against state institutions, the courts, the Senate and the National Assembly, he said.



We are not concerned about this, he added.



Other reactions



Local political analyst Lao Mong Hay welcomed the visa restriction as a sign that democracy may be rescued in Cambodia, and expected the decision to have an effect on the governments strategy in the lead up to the 2018 ballot.



This is a positive measurea step that may push our leaders to reconsider the actions that they have taken and that affect democracy in Cambodia, he told RFAs Khmer Service.



Former CNRP President Sam Rainsy, who has been living in self-imposed exile since 2015 to avoid convictions on charges widely seen as politically motivated, also welcomed the restriction, but urged the U.S. and other members of the international community to take additional measures against the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for more than 32 years.



The measures taken by the U.S.  is appropriate considering the bad deeds committed by this leader against his own citizens and democrats, he said in an interview via Skype from Paris.



They are appropriate since they do not affect the interests of regular citizens. They only affect the interests of the dictator, members of his clique, and their families.



On Wednesday, Hun Sen maintained that his country is governed by a multi-party democracy and said elections scheduled for next year would go on as planned, despite the dissolution of the CNRPthe only opposition party that posed a serious challenge to his rule.



He also accused Sam Rainsywho resigned in February this year in a bid to preserve the CNRP in the face of a law that bars anyone convicted of a crime from holding the top offices in a political partyof treason for calling on Cambodias military to disobey the prime ministers orders to kill protesters, and said the former CNRP chief will face additional legal action for his comments.



Australian lawmaker



Also on Thursday, Australian Labor Party lawmaker Mark Butler, a member of the House of Representatives for Port Adelaide, South Australia, called on Australias parliament and federal government to take strong measures against Hun Sens government to push for the release of Kem Sokha and the normalization of democracy in Cambodia.



The large Cambodian-Australian community here in Australia is obviously distressed by what is happening in Cambodia, Butler said in a speech on the floor of parliament, noting that a number of Cambodian-Australians had come to Australias legislature earlier this week to support CNRP deputy president Mu Sochua in her campaign to rally support for free and fair elections in Cambodia.



Since Kem Sokhas arrest, some 20 CNRP lawmakers, along with deputy presidents Mu Sochua and Eng Chhay Eang and a number of party activists, have fled Cambodia fearing retaliation by the CPP following important electoral gains by the opposition in Junes commune ballot, which are seen as pointing to a strong showing in next years vote.



Butler noted that the European Union, which last month threatened to withdraw preferential trade status for Cambodia in response to the crackdown, and the U.S. have pressured Hun Sen to end restrictions, and said he had written to Australias foreign minister Julie Bishop asking her what concrete actions our country is considering to support democracy in Cambodia.



The first step must be the immediate release of Mr. Kem Sokha, he said.



It's time Australia took action to support democracy in Cambodia.



Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Pony Ma, chairman and chief executive officer of China's Tencent Holdings Ltd., speaks during a session at the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, southern China's Guangdong province, Dec. 6 2017.

Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong shut down businesses, boosted police presence and told dissidents and rights activists to leave the provincial capital Guangzhou, as the city began its hosting of the Fortune Global Forum on Thursday.

As the heads of 150 major international corporations and tech firms gathered in the city to discuss major challenges facing multinational companies, local business owners said roads around the venue in Guangzhou's Haizhu district had been sealed off, and businesses ordered to close for the duration of the event.

"Our entire hotel has been blocked off, so we aren't taking any bookings from guests for the time being," an employee who answered the phone at a hotel near the forum venue told RFA on Monday.

"We won't be taking bookings until after the event," the employee said. "You need a special pass to gain entry to our hotel premises for the duration, and our hotel and some key areas outside have been sealed off."

The employee said the area around the Shangri-La Hotel in Haizhu had been sealed off by authorities starting on Sunday, and that security measures will be in place until Dec. 9.

Guangzhou-based women's rights activist Zheng Churan said she had been forced to leave the city earlier this month.

"I left Guangzhou at the beginning of this month, because I started to feel that it wasn't very safe, so I went on vacation overseas," Zheng said. "My landlord told me to go, and after I was evicted, I thought I'd better just leave before I got harassed any further."

"I was getting pretty scared and depressed because of all of this, because there isn't a single law in China that states that you can be evicted because of something you did," she said.

Zheng's eviction came as three other feminist activists left the provincial capital following a protracted campaign by authorities to force them out of their rented accommodation.

Activists Zhang Leilei, Guo Jing and Xiong Zai, who have been living in Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou for several months, say they have had enough after being repeatedly targeted by police from their local Haizhu district police department.

They said police also cited the Fortune Global Forum as the reason for their eviction.

Zheng was among five Chinese feminists detained ahead of International Women's Day 2015 as they planned a public campaign against sexual harassment.

She and fellow detainees Li Tingting, Wei Tingting, Wang Man, and Wu Rongrong were released "on bail" in 2015 after being detained for several weeks on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble."

Their detentions prompted an international outcry, as they had been planning a low-level campaign against the sexual harassment of women on public transport.

They were never charged with any crime, but have continued to face official harassment, including evictions and travel bans.

A chat with police

A legal professional who asked to remain anonymous said he had also temporarily left Guangzhou, to avoid official harassment.

"The authorities have said they need to know the exact whereabouts of certain [dissident] figures during the Fortune Global Forum," the source said. "They may never have had plans to visit the venue."

"The likelihood of getting an administrative detention sentence for public protests is very high indeed." he said. "Some people have been called in for a chat [with state security police], and a lot of people have been detained in Guangzhou."

Haizhu resident Ou Shaokun said there is a visible police presence around the venue, with strict security scanning in place at the nearest metro station exits.

"There is definitely an increased security presence, with gun-toting police officers and bulletproof vehicles," Ou said. "Everyone who takes a bag onto the metro has to put it through a scanner."

He said the authorities have also canceled leave for all police officers for the duration of the forum.

"It's not just uniformed police either; a lot of employees have had their leave canceled and are patrolling the area wearing red armbands," he said. "My relative works in the police department and told me that they can't take any time off until after Dec. 8."

"Things have been very tightly controlled since [Sunday]," he said.

An official who answered the phone at the Haizhu police department on Monday declined to comment.

"I don't really know about that, so you should call the Guangzhou municipal propaganda department if you want to know more," the official said. "You can't ask us about it."

Calls to the Guangzhou municipal police department rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

Reported by Wong Lok-to for RFA's Cantonese Service and by Gao Feng for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
A Chinese newspaper in the northeastern province of Jilin, which borders North Korea, has published a list of readers' tips on how to survive a nuclear attack, as the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang escalated on Thursday.



North Korea on Thursday called large-scale U.S. combat drills over South Korea "confrontational warmongering," saying that the exercises and recent rhetoric from Washington made the outbreak of war "an established fact."



The latest volley of bellicose rhetoric came after 230 American aircraft, including bombers, joined the "Vigilant Ace" joint military exercises with South Korea, just a week after Pyongyang tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it says can reach the mainland U.S.



The Jilin Daily newspaper made no mention of a potential nuclear attack on North Korea.



But it published a lengthy guide to nuclear weapons and the aftermath of an atomic explosion, advising readers to "shelter behind a wall, preferably lying down in the corner, or under a bed or table, and avoid opening doors and windows ... to minimize the risk of debris injuries."



"After the blast wave has passed, you should immediately remove all dust from your body, and enter the nearest shelter," it said. "If no shelter is available, you can enter any building that has not been destroyed in the blast, and close the doors and windows to prevent contamination by radioactive dust."



Readers are also advised to "dive into any nearby lakes or river and wear light-colored clothing," to avoid initial injuries from the blast.



Anyone entering a shelter or protective space should be decontaminated by wiping, showering, and carefully removing clothing, the article said.



"Rub contamination from people's skin with a towel or gauze wipe, from top to bottom, in one direction, folding the towel after each wipe to prevent recontamination," it said. "Induce vomiting or use gastric lavage, or drink plenty of water for diuretic discharge of contaminated food and water."



"Laxatives may be taken, under direction of a doctor, to speed up the elimination of radioactive material [from the body]," it said.



Officials call for calm



Meanwhile, officials in Beijing called for calm.



"We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement.



"The outbreak of war is not in any side's interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people."



A resident of Jilin's border city of Yanbian surnamed Cai told RFA on Thursday that local officials are handing out similar instructions to residents on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.



But he said many local people don't believe it will come to war.



"They are being issued by our residential communities here in Yanbian, all about how to protect yourself from a nuclear attack," Cai said.



"But farmers like us don't have cellars, so where are we going to hide in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion? Under the table, I guess!"



According to the Jilin Daily, there are five "killing and destructive factors" involved in a nuclear blast: the flash, the shock wave, radioactive pollution, and early nuclear radiation, as well as a massively powerful electromagnetic pulse.



Around 85 percent of deaths, injury, and destruction caused by a nuclear explosion are dealt out by the initial flash and shock wave, it said.



While the electromagnetic pulse doesn't usually cause direct injury to people, it knocks out computers, digital devices, and power networks across a radius of "thousands of kilometers," the paper warned.



'Pretty worried about it'



A Yanbian resident surnamed Yan said local police have also been sending out mass text messages warning local residents not to shelter anyone "foreign."



"I think the authorities seem pretty worried about it, but ordinary people don't seem to be feeling it," she said. "I heard from civil servants that the government has already set in place preparations in the event of a nuclear conflict in North Korea."



"They have built detention centers to hold all the refugees," she said.



And a university lecturer from Jilin surnamed Wang said the article in the Jilin Daily appeared timed to coincide with joint U.S.-South Korean military drills.



But he said the paper doesn't have the backing of any powerful political figures, so the article is unlikely to be a sign that war is imminent.



"But it does reflect the atmosphere in Northeast China over the Korean peninsula, where people feel despairing, as if they have no control over the situation," Wang said. "They are particularly worried about the current state of mind."



United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman met with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Thursday, in a bid to stave off rising tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear program.



Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
An international NGO warned on Thursday that Myanmars Rohingya Muslim refugees may not be willing to return voluntarily to the country and instead remain in sprawling camps in Bangladesh, creating a grave security threat with outbreaks of additional violence and recruitment by jihadists.

A 25-page report by International Crisis Group, a transnational nonprofit NGO that conducts research on violent conflict, examines the events that led to deadly attacks on police outposts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Aug. 25 in northern Rakhine state, prompting a brutal military crackdown that targeted the Rohingya.

It also assesses the impact that the crisis, which has driven more than 620,000 Rohingya to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh, will have on Myanmar and offers possible international policy responses.

Though Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement on Nov. 23 for the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees who fled the crackdown, the chance that many of them will return to northern Rakhine appears unlikely in the near future, the report said.

Prospects are extremely dim for the return of any significant number of Rohingya refugees to their home areas in Myanmar in the short or medium term, it said, adding that the repatriation agreement should be viewed as a statement of intent rather than a sign that return is imminent.

Myanmar has agreed to take back Rohingya who wish to return if they can prove prior residency in the country and show that they left after Oct. 9, 2016, the date on which a smaller scale attack by ARSA triggered another crackdown by security forces.

But the main obstacle to repatriation is that most are very unlikely to want to do so, the report said, citing the untenable situation on the ground in northern Rakhine and the continuing flow of Rohingya out of the region.

ICG cited other obstancles, including Myanmars lack of clarity as to whether the Rohingya will be allowed to return to their places of origin and reclaim their farmland, the provision of the issuance of National Verification Cards which many Rohingya reject because they relegate them to a second-class status, and the fear that some may be arrested upon return if the government suspects them of being ARSA militants or supporters.

In addition, processing the paperwork for returning Rohingya and issuing them identification documents would overwhelm official capacity and resources, because only 300 returnees can be processed daily, the report said.

Fundamentally, neither the government nor security forces possess the political will to create conditions for voluntary return and implement a credible and effective process to that end, it said.

This raises the prospect of a long-term concentration of hundreds of thousands of traumatized Rohingya confined to squalid camps in Bangladesh, with no obvious way out or hope for the future. That would not only be a human tragedy, but also a grave security threat, it said.

Such a context would be ripe for mobilizing further violent responses and potential transnational jihadist recruitment, the report said.

With most of ARSAs members in refugee camps in Bangladesh, the militant group may start carrying out cross-border attacks that could lead to clashes between the Bangladeshi and Myanmar armed forces, ICG said.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other jihadist groups, which have expressed their solidarity with the Rohingya, have called for attacks on Myanmar and its leaders, representing a major security threat to the country, it said.

ICG recommended that the international community and policymakers remain engaged with Myanmar, continue development assistance, humanitarian support, and non-military engagement, minimize the impact of targeted sanctions on individuals who have committed wrongdoing so they do not affect the countrys economy, and engage with the military before imposing sanctions.

Win Myat Aye (2nd from L) and Malaysian volunteers hold boxes of relief supplies from a Malaysian ship delivering aid for Rohingya Muslims in Thilawa port, Yangon, Feb. 9, 2017. Credit: AFP Repatriation in January

The report was issued on the same day that Win Myat Aye, Myanmars minister of social welfare, relief, and resettlement, told diplomats in the countrys capital Naypyidaw that the country would begin repatriating Rohingya refugees in January.

Despite Myanmars agreement with Bangladesh for the voluntary return of Rohingya, there has been no sign of a real effort to move them back.

We are going to form a joint working committee within three weeks, he said. We will start the process of accepting them back two months after the date on which we signed the memorandum of understanding.

As soon as they [the Rohingya] return to Rakhine, they have to have an identification card, such as a national Verification Card, that can identify who they are, he said. If they have this, then they will be in the national verification process, and they can go on to apply for citizenship.

Myanmars 1982 Citizenship Law prevents the Rohingya from becoming citizens because it does not recognize them as one of the countrys 135 official ethnic groups.

Win Myat Aye also heads a government committee created in September to implement the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, a group led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, whose report calls for reviews of the countrys Citizenship Law and an end to restrictions on its Rohingya Muslim minority to prevent further violence in the region.

The minister, who was discussing repatriation efforts by the Union Enterprises for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement, and Development (UEHRD), also said the government will not let refugees stay in temporary camps for long and will rebuild within two months the homes of those whose houses burned.

About 600 Hindus who fled attacks by Muslim militants on their villages also want to return to northern Rakhine.

President Htin Kyaw created the UEHRD in October to oversee the provision of humanitarian aid in Rakhine state, coordinate resettlement and rehabilitation efforts, carry out regional development, promote lasting peace, and arrange audits of funds from the state and local and foreign donors.

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars de facto leader, chairs the UEHRD.

Rakhine lawmaker weighs in

Maung Maung Ohn, former chief minister of Rakhine state and an opposition Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) lawmaker representing Ann township, told RFAs Myanmar Service on Thursday that the international communitys frustration with the crisis is understandable.

We have to accept the international communitys frustration with the governments approach to resolving the Rakhine problem, but it doesnt mean the Myanmar government isnt working on it, he said.

Maung Maung Ohn said that a solution to the crisis should take into account not only human rights, but also national sovereignty.

We have to find a profound and acceptable way to resolve the problem, he said. This way shouldnt harm our sovereignty and should be one that the international community can accept. I hope we can make progress if the government forms a group and works together with international organizations.

We should consider human rights as well as the sovereignty of the nation when we are resolving this problem, he said. We have more pressure on us than before because the international community is talking about and looking only at human rights.

Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt and Thinn Thiri for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Uyghur grape merchants in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region suffered significant losses this year after heightened security measures amid a sensitive annual Communist Party Congress forced them to delay their harvest, according to sources.



This years Congress, held in Beijing Oct. 18-24, was the 19th annual meeting of Chinas Communist Party that regularly triggers a clampdown in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs complain of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.



But during this year, Uyghur families were made to attend daily propaganda sessions at political re-education camps throughout Xinjiang to study the spirit of the Party Congress, and members of the ethnic group told RFAs Uyghur Service that their grape harvests spoiled during what would traditionally have been a harvest week for their crop.



The head of one Uyghur family, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, said that in past years he had earned 3,000 to 3,500 yuan (U.S. $450-530) per fan (76 square meters) of grapes from his five-fan (380-square-meter) vineyard.



[This year] we couldnt sell anything, as the grapes had already fallen from the vine when we went to pick them, he said.



If they are left on the vine too long, they become affected by frost  so either they fall from the vine or they cant be stored for nearly as long.



Because they were forced to attend Congress studies during the traditional harvest week, his family and others also were unable to apply pesticides to their vines, he said, so the grapes were affected by parasites.



A second Uyghur source, who also asked to remain unnamed, told RFA that he had ended up harvesting plenty of grapes this season, but that the quality of the grapes wasnt good and he was unable to make a profit.



[It was] because of the frost, after which the grapes became soft, he said.



Also, as people were taken away to closed re-education camps, the grapes were neglected, causing parasites.



Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August last year, he has initiated a series harsh policies targeting Uyghurs in the region.



Beginning in April, Uyghurs accused of harboring extremist and politically incorrect views have regularly been detained in a vast network of re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, though reports indicate nearly no ethnic Han Chinese are being held at the facilities.



Market share



Grape and raisin production in Xinjiangs Turfan (in Chinese, Tulufan) prefecture accounts for over 80 percent of China's total, and has helped China become the world's third-largest producer of raisins and the world's largest producer of green raisins, according to a 2015 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.



Xinjiangs grape industry has long been dominated by the regions majority Uyghur population, but sources told RFA that Han Chinese migrants made significant gains on controlling the market this year because they had not been made to attend Congress studies like their Uyghur competitors.



One Han Chinese man, who owns a grape warehouse in Beshkerem township, in the seat of Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture, confirmed that his business had been exceptionally good this year due to a profitable harvest.



The minimum I will supply to buyers is one ton of grapes, he said.



But even Han Chinese grape merchants acknowledged that the clampdown during the Party Congress had affected their sales.



There were so few people visiting the market [during the Congress], that we couldnt sell our stock, he said.



In April, sources told RFA that the proliferation of electric water pumps for large-scale farming and oil exploration in Turfan has all but dried up an elaborate set of wells used by Uyghur residents, known as the karez water system.



The karez system consists of some 1,100 wells linked by hand-dug underground canals that have irrigated local agriculture for 2,000 years and once provided an important oasis for merchant caravans traveling the Silk Route through the Taklamakan desert between China and the West.



But after centuries of supplying local residents with the water they need to eke out an existence in the harsh desert environment, nearly 90 percent of Turfans wells have run dry as large-scale farmers extract water and petroleum companies drill at an increasingly rapid rate, the sources said.



Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
The Martin Agencys former creative director Joe Alexander said he resigned late last week to avoid an investigation.

The Martin Agency is my family. Rather than a drawn-out, hurtful investigation, resigning was the proper thing to do to protect my family and all the people Ive worked so closely together with in my 26 wonderful years, Alexander wrote in an email Wednesday.

I will always love that place and people who make it so special. Please respect my privacy during this very, very sad time, he said.

Alexander didnt provide details of the investigation.

The Martin Agency spokesman Dean Jarrett would not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Alexanders departure.

There are instances when were unable to provide details in deference to the request of individuals who have come forward to report actions of others that are inconsistent with our values and guidelines, Jarrett said in an email Wednesday.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has tried to talk to current and former employees with knowledge of the investigation since Alexander abruptly left the Richmond-based agency Friday, ending a long career at the award-winning agency whose clients include Geico, Oreo, Subway and Benjamin Moore paint.

But as of Wednesday night, none had publicly come forward.

Alexanders departure comes two months after the agencys parent company, the New York-based Interpublic Group of Companies, issued a memo to its 50,000-plus employees detailing the companys zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment. The issuance of the memo was reported by the trade journal Adweek in late October.

The memo included an IPG AlertLine for employees to call to anonymously report complaints about sexual harassment, Adweek reported.

Alexander led the creative team at The Martin Agency during a period in which it racked up numerous industry awards. Three months ago, Alexander was honored by the 4As, a membership organization representing the marketing communications agency business, as one of the 100 people who make advertising great.

Alexander was hired by The Martin Agency in 1991. A Minneapolis-St. Paul native and a 1983 journalism and mass communications graduate of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, Alexander worked at agencies in his hometown before coming to The Martin Agency.

Agency CEO Matt Williams informed employees about Alexanders departure in a brief email late Friday afternoon. The email said that Karen Costello and Jerry Hoak will step in as creative leads and that clients are being notified of the change.

In recent weeks, numerous high-profile men in top positions at major organizations across the country have been dismissed because of accusations of sexual harassment and improper behavior.
The Richmond Times-Dispatchs 74th Public Square will examine the challenges facing consumers in protecting their identities against consumer fraud, cyberthreats, ransomware and other fraudulent activity.

Speakers: New York Times columnist Ron Lieber, who asked the hard questions in the Equifax fiasco, and Tom Gallagher, who led the Better Business Bureau of Central Virginia for 35 years

Moderator: RTD Business editor Gregory J. Gilligan

Join the conversation: We want to hear your stories. Come to the Public Square to talk about your personal experiences in dealing with data or identity theft and other consumer fraud.

When: noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Times-Dispatch downtown offices, 300 E. Franklin St.

Parking: There will be no parking available in The Times-Dispatch parking deck, but there is plenty of street parking around the building. Also, several pay-to-park lots are within a few blocks of The Times-Dispatch.
A Chester man was killed in a three-vehicle crash early Wednesday on Interstate 95 in Chesterfield County.

The crash occurred about 4 a.m. on southbound I-95 north of Exit 52, which is for Washington Street.

According to Virginia State Polices preliminary investigation, 20-year-old Jailyn Richad Allred was driving a Saturn sedan that was traveling north in the southbound lane and struck a Nissan Altima head-on. The driver of a tractor-trailer, which was traveling south, attempted to avoid the crash and hit a Jersey wall.

The drivers of both sedans suffered serious injuries and were taken to Southside Regional Medical Center, where Allred died. The tractor-trailer driver suffered minor injuries.
A small, Tennessee-based group that calls itself the New Confederate States of America and prompted a massive police response when it held a rally on Monument Avenue in September says its returning to Richmond on Saturday.

But after the groups last attempted event peaked at seven supporters, some city leaders and residents say they essentially plan to ignore the ralliers this time around.

I dont think theyre being taken too seriously, said City Councilwoman Kim Gray, who represents the district.

The president of the Fan District Association, Katherine Jordan, said the organization is focused on its holiday house tour, which will take place over the weekend.

Im not worried about (the rally), she said. Much like the state Capitol, we see occasional protesters throughout the year, and the police will respond if needed.

The last rally, coming on the heels of violent clashes on the streets of Charlottesville, prompted police to essentially lock down Monument Avenue around the statue of Robert E. Lee, with hundreds of police officers and thousands of feet of fencing.

Meanwhile, the lead-up to the event generated widespread anxiety among residents, culminating in a tense community meeting during which residents pleaded with authorities to stop the rally, something officials said they could not do without violating the groups First Amendment rights to free speech.

In Richmond, assemblies need to be permitted only if they are large enough to block traffic or impede the flow of pedestrians on a sidewalk.

The city later said that its response to the event, which in addition to seven attendees drew several hundred counterprotesters, cost $570,000.

This time, police have signaled to residents they arent planning to re-create the same massive response, saying they dont even plan to shut down streets.

A police spokesman, Gene Lepley, said in a statement only that the department is aware of the event and that officers are prepared to ensure the safety of the public.

A representative of the New Confederate States of America, Thomas Crompton, declined to comment on the groups plans for the day or its message, saying it wont release any information until the day of the event.

The groups website primarily appears to be focused on selling Confederate memorabilia such as shirts, stickers and flags. The Saturday event, which the group is calling Protect All the Monuments on Monument Ave Rally  Round 2, is listed as running from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and taking place on city property near the Lee Monument  sidestepping rigorous state permitting requirements implemented for that location last month.

If Facebook replies are any indication, this weekends rally could end up being even smaller than the September rally: So far, only 19 people have said they plan to attend, compared with the 70 who said they would attend the last event.
A Hanover County dentist pleaded guilty Wednesday in a four-year health care fraud scheme that netted more than $783,000 from Medicaid and four dental insurers.

Maryam E. Zarei, 47, of Glen Allen, the owner and operator of Atlee Station Family Dentistry in Mechanicsville, pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud. She faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced March 16 by U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson.

Court documents show that Zarei controlled the submission of claims to insurance companies for reimbursement and, from 2013 to 2016, defrauded Medicaid and four insurance companies.

The scheme involved billing for services never rendered, some of them supposedly provided when Zarei was out of the country; billing using inappropriate codes that resulted in higher reimbursements; and backdating claims for services that were actually provided after the patients insurance coverage had ended.

David T. Maguire, an assistant U.S. attorney, and David W. Tooker, a special assistant U.S. attorney, are prosecuting the case.
Shion Fenty, a fashion designer and administrative assistant from Chesterfield County, on Wednesday announced that she would run for the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin, D-4th.

For too long, the federal government has had too much control over our personal, academic, and economic successes, Fenty, 37, said in a news release. Its time for policies that will return that control where it belongs: back home to our families and communities.

Fenty is the daughter of immigrants from Guyana, formerly British Guyana, in South America. She attended high school in Chesterfield and Strayer University and is involved in volunteer work with students, foster children and at nursing homes, according to the news release.

McEachin, a lawyer and former state senator, was elected to the seat in 2016 after a court-ordered redistricting created new district lines that made the district lean Democratic. Former Republican Rep. Randy Forbes of the 4th District opted to run in the 2nd Congressional District GOP primary and lost to Scott Taylor, who won the seat.

McEachin won nearly 58 percent of the vote against Republican Mike Wade, the sheriff of Henrico County. In the presidential race in November 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton received 58 percent of the vote in the 4th District to 37 percent for Republican Donald Trump.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates topped 7% for the first time in more than two decades this week, a result of the Federal Reserves aggressive rate hikes intended to tame inflation not seen in some 40 years. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average on the key 30-year rate jumped to 7.08% from 6.94% last week. The last time the average rate was above 7% was April 2002, a time when the U.S. was still reeling from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but six years away from the 2008 housing market collapse that triggered the Great Recession.
Washington and Lee University, home to one of the countrys largest per-student endowments, would see its investment returns taxed under the tax bills passed by the U.S. House and Senate.

Other private college endowments in Virginia, including Hollins Universitys, could be taxed too under one or both version of the bills, which impose the 1.4 percent excise tax at different thresholds. Those differences and others will be worked out in conference this month; a joint bill is expected by Christmas.

Higher education officials warn the legislation as written would have dire consequences for students, leading potentially to tuition increases, scholarship decreases and staff cuts. Theyve lobbied to remove the provisions taxing endowments entirely or amend them to blunt the impact.

Taxing endowments that provide real money to support students is a terrible idea, Washington and Lee President Will Dudley said. It hurts students and families.

College endowments have been targeted for some time by both conservatives and liberals, who have contended that many universities have allowed the money to accumulate rather than using investment income to benefit students.

Dudley and other administrators argue there are better ways Congress could check such practices, such as requiring colleges spend a percentage of investments yearly.

The House tax bills initial version proposed taxing private colleges with at least 500 students and endowments valued at $100,000 or more per student, and then raised the threshold to $250,000.

The Chronicle of Higher Education estimated that higher amount could affect about 61 colleges, including four in Virginia: Hollins University, Randolph College, the University of Richmond and Washington and Lee.

The Senate version raised the threshold even higher, to $500,000. In Virginia, only the University of Richmond and Washington and Lee have endowment-to-student ratios high enough to qualify at that level. Theyre among an estimated 27 colleges nationwide that would be affected, the Chronicle estimated.

Public college endowments would not be taxed under either proposal.

Hollins officials were encouraged to see its name fall off the list under the Senate version, said Kerry Edmonds, the universitys vice president for finance and administration. However, she said concerns remain that the final bills threshold would include them.

Hollins endowment was valued at $182.2 million at the end of June and the university has about 800 students, 650 of whom are undergraduates. Neither proposal specifies whether all students or just undergraduates would count toward the per-student calculation.

Just counting undergraduate students, Hollins would surpass the Houses $250,000 threshold. With graduate students included, Hollins wouldnt meet that threshold, but it would be close.

Under that scenario, Edmonds said, the tax bill would be a disincentive for Hollins to increase its endowment and risk the 1.4 percent tax  estimated at about $300,000, based on its returns this year.

It puts us right there at the threshold, Edmonds said.

Randolph College would similarly fall close-to-but-below the threshold, with an endowment valued at $148 million last year and close to 700 students, almost all of whom are undergraduates.

Washington and Lees endowment, valued at $1.55 billion as of June, would be taxed under both proposals. Its tax this year would be about $700,000, based on the funds most recent returns. W&L has 2,160 students, about 15 percent of whom are graduate students.

To put that in perspective, thats 14 full tuition scholarships or six faculty positions or 100 student internships, so its a significant hit to the budget, Dudley said.

The University of Richmond, with about 4,200 students and an endowment valued at $2.4 billion as of June, normally would meet the criteria under both bills to be taxed, also. Yet the university would have avoided a tax this year because its investments posted a loss, according to an auditors report.

Such investment losses are hard to anticipate and would make it difficult for colleges to plan budgets, many of which include money spent from endowments, Edmonds said. About 37 percent of Hollins budget comes from the endowment; at W&L its 40 percent of the universitys budget.

Both Hollins and Washington and Lee have increased their endowments significantly in recent years. The goal, Dudley and Edmonds said, was to make the universities less tuition-dependent. Its large endowment is what allows W&L to offer full tuition scholarships to students whose families have incomes less than $75,000, Dudley said.

I think there is a misperception that universities with endowments are just irresponsibly sitting on piles of money that were actually putting to work to support students, he said. They exist to support students not just today but for the next 10, 50, 100 years.

Most of an endowments funds must be left untouched in order to continue seeing returns, but colleges can responsibly spend about 5 percent each year, Dudley said.

Washington and Lee spends 5 percent of its endowment each year, while Hollins spends closer to 7 percent. Edmonds said Hollins backs the idea of a required spending percentage, too.

Thats a better use of those funds than an excise tax, she said.

Both W&L and Hollins officials have lobbied legislators, including Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and 6th District Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Washington and Lee law graduate whose district includes both universities.

Goodlatte, who voted for the tax bill, said in a statement that he has relayed those concerns to the conference committee.

Properly done, a tax could incentivize more capital being dedicated to reducing the cost of tuition and the amount of student loans that students have to bear and the federal taxpayers have to guarantee, Goodlatte said.

Dudley and Edmonds said their lobbying efforts would continue as Congress works to reconcile the two bills. The colleges have asked alumni living in other states to lobby their representatives, too.

Edmonds said she hopes universities can successfully fight the proposal.

I dont know that [Congress] fully understood and appreciated the direct impact it was going to have on institutions and being able to meet their mission, she said.
RICHMOND  A state board responsible for protecting Virginias water awarded certification Thursday for the deeply controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, voting 5-2 during a meeting that ended with confusion and conflict.

With its vote, the State Water Control Board determined there was a reasonable assurance that construction of the natural gas pipeline will not contaminate streams and other bodies of water along its path.

Opponents counter that digging trenches for a buried steel pipe 42 inches in diameter along steep mountain slopes is a recipe for environmental disaster.

A highly technical regulatory process that began two years ago became even more dense Thursday as the board struggled to reconcile an earlier decision by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to relinquish part of the states review to a federal agency.

After taking a break to revise the language of its water quality certification, the board returned to the stage in a church gymnasium where emotions had run high at times during a two-day meeting that began Wednesday.

As the vote was taken  with members Nissa Dean and Roberta Kellam dissenting  a few boos that broke out in the audience escalated to angry outbursts when Chairman Robert Dunn adjourned the meeting.

Some pipeline opponents shouted obscenities and threats at the board members. We know where you live, one of them yelled.

A large police contingent then cleared the building and ordered everyone to leave the property.

Earlier in the day, DEQs director of water permitting acknowledged that many people who live in the pipelines path are angry and scared about the projects impact. I get that, Melanie Davenport told the board.

But in the end, this certification is part of the most rigorous regulatory process to which a proposed pipeline ever has been subjected in Virginia, DEQ said in a statement immediately following the vote.

Almost as quickly, opponents said they were considering a lawsuit that would seek to reverse the boards action.

We think there are very strong grounds for a challenge, said Ben Luckett, an attorney with Appalachian Mountain Advocates.

A spokeswoman for Mountain Valley said the state certification, which comes with more than a dozen special conditions, provides further assurance that the MVP project will be constructed in an environmentally responsible manner.

From the start, Natalie Cox wrote in an email, we have worked to design a route with the least overall impact to landowners and communities; and to preserve and protect sensitive species, historical resources and the environment, including streams and wetlands.

Approval by the water control board was a key hurdle that MVP needed to clear before starting work on the project, which would transport natural gas at high pressure through a pipe that would run through the Roanoke and New River valleys on its way from West Virginia to Pittsylvania County.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Forest Service have already signed off on the project. A handful of agencies have yet to act. MVP hopes to begin pipeline operations by late next year.

Construction will begin as soon as practical once we receive all the necessary permissions, Cox said.

After hearing public comments on Wednesday, water control board members waded deeper into the certification issue Thursday during a presentation by Davenport, who detailed the 15 additional conditions the state will impose on the project.

Among them are special precautions for construction in karst terrain, additional water sampling, enhanced riparian buffers and a requirement that MVP pledge $5 million toward a complaint resolution process for residents whose drinking water might be impacted.

One source of friction was DEQs earlier decision to allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to review the pipelines impact on individual stream and wetland crossings  a process that critics call a blanket approach that lacks strict scrutiny.

As board member Robert Wayland pointed out, the Corps of Engineers has yet to determine whether the MVP project is eligible to fall under its review.

I really think thats a bridge too far, he said of Virginias decision to offer certification with the assumption the Corps will grant a permit  which could take one of two forms yet to be decided.

After breaking for a closed door session, DEQ officials came up with an extra condition stating that while the state certification is limited to construction in upland areas, Virginia also reserves its right to additional regulation elsewhere.

Theyre trying to chop this up into a bunch of little pieces, and thats not how the Clean Water Act works, Luckett said.

All of this confusion is DEQs fault, added David Sligh of Wild Virginia, a group that opposes the pipeline. If they had approached this in a combined fashion, we wouldnt have had any of this confusion.

In addition, pipeline opponents say that DEQ staff failed to provide enough data and details to the board for it to make an informed decision.

At the end of the day, DEQ and the applicant are asking you to certify the Mountain Valley Pipeline without highly relevant information, Peter Anderson, Virginia program manager of Appalachian Voices, told the board Wednesday, the first day of their two-day meeting.

During public comment sessions over the summer, more than 8,000 people submitted verbal and written statements to DEQ about the project.

Only about 100 expressed clear support for the pipeline. But DEQ officials stressed that the process does not amount to a popular vote, but rather is governed by the scientific analysis of whether water quality standards will be met.

A final public hearing on Wednesday drew about 250 people to a church gymnasium in Henrico County, held to accommodate an expected crowd too large for DEQs main office in Richmond.

Of the approximately 80 speakers, many repeated earlier concerns that cutting trees, grading land, digging trenches, and laying the pipe will cause major problems with erosion that will channel harmful sediment into streams and rivers.

I think the central question thats facing this board today is that, Can MVP keep the mountain on the mountainside?  said Greg Buppert, attorney for Southern Environmental Law Center. If this project is going to be completed on steep mountain slopes, we need to know what the controls are to keep the sediment on the mountainside.

State troopers and county police kept a heavy presence, and several pipeline objectors who refused to cede the lectern after their allotted three minutes expired were led away without incident.

All seven members of the citizens board were appointed or re-appointed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who supports the pipeline for the economic benefits it would bring to the state.
A small, Tennessee-based group that calls itself the New Confederate States of America and prompted a massive police response when it held a rally on Monument Avenue in September says its returning to Richmond on Saturday.

But after the groups last attempted event peaked at seven supporters, some city leaders and residents say they essentially plan to ignore the ralliers this time around.

I dont think theyre being taken too seriously, said City Councilwoman Kim Gray, who represents the district.

The president of the Fan District Association, Katherine Jordan, said the organization is focused on its holiday house tour, which will take place over the weekend.

Im not worried about (the rally), she said. Much like the state Capitol, we see occasional protesters throughout the year, and the police will respond if needed.

The last rally, coming on the heels of violent clashes on the streets of Charlottesville, prompted police to essentially lock down Monument Avenue around the statue of Robert E. Lee, with hundreds of police officers and thousands of feet of fencing.

Meanwhile, the lead-up to the event generated widespread anxiety among residents, culminating in a tense community meeting during which residents pleaded with authorities to stop the rally, something officials said they could not do without violating the groups First Amendment rights to free speech.

In Richmond, assemblies need to be permitted only if they are large enough to block traffic or impede the flow of pedestrians on a sidewalk.

The city later said that its response to the event, which in addition to seven attendees drew several hundred counterprotesters, cost $570,000.

This time, police have signaled to residents they arent planning to re-create the same massive response, saying they dont even plan to shut down streets.

A police spokesman, Gene Lepley, said in a statement only that the department is aware of the event and that officers are prepared to ensure the safety of the public.

A representative of the New Confederate States of America, Thomas Crompton, declined to comment on the groups plans for the day or its message, saying it wont release any information until the day of the event.

The groups website primarily appears to be focused on selling Confederate memorabilia such as shirts, stickers and flags. The Saturday event, which the group is calling Protect All the Monuments on Monument Ave Rally  Round 2, is listed as running from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and taking place on city property near the Lee Monument  sidestepping rigorous state permitting requirements implemented for that location last month.

If Facebook replies are any indication, this weekends rally could end up being even smaller than the September rally: So far, only 19 people have said they plan to attend, compared with the 70 who said they would attend the last event.

Asked how many people he expected to join his group, Crompton said hes not at liberty to give that information.
December 5, 2017 Zana Webb McCoy Albert, 94, of McCoy, died on Tuesday, December 5, 2017. She was born in Sylvatus, Va. to the late Marion Franklin and Emma Ruth Lewis Webb. She was preceded in death by her brother, Kelly Webb; her first husband; and father of her children, Lawrence McCoy; and her second husband, Francis Albert. Surviving are two daughters and a son-in-law, Julia (G.I.) Graham and Melissa Wohlford and husband, Bill; son, Lenwood McCoy; step-daughter, Sheila Easter and husband, Michael; brother and sisters-in-law, Willis Webb and wife, Virginia, Martha Webb, Susie Vest and Mary Pauley; step-sisters, Eva Daniel and Mary Taylor; seven grandchildren; six great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. Zana retired from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant as a medical secretary and was always active in her church. She served as church pianist for more than 60 years. She also enjoyed hand crafts of all kinds and spent hours crocheting and knitting gifts for family members and friends. The family would like to acknowledge and thank her caregiver Lois for such good care of her for the last 10 years. Also thanks to Alisha, another devoted caregiver, and the Good Samaritan Hospice. Funeral will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday, December 9, 2017 at the Community Christian Church in McCoy with burial following in the Centennial Christian Church cemetery. The family will receive friends at the McCoy Funeral Home on Friday evening from 5 to 7 p.m. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations in her memory to the Blue Ridge Christian Camp, PO Box 428, McCoy, Va. 24111.
Diamond Fields International said the Namibian government has renewed its key mining licence, ML111, for a period of 10 years.

The renewal had been subject to the company undertaking a renewed environmental impact assessment and have an environmental management plan report prepared and approved.

Diamond Fields was also supposed to ensure that at least 5 percent of its local subsidiary was under ownership of Namibians.

Meanwhile, Mining.com reports that the company would resume mining off the coast of Namibia next year following the renewal of the licence.

Marine diamond output had outpaced land-based mining in Namibia.

The southern African country produced 1,7 million carats of marine diamond compared to 403,000 carats recovered on land last year, according to Mining.com.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




The World Diamond Council (WDC) called to start an open discussion of a possible Kimberley Process (KP) reform at the KP Plenary meeting to be held in Brisbane, Australia on December 9-14, 2017, according to a press note released by the WDC on Wednesday. The WDC believes there are three areas in need of reform, including a broader scope of the KP within the debate on the expansion of the definition of conflict diamonds, the establishment of a permanent secretariat and a review of the current Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) core documents.

Stephane Fischler, Acting President of the WDC speaking at a press conference call on Wednesday in the runup to the KP Plenary reaffirmed the importance of the KP and the WDC System of Warranties (SoW) as a critical tool in the fight against conflict diamonds. He said, With the KP, we have much to be proud of having virtually eliminated conflict diamonds from the legitimate supply chain. But our job is not over, and we have more to do together to evolve the efficiency of decision making within the KP in order to maintain credibility and effect meaningful change in our shared goal of conflict resolution. I would call on all KP participants to treat this matter with a sense of urgency and ensure that our time together at the KP Plenary results in the positive outcomes that I know are possible if we all work together toward this common goal.

The WDC believes there are three areas in need of reform to ensure continued success of the KP and SoW, which include:

1. Broadening the scope of the KP within the debate on the expansion of the definition of conflict diamonds. WDC promotes the idea of making changes in a tangible way with the aim of strengthening the KPCS. The WDC is ready to participate in any expansion of the scope, based on suggestions from KP Participants. This step will increase the likelihood of safe and secure working conditions, fair labor practices and sustainable development in diamond communities.

2. Establish a permanent secretariat based in a neutral country. This will ensure preservation of institutional memory, dedicated staffing, technical and administrative support of the daily work of the KP and its bodies, creation of a dedicated experts team to manage and effectively implement KP decisions and restrictions, restoration of KPCS implementation in sanctioned counties, securing the integrity and relevance of the KPCS as the only universal mechanism to ensure sustainable sourcing and enhancing the efficiency of the Peer review system, support for development projects in Participant countries, providing meaningful capacity building on the ground. All of these aspects are crucial to the implementation of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). The WDC recommends this secretariat be ready to act 24/7 on all KP matters and that the position be funded by KP Participants together with the Observers on voluntary basis.

3. Review the current KPCS core document and standards, with the goal of strengthening the KPCS minimum standards by making the peer review mechanism stronger.

Stressing the importance of keeping conflict diamonds out of the global supply chain, Stephane Fischler said that this is a responsibility that is shared by all parties, not just governments. That is why in addition to the KPs scope, further implementation of the diamond industrys system of self-regulation, the WDC SoW, is an important objective for us as it regulates diamonds from rough to polished and across the diamond pipeline, he added.

Speaking of a possible change in the definition of conflict diamonds, Stephane Fischler said the WDC took a very well-known position in 2012 supporting an expansion of this definition and would like to talk more about the scope of the definition at first, pressing upon the participants the importance of expanding the scope of the KP and making sure there is a broad agreement around that before starting to talk about changing the wording of the definition. Also, in his opinion it would be appropriate to have a blessing of the United Nations on this, as the current definition of conflict diamonds was once approved by the UN.

Touching upon the situation in the Central African Republic, the acting president of the WDC noted that to broaden the KP-compliant green zones in this country its government needs to start policing non-compliant areas, which is not an easy thing to do. So far, there are still five green zones there and the KP requirements have not expanded beyond them.

In Stephane Fischlers opinion it is also important that all participants of the diamond pipeline are really taking ownership of the Kimberley Process. It might have not been in the past like this, but I welcome the representatives of African producers to take responsibility by stating that it's really important for African countries to take ownership of the Process and I can only salute it, he said commenting on the recent interview of MZee Fula Ngenge, the chairperson of the African Diamond Council and African Diamond Producers Association to Rough&Polished. However, Stephane Fischler said that he tends to disagree with the opinion expressed in the interview regarding the chairmanship of the Kimberley Process. I think there are exporting countries and there are importing countries, and all of them have their role to play to ensure an ethical pipeline, he said adding that it is very critical that all interested parties jointly manage the Kimberley Process.

According to the press note, diamond industry members of the WDC are close to finalizing the Guidelines which will serve to update the SoW. These Guidelines will be distributed for public review to Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and other interested parties in the spring of 2018.

The WDC also launched this week a new version of diamondfacts.org to share new and updated facts and information about the benefits that diamonds bring to local communities around the world.

Vladimir Malakhov, Rough&Polished, Moscow
R. J. Corman Railroad Group

R. J. Corman Railroad Group has announced a partnership with the Kentucky Labor Cabinet to begin an apprenticeship program.

The company said it plans to continue investing resources into people, and the program is intended to boost the recruitment and retention levels of new hires.

As a family-owned, Kentucky-based business, we are pleased to work with the Department of Labor to continue to create opportunities for the citizens of the commonwealth, said Ed Quinn, president and CEO of R. J. Corman Railroad Group. We believe by investing in people, we can contribute to the workforce development of our state.

The program will begin with the start of 2018 as R. J. Corman and the Labor Cabinet continue developing its curriculum. Recruiting efforts are set to include working with area high schools and U.S. military veterans.

After apprentices are selected, the company said they will work with a qualified journeyman to gain further knowledge of their craft.

Apprentices will receive their journeyman certificate after they complete the required four-year term. R. J. Corman Railroad Group currently employs a shop staff with industry knowledge in machining, welding and fabrication, the company said.

Another area with potential for the program is through the growing Signaling company, which designs, builds and installs various railroad industry signal systems.

The program is expected to continue to grow, eventually involving different companies and positions within the R. J. Corman brand as opportunities arise in the future.

In Kentucky today, employers are facing a shortage of a skilled workforce, said Kentucky Labor Secretary Derrick Ramsey. Registered Apprenticeships are the answer to this problem and businesses like R. J. Corman are reinforcing their commitment to develop and retain more highly-skilled talent through these programs. I applaud R. J. Corman for taking steps to bring more opportunity to their region and I look forward to the success this apprenticeship will bring to Nicholasville.
Nearly 200 passengers onboard Royal Caribbean cruise ship suffered from vomiting and diarrhea after they were struck down with gastroenteritis bug.

Royal Caribbean's biggest ship "Ovation of the Seas" carries more than 5800 passengers and has been sailing for two weeks. It arrived in Tasmania, Australia, on Tuesday after a trip to Singapore.

Royal Caribbean said 195 people received over-the-counter medication for gastroenteritis.

The ship will be "comprehensively sanitized and cleansed" once it arrives at its next port in Sydney tomorrow before new passengers board.

"Those affected by the short-lived illness were treated by our ship's doctors with over-the-counter medication, and we hope all our guests feel better quickly," Royal Caribbean said in a statement. "Meanwhile, we're taking steps like intensive sanitary procedures to minimize the risk of any further issues."

"In addition, crew have undertaken enhanced cleaning practices throughout the cruise, including significantly increasing the already regular sanitization of hand touch surfaces such as door handles, railings and elevator buttons.

"We communicate well established educational hand hygiene practices to all passengers and crew. Hand washing basins are provided at key dining venues and hand sanitizers at all restaurants and bar entrances, where crew are located encouraging guests to use the sanitizing hand product."

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Japan is scheduled to release a raft of data on Friday, setting the pace for a busy day in Asia-Pacific economic activity.

On tap are October numbers for current account and labor cash earnings, plus November figures for bank lending and the eco watchers survey, and final Q3 data for gross domestic product.

The current account is expected to show a surplus of 1.730 billion yen, down from 2.271 billion yen in September. Labor cash earnings are tipped to rise 0.8 percent on year after gaining 0.9 percent in the previous month.

Bank lending is expected to hold steady at 2.8 percent on year. The eco survey for current conditions is expected to show a score of 52.1, down from 52.2 in October, while the outlook is called at 54.0 - down from 54.9 a month earlier.

GDP is expected to be revised up to 0.4 percent on quarter and 1.5 percent on year - up from last month's preliminary reading that suggested a gain of 0.3 percent on quarter and 1.4 percent on year. GDP in the second quarter was up 0.6 percent on quarter and 2.6 percent on year.

China will release November numbers for imports, exports and trade balance. Imports are expected to add12.0 percent on year, slowing from 17.2 percent in October. Exports are called higher by 5.1 percent, slowing from 6.9 percent in the previous month. The trade surplus is pegged at $34.70 billion, down from $38.17 billion a month earlier.

Australia will provide October figures for home loans, with forecasts suggesting a decline of 2.0 percent on month following the 2.3 percent drop in September.

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The cryptocurrency mining marketplace NiceHash said it was hacked and $64 million worth of bitcoin may have been stolen.

Slovenia-based NiceHash said it is investigating the nature of the security breach involving its website, and stopping all operations for a day. The payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet were stolen on Thursday.

NiceHash head of marketing Andrej P Skraba was quoted as saying that approximately 4,700 BTC - worth about $64 million - was lost.

NiceHash, which offers computing capacity for bitcoin miners to mine digital currencies, said this is a matter of deep concern and is working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. "The incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement".

Customers have been urged to change their online passwords.

Several users have reported on social media that their NiceHash-linked wallets were emptied during the outage, with some saying they could lose hundreds of dollars.

Ethereum, another form of cryptocurrency, had come under attack last month. millions of dollars worth Ethereum were "accidentally" frozen on the cryptocurrency wallet provider Parity after a user deleted its code and froze all ether tokens contained within.

Following the failure of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox in 2014, Japanese Government enacted new laws to regulate cryptocurrencies.

In the wake of significant spurt in the value of bitcoin, the Reserve Bank of India this week had cautioned users and traders of virtual currencies against the potential economic, legal, customer protection and security related risks involved in dealing with them.

Meanwhile Bitcoin's value surpassed $15,000 mark for the first time on Thursday. The Chicago Board Options Exchange, or CBOE is planning to launch futures trading in the virtual currency starting Sunday.

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Business News
The House of Representatives has passed a law allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons between states without having to worry about conflicting state laws.

It was the first major self-defense gun legislation that the House approved after a Connecticut school massacre five years ago.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act was passed by a 231-198 vote with bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Lower House.

The National Rifle Association, which has been lobbying for it for 30 years, applauded the passage of the Bill.

The bill, H.R. 38, ensures that those Americans who can legally carry a concealed firearm in one state will legally be able to do so in every other state. It eliminates the conflicting state laws that prevented gun owners from carrying a firearm in multiple states.

The bill also makes improvements to the national background check system. National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, helps states and government agencies to update it with legitimate records of prohibited persons.

Additionally, the bill creates an expedited process for removing records that are erroneously put in the system. Currently, when a person discovers they have been wrongly added to the NICS, it can take up to a year to get their name removed. This bill requires a response to an appeal within 60 days.

The measure will now go to the Senate, where it needs to be passed to become law.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Markets in Europe got off to a positive start Thursday and climbed during the first few hours of trade, before paring their early gains. The majority of the ended the day with modest gains, after struggling during the previous two sessions.

Traders remain in a cautious mood ahead of tomorrow's U.S. jobs report. Lingering uncertainty about the final Republican tax reform bill is also weighed on investor sentiment, as well as Brexit concerns.

The U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is likely to put forth a fresh offer to resolve Irish border dispute, as Brexit negotiator Michael Barnier issued a deadline to potential deal.

Barnier insisted that diplomats of the 27 member states have to sign the deal by Friday, if talks must move onto trade at a summit next week.

The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index advanced 0.02 percent. The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone blue chip stocks increased 0.34 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, lost 0.13 percent.

The DAX of Germany climbed 0.36 percent and the CAC 40 of France rose 0.18 percent. The FTSE 100 of the U.K. declined 0.37 percent and the SMI of Switzerland finished lower by 0.42 percent.

In Frankfurt, energy firm Uniper lost 1.98 percent despite confirming its earnings outlook for the current year and promising higher dividend next year.

Furniture retailer Steinhoff sank 45.34 percent to extend Wednesday's slump, hit by news of the launch of an investigation into accounting irregularities.

In Paris, telecommunications firm Orange rallied 2.32 percent. The company targets growth in adjusted EBITDA of around 2 percent in 2017, followed by an acceleration of the growth rate in 2018 and continued growth in 2019 and 2020.

Carrefour declined 2.91 percent after Bernstein downgraded its rating on the stock to "Underperform" from "Market Perform."

In London, RM Plc jumped 15.37 percent after the educational ICT and resources group said it expects results for the financial year ended November 30, 2017 to be ahead of expectations.

Ladbrokes Coral shares surged 28.86 percent after bookmaker GVC Holdings offered to buy the gambling giant for 3.9 billion ($5.2 billion).

William Hill leaped 8.10 percent. The company has reached an agreement with Scientific Games Corp. (SGMS) to unconditionally support Scientific Games' proposed acquisition of NYX. Following the agreement all the parties have withdrawn from all litigation in the US and UK.

The euro area expanded, as initially estimated, in the third quarter largely on investment and exports, Eurostat reported Thursday. Gross domestic product grew 0.6 percent sequentially, slightly slower than the 0.7 percent expansion seen in the second quarter. The rate came in line with the estimate released on November 14.

Germany's industrial production dropped unexpectedly in October driven by weakness across major sectors except energy.

Industrial production fell 1.4 percent month-on-month in October, following a revised 0.9 percent drop in September, data from Destatis showed Thursday. This was the second straight decline in output. Production was forecast to grow 0.9 percent.

The French trade gap widened in October from a month earlier, the customs office reported Thursday. The trade deficit rose to EUR 5.0 billion in October from EUR 4.6 billion in September. The deficit was forecast to increase to 4.7 billion.

The French current account gap narrowed in October from a month earlier, data from the Bank of France showed Thursday. The current account deficit fell to EUR 2.2 billion in October from EUR 3.3 billion in September.

UK house prices increased more than expected in November, data published by the mortgage lender Halifax and IHS Markit showed Thursday.

On a monthly basis, house prices increased 0.5 percent, faster than the 0.3 percent rise posted in October. This was the fifth consecutive increase. Prices were forecast to grow marginally by 0.2 percent.

A day ahead of the release of the closely watched monthly jobs report, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday unexpectedly showing a modest decrease in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended December 2nd.

The report said initial jobless claims edged down to 236,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 238,000. The drop surprised economists, who had expected jobless claims to inch up to 240,000.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Most Americans think former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea and cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in last year's election is a serious matter for President Donald Trump's administration, according to a CBS News poll.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans said the move by Flynn is a serious matter for the Trump administration, while 27 percent said it is not a serious matter.

Democrats and independents are far more likely to say the issue is a serious matter, although 34 percent of Republicans agree.

Flynn pleaded guilty last Friday to "willfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI regarding conversations with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

Meanwhile, the poll showed a significant partisan divide over whether the Russia investigation is justified or politically motivated.

Eighty-one percent of Republicans said the investigation is politically motivated, while 74 percent of Democrats said the probe is justified.

The partisan divide contributes to a split among all Americans, as 48 percent said the investigation is politically motivated and 46 percent said it is justified.

The survey also found that 67 percent of Americans think it is very or somewhat likely that senior Trump advisors had improper dealings with Russia, while 26 percent said it is not very or not at all likely.

The CBS News poll of 1,120 adults was conducted by SSRS from December 3rd through 5th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Senator Al Franken, D-Minn., announced Thursday he will step down in the coming weeks amid allegations of sexual misconduct by several women.

The announcement by Franken comes after a number of his Democratic colleagues called for his resignation over the allegations.

Franken noted in a speech on the Senate floor that his decision comes even as President Donald Trump and Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore have also been accused of sexual misconduct.

"I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party," Franken said.

"But this decision is not about me. It's about the people of Minnesota," he added. "And it's become clear that I can't both pursue the Ethics Committee process and, at the same time, remain an effective Senator for them."

Franken's resignation comes as seven women have come forward in recent weeks and accused the senator of groping or trying to forcibly kiss them.

The former comedian said some of the allegations against him are simply not true, while he remembers the other alleged incidents very differently.

"I am proud that, during my time in the Senate, I have used my power to be a champion for women - and that I have earned a reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day," Franken said.

"I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks," he added. "But I know who I really am."

The decision by Franken sets up a special election next year in which candidates will run to serve out the final two years of his term.

A report from Politico said Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is expected to appoint Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to fill Franken's seat until the election in November of 2018.

Sources told Politico that Smith would not run for the remainder of Franken's term, clearing the way for a wide open Democratic primary.

(Photo: Lorie Shaull)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
(Agencia CMA Latam) - Argentinean judge Claudio Bonadio requested the Senate to strip former President Cristina Kirchner from her parliamentary immunity to arrest her for the alleged cover-up of Iranian citizens suspected of involvement in the bombing of the Argentinean-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), which killed 85 people in 1994.

The judge considered "necessary" to arrest the former President claiming that "her contacts could hinder the case," and because she is a defendant in another case.

Kirchner recently took oath as Senator, after being elected in October's legislative election. The judge's request for stripping her of immunity needs to be analyzed by the Senate and must be endorsed by two-thirds of the Senators present to the session.

The acting Senate speaker, Federico Pinedo, posted on his Twitter account that the request for immunity will be analyzed "with seriousness and responsibility."

Kirchner was accused of covering-up by the late judge Alberto Nisman after signing, as Argentinean President, a bilateral agreement with the Iranian government to establish a truth commission to clarify the facts surrounding the attack.

The judge claimed to have unveiled an alleged conspiracy headed by Cristina to clear five high-ranking Iranian suspected of masterminding the 1994 bombing.

Nisman mentioned the bilateral agreement signed in 2013 as an evidence of his allegations. In the late judge's opinion, the agreement was aimed at neutralizing his investigation and the Interpol arrest warrants against the Iranian suspects.

The charges were originally pressed in January 2015, four days before Nisman was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in his Buenos Aires apartment. Investigators concluded that Nisman committed suicide.

In October, in testimony to Bonadio, Kirchner denied covering up for the Iranians. She called the case an "absurdity" and told Bonadio that she doesn't expect "any justice coming from you."

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.


Man burnt alive in Rajasthan for 'love jihad', accused arrested In a horrifying video going viral, a man is seen being burnt alive in Rajasamand district of Rajasthan, for allegedly committing "love jihad". Police arrested the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Shambunath Raigar, on Thursday.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.



Meanwhile, police are keeping an eye on the law and order situation in the state.



Initially, Raigar made a video of his brutal act and it was uploaded on social media. The video went viral when the police were conducting their investigations.



The video shows the perpetrator hitting the man with an agricultural tool, and then pouring kerosene on his body and burning him alive. Raigar is seen warning that those indulging in 'love jihad' will meet the same fate.



In another video, which is also going viral, Raigar is seen justifying the act as an endeavour to save a girl from 'love jihad'.



Speaking to IANS, SP Manoj Kumar said the police received information about a semi-burnt body lying in Ragnagar in Rajsamand district.



Without delay, he along with ASP Manish Tripathi and DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location where they found a badly disfigured body. Immediately the forensics team and dog squad were summoned. The agricultural tool used for murder, the victim's motorbike and his slippers were found at the crime scene.






United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel ' title=' Jerusalem as the capital of Israel '>Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the face of international criticism while asserting that he was "not taking a position of any final status" of the ancient city that is also claimed by Palestine.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking immediately after Trump's announcement, delivered criticism couched in diplomatic terms, saying he was "against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians."



"Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides," Guterres added.

Trump invoked the a 1995 law passed by US Congress calling for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to justify fulfilling his campaign promise. As he pointed out, his three predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, issued waivers putting the law on hold but he was now following the intent of the Congress.



While nations and leaders, from China to Pope Francis criticised Trump's decision and even US allies have refused to follow Washington's lead on moving embassies to Jerusalem, there was no noticeable political opposition in the US from even the Democrats. In the US, politicians are loath to be seen as anti-Israel and Trump's move was a challenge to his domestic critics to make it a major politically issue.



Trump's announcement muddies the diplomatic waters in the Middle East where his son-in-law Jared Kushner is engaged in a so-far unsuccessful peace effort to bring Israel and Palestinians together for a solution to the contentious issue.



"The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides," Trump said. "I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement."



While declaring that he would ask the State Department to move the embassy to Jerusalem, he added, "This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement."



"We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders," he added. "Those questions are up to the parties involved."



That leaves the room for Israel to have West Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestine has its capital in East Jerusalem, a territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East War, if there is an eventual peace agreement between the two sides.



Trump's announcement is directed towards his domestic base, rather than the world. Almost a year into power, he has failed to fulfill most of his campaign promises ranging from building a wall along the Mexican border to abolishing his Obama's health insurance programme.



The only high-profile promise he was able to achieve was a tax reform. Now he can add Jerusalem to that without his opposition turning it into a divisive issue.
Dear Editor,

Apart from the burden of systems as already explained in our first discussion, corruption and collusion are the other ones. They are real problems in government, businesses and other organisations.

The impact of corruptions and collusions is also falling straight on shoulders of our people.

As explained before in the first discussion, our government leadership will never find a better direction or a better destination for Samoa unless they do something first to clean the left behind.

The leaders must take all advices from the public and try all the bests they could by taking every measures available to get down to the bottom of all government reports, in order to clean the left behind of serious crimes of corruption and collusion in our government.

That is the right process for them to follow. Also, they should always remember this important information - the appropriate growth and fruitfulness of the globalisation method for the development of our economy is relying on their leadership when they follow the right process.

That means, they must go back to the spot that they went wrong and start again from there with the right process in order to resolve the problems of the old left behind (Systems + Crimes of corruption and collusion) so that the globalisation method for the development of our economy can turn out to be successful.

In the same way, they must follow the same process in order to resolve problems of the new left behind (leasing of Customary Lands + taxing Church Ministers) so that the pathway to the future will never be a problem for their leadership.

Remember, the situation about the pathway for the future or direction/destination was never considered as a problem for the leadership. The only problem for the leadership is what the leaders left behind as results of neglection.

But since our current leaders outdone God with the new tax law, therefore, the directions and destinations are now becoming as new problems for leadership.

I considered it as a great concern because that is the warning sign of things we are going to face as we move forward. So it is very important for our country to be aware of that situation.

I took that situation very seriously and it has given me an extra obligation of bringing into this discussion our own Christian principle that we are using everyday called faith to reconfirm that situation for us.

I have no intention to impress anyone about my explanations about the principles of faith. My only intention is raising awareness because our belief in God or my belief in God or my belief in Christianity has been shattering by the current leadership with the new tax law for taxing Church Ministers earnings.

So its never enough for me to just explain and explain of what I believe without telling people why I believe what I believe. So if want to change the government leadership in the future due to the concern that I have already raised then telling just what I believe is never enough.

I have to dig deep for facts, evidences and hopeful information to explain why I believe what I believe but the most important part of that situation is communication. If I truly love my country then I have to communicate all information I have in my heart through the media in order to save my country from falling apart in the future.

Another example of that situation is the issue about same-sex marriage. I believe Mr. Editor, you may recall back in 2011/2012 or 2012/2013, I was involved in the debate on this issue through Samoa Observer when it was brought up as a goal of equality. Luckily, the encouragement of the same-sex marriage was disappeared without success because of the quick respond from the country.

Now, the same-sex marriage is starting to emerge again according to the concept of equality promoted by the United Nation.

If the same-sex marriage will be accepted in the near future by the current leadership according to the concept of equality and according to the concept of atheism known as no discrimination then paganism such as cross-marriages in families and sexual intercourses between human and animals should also be legalized.

Therefore, according to the two principles of faith, faith goes together with natural processes in order to prove faithfulness and unfaithfulness or righteousness and unrighteousness as explained in detail here below.

The two different Principles of Faith are based on two different circumstances a person could be surrounded with. The first one is in (Romans 4:1-6) and the second one is in (James 2:14-26). The second principle of faith is drawn out of the first principle.

The summary of the two principles of faith or the complete meaning of the two principles of faith is in (Hebrews 11). So, the person can easily explain the exact meaning or the relevant meaning of faith he/she has according to the circumstances that he/she gets caught in.

The first principle of faith is Faith without works [Just believing in God or just believe that He is, thats all] CIRCUMSTANCES  (Romans 4:1-6): God is dealing directly with a non-believer.

The non-believer is making his/her own choice about believing and not believing in God. Works is not needed. The thief on the cross is another good example of that situation.

God is the judge for righteousness and the unrighteousness. Abraham was a non-believer until God called upon him. Abraham survived in all his direction and he arrived safely at all his destinations because of his faith. God approved Abraham as a righteous man because of his faith.

This first principle of faith reconfirms to us that believing in God has never been a problem before for our leaders leadership. The reason is because they have already accepted God as a Guide Line Setting or as a Default Setting for their leadership.

They did make mistakes but they did not outdo God or canceled a Law of God.

Thats why it is impossible to challenge in the Court of Justice if whether or not Gods law of Do not commit murder is right because that law is always right. We already accepted it according to its moral standard (God) and origin (God).

The second principle of faith is Faith with works [A believer must prove his/her belief in God to others through actions and works] CIRCUMSTANCES  (James 2:14-26):

(a) A believer must prove his/her faith through things that should be provided according to the needs of another person or other people and their reactions to each other. No works means faith is dead.

(b) A believer is dealing with his/her own plan according to the plan he/she has already been thinking of to be achieved. There must be works as evidence otherwise, faith without works is dead. God is the judge for righteousness and the unrighteousness.

This second principle of faith identifies the situation of plans turning into actions and works. Thats the situation we see happening every day in our government which is great. So it is a long process.

Apart from that, this same principle of faith can also identify problems of left behind in the work process as well as the ways to resolve problems and the ways to clean the inside of the work process. I made up a name for the work process in order to simplify my points.

It is based from issues in our government. The name for the process is [Pass Touch and Pass]. If the work process is always followed then the inside of the government will be free of left behind. If not, the inside will become as a big mess.

As explained above that through faith, we accepted God and His truth wholeheartedly to run our government process with. That is, the leaders must follow the right process by delivering of the right leadership and by following of the right work process such as the process of [Pass Touch and Pass].

Therefore the acceptance of the truth becomes a Guide Line Setting or a Default Setting in the process so that if anything else with a different intention that might have occurred in the process it can be easily identified as unlawful or corruption and collusion.

Which means, it is not an accident; it has been done intentionally for personal satisfaction or for political satisfaction. The example for that situation is when the right process of [Pass Touch and Pass] is been interfered by wrong intentions such as P.H.P (Pass Hold and Pass) or P.H.H (Pass Hold and Hide).

If the process is running with the interference of P.H.P (Pass Hold and Pass) and P.H.H (Pass Hold and Hide) then it means that everything in our government is not okay at all.

We understand that the main purpose why the current leadership has used the best available process is because of Transparency and Accountability for the country.

According to that main purpose, the Transparency and Accountability can show us the left behind as well as the directions and destinations of the countrys finances and the countrys economy. The current leaders had already promised that services to the country.

Accordingly, the country was also expecting that services to be available on a regular basis according to the right process as well as their promise.

But sadly, the Audit Reports and O.P.C Reports that provides Transparency and Accountability were on hold for a very long period of time and they are still on hold.

Our country has been really affected by that very sad situation and as a result, Samoa has left with no choice but calling for the government to provide those informations. However, when the country demands information, the leadership creates boundaries to deny the countrys access to that information.

The information about directions and destinations of our finances and our economy are huge subjects. Until now, nothing has been provided about those subjects according to the need of our country for a long, long time.

That is the body of hypocrisy embodied by that kind of leadership.

If leaders were holding onto Audit Reports and O.P.C Reports for too long then it means, the government was hiring wrong people. They are surrounded by wrong people and therefore the leadership should follow the right process.

Let those people go and leave the chances available for faithful people who really wanted to save our country from falling apart. If reports are stuck because of Auditors, then they are wrong Auditors in the government.

If reports were already passed to the Parliament then what is wrong with just touch and pass.

The country has missed lots and lots of information in one area which is also the most important area.

On the other side of the same issue, if the leaders were holding onto Audit Reports and O.P.C Reports for too long then it means, they were worried because they were looking at series of serious crimes of corruption and collusion.

Maybe that their holding onto those reports for too long is a cover-up for the sake of their partys reputation. If that is true, then the leadership must follow the right process of [Pass Touch and Pass].

If that is not true, then it means that the reason why they were holding onto those reports for too long is because some of the leaders were involved in those serious crimes of corruption and collusion that are making the government and our country so miserable.

If that is the truth that some of the leaders were involved in those serious crimes of corruption and collusion, then the leadership should follow the right process. Let those leaders go by appointing special committees as well as prosecutors and revisit the left behind in order to get rid of them.

Take a closer look at serious crimes of corruption and collusion already identified by Audit Reports and O.P.C Reports. To clean the inside of the government or to resolve the left behind in government, then now is the chance and the right time for the leadership to follow the right process according to the principle of faith.

Justice should be served and the double standard should also be corrected with one standard.

One set of rules and one law for everyone but not one set of rules to send our poor people to the prison and a different set of rules to cover-up corrupt and dangerous people who are destroying our government and our country.

They are the real people who are destroying everything about the success and progress of our country for many, many years. Speaking of the prison, there are so many people that have been murdered at the prison.

Nothing has been done about it. It is so hard to imagine what those murdered people and relatives went through but the corrupt and dangerous people in government are still enjoying salvation from the leadership.

That was the main reason why Afualo Dr. Wood Salele proposed a corruption tribunal when he was in Parliament but was slammed by the same leadership. According to the leadership, there are enough laws already exists to deal with corruptions.

To be fair for the current leadership or the leaders of our country in the H.R.P.P party, it is the only party [according to my own judgment based on our development and economy] that was/is still responsible for bringing real successes for Samoas development and Samoas economy.

The late Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana and the current Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi; both of them are authors of many great developments in Samoa. In addition, there are two significant changes they did that should also be acknowledged specifically.

The two significant changes are: 1) The changing of the calendar by switching Samoa from east to west of the International Date Line in order to boost trade. 2) The switching of driving from the right to the left side of the road in favour of cars from New Zealand and Australia because it is cheaper than getting cars from Hawaii and USA.

So as always, the H.R.P.P deserves thanks and congratulations accordingly. However, despite of all those efforts and important services, not one of any of those efforts and important services solves the problems of corruption and collusion that have been destroying Samoa and its government for many, many years.

We were hoping that the 47 seats would be a blessing but what we have seen so far is just a wannabe. Its just the opposite of what we were hoping for.

It really seems right now that there is another purpose or secret behind the 47 seats.

May be the extension of the tower of H.R.P.P up to 47 seats is an amazing revelation.

If that is the truth, therefore the purpose of that extension is to tell everyone especially the H.R.P.P that the real meaning of Transparency and Accountability is standing tall above everything and everyone so that everything and everyone can see and look up very clearly at the 47 seats tower of the H.R.P.P and the reality of their Transparency and Accountability.

Those 47 seats in election is history but the performance we have seen so far from the 47 seats is amazing. However, there is hope.

The only hope we have is the message of Jesus. Because Jesus message about leadership is connecting to every parts of life, therefore straining out a gnat and swallowing the camel is also a great encouragement for all leaderships in families, villages, districts, Churches, Schools and other organisations. Follow the right process.

When we come across face to face with problems and difficulties, dont left them behind but deal with them straight away. Deal with the inside first and then the outside. A leader must serve, not to be served.

If someone wants to be a leader, be prepared to sacrifice the whole life like Jesus but not just a 30% of life for leadership but the 70% is for greed, adultery, corruption, collusion and confusing of Transparency and Accountability.

Also, if someone wants to be a leader, be content. What has been offered for service is enough. Dont ask for more money rewards but ask for more problems and difficulties such as Transparency and Accountability to be solved. Let God and the process deal with the reward.

Remember, money was never involved in Jesus leadership in relation to a solution for sufferings.

When Jesus sacrificed His whole life, Jesus did not expect a reward of money from His father as a payback for His life in order to save Israels suffering and to solve Israels difficulties and problems. His only expectation was about the people of Israel. Israelite must follow solutions He left behind such as love and faith.

Money cant solve our difficulties and problems because money does not have a mind. But love and faith through our minds and following the process or the laws of God is the only way we can solve our difficulties and problems.

Also, that same way, is the only way we can save our country from pressures and temptations that are coming from every sides of the globalisation.

Lastly, the globalisation method for the development of our economy is very important but, there is no point of that method as it was launched on piles of problems and difficulties that have been left behind unresolved for many, many years.

So there is no need to force up efforts from the situation of struggling in order to improve our economy. There is no need for the leadership to take Samoa further up to any levels but relax and clean our insides first.

Nanai Malonuu Lealaiauloto Nofoaiga.
Samoa faces a chronic shortage of essential health workers.

The point was highlighted during a three-day workshop that brought together key stakeholders in Samoa to share and discuss the role of education in closing this gap.

The workshop, co-hosted by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and the Faculty of Science at the National University of Samoa, was held last week.

It provided the opportunity to discuss the sharing of resources, both human and physical resources between the University and the National Health Services towards the provision of high quality health services for Samoa.

Participants included health professionals from the National Health Services, Ministry of Health, Samoa National Kidney Foundation, the Samoa Medical Council/Association, the New Zealand Aid Office, and academics and students from the National University of Samoa.

Over the three days, facilitators, presenters and participants discussed key challenges to building a health sector workforce in Samoa and strategies to mitigate these factors, the envisioning of a teaching hospital and the role of assessment standards and practices in the development of high quality programmes and graduates.

This workshop was the first action item required from the external review of the medical curriculum conducted in July 2017.

The programme was facilitated by high ranking academics from abroad which included Dr. Indrajit Hazarika from the W.H.O. regional office in Manilla, Professor David Perez from the University of Otago, and Professor Alec Ekeroma from the University of Auckland.

Local facilitators were the Dean and senior lecturers of the Faculty of Health Sciences.

The University and Faculty of Health Sciences acknowledge the W.H.O. Representative to Samoa, Dr. Rasul Bahgirov and the W.H.O. regional office in Manilla for the continuous support.

Gratitude is also extended to Professors David Perez and Alec Ekeroma for the never ending assistance provided towards the development of the medical curriculum and for building the capacity of local staff.

The University and Faculty of Health Sciences are constantly making little steps in the development of the faculty and in particular the medical school for the current and future health workforce of Samoa.
Japan has painted a gloomy picture on negotiations for a new Tropical Tuna Measure at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (W.C.P.F.C.)

Tropical tunas include Skipjack, Bigeye and Yellowfin tuna.

The Tropical Tuna Measure sets the rules for the fishery but is due to expire at the end of this year.

With new science showing stocks are in better shape than previously thought, there is pressure from some Distant Water Fishing Nations (D.W.F.N.) to relax the rules.

Pacific nations do not want to see any additional mortality for bigeye tuna  a position which is in line with the latest scientific advice.

Members of the W.C.P.F.C. have been working for more than a year on a Tropical Tuna Bridging Measure but the process is difficult because decision-making at W.C.P.F.C. is generally done by consensus and views of the D.W.F.N.s often conflict with those of the Pacific states.

Head of delegation for Japan, Shingo Ota told journalists in Manila he is not so hopeful the commission will come out with a concrete outcome.

Not so much. Well, that. I dont want to talk about this because, you know, that may affect the negotiation.

The only thing I can say is that we really hope to have something at the end of this meeting, he said.

Mr. Ota said Japans position was that the Commission should not weaken the current Tropical Tuna Measure that was expected to end later this month.

Actually, our position is, I think we should not weaken the current measures at all. Or rather, you know, taking into accounts the concern about juvenile catches by F.A.D. fishing, I think we should have additional measures to strengthen fund management. Thats our position. But unfortunately, this is a very minority view.

I dont want to imagine no rule after this meeting. That would be a very chaotic situation, said Mr. Ota.
Love is the most essential component of building a strong and happy family.

And a man has to value his family which means making it their first priority.

Kelisiano Fale, 51-year-old father and grandfather believes this is what makes a real good man.

From Leulumoega Tuai, he shows this love for his family by helping his family every single day.

When the Village Voice team met him yesterday, he quickly made his views known.

Kelisiano said people needed to understand that life these days was difficult because of the high cost of living in order to show true compassion.

I know that bringing up a family in this time and age has immense pressures, he said.

Life in Samoa nowadays is more challenging because everything deals with money.

I am a grandfather now and I believe that only hard work can keep many families alive these days.

Despite the very many difficulties associated with living in Samoa, a good man who loves his family must never stop working no matter the sun and the rain.

To be honest, I always challenge my children that nothing has brought me more peace in life than simply being a good husband and father to their mother, my wife, he said.

So much is happening today because we believe that material and worldly things satisfy us, but they just come and go.

But family are forever for they are part of Gods creation.

He added the bond that linked his true family together was respect and having joy in each others lives.

My family is everything and who I am today is because of my mother, my father, my brothers, sisters because they have given me everything.

So being a good father, it all started from home, and thats the same way I want my children and their children to grow up in.

Personally we have to learn and enjoy precious moments, but dont wait for tomorrow to make you happy because we never know what tomorrow will bring.

I mean every minute should count it should be enjoyed and savoured.

Aside from that, he said life in the village was great.

This is because theres a difference between life in the village and life in Apia.

In Apia, most villages dont have village councils, hence why there are a lot of problems in Apia but to us, everyone is safe because we have curfews to follow.
Samoan citizens jailed in American Samoa should be locked up there. That is the response from Minister of Prisons and Correction Services, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, to calls for Samoan prisoners to be sent back to Samoa.

The suggestion was made by American Samoa Commissioner of Public Safety, Lei Sonny Thompson, who is seeking assistance to address the overcrowding of the Tafuna Correctional Facility.

Lei told the Samoa Observer that 90 percent of inmates housed at the Facility are from Samoa.

Samoa is a sovereign country, he said. They dont have to accept anyone coming in and its up to Samoa what they want to do, but at the same time consider the fact that these are Samoa citizens.

I understand the crime was committed there and you should have a fair trial and what not, and the time should be served there.

However its just overly crowded by Samoa citizens. It is only logical for the Samoan government to consider working on a solution to the problem.

It is not logical for American Samoa to keep on feeding and caring for inmates from here (Samoa).

But the Minister of Prisons does not agree.

I will not entertain the idea of deporting back Samoan inmates to serve their time at Tafaigata.

We dont have a place for any additional inmates. We dont have any funds to care for the additional inmates.

What happens in Pago should stay in Pago.

According to documents of the Two Samoa Talks held last week, the issue was discussed.

It recognized the need for improved information exchange between the Two Samoas relating to deportees.

This information includes advance notice before the individual is deported, and to provide criminal records and health backgrounds.

American Samoa is keen to see how the problem of its predominantly Samoan national prisoners could be addressed given its overcrowded prisons.

Samoa advised that it is looking into legislation to address the deportee situation, says the document.

As reported in October 2017, Samoa inmates represent the second highest number of foreigners being incarcerated at Tafuna Correctional Facility in American Samoa.

As of September 27, 2017, there are 73 Samoa national inmates, more than a third of the 193 inmates housed at T.C.F.

Lei said the American Samoa Government had appropriated $100,000 for T.C.F. food and supplies through Department of Public Safety.

Private Citizens and lawmakers usually drop off raw produce at T.C.F. to assist with their sustenance throughout the year when they are in season. (i.e. Ulu, Taro, Banana, etc).

The cost of maintenance per inmate regardless of ethnic background is estimated around $35 per day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

However, D.P.S. incurs significant debt from the hospital and other specialized facilities when inmates seek medical assistance, said Thompson.

He told the Samoa Observer the financial burden was placed on the sponsor but there were instances when inmates being housed were overstayers because sponsors withdraw their sponsorship or inmates couldnt be located.

So, the question is who carries the tab?

Well, more often than not they charge Departments of Public Safety - T.C.F.

The same goes for immigration inmates who have court cases pending and seek medical attention.

Its been an ongoing dialogue and were working to streamline these processes so D.P.S. doesnt get overwhelmed with the financial burden, Lei added.
The 31st Miss Pacific Islands Pageant is well underway in Fiji with Miss Samoa, Papalii Alexandra Iakopo, among the contestants putting their best foot forward for their countries.

Papalii is carrying the hopes of Samoa, hoping to wear the crown at the end of the finale tomorrow night.

The competition started with the nine beautiful contestants taking to the stage for their first night of public judging.

The first appearance for the contestants was their introduction, where they came out firing with a well-versed overview of themselves and their respective countries in front of a well-appointed panel of judges.

This was followed by their sarong with each showcasing not only their nicely printed swim wear, but their poise and charisma in carrying themselves with a twist from their own countries in linking with the Pageant theme of climate change action to sustain our Islands.

The judged categories of the Pageant contest this year is spread out into three nights of competition, with the winner to be crowned on the fourth and final night at Prince Charles Park in Nadi town.

Chairman of the Miss Pacific Islands Pageant Inc. and Samoas Minister of Tourism, Sala Fata Pinati, said what is being showcased by the contestants is what others can expect from our beautiful countries and diverse cultures.

Earlier-on in the opening day of the Pageant, a parade was held through the streets of Nadi town where the public had the chance to meet their favourite contestants.
A senior lawyer and member of Samoa Solidarity International (S.S.I.), Unasa Iuni Sapolu, is ready to march to ensure customary lands are protected under existing laws from what she described as the claws of monetary interest.

Unasa made the point yesterday during an interview with the Samoa Observer where she elaborated about the reasons behind the protest march being planned from Vaisigano to Mulinuu on Saturday 16 December 2017.

Unasa told the Samoa Observer many Samoans may not be aware that their customary lands could be affected by the use of leases" over their customary lands to secure loans, mortgages. She warned that ownership may shift to mortgagees or lenders under the terms of lending.

We believe our customary lands are not safe and that a change to use customary land leases as securities for loans etc. is a breach of articles 102 of the Constitution of Samoa and that being so requires a referendum of two thirds of the majority of voters, she said.

But that was never the case in the last elections in 2016 and 2011. It's believed the changes shifts control from the extended family and its High Chief to the government.

It's very concerning that the same laws as the L.T.R.A. 2008 was introduced in New Zealand and left Maoris poor and deprived against palagi (Europeans) and foreign ownership.

It took at least 150 years for Maoris fighting in Courts to get some of its customary lands back. The same laws made Aborigines the first people of Australia, poor.

The same damn law made the Hawaiians poor to the point they are now homeless in their own country of Hawaii while big companies, palagi, Saina (Chinese), Filipinos etc., are richer by comparison.

She questions whether Samoa wants to go that way where customary lands are leased for many years, thereby generations and extended family will miss out?

She gave as an example a 90-year lease. She said in such a case, extended family, future generations will not know or have any affinity with their customary lands.

Why? A lease may carry terms that completely exclude members of extended family whose land is leased.

Example, Mister Money leases the High Chief and his extended familys Customary Land for say 99 years.

Then the person leasing borrows $1 million secured on his lease, Mister money then fails to repay loan, the Bank sells extended family Customary Lands to recover its lent monies.

Government argues as I understand it, they will take over the debt and it will find Mister Money to lease land, but that is shrouded with uncertainties and the new Mister money may just disappear again having made his monies, leaving another huge debt for government to take over and so forth.

S.S.I is unhappy about a number of issues including what they call illegal land reform law, L.T.R. (Land Torren System) 2008, claiming that the Act was passed in violation of the Samoa Constitution by removing the constitutional prohibition against Customary Land alienation.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has already ridiculed their said plan to march, saying many of these people, including anonymous online bloggers, are off in the head.

These people are seeking financial gains which allow them to travel overseas to attend meetings pertaining to issues of our lands, Tuilaepa said.

Tuilaepa told the Samoa Observer the S.S.I. has got it all wrong. He argued that the Torren system was specifically for the privately owned land.

The explanation at the time was crystal clear by the government, that customary land will not be affected by the (Torren) system.

The Torren Land System is a solution to predicaments faced by people purchasing land without proper ownership documents by the land owners.

In the old system, unless the deed is provided nothing can be done about changing the ownership of land, despite the fact the money from the land sale has been used, he said. That problem exists until this very day.

Samoa Solidarity International has launched a 'Go fund me' account to finance the protest march.

So far they have raised $3,910 in one month with 64 people donating to the cause.
The Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Talalelei Tuitama, has dismissed concerns raised by Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, about the dengue fever outbreak and overcrowding at the Motootua hospital.

Speaking to the Samoa Observer yesterday, he said Olo doesnt understand what he was talking about and that he lacked facts, therefore raising a false alarm. You cant just go to the hospital and say everyone there has dengue fever, Tuitama said. There are procedures we follow. Those include clinical and laboratory tests.

We can check by symptoms, but until we get that blood test verified, we can never be sure if its dengue. We have patients who are here for other sicknesses too, its not always dengue.

The Minister was asked for a response following Olos comments earlier this week.

Dengue fever a serious virus and I am furious about the lack of a full force campaign to eliminate the mosquitoes breeding sites, Olo told the Samoa Observer.

The Member of Parliament said he was concerned about overcrowding at the hospital.

Im telling you the hospital is overcrowded, he said. 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?

The Minister admits that overcrowding is a challenge.

He said the Motootua Hospital does not have the capacity to cater for the growing number of outpatients every day.

He assured the Samoa Observer that the government is working to address this issue.

Its been a pressing issue for the government, Tuitama said.

We understand that the hospital does not have the capability to host the number of people coming in each day to see a doctor.

He said there is a renewed push by the Ministry to take health clinics back to the rural areas to treat minor illnesses such as flu, fever, and other diseases that can be easily diagnosed.

That way we can have an expanded effort of nurses around the island treating the minor cases and leaving room here at Motootua for the serious illnesses that require top priority medical attention, he said.

As for the state of the dengue fever outbreak, the Minister assured that everything is under control.

The Director General of Health, Leausa Dr. Take Naseri, gave the same assurance.

What Olo had said are just a laypersons comments, Leausa said. He doesnt know exactly what we are dealing with here at the hospital.

Leausa also denied reports that dengue fever had claimed the life of a Samoan man who had recently returned from New Zealand to start a rental business in Samoa.

The Director General said the case was more complex than it surfaced in the media.

He said the cause of death was the culmination of multiple illnesses and a weakening immune system believed to have been caused by dengue fever.

That death was the result of many illnesses he had all at the same time, so it wasnt dengue alone, he said.

He was admitted initially for dengue but was later discharged.

A second time around he came back and this time he had other illnesses.

He was admitted to the hospital on November 4 and later discharged on 8 November. Roughly a week later he was re-admitted, this time with more gruesome symptoms including pneumonia and septicemia.

Leausa said while he was cleared the first time around, the complications that came after his second visit to Motootua Hospital had become difficult cases to determine because of its abnormality.

And because of these many illnesses, he said this led to multiple organ failures causing death.

Leausa assured the public that monitoring and clinics of dengue fever are still at work at the hospital and that there have yet to be any confirmed deaths directly related to dengue fever.

The latest statistics released by the Ministry of Health on Monday 5 December 2017 showed that there have been 339 confirmed cases of dengue fever in Samoa, 53 percent of them being male patients.

Leausa is urging the public to keep an eye out for symptoms of dengue fever and report to the hospital for checkups.
George Brown Primary School was a place of celebration on Wednesday as parents honoured their childrens hard work throughout the 2017 academic year.

Proud parents, Rev. Faletolu Fiti and Vi looked on with pride as their son, Sakaria, received the 2017 Dux award.

Aside from being named Dux, he was also the only student from George Brown to be accepted into Samoa College.

Speaking to the Samoa Observer, he thanked all the teachers and parents for the work and time they invested in him.

Im looking forward to attending Samoa College next year, and I thank my parents for all the hard work, he said.

I promise to make you happy in the future and I thank God for you.

I also want to thank the principal and teachers of my school for all the hard work you have put in throughout the year, I pray that the Lord will shower you with blessings.

He wants to become a scientist in the future.

Thats my dream for the future, but for now I have to focus on my studies knowing that I have lots to work on before reaching that goal.

All I have to do now is to study hard and trust in the Lord.

Sakaria has roots in Neiafu, Fasitoo-Uta, Faleula and Fualuga and hes the third child of six siblings.
For this weeks Culinary Corner, Sheraton Samoa looks to display at their town property a bit of background on what gingerbreads are made of and recipe for baking a mouthwatering masterpiece.

Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavoured with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. It ranges from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a ginger biscuit. Sheraton chefs will help you cook up a tasty Christmas treat with their very own recipe.

Director of Food and Beverage for Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel and Bungalows, Lukaz Nowakowski, lists below the ingredients and recipe for a perfect gingerbread.

Ingredients

 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, spooned into measuring cup and leveled-off

 2 teaspoons ground ginger

 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

 2 teaspoons baking soda

 Scant 1/4 teaspoon salt

 Pinch freshly ground black pepper

 1 cup granulated sugar, divided

 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened but still cool

 1 large egg

 1/3 cup molasses

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, salt, and pepper. Set aside.

2. Using an electric mixer, beat  cup of the granulated sugar, brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the egg and beat for about 20 seconds, then scrape down the sides of the bowl; add the molasses, mix well and scrape down the sides of the bowl again.

3. Add the dry ingredients, and then mix on low speed until just incorporated. Do not over mix. The dough will be very soft; refrigerate it for about one hour, or until firm enough to roll.

4. Set rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

5. Place the remaining 1/2 cup granulated sugar in a shallow bowl. Form the dough into 1-inch balls and roll in the sugar to coat. Place the balls on the prepared baking sheet about 2 inches apart (they will spread), then flatten slightly with your fingers. Bake for 10-14 minutes, until set and golden on the outside and slightly soft on the inside. (As they bake, they will puff up and then flatten. Do not remove them from the oven until they are flat.) Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Refrigerate the dough between batches. The cookies will keep for several days in an airtight container.

Share those beautiful treats with someone special, available in Sheraton Aggie Greys Christmas Shop.
An exchange programme conducted last month between Samoa and Japan has been hailed a success.

The aim of the communication class was to give kids an opportunity to experience a different culture, create a friendship bond between the participants and help Samoan children know and understand more about Japan.

Year 6 students of Afega Primary School and Year 5 students of Alise Primary School in Kobe City, Japan had the opportunity to share their knowledge for a deeper understanding of both cultures through Skype.

The programme was coordinated by the Afega Primary Teachers, J.I.C.A. volunteer Hiroaki Negishi and Lesuea Sau.

They introduced traditional songs and dances between Samoan kids and Japanese kids, followed by questions and answers centered on both cultures.

It was truly a learning process for the children because they enjoyed every minute of the programme.

It was good to watch the Japanese dance. I want to do the lesson again. I was surprised to see so many kids in Japan, a Samoa student said.

Mr. Negishi said he looked forward to more programmes as such in the future.

I would like to do communication classes regularly while Im working at Afega Primary, he said.

Im thinking to let them talk more with each other from next class. I hope they will be friends with Japanese kids and become interested in Japan through these classes.

There are only six years in Japanese primary schools, so kids in Year 5 in Japanese schools are the same age as kids in Year 6 in Samoa.

And for Alise Primary School, there are about 150 students in Year 5.
Finding needles in a haystack is the life-and-death job of San Diegos Epic Sciences. The needles are extremely rare cancer cells that hide among the millions of normal cells in the blood of cancer patients.

The privately held company uses a combination of imaging technology to detect abnormal cells in a blood sample, along with DNA sequencing of those abnormal cells for cancer. A spinoff of The Scripps Research Institute, Epic Sciences raised $40 million in venture funding in May to further develop its technology.

Epics tests can detect just a handful of abnormal cells among the millions on a slide, said Mark Landers, Epics vice president of translational research. The company takes about 10 milliliters, about two teaspoons, from a blood draw. Each test is performed on two slides, using 1 milliliter of blood.

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Epics main test targets a difficult form of prostate cancer. It helps determine if patients should receive hormonal therapy or a more toxic chemotherapy. Prostate cancers are often driven by male hormones. Blocking them, a kind of chemical castration, inhibits growth. But prostate cancers tend to evolve resistance to hormone-blocking therapy and spread. These are known as metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancers.

Called OncotypeDx AR-V7 Nucleus Detect Test, it is part of the field known as liquid biopsies, which uses blood to detect diseases, mainly cancers, and evaluate how they respond to treatment. The test is sold under a partnership with Genomic Health of Redwood City.

Epics customers are pharmaceutical companies and academic scientists, who use the tests to better understand the cancers they are battling. Epic aims to turn its science into a predictive test to help doctors select the best therapy for each individual cancer.

The company participates in basic research to demonstrate its technology does what its supposed to do. For example, it took part in a 2016 study published in JAMA Oncology that showed an association between the presence of a biological marker called AR-V7 and survival in castration-resistant prostate cancer. Epics prostate cancer test looks for AR-V7.

Liquid biopsies are attractive for a number of reasons. Drawing blood is generally less invasive and painful than cutting out a piece of flesh. And unlike solid tissues, blood circulates everywhere in the body, reaching virtually every living cell. So any products of disease, such as unusual molecules or cells, are likely to be present in the blood.

Moreover, cancer cells in the blood, known as circulating tumor cells, are the most dangerous, Landers said, These cells, which break off from the original tumor, lodge elsewhere in the body and spread the cancer.

Modern genetic technology has made liquid biopsies much more feasible than previously. These tests can spot extremely small amounts of disease-associated genetic material, such as blood-borne DNA from cancer cells.

Epic was founded in 2008 on technology developed by Peter Kuhn, then at The Scripps Research Institute and now at the University of Southern California. The technology has been steadily improved. By 2012 the test, called HD-CTC, examined 40,000 cells in a blood sample. Abnormal cells were labeled and sent to pathologists for review.

Today, millions of cells can be examined in each test, Landers said.

Epic examines the white blood cells, which are stained with a fluorescent dye to illuminate proteins of interest. The cells are imaged and their shapes examined with the help of an algorithm, a software-based rule, that picks out abnormalities.

The algorithms behind this are similar to what are used in facial recognition, where were looking for rare events, Landers said. There are about three million normal white blood cells (on a slide), with a very small number of tumor cells in some patients.

Late-stage cancers tend to have a great amount of genetic diversity, making them harder to treat, Landers said. These are the patients who typically get selected for clinical trials, because theyve failed already approved therapies.

With Epics tests, doctors can determine if cancer patients are likely to respond to various experimental therapies, Landers said.

You can plan better for the therapy, and you can also understand response better, Landers said.

As the technology advances, a number of companies have delved into liquid biopsies.

One of the major players, Grail, is a spinoff of Illumina, the San Diego DNA sequencing giant. San Francisco-based Grail not only tests for various forms of cancer-associated DNA, but is performing its own clinical trials to determine how they correlate with cancer prognosis.

In San Diego, liquid biopsy companies include Pathway Genomics and Biocept, along with Carlsbads Genoptix.

But while the field is full of potential, promises can get ahead of reality. This happened with Theranos, a Palo Alto company that claimed it could diagnose hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood.

Theranos failed to produce evidence its technology actually worked in the cases it claimed, as documented in articles in late 2015 by the Wall Street Journal.

In July of last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revoked the license of Theranos blood-testing center in California, and also banned founder Elizabeth Holmes from owning or operating a laboratory for two years.

Pathway Genomics also ran into trouble with its tests, although of a lesser sort. It was warned last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that its promotional materials contained unverified claims.

Unlike Theranos and Pathway Genomics, Epic does not market tests to consumers. Its OncotypeDx AR-V7 test is sold to oncologists and urologists who treat patients with metastatic prostate cancer.

And as shown with the test, Epic publishes the underlying evidence in peer-reviewed journals. Theranos was heavily criticized for failing to publish in these journals.

Additionally, Epic also has research products, which are used by 48 biopharmaceutical companies.

Landers said Epic ensures its testing is valid by constructing the tests to answer specific clinical questions.

Doing clinical validation is incredibly important to every one of our tests, Landers said. Were demonstrating in a patient cohort that our test does what its supposed to do.

Related reading

Cancer diagnostics maker Epic Sciences raises $40 million

Liquid Biopsy May Be New Way to Detect Liver Cancer Earlier, Easier

Scientists move closer to detecting cancer long before any symptoms appear

Who is Illuminas new $100M startup, Grail, up against in cancer liquid biopsy screening?

New blood test helps detect cancer early

Epic Sciences raises $30 million

Scripps invents way to spot spread of cancer

 Mark Landers, vice president of translational research at Epic Sciences, explains how the companys technology detects extremely rare cancer cells in blood, then selects single cells for genomic analysis.

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020
Metacrine, a San Diego biotech developing drugs for metabolic diseases, said it has raised $22 million from venture capital investors.

The financing will help privately held Metacrine advance its program to treat liver diseases, the company said. It is developing a drug now called MET409 for potential use in a major inflammatory liver disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, and other disorders.

Initial human studies of MET409 are planned to begin in the first half of 2018, said Ken Song, M.D., Metacrines president and CEO. In addition, the money will help fund research against other targets for liver inflammation and fibrosis.

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New investor New Enterprise Associates led the round, along with existing investors ARCH, Polaris, venBio, and Alexandria Venture Investments.

The financing we just closed on provides support as we develop into a clinical-stage company, Song said.

Metacrine is also researching a drug to resensitize insulin-resistant patients to insulin, in collaboration with Novo Nordisk. That drug is important because it addresses a root cause of type 2 diabetes, Song said.

The company now has 26 employees, and plans to hire more, especially for clinical development.

Metacrine began operations in 2015, led by a team including investor/entrepreneur/scientist Richard Heyman and Salk Institute researcher Ron Evans. Heyman studied with Evans, and has remained in touch with him over the years.

In August 2015, Metacrine announced it had raised $36 million in venture funding. Song became CEO in September 2016.

Song said he already knew Heyman and the investors. He became available after selling a company he had started, Ariosa Diagnostics, to pharmaceutical giant Roche.

The people around Metacrine and its technology both attracted him, Song said. The company is based around a proven team that develops important health care products, he said, and the technology is the best in its class.

Also, when I joined, the company was still in the research and discovery phase, Song said. The opportunity for me as a CEO to shape the overall direction of the company was also very enticing.

Metacrine raises $36 million

Diet drug fools the gut

Liver fibrosis inhibitor found by Salk researchers

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020
A Marriott-brand AC Hotel was approved for downtown San Diego on Wednesday, after a fight over the 147-room hotel offering no spaces for cars in the parking-scarce Gaslamp Quarter.

This is the first entry of European-style AC Hotels to San Diego.

The upscale urban brand targets millennial customers.

The seven-story project will reuse a historic facade on Sixth Avenue between F and G streets.

A plan to use a car elevator to allow 44 spaces of underground valet parking was deemed unrealistic for the small, odd-shaped lot in the middle of the block.

AC Hotel in the Gaslamp: Heres the full story

San Diego will get its first AC Hotel, a brand targeting millennial travelers with a sleek, modern aesthetic  and, in this case, no parking.

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The Marriott brand will go up in a mid-block space in the heart of the downtown Gaslamp Quarter -- where architects will preserve the historic, but now worse-for-wear, Gaslamp Galleria Building facade on Sixth Avenue.

The 147-room project hit resistance over its total lack of parking.

An initial plan to construct 44 underground spaces for valet parking crumbled after architect Tucker Sadler found that using a car elevator  not the first to be utilized for a downtown hotel, including by Marriott  was unrealistic in the small, odd-shaped lot.

So AC Hotel will offer valet parking using off-site lots.

That created another problem: In 2010, an ordinance in the Gaslamp Quarter was amended to require on-site parking for hotels over 25 rooms. The rules call for one parking space for every three rooms.

But Civic San Diego sided unanimously with the developer  over an appeal by business analyst Rick Bates, who represents the hotel union Unite Here. Bates argued that the developer was trying to save money by deleting the parking, and also that the seven-story building with a rooftop lounge would overwhelm the historic block.

Downtown San Diego is an urban place, and we are charged with helping it become more urbanized, said Theodore Shaw, a Civic San Diego board member, on Wednesday at a public hearing on the project.

Shaw also pointed to the citys Climate Action Plan, which calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half.

A handful of other people also opposed the project along the way, citing high parking demand in the Gaslamp.

However, others said the block could use a sprucing up.

One neighbor said the now-empty storefront along Sixth has become a magnet for the homeless. Next door is the now-defunct Reading Cinemas Gaslamp. On the Fifth Avenue side, the site is currently home to a TGI Fridays restaurant.

New Jersey-based Briad Development is the proponent, with a plan to operate under the AC Hotel flag.

Marriott International started its joint venture with AC Hotels of Europe in 2011, and the division is now on a major North American growth spurt.

Spanish hotelier Antonio Catalan is the driving force behind the AC look, which has been described as upscale urban  competing with brands Hotel Indigo, Kimpton and independent boutique properties.

AC Hotels currently has 19 locations in the United States and Canada with another 69 in the pipeline.

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jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jensteeley
Xena, the 1-year-old Jack Russell/Chihuahua mix stolen from a dog rescue group at an adoption event Saturday at Grossmont Center, has been found.

A woman in Santee emailed St. Pacos Second Chance Dog Rescue on Wednesday morning in response to an article she saw in The San Diego Union-Tribune about the missing dog.

The email, according to Kathleen Orozco, a volunteer for the rescue group, said: I saw your article in the paper regarding Xena. I have her, she is in a nice, loving, caring home with lots of attention and care. Plus shes with another doggy that she absolutely loves. Please call me at the number below to discuss Xena further. Thank you.

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Orozco called the woman, who told her there had been some confusion at the event, and she did not wait to fill out the groups required form to foster and then possibly adopt Xena.

Orozco told her that she had not gone about fostering and/or adopting correctly and said the dog must be returned.

Another St. Pacos volunteer went to Santee to pick Xena up from the home, Orozco said. The dog was in good condition and happy to see the volunteer, she said.

St. Pacos is a dog rescue group out of Golden Hill that focuses on saving dogs found wandering the streets of Mexico.

The dog was part of hundreds of animals at the fourth annual Santa Paws MEGA Adoption Event at the mall. More than 20 groups looking to adopt out dogs, cats, turtles, tortoises and birds had several hundred animals available at the event.

Orozco said that Xena had been taken while one of the volunteers for the organization was speaking with another potential adopter.

Orozco said the St. Pacos volunteer was heartbroken when she turned around and noticed that the dog was missing.

Orozco said that the group will not press charges against the woman.

Orozco had been fostering Xena for the past four months. The pup, rescued from the streets of Rosarito, is a real sweetie, Orozco said. Shes one thats real quiet and very loving.

The group typically charges $300 to $350 in adoption fees, which includes all medical needs including vaccinations, spay/neuter and microchipping.

Xena will be available for adoption this weekend along with more than a dozen other dogs from St. Pacos at La Mesas Holiday in the Village, she said.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
BONSALL

Christmas party

The Bonsall Chamber of Commerce hosts a Country Christmas Party from 5-9 p.m. Dec. 14 at Rawhide Ranch, 6987 W. Lilac Road. Enjoy live music, food, photo booth and more. RSVP to https://bonsallchamber.wildapricot.org/event-2715388/Registration by today.

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CARLSBAD

Start a Business class

The North San Diego Small Business Development Center holds a free workshop, Steps to Starting a Business, from 1:15-4:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at the center, 2075 Las Palmas Drive. Register by Tuesday. This two-part workshop is designed to address the actual risk(s) involved in franchise and business ownership vs a traditional career. Visit https://sandiegosmallbiz.com to sign up for this and other workshops.

DEL MAR

Holiday voucher program

Del Mar is offering Shop, Dine and Be Merry, a voucher program, now through Dec. 31. Receive $15 towards dining when you spend $75 at any participating Del Mar Village retail shop. Visit https://visitdelmarvillage.com/holiday-voucher-program.

NORTH COUNTY

Veteran job fair

The Honor a Hero, Hire a Vet Job and Resource Fair will be held from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday at the Vista Civic Center, 200 Civic Center Drive. More than 100 employers and resources will be on hand. Register at Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/HAHDec13JS. Sponsored by Employment Development Department, Veterans Services-Oceanside.

OCEANSIDE

Deadline extended

The Oceanside Public Library has extended the deadline for its Request for Proposals for a consultant to review the librarys literacy services for English-speaking adults, or adult literacy services. See the RFP at bit.ly/2zbWzgO. Direct questions to Brad Penner, Library Division Manager, at bpenner@ci.oceanside.ca.us no later than Jan. 10, 2018. Proposals must be received by 4 p.m. Jan. 25.

Classes offered

Aharoni Business Law offers two classes at a private home in Oceanside. Address emailed upon registration. Cost is $10 for one workshop or $15 for both. The Retired Entrepreneur at 11 a.m. Saturday will discuss how to securely open that business youve always wanted to have, and how to freelance. Easy, Must-Do Tech Security at 1:30 p.m. Saturday is an all-levels program designed to teach the basics of keeping your information safe. Contact juliet@aharonibusinesslaw.com; visit https://goo.gl/DqjV3Q.

VISTA

Networking lunch mob at URBN Pizza

The Vista Chamber of Commerce holds a networking lunch mob at noon Wednesday at Urbn Pizza, 203 Main St. Bring your business cards and an appetite. Free (attendees pay for their own food) and all are welcome!

Shop Vista campaign

The Vista Chamber of Commerce and the Vista Village Business Association present ShopVISTA & Win! For every $5 of sales tax dollars generated at Vista retailers between now and Dec. 21, participants will receive a free ticket to win a prize. Just present receipts from retailers within the city of Vista at the Vista Chamber to be entered.

laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
Housing shortages and transportation difficulties emerged as the top concerns at Wednesday mornings annual North County Business Breakfast at Cal State San Marcos.

Many people, especially those who work low-paying jobs such as hotel maids and landscape laborers in North County, have to drive long distances to reach homes they can afford.

The lower down the income level that people are, the farther away they live, said Legoland General Manager Peter Ronchetti, one of six panelists who discussed how industry and technology are changing the North County workforce.

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We have a housing challenge, said panelist Eric Bruvold, principal of the San Diego Institute for Economic Research.

Greater density, the planning term for more homes on less land, is one widely accepted solution, Bruvold said. Better public transportation is another factor.

Yet often theres a backlash to higher density from long-time residents who prefer more space, less traffic, smaller buildings and a less urban atmosphere. Its a dilemma North County has faced for decades.

Education will help people resolve those issues and find the right balance between work, shopping and recreation in the areas where they live, the panelists said

Cal State San Marcos plays an important role in that effort.

Founded in 1989, the campus now has 17,000 students and more than 40,000 alumni, and about 80 percent of those alumni still live in North County.

Enrollment at Cal State San Marcos is expected to reach 25,000 students when the campus is complete, which is expected about 2030.

The university is working closely with companies like technology giant ViaSat in Carlsbad to create an agile and flexible workforce, panelists said.

The big problems of the 21st century are not going to be solved by individuals; they are going to be solved by groups, said Katherine Kantardjieff, dean of the college of science and mathematics at Cal State San Marcos, also a panelist at the event hosted by the North San Diego Economic Development Council.

We are preparing students for jobs that dont yet exist, Kantardjieff said.

MiraCosta and Palomar colleges, part of the statewide community college network, are also an important part of the North County higher education network.

Other panelists included Kirby Brady, director of research at the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.; Kevin Ham, Vista director of economic development; and Krist Jaska, vice president of engineering at ViaSat, Inc.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
BONSALL

Note: This event has been canceled as of Dec. 7.

Jingle Rock Holiday Festival coming up

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The Bonsall Education Foundation presents the Jingle Rock Holiday Festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Pala Mesa Resort, 2001 Old Highway 395, Fallbrook. Enjoy free music and dance performed by students in the Bonsall Unified School District. Other attractions will be priced individually or as a package deal and include face painting, bungee run, laser tag, arts and crafts, raffles and pictures with Santa. Please bring a canned food item or two to assist needy families.

CARLSBAD

Academy applications due Dec. 15

Applications are being accepted for the winter session of the Carlsbad Student Leader Academy, a free leadership program for Carlsbad residents in grades 9-12 coordinated by the city, The YouSchool and the Servant Leadership Institute. The academy addresses issues affecting youths and develops youth leaders through civic education and service learning. Apply at carlsbadstudentleaderacademy.com; applications are due Dec. 15. The 10-week program will be held Jan. 22 through March 26.

Carlsbad High Orchestra to perform

The Carlsbad High School Orchestra offers a concert at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Carlsbad Arts Center on campus. Tickets cost $10 for adults, $5 for students; free for Carlsbad Unified School District staff and middle school students. The event features speed painters, wind ensemble and more.

CARMEL VALLEY

Teen awarded $10K scholarship

A Carmel Valley teen has been awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Foundation of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Alyssa DeVries won the NATAS Trustees Scholarship, funded by the NATAS Trustees in recognition of overall potential as a future leader in the television industry. A 2017 graduate of Canyon Crest Academy, Alyssa aspires to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, and is pursuing a comedic arts degree at Emerson College in Boston. She was a Ben Vereen nominee for Best Actress in 2017.

DEL MAR

Legacy bricks benefit students

The Don Diego Scholarship Foundation offers a chance to give a one-of-a-kind holiday gift: a personalized brick permanently enshrined at the Del Mar Fairgrounds Legacy Fountain. Don Diego Legacy Bricks begin at $150. A replica can also be purchased for home or office. For information and to purchase online, visit dondiegoscholarship.org. Call (858) 792-4210.

ENCINITAS

PACT presents Beyond Bullying

The nonprofit Positive Action Community Theatre presents Beyond Bullying, a free theater event of sketches, video clips and improv, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday at 535 Encinitas Blvd., Suite 100. The goal of Beyond Bullying is to inspire students to prevent bullying. Bring your teens. The PACThouse Players offer improv theater and performing arts workshops that teach life and social skills to teens and adults with autism and other special needs. Visit pacthouse.org.

ESCONDIDO

Food giveaway at Orange Glen High today

The Feeding San Diego program will hold a food giveaway from 2:30 to 3:15 p.m. today at Orange Glen High School, 2200 Glenridge Road. Bring your own bags and choose from fresh produce and staple items. The giveaway is first come, first-served; open to all families who have students at the school. Call (858) 452-3663.

FALLBROOK

School of Arts receives $50K donation

Paul and Diane Garrett have committed $50,000 over two years in support of the nonprofit Fallbrook School of the Arts. Jerri Patchett, president of Fallbrook Arts Inc., said in a statement, This generous donation is going to enable us to expand our programing at the art school, adding new areas of art learning for youth, families and students of all ages. Fallbrook Arts is dedicated to providing art venues and a vibrant arts education program. Visit fallbrookartsinc.org, and for the art school, visit fallbrookschoolofthearts.org.

OCEANSIDE

College information sessions at library

The Oceanside Public Library is hosting free programs to help high school students prepare for college. What Students and Parents Need to Know About College will be at 2 p.m. Saturday and Dec. 16 at the Oceanside Civic Center Library, 330 N. Coast Highway. Participants are encouraged to attend both sessions. Topics include how to choose the right college, getting into college, and how to pay for it all. Visit oceansidepubliclibrary.org or call (760) 435-5600.

POWAY

Preschool holds groundbreaking

A groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. Dec. 14 for The Nest, a new infant-toddler center, scheduled to open in Poway in early 2018. The Nest is an expansion of the Ganon Gil Early Childhood Center, which serves ages 2-5. The ceremony will be at Temple Adat Shalom, 15905 Pomerado Road. RSVP to (858) 451-1200 or pfeinberg@adatshalom.com.

RANCHO BERNARDO

RB Chorale offers Holly, Jolly Holidays

Pat Bean and the RB Chorale perform Holly, Jolly Holidays at 7 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498 Espola Road. Santa Claus will stop by. Chorale performances raise scholarship funds for local high school seniors who intend to study music. Please bring an unwrapped new toy to donate to the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots campaign. Buy tickets from chorale members, at rbchorale.org or by calling 858-485-SONG (7664). Preferred seating is $32; general admission is $22; seniors (55 and up), students (13-18) and active military tickets are $20; children, $7 (through age 12).

SAN DIEGUITO

Canyon Crest offers Into the Woods

Canyon Crest Academy Envision Theatre Arts performs Into the Woods at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday, as well as 4:30 p.m. Dec. 14 and 7 p.m. Dec. 15-16 at the school, 5951 Village Center Loop Road. Everyones favorite storybook characters come together in this work by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim. Tickets are available at https://bit.ly/2k8BIrb. Prices are $6 with student ASB card, $8 for students and $15 for adults. Call (858) 350-0253.

SAN PASQUAL

Winter Wonderland concert at CCAE

The San Pasqual Union School presents Winter Wonderland at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd. Students in TK-fifth grade, middle school VAPA Elective/CORE, middle school instrumental elective and middle school choir will perform. This years show supports the enrichment programs with the CCAE. Orchestra seats are $15, available at the CCAE (fees apply to tickets bought at https://bit.ly/2Au2e4x or by phone at 1-800-988-4253); all other seats are $8, available through the school.

VISTA

Innovation Summit coming to VUSD

The Vista Unified School District hosts its inaugural Teachers Guild Innovation Summit today at the Vista Innovation Center, 826 Olive Ave. Exhibition & Design Journey Storytelling is from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m.; Rigorous Prototyping (VUSD teachers only) is from 4:45 to 6:30 p.m. VUSD is one of only four districts nationally to be granted a chapter of The Teachers Guild, an offshoot of design firm IDEO, to activate teachers creativity to solve the biggest challenges in education today. The event is open to the VUSD community and will feature more than 20 design projects created by teachers.

Please send items to laura.groch@sduniontribune.com at least 10 days before events.

laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
Ex-Navy SEAL and former defense contractor Christopher Chris Osman was convicted Wednesday morning for assaulting a motorist during a May 20 road rage incident in Imperial Beach.

Also a former Marine, Osman, 43, pleaded guilty in Superior Court in Chula Vista to a sole count of misdemeanor assault in the beating of Brandon Mansfield along Ebony Avenue in Imperial Beach.

He was sentenced to two days of incarceration  time he already served  and no probation.

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Deputy District Attorney Victor Ou said by telephone that a daytime dispute over which motorist had cut the other one off escalated, with both Osman and Mansfield leaving their vehicles to confront each other.

Although both were injured, an unidentified witness described seeing Osman on top of Mansfield, pummeling him. A neighbor intervened to separate them but Osman left the scene, Ou said. Mansfield was not charged.

Arrested and booked by San Diego County sheriffs deputies into the South Bay Detention Facility on Aug. 30 on twin felony counts of assault and battery, Osman was bailed out the following day on a $50,000 bond.

A protective order barred him from from contacting Mansfield, who was not present for Osmans Wednesday conviction and sentencing hearing.

Superior Court Judge Francis M. Devaney awarded financial restitution to Mansfield for his injuries, but noted the victim had not sent a claim to authorities.

Both Osman and his criminal defense attorney, Anna R. Yum, declined comment as they departed the courtroom.

The co-author of Seals: The U.S. Navys Elite Fighting Force, a 2008 study of irregular warfare operations, San Diegos Osman was one of the first elite commandos to fight in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A former member of SEAL Team 3, in 2001 Osman founded Tactical Assault Gear, a San Diego firm that sold body armor and uniforms to the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, according to federal spending data.

He sold it in 2010 and now operates Chris Osman Designs, an online shop catering to sportsmen, motorcyclists and military veterans.

In recent years hes feuded publicly with several fellow Special Operations veterans, including ex-SEAL Brandon Webb.

Osman has contended that Webbs bestselling publications embellished his role in Seal Team 3, especially a predawn mission in 2002 at the Zhawar Kili cave complex near the Pakistan border that destroyed an insurgent tunnel system.

Webb has fired back with accusations that Osman allegedly disclosed secret information in a book, struggled to graduate from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and was sent home early from an Afghanistan combat deployment following an unspecified incident.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
Three days after his release from federal custody, a Baja California fishing leader on Wednesday accused Mexicos environmental ministry, Semarnat, of orchestrating his arrest.

Sunshine Rodriguez Pena, the head of the largest federation of fishing cooperatives in San Felipe told a group of Mexican reporters that this has a name, and its called Semarnat. The interview was transmitted by Mexicalis MF Noticias.

Rodriguez was arrested alongside with his wife on Nov. 25, as the couple was returning to San Felipe from Calexico with their two children. Their attorney said they were accused of transporting a kilo of liquid methamphetamine.

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The couple was released on Sunday after a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold them for trial, according to their attorney. Mexican federal authorities have not commented publicly on the arrestor the release.

Rodriguez said that while he was in custody, investigators questioned him about the totoaba fishing that has been rampant off the coast of San Felipe, despite government efforts to curb the illegal activity.

Ending up as by-catch in the totoaba nets are critically endangered vaquita porpoises, a species with fewer than 30 individuals that has been the object of unprecedented conservation efforts, including a gillnet ban since May 2015.

Rodriguez, who has denied any connection to the illicit trade, said that he was presented with a list 100 fishermen accused of poaching totoaba, also endangered. The totabas swim bladders are purchased for high prices in Asia by consumers who believe in their medicinal properties.

They do not have a single detainee, not a single person that they can say is guilty, said Rodriguez. Theyre working with pure hearsay. If it were true, theyd still have me in Altiplano, he said referring to the maximum security penitentiary outside Mexico City.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble
The future father-in-law of Britains Prince Harry is living an unassuming life as a retiree in Rosarito Beach, just south of San Diegos U.S.-Mexico border.

British media tracked Thomas W. Markle, 73, to a small tile-roofed home perched on a 120-foot cliff overlooking a sandy beach along the Pacific Ocean. The former Hollywood TV lighting director worked on the sets of Married  with Children and on the soap General Hospital, for which he won a Daytime Emmy, before retiring in 2011.

I believe just about every UK paper was down here. It was quite the search, notes Ron Raposa, who handles Rosarito Beach Hotel public relations.

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Markle refused an interview with Daily Mail TV, saying only, I cant speak out of respect for my family. A few of his acquaintances did talk on the record, however, including a security guard at a Walmart where Markle shops and the owner of a Rosarito storage facility where he rents a unit.

They paint him as a quiet, nice, unassuming man  just a regular guy in regular clothes, living in a community popular with American expatriates. He was said to be extremely proud of his actress daughter even before she began dating the son of Prince Charles and Lady Di.

Markle, who is of Dutch-Irish descent, and his ex-wife Doria Ragland, who is African-American, divorced when Meghan was 6 years old. Ragland, a yoga instructor in Los Angeles, raised their daughter. Her ex-husband still has a home in the L.A. area.

They remain on friendly terms and Kensington Palace issued a joint statement from them saying that they are incredibly happy about the royal engagement.

Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person. To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents.

On June 19, 2016, Meghan tweeted, Happy Fathers Day to this amazing papa. Ive got his drive, his love of old musicals, & that little Markle nose.

Storage complex owner Ramon Moreno told a reporter, He loves his daughter very, very much. He says they talk regularly.

The family confirmed that her dad plans to attend the wedding next year.

This portion of the cover of the 2017 Time Person of the Year issue: The Silence Breakers, shows University of San Diego graduate, center, on the cover of the Dec. 18, 2017 issue for exposing sexual harrassment. (BILLY & HELLS / AFP/Getty Images/ Courtesy of Time magazine )

Touching news: Time magazines Person of the Year edition is out, and it has University of San Diego officials jumping for joy because a graduate is on the cover.

This years honoree is a group dubbed The Silence Breakers for their various courageous roles in outing sexual misconduct in the workplace and influencing social change.

USD alumna Adama Iwu, a lobbyist for Visa in Sacramento, joins Taylor Swift, Ashley Judd, Uber software engineer Susan Fowler and Mexican strawberry picker Isabel Pascual on the cover. Iwu graduated in 2005 with a political science degree.

A Facebook post by USDs College of Arts and Sciences touted, A true Changemaker and we couldnt be more proud!

Iwu was groped in front of colleagues at a political event. After none of her male co-workers called out the misbehavior, she organized 147 women to sign an open letter exposing a culture of harassment in Californias state government and launching a probe by the state Senate.

Its hard to call 147 woman liars, Iwu told Time. We cant be all crazy. We cant all be sluts.

Mayor for sale: Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey proved to be a hot item at the San Diego Junior Leagues annual auction of San Diegos most eligible bachelors.

Kate Thornton triumphed after a see-sawing bidding frenzy. When the hammer came down, she paid $3,300 for a day with the youngest mayor in Coronado history. The date package that came with him includes a tour of Coronado, whale watching, aerial acrobatics and dinner at the Hotel del Coronado.

I was very surprised, said the 31-year-old Bailey, after his first time on the auction block. It raises money for a great cause. The next morning, he was rappelling down the 33-story Manchester Grand Hyatt for another benefit. His team raised more than $10,000 for brain cancer.

Bailey, elected mayor in November 2016, is grateful that his job also provides a platform to raise awareness of charitable issues. Will he take part in the Junior League auction next year?

That depends on my relationship status and whether or not Im still single, he chuckles.

diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1518

Twitter: @dianebellSD

Facebook: dianebell.news
Solana Beach parents are suing a North County school district after their 12-year-old daughter came in contact with a sexual predator during school hours.

San Dieguito Union High School District is accused of negligence in the suit, which was filed on Nov. 30 in San Diego Superior Court.

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The 10-page complaint says the unnamed student of Earl Warren Middle School was repeatedly sexually assaulted in a parking lot adjacent to the school by Jeff Calica, 20, who pleaded guilty in October to one count of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and is to be sentenced Dec. 18.

The incidents occurred between December 2016 and January of this year while school was in session, the complaint says. Calica is also named in the lawsuit.

According to court records, the student met Calica through a YouTube channel, where he posts videos of him eating spicy ramen noodles and posts items such as first day of school.

They began communicating in chat rooms during school hours and formed an online relationship, using school computers or networks, the lawsuit claims.

The district had a duty at all times to supervise the student use of computers and internet access on the grounds of the school and to enforce those rules and regulations necessary for the protection of students and other children, the complaint says. Instead, administrators negligently provided students at Earl Warren Middle School with access to the schools Wi-Fi network  allowing them to access the internet at any time while at school on their personal devices without any supervision or monitoring.

San Dieguito Union High School Superintendent Eric Dill released the following statement:

The district has not been served with the lawsuit. Student safety is the top priority of the San Dieguito Union High School District. Student safety includes student privacy, so out of concern for the minor involved, we cannot publicly comment on the allegations at this time. Our middle school networks have advanced filtering to prevent accessing inappropriate websites. All middle school students participate in the Common Sense Digital Citizenship program to empower students to make safe, smart, and ethical decisions online.

We encourage parents to talk to their children of all ages about online safety and behavior. The district recently held a series of parent workshops focused on raising awareness on teen use of technology. It is important that parents have frank discussions with their kids, set boundaries, and monitor their use of personal devices.

The lawsuit also claims students, including the 12-year-old victim, were permitted to leave school grounds to visit the Solana Beach Public Library unsupervised, which allowed the relationship to extend behind an online chat room.

During trips to the library, the student was assaulted and molested by Calica in the parking lot, the complaint said, adding that the events have caused and continue to cause [the student] great mental, physical and nervous pain and suffering.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, plus attorney fees. Attorney Mary Bajo, who is representing the student and her parents in the suit, said the amount will be based on an evaluation of the student.

Based on my experience with these types of cases, an incident like this can impact all aspects of someones current and future life, Bajo said. Were hoping to have someone assess the damages and the implications of what was done to my client and then determine an appropriate amount.

According to Bajo, the district said it has internet security on both school computers and its wireless network that prevent students from accessing inappropriate websites.

Often times thats not enough, Bajo said. There are so many ways for kids to access whatever they want and for outside predators to communicate with students.

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This story was updated on Dec. 11 to add comments from the plaintiffs attorney.
Because of President Donald Trumps travel ban, the San Diego Community College District warned students to determine whether they will be able to reenter the U.S. before they leave the country for holiday travel.

After a ping pong-esque series of executive actions and court decisions beginning in January, the Supreme Court allowed Trumps third iteration of a travel ban to go into effect temporarily on Monday while lower courts decide the merits of legal challenges against the executive order.

Given changes in how the administrations travel ban is being interpreted, we believe it is important to keep our students informed and to encourage them to consider the consequences if they plan on leaving the country during the upcoming holiday break, said Lynn Neault, vice chancellor of student services.

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In an email sent early Thursday, Neault urged students not to travel outside the U.S. without making sure the travel ban doesnt affect them.

Particular caution should be taken with crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the email said.

The districts immigration attorney advised Neault that people with valid visas are experiencing more intense questioning when crossing back into the U.S. from Mexico, Neault said.

Were trying to share as much information as we can since things are changing so rapidly, Neault said.

Many students travel across the southwest border during break.

The current version of the travel ban indefinitely blocks people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea as well as some Venezuelan officials.

An earlier Supreme Court decision allowed the last iteration of the ban to affect some travelers but exempted people who had ties to the U.S. through family, work or school.

In another recent show of solidarity with non-citizen students facing challenges under the Trump administration, the district has made $175,000 in emergency aid available for those who were beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

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California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon announced Thursday that the chamber is set to pick San Diego Sen. Toni Atkins as his successor, making her the first woman and first openly gay legislator to hold the leadership position, a move that is bringing praise from Democrats and Republicans alike.

De Leon, D-Los Angeles, said in a statement that Atkins, D-San Diego, will make history and be our Senates next president pro tempore. I have every confidence she will lead Americas most accomplished legislative chamber to even greater heights and build on our extraordinary progress.

De Leon said Democratic senators are unified in their support for Atkins and there will be a formal vote in early January before a transition next year. De Leon leaving stepping down as president to run for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

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If De Leons statement holds true, it will be the second time that Atkins, 55, of South Park, has been the leader of one of the chambers in Sacramento. Elected to the State Assembly in 2010, she served as speaker from May 2014 until March 2016.

Atkins was a San Diego City Council member from 2000 to 2008. She served as acting mayor for several months during the pension crisis that erupted in 2005.

Today, I am humbled by the trust my colleagues have placed in me, and I intend to earn that trust every day by working tirelessly and inclusively to keep California a place of opportunity for everyone, Atkins said in a statement.

Given our national divisions, Californias example is more important than ever  and I look forward to working with our president pro tem and all of our colleagues to ensure that the Senate continues to rise together to meet the challenges faced by the great people we represent, Atkins statement said.

Likewise, Senate Minority Leader Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, issued a laudatory statement about the announcement and described a cooperative working relationship with her Senate colleague.

For someone who has achieved historic milestones over her career, I know this one is particularly special. Congratulations to Senator Toni Atkins on becoming the first female Senate President pro Tempore-designate, Bates said in the statement. She is a formidable political force who will usher in an era where the leaders of both Senate party caucuses are women.

Bates added that she hopes Atkins makes addressing misconduct in Sacramento a priority.

I also hope we can continue to work together to substantially address the issues raised by reports concerning inappropriate behavior. There is no place for harassment in the workplace, including the legislature, Bates said.

Atkins has the personal experience and temperament to understand and connect with constituents who feel ignored, and work to advance Californias objectives beyond the state, supporters said.

They said its fitting that Atkins, a lesbian who grew up in rural Virginia with a coal miner father and seamstress mother, will take on the mantle of resistance to Republican President Donald Trump that has become a hallmark of Sacramentos Democratic politicians.

Shell be leading us against the current devastation that is the White House from the Senate, Jessica Hayes, chairwoman of the countys Democratic party, said by telephone.

Equality California, a statewide organization, said that its important for children to see Atkins in a leadership position.

Electing role models like Senator Atkins is important to the LGBTQ community because it sends a clear message to our community across the country, particularly LGBTQ youth, that LGBTQ people can achieve anything, said Rick Zbur, Equality Californias executive director.

Its significant that senators are set to pick Atkins at a time when gay people in parts of California and the country are still fighting for equal rights, said Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego.

We must celebrate when a member of our community reaches this milestone, said Gloria, who is gay, by telephone. Shes breaking barriers once again.

Born in southwest Virginia, Atkins grew up without running water and without the convenience of an indoor bathroom. She credits her challenges as a lesbian, and witnessing the environmental impact of mining, for creating an affinity for the downtrodden and the environment.

Atkins is sincere, and her humble background helps make her relatable to people who feel like politicians dont listen to them, and that government ignores their problem, Gloria said.

When you talk about people who feel forgotten, and who want to be a part of the dialogue and change, shes lived that, she understands it, Gloria said in a telephone interview.

Atkins graduated from Emory & Henry College, where she studied political science and community organizing. She came to San Diego in 1985 to help her sister care for her son. She later met Jennifer LeSar, an affordable housing consultant, whom she married in 2008.

Atkins started in politics in 1993 as a volunteer on Christine Kehoes San Diego City Council race. After her candidate won, Atkins joined her staff. Kehoe was later elected to the legislature, and Atkins took her seat on the San Diego City Council in 2000.

Atkins was elected to the Senate in 2016 after incumbent Marty Block, D-San Diego, decided not to seek re-election.

Atkins said that Block had promised to serve only one term, but as the election approached, Block campaigned and he and Atkins even appeared alongside each other at candidates forums. After Atkins received an endorsement from the California Nurses Association, Block announced from the Senate floor that his first term would be his last, clearing a berth for Atkins to go to the Senate.

Atkins has advocated for affordable housing, an issue thats a problem across the state, through her career.

Only Atkins could have gotten one piece of signature legislation, Senate Bill 2, passed, Gloria said.

This was not an easy bill, he said. It required 2/3 votes in both chambers. I dont know if any other legislator could have seen it through.

The bill creates money for affordable housing by tacking filing fees onto property transfers, excluding home sales, and about a third of that money would be put into a fund to build homes for low-income families and migrant workers.

Atkins received some criticism because the bill will fund the industry that employs her wife. She told The San Diego Union-Tribune, It merely identifies a source of funding and creates a process for allocating the revenue. I have no role in determining who gets the money  either at the state or local level. That is a competitive process, and the decisions will be made by others, as spelled out in the bill.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation into law on Sept. 29.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841
If the federal investigation of Rep. Duncan Hunter brings him down, who will step up?

Its a question being discussed in political circles, particularly in Hunters east and north county 50th Congressional District.

On one level, the answer seems simple: popular state Sen. Joel Anderson is the first name that comes up among the politically savvy folks in the region. But timing could complicate matters and thwart any notion he or anybody else has about filling a Hunter void, if there is one.

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Nobody who is thinking of jumping in if Hunter is out are maneuvering or even talking about the prospect openly, for good reason.

Right now, Hunter isnt going anywhere. The Hunter brand remains strong in the district, the incumbent is  by most accounts  still popular as is his father who preceded him in Congress, and he could be a shoo-in for re-election.

But the criminal investigation into his misuse of campaign funds is heading into another year  an election year  and that creates uncertainty. Hunter has consistently said the misspent campaigns funds represent an honest mistake and the money has been paid back.

Maybe the FBI ultimately decides theres not much there. Maybe not. In any event, the Republicans need a Plan B in a district theyve owned for a long time.

If Hunters situation takes a turn for the worse  say, hes indicted and/or withdraws from the race  the timing would make a huge difference. If its before the March candidate filing deadline, there could be a scramble among potential Republican candidates, possibly with Anderson among them.

Democrats would certainly join in  there are a couple now running against Hunter who have raised decent money  but thats one of the most Republican districts in the state and a tough one to flip, scandal or no, with or without an incumbent.

A special election would be called to fill out the remaining months of Hunters term. That could run concurrent with the separate June primary for the full two-year term beginning January 2019. But if Hunter were to leave office after the filing period, or be so damaged that hes politically dead in the water, that would present an unusual situation.

His name would remain on the ballot whether hes campaigning or not. Heavy hitters now on the sidelines would have to remain there, save for a write-in effort.

The candidates running in the 50th district would be as they are today, assuming they all stay in.

Republicans: Hunter, translation services company executive Shamus Sayed and Sheriffs Deputy Andrew Zelt.

Democrats: Rancher Pierre Pete Beauregard, former Navy SEAL Josh Butner, last years Hunter opponent Patrick Malloy, and former Department of Labor spokesman Ammar Campa-Najjar.

Only Butner and Campa-Najjar have raised six-digit campaign funds.

If the vacancy occurs after the filing deadline, the governor has the option of not calling a special election.

Theres no getting around the seriousness of Hunters predicament and that his political future could be in jeopardy. So its no surprise that what if scenarios are being discussed quietly and that some people are contemplating making a play should he go down.

But nobody seems to be talking of trying to push him out under the existing circumstances.

As for Anderson, hes powerful in his 38th California Senate District  which overlaps much of the 50th district  has strong conservative credentials, and occasionally has worked across the aisle on select issues with Democrats, including Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.

The senator was traveling this week and unavailable for comment. His supporters said he has long backed Hunter, endorsed him for re-election and would do nothing to undermine the congressman.

Anderson is a favorite of the Republican Party of San Diego County, so much so that its leaders gave him $200,000 in 2015 as he launched a campaign to oust incumbent county Supervisor Dianne Jacob, another Republican who has represented her East County constituents for a generation.

Jacob beat back that effort, forcing Anderson to withdraw from the campaign, and cruised to an easy re-election in 2016 as she has pretty much every four years. The move by Anderson, who is termed out next year, caused a nasty split among Republicans, though it remains to be seen whether that will carry over to future elections.

Should a timely vacancy open in Hunters district, there are plenty of potential candidates in addition to Anderson: Mayors Steve Vaus of Poway and Bill Wells of El Cajon, former Assemblyman Brian Jones of Santee and Councilman Mark Kersey of San Diego, to name a handful. Lemon Grove Mayor Rachel Vasquez or La Mesa council member Kristine Alessio are deemed to have bright political futures and could be in the mix, and theres probably a rich business person or two who may be interested.

But some of them might be more tempted to go for Jacobs seat in 2020 when shes termed out, putting them in the position of quietly rooting for Anderson to run for Congress. Plus, theres also his state Senate seat that will be open.

Other names have been tossed about, including termed-out North County Supervisor Bill Horn and Jacob herself, though the people I talked with didnt think they would be likely to get in.

Radio personality and anti-tax crusader Carl DeMaio, the former San Diego city councilman, usually comes into discussion whenever theres an open seat in the county.

Perhaps the most surprising scenario to surface is that Rep. Darrell Issa, facing a tough re-election campaign in his 49th district straddling San Diego and Orange counties, would jump over to a vacant 50th.

That seemed pretty far-fetched, and no one I talked with disagreed.
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested for a robbery and attack in Horton Plaza last month, and also has been linked to another robbery the following day, San Diego police said Wednesday.

Police are seeking witnesses to either incident.

About 8:30 p.m. Nov. 18, three to five people attacked a man in Horton Plaza, punching him once in the back of the head and knocking him out. The assailants took the mans cell phone, San Diego police said in a news release Wednesday

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The victim was taken to the hospital with serious head injuries.

The following day, two people attacked and robbed a victim of his cellphone in the Gaslamp Quarter, police said.

Police said the 16-year-old was the linked to both, and is the primary suspect in the Nov., 18 incident.

A 17-year-old boy has been identified in connection with the second incident, but was not involved in the Horton Plaza attack, police said.

The victim from the Horton Plaza attack has been released from the hospital and is expected to recover.

Anyone with information about either attack can call San Diego Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line at (888) 580-8477.

Anonymous texts or web tips can also be sent at sdcrimestoppers.com.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
Firefighters quickly knocked down a small brush fire in the Mission Hills area early Thursday morning with a fire helicopter making one water drop, a San Diego fire official said.

The vegetation fire was reported at 5:46 a.m. and was quickly extinguished, said Monica Munoz, spokeswoman for San Diego Fire-Rescue. She said a patch of brush about 30 feet by 30 feet was scorched.

Fire crews initially responded to Altamira Place and Valle Vista at the top of the canyon but were initially unable to locate the blaze. Crews subsequently decided to attack it from below from Hotel Circle South, she said.

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There were no injuries and no structures were damaged, she said. Fire crews also reported there were only light winds.

With the region in a red flag warning  with dry conditions and gusty winds in the forecast  fire crews jumped quickly on the fire, she said.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
A man who was sleeping on a sidewalk on 16th Street in downtown San Diego was stabbed a day after a similar attack on a homeless man just blocks away.

San Diego police said the two attacks do not appear related.

At about 5 a.m. Wednesday, a man sleeping near the east curb of 16th Street just north of Imperial Avenue woke up to the sound of a man yelling, Im going to kill someone, according to a police report.

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The assailant reportedly stabbed the man on the sidewalk once in the shoulder and twice in the back. The victims wounds were not considered life-threatening, police said.

The assailant was described as a white man, 18 to 25 years old, about 5 foot, 8 inches with a medium build and clean-shaven face. He was wearing a black hoodie and tan pants.

On Tuesday, a man was stabbed four times in the back and slashed on his hand in a homeless encampment in Logan Heights at around 8:15 a.m. The attack occurred in an alley behind Logan Avenue near Sigsbee Street, about three blocks away.

The assailant was described as a white man, about 5 feet 10, clean shaven, 150 pounds with long brown, straggly hair. He was last seen wearing a red shirt and blue jeans.

Anyone with information related to the attacks is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (888)580-8477.

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gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
A Kaiser medical building in Rancho San Diego was evacuated Thursday morning after employees and patients reported feeling ill after smelling a strange odor.

Ten people said they felt ill and seven were taken to the hospital to be evaluated after complaining of headaches and nausea, said San Miguel Fire & Rescue spokesman Stephen Moran.

He said firefighters were called to the medical office on Avocado Boulevard near Fury Lane shortly after 8:30 a.m. after people reported smelling an unknown odor.

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After firefighters confirmed there was an odor, they evacuated staff and patients from the multi-story building.

San Diego Gas & Electric determined the smell was not caused by a natural gas leak. A county Hazardous Materials team has been summoned to the building to try to figure out the source of the odor, Moran said.

Were not sure what it is, he said.

.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
Authorities on Wednesday asked the public to help locate a San Diego man charged with using a juvenile to sell marijuana to students at a Carmel Valley area school, as well as supplying pot to minors.

San Diego police investigators said William John Sipperley may be armed, and may have left the area. He may be hiding in Oregon, Hawaii or possibly in the Las Vegas area.

An arrest warrant was issued for Sipperley in October. He was last seen in September, a police detective said.

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Sipperley, 50, is charged in the same case as fiancee Kimberly Quach, a Cathedral Catholic High School parent arrested in October on suspicion of using a teenager to sell drugs at the school.

A search warrant affidavit that San Diego police investigators filed Oct. 3 alleged that Quach showed the teen how to make the sales, and that customers paid in cash or through online payments.

According to that document, a search of the home the couple shared with two minor children turned up marijuana plants drying on tables throughout the home, as well as planters, grow lights and other items used to grow the plants.

In early October, Quach pleaded not guilty to 37 counts, including 10 charges of employing a minor to sell or carry marijuana, and 16 counts of furnishing marijuana to a minor over the age of 14.

The 48-year-old remains jailed in lieu of $201,000. Her preliminary hearing is set for February.

Sipperley is white, 5-feet, 9-inches tall and 180 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. Authorities said he might be driving a white 2007 Honda with a California license plate of 7PES884.

Anyone with information about Sipperleys whereabouts can call Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-8477. Texts or web tips can also be sent at sdcrimestoppers.com.

Tipsters may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
A lawsuit last week by a San Diego man is among a growing number of age-discrimination complaints against tech giant Hewlett-Packard.

Bryant Fonseca, 55, sued in San Diego Superior Court, seeking class-action status, according to court records. A spokeswoman for the Palo Alto-based company said by email on Tuesday that Hewlett-Packard does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Fonseca, who was a Hewlett-Packard employee of nearly four decades, claims the tech company ended his employment at its Rancho Bernardo location in May as part of a 2012 workforce reduction plan that targeted older workers, according to the lawsuit. Fonseca has been working as a research and development buyer.

Early last month, Fonseca filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, records show. The agency granted him the right to sue, a required step in the process.

The department has received at least 32 age-discrimination complaints against Hewlett-Packard since July 1, 2012, according to a U-T Watchdog review of state records. Of those, seven were attributed to the companys San Diego location.

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Twenty-four of the 32 complaints received the departments permission to sue, records showed. Seven were dismissed or withdrawn and one was closed because it was outside the departments jurisdiction.

Last year, USA Today reviewed complaints to California state officials about age discrimination at 12 leading tech companies since 2012. The newspaper ranked Hewlett-Packard ranked first. The second company on the list was Cisco Systems, with 11 complaints.

The company has denied that it targeted older workers for layoffs, saying its selection process is neutral.

As of October 2015, the company had laid off 2,076 California-based workers under the reduction plan, the lawsuit said. Of those, 1,765  85 percent  were at least 40 years old, a protected class of worker under California employment discrimination laws, the lawsuit says.

Early this year, Hewlett-Packard set forth a diversity mandate for certain outside hiring, but age was not included in the criteria required by the mandate, according to the lawsuit.

In another lawsuit against HP last year, plaintiff Don Delaney, then 70, of Scripps Ranch, eventually dropped out of the case and reached a confidential settlement with the tech company.

Hewlett-Packard did not admit to any of Delaneys allegations, court records show. The company said in court filings that it took reasonable steps to prevent discrimination and said all employment actions were legitimate, non-discriminatory business decisions.

The company went on to say that Delaney was not serving in a productive capacity at the time of separation, despite his receipt of full compensation, according to court records.

One of Delaneys attorneys, Jeffrey Hogue of the San Diego-based law firm Hogue & Belong, also represents other former Hewlett-Packard workers claiming age-discrimination, including Fonseca, the employee who sued the tech giant Nov. 29.

Some of the age-discrimination lawsuits filed against Hewlett-Packard in state courts have been moved into arbitration, legal proceedings in which records are not public.

According to Fonsecas lawsuit, Fonseca had excellent performance reviews while he worked at Hewlett-Packard. When Fonsecas position was eliminated in May, he was the oldest employee in his working group, the lawsuit said. Employees who were older than he had already lost their jobs under the workforce reduction plan.

Fonseca has had trouble finding other work since he lost his job at Hewlett-Packard, and unemployment has been hard on his family, according to the lawsuit.

As a result of his unlawful termination, Mr. Fonseca has had to resort to government assisted welfare and food stamps in order to support his family and their three foster children, the lawsuit said. Mr. Fonsecas foster children have lost their medical care providers as well because his family was kicked off HPs health insurance plan.

Allegations in Fonsecas lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard companies include age discrimination, wrongful termination in violation of public policy and unfair competition, according to the lawsuit. It asks the court to allow the case to be certified as class action, to award Fonseca back pay and other damages, to prevent HP from a workforce reduction that discriminates based on age and to order HP to pay Fonsecas attorneys fees and costs.

The lawsuit adds to a growing body of litigation alleging age discrimination at tech companies throughout the country. Google and Facebook both settled age discrimination lawsuits in the past three years.

Various tech companies have been called out by critics and in the media for posting job advertisements specifically recruiting exclusively for new grads. The ads didnt specify age, but critics and employment authorities have said job ads may be illegal discrimination if they contain subtle language discouraging older workers or disproportionately ruling them out of being hired.

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morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com
Re Trump flouts warnings, formally recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel (Dec. 6): While, at the very end of this article, the AP seemed to reluctantly admit that this move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was required by U.S. law, it failed to mention that the law dated to 1995 and was passed by huge margins and signed by President Clinton.

The article then noted that Donald Trump had promised this change during his campaign for the presidency, while omitting the fact that the same campaign promise was made by Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and, yes indeed, President Obama.

You may not agree with Trumps decision to follow through on his promise and the rule of law, but surely this does not qualify as the lunacy the article conveys.

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Jim Mallen

Lake San Marcos

Just a reminder of the two most important things President Harry Truman, Democrat, did in the 1940s.

First, 1945; ordered atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Second, 1948; within a few hours after some newcomers arrived on the shore of British Palestine and declared, this is now Israel, a Jewish nation, Truman announced that Israel is indeed a legitimate nation, and shall be treated as such.

The debate that Trump started concerning the capitol of Israel is trivial compared to Trumans decision in 1948. Nevertheless, it enhances Trumps image when we associate him with Truman; neither with a temperament to tolerate nonsense, nor the Welfare State.

Glenn Bernard

Carlsbad

Donald Trump is trying to set the world on fire (North Korea, Jerusalem) as Robert Muellers investigation looks into his financial connections with Russia.

If hes going down, the world can go down, too; destruction (EPA, National Monuments, international agreements) is what Trump does best. Starting a fire also will garner fear among his flock, who consider him the second coming of Christ (God knows why). They will continue to be the lemmings they are and follow him off the cliff.

That leaves the two-thirds majority to stop this from happening. Demand Congress remove him from office. His history of sexual assault, with his recorded confession, should be included in reasons for impeachment.

Cheryl Martin Ede

San Diego

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Anyone who sold their single-family home or condo in Seven Oaks from October 2016 to July 2017 might be owed a refund on some of their escrow-related fees.

The challenge now, according to the communitys homeowners association representatives, is notifying those who are potentially eligible.

Seven Oaks Board President Stella Logan said they are relying on word-of-mouth and social media to get the information out.

If you know of anybody, friends who moved, (you) are the best source since you would be kept apprised of where people went, Logan said.

While some local real estate agents might be aware of where the sellers they represented during recent transactions moved to, Logan  who is a Realtor  said that is not always the case, especially if they did not assist them with a subsequent purchase. If the seller moved into a retirement home or out of the area, their agent might not have their new address.

She said escrow companies also typically do not keep track of where the people they assisted moved.

If the sale occurred due to the homeowners death, notifying heirs who subsequently sold the property is also a challenge. They might be out-of-state with no locals aware of their contact information.

The refunds came about following the election of four new board members to the seven-member group in March, Logan said. As a Realtor who has represented many Seven Oaks sellers, Logan said she had noticed the communitys escrow fees were very high compared to other neighborhoods, but when Logan had questioned the communitys property manager, she blew me off.

Once elected to the board, Logan said she considered mentioning the fees, but due to conflict of interest decided not to.

Much to my surprise Jerry Coats (another new board member and Seven Oaks manager for 13 years until his retirement a couple years ago), brought it up, she said.

Coats said he had heard complaints from fellow Seven Oaks residents, which is why he raised the issue at the board meeting following his election.

Logan said after that meeting in March the group started to investigate its fees, to see if they truly reflected the actual costs to reproduce escrow-related documents that sellers are required to provide to buyers.

Realtor George Cooke with Coldwell Banker has represented many local buyers and sellers. He said that in recent years he has noticed the escrow-related fees in some neighborhoods being much higher than in other areas and sellers fees must be paid before the sale is complete, so for seniors with limited financial resources this is an extreme burden.

Ive started to see them go up ridiculously, double, triple or quadruple, Cooke said. What used to be $200 turned into $700 or $800. He said a factor in the price seems to be if the HOAs do the work in-house or outsource it to a property management company.

Cooke said all Rancho Bernardo residents are required to belong to a homeowners association and, if they have a condo, typically two HOAs. When they sell their property they must provide all HOA-related documents, with the costs put upon the seller during the escrow process. These include transfer fees to cover administrative costs associated with the HOA updating its records and document preparation. The latter includes the HOAs Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs); financial statement and boards minutes from the past year.

Due to the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act, most recently updated in 2014, HOAs are not allowed to charge more for escrow-related documents than the actual cost to reproduce and provide them. In Seven Oaks, Logan said at some point the fee was raised and it remains unclear if a past board was aware and approved the hike, or if the action was solely done by its property manager, who is no longer with Seven Oaks. Regardless, the current board realized the fees were higher than the cost to provide the documents, so it lowered the fees to reflect actual cost and decided to issue refunds for the difference.

Cooke said due to risk management he advises his clients to order the entire packet from their HOA(s) during the escrow process, but Logan said she has told clients that if they have the latest copy of the CC&Rs they can just photocopy those or they can go to their HOAs website and download the board minutes for the past 12 months to save money.

This means that while some sellers have requested a full packet from the Seven Oaks HOA, others only requested and paid for some documents. Some requested electronic copies, others hardcopies. Consequently, board lawyer Theresa Filicia from Silldorf Law LLP said the refund amount an eligible seller is due varies. Those requesting one will be required to produce escrow documents  such as their escrow settlement statement  to prove the amount paid for each type of document for which they seek a refund. Sales must have occurred between Oct. 13, 2016 and July 27, 2017  the timeframe the board has determined excessive fees were charged.

Filicia said the board passed a resolution at its July 11 meeting to lower fees. When asked for examples of the changes, she said on average sellers might have paid $479 for a package of documents that now will more likely cost $229. In terms of specific fees, some dropped significantly, others did not. For example, 12 months of board meeting minutes (was $95, now $75), required assessment and reserve funding disclosure summary (was $45, now $40), articles of incorporation (was $45, now $5) and bylaws (was $40, now $10).

The number of sellers eligible for refunds is unclear and the total in excess fees charged is also uncertain, according to Logan and Filicia. Logan said the board has not set a refund request deadline, but those potentially eligible should submit a request within the next six months or so. Refunds are only for Seven Oaks HOA fees, not those charged by any of the Seven Oaks condo associations.

Anyone who thinks they might be eligible for a refund is to call Filicia at 858-625-3900 (direct number) or 800-811-5874 (main office number).

Cooke, who is also director of the Rancho Bernardo Brokers Group, an organization for local real estate agents, said he told members last week about the refunds so they could share the news with past clients, fellow agents and escrow companies they work with to get the word out.

While the board was conducting its investigation last spring, some Seven Oaks residents heard about the situation and a complaint was filed with the San Diego County District Attorneys office.

Deputy DA Gina Darvas with the offices economic crimes/consumer protection unit said an investigation occurred. By its conclusion, our findings found they (the Seven Oaks board) were in compliance with the law.

She added that the DAs office did not take further action because (the issue) looked to have been resolved.

Logan said the board made its decision to lower the fees and issue refunds prior to the DAs investigation and it did not influence the boards actions.

Email: rbnews@pomeradonews.com
Tickets are on sale to hear Shark Tank investor Daymond John speak in Rancho Bernardo during a luncheon next month.

The self-made multi-millionaire with more than $6 billion to date in global product sales, according to his bio, will be the featured speaker during the North San Diego Business Chambers Leaders of Change luncheon.

It will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26 at Sony Electronics, 16535 Via Esprillo in Rancho Bernardo. Tickets are $59 for chamber members and $79 for non-members, which includes a copy of Johns book Rise and Grind. A table for seven is also available to chamber members at $500. The book is included.

Tickets are limited, with the first 250 attendees receiving an autographed copy of the book, according to chamber officials. To purchase, go to sdbusinesschamber.com or call 858-487-1767.

According to his website, John is a pioneer in the fashion industry, a star for eight seasons on ABCs Shark Tank reality show, a New York Times best-selling author, a branding guru and a highly sought after motivational speaker.

Chamber CEO and President Debra Rosen said she expects tickets to sell-out quickly based on previous Leaders of Change events that featured high-profile individuals like Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post Media Group and human rights activist Naomi Tutu.

Rosen said the chamber only holds the Leaders of Change event when a high-profile individual is booked.

The chamber supports businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit, Rosen said. Daymond John is everything about entrepreneurialism.

Email: rbnews@pomeradonews.com
The firefighters who are battling the Lilac wildfire in the Bonsall area will have to cope with wildly swirling winds on Friday due to a change in the weather.

The wildfire was spread on Thursday afternoon by Santa Ana winds out of the east. On Friday, the Santa Anas will collide with newly forming winds out of the west.

The collision of these winds could make things very swirly for the firefighters, said Mark Moede, a weather service forecaster.The west wind will reach the coast at about 10 a.m. Friday, and they should begin blowing across the Lilac-Bonsall areas about 1 p.m. The onshores will only be blowing 8-16 mph, but thats still enough to spread a wildfire.

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The National Weather Service has extended the red flag warning for San Diego County to Sunday, meaning the region will experience Santa Ana winds for a full week, possibly longer.

Forecasters issued the update on Thursday afternoon, just as the Lilac wildfire was spreading in the Bonsall area. The blaze, fueled by 40 mph winds, had burned more than 3,600 acres of land and injured two people by Thursday evening. Authorities said the fire also threatened 5,000 structures.

The winds will fade on Friday and remain light early Saturday. But theyre expected to regain strength on Saturday night and early Sunday. The Santa Anas have been blowing, on-and-off, since Monday.

This is a once-in-a-decade event, said Alex Tardy, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Rancho Bernardo.

Since Monday, weve had very low humidity and high winds, and Santa Anas usually dont last that long. We havent had something like this since 2015, and we havent had Santa Anas that last a week or more since the big wildfires of 2007.

He was referring to the series of large wildfires that hit the county in October 2007. For example, the Harris fire consumed more than 90,000 acres and killed eight people. The Witch fired burned almost 250,000 across and killed two.

The newly-extended red flag warning means, in this case, wildfires could break out anywhere from the coast to the mountains.

Thursday has turned out to be the windiest so far, with gusting to nearly 90 mph at Sill Hill near Descanso in East County. The winds also whipped to more than 50 mph along eastern Interstate 8, and over-turned a large trailer near the Japatul exit.

The high winds caused a large branch to fall from a tree at Holiday Park in Carlsbad, killing a 70-year-old man Thursday morning.

Carlsbad Fire Chief Mike Davis said the man had just stepped out of his car at about 10:30 a.m. near Pine Avenue and Eureka Place.

The man was pronounced dead about 15 minutes after paramedics arrived, and his name has not been released, Davis said.

During high-wind events, whether its a winter storm with gale-force winter winds off the coast or Santa Anas like right now, its very important to observe our surroundings and be really careful, Davis said.

If youre out driving anyway near or around a brush fire and its smoky, slow down, and well all get through this safe, he added.

In January 2016, musician Nicki Carano was killed when strong winds toppled a tree that fell on her car while she was driving in Pacific Beach.

Here is a sample of Thursdays fastest wind gusts: Sill Hill (near Descanso), 88 mph; Alpine mph, 70 mph; Valley Center, 69; Big Black Mountain, 68 mph; Palomar Mountain, 62 mph; Campo, 60; Julian, 56 mph; Otay Mountain, 50 mph; Ramona, 47 mph; Miramar MCAS, 47 mph; Mission Trails, 46 mph; Scripps Ranch, 45 mph; Mission Valley, 45 mph; Carlsbad, 41 mph; San Diego Country Estates, 40 mph; Valley Center, 38 mph; Montgomery, 37 mph; Poway, 36.

Twitter: @grobbins

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/07/2017 -- Global Food Smokers Market 2017 presents a far reaching and basic investigation of Food Smokers business along the edge of the examination of subjective angles that is ready to exhibit key business bits of knowledge to the perusers. world Food Smokers Market 2017 investigation report offers the diagnostic peruse of the business by learning fluctuated factors like Food Smokers market development, utilization volume, advertise patterns and Food Smokers business value structures all through the conjecture sum from 2017 to 2022.



The Food Smokers market studies the competitive landscape browse of the business. The Food Smokers report put together includes development plans and policies at the side of producing processes. the foremost regions concerned in Food Smokers open-air market live (United States, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India).



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Leading makers Analysis in Global Food Smokers Market 2017:



Char-Broil

Southern Pride

Weber

Cookshack Inc.

Alto-Shaam

Bradley Smoker

Camp Chef

Old Smokey

Landmann

Smoke Hollow



The Food Smokers report will the thorough study of the key business players to grasp their business ways in which, annual revenue, company profile and their contribution to the world Food Smokers market share. varied factors of the Food Smokers business like the availability chain state of affairs, business standards, import/export details area unit mentioned in world Food Smokers Market 2017 report.



Key Highlights of the Food Smokers Market:



- a clear understanding of the Food Smokers market supported growth, constraints, opportunities, utility study.



- telegraphic Food Smokers Market study supported major nation-states.



- Analysis of evolving market segments to boot as a full study of existing Food Smokers market segments.



Browse Complete Report With TOC @:https://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-united-states-food-smokers-market-2017.html



There are 15 Chapters to display the Global Food Smokers market



Chapter 1, Definition, Specifications and Classification of Food Smokers , Applications of Food Smokers , Market Segment by Regions;



Chapter 2, The Manufacturing Cost Structure, Raw Material and Suppliers, Manufacturing Process, Industry Chain Structure;



Chapter 3, The Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Food Smokers , Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, R&D Status and Technology Source, Raw Materials Sources Analysis;



Chapter 4, The Overall Market Analysis, Capacity Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment);



Chapter 5 and 6, Regional Market Analysis that includes North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia & India, Food Smokers Segment Market Analysis (by Type);



Chapter 7 and 8, the Food Smokers Segment Market Analysis (by Application) Major Manufacturers Analysis of Food Smokers ;



Chapter 9, Market Trend Analysis, Regional Market Trend, Market Trend by Product Type



Chapter 10, Regional Marketing Type Analysis, International Trade Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis;



Chapter 11, The Consumers Analysis of Global Food Smokers ;



Chapter 12, Food Smokers Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source;



Chapter 13, 14 and 15, Food Smokers sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.



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Furthermore, distinct aspects of Food Smokers market like the technological development, economic factors, opportunities and threats to the expansion of Food Smokers open-air market live coated thorough throughout this report. The performance of Food Smokers market throughout 2017 to 2022 is being forecasted throughout this report.



In conclusion, world Food Smokers market 2017 report presents the descriptive analysis of the parent market supported elite players, present, past and front information that's able to operate a profitable guide for all the Food Smokers business competitors



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Westmont, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/07/2017 -- Rasdale Stamp Company has posted all the final details of the upcoming Public Auction #434 on its website. This is the last public stamp sale for the company this year and it will be conducted in two sessions spread over two days.



Rasdale Stamp Company has unveiled all the finer details of its upcoming public auction on its website. In a move that assures everyone that everything is on schedule, the company has included all the terms of sale and lot specifics in two digital and a downloadable publications, which are all freely available on its online portal. Public Auction #434 features a total of 1,918 lots as compared to Public Auction #433, which managed 1,795 lots in August. The forthcoming auction is mainly dominated by collections, accumulations, stocks and covers from the United States and from various foreign sources. But there is also a sizable amount of space memorabilia, supplies and literature, rare postage, picture postcards, US airmail, rare coins, and all kinds of miscellaneous collectables from all over the world.



The 434th public auction, which will run from November 18-19, will mark the company's last such event for 2017. Pre-auction bids continue to flow in via mail, fax, email and phone until 6:00 pm (CST) on Friday the 17th of November. All opening bids will be posted on the company's website and updated until Friday. The live auction will be held in the company's auction gallery in Westmont, Illinois. Lots will be available for viewing in the same location from Saturday to Friday, November 11-17. Live auction bidding will be conducted in two sessions: Session One will be on Saturday the 18th of November from 10:00 am (New York time) or 9:00 am (CST) and Session Two will be on Sunday at the same time. Live auction bidding will be done either in person or online via Rasdale's Live Auction Bidding platform  phone bidding is not available.



The company can be followed at http://www.mycityfaces.com/rasdale-stamp-company/bus-23495/.



About Rasdale Stamp Company

Rasdale Stamp Company is a family owned and managed philatelic firm founded in 1932 by Joseph Rasdale. The company runs a philatelic auction house in Westmont and an online stamp store on its website. Rasdale belongs to various philatelic associations including the NADA, ASDA, Florida Stamp Dealers Association, and the Midwest Stamp Dealers Association (MSDA). The company is also a member of several stamp collector societies and clubs including the APS, Bureau Society, ATA, Chicago Collectors Club, Southwest Collectors Club, and the Ann Arbor Collectors Club.



Company reviews can be seen at https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rasdale+Stamp+Company/@41.815952,-87.9762387,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x4f0ef1314e1483cc!8m2!3d41.816317!4d-87.975168?hl=en.



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/
Manchester, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/07/2017 -- When people are looking to visit or emigrate to Australia, there are many things that they must do, from obtaining the relevant visas to arranging accommodation, the list may appear endless, and for many people this means forgetting things that are the most vital, such as their health. In line with this one company specialising in emigration law, James Freeman, has recently been offering health advice for all travelling to Australia.



Some of the health related advice for people planning on travelling to Australia which James Freeman has been providing includes:



- Those travelling to Australia should visit their GPs at least 4-6 weeks before they are supposed to be going to check whether they need any vaccinations



- Those travelling to Australia must arrange comprehensive medical insurance



- When going to Australia people must research Australia's healthcare so that they are prepared should anything bad happen to one's health. For example if require an ambulance in Australia must call 000



These are only some of the tips provided by the company too. James Freeman is able to assist in providing health based information for people travelling to a range of countries, and is renowned throughout the emigration industry for always offering leading and accurate guidance.



A spokesperson and representative from James Freeman was incredibly keen to comment saying, "Here at James Freeman our ultimate goal is to enable as many people as possible to travel and emigrate in the least stressful ways, this is why we not only provide advice and guidance in terms of obtaining the most appropriate visas, but also information and guidance regarding to all aspects of travelling abroad."



About James Freeman

James Freeman is a leading emigration solicitors able to assist those looking to relocate to Australia, Canada and America, as well as a range of other countries.



Looking to move abroad, or even if looking to visit, we are sure that this company will be able to help and provide with all the information that need in order to ensure that are able to do in the easiest possible ways. For full details regarding the company and to get in touch today, do not hesitate to visit their website.



PR Contact:

Company Name: James Freeman

Contact Name: Michael Thorpe

Website URL: http://www.jamesfreeman.org.uk

Contact Number: 0161 826 4977

Contact Email: michael.thorpe@jamesfreeman.org.uk

Address: Conavon Court 12 Blackfriars Street Manchester M3 5BQ


A 35-minute documentary that sheds light on the difficulties facing Arab scientists and students in forced exile is due to be screened this week (7 December) at the US National Academies of Science in Washington, DC.

The documentary reveals the difficult journey of refugee scientists, Nicole Leghissa Science in Exile was produced by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and premiered at the World Science Forum held in Jordan in November. It explores how wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq have ravaged the lives of four researchers who fled their homelands in search of safety, and an opportunity to resume their research or studies in host countries. In the film they share their concerns and stories on the journey to seeking asylum  and how they ended up as refugees rather than scientists.

Like any refugee who flees from war, the scientists seek a new home and a source of livelihood for themselves and their families. But, a refugee scientist aspires for more  a laboratory or research centre to continue his scientific contributions  according to Italian film director Nicole Leghissa.



"The documentary reveals the difficult journey of refugee scientists, showing that the idea of starting over is not an option, Leghissa tells SciDev.Net. [It also] highlights the fact that they are targeted in times of war and conflict."



The film has been produced with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Its production took about seven months in both Lebanon and Turkey, according to Leghissa.



"The sad fact is that their countries are incapable of providing help for them, and some scientists might even not find a job opportunity in the diaspora, forced eventually to lose self-confidence at a time when humanity still needs them to offer what they have to research centres in their new communities, Leghissa adds.



"The crisis in Syria has affected the past, the present and might even affect the future after Syria [has been] depleted of many of its scientists," said Saja Al Zoubi, one of the scientists featured in the film.



Some estimates suggest that more than half of Syrian doctors are now refugees.



Saja, who had to flee Syria for Lebanon after the deterioration of the security situation in Damascus, works as a social scientist. Her recent research focused on the economics of refugee families in Lebanon, especially households headed by women.



You might also like The plight of Arab refugee scientists in the diaspora

Countries in conflict can hold on to science expertise The concerns over security in Syria continue to haunt and disturb Saja, fearing the day when she might be banned from work in her host country. "At that time, [if that happens,] I will lose everything," she said.Researchers participating at the Forum workshop where the film premiered confirmed that the challenges begin after asylum. Among the challenges they face in host countries are the search for work, obtaining a residence permit in the country of asylum, the equivalence of scientific certificates, the existence of institutions that accept refugee scientists, and accessing grants and initiatives that will enable them to continue their scientific journey.

Highlighting initiatives to support refugee researchers, Celine Taminian, special adviser for the Middle East/North Africa region at the Institute of International Education's Scholar Rescue Fund, said that since its launch in 2004, the Fund has given nearly 726 grants to researchers who pursue master's, doctorate, and post-doctoral degrees.



Taminian explained that the plight of refugee scientists emerged after thousands of scientists fled Iraq in fear of retaliation by the government. The Fund began working with them at that time, and was able to support 280 Iraqi scientists covering the costs of their research and studies in different fields of science.



The same effort is being made right now to support scientists from Syria, Yemen, and other countries affected by conflict.



But despite the opportunities and research grants provided by international organisations and civil society, the crisis is growing faster than the solutions. The solution lies only in ending conflicts, which are the main reason for the brain drain, especially in the Middle East, according to comments made after the film screening at the Forum.


KINGSTREE, S.C.  The Williamsburg County Council has approved a finance committee report that includes proposed employee bonuses for the Christmas holiday.

Williamsburg County Supervisor Stanley S. Pasley presented the proposed employee bonus plan to the council at a regular meeting on Nov. 21. The plan includes a $200 bonus for all full-time employees who have worked for Williamsburg County since before July 1, 2016.

Those full-time employees who have been hired since July 1, 2016, will receive a hundred dollars, Pasley said. Permanent part-timers who work 20 hours or more per week will receive $50, and permanent part-timers who work less than 20 hours per week will receive $25.

One ordinance appeared on the agenda at Tuesdays meeting, and that was in regards to the execution and delivery of a fee agreement by and between the county and LHSC Inc. providing for a payment of a fee in lieu of taxes.

LHSC is a textile company expected to open in Kingstree. According to Jim Moore, Williamsburg County Economic Development Board executive drector, the operation will initially create blinds and curtains for institutional use such as in hospitals, schools and hospitality.

The council approved the second reading of the ordinance.

Tim Britton, planning director for the Waccamaw Regional council of Governments, spoke to the council about county planning options and processes. He said only seven of the 46 counties in South Carolina dont have zoning ordinances, and Williamsburg County is one of them.

Britton spoke to the council about the benefits and pitfalls of having a zoning ordinance. He said that when there are sparse populations and people are separated by hundreds or thousands of feet, there is an ability to mitigate, sometimes, the uses that neighbors have.

Unfortunately without zoning, we do have the tendency to have uses to locate in our jurisdictions and counties which have the ability to impact a lot of people in a large area, Britton said. And unfortunately without zoning in place, its very difficult for counties and municipalities to have a say on where those uses are located.

He said it would take the county about six to eight months to develop and impose a zoning ordinance, if it decided to do so.

The council agreed to look more into zoning procedures after the holidays.
Alex Fluegel and Jalyn Spencer-Harris, founders of Mama Hub Hub

Detroit Mama's Circle monthly event

When Jalyn Spencer-Harris and Alex Fluegel first met in a business planning class through the Build Institute , they discovered they had a lot in common. They were mothers, aspiring entrepreneurs, and disappointed with the lack of resources and a quality support system for moms in Detroit.So they each searched for ways to create it. Eventually, Spencer-Harris and Fluegel joined forces to establish Detroit Mama Hub, a community offering support and education to moms-to-be and mothers of babies and young children.Spencer-Harris is a Detroit native who was living in Baltimore when she had her son, Zen, 17 years ago. In Baltimore, she took advantage of and enjoyed the different prenatal education and fitness resources availablealong with a strong network of mom friends. After she returned to Detroit and had her daughter, Violet, who's now 4 years old, Spencer-Harris saw the difference in the level of support and options available to mothers here. And she didn't want to have to drive out to the suburbs to find it."My frustration is what led me to think about creating something like that here in the city," says Spencer-Harris, who pitched her idea for Detroit Mama Hub to the city's Motor City Match program and received an award for a free business planning class.Meanwhile, Fluegel had difficulty finding part-time flexible childcare for her daughter when she moved to Detroit two years ago from Grand Rapids, where she found quality resources for parents to be more accessible."When I was freelancing, I think I spent 30 days straight where me and my daughter were never separated," says Fluegel, a single mom to 4-year-old Sadie and a freelance web and marketing consultant who also works at a yoga studio and a bar. When she couldn't find childcare that fit her needs, she took a business planning class to explore starting her own co-working/childcare business. Detroit Mama Hub began hosting programs in May. Over the summer , at events like Open Streets Detroit and the Detroit Latin Festival, Detroit Mama Hub's baby comfort stations offered mothers a place to nurse, change diapers, and rest. In November, they held a fair to introduce new and expecting moms to baby and birth experts, businesses, and organizations.Detroit Mama Hub also hosts a monthly co-working series at Ponyride , a nonprofit that rents out space to entrepreneurs and other organizations. Childcare is provided during the three-hour co-working period, which is followed by a mom's circle playgroup. Detroit Mama Hub also organizes play dates and workshops for moms. Spencer-Harris, who works part-time as a lactation consultant, holds a monthly breastfeeding support group at her home.Fluegel and Spencer-Harris aim to create spaces where they can provide affirmation and help moms develop their instinct. Detroit Mama Hub's motto is "Motherhood is better together.""There's so many conflicting opinions, so many different reasons to second-guess what you might think or feel when it comes to your children," Fluegel says. "And teaching moms to develop that confidence and courage to say, 'This is what I think is the right thing to do, and I'm going to trust myself.' That's really important."Detroit Mama Hub also hopes to eventually host classes on pre- and postpartum fitness, as well as childbirth education. Spencer-Harris and Fluegel are working to open a physical space where they can hold events and classes in partnership with other professionals, such as doulas, midwives, and yoga instructors. The building will have space to host co-working with childcare.Detroit Mama Hub doesn't currently charge a membership feea paid membership model will be introduced once the brick-and-mortar space opensinstead offering individual ticketed or free events. Members would get access to certain events for free and discounts on classes.In September, Detroit Mama Hub received another award from Motor City Match to help find a property and negotiate the lease. They're targeting their search in the city's North End.The group's Facebook page has more than 600 likes, and a Facebook group where moms can interact with each other and ask questions has about 250 members. Fluegel estimates they have a core group of about 50 active moms who participate in events.While Detroit has a long history of segregation, an important aspect of Detroit Mama Hub is to bring women of different cultures and backgrounds together to learn from each other."We want Detroit Mama Hub to be a space for women/mothers who value inclusivity and also want their children to be in an environment where they can learn to value and respect diversity," Spencer-Harris says.This article is part of " Detroit Innovation ," a series highlighting community-led projects that are improving the vitality of neighborhoods in Detroit, while recognizing the potential of residents to work with partners to solve the most pressing challenges facing their communities.
A Shinola leather hand bag

Jennifer Guarino

A Shinola worker assembles a leather hand bag

Bonnie Fahoome

Two years ago, Steve Mazur and Eric Huang, co-founders of Detroit-based Ash & Erie , makers of shirts for shorter men, were searching for suppliers to produce their classic woven, button-down shirts in Detroit. They soon learned it was impractical and took the production overseas.While watchmaker Shinola has enjoyed immense success, the company has run into obstacles scaling because it lacks a highly-skilled, trained workforce necessary for the intricate sewing and leather cutting required in many of its products. It means each employee hired to sew and cut leather has to be trained from scratch, a tedious process that takes up to six months.These companies are emblematic of other Detroit design and fashion entrepreneurs bursting at the seams to launch, grow, or develop, but who aren't finding the infrastructure needed to flourish locally. The businesses say they face difficulties finding skilled, experienced professionals to sew, cut, and make patterns, as well as local manufacturers able to affordably produce smaller product batches.That's why efforts to create a vibrant textile industry in Detroit are underway. Important players in the city's design and manufacturing fields are working to boost local skilled labor and bring production back home.That's where Jeffrey Aronsson comes in.The former Donna Karen CEO who spent three decades in New York's fashion and luxury apparel industry decided to relocate his consulting business to Detroit. Mayor Mike Duggan personally charged him with the task of creating a textile design and fashion production hub in the city. Aronsson imagines a campus where early, high-potential design and fashion entrepreneurs can get prototypes made and engineered for production, and manufactured without all the obstacles that drive their work to countries such as China, India, Vietnam, or other American cities."What I actually see is something that I don't think exists yet on the planet, and the time is right for it to happen now," says Aronsson. "The industry is right for disruption and that disruption usually comes about in chaos, when people have to do something different when what is being done now simply isn't working. A lot of the functions of everything from design, product development, production, and logistics back to the consumer are dysfunctional. One of the reasons for that is because of the focus on the cost of labor as a chief component to the cost of goods."He says it's the reason New York City's garment district is failing, and the reason why a new model for the $2.5 trillion fashion industry could be created in Detroit.What he didn't initially know was that some Detroiters were already collaborating and had similar ideas to develop the city's ecosystem for the textile manufacturing industry. Now, he's working with them.Jennifer Guarino, Shinola's Vice President of Manufacturing, has teamed up with other clothing companies, such as Ash & Erie, Detroit Denim , and Maggie's Organics , along with the Lear Corporation, to create the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center. An academy and factory in one, master-level experts will train workers to sew, cut leather and other fabrics, make patterns, and operate emerging technology such as robotics to create products, all while taking on contract work.Part of the project includes a U.S. Department of Labor-approved apprenticeship program, and a pre-apprenticeship certification program that will be taught at Henry Ford Community College starting next month."It's a national problem," Guarino says. "The industry has been shrinking for the last 30 years, after factories started closing and the factories that were left didn't have the resources to invest in training. So we have to make up for a generation of not training people in this industry."Not having trained workers has an enormous effect on a company's bottom line, she says. "It takes longer for us to become profitable. The main thing is it hurts your margins. Try to envision someone who can frost a beautiful cake, but it takes them six hours. You're not going to make any money on that cake. It comes down to that. We have to train everybody in the watch factory from scratch."It's still an open question whether or not it makes sense to pursue all this manufacturing infrastructure in Detroit. But Bonnie Fahoome intends to find out.The Director of Business Programs for Detroit Creative Corridor Center got Detroit included in an Urban Manufacturing Alliance study which is analyzing manufacturing needs, assets, gaps, and opportunities such as job creation and neighborhood development for small to mid-size companies in cities, including Baltimore, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Portland. For the assessment, four manufacturing focus groups were conducted in August, one of which targeted the fashion and textile industries.The data will be analyzed in preparation for a national report, a Detroit-specific report, and a resource list that will detail company contacts and products and services they offer. The Detroit report is expected to be released in late January."Our role is to be stewards to identify and support the development of design-related companies, finding out what they need from us, seeing them grow in whatever capacity we can," she says. "We will help them understand how to scale, and serve as a partner to help them get their voice at the table and connect them with resources. There are a lot of people doing a lot of things out there in the maker community, fashion, and textiles."All this may make a way for companies such as Ash & Erie to eventually manufacture in Detroit. Mazur, whose shirt company recently was featured on ABCs "Shark Tank," and received a $150,000 investment from billionaire Mark Cuban, says he and his partner want to find local production partners."We would definitely love to make all our clothes in Detroit, or even Michigan, if possible," he says. "We have the sales, we have the volume; we would love to place orders here. It would save us a ton of time and hassle when it comes to sampling items."For now, the company sells its shirts and a newly launched jeans line (which are made in Los Angeles) online. It is featured among businesses in the Bedrock Holiday Market that will run through January 7.The same is true for Tommey Walker, owner of Detroit vs. Everybody , a T-shirt line that sells online and at three brick and mortar stores. While he has a workshop for printing and embroidering, the company's shirts are manufactured in Asia."A project like this is ahead of its time," says Walker, who has been meeting with Aronsson and other fashion and textile-related companies. "When this hits, it will be like a well-oiled machine and with the resurgence of the city, this can be as innovative as the Model T Fords."Aronsson says he has been discussing the idea with "some of the biggest apparel companies in the world" and he has been met with "tremendous enthusiasm.""They are basically saying, 'We want to support it. If you make it, we will buy it,'" he says. "We've got a lot of disciplines and capabilities that we are going to need to marshal this.  People are enthusiastically embracing this, and it feels like life has set you up when you can bring relationships, insight, and the experience of a career to do it. How lucky to have that opportunity. It's a huge responsibility and it's very humbling."
his coming spring there will be dawn to dusk public access to the 27-acre Pilgrim Haven Natural Area in South Haven.Improvements there will include an electric gate at the preserves entrance, new fencing, pit toilets, additional parking lot improvements, and other facilities that will support the Great Lakes Water Trail. Pilgrim Haven Natural Area features woodlands, hiking trails and a beach on Lake Michigan. Steps being taken to make public access easier are being accomplished, in part, as a result of a $70,000 grant made by Entergy CorporationPalisades to the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy (SWMLC).SWMLC will use the grant funds to match funding from a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund (MNRTF) grant awarded earlier this year to the South Haven Area Recreation Authority (SHARA)."The generous grant from Entergy-Palisades will assist Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy and South Haven Area Recreation Authority in moving forward with a new phase of improvements to the Pilgrim Haven Natural Area," says Peter Ter Louw, SWMLC President and Executive Director. "These improvements will allow us to safely open this extremely unique nature preserve on Lake Michigan for South Haven area residents and visitors."With the contribution from Entergy-Palisades, Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy and South Haven Area Recreation Authority will be able to continue the work to create public access and offer community uses of the property. The land includes a stretch of Dyckman Creek and almost 800 feet of beach along Lake Michigan.Located just north of Van Buren State Park, Pilgrim Haven Natural Area was donated to SWMLC in December 2011 through a bequest from the estate of Suzanne Upjohn Delano Parish.She wanted to see the former campground remain as open space and opened to the public. In the fall of 2016, SWMLC entered into an agreement with the South Haven Area Recreation Authority for the management of the preserve. SHARA is a partnership of the City of South Haven, South Haven Charter Township, and South Haven Public Schools.Under the agreement, SHARA is responsible for the general maintenance and management of the nature preserve, as well as implementation of current public access improvements. SWMLC will continue to own the property and care for the natural areas and wildlife habitats on site through the work of employees and volunteers."Our support is about stewardship and being a good neighbor not only today, but tomorrow and years to come," says Palisades Site Vice President Charlie Arnone. "Future generations will be able to enjoy Pilgrim Haven thanks to the work of the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. The organization provides an incredible service to this region and we are so proud to partner with SWMLC on this important project."South Haven Township Supervisor and Chair of SHARA Ross Stein says, "Visitors can enjoy time on the beach, swimming in Lake Michigan, walking along a creek, or hiking through the woods," "For over 100 years, the property that is now the Pilgrim Haven Natural Area has been a beloved place for people to come to enjoy the Lake Michigan shoreline, and were thrilled that we can be a part of continuing that legacy."SHARA is pleased to partner with SWMLC in managing Pilgrim Haven - it is a remarkable open space and a wonderful gift to the community," says Stein. "And the generous grant from Entergy is helping to ensure Pilgrim Haven is open to all."Souce: Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy
Miller-Davis Company has hired several new staff members in the past few months. Rachael Jennings, Kevin Frye, Troy Geister, Amjed Al-Qudah and Allison Warner have all joined the Miller-Davis team in its Kalamazoo office.Rachael Jennings has been hired as talent and culture coordinator based at Miller-Davis headquarters in Kalamazoo. In this role, a new position for the company, she is responsible for finding and retaining talent and supporting programs that promote Miller-Davis Companys culture. Jennings previously served as a human resources generalist at Dimplex Thermal Solutions in Kalamazoo. She earned a bachelors degree in management from Hope College.Kevin Frye has been hired as a project manager based in Kalamazoo. In this role, he oversees and leads construction projects and serves as the primary office contact for those projects. He is responsible for all aspects of construction, from the design phase through warranty. He previously served as a field manager for Elzinga & Volkers in Holland, and as a senior commercial project superintendent for AVB Construction. Frye is a LEED Green Associate.Troy Geister is a new project superintendent and is working on Dansville Schools 2016 Bond Program. In this role, Geister provides overall onsite management of construction projects and serves as the primary field contact for projects. He has several years of experience working as a superintendent, carpenter foreman, and construction supervisor with both Gerace Construction Company and Granger Construction.Amjed Al-Qudah and Allison Warner have been hired as project engineers based in Kalamazoo. They provide support for project management, estimating and field supervisory staff with responsibility for all aspects of the construction process. Al-Qudah served as an intern through the Monroe-Brown Internship Program with Miller-Davis before being hired as a project engineer. He earned a masters degree in civil engineering from Western Michigan University and a bachelors degree in structural engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology. Warner previously served as a civil engineer at Commonwealth Associates in Jackson, Michigan. She earned a bachelors degree in civil engineering from Western Michigan University.People are at the foundation of what we do and the services we provide. Our new staff are vital to our success and were happy to have them as part of our team, says Rex Bell, Miller-Davis Company president.Miller-Davis Company, founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1909, is a full-service construction company providing general contracting, construction management, design, build and construction consulting services. Miller-Davis maintains its headquarters in Kalamazoo and an additional office in South Bend, Indiana. Learn more at miller-davis.com.Source: Miller-Davis Company
About Legal Services of South Central Michigan



LSSCM provides free legal advice and representation to low-income residents of Barry, Branch, Calhoun, Clinton, Eaton, Hillsdale, Ingham, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston, Monroe, Shiawassee and Washtenaw Counties. They also provide services to older adults in St. Joseph County.



They are a division of the LSSCM provides free legal advice and representation to low-income residents of Barry, Branch, Calhoun, Clinton, Eaton, Hillsdale, Ingham, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston, Monroe, Shiawassee and Washtenaw Counties. They also provide services to older adults in St. Joseph County.They are a division of the Michigan Advocacy Program.

Losing one's home, especially when you're not sure if you can find a new one, is devastating."I had a house fire in 2000. Lost everything," Phyllis Robinson says.She has a home now -- but had recently been threatened with eviction. "If I got evicted, it would be like the house fire, losing everything again," she says, choking-up.After the fire, she gathered herself together, eventually moved to a trailer in Homer, a small town south of Albion in Calhoun County. With the grandchildren she cared for, she lived at New Village Estates for 15 years.Then a situation arose with the ex-boyfriend of her then-17-year-old granddaughter. It involved harassment, stalking, and police. Trailer park management decided the best cure would be an eviction.The messy situation called for a lawyer, a necessity that Robinson could not afford. But then she found Legal Services of South Central Michigan . Thanks to LSSCM and their attorney Anna Moss, Robinson worked out a deal with the park and remained housed there."They helped me fight to stay," she says.Cindy Woodin, 62, was about to lose her home in Tekonsha. She worked in senior care for her whole life -- "not a money-maker" as a career, Woodin says, but she had a modest plan for her senior years. That plan depended on her being able to pay the mortgage on her house.At 59 she had a stroke. She was unable to work. Her savings had to stretch until she got on Social Security in June 2017.At the end of last year her money ran out and she wasn't able to pay the mortgage. In February, "the nightmare began." First, there were polite calls from her bank, then she got a caller who was "just brutal." He told her a sheriff's sale was scheduled for May. "I was a wreck."Woodin told them she'd make past due mortgage payments once her Social Security checks began, but the bank refused to take her seriously, she says. She went to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for help. They referred her to Legal Services of South Central Michigan.Attorney Moss presented the bank with the same plan Woodin earlier proposed. Sometimes it takes a lawyer to get things done. "One phone call -- she got it!"Evictions, even if they do not directly lead to homelessness, disrupt the lives of entire families. Children are especially vulnerable to losing a home, Moss says."I do hear concerns from parents: the fear of where the family will move, where the children will sleep, if the child's school will change, she says. Something that I think is less measurable, but I imagine more pervasive and challenging, is the uncertainty imposed during the eviction process. Legal Services of South Central Michigan is doing what it can -- mainly, to provide free legal help -- to prevent evictions in Calhoun County.Managing attorney at LSSCM Alisa Parker has seen the many issues that can drive people to eviction and likely homelessness, from disputes over pet ownership to life emergencies that lead to unpaid rent or mortgages.Parker knows how complicated these situations can be.On one hand, as an advocate, Parker says "it's just morally right that people should have housing."On the other hand, as an attorney, she knows there are many sides to housing disputes, and Legal Services of South Central Michigan is not going to be able to help anyone unless they also work with the courts and landlords.A year ago, a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant funded LSSCM to "really push forward the eviction diversion work in Calhoun County," Parker said.That led to an eviction diversion program, which "has a three-pronged approach: First, legal representation and access to legal assistance in the courthouse; second, resource assistance in collaboration with social service agencies for tenants needing financial or housing resource assistance; and third, landlord engagement to help build relationships with local private landlords for the purposes of creating more housing opportunities."Before the program, the LSSCM was working with homelessness prevention workers at Calhoun's public schools to find families in dire need of help. By the time they reached potential clients, many were already homeless. "At that point, we'd be getting to families too late, so we needed to come up with a different way."Parker says they needed a holistic approach to keep families from getting evicted in the first place. Having a record of evictions haunts a family and "takes them down that hole for homelessness."The goal should be eviction dismissal, Parker says -- "not to just assist people when they come to court, or advise them, but to negotiate with landlords, or attorneys for the landlords; to say, if we can help get this person connected to resources, would you agree to dismiss this case?"Some tenants can be innocent victims of circumstance, Battle Creek-area landlord Douglas Garner understands.And some, he points out, can be downright irresponsible.Either way, the hard reality for Garner is, if he doesn't get the rent check on time, he needs the renter to vacate. If they break his list of rules, from non-payment to "creating drama on the property," he's done with them.What if someone with a record of evictions comes to Garner in need of a place to rent? Would he give them a second chance?"Definitely not. That's kind of a bad business practice," he says bluntly."A landlord who's out for the good of humanity, who is going to put someone in who hasn't changed, and that person's going to repeat it, then the landlord's going to get burned."Garner's got a business to run, not a charity. Yet, when LSSCM offered seats at their quarterly dinners for landlords, to "sell their pitch at giving at-risk tenants a second chance," as Garner puts it, he got involved. He got more involved last year when he stepped up to represent landlords as a board member of the Rental Housing Roundtable, part of the Greater Battle Creek Homeless Coalition (the LSSCM is a participating partner).He also got on LSSCM's list of landlords for at-risk clients, primarily, Garner says, because he will rent on a two-week basis -- it's easier to pay when rent is due at the same time paychecks arrive.Garner has had a lot of talks with LSSCM and has noticed changes in their approach to helping at-risk tenants."They are now actually sitting in court to try to resolve issues," he says. With all parties present during an eviction hearing, "it keeps the ball rolling during the eviction process," and it's more likely all can come to an agreement if an eviction dismissal is possible."In that case, they've really made a difference," Garner says.Parker has often called landlords on behalf of clients, trying to find one who'd take a chance on an at-risk tenant. "It didn't dawn on me until I had a landlord say, 'You know, when you all pick up the phone and say 'I have a client,' that's an automatic turn-off. I'd rather talk with that person. I want to ask questions with this person, not because I want to deny them housing, I just want to see if they're going to be honest with me.'"LSSCM needs to consider the needs of both landlords and tenants, Parker realized, and get a dialog underway with all sides. "I think it's made for interesting conversation, better dialog; it's less antagonistic and more collaborative."One can't just dismiss them as the villains who throw families out into the cold. Landlords need to be invited to the table, she says. "God knows we don't always agree, sometimes we're sitting around the table having strong disagreements about how things should be approached, but those strong disagreements have been good because they've pushed us on both ends to say, 'there's gotta be a way' at the end of the day."Parker adds, "It does nobody any good to see massive amounts of people, who are not able to afford housing, out in the streets. It does nobody any good to have children who are not able to have stable housing."This article is part of Michigan Nightlight, a series of stories about the programs and people that positively impact the lives of Michigan kids. It is made possible with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation . Read more in the series here
Secularist of the Year is an opportunity to celebrate the outstanding groups and inspiring individuals advancing secularism and related human rights. The 5,000 prize for Secularist of the Year is presented annually.

The 2018 awards luncheon and social reception will be held on Saturday 24 March in central London, from 13.00-16.00 (registration from 12.30). Tickets, which are now on sale, include a three course meal and welcome drink.

Nominations for the award are now closed. Thank you for everyone who submitted.

The venue is fully accessible. If you have any mobility issues or would require extra help on the day please let us know.

Tickets are 40 for members and 50 for non-members.

Ticket sales close at 16.00 on Thursday 22 March 2018
Press Release

December 7, 2017 Dispatch from Crame No. 207

Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Statement on the killing of Fr. Marcelito "Tito" Paez First, it started with the poor, who were killed in their homes, in the streets, even in broad daylight. Not even our children were spared. Now, they are escalating to killing off those who speak and stand up for the victims! Let none of us make a mistake. The death of 72-year-old activist priest Marcelito "Tito" Paez could be indicative of a dangerous escalation in this administration's bloody and violent policy of "solving problems" through extrajudicial killings. They are now attempting to "solve" the uproar about human rights abuses and EJKs by killing those who sound the alarm. This is unacceptable. And none of us should allow it to go unresolved and unpunished, and none of us should allow it to be the start of more to come. It is alarming to note that, just the day before, Fr. Paez, a known human rights defender, helped secure the release of political prisoner Rommel Tucay, an organizer of Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon in Nueva Ecija who was arrested by soldiers in March. It is even more chilling to think that his death happened on the very same day that the President signed a proclamation classifying the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), as terrorist groups. All of this is disturbingly reminiscent of the reign of terror that earned General Jovito Palparan the tag "berdugo" or "butcher" during the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In those days, anywhere that the "Berdugo" was assigned became a killing field, with a spate of human rights violations and EJKs leaving a bloody trail that leads to an apparent state policy to silence political activists. As a reward, he was promoted twice and praised during one of PGMA's SONA. It is eerie to consider that one of Gen. Palparan's past stomping grounds was also Nueva Ecija, where Fr. Paez met his end. Duterte once promised that Change is Coming. But of course, even there, he lied. All we see is a return of the old, violent and bloody tactics of his idols. Is it any wonder though when we consider the fact that, during the same time that Palparan was sowing terror in Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog and Eastern Visayas, the Davao Death Squad was doing the same in Davao City? Tama na ang patayan. Tigilan na ang pang-aabuso. But this is what silence, ambivalence, dilly-dallying and politicking buys us: more killings. As I have said before, one death by extrajudicial killings is one too many. The death of one can quickly escalate to the death of thousands, and after that, the death of those who would defend the thousands. When your President is himself a self-professed mass murderer, only a fool would sit back and watch and wait for the "right time". The right time to defend human rights is the moment it comes under attack. Not a moment later. To wait and to fear acting is to lose the chance to act. I hope that Fr. Paez's death will not be in vain. I hope that his sacrifice will finally move the rest of our leaders - political, community and religious alike - and all of our countrymen into launching a proper outcry against the abuses and failures of this administration.
Press Release

December 7, 2017 CHIZ TO MILITARY: UPHOLD STRINGENT MEASURES OF HSA AMID NPA TAG Senator Chiz Escudero has reminded the police and the military to strictly observe the provisions of the Human Security Act (HSA) in the conduct of their operation after the government had officially declared the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the National People's Army (NPA), as terrorist organizations. Escudero, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, said President Duterte's declaration removes the possibility of peace talks. "And given the government policy, we don't negotiate with terrorists." Republic Act 9372 or the HSA defines terrorism, as well as provides for the procedure should the government seek to tag a group as terrorist. It creates an anti-terrorism council and grievance committee to implement the law and see any violations of the law, respectively. "I hope this terror tag on CPP-NDF is just a hiccup or a negotiating tactic in the peace process. I am still optimistic that peace talks between the government and the CPP-NPA will soon resume and prosper under cooler situation," he said. The senator said with the terror tag on the CPP-NPA, the military and the police should adhere to the measures and procedures provided under the HSA, especially on the matter of safeguards to protect human rights against abuse by the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). "Any offense committed under HSA necessitates stronger evidentiary requirements. You can't just file murder, illegal possession of firearms or any non-bailable offense. Government has to follow and adhere to the stringent requirements provided by the law, and these requirements carry corresponding penalties against violators," Escudero said. "Ang nakakalungkot dito, marami na namang maiipit na iba't ibang lugar sa bansa at mga sibilyan dahil sa umpugan ng NPA at ng gobyerno. At magpapatuloy pa rin ang patayan ng Pilipino at kapwa Pilipino," he said. "I believe that peace negotiation should be exhausted to bring the armed conflict to a permanent and just closure," Escudero added.
Press Release

December 7, 2017 Legarda Ready to Sponsor PH-EU Cooperation Agreement, Social Security Treaties with Sweden, Germany Senator Loren Legarda is ready to sponsor treaties with the European Union, Germany and Sweden before the Senate goes on break next week. Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, today conducted a hearing to discuss concurrence in the Philippines' ratification to three treaties: the Framework Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation Between the Philippines and the European Union (PH-EU PCA); the Agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the Federal Republic of Germany on Social Security (PH-Germany SSA); and the Agreement on Social Security between the Republic of the Philippines and the Kingdom of Sweden (PH-Sweden SSA). The Senator said that the PH-EU PCA will serve as a general framework of relations between the Philippines and the EU and will allow better cooperation between the two parties on political, economic and development issues. "We are currently negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU which will be linked to the PCA. Through the FTA, we will be able to further unlock our trade and economic potential by providing our products with wider access to the markets of the Member States of the European Union, thereby ensuring benefits for small and medium enterprises," Legarda said. The Senator explained that the country will benefit from the PCA through: Customs and Trade Facilitation, which will provide technical assistance and exchange of experts between PH Customs and EU Customs administrations; Cooperation in Combatting Illicit Drugs through strengthened information and information exchange, drug-related research, drug profiling and prevention of manufacture of dangerous drugs and diversion of controlled precursors; cooperation in combatting terrorism and transnational crimes, and migration and maritime labor. Other areas of cooperation under the PCA include employment and social affairs; development cooperation; economic policy; financial services; good governance in the tax area; industrial policy and SMEs; information and communications technology; audiovisual, media and multimedia; science and technology; transport; tourism; education, culture, intercultural and interfaith dialogue; energy; environment and natural resources including climate change; agriculture, fisheries and rural development; regional development; health; statistics; disaster risk management; and public administration. Meanwhile, the social security agreements with Germany and Sweden aim to ensure social security benefits of Filipinos working or residing in these countries. "Many of the countries where Filipinos live and work do not have social safety nets for foreign nationals. This leaves our workers in a precarious situation should the need for such safety nets arise. On the other hand, Filipinos who migrate to countries that have coverage for foreign nationals are unable to accumulate enough insurance periods to qualify for full social security pensions because they do not meet the minimum requirement for coverage. This is the importance of our social security treaties with Germany and Sweden," Legarda explained. The Senator added that without a social security agreement between the Philippines and the host country, many employers risk the payment of double contributions or dual coverage when sending a worker on a temporary basis to the other country. The PH-Germany and PH-Sweden Social Security Agreements aim to improve the administration of social security benefits for Filipinos working and living in Germany and Sweden, respectively. These agreements contain standard provisions that are consistent with International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions on social security. These agreements were proposed to contribute to equality of treatment, allow the portability of benefits to overseas Filipinos and nationals of host countries, and improve the processing of claims while eliminating dual coverage, among others.
Press Release

December 7, 2017 STATEMENT OF OPPOSITION SENATORS AQUINO, DRILON, HONTIVEROS, PANGILINAN, AND TRILLANES ON SEN DE LIMA BEING NAMED AS FOREIGN POLICY'S 2017 LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS We warmly congratulate Sen. Leila de Lima for being named by Foreign Policy as one of 2017's leading Global Thinkers. FP could not have bestowed this award on a more deserving public servant. Sen. Leila's dedication to the cause of justice and human rights in the country, especially where it concerns the brutal war on drugs that has taken thousands of lives in the span of a year, has not gone unnoticed. Her steadfast convictions have captured the interest of people all over the world and have started a global conversation that throws into sharp focus the dangers and abuses happening under this administration's ruthless anti-drug campaign. Despite her detention, she remains true to her principles, and is resolute and unwavering in her beliefs. Sen. Leila's continued battle gives hope and courage to those who feel helpless amid the rampant injustices in our society. We are proud to have such an indomitable spirit among our ranks, and we will stand by her as she carries on with her campaign against injustice and human rights abuses in our country. This award serves as a reminder to all of us that you can never put a strong woman down, much less one who sides with truth.
Press Release

December 7, 2017 POE: CLOSELY MONITOR CHILDREN IN DENGUE VACCINE FLAP Sen. Grace Poe today called on health officials to closely monitor children who have received the anti-dengue vaccines in the wake of reports that there may be increased risk for people who were administered the vaccine but not previously exposed to the mosquito-borne virus. "It is important to account for children who received the vaccine amid new developments on its effects. Strict surveillance must be established to monitor any adverse effects and ensure that proper assistance will be given to those affected," Poe, a child advocate, emphasized. The belated findings of Dengvaxia developer Sanofi Pasteur that the vaccine--despite being commercially available--is not recommended for those without prior infection of dengue came a year after foreign health experts warned of potentially higher risks if the vaccine is not administered correctly. This prompted the Department of Health (DOH) to suspend the sale, distribution and the ongoing vaccinations, and lawmakers to call for far-reaching investigation into the P3.5 billion program. "The DOH should focus on the kids given the shots and determine if any medical intervention is needed given the information about the vaccine's effects," Poe added. Poe also filed Senate Resolution No. 563 calling for a full-blown Senate inquiry into why the inoculation program was hastily approved despite the vaccine still undergoing trials. The Philippines became the first country to roll out the anti-dengue vaccine early last year as the DOH launched a school-based immunization program in highly affected areas. Close to 800,000 public school children have received at least one dose of the three-shot vaccine. Poe said the government should be ready to create a comprehensive database of people who have been injected with Dengvaxia, including those who have not been infected and those who have prior exposures, and determine any adverse effects following the immunization. "We also seek the assistance of local government units in disseminating information coming from the DOH and other government agencies. If any of these initiatives would entail costs, the government should be ready with the funds and resources because at stake here are the lives of our children," said Poe. This developed as news reports indicate that 997 people had fallen ill after being administered the first shot of Dengvaxia between March 18 and Aug. 20 last year. Thirty of those cases, which included two deaths, however, were not related to the immunization program, according to the DOH report to the House of Representatives committee on health that conducted an inquiry into the efficacy of the vaccine. Despite this, Poe called on the government to ensure that there will be no repeat of the ill-planned immunization campaign. Poe directed the DOH to exercise "due diligence" before undertaking such a massive program. "Due diligence on the effects of the drugs should have been observed and clear lines of protocols should have been established before allowing vaccines to be administered to large groups, especially children," Poe said. According to the senator, the DOH "should exercise more prudence before approving mass vaccination" considering that the agency is set to introduce new vaccines under its expanded program on immunization, such as that for Japanese encephalitis. "The DOH officials have a sworn duty to uphold and safeguard public health," Poe said, and they are also duty-bound "to exercise caution and prudence in the formulation of health programs." "Pharmaceutical companies should also be held responsible for selling vaccines that are still undergoing clinical trials and should be held equally accountable for any problem that arises from their manufactured vaccines," Poe stressed.
At least 160,000 people have been evacuated in two of the five blazes raging Wednesday in Southern California, officials said.

The Creek Fire, ripping through the densely populated communities of Sylmar and Lake View Terrace in the San Fernando Valley, had forced at least 110,000 people to leave their homes, Gustavo Medina, an inspector with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told The Chronicle. Between 30 and 50 structures have been destroyed, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

The Creek Fire had burned at least 14,000 acres by noon on Wednesday and remained zero percent contained.

The Thomas Fire, a 65,000-acre blaze in Ventura County, has forced 50,000 people to evacuate, said firefighter Jason Hodge of the Ventura County Fire Department. The blaze was also zero percent contained.

ALSO Fire official warns worst is yet to come for LA area

Across all four fires, 20,000 structures were threatened, Cal Fire officials said.

Wind conditions were slightly better for firefighting Wednesday. The Santa Ana gusts, which initially fueled the rapid spread of the multiple fires, calmed down, but are forecast to return.

Winds of unpurified air are expected to kick up again later this evening and tomorrow, Medina said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Many more have been evacuated in the city of Los Angeles, were the Skirball Fire that started just before 5 a.m. Wednesday near the Getty Center off Interstate 405 continued to burn in the afternoon through the populous area around Bel-Air and forced mandatory evacuations. Medina said he did not know how many had been evacuated in the Skirball Fire.

The evacuations in the Rye Fire in Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles County  which has reached 5 percent containment  were lifted allowing people to return to their homes. Medina said he did not know how many had evacuated.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein renewed her call Wednesday for a so-called Southern Crossing  a new east-west transbay bridge somewhere south of the always-congested Bay Bridge.

Feinstein, D-Calif., has repeatedly called since 2000 for a Southern Crossing, an idea that has been around since the 1940s, but has been rejected in recent years as too costly and environmentally problematic.

On Wednesday, joined by Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, she sent a letter to Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Now Playing: Curious about the traffic patterns of the Bay Area, local Yuji Higaki put together this 68-second time lapse video, using traffic data from Google Maps. Video: Yuji Higaki

The letter chastised the commission for not moving forward on a new transbay span. Its authors said it would relieve Bay Bridge congestion, and that it should be funded by Regional Measure 3, a ballot measure  written, but not yet scheduled  that could raise tolls on state-owned toll bridges by as much as $3.

The traffic demands on our streets and transit systems have become intolerable. Quality of life is suffering, Feinstein and DeSaulnier wrote. A second crossing would alleviate traffic through San Francisco and the East Bay, would better connect the entire Bay Area, and would provide significant benefits for toll payers.

They added: We have communicated in the past about the need for another bay crossing, but this has not led to any concrete action. We need to move this issue forward expeditiously, and we would very much like your assistance in doing so, they said.

MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler acknowledged receipt of the letter. He said the commission appreciated the acknowledgment of the need for major investment in Bay Area infrastructure. The letter, he said, will be taken seriously.

Were grateful to Senator Feinstein and Congressman DeSaulnier for leading on the issue that the Bay Area needs to build significant new infrastructure projects, he said. Imagine if instead of giving millionaires a $1.5 trillion tax break, our country invested in rebuilding the nations infrastructure to benefit everyone.

But Rentschler did not commit to undertaking a new bay-crossing study, pointing out that its not on the list of projects the Legislature approved when it agreed to let the Bay Area vote on Regional Measure 3 to raise its tolls.

The commission is scheduled to discuss the measure, including how much of a toll increase to seek and when to put it before voters, on Dec. 20. But it probably wont make a decision on the measure until Jan. 24.

Where the commission is focused right now is on making a decision on Regional Measure 3, Rentschler said. A Southern Crossing is not a new idea, but it would be something in addition to the decision before the commission right now.

Several versions of a Southern Crossing have been proposed through the decades, none of which has been undertaken.

After Feinstein floated the idea in 2000, the commission undertook a two-year study of what it would cost. It concluded that building a bridge from Highway 238 in Hayward to the Peninsula would cost $8.2 billion, saying that was cheaper than a new BART tube between San Francisco and Oakland but still costlier than the Bay Area could probably afford.

Another two-year study, completed in 2012, estimated the cost of a bridge that would carry both cars and some form of transit, at $12.4 billion.

Both studies assumed a new crossing that would be built from Interstate 380, in San Bruno, to Interstate 238 in San Leandro. The letter from Feinstein and DeSaulnier included no specifics but did mention the need for an additional route for both BART and vehicular traffic.

What I would like is a really innovative look, he said. Maybe you look at light rail, maybe you look at BART, maybe you look at autonomous vehicles.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
Its been 67 days and counting since Congress missed the deadline to renew federal funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program, which provides low-cost health coverage for 9 million poor children nationwide, including 1 million in California.

The insurance program, known as CHIP, expired Sept. 30. If Congress does not reauthorize funding before lawmakers adjourn this month, California will run out of money to continue operating the program by early January, state officials estimate.

If CHIP is not renewed, most of the roughly 1 million children and young adults who receive coverage through the program would continue receiving coverage through Medi-Cal, the states insurance program for the poor. However, under that scenario, the state would receive billions of dollars less from the federal government because of the way the federal government reimburses the state for the health programs. Since October, CHIP has been funded using leftover federal funds that have been redistributed to states.

Policy experts credit the program for helping lower the rate of uninsured children to a record low 3 percent in California and 5 percent nationally.

Since its inception in 1997, CHIP had been reauthorized regularly with bipartisan support, with the exception of a brief period in 2007 when it expired temporarily. The program was created under the watch of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton. Advocates worry that because congressional Republicans are focused on passing a major tax bill  and face deadlines to approve a spending bill and allocate disaster relief funding for Puerto Rico and Texas  the childrens health insurance program may get lost in the shuffle.

Its unprecedented. Weve gone two months having let this program expire, said Anthony Wright, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Health Access. States are still operating the program under the hope and prayer it gets renewed.

The House passed a bill in November to reauthorize CHIP, but the full Senate has yet to take action. If Congress does not renew funding by the end of December, California is projected to face up to a $2.4 billion shortfall in CHIP funding that normally would come from the federal government.

If the federal government chooses not to reauthorize this program, the state is going to have some difficult decisions to face, said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance.

Wright, of Health Access, said in order for the state to maintain the same level of benefits for the same number of children, it would have to reduce spending in other areas to make up for the $2.4 billion shortfall.

You cant lose $2.4 billion and not have it have a huge impact, he said. Wed ideally not want to throw a million kids off of coverage. But that means there would have to be cuts in some other area  education, child care or some other program. This loss of funds would literally mean California policymakers would have to choose among our children.

CHIP covers children up to age 19 whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, known in California as Medi-Cal, but who struggle to afford health insurance on their own. A family of three, for instance, must earn about $28,000 or less to qualify for Medi-Cal; but a family of three with a child could earn up to $53,000 and qualify for CHIP. CHIP insurance is highly subsidized, with premiums as low as a few dollars a month.

The program covers almost all medical costs for 17-year-old Oakland resident Jiewen Li, said Lis mother, Feng Wei Lin, who pays $13 a month in CHIP premiums. Li recently needed an MRI to diagnose a hearing problem and the doctor visits and scan were covered by insurance with no out-of-pocket costs.

Like Medi-Cal, CHIP is jointly funded by federal and state dollars. In California, the federal government pays 88 percent and the state pays 12 percent.

The 2017-18 California budget, signed by Gov. Brown in June, included assumptions that Congress would reauthorize CHIP at a federal matching rate of 65 percent  which was the rate prior to the Affordable Care Act increased the federal match to 88 percent in 2015. The state budget would have to be revised if Congress does not act to renew CHIP.

Were going to have to see what transpires between now and the middle of the month, Palmer said. We just havent made that determination yet.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
Enrollment in health plans on Covered California, the state-run insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, was up 28 percent in November compared to the same period last year, according to figures released by Covered California on Wednesday.

About 102,000 new consumers selected a health plan on the exchange during the first month of open enrollment, between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30  up from the 80,000 people who did so during the same period last year.

Roughly 1.3 million Californians are enrolled in plans through the exchange, which offers discounted health insurance to low-income consumers as well as to those who dont get health insurance through employers. Most people who buy plans through the exchange are low-income and receive federal subsidies to lower their monthly insurance premium. But 15 percent of exchange enrollees earn too much to qualify for subsidies, and pay full price.

Covered California officials estimate that people who receive subsidies are paying 10 percent less in premiums than they paid last year. But those who do not receive subsidies are paying, on average, 10 percent more.

That is due to a combination of factors: rising overall health care costs, and a decision by the Trump administration to halt billions of dollars in payments from the federal government to health insurers. The payments, known as cost-sharing subsidies, reimbursed insurers for lowering co-pays and deductibles for the poorest consumers. The policy change, announced in October, prompted insurers to raise 2018 premiums in order to offset the loss. But Covered California, anticipating the change, negotiated with regulators and insurers months ago to increase premiums, which triggers a requirement in the law for the federal government to provide larger subsidies to make up for the price increase  but only for consumers who receive subsidies.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed a legal complaint against the Trump administration to try to reinstate the cost-sharing subsidies. A judge in October ruled against the state in one aspect of the suit, but the overall matter is still pending in federal court.

Open enrollment for Covered California ends Jan. 31. But in order for coverage to begin Jan. 1, consumers must sign up by Dec. 15.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
San Franciscos Dignity Health plans to merge with Catholic Health Initiatives of Colorado in a deal that would create one of the nations largest nonprofit health systems by revenue, the organizations announced Thursday.

The combination, expected to be completed in the second half of 2018, would create a health system with 139 hospitals and 700 care centers in 28 states, and employ 159,000 workers. Its corporate headquarters would be in Chicago. The deal is subject to federal, state and church approval.

Dignity CEO Lloyd Dean and Catholic Health Initiatives CEO Kevin Lofton would serve as co-CEOs of the new system, whose name has yet to be chosen. In the meantime, all existing medical facilities will continue operating under their respective Dignity and CHI names. There are no current plans to close any facilities.

We foresee an incredible opportunity to expand each organizations best practices to respond to the evolving health care environment and deliver high-quality, cost-effective care, Dean said in a statement.

The proposed merger is the most recent example of consolidation in the health care sector, which has been on the rise for several years  prompting worry that less competition means higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. The 87 U.S. hospital mergers and acquisitions that were announced during the first nine months of 2017 are on track to exceed the 102 such deals that were completed in 2016, according to data compiled by the management consulting firm Kaufman Hall.

The two health systems are similar in size  in 2016 Dignity reported $12.9 billion in revenue, and Catholic Health Initiatives reported $15.5 billion  and would have a combined annual revenue of $28.4 billion.

By comparison, at Kaiser Permanente, the nations largest nonprofit integrated health system, 2016 operating revenue was $64.6 billion. That figure, however, includes revenue from Kaiser health plans and hospital care. Kaiser does not make public the financial figures for its hospital revenue alone.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is giving $250,000 to Reporters Without Borders to fund a West Coast operation based in San Francisco, the nonprofit announced Thursday.

On behalf of my colleagues and the board of Reporters Without Borders USA, we are grateful to Jeff Bezos for a significant grant to empower our activities, said Peter O. Price, the U.S. board chairman of Reporters Without Borders. It will help to support our mission to secure press freedom in the U.S.
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The median Bay Area home price rose 10.9 percent to $765,000 in October from the previous October, the third consecutive month it posted a double-digit year-over-year gain.

The October median price was up 2.6 percent from September but 1.3 percent below the regions all-time high of $775,000 set in June 2017.

Santa Clara and San Mateo counties posted stunning year-over-year increases of 16.7 and 16.2 percent, respectively. San Francisco had the highest median price, $1.26 million, and the largest month-to-month increase, 9.6 percent.

These numbers reflect sales of new and existing single family homes and condos in the nine-county Bay Area that were recorded in October.

Those sales closed before the House introduced a bill on Nov. 2 that would strip away some tax benefits of homeownership. Many in the real estate and housing industry say that bill, which passed the House Nov. 16, and a somewhat different one that passed the Senate on Friday would bring down California home prices.

In a press release, California Association of Realtors President Steve White called the House bill a direct attack on California housing and homeownership. Eliminating the incentive for people to buy homes and raising taxes on hundreds of thousands of California homeowners only puts the American dream further out of reach.

The big jump in Bay Area home prices last month was mainly a result of low inventory, affordability constraints and market disruptions caused by the destructive and deadly North Bay wildfires that began in early October, CoreLogic spokesman Andrew LePage said in a press release.

A total of 7,551 Bay Area home and condos sold in October, up 1.9 percent from September but down 0.8 percent from last October. Sales, year over year, fell a striking 17.6 percent in Sonoma and 19.8 percent in Napa as fires ravaged the region.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Insurance reported that 14,686 residential property insurance claims were filed in Sonoma County as a result of the fires; of these, 4,785 were total losses. In Napa County, those numbers were 2,470 and 447, respectively. LePage speculated that some homes in those counties were either destroyed or pulled off the market in October.

The impact of the fires and tax bills will be more strongly felt in coming months.

Both tax bills would eliminate the federal itemized deduction for state and local income or sales tax and limit the property tax deduction to $10,000 per year.

Under the House bill, homeowners could deduct interest on up to $500,000 in debt used to buy or improve a primary residence. Today they can deduct interest on up to $1 million in mortgage debt used to buy or improve a first and second home. That would not change under the Senate bill, but both bills would eliminate the deduction for up to $100,000 in home-equity debt not used to buy or improve a house.

Both would also extend the holding period needed to qualify for the capital gains tax exclusion  up to $500,000 for married couples and $250,000 for singles  break on a primary residence. House and Senate leaders are trying to reconcile those bills and hope to pass a final one by Christmas.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender
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More than 2,800 Oakland school employees had their most recent paychecks pulled out of their checking accounts this week, a snafu that district officials initially blamed on a bank error before offering a mea culpa a few hours later.

It was not the banks fault, said John Sasaki, a district spokesman. We have apologized to Union Bank for making that assessment earlier.

A district staff member made a mistake, Sasaki explained, saying, It was human error.

District officials, though, could not explain how an employee could reverse payroll deposits for nearly 3,000 employees, something they agreed would likely take more than a push of a button. That said, officials believe it was an accident.

Theres no reason to believe this was sabotage, Sasaki said, adding the problem had nothing to do with a shortage of district funds.

The staff member was not identified, nor was the persons department. It was unclear whether the employee would face disciplinary action. The matter is under investigation, Sasaki said.

Teachers, administrators and other district employees received their paychecks a week ago through direct deposit funneled through Union Bank. For those affected, that deposit was reversed Tuesday, leaving an untold number of accounts drained or in overdraft.

People were upset and in a panic Wednesday morning, said Trish Gorham, president of the Oakland Education Association, the teachers union.

I can attest to that based on my emails, texts and phone calls, she said.

Teacher Barbara Buswell was among those infuriated by the situation.

My mortgage payment is attached to my account, said Buswell, a second-grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary. Im overdrawn. I have $10 in my wallet.

The error came as the district faces a $15.1 million budget deficit, with schools required to make up to $5 million in mid-year cuts to address the shortfall.

COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

As we address this unfortunate error, I want to be clear that this is not related to the current budget crisis, said Superintendent Kyla Johnson Trammell. I am deeply sorry for any inconvenience and stress this may have caused.

District officials said the problem affected workers who are paid monthly and was widespread among employees, including the payroll manager.

The money was sent again Wednesday to employees accounts, and district officials were contacting banks used by employees to explain the situation, with the hope that any overdraft fees would be reversed.

The district will make sure all employees are made whole in terms of any penalties they incur, Sasaki said.

As district officials attempted to correct the error, however, they inadvertently reinstated funds even for some employees who did not lose money, meaning they received a double payment which would have to be returned to the district.

Union Bank officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
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Before you can understand anything about what Im doing, you have to understand this dish, Nigel Jones says before disappearing into the back of his restaurant, Kingston 11 in Oakland.

The restaurants Sunday-morning service on this November day starts slower than normal, hampered by light showers that misted windows. Every few minutes, a car hums down Telegraph, its tires audibly cascading across the roadways newly formed wet patches.

Despite the weather, Kingston 11 soon begins buzzing with energy. Playful chatter pours from the kitchen, echoed by the few jovial clusters of customers in the dining room, most of whom are sipping rum punch and mixtures of grapefruit soda and gin (dubbed the Oakland Ting). Plates of Jamaican patties and jerk chicken cover their tables.

Jones spot has been popular among East Bay locals for years, yet it remains relatively under the radar to San Francisco chef-watchers and the greater Bay Area. Thats fine, Jones says. Kingston 11 wasnt built to please everyone, or to garner attention from bloggers and food writers.

But his next project, whether he desires it or not, will.

In mid-January, Jones, who was raised in Kingston, Jamaica, will open a new Caribbean restaurant in San Francisco. Named Kaya, it will be a partnership with chef Daniel Patterson and will be located in the Mid-Market space that currently houses Pattersons Alta. Kaya, slated to be more of a fine-casual Caribbean spot, will be Jones first restaurant outside of Oakland. Although the two restaurants will have their differences, Jones says theyre also inextricably linked.

The chef returned after a few minutes from the kitchen, bowls of saltfish and ackee cradled in his arms.

To know this dish is to know Jamaican flavors, Jones says, sliding into a booth near the back of the restaurant.

Saltfish is cod, or any other non-oily white fish, that has been seasoned and cured. It originally came to the islands as an import from the North Atlantic. Plantation owners at the time used it as an inexpensive way to feed their slaves.

Ackee is a fruit that came from West Africa to Jamaica in the 1700s. Its colors change from green to bright red to yellow-orange as it ripens before it splits, revealing a couple of shiny black seeds surrounded by soft, yellowish flesh.

Jones had planned to discuss the new project, his life, how Kingston 11 came to be  a story that simultaneously explains how Kaya came to fruition  but all that had to come after the food, he says. So he picks up one of the warm rolls, splits it in half and scoops peppers and whitefish onto the dough.

You dont have to do it this way, he says. But its the way you should do it.

Then he takes his first bite.

***

Michael Short/Special to The Chronicle

Jones was born in Jamaica to teenage parents, neither older than 16.

My mother jokes that the first time she slept with someone, she got pregnant, Jones says. Either way, they werent ready for me. Thats why I was raised by my grandmother.

His grandmother  Gwen Larmond, or Miss Gwen as she was called  was a neighborhood celebrity, if there was such a thing in Kingston, one ZIP code away from Trenchtown, a place once known as much for its crime as for its most famous resident, Bob Marley.

The community was tight-knit, Jones says. For example, as a kid, if he needed to get away from his own home for a few hours, he would just sneak through holes in the fences connecting houses all the way down the block. It was an escape hatch for when he wanted to be with his friends more than he wanted to be in his room. Then there were the nights where he was just trying to evade his grandmothers dinners of cow foot soup or liver. Those nights when he didnt reach the fence in time and found himself at the dinner table, he complained.

She said if I wanted to eat something else, then I needed to learn to cook, Jones says. So, thats what I did. I learned from her.

First, he learned to make Caribbean black fruitcake. A relative of British plum pudding, the dessert is crafted from an assortment of dried fruits  cherries, prunes and raisins  and stays fresh for months at a time. From there he learned the intricacies of layering flavors and the value of locally grown fruits and vegetables.

Decades later, that knowledge has grown and manifested into the Kingston 11 menu: oxtail stew with jasmine rice and plantains, jerk chicken with rice and peas, curried goat, Jamaican patties.

In the years between, his culinary training was intensive but informal. Instead of sharing the memories that graduates of a cooking school might have of white chefs jackets and pristine tablecloths, Jones sees his grandmother and the red, bauxite-tinged soil of rural Jamaica.

Jones moved to New York as a teenager and went to high school in the Bronx, a borough with an extensive Jamaican population at the time. He moved to Florida for college and then came back to New York years later to work for Levi Strauss. Jones says he was successful in the garment industry, but it wasnt completely fulfilling.

I always wanted to open a restaurant like Kingston 11, he says. So, as any good Jamaican would do, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into it.

***

Michael Short/Special to The Chronicle

Kingston 11 began as a pop-up in Berkeleys Guerilla Cafe more than five years ago. Since the kitchen at the cafe was nothing more than a burner or two and a panini press, Jones rented kitchen space in Emeryville to prepare the food ahead of time.

The dishes proved popular, and the pop-up expanded to multiple nights per week. Then the food started running out. Most nights they would open at 6 p.m. and plan to close after 10 p.m. Often they could only last until 8 oclock.

We were kind of forced into opening a restaurant. We had no choice if we wanted to be able to offer the things we wanted to offer and have the space we wanted, Jones says. It was a good problem to have.

When Kingston 11 opened on Oaklands Telegraph Avenue in 2013, there was no public relations company guiding the debut. Local media outlets werent waxing poetic about its deeper meaning to the Uptown neighborhood. The team relied on word of mouth.

It worked. Positive reviews began appearing about the Jamaican fare and the weekly live music shows; quietly, it became the preferred hangout for folks in the industry, chefs and line cooks alike. Recently it piqued the interest of award-winning Bay Area chef Daniel Patterson.

Jones business partner Adrian Henderson knew Patterson from Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a national worker advocacy group that addresses racial equity in the industry. He eventually connected the two.

According to Jones, Patterson knew his San Francisco Mid-Market restaurant, Alta, would be moving down the street, but he wanted to hold onto the current location.

So we just started getting together and talking. Jones says. I wanted to make sure it was genuine. I needed to know we were like-minded people. Im not interested in bringing my style and my culture to someone else so they can appropriate it.

They spent the next few weeks, as Jones jokes, going on dates. He said there were nights where theyd talk for hours, sometimes about food, sometimes not. Whether it was talk about community, politics, family or diatribes about their personal journeys in life, Jones says they found common ground and quickly became friends.

I respect that hes doing what hes doing but instead of keeping the door closed, hes holding it open for other people like me, Jones says. Its like Jay-Z collaborating with Mozart. Theyre from two completely different angles but are ass-kickers in their own ways. Why not come together and do something special?

***

John Storey/Special to the Chronicle

Jones decided to call the restaurant-to-be Kaya, a reference to a Bob Marley and the Wailers album. Its also Jamaican slang for marijuana. Kaya, like Kingston 11, will be home to weekly live music shows.

Jones believes that finding success across the Bay Bridge means operating the way he would in Oakland, a city that embraces authenticity in its restaurants above all else, he says. Its what keeps small, family-owned spots like 10th and Wood in West Oakland or up-and-coming businesses afloat, like Chef Smellys downtown Creole pop-up.

Its possible San Francisco may be similar to Oakland in this regard, he says, but then again there could be limits on whose authenticity is accepted more openly. San Francisco has a black population that has dramatically diminished in the past four decades, according to census data. In 1970, black people made up 13 percent of the San Francisco populace; as of 2016, the total is below 6 percent. For Jones, it raises the question of how the city will view an unapologetically Caribbean restaurant.

But he hasnt let that thought shake his confidence.

I bring my flavors. Im not tamping down for anybody, Jones says. Its hard to tell if San Francisco is a place where my culture and food will be accepted, but Im ready to find out.

***

Michael Short/Special to The Chronicle

The weather at Kingston 11 picks up a bit on this Sunday, and more customers begin streaming through the doors. Jones is approached by Rick Carter, a close friend also from Jamaica. Carter hands the chef two boxes of dough mix for Jamaican patties.

I make these from scratch, Jones says with a laugh before setting the boxes to the side. But Ill take the hot sauces youve got, as usual.

Jones says he wants Kingston 11  and now Kaya  to be more than just places where people can eat Carribean food and maybe even learn about the culture. He wants the businesses to act as pipelines into the restaurant industry for young brown people.

Everyone talks about how theres no diversity, especially in fine dining, but then people will say its because there are no black or brown candidates to choose from, Jones says. This would solve that problem. We all need connections.

In keeping connections local, Kaya will be designed by Rachel Konte, owner of the East Bay boutique OwlNWood and a former director of womens products at Levi Strauss for more than 15 years.

As Jones talks about the future, a young, multiethnic family with two kids, neither older than 3 or 4 years old, shuffles into seats at a table near the front of the restaurant. The young daughters long black hair hangs in curls and flops as she turns to look at her parents. Her brother, his auburn hair equally as curly, sits near a Ziggy Marley Wild and Free poster on the wall and laughs. They, too, eventually order the beloved Jamaican breakfast dish, ackee and saltfish.

At Jones table, the bowls are almost empty. When he takes one of the remaining bites, he says the dish, for Jamaicans, is an emotional anchor, something rooting them to home no matter where they are.

Kaya, he says, will embody that feeling and transfer it to diners.

After the last bite, Jones turns and glances at the growing crowd, with its eclectic mix of faces, and spots the young family. At this point, more laughter comes from the kitchen.

This is what you want to see, he says. Kingston 11 is more than a restaurant. We want Kaya to be that same way, too.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips
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WASHINGTON  Republican-backed legislation that would allow people to carry their concealed weapons across state lines if they have a permit to do so in their home state now heads to the Senate after winning approval in the House with no support from Democrats.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has introduced companion legislation in the Senate, where Republicans have a 52-48 majority, allowing Democrats to block legislation with a filibuster that requires 60 votes to break.

But California Rep. Mike Thompson, a gun-owning St. Helena Democrat who battled the bill in the House, said blocking the Senate measure will be a heavy lift. The American people need to speak out and say whoa, Thompson said.

The House bill passed on a mostly party-line 231-198 vote, with all 14 California House Republicans, 13 of whom co-sponsored the legislation, voting yes. The bill was paired with a modest update to federal law requiring background checks that would strengthen reporting requirements for gun buyers who have criminal backgrounds or a history of mental illness.

Under the legislation, people who own permits would be allowed to carry concealed weapons across state lines, regardless of laws such as Californias that tightly restrict carrying hidden weapons.

Dismissing opposition from law enforcement officials, Republicans argued that the concealed-carry bill would allow good guys carrying weapons to disable shooters before police arrive.

To make their case, supporters cited the Nov. 5 massacre of 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in which a man living near the church grabbed his rifle and engaged in a gunbattle with the shooter.

The argument that armed people are in the best position to neutralize a mass shooter has been pushed vigorously by the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun-lobbying group for which the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, HR28, is a top legislative priority. The group called the bills passage a watershed moment for gun rights.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaking at a separate Senate hearing on background checks, said survivors of the Texas massacre told him, We all had our guns, but we left them in the car out of respect for the church. Cruz said if churchgoers had had their weapons, they could have stopped the shooter sooner.

The House bill would require every state to recognize concealed-carry permits from every other state. It would also allow people from more than a dozen states that require no permits at all to carry hidden weapons to bring them into California and other states with stringent restrictions.

Now were all going to shoot each other, no holds barred, said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., as she argued against bringing the bill to a vote. This is not the Congress Ive known and loved all these years, but its the one weve got.

Critics said the bill would allow untold numbers of bad guys to carry guns anywhere.

A convicted violent criminal will be able to carry a concealed, loaded firearm in every community, said Thompson, who has headed his partys task force on firearm violence. He said some states allow teenagers, stalkers and other domestic abusers who have violent misdemeanors on their records to carry concealed weapons.

People need to know whats going on, he said.

Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and Vermont are all permitless states that put almost no restrictions on gun ownership. Several other states have only loose concealed-carry laws.

California issues concealed-carry permits, but only if approved by local police, and requires gun buyers to submit to background checks and other restrictions. Sheriffs offices in rural areas typically grant concealed-carry permits to those claiming a need to pack a gun, but law enforcement officials in cities are far more restrictive. Most of those able to secure such permits in places like San Francisco and Oakland are police officers and security guards.

Californias law survived a legal challenge by gun groups, as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take it up in June.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County), said California does a very good job of requiring training and background checks for concealed-carry permits, and his only concern with the bill is that hed like to see other states do the same.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said in a statement, If opponents of the Second Amendment want to take peoples rights away, they should do it the old-fashioned way: convince a supermajority of the American people and amend the Constitution. Otherwise, we have a duty to defend the Constitution as it is  all of it.

Rep. Ami Bera, a Democrat who represents a swing Sacramento district, said he had no problem voting against the bill. I dont want the laws of Alabama to supersede the laws of California, he said.

The issue has flipped traditional party positions on federalism and the right of states to make their own laws.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the concealed-carry legislation uses federal power to import the laws of one state into another state.

Republicans said the law is no different from the requirement that each state recognize drivers or marriage licenses issued by other states. The bill would give people carrying hidden guns the right to travel across states just like drivers licenses do, said Brian Babin, R-Texas.

The fact of the matter is the Second Amendment is a constitutional right that extends to all Americans, said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. It is the federal government that has the right to determine what can be transported across state lines.

Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., noted that the vote came just eight days before the fifth anniversary of slayings of 20 students and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Calling the legislation an outrage and an insult to the Newtown victims, Esty said the concealed-carry bill is the only gun legislation that Republicans have allowed Congress to vote on since the school killings. Etsy said 170,000 Americans have been killed in gun violence since then.

Thompson said he was surprised that 14 Republicans voted no on the bill, which was more than Democrats expected, while only six Democrats voted in favor, none from California. Nonetheless, Thompson said Democrats may be unable to block the legislation in the Senate because there are a bunch of Senate Democrats in red states with very tough election prospects who might join Republicans to expand concealed carry.

Carolyn Lochhead is the San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com
Time magazine has named The Silence Breakers as its 2017 Person of the Year, recognizing the women (and some men) who came forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault and helped force a nationwide reckoning.

The magazine calls them the voices that launched a movement.

Among them Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan, the actresses whose stunning accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein helped lead to his downfall; and activist Tarana Burke, creator of the #MeToo movement, along with the Hollywood star who amplified it on social media, Alyssa Milano.

The galvanizing actions of the women on our cover  along with those of hundreds of others, and of many men as well, have unleashed one of the highest-velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s, Times editor in chief, Edward Felsenthal, told NBCs Today show Wednesday.

These silence breakers have forced a national reckoning on sexual harassment.

The medias endless stream of sexual harassment investigations and the countless #MeToo accounts of harassment, sexual abuse and worse have ensnared an ever-growing list of public figures-celebrities, executives, politicians and business leaders, whose lives and careers have come crashing down, or are dangerously close to doing so, amid all the accusations.

Like Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Mark Halperin and former NPR news chief Michael Oreskes.

Like Russell Simmons and Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey and James Levine and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.

Like John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the erstwhile dean of the House who resigned Tuesday amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment.

The barrage of sexual misconduct accusations, from Hollywood to Capitol Hill, came after the Weinstein scandal exploded in public view  with claims from numerous women who said he sexually harassed them, assaulted them and even raped them.

And a social media movement emerged with the hashtag #MeToo, which has been used more than 3 million times on Twitter, according to company data.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in The Washington Post: More women are emboldened to talk, and more are being heard. The risks for abusers  particularly public figures  are rising. We know the roots of this extraordinary moment; where the moment leads remains to be seen.

In its Person of the Year 2017 cover story, Time noted that this moment is borne of a very real and potent sense of unrest. Yet it doesnt have a leader, or a single, unifying tenet. The hashtag #metoo (swiftly adapted into #BalanceTonPorc, #YoTambien, #Anakaman and many others), which to date has provided an umbrella of solidarity for millions of people to come forward with their stories, is part of the picture, but not all of it.

In 2015, Time chose German Chancellor Angela Merkel; in 2014, it was The Ebola Fighters, and in 2013, Pope Francis The Peoples Pope.

Last years choice was President Trump.

Lindsey Bever and Abby Ohlheiser are Washington Post writers.
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An alternate juror in the Kate Steinle case said the jury made the right decision in acquitting the defendant of murder, manslaughter and assault charges after San Francisco prosecutors failed to prove he had intended to shoot anyone.

Phil Van Stockum, a 33-year-old San Francisco resident who is co-founder of a technology company in San Mateo, did not take part in deliberations as the jury weighed charges against Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a homeless undocumented immigrant whose attorneys argued an accident was behind the killing on Pier 14 on July 1, 2015.

But Van Stockum said in an interview Wednesday that he had spoken to the jurors after the verdict and believes he was pretty aligned with the thinking of the panel.

Honestly, Ive been surprised how widespread the reaction is to the verdict, Stockum told The Chronicle after laying out his view of the case in a guest article for Politico. It was clear from the evidence that was available that he couldnt be found guilty of murder. Most of the public reaction has been the opposite. That surprised me to some degree.

Now Playing: San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon today defended the work of prosecutors following last week's acquittal of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the man charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle, and said the blame for any failure in Video: KTVU

The trial pitted prosecutors who said the shooting was intentional against defense attorneys who contended Garcia Zarate had found the stolen gun wrapped in a T-shirt or cloth before it accidentally discharged in his hands. Garcia Zarate, 45, tossed the weapon into San Francisco Bay as Steinle, who was 32, lay dying.

The jury convicted the defendant  whose release from city jail before the shooting intensified a national debate over sanctuary laws  of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on Dec. 14 before facing a federal indictment on gun charges.

Van Stockum said prosecutors presented no motive for a murder by a man with no record of violence. He noted that the fatal shot had bounced off the concrete ground, and that the gun, which had been stolen four days earlier from the nearby parked car of a federal ranger, could have been in a mode requiring a lighter pull of the trigger.

The jury members asked to feel the trigger pull of the gun during deliberation, but the judge wouldnt allow it, for reasons that arent clear to us, Van Stockum said in his Politico article.

He cited a potential reason why jurors not only rejected first-degree and second-degree murder but also the lesser charge of felony involuntary manslaughter, which would have required a finding that Garcia Zarate caused Steinles death with an unlawful, negligent act.

The underlying criminal intent needed for the charge, prosecutors said, was that Garcia Zarate brandished the gun, or displayed it in a threatening manner.

As a juror, I found this choice puzzling, because the prosecutor presented absolutely zero evidence of brandishing during the trial, Van Stockum wrote. I dont think we even heard the word brandishing until it was read as part of the charge during the jury instructions at the trials end.

If prosecutors had proven Garcia Zarate had committed another crime that led to Steinles death, Van Stockum told The Chronicle, I think there was a much higher chance he would have been convicted of manslaughter.

The district attorneys office has been scrutinized for potentially overreaching and arguing for a finding of first-degree or premeditated murder during the trials closing arguments, while offering the less serious options as well.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Van Stockum, though, said, I dont think that was a distraction. I think they carefully considered each of the charges separately. I cant say it was flubbed by the prosecution.

He said that as the trial spanned several weeks, jurors and alternates got to know each other and formed bonds. When he spoke to some of the jurors in the hours after the Nov. 30 verdict, he said, Obviously they were on edge and under a tremendous amount of pressure. President Trump called the outcome of the case disgraceful.

That was tough for them, as it would be for anybody, he said.

Even with the backlash, Van Stockum said he wishes hed been called upon.

Its frustrating being dismissed after sitting in a courtroom for weeks, he said. I think I would have gotten something valuable out of the deliberation process.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
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OJAI, Ventura County  The morning after this tiny, artsy community was expected to go up in flames, Jon Furness unlocked the front door of his coffee shop and flipped the sign in the window to open.

His staff had evacuated, so he brewed the coffee, steamed the milk for lattes and measured the streams of espresso alone. Residents tentatively pulled into Coffee Connections parking lot off Highway 33, unsure if the sign in the window was a false beacon. Nearly every business was closed. Except this one.

This is my livelihood, Furness said. What else am I going to do?

He opened Coffee Connections with his wife, Brenna, 12 years ago. They met in Brazils Amazon rainforest on a mission trip and later moved to Ojai, her hometown. They know their customers: Fred with the breve latte, Kerry with the blended mocha, Vera with the six espresso shots.

On Thursday, Furness slept in until 6:30 a.m. He had been up until 1:30 that morning, eyeing the news and packing bags for his children in case the flames charged toward their home. But when dawn came, and somehow his part of Ojai was still standing after the Thomas Fire roared past, he drove to the shop on the corner of El Roblar and St. Thomas drives.

He flicked on the Christmas lights and checked the water filtration system. He tied an apron around his waist and waited.

Soon, the customers came. They lined up next to firefighters, who had just spent more than 12 hours defending the bucolic community caught in the crossfire of the Thomas Fire. One group came from Monterey, and their faces were caked in soot.

I was dreaming of a fountain of coffee all night, said one firefighter, trying to hand a $10 bill to Furness.

Youre taken care of, he replied in his thick British accent. There you go, boss. Cheers.

The customers stayed even after their Mason jars ran empty, sharing stories of flames and fear and worrying about what was to come. They talked about the neighbors who had stayed, the generators they had finally gotten around to ordering, and the TV news crews streaming into their city with big cameras and foam microphones. Some connected to the Wi-Fi, studying fire maps and checking hotel availability in nearby cities on their computer screens.

About 7,000 people live in Ojai, tucked into a valley in the hills north of Ventura. Downtown is dotted with art galleries and spas; its a place people go to to take a break from hectic lives.

This week, its a place from which many have had to run.

Its scary because there are really only four roads in and out, said Kerry Karnes, 45. When they are closed, we are stuck.

She lives off an Ojai road lined by horse pastures. When she evacuated Wednesday night  taking her disabled father, four dogs, two cats and one guinea pig  she wondered if it was goodbye. Only one more day, she told herself. Then the Santa Ana winds will calm.

But weather reports said the devilish winds would keep up into the weekend. Ojai had suffered some damage in the blaze by Thursday, but so far it wasnt major, authorities said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Fred Roland, 79, told Furness he will be back soon for his morning coffee. He cant sleep another night in the boat owned by his brother. A cat lives there, too. Besides, in the rush to evacuate, he left his photo albums and good work boots behind in his home in nearby Mira Monte.

I get the breve latte on important days, he said. This was important. Its California. You have to expect these things. But the wind didnt blow the way it was supposed to. Its over.

Even if its not, Furness said he will be here Friday morning.

All in the name of espresso, he said.

The front door whisked open, letting in a plume of smoky air. He hollered hello and measured espresso into a cup. He already knew the couples order.

Chronicle staff writer Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com
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Getting to skip classes because of a wildfire may not be such a great thing when youre supposed to be studying the Theory of Relativity. Relatively speaking. For real.

Ryan Chan, a sophomore at UCLA, said he planned to spend the day studying Einsteins theory on his own.

Its going to be on the final next week, he said, whether we have classes today or not.

Chan was one of 45,000 UCLA students who found themselves with a day off, sort of, when the university decided to cancel classes on Thursday because of the wildfires sweeping through Southern California, including the Skirball fire a mile or so north of campus.

Now Playing: 'Skirball Fire' burns 475 acres; 5% contained; 4 homes destroyed as of Thursday morning. Video: Fox2Detroit

Given the array of uncertainties caused by the fire, UCLA has canceled classes, read the announcement in a bright red box on the university web page.

The array of uncertainties has left Los Angeles in disarray. Roads are closed, smoke hangs in the air, the fabled, horrendous commutes take twice as long.

But calling off class wasnt really necessary in his opinion, Chan said.

A lot of students were complaining yesterday about having to go to class and I guess they just wanted to keep the students happy, he said.

At UCLA, some students were walking around the brick-walled campus in surgical masks, as if heading to an appendectomy.

Freshman Alex Jordan said he had a math final coming up, on differential equations, and he was off to the library to get the hang of dy/dx = e to the At power times x.

Id rather be going to class, he said. This material isnt easy.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Thomas Smith, a first-year mathematics graduate student , said he had upcoming finals in real analysis and complex analysis, which are not the same analysis. He was strolling across the near-empty campus to the library, too.

I have to study both, he said. I could take the day off if I wanted to, but I dont want to.

In nearby Westwood Village, which is less a village than a collection of coffee joints, pizza joints and boutiques and Stan's Corner Doughnut Shop  one of the Valhallas of all things donut  business seemed down. The main indicator of that was that street parking, normally impossible to find, wasnt.

Chronicle Staff Writer Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.
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Robots that trundle along sidewalks R2D2-style to deliver takeout food or packages are still in early test phases. Few even exist.

But San Francisco is cracking down on them, and that may stem from mounting concerns about automation gobbling up jobs. On Tuesday night, San Franciscos Board of Supervisors unanimously passed tough new regulations that will limit companies to three robots each; limit the city to nine robots total; and confine robots to industrial areas where almost no one lives  all of which makes it hard to test their basic function of delivering goods to consumers. The robots cant go faster than 3 mph and must have a human monitor, the new law says.

Still, the regulations were more liberal than an original proposal by Supervisor Norman Yee to outright ban the robots. He and supporters, which included pedestrian advocacy groups, said they want to prevent sidewalk crowding and protect seniors, children and disabled people. San Francisco already has banned Segways and bicycles from sidewalk use.

San Franciscos ordinance resembles laws enacted in the early days of horseless carriages that required a person to walk in front of a car waving a red flag, said Bob Doyle, spokesman for the Association for Advancing Automation Association, an industry organization that represents U.S. robotics and automation companies.

To put such a strict limit on these types of autonomous delivery vehicles drastically slows down the process of testing and the potential for these being put into (use before) the general public, he said.

He hopes San Franciscos action isnt the beginning of a wave of neo-Luddite regulations.

In fact, San Francisco is bucking a trend, as several states and cities have gone the other way to legalize robots. In the Bay Area, Redwood City, San Carlos, Sunnyvale and Concord have OKd various robot pilot programs. States including Idaho, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida and Ohio also have given green lights to the robots.

The threat of automation replacing numerous jobs looms large, said Douglas Schmidt, a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt. Its definitely a sociological trend, and can become a political issue, he said. Youve got to figure as more and more people start to lose jobs to automation youll see this kind of response.

And robots are a highly visible target.

San Francisco startup Marble has been testing a few in the Potrero Hill and Mission neighborhoods to deliver Eat24 food orders. It has also been doing tests in other Bay Area cities.

Marbles statement on the San Francisco action was diplomatic.

We're happy for the productive relationship that we've built with the Board of Supervisors, and we agree that this is a promising first step in crafting a regulatory system that will help San Francisco lead the way in robotics innovation and creating well-paid manufacturing jobs, said CEO and co-founder Matt Delaney.

Dispatch, a South San Francisco robot startup, did not respond to requests for comment.

Starship Technologies, the largest robot maker with hundreds of models being tested in Europe and America, works with several food-delivery services, including Postmates and Doordash in the U.S. It did not immediately provide comment.

The Advancing Automation trade group fought a robot tax proposed by Supervisor Jane Kim earlier this year to help offset the economic impacts of jobs displaced by robots.

The robot backlash could also spring from city leaders vexation with some consequences of the rapid growth of hometown startups Airbnb, Uber and Lyft. Yee previously said he was concerned that Uber and Lyft vehicles were overwhelming city streets, while many lawmakers worry that Airbnbs rapid proliferation hurt affordable housing.

The supervisors are also considering guiding principles proposed by Yee on how to regulate future emerging technology businesses. The criteria include making sure that they provide a net common good, dont divert resources or infrastructure from people, give equal access to vulnerable populations, share data about their operations, and give preference to technologies that grow rather than reduce the labor force.

Carolyn Said and Benny Evangelista are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid @ChronicleBenny
President Trump is after an ultimate deal that would produce peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Now hes making a blunt opening move that will greatly reduce any hope for a breakthrough or American clout on the crucial topic.

Hes removing Washington from its perch as broker and diplomatic middleman by declaring Jerusalem as Israels capital and launching a course to move the U.S. embassy there. That intention is infuriating the Arab world, European powers and even Pope Francis in a way that isolates Trump and this country as rarely before.

The declaration is pure provocation on a divisive topic. Palestinians want a state with their capital also in Jerusalem, a claim based on the citys back-and-forth history. By giving Israel claim, Trump overlooks a sensitive issue best left to negotiators, not the wish of an impulsive president hunting for a quick-hit idea.

Theres no question that the Mideast standoff needs a restart. Trump came to office promising to move the embassy, as prior presidents have only to shelve the idea. In reality, Tel Aviv is the home for foreign embassies while Jerusalem houses the heart of Israels government. Its a balancing act that recognizes Mideast tensions that could be tamed, with a two-state solution the best option.

Trumps action disrupts a complex bargain that takes in settlements, land rights, security issues, national aspirations and regional politics. Theres nothing simple or easy, and thats why tossing out a lightning rod issue like Jerusalem as capital makes no sense. Whats more, U.S. polls show a majority of voters dont favor Trumps idea, seeing it as disruptive and inflammatory.

Trump may think his stance will freshen the stale talks. Hes deployed son-in-law Jared Kushner as his surrogate, making experienced hands in the State Department irrelevant. In advance of the presidents announcement, criticism has poured in from Palestinians and Arab allies needed to achieve any agreement.

As Trumps fringe idea takes hold, it could lead to worse: a revival of terrorist attacks that surged during a prior standoff in negotiations. That would be a stinging rebuff to a president all about quelling threats to the U.S. and its allies such as Israel.

The president is producing a finger-snap notion that may please some Israeli hardliners and his own conservative base. But it will only make Palestinians wonder what the rest of his goals are. The long, hard slog to achieve peace just got harder.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
The Supreme Court on Monday again weighed in on President Trumps executive action restricting travel from certain Muslim-majority countries, allowing the most recent (and third) iteration of his order on the topic to go into effect temporarily while the lower courts consider it. No matter the stage of litigation, however, the legal and public debate will likely continue to focus on whether controversial comments by the president relating to the travel orders yet absent from the text nonetheless render them improper forms of religious discrimination. But there is no need to look beyond the documents themselves to be troubled on that front. For although Muslims are nowhere referred to by name, the orders appear to make them their object in a particularly misplaced and inflammatory way: in their curious call for a study on so-called honor killings in the United States.

Specifically, in the course of an effort otherwise devoted to travel and asylum and premised on international-security concerns, the second version of the order  in a section left in force by the third  commissions a government report on the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women, including so-called honor killings, in the United States by foreign nationals. But no factual predicate is offered, no connection to urgent travel issues is described; indeed, the called-for study is limited to domestic crimes. And while any such violence  typically characterized by the perpetrator thinking the female victim has brought shame upon her family  should be condemned in no uncertain terms wherever and by whomever it arises, its cameo appearance in the travel orders seems suspect in both context and the light of history.

As a group of social scientists urged in a recent brief to the Supreme Court, even though honor-based violence is a tragic reality in many cultures and nations its invocation in our contemporary political discourse has come to be associated almost exclusively and unfairly with Muslims as a group. Much of this stems from the rise of the anti-Shariah movement, which views Islam as an ideology incompatible with Western civilization and whose inclusion in the American fabric will lead to theocracy. In addition to immigration limits, the movement has called for prohibitions on the domestic use of religious law  notably, Islamic  even though, as we have described elsewhere, such law is common in many faiths and, unlike in other countries, its application here is limited almost entirely to private affairs.

In any event, and as a 2015 report sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department already has found, domestic acts of honor violence are largely anecdotal and rare in comparison to other types of crime in the United States  hardly the stuff to justify their inclusion in an emergency and categorical travel order.

Moreover, when it comes to immigrant groups, research summarized by the Cato Institute shows immigrants are no more prone to criminal activity than native-born Americans. And regarding Muslims in particular, a recent survey by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding indicates that domestic violence is less prevalent in the Muslim American community than the general public.

The targeting of faith communities in the immigration context  whether direct or veiled  is unfortunately not a new phenomenon in America, despite our otherwise proud history of religious liberty. Catholics, Jews and Mormons, for example, have all faced pernicious generalizations to restrict their entry in past eras. Indeed, each group was at one time or another thought to hold beliefs antithetical to Western values, considered to be loyal to a foreign ideology, and seen as degenerates or worse. For instance, in the late 19th century, the U.S. secretary of state directed diplomatic officers to restrict the flow of Mormons from Europe. A turn-of-the-century study commissioned by Congress likewise peddled stereotypes of Jews and Catholics, leading to laws blocking their influx in the 1920s.

As the Supreme Court has made clear, however, the First Amendment protects against government hostility to religion that is masked, as well as overt. Even valid concerns about public safety can result in illicit discrimination where the text, operation and context of a law  despite appearing to be neutral on its face  are misplaced to the detriment of a particular faith. Indeed, it has historically been in safety and security contexts, where sentiment is high and unequivocal, that the risk of overreach is acute. But to echo the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the measure of a society is not where it stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but ... at times of challenge and controversy.

We have plenty of work to do to rid our society of the plague of violence against women, as shown by the recent spotlight on a culture of sexual harassment at the highest levels of power. And honor violence in particular must be condemned and eradicated  and to that end, be studied. But this should be done independently and universally, and not in the fuzzy, misplaced, and provocative way the travel orders suggest.

No matter the result of the litigation at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, or elsewhere, we can and should insist on the type of thoughtful and tailored balancing of safety and religious liberty that has ultimately, if belatedly, prevailed in the past  and to the benefit of all.

James A. Sonne is an associate professor at Stanford Law School and directs its Religious Liberty Clinic; Zeba A. Huq is a lecturer in law and supervising attorney in the clinic.
A faulty water heater is suspected of causing a carbon monoxide leak that killed one resident of a Bernal Heights house early Thursday morning and injured several others, officials said.

At 4:26 a.m., the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a call at 301 Moultrie Street, near Eugenia Avenue, after a carbon monoxide detector went off in an upper unit of the building.

There were four residents in an upper unit exhibiting symptoms of being exposed to carbon monoxide, said Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the fire department. The residents received medical treatment at the scene, and one was transported to a hospital in stable condition.

Filipa Ioannou / The Chronicle

Firefighters noticed that there was a lower unit and heard a television, but they got no answer when they knocked on the door. They forced entry and found an elderly woman unconscious, Baxter said. She was given advanced life-saving treatment and transported to St. Francis Hospital, which has a hyperbaric chamber, essential for treating carbon monoxide poisoning. She was in serious condition.

Firefighters searching the lower unit also discovered an elderly man unconscious near his bed and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him, Baxter said. After 45 minutes, he was pronounced dead on the scene.

The source of the carbon monoxide leak was suspected to be a malfunctioning water heater, Baxter said. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. turned off the gas to the heater. Residents of the upper unit were able to return to their home Thursday.

Baxter urged people to check their appliances for any problems annually, especially as heaters are turned on for winter. He said people can call PG&E at (800) 743-5000 for questions on how to check appliances.

Sophie Haigney is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophie.haigney@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophieHaigney
A coyote that found itself stuck up on the roof of a one-story commercial building in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood was rescued and released by animal control Wednesday.

Coyotes have been spotted more frequently within the residential parts of San Francisco in recent months, with some being spotted in the fall in Corona Heights and near Fort Mason.
San Francisco business software developer Okta, which went public in April, is the latest tech company to lease a sprawling office space in San Francisco this year.

The company  which charges businesses subscription fees for software that helps employees securely sign into and use cloud applications  announced Wednesday that it signed a 10-year lease for 207,000 square feet at 100 First St.

In September, Facebook signed a 436,000-square-foot lease at 181 Fremont St., followed by Dropbox, which broke San Francisco records by leasing 736,000 square feet in Mission Bay.

The relatively unknown Okta has grown rapidly in the past year due to the rising use of cloud technology.

Ride services

Self-driving

Lyfts in Boston

Lyft is now sending self-driving cars to pick up passengers in a Boston neighborhood.

The cars will have backup human drivers at the wheel and will be limited to short routes within the citys Seaport District, a burgeoning tech startup hub.

San Franciscos Lyft and Boston partner nuTonomy, which builds self-driving software, announced Wednesday that the pilot project has begun.

City officials approved the pilot in October and say they hope to gain insight into how people interact with shared autonomous vehicles that could eventually complement the citys public transit system.

Lyft hasnt disclosed how many autonomous cars it will be running in the neighborhood daily.

NuTonomy was bought this year by auto supplier Delphi Automotive. Its also testing autonomous taxis in Singapore.

Pharmacies

Walgreens big

China stake

Walgreens Boots Alliance took a 40 percent stake in the leading retail-pharmacy chain in China, boosting its investment in the country.

The Illinois chain said Wednesday that it would invest $418 million in Sinopharm Holding Guoda Drugstores Co., a subsidiary of China National Accord Medicines Corp. that has operated retail pharmacies across China since 2004.

China is the worlds second-biggest pharmaceutical market. The country recently underwent changes, including using trial data from overseas, that will speed up approvals of medicines and medical devices.

Health insurance

Registration up

for state plan

Enrollment in health plans on Covered California, the state-run insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, was up 28 percent in November compared to the same period last year, according to figures released by Covered California on Wednesday.

About 102,000 new consumers selected a health plan on the exchange during the first month of open enrollment in November  up from the 80,000 people who did so during the same period last year.

Roughly 1.3 million Californians are enrolled in plans through the exchange, which sells discounted health insurance to low-income consumers. About 15 percent of exchange enrollees earn too much to be eligible for subsidies, and pay full price.

Covered California officials estimate that 85 percent of people who receive subsidies are paying 10 percent less in premiums than they paid last year. But those who do not receive subsidies are paying, on average, 10 percent more.

Court

Tesla wins

Missouri case

Tesla can continue to sell its electric cars directly to consumers in Missouri after a state appeals court reversed a lower court ruling that favored a trade group representing car dealers.

The Missouri Automobile Association sued the state Department of Revenue in 2015, arguing that the agency violated state law by granting licenses allowing the Palo Alto carmaker to sell cars directly to customers instead of through a dealership.

A three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the car dealers association did not have standing to sue the state agency, reversing a lower courts ruling, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

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A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence of a Livermore man for raping and murdering a woman he met at a bar in Contra Costa County in 1986.

The court said it wouldnt second-guess state court findings that jurors hadnt been tainted when a prosecutor reminded them that California voters had overwhelmingly approved capital punishment.

The trial of Guy Rowland was marred by defense attorneys errors in addition to the prosecutors improper comments, but a mistake-free trial would probably have reached the same result in light of Rowlands monstrous criminal history, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The court said it was required by federal law to be highly deferential to the state Supreme Court ruling that upheld Rowlands death sentence.

Rowland was 24 when he met Marion Geri Richardson, 31, at a bar in Byron in March 1986. An off-duty bartender testified that Richardson brushed off Rowlands advances, stayed in the bar after he left and later headed for home in her car.

ALSO Former Oakland fire captain pleads guilty to child porn charges

According to medical testimony, Rowland beat Richardson, raped her, then choked her to death after forcing her to swallow a potentially lethal dose of methamphetamine. He then drove her body to Half Moon Bay and dumped it in the ocean. He later asked his girlfriend to help him clean the victims blood and hair from his truck, but she called the police, the court said.

Rowland had recently served a prison sentence for kidnapping two 13-year-old girls and raping one of them in 1980, the court said. Prosecutors also presented evidence of uncharged beatings and rapes, including assaults of his stepsister and another woman less than a week before the murder.

According to defense evidence, Rowlands family was abusive, his mother twice attempted to drown him in the bathtub as a baby, and he had been diagnosed with several mental disorders. One witness, psychiatrist Hugh Ridlehuber, conducted a brief evaluation and testified that Rowland was still suffering the effects of his traumatic childhood, but said after the trial that he probably would have presented evidence of brain damage if he had been given time for a more thorough analysis.

In Wednesdays ruling, the court said Rowlands trial lawyers had been ineffective by failing to contact Ridlehuber earlier or prepare him adequately. But under the deferential standard of federal law, the states high court could have reasonably concluded that the verdict would have been the same because of the brutality of the crime and Rowlands record, Judge John Owens said in the 3-0 ruling.

The court had a similar assessment of the prosecutors comments to the jury in closing arguments at the penalty phase  that Californias voters had overwhelmingly approved the death penalty and had removed three state Supreme Court justices from office in 1986 for overturning death sentences.

We disapprove of the prosecutors comments, Owens said, but they did not minimize the jurys responsibility to reach is own conclusions.

Michael Levine, one of Rowlands appellate lawyers, said he was disappointed by the ruling and would probably ask the full appeals court for a rehearing.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@egelko
Ron Chapple/Getty Image

The man suspected of shooting two people in a Target parking lot in Emeryville has been identified as 22-year-old Camron Smith, police said.

Smith, an Oakland resident, was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder, police said.
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The San Francisco Police Department is asking the publics help in identifying two pit bulls and their owner after the dogs attacked a woman and killed her Chihuahua, officials said Wednesday.

The incident occurred on Nov. 20 when officers responded to a pet hospital on the 5600 block of Mission Street due to reports of a dog attack, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

A woman, 52, of San Francisco, said she was walking her Chihuahua-mix dog, Joey, on the 600 block of Brunswick Street when she spotted two dogs running toward her, police said.

She immediately picked up Joey to protect him from the dogs, but they jumped and knocked her to the ground, police said.

As the woman attempted to hold onto Joey by his leash, the dogs dragged her across the pavement while they continuously attacked the Chihuahua, police said.

A bystander assisted the woman in taking Joey to the pet hospital where he later died.

The woman, whose name was not released, sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

A man, who appeared to be the dogs owners, left the scene without expressing remorse for the attack or providing contact information, police said.

One of the pit bulls was brown and white, had a pink collar and weighed about 70 pounds. The other pit bull was brown, had a gray collar and was about 80 pounds.

Anyone with information can contact the 24-Hour Tip Line at (415) 575-4444, by texting a tip to Text a Tip at TIP411 and beginning the message with SFPD, or by calling the Vicious and Dangerous Dog Unit at (415) 553-9182.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
A Napa woman was arrested on suspicion of setting multiple arson fires in forest land, police said Wednesday.

Debra Ann Windholz, 59, was booked Tuesday into Napa County Jail on 11 counts of arson to forest land and is being held on $500,000 bail. Police said they suspect Windholz of deliberately setting the wildland fires near the north end of Lake Berryessa in Napa County.

We will not tolerate arson of any type and will track down those suspected of causing harm to our communities, said Chief Shana Jones of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Napa County Sheriff Sgt. Doug Wilkinson said he did not know exactly when the 11 fires were set, but that the incidents were spread out over a couple of years.

Cal Fire said that Windholz was not responsible for any of the fires that ignited overnight on Oct. 8 and devastated the North Bay. The cause of those fires is still under investigation.

Annie Ma is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ama@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @anniema15
Stephen Colbert's interview with "Lady Bird" star Saoirse Ronan Wednesday night didn't make many fans out of Sacramento residents.

The film, which is based on director Greta Gerwig's life growing up in California's capital city, has scored rave reviews from critics, even breaking a record on movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

But high praise of the film didn't score any points for Sacramento with Colbert, who told Ronan that he's been to Sacramento and he's "aware of how boring it is."

Ronan defends the city, calling it "a beautiful place," but Colbert presses on, agreeing that it's "very beautiful, but there's not a lot to do."

Colbert's assessment struck a nerve with locals on social media, most colorfully with Redditors.

"Typical opinion of a east coast elitist," wrote one user. "Ironic too since the film his guest stars in is about understanding how great home, in this case Sacramento, really is."

"Jon Stewart and most other late night talk show host (sic) are funnier anyways," added another. (Stewart retired from hosting "The Daily Show" in mid-2015.)

Defensive residents and fans of the city also took to Twitter, with one McClatchy reporter joking that Colbert got "Sacramento mixed up with Bakersfield," and another pleading with the late night host to "please be kinder to Sacramento."

The Sacramento Bee even ran a story with the dramatic headline, "Stephen Colbert trashes Sacramento in interview with 'Lady Bird' star."

There are, however, plenty who agree with Colbert, including one Redditor, who wrote, "I'm okay with people thinking Sac is boring or whatever. This place is a hidden gem and I wouldn't want those people here tarnishing it anyways. Cobert (sic) is pretty entertaining otherwise."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


President Trump has the authority to exclude citizens of any nation he considers harmful to U.S. interests  even from all nations  without judicial interference, a Trump administration lawyer told a federal appeals court Wednesday.

The hearing in Seattle over Trumps latest ban on travel from a group of mainly Muslim-majority countries took place two days after the administrations most important victory yet on the issue. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the government to fully enforce Trumps order while the case continues.

Arguing before a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that had barred a previous version of the ban as an act of discrimination based on nationality, Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan said the presidents national-security powers on such questions are virtually absolute.

The Supreme Court, in past rulings, has made it clear that the decision of the political branches to allow aliens to enter the country is a political decision that courts cannot review unless Congress decides otherwise, Mooppan said.

In this case, he said, Congress  despite a 1965 law that banned bias based on national origin in issuing immigration visas  has allowed the president to bar visa-holders from entire nations based on his assessment of the national interest.

Judge Ronald Gould asked whether a president who decided the worlds a very dangerous place could deny entry to all non-U.S. citizens. Yes, Mooppan replied.

Judge Michael Hawkins likened the policy to the 2004 movie The Terminal, in which Tom Hanks played a foreigner who is stranded in a New York airport for months after the U.S. invalidates his passport following a coup in his native country, which also prevents his return. Thats how the administration intends to enforce its authority, Hawkins said.

Not just this administration, Mooppan said. He cited President Jimmy Carters ban on entry from Iran while Iranians held hostages at the U.S. Embassy, and President Ronald Reagans ban on travel by Cubans in an escalation of tensions with Fidel Castros government.

But Neal Katyal, lawyer for Hawaii, lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Trumps decree, said the 1965 law prohibited the nationality-based discrimination that the president has now ordered.

He said the court, in a ruling in June that blocked Trumps previous travel ban, had cited a lack of evidence that the current system of extensively screening would-be entrants is allowing dangerous foreigners to slip through. The administration has still presented no such evidence, Katyal said, despite ample time for deliberation  in contrast to the fast-moving action that preceded Carters and Reagans travel bans.

The idea that the president can ban all immigration from around the world and that this court would be powerless to review it is like taking an iron wrecking ball to the immigration law and its constitutional underpinnings, Katyal said.

Mooppan called the argument a scare tactic. Congress, he said, can place limits on the presidents authority to exclude any group of immigrants, and Congress has not done so.

But Judge Richard Paez, the third panel member, said Trumps order seems to disregard what Congress laid out, a time limit on a presidents suspension of foreign entry.

The order, issued after two previous versions were blocked by federal courts, would indefinitely prohibit most entrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea  total population of about 150 million  as well as Venezuelan government officials and their families. Another appeals court in Virginia will hold a hearing Friday on a separate suit against the ban.

Disputing opponents claims that the travel ban was an act of discrimination based on nationality or religion, administration officials said it was based instead on a review of every nations security measures in screening potential U.S. travelers.

The hearing lasted a little over an hour, and the panel gave few hints of how it would rule but promised a prompt decision.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
SALT LAKE CITY  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and outdoor retail giant Patagonia traded harsh words over the Trump administrations plans to shrink several national monuments, an opening salvo in an imminent legal battle that could be waged for years.

A barrage of lawsuits is expected by groups looking to block President Trumps order on Monday drastically reducing Utahs Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. Three lawsuits had been filed by Tuesday night, with more expected Wednesday.

Trump said he was reversing federal overreach by drastically cutting the sprawling monuments named by Democratic presidents. But tribal leaders, environmentalists and others argue the president doesnt have that authority and his move jeopardizes a wealth of Native American artifacts, dinosaur fossils and rugged spaces.

Patagonia, which is expected to file a lawsuit by Wednesday, replaced its usual home page with a stark message, The President Stole Your Land. The California-based company called Trumps actions illegal and described his action Monday as the largest elimination of protected land in American history.

Zinke shot back, calling that nefarious, false and a lie. He told reporters that the land targeted by Trump remains protected because it is still under federal control.

I understand fundraising for these special interest groups, Zinke said. I think its shameful and appalling that they would blatantly lie in order to gain money in their coffers.

Zinke took a defiant tone in a conference call with reporters, saying, I dont yield to pressure, only higher principle. And sound public policy is not based on threats of lawsuits, its doing whats right.

Patagonia has always viewed public lands as our special interest, said company spokeswoman Corley Kenna. And its odd that Ryan Zinke has no problem with special interests when theyre paying for his private jets. We have been fighting for these lands for decades, so that hunters, fishers, hikers and everyone else can use them and help us protect them.

Environmental and conservation groups and a coalition of tribes filed lawsuits Monday that ensure Trumps announcement is far from the final word in the years-long battle over public lands in Utah and other Western states. The court cases are likely to drag on for years.

Matthew Daly and Brady McCombs are Associated Press writers.
HONOLULU  Survivors gathered Thursday at the site of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to remember fellow servicemen killed in the early morning raid 76 years ago.

About 20 survivors attended the event at a grassy area overlooking the harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. They were joined by a several thousand Navy sailors, officials and members of the public.

Gilbert Meyer, who lived through the 1941 Japanese bombing, said he returned because of his shipmates from the battleship Utah  and came to pay his respects and say a prayer for them.

The 94-year who lives near Lytle, Texas, was an 18-year-old fireman first class on Dec. 7, 1941 when a torpedo hit the port side of the Utah. He said hes still alive because he happened to be on the ships starboard side.

I think about my shipmates and how they were killed. It reminds me that were lucky we got off and weve made a good country for them, Meyer said.

Meyer later served in the battles at Attu, Kiska, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He witnessed Japans surrender in 1945 from the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Author Steve Twomey delivered the ceremonys keynote address. Twomey wrote the book Countdown to Pearl Harbor, which examines the 12 days leading up to the Dec. 7, 1941 attack.

After a moment of silence marking the same time that the attack began on Dec. 7, 1941, four F-22 jets from the Hawaii Air National Guard flew overhead. One of the jets peeled off from the formation to symbolize those missing from combat.

The Navy and National Park Service host the ceremony each year at the same time the attack began. Usually, a Navy vessel with sailors manning the rails passes by the Arizona Memorial during the event. This year, no ship participated because of operational commitments, said Bill Doughty, a spokesman for Navy Region Hawaii.

More than 2,300 servicemen were killed in the assault carried out by Japanese airplanes. Nearly half were on the Arizona, which exploded and sank after it was hit by two bombs. Most of the Arizonas fallen are entombed in the battleship, which lies at the bottom of the harbor.

After the ceremony, survivors and dignitaries boarded a boat to the Arizona memorial and presented wreaths in remembrance of those killed.

The attack plunged the U.S. into World War II. Japan and the U.S. became close allies after the war.

Audrey McAvoy is an Associated Press writer.
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An armed robbery in Berkeley on Tuesday night in which the victim was shot in the leg is being investigated in connection with a series of similar crimes attributed to a suspected organized crew, police said.

Five robberies in November were believed to be connected due to similarities in the methods and descriptions of the assailants. The robbers worked in pairs and targeted pedestrians traveling alone to steal their backpacks, police said.

The victim in Tuesdays robbery was approached from behind by two people after getting out of his car parked in the 1900 block of Vine Street, police said. One of the assailants grabbed the victims backpack, but the victim clung to it and the attacker then shot him.

The robber dragged the victim to the sidewalk as the victim clutched his backpack, police said. The victim finally let go after the robber shot at him two more times, and both robbers fled south on Bonita Avenue.

The victim was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. He was treated for a gunshot wound to the leg and released, police said.

Sgt. Andrew Frankel of the Berkeley Police Department said it was too early to say whether Tuesdays robbery was carried out by the same crew as last months attacks, but that police are investigating a possible connection due to the similarities in the crimes.

The five November robberies targeted college-age victims near the UC Berkeley campus. Four attacks were in a four-block area north of the campus and one was in the south campus area. Tuesdays robbery took place about three-quarters of a mile away from the north campus attacks.

In the last two November robberies, one of the robbers threatened victims by saying he had a gun, police said.

All six robberies are under investigation, Frankel said.

Anyone with information can contact police at (510) 981-5742.

Annie Ma is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ama@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @anniema15
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The owner, the manager and a saleswoman at a San Francisco art and antiques gallery have been charged with illegally selling ivory, city prosecutors said Wednesday.

The bust at Lovells Antique Gallery, located along Grant Avenue in Chinatown, is the result of a sting last December by state and federal wildlife agents that led to the seizure of 32 items that appeared to be made from ivory, officials said.

The charges come three weeks after President Trump reversed a decision by his administration to lift restrictions on importing elephant hunting trophies from two African nations, and two years after the Obama administration banned nearly all commercial trade of such goods.

Before the ban, a number of Chinatown galleries had long displayed and sold carved pieces made from elephant tusks. California passed a ban on ivory in 1976, but it permitted the sale of ivory imported before 1977, feeding a market for fraudulent documents.

Lovells owner, 56-year-old Abraham Magadish of El Cerrito, was charged with one count of selling ivory and two counts of possessing ivory for sale, court papers show. The gallerys corporate parent, ALAER-90, was hit with similar charges.

The gallerys manager, 33-year-old Yesika Becerra, and 58-year-old saleswoman Vivian Wei Zhao were each charged with one count of selling ivory. Becerra and Zhao, both San Francisco residents, were to be arraigned Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court.

A worker who answered the phone at Lovells on Wednesday said, Were not talking about it right now. She said Magadish would not be in the store for a few months.

The sale of ivory has decimated the elephant population around the world, District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement. By eliminating the market for ivory at home, we can play a role in reducing demand and the likelihood that these majestic animals will be hunted abroad.

State and federal wildlife agents have been working the case against the gallery since Dec. 15, 2016, when an undercover agent purchased a statuette being sold as ivory for $240, officials said.

Agents then swarmed the store and found some items had a cryptic code on the price tag that appeared to indicate they were ivory, according to court records.

Conservationists say 50,000 elephants a year are illegally slaughtered for their tusks and that cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York have been centers in the ivory trade.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
LOS ANGELES  As the Creek Fire rampaged toward their horse ranch in the darkness before dawn, the Padilla family reportedly woke to the crackle and glow of flames and smoky air  and a fire crew telling them to flee. Downhill from their home lay the stalls of more than 60 horses. In the other direction lay safety. There was little time to quibble.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, according to local news reports, the family got to come back and assess the damage, hoping for something resembling good news as they drove up the twisting denuded roads of Little Tujunga Canyon to their spread in Sylmar. Maybe, in that capricious way of fires, the flames could have skipped past the horse stalls and spared the animals.
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If you're thinking of taking a far-flung trip abroad this holiday season, you may want to consider some research first.

Every year American travelers die sudden, unnatural deaths abroad, and since 2002, these numbers have been made public on the US State Department's website. In 2016, a total of 843 US citizens died from more than a dozen causes such as homicide, drowning and drug-related deaths.

Beyond just stoking the morbid fascination of American tourists, this data can prove helpful for travelers heading into countries with recent State Dept. travel warnings. It can even be used to pinpoint US deaths in certain cities or regions within countries.

So what was the number one cause of death for all Americans abroad last year? Unceremoniously, it was traffic accidents, which comprised 27 percent of all deaths. Terrorism, on the other hand, accounted for just under 2 percent of American deaths.

Mexico led all countries in 2016 with 264 American fatalities, a figure more than eight times greater than Thailand, which took second place with 32 deaths.

Mexico consistently ranks number one in American fatalities and is also the top country in the world for American travelers, drawing close to 39 percent of all American travelers last year while contributing to about one third of the total US deaths abroad.

Canada, by contrast, drew 17 percent of all US tourism in 2016 but only accounted for 1.3 percent of all deaths, according to the State Department.

Mexico also led all countries with 75 homicides, while Jamaica and the Philippines tied for second place with 8 homicides apiece.

In terms of terrorism, a total of 15 Americans died in terrorist actions last year, the majority coming in Belgium and France. Only four Americans died in armed conflicts, all in Syria.

Other countries that made the top 10 include Australia, Germany, China and Costa Rica.

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Other notables from the data:

 Cambodia continued to lead the world in the rate of drug-related deaths among US citizens.

 A total of 15 percent of deaths last year were classified as "other" or "unknown."

More Americans died of drowning than homicides (156 drownings vs 144 homicides)

 The two least common causes of death were disaster (2 deaths) and air accidents (5 deaths).

 The total does not include health and illness-related deaths such as disease, heart attack or stroke.
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VENTURA  It was the house no one expected to burn down.

A copper roof. Aluminum-clad metal doors. One hundred and three sturdy windows. If anything was going to burn, Rochelle Olson thought, it would be the wooden garage door. The rest of her home was built to withstand flames.

And at first, it seemed like the house Olson lived in on Bridgeview Drive for 30 years would be OK. She and her husband evacuated at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday as the Thomas Fire closed in. When they returned later that afternoon, the house was still standing.

Their art  a half-million dollars of it  was still on the walls. Her wedding ring was in a tray by her bathroom sink.

Stray embers landed on the lawn. She put them out with water scooped from the toilet. The faucets werent working. Then she noticed smoke seeping out of a hallway closet.

We have a problem, she thought.

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The couple opened up the closet to drag out all the coats and clothing  and with the rush of oxygen, it exploded in flames. They evacuated a second time, not grabbing anything.

An errant ember had probably blown into a crawl space under the foundation, an off-duty firefighter told them. But all the engines were busy. By the time one arrived nearly 20 minutes later, the house was aflame. In another few minutes, it was gone.

All these houses out here were saved, Olson said Wednesday, gesturing to her neighbors. Soot smeared her forehead and underneath her red manicured nails. Somehow ours wasnt. Who would have thought it would be this one? No one. The house next door has weeds up to your waist and its still standing.

Picking through the wreckage, her son Damon came across a charred chunk of metal. What is this thing, mom? he said, holding it up.

I dont know, she said. I dont know what any of this is.

One thing that did survive was a tall family safe, which fell through the floor. The family fetched it up with rope, and still hasnt been able to pick the lock  the key is lost in rubble  but theyre hoping Olsons passport is intact inside.

She has plans to fly to Cabo San Lucas. But she knows that probably wont happen.

She said, Nothing has been going how its supposed to go.

Chronicle Staff Writer Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com
ATHENS  Turkeys president made a landmark visit to Greece on Thursday, but any expectation for diplomacy was quickly deflated by his call for changes to an international treaty that defined the borders between the rivals, and by suggestions that Greek authorities were discriminating against their Muslim population.

The visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not his first  he had visited Greece twice before as prime minister  but it was the first by a Turkish president in 65 years.

With Turkeys relations with Europe and the United States deteriorating, there had been hopes that Erdogans visit might portend closer ties with Greece, and greater stability in the region. It had been touted, on both sides of the Aegean, as aimed at improving ties.

Instead, Erdogan managed to provoke his hosts even before landing in Athens. In an interview published in the Greek daily Kathimerini on Thursday, he suggested an update of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which defined Turkeys borders with neighboring countries after World War I.

He repeated the demand at a tense, televised news conference with his Greek counterpart, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos.

There are outstanding issues with the Treaty of Lausanne and matters that have not been addressed correctly, Erdogan said. It should be updated, he added.

Pavlopoulos, clearly uncomfortable, immediately countered that the treaty was nonnegotiable.

Greek news media condemned the Turkish leaders stance as provocative and unprecedented.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras later told Erdogan that he was eager to build bridges, not raise walls, and he underlined the need for respect for international law, treaties and of the territorial integrity of countries.

Erdogan indicated that border changes were not what he had in mind, declaring that Turkey never covets the territory of another country.

He also called on Greek authorities to drop ideological fixations and to expand the rights of Muslims living in Thrace, in northern Greece, which he is to visit Friday. Muslims there, he said, should be able to elect their own religious leaders, rather than have them appointed by the Greek state.

Niki Kitsantonis is a New York Times writer.
A mysterious illness induced by excessive marijuana use can cause bouts of uncontrolled vomiting and debilitating nausea, doctors say.

Doctors have only recently begun to recognize the prevalence of Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS), a condition characterized by chronic cannabis use, cyclic episodes of nausea and vomiting, and the compulsion to take hot baths or showers. The syndrome typically affects just a small portion of the population  heavy, long-term marijuana users.

CHS has become so common in the emergency room of Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, some doctors refer to CHS as "scromiting," an amalgam of "vomiting" and "screaming."

"In my work, in the emergency room, I see at least one patient a day with the Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome," Dr. Roneet Lev, the director of operations at Scripps Mercy Hospital, told NBC.

Dr. Linda Nguyen, a gastroenterologist at Stanford Health Care, says she encounters about three to four patients a month with CHS. A more apt description of the syndrome, in her opinion, is "cromiting."

"I tend to see more crying and vomiting, less so screaming," Nguyen said.

In the past several years, Nguyen has noticed an increase in patients afflicted with CHS. It's hard to quantify such observations, because CHS can be difficult to diagnose and research around the syndrome is limited. A major epidemiological study has yet to be conducted.

"What percentage of marijuana users have CHS? We don't know, because we don't know the percentage of the population that uses marijuana," Nguyen said.

Nguyen typically treats more men than women with CHS, although "all types of people" can suffer from the syndrome, including high-functioning adults whose mental ability is not substantially affected by heavy marijuana use.

The only way to cure CHS, Nguyen said, is to "get off the marijuana."

The syndrome was first described by Australian researchers in 2004. Subsequent research has found that CHS coincides with increasing rates of stateside cannabis abuse.

"While the overall prevalence of marijuana use has remained stable in the United States at 4%, the prevalence of cannabis use disorders (i.e. cannabis dependence, cannabis abuse) has continued to rise," a 2011 paper by Temple University Hospital researchers found.

The same paper noted that the average duration of cannabis use prior to an onset of symptoms was 16 years. The earliest symptoms had developed was after three years of heavy marijuana use.

As for the excessive bathing, Temple researchers believe that it is a "learned behavior" that starts as an alleviating measure and "rapidly becomes a compulsive behavior."

It is not yet clear what causes CHS, though two theories prevail, according to Nguyen. Either marijuana slows the emptying of the stomach and, therefore, causes nausea and vomiting; or, more likely, cannabis accumulates in the brain and affects its thermoregulatory centers.

Common treatments for CHS include the administering of intravenous fluids, anti-nausea drugs and capsaicin cream.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.
JERUSALEM  In Gaza City, Palestinians burned photos of President Trump and in Jerusalem, Jews celebrated by lighting the walls of the Old City with the colors of the American and Israeli flags after Trump on Wednesday made good on his pledge to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

As Palestinian officials talked of cutting ties with the United States or ending security cooperation with Israel, Israeli government ministers and opposition leaders alike welcomed the U.S. decision. Ordinary Israelis and supporters of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, however, expressed fears that the move would ignite a new round of violence.

Yediot Ahronot, one of Israels leading daily newspapers, warned of a possible outbreak of violence as Israeli forces readied for protests in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In the Palestinian territories, Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions, whose internecine battles have often been bloody and politically debilitating, came together to urge a public venting of rage against Trump.

These measures are a reward to Israels violations of international resolutions and an encouragement for Israel to continue its policy of occupation, settlements, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said in a televised speech in Arabic.

Abbas called Trumps actions a deliberate undermining of all efforts to achieve peace, and is a declaration of the withdrawal of the United States from playing the role which it has played over the past decades as a peace broker.

Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, called Trumps announcement the beginning of a time of horrific transformations across the region.

In Gaza City, hundreds of demonstrators burned American flags and posters bearing Trumps photograph, in a protest at the Unknown Soldier Square downtown. Hamas and Islamic Jihad called on Arab and Islamic leaders to cut ties with the United States and to withdraw from peace talks with Israel.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, there were harsh words for Trump from Palestinians agitated at the idea that they were being forced into another period of conflict.

We will never allow East Jerusalem to be taken away from us, said a retired farmer who gave his name as Abu Malik, 54. Trump is a crazy man who knows nothing about politics. I think he should go back to making WWF videos, rather than making these dangerous decisions that will only bring more headaches and bloodshed to our region.

Israelis overwhelmingly say they favor international recognition of Jerusalem as their capital, but they did not seem in a particular hurry before this week.

I do agree with recognition, but this should have been done with a wide and clear understanding between all the sides, said Alon Levi, 44, a manager for a chain of health food stores. I am sorry to say I feel that a bomb is being thrown in order to divert from the real issues. I feel like this is an act resulting from the political interests of the leaders and is not in the interest of the two nations here, and peace.

David M. Halbfinger is a New York Times writer.
Over images of people campaigning for equality, images of the Australian parliament voting and passing the bill, images of people celebrating, and images of couples getting hitched, accompanied by lovely, soaring music, the following text appears onscreen: "Australia's MPs have voted to legalise same-sex marriage. The same-sex marriage bill passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives a week after the Senate passed the bill. The vote comes three weeks after 61.6% of Australia's voters backed the legalisation of same-sex marriage in a $122m survey. The governor general is likely to ratify the law within days, meeting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's promise to get it done by Christmas. Same-sex couples who have married abroad will have their marriages immediately recognised, and the first same-sex weddings under the new law will be held early next year."Blub. [Video via the Guardian .]
NZME director Peter Cullinane, a former ad man who founded Lewis Road Creamery, has been confirmed chair of the media group, while ex-investment banker David Gibson has been appointed to the board.

The appointments follow former chair John Anderson's sudden retirement this week, although NZME said it was already in the process of a boardroom renewal. That process led to the appointment of Gibson, a former co-head of investment banking for Deutsche Craigs, who has advised on major transactions in the media sector and will continue next year. Cullinane, a former Saatchi & Saatchi global executive, has been on the board since it was spun out as a separate entity from APN News & Media in June last year.

"I am honoured to accept the appointment as chair of NZME. We have great people, brands and customers and are in a strong position to take advantage of opportunities to grow shareholder value in the New Zealand media sector," Cullinane said in a statement. "Davids extensive experience in capital markets and managing growing businesses will be of enormous value to NZME in achieving its objectives while maintaining strong governance."

NZME was recently added to First NZ Capital's analyst coverage, which took a cautiously positive outlook on the media group's potential earnings, rating the stock a 'neutral' and putting a 12-month target share price of 88 cents. The shares closed at 89 cents yesterday.

The New Zealand media unit was spun out of APN with a view to merging with rival Fairfax New Zealand, although that's been rejected by the Commerce Commission as being anti-competitive and is currently under appeal.

Gibson has been declared an independent director and will put himself forward for election at the next annual meeting.

(BusinessDesk)

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The next generation of mobile telephony, known as 5G, should be built using the same government policy approach that supports the nationwide rollout of Ultra-Fast Broadband to create a shared, regulated backbone, says the chief executive of Chorus, Kate McKenzie.

"Weve been saying that when you get into the 5G world, theres a pretty strong argument that we should be thinking about using the same model weve used for the fibre infrastructure," she told BusinessDesk in an interview. "In a 5G world, the amount of capital thats going to have to be spent to build out those networks for a country of this size and this population, with small cells every couple of hundred metres  if three people (the current main mobile operators Spark, Vodafone and Two Degrees) do that, thats insane.

"Thats just going to be not sustainable," she said.

Mobile 5G technology will involve placing thousands of new, closely spaced cell sites around the country to help transmit data from the millions of internet-connected sensors that are already starting to control machines, automated systems and gather data as the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) revolutionises efficiency and knowledge-gathering in a host of areas from urban planning to agriculture.

Leaving 5G infrastructure to the market risked "the country being left behind" because no mobile network operator would make the investment.

"It's a dead cert that's where we will end up" if a shared approach to 5G infrastructure was not taken, said McKenzie, although there was no immediate urgency for policy on the issue, which is more likely to become pressing in the early 2020s. "There would have to be public policy appetite before you would do anything in that direction and agreement with other mobile operators."

She conceded that telecommunications sector competitors might see Chorus's position on the 5G build as an attempt to both slow down and control the rollout of 5G to allow Chorus to maximise returns from its investment in the UFB network, for which it won around 70 percent of the rollout work. The UFB project has used competitive bidding for a $1.7 billion revolving fund established early in the life of the 2008-2017 National Party-led government to deliver UFB to 80 percent of New Zealanders by 2022.

However, she was finding widespread sympathy for the shared approach to 5G infrastructure.

"Theres a certain sort of logic to it. People sort of go I dont know exactly what that looks like but actually, it is a sensible thing to talk about, said the former Telstra executive who says New Zealand is now "far ahead" of Australia for broadband speeds and consumer packages.

McKenzie welcomed the fact the new government has allowed the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill to proceed to select committee and said Chorus would be seeking no changes to it.

"Its been consulted on for years and to death and ended up in a place thats probably reasonable for all industry participants," she said. "Get it through and get on with it."

Chorus investors were most worried about further instability in the regulatory regime, having experienced substantial value destruction from policy changes relating to the pricing of its copper network earlier this decade.

"That's a really big overhang for us."

While taking on additional increments of the UFB rollout had both increased Chorus's capital expenditure profile and pushed out beyond 2022 its expectations of substantial free cashflows after network construction is completed, McKenzie said there was no pressure to raise additional capital.

Chorus expected to sustainably pay "modestly increasing" dividends through to 2020.

"I'm not sure that we've promised rivers of gold, because it's not quite as stable as electricity, but it (an expectation of strong free cashflow post-build) is still the right investment thesis."

The company also today announced it was experimenting in two North Shore suburbs of Auckland with a proof of concept on a Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) IoT network that seeks to eke further earnings from Chorus's existing network of poles and copper wires. The copper network is used to electrify localised cell sites mounted on Chorus network poles to receive data from sensors in "typically hard-to-access locations" such as underground wastewater or sewage pumping stations.

"The infrastructures there, weve got spare copper, and its just a way of reusing that infrastructure with interesting and innovative ideas," said McKenzie. Chorus was testing business models for an IoT future where the company would remain a commoditised telecommunications platform provider for the "gazillion ways" that IoT applications could emerge.

It was too soon to say whether such activity could be a material earnings contributor.

Chorus shares traded at $4.04, up 1.4 percent, today and are stable, up just 0.4 percent, for the year.

(BusinessDesk)

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Local Government New Zealand is lobbying the new government for more funding options for councils as a lack of options is holding back community development.

"We are overwhelmingly reliant on property rates to fund growth infrastructure for new residents and visitors and it is just not sustainable at the moment. We need access to diverse funding tools with some urgency," LGNZ president David Cull said at a quarterly briefing in Wellington.

Cull said councils nationwide are facing "considerable bills" to renew things such as wastewater plants and other infrastructure, in particular as the population continues to rise. New Zealand has faced record levels of immigration in recent years and councils "simply don't have the mechanisms to raise the debt they need or a sufficient rating base to pay for it," he said.

Growth councils including Hamilton, Tauranga, Auckland and Queenstown are particularly challenged as their debt levels are constrained and mayors have called for additional funding mechanisms, he said.

"Hamilton is staring down the barrel of a 16 percent rate rise because of some of these challenges," he said, adding the problem is not just restricted to those councils.

The new government, however, is reviewing local government costs and revenue "so at least they have acknowledged there is a need to examine this," he said. "We are looking forward to working with the government to develop new tools," he added.

Regarding what types of mechanisms LGNZ would be keen on, Cull said local bodies are "very grateful" for things such as the tourism fund and a number of regional developments, but was "agnostic about what kind of funding it might be."

All options "are up for grabs, but they need to be appropriate," he said.

Cull underscored any funding mechanism needs to be sustainable and ideally needs to "incentivise both the people we are taking the funding from and the council who is on the receiving end."

Water was a case in point following yesterday's series of recommendations on New Zealand's inadequate drinking water systems, with the report failing to address the issue of cost of the significant infrastructure that will be required for things like the universal treatment of water, he said.

The report recommended an independent regulatory body, however, Cull said LGNZ favours a co-regulatory body.

"Local government owns the assets which are worth millions and therefore should have a part," he said. Any government decision around aggregating water bodies needs to be made in conjunction with the communities, given they own the assets, he said.

Separately, the briefing included an update from the Local Government Funding Authority, which sells bonds on behalf of local authorities. In the year ended Sept. 30, the LGFA accounted for 95 percent of all council borrowing. Total LGFA lending to the sector stood at $8.3 billion as at Nov. 30, up $201 million from September.

Of that, $294.7 million was short-term lending to 20 councils and $7.91 billion was long-term borrowing by 52 councils, it said. A significant portion of the lending is to councils refinancing other debt on better terms or pre-funding December 2017 loan maturities, said LGFA chair Craig Stobo.

Overseas investors in LGFA bonds rose 4.8 percentage points in the past three months to 35.9 percent, just below banks an unchanged 35.6 percent holding and domestic institutional investors at 25.2 percent, down 5.5 percentage points.

Stobo said the offshore interest has increased steadily as investors who have invested in government bonds have seen yields decline and are looking for improved margins.

"We have offered them an opportunity to switch out of New Zealand government bonds into LGFA bonds with the same maturities, same coupons but a slightly higher yield."

(BusinessDesk)

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- It happens to even the most die-hard fitness junkies.

Daylight Savings Time ends. Days get shorter. And, suddenly a long nap seems a lot more appealing than a long run.

Yes, winter can be rough on our fitness routines. But why does it happen? And what can we do to fight through it?

Though you do have to shoulder some culpability for hitting that snooze alarm and skipping the gym, science is partly to blame, says Dr. Aleksandr Zverinskiy, a psychiatrist with the Center for Integrative Behavioral Medicine at Richmond University Medical Center and its associate director of outpatient services.

The hormones melatonin and serotonin play key roles in human functions, including sleep and mood, he said. In winter in the Northeast, when days get shorter and we're exposed to less sunlight, the body's production of these chemicals is affected. Additionally, Vitamin D is produced in the body with the help of sunlight. In studies, low levels of the vitamin have been linked with depression.

"Melatonin is responsible for regulating our circadian rhythm,'' he said. "It's what gives us the 24-hour clock in the day. It's how our body knows when to sleep and when to wake up.''

When there is less sunlight and more darkness, that triggers the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SPN, to continue to release the sleep hormone longer. Yet, we have to rise at the same time for our workout other commitments.

The result is sluggishness, fatigue and even winter depression, Zverinskiy said.

For some, a serious condition called SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, may be diagnosed. For others who just don't tolerate the time change very easily, the result is temporary and can be overcome.

"It could throw a person off, change their sleeping habits,'' Zverinskiy said. "Some just get a little sad. A change of pace, a change of atmosphere might help.''

The body also produces less of the hormone serotonin when the days get shorter, he noted. "People with depression are low in serotonin. Most anti-depressants actually target serotonin levels.''

Occasionally skipping a workout won't have devastating results, said Carol Ewing Garber, a professor of movement science at Teachers College, Columbia University, Manhattan.

So, the first step is to give yourself a break.

"Many people think, 'forget it; I've blown it,''' she said. "All is not lost from missing a few days. Try not to get discouraged if that does happen.''

But, winter in New York is so long, and staying inactive for the entire season will almost certainly cause weight gain, putting people at risk of developing chronic diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension.

So how do you fight your body's chemistry?

It's nothing a little advanced planning can't fix, Garber said. "The first thing to do is recognize that its now harder to get going,'' she said, noting that some may want to change the time of day they choose to exercise, or change from an outdoor activity to an indoor routine.

Enlisting the help of a friend often helps, Garber said. "Making a pact with an exercise buddy might get you over that hump,'' she said, adding that joining a gym for the winter could create motivation. "Putting down some money and making a commitment might make you get out of bed in the morning,'' she said.

For those with SAD, light therapy has been proven to improve mood and reduce depression symptoms. Light boxes that simulate intense natural sunlight can be purchased without a prescription and have helped many get back into the rhythm they had in the springtime, Zverinskiy said.

Garber suggests laying out workout clothes the night before your workout. "It really does help if they're sitting there, so you don't have to get up extra early,'' she said. "And if you trip over them later, you'll feel guilty. Sometimes guilt motivates.''

Traditionally, around the winter holidays, people eat too much, eat poorly and tend to gain weight. It's the time of year when we need exercise the most, Garber said.

"There are so many health benefits to being active and exercising,'' she said. "Talk to yourself. Remind yourself that this is important. You are important and this is one thing you can do for yourself that will really make a difference.''
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When a person is in cardiac arrest, anything is better than nothing.

The American Heart Association wants the public to know that, as inexperienced bystanders, you can do no harm by helping.

The AHA just updated its guidelines, urging the nation's 911 dispatchers to instruct bystanders to use a compression-only technique to assist adults experiencing cardiac arrest, instead of the adding breaths to the treatment.

"The advantage to lay rescuers is it's easier, and they have more confidence in at least attempting,'' said Dr. Karl Kern, chairman of the American Heart Association, in a video explaining the 2017 Focused Updates on Adult and Pediatric Basic Life Support and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality, released last month. "The more they attempt, the more people that are going to be saved. "

When someone has a cardiac arrest, their survival depends on immediately getting CPR from someone nearby, said Kern, who is a professor of medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson's Sarver Heart Center.

In fact, CPR performed in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest can double or triple the chance of survival, the AHA says. Currently, almost 90 percent of people who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests die.

Giving compression-only instruction to bystanders encourages them to get involved, said Sarah Gillen, a CPR instructor and a member of the regional faculty of the AHA.

"There's always that hesitancy,'' she said. "They're afraid they can do harm, and that's just not the case. If someone is in cardiac arrest, they are basically dead. Anything you do is improving the situation.''

Mouth-to-mouth breathing discourages some from getting involved, Gillen said, but noted that research suggests it's not immediately necessary in adult cardiac arrest situations.

"We just want to remove those barriers for people wanting to help,'' she said. "You won't be putting yourself in harm's way by doing chest compressions. It's easy to find the spot. Place the heel of your hand in the center of the chest and push. That's all you've got to do.''

When adults experience cardiac arrest, there is usually residual oxygen in the lungs that will last until paramedics arrive, the AHA has said. Compressions without breaths are critical in the first minutes of arrest, Gillen stressed.

The AHA seeks to double the national cardiac arrest survival rate by the year 2020. According to the AHA, each year, more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the U.S.

New York City's survival rate is less than 10 percent, slightly lower than the national average, despite the fact that New York 911 dispatchers do give compression-only instruction, along with about 50 percent of dispatchers nationally.

That data suggests that New Yorkers need to step up, Gillen said.

"In New York, we need to get out there and do it,'' she said. "Ultimately, we need to eliminate that fear factor. There's no getting it wrong.''

Having a dispatcher walk a bystander through the process is a huge help, AHA spokespeople say. "This is not something you are doing every day, and having a knowledgeable professional walk you through it will remove that hesitancy. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you 'do this now.'''

With children, the situation is a bit different, Dr. Kern and Gillen said. When children go into cardiac arrest, often a lack of oxygen is to blame; therefore, breaths are more critical early in the process, the said.

"For children or infants, typically it's a breathing or respiratory emergency,'' Gillen said. "By the time they ultimately go into cardiac arrest, they've already depleted the oxygen from their lungs.'' Even then, "something is better than nothing,'' she said, so compression-only will still help if a bystander is reluctant to administer breaths. "I do think there's a different comfort level if it's a child, especially your own. You'll be less hesitant to put your mouth on the mouth of a child.''

There's also reluctance on the part of men when the victim is a woman, Gillen said, strongly urging men to ignore their initial disinclination.

"I've met a lot of female survivors,'' she said. "And they have no problem with the fact that someone tore open their shirt or did compressions on their chest. They're very happy with that.''

The AHA guidelines, which are used to train 22 million caregivers worldwide, were last updated in 2015 and have traditionally been updated about every five years. But, the AHA has recently transitioned to a continuous evaluation process, bringing updates more often.

Gaining full CPR certification takes about four hours, Gillen said. To find a local CPR training session, or find more CPR resources, visit heart.org.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- District Attorney Michael E. McMahon was among many city officials who denounced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (CCRA) for New York state.

The CCRA is a federal legislation that was introduced in early 2017, that would require states to recognize the concealed-carry permits of gun owners from other states.

State gun laws vary across the United States; some states issue permits to convicted felons through loopholes in background check laws, convicted violent misdemeanants, people wanted on warrants, and those subject to orders of protection.

Twelve states do not require permits, which means residents of those states could be allowed to carry a concealed weapon in New York without ever having a background check or meeting any other safety requirements.

McMahon implored that leaders in Congress reject the act in all its forms.

"The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act both threatens the safety of the men and women in law enforcement who proudly protect our communities everyday and directly undermines our efforts to combat gun violence," McMahon said. "At a time when New York boasts some of the most significant drops in violent crime, this brash and misguided legislation has the potential to reverse that trend as it will make it easier for people with criminal histories to carry dangerous firearms on our streets."

City officials are constantly working to combat gun trafficking by criminals who bring firearms purchased in states with loose gun laws.

The legislation, its opponents feel, undermines public safety and endangers the lives of their officers.

"New York City's well-recognized success in the continued decrease in shootings and murder is in no small part a result of effective control of guns on our streets," said NYPD Commissioner James P. O'Neill. "Any measures that would contribute to the increase of firearms in New York could only jeopardize the level of safety that New Yorkers have benefited from through effective gun control. This proposed bill creates a real risk to public safety."

The House passed the bill on Wednesday.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Gunplay got him nine years behind bars.

Port Richmond resident Joendy Gomez, who was accused in separate incidents last year of shooting and wounding two victims, one a rapper reportedly affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan, was sentenced Wednesday in state Supreme Court, St. George.

In September, Gomez, 23, pleaded guilty to attempted murder in connection with the first episode.

Authorities said he shot a 50-year-old man in the arms and legs during a dispute in the back of a grocery store at 506 Richmond Terr., New Brighton, on Dec. 8.

The victim was transported to Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, in stable condition after the 10 a.m. shooting.

Authorities had initially charged Gomez and Clifton resident Linc Omaro in that case.

However, Omaro's lawyer, Anthony Katchen, previously told the Advance that his client, who's also known as Linc Boyd, wasn't involved.

In June, Omaro was sentenced to four years in prison for his pleas on unrelated gun and drug cases, but avoided criminal penalty in connection with the shooting.

Gomez was also accused of attempted murder for allegedly shooting rapper, Solomon Childs, then 38, in the neck and back on Dec. 10, according to court documents.

The incident occurred at around 11:30 a.m. in front of Oznico, a retailer at the corner of Forest and Eldridge avenues in Port Richmond, police said.

The victim, whose given name is Walbert Dale, was rushed to Richmond University Medical Center in West Brighton and ultimately underwent two surgeries.

In a prior interview, Childs told the Advance he was at the store checking out new sneakers when he exchanged words with a group of men. The conversation, he said, escalated when one of the men said "F--- you," when Childs didn't reply to a "What's up?"

Childs said the next thing he knew he was shot in the neck and back. The victim said he didn't know his assailants.

Hip-Hop websites variously refer to Childs as a Wu-Tang Clan affiliate or a member of the Wu-Tang Killa Bees.

Gomez's top-count plea covered all charges against him.

Besides nine years in prison, Gomez was sentenced to five years' post-release supervision.

His lawyer, Maria Guastella, has declined comment on the cases.

Assistant District Attorney Adam Silberlight was the prosecutor.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A repeat felon insisted at his sentencing on Thursday that jurors had gotten it wrong.

Antwyne Lucas told a justice he was not the culprit, rather, his buddy, Kerry Pack, had attacked and robbed a Roman Catholic clergyman at gunpoint outside a West Brighton rectory last year.

But jurors, in September, didn't buy Lucas' story, convicting the Brooklyn man of first-degree robbery, and Justice Mario F. Mattei made it clear to Lucas he doesn't give it any credence either.

Calling his actions "reprehensible," Mattei sentenced Lucas to the maximum - 25 years behind bars - for sticking up the Rev. Marc Roselli outside the rectory door at St. Mary of the Assumption-Our Lady of Mount Carmel-St. Benedicta R.C. Church, around 5:15 a.m. on June 2, 2016.

"This case is not about the victim being a priest it's about you being a predator," Mattei said, noting Lucas and Pack had made a "beeline" to the victim as he stepped out of his car and surrounded him.

Lucas, the judge said, punched the priest in the face, knocking him out, even after the 62-year-old victim had complied and handed over his wallet, cell phone and car keys.

"That was reprehensible," said Mattei. "After all your felony convictions, you show no remorse. There's no indication you'll be rehabilitated. Your actions are gratuitous. Your actions are violent."

Mattei said a videotape of the attack showed Lucas, 45, "was the main actor."

Father Roselli did not attend Thursday's proceeding.

Both the victim and Lucas had taken the stand during the eight-day trial in state Supreme Court, St. George.

Prior to trial, Lucas had rejected prosecutors' offer of a 10-year prison term in exchange for a guilty plea.

Father Roselli testified that two men walked up and hemmed him in as he tried to open the rectory door, which is steps away from the church's front door.

The priest said one of the men was wearing a white T-shirt, and that is the person who stuck a gun in his stomach and demanded his personal items. The man in the white T-shirt also punched him, the priest testified.

Later that night, Father Roselli said he went to a lineup at the 120th Precinct and identified the man who pulled the gun and punched him.

A detective testified Father Roselli had identified Lucas.

The priest, however, could not identify Lucas, who has gained weight and now wears eyeglasses, in court.

Lucas pointed the finger squarely at Pack when he testified, and did so again on Thursday.

"I didn't do nothing," said the defendant, who was garbed in tan jail scrubs. "I didn't have any idea [Pack] was going to do what he did. It's sad that it happened, but I didn't do it."

Defense lawyer Mark J. Fonte, asked Mattei to impose the minimum sentence of 10 years.

He said Lucas, who was beaten by an uncle as a youngster, has post-traumatic stress disorder as a result and also is on medication for "mental-health challenges."

"I'm asking the court to temper justice with mercy," said Fonte.

But Assistant District Attorney Adam Silberlight branded Lucas as a "career criminal who earned the right to be sentenced to the maximum."

Lucas is the only person to be convicted of a firearm charge in each of the five boroughs, said Silberlight, who prosecuted the case along with Assistant District Attorney Michael Tannousis.

In a statement after Lucas' conviction, District Attorney Michael E. McMahon had called Lucas and Pack's actions "depraved."

"Those who do harm to the dedicated and passionate members of our community will be prosecuted and sent to prison so that Staten Island remains safe for all who call it home," the D.A. said then.

Besides prison time, Mattei sentenced Lucas as a second violent felony offender to five years' post-release supervision.

Fonte, the defense lawyer, said Lucas would appeal.

Lucas has previously spent time upstate.

In 1995, he was convicted in Queens of criminal weapon possession and sentenced to 30 months to five years behind bars, online records of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision show.

More recently, in 2013, he was sentenced in the Bronx to two years for attempted criminal weapon possession.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With 15 apartments still up for grabs, a 67-unit $20.7 million affordable senior citizens housing complex with views of the Manhattan skyline and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge will open this month on Bay Street in Stapleton.

The six-story high-rise at 533 Bay St. -- designed to help fill the void of affordable senior housing in the borough -- is being financed by low income housing tax credits, and is part of $95 million in awards that Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in 2014.

The building, built to code to meet flood zone requirements, borders Sands Street and is for tenants age 62 and older whose income is at or below 50 percent of the area median income, according to the state.

"Seniors make up an increasingly large part of Staten Island, and the population as a whole, and this investment of nearly $21 million is an example of Governor Cuomo's commitment to expanding affordable housing opportunities," said RuthAnne Visnauskas, New York State Homes and Community Renewal commissioner.

"This will enable seniors to stay on Staten Island, the community they love, in an affordable apartment in a transit-oriented location that is close to shops and local retail. Residents can live affordably in a new place they can call home," she added.

The Advance was given a sneak peek private tour of the building, that includes mostly studio and one-bedroom spacious apartments, all with hardwood floors, bathrooms that are handicapped accessible, and modern kitchens of cherrywood cabinetry and stone counter-tops.

"We are proud to be opening our newest development for seniors on Bay Street, where our residents can live in clean, safe, and comfortable affordable housing," said Dan Moritz, principal of Long Island-based The Arker Companies, the project developer.

The elevator building includes such amenities as a party room, fitness center, outdoor recreation area, on-site laundry room, computer facilities, social services office and parking.

QUALIFICATIONS



Apartment rents start at about $750 per month, according to the state.

For a studio apartment, yearly income must be between $25,200 and $31,750, according to an advertisement for the project.

In addition, a single renter seeking a one-bedroom must earn between $26,983 and $31,750, and for two people, their income must be between $26,983 and $36,250.

HOW TO APPLY



Anyone interested in applying for housing at 533 Bay St. should call (516) 277-9361 or submit an application online at: www.progressivemgmt.net.

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A surprise birthday getaway has turned into a "nightmare" for a Canberra couple badly injured in a crash in Thailand on Monday.

Shani Bourne and Sam William were riding through Patong on a hired scooter when a car swerved towards them. As they veered to avoid it, they crashed into a parked truck.

Canberra couple Sam William and Shani Bourne were badly injured in a crash in Thailand.?

Ms Bourne, 25, was rushed to hospital with a fractured pelvis, a broken nose and several facial injuries as well as a brain bleed, while Mr William, 25, suffered a broken arm.

They were due to fly home on Tuesday but, speaking from hospital in Phuket, Ms Bourne said the pair had since been stranded in Thailand as they were unable to afford the $80,000 cost of medical transport home.
Riesling attracted perhaps the most attention locally this year, but our winemakers made beautiful and sometimes quirky wines across a wide range of styles. Shiraz remains the district red specialty, though some makers say the sheer number of labels on offer now makes it harder to find restaurant listings or retail shelf space. Partly for that reason, Nick Spencer, recently departed from Eden Road Wines, plans on offering reds from warmer Gundagai under his new Nick Spencer label. He reckons using appropriate varieties (shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, touriga and grenache) in warm-climate blends makes a good narrative and an alternative style for drinkers. But for most, shiraz remains the main game in a wide and deep district offering. My gong for Australian shiraz of the year goes to Clonakilla Syrah 2015, a remarkable small-production wine from the warmest site on the Clonakilla vineyard. The wine never wins medals or trophies one reason  winemaker Tim Kirk doesn't enter it in wine shows. However, Frank van der Loo shows his shiraz, and in November his Mount Majura 2015 won the Chairman's Trophy at the National Wine Show of Australia. Former Canberran Jim Chatto wrote, "I generally look for a wine of excellent quality and character. My Chairman's Award goes to a beautifully expressive cool climate shiraz from Canberra. Amazingly this very same wine was the runner-up to my award last year". Canberra shiraz fared well at the NSW Wine Awards, too, where Lerida Estate won the best young shiraz trophy. At the same show, Shaw Vineyard Estate Cabernet Shiraz 2015 topped the best young red blend category.

Canberra's production of so-called alternative varieties continued to expand in 2017. Our makers now work with, among others, graciano, tempranillo, sangiovese, gamay, nebbiolo, colorino, mammolo, refosco, mondeuse, canaiolo, aglianico, nero d'avola and cinsault. Of these, sangiovese and tempranillo became mainstream some years ago, with conspicuous success for Mount Majura's tempranillo, now its signature variety, and its gold-medal winning mondeuse and TSG (tempranillo-shiraz- graciano blend). In 2017, Pankhurst Wines, Hall, produced its first whites from marsanne (Rhone Valley origin) and arneis (Piedmont origin), varieties Allan Pankhurst grafted onto semillon and sauvignon blanc rootstock a few years earlier. The wines, made for Pankhurst by Capital Wine's Andrew McEwin, give us a new expression of marsanne, no newcomer to Canberra, and I believe our first glimpse of Canberra-grown arneis. The marsanne 2017 ($25) provides full, fresh flavour with the distinctive viscosity of the variety. Arneis 2017 ($30) shows a racy, pleasantly tart character and bone-dry finish. In 2017, awards of another kind came to Four Winds Vineyard. In March the vineyard's new label became "supreme champion" of London's Drinks International Wine Design Challenge. Five months later, and still in London, the labels were awarded "best redesign" and "supreme champion" at Harpers Design Awards.

In May, Wine Australia selected Four Winds' Sarah Collingwood for its Future Leaders Program. Then in September Collingwood won owner-operator of the year in the Australian Women in Wine Awards. Sarah Collingwood from Four Winds Vineyard.l 2017 also witnessed generational change at three wineries: founders Jim Lumbers and Anne Caine sold Lerida Estate at Lake George, to Michael McRoberts. Roger and Faye Harris sold Brindabella Hill in Hall, to Michael Anderson and Renae Kilmister. And Brian and Janet Johnston sold McKellar Ridge to John and Marina Sekoranja. Lerida's operations manage Andrew McFadzean, says new owner Michael McRoberts' long-term plans include doubling the winery, barrel cellar and cellar door capacity as production lifts from 130 tons in 2017 to 300 tons. McFadzean expects to source grapes from neighbouring regions, including Hilltops and Orange, as well as Canberra. "We want not just more wine, but excellence in everything we do. We want to give customers a great experience in wine, at the cellar door, in restaurants and when they drink our wines at home," he said. Lerida now offers cellar door sales and food service seven days a week.

Former owner Jim Lumbers, new owner Michael McRoberts and operations manager Andrew McFadzean at Lerida Estate. Credit:Jil Hogan Brindabella Hills' vineyards had been out of action for a couple of years. But new owners Michael Anderson and Renae Kilmister retained chef Robyn Cooper and winemaker Brian Sinclair. The couple then "worked around the clock for weeks", says Anderson, revamping the vineyard and renovating the cellar door and cafe. They have further plans to add a big new deck to the cafe, with views to the Murrumbidgee Valley and also to renovate and move into the Harris's former house. At about the time John Sekoranja decided to leave corporate life and buy a winery or vineyard, he met McKellar Ridge founders Brian and Janet Johnston. Instant rapport led to a sales agreement. McKellar Ridge changed hands in June 2017. But before that Sekoranja and wife Marina had worked vintage with Brian Johnston and both had enrolled in the wine science degree at Charles Sturt University.

They plan to modernise the cellar door, continue with the wine styles the Johnstons established and "expand and diversify the range". They'll experiment a bit with an existing tempranillo style and add a sparkling riesling to the range. The Sekoranjas also plan to add sangiovese to a new one-hectare shiraz and riesling vineyard they planted at their home in Wallaroo Road, Hall. Inside the new Brindabella Hills Cellar Door. Change is also underway at Jeir Creek Winery, Murrumbateman. Founders Rob and Kay Howell put the winery and vineyard on the market recently and hope to find a buyer in the near future. Meanwhile, Rob Howell remains on the vineyard and says, "Beautifully timed rain boosted the vines and inflorescences [that precede flowering, then fruit set] suggest it'll be a big crop [in 2018]".
Legal action has been launched against the owner of a chain of Australian sushi outlets for allegedly exploiting overseas workers in Canberra.

The Fair Work Ombudsman says Sushi Bay Belconnen, owned by Rebecca Yi Jeong Shin, underpaid 22 workers a total of $18,671 over five months between November 2015 and March 2016.

Sushi Bay Belconnen has been accused of underpaying staff more than $18,000 over one year. Credit:Facebook//sushibayBL

Most of the allegedly underpaid staff were Korean nationals in Australia on working holiday or student visas, and four were still teens, aged between 17 and 19.

Ms Shin also owns and operates sushi outlets across NSW, Queensland, and the Northern Territory.
Air rage is getting uglier.

As the number of serious incidents involving drunk and violent travellers increases, airlines are being forced to physically restrain an increasing number of disorderly passengers, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Airlines have seen a massive jump in unruly rise in in-flight incidents.

Statistics released this week by the industry's main trade group show a 50 per cent rise last year to 169 passengers who were forcibly confined for behaviour ranging from verbal and physical abuse to life-threatening actions -- the most serious of which involved attempts to enter the cockpit.

The annual tally by IATA of bad form comes as examples of extreme in-flight incidents grab headlines and flood social media.
Qantas pilots are up in arms over the airline's plans to fly Australian aircraft with lower-paid pilots employed by a subsidiary in New Zealand.

The airline will operate extra flights between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and Auckland from March next year when its code-share partner Emirates reduces its A380 trans-Tasman services.

Qantas will convert seven Boeing 737 aircraft it has registered in New Zealand through its subsidiary Jetconnect to its Qantas' Australian operating licence.

Qantas says New Zealand pilots won't fly any more than they do now under the plan. Credit:Peter Braig

But pilots employed in New Zealand by Jetconnect will continue to fly those Australian registered planes - the first time Qantas' has regularly used foreign employed pilots on local aircraft.
The man ultimately in charge of the review, ACCC chairman Rod Sims, is well aware of that. "This is a world first," he tells Fairfax Media. "We do attract international attention occassionally, but this one will be the first review of its kind. "They [digital platforms] have been looked at for other reasons. But in a sense, this [inquiry] goes to the heart of their business models, so I'd be surprised if it didn't get attention." The inquiry will investigate the impact digital platforms are having on competition in media and advertising services markets. For the tech industry's growing band of critics, it is exquisitely timed.

Internet giants are facing unprecedented scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators around the world at the moment. This follows a string of missteps and scandals that have totally altered perceptions of their industry in the media (if not yet among users or investors). For years, coverage of tech has been dominated by awe over groundbreaking products and soaring share prices. Now, it is just as likely to involve infiltration by Russian trolls and other groups to spread misinformation, fears about the industry's role in job displacement and inequality and, in a local context, controversies around taxes.

For years, Silicon Valley's unique blend of employing mostly socially liberal people while still being a collection of ruthless and tremendously profitable businesses insulated it against political criticism. Now, with populism back en vogue in the US, elements of both the left (think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and the right (think Steve Bannon) are openly hostile. Yet despite all of this, it remains doubtful whether America's increasingly paralysed and ineffective institutions will actually be able to do anything to curtail the industry's power. That's why many people think the biggest risk to Facebook and Google actually lies outside the US, rather than within it. For example, New York University professor Scott Galloway recently declared he would not be surprised if an EU nation "outright bans one of these companies from doing business in their country".

Which brings us back to the ACCC inquiry, which could conceivably set international precedents. Sources at Google and Facebook are relatively relaxed about the process, which, they note, has no direct power to change anything. When it concludes the inquiry, the ACCC will make recommendations to the government, which would first need to be adopted by a party room, before legislation even comes into play. Still, the process carries significant risks. The ACCC has information gathering powers - resisting them is a criminal offence. Together with public hearings, who knows might be unearthed.

Sims is widely respected, and regarded as a straight shooter. He is entering the inquiry with an open mind, and rejects the idea that the global spotlight will place more pressure on the ACCC to come up with strong recommendations. What those recommendations, if any, might look like is an open question. There isn't much to compare against. For example, an attempt by Spain to get Google to pay publishers for links to their stories backfired spectacularly - the search giant simply shut down its news page in the country. What we do know is Sims, is not afraid of courting controversy - his intervention into the national energy debate is the most recent example of that.
Where is Nick Bolton? That was the question being asked around the Federal Court a few weeks ago when Australias favourite hipster spiv failed to show for cross-examination at a hearing.

It was a rather important hearing.

Bolton was applying for an extension of time to apply for a review of a Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) decision that went against him.

It was a rather important decision. It related to a tax expense for Australian Style Investments (ASI), which had Bolton as its only director, and led to the company being wound up.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

This paved the way for ASIC to ban him from acting as a company director for three years.

So why wasnt Bolton in court to be cross-examined over the affidavit he filed in July?
Ride-sharing company Uber is increasing its fares in Melbourne as it tries to address driver dissatisfaction over conditions and pay.

From Friday UberX drivers in Melbourne will charge passengers $1.15 per kilometre, up from $1, combine with 35 per minute up from 32.

Uber fares will go up in Melbourne from Friday.

The base fare of $2 and the booking fee of 55 will remain unchanged, and Uber will continue to pocket 20 to 25 per cent of the fare.
A High Court decision placing on onus on unions to abide by all orders from the industrial umpire if they want to use strikes as a bargaining tool has sparked fresh debate about laws governing industrial action.

The High Court on Wednesday held that a union can not take protected strike action for the remainder of an enterprise bargaining period if it breaches a previous order from the Fair Work Commission related to that bargaining.

The case decision could expose the Australian Workers Union to substantial damages from past disputes now deemed as unprotected industrial action at Esso's Longford gas plant in Victoria.

While business groups welcomed the decision, the union movement has used it to press further for changes to the rules of engagement in bargaining.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus on Thursday said the decision made it harder to take protected industrial action.
It's not often you turn on the news and hear of a massive car accident caused by the guy who smoked a joint. Research shows why. Serious road accidents where alcohol is a factor? Just over 20 per cent. Where cannabis is a factor? Just over 1 per cent. Heck, a staggering 22 per cent of road accidents in 2015-16 were caused by mobile phone distraction. You're over 2000 per cent more likely to be hit by Kelly-Anne texting Rhonda to tell her she can't find a parking spot near Mooseheads on a Saturday night than you are by Shaun who smoked a bong with Craig two hours ago and is biw on his way to pick up a meatlovers with extra cheese at Dominos.

We're more sensible in the ACT than in other jurisdictions when it comes to how we view the recreational use of pot. While not legal, of course, the possession of up to 25 grams or two non-hydroponic plants in Canberra attracts a fine of $150 and/or attendance at a government-sponsored drug-and-alcohol program.

That seems a sensible law-enforcement approach to most people, but not to me. When it's legal to sell and buy cannabis for medicinal and recreational use in strait-laced US states like Massachusetts and Washington, I think it's time to acknowledge that Australia, as we have been on other social issues such as marriage equality, is well behind the rest of the world in cannabis law reform.

There's no doubt this national conversation that is coming, whether that be next year or in five years. it would be smart for the ACT to be the first state or territory to light an incense stick under the debate by taking steps to regulate and tax cannabis for recreational use. We're a small area, where laws could easily be enforced.

The benefits would be many. Besides a more chilled-out population, the ACT could grow an entire new industry, gaining the many jobs and other associated businesses that go with it: a real green economy. We'd dramatically decrease police spending and court costs on pursuing personal cannabis users while simultaneously destroying criminal enterprises that rely on millions of dollars in easy income from pot sales to prop up their ice trade. There'd be a new crop for local farmers and increased tax revenue for the government. Where's the downside?
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull began this saga by wheeling out Barnaby Joyce to mock the Greens. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen They did not suddenly discover that their parents or grandparents were born overseas. They knew this. It was at this moment they had a choice. They could have recognised the unfortunate circumstances of their parliamentary colleagues  and especially the non-substantive nature of their disqualifications. Why would Bill Shorten straight up refuse Malcolm Turnbull's invitation to refer all MPs from either party to the High Court in a non-partisan way? Credit:AAP They could have solemnly acknowledged that the constitution must be upheld, but also refused as a matter of principle, to delight in its workings.

They could have shown some restraint, resisted the orgiastic gloating of an opponent's misfortune, and demonstrated to the electorate that political bloodsport is reserved for the things that really matter  that they'll only fight each other when they're really fighting for us. Tony Abbott: his style of opposition ultimately led him to inherit a paralysed government unable to make budget cuts or raise any taxes. Credit:Nick Moir How might that have looked? Possibly the acceptance of the need for some kind of audit early on. Certainly, a unanimous preparedness to refer cases to the High Court as they came up and without fuss. Instead, we've got the clearest demonstration we could of a political class with no restraint, no ability to hold fire for the things that really matter, no perspective, and in the end not even a functional sense of self-preservation. Illustration: Simon Letch

What, for instance, was Labor thinking over these past few months as it repeatedly insisted its systems were robust, and that we should take its word that it was above this citizenship palaver? Why would Bill Shorten straight up refuse Malcolm Turnbull's invitation to refer all MPs from either party to the High Court in a non-partisan way? There are only political answers to these questions: specifically, that Shorten thought it the best way to apply the screws to Turnbull, emphasising relentlessly that this was a problem for the Coalition, but not Labor. What, now that David Feeney and Katy Gallagher (at least) have revealed this not to be an act of confidence, but instead of monstrous arrogance? Labor's conduct has been thoroughly risible here. Unfortunately, it merely echoes the Coalition in this, which began this saga by wheeling out Barnaby Joyce to mock the Greens and guarantee he was not a dual citizen himself. Since then it has occupied every position on how dual citizens should be handled, from demanding their swift excommunication, to shifting them to the back bench, to thinking it entirely appropriate for them to stay in cabinet.

Turnbull's now infamous declaration that the High Court would find Joyce eligible to remain in parliament is similar to Shorten's approach: obviously unprincipled, needlessly aggressive, and startlingly naive. It can only be that politics no longer knows any other way of being. The short-term gameplaying we're watching is so ruthless that parties have begun scalping themselves. It's the same problem that, in a much more comprehensive way, crippled Tony Abbott. His style of opposition, his determination to unleash a populist attack daily ultimately led him to inherit a paralysed government unable to make budget cuts or raise any taxes, yet still bidden to erase the deficit. What destroyed Abbott as Prime Minister was not his government, but the way he seized it; his accumulated short-term rhetorical victories, which ultimately collapsed upon him.

Labor now faces an analogous problem. It was very clearly hoping dual citizenship would eventually claim a Coalition member in a properly vulnerable seat: that eventually the Coalition would lose a by-election or two, and with it, its parliamentary majority. In brief, that Labor might either force a snap election, or luck its way into government by increments. But at no point does anyone seem to have asked whether that would be much of a way to take power; whether we should be content watching a government brought down by an issue that has almost nothing to do with policy or even the way it governs, but rather the combined quirks of foreign citizenship laws and our own constitution. Indeed, merely asking that would seem quaint. Now look what this approach has yielded for Labor: a possible by-election against the Greens  perhaps the only party to have been enhanced by its handling of citizenship  in a seat the Greens would be confident of winning given the recent result in the state seat of Northcote. Diminished standing and trust on this, and by extension, other issues. And a freshly militarised political arena that promises only to delegitimise whoever claims power soon enough after they've claimed it.
There were federal implications in the Queensland result. Yet Turnbull's defence was no more than the standard that federal leaders give: that they should not be blamed for state losses.

Queensland Nationals undermined Turnbull's opposition to a banking royal commission, forcing him to back-flip. George Christensen toyed publicly with the idea of quitting the government benches altogether before texting Turnbull to say he would stay now there was to be a royal commission. Yet Turnbull's stand was supported by former prime minister John Howard, who had described a bank royal commission as "rank socialism". It was hardly conservative to push for one.

While the Nationals are causing most of Turnbull's leadership problems, over the course of his prime ministership, members of his own Liberal Party have led the way. His arch-rival, Tony Abbott, has been supported by a clutch of conservatives, including Kevin Andrews, Eric Abetz and, until he formed the Australian Conservatives, Cory Bernardi. The Nationals can be disruptive but only the Liberals can directly depose Turnbull because the critical decision on leadership will be taken in his own party room, not in a joint Coalition meeting.

Most of the friendly-fire criticism of Turnbull is unfair. It also shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness and discipline on the part of the critics, who themselves have contributed to the difficulties of their state and federal parties. Broad does not reflect the views of his electorate, which voted in favour of same-sex marriage. The NSW Coalition government has stumbled enough without any contribution from Turnbull, and Barilaro should reflect on its own weaknesses. The unorthodox Christensen has never been a good advertisement for a disciplined and unified government.

Turnbull's weaknesses and failures may contribute to his government's defeat at the next election. But many of them have been caused by the deep-seated divisions between conservatives and moderates within his party and his government. The Coalition agreement between the Nationals and the Liberals, signed after the September 2015 leadership contest and confirmed again after the July 2016 election, enshrined these divisions.
GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN 

(107 minutes) PG It's 1928 and a little boy is wondering why his life has changed so much that he has to talk to the newspapers and have his picture taken wherever he goes. His Scottish nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald), tries to explain to eight-year-old Christopher Robin Milne (Will Tilston) why so many people love the books created by his father, A.A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson). Winnie-the-Pooh has already conquered the known world. In dramatic terms, the film is complex and involving; in historic terms, it's half-truth. That's better than nothing but never enough. General release IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD 

(130 minutes) M Sunao Katabuchi's animation is set in Hiroshima and Kure, a nearby port city, from 1933 to 1945. Suzu, a girl of 11, and her sister Sumi play games and taunt their grumpy older brother. Suzu falls secretly for the sad and soulful boy Tetsu, who doesn't seem to notice her attentions. By 1940, she is 19 and married and day by day, the war comes closer to home. The film stays close to the ground, depicting the lives of ordinary people during an extraordinary time. Selected release THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER 

(119 minutes) MA15+

If you know your Greek directors, you know Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the new hopes of Greek cinema. Here, Colin Farrell (The Lobster) returns as a heart surgeon in a Midwestern American city. Steven Murphy (Farrell) has all the trappings of success, including a big house where his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) runs a tight ship. She's an ophthalmologist, but we never see her go to work. She tends their two beautiful and well-mannered children. The premise, holding a doctor to highly personal account for his professional mistake, is interesting, even a little classical. General release LOUIS THEROUX: HEROIN TOWN 

(100 minutes) MA A specialist in America's fringe subcultures, Theroux puts himself forward as a "normal" foil to his weirdo subjects, working under the assumption that the mantra "I'm from the BBC" answers all questions and opens doors. Heroin Town brings Theroux to Huntington, West Virginia, an industrial community where opiate abuse is rife. Theroux offers some broad-brush explanations and while he maintains addiction can happen to anyone, clearly not every town in the US has a problem on this scale. General release THE STAR 

(86 minutes) G This computer-animated retelling of the nativity is from the point of view of the animals gathered round the manger, in other words a biblical variant on Ice Age. The hero is Bo (Steven Yeun), a bumbling donkey who is adopted by Mary and Joseph and ends up following them to Bethlehem, accompanied by sidekicks including Dave the wisecracking dove (Keegan-Michael Key) and Ruth (Aidy Bryant), a sheep with untapped leadership potential. This thin storyline is padded out with subplots that showcase a bizarrely star-studded voice cast, including Christopher Plummer as the villainous King Herod, who gets wind of a prophecy about the coming messiah and sends his minions on the holy family's trail. General release

Julianne Moore and Matt Damon in Suburbicon. SUBURBICON 

(104 minutes) MA Suburbicon is a mid-20th-century housing development for World War II veterans, modelled after the real-life Levittown, whose racist founder William Levitt made the news recently when he was name-checked admiringly by Donald Trump. When a black family moves in, outrage ensues. Meanwhile next door, Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) plots to murder his wife (Julianne Moore) and replace her with her twin sister (Moore again), all under the nose of his innocent young son (Noah Jupe). General release THOR: RAGNAROK 

(130 minutes) PG In this latest Marvel film, New Zealand director Taika Waititi succeeds in putting his stamp on the material about half the time. The film chronicles the adventures of Chris Hemsworth's Thor, who is locked in perpetual rivalry with his younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Once we're past the disjointed early scenes, the plot is straightforward. General release
THEATRE

WE ARE LIGHTNING! 

Joseph O'Farrell (JOF) & Sam Halmarack

Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall

Until December 10



Did you get pissed off, or just watch glumly on, watching a swag of Melbourne's live music venues fall to a wave of gentrification over the last two decades? Either way, this one's for you.

We Are Lightning! Credit:Bryony Jackson

Inspired by a similar situation in London, We Are Lightning! combines live art concert and clownish rockumentary to create a wacky, rousing celebration of the sense of community in our grassroots music scene.

It's all held together in a seat-of-the-pants way by Joseph O'Farrell (JOF) and Sam Halmarack, a shambolic comedy duo who corral the audience into the auditorium and try to dampen expectations. We'll be hearing a band play their very first gig, Halmarack informs us. "There are no wrong notes," JOF adds, "if you listen in the right way".
Attorney-General George Brandis has asked the Senate's powerful privileges committee to investigate whether Labor's Sam Dastyari broke the rules that govern MPs' conduct.

Senator Brandis wrote to the Senate President Scott Ryan on Thursday to request the referral, while suggesting the under-pressure Labor senator may have breached paragraph 6(3) of the privileges resolutions.

Sam Dastyari in the Senate this week. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The referral follows Fairfax Media revelations that Senator Dastyari gave counter-surveillance advice to Chinese Communist Party-linked political donor Huang Xiangmo that his phone was probably tapped by government agencies when the pair met last year.

That meeting occurred more than a month after media reports in early September that ASIO's top spy, Duncan Lewis, had warned Labor "that some of their donors had strong links to the Chinese Government".
Charities and non-government organisations have expressed alarm at the Turnbull government's appointment of controversial former Labor MP Gary Johns as the head of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

The selection of Dr Johns, according to representatives of the sector, is "bizarre" and forms part of a wider effort to clamp down on criticism of government policy and the public advocacy work of charities, which the incoming commissioner has previously targeted.

Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Dr Gary Johns and Assistant Minister to the Treasurer Michael Sukkar at a press conference at Parliament House. Credit:AAP

But Assistant Minister to the Treasurer Michael Sukkar has rejected the concerns, saying Dr Johns will merely apply the law as an "independent regulator" and downplaying the contentious views he has expressed about activism and broader social issues.

Dr Johns, who was an MP in the 1980s and 1990s and a minister in the Keating government, has criticised how registered charities lobby for their causes and receive government funding. He has also said poor women who have children  singling out those who are Aboriginal  are "cash cows" and argued people who rely on welfare payment should be forced to use contraception.
The royal commission into the banking and financial services sector will be expanded to include mortgage brokers and pay-day lenders as part of the largest investigation into the financial system in Australian history.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne will now be empowered to investigate all agencies that hold an Australian credit licence, including unscrupulous lenders outside of the major banks, during the 12-month inquiry.

The Turnbull government was initially criticised for limiting the inquiry to the narrower field of Australian financial services licence holders  mostly made up of major financial institutions  but it is now understood to be broadened when the final letters patent is released.

"In the context of all unsuitable lending, mortgage brokers had to be covered," said Maurice Blackburn lawyer Josh Mennen, whose firm has been discussing the royal commission with hundreds of clients.
Three out of the four politicians to vote "no" in the marriage equality bill were from Queensland.

They were Bob Katter (Kennedy) and LNP MPs David Littleproud (Maranoa) and Keith Pitt (Hinkler).

Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, from Victoria, joined the lonely crew of four on the "no" side of the House.

The four MPs who voted 'no', pictured to the right of the picture during the Parliamentary division. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

With only a tiny "no" vote to combat the overwhelming number of MPs who supported the "yes", the House of Representatives passed unamended legislation to allow same-sex couples to marry in Australia.
Treasurer Scott Morrison will deliver a better than expected mid-year budget update a week before Christmas, as company profits and high employment figures stir the economy back to life.

Fairfax Media understands the mid-year update, one of the key events on the government's economic calendar, is likely to be released on December 18 and lay out a path back to surplus while also allowing the Coalition to toy with income tax cuts next year.

The government has become more cautious in its outlook after sluggish wage growth blew a $24 billion hole in last year's projections.

Deloitte Access Economics says it expects total revenue in 2017-18 to beat the budget forecast by $2.7 billion and for a $3.6 billion improvement in the deficit.
Never had a larger, more expectant crowd sat so intently and for so long in the public galleries of the House of Representatives.

Barely a seat lay empty all the long day, the morning creeping into the afternoon, the afternoon edging towards evening, anticipation intensifying.

Not an occupant of a pew was willing to drift away until all the words, thousands and thousands of them, had been uttered on the floor below.

They knew what it was to wait, all these visitors to the Parliament, more than 600 of them.
It can be difficult enough having one chef in the kitchen, but what about two? Fujisaki opens at Barangaroo with two formerly hatted Good Food Guide chefs; a dynamic that immediately makes it twice as interesting as your average identikit contemporary Japanese.

Sushi master Ryuichi Yoshii, who has been quietly running Yoshii for the past 20 years, is upfront in the open, counter-lined raw fish kitchen, while former chef and owner of Claude's in Paddington, Chui Lee Luk brings her finesse to the simmering, steaming and robata-grilling.

Chinese-inspired salted duck with muntries. Credit:James Alcock

Fujisaki is the flashest of Lotus Dining group's presence in Barangaroo, with Lotus Barangaroo and Bing's Bao already there, working their butts off.

Here, the Design Clarity team has created a refined Scandinavian, not overly Japanese-themed interior for 146 diners, with glass-fronted wine cellar, smoked mirrors, plush velvet seating and three private tatami rooms. Tables also line the street outside, their harbourside views somewhat diminished by proximity to passing cars.
During this busy time of year, anything that helps cut down on time spent in traffic or looking for a park is good news. So imagine our glee when we heard that some of Australia's biggest shoe brands are holding a sale under the one roof? That's right, Django & Juliette, Mollini, Diana Ferrari and more brands will have styles starting from $20, or six pairs for $100.

592-594 High Street, Epping. Thursday-Sunday 10am-5pm.

A handful of shoe brands are holding a sale under one roof.

Still on the multi-brand love train, Armadale boutique The New Trend is encouraging lots of Christmas cheer and generosity with a spend-and-save deal from now until December 24. With brands including A.L.C, Ellery and Chloe, the deal includes 15 per cent off spends totalling $750-$1499, 20 per cent off for spending $1500-$2499, and 25 per cent off for customers who spend more than $2500. Sounds like a good excuse to stock up in one go.

Online or 1038 High Street, Armadale. Monday-Thursday 9.30am-5.30pm, Friday 9.30am-6pm, Saturday 9.30am-5.30pm, Sunday 11am-5pm.
Public Service Commission boss John Lloyd has defended a controversial social media guidance for APS employees, acknowledging the document could be used during disciplinary proceedings despite not being a formal employment policy.

Facing questions in a Senate estimates committee on Thursday, Mr Lloyd said the commission wanted public servants to "think before you post" and ensure any public comments are consistent with the APS code of conduct.

Australian Public Service commisioner John Lloyd. Credit:Jay Cronan

Asked if the document had "standing" in enforcement of conditions of employment, he said it would be considered in dealing with breaches and had been based on legal advice.
With dozens of police standing sentinel on the rural roads leading into a bush rave festival on the mid-north coast, there was always the threat of some arrests.

But the scores of Subsonic Music Festival attendees who are now facing drug possession charges have stunned authorities and even prompted a magistrate to order a fresh court sitting day to deal with the flood of new cases.

Police handed out 85 court attendance notices for possessing drugs such as LSD as attendees arrived at the Subsonic Music Festival at Monkerai. Credit:iStock

Over five days, including a day either side of the three-day festival which finished on a property at Monkerai near Stroud on Sunday night, Port Stephens police handed out 85 court attendance notices for drug possession and supply, 36 cannabis cautions and charged 14 motorists with drug-driving.

And intelligence from local residents suggests the 15-hour daily police operation, which finished each night at midnight, was met with a stream of pre-dawn traffic along the usually quiet Bucketts Way as 5000 festivalgoers from as far afield as Victoria arrived to take part.
Hollywood star John Travolta has confirmed he'll be on board the Boeing 707 aircraft he's donating to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS).

HARS president Bob De La Hunty had flagged the plane wouldn't arrive without Travolta  and the movie megastar this week locked in his special appearance at the Illawarra Regional Airport.

John Travolta officially hands over his Boeing 707 to HARS members Peter Elliott (left), John Dennis and Frank Bowden at Brunswick's Golden Isles Airport in Georgia USA on Sunday. Credit:Andy Zakeli / www.lenswork.com.au

Travolta and his vintage passenger jet will touch down at the airport some time in 2018 the exact date is yet to be determined, but it is expected to be towards the tail-end of the year.

Mr De La Hunty told Fairfax on Thursday it was "fully intended" Travolta would be on the plane when it arrived on Australian soil from the United States.
A high-ranking Australian Hells Angel who was kidnapped and murdered in Thailand two years ago may have died by accident, an inquest has heard.

Wayne Schneider, 37, was forced into a ute by five men outside his house in Pattaya, south of Bangkok, in the early hours of November 30, 2015.

He was taken to a rented home and tied to a metal commode wheelchair where he was beaten and left alone for several hours.

By the time his captors returned, he was dead, a short inquest at the NSW Coroner's Court heard on Thursday.
Likely new Greens MP Michael Berkman wants to embark on a listening tour of Queensland so he can be a representative for the whole state.

Earlier, Fairfax Media revealed the Greens were set to announce the historic win in the west Brisbane seat of Maiwar, with party officials confident the count and preference flow were in their favour.

Greens candidate for Maiwar Michael Berkman has claimed victory in the Queensland Parliament.

Speaking from Guyatt Park at St Lucia, Mr Berkman said he wanted to "represent not just the people of Maiwar".

"Although they're obviously my first and foremost concern," he said.
A Federal Court judge has ordered Clive Palmer to explain a tweet sent from his account during a hearing at which he failed to appear.

The former politician again avoided a hearing in Brisbane on Thursday morning, after being warned to move heaven and earth to comply with court orders.

The court heard Mr Palmer had complied with all orders issued at the previous hearing on December 1 but Justice John Reeves asked for an explanation of a tweet sent out during the hearing.

The tweet, sent at 11.44am on that date, showed a photograph of Mr Palmer, which appeared to have been taken outside the nearby Supreme Court, and the words "Hey memesters, you vibin' my style??"
A drug raid that netted more than 11,000 cannabis plants in rural south-east Queensland is one of the largest hydro seizures in the states history, police believe.

Officers from the Drug and Serious Crime Group raided three properties in the Somerset region, west of Brisbane, on Wednesday, allegedly uncovering a very sophisticated hydroponic growing network and plants worth tens of millions of dollars.

Police seized thousands of cannabis plants from properties near Esk. Credit:Police Media.

Police claimed to have seized 11,795 plants at various phases of growth from the three properties, in Mount Hallen, Churchable and Coominya.

State Crime Command Drug and Serious Crime Group Detective Superintendent Jon Wacker said he believed "several hundred thousand dollars" had been spent on the infrastructure at each of the properties.
Fifteen minutes before his death fall, the 22-year-old killer had entered the Australia Post Victorian headquarters and waited with others in the blue-tiled lobby for a lift to the fifth floor. Nobody saw the cutdown carbine secreted in his clothing.

Frank Vitkovic's life blood left a long angry red smear on the facade of 191 Queen Street as he plummeted to his death on the footpath below.

A victim of the shooting is taken away from the scene on a stretcher. Credit:Fairfax Archives

At 4.20 pm on Tuesday he walked into the fifth-floor glass doors of the Telecom Employees Credit Co-operative, spoke with a male friend briefly, suddenly pulled a .30 M1 carbine from his clothes and started firing.

His friend ducked behind a counter. But a teller, 19-year-old Judith Morris, was caught by surprise and cut down. A fellow worker hit the alarm button and somewhere across town a light flashed in the Wormald system warning that something untoward was happening in the Telecom co-op. Judy Morris was the first to die in Frank Vitkovic's murderous run through three floors of the Australia Post headquarters.

Police are still piecing together his killing spree but most of the 1000 people in the building when Vitkovic started firing did not know what was happening when the mad rampage began.

The sound of a few gunshots could have been confused with a backfiring car, but, by the time the gunman caught the lift to Australia Post's philatelic security section on the 12th floor the salvo of shots that followed left people in no doubt that something dreadful was occurring at 191 Queen Street.
A far-right activist who staged a mock beheading in protest at plans to build a mosque has had a court order taken out against him by his former employer who accuse him of trying to damage their brand.

Freight group Toll said United Patriots Front member Neil Erikson, 32, had repeatedly refused to hand back his uniform since the company terminated his employment in May.

The company claim Mr Erikson is now getting his associates to wear their uniforms after sightings of a right-wing protester wearing a company shirt at violent protests outside controversial British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos' Melbourne event in Kensington. The man is pictured wrestling with other protesters.

The company said in a statement earlier this week that the man had never worked for the company and believed the move was an attempt to "damage our brand".
A man charged with murdering his partner took guns from family members, friends and criminals because he didn't want people to hurt themselves or end up in jail, a court has heard.

Steven Samaras, 49, was last year questioned over the death of his American partner, Tamara Turner, whom he proposed to not long after meeting her on Facebook, and was later charged with one count of murder.

Steven Samaras (left) was arrested after the body of his partner, Tamara Turner (right), was dumped at the Mildura hospital. Credit:Facebook

Ms Turner, 49, was found dead outside Mildura Base Hospital one morning in June last year.

Her adult son has previously told The Age that he had been told by police his mother had been shot in the thigh and the bullet pierced a major artery.
EXCLUSIVE

Victorians should be able to vote on Transurban's $5.5 billion West Gate Tunnel  an "oversized" toll road that will worsen city traffic and "damage" Melbourne's urban area, leading experts have said.

The academic doyennes of planning and transport in Melbourne have united to deliver a withering assessment of Transurban's new toll road, warning that it will unwind decades of good planning in the state.

A 30-page report backed by 28 transport and urban planners at RMIT and Melbourne University includes a letter addressed to Premier Daniel Andrews, calling for the West Gate Tunnel to be dumped.
Melbourne Express: Friday, December 8, 2017

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A man who got his 13-year-old stepdaughter pregnant has had his jail term increased by four years in an appeal ruling that could pave the way for tougher sentences for sex crimes in Victoria.

The stepfather, sentenced under the pseudonym Charlie Dalgliesh, in 2015 pleaded guilty to incest and other charges and was jailed for five years and six months by a County Court judge. On the main charge of incest he was jailed for three years and six months despite it carrying a maximum penalty of 25 years.

After two years of appeals by prosecutors who argued the original penalty was manifestly inadequate, the Court of Appeal on Thursday increased Dalgliesh's sentence to nine years and six months, including seven and a half years on the main incest charge.

Dalgliesh, 45, must serve at least six years before he is eligible for parole, having already served more than two years.
A fire at Victoria's largest prison has damaged CCTV cameras, and left prisoners in lock-down and without telephone or visiting rights, as investigators determine whether the blaze could have been prevented.

The Port Phillip Prison fire started in the server room about 1.30am on November 29, destroying the server-controlled surveillance cameras, computers, all internal communications, televisions and some of the security sensors.

Prisoners are in 23-hour lockdown after a fire at Port Phillip Prison. Credit:Craig Abraham

Power to several doors, including the main gate house or entrance, was also cut, and prisoners were unable to appear via videolink for court appearances.

But while most of the issues were fixed within days, some CCTV cameras are still not in operation, and it remains unclear when inmates will have visiting, movement, and telephone rights restored.
A WA Police officer has been killed while on duty after crashing his motorcycle into a tree east of Perth on Thursday afternoon.

The officer was riding his police bike on Julimar Road near Toodyay Road at around 1.30pm when his motorcycle left the road and crashed into a tree.

A Ten Eyewitness News reporter was on the scene. Credit:Beau Pearson

Two of his fellow officers and paramedics administered emergency first aid, but the officer died as a result of his injuries.
WA's most outstanding cops have been recognised at the Nine News WA Police Excellence Awards.

The awards held at Crown Perth recognise police officers at both an both individual and team level who demonstrate 'exceptional dedication in service excellence to the people of WA.'

Det-Sgt Gina Horch won the individual category award. Credit:WA Police

Detective Sergeant Gina Horch, from Karratha Detectives, was recognised as the state's most outstanding police officer, taking out the individual category.

The former German cop has spent the past several years in WA's Pilbara region investigating historical and current child sexual abuse cases.
Donald Trump likes to call his proposed tax cut "a Christmas present" to the American people. Today, by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, he has presented the Jewish State with what appears to be a Hanukkah gift.

Appearances can be deceiving. There is more than generosity, or fidelity to a campaign promise, behind this move.

In and of itself, Trump's declaration gives nothing away. Jerusalem has been the de facto capital of Israel for 70 years. East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim, was annexed by Israel in the summer of 1967. The world didn't recognise that annexation, but Israelis now take it for granted.

Jerusalem is the seat of the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the prime minister's residence. East Jerusalem is home to more than 200,000 Israelis. No Israeli government could bargain it away and stay in power. It is a fait accompli.
A new, take-it-or-leave-it "United States of Europe" is the best answer to the political and economic woes facing the continent, Martin Schulz, the head of Germany's Social Democrats said on Thursday.

Schulz, chancellor Angela Merkel's last best hope for forming a stable German coalition government, proposed replacing the EU with a United States of Europe by 2025.

He told a party convention in Berlin that under his plan there would be a new treaty to create a federal Europe, with centralised control of domestic and foreign security, tax and monetary affairs, asylum and international development. Citizens across Europe would help draft the constitutional treaty.

If member states didn't agree they would "simply leave the EU" Schulz said, adding that Poland was systematically undermining European values, and Hungary was increasingly isolating itself.
Three Australian members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang have been arrested and charged with multiple offences in Thailand, with local authorities alleging their involvement "in the murder and secret burial of an Australian two years ago."



The men, who are yet to be identified, were arrested alongside a Canadian national on Wednesday, in the Thai tourist district of Pattaya. All four men are aged between 32 and 42.

It remains unclear what charges have been laid, however it is said they are related to their alleged involvement in "extortion, money laundering, illicit drugs and human trafficking."

Acting deputy commissioner of tourist police Pol Maj Gen Surachet Hakpal, told local media the men "were disguised as tourists and threatened national security."

He also alleged they were "the same group of people involved in the murder and secret burial of an Australian two years ago," referring to the violent killing and burial of alleged Hells Angels drug kingpin Wayne Schneider in 2015.
Washington: WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing multiple investigations by US authorities, including three congressional probes and a federal criminal inquiry, sources familiar with the investigations said.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are probing the website's role in the 2016 US presidential election campaign, according to the sources, who all requested anonymity, and public documents.

Julian Assange on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Credit:AP

WikiLeaks published emails hacked from the Democratic Party and the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman.

In a report issued in January, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Russian intelligence did the hacking, and the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, sent hacked data to WikiLeaks via intermediaries.
Many people are saying they are fed up and tired of elections and that they are not going out to vote. Since 2010 Sint Maarten has had three elections. In September 2010, August 2014, and September 2016. And on February 26, 2018 the voters of Sint Maarten will have to go to the polls for the fourth time since 2010. Four elections in eight years is an average of one election every two years. This frequent demand on the voter to go to the polls has resulted in voter fatigue and election apathy. SMCP truly understands the voters resistance to the upcoming parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, SMCP still encourages every voter to go out and vote! Your vote can make the difference in bringing about a change in parliament and consequently in government. Who knows, we may just get it right this time!

Given the devastation to Sint Maarten due to hurricane Irma, elections should have been the last thing for the Government and the Governor to call for at this time. However, since the election process has been duly initiated according to article 59 of the constitution, the Government has no other choice than to uphold the constitution and let the people go to the polls on February 26, 2018.

Being able to elect our members of parliament is one of our fundamental rights according to article 23 of the constitution. Under a normal governing cycle, this happens every four years. But, whenever government decides to dissolve parliament then, according to article 59, a new parliament must convene within three months. Unfortunately, the old electoral laws from the Island Council days were never amended and synchronized with the constitution of Sint Maarten. That is why there is now a serious conflict between the constitution and the electoral ordinance in relation to the election date and the time period between, for example, the closing of the voters registry, the registration of political parties with the Electoral Council and the establishing of the postulation date.

If the Central Voting Bureau were to follow the time sequence specified in the election ordinance then the Bureau would need more than the three months stipulated in the constitution to complete the election process. The synchronization of the election ordinance with the constitution falls under electoral reform. The people of Sint Maarten expected that electoral reform would have taken place when the Governor extended the election date by six months in 2016 (namely from February 9th to September 26th). At that time, the five new parties contesting the 2016 elections objected to and protested this unconstitutional decision by the Governor, yet he still went ahead and postponed the elections in contravention of the constitution. Electoral reform will be one of the first laws SMCP intends to work on when elected to Parliament.

Governments in Sint Maarten seem to have no respect for our constitution. In 2015 the Marlin Government disregarded article 59 of the constitution by postponing the elections by six months. SMCP understands that the incoming UP/DP/Brownbill government also intends to submit a national ordinance to the Governor for the postponement of the upcoming February 26th elections. SMCP hopes that the Governor will uphold the constitution this time and not bow to political pressure to postpone or cancell the elections.

According to the normal election cycle, elections would have been held in 2020. However, thanks to former Prime Minister, William Marlin and Governor Eugene Holiday, the people of Sint Maarten are once again required to go to the polls prematurely. The decision to invoke article 59 was seemingly Marlins attempt to strike back at the parliament that had given him and the majority of his cabinet a vote of non-confidence. In other words, parliament was penalized for doing its job which is to give oversight, monitor and control the government. It should be that if Parliament is of the opinion that the government is not doing a good job then Parliament has all rights to send the government home by way of a vote of non-confidence.

Even though there are suggestions to remove article 59 from the constitution, SMCP is of the opinion that this article has its place in our constitutional system of checks and balances. Article 59 was included in the constitution in case parliament failed to execute its duties. For example, if Parliament does not call meetings, does not review and pass laws submitted by the government and as a result the functioning of government is grossly stagnated or impeded, then government has the right, according to article 59, to dissolve parliament on behalf of the people and call for new elections. However, we, the people, do not expect government to abuse this right and use article 59 as an instrument for retaliation. Rather, it should be used as a last resort to ensure that the people get a proper functioning parliament.

Like it or not, the election process is in motion according to the constitution and any postponement or cancelation at this time would be a serious violation of our constitution. SMCP hopes that this time the Governor will not yield to any political pressure to postpone or cancel the upcoming elections on February 26th 2018.

Wycliffe Smith

Leader of the Sint Maarten Christian Party
PHILIPSBURG:--- The House of Parliament will sit in an urgent plenary public meeting on Thursday, December 7, 2017. The Council of Ministers will be present.

The urgent plenary public meeting is scheduled for 10.00 hrs in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelminastraat #1 in Philipsburg.

The agenda points are:

Advice regarding changes to the composition of certain Permanent and Ad hoc Committees of Parliament Discussion between Parliament and the Government pertaining to setting priorities as it relates to funding of projects in the reconstruction phase post-hurricane Irma

Members of the public are invited to the House of Parliament to attend parliamentary deliberations.

The House of Parliament is located across from the Court House in Philipsburg.

The parliamentary session will be carried live on St. Maarten Cable TV Channel 120, via Pearl Radio FM 98.1, SXMGOV Radio 107.9 FM, video live stream via the internet www.pearlfmradio.sx, www.sxmparliament.org and also Parliament FB page: Parliament of Sint Maarten.
PHILIPSBURG:--- SEL Maduro & Sons- St.Maarten, along with Island Essence Travel Agency of St. Eustatius have done it again! On Thursday, November 23rd, twenty-four excited passengers all dressed in the bright red matching SEL Maduro & Sons T-shirts boarded the American Airlines flight destined to Miami.

The flight landed safely in Miami where a VIP bus service was on standby to welcome the guests. SEL Maduro & Sons surprised the passengers by taking them directly to The Dolphin Mall, instead of to the Marriott Hotel for check-in. At the mall, they experienced an exciting 2-hour shopping expedition followed by another 2-hour shopping spree at Wal-Mart. They literally hit the ground running.

On Friday 24th November, the VIP Bus Transportation was in place for a timely departure headed directly towards the Sawgrass Mills Mall where guests had 14 hours of uninterrupted shopping........and as expected they shopped until they dropped! Saturday followed with extensive shopping and fun.

To facilitate our guests with shipping of their newly acquired goodies, Maduro arranged for Carib Trans, Mr. Eddie Andre and his hardworking team, to be at the Marriott Hotel to assist with packing of the barrels, E Containers and D Containers. Carib Trans made their services available to anyone who did not want to worry about excess freight of the airline.

On Sunday it all came to an end as our guests prepared for departure, back to St.Maarten. S.E.L. Maduro & Sons extends warm gratitude to all its customers, thanking everyone for their support. We have built new friendships and long-lasting memories explained Evelyn, the travel advisor of Maduro.

Based on the growing popularity of these group packages, S.E.L. Maduro & Sons is presently introducing all-inclusive group travel packages for the following upcoming destinations:

Save The Dates!

All-Inclusive Trip to Dominican Republic Easter Weekend Thursday 29th March to Sunday 1st April, 2018.

Jamaica 9th May to 12th May, 2018.

Soca Cruise July 2018.

Summer Trip to Cuba July / August 2018.

Summer Family Packages to Orlando / Disney World.

Summer Family Package to Punta Cana / Nickelodeon.

Dominica Creole Fest, 27th to 30th October, 2018.

Miami Shop Until You Drop 23rd to 26th November, 2018.

Reggae Cruise December, 2018.

For further information please contact S.E.L. Maduro & Sons Travel & Shipping Agency, for local and international services. Located at Emmaplein Building # 1, in Philipsburg, St. Maarten. Telephone Numbers: 1(721) 542-3410/2472.

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

S.E.L Maduro & Sons Press Release
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Court of First Instance in Philipsburg treated on Wednesday, December 6, 2017 the case Mahi-Mahi against L.L.W. (39 years). He stands trial for the illegal possession of firearms and the possession of 47.000 dollars counterfeit money. The Public Prosecutors Office Sint Maarten demanded a prison sentence of 30 months for this suspect.

The criminal investigation "Mahi-Mahi" started after the shooting on 29 May 2016 in the parking garage of the Westin Hotel. The reason for the shooting has never been entirely clear, but "it has all the appearance of a rip-deal that got out of hand", according to the Prosecutor during the court session. During the shooting two men from Dominica were injured. Suspect L.L.W. had just recently before the shooting been released from prison. He had served a prison sentence of 8 years for a rip-deal with a fatal outcome.

A second suspect in this case, L.L.W. (39 years), will have to stand trial in court at the beginning of 2018.

Press Release from the Public Prosecutors Office
PHILIPSBURG:--- The House of Parliament will sit in a plenary public meeting on Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 16.00 hrs in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelminastraat #1 in Philipsburg. The Minister of Justice will be present for this meeting.

This meeting was scheduled to take place on Monday, December 4, 2017 at 10.00 hrs and then at 14.00 hrs. There was no quorum for neither meeting.

The agenda points are:

Incoming documents Approval Decision Lists Public meetings Parliamentary Year 2017-2018 no. 1, 3, 4, 6 and 9 Draft National Ordinance containing general regulations concerning administrative enforcement of legal stipulations (National Ordinance administrative enforcement)

Members of the public are invited to the House of Parliament to attend parliamentary deliberations.

The House of Parliament is located across from the Court House in Philipsburg.

The parliamentary session will be carried live on St. Maarten Cable TV Channel 120, via Pearl Radio FM 98.1, SXMGOV Radio 107.9 FM, video live stream via the internet www.pearlfmradio.sx, www.sxmparliament.org and also Parliament FB page: Parliament of Sint Maarten.
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At first, EU citizens in the UK assumed such campaigns had nothing to do with them. As long as the UK was still an EU member, their rights would be just as protected as the 1.2 million Britons living in the other 27 EU member states. Then, in the autumn of 2016, cabinet members held speeches at the Conservative Party conference that sounded like declarations of war. Among many measures mentioned was a move to force companies to provide lists of foreign employees. "That's when we realized that things were getting serious," Maike Bohn says.

When May again refused to guarantee that EU citizens would be allowed to continue living in the country after Brexit took hold in 2019, their anger turned to fear. And the question regarding the rights of EU citizens already living in Britain still has not been resolved. Instead, harassment continues to increase.

'This Is Our Country'

When representatives from the3million went to Westminster to lobby parliamentarians there, a Conservative MP said: "Why don't you put pressure on your own countries." Their answer was: "This is our country." Or at least it was.

Many EU citizens seeking certainty have been applying for residency permits since 2016. UK law holds that such an application should be a mere formality for those who have lived in the country for more than five years. In practice, however, things look quite a bit different - as can be seen in the case of Klaudia Orska, a Polish woman who has remained remarkably cheerful despite the bureaucratic odyssey she's been forced to go through.

The 45-year-old has lived for 11 years in the UK. She works for an apartment realtor, pays her taxes and speaks perfect English. In May, she sent off her application for a residency permit to the Home Office. It consisted of hundreds of pages, including notarized documents, photographs, spreadsheets - an entire life reduced to 3 kilograms of paper.

The package arrived and the application fee was deducted from her account. Then nothing happened. Radio silence. After three months, she was sent back all the documents along with a rejection notice and was told to prepare to leave the country. The justification cited for the rejection was her alleged failure to send passport photographs. Even though the photographs were attached to the pile of papers - a pile that seemed to not have been touched.

Orska sent the package back with a complaint, and reapplied. Three weeks later, she was rejected again, this time because her bank account details were allegedly missing and it was not possible to deduct the fee. "It's like Monty Python," she says and even manages to laugh about it. Who knows for how much longer, though. She now finds herself threatened with deportation to Poland. "We left the country back then because we wanted to escape the narrow-mindedness of the politicians there."

It is cases like this that prompted a group of European parliamentarians to write letters to Theresa May and the Home Office several months ago. "It's obvious that the authorities have been instructed to reject as many applications as possible," said one of the authors of the letter, Sophia in 't Veld, from the Netherlands. "The British government is deliberately instilling fear in people. What have these people done? Where does this hatred come from? It's a mystery to me." She doesn't feel much the wiser after May's vague response.

'Colonial Occupiers'

It isn't the only question on which the prime minister has waffled. Thus far, she has sought to placate the Brexit hardliners in her own party, who refuse to budge an inch. If EU citizens are allowed to hold on to all their rights, arch-conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg has argued, then they'd have more rights than Britons. "That would give them the status of colonial occupiers."

As such, the government has said it intends to give EU citizens in the UK the same access to the education and social system as British citizens. But they must apply for that access individually and would lose all further rights they once held as EU citizens. It is a horror scenario for those affected, and not just because of the "errors" the British authorities have made thus far.

It would mean that the 3 million EU citizens would only have recourse to British law, which the government can change any time it likes. There would be countless hardship cases created, with no way of appealing to a supranational court.

Would an Italian woman who grew up in Great Britain be allowed back into the country if she had to go to Italy for two years to care for her sick mother? What about a German academic in Cambridge who takes a two-year posting in France? And will everyone who forgets to include their passport photographs really be deported? These are the kinds of existential questions facing many people who have lived in Britain for many years and who feel British even if they don't hold a British passport.

May sought to calm their nerves recently in a letter sent out to 100,000 people. "We want people to stay and we want families to stay together," she wrote. She told her negotiating partners in the EU this summer that there was no need to concerned: "No one is being deported."
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With one word on Wednesday, the chairmen of the tribes that run casinos in Connecticut leveled the whole debate.

Discussion. As in, hey lawmakers, if you might approve a casino in Bridgeport, we want to be part of the discussion.

Thats what Rodney Butler of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and Kevin Brown of the Mohegan Tribe said in a letter to leaders of the General Assembly. This is great! Now we have a discussion.

Until now, the tribes have basically treated MGM Resorts International as an interloper. There was no open discussion involving everyone. It was them or no one.

This is a good turn of events for the state because, lets face it, there arent many companies fighting for the right to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars in Connecticut.

May the best team win  if we even want a casino in Bridgeport. And we should. Its not the ideal economic engine and for some gambling customers, its an addictive disaster. But its the biggest new economic engine we have right now.

The surprise is that it took almost three months for the tribes to speak up about Bridgeport after MGM unveiled its $675 million proposal in September.

Heres the fight card: In one corner, from Las Vegas, weighing in at 18 casino resorts in three continents, we have MGM. The publicly traded company has what looks like a lock on the best Bridgeport site imaginable  part of the harbor redevelopment  right on the water across from downtown, just off I-95.

Weve got the best site, said Uri Clinton, MGM senior vice president. This proposal stands tall.

Other developers? Theyd have to come up and have some deal with someone else who has land, Clinton said.

MGM has the solid backing of the mayors of Bridgeport and New Haven. The company also has a CEO, Jim Murren, who was born in Bridgeport and raised in Fairfield, so this project means a lot to the boss.

He should have mentioned it in a November conference call with financial analysts but he didnt. The tribes are saying thats proof hes insincere, but on both sides, lets judge everybodys actions rather than what they say or dont say.

In the other corner, we have hometown favorite MMCT, the tribes joint partnership, weighing in at $7 billion in payments to the state so far. Thats the amount the Foxwoods Resort and Mohegan Sun casinos the two tribes have paid to the state since 1993 and 1994, when they struck deals to pay Connecticut 25 percent of slot machine revenues in exchange for an exclusive right to operate casinos.

That compact, as it is known, is one of the tribes big selling points when it comes to the Legislature saying yes to a commercial casino not on tribal land. The states payday has fallen from $430 million in 2007 to $265 million last year and is expected to drop below $200 million after MGM Springfield opens next fall.

Dropping or not, its still a chunk of change the state cant afford to lose, and thats why the legislature approved an MMCT casino in East Windsor.

Butler and Brown also played up their neighborliness in the letter to legislators Wednesday.

Over the years, weve led support events for our states veterans and contributed to organizations like the United Way, which helps families in need across our state, they said. Simply put, we are part of the very fabric of many communities that make Connecticut such a great place to live, work and raise a family.

There is no easy answer here especially since MGM, already vowing to refile a federal lawsuit over the state holding a closed process for the East Windsor casino, would have an even bigger claim if the state were to hand a Bridgeport license to the tribes.

Its way too early to handicap lawmakers preferences, though some have weighed in. The Legislature and governor should first decide whether they want a casino in Bridgeport, or Putnam or Salisbury for that matter, then solicit bids from all comers.

The MGM bid is on the table.

The tribes have no Bridgeport plan just yet. And they most likely arent as strong financially. They dont have the global organization to pull off a full-scale project as easily and they dont necessarily agree with each other when it comes to making decisions. Witness the two years it took MMCT to settle on the East Windsor site.

Yes, the tribes compact would be a factor in a decision, as would their history in Connecticut. But those factors cant be allowed to short-circuit a debate before it starts.

One way around a tortured legislative process that could last three years is a negotiated solution. As Av Harris, Bridgeports top policy and legislative aide, put it, Get everyone in a room and see what happens....There is a terrific chance that both the tribes and MGM can succeed in Connecticut.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
Every Thursday and Sunday through the end of the year, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time will publish short stories about local families and people in need of a helping hand. The names of those included have been changed to protect their privacy.

Each case will include an estimated dollar amount that would help them face everyday challenges like rent payments, child care costs and transportation. Every dollar donated to the Giving Fund goes directly to the clients in need. Click here to donate to The Giving Fund.

Monica  Case #344

Monica and her husband have two young children and had sufficient income from jobs they enjoyed. All seemed to be going well until their son, only three years old, got leukemia. This couldnt happen to us, they thought, but it did and their life became one of endless stays in the hospital watching their child become sicker and sicker. Since neither of them could keep a job, due to caring for their son, they were finally threatened with eviction. $1000 would at least lift that burden, and give them courage to face the future.

Mia  Case #345

Mia had worked for over a decade at a company. After her lay-off, she struggled to find work that would support her household and provide enough income for expenses. Shortly after, she found a job working in the same field, however, the pay was dramatically reduced. Mia has custody of one of her grandchildren because Mias daughter suffers from an illness that prevents her from caring for her son. Mia has also done odd jobs on the side to maintain a steady income. She is a hard worker and diligently seeking other types of employment. Currently, she is traveling great distances to get to work, and she hopes to find work that is both financially rewarding and allows flexibility to care for her grandchild. A grant of $1000 will assist towards 1 months rent.

Michelle  Case #346

Michelle is a single mother raising two children, earning a living cleaning homes. She struggles to make a better life for herself and her children. She is currently certified as a Home Health Aide. Her goal is to become a nurse practitioner, but she is enduring financial difficulty in taking the necessary steps to pursue her goal. She is a hard worker and diligently seeking employment in the healthcare field in hopes to better financially support her family. Michelle is focused on pursing her Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) License but does not have the finances to cover the expense of the program. Michelle recently passed the Healthcare Assessment Test granting her access to register for the CNA course. A grant of $829 will cover her tuition cost.

Jimmy  Case #347

Jimmy has been living with multiple disabilities from birth and has managed to function independently. Living alone and self-supporting, Jimmy works as an Uber driver. He cannot afford to buy a new car and relies on an older vehicle which frequently is in need of repair. His car is currently in need of $700 worth of repairs. This is necessary to keep the car roadworthy and help to maintain his livelihood.

Charlotte  Case #348

Charlotte is a single mother that just became unemployed. She has been working on her resume, job search and interview skills and is coming close to securing a position. Unemployment benefits arent meeting the monthly expenses, and a gift of $500 would greatly assist the client with catching up on her rent and utility bills during this holiday season.

Shelly  Case #349

Shelly is a wife and mother living on a minimum wage salary to help support her family of four. She is working hard to continue her education in order to get a better paying job, but is in need of financial assistance to help with basic bills and transportation to her college classes. A gift of $500 would allow this client the opportunity to continue to work toward her future.

Francesca  Case #350

Francescas life took a turn for the worse when she got into a bad car accident in May 2017. She is grateful that she walked away from the crash with her life, but saddened that her life will never be the same. As a result of the accident, Fran has limited usage of her right arm, she can no longer stand for more than 15 minutes at a time, and she suffers from chronic pain. Per the recommendation of her doctor, Fran quit her job as it was very labor intensive. Fran is now unemployed, partially disabled, and very depressed. A gift of $300 will help Fran take care of bills that she is currently unable to pay.
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Connecticut DACA recipients and Democratic lawmakers are dismayed  and, they said, appalled  President Donald Trump would condition continued legal status for youthful immigrants on what they consider deal-breakers like a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

But theyve seen this movie before.

Despite the political pressure on Trump to act tough on immigration, the nations 800,000 or so Deferred Action for Child Arrivals  more than 8,000 in Connecticut  are here to stay.

For the sake of the dreamers, one of our goals has to be to extract this dire situation from politics, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

He said deft maneuvering on Capitol Hill will be required to help dreamers stay in the U.S.

We have political cards to play, Blumenthal said.

The politics of immigration resurfaced Sunday when the White House released Trumps framework for immigration.

The document allows for extension of DACA on condition it be accompanied by approval of a border wall, more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, denial of grants to sanctuary cities such as New Haven, and quicker deportation for unaccompanied minors from Central America.

DACA is the Obama-era policy giving legal status to those who were brought to the U.S. as children by their undocumented-immigrant parents.

The framework was the latest twist in Trumps on-again, off-again views on dreamers. Last month he said of dreamers: I have a love for these people, and expressed confidence a deal would be worked out. But that same day, he rescinded former President Barack Obamas DACA policy, giving Congress six months to come up with a solution to their status.

Two weeks later after a dinner with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Trump appeared to agree to continued legal status for DACA youth with tough border enforcement but no wall, at least not immediately.

That deal appeared to unravel Sunday when Trump told Congress any DACA deal must be linked to building the wall, a campaign promise he insisted would be funded by Mexico. Mexico has repeatedly rejected Trumps call.

The demands that are being made here are basically meant to derail any opportunity to come to some sort of bipartisan solution, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

On Trumps expression of love for DACA recipients, DeLauro added, I dont know where it is. Its not demonstrated by what were seeing.

Since the defeat of Trump-backed Sen. Luther Strange to fire-and-brimstone conservative Roy Moore in the Alabama Republican senatorial primary last month, Trump is said to be worried about his right flank.

Because of the divide between conservative and more center-leaning Republicans on Capitol Hill, the votes of Democrats could prove pivotal to any legislation, immigration or otherwise. One opportunity for Democrats to flex their muscles might come in December, when a legislative fix is needed to keep the government funded and open.

There are rational and reasonable solutions to this, Blumenthal said. But the wall as a condition is totally a nonstarter.

Connecticut DACA recipients were philosophical when asked how they see the future unfolding, since they could be subject to deportation as early as March if Congress fails to act.

I think something will happen because, politically, neither party can afford to have 800,000 DACA recipients deported, said Carolina Bortolleto, of Danbury, a DACA recipient from Brazil who co-founded CT Students for a Dream with her twin sister, Camila.

dan@hearstdc.com
The media devotes a lot of time to covering early adoption. Media outlets profile emerging technology trends, digital marketing best practices, and health and fitness movements. But what about human capital innovation in business?

Enterprise business leaders have always needed to predict what the market will demand in terms of products, processes, and advertising. However, in todays evolving business landscape, its equally vital for company leaders to identify processes and systems that find the right talent and expertise to execute on business-critical solutions.

Smart companies are building teams and task forces around the future of work, with the goal of assembling flexible work programs that integrate agility, speed, and specialized talent within their organizations. In my experience, there are three subsets of companies that tend to drive innovation in employment:

1. Businesses based in underpopulated areas or in competitive hiring markets.

Regardless of the reason -- geographic location, current industry standing or employer brand -- these companies are taking a close look at alternative approaches to sourcing talent, recognizing that this is almost exclusively their option for attracting the talent they need. This is a broad pool that includes everything from boutique PR agencies based in North Dakota to app development brands in Silicon Valley.

Related: 4 Tips for Making the Right Hires in a Super-Competitive Job Market

2. Companies forced to address problems theyve never encountered.

A very large beer company that spent generations excelling at manufacturing, marketing and distributing its beer could run up against millennial consumers with drinking tastes different than their predecessors. While the company may have been good at improving its work incrementally, getting 2 to 4 percent better at its methods annually, shifting its product to cater to craft beer lovers may require a new cohort of employees with skills that previously seemed irrelevant. These types of companies need new talent to solve new problems.

3. Organizations spending too much money on traditional consulting firms without receiving equivalent ROI.

This subset can include members of the previous groups, but it can also include budget-minded corporations that lack niche specialists in new verticals theyre exploring or firms needing short-term employees for projects.

The reason for adoption within these three types of companies isnt all that surprising: They do it out of necessity. Their necessity today is likely to be their competitors necessity tomorrow, so their early adoption gives them a competitive advantage.

Related: 5 Things to Look for When Hiring a Consulting Firm

The Viability of Innovation

While these businesses are fueled by necessity, they also have to be innovative with respect to how they operate and adjust to the marketplace.

A great example is General Electric. GE is well-known for manufacturing jet engines and power plants; it hasnt historically focused on software development or machine learning. A company like GE is adopting a flexible approach to its workforce by backfilling areas where it doesnt have as much knowledge about whom to hire.

Other household names like Samsung have addressed capability gaps through the utilization of freelance platforms. Cathleen Nilson, who leads on-demand talent at Samsung, has said she really believes this is the future.

Ive found that in many companies, a senior executive on the business side is convinced that his or her brand doesnt have the talent it needs to execute a specific strategy. With todays on-demand marketplace, the future of work is helping to solve this problem. Early adoption is driven by companies carrying strong internal knowledge of exactly what they want to get done and why.

Related: 10 Traits of the Most Innovative Entrepreneurs

The Solution to Every Problem

Innovative companies ask themselves two key questions: What products or processes do we think the marketplace will want next? What talent do we need to deliver that?

Once the skill sets for those roles are identified, forward-thinking companies can utilize on-demand platforms to locate the talent they need without delaying their timelines or breaking the bank. They can add members to their team for a specific project or to meet cyclical needs, and they can scale up or down, depending on the impact of the task.

The key, of course, is for business leaders to understand their skill gaps  and be willing to address them differently than they have in the past. Those are the companies that will reap the benefits of a flexible workforce and ultimately thrive in the future of work.

Related:

How HR Can Embrace Technology to Drive Employee Centricity in 2018

The Future of Work: Solving Problems Through a Flexible Workforce

Paying Interns Is a Good Investment In the Future of Your Business



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


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STAMFORD  A Florida man wanted on a racketeering warrant from his home state was captured leaving an apartment on the citys West Side on Thursday, police said.

Deandre Jackson, 32, was charged with being a fugitive from justice and held in lieu of a $200,000 cash court appearance bond.

Capt. Richard Conklin said the Narcotics and Organized Crime squad working with a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force found Jackson coming out of an apartment at 40 Stillwater Avenue just after 6 a.m. Conklin said the officers were working on a tip on Jacksons whereabouts in Stamford and apprehended him without incident.

The father of four children, who worked at Chipotle Mexican restaurant in Greenwich, is wanted by the Martin County Sheriffs Department in Florida on a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations charge that was filed against him in June of this year, according to paperwork in his court file.

Jacksons original connection to Stamford is unknown.

Maybe it is a family connection, Conklin said. We have not established that.

He was convicted on a disorderly conduct charge in Stamford in 2002 and was interviewed in connection with a weapons law violation in 2013, Conklin said.

According to the court paperwork, he was charged in Florida on April 14 of this year for being a convicted felon in possession of a concealed weapon, possession of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to sell and possession of methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of a college.

jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com
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STAMFORD  A true midcentury modern, with its giant windows to take in nature and characteristic flat lines, is an unusual find.

Rarer is one like 44 Chestnut Hill Road that has seen few changes since being built in 1952 on a nearly 7-acre North Stamford parcel by a New York City advertising executive of the Mad Men era.

Its definitely a certain group of buyers who look for the midcenturies that havent been touched, said listing agent Serena Richards of Halstead Property.

The home has so far piqued the interest of creative types, including musician and Darien native Moby, who was attracted by the vintage surround-sound system, Richards said.

But before the property added a 5,700-square-foot modern masterpiece, it was  and still is  the site of a 600-square-foot cottage where the late Luise Rainer, who in the 1930s was the first actress to win two consecutive Oscars, spent weekends with her husband, the British publisher Robert Knittel.

The cottage is used now for storage, but still has utility hook-ups for buyers looking to recreate where the German-born Jewish star would escape for getaways during the two years she owned the property. By that time, Rainer, who fled Nazi Germany to become an actress, had retired from her brief but successful film career. She died in 2014 at age 104.

It has a cool story and it really is a cute little place inside, said Mimi Rossin Burigo, a Westport resident whose father, the late Lester Rossin, bought the property from Rainer and Knittel.

Burigo grew up in the house and said her favorite feature is not the in-ground pool or the twin bedrooms and adjoining play area she shared with her sister, but the open living and dining room divided by a granite fireplace. In classic midcentury fashion, the walls are paneled in dark pecky cyprus, known for its unique pitted pattern caused by a rare fungus that dies once the wood is harvested.

She recalled watching films in the living room projected from her parents bedroom above. The second-floor master suite, with glass paneling, looks down over the living room.

The four-bedroom, five-bathroom home also has a studio used by Rossin, who founded Lester Rossin Associates, a marketing and advertising agency, as well as a separate corporate design firm and a creative group that represented artists and illustrators, including Norman Rockwell, according to Burigo. Rossin, who died in 2013, was also the co-author of 34 how-to books on painting.

Few updates over the years means the home has retro features like a soda fountain, a buzzer under the dining room table that was used to summon household help and a functioning 1960s surround-sound system by NuTone.

Few and far between on the market, Fairfield County is home to several noteworthy midcentury modern homes, the most famous being Philip Johnsons Glass House in New Canaan.

Stamford has seen a handful of mid-centuries listed recently, but none as authentic as 44 Chestnut Hill, Richards said. The home, cottage and nearly 2 acres are together listed for $995,000 by Rossins estate. The remainder of the original property, 4.7 acres, is listed separately for $690,000 and can be subdivided into three parcels.

A buyer will likely update or remodel the kitchen and bathrooms, but Burigo expects theyll keep her favorite area and the memories she made there intact.

Its taken me awhile to pull myself away from the home, so I dont come by much anymore, she said. Once its sold, it I think it would be too hard.

eskalka@stamfordadvocate.com
December 5, 2017

Lincoln, Neb.  A new University of Nebraska-Lincoln-led partnership is helping agricultural producers explore emerging technologies and identify ways to strengthen profitability without increasing risk during the growing season.

Organized by Nebraska Extension and the Nebraska Water Balance Alliance, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Testing Ag Performance Solutions farm management competition involved managing center pivot-irrigated corn. Seventeen producers squared off against university scientists and two student groups in three categories: most profitable farm, highest input use efficiency and greatest grain yield.

"We came up with the idea for the UNL-TAPS competition as a way to help producers become familiar with new ag technologies and techniques, while also leveraging a peer-to-peer exchange of information," said Daran Rudnick, assistant professor of biological systems engineering and agricultural water management specialist with Nebraska Extension.

The competition took place at the university's West Central Research and Extension Center in North Platte. Each participant managed three small plots under a variable rate irrigation system. Preseason decisions included hybrid selection, population density and crop insurance selection. Each week, participants made decisions regarding irrigation and nitrogen management, and grain marketing. Decisions were submitted through a password-protected website, which also included in-season photographs of the plots, weather data and additional farm management resources.

"With today's low commodity prices, we really wanted to focus on profitability," said Chuck Burr, an extension educator. "It's not just about highest yield; it's about highest economic yield, meaning at what cost did it take to achieve a certain yield.

The competition attracted the attention of several industry partners, who were curious about the management practices being used. The industry representatives were able to share information about their new technologies with producers.

John Walz owns and operates a farm 22 miles north of North Platte. He participated in the competition because the knowledge needed to manage an operation is constantly expanding.

"I've really learned a lot by participating in the UNL-TAPS competition," he said. "There were a lot of really cool tools at our disposal, and we've had the opportunity to see if they can add value to our operation without risk."

Some of the participating producers implemented the same management practices they use on their farms while others used the competition to evaluate different practices. Not only were producers able to expand their knowledge, but the contest allowed Nebraska Extension to expand its expertise.

"We recognize that the university plot might not be the most successful one in the group, but that provides a great learning opportunity," Rudnick said. "It's critical for us to understand different management practices that take place on individual operations so that when a grower comes to us and asks 'Why?' we have actual scientific background on why that outcome took place."

Cash prizes will be awarded to the top-performing producer, excluding university scientists, in each category at a Dec. 12 awards banquet. In the coming weeks, each producer will share their management strategies and discuss their successes and challenges during educational workshops.

While all of the participants have embraced the competitive nature of the project, Walz says everyone will walk away a winner thanks to this exchange of information.

Theres too much knowledge to be shared to care about winning and losing, he said.

Others involved in launching the competition were Matt Stockton, associate professor of agricultural economics, and Rodrigo Werle, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture. The competition is supported by Nebraska's Natural Resource Districts, the Nebraska Corn Board, AquaMart and several industry partners.

For more information, visit https://taps.unl.edu.

Daran Rudnick

Assistant Professor

Biological Systems Engineering

308-696-6709

daran.rudnick@unl.edu
MORRILL  One local businesss generosity will help dozens of people in Scotts Bluff County.

Karen and Dale Ott, owners of Horse Creek Tire in Morrill, donated a 2005 Dodge Caravan SE to the Aging Office of Western Nebraska Wednesday. The Aging Office passed the vehicle on to their Morrill nutrition site to use for meal deliveries in Morrill, Lyman and Henry.

Karen Ott said with any auto repair shop, operators end up with a vehicle or two that either has some problems or people dont want to spend the money to fix it. That is how the van came into their possession. The Otts thought about selling the van, but Karen knows Carol Sinner, CHOICE supervisor at the Aging Office, and she thought Sinner might know someone who could use it.

Sinner spoke to Executive Director Cheryl Brunz and presented the Otts' offer to her. They discussed where the van could be used best. The Otts were happy with the decision that was made.

To find out it will be used in Morrill was just like the frosting on the cake, Ott said. I grew up in Morrill, went to school in Morrill and farmed there.

The van did need a little bit of work and Dale and Karens son, Matthew, who is a certified mechanic, made all the necessary repairs.

The meals are packed in Morrill and delivered to wherever a senior needs a meal. Shirley Swenson, Morrill nutrition site manager, said the donation will help the volunteers who put miles on their own vehicles to deliver each meal. Volunteers are paid for mileage going out to deliver the meals but not for their return trip.

I put 5,000 miles a year just going to Lyman, said Jim Swenson, volunteer. Thats 20 miles a day.

Swenson expressed her gratitude for the Otts' generosity, explaining it will be a big help to the program.

This is a blessing for this site to have a vehicle to deliver the meals in, Sinner said.

The Otts didnt plan to make such a generous donation around Christmas time.

We didnt have a plan, Karen Ott said. It just happened.

Brunz said the van will have a huge impact on the program in Morrill, Lyman and Henry. Those areas receive 20-25 meals per day and recently have had 31 meals in a day.

It helps people in a small community receive a meal because we cant have a senior center in every community, Brunz said. Those two communities wouldnt have a meal without this.

For more information about the meal program, contact the Aging Office of Western Nebraska at 308-635-0851. For the Morrill, Lyman and Henry area, contact Swenson at 308-247-3323.
GERING  Nebraska Lt. Gov.Mike Foley and State Sen. John Stinner of Gering outlined whats ahead for the upcoming legislative session during the Scottsbluff/Gering United Chamber of Commerce's Pre-Legislative Breakfast Wednesday.

On Jan. 3, 2018, the Nebraska Legislature will begin its 60-day short session facing a $173 million revenue shortfall. A common belief is the cause is depressed agricultural commodity prices, but its more complicated.

The problem isnt just agriculture; its a dwindling workforce. As Nebraskas population continues to age and birthrates decrease, the strain on the states health care system will only increase, Stinner said.

The State Chamber does an annual survey and for the past five years the biggest concern has been workforce, Stinner said. Cities across the state have available jobs but no workers to fill them.

While hes talked a lot about economic development in the past, Stinner said he now sees the biggest problem is outmigration  people leaving the states rural areas for Lincoln and Omaha. One of the things we have to do in order to stabilize our community is to provide housing for our workers.

Stinner encouraged strong relationships with the high school career academies and Western Nebraska Community Colleges specialized courses to train the next generation of workers.

With workforce comes the need for housing. So last session, Stinner introduced LB 496, which would allow Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to be used for new housing construction and rehabilitation of existing housing. The legislation was bottled up with a filibuster, but Stinner plans to reintroduce the bill next session.

Leading the opposition is Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte, who said TIF money is still taxpayer money and should only be used for public purposes. But Stinner disagrees.

As a banker, Ive done TIF projects before and theyve been positive and stimulated the economy, he said. Two of the more recent local ones are Reganis Motors and the Fairfield Inn and Suites. Theyve provided jobs, sales tax and income.

He said that although taxes are deferred using TIF, theyre still paid back over time. The increased economic activity the businesses produce is an added benefit to the community.

Foley spoke to the other factor cited as causing the states revenue shortfall  a struggling ag economy.

The increasing cost of production, high farm taxes and low commodity prices are a bad combination, Foley said. Total farm income four years ago was $7.5 billion. This year it might come in at $4 billion. That kind of loss shows in local businesses as people cut back their spending.

Foley encouraged Nebraska to be even more aggressive in marketing its ag products to customers around the world. Outside of North America, Japan is the states leading customer, purchasing an annual $1 billion of beef, pork, corn and eggs.

Foley just recently returned from a trade mission to China, where he sees its growing economy not only as competition for America, but also as another huge market for Nebraska ag products.
SCOTTSBLUFF - U.S. Forest Service officials will be in Scottsbluff on Tuesday, Dec. 19, to answer questions for potential job candidates about 900 temporary positions for the 2018 field season throughout national forests and grasslands in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

They also can assist job seekers with applications through USAJobs.com. From noon to 3 p.m. they will be in the commons area of WNCCs Student Center. From 3-6 p.m. they will be at the Guadalupe Center.

The entry-level salary for these positions ranges from $11 to $14 per hour.

The Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service also will host two virtual job fairs by phone for job seekers. During the one-hour, toll-free call, recruiters will introduce job seekers to the U.S. Forest Service; provide information regarding available jobs; provide an overview of the application process; and answer questions.

Two opportunities to join in

 Thursday, Dec. 7, 2-3 p.m.

 Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2-3 p.m.

Call-in instructions

Dial the call-in number: 1-888-844-9904

Enter the access code followed by the number sign: 7662084#

Temporary positions are available in a variety of occupations such as fire, trails, forestry, engineering, wildlife, recreation, fisheries, archaeology and administrative support. Temporary job opportunities are available online at www.fs.usda.gov/main/r2/jobs.

The Forest Service is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that manages 193 million acres of land, roughly the size of Texas. The Rocky Mountain Region includes 17 national forests and seven national grasslands located in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nations forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

For questions about the virtual hiring call, accessibility or to request an accommodation, contact Lawrence Lujan at 303-275-5356 or lmlujan@fs.fed.us.
School officials say a crossing guard was clipped by a car's side mirror Thursday morning outside Cloverleaf Elementary School.

The guard's was transported in stable condition to Iredell Memorial Hospital, according to Iredell County EMS director Blair Richey.

According to Susie Wiberg, spokeswoman for Iredell-Statesville Schools, the crossing guard was coherent.

The N.C. Highway Patrol is handling the investigation.

Trooper S. Martin said Taylor James, 50, of Statesville, was pulling out of the school's parking lot on Jane Sowers Road.

The guard, Margaret Rockwell, 32, was standing at the corner and was struck by the SUV's mirror, Martin said. Rockwell works for the school system, he said.

The patrol said the scene was cleared before 8:15 a.m.

The investigation is ongoing.
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Florida mayor arrested for allegedly using dead people's disabled parking permits at City HallAssociated PressMore from Associated PressPublished:December 6, 2017Updated:December 6, 2017 4:35 PM ESTIn this stock photo, a disabled parking permit hangs in the windshield of a car in a parking lot.Getty ImagesDAVENPORT, Fla.  The mayor of a small Florida city has been arrested on allegations that she used dead peoples disabled parking permits to park at City Hall.The Polk County Sheriffs Office said Davenport Mayor Darlene Bradley was arrested Tuesday and faces felony charges of using a deceased persons identification. She also was charged with possessing an altered or counterfeit decal.Davenport Mayor Darlene Bradley, 60 is charged with using a deceased personas identification and possessing an altered or counterfeit decal. (Polk County Sheriffs Office)Davenport is a small city located in central Florida.The sheriffs office says Bradley was videotaped parking in the disabled spot recently, and that a search of her home led to the discovery of permits issued to two people who have died.The mayor was booked into the Polk County Jail and released after posting $2,250 bond.Jail records didnt indicate if Bradley had an attorney.
Ron Makovicka didnt know what hed lost until he was pulling a grain cart through one of his York County fields, following the combine driven by his son.

All around him, the land remained littered with loose ears of corn, like money left on the ground.

He thought maybe the combine was the problem. He radioed his son, asking: Are you doing this? Are you doing that?

But the corn had snapped from its stalks and fallen to the dirt days earlier, the result of what agriculture experts called a perfect storm: A series of weather conditions over the growing season that had been good, and then bad, for certain hybrid seed varieties, producing big-kerneled ears but weakening their grip to the stalks.

And when strong winds  exceeding 40 mph in many areas, topping 50 in others  raked the state in late October, the rattling corn simply couldnt hang on.

Most farmers wouldnt know they were suffering the worst recent season of what they call ear drop until the gusts died, when they were in their fields, looking down from their combines and tractors.

It really turned your stomach when you saw all that crop on the ground, Makovicka said. And there was nothing you could do about it.

The losses are significant and widespread.

Theres no good way to get a handle on it, said Jenny Rees, a Nebraska extension educator. But its thousands and thousands and thousands of acres statewide.

In Makovickas most damaged field, he counted 70 bushels of corn per acre  grain he couldnt salvage, couldnt sell at the elevator. Rees has heard of northeast Nebraska farms that lost 100 bushels per acre, or nearly $50,000 of missed income on each quarter-section.

Thats unprecedented and outrageous these days. With modern farming technology, we hardly ever leave anything anymore, said Randy Pryor, an extension educator in Saline County. If youre leaving more than a bushel or two, people are awfully upset.

The problems will extend beyond harvest. Many growers will be forced to pay for more herbicide, when the corn they couldnt harvest this year sprouts among their soybeans next year. Some farmers who graze their cows in harvested fields are realizing, after its too late, that their animals are gorging on more corn than their bodies can handle.

Id never had a problem and Ive been doing it for 30 years, said Steve Wenz, who farms near Firth. I put them out on a Tuesday morning and, Thursday morning, I had three dead ones.

A leftover fundraiser

Collecting corn from the ground is hard work  and hard on equipment. And at $3 per bushel, not always worth it.

But if it were $7 a bushel, wed have everybody wanting to do it, Pryor said.

Hugh Clarke donated the leftover corn from a 100-acre field west of Wilber to Saline County 4-H junior leaders, who are raising money for a trip to Washington. On Saturday, about 20 4-H members and their parents walked the field with five-gallon buckets, picking up ears for Clarke to run through his combine.

They hand-picked about 15 acres, collecting about 200 bushels. Theyd hoped to do more.

I was proud of the kids, Pryor said. But it was definitely hard work.

The rest of the corn will likely stay on the ground, Clarke said. Its going to be food for the deer and the coons.

Some farmers have used soybean heads on their combines, but all the soil they pick up is tough on the machines. And they get docked at the elevator because the corn is so dirty, Rees said.

Pryor heard a second-hand story of a farmer who bought a used, inexpensive combine to try to harvest the corn on the ground.

Some farmers have raked it and baled it for feed. Others have opened their fields to cows, but they need to be careful, Rees said. The cows arent used to eating 100 percent corn, and they dont know when to stop.

They look at the grain like it was candy or ice cream, she said. But their stomachs cant digest it, and too much can kill the animals.

She and others have been trying to educate producers, instructing them to use corn-based feed beforehand to acclimate their animals, to graze multiple cows in smaller areas, to feed them first so they dont overeat on corn, and to move them frequently.

Near Firth, Wenz didnt see the problem until it was too late. He put 80 cow-calf pairs in his field, checked them daily, and pulled them out when he found three dead animals a few days later.

Another $4,500 hit on top of the corn he couldnt harvest.

I could have lost them all, he said. It could have been a disaster.
General Electric Co. is axing 12,000 jobs at its global power business, the struggling industrial conglomerate's latest effort to shrink itself into a more focused company.

The U.S. company launched the cuts to save $1 billion in 2018, saying it expected dwindling demand for fossil fuel power plants to continue.

"Traditional power markets including gas and coal have softened," GE said.

Rumors of sweeping job cuts were confirmed by labor union sources on Wednesday, with staff in Switzerland and Germany among those badly hit.

"This decision was painful but necessary for GE Power to respond to the disruption in the power market, which is driving significantly lower volumes in products and services," said Russell Stokes, head of GE Power.

"Power will remain a work in progress in 2018. We expect market challenges to continue, but this plan will position us for 2019 and beyond."

New GE Chief Executive John Flannery last month outlined plans to shrink GE's sprawling empire of businesses built up by predecessors Jeff Immelt and Jack Welch, whose strategy was based on spreading risk across a broad range of industries.

GE has previously said it would exit its lighting, transportation, industrial solutions and electrical grid businesses. It also plans to ditch its 62.5-percent stake in oilfield services company Baker Hughes.

In Thursday's layoffs, nearly a third of the company's 4,500-strong Swiss workforce could be cut, while 16 percent of staff in Germany are also likely to be axed.

In Britain, around 1,100 position will be affected, the company said. Globally GE employed 295,000 people worldwide at the end of 2016, according to the company website.

GE said it had begun talks with labor leaders about the steps.

Union leaders in Germany reacted angrily to the job cuts.

"The announcement by GE that it wants to cut thousands of jobs across Europe is neither strategically nor economically justifiable, and serves only to maximize short-term profit for shareholders," said Klaus Stein, the representative of the IG Metall Union at GE's plant in Mannheim.

"We are not going to accept this, and we will fight ... to preserve jobs."

Demand for new thermal power plants dramatically dropped in all rich countries, GE said, while traditional utility customers have reduced their investments due to market deterioration and uncertainty about future climate policy measures.

Hardly any new power station projects had been commissioned in Germany in recent years, GE said. Heightened Asian competition had also increased price pressures.

GE rival Siemens is cutting about 6,900 jobs, or close to 2 percent of its global workforce, mainly at its power and gas division, which has been hit by the rapid growth of renewables.
WASHINGTON  The Environmental Protection Agency will announce in January its plan to clean up the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Bridgeton, administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday.

Pruitt made the promise in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing chaired by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville. Pruitt said the site, which has been on the agencys Superfund cleanup list since 1990, has languished too long, and that his announcement is to be part of efforts by President Donald Trumps administration to address a backlog of environmental issues left by the previous administration of Barack Obama.

We should be able to announce a decision in the month of January, Pruitt said. There are proposals that I am looking at this month to make a decision on West Lake. It has been a long time coming, specifically 27 years. It is a very important issue for the people of St. Louis.

He added that it has taken the agency 27 years to make a decision on whether to excavate or cap the site. That is unacceptable.

The EPA could do everything from trying to cap the site, which contains waste from the World War II nuclear weapons development, to removing potentially toxic materials from it. The former would be an especially controversial plan among nearby residents, who have pushed for stronger remediation by the government and responsible private parties.

The Obama administration had promised a decision by the end of 2016, but that did not happen. Pruitt, a Trump appointee, has been in office 10 months, and in that time the EPA has held further listening and information sessions with residents who live near the site.

West Lake holds both municipal garbage from the 1950s co-mingled with about 8,200 tons of leached barium sulfate left over from the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to create a nuclear weapon. That nuclear waste was added to 38,000 tons of soil to cover the trash.

Residents who live nearby have complained of health problems from contamination.

Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, a volunteer group focused on cleanup of the landfill, said she believes that Pruitt would follow through after years of missed deadlines under Obama.

But she cautioned that if it appears the EPA is rushing to cap the site just to get the decision out of the way, Pruitt would be shooting himself in the foot because that option is widely opposed.

I do know for certain that our congressional offices  bipartisan, Democrat and Republican  have told him, Dont you cap this  dont do it, Chapman said.

But Chapman also had praise for the new administrator for taking a personal interest in West Lake.

I think he has been pretty outspoken on our site, specifically, and I think that we can feel, the community here, can feel a more active EPA  and more involvement, frankly more transparency and honesty than we have in  the five years that I have been doing this, she said.

Shimkus also said he was not sure in what direction Pruitt was leaning. But Shimkus said Pruitt has taken a personal interest in (West Lake) to the point that he is angrier at the EPA than at the citizens that are riled up about it. He thinks the citizens are justified, but having said that, he is on record and we will see what is happening in January.

Pruitts announcement came before a divided subcommittee, with Democrats complaining that the EPA under Pruitts guidance has ignored scientists while allowing industry and business too much sway in the regulations it lives under, peeled back Obama administration regulations to protect the environment, and that Pruitt has been too secretive in performing the job.

Pruitt has ignored the advice and conclusions of his own scientific staff on numerous occasions, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said.

But Pruitt pushed back hard, saying that the EPA under his tutelage has returned to the rule of law by pushing back controversial Obama actions, such as the Waters of the USA initiative extending EPA oversight of small bodies of water, long a target of Republicans.

Pruitt also said hes tried to forge better relationships with states, and that the EPA as accelerated enactment of federal laws, such as the rewrite of federal chemical regulations that Shimkus helped shepherd through the last Congress.
Regions Bank has raised the number of St. Louis area branches it will open next year, signaling an even more ambitious growth plan than previously announced.

Bank officials said Thursday they intend to open 10 new branches here by the end of 2018  three more than they announced in August.

The new locations are at 3005 Highway K in OFallon, Mo.; 14200 Manchester Road in Manchester and 3895 Veterans Memorial Parkway in St. Peters.

In August, Regions Bank announced plans to open seven new branches by the end of 2018, in addition to a new branch opening Dec. 11 in Clayton. The other seven previously announced new branches are in University City, Florissant, Lake Saint Louis, Des Peres, Twin Oaks and two in St. Peters. A grand opening is planned for the University City branch at 6680 Delmar Boulevard on Dec. 9.

Were also targeting to open between five and eight more branches in 2019, Mike Hart, Regions Midwest area president, said about growth plans for the St. Louis area.

Hart said the banks focus group research shows many customers, particularly millennials, use their smartphones for many banking functions but they also want access to bankers for some transactions.

At its new Clayton branch at 8351 Maryland Avenue, Regions Bank has three video ATMs where users can select to talk to a banker via a screen on the machine to get the preferred denomination of bills for withdrawals, for example. Instead of teller lines, with Region Banks new branch design, customers are greeted by a bank employee upon entry and directed to a banker.

In the St. Louis area, Regions Bank has more than 60 branches and 2.95 percent market share of deposits, as of midyear 2017, making it the fifth largest retail bank in the St. Louis area behind U.S. Bank, Bank of America, Commerce Bank and Enterprise Bank & Trust. Midyear in 2016, Region Banks market share was 2.9 percent, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

St. Louis is one of four markets Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank has targeted to grow its branch footprint. The other cities where Regions Bank is adding branches are Atlanta, Houston and Dallas.
Durham Museum (801 S. 10th St., Omaha): Christmas at Union Station, through Jan. 7. Ethnic Holiday Trees, through Jan. 7. The exhibition showcases how cultures from around the world celebrate the Christmas season. Bridges: Sharing our Past to Enrich the Future Exhibit, through Jan. 7. A Nebraska 150 Commission Signature Event, this exhibit shares photos from each of Nebraskas 93 counties capturing images of historic sites of hidden treasures from across Nebraska. Zoom Into Nano, through Jan. 7. The exhibit presents a variety of largescale, immersive experiences in the world of nanotechnology. Mid-Western Missions: Agents and Expeditions, through Jan. 14. A Lifetime of Objects: The Story of Byron Reed, 1829-1891, through Jan. 14. Lets Go to Town for Boys Town, through Jan. 21. Through images, documents and artifacts from the Boys Town Hall of History collection and archives, visitors to The Durham Museum will trace the development of this Omaha fixture over the last 100 years.

Admission: adults $11, seniors (62+) $8, children (3-12) $7, children under 2 free.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday and major holidays.

International Quilt Study Center & Museum (33rd and Holdrege streets, Lincoln): Against the Grain: Quilted Leather by Cathy Wiggins, through Jan. 6. Small Talk, through Feb. 4. Voltage: Quilts by Erica Waaser, through Feb. 25.

Admission: adults, $6; children ages 5-18, $3; children under 5, free; families, $10. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 1-4 p.m. Sunday.

May Museum (1643 N. Nye Ave., Fremont): Transplanted: The Early Ethnic Settlers of Dodge County.

Admission is $5 for adults and $1 for students. Hours: 1:30-4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Nebraska History Museum (131 Centennial Mall North, Lincoln): Imprinting the West: Manifest Destiny, Real and Imagined, through Jan. 8. The exhibit features 48 hand-colored engravings and lithographs. Dont Touch That Dial: Kalamity Kate and the George Churley Puppets, through June 17. The exhibit features puppets created by Churley that were prominently featured on the KOLN/KGIN program, Kalamity Kates Cartoon Corral, and hundreds of live programs during the 1970s. Visitors also will be able to see the original Kalamity Kate costume worn by Leta Powell Drake, as well as film footage.

Hours: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, 1-4:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Admission: Free.

Omaha Childrens Museum (500 S. 20th St., Omaha): Santas Magic, through Dec. 23. Santas Magic is an enchanting winter wonderland populated by friendly characters like the Snow Queen, Holly the Elf and Santa. An interactive program is held several times daily and includes lights, music and Santas magical arrival. Forever Forest, through April 15. Exploring the realities of forests through play, this exhibit includes a tree top climber, a realistic mini replica of a Union Pacific engine, a kid-sized home kids can help build and more.

Admission: $12 for adults (16-59) and children (2-15), $11 for seniors (60 and older) and free for children under 24 months and members. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday.

Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum (28210 West Park Highway, Ashland): Nebraska 150 Aerospace. The exhibit highlights significant contributions of Nebraskans over 150 years of aerospace history. Admission: $12 for adults, $11 for seniors and military and $6 for children ages 4-12. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History (14th and Vine streets, Lincoln): Guts and Glory: A Parasite Story, through May 1, 2018. The exhibit explores the hidden world of parasites while showcasing the museums Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology. Miss Mie, through Dec. 31. The historic Japanese friendship ambassador doll and its accessories will be on display. Admission: $6 for adults (19 and over), $3 for children (5-18 years), free for children 4 and under, and $13 for families (up to two adults and children). Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and Friday-Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays and 1:30-4:30 p.m. Sundays.
William H. Gass, one of the nations most esteemed writers of literature and criticism, died of congestive heart failure on Wednesday (Dec. 6, 2017) at his home in University City. He was 93.

Known for his love of language and wide interest in the arts, Mr. Gass was a serious writer whose dazzling prose could be both playful and puzzling. His work was translated around the world, producing ardent fans in countries from Germany to Russia.

I have a hard time thinking there is another intellectual figure who married a deep connection with literature with a bottomless interest in philosophy  and music and photography and architecture, said a friend, Stephen Schenkenberg, editor of the website Reading William Gass.

His seemed like a landmark mind.

Mr. Gass continued writing and corresponding with friends until this fall, his wife, Mary Henderson Gass, said. He was honored to be associated with the best writers, ones that he admired. That was his aspiration  to contribute something to the greater world of literature.

His editor at Knopf, Victoria Wilson, said in a news release that Bill was a master writer, thinker, inspirer and human being. His writing was important and daring.

The William Gass Reader, including essays, stories, criticism and more, is scheduled to come out in June, the release said.

Mr. Gass influenced younger stylists, such as David Foster Wallace, but he also inspired thousands of students during his decades as a professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.

During his university years (1969-99), Mr. Gass was part of the lively literary circle that included novelist Stanley Elkin and poets Howard Nemerov and Mona van Duyn. In 1990, Mr. Gass founded the International Writers Center at Washington University, which brought prominent writers from around the world to Missouri.

Schenkenberg said that one of the privileges of running the website about Mr. Gass was that you hear from readers around the world.

Mr. Gass first novel, Omensetters Luck, was published in 1966 and is now considered a classic of American literature. Despite his novels long gestation periods (The Tunnel was in the works for 26 years), Mr. Gass was always working and publishing short stories, essays and criticism. Three of his books of essays won awards from the National Book Critics Circle.

He won the 1997 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2000 PEN/Nabokov Award and the PEN/Nabokov Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2007 he received the St. Louis Literary Award.

His last novel, Middle C, was published in 2013 when Mr. Gass was 88. He said at the time that he had several projects in the works, including a book about Baroque prose writers (Baroque writing was something he was accused of himself, he said). A collection of essays, Life Sentences, was published in 2012 and a book of stories and novellas, Eyes, in 2015.

His work was often called postmodern, experimental or avant-garde and considered by many to be difficult but brilliant. In 2013, he said that magazine editors would reject his stories, telling him that they didnt understand them.

Mr. Gass is believed to be the first to use the term metafiction to refer to techniques in fiction that depart, self-consciously, from traditional narrative.

I dont have a whole lot of patience with writers repeating what everybody else does, he once said. He preferred being known simply as a writer, without any qualifying adjectives.

In the essay The Sentence Seeks Its Form, Mr. Gass described his passion:

I have always thought more about writing than I have written about writing, and even when I was writing about things a world away from writing, I was thinking harder, longer, more eagerly about writing them than anything the writing aimed to address.

Loved St. Louis

Mr. Gass was born in Fargo, N.D., in 1924, and grew up in Warren, Ohio, the son of a failed architect and an alcoholic mother. Echos of them would show up in The Tunnel, hed admit, but he intensely rejected any assumption that his fiction was based on his life. Fiction writers make things up, he emphasized.

A Navy veteran of World War II, Mr. Gass wrote a memory of his service for archives held at Washington University. He served on the Pasadena, the flagship of its group. This meant that, in addition to a captain, we carried an admiral and his staff of toadies. What we didnt have was experience. Our boat was brand new (like me), on its first fight (like me), an amateur at everything (like me).

In 1947, Mr. Gass earned a bachelors degree in philosophy at Kenyon College. His doctorate came from Cornell University in 1954. His dissertation was called A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor, which seems a signpost for his future work.

Mr. Gass taught for four years at the College of Wooster and 14 years at Purdue University.

He published Omensetters Luck after an early manuscript had been stolen and required rewriting. Set in 19th-century Ohio and told by three narrators, the book was a dense, provoking, vastly rewarding and very beautiful first novel, a review in Newsweek said.

His second book of fiction, a collection of stories published in 1968 was In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Works from it have been included in more than 40 anthologies. One of his best-selling books, he said, was the nonfiction On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry.

Although he found writing fiction arduous, he felt an easier joy translating the lyrical poet Ranier Maria Rilke for Reading Rilke, Mary Gass said. The couple came to St. Louis in 1969. At Mr. Gass death, he still lived in their longtime Parkview home, where he had built many of the bookcases that held his 20,000 or so books.

He loved St. Louis, the Arch and the river, his wife said. In a 2007 interview, he said he had no interest in hobnobbing with the literati of New York: You get crucified because of the backbiting and gossiping.

Mr. Gass could be a tough critic of things he thought inferior: Hes still remembered for writing that the Pulitzer Prize for fiction takes deadly aim at mediocrity and almost never misses. But, Schenkenberg said, Mr. Gass main interest was putting good writing in front of people and saying, This is the real deal.

A memorial arranged by Washington University is expected next year, Mary Gass said.

Among Mr. Gass survivors are two daughters with his wife: Catherine Gass of Chicago and Elizabeth Gass-Boshoven of Kalamazoo, Mich.
A single-engine plane barely missed a fuel tanker before crashing into the parking lot of a gas station Wednesday afternoon, claiming the life of the pilot.

The plane damaged a vehicle and a gas pump when it crashed about 3 p.m., but no one else was injured.

Police did not identify the pilot, but late Wednesday others, including St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, identified him on Twitter as Jim Smith.

Smith helped lead the $100 million renovation of the Chase Park Plaza hotel in the Central West End in the late 1990s. He also managed the reopened hotel for years.

Krewson said Smith was key to that project, which she called the single biggest impetus for bringing back the Central West End. The iconic complex at the corner of Kingshighway and Lindell Boulevard had been closed for nine years before it was revived by Smith and his partners.

Krewson was a longtime alderman whose ward included the CWE before she was elected mayor this year.

Smith had been involved in real estate his entire life in St. Louis and elsewhere, the mayor said. She said he was a family man with adult children and grandchildren.

He was a great guy, Krewson said, one of the finest guys Ive ever worked with.

Before the crash, the pilot had been cleared to land at nearby Spirit of St. Louis Airport, but then reported the plane was losing power, according to John Bales, director of the airport.

The pilot told the tower, I dont know if Im going to make it, Bales said.

Chesterfield Police Capt. Ed Nestor said a police officer who happened to be nearby heard the plane clip the canopy over the pumps at the BP Gas Station at 110 Long Road. She looked up to see the plane crash and explode into flames.

Several witnesses were out, Nestor said. Everybody went over and tried to do what they could, but there really wasnt much that they could do.

He said witnesses reported they did not hear any engine noise before the crash. The crash site was just feet from where the fuel tanker was parked.

Fire Marshal Roger Herin said there was one person on board the aircraft when it crashed. That person was pronounced dead on the scene.

The plane was totally involved in fire when we arrived on the scene, Herin said. We extinguished the flames pretty quickly.

The plane was based here, Nestor said. An online flight tracking site indicated the plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, was en route to Spirit from Albuquerque, N.M. The Federal Aviation Administration listed Wings West LLC of Las Vegas as the owner.

Chesterfield police secured the scene for investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Mary Flynn said she had just bought a few items at the gas station and was getting into her car when she heard a loud crash. It was the plane clipping the gas station canopy.

Flynn turned just in time to see the plane hit the ground and burst into flames, just about 10 feet from a woman at one of the fuel pumps, she said. The plane skidded several feet to where it came to stop at the edge of the parking lot.

Within seconds there were four or five people with fire extinguishers who tried to put the fire out, which helped for a few seconds, but the flames reignited almost instantly after the extinguishers were depleted, Flynn said. They tried several times but it was no use.

It was just too much. It was a fireball.

The smoke was so thick she couldnt see, Flynn said. She ran into the gas station, where she found the woman who had been so close to the impact uninjured but shaken up.

The plane wouldve hit an 18-wheel fuel tanker had it not clipped the canopy and skidded to the side, Flynn said.

It was pretty remarkable that by some miracle the plane missed the tanker truck literally by mere feet, she said.

Things were quiet right up until the crash, Flynn said.

There was no sound of an engine, no sound whatsoever, she said. No one had a clue that plane was coming unless they were looking up at the sky.

Its almost surreal. You dont expect it, and then youre immediately thankful that no one else was hurt. You feel gratitude no one else was hurt and then great sadness for the poor pilot that didnt survive.

Flynn said she thought the pilot may have been able to guide his plane just before the crash so that it didnt the fuel pumps or any buildings, including a nearby daycare, she said.

If he did, he did a miraculous job of making sure no one else was hurt, she said.

Ron Mansfield, a Chesterfield resident, drove past the scene about the 30 seconds after the crash, he said.

Mansfield said he saw thick black smoke rising from behind some buildings in an area he knows well.

As soon as I turned the corner I saw a big fire in the McDonalds parking lot, he said. When I got closer I saw that it was a plane on fire.

Mansfield thought he saw a man trying to break the plane window open. He said the man had to retreat as the flames grew.

By the time I pulled up and got out to help it was too late, the fire was enormous, he said.

Mansfield said he thought the gas station canopy and a light post the plane struck as it crashed stopped it from hitting anything else.

The plane missed an 18-wheel fuel tanker by less than 100 feet, he said.
JEFFERSON CITY  Fearful of losing the battle against the spread of wild hogs, Missouri conservation officials are again voicing opposition to a proposal that would allow feral pigs to be processed for their ribs, roasts and loins.

The fear: Regulating the processing of feral hogs would create an economic incentive for hunters to introduce more of the pigs to Missouri's forests and farmlands to start new populations.

Feral hogs are a public nuisance. We want them eradicated from Missouris landscape, said Aaron Jefferies, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Conservation.

For the second year, Rep. Jered Taylor, R-Nixa, has introduced legislation that would allow for hogs caught in the wild to be sent to meat processors, where they could be transformed into bacon, chops and other barbecue favorites. Although hunters can dress their own animals and use the meat, the pigs cannot be commercially processed for human consumption.

My goal is to allow more people to hunt feral hogs and then use the meat, Taylor said.

Taylor said he has hunted and eaten feral swine. He smoked the ribs and they tasted great.

They taste a little more gamey, Taylor said. The bigger ones have more fat.

He envisions donating the excess meat to food pantries and other programs that help people who need food.

Its a lot of meat, Taylor said.

But the idea runs counter to the goals of the Department of Conservation.

Through Oct. 31, Jefferies said Conservation agents have killed nearly 6,000 hogs this year, up from a 2016 total of 4,385.

The department also has banned hunting of the hogs on Conservation property. Hunting of the feral pigs is still allowed on private property, but is frowned upon by the agency.

Hog hunting provided an incentive to release feral hogs in different parts of the state, Jefferies said.

In November, a Dent County man was charged in connection with a wild boar hunting ring in which swine were illegally released for the purposes of hunting, according to court documents.

Conservation officials allege that Michael L. Bennett of Jadwin bought two hogs at a stockyard in Shannon County and released them.

Jefferies said incidents like that could stymie efforts to eradicate the pigs, which have spread to 39 states, including 30 counties in Missouri. The Conservation Commission has committed $2 million this year to fight the spread of the pigs.

The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that wild hogs do more than $1.5 billion damage nationwide each year.

But the species prolific breeding rate means that 50 to 75 percent of the population must be killed each year to keep the population in check.

Right now we are trying to stay ahead of Missouris feral hog problem. Feral hogs arent a problem just for MDC, they are everyones problem. Both the conservation community and agricultural community want feral hogs eradicated from the state so we dont want to do anything that would provide an incentive to keep them here, Jefferies said.

Taylor understands the opposition from the department could torpedo his proposal.

Its an uphill battle going against something they dont support, Taylor said. Id like for it to at least get a hearing.

The 2018 legislative session begins Jan. 3.

The legislation is House Bill 1414.
A settlement may be close in an aldermans lawsuit over public financing for Scottrade Center renovations, but neither side is talking about it.

Erich Vieth, an attorney for the plaintiffs seeking to halt the $64 million financing deal, filed on Thursday a motion asking the judge to enforce a settlement to which both sides allegedly agreed on Tuesday evening. Vieth, in the filing, alleges a settlement was agreed to over the phone with attorneys for the Blues and other defendants.

However, Vieth said the written settlement drafted by the Blues attorneys was dramatically different than what was agreed to over the phone. A hearing is scheduled for Monday, the same day the trial was supposed to start, on whether to grant the plaintiffs motion and declare the case settled.

Alderman Cara Spencer, the lead plaintiff against the Blues and the city, would not comment on the alleged settlement. A spokesman for the Blues also declined to comment.

The court filings Thursday do not reveal any details of the settlement discussed Tuesday or the Blues draft settlement shared with the plaintiffs Thursday.

Even if the case is settled, the Blues may still have to fight an appeal in another case they brought against St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green after she refused to sign the financing agreement.

Under a court order, Green signed the agreement Tuesday, but she also filed a notice of appeal that is likely to keep the contract from being executed until the appeal is resolved.

Both lawsuits were filed in August. If Spencers lawsuit against the Blues goes forward, it could take until 2018 to be resolved.

Meanwhile, the Blues say they took on unanticipated debt to complete renovations to Scottrade Center on time after Green refused since February to sign the financing agreement. More renovations are planned under the agreement for summer 2018 and 2019.
Larry the donkey was a little stubborn.

But an organizer of Road to Bethlehem hopes hell make a return visit to the live Nativity.

This weekend, Calvary Baptist Church in Fremont will host the interactive Nativity from 7-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Admission is free and the public is invited to the event at the church at 904 N. Bell St. The Rev. Philip Schmidt, pastor, in charge of the event.

Since most of the event takes place outdoors, guests are encouraged to wear warm clothes.

Attendees will come to the church parking lot, where theyll be greeted by a shepherd who will take groups of about 10 people on a 15-minute guided tour.

Guests will get to gather around a fire with shepherds as they talk about seeing an angel.

Attendees will go back in the Bible story a bit to see Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem. Theyll head to another section to talk to Wise Men on their way to see a new king.

Visitors then will come to Bethlehem and talk to a cranky innkeeper and see a village display with Mary and Joseph in a stable.

The guests then will come into the church for a surprise ending.

Well see what Christmas is all about, said Judi Schmidt, an event organizer. They (guests) will be able to experience it in a new way.

Inside the church, visitors will receive a free gift, a Gospel tract and be treated to cookies and coffee or hot chocolate.

The continuous, guided tours take place every 15 to 20 minutes until 9 each night.

Approximately 25 volunteers help with the live Nativity.

And last year, a miniature donkey named, Larry, made an appearance.

Schmidts teenage daughter, Charity  who was dressed in a shepherds costume  wanted to lead Larry around.

He was stubborn and would not move, Schmidt said, laughing a little. So he kind of stood in one place and let people walk past him.

Charity loves horses and donkeys and her mom said they hope Larry will visit again.

Schmidt also hopes area residents will attend.

I have a desire that people would know the same peace that Ive experienced and knowing that peace comes from knowing the Prince of Peace (Jesus), Schmidt said. I would like to share the good news with everybody, because theres a lot anger and hurt out there in this world. There isnt peace on earth right now. True peace is only going to come when people realize who that baby in the manager really is.
When NBC News broke the story in October 2016 of the Access Hollywood recording in which Donald Trump spoke of grabbing womens crotches, almost all of the news networks went wild with coverage. You couldnt get away from the story. Trumps presidential bid was imploding before our very eyes.

That night, I switched over to Fox News just to see what their take was. Coincidentally, Hurricane Matthew happened to be skirting Americas southeastern Atlantic coast. On Fox, correspondents were going wild about this weather event, almost as if no one at the network had even heard of Access Hollywood. Or Donald Trump.

Like the hurricane, the Access Hollywood recording appeared only to have gently brushed the lives of Trumps supporters before drifting out to sea.

But now its circled back, mainly because Trump himself wont let it die. Amid all the commotion about Matt Lauer, Al Franken, Garrison Keillor, Roy Moore and scores of other sexual harassment scandals, its almost as if the president simply couldnt stand not being the center of attention. Trump started telling White House aides, according to The New York Times and Washington Post, that the Access Hollywood recording might have been faked. It might not have been Trump.

Well, thats just downright crazy. During the campaign, Trump acknowledged and apologized for it. Speaking of crazy, Trumps resumption of irrationality on this issue is happening just as the nations psychologists and psychiatrists are locked in their own debate about whether the president is mentally unfit for this office.

I decided to devote our op-ed pages last Friday to a pro/con discussion first published in The National Psychologist newspaper between John Gartner, a 28-year veteran of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, and Nancy Mroczek, a behavioral psychologist and neuropsychologist in Boston.

Soon after the two pieces were posted online, I received a call from Mroczek, who is a staunch and outspoken Trump defender. Gartner argues, along with thousands of other professionals in the field, that the president shows clear signs of being psychologically unfit.

But I was more interested in Mroczeks defense of the president. I told her I was disappointed that she hadnt used her opportunity to defend the ethics of her profession and state clearly that mental health professionals had no business making armchair diagnoses of Trump.

But the conversation veered into weird territory. Mroczek launched into an impassioned defense of Trump. She lauds him as a male with testicular fortitude.

But as a professional, I asked her, how do you explain Trump denying the very recordings in which he stated in unequivocal terms that, as a star, he was allowed to kiss women without asking for permission and to grab them by the pussy.

My mouth dropped open when Mroczek responded, Oh, do you think those women go running away screaming when he grabs them by the pussy? No, they say  (and here she alters her voice to mimic the deep, seductive, come-hither, lilting voice of a woman who welcomes having her crotch grabbed by a star) No, they say, Hi Don.

The clear gist of her comment was that those women want it.

I followed up this week with a confirmation email to Mroczek. She responded that she absolutely DID say the hi don thing. So she meant it.

During our phone conversation, I had asked about Trumps history of walking into beauty pageant dressing rooms when he knew the contestants would be naked. Trump took pleasure in catching them in various states of undress.

Mroczek disputes having answered that question. But she did, and her answer was just as outrageous as her Hi Don remark. But Ill leave it out since she disputes it.

Im not trying to embarrass her with a gotcha quote. My main interest is in understanding how Trumps base supporters  especially women  rationalize what they know to be unacceptable behavior by the man they elected president. Mroczek isnt some backwoods, unemployed coal miner who gets her news off Twitter or from the gossip mill at the local bar. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology. Shes an enlightened, informed, highly educated person.

But she reflects an apparently prevalent belief that women in certain lines of work, such as show business (a sexually colluding industry in Mroczeks terms), have no problem being groped if the offender is rich and famous. Trump is the victim here, she has written.

If someone of Mroczeks professional stature is willing to embrace such a bizarre rationale, does that help explain how millions of Trump supporters could ignore his disgusting behavior and vote for him anyway? Or support Republican Roy Moores U.S. Senate bid in Alabama? In these voters minds, its the victims who are in the wrong, never their political heroes.

To them, Trump is absolutely mentally fit for office. But I still have to wonder: If attacking women isnt a step too far to merit their turning against him, what is?
Once upon a time, Missouri gun-rights activists proudly upheld this states right to pass and enforce its own laws. If you didnt like them, well, you were free to move to another state. That concept of states rights used to be a bedrock philosophy of the Republican Party in its campaign against federal overreach.

Now, Republicans arent so sure that states know whats best for themselves, and maybe a whole lot of federal intrusion might be the best way to go. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives kneeled to pressure from the National Rifle Association and approved a bill that would allow federal law to supersede the ability of individual states to enforce their own gun laws.

Six Democrats supported the bill and 14 Republicans  perhaps mindful of being labeled hypocrites  voted against it. The bill, HR 38, or the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, effectively allows states like Missouri with the loosest gun laws to impose their will on states that impose tighter restrictions.

Missouri and Kansas are among the 12 states that allow permitless concealed carry, which means qualified adults can buy a handgun, conceal it, and under this bill go to any public place the law allows in other states, no questions asked. Illinois requires a permit. But under HR 38, Missouri would get to impose its laws on the people of Illinois, like it or not.

Although the NRA argues that Second Amendment rights should apply uniformly throughout the land, different states have conflicting interpretations. Kansas, for one, expresses specific concerns about the existence of armed militias referenced in the Second Amendment. Kansas law states clearly: The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security, but standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be tolerated.

In other words, Kansas specifically reserves the right to add clarity where the Constitution is too vague. Other states, such as California, impose far more restrictions on gun ownership, choosing to interpret the Second Amendments reference to a well-regulated militia as meaning that the right to bear arms is not absolute.

But neighboring Arizona, like Missouri, seems to embrace a philosophy of the more guns, the better. Under HR 38, California would have to honor Arizonas concealed-carry laws. The law also would even allow qualified out-of-state gun owners to carry concealed firearms in school zones of states they are visiting. Its a law enforcers nightmare.

Senate Republicans acknowledge this bill probably wouldnt pass in their chamber, especially since memories of recent gun massacres in Nevada and Texas are still fresh on the minds of their constituents.

The NRA is pressing its luck. American voters tolerance is wearing thin for the mass bloodshed that accompanies looser gun laws. Thinner still is their tolerance for hypocrisy.
A Davenport woman is accused of helping to bilk more than $35,000 out of the grandparent of a prison inmate by pretending to be an employee of a law firm representing the inmate, Davenport police said.

Audrey Elaine Slyter, 30, is charged with one count of felony ongoing criminal activity, felony first-degree theft and conspiracy to commit a non-forcible felony.

According to the arrest affidavits filed by Davenport Police Detective Jason Gillaspie, from Feb. 14 through June 23, Slyter and at least two other co-defendants presented themselves as employees of a law firm representing a current Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.

Slyter and her accomplices told the inmates grandparent that money was needed for attorneys fees and for the inmates medical needs that required payment, according to the affidavits.

During the four months of the scam, Slyter and her co-conspirators received 20 checks totaling $35,875.87 from the victim, according to the affidavits.

Neither Slyter nor her accomplices are members of any law firm, and none of the funds obtained were used for the victims grandson.

Police are working on filing charges against Slyters co-defendants.

Slyter was arrested early Wednesday by Davenport police.

She was being held Wednesday night in the Scott County Jail on $40,000 bond cash or surety.
Faye Lawrence, a Kineton native, gives her acceptance speech for best Female Presenter at the Student Radio Awards held at the O2 Arena in London.

A FORMER pupil of Stratford Girls Grammar School was recently awarded the Best Female Presenter at the Student Radio Association Awards.

Faye Lawrence, aged 21, received the award on 9th November at the O2 Arena in London.

She said: It was a huge surprise, but once that wore off I was really proud of myself. The quality of some of the entries that I was up against was so high and it feels really great to be recognised by the industry-level judges.

She received the award for her work with student radio while attending Leeds University. She graduated in July 2017 with a degree in English Literature and Theatre Studies. Last year she also won the Kevin Greening Award for Creativity. She currently works at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Denes Farkas/iStock/Thinkstock(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) -- Mecklenburg County, North Carolina will not pay ransomware criminals $23,000 to unlock many of the countys applications that have been frozen since Monday, county officials said in a release Wednesday afternoon.



I am confident that our backup data is secure and we have the resources to fix this situation ourselves, County Manager Dena Diorio said in a statement on the county's website. It will take time, but with patience and hard work, all of our systems will be back up and running as soon as possible.



The statement said it would take several days to fix the problem using backup data from before the incident to "rebuild the applications from scratch." Systems involving Health and Human Services, the court system and Land Use and Environmental Services are top priority, according to the statement.



It was going to take almost as long to fix the system after paying the ransom as it does to fix it ourselves, Diorio said in the statement. And there was no guarantee that paying the criminals was a sure fix.



Earlier, Diorio said there was no indication any data had been lost or personal information compromised. She said the ransomware was a new strain called a "lockscript," which appears to have originated in Iran or Ukraine, and affected 48 of the county's 500 servers.



She said the county had reached out to the cyber-criminals, who had demanded a ransom of two bitcoins (about $23,000), through a third-party cyber-security firm and decided against making the payoff. She said the county acted quickly to shut down services to prevent the spread of the virus after it was discovered. The statement added county offices are open and affected departments are using "alternative processes" to conduct business.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
MASON CITY | Interim City Administrator Kevin Jacobson assured the City Council and the public Tuesday night that the G8 proposal for a downtown hotel is "consistent" with the proposal offered by Gatehouse Mason City LLC.

"It is in the same location (Southbridge south parking lot), with hotel, skywalk, convention area and museum. Nothing has changed," he said.

Mayor Eric Bookmeyer asked Jacobson for the clarification at Tuesday night's council meeting.

He said there had been some confusion in the community, apparently because G8 had proposed a hotel last year in the parking lot west of City Hall, a plan that never panned out.

Phillip Chodur of G8 sued the city and the Chamber of Commerce for obstructing his plans. In his latest proposal, he agreed to drop his lawsuit if the council approved his plan.

The lawsuit remained active as of Wednesday evening, according to court records.

Bookmeyer asked Jacobson to clarify G8's proposal, so people know that the plan remains for the hotel to be in the Southbridge lot "and there is no ambiguity about it."

The city had been working with Gatehouse on the downtown proposal for several months. When Gatehouse made several changes in the proposed development agreement with the city, that opened a 30-day window in which other proposals could be made.

G8 submitted a plan minutes before the deadline last month. The council considered its proposal "competitive." That set up a "bid-off" Nov. 27 at which time both developers could reshape their bids to try to get an edge on the other.

That night, on Jacobson's recommendation, the council voted 5-0 to go with G8, primarily because of the savings to taxpayers its bid represented.

Jacobson told the council Tuesday night G8 is working with LiveOak Bank in North Carolina on financing, and with First Citizens Bank in Mason City, which has expressed interest but has not committed support.

Also, he said, meetings are planned to work out a timeline to meet the requirement of the hotel being built by Dec. 31, 2019.

On Dec. 15, Jacobson, Bookmeyer and Steven Van Steenhuyse, director of development services, will go to Des Moines to update the Iowa Economic Development Authority on the latest developments.

The city is seeking up to $10 million in state funding through the Iowa Reinvestment Act to help leverage a $38 million downtown renovation plan that includes the hotel, the conference center in The Music Man Square, a performing arts pavilion and an ice arena/multipurpose center.
CHARLES CITY | Charles City police have arrested a man in connection with items they say were stolen from a gravesite.

Police announced the arrest on their Facebook page about four hours after the initial post Thursday morning asking for the publics help in locating a suspect.

Officers found the subject with the help of social media (all of you. Thanks!) and the stolen items were found at a residence in the 500 block of Hulin St., the post said.

Police took a report of unspecified items stolen from a grave at Riverside Cemetery. According to police, the reporting party had installed a camera and caught a person on camera stealing Christmas lights.

Terry Brandt, 43, of Charles City, was arrested and charged with two counts of fifth-degree theft and one count of possession of stolen property, due to an item stolen from a cemetery in the county.

Police say additional charges are pending as the investigation continues.

Numerous items were also recovered from homes in the 200 block of Ferguson Street, the 100 block of Hulin Street and the 400 block of North Jackson Street, police say.

Police said the items they recovered appear to have been taken from graves in Charles City and Floyd County.

If you or your family are missing something, contact Captain Brandon Franke at 641-228-3366.

Describe what you are missing and we will see if we recovered it, the post said. We would like to get the items back to the owners.

Previous story.

CHARLES CITY | Charles City police are asking for the public's help in identifying a man who allegedly stole items from a cemetery gravesite.

The van in the back of the photo is possibly the one he came to the cemetery in, police said in a Facebook post.

Police said the photos depict a man removing items from a gravesite.

Those with information should call Officer Bilharz at 641-228-3366.
MASON CITY | A Mason City man will head to trial for a second-degree robbery charge from an incident in late September.

Armando Ismeal Ramon, 18, was charged after he and co-defendant Gunnar Flores, allegedly assaulted and stole $3,500 and a wallet from a person, causing bodily injury, in the 700 block of North Commercial Alley at around 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 30.

The two also allegedly assaulted and stole $600 in cash, a wallet, cell phone and belt from a second person, causing bodily injury.

Ramons trial is scheduled for January 23, 2018, at 9:30 a.m. in the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse.

 Steve Bohnel
MASON CITY | A Mason City man will head to trial after law enforcement officials said they found him with more than five grams of methamphetamine during a traffic stop Oct. 19.

Eric Thomas Hart, 28, was charged with possession with intent to deliver meth over five grams, failure to affix a drug stamp, failure to have a valid drivers license and possession of drug paraphernalia. According to court documents, law enforcement found two bags of meth on Hart, estimated at two ounces. They also found more meth after searching his car, a hypodermic needle and a scale, according to court documents.

Hart pleaded not guilty on Nov. 27 to the above charges and waived his right to a speedy trial. His trial is scheduled for Feb. 13, 2018, at 1:30 p.m. in the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse.

 Steve Bohnel
MASON CITY | Praising his work so far as interim city administrator, the City Council on Tuesday doubled the pay increase Kevin Jacobson will receive in that role.

Jacobson, the city's finance director, earns $119,849 in that role. When he was named interim city administrator in October, the council agreed to pay him an extra $26,000 through March 31, 2018, ending earlier if a new administrator is hired before then.

On recommendation of Mayor Eric Bookmeyer, the council approved an additional $26,000 for him.

Bookmeyer thanked him for the added tasks he has taken on. "You and your staff have saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions," he said.

Councilman Travis Hickey, speaking after the mayor, told Bookmeyer, "You stole my thunder" as he too praised Jacobson for his work.

Jacobson led city staffers and the City Council through the process that led the council to choose G8 Development as the downtown hotel developer over Gatehouse Mason City LLC, which had been negotiating with the city for several months.

Mason City Council approval of G8 follows emotional meeting MASON CITY | The Mason City Council's approval Monday night of G8 Development for the downto

G8 submitted a proposal minutes before the deadline last month which the council determined was competitive. Jacobson then oversaw a "bid-off" between the two developers that resulted in final bids from each of them.

On Jacobson's recommendation, the council went with G8 after he pointed out many areas of savings with the G8 proposal.

Jacobson also dealt with a situation that resulted in former Fire Chief Al Dyer being placed on paid administrative leave for circumstances which the city has never disclosed. Dyer subsequently resigned.

In connection with that, the council on Tuesday approved the appointment of Deputy Fire Chief Doug Janssen as interim chief and raised his salary from $90,625 to $94,625, retroactive to Nov. 20. Janssen will serve as interim chief until a new chief is hired.
Farmer confidence in New Zealand has dropped in the final quarter of 2017, having tumbled 41 per cent in the past six months on the back of political uncertainty.

Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller says the latest Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey shows horticulturalists have experienced the biggest drop in net confidence.

As the MP for Bay of Plenty, Im really concerned that horticulture  the backbone of our local region  is losing confidence so rapidly, says Todd.

This is even more concerning when viewed in the context of the economy the Labour government inherited  a high performing economy that was firing on all cylinders.

He believes the government has taken something that wasnt broken and tried to fix it.

Now look at the result. I can understand why confidence has dropped and I dont see it improving any time soon when I look at their current trajectory. Huge drops in immigration will not serve our regions interests, particularly kiwifruit.

When you combine this with the planned restructuring of employment law, which will significantly lift costs and compliance, there are only headaches ahead for our small businesses.
Ready to meet two cruise ships today was Alex Robinson, who has just turned three years old. Out of bed early, he was down at Salisbury Wharf to welcome in the Noordam followed soon after by the Regatta.

The Noordam, registered in the Netherlands has a 82897 gross tonnage, is 286m long and has 1865 passengers and 819 crew members on board. It arrived after dawn from Auckland and leaves at 5pm for Napier.

The Regatta, registered in the Marshall Islands is 181m long, is carrying 824 passengers and has a gross tonnage of 30277. It arrived from Wellington this morning and leaves Tauranga for Auckland at 4.15pm.

Alex says he hasnt seen a cruise ship before, that today is his first day. He didnt think he would go home for breakfast after the Noordam and Regatta had arrived.

Im going to wait for another big cruise ship, says Alex. If any more are coming in I can stay and watch.
Dense mats of potentially toxic algal species have been found at five sites around Lake Taupo, prompting a warning for the public to avoid swimming in affected areas and any contact with algae blooms that may be on shore.

After receiving reports from the public of algae blooms, Waikato Regional Council scientists collected a number of algae samples on Tuesday and again yesterday from five sites.

Testing overnight by NIWA scientists has confirmed the presence of potentially toxic algal species, including Phormidium, at areas within Five Mile Bay, Acacia Bay, the main lake front in Taupo, Whakaipo Bay and Kinloch Beach.

The algae blooms are generally in water from the height of the ankle and up to the waist. However, they will shift depending on water flows and wind, so well continue to test and monitor these areas," says Regional council water scientist, Dr Eloise Ryan.

It was windy when we collected samples at the lake yesterday, which helped to disperse the algae blooms. But weve had reports from our Taupo-based staff of dense mats forming in the calmer conditions yesterday.

The good news is that temperatures are signalled to lower during the day and overnight, and rain combined with the predicted wind may help to slow the algal growth and disperse future blooms.

Waikato Regional Council water scientist, Dr Eloise Ryan, examining the algal samples.

Based on the test results to date, Toi Te Ora Public Health, Medical Officer of Health, Dr Neil de Wet, has issued a health warning.

People are advised not to paddle, wade, swim, or participate in any recreational activity that might involve any direct contact with the algal mats or swallowing of affected lake water.

Parents should ensure young children do not come into contact with algal mats in the water or on the shoreline.

Dogs are especially vulnerable, so people should keep their pets and livestock out of the water and off the shoreline in the known affected areas or where the algae is visible.

Contact with algal mats can cause symptoms such as skin rashes, stomach upsets and respiratory symptoms such as triggering of asthmatic attacks. If material from algal mats is swallowed it can cause neurological symptoms such as numbness and weakness, visual symptoms and, in severe case, affect the ability to breathe," says Neil.

The algal mats can come free and accumulate on the shoreline or float on the surface. While there are five areas currently known to be affected, due to the weather conditions the blooms could disperse or occur in other areas of the lake, so the community should be vigilant and check for signs of algal mats before entering the water in other areas.

Toxic algal species often multiply to high levels during periods of warm, sunny weather. In lakes they can form extensive green to black-coloured mats that settle on rocks and the lake floor. Significant clumps sometimes break off and float free, collecting on the waters edge.

Topia Rameka, CEO of the Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board said, Taupo Moana is a dynamic ecosystem and the last algal bloom event we experienced was in 2003  the priority now, as it was then, is the safety and welfare of our community.

With the Ironman 70.3 Taupo being held this weekend, organisers were made aware of the warning issued yesterday.

Phormidium under a microscope.

Meanwhile, Taupo District Council has comprehensive monitoring in place to ensure the quality and safety of drinking water at all times.

There is currently NO risk to the water supply and the frequency of testing at water intakes will be increased as a precaution until the situation resolves.

Waikato Regional Council monitors the waterways throughout the year, but the frequency increases to weekly in summer as the potential for an occurrence of algae blooms grows.

While algal blooms occur naturally in hot and sunny weather, they also depend on other factors, such as the amount of available plant nutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen within a lake.

Members of the public who notice algal blooms in other areas can report them to the regional council on 0800 800 401.

For health advice, people should call the Healthline on 0800 611 116. For advice on drinking water and beach access call the district council on 0800 ASK TDC (0800 275 832).
In todays weather forecast we are expecting it to be cloudy this morning with a chance of showers. Fine spells developing this afternoon and northeast breezes.

Its a one-clothing layer day today with a high of 23 and an overnight low of 17 degrees.

High tide is at 11.10am and low tide is at 5.30pm. Sea temperature is 20 degrees. Theres an average sea swell of .9m. Sunset tonight is at 8.23pm.

If youre going fishing today the best fish bite time is between 4.30pm and 6.30pm.

This day in NZ history in 1941 New Zealand declared war on Japan. New Zealands declaration followed the surprise attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japan also attacked Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaya.

In 1942 on this day there was a deadly fire at Seacliff Mental Hospital. The fire that swept through a locked ward of the Seacliff Mental Hospital, north of Dunedin, killed 37 female patients.

In world history on this day in 1660 the first Shakespearian female actor to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) made her debut as Desdemona. In 1948 the United Nations approved the recognition of South Korea. In 1980 John Lennon was shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building. In 2010 the Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passed the planet Venus.

Our inspirational quote today is from Captain Donald Williams who said "The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."

To get involved in activities and events, please check out our Whats On page.

Have a great day
An Opotiki man has been found not guilty of intentionally wounding another man with a machete.

Colin Tutbury, 66, is one of two men accused of a number of violent offences at a coastal Opotiki area including wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Tutbury was found guilty of the lesser charge of wounding with reckless disregard at the end of a one week trial in the High Court at Tauranga.

He appeared alongside Wayne Matchitt, 51, who also faced charges for similar violent offences.

In her opening earlier last week, Crown prosecutor Hayley Sheridan told the jury about an approach made by the accused on two fishers.

She says Matchitt and Tutbury accused the couple of trespass, desecrating the beach and made demands to see their catch.

The Crown says this approach was the catalyst to a number of other violence offences including a machete attack on local resident, Jeremy Johns.

According to the crown, Jeremy became involved in an altercation with the accused after his partner, Melissa Franklin, returned home having witnessed the approach on the two fishers.

Melissa claims to have witnessed the altercation on the beach and to have approached the accused, and as a result was then physically assaulted, harassed and threatened with rape by the two men.

After becoming aware of this, her partner Jeremy returned to the beach, where an altercation has then occurred.

She says during the altercation, Tutbury presented a machete from his vehicle and struck Jeremy, causing a 10cm laceration to his arm.

He was found not guilty of common assault against Melissa Franklin.

Matchitt was found not guilty of common assault and threatening to kill in relation to this altercation.

Both men also face a number of charges related to the two fishers, Robert Pole and Tracy Gallagher.

This interaction led to a number of acts of physical and verbal abuse, including the complainants being shoved, threatened with violence and victim to a number of racial slurs, on the basis that they were trespassers desecrating private whenua, says Hayley.

Both were found guilty of all charges relating to these victims including intimidation and assault with intent to injure, with two additional counts of threatening behaviour for Matchitt.

The men are set to appear in the Tauranga High Court for sentencing on February 2.
MASON CITY | A new scholarship will provide up to four semesters of free tuition for qualifying high school and home school graduates at NIACC, the community college announced Thursday.

The North Iowa Area Community College Promise scholarship will be available to May 2018 Area 2 (NIACC's service area) graduates who meet the eligibility criteria, as well as current NIACC students meeting second-year participation criteria.

The scholarship was made possible through a donation by an unnamed North Iowa couple, NIACC President Steve Schulz said in a news release. More than 300 North Iowa students are expected to benefit from the scholarship each year.

As the cost of attending college continues to climb, we know the financial burden can impact a students ability to enroll or complete their degree," NIACC Director of Institutional Advancement Molly Knoll said in the release. "The NIACC Promise will ease that burden for many North Iowa students."

The college says the scholarship is a last-dollar award; it will be applied to a students account after all other federal, state, outside and other NIACC aid/scholarships is applied. It is renewable for up to four semesters.

Eligibility criteria for NIACC Promise includes:

 Graduation from a NIACC district high school or home school within the service area.

 An expected family contribution of $3,000 or less, as determined by FAFSA application.

 Full-time enrollment  minimum 12 credits per semester  at NIACC in fall 2018.

 Completing four hours of community service each semester.

The deadline to apply is March 1, 2018.

Visit www.niacc.edu/niaccpromise for more information on the eligibility criteria or contact Enrollment Advisor Brittney Jost at brittney.jost@niacc.edu or 641-422-4422.
The British company Hammerson, which owns major shopping and retail centres in the UK including Bicester Village, The Bullring in Birmingham, Brent Cross (London), Highcross (Leicester) and many more, has announced that it has plans to acquire the Intu group, one of its biggest competitors, to create a giant property and development business worth billions of pounds.

After the merger of these two businesses, which are among the top property companies in Europe, the new group will continue with plans to build on the Costa del Sol, where Intu has already designed a project for the biggest shopping and leisure centre on the Mediterranean.

This complex, to the north of the Palacio de Congresos in Torremolinos will be very important for the new company, which will be called Hammerson but will still use the Intu brand on its signs in the retail centres.

The merger will make the group the second largest listed on the stock market in Europe

The retail and leisure centre in Torremolinos will have a circus, big wheel, ski slope and climbing area

Representatives of Hammerson say that the Costa del Sol is a growing region which is of great interest to developers. The forthcoming merger will make the new group the second largest property company listed on the stock market in Europe, after the French Unibail-Rodamco.

Hammerson and Intu believe this move will expand their possibilities of growth in Spain and Ireland, and will enable them to respond to the rapidly changing preferences of consumers. In Spain, Intu owns 50 per cent of the Xadadu (Madrid), Puerto Venecia (Zaragoza) and Parque Principado (Asturias) commercial centres, and it has spent months finalising its new project in Torremolinos, where it already owns land.

Intu's concept of developing to adapt to new consumer habits and attract clients, in a sector where online shopping is gaining ground, involves the construction of 'shopping resorts', large centres with a combination of shops and open-air areas with many different attractions.

In Torremolinos, as well as the commercial areas, which will take up about one-third of the space, the company plans to incorporate a resident circus, a big wheel, a wind tunnel, a wave pool, climbing area, a lake, a ski slope, a large screen and an aquarium.

Hammerson has not said whether it will modify the plans drawn up by Intu, although sources at the company say that as a larger group it will be in a more favourable position to carry out different projects.

In the document issued this week, Hammerson said that the Torremolinos project will be similar to some of Intu's most successful shopping centres, such as Merry Hill, Lakeside and Watford.

The new group will have a pan-European portfolio of retail and leisure assets valued at 23.7 billion euros.
An estimated 45,000 people marched in Brussels on Thursday in support of Catalan independence. Protesters were seeking to raise awareness across Europe of their demands and what they see as repression from Spain.

So far the European Union, based in the city, has rejected all approaches from the Catalan independence movement. The ousted regional president, Carles Puigdemont was at the head of the rally.
Rich Fury | AP

by Geoff Herbert | gherbert@syracuse.com

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Jeffrey Tambor hasn't quit 'Transparent'

Jeffrey Tambor denies quitting "Transparent," despite previously responding to allegations of sexual harassment allegations by saying "I don't see how I can return" to the Amazon TV series. A rep now says the 73-year-old actor meant that "given the toxic atmosphere and the politicization on the set, it's very hard for him to see how he can possibly return. But no final decision for next year has been made, either by Jeffrey or by Amazon." Tambor, also known for roles in "Arrested Development" and "The Hangover," has played transgender character Maura Pfefferman since 2014 and won two Emmys for the role.

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Sia responds to criticism

A British newspaper has criticized Sia for constantly hiding from fame with huge wigs while letting a young Maddie Ziegler take the spotlight. The former "Dance Moms" star, now 15 years old, has appeared in six Sia music videos. "I do check in with Maddie weekly about whether she wants this, and assure her if she ever wants it to stop it stops," Sia wrote on Twitter. "Maddie was already famous when I discovered her, but I have certainly expanded her exposure and feel responsible for that... I feel very protective of her and my goal is to empower her in whatever choices she makes. Some would argue a teenager can't or shouldn't be charged with making sound choices for themselves and so I do try to choose the best for her always. But I think this is an important conversation."

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Ryan Reynolds to star in 'Detective Pikachu' movie

A new "Pokemon" movie is on the way, and Ryan Reynolds -- yes, as in "Deadpool" -- will star as the voice of the titular "Detective Pikachu." The live-action film will feature a CGI version of the cute monster opposite human characters played by Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton, investigating a kidnapping. "Detective Pikachu," directed by Rob Letterman ("Goosebumps"), has no release date yet.

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Ex-radio DJ sends Taylor Swift a symbolic $1

Former radio DJ David Mueller has mailed a Sacagawea dollar to Taylor Swift after being found guilty of groping her during a photo op. Mueller, who was ordered to pay a symbolic $1 for lifting up her skirt and grabbing her butt, told the AP he sent her a coin with the Native American figure on it last week. "I mean, If this is all about women's rights...It's a little poke at them, a little bit," he said in August. "I mean, I think they made this into a publicity stunt, and this is my life." Swift, meanwhile, got the last laugh and was recently honored as one of the #MeToo "Silence Breakers" for Time's Person of the Year. "I figured that if he would be brazen enough to assault me under these risky circumstances and high stakes, imagine what he might do to a vulnerable, young artist if given the chance," Swift told the magazine, explaining why she reported his assault that got him fired from a Denver radio station.

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'WarGames' reboot teaser

Remember Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy in the 1983 hacker movie "WarGames?" A reboot is coming out that promises to give fans a 21st century update as an "experimental interactive series." SlashFilm reports MGM and interactive video company Eko teamed up with HerStory creator Sam Barlow to allow viewers to somehow respond when the AI computer asks "Shall we play a game?" The new #WarGames, which focuses on "modern espionage, hacking and government conspiracy," will debut on Eko's website in 2018.

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AM Buzz is a weekday morning feature on syracuse.com where we'll post the latest in viral videos, trending topics, celebrity gossip and entertainment news.
BALDWINSVILLE, N.Y. -- New York State Police have arrested an 18-year-old man from Baldwinsville for allegedly having sexual contact with a child under age 11.

Richard Curtis is facing several felony charges, including one count of first-degree criminal sexual act, three counts of possession of a sexual performance by a child and one count of promoting the sexual performance of a child.

A state police news alert did not provide any details about where the alleged crimes occurred. Police said the criminal sexual contact occurred in 2016.

Curtis was arraigned at the Town of Lysander court and was sent to the Onondaga County Justice Center on $5,000 cash bail or $10,000 bond.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Ithaca police have released photos of a masked suspect who made off with cash after a bank robbery two days ago.

Police ask anyone with information about the robbery to give the department a call. Investigators determined that the suspect was near the bank for 10 minutes before entering to rob it, according to a news release.

The man held a handgun, wore a mask and demanded that the teller put money into a white, plastic bag he was holding.

The man entered the Tompkins County Trust Company at 775 S. Meadow St shortly before 4:40 p.m. on Dec. 5.

Police described him as a 5-foot, 10-inch black man in a dark blue or black hooded sweatshirt, with dark blue jeans and white sneakers. He also was described as having a thin build and a soft-spoken voice.

The suspect fled on foot from the bank with an undisclosed amount of cash, heading south behind businesses on Elmira Road, police said.

The department is asking anyone with information to call the department's dispatch line at (607)272-3245. The photos are below courtesy Ithaca PD.
MASON CITY | Two people were injured in a single-vehicle rollover south of Mason City Wednesday afternoon, according to law enforcement.

The Iowa State Patrol said in a news release a 2001 Toyota 4Runner was eastbound on the Avenue of the Saints about 2:04 p.m. when the vehicle went onto the gravel shoulder and the driver overcorrected.

The SUV rolled several times near the 185 mile marker before coming to rest in the far eastbound ditch, the State Patrol said. The driver was ejected.

A 36-year-old and 18-year-old were transported by Mason City Fire medics. Their identities have not been released, according to the State Patrol, and their conditions are not available.

The Cerro Gordo County Sheriff's Office, Mercy Air Med and Iowa DOT Maintenance also provided assistance at the scene.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A Liverpool woman cheated the worker's compensation system out of $6,100 by falsely claiming she was not working while holding down two jobs, according to New York State Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott.

Shana M. Klouda, also known as Shana Perry, 27, of Liverpool, pleaded guilty today in Onondaga County Court to the workers' compensation crime of fraudulent practices, a felony. Klouda paid $6,150 in restitution and will be sentenced Feb. 1.

Klouda was injured in 2015 while working as a bus monitor for Oneida city schools.

She told medical providers and the workers' compensation board she was not working after she began receiving benefits from the injury. She also filed paperwork with the Oneida school district's insurance company indicating she was out of work.

But Klouda was employed as a day care provider in a child care center near Syracuse and as a clerk with U-Haul, according to Scott.

An investigation found Klouda received workers' comp benefits she was not entitled to between November 2015 and August of 2016.

Scott said Klouda "... shamelessly abused a benefit system that honest New York employees rely on to make ends meet, all so she could fraudulently supplement her own income."
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - State transportation officials today said they are working to expand the DeWitt rail yard controlled by CSX into an "inland port,'' a decision that appears to put an end to more ambitious plans put forth in 2015 by regional business leaders.

The Department of Transportation today released a long-awaited financial study that identifies the DeWitt rail yard as the "only viable site'' for a Central New York inland port.

State officials say they are negotiating with CSX to expand the existing DeWitt yard so that 30,000 containers a year can be sent by rail between Central New York and ships at the Port of New York/New Jersey.

The project is expected to lower shipping costs by $500 per container, boosting local agriculture and other sectors, the DOT report said. But the plan falls short of the ambitious inland port envisioned in 2015 by the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council.

That proposal -- a $100 million rail hub surrounded by warehouses and light manufacturing -- was part of the "CNY Rising" plan that won $500 million in state money for economic development. The project was expected to create up to 2,000 new jobs, according to the Regional Economic Development Council.

But neither of two sites identified by the regional council - in Jamesville and Camillus - was likely to succeed, according to the DOT study released today. The report was prepared by Resource Systems Group, a consultant from Vermont.

The Jamesville site faced heavy opposition from community residents. And the Camillus site could work only if CSX granted access to another railroad, the NYS&W. Resource Systems Group said CSX is unlikely to grant such access.

"The CSX DeWitt Yard appears to be the only viable site for a CNY (inland port) because no other proposed site has a commitment for rail service,'' the report said.

The enhancement of the DeWitt rail yard will allow containers to be transferred between trucks and rail cars, which will carry the cargo to and from the ocean port.

Resource Systems Group said the development is likely to spur job growth related to imports and exports, but the consultant did not estimate by how much. The report noted that there could also be some job losses in the trucking industry due to less truck transportation to the seacoast.

The DeWitt yard is abutted by wetlands, limiting the amount of warehousing or other development that could spring up on site. That made it less desirable in the eyes of the Regional Economic Development Council, which pinned hopes for new jobs on warehouses and other operations that would be attracted to the hub.

The regional council modeled its proposal on the Virginia Inland Port in Front Royal, Va., which has attracted 8,000 jobs and $750 million in private investment. The facility took a few years to attract warehouses, but eventually companies including Home Depot, Kohl's, Rite Aid, Kraft Foods, Ford, GE Lighting, H.P. Hood, Rubbermaid and Red Bull opened distribution centers there.

But there is no demand for new warehouse space currently in Central New York, said Ron Epstein, assistant commissioner of the transportation department. If the enhanced DeWitt yard spurs new demand in the future, it could be met by new or existing warehouses in the region, he said.

"The job potential isn't lost,'' Epstein said. "You're just not building brand new infrastructure.''

Before the DeWitt project can go forward, state officials will have to negotiate a contract with CSX, Epstein said. In exchange for a commitment from the railroad to provide reliable container service, the state will provide funding to help build container storage areas, bring in two portable lifts, and enhance security at the site, he said.

Money for the deal will come out of $40 million the state legislature budgeted in 2015 to enhance rail connections in Central New York. Epstein declined to estimate the cost of the DeWitt project until negotiations with CSX conclude, but said it will be "significantly less than $40 million.''

By contrast, "CNY Rising'' envisioned a new rail hub that would cost about $100 million to develop. In addition to the money from the state budget, the regional council earmarked $40 million for the project out of its $500 million state grant from the Upstate Revitalization Initiative.

The $40 million from the URI likely will be reallocated to other projects. State economic development officials were not immediately available for comment.

The state's endorsement of the DeWitt project is a victory for 3Gi CNYIP, a Syracuse company that controls about 200 acres of land near the CSX yard. Company officials, who advocated for the DeWitt site for years, have said they plan to build and operate specialized warehousing to support the inland port.

The Regional Economic Development Council had partnered with the Port of Oswego Authority on its inland port plan. Two years ago, the port authority commissioned a Draft Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate potential sites, including DeWitt, Jamesville and Camillus.

That DEIS was never released publicly. According to a May 2016 executive summary of the DEIS obtained by syracuse.com, the Camillus and Jamesville sites were rated higher than the DeWitt rail yard, in part because they had more land available for expansion.

Epstein said state transportation officials had no involvement with the DEIS.

Assuming state officials can make a deal with CSX, the next step would be to obtain environmental and site approvals for the project, Epstein said.

"It is already a rail yard, so we don't see there being any significant impact,'' he said.

Contact reporter Tim Knauss | email | Twitter | 315-470-3023

Inland Port Study by Tim Knauss on Scribd
SYRACUSE, NY -- For more than 80 years the goal of the annual Old Newsboys Hope for the Holidays fundraiser has always been the same: Every child deserves a gift under the Christmas tree.

Hundreds of volunteers called Old Newsboys will be out hawking special edition newspapers Friday and Saturday to raise money for the Christmas Bureau, which provides gifts, food and other items to needy Onondaga County families.

"Hope for Holidays is a great tradition in our community - 80 years and going strong," said Tim Kennedy, president of Advance Media New York."Hope matters for the more than 3,000 families that benefit from the tremendous generosity in Central New York. So please when you see people out on the street corners -- share a smile, buy a newspaper and give what you can."

Want to donate now? You can do it online

Andrew Sabbaghzadeh, of the Salvation Army, said the Old Newsboys is vital to the Christmas Bureau. The Christmas Bureau is sponsored by the Salvation Army and the United Way of CNY.

"We are very lucky to have these resources in the community," he said.

Sabbaghzadeh said the Christmas Bureau served 6,600 children in 2016. The needs in the community continue to grow, he said.

"Children deserves to have a Christmas morning - a gift to wake up to," he said.

Nancy Kern Eaton, president of United Way of CNY, said the Old Newsboys campaign is an exciting weekend.

"It's fun to see the spirit people have that buy and sell the newspaper," Eaton said.

Old Newsboys was launched in 1932 to raise money to help those in the community who are in need.

The volunteers will be stationed on street corners, stores and gas stations Friday and Saturday hawking newspapers for donations with the same message to the community from the 1930s: "Buy a paper ... give what you can."

The newspapers are donated and all the money collected goes to the Christmas Bureau.

"There's never enough giving to support all the needy kids that we have in Onondaga County," said Tom Brown, chairman of the Old Newsboys sale and The Post-Standard's circulation director. "We're hoping that everyone will be in a generous mood."
By Linda Blackford, Lexington Herald-Leader (TNS)

MOREHEAD, Ky. -- David Ermold, one of the men denied a same-sex marriage license by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in 2015, hopes to challenge her for the clerk's seat next year, he announced Wednesday.

Davis set off an international furor when she denied a marriage license to Ermold and his partner, David Moore, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right for same-sex couples to marry.

Davis, who said providing the license violated her religious beliefs, continued to withhold the license, even after a federal judge ordered her to issue it, and was jailed briefly. The issue was solved when one of her deputies, Brian Mason, agreed to issue licenses, and in 2016 the Kentucky General Assembly established an alternate license.

Mason is still issuing same-sex marriage licenses, he said Wednesday.

"I am running to restore the confidence of the people in our clerk's office and because I believe that the leaders of our community should act with integrity and fairness, and they should put the needs of their constituents first," said Ermold, 43, who teaches English at the University of Pikeville and directs Morehead Pride, a local gay rights organization. "My commitment to Rowan County is to restore professional leadership, fairness, and responsibility to the clerk's office. I will build upon the successes of the past, and I will seek solutions for the challenges we may still face."

Ermold is one of four Democrats seeking the nomination to challenge Davis, who changed her registration from Democrat to Republican in 2015. The others are James L. Jessee, Elwood Caudill and Nashia Fife, according to the Kentucky Office of the Secretary of State.

Davis, who has been married to opposite sex partners four times, has already said she will run for re-election. She has been County Clerk since 2014, although she worked for her mother, who was also clerk, before being elected to the position. Her son, Nathan Davis, also works in the clerk's office.

Davis processed Ermold's paperwork at the clerk's office on Wednesday, where she shook hands with him and said "may the best candidate win," according to The Associated Press.

Ermold said he would bring more professionalism to the clerk's office, which includes not hiring family and friends, and do a better job helping to register voters and facilitate voting.

"The county clerk's office has been in the hands of the same family for almost 35 years," Ermold said. "I think there's' the potential they want to keep it in the family. But everyone should have a fair shot, it should not be something that's handed down from mother to daughter and from daughter to son."

Ermold and Moore married in October, 2015 in Morehead. Ermold has two master's degrees from Morehead State University, and has worked at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College and Maysville Community College. Since 2015, he's helped organize several gay pride events in Morehead.

Davis has become a darling of the religious right. For example, two months ago she traveled to Romania to urge that country to outlaw gay marriage.

Ermold said Davis' position within the religious right is bringing more politics to the job.

Going to Romania, he said, "she's just dragging our people through the mud over and over again," he said. "Our people want to move on."

Jackie Matthews is one of those people. She moved to Kentucky two years ago, then specifically moved to Rowan County so she could marry her wife there last year. She is excited to vote for Ermold and get Davis out of office and joined him at the lightly attended event at Coffeetree Books in downtown Morehead.

"You have to serve all the people, not just the ones you agree with," she said. "David represents everyone."

Ermold said he was also discouraged by politicians who used the Rowan rift to further their candidacies in the presidential primary. He said he's aware that Davis could get a lot of outside help in the campaign, but hopes Rowan voters will recognize the importance of restoring integrity to the office.

"Diversity, inclusion -- none of these things are solely one party issues," he said. "These are issues that are important to all of us."

Like much of Eastern Kentucky, Rowan County has turned from a Democratic county to a Republican one; President Donald Trump won with 58.5 percent of the vote in 2016.

Retired Morehead instructor Joe Sartor said the community is pretty divided over Davis, so he thinks Ermold has a shot. But Morehead resident Bill Roberts said he's one of many true blue supporters of Davis and her stance on gay marriage.

"She does a good job and should be re-elected," he said. "I stand by her 10,000 percent."
MAPLEWOOD, N.J.  An obese squirrel was caught on video stealing gourmet chocolate and lip balm that a family leaves outside as a holiday treat for delivery people.

Michele Boudreaux said on her blog she provides candy, snacks, tissues, hand warmers and other goodies on her doorstep every year. Shes never had any issues before, but this year, her basket was raided within hours of being set outside her home.

The thief seemed to be targeting the priciest stuff, including about 25 squares of Ghirardelli chocolate, she said.

The family set up a surveillance camera to see what was going on and spotted the overweight varmint standing on a step stool, digging through the stash Tuesday.

I mean, this squirrel is so obese  a jolly ol chap  he must be prepping for a decade of winters, Boudreaux wrote.

Her husband tried to chase the squirrel to see where it was hoarding all the treats, but it made a clean getaway.

Boudreaux said she stumbled upon the thieving rodent in the act Wednesday and recorded it taking more chocolate and a Carmex lip balm.

Her family has devised the perfect solution to the problem.

We now have our chocolate in a jar that requires opposable thumbs, she wrote.

The shenanigans brought my family so much joy, she said.

She also put a bowl of treats out for the squirrel Thursday, full of walnuts, popcorn and pumpkin seeds. The rotund rodent showed his pickiness yet again.

He threw all the seeds out on the porch and ate all the other stuff, she said.

Squirrels are seemingly trying to ruin the holiday spirit all over New Jersey this season. Officials in the town of Sea Girt were puzzled last week when wires to the towns Christmas tree and display were found torn. Workers repaired the damage so the tree could be lit on Friday.

Police kept watch over the display and on Saturday posted a photo on Facebook of the culprit  a squirrel.

Police said the naughty rodent was charged with criminal mischief and released on bail.
Start-ups, e-tailing and Chinese mainland opportunities on Forum agenda

Margaret Fong, Executive Director of the HKTDC, speaking at the opening ceremony of Hong Kong Forum.

HONG KONG, Dec 5, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - Asia's newest business opportunities are in focus at the 18th Hong Kong Forum which opened today at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Co-organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and the Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations Worldwide, the event has attracted more than 350 business leaders from 29 countries and regions. Key topics at this year's Forum include start-ups, electronic retailing (e-tailing) and business opportunities on the Chinese mainland.

This year's Forum is participated by representatives from the Chinese mainland as well as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungry, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.

Bay Area and ASEAN trade agreement creating opportunities

At the Forum this morning, HKTDC Executive Director Margaret Fong called 2017 a year of changes. Noting that amid a volatile global political and economic environment, Hong Kong has once again been named the world's freest economy, underscoring the city's standing as a world-leading hub for financial, trade and professional services. Hong Kong's close ties with the mainland have also strengthened its unique role on the world stage. Fong added that the HKTDC is committed to helping SMEs develop opportunities brought about by the Belt and Road Initiative, which was a focus of last year's Forum. In addition to organising missions to countries and regions along the Belt and Road, the HKTDC is actively building new business networks related to the Initiative.

"This year, China has put forward the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area Initiative," said Ms Fong. "The Bay Area will be a world-class city cluster with international competitiveness. It will propel Hong Kong's innovation and technology development, which will make it a leading economic growth engine." Ms Fong added that the free trade agreement recently signed between Hong Kong and ASEAN will further promote Hong Kong's trade. The HKTDC will continue to develop connections with different markets.

Hong Kong: Cradle for start-ups

In recent years, many Hong Kong start-ups have successfully ventured into global markets. At the first seminar this morning, speakers discussed the challenges and opportunities for young entrepreneurs. Jason Chiu, CEO of cherrypicks, Eric Chen, Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Vitargent (International) Biotechnology Limited, and Wesley Ng, CEO and Co-founder, Casetify, examined how Hong Kong's distinctive business environment can help start-ups succeed. They also shared their entrepreneurial experience. Jason Chiu said Hong Kong offers many favourable conditions for start-ups to develop, and encouraged young entrepreneurs to stay true to their style, think globally and not be afraid of failure. He said he is optimistic about the prospects for AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality) and eLearning, and hopes to develop enhanced technical solutions to create a better interactive learning experience for students.

Leveraging Hong Kong's unique advantages to "go out"

With the Belt and Road and Bay Area development expected to generate tremendous opportunities, Hong Kong will see a strengthening of its role as a launch pad for enterprises aspiring to go global. In the second seminar in the morning, the leaders of several renowned mainland enterprises, including Wang Tian Yi, General Manager of China Everbright International Limited, and Shen Weizhong, Director and Executive Vice President of China Mobile International Ltd, examined how mainland companies can leverage Hong Kong's professional services platform to capture market opportunities and to succeed in international markets.

Wang Tian Yi said green industries are playing a more and more important role as China's economy transitions into a "new normal", and that Hong Kong's advantages in professional services can facilitate the development of related industries in the Chinese mainland. He added that Hong Kong is just starting to focus on innovation and technology, and more resources are needed to increase the city's competitiveness in the area. Shen Weizhong said Hong Kong, with its international talent pool, favourable business environment, low tax rates and sound legal system, is the ideal platform for mainland companies to tap into global markets. He said the company will continue to leverage Hong Kong's advantages to support its business expansion worldwide.

Carrying on entrepreneurial acumen

Each year, heavyweight speakers invited to the Forum's luncheon share their views and insights. Today's Luncheon Dialogue with Dreamcatchers invited two young business leaders - Winnie Chiu, President and Executive Director of Dorsett Hospitality International, and Bosco Law, Deputy Chairman & CEO of LAWSGROUP - to share their keys to success and how they have leveraged the experience and wisdom of older generations to sustain development of their family businesses.

Mrs Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR, will be the speaker at the keynote luncheon tomorrow (6 December). She will introduce Hong Kong's latest developments and business policies to participants from around the world. She will also explain how Hong Kong will establish closer cooperative relationships with regional partners to capture the opportunities presented by the new global economic order together.

New Asian e-tailing landscape

The inaugural Asian E-tailing Summit will be held tomorrow (6 December). The event will feature star speakers to comprehensively examine the latest e-tailing developments and trends. Speakers include Dai Feng Jun, General Manager of Hong Kong Suning Commerce Co., Ltd, Yang Tao, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kilimall International Ltd, Giulio Xiloyannis, Managing Director of ZALORA, and Kiril Popov, Senior Analyst of Fung Global Retail and Technology. The event provides a platform for industry professionals and event participants to explore Asian business opportunities.

Chongqing: Important logistics hub

Chongqing is one of China's major industrial bases, serving as a hub for the automotive, military, iron and steel and aluminium industries. The city has been actively developing modern and high-tech industries in recent years. It is also home to factories operated by many major manufacturers of computers and related products, including Taiwan's Foxconn and Inventec, and boasts immense market potential.





Iris Wong, HKTDC's Director of Belt and Road and External Relations, will lead a business delegation to Chongqing to survey the city's investment environment and development prospects. The delegation will include nearly 40 representatives from chambers of commerce from Belt and Road countries, as well as from Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. The group will meet senior Chongqing officials, as well as visit the Lifan Group, the Hong Kong Industrial Park in Chongqing, the Chongqing Logistics City and the Chongqing Tiandi. They will also meet with Hong Kong entrepreneurs in Chongqing and explore cooperation opportunities between Chongqing, Hong Kong and overseas enterprises.

The two-day (5-6 December) Hong Kong Forum is an annual flagship event of the Federation of Hong Kong Business Associations Worldwide. The Federation was set up in 2000 and has a membership of more than 13,000 businesspeople. It has 42 association members from 31 countries and regions around the world. Chile is the new member association joining this year.
Guess what  even objects that don't have any power or electricity running through them can essentially become internet-of-things devices.

How? Well, researchers from the University of Washington have developed a way for 3D-printed plastic objects to communicate via Wi-Fi without the help of a power source whatsoever. This can be done, they've found, with commercially available plastics and Wi-Fi receivers.

Everyday Objects That Can Send Wi-Fi Signals

"Our goal was to create something that just comes out of your 3D printer at home and can send useful information to other devices," said Vikram Iyer, one of the authors of the study, and a doctoral student of electrical engineering at the university.

According to Iyer, the challenge was to create an object that can communicate wirelessly with Wi-Fi using only plastic, a feat that has never been done before.

To achieve this, the researchers 3D-printed springs, gears, and switches, the motions of which could be translated into antenna-transmitted information. For instance, they made an anemometer, a tool used to measure wind speed, then integrated it to a gear. Whenever the gear spins, its teeth make contact with the antenna embedded into the object. The antenna then sends out ambient Wi-Fi signal, which goes to a Wi-Fi receiver to be decoded.

They created other things as well, such as a scale and a flowmeter that can measure water speed.

Possible Real-World Uses

An object that can communicate via Wi-Fi without a power source. Amazing. But so what? How could this be useful? Well, here's an example: the researchers were able to create a detergent bottle with an integrated flowmeter that tracks the amount of detergent inside. When it detects that it's low, it can send out a Wi-Fi signal to order another one.

"As you pour detergent out of a Tide bottle, for instance, the speed at which the gears are turning tells you how much soap is flowing out," said Shyam Gollakota, one of the authors of the study, and an associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. "The interaction between the 3-D printed switch and antenna wirelessly transmits that data."

They were also able to find a way to print iron into 3D objects that, when scanned by a smartphone, shows information about that object.

The researchers are making their work available for all, so that basically anyone will be able to take advantage of these objects at home, provided they have a 3D printer, of course.

Below is a video showing the researchers' work in detail.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NEW YORK, Dec. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VORNADO REALTY TRUST (NYSE:VNO) announces that it has called for redemption all of its $200 million outstanding 6.625% Series G Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares and $150 million of its $270 million outstanding 6.625% Series I Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares on January 4, 2018, at a redemption price of $25 per share, plus accrued and unpaid dividends through the date of redemption. American Stock Transfer & Trust Company LLC is serving as redemption agent.



The Company will incur a charge of $11.1 million in the first quarter of 2018 from the write off of issuance costs relating to the shares being redeemed.

On December 4, 2017 the Company sold $300 million of 5.25% Series M Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares that together with $50 million of its cash will be the source of the funding for these redemptions.

Vornado Realty Trust is a fully-integrated equity real estate investment trust.

Certain statements contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, risks associated with the timing of and costs associated with property improvements, financing commitments and general competitive factors.
Mozilla and Oath are heading to court after the companies filed lawsuits against each other related to the decision to switch the Firefox default search engine from Yahoo to Google.

Mozilla announced that it was dropping Yahoo in favor of Google just as it unveiled the Firefox Quantum, a lightning-fast browser that ironically looks to challenge Google Chrome.

The Mozilla-Yahoo Deal Of 2014

Yahoo, which was purchased earlier this year by Verizon and then combined with AOL to form Oath, signed a contract with Mozilla in 2014 to make it the default search engine for five years. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo at the time, looked to cut into the popularity of rival Google's search engine through the millions of Firefox users. While there remains a user option in Firefox to change the default search engine, the move resulted in Yahoo reaching five-year high search volumes a few months after the agreement.

The contract, however, was very much skewed in Mozilla's favor. Mayer allowed the inclusion of a clause that will allow Mozilla to continue receiving annual payments of $375 million from Yahoo until 2019 if Yahoo was bought by a company that Mozilla does not want to work with. Mozilla was even allowed to walk away from the contract if it wanted to.

Mayer did not think that such a thing would happen, but Yahoo's purchase by Verizon triggered the stipulation. Verizon, a telecommunications company, is not really known for search engines, so it is understandable that Mozilla decided to end the contract with Yahoo.

Firefox Switches To Google, And Chaos Follows

Mozilla decided to switch the Firefox default search engine from Yahoo to Google, while requiring Oath to pay the annual $375 million payment that Yahoo promised.

Oath filed a complaint against Mozilla for what it alleged was an improper termination of the contract between Mozilla and Yahoo. However, Mozilla has now lodged a cross-complaint against Oath, claiming that it only seeks to exercise its rights under the 2014 contract. The terms were lopsided, but that was what Mozilla and Yahoo agreed to three years ago.

Oath believes that the deal should not be honored as it was made by Yahoo's former CEO, and that it does not follow the company's current vision. In addition, $375 million is a massive amount of money, even for Verizon's stature. However, the burden of proof lies on Oath, as it appears to be pretty clear from the contract that Mozilla is not breaking any rules.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Paleontologists in South Africa have unveiled one of the absolutely complete skeletons of a human ancestor, which dates back 3.6 million years.

The nearly complete fossil of the Australopithecus was displayed by the University of the Witwatersrand. The skeleton, named Little Foot, was found 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg in the Sterkfontein caves. Rocks blasted by miners here had revealed the bones of Little Foot.

It took researcher Ron Clarke, from the University of the Witwatersrands Evolutionary Studies Institute and his assistants, 20 years for excavating, cleaning, reconstructing, and analyzing the fragile skeleton.

"This is one of the most remarkable fossil discoveries made in the history of human origins research and it is a privilege to unveil a finding of this importance today," Clarke said.

Little Foot - The Early Australopithecus Ancestor

Although the honor of the oldest hominid skeleton ever found goes to a hominin named Ardi, which lived in Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, the discovery of Little Foot is important because its skeleton is more whole than Ardis. The nearly complete skeleton is expected to help paleontologists know more about the appearance and movement of Australopithecus, the early human ancestors.

Little Foot is relatively small, with a height of about 4 feet 4 inches. The face, teeth, and pelvic structure of the fossil indicate that Little Foot is a young girl.

The isotope analysis of Little Foots fossilized tooth enamel may also throw light on the environment she lived in and the food she consumed. The paleontologists believe that Little Foot died after falling down a shaft and into the caves below.

Little Foot is also the first skeleton that will enable the research team to compare between the leg length and arm length in a single individual. Her legs were longer than her arms, suggesting she was much more like humans than apes and walked upright and could have lived in trees.

The location of the skeleton indicates that hominins flourished further across Africa than researchers had previously believed.

A Source Of Pride For Africa

Robert Blumenschine, who is the chief scientist at the Paleontological Scientific Trust that funded the excavation, said the discovery is a source of pride for Africans.

Blumenschine added that the discovery indicated that Africa is more than the storehouse of the ancient fossil heritage for people the world over. The continent is also the wellspring of everything that makes human qualities, including supreme intellect, artistic ability, and technological prowess.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Whittier, CA, Dec. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU) is pleased to announce that Dr. Joycelyn Elders will be the keynote speaker at the universitys Fall 2017 Commencement. The ceremony is set to take place on Saturday, December 16, 2017, at the Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, California.

Dr. Elders is an exceptionally fitting choice for the universitys keynote speakeras she personifies SCUs pioneering spirit. As the first person in the state of Arkansas to become board certified in pediatric endocrinology, the first African American public health administrator, and the first African American to serve as surgeon general to the United StatesDr. Elders has played a significant role in changing the face of medicine. An outspoken advocate of expanded sex education, Dr. Elders, has always been ahead of her time. Although retired, she still actively champions issues such as racial equality in medicine and widening access to healthcare.

As one of the nations leading disruptive universities for integrative health and interprofessional education, SCU has been educating students to be caring, competent, and integrative healthcare practitioners for over 100 years. Comprised of Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, College of Eastern Medicine, College of Science and Integrative Health, and the recently-launched School of Professional StudiesSCU prepares todays students for the healthcare system of tomorrow. The universitys vision of excellence and leadership in educating competent and caring integrative practitioners in an evidence-based and interprofessional environment is personified through scholarship, research, programs, and clinical experiences that are evidence-based and outcomes-focused.

We are honored to welcome Dr. Elders as our keynote speaker. Her unprecedented achievements, courageous spirit, and her exemplary display of excellence in action is incredibly admirable, says SCUs President/CEO, John Scaringe, DC, EdD. When asked about SCUs vision of transforming healthcare, Dr. Elders remarked, Now is the perfect time for bright, young graduates to be involved in changing and transforming healthcare. Integrative medicine is the way of the futureand I think its wonderful that SCU is using the most cutting-edge, scientific approaches to inform how their students treat the whole person.

For more information on SCUs commencement, please visit https://www.scuhs.edu/commencement/. Media interested in covering any part of the commencement ceremony should contact Sherise Bright, Executive Director for Communications and Brand Management for SCU, at 562-947-8755 ext. 533 or sherisebright@scuhs.edu.

About Southern California University of Health Sciences:

Founded in 1911, Southern California University of Health Sciences is located on a 25-acre campus in Whittier, California. SCU, one of the nations leading universities for integrative health, recently launched the first interprofessional, integrative Masters in Physician Assistant program of its kind. SCU is comprised of Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, College of Eastern Medicine, College of Science and Integrative Health and the newly-formed School of Professional Studies. A pioneer in interprofessional, integrative health education, SCU offers full-time programs leading students to successful and significant careers in patient care. For over a century, SCU faculty has drawn upon their experience and their passion for teaching to educate practitioners who are transforming the face of healthcare around the world. For information on SCU, please visit http://www.scuhs.edu.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7ab8a26f-46e3-42d0-a35d-3a72e4df45e6

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3cd283c1-8cf5-4501-bf05-84482cbc8e0e
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Forest Products Inc. (TSX:WEF) (Western or the Company") today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Hampton Lumber Mills-Washington, Inc. (Hampton) to acquire Hamptons lumber processing and distribution centre in Arlington, Washington. The purchase price of the transaction is approximately USD $9 million and is anticipated to close in January 2018.



This acquisition is a natural fit for Western as it allows us to increase the production of targeted, finished products while also providing a centralized warehousing and distribution centre to more effectively service our selected U.S. customers, said Don Demens, President and CEO of Western. This asset in Washington State also strengthens our global competitiveness by positioning Western to mitigate the damaging effects of duties on our products destined for the U.S. market.

The site is ideally suited for Westerns central distribution needs with direct rail service and close proximity to the Companys major U.S. markets.

About Western Forest Products Inc.

Western is an integrated Canadian forest products company and is the largest coastal British Columbia woodland operator and lumber producer. The Company has an annual available harvest of approximately 6.1 million cubic metres of timber, of which approximately 5.9 million cubic metres is from Crown lands. Western has a lumber capacity in excess of 1.1 billion board feet from seven sawmills and one remanufacturing plant. Principal activities conducted by the Company include timber harvesting, reforestation, sawmilling logs into lumber and wood chips, and value added remanufacturing. Substantially all of Westerns operations, employees and corporate facilities are located in the coastal region of British Columbia, with sales worldwide.

Media Inquiries:

Babita Khunkhun

Senior Director, Communications

(604) 220-4923

Investor Inquiries:

Stephen Williams

Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

(604) 648-4500

Forward Looking Statements and Information

This press release contains statements that may constitute forward-looking statements under the applicable securities laws. Readers are cautioned against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as anticipate and similar references to future periods. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, the anticipated timing and benefits of the transaction between the Company and Hampton Lumber. Although such statements reflect managements current reasonable beliefs, expectations and assumptions, there can be no assurance that the proposed transaction will occur or that the anticipated strategic benefits will be realized in their entirety, in part or at all. Many factors could cause our actual results or performance to be materially different, including the factors discussed in the companys annual information form, which is available on the Companys website at www.westernforest.com. Forward-looking statements are based only on information currently available to us and refer only as of the date hereof. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) is pleased to share that DOT youth leader Douglas Mwangi from Kenya has been announced as a recipient of the 2018 Queens Young Leader Award.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b4c50963-d35f-4ad0-a35f-96f085cb1f49



Douglas is the founder of Oasis Mathare, a community centre in the Mathare Slum in Nairobi, Kenya that provides education, skills training, a community library, an early childhood development centre, and a safe community space for unemployed youth and vulnerable children.

Douglas leads a team of five staff and 10 volunteers who have helped more than 2,000 youth and children in Mathare.

Douglas is the only Kenyan recipient of the 2018 award, which celebrates and supports exceptional young people from across the Commonwealth. He will collect the award from Her Majesty The Queen during a one-week programme in the UK.

Douglas launched Oasis Mathare while working as a youth leader with Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), an international organization that supports youth to become innovators and leaders, and to create and apply digital solutions that have positive impact in their communities.

Growing up in the Mathare Slum gave me first-hand experience with the challenges youth face here. My solution was to create Oasis Mathare  a true oasis that provides a safe, supportive space for youth to learn and grow, Douglas shares.

Youth have a powerful impact when they put their minds to solving challenges in their communities and countries. Equipped with skills, knowledge, and networks, young social entrepreneurs are successfully tackling systemic problems that governments, charities, and the private sector have spent decades trying to address.

I always wanted to be a social entrepreneur  to give back to my community, create change, and make it a better place while also creating jobs. Most youth are held back because they think they dont have resources to run a business, but an idea is a seed in itself. Youth can find support at organizations like DOT to gain the skills, knowledge, and networks they need to succeed, says Douglas.

Through the Queens Young Leader Award, Douglas will join a community of 240 influential change-makers who represent all 52 commonwealth countries.

Oasis Mathare: http://www.oasismathare.org/

Digital Opportunity Trust: http://dotrust.org

Queens Young Leaders Award: https://www.queensyoungleaders.com

Interviews/information:

Judy Muriuki

+254 715 811 361

jmuriuki@dotrust.org
December 7, 2017 - Aker Solutions won a contract from Sembcorp Marine to design the living quarters for the Johan Castberg development's floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO).

The work scope includes detailed design engineering of the living quarters and technical specifications for the equipment and supplies required for Sembcorp to construct the accommodation unit for the Statoil-operated development. Johan Castberg is the largest oil discovery in the Norwegian Barents Sea.

"We look forward to working with Sembcorp and Statoil on this next stage of the landmark Johan Castberg development," said Executive Vice President Knut Sandvik, who heads Aker Solutions' projects delivery center. "We will build on our previous work on the development to optimize the design of the living quarters."

Aker Solutions has been directly involved in the Johan Castberg development since its earliest phases, providing concept studies and front-end engineering design that have helped drive down costs. As previously announced, the company earlier this week won contracts from Statoil to supply the subsea production system for Johan Castberg and design the FPSO's topside.

Work on the accommodation unit will be carried out at Aker Solutions' locations in Oslo and Mumbai, starting in the current quarter. Delivery is scheduled for the second half of 2018.

Sembcorp Marine, a global provider of integrated offshore and marine engineering solutions, will be constructing the living quarters at its shipyard in Singapore for Statoil.

The parties agreed to not disclose the financial value of the contract, which will be booked as part of Aker Solutions' fourth-quarter order intake.

ENDS

Media Contact:

Stina Kildedal-Johannessen, tel: +47 55 22 28 00, mob: +47 934 12 301, e-mail: stina.kildedal-johannessen@akersolutions.com

Investor Contact:

Fredrik Berge, tel: +47 22 94 62 19, mob: +47 450 32 090, e-mail: fredrik.berge@akersolutions.com

Aker Solutions is a global provider of products, systems and services to the oil and gas industry. Its engineering, design and technology bring discoveries into production and maximize recovery. The company employs approximately 14,000 people in about 20 countries. Go to http://akersolutions.com for more information on our business, people and values.

This press release may include forward-looking information or statements and is subject to our disclaimer, see http://akersolutions.com
A single sentence in the Baton Rouge Plan of Government could affect future efforts to incorporate St. George.

"No additional city, town or village shall be incorporated in East Baton Rouge Parish," section 1.05 concludes.

In the past few years, some residents in the unincorporated southeast have pushed to form a new city, St. George. During a meeting reviewing the Plan of Government, committee member and local NAACP president Mike McClanahan asked what impact the section could have on future incorporation efforts.

Parish Attorney Lea Anne Batson responded that the Plan of Government was written to specifically forbid the creation of new municipalities beyond those that already existed at the time  Baton Rouge, Baker and Zachary.

However, Batson said, when Central sought to incorporate, proponents and the city-parish stipulated in court that it would be unconstitutional for that sentence to prevent that new city from forming. She noted, though, that the issue was never fully litigated.

In the future, the city-parish might seek to challenge an incorporation attempt by arguing that it interferes with the existing Plan of Government, Batson said.

A committee looked at the language in 2007 and recommended adding Central to the list of existing municipalities while retaining the prohibition against establishing any new cities.

"It's just a thorny issue," Batson remarked.

Lawyers, politicians and local leaders are currently performing another periodic review of the parish's Plan of Government, which is essentially the local constitution. They began their dive into the first chapter on Wednesday although they committed to no specific alterations.

+3 Should Baton Rouge change Plan of Government to elect police chief, separate city and parish? As mayor-president Sharon Weston Broome weighs her choices for the next Baton Rouge police chief, one Metro Council member is wondering if vot

Some of the proposed changes would be easy: correcting a minor error, removing references to debts long paid off, changing gender-specific pronouns. But other areas are potentially more fraught. The first chapter lays out basic principals, such as the boundaries of Baton Rouge.

When the city and parish united into a single government back in the 1980s, authorities assumed that eventually Baton Rouge would absorb all the unincorporated areas of the parish, according to Don Nijoka, a former council administrator and chief administrative officer. Nijoka was brought in to provide a historical perspective.

However, if the city of Baton Rouge was to absorb all of the remaining unincorporated ares of the parish it would place an enormous strain on the police department, Nijoka said. And while there has been periodic disussion of combining city police with the parish Sheriff's Office, no one's ever been able to land on a workable plan, he said.

In fact, the parish contains a mish-mash of districts for fire protection, crime prevention, street lighting and other government services. East Baton Rouge is essentially "one, but separate," councilwoman Tara Wicker observed.

"Everybody should get equal police protection and fire protection," councilwoman and committee chairwoman Donna Collins-Lewis said.

A decade ago, authorities explored whether to form one comprehensive city-parish fire department, but efforts got "bogged down," Batson explained. Currently, people in different parts of the parish are willing to pay varying tax amounts to fund their local department. More firehouses may have to be built in the rural areas in the north part of the parish for everyone to retain the fire rating that factors into their home insurance rates. A lot of people would have to row in the same direction.

"Don't underestimate what a difficult challenge it is," Batson said.

Similarly, so far no one's been able to figure out how to combine city and parish law enforcement, Wicker said. Everyone has their own little kingdoms, she added.

Collins-Lewis asked committee members to submit proposed amendments to the chapter in writing and said the group would vote during their next meeting on whether to recommend them to the full council. The next meeting is Jan. 31 at 1:30 p.m. in the Metro Council chambers at City Hall. Any changes to the Plan of Government would have to pass a vote of parish residents.
Lithuanian English

Lithuanian mobile operators  UAB Bite Lietuva, UAB Tele2 and Telia Lietuva, AB  each acquired a 33.3 per cent stake in UAB Mobilieji Mokejimai. An increased authorized capital of the company amounts to EUR 2.1 million.

New shareholders also appointed the members of the Supervisory Council and the Board of the company, and appointed Monika Rimkunaite-Bloze as the General Manager of Mobilieji Mokejimai.

The Supervisory Council consist of the following members: Arunas Duda, Chief Financial Officer of Bite Lietuva, Tadas Bukauskas, Strategy and Development Director at Tele2, and Kestutis Sliuzas, CEO of Telia Lietuva. The composition of the Board of the company is as follows: Pranas Kuisys, Executive Director of Bite Lietuva, Mindaugas Savickas, Head of Marketing at Tele2, and Laimonas Devyzis, Head of Finance at Telia Lietuva.

Mobilieji Mokejimai is creating the first instant payments platform in the Baltic States, which will be called MoQ (moku) and will function as a means of payment at points of sale, on the Internet, and will allow customers to make money transfers between themselves. All payments between MoQ users will be made instantaneously and at any time of the day.

In May 2017, the Bank of Lithuania granted a limited activities electronic money institution license to Mobilieji Mokejimai required for activities related to instant payments. In July, the mobile operators got the permission of the European Commission to jointly create a common platform for provision of the mobile payments service.
An advisory panel that is examining hurdles people face when they want to vote in Louisiana spent several hours at the State Capitol on Wednesday discussing the state's registration requirements, locations of polling places and ways to aid disadvantaged communities.

The Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held its second meeting Wednesday as part of an effort to evaluate the state's voting laws and report back to the federal bipartisan advisory commission.

Members heard from several advocates for making voting more accessible and easier, as well as the Louisiana secretary of state's office.

"This is a tremendous opportunity," said First Assistant Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin. "There's no such thing as a perfect election because we are all human and we all make mistakes, but we do the best job possible."

Secretary of State Tom Schedler was out of the state and unable to attend.

The issues raised included concerns over race, poverty, imprisonment and education as barriers to voting.

Jhacova Williams, a student pursuing a doctorate at LSU, has been researching issues related to economics and diversity and how they relate to voting behavior.

"Low voter turnout among blacks is common in many cities across Louisiana," she said, arguing that black voters often end up underrepresented.

She said that her research has found parishes with higher average income levels tend to have more polling places and those with larger black populations have fewer voting machines.

"It's important that you allocate the right amount of polling places in an area so everyone has access to voting," she said.

State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, a New Orleans Democrat who chairs the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Louisiana Democratic Party, said the state law that bars convicted felons from voting while incarcerated, on parole or on probation unfairly restricts the right to vote.

"Such laws have significant disproportional impact on African Americans," she said. "How long do they have to pay that price?"

Peterson also voiced concerns about the state's restrictions on when someone can be assisted with voting and said she worries it could impact people with disabilities.

Susan Meyers, community engagement director for the New Orleans-based Advocacy Center of Louisiana that aids people with disabilities, said that having polling places on non-governmental sites like churches, or in rare instances in people's homes, can create accessibility issues.

She also noted concerns about people being barred from voting improperly and cited a recent case where a woman who had been committed to a short-term mental facility was later improperly purged from the voting rolls.

"I think lack of training and ignorance of all the various laws that inform someone's right to vote abounds," Meyers said.

And Nia Weeks, director of policy for the New Orleans-based Women with Vision, said that hurdles abound for black women, especially single mothers, that could be eased with longer early voting periods and other outreach.

"There are still barriers that prevent them from actually exercising their right to vote," she said, adding that black women make up an "untapped population" of voters. "It's really difficult to engage people and get them excited and when they go try to engage that meaningful government, they're not able to."

It's unclear what form the advisory panel's final report will take or what suggestions might make their way into it. Also unclear is what will come out of the findings.

Advisory committees in other states have recently published reports ranging from findings on hate crimes to civil rights to voting.

Ardoin, with the secretary of state's office, said that Louisiana has gone to lengths to make voting easier. He touted the state's roll-out of online voter registration and award-winning website that provides instant access to sample ballots and polling location information.

"Much of what was stated here today, we've been looking at," he said.

He noted that the state is in the process of purchasing new voting machines to replace its aging stock. He said he's hopeful that the state will be able to purchase new machines that can allow voters the opportunity to cast ballots in other precincts, among other efforts meant to make voting easier.

"It all takes technology, which takes money," Ardion said.
Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pose for a media event in the grounds of Kensington Palace in London, Monday Nov. 27, 2017. It was announced Monday that Prince Harry, fifth in line for the British throne, will marry American actress Meghan Markle in the spring, confirming months of rumors. (Dominic Lipinski/PA via AP) ORG XMIT: LON826
There are about 80 couples eligible in a move that is expected to cost the ACT government about $4400.

Couples who previously registered a civil union under the Civil Union Act 2012 can also have their fee waived.

First Australian legal same sex marriage. ACT celebrant Sharyn Gunn officiates over Australia's first Australian legal same sex marriage between Alan Wright (left) and Joel Player, at one minute past 12 midnight on Saturday, December 7, 2013. Credit:Karleen Minney

Regulatory services minister Gordon Ramsay will announce on Friday the ACT government will waive $55 certificate fee for couples married previously under the ACT's Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act 2013.

Same-sex couples who wed while gay marriage was briefly legal in the ACT will be able to get a free marriage certificate if they marry again, in celebration of the passage of the marriage equality bill.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr told ABC Radio on Friday morning said the waiver was the "least" the government could do.

"There's been a long history of civil unions slash civil partnership legislation in the ACT going back over a decade," Mr Barr said.

"Yesterday it was funny to reflect upon just how far this debate has progressed given there was a time, I think 11 years ago, when even a civil union in the ACT was vetoed by the then federal government so to see that vote yesterday was a very significant change in public opinion in Australia.

"We feel it's an entirely appropriate thing to acknowledge these couples who took the very significant step of getting married in the ACT in 2013, that is the least we could do to both say thank you to those couples and to recognise their enduring commitment to each other."

By a happy coincidence, the bill's passage came four years after the first same-sex weddings in Australia took place because of its brief legalisation in the ACT.
Good morning Canberra and happy Friday.

We are expecting a top of 23 and early showers for the end of the working week. It's going to be a warm weekend, with a top of 26 on Saturday and 28 on Sunday.

Here's all the news you need:

Canberra couple's holiday from hell
The federal government has banked $122.5 million from the sale of four properties in Canberra's parliamentary triangle, including $15.5 million for the home of the National Archives of Australia.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann announced on Thursday the historic East Block, Anzac Park West and East buildings and a development site on Constitution Avenue had been sold to developers.

The Parliamentary Triangle's East Block was once the Canberra General Post Office. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Senator Cormann said EG Funds Management Pty Ltd had bought the Anzac Park West site for $51 million and the East Block for $15.5 million.

Amalgamated Property Group paid $34.3 million for Anzac Park East and $21.7 million for the Constitution Avenue development site.
A 31-year-old man is expected to face court on Friday to be charged with the murder of Canberra man Eden Waugh.

Police said further charges would be laid as the homicide investigation continues.

Murder victim Eden Waugh (centre) with his parents Elaine and David, who have appealed for people to come forward with information about his death.

Mr Waugh, 37, was found dead with a single gunshot wound to his chest when police were called to his Watson home shortly before 8pm on November 3 in 2016.

On Thursday, ACT Policing said the 31-year-old accused had been arrested in NSW and transported to the territory, where he would appear in the ACT Magistrates Court on one count of murder.
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Block One Capital Inc. (TSX-V:BLOK) (Frankfurt:ES3) (the Company or Block One), is pleased to announce that its investee company: TG12 Ventures Inc. (TG12) has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire an additional one-thousand (1,000) S9 Antminers. TG12 now has two-thousand (2,000) units on order with the first 1,000 units scheduled to be operable in February 2018.



The S9 Antminers are manufactured by Bitmain, one the worlds most recognized Bitcoin/ cryptocurrency companies. The first batch of S9 Antminers is scheduled to be shipped and delivered in January 2018 and be operable in February 2018. The S9s are planned to operate at a co-location facility located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the all-in cost of operating the miners, inclusive of electricity, rent, cooling, general rig maintenance and management, is estimated to be about US$0.10 per kilowatt hour.

Based on TG12s financial forecasting, current conservative Bitcoin price estimate of US$8,000 and the 2000 miners being fully operable, the estimated revenue per year is US$15,600,000. With any appreciation of the price of Bitcoin above this estimate, the return on investment of the miners should become even greater. Based on the current Bitcoin price of approximately US$13,900 on December 6, 2017, the estimated revenue per year would be US$25,970,000.

Additionally, the Companys updated corporate slide deck is now available for download at: www.blockonecap.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

David Berg

Chief Executive Officer and Director

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACCURACY OR ADEQUACY OF THIS RELEASE.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on the Companys expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates. Although Block One believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin, delays in deliveries and shipments, machines operating at the capacity expected, the price of electricity and other costs affecting profitability, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, including the general acceptability of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, risks associated with regulatory changes, availability of personnel, materials and equipment on a timely basis, accidents or equipment breakdowns, and uninsured risks,. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them publicly to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances, unless otherwise required to do so by law.

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 and has in no way passed upon the merits of the qualifying transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT:

Block One Capital Inc.

Office: 604-908-3095; email: info@blockonecap.com
Summernats has canned its 2018 Miss Summernats competition as it attempts to crack down on sexual harassment at the annual car show.

More than 100,000 motorsports fans are expected to descend on Canberra's Exhibition Park on January 4 for the 31st Summernats car festival.

Andy Lopez, co-owner of Summernats. Credit:Karleen Minney

But co-owner Andy Lopez said the yearly beauty pageant would not be returning.

"Our focus is to get women in as a particular demographic and we want women to feel safe and comfortable as they generally do at the Summernats and to encourage their participation both from a spectator point of view but also into the sport or the scene itself of car building," Mr Lopez said.
Donald Trump breaks the presidential mould so often that the usual questions about decision-making hardly apply. There is little point asking: Why is Mr Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital now? What is his plan for the Middle East? How does moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv fit into it? As his record shows, that is not the way Mr Trump works. Instead, the more relevant questions are: Does he even realise the significance of what he is doing? Does he understand the likely consequences of detonating explosive charges along the region's faultlines like this? It is quite possible he does not.

Mr Trump certainly understands, though, that his move will cause uproar  but it does not worry him. Indeed, uproar has been Donald Trump's friend through much of his career. It has accompanied, and perhaps created, his political success. The bigger the row, the greater the opportunity for a chancer like the 45th President of the United States.

The Palestinian Authority has called for three days of rage. Credit:AP

Part of his motivation is doubtless based in domestic US politics. Most obviously, he is fulfilling a campaign promise to Israel's backers in the United States, a large and powerful lobby. Coincidentally, he is also creating a major distraction from his own difficulties with the Mueller investigation into his campaign's links to Russia.

An optimistic interpretation might look like this: Donald Trump's taste for the limelight, his all-consuming self-regard, his brinkmanship and lack of restraint make him a wild card in international diplomacy  and a potential circuit breaker. He may yet play that role with North Korea where a long stalemate has allowed problems to fester. In the Middle East, perhaps this sudden jolt may break the long deadlock in the peace process. Yet in a region where hopes for peaceful, rational solutions are always slight, this seems the very longest of long shots. Neither his motives, nor the slim likelihood of success, justify it, and there are many reasons why recognising Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its capital just now is a bad move. Despite Mr Trump's protestations of even-handedness, Israel is the only country applauding. Australia, along with many other US allies, has condemned his initiative.
For heaven's sake, why doesn't Parliament agree to a ceasefire until the next election? This would give everyone time to sort out the mess and it would also save the cost of expensive byelections. Vivienne Newman, Templestowe Give them three months to sort out this mess Since federation, goodness knows how many of our politicians have had dual citizenship. Rather than disrupting Parliament (and the courts), why don't we simply give all politicians three months to get their citizenship issues sorted? In the meantime, they should do what we pay them to do. Ross Barker, Lakes Entrance

When will our "leaders" show true leadership? If Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten had a genuine interest in the nation, they would have agreed to submit a recommendation to the High Court to add a temporary codicil to the constitution, recognising the problem of dual citizenship and putting on hold any remedial action until the next election. Some intelligent clauses would have been sufficient to tighten the intent and controls. This simple action would also save the cost of any byelections. Instead, both men have pursued short-term political gain and, in so doing so, have shot themselves in the foot. What hope have we got with "leaders" like this? Campbell Laughlin, Rowville We cannot trust MPs to decide their own eligibility The government has demonstrated its poor understanding of Section 44. Now it has collected documentation needed to decide the eligibility of members of Parliament. The decision on this matter is not for MPs, who have so much self-interest that objectivity has been lost. It is the right and duty of the Court of Disputed Returns. All the documents should be passed to it for an unbiased decision.

Adrian Tabor, Point Lonsdale Mr Feeney, have you tried to get a copy? If David Feeney has lost the papers renouncing his dual citizenship, why can't he simply request a copy from the appropriate British government office? I would imagine that it keeps records. Phil Labrum, Flemington Give us local candidates

David Feeney, as member for Batman, is a case study in what is wrong with the ALP: the beneficiary of his position as Bill Shorten's former factional ally, he forgot to declare his multimillion-dollar property in Northcote while claiming a travel allowance when he stays in an apartment owned by his wife in Canberra. Now, we are expected to believe that five months after the prompt resignations of two Greens senators, he has just realised he lacks proof of renunciation of British citizenship. Sorry, it will not wash. The ALP may well find that the interests of inner and outer-metro electorates are not far apart: surely both constituencies abhor the major parties truckling to corporate backers, and both value the competitive pre-selection of intelligent, local candidates of integrity and experience. Pre-election largesse is no match for a proven track record. Angela Munro, Carlton North THE FORUM Calling the CFA to account

It is time the CFA did something serious about the thuggery that exists in some brigades. The volunteer fire captain of Eaglehawk brigade says: "My name has been tarnished" and there are "two sides to every story" (The Age, 7/12). What is he suggesting? That the young woman asked to be pushed to the ground, kicked and dragged under a fire truck? The CFA regulations state that there must be confidentiality around such investigations, but you can be sure the members are talking among themselves. I was part of a CFA brigade for some years and experienced first hand what happens next. The brigade members will close ranks, say what great blokes the captain and other members are, find some way to blame and vilify the victim, and fall back on the old excuse: "We are volunteers." They think that somehow that means they are untouchable heroes and not subject to the laws of the land. They need to be reminded that the CFA is a public institution, not a private club. Kath McKay, Upwey Listeners need their Red Is this more dumbing down of ABC radio (The Age, 7/12)? The most erudite presenter on morning radio, Red Symons, is sacked by ABC management and replaced by two lightweights, comedian Sami Shah and broadcaster Jacinta Parsons. Really, ABC? It is not "my ABC" any more.

John Hartigan, Toolern Vale Hold them all to account The concentration on the failures of Archbishop Frank Little is appropriate and necessary, but it cannot lead to a "get out" clause for those who worked alongside him. Whether it is Cardinal George Pell, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart or any number of others who were, or are to this day, in the inner sanctum of the Catholic hierarchy, all of them must take responsibility for the appalling response to allegations of abuse, and the deliberate and wilful "risk management" strategy of the organisation that continues to be their focus. I was a young Catholic school student when Frank Little was made archbishop (he was our school chaplain at one time), and I was shocked by his appointment as he seemed such a weak character. Maybe it was a strategic decision by others as they knew he would maintain the status quo. Regardless, he is safely beyond this world and ripe to be an easy target for blame by his peers and co-conspirators in the church. All of them must be held to account. Mary Dalmau, West Brunswick

A name to inspire shame In the 1970s in Melbourne, my husband and I were members of a Catholic married couples' movement called Equips de Notre Dame. One of our prominent chaplains was the then father Frank Little. He was revered, lionised and his name spoken in almost hushed tones. In the light of this report from the royal commission, there will indeed be hushed tones when his name is mentioned. But in a different key. Rosemary Blake, Newtown The types we don't want Given that Milo Yiannopoulos' seminars (or should I call them rant sessions?) have incited violence and riots everywhere he has gone  which is probably exactly what he wanted  would it be out of line to tell him to go back to his own country?

John Howes, Rowville Violent, militant protests I took my 73-year-old intellectual, feminist, gay-marriage-supporting mother to see Milo on Monday. While queuing, she endured a tirade of abuse from young, rough-looking guys who stuck their finger up at her repeatedly and called her a Nazi. All the while, she remained silent, surrounded by riot police. The show was OK, if not a little underwhelming given all the vehement opposition. What we did agree on with Milo was about how violent and militant the authoritative socialist agenda of the Left has become. We witnessed it first hand and it terrified us both. Alastair Mckenzie, Port Melbourne

Putting the workers first Scott Morrison is concerned about Australians closing their wallets and not contributing to Team Consumerism (BusinessDay, 7/12). Perhaps he should be more concerned about the executive management of big business closing their wallets to increase wages, while their own personal wallets continue to fatten in support of Team Greedy. Paul Miller, Box Hill South Pity the city dwellers Sluggish retail spending in the CBD during the Christmas build-up has led the City of Melbourne to spend $5million to lure shoppers into the city (Online, 7/12). So, as a resident in a small apartment, paying more than $1000 a year for rates  and extra to have garbage collected (Iassumed this once was a council task)  am I subsidising the retailers? Maybe a nice program to entice families to the city would be better. Oh, and my rates will pay to clean up the trash left by visitors. Good value? Certainly not.

Terry Beath, Melbourne The Nanjing Massacre Jonathan Breedon (Letters, 6/12) asks whether I am familiar with the Nanjing Massacre and memorial. Istudied Chinese history under China's leading historian of the Nanjing Massacre. One of my historical interests is why the Beijing government prevented anyone talking or publishing on the massacre for 30years. The chief reason is that it did not suit the Communist Party's dominant narrative of a "world anti-fascist war" that Senator Sam Dastyari recently stumbled upon. This phrase has been deployed to hide the truth of Japan's brutal invasion of China and to deny the Nanjing KMT government credit for Japan's defeat. (See my research article: China's Anti-Fascist War Narrative: Seventy Years On and the War with Japan is Not Over Yet.) Professor John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University

Are they still our masters? When we express concern about foreign meddling in Australian domestic politics, let us remember the extensive meddling of British officials in the events of 1975, as demonstrated by Professor Jenny Hocking's research in the relevant archives. Can we assume the attitude of our old colonial masters has changed? Chris Watson, Ivanhoe Such a shameful vote I agree with Michael Short (Comment, 7/12) that Warren Entsch and Penny Wong deserve credit for their tireless work to winover their parties to support same-sex marriage. It is therefore such a pity that Mr Entsch's compassion for this minority group did not include those who are suffering on Manus Island. He was one of two members who were missing in Parliament, but then returned and helped to overturn its decision to send these suffering souls to New Zealand (The Age, 5/12). Refugees are not living a "lifestyle choice".

Wendy Logan, Croydon North Too high a price to pay Oh for an admirable prime minister, with the qualities of Penny Wong, opines Michael Short. That would be wonderful, indeed. But hanging on to leadership for your party and yourself can require the kind of compromise that knocks the shine off integrity. Maybe Senator Wong should stay where she is. Glenda Johnston, Queenscliff Our night with Sir Paul

An evening reminiscing, dancing and singing along to Paul McCartney and his band ("Happiness is a musical legend rolling on", Arts, 7/12) was the "fill up" that so many of us needed. The great hits, the dedications and the brilliance were to be expected. However, 20,000-plus people singing, almost pleading, Give Peace a Chance showed what we really want for Christmas. Thank you, Paul. Darren Grindrod, Glenroy Give us American prices As a prolific online shopper, I am mystified by Amazon's start-up in Australia (BusinessDay, 7/12). What shoppers want from any online store is the same wide range of products at the same low prices that our American friends receive, not a hub for local Aussie stores to sell us the same goods we can already get now. As an example, I can buy filters for my cordless vacuum cleaner, shipped from the United States, cheaper than if I buy them here. (The American cost per unit, including shipping: $A13. Thelocal cost: $22.) Amazon or not, we still suffer from the Aussie premium added to everything we buy and we want this to end. Are you up for it, Amazon?

Julie Ljiljak, Burwood East Support local businesses The arrogant American Amazon has ridden into the Australian market on its high horse. It seems its horse has had a few falls, perhaps because of the appalling, Dickensian way that Amazon treats its workers. Or perhaps because its website lacks variety and the prices are not as low as all the hype promised they would be. The message is that big, foreign companies should think before theymarch in here and that Australians should support local businesses rather than faceless corporations. Max Sandler, St Kilda East

AND ANOTHER THING Politics Parliament, full of do-nothings. Thanks for nothing while the rest of us get on with life without you. Mel Green, Glen Waverley

The Greens are the only party that has shown integrity on dual citizenship. Connie Gibbons, Clifton Hill A line in Labor's last will and testament: "We hereby bequeath Batman to the Greens." Stephen Baldwin, Frankston Penny Wong would make a fantastic PM (7/12), but she'll need to change parties quickly.

Diana Goetz, Mornington I've bought the Christmas turkey. Its name is Malcolm. Out of the freezer, lifeless, dead as a dodo. Noel Denton, Mount Waverley Furthermore The only way to change the CFA is to disband it and start again. The dysfunctional culture is too deeply entrenched.

Rod Andrew, Malmsbury I loved the comment that Yiannopoulos is "a small man with a big mouth" (6/12). It's a pity he's been handed a megaphone. Jane May, Toorak Free speech: allowing those you don't agree with the same right to speak as those you do agree with. Rob Melvin, Maribyrnong

I hope Trump doesn't decide Woorinen North should be our capital. It is calm and sensible here. Barrie Bales, Woorinen North Thanks for nothing, ABC. Now I have to find a new breakfast radio station. Obviously you're dumping us oldies. Lyle Dickman, Rye Thanks for explaining that Sami Shah (7/2) is a comedian.
Environmental lawyers have asked Australia's consumer watchdog to investigate Adani's claims that its controversial Queensland coal mine will create a jobs bonanza.

Environmental Justice Australia this week wrote to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission asking it to investigate what it says is "misleading or deceptive conduct" by the company relating to the Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin.

Anti-Adani protesters protest outside Queensland's Parliament House in Brisbane. Credit:AAP

"Plenty of evidence suggests Adani's representations about 10,000 direct and indirect jobs are seriously flawed, yet the company continues to mislead people looking for work," said EJA lawyer David Barnden, who said the Queensland Land Court had already ruled the mine would create just 1464 jobs.

The future of the mine has suffered a number of setbacks this week with project funding from China looking increasingly unlikely.
Foreign-backed saboteurs who plant sleeper bugs in critical infrastructure such as telecommunications, power and water that could be mobilised to wreak havoc in the event of a war with Australia will face up to 15 years' jail under the new foreign interference laws.

The new laws reflect the changing nature of war, in which the first shots of a major conflict are likely to come electronically and target critical infrastructure used by civilians. They will replace outdated sabotage laws that cover only attacks on defence facilities.

Sabotage laws will be modernised to cover all major critical infrastructure including utilities; key transport facilities such as ports; and healthcare infrastructure, including the Medicare computer system.

For the first time, sabotage will include planting a device or piece of computer code that can be used to damage Australia's national security or a piece of critical infrastructure. Doing so deliberately will carry a jail term of up to 15 years.
Australia has officially become the 26th country to legalise same-sex marriage after the law was passed on Thursday with the overwhelming backing of the Federal Parliament.

Thirteen years after changing the Marriage Act to explicitly forbid same-sex unions, federal politicians voted to undo the last major piece of discrimination against gay and lesbian Australians.

It followed last month's emphatic resolution of the Australian public in the postal survey to join the rest of the English-speaking world by embracing marriage equality.

The vote in the House of Representatives, minutes before 6pm on Thursday, came after last week's vote in the Senate, meaning the law has now passed both houses of Parliament.
London: Some of the world's most recognisable companies would lose nearly $250 billion if governments extended Australia's controversial plain packaging laws from tobacco to alcohol, sugary drinks and junk food.

Analysis by Brand Finance found the makers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi would lose the most, with each company shedding about $52 billion each, or a quarter of their value.

The study calculated the likely loss of royalties if eight of the world's biggest brand owners were forced to give up their glossy packaging.

Those companies included AB InBev, The Coca-Cola Company, Danone, Heineken, Mondelez International, Nestle, PepsiCo and Pernod Ricard, which between them control 1242 brands, 907 of which are used to market alcohol, fizzy drinks and junk food.
With the new year around the corner, now is the perfect time to stock up on summer essentials, especially if they are on sale.

First up, in fashion news, grassroots label the habadashery club is launching an online store on Friday. Based in Armidale, the store is inspired by brands such as Sir the Label and encourages sustainable clothing practices.

It's holiday vibes all round with The Habadashery club.

"The brand reintroduces the slow fashion movement. With a direction away from fast fashion and mass production, we put an emphasis on the importance of timeless styles that can adapt to the now. With the intention to recapture the luxe for handmade goods, the habadashery club promotes the need for sustainable design and supports the notion of buy less, choose well," says the founder, Georgia Epworth.

"The range is designed with the intention of appealing to a wide audience; younger and older, of different sizes and shapes. A single style can be worn a number of different ways, encouraging the wearer to make it their own."
One man has died after three workers were trapped in an ink vat in a workplace accident in Sydney's west on Thursday morning.

Emergency services were called to DIC Australia, an ink factory in Chisholm Road, Auburn, about 8.50am, following reports three men aged between 30 and 40 were trapped.

By 11.30am two men had been rescued, but the third man died at the scene. The body remains trapped in the vat.

"The third patient trapped is now deceased," NSW Ambulance Superintendent Paul Turner said.
Residents of a Queensland town at the centre of a Defence Department chemical scandal have been told not to eat food grown near the contamination zone, in a Defence-commissioned report.

The warnings were contained in a report into problems at Oakey, north-west of Toowoomba, prepared by an independent company, which reviewed results from groundwater, soil and blood at the departments request.

Residents in the contamination zone were warned not to eat home-laid eggs. Credit:Max Mason-Hubers

The department reportedly assured residents there were no likely health impacts from PFAS at a meeting in the Darling Downs town on Wednesday night.

But the Human Health Risk Assessment recommended residents should not use groundwater for drinking within the investigation area and even avoid bathing, showering, swimming in certain areas.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- East Africa Metals Inc. (TSX-V:EAM) (East Africa or the Company) is pleased to announce the Company has received government approval of East Africas Mining Licence Agreement for the Terakimti Oxide Gold Project (the Terakimti Project) at the Companys 70% owned Harvest Project located in the Tigray National Regional State of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Ethiopia).



The Mining Licence Agreement has been formally approved by the Ministry of Mines, Petroleum, and Natural Gas (the Ministry of Mines), the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers. The Company will now focus on finalizing its previously announced Project Financing (refer to the Companys news release dated November 10, 2017) and proceed with engineering and development of the Terakimti Project.

Andrew Lee Smith, East Africas C.E.O. stated, This is an extremely important achievement for East Africa, and we appreciate the efforts of the Government and Ministry of Mines in the development of the Mining Licence Agreement for Terakimti. We plan to move forward as soon as possible with engineering and development of the project. The Terakimti Project will provide East Africa the opportunity to benefit from establishing the first commercial heap leach operation in the country, and provide the basis for additional exploration and development to grow the Companys mineral resources in Ethiopia.

Terakimti Oxide Gold Project Profile:

Mineral Resource: Indicated Resource of 1,110,000 tonnes grading 3.20 grams gold and 23.6 grams silver per tonne containing 114,000 ounces of gold and 841,000 ounces of silver;

Indicated Resource of 1,110,000 tonnes grading 3.20 grams gold and 23.6 grams silver per tonne containing 114,000 ounces of gold and 841,000 ounces of silver; Heap Leach Recoveries from Column Testwork 1 : up to 74.8 % gold and 39.4% silver;

up to 74.8 % gold and 39.4% silver; Proposed Mining Method: Conventional open pit;

Conventional open pit; Proposed Processing Technology: Heap leaching to produce goldsilver dore.

(1) see East Africa Metals News Release dated January 23, 2017 for summary of metallurgical test work results.

Proposed Mining Operation:

The Terakimti Project is proposed as an open pit mining operation followed by heap leaching and on site processing to produce gold-silver dore. The combination of near surface oxide gold and silver mineralization, hosted in soft rock when compared to other deposits, high and rapid extraction of gold at coarse crush sizes in metallurgical testwork, along with satisfactory percolation rates all support this strategy for the development of the Terakimti Project.

Project Infrastructure:

The Terakimti Project is located approximately 600 kilometres north of the Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The region has daily, commercial air service from Addis Ababa. The existing transportation and power infrastructure is located close to the project site and enhances the development potential of the proposed operation. The proposed mining operation would utilize grid power for the project, for which the nearest high tension power line is approximately 7 kilometres away. Primary road access to the site is by paved highway from the town of Shire, 40 kilometres south of the project. Shire has a population of approximately 60,000 people and sufficient services to serve as a base for off-site project activities.

Environmental Impact and Socio-Economic Assessment:

An independent Environmental Impact and Socio-Economic Assessment (EISA) study has been completed by Beles Engineering Pvt. Ltd. Co. of Ethiopia, and forms an integral part of the Mining Licence Agreement. This EISA examined the beneficial and adverse aspects of the proposed mining operation and concluded that the local population is in favor of the project, and the anticipated benefits would be positive and very important to the local community and to the local and regional governments. The EISA further concluded that the adverse impacts identified can be mitigated through implementation of the proposed management and monitoring plans, and therefore recommended project implementation.

Mineral Resources:

Terakimti Updated Oxide Mineral Resources2

Mineralization

Class Mineralization

Type NSR

Cut-Off

($/t) Tonnes

('000s) Grade Contained Metals Au

g/t Ag

g/t Cu

% Au

('000 oz) Ag

('000 oz) Cu

('000 lb) Indicated Oxide 15.74 1,110 3.20 23.6 0.08 114 841 - Inferred Oxide 15.74 15 1.94 13.5 0.04 1 7 - 2Terakimti Oxide Resource update disclosed October 27, 2015; effective date October 18, 2015. Full mineral resource estimate disclosure can be found in the companys press release dated October 27, 2015, available at www.eastafricametals.com or at www.sedar.com. Subsequent to the release of the Oxide Resource update, a review by the resource QP identified an error in the tabulation of mineral resources. The error was not material and the corrected resource information was disclosed via East Africa Metals press release on January 11, 2016. Metal prices for gold and silver are $1,300/oz and $17.50/oz, respectively.

Terakimti Sulphide Mineral Resources

Additional gold copper resources underlie the Terakimti oxide resource and the Company plans to continue its assessment of these resources for future development.

Terakimti Mineral Resources3

Mineralization

Class Mineralization

Type NSR

Cut-Off

($/t) Tonnes

('000s) Grade Contained Metals Au

g/t Ag

g/t Cu

% Zn

% CuEq

% Au

('000 oz) Ag

('000 oz) Cu

('000 lb) Zn

('000 lb) CuEq

(000 lb) Indicated Sulphide 23.9 1,841 1.1 17.5 2.20 1.65 3.98 63 1,033 89,477 66,871 146,645 Inferred

Sulphide 23.9 2,583 1.0 20.6 1.09 1.42 2.60 80 1,712 62,187 77,101 134,337 Primary 63.9 939 0.8 15.2 0.69 2.92 2.66 25 459 14,198 60,358 49,862 Sub-Total

Inferred 3,522 0.9 19.2 0.98 1.82 2.61 105 2,171 76,385 137,459 184,199 3Terakimti Initial Resource Estimate as disclosed in the 43-101 Technical Report dated February 14, 2014; effective date January 17, 2014. Full mineral resource estimate disclosure can be found on the companys website or at www.sedar.com. Metal prices for gold, silver, copper, and zinc are $1,400/oz, $25.00/oz, $3.50/lb, and $0.90/lb, respectively.

More information on the Company can be viewed at the Companys website: www.eastafricametals.com.



On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Andrew Lee Smith, P.Geo., CEO

For further information contact:

Nick Watters, Business Development

Telephone +1 (604) 488-0822 Email investors@eastafricametals.com Website www.eastafricametals.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "project", "budget", "schedule", "may", "will", "could", "might", "should", indicate or variations of such words or similar words or expressions. Forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions that have been made by East Africa as at the date of such information and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of East Africa to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: timing of receipt of mining permit; timing of mining development; projected heap leach recoveries ; early exploration; the closing of the agreement with the exploration and development company to advance the Magambazi Project or identify any other corporate opportunities for the Company; mineral exploration and development; metal and mineral prices; availability of capital; accuracy of East Africa's projections and estimates, including the initial mineral resource for the Adyabo, Harvest and Magambazi Projects; interest and exchange rates; competition; stock price fluctuations; availability of drilling equipment and access; actual results of current exploration activities; government regulation; political or economic developments; foreign taxation risks; environmental risks; insurance risks; capital expenditures; operating or technical difficulties in connection with development activities; personnel relations; the speculative nature of strategic metal exploration and development including the risks of diminishing quantities of grades of reserves; contests over title to properties; and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, as well as those risk factors set out in in East Africas managements discussion and analysis for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2017 and for the year ended December 31, 2016, and East Africas listing application dated July 8, 2013 Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The contained gold, copper and silver figures shown are in situ. No assurance can be given that the estimated quantities will be produced. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to the timely closing of the financing; the timely closing of the Handeni Property definitive agreement; the price of gold, silver, copper and zinc; the demand for gold, silver, copper and zinc; the ability to carry on exploration and development activities; the timely receipt of any required approvals; the ability to obtain qualified personnel, equipment and services in a timely and cost-efficient manner; the ability to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner; the renewal or extension of exploration Licences; the regulatory framework regarding environmental matters, and such other assumptions and factors as set out herein. Although East Africa has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. The Company does not update or revise forward looking information even if new information becomes available unless legislation requires the Company do so. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
A man has survived being shot through the eye in the driveway of a Gold Coast home, with police hunting for two gunmen.

The 36-year-old victim was shot just after 8am while in a ute in the driveway of his Roe Street home at Upper Coomera, police said.

As the ute was reversing down the man's driveway, a white sedan pulled up behind it.

Police said a man from a white sedan then opened fire on the passenger side of the ute, hitting the resident in his left eye, police said.
If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck, it might be a dinosaur.

Scientists have discovered the ultimate ugly-duckling dinosaur: a creature with short, stubby flippers like a penguin, a long arched neck like a swan, and razor sharp claws and teeth.

The Halszkaraptor escuilliei fossil at a facility in Grenoble, France. Credit:Pierre Jayet

"The first time I saw the fossil I was shocked," said lead author Andrea Cau, a palaeontologist at the Geological and Palaeontological Museum Giovanni Capellini in Italy. "It was so unexpected and bizarre."

Halszkaraptor escuilliei, as the creature has been christened, lived some 75 million years ago during the cretaceous period. It was a theropod, a largely carnivorous group of dinosaurs whose members included Tyrannosaurus rex and the ancestors of all living birds. Its fossilised remains were described in the journal Nature on Thursday.
The promoter of controversial alt-right mouthpiece Milo Yiannopoulos' 'Troll Academy' tour says he will not foot the bill for extra police resources at his Melbourne event.

Promoter Damien Costas, who publishes Penthouse magazine and bankrolled the speaking tour, said Police Minister Lisa Neville's claim his team would be billed at least $50,000 for the cost of the hundreds of police officers required to handle violent protests outside the shows was "political grandstanding".

"We held a perfectly legitimate event," Mr Costas said. "The people that attended, 3000 of our people, we have three hours worth of footage where you actually see them lining up very peacefully.

"The people causing all the trouble and being violent were people not attending the event. If you want to take it further, sue me and I will call every single one of those 3000 people as witnesses."
The president of Trinity Grammar's alumni association has accused the prestigious private school of being too preoccupied with high ATARS, fundraising and building projects.

In a scathing letter to the school council chair and headmaster, Old Trinity Grammarians' Association president David Baumgartner said the school needed to return its focus to the "holistic development" and wellbeing of students.

Mr Baumgartner, who has served on the association for 34 years, said there was a "resurgent undercurrent of frustration and anger" among the school community.

"There is too much inward focus on things like buildings, fundraising, marketing, ATAR excellence, Cambridge schooling program, etc," he wrote in his November 6 open letter, which made its way to hundreds of parents' inboxes.
Just three months after being deployed in the Pilbara, Western Australia's first dual general purpose and narcotics dog has rounded up armed offenders, domestic violence perpetrators, drink drivers and illegal drugs.

And there could be as many as seven more dogs just like him on the way soon, as WA Police revamp the way it trains their invaluable canines.

Police dog Maygar. Credit:WA Police

Maygar became the very first dual general purpose and narcotics police dog to join the force earlier this year.

He arrived in the Pilbara with his handler - First Class Constable Tom Gryta - in September.
Washington: The US House of Representatives has easily passed a sweeping expansion of the right to carry concealed firearms virtually anywhere in the country, putting the fate of the National Rifle Association's top legislative priority in the hands of a divided Senate.

To win over Democrats, House Republicans paired the measure, which would require all states to recognise any other state's concealed-carry permit, with a more modest bipartisan fix meant to encourage better reporting of legal and mental health records to the national background check system.

A custom-made semi-automatic hunting rifle with a high-capacity detachable magazine Credit:AP

Together, the measures were the first gun-related bill to pass through the chamber since two of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, in the fall.

But the background check measure was not enough to win over most Democrats, nor did it persuade law enforcement officials in some of the largest cities, including New York, who say the legislation would force locales with strict gun laws to bow to places with few or no gun restrictions.
Jerusalem/Gaza: Palestinian protests have erupted in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip following the United States recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, as Hamas urges Palestinians to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel.

US officials, however, appeared to remain hopeful an Israel-Palestinian settlement could be negotiated after a "cooling off" period.

Seventeen people were wounded by Israeli army gunfire in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Al-Bireh, and thousands of demonstrators rallied with chants of "Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine".

Some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!" At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets, according to medics.
London: Donald Trump must show how he will progress peace talks in the Middle East after he deprived negotiators of the key bargaining chip in finalising the status of Jerusalem, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said.

Johnson made the comments after delivering a 4,700 word speech on the fight against terrorism, in which he called on the Arab world to look past its tribal instincts and become more nationalistic, to promote enduring institutions that would help the Muslim world overcome the "addictive" lure of jihadism infecting Islam.

A copy of his speech provided to the media in advance had a section in bold, that Johnson didn't deliver, condemning the president's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem before the resolution of decades-long dispute.

Asked by Fairfax Media about the omission of the comments, the foreign secretary blamed its last minute inclusion, and reiterated Prime Minister Theresa May's condemnation of Trump's move saying it was not helpful.
Guangzhou, China, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GUANGZHOU, China-- Sino Agro Food, Inc. (OTCQX: SIAF | OSE: SIAF-ME), also referred to as SIAF or the Company, is an agricultural technology corporation focused on protein food including seafood and cattle. The Company produces, distributes, markets, and sells sustainable seafood and beef to meet growing demand for safe, quality food in China. The Company has posted an open memo to its shareholders and other interested parties to provide a comprehensive update on the operations of its investee, Tri-way Industries, Ltd. The document may be viewed or downloaded here: http://www.sinoagrofood.com/sites/default/files/Tri-way_Status_Nov-2017.pdf



CEO Commentary



Mr. Solomon Lee, CEO of Sino Agro Food, commented, Our investors have expressed a desire for more detailed information of our operations and concepts behind plans for Tri-way Industries. Please take the time to read the lengthy memo, as we believe it provides an informative appraisal of recent operations, technical considerations, and seafood markets in China. We believe all of these to be positive. Even though occasional modifications to plans may be required, many present marginal opportunities.



The memo indicates history-based production extrapolation for several species, based upon SIAFs proofs of concept and continual refinements at its first three aquafarms, dating from 2011, and at the Zhongshan aquafarm 4 facility in the last year plus. Tri-ways historical financial profitability is a matter of record, reported quarterly. We remain highly confident that Tri-way is well positioned to increase both production numbers and gross margins, the pace of which would be accelerated if and when expected development capital additional to cash flow materializes.



About Sino Agro Food, Inc.



SIAF is an agricultural technology company focused on protein food. The Company produces, distributes, markets, and sells sustainable seafood and beef to the rapidly growing middle class in China. Activities also include production of organic fertilizer and produce. SIAF is a global leader in developing land based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), and with its partners is the world's largest producer of sustainable RAS prawns. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Guangzhou, the Company had over 550 employees and revenue of USD 343 million in 2016. Operations are located in Guangdong, Qinghai, and Hunan provinces, and in Shanghai. Sino Agro Food is a public company listed on OTCQX U.S. Premier in the United States and on the Oslo Brs Merkur Market in Norway. News and updates about Sino Agro Food, Inc., including key information, are published on the Companys website ( http://www.sinoagrofood.com ), the Companys Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/SinoAgroFoodInc ), and on twitter @SinoAgroFood.



Forward Looking Statements

This release may contain forward-looking statements relating to the business of SIAF and its subsidiary companies. All statements other than historical facts are forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as believes, expects or similar expressions. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. These risks and uncertainties are described in detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements are based on SIAFs current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on SIAF. There is no assurance that future developments affecting SIAF will be those anticipated by SIAF. SIAF undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws.


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EDMONTON, Alberta, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At its annual Investor Day event in Toronto today, Capital Power Corporation (TSX:CPX) (Capital Power or the Company) will review various topics including its plans and progress on decarbonization, growth strategy and the Companys business outlook, and will also provide operational and financial targets for 2018.



North America is on a path towards a greener energy future and Capital Power is advancing lower carbon energy through investments in new, cleaner energy sources with the integration of natural gas, renewables and coal to natural gas conversion. Capital Power has expertise in the transition to lower carbon and is a leader in the carbon offset markets.

Among the Companys business partners in addressing a cleaner energy future is GE Canada. GE has been pleased to collaborate with Capital Power over the past two years by developing and providing digital and hardware solutions that are assisting Capital Power to be a world leader in carbon reduction from coal plants, said Elyse Allan, President & CEO, GE Canada.

Were pleased to be recognized by a global company such as GE for our decarbonization plans and the actions we have taken towards reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at our Genesee coal facilities, said Brian Vaasjo, President and CEO of Capital Power. We are executing on strategies that sustain operational excellence while reducing our GHG emissions, cost and risk. The conversion of our coal facilities to natural gas is largely dependent on carbon taxes and natural gas prices. In the interim, we are implementing our world-leading Genesee Performance Standard program that reduces fuel and carbon compliance costs to deliver significant cost savings on coal or natural gas generation.

The acquisitions and wind farm development activities in 2017 have positioned us very well for the future. In addition to the recently announced New Frontier wind project, we expect to secure two to four additional wind farms projects by the end of 2018, continued Mr. Vaasjo.

Financial guidance

In 2017, Capital Power continued to grow its contracted cash flows through acquisitions and development of assets in North America by adding nearly 1,300 megawatts of generation to its fleet.

Financial results remain on track for 2017 with adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) expected near the mid-point of the Companys revised annual target range of $340 million to $385 million. For 2018, the Company is targeting an approximate 5% increase in AFFO based on the mid-point of its $360 million to $400 million target range. Demonstrating Capital Powers confidence in this forecast AFFO growth, the Company reaffirms its 7% annual dividend growth guidance to 2020.

Outlook for 2018

The Company will discuss its corporate priorities and financial targets for 2018 including:

Completion of the New Frontier Wind project on-budget and on-time for commercial operations in December 2018,

commit capital of $500 million for contracted growth,

secure an additional 2-4 contracted wind developments by the end of 2018,

a capacity-weighted average plant availability of 95%, reflecting planned outages at Genesee 2 and Genesee 3,

plant maintenance capital and sustaining capital expenditures of up to $85 million, and plant operating and maintenance expenses of $230 million to $250 million,

adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) of $360 million to $400 million, based on 81% of the Alberta commercial baseload generation portfolio sold forward at an average contracted price in the high-$40 per megawatt hour range, and

a dividend increase of 7%, in-line with its annual dividend growth expectations.

Investor Day event and webcast information

Capital Powers Investor Day event is being held today at the Vantage Venues (formerly St. Andrews Club and Conference Centre) located at 150 King Street West, 16th floor in Toronto. Registration begins at 8:30 am (ET) with presentations starting at 9:00 am. A live audio webcast of the event is available on the Companys website at www.capitalpower.com. The webcast will be archived and accessible for replay.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The Company uses (i) adjusted EBITDA and (ii) adjusted funds from operations as financial performance measures. These terms are not defined financial measures according to GAAP and do not have standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP, and, therefore, are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures used by other enterprises. These measures should not be considered alternatives to net income, net income attributable to shareholders of the Company, net cash flows from operating activities or other measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with GAAP. Rather, these measures are provided to complement GAAP measures in the analysis of the Companys results of operations from managements perspective.

Forward-looking Information

Forward-looking information or statements in this press release are provided to inform the Companys shareholders and potential investors about managements assessment of Capital Powers future plans and operations. This information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The forward-looking information in this press release is generally identified by words such as will, anticipate, believe, plan, intend, target, and expect or similar words that suggest future outcomes.

Material forward-looking information in this press release includes disclosures regarding: (i) adjusted funds from operations, maintenance capital and sustaining capital expenditures, and operating and maintenance expenses, (ii) dividend growth, (iii) development of new projects, (iv) plant availability.

These statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by the Company in light of its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate. The material factors and assumptions used to develop these forward-looking statements relate to: (i) electricity and other energy prices, (ii) anticipated facility performance, (iii) business prospects and opportunities including expected growth and capital projects, (iv) status of and impact of policy, legislation and regulations, and (v) effective tax rates.

Whether actual results, performance or achievements will conform to the Companys expectations and predictions is subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results and experience to differ materially from the Companys expectations. Such material risks and uncertainties are: (i) changes in electricity prices in markets in which the Company operates, (ii) changes in energy commodity market prices and use of derivatives, (iii) regulatory and political environments including changes to environmental, financial reporting, market structure and tax legislation, (iv) facility availability and performance including maintenance of equipment, (v) ability to fund current and future capital and working capital needs, (vi) acquisitions and developments including timing and costs of regulatory approvals and construction, (vii) changes in market prices and availability of fuel, and (viii) changes in general economic and competitive conditions. See Risks and Risk Management in the Companys Managements Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2016, prepared as of February 17, 2017, for further discussion of these and other risks.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the specified approval date. The Company does not undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in the Companys expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.

About Capital Power

Capital Power (TSX:CPX) is a growth-oriented North American power producer headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. The company develops, acquires, operates and optimizes power generation from a variety of energy sources. Capital Power owns approximately 4,500 megawatts of power generation capacity at 24 facilities and is pursuing contracted generation capacity throughout North America.

For more information, please contact :
VANCOUVER, Washington, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CytoDyn Inc. (OTC.QB:CYDY), a biotechnology company developing new antibody therapies for combating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, announces that the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) for the Companys PRO 140 pivotal combination therapy trial has completed a planned interim analysis of efficacy data of the first 40 patients and has recommended that the trial be continued as planned, with the protocol defined sample size and power to achieve the primary endpoint. The Phase 2b/3 pivotal trial requires a total of 50 patients for completion.



The Phase 2b/3 pivotal trial is evaluating PRO 140, the Companys humanized IgG4 monoclonal antibody, in combination with existing HIV therapies. CytoDyn has been and will remain blinded to the trial efficacy data until the trial is completed in due course.

We are delighted that following a review of the efficacy data, the IDMC has recommended continuation of our PRO 140 combination therapy pivotal trial under the current protocol, said Nader Pourhassan, CytoDyns President and Chief Executive Officer. We have now reached another critical milestone in this important trial with the goal of bringing a new treatment option to HIV-infected patients.

About PRO 140

PRO 140 belongs to a new class of HIV/AIDS therapeutics  viral-entry inhibitors  that are intended to protect healthy cells from viral infection. PRO 140 is a humanized IgG4 monoclonal antibody directed against CCR5, a molecular portal that HIV uses to enter T cells. PRO 140 blocks the predominant HIV (R5) subtype entry into T cells by masking this required co-receptor, CCR5. Importantly, PRO 140 does not appear to interfere with the normal function of CCR5 in mediating immune responses. PRO 140 does not have agonist activity toward CCR5 but does have antagonist activity to CCL5, which is a central mediator in inflammatory diseases. PRO 140 has been the subject of seven clinical trials, each demonstrating efficacy by significantly reducing or controlling HIV viral load in human test subjects. PRO 140 has been designated a fast track product by the FDA. The FDA also granted orphan drug designation to PRO 140 for the prevention of graft versus host disease (GvHD). The PRO 140 antibody appears to be a powerful antiviral agent leading to potentially fewer side effects and less frequent dosing requirements compared with daily drug therapies currently in use.

About CytoDyn

CytoDyn is a biotechnology company focused on the clinical development and potential commercialization of humanized monoclonal antibodies for the treatment and prevention of HIV infection. The Company has one of the leading monoclonal antibodies under development for HIV infection, PRO 140, which has completed Phase 2 clinical trials with demonstrated antiviral activity in humans and is currently in Phase 3 development. PRO 140 blocks the HIV co-receptor CCR5 on T cells, which prevents viral entry. Clinical trial results thus far indicate that PRO 140 does not negatively affect the normal immune functions that are mediated by CCR5. Results from seven Phase 1 and Phase 2 human clinical trials have shown that PRO 140 can significantly reduce viral burden in people infected with HIV. A recent Phase 2b clinical trial demonstrated that PRO 140 can prevent viral escape in patients during several months of interruption from conventional drug therapy. CytoDyn intends to continue to develop PRO 140 as a therapeutic anti-viral agent in persons infected with HIV and to pursue non-HIV, inflammatory indications where CCR5 and its ligand CCL5 may be involved. For more information on the Company, please visit http://www.cytodyn.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, including statements regarding our current and proposed trials and studies and their results, costs and completion. Words and expressions reflecting optimism, satisfaction or disappointment with current prospects, as well as words such as believes, hopes, intends, estimates, expects, projects, plans, anticipates and variations thereof, or the use of future tense, identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Our forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and actual results could differ materially from those contained in or expressed by such statements. In evaluating all such statements, we urge you to specifically consider the various risk factors identified in our Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2017 in the section titled Risk Factors in Part I, Item 1A, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by our forward-looking statements.

Our forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on currently available financial, economic, scientific, and competitive data and information on current business plans. You should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to, among other things: (i) the sufficiency of our cash position and our ongoing ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations, (ii) our ability to complete our Phase 2b/3 pivotal combination therapy trial for PRO 140 (CD02) and to meet the FDAs requirements with respect to safety and efficacy to support the filing of a Biologics License Application, (iii) our ability to meet our debt obligations, (iv) our ability to identify patients to enroll in our clinical trials in a timely fashion, (v) our ability to achieve approval of a marketable product, (vi) design, implementation and conduct of clinical trials, (vii) the results of our clinical trials, including the possibility of unfavorable clinical trial results, (viii) the market for, and marketability of, any product that is approved, (ix) the existence or development of vaccines, drugs, or other treatments for infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that are viewed by medical professionals or patients as superior to our products, (x) regulatory initiatives, compliance with governmental regulations and the regulatory approval process, (xi) general economic and business conditions, (xii) changes in foreign, political, and social conditions, and (xiii) various other matters, many of which are beyond our control. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties develop, or should underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary materially and adversely from those anticipated, believed, estimated, or otherwise indicated by our forward-looking statements.

We intend that all forward-looking statements made in this press release will be subject to the safe harbor protection of the federal securities laws pursuant to Section 27A of the Securities Act, to the extent applicable. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any responsibility to update these forward-looking statements to take into account events or circumstances that occur after the date of this press release. Additionally, we do not undertake any responsibility to update you on the occurrence of any unanticipated events which may cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

CONTACTS:

Media:

Joan E. Kureczka

Bioscribe, Inc.

Phone: 415-821-2413

Email: Joan@bioscribe.com

Investors:

LHA Investor Relations

Jody Cain

Phone: 310-691-7100

Email: jcain@lhai.com
Three women have been indicted on murder charges in connection to an incident in which a Brenham State Supported Living Center resident was found dead in the back of a van.

According to the Washington County District Attorney's Office, Charlotte Washington, 58, of Caldwell; Sylvia Pratt, 51, of Navasota, and Lacreshia Miles, 34, of Brenham were each indicted last week on a murder charge.

According to a previous article in The Eagle, staff of the Brenham facility could not find resident Amy Parrish for several hours in July. Eventually, she was found in the back of the van that was parked on the center's campus. CPR was performed on Parrish, who was taken to an area hospital where she was pronounced dead, Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said at the time.

Parrish was severely mentally impaired.

The indictment of the three women states the three left Parrish in an automobile in excessive heat conditions and "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence" committed a felony leading to her death.

Murder is a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Bryan Mayor Andrew Nelson took the crown this year in the 11th Annual Bryan-College Station Mayor Ring Off for the Salvation Army.

Each year, the twin cities' mayors go head-to-head in a friendly bell-ringing competition in an effort to raise money for the Salvation Army. On Saturday, the mayors stood outside Wal-Marts in their respective cities for one hour and rang a bell over the famous Salvation Army red kettles. Nelson raised $3,574, and College Station Mayor Karl Mooney raised $1,320.

"I am proud of both cities in our community for dramatically increasing the donations this year," Nelson told The Eagle. "College Station did a great job raising 500 percent more this year, so I am relieved Bryan also updated our game so we could take home the prize. But I'm really proud of both cities and the entire community."

To learn more about the Salvation Army, visit www.salvationarmytexas.org/bryancollegestation/.
Wednesday's cold, wet weather may not have been conducive to grabbing an ice pop or an ice cream snack, but Texas A&M senior Ian Weber remained optimistic.

Weber, bundled up in a thick peacoat, worked the window at Frio's Gourmet Pops truck for the grand opening of the Wayside Food Park in College Station, and while sales weren't brisk thanks to the December chill, he wasn't deterred.

"I'm excited," he said as he prepared a gingerbread and graham cracker ice cream treat for serving. "I think this food truck park was a good idea."

The Wayside Food Park, located in Northgate in the 200 block of University Drive, features as many as 10 food trucks offering a wide variety of edibles to hungry Aggies. While Wednesday's first official day got off to a slow start as the weather put a damper on foot traffic off the edge of Texas A&M's campus, the grills remained hot, the freezers stayed crisp and food truck owners and employees kept smiling.

The idea to have a food truck park in Aggieland first came about several years ago from Derek Barre, the owner of DBQ Barbecue & Catering, a food truck normally parked alone on Texas Avenue directly across from campus.

"I opened up my truck about five years ago, and I realized that in College Station there aren't [food] trucks parked together like in Austin," said Barre, an Austin native.

So Barre spoke with College Station City Councilman James Benham, who loved the idea of a food truck park in town. Benham presented the concept of allowing such an establishment to other council members, who in 2015 agreed to approve an ordinance allowing this new creation.

"This allows not just my park, but the ordinance allows for all food truck parks to be here," Barre said.

With Alex Jester and Matt Abegglen, Barre got to work on building Wayside. He was able to lease land right off of the Northgate district next to Chimy's restaurant, with what he said was congenial acceptance from other restaurants and bars in the area. Barre said he feels Wayside is not taking away business from the other companies, but rather enhancing the Northgate experience with the addition of food and non-alcoholic beverages, although beer and wine will soon be sold at Wayside once permits have been finalized.

"It's not a bar," he said. "Beer and wine will be there to have with your food. We'll [stop selling] those drinks at midnight -- this isn't a place to come and get shots."

Wayside has a permanent pavilion covering a cafeteria-style eating area. In addition to hosting the food trucks, Wayside has a permanent restaurant facility that sells drinks and food, as well as having restrooms. Shade is present for the summer, and large heaters warm the pavilion in the cold.

"We sunk in about half a million dollars putting in a foundation, grading, building this pavilion," Barre said. "This is not normal for a food truck park."

Food trucks will be able to open as early as 5 a.m. each day and stay open as late as 3 a.m. The business owners operate independently of Wayside, each paying a $1,500 monthly lease to sell their goods but being accountable to the health department on their own.

While the park can accommodate up to 10 trucks, on Wednesday there were seven open. Available items included ice cream, barbecue, savory sandwiches, donuts and crepes, depending on the truck.

"If an ice cream place wants to sell ice cream during the winter, I say go for it," Barre said. "If a hot cocoa truck comes in during the summer, that's OK, too. ... I'm looking for places that add diversity and bring something good to this park."

Beny Fam, a cook with food truck Moki Hoki, took a big step in coming to Wayside. The food truck owned by Houstonite Xiang Lin is the only one of its kind, serving both ice cream as well as savory sandwich-style food out of handmade waffles. Though Moki Hoki has been operating in Houston, owners and employees saw online that Wayside was opening up and wanted to move everything from the big city to try and feed the student population in Aggieland.

The cold rain put a damper on the fresh scents coming from Moki Hoki's grill, but Fam said that like his new neighbor over at Frio's, he has optimistic for the future. The waffle wielders will be staying at Wayside as long as they need to.

"We just came here to give it a try," Fam said. "Houston is a good place, too."

To learn more, visit www.waysidefoodpark.com.
Three women have been indicted on murder charges in connection to a July incident in which a Brenham State Supported Living Center resident was found dead in the back of a van.

According to the Washington County District Attorney's Office, Charlotte Washington, 58, of Caldwell; Sylvia Pratt, 51, of Navasota; and Lacreshia Miles, 34, of Brenham were each indicted last week on a felony murder charge. The indictments of the three state they left resident Amy Parrish in a vehicle in excessive heat conditions.

According to a previous article in The Eagle, staff of the Brenham facility could not find Parrish for several hours on July 11. Eventually, she was found in the back of the van that was parked on the center's campus. CPR was performed on Parrish, who was taken to an area hospital where she was pronounced dead, Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said at the time.

Parrish, who was in her late 40s, was severely mentally impaired.

Washington County First Assistant District Attorney Adam Muery said Washington, Pratt and Miles were employees of the center. Meury said the three women were indicted on a felony murder charge because, per the Texas code of criminal conduct, they "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence" committed the felony of injury to a disabled individual that led to Parrish's death. All three women turned themselves in to authorities after they were indicted on Nov. 28, said Muery. Washington surrendered to authorities in Burleson County and posted a $10,000 bond. Pratt and Miles are being held on $75,000 bond each, Muery said, though Pratt has a bond hearing today that could result in a lower bond. The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Brenham police, the Office of the Inspector General of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the Texas Rangers investigated the case.

Muery said a trial date had not been set.
Updates Shareholders on Latest Developments

Las Vegas, NV, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mCig, Inc. (OTCMKTS:MCIG), a diversified company servicing the legal cannabis markets, announced today that the companys CEO has agreed to invest more than $500,000 into OBITX, Inc., formerly known as GigeTech, Inc., a majority owned subsidiary of MCIG. The funds will be used by the company to purchase the first of its kind, state of the art cryptocurrency ATMs. OBITX will utilize the machines to service cannabis companies by helping to build a bridge between the cash business of cannabis and mainstream finance through cryptocurrency.

The ATMs are the first of its kind and will support most forms of cryptocurrency including Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin and more. They will enable dispensing of cash and transfer of funds, as well as the purchase and selling of cryptocurrency and gift cards from the machine. The machines will feature two screens, one for transactions, and another for advertising which will be integrated with eHESIVEs proprietary advertising platform, developed by mCIG team. The company has already placed its first order of 125 crypto ATMs with scheduled delivery in January 2018. The technology has been tested over the last few years and will be ready to go upon delivery. It is projected that over 10,000 ATMs will be installed in dispensaries and mainstream locations over the next few years.

The space we are entering may be new to our shareholders, but it is a new and lucrative sector. Integration with cryptocurrency was planned since the day we acquired our software and technology division. Many tech and finance projects that were developed within the last 8 months will integrate into and transform the experience of technology and transactions in this new company, stated Paul Rosenberg, CEO of MCIG Inc.

I am very comfortable in OBITX management to deliver great results, thats why I decided to help the company and invested my personal funds, continued Paul Rosenberg.

OBITX will be an exclusive distributor of crypto ATM for the entire cannabis market. Cryptocurrency will not only help solve regulation, banking and payment processing issues currently troubling the marijuana industry, it is already making its way in widespread adoption in other industries as well.



Let me also update our shareholders on other developments, continued Paul Rosenberg.

We are a few days away from finishing our audit of OBITX. We are extremely pleased with the business model of OBITX and as soon as audit is complete, we'll file our Form S-1 with SEC to spin-off OBITX.

Now, lets talk about MCIG Inc. overall strategy.

Render Payment concluded its ICO on December 4, 2017 and is expected to be registered on an exchange platform in January 2018. MCIG will work with Render Payment as it continues to expand its high risk merchant service cryptocurrency platform.

As we discussed in early press releases, the goal is to be focused on cultivation, extraction and distribution of cannabis/hemp related products. We are waiting for the approval of our license application in California City, that will allow us to manufacture different cannabis products.

We struck a huge deal with Farm On! Foundation, currently run by extraordinary business woman, Tessa Edick, who accepted the position of CEO of NYAcres, Inc., 100% owned subsidiary of MCIG Inc. We will be one of the very few companies to grow HEMP in the New York area.

We are looking for other opportunities to grow cannabis in other states, but, we are very careful how we proceed, since the price tag to some projects are high and we need to find balance to be profitable.

Our construction division was completely restructured. This took place during our second quarter, as management found that the results of the operation could be improved significantly. Construction projects are back on track, however management is now very selective with projects and who to be involved with. We are here to make smart deals and make money. Our next big construction project will be in California, where we will obtain ownership rights as well.

The company as you know, has an interest in 2 public companies. Omni Health (10% owned by MCIG) is making great progress with its FDA medical devices registration of CBD for topical pain analgesic and development of non-prescription CBD analgesic creams and ointments with fast absorption properties. They are making smart moves as a newly restructured biotech company and have an exceptionally strong team. Stony Hill, our partner in VITACBD brand, is a long term investment for the company and continues to also be a profitable venture.

MCIG Inc. has recently updated the look of its website mciggroup.com and will continue to make enhancements and provide updates to shareholders on social media.

Finally, I want to thank our shareholders for their patience and for their suggestions. We are here for you and are working continuously and aggressively to grow MCIG Inc. and its businesses, concluded Paul Rosenberg.

For more information visit our websites:

For more information about mCIG visit: www.mciggroup.com



For more information about Grow Contractors visit: www.growcontractors.com



For more information about the Cannabis Advertising Network visit: www.eHesive.com



For more information about email campaigns, lead gen and blasting visit: www.marketaro.com



Download 420Cloud on iTunes or Google Play and make a connection at: www.420cloud.com



More information about Cannabiz Packaging and Supply in California: www.cannabiz.supply



For more information about Cannabiz Supply in Nevada visit: www.cannabizsupply.com



Latest jobs in the cannabis industry visit 420Jobsearch at: www.420jobsearch.com



For the marijuana recipes and cooking tips visit: www.mj.recipes



For more information about VitaCIG visit:www.vitaciggroup.com



For more information about VitaCBD visit:www.vitacbd.com



For the latest cannabis news visit: www.weedistry.com



Follow us on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/mciginc/



Visit us on Facebook @https://www.facebook.com/mCigInc/



Follow us on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/mcigInc



About OBITX, Inc

OBITX Inc, a 100% subsidiary of mCig, Inc., is developing advanced, full featured software, and services to meet technology and business needs. The team is comprised of experienced developers, programmers, and engineers provide a unique capacity for developing innovative products layered in complexity and designed exclusively for any business initiative.

While OBITX Inc, covers traditional business sectors it is also concentric and specializes throughout the cannabis and hemp sectors. Expertise involves designing, building and supporting mission critical enterprise applications. Specializing in core product development areas ranging from enterprise infrastructure to low-level system applications, we deliver cutting-edge solutions that leverage our years of experience into robust end products with high availability and scalability.

About MCIG Group (OTCQB:MCIG)

Headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, mCig, Inc. ( OTCQB : MCIG ) is a diversified company servicing the legal cannabis, hemp and CBD markets via its lifestyle brands. mCig, Inc. is committed to being the leading distributor of technology, products, and services to fit the needs of a rapidly expanding industry. mCig, Inc. has transitioned from a vaporizer manufacturer to industry leading large scale, full service cannabis cultivation construction company with its Grow Contractors division currently operating in the rapidly expanding Nevada market.

mCig, Inc. also employs a world renowned tech team and has recently entered the tech space to satisfy its evolving role in technology and in keeping its growing following up to speed.

The company looks forward to growing its core competencies to service the ancillary legal Cannabis, Hemp and CBD markets, with broader expansion to take place once federal laws change. With over seventy five years of experience combined between the key players that make up the Cannabis Grow Contractors Division, mCig Inc. is proud to work with Cannabis Industry leaders and provide broad and rounded solutions for legal growers nationwide.

Safe Harbour

Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties relating to the Companys ability to develop, market and sell products based on its technology; the expected benefits and efficacy of the Companys products and technology; the availability of substantial additional funding for the Company to continue its operations and to conduct research and development, and future product commercialization; and the Companys business, research, product development, regulatory approval, marketing and distribution plans and strategies.

This release contains a non-GAAP disclosure, EBIDTA, which consists of net income plus interest expense, net, provision for income taxes and depreciation and amortization. This term, as the Company defines it, may not be comparable to a similarly titled measure used by other companies and is not a measure of performance presented in accordance with GAAP. The Company uses EBIDTA as a measure of operating performance. EBIDTA should not be considered as a substitute for net income.




May 5, 1951 - November 30, 2017

My devoted dad, a loving husband to my mom, a loyal friend to all, a dedicated employee and co-worker, a real family man, Roy Oliver, 66, of Bryan, died on Thursday, November 30, 2017 in Temple. We will honor this incredible life during a Life Tribute Service at 12 noon Saturday, December 9, 2017 at Callaway-Jones Funeral and Cremation Centers in Bryan, Texas. We will begin at 11am with visitation at the funeral center. Inurnment for both Roy and Sandra will be at 11am on Sunday December 10th in Bryan City Cemetery. Cremation Life Tribute Services are in the care of Callaway-Jones Funeral and Cremation Centers Bryan-College Station.

Roy Oliver was born in Houston County. A quiet human throughout his life; he was born to John and Bessie Lamber Oliver on May 5, 1951. Roy's life, as was his character, was a simple life. He didn't need the latest in fashions or the most recent in trends. Roy always gave you respect and honor. He never complained. Roy was one of eleven children in his family; he is the twin brother to Joy, his sister. His family was of simple beginnings and hard work. He married the love his life Sandra Grady and they made their home for five wonderful children. Roy was employed with Wolf Cemetery Services starting in 1991 for many years. Roy knew the importance of being a cemetery professional. He also provided the most excellent care in services to numerous families in his career. He was dedicated to the cemetery business regardless of how beautiful a day it may have been or even in the worst of weather conditions. Roy recently retired from Metzer Cemetery Services, just before Sandra's death in June 2017.

His wife Sandra Oliver; their children Jimmy, Dene, Carol, and Glenda; his brothers, Thomas, Sammy, and Marvin; and his parents all precede Roy in death.

Although his daughter, Lisa Dowdall is the last immediate survivor of Roy's, he also leaves to cherish his legacy his brothers, Donald, Ronald and wife, Samantha, Johnny and wife, Sally; his sisters, Evon and husband, Hubert Hall, Patricia and husband, Edward May; his beloved twin sister, Joy and husband, Raul Lumbreraz, and Nelda Benton; his brother-in-law, Tom and wife, Sandra Grady; his numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and his precious fur baby, Joy.

Roy's family, especially Lisa Dowdall, would like to express their deepest gratitude to Kim May, Roy's niece, for her unconditional love and all the support she gave uncle Roy.

Express condolences at CallawayJones.com
Making a return to our two favourite summer locations, Mount Maunganui and Nelson in early January 2023, we've got whiff of the first release lineup and me oh my, yes boy
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Thirteen Connecticut State Police troopers are on the ground in Puerto Rico to help local law enforcement with the post-hurricane recovery efforts.

The U.S. territory was devastated when Hurricane Maria made landfall on Sept. 20, leaving about 3 million residents without power or clean water for months.

On Monday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced the troopers deployment as part of the states ongoing efforts to help Puerto Rico. Of the 13 troopers sent to Puerto Rico, state police said 12 of them are fluent in Spanish.

Im incredibly proud of the troopers that volunteered to assist the people of Puerto Rico in their time of need, Malloy said.

The troopers left the state Monday and are expected to stay in Puerto Rico until Dec. 14  though there are talks of a possible extension for that return date.

The state police troopers are stationed in Humacao, about an hour south of San Juan. A majority of Humacao remains without power, according to Capt. Tim Madden, who is serving as the commander of the state troopers deployed on the island.

There is a large population of the town that is homeless ... and one of our jobs is to distribute food and water in the community, Madden said. Many of the people here are still struggling, but they are wonderful people and are so grateful for the assistance. Its been very rewarding.

The troopers are also providing security and working traffic details in conjunction with the police force in Puerto Rico. They answered the call from the Federal Emergency Management Agency looking for more than 500 law enforcement volunteers to help on the island.

There was definitely no shortage of volunteers with the state police when we heard the call, Madden said. In Connecticut, we grumble if weve been without power for three days but then you realize how lucky we really are.

Police personnel from Las Cruces Police Department in New Mexico, Massachusetts State Police, New York State Police, New Jersey State Police, New Hampshire State Police and Florida Highway Patrol are some of the other departments helping out.

Despite the chance they wont be home for the holidays, Madden said everyone on the team agreed to stay if needed.

(They) are entirely selfless and have been putting in sweltering 16-hour days, Madden said. And theyve been doing it with dedication and devotion. We couldnt ask for a better group of people to come down here. It makes me proud the way they are representing our state.
Nearly 60 years ago, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, coined "Moore's Law," a prediction that would set the pace for the digital revolution. The law stated that computing abilities, over time, would radically increase in power while decreasing in relative cost, all at an exponential rate.

Related: Survey Finds Marketers Know All the Important Tech Trends But Aren't Prepared for Any of Them

This insight, along with the hard work of many computer scientists and engineers, has fueled the rapid growth of the technology sector. The industry has quickly become a staple component of our modern economy.

The five biggest technology companies (Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) together made up a whopping 37 percent of the S&P 500's total gains in 2017. Federal investments in the digital sector could reach up to $95 billion in the coming year. And, internationally, the public will spend up to $3.4 trillion on digital services by 2020.

Consumers and enterprises have a lot of potential to look forward to, as frontier technologies finally become affordable enough to service the mass markets.

So, what exactly will 2018 have in store? Here are eight tech trends to keep your eye on:

1. Blockchain

By now, you have probably heard a thing or two about the promise of blockchain and Bitcoin. At a high level, blockchain technology is a way of securely managing access and information. The core of blockchain hinges on the idea of decentralization, which essentially distributes power and risk equitably across players in a network.

Blockchain startups are finding niche and clever ways to optimize industries, by replacing intermediary parties (brokers, agents, etc.) with smart contracts that automatically verify actions without compromising data security. Platforms like Gameflip and Filecoin are able to solve fundamental marketplace challenges, worth billions of dollars, which have been terrorizing ecosystems for decades.

Other companies, like SparkleCoin, are driving blockchain adoption at scale by empowering everyday consumers to purchase real-world products and services from the world's largest online retailers using cryptocurrencies.

2. Internet of things

BI Intelligence's report on the "internet of things" notes that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions in the next five years alone. This deluge of investment has turned this once science-fictional notion into reality.

Already, many of us wake up in our "smart beds" to a Bluetooth-connected alarm clock that communicates with our wifi-enabled speakers. Soon all of our devices -- microwaves, washing machines and even bird feeders -- will be connected to the web. With geospatial data from all of our devices, tech-savvy companies will be able to optimize and automate systems, eradicating inefficiencies caused by human error.

3. Virtual reality

Is 2018 the long-awaited year that virtual reality goes mainstream? While the technology is still evolving, and while players like Oculus and HTC continue to iterate on their consoles, things look promising for the industry as VR platforms begin to appeal to the masses.

Related: Technology Trends That Will Shape 2017 and Boost Your Company's UX

One of the biggest obstacles to virtual reality achieving true scale is the creation of enough content to attract a wide swath of consumers. As the industry has learned, onboarding hard-core gamers will not be enough to sustain a long-term effort.

Beyond gaming, there a number of virtual-reality startups that are building high-value-add services specifically for enterprises.

4. Augmented reality

The rise of Pokemon in 2016 was just the first of many implementations of augmented reality that will make a massive impact on society. Apple and Google recently introduced both ARKit and ARCore and are driving an inflection point for the industry. As hardware and software continue to improve, we can expect to see more developers building AR applications in 2018.

It's not just startups looking to get in on the action. In fact, it is likely that many of the world's biggest brands will invest their resources into creating augmented-reality experiences to enhance their users' experiences both inside and outside of their stores.

5. Chatbots

Enterprise applications of messaging bots seem poised to have a tangible impact on the software space, as more companies invest in developing their own consumer-facing bots. Chatbots, at the most simplistic level, are front-end interfaces for companies to communicate with their customers. More advanced bots leverage artificial intelligence to provide enriching and interactive user experiences.

Companies can embed these bots on their home pages, or they can rely on native platforms like Facebook and Slack for distribution. Expect to see companies across all industries, including hospitality, dining and travel, create bots for customer support, sales and marketing services.

6. Subscription model

The days of "pay-per-use" costing are long gone, and are likely not coming back anytime soon, as most companies are switching to recurring revenue models. Already, you can order your clothing, groceries and cleaning supplies to be delivered directly to your doorstep on a weekly or monthly basis.

And the model is being applied more widely than just to physical goods: Most internet companies are operating under a "software as a service" model, where you pay a monthly fee on a recurring cycle for a service.

We can expect to see startups expand their subscription businesses into more verticals, and to start specializing.

7. Ecommerce

Next year, 2018, may finally be the year ecommerce overtakes retail once and for all. In a report on online retail, Forrester stated that 83 percent of U.S. adults purchased something on Amazon this past year. As this number grows, and digital storefronts become a more convenient and attractive option for consumers, we can expect to see ecommerce begin to take bigger slices of the retail pie.

It will be interesting to see which incumbents are able to establish a large enough digital presence to protect themselves from this disruption.

8. Automation

Artificial intelligence and machines will soon become ubiquitous in the professional world. From virtual assistants, to manual labor,to intermediary services, many jobs will likely be disrupted in the coming years. Though humans are indispensable in certain fields, there are many points of optimization that we can fully automate with embedded technology.

Related: 9 Key Mobile Technology Trends for 2017 (Infographic)

Machine intelligence has the potential to fundamentally shift worker demand and displace millions of jobs. Where will everyone go when machines can do our work for us? This question, among others, will be important considerations getting our rapt attention in 2018.

Related:

8 Tech Trends to Keep Your Eye on in 2018

Online Small-Business Lending Is Set to Bounce Back

'Factoring' Family Into Account



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


Spring Hope, NC, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) executives updated its shareholders today that Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, signed Senate Bill 119, that was adopted last month, into law and published on December 1, 2017. According to the Wisconsin State Legislature , Senate Bill (SB) 119 relates to growing and processing industrial hemp, providing an exemption from emergency rule procedures, granting rule-making authority, making an appropriation, and providing a criminal penalty. Senate Bill 119 will also allow a pilot program to be established in the state that will examine the cultivation, processing, and marketing of industrial hemp, and be administered by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP).

Today, Wisconsinites are aware of the need to diversify their state's economy. Enacting Senate Bill 119 into law was expected. Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP), said, "It's time for hemp to make its rightful return to the American landscape. Wisconsin was once a leading producer of industrial hemp and now the crop is set to make a return to the state of Wisconsin."

Senate Bill 119 states, in part, the following:

requires the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to issue licenses that authorize the growing and processing of industrial hemp The bill provides that a person may possess, transport, sell, distribute, or buy industrial hemp without a license if the industrial hemp was planted, grown, cultivated, and processed by a person licensed by DATCP or by a person in another state or country who planted, grew, cultivated, or processed the industrial hemp in accordance with the laws of that state or country. The bill requires reporting by a person with an industrial hemp license, including reporting all sales of industrial hemp.

This bill also provides that DATCP or an institution of higher education may establish an agricultural pilot program to study industrial hemp and to grow hemp for this purpose.

This bill requires DATCP, the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (UW-CALS), and the Wisconsin Crop Improvement Association to administer a voluntary seed certification program for industrial hemp and allows DATCP and UW-CALS to develop a Wisconsin heritage seed for industrial hemp. In addition, the bill requires any industrial hemp or industrial hemp product intended for human consumption to be tested, in its final consumer-ready state, by an independent testing laboratory. The bill sets out requirements related to the laboratory's accreditation, testing, and reporting.

This bill also creates an exemption from the controlled substances law for growing, processing, or possessing industrial hemp in conformity with a license issued by DATCP. Additionally, the bill creates an exemption for possessing, transporting, delivering, selling, distributing, and buying industrial hemp if the industrial hemp was planted, grown, cultivated, and processed by a person licensed by DATCP or by a person in another state or country in accordance with the laws of that state or country.

To read the full bill, click here .

According to the amended bill, the pilot program should move quickly, as DATCP only has 90 days to develop a system for licensing growers who will participate in the program. One news source, The Hempgazette , stated, Given the constraints on industrial hemp in U.S. Federal law, there will be significant limitation on hemp farming in Wisconsin for the foreseeable future, however the framework of SB119 will enable expansion if things should change. Wisconsins association with hemp began in 1908 with 6 acres of the crop. Its popularity grew rapidly and according to a 1918 report, Wisconsin was the second largest hemp producing state in the USA by 1917. Of the 42,000 acres of hemp grown in the United States that year, Wisconsin accounted for 7,000 acres. That same year, Kentucky had 17,000 acres under cultivation.

Co-sponsor of SB119, State Senator Patrick Testin, sees a bright future for industrial hemp in Wisconsin. We import about $500 million from Canada alone into the United States of industrial hemp, he said. This is a prime opportunity to lessen our dependence on foreign imports, and have those imports grown right here in Wisconsin.

Hemp, Inc.s investor relations department has also reported calls from at least 25 Wisconsin farmers wanting Hemp, Inc. to process their hemp. We have seen an influx of calls from Wisconsin just over the past month. Industrial hemp is important to Americans because they are being informed on the difference between hemp and marijuana and the fog of ignorance is dissipating. Industrial hemp is a miracle crop and a big source of revenue, concluded Perlowin.




NORWALK  Bruce Chimento, who stepped out of retirement two years ago to head his hometowns public works department, will truly retire next year.

Chimento said hell retire as Norwalks director of public works in the latter part of 2018.

I was in the corporate world for a while and (Mayor Harry Rilling) asked me to come back and help. I hope to have made an impact, said Chimento, recalling his two years thus far as head of the department. But Ive got to consider myself now, my personal life. I have a house in Florida and Id like to relax a little bit.

Chimento, a registered professional engineer who was born in Norwalk and once worked as the citys commissioner of public works, was appointed as interim public works director in June 2015 after the resignation of Harold Alvord. He became permanent director of the roughly 135-member department in August of that year.

Rilling said Chimento informed him of his retirement plans before Norwalks municipal elections Nov. 7.

Thats up to him, Rilling said. Im not forcing the issue with him. Hes a good person, a good worker. Hes very knowledgeable and very dedicated and he gets the job done. Its been a win-win situation for me and for him.

Rilling, who is began his third two-year term last month, said Chimentos knowledge of Norwalk has served the city and its residents well.

Thats really important, Rilling said. When youre talking about our infrastructure, you need that institutional knowledge of where things are and how things have happened in the past. You have to have that familiarity. This is a very complex system.

Rilling said Chimento has led the department well and run a tight ship while treating employees with respect. He said many labor grievances were settled under Chimentos leadership of the department.

His departure comes as the Connecticut Department of Transportation gears up to replace the Walk Bridge over the Norwalk River. The roughly $1 billion project is slated to begin in 2019. The DOT has begun staging equipment for preliminary track-and-signal upgrades.

Chimento told the Common Councils Public Works Committee on Tuesday evening that meeting with DOT officials to discuss the Walk Bridge project consumes a significant amount of his time and that of other officials at City Hall. Rilling has put forward hiring a regional transportation planner to work as the citys point person for bridge replacement. The council will consider the proposal next Tuesday evening.

Next year, the council likely will be charged with confirming a new public works director.

Under Norwalks charter, the citys public works director is appointed by the mayor, subject to confirmation by the Common Council, and may be removed by the mayor at his or her discretion. The director must have at least five years of applicable executive or administrative experience prior to appointment.

Chimentos salary in 2016 was $137,425, according to the Norwalk Comptrollers Office.
Dublin, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "The Boeing Middle-of-the-Market' Aircraft Forecast" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.



This Boeing Middle-of-the-Market' Aircraft Forecast analyzes the market for the proposed new Boeing aircraft to provide insight into what opportunities may arise from its development and to inform future business strategies.

The following key questions have been answered by experts arising from the potential new programme, including:

Will Boeing launch a MoM aircraft?

What impact could it have on the market?

What are the key market drivers?

Which regions offer the best sales prospects?

Why are airlines interested in this size of aircraft?

How many aircraft might Boeing sell?

What will be the reaction of Airbus?

Which regions offer the best sales prospects?

What is a realistic price for such an aircraft?

What challenges does Boeing face in bringing the aircraft to market?

When might the aircraft be launched?

Why buy this report?

Leverage expert analytics and insights to answer your key market and business questions about this mid-size aircraft and its impact on the market.

Through pricing landscape, forecasts, SWOT, airline requirements and more, you'll have a better understanding of what is happening and what could happen.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

2. Executive Summary

3. Middle-of-the-Market' sector definition

3.1 Aircraft types

3.2 Payload-range characteristics

4. Currently available MoM aircraft types

4.1 Airbus A321/A321neo

4.2 Airbus A330/A330neo

4.3 Boeing 737 NG and Max

4.4 Boeing 787-8

5. Forecast for MoM sector

5.1 Baseline forecast from Flight Fleet Forecast (FFF) 2017

5.2 Key market drivers for the sector

6. Key success factors for a new MoM aircraft

6.1 Range and performance

6.2 Operating cost

6.3 Other design drivers

6.4 Boeing options for a new aircraft design

6.5 SWOT analysis for new MoM aircraft

7. Programme development costs and pricing

7.1 Research and development costs

7.2 Pricing landscape

8. MoM delivery forecast

8.1 Baseline forecast

8.2 Airbus competitive response

8.3 Forecast sensitivities

9. Factors impacting launch and programme timescales

9.1 Engines

9.2 Market position

9.3 Key airline requirements

10. Conclusion

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/rbp5x6/the_boeing




Drainage issues for a proposed subdivision were addressed at the Regional Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night.

The planning commission voted 9-0-1, with Commission member Robin Hendricksen abstaining, to recommend approval of a rezoning request from Niedfelt Property Management. The request is to rezone part of lot 1 and all of lot 2 of the proposed Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision from LLR Large Lot Residential to B-2 General Business Zone for an area located between Highway 34 and Goldenrod Drive, and west of Shady Bend Road.

Regional Planning Director Chad Nabity told the commission it has seen this rezoning request before, back in July and September. After the July meeting, Niedfelt Property Management decided to reconfigure their request, he said. The planning commission made no recommendation due to a deadlocked 6-6 vote.

The request moved to the Grand Island City Council, who voted to forward the matter back to the commission to discuss drainage issues. This was what was discussed Wednesday night.

Hall County Engineer Steve Riehle spoke to the planning commission about the drainage issue. He explained that the rezoning for the Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision is Hall Countys jurisdiction as far as roads, maintenance of the roads and ditches.

He added he had meetings with neighbors in the Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision two weeks ago to address some of their concerns.

We talked to the property owners about what we, as Hall County could do, Riehle said. We talked a lot with the people that were there about zoning jurisdiction and how that covers things like land use, rezoning and building permits. We talked a little bit about jurisdictions the county has. It (subdivision) is currently in the county, but the city is involved in the zoning jurisdiction and building permits.

Riehle said Hall County cleaned out three or four ditches in 2011. He noted the county has one project underway to clean out the ditches along Conrad Drive.

It is our job to clean out our ditches, he said. Many of the ditches get full because of silt that comes from other properties. We probably clean out about 50 ditches a year. But based on the number of surveys we get, I bet we actually do 150 ditches every year. We clean out a lot of county ditches as it is what we do. We have not done Conrad and Goldenrod since 1994.

Riehle added Hall County also plans to work with a property owner to clean out the slough just south of the Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision. He said the county would start at the western edge of the subdivision, come up through Goldenrod Drive where there is a box culvert, and then go east of Goldenrod Drive though an easement.

The property owner said hed be willing to grant to the public. We can maintain that ditch, clean it out this winter and go out and clean it again in 2020, 2023 or whenever it needs it again.

Commission member Les Ruge asked Riehle what could be done to keep property owners from throwing grass clippings into the slough. He responded that when he worked for the city of Grand Island, he would send out letters, which sometimes worked, but that he preferred to address this issue via a telephone call.

Letters will not make a conversation and will spark a fight, Riehle said. If I make a phone call, I can have a conversation with the property owner to say this is just making it worse. If we get a significant rainfall, grass is going to plug it up. If there is resistance there, I would send a letter and follow up with the county attorney if needed.

Christie DePoorter of Niedfelt Property Management also spoke at Wednesdays meeting and said Niedfelt Property Management has attempted to address the concerns brought forward by the neighbors in the proposed Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision.

We are going to be preparing restricted covenants to try to create green space on the north side of the property, she said. We will address the size of the retention area to capture any runoff with any possible development on the south end, so we do not overwhelm the slough and create issues for neighbors on the north end.

Commission chairman Pat ONeill asked DePoorter if Niedfelt Property Management had volunteered to put in a detention cell. DePoorter said they have.

For the record

In other action, the Regional Planning Commission:

 Voted 9-0-1, with Hendricksen abstaining, to approve recommendation of the subdivision agreement for Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision to include no commercial driveway.

 Voted 9-0 to approve the one- and six-year street improvement plan for the city of Grand Island. Hendricksen arrived late and did not vote.

 Voted 10-0 to approve a redevelopment plan request from Take Flight Investments, LLC., to redevelop the three-story building into retail and apartment space at the former Connie Swanson Photography Studio building at 209 W. Third St. The redevelopment would include one one-bedroom apartment on the second floor and one two-plus bedroom apartment on the third floor.
Police/Sheriff

Anyone with information about any crime in the state may call the Grand Island-Hall County Crime Stoppers, (308) 381-8822. Callers will remain anonymous.

A reward of up to $1,000 will be paid after law enforcement agencies have determined the seriousness of the crime and the usefulness of the information.

Inmate custody status can be obtained by calling the VINE hotline at (877) NE 4 VINE or by visiting www.vinelink.com. Information is available 24 hours a day.

If you see a crime happening, call the Grand Island-Hall County Emergency Center  911.

Grand Island Police

The following felonies were reported:

 A cardholder reported Tuesday that his BankStar Financial debit card information was used for numerous transactions.

 Alec Bernstrauch reported a burglary to a residence Tuesday at 2006 W. 11th Ave.

 On Tuesday, Lizabeth Weeth reported losing her wallet in the Conestoga Mall parking lot and having her credit card used at Best Buy.

 Plains Irrigation Sales and Service reported that someone took a John Deere skid loader with a front bucket and a space heater from the business, which is at 3344 W. Wildwood Drive.

Hall County Sheriff

Law enforcement arrested one person on a warrant in one case. There were 22 calls for service.

For more information visit www.hallcountyne.gov and click on the sheriff link.

 Jeff Whitaker reported a burglary Tuesday at 7501 W. Lepin Road in Doniphan.

Court report

Hall County District Court

 Jaycee E. Aguilar, 25, Grand Island, two counts of attempt of a Class 3 or 3A felony, 36 months probation for each.

 Rusty Howard Fulton, 30, Sutton, DUI causing serious bodily injury, 45 days in jail, 48 months probation, drivers license revoked 10 years, ordered not to drive 45 days, $1,200 probation fee.

 Christopher J. Thompson, 50, Superior, second-degree criminal trespass, 90 days in jail with credit for 180 days, jail post-release custodial sanction, two days. Also guilty of attempt of a Class 3 or 3A felony, 180 days in jail, post-release supervison 12 months, jail post-release custodial sanction, two days.

 Oniel Benitez, 39, Grand Island, guilty of seven counts of first-degree forgery. For the first count, sentenced to 30 days in jail with 18 days credit, 48 months probation, required to pay $1,428.97 restitution and $1,200 probation fee. For the other offenses, the sentence is 48 months probation for each.

 Colby J. Suntych, 22, Cairo, had his probation revoked. Original offenses are criminal attempt at robbery, 60 months probation, $1,478 in restitution and $1,500 probation fee; second-degree assault, 60 months probation; and criminal attempt at possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, 60 months probation, 30 days in jail with credit for one day, and $1,500 probation fee.

 Michael Mostek, 28, Wood River, operating a motor vehicle to avoid arrest for a felony, six months in jail with credit for 268 days served, license revoked two years, post-release supervision 18 months. Also guilty of theft by unlawful taking totaling $500 to $1.500, subsequent offense, six months in jail with credit for 268 days served. Also guilty of third-degree domestic assault, six months in jail, and terroristic threats, one year in jail with credit for 268 days served, post-release supervision 18 months.

Hall County Court

 Kara J. Murphy, 18, Lincoln, attempt of a Class 4 felony, $200 fine, nine months probation, required to pay $225 probation fee. Also guilty of having no operators license/non-waiverable, $75 fine, nine months probation.

 Jeffrey Wright, 36, Grand Island, was charged with three counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument and three counts of first-degree forgery, all on Sept. 1. Preliminary hearing set for 4 p.m. Jan. 23.

Driving Under the Influence  Juan M. Martinez-Rodriguez, 35, $500 fine, six months probation, drivers license revoked 60 days, $150 probation fee; Marcos Miranda-Hernandez, 29, Grand Island, $500 fine, six months probation, drivers license revoked 60 days. Also guilty of no operators license/non-waiverable, $75 fine.
The parent company of Omaha-based CHI Health will combine with San Francisco-based Dignity Health, creating a new nonprofit Catholic health system.

The combined companys headquarters will be in Chicago and operate under a new name, which will be chosen in the second half of next year, when the deal is expected to close, the companies said.

Local facilities will continue operating under their current names, the companies said.

Catholic Health Initiatives, which is based in Denver, is the parent of Omahas CHI Health, which operates the Creighton University Medical Center-Bergan Mercy, Immanuel, Midlands and other hospitals in the region.

CHI Health is Nebraskas largest health system with 12,000 employees. The merger is not expected to impact local employees, given there is no geographical overlap between the two combining organizations.

The combined health system will include more than 700 sites and 139 hospitals across 28 states. Care will be delivered by approximately 159,000 employees and more than 25,000 physicians and other advanced practice clinicians.

There are no current plans to close any facilities in either organization as a result of the merger.
Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy  the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

These words spoken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed a surprise attack by Japan on the United States. Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless. Five of eight battleships, three destroyers and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged. More than 200 aircraft were destroyed. American service personnel killed totaled 2,403 and 1,200 were injured. War was declared against Japan and Germany on Dec. 8, 1941  a war that would rage until the summer of 1945 and result in the deaths of more than 400,000 United States service personnel and dramatically change our world.

Today we remember and commemorate those military personnel who suffered that first attack on the United States. Once again we remember and honor all those who fought during World War II and helped preserve democratic ideals. Given that World War II ended 72 years ago, we are rapidly losing the brave warriors of World War II who gave so much.

The U.S. had long practiced a policy of not being involved in foreign wars whenever possible. We believed that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would allow us to avoid the wars fought on other continents. Thus America had hoped to escape involvement in the vicious fighting already taking place in both Europe and Asia in the early 1940s. However, the Neutrality Acts passed in the 1930s proved worthless in keeping the U.S. out of war. They did contribute to our being unprepared when war did come to American soil. Pearl Harbor Day marks the end of our foreign policy based on isolation. At the end of World War II we emerged as the nation that could protect the free world and provide needed leadership in world affairs. Large military budgets and standing armies have been and will continue to be seen as necessary for us to keep the world safe.

Surely, the military generals in Japan must not have anticipated that their country would be totally defeated, forced to accept an unconditional surrender and endure an army of occupation. Had they known that the war they started would result in two atom bombs destroying their cities, they surely would have chosen differently. Had they known that saturation bombing would destroy their ability to produce and kill masses of their people, surely they would have chosen differently. Had they realized the consequences of their aggression, surely they would not have attacked the sleeping giant.

They should have known. We must always make sure that those who would harm us understand our willingness and ability to defend ourselves.

We enjoy the worlds largest economy and have the worlds most powerful military. However, to prosper in the modern global economy and promote the ideals of democracy across the globe, the U.S. needs allies  just as we needed allies in our struggles against Germany and Japan during WWII. We must continually work with those who share our common ideals.

Pearl Harbor Day reminds us once again that freedom is not cheap. We must be ever vigilant. World leadership is our responsibility, regardless of our desire to have it. Armed conflicts  both large and small  seem inevitable. We must continue to work to keep peace in the world; however, nuclear weapons and modern technology make peace keeping increasingly difficult and complex.
The revitalized Soldiers Memorial Military Museum is one year away from reopening in the heart of downtown St. Louis.

On Nov. 3, 2018, Soldiers Memorial will open as a state-of-the-art museum facility that honors military service, veterans and their families under the operational leadership of the Missouri Historical Society. The Missouri Historical Society also operates the nationally renowned Missouri History Museum in Forest Park and the Library & Research Center at 225 S. Skinker Blvd.

The Missouri Historical Society took the helm of Soldiers Memorial in November 2015 and began a $30 million renovation in 2016. The cost of the renovation is being covered entirely by anonymous donors to the Missouri Historical Society.

With the help of Mackey Mitchell Architects, every effort is being made to maintain the architectural and historic integrity of this beautiful art deco building, while also bringing it up to contemporary museum standards.

That includes meeting the rigorous standards for both LEED Certification and ADA Compliance, which the 1938-structure did not meet before.

LEED Certification

Throughout the Soldiers Memorial revitalization process the Missouri Historical Society has been working to achieve LEED certification for energy and resource-efficient buildings. This is an especially difficult feat to achieve with the renovation of a historic building.

The project is projected to receive Bronze level certification, but project managers are still striving for Silver.

In order to meet the LEED certification requirements, the construction team is using environmentally friendly construction materials such as cork flooring, and relamping the original light fixtures with LED lights. They are reusing materials where possible, including the granite steps, marble walls and the original bathroom vitrolite panels.

Waste is being recycled wherever possible. Also, an electric vehicle charging station is being installed on the north side of the building.

ADA Compliance

The revitalized Soldiers Memorial will meet ADA compliance for the first time in the buildings history. The construction of a new ramp at the intersection of Chestnut and 13th began in September that will allow an accessible entrance to all visitors at the front door. Power assist automatic openers have been designed for the two entrances off of the loggia as well as for the entries into the main exhibition galleries. A ramped sidewalk on the east side of the Court of Honor provides an accessible pathway.

Inside a new elevator has been installed in the east wing to ensure all three levels of the building are accessible to visitors and staff. A new lift is being installed on the second level, which will allow individuals attending programs in the Assembly Hall to access other spaces on the upper level for the first time without being required to use stairs.

The original restrooms on the upper level and the new restrooms on the lower level have been designed according to accessible standards. Family assist restrooms have been created on both the lower level and the upper level. Even the new exhibitions will be designed with accessibility in mind, featuring closed captioning on video elements, higher level of contrast on labels for visitors with low vision, and gallery space that is wheelchair accessible.

Renovation of a City Landmark

The entire Soldiers Memorial building is receiving a face-lift. The unique metal work on the Museums windows and doorways has been cleaned and preserved. The decorative plasterwork on the ceilings has been restored. Where

possible, the original art deco light fixtures have been cleaned and rewired to return to use. The stunning mahogany-lined elevator, with its art deco metal doors, has been brought up to code. The several hundred missing tiles from the gorgeous Gold Star Mothers mosaic on the ceiling of the loggia have been thoughtfully matched and replaced. Interior storm windows are being added to aid in the climate control needed for the safety of the artifacts while allowing the original windows to remain in place.

The lower level of the museum, which had previously not be open for public use, has been gutted and renovated to more than double the amount of exhibition space for the Museum. New restrooms have been roughed in on this level as well.

The renovations include the addition of a museum-quality HVAC system, a first for the building, as well as new electrical wiring, a fire suppression system and a stateof-the-art security system.

The exterior of the building has been cleaned. The beautiful Walker Hancock sculptures have been carefully cleaned to remove years of coal dust and embedded dirt from the surface.

A New Life for The Court of Honor

The Court of Honor was created as the Citys World War II memorial in 1948 and resides across Chestnut from Soldiers Memorial. It is being revitalized with a Five Branches Fountain, which has been constructed, and a reflecting pool, which has also been constructed and will be tested soon. Exposed aggregate pavement has been installed and the stone planter on the east side of the Court of Honor has been rebuilt using the original stone.

Monuments to those who lost their lives in Korea and Vietnam will be moved to their own spaces along the walkway between the Museum and the Court of Honor. New memorials to St. Louisans who lost their lives in more recent conflicts will be also be added to that space.

Chestnut Street is being narrowed to a single vehicular lane and a protected bike lane on this block to better integrate Soldiers Memorial with the Court of Honor. There will be a grassy area that can be used for quiet reflection of visitors or a programming space for the Museum. It will be outfitted with lighting and a sound system.

ABOUT SOLDIERS MEMORIAL MILITARY MUSEUM

The City of St. Louis created a Memorial Plaza Commission in 1925 to oversee the creation of the Memorial Plaza and Soldiers Memorial. Designed as a memorial to the St. Louis citizens who gave their lives in World War I, the Memorial became Project No. 5098 of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. The St. Louis architectural firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell designed the classical Memorial with an art deco fair. St. Louis born sculptor Walker Hancock created four monumental sculpture groupings entitled Loyalty, Vision, Courage, and Sacrifice to flank the entrances. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the site on October, 14, 1936 and the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum opened to the public on Memorial Day, May 30, 1938. The Soldiers Memorial Military Museum is owned by the City of St. Louis and is under the authority of the Board of Public Service of the City of Saint Louis. Today, Soldiers Memorial honors all veterans and active military from St. Louis.

The Missouri Historical Society, which operates the Missouri History Museum and the Library and Research Center, has been active in the St. Louis community since 1866. Founding members established the organization for the purpose of saving from oblivion the early history of the city and state. Today, the Missouri Historical Society serves as the confluence of historical perspectives and contemporary issues.

Due to its innovative approach to public service, the Missouri History Museum was the first recipient of the Institute of Museum and Library Services National Award for Museum Services in 1994. The Missouri History Museum offers programs and outreach services, including traveling exhibitions; tours; theatrical and musical presentations; programs for school classes and youth groups; family festivals; special events; workshops; and lectures. The Missouri Historical Society also operates the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center, a non-lending historical research library. The Missouri History Museum is funded by the St. Louis City and County taxpayers through the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District and by private donations. The Museum is open seven days a week. The Library and Research Center is open Tuesdays through Sundays. General admission to both facilities is always free.
Members of the public were informed of the results of a flood survey conducted by HeartLands Conservancy in an effort to create a plan and recommendations to solve flooding issues.

The survey was sent out to 2,100 addresses in the American Bottom watershed in Madison County. The watershed encompasses 43,352 acres of urban and agricultural lands.

An open house to discuss the survey publicly is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 13 in the Council Chambers at Pontoon Beach Village Hall.

Results from the survey show that 45 percent of the respondents said they had been flooded in the last 10 years.

Janet Buchanan, project manager at HeartLands Conservancy said where the flooding is occurring came as a surprise.

What is perhaps most interesting is the amount of flooding that is happening outside the floodplains identified by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), Buchanan said. People are reporting that the vast majority of flooding events are happening in other places, often urban areas, and we had no data on that before now.

The Flood Survey identified the top four causes of flooding in the area as heavy rainstorms, lack of drainage facilities (swales, ditches, storm sewers, etc.), flooding from nearby rivers, streams, lakes or ditches, and pipe/culvert or ditch that was blocked or needs maintenance.

The survey found that flooding over the last 10 years has cost survey respondents an estimated $385,000. The estimated average amount lost per respondents is $11,667 over 10 years.

The survey was created as part of the watershed planning process for the American Bottom watershed, which is being undertaken by Madison County, HeartLands Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The watershed plan is a way to strategically address water quality, flooding and stormwater issues.

The end result will be a document that presents strategies and marshals funding to address these issues.

Madison County Stormwater Coordinator Steve Brendel said he hopes the open house would be useful for residents, business owners, municipalities, townships and farmers.

Watershed plans can be used to leverage funding for many different types of projects, Brendel said. With input from the attendees, we can direct attention to infrastructure projects and land management issues that matter to people.

The full Flood Survey Report can be downloaded from HeartLands Conservancys website at www.heartlandsconservancy.org/americanbottoms.php.

The results shared in the report include reported frequency of flooding, cost of flooding and other impacts.

For more information about the American Bottom Flood Survey or the watershed plan, contact Buchanan at (618) 566-4451 or email janet.buchanan@heartlandsconservancy.org.
COLUMBIA, Md., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EventTracker, a leader in security information and event management (SIEM), today announced that it has been recognized once again by Gartner, Inc. in its 2017 Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management. This will mark the 10th consecutive year that EventTracker has been included in this report.1,2



As one of 19 companies included in the report, EventTracker is recognized for its ability to execute and its completeness of vision.

The Magic Quadrant is based on Gartners annual analysis of the SIEM market and vendors in the industry.

Over the last year, SIEM companies have consistently upgraded their technologies and offerings to keep pace with cybersecurity demands, and EventTracker has made break-through enhancements. In December, it released a forward-thinking SIEM-as-a-Service offering called SIEMphonic, and in June 2017, EventTracker introduced Dormant Malware Hunter as part of Security Center 8.3. Dormant Malware Hunter is a uniquely powerful response to the ransomware epidemic that arose earlier in the year.

The comprehensive EventTracker Security Center 8.3 platform includes SIEM, intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning, threat intelligence, and honeynet deception technology, and is implemented either on-premises or in the cloud. Security Center is also at the core of SIEMphonic. The company ensures its clients success by overlaying the technology with professional services for remote administration, analysis, compliance support, and tuning for optimal results. These services are provided by security experts at the companys 24/7 intelligence-driven and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified security operations center (SOC).

This array of features extends beyond traditional SIEM and log management, enabling organizations to defend their networks from the latest advanced persistent threats while also complying with multiple regulations.

We are honored to be listed in this Magic Quadrant for the 10th consecutive year, said A.N. Ananth, CEO, EventTracker. We believe that Gartners report, its findings and recommendations, are held in extremely high regard. We feel that they give insight into what our customers need and expect in their security solutions. Using this knowledge, we continue to add powerful capabilities to our SIEM and security orchestration solutions to give resource-strapped IT teams optimal threat and compliance management results.

To download this Magic Quadrant report, visit: https://www.eventtracker.com/campaigns/gartner-mq-siem/. For more information about EventTrackers SIEM platform and co-managed solutions, please visit: www.eventtracker.com.

1Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management, Kelly M. Kavanagh, Toby Bussa, 4 December 2017.

2From 2008-12, EventTracker was listed as Prism Microsystems.

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 Gartners 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.

Tweet this: EventTracker named to @Gartner_inc Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management for the 10th consecutive time http://bit.ly/2pSsayo

Resources

EventTracker YouTube

EventTracker Case Studies

About EventTracker

EventTrackers advanced security solutions protect enterprises and small businesses from data breaches and insider fraud, and streamline regulatory compliance. The companys EventTracker platform comprises SIEM, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection, behavior analytics, a honeynet deception network and other defense in-depth capabilities within a single management platform. The company complements its state-of-the-art technology with 24/7 managed services from its global security operations center (SOC) to ensure its customers achieve desired outcomessafer networks, better endpoint security, earlier detection of intrusion, and relevant and specific threat intelligence. The company serves the retail, hospitality, healthcare, legal, banking and financial services, utilities and government sectors.

EventTracker is a subsidiary of Netsurion, a leader in remotely-managed IT security services that protect multi-location businesses information, payment systems and on-premise public and private Wi-Fi networks. www.eventtracker.com. Twitter: @logtalk.

CONTACT:

Deb Montner, Montner Tech PR

(203) 226-9290

dmontner@montner.com
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Linkedin Endy Bayuni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 08:09 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c69daf 1 Opinion #commentary,democracy,Indonesian-politics,#Democracy,New-Order,Soeharto Free

The late Soeharto has become something of a poster boy for leadership as the nation searches for a president who can effectively deliver the goods.

Photos of the smiling president, who ruled Indonesia between 1966-1998, appear everywhere, with the caption in Javanese piye kabare, isih penak jamanku, tho? (How are you, better in my era, wasnt it?), a reminder that for some, life was so much better then. The Soeharto posters and memes have been going viral since the 2014 election and are still circulating now.

Soeharto was a dictator, there is no doubt about it, though his supporters would claim that he was a noble one. But the point of the poster is that Indonesia had a leader who delivered the goods, something that no other president since then has been able to match, so his supporters claim.

Soeharto, who ruled with an iron fist, did deliver justice, security and welfare, but it is debatable whether his successors have fared better or worse. Ruling the country for 32 years, he was bound to have delivered something, while his successors have been subject to periodic democratic elections and limited to ruling for no more than two five-year terms.

The bigger question, and this was one of the topics discussed at the recent Bali Civil Society and Media Forum, is whether democracy can deliver justice, security and welfare to the people, all the people.

Indonesia, now a democracy for nearly 20 years, albeit a struggling one, makes a good case study to answer this question, by comparing the ability of the two political systems in bringing greater prosperity to the people.

The track record of Indonesia since 1998 has not been bad, although perhaps underappreciated.

The economy has improved significantly, in terms of overall GDP and per-capita-income growth, and the government today provides many services such as free health care, 12-year compulsory free education and cash assistance for the poor. Indonesia is today the 16th-largest economy in the world, and many predict that it will be in the top 10 by 2025 and top five by 2040.

We have a growing middle class, reflected by the number cellphones, cars and motorcycles, and a growing appetite for holidays, both at home or abroad.

And there is freedom, all kinds of freedom, something that distinguishes todays era from that of Soehartos.

Why then, do some people still feel that they miss Soeharto?

Perhaps they dont really miss him, but they miss the certainty, the swift way decisions were made and the security he provided. They miss the effectiveness and efficiency that an authoritarian regime can deliver.

Democracy, unfortunately, is almost anything but.

Decisions are made through an arduous and cumbersome process, and the government is often mired in stagnation. Every single major decision has to undergo the democratic processes, meaning noisy public debates and endless deliberation by legislators.

We also have legislators who are good at grandstanding but ineffective in producing laws that reflect the aspirations of the people. In many ways, Soehartos regime produced some better laws because they did not go through the lengthy debates we see today.

On security, Indonesia faces challenges in ensuring protection for people who are attacked or persecuted because of their faith, race, sexual orientation or even ideological leanings.

The attacks on the Shia and Ahmadiyya followers, the forced closures of places of worship, the recent attacks against people because of their leftist ideological leanings, and the return of anti-Chinese sentiments, reflect that freedom and the protection of freedom have been denied to some.

Soeharto would not have tolerated any of this, but then, he would not have tolerated a lot of other things, including dissent and differences of opinion.

Populism, the hallmark of democracy and one way of getting elected, also means leaders addressing only popular issues but avoiding more fundamental problems.

These failings of democracy in Indonesia may have revived our memory of the good old days of Soeharto (while forgetting the worse aspects of his regime), but they should not be used as a pretext for a return to authoritarianism.

Democracy in Indonesia is still a work in progress. We have been in this game for only 20 years, and it still has not been able to ensure justice, security and welfare for all.

Democracy, as the popular saying goes, is the worst form of government, except for all the others. The alternative, an authoritarian regime, may be swift and efficient. But if authoritarianism comes at the cost of our freedom, an absence of checks and balances and endemic corruption, then yes, give us democracy any time.

We just have to work harder, through the democratic process, to fix these problems. We have to have faith in democracy.

***

The writer, editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post, took part in the Bali Civil Society and Media Forum, organized by the Institute for Peace and Democracy and the Press Council, on Dec.5-6.
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Linkedin APP Sinar Mas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia  Fri, December 8, 2017

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Sinar Mas recently won a Sustainable Business Award (SBA) in the category of Best Energy Management.

The award was handed over directly by National Development Planning Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro at the Grand Hyatt Jakarta. During the awards ceremony, the minister said the company had fulfilled the standards of sustainable business practices thanks to its use of sustainable energy resources.

"We welcome this award and are grateful for it. The appreciation and external evaluation we have received is part of our Sustainability Roadmap Vision 2020 target that aims at economic growth while still prioritizing sustainable business practices," said Elim Sritaba, APP Sinar Mas' director of sustainability.

. (Photo: Courtesy of Asia Pulp & Paper Sinar Mas/.)

APP Sinar Mas has also won similar awards in previous years. It won an SBA in the category of Strategy and Sustainability last year. The company's two industry units, Pindo Deli Pulp & Paper Mills and Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper, both won SBAs in 2013 for Water Management.

The SBAs are the result of the partnership between PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Indonesia, the Indonesia Chamber of Commerce and the Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development, and are designed to increase awareness of sustainability and demonstrate how it can still benefit businesses, while also being good for the environment and for stakeholders in both the present and the future. The SBA's advisory panel consists of leading sustainability experts in Indonesia.

APP Sinar Mas' efforts to manage sustainable energy involve increasing the efficiency of its energy per unit in the product, moving to the use of alternative fuels and educating all of its employees on how to save energy.

Each of the industry units at APP Sinar Mas has its own way of implementing sustainability. At Pindo Deli Karawang, for instance, the company has worked together with the IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative to adopt a Clean Manufacturing Program in its entire production process. This program stresses the use of increased energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, at industry units like Indah Kiat and Twiji Kimia, there are special teams dedicated to the issue of energy efficiency that are tasked with identifying what parts of the company have potential for improved energy efficiency usage. These two units are internationally certified with International Standardization Organization (ISO) 50001.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 09:04 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c6a398 1 Food tea,local-crop,coffee Free

While Indonesia has made a name for itself in the coffee industry, the same can't be said of its tea counterpart, despite being the worlds seventh-biggest tea producer.

According to kompas.com, tea leaves from Indonesia are more often used as an ingredient mix for average-quality teas, while tea production spans wide across the country from North Sumatra, Jambi and all over Java Island.

Bambang Larensolo, a tea sommelier, said Indonesian tea is still finding its geographic identity with respect to its source region. This means that different tea-producing regions across the country are still categorizing its signature characteristics from one plantation to discover a distinctive identity in comparison to other plantations.

"People are only just beginning to use geographic identity. But the issue is that Indonesian teas are still too similar in character to different regions, even though some do have significant [characteristics]," Bambang told kompas.com recently.

Bambang said the similarity could be because tea plantations are growing the same seeds, which are sourced from the Gambung region in West Java.

Read also: Govt tours Europe to boost tea exports

"So the real characters of the local teas that have been grown long previously have actually faded, because signature characteristics are not formed quickly," he said.

The widespread use of the same seeds is not new, as it had been practiced previously, when in the 1990s all seeds were sourced from Sri Lanka.

Nevertheless, Bambang said, there are regions in Indonesia that have signature characteristics, such as green tea from Pulau Bangka, tea from Malabar in West Java, as well as leaves from Simalungun in North Sumatra.

"Green tea from Bangka is indeed special, but what's famous abroad is actually from Malabar and Bah Butong, Simalungun. [Bah Butong] has a spicy aftertaste," Bambang said.

He added that tea from Malabar is famous for its floral and fruity aftertaste. In addition, the name is already famous because of its history as one of the oldest tea plantations. Since the Dutch colonial era, the tea has been exported as one of the best teas from Indonesia.

Overall, however, Bambang said Indonesian tea is only a mixed brew and not a standalone or single origin due to lacking character.

"The homework is how to develop tea with a character distinctive from other tea plantations," he concluded. (liz/kes)
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Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 09:19 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c6a656 1 Books architecture,Book,design Free

Challenging the usual norms of architecture, Indonesian architectural bureau Aboday has published its second book, Firmitas, partly as a way to encourage budding architects to trust their intuition and experience more when designing.

Published by Griya Kreasi, Firmitas is basically a collection of Aboday architects personal experiences during their work, sprinkling throughout the colorful paperback their trade secrets, material choices and their navigation through the sometimes rigid design rules of the Indonesian architectural scene.



Aboday architect and co-writer of Firmitas Ary Indra describes the book as one that is more accessible to readers and architectural students, compared to the book that Aboday released in 2013, Fame, Fortune, Flirt, which was in the form of a monographed, coffee-table book that was relatively pricy and therefore somewhat exclusive.



A focus in the books content is the groups willingness not to preach the relatively general teachings that are usually already taught in university.



Ary himself feels that architecture courses in universities tend to be devoid of experiential teaching, focusing rather on the same general basics of architecture taught for years.



Content wise, the book is more informed compared to the first book. We purposefully put in strategies and explanations on how to actually design good rooms, based on experience. Basically, rules that sometimes are not taught by architecture classes. I dont think I learned as much about architecture in university as I do in the field today, he said during the launch of Firmitas inPlaza Senayan, South Jakarta recently.



The book details up to 20 finished projects and 13 projects currently in progress, explained in conjunction with Abodays development, growth and ideas that it has cultivated in its 11-year operational history.



Blueprints of apartment block lobbies, malls and tall office buildings in several locations in Indonesia are presented in detail accompanied with Abodays personal approaches, typical material usage and design standards laid out in the explanations.



Some of the books insights include how to properly design fire escapes in buildings, at what appropriate distances and sizes to ensure maximum effectiveness, and how far tall buildings should be properly distanced in order to fit a particular areas density.

Architects need to realize that they must make a lot of decisions outside of their usual scope. The usage of their architectural intuition can sometimes open up new perspectives that can make more sense than ordinary pragmatic calculations, reads a paragraph in the picture and diagram-laden books 30th page.



So we are basically opening the secrets to our craft, similar to how chefs reveal their secrets in their own cookbooks, added fellow Aboday architect and co-writer Rafael David.



The job of the architect is to ultimately fulfill the requests of their clients and to pull them off in the most effective and efficient way for their ultimate usage. Sometimes, his means that architects must also succumb to whatever architecture or home design trends are big at the moment. But according to Ary, there is no such thing for an architect as design trends.



This is because the architect feels that whatever is requested by a client is ultimately a reflection of the clients personality, and around which the architect simply builds their designs.



Architecture in the end is about what the client wants. I look at the personal style of the client based on their requests. I know that the term eco-friendly designs get thrown out a lot but I dont see that as a trend. Its only a label in the end, and besides, architects should design as eco-friendly as possible without even being asked to.



Topics : architecture Book design
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) London  Thu, December 7, 2017 12:38 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c79c1d 2 Science & Tech santa-claus,Science,research,Christmas Free

Was Santa real? Scientists have offered a tantalizing clue by dating a bone said to belong to St Nicholas, the inspiration for Father Christmas, to the same century in which he died in what is now Turkey.

Oxford University researchers analysed a micro-sample of a pelvis fragment and found that it dated back to the fourth century.

Legend has it that St Nicholas, who is depicted with a white beard in icons and was said to have died in 343 AD, was widely known for his generosity -- a trait that inspired the story of Father Christmas.

"Many relics that we study turn out to date to a period somewhat later than the historic attestation would suggest," Tom Higham, co-director of the Oxford Relics Centre, said in a statement.

"This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself," Higham said.

The actual bone fragment analysed is owned by Father Dennis O'Neill, a priest based in the US state of Illinois.

Read also: People who display Christmas decorations early are happier, more nostalgic

But the bulk of relics said to be of St Nicholas are held in the Italian cities of Bari and Venice.

The scientists said the fragment was of the left pubis -- the lower part of the pelvis -- while the Bari collection only contains the upper part of the bone, suggesting they could be from the same person.

The relics in Venice consist of as many as 500 bone fragments, which an anatomical study has concluded were complementary to the Bari collection.

"These results encourage us to now turn to the Bari and Venice relics to attempt to show that the bone remains are from the same individual," said Georges Kazan, co-director of the Oxford Relics Centre.

St Nicholas is thought to have lived in Myra, near the modern-day Turkish town of Demre, and his relics were carried away by a group of Italian sailors.

The legend of Father Christmas began in the 16th century at a time when stories about St Nicholas became popular. Several European countries celebrate December 6 as St Nicholas's Feast Day.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 18:37 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c8a6ca 1 Lifestyle Go-Jek,star-wars-the-last-jedi,Star-Wars Free

Ride-hailing app Go-Jek has teamed up with Disney to feature Star Wars: The Last Jedi in its mobile application ahead of the film's Indonesian premiere on Dec. 13.

The new feature can be seen in the apps Go-Points, Go-Car and Go-Ride pages, as well as the drivers performance appraisal form.

Those who have updated the latest version of the app are greeted with a full-screen banner that tells them whether they are part of The First Order or The Resistance.

Read also: Go-Jek CEO Makarim says he's aiming for IPO in next few years

Go-Jek has teamed up with Disney to feature 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' within the ride-hailing app. (JP/Ni Nyoman Wira)

Go-Jek also offers fans the opportunity to purchase Star Wars: The Last Jedi merchandise using Go-Points, which can be accessed by visiting the Go-Points page or tapping the Star Wars banner on the apps homepage. The type of merchandise available depends on the number of points.

Through Go-Points, one can find loyal astromech droid BB-8. Playing a token prompts a cute notification sound from it when a score is announced. (kes)
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Linkedin Lyna Mohamad (Borneo Bulletin) Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei  Thu, December 7, 2017 17:37 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c88c20 2 Art & Culture chef,culinary,skills Free

The Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism, Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Haji Apong was the guest of honour at the event hosted by the Indonesian Embassy in Brunei Darussalam in collaboration with The Rizqun International Hotel.

The event began with the recitation of Surah Al-Fatihah and Doa, followed by welcoming remarks by Chief of Mission of the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Brunei Darussalam, Arko Hananto Budiadi.

"This event is hoped to strengthen the bilateral ties between our two countries," he said, adding that Indonesia has more than 400 ethnic groups with each having their own cuisine.

Read also: Indonesian chefs shine on global stage

The chef, during the live cooking demo, said that both Brunei and Indonesia share the same cuisines yet differ in terms of preparations, citing the Beef Rendang as an example. He also prepared a special dish - Ayam Tangkap Acheh - and shared cooking tips with the audience.

The event was held in conjunction with the Indonesian Food Festival and Brunei December Festival 2017.

Topics : chef culinary skills
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Seoul  Thu, December 7, 2017 16:09 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c8288d 2 Art & Culture Naples-pizza,pizza,intangible-cultural-heritage,UNESCO,food,#food Free

Naples' pizza twirling joined UNESCO's list of "intangible heritage" Thursday, securing the coveted status alongside a host of cultural treasures including a Saudi art form traditionally practiced only by women.

The art of 'pizzaiuolo' -- which has been handed down for generations in the southern Italian city -- was given the nod by the UN cultural body's World Heritage Committee, who met on the South Korean island of Jeju.

It comes after some two million people joined a petition to support Naples' application, according to Sergio Miccu, head of the Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli -- no doubt buoyed by his offer of complimentary pizza if the age-old culinary tradition joined the prestigious list.

"We'll be giving out free pizza in the streets," Miccu earlier told AFP.

The custom goes far beyond the pizzaiuolo's spectacular handling of the dough -- hurling it into the air in order to "oxygenate" it -- to include songs and stories that have turned pizza-making into a time-honoured social ritual.

"Victory!" Maurizio Martina, Italy's minister for agriculture, food and forestry, wrote on Twitter. "Another step towards the protection of Italy's food and wine heritage."

Pecoraro Scanio, a former agriculture minister who attended the proceedings in Jeju, wrote on Twitter: "Long live the art of Neapolitan pizzzaiuolo!"

Read also: Three of North Kalimantan's cultural works recognized as intangible heritage

Italy's Culture Minister Dario Franceschini takes out a pizza from the first stone oven where was cooked a Pizza Margherita, on December 6, 2017 at the Capodimonte museum in Naples. (AFP/Tiziana Fabi)

Thirty-four candidates were seeking to join the list of intangible heritage, created in 2003 mainly to raise awareness, although UNESCO also sometimes offers financial or technical support to countries struggling to protect their traditions.

The list already included more than 350 traditions, art forms and practices from Spain's flamenco dancing to Indonesian batik fabrics, to more obscure entries such as a Turkish oil wrestling festival and the Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels.

Saudi Arabia was among those celebrating on Jeju, claiming the tag for Al-Qatt Al-Asin -- elaborate interior wall paintings traditionally done by women. The art, which promotes solidarity among women, is handed down through observation.

Bangladesh also claimed victory with its tradition of Shital Pati, an intricate weaving craft using strips of green cane to produce mats and bedspreads.

An array of traditions struggling to survive will also be given special support after being placed on an "urgent safeguarding list".

These include a whistled language that developed in Turkey as a way to communicate across steep mountains and rugged topography but is now being threatened by mobile phones.

Morocco will also get help to protect Taskiwin -- a martial dance that developed in the western High Atlas mountain range and involves shaking one's shoulders to the rhythm of tambourines and flutes.

UNESCO said globalization and young people's rejection of traditional heritage had driven the practice "closer to oblivion".
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Linkedin Agus Dermawan T. (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 09:01 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c6a156 4 Art & Culture New-Order,Soeharto,culture,Chinese-descents,Chinese-Indonesian-residents,art-and-culture,painting,history,#history Free

Painter Lim Wasims life as an artist changed when Soehartos New Order regime took over Indonesia in 1967 and started a systematic and bloody purge on everything deemed as a communist influence.

Lims paintings used to grace the walls of the State Palace before Soeharto became Indonesias second president in 1967, but under the latters 32-year, iron-fist regime, Indonesian artists of Chinese descent like Lim could not freely express their artistry due to anticommunist sentiments planted by the regime.



To survive, they slipped into the arena of fine art oriented to the market paradigm.



By 1980, I started appearing in public by offering flower and landscape paintings. These themes are free from political interpretations. But again, such themes were deemed faulty and criticized as commercial products, the 88-year-old Lim said.



Soeharto and the army, with the help of anticommunist mass organizations, launched the purge on everything they deemed communist-related, including cultural works like paintings, following a foiled coup attempt allegedly conducted by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).



The New Orders narrative at that time was that the PKI was backed by the communist Chinese government, and during the Cold War period, it was clear that Soehartos regime opted to side with the United States to fight the growing influence of communism in Southeast Asia.



On Dec. 6, 1967, Soehartos New Order government issued Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No. 14/1967, which banned the presence and dissemination of culture smacking of China in Indonesia.



Consequently, ethnic Chinese art and cultural figures, obviously rooted in Chinese culture, had no freedom of movement. Ethnic Chinese artists were also under surveillance for decades, while references to anything Chinese was stigmatized.



The New Orders policy caused artists of Chinese descent to be haunted by political trauma.



As an impact of the repression, ethnic Chinese citizens had to be very cautious in rendering their creativity, so as not to be perceived by the government as part of politics.

Art of survival: Lim Wasim, whose paintings graced the walls of the State Palace during founding president Sukarnos era, poses with an early sketch of his painting. (JP/Agus Dermawan T)

Nonetheless, incidents of alleged politicization of art and cases of discrimination against ethnic Chinese artists kept emerging.



In 1974, a Black December Movement appeared in Jakarta.



It was a small demonstration of young painters protesting against a decision made by the jury of the Indonesian Painting Art Biennale at Taman Ismail Marzuki, Central Jakarta.



The uproar spread to the campus where the artists studied. So, the five students of the Academy of Fine Arts (Asri) Yogyakarta were suspended.



In an interrogation conducted behind closed doors at the Asri, now the Jogja National Museum, on Jan. 21, 1975, artist FX Harsono, born Oh Hong Boen, was intensely grilled. Even his family was examined.



After questioning whether he wanted to ruin national culture and whether he realized his actions would be exploited by certain elements, it was decided to expel Harsono.



Harsono later rose to fame as a contemporary artist with an international reputation.

Unique touch: A painting of life in Bali by Huang Fong that features artistic Chinese influences. (JP/Agus Dermawan T)



The controversy continued, with some other students opposed to the expulsion and holding a cynical parody exhibition at Karta Pustaka, the Dutch consulate library, in Yogyakarta in March 1975, entitled Nusantara! Nusantara! (Archipelago! Archipelago!). As a result, the painters were also expelled from the school.



Undeniably, for three decades, ethnic Chinese artists were politically subjected to discrimination and later marginalization. In the 1970s in Warsaw, a museum especially dedicated to Asia-Pacific fine arts was established



Among the hundreds of paintings shown were the works of AD Pirous, T. Sutanto, Srihadi Sudarsono, Fidrus Lauw and Lie Tjoen Tjay.



The museum, which made Indonesia proud, was also reported by Indonesian journalists. But the papers publishing the news failed to mention Fidrus Lauw and Lie Tjoen Tjay, who are of Chinese descent.



Mutiara weekly journalist Ray Rizal admitted this. He was convinced that his peers had included the ethnic Chinese painters names, but their editors were tasked with maintaining mass media cleanliness.



Editors were accountable to chief editors and they were the ones who had to deal with questions from the Information Ministry if they published articles related to the work of artists of Chinese descent, Ray said during a recent discussion at Taman Ismail Marzuki.



Several years after the mass rehabilitation of communist political detainees in 1978, over a dozen non-political ethnic Chinese painters tried to gather and display their works at Balai Budaya, Central Jakarta.



The exhibition was an unwelcome event. It was even cynically written by a paper as an arisan (social gathering) of Hoa Kiau (Chinese foreigners), thus prompting a close watch by the State Intelligence Coordinating Agency (Bakin).



The artists also felt some alienation. In fact, the Broad Outlines of State Policy of 1978 mandated equal recognition of indigenous culture and the ethnic Chinese culture.



The discrimination continued, even expanding to different areas. In the selection of visual aspects, art characterized as Chinese paintings would rarely be allowed to join government-sponsored art programs for being seen as a manifestation of a national enemy and presenting a foreign vision and aspiration stemming from Chinese communism.

Actually, it is recorded in Chinas modern art history that Chinese paintings were also victimized by the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse Tung, who wanted paintings with revolutionary realism.



Inevitably, the New Orders only government program that displayed Chinese paintings was the sixth Painting Art Biennale of the Jakarta Art Council in 1984, which showcased the water colors of ethnic Chinese artist Lie Tjoen Tjay.



No such story was ever heard afterward.



Meanwhile, such discrimination was accompanied by the ban on TV broadcasting of fine art events presenting the works of artists allegedly involved in the Peoples Cultural Institute (Lekra), an affiliate of the now-banned PKI. In this context, ethnic Chinese artists were evidently equated with those of Lekra.



The repression even further covered graveyards. In 1990, the Bandung regional administration ordered the removal of Chinese characters beautifully carved into gravestones in the local Chinese cemetery. However, the outrageous instruction was later revoked.


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Linkedin Khristian Ibarrola (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Thu, December 7, 2017 20:06 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c8d03f 2 Science & Tech Winklevoss,Bitcoin,Bitcoins,billionaire,billionaires Free

Tech personalities Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are perhaps best known for suing Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the idea for Facebook.

Dubbed as Winklevi in the 2010 biographical drama The Social Network, the identical twins have reportedly cashed in on their hefty Facebook payout and now own one of the largest portfolios of bitcoin.

According to Fortune, the brothers took their $65 million from the 2011 lawsuit and invested $11 million of it into the cryptocurrency in 2013.

Four years later, their stock has risen to $1 billionan impressive return in just a short amount of time.

Read also: Bank Indonesia to ban Bitcoin transactions next year

Even before the unprecedented surge of the now popular cryptocurrency, the siblings refused to sell a single one of their bitcoins, the report said.

This proved to be a wise decision, as the currency is now valued at $11,247 coina far cry from the $120 value when the brothers first invested.

If bitcoin is a better gold or seen as a type of gold-like asset, then it could be in the trillions on a market cap, Tyler Winklevoss described their investment in a 2105 report from CNN Money. We do feel those are very real possibilities.

Aside from acquiring wealth from bitcoin, the brothers also tried to create an exchange-trade fun for the cryptocurrency early this year, but was denied by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Topics : Winklevoss Bitcoin Bitcoins billionaire billionaires

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This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Balmoral Resources Ltd. (Balmoral or the Company) (TSX:BAR) (OTCQX:BALMF) today reported the successful expansion of the Bug South gold deposit on its flagship Martiniere Property in Quebec. Drill results were highlighted by an intercept of 10.62 metres grading 4.52 g/t gold, which included 2.14 metres grading 17.58 g/t gold from the Lower Zone, one of the two primary zones which comprise the Bug South deposit. The Bug South and other nearby gold deposits located along the Bug Gold Trend remain open for expansion to depth and will continue to be the focus of the planned winter 2018 drill program.



Balmorals wholly owned Martiniere Property is located along the Detour Gold Trend 45 kilometres east of the Detour Lake Gold Mine and 45 kilometres north of the Casa Berardi Gold Mine in west-central Quebec. The Property hosts four known gold deposits (Bug North, Bug South, Bug Lower Steep and Martiniere West; see Figure 1), which are currently in delineation. The Property also features a series of recent, shallow gold discoveries which, like the recently discovered NW Zone (see below), continue to provide evidence for a large, robust gold system on the Property.

Holes MDE-17-300, 308 and 309 successfully extended the Bug South gold deposit to a vertical depth of over 400 metres, below which it remains open for further expansion (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). Each of these holes sits outside the current deposit outline with MDE-17-308 representing one of the strongest Lower Zone intercepts to date within the Bug South deposit.

Hole Section Azimuth Dip From To Interval* Gold Zone # (Metres) (Metres) (Metres) (g/t) Bug South Deposit MDE-17-300 5+65 SE 218 -51 597.35 599.63 2.28 1.95 Lower including 598.21 598.70 0.49 3.65 " MDE-17-308 4+75 SE 234 -50 315.30 322.44 7.14 0.93 HWP including 315.30 316.24 0.94 6.34 " 399.78 400.77 0.99 6.99 Upper 447.41 458.03 10.62 4.52 Lower including 455.89 458.03 2.14 17.58 " 507.39 522.73 15.34 0.59 FW including 507.39 510.54 3.15 1.59 " MDE-17-309A 4+75 SE 227 -51 168.12 172.45 4.33 1.01 Copper 459.46 461.97 2.51 4.13 HW 479.98 480.44 0.46 4.11 Upper 508.92 520.79 11.87 0.84 Lower including 511.80 512.65 0.85 5.77 " Bug North MDE-17-307 1+45 S 235 -45 150.00 153.38 3.38 1.28 473.63 544.45 70.82 0.54 Upper Bug including 488.92 489.73 0.81 4.37 " and 535.14 535.76 0.62 3.92 " 572.56 574.62 2.06 1.66 Lower Bug 716.60 775.44 58.84 0.45 West Contact including 722.30 724.48 2.18 6.77 " * Reported drill intercepts are not true widths. At this time there is insufficient data with respect to the shape of the mineralization to calculate true orientations in space. All values presented uncapped.

Hole MDE-17-309A intersected a previously unknown zone of gold-copper mineralization at shallow depths. The 4.33 metres interval starting at a down-hole depth of 168.12 metres returned 1.01 g/t gold and 0.19% copper within a zone of semi-massive sulphide mineralization.



Drilling also tested the down-plunge extent of the Bug North gold deposit intersecting a broad mineralized interval of 70.82 metres grading 0.54 g/t gold in hole MDE-17-307.

West Contact Gold Discovery

Hole MDE-17-307 also intersected the emerging West Contact Gold Zone. This new Zone, which was first identified earlier in 2017, is located approximately 100 metres to the west of the Bug Gold Trend and occurs at the contact between the West Gabbro and overlying sedimentary sequence. Hole MDE-17-307 intersected a broad gold mineralized zone at a vertical depth of slightly over 600 metres proximal to the contact. A 58.84 metre down hole interval graded 0.45 g/t gold, including 2.18 metres grading 6.77 g/t gold. All three holes which have intersected this new discovery have returned intercepts of greater than 6.0 g/t gold surrounded by a broad gold mineralized halo providing further evidence for the continuation of the Martiniere gold system to depth. The West Contact discovery occurs in a setting similar to the Martiniere West gold deposit located 600 metres further to the west. Large areas of the contact regime at depth remain untested and the discovery is open both up and down dip/plunge.

Drill hole MDE-17-305 tested the Southeast Zone but intersected heavy dyking near and along the Southeast Bug porphyry contact and as a result failed to return any intercepts of interest. Previous drilling suggests this dyking is spatially limited and that additional testing along strike/dip remains warranted.

Bug NW Gold Zone

On September 18, 2017 (see NR 17-16) Balmoral announced the discovery of the Bug NW Gold Zone. A series of holes were collared to follow-up this new discovery. Drilling successfully expanded the NW Zone before encountering the Lac du Doigt (LdD) fault corridor along its northern margin. Based on observations to date the LdD fault appears to have potentially offset the Bug Gold Trend to the west into an untested area of the Property. Geophysical surveys will target this potential offset prior to drill testing during the latter half of the first quarter of 2018.

Hole Azimuth Dip From To Interval* Gold Zone # (Metres) (Metres) (Metres) (g/t) Bug NW Discovery MDE-17-310 035 -63 163.77 168.76 4.99 0.16 Lower 179.08 183.04 3.96 0.32 Upper MDE-17-311 035 -45 138.81 151.78 12.97 0.24 Upper MDE-17-312 007 -71 4 Holes (312 to 312 C) failed to penetrate overburden MDE-17-313 035 -55 131.74 132.33 0.59 26.60 New 230.88 244.43 13.55 0.52 including 232.76 233.77 1.01 4.86 309.00 319.56 10.56 0.19 Lower MDE-17-314A 035 -67 290.96 372.24 81.28 0.30 L and U including 293.72 304.24 10.52 1.01 Lower which includes 293.72 294.27 0.55 8.42 " and 356.19 356.92 0.73 4.21 Upper 406.62 407.30 0.68 3.63 HW 432.98 461.96** 28.98 0.29 New including 440.20 441.16 0.96 3.02 " MDE-17-315 040 -54 52.59 57.64 5.05 0.52 New 170.76 173.66 2.90 0.78 New MDE-17-316 035 -49 No Significant Results MDE-17-317 035 -64 41.41 42.39 0.98 2.44 108.84 110.30 1.46 1.75 242.16 261.03 18.87 0.32 Upper including 259.69 261.03 1.34 2.59 324.85 325.96 1.11 8.39 Lac Du Doigt MDE-17-318A 008 -74 34.89 42.63 7.74 1.30 including 41.84 42.63 0.79 6.68 197.2 203.8 6.60 0.47 Upper 232.77 239.96 7.19 0.90 including 232.77 233.77 1.00 5.42 MDE-17-319 035 -73 263.09 269.35 6.26 0.29 Lower * Reported drill intercepts are not true widths. At this time there is insufficient data with respect to the shape of the mineralization to calculate true orientations in space. All values presented uncapped. ** Terminated in mineralized interval

Winter 2018 Detour Gold Trend Program



Balmoral is currently finalizing plans for a $2.0 million dollar winter drilling and geophysical program on its Detour Gold Trend properties. This program is anticipated to commence in January of 2018. The Board of Directors of the Company have approved a minimum $8.2 million dollar 2018 budget which is fully funded.

As currently outlined the winter 2018 program will include additional testing of the Bug gold deposits, the gold mineralized LdD fault corridor, the recently discovered Horsefly Gold Zone, and other gold discoveries on the Martiniere Property. It will also tentatively include the first ground work on the large Hwy 810 Property located between the Martiniere Property and the Casa Berardi Gold Mine and further testing of targets throughout the central and eastern portion of the Companys extensive holdings along the Detour Gold Trend.

Three dimensional modelling (wire framing) of the known gold deposits and zones which comprise the Martiniere gold system is on-going. The Company anticipates that this will be completed during the first quarter of 2018 to allow incorporation of the summer/fall drill results. The models developed will help to guide future expansion drilling and outline, if necessary, any infill drilling that might be required prior to completion of an initial resource estimate on the near surface portion of the Martiniere gold system. The Company will provide further guidance on the timing of an initial resource estimate once the wire framing process has been completed.

Quality Control

Mr. Darin Wagner (P.Geo.- B.C., Ont., Res. Permit Que.), President and CEO of the Company, is the non-independent qualified person for the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Mr. Wagner has supervised the work programs on the Martiniere property since inception, visited the property on multiple occasions, discussed and reviewed the results with senior on-site geological staff, reviewed the data from the drill core for the holes contained in todays release and reviewed the available analytical and quality control results.

Balmoral has implemented a quality control program for all of its drill programs, to ensure best practice in the sampling and analysis of the drill core, which includes the insertion of blind blanks, duplicates and certified standards into sample stream. NQ sized drill core is saw cut with half of the drill core sampled at intervals based on geological criteria including lithology, visual mineralization and alteration. The remaining half of the core is stored on-site at the Companys Martiniere field camp in Central Quebec. Drill core samples are transported in sealed bags to ALS Minerals Val dOr, Quebec analytical facilities. Gold analyses are obtained via industry standard fire assay with atomic absorption finish using 30 g aliquots. For samples returning greater than 5.00 g/t gold follow-up fire assay analysis with a gravimetric finish is completed. The Company has also requested that any samples returning greater than 10.00 g/t gold undergo screen metallic fire assay. Following receipt of assays, visual analysis of mineralized intercepts is conducted and additional analysis may be requested. ALS Minerals is ISO 9001:2008 certified and the Val dOr facilities are ISO 17025 certified for gold analysis.

About Balmoral Resources Ltd.  www.balmoralresources.com

Balmoral is a well-funded, Canadian-based company actively delineating and expanding a series of gold deposits and recent discoveries on its Martiniere Property located within the prolific Abitibi greenstone belts in Quebec, Canada. The Companys 1,000 km2 Detour Gold Trend Project is also home to the Companys Grasset Ni-Cu-Co-PGE deposit and several other gold and base metal discoveries. Employing a drill focused exploration strategy in one of the worlds preeminent mining jurisdictions, Balmoral is following an established formula with a goal of maximizing shareholder value through discovery and definition of high-grade, Canadian gold and base metal assets.

On behalf of the board of directors of

BALMORAL RESOURCES LTD.

Darin Wagner

President and CEO

For further information contact:

John Foulkes, Vice-President, Corporate Development

Tel: (604) 638-5815 / Toll Free: (877) 838-3664

E-mail: jfoulkes@balmoralresources.com



This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, forward looking statements) within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement, duration and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves, the timing of the receipt of assay results, the visual continuity of certain mineralized intervals, the potentially open nature of the mineralized zones on the properties, prospects and the potential for future discoveries of additional mineralization on the property, business and financing plans, timing, cost and objectives of planned exploration programs and economic trends are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions or are those which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from the Companys expectations include those related to weather, equipment and staff availability; performance of third parties; timing of receipt of assay results from third party analytical facilities; risks related to the exploration stage of the Companys projects; market fluctuations in prices for securities of exploration stage companies and in commodity prices; and uncertainties about the availability of additional financing; risks related to the Companys ability to identify one or more economic deposits on the properties, and variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located on the properties; risks related to the Companys ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities on the properties; and risks related to the Companys ability to produce minerals from the properties successfully or profitably. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. All of the Companys public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical reports filed with respect to the Companys mineral properties.



This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 22:40 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c8eb5e 1 National #e-ID,e-ID,corruption-case,#corruption,#Andi-Narogong,Andi-Narogong Free

Prosecutors from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) have demanded that a court sentence businessman Andi Agustinus, also known as Andi Narogong, to eight years in prison for his alleged role in the e-ID graft case.

At a hearing in the Jakarta Corruption Court on Thursday night, prosecutors also demanded the bench order Andi to pay Rp 1 billion (US$70,000) in fines or serve an additional six months imprisonment.

We concluded that there was close cooperation between the defendant and several other parties [in the graft scheme], KPK prosecutor Nur Haris Arhadi said, while reading out the sentence demand.

Three individuals have been incriminated in the case, namely House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto, who is expected to soon face trial, as well as former Home Ministry officials Irman and Sugiharto--both of whom have been convicted in the case.

Prosecutors also claimed that Andi had used Setyas authority and influence to allow him to participate in the budget deliberation and procurement for the e-ID system, saying: It could be concluded that the defendant conducted the foul play on behalf of Setya".

In March, Andi was named a suspect by KPK investigators for his alleged role in rigging both the deliberation of the e-ID project at the House and the bid at the Home Ministry. The case reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion in state losses. (ipa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 15:47 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c813bb 1 City basuki-tjahaja-purnama,ahok,global-thinker Free

Former Jakarta governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama is on the 2017 list of Global Thinkers compiled by US magazine Foreign Policy (FP).

He was recognized as one of 100 Global Thinkers for standing up to Indonesias creeping fundamentalism and considered one of the most prominent symbols of the countrys beleaguered ethnic and religious pluralism.

Sharp-tongued, of Chinese descent, and a practicing Protestant in the worlds largest Muslim-majority country, Ahok did not fit the profile of a typical Indonesian politician, the FP notes.

Ahok, who led Jakarta from 2014 to 2017, served as deputy governor under former Jakarta governor Joko Jokowi Widodo, who decided to run for the presidency in 2014 and won, causing Ahok to take over his place.

However, following a remark on a Quran verse he made in a speech in Thousand Islands regency in September last year, he has been behind bars since May.

Hard-line Islamic groups had pushed for the trial against Ahok and wanted him sentenced to at least five years in prison. The panel of judges ruled in May that Ahok was guilty of blasphemy and sentenced him to two years in prison.

Despite the legal proceedings against him, Ahok still ran for governor alongside his deputy Djarot Saiful Hidayat. But the pair lost to Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno, who were supported by numerous Islamic groups. (wnd)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakart  Thu, December 7, 2017 16:33 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c86bd2 1 Politics MK,#ConstitutionalCourt,Arief-Hidayat,Constitutional-Court,#HouseOfRepresentatives,house-of-representatives Free

Constitutional Court (MK) chief justice Arief Hidayat has responded to allegations that he lobbied the House of Representatives to secure a second tenure as justice.

A House faction, as reported by various news outlets, had suggested that there had been a "political barter" between Arief and the House over his reappointment and an ongoing judicial review on the House's inquiry rights.

The court's ruling on the inquiry rights will determine the fate of the House's ongoing inquiry into the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which critics see as an attempt by lawmakers to weaken the KPK amid its investigation into a massive graft case implicating dozens of politicians.



"[Arief] has delivered clarification before the ethics council related to the recent media reports," MK spokesperson Fajar Laksono said on Thursday, after Arief had been summoned to a one-hour meeting with the court's ethics council on Thursday morning.



Fajar refused to detail Ariefs arguments, noting that the ethics council hearing had taken place behind closed doors.



Arief, whose current tenure ends in March next year and who is the only MK justice candidate nominated by the House has previously denied allegations of a backroom deal.



Despite mounting protest over what critics call a lack of transparency in the vetting process, House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, decided to grant Arief a second tenure as justice following a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. (ipa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 14:31 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c7c954 1 City Bekasi,investment Free

Property development, retail and goods and services companies have contributed Rp 7.8 trillion (US$575 million) in its investment to Jakarta's satellite city of Bekasi during the first semester, an official has said.

Bekasi Investment Capital and One-Stop Integrated Services Agency secretary Lintong Dianto Lutra said on Wednesday that total investment value was expected to reach more than Rp 8 trillion by the yearend on growing property developments in the West Java city.

Lintong said the regional government had targeted Rp 10 trillion in investment for 2017 and 2018.

"We believe that we can achieve the target," he said, as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

"Sixty percent of the total investment come from local investors while the rest is the foreign players," Lintong added.

With several infrastructure projects under way, including the Bekasi-Cawang-Kampung Melayu (Becakayu) toll road and the Light Rail Transit (LRT), Bekasi Mayor Rahmat Effendi said investors need not worry about accessibility.

Rahmat said legal certainty would be assured for investors, so they would feel secure about investing in Bekasi. (rdi)

Topics : Bekasi investment
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 21:21 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c8e3e9 1 City mass-wedding,New-Year Free

The Jakarta administration has prepared dowries, in the form of Qurans and a set of prayer outfits, for participants of the free mass wedding event set to be conducted at the park-and-ride facility on Jl. MH Thamrin in Central Jakarta on New Years Eve.

Jakarta Governance Bureau head Premi Lasari said the dowries were procured by the Jakarta Muslim Charitable Donations Board (Bazis) as the participants would be couples from lower to middle economic classes.

Premi said the administration had limited the number of the participants to 534 couples.

We have limited the number to 534 couples. However, if the number of couples registering in the event exceeds the limit, we will add more to the quota after having an evaluation meeting next week, Premi said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com.

Each subdistrict across the city might start announcing the event, she said.

Couples who are interested in the program can fill in the requirements to get married in subdistrict offices and register themselves in the Menteng district office, she said.

Besides the dowry, the city administration has also prepared traditional Betawi attire for the couples, Betawi-themed wedding decorations and meals.

Premi added that during the event the city administration would hold a bazaar which would promote traditional foods from 34 provinces in the country. (cal)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Tangerang  Thu, December 7, 2017 10:28 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c70add 1 Politics Jerusalem-resolution,Israel,Palestine-Israel-talks,trump,Indonesia,Foreign-Minister-Retno-Marsudi Free

The Foreign Ministry has condemned the decision by United States President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, saying that as a democratic country, the US should know what democracy means.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said in her opening speech at the Bali Democracy Forum on Thursday that Democracy meant respecting international law, while the recognition by Trump as well as his decision to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem did not respect various United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

Wearing a traditional Palestinian scarf while delivering the speech, Retno emphasized that Indonesia and its people would always be committed to the Palestinian people.

Indonesia will always stand with Palestine, she said to the delegations of 99 countries, including the US, in Serpong, Tangerang.

Support also came from Tunisian Foreign Affairs Minister Khemaies Jhianoul, who presented at the forum. He said Trumps decision would hamper the peace process in the disputed area.

Tunisia in this respect reiterated its strong position to support Palestine to have its own independent state, he said.

After more than two decades of waiver from the previous administration, Trump said he made the decision as we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians. He also emphasized that repeating the same approach would not produce a better result. (dmr)
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Linkedin Fathiya Dahrul (Bloomberg) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 10:05 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c6c0df 2 Business danamon,banking-industry,Mitsubishi Free

Indonesias financial regulator expects Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. to begin accumulating a stake in PT Bank Danamon Indonesia early next year, as Japans biggest bank expands in the most populous Southeast Asian nation.

MUFG will probably buy 40 percent of Danamon in two phases, the first of which may take place early in 2018, Aristiadi, head of foreign bank supervision at the regulator known as OJK, told a group of reporters in Jakarta on Wednesday. Danamon shares extended gains after the comments.

Tokyo-based MUFG has expressed interest in purchasing the shares from Singapores state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte. The Japanese banks main lending unit is seeking to spend 200 billion yen ($1.8 billion) on the stake and may consider obtaining a majority holding in the future, the Nikkei newspaper reported last month.

MUFG will report to OJK and purchase a minority stake under the first phase early next year, without needing approval, Aristiadi said. If they want to buy 40 percent or more, they will need our approval as it needs to meet the test first."

Ownership Restriction

Indonesia largely restricts foreign banks from owning more than 40 percent of local lenders. OJK said last month that MUFG should consider merging its local unit with Danamon, citing the nations single-presence policy.

Asia Financial Indonesia Pte, which is owned by a Temasek unit, has a 67.4 percent stake in Danamon, according to the Indonesian banks 2016 annual report. Danamon said on Nov. 9 that it received notice from Asia Financial that it received an expression of interest in its holding.

Temasek referred to Danamons statement and said it has nothing to add at this point. In the event there is any transaction involving shares owned by us, appropriate disclosures will be made at that time, Stephen Forshaw, a spokesman for the Singapore firm, said by email.

MUFG spokesman Jun Watanabe declined to comment.

Shares of Danamon rose 8.3 percent in Jakarta on Wednesday. The stock has climbed 15 percent since the close of trading on Nov. 8.
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 14:46 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c7f370 1 National #SetyaNovanto,setya-novanto,e-ID,eID-graft-case,KPK,#KPK,corruption-case,#corruption Free

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) appears to be confident with its case against Golkar Party chairman Setya Novanto in the alleged rigged e-ID procurement that implicates dozens of politicians.



The KPK submitted the indictment to the Jakarta Corruption Court on Wednesday, claiming that it had built a strong case against Setya after questioning 99 witnesses, besides securing sufficient evidence in the graft case that is believed to have caused Rp 2.3 trillion (US$170 million) in state losses.



"The witnesses were varied, from private companies to a notary, politicians and relevant ministerial officers, KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah said on Wednesday.



The indictment, to be presented in the upcoming first trial, will also map the alleged involvement of other actors in the case, particularly those who have reportedly benefited from the alleged foul play.



We will also detail the process [corruption plot], from the deliberation of the e-ID project to relevant meetings and, of course the flow of the money to certain individuals," Febri said.

The KPK is racing against time in holding Setya responsible in one of country's biggest graft cases as the South Jakarta District Court is hearing a pretrial motion filed by Setya to challenge the KPK's decision to rename him a suspect.

A pretrial motion is automatically declared void if no ruling has been made by the time the corruption case is taken to court, as regulated under the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP). (vla/ipa)
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Amritsar, India  Thu, December 7, 2017 07:42 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c68c18 2 World #British,#India,#London,#massacre Free

London's first Asian-origin mayor Sadiq Khan said the British government should apologise for a colonial-era massacre in India as he visited the site on Wednesday.

The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which British troops opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters in the city of Amritsar, remains an enduring scar of British colonial rule over the subcontinent.

The then British prime minister David Cameron described it as deeply shameful when he visited the memorial in the northern state of Punjab during a 2013 trip to India, but stopped short of an apology.

Writing in the visitors' book, Khan said it had been "incredibly moving" to see the site of the massacre, calling it a tragedy that should never be forgotten.

"It is time for the British government to finally apologise," he wrote. "Our thoughts are with all those who died."

Colonial-era records show about 400 people died when soldiers opened fire on men, women and children in the enclosed area, but Indian figures put the toll at closer to 1,000.

In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath at Jallianwala Bagh during a tour of India. But her gaffe-prone husband Prince Philip stole the headlines by reportedly saying that the Indian estimates for the death count were "vastly exaggerated".

Khan, the son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver in London, also laid a wreath at a memorial to the victims.

Earlier in the day he visited the Golden Temple, the most revered place for the Sikh religion, where he covered his head with a white cloth and sat cross-legged on the floor to eat at the community kitchen.

Khan, who represents Britain's opposition Labour party, later entered Pakistan via the Wagah border crossing between the two countries.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 14:45 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c7ee45 1 City LPG,shortage,Greater-Jakarta Free

A scarcity of 3-kilogram canisters of subsidized liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for household needs has hit Greater Jakarta, affecting residents of Depok and Bogor.

Imran, a resident of Depok, had to stop selling food at his stall as he was unable to find any 3-kg LPG canisters in his area.

I cannot earn money, said Imran on Wednesday.

Nursyamsyiah, also a Depok resident, said her family had to rely on an electronic rice cooker to make their daily dishes.

Ive been using a rice cooker to cook for the last two days. I dont know what to do since it is difficult to find the LPG, she said, as quoted by kompas.com.

Responding to the shortage, stated-owned oil and gas company Pertamina for western Java communication and relations manager Dian Hapsari Firasati said the company had increased the supply of 3-kg LPG canisters in several zones, up to 60 percent of the regular supply.

Pertamina has been conducting market operations since Monday and is scheduled to continue until Thursday. So far, the market operations have been conducted in Bogor city, Bogor regency and Depok, Dian said. (roi)
MENLO PARK, Calif., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Praxis Bioresearch, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for chronic neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, today reported positive preclinical data that demonstrated the desired pharmacokinetic (PK) profile and targeted activity for its lead product candidate, PRX-P4-003, a novel, abuse-deterrent prodrug stimulant. PRX-P4-003 is being developed as a prodrug of fencamfamine, a well-tolerated Schedule IV stimulant that was formerly prescribed for decades in Europe and other countries, for a range of conditions including depressive daytime fatigue, lack of concentration, and lethargy. Praxis novel prodrug, which is selectively cleaved by gut enzymes, is designed to offer the therapeutic benefits of currently marketed stimulants, while reducing risk of abuse and diversion. These data were reported in a poster presentation at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), being held December 3-7, 2017, in Palm Springs, CA.



Presented study findings showed that prodrug PRX-P4-003 remained intact without releasing the parent compound (-)-FCF, a purified isomer of fencamfamine, when it was exposed to simulated gastric fluid. (-)-FCF was only released when the prodrug was metabolized following exposure to simulated intestinal fluid containing pancreatic enzymes. Importantly, data demonstrated that intact PRX-P4-003 lacked affinity for dopamine and norepinephrine transporters, whereas (-)-FCF demonstrated strong affinity for these key targets of stimulant therapy, as expected. These findings suggest that orally dosed PRX-P4-003 possesses the desired profile to prevent rapid stimulant uptake and activity until it has passed through the stomach and reached the small intestine.

Once metabolized in the gut, orally dosed prodrug PRX-P4-003 demonstrated comparable exposure of (-)-FCF as equimolar oral dose of unmodified (-)-FCF. Additionally, oral doses of the prodrug resulted in dose-dependent increases in locomotor activity in rodents, as compared to vehicle. This effect on locomotion suggests that PRX-P4-003 maintains the targeted stimulant-like activity following oral administration, which is the intended delivery route for the prodrug.

Researchers also evaluated the intravenous (IV) abuse-deterrent properties of PRX-P4-003. Findings demonstrated that plasma exposure of (-)-FCF was significantly lower with IV administration of the prodrug as compared to (-)-FCF exposure from a comparable dose of unmodified (-)-FCF delivered intravenously. Moreover, no stimulant-like activity was seen with PRX-P4-003 even when the prodrug was administered at a dose five times greater than unmodified (-)-FCF, which showed highly significant activity (P<0.001). This provides additional support for the mechanistic hypothesis that the prodrug is metabolized by the pancreatic lipase, an enzyme whose biological activity is almost exclusively limited to the gut. Less than 1% of the enzyme is expected to be active in the intravenous compartment thus limiting PRX-P4-003 activation following IV administration. Taken together, these findings highlight the ability of Praxis prodrug to prevent abuse following IV administration, further supporting its abuse-deterrent potential.

We are very encouraged by the aggregate results of this preclinical evaluation of our prodrug approach to developing an effective, yet low-risk stimulant to serve the therapeutic needs of patients with a range of CNS conditions, said Sandeep Patil, PhD, MD, chief executive officer of Praxis Bioresearch. In this study, we set out to establish that PRX-P4-003 has the capability to provide the established biological activity of stimulants, while pharmacokinetically limiting the potential for IV and oral abuse. We believe that these presented data show that we have achieved those objectives in animals and provide support for similar evaluation of the compound in human studies.

While the epidemic of opioid abuse receives considerable public attention, somewhat similar issues and potential danger also exist with prescription stimulants. As such, there is a significant need for novel abuse-deterrent stimulant formulations, said Valentino J. Stella, distinguished professor emeritus, department of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Kansas and co-inventor of PRX-P4-003. To my knowledge, this is the first prodrug that utilizes a gut-specific pancreatic lipase approach to limit intravenous activation by taking advantage of its asymmetric distribution.

Stimulants such as methylphenidate and amphetamines are among the most widely prescribed classes of medications, with an estimated 90 million annual prescriptions written for a range of central nervous system conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and binge eating disorder (BED). According to a report issued by Persistence Market Research, the stimulant market for ADHD alone is expected to grow to $25 billion annually in 2024. However, stimulants are classified as Schedule II controlled drugs due to risk of addiction. Accordingly, there is a significant unmet need for effective abuse-deterrent stimulant formulations.

Prodrug stimulant PRX-P4-003 is a novel, abuse-deterrent dopamine norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor incorporating an active isomer of fencamfamine. Having previously been prescribed for human use for decades, the clinical profile of fencamfamine is well established. PRX-P4-003 is specifically designed to produce therapeutic stimulant activity when delivered orally but lacks any such activity if injected. Translated into humans, this profile may assist in the deterrence of prescription stimulant abuse and diversion while providing effective treatment by the oral route.

About Praxis Bioresearch

Praxis Bioresearch, LLC, is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of therapeutics for chronic neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Praxis lead development candidate is PRX-P4-003, a novel prodrug stimulant designed to offer the proven clinical activity of currently marketed stimulants in an abuse-deterrent formulation. For more information visit: www.praxisbioresearch.com.




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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Riyadh  Thu, December 7, 2017 08:07 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c694ba 2 World #DonaldTrump,#SaudiArabia,#Jerusalem Free

Saudi Arabia on Thursday slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling the move "unjustified and irresponsible".

Trump ended seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the disputed city on Wednesday, prompting an almost universal diplomatic backlash and fears of new bloodshed in the Middle East.

He also kicked off the process of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"The kingdom expresses great regret over the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said a Saudi royal court statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

"The kingdom has already warned of the serious consequences of such an unjustified and irresponsible move."

Saudi King Salman on Tuesday had warned Trump that moving the US embassy for Israel to Jerusalem was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims worldwide.

Ties between Saudi Arabia and the United States appeared to have warmed after the election of Trump, who chose the Gulf kingdom for his first overseas visit in May.

While the two countries have long been allies, Riyadh viewed Trump's predecessor Barack Obama as overly friendly with its arch-nemesis Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 15:13 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c802ff 4 Business village-vehicles,industry-ministry,transportation-ministry Free

Seven ministries will be involved in the development of village vehicles , which will be sold for between Rp 60 million (US$4,428) and Rp 80 million, the Industry Ministrys director general for small and medium enterprises, Gati Wibawaningsih, has said.

Gati said the ministry had invited the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, Transportation Ministry, the Agriculture Ministry, the Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministry, the Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry and the National Planning Ministry to be involved in the project.

The development of village vehicles needs the involvement, commitment and synergy of various relevant parties, she said in Jakarta on Wednesday as reported by tempo.co.

Gati said the government was preparing the legal basis for the development of the village vehicles, including a regulation that stipulated incentives for investors.

The government is also mapping out the possible contribution of small and medium enterprises in the development of village vehicles, she added.

The development of village vehicles is expected to encourage the development of the automotive industry, Gati added. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 12:51 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c7a31e 1 City Sandiaga-Uno,mayor,West-Jakarta Free

In response to an event in which West Jakarta Mayor Anas Effendi fell asleep next to Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan while they were listening to a Quran recitation, Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno said the mayor must have been tired from working all-day serving residents.

Speaking at City Hall on Thursday, Sandiaga said he empathized with the mayor. He must be tired. [Maybe] he works 24 hours a day, he said.

The sleeping mayor incident took place on Wednesday morning when Anies and Anas attended an event to commemorate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities at a city-owned social house in Kalideres, West Jakarta. Anas, who sat in the front row beside the governor, fell asleep while a visually impaired child was reading the Quran in Braille.

According to a kompas.com report, Anas had fallen asleep on four different occasions during his tenure, among incidents being when in 2013, then governor Joko Jokowi Widodo delivered a speech in front of city officials and City Council members.

Anas, who was sitting next to then Jakarta Employment Agency head I Made Karmayoga, had seemingly fallen asleep during Jokowis speech, attracting the attention of many attendees. (vny)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 7, 2017 11:32 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c75eac 1 City Thousand-Islands-regency,water-treatment Free

The Thousands Islands is to install the Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) system on eight of the regency's inhabited islands to facilitate their residents to access clean water.

Thousand Islands Deputy Regent Ismer Harahap said the SWRO system was the administration's response to demands for clean water from its residents.

The SWRO system desalinates seawater and converts it into drinking water.

The residents of Pulau Kelapa, which has a population of 6,500, had been calling on the local government to provide them with the necessary facilities to fulfill their need for clean water.

"The Jakarta's Water Resources Agency will be managing the development [project]," Ismer said as quoted by beritajakarta.id on Wednesday.

Thousand Islands Water Resources Agency head Ahmad Saiful said the eight islands designated for the SWRO installation were: Pramuka, Panggang, Tidung, Lancang, Pari, Kelapa, Harapan and Payung. (fac)
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) United Nations  Thu, December 7, 2017 10:30 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c70e6c 2 World #UnitedNations,#DonaldTrump,#Jerusalem Free

The UN Security Council will meet on Friday in emergency session to discuss the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the council's leadership announced Wednesday.

The talks -- requested by eight nations -- will begin at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), but there are other items on the agenda, so the Jerusalem issue may not come up until the late morning, said Japan, which holds the council's rotating presidency.

Bolivia, Britain, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden and Uruguay requested the talks. They have also asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to open the meeting with remarks.

After Trump's announcement, Guterres said Jerusalem's final status could only be resolved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Guterres added that he had "consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures."

"There is no alternative to the two-state solution."

Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz called Trump's move "a reckless and a dangerous decision which goes against international law, the resolutions of the Security Council."

"It's a threat not just to the peace process, but also it's a threat to international peace and security," said the envoy.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted in December 2016, "underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations."

At the time, former US president Barack Obama's government abstained from voting on the measure, allowing its adoption.
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Linkedin (AFP) Washington  Thu, December 7, 2017 07:14 1806 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c689fd 2 Politics Cambodia,US,Visa,diplomacy Free

The United States said Wednesday it will bar entry to Cambodians who undermine their country's democracy and called on the government to reverse a crackdown on the opposition.

Cambodia's Supreme Court, effectively controlled by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen, outlawed the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party last month and banned more than 100 of its politicians. It accused the party of attempting to overthrow the government.

That verdict was the culmination of a strangling of dissent in Cambodia, with CNRP president Kem Sokha jailed for treason in September as part of a crackdown that has also seen media outlets shuttered, journalists jailed and activists harassed.

In response, the State Department will restrict entry to "those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia." In some cases, their relatives will also face visa restrictions.

The department declined to say which Cambodians are being punished, in particular Hen Sen himself, and said visa issuance is confidential.

"We call on the Cambodian government to reverse course by reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities," the department said in a statement.

Topics : Cambodia US Visa diplomacy
Since September, when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, New Yorkers have been scrambling to help in recovery efforts. Some of the students at P.S. 126/Manhattan Academy of Technology on Catherine Street are doing their part.

P.S. 126 teacher Chris Piccigallo sent along these photos, after the students raised $1,346 in a recent fundraiser. In the photo posted above you see the kids who were involved, along with Millie Rodriguez, who organized the relief campaign, along with P.S. 126 Principal Carlos Romero. [Romero and Rodriguez are both Puerto Rican].

The students just decided which organizations to support. They will be sending the money raised to the Posada Foundation and to UNICEF. (Some of the funds will be going to help hurricane victims in Houston). The three-day fundraiser included a bake sale, plus a Wear Your Hat in School Day and a Take Your Picture For Disaster Relief Day.
TORONTO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Beleave Inc. ("Beleave" or the "Company") (CSE:BE) (OTCQX:BLEVF) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Brand Licensing Agreement with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, better known as their onscreen characters, Jay and Silent Bob. Under the agreement the Company, in partnership with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, will be developing various proprietary strains geared towards the recreational market which will be available under the Beleave Kannabis brand.



We are excited to welcome Kevin and Jason to our team, their passion for the industry is something that resonates with us, commented Beleave CEO Andrew Wnek. We look forward to working together to explore unique, outside the box business opportunities over the coming years.

Kevin Smith is a filmmaker, actor, comic book writer, author, and podcaster well known for his comedy film Clerks (1994), which he wrote, directed, co-produced, and acted in as the character Silent Bob. Jay and Silent Bob have appeared in Smith's follow-up films Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Its no secret that Im a fan of cannabis, it helps me sleep at night and keeps my blood pressure down. Ive seen cannabis drastically improve the lives of some of the closest people in my life, and believe it could be a viable alternative to the use of traditional pain killers, said Kevin Smith. This culminating with the changing laws and perception surrounding cannabis has me very excited to team up with Beleave, a group I believe to be one of the most innovative in the Canadian cannabis space.

Its hard for me to argue against the potential benefits that Medical Cannabis can bring. Much like the Beleave team I have a personal connection to the remedy. Now that Canada is on the verge of legalizing cannabis, I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with the scientifically focused and forward thinking team at Beleave, theres no telling what we can dream up together, said Jason Mewes.

Jason Mewes, is perhaps best known as the vocal half of the on-screen comedic duo, Jay and Silent Bob. Mewes has reprised his role as celebrated character, Jay, in a number of hit films. Mewes has captured audiences with rebellious banter against his unspoken other half and long-time friend, Kevin Smith (Silent Bob).

Kevin and Jay played the quintessential stoners in a bunch of 90s comedies, but are serious about the benefits of the cannabis lifestyle, continued Beleave CEO Andrew Wnek, Its definitely going to be fun watching them take an active role in the space while developing strains together.

About Beleave

Beleave Inc. is a biotech company and Beleave's wholly-owned subsidiary Beleave Kannabis Corp. (formerly First Access Medical Inc.) is a licensed producer pursuant to the ACMPR. Beleave's purpose-built facility is located in Hamilton, Ontario.

For further information please contact:

Sebastian de Kloet

Phone: (905) 979 - 5173

Email: sebastian@beleave.com

beleave.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law ("forward-looking statements"). The use of any of the words "plan", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur are intended to identify forward-looking information. These statements are only predictions. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Company's ability to satisfy the conditions associated with its cultivation license, the Company's ability to obtain a sales license and the related timing considerations, the availability of further financing, consumer interest in its products, competition, regulation, operational and technological risks, and anticipated and unanticipated costs and delays. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, by its very nature it involves inherent risks and uncertainties. This information speak only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents, which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com.
NEW YORK, NY, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTC PINK: TAUG) (Tauriga or the Company), engaged in building business through the development, distribution, and licensing of proprietary products as well as the evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities, today confirmed the receipt of multiple initial customer orders for its licensed Cupuacu Butter Lip Balm product branded as HerMan.

On December 29, 2017, the Company disclosed that the original non-exclusive license agreement for HerMan with its licensee Ice + Jam LLC (Ice + Jam) was extended for a period of two years and is now valid though the date December 23, 2019. Any potential future profits that result from license agreement with be split evenly between Tauriga and Ice + Jam.

The Company continues to anticipate a formal retail launch for HerMan to occur on December 17, 2017 and expects that an initial inventory of at least 10,000 HerMan units will be available to support the launch.

From a composition analysis, HerMan is primarily composed of the compound Theobroma Grandiflorium (Cupuacu Butter or Superfruit) to leverage the potential benefits that have been well documented historically (see paragraph directly below). The reformulation process specifically addresses the following two issues: maintaining a formula as close as possible to 100% Cupuacu Butter and preventing the drying out of the product in the packaging tube. This will be accomplished through testing the product with various natural emollients -- to determine the best way to maintain the Superfruit's natural state and texture.

Cupuacu Butter is derived from the fruit of the Cupuacu Tree, a tropical rainforest tree related to Cacao (the base of chocolate production). Common throughout the Amazon basin (South America), it is widely cultivated in the jungles of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru and in the north of Brazil, with the largest production in Para, followed by Amazonas, Rondonia and Acre. Cupuacu Butter is a good plant alternative to lanolin, offering the capacity to attract 240% more water, allowing it to function much more effectively as a skin hydrator and moisturizer.

Tauriga has already paid for the first production run of HerMan and is hopeful of generating revenue during the first six months of 2018 and beyond. In addition, the Company has already funded part of the marketing budget to support the anticipated upcoming retail launch.

Ice + Jam's HERMAN product, now jointly distributed by the Company, can be found at the following website link: (http://www.iceandjam.com/shop/herman-cupuacu-butter-balm)

ABOUT TAURIGA SCIENCES, INC.

Tauriga Sciences, Inc. ( OTC PINK : TAUG ) is engaged in building businesses through the development, marketing, distribution and potential licensing of a broad array of products and technologies. The Company is presently focused on its upcoming contemplated launch of a Cupacu Butter based lip balm product branded under the name: HerMan. The Company believes that one of its most important strengths is its access to and relationships with potentially substantial distribution systems and networks. The Company intends to capitalize on distribution opportunities and will continually update shareholders on such developments. Please visit the Corporate Website at www.tauriga.com



ABOUT ICE + JAM LLC

Ice + Jam LLC is a fast growing cosmetics products firm headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Ice + Jam LLC fuses bold color & luxe ingredients with a dash of wit to create rule-breaking beauty products with one goal in mind: empower your lips. Founded in June 2013 by Ivy Evans & Jamie A. Murphy, Ice + Jam harnesses their industry experience, passion and creativity into a beauty brand that's all about being crazy, clever and confident. It's time to put your best lip forward with Ice + Jam's unreal lip-plumper and bold, long-lasting colors. The company's website: (www.iceandjam.com)

This press release contains information about Ice + Jam, its business, products and other information contained on Ice + Jam's website. Tauriga is not responsible for this information, the accuracy of it or the practices of Ice + Jam or the content or the information on Ice + Jam's website, nor is any such information deemed to be or actually incorporated into Tauriga's website or this press release.

NON SOLICITATION:

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale is not permitted. Any securities offered or issued in connection with the above-referenced merger and/or investment have not been registered, and will be offered pursuant to an exemption from registration.

DISCLAIMER:

Forward-Looking Statements: Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, without limitation: expectations, expects, anticipates, believes, hopes, beliefs, plans and objectives regarding the development, use and marketability of products as well as the Company's ability to achieve revenue from HerMan and the date of the formal retail launch of HerMan (i.e. SEC Periodic Filings, Filing of Proxies, etc.). Such forward-looking statements are based on present circumstances and on Tauriga's predictions with respect to events that have not occurred, that may not occur, or that may occur with different consequences and timing than those now assumed or anticipated. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, and are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the events or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include general economic and business conditions, the ability to successfully develop and market products, consumer and business consumption habits, the ability to fund operations and other factors over which Tauriga has little or no control. Such forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release, and Tauriga assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and other factors are discussed in documents filed from time to time by Tauriga with the Securities and Exchange Commission.




In the first part of this article we spoke to several young people who left the UK and travelled to Australia on a working holiday visa (WHV) to make new lives for themselves in Darwin, the tropical capital city of the countrys Northern Territory.

In this second part we find out why Darwin proves to be the ideal destination for working holiday makers.

In a country as vast as Australia there are degrees to how far any traveller is from the culturally familiar. 42% of working holiday makers in 2016 settled in Australias most well-known cities, Sydney and Melbourne, which offer big-city familiarity not far removed from home. Darwin and the Northern Territory, on the other hand, promise something truly unique, and although many travellers seem to end up here by happy accident they soon find themselves reluctant to leave.

Id never even heard of Darwin when I arrived in Australia, says Beth Morrison, 24. We just came here because it was warm when everywhere else was cold and miserable. Now Ive been here for six months and dont want to leave!

Darwin lies about as far north as you can get in mainland Australia, and is closer to Asia than it is to Sydney. For all its modern comforts it has retained the feel of a frontier town. Its small population, of around 145,000, is surprisingly diverse, and the city is insulated enough by the surrounding Outback to have developed a personality unlike anywhere else in Australia.

Clare Dazeley, 26, has experience of living in Australias biggest cities. A lot of people settle in Sydney or Melbourne when they first arrive in the country. Those places are great to visit, but to live there? she says. Darwin is big enough that you have everything you need, but its not a big city, so youre not drowning in people. Its a lot friendlier and more relaxed because of it.

Although Darwin is well-equipped with backpacker bars, pubs, and hostels, its this small-town vibe that seems to keep travellers here.

I feel like I have an actual new life here, instead of just being lost in a big city for a while, says Harry Reeves, 21. Even though Ive never been anywhere like it, it really surprised me how easy it was to settle in here.

It helps, of course, that Darwin has plenty of work to offer backpackers  everybody we speak to found a job within a couple of weeks of arriving, if not a couple of days. The general flexibility of a WHV means many of those jobs are similarly flexible, allowing time off to see the local sights, and Darwin is certainly blessed with those. Within a couple of hours drive of the city are some of Australias best natural wonders, like Kakadu National Park, a cornucopia of waterfalls, breathtaking vistas, and spiritual indigenous sites, as well as Nitmiluk (aka Katherine) Gorge and Litchfield National Park.

There are so many things to do around Darwin, and Ive just taken a few days off here and there to see places like Kakadu and Litchfield, says Morrison.

Seeing those places feels like travelling again. Its incredible that theyre right on our doorstep. You cant go exploring like that in Melbourne.

A WHV offers a clear path into travel alongside the ability to earn money and valuable career experience. Perhaps a place like Darwin adds the missing ingredient that these young travellers were always seeking: that sense of being far from home in somewhere strange and new.

Sometimes you get complacent when you travel, because you see so many cool things, but not here, says Reeves. The Northern Territory feels like the real Australia.

Find out more about the Northern Territory here.

Photo credit: Peter Eve/Tourism NT

Writer credit: Dave Owen
You may think advent calendars are for chocolate, or if youre a traditionalist, opening a window to reveal a pretty picture, but Essex Police have got other ideas.

For this years Christmas season, the police in the west of the county are posting a wanted person each day to social media.

First up is Tiras Downie, 38, who is wanted on suspicion of breaching a court order. He has links to Wandsworth and Ipswich.

Our first wanted person in the advent calendar series is Tiras Downie, 38.Hes wanted on suspicion of breaching a court order and has links to Wandsworth & Ipswich.Last known to be living in the Lambeth area.Call Pc Clare Thomas at Harlow police station on 101 with info. pic.twitter.com/kbkXEoGgSZ  Essex Police (@EssexPoliceUK) December 1, 2017

Chief Inspector Richard Baxter said: We have a number of people wanted in the west and want to highlight what offences they have committed and why they are wanted. They will have the opportunity to come forward but if they dont we will continue our search for them.

Public appeals for information have previously proved successful and weve chosen the Christmas period to highlight those who are wanted to appeal for help in catching them before Christmas. 

Its a bold strategy from the service and reaction has been mixed.

Do you know how petty this is! I hope you catch him though haha pic.twitter.com/hLmQPV1jZr  PeppermintThinker (@cool_thoughtsLW) December 1, 2017

A Wanted Advent Calender. That is great.  JimBobWalton (@JimBobWalton5) December 1, 2017

this is awful  Mary Smith (@FinntasticSmith) December 1, 2017

If you have any information on individuals featured in the calendar, please call 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800

555 111.
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English French

Quebec City, December 7, 2017 - (TSXV: HEO) - H 2 O Innovation Inc. ("H 2 O Innovation" or the "Corporation") held on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") at its headquarters located in Quebec City, Canada.

Shareholders re-elected the following directors to the Corporation's Board of Directors: Philippe Gervais, Chairman of the Board, Frederic Dugre, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pierre Cote, Lisa Henthorne, Richard Hoel, Elaine Cousineau Phenix and Jean-Real Poirier. Shareholders also elected two (2) new Board members, Robert Comeau and Steven A. Davis. Among these nine (9) directors, eight (8) are external directors and independent.

During the Meeting, shareholders appointed Ernst & Young LLP as auditor of the Corporation for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018.

About H 2 O Innovation

H 2 O Innovation designs and provides state-of-the-art, custom-built and integrated water treatment solutions based on membrane filtration technology for municipal, industrial, energy and natural resources end-users. The Corporation's activities rely on three pillars which are i) water and wastewater projects and services, including digital control and monitoring solutions as well as after sale customer services; ii) specialty products, which include a complete line of specialty chemicals, consumables, specialized products for the water treatment industry; and iii) operation and maintenance services for water and wastewater treatment systems and utilities. For more information, visit www.h2oinnovation.com.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) nor the Alternext Exchange accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

- 30 -

Source:

H 2 O Innovation Inc.

www.h2oinnovation.com





Contact:

Marc Blanchet

+1 418-688-0170

marc.blanchet@h2oinnovation.com

Attachments:

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e91ff01c-60d0-4ded-8075-361cccbf3803
English French

1 in 10 invoices paid late, impacting Small & Medium businesses to the tune of $3 trillion globally



10 percent of invoices paid late in Canada, Sage report finds

33 percent of businesses in Canada see a direct negative impact from late payments, with 8 percent written off as bad debt

This year, businesses in Canada are spending an average of seven days chasing late payments, costing them more than 5,000 Canadian dollars.

RICHMOND, B.C., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An economic report published today by Sage reveals the detrimental impacts of late payments on Small & Medium Businesses, currently equating to $3 trillion globally. With one in 10 invoices failing to be paid on time, the study reports up to eight percent of payments are either never paid or paid so late that businesses are forced to write them off as bad debt.

Late Payments: The Domino Effect highlights that almost 40 percent of Small & Medium Businesses in Canada experience direct negative impacts from late payments. As a consequence of late payments, 13 percent say they struggle to pay bonuses around the festive period, and 12 percent say they experience difficulties with paying suppliers.

Other common impacts across the 11 countries analyzed include delaying investment into the company (14 percent for Canada), and impeding the ability to pay its own suppliers in turn (12 percent for Canada), creating a vicious cycle.

However, when looking at the reasons why Small & Medium Businesses dont chase payments, the overwhelming response from 31 percent of those surveyed in Canada is to protect client relationships, indicating that there is a stigma around chasing payments.

Paul Struthers, Executive Vice President & Managing Director of Canada at Sage, said, Almost 40 percent of SMEs contribute to 55 percent of total GDP in Canada. This is a very substantial part of the economy that relies on low cash reserves to operate, and delays to income can have substantial impacts on growth and operations.

We need the culture around late payments to change, so that small businesses can get on with doing what they loverunning their businessrather than worrying about when the money will come in. In 2017, it is simply unacceptable for 18 percent of all payments paid to Small and Medium businesses to be paid late.

Undertaken by Plum Consulting, the research analyzed responses from over 3,000 business builders to look at the effects of late payments on Small & Medium businesses. It highlights significant implications for our entrepreneurs and their ability to operate, plan and grow.

The results underscore that the Canadian economy, as a whole, could benefit from any improvement in the operational efficiency of SMEs, as this would enable Canada to become more competitive internationally and increase the countrys growth prospects. In Canada, a significant percentage of companies with which SMEs enter into a commercial transaction pay for their products or services lateat least 10 percent of all payments to SMEs are coming in late according to survey results. This corresponds to 10 percent of all invoices.

Because of their size, SMEs have fewer financial resources they can utilize in the event of unexpected shocksmaking them particularly vulnerable to cash flow problems. Receiving late payments from other companies was found to be one of the leading causes of cash flow problems for SMEs and something that could adversely affect the companies future growth and productivity.

The silver lining? The problem of late payments may be easily remedied. Respondents shared that no reason is most often given as the reason for a payer company making their payments late. This highlights that mandating a stricter payment schedule may help reduce the number of late payments to SMEs in Canada.

Global snapshot: Late Payments Landscape  The Domino Effect

Across the 11 countries analysed Small & Medium Businesses account for at least 96 percent of total enterprise, protecting client relationships is the most cited reason for not chasing late payments  leading Sage to call for a fundamental shift in culture for Small and Medium business to be proud to chase for work undertaken.

Country Proportion

of invoices

that are paid

late (%) Average number

of days per year

spent by SMEs

chasing up late

payments Top barrier to chase

late payments for

SMEs in each country Proportion of

invoices that

become bad

debt (%) UK 18 15 Protect client relationship (40%) 9 South Africa 15 20 Protect client relationship (40%) 9 France 11 6 Protect client relationship (21%) 8 Ireland 15 7 Protect client relationship (43%) 8 Australia 9 5 Protect client relationship (29%) 7 Brazil 7 14 Protect client relationship (35%) 7 Canada 10 7 Protect client relationship (31%) 8 Singapore 18 15 Protect client relationship (41%) 9 Spain 12 18 Protect client relationship (37%) 8 United States 13 15 Protect client relationship (32%) 10 Germany 9 5 Protect client relationship (31%) 8

Tim Miller, Partner at Plum Consulting, said, losing the cultural stigma of chasing late payments is crucial to escaping the domino effectall the time that SMEs are worrying about chasing late payments, their own suppliers will be paid late, and the cycle will continue. SMEs are more likely to trade with other SMEs, meaning this will disproportionally affect smaller companies. An automatic system to send reminders for unpaid bills may get over the cultural aversionand could also overcome the lack of staff and resources that some SMEs cite as reasons for not chasing late payments.

METHODOLOGY

This research was conducted by FTI Consultings Strategy Consulting & Research team from 21st July4th August 2017, involving n=3,028 SME respondents across 11 countries, who are either fully involved in or knowledgeable of the decision making in their organisation.

The country specific breakdown is as follows:

United Kingdom: n=280;

South Africa: n=271;

France: n=277;

Republic of Ireland: n=289;

Australia: n=278;

Brazil: n=270;

Canada: n=278;

Singapore: n=255;

Spain: n=276;

United States of America: n=282;

Germany: n=272.

Please note that the standard convention for rounding has been applied and consequently some totals do not add up to 100%. Further information on the results and methodology can be obtained by emailing dan.healy@fticonsulting.com.

Media contact:

Betty Tian, Sage

Office: 604-207-3611

Mobile: 604-376-7398

Betty.Tian@Sage.com

About Sage

Sage (FTSE:SGE) is the global market leader for technology that helps businesses of all sizes manage everything from money to people  whether theyre a start-up, scale-up or enterprise. We do this through Sage Business Cloud - the one and only business management solution that customers will ever need, comprising Accounting, Financials, Enterprise Management, People & Payroll and Payments & Banking.

Our mission is to free business builders from the burden of admin, so they can spend more time doing what they love  and we do that every day for three million customers across 23 countries, through our 13000 colleagues and a network of accountants and partners. We are committed to doing business the right way, and giving back to our communities through Sage Foundation.

Find out more at www.sage.com/ca.




SAN DIEGO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Payout, Inc. (OTCPink:GOHE) (Global) is pleased to announce that its majority owned subsidiary, MoneyTrac Technology, Inc. (MTRAC, the Company) has secured a definitive Referral Partnership Agreement with GreenRush Group, Inc. (greenRush). This agreement will provide MTRAC with a direct source of revenue from the referral of cannabis-related businesses who secure a contract with greenRush for the use of their e-commerce payment platform, and Green Label Platform.

The Agreement further solidifies the ongoing partnership between MTRAC and greenRush that was established in May of this year. As MTRAC continues establishing new partnerships with businesses throughout the cannabis industry who are eager to be introduced to various e-commerce platforms, such as that offered by greenRush, it is maximizing consumer exposure and streamlining e-commerce capabilities. The terms of the Agreement also provide MTRAC with an opportunity to earn recurring revenue commissions from e-commerce transaction activity conducted on the greenRush platform involving businesses referred to greenRush by MTRAC.

MTRAC COO, Vanessa Luna said: The greenRush e-commerce platform is truly ahead of anything else in our industry today and is one of the most valuable resources available to dispensaries and other companies and brands who need an effective platform to market and sell their products for both B2C and B2B purposes. This agreement will give us an opportunity to contribute to the growth of greenRush through our referrals and will also play a vital role in the growth and success of our existing and future clients and partners as we work with them to leverage the resources available through the greenRush platform.

MTRAC also believes that this agreement should produce revenue earnings for the Company as early as the 1st quarter of 2018 from several already executed referral agreements. In addition, they are currently in the process of directing multiple referrals and brand labels to greenRush, which should result in a steady source of revenue throughout 2018.

MTAC continues to streamline their network of relationships in its pursuit of e-commerce, payment platforms, and the ability to bring compliant and resourceful payment alternatives to this expanding industry.

About Global Payout, Inc. (OTC Pink:GOHE)

Since the Company's inception in 2009, Global Payout, Inc. has been a leading provider of comprehensive and customized prepaid payment solutions for domestic and international organizations distributing money worldwide. In 2014, Global introduced its first online payment platform called the Consolidated Payment Gateway (CPG), which allowed its enterprise clients to transfer money to international bank accounts, mobile accounts, and prepaid card accounts. The development of the CPG became the foundation for the introduction of its new, state of the art FINTECH payment system in 2017, for both online and mobile applications to allow account holders to maximize an expanded suite of financial services and minimize operational costs. Global will continue to offer their FINTECH payment system to many vertical markets for support of foreign currency exchange and digital currency, including ongoing support of the banking industry and international governments.

About MoneyTrac Technology

MoneyTrac Technology, Inc. is a pioneer in offering a full-service solution for alternative banking and electronic financial solutions and provides all aspects of financial technology including E-Wallet and mobile apps services for businesses and companies in various "high-risk" industries. MoneyTrac's technology platform allows for its clients to access their financial information from anywhere in the world, in addition to providing tracking and compliance to help them manage and control the flow of all revenue through their business.

About Green Rush Group

GreenRush is a technology and marketing platform that helps facilitate the delivery of cannabis products to patients. From access to new dispensaries, to a simple one-time verification process, GreenRushs proprietary technology offers unique solutions providing a superior patient experience. GreenRush is rapidly expanding to all states where medicinal cannabis is legal.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer:

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "ongoing," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "will," "would," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time the statements are made and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainty and other factors that may cause our results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this press release. This press release should be considered in light of all filings of the Company that are contained in the Edgar Archives of the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov.

Public Relations and Media Contact:

Global Payout

www.GlobalPayout.com

619.795.5180 Office

Information@GlobalPayout.com



Communications Contact:

NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

New York, New York

www.NetworkNewsWire.com

212.418.1217 Office

Editor@NetworkNewsWire.com
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- David Kideckel, an analyst with Beacon Securities Ltd., explained the investment thesis for this clinical-stage life sciences firm.



Included in this article is: Resverlogix Corp. (RVX:TSX)

In a Nov. 15, 2017, research report, Beacon Securities Ltd. analyst David Kideckel described Resverlogix Corp. as a company with "a game-changing medical technology platform and drug development platform," and "a deeply talented senior management team." He stated, "We believe that Resverlogix is one of the most undervalued and most impressive biotechnology companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. . .[it] has flown under the radar of 'healthcare and biotechnology-focused' investment banks, which is unfortunate (or fortunate for future investors), given the company's blockbuster market potential."

Resverlogix's epigenetics drug development platform is based on targeting bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) proteins, and its lead drug candidate, apabetalone (RVX-208), is one such inhibitor. With its platform, the company is addressing epigenetics and BET inhibition, which, wrote Kideckel, "are among the hottest fields in the global biotechnology sector with significant upside potential."

Three clinical trials are underway involving apabetalone. The first is a Phase 3 study (BETonMACE) for the secondary prevention of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in high-risk patients with diabetes. The second is a Phase 2 study in chronic kidney disease, and the third is a Phase 2 trial in Fabry Disease (a rare disease).

Continue reading this article: Coverage Initiated on 'One of the Most Undervalued Biotech Companies in Canada'

About Streetwise Reports  The Life Sciences Report

Investors rely on The Life Sciences Report to share investment ideas for the biotech, pharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics industries. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

DISCLOSURES:

The following company mentioned in this article is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports: Resverlogix Corp. Streetwise Reports does not accept stock in exchange for its services. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers.
VICTORIA, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CUPE 410, Greater Victoria Public Library staff, welcomed 37 new members from the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) after a Labour Relations Board vote at the art gallery on November 30.

Our members are a very diverse group who proudly provide library services to the citizens of and visitors to the Greater Victoria area, said CUPE 410 President Helen Hughes. We warmly welcome these new members. As cultural workers providing the public access to cultural and recreational resources, they are a good fit with our local.

The workers at the AGGV are integral to every aspect of the Gallerys operations. They provide curatorial services, exhibit design and preparation, gallery programming for visitors and members, as well as front desk services. They also manage the Gallery Shop and the art rental and sales program, coordinate membership and donor services, and also provide marketing and development, accounting, IT, security and custodial services.

CUPE 410 represents workers at the Greater Victoria Public Library including pages, circulation assistants (clerks), librarians, and branch supervisors to shuttle drivers, IT specialists, services and program coordinators. Including workers from AGGV, they now represent almost 300 workers.

We look forward to getting to know our newest members and working with them towards their first collective agreement with CUPE, said Hughes.

Contact:

Helen Hughes, CUPE 410 President: (250) 882-7695

Zoe Magnus, CUPE Organizing Representative: (604) 291-1940 x285

Janet Szliske, CUPE Communications Representative: (604) 454-7293
United States Ambassador Christine Elder

Liberians, rightly so, are reacting to the comment made by Ms. Christine Elder, the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia. Ms. Elder had asked political leaders to abandon the legal proceedings of electoral irregularities of the October 10, 2017 presidential elections and move on to the run-off. Liberia should move on to the run-off since international observers did not report any significant irregularities that would impact the results of the 10/10/2017 elections, and that the main complainant got only 9% of the total votes, she added.

There are quite a few Liberians who share similar views of the U.S. Ambassador, arguing that Liberia does not have the money to finance a re-run of the presidential and general elections. Still, other Liberians argue that the issue of money should not outweigh the importance of credibly free, fair and transparent elections, and upholding the constitution of Liberia. They add that the National Elections Commission (NEC), acting against the advice written by one of the its Commissioners, provided two separate voters Final Registration Rolls (FRR), which had created the environment conducive for some NEC officers to have suppressed or denied 500,000 voters, according to a local newspaper ((Hot Pepper) story published on November 16, 2017. Without vetting the FRR before the run-off, some NEC officers would, once again, determine the winner against the wishes of the voters.

The debate about the re-run and/or run-off is fine; however, some Liberians are calling upon non-Liberians not to dictate the destiny of Liberians. Amid many views, the Daily Observer, a Liberian local newspaper, stated that Liberia is not a colony of the U.S.; hence, the U.S. Ambassador has no right to state that Liberia should abandon the legal process and continue with the run-off. If, after 300 years, the USA is still renewing and perfecting its democracy that Liberiashould be left alone to... strengthen its democracy.

I understand the rationale why Liberians are asking Americans, whose government might have to finance the re-run, to keep their advice to themselves. This is because many Liberians, I guess, believe that Americans have and continue to support anti-peoples policies in the country. And since it is the electoral process which voters use to elect leaders and produce policies, investors, represented by American officials, are doing everything to manipulate the process. More so, this 2017 is not just about instituting new policies, but how best to guide policies that have failed or have created adverse conditions in the country. Also, the election should produce a corrupt leader who will present the outgoing President as a reformist for other leaders to emulate.



Now let us review some of Sirleafs decisions to understand why investors have continued and continue to prefer the President and want someone with similar character to replace her. Sirleaf government awarded 66 sweetheart deals to big business; allowed 58 gold mining companies to report 9,000 ounces of gold in 2015; reduced real estate taxes and also allowed Monrovia-landlords to charge exorbitant rent for shelters; paid excessive salaries to a few advisers, while at the same time fired US $100 per month employees; committed the country to pay US $80 million to contractors for road projects without budgetary allocations; and misused money donated to produce rice in Lofa County.

In the world of business, profiteers make more money when bribe-offering is rampant, when a country is cash-trapped, which requires government, consumers, etc. to pay high prices or when the leadership is weak, undisciplined, or liable to corruption. Therefore, when President Sirleaf awarded 66 sweetheart deals, her government did not only borrow money to replace the lost revenue, but subordinates, new profiteers and consumers also felt that bribe-offering was a better way to do business. When her government ended the rice production in Lofa, government was not only discouraged from trying to produce cassava, potato, pepper, fish, rocks, timbers, gold ounces or diamond carats, but trade deficits increase, importers made profits, and dealers smuggled lucrative assets.

Moving forward, not prosecuting corrupt officials did not only allow investors to maximize their profits, but it also helped and continues to help President Sirleaf to cover up her involvement or awareness of corruption. For instance, was she not aware that her Unity Party received and spent USD $200,000 as bribes in exchange for the sweetheart deals to investors interested in Wologisi Mountain, part of the evidence her government filed with the Courts? Also, does she not know that state-owned entities are having financial difficulties, including the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) that has not accounted for US $148 million, which she openly took responsibility for? Why did the National Social Security & Welfare Corporation (NASSCORP) invest US $11 million (63% of retirement investment fund) into real estate, but then rents the building to a bankrupt tenant (i.e., the Liberian government via the Liberia Revenue Authority)? Bankruptcy has made it difficult for the NASSCORP to receive US $52.08 million from the government, pension retirement money government collected from its employees.

Further, can the Sirleafs government account for the US $400 million budgeted for each of the twelve years, since our International Partners also spent US $400 million per year? More so, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) balance is now US $22 million, all because her government borrowed US $677 million from the SDR, according to the 11/13/2017 International Monetary Report 17/348. Additionally, can her government account for US $79 million that she borrowed from the Central Bank of Liberia [CBL] (i.e., $79 million debt is equal to $245 million owed in 2016 minus $166 million owed in 2006)?

Furthermore, no wonder the International Bank (IB), formerly International Trust Company (ITC) acquired by a consortium of shareholders led by Pan African Capital Group (PACG) in 2006 had received US $45 million (LD 4,531,817,079) deposits in 2016, while the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), being in existence since the early 70s and still thriving as the only Liberian-owned commercial bank, received USD $21 Million (LD 2,139,519,344) deposits in 2016. Interestingly, owners of PACG are Stephen Cashin, longtime American business partner of President Sirleaf, George Kofi-Atta, Finance Minister of Ghana and longtime business partner of President Sirleaf and Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf herself. PACG owns Data Bank of Ghana and boasts on its website of performing consulting services in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Liberia as a major client.

Common sense indicates that big business is obliged to protect profits. Therefore, since corrupt leaders will create the environment for profiteers to make huge profits, Liberians should understand that profiteers are not in the business of instituting democracy or electing leaders who will institute policies that will reduce the propensity for profits of investors because they have to maintain the status quo.



About the Author:Jyanqui@aol.com

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NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cannabix Technologies Inc. (CSE:BLO) (the Company) is pleased to announce that it has closed its private placement of 4,000,000 units (Units) of the Company at a price of $1.15 per Unit (the Offering Price), for aggregate gross proceeds of $4.6 million (the Offering). Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (a Common Share) and one common share purchase warrant, each warrant entitling the holder to purchase one additional Common Share at an exercise price of $1.60 for a period of three years following closing. The Offering was underwritten by Cormark Securities Inc. (the Underwriter), which exercised in full its option to purchase up to an additional 500,000 Units at the Offering Price.



In connection with the Offering, the Underwriter received a cash commission of $276,000 and 240,000 broker warrants (the Broker Warrants), each Broker Warrant entitling the holder to purchase one Unit at the Offering Price for a period of two years following closing.

Non-Brokered Private Placement

In addition, the Company is pleased to announce that it has closed a concurrent non-brokered private placement (the Concurrent Private Placement) of 850,000 units at the Offering Price, for aggregate gross proceeds of $977,500. The units issued pursuant to the Concurrent Private Placement were issued on substantially the same terms as the Units issued under the Offering.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering and the Concurrent Private Placement to fund research and development related to its cannabis breathalyzer technologies and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

All securities issued in connection with the Offering and the Concurrent Private Placement are subject to a statutory hold period expiring four months and one day after December 7, 2017.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) or any state laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to U.S. persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or unless an exemption from such registration is available.

About Cannabix

Cannabix Technologies Inc. is a leader in marijuana breathalyzer development for law enforcement and the workplace. Cannabix has established breath testing technologies in the pursuit of bringing durable, portable hand-held tools to market to enhance detection of marijuana impaired driving offences on roads at a time when marijuana is becoming legal in many global jurisdictions. Cannabix is working to develop drug-testing devices that will detect THC - the psychoactive component of marijuana that causes intoxication - using breath samples. In Particular, Cannabix is focused on developing breath testing devices for detection of recent use of THC, in contrast to urine testing for THC metabolite that requires an invasive collection and reflects use days or even weeks earlier. The devices will also be useful for other practical applications such as testing employees in the workplace where intoxication by THC can be hazardous.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Cannabix

Rav Mlait

CEO & Director

Cannabix Technologies Inc.

For further information about Cannabix Technologies Inc. or this news release, please visit our website at www.cannabixtechnologies.com or contact the Company at info@cannabixtechnologies.com.

Caution Concerning ForwardLooking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, such as: the use of proceeds of the Offering and the Concurrent Private Placement; that the Company will successfully develop a commercial or prototype product(s) or successful trial or pilot of company technologies; that commercial sales of any kind will actually materialize; and that the Company will have sufficient funds to complete product development. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Companys plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information, including: (i) adverse market conditions; (ii) risks regarding protection of proprietary technology; (iii) the ability of the Company to complete financings; (iv) the ability of the Company to develop and market its future product; and (v) risks regarding government regulation, managing and maintaining growth, the effect of adverse publicity, litigation, competition and other factors which may be identified from time to time in the Company's public announcements and filings. There is no assurance that the marijuana breathalyzer business will provide any benefit to the Company, and no assurance that any proposed new products will be built or proceed. There is no assurance that existing patent pending technologies licensed by the Company will receive patent status by regulatory authorities. The Company is not currently selling commercial breathalyzers. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

Cannabix Technologies Inc.

7934 Government Road, Burnaby, B.C., V5A 2E2

Phone: (604) 551-7831

Fax: 604-676-2767

info@cannabixtechnologies.com

cannabixtechnologies.com
"They all feel its the right thing to keep doing what theyve always done as a band, make new music"
NEWARK, Del. and PISCATAWAY, N.J., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Medical Network Management Services of Delaware, LLC (MedNet), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Medical Society of Delaware (MSD), has awarded a contract to HealthEC, a KLAS-recognized population health management company, to provide its population health platform and management services. The multi-year agreement supports the unification of MedNets nearly 900 physicians across four provider organizations through a Clinically Integrated Network (CIN). MedNet, which represents a significant portion of all physicians in the State of Delaware, will work closely with payers and Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to secure value-based care contracts for its members.



Through this partnership HealthEC will integrate data across multiple specialties and 50 different Electronic Medical Records systems (EMRs) onto a single platform, enabling physicians to work collectively to improve patient care, decrease cost, and demonstrate value to the market. The ability to share clinical information on common patients and collectively drive population health management initiatives positions MedNets members to succeed under value-based care arrangements.

We are excited to facilitate access to value-based care contracts for our physicians, said Michael Bradley, DO, President of MedNet, LLC. With their extensive experience in care coordination, practice transformation, patient-centric medical homes, contract negotiations, and developing strategic partnerships, HealthEC will help ensure our success in offering a coordinated service program to payers in Delaware. MedNet is working hard to support the independent practicing physicians as they try to manage the ever changing health care environment and provide good quality, cost-effective health care to their patients in Delaware. This partnership will enable MedNet to successfully take the next steps in going forward with this new initiative.

Independent physicians are a precious commodity and we are proud to expand our mission to help these providers survive in a value-based world, said Sanjay Seth, MD, Executive Vice President at HealthEC. Our partnership with MedNet will enable members to remain competitive amidst revenue and cost pressures brought about by health reform initiatives, while taking on higher levels of accountability for the care of Delawareans.

About Medical Society of Delaware

The Medical Society of Delaware, founded in 1776 and incorporated on February 3, 1789, continues its support of physicians in their vigor and spirit to advance the profession. Our Mission is To guide, serve and support Delaware Physicians, promoting the practice and profession of medicine to enhance the health of our communities.

About MedNet

MedNet, developed in 1995, provides administrative services, such as contract management, and practice support to approximately 900 physicians who belong to one of four physician organizations in Delaware. MedNet is also positioned to assist physicians in taking advantage of opportunities presented by the changing health care delivery landscape.

About HealthEC

HealthEC is a KLAS-recognized Population Health Management Company that integrates data from hundreds of EHRs, laboratory systems, payers claim submissions, HIEs, data warehouses, and other sources to improve patient outcomes, manage costs, and optimize patient quality of life for its customers. The companys clinical analytics identify provider-specific patterns and guide patient care interventions for better Care Coordination activities and outcomes, lower cost resource utilization, and maximum reimbursement under value-based care. To learn more visit our website, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or call 800-444-0278, ext. 1500.

Medical Society of Delaware Contact:

Mary S. Fenimore

Manager of Community Relations

302-366-1074

mary.fenimore@medsocdel.org

HealthEC Contact:

Carlene Anteau, M.S., R.N.

Vice President of Marketing

877-444-7194 ext. 7005

carlene.anteau@healthec.com
The Defence Ministry is looking into the issue of a cap of Rs 10,000 on educational expenses paid to the children of armed forces martyrs, and Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has assured that the issue will be addressed on priority, Army chief General Bipin Rawat said here on Wednesday.

According to Ministry sources, Sitharaman also held a meeting on Wednesday over the issue, after all three forces approached her requesting a rollback of the order.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event, General Bipin Rawat said Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, has written to the Defence Minister of the issue.

For our martyrs, children are entitled (to) free education. It is a very good thing that the government has done.

What has happened is possibly because of some misunderstanding they have now capped it at Rs 10,000 because somebody must have calculated as to how much a person spends per month on a childs education.

In our case, we have written to the government. I think the Defence Minister is completely seized of the problem. She is aware of it, and after we explained the reason to her she said she is certainly concerned about it and will address the issue on priority, General Rawat said.

As per estimates, around 3,400 children of armed forces personnel have been impacted by the decision.

According to informed sources, Admiral Lanba, the senior most among the three service chiefs, in his letter to the minister requested the order be withdrawn.

this small gesture would assure the families of our brave women and men that the nation cares for them and their sacrifices are truly appreciated by the government, the Navy chief said in his letter.

These personnel have made the supreme sacrifice for the country and the provision of educational concessions to their wards is a small gesture to recognise their commitment to the defence of the country.

An order dated September 13 by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare of the Defence Ministry said the fee for tuition and hostel expenses for children of martyrs would be capped at Rs 10,000 per month, as per the recommendations by the 7th Pay Commission. The order came into effect from July 1.

The demand for a rollback on the decision was also raised by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Union Minister of State for External Affairs General V.K. Singh, who is himself an Army ex-chief.

On Tuesday, Sitharaman had said that the matter was under consideration.

I know it is a very sentimental issue I am fully seized of it. I respect martyrs, their families, and the sentiments that is tied to it, we all respect that, Sitharaman told reporters in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

She said the decision came out of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations.

I am not trying to give you (an) excuse, 7th Pay Commission made some recommendations, recommendation was accepted, the Cabinet took a call on it Therefore there is some process that has taken place. It is hurting us, we will go back to consider it.
Amid massive protests by guardians of students over the alleged sexual assault of a four-year-old girl in the school, the GD Birla Centre for Education here on Wednesday relieved the schools principal of her duties and announced that the classes would resume from Thursday, a guardians forum member said.

The announcement came after a long meeting between the school authorities, the guardians forum, senior officers of Kolkata Police, members of the state Child Rights Commission and other stakeholders on Wednesday evening.

The school authorities informed the guardians that the present Principal of the school has been relieved of her duties and responsibilities with immediate effect. The existing Vice Principals would run the schools from now on, the member read out from a written document.

They (school authority) informed that the removal is a legal term and requires due process. The school will reopen from December 7, she said.

A section of the guardians were demanding ouster of the Principal for allegedly trying to cover up the issue of sexual assault and indirectly supporting the accused instead of taking action against them.

The members of guardians forum also said that the school had agreed to form a body of the guardians with representatives from all the classes.

The forum said it would hold regular meetings with the school authorities to discuss the betterment of the school.

Several of our suggested measures, including no male teachers in the senior and junior sections, installation of CCTV cameras, posting of female attendants in the school and its buses and separate toilets for boys and girls have been taken note of by the school management, it said.

Terming the outcome of the meeting as a moral victory, Chairman of West Bengal State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBSCPCR) Ananya Chakraborty said it could be achieved through sheer dedication of the guardians.

The south Kolkata-based high-profile school has seen continuous protests since the alleged sexual assault on the small girl inside a school washroom by two physical training teachers on December 1.

The two accused have already been arrested and remanded to police custody till December 15, while the Principal and four other teaching and non-teaching stuff have been interrogated by the Kolkata Polices women grievance cell till now.
Samsung India plans to hire 1,000 graduates from top engineering colleges across the country in 2018 with over 300 of them coming in from various IITs, a top company official said.

A majority of these engineers are expected to be hired for new-age domains like artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), biometrics, natural language processing, augmented reality and networks including 5G.

Apart from IITs, Samsung will also be hiring talent from premier institutes like Delhi College of Engineering, BITS Pilani, Manipal Institute of Technology and IIITs among others.

Samsung is extremely bullish on R&D in India. We have been here for over 22 years. The three R&D centres in India work on several cutting-edge technologies, Samsung Global SVP and MD of Samsung R&D Institute India, Bengaluru Dipesh Shah told PTI.

He added that the India centres not only work on innovation for Indian consumers but also contribute to global products.

Some of the India-centric features developed by the local teams include S-bike mode and Ultra Data Saving mode for smartphones and ActivWash+ for washing machines.

Samsung R&D centres in India have worked on several global products of Samsung, including the high-end camera.
Title: The Nothing

Author: Hanif Kureishi

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Pages: 167

Price: Rs 599

Hanif Kureishi is growing old. So are his heroes. The author, who gave us great stories like Intimacy and My Son the Fanatic, has come up with The Nothing, whose protagonist, Waldo, is a once-celebrated filmmaker bogged down by age and illness. Why should we be interested in him?

Waldo, also the narrator of the Pakistani-origin British authors eighth novel, used to once hang out with the Whos Who of Hollywood. Now in his 80s, he is a wheelchair-bound has-been, confined to his London home with illness. He is taken care of by his young and devoted wife Zee, short for Zenab. But even in sickness, Waldo is addicted to sex. The only problem is he is impotent.

The novels evocative beginning  One night, when I am old, sick, right out of semen, and dont need things to get any worse, I hear the noises again. I am sure they are making love in Zenabs bedroom, which is next to mine  sets the tone. Dark-humoured, resentful and unpleasant.

The man Waldo suspects Zee is cheating on him with Eddie  a freeloader and a leech whom he has known for decades but as more than an acquaintance and less than a friend.

This gives Waldos meaningless life a mission. He wants Zee back and Eddie gone. So he starts plotting and directing their lives like one of his films. His desire to mean something, to not be nothing, is what forms the core of the novel.

The level of honesty with which the 63-year-old author has explored old-age sexuality, male insecurity, and the futility of it all, is unsettling.

Lets be honest, Waldo is a manipulative, scheming, insecure and a vengeful control freak  in short an unpleasant man  and its hard to feel any empathy for him. Considering that was the intention, for he was chosen to be the narrator and not Zee, Kureishi failed. But maybe thats what the author wanted for Waldo  to be loathed and resented  because does the hero have to be likeable always?

While deciding to get Zee back, Waldo muses: Even these days, a woman is the ultimate luxury; a diamond, a Rolls-Royce, a Leonardo in your living room.

We live in a politically correct world where even a hint of sexism is sure to cause a Twitter storm and invite trouble  well deserved. To write, in such times, about the desires of a misogynist is brave. It is also important, for writing, like any other art form, should not be subjected to a censor, moral or otherwise.

But Waldo is not just a misogynist; he is also a narcissist and a lookist, for whom appearance matters most. Looking back at his youth, when he had f***ability, Waldo says: If youve once been attractive, desired and charismatic, with a good body, you never forget it. Intelligence and effort can be no compensation for ugliness the beautiful are the truly entitled.

And Waldo can also be pretty crude in his words  with Kureishi pulling no punches with his use of earthy language. As our hero says: If my suspicions are correct, I will move like a serpent between the rocks First I will smite him with madness, blindness and impotence then I will urinate in his mouth and wipe my a** with his head.

If there is one place where one can appreciate the hedonistic Waldo, despite his insistence on not letting his still young wife (22 years his junior) fall in love with someone else, is his desire. As we grow old, we lose the will to live. But not Waldo. In spite of his flaws, he loves Zee and believes he knows better. Its this rather self-indulgent belief, generally reserved for artistes, that perhaps made Zee fall for him in the first place.

Does Waldo succeed in his aim of displacing Eddie? Will he regain Zee? And what  and how long  is his future?

So how does The Nothing rank? Compared to the Kureishi of Intimacy and The Buddha of Suburbia, it reads like a lazy work. Like he doesnt care any more what people think of his art.

Theres a line in the novel where Waldo says: As a reader, Im done with literature. I only want fun. And thats what Kureishi does with The Nothing.
Punjab chief minister (CM) Amarinder Singh on Thursday made it clear that he would go in for a Cabinet expansion after the results for polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are declared on 18 December.

The CM also ruled out the possibility of appointment of a deputy CM, for which the Congress has no convention. The CM was addressing a press conference at the launch of the Congress vision document for the states urban development in Amritsar.

Flanked by Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and Local Bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, Amarinder rejected the suggestion that his government had failed to implement many of its poll promises, which could affect the Congress partys performance in the Municipal Corporations (MCs) elections.

It was not possible to implement all promises in eight months, especially given the financial crisis inherited from the erstwhile Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party government, he said, adding that the state is struggling to generate its own resources, including loans, to fulfill its responsibilities and meet its promises.

The CM said, process of farm loan waiver would begin after the elections and distribution of smart phones would also begin soon. Unfortunately, all things are dependent on resources, which takes time to manage. The influx of industry would help boost the resource generation for the state, he added, disclosing that his government had signed Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) to the tune of Rs. 50,000 Crore since taking over in March this year.

On the Goods and Service Tax (GST) issue, CM said the problem was with its implementation, which had been done without the entire issue being properly thought through by the Central government. The CM disclosed that his government was mulling a change in the excise policy to make it more lucrative for the state.

The policies in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan were being examined, he added. Regarding the forthcoming MC elections in Punjab, the CM rejected outright the allegation of parivarwaad (giving preference to a particular family) in ticket allocation, saying deserving legislators and other individuals were being chosen, based on the feedback received, by the committee set up for this purpose.

Asked about the Congress prospects in the Gujarat elections, Amarinder said his information, received from senior party colleagues, was that it was going neck-and-neck at the moment, with a strong possibility of silent voters swinging the mood.

The CM said his government was working closely with central agencies to crack down on such elements, working at the behest of the Pakistani agency ISI. ISI was working via various other countries, including Canada, US, UK and Germany, he said, adding that the recent arrests had proved this.

Asked about gangsters operating from prisons to facilitate the radical groups, he said all steps were being taken to block communication, including replacement of 2G jammers with 4G jammers.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Wednesday dared rebel Congress legislators to resign from the assembly ahead of next years elections.

We know all who will resign. We will be happy to see if they resign as MLAs. That is why we have given enough time. If somebody has the courage, let them resign as MLAs, he told the media here.

The Chief Minister was reacting to veteran Congress legislator Coming One Ymbon from the Cabinet.

Ymbon, who tendered his resignation on Monday, along with Congress legislators Rowel Lyngdoh, Prestone Tynsong, Sniawbhalang Dhar, and Ngaitlang Dhar are expected to contest the assembly elections on National Peoples Party (NPP) ticket.

Reacting to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the NPP dubbing him the most corrupt politician, the Chief Minister said he would take legal recourse against making such allegations.

It is not my job to clarify. My job is to drag them to court. People who do not have issues to raise are demonstrating their frustration and anger, Sangma said.

Elections to the 60-member assembly will be held in February-March 2018.
FORM 8.3

PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY

A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE

Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

(a) Full name of discloser: Tyrus Capital S.A.M. (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a):

The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates:

Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Paysafe Group plc (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken:

For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 6 December 2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer?

If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" N/A

If YES, specify which:

2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security.

(a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any)

Class of relevant security:



0.01p ordinary



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



42,715,000 8.745 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL: 42,715,000 8.745

All interests and all short positions should be disclosed.

Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions).

(b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options)

Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages:

3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

(a) Purchases and sales

Class of relevant security Purchase/sale



Number of securities Price per unit





(b) Cash-settled derivative transactions

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. CFD Nature of dealing

e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit 0.01p ordinary CFD



Increasing a long position 99,900 GBP 5.861893





(c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options)

(i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type

e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit





(d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities)

Class of relevant security Nature of dealing

e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable)





4. OTHER INFORMATION

(a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements

Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer:

Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



none





(b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives

Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to:

(i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or

(ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced:

If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



none





(c) Attachments

Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? NO





Date of disclosure: 7 December 2017 Contact name: Jonathan Beer Telephone number: +377 9999 5030

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service.

The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.
Underlining the importance of having a law like the Right to Information (RTI) in a democratic set-up, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said the access to credible information makes a democracy more progressive, participatory and meaningful.

Indeed, the adoption of the citizens Right to Information has enabled each citizen to be better informed and more actively participate in the governance of the country. Citizens now have confirmation that the information is authentic. This can be potential ammunition to fight injustice and cleanse the polity, Naidu said.

Inaugurating the 12th annual convention of the Central Information Commission, he said: It is significant to note that even those countries which are not formally democratic in structure have come up with some form of Right to Information. For a nation which has adopted democracy as a political system, the Right to Information is even more of an imperative.

He said Kautilyas Arthashastra advocates a free flow of communication between the king and his subjects and in modern times the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises Right to Information as a human right.

The Vice President said that the RTI enables greater government accountability, facilitates citizens participation and lends transparency to government functioning.

In India, a sea change can be seen in the systems of governance and the attitude of government agencies since adoption of the RTI Act. Also, a clear attitudinal change is visible in public authorities dealing with matters concerning public services and citizens expectations, he said.

He observed that over the past decade, citizens expectations have changed and from a once-in-five-years exercise of electoral choice, they now expect to be regularly consulted in matters directly concerning them.

The Vice President hoped that the discussions at the convention will lead to substantive recommendations which will help further advance the cause of RTI in our country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met officers of the Kendriya Sainik Board on the occasion of Armed Forces Flag Day, officials said.

In a tweet, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said: Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi with the Officers of the Kendriya Sainik Board, on the occasion of the Armed Forces Flag Day, in New Delhi.

Prime Minister, Shri @narendramodi with the Officers of the Kendriya Sainik Board, on the occasion of the Armed Forces Flag Day, in New Delhi pic.twitter.com/N7ROGeZ9FL  Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (@MIB_India) December 7, 2017

On the occasion, Secretary of Kendriya Sainik Board, Brigadier MH Rizvi pinned an armed forces flag on the Prime Minister.

The Armed Forces Flag Day is observed on December 7 every year since 1949, and is a day dedicated towards collection of funds from people for the welfare of the Indian armed forces personnel.

The day is also observed to raise funds for the well-being of serving jawans, as well as the disabled comrades-in-arms and widows and dependents of those who have made the supreme sacrifice, the leaders urged all citizens to donate generously for the jawans welfare.

Over the years, it has become a tradition to commemorate this day as an honour to the soldiers, airmen and sailors of India.

This year, from December 1 to 7, a wide digital campaign was spread across Twitter, Facebook and other social networking websites, encouraging people to wear the armed forces flag with pride to show their support and express solidarity with the military.
Farmers in Nawada Village of Baghpat have pleaded for wishful death for them and their families over land dispute with farmers of Haryana.

Devastated over alleged delay in resolving land dispute with farmers of Haryana; Ikhlaq,Nisar,Sabir Ali, Megan Singh, Begraj and others feel that they are left with no other option.

After running from pillar to post, the issue of these farmers remains unresolved. The farmers had sent letters to the Human Right Commission and Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding for wishful death for them and their families.

These farmers have over 5 thousand Beegha agricultural land in the plains of river Yamuna in Baghpat which has been demarcated as border between Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, the changing course of river Yamuna often causes rift between the farmers of Sonepat(Haryana) and Baghpat (UP) over the ownership of land.

Farmers feel their land has been encroached over the years and despite of the repeated request from the administration, the issue remains unresolved. Every time they tried to get back their land from the Haryana farmers they are being thrashed, they claimed.

Jai Prakash, SP of Baghpat, however, clarified that issue is related to revenue department and police have limited role of maintaining the issue of law and order.  On the complaint of these farmers, the district magistrate had directed officials of revenue department to resolve the matter and contact officials in Haryana ,  said Jai Prakash , SP Baghpat, adding that the matter is of revenue department and the police have little role in it.
On the last day of campaigning in poll-bound Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the concerns of BJPs scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) members in the state, inaugurate Dr. Ambedkar International Centre and finally hold a rally in Surat, he said on Thursday.

In a tweet Modi said: At 10 AM today, will interact with @ BJP4Gujarat SC, ST Morcha Karyakartas and Karyakartas belonging to coastal areas of Gujarat. At 11 AM will inaugurate the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre and will then go to Surat, where I will address a rally.

At 10 AM today, will interact with @BJP4Gujarat SC, ST Morcha Karyakartas and Karyakartas belonging to coastal areas of Gujarat. At 11 AM will inaugurate the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre and will then go to Surat, where I will address a rally.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 7, 2017

The PM will connect with the divisional heads of the Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) SC and ST units on mobile phones through the audio bridge technology.

About 10,000 workers of the party would directly attend PM Modis call, the BJP said in a statement on Wednesday.

He will then inaugurate the BR Ambedkar International Centre in the national capital which he said would encourage research and original thinking among the youth.

The Prime Minister will then fly to Surat to hold a public rally and conclude his campaigning.

The Surat rally was scheduled to take place on Wednesday but had to be postponed due to cyclone Ockhi. With the first phase of polling to take place on Saturday, the rally will conclude Modis campaigning in Gujarat.

On Wednesday, PM Modi addressed three rallies in the state  Dhandhuka, Dahod and Netrang.

The 182-member Gujarat Assembly will go to the polls in two phases on December 9 and 14. The results will be declared on December 18.
As the polling for the first phase of the Gujarat elections nears, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has upped its game. The BJP has planned to bombard the Saurashtra region which is predominantly a Patidar dominated area with its team of star campaigners to salvage its image in the community.

The BJP is facing a challenge from the community of Patidars who have traditionally voted for the BJP. But this time around, the backlash of Patidar reservation issue and the atrocities brought upon the agitating community members by the police have become a big headache for the BJP. Rebel Patidar leader Hardik Patel has also campaigned extensively against the BJP and has openly been asking his followers to vote against the BJP to take revenge of all the troubles the community members have faced.

BJP is aware of the difficult situation it is in and Prime Minister Modi has extensively campaigned for the party to save as many seats as possible. The party now is roping in more leaders to build support for its candidates and has lined up an impressive list of star campaigners including; Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Cabinet Minister of Textiles and Information & Broadcasting Smriti Irani, Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation Uma Bharti, Union Minister Parshottam Rupala and State Minister Purshottam Solanki. All of them are campaigning across Saurashtra in the final leg of the first phase of the Gujarat elections.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath held rallies at Gariyadhar, Talala, Savarkundla and Amreli, while Union Minister Cabinet Minister Smriti Irani addressed meetings at Porbandar and Kutiyana on Wednesday. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Union Minister Uma Bharati were to address election rallies at Moviya and Mandovi Chowk in Gondal Taluka.

Apart from these, former President of Gujarat Pradesh BJP and current Union Minister Parshottam Rupala addressed meetings at Jamjodhpur, Dhrol and Maliya. Later in the day, he addressed rallies in Manavadar, Bageshara, and Jetpur. While State Minister and Saurashtras Koli leader Purshottam Solanki addressed a public meeting in Koli society at Vadi, Kodinar.
India reacted cautiously to US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, asserting it would take an independent stand on the issue.

Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said on Thursday.

His statement, however, did not specifically address the issue of future Jerusalem as the American-recognised capital of Israel. New Delhi in recent months has avoided direct mention of Jerusalem in its comments on the Palestine issue.

This was apparent also during the UNESCO vote on Jerusalem. India had supported the resolution sponsored by Arab countries which endorsed the Palestinian stand on Jerusalem in April 2016. However, in October 2016 and May 2017, India abstained when the resolution came up again.

With Wednesdays announcement by Trump, the US became the first country to recognise Israels sovereignty over entire Jerusalem. Observers feel Trumps decision is a major setback to the two-nation theory with Israel and Palestine living side by side. The decision would further complicate the Middle East peace process.

India enjoys close ties with both Israel and Palestine. Only last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a letter to the UN on the occasion of Palestine Solidarity Day, said India hoped for the early realisation of a sovereign, independent and united Palestinian state coexisting peacefully with Israel.

New Delhi has traditionally supported the Palestinian cause even as it opened diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992. Even at the height of tensions in the Middle East, India balanced ties with Arab countries where it has a sizeable diaspora presence and commercial interests.

However, since the NDA government assumed office in May 2014, India-Israel ties have gone from strength to strength, with PM Modi paying a stand-alone visit to the Jewish nation in July this year. But India made sure that its ties with the Arab world remain unaffected by hosting Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas and reaffirming its commitment to the Palestinian cause.

The US announcement has come at a time when India is gearing up for a high-profile visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to this country in January, marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The Arab world will obviously keep a close eye on the visit.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday said it has arrested an arms supplier involved in the murder of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain in Ludhiana in Punjab.

An NIA official told IANS: The agency has arrested Malook who is accused of providing weapons to the assailants who killed Gosain. The arrest was made during a joint operation by the NIA and the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Wednesday.

On Sunday, a team of NIA and Uttar Pradesh Police was attacked by a mob when it raided Nahali village in Ghaziabad district in pursuit of the accused.

Constable Tahzib Khan suffered a leg injury when the mob stoned the raiding team and even fired at them. The mob also damaged an official vehicle.

The NIA was also looking for Iqbal, a resident of Hapur district for giving shelter to Malook.

NIA teams are reportedly searching for him in the National Capital Region.

On Tuesday, Pahar Singh, 48, was arrested from his residence in Meerut on charges of supplying a home-made weapon to the main accused, Hardeep Singh.

The NIA earlier had arrested Ramandeep and Hardeep Singh for the murder of Gosain, 60, who was shot dead on October 17 near his house while returning after a morning RSS meeting.

The NIA took over the case from Punjab Police.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday made a cashless contribution to the welfare of soldiers and their families on Armed Forces Flag Day, officials said.

In a tweet, Modi said: Today, on #ArmedForcesFlagDay, officers from the Kendriya Sainik Board pinned the flag on me. I made a cashless contribution for the welfare of our brave soldiers, who protect us and keep our country safe.

Today, on #ArmedForcesFlagDay, officers from the Kendriya Sainik Board pinned the flag on me. I made a cashless contribution for the welfare of our brave soldiers, who protect us and keep our country safe. pic.twitter.com/GR0LlszpdU  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 7, 2017

Modi met officers of the Kendriya Sainik Board on the occasion and Secretary of the board, Brigadier MH Rizvi pinned an armed forces flag on the Prime Minister.

The Armed Forces Flag Day is observed on December 7 every year since 1949, and is a day dedicated towards collection of funds from people for the welfare of the Indian armed forces personnel.

The day is also observed to raise funds for the well-being of serving jawans, as well as the disabled comrades-in-arms and widows and dependents of those who have made the supreme sacrifice, the leaders urged all citizens to donate generously for the jawans welfare.

Over the years, it has become a tradition to commemorate this day as an honour to the soldiers, airmen and sailors of India.

This year, from December 1 to 7, a wide digital campaign was spread across Twitter, Facebook and other social networking websites, encouraging people to wear the armed forces flag with pride to show their support and express solidarity with the military.
The United Nations does not have an army but it has peacekeepers for sustaining peace in conflict ridden areas. If the peacekeeping force was ranked against the national militaries it would be the 44th largest army in the world. There are a total of over 100,000 UN peacekeeping personal  consisting of 91,132 troops, 13,563 police and 1,811 military experts from 123 countries. However the peacekeeping army is dominated by the South Asian troops which have traditionally been the top providers.

In Asia, it is India that contributes the most number of troops with 7,471 personnel stationed worldwide. India has participated in the most peacekeeping missions than any other country.

Pakistan is the second highest contributor in Asia with 7,161 troops in the UN missions. It was the first country to respond to crisis in Somalia and sent 500 troops to Somalia in 1992. Bangladesh is the third highest troop contributor to the UN. The country has served in 58 peacekeeping missions across 40 countries since 1988. Nepal has contributed to 11 peace peacekeeping missions most of which are in Africa.

Indonesia first contributed troops in the 1950s and after a sustained absence has been once again actively contributing to the UN peace keeping missions.

Chinas troop contribution has increased over the last many years and it is the 12th largest provider of troops in the world and sixth highest in Asia. Mongolia contributes 950 troops for UN peacekeeping mission.

Malaysia, South Korea and Cambodia individually contribute less than one thousand troops.

Japans contribution to peacekeeping has diminished over a period of time. It contributes a handful of personnel for UN missions.

Compared to its neighbours Sri Lanka remains an outlier in terms of troop contribution to the UN. Bhutan, Australia, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar together contribute just hundred and forty personnel to the peace keeping missions of the UN.
Unwittingly or otherwise, Pakistans former army chief and military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, may have tacitly condoned the activities of Hafiz Saeeds JuD and the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba, verily the dramatis personnae of the Mumbai catastrophe (26 November 2008). He has let it be known that he is open to forming a political alliance both with Hafiz and LeT and has thus emitted a signal that is bound to raise eyebrows, and not merely in the subcontinent.

It is far from clear whether the two militant groups, much in the manner of Indias Maoists, have a scintilla of faith in elections. With a studious sense of timing, Musharraf has disclosed his preference soon after the release of Hafiz and exactly 72 hours after the latter unveiled his political ambition by declaring that the Jammat-ud-Dawah would contest next years general election under the banner of Milli Muslim League. Even within the country, the former Presidents statement has been binned as outrageous, even fantastical nonsense.

The GHQ in Rawalpindi is yet to react, but it cannot but be astonished by the former arny chiefs misadventure. Nor for that matter have Hafiz or the LeT leadership responded to the overture. He has kept both the military and the political class guessing over the provocation behind the announcement, though it is pretty obvious that the move comes after several parties have dissociated themselves from his very own Awami Ittehad alliance.

Far from alluding to the JuD/LeT potential to foment terror, he has referred to the two entities as NGOs working for the welfare of the community. Social activists in Pakistan must be aghast at so strained a justification of a fraught electoral strategy. Direly inexplicable must be his turnaround not least because as President he had initiated several steps to rein in the militants. Notably, he had outlawed certain groups with clampdowns.

In the years since he relinquished authority, both JuD and LeT have perpetrated terrorism with far greater ferocity. It is hard not to wonder whether or not Musharraf is winking at fundamentalism or endorsing its role in statecraft. Quite a turnaround for an army chief who once referred to his uniform as his second skin and harped on the imperative of a moderate Pakistan as distinct from a theocratic agenda.

Not that Musharraf is unaware of the damage that the militants have wrought to Pakistans economy with the country under the shadow of the terrorist gun from his heyday to the present. It is a politically bankrupt nation, with the ruling partys leader fighting his battles in court.

Whether or not the proposed alliance between Musharraf and the militants fructifies need not detain us here. What matters most of all is that as the former army chief, Pakistan expects him to be more restrained and not reckless. He has played to the terrorist gallery by saying that what is happening in Kashmir should not be termed as terrorism. Not everyone in Pakistan will readily concur.
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ocean Development Inc. (ODI) the second largest residential developer in Los Angeles, has completed a website overhaul, a key milestone in its continued efforts to build low cost & accessible housing in some of the regions most underserved communities. The website brings innovative content options designed to provide ease of navigation for prospective homebuyers, renters, investors, and all members of the public looking to stay engaged with the company.



We are looking forward to expanding our digital footprint which will ultimately make it easier for current and prospective tenants, said CEO & Founder Amy Cyprus, commenting on the new website. This is part of our commitment to being more accessible and transparent to the communities and individuals that our company serves. Ocean Developments mission is about more than constructing buildings and houses, we are helping create homes that will shape the future of Los Angeles.

The new website highlights a range of helpful information, including an extensive photo gallery, detailed property floorplans, and complete listings of available housing. For individuals seeking Section 8-eligible units, a plethora of options can now be viewed on a central webpagegiving up-to-date information about whats currently available and on the market. The website showcases variations of the amenities that modern homeowners and renters are looking for: homes built to accommodate families of any size with spacious designs, and situated in vibrant neighborhoods.

Ocean Development Inc, has constructed well over 1,000 units in South Los Angeles, all with off-street parking, modernized kitchens and spacious living quarters. While affordable housing in most parts of Los Angeles is increasingly difficult to find, Ocean Development continues to stand out as a shining example of what the private sector can accomplish while working together with local government and other community stakeholders. As the company continues to expand its presence by building homes in Los Angeles, their reimagined online presence will provide an unparalleled customer & user experience that will impact countless individuals and families in a positive way.

About Ocean Development, Inc. Ocean Development, Inc. is a full service real estate development company, which develops, constructs, owns, and sells residential housing units. Its sister company, Ocean Properties, Inc., offers full service management to over 1000 units consisting of over 500 properties in the south Los Angeles area. Our mission is to provide the highest quality of affordable homes and duplexes in the south L.A. area. Our management and staff are highly qualified in the real estate investing and property management arena with more than 100 years of collective experience. For more information, visit www.oceandevelopment.com

Contact:

Eric Rose

805-624-0572

eric@ekapr.com
Not long ago, parents would be free from worries when their children left for school early in the morning and returned late in the afternoon. But today, they are very much concerned about the safe return of their little ones. They have been unnerved by the recent cases of child abuse and deaths reported from schools across the country

According to a recent survey by a humanitarian aid organisation, one out of every two children in India has suffered sexual abuse. For a country that is home to 19 per cent of the worlds children, that piece of statistic is heart-rending. Both the home and the school must be safe and secure for our children; on the contrary, however, cases of child abuse, exploitation and violence against the kids have been reported in both these places.

The Government drafted the National Policy for Children 2013 to build a preventive and responsive child protection system and promote effective enforcement of punitive legislative and administrative measures against all forms of child abuse and neglect. While we have successfully introduced children-specific legislation, such as the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO) and the amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015, our record in creating a robust and reliable preventive response system has been terribly poor. The spate of brutal crimes against children demonstrates that our collective approach to child safety in schools remains ad hoc, laissez-faire and poorly monitored, highlighting the lack of both a soft and hard preventive infrastructure.

It has been estimated that in large cities children spend as long as 8 to 9 hours a day away from home, while those in smaller towns and rural areas spend 5 to 6 hours outside the home. In fact, the number of children in the approximately 1.6 million schools in India is much larger than the population of most countries of the world. We need to develop a Uniform Child Protection Policy for all schools, whether private or government, and even tribal ashramshalas (residential schools) in remote parts of the country.

It must be conceded that the HRD ministry has comprehensive guidelines that take into consideration the physical infrastructure, notably separate and age-appropriate toilets to ensure the safety of children in school. The rules also cover the terms of engagement of the staff, such as background-checks and the mental make-up. However, these guidelines need to be made mandatory. Compliance is not negotiable.

The policy should emphasise gatekeeping to ensure that the recruitment of both teaching and non-teaching staff is done after thorough police verification and psycho-social assessment. Many private and government-aided schools already follow this process, but it must now be made compulsory for all. It should also be mandatory for schools to enrol trained counsellors who can prevent and detect child abuse. He/she could be a teacher who has undergone the requisite training or a separate counsellor. In addition, all teachers need to be sensitised about child abuse; they must be taught to identify the offence, and be made aware of laws such as the POCSO Act which makes reporting such acts compulsory.

Sessions with children on safety and prevention of abuse ought to become part of the curriculum. They need to have a designated point of contact and be assured that there is a safe space where they can speak and be heard.

(The writer is with the Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management (EIILM), Kolkata)
Global chip-maker Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform  the next generation flagship mobile technology.

The announcement came at the annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii late on Tuesday where Qualcomm made several announcements aimed to deliver significant advancements and innovation in mobile and PC technologies.

The 845 mobile platform is a successor to 2016s Snapdragon 835 and will drive improved performance, better power efficiency, and improved image processing. The Snapdragon 845 will likely come in many high-end Android phones in 2018, The Verge reported.

Samsung Electronics confirmed that Samsung Foundry will be the foundry for Snapdragon 845 as the companies continue to work together to advance the silicon manufacturing process.

As the foundry partner for the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform, we look forward to our continued collaboration, said ES Jung, President and General Manager, foundry business, Samsung Electronics.

Xiaomi Founder and Chairman Lei Jun announced that Xiaomis next flagship smartphone will be powered by Snapdragon 845.

Xiaomi is committed to making devices that combine cutting-edge innovations in technology and beautiful design, while defying price expectations, and we have chosen Snapdragon 845 to power our next flagship smartphone, added Jun.

Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice President of Qualcomm Technologies and Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft, reiterated their collaboration to deliver Windows 10 on Snapdragon.

Always Connected PCs are instantly on, always connected with a week of battery life, said Myerson.

Jerry Shen, Chief Executive Officer of Asus announced the first Windows on Snapdragon device, the 2-in-1 convertible ASUS NovaGo, which is expected to be available early 2018.

Kevin Frost, Vice President and General Manager of consumer personal systems at HP Inc., also announced a detachable HP ENVY x2 Windows on Snapdragon Mobile PC.

The HP ENVY x2 is designed to go everywhere with an incredibly thin and durable design built to be always connected with ultra-fast 4G LTE and Wi-Fi, Frost said.

Kevin Lensing, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the client business unit at AMD announced to bring Qualcomm technology to AMDs high-performance Ryzen processor platforms.

Qualcomm Technologies continues to transform the way people use their mobile devices, said Amon.

ASUS is proud to be paving the way with Qualcomm Technologies and other companies to develop this new landscape for Always Connected Windows on Snapdragon PCs, added Shen.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that Germany does not support US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

The Federal Government does not support this attitude because the status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated within the framework of a two-state solution, Xinhua news agency quoted spokesperson Steffen Seibert as saying on behalf of Merkel.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump announced that he formally recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital, while ordering to immediately begin the process of relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Although the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former US presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday accused Russia of instigating unrest in eastern Ukraine, where violations against an agreed ceasefire have increased in recent weeks.

Tillersons comments came during a speech on the first day of a Ministerial Council of the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the Austrian capital, Efe news reported.

We should be clear about the source of this violence, said the top US diplomat. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces in Ukraine.

Tillerson was expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov later in the day.

He pointed out that more civilians had died in the conflict in 2017 than last year and that ceasefire violations in Donetsk and Luhansk had risen by 60 per cent.

In a speech delivered shortly before Tillserons, Lavrov had denounced what he said was the reckless expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and the deployment of US anti-aircraft missile systems in Europe.

The Russian official said his country was worried about the violation of basic laws, interference in internal affairs by other countries and apparent support for coup detat.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has that the State Department will immediately act on President Donald Trumps order and start preparations to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump announced in a televised speech that he officially recognises Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and instructed the State Department to relocate the US embassy to the city, reports Xinhua news agency.

Tillerson, who is on a Europe visit, said in a statement on Wednesday night that the US has consulted with many friends, partners and allies about the relocation ahead of Trumps decision.

Though hailed by Israel, Trumps announcement immediately drew strong opposition and widespread criticism from Arab and European countries that such a move would inflame tensions and fuel violence in the Middle East.

Tillerson said that the US had taken measures to protect Americans in the region.

The safety of Americans is the State Departments highest priority, and in concert with other federal agencies, weve implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions.

Trumps announcement marked a dramatic departure from his predecessors foreign policy.

Although the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former Presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.

The status of Jerusalem, revered by Muslims as the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site by Jews, lies at the core of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries have their embassies in the city.
US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital triggered global flak, including from some of Americas closest allies, amid fears it could strengthen extremists and destroy the regions faltering peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trumps decision on Wednesday had made for a historic day and was an important step towards peace. But furious Palestinians condemned it and warned that had diminished Washingtons role as a peace mediator.

Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas called the decision deplorable and said it will not change Jerusalems status as the eternal capital of the State of Palestine.

Palestinians took to the streets in Gaza and the West Bank.

The hardline Hamas called for a day of rage on Friday and said the decision would open the doors of hell on US interests in the region.

In a landmark speech in Washington, Trump reversed decades of US policy in defiance of warnings that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital will derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and create further unrest in the Middle East.

Trump, fulfilling his campaign promise, said he had judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the US and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He said he would tell the State Department to begin preparations to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump said the US still supported a two-state solution to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if approved by both sides.

Several past US Presidents insisted that the status of Jerusalem  home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions  must be decided in negotiations between the two sides.

The UN Security Council will discuss the issue on Friday after eight of the 15 nations called for an emergency session. The Arab League will meet on Saturday.

The Arab and the wider Muslim world, including a number of US allies, condemned Trumps announcement.

The Saudi Royal Court warned of serious consequences of such an irresponsible and unwarranted step. The United Arab Emirates expressed deep concern about the repercussions of the decision, WAM news agency reported.

Lebanons pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper declared Death to America on its front page on Thursday.

President Hassan Rouhani said Iran will not tolerate a violation of Islamic sanctities. Muslims must stand united against this major plot.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the US decision was not only a violation of international law but also a severe blow to the conscience of humanity. Demonstrations erupted outside the US consulate in Istanbul.

Kuwait and Qatar, besides China and Pakistan, also came out against the US move.

India declined to comment, saying its position on Palestine is independent and consistent.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said it was a moment of great anxiety. He said there is no alternative to the two-state solution.

Pope Francis called for the citys status quo to be respected, saying new tensions in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts.

British leader Theresa May disagreed with the US decision, which was unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron both said their countries did not support the move. Canada said its embassy wont move to Jerusalem.

EU chief diplomat Federica Mogherini voiced serious concern.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to make it clear that we strongly oppose the US move. Indonesias President Joko Widodo too slammed the US decision.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and according to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accords, its final status is meant to be discussed in the latter stages of peace talks.


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SAO PAULO, Brazil, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stefanini, one of the most important global, technology-based, business solution providers, ends the year with a global growth of 7.5%--reaching a revenue of R $2.8 billion (Brazillian Reais). The region that grew the most was Latin America, with an index of 30%, followed by Europe, Brazil, and the United States.



According to the founder and global CEO of Stefanini, Marco Stefanini, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is directly affecting traditional companies. Companies like ours need to consolidate a new model based on the innovation ecosystem to continue standing out globally. The next two years will be decisive for the digital transformation of corporations. Stefanini is strongly investing in offers that will be able to help our clients in this transition, says the CEO.

To achieve this aggressive growth goal in the next five years, Stefanini predicts new acquisitions in Brazil and other regions. We continue monitoring opportunities that can complement our portfolio and, consequently, our innovation ecosystem, says Marco Stefanini.

Currently, the company works with the dual model, which considers, on one side, more traditional solutions such as BPO, service desk and field service, and on another side, more modern automation tools, personalized marketing campaigns, Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence.

One solution in the digital universe that has produced great results in Brazil and outside is the cognitive intelligence platform, Sophie. The tool, which is in its version 2.2, is composed of a set of software, systems and processes that help improve the performance of companies or systems that interact with the consumer or user, through text and voice.

The most recent project involving Sophie was just implemented through Caixa Economica Federal, whose virtual assistant was named Aixa. More than 150 thousand employees and service providers will benefit and can open tickets, have consultations and hundreds of other transactions through Caixas self-service portal or Skype for Business. With Stefaninis solution, the interactions follow flows of conversation that are simpler and more natural, searching for information in a dynamic way in Caixas systems, as well as facilitating the opening of service tickets (ITSM).

With the high level of complexity and integration, we can consider this the biggest cognitive service project ever held in Brazil, says Alexandre Winetzki, Stefaninis P&D director.

According to the executive, no system in Brazil has reached such a high level of contextual understanding and assertiveness. The Sophie 2.2 platform has new features:

Sophie 2.2 features:

Platform responds in 40 languages, with no need for additional configuration

New integration backplane

Dashboards, control systems and service maintenance

Search in knowledgebases external to the platform, with ranking based on semantic search

Improvement in cognitive nucleus with implementation of genetic algorithms and common knowledge networks (unique technical approaches)

Platforms Potential

Automation average of 31% of client processes that already implement the solution

User satisfaction index, measured in real time, continuously above 85%

More than 2,500 processes mapped

Services in areas as distinct as banks, insurance companies, telecom, industry and health

Sophie will process more than 1.2 million service tickets by the end of 2017, up from 80 thousand processed in 2016

Editorial Contacts

Carla Ferber

Carla.ferber@stefanini.com

Vanessa Morais

Vanessa.morais@stefanini.com

+1 248 263.8612
But the tribe has a long way to go
The finance ministry has clarified that depositors' interests will not be sacrificed in the FRDI (Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance) bill . It will rather give an extra layer of protection to depositors in a more transparent manner.

"The FRDI Bill is far more depositor friendly than many other jurisdictions, which provide for statutory bail-in, where consent of creditors / depositors is not required for bail-in", says the finance ministry note.

Concerns have been raised on the bail in clause in the FRDI bill. Under a 'bail-in' clause, banks issue securities in lieu of the money deposited. In the past, bail-in efforts have largely worked against depositors. The bill does not clarify whether it will be statutory or banks will seek depositors consent.

The FRDI Bill seeks to create a framework for resolving bankruptcy in banks, insurance companies and other financial establishments. It proposes to establish a Resolution Corporation to monitor financial firms, calculate stress and take "corrective actions" in case of a failure. The bill has currently been refered to a parliamentary commitee which is seeking suggestions from all stakeholders on the issue.

While it is not yet clear what has triggered activity on the FRDI bill, a financial sector expert said that the government might be seriously looking at it because of poor state of some of the PSU banks.

Six government-owned banks, including Dena Bank, Central Bank of India, are under the RBI prompt corrective action watch after their financials deteriorated. Sixteen of 21 PSU banks have their capital ratio close to regulatory minimum with the peril of breaching it.

The bill empowers the corporation to take corrective actions such as merger or acquisition, transferring the assets, liabilities to another firm, or liquidation.

Earlier, RBI and IRDA were handling resolution cases for banks in case of a bank failure.

The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), an RBI subsidiary, established in 1971 insures all kinds of bank deposits upto a limit of 1,00,000. In case a stressed bank had to be liquidated, the depositors would be paid through DICGC. After FRDI Bill is passed, DICGC will be folded up and its functions will be taken over by resolution corporation.

"Currently, DICGC was bearing the insurance cost which was paid by banks. It is unclear who will bear the insurance cost now and whether it will be passed on to depositors. With government talking about giving more protection to depositors, the insurance cost will go up", said Ashwin Parekh, Managing Director, Ashwin Parekh Advisory Services.

"The FRDI Bill will strengthen the system by adding a comprehensive resolution regime that will help ensure that, in the rare event of failure of a financial service provider, there is a system of quick, orderly and efficient resolution in favour of depositors", said the finance ministry note.
Limited supply of quality spaces is driving office rentals higher in major metro markets in India and indications are that they will go up in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru over the next twelve months.

According to data released by global real estate consultancy Knight Frank, New Delhi's Connaught Place recorded a 2.1 per cent rise in prime office rentals in the July-September quarter, compared with the April-June quarter. The pace of rise in rentals in Connnaught Place was the second highest in the Asia Pacific region, following Thailand capital Bangkok, which saw rentals appreciate 4.4 per cent.

Elsewhere, office rentals in Bengaluru's technology hub also gained 1.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2017, despite 200,000 square meters of new supply being added, data showed.

In Mumbai, while prices in the prime Bandra-Kurla complex have remained steady over the same period, vacancy levels have dropped and with limited new supply entering the market, expectations are that prices will only go up over the next twelve months. Rentals are also expected to further go up in Bengaluru, projects Knight Frank.

When compared on a year-on-year basis, office rentals rose 8.8 per cent in in New Delhi's Connaught Place, 8.7 per cent in Bengaluru and 6.9 per cent in Mumbai's BKC.

The prime office rentals are showing an upward trend. The quality supply is limited and we do see the upward pressure on rentals too in the coming 12-month period, said Samantak Das, chief economist and national directorresearch at Knight Frank.

Despite new supply coming in, over the past few years, availability of quality commercial real estate has trailed demand, in most major metro markets of India. That coupled with increasing transparency through the implementation of regulations like Rera has attracted a slew of global private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds to the Indian market.

Last year, Canada's Brookfield Asset Management bought commercial and retail assets in Mumbai's upscale Powai area from the Hiranandani Group in a $1 billion deal.

In October this year, German insurer Allianz Group announced a partnership with construction company Shapoorji Pallonji Group to set up a $500 million real estate fund that will invest in commercial office properties.

Overall, the Knight Frank Asia-Pacific Prime Office Rental index, which covers 20 cities, showed in July-September quarter 11 cities saw increase in rentals and over the next one year, rentals are expected to rise or at least remain steady in 16 cities.
A day ahead of the first phase of elections to Gujarat assembly, Congress found itself in an embarrassing position after party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar sparked off a controversy, calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'neech aadmi'. In a quick damage control exercise, Congress suspended the senior leader from its primary membership.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi deprecated Aiyar's language against the prime minister and asked him to apologize which the former Union Minister did, claiming his knowledge of Hindi was not good. He also maintained that he never called Modi a "low born".

"I meant a low-minded person when I said 'neech'. I tend to think in English when I speak in Hindi as Hindi is not my mother tongue. I never meant low-born. In English, there is a clear distinction between 'low' and 'low-born'. So if it has some other meaning or it means 'low-born' only, then I apologise for the wrong translation. The word I used has different meanings and the meaning Prime Minister Modi is making out is not what I meant," he said.

As Aiyar's remarks that Modi was a "neech aadmi" (low man) in the context of his criticism of the Congress vis-a-vis B.R. Ambedkar snowballed, the prime minister referred to it in an election meeting in Surat and attacked the Congress leader, saying he called him a "neech jaati" (low caste).

This is not the first time Aiyar has made a derogatory remark about the prime minister.

He had, in January 2014, before the Modi-wave took the nation by surprise, said "Modi would never become prime minister, but he was welcome to serve tea to Congressmen."

The BJP had then turned the Congress leader's attack into a campaign asset - "chai pe charcha".

To this end, Aiyar said he had never called the prime minister a 'Chaiwala', adding, "You can go on the internet and check all the videos."

With inputs from agencies
Campaigning for the first phase of elections in Gujarat drew to a close on Thursday evening, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave an emotional twist to the campaign by raking up the comments by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, who called Modi neech (despicable).

Out of the 182 assembly seats, elections to 89 seats will be held on December 9. The second phase of election will be held on December 14.

Addressing a gathering at Limbayat in Surat, Modi said Aiyar called him neech. Isn't it an insult of Gujarat and high tradition of the country? Modi asked the gathering. He said people would give a befitting reply when the results came out on December 18.

Aiyar had called Modi neech in response to the latter's remarks on Jawaharlal Nehru with regard to his relations with B.R. Ambedkar.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who had been aggressively campaigning in Gujarat, was quick to attempt to end the controversy. Gandhi tweeted on his official Twitter handle, BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.

Aiyar tried to defend himself by saying that the controversy was because of the fact that he was not well conversant in Hindi. I did not mean low born. I meant low mentality. I translated low as neech. If low means anything else, I apologise, he said.

The Congress leader has been used to controversies. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Aiyar had said that Modi would never become Prime Minister in the 21st Century and if he wants to come and sell tea, we would set up a proper place.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also reminded that Modi was referred to as Maut Ka Saudagar in the past.

In the elections that had followed, these remarks backfired on the Congress.

The campaign has seen a war of words between the arch-rivals BJP and the Congress, with Modi, Gandhi and national BJP president Amit Shah addressing back-to-back public meetings over the last several days.

The 2017 Assembly election has been a prestige issue for the ruling BJP, which has been in power in the state for the last 22 years. The BJP had set a target of securing more than 150 seats for itself. The highest number of seats the BJP had won under Modi was 127 in 2002, in the elections held after the post-Godhra riots.

The BJP is facing anti-incumbency and unrest from Patidars, OBCs and dalits in the state. Youth leaders Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani have been campaigning aggressively in the state and asking the masses to vote the BJP out of power.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, state BJP president Jitubhai Vaghani, Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil and Arjun Modhwadia are among the key candidates in the fray in the first phase of elections.

Analysts feel that the Congress was expected to do well because of the Patel ire and farmers' unrest.

In South Gujarat also, the traders are unhappy over demonetisation and GST.

Several surveys have shown that the BJP is ahead in the race. The Congress was expected to improve its performance of 2012. However, now with Aiyar's comments triggering a new controversy, it remains to be seen how Gujarat responds to it.
At the fag end of campaigning for the Assembly elections in Gujarat, mysterious posters have come up in different parts of the state, appealing to the Muslim community to vote for the Congress, so that one of its leaders, Ahmed Patel, can be made chief minister.

The posters, which bear the photos of Patel and soon-to-be-Congress president Rahul Gandhi, also carry the party's election symbolthe handand its slogan for the polls, which is Congress Aave Che. And the message about making Patel chief minister is in Gujarati.

"To maintain unity within the Muslim community and to make Ahmed Patel the 'wazir-e-alam' (grand minister) of Gujarat, we request the Muslim community to vote only for the Congress," the posters said.

Gauging the potential of the posters to damage the Congress' campaign, which had steered clear of communal issues, Patel was quick to declare that he had never been a chief ministerial candidate and never shall be one.

Congress leaders said the posters were the handiwork of the 'dirty tricks department' of the BJP since the incumbent was desperately trying to communalise the campaign and polarise the electorate.

Patel tweeted, The moot issue is that the BJP is trying very, very hard to divert the narrative from its performance of last 22 years to a divisive agenda. Hence, their reliance on lies and propaganda. But people of Gujarat have made up their mind this time.

Putting up fake posters and orchestrating a rumour campaign shows the utter desperation of the BJP. Fearing defeat, do they have to rely on such dirty tricks? I have never ever been a candidate for the CM and will never, ever be, said the Congress leader, who hails from Bharuch in Gujarat.

The Congress, realising that polarisation of the electorate on communal lines favours the BJP, had kept completely quiet on the 2002 riots. It is keen to shed the image of a party that indulges in appeasement of the minorities, since it has got feedback that this has resulted in antagonising the majority. It is for precisely this reason that Gandhi is experimenting with 'soft Hindutva,' making frequent visits to temples during his Gujarat campaign.

It is felt that the posters, proclaiming that Gandhi would make Patel, who is a Muslim, chief minister if the Congress won, were aimed at neutralising the impact of the party's strategic shift in campaign by projecting it as a pro-Muslim party.

(With agency inputs)
Now, bangles have earned curious place in Gujarat assembly electionsthe bangles that a woman threw at the motorcade of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the bangles in a Gujarati film song char char baangdi Audi lai do (Buy an Audi car with four rings).

Chandrika Solanki, 40, is an Independent candidate in Vadodara City constituency whose election symbol is bangles. This former schoolteacher, who dared to throw bangles at PM Modi's motorcade, is doing door-to-door campaigning in Vadodara city, along with a band of women. He way of campaigning is indeed out of the box. She displays to people the bangles she is wearing on her right hand.

Solanki is pitted against Vakeel Manisha Rajivbhai, sitting MLA of the BJP, and Anil Parmar of the Congress, in the constituency reserved for ST.

Solanki is the president of the womens wing of Contract and Fixed Salary Sangharsh Samithi. She came the limelight through the agitations she led demanding wages for ASHA workers  who are under the department of health  equal to those of other workers. Vadodara City assembly constituency is a part of the Vadodara parliament constituency from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected. Modi later resigned from this seat.

She threw her glass bangles at Modis motorcade when the Prime Minister visited Vadodara in October 2017. After having been jailed for two days for the offence, Solanki came out and swore to contest against the BJP on the bangles symbol. She claims that even Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had requested her to support the party, but she did not oblige.

Solanki, who campaigns wearing a blue sari and glass bangles of the same colour, says,It was not for mere publicity that I protested by throwing bangles at Modis motorcade. An ASHA worker is paid a paltry Rs 1,000 a month. There are 1,70,000 such workers in all. I had to resort to the novel protest after agitations, lasting many months, demanding a raise in wages were in vain.

Solanki, who was a teacher in a government school at Kotali village, won the award for the best teacher in 2016. However, she was suspended from her job recently for having led the agitation by ASHA workers. Now, she has resigned her job in order to contest in the elections.

She pins her hopes on woman voters who number about 1.5 lakh.

(This article was originally published in Malayala Manorama)
A democratic country like India is cutting a very sorry figure with open threats being given to artists and others and with attacks on people for voicing their opinions, the Bombay High Court said on Thursday.

The High Court, while referring to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversy-hit film Padmavati, observed that the director had not been able to release his film and an actress was facing death threats.

The High Court also pulled up the CBI and the state CID, which were investigating the murder cases of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, respectively, over the failure to arrest the main suspects in these cases so far.

The strong remarks were made by a division bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and Bharti Dangre while hearing the petitions filed by family members of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking court supervision of the investigations of their murders.

"In this country, we have come to a situation where people cannot voice their opinions. Every time a person says he or she wants to voice their opinion, somebody or a fringe group says they would not allow it. This does not augur well for the state," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

"In which other country do you see threats given to artists and performers? It is distressing to know that a person makes a feature film and several people work tirelessly towards it, but is not able to release the film because of continued threats. What have we come to?" he asked.

"Today, somebody says I will give a reward to anyone who kills an actress. Such open threats! People are taking pride in saying we will give reward to those who will kill an actress. And even chief ministers are saying they will not allow the release of the movie in their states," Justice Dharmadhikari said, referring to some states banning the release of Padmavati.

He added that if such things are happening to people with financial backing, what would happen to poor people.

The court noted that this was censorship of a different kind and it was damaging India's image.

"What concerns us is India's image and reputation as a democratic country. We are the largest democracy. We cannot take pride in the happenings of such incidents day in and day out. We are cutting a very sorry figure," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

Referring to a recent case where a foreign couple was attacked in Uttar Pradesh, he said, "Somebody visits this country as tourists and they are attacked."

The bench noted that states like Maharashtra and Karnataka were known for their 'progressive and modern thinking.'

"Maharashtra and Karnataka are known for social reformers and thinkers and with such incidents, these states are cutting a sorry figure politically too," the High Court said.

It added that in other countries when any major incident occurs, the suspect is apprehended, dead or alive, within hours.

"However, our country's agencies have not learnt anything from past incidents like the attack on Parliament and the Prime Minister," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

The court said Dabholkar was killed in 2013 and Pansare in 2015, but till date, the investigating agencies (CBI and state CID) have not been able to arrest the main suspects.

"We cannot allow such serious matters to linger for years. We cannot allow constitutional rights to be taken away. Enough damage has been caused already. Has any senior official from the two agencies bothered to find out why the probe is not getting any headway?" the court asked.

It said even after these two attacks, there are persons, who were openly and boldly voicing their opinions, being threatened.

"At the core of these two crimes is the bold attempts being made by fringe groups to attack those who voice their rational views, thoughts, feelings and expressions," the court said.

"Hence, we feel that it is time to call upon the CBI and the CID to involve their superiors. If the senior officials do not wish to be summoned to court, then they should meet with the counsels appearing in court and take stock of the situation," Justice Dharmadhikari said.

The High Court directed a meeting to be convened with the secretary of state home department, director general of police (DGP) and joint director of CBI with Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh and Ashok Mundargi, who appeared for the CID in the matter.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on December 21.

While the CBI is probing the Dabholkar case, the Pansare murder case was being investigated by a special investigation team of the CID.

Dabholkar was murdered in Pune on August 20, 2013 and Pansare was shot on February 16, 2015 in Kolhapur. He died four days later in a hospital.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has demanded that Narendra Modi government at the Centre declare the birthday of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose as holiday.

This is for the first time Mamata has tried to take away the wind from the BJP, which has been campaigning in Bengal to unravel the mystery surrounding Netajis death.

Speaking at a party forum on Thursday, Mamata said if Gandhiji is the father of the nation, Netaji is the leader of the nation.

I know central government has talked so many things about Netaji. If they care for Netaji, why dont they declare Netajis birthday as national holiday. My government has already done that, said she.

Chandra Bose, BJP state vice president and a strong critic of Mamata, however, supported her demand and said, Its a good proposal. But central government would have to do more to unravel the mystery.

Meanwhile, Mamata held a one-to-one meeting with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at her chamber. Both the leaders discussed the situation in Darjeeling.

Sources have confirmed that Mamata asked Rajnath to personally take stock of the situation and help West Bengal government book GJM activists who are allegedly involved in a series of explosions. She alleged that a section of the BJP leaders maintain a soft approach to all such leaders. Rajnath has reportedly assured the chief minister that he would look into the matter.

Mamata also asked Rajnath to replace the SSB in Darjeeling with either the BSF or the CRPF.

Chief minister considers BSF or CRPF as much more efficient force to deal with Darjeeling situation. Home minister said since India-Nepal border is manned by SSB, he would have to talk to the prime minister to take a call on the mater, said a source.

In the meeting, attended by a few top rank officials, Rajnath also put some requests to the West Bengal government. There are around 39 Rohingyas in different shelter homes in West Bengal. Rajnath has reportedly asked Mamata to initiate proceedings to push them back, to which the chief minister remained non-committal, saying the issue is politically sensitive.

Rajnaths another request also did not get any commitment from the chief minister. The Union home minister wanted more land for around 89 border out posts in Bengal.

We would like to add more strength to the BOPs and that would strengthen the border. But for that we need more land in rural areas, a source quoted Rajnath as saying.

But chief minister could not give any commitment as land surrounding the border areas are all fertile. She also told Singh that her government has a policy of 'no forceful land acquisition'.

What drew eyeballs on Thursday was, not only Mamata, even the BJP gave its senior leader, a cold response. No senior leader was present at the airport to receive Singh. All senior leaders went to North Bengal the day when Rajnath, a former BJP president, reached Kolkata to meet seven chief ministers of the east.
Philadelphia, PA, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- honeygrow, the Philadelphia-born fast-casual, today announced the close of its Series E fundraise of $18 million. Miller Investments led the round, with continued participation from existing partners. The Series E round was also opened to members of the executive team to participate and truly become owners as well.

The new capital, which brings total amount raised to $70M, will be used in many ways. First, for continued growth in existing markets, including expansion of our minigrow concept which successfully launched in New York City in October. New minigrow stores will be opening in NYC, DC, Boston, and Chicago in 2018. Tech upgrades include a new app combining honeygrow and minigrow loyalty programs while refining the ordering process. Building on the success of its Virtual Reality on-boarding and training program, the honeygrow team is continuing to research and test other technologies that can prove to be meaningful, engaging, and positively impactful to both the employee and guest experience.

Founder and CEO Justin Rosenberg said, We have a mission to be the best at what we do, providing wholesome, delicious foods with an emphasis on creatively differentiating ourselves from the pack  from menu to guest experience. Im also beyond excited to continue to expand our new concept, minigrow, as initial results from our first Manhattan location have really exceeded our expectations. I am extraordinarily grateful to continue to partner with an amazing investment team and for the first time, members of our excellent executive team, all who share one vision: to create and execute a sustainable brand, distinct from all else out there.

Since launching in 2012, honeygrow has expanded to include over 20 locations spanning the East Coast and Chicago, with more honeygrow and minigrow locations slated to open throughout the next year. As its honest eating + growing local tagline proclaims, honeygrow features the highest quality locally and seasonally sourced ingredients in its stir-fry, salad and honeybar menu options.

About honeygrow Since June 2012, honeygrow has aimed to bring people together to enjoy quality, wholesome and simple foods. We focus on eating honestly and spending time doing what matters: from visiting the farms where our ingredients are grown to whipping up sauces and dressings in-house (no freezers in here!). honeygrow specializes in colorful stir-frys, salads, and honeybar treats featuring local and seasonal ingredients. The company has approximately 350 employees and recently opened its new headquarters in Fishtown, Philadelphia.

honeygrow = honest eating + growing local. For more information, please visit www.honeygrow.com

For more information on upcoming locations, job fairs and menu updates, follow us on:

Twitter  Instagram  Facebook

About Miller Investment Management: Miller is a Philadelphia-based investment manager founded in 1998. Miller and its affiliates manage investments in private growth equity, US commercial real estate, and global public securities. The focus of Millers private growth investments is partnering with entrepreneur-led, consumer-oriented businesses for the long term, with an emphasis on fast casual restaurants. For more information, please visit www.millerinv.com.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5c871f27-2ab3-484a-b2f3-a96f44d48fc1
The National Green Tribunal on Thursday held the Art of Living (AoL) foundation of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains due to it organising the World Culture Festival there in March 2016. However the NGT did not impose any penalty on the AoL.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar refused to impose any further environment compensation on the AoL and said the Rs 5 crore, which was submitted by it earlier, would be used for the restoration of the floodplains.

"We hold AoL responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains in terms of the report submitted by the expert committee," the bench said.

The bench, also comprising Justice Jawad Rahim and expert member B.S. Sajwan, directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to assess the damage caused on the floodplains and compute the cost of restoration in line with the recommendations of the expert panel.

The tribunal said that in case the expenditure of the restoration crossed Rs 5 crore, then it would be recovered from AoL. However, if the costs is less than Rs 5 crore, the remaining amount would be refunded to the foundation, it said.

The NGT also said the Yamuna floodplains should not be used for any activity that can cause damage to the environment.

However, it refused to decide whether AoL was authorised to hold the festival on the Yamuna floodplains, saying the question was beyond its jurisdiction.

The NGT also rapped the DDA for failing to exercise its duty to protect the Yamuna floodplains but refrained from imposing any penalty on it.

Before the pronouncement of the judgement, it was informed that Justice R.S. Rathore, who had earlier heard the matter, had recused from the bench.

The AoL counsel said that they would approach the Supreme Court against the verdict.

"We do not agree with the verdict. Our submissions have not been dealt with/considered. We will appeal to the Supreme Court. We are confident that we will get justice before the Supreme Court," AoL said.

An expert panel had told the NGT that Rs 42.02 crore would be required to restore the Yamuna floodplains, which was ravaged due to the cultural extravaganza held from March 11-13, 2016.

The NGT was hearing a plea filed by Manoj Misra who claimed that severe damage was done to the river and the floodplains and it must be restored by the authorities concerned.

Environmentalists had opposed the AoL's decision to organise the World Culture Festival on the floodplains on the grounds that the area was ecologically fragile. The event included a stage stretching seven acres for 35,000 musicians and dancers, newly built dirt tracks and 650 portable toilets across 1,000 acres.

The Art of Living had denied it caused any damage to the banks, alleging that it had been the victim of a 'conspiracy.'
Bharatsinh Solanki, state president of the Congress in Gujarat, is 64, but looks no more than 50. Well-built and with a booming voice, this civil engineering graduate has with him the master blueprint for electioneering. What is more, he has inherited the maturity and mindfulness of his father Madhav Singh Solanki, former chief minister of Gujarat.

It was early morning, and Bharatsinh Solanki was tired and heavy-eyed when he returned to Ahmedabad after having accompanied Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on his campaign trail. Solanki agreed to talk to Malayala Manorama though he is generally averse to interviews.

Excerpts from the interview with Bharatsinh Solanki:

How hopeful is the Congress about victory in the assembly elections?

We are sure of coming to power. The people of Gujarat dislike the BJPs rule. All sections of the people, irrespective of caste or creed, have distanced themselves from the BJP. In the last elections, the difference total votes between the BJP and the Congress was merely 7 per cent, which is a small margin. The Congress made a comeback in the recent elections to the local bodies by bagging 105 seats in the block panchayats and district panchayats. This was just a beginning.

Will the movements led by Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor benefit the Congress?

These three are the young leaders of Gujarat. They have created a new stir in the state. All the three support the Congress totally. In fact, a majority of the youngsters of Gujarat are in favour of the Congress.

It was rumoured that you would be contesting in the elections, but your name did not find a place in the list of candidates. Why?

I did not contest in elections when I was PCC president earlier (2006-2008). My task now is to lead the electioneering in all the 182 constituencies, and I want to put in my best efforts for that.

Why has the Congress not announced the chief ministerial candidate this time?

You can be sure of a Congress legislator becoming the chief minister.

Are you aware of the fact that the organisational setup of the Congress at the grassroots-level is weak even while you claim that there is an anti-incumbency trend?

The Congress is a movement of the peopleJan Aandolan. The people of Gujarat have come forward to support the Congress en masse. This is a change for the better.

How many seats do you expect?

Certainly over 125.

(This article was originally published in Malayala Manorama)
The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian factions called for a "Day of Rage" on Friday, and on Thursday a wave of protest in the West Bank and Gaza brought clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops. At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets, medics said.

The Israeli military said on Thursday evening two rockets had been fired towards Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, but did not cross into Israeli territory.

The military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank.

Medics said 11 people had been hit by live bullets and 20 by rubber bullets in the Thursday unrest. One was in a critical condition. Some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted: "Death to America! Death to the fool Trump!"

Trump reversed decades of US policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angering the Arab world and upsetting Western allies.

The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza.

On Friday's "Day of Rage", rallies and protests are expected near Israeli-controlled checkpoints in the West Bank and along the border with Gaza.

Friday prayers at the Muslim shrine of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem could also be a flashpoint.

Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful.

Abbas on Thursday met Jordan's King Abdullah, whose dynasty is traditional custodian of Jerusalem's holy places. Jordan is a staunch US ally but has dismissed Trump's move as "legally ull".

Palestinian news agency Wafa said Abbas updated the king on "the imminent dangers in light of the decision by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the occupation state, and the mechanism of future steps to protect the holy city".

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of their own to be in the city's eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

Trump immortalised

Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years, a move his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump's announcement as a "historic landmark" and said many countries would follow the US move and contacts were under way. He did not name the countries.

"President Trump has immortalised himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people," he said in a speech at Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Other close Western allies of Washington, including France and Britain, have been critical of Trump's move. Pope Francis has called for Jerusalem's status quo to be respected, while China and Russia have expressed concern.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said: "The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both."

The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday to discuss the US decision, diplomats said.

Trump's decision has raised doubts about his administrations ability to follow through on a peace effort that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations.

Haniyeh called on Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. Abbas said on Wednesday the United States had abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts.

"We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine," Haniyeh said.

Backlash expected

Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. Hamas does not recognise Israel's right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005.

Fearing disruption to reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas.

The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem and no other country has its embassy there.

Trump's decision fulfils a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals.

He said his move was not intended to tip the scales in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties, but the move was seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt towards Israel.

The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to US facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters.

"The president has directed me and the State Department to undertake the process to begin an effort to move the embassy," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Vienna."This is not something that will happen overnight."

In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah backed calls for a new intafada and said: "We are facing blatant American aggression."Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said Trump's decision was the result of "normalisation steps" between some Gulf Arab countries and Israel."

It is also a clear challenge to the Muslim world," the Yemen-based group said.Protests have broken out since Trump's announcement in Jordan, outside the US consulate in Istanbul and in Pakistan.

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan said the United States was "exposing its colonial ambition in Muslim territory".

Palestinians switched off Christmas lights on trees outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in protest.

 Reuters
Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, as he rallied his party ahead of a tough election due next year. Muslim majority Malaysia, a significant US ally in Southeast Asia, warned of grave repercussions as it joined other countries condemning President Donald Trump's decision on December 6 to reverse decades of US policy and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.



"How can we accept that?" Najib said in his speech at an annual gathering of the ruling United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) party inKuala Lumpur. "I call on all Muslims across the world to let your voices be heard, make it clear that we strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital for all time.



"The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) said it would hold a protest outside the US Embassy on Friday to condemn the decision. Dogged by a long-running multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund that he founded, Najib is expected to court Muslim sensibilities as he seeks a third term in next year's election, though the strategy could lose votes for his coalition partners from Malaysia's sizable Chinese and Indian minorities.



"At this father of all elections, we will fight to the end," Najib said, leading three cheers of 'God is Great' from the thousands of UMNO delegates in the conference hall. Najib's greatest challenge is expected to come from an opposition alliance that has re-grouped under 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad  who led Malaysia for 22 years  and charismatic leader Anwar Ibrahim, rather than from the Islamists.



Observers still expect Najib to steer UMNO and the multi-racial Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to victory despite the controversy over state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Najib has denied any wrongdoing in a scandal that is beinginvestigated in at least six countries including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.





On December 4, US attorney-general Jeff Sessions described theMalaysian graft case as the worst form of kleptocracy, and said the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was working to provide justice to the victims.Holding onto power, Najib has purged dissent among the 3.4 million members of UMNO, clamped down on media and civil society, and blocked a damaging internal probe on him related to graft at 1MDB.
Two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea on December 7 amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and US threats have made the outbreak of war an established fact.

The annual US-South Korean Vigilant Ace exercises feature 230 aircraft, including a range of the US militarys most advanced stealth warplanes, and come a week after North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to date which it says can reach the mainland United States.

A spokesman for the Norths foreign ministry blamed the drills and confrontational warmongering by US officials for making war inevitable.

The remaining question now is: when will the war break out? the spokesman said late on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Koreas official KCNA news agency.

We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it.

China, North Koreas neighbour and lone major ally, again urged calm and said war was not the answser.

We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement.

The outbreak of war is not in any sides interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Koreas latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and international condemnation.

Strategic bombers

On Wednesday, a US B-1B bomber flew from the Pacific US-administered territory of Guam to join the exercises, which will run until December 8.

Read more: US B-1B bomber flies over Korean peninsula during military drills



The flights by the B-1B, one of Americas largest strike aircraft, have played a leading role in Washingtons attempts to increase pressure on North Korea to abandon its weapons programmes.

In September, B-1Bs were among a formation of US military aircraft that flew further north up North Koreas coast than at any time in the past 17 years, according to the US Pacific Command.

That prompted North Koreas foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, to warn that the North could shoot down the US bombers even if they did not enter North Korean airspace.

B1-B bombers have been regularly dispatched to the Korean peninsula over the past years; however, it seems that the US Air Force might have enhanced its training to better prepare for actual warfare, said Yang Uk, a senior fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum.

While B-1Bs are no longer equipped to carry nuclear weapons of their own, they would be key to any strike targeting major North Korean facilities, he said.

Thats why North Korea has been making such a big deal when B1-B bombers are flying overhead.

Escalating tensions

Both sides insist they dont want war, but blame each other for provocations while saying they will act to defend themselves.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said over the weekend that the possibility of war with North Korea was increasing every day.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving US military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close.

The Pentagon said it has no intent to move any dependants out of the country.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States and says its weapons programmes are necessary to counter US aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Recently, as the US is conducting the largest-ever joint aerial drill on the Korean peninsula targeting the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, its high-level politicians are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another, the Norths foreign ministry spokesman said, using North Koreas official name.

These confrontational war-mongering remarks cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a warning to us to be prepared for a war on the Korean peninsula, he said.

North Koreas latest missile test prompted a warning from the United States that North Koreas leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out, a statement that drew sharp criticism from Russia.

US President Donald Trump has said the whole of North Korea would be destroyed in the event of war.

The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012.

Feltman met North Korean Foreign Minister Ri on December 7, following his meeting with the vice foreign minister a day earlier, KCNA said.



 Reuters
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has that the State Department will "immediately" act on President Donald Trump's order and start preparations to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.



Earlier on December 6, Trump announced in a televised speech that he officially recognises Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and instructed the State Department to relocate the US embassy to the city, reported the media.



Tillerson, who is on a Europe visit, said in a statement on the night of December 6 that the US has consulted with "many friends, partners and allies" about the relocation ahead of Trump's decision.



Though hailed by Israel, Trump's announcement immediately drew strong opposition and widespread criticism from Arab and European countries that such a move would inflame tensions and fuel violence in the Middle East.



Tillerson said that the US had taken measures to protect Americans in the region.



"The safety of Americans is the State Department's highest priority, and in concert with other federal agencies, we've implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions."



Trump's announcement marked a dramatic departure from his predecessors' foreign policy.



Although the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 which required the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, former Presidents, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, consistently renewed a presidential waiver to delay the relocation out of consideration for national security interests.



The status of Jerusalem, revered by Muslims as the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site by Jews, lies at the core of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.



The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no foreign countries have their embassies in the city.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Over 700 PIMCO employee volunteers, friends and family gathered at the PIMCO Foundations 10th annual Share the Harvest event in Newport Beach on Saturday December 2nd to pack 12,000 holiday meal boxes for needy families in Southern California. All 12,000 boxes were donated to the Orange County Food Bank and its many member agencies.

This event follows a similar one in New York City where 250 PIMCO volunteers packed 10,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger, 1,000 lunches for Bridges Outreach, 1,000 grocery bags for Citymeals on Wheels and 1,000 blessing bags for The Bowery Mission.

Emmanuel Roman, Chief Executive Officer of PIMCO, said, "We are so grateful to our partners on both sides of the country who help to make our Share the Harvest events so impactful each year. Their work ensuring food and support get to the neediest in our local communities is an example to us all and we are proud to play our small part.

"What a terrific day to see so many PIMCO volunteers packaging these meals for people experiencing hunger and homelessness in New York City, said Lois Bhatt, Executive Director of Bridges Outreach. Here, where food is abundant, it's hard to imagine that people are hungry, but its happening. A thousand thanks to PIMCO for 1,000 meals and for sharing the harvest.

Mark Lowry, Director of the OC Food Bank, said, On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Share the Harvest in Orange County, it is heartwarming to reflect on the 90,000 local families who have been gifted with a generous holiday meal over the past decade thanks to PIMCO and its army of volunteers.

Since inception, PIMCOs Share the Harvest events in Orange County and New York City have provided meals for 419,000 individuals. The OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, California is a supporting partner in Share the Harvest.

About PIMCO

PIMCO is one of the worlds premier fixed income investment managers. With our launch in 1971 in Newport Beach, California, PIMCO introduced investors to a total return approach to fixed income investing. In the 45+ years since, we have continued to bring innovation and expertise to our partnership with clients seeking the best investment solutions. Today we have offices across the globe and 2,150+ professionals united by a single purpose: creating opportunities for investors in every environment.

About the PIMCO Foundation

The PIMCO Foundation is the philanthropic arm of PIMCO, based in Newport Beach, California, which helps people around the world to reach their full potential by engaging, empowering and investing in communities. It carries out its mission by identifying areas of community need and volunteering time and financial resources to support high impact projects and programs. The Foundations website can be accessed directly at www.pimco.com/pimcofoundation and on social media @PIMCOFoundation.

About Bridges Outreach

Bridges connects the housed and homeless to establish relationships that lead to greater acceptance and understanding, social and economic growth, and well-being. Come rain, sleet or snow, annually, the Bridges van is delivering over 65,000 meals and bringing critical resources directly to the homeless population in Manhattan.

About Citymeals on Wheels

Citymeals on Wheels provides a continuous lifeline of nourishing meals and vital companionship to New York Citys homebound elderly. Working in partnership with community-based organizations and senior centers, Citymeals prepares and delivers over 2 million weekend, holiday and emergency meals for more than 18,000 of our frail aged neighbors each year. Last year, over 21,000 individuals volunteered nearly 68,000 hours of their time.

About Rise Against Hunger

Rise Against Hunger, formerly Stop Hunger Now, is an international hunger relief organization that coordinates the distribution of food and other life-saving aid around the world. Driven by the vision of a world without hunger, the organizations mission is to end hunger in our lifetime by providing food and life-changing aid to the worlds most vulnerable and creating a global commitment to mobilize the necessary resources.

About The Bowery Mission

The Bowery Mission has served homeless and hungry New Yorkers since 1879. Last year, The Bowery Mission provided more than 505,000 meals to men, women and children, 97,300 nights of shelter and 56,200 articles of clothing, as well as showers, haircuts, and expert medical and optometric care. Each meal and every night of shelter is an invitation to residential recovery programs, where men and women get a second chance and lives are transformed from hopelessness to hope.

About the OC Food Bank

The OC Food Bank distributes over 21 million pounds of food each year to vulnerable people. Nearly 400 other charities rely on the Food Bank for the food they distribute. Those organizations include churches, senior centers, shelters, community centers, and social service agencies. Those charities feed seniors on fixed incomes, individuals with disabilities, the unemployed, homeless persons, and the working poor. The Food Bank also feeds 1,700 people directly each day in communities throughout the region. The Food Bank is part of a larger private non-profit community service organization  The Community Action Partnership of Orange County (CAPOC).

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the performance of financial markets, the investment performance of PIMCO's sponsored investment products and separately managed accounts, general economic conditions, future acquisitions, competitive conditions and government regulations, including changes in tax laws. Readers should carefully consider such factors. Further, such forward-looking statements speak only on the date at which such statements are made. PIMCO undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements.

Contact:

Laura Batty

PIMCO  Media Relations

949-720-6374

Laura.Batty@pimco.com
As Donald Trump delivered his presidential inaugural address last January, his national security adviser Michael Flynn told a former business associate in text messages that a private plan to build nuclear reactors in the Mideast was good to go and that U.S. sanctions hobbling the plan would soon be ripped up, a whistleblower told congressional investigators.

The witness did not specify which sanctions Flynn was referring to in his texts. But the nuclear project that Flynn and his business associate had worked on together was stymied by U.S. financial sanctions on Russia.

The witnesss account, made public Wednesday by the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, raises new concerns about the extent to which Flynn may have blurred his private and public interests during his brief stint inside the White House.

Trump fired Flynn in February, saying he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russias ambassador to the U.S. Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, pleaded guilty in federal court last week to one count of making false statements to the FBI and is now a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Muellers probe into possible coordination between Trumps campaign and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 election.

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday the whistleblowers allegations raise concerns that Flynn improperly aided the nuclear project after joining the White House as one of Trumps top national security officials. The project has yet to get off the ground.

Cummings detailed the whistleblowers allegations in a letter to committee chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and urged Gowdy to authorize subpoenas to Flynn and his business associates to learn more about his efforts to aid the proposal. Gowdy did not immediately respond to Associated Press requests for comment but previously has referred letters from House Democrats about Flynn to Muellers inquiry.

Flynn had been a paid consultant for the venture before he joined the Trump campaign last year. The plan, backed by a group of investors, nuclear power adherents and former U.S. military officers, was to construct dozens of nuclear reactors across the Mideast with aid from Russian and other international private interests.

House Democrats noted that a federal ethics law requires White House officials to refrain for a year from dealing with any outside interests they had previously worked with on private business matters.

Our committee has credible allegations that President Trumps national security adviser sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners, Cummings said.

The whistleblower told House Democrats that while Trump spoke in January, Flynn texted from the Capitol steps to Alex Copson, the managing director of ACU Strategic Partners and the nuclear projects main promoter. The whistleblower, whose identity was not revealed in Cummings letter, said that during their conversation, Copson described his messages with Flynn and briefly flashed one of the texts, which appeared to have been sent 10 minutes after Trump was sworn in as president.

Mike has been putting everything in place for us, Copson said, according to the whistleblower. Copson added that this is going to make a lot of very wealthy people. The whistleblower also said that Copson intimated that Flynn would ensure that U.S. financial sanctions hobbling the nuclear project were going to be ripped up, allowing investment money to start flowing into the project.

Attorneys for Flynn and Copson did not immediately return email and phone requests for comment. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment on the allegation.

In Flynns plea agreement last week, prosecutors said he lied to FBI agents about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition.

Copson had promoted a succession of nuclear projects designed to include Russian participation dating back to the 1990s. In an earlier note to the committee, Copson said his firm had provided Flynn with a $25,000 check  left uncashed  and paid for Flynns June 2015 trip to the Mideast as a security consultant for the project.

Flynns financial disclosure did not cite those payments, but he did report that until December 2016, he worked as an adviser to two other companies that partnered with Copsons firm. That consortium, X-Co Dynamics Inc. and Iron Bridge Group, initially worked with ACU but later pushed a separate nuclear proposal for the Mideast.

(AP)
The price of bitcoin seesawed yesterday as fears grow that a colossal bubble in the online currency is about to burst.

It rose from below $13,000 to over $16,000 in under 24 hours, in a wild days trading.

Many experts have compared it to the frenzy for tulip bulbs in the 17th century which saw prices climb 2,200 per cent in four months before crashing. By comparison, bitcoin had risen 1,800 per cent this year at its peak.

The mania has prompted Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Sir Howard Davies to call on central banks around the world to protect savers from disaster.

Many experts have compared Bitcoin's rise to the frenzy for tulip bulbs in the 17th century which saw prices climb 2,200 per cent in four months before crashing

He said they are failing to act out of fear they will be labelled technology-hating dinosaurs.

Bitcoin started the year at $1,000 and has doubled in less than a fortnight. It was trading around $16,000 at the time of going to press.

Experts are now warning that its rise is completely unsustainable and unprecedented in the modern era. Davies, 66, compared the currency to the vision of hell portrayed by Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

He called for warnings from the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Davies branded bitcoin a frothy investment bubble and said: Put up the sign from Dantes Inferno  Abandon hope all ye who enter here  I think thats probably whats needed.

Theyre all very nervous about not wanting to seem to be Luddites, saying that all these investments are bad things.

In a frantic 20 minutes on the Coinbase exchange yesterday, the currency soared $2,000 to more than $19,000, then plummeted back to $15,000.

The surge has been driven by bitcoins fast-approaching debut on two Chicago exchanges. CME Group and Cboe Global Markets will allow punters to bet on its future price without buying it, and their involvement is seen as a key step towards bitcoin entering the mainstream.

Bitcoin rocketed from below $13,000 to above $16,000 in less than 24 hours

But although money is pouring in based on the expectation of further growth, it is also possible that the value of bitcoin will drop sharply if hedge funds are able to start short-selling it  betting the value will fall.

As happened at vulnerable banks during the financial crisis, this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and trigger massive drops.

Davies said that it is a very risky move in reputational terms for exchanges to offer bitcoin trades. Im not quite sure they know enough about what it is, he said.

There has been similar criticism from Wall Street banks, including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, which warned in a joint letter about a lack of public transparency by the Chicago exchanges.

Bitcoin was initially supposed to be a rival to traditional currencies such as the pound, but its surging price means many analysts now see it more as a commodity, like gold.

Few stores accept bitcoin and those which do  such as Old Shoreditch Station coffee shop in the heart of Londons tech district  say the number of transactions is small.

Yesterday, online video game retailer Steam stopped taking bitcoin because it is so volatile. Economists have described it as the biggest bubble since tulip mania gripped Holland, which left thousands penniless.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire boss of hedge fund Citadel, said: These bubbles tend to end in tears. And I worry about how this bubble might end.

He is the latest in a long line of experts to raise concerns. JP Morgan bank boss Jamie Dimon has called the currency a fraud.
Brexit could have as big an impact on the British economy as the 2008 credit crunch, David Davis warned today.

The Brexit Secretary said quitting the Brussels club will amount to a 'paradigm change' comparable with the biggest financial slump since the Depression of the 1930s.

He made the extraordinary comment as he was called before the Brexit select committee where he admitted no Brexit impact assessments have been carried out by Whitehall.

He said an assessment of the potential impact of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy would not necessarily be 'informative' as economic models 'have all proven wrong' in the past.

Mr Davis told the committee: 'You don't need to do a formal impact assessment to understand that if there is a regulatory hurdle between your producers and a market, there will be an impact.

Scroll down for video:

The Brexit Secretary David Davis, pictured today, said quitting the Brussels club will amount to a 'paradigm change' on a level with the biggest financial slum since the Depression of the 1930s

David Davis made the extraordinary comment as he was called before the Brexit select committee to explain why no impact assessments on leaving the EU have been carried out by Whitehall

'It will have an effect, the assessment of that effect is not as straightforward as people imagine.

'I'm not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong.

'When you have a paradigm change - as happened in 2008 with the financial crisis - all the models were wrong. The Queen famously asked why did we not know.

RUTH DAVIDSON SAYS SPECIAL NORTHERN IRELAND BREXIT DEAL COULD BREAK UP UK Ruth Davidson said the set-up could have unravelled the whole UK (file pic) A Brexit deal giving special status to Northern Ireland could have put the future of the UK in jeopardy, Ruth Davidson today said. The Scottish Tory leader said such a set-up could have 'unravelled the entire United Kingdom'. And she revealed she told Theresa May telling the 13 Scottish Tory MPs at Westminster would not be able to support it - meaning the PM would not have had a majority if it came to a Commons vote. It comes after the DUP pulled the plug on a deal to move on to the second stage of Brexit talks. They were angry at an agreement to keep 'regulatory alignment' with the Republic of Ireland fearing it would push the customs border back to the border with the British mainland. Ms Davidson wrote in the Scotsman: 'A markedly separate deal for Northern Ireland - perhaps with membership of the single market - could have unravelled the entire United Kingdom. 'That is why I made clear to the Prime Minister yesterday that neither I nor the 13 Scottish Conservative MPs at Westminster could support such an arrangement.' She added: 'My view is therefore that, whatever happens with Brexit, we should do nothing that damages the integrity of the one union that really does keep Scotland in business. 'Protecting our border-free access with our biggest market - the rest of the UK - is a fairly significant one. We should do nothing to imperil that.' Advertisement

'Similarly, what we are dealing with here in every outcome - whether it is a free trade agreement, whether it is a WTO (World Trade Organisation) outcome or whether it is something between that on the spectrum - it is a paradigm change.

'We know not the size, but the order of magnitude of the impact.'

The shock admission comes in a crunch week for Brexit as Theresa May faces a frantic scramble to rescue her attempt to get the talks to move on to trade by the New Year.

DUP leader Arlene Foster and Mrs May finally spoke by phone today about the impasse, at the same time as Mr Davis was updating the Commons about the economic impact Brexit is likely to have.

The DUP - who are propping the PM up in No10 - on Monday pulled the plug on a deal to move the talks on amid fears it could tear the UK apart.

Britain, the EU and the Republic of Ireland had all signed up to a draft which would promise to keep regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

But the DUP refused to sign up to the plan and today said there will be no deal this week - throwing the PM's hopes a deal can be finalised at a crunch EU summit on December 14 into fresh doubt.

Mr Davis last December told MPs the government was in the midst of carrying out 'about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85 per cent of the economy'.

But today he confirmed there are no such separate reports , sparking accusation he had 'misled Parliament'.

Instead ministers have produced a general report which does touch upon the impact our departure may have on trade and the British economy.

Mr Davis said officials will 'at some stage' during Brexit trade talks conduct work to quantify the effects of different possible outcomes on the UK economy.

But the chairman of Brexit select committee, Labour MP Hilary Benn, attacked the decision not to bother drawing up the separate Brexit reports.

He said it was a 'rather strange' decision when ministers are frantically battling start trade negotiations with Brussels within weeks.

He said: 'You have said there are no impact assessments.

'You were hoping that at the October (European) Council, the door would be open to phase two of the negotiations, where the question would be asked, what does the UK Government want?

2008 CREDIT CRUNCH COST BRITAIN TRILLIONS OF POUNDS The 2008 credit crunch cost the British economy up to 7.4trillion and ushered in a decade of austerity. A long-term boom in credit suddenly collapsed causing the biggest economic downturn in 80 years. The global recession saw banks fail, markets tumble and a frantic efforts by governments around the world to stave off a full-blown depression. Britain had the first run on a bank since 1866, and saw many workers in the lucrative City laid off as firms collapsed like dominoes. Gordon Brown's Labour government printed hundreds of billions of cash to prop up the economy, but it saddled Britain with sky-high debt which we are still paying off. Advertisement

'Are you actually telling us that the Government hadn't at that point - and still hasn't - undertaken the assessment?'

He added: 'Doesn't it strike you as rather strange that the Government undertakes impact assessments of all sorts of things all the time.

'But on the most fundamental change that we are facing as a country, you've just told us that the Government hasn't undertaken any impact assessments at all on the implications for various parts of the economy?'

Mr Davis last week gave the committee 850 pages of what he terms 'sectoral analyses'.

This looks at the condition of various parts of the UK economy and their current involvement in the EU market but making no forecasts on the likely impact of Brexit.

But MPs complained the material had been heavily edited by officials before being released to them.

And some suggested the Brexit Secretary should be thrown into the Tower of London for being in contempt of Parliament for failing to respond adequately to its demand for the full report.

Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable described the decision to commit the UK to leaving the customs union without a formal assessment of its impact as 'gross negligence'.

Labour MP David Lammy said: 'It is time to put David Davis in the Tower of London for contempt of Parliament. I will meet him outside this hearing and walk him down the Embankment myself.'

He has contacted Commons Speaker John Bercow to seek advice on beginning contempt proceedings against Mr Davis who he believes have misled Parliament.

Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas said: 'This is beyond farcical. Davis is either grossly incompetent, or someone who struggles with the truth and treats MPs with contempt.

'Either way, he should be out of his job.'

David Davis, pictured leaving Whitehall this morning, is facing a race against time to get the DUP signed up to a deal to move talks on to trade by Christmas

The minister was appearing before the Brexit select committee in parliament where he admitted Brexit impact assessments have not been carried out

'We WON'T pay this price:' May faces revolt from Boris and Gove over bid to 'bounce' Cabinet into bowing to EU rules - as Foreign Secretary insists BRUSSELS should give in and get on with trade talks

Theresa May is facing a revolt from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove today over claims she tried to 'bounce' Cabinet into accepting EU rules after Brexit.

The Prime Minister has been rebuked for playing a 'risky game' by keeping her top team and the DUP in the dark over plans for a 'soft Brexit' deal with Brussels.

The agreement was humiliatingly torpedoed by the Northern Ireland party, which is propping Mrs May up in power, at the last minute on Monday amid fears it would tear the UK apart.

The premier is now scrambling to get the painstakingly assembled proposals back on track ahead of a crunch EU summit next week.

The Prime Minister had planned to return to Brussels today to try to complete a divorce deal with the EU, but this has been cancelled

But there is growing alarm on the Tory benches after David Davis confirmed some sectors of the UK economy could have to align with the EU after Brexit to resolve the Irish border issue.

Former leader Iain Duncan Smith  who has acted as a bridge between No 10 and Eurosceptic MPs until now  described the proposal as 'intolerable' and suggested it was time to walk away from the talks.

He said: 'We are beginning to stare at the edge of what is a price that we simply cannot afford to pay.'

Mr Johnson tried to ease the tensions today by pointing out the EU is being unreasonable in expecting the UK to make commitments without knowing what the 'end state' of trade arrangements will be.

Speaking to journalists as he arrived at a NATO meeting in Brussels today, Mr Johnson said the government 'would find a solution'.

He said: 'We are going to take back control of our borders and our cash contributions.

'But that solution can only be discovered in the context of discussions on the end state of the UK's relations with the rest of the EU.'

Boris Johnson is said to have confronted Mrs May over the compromises at Cabinet yesterday. He is pictured right at a NATO meeting in Brussels today

Michael Gove, pictured left arriving for Cabinet with Jeremy Hunt yesterday, is said to be part of a revolt of Brexiteers who have a 'genuine fear' Mrs May wants to push through a soft option

But behind the scenes Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers have complained they were being kept in the dark about the extent of the compromises, both on the Irish border and the European Court of Justice.

One Cabinet source told the Telegraph: 'It seems that either Northern Ireland is splitting from the rest of the UK or we are headed for high alignment with the EU, which certainly hasn't been agreed by Cabinet. The Prime Minister is playing a risky game.'

Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson and Environment Secretary Mr Gove - who have restored their alliance after dramatically falling out during the Tory leadership campaign last year - are said to be leading a revolt of Brexiteers who have a 'genuine fear' that Mrs May is going to push through a 'soft Brexit'.

The Foreign Secretary reportedly confronted the Prime Minister in a dramatic clash during Cabinet yesterday over her negotiating strategy.

A senior insider told The Sun: 'Cabinet is in the dark about what the PM is doing, which is a very strange state of affairs to be in.'

Tory grandee Bernard Jenkin said on Twitter: 'EU is using NI border issue as a proxy for the trade negotiations which have not started.

'EU cannot abide the idea that UK leaving sets a precedent for invisible external frontiers elsewhere, though we cd all agree: Ireland case is completely exceptional.'
Dublin, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "CAD Software Market: Analysis and Forecast to 2023" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.



Global CAD software market is estimated to reach $11,097.0 million by 2023, on account of high demand for advanced designing software and significant advancement in technologies, such as cloud based designing tools.



Computer-aided design (CAD) software is being utilized to create two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) illustrations. The different modelings under 3D CAD include wireframe, surface and solid modelling. CAD is used by professionals such as designers, engineers, drafters, entertainers and architects to create meticulous sketches or technical illustrations. CAD software is getting widely adopted in various application areas such as automotive, industrial machinery, aerospace, defense, healthcare and arts.



As per the findings of the research, 3D CAD held a larger market as compared to 2D CAD technology. The demand for CAD software solutions was the highest from automotive industry and it is also expected to continue being the highest revenue contributor to the global CAD market, during the forecast period. Intermediate CAD software witnessed the highest demand as compared to other categories in 2016. However, both pro and intermediate level of CAD software are expected to grow with similar rates during the forecast period.



Geographically, EMEA has been the largest CAD software market, whereas Asia-Pacific is expected to witness the fastest growth among all regions, during the forecast period. The anticipated growth in CAD software market can be attributed to increasing digitalization, advancement in new technologies, growth in manufacturing industry, and increasing adoption of advanced rendering and simulation tools by designers in the region. Further, due to rapid technological advancements in building infrastructure, and development of precision modeling techniques in industrial machinery and healthcare applications, the region has higher propensity to adopt advanced CAD software solutions at a rapid scale.



The key factors propelling the growth of CAD software market include surging adoption of CAD software in packaging machinery. Packaging machinery helps to complete various phases of the packaging process including filling, wrapping, strapping and labelling. With packaging machines becoming increasingly complex with higher efficiency demand, engineers and designers are adopting CAD software to face unique mechatronic engineering challenges.



Global Cad Market Segmentation:



By Technology:

3D

Wire-Frame Model

Surface Model

Solid Model)

2D

By Level:

Intermediate

Pro

Beginner

By Model:

Solid

Surface

Wireframe

By Application:

Automotive

Industrial Machinery

Aerospace

Defense

Electrical & Electronics

Healthcare

Arts

Others

By Geography

EMEA

The U.K

Germany

Russia

France

U.A.E

South Africa

Rest of EMEA

Asia-Pacific

China

Japan

India

South Korea

Rest of Asia-Pacific

Americas

The U.S.

Canada

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of Americas

Companies Mentioned



3D Systems Corp.

Autodesk Inc

Aveva Group Plc

Bentley Systems Inc.

Dassault Systmes

GStarsoft Co., Ltd.

Gehry Technologies Inc.

Hexagon AB

IronCAD LLC

PTC Inc.

Siemens AG

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/hkhncf/cad_software?w=12




MBABANE  Good times lie ahead for the tech savvy populace.

Swazis could soon surf the net with pricey gadgets purchased at low prices, following governments undertaking to either remove or waive taxes on tablets computers and various ICT equipment. Removal of taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT), which currently stands at 14 per cent, effectively means prices of ICT equipment could also be drastically reduced in the near future. The price reduction could primarily come about because there would be no need for retailers to pass on the cost of VAT to the consumer as it would have been scrapped altogether. The undertaking to remove taxes on ICT products by government, unpacked in the National Trade in Services Strategy, has been intended to foster investment in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) devices and equipment by the general public and ICT firms. Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade Jabulani Mabuza explained that this move formed part of a series of initiatives that would be implemented by the State to improve trade in services and ultimately improve on the provision of more employment opportunities, poverty alleviation and ultimately improve the economy for the better.

Taxes on tablets, computers and other ICT equipment will be removed or waived in order to foster investment in ICT devices and equipment, reads the document in part.

To complement the high number of people that would be in possession of the ICT devices who could be in need of how to use them effectively, it has also been pledged that government would also implement its e-government strategy and put all departments online. It (government) will first provide key government services online. This will be the biggest stimulus or boost to the ICT sector, the strategy pointed out. Further, it has been mentioned that government could introduce tax or fiscal incentives for investing in the ICT sector, particularly for online businesses that would export their services. The incentives will include waiver of the VAT on inputs to the sector such as telecommunications machinery and equipment and specialised business software, it was explained. Asked to shed light in relation to how government would have to go about removing taxes on devices and providing tax incentives to improve the ICT sector, Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) Commissioner General (CG) Dumisani Masilela explained that various options would be put into consideration prior to implementation of the strategy. He said options included, but not limited to, rebates on importation of ICT equipment and provision of initial allowances to businesses.

Specifically in relation to taxes on tablets, computers and other ICT devices, Masilela explained: legislation would have to be amended on the list of taxable goods under VAT. Federation of the Swaziland Business Community FESBC President Tum Du Pont said the move by government to remove certain taxes to improve ICT was commendable. This is a good move but should not remain as a document. There should be timelines allocated for the implementation processes if we mean business, Du Pont advised. Federation of Swaziland Employers and Chamber of Commerce (FSE& CC) Marketing and Communications Coordinator Magman Mahlalela said the development of ICT would greatly improve the countrys rankings in the Ease of Doing Business.
OUR Father who is in heaven, we come before you today because we need your deliverance. Please hear the cry of Swazis as you heard the cry of Israelites in Egypt.

Deliver us Almighty from the hands of those who are supposed to lead us to prosperity as a country but they decide to enrich themselves at the expense of Swazi people. Make them realise that you decided to put them in those positions to advance the lives of your children not to give themselves huge salary increments despite the fact that a majority of your people live in abject poverty.



Father, we have our elderly, some of whom sacrificed their happiness for the prosperity of the country and they now have no energy to provide for themselves. Government made promises to assist them but instead it is failing to keep its promises. Government is now discriminating against them based on when they were born. Our government is discriminating against those born in 1957 based on their year of birth.

They are not being treated the same way as those who were born earlier. Government is denying them what they were promised. This is despite the fact that it is written in our Constitution that we will not discriminate against each other based on age. I am sure Almighty that you know that we do our statistics every now and then and we have the database of our identity documents that show our dates of birth and government has that. So they know when they budget how many people would be turning 60 on a particular year and government should budget accordingly.



Father I pray that you reveal yourself to our parliamentarians and make them see that they are the cause of all this. You have given them wisdom that they realise that the budget was not meant to take good care of the needs of Swazis and they correctly rejected it. I am not sure Father whether it was the power of evil spirits that they then decided to change what was good for Swazis and then allowed the budget.



If it is the spirit of cowardice, Father, that engulfed them, then I rebuke it in your name. If it is the spirit of greediness, which has seen them give themselves a huge salary raise and sacrifice the whole nation then I rebuke it.

I also command your spirit to make Cabinet realise that they are supposed to lead the country transparently and in truth. They must realise that they are not to benefit a few individuals in their leadership but the whole country. Lord it is not about themselves but your people. They must know that when the people are hungry, it reflects on them.

When they forbid people from getting mealie-meal from South Africa yet they do not have enough to eat, it is not a good thing. They are the ones failing to prioritise food production as stated in the Maputo Declaration yet we are failing to produce enough for the whole country.

Where will the maize to supply the whole country come from because we are concerned with sugar cane farming than maize production? Reveal to them Father that you helped Israelites conquer powerful armies through your will. Therefore to pump in a lot of resources to an army that is doing little if there is anything at all will not assist anyone but will just increase the wage bill.

You warned us Lord, that they will come in Your name yet there are far from you.

There are those who will come in sheep skin yet they are wolves. We are now witnessing it Father. They have started throwing parties and campaigning before time. They have no good intentions to benefit Swazis but are after enriching themselves. They appear to be people who are ready to assist communities but the minute they are elected they forget about the people and pass budgets that do not benefit the ordinary folk.



They will make false promises to us and even promise to take us to heaven yet they do not even know you. I pray Almighty that you help Swazis see these wolves for what they are. Give Swazis the wisdom to see that we are now going to elections and suddenly we are getting gifts and we are being visited by people we have not seen in communities for a while. Let Swazis realise that a prophet or true leader will not ask them to make him or her leader but the people must just realise the qualities of a leader. Let Swazis not elect these wolves who have no interest of developing them. I pray Father and believe that you will hear my prayers, Amen.
Chicago, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Guaranteed Rate Foundation, created in 2012 to positively impact lives in times of need, encourages people affected by tragedies and natural disasters to apply for assistance. The Foundation has also revamped its online presence and streamlined the application process to reach a wider audience and help more people.

"The goal of the Guaranteed Rate Foundation is to provide relief for people facing dire circumstances where we can make a huge impact in helping them recover or get back on their feet," says Guaranteed Rate Founder and Chief Executive Officer Victor Ciardelli. We want to ensure that those in communities recently impacted by tragedies and natural disasters are aware of the Foundation and that we are here as a potential resource for them. Every single penny donated goes to assist someone in desperate need of help and Guaranteed Rate covers 100 percent of all of the Foundation's expenses."

Since its founding five years ago, the Guaranteed Rate Foundation has provided assistance to hundreds of people, including:

The family of a firefighter who collapsed and died in the line of duty. The 54-year old left behind his wife and five children, ages 12 to 19. The Foundation covered mortgage payments and provided additional living expenses for one year to help the family stay on their feet.

A retired woman whose roof, heating and walls were damaged during Hurricane Matthew. When she was denied assistance from FEMA due to insurance, she was unable to fully restore her home. The Foundation aided in covering the repairs to her roof and damage inside her home.

A man whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, leaving him with irreparable damage to his appliances, furniture, drywall and cabinets in the bathroom and kitchen. With social security as his only source of income, funds fell short when repairing the home to a livable condition. The Foundation stepped in to cover the cost of new appliances and building materials.

Foundation recipient Maureen Toscano, whose husband passed away while on duty as a firefighter, notes that the Foundation helped her family by providing financial assistance during an emotional time. Its just nice not to have that financial burden that can bring a lot of people down; its hard enough dealing with the emotional grieving process. We really appreciate what the Guaranteed Rate Foundation is doing for all of us and it means so much to myself and the children to know that people out there care.

About the Guaranteed Rate Foundation

The Guaranteed Rate Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation established with one simple objective: Impact the lives of Guaranteed Rate employees, their families and their communities in times of desperate need in a meaningful and positive way. Since our founding in 2012, the Foundation has helped over 800 individuals who have experienced unforeseen hardships. Requests range from providing food, clothing and shelter following a natural disaster to assisting with housing, transportation and outstanding bills as a result of a medical emergency or loss of life. The Guaranteed Rate Foundation is funded by Guaranteed Rate Inc. and its employees in addition to private sponsors. To ensure every dollar donated is allocated to those in need, Guaranteed Rate Inc. underwrites all Foundation expenses. For more information on The Foundation and how to apply for assistance, visit www.rate.com/foundation. Special thanks to the Foundations Gold Level Sponsors for their support: CBCInnovis, DataVerify, Radian and Write-Green.

About Guaranteed Rate

Guaranteed Rate is one of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, the company has approximately 195 offices across the U.S. and Washington, D.C., and is licensed in all 50 states. Since its founding in 2000, Guaranteed Rate has helped hundreds of thousands of homeowners with home purchase loans and refinances and funded nearly $23 billion in loans in 2016 alone. The company has become the Home Purchase Experts by introducing the world's first Digital Mortgage technology and offering low rate, low fee mortgages through an easy-to-understand process and unparalleled customer service. Guaranteed Rate won an American Business Award for its Digital Mortgage technology in 2016, ranked No. 1 in Scotsman Guide's Top Mortgage Lenders 2016, was chosen as Top Lender 2016 and 2017 by Chicago Agent magazine and made the Chicago Tribune's Top Workplaces list seven of the past eight years. Visit rate.com for more information.

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A retired top Albany fire investigator testifying at the Edward "Ted" Mero double-murder trial said Wednesday he does not know why the blaze that killed Mero's roommate was ruled an accident possibly caused by smoking.

Former Capt. Loren LaJoy, who headed the Albany Fire Department's fire investigation unit at the time, said his preliminary report found the cause of the Jan. 27, 2013 blaze that killed Megan Cunningham, 23, to be undetermined.

Mero, 30, of Albany, is charged with the second-degree murders of Cunningham and 24-year-old Shelby Countermine, who vanished on Dec. 3, 2014 and was found dumped the following May in a remote area of Coeymans.

Prosecutors allege Mero set the home he shared with Cunningham ablaze to cover up murdering her. Mero's defense has used the fire classification as an accident to assert his innocence.

LaJoy explained he knew the probe would not be solved before his retirement the next month. Fire officials were bringing a new fire investigator to the case, he said.

"I was in the process of handing everything over to him on this -- and somebody, somewhere, decided to make an announcement that it was accidental," LaJoy testified under questioning by Chief Assistant District Attorney David Rossi. "I don't know who specifically made that decision."

LaJoy said the only evidence that smoking could have caused the fire was a lighter found in Cunningham's bedroom, where her body was discovered. LaJoy said he found no evidence of cigarette butts or ashtrays or candle holders.

In her cross-examination of LaJoy, Mero defense attorney Cheryl Coleman suggested marijuana could have sparked the blaze that killed Cunningham, who was smoking pot on the night of the fire.

"Are you aware of what a blunt is?" Coleman asked the retired fire investigator, referring to a hollowed-out cigar filled with marijuana.

"The terminology has changed," LaJoy said.

After both the attorney and witness had a brief laugh, Coleman asked LaJoy if marijuana paraphernalia such as filters and paper-type material had gone up in flames, would it not make finding residue hard to find. He said it would.

LaJoy maintained "to call a fire accidental without specifically knowing the cause" was not right.

Coleman reminded LaJoy that before his retirement, he told a fire investigator for Allstate insurance, which insured 12 Arcadia Ave., that the fire had been classified as an accident and the case was closed.

"Correct?" Coleman asked.

LaJoy said he "may have" said that to the insurance investigator.

"This was five years ago," he said.

John Fairclough, a fire investigator with the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control, later testified that to cause a fire, a lit cigarette would have to be dropped into material  such as clothing, garbage, an overstuffed chair, mattress -- that insulated the cigarette to where the materials reached an ignition temperature.

Fairclough, who assisted with the probe, appeared less than sure about the cause of the blaze, saying officials "did not rule out the possibility that candles or cigarettes started that fire."

"Cigarettes do start fires. It's not as common as people might think," he said.

Fairclough said he ruled out the fire being incendiary because he found no physical evidence or testimony to support it at the time.

Coleman reminded Fairclough his report on the case was that it was possibly caused by smoking.

Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors called Collene Streicher, a volunteer firefighter from Malta who went on a first date with Mero on Nov. 29, 2014 -- just days before the disappearance of Countermine -- after meeting him on a dating website, "Plenty of Fish."

She said they met at the Red Robin eatery in Latham. During the date, she said, she mentioned that she would like to ship all old boyfriends away.

Mero allegedly responded with a remark prosecutors now find key.

"It was along the lines that, 'You're a firefighter and you could easily make people go away,'" Streicher testified. "He said, 'I am a water guy. We can make that happen also.'"

"You took that jokingly?" Rossi asked the witness.

"Oh yeah," Streicher responded. "I mean we all say stupid things."

"Of course," Rossi replied.

Also testifying Wednesday was Laurie Green, the former roommate of Countermine in Schenectady. Her testimony is expected to continue Thursday when the trial resumes before Judge Peter Lynch.
SEATTLE, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Echo Health Ventures (EHV), a strategic collaboration between Cambia Health Solutions and Mosaic Health Solutions to invest in innovative health care services and health care information technology companies, today announced the appointment of Patrick Conway, MD, MSc to its board of directors.

Dr. Conway currently serves as President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC), succeeding Brad Wilson, who helped launch EHV in partnership with Cambia Health Solutions in 2016. Dr. Conway was previously at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where he served as Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality, and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Dr. Conway with Mark Ganz, President and CEO of Cambia Health Solutions, will represent the parent companies of EHV on the board. Both are leaders driving innovation within their respective health plans, while broadening the landscape for health care transformation beyond their organizations.

From Dr. Conways leadership steering federal health programs and policies that affected millions of Americans to his new role as leader of Blue Cross NC, his dedication to improving health care resonates with our commitment to building a health care system centered around the consumer, said Echo Health Ventures President and CEO, Rob Coppedge. The addition of Dr. Conway to EHVs board reinforces the value we bring to our portfolio companies as they scale their innovations nationally.

Dr. Conway joined CMS in 2011 as the agencys Chief Medical Officer, where he advocated for health care payments tied to quality and innovation. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2014, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. He recently won an Innovator in Health Award from the Network for Excellence in Heath Innovation for his distinguished service to all Americans under three different U.S. administrations, and particularly for his leadership in transforming health care payment and delivery.

Prior to joining CMS, Dr. Conway oversaw clinical operations and research at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center as Director of Hospital Medicine, with a focus on improving patient outcomes across the entire multi-billion dollar health system. He is a practicing pediatric hospitalist and was selected as a Master of Hospital Medicine from the Society of Hospital Medicine. He has received the Presidential Rank Award, Distinguished Executive, and the Health and Human Services Secretarys Award for Distinguished Service.

Echo Health Ventures helps bridge the divide between the innovation economy and the needs of large health care enterprises. They have established a track record of creating high-value partnerships that accelerate the strategies of Cambia Health Solutions and Blue Cross NC and create value for their portfolio companies, said Dr. Conway. We share a common objective of making health care more accessible and affordable and the key to that success will be collaboration. I look forward to continuing Brads legacy and working with EHV to combine the resources and knowledge of large-scale health care companies with the creativity and drive of innovative startups.

In Wilsons more than two-decade tenure at Blue Cross NC, he was instrumental in driving innovation and the transition to value-based care. He expanded critical investments in programs that aimed to improve the health and well-being of customers and communities.

Brads vision and leadership drove the founding of Echo Health Ventures and our distinctive investment model, said Coppedge. He recognized the opportunity to multiply resources, scale and impact by bringing together two health plans on opposite coasts joined by a shared vision of reshaping the health care system. His steadfast support and counsel helped establish the partnership that created EHV. As we close out our first year with milestone wins including new investments and a deeper team, we owe Brad a debt of gratitude for accelerating EHVs momentum and leaving his post in excellent hands. We wish him the best in his well-earned retirement.

ABOUT ECHO HEALTH VENTURES

Echo Health Ventures LLC invests to build and grow tomorrow's great health care companies. We invest across every stage and work with our portfolio companies to challenge and transform the health care system. As a strategic collaboration of Cambia Health Solutions and Mosaic Health Solutions, we work closely with our Parents to catalyze the development of our portfolio companies' and accelerate their innovations to scale nationally. Echo Health Ventures operates nationwide with offices in Seattle, Durham, N.C., and Portland, Ore. Follow us on Twitter @healthecho.

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Albany

Shakir Lateef Cannon, a 34-year-old advocate for raising awareness of sickle cell disease and improving health disparities affecting minorities, whose efforts took him to the White House in recent years, died Tuesday at Albany Medical Center Hospital, following a sudden respiratory infection, according to his mother.

The respiratory infection was a complication from the sickle cell disease hed battled all his life, his mother, Cheryl Cannon, said. Shakir, whod received monthly blood transfusions since having a stroke at age 3, had trouble breathing Sunday night at his home in Clifton Park and was taken by ambulance to Albany Med.

He left behind a wife of six years, Chau Duong Cannon, and their 5-year-old daughter, Kira, as well as parents, a brother and other relatives and friends.

How to help A GoFundMe account has been launched to raise money for Shakir Cannon's family. Go to: https://www.gofundme.com/shakir-cannon-and-family/ See More Collapse

Despite his illness, Cannon lived an active life. His mother said the monthly blood transfusions kept him from suffering in pain as badly as some other children with sickle cell disease, though in his online writings, Shakir describes having pain as an adult and also enduring not only regular transfusions but also nightly infusions to remove iron from his blood. Sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affects African Americans, decreases the bloods ability to carry oxygen through the body, which can cause anemia, repeated infections and periodic episodes of pain.

Cannon wrote about his experience in a blog and fought for more research investment in the disease as cofounder of the Minority Coalition for Precision Medicine. Last year, he participated in the White House Precision Medicine Initiative, an effort of President Barack Obama to encourage medical research that takes into account differences in peoples genes, environments and lifestyles.

Among the goals of the Minority Coalition for Precision Medicine was to improve the trust of minority groups in medical research, with the aim of increasing their participation. Cannon addressed the mistrust of the minority community in his writings.

In a September blog post for the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley, Cannon noted that only one sickle cell drug had been approved by the federal government in 20 years, and that his treatments had not changed since childhood.

Why has there been no progress to treat such a horrific disease? he asked. We cannot ignore the fact that sickle cell disease predominantly affects African Americans (about 90% of cases) as compared to cystic fibrosis, which mostly affects Caucasian Americans and was originally identified nearly three decades after SCD. We cannot ignore the history of African Americans being mistreated by the biomedical research community; e.g. Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee syphilis experimentees. Its hard not to consider the thought of a purposeful neglect of the sickle cell disease community.

He further wrote with optimism about new gene editing techniques focused on sickle cell disease and was engaged in work with a Harvard University professor to partner with black churches to improve trust between African Americans and researchers.

Cannon grew up in Nassau, Rensselaer County, where his parents, Cheryl and Joseph, still live. He earned a bachelors degree from the University at Albany, and worked in information technology at the state Department of Health in Albany.

Calling hours will be held Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the McVeigh Funeral Home in Albany. A mass of Christian burial will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Church of St. Mary in East Greenbush.
A panel studying restoration of passenger rail service between New York City and Berkshire County, Mass., is considering a route that would take it through the Capital Region.

The Berkshire Flyer would travel along Amtrak's Empire Corridor to Rensselaer, then reverse direction and travel over a line through southern Rensselaer County, already used by the Lake Shore Limited's Boston section, to connect to the CSX line to Pittsfield, Mass.

Unlike other routes the panel is considering, this line wouldn't require any additional investment in new track, signals or land purchases. And the service could be supplied by extending an existing train that now terminates at Rensselaer, much as the Ethan Allen Express to Rutland, Vt., is the extension of another Empire Service train from Rensselaer.

Eddie Sporn, a West Stockbridge resident who heads real estate and planning firm Robin Road Consulting, said that while another option that would avoid Rensselaer is still on the table, the route through Rensselaer appears to be the favored option.

The other route would require some land acquisition and track work to connect to the same CSX freight line.

The target market for the Berkshire Flyer would include summer tourists from New York City.

"One of the markets we're really trying to tap into is the vast number of people in New York City who have the disposable income and the cultural bent to visit the Berkshires (but) who don't have a car," Sporn said.

Berkshire County tourist attractions include the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Tanglewood, Jacob's Pillow, and the Norman Rockwell Museum.

The major challenge with any restoration of passenger rail service is getting customers that "last mile" to their destination. Rental cars, ride-hailing services, traditional taxis or even so-called "station cars" that passengers leave at the station garage to get back and forth to a second home, for example, all might be part of the solution, said Sporn.

Others studying the issue include Astrid Glynn, former New York State Transportation Commissioner who is now rail and transit administrator at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

Travel time from New York City to Pittsfield likely would be in the three and a half to four hour range, but if instead of extending an existing Empire Corridor train, another train is added, it could also travel as an express, skipping most of the Hudson River stops and shortening the trip to under three and a half hours.

Sporn also would like to see the Chatham stop restored. While the station exists, the Lake Shore now skips it.

At one time, the New York Central and later Penn Central provided commuter service from Chatham to New York City, but that ended in the early 1970s and much of the track was removed. Commuter trains now travel no farther north than Wassaic, in Dutchess County.

The Berkshire Flyer likely would be launched as a weekend seasonal service, operating on Fridays and Sundays between Memorial Day and Columbus Day, Sporn said. But planners hope that it would eventually become a year-round service with increased frequencies.

The cost of the service hasn't yet been calculated. Once a route is determined, Amtrak will be asked to come up with the cost.
ALBANY  Albany City School District officials decided late Thursday to close the high school Friday out of an abundance of caution for student safety after several large fights erupted in the halls and the street earlier that afternoon.

The high school was thrust into chaos Thursday after a series of fights spilled into the street when someone unexpectedly pulled a fire alarm.

Nearly a dozen students were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly for their role in the melee, which prompted a large police response and closed off a portion of Washington Avenue Thursday.

Police spokesman Steve Smith said one student was injured in the fights and was being treated at Albany Medical Center Hospital for a nose injury. Students and parents on the scene, however, called the Times Union to report multiple students being loaded into ambulances.

Rumor quickly spread on social media and among students that there were "several stabbings," but police and school officials say none occurred and no weapons were confiscated during the police response.

School was dismissed 15 minutes early, and after-school activities were canceled as a result of the fights.

"This kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable," said district spokesman Ron Lesko. "It is not an example of what Albany High is like on a regular basis. We will not tolerate it. We will treat it like it is completely unacceptable. Any students who we learn were involved will be disciplined."

Lesko said Thursday night that the decision to close school Friday was not made lightly, but that the district and police need more time to review surveillance footage to identify any other students who may have been involved in the fights.

"We have a responsibility to make sure our learning environment is safe for our students and our staff," he said. "There were a lot more students involved than the ones who were arrested. We've got a lot of cameras at Albany High and we're reviewing all the tape we can get our hands on. But we want to find that out before we open the school again."

Officials say it's unclear whether the chaos began before or after a fire alarm was pulled, but parents who contacted the Times Union said their children witnessed fights in the halls as students and staff were leaving the building. The fighting spilled outside as well.

A 14-year-old student on the scene said students were throwing punches, kicks and "beating each other up" on the ground. She said several students were pepper-sprayed, though she could not see who had sprayed them.

As for what caused the fights, she could only guess: "Just drama, I assume."

At least 50 police officers responded to the scene, according to passersby. Albany County sheriff's deputies were also observed on the scene.

Six of the 10 students who were taken into custody were under 16 and were charged as juveniles; four were over 16 and were charged as adults, Smith said. Earlier in the day he said possible charges could include inciting a riot, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest, but by nightfall the charges had been downgraded. He said there could be further charges.
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Albany

New Yorks predominantly Democratic lawmakers have for weeks been decrying the federal tax overhaul that the Republican-controlled Congress is drawing up, but there is a bright side.

Part of the nearly 500-page tax reform bill includes a proposal to cut by half the federal excise tax on craft beer.

With the fourth-highest number of craft breweries nationwide, the measure could spur a growing industry that already enjoys a number of state benefits.

As with most small independent businesses, the savings will go directly back into the task of creating high quality products and increasing the brand successes, Jeremy Cowan, owner of Clifton Parks Shmaltz Brewing, one of 375 such relatively small breweries in the state, said in an email.

Brewers just pour that money back into their businesses. It would be a big win, said Paul Leone, executive director of the state Brewers Association.

For brewers who produce up to 60,000 barrels annually, the measure would cut the per-barrel federal excise tax from $7 to $3.50 per barrel, explained Leone.

Like the rest of the massive and rapidly evolving tax bill, the details remained fluid on Thursday. As currently conceived, the cut would expire at the end of 2019 but the beer lobby is pushing to extend or make it permanent.

The national Brewers Association has been pushing for such a measure for years.

It would also apply to wineries and distilleries.

Despite that potential cut, Democratic New York lawmakers and some Republicans kept up their criticism of the overall tax bill which would sharply curtail or cut the deductibility of mortgages as well as state and local income and property taxes.

The bill in its current form could cap the deductability of mortgages at $500,000 and of property taxes at $10,000.

There are lots of homes on Long Island and other New York City suburbs with home prices and taxes above that level.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a Thursday afternoon conference call reiterated worries that those caps would drive many affluent New Yorkers out of the state.

He also took aim at western New York GOP congressmen Tom Reed and Chris Collins, who have supported the measure.

The lawmakers have argued that the limits would hurt just a few of the high earner in their districts.

But Cuomo noted that those affluent taxpayers pay a high proportion of the states tax bill.

Why would a Republican congressman from one of the states that you are dismembering take part in it? said Cuomo.

An hour earlier, members of the state Association of Counties gathered to decry the bills impact, especially in high cost areas such as the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island.

Its all bad news for New York taxpayers said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy added that hes been hearing from real estate brokers who are telling people to consider selling their homes before the law, if it passes, goes through.

Public policy shouldnt punish people, said Marc Molinaro, the Republican Dutchess County executive and former assemblyman.

Molinaro, who is viewed as a possible gubernatorial challenger to Cuomo, also criticized the governor for saying that lawmakers who support the tax plan are treasonous.

Those comments, he said, are counterproductive.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
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BETHLEHEM  The state's highest court may soon be called to solve a debate that's been raging in the town of Bethlehem for more than two and a half years.

And like all good debates, it involves an electronic road sign and local zoning law.

The Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk school district is gearing up to appeal an appellate court decision issued last week that said the use of the sign outside one of its elementary schools is subject to local zoning laws and must be removed.

The district, however, says the town has no jurisdiction over the sign, which has stood dark outside A.W. Becker Elementary School since 2015  or over any structure erected on or near school property. Such jurisdiction falls squarely to the state Education Department, and always has, it says.

"The outcome of this court case and appeals have the potential to change current practices for all school districts in New York state," said Brian Bailey, superintendent for the rural school district, which serves about 1,900 students across Coeymans and parts of the towns of Bethlehem, New Scotland and the Greene County town of New Baltimore.

The district intends to appeal the ruling to the only other court it can  the state Court of Appeals. That process may not get under way until early 2018, Bailey said.

Currently, he said, schools may choose to collaborate with local municipalities on a project, but they are not required to get permission from that municipality to construct something in or around school buildings or on district-owned property. Such projects are considered to be within the purview of the state Education Department, he said.

But the town of Bethlehem and two state courts say otherwise. (The state Education Department said Tuesday it's reviewing the decision).

In the ruling issued last week, the Supreme Court's Appellate Division acknowledges that schools enjoy "some immunity" from local zoning regulations, but went on to state that "that immunity is not so broad and absolute as petitioner contends."

Schools and churches have historically enjoyed special treatment when it comes to local zoning ordinances, the ruling notes, and have been allowed to expand into neighborhoods where "nonconforming uses" would otherwise not be allowed because  by their very nature  they "serve the public's welfare and morals."

The Court of Appeals clarified in 1986, though, that case law does not offer wholesale immunity from local laws, especially when a project may "actually detract from the public's health, safety, welfare or morals," the ruling notes.

In Bethlehem's case, the concern is safety, said Michael Moore, deputy town attorney for the town.

Town zoning officials in 2015 expressed concern the sign could pose traffic safety issues if drivers got distracted by digital messaging along the road, Moore said. The state Department of Transportation echoed those concerns, he said.

The town first outlawed electronic message-type signs in 2012, but allowed those that had already been erected to remain.

Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk erected its sign in the spring of 2015 as part of an annual capital improvement project, and was notified several weeks later that it was in violation of town zoning, district spokeswoman Stephanie Hunter said.

Town representatives then convinced the district to complete "the formality of applying for a variance," she said, and once the district appeared in front of the town board, it "resoundingly denied" that variance.

According to the town, the district had sought a permit for the sign and was denied it in April 2015. A month later, town officials discovered the district had erected the sign anyway. It was only then that the town applied for a variance, Moore said.

"RCS is not prohibited by this case from having a sign at its Becker Elementary School," he said.

"The town has made clear from the outset ... that a sign which complies with the town code will be allowed."

From the school district's point of view, the appellate ruling sets a dangerous precedent.

"This particular decision has a potential impact on every municipality in New York state," Bailey said at a board of education meeting Tuesday night.

"If the municipality is able to exert pressure over a public school district, if we were to lose, it has the potential to mean in case law that any public organization  that means fire department, police department, public library, public school districts  could potentially immediately be held to the same standards as your local pizza place."
GUILDERLAND  Guilderland police arrested a 31-year-old Connecticut man who is accused of having raped a child under 15 at a Days Inn in town, police said.

Christopher L. Green, of Hartford, is charged with second-degree rape and second-degree criminal sex act (actor over 17, victim under 15), both felonies, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor.
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ALBANY  Proposed legislation would allow undocumented immigrants protected under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to keep their driver's licenses after the program ends in March.

Democratic Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda of the Bronx also backs a bill to make DACA recipients eligible for the Excelsior Scholarship free state college tuition program.

This is not reinventing the wheel, Sepulveda said at a Capitol press conference Thursday morning. (DACA) recipients already have the right to have a drivers license here in New York State. So were not changing anything, were not augmenting anything. Were just maintaining the status quo.

He added that DACA recipients already have taken advantage of the K-12 education system, and now what were saying is, 'We want to now throw you and kick you to the curb, and essentially maybe even throw you out of this country.'

Thats not what the United States stands for, he said.

Neither bill has been printed yet. Sepulveda's office said the first measure would bar the state Department of Motor Vehicles from canceling, suspending or rescinding drivers licenses issued to DACA recipients. The second bill would make recipients eligible for the Excelsior Scholarship program without needing to apply and qualify for the state Tuition Assistance or Education Opportunities programs.

The DACA program was created during the Obama administration and gives children brought to the country illegally protections from deportation for two years. Those immigrants must first be vetted.

Recipients have an opportunity to renew those protections. The program makes them eligible for work, drivers licenses and college. DACA recipients are not eligible for federal college financial aid or New York State tuition aid.

President Donald Trumps administration announced in the fall that DACA would end in March if Congress didnt approve a replacement program. A potential fix has become a negotiating point in the current talks intended to stave off a government shutdown this month.

Even though Democrats have rushed to the aid of immigrants this year amid federal policy changes, both of Sepulvedas ideas have proven to be controversial in New York in the past.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer in 2007 sought to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, but ultimately dropped the plan as opposition mounted.

The DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students to obtain state financial aid for college, has repeatedly been passed by the Democratically controlled Assembly but has not gone anywhere in the Republican-led state Senate.

Asked if a state solution could conflict with federal law, Sepulveda said, "It's always a possibility."

mhamilton@timesunion.com  518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10
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ALBANY - The day that will live in infamy will always resonate with Barbara Bartholomew.

She was in the car when she heard the news on the radio that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And all she could think of was her fiance, Edward Bartholomew.

It was a horrible day, of course, said the 96-year-old widow. The day brings back many, many memories.

She was relieved to get a standard military-issued postcard from Edward on which he checked the box, Im well. But in reality, he was shaken by the ordeal. He was on his way to Mass that Sunday morning when the attack occurred, but instead ended up dragging bodies out of the bombed-out USS Pennsylvania on Dec. 7, 1941.

After it happened, we wanted to get married as soon as possible, Barbara said. I flew to San Francisco and we got married. I dont even know the names of the people who stood up for us. It was another sailor and his girlfriend. But he really never talked about it.

Bartholomew, from Troy, died in April. He was the last area survivor in the Capital Region of the attack now remembered as Pearl Harbor Day. Its also the day Americans rallied to involve themselves in World War II, both in Europe and the Pacific. He is buried at Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery in Schuylerville.

And its also a special day at the Zaloga American Legion Post 1520, which hosted its annual breakfast to remember Pearl Harbor.

You would think that after we lost our last veteran two years ago, said Timothy Rizzuto, the executive director of floating museum. But this was our biggest day so far.

The annual breakfast featured a color guard and a reading of President Franklin Roosevelts famous speech delivered to a joint session of Congress on the day after the attack. In addition to the veterans, the event was attended by local politicians and junior ROTC members from the Christian Brothers Academy and Albany High School.

One of the things that is nice is having the students sitting with veterans, Rizzuto said. They can ask questions. Its important because I think that young people know less and less about World War II. It's not so much in the history books anymore. One veteran who was talking to a group of school children mentioned Pearl Harbor and a student asked 'whos she.' Pearl Harbor and World War II are important because it shaped the world we have today.

It also shaped the youth of Al Atwell, a Clifton Park veteran, who also remembers the day well. He was 16 and living in his hometown of Breesport in Chemung County.

When it happened, I had no doubt I would become involved, Atwell said. But, I was too young to join the service.

Subsequently, he, along with other teens and wives and mothers of servicemen, joined what he called a home guard that monitored every plane that flew over hamlet, located just outside Elmira in the state's Southern Tier.

We sat in a small building, taking two hour shifts, we would report any airplane that flew over, Atwell said. With a crank phone, we called Horseheads or Syracuse to report the number of planes, their altitude and which direction they were flying in.

When he turned 18, he joined the Army and was sent to fight in France, where he ultimately suffered frost bite. He later became an MP. And while it was not easy going in France, especially trying to survive outside in below zero temperatures, Pearl Harbor Day stands out to him.

It was startling, the 92-year-old said.

Rizzuto said that what Americans need to remember the most about World War II and Pearl Harbor is how everyone came together.

It also shows what we can do when we are united, Rizzuto said.
ALBANY  At least six members of The College of Saint Rose's board of trustees, including the chair, have resigned in recent weeks following intense division over the leadership of the school and governance of the board.

The Albany college has experienced significant turmoil in the three years since Carolyn Stefanco took over as president and vowed to address a $9 million deficit with a mix of cuts and revenue-raising initiatives.

Faculty members have spoken out against and sought the ouster of Stefanco, who they say violated the college's longstanding shared governance model when she restructured academic programming without their input. According to letters obtained Wednesday by the Times Union, similar concerns have been bubbling among the nearly 30 trustees and recently surfaced with an attempted coup on the board and a slew of resignations.

"The board of trustees is deeply divided in our governance and our charge and supervision of management," Judith Calogero wrote in a letter announcing her resignation as board chair Sunday. "We've committed an enormous amount of time and effort over the last few years to help improve the leadership and management effectiveness, but with no success, and the trustees are divided over taking any corrective action."

College officials referred questions about recent changes and tensions on the board to Sister Mary Anne Heenan, who the board announced Wednesday would take over as chair. Heenan is an alumna of Saint Rose and director of the Albany Province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the religious order that founded the college.

When asked about those tensions, Heenan said differences of opinion are bound to occur among any group or board but she declined to provide details.

Asked if she and the board as it currently stands support Stefanco as president, Heenan said: "It is my belief that we are strongly committed to working with Dr. Stefanco to perform her role as the president and to move the college forward to meet the challenges that we now face."

The college was facing enrollment declines and a $9 million deficit when Stefanco became president in the summer of 2014, and her tenure kicked off with fears of retrenchment.

She ultimately approved a plan that would cut more than two dozen programs at the college and 23 faculty positions. The goal, she said, was to eliminate or reduce the programs with the fewest students in order to expand high-demand programs with the greatest potential for growth.

But faculty, and some students, objected along the way. A vote of no confidence was taken by faculty in 2016 and a vote urging her ouster was taken this past spring.

All along, board of trustees maintained a public position of "unwavering support" for Stefanco, who the trustees said was hired to make tough decisions that would allow the college to continue into the future.

Small private colleges like Saint Rose, the Sage Colleges and Siena College have faced enrollment declines in recent years due to changing demographics and increased competition from public colleges and universities. This year, New York approved the first-ever free tuition program at the state's public colleges, putting even more pressure on schools like Saint Rose to compete for a declining pool of college-age students.

While the deficit at Saint Rose had shrunk to $3.6 million as of last year, it "soared to $12.1 million" in the current fiscal year that began in July, Calogero said in her letter.

"Astonishingly, this could go higher without immediate corrective action," she wrote. "Enrollment is down, student retention is down, the (tuition) discount rate is at a historical high, student housing occupancy is down, new programs that were expected to bring new students have failed or stalled, and the strategic plan is failing  all occurring within the last three years under the current leadership team."

Heenan, in a statement issued Wednesday night to the Times Union, said many of the financial challenges the college faces existed before Stefanco arrived in 2014.

"In the last three years, she has implemented major changes that we, the Trustees, directed," she wrote. "She is working diligently with us to address emerging financial, enrollment, and personnel challenges. We have a board of 28 extremely talented Trustees, all of whom care deeply about the mission of Saint Rose and are focused on working with President Stefanco to make progress."

As the financial situation at Saint Rose has declined and employee turnover reached "record levels," several trustees struggled to maintain a public show of support for Stefanco  and that appeared to have a souring effect on their relations with administration, according to resignation letters obtained by the Times Union.

In her own letter, Calogero stated that "a campaign was initiated" to oust her as chair after she asked the president to "hold off further external commitments" and instead focus her energies at Saint Rose. (Stefanco serves on several local and international boards, including Women@Work, a Times Union-led network of business and professional women.)

This ouster campaign apparently culminated at an October board meeting, which several trustees described in their letters as "unprofessional" and "embarrassing." Calogero did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

"We all want to be supportive of the president of the school we support and serve; I simply cannot do that anymore," wrote Gregory Serio, a trustee of several years, in his resignation letter. "Carolyn Stefanco, as president of St. Rose, no longer enjoys my confidence."

He continued: "Her secretive management style, closed-circle communication methods, obvious preoccupation with personal interests, and apparent disdain for the board and its critical role in the governance of this institution are serious and, probably, irreparable shortcomings for any executive, within or without higher education."

Other trustees submitted similar letters, including Tim Fenton, the recent chief operating officer of McDonald's Corp., and Michael Miller, who wrote a six-page screed detailing the decay of confidence among the board.
TORONTO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Association (VRARA) has announced a partnership with Cantech Investment Conference; the biggest technology investment conference in Canada, coming to Toronto on January 31st! The VRARA, a global association partnered with the Toronto chapter, is working with the event's producers, Cambridge House International and Cantech Letter, to create a virtual reality village that will showcase Canada's most innovative virtual and augmented reality companies.



"As a global association, we are happy to partner with the largest investment and technology conference in Canada as we feel this will provide entrepreneurial-minded members the opportunity to find investors to fund their immersive technology innovations. This is not only a great opportunity for our local chapter members but also for members of our 50 global chapters." - Paul Rothbein, Toronto Chapter President, VRARA.

3,000 investors will come together with 100+ leading edge tech companies at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the Cantech Investment Conference.

"Canada is punching way above our weight in the virtual reality and augmented reality industries. We are very excited to showcase some of Canada's most disruptive AR/VR experiences before they are available to the public." - Jay Martin, CEO, Cambridge House.

Qualified companies are invited to present to an influential group of VCs, financial institutions, portfolio managers, private equity firms and sophisticated investors. Exclusive one-on-one meeting opportunities will also be available.

Cantech is produced by Cambridge House International Inc., Canadas undisputed leader in technology and mining investment conferences, and the Cantech Letter, one of the most popular and respected financial sites in Canada.

To learn more about the Cantech Investment Conference, or to purchase tickets, please visit CantechConf.com, or contact info@cambridgehouse.com.

Contact:

Company presentation opportunities:

info@cambridgehouse.com

604-687-4151

Media inquiries:

Lbrodie@cambridgehouse.com

Speaking Inquiries:

Danielle@cambridgehouse.com
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ALBANY  The mother of Wendell Hill broke down in court while as she confronted the man who gunned down her son in a Central Avenue night club during the predawn hours of Thanksgiving 2016.

"Why did you take my baby from me?" Hill's mother, Demetria Conyers, told Kareem Blacknall before she was overcome with emotion. "Only 26 years old. He had so much to live for, to see and to do... I couldn't have asked for a better son."

State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Breslin imposed a 25-year sentence on Blacknall, who pleaded guilty last month to first-degree manslaughter to resolve his second-degree murder charge.

On Nov. 24, 2016, Blacknall opened fire and shot Hill inside Rocks at 77 Central Ave. Three bystanders were wounded in the incident, much of which was captured on club surveillance video at 2 a.m.

An advocate for crime victims who works for District Attorney David Soares completed Conyers' statement.

"I am going to miss the days he would come home and give me kisses and hugs, telling me how much he loved me, telling me stories of what my grandchildren were up to," the mother's statement said. The victim's young daughter cries every day for her father, she said.

Maiya Boykin, one of the bystanders who was shot, issued a statement read aloud as well by the advocate. The woman explained she went out that night just to have fun with her friends.

"We were enjoying ourselves and looking forward to the holidays," Boykin wrote. "The next thing I knew, I was shot and more scared than I had ever been in my life."

After the shooting, she said, she had to adjust to the reality that "every popping sound is not a gunshot and that I don't have to fear for my life all the time." It took her a long time to even go out without being afraid, she said.

Blacknall, 31, known as "Reem," also received five years of post-release supervision.

When given a chance to speak, Blacknall apologized to the victims, his own children and said he wanted to better himself in prison. Breslin said there was nothing he could say that would be more eloquent than that of a "mother who lost her son."

Police arrested Blacknall last Dec. 2 at Henry Johnson Boulevard and Clinton Avenue.

He was later indicted on charges of second-degree murder, weapon possession, reckless endangerment and attempted escape.

In 2011, Blacknall pleaded guilty to enterprise corruption in a case the attorney general's office brought against the Capital Region faction of the Bloods street gang.

--- Steve Hughes contributed
The Asthma Society of Ireland has welcomed the announcement from Minister Denis Naughten of a nationwide smoky coal ban. Dublin led the ban in 1990, which has since saved more than 8,900 lives and many more will be saved with this announcement. The Society says the ban will be welcome news for the 15,377 asthmatics in Tipperary.

Kevin Kelly, Asthma Society Interim CEO, commented, We are delighted with this milestone announcement from Minister Naughten. The risk smoky coal poses to our health has now been recognised and tackled at source following years of campaigning. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 lives are lost on the island of Ireland each year from smoky coal pollution and the right to clean air has been acknowledged. The ban will reduce coal ash production, a source of exposure to arsenic and other health-damaging metals

With 470,000 people affected, Ireland has the fourth highest prevalence of asthma worldwide. Whilst patients of respiratory diseases are worst affected, ongoing exposure to this pollutant affects everyone.

It is now vital however for Minister Naughten and the Department of Environment to oversee the implementation of the ban across the country. Paramount to this is ensuring that as part of the existing Swift 7 process, they independently verify smoky coal stocks. Coal merchants should be unable to order smoky coal after April 2018. We feel that the only smoky coal that should be available for sale in 2019 is the left over physical bags from the 2018 burning season. Kelly added.
Following another year of strengthening and developing its balance sheet and financial reserves, Thurles Credit Union will inform the members of a good years trading at the annual general meeting, to be held on Tuesday 12th December next in the Anner Hotel.

Speaking to the Tipperary Star, Donal Scannell, C.E.O., described the current status of the business as solid and secure.

Thurles has consolidated its status as a Tier One credit union, with assets now in excess of 113 million. This maintains the positive upward trend of recent years, despite the many challenges that are a continuing feature of fiscal trading generally, and locally based businesses in particular. The world market determines what happens in financial circles in most countries and Ireland is no exception. But Mr. Scannell noted that Thurles Credit Union has long been set on a very firm foundation, a factor which has enabled it to face the rigors of trading through the recession years by prudent management and the magnificent support of its members. I never cease to be amazed by the loyalty and support from all our members, and it is very gratifying for the directors, management and staff to reciprocate by way of growth and development each year, Mr. Scannell said.

He pointed out that the accounts for the past twelve months have been approved by the Central Bank, the regulatory body for the credit union movement in Ireland. The Central Bank has also approved the financial projections up to 2020, as well as the strengthening of the regulatory and general financial reserves. He also said The directors of the credit union are confident of the current strength and well-being of the business and the proposed payment of a dividend and interest rebate has received the approval of the Central Bank. This is the best possible tribute to be paid to all concerned in the management and strategy of Thurles Credit Union.

The four-year strategic plan 2014-2018 is regularly monitored and has proven an invaluable aid in pin-pointing the way forward in critical areas. Arrangements are currently in place to upgrade the strategic plan for the period 2018-2022. However, he also issued some cautionary notes. The reported recovery in the economy has been slow to impact on peoples incomes in our area although the accounts give strong evidence of our members commitment to keeping up to date with loan repayments, resulting in a low figure for write-off this year. In this context we will continue to help our members work through the many financial demands made on them. We have strengthened our control systems to ensure that the loan book remains in good health. Mr. Scannell continued. We are confident that we offer a first-class service to our members, who are our main priority now and always.

During the year Thurles Credit Union introduced two new loan products i.e. Car and Student Loans at a special rate of 7.5%. The uptake to date has been very positive on these new loan products. He pointed out that the new system of accounting protocols known as FRS 102 is providing a better benchmarking for accounts going forward.

Mr. Scannell wished to acknowledge the work of the staff, all of whom have undertaken and continue to participate in a number of training courses, thus enabling them to maintain a first class service to the members. The staff also work diligently to help the members resolve their financial difficulties in true credit union fashion.

Savings have grown by 3.5m in 2017, with Mr. Scannell noting that member savings continue to be protected under the Governments Deposit Guarantee Scheme. Arising from the prudent use of its financial resources, the directors will be recommending a dividend to all those with savings and a loan interest rebate to the members who have borrowings and have kept their loan repayments up to date.

At management level, Thurles Credit Union has met all of the stringent regulatory and governance requirements of a modern financial corporation, and maintains a strong and professional relationship with the Central Bank. It has also developed an IT business and security strategy in line with the very stringent requirements of modern financial services.

Our directors, board oversight committee, and staff have taken a proactive stance towards the many legislative and regulatory demands placed on the credit union in recent years, and I am confident that this positive attitude will continue to impact beneficially on the members into the future. Mr. Scannell concluded by paying tribute to everybody involved for another excellent team effort during the year.
Sr Patricia Wall was named Volunteer of the Year at the Volunteer Ireland Awards which were held in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Sligo last Friday night.

Sr Patricia is known to many as the Flying Nun for skydiving aged 75 to raise funds for Aware and resource centres in the Slieveardagh area.

Since her retirement as a school principal more than 20 years ago, she has set up three organisations to support the Slieveardagh community and she is still involved in the day-to-day running of all three. These organisations, The Millennium Family Resource Centre, Ballingarry Community Development (including Brightsparks Childcare) and Slieveardagh Rural Development, came together to nominate Sr Patricia for the impact she has had on the community.

She picked up the Christine Buckley award on Friday night in Sligo which is reserved for one truly exceptional volunteer and is named in memory of the late Christine Buckley, who co-founded the Aislinn Education and Support Centre and campaigned tirelessly on behalf of victims of institutional abuse for more than 25 years.

In her acceptance speech Sr Patricia praised the work of the people in her community saying I see amazing people doing extraordinary work in the community without any acknowledgement so I want to thank them tonight for all their hard work.

Michael Kealy, Manager of Ballingarry CITE, who attended the awards ceremony said: "On behalf of all of the staff and Board of Management of Ballingarry Community Development and Brightsparks Childcare Centre, Ballingarry we would like to congratulate Sr Patricia on winning the prestigious 2017 Volunteer of the Year Award".

"Seeing at first hand, the work she puts in and the wealth of knowledge she imparts daily, we know that there can be no more worthy winner. Sr Patricia has never been one to seek plaudits, but often deserves them and it is great to see her been honoured nationally, Mr. Kealy stated.
CHICAGO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tempus, a technology company focused on helping doctors personalize cancer care by collecting and analyzing large volumes of molecular and clinical data today announced the launch of Tempus O, a groundbreaking system that collects, structures and analyzes clinical data from electronic medical records, research databases, images, and physician notes to generate therapeutic insights.



Tempus is committed to building the worlds largest database of combined clinical and molecular data, in order to give physicians and researchers insights into what drives cancer progression, and which treatments may be most effective for individual patients. In oncology, and across healthcare more broadly, datasets are small and disorganized and the most critical data often exists in unstructured free-text documents and images. Without a platform that collects, cleanses, analyzes and applies that data, at scale, we cannot usher in the age of precision medicine. As of today, the largest publicly available dataset of clinical and molecular data includes merely 11,000 patients. This is insufficient, given that 1,688,780 people were expected to be diagnosed with cancer in the United States in 2017 alone. When this dataset is broken down by cancer subtype, key mutations, or treatment and outcome data, the resulting datasets are far too small to reveal useful evidence for clinical decision making.

The first piece of this puzzle is collecting molecular data at scale, which Tempus generates through its CAP/CLIA accredited highly robotic next-generation sequencing lab. The key to understanding the factors driving a patients cancer, however, do not lie solely in understanding their genomic profile. Genomic data has to be integrated with clinical data, which is often messy, unstructured, devoid of outcomes and locked away in various independent electronic medical record systems.

Tempus works with leading physicians, researchers, cancer centers and hospital administrators to collect, organize and standardize vast quantities of clinical data. Tempus applies its unique optical character recognition and natural language processing algorithms to identify key factors in the patients treatment history. Tempus then validates these findings with a team of qualified healthcare professionals who curate the data before deploying its insights to benefit providers and patients.

Data in isolation cannot be used to help physicians learn from patients who came before, said Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO at Tempus. In order to build a true learning system, we need to know who these patients are, what drugs they have taken, how theyve responded to those drugs, and what genomic factors seem to be driving their disease only then can we improve the treatment and outcome for every patient that follows.

Tempus O can be used as a standalone product or it can be used in conjunction with the companys sequencing and analytic offerings.

About Tempus:

Tempus is a technology company that is building the worlds largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful. We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine learning platform. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data. For more information, visit tempus.com and follow us on Facebook (Tempus Labs) and Twitter (@TempusLabs). For more information on Eric Lefkofsky, visit lefkofsky.com.

Tempus:

Clo Ewing

clo@tempus.com
Rathdowney Parish is delighted to welcome back Fr. Liam Lawton for a gala Christmas Concert on Thursday 21st of December. This year Liam will bring a full thirty three piece orchestra, The Irish Festival Orchestra and it promises to be a magical Christmas Celebration. In addition to soloists the concert will also feature the Rathdowney Parish Choir and The Creagh Family.

Liam Lawton is an internationally recognised Composer and performer and his music is greatly loved throughout the world. After 9/11 one of Liams early pieces, The Clouds Veil was the most requested song at the many funerals which took place in the New York area as a result of that awful atrocity.

Fr. Lawtons music is steeped in the Celtic tradition and his melodies and lyrics have touched and uplifted people of all age groups throughout the world. Liam was asked recently by the Disney Film company to compose an original song for one of their forthcoming movies.

Liam Lawton travels the length and breadth of Ireland giving Liturgical Music workshops and performing sold out concerts in all of the countrys top music venues. In 2016 he was invited by the Luthern Church in Sweden to compose a piece of music for the visit of Pope Francis to the Scandinavian country. Liam also travelled to Sweden to sing for the pope during the visit.

Liam Lawton has been to Rathdowney on a number of occasions. In 2014 just before Christmas he teamed up with Daniel and Majella ODonnell for a memorable concert in our church. He was also joined by his twin brother Tom and his friend Mary Kennedy from RTE who compered the evening. During our Faithfest in 2016 Liam conducted a Liturgical Music workshop for choirs throughout the diocese and beyond. More recently Liam was the main celebrant at our Pilgrimage celebration in Grogan on August 15th 2017.

This years Gala Christmas Concert is on Thursday 21st of December at 8pm in Holy Trinity Church Rathdowney Co. Laois. Tickets are 30 and are available from Rathdowney Parish Office Tel. 050546282 (0862444594 after hours)
The Asthma Society of Ireland welcomed the announcement from Minister Denis Naughten of a nationwide smoky coal ban. Dublin led the ban in 1990, which has since saved more than 8,900 lives and many more will be saved with this announcement.

Kevin Kelly, Asthma Society Interim CEO, commented, We are delighted with this milestone announcement from Minister Naughten. The risk smoky coal poses to our health has now been recognised and tackled at source following years of campaigning. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 lives are lost on the island of Ireland each year from smoky coal pollution and the right to clean air has been acknowledged. The ban will reduce coal ash production, a source of exposure to arsenic and other health-damaging metals

With 470,000 people affected, Ireland has the fourth highest prevalence of asthma worldwide. Whilst patients of respiratory diseases are worst affected, ongoing exposure to this pollutant affects everyone. There are 15,377 people with asthma in Tipperary.

It is now vital however for Minister Naughten and the Department of Environment to oversee the implementation of the ban across the country. Paramount to this is ensuring that as part of the existing Swift 7 process, they independently verify smoky coal stocks. Coal merchants should be unable to order smoky coal after April 2018. We feel that the only smoky coal that should be available for sale in 2019 is the left over physical bags from the 2018 burning season. Kelly added.

For more information, visit www.asthma.ie
This coming Friday night, December 8th, will see the official switch on of the towns new Christmas lights. This will be an occasion for all the family with music and singing from 6.45pm. The local Parish Choir will attend along with the Folk Group, Childrens Choir, Killea Choir, Clonmore Choir and Thomas Mac Donagh Pipe Band. Santa will also make an appearance with sweets and treats for all the kids.

We are delighted to announce that All-Ireland winning duo Maria Curley and Elaine Fitzpatrick will be on hand to do the honours so please do make the effort to come out and get the festive season off to a great start.

TCDA (Templemore Community Development Association) would like to publicly express their thanks to Tipperary County Council for all their assistance on this project. Starting with a blank canvas both parties met on numerous occasions eventually agreeing on a plan which we hope will be appealing to the majority.

The lights will focus on the main thoroughfare through the town with pole features and white LED icicle lighting replacing the traditional multi-coloured string lighting. As all the lights are brand new, our budget restricted us from lighting up the streets off the square but it is envisaged that this will be achieved in the years ahead.

Remember its only year one of a new project so we ask the people of the town to be patient and let it develop in time.

The best thing we can all do is turn up at the Town Hall on Friday evening at 7pm and support this new initiative. Bring your Santa Hats, join in the singing and get Christmas 2017 off to a flying start. See you all outside the Town Hall. Parents, please accompany your children and keep them safe near the roadside.

Christmas Shopping in Templemore

The new lighting will be twinkling from Friday, and the shopping countdown has already begun. Lets hope that everybody will make a special effort this year to support the local shops and businesses in Templemore. These shops and businesses are the ones that clubs and organisations make repeated calls to during the year for sponsorship for various events etc., and they are always so supportive of all charitable and voluntary organisations in the town. Not alone do they come up trumps, but our local shops give quality service and valuable employment in our town and the surrounding areas. If you need a break from shopping, have lunch or a coffee, or take a short walk around our beautiful park while the children check out the Fairy Trail. And guess what? Parking in the Town Park is always free, and its only 2 minutes from the shops. In line with other towns in the county can we assume that we have general free parking on the Saturdays in December ??

Christmas Day Swim

Volunteer swimmers are hopefully now gearing themselves up for the Annual Christmas Day Swim in Templemore Town Park Lake. The Swim, timed for 12.15 has been taking place now for many years with up to thirty brave swimmers taking the plunge last year. Sponsorship Cards are available from Robbie Ingram or at Peters Fruit & Veg. If you would like to add your name to the list of swimmers this year, or for any information on the Swim please get in touch with Dorothy Bradish (087-9926631). All proceeds in aid of North Tipperary Hospice.
Charlie Castelluccio (left) and Dale Henderson, Vietnam War veterans and members of Bruce Shorts Post 5958 VFW, of Titusville, proudly stand in front of the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day display at Lighthouse Christian Church, on Spring Street, Wednesday morning. The window display was done by Joan Amini and Mary Jean Nichols to honor and commemorate the veterans who served, and died, during Japans surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
[December 07, 2017] Nokia selected by Kansas City Power & Light to supply a mission-critical communications network to enhance its power grid

 Project will enable KCP&L to bolster power delivery to its 800,000-plus customers in northeast Missouri and eastern Kansas  Nokia Wavence(TM) microwave packet radio portfolio to support high-bandwidth services such as video and emerging grid applications as well as existing data traffic on a single network Nokia has been selected by Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) to enhance the microwave communications network that supports a range of mission-critical services for the utility's power transmission and distribution grid. The new network, based on packet microwave technology, is intended to support power delivery and reliability for KCP&L's more than 800,000 customers in and around Kansas City, Missouri as well as parts of neighboring state of Kansas. KCP&L is reinforcing its network using Nokia's Wavence microwave packet radio family of technologies (formerly known as the 9500 Microwave Packet Radio), which will enable the utility to support all of its grid control applications alongside its legacy data services using a single, converged network. This will simplify the management and operation of KCP&L's network today, while laying the groundwork for the introduction of emerging grid applications in the future. This is covered by a 10-year agreement to enable network expansions and upgrades. The current deployment, covering 40 sites, is already underway and is to be completed before the end of 2017. A second phase consisting of 29 additional sites will follow shortly after. Nokia's Wavence portfolio incorporates features specifically designed to address the unique needs of utilities, smoothing their transition from time division multiplexing (TDM) technology to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks. For the project, Nokia is introducing the latest microwave packet radio technology as an overlay to existing equipment. This approach will enable KCP&L to expand their bandwidth to support new IP-based applications without the need for new antenna infrastructure and without forcing a disruption of existing communicaions, reducing costs and facilitating a seamless, incremental migration from TDM to IP.



The Nokia Wavence microwave portfolio is the leading 'pure packet' product portfolio on the market, and was developed with utilities' stringent requirements for security, reliability, latency and resiliency in mind. The network is managed by Nokia's Network Services Platform. This agreement builds on Nokia's strong track-record providing mission-critical networks to utilities, having served more than 200 power utilities worldwide. It also highlights the progress of Nokia's strategy of expanding its customer base outside of the traditional telecommunications sphere, a key focus of the company's diversification efforts.

Melvin Sam Charuvilayil, Supervisor Network Planning & Engineering, KCP&L said: "Nokia's microwave packet radio technology delivers the reliability and performance needed to support our current operations, while providing the scalability and flexibility to introduce new services in the future. 'Future Proof' can be an overused term, but the fact that we can easily transition all our TDM applications into the packet realm seamlessly, while supporting our latency-sensitive teleprotection traffic, is particularly appealing. We chose Nokia because of their commitment to the utility industry and because its solution portfolio incorporates microwave radio as a part of its end-to-end communications architecture for utilities. Nokia's Network Service Platform brings network management under one umbrella, simplifying our provisioning and troubleshooting processes across our IP/MPLS and microwave networks and helping us ensure reliable communications to support grid operations." Kamal Ballout, head of the Global Energy Segment at Nokia, said: "Nokia understands the needs of power utilities like KCP&L, and has dedicated a great deal of effort to ensuring that our packet microwave technology can meet the requirements today, while preparing networks for the introduction of even more advanced technologies in the future." Resources: Nokia Wavence Microwave Packet Radio

Nokia Solutions for Power Utilities Connect with Nokia: Subscribe to receive information on specific areas of interest Website Blog LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Instagram Periscope YouTube Glassdoor

About Nokia We create the technology to connect the world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry's most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing. From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com Media Enquiries: Nokia

Communications

Phone: +358 10 448 4900

Email: [email protected]



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[December 06, 2017] Singapore Students Explore Community Issues Through Visual Analytics Competition

Singapore public data sets inspire winning visualisations SINGAPORE, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The next generation of Singapore's data talent was recently on display during the final round of the IMDA-Tableau Community-Driven Data Stories Competition. Organised by Tableau and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Singapore students were challenged to use publicly available data sets and Tableau's leading visual analytics platform to create data-driven stories around topics impacting their local communities. Now in its second year, the annual competition encourages the development of in-demand data analytics skills including visualisation and data storytelling. More than 130 students representing 21 educational institutions participated this year, examining public data sets and submitting data visualisations across both 'Schools' and 'Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL)' categories. Developed through Tableau's global Academic Program, competition finals were held in conjunction with the recent Tableau Academic Day with winners taking home prizes and tech gadgets worth over SGD20,000.



JY Pook, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific, Tableau, said: "These young people are our future leaders, and it is especially encouraging to see them get engaged with data and make amazing discoveries from it. As we continue to strive towards building a Smart Nation, the amount of data generated is just going to increase exponentially. Data is worthless if you can't make sense of it, but these young people have shown they can find the hidden insights, and that's how visual analytics can help drive transformation." Through their Digital Readiness programs, IMDA aims to empower people to solve real world problems and prepare them with skills for the digital economy. These efforts are closely aligned with Tableau's mission and, through the annual competition, local students are able to collaborate with data mentors and bolster highly sought-after data skills.

A number of Singapore's open government data sets inspired this year's winning visualisations. The 'IHL' category winner, Fauzi Bajuri from the National University of Singapore (NUS), created the Friendliness Standards of Building in Singapore visualisation in order to explore the current accessibility of train stations, public buildings, and neighbourhoods around Singapore. The winning team from the 'Schools' category examined whether factors like GDP, government budget and others impact the quality of education in their Education Standards & GDP visualisation. Throughout the months-long competition, over 200 Singapore students, teachers and lecturers joined seven local workshops to learn the importance of visual analytics skills and gain first-hand data storytelling experience. Please visit the competition results to find out more about the IMDA-Tableau NIC Faceoff | Community-driven Data Stories Competition 2017 and see the winning entries from each category. About Tableau

Tableau helps people see and understand data. Tableau helps anyone quickly analyze, visualize and share information. More than 65,000 customer accounts get rapid results with Tableau in the office and on-the-go. Hundreds of thousands of people have used Tableau Public to share data in their blogs and websites. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial. Tableau and Tableau Software are trademarks of Tableau Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. SOURCE Tableau

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[December 07, 2017] Zhaopin Unveils 2017 Top 30 Employers in China

HANGZHOU, China, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Zhaopin Limited ("Zhaopin" or the "Company"), a leading career platform in China focused on connecting users with relevant job opportunities through their career lifecycle, today announced the Top 30 winners of the "China Best Employer Award 2017", with BMW China leading the list. China Best Employer Award Winners 2017 Winners of the 2017 awards were led by Top 10 employers that included, in order: BMW China, Tencent, China Merchants Bank, Vanke, Netease, the People's Insurance Company (Group) of China, Baidu, SF Express, FAW Group, and BAIC Group. The full ranked list of the Top 30 Employers is set forth below. Among this year's Top 30 Employers, 40% are public companies. By industry, 30% of the winners are from the IT/telecom/electronics/internet sector, indicating that Artificial Intelligence and digital technology are driving the new employer economy in China. In evaluating these companies, employees and the public gave top priorities to the employer's culture, salary and welfare, and training opportunities, followed by working environment, organizational structure and employer reputation. The most important evaluation factors were respect for employees, sound welfare and benefits, and salaries that matched workers' contributions to the employer, Zhaopin found. The annual "China Best Employer Award" was organized by Zhaopin together with Peking University Social Survey Research Center. Launched in 2005, the award has become the most influential and prestigious employer brand event in China. The "Oscar" of the human resources industry in the country, the award is both a valuable reference for job seekers, and an important way for local and international employers to measure themselves against the best in the industry. This year's winners were selected from more than 17,550 nominated companies, representing an increase of 80% over last year. A record of more than 24.3 million online votes and nominations were conducted by employees and the public, six time more than last year. The award selection was based on professional evaluation by a jury commitee and surveys of employees, HR professionals and the public.



In addition to the Top 30 Employers in China, Zhaopin also announced winners for the "Best Employer for Female Employees", "Best Employer for University Students", "Most Socially Responsible Employer", and "Most Aspiring Employer" for 2017. Caring for Female Workers - "Best Employer for Female Employees"

This year's winners of the "Best Employer for Female Employees" included BP China, BMW China, SAIC VOLKSWAGEN, Vipshop, China Merchants Bank, IBM, HSBC, Microsoft, IKEA, and China Southern Airlines. The "Best Employer for Female Employees Award" was jointly issued this year by Zhaopin and UN Women, and integrated the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) into the award selection criteria. WEPs are a set of globally recognized principles on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community, jointly developed by UN Women and the UN Global Compact. For award winners, their female employees accounted for 49.3% of total employees, 6.2 percentage higher than the national average. These companies provided more considerate benefits for female employees. The average maternity leave for female employees was 131 days at these companies, compared with 98 days required by the Labor Law in China. Male employees also got 14 days for paternity leave at these companies. 89% of winning companies had special policies to support female employees during pregnancy, child birth and lactation. Salary is Important for College Graduates - "Best Employer for University Students" Winners of "Best Employer for University Students" this year included Wanda Group, Fosun, Tencent, Starbucks, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, A.O. Smith, SPD Bank, Netease, China Telecom, and China Unicom. The ideal employers for college graduates should offer competitive salaries, training opportunities, and equal treatment, Zhaopin found in its survey. 60.9% of college students thought highly of salaries. Their expected monthly salary in 2017 was RMB6,023, an increase of 5% over last year. Showing Social Responsibility - "Most Socially Responsible Employer" The "Most Socially Responsible Employer" awards this year went to TCL, Mercedes-Benz, United Overseas Bank, China Guangfa Bank, Zhengzhou Yutong Group, Amway, Poten Environment Group, Neusoft, NARI Group and Cofco, which had demonstrated their responsibilities for employees, environment and society. Among these winning companies, 76.1% of employees got pay raises in 2017, and the average salary increase was 14.4%. Both were higher than that of other nominated companies. The employee turnover rate was 11.6% at these companies, below the 37.5% rate of other nominated companies. These companies also invested more in training for employees. Their spending on training in 2017 accounted for 1.3% of total revenues, higher than the 0.6% by other companies. 63% of employees in these companies participated in training, compared with 58% for other companies. The List of "China Best Employer Award 2017" Winners: For more information, please contact: Zhaopin Limited

Ms. Daisy Wang

Investor Relations

[email protected] ICR Beijing

Mr. Edmond Lococo

Phone: +86 10 6583-7510

[email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zhaopin-unveils-2017-top-30-employers-in-china-300568382.html SOURCE Zhaopin Limited

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[December 06, 2017] BioInvent and Transgene collaborate on next generation oncolytic viruses encoding an anti-CTLA-4 antibody to treat solid tumors

Regulatory News: Transgene (Paris:TNG) (Euronext Paris: TNG), a company that designs and develops viral-based immunotherapies, and BioInvent International AB (OMXS: BINV), focused on the discovery and development of novel and first-in-class immuno-regulatory antibodies to treat cancer and have entered a collaboration to co-develop next generation oncolytic virus (OV) candidates encoding an anti-CTLA-4 antibody sequence - potentially with additional transgenes - capable of treating multiple solid tumors. Under the terms of the agreement Transgene will contribute both its OV design and engineering expertise as well as its proprietary engineered Vaccinia virus, derived from its Invir.IOTM platform. These oncolytic viruses are designed to directly and selectively destroy cancer cells by the intracellular replication of the virus in the cancer cell (oncolysis). Oncolysis is important as it induces an immune response against tumors (immunogenic lysis). In addition, the replication of the virus allows the expression of the genes carried by the oncolytic viral genome including therapeutic "weapons" that have been specifically designed to attack the tumor. BioInvent will provide its cancer biology and antibody expertise to the collaboration as well as anti-CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody coding sequences, generated through its proprietary n-CoDeR/FIRST platforms, which will be encoded from in Transgene's Invir.IOTM viral vectors. The local expression of such therapeutic payloads in the cancer cell is expected to augment the anti-cancer effects of viral oncolysis, by efficiently modulating the tumor micro-environment and increasing the immunocompetency of the tumor. Encoding BioInvent's anti-CTLA-4 antibody sequence in Transgene's latest improved Vaccinia virus, promises to optimize the efficacy of this potent checkpoint inhibitor, while reducing the side effects seen when it is given systemically. There is also the potential for this novel OV product to be significantly more effective than the combination of these single agents. Transgene has generated preclinical proof-of-concept data showing that an oncolytic Vaccinia virus encoded with a checkpoint inhibitor demonstrated better overall survival than the corresponding combination as separate single agents. The collaboration's research and development costs, as well as the revenues and royalties from candidates generated by the collaboration, will be shared 50:50. Philippe Archinard, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Transgene, said: "We look forward to starting this first, exciting collaboration with BioInvent. We believe that the next generation of multi-functional OVs derived from our Invir.IOTM platform, armed with highly targeted immune modulators such as those engineered by BioInvent, will provide patients with better clinical outcomes. Based on the compelling preclinical data we have generated, we expect the resulting OVs to deliver a significant improvement in overall survival, with an enhanced safety profile when compared to administering an OV and checkpoint inhibitor separately." Commenting on the agreement, Michael Oredssn, CEO of BioInvent, said: "We are very pleased to announce this first collaboration with Transgene which will allow us to leverage our cancer antibody biology and immuno-oncology expertise. We are looking forward to working with Transgene to generate the next generation OVs capable of expressing immune modulatory antibodies in the tumor, thus enhancing their efficacy and improving their safety profile. We are confident that such next generation oncolytic viruses have the potential to significantly improve treatment of solid tumors."



Notes to editors: About BioInvent

BioInvent International AB (OMXS: BINV) is focused on the discovery and development of novel and first-in-class immuno-regulatory antibodies to treat cancer. The Company's clinical programmes are BI- 1206, currently in a Phase I/II for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and chronic lymphatic leukaemia and TB- 403, in cooperation with Oncurious, currently in Phase I/II for medulloblastoma. BioInvent has an extensive pre-clinical portfolio based on novel immuno-modulatory antibodies that target regulatory T cells (T-regs) and tumour-associated myeloid cells. In December 2016, the Company signed a strategic research collaboration with Pfizer Inc. BioInvent also works with leading academic institutions including the University of Southampton, Cancer Research UK, and Penn Medicine. BioInvent generates revenues from global partnerships, including Bayer Pharma, Daiichi Sankyo, and Mitsubishi (News - Alert) Tanabe Pharma and from its manufacturing facility for the production of antibodies for research through to late- stage clinical trials. More information is available at www.bioinvent.se About Transgene Transgene S.A. (Euronext: TNG), part of Institut Merieux, is a publicly traded French biotechnology company focused on designing and developing targeted immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Transgene's programs utilize viral vector technology with the goal of indirectly or directly killing infected or cancerous cells. The Company's lead clinical-stage programs are: TG4010, a therapeutic vaccine against non-small cell lung cancer, Pexa-Vec, an oncolytic virus against liver cancer, and TG4001, a therapeutic vaccine against HPV-positive head and neck cancers. The Company has several other programs in clinical and preclinical development, including TG1050 (chronic hepatitis B) and TG6002 (solid tumors). Transgene is based in Strasbourg, France, and has additional operations in Lyon, as well as a joint venture in China. Invir.IOTM is a trademark of Transgene.

Additional information about Transgene is available at www.transgene.fr

Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert): @TransgeneSA Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The occurrence of any of these risks could have a significant negative outcome for the Company's activities, perspectives, financial situation, results, regulatory authorities' agreement with development phases, and development. The Company's ability to commercialize its products depends on but is not limited to the following factors: positive pre-clinical data may not be predictive of human clinical results, the success of clinical studies, the ability to obtain financing and/or partnerships for product manufacturing, development and commercialization, and marketing approval by government regulatory authorities. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the Company's actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors ("Facteurs de Risques") section of the Document de Reference, available on the AMF website (http://www.amf-france.org) or on Transgene's website (www.transgene.fr). Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and Transgene undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. The press release contains statements about the future, consisting of subjective assumptions and forecasts for future scenarios. Predictions for the future only apply as the date they are made and are, by their very nature, in the same way as research and development work in the biotech segment, associated with risk and uncertainty. With this in mind, the actual outcome may deviate significantly from the scenarios described in this press release. This information is information that BioInvent International AB is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 18:00. CET, on 6 December, 2017. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171206005993/en/

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LifeSciences BC Hosts Discussion on Emerging Cannabis Industry

LifeSciences BC is hosting a speaking event on Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 7.30am - 9.30am on the emerging cannabis industry.

We are brining together a panel of medical industry experts to discuss the issues affecting the emerging cannabis industry. The panel members will address public and private finance for cannabis companies and regulatory matters affecting the medical marijuana industry.

Panel members:

Jamie Brown, Vice-Chairman, Managing Director - Canaccord Genuity

Sam Znaimer, Founder & CEO - Trimble (News - Alert) Hil, Founder - Locarno & Member of the Limited Partner Advisory Committee - Version One









There will also be company presentations by

Emerald Health - Chris Wagner - CEO

Anandia - Jonathan Page - CEO

Tilray - Woody Pastorius - COO

Event details:

Date: Thursday December 7, 2017

Time: 7:30am to 9:30am

Location: Terminal City Club, 837 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

Price: LSBC Member: $25 & LSBC Non-member: $50

Schedule:

7:30am - 8:00am: Registration and Hot Breakfast

8:00am - 8:45am: Panel discussion

8:45am - 9:30am: Company presentations

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171206006370/en/
[December 06, 2017] Bitproperty Announces Strategic Partnership with Real Estate Developer Nikken Housing and Digital Currency Fund Alphabit

ZUG, Switzerland, Dec. 6, 2017 /CNW/ -- As Bitproperty builds a new and innovative solution for potential investors around the world, it has established partnerships with leading players from both the real estate and blockchain sectors. One such partner is Nikken Housing, one of Japan's leading real estate development companies. It has developed over 10 million housing units in Japan over the past half century. As part of the agreement, Nikken will make around 30 upcoming projects available to Bitproperty investors, primarily in the energy sector. Bitproperty already has a successful relationship with Nikken Housing through the solar farm project. This new agreement will deepen the relationship and ensure that Bitproperty investors have access to a steady stream of high quality investment opportunities. Ryo Nomura, CEO of Bitproperty described the new partnership as "critical to our core business and an important step as we approach our Initial Coin Offering (ICO). We want to demonstrate to potential investors looking at our token sale that there will be a steady pipeline of projects coming onto our platform. The agreement is the best sign thatthere is real excitement and demand for our solution. Nikken Housing is thrilled by the prospects of connecting with a global investor community and the possibilities enabled by Bitproperty's token model."



Bitproperty's other new partner is Alphabit, a fund focused on digital currencies. Alphabit uses various trading strategies to achieve its target of beating "the performance of Bitcoin on a risk-adjusted basis". Alphabit also invests in companies directly via a variety of ICOs to generate additional returns. Bitproperty also announced that Alphabit co-founder Liam Robertson would join Bitproperty as a strategic advisor. Liam will provide Bitproperty with valuable insight and experience as the company approaches its ICO as well as helping guide the company as it completes the development of its platform and works to bring projects on board for investors.

Ryo Nomura remarked that "Liam is doing really exciting and innovative work in the space and we are excited to bring him on board as an advisor. He will give our team the knowledge base." Liam commented, "Bitproperty has developed a really exciting business model that offers real value for potential investors. I'm looking forward to the company's ICO and opportunities this unique investment model can provide." Nikken Housing

http://www.nikken-inc.jp/ Alphabit

http://www.alphabit.fund/ Bitproperty GmbH.

CEO Ryo Nomura

https://btptoken.io/en/ Contact: Ryo Nomura

+81-3-5412-7688

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitproperty-announces-strategic-partnership-with-real-estate-developer-nikken-housing-and-digital-currency-fund-alphabit-300568165.html SOURCE Bitproperty GmbH

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SAN DIEGO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ziyen Inc. is pleased to provide an update on recent operational advancements along with the announcement that Ziyen Inc. recently qualified at $1.50 per share for its second round of funding by the SEC.

Ziyen continues to navigate the Regulation A+ IPO process whilst both divisions within the company, Ziyen Intelligence and Ziyen Energy, continue to grow as we prepare to emerge on the market with an IPO targeted for 2018.

Latest developments:

Oct, 2017 - The Ziyen Intelligence division continues to develop its business information portal app, Ziyen IQ, with a Beta release targeted early 2018.





Oct, 2017 - Ziyen Inc.s CEO Alastair Caithness becomes a committee member of the San Diego chapter of Autism Speaks charity. Mr. Caithness represents the charity at local press events to support the 2017 Autism Speaks charity walk.





Oct 2017 - Ziyen successfully closes its First Round of funding at $0.25 cents and files a new 1-A POS with the SEC, reflecting the new oil asset and updated financials.

Ziyens New 1-A POS filing

Oct, 2017 - Members of the Ziyen team toured the NASDAQ headquarters in NYC to get a firsthand view of a company IPO. CEO met with NASDAQ executives to plan Ziyen Inc.s IPO.





Oct, 2017 - Ziyen Inc.s first lease holding is undergoing a thorough due diligence by our land team and technical team in Indiana to position the company for a period of rapid growth with plans to develop large return wells and improving development infrastructure for the oil assets we have secured. The company plans to continually acquire new oil assets.





Nov, 2017 - Ziyen appoints Granite PR to help promote company message in the UK media.





Nov, 2017 - Ziyen Inc. team travels to Evansville, IN in order to inspect the oil lease and to appoint local oil and gas operators.





Nov, 2017 - Ziyen opens a new branch office in Aberdeen, Scotland, Ziyen UK, Ltd., and Greg Simpson and Cameron Murray are appointed to manage the Ziyen Intelligence division and e-procurement sites.





Nov, 2017 - Ziyen is SEC qualified for the Second Round of Funding at a new share price of $1.50.

David Rogers, VP at Ziyen Inc., discusses how investment drives company operations

David Rogers, Vice-President said:

In the last few months weve refined our business model and established our presence in the UK. Our Ziyen Intelligence division shows no signs of slowing for 2018 as we release our new Ziyen IQ procurement application. We continue to provide value for all of our early investors by acquiring our second oil asset and we will continue to pursue additional oil lease assets, with plans to begin oil production as a new revenue stream for the company. To invest, please visit www.ziyen.com

About Ziyen Inc.

Founded in 2016, Ziyen Inc. is a Scottish-American company developing cutting edge procurement software to provide clients with industry specific government and private contracts via procurement portals. In 2017, Ziyen diversified, instating the Ziyen Energy Division, with intent to produce oil in the U.S. with advanced extraction methods and technology implemented and guided by career experts in the oil and gas industry. In June 2017, Ziyen acquired the mineral rights to its first oil field in Indiana, and now has two assets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently qualified Ziyen Inc. in November 2017 for our second round of funding, with a pre-IPO share price of $1.50. More information may be found in its Offering Circular filed with the SEC, or on their website www.ziyen.com

About Granite PR

Founded in 2008, Aberdeen-based Granite PR offers the full spectrum of PR services with an emphasis on the energy, technology, hospitality, food and drink, professional services and healthcare sectors. The company has developed strong links in domestic and overseas markets, particularly the US and Scandinavia, and these have been enhanced by Granite PRs Gateway series of business events which encourage trade between key locations. For more information visit www.granitepr.co.uk

Forward Looking Statements:

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements related to anticipated commencement of commercial production, targeted pricing, performance goals, and statements that otherwise relate to future periods are forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are described in more detail in the Company's periodic reports filed with the SEC- specifically the most recent reports which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made and based on information available to the company on the date of this press release. Ziyen Inc. assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release.

Contact:

Brett Jackson

Managing Director

Granite PR

info@granitepr.co.uk
[December 07, 2017] JLL India and CII Release New Report at the Facilities Management Conclave 2017, New Delhi

NEW DELHI, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading international real estate consultants JLL India released the report, 'Workplace Powered by Human Experience - an India perspective' in association with the Confederation Indian Industries (CII) at the Facilities Management Conclave 2017, today. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160316/10142243 )

Commenting on the report findings, Sandeep Sethi, Managing Director - Integrated Facilities Management, West Asia JLL India says, "Workplaces today are constantly evolving to deliver an authentic human experience to employees. However, Indian employees want more than just a functional workspace - creative, inspiring office spaces are a significant factor that now drives employee engagement in the country. Through this research, we have looked at the evolution of the Indian workplace and examined the trends that influence how office spaces are being used to empower the workforce of the future." The report reveals:

- 98% of the Indian respondents want their companies to appoint someone at work, who can oversee the change and drive their well-being and experience at work.

- Globally, offices in India are the second densest after Japan on the basis of people sharing their open-plan work areas.Against the global average of 45 persons sharing the office space, Japan leads with an average of 68 people followed by India, where 52 people share the same open-plan work areas.







- Indian professionals are the most mobile, engaged and effective within their offices in comparison to their counterparts in the Asia region. The report closely examines the increasing importance of human experience as a key differentiator driving employee engagement, empowerment and fulfilment at work. It looks at various office parameters like density in offices, mobility within offices, employee engagement, innovation at workplace and enthusiasm for workplace change.

The report also highlights the changes that are desired in workplaces across countries, including India. More than 7000 respondents across 12 countries participated in the worldwide survey. Indian employees name creativity, happiness, and personal learning and development as the top three contributors to unique workplace experiences. Levels of employee engagement and workplace effectiveness are higher in India than any other country surveyed. Click here to download the report 'Workplace Powered by Human Experience - an India perspective' About JLL India JLL is India's premier and largest professional services firm specializing in real estate. With an extensive geographic footprint across 11 cities (Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Chandigarh and Coimbatore) and a staff strength of 9,300 the firm provides investors, developers, local corporates and multinational companies with a comprehensive range of services including research, analytics, consultancy, transactions, project and development services, integrated facility management, property and asset management, sustainability, industrial, capital markets, residential, hotels, health care, senior living, education and retail advisory. The firm was awarded the Property Consultant of the Decade at the 10th CNBC-Awaaz Real Estate Awards 2015 and the Best Property Consultancy in India at the International Property Awards Asia Pacific 2016-17. For further information, please visit http://www.jll.co.in.

Media Contact:

Arun Chitnis

[email protected]

+91-9657129999

Head - Corporate Communications & Media Relations

JLL India





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[December 07, 2017] Tauriga Sciences, Inc. Confirms Multiple Initial Customer Orders for its Licensed Cupuacu Butter Lip Balm Product

NEW YORK, NY, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTC PINK: TAUG) (Tauriga or the Company), engaged in building business through the development, distribution, and licensing of proprietary products as well as the evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities, today confirmed the receipt of multiple initial customer orders for its licensed Cupuacu Butter Lip Balm product branded as HerMan. On December 29, 2017, the Company disclosed that the original non-exclusive license agreement for HerMan with its licensee Ice + Jam LLC (Ice + Jam) was extended for a period of two years and is now valid though the date December 23, 2019. Any potential future profits that result from license agreement with be split evenly between Tauriga and Ice + Jam. The Company continues to anticipate a formal retail launch for HerMan to occur on December 17, 2017 and expects that an initial inventory of at least 10,000 HerMan units will be available to support the launch. From a composition analysis, HerMan is primarily composed of the compound Theobroma Grandiflorium (Cupuacu Butter or Superfruit) to leverage the potential benefits that have been well documented historically (see paragraph directly below). The reformulation process specifically addresses the following two issues: maintaining a formula as close as possible to 100% Cupuacu Butter and preventing the drying out of the product in the packaging tube. This will be accomplished through testing the product with various natural emollients -- to determine the best way to maintain the Superfruit's natural state and texture. Cupuacu Butter is derived from the fruit of the Cupuacu Tree, a tropical rainforest tree related to Cacao (the base of chocolate production). Common throughout the Amazon basin (South America), it is widely cultivated in the jungles of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru and in the north of Brazil, with the largest production in Para, followed by Amazonas, Rondonia and Acre. Cupuacu Butter is a good plant alternative to lanolin, offering the capacity to attract 240% more water, allowing it to function much more effectively as a skin hydrator and moisturizer. Tauriga has already paid for the first production run of HerMan and is hopeful of generating revenue during the first six months of 2018 and beyond. In addition, the Company has already funded part of the marketing budget to support the anticipated upcoming retail launch. Ice + Jam's HERMAN product, now jointly distributed by the Company, can be found at the following website ink: (http://www.iceandjam.com/shop/herman-cupuacu-butter-balm)



ABOUT TAURIGA SCIENCES, INC. Tauriga Sciences, Inc. ( OTC PINK : TAUG ) is engaged in building businesses through the development, marketing, distribution and potential licensing of a broad array of products and technologies. The Company is presently focused on its upcoming contemplated launch of a Cupacu Butter based lip balm product branded under the name: HerMan. The Company believes that one of its most important strengths is its access to and relationships with potentially substantial distribution systems and networks. The Company intends to capitalize on distribution opportunities and will continually update shareholders on such developments. Please visit the Corporate Website at www.tauriga.com



ABOUT ICE + JAM LLC Ice + Jam LLC is a fast growing cosmetics products firm headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Ice + Jam LLC fuses bold color & luxe ingredients with a dash of wit to create rule-breaking beauty products with one goal in mind: empower your lips. Founded in June 2013 by Ivy Evans & Jamie A. Murphy, Ice + Jam harnesses their industry experience, passion and creativity into a beauty brand that's all about being crazy, clever and confident. It's time to put your best lip forward with Ice + Jam's unreal lip-plumper and bold, long-lasting colors. The company's website: (www.iceandjam.com) This press release contains information about Ice + Jam, its business, products and other information contained on Ice + Jam's website. Tauriga is not responsible for this information, the accuracy of it or the practices of Ice + Jam or the content or the information on Ice + Jam's website, nor is any such information deemed to be or actually incorporated into Tauriga's website or this press release. NON SOLICITATION: This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale is not permitted. Any securities offered or issued in connection with the above-referenced merger and/or investment have not been registered, and will be offered pursuant to an exemption from registration. DISCLAIMER: Forward-Looking Statements: Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, without limitation: expectations, expects, anticipates, believes, hopes, beliefs, plans and objectives regarding the development, use and marketability of products as well as the Company's ability to achieve revenue from HerMan and the date of the formal retail launch of HerMan (i.e. SEC Periodic Filings, Filing of Proxies, etc.). Such forward-looking statements are based on present circumstances and on Tauriga's predictions with respect to events that have not occurred, that may not occur, or that may occur with different consequences and timing than those now assumed or anticipated. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, and are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the events or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include general economic and business conditions, the ability to successfully develop and market products, consumer and business consumption habits, the ability to fund operations and other factors over which Tauriga has little or no control. Such forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release, and Tauriga assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and other factors are discussed in documents filed from time to time by Tauriga with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CONTACT: Tauriga Sciences Inc. 555 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor New York, NY 10022 Chief Executive Officer Mr. Seth M. Shaw cell # (917) 796 9926 www.tauriga.com

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[December 07, 2017] K2 Clean Energy Capital Develops $8.65 Million C-PACE Financing for Advanced Energy-Efficient Facility at Verseon Corporation in Silicon Valley

FREMONT, Calif., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- K2 Clean Energy Capital, LLC, a leading developer of Commercial PACE (C-PACE) financing, is pleased to announce the PACE funding for an $8.65 million energy efficiency project at the new Verseon research and administrative facility in Fremont, CA in Silicon Valley. Verseon is a technology-based pharmaceutical company with a proprietary, computationally driven drug discovery platform. The financing will help fund energy-related improvements such as the installation of new HVAC systems, energy-efficient LED lighting and glass, and a natural gas-based power generation system as part of an overall facility refurbishment. The facility will serve as the primary location for the discovery and development of new pharmaceuticals. The combination of the energy efficiency upgrades and co-generation system will offset a large portion of the electricity supplied from the grid and result in substantial operational cost savings. The co-generation system generates heat, enabling a reduction in the natural gas and energy required for the boilers and HVAC system, and produces electricity to offset the grid loads. The system also serves as emergency back-up for the facility during grid power outages and can operate on propane from onsite tanks in the event of an interruption in the utility natural gas supply. The ultra-low emission co-gen system replaces the typical diesel generator back-up system and will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the facility. "This is the largest PACE financing project in the bio-tech industry on a national basis and exemplifies how industial companies can benefit from PACE," said Stephen Tsu, co-founder and Managing Director of K2 Clean Energy Capital. "Verseon was able to raise capital for the implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives while simultaneously reducing operating expenses at their new facility.



"We were pleased to have CleanFund Commercial PACE Capital as our funding partner for the project," he added. "They were selected after an extensive search process, and their perseverance and support were instrumental in closing and funding the project." About K2 Clean Energy Capital, LLC:

K2 Clean Energy Capital is a leading developer of C-PACE renewable energy, energy efficiency, and water conservation projects with a focus on the hospitality, bio-tech, food-processing/distribution, and retail industries. The company has offices in Campbell, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, TX. K2 CEC also offers commercial financing services to renewable energy contractors and developers through its PACE Financing Application on the Energy Toolbase proposal generation platform. More information is at www.k2cleancap.com.

About CleanFund

Sausalito, CA-based CleanFund Commercial PACE Capital is the leading direct provider of long-term financing for energy efficiency, water conservation, renewable energy and seismic improvements to commercial, multifamily and other nonresidential properties in the U.S. With significant expertise in commercial real estate, finance, renewable energy and PACE policy, CleanFund offers PACEDirect and SolarPACE financing programs, enabling property owners to upgrade their properties with no up-front cost while increasing property cash flows and value. Visit us at www.cleanfund.com. Contact:

For K2: Jonathan Pickering, Managing Director

K2 Clean Energy Capital, LLC

900 E. Hamilton Ave, Suite 100

Campbell, CA 95008

[email protected]

www.k2cleancap.com For CleanFund:

Ron Heckmann, Heckmann Communications

[email protected]

(510) 652-5800 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/k2-clean-energy-capital-develops-865-million-c-pace-financing-for-advanced-energy-efficient-facility-at-verseon-corporation-in-silicon-valley-300568084.html SOURCE K2 Clean Energy Capital, LLC

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[December 07, 2017] Canadian securities regulators publish notice on complying with requirements regarding the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments

TORONTO, Dec. 7, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) today released a joint notice CSA Staff Notice 31-351, IIROC Notice 17-0229, MFDA Bulletin #0736-M Complying with requirements regarding the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI). The notice highlights concerns about some registered firms' complaint handling systems and participation in OBSI's services, and sets out potential regulatory responses. The notice also outlines staff's concerns regarding the use of an internal "ombudsman" as part of complaint handling systems. "We expect firms to participate in OBSI's dispute resolution process in a manner consistent with their obligation to deal fairly, honestly and in good faith with their clients and to respond to each customer complaint in a manner that a reasonable investor would consider fair and effective," said Louis Morisset, CSA Chair and President and CEO of the Autorite des marches financiers. "Investor confidence in the integrity of Canada's capital markets is built on a foundation of trust, supported by a fair and effective dispute resolution process," said Andrew J. Kriegler, President and CEO of IIROC. "IIROC expects its Dealer Members to deal with client complaints, including during the OBSI dispute resolution process, effectively, fairly and expeditiously." "Fair and timely handling of client complaints is a fundamental requirement for MFDA Members, both at the time of receipt and during the OBSI dispute resolution process," said Mark Gordon, President and CEO of the MFDA. The regulators are also continuing to consider options for strengthening OBSI's ability to secure redress for investors, a key recommendation made by the independent evaluator in its 2016 report. The Joint Regulators Committee (JRC), which is composed of designated representatives of the CSA, IIROC and the MFDA, provides oversight of OBSI and meets regularly with OBSI to discuss governance and operational matters, including the effectiveness of OBSI's services. IIROC is the national self-regulatory organization which oversees all investment dealers and trading activity on debt and equity marketplaces in Canada. The MFDA is the self-regulatory organization which oversees the operations, standards of practice and business conduct of Canadian mutual fund dealers. The CSA, the council of the securities regulators of Canada's provinces and territories, co-ordinates and harmonizes regulation for the Canadian capital markets. For more information: Canadian Securities Administrators







Kristen Rose Hilary McMeekin Ontario Securities Commission Alberta Securities Commission 416-593-2336 403-592-8186



Alison Walker Sylvain Theberge British Columbia Securities Commission Autorite des marches financiers 604-899-6713 514-940-2176



Jason (Jay) Booth Erin King Manitoba Securities Commission Financial and Consumer Services 204-945-1660 Commission, New Brunswick

506-643-7045



Donna M. Gouthro Steve Dowling Nova Scotia Securities Commission Office of the Superintendent of Securities 902 424-7077 P.E.I.

902-368-6288



John O'Brien Rhonda Horte Office of the Superintendent of Securities Office of the Yukon Superintendent of Newfoundland and Labrador Securities 709 729-4909 867-667-5466



Jeff Mason Tom Hall Nunavut Securities Office Office of the Superintendent of Securities 867-975-6591 Northwest Territories

867-767-9305



Shannon McMillan

Financial and Consumer Affairs

Authority of Saskatchewan

306-798-4160



Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada Andrea Zviedris Manager, Media and Public Affairs 416-943-6906 Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada Ken Woodard Director, Communications and Membership Services 416-943-4602 SOURCE Autorite des marches financiers

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[December 07, 2017] Artificial Intelligence to Bio Scanners: DENSO Broadens Investment in Startups to Make the Future of Transportation a Reality

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DENSO, one of the world's largest automotive suppliers, plans to expand its venture capital investments in a broad range of new technologies to make a world of self-driving, truly connected cars a reality. CES 2018 will provide a glimpse of the present and future for these innovations, including both core automotive startups and innovative technologies from bio sensors to cybersecurity with potentially huge applications for the way we get around. Three successful DENSO ventures will demonstrate at the company's CES exhibit, while the next wave of early-stage startups can pitch DENSO's venture capital head, Tony Cannestra. "DENSO's vision for the future of mobility goes beyond automotive, and it will take the combination of a broad range of emerging technologies to make that vision a reality," said Tony Cannestra, director of Corporate Ventures at DENSO. "This year we'll look especially at companies tackling automated driving, cybersecurity and both biometric and vehicle sensors, including LIDAR and radar. Our CES meetings will play a big role in decisions over the next year." The CVC Group led by Cannestra typically invests between $1 - $4 million in early stage startups working on technologies that are strategically relevant to the transportation industry. Currently, DENSO has a portfolio of more than 10 startup investments and is aggressively seeking to expand its investment efforts. Startups attending CES can sign-up for a 20-minute pitch meetng by visiting www.densomedia-na.com/cesstartups. Meetings will take place on Wednesday, January 10 and Thursday, January 11 from 1-4pm PST at DENSO's CES exhibit in LVCC, North Hall #7917.



DENSO's startup investments target innovative technologies with applications in connectivity, autonomous drive, shared mobility and electrification (CASE). Recently, DENSO has also announced several investments in R&D and manufacturing CASE technologies. That includes a $4.3 billion global R&D commitment and $1 billion investment in its largest US manufacturing facility to produce electrification and safety technology. DENSO's startup investments complement R&D and production, all aiming to bring new solutions to market that benefit automakers and consumers. About DENSO in North America

DENSO is a leading global automotive supplier of advanced technology, systems and components in the areas of thermal, powertrain control, electronics and information and safety. With its North American headquarters located in Southfield, Michigan, DENSO employs more than 23,000 people at 28 consolidated subsidiaries and 4 affiliates across the North American region. Of these, 25 are manufacturing facilities located in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In the United States alone, DENSO employs more than 17,000 people in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Iowa, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. DENSO's North American consolidated sales totaled US$9.6 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017. For more information, go to www.denso.com/us-ca/en. Connect with DENSO on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DENSOinNorthAmerica.

DENSO Worldwide

DENSO Corp., headquartered in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan has more than 200 subsidiaries and affiliates in 38 countries and regions (including Japan) and employs more than 150,000 people worldwide. Consolidated global sales for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, totaled US$40.4 billion. Last fiscal year, DENSO spent 8.8 percent of its global consolidated sales on research and development. DENSO common stock is traded on the Tokyo and Nagoya stock exchanges. For more information, go to www.denso.com, or visit our media website at www.denso.com/global/en/news/media-center/ View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artificial-intelligence-to-bio-scanners-denso-broadens-investment-in-startups-to-make-the-future-of-transportation-a-reality-300568497.html SOURCE DENSO

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[December 07, 2017] Maria Pergolino joins Anaplan as Chief Marketing Officer

Award-winning executive brings more than 18 years of world-class enterprise software marketing experience to new role SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Anaplan, a leading platform provider driving a new age of connected planning, announced today the appointment of Maria Pergolino as Chief Marketing Officer. Pergolino is a proven marketing leader known for building world-class teams that drive growth, product differentiation, and category development with award winning-campaigns. "Maria is widely respected as an exceptional team builder and an accomplished enterprise software marketing executive, and we're excited to welcome her to Anaplan," said Frank Calderoni, President and CEO of Anaplan. "She has one of the best track records of success, and I am confident that Maria will make an immediate impact as we scale globally." Prior to joining Anaplan, Pergolino served as Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Development at Apttus, where she directed go-to-market strategy, sales development, customer advocacy, demand generation, strategic events, and communications initiatives. Before that, Prgolino was Senior Director of Marketing at Marketo, where her demand-generation efforts drove quadruple-digit growth.



Pergolino also held significant demand generation and marketing leadership roles at Shunra Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard) and Chubb Ltd. She is regularly recognized for her contributions to the marketing industry as a whole and as a respected leader across numerous fields. Recent accolades include a Stevie Award for Women Executives, membership of the renowned Forbes Communication Council, and being named among the 30 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing Technology, 35 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing Technology, 40 Marketing Game Changers, and 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. "My career has been spent at the forefront of marketing and technological innovation, which matches perfectly with Anaplan's industry leadership," Pergolino said. "Together, our team will use the most advanced and strategic methods, including Anaplan's connected planning platform, to prioritize our customers' success and accelerate our own rapid growth."

Pergolino will speak at Hub 2018, Anaplan's annual connected planning conference. More than 1,500 Anaplan users, partners, and planning experts will gather at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas from March 57, 2018 for more than 85 focused breakout sessions, a full day of training, social and networking events, and a talk by bestselling author and influencer Malcolm Gladwell. About Anaplan

Anaplan is driving a new age of connected planning. Large and fast-growing organizations use Anaplan's cloud platform in every business function to make better-informed plans and decisions and drive faster, more effective planning processes. Anaplan also provides support, training, and planning transformation advisory services. Anaplan is a privately held company based in San Francisco with 18 offices and over 150 expert partners worldwide. To learn more, visit anaplan.com. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/616945/Anaplan_Pergolino.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/482892/Anaplan_Logo.jpg

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[December 07, 2017] Hotels.com sees new millennial #TravelBrag trend

DALLAS, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- New research from Hotels.com global Mobile Travel Tracker*, has discovered a new millennial trend, of 'travel bragging' on social media to build kudos amongst their friends, and even faux friends on social. Trading in their #TravelBrag for 'likes', 30% admit they spend over four hours a day on their mobiles whilst traveling, often more glued to the small screen than the beach scene #sorrynotsorry. When it comes to what social savvy travelers are bragging about on their trips, food snaps (44%) is up there. Travel braggers show off their #foodporn to those stuck at home with their avocado toast, posting weird and wonderful dishes from across the globe. Fried spider anyone? Being a generation of filter-loving, selfie-stick addicts, two out of three American (66%) 18-29-year-olds admit they would rather upload a selfie than a picture with their loved ones (62%) on holiday #savage. Not only that, 60% of US young travelers admitted to uploading pictures, checking in at cool locations (39%) and tracking the amount of interaction on their posts (32%) for bragging purposes while on vacation. The new global research has also proven the long-debated theory that romance really is dead, with 14% admitting they would rather travel with their smartphone than their partner. Travelers even get more anxious when their phone runs out of battery (15%) than if they argue with their partner on a trip (8%). The research, commissioned by Hotels.com identifies new trends in how mobile technology is used during travel, as it launchs its second annual Mobile Travel Tracker Report.



"At Hotels.com we know that 28% of people wouldn't enjoy their holiday without their smartphone in their hand - how could they possibly capture the best selfie or show off to their friends at home without it! Not only that, we also know that getting the perfect picture plays an even bigger role with 14% of travelers admitting they would pose anywhere for that flawless selfie, often putting selfies ahead of safety", said Daniel Craig, VP of Mobile at Hotels.com brand. "With a third of travelers refusing to book a hotel that doesn't offer free Wi-Fi, there is a clear demand for travelers to be connected at all times. At Hotels.com, we have so many great places to stay, all bookable at the click of a button on our mobile app, that we're confident selfie-lovers will have plenty of opportunities to snap the ideal #nofilter photo for Instagram, perfect to #TravelBrag with."

Start your next adventure by downloading the Hotels.com mobile app to choose from hundreds of thousands of places to #TravelBrag around the world. For further information, please contact;

Alex Lee

Phone: (214) 613 0025

Email: [email protected] Notes to Editors *Mobile Travel Tracker research conducted by One Poll in November 2017. Data based on 9,000 respondents across 30 countries. About Hotels.com Hotels.com L.P. operates Hotels.com, a leading online accommodation booking website with properties ranging from international chains and all-inclusive resorts to local favorites and bed & breakfasts, together with all the information needed to book the perfect stay. Customers get instant savings *** with Secret Prices through our mobile booking app and when logged into the booking website. Hotels.com Rewards members can earn and redeem free**** nights at thousands of properties worldwide. The Hotels.com Mobile Concierge on iPhone is like having a local expert in the palm of your hand, offering fast access to services such as transportation, on-demand food delivery, restaurant reservations and activities. ***Instant savings are only available on select, participating properties. **** Free nights are only available on select, participating properties. Maximum value of the free night is the average of daily rate of the 10 paid nights and doesn't include taxes or fees. See site for details. Secret Prices are available to Hotels.com app users, Hotels.com Rewards members and individuals who unlock Secret Prices on the website by subscribing to Hotels.com by email. Secret Prices will be shown where the "Your Secret Prices" banner is displayed on your search results. Available on select hotels and select dates only. Subject to full terms and conditions.  2017 Hotels.com, LP. Hotels.com, Hotels.com Rewards and the Hotels.com logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Hotels.com, LP in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. CST #2083949-50 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hotelscom-sees-new-millennial-travelbrag-trend-300568536.html SOURCE Hotels.com

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[December 07, 2017] Senator Van Hollen to Spotlight Maryland Scientific and Economic Development Advancements

Senator Van Hollen will join the leaders of Maryland biotechnology company GlycoMimetics for a tour of the company's facilities before participating in a roundtable discussion on the economic and societal value of biotech innovation. Senator Van Hollen will learn more about prospects for, and impediments to, the continued growth of this high-wage industry in Maryland. The Senator also will discuss the potentially significant effects of the federal health care policy and budget debates.







WHAT: Tour and Roundtable Discussion at GlycoMimetics WHO: Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen Jim Greenwood, President & CEO, BIO Rachel King, CEO, GlycoMimetics, Inc. Other senior leadership from GlycoMimetics WHEN: Friday, December 8, 2017 from 9:45 am - 11:00 am WHERE: GlycoMimetics 9708 Medical Center Drive Rockville, MD 20850

Media requested to RSVP to George Goodno, mailto:[email protected] 1 https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/SP_Maryland_0.pdf About BIO BIO is the world's largest trade association representing biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of innovative healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products. BIO also produces the BIO International Convention, the world's largest gathering of the biotechnology industry, along with industry-leading investor and partnering meetings held around the world. BIOtechNOW is BIO's blog chronicling "innovations transforming our world" and the BIO Newsletter is the organization's bi-weekly email newsletter. Subscribe to the BIO Newsletter. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207005918/en/

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[December 07, 2017] Magenic Enables Linius Video Virtualization Engine on Microsoft Azure

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Magenic Technologies, a leading business technology consulting firm, is pleased to announce that it has completed the integration of the Linius Technologies Limited Video Virtualization Engine (VVE) with Microsoft Azure cloud services. Linius is recognized as a leading provider of content intelligence and the next evolution of video streaming. Recognizing that video accounts for the vast majority of Internet traffic, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are all making significant investments in virtualizing video technologies in the cloud. Linius is responsible for patenting the world's only video virtualization technology, which is now available on all three cloud providers as a result of Magenic's integration with Microsoft Azure. The cloud-support VVE makes video file metadata exposed, making video as flexible as all other forms of content and data. Linius enables Microsoft, Amazon and IBM to bring much greater value from the cloud and artificial intelligence to the video market. Magenic's New York General Manager, Eric Feige, noted, "This project enables many new applications of 'intelligent video.' It's been said that every company is a technology company. As video content becomes componentized through virtualized video services, we are now seeing how every company can also be a media company." Chris Richardson, CEO of Linius, said, "The integration with Microsoft is key to our mission to scale rapidly and our vision of making the world's video available as data. Our major cloud providers are very focused on virtualizing the video management tools in the cloud, but only Linius can virtualize the actual video file. We feel strongly that we are the missing link in these providers' video services." Linius' VVE technology has the potential to transform many multi-billion dollar markets, and is initially focused on: Anti-Piracy: Applying proven data protection methods to video to solve piracy;

Applying proven data protection methods to video to solve piracy; Search: Search within videos and compile new videos on the fly;

Search within videos and compile new videos on the fly; Security and Defense: Intelligent search and immediate distribution of security footage; and

Intelligent search and immediate distribution of security footage; and Personalized Advertising: Hyper personalized to individuals, timeslots and content. About Magenic

Over the past 20 years, Magenic has earned a reputation as a leader in business technology consulting. The firm is recognized for its premier technical talent as well as its proven project management and delivery processes. Magenic prides itself on transforming businesses through technology, moving companies forward with quality and speed. To learn more about Magenic, visit www.magenic.com. About Linius Technologies Limited:

Linius Technologies Limited has cracked the code of content intelligence by creating the next evolution of video streaming. The company transforms cumbersome, static video files into agile, dynamic virtual files that can be easily manipulated on the fly, that are malleable at any point between the content owner and the in order to deliver an enhanced, custom experience for both broadcasters and end-users in any way imaginable, and some as yet to be imagined. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Linius seeks to commercialize its patented Video Virtualization Engine  to transform many market segments, initially focusing on delivering personalized advertising solutions for broadcasters, providing video security and reduced piracy, enhancing search engine monetization, and delivering security-service applications.







Contact: Patty Gibbs

Patty Gibbs & Company

651.653.7302

[email protected]

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[December 07, 2017] Attest Reveals That One in Three Americans Can't Identify a Single British Brand

LONDON, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In the midst of Brexit Britain, Attest has carried out research to find out about consumer perception of British brands and products. Does a 'Made in Britain' label make a difference to consumer brand perception? Attest, a brand intelligence and consumer insights platform, surveyed 2,000 British and 2,000 American people, and these are some of the findings: 1 in 3 Americans admit they don't know any British brands. However, nearly 40 percent of Americans find 'Made in Britain ' products 'desirable'

' products 'desirable' 39 percent of Brits feel more positively toward British brands and products post-Brexit

3 in 4 people are more likely to buy a product with a 'Made in Britain ' label

' label 'Quality' is the most associated term with 'Made in Britain ', followed by 'stylish', though 46 percent of people expect British-made products to be expensive When asked to list their favorite British brands, Cadbury and M&S had the best brand perception for British participants, while Burberry came out on top as the favorite in the U.S. View th full infographic here and additional assets on Dropbox.



"Britain's reputation for style and quality, both within the UK and overseas, is evident in our findings", says Mark Walker, Marketing Director at Attest. "Rather than Brexit diminishing Britain's reputation for consumer brands on the world stage, it appears to be presenting an opportunity to redefine 'Made in Britain' both at home and abroad." John Noble, Director of the British Brands Group says: "British brands are a strong source of pride, but also of our international competitiveness, and it is encouraging to see this reflected in this research. British brands help shape perceptions of the UK around the world, with the Nation Brand Index rating the country 3rd out of 50 for the strength of its image and reputation. Strong brands will play a key role in our future success."

About Attest Attest is a Market and Brand Intelligence platform, helping connect businesses to a network of 70 million consumers across 80 different countries. They work with brands including Deliveroo, Fever-Tree, Twitter, Uber and Unilever to help them measure, manage and maximise their brand equity, get closer to customers, and win market share. They are backed by leading venture capital firms including Oxford Capital and Episode 1. Learn more at: www.askattest.com For media inquiries and further information, please contact: Maria Hughes

Media Relations Manager

BlueGlass

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +4420 7242 0142 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/attest-reveals-that-one-in-three-americans-cant-identify-a-single-british-brand-300568527.html SOURCE Attest

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LONG BEACH, Calif., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Last night, LINC Housing was honored with the fourth annual Hanley Award for Community Service in Sustainability from the Hanley Foundation and Hanley Wood. The award, with its $25,000 grant, recognizes community-based and non-profit organizations working to advance sustainability and environmental awareness. LINC's work is highlighted in the December issue of Hanley Wood's Builder magazine.

LINC Housing, one of Californias most productive nonprofit developers of affordable housing, is grounded in the realization that with the escalating price of land, certain segments of the population would be left behind with no hope to own or even rent a place to live: retired teachers and service sector personnel and young working families in both Californias urban and rural economies. The nonprofits properties are known for excellent design, outstanding management and life-enhancing services for its residents. Since 1984, LINC has helped create more than 7,800 homes in 76 communities throughout the state.



Michael J. Hanley, president of the Hanley Foundation and creator of the Hanley Award for Community Service in Sustainability, said he has long admired the work of LINC and its leaderships commitment to providing sustainable yet affordable housing throughout California for people who are integral to communities  public employees, service sector employees, first responders, seniors, individuals with special needs, and the unemployed due to circumstances beyond their control.

If we cannot provide well located, affordable and sustainable housing to the people who serve our communities, our communities cant thrive and we are all negatively impacted said Hanley. LINC Housing is an astounding example of an organization committed to providing vital housing and related services to those who need it most and we are pleased to honor their work with The Hanley Award for Community Service in Sustainability.

The Hanley Award for Community Service in Sustainability was presented alongside The Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainability ($50,000) to this years recipient, William McDonough, at The Hanley Award Reception and Gala Dinner, on Dec. 6, 2017 in Los Angeles.

The Hanley Award for Community Service recognizes the efforts of organizations working within one of the following areas: 1) Providing housing that is affordable, sustainable and healthy; 2) expanding community awareness in sustainability and environmental issues through education and/or demonstration projects; 3) developing and advocating innovations in local and regional policies affecting sustainability; and 4) creating sustainable public buildings that advance community awareness.

"LINC Housing is honored to be recognized for our work to bring sustainable, vital housing and services to people who need it most, said Rebecca Clark, president and CEO of LINC Housing. The need for affordable housing has never been greater, and our team works tirelessly to fulfill our mission to build communities and strengthen neighborhoods for people underserved by the marketplace.

Previous Hanley Award for Community Service in Sustainability recipients are Skid Row Housing Trust (2016) Chesapeake Bay Foundation (2015) and Make it Right Foundation (2014).

About LINC Housing Corporation

LINC Housing, one of California's most productive nonprofit developers of affordable housing, is committed to building communities and strengthening neighborhoods for people underserved by the marketplace. LINC has helped create more than 7,800 homes in 76 communities throughout the state. The organization's properties are known for excellent design, outstanding management and life-enhancing services for its residents. LINC has more than 30 years of service to families, seniors, people with special needs, and local governments - helping to create sustainable communities via new construction, acquisition and rehabilitation, and historic preservation.



About The Hanley Foundation

The Hanley Foundation is a non-profit foundation created in 1999 by Michael and Kathryn Hanley that provides support for organizations working in the areas of affordable housing, environmental awareness, and community service especially regarding mental health and childhood nutrition. The Washington, DC-based foundation supports helping to provide shelter and employment like Friendship Place in Washington, D.C., mental health services through support of the Wendt Center and healthy eating in partnership with Martha's Table. Their local support also includes environmental organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The Hanley Awards were created to recognize and honor significant and lasting contributions to advancing sustainability in the built environment. The Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainability, now in its eighth year, was established in 2009.

About Hanley Wood

Hanley Wood is the premier company serving the information, media, and marketing needs of the residential, commercial design and construction industry. Utilizing the largest analytics and editorial-driven Construction Industry Database, the company provides business intelligence and data-driven services. The company produces award-winning media, high profile executive events, and strategic marketing solutions. To learn more, visit hanleywood.com.

Media Contact: Holly Ferris, (562) 746-8461 mobile/text, holly@ferriscomm.com
[December 07, 2017] FieldEdge Honored As One Of The Best Places To Work In 2018, A Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award Winner

ATLANTA, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- FieldEdge has been honored with the Glassdoor Employees' Choice Award, recognizing the business as one of America's Best Small-to-Mid Sized Companies to Work for in 2018! The Employees' Choice Awards program, now in its 10th year, reviews over 700,000 company profiles before selecting the top 200 places to work based solely on the input of anonymous employee feedback. The final list is compiled based on Glassdoor's proprietary algorithm, and takes into account the quantity, quality, and consistency of reviews. "We are especially proud of this award because the win was purely based on the feedback from those that know our company best  the employees. Ths is a testament to our unwavering commitment to create a positive, stimulating, and fun work environment that our employees love," said FieldEdge Co-CEO, Rameez Ansari. "It is truly our people that make FieldEdge a special place and we are honored to receive this recognition," said FieldEdge Co-CEO Steve Lau.



For the complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work in 2018, please visit this link. About FieldEdge

FieldEdge is the leading vertical SaaS business that enables contractors to run their small businesses with ease, save time and make more money through targeted marketing and improved resource utilization.. FieldEdge has helped thousands of service-based organizations increase sales performance and overall workforce productivity by managing all aspects of their daily operations since 1980. FieldEdge is a hyper-growth software company with a startup culture that is backed by 35 years of industry-leading knowledge. FieldEdge has offices in Fort Myers, Atlanta, and Toronto. To learn more visit www.fieldedge.com or click here to visit their Glassdoor page.

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[December 07, 2017] A.M. Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Subsidiaries

A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of "aaa" of National Indemnity Company (National Indemnity) (Omaha, NE) and its affiliates. Concurrently, A.M. Best has affirmed the FSR of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of "a-" of Finial Reinsurance Company (Stamford, CT), as well as the Long-Term ICR of "bbb-" and the Long-Term Issue Credit Rating (Long-Term IR) of "bbb-" of Finial Holdings, Inc. (Delaware). A.M. Best also has affirmed the FSR of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICR of "aa+" of Berkshire Hathaway Life Insurance Company of Nebraska (BHLN) and the FSR of A+ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICR of "aa-" of First Berkshire Hathaway Life Insurance Company (Flushing, NY). These companies are all subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Berkshire) [NYSE: BRK A and BRK B]. The outlook for all of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. All companies are headquartered in Omaha, NE, unless otherwise specified. (See below for a detailed listing of the companies and ratings.) The ratings reflect National Indemnity's balance sheet strength, which A.M. Best categorizes as strongest, as well as its very strong operating performance, very favorable business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. National Indemnity's management team continues to be adept at managing the underwriting cycle and has the financial resources and acumen, which places the company in a strong position to seize unique opportunities. This distinguishing aspect and its superior market profile provide National Indemnity with the ability to outperform the market in terms of underwriting performance. Furthermore, the ratings reflect the benefits of being part of Berkshire, which includes the proven investment acumen of Mr. Warren Buffett with this expertise relied upon heavily to augment the returns of the organization. In addition, Berkshire provides substantial financial flexibility, diversification and long-term competitive advantages associated with Berkshire's non-insurance businesses. Partially offsetting these strengths is National Indemnity's exposure to higher levels of equity investments as compared with most of its peers. These higher levels of equity investments can result in volatile results; however, A.M. Best's concern is somewhat mitigated by National Indemnity's investment portfolio's superior ong-term performance.



The importance of Mr. Buffett (as CEO) to the entire Berkshire organization and the lack of transparency with regard to his successor remain a concern for A.M. Best. Although A.M. Best believes there are very strong internal candidates to succeed Mr. Buffett, the lack of clarity in regard to a chosen successor adds a degree of uncertainty to the future direction of the corporation, as Mr. Buffett personally controls the capital allocation within the firm. Nevertheless, A.M. Best believes Berkshire's corporate strategy, culture and decentralized operating structure will facilitate a successful transition in management when it occurs. The ratings of BHLN recognize its risk-adjusted capitalization is at the strongest level, the steady flow of transaction activity and the implicit and explicit benefits of being part of the Berkshire organization. Partially offsetting these positive rating factors are BHLN's fluctuating statutory operating trends driven by the deal flow and mortality results on certain blocks, increased exposure to interest sensitive business and its heavy concentration in affiliated non-insurance investments.

National Indemnity's ratings could experience negative rating actions if there is a series of operating losses over several years that exceeds A.M. Best's expectations or there is a material change in the financial strength and flexibility of the group's ultimate parent, Berkshire. The FSR of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of "aaa" have been affirmed for National Indemnity Company and its following affiliates: Columbia Insurance Company

National Fire & Marine Insurance Company

National Liability & Fire Insurance Company

National Indemnity Company of Mid-America

National Indemnity Company of the South

Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company

Berkshire Hathaway Direct Insurance Company The following Long-Term IR has been affirmed: Finial Holdings, Inc. - "bbb-" on $200 million 7.125% senior unsecured notes, due 2023 This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and A.M. Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and A.M. Best Rating Action Press Releases. A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2017 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171207006238/en/

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By Trend





Azerbaijan supports the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hikmet Hajiyev, Spokesman with Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Trend on December 7.

"Azerbaijan stands for the two state solution of this issue with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine. We call on all parties involved to comply with relevant UN Security Council resolutions", he said.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he will move the American embassy there once a location is secured.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said from the White House.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.
English Spanish

CANCUN, Mexico, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NexusTours has just presented its Strategic Plan 2018-2020. This defines its strategy to convert current regional leadership in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America to global status as experts in providing and distributing touristic products and services.



In February 2014, we launched a foundational strategic plan. This has guided us in 2017 to be the leading company in the region with presence in 15 countries and 47 destinations. At the same time we have built a team of dedicated and professional people, which has successfully reached all goals and objectives. As we close this stage, the icing on the cake has been our achieving and surpassing of all that was expected of us.

However, our vision and the markets fast evolution, calls for us to adapt our strategy and update our planning. Were taking some new steps towards the future consolidating our leadership at a regional level, whilst at the same being increasingly more relevant in the market which will convert us into a global operator, affirms Ruben Gutierrez (Managing Director).

Starting November 1st, 2017, and after many months of analysis and planning, NexusTours begins a new era to evolve into a new version: Nexus 2.0. The plan is based upon 3 strategic pillars: sustainable growth, value creation and diversification. It aims to triplicate the companys size in only 3 years.

This objective in mind, NexusTours has also reorganized its directive team with the creation of an Executive Committee denominated NexCo and comprised by 5 members. Their mission will be to execute the strategic plan, boost and streamline decision making, and follow up on results and monitor target achieving.

In its bid for attracting the best talent in the market, NexusTours now welcomes Roberto Bermudez who, starting November, joins the team as Senior Corporate Director Distribution & Product. By sharing his knowledge on strategic planning, product creation, commercial operations, international business and technological solution, among other endeavors, Bermudez will be important part in the companys transformation. He brings a wealth of experience with almost two decades within successful companies in the sector such as Amstar, Hotelbeds and Tui.

In the meantime, Pablo Gutierrez, after being appointed Senior Corporate Director Strategy & Marketing, assumes responsibilities in the areas of strategy, expansion, marketing & communication, business processes and excursion development. Backed up by over 30 years of professional trajectory in tourism, Gutierrez has manned different directive positions in renowned companies like Iberojet (Orizonia), Halcon Travel and Travelplan (Globalia), Ac Hotels and Ilunion Hotels (Confortel), among others. Since his entry in NexusTours in 2014, he has been responsible for product, distribution, differentiation and new services, marketing strategy and corporate image.

The third NexCo member is Jesus Rocha, current Senior Corporate Director Information Technologies, who since his inclusion in the beginnings of 2017 has been responsible for the companys development and technological transformation. Rocha has over 15 years experience in IT applied to distinct sectors such as hotel industry and tourism, and thriving within important companies like RIU Hotels & Resorts and Innovation Strategies. He has achieved excellent output on systems direction, project management, team coordination, consulting and more.

Pedro Dominguez has been appointed Senior Corporate Director Finance & Corporate Services, covering the entire financial area that he already manages, plus adding corporate services such as Human Resources and Legal. Dominguez has ample international experience with over 15 years in the financial field, highlighting his valuable role as Global CEO in Destination Management and Bed Bank MTS/OTS Globe. Since his arrival in NexusTours three years ago, he has significantly contributed to the companys growth and development.

To round off the Executive Committee, a Senior Corporate Director Operations will join, and be responsible for countries and destinations, customer quality, service and will be working alongside Ruben Gutierrez, NexusTours Managing Director.

I would like to thank all our Directors for their generosity and flexibility in adapting to changes, and highlight our solid team of Managers who, with commitment and dedication, guarantee us the strength to face all future challenges successfully, stated Ruben Gutierrez.

Through the implementation of the Nexus 2.0 plan, the brand seeks to widen its horizons by increasing presence in the market. At present it covers 15 countries and 47 destinations in Mexico, Caribbean and Central America. Prioritizing its digital transformation and the inclusion of new lines of business it will continue exceeding expectations and be a role model within the sector.

For media queries please contact:

Milagros Alfonzo

Communication Coordinator

malfonzo@nexustours.com

Web | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | YouTube

Download our NexusTours App. free of charge in Apple App Store | GooglePlay
HTC is getting ready to release the Vive Focus standalone VR headset. The company announced that it would open pre-orders next week and begin shipping headsets in January.

The Vive Focus is HTCs first attempt at a standalone VR HMD. The company initially partnered with Google to create a Vive-branded headset that would operate on Googles Daydream VR platform. HTC also planned to release the same headset in China that would operate on its Viveport platform.

Somewhere along the line, HTC backed down from its partnership with Google and abandoned the idea of building a headset for Daydream, but its pushing forward with the Viveport version for China. Last month, HTC revealed the Vive Focus headset and announced that it would be available soon. Now we know the specifications and the price of the hardware.

HTCs Vive Focus headset is a standalone headset that doesnt require a host device such as a smartphone or PC. The Vive Focus gets its compute power from a Snapdragon 835 SoC embedded in the headset. The headset also offers untethered 6-DoF world-scale tracking provided by two front-facing cameras.

The Snapdragon 835 SoC has no hope of delivering the same performance that a high-end gaming PC can for the Vive. However, the Vive Focus features a higher resolution AMOLED display and newly designed lenses. It remains to be seen, but the Vive Focus may offer a crisper, clearer display than the original Vive headset.

Curiously, HTC did not reveal how much RAM it installed in the Vive Focus. It also neglected to mention how munch internal storage space is available. The headset does offer expandable storage via a MicroSD slot, though, that can support cards up to 2TB.

HTC also revealed information about the battery life for the first time. The company didnt announce the specifications of the battery pack, though, we would imagine it would be a lithium-ion power pack because it supports fast-charging over USB type-C. HTC said that the device would offer up to 3 hours of active use, and more than seven days of standby time between charges.

The Vive Focus also includes a 9-axis wand controller with a touch pad, App button, Home button, volume controllers, and a trigger. HTC said that the controller lasts up to 30 hours on two AA batteries.

HTC has yet to reveal its plans to bring standalone VR to the North American market (if it has any), but the company is preparing to release the Vive Focus standalone HMD in China early next year. HTC announced that pre-orders for the Vive Focus would begin on December 12 (opens in new tab). The company plans to run the pre-order campaign until January 12, 2018. It did not reveal the exact shipping date, but HTC expects to deliver headsets in January. HTC said that pre-ordered devices would include four free titles to sweeten the deal.

Along with the release date, HTC revealed that there would be two versions of the Vive Focus. HTC is offering an Electric Blue version, which would sell for 4,299 (approximately $649) and an Almond White version, which would sell for 3,999 (approximately $605). As far as we can tell, both headsets boast the same hardware specifications, so it appears that the blue version costs more simply because of the color.
Senior Alex Lonsdale, a member of Liberty High School's nationally ranked debate club, discovered after the fact that not all debate topics are created equal. In a conversation with schoolmates, Lonsdale made reference to pro-terrorist sentiment among British Muslims. Not one to air empty opinions, Lonsdale cited polls by ICM Research for the British documentary "What British Muslims Really Think."
Kansas City Workout Conclusion

After 40 years in Westport, the last Gold's Gym in KC is closing KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Members of Gold's Gym in Westport tell 41 Action News the business is closing its doors after 40 years in the area. Gym members have complained in the past about the gym having equipment and management issues.

Exceptional Real Estate Tradition

Dream House of the Week: Home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright This home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is on the market for the first time ever!

The Old School Underground

Old Limestone Mines In Kansas City Are Home To Stores Of Hollywood History Businesses are using the millions of square feet of underground space to preserve rare stamps, put the finishing touches on brand-new trucks and more.

Tradition Of Service & Suds

New Kansas City brewery 'founded by veterans to honor heroes' NORTH KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Early next year there will be a new brewery with a unique purpose in North Kansas City. Each one of Callsign Brewing's beer is named after military aircraft, and each time that specific beer is brewed, there will be a special tribute.

Local Institution Celebrates NextGen

'It's a boy': After weeks of waiting, KC Zoo reveals baby penguin is a boy KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A month ago the Kansas City Zoo welcomed a baby penguin, and on Thursday they revealed the gender. For the big announcement, the zoo cut into a penguin shaped cake. When a slice of the cake was removed, blue candy spilled out revealing that the King Penguin is a boy.

In more tribute to #TBT, we remember thatdespite the fact that she's a bit older than her competition yet still spry, putting a new twist on "mom jeans" and providing inspiration for all of these Kansas City MSM links.And this is thefor right now . . .
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, II released the following statement regarding his vote on the impeachment of President Donald Trump.





"Yesterday, I voted to table a resolution containing the articles of impeachment of President Donald Trump. I believe that this President has sent tasteless tweets, made crude and cruel comments, and embraced those who espouse hatred and division while pushing policies like the Trump tax cuts which benefit him and his children. However, I will not violate who I am by refusing to wait until the special counsel has completed his investigation.





On the subject of impeachment, I have decided to say nothing as often as I can. After all, in the United States we believe in due process, even if the President believes that a federal judge, because of his race, cannot be fair on the federal bench.





I realize that Trumps presidency generates anger. I will remind folk that there is only one letter of the alphabet that separates anger from danger. My vote to table was an issue of fairness."

Kansas City's highest ranking elected official shares his viewpoint on the controversy confronting the Commander-in-Chief and encourages his constituents to remain rational despite their political differences.Checkit:Developing . . .
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TruAmerica Multifamily has promoted Matthew Ferrari to Managing Director in charge of East Coast business operations and has made three key senior management hires in Florida and Northern Virginia as the Los Angeles-based real estate firm continues to broaden its vertically integrated investment platform to facilitate its rapid and controlled portfolio growth throughout the United States.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d8cd9746-d651-4a98-b728-b714c53b59be

Ferrari, who has spent his entire 10-year career in the real estate property markets joined the firm in September 2016 as Eastern U.S. Director of Acquisitions. In that role, he has made a significant and immediate impact in TruAmericas national expansion. He was responsible for the acquisition of approximately $700 million in multifamily assets in Florida and Maryland, representing approximately 15% of TruAmericas more than 34,000-unit portfolio. In addition to his responsibilities of continuing to broaden TruAmerica footprint in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern states, in his new role, Ferrari also will manage all aspects of the firms asset and construction management functions on the East Coast out of TruAmericas Arlington, VA office.

TruAmerica also has announced three key additions to the East Coast team: Doug Kelley, Senior Director of Asset Management; Jeff Frederick, Director of Asset Management; and Ethan Pompey, Director of Capital Improvements.

The addition of Doug, Jeff and Ethan will allow us to better serve our East Coast-based institutional investors, which include insurance companies, pension fund advisers, global real estate investment firms and large family offices, said TruAmerica CEO Robert E. Hart.

Kelley will have direct oversight of all property operations functions on the East Coast partnering with Ferrari to run the Eastern U.S. region. Prior to joining TruAmerica, Kelley was Vice President of Development for Snell Properties Inc. responsible for all phases of development and value-add repositioning for the 70-year-old family owned real estate investment company. Previously, he was Director of Redevelopment and Asset Management at AvalonBay. Kelley received a BA in Business Administration from Lycoming College and an MS in Real Estate Development from The Johns Hopkins University School of Business.

Frederick has extensive knowledge of the Florida multifamily market through more than 20 years of asset management experience actively involved in the successful implementation of value-add interior and exterior renovation programs. He joins TruAmerica from Miami-based private investment firm Fifteen Group where, as VP of Asset Management, he was responsible for the firms 2,200-unit portfolio in Southern Florida. During his career, Frederick held similar roles with Metis Property Group and Franklin Street Real Estate Services. He earned a BS in Finance from Florida State University.

Pompey will manage the $22 million capital improvement budget for TruAmericas 3,400-unit portfolio in Florida out of the firms newly established Orlando office. With nearly 10 years of construction management experience, Pompey will be responsible for establishing construction scopes and budgets, soliciting bids, contracting the jobs, and overseeing construction to its completion. Prior to joining TruAmerica Pompey was Director of Construction at Pinnacle Property Management Services. Pompey earned a BS degree in Accounting from the University of Phoenix.

Institutional real estate investors are increasingly global and metrics-driven, yet real estate remains a local, market-by-market, even a block-by-block art and we are dedicated to hiring the best and brightest professionals in the industry to achieve our goals, explained Hart. We look forward to 2018, and an even larger presence in the multi-family market, as we opportunistically build out our national platform.

About TruAmerica Multifamily

TruAmerica Multifamily is a vertically-integrated, value-add multifamily investment firm based in Los Angeles. Founded in July 2013 as a joint venture between Robert Hart and The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, TruAmerica has been one of the country's most active multifamily investors and manages a $7.1 billion portfolio of approximately 34,000 units across prime locations throughout Northern and Southern California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Maryland and Florida. For more information on TruAmerica Multifamily, visit http://www.truamerica.com or call (424) 325-2750.

Contact: Bruce Beck/DB&R

(805) 777-7971; bruce@dbrpr.com
BRENT WELDER IS MAKING WAVES WITH HIS $15 MINIMUM WAGE SUPPORT!!!

- There has been an influx of lower wage workers in the Kansas 3rd District. And yes, a lot of those people vote.





- Again, this is a hardline progressive position which strikes a DEFINITIVE difference betwixt Welder Vs. Rep. Yoder - Previously, Democratic Party candidates have simply attempted to adopt softer GOP policies rather than risk outright opposition.





- Remember that JoCo voted for Bernie and then Hillary. If Mr. Welder can capture more grassroots support among the emerging community of progressives in this enclave, he presents a real threat to Congressman Yoder.

The upcoming election in JoCo is getting closer than most suburban voters realize and early on a real challenger to Congressman Kevin Yoder has emerged.We've talked about Brent Welder previously and had a bit of fun withBut recently via social media . . .Now, this is important for a lot of reasons . . .Better still, some of the most vicious right-wing partisan hacks who have always accused Congressman Yoder of being a RINO must now tout his Conservative credentials if they want to keep the only county that matters in Kansas controlled by Republicans.Developing . . .
From the European revolutionary movements of 1848, through the revolutionary and national movements, WWI, the Russian Revolution, WWII, and even globalization

From December 7-9, the Hellenic Parliament Foundation is holding an interdisciplinary conference titled Art and Democracy. During the conference, historians, political scientists, philosophers, and literary theorists will speak to establish a line of dialogue on comparative reading and interpretation of international and Greek movements, but also of ideological and artistic practices and platforms.

The conferences sections range from the European revolutionary movements of 1848, through the revolutionary and national movements, WWI, the Russian Revolution, WWII, and even globalization.

Among the many themes to be addressed are the freedom of artistic expression, the individual and society, art during parliamentary crises, art and the concept of decadence, national art, intellectual and artistic vanguards of the late 19th century and the interwar years, as well as the iconoclastic modernism in literature and the art of the early 20th century.

Addressing the conference will be Hellenic Parliament Speaker, Nikos Voutsis, and Hellenic Parliament Foundation Secretary-General, Associate Professor, Niki Maroniti.

Where: Acropolis Museum Amphitheatre

When: December 7-9

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: Apaleutos25 License: CC-BY-SA

Source: int.ert.gr
Tensions between Turkey and Europe have been going on for centuries but their cooperation has also been extensive enabling tourism to benefit significantly and reach very high levels in recent decades

Turkish president Tayyip Recep Erdogans closely watched official visit to Greece, starting on Thursday, has attracted the attention of German media this week, with a dispatch circulated by Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Presse and Dresdner Neueste Nachrichte from Athens mostly revolving around the powerful Turkish leaders purported attempt to re-approach the European Union.

Neighboring Greece, according to the assessment of the German report, offers Erdogan the opportunity of a bridge with the rest of the European Union.

After the harsh measures he took against his critics, Turkish President Erdogan has led his country into isolation  theres no talk over a possible Turkish accession to the EU. Erdogan is now trying to build bridges, the widely circulated article on the German-language Internet underlined.

Even though Erdogan has previously visited Athens as the prime minister, this will be his first time in the country as the Turkish president, a post with significantly increased executive powers from the last time a Turkish head of state was in Athens  far-off 1952.

Beyond improved relations, the article refers to still unresolved problems, such as exclusive economic zones in maritime regions between the two neighbors  the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean  as well as the long-standing Cyprus island division.

Furthermore, the German report notes that some 1,000 Turkish nationals have fled the country to Greece in the wake of a round of mass arrests after a foiled coup in Turkey.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Lfdder License: CC-BY-SA

Source: naftemporiki.gr
Tsipras also urged Erdogan to utilize the positive momentum created for the Greek economy to help open a new chapter in Greek-Turkish relations including tourism

The Lausanne Treaty is the cornerstone of Greek-Turkish relations, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras noted during joint statements with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, after their meeting at the Maximos Mansion in Athens.

Tsipras stressed the importance of enhancing channels of communication between the two countries, noting that Erdogan's visit to Greece was historic, as was the initiative taken by President Prokopios Pavlopoulos to invite him.

The Greek government was aware of the problems that divide Greece and Turkey, he continued, as some undermined these relations every day.

Tsipras underlined the need to end Turkish airspace violations in the Aegean, adding that retaining Turkey's casus belli threat against Greece (if the latter should choose to extend its territorial waters to 12 miles) is inconsistent with cultivating a good climate between the two countries.

"We spoke openly with the Turkish President in our effort not to hide behind disagreements. We wanted to identify them but to discard misunderstandings and clarify what each of us means. We talked about tension in the Aegean. I have stressed that Turkish air space violations must be terminated. The increased violations of Greek airspace and especially the dogfights in the Aegean Sea are a danger to our relations and, above all, a danger to our pilots," he noted.

Commenting on the issue of the Muslim minority, Tsipras said the reforms needed in Greece are not issues that are debated between two countries. "We will implement our policy because we want to implement it, and it concerns a domestic issue," he pointed out.

"The Muslim minority in Thrace and the Greek minority in Turkey must bring the two countries closer together. Our government is particularly concerned for Greek Muslim citizens and is sensitive to all minorities," he added.

Illegal invasion and occupation

On Cyprus, Tsipras repeated that it is primarily a problem of illegal invasion and occupation. "I'm 43 years old and for 43 years the Cyprus issue remains open. Every time we discuss who's to blame. However Mr. President, we must not forget that this issue remains open because 43 years ago there was an illegal invasion and occupation of [northern] Cyprus. This is why it remains open," he said.

He reiterated Greece's position for a united, federal Cyprus, without guarantees ad foreign troops, where Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities will live in safety. "This solution will have to be based on the framework set out by the Secretary-General of the UN."

Tsipras also urged Erdogan to utilize the positive momentum created for the Greek economy to help open a new chapter in Greek-Turkish relations that are not based on mutual suspicion but on mutual respect and solidarity.

He also expressed hope that Turkey will accept this proposal adding that if it doesn't, it will be to the detriment of both peoples, Greek-Turkish and EU-Turkish relations.

On his side, Erdogan stressed that he's pleased to visit the country as a head of state and reiterated his view that the Lausanne Treaty needs "revisions".

"I am happy that after 65 years I am making an official visit as the President of the Republic of Turkey to Greece. This place is familiar to me, I visited as a Prime Minister, but it is the first time I visit as President of the Republic," he said in his opening remarks. "The steps we have made are important ?we also raised issues such as the High-Level Greek-Turkish Cooperation Council which was held under my own chairmanship," he followed.

"The Lausanne Treaty was signed by 11 countries. Are there only provisions for the Aegean in the treaty? Isn't there anything about the status of the two minorities? In western Thrace we have a Muslim minority and we believe there can be new thoughts on this issue," he argued. "The issues of the Aegean are tricky but can be resolve with talks."

Erdogan claimed that there's significant economic disparity between Western Thrace and the rest of the country, saying there's "an economic gap". On the issue of the mufti in Thrace, he reiterated that he shouldn?t be a civil servant chosen by the state. "We do not have problems with freedom of religion. But there are issues in Western Thrace."

Asked about the "revisions" he suggested, he cited that Turkey "does not covet the territorial integrity of any country and any neighbouring country."

On Cyprus, he noted Turkey and Greece are "motherlands" and guarantor powers. "We want a fair and viable solution. This is what the Greek side wants as well, but we have last-minute issues arising which could be considered as evasions, so that we do not reach any conclusion."

Erdogan also repeated his call for the extradition of the eight Turkish servicemen who arrived in Greece after the failed coup in Turkey. "The coup plotters can be returned to Turkey which is a country that has abolished the death penalty, where there is no torture, and I hope Greek justice will listen to us on this issue."

Commenting on the recent decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said: "Israel and the United States are the only countries that speak of Jerusalem as a capital of Israel. Jerusalem is the spiritual center of the three major monotheistic religions."

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: Matti License: CC-BY-SA

Source: ANA-MPA
Handelsblatt Global reports that too few German entrepreneurs see Greece, and especially its energy sector, as an investment opportunity. Others are more perceptive than the Germans. During a recent visit to China for the Beijing Foreign Policy Forum, for example, I realized how crucial Greece is for the Chinese strategy and foreign policy: Greece is at the heart of the Chinese One Belt, One Road Initiative  the plan to build a modern-age Silk Road linking all of Eurasia. The Chinese have chosen Greece, and in particular the Port of Piraeus, as their hub into Western Europe. Already in 2015, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the president of Greece, was the first European leader to speak about the significance this new Chinese Silk Road would have for the rest of the world.

The prestigious German newspaper notes that the Greeks, for their part, are gratefully accepting this Chinese investment, feeling all the more snubbed by Germany during the euro crisis.

It adds: "Greece understands that it is at a geographical and geopolitical crossroads. But it must now seize this opportunity to become an energy hub. If it does, it can become the gateway for natural gas flowing into Europe from three sources: first, from Central Asia and Turkey; second, from the eastern Mediterranean; and third, from its own seafloors, which cover big reserves of hydrocarbons. If Greece grasps this chance, it could at last find a model to grow its economy and make its people prosperous."

And explains: "Here is why Greece holds so many geopolitical keys. The US views Greece as vital to securing the energy supply of the wider West, and to containing Russian influence in the region. Russia has left no doubt that it wants to be a major power in the region: It has bought parts of the Zohr gas field off the coast of Egypt and of oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan. Russia also has submarines patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean. It has even come to a detente with Turkey, which also wants to dominate the flow of hydrocarbons into Europe."

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: HG32 License: CC-BY-SA

Source: handelsblatt.com
The World Bank has approved $1.15 billion in a development policy financing loan to support Egypts economic reform programme.



This loan is the last in the series of three annual loanscalled the Fiscal Consolidation, Sustainable Energy, and Competitiveness Development Policy Financing loans - worth a total of $3.15 billion. These loans were provided over 2015 to 2017.



We welcome the World Banks continuous support to the transformational economic reform agenda of the government. This program supports Egypts program to help improve its attractiveness for private investment, creating jobs especially for youth and women, said Dr Sahar Nasr, Egypts Minister of International Cooperation who also represents Egypt on the World Banks Board of Governors.



This loan supports Egypts home-grown inclusive reforms aimed to power job creation, ensure energy security, strengthen public finances, and enhance business competitiveness, especially for micro, small and medium-sized businesses.



Egypt has shown sustained commitment to implementing inclusive reforms. We are privileged to support the country on its path to achieving its full potential and improving living standards for all Egyptians, said Dr Asad Alam, World Bank country director for Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti.



In providing this financing, the World Bank has collaborated closely with development partners. The African Development Bank is preparing its parallel financing of $500 million while the UK has provided an additional $150 million guarantee to expand the loan amount to $1.15 billion.



The United Kingdom is proud to join the World Bank in this strategic support to the Egyptian Government in building an economy that works for all Egyptian men and women, said John Casson, UK Ambassador to Egypt.



The World Bank Task Team leaders, Ashish Khanna and Ibrahim Chowdhury, emphasised that Egypt now provides an international benchmark for comprehensive reforms in its policies to maximize finance for development, notably through mobilizing $17 billion of private investment in the energy sector.



The World Bank finances programmes and projects to help Egypt reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity. The focus of Bank support includes social safety nets, energy, transport, rural water and sanitation, agriculture and irrigation, housing, health care, job creation, and financing for micro and small enterprises.  TradeArabia News Service
Womens Entrepreneurship Day (WED) was recently celebrated in Bahrain at an evening tea event hosted by the co-founder of Annada and the ambassador of Womens Entrepreneurship Day Bahrain, Nada Alawi.



Some of Bahrains most influential women attended the event to reconnect, engage, and discuss the active role that women play in Bahrains economy and prosperity.



Womens Entrepreneurship Day is an international day designated to celebrate pioneering businesswomen, who have actively contributed to the economy by leading and establishing businesses with innovative, creative, and strategic methods.



The WED Ambassadors are spread across 144 countries and 110 universities and seek to convene business leaders to collaborate and find solutions in areas of entrepreneurship eco-systems to empower women in business. Nada Alawi, Bahrains WED ambassador and the co-founder of Annada is actively engaged in multiple forums that seek to enable and empower ambitious women.



The event commenced with an inspiring discussion about the significant role of women in todays industrial, financial, and digital - national and international markets. Furthermore, it continued with the attendees sharing their goals, success stories, and creative ideas.



Highlighting the importance of collaborations between leading women entrepreneurs for it to serve as a foundation for a business environment that flourishes with women leaders supporting and encouraging one another. A groundbreaking initiative that will inspire, enable and empower the future generations of aspiring businesswomen, entrepreneurs, and women in versatile career paths.



As a WED ambassador, I am honoured to be hosting an event to celebrate fellow women entrepreneurs to share our success stories and ideas, and highlight the importance of women supporting and collaborating with one another, said Nada Alawi.



Throughout its journey, WED Ambassadors achievements include a triumph in Jordan, in which a collective of female innovators, businesswomen, and policymakers funded 500 Syrian refugee girls to attend high school.



In Oman, a WED ambassador announced an initiative to empower women and girls to use their vote against arranged marriage. India tied with the Women's Wing of the National Federation of Industries (a national trade body) to jointly host their event. And in Uruguay, a partnership with a local university offered scholarships to the girls present at the WED event.  TradeArabia News Service
Alstom, a world leader in integrated railway systems, has signed an agreement with Iraqi government for the development of urban transport in the country.



The MoU covers two major projects - a 20-km elevated train in Baghdad and development of a metro system in Basra, said senior officials after signing the deal at the Franco-Iraqi meeting in the presence of Dr Sami Al Araji, the head of National Investment Committee of Iraq and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, French Secretary of State.



The first project will cover the implementation of the supply of rolling stock, electromechanical systems, tracks and associated civil works for the Iraqi capital. The light rail system would link areas of Al Mustansirya, Al Shab, Al Wazyria, Alsarafia Al Etafia bridge, Al Khadumia, Al Muthana airport and Al Alawi, they stated.



The second one will focus on the development of the metro system in Basra, which consists of two elevated lines of 30km each, 15 stations and one depot for each line from North to South, from Zubair to Shat Alarab and from East to West, from Karma to the Desert.



These projects would significantly contribute to the development of the countrys urban infrastructure and national economy, said a top Alstom official.



"We appreciate the opportunity to develop industrial cooperation with the Republic of Iraq, in order to better address the countrys needs for urban transportation," remarked Bernard Peille, the managing director of Alstom in Western and Central Asia.



"Alstom is ready to bring its innovative technologies and sees the signature of this MoU as a first step towards the development of a long-term partnership with Iraq," Peille added.



A major player in the region, Alstom is already well established in the Middle East & Africa with more than 3,800 employees and 1,800 suppliers. It is present in more than 15 countries in the region with offices and joint-ventures in Algeria, Morocco, South Africa and Kazakhstan.-TradeArabia News Service
The Emirates Red Crescent (ERC) has signed agreements with Yemen's General Authority for Rural Water Supply Projects and Ministry of Education, to provide support for rural water projects and educational development initiatives in the Wadi Hadhramaut area, reported state news agency Wam.



Ahmed Al Neyadi, the deputy head of the ERC team in Hadhramaut, reaffirmed the ERC's keenness to support and improve infrastructure, utilities, and education sector projects, as well as providing humanitarian relief support to the residents as per the directives of President HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.



"The ERC is keen to implement this necessary project to provide clean drinking water to Yemeni citizens," he stated.



The Hadhramaut Governorate Under-Secretary praised the great efforts exerted by the UAE and the ERC to support the people in the governorate in particular, and Yemen in general, across various sectors, stated the report.
Saudi Aramco has announced that it will host an invitation-only forum for key suppliers on December 12-13, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.



The 2017 iktva SME Forum & Exhibition is Saudi Aramcos principal engagement event with valued suppliers who form our energy sector ecosystem. Through iktva, Saudi Aramco is developing a world-class supply chain thats locally accessible, reliable and innovative to meet its needs as the worlds leading integrated energy and chemicals company.



The forum, which will be attended by investors from 35 countries, will highlight Saudi Aramco vision for the future and outline business opportunities, focused on developing an accessible, reliable, and efficient supply chain. The objective is to bridge gaps in the energy sector supply chain that fosters the development of competitive industrial clusters.



New investment opportunities will be shared for local value creation that broaden the base of goods and services, especially for Saudi small and medium size enterprises, who will be participating in the iktva forum for the first time.

This years forum will provide a platform for all companies interested in establishing operations in Saudi Arabia to engage with the kingdoms energy sector stakeholders and their key suppliers. The forum will cover topics such as integration of supply chains, knowledge economy, human capital development, access to finance, market access, the legal and regulatory environment, SMEs, and infrastructure benefits.



The iktva program was developed by Saudi Aramco through consultation and collaboration with its national and international supplier partners. - TradeArabia News Service
PUNE, India, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acumen Research and Consulting, a global provider of market research studies, in a recently published report titled Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Market (Application: Security and Surveillance, Vehicle Parking, Traffic Management, Toll Enforcement; End-user: Government, Commercial)  Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Opportunities and Forecast, 2013-2023, estimates that the global automatic number plate recognition market is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 13% during the period from 2015 to 2023 and generate a revenue of over $1.4 billion by 2023. Major factors responsible for driving the growth of this market include increasing adoption of ANPR systems in traffic enforcement and management, growing need for enhanced security in public sector, and increasing spending by governments in emerging economies on internal security. However, linguistic barriers and non-uniformity in the design of number plate are some major complications in designing the ANPR systems and posing a challenge for manufacturers. Adoption of ANPR in parking management and toll collection application could be a potential market area for manufacturers to target on.



Download Sample Pages at https://www.acumenresearchandconsulting.com/request-sample/396

Europe is the largest market for automatic number plate recognition systems owing to the early adoption of this technology in the region. Stringent government regulations for speed enforcement and red light control in countries such as UK, Germany, France, and Italy have encouraged the adoption of ANPR systems, thus driving the market growth in the region. Presence of large number of ANPS manufacturers in the region such as ARH Inc., Q-Free ASA, and NDI Recognition Systems Inc. among others has further spurred the market growth and promoted consumer awareness. Presently, most countries in Europe have deployed ANPR technology, and as a result, the market for ANPR is increasing in Europe. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market for ANPR and the technology is deployed in countries such as China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Australia. ANPR technology has been deployed in Japan for the past 10 years and is used for the purpose of calculating journey time. The market is in nascent stage in India; however, it is expected to grow considerably in coming years as state traffic department and highway authorities have initiated the process of deployment of ANPR systems. These systems are presently installed in Cities such as Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Ludhiana among others for security and surveillance purpose. The market for ANPR in Asia-Pacific is anticipated to experience significant growth in the next few years, at a CAGR of more than 15% from 2015 to 2023 to reach an estimated value of over $350 million in 2023.

View Detail Report With Table Of Content, List of Table and Figure at https://www.acumenresearchandconsulting.com/automatic-number-plate-recognition-anpr-market

The major applications of automatic number plate recognition include security and surveillance, traffic management, vehicle parking, and toll enforcement among others. Security and surveillance represents the largest application segment of ANPR market and are installed for safety and security at public places. ANPR cameras installed on streets or on police department vehicles capture images of vehicles and helps in real-time investigation of crime. The ANPR systems are also used for surveillance activities and enables matching, rapid recovery, identification and tracking of vehicles in real-time. The development of advanced information technologies has brought surveillance to a completely new and extended level of operation.

Make an inquiry for purchasing this report at https://www.acumenresearchandconsulting.com/inquiry-before-buying/396

The player profiled in the report include Bosch Security Systems, Inc., Q-Free ASA, ELSAG North America LLC, ARH, Inc., Genetec, Inc., PIPS Technology Ltd., Siemens AG, Tattile S.r.l., Vigilant Solutions, NDI Recognition Systems LLC, and Digital Recognition Systems, Ltd. among others. Mergers and acquisitions for innovation and new product development and partnership for enhancing product quality are some of the key strategies implemented by players operating in this market.

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Would like to place an order or any question, please feel free to contact: sales@acumenresearchandconsulting.com

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Acumen Research and Consulting (ARC) is a global provider of market intelligence and consulting services to information technology, investment, telecommunication, manufacturing, and consumer technology markets. ARC helps investment communities, IT professionals, and business executives to make fact based decisions on technology purchases and develop firm growth strategies to sustain market competition. With the team size of 100+ Analysts and collective industry experience of more than 200 years, Acumen Research and Consulting assures to deliver a combination of industry knowledge along with global and country level expertise.

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UAE imported $44.27 million worth of Turkish heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC&R) products in 2016, and that figure is expected to further grow at 4.5 per cent in 2017, revealed TIM TTC Gulf Consulting.



TIM TTC Gulf Consulting, which operates the Turkish Trade Centre for the HVAC&R sector, was established in July 2016 to represent the Turkish companies in the UAE. The company is a subsidiary of TIM A S, located in Istanbul, which is a joint stock company, within the body of Turkish Exporters Assembly.



Operating from the Dubai World Trade Centre, the TIM TTC Gulf Consulting plays a pivotal role in facilitating trade between Turkey and the UAE for HVAC&R products.



It works closely with the Turkish exporters by providing them with commercial, legal and logistical support to reach out to the UAE businesses and address their market needs, said a statement from the company.



The TTC further revealed that UAEs HVAC&R imports from Turkey are expected to grow at 4.5 per cent in this year, compared to 2016 based on the $30.75 million exports.



These products include heating and refrigeration systems, cooling towers, air filters, ventilation ducts, insulation material and air conditioners, it said.



The HVAC&R sector shows significant promise of a partnership between the UAE and Turkish companies as it represents high quality Turkish export products that are performing better in global competitiveness and thereby gaining market share. This was evident at the Big 5 2017 exhibition where Turkey was one of the top exhibiting country representing over 240 companies, it added.



Turkeys HVAC&R manufacturers have given high priority to research and development alongside transfer of technology from global tie-ups, said a statement.



Almost all Turkish HVAC&R producers adhere to ISO standards and various quality standards, research customer preferences during the design phase and have well-established after-sales service networks that have helped grow exports, it added.



Serdar Kumbaraci, country manager for TTC UAE, said: Our TTC participant companies in the HVAC&R sector have established long-term relationships with UAE companies to support them to utilize the best technological solution for their needs.



It is heartening to note that trade in this sector is growing at a rapid pace and is in the best interests of both countries, he added.



With more than $9 billion trade volume in 2016, Turkish bilateral trade with the UAE has been growing at a steady pace. In preparation of Dubai Expo 2020, a growing number of Turkish companies have established their UAE operations and more are expected to do so in the coming months.



The number of Turkish companies under TTC that have established UAE operations reached 33 as of November of this year, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia has condemned the US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, amid growing international criticism of the move.

In a statement, Saudi Arabia said President Donald Trump's announcement was "unjustified and irresponsible", a BBC report quoted.

The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts, and Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called for a general strike and rallies on Thursday to protest.

President Trump's move reversed decades of US policy. The fate of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues between Israel and the Palestinians and the US move could imperil Middle East peace efforts and upset the Arab world and Western allies alike.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said in a speech at the White House. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

Eight of the 15 nations who are currently members of the United Nations Security Council have called for the body to hold an urgent meeting on the US decision by the end of the week.

Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark, but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical.
Air Arabia, the Middle East and North Africas first and largest low-cost carrier, has announced that Asmara will become its first destination in Eritrea, starting from December 10.



Situated in the Horn of Africa, Eritrea is home to some delightful modernist architecture, and a unique art deco scene for visitors to behold. Asmara is well known for its vibrant traditions, and hosts an abundance of cafes, restaurants and attractions for tourists to immerse themselves into the local culture.



The flight will operate once a week on Sundays, departing Sharjah International Airport (SHJ) at 22:00 hours, and arriving at Asmara International Airport (ASM) at 01:00 hours local time. The return flight will depart Asmara on Mondays at 01:40, landing in Sharjah the next day at 06:20 hours local time.



Adel Al Ali, group chief executive officer of Air Arabia, said: Eritrea is on the path to becoming an important market for the UAE. Through the launch of this route, we look to boost the trade and bilateral relations between the two countries, and expand our footprint in the African continent. We are excited to commence our operations to Asmara, which will provide affordable travel options to passengers travelling from Eritrea to destinations across our network and beyond.



Air Arabia currently operates flights to 133 routes across the globe from five hubs located in the Middle East and North Africa. - TradeArabia News Service
Royal Cliff Hotels Group warmly welcomes the new Executive Chef, Jeff Hurst to its award-winning culinary team. He brings with him his expertise and imaginative flair to Royal Cliffs diverse culinary scene.



(TRAVPR.COM) THAILAND - December 7th, 2017 - Royal Cliff Hotels Group warmly welcomes the new Executive Chef, Jeff Hurst to its award-winning culinary team. He brings with him his expertise and imaginative flair to Royal Cliffs diverse culinary scene.

Coming from a global background, Chef Jeff enjoys combining interesting flavors to create one-of-a-kind dining experiences. His passion for his craft has resulted in an impressive career spanning Asia and the United States with previous work experiences that include working for 5-star hotels such as the Conrad Hotel Osaka, Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto, Sheraton Miyako Hotel Tokyo, Hilton Osaka, Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt San Francisco as well as the Hyatt Regency Oakland. His wide ranging experience, creative flair and ardent passion for the culinary arts make him the ideal chef to oversee all kitchen operations of the award-winning restaurants of the Royal Cliff Hotels Group. He will be a great addition to maintain the legacy of the restaurants.

Royal Cliff Hotels Group is home to restaurants that offer a gastronomic experience unlike any other. With a tempting variety of dining options, dining here is like embarking on a tour of the world's finest cuisines. The Wine Spectator Magazine in New York have continually awarded 5 of its restaurants with the prestigious Best of Award of Excellence which recognizes the exceptional food and wine pairings that each restaurant offers and the remarkable dining experiences that they provide. Come and discover the extraordinary dishes of Chef Jeff Hurst that embody bold, exotic and memorable flavors that will make you come back for more! The Royal Cliffs team has already challenged Chef Jeff to elevate the dining quality so please come and check out whether he has met the challenge.

Situated on a 64-acre private parkland estate overlooking the stunning Gulf of Thailand, the Royal Cliff Hotels Group operates four award-winning hotels providing guests from home and abroad with the ultimate experience. Book your stay directly and get the best price guaranteed along with value-added optional extras that will enhance your hotel experience by visiting www.royalcliff.com, contacting Reservations at (+66) 38 250 421 ext. 2732 or emailing: reservations@royalcliff.com. To book one of our 11 award-winning restaurants please send an email to gro-main@royalcliff.com

For more information on the Royal Cliff Hotels Group, please visit www.royalcliff.com

###
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cypress Development Corp. (TSX-V:CYP) (OTCBB:CYDVF) (Frankfurt:C1Z1) (Cypress or the Company) is pleased to announce Pasinex Resources Limited ("Pasinex"), through its wholly-owned subsidiary Pasinex Resources Nevada Limited, has entered into an Option Agreement with Cypress and Silcom Systems Inc. ("Silcom") to earn up to an 80% interest in Cypress Gunman Zinc Project ("Gunman") located in White Pine County, Nevada ("Option Agreement"). In essence, Pasinex has acquired the option by honouring the terms of Silcom's original Option Agreement, announced April 5, 2017, to acquire an 80% interest from Cypress in the Gunman Project.



The Option Agreement's total consideration to acquire the 80% interest is staged over four (4) years and is approximately US$1.5 million payable in a combination of cash and Pasinex common shares. In addition, the Pasinex must incur minimum exploration expenditures totalling US$2,950,000 over the same four (4) year period.

The deposit style at Gunman is carbonate replacement (CRD) with central zones of massive, strongly oxidized mineralization and halos of partial replacement and veining. The mineralization is within 125 metres of the surface. Pasinex states they are attracted by the high grades and the deposit style of the Gunman with striking similarities to the Pasinex 's Pinargozu high grade CRD zinc mine in Turkey.

Robert Marvin, B.Sc., PGeo, VP of Exploration and Director of Cypress Development Corp., is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has approved of the technical information in this release.

About Cypress Development Corp.:

Cypress Development Corp. is a publicly traded lithium and zinc exploration company that continues to acquire and develop potentially viable mineral projects in the State of Nevada, U.S.A.

Cypress Development Corp. has approx. 54.1 million shares issued and outstanding.

To find out more about Cypress Development Corp. (TSX-V:CYP), visit our website at www.cypressdevelopmentcorp.com.

CYPRESS DEVELOPMENT CORP.

Don Huston



DONALD C. HUSTON

President

For further information contact myself or:

Don Myers

Director, Investor Relations

Cypress Development Corp.

Telephone: 604-639-3851

Toll Free: 800-567-8181

Facsimile: 604-687-3119

Email: info@cypressdevelopmentcorp.com

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. (Mineral Mountain or the Company) (TSXV:MMV) is pleased to announce that it has closed the first tranche of its non-brokered unit (Unit) private placement (the Private Placement) announced previously on October 24th, 2017 and has issued 11,130,000 units of the Company (Units) at a price of C$0.20 per Unit to raise gross proceeds of C$2,226,000. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company and one common share purchase warrant (a Warrant), with each Warrant entitling the holder to purchase one common share of the Company (a Warrant Share) for a period of two (2) years from closing at an exercise price of C$0.35 per Warrant Share in the first year and C$0.50 per Warrant Share in the second year, subject to the following accelerated expiry provision: in the event that the Companys common shares trade for a period of at least 20 consecutive trading days at a closing price equal to or in excess of C$0.50 per share at any time after four months following closing of the Private Placement up to the end of the first year term of the Warrants, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by giving notice to the holders thereof and in such case, the Warrants will expire on the 30th day after the date on which such notice is given by the Company.



On October 24, 2017, the Company announced a Private Placement of up to 15,000,000 units (Units) to be sold at a price of C$0.20 per Unit to raise gross proceeds of up to C$3,000,000. The Company has received a 30 day extension from the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) to complete the closing of the Private Placement.

A finders fee of 6% was paid to arms length third parties on a portion of the Private Placement.

The net proceeds raised from the Private Placement are intended to be used to expand the historic high grade Standby Mine gold deposit down plunge and prove the Homestake Mine model exists in the Rochford District, and, for corporate and general working capital purposes.

The securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement are subject to a hold period expiring on April 8, 2018 pursuant to applicable Canadian securities laws.

The Private Placement is subject to final TSXV approval.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

MINERAL MOUNTAIN RESOURCES LTD.

Nelson W. Baker, President and CEO

For further information, please contact:

Brad Baker

Vice-President Corporate Development & Director

604-714-0111 ext 205

bbaker@mineralmtn.com

Or visit our website: www.mineralmtn.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as such term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward looking information

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be forward-looking information under Canadian securities laws. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that the Company expects to occur, constitute forward looking- information. Forward looking information consists of statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words expects, plans, could or should occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking information are based on reasonable assumptions, such information does not constitute guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward- looking information. Factors that cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking information include gold prices, results of exploration and development activities, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of materials and equipment, timeliness of government approvals, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The Company cautions the foregoing list of important factors is not exhaustive. Investors and others who base themselves on the Company's forward-looking information should carefully consider the above factors as well as the uncertainties they represent and the risk they entail. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.com for further information.
TORONTO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Minera Alamos Inc. (TSX-V:MAI) (the "Company" or "Minera Alamos") is pleased to provide an update in advance of the first phase of exploration drilling planned at the La Fortuna gold project (the Project) in Durango, Mexico. During the compilation of historic information for the extended project area, drill holes and associated data were discovered for an area approximately 1300m southwest of the Companys La Fortuna Main Zone resource. The shallow historic drill holes provided indications of significant near surface disseminated gold/silver mineralization with heap leach style intervals of up to 50m in width1. Rock sampling in recent months surrounding the new target zone has returned assays up to 8 g/t Au and 30 g/t Ag over a mineralized area of approximately 500m x 300m.



New Discovery  La Pista

This new discovery area now named La Pista was an unexpected and exciting result of the recent work the Companys exploration team undertook at the La Fortuna project, said Miguel Cardona, Vice President of Exploration for Minera Alamos. The La Pista zone is located in an area of quartz monzanite breccias with the strong presence of tourmaline and quartz stockwork veining reminiscent of the structures that contain the existing La Fortuna Main Zone resource. The discovery of a new and potentially significant additional area of gold and silver mineralization in addition to the known areas of historic mining confirms our belief that the La Fortuna project area was the focus of intense regional hydrothermal activity. All of the areas targeted for Phase 1 drilling at the start of 2018 show significant potential to host new mineralized resources and none of them have been subjected to any modern exploration or drilling activity."

Led by Robelsis Altamirano since August of this year, the Companys La Fortuna exploration team have been based at site and working to compile historic project information while completing new surface mapping and rock sampling around prospective target areas. The first phase of new exploration drilling is planned for early 2018 and will focus on extensions to the current La Fortuna Main Zone resource in addition the highly prospective PN area and the recently discovered La Pista area. The PN target area is one of four historic mining areas within the La Fortuna project boundaries. Recent sampling has provided encouraging initial assay results and full assays are expected to be available in the coming weeks. PN area results to date have identified gold/silver mineralization at surface across an overall area of approximately 1800m x 1200m that includes a number of recorded historic mining zones - El Refugio, La Guadalupe, Magistral, Santa Fe, Plomosa and La Republicana.

The Companys current exploration program was initiated in the fall of 2017 and was focused initially at compiling available data relating to the historic mining/prospecting activities in the vicinity of the La Fortuna Project area. This was followed by surface mapping and sampling of the priority target areas in preparation for a Phase 1 exploration drilling program early in 2018. In addition to the existing La Fortuna Main Zone resource the extended claim area contains a number of other prospective target areas including:

Mineralization evident at surface to the north and also approximately 400-500m to the south along strike from the La Fortuna Main Zone resource.





The highly prospective PN Area at the north of the property that contains numerous occurrences of old mine workings and the potential for a large bulk tonnage gold/silver system associated with the intersection of two major fault systems and mineralization that can be followed at surface over a distance of approximately 2km.





The Ramada Zone which lies between the Fortuna Main and PN Zones on a parallel fault structure and exhibits grades of up to 15-40 g/t gold from sampling both at surface and inside of historic mine workings.





The Cerro Pelon Zone, located to the south of the major E-W fault system passing through the project area, where it appears the deeper porphyritic rocks have been uplifted and exposed. The area also contains historic workings and was delineated in the past by the Mexican Geological Service (SGM) to contain a large area (3-5 km in diameter) of anomalous and disseminated gold occurrences (0.1 to 10 g/t gold)1.

1The data as referenced is historical in nature and was compiled prior to National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101). A qualified person has not done sufficient work to confirm the results were obtained in compliance with NI 43-101 standards. Their relevance is limited to an indication of the exploration potential of the properties and in planning the ongoing exploration activities. Additional drilling and data analysis is required to upgrade or verify the historical values.



Guadalupe de los Reyes Updates

The Company is actively proceeding with the setup of a field office near its newly optioned Guadalupe de Los Reyes (Guadalupe) project (see press release dated October 24, 2017). Current plans are for the new field exploration manager to be in place for the start of 2018. Immediate responsibilities will include establishing a local presence with the community in order to advance discussions towards the completion of a full surface rights agreement as a prerequisite for a heap leach mine development permit should the Company proceed with an application later in 2018. In addition, historic data for the project will be combined with field mapping/sampling as preparation for a resource expansion exploration program at site.

Guadalupe is a gold-silver project located in the Sierra Madre Range in Sinaloa, Mexico and approximately 3 hours from the Company's base of operations in Culiacan. It is one of the most significant historic gold producers in this region of Mexico and estimated (historical estimates only) to have produced approximately 500-600,000 ounces of gold and 40 million ounces of silver over its operational life at reported grades of +10 g/t Au and +500 g/t Ag. Current near surface gold resource estimates consist of 380,100 Indicated ounces (6.8 MM tonnes @ 1.73 g/t Au) with an additional 155,200 Inferred ounces (3.2 MM tonnes @ 1.49 g/t Au)2, in addition to significant exploration potential from previously identified mineralized structures that remain undrilled. Minera Alamos immediate goal is to utilize its extensive in-house technical expertise to evaluate the potential for the project to be developed as a low capital heap leaching operation.

2Mineral Resource estimate as prepared by Tetra Tech Inc. in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43101) under the supervision of a qualified person. The most recent Technical Report (Preliminary Economic Assessment  PEA) was issued for Vista Gold by Tetra Tech on March 4, 2013 and amended/restated on July 3, 2014. Minera Alamos is treating the prepared resource estimates as current and reliable but will be evaluating development strategies for the project different than those outlined in the existing Technical Report (PEA). This includes consideration of an open pit mine with a heap leach extraction facility. The Company will be filing an updated technical report supporting the mineral resource estimate and results under its name within 45 days of this announcement.

Corporate Matters

The Board of Directors of the Company has approved the issuance of 4,750,000 options to certain of its management and staff pursuant to its stock option plan. The options are exercisable at a price of $0.17, are subject to agreed vesting schedules and expire in five years.

About Minera Alamos

Minera Alamos is an advanced stage exploration and development company. Its growing portfolio of high-grade Mexican projects includes the La Fortuna open pit gold project in Durango and the Guadalupe de los Reyes gold/silver project in Sinaloa. The Company is well financed to conduct all of its planned exploration and development activities and continues to pursue additional project acquisitions in Latin America.

Mr. Darren Koningen, P. Eng., Minera Alamos President & CEO, is the Qualified Person responsible for the technical content of this press release under National Instrument 43101. Mr. Koningen has supervised the preparation of, and approved the scientific and technical disclosures in this news release.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Minera Alamos Inc

Darren Koningen, President & CEO

416-306-0990 ext 201

Patrick Piette, Investor Relations

416-306-0990 ext 203

www.mineraalamos.com

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements



This news release may contain forward-looking information and Minera Alamos cautions readers that forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions and risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations of Minera Alamos included in this news release. This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements, which often, but not always, can be identified by the use of words such as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". These statements are based on information currently available to Minera Alamos and Minera Alamos provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements with respect to Minera Alamos future plans with respect to the Projects, objectives or goals, to the effect that Minera Alamos or management expects a stated condition or result to occur and the expected timing for release of a resource and reserve estimate on the Projects. Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, the economics of processing methods, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Minera Alamos mineral properties, the ability to complete a preliminary economic assessment which supports the technical and economic viability of mineral production. Minera Alamos financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: the absence of funding resulting from a determination by Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd not to exercise the royalty options contemplated under the Investment Agreement on the terms provided for therein or at all; an inability to finance and/or complete an updated resource and reserve estimate and a preliminary economic assessment which supports the technical and economic viability of mineral production; changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Minera Alamos activities; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Minera Alamos forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on Minera Alamos forward-looking statements. Minera Alamos does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by Minera Alamos or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
Tribune News Service

Sonepat, December 7

Armed men shot dead a man and injured his mother at Barona village under Kharkhoda police station in this district on Wednesday night.

The men came in a Scoroio.

The deceased has been identified as Dinesh and his mother as Kamla.

Police reached the village and brought the injured to the civil hospital at Kharkhoda.

A case has been registered against the unidentified men.
Satish Seth

Kaithal, December 7

A youth from Taragarh village in Kaithal district was reportedly murdered in Malaysia on December 2. Vikas had gone to Malaysia about 11 months ago. His family received the shocking news thorough some source in that country. The bereaved family members, who have no information through official channels, are making efforts to know the facts and have contacted the Malaysian Embassy in New Delhi.

According to information, another youth, who also was killed, belonged to Punjab but no further details about him are available. Vikass family members said he worked in a factory in Malaysia and Gurmeet, a resident of Punjab, Vikram, a resident of Barta village in Kaithal, and a Nepalese were his colleagues. On December 2 night, Vikas and Gurmeet arrived at the factory gate for duty when unidentified youths attacked them with sharp-edged weapons. Both reportedly died on the spot. Vikass family members got information the next day that Vikas had been injured in a fight. They repeatedly tried to contact him on his mobile phone but got no response. Later they learnt about his killing from own source.

Subhash, a Vikass relative, said that a Malaysian newspaper had published the news about the murder of two Indian youths but no further details were available. They had met MP Dushyant Chautala and sought his help in the matter.
Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 6

The Haryana Government will lodge an FIR against Fortis hospital, Gurugram, for causing death by negligence of seven-year-old Adya Singh, who died of dengue on September 14.

The government will also write to the Medical Council of India (MCI) for initiating proceedings against the doctors responsible.

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Health Minister Anil Vij today said the inquiry by a three-member panel of the Health Department found serious irregularities, unethical practices and lapses in the diagnostic protocol on part of the hospital.

He said the state would get a criminal case registered for causing death by negligence under Section 304-A of the IPC. He went to the extent of terming it murder. He said the government had also issued a notice to the hospital to cancel the licence of its blood bank after the probe panel highlighted gross violations.

The inquiry revealed that the hospital charged Adyas parents a whopping sum, besides minting 108 per cent profit on medicines and 1,737 per cent on other consumables. Adya was admitted for treatment of dengue where the hospital charged Rs 18 lakh for 15 days before her death on September 14.

Vij said the report suggested that Adya died while being transported to another hospital as after she was discharged, the ventilator was removed and no ambu bag was provided. The protocol as regards patients leaving against medical advice (LAMA) provides that the patient be transported under similar conditions as when kept in the hospital.

The report said since Fortis was provided land by HUDA on concessional rates, it was supposed to provide free treatment to 10 per cent EWS patients, 70 per cent discount to 20 per cent patients in IPD and free treatment to 20 per cent patients in OPD. However, the hospital was not found following the guidelines.

We are writing to HUDA for action, he said. Amit Jha, Principal Secretary (Health), said action would be initiated for not reporting dengue cases. The report, however, found no prima facie negligence during her stay in the ICU.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aerojet Rocketdyne, Inc., a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AJRD), recently achieved a significant milestone by completing a successful hot-fire test of a controllable solid rocket motor under the U.S. Air Force Demonstration and Validation Post Boost Study A program.

This hot-fire test successfully demonstrated the increased capabilities of an advanced, controllable solid rocket motor system, said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. Applying this technology could provide increased mission flexibility and capability in a future post boost propulsion system.

Post boost propulsion systems are a critical element of strategic and missile defense systems for final payload positioning and deployment. The Post Boost Study A program was aimed at identifying emerging propulsion concepts using a trade study approach and selecting high potential candidates for demonstration of technical maturity.

This program allowed us to evaluate various advanced technology propulsion systems and select one of the most promising  a controllable solid rocket motor system for hardware demonstration testing, said Vice President of Defense Advanced Programs Tyler Evans. Maturing this critical technology now will undoubtedly pay future dividends as our nation looks to modernize its strategic deterrent capabilities in the coming years.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is an innovative company delivering solutions that create value for its customers in the aerospace and defense markets. The company is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader that provides propulsion and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems, tactical systems and armaments areas, in support of domestic and international markets. Additional information about Aerojet Rocketdyne can be obtained by visiting our websites at www.Rocket.com and www.AerojetRocketdyne.com.

Steve Warren, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 703-650-0278

Steven.Warren@Rocket.com

Todd McConnell, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 561-882-5395

Todd.McConnell@Rocket.com




Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 7

In a typical case of proverbial shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted Himachal Prison Department is speeding up the process of installation of CCTV camera in all the jails after three under-trial prisoners escaped from Kanda jail yesterday.

Although the negligence on the part of sentries on duty is apparent, another fact that has come light is that there were no CCTV cameras in the Model Jail, Kanda, except at entry and exit points and no watch on the activities of the inmates.

The state police department is hastening the process of installation of CCTV camera in all the jails. A budget of Rs 2.5 crore was already sanctioned for the purpose and 50 per cent advance payment was also made to the State Electronic Corporation, DGP Somesh Goel said. The work had been initiated and cables were already laid in Kaithu jail, he added.

During the security audit of prisons conducted in 2015, it was found that there were no arrangements for lighting, Door Frame Metal detector (DFMD) and walkie-talkie. As a follow up, generators were provided, DFMD were installed, walkie-talkies were provided in all jails for mobility and the work for installing the CCTV was awarded.

We have requested the Electronic Corporation to complete the entire work within two months. Further, there is a problem of manpower which is far short of the prescribed norms of the Home Ministry, he added.

So far there was no trace of three under trial prisoners Lila Dhar Kharak, alias Lalit, Pratap Singh and Prem Bahadur, alias Prakash, all hailing from Nepal, who broke the jail in the intervening night of December 6 and 7 and escaped.

All these prisoners were booked for heinous crime like rape and murder and the police have launched frantic search operations and sealed the borders with Haryana and Uttarakhand to nab the fugitives but of no avail.

Strict vigil is being maintained on all entry points and vehicles and people are being searched. The police have clues that these prisoners have not been able to sneak outside the state.

Sources said that they were spotted near Jubbarhatti. Some locals informed the police but by the time the police reached the spot they had shifted to some other location. However, there was no confirmation from police of the version. The police have intensified the search in the nearby areas and was hopeful of arresting the prisoners.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, December 7

Seeking to forge a partnership with Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), a three-member delegation from Cyprus is on a three-day visit to the PAU to explore collaborative areas.

The delegation comprises Dr Dionysia Fasoula, Agricultural Research Officer, Agricultural Research Institute (ARI), Cyprus; Dr Sozos Sozou, Director, Heart4India Organisation, Cyprus; and Dr Gladuin P Singh, Dean, Heart4India. The delegation interacted with Dr Neelam Grewal, Dean, Postgraduate Studies, and Dr Navtej Bains, Director of Research, PAU.

Fasoula said, Our visit aims at promoting collaboration between Cyprus and India, particularly, between Agricultural Research Institute and Punjab Agricultural University. Both universities were established in 1962, she observed, while stating that it was a good time to broaden the horizons.

Agricultural Research Institute seeks to enter into cooperation with the PAU in the areas of plant breeding and genetics, microbiology, agricultural engineering and transfer of technology, she said. Dr Fasoula said, Plant breeding declined after the Green Revolution. Now, it is again in trend in Cyprus and holds a lot of relevance.

Grewal traced the history of the Green Revolution in India and establishment of the PAU. She said: Indian governments push to agriculture in 1960s paved the way for the Green Revolution and made the country self-sufficient in food grains. Punjab Agricultural University started with a high benchmark, she stated, while presenting the key outlines of the research, teaching and extension programmes of the PAU. Grewal said the PAU had been adjudged as the Best State Agricultural University by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in 2017. The delegation also visited the Soil Museum and the Crops Museum and the Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, PAU.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

The Congress on Thursday suspended its senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar from the primary membership of the party and issued him a show-cause notice, after he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a neech aadmi (vile man).

The disciplinary action against the Gandhi family loyalist came barely two days before the first phase of Assembly poll in Gujarat.

Congress communications in charge Randeep Surjewala said the action showed the partys Gandhian leadership and respect for the political rival. He asked whether Prime Minister Modi would dare to act similarly.

The Congress party has served a show-cause notice to Mani Shankar Aiyar and suspended him from the primary membership of the party, Surjewala said.

Aiyar today set off a political firestorm when he called Modi a neech kism ka aadmi (a vile man), a remark the latter claimed was a casteist slur against him.

Reacting to the PMs speech at a function to inaugurate the BR Ambedkar International Centre here, Aiyar said if anyone had contributed to taking Ambedkars dream forward, it was Jawaharlal Nehru.

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#WATCH: "Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai?: Congress' Mani Shankar Aiyar on PM Modi pic.twitter.com/sNXeo6a1Gi  ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017

Lambasting the PM, Aiyar told ANI, Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai. Aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai? (This man has a low level, and is not civilised. What was the need to indulge in dirty politics at this time?)

Read: Narendra Modi inaugurates BR Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi

Responding to Aiyars remark, Modi told an election rally in Surat: "They can call me 'neech jaati'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work."

Targeting Aiyar, Modi said he came from a good family, has a number of university degrees, was a diplomat for a number of years and remained a minister in the Manmohan Singh government, but was resorting to such insults. "This is an insult to Gujarat. Not just to Gujarat but to the entire nation." "You are the people who discriminated on the basis of caste. Not we. They feel troubled. You call us 'gandi naali ka keeda'. You call us low caste people but we won't lose our culture." He said Aiyar was speaking out of the "Mughlai mindset" that "sees everyone as 'neech'".

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi too disapproved of Aiyar's remark and said both he and the party expected the senior leader to apologise.

Expressing his thoughts on Twitter, Gandhi said that it is not the Congress party's culture to use such language against political opponents.

"BJP and Prime Minister routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the Prime Minister. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Gandhi tweeted.

Later, Aiyar apologised for using the word "neech" (low) for Modi but maintained that he had not referred to him as "low-born".

BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 7, 2017

"I never meant low-born. There is a difference in English language between words 'low' and 'low-born'. But in Hindi if low means low-born, then I tender apology," he told reporters after his remark triggered a political storm.

Mani Shankar Aiyers Neech remark against the Prime Minister displays a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the Neech.  Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) December 7, 2017

Asked about Rahul Gandhi's tweet that he did not appreciate Aiyar's words to address the Prime Minister, Aiyar said he could talk about it only after meeting Gandhi. With agencies
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

The deadline for making Aadhaar mandatory for availing benefits of more than 130 schemes, including linking of bank accounts with the 12-digit unique biometric identification number, will be extended till March 31 next year, the Centre told the Supreme Court on Thursday.

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A notification was likely to be issued on Friday to extend the current deadline of December 31, Attorney General KK Venugopal told a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.

Venugopal, however, clarified that the deadline for mobile phone number-Aadhaar linking will remain February 6, 2018, as ordered by the top court in another PIL that dealt with national security issue.

CJI Misra said he would set up a Constitution Bench next week to hear petitions challenging Aadhaar Act and related government notifications and see if any interim orders were needed to be passed.

A nine-judge Constitution Bench had on August 24 declared right to privacy a fundamental right and had said individual cases challenging the Aadhaar Act would be decided separately by a five-judge Constitution Bench.

As senior counsel Shyam Divan, representing petitioners, requested the court to ensure that no coercive action was taken against those not submitting the 12-digit unique biometric identification number, Venugopal said he was ready to argue and defend Aadhaar.

Divan wanted the ongoing Aadhaar enrolment process to be stayed.

The Attorney-General opposed it, saying that in such a situation nobody would bother to submit Aadhaar. There cannot be a stay on the Aadhaar scheme which has gone on for years, he said.

Venugopal said a Data Protection Committee headed by former SC Judge BN Srikrishna was likely to submit its final report to the government by February next year.

The Supreme Court had on November 3 asked banks and mobile telecom service providers to inform their customers about the last date for linking of accounts and mobile numbers with Aadhaar.

A Bench headed by Justice AK Sikri had, however, refused to stay such linking, noting that all Aadhaar-related matters had already been sent to a Constitution Bench which would assemble much before the deadlines for Aadhaar-linking for bank accounts and mobile phones.

The Government had on October 25 told the court that the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar to receive benefits of government schemes has been extended till March 31, 2018, for those who did not have the unique identification number but were willing to enrol for it.

Venugopal had submitted no coercive action would be taken against those who did not have Aadhaar but are willing to enrol for. Such people would not be denied benefits of social welfare schemes till March 31, he had said.
Jotirmay Thapliyal

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, December 7

Commandant of the Indian Military Academy Lt Gen SK Jha today said the Bangladesh army chiefs visit to the academy would improve the relations between both countries.

Chief of the Bangladesh army General Abu Belal Muhammad Shafiul Huq will review the passing-out parade to be held at the IMA on Saturday. He will be accompanied by his wife Shoma Huq.

Lt Gen Jha asserted that Bangladesh was Indias close neighbour and the two countries share a 4,900-km boundary. Both nations have great diplomatic ties and conducted joint military exercises in the recent past, he said.

He pointed out that the IMA had invited heads of the SAARC nations as reviewing officers for its passing-out parades in the past.

The army chiefs of Afghanistan and Nepal have reviewed the parade in the past and it is a matter of great honour that Bangladesh army chief will be at the IMA to review the parade this time, Lt Gen Jha said.

Referring to the training at the academy, he said stress was being laid on turning Gentlemen Cadets from scholastic warriors to techno warriors without compromising on physical aspect of the training.

On proposed underpass along the Chakrata road, which divides two campuses of the IMA, the Commandant said the proposal was in the final stage. He asserted that an underpass would help in strengthening security arrangements at the IMA.
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

In response to Chinas claim that an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has made an airspace violation and crashed on its side, the Ministry of Defence here said on Thursday that the UAV had crossed over due to some technical problem.

The Indian UAV which was on a regular training mission inside the Indian territory lost contact with the ground control due to some technical problem and crossed over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Sikkim sector.

The MoD said as per standard protocol, the Indian border security personnel immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV.

The Chinese have reverted with the location details of the UAV. The exact cause of the incident is under investigation, the MoD said.

The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols through institutional mechanisms to deal with situations along the India-China border areas.

Chinas Defence Ministry said the Indian UAV crashed into the Chinese side of the border.

The Indian drone intruded into Chinas airspace and crashed recently, and Chinas border troops had conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, said Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Commands joint staff department.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the country had lodged a diplomatic protest to India over the drone violating the Chinese sovereignty.

The Chinese militarys western theatre command jurisdiction covers almost all of the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC), including Tibets border region with India and the Ladakh region.

Indias move has infringed upon Chinas territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this, Zhang was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend Chinas national sovereignty and security resolutely, he said.

The Chinese militarys claim came months after India and China were locked in a standoff in the Dokalam sector after the Chinese troops began constructing a road near the Bhutan trijunction.

The 73-day-long Dokalam standoff ended on August 28 after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to Indias Chicken Neck corridor.

India had objected to the construction highlighting its security concerns. The road was being built by the Chinese troops in the area also claimed by Bhutan.

The militarys charge comes ahead of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yis visit to New Delhi to take part in the Russia-India-China (RIC) Foreign Ministers meeting to be held on December 11.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media here on Wednesday that Wang would meet top Indian officials on its sidelines.

This will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of second five-year term after Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is expected to be followed by the 20th round of India-China boundary talks in New Delhi between Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who are the designated Special Representatives.  With PTI
New Delhi, December 6

The father of the seven-year-old girl, who died of dengue at Fortis Hospital in Gurugram, has alleged that the hospital offered him Rs 35,37,889 to stop his social media campaign and any legal action against them.

Jayant Singh said, Senior members of Fortis had met me and offered me a cheque of Rs 10,37,889 refunding the entire amount. They said they will be offering me Rs 25 lakh cash on top of this, saying I will have to sign and enter a legal agreement assuring to stop my social media campaign, or going to court and taking legal action against them.

Earlier in the day, a committee formed by the Haryana government found criminal negligence on the part of the hospital, causing the death of a seven-year-old girl suffering from dengue.

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The statement came after a committee of senior doctors, formed by the state government, gave its recommendations.

The committee also alleged several irregularities, including refusal of appropriate ambulance service to the patient, not following leave against medical advice (LAMA) protocol, and overcharging.

The girl was on ventilator in the hospital, but she was provided with an ordinary ambulance. The ventilator system was withdrawn and an ambu bag was also not provided. This eventually led to the girl's death," Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij said.

The Haryana government would now file an FIR against the Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI) under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for death due to negligence and would also ask the Medical Council of India (MCI) to take an action against the hospital, which may include cancelling of its licence.

The committee also found hospital guilty of overcharging for medicines and platelets and has sent a notice for cancellation of its blood bank's licence.

It was also found by the committee that the hospital did not provide 20 per cent RBD to the patient's family, violating a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA).

Parents of the seven-year-old girl, who died on November 21 of dengue shock syndrome (DSS), had accused Fortis Hospital of charging Rs 16 lakh for a 15-day treatment.

The hospital, however, had denied the allegations. ANI
COVINGTON, Ky., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting Services (CTI), a global, privately held, full-service contract research organization announces the acquisition of Eurotrials, a full-service contract research organization, with more than 20 years of experience, and strong local expertise in Europe and Latin America.



The acquisition strengthens CTIs existing Real World Evidence business, adding significant presence and expertise in Europe and Latin America. Eurotrials has offices in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Portugal and Spain, covering over 15 countries in both regions. Eurotrials provides an extensive array of services from early- to late-stage research as well as product support in accordance with global and specific regional requirements. Additionally, the Eurotrials footprint augments CTIs current reach, enabling CTI to better serve clients and global programs.

We are excited to join our companies together to create a stronger full-service global clinical research organization, according to Timothy J. Schroeder, CTI Founder and CEO. This combined company will be one of the 20 largest CROs in the world, with associates in more than 30 countries across six continents. We believe this combined entity is the oldest, largest, privately owned CRO in the world with the founders still active in the company operations. Were also thrilled that the leaders of Eurotrials, Maria Joao Queiroz and Ines Costa, will continue to play a large role in the organization.

We are very pleased with the opportunity to combine strengths and expertise with CTI, according to Maria Joao Queiroz, MD, Founder and CEO of Eurotrials. Our companies have a strong cultural fit and a similar approach to clients and collaborators. Joining CTI enhances the access our clients have to industry leading therapeutic expertise, a broader global footprint, and a greater capacity for innovative solutions, while still maintaining focus on the local and regional proximity to our clients, as well as the quality and customer service that is highly valued by Eurotrials clients.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Plante Moran and Fifth Third Bank provided support to CTI throughout the acquisition.

About CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting Services

CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting Services is a global, privately held, full-service contract research organization (CRO), delivering a complete spectrum of clinical trial and consulting services throughout the lifecycle of development, from concept to commercialization, including real world evidence. CTIs focused therapeutic approach provides pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device firms with clinical and disease area expertise in rare diseases, regenerative medicine/gene therapy, immunology, transplantation, nephrology, hematology/oncology, neurology, infectious diseases, hematology, cardiopulmonary, and pediatric populations. CTI also offers a fully integrated multi-specialty clinical research site that conducts phase I-IV trials. CTI has a passion for helping life-changing therapies succeed in chronically and critically ill patient populations. With clinical trial experience across 6 continents, CTI partners with research sites, patients, and sponsors to fulfill unmet medical needs. CTI is headquartered in the Greater Cincinnati, OH area, with operations across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. For more information visit www.ctifacts.com
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

Past record shows that whenever Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been slurred by political opponents, it has always worked well for the party.

It came true in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when Congress repeat offender Mani Shankar Aiyer predicted that Modi (then the BJP candidate for the post), a chaiwallah, would never become the prime minister.

Around the same time, Priyanka Vadra also accused Modi of indulging in neech rajniti.

The results are for all to see, a reason the BJP is projecting Aiyers neech aadmi remarks as an insult to PMs caste (backward classes) and not his actions, which he claims he meant.

BJP leaders, who till yesterday were battling with predictions of a neck-to-neck with the Congress, now say Aiyars neech aadmi remark has propelled the party close to the 150-mark set by chief Amit Shah in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly that goes to polls on December 9 and 14.

As per Shah, Aiyers remark reflected Congress inherent upper-class mindset against so-called low born.

Neither shocked nor surprised by Mani Shankar Aiyar referring to PM as Neech. This is the culture of the Congress party. People of Gujarat will punish anti-poor, anti-Dalit, anti-Tribal and anti-OBC Congress, he said,

Neither shocked nor surprised by Mani Shankar Aiyars referring to PM as Neech. This is the culture of the Congress Party. People of Gujarat will punish anti-poor, anti-Dalit, anti-Tribal and anti-OBC Congress.  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

Yamraj

Maut Ka Saudagar

Ravan

Gandi Nali Ka Keeda

Monkey

Rabies Victim

Virus

Bhasmasur

Gangu Teli

Goon

These are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians.  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

Yamraj, Maut Ka Saudagar, Ravan, Gandi Nali Ka Keeda, Monkey, Rabies Victim, Virus, Bhasmasur, Gangu Teli, Goon These are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians, Shah posted on Twitter.



The prime minister termed it a direct insult of his home state Gujarat.

Gujarat will reply, he warned, They can call me neech (low), but my work is oonch (high), he added



It all started with the PM accusing the Congress party of seeking votes in the name of BR Ambedkar but trying to erase his contribution in building India.

Such was his (Ambedkars) incredible strength that when years after his demise efforts were made by such people to crush his philosophy, when efforts were made to erase his contribution towards nation building, his ideals could not be wiped out from peoples memory, he said inaugurating the Ambedkar International Centre conceived several years ago.



To this Aiyer said: He (Modi) is a neech kism ka aadmi who has no sabhyata.

Observers believe the remark may have offset the recent turn in Congress fortunes due to its new-found Hindutva pitch.

Projected to land between 100 and 110 seats, it is advantage-BJP. Any erosion in the partys existing seats has the capacity to dent its image, putting a question mark on economic reforms undertaken by the BJP-led Centre.
Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, December 7



The Maharashtra government claims to have waived the loans of 41 lakh farmers and has disbursed nearly Rs 20,000 crores over the last few days after waiving the need for linking farmers' Aadhar cards to their bank accounts.



According to data released by the state government on Thursday, farm loans to the tune of Rs 14,864 crore were waived off and another Rs 4,673 crore were waived under a one-time settlement scheme for farmers.



The loan waiver came days after the Maharashtra government waived the linking of farmers' Aadhar cards to their bank accounts.



Several banks in both the public and co-operative sector had linked multiple farm loan accounts, in some cases more than a hundred, to a single Aadhar card number since the number had not been collected from farmers at the time of disbursal of the loans.

In many cases, bank employees had entered random numbers in the column meant for Aadhar numbers.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had earlier said that the linkage of Aadhar cards with bank accounts was essential for disbursal of farm loans in order to weed out the names of bogus beneficiaries.



Under the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana, as the scheme is called, farmers will have loans upto Rs 1.5 lakh waived off.

Farmers, whose loans are waived off, are being given a certificate to the effect by the lending banks. This would enable the farmers to apply for fresh loans, an official from the state co-operative department said.

The state government claims to have received 56.59 lakh applications covering 77.29 lakh accounts.



Fadnavis said the government will soon complete the farm loan waiver process with dues of all eligible farmers being settled.
New Delhi, December 7

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said on Thursday without elaborating when it will take place.

His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting tomorrow after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital.

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Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine, the ambassador told Rajya Sabha TV.

He, however, did not elaborate when the visit will take place.

Participating in a discussion on the channel, he said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel.

Reacting to the US announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, India today said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Indias position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country, he said responding to a query regarding Indias position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.  PTI
New Delhi, December 7

There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources said amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UKs Fraud Act, 2006, against Mallya, a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the governments case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the governments extradition plea.

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The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money-laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, on Wednesday.

The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India, he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrates court.

Mallya, who was arrested by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds. PTI
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the anticipatory bail pleas of former chief engineer Harvinder Singh and contractor Gurinder Singh, who are facing criminal investigation as accused in the Rs 1,000 crore Punjab irrigation scam.

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A Bench of Justice NV Ramana and Justice S Abdul Nazeer dismissed their special leave petitions after senior counsel Shyam Divan and Punjab Advocate-General Atul Nanda opposed it on the ground that the accused needed to be interrogated.

We are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order passed by the (Punjab and Haryana) High Court, said the Bench in its order after perusing the relevant material and hearing senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi and KTS Tulsi on behalf of the accused duo.

However, acceding to the request of Rohatgi and Tulsi, the top court granted one week from Thursday to the two accused to surrender before the trial court as Punjab government did not object to it.

The petitioners had challenged the November 16 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissing anticipatory bail pleas of six accused, including Harvinder Singh and Gurinder Singh.

This court is convinced that there is prima facie evidence against all petitioners and huge evidence is required to be collected by the investigating agency and that is possible only if the custodial interrogation is allowed, the High Court had said.

However, the Supreme Court said, Any observations made by the High Court in the impugned order does not come in the way of the petitioners in considering the bail applications and the main matters before the trial court. As a sequel to the above, pending applications, if any, shall stand disposed of.

The accused are facing probe in relation to an FIR registered on August 17 by the State Vigilance Bureau, Punjab, for alleged cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and various other offences, including those under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The Bureau alleged that in the past seven-eight years, engineers from the Irrigation Department and other officials misused their powers connived with Gurinder and allocated works worth Rs 1,000 crore to the contractor on a rate which was 50% more than departmental rates and thereby caused huge loss to the government.
GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 6

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who arrived in Amritsar on Tuesday on the last leg of his India visit, paying tributes to Jallianwala Bagh martyrs today, said it was time the British Government apologised for the tragedy that "one must never forget."

Khan's grandparents were born in India. His parents migrated from Pakistan to the UK.

The Mayor stopped at the martyrs' well for a couple of minutes and made enquiries. Laying a wreath at the Flame of Liberty memorial, he observed a one-minute silence. "It was incredibly moving to visit Jallianwala Bagh," he told mediapersons.

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Prior to the Jallianwala Bagh visit, Khan paid obeisance at the Golden Temple, ate langar and undertook 'sewa' by washing utensils. It was an absolute privilege to be in Amritsar. Going to Golden Temple was very important for me as it is spiritual home for thousands of Sikh Londoners and millions of Sikhs around the world," he said.

Received by SGPC chief secretary Dr Roop Singh, the dignitary was presented with a replica of the Golden Temple, siropa (robe of honour) and books on Sikhism. Along with his 16-member delegation, he crossed over to Pakistan via the Attari-Wagah border later in the day.

Responding to Khan's suggestion, Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh said: "Coming from a British Government functionary, it was good, and if implemented, would go a long way in strengthening ties between India and the UK, and perhaps, to some extent, assuaging the wounds of Indians who suffered the pain of Independence struggle."
Jerusalem/Gaza, Dec 7

The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank, deploying several new army battalions and putting other forces on standby, describing the measures as part of its readiness for possible developments. Protests so far have been scattered and largely non-violent.

But dozens of Palestinians gathered at two points on the Gaza border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. Inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: Death to America! Death to the fool Trump! and burning tyres.

Trump reversed decades of US policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperilling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.

The status of Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions, is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza. Haniyeh, elected the groups overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the US decision on Friday, calling it a day of rage.

Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage protests but said they should be peaceful.

Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the citys eastern sector.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark, said on Thursday many countries would follow the US move and contacts were underway. He did not name the countries he was referring to. President Trump has immortalised himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people, he said in a speech at Israels Foreign Ministry.  Reuters

United Nations Security Council meets today

The United Nations Security Council has convened an emergency meeting on Friday after US President Donald Trump in a controversial move recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital. At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and France, joined by other non-permanent members - Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay - asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.

EU for making Jerusalem capital for Palestinians too

The EUs top diplomat pledged on Thursday to reinvigorate diplomacy with Russia, the United States, Jordan and others to ensure Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem after US President Donald Trump recognised the city as Israels capital

The European Union, a member of the Middle East Quartet along with the United States, the United Nations and Russia, believes it has a duty to make its voice heard as the Palestinians biggest aid donor and Israels top trade partner

The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both, EU foreign policy chief said

Jewish restaurant in Netherlands attacked
Washington, December 7

The United Nations Security Council has convened a meeting on Friday in the wake of US President Donald Trump announcing his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

At least eight of the 15 members of the Security Council, including Britain and Francethe two permanent members which closely align themselves on most of the global issuesjoined by other non-permanent members--Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay--asked for a special meeting of the top decision-making wing of the New York-headquartered world body.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected to address the Security Council on Friday.

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Earlier in a statement, Guterres said Jerusalem was the final status issue and must be resolved through direct negotiations.

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In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: there is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he said, adding that he has consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

Jerusalem is a final status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties on the basis of the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, taking into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, Guterres said.

Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city. He also directed the State Department to immediately begin the process of construction of a US Embassy in Jerusalem.

His announcement has outraged several countries.

Many of American allies and partners have criticised Trump for the controversial decision.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement said she disagreed with the US announcement to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it, she said.

May stressed that the status of Jerusalem should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis the Palestinians.

Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, she said, adding, Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.

In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, May said. PTI
Kathmandu, December 7

Polling opened on Thursday in 45 districts of Nepal for the last phase of the historic provincial and parliamentary elections that many hope will bring the much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.

More than 12.2 million voters are eligible to exercise their voting rights in the second phase of the polls.

The voting is taking place for 128 constituencies of Parliament's House of Representatives and 256 seats of Provincial Assemblies in 45 districts.

In total 4,482 candidates, including Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, will be trying their fate in the final phase.

For the House of Representatives, 1,663 candidates are contesting and 2,819 candidates are trying for the Provincial Assemblies.

As many as 15,344 polling centres have been set out for the polling that started early on Thursday amid tight security and will continue till 5 pm.

Vote counting is expected to start later on Thursday.

The first phase of the polls in the land-locked country was successfully held in 32 districts on November 26.

Around 200,000 security personnel, including the Army, have been deployed for the polls in an attempt to step up security in the wake of explosions at various parts of the country ahead of the elections.

This is for the first time that elections for Parliament and Provincial Assemblies are being conducted under the new Constitution promulgated in September 2015.

The elections will elect 128 Members of Parliament and 256 Members of the Provincial Assemblies.

The House of Representatives consists of 275 members. Of them, 165 are elected directly under the First-Past-the-Post system while the remaining 110 come through Proportional Representation system.

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.

While many hope Nepal's first state elections will hasten regional development, others fear they will spark a fresh wave of violence.

In 2015, when Nepal adopted a new Constitution that split it into seven states, dozens of people were killed in ethnic clashes over territory and rights.

Following the adoption of the new Constitution in 2015, the ethnic Madhesi group, mostly of Indian-origin, protested for months, saying they were not getting enough territory in one of the states and were also facing discrimination.

The polls are a major step toward implementing the new Constitution.  PTI.
Nairobi, December 7

Swearing in an alternative president of Kenya would be an act of treason, the countrys Attorney- General said on Thursday, days before an Opposition leader expects to be inaugurated by an unofficial peoples assembly.

Such an inauguration would worsen the rifts opened by an acrimonious election season, when more than 70 people died in political violence. The extended campaigns eventually led to President Uhuru Kenyattas re-election.

Attorney-General Githu Muigai did not name anyone, but Opposition leader Raila Odinga said last month that he would be inaugurated by a peoples assembly on December 12  Kenyas Independence Day.

Unless a candidate was declared the victor in an election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the swearing-in was conducted by the Kenyan chief justice, Muigai told a news conference, such a inauguration is a process wholly unanticipated by the constitution and is null and void.

The criminal law of the Republic of Kenya stipulates that sort of process is high treason, he said. It is high treason of the persons involved, and any other person facilitating that process.

Under Kenyan law, treason is punishable by death.

Muigai said peoples assemblies proposed by the National Super Alliance, Odingas opposition coalition, were illegal as well.

These institutions are unconstitutional they are illegal, they are null and void. The persons involved in their creation are involved in extra-constitutional activity and may be visited by the full force of the law, he said.

So far, 12 Kenyan counties have passed motions supporting the formation of a peoples assembly, most of them counties that had backed the opposition in Kenyas protracted voting.

Odinga and Kenyatta faced off in an election in August that Kenyatta won. But the Supreme Court nullified the result, and a repeat election was held on Oct. 26. Odinga boycotted that vote, saying reforms needed to avoid illegalities and irregularities had not been made. Kenyatta won again, with 98 percent of the vote.

The United States had urged Opposition leaders to work within the law and avoid actions like the proposed inauguration ceremony, a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi said on Wednesday, following a visit to Kenya by Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

Without directly mentioning the ceremony or the United States, Odinga said on Thursday that Kenyans should be left to solve their own problems.

Our friends can give us advice ... in privacy. Dont come and shout at us, and tell us that we are going to violate the constitution. Which constitution, my foot, Odinga told reporters in Nairobi. Reuters
WELLESLEY, Mass., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After years of promise, electric vehicles (EV) finally began to enjoy slow, steady sales at the beginning of the 21st Century, and the global market, worth more than $75.7 billion in 2017, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.0% between 2017 and 2022, when the industry could be worth almost $128 billion, according to a report by BCC Research. The global EV market now includes passenger cars, scooters, low velocity vehicles, buses, niche vehicles and commercial and industrial vehicles. For passenger vehicles, EV types include the hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles.



Passenger EVs make up the bulk of the markets value and growth, according to the report Electric Vehicles and Fuel Cell Vehicles: Global Markets to 2022. The passenger EV market is anticipated to be worth $63.2 billion by 2022. However, in terms of units, the EV market will be dominated by battery-powered scooters and bikesmore than 55 million sold in 2017 and 79 million could be sold annually by 2022.

Leading EV makers include Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Dolomitech, Fiat, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and Yamaha. Leading hybrid EV makers include Acura, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Volkswagen. Leading plug-in hybrid EV makers include Audi, BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volvo. Leading pure EV makers include Tesla, Toyota, Vectrix, Volkswagen, Yamaha and Zero Motorcycles.

Research Highlights

So-called exotic EV power sources include capacitive energy storage, flywheel energy storage, hydro-hybrid and water fuel cells. Of these, capacitive energy storage and flywheel energy storage could begin to have a small impact on the EV market by 2022.

Niche EVs run a broad spectrum of types and current use status. An area of focus are military applications, where pure EV and hybrids have been deployed and battery-powered fighting vehicles have been tested. Among the benefits are the fact that certain fuels do not need to be transported across war zones, operations are quiet and there are no heat signatures.

A substantial benefit of the wider use of EVs, HEVs, PHEVs and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) is the direct and immediate reduction of air pollution through the elimination of vehicle exhaust.

Both HEVs and PHEVs can significantly reduce the generation of toxic pollutants, particulates, ozone, and, most notably, greenhouse gases, said report author and BCC Research analyst Donald Saxman. Depending on how quickly they are adopted and where and when they are recharged, a certain amount of air pollution will be transferred from numerous small point sources (automobiles) to fewer larger point sources (power plants that burn fossil fuel). The potential for pollution abatement and a consequent reduction in the production of greenhouse gases is one of the most important forces driving the EV industry.

Chinese Scooter and Electric Bike Makers Now Looking to India for Expansion

The majorityabout 80% by volumeof the worlds market for electric scooters, motorcycles and personal mobility devices are sold in China. More than 1,000 relatively small Chinese companies produce electric bikes and electric scooters, with a near-equal number of companies making lead-acid batteries. Now, Chinese manufacturers in the industry are looking to India to sustain their growth. One limiting factor to growth, both in China and India, is that batteries are rarely recycled in these regions, and Chinas lead consumption now goes to fill demand for EV batteries. There are nascent calls to limit, permit or even prohibit EV scooters and bikes in China, and these same concerns are a constraint against wider adoption in India.

Editors/reporters requesting analyst interviews should contact steven.cumming@bccresearch.com.

About BCC Research



BCC Research is a publisher of market research reports that provide organizations with intelligence to drive smart business decisions. By partnering with industry experts worldwide, BCC Research provides unbiased measurements and assessments of global markets covering major industrial and technology sectors, including emerging markets. For more information about BCC Research, please visit bccresearch.com. Follow BCC Research on Twitter at @BCCResearch.

Data and analysis extracted from this press release must be accompanied by a statement identifying BCC Research LLC, 49 Walnut Park, Building 2, Wellesley, MA 02481, Telephone: 866-285-7215; Email: editorial@bccresearch.com as the source and publisher. Thank you.


Bangkok, December 7

Thai police have arrested four members of a Hells Angels biker gang accused of drug crimes, violence and posing a threat to society, the Tourist Police said on Thursday.

Three Australians and a Canadian were arrested on Wednesday in Pattaya, a major tourist resort with a reputation as a hub for foreign gangs, drug dealing and the sex industry.

Piyapong Ensarn of the Pattaya Tourist Police told Reuters that two of the accused gang members would be deported and the two others would be charged with drug offences.

"Traces of cocaine were found on them," he said.

Reuters was unable to contact either the accused or their lawyers for comment. Pattaya is 100 km (60 miles) southeast of the Thai capital, Bangkok.

Police said they were still looking for three Australians believed to be members of the gang. A British member of the gang had fled the country before he could be arrested, Piyapong said.

The gang made headlines in 2015 when one of its members was murdered by an Australian man, who was sentenced to death in February for the killing.  Reuters.
Ramallah (Palestinian Territories), December 7

US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital sparked Palestinian protests, clashes and a call for a new intifada on Thursday as fears grew of fresh bloodshed in the region.

Trumps announcement also prompted an almost universal diplomatic backlash that continued on Thursday, with fresh warnings from Turkey, the European Union and Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however lavished praise on Trump, saying his name would now be associated with Jerusalems long history and urging other countries to follow his lead.

The Israeli military deployed hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank amid uncertainty over the fallout, while clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces erupted in various areas.

In a speech in Gaza City, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for a new intifada, or uprising.

Protests were held in West Bank cities including Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, as well as in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces dispersed several hundred protesters with tear gas at a checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah, while the Palestinian Red Crescent reported dozens wounded from tear gas, rubber bullets and live fire in the West Bank.

Three Palestinians were wounded east of the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, medical sources and witnesses said.

Trumps defiant movemaking good on a pledge made during his 2016 presidential campaignends seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the Holy City, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump said it marks the start of a new approach to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said in a speech from the White House on Wednesday, urging calm and the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate.

But his willingness to part with international consensus on such a sensitive issue drew increasingly urgent warnings from around the world.

EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the decision could take the region backwards to even darker times. Russia said it viewed the move with serious concern and Saudi Arabia called it unjustified and irresponsible. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it would put the region in a ring of fire.

Hey Trump! What do you want to do? he asked.

What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace. Palestinian leaders were outraged, with president Mahmud Abbas saying Trump had disqualified the United States from its traditional role as peace broker in the Middle East conflict.

Palestinian shops in east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as in the West Bank were largely shuttered and schools closed on Thursday after a general strike was called.

By this decision, America became a very small country, like any small country in the world, like Micronesia, Salah Zuhikeh, 55, told AFP in Jerusalems Old City.

America was a great country for us and everyone. Trumps move left many angry US allies struggling to find a diplomatic response.

Through gritted teeth, Britain described the move as unhelpful and France called it regrettable. Germany said plainly that it does not support Trumps decision.

Eight countries including Britain, France and Italy pressed for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in response, which was set for tomorrow.  AFP
Terry Kilpatrick is president of Billy Barnes Enterprises. Photo by Corey McDonald

Terry Kilpatrick attended his first Alabama Trucking Association event 25 years ago, invited by a member to the annual convention.

I was in awe of the great trucking legends who were there, men like Dempsey Boyd and Walter Poole, he says. These were successful businessmen who offered great ideas and a deep knowledge about trucking  and they were willing to freely share that knowledge with others. I have always remembered and appreciated those days.

Now with his own successful business, Billy Barnes Enterprises in Frisco City, Alabama. Kilpatrick wants to give something back. During his one-year term hes working on new public outreach programs to bring younger workers to the industry and help the public understand truckings purpose and value to the states economy.

The 65-year-old former Army helicopter pilot turned fleet executive quickly allocated additional funds for ATA staff to develop and implement programs to improve services to members and showcase truckings contributions to the states economy and its efforts toward industry professionalism. He also has plans to work with some of the associations legacy members to establish a foundation devoted to industry research, outreach, and charity.

Company History

Monroe County, Alabama, is a hotbed of forest products industry activity. In fact, it was the reason Kilpatricks stepfather and company founder Billy Barnes got his start in trucking.

Back then, the region was in the midst of an economic boom, with several forest products producers starting up new facilities or upgrading existing operations. Barnes recognized the need for a specialized trucking outfit to service the booming industry. In 1975 the owners of Harrigan Lumber Co. approached him about contract hauling for their mill. Within weeks of accepting Harrigans offer, Barnes had bought a couple of trucks, hired a skeleton crew of drivers, and hit the road.

By the end of the 1970s, after five years of military service, Kilpatrick returned to Monroeville to help his dad and younger brother Donnie grow the business. At the time, the business had about 10-15 trucks, and about as many drivers, but demand was there and the future looked promising. Throughout the following years, the family business prospered, adding capacity and qualified people as markets allowed.

Kilpatrick has been with the family business for nearly 40 years. Prior to that, he served as an officer in the Army serving as a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division, piloting helicopters, overseeing personnel, and performing general managerial tasks. His military background and education, which includes an undergraduate degree from Middle Tennessee State University, and a Masters degree in Human Resource Management from Pepperdine University, have served him well during his career in fleet management.

Terry and Donnie lost their dad in an automobile accident in 1999. The company was able to continue its prosperity because of proper estate planning and the fact that Donnie and Terry had the wherewithal to continue building the business. The brothers worked as equal partners for six years after their dads accident. In 2006, Donnie was also killed in an automobile accident. He was 48.

Difficult Times

Donnies death was tough; he had been in total charge of the maintenance department and was well respected by coworkers and vendors for his mechanical knowledge and skills. A few months after Donnies death, Terry received news from his doctor that hed developed esophageal cancer. The same day he got that bad news, he recalls, The very next call I received was the IRS letting me know that the company would soon go through a full audit.

So for most of the fall of 2006, Kilpatrick underwent treatment for cancer, dealt with an extensive IRS probe, and continued working to reorganize the company following Donnies death.

It was a lot to deal with for a few months, but fortunately I had hired my nephew, Luke Hudson, the previous summer to take over the role of operations manager. He stepped in and did an excellent job managing the business during my absence. It all turned out great. Im now cancer free and doing fine.

His first task after recovery from cancer surgery was to recruit a new head of the maintenance department, bringing in veteran fleet manager Jerry Layton, who had more than 25 years of truck maintenance management with Schneider, Evergreen Transportation and other area fleets.

With very short runs and a lot of loading and unloading, Billy Barnes' maintenance routines are a cornerstone of the operation's longevity and profitability. Photo by Corey McDonald

Donnie knew so much about maintaining trucks. I knew we needed to find someone quickly to move us forward, Kilpatrick says. We had talented folks working in the shop who kept us going during the transition, but none of them felt they had the experience to run the whole department. We needed a proven manager who could lead that department from the first day.

After solving the maintenance situation, Terry talked to his oldest son, Bryan, who had taken a job after graduating from the University of Alabama with Tuscaloosas WTI Transport in the maintenance department. It was an opportunity to determine if he really wanted a career in trucking.

Terry asked Bryan to come back to Monroeville and work for the family company. He started in 2008 and ran the safety and human resources department for several years. Bryan working with the operations department to modernize the fleet of 180 trucks with on-board cameras and electronic logs. He also implemented online safety training for drivers with Vertical Alliance Group.

Improving Operations

After weathering a number of tumultuous years, Kilpatrick is focusing on the companys future. The management team is taking advantage of newer equipment and technology to improve services to customers, protect equipment, and better train employees. Bryans focus, after the recent hiring of Randy Watson, previously VP of safety at Birmingham-based J&M Tank Lines, will shift to sales and operations.

Other technical advances include the addition of McLeod Softwares latest version. Our dispatchers really like it, he says. In the last year or two, weve made major investments in the areas of safety and technology in an effort to improve the safe and efficient movement of our customers freight.

Kilpatrick brings more than 40 years in fleet management to the Alabama Trucking Associaiton. Photo by Corey McDonald

The company operates three divisions. The largest runs wood chips, shavings, bark, and saw dust. A flatbed side hauls finished lumber, poles, plywood, and general commodities. The dedicated division hauls for other local plants and mills.

Kilpatrick and his team have focused on improving the operations CSA score. Our type of work is short haul with a lot of loading and unloading that generates more wear and tear on equipment. Our team is very proactive and conscious of that.

We have worked incredibly hard the past few years to fine tune our fleet maintenance and safety programs. I am proud to say that our programs have resulted in much improved CSA scores. They are now among the best in its peer group.

The company is even working on streamlining its equipment rotation to maximize newer, more efficient trucks. For years we ran trucks as long as we could, Kilpatrick says. But more recently weve moved to a set rotation system, especially for tractors. We believe a rotation system designed for our particular business model will result in lower overall cost.

The operation uses a mix of Internationals, Kenworths, Macks, and Volvos, pulling a mixture of about 300 Peerless and Dorsey vans and flatbed trailers.

Kilpatrick admits that the operation hasnt grown much lately, but looking ahead he believes it is well prepared for its future. Weve put people and systems in place for better utilization of what we have, he says. Truth is, weve never had a dedicated salesman. All of our business has come from word of mouth. We are not going to chase growth at the expense of poor service to our existing customers. This companys success has been because of dedicated, hard-working employees and loyal customers. I will never forget that.

Adapted from a feature in the Alabama Trucking Association magazine. Used with permission.
Touting the universitys personal touch, TUs president was among officials hand-delivering acceptance letters to hundreds of high school students this week.

Seniors at 10 area schools received University of Tulsa acceptance letters  254 blue boxes filled with necessary materials  on Wednesday and Thursday.

TU President Gerard Clancy said the interaction gives university officials a chance to demonstrate the low student-to-faculty ratio to students who may attend the university.

We have the opportunity with all the area high schools here in Tulsa to show that personal touch that TU has, Clancy said.

Joe Bales, 17, was one of those students. TU officials delivered his acceptance letter and 36 others Thursday morning at Booker T. Washington High School.

Bales, with only mild uncertainty, said he will continue studying the subjects he enjoys in high school: physics and music.

Throughout high school, (music) has actually been my secondary focus, he said. It has been what Ive been focusing most on other than academics.

Bales expressed his confidence in the science programs at his high school and at TU. He said he leans toward studying astrophysics, in part, because of growing up with media that emphasized those topics, such as Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and Public Broadcasting Services Space Time.

Mathematics clicks for Bales. And because of that, he said, he finds his connection to physics and music.

Spirits among the Booker T. Washington students were generally high as they celebrated Thursday with their acceptance letters in hand. Goldie, the universitys canine ambassador, was also on hand to greet the students, and the golden retriever stole the show.

Clancy said his long-term goal for TU is to be a pipeline for Tulsas best and the brightest from high schools, through the university and into their professional lives in Tulsa.

The future of the city is going to really rely on young, creative talent, Clancy said. As the baby boomers are retiring, 10,000 of them a day across the United States, cities that can retain, develop, recruit young talent are going to do much better than those that cant.

All recipients of the acceptance letters will have scholarships to cover at least some of the costs associated with college, TU spokeswoman Mona Chamberlin said.
Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe says he will support Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore because it is a "numbers game."

"I would support him or will support him," Inhofe told CBS Miami. "Its a numbers game. I want Republicans to maintain control."

Moore is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with minors when he was in his 30s.

Last month, Inhofe and Sen. James Lankford said Moore should end his campaign if the accusations were accurate.

If he's guilty of what he's been accused of, he should step down, Inhofe said when asked by reporters in Midwest City, as reported in The Oklahoman.

If he's guilty at all, we will figure out some way or should figure out some way to make sure he is not our nominee. I think everybody's in agreement. I heard a statement that was made by Richard Shelby  he is the senior senator from Alabama and he's a Republican  and he said, as I'm saying, that if there's any truth to that, we've got to get rid of that guy.

Five days later, Inhofe told an Oklahoma City television station "I'm pretty much convinced that the guy should not be seated in the Senate."

Moore, however, refused to drop out, and Republicans  in many cases grudgingly  have decided to back Moore rather than risk losing a previously safe seat to Democrats.

Republicans hold a narrow 52-48 advantage in the Senate and fear losing the majority in next year's elections.
HOUSTON, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orion Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) (the "Company") a leading specialty construction company, today announced a change in its management structure.



As previously discussed, the Company continues to execute on its strategic vision to be the premier specialty contractor in the infrastructure, industrial, and building sectors. As part of this, the Company is in the process of making structural changes to support future success. Moving forward, Orion will continue to focus on the success and development of its three business sectors; the marine segment, part of the infrastructure sector; the concrete segment, part of the building sector; and the recently established industrial sector. Each segment will have a segment leader and encompass all the support functions needed for that segment.

In connection with these structural changes, Dwayne Breaux, Chief Operating Officer, has left the Company. With his departure, the Company will not seek to replace the Chief Operating Officer position.

As we move forward, we will have executive leadership at the segment level to run the unique aspects of each of our business lines, said Mark Stauffer, President and Chief Executive Officer. The decision to eliminate the Chief Operating Officer position is strategic for our alignment along segmental lines and will support execution of our strategic plan. We appreciate the positive impacts Dwayne has made on the organization and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

About Orion Group Holdings

Orion Group Holdings, Inc. is a premier specialty construction company, in the infrastructure, industrial, and building sectors, in the continental United States, Alaska, Canada and the Caribbean Basin through its marine segment, the Orion Marine Group brand, and its concrete segment, the TAS Commercial Concrete brand. The Companys marine segment services includes marine transportation facility construction, marine pipeline construction, marine environmental structures, dredging of waterways, channels and ports, environmental dredging, design, and specialty services. Its concrete segment provides turnkey concrete construction services including pour and finish, dirt work, layout, forming, rebar, and mesh across the light commercial, structural and other associated business areas. The Company is headquartered in Houston, Texas with regional offices throughout its operating areas.

Investor Contact:

Shane Martin, (972) 850-2001
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Published December 6, 2017

The University of Louisiana Monroes English program hosted its annual Best Freshman Essay Awards Ceremony Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 3:30 p.m. in the media room on the 6th floor of the university library.

This essay contest is held each fall for English 1001 students to demonstrate their writing abilities and creativity.

Essay submissions are from the first essay that freshmen students write in Composition I. The essays are written based on a unit taught alongside Writing in the Works and the summer reader This I Believe (essay selections from NPR).

Students submit their narrative essays for judging by composition instructors. The judges look for creativity, a resounding message and writing level.

This years winners are as follows:

First place: Olivia Bailey is 19, from Lake Charles and is studying political science. She wants to become a defense attorney and someday own her own lobbying firm. She is a cheerleader for ULM, member of Kappa Delta sorority, a freshman senator for SGA, and a team leader for Up Til Dawn. Her essay is titled Grease Girl. Bailey recounts the moment she realized her race in an introspective and humorous narrative. Her instructor was Hannah Clifton.

Second place: Alexis Page is 18 and from San Diego, Calif. Her major is art with a concentration in graphic design. She aspires to be a background artist for video gaming. Her essay is titled Cursed Skin. Page chillingly and poignantly narrates her struggles associating with members of her own race. Her instructor was Jaleesa Harris.

Third place: Alexi Wiley is 19 and from West Monroe. He is a computer science major and would like to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. In his essay A True Momma's Boy Alexi delivers a heartfelt narrative about the moments he had to care for his mother. His instructor was Meredith McKinnie.

This I Believe is an international organization engaging people in writing and sharing essays describing the core values that guide their daily lives. More than 100,000 of these essays, written by people from all levels of society, are archived on the NPR website, heard on public radio, chronicled through NPRs books, and featured in weekly podcasts.

For more information on This I Believe, visit thisibelieve.org.

For more information on ULMs Summer Reading Program, visit ulm.edu/summerreading.
Eli Kashindi was finally beginning to feel she had found peace, 20 years after she and her family fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then this year, wind whipped through Nyarugusu refugee camp and wrecked her shelter.

The roof was destroyed by the wind, recalls 25-year-old Eli. Afterwards we had to cover the house with grass.

Years ago, the camp would have been protected from the elements by trees. However, a major influx of refugees from neighbouring Burundi and the DRC has increased the pressure on limited resources and aggravated environmental challenges faced by the host community. Acres of trees have been cut down to make way for agriculture and to supply firewood and timber. Now refugees and communities are bearing the brunt.

"Its more important to me now that there are trees.

There is hope. For the past three months, Eli has been working at a tree nursery in Nyarugusu camp, where about 800,000 seedlings are being grown on half an acre of land. Once rooted, they will be transferred to the camp and host community.

About 100 refugees like Eli, as well as local people, are learning new skills and earning a regular monthly income.

Normally I do watering and weeding, says Eli, tending to some newly planted papaya trees in a peaceful clearing. Im really enjoying working here and its more important to me now that there are trees.

Hamilton Misana has led the project for CEMDO, a partner of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, since 2014. Resources are limited, but we train workers on watering, insect management and weeding, he says. We also educate locals and refugees on planting trees, water conservation and bush fires, and mobilize them to do business that is environmentally friendly, such as beekeeping.

Abdu Ali, 42, works at a tree nursery project for the Tanzanian host community.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Burundi refugee workers at REDESO tree nursery in Nduta refugee camp.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Local people like Jovin Nyanenda, 27, gain new skills.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Young trees sprout at the REDESO tree nursery in Nduta refugee camp.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

54,000 trees have been planted at a nursery in Biturana village.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

With more than 316,000 refugees living in camps in Tanzania, Hamilton knows how important cooperation with the host community can be. We have to work together, he says.

UNHCR and partner organizations are working to make a difference for everyone. Besides the two nurseries at Nyarugusu, an additional 100,000 trees have been raised in a nursery in Nduta Refugee Camp with support from REDESO. These will be planted in the camp by the refugee community.

Another 54,000 have been planted at a nursery in Biturana village, a 30-minute drive from Nduta. There, local people like Jovin Nyanenda, 27, gain new skills and soon every household will receive 30 seedlings.

UNHCR trained me with new skills in how to raise seedlings, mix the soil and maintain the nursery, says Jovin, wiping his brow. Im very happy to have the trees around again. It is not only benefitting me, but everyone.

"It is not only benefitting me, but everyone.

In total, UNHCR has planted about 2 million trees in Nyarugusu, Nduta and Mtendeli refugee camps. Seeds are acquired through its partners CEMDO and REDESO from local dealers, boosting cooperation with the private sector.

However, every seedling costs 250 Tanzanian shillings (Tzs) (10 US cents) and funding is limited. More is urgently needed to continue important projects like these, which are key to the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), a new approach that focuses on supporting communities hosting large numbers of refugees and implementing sustainable programmes as early as possible.

Tanzania: Tree project grows hope for refugee and host communities (William Davies, producer-camera)

Energy needs in the camps are high and, even for fast growing tree species, it can take three years before a tree is ready to use as firewood.

Many refugees, forced to start from scratch and with little alternative, have spent decades using Tanzanias trees for firewood and timber. As supplies have dwindled, tension with local communities has grown as they try to meet their own energy and timber needs from the same limited resources.

Stella Ndayishimiye, 27, is a mother of two, who until recently regularly left the camp in search of firewood. It is a dangerous and exhausting task, taking up to five hours. She was among a group of women who were beaten by local people.

The beating took a long time, she recalls. Some of us were cut with knives and some were taken to hospital. The children were with me. Even now, I still feel the pain in my body and in my head.

Liquefied Petroleum Gas is an alternative fuel source being trialled by UNHCR at Nyarugusu and Mtendeli. Each week, more than 3,000 households receive a 6-kg canister of gas, a safer, healthier and more sustainable alternative to firewood. It reduces emissions and improves air quality in shelters.

It is better to have the gas, says Stella, firmly, as she waits in line with other women. Now I dont have to fear because I dont have to go out into the bush and get attacked.

Now I dont have to fear."

Lack of funding, however, means this project may be short-lived. It costs UNHCR 47,000 Tzs (US$21) for one canister of gas, and 20,500 Tzs (US$9) to refill it each time. More than 3,000 households are reaping the benefits, but that is still a tiny percentage of the refugee population. Much more needs to be done to save the natural environment.

UNHCRs representative in Tanzania, Chansa Kapaya, said the use of natural resources, including firewood for cooking, not only affects the environment, but also leads to protection risks and tension between refugees and surrounding communities. In response, UNHCR is implementing a comprehensive energy and environment strategy.

One of the main goals of the strategy is to provide all households with access to alternative cooking fuels and linking the intervention with increased livelihood opportunities so that the beneficiaries can contribute towards the cost and sustainability of this important programme, she said.

Burundian refugee Frida Nehebauwayo, 17, queues to receive an LPG cylinder.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Burundian refugee Hasfasimana, 25, carries firewood back to camp.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Wizeyimana Siwajibu, 34, tends to seedlings at Nduta's tree nursery.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Burundian refugee Stella, 27, was beaten while collecting firewood.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

Hadija Masunguko, 34, works at the tree nursery in Nyarugusu refugee camp.  UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

These projects are examples of the kind of thing that need to be replicated and scaled up, as UNHCR leads the process to develop a global compact on refugees, designed to ensure that host countries have the support to manage the effects, including environmental issues, of large numbers of refugees.

This might cover access to affordable, clean and sustainable energy in refugee camps or investment in environmental technologies that benefit refugees and host communities alike.

The High Commissioners 10th Dialogue on Protection Challenges in Geneva next week (12 and 13 December) will focus on progress towards a global compact on refugees. The meeting will assess the results of extensive consultations that took place in 2017, and bring together the lessons learned so far from the application of the CRRF, which was set out in last years New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.

For Wizeyimana Siwajibu, 34, a Burundian refugee who tends seedlings at Ndutas tree nursery, such projects are life-changing.

Im proud to have the chance to work here, she says, smiling. I used to walk for around three hours to collect firewood and this project is helping us to keep the trees. Im really very thankful.
Name: Robina Kolok, 35, from South Sudan.

Job title: Associate Supply Officer, temporarily assigned to Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, from her duty station in Kenya.

Years at UNHCR: Seven, working in South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Why did you become an aid worker?

I think I was destined to work with refugees. I was an urban refugee in Kenya, having left South Sudan when I was very young. I was a UNHCR beneficiary  UNHCR sponsored my primary education. I got to know about UNHCR at an early age.

In addition to that, my mother later joined the World Food Programme in South Sudan. When I went to visit her at work, she would be involved in programmes like food distribution. Seeing people receive the food aid, and how they appreciated what they were receiving, made me want to do what she was doing. I saw the sense of satisfaction she got from her job. It motivated me to follow in her footsteps.

What is the most rewarding/challenging thing about your job?

In just three months, more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar to seek safety in Bangladesh. What is shocking to me about this emergency is how fast it has been growing. While it is growing very fast, the resources are not keeping up. We are giving a lot, yet it feels like a drop in the ocean.

Logistically, it means more work for us at our warehouse, because we are bagging up various aid items like jerry cans, plastic sheets, blankets, mosquito nets, cooking pots and solar lanterns. But when it comes to distribution, it is easier. In the camps, refugees have to walk long distances to pick up aid items. So having the items already in kit form makes it easier for them to carry.

Robina at work in the UNHCR warehouse in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.  UNHCR

The job needs you to be strong, and have an authoritative voice. You are dealing with people, mainly men, from different backgrounds  from labourers to loaders, truck drivers, to managers. You need to have all these characteristics, which I think women have.

What was the best day you had at work?

I had just started my career in the United Nations when we were involved in the repatriation of refugees from Uganda to South Sudan. When I saw them return, they had that feeling of coming home. They had possessions that they brought back with them, and they were so happy to be back in their own land.

We were not doing much for them  we were distributing tools and seedlings  but what I saw in their faces was a hope for a new and better tomorrow. That was the best day of my life. Especially for myself, coming from the same community, it felt like things were changing for the better.

What was the worst day at work?

Actually, it is related to what I said is the best day of my career. It was when I saw that hope begin to crumble in late 2013, when fighting broke out in South Sudan again. I happened to drive along the road exiting town, and there were all these families walking with mattresses on their heads, buckets, all their belongings  leaving South Sudan, trying to cross the border into Uganda. It was just a few years before that they were coming back home, and now they were leaving their home again. That was painful for me.

The UN Refugee Agency works in 130 countries helping men, women and children driven from their homes by wars and persecution. Our headquarters are in Geneva, but most of our staff are based in the field, helping refugees. This profile is one in a series highlighting our staff and their work.
Ryad Alsous stands in the winter sunshine of an orchard in northern England and shakes his head in disbelief.

Look at them, all working! he says, watching his bees take off and land at hives carefully arrayed behind the apple trees. I never thought bees could be so successful in this climate.

Given bees usual intolerance of dampness, Alsous remains astonished at the hardiness of Britains native black bee, a furry relative of strains from Germany and the Baltics that long ago adapted to the British Isles.

Syrian bees cant go out in even the lightest rain, he added. If its 15 degrees, there is no activity. But here, they work normally if its 15 degrees, or even 13 degrees  even in the rain!"

In England, a buzzing business for Syrian refugee beekeeper (Dalal Mawad, producer / Bela Szandelszky, camera-editor)

Once a professor of agriculture at Damascus University, Alsous, 64, arrived as a refugee in the United Kingdom four years ago. Abandoning his research into beekeeping and environmental pollution, he fled Syria for his life after his family received death threats and his car was bombed.

In July 2013, he joined his wife in Huddersfield, the West Yorkshire city where their daughter Razan had settled. Razan, who had arrived the previous year, is something of a local celebrity, appearing on a national television cooking show thanks to the award-wining halloumi produced by her company, Yorkshire Dama Cheese.

Back in Syria, Alsous had managed 500 beehives whose colonies, derived from the Italian and Carniolan strains, produced at least 10 tonnes of honey a year. In addition to his research at the university, he ran a company selling herbal and honey-based cosmetics.

A passion for honeybees was one of the few things he brought with him when he left. Even his precious steel-and-rubber bee smoker had to be conveyed from Syria by a friend later.

I needed only one hive to start.

Ryad Alsous was impressed with the hardiness of Britain's native black bee.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

Beekeeper Ryad Alsous shows one of his prized British black bees.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

Beekeeper Ryad Alsous with the hive he uses for demonstrations.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

Ryad Alsous with one of his hives in the orchard at Armitage Bridge, Yorkshire.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

Ryad Alsous (left) with orchard owner Ted Mankowski in Armitage Bridge, Yorkshire.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

Standedge Canal Tunnel visitor centre in Yorkshire, where Ryad Alsous will run the Buzz Project in the summer.  UNHCR/Caroline Brothers

In the UK, it took time for him to find his feet. He knew some English but lacked contact with native speakers. And he was rejected as overqualified each time he applied for a job.

Eventually, he approached the Huddersfield Beekeepers Association to volunteer. There, he made friends and contacts, but still he was a beekeeper without any bees.

I needed only one hive to start, he said. Finally, he posted an advertisement on Facebook asking if anyone had a hive to donate.

Three weeks later, in September 2015, a woman from Manchester replied. She offered a hive, and to his delight, a colony of British black bees, believed until recently to be all but extinct in Britain.

That first hive, I've split it seven times, said Alsous proudly, referring to a method used by beekeepers to prevent swarming  when bees take off to nest in the wild. Really it is like a treasure, he said. My aim is to cooperate with the community to improve the strain.

Alsous apiary now comprises 17 hives, which he builds from recycled materials.

Shocked to learn the United Kingdom imports 90 per cent of its honey requirements, according to industry data, he believes Britains rapeseed fields and banks of heather and lavender could support many more hives.

It was only when he attended a monthly dinner held for refugees and new arrivals in the Huddersfield region, that his idea started to take shape. There he met two women, Jean York and Jane Wood, who work with refugees in the district of Kirklees, a member of the grassroots City of Sanctuary movement in the UK which helps new arrivals fit in.

This lit it up for me, said York, remembering her first conversation with Alsous, when he raised the possibility of teaching beekeeping to refugees and jobseekers.

If someone asks for help, why not give it?

Geof Hughes, a local beekeeper who met Alsous through the Huddersfield association, was similarly impressed. I really valued the idea, said Hughes. I wanted to help.

Last year, they and Alsous assembled a steering committee and got to work. The Buzz Project was born.

Kickstarted with local funding, the project has just given the second of its fortnightly workshops to 12 volunteers. Attendees included three Syrian women, a Congolese refugee with memories of gathering honey in the jungle, and a Nigerian student, who was already asking how to get her first queen.

After a chance encounter with the Huddersfield mayor, Jim Dodds, the project really took off.

Alsous was offered a base for next summer in the nearby village of Standedge, where he will install 10 hives and demonstrate beekeeping to visitors.

Until then, his apiary remains divided between its warmer wintering spot in the Armitage Bridge orchard and a grassy space lent to him by a local mechanic.

If someone asks for help, why not give it? said Ted Mankowski, the orchards owner who has lived in England for 30 years. In Poland, my uncle used to have bees.

Even in the safety of the UK, Alsous cannot forget his homeland, which had half a million hives before the war. Those colonies, he says, have all but collapsed. I hope to go back one day and help to rebuild. It is very important.
VANCOUVER, B.C., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Central 1 Credit Union (Central 1) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Blucher to the role of President & CEO, effective January 22, 2018.



With significant experience in leading complex financial services companies and a regulated crown corporation in his most recent role as CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), Blucher is widely regarded as a transformational leader.

With our focus on adapting swiftly and effectively to meet our members and clients needs in a volatile financial services environment, Marks capacity for leading change will be a great asset in driving transformation at Central 1, said Rick Hoevenaars, Chair, Central 1. His ability to build strong relationships and consensus in organizations with diverse stakeholders and objectives positions him well to drive Central 1s business and strategy.

Blucher has had a successful career spanning more than 20 years in executive leadership roles, including extensive experience in financial services and insurance. Before his role at ICBC, he held senior positions at Suncorp Group, including over three years as Group Executive for Suncorp Retail Bank, the fifth largest bank in Australia.

I understand and respect the principles and values of the cooperative movement and Im looking forward to working with Central 1s stakeholders to support a sustainable and successful future for credit unions in Canada, said Blucher.

In addition to his professional roles, Blucher holds volunteer positions with several high-profile community organizations, including Vice Chair of St. Pauls Hospital Foundation, Chair of the United Way of the Lower Mainland, and Governor of the Business Council of B.C.

Blucher steps into the position previously held by Don Wright, who is now Deputy Minister of the Executive Council, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Public Service of B.C. Marilyn Mauritz, Central 1s SVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary is currently serving as Interim President and CEO.

On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Marilyn, who has propelled significant transformational efforts at Central 1 during her tenure as Interim CEO and look forward to the continuation and implementation of that work and vision, said Hoevenaars.

In addition to Mauritz, Blucher joins Central 1s executive leadership team of Richard Beed, SVP Human Resources; Dan Blue, Chief Financial Officer; Brent Clode, Chief Investment Officer; and David Finnie, Chief Risk Officer.

About Central 1

With offices in Vancouver, Mississauga and Toronto, Central 1 holds on balance sheet approximately $17.7 billion in assets. We provide wholesale financial products, trust services, payment processing solutions and direct banking services to about 300 credit unions and institutional clients from coast to coast.

In addition, Central 1 is the primary liquidity manager, payments provider and trade association for our 42 member credit unions in B.C. and 70 Ontario member credit unions. Our members represent a consumer-oriented, full-service retail financial network that collectively serves 3.3 million members and holds more than $124.5 billion in assets. For more information, visit www.central1.com.

Media

Nicole Adams

Interim AVP, Member & External Communications

Central 1 Credit Union

T 604.714.6581 or 1.800.661.6813 ext. 6581

E nicole.adams@central1.com
VICTOR, N.Y., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) (NYSE:STZ.B), a leading beverage alcohol company, announced today it will report financial results for its fiscal third quarter ended November 30, 2017, on Friday, January 5, 2018, before the open of the U.S. markets. A conference call to discuss the financial results and outlook will be hosted by President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Sands and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer David Klein at 10:30 a.m. eastern time, January 5, 2018.



The conference call can be accessed by dialing +973-935-8505 beginning at 10:20 a.m. (eastern). A live, listen-only webcast of the conference call will be available on the companys website, www.cbrands.com, under the Investors section. Financial information discussed on the conference call, and a reconciliation of reported (GAAP) financial measures with comparable or non-GAAP financial measures, will also be available on the companys website when the call begins under Investors and by selecting Financial History. For anyone unable to participate in the conference call, a replay will be available on the companys website.

About Constellation Brands

Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ and STZ.B), a Fortune 500 company, is a leading international producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits with operations in the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand, Italy and Canada. Constellation is the No. 3 beer company in the U.S. with high-end, iconic imported brands such as Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Modelo Negra and Pacifico. The companys beer portfolio also includes Ballast Point, one of the most awarded craft brewers in the U.S. In addition, Constellation is the world leader in premium wine, selling great brands that people love, including Robert Mondavi, Clos du Bois, Kim Crawford, Meiomi, Mark West, Franciscan Estate, Ruffino and The Prisoner. The companys premium spirits brands include SVEDKA Vodka, Casa Noble Tequila and High West Whiskey.

Based in Victor, N.Y., the company believes that industry leadership involves a commitment to brand building, our trade partners, the environment, our investors and to consumers around the world who choose our products when celebrating big moments or enjoying quiet ones. Founded in 1945, Constellation has grown to become a significant player in the beverage alcohol industry with more than 100 brands in its portfolio; about 40 wineries, breweries and distilleries; and approximately 9,000 talented employees. We express our company vision: to elevate life with every glass raised. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @cbrands and visit www.cbrands.com.

CONTACTS

Media

Mike McGrew: 773-251-4934

Amy Martin: 585-678-7141

Investor Relations

Patty Yahn-Urlaub: 585-678-7483

Bob Czudak: 585-678-7170
December 7 2017

Highland planners are recommending that councilors approve an application by Tulloch Homes to build 767 homes, recreational space and supporting infrastructure on land close to the West Link Road.Designed by Bracewell Stirling Ness-side will be built in three phases the masterplan calls for a defined development edge to be established along the link road with a varied setback.Stated design principles include an avoidance of repetitive patterns of development, features within perimeter blocks and a division of continuous facades through use of paths and landscaping.Detailed design work hasnt yet been undertaken but Tulloch will strive to incorporate a variety of textures and finishes into the finished buildings.A mix of properties will be offered within the development ranging from one-bedroom flats through to five bedroom houses.
TORONTO, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Veterans Transition Network: A group of six injured veterans suffered a devastating setback yesterday in their legal battle with the government when the Equitas case was struck down in its entirety at the B.C. Court of Appeal.



The Equitas case was filed in 2012 in response to a government decision in 2006 to replace lifelong pensions for disabled veterans with a single lump-sum payment. They allege that this overhaul discriminates against todays veterans because the previous pension system provided more financial support over a lifetime.

The judgement on Monday did not consider whether or not disabled veterans were adequately compensated. Instead, it dismissed the claims that the charter rights of veterans had been violated and struck down the case on the grounds that there was no chance for success.

We are more determined than ever to fight the fight for justice for disabled veterans, Marc Burchell, President of the Equitas Society said, and we will win because it is morally right.

Retired Warrant Officer Brian McKenna, a representative of the Equitas Society previously stated, This isn't the standard that Canada ought to deliver." McKenna has also taken part in an advisory group for Veterans Affairs Canada and volunteers as a paraprofessional with the Veterans Transition Network.

Veteran Affairs Canada remained optimistic, saying in a statement, "We remain committed to a lifelong benefit option for ill and injured Veterans and we will finalize a benefit for life option for pension program for ill and injured Veterans soon.

In the meantime, the Veterans Transition Network continues to deliver specialized therapy services to Veterans who have been unable to receive timely assistance from the government.

About the Veterans Transition Network: The Veterans Transition Network is the only Canadian charity delivering mental health services to veterans from coast to coast. Founded in 1997 by Dr. Marv Westwood, their mission is to make sure no Canadian veteran is left suffering in isolation. Our programs are backed by 20 years of research and have a 98% successful transition rate, one of the highest in the world. For more information, see vtncanada.org.

About Press Pillay: Press Pillay is a socially-conscious, boutique communications agency based in Toronto. With a team of former journalists, PR professionals and social media gurus, Press Pillay offers their lifestyle tech clients the highest-possible level of digital marketing strategies, branding and content. For more information visit www.presspillay.com.

Media Contact

Nesh Pillay

647-745-4224

nesh@presspillay.com
SPRINGDALE, Ark., Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) has made an additional investment in plant-based protein producer Beyond Meat. Through Tysons venture capital fund, the company chose to participate in Beyond Meats most recent fundraising initiative, which is designed to generate additional capital to help the business continue to expand its product portfolio and distribution.



While the terms are not being disclosed, Tyson Foods latest investment slightly increases its ownership stake in Beyond Meat from the 5 percent established a year ago.

Global demand for all protein remains high and were passionate about meeting that demand sustainably, said Justin Whitmore, executive vice president corporate strategy and chief sustainability officer of Tyson Foods. Our investment in Beyond Meat provides another fantastic alternative for consumers as we strive to sustainably feed the world.

Whitmore added, This investment reinforces our focus on protein and enables us to support Beyond Meats efforts to produce new, leading edge products. What were most excited about is that we can do all of this while continuing to provide the great tasting, high quality food that is the hallmark of our company.

Beyond Meat reports the latest fundraising round, which also includes the support of venture capital fund Cleveland Avenue, will be used to expand production, fund the companys R&D commitment, and expand sales and distribution.

Tysons venture capital fund was launched in December 2016 and is focused on investing in promising entrepreneurial food businesses that are pioneering new products or technology.

About Tyson Foods, Inc.

Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) is one of the worlds largest food companies and a recognized leader in protein. Founded in 1935 by John W. Tyson and grown under three generations of family leadership, the company has a broad portfolio of products and brands like Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright, Aidells, ibp and State Fair. Tyson Foods innovates continually to make protein more sustainable, tailor food for everywhere its available and raise the worlds expectations for how much good food can do. Headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, the company has 122,000 team members. Through its Core Values, Tyson Foods strives to operate with integrity, create value for its shareholders, customers, communities and team members and serve as stewards of the animals, land and environment entrusted to it. Visit www.tysonfoods.com.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Namaste Technologies Inc. (Namaste or the Company) (CSE:N)(OTCQB:NXTTF)(FRANKFURT:M5BQ) is pleased to announce that the Company has elected to exercise its right under the warrant indenture (the Indenture) governing the common share purchase warrants of the Company (the Warrants) issued on March 9, 2017. Pursuant to the terms of the Indenture, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants when the closing price of the common shares of the Company (the Common Shares) on the Canadian Securities Exchange exceeds $0.70 for a period of 10 consecutive trading days (the Acceleration Event).



Namaste is pleased to confirm that an Acceleration Event occurred as of December 7, 2017. Accordingly, the Company has chosen to accelerate the expiry time of the Warrants to 4:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on January 8, 2018. This news release constitutes notice to Warrant holders of the new expiry date. Any Warrants remaining unexercised after the new expiry date will be cancelled.

As of close of market on December 7, 2017, a total of 12,240,600 warrants of the 22,676,000 originally issued Warrants had yet to be exercised. Each Warrant is exercisable to acquire one Common Share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.35. Consequently, if all remaining unexercised Warrants are exercised, proceeds to the Company will total $4,284,210.

Management Commentary

Sean Dollinger, President and CEO of Namaste comments: This warrant acceleration will provide a significant cash injection for Namaste that strengthens our cash position and will also support the Companys various expansion opportunities. We are well funded, looking forward to continued growth and are excited about the future. 

About Namaste Technologies Inc.

Namaste is the largest online retailer for medical cannabis delivery systems globally. Namaste distributes vaporizers and smoking accessories through e-commerce sites in 26 countries and with 5 distribution hubs located around the world. Namaste has majority market share in Europe and Australia, with operations in the UK, US, Canada and Germany and has opened new supply channels into emerging markets including Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Namaste, through its acquisition of Cannmart Inc., a Canadian based late-stage applicant for a medical cannabis distribution license (under the ACMPR Program) is pursuing a new revenue vertical in online retail of medical cannabis in the Canadian market. Namaste intends to leverage its existing database of Canadian medical cannabis consumers, along with its expertise in e-commerce to create an online marketplace for medical cannabis patients, offering a larger variety of product and a better user experience.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Sean Dollinger

Chief Executive Officer

Direct: +1 (786) 389 9771

Email: info@namastevapes.com

Further information on the Company and its products can be accessed through the links below:

www.namastetechnologies.com

www.namastevaporizers.com

www.namastevaporizers.co.uk

www.everyonedoesit.com

www.everyonedoesit.co.uk

FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains forward-looking information based on current 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, Namaste 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 including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. This press 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. The CSE has neither reviewed nor approved the contents of this press release.


Earlier today, Vegas Golden Knights stars Deryk Engelland and James Neal joined more than 40 Bank of America employees at Three Square Food Bank for a spirited day of volunteerism (Pictured: Vegas Golden Knights stars Deryk Engelland and James Neal sort food with Bank of America employee volunteers at Three Square Food Bank).

The group worked together in Three Squares expansive warehouse, sorting and repacking donated food to be distributed to families struggling with hunger throughout Southern Nevada.


In the spirit of the holiday season, Tivoli Village will be giving back to the community through an inaugural, village-wide celebration of Twelve Days of Giving (Pictured: Tyra Bell Rose of Ava Rose Agency and Jennifer Bradley of JB Public Relations).

A first of its kind, multi-charity holiday giving initiative, Twelve Days of Giving is a collaboration between retailers, restaurants, and Tivoli Village to raise funds for a collection of 12 charitable organizations throughout the Las Vegas Valley.

Throughout the Twelve Days of Giving, which runs December 6-17 and is sponsored in part by Jeff White Custom Jewelry, participating retailers and restaurants will offer various shopping and dining incentives to be donated back to the charities. This years charities include:

American Heart Association

The Folded Flag Foundation

Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn

Heaven Can Wait Animal Society

JDRF

Just One Project

Keep Memory Alive

Project 150

Ronald McDonald House

Speedway Childrens Charities

St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital

Three Square

Reindeer ornaments will be for sale at Tivoli Village for $10 now  Dec. 17  Text to give: TVGIVE 444999 to donate!

Participating retailers and restaurants include Cork & Thorn, Cupkates, Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse, Hamptons, Hub Modern Home + Gift, Leone Cafe, Jeff White Custom Jewelry, Leticias Mexican Cocina, LOOK Style Society, Mario Basner Photography, MarkieChar, Pressed Juicery, River North, and Waffle Bar. For a complete listing of all of the offers, please visit tivolivillagelv.com.
CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (TSX:EGL): Eagle Energy Inc. (Eagle) is pleased to announce that Mr. F. Wayne McWhorter will be appointed as a director of Eagle on January 1, 2018. Mr. McWhorters appointment will fill the vacancy on Eagles board of directors (the Board) created by the upcoming retirement of Mr. David Fitzpatrick, Eagles lead independent director.

Mr. McWhorter, a resident of Texas and former certified public accountant and County Judge in Harrison County, Texas, brings over 40 years of experience in the oil and gas, banking, public accounting, and real estate industries.

Throughout his career, Mr. McWhorter has held various executive officer and director positions. He has served as Chief Executive Officer of MarTex Bancshares, Inc. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of First Service Bank of Gladewater, Texas. He also has served as the Vice President of Finance and Accounting of Carlile & Howell/Marshall Exploration Inc., a private company based in Texas engaged in oil and gas exploration and production, well drilling and oil field services operations.

Mr. McWhorter was also a partner in the public accounting firm, Fitts, Feille, & McWhorter and a Senior Accountant with the accounting firm, Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young).

Mr. McWhorter currently sits on the board of directors of Hemotek, LLC and is a trustee of East Texas Baptist University. He obtained both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Masters in Business Administration degree from Baylor University, Texas.

Commenting on Mr. McWhorters appointment to Eagles Board, Richard Clark, Eagles Executive Chairman, stated, We are delighted to welcome Mr. McWhorter to Eagles Board. We believe Mr. McWhorter will be a valuable contributor to Eagle and we will benefit from his wealth of experience and expertise in Texas.

Mr. McWhorter will also become a member of the Boards Audit Committee, Compensation Committee, and Reserves and Governance Committee. These committees will therefore remain comprised entirely of independent directors.

About Eagle Energy Inc.

Eagle is an oil and gas corporation with shares listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol EGL.

All material information about Eagle may be found on its website at www.EagleEnergy.com or under Eagles issuer profile at www.sedar.com.

For further information, please contact:
The European Commission unveiled its vision of a rebooted eurozone. (Photo: AFP/John MacDougall)

Other ideas, such as the creation of a eurozone finance minister or a rainy day budget for eurozone member states, are officially tabled for discussion by the commission, but without a formal proposal.

The proposals follow the heavily trailed state of the union speech by European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker in September and are intended to inspire discussion at an EU summit on the future of the euro on Dec 15.

"After years of crisis, it's now time to take Europe's future into our own hands," Juncker said in a statement. "There is no better time to fix the roof than when the sun is shining."

The proposals by the commission, the EU's executive, were originally billed to be the European Union's answer to the shock of Brexit, but have been reduced in scope with member states split on the direction they should take.

The commission also faced criticism that the reform timeline should be left to the national governments, which Brussels insistently rejected.

"Only the commission is able to present concrete proposals for the euro area and the union as a whole, although some would have preferred it to do nothing," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said at a news briefing, in a veiled reference to Germany and other naysayers.

The proposals follow a laundry list of ideas set forth by French President Emmanuel Macron to strengthen the euro single currency, who worked under the assumption that Germany would have a pro-EU government installed to see them through.

Instead, the commission's most concrete proposals are the least controversial, including the creation of a European Monetary Fund to be built from the eurozone's existing bailout body, the European Stability Mechanism.

Leaked drafts of the other ideas on the finance minister and emergency budget were met with fierce derision in German media, which loathe any EU project that could transfer German taxpayer money to poorer member states.

'NOT THE END'

The climbdown will be a blow to Macron who has made reforming the eurozone, including with a proper eurozone budget, one of his top priorities.

Macron will still make his case when the EU's heads of state, minus Britain, discuss the reform plans at next week's summit in Brussels. The original plan was to follow this up with a decision-making summit in June.

The commission's proposals "are clearly not the end of the story," an EU diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Reaction to the commission's proposals were mixed with worry that the EU was missing a golden opportunity to strengthen itself against future shocks.

"Far from going too far, the implementation dates are too late. These changes should be brought forward," said Luca Visentini, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation.

Guy Verhofstadt, senior MEP from the liberal ALDE group, hit out at the silent critics of the commission's proposals.

"Commentators often complain that the EU is too slow to act - now they complain that the European Commission is acting," he said.

ING chief economist Carsten Brzeski said the proposals "go in the right direction", but are "not new and clearly not a game changer".

This was not least because of the "almost impossible mission for the European Commission to balance between many diverging national interests."
State divestments and loosened foreign ownership caps will benefit local pharma stocks, Photo: Le Toan

An adrenalin rush

Although it has always been a favourite among foreign investors, the pharmaceutical sector has generated more buzz than usual in recent weeks. One reason is because the stake sale of Domesco is likely to take place next Tuesday, December 12, in which the state will part with 34.71 per cent of the firm.

As Domesco has already abandoned its foreign ownership limit, their strategic partner Abbott is regarded as the strongest contender in the auction. Until now however, Abbott, which already owns 51 per cent of Domesco, has kept quiet about its intentions.

Last month, drug-maker Traphaco also made headlines as 40 per cent of its shares were transferred from investment funds Mekong Capital and Vietnam Holding to Magbi Fund Ltd. (Hong Kong) and Super Delta Pte., Ltd. (Singapore). It remains unclear whether these two are financial or strategic investors, as they were both established just a few months ago with very little information available.

Traphacos chairwoman Vu Thi Thuan told VIR that the divestments were a success for the two funds, especially Mekong Capital, which stayed with Traphaco for more than 10 years. Foreign investment funds are really interested in Vietnams pharmaceutical industry. Traphaco has gained great attention thanks to our growing business performance, which is better than the sector average, she said.

The market is also waiting for the possible removal of DHG Pharmas limit on foreign ownership. Similar to Domesco and Abbott, DHG Pharmas strategic investor, Taisho, is widely expected to increase its position in the firm.

Ripe for M&A

The foreign ownership cap, which stands at 49 per cent, remains a major roadblock for foreign investment into Vietnams pharmaceutical industry. For instance, foreigners cannot invest in the newly-listed Pymepharco, Vietnams second-most-profitable drug-maker, as 49 per cent of its shares are already owned by Germanys Stada Arzneimittel AG.

EuroChams Pharma Group commented that a clear path in converting partnerships into majority ownerships would provide overseas firms with stronger arguments to invest in Vietnam.

It is likely that foreign investors will fight for merger-and-acquisition (M&A) deals with Vietnamese partners, as they are forbidden by Vietnamese law to distribute pharmaceutical products on their own.

In a recent report, Vo Thi Ngoc Han, head of industrial sector research at Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation, said that she expects the foreign ownership cap at DHG Pharma to be scrapped by the end of this year, paving the way for Taisho to launch a tender offer in the first half of 2018.

Taishos interest in increasing their stake is keeping the M&A story alive, and is the main medium-term catalyst for the firms stock. Timing depends on if and when the state agrees to sell stake, she noted.

Michael DC Choi, senior deputy director of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, told VIR that some M&A deals between Vietnamese pharma firms and South Korean investors are already underway. The Koreans now prefer M&A deals as a way to reduce set-up costs and gain quicker access to Vietnams pharmaceutical market, Choi said.

Another cause for concern that investors may have is price. Vietnamese pharma stocks have been rallying over the past year, pushing their price-per-earning ratio (P/E) high above the market average of 16x. In particular, Traphaco JSC is trading at 24 times its earnings, Imexpharm at 21x, and Domesco at 18.94x.

However, analysts at BIDV Securities pointed out that compared to the Asia-Pacific average of 31.09x, the P/E ratios of major Vietnamese drug-makers are still very attractive for foreign investors, who would like to cash in on this growing market.

Besides other major drug makers, investors may want to consider Bidiphar JSC, which is Vietnams only producer of anti-cancer medicine. The number of cancer patients in Vietnam may reach 190,000 in 2020, which creates a strong growth opportunity for this pharmaceutical firm, noted the analysts.
The new user interface of the upgraded credit cards comparison function will come out in January 2018

GoBear is Asias first and only metasearch engine for insurance and banking products. GoBear provides users a comparison platform that is free, easy to use, and unbiased. Since the official launch in Vietnam in early December 2016 with three products comparison of credit cards, personal loans, and travel insuranceas well as educational pages for unsecured loans, GoBear Vietnam has landed nearly one million visitors to its website to become a trusted provider of comparison services for financial products in Vietnam.

The new website features an upgraded credit cards comparison function and is expected to provide users with an enhanced experience which will make searching and comparing credit cards on the website easier than ever before.

The fact that GoBear Vietnam has hit nearly one million visitors in our very first year of operation shows Vietnamese peoples genuine interest in finding the right personal finance products and confirms GoBears vast growth potential. GoBear is looking forward to receiving even more support from our users and business partners, and to bringing more transparency and fair pricing to the market in our next phases of development, said Andre Hesselink, CEO and co-founder of GoBear.

Overall, GoBear has shown strong month-on-month growth ever since we started our first office in Singapore right up to our latest office in Vietnam. So far, we have served 14 million users year to date, with a rapid growth of four million users last month. In 2016, Think with Google ranked GoBear as the most popular comparison website in the region based on search volume, Hesselink added.

GoBear is Asias first and only metasearch engine for insurance and financial products. It was founded based on the simple premise that a consumer should find freedom and ease in choosing complex financial products like insurance, credit cards, and loans.

Headquartered in Singapore since early 2015, GoBear has established presence in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Manila, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, and will continue to expand across Asia in 2018.

As one of the fastest growing fintech startups in Asia, GoBear is leading the way in democratising financial shopping experience with its unbiased and personalised comparison process. GoBears user-oriented platform neither aggregates nor sells products.

GoBear simply offers consumers a free and transparent comparison process based on their financial needs and is not influenced by service providers commissions or advertising. The result is a user-friendly experience that empowers users to make better informed decisions efficiently, saving both time and money.
Heineken Vietnam's deputy managing director Tran Minh Triet receiving the award

The ceremony is part of the programme on benchmarking and ranking sustainable businesses in Vietnam which was initiated by the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (VBCSD) under the guidance of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI).

This is the second year VBCSD has organised this programme and received almost 500 applications from the business community.

Despite the significantly higher number of applications this year, Heineken Vietnam has improved its previous ranking from the third to the first sustainable manufacturing company in Vietnam.

The company topped the Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) due to its significant achievements in 2017. Heineken Vietnam contributed approximately 0.75 per cent of the nations GDP. Additionally, the companys focus on green growth by promoting carbon-neutral initiatives such as using biomass to create thermal energy for brewing greatly boosted its evaluation.

It also prioritises Vietnamese suppliers wherever possible and by doing so created nearly 200,000 extra jobs in Vietnam.

Heineken Vietnam has shown strong commitment to advocate responsible drinking in Vietnam by implementing impactful campaigns, such as the Responsible Drinking campaign at Tiger Wall events.

Additionally, Heineken Vietnam Brewery has been one of the most long-standing, stable, and successful joint ventures in Vietnam for the past 26 years.

The CSI has been used as the base criteria for ranking and celebrating the most sustainable companies in Vietnam since 2016. It is aimed at promoting sustainable development in the Vietnamese business community and has been developed as a gauge of corporate values in the fields of the economy, society, and environment.

We are honoured to receive this prestigious recognition for Heineken Vietnams continued efforts and commitment to Brewing a better Vietnam throughout our 26-year journey in Vietnam, said Tran Minh Triet, deputy managing director of Heineken Vietnam. This is a remarkable source of inspiration for all of us at Heineken Vietnam. We look forward to continued support and direction from the government for sustainability-conscious organisations so that we can further integrate sustainability in our overall business, contributing even more to Vietnams sustainable development.

At the recent Vietnam Corporate Sustainability Forum (VCSF 2017) held earlier this October in Hanoi, Heineken Vietnam was recognised by representatives from the government and the business community as an excellent example of applying sustainable business practices to its operations.

At the forum, Heineken Vietnam shared its success story on how driving the sustainability agenda has helped its business and the community grow together.

Key to this is creating an inclusive value chain, such as by implementing the circular economy model, and transparency and integrity in business and sustainability reporting.

Heineken Vietnams sustainability agenda focuses on six key areas: Promoting responsible drinking, protecting water resources, reducing CO2 emissions, supporting our communities, sourcing sustainably, and promoting health and safety.

Heineken Vietnam comprises Heineken Vietnam Brewery Company Limited and Heineken Hanoi Brewery Company Limited.

Established in 1991, Heineken Vietnam Brewery Company Limited (formerly Vietnam Brewery Limited) is a joint venture between Saigon Trading Group (SATRA) and Heineken, a Dutch family-owned business with a history of over 150 years.

This is one of the worlds leading international brewers that brews and distributes over 250 beer and cider brands in more than 180 countries.
Hoi An Town

Under the new regulation, the owners of homestays must be Hoi An residents whose husbands or wives are not foreigners. At least two generations of families live in the houses that serve as homestays.



The regulation, as explained by Hoi An authorities, aims to preserve and promote the local culture, traditions and values.



The decision has been applauded by locals but criticized by tourism experts.



Local people point out that hotels and resorts can be developed by investors from different localities, but homestays must be developed by locals with families living there. They argue that if local people dont live with travelers in the houses, these must not be called homestays.

Allowing local people to have homestays is a way to solve the problem of community tourism. This helps locals increase their income by providing services, while maintaining their culture, land and assets.

Allowing local people to have homestays is a way to solve the problem of community tourism. This helps locals increase their income by providing services, while maintaining their culture, land and assets. Locals can also maintain their major job without having to sell land or work as hired workers.



Meanwhile, analysts have criticized local authorities who are protecting local tourism in an unreasonable way. They say in a non-smoke industry, many different ideas and a healthy competitive environment will enhance development.



Lawyer Kieu Anh Vu from the HCM City Bar Association believes that the regulation set by the Hoi An authorities is contrary to the provisions in the Investment Law and Tourism Law.



The new regulation is illegal and unfeasible. I hope that competent agencies will reconsider the regulation to ensure harmony in the preservation of local culture and the peoples right to do business according to the laws, he said.



Phan Dinh Hue, director of Vong Tron Viet travel firm, said travelers expect to live with the family in a homestay to learn more about local culture.



However, he doesnt advocate the idea of prohibiting investors from other localities to develop homestays in Hoi An. He knows several Vietnamese-foreigner couples who have opened well-run homestays. One of them has good understanding about local culture, while the other knows what foreign travelers like.



In this case, foreigners act as culture connectors, he said.



Hoi An should not set strict requirements on the nationality of homestay owners, but should choose a way to develop homestay services that are attractive to travelers, he said.
Home Credit was voted as the best financial company by consumers

The award was handed out within the framework of the annual Vietnam Outstanding Banking Awards 2017 organised in Hanoi on December 15. Home Credit is the only financial firm to have received such an award related to consumer lending.

Home Credit was the first foreign company to start operating in the Vietnamese consumer finance market nine years ago. It is now one of the biggest companies in Vietnam, offering consumer lending packages with three main products, including motorbike purchase loans, loans for buying home appliances and electronics items, and cash-based loans.

Recently, Home Credit has also launched new products in the educational sector (in co-operation with Wall Street English) and the healthcare sector (with California Fitness and Yoga Centres). This month, Home Credit will launch its new credit card product offering many incentives for existing customers.

Last month, the company unveiled its new brand name identity set, further strengthening its people-oriented business strategy.

Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, Home Credit has a branch in Hanoi and 10 representative offices in other cities and provinces.

Starting operations in Vietnam in 2009, Home Credit currently has a huge network of more than 7,000 locations across all cities and provinces of the country to introduce its services.

With more than 10,000 employees, Home Credit has been serving 6.76 million customers to date.

Home Credit Vietnam records bumper crop Czech-backed consumer financial firm Home Credit Vietnam has reaped good business results in the years first half.

Home Credit advances with digital technology Czech-backed Home Credit Vietnam is employing digital technology to enhance the satisfaction of its millions of customers. The firms CEO, Bruce Butler, spoke with VIRs Thanh Tung about the new technology.
Citi supporting Vietnam in connecting the global dots Vietnam is considered by US group Citi as an attractive market. Ramachandran A.S., Citi country officer, talked to VIRs Linh Le about the groups efforts to utilise its global experience in the Southeast Asian nation, and its priorities moving forward.

Radisson Hotel Group spearheading hospitality growth in Asia-Pacific With travel restrictions easing, air traffic increasing, and leisure and business travel bookings on the rise, Radisson Hotel Group is optimistic about the outlook for the hospitality industry in Asia-Pacific.

Secrets of the most special securities company in Vietnam Techcom Securities (TCBS) leadership, with cutting-edge vision and execution muscle, has changed the course of the company over the last nine years since Nguyen Xuan Minh became chairman of the Board of Directors. VIRs Tuan Khanh sat together with Minh and talked about his path, vision, and success story.

Promoting gender equality & enhancing women's economic empowerment Vietnarn's national strategy on gender equality for the 2021-2030 period sets a target that by 2025, 60 per cent of state management ageneies and local governments at all levels will have female key leaders.
The accolade attests to Nestle Vietnam's committment to building a sustainable environment for the community

The programme leverages Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) as a metric to gauge enterprise value in diverse economic, environmental, and social fields.

Nestle Tri An plant, which turns out NESCAFE products, has recorded prominent achievements in the environmental field. Nestle Tri An was dubbed as one of the exemplary enterprises building a sustainable production environment.

This is one of the handful enterprises in Vietnam disposing no waste to the environment. With prominent initiatives, such as using coffee peel as fuel, ash as fertiliser or wastewater from production for irrigation, the plant saves a significant amount of energy and water resources during production.

These initiatives help save 60 per cent of used energy and reuse 28 per cent of wastewater after being treated. Nestle Tri An is one of the four factories of Nestle Group in Vietnam that meet the highest standards of environmental protection.

NESCAFEs farming techniques help farmers reduce water usage by 40 per cent, pesticide and fertiliser usage by 20 per cent, while boosting land use efficiency via combined planting with other crops.
A glitzy ceremony for volunteers in Moscow seemed the ideal platform for Putin to announce a re-election bid. (AFP/Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV)

Putin, who has been in power for the past 18 years, is expected to sail to victory, with only token opponents competing against him.

"I will offer my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation," he said during a visit to a car factory in Nizhny Novgorod.

He made the widely-expected announcement surrounded by cheering workers, who prodded him to unveil his plans in a carefully-choreographed ceremony.

"There is perhaps no better place and better excuse to announce this," Putin said in a nod to his core constituency.

"Russia will go only forward! And no one would ever stop her in this direction."

Predictably, a chorus of Russian politicians praised the announcement, while social networks were abuzz, with many ridiculing the Kremlin strongman.

Top Putin critic Alexei Navalny, who has earlier declared a Kremlin bid even although he will not be allowed to run due to a suspended sentence for fraud, called Putin a "swindler."

"I suggest we don't agree," the 41-year-old Western-educated lawyer said on Twitter, referring to Putin's plans to seek a fourth Kremlin term.

Putin's confirmation of the Kremlin bid came as Russia reeled from a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban the country from the Winter Games as punishment over claims of state-orchestrated doping.

But despite a litany of mounting problems including corruption, poverty and poor healthcare, the 65-year-old leader enjoys approval ratings of some 80 per cent.

'DO YOU TRUST ME?'

Just hours earlier Putin visited a glitzy ceremony for volunteers in Moscow where he sought to rouse supporters.

"I want to ask, do you trust and support me?" he addressed the huge audience of mostly young people. "Yes!" the audience chanted.

Before Putin took the floor prominent figures, including athletes and Soviet-era celebrities such as 83-year-old actor Vasily Lanovoi, took to the stage to extol the country's successes, such as Soviet victory in World War II.

Cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky addressed the audience via video link from the International Space Station.

Putin has sought to appeal to the country's youth after thousands of young Russians took to the streets earlier this year to protest alleged corruption among the elites, targeting Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev among others.

The demonstrations were sparked by a documentary fronted by Navalny.

Putin, who first became president after Boris Yeltsin sensationally resigned on New Year's Eve 1999, handed power to his ally Medvedev in 2008 at the end of his second term.

Putin served as prime minister - though few doubted who was really in charge - and returned as president in 2012.

If he extends his rule to 2024, Putin will have led Russia longer than Leonid Brezhnev, who presided over an era of stagnation from 1964 to 1982 and became the target of derision in his later years.

"He cannot not seek a new term," independent analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told AFP. "If he left the system he himself created he would become weak and vulnerable."

Analysts say that after more than 17 years of leadership - both as president and prime minister - Putin fatigue may be spreading across the country.

Many Russians say they would vote for Putin simply because they don't see an alternative to him amid the former KGB officer's chokehold on domestic politics.

With the result of the election already a foregone conclusion, turnout could be low, dealing a blow to the Kremlin' hopes for a decisive new mandate, observers say.

According to a poll conducted by the independent Levada Centre pollster last month, just 58 per cent of respondents said they would take part in the polls, down from 75 per cent in December 2007.

'WHAT WILL HAPPEN AFTER 2018?'

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed this week that those figures came ahead of the start of a political campaign, saying they were set to grow.

Many expect that Kseniya Sobchak, a 36-year-old glamourous former host of a television reality show and daughter of Putin's former mentor, will likely be allowed to run against Putin to rekindle public interest in the dull election.

With the election virtually devoid of any suspence, the question is what will happen after Putin's expected re-election and later, after his new term ends in 2024, analysts say.

"The main intrigue is, what will happen after 2018, how the configuration of power will be changing," Tatyana Stanovaya, a Paris-based analyst for the Centre of Political Technologies in Moscow, to AFP.

Speculation has swirled over the past weeks that the Kremlin may be considering whether to change the constitution or create a brand new post for Putin in an effort to extend his grip on power.

"The main task for the Kremlin is to adapt the regime to Putin's future status - be it an extension of presidential powers or the creation of a new post," said Stanovaya.
NEW YORK, Dec. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Thomas Deane has joined Stonybrook Capital, a strategic advisory and investment banking firm focused exclusively on the insurance industry, Joseph Scheerer, Principal and Managing Director, announced today.



With more than 10 years of experience in financial services, Tom Deane brings in-depth experience in a wide range of investment banking advisory services that will support our clients and contribute to the companys growth, Scheerer said.

Mr. Deane came to Stonybrook from JLT Capital Markets, where he was a Senior Vice President in the North American Advisory space. Mr. Deane joined JLT in 2010, and spent his first four years in London, predominantly focused on Lloyds M&A and aiding Lloyds Syndicates with their capital requirements. Prior to JLT, he was a member of the investment banking team at Benfield Advisory (now Aon Benfield Securities), where he worked on a number of start up Lloyds operations and capital raises. Mr. Deane has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Surrey and a Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course from the College of Law.

About Stonybrook Capital

Stonybrook Capital is a merchant and investment-banking firm located in New York City that focuses exclusively on the insurance and reinsurance industry. The Companys shareholders include its employees, a renowned individual from the reinsurance industry, and Holborn Corporation, a privately held independent reinsurance brokerage firm established in 1920.

Securities transactions are executed through Weild & Co., member FINRA | SIPC.

Corporate contact:

Joseph Scheerer

Principal & Managing Director

1 (917) 860-4519

joseph.scheerer@stonybrookcapital.com
Land value in Thu Thiem increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past three years, according a recent report released by JLL Vietnam.

While this is a considerable bump, JLL believes it is sustainable for several reasons. Initial land values are coming off a relatively low base, the speed of infrastructure construction has increased dramatically during this past period, the most recent residential projects launched in Thu Thiem have witnessed strong demand, and finally Thu Thiem is the largest undeveloped parcel of clear, master-planned land near the city centre.

Thu Thiem New Urban Area comprises 657 hectares, with 176 land parcels in total, more than 3.2 million square metres of accommodation, and 3.4 million sq.m of trading floor. It will be the new home of more than 145,000 residents and 217,000 labourers. To date, 10 investors have registered to invest in Thu Thiem, with total investment capital of $5 billion. Around 71 per cent of land plots (67 per cent of total land area and 81 per cent of total gross floor area) in Thu Thiem have been officially approved.

On average, Thu Thiems land price is approximately one-third of District 1s, and relatively low compared to neighbouring districts such as districts 3 and 4, said Stephen Wyatt, general director of JLL.

According to Yong-Beom Kim, manager at GS Engineering and Construction, Thu Thiem is designated as Ho Chi Minh Citys new central business district (CBD).

After the completion and operation of the infrastructure  including Metro Line No. 2 and bridges No. 2, 3, and 4, connecting to districts 1 and 7  Thu Thiem will be operating as planned, Kim said.

In addition to land values appreciating in Thu Thiem, the neighbouring areas in District 2, such as Dong Van Cong, An Phu, and Thao Dien have also witnessed increasing land prices.

With rapid urbanisation, the establishment of Thu Thiem projects and some improvements in the legal and planning framework, it is reasonable to say that land prices will continue to increase over the coming years.

The largest beneficiaries from this price movement will be the early investors in Thu Thiem, as the higher risks that they had to bear in the early stages of development are compensated.

Cosimo Jencks, chief representative from Hong Kong Land, also said that with its refined master plan, disciplined authority, cleared land plots, modern infrastructure, and proximity to the current CBD, Thu Thiem will likely become Ho Chi Minh Citys most modern district, one which is urgently needed.

Thu Thiem is now home to different large-scale projects. Launched in 2015, Dai Quang Minhs Sala project has sold 95 to 100 per cent of units, and recorded a 30 to 35 per cent increase in sales prices compared to when the units were first launched.

The Empire City project held launches in December 2016 and July 2017 for its Linden Residence and Tilia Residence projects, respectively. Both residential projects, totalling approximately 1,000 units, nearly sold out in the first few weeks after launch.

The average sale price of Tilia increased by approximately 20 to 25 per cent in comparison to Linden over the past six months.

With a booming high-end residential market and abundant opportunities for commercial development, District 2 has become the focal point for large-scale developments in the past three years. Because of the quality of the master plan and its proximity to District 1, Thu Thiem is possibly becoming the most attractive part of District 2.
Many South Koreans who live in the Phu My Hung area in HCM Citys District 7 send their children to the Korean International School, which is located in the area. - VNA/VNS Photo Manh Linh

Just opposite the clothing store is a South Korean coffee shop serving drinks and offering a selection of books for Korean readers, many of whom live in the neighbourhood.

Such sights are common on the streets of Bui Bang Doan, Nguyen Duc Canh, Pham Van Nghi and others in Phu My Hung, a suburban area outside HCM City.

Many South Korean restaurants, spas, shops and a supermarket serve the large South Korean expatriate community in the area. Many of them have signs in Vietnamese, English and Korean, and have staff who can speak Korean.

Grace Choi, 42, who moved with her husband to live in the area, said she could enjoy her countrys food and drinks at local shops and her children were able to attend schools nearby.

I visited Viet Nam once before. A year ago, my husband said he was coming to work here, so I felt comfortable following him, Choi added.

Ryan Jung, 47, also of South Korea, initially moved to neighbouring Dong Nai Province in September 2001, when the Korean expatriate community in HCM City was much smaller. Many of them lived on D2 Street in the citys Binh Thanh District or the K300 residential area in Tan Binh District.

In 2004, when Kenh Te bridge was built, connecting District 4 to District 7, more South Koreans moved from other districts such as Binh Thanh and Tan Binh to the Phu My Hung urban area.

Other new bridges, including Nguyen Van Cu, Nguyen Tri Phuong and Chanh Hung, have also made travelling between the districts of 1, 4, 5, 8, and 7 much easier in recent years.

Nearly 30-50 per cent of the residents living in Sunrise City apartment buildings in District 7 are South Koreans, according to Jung, who lives in the building.

Many South Koreans have also chosen to live in the An Phu area in District 2, which has many new apartment buildings.

According to the South Korean Consulate General in HCM City, nearly 100,000 South Koreans live in HCM City and neighbouring provinces, including Binh Duong and Dong Nai.

Jung said that he left South Korea to work and live at a Dong Nai-based factory.

I do not have any difficulties living in Viet Nam. I have a comfortable and good life here as I would in South Korea, he said, adding that Viet Nam and South Korea share similar cultures and religions, which makes it easier to live here.

After three years of working in the country, Jungs company said he could return to South Korea, but he decided to stay in Viet Nam.

In 2008, the factory in Dong Nai Province was sold to another owner, so Jung started his own business.

Living in any country is the same. Its very important to meet and work well with each other, he said, adding that Vietnamese friends and his staff had helped him develop his business and learn the language.

Viet Nam has become my native country, like South Korea, Jung said.

His children, who attend international schools in HCM City, do not have to suffer the pressure that often exists in South Korean schools, he added.

They have more time for physical activities, including swimming, he said.

Hwang Dong Won, who has lived in the Phu My Hung area for two years, said that he was able to quickly find a good job related to his management major in university because the economy here is booming, with many foreign enterprises, including Korean companies.

Although Won likes living here, he sometimes feels uncomfortable. He faces difficulty, for example, with red tape in buying items like a motorbike.

According to the South Korea Consulate, Viet Nam became the third-largest country attracting investment from South Korea last year. More than 2,700 South Korean enterprises are operating in Viet Nams southern region.

Choi Hansol, 28, who studies Vietnamese at the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said that he wanted to learn the language so that he could live and work as an actor in Viet Nam, which is experiencing rapid economic growth.

Two years ago, I travelled to Viet Nam, and after returning to South Korea, I wanted to come back to live. My brother runs his business here, he added.

Because of their busy work schedules, many South Koreans in HCM City and other areas celebrate Korean holidays and occasions in Viet Nam with their traditional customs and foods, sometimes with spouses they met and married while living in the country.

As long as the economy continues to prosper, more people from South Korea are expected to come to work in Viet Nam, and possibly stay and live for many years, or for a lifetime. For now, they mostly live in the areas where many other Koreans live, especially in Phu My Hung, where families with children, in particular, feel comfortable and safe.
Cai Mep International Terminal photo source: viettimes.vn

A source from Vietnams largest shipping company (Vinalines) told VIR that total container throughput shipped via Cai Mep International Terminal (CMIT) reached nearly 1.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) during the years first 10 months, up over 10 per cent on-year.

Located in the Cai Mep-Thi Vai area of the southern province Ba Ria-Vung Tau, the port  a joint venture between Vinalines and Denmarks APM Terminals  saw its revenue rise over 20 per cent on-year to VND455.4 billion ($20.7 million).

With ongoing improvements, CMIT has a target throughput of 1.33 million TEU this year, which would give the firm revenue of VND528 billion ($24 million)  up from a throughput of 1.2 million TEU and VND492.8 billion ($22.4 million) in revenue last year.

Big business improvements were also witnessed from January-October at Cai Lan International Container Terminal (CICT), located in the northern province of Quang Ninh. This joint venture has US-based Carrix  the parent company of SSA Marine  as a partner.

Unlike in previous years when CICT had to handle goods in bulk to survive, the port reported a throughput of 62,760 TEU for this years first 10 months, easily surpassing its yearly target of 19,838 TEU.

So far, CICT has made VND207.3 billion ($9.42 million) in revenue, fulfilling 98.1 per cent of its yearly target. This is a good sign of progress, and the figure is well ahead of last years VND176.22 billion (over $8 million).

SP-PSA, a joint-venture port between Vinalines and Singapore-based PSA, saw its volume of bulk goods increase to over 1.5 million tonnes in the years first 10 months, while the figure was 1.54 million tonnes last year.

The port, which is also located in the Cai Mep-Thi Vai area, fetched revenue of VND84.68 billion ($3.85 million), up from $3.07 million in 2016.

With business performance that often ranks lower than other jointly invested ports, SSIT  a joint venture between Vinalines and SSA Marine  witnessed solid growth in its goods volume in this years first 10 months.

SSIT, which is also in the Cai Mep-Thi Vai area, handled nearly three million tonnes of goods, compared to 3.8 million tonnes in total in 2016 after doubling the throughput of 2015.

Last year, after enduring a number of slow years, these four ports continued to perform better, thus contributing to a brighter picture for Vinalines port business, which saw its pre-tax profit climb 58 per cent to VND923 billion ($41.95 million) so far this year.

Their good performance is attributed to an increase in goods volume. We expect that the situation will be better when infrastructure development at SSIT is completed in June or July 2018, a senior official of Vinalines, told VIR.

At present, foreign joint-venture ports are waiting for approval from relevant ministries, including the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, to dredge the channels in the area to a depth of 15.5 metres from their current 14m, which will enable the ports to handle bigger vessels.

These are positive business results amid a shaky climate for global shipping businesses that are still fighting uphill battles like rising fuel prices  up 30-50 per cent on average from the same period last year.

Many leading global shipping lines suffered huge losses, while many others had to either merge, join alliances, or declare bankruptcy.

Maersk Lines acquired Harmburg Sud, and French line CMA CGM acquired NOL/APL. Meanwhile, China Cosco and CSCL were merged into COSCO Shipping. Three leading shipping lines, NYK, MOL, and Kline, underwent mergers.
File photo shows heavy smoke billowing from the chimney of a factory in Pietarsaari. (Photo: AFP/Olivier Morin)

Government envoys issued a political declaration outlining the path to "a pollution-free planet" at the third UN Environment Assembly (UNEA).

"Pollution is cutting short the lives of millions of people every year," said the call to action adopted in Nairobi at the world's highest-level decision-making forum on environmental issues.

"Every day, nine out of 10 of us breathe air that exceeds WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines for air quality and more than 17,000 people will die prematurely because of it," the declaration added.

It committed governments to promoting "sustainable economic productivity", and to encouraging more "sustainable lifestyles" by making it easier to reuse and recycle products, reducing waste.

"What we need to do next is to move concretely to a plan of action," UN Environment Programme deputy head Ibrahim Thiaw told journalists on the final day of the Dec 4-6 pollution-themed gathering.

All 193 UN states are members of the UNEA.

"Some of the actions will have to do with the way we produce and the way we consume," Thiaw said.

"Our models of production and consumption will have to change. We do not have to have models of production and consumption that harm the environment and keep killing us."

This would require "very clear policies" from governments at the national and local level, said Thiaw, such as banning single-use plastic shopping bags.

NO ROOM FOR MISTAKES

"Every year we dump 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans and generate over 40 million tonnes of electronic waste," the ministers said.

The UN Environment Programme said it has received 2.5 million anti-pollution pledges, including from national governments, municipalities, businesses and individuals.

They include commitments, which are non-binding, to ban plastic bags, curb air pollution, or green public transport.

Some 88,000 individuals made pledges too, undertaking to switch to less-polluting fuel, for example, or to use less plastic and recycle more.

Taken together, if all the commitments by governments, businesses and civil society are honoured, they would lead to 1.4 billion people breathing clean air, said Jacqueline McGlade, who co-authored a pollution report for the assembly.

Furthermore, 480,000 kilometres (almost 300,000 miles) - a third of the world's coastlines - will be unpolluted, and US$18.6 billion (15.7 billion) will be invested in anti-pollution research and innovation.

The assembly heard this week that pollution has become the biggest killer of humans, claiming nine million human lives every year - one in six deaths worldwide.

Of the annual tally, nearly seven million people succumb from inhaling toxins in the air - from car exhaust fumes, factory emissions and indoor cooking with wood and coal, according to a recent report by The Lancet medical journal.

Lead in paint alone causes brain damage in more than half-a-million children every year.

The president of the UNEA meeting, Costa Rica's environment minister Edgar Gutierrez, lamented Wednesday that humans "haven't done a good job" managing Earth's natural bounty.

"The room we have for making more mistakes is very narrow," he warned.
President Donald Trump signs a proclamation to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on Wednesday in Washington.
People sit on both sides of a destroyed bridge that had crossed the San Lorenzo de Morovis River, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in Morovis, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 27.


The fashion legend chooses his favourite images from the vast display at the Paris Photo exhibition at the Grand Palais









Karl Lagerfeld's choice: Yellow Passage by James Casabere, 2017. Visitors to Paris Photo 2017 can follow a trail through the exhibition hall of images selected by Karl Lagerfeld



James Casebere, Courtesy of the Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris/Brussels



The flourish of a signature in black pen and ink, the letters tipping slightly to the right, reads Karl Lagerfeld 2017. And those spidery letters seem to pop up everywhere in the huge space at the Grand Palais in Paris, devoted to the annual exhibition, Paris Photo (until 12th November)

Karl Lagerfeld's choice: Christy Turlington, by Patrick Demarchelier (1990), wearing a rose hat by Jasper Conran

Patrick Demarchelier, courtesy of Camera Work

Today, photography is part of my life  it completes the circle between my artistic and professional restlessness, Karl said, to explain the backstory to these signatures marking his interest or approval. They create a winding path through the thousands of artworks on display from a global selection of galleries.

To my inexpert eye, the Lagerfeld choices seem to be as restless as he describes himself. Here is a relatively predictable image for Lagerfeld to choose as one of the most powerful fashion designers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Elsa Schiaparelli floating among flowers, photographed in 1934 by Ilse Bing (Gallery Karsten Grieve, Paris).

Its awkward romance is perhaps a good fit in a photographic minds eye, with Karls choice of a forest, resembling something from the fable of Sleeping Beauty, created in pigment print by Sandra Kantanen for Londons Purdyhicks Gallery.

What about that period car leaning like a drunken driver on the steep streets of San Francisco in 1960? I have never seen Karl at the wheel nor noticed any interest in cars.

But perhaps the moody, filmic story-telling of the image by Ed van der Elsken (from Annet Gelink Gallery) fits with another storybook photo by the same photographer: a picture of a Paris street, metro station included, with a mechanic at the tipping point of a ladder as he works on a street clock (Howard Greenberg Gallery).

I have often sensed a dream-like vision of the past in Karls photography, which never appears in his deliberately forward-looking fashion designs. But in these scattered choices of images there seem to be other elements, such as a sense of dark poetry or something that is so hard to achieve: pure beauty. The choice of Paolo Roversis 1988 vision of feminine innocence, double images of a body covered and naked, is one such example of pure beauty (at Pace MacGill Gallery).

Is there a leaning towards fashion in Karls choices? I cannot judge without another visit to the exhibition, put together by hundreds of different galleries and displaying so many visual creatives. Or maybe all will be revealed when I see the forthcoming book of Lagerfelds choices, Paris Photo by Karl Lagerfeld, to be published by Steidl.

Karl Lagerfeld's choice: Geothermal Stones by Liz Nielsen (2017)

Courtesy of the artist and Next Level Galerie, Paris

The idea of interjecting Karls eye at Paris Photo is an original way for the public to contemplate the artworks exhibited by the many gallerists and curators while at the same time discovering Karls aesthetic universe.

And as we are discussing the creative eye, one of his selection is a relatively recent image by Irving Penn from 2001, dubbed Mascara Wars. Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, it shows a dragon lady version of spiky lashes (from Pace/MacGill Gallery). This skewered vision of beauty shows a forest of lashes surrounding a glassy, blood-shot eyeball. Nature, with a difference that Lagerfeld must relish.

A book with images and essays of Karl Lagerfeld's selection of images from Paris Photo 2017 will be published at the end of November

Steidl
Care Agency Announces Safeguarding for Adults at Risk Training

The Care Agency held two days of Safeguarding Training for Adults at Risk on the 28th and 29th November 2017.

Safeguarding relates to protecting an adults right to live in safety and free from abuse and neglect. Vulnerable adults exist in all areas of society and it is vital that professionals and practitioners understand safeguarding procedures and their roles and responsibilities, so as to promote the welfare of vulnerable adults and safeguard them from potential harm.

This Safeguarding Training for Adults at Risk course, aimed to provide the skills to identify risk and vulnerability. It also covered the duties and responsibilities for professionals and their organisations, to ensure that all staff working with adults are aware of the Safeguarding Adults at Risk policies and procedures. Managers with lead responsibilities in safeguarding from the Gibraltar Health Authority, the Royal Gibraltar Police and the Care Agency, attended the training.

The CEO for the Care Agency, Mrs. Natalie Tavares commented that safeguarding was central to the work of the Care Agency. The Adult Services works hard to ensure the course was delivered to all its stake holders. She went on to say that Safeguarding is about professionals and organisations working together to promote well-being and choice.

The Minister for Health, Care and Justice, the Honourable Mr Neil F Costa MP was delighted at the work being conducted by the Adult Services and the delivery of the Safeguarding Training for Adults at Risk. He stated: This training will provide all the practitioners working with vulnerable adults with the skills to ensure the welfare and safety of those who may suffer harm. Additionally, it will enhance the already positive working relationships between the staff of three Departments for which I am responsible.
Lorin Stein Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The Paris Review editor Lorin Stein resigned on Wednesday, as it was revealed the literary publication was conducting an internal investigation into his alleged inappropriate behavior toward female employees and writers, the New York Times reports. A spokesperson for book publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux told Publishers Marketplace that it had also accepted Steins resignation on Wednesday afternoon.

The Times notes that The Paris Reviews board began an investigation into the conduct of Stein  who had edited the publication since 2010  in October after he informed them that his name had appeared on a list (entitled SHITTY MEDIA MEN) circulating online with anonymous allegations of harassment and misconduct by men in media. Both a subcommittee and lawyers for The Paris Review spoke with current and former female employees, and received complaints from at least two female writers about Stein.

The board had been planning to meet on Thursday and had not yet decided what action to take on the matter. Early on Wednesday, Stein sent an email to the board suggesting he wouldnt make the same mistakes again. Per the Times:

He acknowledged dating and expressing interest in women with whom he professional connections, including interns and writers for the magazine, conduct that he acknowledged was an abuse of my position. He told the board that he had occasionally engaged in sexual behavior in the office after hours, but said that in all instances, the sexual contact was consensual and had happened when he was single. Mr. Stein was married in 2015.

He later apologized for his behavior in a Wednesday afternoon letter of resignation to board. At times in the past, I blurred the personal and the professional in ways that were, I now recognize, disrespectful of my colleagues and our contributors, and that made them feel uncomfortable or demeaned, Stein wrote. I am very sorry for any hurt I caused them.

Steins resignation serves a testament to the power of naming and shaming the so-called Harvey Weinsteins of the workplace  whether its through public forums, word of mouth, or even sly kickers in longer reports.
Photo: Laurie Sparham/Focus Features.

In Paul Thomas Andersons Phantom Thread, a hush attends the illustrious British womens-clothing designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he wields a tape measure with delicate precision, runs his long fingers over the fabric, and gazes intently on his handiwork  the silence broken only by pencil scratching or the creak of a floorboard. Assistants and clients know not to interrupt. The time is the early 50s, and Reynolds Woodcock is an artist breathing the higher air.

Phantom Thread could have been a howl. Just the name Reynolds Woodcock is, as the French would say, de trop  the pinnacle of twit. Jonny Greenwoods delirious strings-and-piano score carries on in a romantic-transcendentalist realm of its own. It would all be very pretentious  except its not pretension if you live and breathe it, as I think Anderson lives and breathes the idea that an artist like Woodcock must orchestrate every aspect of existence to make a sacred space for creation. The trouble comes when you also believe in true love. How can a man like Woodcock cede even a small amount of control?

He cant, at first. The Woodcock we meet sits at the breakfast table with his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), along with a lover who begs for his attention and is curtly frozen out. Shes already history. Cyril, meanwhile, is attuned to his movements. She follows his lead, completes his thoughts, guides him only in the subtlest ways for fear of throwing him off his precious rhythm. Woodcock allows only two people into his space: Cyril, who takes care of the day-to-day business of living, and his mother, who is dead but ever present.

Woodcocks delicate balance could perhaps be maintained if he were an ascetic, but Anderson has also given him a reverence for the female form and a gift for seduction. In a restaurant near his country house, he picks up a charmingly clumsy waitress named Alma (the Luxembourg-born Vicky Krieps), who has the body type he likes (tall, small-breasted, a hint of a belly) and a tantalizing way of holding his eyes. (If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose, she tells him.) On their first date he takes her measurements. Soon after, she has practically moved in. Like his other lovers, Alma is not happy as a wallflower: She wants to feel recognized and needed. Unlike his other lovers, she has a touch of the psychopath.

Phantom Thread adopts a sinister, Hitchcockian tone before resolving itself into a folie a deux that is too fou for words  preposterous, in fact, although this is the director who once opened his characters hearts by pelting them with frogs. Said resolution makes psychological sense but needed a few more beats to work itself into our bloodstream. Much has been made of Andersons attraction to stories of fathers, generally terrible ones. But in Phantom Thread  as in Punch-Drunk Love  we can discern the longing of a little boy for a mommy-lover. Does Woodcocks clinging to order signal a desire to surrender, even to the brink of death? I doubt Anderson imagines a better design for living.

Manville is, like her character, so in sync with Day-Lewis that she borders on self-effacing  until you see how keenly Cyril monitors her brothers every breath. Krieps is bewitchingly lucent, her face just masklike enough to make our sudden awareness of all her dark thoughts a shock. But the draw, of course, is Day-Lewis, whos no stranger to the notion of creating a sacred space in which to work. Were not so much watching Woodcock the rarefied designer as Day-Lewis the rarefied actor, his immersion so uncanny that he can illuminate a soul at once titanic and stunted. Day-Lewis has announced that this will be his last role, that hes retiring from acting, and its easy to imagine him losing himself in carpentry or some other craft requiring less emotional risk. How nice that will be for him. How tragic for the rest of the world.
Do you feel a chill in the air? Have the clouds above you darkened? Did a nearby flock of birds suddenly take flight? Its the day of the Posche fashion show, and the Lizard Queen is at the height of her unearthly powers. As the models get ready, Kim D. (the D is short for Deargodwhy) doubles down on accusing Teresa of infidelity, a charge Siggy and Dolores continue to vociferously deny on her behalf. Kims hairdresser friend Lina says she saw Teresa canoodling with a non-Joe man in public just last week. It is a blessing that everyone makes it out of this conversation without taking a hair curler to the eyeball.

Meanwhile, Teresa, Melissa, Danielle, and Margaret primp for a high-glam confrontation. Danielle reminds us that it was at a long-ago Posche fashion show that Ashlee Holmes yanked out her hair extensions. This event is basically the Purge. Teresa  who, by the way, is still on probation  leads her squad into the basement, the shows de facto backstage. Its probably for the best that the actual rumble is anticlimactic, like the Jets and the Sharks if they universally forgot their choreography. Teresa yells at Kim D. for talking shit about her marriage, Kim D. chastises for Teresa for clubbing, Teresa threatens to grab her by her hair. (Ashlees spirit lives on.) T does deliver one memorably excellent line, though, when she announces that Posche stands for Piece Of Shit, Coke whore, Homewrecker Everyday. Acrostics are a really underutilized insult format across the Real Housewives franchise.

In the face of all this sturm und drang, Siggy and Dolores still intend to walk in the show, a choice that soon has Dolores and Melissa getting in each others faces. This is not the worst fight I have ever had with someone Im about to get on an airplane with  theres something about traffic on the Van Wyck that transforms me into a carsick, raging she-Hulk  but still, Milan ought to be interesting.

Joe Prime, still very much grieving his mom, has procured the services of a medium, Concetta, who soothes everyones nervous Catholic streak when she tells them shes Italian. Im a simple girl whos heard dead folks all my life, says Concetta, and if this isnt a backdoor pilot for a Bravo show of her very own, then somebody has made a grave mistake. After turning down a drink (I never mix alcohol with dead people, she explains, and you know what, same), Concetta tells Joe, Teresa, and Melissa that the late Antonia is right beside them. Shes at peace, and shes even playing music for Joe. Its Connie Franciss Mama, the song they danced to at his wedding. She also encourages them to tell their dad, who desperately misses his wife, to take his time and trust theyll be reunited one day. I didnt expect a supposed psychic paying a visit to the Giudice-Gorga family would make for such a sobering and emotional scene, but here we are. Its probably for the best that the Allison DuBoises of this world be kept as far away as possible from people in mourning.

Siggy heads to Giudice Manor to apologize to Teresa. She agrees that Kim D. was wildly out of line. So whyd she still walk in the show, then? As Siggy explains it, she didnt want to disappoint the families of the victims that the charity event was intended to benefit. Teresa accepts that  kind of. Siggy makes it clear that she still wants very much to go to Italy, but that she wont go without Dolores. By the way, for those of you playing along at home, Siggy is once again in a fight with Margaret, whos back on her bad side for referencing Hitler in their group argument over Kim D. I fully endorse the point Margaret was making  that you should judge others by how they treat everyone, not just you  but as a general rule, you should probably not rhetorically invoke Hitler, especially when talking to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

After we are forced to endure some conspicuous product placement for a blow-out house-call app called Priv (now, give me $100, Priv), Marge Sr. is off for a date with Steve, the company accountant! Naturally, Marge Jr. and Joe Omega have come along as chaperones. I feel like I havent talked enough about how much I enjoy Margarets mother, so allow me to do that here: I love Margarets mother. After Marge Sr. describes her plans to get a new tattoo that will only be visible when shes naked, Margaret asks Steve about his five-year plan: To be alive. I may not be a family member, but Steve has my personal blessing to marry Marge Sr.
Ryan Reynolds. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME

Normally when Ryan Reynolds is speaking from behind a mask hes shooting and slicing people down as the merc with a mighty foul mouth in Deadpool. But hes just booked a new gig as the voice behind a crazy character. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reynolds will play Detective Pikachu in the upcoming live-action movie, Detective Pikachu. And before you start wondering, it is reportedly meant to be a motion-capture role. So Reynolds isnt just stepping into a recording studio and talking at a microphone. Hell be suiting up in spandex and covered in all those little dots to give Andy Serkis a run for his mo-cap money! Detective Pikachu is an exceptionally intelligent Pokemon who fancies himself a sleuth, and he sets out in the movie to help star Justice Smith track down his kidnapped father. Kathryn Newton will play a sassy journalist who helps them. And now we wonder: Are there going to be a lot more guns and curse words in Detective Pikachu than we could have ever imagined? Lets wait and see.
And with one final shirking of narrative responsibility, a frustrating season of South Park comes to an end. Everything thats disappointed in season 21 is present in Splatty Tomato, though at least this finale tackles the burning matter of Donald Trump in a more head-on capacity than some of this seasons more slight installments. All the same, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have proven themselves once again incapable of standing behind a principle without defaulting to their natural position of both sides dismissal. What made South Park widely liked in its earlier seasons  its determined egalitarianism of mockery, its willingness to dish out the burns indiscriminately in all directions  has made it incompatible with an era defined by more clear-cut ethical stakes.

Every time Parker and Stone landed a glancing blow on this years meatiest target, they quickly undercut themselves by saving a little blame for the rest of us. Its inconceivable for them to take a stand on one side of an issue, and so this weeks skewering of Trumps rock-bottom approval rating has to be offset by a line later in the episode calling out the other side. Except that the other side is  us, them, and anyone sane enough to have some misgivings about Americas pivot toward fascism. The national culture has produced a situation without two comparable and equally valid viewpoints, and South Park isnt prepared for that. It doesnt make a lick of sense when the episode ends with the stated koan, If you always make yourself the victim, you can justify being awful. Are we really to believe that was the problem in 2017? Too many people playing the victim? Its a puckeringly sour note to go out on, though one gets the impression the writers saw it more as a parting nugget of aloof wisdom.

At least the scenes leading up to that thoroughly un-stuck landing give us the satisfaction of mocking the most easily mocked man in America one more time. Parker and Stone go for the low-hanging fruit of a politically charged It parody, suggesting that the real Pennywise might be in the White House. President Garrison has been lurking around South Park, jumping out at kids to ask them, Hey, how are my approval ratings? A newscast informs us that Trump is currently at Emoji Movielevel scorn among the public  certified rotten, to put it in the vernacular of Rotten Tomatoes. He hasnt received the news well, stalking local backyards and eating neighborhood pets for sustenance. The townspeople are worried, though not all the townspeople.

And so we meet the White family, one of the more closed-minded households in South Park. (I suspect that the family repeatedly referred to as the Whites has been intended as  stay with me here  a stand-in for the white population of America.) When the people of South Park make an impassioned plea to the Whites to do the right thing and stop propping up Trumps incompetent administration, South Park is calling out to the lowercase-w whites, too. Really makes you think.

Meanwhile, theres a lot of stuff gumming up the works, included more as resolution to previously established strands of plot than functional parts of a satirical apparatus. Everyone is still dealing with the nuclear fallout resulting from the bombing of Toronto at the close of last weeks episode, particularly Ike, Kyles adopted little brother from Canada. This universes Justin Trudeau calls on Canadas sleeper cells to activate, and with that command, Ike transforms into a majestic Mountie atop an adorable sloppy dog. Its kind of dumb, but then, the best parts of South Park often are.

Less amusing is the lunge at resolution to the ongoing courtship between PC Principal and Strong Woman. Their mutual attraction too strong to deny, theyve continued seeing one another on the sly, and of course theyre exposed in this episode. In a running joke not nearly as funny as Parker and Stone think it is, everyone who learns of their mutually respectful and consensual relationship begins violently projectile vomiting. Its not easy to divine just what statement theyre trying to make with this reaction, but none of the possibilities strike the right chord. Nobody is arguing that love cant begin in the workplace, only that men need to learn how to read a damn room. There are several planets of behavior separating a tentative test-the-water half-flirt with the impropriety thats made headlines every other day over the past year.

Everything comes to a head in a tense showdown at gunpoint, where both Cartman and the Whites get their just desserts. Heidi finally opens her eyes to the more unhealthy aspects of her relationship and smartly gives Cartman the heave-ho, while Randy Marsh lodges a plea for decency to the Whites, ending with a thud in an extreme wide shot of the United States of America. As ever, Parker and Stone are willing to point fingers at everyone but themselves.

The episode leaves its audience with a note of ambiguity that serves the same purpose as a Rorschach blot. In the concluding bid for sanity from white America, the optimists see a signal that its not too late to change while the pessimists despair that the fate of the nation has been left to people who have amply demonstrated that theyre not ready for that responsibility. Parker and Stone might think of this concluding note as faintly redemptive, a rare show of earnestness from a wiseacre series in the service of a public good. But considering their own philosophy, it rings false. Want America to find its scruples and do the right thing? You first.

Final Thoughts and Questions

 One of the scant truths contained within this episode is that some of our 80s nostalgia may be misplaced; more specifically, that vast swaths of music from the era are unlistenable. The Chicago Bears Shufflin Crews novelty song The Super Bowl Shuffle was the Gangnam Style of another time.

 The cut from a mention of a fox trap to a decoy Fox News set plopped in the middle of the woods worked real good on me, a lover of corny visual puns.

 The writers of South Park would like you to know that the only reason they havent depicted Trump getting shot is that theyre not allowed to, not even in a coy, satirical way. This, naturally, is couched in a withering diss to Kathy Griffin.

 Thats a wrap for South Park this year, one of the rockier outings in the shows run. What sort of world will we be living in by the time season 22 gets up and running next year? Will Trump still be president? Will America still be a recognized nation? In the event that we arent all incinerated in a nuclear holocaust, I hope to see you all back again in 2018, and thanks for reading.
TONIGHT: The #MeToo movement won Person of the Year. Al Franken did not. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/MEOuK0Ielr  The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) December 7, 2017

After a seventh woman stepped forward to accuse Senator Al Franken of sexual misconduct on Wednesday, Stephen Colbert used his Late Show monologue to address what appears to be the writing on the wall in regard to Frankens career. Referring to the politician as the Minnesota senator and former Minnesota senator, Colbert noted that numerous Democratic senators have called for Frankens resignation. This accusation appears to be the straw that groped the camels back, Colbert quipped. Despite previously denying wrongdoing and an ongoing Senate ethics investigation, Bloomberg is reporting that Franken will make an announcement on Thursday, with some predicting he might resign, though it is by no means certain.
Photo: Alex Bailey / Netflix

The second season of The Crown brings back all the sumptuous, high-production-value, ultra-British refinement that characterized its first season. But it also does something different: It loosens up a bit.

While season one functioned as a Queen Elizabeth II origin story about the young monarchs adjustment to her new duties  and in particular, her relationship with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, played with blustery verve by John Lithgow  the ten episodes arriving Friday on Netflix broaden the canvas to explore the fragility of various relationships, both personal and political. Although its still very much a serious drama, the show, set this season between 1956 and 1963, has a warmer pulse. Reflecting the march toward more modern times, its also sexier, especially every time Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) shows up onscreen to suck on a cigarette and smolder. There are many pleasures in this season of The Crown, but one of the greatest is watching Kirby blow smoke and find new ways to convey that she is soooo over everyone and everything in her vicinity. (Another pleasure: watching the heat thats generated when she meets photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, portrayed, due to the grace of the British TV gods, by the dashing Matthew Goode.)

Romance and marriage  particularly of the strained sort  are running themes, most notably when it comes to Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and her husband Philip (Matt Smith), whose troubled relationship takes center stage in the first three episodes. But tenuous alliances of other sorts are also on display within the extended royal family; between members of the international community and Great Britain, whose reputation takes a whacking in the wake of the Suez Canal crisis; and between the British people and the queen herself, whos sharply criticized for being out of touch with her subjects. This season  largely written by series creator Peter Morgan, screenwriter of The Queen and Frost/Nixon  would be a transporting, thought-provoking experience under any circumstances. But its especially fascinating to watch right now. While Elizabeths attitudes are quite conservative, especially by todays standards, there is also something deeply encouraging in seeing a leader who insists on projecting decency.

The age of deference is over, the monarch is told at one point by journalist John Grigg (John Heffernan), who publicly chastises the outmoded royal family and Elizabeths stilted way of addressing the public.

What is left without deference? she asks. Anarchy?

Pretty much, Queen E. Pretty much.

With Churchill no longer prime minister, Lithgow is, save for a flashback, out of the picture. His presence is missed, but the consistently excellent cast more than makes up for that absence. Foy, superb in season one, sinks even more comfortably into the skin of the fusty, old-fashioned, but sometimes surprisingly generous ruler of England. When Elizabeth occasionally  very occasionally  smiles or giggles, Foy plays the moments as if the queen has finally given herself a permission slip to experience joy. And when Elizabeth is angry, Foy knows just how to radiate a sense of calm while enabling the muscles in her neck to tell a completely different emotional story.

Smith can be deliberately maddening and arrogant as Philip, but he also dollops so much drollery into his line deliveries that you cant help but be charmed by him, and understand why Elizabeth is, too. In a few scenes, Philip and Margaret even become partners in eye-rolling, one of the many ways in which Morgan and his co-writers and directors add levity to their reenactment of British history.

Of course, the sheer beauty of the costumes and production design in The Crown cannot be overstated. Gorgeous vistas from all over the globe splash across the screen when Philip goes on a five-month tour of various British territories, and the interiors of Buckingham Palace are just as rich with vibrant, opulent detail. At no point do you watch this show without thinking two thoughts: Wow, thats beautiful! and Jesus, that looks really expensive!

But what is most striking and instructive about the second season of The Crown is Elizabeths capacity to take modest but meaningful steps toward change. On more than one occasion, the queen arrives at an opinion, then receives new information and revises that opinion accordingly. Shes not always right, but she listens, a quality she rather pointedly tells Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Anton Lesser)  who really should be called Prime Minister Mansplain  is vital in a leader.

On every level, The Crown is deserving of praise. But its that subtle emphasis on the idea that even the most stubborn among us can at least try to evolve that makes it vital end-of-2017 viewing.
Photo: Vulture and Courtesy of Disney

Drawing a line between weird and not-weird cartoons might seem like a fuzzy endeavor, as far as animation is concerned. All cartoons are inherently weird and unnatural, especially ones that need to catch and retain the attention of a PG-aged audience. And yet, certain cartoons do seem to broadcast themselves as odder than others. Shows from the 90s, like Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Arthur, Doug, Kim Possible, and As Told by Ginger, were filled with practical life lessons from human and anthropomorphic characters modeled after real life and its physics. Then therere those other cartoons from that same decade: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Rockos Modern Life; Ed, Edd n Eddy; Cow and Chicken, Angela Anaconda, Invader Zim, and even SpongeBob Squarepants were, well, weird. Today, Cartoon Network embraces the weirdos as part of its brand, and theres a certain seamlessness between its regular daytime programming and the after-dark switch to Adult Swim, allowing kids and adolescents to age gracefully from oddballs like Mordecai and Rigby to the even more bizarre Morty and Rick. Nickelodeon is no slouch, either. Newly acquired shows like Welcome to the Wayne and Pinky Malinky joined their programming block this fall to compete with CN fan favorites Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball, Uncle Grandpa, and Steven Universe.

These cartoons often employ more mature, or simply darker, humor that multiple age groups can latch onto. Full of adult situations and inside jokes, Rockos Modern Life is as funny to me now as in its heyday (I eagerly await the 2018 release of Rockos Modern Life: Static Cling), and Adventure Time and Steven Universe have an abundance of teen and adult fans. They also take more risks visually, bypassing the cute or attractive for something closer to the realm of gross and uncomfortable. Weird cartoons arent afraid to make bodies ugly, even, or perhaps especially, in the case of main characters. Their eyes bulge, too large or small and oddly shaped to pass for cute (Rocko of Rockos Modern Life, Zim and Gir of Invader Zim, Weasel of I Am Weasel). Nothing fits their face, whether its a nose (Brendon Small of Home Movies, Daggett and Norbert of Angry Beavers), or especially a mouth (Ickis, Oblina, Krumm of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters). And their eyes and lips, no matter their normal size, are likely to stretch far past the spatial limits of the face when they express delight, fear, or anger. Their limbs are spindly and cumbersome (Finn the Human of Adventure Time) or short (Lazlo from Camp Lazlo, Courage from Courage the Cowardly Dog) and squat (Cow of Cow and Chicken, Vendetta and Charlotte of Making Fiends), under- or oversized like the rest of their frame. They have awkward, angular hair (Ed and Eddy of Ed, Edd n Eddy, Mandy of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy) and always look a bit  unkempt.

These characters not only buck the beauty standard, they give etiquette the middle finger. They gargle, drool, fart, spit, puke, binge, burp, shake, seizure, gape, gawk, and literally bounce off the walls. They are rude, crude, and crass. They find themselves in extreme situations that get them flattened, blown up, and decapitated. Theyre violent toward others. Unlike shows such as Hey Arnold or The Fairly OddParents, which at least attempt to balance youthful do-nothingness with accepted necessities in life like chores, school, and a healthy respect for labor, the lessons offered by these programs can be few and far between. By the end of the 22-minute mark, its sometimes unclear if anything was learned by anyone involved, including us. They are wild and unruly in a way humans, bound by social norms, can only dream of.

But theres yet another, much simpler way to name what unites these productions: weird cartoons embrace a hybrid ethnic heritage that includes features from the minstrel stage. The minstrel tradition allowed for stereotypes about black people to act as a way for performers to push outside the limits of propriety and bodily control. These wildly popular shows provided a blueprint for early animation in both aesthetic and content, gifting cartoons their odd bodies, wacky judgment, and over-the-top physical comedy. Those traits remain in cartoons today, and theyre most apparent in weird cartoons. However, something has changed. Unlike their minstrel predecessors, todays cartoons celebrate oddities rather than ridicule them. They relish the not-normal, transforming minstrel aesthetics into an ethical embrace of kids and adults who fall outside the normative standard  people of color, people of all sizes, and people with disabilities. Such a transformation owes itself to the melting pot that American animation became by the end of the 20th century. From surrealism to the sitcom to anime, diversity in every sense of the word allowed cartoons to flip the script on minstrelsy.

First, its important to understand how deeply embedded the minstrel tradition is in American animation. In a study entitled Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation, University of Toronto professor Nicholas Sammond illustrates how American animation not only developed out of minstrel tradition  cartoons keep the aesthetic principles of minstrel shows alive and could not exist without them. While film and media historians are clear on the relationship between the two widely popular staples of American culture, as Sammond says, that observation too often has added up to little more than a mere nod or at best a shaking finger  yes, the American cartoons debt to the minstrel is undeniable and wrong, now could we please move on? Meanwhile, the most enduring features of American cartoons reenact the minstrels body in all its buffoonery and excitement. Cartoons didnt borrow from minstrelsy, they joined it, as Sammond puts it. A familial resemblance is easy to see in early animation figures from the 1920s, such as Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid and Betty Boops companions Bimbo and Koko, with their blacked-out bodies, Jump Jim Crow attire (gloves, hats, patent shoes), and vaudeville antics. The similarities become less overt over time. Mickey Mouse and friends, Bugs Bunny, and others would keep the gloves, but by the height of their popularity, became more like vestigial minstrels, as Sammond calls them. As time went on, audiences read them as cartoons above minstrels. Still, they embodied the conventions of blackface minstrelsy. For Vice this past spring, Sarah Hagi put forth the provocative argument that Bugs Bunny is no doubt  a black man. Not only was Bugs Bunny black, he and Mickey and Tweety are, according to Sammond, actual minstrels.

Minstrel characters relied upon a mythos of the black body as resistant to labor, says Sammond. The minstrels body  fluid, voracious, and libidinal  represented a freedom from the constraints of Protestant middle-class morality for performers and audiences alike, with that freedom represented by a culturally prevalent notion of an uncivilized black race. In cartoons, the fantasy of unruly, unschooled bodies was intensified by characters without physical limitations, whose unruliness could mean hyperactive motions, beyond-extreme emoting, and dismemberment. Like their actor counterparts, these new characters, says Sammond, behaved as tricksters, indifferent or even hostile to the social norms of polite society.

Bugs embraced the components of minstrel performance that audiences eventually came to take for granted as synonymous with cartoons. He is a trickster, antagonizing his scene partners for personal gain or the sheer hell of it, and resistant to anything that might resemble work. A study on minstrel musical arrangements in Looney Tunes shorts by musicologist Joanna R. Smolko directed me to the 1952 Southern Fried Rabbit. In the short, Bugs attempts to cross the visibly marked Mason-Dixon line only to be stopped short by Yosemite Sam in full Confederate uniform  Sam is following orders to keep Yankees from crossing. Bugs  a Yankee  again tries to cross, this time disguised as an enslaved black person. Well, its one of our boys! Sam exclaims before Bugs enters the frame, blacked up with brown coloring, sloped shoulders, and tattered clothes, playing My Old Kentucky Home on a banjo and singing along. Safely across, Bugs straightens up and changes the tune to Yankee Doodle. As Sam rushes over, knife raised, Bugs reverts back to his disguise: Please, dont beat me, Massa, he cries, handing Sam a whip.

The short is fascinating for many reasons, not least because of the effort put into Bugss costume. Bugs doesnt need the disguise to be a minstrel  his gloves, tricksterism, language (Ise coming, Ise coming), and wily antics make him one. In dressing as a caricature of an enslaved black person, he is really blacking up twice. Southern Fried Rabbit demonstrates how the minstrel features embedded in animation eventually became normalized as conventional cartoon behavior. To audiences, these vestigial minstrels no longer signaled black caricatures  they were just cartoons. By the 50s, in order for a cartoon like Bugs to become black (again), he has to do some more exaggerated play-acting. Bugss blackface within Southern Fried Rabbit is a sly wink to the minstrel aesthetic that forged his character in the first place.

Television changed (almost) everything. The development of the sitcom model inspired a structural and visual shift between the minstrel two-act antics of Bugs & Co. and the Honeymooners-esque Flintstones or The Jetsons. Much like live sitcoms, these shows were cartoonish reenactments of ultimately normative ideals. The characters were more human, their situations a mirror to real-life concerns with work, child-rearing, relationships, and money.

As for the cartoons that have kept the weird tradition alive, elements of minstrelsy remained in the out-of-bounds behavior that defines them. But as Sammond says, in terms of aesthetic, theres a new thing happening that, when combined with that minstrel tradition, reconfigures its more problematic elements. That new thing is, ironically enough, global diversity. You have this entire generation of folks as early as the 60s beginning to recognize and be intrigued by a kind of reverse flow, Sammond says. He points to the 60s Speed Racer and early evidence of American audiences fascination with anime and manga, from wildly popular dubs (Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Inuyasha), to cross-cultural collabs (Thundercats, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi), and Western shows imitative of Japanese styles (Martin Mystery, Totally Spies, Avatar: The Last Airbender).

Another import  surrealism  had also taken root in the aesthetics of American cartoonists, a slightly different take on unruly, non-normative shapes and over-the-top grotesque bodies. Harvey Kurtzman founded Mad in 1952; Art Spiegelman, while best known for Maus, worked on Wacky Packages in the 60s and Garbage Pail Kids in the 80s; and the generation of cartoonists who followed. When I look at Ren & Stimpy, a lot of what I see is Wacky Packs, Sammond says. Premiering in the summer of 91, Ren & Stimpy was  along with Rugrats and Doug  a Nickelodeon original, crucial to the channels entry into original programming. Shows like Rocko, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, KaBlam!, The Angry Beavers, CatDog, and Oh Yeah! Cartoons, followed within the decade. The 90s proved that animators and audiences were far from done with the weird, the wacky, and the grotesque.

Lineups for childrens television today include The Amazing World of Gumball, We Bare Bears, Harvey Beaks, SpongeBob Squarepants, and Gravity Falls (in syndication), shows that thrive off the weird, the wacky, and the grotesque hallmarks that define both surrealism and minstrelsy. The themes, however, have changed. In The Amazing World of Gumball, main characters Gumball and Darwin Watterson are generous interpretations of a cat and goldfish, respectively, prone to hyperbolic expressions and dramatics to match the random high jinks they find themselves in from episode to episode. In the current seasons episode The Nuisance, the Wattersons, including parents Nicole and Richard and sister Anais, are notified that they will be kicked out of town at the request of other citizens, frustrated with the familys frequent crimes which include public nudity, wasting 911 resources, parking violations, and vandalism. Hoping to stay in their town of Elmore, the Wattersons endeavor to become the perfect residents. They succeed, but are changed in the process, transformed into thinly lined, realistic human figures in the image of the idealized white nuclear family. Realizing their sacrifice, the Wattersons revert back to deviants and reclaim their original selves. If you truly love something, make it as ugly as possible to everyone else, says Gumball. (A similar episode occurs in season six of SpongeBob Squarepants, where SpongeBob physically transforms to a smoother, less quirky version of himself after watching a video on How to be Normal.)

While visually more muted compared to some of its contemporaries, We Bare Bears  premised on three bear (and bare) brothers acclimating to human society  also explores the boundaries of normal and not normal. Creator Daniel Chong previously worked for Disney Animation Studios and Nickelodeon and interned at Cartoon Network before starting the webcomic that was then developed into the acclaimed Cartoon Network series. [I]ts a story about people just trying to fit in and I think its something that we all can relate to, just trying to find a place in the world, said Chong in an interview shortly after the shows premiere in 2015. Analogous shows such as Uncle Grandpa, Chowder, Regular Show, Harvey Beaks, Rocko, Rick and Morty, and SpongeBob exhibit that same impulse toward oddity, and even deviance, that uses it as a way to interrogate norms associated with school, work, family, relationships, and bodies.

These weird cartoons display unabashed attachment to what separates them from so-called normal life, which in turn rearranges audiences attachments to normalcy as an outdated, rigid, and unattainable ideal for most. Little wonder then why childrens shows like Adventure Time and Steven Universe  created by Adventure Time alum Rebecca Sugar  have become cult favorites among adult communities of color, queer people of color in particular. Reading Adventure Time as a legacy of Judith Butlers groundbreaking critical text, Gender Trouble, writer Zoe Daniels points out the ways in which feminized and masculinized traits are freely distributed among characters of all genders, [proof] that kids TV is capable of challenging some of the adult worlds most strongly held constructions. For Vulture, J.P. Brammer called Steven Universe the queerest show on television, highlighting season-four episode Last One Out of Beach City in which a tall, thick, pink-haired, darker-skinned rocker chick gives Pearl her number. As Brammer notes, the moment is an unsurprising milestone for a show that makes gender fluidity and love between femmes part of its norms. Even Rick and Morty, a show that in many ways makes itself attractive to white dudebro audiences, undermines the traditional family structure and its wacky grotesque ultimately chastises heteropatriarchal urges instead of reveling in them (in Rick Potion #9 a plan to trick a girl classmate into falling in love with him literally leads to the irreversible destruction of the world and the deaths of the title characters).

These shows, with their borderline grotesque protagonists who are committed to doing as little of anything that might be deemed productive, offer a sense of freedom, not unlike what was sought after and found on the minstrel stage, and later through its vestiges in animated shorts. However, unlike their predecessors (live-action and animated), whose fantasies about unruly, unproductive bodies were moored to racist mythology about an untamable black race, todays cartoons are textured by a diverse cultural and formal reservoir that imagines new definitions, new possibilities for difference across color, shape, and sound. Minstrelsys residual influence is the impulse toward the unruly, but the influx of global influences changes the nature of the impulse. For these shows it is matter of fact that some bodies will be tall, some will be short, some will be chubby, some will be thick, round, lumpy  and everything in between. They will be quirky, anxious, depressed, and hyperactive. And while it would be impossible for these weird cartoons to exist without an American minstrel tradition, todays most artistically daring shows remake that legacy in a way that might be considered reparative of what once was.
Crowds of spectators and media interest in the first Twin Peaks shootout trial fell short of expectations, and the McLennan County Sheriffs Office is undertaking a full assessment of its security effort before the next trial, officials said.

The office spent almost $572,000 in overtime for the first trial. The cost came in even higher than expected because efforts related to Hurricane Harvey prevented state and federal agencies from sending personnel they had planned to send to Waco, McLennan County Chief Deputy David Kilcrease said.

We knew last year this was going to be very expensive, Kilcrease said. We had to plan for everything. We had to cover every contingency that there was, and thats what we did.

For one, officials expected the courtroom to be packed with reporters, spectators and supporters of the defendant throughout the trial. Instead, it was sparsely attended, he said.

Now that the first trial is over and a second one is expected for the spring, the department will evaluate what worked, what areas could be trimmed back, and how everything unfolded, he said. Every law enforcement agency in the county stepped in and helped offset costs for the county by offering assistance in place of the federal and state help that was needed elsewhere, Kilcrease said.

There were many unknowns, and several courthouse officials and others involved in the case required 24-hour security, he said.

All that being said, it is incumbent upon us at the sheriffs office to be judicious in the expenditures of funds and resources of the county. We owe that to the citizens of the county, he said. We will definitely be trimming any area that we can without trimming out safety, because thats what we dont want to do. The last thing that we wanted is to have an incident occur that affected the trial or affected public safety.

Overall, the security effort for the first trial went off as well as it could have, Kilcrease said. Sheriffs office officials will report back to county commissioners after a debriefing and before the next trial, he said.

Sheriffs office deputies worked just shy of 13,290 hours of overtime, worth $571,609, between May 7 and Nov. 18, with the bulk coming during the actual trial, according to county records.

Twenty-nine months after the deadly skirmish at Twin Peaks, Jacob Carrizal, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, was the first to stand trial. The first day of testimony was Oct. 11, and the trial ended in a mistrial Nov. 10 after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

From Oct. 8 through Oct. 21, 131 sheriffs office employees worked 4,963 hours of overtime related to the case. Another 126 employees worked 4,086 hours of overtime in the pay period between Oct. 22 and Nov. 4, according to county records. As the trial wrapped up, 118 employees worked 2,144 hours of overtime between Nov. 5 and Nov. 18.

But those overtime numbers represent only a fraction of all the hours worked, Kilcrease noted.

Commissioners have said the county is still in good financial shape despite having spent half its countywide contingency on the overtime.

There is about $532,000 left of the original $1,016,000 in the countywide contingency line item a little more than two months into the fiscal year.

County leaders still hope to get more money from the state to help cover Twin Peaks costs. The state has reimbursed $268,000 so far, out of about $1 million the county has spent on Twin Peaks-related expenses since the incident.

More than 300 steel barricades went up around the perimeter of the historic downtown courthouse Oct. 10. Access was blocked to curbside parking spots on three sides of the building.

The 315 barricades were purchased Sept. 29 from Dallas Midwest, LLC at a cost of more than $31,440, according to county documents. Precinct 1 Commissioner Kelly Snell and Precinct 4 Commissioner Ben Perry split the cost of the barriers out of their precincts road and bridge funds.

Perry said he had plans to replace barriers for his precinct anyway, and the remaining barriers could be divvied up between departments that need them.

Perry said he and Snell used precinct money for the barricades because time was short and it needed to be done.

It was probably one of those deals where everybody thought everybody else had it covered, Perry said. Im very confident and comfortable we can use those in multiple departments.

Kilcrease said the need for the barricades was discussed several months before the trial started.

If anybody has to take it on the chin for not communicating the timeliness of putting the barriers up, that has to go to the chief deputy, he said.

Twin Peaks trial security needs prompt overtime exemption As McLennan County leaders prepare for the first trials from the May 2015 Twin Peaks shootou
An unexpected computer-system outage for vehicle inspections has slowed vehicle registration in Waco and across the state, officials confirmed Wednesday.

The outage, affecting all inspection sites statewide, was discovered Monday, and it is unknown how long the outage may last, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety inspections customer-service employee.

McLennan County Tax Assessor-Collector Randy Riggs said the outage has caused difficulties locally.

The state requires an individual to get their vehicle inspected before it can be registered, so we have people who want to get their vehicle registered, but by law, we cannot register that vehicle until it is inspected, Riggs said. Now, people are unable to get their vehicle inspected and they are asking us what to do.

County employees cannot recommend any company to inspect vehicles, and with the entire system unable to generate reports, it is nearly impossible to move forward with new registrations, Riggs said. If residents had their vehicles inspected before the outage, county employees can still process new registrations, he said.

If residents got their vehicle inspected earlier in the month, then they are probably OK, but Tuesday was the first day that I really realized the issue was starting to happen, Riggs said.

Technical difficulties have hit the Department of Motor Vehicles in the past, but Riggs said outages have never lasted long.

From the beginning of the year to Nov. 30, the county has handled 253,000 transactions, including registration and car titles, Riggs said. Last year, the county handled 151,000 transactions.

That is a huge increase, Riggs said. The (outage) really hasnt affect us too much yet, but if it continues to go on for a week, I think it may slow us down.

It was not known Wednesday whether local and state law enforcement would offer any kind of grace period for recently expired registration stickers because of the outage.

DPS officials suggested residents continue to check with local vehicle inspectors to see when systems are back online.
The Santa Claus who dons a jolly red Christmas suit is getting a little help from Blue Santa in bringing holiday happiness to more than 150 children in Robinson this year.

The Robinson Police Department kicked off its seventh annual Blue Santa program late last month. A total of 51 families with 158 children registered for the holiday program this year, making it the largest in the Robinson programs history.

Each year, the program seems to grow and grow, and this year it nearly doubled, said Jessica Casper, Robinson Senior Dispatcher and program coordinator. Last year we had 26 families with 98 children, but this year we do have a family that is an evacuee from Hurricane Harvey that was nominated.

We also have a lot of new families that weve never helped before.

Casper and Officer Chris Lopez, who serves as Robinsons crime prevention officer, organized the Blue Santa program. With donations coming in from the public, churches, Robinson schools and partnerships with local businesses, community support is growing right along with the growing need, Casper said.

Ive gotten more calls this year of churches that want to help individuals and families or other city workers who want to help, she said. It is like everyone knew we had more kids and everyone is willing to step up and help.

All the efforts prove city officials and the rest of the community are willing to step up to help others, Robinson Police Chief Phillip Prasifka said. He started as chief in September.

The most rewarding part is helping out someone in need, and I think that is what is so important, Prasifka said. Being new to the department, we had a similar program from where I came from, but to have this many families and to know we are going to be able to help so many more people really says a lot about this community.

Lopez said the Robinson Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the police department to encourage donations from the local school district. He said classes that collect the most donations for the program will be rewarded with a pizza and ice cream social.

I mean, its Christmas. It is a lot of work but it is a lot of fun, and knowing we can all come together and do this with our city is great, Lopez said.

Robinson police will be collecting donations until Dec. 15. To donate to the Blue Santa program, visit the Robinson City Hall Christmas tree at 111 W. Lyndale Drive or call 662-0525 for more information.
Charis LeTourneau Garcia Guzman

July 20, 1978 - November 23, 2017

Charis Elisabeth LeTourneau Garcia Guzman was born on July 20, 1978, in Longview, Texas, and passed away on Thursday, November 23, 2017, also in Longview. A memorial service will be held on Saturday, December 9, at 11:00 a.m. at Lake Shore Baptist Church, 5801 Bishop Drive in Waco. Family and friends will gather at Mutualista Hall after the service.

Charis attended elementary school in Longview and later moved to Austin, Texas, where she attended middle and high school, graduating from Crockett High School. She also attended Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, before starting a successful career in the banking industry. Her most recent and last place of employment before her death was with Bank of America where Charis held several important positions, including Underwriter III, Senior Underwriter, and National Accounts Production Manager. In these positions she developed extensive expertise in her field and was readily recognized for her accomplishments and productivity. In addition to her work, Charis was enthusiastically involved in fund raising for cancer research and other worthy endeavors. She no doubt was good at and enjoyed her job, but she had always aspired to become a medical doctor, for which she had all the necessary attributes and intelligence to accomplish had she been given the opportunity.

Although her career and work accomplishments were impressive, Charis considered her marriage to Samuel Leon Guzman, her beloved husband of 17 years, and their sons, Samuel Leon Guzman, Jr. and Benjamin Paul Guzman, as her major accomplishment in life and her treasure. Charis received all of her Catholic sacraments at San Jose Catholic Church in Austin. She and Samuel were married at San Jose.

A Rosary was held Thursday, November 30, and a funeral on Friday, December 1, both in Austin.

Survivors of her immediate family include her father, Louis Garcia (Waco), and mother, Linda Vann (Austin); father-in law, Samuel Guzman (Austin), and mother-in-law, Sheila Guzman (Austin); brothers, Jason LeTourneau, Michael Wakim and Alex Wakim (Cedar Park), and Brayson Garcia (Waco); one sister, Angel Lopez, from Scottsbluff, Nebraska; many aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends from Austin, Longview, Houston, and Waco.

She was preceded in death by her grandfather, Richard H. LeTourneau; and grandmothers, Louise LeTourneau (Longview), Abuelita Rosie Galvan (Austin), and Lina Gaitan Garcia (Waco). Her grandparents who are now in heaven will welcome her with open arms.

Charis was a loving and caring young and beautiful woman who sought to accomplish great things in life and tried to always be there to help others. Her family and friends will miss her greatly and are heartbroken at her passing, but know that she is at peace and in the hands of God in heaven.
Today, Dec. 7, 2017, marks 76 years since Japans devastating surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base near Honolulu, Hawaii.

For many years, I have taken a personal interest in this day. I grew up in a family and in an instructive community environment where Pearl Harbor Day was a vivid reminder of an attack that, in some ways, brought our fractured nation together. I was also aware of a local WWII hero, Navy Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller.

Every year right before Pearl Harbor Day, our high school choir would start practicing Sammy Kayes Lets Remember Pearl Harbor, which all of us would proudly bellow out. Though this song was not about Doris Miller, you would have had a hard time convincing any of us of that. We felt a special connection to our fellow alum, Doris Miller, whose monument greeted us each morning at the main entrance of the school. As soon as we entered the doors, there he was again in his Navy uniform, looking down upon us from his perch above the trophy case. Then, as now, we had many other reminders around us of our heroic Waco native in the community. We were proud that the story of Millers heroism was told and retold in African-American homes across the nation, justifying our part in Americas destiny and defense.

On that December morning in 1941, mess cook Doris Miller had finished serving breakfast aboard the USS West Virginia and was picking up laundry when he heard the alarm. When he found his battle station bombed, he went up on deck where he saw his mortally wounded captain. He moved him to safety, helped other injured sailors, then manned one of the anti-aircraft machine guns and began shooting Japanese planes firing down at the ship.

According to the senior surviving officers USS West Virginia action report of Dec. 11, 1941, Doris Miller was one of a few men he identified as deserving of the highest commendation for work on December 7 and on the days following. Three other officers mentioned Millers action during the attack: Lt. Cmdr. D.C. Johnson cited his assistance and Lt. C.V. Ricketts noted that D. Miller, Matt, 2c., and I manned #1 and #2 machine gun forward of the conning tower  Lt. F.H. White too mentioned that Doris Miller, mess attendant, second class, U.S. Navy, was instrumental in hauling people along through oil and water to the quarterdeck, thereby unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost.

The West Virginia had been severely damaged. After he ran out of ammunition, Miller continued to work to save lives. He was awarded several honors and medals for his courage and became the first African American to receive the Navy Cross, Purple Heart and several other medals. And in 1973 the destroyer escort USS Miller was commissioned in Millers honor.

After all of these honors, and with the upgrades of several minority veterans medals as a result of the 1993 investigation of racial discrimination in the awarding of such medals, many of us expected Doris Miller to be recommended once again for the Medal of Honor. But even with Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Waco native, and others working tirelessly to have the honor conferred posthumously, the medal has yet to be approved.

Last year, I wrote a letter to President Obama, our nations first black president, urging him to press Congress and the Navy to award Miller the Medal of Honor. There was no response. He missed an opportunity to right what many have seen for years as a censure of Millers acclaim as a World War II hero. Miller joined the Pacific war dead in 1943 when the USS Liscome fell victim to a Japanese torpedo in battle.

Another year has passed and the issue is as alive today as it was in 1942 when newspapers and other media across the country circulated a story about an unidentified Negro messman who bravely carried his captain and others to safety during the harrowing surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Pittsburgh Courier, a widely circulated black newspaper, investigated and identified the figure as Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller. The papers large circulation helped to promote his heroic deeds and garner support and recommendations for the Medal of Honor for Miller.

Doris Millers niece, Henrietta Miller, tells me that shes glad Waco is erecting the Doris Miller Memorial, complete with an unveiling of a statue of Miller today. Even though other cities across the country honor him in various ways, it means a lot to the family that Waco will have this permanent memorial to honor her uncle. She says her sister Vickie would be happy about this because she was all about anything honoring the legacy of Uncle Doris.

Now that Vickie is gone, it is up to me, my siblings and all the rest of the family to carry on the legacy of Doris Miller, Henrietta said. I look forward to being in Waco on Pearl Harbor Day for the ceremony! And, yes, the family will continue to push for the medal, she said, just as Vickie would be doing if she were still alive.

Vickies book, Doris Miller: A Silent Medal of Honor Winner, continues to be a key reference about her uncles life.

Korean War Air Force veteran Ernest Smith and his sister Mary Webster, cousins of Doris Miller, agree its important to continue pursuing the Medal of Honor. He deserves it as much as anyone, Ernest told me.

Miller has been honored in many ways over the years, including the recent renaming of what was once the Waco Veterans Memorial Hospital to Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. This was accomplished through the combined, bipartisan effort of our elected state representatives, U.S. representatives, senators and other leaders. Its my hope and prayer our community will continue to work in unity to honor him  and that includes working diligently to have the Medal of Honor posthumously bestowed on Navy Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller, an inspirational figure both then and now, in war and peace.
My students at The University of Texas at Austin recently had a spirited debate about justice. How do we balance fairness and compassion in our judicial system? Which is more important? How do we decide? My students are not studying political science, law or philosophy but Greek mythology.

Mythology offers valuable lessons about how to have a meaningful dialogue without breaking the bonds that join us together. These lessons may come in handy around holiday dinner tables where family members who love one another may find themselves at odds about difficult issues.

Like the ancient Greeks, my students have found that tough current issues  such as immigration and refugees  are easier to grapple with through the lens of a mythological tale about a time and place long ago. Every student in this class understands why mythology is relevant. Their discussions about these ancient texts are preparing them not simply to pass a test but to consider a range of viewpoints on difficult issues  and to be more thoughtful and engaged citizens of our democracy.

The students were talking about justice while studying Aeschylus Furies, a play that recounts an origin myth about a murder trial that was the first case heard by one of the Athenian law courts. When this play was first performed, at an important Athenian religious festival in 458 B.C. attended by thousands, it commented indirectly on recent changes to the court. Yet the plays specific message about contemporary events is sufficiently indirect that scholars disagree to this day about what Aeschylus actually thought about these judicial reforms.

Many Greek plays are clearly relevant to contemporary issues, but  like Aeschylus Furies  they do not spell out exactly what the relationship is between the mythological story and the life and times of ancient Athens. Instead, the play suggests parallels between what happens in the drama and current events, and leaves it up to the audience to decide what the connections are.

As still happens today, people with different perspectives would find different similarities between a mythological tale and their own lives, and people who think they are talking about a play may find that they are in fact talking about current events that would otherwise be impossible to discuss without bad feelings. We can all do this. We can retell stories that we all find meaningful as a way to air different opinions and reaffirm our bonds at the same time.

In the Furies, Orestes, on trial for murder, tells the presiding goddess Athena that he will accept her judgment of his actions. But Athena finds his case so challenging that she sets up a court to judge it, and she orders the jurors to conduct thoughtful deliberations and deliver an honest verdict. She tells the Athenians that their reverence for justice will be essential to the smooth functioning not simply of this new court but of democracy in their city.

The words of both Orestes and Athena make a sea change in Aeschylus drama, where justice had previously been carried out in an endless cycle of family vengeance arising from emotions of anger, fear and loss  not in a rational deliberative process organized by the state. They also make a ringing declaration of contemporary Athenian values that was intended to fill the citizens with pride in the ideals of their democratic society.

We could inscribe Athenas description of proper judicial conduct over the main entrance of any courthouse in the United States and it would be just as relevant and just as inspiring as it was in that Athens theater 2,500 years ago. We can all agree on those ideals, even if we disagree about how best to carry them out. Greek mythology has helped my students find common ground with each other. Everyone can do this. We can all find common ground through the stories we share, whether they are Greek myths, family lore or favorite movies. Rather than getting into a shouting match with Uncle George during the coming holidays, try sharing stories you both care about instead.
Here we go again!

Anytime the Democrats dont get their way, its the election was stolen! It was so in 2000 with President Bush (43) and now its so with President Trump (45), all because of a claim that neither won the popular vote. In his Sunday letter, Mr. Thomas may be correct that Donald Trump lost by 2.8 million popular votes, but the one glaring truth is consistently ignored: the popular vote is as much a courtesy vote as exit polling is!

Presidential voting is not done, nor has it ever been, on a national level by popular vote. Perhaps re-reading Article II of the U.S. Constitution will help some understand it. The second paragraph opens with: Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress

After that, the method for the electors making their selection is described in minute detail through the next three paragraphs, yet not once is a vote by the people mentioned. Not once is popular selection of the president suggested. Why would anyone think so much attention was paid to the counting of the votes in Florida in 2000? It was not to shore up the popular vote but to determine which candidate would be awarded the electoral votes.

The Framers devised this method with much forethought, understanding that a popular vote might cause an oppressive atmosphere over voters whose interests diverge with states where larger metropolitan centers are located. The presidential election is held on the state level with the only stipulation that the Congress may determine the Time of [choosing] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

And that is how the president is elected.

Pete Commander, Bellmead

EDITORS NOTE: Mr. Commander is a member of the Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors.

Its about time!

Sundays editorial about the presidents reckless behavior is long overdue. His contempt for others and his immature, egotistical bullying personality are not acceptable behavior. The Republicans who are complicit in enabling his behavior should be ashamed of themselves.

Clydanne M. Reeves, Hewitt

Out and about

Drive around in Waco on most streets and:

Be loosened up in time for exercise class.

Improve your vibrato when singing.

Be pummeled before going to a spa.

Help your vehicle to rattle more.

Be thumped upon your fat/flab.

Be taxed for use of your vehicle.

I hope and yearn for any promised improvements!

Maria Malizia, Waco
Sons of Norway held their annual Christmas party on Sunday at the Norse Hall. There were kids games and activities at tables all around the room. Santa was available for pictures or to listen to any arguments for or against personal goodness. Music played, and visitors chatted. There was krumkake, lefse, and more to nibble on or purchase for later.

Photos by Diana Zimmerman.
My first contact with banks was at primary school when the local State Bank teller signed us kids up with a passbook account - and it was a real book.

Each week we would line up outside classroom 1b to deposit a penny or two. Investing a Zac or a Tray was big deal and relied on an earlier visit from the tooth fairy or some good luck with the Christmas pudding.

Then in secondary school I got a different view of banks when studying Shakespeares Merchant of Venice.

The words of money lender Shylock still send a shiver down my hip pocket. A pound of man's flesh taken from a man is not so estimable, profitable neither, as flesh of muttons, beefs or goats I say.
Instead of using a PIN for purchases over $100, as occurs today, customers will be able to use their smart phone to take a scan of their fingerprint, or face, under the new standards issued to banks and technology companies.

In a bid to counter fraud, it has issued new standards that will remove the need to enter a personal identification number (PIN) when making purchases in-person. It is also beefing up its systems for detecting fraudulent transactions made online.

Shoppers will soon be able to take a scan of their fingerprint or face to authorise a credit card purchase, instead of entering a PIN, as part of a crackdown on payment fraud.

This option would only be available to those using a "digital wallet" - where a phone is used to make payments, by tapping it on a contactless card reader. Exactly when the technology is available will also depend on phone manufacturers meeting the standards - some phones already do this.

Only one big bank, ANZ, has so far done a deal with Apple to allow tap payments on the iPhone.

Visa Asia Pacific head of risk, Joe Cunningham, predicted such "biometric" payments would become common within a year.

"Five years ago, the idea that entering a PIN could become a rare experience would have been almost unbelievable," he said.

"Yet how we pay is changing fundamentally and security needs to move at the same speed. Biometrics are a crucial part of the future. Some devices that use these new standards have just entered the market and we expect it to become commonplace within the next year.
The Webb Dock picket line is being widely supported by the broader Victorian union movement. Credit:Jason South The MUA claims workers are being underpaid, but VICT disputes this saying typical earnings range from $140,000 to $160,000, topping out at $180,000. "We reject the implication that making an agreement with the only employees we had at the time was somehow unfair or otherwise unacceptable," a company spokesman said. More than 1000 shipping containers carrying retail goods, Christmas decorations, fresh food and medicine remain stranded on Mebourne's waterfront, as a picket line blockading a major container terminal enters its second week. Credit:Jason South In the meantime, people like Mr Tullio are caught in the middle of the dispute and they stand to lose a lot of money while it continues.

"It is a bit nerve-racking when it's our money sitting there," Mr Tullio said. It is a bit nerve-racking when it's our money sitting there Joe Tullio "The pears weren't put on the boat because of the union dispute. We can't even go in and retrieve [our container]." Dominic Jenkin, chief executive officer of the Australian Horticultural Exporters' Association said he knew of several other containers of fresh produce being held up on the dock for more than 10 days. If and when Mr Tullio's pears finally arrive in Indonesia, their value will be degraded. "You can't hold perishable products indefinitely," Mr Jenkin said.

"This disrupts the trading relationship and our reputation as Australian exporters" Russell Zimmerman, of the Australian Retailers Association, said the wharf dispute was threatening the delivery of retail products during the busy Christmas trading period. "Our concern is that there are retailers who will be waiting for product," he said. "This will disrupt commerce particularly at this time of the year. "Coming this close to Christmas, our concern is that there could be gifts or other products that people would be expecting to have in time. "There could be some very disappointed people."

A spokesman for VICT said the stranded imports included EpiPens, frozen prawns and other seafood, toys, Christmas decorations and machinery parts. Stranded exports included frozen meat, chilled cheese, wine, fruit, cotton, clay, timber, lead, zinc and aluminium, hay, grain, wheat and milk products destined for China. The company has threatened to seek damages of up to $100 million it says it stands to lose because of the union blockade. Container Transport Alliance Australia, representing trucking and logistics companies, said many of its members had taken a financial hit after having their trucks turned away at the gates. "It's affecting big and small logistics companies, and family businesses who have sent their trucks down there to pick up a container," spokesman Gerard Langes said. "The cost of the round trip will never be able to be recouped from the customer ... we call them futile trips."

Mr Langes urged the waterside protesters to comply with orders to break the picket line, and stop hurting businesses that were caught in the middle. "If this is a legitimate protest, why don't they protest the government authority who said they wouldn't issue the security card?" he said. MUA Deputy National Secretary Will Tracey has said there were 22 workers at the site who did not have a Maritime Security Identification Card to work in a restricted zone and were awaiting processing. Mr Tracey said the MUA was seeking minimum standards for wages and conditions, but the company refused to negotiate with the union. "VICT is continuing a disturbing recent trend by employers who want to engage in a race to the bottom by accepting a workplace agreement voted on by five staff chosen by the company that slashes penalty rates and casual loading," he said.

"The Port Melbourne community has decided to take a stand against a company with an atrocious labour record around the globe that should not be allowed to operate in this country." Thousands of unionists and supporters in the wider community are expected to converge on the Port of Melbourne from 10 am on Friday to "take a stand" against VICT. Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union Victorian secretary John Setka posted on social media for union members to join the "Webb Dock peaceful assembly" on Friday, comparing it to Patrick's historic 1998 waterfront dispute. Union leaders this week launched a fierce attack on former Labor Party veteran Linsday Tanner who is a director of Victoria International Container Terminal, and Mick O'Leary, a former MUA official, who is now the company's HR manager. "We are furious at the former Labor has-beens that are dabbling with this company," Victorian Trade Hall secretary Luke Hilakari said.

"They earned their careers off the backs of working people, now they are earning their dime at the expense of working people. "If they have a conscience, the right thing they would do right now would be to resign from that company." Fairfax Media contacted Mr Tanner for comment but its calls were not returned. The Webb Dock picket line is being widely supported by the broader Victorian union movement, with officials saying they stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the MUA. Loading
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating might have to register on the Turnbull government's agents of foreign influence list because he sits on an advisory council for a Chinese government development bank, Fairfax Media understands.

Sources have told Fairfax Media that a reading of the criteria of the government's new transparency scheme requiring agents of foreign influence to register on a public list suggests someone in Mr Keating's circumstances would have to seriously consider registering themselves.

The former prime minister sits on an advisory council to the China Development Bank, a state-owned bank that raises money for large infrastructure projects. Mr Keating declined to comment on Wednesday.

Under the scheme, which the government has stressed does not taint the people or organisations listed on it but merely lets Australians know who has connections to foreign powers, anyone representing foreign interests is expected to register.
Gun-loving Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie will be catapulted from the backbench straight into federal cabinet after being named as Barnaby Joyce's new deputy.

But her elevation could lead to a demotion for one of her Nationals colleagues  Matt Canavan, Darren Chester or Nigel Scullion  in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's coming reshuffle.

With former deputy leader Fiona Nash set to be replaced in the Senate by a Liberal, the junior Coalition partner is now strictly only entitled to four seats in cabinet, rather than five.

With Mr Joyce and Senator McKenzie guaranteed a spot in the inner circle because of their leadership roles, that leaves space for only two more  unless Mr Turnbull chooses to make an exception and keep all five. Mr Turnbull is expected to reshuffle his ministry in the coming weeks, after the Bennelong byelection.
It's raining pork chops in Canberra.

The citizenship declaration process that in theory, was supposed to clear up the section 44 mess once and for all, has simply ushered in a new round of fighting and uncertainty. Of both major parties trying to out outrage each other, even though they both have MPs with citizenship question marks.

Amid this, the only truly fresh name to emerge from the piles of paperwork MPs submitted to the House of Representatives on Tuesday night, was Labor's David Feeney.

Feeney  who has enjoyed only brief and junior stints on the frontbench  will not necessarily be a household name. But he is well known in Canberra and exquisitely well known within Labor circles. Before he was elected to Parliament, Feeney held various ALP positions, including assistant national secretary and was a high-profile factional dude. Although they aren't quite as tight these days, he rose through the ranks with Bill Shorten and has been "thick as thieves" with the Labor leader. Feeney was also one of the faceless men right in the middle of it all when Julia Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd.
Liberal senator Dean Smith is speaking: "This is a great win for Australian values.The survey said a lot about people's attitudes to same-sex marriage, it said a lot about their attitudes about Australian values and how they should be applied in a contemporary way. I am proud to be a parliamentarian, I have always wanted to be a parliamentarian. Even when I was that nerdy kid at school."

"People can be proud that over the last few weeks, they have seen the best of their Parliament, the best of their parliamentarians, as I said before, the real challenge going forward is to think about how we can do this more often, how we can do this more often, how we can put the politics of partisanship aside."

"I would like to dedicate the day's win to a special group of people, and that is to those young LGBTQI Australians, who in their workplace or in their school yard, find life a little tough. Let me tell you, 'you are OK, it will all be OK, and this is a great country to grow up and be an LGBTQI Australian'."
Australia Post's smart mailbox Receva sits on your porch and only opens for authorised parties. Australia Post recently unveiled its Receva "smart mailbox", which it has been trialling in south-east Melbourne. Dubbed a "secure and convenient place" for your home deliveries, it came about from one of the organisation's internal startups and involves placing a physical cabinet-like device outside your home for posties to put goods securely inside. Customers can currently pre-order one for $249. But there's one big problem: it only accepts parcels from Australia Post at present. Authorised third-party companies, such as couriers, are being encouraged to express interest in accessing the proprietary mailbox's key. It's understood no third-party access agreements exist at present but it's feared by some in the industry that Australia Post will seek payment for access like it has with its PO and parcel lockers. Australia Post is yet to reveal what commercial arrangements, if any, will apply to Receva when it launches more widely. Founder Steve Orenstein of Zoom2u, an Uber-like on-demand service. The system is anti-competitive, the owner of an upcoming rival Australian-made product called Chester told Fairfax. When launched next year, Chester will be a Wi-Fi enabled outdoor storage chest that messages you to let you know the time of delivery and weight of a parcel once delivered.

Malcolm Lewis, its founder, said he approached Australia Post before it launched Receva but that the company decided to go down its own path of locking people into using its own ecosystem. Chester is another smart mailbox, but will allow deliveries from anybody. Once locked it will only open on its owners command. The idea behind Chester, Mr Lewis said, was that any courier or postman could leave parcels in it before it locked, preventing others from stealing your parcels, traditionally left near front doors. Steve Orenstein, the founder of another Australian start-up, Zoom2U, is tackling the problem from another angle. His courier business enables deliveries at times which he says are more convenient than that of Australia Post, ensuring packages get delivered on the first try most of the time. James Moody, founder of Sendle, says customer choice is key.

He said this was one of the biggest problems with incumbent Australia Post's delivery method. "Australia Post always delivers during business hours," Mr Orenstein said. "It's never when people are actually at home and you never know when someone is going to turn up. Their delivery service was always designed around delivery to businesses. But with e-commerce, this changed things. "It's a fundamental flaw as to why parcels are stolen," he said, adding that of the close to half a million parcels Zoom2U has delivered to date, none of his customers had reported parcel theft. Mr Orenstein said the main problem with traditional postal companies was a lack of communications with consumers and not offering them a choice of when to receive a parcel. "If you solve that, then the need for these smart mailboxes is less," Mr Orenstein, whose company has been operating for three years and has over 700 contracted drivers, said.

His company conquers this parcel theft problem by giving consumers the choice to receive a parcel from 8 am until 10 pm at night, 7-days a week. It is also one of the only companies in Australia that offer live GPS tracking, lets recipients contact drivers directly, and enables consumers to rate their delivery driver. Like Uber but for parcels, one might say. "When you have had a bad experience with Australia Post, if you don't pick up the phone to complain then nothing ends up happening," Mr Orenstein added. "On our platform, consumers give drivers a rating, meaning we very quickly know if a driver has done the wrong thing." Currently, Zoom2U typically delivers 40,000 parcels a month and is focused on same-day deliveries within three hours in metropolitan areas. However, it has a partnership with bus company Greyhound to deliver interstate, although Mr Orenstein concedes there's "some gaps". James Moody, founder of Sendle, said his company did not see a big incidence of parcel theft, adding that "the most important thing you can do is give the receiver a choice" of whether to leave a parcel behind or not. Moody, whose company offers consumers complimentary parcel insurance, also complained that Australia Post "do not let anyone else in Australia deliver parcels to PO boxes" unless they sign an agreement with Australia Post. He said the consumer regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, should investigate this.
Wednesday morning, Helena's Mayor-elect Wilmot Collins stepped in as the inaugural Curator for a Day at the Holter Museum of Art.

Hed been invited to pick three to six art items from the Holters permanent collection to go on display Jan. 18 in a corner of the Millikan Gallery.

The idea is why not bring people in and let them be curator, said Holter executive director Chris Riccardo. And at the same time, showcase some of the seldom-seen items in the Holters permanent collection.

Lets go into the vault, Riccardo said, leading the way to the storage area for the permanent collection.

Collins eye was immediately grabbed by two large wood cuts of jazz musicians by Missoula artist James G. Todd Jr.

One shows ceramic artist and musician Beth Lo playing bass.

Another was Jazz Hustlers, featuring a jazz sax player and mobster-type pool sharks -- including the famous Joe Camel -- all wearing dark shades and black fedoras gathered around a pool table.

Curator Jennifer duToit also introduced Collins to an extensive collection of lithographs by Al Hirschfeld, who was particularly renowned for his pen-and-ink caricatures of famous Broadway and Hollywood stars. At the top of the stack were The Beatles and Sinatra.

But there was a lot more to see.

Riccardo opened a few drawers revealing some of the museums prized Meloy ceramics.

And then hanging on storage racks were paintings by Theodore Waddell, Rudy and Lela Autio, and Robert and Gennie DeWeese -- all artists with deep roots in Helena and Montanas art history.

Im still drawn to this guys work, said Collins, returning to Todds wood cut prints.

Although Collins had visited the Holter Museum before, the vault tour was something special.

This is exposure, Collins said, and as Helenas new mayor hes interested in promoting what the community cares about. The exposure means so much to our community.

It only took one time, he said of his exposure to a new artist. Now that hes met Todds art -- This guy is my dude. I love his work. I cant believe hes right here in Montana.

First of all, I love black and white, he said of what drew him to the prints. And then Im a fan of jazz.

Todd, who did a popular 2012 Holter show, Jazz Icons, will be back with another exhibit in January 2019, showing new work inspired by art he did in his youth.

We dont do this enough, said Riccardo of community outreach, such as inviting in a Curator for the Day.

He wants to draw in people who have never stepped inside an art museum before.

Thats why the Holter did The Art of the Motorcycle exhibit in 2016, he said. It drew in record numbers of people who had never been in an art museum before.

Its all part of being a better part of our community, said Riccardo. People see art museums as snobby with nothing in there for me.
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and his promoters will be slapped with a bill of at least $50,000 to cover the cost of the police numbers required to handle violent protests outside his shows in Melbourne.

Hundreds of left and right-wing protesters gathered in front of the Melbourne Pavilion on Racecourse Road and Stubbs Street, Kensington on Monday night where they faced off and fought with sticks.

Riot police stormed the protest and used pepper spray to subdue the crowd, which included members of left-wing group Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and right-wing groups Reclaim Australia and The Freedom Party.

Police and protesters also clashed at Mr Yiannopoulos' events in Sydney on Tuesday night, resulting in charges against several protesters. The event was heavily guarded with mounted police, officers on bicycles, riot squad, marine police and police vans barricading the event after several arrests were made at his Melbourne show.
As the Anzacs left for Gallipoli in 1915 the last piece of Australia they saw were the islands and headlands protecting Albany's Princess Royal Harbour.

More than 100 years on, Albany has become synonymous with the Anzac legend through its iconic National Anzac Centre, which overlooks the same waters the soldiers farewelled.

Thousands of lights will be planted on Albany's Mt Clarence. Credit:Mark Pickthall/Bruce Munro Studio

Now with the century anniversary of the Great War's Armistice approaching, an immersive art installation made famous at Uluru will grace Albany's Avenue of Honour at Mt Clarence to honour the sacrifice of the Anzacs and bring thousands of tourists to the region.

Field of Light: Avenue of Honour by UK artist Bruce Munro will place 13,000 shining glass spheres on slender stems along the road approaching the Anzac Centre to make an ephemeral landscape of whites, yellows and golds; the colours of the national flowers of Australia and New Zealand - the wattle and kowhai.
WA business owners are optimistic about their economic performance this Christmas but concerned for their mental health, according to a study by an international business group.

Business Network International (BNI) surveyed more than 1,500 businesses across Australia about their outlook for 2017.

The Christmas retail period is crucial for WA businesses. Credit:Erin Jonasson

Overall, 76 per cent of business owners said they were optimistic about business performance over the crucial Christmas and New Year period, although 64 per cent said they would personally be spending about the same for the holidays as last year, and 19 per cent indicating they would spend less.

BNI's mental health questions revealed some interesting insights, with 55 per cent of WA business owners surveyed agreeing that they often feel lonely being the boss, and 69 per cent agreeing that they are often stressed being the owner.
The number of Western Australian teenagers who identify mental health as a national concern has doubled in the past two years, a major new survey shows.

Mission Australia's annual youth survey gauged the views of more than 24,000 young people nationally.

Mental health issues are of increasing concern for young Western Australians. (file photo)

On a national scale, mental health topped the list of issues of concern for the first time in the survey's 16 year history.

At a local level the survey found alcohol and drugs remained the number one issue of concern for young WA people.
A Perth teenager has been arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a 47-year-old woman as she walked along a street on Wednesday afternoon.

A police spokeswoman said the incident occurred at 5pm in Armadale.

Eighth Road in Armadale, where the alleged assault occurred. Credit:Google Maps

"The woman was walking along Eighth Road in Armadale when she was approached by the man," she said.

"She was then forced to the ground and sexually assaulted.
A 55-year-old WA man is fighting for his life in hospital after the alleged stolen ute he was driving veered off the road and wrapped around a power pole on Wednesday night.

A police spokeswoman said the incident occurred at 9.50pm on the corner of Tonkin Highway and Thomas Road in Darling Downs.

The driver was flown to hospital in a serious condition. Credit:Nine News Perth

"The man was driving a Toyota Hilux Utility in Darling Downs," she said.

"As he turned left from Tonkin Highway onto Thomas Road, he veered off the road and hit a power pole.
Ms Currie has been issued with a life ban from the WA real estate industry. "But our tenant told us she had never seen anyone come or go for an open, and she was never contacted by Gayla about possibly conducting home opens." Soon, Ms Currie reached out to Ms Mafrica to tell her she had a potential buyer lined up for her Balcatta home. Some of Ms Currie's correspondence with a Perth conveyancing company. Ms Currie said a Perth mother had put in an offer on the property, and her finance had been approved.

But soon, the offer fell over because the mother supposedly realised Ms Mafrica's property wasn't "in the catchment for her child's potential school". Gayla, on the far left, in a Telethon promotion representing Century 21 Max Comben. Credit:Channel 7 Telethon Trust However Ms Currie said this was fine, as she had a second "Chinese" buyer lined up. "So we let the first buyer out of her contract, and decided we'd go ahead with this offer," Ms Mafrica said. "We let the tenant know we had someone moving in, and she was happy to vacate early so the new owner could move in."

As Ms Mafrica was preparing her home for a new owner, she received what she describes as an "interesting" call from her settlement agent. "She told us that something didn't seem right with the offer," she said. Ms Mafrica's settlement agent revealed she had not had any contact from Ms Currie regarding the buyer's finance ("no emails, no calls"), and Ms Mafrica quickly confronted the real estate agent over text message why her settlement agent said no finance had been approved on the home. "I just spoke to [settlement agent]. She told me finance isn't approved on the house... what the hell is going on?" Ms Mafrica writes. Ms Currie insisted the finance had been approved, and things were moving ahead.

However, one day prior to the settlement date in January 2016, Ms Currie contacted Ms Mafrica to let her know the "Chinese" buyer had gotten into an accident in Jakarta, Indonesia. "She said he's walked out of his hotel, and was caught up in a bombing in front of a bank," Ms Mafrica said. "He was in a coma in hospital, and eventually died." There had indeed been a bombing in Jakarta that night, but Ms Mafrica's buyer apparently was not listed among the dead as "he had passed away in hospital". But that wasn't the end. Ms Currie said the family still wanted to go ahead with the sale.

"She was stringing us along, saying his wife still wanted the house. Apparently within their religion, it was something like 'keeping his spirit alive'," Ms Mafrica said. "This went back and forth for awhile, but then a couple of weeks later, Gayla told me she couldn't handle it all and went into a mental home due to her husband dying and she couldn't handle it all." In a text to Ms Mafrica, Ms Currie said she had sent flowers to the family and spoke of the man's "widow's" mental state: "She will die I'm convinced in the next few months... heartbroken and what for[?] Animal terrorist she is a multi, multi millionaire she has 9 properties here [sic]." After months of deception, Ms Mafrica estimates she lost around $20,000 in rental income due to the lost tenancy, thousands in advertising costs and months of paying two mortgages.

Unfortunately, Ms Mafrica wasn't Ms Currie's only victim. Saskia Maes owned a home in Morley when she leased with Century 21, and Ms Currie took over the sale of her property in December 2015. Ms Maes said shortly after Ms Currie took up the listing, she went on holiday. "I went on holiday with my family to Europe and flew out in December of that year," Ms Maes said. "While I was there, I received a text from Gayla.

"She said something to the effect of 'you've got a couple of days to get your stuff out of the property' because her buyer wanted to go ahead with the sale. "Lucky it was towards the end of our holiday, so when we came home, completely jet-lagged, we shoved everything in our home into a shipping container." Ms Maes used a shipping container company Ms Currie recommended, which cost her just over $1000 to rent. Shortly after she had frantically moved out of her Morley home, Ms Currie told Ms Maes the buyers finance had, again, fallen through. Ms Currie went on to create another fictional family, whose daughter was supposedly looking at buying her property.

In a text message to Ms Maes: "It's a little low [the amount] to start I'm thinking we counter [with another amount] but I can't tell you that either lol". She went on: "Remember I know what she can borrow... but that's something I can't tell you lol". Over the course of another four months and another failed sale, Ms Maes said she was beginning to smell a rat.

At this point, Ms Maes and her husband were under the impression their home was on the verge of sale three times before buyer finance or interest had fallen through. It was through Ms Maes's detective work and the help of her settlement agent she found it wasn't the first time Ms Currie had been accused of faking contracts. "I started to pull up the people she mentioned on Facebook or the White Pages. The houses they were supposed to be selling weren't on the market, or they never existed," Ms Maes said. Ms Maes said she found Ms Currie had actually pulled signatures from old sales, or used the identity of people in her real life as "buyers". One of the people Ms Currie had used as a fake name actually found out about her scheme, and contacted those she believed had been affected.

Ms Mafrica and Ms Maes both came together with a number of other homeowners who had been duped along the way, and took their complaints to Consumer Protection. "This whole ordeal consumed us. It nearly made us lose everything. We had two mortgages we had to pay thanks to this elaborate web of lies," Ms Maes said. "Everything would always fall down at the last moment. That year was hell, and this whole ordeal has set us back around two years. "She got a slap on the wrist considering how much people lost, and there's been no form of compensation. Nothing, nothing at all." Ms Mafrica agrees the penalty was not harsh enough.

"She should have a criminal record for what she put people through," she said. "It's appalling that she can wake up every morning and go about her day. It makes me sick. It's disgusting and it really frustrates me because she's banned in WA. "What happens if she moves? Can she just start doing this again? So many of us aren't in the position to press charges thanks to what she's done to our finances." In response to the allegations made against her, Ms Currie said "the Department of Commerce clearly stated the dealings are over and the agency had dealt with all sellers and had been compensated". Ms Currie refuted claims made by the homeowners, and when asked why a number of contracts didn't go ahead, she said often the deposit wasn't paid in the required time or hadn't been paid at all thus rendering contracts null and void.

She argued home opens were conducted, there was "no need" for Ms Maes to put her belongings into a shipping container. She did not respond to questions regarding the legitimacy of the buyers listed in the contracts. Consumer Protection WA said they were at a loss to understand why Ms Currie would do this. "It is difficult to understand why Ms Currie would do this," Consumer Affairs commissioner David Hillyard said. "It is only speculation but it may have been to appear to be doing a good job to ensure her clients were happy with her work or it could have been to appear to be doing a good job in the eyes of her employer.

"It is not a common occurrence and it is the first case of its kind that we have seen in WA." Western Australia's real estate institute REIWA said the case was certainly unusual, and there should be harsh penalties for this kind of conduct. "This is a rare occurrence so it is hard for us to speculate 'why' she would do this," chief executive officer Neville Pozzi said. "This is the first time REIWA has heard of a scenario like this, so we have no reason to believe that this is a common issue. "Certainly penalties for this type of conduct should be strong and harsh and send a clear message."
Ramallah, West Bank: Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus' traditional birthplace in Bethlehem on Wednesday night in protest at US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

A Christmas tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness.

"The Christmas tree was switched off on the order of the mayor today in protest at Trump's decision," said Fady Ghattas, Bethlehem's municipal media officer.

He said it was unclear whether the illuminations would be turned on again before the main Christmas festivities.
Beijing: South Korea plans to create a combat unit of weaponised drones next year that would be capable of swarming the nuclear-armed North in the event of a conflict.

Army officials said the drones would primarily focus on reconnaissance operations against strategic North Korean military sites, amid growing tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programme.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects an intercontinental ballistic missile test in North Korea. Credit:AP

But the unit could be mobilised to launch swarm attacks if necessary, with an army official claiming drone combat would be a "game-changer in warfare" on the Korean peninsula.

"The army plans to set up a special organisation to lead the development of dronebots, establish a standard platform and expand the dronebot programme," the unnamed official said.
A man suspected of being in the country illegally and held in a Bozeman jail on a misdemeanor charge of sexual assault was released under what his attorney said is unusual circumstances that allowed federal immigration officials to take custody of him Wednesday.

A brief filed in a Montana Supreme Court case by Arturo Valerio-Gonzales' attorney also raises the question of whether the release was coordinated between local law enforcement, Immigration and Customs officials and the U.S. Department of Justice.

The brief says acts of bad faith on behalf of the Gallatin County Attorneys Office, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice led to Valerio-Gonzales being suddenly and unexpectedly transferred to ICE custody over his attorneys objections.

Valerio-Gonzales was arrested over the summer and charged with misdemeanor sexual assault. He denied the charge and his bond was set at $5,000.

Shortly after Valerio-Gonzales was arrested, a detainer was placed on him by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. A detainer is a request to hold someone who is suspected of being in the country illegally for an addition 48 hours to allow ICE agents to decide whether to take someone into federal custody and begin the process to remove them from the country.

Valerio-Gonzales' trial was scheduled to start Dec. 12, but at at a pretrial conference Wednesday in Gallatin County Justice Court, a judge pushed it back to Jan. 9 because of a delay in getting DNA results back from a lab. Valerio-Gonzales objected to the delay.

The judge, on his own and not as a result of any motion from either Valerio-Gonzales or the county attorney prosecuting him, released Valerio-Gonzalez, according to a brief filed by his public defender, Annie DeWolf.

According to a brief, the judge knew based on previous filings that when released, Valerio-Gonzales would be placed immediately into ICE custody. Valerio-Gonzales objected because he would not be able to return for trial. The Gallatin County Attorney's Office also objected to his release.

Valerio-Gonzales appeared in court wearing his street clothes, which DeWolf said is uncommon when a jury isnt present.

It is not customary for criminal defendants to appear at hearings in street clothes in a court within Gallatin County, she wrote in the brief.

A sheriffs deputy accompanying Valerio-Gonzales also said it was weird he was wearing street clothes, the brief says.

ICE somehow learned about the own-recognizance release, arrived in Bozeman and assumed custody of Mr. Valerio-Gonzales by 6:24 p.m., the brief states. Valerio-Gonzales left his court hearing at around 5:30 p.m., according to the brief.

Attorneys for Valerio-Gonzales are subpoenaing information related to communications between local law enforcement, ICE and the U.S. Department of Justice.

These communications will shed light on the abnormal proceedings that accompanied Mr. Valerio-Gonzales sudden release  after months of custody  and his transfer to the custody of federal immigration authorities.

DeWolf said on Thursday that Valerio-Gonzales is being held in Cascade County.

DeWolf also said another man is being held on an ICE detainer in Gallatin County who was found not guilty of a misdemeanor on Nov. 21, and he was not picked up last night.

The Justice Court judge could not be reached for comment.
Sean P. Sullivan is the editor of Washington Wine Report. He has been writing about and reviewing Northwest wine since 2004. Read a full biography on the About page. All articles written by Sullivan unless otherwise indicated.
DECATUR  Archer Daniels Midland Co. will pay up to $100,000 for Decatur Airport renovations to accommodate jet service through SkyWest Airlines, according to an agreement reached Wednesday, although Decatur Park District officials haven't defined the extent or cost of the work.

The park board agreed to enter into the agreement with ADM, which also guaranteed it would fill 5,000 seats each year for the next two years if SkyWest is selected as the airport's next commercial provider through the Essential Air Service program. The company lobbied last month for the board to recommend SkyWest to the Department of Transportation, which oversees the program and has not yet announced its decision.

"It's ultimately up to them," said Airport Director Tim Wright. "Right now, we're unable to speculate when they will make their decision by."

ADM has supported Utah-based SkyWest's bid since the board began considering Essential Air Service proposals in October. The board also received bids from the current provider, Air Choice One, and Massachusetts-based Cape Air, both of which would have provided flights to both St. Louis and Chicago. SkyWest would offer two flights daily to Chicago.

The board switched its recommendation, voting 3-2 for SkyWest on Nov. 15, after representatives from ADM, Decatur Memorial Hospital and other local businesses publicly expressed their preference for jet service and ADM's representative offered the incentives. Commissioner Chris Harrison changed his vote from the one he had taken on Nov. 3, when the board voted 3-2 in favor of Cape Air.

ADM's donation would pay to accommodate more passengers in the airport waiting area, which can seat 15 people comfortably, Wright said. SkyWest will provide a 50-seat, twin engine Canadair Regional Jet 200, much larger than the Air Choice One planes that seat nine passengers.

Wright said the airport has enough space to accommodate 50 people, but he did not know how much work would need to be done or how much it would cost. The park district will be responsible for expenses over $100,000.

Final plans will depend on regulations enforced by the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, he said.

"There are rules that have to be followed to ensure the safety of passengers," Wright said. "These agencies have been involved in the planning and the design aspects so far."

The contract will not take effect if another airline is chosen by the Department of Transportation, district Attorney Ed Flynn said. "We will not be in any obligation to (ADM), and they will not be in obligation to us," he said.

ADM Senior Vice President Michael D'Ambrose said last month that jet service would make it easier for the company to transport vendors, employees and other people to and from Chicago. Company spokeswoman Jackie Anderson said in an email on Wednesday that D'Ambrose and ADM had no further comments about the agreement or the district's recommendation of SkyWest.

Regarding the 5,000 guaranteed seats, Flynn said there are consequences in place if ADM fails to deliver those numbers during both years of the airport's contract with SkyWest. The company will have to pay a certain amount of money in damages if it doesn't, he said.

As an example, Flynn said ADM will have to pay $69,000 in damages if the company only fills 4,000 seats in a year. That number was calculated by multiplying the number of seats that weren't filled by ADM by the price of a $69 plane ticket from Decatur to Chicago.

The park district board hopes that ADM's guarantee of 5,000 in each of the next two years will help the airport reach its goal of 10,000 enplanements in a year, which would allow the district to receive federal money for infrastructure purposes. An enplanement represents when a passenger boards a flight that originates in Decatur.

"We don't care how (ADM) does it, but we just want them to do it," Board President Bob Brilley II said during the meeting.

This story has been updated to show the correct price of a plane ticket from Decatur to Chicago.
City Councilman Bill Faber will not seek reelection in 2023, a move that opens up at least one of three council seats in the municipal election in April.
DECATUR  Pete Frank remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor differently than some. He was a junior in high school when he heard President Franklin D. Roosevelts speech before Congress asking for a declaration of war, which inspired him to serve his country, he said.

The war took the boys of Decatur and turned them into men, Frank said, in faraway and unknown places theyd only previously learned about in textbooks and on maps.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack that killed 2,403 people and decimated the U.S. Pacific Fleet shocked the nation and led to the United States entering World War II.

The Macon County Honor Guard and Veterans Assistance Commission of Macon County conducted a three-volley rifle salute and playing of taps for Thursday's 76th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The U.S. Navy provided a wreath to place on Lake Decatur from a dock in Nelson Park, said Dave Freyling, chairman of the Veteran's Assistance Commission of Macon County.

Frank said he joined the U.S. Navy following his graduation from high school, one of many to do so from Decatur, he said. He read some of the famous lines from Roosevelts speech that inspired him to answer the call of service to the group gathered Thursday.

Standing before Congress the day after the attack, Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." He said the United States was "suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan," but promised inevitable triumph "so help us God."

Congress passed a war declaration that was signed by Roosevelt that day. The United States would be at war across the globe until Japan's formal surrender on Sept. 2, 1945.

Thursday's event was to honor the memory of Pearl Harbor, those who died there and in the following years of World War II. They also remembered those who survived the war, and all veterans.

The group hoped to remember those who have taken up the call to defend the American way of life, said Frank, a lifelong resident of Decatur.

The number of World War II veterans is shrinking each day, taking their experiences and memories with them, Frank said.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs there are 558,000 surviving World War II veterans out of about 16 million who served. Illinois has just under 21,000 World War II veterans still alive.

Freyling said it is important for people to remember such events and learn from them. He compared the way younger people experienced the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when planes flew into the World Trade Center towers in New York City killing 2,996 people, to the way the older generations experienced Pearl Harbor.

To a lot of people, 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor, he said. People have a tendency to forget it; its been a long time.
US 60 open after Salem fire, but may be icy
By WestKyStar & MSU Staff Dec. 06, 2017 | 07:01 PM | MURRAY, KY





Murray State University will celebrate the December 2017 Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 9, at 9 am in the CFSB Center with 855 degrees being conferred, including associate, baccalaureate, master/specialist and doctoral programs. A total of 23 states and 16 countries will be represented in this semesters graduating class.The ceremony is scheduled to begin with the Presentation of Colors by the Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (NJROTC) from Paducah Tilghman High School, while Distinguished Professor John Dressler, from the department of music, will serve as the ceremonys mace-bearer.Elaina Barnett and Caleb Brannon, the outstanding seniors for fall 2017, will lead the candidates for the conferral of degrees and will also provide the valedictions later in the ceremony. Barnett is graduating with a bachelors degree in studio art, while Brannon is graduating with a bachelors degree in agribusiness. They are both graduating summa cum laude.Murray State faculty in attendance will be led into the arena by the recipients of the Regents Teaching Awards for Excellence: Mickey Miller, Dr. Rebecca Pender Baum, Dr. Andrew Black, Matthew Crider, Dr. Traci Byrd, Dr. Christopher Trzepacz and Dr. Michelle Santiago. They will be joined by Presidential Research Fellow William R. Jones, Max Carman Outstanding Teacher Award Recipient John Fannin, University Distinguished Mentor Michael Flinn, Faculty Advisor of the Year Beverly Fort, Faculty Distinguished Service Recipient F. Gilland Welsch and University Emerging Scholars Vladyslav Krotov and Diane Nititham-Tunney.Faculty marshals assisting with the overall ceremony include Dr. Susana Bloomdahl, Dr. Traci Byrd, Dr. Heath Keller, Dr. Michael Kemp, Dr. Melony Shemberger, Matt Shultz and F. Gilland Welsch.Dr. Robert Davies, president of the University, will preside over the Commencement Ceremony. Davies, along with Provost Mark Arant, will administer the conferring of degrees.The ceremony will also feature a welcoming address to the newest members of the Murray State alumni community from Jerry Penner III, president of the Alumni Association Board of Governors.The doors to the CFSB Center will open at 8 a.m. and attendees are encouraged to arrive early. Admission tickets are required for all attendees but seating within the facility is general admission and available on a first-come, first-serve basis.General guest parking is available in the Stewart Stadium parking lot, east of the CFSB Center and off U.S. Highway 641. Shuttles buses are available to transport guests from the parking lot to the front doors of the CFSB Center beginning at 7:30 am. The shuttle buses will also be available until 1 pm to return guests to the parking lot.Guests with accessibility needs may use the parking lot located off Gilbert Graves Drive. An accessible parking tag or relevant special permission will be required to park in the lot. Guests with limited mobility may also be dropped off at this location.Additionally, the top two rows of chair seating in the CFSB Center will be reserved for guests with limited mobility. Special seating areas will also be located on each side of the arena. Ushers will be available for assistance. Other special requests regarding accessibility needs can be directed to the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Access at 270-809-3155 from 8 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday, or to the CFSB Center at 270-809-5577.For those unable to attend, the ceremony will be streamed live at murraystate.edu/streaming. Commencement moments can also be shared on social media with #RacerGraduation. More information about the event overall can be found at murraystate.edu/commencement.Murray State University provides an Opportunity Afforded for more than 10,000 students through a high-quality education with experiential learning, academic and personal growth and the ability to secure a lifetime of success. Since 1922, the true value of higher education has been found at Murray State University, where our commitment is to afford endless opportunities for developing leaders in the community, the country and the world. The Universitys main campus is located in Murray, Ky., and includes five regional campuses. For more information about Murray State University, please visit murraystate.edu.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Dec. 06, 2017 | FANCY FARM, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Dec. 06, 2017 | 06:15 PM | FANCY FARM, KY

The Tennessee Auctioneers Association announced that Jay Cash of Fancy Farm recently won the title of 2018 Tennessee State Champion Auctioneer during their Winter Convention in Murfreesboro, TN.



Top auctioneers from across the state of Tennessee gathered in Murfreesboro this month to showcase their skills and walk away with a $1,000 cash prize. The contest consisted of selling three items in a preliminary round, then the top three were selected to advance to a final round which included both an interview and live selling portion.



Cash will represent Tennessee on the national level next summer in Jacksonville, FL.



Cash works with his family's auction business, James R. Cash Auctions, with his wife Lisa.



Ive learned from the best. When your dad is known as The Selling Machine, its pretty much impossible to ever outshine him, Cash said.



The judging field consisted of past World Livestock Auctioneer Qualifier Champions, World Automobile Auctioneer Champions, and this year's current International Champion Auctioneer.



The Tennessee Auctioneers Association promotes high professional standards and encourages members to practice the highest principles of integrity in their auctioneering profession. Members agree to work uniformly to remain competitive in the auctioneering profession.
By The Associated Press Dec. 07, 2017 | 08:20 AM | NASHVILLE, TN

Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is joining the race to succeed Republican Bob Corker in the U.S. Senate.

Bredesen is the last Democrat to win a statewide election in Tennessee, a state that famously turned its back on favorite son Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election in favor of Republican George W. Bush.

Bredesen announced his candidacy in a campaign video posted on his website on Thursday morning. He had spent the previous day calling potential donors to let them know of his plans.

Bredesen grew up in a single-parent, working class home in Shortsville, New York, went to Harvard on an academic scholarship and earned a degree in physics.

He became a wealthy health care entrepreneur before winning two terms each as Nashville mayor and Tennessee governor.
Alina Simonyan

Today, 29 years after the Spitak earthquake hit northwestern Armenia, killing at least 25,000 and injuring tens of thousands more, traces of the devastation remain evident.

Many remain homeless, still living in makeshift shelters that were supposed to be temporary. The Shirak Provincial Administration estimates the number of tomiks (small huts) to range from 2,000  2,500. Many of these people, for a number of reasons, are no longer eligible for state housing.

Ruzan Hakobyan  50

Have you come to photograph my tapestries? she asks, welcoming us in. Ms. Hakobyan is dejected upon learning the real reason for our visit. Her works have been displayed at numerous exhibitions. Last year, she held a solo exhibit at the Mher Mkrtchyan House-Museum in Gyumri.

Ms. Hakobyan hails from the Talin village of Ashnak. She moved to Gyumri in 1986. Her husband moved away after the earthquake, and Ms. Hakobyan raised her son Henrik, now serving in the army, on her own in the tomik the family has been living in since.

I place all my hope on Henrik. I want him to return and do something good. I worked in many places, many schools. Ive had many children under my wing. I worked for ten years at the Trchunyan Tun Childrens Home in Gyumri. My Henrik got a job as a waiter when he wasnt even fifteen. He looks big for his age.

Somewhat embarrassed, Ms. Hakobyan says the only real assistance shes received from the government is the one time some workers from the municipality came by and dropped off some wood to heat the tomik.

Im an optimist. My grandma would say, If you want to live well, look at those below, not above, you. Walking down the street, I see people standing next to the trash bins. I say to myself, thank God, we are better off. My son tells me that we should move to Russia when he returns from the army. But I cant move and live abroad. I tell him, You were raised here. Have some pride. At least, dont raise your kids here.

Galya Avetisyan  60

For ten years before the earthquake, we rented a place to live. After the earthquake hit, we were supposed to have been allocated a house. All our papers were in order. But it was all lost. They gave this tomik to my husband. Weve been living here for the past thirty years. Weve given up hope of ever getting a real house. The municipality has denied all my requests. They say theres no such housing program in place. If there is, theyll inform me. Ive also filed a housing request with the Gyumri Without Tnaks organization.

She shares the tomik with her son, daughter-in-law, and her two grandkids. Ms. Avetisyan receives a monthly pension of 16,000 drams. She says nothings left after paying the utility bills.

Were not even on the list for housing. They say we never lost a house in the first place. We have to repair this tomik every year. I just hope our children will have a regular home to be happy in.

Anahit Mardoyan  66

I married in 1991, and ever since then, some thirty years, Ive been living in this tomik. My husband died two years ago. I live alone.

My husbands house was destroyed in the earthquake. His first wife died. Ive applied to the municipality for housing, but have received no reply. Ive also written to Tsarukyan*. Again, no answer. I written a letter to the All-Armenian Fund. My neighbor will take it to Yerevan and deliver it. Lets see what will happen. [Gagik Tsarukyan- wealthy Armenian tycoon]

If I at least am allocated one room. Thats all I want. Id leave this tomik in a second. Its impossible to live here. Ive set rat traps all around. Sometimes, at night, their screeching wakes me.

Haykanoush Gasparyan  52

Ive been living in this tomik for the past 25 years. I was married and about to give birth when the earthquake hit. I lost the child. My in-laws house was flattened. No one was found. I was on my own. I havent remarried. They told me I couldnt have kids.

Ms. Gasparyan worked in a hospital, as a nurse. She was let go. She worked for two months in Russia.

I now unemployed. I can still give shots and other first aid. Hopefully, something will turn up.

My sisters in Russia help me. I used to get some state assistance. That was cut. I want to go to Yerevan to look for work. I wrote the All Armenian Fund four years ago. They never replied.

Living in this tomik is terrible. I wont even talk about the public conveniences. The roof leaks. Ive patched it, but who knows how long it will last. I dont want much, just a job. I could get by if I had some work.

Top photo shows Ruzan Hakobyan
Welcome to The Independent Herald E-Edition! Check back each week on Tuesday to see our[Read More]
She was called the Mistress.

Maria Angela di Trapani, the wife of a Cosa Nostra boss and daughter of another, is among the 25 people arrested Monday morning during a police operation in Sicilian capital of Palermo.

Operation Talea, led by Palermos Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi and his colleague Salvatore De Luca, was carried out by 200 Carabinieri and dismantled two of the citys crime gangs: Resuttana and San Lorenzo, historically close to the Boss of the Boss Toto Riina, who recently passed away.

The two mandamento used to be one but Riina split them in two in order to get two votes when the Cosa Nostra was electing the boss of the bosses, Colonel Antonio Di Stasio from the Carabinieri of Palermo explained.

But there were times when Maria Angela di Trapani - daughter of boss Francesco 'Ciccio' di Trapani and wife of Salvino Madonia, the son of another historical boss Francesco Madonia - was heading both gangs, investigators found.

The Mistress, served prison time between 2008 and 2015 for delivering orders from her jailed husband and his two brothers.

One of those orders was the murder of another boss who had spread the word that Maria Angela's just born son could not be her husbands because he was in jail.

When she got out of jail she had a pedigree, di Stasio said.

Spending time in jail is very important for a Cosa Nostra career, although being the daughter and the wife of two important Palermo bosses, she did not really need that in her CV, he said.

But with all of her qualifications and her personality, she became the one who had the last word in the mandamento, as soon as she was released.

She hired and fired mandamento bosses and led at least 22 of their extortion businesses.

How did this work?

One of the bosses would visit a construction site and tell the owner of the company that one of his workers could fall from the building if he doesnt pay a certain sum. Most of the entrepreneurs pay but two reported the blackmail to authorities.

During the investigation, inspectors were delighted to hear from the wiretapped conversation that the Cosa Nostra was in crisis.

They would complain that not so many people wanted to be members of the Cosa Nostra and spoke nostalgically of old times when just mentioning the names of old bosses would spread fear, di Stasio told OCCRP.

But its not the first time and the criminal organization always finds a way to reboot and reorganize itself.

Besides, it is confronted But on the other side are brave and professional investigators and prosecutors like Francesco Lo Voi and Salvatore De Luca, concludes Colonel Di Stasio.
On December 6, while on a working visit to Vienna, Edward Nalbandian, Foreign Minister of Armenia, met with Elmar Mammadyarov, Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan.



The meeting started with participation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, then continued in a tete-a-tete format.



The agenda of the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan focused on the ways of implementing the agreements reached between the leaders of the two countries during the Vienna, St. Petersburg and Geneva Summits.



Upon the Co-Chairs proposal, an agreement was reached to hold the upcoming meeting between the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the beginning of 2018. At the meeting the timetable of the next visit of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to the region was discussed.



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When all hell broke loose

On the morning of Dec. 7, Japanese warplanes roared across the sky above Oahu.

Aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, Coxwain Edward Janikowski had just put a boatload of shipmates into the harbor bound for church services ashore. He looked up to see the blood-red rising sun emblazoned on the wings of the aircraft overhead.

Then all hell broke loose.

In 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the attack, Janikowski told Winona Daily News reporter Mark Metzler what happened next.

I had the watch four to eight in the morning, and this happened at eight. When the planes came over, I knew right away. They dropped bombs right away at the airfield at Ford Island. Then they came over us and they dropped some more. And we knew right away. I saw the wings  the big rising sun on the planes.

They were so low over the ship you could see them  the pilots  you could see what they looked like.

An officer told me, General Quarters! This is not a drill. The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor!

Then he had me running all over the quarterdeck and getting different people. He told me to go in and get the lieutenant commander out of the wardroom. And then I opened the hatch up, and that was the end of it.

A Japanese bomb had detonated in the battleships forward powder magazine, touching off a massive explosion that ripped the bow from the ship and sent Janikowski flying 20 feet across the deck, over the side and into the water  water set ablaze with the 18,000 gallons of fuel oil escaping the ships ruptured fuel tanks.

I didnt even know I was burning. My whole face, my hair was burned off, my hands were burned, and then I went into the water, and the water was burning, Janikowski sad.

Less than five minutes had elapsed since the attack began.

As the Arizona settled to the bottom, more than 1,000 sailors were trapped below decks and perished. Only 248 of the 1,425 officers and men aboard the Arizona survived.

Some of the boys  a lot of them lost their lives  jumped 100 feet into this burning sea. Our clothes caught fire when we hit the water. I was dressed in the service, whites at the time, and big holes were burned in the uniform, he recalled in a 1942 interview, shortly after he was released from the hospital.

The swimming I learned in the old Mississippi came In handy. None of us had time to get any life preservers.

It was hard going in the burning oil. I headed for shore but did not make it. I went out, and was picked up by a boat (the same boat he had launched moments before) and taken to a hospital ship. I dont remember much of the first few days.

Days after the attack, the hospital ship Solace, with Janikowski aboard, set sail for the United States.

Recovery from horror

I think my happiest day was Christmas Day in Vallejo, Calif., because they said a submarine was following us all the way to San Francisco, Janikowski told Metzler in the 1991 Daily News story.

In the hospital at Vallejo he was briefly reunited with one of his shipmates.

One of the guys called my name. I didnt know who he was, he was so burnt, Janikowski said. Im Goshen, he said, and I said, Oh. He was all black. He could see I suppose. And he lived, too. He was burnt all over his body.

Not far from the Arizona, the U.S.S. Oklahoma had fared little better.

Hit by three torpedoes dropped by Japanese torpedo bombers, the Oklahoma, mortally wounded, turned turtle in the harbor, trapping hundreds of crewmen inside the hull  many of whom were saved when rescuers braved explosions and burning oil to dive down to open hatches and cut through the hull to allow men to escape drowning or suffocation.

Lloyd Timm, 20, from Kellogg, Second Class Seaman aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma, was among the 429 crewmen killed. His brother, Warren Timm, 21, had only recently transferred from the Oklahoma to train in aviation mechanics in Jacksonville, Fla. where he was the day of the attack.

Owen Teska, 20, from Winona, manned his gun as the call to General Quarters sounded and was right in there pitching until the ship capsized beneath him. He survived the sinking and the war.

Janikowskis parents wouldnt learn their son had survived the sinking until Dec. 18. He would be the second Winona area Pearl Harbor casualty to be reported.

On Dec. 16, the first casualty notice arrived when a War Department telegram informed the family of Howard Irmscher of Fountain City that Howard had been lost in action on a ship in the performance of his duty and in service to his country.

However, Irmscher, who had been stationed at Pearl Harbor, surprised his family on New Years Eve with postcards telling them I am well and getting along well. Letter follows. The cards were followed by an official Navy Department apology on New Years Day.

For other families, the news was grim.

On Dec. 21 parents of Harold William Ham, a farm boy from St. Charles, and Joseph Morris Johnson from Rushford, were notified that their sons had died in the Pearl Harbor attack.

Other families had even a longer wait. It wasnt until Jan. 7 that Mrs. Bertha Johnson of Houston was notified by the War Department that her son, Private First Class Olaf A. Johnson, stationed at Hickam Field on Dec. 7, had been killed in action.

Alvin Claussen was aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Craven escorting the carrier U.S.S. Enterprise from Wake Island to Pearl when the Japanese struck, avoiding the attack.

However, on July 4, 1944, he was serving as radioman aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Strong when it was hit by a Japanese torpedo and sunk. Four days later he was able to contact his parents, assuring them he was very much alive.

It was a hard blow to the Island, Janikowski said while on leave in 1942, and a lot of the fellows lost their lives, but there are many more there now to take their places.

They need us fellows now and Ill be going back, he said.

He did go back. His injuries kept him out of combat for the balance of the war, but he served as crewman on the admirals launch at Pearl Harbor. He would go on to a career in the Navy, serving 21 years, then spending the next 16 years as a civilian employee in the Navy Yards in Bremerton, Wash. He retired in 1976.

In 1991, Janikowski was present for the 50-year anniversary commemoration at the memorial above the decks of the Arizona in Pearl Harbor. There, above the final resting place of 1,100 shipmates, he met President George Bush and his wife, Barbara.

I shook his hand twice and Barbaras, too, he said, in an interview with the Daily News.

When examining the names of the dead interred below, Janikowski found 50 names of men he knew.

When I go aboard that memorial and I look at a name, I can just see the face, the guys that I used to go on the beach with, he said.
There is some interesting news about problems with concealed carry permits. Well, actually there are very, very few problems. But the news is interesting. Unless, of course, you are an anti-gun fanatic, in which case, any good news about concealed-carry will turn you into a babbling hysteric.

The number of people applying for and getting concealed-carry permits reached an all-time high in 2015. 1.83 million permits were issued. That sets a record for the fourth straight year. Who are these people you ask? The most significant increases for permits were for women and blacks.

More than 6 percent of the adult population in the United States can now legally carry a concealed handgun. If the inhabitants of New York and California arent included, 8 percent now are able to.

If you are a zealot, you will assert that these arent needed, they contribute to a culture of violence, and cause an increase in violent crime. Well, okay, why dont we take a look at some data.

In 2015, 0.0123 percent of permit holders were accused of or convicted of a felony. A high number you think? Thats 123 charges/convictions for every 10,000 (12.3/1000) permit holders. In 2016, that number dropped to 0.0092 percent or 92 charges per 10,000 (9.2/1000).

How bad are those figures? Perhaps we ought to establish a frame of reference.

The data however, is not broken down by actual convictions as it includes both those charged and those convicted. They are not the same. Throw out the charged statistics and use only convicted data, then gun-problem numbers are even lower. Obviously.

The Crime Research Prevention Center points out that, In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at one-sixth of the rate at which police officers are convicted. In other words, Dear Radical, some of our countrys police officers are found guilty of misdemeanors and felonies six times more often than concealed-carry permit holders.

Without question, concealed weapon permit holders are extraordinarily law-abiding.

But if we were to eliminate private ownership of guns, especially the right-to-carry concealed weapons, it would obviously follow that we would also have to disarm law enforcement as well. Since they seem to have greater problems abiding by our laws than concealed permit carriers. Isnt that right? That would work just great wouldnt it?

Want more interesting news about gun deaths and murders? Sure.

A Crime Prevention Research Center study found that more than 50 percent of all US murders occur in only 2 percent of our counties. Almost 70 percent of all US murders occur in just 5 percent of our counties.

Also 54 percent of counties (11 percent of the U.S. population) have no murders while 69 percent  have no more than one murder.  together these counties,  represent about 31 percent of the U.S. population, (and) account for only 4 percent of all murders in the country.

And from 1977  2000, 73 percent of US counties had no murders at all. Doesnt seem as if all of those gun carrying rednecks out here in fly-over country are very dangerous does it? Thats because? We arent.

Which counties are the most dangerous? Los Angeles, Cook with its major city Chicago, and Harris where Houston, Texas, is located. Anything else these counties have in common? They are all controlled by Democrats. And have been for a long time. But you already knew that so thats no surprise.

If you believe that the second amendment doesnt protect our individual rights to carry, how about this quote from Thomas Jefferson as cited in DODs Early Bird News:

Laws that forbid the carrying of armsdisarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimesSuch laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

I have to say though, that Im a little nervous about quotes like this attributed to famous people as there seem to be no end to bozos willing to make stuff up. That might include this one though the logic is spot-on irrespective of who said it or, heaven forbid, made it up.

By the way, did any of you see that an ex-CEO of National Public Radio (NPR) changed his mind about believing in the effectiveness of gun control? Apparently had something to do with recognizing 25 years of continuous declines in the number of homicides.

Will any of this evidence change any crusaders wild-eyed convictions about guns being bad, bad, bad? I doubt it. Most scolding anti-gun dogmatists believe in an unsupportable faith. That doesnt matter.

What they want is far important than trivial things based on truth. And they want nothing to do with reality either. Or the Constitution. That is why, instead of using facts and logic, which they dont have, they must try to bully us. They have nothing else to stand on but shrill emotionalism and apoplectic fury.

Okay anti-gun lefty, its yelling and screaming time. But wear a bib. Frantic yowling with foaming-at-the-mouth rage while having spittle dribble down your chin onto your shirt is just so tacky.
Alina Simonyan

People talk about life in Gyumri, Armenias second largest city, in two separate time frames  before and after the 1988 earthquake.

The Gyumri of today, and the Leninakan of 1988, seem like two separate towns.

Here are photos comparing the two.

Gyumris Shirak Hotel. The municipality has decided to demolish whats left of the Soviet-era hotel and allocate the site to a company called Baseni Govk LLC. The company plans to build a new hotel, commercial center and food outlet on the site. The company must preserve and restore the sculptural adornments of the old hotel.

The Holy Savior Church was partially destroyed during the earthquake. Crews tried to use as many of the old stones as possible during its reconstruction. The church was built to resemble the Mother Cathedral at Ani.

The new Gyumri Municipal Building opened its doors in 2009. Its facade reminds one of the old political council building.

The main square was restored in 2000. Two years later, a statute of Charles Aznavour was installed.

The October Cinema. In the background is the belfry of the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God (also known as the Yot Verk/Seven Wounds Church).

P.S. 16 and the adjacent Chulochni sock factory. The Shirak Provincial Court now stands in place of the school.

The building now housing the Gyumri Technology Center was built in 1900-1920. On January 31, 1920, the doors to the Alexandropol Trade School opened to great fanfare. Over the years, the building housed a state college, Institute of Pedagogy, Museum of Geology and a photography school. The Technology Center relocated there in 2013.

This building, now the home of the Ananya Shirakatsi Branch of the private Haybusak University, housed the Univermag Soviet market in the 1940s and 1950s.

Before being converted into the Chulochni hosiery factory, the building housed the brewery belonging to the Tzitoghtsyan family. The factory is now empty. Only one small section still operates.

Leninakan archival photos from Tigran Ghasabyans Facebook page. Gyumri photos provided by author.
A jury found a Sauk County man guilty Wednesday of 40 counts of felony child pornography possession.

It took the jury about an hour and 40 minutes to reach the verdict in the case of 55-year-old John L. Lomax in Sauk County Circuit Court. He was taken into custody, and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

The maximum sentence on each count is 25 years in prison, which means Lomax could be sentenced to up to 1,000 years of incarceration.

The case centered on whether Lomax knowingly possessed images of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct on a computer in his West Baraboo apartment.

During closing arguments, defense attorney Joseph Viney of Baraboo said it was reasonable to believe the images found on his clients computer may have been put there by someone else, and remained there without his knowledge.

Prosecutors contended that Lomax was computer savvy, and used special software to download child pornography. Investigators said he was actively deleting files when they entered his apartment in May 2013, likely because he heard them arrive earlier and search his landlords home.

Viney said the prosecutions theory was not consistent, because if Lomax was tech savvy, he would have known that deleting files would not completely erase them from the computers hard drive, and that physically destroying the hard drive was his only option.

If he has the knowledge the state contends he has, why isnt he himself trying to remove the drives and destroy them? Viney said.

Sauk County Assistant District Attorney Michael Albrecht reminded jurors of other evidence that suggested Lomax knowingly downloaded and possessed the images in question. He read from lewd phrases found on the computer that analysts determined had been used to search for child pornography.

Albrecht said similar evidence was found on other devices that were not connected to the internet, so it would have been impossible for a hacker to have planted them there.

Albrecht said it was not reasonable for jurors to believe that Lomax may have been the victim of some conspiracy in which someone else planted the evidence against him.

Its always possible that aliens came down and planted something, Albrecht said. But is that rational? No.

Juror apologizes

As the trial wrapped up, Judge Michael Screnock informed attorneys that a prospective juror whose courtroom outburst landed him in jail Monday had apologized.

Screnock said he had received a phone message from Loren H. Wilhelm in which the 71-year-old apologized for an inappropriate remark he made during the jury selection process. Screnock said Wilhelm told him that the dialogue between attorneys and potential jurors brought back memories of a prior event to which Wilhelm was tangentially connected.

He indicated that he just couldnt take it anymore, said Screnock, who is campaigning for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

As jury selection wrapped up Monday, Wilhelm allegedly referred to the defendant with a derogatory name and declared that he was guilty.

Screnock then questioned Wilhelm about the remark on the witness stand, and held him in contempt of court. He ordered that Wilhelm be jailed until Tuesday morning.

Screnock provided the update to attorneys Wednesday afternoon just after the jury began its deliberations.
The Van Orden mansion has been transformed into a Holiday Inn.

The Sauk County Historical Societys annual Edwardian Christmas event returns to the Baraboo mansion Friday and Saturday. This years theme is Holiday Inn, inspired by the classic 1942 film. Nine rooms in the Fourth Avenue historic site have been decorated in the style of holidays from Christmas to St. Patricks Day to Independence Day.

The theme has awakened peoples creativity, said Historical Society Executive Director Paul Wolter.

This week he was reattaching to the mansions front porch a sign reading Holiday Inn that had blown down during a wind storm. Despite the intervention of Mother Nature, the mansion was ready for public view, thanks to a sneak preview last weekend that spurred decorators to finish their work early.

Its 99 percent there, Wolter said.

Each December, the Historical Society opens the mansion to the public for a holiday open house featuring snacks, live music and astounding decorations. Organizers selected the Holiday Inn theme because it incorporates holidays besides Christmas. The Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie is about an inn thats only open on holidays.

This year, Thanksgiving and New Years Eve and George Washingtons birthday  today we call it Presidents Day  will get some of the spotlight. Ann Wolter, Pauls wife, said she has spent more than 100 hours researching Washingtons personal history and filling a room with a display in his honor. A Christmas tree  there is one in every room  features replicas of toys the president brought back for his children from the American Revolution. Theres a display of military flags, a drum and fife, and a whiskey barrel noting Washingtons passion for distilling spirits.

Washington spent eight Christmases away from home during the war. I thought it was fascinating, Ann Wolter said. He was out in the field being cold.

Each room is sponsored by a local business, decorator or organization. Dave SaLoutos decorated one room based on the theme of White Christmas, the hit Irving Berlin song from Holiday Inn that spawned the Crosby/Rosemary Clooney Christmas movie 12 years later.

Edwardian Christmas has attracted as many as 900 people. This year, Paul Wolter said, traffic will be divided between last weekends preview, Friday evenings wine and appetizer premiere, and Saturdays open house. On Saturday, visitors will enjoy not only a look inside the museum, but live music, home-baked treats and carriage rides.

I dont think you can get that anywhere else, Paul Wolter said.
George Archibald has been named one of five finalists for the Banovich Wildscapes Foundations inaugural Award for Conservation Excellence.

The co-founder of the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation could receive $100,000 during a February awards ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina, should he take home the top honor. The international award recognizes exceptional contributors to wildlife conservation around the world.

The award will recognize a conservationists long-term commitment to making our planet a better place, and empower people in both local and international communities to advance wildlife conservation, according to a Banovich Wildlife Foundation press release.

Archibalds 50 years of leadership in international conservation efforts paved the way for crane conservation worldwide, according to the crane foundations leaders. When many cranes species were on the brink of extinction in 1973, Archibald and his Cornell University colleague, Ronald Sauey, established the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo as the world headquarters for the study and preservation of the birds.

Soon after, Archibald pioneered innovative breeding techniques that allowed many rare crane species to reproduce in captivity for the first time. He also forged scientific exchanges and field conservation programs with Chinese and Russian biologists in the 1970s.

Crane Foundation Information Services Manager Betsy Didrickson said Archibalds internal optimism and ability to locate and train young talent has made him a global standout among conservationists.

Georges life is about being a catalyst, she said. Its about getting things started, identifying amazing talent and then handing the torch to that person.

There are daunting challenges in conservation that would easily bring down lesser people.

Under Archibalds leadership, the International Crane Foundation has grown into a globally respected organization with more than 50 employees. The organization supports conservation projects in more than 50 countries on five continents.

As a finalist for the Award for Conservation Excellence, Archibald will receive a $5,000 Cabelas gift certificate donated by Cabelas Outdoor Fund, and a $5,000 cash award donated by Bass Pro Shops. Other finalists include Joel Berger of Colorado, K. Ullas Karanth of India, David Macdonald of the United Kingdom and Timothy McClanahan of Kenya.

If Archibald wins the $100,000 first-place prize  which was donated by Cabelas Outdoor Fund and the Cabela Family Foundation  Didrickson said the money will be used to fund programs at the International Crane Foundation.

It would immediately go to work for conservation, she said.
When Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an illegal immigrant who had repeatedly been deported, was acquitted Nov. 30 of killing an American citizen, Kate Steinle, President Trump denounced the verdict as a complete travesty of justice.

The anger people feel over this acquittal contains an echo of the fury felt when a grand jury refused to indict the Ferguson policeman who shot and killed Michael Brown, in that it is stoked by a sense of systemic injustice, and a breakdown of law and order. In the case of Brown, the context was police mistreatment of young black men. In the case of Steinle, the context is lax enforcement of our immigration laws and sometimes out-and-out flouting them.

Steinle died in her fathers arms after Zarate shot her. His story changed over the course of the investigation, but he fired the gun in public, either at a sea lion or out of sheer recklessness, killing Steinle. But a jury convicted Zarate only on weapons charges.

Whatever the injustice of the verdict in this case, it is right that our Constitution leaves such questions in a jurys hands. But there is still the broader, deeply frustrating, not to say enraging, context. The jury cannot acquit our immigration system or cities that declare that they wont enforce our immigration laws and will interfere try to hobble federal authorities who try to enforce them.

There is no solid evidence that illegal immigrants are especially likely to be criminals. But that does not change the fact that sanctuary cities do great damage to the rule of law. Whenever a criminal illegal immigrant like Zarate commits a crime, it is always a crime that didnt have to happen, because the perpetrator should not have been in the country.

Zarate was a career criminal who had repeatedly re-entered the U.S. illegally. He had been slated for deportation before federal authorities sent him to San Francisco to face trial for an old drug charge. That charge was dropped, and the sanctuary citys sheriff released him from jail rather than handing him back to the feds for deportation.

As Attorney General Jeff Sessions put it, Zarate would not have been on the streets of San Francisco if the city simply honored an ICE detainer. One seldom has the opportunity to see such a clear cause-and-effect relationship between a policy and a terrible outcome. If San Franciscos sanctuary city policy hadnt protected Zarate from deportation, Steinle would still be alive. States and cities that harbor criminals are deliberately endangering their own populations so they can strike attitudes on what they fatuously believe is the moral high ground.

There is no simpler problem in America to solve than the question of crime by convicted criminal illegal aliens. There is the one-size-fits-all answer. Remove them, and throw any leader out of office who cannot grasp this obvious requirement of public safety.
After helping clients with digital marketing strategies for 17 years, Bob Turner was excited to move his home-based business to downtown Columbus.

Web Wisconsin, 114 N. Ludington St., officially opened its office Nov. 1.

Weve never had a retail office location outside the home, Turner said. The business has kind of gotten to the point that in order for us to continue to grow, I need to do less of the account management and sales side of it.

Turner recently hired a new account manager and is looking to bring on additional sales staff. Turner runs the business with his wife, Kat. The couple is from the Madison area, but decided they wanted a little slower pace and relocated to Columbus.

Web Wisconsins motto is lets put the internet to work for you. The company helps businesses throughout southern Wisconsin improve their marketing outreach through the web. With internet marketing changing often, it can be difficult for small business owners to keep their websites, if they have a website, fresh and attractive. Through the past 17 years, Turner has enjoyed seeing his clients improve their businesses with help from Web Wisconsin.

We can consider ourselves a digital marketing agency, Turner said. We dont want to get trapped into being a website development company  we do that  but we do so much more than that.

Besides helping build websites, Web Wisconsin can help businesses improve chances of being found on popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yelp, Siri and other platforms. In the coming weeks, the business plans to offer automation marketing to make it easier for companies to keep up on marketing trends. Web Wisconsin also does Facebook graphic design and marketing for businesses.

Turner is especially proud of a niche product, Order Our Food, designed to help consumers and businesses. He said the online food ordering service is similar to Eat Street and Grub Hub, but he believes it is more user-friendly.

It is amazing, Turner said. Its a really neat function.

Order Our Food, which was branded earlier this year, allows consumers to order meals in a fast, efficient way. In addition, Turner said companies who use the service have seen online sales jump dramatically. He mentioned a restaurant in Janesville that improved its online sales from about 150 orders a month to more than 400. Users can also download an Order Our Food app on their smart phones. The service can be used for delivery or pick-up orders.

Turner showed examples of how he was able to transform a business website from an old, outdated model to a much more attractive site that often draws more costumers.

Web Wisconsin recently began working with Bombshell Hair Designs, a Columbus-based business. They expected to launch Bombshells new website earlier this week.

Its going to look great, Turner said. We help local businesses and thats all we deal with. We dont help big franchises. We like helping them succeed and just explode with more profits and customers. Thats our passion.

While the business is expanding, Turner said he doesnt want to lose that local feel. He plans to keep helping small, local businesses reach new heights through digital platforms.

For more information, contact Web Wisconsin at 608-622-7050 or send email to bob@webwisconsin.com.
Fishermen in Necedah may soon have more accurate information on the lake.

The Village Board of Necedah heard a presentation by Sara Hatleli of Aquatic Plant and Habitat Services, on Dec. 4.

In 2014, there were concerns about the Necedah pond having too much vegetation. Hatleli was contacted and applied for a grant. In 2015, the improvement plan was broadened it from just a discussion about the pond, to Lake Necedah as well, Hatleli said. So we did an aquatic survey of the lake.

The results of the survey found that about 50 percent of the points that were surveyed had vegetation.

The Aquatic Plant Management Plan is scheduled to be conducted during Spring 2018.

Hatleli said the map they had produced would also be useful to fisherman. Necedah Village President Scott Carter said if lake maps where to be sold he was sure residents would buy them.

Aquatic invasive species management is a core goal of the plan. The plan will include watercraft inspections in order to make sure no invasive species are being brought in or leaving the lake, Hatleli said.

The survey did find Eurasian watermilfoil in the lake. It doesnt seem to be behaving badly in Lake Necedah though, Hatleli said. It just doesnt seem to be posing a huge impairment to the lake. So for now its kind of monitor and watch thing.

Hatleli said the Eurasian watermilfoil was mostly present in areas of the lake that had no other plant life present.

Hatleli said the survey also found the presence of weevils in the lake. Theyre native to Wisconsin, theyre naturally occurring, nobody put them here, Hatleli said. Hatleli thinks the weevils might be keeping the watermilfoil from dominating the lake.

The management plan also includes a fish survey. Hatleli estimates that there hasnt been a fish survey in Lake Necedah in about 20 years. The fish data will be available in late 2018.

Other Business

Necedah Police Officer Tony Heiss said he had assisted as a member of the drug force for Juneau County in November that resulted in three arrests relating to methamphetamine. Heiss assisted the Elroy Police Department in the case. We kind of work together. We cant all do it one department at a time, Heiss said.

The Necedah Village Board unanimously voted to approve the 2018 G.O. Budget for the village.

The Village Board is scheduled to meet again on Jan. 8.
Law Enforcement agencies in Juneau County may find coordination easier in the near future. The Juneau County Sheriffs Department has chosen to adopt Spillman Technologies software as their new records-keeping program.

With the Sheriffs Office making the transition, other law enforcement agencies in Juneau County are considering following suit. The Mauston, New Lisbon and Elroy Police Departments are all reported to be considering switching to Spillman.

Spillman is estimated to have a presence in 25 of Wisconsins 72 counties.

At the Fire and Police Commission meeting on Nov. 29, Mauston Police Chief Mike Zilisch spoke on the benefits of switching to Spillman.

Our data pool is astronomically increased and so is everybody elses because now were sharing all the data, Zilisch said,Wed be able to look at not only New Lisbons reports, Elroys (and) the Countys, but wed also be able to look at Adams, and Sauk, and Columbia because this whole region is jumping to Spillman.

Its much more powerful than the current software that we have, Zilisch said.

Initially, Spillman would cost the Mauston Police Department more than their current software. But over, time the cost would be similar. $12,000 is what our original total would be, Zilisch said. But subsequent years are the normal (about) $6,000 that we are spending.

The Mauston Finance Committee has voiced support for the purchase.

There are potential additional costs associated with the transition to Spillman, but those have not been decided on yet. For a fee, Spillman will migrate existing police data. All the municipalities are spending around $10,000 to take all their old data and convert it into Spillman data, Zilisch said. Zilisch said he has spoken with Mauston City Administrator Nathan Thiel about a potential data conversion, and Thiel feels that it is a benefit worth the cost.

The ability to track the GPS location of law enforcement vehicles in real time is a feature Zilisch said would be beneficial to the department.

Now I could actually put in the exact time and put in CAD and I could look at exactly what (an officers) GPS coordinates was, Zilisch said. So if they just sat at the police department and slept, not only would we know that, but we could see that their car never moved.

At the Juneau County Sheriffs Department, the transition to Spillman has already been decided.

Its the entire records system for the Sheriffs Office, Dispatch Supervisor Michelle Lobenstein said. So it includes our records management, it includes our CAD for dispatch, it includes all of our jail records, evidence, basically everything we do records-wise in the Sheriffs Department.

Previously we were using Vision CAD, and Inform RMS through TriTech, Lobenstein said. Theyre three different programs, but they do work together.

Because of the ability to seamlessly share information, Spillman software will be more effective as more local law enforcement agencies choose to adopt it.

Its something we wanted to encourage them to do, Sheriffs Office Manager Elizabeth Geesaman said Because the more records you have, the more information you have, the more effective we are.

The server will be housed in Juneau County, with the Sheriffs Office as the host. Municipal police departments will be connected to that server. Well share all of our records with all of the police departments that come onboard, Lobenstein said.

Gessaman believes Spillman will make the whole department more efficient.

Right now we have an issue where the computer aided dispatch doesnt communicate well with our records management system, Geesaman said. Our new system with Spillman is a seamless process of information being transferred over, whereas with our current stuff, information really isnt transferred over like that.

Spillmans ability to share information between agencies will make each agency better informed.

Each municipality is going to jump on board, Zilisch said. It really allows us to be much more powerful while doing investigations.

Law enforcement agencies in Adams, and Sauk, and Columbia counties have already adopted Spillman, and more are expected to follow.
A gay man who was twice denied a marriage license by Kim Davis has thrown his hat in the ring to run against her for county clerk.

David Ermold, an assistant professor of English at the University of Pikeville, announced his plan to run against Davis for the position of Rowan County Clerk in Kentucky.

Davis made headlines in 2015 when she defied a US Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage and refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She spent five days in jail for refusing to abide by the court's ruling.

Twice denied

Among those who were denied a license was Ermold and his partner of more than 15 years, David Moore.

"This is how gay people are treated in this country, this is what it's like, this is their experience, this is how it feels," Ermold said in an emotional statement after he was denied a license for a second time in 2015.

On Wednesday, Ermold announced his intention to run against Davis on the platform of fairness and integrity, he said in a statement.

In addition to Davis and Ermold, three other candidates plan to run for the seat, according to CNN affiliate WYMT.

The election is on May 22, 2018. Davis was elected to Rowan County Clerk in 2014, and previously worked for her mother, the county clerk for 37 years.

CNN has reached out to Davis for comment.
American evangelicals, especially those close to President Donald Trump, hailed his announcement on Wednesday that the United States now recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But other religious leaders, including Pope Francis and Christians living in Israel, expressed dire concerns that the move would incite unrest in the volatile region.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said from the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room. "After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians."

Trump also described the move as keeping a campaign promise that other presidents had failed to fulfill.

Johnnie Moore, a de facto spokesman for Trump's informal group of evangelical advisers, said Jerusalem's status was a key part of the President's outreach to evangelical voters.

"This issue was -- to many -- second only to concerns about the judiciary among the President's core evangelical supporters. President Trump has -- yet again -- demonstrated to his evangelical supporters that he will do what he says he will do," Moore said.

Paula White, a Florida megachurch pastor who is close to Trump, likewise said the President has fulfilled a campaign promise.

"Once again, President Trump has shown the world what I have always known  he is a leader who is willing to do what is right however loud the voices are of the skeptics and the critics. Evangelicals are ecstatic, for Israel is to us a sacred place and the Jewish people are our dearest friends."

According to a recent survey, a plurality of American evangelicals -- 45% -- said the Bible is the biggest influence on their opinion about Israel. Just 41% of evangelicals said Jews have a "biblical right" to the land of Israel but also a responsibility to share the land with Palestinian Arabs.

"Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy. But most importantly, God gave Jerusalem  and the rest of the Holy Land  to the Jewish people," said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board.

Other religious leaders, however, worried that Trump's announcement could spark unrest and even violence in the volatile Middle East.

"I cannot remain silent about my deep concern for the situation that has developed in recent days and, at the same time, I wish to make a heartfelt appeal to ensure that everyone is committed to respecting the status quo of the city, in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the United Nations," Francis said on Wednesday during his general audience at the Vatican.

"I pray to the Lord that such identity be preserved and strengthened for the benefit of the Holy Land, the Middle East and the entire world, and that wisdom and prudence prevail, to avoid adding new elements of tension in a world already shaken and scarred by many cruel conflicts."

Leaders of Christian communities in Jerusalem issued even more dire warnings about Trump's decision.

"We are certain that such steps will yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division," 13 patriarchs and leaders of Christian Orthodox communities wrote in an open letter to Trump on Wednesday.

"Any sudden changes would cause irreparable harm."

The announcement divided American Jewish groups. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and American Jewish Committee hailed Trump's move, calling it an apt and long-delayed recognition of Israel's own determination that Jerusalem is the nation's capital.

But Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union for Reform Judaism said that while his group supports moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it is concerned about the timing of the announcement and the lack of a comprehensive peace process to address the larger disputes between Israelis and Palestinians.

American Muslims expressed nearly universal dismay at the move.

"In an already volatile region, Mr. Trump's action will be akin to dousing gasoline on a burning fire," said Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame. "The US will also sign itself into irrelevance in Mideast matters. Without a two-state solution the very future of Israel might be in jeopardy."
Boxed subscription services like Birch Box and Blue Apron are changing the way we shop. And while this may be bad news for American malls and department stores, whose demise is marked by rapidly closing brick and mortar retail venues (according to an industry think tank, 6,879 stores will have closed in the US in 2017)it may be great news for Armenia, whose geopolitics has long created a literal and figurative barrier between its small business owners and an international customer base.

On December 1, WithLove.am, the first boxed product start-up highlighting handcrafted items from Armenia, released its third annual collection in 250 limited edition sets to the U.S. online market. After two sold-out years, the WithLove teams ambitions for the future include more frequent releases throughout the calendar year.

WithLove is the antidote to two long-standing myths that feed into each other, said creative director Anahid Yahjian, first, that products from Armenia should feature pomegranates, the tricolors of the Armenian flag, or Mount Ararat; and second, that products from Armenia can really only hope to be bought by people of Armenian descent as souvenirs.

The products are remarkable because of their craftsmanship, innovation on ancient techniques, applicability to everyday cosmopolitan life and, most of all, the stories they tell. That last point is a big part of what sets WithLove apart from all artisan-focused brands--when sourcing products, they look for artisans with powerful stories and foreground them in their marketing.

And we do this in an empowered way,  Yahjian said. You will never see us neglect to name an artisan or provide their direct contacts when advertising their products. You will also never see us waxing poetic about their socio-economic status--these are proud small business owners, period. We are interested only in collaboration and see them as equal stakeholders in getting their product to the US market.

WithLove has aspired to curate the best of the countrys artisan economy, selecting one-of-a-kind items with universal appeal, sometimes from little-known craftspeople located in remote parts of the country. Some artisans operate so locally, in fact, that their feature on WithLoves online store doubles as their debut into the digital realmoutside of word-of-mouth references or Facebook, which is commonplace in Armenia.

In the past, artisan partners have ranged from indie urban designers, like architect-turned-jeweler Armine Harutyunyan of Yerevan, whose sterling silver pendants were featured last year, to rural operations like that of Honey.am, whose organic honey grown in the village of Haytagh anchored WithLoves first collection.

This spirit of discovery is the root of the concept behind WithLove, which is an initiative of Sose and Allens Legacy Foundation.

My sister was always a huge fan of avant garde and unique handicrafts--especially the ones in Armenia, said Legacy Foundation director Vache Thomassian. She was always on the hunt to meet talented people doing creative things. Whether it was the ceramic potter who made [her and Allens] wedding favors, the young jewelry maker that she bought earrings from after meeting on Facebook, the painter, the clothing seamstress, or the shoemaker, there was no shortage of amazing stuff that she was able to find in Armenia.

After Sose and Allens untimely passing in 2013, Thomassian found a bag of business cards with notes on all kinds of different creative people his sister had interacted with. It sparked the idea to help share those treasures with the rest of the world.

WithLove fits perfectly with the Legacy Foundation's mission to highlight and magnify world-class things coming out of Armenia, Thomassian said. All the while, we get to work side-by-side with these artisans as they jump-start their businesses.

From the outset, WithLove collections have been cleverly packaged in vessels commissioned uniquely for that years collection. In 2015, it was the WithLove Box. In 2016, it was the WithLove Pouch.

This year, the tradition continues with the WithLove Tote, which was designed by Tatev Sayadyan, a textile designer who returned to her native Yerevan in 2014 after several years spent living and working in Los Angeles. The design is inspired by the Armenian eternity symbol and other traditional carvings that adorn the countrys historic structures. The tote itself is made entirely from an extremely rare Armenian-made canvas discoveredafter much searchingby Yahjian in the southern city of Goris at the Zangezur Textile factory.

Each tote has been silkscreened, hand-dyed, and handsewn in Yerevan and comes in 3 colors (orange, navy blue, and black). The bags bear the #ToprakPetqChi hashtag (Armenian transliteration for no bag needed) in solidarity with the eponymous movement to encourage the use of reusable bags in Armenia and protect its environment. Inside is a curated selection of 5 more products that were all hand-crafted sustainably in Armenia:

Sterling silver WithLove Earrings that take the shape of the traditional Armenian eternity symbol and interpret it as a flower or wheel, made by Harout Der Baghdassarian.

that take the shape of the traditional Armenian eternity symbol and interpret it as a flower or wheel, made by Harout Der Baghdassarian. A dessert plate made by Aratta Ceramics in Gyumri using clay sourced from the nearby village of Talin.

made by Aratta Ceramics in Gyumri using clay sourced from the nearby village of Talin. Zanazan Armenian "Ransom" Magnets with 330 unique Armenian characters and symbols created by Proper Company.

with 330 unique Armenian characters and symbols created by Proper Company. A wooden puzzle made from reclaimed linden wood in Artsakh (NKR) by Woodpeckers' Wood Toys. It comes in 4 variations: a duck, rabbit, turtle and bear.

made from reclaimed linden wood in Artsakh (NKR) by Woodpeckers' Wood Toys. It comes in 4 variations: a duck, rabbit, turtle and bear. A Give Color/Gain Life coloring book based on medieval Armenian ornamentation that was researched, compiled and digitized by Armen Kyurkchyan of Kyurkchyan publishing. There are 3 versions of this item: "Armenian Continuous Ornaments," "Armenian Floral Patterns," and "Armenian Rosettes."

The limited edition sets are available with complimentary 2-day shipping to anywhere in the U.S. Those interested in learning more about the stories behind the products in this years WithLove collection and purchasing a set for themselves or as a holiday gift can do so by visiting the online store.
Good news and inspiration at Founders Tea

It was a remarkably forward-looking crowd of Witsies at the 2017 Founders Tea, held on 30 November on the Gavin Relly Green, West Campus. Mostly aged 70 and above, they were still keen to hear the Vice-Chancellors outline of new developments at Wits and guest speaker Sipho Pityanas vision of the leadership South Africa needs for the future.

Civil engineer Robert Schaffner (BSc Eng 1951), aged 97, was the oldest Witsie present, though some of the guests had graduated in earlier years. Founders are Witsies who graduated 40 or more years ago.

Photos of the event are available here.

Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Adam Habib welcomed the guests, especially the new Founders in the Class of 1977. He said it had been a good year for Wits, with no disruptive protests. The challenges of financing higher education and accommodating students remain, but these have to be resolved systemically by government, he said.

Highlights and plans

Meanwhile, there is plenty of good news. Wits has increased research output, pass rates are expected to rise this year, and the University is using innovative technology to put education within reach of more people. Wits is also working with industry to produce the skills needed in a rapidly changing society. Professor Habib said the University and the City are making Braamfontein a place where future generations of students will be safe and where business and cultural life will flourish.

Master of ceremonies Simon Gear (BA 1998, BA Hons 1999, MSc 2014) mentioned the impact of investment in basic education, a point that the Founders clearly appreciated. He also described a Wits degree as a harpoon in the context of teaching a person to fish.

Development and Fundraising Director Peter Bezuidenhoudt spoke of the surge of corporate financial support that has come for Wits recently. He also highlighted a year of sporting achievements  including beating Tukkies at rugby in the USSA tournament for the first time in 50 years  and special residence reunions. Alumni should also be pleased to see Wits in the Times Higher Education Global University Employability Index  the only South African university in that ranking.

Reflections on leadership

Sipho Pityana, a leader in business and adviser on matters of labour and higher education, is also convenor of Save South Africa. This is a civil society campaign in support of democracy, accountability, integrity and the values of our Constitution.

Wits is an appropriate place to reflect on the leadership South Africa needs, he said. It is a place that should produce people capable of producing and defending new ideas.

Looking back, 1977 was a time of repression: a time of conscription, detention without trial, political killings, spies and censorship. Though some were privileged, no citizen of South Africa was free. But it was a generation that dared to imagine, fight for and realise a free South Africa.

Freedom is threatened

This freedom, Pityana said, does not go far enough and is now threatened. Many people are still marginalised and may have begun to question the efficacy and credibility of the Constitution. Inequalities are widening. The failure of the basic education system since democracy is one of the biggest betrayals of peoples hope and trust. The health system, Pityana said, is an assault on human dignity. In rural areas, hardly anything has improved for some people. How can we expect the poor to embrace and respect the Constitution when the promise is betrayed?

We need leadership with integrity, whose word will be honoured, whom we can trust with the state coffers. Not one who invokes narrow ethic proclivities or who exploits divisions in society, but an inclusive, nonracist leader who embraces the values in the Constitution. One who will hold others accountable for corrupt deeds and is capable of removing rogue elements in important institutions. One capable of appointing a credible cabinet and who appreciates the independence of the judiciary and the Chapter Nine institutions. One who can forge a new social compact. We can do without a populist leader who will make false promises.

The consequences of misgovernance will be with us for years to come, Pityana said. There will be more job losses. South Africa cannot afford free higher education for all. The social contract is not sustainable if its about asking the poor to give more, he said. We must get back the money that has gone from the state coffers.

We have a beautiful country, Pityana concluded. It is ours to mess up. We must all be vigilant and defend our democracy.
Ron Makovicka didn't know what he'd lost until he was pulling a grain cart through one of his York County fields, following the combine driven by his son.

All around him, the land remained littered with loose ears of corn, like money left on the ground.

He thought maybe the combine was the problem. He radioed his son, asking: Are you doing this? Are you doing that?

But the corn had snapped from its stalks and fallen to the dirt days earlier, the result of what agriculture experts called a perfect storm: A series of weather conditions over the growing season that had been good, and then bad, for certain hybrid seed varieties, producing big-kerneled ears but weakening their grip to the stalks.

And when strong winds  exceeding 40 mph in many areas, topping 50 in others  raked the state in late October, the rattling corn simply couldn't hang on.

Most farmers wouldn't know they were suffering the worst recent season of what they call ear drop until the gusts died, when they were in their fields, looking down from their combines and tractors.

It really turned your stomach when you saw all that crop on the ground, Makovicka said. And there was nothing you could do about it.

The losses are significant and widespread.

Theres no good way to get a handle on it, said Jenny Rees, a Nebraska extension educator. But its thousands and thousands and thousands of acres statewide.

In Makovicka's most damaged field, he counted 70 bushels of corn per acre  grain he couldn't salvage, couldn't sell at the elevator. Rees has heard of northeast Nebraska farms that lost 100 bushels per acre, or nearly $50,000 of missed income on each quarter-section.

That's unprecedented and outrageous these days. With modern farming technology, we hardly ever leave anything anymore, said Randy Pryor, an extension educator in Saline County. If you're leaving more than a bushel or two, people are awfully upset.

The problems will extend beyond harvest. Many growers will be forced to pay for more herbicide, when the corn they couldn't harvest this year sprouts among their soybeans next year. Some farmers who graze their cows in harvested fields are realizing, after it's too late, that their animals are gorging on more corn than their bodies can handle.

I'd never had a problem and I've been doing it for 30 years, said Steve Wenz, who farms near Firth. I put them out on a Tuesday morning and, Thursday morning, I had three dead ones.

'A perfect storm'

Makovicka was preparing for his most bountiful harvest in the 40 years he's been farming in York County.

Before the winds, he'd harvested a test plot and the yield was encouraging  275 to 280 bushels per acre. It would have been the best year ever, he said.

But the ground was still wet, and they had the beans to get in, so they put the rest of the corn on hold.

West of Wilber, Hugh Clarke had no idea his crop was damaged. I really didn't know until I got in the combine and started actually picking up the corn, he said. You could see it all knocked over.

And near Firth, Wenz couldn't know anything was wrong until he counted up to 40 bushels of wasted corn per acre from the cab of his Case. The shank broke off and the ears were on the ground.

They all were realizing a problem that started months ago, at the beginning of the growing season, Rees said.

It was a perfect storm, she said. We had different stress events early on.

She chronicled them last month on UNL's CropWatch, an online newsletter for farmers, and to the Journal Star: During pollination, high heat weakened the shanks  the tie between the corn and the stalks  and cool August temperatures resulted in bigger ears. They produced really heavy kernels, really deep kernels. There was quite a bit of weight.

October rains contributed to stalk rot, followed by the damaging winds the week of Oct. 23.

The corn couldn't hang on.

The Thursday of that week, that really wreaked havoc on those plants. Those ear shanks were brittle from all of these combination of factors. It was the final straw.

But there was another straw. Certain seed varieties proved more vulnerable than others, and the loss varied from farm to farm, even from field to field, Rees said.

Several farmers said this was primarily a problem with specific Pioneer hybrids; Makovicka, Wenz and Clarke all experienced ear drop with Pioneer seed, though Clarke also planted, and lost, Mycogen corn.

Depending on soil conditions, or terrain, growers mix up their seed selection  one variety for a dryland field, another for irrigated land. One for a creek bottom, another for a hillside.

It's an important choice a producer makes every year, said Pryor, the Saline County extension educator. It's difficult to project what particular hybrid would be the best, so it's always good to not put your eggs in one basket.

Neither Pryor nor Rees could say this year's loss was primarily a Pioneer problem.

There are some Pioneer varieties that were implicated, but there were other varieties from other companies that were implicated, Pryor said.

Said Rees: Every company had some hybrid that was affected by it.

'Food for the deer and coons

Collecting corn from the ground is hard work  and hard on equipment. And at $3 per bushel, not always worth it.

But if it were $7 a bushel, we'd have everybody wanting to do it, Pryor said.

Clarke donated the leftover corn from a 100-acre field west of Wilber to Saline County 4-H junior leaders, who are raising money for a trip to Washington. On Saturday, about 20 4-H members and their parents walked the field with five-gallon buckets, picking up ears for Clarke to run through his combine.

They hand-picked about 15 acres, collecting about 200 bushels. They'd hoped to do more.

I was proud of the kids, Pryor said. But it was definitely hard work.

The rest of the corn will likely stay on the ground, Clarke said. It's going to be food for the deer and the coons.

Some farmers have used soybean heads on their combines, but all the soil they pick up is tough on the machines. And they get docked at the elevator because the corn is so dirty, Rees said.

Pryor heard a second-hand story of a farmer who bought a used, inexpensive combine to try to harvest the corn on the ground.

Some farmers have raked it and baled it for feed. Others have opened their fields to cows, but they need to be careful, Rees said. The cows arent used to eating 100 percent corn, and they dont know when to stop.

They look at the grain like it was candy or ice cream, she said. But their stomachs cant digest it, and too much can kill the animals.

She and others have been trying to educate producers, instructing them to use corn-based feed beforehand to acclimate their animals, to graze multiple cows in smaller areas, to feed them first so they dont overeat on corn, and to move them frequently.

Near Firth, Wenz didn't see the problem until it was too late. He put 80 cow-calf pairs in his field, checked them daily, and pulled them out when he found three dead animals a few days later.

Another $4,500 hit on top of the corn he couldnt harvest.

I could have lost them all, he said. It could have been a disaster.
Kepco named preferred bidder for UK's NuGen

07 December 2017

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Korea Electric Power Company (Kepco) has been named as the preferred bidder to acquire 100% of the shares in NuGeneration (NuGen), the UK nuclear power development company owned by Toshiba. Kepco CEO Hwan-Eik Cho said in a company statement yesterday that, as preferred bidder, Kepco intends to "progress negotiations to a positive conclusion" to achieve a target closing of the proposed acquisition early next year.

NuGen, which was formed as the UK joint venture between Japan's Toshiba Corp and France's Engie, planned to build a nuclear power plant of up to 3.8 GWe gross capacity at a site in West Cumbria, using AP1000 nuclear reactor technology provided by Westinghouse. That reactor design completed the UK regulatory assessment process in March.

Toshiba owns Westinghouse, which filed for Chapter 11 protection with US courts in March. In July, Toshiba Corp became the sole owner of NuGen, after Engie exercised its right to require the Japanese conglomerate to purchase its stake.

In its statement yesterday, Kepco noted that the UK aims to build 18 GWe of new nuclear capacity and that NuGen will contribute around 3 GWe of this from the Moorside site in Cumbria, in the northwest of England.

Kepco said conclusion of the proposed acquisition requires agreement of definitive sale documentation and approvals from the UK and Korean governments.

"Kepco has been fiercely competing with international rivals and is pleased to reach this significant milestone in the process," Cho said. "Kepco is excited about bringing their delivery experience to the UK and build on the important nuclear heritage of the UK."

Kepco has engaged in thorough due diligence with legal, financing, accounting, technology advisers and reviewing project risks to "confidently take control of NuGen".

Kepco has stepped up its activities to achieve preferred bidder status by meeting the UK government and key figures in the nuclear industry, hosting a roadshow for the Korean nuclear industry, and visiting Japan for discussions with the CEO of Toshiba.

This paved the way for Kepco to enhance the opportunity to join the Moorside project by proactively explaining its excellent project performance and expanding public recognition within the UK, it said.

In a meeting with Secretary of State for BEIS Greg Clark on 19 October, Cho said he had explained why Kepco is "willing and able" to enter the UK through the opportunity at Moorside.

Kepco is scheduled to continue talks with Toshiba alongside engagement on the pre-feasibility study from the Korean government before closing the transaction early next year.

NuGen's future



Speaking at the Nuclear Industry Association's annual conference in London today, NuGen CEO Tom Samson said the preferred bidder announcement is a "significant milestone", but stressed that this was not yet the conclusion of the transaction.

NuGen will not provide a "running commentary" on the transaction in the weeks and months ahead, Samson said, "but we will continue to work tirelessly to bring these discussions to a successful conclusion so that we can move forward with delivering the Moorside project as soon as possible".

Samson said that, one year ago, he had set out the four questions the company had to address in its strategic review of the Moorside project - technology, ownership structure, funding solution and delivery model.

"The Kepco selection presents us with a solution that fully addresses the four questions that we set ourselves at the start of this process. On technology, the APR1400 tech has been operational now for one year in Korea and its a recognised Gen III+ design, and the first Gen III+ design to go into service in the world. On ownership, Kepco as a utility has the desire to invest and remain in the UK for a long time; they have no exit strategy at [the point of a] Final investment Decision - they're here to stay.

"On funding, they've got a balance sheet thats prepared to support their technology and they've got strong Korean institutions that theyll bring to the table to help with the funding. And on delivery, Team Korea - Kepco and their supply chain - have perhaps the most enviable delivery record in our industry; their performance in Korea over the last four decades of continuous build and their track record at Barakah provide compelling evidence that we can look forward with great excitement to working with those credentials here in the UK to deliver the next generation of new nuclear on time and on budget to the highest standards of quality and safety."

Changes



Asked about the schedule for the Moorside project with a new owner and a different reactor design, Samson said, "One of the first things we need to do where NuGen is entirely owned by Kepco is to then validate a lot of the work weve already done on NuGen to define what our new plan will be. That includes a new GDA for the AP1400 and the completion of the Development Consent Order process."

He said commissioning of the Moorside plant is now "likely to be towards the end of the 2020s or the 2030s".

Asked whether the Moorside site would be large enough to accommodate two AP1400s, Samson said, "There's a high likelihood that we may end up, not necessarily because of space constraints, but because of schedule and cost benefits, in limiting it to two units. We havent made that decision yet."

Kepco leads the consortium building four Korean-designed APR-1400 pressurised water reactors at Barakah in the United Arab Emirates for the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec). Construction of Barakah 1 began in 2012, with units 2, 3 and 4 following in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Units 1 and 2 are both expected to start up next year. Units 3 and 4 are expected to start up in 2019 and 2020. When complete, the power station will deliver up to a quarter of the UAE's electricity.

Prior to joining NuGen, in June 2015, Samson was COO of Enec.

Asked what he brought from that experience, especially with the prospect of Kepco as NuGen's new owners, he said, "Some of the key lessons from Barakah that we'll be bringing into NuGen is teamwork. There is definitely a feeling of one team focused on the outcome, which was delivering the power to the grid. I think that's how we'll be working with Kepco, as a one-team philosophy through NuGen, with a clear common purpose to deliver power to the grid. That's one of the key drivers that helped create that sense of purpose and focus in the UAE."

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the NIA, said Kepco's announcement was an important step towards ensuring the UK has the low-carbon generation capacity required to meet its power demands for the future.

"West Cumbria has a long-established and highly-skilled nuclear workforce in an industry which contributes GBP4.3 billion to the north-west economy. This is a real opportunity for new, secure, reliable and clean power which will add to that economic footprint," Greatrex added.

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UK to support 'next-generation' nuclear technology

07 December 2017

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The UK government has announced a series of measures that aim to realise the full potential of the of the country's nuclear power industry. The document 'Government to support development of next-generation nuclear technology' follows publication of the Industrial Strategy white paper last month, a core objective of which is to "ensure the UK is developing the technologies of the future and preparing to seize the opportunities they bring and build on its strengths", the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said.

In the UK, a white paper is a statement of policy, and often sets out proposals for legislative changes or the introduction of new laws. It normally follows a green paper, which is a preliminary report of government proposals published to stimulate discussion. The Industrial Strategy green paper was published in January.

In the BEIS document published today, Business Secretary Greg Clark noted that the UK's civil nuclear sector contributed GBP6.4 billion to the UK economy last year.

"Today's announcements recognise the importance of industry driving innovation, supported by government, so the sector continues to compete at the very highest level, not just in the UK but globally," Clark said.

Advanced and small modular reactors



Funding is being made available over the next three years to help support research and development (R&D) into innovative advanced and small modular reactors as well as assess their feasibility and accelerate the development of promising designs.

The government will also be supporting "early access" to regulators to build the capability and capacity needed to assess and licence small reactor designs and will establish an expert finance group to advise how small reactor projects could raise private investment in the UK.

It is providing up to GBP56 million funding for new technologies through a two-stage advanced modular reactor R&D project over three years. Stage 1 comprises up to GBP4 million for feasibility studies and up to GBP7 million to further develop the capability of nuclear regulators who support and assess advanced nuclear technologies.

Subject to Stage 1 demonstrating clear value for money through a formal re-approval process with the Treasury, up to GBP40 million will be available for advanced modular reactor R&D projects and up to a further GBP5 million for regulators.

In addition, the government plans to launch soon the second phase of its Nuclear Innovation Programme, including up to GBP8 million for work on modern safety and security methodologies and studies in advanced fuels.

Tender



Separately announcing a tender for GBP4 million in funding to develop feasibility projects for nuclear advanced modular reactors, BEIS said today that up to GBP40 million of further funding may be available for development, subject to government approval.

Applicants to lead such a project needs a "viable route to market", it said, and can be an organisation of any size or type, and work with others as sub-contractors. This is a Small Business Research Initiative and projects will receive 100% of their eligible costs.

The competition opens today, and a briefing event is scheduled for 12 December. The final date for registration is 7 February and applications must be submitted by 14 February. A decision will be made to applicants on 30 March, with contracts to be awarded in May.

This is phase 1 of the competition.

"In phase 1 there is a share of up to GBP4 million (excluding VAT) available. This is to undertake a series of feasibility studies for advanced modular reactor designs. Phase 1 contracts for technical feasibility studies will be worth up to GBP300,000 (excluding VAT)," BEIS said.

"Funding for phase 2 is subject to government approval. We estimate a share of up to GBP40 million (excluding VAT) may be available. This will be for successful selected projects from phase 1 to undertake development work," it added.

An additional invitation to tender and bid process will not take place for phase 2.

Fusion



A further GBP86 million was announced today for fusion research to set up a national fusion technology platform at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire.

The government has awarded the funding to UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to establish a centre to support innovation and expertise in nuclear fusion technologies. The funding will establish a National Fusion Technology Platform (NaFTeP) at UKAEAs Culham Centre.

NaFTeP will bring together organisations from across the supply chain to provide a unique, world-leading set of nuclear research and innovation facilities in tritium and fusion technology, BEIS said. NaFTeP will support UK industry in targeting major scientific and engineering contracts in nuclear fusion and safeguard the future of the Culham site and the world-class scientists and engineers that work there, it added.

The new investment will allow UK firms to compete for up to a further GBP1 billion of international contracts for fusion technologies, including for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

Science Minister Jo Johnson said: "Our new Industrial Strategy clearly detailed our ambition to build on the UK's existing scientific strengths and ensure UK expertise remains at the forefront of pioneering research that has global impact.

"This new funding for nuclear fusion research will establish a unique set of research and innovation capabilities that will safeguard the exceptional work already taking place in Culham by scientists and engineers from across the world, and emphasises the UK's commitment to international collaboration."

ITER, the successor project to the EU's Joint European Torus (JET) reactor in Culham, is currently under construction in France and will continue efforts to develop a clean, safe and virtually limitless energy source.

Large nuclear



Speaking at the Nuclear Industry Association's annual conference in London today, Energy Minister Richard Harrington also set out the next steps to allow large new nuclear projects to apply for planning consent after 2025.

"As we set out in our Industrial Strategy, the nuclear sector has a key role to play in increasing productivity and driving clean growth across the country. Nuclear is a vital part of our energy mix, providing low-carbon power now and into the future so today's package of new measures will help to boost innovation and provide greater clarity on our future plans.

"Today, in recognising value of policy certainty, we are launching a consultation on siting of large-scale nuclear plants, which begins the process towards designating a new National Policy Statement (NPS) for conventional nuclear power stations deployable between 2026 and 2035. The initial consultation sets out the proposed siting process and assessment criteria for a site potentially suitable for nuclear plants with single reactor capacity above 1 GWe. In having this new national policy statement in place, we provide reassurance and certainty to the 2030s."

Today's announcements, and the recent launch of the Industrial Strategy white paper, "set out the government's vision for an economy that can drive growth across the country, boost national productivity and provide UK business with certainty," he said.

BEIS said the current NPS for nuclear will remain in place for as long as it is required, adding that the government is consulting on the arrangements for the siting of nuclear power stations for the period beyond 2025.

This consultation - National Policy Statement for new nuclear above 1GW post 2025: siting criteria and process - sets out the process and the updated high-level criteria used to assess potentially suitable sites. There will be a further consultation on a new NPS during late 2018.

The government's intention is to carry forward existing sites into the new NPS, subject to them meeting the updated siting criteria and environmental assessments.

This consultation and the subsequent NPS being developed under this process will not apply to SMRs. The government will consider planning issues related to smaller reactors of less than 1 GWe separately.

Geological Disposal Facility



The government also said it intends to launch two public consultations in 2018 on working with communities in an intended consent-based siting process; and on a National Policy Statement for Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) infrastructure.

Harrington signalled that the government would bring forward consultations in the New Year on the GDF. This will enable the development of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure project, creating thousands of jobs and opportunities for UK companies in the supply chain, he said.

"We recognise the need to implement a strong long-term solution for the disposal of higher activity radioactive waste. That's why, early in the New Year we will be launching two consultations as part of a process to site a geological disposal facility for higher activity radioactive waste. We'll be consulting on a framework for future planning decisions and secondly on our approach to working with local communities in the siting process.

"Internationally it's been shown that willing host communities are central to successful siting and strong and effective lasting relationships built on mutual trust and a shared vision for long-term economic benefits for the host community are key to the success delivery of a programme of a GDF."

Nuclear Innovation Programme



The BEIS statement also announced the second phase of the Nuclear Innovation Programme, which consists of GBP3.7 million for work on reactor design and safety engineering and GBP4.3 million for work on advanced nuclear fuels.

As part of the first phase of this programme, launched last year, the government has also awarded GBP5 million of contracts for work on nuclear advanced materials and manufacturing.

Nuclear Industry Council



The government support announced today comes as the Nuclear Industry Council (NIC) published proposals as part of its ongoing work to drive down the cost of nuclear energy for consumers while maintaining UK expertise.

The Industrial Strategy green paper, published in January, cited nuclear as suitable for a potential Sector Deal. Since then Lord John Hutton, NIC chairman, has led the sector in the development of a range of proposals across key areas including new build, waste and decommissioning, R&D and skills.

The industry has today published its proposals for a nuclear Sector Deal, including ideas that target significant cost reductions in new build and decommissioning.

NIA Chief Executive Tom Greatrex said: "We share the desire expressed by Richard Harrington to finalise agreement on the ambitious proposals for a nuclear Sector Deal which the Nuclear Industry Council has put to government."

He added: "The series of commitments made today are relevant to fusion, advanced technology, modular reactors, large scale new build and innovation in fuels. While there is more to do in some of these areas, the overall package is nevertheless a strong signal of commitment to and confidence in an industry that is integral to supplying the low carbon, secure and reliable power system we need for the future. There are real opportunities for the future in innovation and advanced technology which can help meet our climate commitments, while providing jobs, growth and economic opportunities for UK companies at home and abroad."

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Uranium suppliers respond to production cuts

07 December 2017

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Recent announcements of production cuts by the world's two biggest uranium producers - Cameco and KazAtomProm - have been greeted as positive developments by mining companies.

Kazakh uranium producer NAC KazAtomProm announced on 4 December that it will reduce planned uranium production by 20% for a period of three years beginning in January 2018. The cuts are to better align output with demand, the company said. This followed Cameco's 8 November announcement of a 10-month temporary suspension of production from the McArthur River mining and Key Lake milling operations in northern Saskatchewan by the end of January "due to continued uranium price weakness".

Kazakhstan has 12% of the world's uranium resources and has been the world's leading uranium producer since 2009. Its 2015 production of 24,560 tU accounted for 39% of world production. The McArthur River and Key Lake operations together produced 11.1 million pounds of uranium (4270 tU) in the first nine months of 2017, with Cameco's share being 7.8 million pounds. Cameco is the operator of both the McArthur River mine and the Key Lake mill that processes all the ore from McArthur River, and owns 70% of McArthur River and 83% of Key Lake. Areva Resources Canada Inc. owns the remainder.

The uranium market has long been acknowledged to be in a state of oversupply, with material entering the market from commercial and government inventory, byproduct production and enrichment plant underfeeding, and producers largely shielded from falling prices by long-term contracts made when prices were higher. Many of these contracts are now coming to an end.

Mike Young, CEO of Australia's Vimy Resources, commended KazAtomProm and Cameco for their announcements, which he said indicated rapidly changing dynamics in the supply side of uranium in response to unsustainably low prices. "The industry is entering a period of re-adjustment as the disconnect between utilities and producers begins to play out," he said. In response to the announcements, Vimy has reviewed, and revised upwards, the uranium price and foreign exchange assumptions used in the definitive feasibility study (DFS) it is currently preparing for the Mulga Rock project in Western Australia. The study is now scheduled for release early in the second quarter of 2018, he said.

Positive news



Colorado-based Western Uranium Corporation described KazAtomProm's announcement as positive news. The company said that Cameco and KazAtomProm's announcements, taken together with Honeywells' 20 November announcement of a suspension of operations at the Metropolis uranium conversion facility, would effectively remove about 37 million pounds of uranium, on aggregate, from world supply in 2018. "Consequently, the aggregate effect of these production cuts, if implemented as announced, will eliminate a large portion of oversupply," the company said.

Brandon Munro, CEO of Bannerman Resources which is developing the Etango uranium project in Namibia, said KazAtomProm and Cameco's announcements alone would remove more than 25 million pounds of uranium from 2018 supply. "This is expected to put the uranium market into deficit, which follows 11 consecutive years of surplus that has driven prices to fundamentally unsustainable levels," he said. "Next year promises to be very exciting for our industry," he added.

The company is currently carrying out test work on uranium-bearing solutions from Etango using a variety of nano-filtration membranes, the first phase of which has now been completed. Early indications from the study are positive, the company said yesterday. Full results of the study are expected early next year, and confirmed cost savings will be incorporated into Etango's DFS, it said.

Commenting on Cameco's announcement in November and ahead of KazAtomProm's announcement, Steve Antony, CEO of US uranium producer Energy Fuels, said further production cuts were to be expected. "It is no secret that uranium prices have been depressed in recent years, mainly due to persistent oversupply. The uranium market has seen similar dynamics in the past. Low prices caused production to drop significantly, setting the stage for the next price recovery. We believe that history might be repeating. The bottom line is that todays prices do not incentivize current production - much less the new production we know the World will need in the future. Therefore, we would not be surprised to see additional production cuts announced by other producers in the coming months. A healthy uranium market will benefit miners, utilities, and consumers. No one knows when this market will ultimately recover. But, the things that need to happen are happening now," he said.



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There are more than 10,000 different religions in existence in various parts of the world. However, only 84% of the population in the world identify with one of the five major religions, which include Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, or some form of folk religion.

Hinduism

Hinduism is thought to be the oldest religion in the world. Although Hinduism has its origins in India, it has spread to several countries around the world. The religion has the third largest number of followers in the world after Christianity and Islam, and is primarily practiced in India and Asia. Hinduism is also known as the eternal way or a way of life, and is a mixture of different Indian traditions. The caste system which divided Hindus along social status was a significant practice in Hinduism, but the system has been stopped. Indians make for most of the population practicing Hinduism around the world because the religion rarely has new converts. Nepal has the highest number of Hindus in the world after India, and Mauritius which has the highest number of followers in Africa.

Hinduism in Africa

Hinduism infiltrated Africa around the 19th century with the colonization of African countries by the British. The religion was introduced by Indians who migrated as casual laborers from British India, some of who chose to remain in Africa. The ban on the slave trade in Africa made the British look for casual laborers from other continents. Most of the casual laborers were from India as the country was also a British colony. The religion has been embraced in several countries in Africa, but the majority of the followers are of Indian origin with very few African converts.

Hinduism in Mauritius

Mauritius is the only African country where Hinduism takes center stage as the religion with the highest number of followers. The country is located to the south east of Africa and has a population of about 1.3 million. A census by Statistics Mauritius in 2011 showed that 51.9% of the countrys population practice Hinduism, and 31% practice Christianity. The population is mostly made up of Indo-Mauritians which explain why Hinduism is primarily practiced in the country. Indo-Mauritians originated from the Indians who chose to stay in the country after the colonial period. The Hindus in Mauritius never practiced the caste system, and they speak Hindu, Creole, and Tamil. The three Hindu temples in the country are Triolet Mandir, Sagar Shiv Mandir, and the temple at Ganga Talao Grand Bassin. Maha Shivaratri, meaning "the Great Night of Shiva," is the most prominent Hindu festival in Mauritius and is widely celebrated in the country. The festival is four to nine days long and is marked between February and March.

Spread of Hinduism in Africa

South Africa is the second nation in Africa with a large population of Hindus. The religion is relatively new in West Africa, but it is seen to be fast growing in Ghana, this is with recent Indian immigration to this part of Africa. There are many Hindus in most of the Eastern and Southern African countries, especially countries that were British colonies. The religion, though having a few similarities with some of the African traditions, has received resistance from Christians and Muslims in some African countries.
The expansion will help meet growing customer demand and will strengthen the companys market leadership position.

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS: AkzoNobels speciality chemicals business said that it is investing more than 4 million to increase production capacity in Sweden for its Levasil CC-branded product line of patented surface modified colloidal silica. The expansion will help meet growing customer demand and will strengthen the companys market leadership position.

A product of two natural ingredients  sand and water  colloidal silica is a versatile product which enhances and improves key functionalities of other products and manufacturing processes. With production facilities in Asia (Taiwan and China), Europe (Germany and Sweden) and the Americas (Brazil and US), AkzoNobel is a leading global producer of colloidal silica products. The business main markets include electronics, coatings, construction and catalysts, as well as batteries.

The expansion, at the Bohus facility close to Gothenburg, is expected to be completed by late 2018. It is the latest initiative aimed to fuel further growth of AkzoNobels colloidal silica business. Last year the business commissioned a new lab and implemented an innovative process step that boosted production capacity of Levasil products.

Within our Levasil Colloidal Silica brand, we have a very diverse product portfolio and are experiencing growing demand in various markets, such as coatings, where Levasil CC supports the industry in its switch from solvent-borne coatings to waterborne alternatives, said Ann Lindgarde, director of Levasil colloidal silica at AkzoNobel.

This is a significant investment which not only strengthens our leadership position but also underlines our commitment to growing with our customers and meeting their changing needs, said Niek Stapel, managing director of AkzoNobels pulp and performance chemicals business.

More than 50 percent of colloidal silica revenue comes from Eco-Premium products, which offer our customers more sustainability benefits than competitive products. The increasing demand for Levasil CC, as well as other products in the Levasil portfolio, mirrors a growing demand for products with clear sustainability benefits, added Stapel.

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A father regularly abused his two daughters as they grew up and they continued to have sex with him into adulthood, according to police in Australia.

Police arrested the 64-year-old father after the two sisters confided in their friends and a teacher who notified the Department of Child Protection.

In court, the father, who was not identified, denied the allegations.

The father was convicted of rape.

District Court Judge John Staude sentenced the father to 16 years in prison.

He will have to serve 14 years in prison before being eligible for parole.

According to the police investigation, the abuse began when the fathers wife ran away from home.

The couples daughters, who were 8 and 12-years-old at the time, remained at home with their father.

The father then began having sex with his two daughters.

He told them that this is what boys do to girls.

The girls grew up thinking that all girls have sex with their fathers.

The girls told police that they had sex with their father because it was the only thing that made him happy and they wanted him to be proud of his children.

The abuse came to light after one of the girls told her friends that she gets extra pocket money from her father because she gave him special massages.

The other girl broke down and told a teacher that she could no longer take the abuse from her father.
We are so grateful for the warm welcome we have received  Councillors to approve capacity for further Syrian refugees

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Dec 7th, 2017

The people of Wrexham have been praised by refugee families who have had to relocate here, with no community tensions reported.

Eight Syrian refugee families have been rehoused in the Wrexham area as part of a Resettlement Scheme  with plans to identify and welcome a further two families by the end of the financial year.

The families were resettled in Wrexham as part of the Home Office-funded Syrian Relocation Scheme, which provided support to local authorities to find accommodation for refugees fleeing the country

In May 2016 members of the Executive Board unanimously gave their support to the scheme, approving plans to house five Syrian refugee families in Wrexham. A second report presented to the board later that year for a further five families, was also backed unanimously by councillors.

Background to the scheme is detailed in a fresh report due before the Executive Board next week, which states: The number of individuals or families accepted onto the Scheme is decided locally. From a community cohesion perspective and based on our experience as a dispersal area it was felt that families would be easier to integrate than single people.

Councillors will likely approve plans next week that will see Wrexham accept, in principle, up to 5 further Syrian refugee families under the Home Office scheme during each of the next two financial years, 2018/19 and 19/20.

In contrast neighbouring Local Authorities have each welcomed three families, so far.

The report adds: There are currently 36 persons in Wrexham under the Scheme. The remaining families, when identified, will ensure that the total number of Syrian refugees under the Scheme in Wrexham is consistent with the previously agreed upper limit of 50 people.

Funding for the scheme has been provided by the Home Office, which Wrexham Council say is sufficient to cover all of the councils costs in supporting refugees for a maximum period of five years following the date of each familys arrival in the UK.

The report continues onto list examples of some of the types of expenditure which the council has already incurred under the Scheme to date include:

 Up to 8 weeks void costs to secure properties before families arrive  Costs of furnishing properties

 Casework support;

 Education costs including Special Educational Needs [SEN];

 Language support

 Staffing costs to cover the administration of the Scheme.

It is also noted that processes have been agreed locally to ensure that the council maximises the funding available to it under the Scheme with claims being submitted to the Home Office on a regular basis throughout the year.

The report to Councillors notes that Syrian refugee families in Wrexham have been very positive about their experiences, stating No community tensions associated with the Scheme have been reported.

Some learning points are noted, including that in future spacing out the arrival of families would help not to overwhelm any service with new arrivals.

The most heartwarming statements in the report are quotes taken from British Red Cross case notes in Wrexham from the 8 Syrian families living here:

We are so grateful for the warm welcome we have received. We feel very safe here and I can begin to think about the future for my family now

We are very happy here as a family and are able to do most things independently

We feel our children have a good future here and we like our life in the UK

I am determined to learn English and find work. Now we have been here for almost 6 months and we see our future here being very good

I am learning about life here and I have been given the opportunity to go to college and learn English, I am very grateful for that

Everyone is very nice and helpful and I would like to help other families to resettle here in the future

Lead Councillor Hugh Jones told us he felt it was entirely positive and really good news, adding As a Council we are grateful for the support from the community, and are delighted they have been welcomed, supported and valued by the people of Wrexham.
The assessment by David Anderson QC of nine classified internal reviews by counterterrorist police and intelligence services into four UK terrorist attacks confirms that three of the six attackers were well-known to the state.

The four attacks reviewed took place this year at Westminster on March 27, the Manchester Arena on May 22, London Bridge on June 3, and Finsbury Park on June 19. They resulted in 36 deaths and multiple injuries.

Anderson, the UKs former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, writes in his executive summary, Three of the six attackers were on MI5s radar, either as an active subject of interest (Khuram ButtLondon Bridge) or as closed subjects of interest (Khalid MasoodWestminster, Salman AbediManchester).

Such was the extensive knowledge about the individuals that Andersons 61-page report concludes, in the case of Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people on May 22 at Manchester Arena, It is conceivable that the Manchester attack in particular might have been averted if the cards had fallen differently.

This is a damning admission. It means that police and security services could have stopped the attack, but failed to do so. This raises the question how and why this was the case. Anderson goes to huge lengths to conceal the implications of this finding, producing a whitewash.

Anderson presents his review, commissioned in June by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, as an independent inquiry. But he has played a key role in calling for the strengthening of state powers. He first came to prominence in a BBC Panorama documentary, Edward Snowden: Spies and the Law propagandizing in favour of the spying carried out by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) on millions of people. As Independent Reviewer, he authored the report, A Question of Trust, helping pave the way for the introduction of the anti-democratic Investigatory Powers Act, known as the Snoopers Charter.

Andersons task was to ensure that the intelligence services and policewho exonerate themselves in their own reviewswere given a clean bill of health in his assessment. He writes, It is not the purpose of the internal reviews, or of this report, to cast or apportion blame.

His document offers only oblique references regarding the detailed knowledge that the state had of the perpetrators prior to their attacks. He notes that classified documents being withheld amount to 1,150 pages and comprise some 650 pages of text, with a further 500 pages of Annexes and references, adding, Collectively, these detailed and highly classified documents provide a comprehensive account of the handling of intelligence prior to each attack

These reviews are being kept away from the public, and even parliament, with Anderson stating that only Prime Minister Theresa May, Home Secretary Rudd and the Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee are privy to their contents.

However, in the case of Abedi, evidence already in the public domain points to the fact that the intelligence services were well aware, months before he carried out the Manchester attack, that he was planning to take part in a terrorist operation.

Anderson writes, [S]alman Abedi was first actively investigated in January 2014, when it was thought that he might have been an individual who had been seen acting suspiciously with an SOI [Suspect of interest]. He claims that this turned out not to be the case and that his MI5 record was closed. He continues, Salman Abedi was again opened as an SOI in October 2015, on the basis of his supposed contact with a Daesh figure in Libya, but he was closed as an SOI on the same day when it transpired that any contact was not direct.

There is no innocent explanation for two such failures. Anderson continues, Although he remained a closed SOI until the day of the attack, Salman Abedi continued to be referenced from time to time in intelligence gathered for other purposes . On two separate occasions in the months prior to the attack, intelligence was received by MI5 whose significance was not fully appreciated at the time. It was assessed at the time to relate not to terrorism but to possible non-nefarious activity or to criminality on the part of Salman Abedi. In retrospect, the intelligence can be seen to have been highly relevant to the planned attack . [Emphasis added]

In fact, as reported by the World Socialist Web Site, on May 27 the Mail on Sunday published a story detailing how the FBI told MI5 that Abedi was part of a North African Islamic State cell plotting to strike a political target in the UK.

The FBI passed these warnings to MI5 in January [five months before the Manchester bombing], after placing Abedi on their terrorist watch list in 2016. An unnamed security source told the Daily Mail that the FBI informed MI5 that Abedi belonged to a North African terror gang based in Manchester, which was looking for a political target in this country.  Following this US tip-off, Abedi and other members of the gang were scrutinised by MI5. It was thought at the time that Abedi was planning to assassinate a political figure. But nothing came of this investigation and, tragically, he slipped down the pecking order of targets.

Abedi was not even stopped and questioned at the UK border when he arrived back from Libyajust four days before the Manchester attack. He and his family were considered to be valuable state assets. Abedis parents were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who had participated in the 2011 military operations to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as part of the regime change carried out at the behest of US and British imperialism.

None of this figures in Andersons report. Instead, he blandly asserts that although Abedi was not under active investigation at the time of the attack, MI5 nonetheless came by intelligence in the months before the attack which, had its true significance been properly understood, would have caused an investigation into him to be opened. It is unknowable whether such an investigation would have allowed Abedis plans to be pre-empted and thwarted: MI5 assesses that it would not.

Khuram Butt, states Anderson, was a live SOI, under active investigation at the time of his attack. One of Butts two accomplices in the London Bridge attack was Youssef Zaghba, who Anderson acknowledges was put on a Europe-wide warning list after telling officials at Bologna Airport he was travelling to Turkey to be a terrorist. He was still allowed to travel by UK Border Force staff through British ports on three occasions. In June 2016, one year before the London Bridge attack, Italian intelligence requested that MI5 provide information on Zaghbawho was working in Britainand his desire to travel to Syria, and any contacts he had in the UK with individuals linked to Islamist extremism and/or with Italy.

Of this, Anderson writes, MI5 has no record of responding to this enquiry, noting by way of possible explanation that it arrived in the incorrect mailbox in MI5.

Andersons assessment is the culmination of a state cover-up. Earlier this year, the Daily Star wrote that a DSMA Notice, known as a D-Notice, was issued by the Defence Security Media Advisory Committee in relation to the Manchester bombing. D-Notices are requests to news editors to voluntarily not publish or broadcast items on specified subjects on the grounds of national security. An article published five days after the bombing in the Washington Post revealed that, According to Geoffrey Dodds, secretary of the Defense and Security Media Advisory Committee, two D-Notices have been issued in relation to the attack in Manchester

No other information has surfaced in the UK media about the role of Abedi or the other perpetrators since the Daily Mail article cited above.
The Chinese embassy in Canberra yesterday condemned in unusually blunt terms the xenophobic campaign underway against Chinas interference in Australian politics. The remarks followed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls announcement on Tuesday of sweeping new legislation expanding treason and espionage laws and outlawing foreign interference and political donations.

An embassy statement accused the Australian media of repeatedly fabricating stories about so-called Chinese influence and infiltration. Those reports, which were made up out of thin air and filled with Cold War mentality and ideological bias, reflected typical anti-China hysteria and paranoia, it said.

The statement declared that the media reports made unjustifiable accusations against the Chinese government and unscrupulously vilified Chinese students as well as the Chinese community in Australia with racial prejudice.

These comments followed those of a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing on Tuesday who urged the relevant people in Australia to discard prejudices and speak and act more in a way that will be conducive to boosting the China-Australia relationship.

The strong reaction clearly reflects growing concern in Beijing about the hostile atmosphere being whipped up in Australia towards China as Canberra aligns itself more and more closely with the US confrontational stance towards China and its military build-up in Asia.

The laws foreshadowed by the Turnbull government have not yet been tabled in parliament, but they go far beyond existing legislation in Australia and other parts of the world. The coverage of the issue in the British and American media is an indication that the anti-democratic legislation could become a new benchmark internationally.

A government media statement declared that the laws will introduce offences that criminalise covert and deceptive activities of foreign actors that fall short of espionage but are intended to interfere with our democratic systems and processes or support the intelligence activities of a foreign government.

Such extraordinarily vague terms as covert and deceptive activities and foreign interference leave the field wide open for Australian authorities to crack down on anyone or any organisation deemed to be lining up with China. The legislation will also require public registration for so-called foreign agentsthat is, anyone acting on behalf of a foreign individual or entity.

After announcing the laws, Turnbull again lashed out at Senator Sam Dastyari saying he had sold out Australia. Dastyaris crimes were to solicit donations from a Chinese-born businessman Huang Xiangmo, suggest in one meeting that he and Huang turn their phones off to prevent eavesdropping, and question Australian and US interference in Chinas territorial disputes with its neighbours in the South China Sea.

Attorney General George Brandis made clear that such activities would be criminalised under the new legislation, which will include penalties up to life imprisonment.

The new laws are the culmination of a vicious anti-China witch-hunt for more than a year that has been fed by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and other intelligence agencies and backed to the hilt by Washington. What passes for the liberal media in Australiathe Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Fairfax Mediahave been in the forefront of the campaign.

Former trade minister Andrew Robb, who has been under attack for accepting a well-paid position with the Chinese firm Landridge that manages the commercial port of Darwin, lashed out at his former colleagues in the ruling Liberal National Coalition. The attempts to trash my reputation in some quartersnow aided and abetted by the governmentare ill-informed and cheap politics.

Asked if he was surprised if he might be forced to register as a foreign agent, Robb replied that he was not after the way the ABC and Fairfax Media have beaten the crap out of these issues. There is at the present time, and has been for 12 months or more, an inordinate attempt to worry people about China.

The former trade minister declared that the United States was the biggest source of instability in the region due to President Trumps decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Having sabotaged the TPP, Trump is adopting even more aggressive economic measures towards China that could provoke a trade war.

Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr, who could also be required to register, has been under fire for criticising Australian support for the US hard-line stance against China and over Chinese funding of the Australia-China Relations Institute that he heads. Carr pointed to the hypocrisy of the anti-China campaign, noting that bodies such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and United States Study Centre express consistently pro-American positions and receive funding from US corporations, including armaments companies.

Corporate leaders are also anxious about the impact of the anti-China campaign on trade and possible economic retaliation by Beijing. Writing in todays Australian, senior financial writer Glenda Korporaal commented that there has been a growing concern [in business circles] whether increasingly heated political debate could harm hard-fought long-term business ties.

Overwhelmingly, however, the media and political establishment, including the Labor opposition, have fallen into line with the draconian new legislation. Among commentators closely connected to the security and intelligence apparatus, there is note of triumph. Writing in the Australian Financial Review today, Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College, declared that it was not surprising that Australia is fundamentally updating its laws on foreign interference What is surprising is that it has taken so long.

Bitter divisions remain that stem from a fundamental dilemma confronting the ruling class which is caught between its longstanding strategic and economic reliance on the United States and its heavy dependence on China as its largest trading partner. In the past, governments have attempted to balance between Washington and Beijing, but, as US preparations for war against China have accelerated under Obama and now Trump, the room for manoeuvre has shrunk.

The feverish denunciations of figures like Robb, Carr and Dastyari, all of whom are supporters of the Australia-US military alliance, indicate that any deviation from the anti-China line will no longer be tolerated. Australia is being placed on a war footing and anyone who challenges the official propaganda, let alone opposes the US war drive, will be increasingly subject to media witch-hunting and serious criminal charges.
In oral arguments on Tuesday, a majority of US Supreme Court justices indicated that they may rule in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couples wedding in violation of a state public accommodations law banning discrimination by businesses. Most significantly, the so-called swing vote justice, Anthony Kennedy, showed concern for the religious freedom of the baker.

The nominally liberal judgesStephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonya Sotomayor, and Elena Kaganappeared supportive of Colorados public accommodations law. The Republican bloc, which includes chief justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuchclearly supported the bogus religious freedom argument.

Therefore, as in so many cases before the Supreme Court, the law will follow where Kennedy leads.

The facts of the case are briefly stated as follows: gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado in July 2012 to order a cake for a wedding reception. When it became clear to owner Jack Phillips that the cake would commemorate a same-sex wedding, he informed Mullins and Craig that he would not serve them, citing Christian beliefs. By admission, he has denied his services to other gay couples for the same reason. Mr. Phillips proudly told one gay couple that he would not make them a cake any sooner than he would for a pedophile.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a state agency charged with prosecuting illegal discrimination, sanctioned Phillips, who eventually lost in the Colorado Court of Appeals, was denied review in the Colorado Supreme Court, and petitioned the US Supreme Court for review. The US Supreme Court selects only a tiny minority of cases each term, and the choice of which cases are certified for review often has political significance of its own.

Litigious provocations like the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, or that of Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis, serve as chum for the waters of reaction, drawing the most backward and fascistic layers of the population into a feeding frenzy. They embolden the extreme-right elements that serve as a base of support for Trumps policies and are harnessed and directed to enrich the ruling class. In this case, the Christian fundamentalist Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represents Phillips.

ADF prides itself on providing policy advice to school systems to limit transgender student access to restrooms, and a free legal defense if a student sues for discrimination. They oppose school policies against bullying LGBT students, and even encourage students with anti-gay views to promote their views on school grounds.

The Trump administration has supported Phillips to the hilt, with its solicitor general, Noel Francisco, urging the court Tuesday to find for Phillips. Francisco did pro bono work for ADF and earned their designation Allied Attorney, facts he failed to disclose in his senate confirmation hearing. He argued, against law and logic, that if the Supreme Court found for the gay couple, then an African-American sculptor could be forced to make a cross for the Ku Klux Klan. (Since this would not be an incident of race, gender, sexual orientation or nationality discrimination, the sculptor could happily throw the Klansman out on his head).

As a matter of established US constitutional law, Phillips First Amendment argumentsthat making a cake for a gay wedding reception violates his free exercise of religion and violates his free expression because of the expressive character of bakingare farcical. (His legal brief likens his cakes to the works of Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrian).

Certainly, American law rarely requires one to say or express something in particular, to support this policy or religion, etc. But Phillips was not asked to make a cake that expressed support for gay marriage. The cake was apolitical; it was the gay customers he turned his nose at, not a specific cake design, statement, shape, color, symbol, etc. All of the expressiveness is therefore incidental to his prejudices.

Moreover, well-settled legal precedent holds that businesses, in their commercial activity, cannot skirt an otherwise valid law simply because they engage in expressive activity or speech. This holds true for newspapers, broadcasters, law firms, non-denominational private schools, labor unions, civic clubs, photography studios, restaurants and professional organizations, all of which are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, gender and other categories.

Justice Kennedy touched on what a precedent would be set in the case of Phillips victory, asking US Solicitor General Francisco if Masterpiece Cakeshop could legally post a sign saying gay couples would not be served. Indeed, a ruling for Phillips could pave the way for discrimination in housing, insurance, education, lodging, recreation, employment or any number of contexts, provided that the discriminating enterprise could offer a justification based in religious belief.

The main thrust of Kennedys comments, however, was his condemnation of any court or state action based on hostility to religion, a sound bite for the extreme right-wing campaign to attack equality and secularism under the fig leaf of religious freedom.

One must view the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as a political provocation and an attempt to twist and turn the US Constitution against itself. This viewpoint also holds that secularism is everywhere and always persecuting religious persons, a notion which contrasts starkly with the fact that religion plays an inflated and semi-official role in American public life.

Commercial speech and expression has, for most of American legal history, been treated as far less important than the speech and expression of individuals. More recent decisions in the Hobby Lobby and Citizens United cases have elevated private corporations, which legally are nothing more than fictitious persons, to a legal status higher than that of real people. Religious freedom formed the main argument for Hobby Lobby in its successful effort to deny birth control coverage to employees.

A ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop would overturn a long line of Supreme Court decisions dating at least as far back as the 1950s and 1960s. In that period, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, made a series of landmark rulings that outlawed segregation based on race in most areas of social life, including businesses like hotels and restaurants. The great cases outlawing segregation include Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises (1968).
Michele Hatchell, left, a Madison art teacher, holds up the book I Am Jazz as co-author Jessica Herthel reads at the Mount Horeb Public Library in 2015. The reading drew a crowd of 600 after the Mount Horeb School District canceled a reading of the book, about a transgender girl, at an elementary school the previous week.
CVS Health Corporation announced Sunday that it had agreed to buy Aetna, the nations third largest health insurer, for $69 billion. The merger will create an unprecedented level of vertical integration in the health-care industry, and is expected to reshape how the industry as a whole operates.

CVS Health Corporation is the 7th largest US Corporation measured by annual revenue, taking in over $177 billion in net revenue in 2016. Its assets include almost 10,000 CVS Pharmacies nationally as well as CVS Caremark, which is one of the largest pharmacy benefit management systems in the country. It also operates medical clinics at pharmacy locations throughout the country that go by the name MinuteClinic. All told, CVS has 158,000 employees.

Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, has 23.1 million medical insurance members and works with 1.2 million health-care professionals.

The merger, the largest ever in the health insurance industry, follows several record years of consolidation in healthcare more broadly.

Among healthcare providers, 2017 is on track to outpace 2016 in the number and value of mergers and acquisitions. Last year 102 occurred, and by the end of the third quarter this year another 87 had taken place. Last year, four of those were mergers that involved companies taking in revenue exceeding $1 billion. Ten $1 billion-plus mergers have occurred so far in 2017.

In April of this year the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution and Carnegie Mellon Universitys Heinz College published a white paper, Making Health Care Markets Work, that argued that the growing consolidation of the health-care industry was both driving up healthcare costs and reducing the quality of care. This can be seen clearly in relation to hospitals.

Glenn Melnick, a researcher at the University of Southern California, found that the average price for hospital admissions in California increased 70 percent from 2004 to 2013. However, among the largest hospital chains it increased much more, by 113 percent.

In addition to the rising cost of hospitalization, drug prices are another factor driving up healthcare costs. Branded drugs rose 13 percent just last year, and it is just one of the many economic and political pressures that are pushing healthcare companies to scale-up into larger and larger conglomerates.

Modern Healthcare, a leading healthcare industry business paper, writes, Scale can insulate providers from looming policy changes, prepare them for expected reimbursement cuts, accommodate rising labor, technology and pharmaceutical costs, allow them to take on more risk and help tackle new payment models in an evolving value-based industry.

The Aetna-CVS merger has been called a pre-emptive response to Amazons anticipated entrance into the prescription drug market. Following Amazons acquisition of Whole Foods in the summer, several major pharmaceutical middlemen, such as Walgreens and CVS, saw their stocks fall, a sharp warning from Wall Street. Bernstein analyst Lance Wilkes wrote in a note to investors that Amazons major advantages come from eliminating 70,000 retail locations (and related staffing and other expenses), which could be replaced by automated distribution centers with efficient pharmacist oversight.

Amazon, headed by Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, has upended all manner of traditional businesses that rely on storefronts. Amazon has emerged as one of the most important companies in the world by combining advanced logistics technology with the intense exploitation of hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers and deliverymen.

The merger of Aetna and CVS would give the companies a chance to bypass expensive hospital visits and instead encourage pharmacy and clinic visits, as well as in-home visits. This could put a huge downward pressure on prices throughout the whole healthcare industry, cutting into the revenues of hospitals across the country. While some aspects of this move might appear to benefit consumers, the overall quality of care will likely suffer. Given the increasingly unaffordable character of high quality healthcare for most Americans, cheap local clinics that specialize in prevention and routine care is all that is in reach for tens of millions.

In this vein, the CVS-Aetna merger is also a reaction to the growing use of digital doctors and nurses performing check-ups, as opposed to doctor-to-patient treatment. A study by Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation published last May showed that video consultation increased an average of 45 percent every year between 2004 and 2014 among rural Americans on Medicare. While this technology is in and of itself a progressive addition to healthcare, under a for-profit, corporate-controlled health system, it becomes a means of replacing quality healthcare with cheaper, makeshift alternatives.

Given the relentless drive by the government and corporations to cut health care costs through the continual erosion of Medicare and the elimination of employer-paid healthcare for workers, both the younger millennial generation and the so-called baby boomers who are now reaching retirement age will increasingly be forced to rely on cheap substitutes for their healthcare, as they will be unable to afford what they actually need.

Wall Streets perspective on the merger is best summed up by the half billion dollars that outgoing Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini is expected to pocket as a reward for reaching this deal. This giant sum, however, would still be just a fraction of the profits that those who own these companies can expect. Aetna, like many major corporations, is primarily owned by major hedge funds and private equity firms like BlackRock, the Vanguard Group, and State Street Corporation, whose overriding concern is the stock valuation of the companies they hold.

Though the companies agreed to the merger Sunday, it has yet to be approved by the Trump Administration, which recently sued to block the merger of Time and AT&T. However, the CEOs of both firms dont expect the Justice Department to block the merger. The deal will likely be finalized over the course of the next six months, and is expected to be fully in place and approved by regulators and shareholders by mid-2018.
A recent study by the Migrant Worker Justice Initiative (MWJI) confirms that the exploitation of temporary migrants working in Australia by their employers is widespread, endemic and severe.

It confirms that recent casesfor example, 7-Elevens systematic underpayment of young migrant workers at its network of 620 convenience store franchises across Australiaare not aberrations but are the norm.

The vast majority of international students, working holiday makers (WHMs, euphemistically called backpackers) and other temporary migrants confront wage theft, i.e., employers stealing a portion of their wages by undercutting minimum entitlements under Australian labour law. A significant minority work under slave-like conditions.

The report, Wage Theft in AustraliaFindings of the National Temporary Migrant Work Survey, is based on the responses of 4,322 temporary migrants from 107 countries. It was conducted online between September and December last year and asked those surveyed about their lowest paid job.

At the time of the survey, the legal minimum wage for a casual worker was $22.13 per hour. Many temporary migrants were entitled to higher rates based on penalty rates and entitlements under relevant industry awards. For example, a 21-year-old fast food employee should have earned at least $24.30 per hour and $29.16 on Saturdays. For the majority of temporary migrants, however, the minimum wage is a dead letter.

About 65 percent of international students and 59 percent of backpackers earned $17 per hour or less, significantly below the minimum wage. There were no figures on what proportion actually received their legal entitlement.

Severe underpayment was rife, with almost a third of WHMs and a quarter of international students earned $12 per hour or less, about half the minimum wage. The worst underpayments were in fruit- and vegetable-picking and farm work, where almost one in seven participants earned $5 per hour or less and close to a third earned $10 per hour or less.

Widespread underpayment, including workers receiving less than $10 an hour, was found in every sector of the economy in which temporary migrants work including construction, factories, retail, hospitality and tourism. Underpayment was especially prevalent in food servicescafes, restaurants and takeaway shopswhere almost three-quarters earned $17 per hour or less, significantly below the minimum wage.

The study also found 44 percent of workers were paid in cash. While this is not illegal, it points to widespread tax avoidance by employers and without payslips it makes it harder for workers to prove they were underpaid. Half never or rarely received a payslip despite employers being legally required to do so. For those paid $12 per hour or less, almost three quarters were paid in cash and the overwhelming majority of these never or rarely received pay slips.

The MWJI report also detailed serious criminal behaviour by employers for a significant minority of temporary migrants who work under conditions that indicate forced labour. Five percent had their passport confiscated by either their employer or their accommodation provider. Four percent said someone in their workplace had threatened to report them to the Immigration Department. Five percent paid an upfront deposit for a job in Australia and 6 percent reported paying a potentially unlawful training fee at the outset of a job.

The survey has methodological limitations due to its anonymous nature but the figures indicate that as many as 45,000 temporary migrants could be working under conditions of forced labour.

Excluding New Zealanders, there were over 900,000 temporary migrants with work rights nationally in Australia in 2016, comprising up to 11 percent of the Australian labour market.

The Australian economy is increasingly dependent on revenue from international educationworth $21 billion in 20167. It is Victorias largest export, and the second largest export in both New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The Australian government hopes to double the number of international students coming to Australia to study by 2025.

These students are treated as cash-cows; forced to pay exorbitant tuition fees as high as $40,000 a yearconsiderably more than Australian studentswhile being denied access to basic social services, including unemployment benefits, the Medicare health scheme and housing support. In Victoria and NSW, they do not even have concession rates for public transport.

In order to survive, many of these students, like their domestic counterparts, are forced to take jobs, often in the most exploitative sectors of the economy.

Under discriminatory visa restrictions, international students are only permitted to work 20 hours per week, which makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. If an employer can coerce an individual into working more than 20 hours per week, breaching the terms of their visa, it gives the employer extra leverage over the worker.

This is how 7-Eleven systematically underpaid international students. The half-pay scam at the retail chain involved students who worked 40 hours per week but were only paid for 20 in line with their visa requirements. If students complained, they would be threatened with being reported for breaching their visa conditions.

This was exposed by a joint Fairfax Media/ABC investigation on the Four Corners television program in August 2015. Following the screening, 7-Eleven was compelled to terminate the half-pay scam but within 48 hours a new one had replaced it. Employees could be paid the correct wages, but their employers would demand part of the wages back in cash so that it could not be tracedthe cash back scam.

As MWJIs Wage Theft in Australia states, This practice appears to extend beyond 7-Eleven, with 4 percent reporting that they were required to pay cash back to their employer.

Moreover, the report confirms that those international students who work more than 20 hours per week earn substantially lower wages with almost half (45 percent) earning $12 per hour or less.

The reports authors acknowledge that underpayment of migrant workers serves employers' interests by lowering pay directly and indirectly by putting downward pressure on the wages and conditions of all workers. Despite this, MWJI issued an appeal for businesses to employ more effective methods to detect and remedy wage theft.

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney issued a cynical statement: Wage theft has to stop. Workers must have quick and easy access to justice and unions which can protect their rights.

The scale and depth of underpayment exposed by the report, however, proves the opposite.

Far from protecting workers rights, the unions are directly responsible for creating these conditions, having collaborated for decades under respective Liberal-National and Labor governments in the assault on the wages and conditions of all sections of the working class.

Australias largest retail union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), has signed agreements with a host of major employers, including Coles, Woolworths, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks and KFC, to slash the wages of their members.
Massive wildfires, fueled by fast winds, spread throughout Southern California on Tuesday and Wednesday, leading to mass evacuations, power outages and property destruction. Already limited firefighting resources have been stretched to the limit. Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas even warned that this would cause limited response to 911 emergency calls throughout the duration of the fires.

The National Weather Service has reported that continued winds and low humidity would keep the fires burning until at least the end of the week.

Severe drought over the past six years has made conditions ripe for wildfires of this magnitude. Primarily due to manmade climate change, the period between late 2011 and 2014 was the driest on record in the state of California. Cal Fire Deputy Chief Scott McLean noted in an interview Tuesday with ABC7 News, Ourif you want to call itseason, has been elongated by upwards of 0-50 days over the last 50 years and will continue to do so.

After six years of drought, significant rains resumed in the winter of 2016 and 2017. These conditions led to widespread growth of underbrush. The new vegetation shriveled and died during the summer of 2017, the hottest on record, creating prime conditions for devastating wildfires.

The most recent of the Southern California fires started in the upscale neighborhood of Bel Air on Wednesday morning, shutting down the 405 freeway, the main traffic artery on the western side of Los Angeles. It also threatened two of the citys principal museums, the Getty Center Art Museum and Skirball Cultural Center. As of 11:00 am on Wednesday, the fire had burned through 150 acres and destroyed six homes. Power outages affected nearly 1,000 customers along with the nearby campus of the University of California Los Angeles, UCLA. Classes were canceled on Wednesday as a result.

A fire in the city of Santa Clarita began late Tuesday afternoon, consuming more than 7,000 acres. Some 1,300 households were ordered to evacuate along with several area schools. The fire was only five percent contained as of 4:00 pm Wednesday, according to Los Angeles County fire officials.

Also on Tuesday, nearly 100,000 people were under evacuation orders as a result of the Creek Fire near the towns of Sylmar and Lake View Terrace north of Los Angeles.

Winds fueling the Creek Fire were so strong that embers crossed and ignited brush south of the 210 freeway, separating the more sparsely populated San Gabriel Mountain Foothills from denser areas closer to the city of Los Angeles. As of this writing, the fire has destroyed at least 30 homes and scorched nearly 11,400 acres.

That fire is still zero percent contained and has caused the death of at least 30 horses at a ranch in Sylmar. At least 2,500 homes are still under threat, according to LA County fire inspector Gustavo Medina.

Another blaze broke out to the east near the campus of California State University, San Bernardino, causing two people to be hospitalized with severe burns. The fire, called the Little Mountain Fire, broke out at 12:28 pm Tuesday and burned 30 acres in less than 2 hours. I expect that number to grow, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Eric Sherwin at the time. We are at zero percent containment.

The largest of all fires this week, however, was the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, which is the largest experienced in the Southern California region thus far this year. At least 150 structures, including at least one large apartment complex and a psychiatric facility, were burned to the ground as the fire forced more than 27,000 people to evacuate.

As of this writing, more than 90,000 acres had been burned by the fire. According to fire officials, at its peak the Thomas Fire was spreading at a rate of 50 acres every minute as high winds deluged the area with fiery embers.

The high Santa Ana winds, a regular occurrence in the Southern California area at this time of year, are expected to continue into Thursday, leaving the likelihood of greater damage extremely high. The Santa Ana winds also complicate fire suppression efforts, as fixed wing aircraft and helicopters are unable to dump water and other fire retardants on the affected areas either for safety reasons or because accurate dispersal becomes nearly impossible. Forecasters are predicting wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour on Thursday.

The National Weather Service has declared the fires part of the strongest and longest duration Santa Ana wind event we have seen so far this season.

The fires arrive less than two months after Octobers Wine Country fires in Northern California. At the time, seven major wildfires destroyed 8,889 structures and led to 44 deaths.

Increasing temperatures coupled with funding cuts have left forestry services around the country woefully unprepared to deal with the rising danger.

Unlike the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which can use emergency funds for hurricane or tornado response, the US Forest Service must tap into other portions of its own budgetincluding fire prevention activitieswhen it runs out of firefighting funds. In 2016, the Forest Service spent more than half of its budget on firefighting, compared to 16 percent in 1995.

While most fires in California start on state or private land, the US Forest Service provided 154 of the 170 external fire engines used in the Wine Country fires. Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott recently noted the extreme importance of federal aid in fighting the fires. If they [US Forest Service] dont have adequate funding to ensure their wildland fire program is fully supported, we dont have the ability to reach out to them to get mutual aid and assistance at the same capacity.

The Trump administration is working to ensure that the state of California is starved of funding for wildfire disasters. Of the $44 billion requested by the White House in supplemental disaster aid, none will go towards the victims of the California wildfires.

Such callous disregard for the victims of natural disasters is not limited to the Trump Administration. It is a bipartisan policy, as evinced by the administration of California Governor Jerry Brown, who is being floated as a possible contender for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

After Brown declared an end to the states drought in April of this year, the states budget only included a mere $2 million to help local agencies remove dead trees and underbrush. Similarly, funding for the states disaster assistance fund dropped from $52.7 million to $8.5 million.

Despite the fact that California is home to more billionaires than any other single state in the country, no additional funds can be expected to be forthcoming. Even before the Northern California fires started last October, Cal Fire had already used $250 million of its $426.9 million emergency fund.
Upending seven decades of US policy toward the Middle East, President Donald Trump Wednesday delivered a White House speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital and vowing that the US would begin preparations to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv, becoming the first nation in the world to do so.

The decision was met with near universal condemnation from Washingtons allies and foes alike, along with Palestinian demonstrations in the Israel-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, as well as elsewhere in the Middle East.

In a 12-minute speech, Trump cast the decision as a new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and a long overdue step to advance the peace process.

In reality, the move represents a green light to the extreme right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accelerate the expansion and creation of new Zionist settlements and escalate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

At the same time, the American president engaged in his habitual self-aggrandizement, saying that while previous presidents had promised to move the embassy, they had failed to deliver. Suggesting that the issue was a lack of courage, he proclaimed, Today, Im delivering.

During his 2016 election campaign, Trump had vowed to become the most pro-Israel president in US history and to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. This was part of a calculated bid to win the support of right-wing Christian Evangelicals as well as a far less numerous, but financially critical, sector of right-wing Zionists, most importantly casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who poured some $25 million into Trumps campaign.

Under conditions in which his administration is in deepening crisis, and Trumps own public approval ratings are falling to record lows, the announcement on Jerusalem, while threatening to unleash a new round of bloodshed in the Middle East and potentially beyond, provided a cheap means of solidifying his base.

The decision was reportedly opposed by both his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis. Trumps action, however, was not merely--as it is widely being cast, particularly in Europe--an act of irresponsibility or even madness. Rather, it is bound up with broader aims of US imperialism to escalate its military intervention in the Middle East, particularly to roll back the growth of Iranian influence in the wake of the successive debacles suffered by Washington in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Formally, Trump has based his shift on Jerusalem on a law enacted in 1995, the so-called Jerusalem Embassy Act, which was approved with overwhelming bipartisan support. Included in the legislation, however, was a waiver allowing the US president to put off moving the American embassy on the grounds of national security. Every American president since Bill Clinton--including until now Trump--has invoked this waiver every six months as required by the law.

Trumps action was praised by leading members of both parties in Congress. Jerusalem has been, and always will be, the eternal, undivided capital of the State of Israel, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

The leading Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland, responded, Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and the location of the US Embassy should reflect this fact. While some Democrats expressed reservations about the timing of Trumps action, these were undercut by the fact that just last June the US Senate approved, without a single opposing vote, a resolution reaffirming the demand for moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

This bipartisan policy represents a naked repudiation of international law, endorsing Israels illegal annexation of territories, including most of the current city of Jerusalem, that it militarily occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Such annexations were declared illegal under the Geneva Conventions enacted in the wake of the Second World War to prevent the repetition of similar actions carried out by Germanys Nazi regime.

Thousands of Palestinians protested in Gaza Wednesday in anticipation of Trumps speech. There were also protests reported at schools in the West Bank. On Wednesday night, large numbers of Palestinian youth poured into the streets of the Jordanian capital of Amman, one of the major centers of Palestinian refugees. Chanting Down with America! America is the mother of terror! they called upon King Abdullahs Hashemite monarchy to break its peace treaty with Israel. Palestinians also took to the streets across Lebanon. Several hundred protesters also gathered outside the American consulate in Istanbul, throwing coins and other objects at the building.

Palestinian organizations have called for three Days of Rage, culminating on Friday, when Muslim religious services are held. Attempts by Israeli security forces to prevent access by Palestinians to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem have repeatedly served to provoke violent clashes. In 2000, a visit to the site by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon provoked an intifada, or Palestinian uprising, and violence was also ignited in 2015 by attempts of right-wing Zionist settlers to storm the Islamic holy site.

Trumps reaction was roundly condemned by both Arab regimes and Washingtons erstwhile allies in Western Europe.

Among the most telling reactions came from Germanys Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who on the eve of the announcement said that Trumps decision was indicative of why the alliance between Washington and Europe had begun to crumble. He added, that the determination of Jerusalems status had to be the product of direct negotiations between both parties, and that Everything which worsens the crisis is counterproductive. Trumps decision has been invoked by the German ruling establishment to promote the countrys rearmament and more aggressive pursuit of its great power interests on the world stage.

Challenged in Parliament over Trumps action, British Prime Minister Theresa May described it as unhelpful and vowed to speak to the US president about the matter. French President Emmanuel Macron called the US action regrettable. Both reiterated the position that Jerusalems status could only be settled through negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The principal concern of both the European powers, the Arab regimes and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority is that Trumps action has pulled the last rug out from underneath the so-called peace process, a diplomatic fiction that has limped along for over a quarter century as the Israeli regime has steadily expanded its grip over occupied Palestinian territories.

The prospect of a two-state solution, which Trump said the US would support if agreed to by both sides, has already been rejected by the ruling layers within the Israeli government and made unrealizable by the continuous encroachment upon and division of Palestinian land into a patchwork of noncontiguous territories. This has only been further confirmed by the recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, denying the Palestinian claim that the same city would be the capital of any Palestinian state.

The monarchical, autocratic and dictatorial Arab bourgeois regimes, all of which had been consulted in advance by the Trump administration, issued their pro-forma condemnations of the recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Egypts dictator, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, warned that Trumps actions would undermine the chances of peace in the Middle East.

Similarly, Saudi King Salman declared that the shift on Jerusalem would harm peace talks and increase tensions in the area.

According to multiple media reports, however, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince and soon-to-be king, summoned Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas to Riyadh last month to inform him of Trumps terms and order him to accept them or face a cutoff of Saudi funding.

Following Trumps speech, Abbas released a prerecorded response warning that, as a result of the American presidents actions, the extremist groups which try to turn the conflict in our region into a religious war that will drag the region...into international conflicts and endless wars.

The leader of the Palestinian Authority, which functions as an adjunct security force for the Israeli occupation and a means of enrichment for a thin layer of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, is concerned that the Trump administrations scuttling of any pretense that essential issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be left to negotiation will make its position untenable.

This pathetic appeal will find no sympathy in Washington. The prospect that the provocation over Jerusalem will fuel Islamist terrorism is no doubt already factored into Washingtons calculations. Terrorist attacks serve as useful pretexts for war abroad and repression at home.

At the same time, the Trump administration is clearly calculating that Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf oil monarchies and the autocratic Sunni regimes in the region will not let any concern for the fate of the Palestinians interfere with their determination to cement an anti-Iranian axis together with the US and Israel.

Israels Prime Minister Netanyahu broadcast his own prerecorded statement hailing the US move to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital as historic and praising Trump for his courageous decision.

The reality, however, is that this recognition represents one more nail in the coffin of the so-called two-state solution, further dispelling any lingering illusions that an end to the oppression of the Palestinian masses will be found through diplomatic deals and negotiations between imperialism and the Arab bourgeois regimes. The only alternative left is that of revolutionary struggle, uniting Arab and Jewish workers in a common fight for a socialist solution to the scourges of war, inequality and exploitation produced by the capitalist system.
On Saturday, December 2, at around 9:00 am, workers on the overnight shift at Fiat Chryslers Jefferson North Assembly Plant (JNAP) on Detroits east side began complaining to supervisors and union officials that strong-smelling fumes coming in through the air vents were making them sick. Several workers began vomiting or suffered from headaches and dizziness and demanded to go to medical.

While the chief concern of the floor managers and union reps was to keep the assembly line moving, workers took the threat seriously and wanted answers. Included among the 1,600 workers on the shift, and the next shift of another 1,600 workers due in the afternoon, were female workers who were pregnant and others suffering from asthma or other respiratory ailments for whom exposure to toxic gasses could do permanent damage or even prove fatal. The workers stopped work and gathered to discuss what to do.

According to workers inside the plant who texted the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter as the incident unfolded, management and safety representatives from United Auto Workers Local 7 downplayed the seriousness of the situation, claiming there was nothing unusual about bad smells inside an industrial facility. Supervisors threatened workers with disciplinary action if they did not go back to their work stations.

A worker texted: Im at work and its a strong gas smell inside while they are making us work. They stopped the line for five minutes then started back. They say its coming from across the street.

Asked where the union officials were, the worker replied, They keep saying it always smells this way. Its never been like this. People have started going to medical but only so many can go at a time because theyre saying someone has to cover for you.

President not answering phone, the worker texted, referring to UAW Local 7 President Reggie Griffin, and steward said go to medical smh (shake my head). Long line in medical they wont even see ppl. They tell them to go outside to get fresh air.

There was widespread sentiment to stop production and walk out of the plant to find safety, the worker texted, but not enough are willing. Referring to the fact that management and the union were forcing them to continue to work despite the still unknown danger, the worker texted, This is crazy. To management, union and safety there is no issue. They dont give a dam.

On the JNAP Local 7 Brothers and Sisters United Facebook page workers were also posting as events unfolded. One worker said, How bad does the smell of gas have to get before they evacuate us. Maybe after we all start puking and passing out?

Girl had asthma attack the supervisor said Oh, dont believe that its fake. We need a new safety rep she added, saying back in the day the safety reps Wouldve had this place shut down, period.

In this case, however, union officials threatened workers who wanted to leave, saying it was against the contract to walk out.

WSWS reporters rushed down to the plant and witnessed several Detroit Fire Department emergency vehicles at the east side of the factory apparently loading workers into ambulances. A DTE Energy van was also present. One emergency responder told reporters there had been complaints in the eastside neighborhood about gas fumes for 2-3 days, but that the source had not yet been found. He said the fire department called in DTE as a precaution.

A young worker in the west side parking lot who was returning from her lunch break told the Autoworker Newsletter reporters that the smell was worse inside the plant than it was outside. The union had told workers that management had brought in sniffers but they sent us right back in. They just want us to keep working. Why are we paying union dues? she asked.

The WSWS reporters then became aware of a serious smell on the south side of the plant and traced its possible source to a neighboring production facility owned by Aevitas, a company that recycles industrial oil and lubricants from manufacturing facilities. About five minutes later officials from the Detroit Fire Department, which has a local engine company just south of the Chrysler factory, showed up at the Aevitas location and began questioning an employee.

Meanwhile, another worker in the plant texted that management and the union had returned conditions to business as usual. Management, he said, just had a meeting. Plant Manager Zach was wearing a headphone piece. I presume hes getting updates about outside. His next text said: The fire marshal is walking through inside with safety. The marshal was shaking his head as if he couldnt believe it took so long to call him. It was happening around nine and theyre there just now. You cant smell anything now, he should have been here then.

This reporter replied, The chief role of the UAW is to make sure there is no disruption of production, no matter what. A rank-and-file committee would have immediately halted production, called the fire department and if necessary called off for the whole day pending an investigation and resolution of the problemwith no loss of pay.

The worker replied in a text: Thats what is needed.

Amazingly, not a single news outlet in Detroit reported the incident. Apparently, the safety concerns of workers at the sprawling 3 million-square-foot plant, which employs more than 5,000 hourly and salaried workers who live in Detroit and surrounding suburbs was not deemed newsworthy, as long as the production for the highly profitable Jeep Grand Cherokees, Grand Cherokees SRTs and Dodge Durango SUVs continued without disruption.

The WSWS called UAW Local 7 for information about the incident and to learn how many of the local members were taken to the hospital and what their status was. Sherry Saunders, the trustee chair of the local, said she did not have any information on the incident. She took down this reporters phone number to give to local president Reggie Griffin, who did not return the call.

As for Fiat Chrysler management, their response was evasive. After being bounced around several plant departments, the WSWS reached James Busi, a talent manager in the Human Resource Department and a former Labor Relations and Safety Representative. Asked about the incident, Busi said, I am not aware of any such situation. I would be if it were a major incident. But this was not as major as it was made out to be.

This reporter asked, If it was not as major as it was made out to be that means something must have happened, right? Busi replied, I am not aware that anything happened.

In his best corporate double-speak, the manager directed this reporter to talk to the subject matter experts in the union-management safety department. When I informed him that I had already spoke to the union local, he said than there was no one else to talk to.

This reporter also contacted a spokeswoman for Detroit Fire Commissioner Eric Jones office who said she had no information and would have one of the departments commissioners call me.

Several days after the incident, UAW officials on the JNAP Brothers and Sisters United Facebook page tried to justify their cowardly inaction, saying safety reps would have been fired if they called workers out. Then one posted, I want to give a shout out to President Reginald Griffin for sending all of the local 7 leadership, and appointed safety reps, to an OSHA training course. So, when you dont see any of us on the floor this week, that is why. Lots learned in the first day. Hopefully we can take all the knowledge we gain, use it on the floor, and also educate the rest of the membership.

So, after imperiling workers safety, the union officials were sent off on a junket for safety training. In fact, the joint labor-management safety schemes and their partnership with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are designed to conceal from workers and the general public the real dangers workers confront on a daily basis and to ensure that profits continue flowing no matter what. Under these schemes, management is given prior notice before OSHA inspections and fines for violations are automatically reduced based on the grotesquely false claim that the UAW represents the workers and will resolve all safety issues.

As the recent revelations about the multimillion-dollar bribes paid by Fiat Chrysler executive to UAW officials shows, the union does not represent workers; it is a corrupt tool of the auto bosses.

Reflecting on the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter's call for workers to form rank-and-file committees to assume the responsibilities the UAW long ago abandoned, one of the workers who texted the WSWS, said, We should have all stood together, united, and stopped the line and got out. Nobodys safety is worth sacrificing to make their cars and their profits. If you pass out or have a heart attack, they just push you to the side to keep the line going. Workers are fed up and tired.
On Monday, President Trump announced that he would reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half. The move strips away protections for 3 million acres of federal land in an area eyed by industry for rich deposits of fossil fuels and uranium.

The gutting of the national monuments, unprecedented in more than a century, amounts to the initial stages of a land-grab by the oil, gas and mining industries. Alongside these two redesignations, the Trump administration has moved to open up federal lands to expanded drilling and mining operations. In March, the president directed agencies through an executive order to alleviate or eliminate actions that burden domestic energy production. Since then the administration has initiated the repeal of more than two dozen regulations directly impacting energy and mining companies.

Trump is seeking nothing less than to eviscerate the entire framework of land conservation controls and environmental protections, which at times have limited mining and drilling operations and imposed cost on industry in order to mitigate public health and the environmental impacts.

Trump is also attempting to intimidate and suppress Native American groups, which, despite some divisions, were instrumental in urging the establishment of the national monuments last year. Tribal lands have come under acute threat from the rapid expansion of domestic drilling and transportation under the Obama administration. The past few years have witnessed bitter resistance struggles of Native Americans and others against the threat of environmental destruction, most notably related to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Trump ordered the pipeline project fast-tracked shortly after taking office. With the decisions in Utah, he is issuing another provocation.

Removing lands from protected status fits into the broader strategy of the administration. The announcement Monday came just days after the Senate passed a tax bill that sets the stage for a new round of vicious attacks on social programs while simultaneously engorging the rich. In his remarks revoking the monument status, Trump stated, Im a real estate developer. When they start talking about millions of acres, I say, Say it again? Because thats a lot.

The reduction of the size of a national monument at this scale is unheard of in US history. The only other reduction so far was done by President Wilson in 1915 when he removed 313,000 acres from the Mount Olympus National Monument.

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are just the beginning. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke followed up on the reclassification announcement a day later with a report that identified four more national monuments for downsizing, as well as changes to the management of another six. The report is the initial response to the presidents request to review 27 monuments established since 1996.

The move has already been met with opposition from an assortment of conservation groups and Native American organizations. Lawsuits are already underway, including one by five tribesthe Hopi, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and Ute Indianagainst the shrinking of Bears Ears. Shaun Chapoose, a member of the Ute Indian tribe, told the Salt Lake Tribune, They declared war on us today. If they think were not prepared to protect it, theyre kidding themselves.

The Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah currently comprises 1,351,849 acres of sparsely developed land. It was created as a final act of the Obama Administration in 2016 and protects significant Native American and natural landscapes.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is 1,880,461 acres large. It was created in 1996 by President Bill Clinton and also protects significant landscapes and archaeological and cultural sites.

Both regions were sparsely populated before receiving monument status under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows a president to use executive power to establish a National Monument. However, both regions are resource rich. Obama, when creating the Bear Ears Monument, deliberately left out the Daneros Mine in Red Canyon, because it was a currently operating uranium mine.

The Trump Administration and its Republican supporters presented the move as a boon to common rural people. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said, This is about giving rural America a voice. Utah state Rep. Gregory H. Hughes said, The little guys voices were heard. Voices in the community were heard.

In truth, it was the voice of the fossil fuel and mining industries, which are salivating over the prospect of unfettered access to the countrys natural resource wealth. In the same breath that Trump claims to be helping the rural poor, he is overseeing reforms that would dramatically escalate the attack on the environment and social programs across the country.
The campaign over alleged Russian meddling in Britains 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) has now rumbled on for months.

With little substance, the claim is regularly made that the Leave vote was the result of the Putin government in Moscow planting fake news to achieve a desired political objective.

Such allegations are the British corollary of the campaign initiated by the Democrats and sections of the military-intelligence establishment in the United States, which also finds an echo throughout Europe. The aim is to justify both accelerating war preparations against Russia and massive state censorship of social media.

A remarkable admission by former Conservative justice secretary, Ken Clarke, to a government committee, raises far more substantive evidence of an insidious, pervasive and systematic effort to subvert the democratic process, also centred on Brexit, and involving wholesale manipulation of the news.

In contrast to the campaign against Russia, this has gone largely without comment because it concerns Clarkes suggestion that former Tory leader David Cameron struck a deal with Rupert Murdoch in the run-up to the 2010 general election.

The former cabinet minister made his comments before the non-ministerial Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), part of an investigation into a proposed 11.7 billion takeover of the UK TV company Sky by Murdoch and his 21st Century Fox.

The deal would give Murdoch just under 20 percent of the TV news market and 45 percent of the radio audience in the UK, making him the largest competitor to the British Broadcasting Corporation. However, Murdochs reach is far more extensive, as he already controls the largest circulation share of any newspaper group in Britainincluding the Sun, the Sun on Sunday, the Times and the Sunday Times.

The Fox/Sky move comes just five years after Murdochs now defunct News of the World was accused of criminality on an industrial scale, involving widespread phone hacking. Since then, it has settled at least 1,000 cases.

A key element in the rehabilitation of the Murdoch empire was the whitewash inquiry into press standards, led by Lord Leveson. Clarke noted in his interviewthe transcript of which just became availablethat the second part of the inquiry was never held because the government was scared it would upset Rupert.

For more than a decade, and through three general elections, the oligarch had been a strident backer of Tony Blair and his New Labour governmentso much so that Murdoch was described as an unofficial cabinet member.

This changed in the run-up to 2010. Clarke said quite how then Conservative Party leader Cameron had got the Sun away from Labour, I shall never know. Murdoch would never let Tony down because Tony had backed the Iraq war, he said, so Maybe it was some sort of a deal. David would not tell me what it was. Suddenly we got the Murdoch empire on our side.

Clarke said he assumed the appointment of Andy Coulson, former editor of News of the World between 2003 and 2007, as Camerons director of communications was part of the deal.

After the Tories surprise win in 2010, Clarke met with Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of Murdochs British arm, News International. Referring to Brooks law-and-order campaigns, Clarke said she was instructing me on criminal justice policy as I think she had instructed my predecessor...

Brooks told Clarke that she was running the government now in partnership with David Cameron and instructed him to buy prison ships because she had got some more campaigns coming, he relayed.

Coulson was forced to quit as Camerons communications director in January 2011, just before he was arrested, accused of conspiracy to intercept voicemails. In June 2014, he was found guilty. He served just five months of an 18-month sentence.

Brooks plea of incompetencethat she was unaware of the illegal activities of the newspaper she had edited for three yearswas accepted. The following year, she was made CEO of News UK, the relaunched News International.

Clarke is not the first to suggest a deal. At the time of the 2010 election, Labours [Lord] Peter Mandelson said Murdoch had agreed a contract with Cameron. This was denounced as sour grapes by the Tories. Cameron categorically denied any agreement stating, There was no overt deal for support, there was no covert deal, no nods and winks. There was no trading policies for that support.

Clarkes account of Brooks remarks suggest that the former prime minister perjured himself. At any rate, it is a matter of record that Cameron met with executives of Murdochs News Corp and its UK subsidiaries on more occasions than with all other media outlets combined over the same timeframe. Murdoch told a committee of MPs investigating the phone hacking scandal that he often entered Downing Street by the back door.

As the World Socialist Web Site commented following the conclusion of the Leveson Inquiry, successive Tory and Labour governments bent their knee at Murdochs court, as the media mogul exercised close to veto power over state policy! Democracy is a facade behind which plutocrats and their political hirelings operate as a law unto themselves.

Clarkes remarks confirm this appraisal. And not only prison ships are involved.

In 2004, Blair infamously made a sudden reversal on Labours opposition to a referendum on EU membership. That year, the EU agreed to draw up a constitution. In response, the Tories forced a vote in parliament demanding a referendum to veto the move, which Labour opposed, and was lost. Murdochs press ran with denunciations of Blair and Labour for treachery.

Murdoch had long campaigned for a British exit from the EU, which he accused of imposing unnecessary regulatory burdens on big business. His titles functioned as the main outlet for the euro-sceptic wing of the bourgeoisie.

Within weeks, Blair had changed his position. After a holiday, in which he returned home by way of Washington and New York, Blair announced he would support a referendumto the astonishment of his cabinet, many of whom had not been informed.

According to reports, Blairs change of mind on a referendum came after a visit from Sunday Times columnist Irwin Stelzer, who informed him Murdochs media would come out against him unless he did so.

Blair gave himself wriggle room, however, stating that the referendum should be held only after a constitution was agreed. In the end, referendums in the Netherlands and France vetoed the planned draft. The EU simply moved ahead regardless under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty.

In 2009, Cameron committed an incoming Conservative government to support a referendum. Having won office in 2010, with Murdochs backing, he vacillated several times in implementing this pledgenot least because of concern at the possibility of a Leave votebefore officially committing in 2013 to hold a referendum by 2017.

The 2016 referendum vote narrowly went to Leaveheavily backed by Murdochand Cameron, who led the Remain campaign, was forced to quit as prime minister. He was replaced by Theresa May, also a Remain campaigner, but who leads a cabinet committed to Brexit.

Murdoch was one of the first people May met as prime minister, using a visit to New York in September 2016where she was making her maiden speech to the United Nationsto hold a private audience with the oligarch.

It is suggested that it was Murdoch who instructed May to appoint arch-Brexiteer, Michael Gove, to her cabinet, despite him backing Boris Johnson against her in the post-referendum leadership contest. Gove returned in June.
Over the past week, the ferocious political conflict within the ruling class in the United States has entered a new stage. In the wake of the guilty plea by Trumps former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Friday, the media is again filled with discussions over possible methods for removing Trump from office.

On Monday, the New York Times ran an editorial, Yes, the President Can Obstruct Justice, answering the claim by Trumps lawyer that the president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer. Citing previous articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the Times argued that the precedent applies equally, if not more, to Trump.

The entire framework of the Times argument against Trump revolves around the investigation, headed by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller, into alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 US election. In securing a guilty plea from Flynn, the Mueller probe is now targeted directly at Trumps inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr., as well as Trump himself.

In his reported call for then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the probe into Flynn earlier this year, the Times writes, Trump tried to shut down an investigation into his own campaigns ties to the Russian governments efforts to swing the 2016 election in his favor.

The editorial echoes the language of Democratic Party Senator Diane Feinstein of California, who said in her Sunday appearance on NBCs Meet the Press, I think what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice.

That Mueller is moving to develop a case against Trump was indicated by news this week that he has subpoenaed Trumps financial records with Deutsche Bank, prompting speculation that he could force Trump to resign by threatening to prosecute him over his business dealings before he came to the White House.

Another possible avenue raised by Trumps critics within the political and media establishment is the use of the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which allows the cabinet to remove the president if he is so impaired that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

Last week, conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin reiterated her previous proposal to invoke the amendment, citing reports that Trump continues to believe that Obama was not born in the US, and that he has asserted that the voice in the Access Hollywood tape released during the 2016 elections was not his. If he believes such statements, Rubin wrote, it would be proof that he is mentally and emotionally incapable of performing his duties (which require one to grasp and process reality) and it would be long past time for him to go.

It is evident that a significant faction of the ruling elite has concluded that Trump must go, in one form or another.

There is not, however, an ounce of democratic or progressive content to this campaign. The conflicts in Washington are conflicts within the ruling class, pitting the Trump administrationwhich is increasingly relying on far-right and fascistic forceswith powerful elements of the military and intelligence apparatus with which the Democratic Party is aligned.

Significantly, Democratic Congressman Al Green on Thursday moved a vote in the House of Representatives to bring articles of impeachment against Trump, which was overwhelmingly rejected by congressional Democrats and unanimously by Republicans. Unlike Muellers investigation, Greens proposal was based on the presidents defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville and his re-tweeting of anti-Muslim videos previously posted by British fascists.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi made clear that the Democrats votes against the measure reflected not their support for Trump, but their desire to wage their campaign on charges on Trumps collusion with Russia, saying that those [i.e., Muellers] inquiries should be allowed to continue.

Even as they have intensified their efforts to brand Trump a traitor and a Russian agent, the Democrats have avoided any opposition to his right-wing domestic policies. As Congress moves to pass Trumps tax billa handout to the financial elite that will set the stage for major cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaidthe Democrats have done nothing to oppose its passage. They have held no hearings on its contents and called no demonstrations.

Rather, the Democrats dispute with Trump is centered on their concern that his administration has undermined the fundamental foreign policy interests of US imperialism. The reality of the United States geopolitical decline under Trump was made apparent by two recent eventsthe agreement between Russia and Egypt that allows Russia to station aircraft on Egyptian airbases, and the proclamation by German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel that the protective role played by the United States over Europe is beginning to crumble.

The witch-hunt over allegations of sexual misconduct orchestrated by media outlets affiliated with the Democratic Party, particularly the New York Times, is part of this same process. It is an effort to mobilize sections of the upper-middle class behind the agenda of the financial elite and military-intelligence agencies based on a deeply anti-democratic and reactionary campaign. It is of a piece with the campaign over Russian meddling, which has been utilized not only to go after Trump, but to lay the framework for a regime of Internet censorship and the suppression of domestic discontent.

The eruption of ferocious conflicts within the states is the expression, however, of a deeper disease, for which the ruling class has no solution. If Trumps ruling class critics were to succeed in removing him, it would not resolve the crisis of class rule that is engulfing the United States. It would place in power a government even more firmly under the control of the military-intelligence apparatus, committed to continuing the offensive against the working class and escalating the military confrontation with Russia.

An altogether different conflict is developing, between the ruling class and the working class. Three billionaires now control more wealth than half of the population in the United States. The broad mass of the population is suffering from an escalating crisismass indebtedness, low-wage jobs, an expanding drug epidemic, and other manifestations of social distress. The financial system, inflated through an endless infusion of cash, is teetering on the edge of another collapse, on the scale of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, with incalculable consequences.

Even as they furiously denounce each other, what all factions of the ruling class fear above all is that the crisis will prompt the political radicalization of the working class.

Workers and young people seeking to oppose the Trump administration must avoid the deeply diseased and reactionary Democratic Party like the plague.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in its June 13 perspective,  Palace coup or class struggle: The political crisis in Washington and the strategy of the working class , the essential political conclusion that flows from the political situation in the US is that the fight of the working class against Trump and all that he represents will raise ever more urgently the necessity of a political mass movement, independent of and opposed to both the Republicans and the Democrats, against the capitalist system and its state. This objective tendency of social development must be developed as a conscious strategy of working class struggle.

The Socialist Equality Party is fighting to build such a movement, based on the socialist program of expropriating the wealth of the financial oligarchy, the reorganization of society on a socialist and egalitarian basis. We call on all our readers to make the decision to join and build the SEP .
Amid attempts in Berlin to maneuver a right-wing government into office, German police are reviving the myth of "extreme left" violence at last Julys Hamburgs G20 summit.

On Tuesday, the police carried out large-scale raids in several German states. Police officers headed by the Hamburg Special "Black Block Commission (Soko) searched more than 20 premises in Hamburg, Berlin, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Wurttemberg, Saxony-Anhalt, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony.

The Hamburg public prosecutor is investigating 22 men and women who were allegedly involved in violent activities in Hamburg during the G20 summit last July. Twenty of the 22 suspects are alleged to be members of the "extreme left-wing spectrum", and charges include "serious breaches of peace".

According to police, 583 police officers were involved in the latest raids. A total of 35 mobile phones, 26 laptops, other data carriers and documents were confiscated during the action. Nobody was arrested.

These raids are largely for propaganda purposes. It has since emerged that the violence in Hamburg stemmed mainly from the security forces and right-wing provocateurs. Most of the original reports about "violent, left-wing extremist" demonstrators were fictitious, e.g. the claim of an "armed ambush" by leftists in the citys Schanzenviertel, which justified the use of sophisticated special operations commandos armed with assault rifles. Travelling in armoured cars, the commandos terrorised an entire urban area.

It was also the police who provoked violent clashes in Hamburg-Rondenbarg. Videos show that a demonstration by some 200 G20 protesters was attacked and fired on by heavily armed police on 7 July. The police video shows how one policeman abruptly hit a demonstrator passing by. On the run from the rampaging hordes of police, 14 protesters fell from a scaffold, sustaining injuries.

In recent weeks, more and more details about the extent of brutal police violence against innocent citizens have been revealed. In a video published by Spiegel Online, a young worker, Sarah Nothdurft, reported on her own experience. She and her boyfriend were on their way home when they found themselves trapped in a police cordon. They were dragged off their bikes by police, dragged across the ground and kicked. "The worst thing in her recollection, however, were "those incredibly hateful eyes under the masks, Sarah declared. Her lawyer Christian Woldmann describes the actions of the police as dangerous bodily harm while on duty.

The operation in Hamburg involving more than 20,000 heavily armed police officers was a civil war exercise in which weapons of war were illegally used. The Hamburg city authorities admitted that police fired rounds of rubber bullets at least 15 times, and tear gas from a multipurpose gun (MZP1) on 67 occasions. According to the federal Ministry of Economics, this weapon falls under the War Weapons Control Act and is listed in the German war weapons list under the category "grenade machine guns, grenade guns, grenade pistols".

In an interview immediately after the G20 summit, Sven Mewes, commanding officer of the Saxon Special Operations Command (SEK), praised the action of his unit in the Schanzenviertel, stating: "Our approach [was] extremely robust on securing our own safety, but also designed for highly dynamic situations. That is, we were freely allowed to use firearms, we used distraction pyrotechnics in buildings and opened closed doors with firearms using special ammunition. All those we found were immediately placed on the ground, tied up and then led away. [...] There was no resistance at all on their part."

The fact that the campaign against "left-wing extremism" is now being resumed is a warning. The German ruling class aims to establish a police state that criminalises and brutally represses protests and resistance to social inequality, militarism and war. At the same time the recent congress by the far right Alternative for Germany was protected by police from demonstrators, and right-wing terrorists like Franco A. have been set free.

According to a report in Die Welt, the Soko Black Block" commission is the "largest investigation unit of the Hamburg police in decades, involving around 100 Hamburg officers and "almost as many additional investigators from almost all federal states and federal police, who rotate every three weeks". "The unit is also supported by reconnaissance units such as the units for securing evidence and arrest".

The city-state administration of Hamburg consists of a coalition of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens, who are leading the campaign against "left-wing extremism" with all of Germanys other parliamentary parties, ranging from the AfD to the Left Party. The victims of the campaign are thousands of people who have merely sought to exercise their right to demonstrate.

There are currently more than 3,000 investigations pending, most of them directed against still unknown persons. "We will get many of you. Thats for sure, threatened the head of SOKO, Jan Hieber, following a raid in late September. "We have visual material on a scale never seen before in German criminal history."

Those who go to court must expect draconian punishments. Already in August, a Hamburg court imposed a prison sentence of two years and seven months on a 21-year-old Dutch citizen alleged to have tossed two empty glass bottles at a policeman and then resisted arrest (the allegations were made exclusively by police officers). On Monday, another show trial imposed the longest prison sentence handed out so far in the G20 trials. The 30-year-old online art dealer Benjamin S. was jailed for three years and three months for serious breach of the peace".

At the government level the German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere plans to use a conference of Interior Ministers in Leipzig next weekend to press for further measures to beef up the state apparatus. He is reportedly planning nothing less than total surveillance measures. Redaktionsnetwerk Deutschland (RND) reported that de Maiziere wants to drastically expand "so-called eavesdropping" by the "use of technical means against individuals".

According to circles close to the Interior Ministry, "Investigators and the secret services find it increasingly difficult to install and hide bugs" to spy on apartments, cars and equipment. De Maiziere would therefore require internet companies to hand over their programming protocols.

Eavesdropping would then be possible wherever devices are connected to the Internet. The industry is advised to give the state "exclusive access rights, such as private tablets and computers, smart TVs or digitised kitchen appliances."

Bernhard Rohleder, managing director of the industry association Bitkom, characterised these Orwellian surveillance plans to Spiegel Online: "In the future, all devices, buildings and almost all people will be connected to the Internet." De Maiziere's initiative is about "state access to just about anything, anyone and everyone".
A broad cross-section of workers, retirees, university and high school students and young people attended the recent Socialist Equality Party centenary meetings on the Russian Revolution. Several voiced their appreciation, explaining what they learnt about the 1917 Russian Revolution and the political lessons of this historic event.

Mitchell, a 21-year-old hospitality worker from Melbourne, said: I thought the meeting was really good. I came because I thought it would be interestingI did history in Year 12 and thought the Russian Revolution was fascinating. I basically agree with most socialist policies. I think its definitely better than the current system

The degree to which the consciousness of people my age, the working class, is being suppressed by diversions on social media, with your news feed filled with trash, is quite troubling.

Theres a sense of hopelessness among some young people, who might think, what can you do? But the revolution shows an example of the truthyou are the masses, you hold the power. They might have all the wealth, but they need you to run the McDonalds, in other workplaces. They require us.

Theres also a sense that youre not important, that you dont fit into this world, you might just be a cog in some mass machine You can inspire a fair bit of hope with it [the revolution]; it says there is significance, you as an individual, the more you can fight the stronger youll be.

Asked about the danger of war, Mitchell said, Its terrifying. Even if the US doesnt use nukes initially in an attack on North Korea, theres going to be retaliation with nuclear weapons. You cant conquer an entire country just with ground forces.

Trump is basically saying were going to nuke them, which is honestly terrifying. Its a dress rehearsal for China, as James explained, which I hadnt thought about before. But its true, a war wont stop with Korea.

Cameron, a University of Melbourne biology and mathematics student, said: I had never studied much about history but I was really pleased by how accessible the meeting was. Lots of the questions from the audience seemed fundamental, but they were treated really seriously. The Russian Revolution is really important and I have to learn more about it.

One thing I was really pleased to hear about was the working class necessarily being international. There was a question from the audience about whether nations should continue to divide the world today.

The danger of war would be on the list of major issues today especially because of the link that the speaker drew between the actions of the US today and previous actions in history. They are almost following the same script in the threats against North Korea as the other wars in the last 15 years.

Morgan, a University of Melbourne English Literature student who was attending his first SEP meeting, said: I found everything that was said was really convincing. It just seemed right. Its definitely now more apparent to me that there is a possibility of world war.

Although I was previously a bit dismissive of the comparisons made between today and Tsarist Russia. It seemed to me [that] the Tsarist oppression before the Russian Revolution was something far from what Australia is like today but now Im starting to see the reasons for a revolution, and the threat of war is definitely there.

Leanne, a social worker, said: The Russian Revolution showed that the workers of the world can unite and take the power, and that is clearly the only way this planet, and all its inhabitants, can survive. Id been seduced in the past by movements such as feminism... Its quite shocking to think now, looking back, Ive been sucked in and distracted from the main game.

I have a son who is 25, who goes to work and talks to other people about the World Socialist Web Site, and has been quite amazed at the response of other people. Particularly because they work for a big multi-national company, with lots of overseas workers, and theyve come back and said, Thats an amazing web site. Weve learnt so much from it, and its got fantastic articles.

Referring to Googles censorship of the WSWS, she said: I refuse to watch or read anything that isnt WSWS-based. Clearly the WSWS is a threat for [Google], and will continue to be, I hope, a growing threat. It goes to show their level of fear, and the weakness of their position.

Nicholas, 22, who is studying Physics Honours at the University of Newcastle, said: What stood out most for me was the emphasis on a revolutionary party to lead the working class as a whole. The meeting gave us an overview of a previous attempt at a revolution and the building of a socialist society.

If we ever want to replicate this and initiate a world-wide revolution, we need to look at the most significant previous attempt of a revolution of this kind in history, a socialist revolution. Obviously the context has changedwe no longer live in the early 20th centurybut the underlying forces, the class structure, still remains more or less the same

In my field today, the major problem is mostly funding; it is seen as an extravagance. Physics requires a lot of research and its applications may not be apparent for many years to come. You can point to numerous examples where it has been useful and necessary in the real world throughout history.

Its ultimately that conception, the need to make cuts to funding has the most profound impact on the field. Its a fundamental issue and requires a fundamental change. Capitalism would not be able to resolve that; there have been attempts before but they only got so far. All attempts have dissolved backwards. It slows down the development of technology.

Maz, an IT Business Analyst from Newcastle, said the meeting was very informative, it covered important aspects of the revolution. I wasnt clear on whether the revolution was a coup or not, but today I found out that it wasnt the case. This conception is something that is widely misunderstood, or intentionally portrayed as such  Even though [the revolution] was 100 years ago, the impact is still there, and there is much more to learn from it, which I would like to pursue.

Capitalism today is wearing a different mask, but there is still inequality and wage slavery. On the other side there are still those genuine socialists who will take up the fight for equality, sharing and fairness. It is just a matter of raising awareness and making the public aware.

People cant afford to live in todays world, and this is something that needs to be changed. Its like someone fighting to breathe; fighting for socialism is not a lifestyle, its a fight for survival. The next thing would be how are we going to sustain the gains of our revolution. This would be a question I will ask for next time.

Robert, a local retiree, said that he came to the meeting to hear a socialist perspective of history and present-day events, because the current information from the education system and the mainstream media is distorted, particularly with regards to this fake news rubbish.

Censorship worries me more than anything. I dont fully agree with your perspective yet, but you should have a right to be heard. Censorship is the thin end of the wedge and it has to be fought against.

The ruling class only want workers to be smart enough to use machines, to do the paperwork for the system. They dont want them to think freely. They dont want them questioning society; thats their worst nightmare!

At the Brisbane meeting, Michael, a performing arts worker, asked about the role of art and artists in society, including in the Russian Revolution and today.

I appreciate the way our questions were clarified in the meeting. I studied art for two years, so I am interested in how art has influenced people. The answers given were good. Artists can express things in a way that other people can relate to, because its a kind of universal language, he said.

Except for World War I, which I knew something about, all the other information was new. I learnt a lot about history, the past and whats been going on. I had not really known much about the prominent figures back then, so it was good to get their backgrounds, what they did, and what their influences were.

Definitely, the Russian Revolution offers a way forward, he said. There needs to be something that changes things. The present system is not really suited for the past or the future.

Wendy and Harry, both currently unemployed, said they came to the meeting to find out more about the Russian Revolution and what they could do to help the movement. Wendy said: Looking around the world, there might not be much hope of change, but there might be in the future.

Harry commented: Historical context is very important. You cant just ignore the past. I liked the way you talk about the reasons behind things, and try to get down to the reasons first. Its always important to keep clarifying the reasons. I understand the class structure and the class battle we are talking about.

It was good that you opened up the floor [to questions]. Its good that we had different people talking. That was handy. Wed love to explore the ideas you have  We need to talk more. We have to do this again!
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The Socialist Equality Party (Australia) held well-attended meetings in Melbourne, Newcastle and Brisbane during the past fortnight to commemorate the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution and explain its contemporary relevance.

The meetings are part of centenary events being organised in North America, Europe, Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand organised by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement, and publisher of the World Socialist Web Site.

Entitled 100 years on: The significance of the 1917 Russian Revolution for today, the Australian meetings, which involved extended reports by leading party members accompanied by audio visual presentations, provoked a range of thoughtful questions from the workers, students and youth in attendance. These included numerous questions on the revolution itself, the danger of nuclear war and the SEPs anti-war program. Intense discussions continued on these and other issues after the meetings ended.

Over 50 people attended the Melbourne meeting on November 26, including university and high school students, teachers, health workers, artists and retirees. It was addressed by Will Morrow, a member of SEP national committee, and SEP national secretary James Cogan.

Cogan told the meeting that the Russian Revolution was the most progressive social and political event of the 20th century. It had powerfully demonstrated that the working class, providing it has been consciously prepared and is politically guided by a genuine Marxist leadership, can be transformed into an immense material force capable of achieving revolutionary change.

Cogan pointed out that the revolution was not the outcome of national factors:

World War I and the Russian Revolution represented the responses of antagonistic classesthe capitalist class and the working classto the epoch of imperialism This epoch is defined by the inability of capitalism to resolve the contradictions between world economy and national-state divisions, and between private ownership and socialised production by the working class.

The contradictions that propel the ruling classes toward war among themselves, and to suppress the working class of their own countries, also generate the impulses that propel workers in all countries into struggle against their own capitalists.

The speaker warned that all the factors that had produced WWI and WWIIthe private ownership of the means of production, the struggle between rival capitalist powers for control of markets, resources, colonies, profits and strategic interestswere present in the contemporary situation and leading to another world war.

Such a catastrophe, he continued, could only be prevented and humanity taken forward by ending capitalism and establishing a world planned socialist economy, under the democratic control of the working class.

Cogan explained that this perspective required the construction of a unified international revolutionary Bolshevik-type party and a detailed study of the Russian Revolution and the political program, developed by Lenin and Trotsky, upon which it was based. It also demanded the ongoing political exposure of those who falsely claimed that the Bolsheviks lacked popular support and that the Stalinist bureaucracy, which emerged in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution, was not an aberration but an inevitable product of the revolution.

The ICFI categorically rejected these historical lies, Cogan said, explaining the mass working-class character of the Russian Revolution, the defeat of working class revolutions in Europe and the economic isolation of the workers state that had produced Stalinism and its nationalist repudiation of Marxist internationalism.

In all its policies, both in regard to the international situation and within the Soviet Union, the Trotskyist opposition advanced a clear, unambiguous alternative to Stalinism, Cogan said.

The speaker told the meeting that the only political movement that today advanced the Marxist program that had led the Russian Revolution, was the ICFI and urged all those in attendance to study its revolutionary perspective and join and build it as the leadership of the international working class.

The Newcastle and Brisbane meetings were held on December 3. Nick Beams, former SEP national secretary and leader of the Trotskyist movement for more than 40 years, was the key speaker at Newcastle, preceded by Max Newman, a member of the SEP national committee, while SEP member Gary Alvernia spoke in Brisbane, followed by the main speaker, Linda Tenenbaum, former SEP assistant national secretary.

Beams began by raising the possibility that the majority of the audience likely knew little or nothing about the Russian Revolution and its significance, and asked, rhetorically, Why is this? He replied, It is not your fault, but the outcome of a systematic campaign by the ruling class and their ideologists in the mass media and universities to either suppress any knowledge of the revolution, or  to bury it beneath a mountain of lies, slanders and falsifications.

Beams went on to expose some of these lies and slanders by detailing the actual role of the Bolshevik Party in educating and mobilising the working class, the nature of the complex political problems and issues that it faced, and the role of Lenin and Trotsky in providing the necessary leadership to overthrow the capitalist regime.

Beams stressed the critical role of the revolutionary party in the historical process. Without a prepared cadre, the working class cannot take political power. This is the significance of the work of the SEP in building that leadership.

In answer to a question likening revolutions to biological mutations, Beams explained, Just as Charles Darwin discovered the laws of evolution in the natural world, so Marx uncovered the laws of the development of society and it is made up of living, conscious, human beings, who make decisions, unlike rats. Revolutions, he continued, resulted from conflicts between the growth of the productive forces and the social relations within which they have developed.

In Brisbane, Linda Tenenbaum provided a detailed overview of the Russian revolutionfrom February to October 1917and the strategic significance of the intense political struggles waged by Lenin inside the Bolshevik party that were critical in preparing the working class for the seizure of power.

She reviewed Lenins intransigent insistence on demarcating the independent internationalist political orientation of the working class from every form of nationalism and opportunism, and the unique contribution made by Trotsky, in his theory of permanent revolution, to the perspective that guided the socialist revolution in Octoberregarded by Lenin and Trotsky as the opening chapter in the world revolution.

A range of questions was discussed in Brisbane. These included how socialist ideas were developed in Russia and circulated amongst Russian workers in the years prior to the revolution, the relationship between the working class and the peasantry, and why art is such an important component in the development of social consciousness and human empathy.

A lively discussion also developed over the political agenda behind the medias sexual witch-hunt against prominent artists, and its recent extension to the publication of unidentified and unsubstantiated allegations against acclaimed Australian actor Geoffrey Rush.

While it is not possible to detail all the important issues raised and discussed at the SEP meetings, the audiences at all three were deeply engaged throughout.



One indication of the serious and appreciative response was reflected in donations of more than $2,600 to the SEP and the purchase of more than $300 of Marxist literature, including several copies of Why Study the Russian Revolution?

The final 100 years on: The significance of the 1917 Russian Revolution for today, meetings in Australia and New Zealand will be held in Wellington, the New Zealand capital, and in Sydney on December 14 and 17 respectively.

All those looking for a serious discussion on the Russian Revolution and the key political tasks facing the international class today are encouraged to attend.

Wellington

Thursday, December 14, 6.00 p.m.

Russell Keown House

Corner of Laings Road and Queens Drive

Lower Hutt

$5/$3

Sydney

Sunday, December 17, 2.00 p.m.

Petersham Town Hall

107 Crystal St

Petersham

$7/$5
A Russian federal investigation, opened in 2015 into the killing of the Tsarist family by the Soviet government in 1918, will now take up the veracity of a fascistic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory which presents the execution as a ritual killing. For almost a century, this argument has been the stock-in-trade of the anti-Semitic far-right and fascist forces throughout Europe, which have presented the Russian Revolution as the outcome of a Jewish conspiracy.

A senior investigator of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee, Marina Molodtsova, declared at a press conference on November 27 that the agency plans to appoint psychological-historical legal expertise to investigate the possibility that the murder of the Tsarist family had the character of a ritual killing. The press conference was attended by a delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church, which is headed by the Patriarch Kirill, the highest priest of the Church.

The Russian Federal Investigation Committee has already reviewed the ritual killing theory twice, in the mid-1990s and in the late-2000s. It was debunked both times. The Russian Orthodox Church has refused to acknowledge the findings and has continued to press for a reopening of the case and an investigation of this conspiracy theory.

According to Molodtsova, the Committee is now in the process of forming an expert council, which would comprise not only members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, historians and archivists, but also priests of the Russian Orthodox Church. In this latest reopening of the case, the commission has worked together with the Russian Orthodox Church--a hotbed of anti-Semitism, Russian chauvinism and fascist theories--on a scale that is hitherto unprecedented.

At the same conference, the bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, who is rumored to be the confessor of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said: We are treating the ritual killing theory with the utmost seriousness. Moreover, a significant part of the church has no doubts that this is precisely what happened.

There can be no mistake about what is going on: Amid a profound political and economic crisis, the Russian state is involved in a systematic effort to legitimize and propagate fascist and anti-Semitic attacks on the October Revolution. The announcement by Molodtsova came just a few days after the airing of an anti-Semitic slander film about Leon Trotsky that was shown on Russias most widely watched, state-owned Channel 1. (See: Russian televisions Trotsky serial: A degraded spectacle of historical falsification and anti-Semitism)

The fraud of ritual killings is an old anti-Semitic prejudice, dating back to the Middle Ages. The so-called blood libel purports that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children to drink their blood for Jewish religious rituals. This was used as the pretext for countless pogroms in early modern Europe and in the final stages of the Russian Empire.

Tsar Nikolai II, toppled in the February Revolution of 1917, threw the weight of his entire government and state machinery behind the pogromist and anti-Semitic Black Hundreds. A man of extraordinary ignorance and bigotry, Nikolai II made every effort to propagate the anti-Semitic and ignorant idea of ritual killings in the Beilis Trial of 1913, in which Mendele Beilis, a simple Jewish worker from a factory in Kiev, was falsely accused of having murdered a little boy in a ritual murder. In one of the most shameful and grotesque show trials of history, Beilis had to spend over 26 months in prison, while the real murderers of the boy, who had actually confessed the crime, were used as witnesses in the trial.

The Beilis Trial discredited the Tsarist family and the Russian government as a whole both at home and abroad. Thousands of workers, educated by the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), read about this show trial, based on the most primitive and backward lies, with increasing fury. The case was so preposterous and obviously fraudulent that even the jurors, handpicked by the government and drawn from the most backward and prejudiced layers of the peasantry, could not help but find Beilis not guilty.

In a commentary for the social democratic Die Neue Zeit, Leon Trotsky wrote in November 1913: In the Kiev ritual murder trial, the government has publicly revealed not only its boundless perfidy but also its weakness. The Kiev trial has revealed the unbridgeable gulf between this monarchy of the Black Hundreds and all historically viable social classes and has made both sides look into the depth of the abyss that separates them. In this way, the trial has transformed itself into a historical fact which is the harbinger of a new epoch of profound revolutionary upheavals.

Four years later, the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd.

The charge that the execution of the Tsarist family was a ritual murder originated in the anti-Semitic propaganda of the supporters of the Tsar who desperately tried to overthrow the new workers state. In the midst of their bloody struggle against the fledgling Soviet regime and its Red Army, the Whites undertook an investigation into the execution of the Tsarist family. The findings of this investigation were published in a book that was authored by General Mikhail Dikhterikhs, one of the most right-wing, cruel and backward generals, first of the Tsarist Army and then of the Whites.

His main finding was that the execution of the Tsarist family was a ritual murder. Bound up with this was the idea that the Bolshevik seizure of power was part of a Jewish conspiracy to rule Russia. Dikhterikhs went on to fight the Red Army until the very end of the Civil War in 1922, in what he called a religious crusade against Bolshevism. Anti-Semitic propaganda like this played a key role in mobilizing local ultra-right and nationalist forces against the Red Army. In what were the greatest anti-Jewish massacres in European history before the Nazi Holocaust, at least 150,000 Jews were killed in horrific and bloody pogroms, above all in what is now Ukraine. Countless women were raped and hundreds of thousands of children were turned into orphans.

The Whites were eventually defeated by the Red Army, but their theories lived on and found bloody expression with the Nazi movement that came to power in 1933. A crucial element in Nazi ideology was the conception of the 1917 Revolution, and of the Marxist movement in general, as part of a Jewish conspiracy. Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, one of the main Nazi ideologues, had in fact been heavily influenced by the theories of the Russian White emigres.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote, in 1925: In Russian Bolshevism, we have to recognize [erblicken] the attempt undertaken by Jewry in the 20th century to assume world domination. In 1935, his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels described Bolshevism as the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself. The blood libel was also a frequent component of the anti-Semitic rants in Julius Streichers Nazi paper Der Sturmer.

On the basis of the bogeyman of Jewish Bolshevism, the Nazis and the Wehrmacht leadership were able to mobilize fascist forces throughout the occupied Soviet territories and Eastern Europe, especially starting with the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The result was the most horrific genocide in history, the murder of some 6 million European Jews, including about 1.5 million Jews in the former Soviet Union. The war waged by the Nazi regime against the USSR as a whole claimed the lives of at least 27 million Soviet citizens and devastated large parts of the European part of the country.

Enmeshed in a historical crisis and terrified by the legacy and reemerging appeal of the October Revolution, the Russian oligarchy now seeks to embolden and strengthen fascist forces on a hitherto unprecedented scale. There can hardly be a greater indictment of the results of the destruction of the Soviet Union at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy and of the Putin regime that has emerged from it.
Union membership among American teachers is in a steady, and in some regions precipitous, decline.

The percentage of US public school teachers participating in unions has dropped by 9 percent since 1999-2000, according to the 2015-2016 National Teacher and Principal Survey. Today, 70 percent of elementary or secondary teachers in public schools are union members, down from 79 percent in 1999-2000.

Overall, workers in education, training and library occupations have a 34.6 percent union membership rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 50 percent in 2013 and 53 percent just a decade ago. As recently as 1984, teachers union coverage was 64 percent.

Unprecedented losses of teacher union membership have occurred in: Wisconsin (-58.3 percent), Arizona (-49.6 percent), North Carolina (-47.8 percent), Tennessee (-33.5 percent), Idaho (-28.9 percent), Indiana (-26.5 percent), with many other states recording double-digit losses.

Unionization rates in the private sector, including manufacturing, have fallen for decades, plummeting to a historic low of 6.4 percent in 2016, down from 11.9 percent in 1983 and a peak of 35 percent in 1954. Although the percentage of unionized public-sector workers fell to 34.4 percent last year, it was still five times more than the private sector rate.

Two interrelated processes contributed to the falling unionization rate for teachers. First, the Obama administration accelerated the assault on teachers and public education on behalf of Wall Street hedge funds and other school privatization interests. The 2008 financial crash and the subsequent budgetary crises of states and local school districts was used to effect a historic defunding of public education, eliminating the jobs of an estimated 366,000 teachers and other school employees.

While the Democratic president bailed out Wall Street with no strings attached, Obama increasingly tied federal education funding to the expansion of largely nonunion charter schools and test-based schemes used to fire staff and close so-called failing traditional public schools.

Obamas Race To The Top, a hunger games-style competition for funding of school districts had devastating effects. In Louisiana, virtually the entire New Orleans school system was turned over to charters, and in Michigan, the birthplace of the autoworkers union50 percent of Detroit students now attend the mostly nonunion charters. Teachers are hired on the cheap, with no pension benefits, or seniority rights. The drop in teacher union membership in both states has been dramatic, a drop of 37.6 percent in Louisiana and 26 percent in Michigan since 2011.

Far from opposing the attack on public education, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) were the first unions to endorse Obama in both 2008 and 2012, and they worked assiduously to implement his corporate-backed school reforms. When struggles erupted against school closings, teacher layoffs and privatization, as in the 2011 mass protests in Wisconsin, the 2012 Chicago teachers strike and the wildcat teacher sickouts in Detroit in 2016, the unions worked to smother these struggles and shore up the Democratic Party.

AFT President Randi Weingarten justified the unions compliance with the grave erosion of teachers rights with the cynical phrase school reform with us, not against us Both she and the AFT, as well as the NEA, have accepted substantial funds from the billionaire proponents of privatization, Bill Gates and Eli Broad.

Right to Work

The second factor in the decline of teacher unionization rates was the spread of right to work laws, which stipulate that employees are not compelled to join the union in unionized workplaces. Largely pushed by Republicans, like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and right-wing billionaires, including the Koch brothers and the family of Trumps education secretary Betsy DeVos, these measures have been successfully enacted in 28 states, including former union strongholds such as Michigan and Indiana in 2012, Wisconsin in 2015, West Virginia in 2016, and Missouri in 2017.

While Democrats like Obama have traditionally relied on the unions to impose their pro-corporate agenda, the Republicans have utilized right to work laws to severely weaken the unions, undermining the financial support they provide the Democratic Party.

This process is expected to be exacerbated this year with a likely decision by the US Supreme Court in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 . This case could illegalize agency feesthose required in some states by employees who opt out of union membership. Because these fees are often nearly equal to the cost of dues, should this measure pass, a further major exodus from the public service workers unions is anticipated.

The union executives blame these legal changes for their loss of membership, while denouncing teachers who opt out as freeloaders for not paying for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut with the complicity of the unions. In fact, the laws only accelerated the dissolution of the unions, which has long been underway.

In a vote of no confidence in the unions, teacherswho for many years had the highest rate of unionization among any section of the working classhave voted with their feet and withdrawn from the unions by the tens of thousands.

What the right to work laws do show is that once the state backing of the unions is removed, and the employers no longer automatically deduct dues from workers paychecks, the unions are incapable of retaining the large numbers of members who see no point in paying tribute to organizations that abandoned their interests long ago.

The union bureaucracy has responded to the spread of such laws by doubling down in its collaboration with Democrats and Republicans, demonstrating to the state the value of maintaining the unions to suppress the class struggle and impose its reactionary agenda of tax cuts to the rich and draconian austerity for the rest of the population.

The real interests of the union tops

On the basis of their nationalist and pro-capitalist orientation, the unions were incapable of responding in any progressive way to the global integration of production and the historic decline of American capitalism. The United Auto Workers and other unions abandoned any connection to the traditions of the class struggle and openly embraced labor-management partnership and their transformation into the direct tools of the corporations.

The teachers unions, which once provided nominal protection for teachers and pressed for an expansion of the share of national income that went to public services, have degenerated into organizations that impose austerity, attacks on teachers jobs and living standards, and prevent opposition to school closings and privatization.

They have come to represent, not the interests of the membership, but of a well-heeled upper-middle class layer entirely hostile to workers and devoted to maintaining their top-level state connections. Focused on suppressing the class struggle and safeguarding their bloated salaries through a steady stream of dues, or coerced agency fees, this union bureaucracy is a breed apart.

NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia last year took in $416,633 in salary and expenses, while AFT President Randi Weingarten netted $497,300, putting them both at or near the top 1 percent of earners.

Additionally, they maintain an extensive apparatus, a well-paid cadre of over 1,000 salaried positions at the national level. This reporter counted a total of 396 NEA operatives on the payroll with countless officials, associate directors and organizational specialists, each bringing home from $100,000 to $430,000 annually. An average teachers salary is $56,383, with large numbers of teachers earning far less. Only a few administrative assistants and limited term employees draw such modest salaries at NEA headquarters.

In point of fact, the AFT and NEA have been transformed into business entities and money managers. Weingarten was ranked #1 on Institutional Investor magazines 40 most influential players in US pensions in 2013, according to Axios. The union has involved itself in myriad enterprises, including credit cards and insurance peddled to the membership.

In March or April 2017, Weingarten held a secret meeting with Stephen Bannon, Trumps fascistic aide who was then White House chief strategist. In addition to seeking a political alliance with Trump, it was widely speculated that Weingarten also discussed investing some of the teacher union pensions funds in infrastructure projects being planned by the Republican administration.

The historic decline of union membership among teachers highlights the extent to which these unions exist only at the behest of the government. Without state sanction and the automatic dues checkoff system, the unionsincapable of commanding the allegiance and loyalty of teachersare deservingly suffering a shipwreck.
TEQUESTA, Fla. (WTXL) - The defense team for a former Florida State student accused of killing a south Florida couple and chewing the face of one of the victims intends to rely on insanity.

Court documents filed Tuesday, show defense attorney, Nellie L. King, claims the night of August 15 of 2016, Austin Harrouff was suffering from a full blown psychotic episode.

Authorities say the 19-year-old is accused of fatally stabbing Michelle Stevens and John Stevens outside their home and then biting John's face.

Harrouff is facing first degree murder charges in the death of the Stevens and injuries to their neighbor, Jeffrey Fisher.

The defense plans to call Dr. Phillip Resnick, the Director of Forensic Psychiatry at University Hospitals Cleveland Medicine Center, as an expert witness in the case.

To see the full story, please click here.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee man and his elderly parents have been arrested after a failed scheme to steal from a CVS Pharmacy.

David Holmes Sr., 75, David Holmes Jr., 39, and Martha Holmes, 74, were all arrested early Tuesday morning.

Police were called to the CVS on West Tennessee Street by a manager who told them that he saw the theft via an in-store camera.

The manager said it started when he saw an elderly man, later identified as David Holmes Sr., standing at the counter returning items. The manager said he had a "bad feeling" that the items were stolen and went to check the surveillance video.

The video showed a younger man, later identified by police as David Holmes Jr., who walked into a store and took three items off a shelf. An older woman, Martha Holmes, came in the store shortly after and walked near Holmes Jr.

Holmes Jr. then placed the items into Martha's bag, walked to the front of the store to grab a shopping cart, and began shopping. Martha then walked out of the store and got inside of a white car.

A few minutes later, Holmes Sr. got of the car Martha was in and walked into the store. That's when he went to illegally return the stolen items.

The manager says Holmes Sr. was given a CVS money card worth just under $50 for the returned items. After receiving the card, Holmes Sr. walked over to Holmes Jr. and gave him the money card to pay for groceries.

Police were able to confirm the manager's statements via the surveillance video and went to speak with the Holmes family who were all sitting inside the white car outside the store.

Holmes Sr. and Martha both admitted to the crimes, saying that their actions were part of the plan they had worked out earlier. Holmes Sr. even admitted the three had done this before.

All three were arrested for petit theft and remain in jail, each on a $1,000 bond.

Police say both Holmes Sr. and Holmes Jr. have had eight prior convictions for theft. Martha has had seven. All three were also on probation at the time of their arrest.

We reported on Holmes Sr. and Martha back in July 21, when they were accused of stealing $14,000 worth of cigarettes from a Wal-Mart. You can see the full story here.
SNEADS, Fla. (WTXL) - The Florida Department of Corrections will host a recruitment event at the Apalachee Correctional Institution.

Apalachee CI is one of several facilities offering a $1,000 signing bonus to new hires.

The department says people seeking jobs should bring these items: drivers license, legible copy of birth certificate, social security card, high school diploma, GED or college transcripts, and any name change documents (if applicable), such as a marriage certificate.

Veterans and reservists/Guardsmen should bring a copy of their DD-214 or military ID, respectively.

To take the Criminal Justice Abilities Test (required for employment), you should bring a $12 money order payable to the Florida Department of Corrections.

The event will be Friday, Dec. 8, at 9:00 a.m. Officials say people seeking to be hired should arrive no later than 8:30 a.m.

The Apalachee Correctional Institution  Training Building is at 1796 Gulf Power Road in Sneads.

For employment information, contact Recruitment Officer Brittany Baggett at (850) 593-9506 or email Brittany.Baggett@fdc.myflorida.com.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

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Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Strong words were exchanged on Twitter Thursday between Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum and Florida's commissioner of agriculture.

Gillum and Putnam, both running for Florida governor, were duking it out on Twitter Thursday after a tweet from Putnam regarding a PolitiFact article:

PolitiFact wrote that while Gillum has made comments vowing to fight against President Donald Trump's attack on sanctuary cities, they found no record of Gillum pushing for a statewide policy on the matter.

As a result of their findings, PolitiFact rated Putnam's claims as "Half True."

In response, the Republican gubernatorial candidate thanked PolitiFact on Twitter for the "Half True" and asserted that no such policy would happen on his watch.

About 30 minutes later, Gillum responded with a clap back of his own, calling the commissioner "half true and all racist":

"Im proud to stand up for all people," Gillum wrote, "precisely what Floridians expect of their leaders."

Putnam later retweeted a response to Gillum's comment that said, "It is not racist to want to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. It is @AdamPutnam s goal to keep Floridians safe from criminals, particularly those who are in our country illegally, like the person who shot Kate Steinle."

What do you think about sanctuary cities?
WASHINGTON, DC (WTXL) - Florida Rep. Neal Dunn spoke in support of a bill that would make it easier for gun owners to legally carry concealed weapons across state lines.

Dunn expressed his support Wednesday for the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which the House approved 231-198. Now Senators will consider the bill.

The act will ensure that valid concealed carry permits are recognized in other states that allow concealed carry. It will also allow those who live in Constitutional carry states the ability to carry in other states that recognize the right to concealed carry.

The act will also allow those with concealed carry permits to carry in National Parks and in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

This is the first gun legislation in Congress since mass shootings in Nevada and Texas killed more than 80 people.

Many gun-rights groups support it, including the National Rifle Association. Rep. Richard Hudson (NC-08) introduced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act and it has 213 cosponsors in the House.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

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Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - City Commissioners have appointed Bill Hollimon to fill Seat 1 on the Citys Independent Ethics Board.

The attorney's three year-term will run from Jan. 1, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2020. He will be eligible for reappointment to a second term in the only position filled by the City Commission.

Since 2010, he has owned his own law firm. He has focused on areas that include patent, trademark, and copyright prosecution and litigation, and mediation of complex litigation.

Prior to his legal career, he worked as an engineer in the utility industry.

Hollimon will work with existing Ethics Board members Cecil Davis, State Attorney appointee; Richard Herring, Florida State University appointee; Bryan Smith, Florida A&M University appointee; Bruce D. Grant, board appointee; and Renee McNeill, board appointee.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

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Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee woman is accused of participating in a bank fraud scheme involving stolen checks from mailboxes all over Tallahassee.

Brittany K. Fullwood, 23, was booked into the Leon County Detention Center on Wednesday and remained there Thursday on $15,000 bond.

She is charged with one count of defrauding a financial institution, two counts of attempting to impersonate another person without consent, and grand theft of $300 or more but less than $5,000.

Fullwood cooperated with Akeem Jones in the scheme, according to a court document.

Jones, 23, who faces more than 40 charges for bank fraud, was taken into custody in July 2017. He remained in the Leon County Detention Center on Thursday.

Investigators said the scheme involved the depositing of stolen and altered checks, which came from all over Tallahassee, into the victims' accounts without consent.

Withdrawals were then made for the maximum amount of money allowed.

Court documents say that surveillance video shows a man resembling Jones and a woman resembling Fullwood depositing and withdrawing checks at different banks from April 21, 2017, to May 2, 2017.

The scheme involved branches of Bank of America, First Commerce Credit Union, Capital City Bank.

The Tallahassee Police Department investigator said that three checks were deposited into an account belonging to Fullwood via ATM. Two checks were altered and made payable to Fullwood before they were deposited.

Once the checks were deposited, Jones immediately withdrew the money, the investigator wrote.

MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go.

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Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Juvenile Services Unit of the Tallahassee Police Department is seeking information on the whereabouts of missing 15-year-old boy, Samondre Ealey.

Investigators say Ealey was last seen on Saturday, November 4, in the area of 3215 Mission Rd. in Tallahassee. Ealey is a dark skinned black male, 140 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

Reports say Ealey has medium length black dreads/twists. He was last seen wearing a black t-shirt, black pants, and red sneakers.

Police say he is known to frequent West Tennessee St., Blountstown Hwy. and the Jackson Bluff Rd. Skate Park.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Tallahassee Police Department at (850) 891-4200.
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Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy.

The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party.

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Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters.

Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month.
YORK - From the sandy beaches of Dominican Republic to snowy forests of Sweden, 339 elementary and middle school students from the York area explored the world at the annual Cultural Geography Fair hosted by York College on Friday.

College students spent months preparing for the event, researching everything from the natural resources to the national pastimes of the countries selected. Teams of students presented food, costumes, language, games and fun facts about Columbia, Nepal, Greece, Ethiopia, Germany, Samoa, Kuwait, Dominican Republic, Sweden, Zambia, Brazil and Mexico at this years event.

The Geography Fair, now in its sixth year, is organized by Christi Lones, assistant professor of history. She sees great value in the project for her students as well as the elementary and middle school students who attend.

[The college students] are so passionate about this project, she said. To see the younger kids and their excitement, thats worth all of the worry, work and stress to make this event happen every year. Those kids love it. Its great for our students, too.

The group work component is vital to the project, said Lones, noting that she, like most of her students, prefers solo tasks to group projects. I tell my students, in all of your life, both professionally and personally, you will have to work with other people. This is good practice.

Loness Cultural Geography class is a general education course, so students from all majors are included. One of the key purposes of the class is for students to see that different doesnt mean weird, says Lones. Theres value in learning why are they different. You come to a place of respect, she said. Whether its Swedens very generous policy on maternity leave or Ethiopias 13-month calendar, people around the world do things differently, and one cultures ways are not necessarily better or worse than anothers. Were studying culture as a whole. Hopefully they walk away from this project with a deeper understanding of what they take for granted as normal and with a bigger worldview.

At the end of the Geography Fair, young students left campus with passports full of country flag stickers, bags of crafts and coloring pages, and minds full of information about the wide world. Some YC students were left with a kindled passion for travel and research.

Eric Smith, a senior from Greeley, Colorado, explored the African nation of Zambia with classmates. He says the experience made him want to travel, to Zambia (where hed like to bungee jump and see Victoria Falls) and places far beyond. When I do travel, I will do research like this before I go, he said. This was a good way to learn about different people and places. Chris Baker, a freshman from Dodge City, Kansas, had a similar experience researching the Dominican Republic. After learning about the people, culture, and challenges, he says visiting the island nation is now on his bucket list.

Stella Newman, a sophomore from Livingston, Montana, has visited the country she researched for her project a number of times, as she has family there. However, the experience of studying Sweden academically and presenting the information stretched her. I learned a lot of interesting facts and I was really excited to share about the country with children.
Sydneys housing and unit markets have tumbled from their peaks and are starting to decline, according to Herron Todd Whites National Property Clocks for December 2017.

As Sydney moves further into 2018, the property market will continue to decline, placing it on a similar footing with Brisbane, Canberra, and Perth.

For greater Sydney, 2017 was a year that saw continued growth but at a lower rate than in previous years, the firm said in its December 2017 Residential Report. Recent months have shown signs of slowing even further. This was widely anticipated and our prediction of slower growth as the year progressed proved correct.

Dwelling values first began dropping in Sydney in September, falling 0.1% lower during that month, according to CoreLogic. By November, dwelling values had dropped by 0.7% to be 1.3% below the market peak.

At the start of this year, demand outstripped supply, which kept the wider residential market buoyant. However, prices and demand have begun to soften in recent months.

In more recent months we have seen selling periods extend closer to longer term averages and prices begin to stabilise and even fall in some areas, the report said. As the market moves from a sellers market to a buyers market, the instances of sales results well above asking prices are becoming far less frequent.

Nevertheless, local agents note that quality properties are still highly desired and are continuing to record strong results.

They are just taking slightly longer to sell with a reduction in the number of interested buyers compared to previous years, the report said.

Related Stories:

Will Sydneys house prices rebound in 2018?

Strategic site acquisitions in Sydney
Pasco County Sheriffs Office(PASCO COUNTY, Fla.) -- Two police helicopter pilots in Pasco County, Florida landed in a community center parking lot and chased down a suspect this week after he allegedly aimed a red laser at them from the ground, blinding them temporarily, police said Wednesday.



Pasco County Sheriffs Office pilots Stephen Bowman and Tim Bullis were assisting deputies on the ground with a barricaded suspect call on Tuesday evening when the man began to flash the bright laser at them, the Pasco County Sheriffs Office said in a statement.



The suspect aiming the laser at the aircraft was blinding the pilot and causing a hazard while interfering with the mission of the aircraft, the statement said. The pilot was forced to disengage from the primary mission and address the laser suspect.



In a cockpit video released by the sheriffs office, the pilots said they counted a total of 10 laser beam flashes.



It blinded us for a couple of seconds. Extremely painful, Bowman added in an on-camera interview with ABC affiliate WFTS. "At night, low and making turns and you get struck by a laser, couple seconds and you can fall a couple hundred feet."



Bowman, a five-year veteran of the sheriffs air unit, said there were no officers available on the ground to investigate the incident, so he landed the plane in the Portuguese American Cultural Association parking lot and did it himself.



It wasnt long before he had arrested a suspect, Ryan Fluke, 27, for misuse of laser lighting devices.



Police said Fluke initially denied any wrongdoing, but he later confessed to the crime. He was released from the Pasco County Jail Wednesday on a $5,000 bail, according to court documents. It was not clear if he had obtained an attorney.



He said that it was for fun. He said that he didnt realize that a laser can travel a long distance even though we were only about 800 feet away from him, Bowman said.



Pointing a laser at an aircraft is a felony punishable by five years in jail, according to the FBI.



The FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration have been tracking laser strikes since 2005 and they even launched an initiative to crack down on lasing.



In 2014, the bureau said it would offer up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
News

Washington, DC - First Lady Melania Trump and Second Lady Karen Pence will travel to Texas today, to continue their efforts in assisting those affected by this years devastating hurricane season.

Upon arrival to Corpus Christi, the two will participate in a meet-and-greet with first responders who are part of the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort. Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Pence will then travel to Rockport, Texas to meet with a family whose home was destroyed in the hurricane, and tour the homes remains. They will also see the familys new Manufactured Housing Unit, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will serve as the familys temporary residence until they can move into a new, rebuilt home.

Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Pence will also visit a local elementary school, touring classrooms and speaking with faculty and students about the hurricane. The two women will conclude their day in Texas with a stop at a local food bank to meet with volunteers and help sort boxes of donations.

The effects of the hurricane season are still being felt throughout southern portions of the United States and in Puerto Rico, and residents still need our help, said First Lady Melania Trump. While I am heartened by the strength and resilience of those impacted by the storms, I will continue doing all that I can to lend a voice and shine a spotlight on those who need assistance to rebuild and start new family traditions. As Christmas and the New Year approach, I encourage people to lend their time volunteering or providing financial support to those still reeling from the hurricanes.

Our hearts are encouraged by the people of Texas and their continued enthusiasm to help each other pick up the pieces and rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, said Mrs. Karen Pence. I am looking forward to the opportunity to accompany the First Lady in Texas and to visit with families and their children in the communities most impacted by the storm. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the people of Texas.
Latest News

Washington, DC - Statement by President Trump on Jerusalem:

Diplomatic Reception Room 1:07 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the worlds challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city -- and so importantly -- is Israels capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the laws waiver, refusing to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital city.

Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.

Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.

I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.

Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace.

It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem -- the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.

For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.

Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.

Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.

But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israels capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done.

That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.

In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.

In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.

Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With todays action, I reaffirm my administrations longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region.

There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation.

This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach.

So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.

I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud, and diverse, vibrant and strong. But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance, and terror.

Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.

It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations, and people, to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate - not violence.

And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.

So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities. And finally, I ask the leaders of the region -- political and religious; Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish and Christian and Muslim -- to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians. And God bless the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you.

(The proclamation is signed.)
Latest News

Washington, DC - At the Federal Trade Commissions request, a federal judge has banned the operators of a fraudulent investment scheme from selling investments and ordered them to pay more than $6.5 million for return to consumers.

According to an FTC complaint filed in June 2016, many people lost thousands of dollars to the Discount Gold Brokers scheme, which marketed gold and silver as investments, but often failed to deliver the goods. The defendants ran ads in national media and touted gold and silver as a safe retirement investment on their website. Many consumers, including older Americans, used their retirement savings to pay the defendants. Yet in numerous instances, defendants entirely failed to send consumers the gold or silver ordered and refused to provide refunds.

On October 4, 2017, U.S. District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II granted the FTCs request for summary judgment against Donald Lee Dayer and his wife, Katherina Dayer. On October 23, 2017, Judge Wright issued a final judgment and order banning the Dayers, Michael Scott Berman and DiscountMetalBrokers, Inc. from selling investment opportunities, misrepresenting any good or service, and violating the FTCs Mail, Internet or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. The order imposes a judgment of $6,526,559 against the defendants, which represents their unjust gains between 2012 and 2014.

The Mail, Internet or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule requires sellers soliciting orders via mail, internet, or phone to have a reasonable basis to expect that they can ship merchandise within any advertised time frame, or within 30 days if no specific time frame is promised. It also requires that, when the promised shipping time cannot be met, the seller must obtain the buyers consent to a shipping delay or cancel the order and promptly refund payment for the unshipped merchandise.
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VILLANOVA, Pa.  Harris Corporation (NYSE: HRS) has donated $1.25 million to the Villanova University College of Engineering to fund a summer innovation incubator program that helps propel the next generation of engineers. The donationwith $1 million going towards endowing the program and the other $250,000 towards programmatic support represents the largest single corporate contribution the College of Engineering has ever received.

The donation permanently funds and provides additional support for the Villanova Summer Innovation Incubator, which will be renamed the Harris Summer Innovation Program. The program exposes students to advanced real-world engineering challenges and fosters innovation and an entrepreneurial approach to problem solving. It encourages an open environment for self-directed teams of students to work on solutions to major engineering challenges.

Harris and Villanova share a common belief in the power of project-based engineering learning, said William M. Brown, Harris chairman, president and CEO. We are one of the top-hiring companies for graduates of Villanova engineering programs and are proud to be associated with the university and this innovative program.

The program also creates an open-design model to engineering problem solving that Villanova professors can fold into undergraduate education. After working on the engineering challenge, the teams of students in the program will make a presentation to Harris company leaders, mentors and engineering managers at the companys headquarters in Melbourne, Fla.

Harris Corporation has been a visionary partner for the College of Engineering, and has made a significant investment of time and resources in supporting our students and graduates success, said Gary A. Gabriele, PhD, Drosdick Endowed Dean of Engineering. We are honored to receive this generous gift, and look forward to creating an even more distinctive experience through the Harris Summer Innovation Program.

We are grateful to Bill Brown and Harris Corporation for the lasting impact this gift will have on Villanova engineering students, said Michael J. ONeill, Senior Vice President for University Advancement. The Harris Corporations generous commitment will not only further enhance a unique student opportunity; it also will support Villanovas growing endowment, which is a vital resource for the Universitys future. This is an extremely exciting gift in what has already been a historic comprehensive capital campaign here at Villanova.

To date, more than $705 million has been raised through For the Greater Great: The Villanova Campaign to Ignite Change.

About Villanova University: Since 1842, Villanova Universitys Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition has been the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students in the University's six collegesthe College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Villanova School of Business, the College of Engineering, the College of Nursing, the College of Professional Studies and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Ranked among the nations top universities, Villanova supports its students intellectual growth and prepares them to become ethical leaders who create positive change everywhere life takes them. For more, visit www.villanova.edu .
Gandhinagar: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will once again be in Gujarat, landing in the state on the eve of the first-phase polls, to campaign in north and central Gujarat regions for the second phase of the state Assembly elections.

Gandhi, who had to cancel his previous campaign visit after visiting just one place in Anjar in Kutch due to bad weather and the `Ockhi` cyclone alert, will be addressing more public meetings than scheduled during his two-day visit.

On Friday, the Gandhi scion will be visiting Chota Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Kheda and Anand districts, regions of the second phase of the elections. And on the following day, he will visit Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts.

Rahul Gandhi will be addressing a public meeting at APMC ground in Pavi Jetpur in Chhota Udepur district on Friday noon. Continuing with his temple visits, which the ruling BJP party has been scoffing at, Gandhi will go to the Mogal Dham Mandir in Ranesar in Ahmedabad district. Later in the afternoon, he will address a public gathering at the ground opposite Super Gas in Ranesar.

In the early evening hours, Gandhi will hold a corner meeting in Anand district`s Tarapur and later another corner meeting at Kheda district`s Limbasi near the Rice Mill.

In Anand district, Gandhi will be welcomed by local Congress leaders in Mangrol and Sojitra Chokdi regions, after which he will address a public gathering at Vyayamshala Ground, Loteshwar Bhagol in Anand. His night stay will be in Vadodara.

On Saturday, the day of polling for the first phase, Gandhi will be in Patan, Banaskantha and Mehsana districts, the region said to be the Patidar bastion.

He will arrive in Patan district`s Chanasma by chopper from Vadodara and hold a public a meeting at Harij around at noon. He will reach Banaskantha district`s Vadgam by chopper and address a public meeting in Chappi in the afternoon. Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani is contesting as an independent from Vadgam constituency.

From Vadgam, Gandhi will fly by chopper to Vadnagar, the home town of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and address a public meeting in at around 4 in the evening. The place falls in the Unjha Assembly seat of Mehsana district. From Modi`s hometown, Gandhi will take a Yatra Bus to Vijapur, another place in Mehsana district, the region believed to be a Patidar fortress.

At 6 p.m., Gandhi will address a large gathering in Vijapur on the Ladol road in Mehsana. The Mehsana Assembly constituency seat is held by the Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat, Nitin Patel.
Beirut: The head of Lebanon`s powerful Hezbollah movement on Thursday called for a mass demonstration in protest at US President Donald Trump`s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel`s capital.

"I call on everyone to take part in a mass popular demonstration to protest and denounce this American aggression and this unjust... decision," Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address.

The demonstration is to be held on Monday in Beirut`s southern suburbs, a bastion of Nasrallah`s Shiite movement.

"I am calling on men, women, young and old, the southern suburbs, Beirut and all those who wish to join in from across Lebanon," Nasrallah said, also inviting residents of Lebanon`s 12 Palestinian refugee camps.

Trump on Wednesday announced that his administration was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that was widely condemned as inflammatory.

Most of the international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel`s capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through negotiations with the Palestinians.

Trump`s move sparked threats of a new intifada by the Palestinians and fears of a fresh eruption of violence across the region, but the response of Arab nations has been relatively muted.

Nasrallah, whose military organisation holds the southern region of Lebanon bordering Israel, stopped short of threatening any direct action himself and instead put the onus on Arab governments to provide support to the Palestinians.
The rat kept crawling over Phekan Manjhi's arm as he battled to pin it to the ground before he eventually managed to kill it with repeated blows to the head.

The execution drew applause from neighbours huddled around the 60-year-old in a grimy courtyard outside his mud and straw hut. Another meal lined up for the Rat Eaters -- some of India's poorest people.

Phekan said it would take 15 minutes to prepare the rat stew, as he dissected the animal with his fingernails.

"Almost everyone here loves this and knows how it's prepared," he added.

Phekan is one of about 2.5 million Musahars -- 'Rat Eaters' -- one of India's most marginalised communities. Even the browbeaten low-caste Dalits look down on them.

"They are the poorest amongst the poorest and rarely hear about or get access to government schemes," said Sudha Varghese, who spent three-decades working among Musahars in the northern state of Bihar, where most live and survive as dollar-a-day labourers.

"It's a daily struggle for the next meal and diseases like leprosy are an everyday reality," added Varghese, who was awarded India's top civilian honour for her work.

Phekan's neighbour in the village of Alampur Gonpura, 28-year-old Rakesh Manjhi, bemoaned his life.

"We sit at home all day with nothing to do. Some days we get work at the farm, on other days we go hungry or catch rats and eat it with whatever little grain we can get," Rakesh said.

"Governments may have changed but nothing has changed for us. We still eat, live and sleep as our ancestors," said Phekan as he took the roasted rat off the fire and poked the tender meat.

He cut the flesh with his hands into a bowl and added mustard oil and salt.

The feast disappeared in seconds as a dozen men and half-naked children grabbed what they could.

"Nothing but education can change our lives and future," said Jitan Ram Manjhi, who in 2014 became the first Musahar chief minister of any Indian state.

His nine-month tenure heading Bihar, one of India's most populous states, is considered a huge achievement for the Musahars.

"My community is so downtrodden that I think even government records don't yet show its real numbers, which could easily be around eight million," Jitan Ram added.

As a child, the former minister herded cattle for a rich landowner who employed his parents as labourers.

"They were almost like bonded labourers, getting one kilogram of grain for each day's work. Even today, things haven't changed much for many," he added.

While there are well-intentioned programmes are often privately-run -- like the Shoshit Samadhan Kendra residential school for Musahar boys on the outskirts of Patna.

"I started the school around a decade back with only four students and today it has 430, from remote Musahar communities across the state," founder J.K Sinha said.

He discovered how Musahars live while on a police raid as a young officer four decades ago.

"They were cramped in a small hut with pigs and the filth. It was shocking. Inhumane. I can't forget it," Sinha said.

RU Khan, the school principal, said the Musahars face discrimination, seclusion and squalor wherever they gather.

"Most still only work as farm labourers who are forced to catch rats or snails in fields and scavenge for grain if the crop fails," Khan said.

Out of 430 pupils at Shoshit Samadhan Kendra, 117 lost their fathers at an early age.

"Once here, it takes us at least a month to teach them the most basic personal and social skills -- like using toilets, personal hygiene, washing hands or eating food," Khan said.

The regular education only starts after. But once given a chance, the boys are proud to get the opportunity to improve their lives.

Bihar's Welfare Department Minister Ramesh Rishidev insisted that life has improved for the Musahars.

"We've been working hard with the different communities, which includes the Musahars," the minister said.

"Our workers go to the communities to get their young enrolled in schools. They are linked to government skills and training projects to get them employment opportunities," he added.

Rishidev said that while in the past the Musahars ate rats to stave off hunger, most now do so out of a "cultivated taste and not compulsion."

"Some from the older generation still eat rats because it is like any other food they have. Most of the younger generation don't eat it. Things have improved and will further change," he added.

Many Shoshit Samadhan Kendra boys are the target of jokes when they return to their villages for holidays however.

"We often hear stories how their village friends taunt them to catch rats or scavenge for other food with them, like they used to earlier. And under pressure, some of them do," Khan said.
New Delhi: The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in June approved the proposal to introduce a Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, 2017.

The government tabled the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017 in August in the Lok Sabha, which was referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament.

The committee is expected to submit its report in the upcoming winter session of Parliament beginning 15 December.

The Bill would provide for a comprehensive resolution framework for specified financial sector entities to deal with bankruptcy situation in banks, insurance companies and financial sector entities, a government statement had said.

The government explains Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill 2017 thus:

The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance, Bill 2017 when enacted, will pave the way for setting up of the Resolution Corporation.

It would lead to repeal or amendment of resolution-related provisions in sectoral Acts as listed in Schedules of the Bill.

It will also result in the repealing of the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, 1961 to transfer the deposit insurance powers and responsibilities to the Resolution Corporation.

The Resolution Corporation would protect the stability and resilience of the financial system; protecting the consumers of covered obligations up to a reasonable limit; and protecting public funds, to the extent possible.

The proposed Bill complements the Code by providing a resolution framework for the financial sector.

Once implemented, this Bill together with the Code will provide a comprehensive resolution framework for the economy.

Government outlines the following merits of Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017

The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017 seeks to give comfort to the consumers of financial service providers in financial distress.

It also aims to inculcate discipline among financial service providers in the event of financial crises by limiting the use of public money to bail out distressed entities.

It would help in maintaining financial stability in the economy by ensuring adequate preventive measures, while at the same time providing the necessary instruments for dealing with an event of crisis.

The Bill aims to strengthen and streamline the current framework of deposit insurance for the benefit of a large number of retail depositors.

The Bill seeks to decrease the time and costs involved in resolving distressed financial entities.

Controversial Provisions in the Bill

The FRDI Bill has received flak from various stakeholders for some of its controversial provisions including a bail-in clause which suggests that depositor money could be used by failing financial institutions to stay afloat.

The Resolution Corporation (rescue body), proposed under the Bill, can use your money in case the bank sinks. The bill empowers the rescue body to decide the amount insured for each depositor.

Under Section 52 it can even cancel the Rs 1 lakh insurance that you get under the current law because the Bill aims to repeal the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, 1961.

Section 52, Explanation II says, The purpose of bail-in is to absorb the losses incurred, or reasonably expected to be incurred, by the covered service provider and to provide a measure of capital for it so as to enable it to carry on business for a reasonable period and maintain market confidence in it.

Section 53 explains powers of a bail-in instrument in relation to securities:

A bail-in instrument may

(a) cancel or modify any securities to which section 52 applies;

(b) convert any such securities from one form or class into another, including the creation of a new security in connection with the modification of an existing security.

(c) make provision with respect to rights attaching to securities issued by the covered service provider including:

(i) a provision that specified rights attaching to securities are to be treated as having been exercised;

(ii) a provision that the Corporation is authorised to exercise specified rights attaching to securities;

(iii) a provision that specified rights attaching to securities may not be exercised for a period

specified in the instrument;

(d) provide for the listing of securities issued by the covered service provider to be discontinued.

(e) provide for securities issued by covered service provider to be transferred to the Corporation or any other entity

(f) make any other provision for, or in connection with, the transfer of securities issued by the covered service provider, whether or not the transfer was the subject of that instrument.
New Delhi: In its bid to push digitisation and promote cashless transaction, the Indian railways has started accepting payment made through Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app.

BHIM or UPI (Unified Payments Interface) promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi post demonetisation facilitates instant fund transfers between two bank accounts on a mobile platform. Details of the beneficiaries bank account are not needed for this.

The UPI based payment has been made applicable from December 1. Passengers can go to the counter with their handsets and get their reserved tickets.

The payment facilities that were activated from the starting of December is now being promoted by the Ministry of Railways via e-mails.

This facility is not chargeable for a period of three months and is safe to use as there is no need to share bank account or credit/debit card numbers, an e-mail to a customer on Wednesday read.

BHIM app facility will be available at a number of counters.

No additional charges will be levied from passengers making payment at railway counters using UPI/BHIM for a period of 3 months.

Here's how to book rail ticket via BHIM app
Key partners in the Dane County Community Restorative Court explain the program in July 2016 while sitting in a circle, similar to how meetings between victims and offenders occur: From left, UW-Madison restorative justice expert Jonathan Scharrer, Dane County Board Supervisor Shelia Stubbs, restorative court coordinator Ron Johnson, special prosecutor Barb Franks and Capt. John Patterson of the Madison Police Department's South District. Restorative Court is part of the county's efforts to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Another part of the county's effort is an upcoming Dec. 14 workshop on implicit bias.
New Delhi: The practice of dowry has long been looked down upon - and rightly so. But what if gifts are given willingly and with the noble intention of spreading awareness about the environment? That is exactly the idea Ramesh Chauhan had when he was planning his daughter's wedding.

A resident of Ratnagiri's Khed in Maharashtra, Ramesh gifted a potted plant to each guest at the wedding of his daughter - asking them to plant them in soil and help contribute to saving the environment. "A lot of harm is being done to the environment and (therefore), I decided to gift every guest at the wedding with a potted plant. Each of these plants have the potential to become fruit-bearing trees and it is my small effort to stop environmental degradation in whatever little way possible," he said, adding that the plants include mango, sapodilla (chikoo), jackfruit and cashew.

Apart from gifting the plants, Ramesh also put up posters at the wedding venue which urged people to act against environmental degradation.

State environment minister Ramdas Kadam, who attended the wedding, was visibly impressed with the initiative and said he hoped more such events were organised. "I feel proud to have come to this wedding. Perhaps this is the first wedding ever in whole of Maharashtra where the massage of planting trees has been spread," he said.
Brussels: EU President Donald Tusk will make a statement Friday on Brexit, the EU council said, as Britain and the bloc hope to agree terms to their divorce.

"President Tusk will make a press statement on Brexit tomorrow at 7:50 am," the council said in a tweet Thursday.
After terming demonetisation as organised loot and monumental disaster, former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday reiterated that the notes ban was disastrous. Addressing a gathering in Rajkot in poll-bound Gujarat, the veteran Congress leader said that we should avoid such blunder like demonetisation in future.

Hitting out at the Narendra Modi government, the former prime minister alleged that a large chunk of black money was converted to white during notes ban. He also said that millions of jobs were lost due to the move and new jobs were not created.

Terming the move as a disaster, Singh claimed that none of the decisions by his government hurt the poor.

According to the Congress party, Singh is in Rajkot for an interaction with teachers, professors and professionals on matters of concern.

Earlier this month, Singh had attacked Prime Minister Modi over government schemes, referring to hardships faced by people during demonetisation.

He had said, "I invoke memories of more than 100 people who lost their lives while standing in queues as a result of demonetisation. I say with immense pain and a sense of deep responsibility that November 8 was a black day for our economy and democracy."

He had also said that it was too early to conclude that the economic slowdown has reversed as the 6.3 per cent growth rate in the July-September quarter did not take into account the small and medium sector which suffered huge losses in the aftermath of demonetisation and hasty implementation of GST.

"It is too early to conclude that this represents a reversal of the declining trend observed in the previous five quarters. Some economists believe that the CSO which released the figures has not adequately captured the impact of demonetisation and GST on the informal sector that accounts for about 30 per cent of the economy," Singh had said.

The former prime minister said that while Modi claimed to understand Gujarat and the poor "more than anybody else", how was it that "he never understood the pain his decisions unleashed".
Ahmedabad: A vituperative campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls that saw emotive issues of religion and caste competing with that of development as the main rivals, BJP and Congress, launched no-holds-barred attacks on each other ended Thursday evening.

The sparring between the two parties while canvassing for the polls, dubbed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon to be Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, continued till the very end with Manishankar Aiyar's "neech aadmi" jibe at Modi triggering a controversy.

A total of 89 seats -- out of 182 -- spanning the Saurashtra and south Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Polling will be held on Saturday.

Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) B B Swain said around 2.12 crore of the 4.35 crore voters of the state were expected to exercise their franchise on Saturday.

The Election Commission (EC) had earlier announced that Gujarat would be the second state after Goa where the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system would be used, along with electronic voting machines (EVMs), at all the 50,128 polling booths.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties' campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

The poll narrative kept changing with issues such as the Ayodhya title suit, Gandhi's imminent elevation as the Congress president and his visits to temples being raised by the BJP brass.

The campaign mainly shaped up as a duel between Modi and Gandhi, with the latter emerging as the Congress' pivot to take on the might of the prime minister on his home turf.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Gandhi, has mainly targeted the "hollow Gujarat development model" to slam Modi.

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state.

Kutch is the largest district in Gujarat, comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Of the 58 seats in Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP had won 35 in the 2012 Assembly polls and the Congress 20. Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the now-defunct Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) of Keshubhai Patel and one by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

In 2007, the tally of the BJP and the Congress in Saurashtra and Kutch stood at 43 and 14 respectively, while the NCP had bagged one seat.

Of the 35 seats spread across the seven districts of south Gujarat, the BJP had won 28 and the Congress six in the 2012 polls. The remaining seat was won by "Others".

The 2009 tally for the BJP and the Congress stood at 19 and 14 seats respectively in south Gujarat, while two constituencies had gone to "Others".

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) -- both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJP's new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim- dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The contest for the 12 seats in Surat, the diamond and textile hub of the country as well as a BJP bastion, is being viewed as a referendum on the note ban and GST, as the BJP is facing a stiff opposition from the trading community.

The campaign was marred by a number of controversies, with the latest being Aiyar's off-the-cuff remarks against Modi, which the latter termed an "insult to Gujarat" while addressing a rally in Surat.

Earlier, a row had erupted over the Youth Congress' online magazine tweeting a meme of Modi, mocking his English speaking skills and raising his "chaiwalla" past.

Similarly, Gandhi's visit to the famous Somnath temple had triggered a controversy over his faith.

Shedding his "reluctant politician" persona, Gandhi, during his campaign, had interacted with the traders in Surat, who vented their ire against demonetisation and the "complicated GST structure".

Subsequently, the Congress vice-president had attacked the Modi government over the "four-tier" GST structure and sought rationalisation of the indirect tax rates.

For the BJP, Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani had held the fort to defend the GST and note ban, while trying to allay the concerns of the traders and textile merchants during their interactions with them.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 15 rallies, while Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

BJP president Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the saffron party, had also addressed a number of rallies, mainly targeting the Congress and Gandhi.

The BJP had also drafted in Union minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The Congress had fielded former prime minister Manmohan Singh and prominent leaders such as P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, to name a few, for canvassing.

A big takeaway for the Congress from these polls is ensuring the support of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an umbrella organisation of the numerically strong Patidar community, which has traditionally formed the bedrock of the BJP's support in Gujarat.

In its bid to form a caste bloc against the BJP, the Congress has won over Alpesh Thakor, Patel and Jignesh Mewani, who have emerged as the young Turks representing the OBCs, Patidars and Dalits respectively.

The Congress, in political wilderness in Gujarat for nearly 22 years, is desperate to break the jinx. It has raised issues such as the BJP's "hollow development model", "the prime minister's proximity with select industrialists", besides demonetisation and GST, at the hustings.

Polling for the second and final phase, comprising 93 seats spanning north and central Gujarat, will be held on December 14. The counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
AHMEDABAD: The high-octane campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls, viewed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon-to-be Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, will come to an end on Thursday.

A total of 89 seats - out of 182 - spanning the Saurashtra and South Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Voting will be held on December 9.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Rahul Gandhi, has mainly targeted the "hollow Gujarat development model" to slam Modi.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties' campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state.

Kutch is the largest district comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Of the 58 seats in Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP had won 35 in the 2012 Assembly polls and the Congress 20. Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the now-defunct Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) of Keshubhai Patel and one by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

In 2007, the tally of the BJP and the Congress in Saurashtra and Kutch stood at 43 and 14 respectively, while the NCP had bagged one seat.

Of the 35 seats spread across the seven districts of south Gujarat, the BJP had won 28 and the Congress six in the 2012 polls. The remaining seat was won by "Others".

The 2009 tally for the BJP and the Congress stood at 19 and 14 seats respectively in south Gujarat, while two constituencies had gone to "Others".

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress' Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) -- both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJP's new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim- dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The contest for the 12 seats in Surat, the diamond and textile hub of the country, is being viewed as a referendum on the note ban and GST, as the BJP is facing a stiff opposition from the trading community.

During canvassing, Gandhi had interacted with the traders in Surat, who vented their ire against demonetisation and the "complicated GST structure".

Subsequently, the Congress vice-president had attacked the Modi government over the "four-tier" GST structure and sought rationalisation of the indirect tax rates.

For the BJP, Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani had held the fort to defend the GST and note ban, while trying to allay the concerns of the traders and textile merchants during their interactions with them.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 14 rallies, while Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

BJP president Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the saffron party, had also addressed a number of rallies, mainly targeting the Congress and Gandhi.

The BJP had also drafted in Union minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The Congress had fielded former prime minister Manmohan Singh and prominent leaders such as P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, to name a few, for canvassing.

The campaign mainly shaped up as a duel between Modi and Gandhi, with the latter emerging as the Congress' pivot to take on the might of the prime minister on the latter's home turf.

A big takeaway for the Congress was ensuring the support of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an umbrella organisation of the numerically strong Patidar community, which traditionally formed the bedrock of the BJP's support in Gujarat.

In its bid to form a caste bloc against the BJP, the Congress won over Alpesh Thakor, Patel and Jignesh Mewani, who have emerged as the young Turks representing the OBCs, Patidars and Dalits respectively.

The Congress, which is in political wilderness in Gujarat for 22 years, is desperate to break the jinx. It has raised issues such as the BJP's "hollow development model", "the prime minister's proximity with select industrialists", besides demonetisation and GST, at the hustings.

The second and final phase of the polls will be held on December 14 and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.
Vadodara: BJP contestant from Dabhoi Assembly seat in Gujarat, Shailesh Sotta on Thursday courted controversy by allegedly saying that the population of "topi and dadhiwalas", an apparent reference to Muslims, should be "reduced".

He also said that he came to Dabhoi to "instill fear" and that if sporadic communal clashes were not stopped a "befitting reply" would be given.

"If any 'topi, daadhiwala' (anybody wearing a cap and sporting beard) is sitting here (in the crowd), then pardon me, but there is a need to reduce their population. Many leaders asked me not to say this, as it may go against me, but if 90 percent of people are supporting me, then why shall I stop speaking about the 10 percent people?" Sotta purportedly said at what appeared to be a small gathering in Dabhoi town in Vadodara district.

The video of the speech he made in Gujarati has gone viral.

"(They say) don't talk about the community in which you are born (Hindu), and if you want to talk about that (the community), then don't contest election. But I will fight election for the religion in which I am born," Sotta purportedly said.

Sotta, a Vadodara councillor who is contesting Assembly polls for the first time, said they (Muslims) will have to stop sporadic clashes (communal incidents) or they will get 'eent ka jawab pathhar se (tit for tat response).

Dabhoi is going to polls in the second phase on December 14.

"There was a meeting of a peace committee in which a 'tadipaar' (externed criminal) said that he is scared of the BJP candidate (Sotta). There is nothing wrong in this," he said.

He said he came to Dabhoi to "scare people" and not the other way round.

"I came here to scare people. I am here not to get frightened, but to make others frightened. And if anti-social elements remain scared, then it is required for this place," he said.

Sotta could not be contacted on phone for his reaction.

He is pitted against senior Congress leader Siddharth Patel.

After Sotta's video was aired by some news channels, Ahmedabad-based social worker Nishant Varma filed a complaint with the State Election Commission against Sotta over his "highly communal and instigating" comments against the Muslim community and for "violating the poll code".

"He (Sotta) is clearly heard saying that Muslim population must be reduced in the area, and that Muslims will face 'eent ka jawab pathhar se'. He is saying all this to appease 90 per cent (Hindu) voters and not the rest 10 per cent," Varma said in his complaint.

"He (Sotta) is referring to Muslims as 'topi and daadhiwala' which is completely unacceptable and a clear violation of the model code of conduct as well as various provisions of the CrPC and IPC," he said.
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Thursday stayed the Election Commission's (EC) directive that the polling agents appointed by the candidates in the upcoming state Assembly election should be residents of the area covered under the polling booth concerned or neighbouring booths.

A division bench of justices Akil Kureshi and A Y Kogje passed an interim direction, stating that a candidate contesting the election could appoint any voter or resident from the constituency as his or her polling agent at any polling station.

The court also issued notices to the EC and the chief electoral officer, Gujarat, seeking replies by December 20.

The Gujarat Congress unit and the party's candidate from the Gondal constituency, Arjun Khataria, had challenged the EC's direction, contained in a handbook where the criteria for appointing polling agents were spelt out.

The handbook states that the polling agents should be residents of the area covered under the polling station concerned (where they are sought to be appointed) or neighbouring polling stations.

The petitioners had contended that the EC had no authority to frame such guidelines under the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

This amounted to usurping of the candidate's powers to appoint polling agents of his or her choice, the petitioners had said.

Gujarat will go to the polls in two phases -- on December 9 and December 14.
New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi lashed out at the BJP, saying that by not coming out with its manifesto for poll-bound Gujarat it has shown "unbelievable disrespect" to the people of the state.

Polling for 89 assembly constituencies in the phase one will be held on December 9. The second phase voting will be held on December 14.

"The BJP has shown unbelievable disrespect towards the people of Gujarat. Campaign is over and STILL no mention of a manifesto for the people, no vision and no ideas presented for Gujarat's future," Gandhi said on Twitter.

Congress's chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also hit out at the saffron party, tweeting, "Using 'jumla' (rhetoric) is only their (BJP's) manifesto."

The Congress had released its manifesto for the election last Monday.

'Special category' quota for weaker communities with similar rights enjoyed by OBCs, farm loan waiver, setting up of 'Indira canteens' to provide nutritious food for labourers at Rs 10 are some of the highlights of its manifesto.
SURAT: Posters have been put up in some areas of Surat calling for Muslims to unite and support Congress so that Ahmed Patel is made the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

However, clarifying his position, Patel said that he is not the CM candidate and will not be one in the future too. "This is a misinformation campaign by the BJP as now they know they are going to lose. I was never the CM candidate and neither will I ever be," Patel said.

Party vice president Rahul Gandhi has been leading the charge of campaigning in the poll-bound state. However, there has been no word on who will be the CM candidate for the Congress in the state if it wins the elections.

Some of the front runners in the race are Leader of Opposition Shankarsinh Vaghela and Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Bharatsinh Solanki, national spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil, Arjun Modhwadia and Siddarth Patel.

Many in Congress say that they have a strong chance of beating the BJP in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state.

The BJP has been in power in Gujarat since 1998.
NEW DELHI: The Fortis Hospital on Thursday denied the allegations of bribe levelled against it by the father of the seven-year-old girl, who died of dengue.

The hospital, however, agreed to have offered a refund of his entire medical bill.

"We categorically deny assertions or allegations of any bribe being paid to Jayant Singh. Fortis did offer a refund of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the family," Fortis Hospital was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

We categorically deny assertions or allegations of any bribe being paid to Jayant Singh(father of deceased girl who was treated for dengue at the hospital). Fortis did offer a refund of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the family: Fortis Hospital  ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017

A day before, on Wednesday, father of the minor child accused the hospital of offering him a total of Rs 35,37,889 for assuring to stop his social media campaign and any legal action against them.

"Senior members of Fortis had met me and offered me a cheque worth Rs 10,37,889 refunding the entire amount. They also said they will be offering me Rs 25 lakh cash on top of this, saying I will have to sign and enter into a legal agreement assuring to stop my social media campaign, or going to court and taking legal action against them," Singh was quoted as saying by ANI.

Senior members of Fortis met me, offered me a cheque worth Rs 10,37,889 refunding the entire amount: Jayant Singh, Father of the deceased girl #Fortis #Gurugram pic.twitter.com/hW0wOy3NWD  ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2017

They also said they will be offering me Rs 25 lakh cash on top of this, said that I will have to sign, enter into a legal agreement assuring to stop my social media campaign, or going to court and taking legal action against them: Jayant Singh, Father #Fortis #Gurugram pic.twitter.com/FN31giK57V  ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2017

The Haryana government had ordered the probe allegations against a Gurugram- based private hospital for overcharging the family of a 7- year-old girl, who died of dengue.

The girl was admitted to the Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI), Gurugram in September this year. The parents of the girl alleged that they were billed Rs 16 lakh, which also included the cost of 2,700 gloves.

The hospital had earlier refuted the charges, claiming that the patient's family was informed about the bill on a daily basis and that there was no medical negligence.
Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh Police on Thursday celebrated its first Raising Day, 68 years after the appointment of the first chief of the force in the state.

Governor Acharya Devvrat, who was the chief guest on the occasion, called upon the police to project its "friendly image" and said "good behaviour can win over the hearts of the people and instill confidence among them".

The governor exhorted the police personnel to "learn lessons from the past and work in a friendly manner with full responsibility".

"Law and order always remains foremost priority of any civilised society and therefore, the police has an important role to play," he said, adding that it was?a matter of satisfaction that the police was performing its duties with responsibility in every sector.

Devvrat called upon the individuals, parents, NGOs and the police to collectively fight the?drug menace, especially among the youth, in the state.

"Eradicate the demons of peddling as people earning money by supplying drugs are the worst as they spoil generations and should be punished," he said.

Highlighting the main activities and programmes being carried out by the police in the state, Director general of police Somesh Goyal said "Himachal has been ranked the first for the implementation of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS)".

A colorful cultural programme was presented by the jawans on the occasion.

Former governor of Nagaland and former state DGP Ashwani Kumar, chief secretary V C Pharka and senior police officials were also present on the occasion.
Hyderabad: A 65-year-old man has been arrested on Thursday for allegedly clicking photographs of women clandestinely in a metro train here, police said.

N Narasimha, a retired employee of the education department, was apprehended by the police's "She Team" which is entrusted with looking into cases of eve-teasing and stalking, police said.

"He was found "capturing" photographs of women and girls seated in front of him in the metro train without the knowledge or permission of the latter," Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh M Bhagwat said.

The officer added that some more photos were found in the man's phone.

" He was booked under IPC section 354-C (voyeurism) and was placed under arrest," Bhagwat said.
Securing India's border in extreme conditions requires - among other things - bravery, sacrifice and patriotism. The brave soldiers of Dogra Scouts lack none of these three as they patrol the border with China in far-flung areas of Himachal Pradesh at a giddying altitude of 14,000 feet.

The path less travelled on

Reaching Pooh - a small town in Kinnaur district in HP - is a massive task in itself. The last town of any significance before reaching the Dogra Scouts' base which is even higher, the road to Pooh is considered one of the deadliest. There is a constant threat of roads being washed away or the odd boulder hutling down at menacing speeds. And when winter beckons, expect the roads to slide under a deep blanket of snow completely. While Border Roads Organisation (BRO) does undertake regular repair works, the element of certainty is a scarcity.

From here and onwards towards Dogra Scouts' base, soldiers are seen at regular intervals to ensure that any unfortunate event can be averted.



Where the head is held high and the mind is without fear

Ordinary men won't usually dream of putting their life at risk to travel to far-flung places - let alone stay there for months. But then, soldiers of Dogra Scouts are no ordinary men. They are extraordinary warriors.



One look at the thoroughly-trained soldiers stationed at Dogra Scouts' base shows just why one requires enormous amounts of bravery and patriotism to battle the extremes of mother nature. Enviable energy and permanent passion reflect in their expressions and actions as soldiers here are regularly trained in ascending and descending steep mountains, constructing temporary bases on cliffs and on how to attack enemy intruders.



Mind over matter in battle against elements

While the high altitude in itself would make daily tasks an uphill struggle, soldiers of Dogra Scouts have to constantly bear the brunt of high wind, sub-zero temperatures and months and months of heavy snow. And under such circumstances, they routinely perform tasks that make them who they are - superheroes. Climb vertical cliffs? Done. Set up tents in almost inhospitable terrain? Done. Why, even scale Mount Everest? Done and dusted.

The valiant Dogra Scout daredevil knows no 'No.'

"In a month leading to winter, the temperature varies from four to five degree Celsius during the day to about minus eight to minus nine degree Celsius at night," says Subedar Major Pawan Singh. "In January and February, the temperature falls to about minus 18 degree Celsius. In forward posts where our soldiers are stationed, it even goes down to minus 22 degree Celsius.



Here in the Zanskar Range, life goes on regardless - courtesy special clothing and equipment. "Winds coming in from snow-clad mountains are especially dangerous for the human body and every person here needs to wear a number of specialised protective clothing including special face masks to protect oneself from chillblain," says Major Manvinder Deka.

And while staying quarters are heated using bukhari - a traditional space heater, soldiers in their free time indulge in recreational activities like gyming and enjoying music.

Line of duty

While far down below in the plains - where the country works, sleeps, laughs, cries and generally tries to make each day count, Dogra Scout warriors give their all to ensure that their fellow countrymen can indeed live a secure life. In doing so, they stare the enemy right in the face under extreme conditions - putting themselves in peril but not for once flinching. They deserve a salute and then some.

Want to show gratitude and contribute to Armed Forces Flag Day? Here's how:



1. Click on - http://www.ksb.gov.in/PaymentListRMDF.htm

2. You can also choose the UPI Code option - armedforceesflagdayfund@sbi

3. Or you can pay by Paytm number - 8800462175

4. To pay via cheque, the account number is - 34420400623 (SBI RK Puram branch)



Contributions to the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund are eligible for Income Tax exemptions under section 80 G (5) (vi).








SURAT: In the run-up to the Gujarat elections, a war of words is on between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Attacking the Prime Minister, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday called Narendra Modi 'neech' (dishonourable) and 'asabhya' (uncultured).

"Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai. (This man is extremely dishonourable and uncultured. He specialises in playing dirty politics), " Aiyar said taking potshots at Modi.

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, hit back at Aiyar at a rally in Surat claiming that the Congress leader's statement is extremely insulting. "Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy. One Congress leader, who has studied in best institutions, served as a diplomat, was a Minister in Cabinet, he said 'Modi is Neech'. This is insulting. This is nothing but a Mughalai mindset," the PM said.

The attack and counter-attack between the two leaders has brought back memories of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when Aiyar took on Modi by calling him a 'chaiwallah'.

"If he (Modi) wants, he can come and sell tea here at the All India Congress Committee meet," Aiyar had said in 2014.

Modi had latched on to the opportunity. Many believe that it was the 'chaiwallah' barb on him that gave him a headway in the election and helped him win by a massive majority.

Modi had made the barb the center stage of the election using it as a proof to show the 'arrogance of the Congress'. He and the BJP continuously said that those born in "high families" consider it an insult to fight polls against a "backward" candidate.

"They think they should fight in elections. They think they should win elections. But (to compete) against a chai wallah, they feel insulted," Modi, the then PM candidate had said.
Beijing/New Delhi: An Indian drone "crossed over" the border with China and crashed in the Sikkim sector which includes Dokalam after losing contact with the ground control, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of China's territorial sovereignty.

China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded China's airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China-India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

In New Delhi, India's defence ministry today said an unmanned aerial vehicle had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

It said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

The defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi to attend the Russia- India-China trilateral meeting.

"I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited," Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China- British Treaty.

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", he said.

Geng declined to reveal the details of the drone. He did not confirm whether the crash has taken place near the Dokalam where the two countries were locked in a 73-day-long border standoff which ended on August 28.

The standoff ended after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to India's Chicken Neck corridor.

Asked whether the protest was lodged in Beijing or Delhi, he said he is not aware of the details. "I know that China has lodged solemn representation to the Indian side," he said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Command's joint staff department said.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers all most all of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

"We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

Asked whether the drone issue would figure in Wang's talks with Indian officials when he visits New Delhi, Geng said the "goal" of the Chinese foreign minister's visit was to attend the RIC meeting.

"When he is in India he will meet with the senior officials of the Indian side. At that time, the two sides will exchange views on China-India relations and other issues of the common concern," he said.

Wang's visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
NEW DELHI: The Congress has suspended senior leader Mani Shankar Aiyar from the primary membership of the party and issued him a show-cause notice over his purported casteist slur against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The action against the long-time Gandhi-family loyalist comes as the grand old party heads into an electoral battle in Gujarat.

The announcement came after Congress president-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi asked Aiyar to apologise.

Aiyar, a former Union Minister, sought to clarify his remarks. Pointing to the fact that Hindi is not his mother tongue, Aiyar said, "I meant 'low level' when I said 'neech'. I think in English when I speak in Hindi, as Hindi is not my mother tongue. So if it has some other meaning, then I apologise."

Aiyar hails from Mayiladuthurai in the Cauvery Delta region of Tamil Nadu.

He had been attempting to make a point against dirty politics when he uttered the remarks that have now got him expelled from the Congress. "Mujhko lagta hai ki ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, isme koi sabhyata nahi hai, or aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai?" Mani Shankar Aiyar was quoted as saying, by news agency ANI.

The remarks had come in for wide criticism through the day on Thursday. PM Modi himself referred to it at an election rally in poll-bound Gujarat's Surat. "Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy. One Congress leader, who has studied in best institutions, served as a diplomat, was a Minister in Cabinet, he said Modi is 'neech.' This is insulting. This is nothing but a mindset that of the Mughals," PM Modi said.

Rahul Gandhi took the opportunity to take a shot at the BJP even as he snapped down on Aiyar's comment. "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Rahul had said in a tweet.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad condemned the remarks and called Aiyar mentally 'unfit'.

This is not the first time Aiyar's remarks on Narendra Modi have landed him in soup and been used in counterattacks from Modi and the BJP. In the run up to the 2014, it was Aiyar whose remarks about Modi's claims of having sold tea at railway station that became the 'chaiwalla' controversy. The BJP leveraged that into the 'chai pe charcha' campaign.
New Delhi: Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Thursday held extensive talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart Abu Belal Muhammad on ways to further deepen the cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.

They deliberated on enhancing cooperation in ensuring adequate cooperation between security forces of the two countries, guarding the India-Bangladesh border, official sources here said.

A number of key issues related to defence and security were discussed in the meeting, they said.

They also discussed issues of mutual concern, a senior Army official said.

The Bangladeshi Army chief is currently on a visit to India.
The Chinese state media has alleged that an Indian drone invaded its airspace and crashed. However, no details were furnished on when and where the incident took place.

A senior Chinese defence official was quoted by China-based Xinhua news agency as saying that the Chinese border troops "took a professional and responsible attitude" and carried out identification verification of the device.

The official was also quoted as saying that the alleged move by India violated Chinas territorial sovereignty, as he expressed his dissatisfaction and opposition.

On Wednesday, Chinese publication Global Times had accused India of attempting to put US against Chinas increasing naval capabilities.

Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, has said that India is provoking the US by projecting Chinese People Liberation Army (PLA) navy as a direct rival of the Americans. "The Indian media is exaggerating the rise of our naval power, as China has made clear that the development of maritime power is to protect the security of sea lanes. And the rise of the PLA navy will never affect freedom of navigation," he said.

While an increasing number of countries - especially in south and south-east Asia - suspect China of trying to increase its maritime sphere of influence, China continues to project its rapid naval advancement as an attempt to secure merchant lines. "India just wants to incite the US to cooperate with India on containing China," said Hu.

India does see Chinese navy's movement in the Indian Ocean with a certain degree of suspicion. And that may well be due to China's own expansionist policy - a policy which has been witnessed by the global community in the South China Sea conflict.

And while Chinese patrolling vessels - and its submarines, more importantly - continue to lag in quality when compared to those with American and Russian forces, the country is on a fast-track to ramp up not just quantity but quality with it.

(With AFP inputs)
NEW DELHI: Soon after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi lashed out at party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar for calling the Prime Minister 'neech', the veteran leader came out with a clarification.

In his defence, Aiyar said "I meant low level when I said 'neech', I think in English when I speak in Hindi as Hindi is not my mother tongue. So if it has some other meaning then I apologise."

He also claimed that he never called Narendra Modi a 'chaiwallah' during the 2014 elections. "You can go on the internet and check all the videos," he challenged.

His clarification comes just after Rahul asked Aiyar to apologise for his remarks. "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack Congress party. Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," the Gandhi scion said on Thursday.

Responding to Aiyar's remark, Modi said that Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy. One Congress leader, who has studied in best institutions, served as a diplomat, was a Minister in Cabinet, he said Modi is 'neech.' This is insulting. This is nothing but a mindset that of the Mughals."

The attack and counter-attack between the two leaders has brought back memories of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when Aiyar took on Modi by calling him a 'chaiwallah'.

"If he (Modi) wants, he can come and sell tea here at the All India Congress Committee meet," Aiyar had said in 2014.

Modi had latched on to the opportunity. Many believe that it was the 'chaiwallah' barb on him that gave him a headway in the election and helped him win by a massive majority.
PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Lalu Prasad Yadav slammed Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar for his "neech" remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Mani Shankar Aiyar is mentally unfit," the former union minister said.

Aiyar earlier today called Modi a "neech aadmi" (vile man) who does "dirty politics" after the prime minister targeted the Congress saying that parties seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's name tried to erase his contribution to nation building the party.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi asked senior party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar to apologise for his "neech" barb against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Expressing his thoughts on Twitter, Gandhi said that it is not the Congress party's culture to use such language against political opponents.

Soon after Congress vice president lashed out at Aiyar for calling the Prime Minister 'neech', the veteran leader came out with a clarification.

In his defence, Aiyar said "I meant low level when I said 'neech', I think in English when I speak in Hindi as Hindi is not my mother tongue. So if it has some other meaning then I apologise."

Asked about Rahul Gandhi`s tweet that he did not appreciate Aiyar`s words to address the Prime Minister, Aiyar said he could talk about it only after meeting Gandhi.

PM Modi attacked Congress leader Aiyar for calling him a "neech jaati" (low caste) man and said by this he has insulted all the Gujaratis who will give a befitting reply to the Congress by voting for the BJP in the upcoming assembly elections.

"They can call me `neech jaati`. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work," Modi told an election rally in Gujarat.
A Holmen school district employee is accused of sexually and physically abusing a child over the course of about six years.

Timothy Schilling, 47, raped the boy, beat him with a belt, slapped his genitals with a fly swatter, and urinated on him, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

The boy told police the abuse began when he was about 6 and recounted several occasions when he was raped, according to the criminal complaint. The boy described another encounter when he was about 8 when Schilling hit his bare back with a belt.

According to the complaint, Schilling slapped his face, urinated on his leg, and wrung out soiled underwear over his head when the boy struggled with wetting his pants. He also pulled on the boys genitals and hit them with a fly swatter.

Prosecutors charged Schilling with repeated sexual assault of a child, two felony counts of physical abuse of a child and four counts of disorderly conduct. The most serious charge carries a maximum 60-year sentence. He is free on a signature bond.

Schilling, an educational assistant who worked in building security, was put on unpaid leave after he was arrested Nov. 27, according to a letter the district sent to parents.

School District Administrator Kristin Mueller said in the letter that Schilling did not work in classrooms and that his employment was under review.

Mueller said Wednesday that he remains on unpaid leave.
RAJKOT: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh today said the people of Gujarat have seen though the "lies" propagated by the BJP during its 22-year-rule in the state, and took a dig at the ruling party over the 'Gujarat model' of development, saying it only benefited the top one percent of the society.

He also said the "achhe din" promise made by the BJP was "nowhere to be seen".

"Twentytwo years is a long time, and now the results are there for all of us to see. The Gujarat model of the BJP has only benefited the top one per cent of the society," he told reporters here.

Singh claimed Gujaratis have seen through the lies and the BJP's Gujarat model was being openly challenged on the streets of the state.

"Every community and class, except a few rich businessmen, are raising their voice against the inequality and injustice of the Gujarat model as operationalised by the BJP over the last 22 years," he said.

He said that in many critical areas of human development, Gujarat has "regressed in the last 22 years".

"On every social indicator, it has fallen behind states including Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu," he said, noting that if the Congress formed the government in Gujarat, it would change this.

"The Congress party has a vision for the people of Gujarat," he said.

Singh also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation and GST rollout, saying, "Modiji has betrayed the trust that the people of Gujarat had reposed in him."

The Congress leader also demanded that the Centre should release relevant documents and files relating to note ban.

"We must demand that the government release all the relevant documents and files related to demonetisation in the public domain and Parliament for security. We must avoid the repetition of such blunders in the future. India cannot afford such mistakes," he said.

He said note ban and GST have damaged the economy and caused a loss to the GDP, even as China benefited with 23 per cent year-on-year increase in India's import from China in FY 2017-18.

On the Ayodhya issue, Singh refused to comment saying that it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the matter as it was sub-judice.

"The issue is in the Supreme Court and I feel that it is not appropriate to discuss it. We (Congress) will accept whatever verdict the court pronounces on the matter," he said.

He also welcomed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's nomination for the top party post and expressed confidence in him saying that he would take the Congress to newer heights.

The Congress veteran also slammed the Modi government for "not taking any action to curb corruption".

"It should take action, just like the Congress-led UPA government had taken," he said.

On the Centre's Jammu and Kashmir policy, Singh said that he was not aware if the government has achieved anything on the issue.
NEW DELHI: Days after Maharashtra Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla raked up claims of the party presidential election process being 'rigged', another leader on Thursday raised questions over the election process.

On Thursday, Congress leader Ayub Ali claimed that his nomination papers for the post of Congress president were rejected by Returning Officer of Congress central election authority Mullapally Ramachandran without any valid reason.

Ayub claimed that the officer at the election authority told him that there could be no other candidate for the post other than Rahul Gandhi himself.

"On December 3, I went to the Returning Officer of Congress central election authority Mullapally Ramachandran and told him that I would like to stand for the Congress Presidents post. Suddenly, he got angry and told me that there will only be one candidate  Rahul Gandhi. He then asked me to leave immediately," he told ANI.

"Eighty-nine nominees have been proposed for the post from all over the country. There are two sets of nomination papers to be filed with conditions. Still, Ramachandran ji did not accept my nomination. He could have told me whether I had filed my nominations properly or not," he added.

However, Ramachandran rubbished the Ayub Alis claims and denied there being any wrongdoing in filing of nomination.

"No nomination was received before December 4. The form shown by Ayub Ali is also of a wrong format. The forms for nomination were only in English and no Hindi form was issued. There is no receipt or my signature on the same. He is just doing cheap publicity."

Despite not being 'allowed' to contest against Rahul Gandhi, Ali said he would back the elevation of the party vice-president.

"I am not angry with Sonia Ji (Gandhi) and will always remain the leader of the party. When Rahul Gandhi takes over, I will respect him and he will also remain our party's leader. I won't challenge my nomination in the court. I will not allow Congress party to go down the drains," Ayub Ali said.

A few days ago, Poonawalla had dubbed Rahul's election as party chief as "Mughal style coronation" and said it is a "black day" in the history of the grand old party. Notably, he was the first Congress leader who had alleged that the party president's election was rigged to favour Rahul.

He had also alleged that party's spokesperson Manish Tewari had told him during a conversation that the Congress was a "proprietorship" like every other political party in India.
NEW DELHI: Retaliating at senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's 'neech' barb against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that the Congress Party has challenged the weaker and backward sections of India.

Hitting out at Aiyar's deplorable remark, Jailtley said, "Mani Shankar Aiyars neech remark against the Prime Minister displays a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the neech.

"The Congress Party has challenged the weaker and backward sections of India by calling the Prime Minister as neech. The strength of Indias Democracy will be displayed when a person of humble background politically defeats the dynasty and its representatives," Jaitlkey tweeted.

Earlier Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that the "first family" never tolerated a Prime Minister from outside their fold and always tried to destabilise them.

Earlier in the day, Aiyar called Modi a "bahut neech kisam ka aadmi" who is practising "dirty politics".

"He (Modi) is 'neech kism ka aadmi' (a vile man) who has no 'sabhyata' (civility)," he said, attacking Modi after the latter accused the Congress of seeking votes in B R Ambedkar's but trying to erase his contribution to building India.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi asked Aiyar to apologise for his "neech" barb against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Expressing his thoughts on Twitter, Gandhi said that it is not the Congress party`s culture to use such language against political opponents.

Mani Shankar's controversial remarks came after the Prime Minister said parties seeking votes in BR Ambedkar's name tried to erase his contribution in nation building and did little to build the Ambedkar International Centre conceived 23 years ago.

Modi, who inaugurated the centre in the heart of the national capital in Janpath, also took a jibe at Rahul Gandhi's comment on being a Shiva devotee and said some parties talked more of Baba Bhole (Lord Shiva) than Babasaheb.

While appealing to the people to vote for BJP, the PM said, "Nothing can stop me from giving back to the poor what belongs to them."
NEW DELHI: After creating a huge controversy with his 'neech' remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday said that Indian Muslims should not be held responsible for what 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed does.

While addressing a session titled, 'The Current State of India-Pakistan Relations', Aiyar, in an apparent reference to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime at the Centre, said the biggest issue of nation-building is integrating Muslim community into rest of country.

While addressing the session along with Pakistan's former foreign affairs minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the bureaucrat-turned-politician was quoted by ANI saying, "There is a large section in India that believes Muslims were responsible for India's vivisection and therefore draws parallel between Muslims who created Pakistan and the Muslims who remained in India."

"Are we going to integrate them (Muslims)? Can we do it if there is a hostile relationship with Pakistan? We are damaging our own nationhood by enabling Islamabad to continue being considered enemy territory for no reason other than that it is inhabited and created by Muslims," Aiyar further said.

While calling for dialogue with the neighbouring country, Aiyar said, "We need to work out ways of consolidating our own nationhood and one very important aspect of that is somehow creating a relationship with Islamabad which will enable Muslims living in our country not to be held responsible for what Hafiz Saeed does or did or will do."

Earlier in the day, Aiyar called Modi a "neech aadmi" (vile man), who did "dirty politics", kicking up a row on the last day of campaigning for the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly polls.

Facing flak, the Congress suspended its senior leader from the primary membership of the party over his purported casteist slur against the Prime Minister. The action against the long-time Gandhi-family loyalist comes as the grand old party heads into an electoral battle in Gujarat.
NEW DELHI: Reacting to the US' announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, India said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India's position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US.

President Donald Trump had yesterday recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing decades of US and international policy on the holy city.

Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions.

The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trumps announcement as a historic landmark," but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts, and Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called for a general strike and rallies on Thursday to protest.

The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.

Trump`s decision fulfills a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support.
New Delhi: Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not caring about the country's future and being concerned only about electoral politics.

He also alleged that the prime minister was making statements without checking facts and urged him to be careful in future and verify before he stated things like he appeared for the Sunni Waqf Board before the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya case.

Sibal said he appeared for Mohd Iqbal Ansari, whose lawyer M R Shamshad had engaged him to appear for him, and not the Sunni Waqf Board.

Noting that the country is passing through "a difficult phase", the former union minister said the prime minister making a national issue of who he appears for as a lawyer in the Supreme Court "speaks only of his mindset and his priorities for the nation".

"I feel sad that we have a prime minister who doesn't care for the future of India but is only concerned with electoral politics.

"Let us unite rather than divide the country. Let us take it forward instead of pulling it back by making statements that do not behove the status of the office of the Prime Minister," he told reporters.

Alleging that the prime minister is given to making statements "without checking facts", which he repeated yesterday, he said, "He (PM) should have verified before making a statement that I appeared for the Sunni Waqf Board before the Supreme Court."

Sibal said he also should have verified whether Haji Mehboob, whom Modi thanked, is a member of the Sunni Waqf Board.

"It is also surprising that my appearing for a party in a court proceeding, which is my professional right, has eclipsed all other issues which are of immediate national concern. I don't think that I am important enough for the prime minister to make it a national issue as to who I appear for in court proceedings," he said.

Noting that the country is passing through a difficult phase, he said demonetisation "robbed" poor people of their legitimate money leading to loss of lives, livelihood and jobs, while GST "destroyed" businesses from which one is yet to recover.

"It impacted GDP and cost the economy over 3 lakh crore. This is actual and not presumptive loss," he said.

The prime minister, he said, must address the nation on the following national issues: farmers are committing suicide and agricultural output has gone down, exports have declined, the youth is jobless, textile workers are up in arms, the informal sector is in utter disarray and despair, education and healthcare need urgent attention.

He alleged that healthcare is inaccessible to the poor, people can't breathe in many cities in India.

"The people of Gujarat now realise that the Gujarat model of development has led to the poor getting poorer and the rich enjoying the benefits of BJP's policies. The prime minister's schemes have also not delivered. All these issues are not important for the prime minister. What is more important is who I appear for in a litigation," the former minister said.
Kolkata: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday asked five eastern states sharing boundaries with Bangladesh to be extra vigilant against influx of Rohingyas and illegal immigrants through the porous Indo-Bangla border.

At a meeting of chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura here, he said a border protection grid on the lines of Unified Command set up in insurgency-hit states will soon come up in these states to check illegal infiltration.

"The state governments have to be extra vigilant against the Rohingyas and other illegal immigrants," he said, flagging the central government's priority to check the illegal immigrants from Myanmar through Bangladesh.

The home minister resolved to check illegal immigrants who have links with extremists groups for further anti- national activities with ulterior motive and posing threat to internal security.

"Radical elements and terrorists can be checked only with joint action and active cooperation of central and state governments," he said.

Influx of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis though the porous Indo-Bangla border has been a major concern for India.

According to official estimates, 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.

He quoted latest estimates to say that 9-10 lakh Rohingya Muslims have migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar and the possibility of a spillover to India cannot be ruled out.

The home minister said the concept of the grid has been planned as a multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure the 4,036-km-long Indo-Bangla border.

"The grid will comprise various elements namely physical barriers, non-physical barriers, surveillance, system, Intelligence agencies, state police, BSF and other state and central agencies," he said in his opening remarks.

Of the border with Bangladesh, 2,217 km falls in West Bengal, 262 km in Assam, 443 km in Meghalaya, 856 km in Tripura and 180 km in Mizoram.

This is 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.

Unified Command structures comprising army, paramilitary forces and state police are in place in states like Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Nagaland to effectively deal with militants.

Singh said the NDA government has been giving highest priority to secure India's international border by putting in place a robust system to facilitate legitimate trade and commerce.

"India has friendly relations with Bangladesh and all these measures will be taken to facilitate genuine trade and legitimate cross border movement of people while curbing radicalisation, illegal immigration, smuggling of cattle, fake Indian currency notes and drugs," he told the chief ministers and top officials of the five states.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal sought a new law to check the cross border smuggling, including cattle, and effective steps to end illegal immigration.

Sonowal said the central government should set a deadline - possibly December 2018 - to completely seal the international border with Bangladesh.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appreciated the central government's initiative to hold this meeting of the chief ministers and offered full cooperation to any joint action.
Lucknow: A senior Muslim Congress leader today wrote to party president Sonia Gandhi demanding that Kapil Sibal be sacked from the party for moving the Supreme Court seeking to defer the Ayodhya hearing.

"Sibal should be sacked or he should resign from the party on moral grounds. At a time when the party has unanimously proposed to make Rahul Gandhi its president, his statements in court are damaging," former Congress MLC, vice president and chairman of the party's minority department Siraj Mehdi said.

He said party spokesman Ranjit Singh Surjewala's statement that it was a personal view of Sibal and not of the Congress party would not do.

"Sibal's statement came when Gujarat elections are going on and Assembly elections are due in many states next year. He has always given statements which are damaging for the party," Mehdi said.

All sides agreed to abide by the apex court's advice of resolving the Ayodhya dispute through talks, he said.

"Neither people nor parties (in Ayodhya dispute) agree to Sibal's statement in court," Mehdi added.

Senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal had moved the top court seeking to defer the hearing of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute till after the 2019 general polls.
NEW DELHI: There is prima facie a very strong case of fraud against liquor baron Vijay Mallya, senior government sources said amid reports that his lawyers told a UK court that India had no evidence against him.

"The fact remains that there is, prima facie, a very strong case in terms of the UK's Fraud Act 2006 against Mallya," a source in the government said.

He said news reports from London had suggested that there was no evidence to support the government's case against Mallya and that his lawyer had torn into the government's extradition plea.

The 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore, was in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court for his defence, headed by barrister Clare Montgomery, yesterday.

"The conduct of Vijay Mallya, especially before the Supreme Court and other courts, was also highlighted to drive home the fact that Mallya has to answer about his dishonest intentions in the contempt proceedings against him in the Supreme Court of India," he said, quoting proceedings in the Westminster Magistrate's court.

Mallya, who was arrested by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April this year, has been out on bail?on a bond worth 650,000 pounds.


London: Bitcoin ploughed past $15,000 to a fresh record on Thursday, triggering a warning the cryptocurrency was "like a charging train with no brakes" and prompting fresh concern about its looming launch on mainstream markets.

It struck a new high of $15,075 in European trading hours, according to Bloomberg News.

The rally came just a day after the virtual currency, which has been used to buy everything from an ice cream to a pint of beer, hit the $12,000 mark for the first time, while it has soared more than 50 percent in value in just one week.

Bitcoin -- which came into being in 2009 as a bit of encrypted software and has no central bank backing it and no legal exchange rate -- has risen from a 2017 low of $752 in mid-January and surged dramatically in the past month.

The increased interest has been driven by growing acceptance among traditional investors of an innovation once considered the preserve of computer nerds and financial experts.

But some, including the US Federal Reserve, have warned against dabbling in bitcoin as it could threaten financial stability, and fears of a bubble have increased as the price has soared.

"Bitcoin now seems like a charging train with no brakes," said Shane Chanel, from Sydney-based ASR Wealth Advisers. "There is an unfathomable amount of new participants piling into the cryptocurrency market."

But he warned: "Once the hype slows down, we will most certainly see some sort of correction."There are mounting concerns about its introduction into the mainstream financial system after US regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week cleared the way for bitcoin futures to trade on major exchanges, a decision which analysts say has helped spur the recent rally.

Bitcoin is to be offered on the CBOE Futures Exchange from this weekend and on the world`s biggest futures venue, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), from December 18.

The Futures Industry Association, which groups some of the world`s biggest derivatives brokerages, criticised the plans in a letter to the regulator, saying that contracts are being rushed through without the risks being properly weighed up.

"A more thorough and considered process would have allowed for a robust public discussion among clearing member firms, exchanges and clearing houses," said the association.

Transactions happen when heavily encrypted codes are passed across a computer network.

The NiceHash marketplace was meanwhile on Thursday investigating a security breach resulting in the theft of bitcoin.

"Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days," NiceHash said in a statement.

"In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency."

Bitcoin and other virtual currencies use blockchain, which records transactions that are updated in real time on an online ledger and maintained by a network of computers.

In 2014 major Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange MtGox collapsed after admitting that 850,000 coins -- worth around $480 million at the time -- had disappeared from its vaults.

Bitcoin`s use on the underground Silk Road website, where users could use it to buy drugs and guns, also raised suspicions about the virtual money.
JUNEAU  A 57-year-old Horicon man was found guilty Wednesday of illegally voting in the presidential election last November.

Herbert E. York Jr. entered a guilty plea of election fraud  voting by disqualified person after a plea agreement was reached. Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries accepted his plea. York must pay $737 in fines and other court costs.

According to the criminal complaint, York was still on supervision with parole and probation for a felony conviction when he voted in the Nov. 8 general election.

York was placed on probation for three years after a 2014 conviction for intentionally subjecting an individual at risk to abuse in Washington County.

According to the criminal complaint, Horicon police received a report from the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Aug. 1 about a person who was on supervision and voted in the presidential election. Yorks information matched a list of offenders who still were under supervision with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Police met with York on Aug. 3, and began to tell him about the accusations when York allegedly interrupted them and said that they were there about him voting and that he was no longer on probation.

When the officer said he was on probation when he voted, York allegedly said, Yeah, but I thought I would get away with it.
KOLKATA: The high profile Kolkata school, where a four-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by male teachers, reopened on Thursday, amid massive protests by guardians.

Relieving the school's principal of her duties, the school on Wednesday had announced that the classes would resume from the next day, a guardians' forum member said.

The announcement came after a long meeting between the school authorities, the guardians' forum, senior officers of Kolkata Police, members of the state Child Rights Commission and other stakeholders on Wednesday evening.

The school authorities, earlier, had declared a sudden closure from December 4 onwards until further notice.

Parents, however, demanded the re-opening of school as senior classes were scheduled to appear for internal assessments.

A four-year-old girl child was allegedly sexually abused inside a school by two Physical Education teachers on November 30. The child's mother found the blood stain on her uniform while picking up from school.

A day after the incident, two PT teachers were arrested and sent to two days police custody. Meanwhile, 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.
Kolkata: Classes at the GD Birla Centre for Education here resumed on Thursday after nearly a week following a settlement reached by the school management and guardians over the demand for removal of the principal in the wake of the alleged sexual assault of a four-year-old girl.

A school managing committee spokesman told PTI that classes of the senior section began this morning.

"The classes of the junior section will resume from tomorrow," he said.

The stalemate ended last night after the management decided to "relieve" principal Sharmila Nath from her present responsibilities, following a three-hour meeting with the Guardians Forum.

"The principal has been relieved of her present responsibilities with immediate effect, and the vice-principal and a coordinator will be officiating," the spokesman said.

A guardian of a senior-section student said, "We are very happy that classes resumed today. The stalemate would have affected studies of children had it continued."

Before the classes resumed, guardians removed all posters they had pasted on the gates and boundary wall of the school.

They pasted the posters denouncing the alleged sexual assault on the girl and raising their demands during the past several days.

Meanwhile, Sharmila Nath said today that she could not be held responsible for somebody else's act or words and that she was being judged unfairly.

"How can I be held responsible for the alleged act of someone else? Can I be held responsible for someone else's words or act?" she told a Bengali news channel.

Nath has been named in an FIR registered based on a complaint by the parents of the girl for allegedly suppressing the incident and shielding the two accused who were arrested on December 1.

"People are making all sorts of comments against me without knowing how much I have been involved with the students in all these years," Nath said.

On November 30, a four-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted in the school, which led to the arrest of two physical training instructors amid a massive agitation by guardians.

After an FIR was registered against Nath on December 2, she was summoned to the Kolkata Police headquarters in Lalbazar on December 5 and questioned for several hours.

West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights chairperson Ananya Chakraborti, who was also present at yesterday's meeting, said, "The principal has been relieved of her responsibilities. We are happy over the outcome."

The meeting was attended by the school management, representatives of the Guardians Forum and senior police officers.

A spokesperson of the forum said the school management promised to look into their other demands -- having no male teacher in both junior and senior sections and installation of CCTV in school buses.

The police have also formed a special committee to look into the allegations of negligence and false representation on part of the school principal.
INDORE: The Central Bureau of Narcotics (CBN) has seized 5.2 kilograms of mephedrone or `meow-meow' drug, worth around Rs 50 lakh in international markets, and arrested one person.

Superintendent Sabiha Khan of the CBN's Indore unit said Aazaad Khan (35), resident of Mandsaur district, was arrested from Madhumilan Square here on December 5.

Some 5.2 kg of mephedrone was recovered from his possession.

Khan had come to Indore to hand over the contraband to someone else, the officer said, adding that he was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Mephedrone is also known as 'meow-meow' and 'MD'. In local drug circuits, one gram of this prohibited drug costs around Rs 6,000, according to CBN officials.
Mumbai: Honking took a bloody turn at a village in Maharashtra when a 21-year old and his father were attacked by three persons who took objection to the youth's honking while riding a motorcycle.

The incident took place at Sapatne village in Madha tehsil of Solapur district on Tuesday, local police said.

The trio, who objected to honking by the youth who was riding a motorcycle, beat him up, and when the youth's father, Gautam Ohol, tried to intervene, he was also attacked, police said.

Ohol and his son were rushed to a hospital in Solapur, where Ohol succumbed to his injuries today, police said.

One person has been taken into custody in connection with the incident, police said.
Mumbai: A 28-year-old man from Nepal allegedly committed suicide by jumping off the 24th floor of a building located near Bandra Bandstand in the wee hours on Thursday, a senior police official said.

The deceased was identified as Bharat Hooda.

"Hooda ended his life by jumping off the 24th floor of the building where he used to work as a domestic help. He used to work and live in that building with his uncle," the official said.

Last night around 10 pm, Hooda came to the building drunk and killed himself around 1 am, he said.

"The victim's uncle told the police that Hooda was under some pressure since the last one month. But despite repeatedly asking him about the cause of his worry, Hooda did not reveal it to him," senior police inspector of Bandra police station, Pandit Thackeray, said.

The official said no suicide note was found on the spot.

Police have registered a case of accidental death in this connection.
Mumbai: A Thane police inspector was arrested on Thursday under the charge of kidnapping a married woman police official who went missing from neighbouring Navi Mumbai 19 months ago.

Assistant Police Inspector (API) Ashwini Bidre (37) went missing from Kalamboli area of Navi Mumbai last April.

Her family members lodged a complaint against Abhay Kurundkar, who is posted as Police Inspector, Thane (rural), with Kalamboli police station, the Navi Mumbai Police said in a press note today.

Her family suspected that she was kidnapped and killed.

Bidre's family approached the Bombay High Court as the police failed to trace her.

On the orders of the HC, the Kalamboli Police today arrested Kurundkar.

Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale has confirmed the arrest of Kurundkar.

He has been booked under sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 497 (adultery) 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and other relevant sections of the IPC, a senior official said.

Bidre, who hailed from Kolhapur in western Maharashtra, was working in the Human Rights Commission department of Navi Mumbai.

Kurundkar had met Bidre at the Sangli Training Centre.
MUMBAI: A woman was on Sunday arrested for running a brothel and allegedly murdered three people including her husband, police said.

The woman had reportedly killed her husband about 13 years back and dumped his body inside the septic tank of her house.

The accused has been identified as 42-year-old Savita Bharati.

In 2014, she killed her husband Sahdev after he had reportedly spotted her in a compromising position with her lover Kamlesh.

Bharati along with her lover stonned Sahdev to death and covered the septic tank with cement after burying him inside.

On Thursday, Bharti will reportedly be produced before the Palghar court, added police.
New Delhi: It is common for celebrities to suffer minor injuries while shooting action sequences for a film. However, if reports are to be believed, the incident that took place with Arjun Kapoor is shocking as well as appalling.

Arjun, who is busy with the shooting for 'Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar' in Uttarakhand was paid a visit by a 'fan'. What's so shocking about that? Well, according to a TOI report, the man who visited Arjun was drunk and had tried to misbehave with the young actor.

According to the report, the man is a driver and has already been arrested for his act.

The driver approached Arjun in his vanity van to shake hands with him. When the actor came forward and shook his hand, the driver twisted it. Report further suggest that the driver's car was also seized by the police under the Motor Vehicle Act and that a fine of Rs. 500 was imposed on him for driving under the influence of alcohol.

'Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar' is being helmed by Dibakar Banerjee and will release in August 2018. Arjun Kapoor plays the role of a cop in the movie.

The film also stars Parineeti Chopra.


Los Angeles: Actor Robert Pattinson has said that he felt like a "big shot" when he started his career and had a big "ego".

The 31-year-old actor came into prominence after starring in the 'Twilight' series. He played the role of vampire Edward Cullen in the film adaptations of the Stephenie Meyer's novels by the same name.

"When something becomes really big you really get an awareness of how small you are, like where it is when you first start acting and you feel like a big shot when you're only doing something small. My ego was a lot bigger when I first started," Pattinson said while appearing on Variety's 'Actor on Actor' along with Jamie Bell.Pattinson said the feeling of losing your identity in the franchise filmmaking was "frightening".

"Then you start losing control of a lot of different aspects of your life and also the job, especially when you're doing sequels to something. It doesn't matter what you think: a) it?s already been written in a book, and b) the tone has already been set up and the machine is already in motion. It's frightening when you lose your sense of identity," Pattinson said.
ALWAR: A suspected cow smuggler was killed in retaliatory firing by police on Thursday in Rajasthan's Alwar district, while other five to seven of his accomplice are on the run.

Speaking to ANI, Superintendent of Police (SP) Rahul Prakash said, "A group of five to seven smugglers were seen transporting cows in a small truck. Based on a tip-off about a vehicle carrying cows, the police control room immediately blocked the roads.

"But the smugglers broke the barriers placed by police and opened fired on the officers. One of the smugglers was shot at in the retaliatory fire and later succumbed to his injuries," he said.

Further describing the incident, the police said, "The attempt was thwarted but all other smugglers except the one shot dead managed to flee. At least, five cows were rescued from the possession of the smugglers. All the cows are badly injured and are being treated."

On November 10, a similar incident took place where one person was shot dead by the cow vigilantes in Alwar.
JUNEAU  A 53-year-old Waupun man has been charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after monitoring systems found suspicious images were downloaded to his computer.

Timothy R. Hilt could be sentenced to up to 250 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted on all the charges.

According to the criminal complaint, police received two cyber tips that were generated by Yahoo that indicated the digital images were downloaded using Yahoo Messenger. The four images, with two of them being the same, contained images of girls wearing lingerie. The images were not labeled as child pornography, but law enforcement decided to meet with Hilt.

Representatives from Dodge County Sheriffs Office, along with a member of the Department of Criminal Investigations and a forensic analyst, went to Hilts home on May 22. They spoke to Hilt and told him that there were questionable images that were transmitted from his home IP address.

Hilt allegedly said that he had a phone and two laptops that he uses. He also was the only one who had the passwords for the internet. Hilt was asked for his personal laptop to make sure there were not images on the computer that were illegal in the state of Wisconsin.

According to the criminal complaint, there were 18,000 images in one folder, and many other folders, though they did not immediately find anything that was obviously child pornography. Law enforcement seized the hard drive, however, to go through the images, and eventually discovered 10 images fitting Wisconsins definition of child pornography.

Hilt will make his initial appearance in court on Dec. 26.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court today upheld the constitutional validity of the Real Estate(Regulation and Development) Act (RERA), observing it was crucial to protect the interests of flat buyers across the country and develop incomplete projects.

Noting that there are "enormous problems" in the housing sector, the court also said it's time to take a step forward to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi's vision of wiping every tear from every eye.

The court also addressed the issue of implementation of the act, saying it must be closely monitored. Although RERA is a central law, its implementation will depend on state governments since real estate is a state subject.

A bench of Justices Naresh Patil and Rajesh Ketkar pronounced its judgement on a bunch of petitions by real estate developers and individual plot owners, all challenging the constitutional validity of the Act that was brought into effect in May this year.

The bench, headed by Justice Patil, however, allowed a significant leeway for the developers in the judgement by permitting the state-level RERA Authority and the Appellate Tribunal to consider delays on a case-to-case basis, and not to cancel such projects or developers' registration in cases where the delay was caused due to "exceptional and compelling circumstances."

"In case the authority is satisfied that there are exceptional and compelling circumstances due to which a developer could not complete the project inspite of the one year extension granted, then the authority will be entitled to let the developers' registration continue," the court said.

Such powers shall be exercised on a case-to-case basis and the authority shall consult with the state in such cases if needed, it said.

"RERA is not a law relating to only regulatory control of the promoters (developers), but its objective is to develop the real estate sector, particularly the incomplete projects across the country," the bench said, observing it was crucial to protect the interests of flat buyers across the country.

"The problems are enormous. It's time to take a step forward to fulfil dreams of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, to wipe every tear from every eye," Justice Patil said.

The Act, among other things, mandates that all developers or promoters register themselves under a state-level regulatory authority.

It also allows buyers to claim compensation for delay in possession, and envisages cancellation of a developer's registration and imposition of severe penalties in case where the developer fails to complete the project within the stipulated deadline.

Most of the developers had challenged a provision of 'force majeure or a natural disaster'-- that allowed an extension of the deadline by a maximum of one year, if the delay was caused on account of natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods.

The developers had also opposed the composition of the state-level RERA Authority and the Appellate Tribunal.

The HC did not interfere with the composition of the state-level authority, but it ruled that the tribunal must be headed by a judicial officer and not a bureaucrat, or a member of the Indian legal services, and that majority of the members of such tribunal must be officers or members of the judiciary.

The Centre and the state of Maharashtra had vehemently defended the Act, and justified the strict provisions by arguing that the same were meant to protect buyers, and to rein in rogue developers.

While the bench concurred with the state and the Union government's arguments, it said that the authorities must also closely monitor the implementation of the Act.

"We are conscious of the fact that the actual implementation of RERA needs to be closely monitored in the years to come," the bench said.

In September, after several petitions challenging RERA were filed in high courts across the country, the Supreme Court stayed the proceedings in other courts and suggested that the Bombay High Court hear its RERA cases first.

Other courts should wait for the Bombay High Court's decision before hearing RERA-related matters, it said, while directing the high court here to expedite the hearings.
Mumbai: Prabhas starrer Saaho is one of the most anticipated upcoming films. Directed by Sujeeth Reddy, Saaho, a futuristic action film promises to showcase some death defying action sequences and jaw-dropping visual effects.

Soon after the first half of SS Rajamoulis two-part magnum opus hit the silverscreen in 2015, Prabhas became a household name pan India. And after the roaring success of Baahubali: The Conclusion, Prabhas became an icon of sorts and nations heartthrob.

After having invested five years of his career to do justice to a magnum opus like Baahubali, Prabhas will be seen on screen for the first time in Saaho, which will co-star Bollywood beauty Shraddha Kapoor. Fans of the hunk of an actor are eagerly looking forward to the release of the film. And if the latest buzz is anything to go by, Saaho will release on Diwali next year.

According to a report in India.com, a source said, There have been reports that Saaho is aiming for a Diwali release but then we also heard that since the shoot is still on and the VFX in the slick entertainer will require additional time on the editing table, it might get pushed to 2019. But word is that director Sujeeth and production house UV Creations are determined to finish the project on time and release the film in 2018 itself.

Saaho, which is currently being shot in Dubai, also stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, Jackie Shroff, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Tinu Anand and Mandira Bedi.

Prabhas had made women fans go weak in the knees by essaying an awe-inspiring character like Amarendra Baahubali in Baahubali: The Conclusion. The hunk of a superstar has an ocean of fan following and it includes a huge percentage of female admirers.
CHENNAI: A Tamil Nadu man was on Monday sent to life imprisonment for 43 years after he allegedly raped and impregnated his minor daughter.

The Mahila Court in the state's Tiruchy district awarded the accused with three consecutive terms of life imprisonment and a year's rigorous imprisonment.

He is identified as S Kamaraj, a 51-year-old daily wager who sexually exploited his 14-year-old daughter.

Kamaraj, who is a resident of Arasangudi village in Tiruverumbur, repeatedly raped and threatened his daughter since July 2013.

In 2014, the girl developed some physical problems and informed her mother Pazhaniammal regarding the past incidents.

Subsequently, the girl underwent a medical examination that confirmed she was pregnant and the doctors said termination of the foetus would be dangerous.

The girls mother lodged a complaint with the Tiruverumbur All Women police station on December 31, 2014.

Following the complaint, the police who registered a case under various sections including under the POCSO Act arrested Kamaraj.

The police investigation revealed that Kamaraj had undergone seven years imprisonment for murdering a neighbour and had been looking for a job ever since his release from jail. Kamaraj had forced himself on his daughter and repeatedly raped her when his wife was out for work.

Meanwhile, the 13-year-old was delivered of a girl baby at Kasturi Bhat hospital in Dindigul in March 2015 and the baby was handed over to an adoption centre run by the hospital. However, the baby died due to various complications in June 2015.

In order to prove Kamarajs crime, the police exhumed the baby's body and a DNA test was carried out in October 2015. "The DNA test confirmed that the girl was impregnated by her father Kamaraj," said special public prosecutor G Krishnaveni Thamaraiselvan.

(With DNA inputs)
New Delhi: Bigg Boss season 11 can rightly be called the hub of controversies, all thanks to the contestants who have been actively arguing right from the first day.

This season of Bigg Boss has a lot of twists and turns. We saw Priyank Sharma getting violent inside the house owing to which he was asked to leave the show by an angered Salman Khan. Shilpa Shinde's attempt at torturing Vikas Gupta garnered a lot of attention and Bandgi Kalra and Puneesh Sharma's love angle kept raising the excitement level of the show. Contestants have time and again hurled abuses at each other which has led to some serious arguments inside the house.

Looking at all the events of the show, it is often speculated if Bigg Boss is a scripted show and the contestants are told to create a ruckus to get more TRPs.

Bandgi Kalra, who has recently been evicted from the show has answered this question.

She told Aaj Tak that Bigg Boss isn't scripted at all. The contestants never have any contact with the makers of the show or with any person of the outside world. Bandgi said that the contestants receive no instructions from the makers of the show.

Zubair Khan was evicted from the show in the early weeks and had said that the makers of the show had been pressurising him to hurl abuses at others.

When the publication asked Bandgi about the same, she said that Zubair was lying. She also said that the Bigg Boss house is an entirely different world and the contestants lose all contact with the outside world.

The young model also commented that the entire lifestyle of the housemates undergoes a major change upon entering the show.


Lucknow: Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Thursday trashed charges by parties that the BJP got the EVMs tampered in the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh.



In Mainpuri to attend a wedding, the former minister said had this been the case, he would not be a legislator now.



Shivpal Yadav`s statement contradicts what his estranged nephew and party President Akhilesh Yadav has said. Akhilesh Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, has time and again said that the Electronic Voting Machines had been tampered with.



"I won the election from Jaswantnagar earlier this year, many of my supporters have won the urban body polls. So without proof how can I allege that the EVMs were tampered to favour the ruling party?" he asked.



Shivpal Yadav has been daggers drawn with Akhilesh Yadav and has now been more or less ditched by his elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav who has apparently bought peace with his son after initially siding with his brother.



Shivpal Yadav also took a dig at Akhilesh Yadav for the Samajwadi Party`s defeat in the civic polls, demanding to know who had picked the candidates.


LAHORE: An overcrowded boat carrying devotees capsized in a creek in Pakistan's Sindh province today, killing at least 21 people including women and children, authorities said.

The boat carrying members of the Dawoodi Bohra community capsized near to Thatta city.

Deputy Commissioner Thatta Nasir Baig the accident took place as the overloaded boat lost balance and tipped over in a creek, 30 kilometres away from Bohara. He added that the boat was carrying passengers travelling to the shrine of Pir Pathai to celebrate a festival.

He said the boat was carrying 60-70 passengers.

At least 21 bodies have been recovered, Dawn newspaper quoted officials at the Mirpur Sakro Taluqa Hospital as saying.

Officials said the dead included women and children.

About 15-20 people were rescued and admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state, Baig said.

Commissioner Hyderabad Division Saeed Magnejo said that the ongoing local rescue efforts are being supported by coordination between Navy and Army units in the area.

According to local rescue officials, the passengers were devotees seeking to attend the annual urs celebration of the sufi saint. They are believed to be members of the Dawoodi Bohra community.

Chairman Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Muhammad Ali Shah said that one boat capsized at the Bohara jetty when the boat tilted over as passengers rushed to exit it. He said there were nearly 100 passengers on board at the time.

Shah said he had received reports of at least 40 bodies being recovered. These reports, however, have not been independently verified, the paper said.
LOS ANGELES: Hundreds of Los Angeles area schools shut their doors on Thursday as raging wildfires wreaked havoc on Southern California, forcing about 200,000 people to flee and destroying hundreds of houses.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the country`s second largest with more than 640,000 students, said it closed at least 265 of its nearly 1,100 schools.

Dozens of schools were also closed in neighboring Ventura County, where the largest of the area blazes, the Thomas Fire, has charred more than 95,000 acres. The school district, with nearly 17,000 students, said it hoped to reopen on Monday.

"But that will only happen if a number of factors are in place that will guarantee the health and safety of our students and staff," Ventura Unified School District Superintendent Dave Creswell said in a statement.

Dry Santa Ana winds, blowing westward from the California desert, could reach 75 miles per hour (130 km per hour) on Thursday. "Strong winds overnight creating extreme fire danger," said an alert sent by the countrywide emergency system in Los Angeles.

Video and photographs on social media showed flame-covered hillsides along busy roadways on Wednesday as commuters slowly made their way to work or home, rows of houses reduced to ash and firefighters spraying water on walls of fire as they tried to save houses.

The Thomas Fire continued its westward push on Thursday, forcing a few hundred Santa Barbara County residents to be evacuated and the closing of coastal Highway 101 north of Ventura city.

In the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles, the Creek Fire destroyed at least 30 homes, blackened more than 12,000 acres (4,800 hectares) and forced the evacuation of 2,500 homes and a convalescent center.

Another blaze, the Rye Fire, threatened more than 5,000 homes and structures northwest of Los Angeles.

The Skirball Fire in Los Angeles has forced hundreds of residents in the wooded hills near the affluent Bel-Air neighborhood to evacuate and charred more than 150 acres (60 hectares).

Skirball threatened media magnate Rupert Murdochs Moraga Estate winery. The property was evacuated, with possible damage to some buildings, Murdoch said in a statement. We believe the winery and house are still intact.

"These are days that break your heart," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday during a news conference. "These are also days that show the resilience of our city."

No civilian casualties or fatalities have been reported. Three firefighters were injured and hospitalized in stable condition, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

The Thomas Fire has destroyed more than 150 homes and threatened thousands more in Ventura.

Additional evacuations were called for late Wednesday in the Ventura area, where 50,000 people had already fled their homes over the last three days.
BEIJING: China`s Commerce Ministry expressed concern on Thursday that the United States has been spreading negative information about the trade relationship between the world`s two largest economies.

"Recently the United States has launched trade remedy investigations into Chinese products and has continuously released negative information," said Gao Feng, China`s Commerce Ministry spokesman.

"This has caused widespread concern among businesses in China and the United States, especially among U.S. companies that are willing to cooperate with and expand into China," he said.

China`s Commerce Ministry expressed "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition" on Saturday to a statement by the United States to the World Trade Organization that it opposes granting China market economy status, Xinhua reported.
RAMALLAH: US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital sparked Palestinian protests, clashes and a call for a new intifada on Thursday as fears grew of fresh bloodshed in the region.

Trump's announcement also prompted an almost universal diplomatic backlash that continued on Thursday, with fresh warnings from Turkey, the European Union and Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however lavished praise on Trump, saying his name would now be associated with Jerusalem's long history and urging other countries to follow his lead.

The Israeli military deployed hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank amid uncertainty over the fallout, while clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces erupted in various areas.

In a speech in Gaza City, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for a new intifada, or uprising.

Protests were held in West Bank cities including Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus, as well as in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces dispersed several hundred protesters with tear gas at a checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah, while the Palestinian Red Crescent reported dozens wounded from tear gas, rubber bullets and live fire in the West Bank.

Three Palestinians were wounded east of the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, medical sources and witnesses said.

Trump's defiant move -- making good on a pledge made during his 2016 presidential campaign -- ends seven decades of US ambiguity on the status of the Holy City, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump said it marks the start of a "new approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"It is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," he said in a speech from the White House on Wednesday, urging calm and "the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate."

But his willingness to part with international consensus on such a sensitive issue drew increasingly urgent warnings from around the

EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said the decision could take the region "backwards to even darker times."

Russia said it viewed the move with "serious concern" and Saudi Arabia called it "unjustified and irresponsible."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it would put the region in a "ring of fire."

"Hey Trump! What do you want to do?" he asked.

"What kind of approach is this? Political leaders do not stir things up, they seek to make peace."

Palestinian leaders were outraged, with president Mahmud Abbas saying Trump had disqualified the United States from its traditional role as peace broker in the Middle East conflict.

Palestinian shops in east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as well as in the West Bank were largely shuttered and schools closed on Thursday after a general strike was called.

"By this decision, America became a very small country, like any small country in the world, like Micronesia," Salah Zuhikeh, 55, told AFP in Jerusalem's Old City.

"America was a great country for us and everyone."

Trump's move left many angry US allies struggling to find a diplomatic response.

Through gritted teeth, Britain described the move as "unhelpful" and France called it "regrettable." Germany said plainly that it "does not support" Trump's decision.

Eight countries including Britain, France and Italy pressed for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in response, which was set for tomorrow.
WISCONSIN DELLS  Six former residents of Puerto Rico are working at Ho-Chunk Gaming-Wisconsin Dells and plan to make their stay here permanent.

Jose Serrano and Daniel Reyes moved to North Freedom near Baraboo in September to stay with a friend. They were already working at Ho-Chunk Casino when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, two weeks after the island took a hit from Hurricane Irma.

After the hurricanes, Zuleika Martinez Diaz also moved to North Freedom with her three children and started working at the casino. She, Serrano and Reyes are dishwashers. Diaz had plans to leave Puerto Rico before the storms hit, as Serrano and Reyes had.

The three speak Spanish and their boss, casino lead cook Angel Artripe, acted as translator for this interview. Diaz said she was scheduled to fly out of Puerto Rico the day after the hurricane, but the flight was canceled. The airport and its runways had been damaged in the storm. Later, she and her children were able to get on board one of the military rescue planes that brought her to the U.S. mainland.

Puerto Rico has been losing population for years. In the last decade, it lost 40,000 people in some years, a trend that accelerated in 2016 when about 84,000 people  almost 2 percent of the U.S. territory's population  left their homes on the island. The reasons, according to a CNN story, were lack of opportunities, especially for young people, and quality of life. The island, whose residents are U.S. citizens, has a huge debt and has been described as being in a recession for 10 years. The population exodus has swelled in the aftermath of Maria.

They are leaving because the situation on the island has become dangerous, Diaz said. She spoke of the stench of death on the island and how it was hurting peoples health.

Immediately after Maria hit, the death toll was put at 16, but that figure has been disputed, and now news stories and researchers have put the death toll at more than 500.

Other reasons for leaving are that two months after the hurricanes, 40 percent or more of the island is still without electricity. Roads are still blocked, Diaz said.

Serrano, who returned to the island for a visit after the hurricanes because his mother was ill, also said there was a lot of damage. He said in isolated places, people have no food.

Diaz said that many people have no jobs and markets are raising prices. In some places, bags of ice are being brought in to help people keep food cold, but people are not being told when the ice will be available.

President Donald Trump has not been much help, the three say. Social media has helped, and news reports often show that the situation is improving, but they said when they talk to their families, that is not so.

Many of those leaving the island have gone to Florida, but Diaz, Serrano and Reyes came here because friends in North Freedom. Serrano and Reyes are still living with friends, but Diaz has moved into an apartment in North Freedom.

Because of the language barriers, Artripe helped the three through the hiring process. David Abangan, public relations spokesman for the casino, said that when Diaz learned she had been hired, she started to cry because she was so relieved.

The three are dependent on their friends and co-workers for transportation since none has yet been able to afford a car. They also are sending money and supplies to family back in Puerto Rico. They can talk to their families there when cellphone service is available.

Even without cars, the three plan to stay here permanently because they like their jobs. Artripe also likes them as workers. He said he has been cross-training them in different positions within the kitchens and the three have passed the safe-server certification required by state law.

Artripe, who used to live in the Bronx borough of New York City, said he will be bumping them up to prep cooks and cooks shortly. He said the three are some of the best workers he has.

The three have also invited six of their friends in Puerto Rico to join them here, and Abangan said the casino needs the help. It currently has signs up outside the complex on Highway BD between Lake Delton and Baraboo advertising job openings.
BRUSSELS: The European Commission said on Thursday that there was still "no white smoke" on a Brexit deal and set a limit of Sunday for British Prime Minister Theresa May to return to Brussels with an acceptable deal.

"So far no white smoke. We stand ready to receive prime minister May at any moment in time when they are ready," Margaritis Schinas, chief spokesman for commission chief Jean- Claude Juncker, told reporters in Brussels.

The Vatican sends up white smoke when a new pope is chosen.

"But I would like to repeat what President Juncker said on this, namely that this will have to happen this week, in this building. We work for a full week, 24/7, and our week includes Sunday."

Talks between May and Juncker broke up on Monday without a deal after a pro-British party in Northern Ireland that props up the British leader's government objected to a clause about future arrangements for the Irish border.

Time is now running out for a deal on Brexit divorce terms, which would allow the opening of talks on a future trade deal at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on December 14-15.

Schinas dismissed British newspaper reports that the deadline could be extended into next week as "not correct".

Diplomats from the other EU 27 nations are to meet on Monday and would need to see European Council chief Donald Tusk's draft guidelines for opening the next phase of talks then in order to approve them for the summit, he said.

The EU has demanded "sufficient progress" on the divorce issues of the Ireland border with Northern Ireland, Britain's bill for leaving the bloc, and the rights of European citizens in Britain in order to move on to the second stage.

"Every day lost makes this more difficult," he said. "President Juncker is a born optimist... But it takes two to tango, two to be optimist."

But EU sources said it was still possible that European leaders could agree at the summit next week that there had been "sufficient progress", in order to give May a win, while postponing their approval of the guidelines for trade talks.

They could then approve those guidelines at EU summits due in February, or failing that in March, sources said.
A photograph of a loved-up gangster couple, that was clicked shortly before they were gunned down, has gone viral.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow reportedly committed 13 murders, several robberies and burglaries. They believed to have met in Texas in the year 1930.

The duo's last picture spots them kissing in Missouri, reported Mail Online.

ICYMI: recycleamericaradioshow Unearthed photo shows Bonnie and Clyde's embrace right before bloody death https://t.co/3VgglfuIQ5 https://t.co/8kPXW1GXt5 pic.twitter.com/qdW8ZBLwzL  Peter Swifen (@2peterswift) December 7, 2017

Parker and Barrow became infamous because of their two-year crime spree from 1932 to 1934.

The gangster couple reportedly travelled across America's Midwest and South, robbing banks, stores and killing whoever got in their way.
Region du Centre: The UN Committee against Torture has asked Cameroon to stop its troops from committing "atrocities" in its fight against Boko Haram jihadists, according to report seen by AFP on Thursday.

The body also expressed concern over sweeping arrests in the Francophone west African country`s English-speaking regions, demanding an investigation into the deaths of at least 17 people killed in October 1 clashes between the security forces and protestors seeking a separate state.

It said more than 500 people were arrested, some of them from hospital in the wake of the unrest, and criticised Yaounde for not responding to several demands seeking information on those still being held.

Boko Haram, the Islamist militants whose insurgency has left at least 20,000 people dead and more than 2.6 million others homeless since 2009, has spread its attacks from Nigeria to neighbouring countries, including Cameroon.

The report denounced "serious crimes and atrocities committed by the Boko Haram terrorist group in the extreme north since 2014," but underscored its "great concern" over reports of abuses and torture by Cameroonian security forces.

The committee said it had received information that many people in the Extreme North region had been "detained in secret on suspicion of backing Boko Haram... in at least 20 unofficial detention centres."

The report said the state was protecting the security forces from being probed for "extra-judicial executions, forced disappearances and arbitrary detentions."

Cameroon is among the 162 countries that are signatories to the convention against torture.

"With the Committee against Torture now also demanding an end to the use of torture in Cameroon, it is becoming impossible for the world to ignore the widespread practice of torture in the country," said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International`s Lake Chad researcher, said on Thursday.

The committee met in Geneva early last month and reviewed the situation in Cameroon. The 10 independent experts held discussions with the Cameroonian delegation before publishing the latest report.
Vienna: The United States warned Russia on Thursday that its ties with the West can never recover until it pulls its forces out of Ukraine, as OSCE foreign ministers met in Vienna.

Diplomats had hoped that meetings on the sidelines of the 57-nation body would make progress on agreeing terms for a UN peacekeeping force for war-torn Ukraine.

But the major powers in the dispute are still far apart, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went so far as to declare that the stand-off over Ukraine was the single most important obstacle to warmer US relations with Moscow.

Tillerson was to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later in the day, but there appeared little room for compromise after the veteran Moscow envoy branded the idea of a robust UN mission a bid to resolve the conflict "by force".

At a news conference with OSCE host Austria`s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, Tillerson recalled that US President Donald Trump had been clear during his campaign last year that he wanted better relations with Russia.

"But the issue that stands in the way is Ukraine," he stressed, after a morning ministerial meeting at which he and Lavrov had expressed starkly different views.

"We can have difference in other arenas ... but when one country invades another that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile," he warned.

"And we`ve made this clear to Russia from the very beginning: That we must address Ukraine, it stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing relations."

In principle, both Moscow and Washington have now expressed support for the idea of a UN peacekeeping mission to end the war between Kiev`s government forces and Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country.

But Russia envisions a limited force to simply protect the existing 600-strong group of unarmed OSCE observers, who are struggling to monitor a shaky ceasefire in a conflict that has already left 10,000 dead since 2014.

Washington, in contrast, has in mind a much more robust UN mission that would police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine, building the conditions for lasting peace.

"We`ve reached an absolute low point regarding confidence between the main players," Thomas Greminger, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe`s secretary general, admitted as talks began.

Western powers fear that a limited United Nations mission would serve to create a frozen conflict that would lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine.

But Lavrov, in his opening remarks to the OSCE ministerial council, argued that the bigger mission idea could become "an occupational administration" and be tantamount to attempting "to solve this problem by force".Tillerson did not directly address the peacekeeping issue in his remarks but was strident in his condemnation of the threat he said Russia poses to the existing unarmed mission.

"Of all the challenges confronting the OSCE today, none is more challenging nor vexing than the situation in Ukraine," he warned, stressing the US will never lift sanctions until Russia returns control of Crimea and the disputed Donbass region to Ukraine.

Tillerson noted that more civilians were killed this year in eastern Ukraine than in 2016, and that ceasefire violations are up 60 percent.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces," he said.

"We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission," he demanded.

And he paid tribute to an American paramedic who was killed in April when his OSCE patrol hit a landmine in a separatist-occupied area.The OSCE was created during the Cold War to ease dialogue between East and West. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago it expanded and now has 57 members including the United States, Russia and Ukraine.

The Vienna-based body monitors conflicts, elections, media freedom and human rights. Italy will take over the rotating presidency from Austria in January.

The nosedive in relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine and other points of contention has brought OSCE decision-making to a near-standstill, diplomats say.

"Everything is blocked," a Western diplomatic source told AFP on the eve of the two-day meeting in Vienna that ends on Friday.
Picketing at the Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT) has resulted in $100 million in damages and delayed cargo for two weeks, meaning some goods may not reach their intended destination in time for the holidays, the terminal operator said.



A protest started by the MUA and now continued by the community has hampered port operations for two weeks.

Operations at the Victoria International Container Terminal at the Port of Melbourne have been hampered by boycotts for two weeks, despite the Australian Supreme Court ruling the action illegal.

The terminal has been subjected to an estimated $100 million Australian (U.S. $75.2 million) in damages as a result of the picketing, said VICT CEO Ander Dommestrup. As a result, the terminal commenced legal action.

The Supreme Court ordered the original picketer, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), to lift the picket last week but it has continued as a community protest with support from other unions including the national construction union, the electrical trades union and Victoria Trades Hall Council, according to local media source the Sydney Morning Herald. VICT is now monitoring the picket line to ensure no MUA members are taking part.

MUA cites substandard wage agreements and violations of workplace rights as the motivator behind the picketing. Union officials also demanded that VICT offer work to an MUA member with a criminal record, which makes it illegal for him to work in the secure areas at the terminal under federal law, said VICT.

MUA Deputy National Secretary Will Tracey told local media source the Sydney Morning Herald that there were 22 workers at the site who did not have a Maritime Security Identification Card to work in a restricted zone and were awaiting processing. Tracey said the MUA was seeking minimum standards for wages and conditions, but the company refused to negotiate with the union.

VICT is continuing a disturbing recent trend by employers who want to engage in a race to the bottom by accepting a workplace agreement voted on by five staff chosen by the company that slashes penalty rates and casual loading, Tracey said. The Port Melbourne community has decided to take a stand against a company with an atrocious labor record around the globe that should not be allowed to operate in this country.

VICT said in a statement that, the illegal picketing is damaging Victorias reputation as a destination for investment and as a reliable trading partner. The picketing has already cost millions in the first week to exporters, importers, trucking companies, shipping lines, VICT and to Victorians who depend on the reliability of their main port.

Over 1000 containers, both imports and exports, cannot be moved because of the picket, meaning that a substantial amount of goods required urgently for Victorias Christmas trade will never reach the states consumers. Our export trade will also suffer a blow equally as home grown products will never reach our important overseas markets, said VICT.

Russell Zimmerman, of the Australian Retailers Association, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the wharf dispute was threatening the delivery of retail products during the busy Christmas trading period. Our concern is that there are retailers who will be waiting for product, he said. This will disrupt commerce particularly at this time of the year. Coming this close to Christmas, our concern is that there could be gifts or other products that people would be expecting to have in time.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian released a comment on the status of Jerusalem, the foreign ministry told Armenpress.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most important issues on the international agenda and it could be solved through the negotiations within the context of the acceptable solution for the parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This can pave the way for the establishment of a lasting peace and security.

Jerusalem has a centuries old Armenian presence, a rich Armenian historical and cultural heritage. Armenian Apostolic Church is one of the major guardians of the Christian Holy Places. Therefore, we attentively follow all developments with regard to Jerusalem, stated in the comment.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The decision of US President Donald Trump to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel can create one more hub of instability in the Middle East.

Armen Petrosyan, expert on Arabic studies, told Armenpress that Trumps such step is dangerous and can lead to negative consequences.

We may witness unpredictable complaints from Palestinains, as well as deterioration of relations between some countries and Israel, US, the possibility of rebellion. Moreover, the US reputation can face decline in the Arab-Islamic world. This step contributes to the failure of the US mediation role in the settlement of the Palestinian conflict. By such unilateral decision the US is out of the process, its a pro-Israeli decision. It also violates the norms of international law. There is a UN resolution with regard to Jerusalem according to which as long as the conflict is unresolved, the city should remain neutral, Armen Petrosyan said.

The expert on Arabic studies stated that Trump by this decision tries to be different from the former governments, authorities and say something new in the decades-long conflict.

This step creates a new hub of instability. On the background of dissatisfaction, attacks on the US diplomatic representations are also possible. Its necessary to understand that Jerusalem is one of the sensitive issues for the Arab-Muslim world. It was not a coincidence that in the recent period some Arab countries became more active in the diplomatic field trying to prevent that step. In my opinion, recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital is a decision of a narrower group. I dont think that all foreign policy actors agree on this decision, he said, adding that Russia and China can use this situation to strengthen their positions in the region.

Israel faces difficult times. From the first site it seems that the US decision is positive, but, according to the expert, its obvious that a serious political, diplomatic campaign will launch against Israel.

In any case declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US doesnt mean that the world acknowledges it. Its less likely that the major world powers will take that step, Armen Petrosyan said.
GYUMRI, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. A commemorative event for the 1988 earthquake tool place in Gyumri today.

A mass was held in all churches of the Diocese of Shirak.

29 years after the devastating earthquake, people visited the graves of the victims who were killed in the disaster.

At midday, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, regional and city officials and many others laid flowers at the memorial of the earthquake and held a moment of silence.

The PM told reporters living standards in the city will definitely be changed, in terms of the temporary housing units.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The status of Jerusalem should be solved during the direct talks between the sides, Sebastian Kurz, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Austrian foreign minister, said, RIA Novosti reports.

Our position here is clear: both the Austrian and the EU authorities agree that the status of Jerusalem should be clarified during the direct talks between the sides, he told reporters before the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna.

US President Donald Trump on December 6 announced recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital and signed a document on transferring the US Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly George Tsereteli is concerned over the growth of tension in Nagorno Karabakh, reports Armenpress.

I am equally concerned over the existence of all conflicts in the OSCE area. The growth of tension and hostility in Nagorno Karabakh is a serious concern, the OSCE PA President said at the opening of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna. He also touched upon the Ukrainian and Georgian issues.

These conflicts claimed a lot of human lives. The fundamental human rights have been violated. The OSCE should never be normal and tolerant to such actions. I hope we will find a political will around this table to move forward our efforts for building peace and trust, he said, adding that the OSCE is a unique platform that serves their collective security.
A developer previously charged with renovating the existing building on Madison Area Technical Colleges Downtown campus is now the likely candidate to take over the entirety of the one-block parcels development.

Drury Southwest, a Missouri hotel company, was originally part of a pair to take on redevelopment of the Downtown property. Drury was to renovate the existing building to turn it into a 192-room hotel on a majority of the land, and Hovde Properties of Madison was to construct a multi-story commercial building to fill a smaller section that is currently a parking lot.

MATC chief financial officer Mark Thomas said the project hasnt drastically changed since Hovde pulled out of negotiations last month and that Drury is moving forward with the ideas put forward by Hovde.

While the concept of parking and a commercial building in that space had already been set, Thomas said, there are still decisions to be made about tenants for the property.

I think the big outstanding question wasnt the building itself but whats in it, Thomas said.

Drury staff already have an understanding of what is expected for the building on that section of the property, Thomas said, because they had been involved in meetings between college staff and Hovde representatives. They were also involved in meetings with city staff that outlined basic requirements for approval from city boards, including height limitations and street setbacks.

Theyre really stepping into what Hovde was already doing, Thomas said.

Hovde backed out citing concerns over the land-lease agreement. Hovde president Michael Slavish told the State Journal in November that the company just didnt have a confidence level moving forward, but declined to give details.

Thomas said Drury didnt seem to have the same qualms with the colleges requirements in the land lease that Hovde did, although he didnt provide specifics, and he expects the negotiations will move forward quickly. He said he hopes to get an agreement before the board for its January meeting.

Representatives from Drury could not be reached Wednesday night.

The negotiations moving forward will generally conform to the expectations that had been set for Hovde, Thomas said. He also said he doesnt expect the financial gains for MATC to be drastically different with Drury paying several million dollars in rent over a 98-year land lease.

Drury wasnt originally a finalist to submit a development proposal earlier this year because the company only had suggestions on redeveloping the existing building, not the entire parcel, Thomas said. With the Hovde partnership on the smaller section of the property, the proposal seemed more feasible. Since Drury will still move forward with the plans initiated by Hovde, the college didnt restart the proposal process.

MATC plans to fully pull out from its Downtown campus in May 2019, making way for a possible start date for construction that summer. The removal of the colleges presence from Downtown and addition of a new campus on the South Side are part of a years-long effort to reorganize the school and address local education disparities.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Estonia attaches importance to the necessity of finding a settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, foreign minister Sven Mikser said at the opening of the OSCE Foreign Ministerial Council session in Vienna.

We find it strictly important to continue adhering to the commitment of finding a peaceful settlement of protracted conflicts, like in Nagorno Karabakh, Georgia and Moldova, he said.

Mikser highlighted the existence of strong and independent institutions in the OSCE, stressing that they expand and highlight the structures function even more.

He also stressed that ensuring the security of more than 1 billion individuals living in the territory of the organizations member states in also one of the main responsibilities of the OSCE.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Foreign minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian delivered speech at the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna on December 7, the ministry told Armenpress.

Armenpress presents the full text of his speech:

Mr. Chairman,

Dear Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank the Chairmanship-in-Office for leading the organization throughout the year, good organisation of the Ministerial Council and the warm hospitality.

Armenia has always been a strong advocate for advancing the indivisible security in the OSCE area and has continuously contributed to the discussions aimed at reinvigoration of the framework of arms control and CSBMs.

Building trust and confidence does not rest only with the first dimension. We strongly believe that the economic and environmental basket of our Organization has an untapped potential. In this regard the OSCE could be a natural platform for promoting an inclusive dialogue between participating States, including on regional integration processes.

About two weeks ago Armenia signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It vividly demonstrated that the membership to one integration framework, in the case of Armenia to the Eurasian Economic Union, does not preclude cooperation with the others. We hope that pragmatic and result oriented dialogue will be the driving force of the economic cooperation in the whole OSCE area.

We would also like to emphasize Armenias contribution to the human dimension of our activities and highlight in this regard our effective cooperation with the OSCE institutions. The April Parliamentary elections in Armenia demonstrated that the progress achieved in upholding fundamental freedoms is irreversible and sustainable and we acknowledge the contribution of the OSCE institutions in this regard.

We are glad that the theme of protection of the ethnic and religious groups from identity based violence and atrocities especially in our neighboring region  in the Middle East, is getting more and more attention within the OSCE. Armenia has been among the first to raise this issue and support the strengthening of the OSCE commitments in this regard. The further development of effective measures to counter hate crime and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions was the main focus of the recent high-level conference in Yerevan, co-organized by the OSCE Chairmanship and ODIHR with the support of the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Ministerial Councils provide an opportunity to talk about the achievements and vision for the future. However, it is equally important not to omit to address the setbacks of the Organization in an open and candid manner.

The consequences of the closure of the OSCE Office in Yerevan pertain to very essence of the OSCE, which is designed to settle the issues through dialogue and cooperation and never through imposing the position of one participating State at the expense of all others and the entire Organization. It created a very negative precedent. The refusal of Azerbaijan to join the consensus on the extension of the mandate of the Office damaged not merely the integrity of the field missions of the OSCE, but its capacity of inclusive cooperation. Azerbaijan failed to respect the OSCE commitments and eliminated the OSCE Office in its own country before it attacked and closed the last OSCE full-fledged mission in the region. It is particularly deplorable that the Office was closed against the will and consistent efforts for its preservation exerted by the host country and all participating States with one exception - Azerbaijan. We would like to recall that both German and Austrian Chairmanships rejected the accusations of Azerbaijan against Yerevan Office. It does not come as a surprise that Azerbaijan found itself in isolation in challenging the OSCE Office in Yerevan.

We are determined to continue our close cooperation within the OSCE framework. The Armenia cooperation programme opens good opportunities in this regard.

Mr. Chairman,

Ten years ago the Basic Principles for the Peaceful Settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict were presented to the sides by the Minsk Group Co-Chair countries in the margins of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid.

Two years later the Athens Ministerial Council of the OSCE adopted a statement on behalf of all participating States that strongly supported the Basic Principles and noted the commitment of the parties to reach an agreement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution based upon the principles of Non-Use of Force or Threat of Force, Territorial Integrity, and the Equal Rights and Self-Determination of Peoples. The presidents of the Co-Chair countries in their five joint statements issued since 2009 reiterated their support to these principles and main elements for the conflict resolution which were presented by them as an integrated whole. Since then the Co-Chairs have reaffirmed this approach on many occasions, including during almost all OSCE Ministerial Councils and most recently in their joint statement made in Hamburg. On numerous occasions Armenia has continuously reiterated its readiness to continue negotiations based on these principles and elements with the aim of the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict.

There are several reasons why till now it has not been possible to advance the peace process despite numerous meetings on the presidential and ministerial levels, many rounds of negotiations, the tireless mediation by the Co-Chair countries, and the strong endorsement of the OSCE and all others who have supported the efforts and approaches of the Co-Chairs.

First, Azerbaijan made a step back and has refused the abovementioned three principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution as a basis for the conflict settlement.

Second, Azerbaijan adopted a selective approach towards the elements proposed by the Co-Chairs, who have continuously warned against such practice, since they conceive their proposals as an indivisible whole, and made it clear that any attempt to select some principles and elements over others would make it impossible to achieve a solution.

Third, Baku does not comply with the reached agreements and backtracks from them, as it happened during many rounds of negotiations, most notably during the Summits in St. Petersburg (June 2010), Astrakhan (October 2010), Sochi (March 2011), Kazan (June 2011). The pattern of refusal by Azerbaijan to honor prior agreements seriously questions Bakus credibility as a negotiating party.

Fourth, almost constant profanation of the Co-Chairs efforts and the attempts to shift the mediation to other formats have been illustrative of Azerbaijans intentions to derail the negotiations. It does not come as a surprise that the Co-Chairs in their public statements called on Baku to reverse this stance.

Fifth, the use or threat of use of force by Azerbaijan, regular ceasefire violations and provocations, unnotified military exercises in a blatant noncompliance to the OSCE Vienna document, bellicose statements of the high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan demonstrate that Baku considers the war as a viable option. The Co-Chairs have appealed to Azerbaijan to refrain from the escalation of the situation, to reaffirm the commitment to peaceful settlement. Nobody doubts that it is Azerbaijan that constantly violates the ceasefire and resorts to the escalation of the situation.

Sixth, a serious damage was caused to the negotiation process by Azerbaijans aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in April 2016 that was accompanied by the grave violations of international humanitarian law, atrocities against the civilian population, including children, women and elderly persons, mutilation of the bodies, DAESH-style beheadings.

Seventh, after April aggression the Co-Chairs organized two summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg with the participation of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to address the consequences of the war. Azerbaijan refused to implement what had been agreed upon and emphasized in the framework of these Summits particularly on the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict, full adherence to the 1994-1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements, which do not have time limitations, creation of mechanism for the investigation of ceasefire violations, expansion of the team of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office with the aim to increase efficiency of the monitoring capacities on the ground. The reported goal of these agreements was to create conditions for the advancement of the peace process, thus, by rejecting them Baku intentionally hinders the negotiations.

Eighth, Azerbaijan continues to practice anti-Armenian hate speech, it calls all Armenians of the world its enemy number one, it writes in the textbooks that Armenians are genetic enemies of Azerbaijan, it erases all traces of indigenous Armenian cultural heritage and religious sites, it claims that allegedly territories of Armenia are ancient Azerbaijani lands. Azerbaijan has long blacklisted the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, and then it started to put in the blacklist all those who visit Nagorno-Karabakh. Those who genuinely aspire for peace do not do such actions.

Ninth, after many years of negotiations on the Basic Principles, Azerbaijan started to claim that there is no need for adopting them, in a sheer disrespect to other negotiating parties, to the Co-Chair countries and huge efforts and time invested in the process.

Azerbaijans uncompromising and maximalist stance has become a serious obstacle to the advancement of the peace process and has heavily contributed to the preservation of the status-quo. The Co-Chairs conflict settlement proposals are a way that could bring to the change of the status-quo. However, Azerbaijan rejects those proposals, doing everything to keep the status-quo intact at the same time claiming that allegedly it is advocating for the change of status-quo.

Azerbaijans intentions can be easily tracked by its expenditures: Baku spends billions to buy influence in the world capitals, as once again became obvious through notorious Laundromat affair, it spends much more for purchases of advanced weaponry, but it has not invested anything so far to prepare its population for peace, as the Co-Chairs have been continuously urging.

If Baku abides to the calls of the Co-Chairs to strictly respect the ceasefire, implements previously reached agreements, reiterates its adherence to the principles of the conflict resolution proposed by the Co-Chairs and constructively engages in the negotiations that will pave the way to move the peace process forward and change the status-quo.

We are convinced that there is no alternative to the peace talks and there is a need to conduct intensive negotiations based on the proposals of the Co-Chair countries.

It is with this understanding that I met six times with my Azerbaijani colleague during past year and the last one was just yesterday in the framework of this Ministerial Council. The meetings between the Ministers and the able mediation of the Co-Chairs helped to prepare the Geneva Summit of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on October 16th, 2017. This was the first meeting between the Presidents after about sixteen months interval and it passed mostly in a positive mood.

For the first time in about four years at the Geneva Summit it was possible to adopt, although quite brief, a joint statement. On numerous previous occasions Armenia expressed its readiness to join the statements of the Co-Chairs, however, Azerbaijan always refused to have a common statement. This joint statement reflected what Armenia has been long advocating for: to take additional steps to reduce tensions on the Line of Contact. These steps have been identified in the statements made at the Vienna and St. Petersburg Summits of 2016. The Geneva statement also stressed the necessity to intensify the negotiation process, and this too has always been strongly advocated by Armenia.

Unfortunately, just after the Summit Baku again resorted to its language of groundless accusations and warmongering.

Yesterdays meeting with my Azerbaijani colleague generally passed in the positive mood. We will see the developments after it.

Mr. Chairman,

Next year people of Nagorno-Karabakh will mark 30 years of their struggle for the right to choose their destiny, for human dignity and freedom. In three decades people of Artsakh despite the devastating war and all difficulties, succeeded to create a society based on the respect of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic institutions. The settlement of the conflict should respect all inherent rights of the people of Artsakh and should ensure their unhindered implementation.

Mr. Chairman,

In conclusion, I would like to assure Italy, the incoming Chair that it can count on Armenias support. I would also like to welcome Slovakias joining the Troika.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. US Congressman Gus Bilirakis says the United States should provide financial assistance to those countries that hosted Christian refugees from the Middle East, reports Armenpress.

I think we ought to provide assistance to the states that hosted Christians from Syria and Iraq. President Trump also supports that we should be the protector of Christians across the world, the Congressman told Voice of America.

He said Armenia, which hosted numerous Christians from the Middle East over the past years, also can expect an aid for assisting the refugees. I call on Armenias representatives to contact me, I will be happy to work with them on this matter, he said.

During a conference on religious freedom in Washington DC, the Republican Congressman highlighted the importance of the Armenian Genocide recognition at the Congress level. He told the reporter that he is going to discuss this issue with the Republican Congressmen. I think the resolution can be adopted, we will discuss it with our leaders, firstly the issue should be discussed at the foreign affairs committee, and then when it is adopted here, we will include the Armenian Genocide resolution in the agenda of the House of Representatives, Gus Bilirakis said.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. During the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna, Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian said the closure of the OSCE Office in Yerevan was a very negative precedent, reports Armenpress.

FM Nalbandian said the very essence of the OSCE is to settle the issues through dialogue and cooperation and never through imposing the position of one participating State at the expense of all others and the entire Organization.

The Ministerial Councils provide an opportunity to talk about the achievements and vision for the future. However, it is equally important not to omit to address the setbacks of the Organization in an open and candid manner. The refusal of Azerbaijan to join the consensus on the extension of the mandate of the Office damaged not merely the integrity of the field missions of the OSCE, but its capacity of inclusive cooperation, Nalbandian said.

He reminded that Azerbaijan failed to respect the OSCE commitments and eliminated the OSCE Office in its own country before it attacked and closed the last OSCE full-fledged mission in the region.

It is particularly deplorable that the Office was closed against the will and consistent efforts for its preservation exerted by the host country and all participating States with one exception - Azerbaijan. We would like to recall that both German and Austrian Chairmanships rejected the accusations of Azerbaijan against Yerevan Office. It does not come as a surprise that Azerbaijan found itself in isolation in challenging the OSCE Office in Yerevan, the minister noted.

Edward Nalbandian added that Armenia is determined to continue the close cooperation within the OSCE framework, and the Armenia cooperation programme opens good opportunities in this regard.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. His Holiness Catholicos Aram I of the Great House of Cilicia rejects the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, the Catholicosate told Armenpress.

His Holiness Aram I delivered remarks at the World General National Assembly of the Catholicosate in Lebanon touching upon US Presidents Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Catholicos Aram I rejected this step and said it is not in accordance with the justice of the international law and the historical reality.

According to His Holiness, such a move may have negative repercussions in the Middle East and may jeopardize the peace process.

The event was also attended by President of Lebanon Michel Aoun who in his turn presented the Lebanese stance on President Trumps statement.

His Holiness Aram I also talked about the role of Diaspora communities. The Lebanese President highlighted the importance of the Armenian Diaspora and the necessity to preserve the Armenian language, values and culture.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan has long blacklisted the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, and then it started to put in the blacklist all those who visit Nagorno-Karabakh. Those who genuinely aspire for peace do not do such actions, Armenias foreign minister Edward Nalbandian said in his speech at the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna on December 7.

In addition to more than a dozen reasons why progress hasnt been possible to be achieved until now in the peaceful negotiations process, FM Nalbandian stressed Azerbaijans adoption of an anti-Armenian hate speech policy.

Azerbaijan continues to practice anti-Armenian hate speech, it calls all Armenians of the world its enemy number one, it writes in the textbooks that Armenians are genetic enemies of Azerbaijan, it erases all traces of indigenous Armenian cultural heritage and religious sites, it claims that allegedly territories of Armenia are ancient Azerbaijani lands, Nalbandian said.

He reminded that despite numerous presidential and ministerial level meetings, numerous stages of negotiations, the mediation of co-chairing countries, efforts of the OSCE and other structures, Azerbaijan continues to step back and obstacle the peaceful settlement process by the use of force.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. President of Artsakh Bako Sahakyan on December 7 held a consultation over the implementation of a number of educational programs, press service of the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

Minister of education, science and sport Narine Aghabalyan reported on the process of works.

President Bako Sahakyan stated that a coordinated work between the legislative and executive branches is necessary for successfully implementing the aforementioned programs, as well as a close cooperation with Armenia and the Diaspora.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan is rejecting the proposals of the co-chairs for the NK conflict settlement, doing everything to keep the status-quo intact at the same time claiming that allegedly it is advocating for the change of status-quo, Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian said at the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna on December 7.

Azerbaijans intentions can be easily tracked by its expenditures: Baku spends billions to buy influence in the world capitals, as once again became obvious through notorious Laundromat affair, it spends much more for purchases of advanced weaponry, but it has not invested anything so far to prepare its population for peace, as the Co-Chairs have been continuously urging, Nalbandian said.

Nalbandian reaffirmed Armenias stance that the peaceful talks dont have an alternative, and intensive negotiations are required based on the proposals of the co-chairs. Nalbandian mentioned the steps which Azerbaijan must take for advancing the peace process.

If Baku abides to the calls of the Co-Chairs to strictly respect the ceasefire, implements previously reached agreements, reiterates its adherence to the principles of the conflict resolution proposed by the Co-Chairs and constructively engages in the negotiations that will pave the way to move the peace process forward and change the status-quo, he said.

Speaking on his meeting with Azerbaijani FM Elmar Mammadyarov, Nalbandian said it generally proceeded in a positive atmosphere.

Lets see what developments will happen after it, he said.
YEREVAN, 7 DECEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 7 December, USD exchange rate is up by 0.37 drams to 485.33 drams. EUR exchange rate is down by 1.31 drams to 572.16 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate is down by 0.02 drams to 8.20 drams. GBP exchange rate is up by 0.20 drams to 649.37 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is down by 25.51 drams to 19718.42 drams. Silver price is down by 2.46 drams to 251.45 drams. Platinum price is down by 160.72 drams to 14152.57 drams.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The Government of Armenia has approved the bill on creating a free trade zone in Meghri region of Syunik Province. Minister of Economic Development and Investments Suren Karayan noted that the goal of the free trade zone is to attract FDIs, raise the investment attractiveness of the country and boost exports, as well as to create new jobs and foster sustainable economic development.

According to the Minister, the free trade zone will develop in two phases covering 70 hectares by the final stage. Its planned to involve 50-70 companies in the free trade zone in the nearest years, that will make 130-150 million USD investments creating 1500 new jobs. Export volumes will amount to 350 million USD, Suren Karayan said.

Answering Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, the Minister of Economic Development noted that the opening of the free trade zone will take place on December 15.

For the implementation of the project the Government of Armenia has founded "Meghri Free Economic Zone" CJSC.
Two national companies partnering on the redevelopment of the former Oscar Mayer campus on Madisons East Side say theyve already got one letter of intent from a potential tenant and are doing at least a tour a week for others.

Representatives from Reich Brothers Holdings and Rabin Worldwide declined to name the companies that have shown interest in parts of the 72-acre site, but outline a vision for the property that could include everything from food processing to light industrial to warehousing to server farms.

Residential could be in the mix, too, said Orlee Rabin, principal with Rabin Worldwide, but no multistory residential, and Adam Reich, co-CEO of Reich Brothers, said city officials have also been clear that they dont want to see all residential or all retail on the property.

Nate Ellis of Rabin emphasized the creation of a campus where employees could work but that would also have services such as a coffee shop or bank nearby. Reich said the overriding goal is the re-use of as much existing structures as possible and to create jobs.

Any and all calls

Finding one tenant for the entire campus is unlikely, Ellis said, as there are only so many Kraft-sized folks in the world. Alex Reich, director of business development with Reich Brothers, said the development team has specific ideas for what it would like to see on the campus but it would also welcome any and all calls from potential tenants.

He said the vacancy rate for industrial space in Madison is about 3 percent, which is low and could bode well for attracting industrial tenants to the property.

This will truly be a mixed-use location, Ellis said.

To do that, the companies will need to repurpose infrastructure that had been designed and had evolved to serve one massive tenant so that it can serve many. Alex Reich noted the site has access to a high-speed fiber connection but that it would need to be extended around the back of the campus, on the west side, to serve other tenants.

The companies have already been in contact with the city and the states jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., about what tax incremental financing, grants or other public assistance might be available for the project. Ellis said the most likely use of any public assistance would be to improve infrastructure such as water and power service to better serve multiple tenants.

Once the primary auction of Oscar Mayer equipment is completed on Friday, the companies will move into a quieter phase in which theyll undertake what Ellis said is $10 million in needed infrastructure improvements at the site, including $4 million to $5 million in electrical work alone.

Its not sexy, he said. People wont see it really happening.

Both companies point to projects theyre doing elsewhere  the repurposing of a former Campbells Soup factory in Sacramento, California, for Rabin, and a former steel foundry in Columbus, Ohio, for Reich  as proof that they could do the same with Oscar Mayer.

Adam Reich said his company is known for holding onto properties to see their redevelopment through and in five years, were going to be here.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan received on December 7 Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Armenia Jonathan Lacote.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Defense Ministry of Armenia, Vigen Sargsyan congratulated Ambassador Lacote on the assumption of the post and wished him new achievements in his diplomatic mission in Armenia.

According to the Defense Minister, the high level political, economic and cultural relations oblige to develop cooperation also in the defense sphere.

Ambassador Lacote thanked for the warm reception and wishes, expressing conviction that the development of Armenian-French cooperation will be continuous.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The Government of Armenia will suggest the President of the National Assembly of Armenia to convene an extraordinary session on December 19 at 11:00, ARMENPRESS reports the Cabinet meeting approved the decision.

14 issues will be on the agenda of the extraordinary session.
According a Tweet from the French Ministry of Defense of December 6, 2017, Qatar has signed a letter of intent to purchase 490 French-made VBCI (Vehicule Blinde de Combat d'Infanterie) 8x8 armoured infantry fighting vehicles designed and manufactured by the French Defense Company Nexter Systems.

VBCI 2 8x8 armoured infantry fighting vehicle fitted with CTA 40 turret at Eurosatory Defense Exhibition in June 2016. (Picture source Army Recognition)

Some few years ago, Qatar has showed a great interest to purchase the French-made VCBI 8x8 infantry fighting vehicle. In August 2015, an improved version of the VBCI, the VBCI 2 fitted with CTA40 40mm turret was spotted in Qatari video report showing the French-made 8x8 vehicle in trial tests in Qatar.

The VBCI is in service with the French army, it has already been successfully deployed for combat operations in Afghanistan and Mali.

The VBCI in the French Army is equipped with a one-man Nexter Dragar turret armed with a dual feed 25mm NATO cannon type 25 M811 with 150 rounds in the turret and a coaxial 7.62mm machine gun.

The hull and the turret of the VBCI Nexter Systems are composed by welded steel and aluminium, who offers a protection against small arms fire and artillery shell splinters. To increase the protection, the welded steel and aluminium alloy hull is fitted with spall liners and add-on titanium armour plate to protect against anti-tank weapons.

The VBCI 2 is an improved version of the previous version of the VBCI which was unveiled at the Defense Exhibition DSEI in September 2015. The VBCI has more internal volume thanks to an higher roof hull. The vehicle can also be fitted with additional armour to increase protection against ballistic and mine threats.

The VBCI 2 is motorized with a more powerful engine Volvo D13 turbocharged diesel developing 600 hp.

The CTA 40 turret is armed with the CTA International 40 mm Cased Telescoped Cannon System (CTCS). A 40mm CTA APFSDS round penetrates more than 140mm of armoured steel. Second armament includes a remotely operated weapon station armed with a 7.62mm or 12.7mm machine gun. Two launchers for anti-tank guided missiles can be mounted on each side of the turret.
SAN FRANCISCOMaxine Doogan, whose long battle to decriminalize prostitution finally went to a federal court in October, was back in the news in San Francisco this week, when the local Bay City Beacon newspaper spotlighted the activist and her court casewhich, if Doogan prevails, would clear the way for legal sex work not only in California, but in other states as well.

Read AVN.coms latest coverage of Doogans lawsuit, ESPLERP v. Gascon, by clicking on this link. ESPLERP is the organization Sex Workers and Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project, founded by Doogan in San Francisco after the failure of a California ballot proposition to decriminalize sex work in 2008.

The lawsuit brought by ESPLERP, which went before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 19, seeks to toss out laws banning prostitution as unconstitutional on the grounds that those laws invade the privacy of consenting adults.

People should be able to charge for [sex], and people should be able to pay for it, Doogan told the Beacon. And prostitution is a prolific activity, and it continues today, so all these laws against it dont really work anyway.

At least one judge on the Ninth Circuits three-judge panel appeared sympathetic with that point of view when the case was argued in October, asking in the hearing, Why should it be illegal to sell something that is legal to give away?

Judge Carlos Beas question seemed to go right to the heart of Doogans own argument in favor of removing criminal penalties from prostitution.

In capitalist America, you can charge for everything, she told the Beacon.

When the Ninth Circuit will issue a decision in the ESPLERP case is unclear, but according to some experts, the appellate judges appear likely to send the case back to the lower courts for a trial, rather that issue a definitive ruling of its own.
UK-based sugarcraft brand Renshaw Professional is continuing its overseas expansion with the opening of an Australian operation.

While the business has supplied leading Australian grocery retailers with own-label products for three to four years, the brand made its debut Down Under last month.

Renshaw has produced 18 lines specifically for the Australian market, and is using third-party warehousing and a dedicated sales resource to market the range.

The company has 30 cake decorators representing the brand across Australia, with products already featuring online on Cake TV, and more than 30 members of the Australian Cake Decorating Network visiting the Renshaw Academy in Liverpool to gain further knowledge on the products.

Dedicated digital media, competitions, trade shows and advertising will support the Australian roll-out.

The Renshaw brand launched into the US and Canada in 2016 and is using this experience as a blueprint for the Australian launch. Renshaw, which has a dedicated warehouse and offices just outside New York in Rockaway, New Jersey, has recently relaunched 45 lines in the US. The company said the activity has resulted in its highest-ever monthly US sales in November.

In the UK, the company launched eight new sugarpastes last month ahead of a global roll-out. The line-up includes Petal paste for fine detail, modelling paste, white chocolate modelling paste, milk chocolate modelling paste, and Extra for covering deep cakes. Three confectionery covering icings are being launched for the B2B market - caramel, white and milk chocolate.

In October, Renshaw owner Real Good Food reported a 5.5m annual profit from its Cake Decoration division.
Burtons Biscuit Company is set to introduce an indulgent extension of its Maryland brand called Big & Chunky.

Available from January, the cookies come in two variants  White Choc & Caramel and Milk & Dark  with an RSP of 1.49 for a 180g pack. The latter is also available in a price-marked pack (PMP) for 1.39.

With our new Big & Chunky lines, were bringing our best-loved cookie recipes into a bigger and chunkier format thats perfect for a slightly more indulgent treat, said Mandy Bobrowski, UK and Ireland marketing director at Burtons Biscuit Company.

Were also tapping into the impulsive nature of biscuit shoppers, with a PMP format that will enable retailers to drive sales from impulse purchases.

The NPD follows what Burtons described as a successful year for the brand, worth 50m and growing at 9.5% year on year, according to Nielsen Scantrack data to 7 October 2017. This was driven by sales of its core range, which are up 6.2% to 27.5m, and Maryland Minis, which experienced 12.2% growth.

A wide range of NPD has been launched under the Maryland brand over the past year, including Maryland Thins, designed to tap into the trend for a lighter snack, and Maryland Crispies, cookies with crispy pieces in them.
The Federation of Bakers, Hovis and the Real Bread Campaign are among the latest organisations to sign up to Courtauld 2025.

Twenty-four new signatories, including the Scotch Whisky Association and Stonegate Farmers, have pledged to help tackle food waste. The total number of organisations involved  including supermarkets, manufacturers, charities and government bodies  now stands at 156.

The expansion comes a year into the Waste & Resources Action Programmes (WRAPs) 10-year plan to slash the resources needed to provide the UKs food and drink by a fifth, saving 20bn, and coincides with the publication of a Review of the work undertaken so far.

This first year has been about creating sector-wide collaboration and developing networks for change, and Im very pleased with how signatories have responded, said Steve Creed, director of Business Programmes at WRAP. This first year has been about creating sector-wide collaboration and developing networks for change, and Im very pleased with how signatories have responded.

It comes less than a week after WRAP released best-practice guidance, designed to clear up confusion around food labelling, which can lead to food being wasted.

Courtauld uses what WRAP describes as a holistic approach from farm to fork, with achievements set out under sector categories. This includes an initiative called Your Business is Food for the hospitality and foodservice sector to help businesses track and reduce food waste.

It also looks at commercially viable ways to use food surplus, with signatories in the bakery sector a core focus of this, as well as options for redistribution via charities such as FareShare.

British Baker magazine subscribers can also access our latest feature on waste, which explains the rules and regulations around such donations, as well as alternative uses for bakery waste.
Most posts here will be stuff I've

found or friends have sent to me

from around the internet that I

find interesting in one way or

another.





It will be an outlet for my political

views, sense of humor, musical

interests, etc., etc..





Also on occasion stories of my

own from my everyday life,

doing what ever the hell it is i do,

see, or may be working on.




This is the first of many new pictures of the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, which I have just uncovered in the Public Domain: The USS West Virginia and USS Tennessee struck by Japanese torpedoes in Pearl Harbor, just a few short miles from Honolulu on the island of Oahu.

"Battleship Row" ablaze - I believe the USS Oklahoma is capsize in the foreground, where hundreds of sailors were entombed after being trapped and ultimately drowned.

A pet peeve of mine has long been how poorly we treat history in our school systems , and, subsequently, in the periodicals that represent who we are. So often young Americans do not know of our past, and because of that sad fact, I fear whom, as a People, we will become.Because there are Americans, who are purely ignorant of the facts of our past, which often tell the story of abject sacrifice of our forefathers, I wonder to what extent the citizen soldier will rise up to defend their liberty that is now taken so faithfully for granted. At present, we have the world's most competent military to protect us, which provides those who ignore the history of American sacrifice the luxury to be complacent of the sociological value of that sacrifice.On December 7, 1941, the United States of America was not the world's strongest military; no, far from it. With Europe, north Africa and Asia engulfed in a war in which aggressors: Nazi Germany / Austria and Italy in Europe and north Africa, Japan in all of Asia, terrorized huge swaths of civilian populations, America was still woefully unprepared for certain war. These Fascist aggressors, known as the Axis Powers, enforced a reign of terror upon civilian populations, unprecedented in world history, and yet a majority of Americans desperately wished to remain in "isolation."This unwise policy of isolationism abruptly ended on that fated Sunday, December 7, 1941. Whether America was ready for war, we were well engaged in those early days of December in late 1941, when the Empire of Japan not only attacked Pearl Harbor, in the United States's Territory of Hawaii, but the American territories and protectorates of the Philippines Islands, Guam and Wake Island. Whether America was resolved to wage total war against the unrepentant evil of these Axis Powers, or not, hundreds of thousands of brave American boys and men volunteered for enlistment the following week after they, as true American patriots, were willfully attacked in a protected harbor, on a distant island, thousand of miles away from this young, ambitious nation.I still have to question, would this current American nation, which has benefited immeasurably from the valor of this preceding generation, still have that resolve to act as quickly, as honorably, as this "Greatest Generation." I am ambivalent in my conclusion to such a necessary question. I often pray for our future.In less than two hours, two waves of Japanese dive bombers and torpedoe planes, with fighter support, Mitsubishi Zeros, attacked, unprovoked, the United States's Pacific Fleet at Pearl Habor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The this short battle was over, and the remarkable damage done, America was crawling forward to go to war, not only with Japan, but against Nazi Germany as well. It was about time!Here below is the infamous list of that destruction to American property, and of American life:United States Army -United States Navy -United States Marine Corps. -Civilians -USS Arizona (BB-39) -USS Oklahoma (BB-37) -USS California (BB-44) -USS West Virginia (BB-48) -USS Nevada (BB-36) -USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) -USS Maryland (BB-46) -USS Tennessee (BB-43)USS Utah (AG-16) former battleship used as a target) -USS New Orleans (CA-32) -USS San Francisco (CA-38) -USS Detroit (CL-8) -USS Raleigh (CL-7) -USS Helena (CL-50) -USS Honolulu (CL-48) -USS Downes (DD-375) -USS Cassin (DD-372) -USS Shaw (DD-373) -USS Helm (DD-388) -USS Ogala (CM-4) -USS Curtiss (AV-4) -USS Vestal (AR-4) -USS Sotoyomo (YT-9) -188 Aircraft destroyed (92 U.S. Navy and 92 U.S. Army Air Corps)
North Carolina is urbanizing. One of its urban areas, Charlotte, has an extensive transit system that includes rail lines. Another urban area, the Triangle, is currently embarking on a major expansion of transit service, including some rail. Leaders in the Triad, Asheville, Wilmington, and other places are also working on, or at least dreaming of, large-scale transit systems.Do these developments excite you, annoy you, or bore you? If the former, you are probably a progressive Democrat. If either of the latter, you probably aren't.Count me among the annoyed. I understand the politics. While most North Carolinians, even urbanites, have no plans to use transit on a regular basis, they believe that others will - and that such a shift of commuters from automobiles to buses or trains will make it easier to drive to and from work. Thus these voters express support for transit, particularly if they think the cost can be shifted to taxpayers elsewhere in the state or nation.Such politically appealing notions bear little relationship to reality. Outside of New York and few other large cities, transit accounts for a tiny fraction of daily travel. That's not going to change.In the Charlotte area, transit is used for about one-half of a percent of all trips, about 3 percent of all commuting, and just 4.4 percent of the commuting to and from the center of the city. In Raleigh, the shares are even lower - two-tenths of a point for all trips, 1.1 percent for all commutes, and 2.1 percent for downtown commutes.North Carolina's cities are less dense that those of most other states. While some infill development and multi-occupancy projects are happening, our densities will remain far below the average. So no matter how many billions of tax dollars we spend on buses and trains, we can't expect the share of our commutes carried by transit to rise into the double-digits anytime soon.Transit boosters insist that automotive transportation is just as subsidized, if not more so, but this is simply bonkers. Motorists or their customers bear the vast majority of the cost of operating the system - even if you include externalized costs such as air pollution - through fees, tolls, taxes, and direct charges.The latter source, "direct charges," is the largest. Keep in mind that public streets, roads, and bridges are only the surface where automotive transportation happens. The system itself mostly consists of private operation of private assets. That is, about 80 percent of the annual outlay is to buy, fuel, maintain, repair, insure, and operate cars and trucks. If you factor in the monetary value of the time we spend driving ourselves, that ratio would rise still higher.Some people are shut out of automobility due to poverty or disability. There are ways to address their needs that don't involve massive capital expenditures or intrusive attempts to engineer transit-friendly "smart growth."Unfortunately, the issue rarely comes down to practicality. As on so many other issues, there is a clash of visions here. While even among hard-core Democrats the share of voters who use transit regularly is small, progressives are overwhelmingly in favor of transit subsidies. Conservatives are overwhelmingly against them.More generally, according to a recent set of polls by the Pew Research Center , about 70 percent of the group of voters it calls Solid Liberals say they would prefer to live in communities whereOn the other hand, about 70 percent of those classified by Pew as conservatives say they prefer communities whereTo the extent government regulation inhibits the dense neighborhoods that many urban progressives desire, I'd end it. But not enough residents will join the progressives in those places, and give up their cars, to justify large-scale transit systems. That's not in North Carolina's future. Alas, lots of wasteful spending is.
Direct political advocacy unusual but not unheard of from N.C. PTA chapters

As parents waited in the carpool line Dec. 4 at A.B. Combs Magnet Elementary school, they were greeted by PTA volunteers passing out bright green fliers. The fliers, from the school's PTA chapter, urged parents to get involved in politics. Their cause? The class size reduction mandate passed this spring by the General Assembly.The fliers listed possible impacts from requiring lower class sizes, advice on how to argue against the mandate, and contact information for the Wake County legislative delegation and the Senate Committee on Education.The General Assembly required local school systems to reduce their class sizes starting in the 2018-19 school year. Class sizes for K-3 grades would be capped at 18 for kindergarten, 16 for first grade, 17 for second and third grade. The idea is that smaller class sizes would result in improved student performance as teachers are able to spend more time on each individual student.Currently, class size averages in Wake County public schools for kindergarten, second grade, and third grade are at 20, while first grade averages 19. Critics of the mandate are concerned that without additional state funding, school districts will have to provide more money to meet the mandate.The A.B Combs Elementary PTA says the unfunded class size mandate will hurt public schools and warns that 27 elementary schools in Wake County cannot meet the mandate requirements.A.B. Combs Elementary PTA President Sarah London said the unfunded mandate was well-intended, but the unintended consequences will hurt students and teachers."We had a group of parents who were concerned about the implications of the unfunded class size mandate," London said.London explained that the goal is to educate parents about the possible implications of the unfunded mandate and what they can do about it. The A.B. Combs Elementary PTA passed a resolution on November 20 urging the General Assembly to take up the issue during the January special session.Terry Stoops, the John Locke Foundation's vice president of research and director of education studies, said it is unusual but not unheard of for PTAs to get involved in advocacy.Stoops said. Political advocacy should not be part of the group's mission.Stoops said PTAs from higher-income urban and suburban areas are more likely to get involved in politics. Affluent parents are more likely to take the time to organize such endeavors, as The Atlantic Monthly noted last year in a feature story.While the A.B. Combs Elementary PTA may have a legitimate concern, Stoops said the PTA isn't the most appropriate means for advocacy.Stoops argued.Stoops said the PTA has framed the debate about the class size mandate as a complaint against the Republican-controlled General Assembly's education policies.Stoops said.London insisted the A.B. Combs PTA advocacy campaign is not driven by politics.London explained.Even so, A.B. Combs PTA posted support for the Wear Red 4 Ed campaign on its Facebook page . The campaign, organized and endorsed by the North Carolina Association of Educators , pushes for higher taxpayer funding for public schools.Stoops said.The PTA's Facebook page also links to the website of Public Schools First NC , a left-leaning advocacy group that opposes school choice of all forms, including public charter schools. The site includes suggested text of letters parents should write to legislators, urging them to ease the class size mandate.
The Democrat leadership has made constant, profound and incredible pronouncements that one's supportive vote for Republicans is tantamount to surrendering Democracy forever. Understanding their sincere thinking in their extreme position: How will you still vote on this election day?

Democrat; because the continuance of this Democracy from the existential threat of extreme Republicans is paramount.

Republican; the process of having a choice is the democratic method within what so called "Democracy" does exists.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city -- and so importantly -- is Israel's capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law's waiver, refusing to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement.Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace.It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem -- the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs.Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all.But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done.That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace.In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved.The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With today's action, I reaffirm my administration's longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region.There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation.This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible; not pulling us back and down to the old fights that have become so totally predictable. Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach.So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance to prevail over the purveyors of hate. Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts.I repeat the message I delivered at the historic and extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: The Middle East is a region rich with culture, spirit, and history. Its people are brilliant, proud, and diverse, vibrant and strong. But the incredible future awaiting this region is held at bay by bloodshed, ignorance, and terror.Vice President Pence will travel to the region in the coming days to reaffirm our commitment to work with partners throughout the Middle East to defeat radicalism that threatens the hopes and dreams of future generations.It is time for the many who desire peace to expel the extremists from their midst. It is time for all civilized nations, and people, to respond to disagreement with reasoned debate -- not violence.And it is time for young and moderate voices all across the Middle East to claim for themselves a bright and beautiful future.So today, let us rededicate ourselves to a path of mutual understanding and respect. Let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities. And finally, I ask the leaders of the region -- political and religious; Israeli and Palestinian; Jewish and Christian and Muslim -- to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace.Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless the Palestinians. And God bless the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you.(The proclamation is signed.)White House 
Every public school student will graduate ready for post-secondary education and work, prepared to be a globally engaged and productive citizen."

Those lofty words are from the vision statement of the State Board of Education of North Carolina. With the adoption of Common Core State Standards in 2010, college and career readiness became the stated outcome of our public schools.According to the Department of Public Instruction, in 2015, 82 percent of North Carolina high school graduates intended to enroll in a public or private four-year college or two-year community college.Education officials trumpet that North Carolina's four-year high school graduation rate is at an all-time high; 86.5 percent.If we seek to enroll more graduates into college, high school graduates need to be ready for college. Are they?In 2016-17 the percentage of 11th grade students in North Carolina taking the ACT test - an exam that gauges college readiness - who met ACT benchmarks in all subject areas was 30.8 percent. The concerns aren't limited to high school. The percentage of K-12 students who met or exceeded college or career ready proficiency standards on all EOG/EOC subjects was less than half of all students (49.2 percent).Today children receive nonstop messages about the benefits of higher education. Couple that with pressure from Washington and Raleigh to not only increase the number of high school graduates and get students into colleges, but to also increase the number of minority and disadvantaged students and you have significant forces working to open college doors. It's a mix where strange things begin to happen.North Carolina's rising graduation rate was supposed to be good news. Until you realize it has been aided by an online credit recovery program that allows students to retake parts of classes for credit that students failed to gain credit for the first time. In 2015-16, over 18,600 students enrolled in credit-recovery programs and 64 percent of students passed. The unusually high numbers of students gaining diplomas through the program has raised questions and recently caught the attention of the State Board of Education.In North Carolina, students are considered career and college ready when they have the knowledge and academic preparation needed to enroll and succeed, without the need for remediation in college-bearing courses like English language arts and mathematics. The percentage of students taking remediation classes in many states ranges from the mid-thirties to mid-forties. Not in North Carolina.In recent years, the percentage of North Carolina high school students enrolling in English or math remediation classes has been declining. In 2013, 63 percent of recent high school graduates who enrolled in North Carolina community colleges took one or more developmental courses in reading or math. Four years later, Terry Stoops, Director of Research at the John Locke Foundation reported that approximately 25 percent of freshman students were enrolled in remediation classes.But further reflection reveals that policy changes - not improved preparedness - have reduced the size of the remediation applicant pool.For instance, if a student takes four years of math, has a GPA of 2.6 or better and graduated in the previous five years, they are not required to take the placement test. This significantly narrows the pool for potential remediation.In the last several years, North Carolina has awarded performance grades to all public schools. Schools are awarded individual grades A, B, C, D and F. While we can argue about how the grades are calculated, few parents know that the grades are based not on a traditional seven or ten-point grading scale, but on a 15-point scale. The new scale makes it easier to get higher grades and lowers the floor for failing from a score of 69 to 39 and below.Performance grading was supposed to revert to a 10-point scale a few years back but lawmakers have delayed the transition.These factors may help to explain the myth of college readiness. None of this is easy to fix.Parents and taxpayers should expect high school graduates to have the skills necessary to enter either higher education or the work force. That we find more students unfit for higher education points to a system where the rush to expand access has damaged educational quality and had the opposite effect. The gap between the rhetoric and reality of college readiness is a problem we have tried hard to ignore. It shouts for our attention.
. To do so, first type the original number into the text box. Then click on the "Scientific Notation" option located at the top of the floating window. Finally, click on the "Standard" button found beneath the text box to display your result. This program is useful for scientists and engineers working with decimal-based numbers. It provides easy access to those who need to convert those numbers into more compact forms without having to do heavy math calculations first.

Scientific notation is a way to express very large or very small numbers. It is used in physics, chemistry and other fields where large numbers are common. Those numbers are written as a power of 10 followed by a number with an exponent. For example, 1,000,000 (one million) is written as 1  103. The exponent shows how many zeros are after the first digit. For example, 1,000,001 is written as 1  102. Scientific notation is a useful tool for making calculations easier. You can use it to write down very big or very small numbers in one step instead of writing out both the large and small numbers separately. You can also use it to express large or small numbers in terms of other units like centimeters or millimeters.

Scientific notation solver is an online tool that can be used to convert any number into scientific notation. Simply enter any number to the left of the decimal point and it will automatically convert it into a scientific notation equivalent. This web tool can be very helpful when you need to convert a large number into scientific notation. However, please note that this online tool can only convert numbers that are in scientific format. For example, it cannot convert a non-scientific number like "1,085" into a scientific notation equivalent. It is also important to keep in mind that this web tool only works when converting numbers from one particular format to another. For example, if you want to change a non-scientific number like "1,085" into standard format, then you will have to use another online tool like NumberFormatting.com.
The survey showed that voters, by a margin of more than five to one, oppose allowing American trophy hunters to import into the United States the parts of elephants and lions they kill in Africa. Photo by Alamy

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We have no better evidence of the non-partisan nature of animal protection than new data from a national poll, released this week by The HSUS, that shows deep and widespread opposition to trophy hunting, including strong disapproval of allowing imports of sport-hunted elephant and lion trophies from several African nations.

The survey showed that voters, by a margin of more than five to one, oppose allowing American trophy hunters to import into the United States the parts of elephants and lions they kill in Africa, with 78 percent opposing and 15 percent supporting the imports. Those trophy imports are opposed by 76 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of Democrats, and 75 percent of non-partisan voters. More broadly, 69 percent of Americans say they oppose trophy hunting, including 79 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Republicans, and 67 percent of non-partisan voters.

President Trumps direct language, offered up in a tweet taking issue with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to allow the import of elephant and lion hunting trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia, exposed trophy hunting for what it is: a frightful and gratuitous assault on some of the worlds most spectacular animals. And he signaled he wasnt buying the tired old canard that trophy hunters have trotted out for years  that the money they pay in license fees and guiding services to kill rare and even endangered animals somehow justifies the killing and is essential to help conserve them.

The survey shows that the American people are with the president on this issue. Pro-trophy hunting advocates claim that trophy hunters provide much-needed revenue for Africans living in economically depressed regions and that the need for such revenue outweighs the need to preserve wildlife populations. The survey showed that 78 percent of American disagree with the claim that trophy hunters provide much-needed revenue for Africans in rural areas, including 75 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats.

Its clear that these numbers reflect a deep dislike for the practice of killing animals just for their heads or hides. Add in the fact that it is only rich Americans who go to African nations and slay wildlife and then take certain parts home, and you have a colonialist tint to the entire, violent vacation experience sought by a selfish few.

These survey results come two weeks after President Trump described wildlife trophy hunting as a horror show  and its clear that his declaration has moved Republicans in our direction on this issue. There is negligible support for allowing trophy parts from elephants and lions to come into the country, and the strongest support for President Trump shutting down the imports comes from Republicans. The survey found that a majority of Americans support this action, with the strongest support coming from Republicans (72 percent support to 19 oppose) and conservatives (64 support to 24 oppose) but also pluralities of Democrats (48 support to 35 oppose) and liberals (49 support to 28 oppose) backing the president on trophy hunting.

Editorial boards throughout the nation have called on the federal government to ban imports of lion and elephant trophies. So have pundits, including conservatives Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and Mark Levin. Members of Congress have also weighed in. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., led a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed by 23 senators, urging a restored ban on elephant and lion trophies. And in just one day of circulation, a letter to President Trump led by Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., Jim Langevin, D-R.I., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Grace Meng, D-N.Y., and Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. garnered 68 bipartisan signatures in support of a prohibition.

Keeping elephants and lions alive is key to economic progress in so many African nations. Millions of tourists trek to natural areas throughout Africa to see elephants, lions, and other extraordinary wildlife on the continent, collectively contributing billions to the economies of wildlife-rich nations. Dramatically fewer in number than wildlife watchers, trophy hunters generate minuscule dollars in relative terms. Whats more, trophy hunting robs these nations of their greatest resources, diminishing the wildlife-watching experiences of so many tourists. Thats no doubt why Kenya has long banned trophy hunting, and in 2014, Botswana  which has more elephants than any other nation  outlawed all trophy hunting, too.

Our intolerance for animal cruelty, especially when it is purposeful, wasteful, and done for boastful, selfish purposes like trophy hunting and dogfighting, is an American characteristic that binds us together as a nation and is something we should be proud of. President Trump has keenly tapped into this American value by calling for a hold on renewing the imports of trophy hunted elephants and lions. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should heed the science and formally prohibit such imports.
Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church says he's working with Vladimir Putin to convene a Church-based inquiry into whether the execution of the royal family by revolutionaries in 1917 was actually a Jewish ritual killing; this appears to be an actual thing the Russian state is about to do, with many details confirmed in a public statement by Moscow's General Prosecutor.



Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov expressed disgust at the idea that investigating a hundred-year-old revolution as a secret Jewish ritual murder plot made him an antisemite.



Andrei Kuraev (right), a protodeacon of the Church in Moscow, academic theologian, and critic of Kirill's policymaking, said in a radio interview this week the ritual murder charge is a public relations ploy by the patriarch's faction. "Twenty years ago when you saw the first investigation, the Synod made its request to the investigating commission  is there any reason to believe the murder was a ritual. The answer was  no. Now, in the new case we are talking about what Patriarch considers his policy  [he is] flirting with right-wing circles inside the Church. The Patriarch is trying to make a revolution in their minds, He is pretending, you see. He is trying to say  really I can hear you, I am protecting your interests, I'm for tough talk with the government  you see how independent I am, and strong. This shows the PR of the Patriarch, nothing more." Kuraev believes this will backfire. "In order to speak of the blood ritual version, you have to be a person who generates hatred and enjoys this hatred and misanthropy. It is very sad that these people call themselves my co-religionists, Orthodox Christians."

TORQUEMADA MAKES A COMEBACK  THE SPANISH INQUISITION HAS ARRIVED IN MOSCOW [John Helmer/Dances With Bears]





(via Naked Capitalism)



(Image: patriarchia.ru)


The latest stupidospheric controversy in Donald Trump's America is Donald Jr's hard-to-parse claims of attorney-client privilege; Junior told Congress to go fuck themselves when they asked him to testify under oath about a meeting he had with his father about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, saying he didn't have to answer them because his lawyer was present and thus the conversation was privileged.

In a characteristically excellent lawsplainer, former federal prosecutor Ken "Popehat" White explains what the hell Junior is talking about and whether he's totally deluded, or only partially deluded.



So was the conversation by Trump Jr. and Trump Sr. privileged, because there was a lawyer in the room, or their lawyers were on the call?

No, not necessarily. Just having a lawyer in the room, or on a call, doesn't make a communication privileged. The communication is only privileged if it's for the purpose of obtaining legal advice  if it's communicating things to the lawyer so the lawyer can give legal advice, or it's the lawyer communicating that legal advice. For instance, having a company's general counsel in the room or on the phone during a meeting about business issues doesn't make the meeting privileged, unless the purpose was to get the general counsel's advice.





You see this issue come up all the time in the modern era with email. Just cc'ing your attorney on an email to a non-attorney does not make the email privileged. The email's only privileged if it's to get legal advice  to tell the lawyer something they need to know to give advice, for instance.

So if Sr. and Jr. were just talking, and weren't conveying information for the purpose of getting legal advice from the lawyers who were on the call or in the room, the conversation would not be privileged. On the other hand, if they were exchanging information so that their respective lawyers could give them legal advice about what the lawyers heard, it could be. Jr. didn't really give enough information to judge.
Al Franken, the Democratic senator and admitted groper who should have been made to resign weeks ago because there's never just one, idiots, is to resign.

The announcement came after dozens of Democrats called on him to resign.

He is the most prominent political figure to resign amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations.

"Today I am announcing that in the coming weeks I will be resigning as a member of the United States senate," he told his colleagues on Thursday.

"I may be resigning my seat but I am not giving up my voice."

The former Saturday Night Live comedian and two-term senator has apologised to several women who have accused him of groping and sexual harassment, but he faced mounting pressure to resign after a new allegation emerged on Wednesday.
A South Carolina cop who shot an unarmed black man in the back is going to jail for at least 19 years.

Michael Slager killed Walter Scott in 2015, while an officer with the North Charleston Police Department. He was fired after video surfaced that showed Slager firing at Scott as he fled. It was clear from the footage that Slager was not in any danger: he just wanted to kill Scott.

Even then, it took two years and one mistrial to bring him to justice. ABC News:
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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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Maya Selva Cigars has a new limited release for Asia. The companys new 2018 Year of the Dog release not only pays homage to the Chinese New Year, but pays homage to the ancient Mayans, who inhibited Honduras  the country where Maya Selva Cigars are produced.

The 2018 Year of the Dog is branded under the Flor de Selva name. The packaging features a dog paw on the box. According to the company:

The dog paw design on our box is reminiscent of the Mayan hieroglyphics. The fauna of the ancient Maya have proven to play a significant part of their iconography. For Mayans, every person had an animal companion who shared their soul and could eventually transform into their animal companion.

The blend of the 2018 Year of the Dog features a Habano wrapper from Honduras, a Nicaraguan binder from Jalapa and a combination of Nicaraguan and Honduran filler tobaccos.

The cigar is available in one size  a 5 5/16 x 52 (150 mm x 52) Toro. It is available in ten-count boxes. Each box is individually numbered and 2018 boxes have been produced. The company has already sold out this years allocation, but is planning for a larger one in 2018.

The Year of the Dog has been a popular release globally in the cigar industry. Davidoff has released its Year of the Dog 2018 Limited Edition as a part of its annual Chinese Zodiac release. Meanwhile, Altadis is planning a Year of the Dog release for the European market under the VegaFina brand.

At a glance here is a look at Maya Selva Cigars Year of the Dog

Blend Profile

Wrapper: Honduran Habano

Binder: Jalapa, Nicaragua

Filler: Honduras, Nicaragua

Country of Origin: Honduras

Vitolas Available

Toro:5 5/16 x 52 (150 mm x 52)

Photo Credits: Maya Selva Cigars
THURSDAY, Dec. 7, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- As the baby boomer population ages, the number of Americans with Alzheimer's disease will double by 2060, researchers report.

The study findings, which show cases of Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment going from 6 million this year to 15 million in four decades, highlight the need to better identify people with a brain-related disease, and to slow its progression.

"There are about 47 million people in the U.S. today who have some evidence of preclinical Alzheimer's," said study author Ron Brookmeyer. He is a professor of biostatistics at the Fielding School of Public Health at University of California, Los Angeles.

"Many of them will not progress to Alzheimer's dementia in their lifetimes. We need to have improved methods to identify which persons will progress to clinical symptoms, and develop interventions for them that could slow the progression of the disease, if not stop it altogether," Brookmeyer said in a UCLA news release.

The researchers used information from large Alzheimer's studies to create a computer model to estimate the number of future Alzheimer's cases.

The investigators determined that by 2060, about 5.7 million Americans will have mild cognitive impairment and another 9.3 million will have full-blown Alzheimer's. Of those with Alzheimer's, about 4 million will require intensive care, such as that provided in nursing homes.

"Estimates by disease state and severity are important because the resources needed to care for patients vary so much over the course of the illness," Brookmeyer said.

People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have significant short-term memory loss but do not necessarily have problems with daily functioning. While those with MCI are more likely to go on to develop Alzheimer's disease, MCI does not always lead to dementia. In full-blown Alzheimer's, the symptoms are more severe, and include memory loss as well as impaired judgment and thinking, problems with performing normal daily activities and, sometimes, personality changes.

The study was published Dec. 7 in Alzheimer's and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.
THURSDAY, Dec. 7, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Age can often bring a loss of hearing, and for some, mental decline in the form of dementia. But are the two linked?

New research does suggest that hearing loss raises the odds for dementia, but the jury is still out on whether one condition actually causes the other, experts say.

According to a team of Irish researchers at Trinity College Dublin, approximately one-third of adults older than 65 years experiences age-related hearing loss. And prior research suggests that a loss of hearing often -- but not always -- precedes the onset of dementia by about 5 to 10 years.

In the new study, a team led by Trinity's David Loughrey reviewed data from 36 studies that included more than 20,000 people across the world. The investigators found a small association between age-related hearing loss and increased risk for mental decline, mental impairment and dementia.

"The associations, although small, were comparable in size and significance with other more commonly researched risk factors" for dementia, the study authors wrote. For example, looking only at the best-conducted, prospective studies, age-related hearing loss was tied to a 22 percent higher odds for cognitive (mental) impairment and a 28 percent higher risk for any kind of dementia.

However, looking at Alzheimer's disease in particular, Loughrey's group saw no association between hearing loss and that brain-robbing disorder.

The researchers stressed that they couldn't prove any cause-and-effect relationship. But if hearing loss is tied to dementia, that's doesn't mean aging adults are helpless to prevent either condition, one geriatrician said.

"It does appear that hearing loss is a modifiable risk factor for cognitive decline as we get older -- this is good news for older adults because hearing loss can be diagnosed easily and treated successfully when using proper hearing aids," noted Dr. Gisele Wolf-Klein. She directs geriatric education at Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y.

Dr. Ian Storper directs otology at the Center for Hearing and Balance Disorders at the New York Head and Neck Institute, part of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Reviewing the findings, he stressed that the study couldn't prove that diminished hearing helps cause dementia, so older Americans who are having hearing difficulties shouldn't panic.

Also, the study "does not suggest that hearing loss is the only risk factor" for dementia, Storper said. And he agreed with Wolf-Klein that if hearing loss is a risk factor for cognitive decline, "it could be a preventable risk factor by using hearing aids, if possible, which will also help you hear better."

The findings were published Dec. 7 in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more on age-related hearing loss.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal with his children Fe, Jorge, Paula and Santiago, in Barcelona, in 1889. UB

On his first day as mayor of Barcelona, Dr Bartolome Robert gave a conference to an expectant audience in Barcelona. The subject of his talk was The Catalan Race. The date was March 14, 1899.

Surrounded by huge sketches of skulls, Robert began to lay out the solid proof of the cephalic index of the various races, following their path across Spain, according to an article that appeared the following day in La Vanguardia newspaper.

The mayor of Barcelona, Bartolome Robert, declared the existence of a Catalan Race with a different cephalic index in 1899

Standing by a colored map of the country, the doctor declared that those from Valencia had a more oval shaped skull while in Asturias and Galicia there was a prevalence of rounder craniums similar to those of the primitive inhabitants coming to the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa.

In Catalonia, meanwhile, the shape of the skull fell somewhere between these two types, according to Robert, who described as notable the skulls of Aragon, where the anthropological difference appears to be more distinct on both sides of the border. The article added that Dr Robert would be leaving the characteristics of the Catalan race to another conference to be held at a later date.

Dr Roberts claims sparked controversy, and attracted the attention of his former colleague, neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who spent five years as a professor at Barcelona Universitys medical faculty.

In his memoirs, Recollections of My Life published in 1917, Ramon y Cajal still recalls the genuine affection that existed between he and Dr Robert: An eminent doctor, champion of the precise and purposeful word who, as time passed, was to surprise those of us monitoring Catalan nationalism by proclaiming to the entire world a little insubstantially (he wasnt an anthropologist), the theory of the superiority of the Catalan cranium over the Spanish cranium.

Bartolome Robert, mayor of Barcelona in 1899. RANM

Wryly, Ramon y Cajal suggested that Roberts opinion would be impartial as, besides having a meager though well-furnished cranium himself, he was born in Mexico and had a French surname.

Dr Robert had indeed been born in Tampico, the son of a Basque mother and Mexican father whose roots lay in Catalonia. In October 1899, six months after his controversial conference, Robert stood down as mayor and died three years later.

Researchers today give little importance to the racist element that historically fueled separatism. In his thesis on Dr Robert, the historian Santiago Izquierdo, from the University of Barcelona, points out: At that time, the study of human races did not have the implications that they have today  particularly with regard to politics. And he insists that Robert himself made it clear in 1900 that he was not talking about privileged skulls, although he continued to insist on the different cephalic indexes evident in the various regions of Spain.

Ramon y Cajal did, however, see it as exacerbating the drive for independence. He loved Catalonia and hated the idea of it breaking away from Spain. In his book, The World Seen at 80, published just days before he died in 1934, he bemoaned the antagonism that was surfacing in parts of the Basque Country and Catalonia. After all thats been said, we hope that common sense prevails in the regions that come under the Statutes, without getting to the point of violence and dismemberment that would be fatal for everyone. We are convinced of the good sense of the Catalans, although it is clear that serene and impartial attitudes are hard to achieve among people systematically poisoned by passion for 34 years or among those in the grip of secular prejudice, he mused.

The thesis of Dr. Robert in the satirical publication Don Quijote in 1901. BNE

Born in Petilla de Aragon in Navarre in 1852, Ramon y Cajal chose Catalonia for his second home. His father had studied medicine in Barcelona, and he himself made his first discoveries on neurons, which he called the butterflies of the soul, in Barcelona between 1887 and 1892, winning him the Nobel Prize. A number of his children were also born in the Catalan capital and it was there that one of his younger daughters, Enriqueta, died tragically from meningitis.

Some years earlier, in 1873, he finished his military service in Lerida, where he had fought against the Carlists, who were trying to enforce their claim to the Spanish throne. During these military maneuvers, I had the chance to get to know the Catalan character well, he writes in Recollections of My Life.

Ramon y Cajal is hardly ever mentioned in Catalonia as he was very critical of separatism

Great-great nephew Santiago Ramon y Cajal

He went on to say: In homes where they would get together, including the most humble families, the women were proud to speak Spanish, and they made every effort to make our stay pleasant. They believed that Catalan, with its homegrown dialect, was appropriate to nothing more than terms of endearment and communication within the home. He added that affection for Spain arose spontaneously in all the Catalan provinces.

In his writings, Ramon y Cajal suggests that some of the Catalan population were later poisoned by prominent figures peddling pseudoscientific lies. The rise of Catalan [separatist] politics was also reflected in attempts to establish the particularity of the Catalan physique, writes Lluis Calvo in the Anthropological History of Catalonia, published in 1997.

Ignorance provided the perfect breeding ground for these theories, according to Calvo, director of the Institucion Mila i Fontanals of the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona. The lack of development in anthropological research in Catalonia in the 19th century, together with the scant mention of research into prehistoric issues and archeology, meant that in certain political circles in Catalonia, arguments pertaining to physicality were sought to justify the aforementioned particularity, he writes.

It is clear that serene and impartial attitudes are hard to achieve among people systematically poisoned by passion Ramon y Cajal

Calvo also refers to the historian Jose Pella y Forgas, who asserts a physical difference among the Catalans in his Studies of Catalonia Ethnology published in 1889. Our identity survives and cannot be confused with the Spanish or French due to its own basic ethnicity (evident, among other things, from the Sardinian skull, predominant in Catalonia and to a lesser extent in Valencia and Mallorca), says Pella y Forgas.

But Antoni Rovira i Virgili, a left-leaning Catalan politician, wrote in his 1917 book Catalan Nationalism, that Dr Robert had not strayed from the realms of scientific research in his conference and had drawn no far reaching conclusions. If a different kind of skull was prevalent in the north east of the peninsula, we Catalans arent going to deform our skulls for the sake of Spanish unity, he said.

And in reference to the October 12 celebration commemorating the discovery of America, Rovira i Virgili had this to say: Speaking about the Catalan race is not tolerated while the artificial and arrogant Fiesta of Race is celebrated in territory where the Spanish language is spoken.

The discussion over The Catalan Race would appear to be a craze from another century, but it has had echoes in recent years. The historian Oriol Junqueras, the head of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) party and who is currently languishing in jail on charges of sedition, was quoted in 2008 in the Avui newspaper, speaking about a scientific study of Europes genetic map. There are three states (only three!) where it has been impossible to group the population according to one genetic group. In Italy, Germany [] and Spain, between the Spanish and the Catalans, he said.

The rise of the politics of Catalan separatism was also reflected in attempts to establish the particularity of the Catalan physique

Historian Lluis Calvo

Junqueras perceived a genetic division that did not appear in the data. What that study in fact said was that the genetic differences were minimal across the continent with a gradual variation relating to distance. If you take samples from just two sections of the population, as was done in Spain, these minimal differences show up. If they had analyzed more, a gradual change would have become evident. There are no genetic borders or boundaries, says biologist Jaume Bertranpetit, from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, one of the authors involved in the study. Genetically, Europe is very boring.

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, a great-great nephew of Ramon y Cajal, and a prestigious pathologist at Barcelonas university hospital, Vall dHebron, believes that Catalonia ignored his uncle despite the fact he won the Nobel Prize thanks to the work he carried out there. Ramon y Cajal is hardly ever mentioned in Catalonia, he says. Because he was very critical of separatism. He was very anti-independence.

English version by Heather Galloway.
Catalan Socialists leader Miquel Iceta voting in 2015. Massimiliano Minocri

Opinion polls indicate that turnout at the Catalan elections of December 21 could be in the 80% range, a figure that would shatter the record of 74.95% set in September 2015.

Experts believe that this unprecedented participation will mainly benefit anti-independence parties, in particular the Catalan Socialists (PSC) and Ciudadanos. This, they say, is because Catalans who wish to remain a part of Spain are now highly motivated to go and vote, whereas in the past many felt that regional elections were not something that affected them directly.

Separatism may have reached its electoral ceiling two years ago

Secessionists, for their part, have been highly mobilized for years. Gabriel Colome, head of the Catalan governments Opinion Studies Center, feels that separatism may have already reached its electoral ceiling two years ago, and that increased turnout rates will not help their cause.

In addition to this, they are no longer running together, but are instead rivals, and some of those voters could choose to punish them or turn to the CUP. In 2015, the European Democratic Party of Catalonia (PDeCAT) and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) teamed up in the Junts pel Si (Together for Yes) coalition, which attracted under 50% of the vote but enough seats for a minority government that secured parliamentary support from the far-left CUP group.

Unusual situation

This unusual voter motivation reflects highly unusual circumstances in Catalonia itself: the regions powers of self-government have been partially suspended since late October, when separatist leaders in the region passed a unilateral declaration of independence through parliament. The emergency measures were introduced after Madrid invoked Article 155 of the Constitution for the first time in Spains modern democratic history.

And the race for office is also unprecedented: the ousted premier, Carles Puigdemont is campaigning for the Catalan presidency from Belgium, where he fled to avoid action by the Spanish courts. And several separatist candidates, including former deputy premier Oriol Junqueras (ERC), are campaigning from prison, where they are being held in pre-trial custody while the courts investigate charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds during the independence push.

At the previous regional election of September 27, 2015, the turnout rate grew by nearly 7% and made the unionist party Ciudadanos the second-largest force in the Catalan parliament, where it gained 25 seats. The Catalan Socialists retreated to a rock-bottom 16 seats, but could put in a much stronger performance this time around.

Unionist Catalans used to feel that regional elections did not affect them much

The PSC has managed to convey a clear message following the crisis of three years ago, says Colome.

The big loser on December 21, according to the opinion polls, will be the Catalan branch of the conservative Popular Party (PP), which is currently in power in the central government.

Colome notes that the election will be mostly decided in Barcelona province, which contributes 85 of the 135 seats in the regional assembly, and most particularly in the Barcelona city metro area, where most of the population resides. This electorate has traditionally had high abstention rates.

In another departure from the norm since regional elections were first held here in 1986, the polls will be taking place on a weekday, a fact that could drive up participation because businesses are giving workers four hours off that day to cast their vote.

English version by Susana Urra.
Carles Puigdemont in Brussels on Wednesday. OLIVIER HOSLET (EFE)

The withdrawal of the European arrest warrant against the ousted premier of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, and against four former ministers of his government who fled to Belgium with him, is not a sign of weakness, nor of fear or resignation on the part of the Spanish justice system. It is exactly the opposite. The measure adopted in the writ for the withdrawal by Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena is in line with the plan to prevent the fugitives avoiding prosecution for some of the crimes for which they are being investigated (such as that of rebellion), and to prevent certain actions not being included in the judicial process  both of which would damage the principle of universal application of the law and the principle that states no crime should go unpunished.

If the above were the case, the fugitives would end up enjoying unbalanced and privileged treatment compared to the politicians and former ministers who stayed in Spain, and who had the dignity to assume the responsibilities of their acts of rebellion against the constitutional and statutory order in Spain. These figures will answer for all of their alleged illegal acts in the Spanish courts.

The fugitives must return now, face up to their responsibilities and defend themselves without showboating

Therefore, the decision of the Supreme Court seeks to assure equality of treatment and equality of the result, and to ensure the principle that the same penalty applies for the same crime. These judicial notions have great sway as a civic imperative: they seek to prevent negative discrimination in all cases at all times. With its decision, the Supreme Court is also correcting the perhaps hasty decision to issue the arrest warrant on the part of High Court Judge Carmen Lamela, from whose jurisdiction the Supreme Court has now taken over the case against those who allegedly broke the law as part of the Catalan independence push.

The decision is based on the concept that rebellion is both an individual and a collective crime  the product of a strategy shared by various players in which each person plays a role that is connected to the rest of the participants. To break up this case or to separate the criminal figures involved  as the rules of the European arrest warrant would allow for in cases where the crimes codified in one country do not exist in the country from which a suspect would be handed over  would lead to an unfair trial for everyone. Some would pay a higher price than others.

The fact that the decision to withdraw the European arrest warrant could temporarily reduce the political pressure on the fugitives in Brussels is, however, a poisoned chalice for them. Because it has now been confirmed that with the payment of a small bond the vast majority of them could enjoy the same liberty enjoyed by the others.

The decision of the Supreme Court seeks to assure equality of treatment and equality of result

If the fugitives were to stand honestly in the Catalan elections of December 21, they would have to return to go on the campaign trail, and, if elected, take their seats in the regional parliament. If they dont return, it will be clear to their voters that what they are asking for is a sham: it would not serve the purpose for which it is theoretically designed. And if the fugitives do not return because they are afraid of spending a few days in prison, it will become clear that they joined the electoral contest in search of a political shield. And it would give them a license to do what they like in terms of continuing with the noisy propaganda that has already done so much to damage the Catalans, as can be seen with the regions failure to become the new home of the European Medicines Agency. Their squabbles were enough to see Barcelona ruled out.

The fugitives must return now. They have to face up to their responsibilities. They must defend themselves without showboating. And they must not abandon those who  wrongly  trusted in them.

English version by George Mills.
Mariano Rajoy and Theresa May in London on Tuesday. EFE

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has made another mistake with regard to his own countrys history. But this time, instead of claiming that Spain is the oldest nation in Europe  historians say that France and England were created earlier  he erroneously gave someone else credit for a practice that actually began in Spain.

As part of a visit to Britain on Tuesday, when he met with Prime Minister Theresa May, Rajoy published an opinion piece in The Guardian in which he stated that Britains stance [on the issue of Catalonia] is particularly important, as it is the cradle of parliamentarism and the rule of law.

Rajoy felt like showing off his complete ignorance about the Kingdom of Leon

CCRL

Rajoy received support from May over the independence threat from the Spanish region, with the UK prime minister saying that respecting the Constitution is fundamental.

But residents of the Spanish province of Leon were furious: the cradle of parliamentarism is there, not in the UK, as UNESCO has recognized.

An independent Kingdom of Leon existed at various times in history. In 2013, UNESCO declared The Decrees of Leon of 1188 to be the oldest documentary manifestation of the European parliamentary system.

The candidacy had been submitted in 2012, during Rajoys first term in office.

According to UNESCO, the Decrees of Leon are a group of documents that contain the oldest known written information regarding the European parliamentary system. It originated in medieval Spain and was based on the celebration of a Curia Regia (Royal council) during the reign of Alfonso IX of Leon (1188-1230).

Britains stance is particularly important, as it is the cradle of parliamentarism and the rule of law

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy

These documents reflect an original model of government and administration within the framework of Spanish medieval institutions, where the institutional presence of the common people in higher-level decision making, together with the king, the Church and the nobility, occurs for the first time through the elected representatives of the towns and cities.

A group called Citizen Collective of the Kingdom of Leon (CCRL) was quick to protest.

Rajoy felt like showing off his complete ignorance about the Kingdom of Leon, said the group in a statement on its website. Calling it a serious historical mistake, the CCRL calls on Rajoy to rectify and stop robbing the Leonese people of our historical milestones.

The head of the Leon branch of the Socialist Party, Javier Alfonso Cendon, said it is unacceptable for Rajoy to not be aware about key facts about the political history of his own country, and to additionally attribute them to others.

And the Union of the Leonese People (UPL) has also expressed our most absolute indignation over Rajoys statements.

English version by Susana Urra.
Ousted Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont (c) at Thursdays demonstration in Brussels. Stephanie Lecocq (EFE)

The Belgian police estimate that around 45,000 people attended a demonstration in Brussels today to call for independence for Catalonia, and for the European Union to alter its position on the secession drive.

The protest, which was organized by the pro-Catalan independence associations ANC and Omnium, was attended by the ousted former premier of the northeastern Spanish region, Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Brussels to avoid arrest in Spain for his role in a unilateral declaration of independence passed by the Catalan parliament.

Europe must realize that it can still play a role in the Catalan crisis

Carles Puigdemont

The former health minister in the regional government, Toni Comin, was also in attendance at the march, at which he described members of the Spanish government as Francoists.

Speaking at the end of the event, Puigdemont launched a direct appeal to the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, saying that Europe must realize that it can still play a role in the Catalan crisis. In the run-up to the declaration of independence, pro-secession politicians had assured the public that the EU would recognize an independent Catalonia, but in the event it refused to do so.

Puigdemont went on to say to Juncker that those who are demonstrating below your office [] are not criminals, they are democrats, and asked if he had ever seen a demonstration like this one in support of criminals, in reference to the former members of his government and the one-time heads of ANC and Omnium, who are being held in pre-trial custody in Spain for their role in the independence declaration.

People waving pro-independence 'estelada' flags during the demonstration in Brussels. DIRK WAEM (AFP)

The other four former Catalan ministers who fled to Brussels with Puigdemont  Clara Ponsati, Meritxell Serret, Lluis Puig and the aforementioned Toni Comin, and who, like Puigdemont, are wanted by the Spanish justice system  also made speeches at todays protest.

In response to the demonstration, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenza de Santamaria sent out a tweet saying that the participants were able to attend thanks to their Spanish ID cards and the fact that Spain is a country within the European Union, an institution that the pro-independence movement has also criticized.

In the wake of the unilateral declaration of independence in the Catalan parliament, the central government invoked Article 155 of the Constitution, effectively suspending elements of self-rule in the region. Madrid also called regional elections for December 21, at which Puigdemont will be running as a candidate, despite the likelihood of him being arrested should he set foot on Spanish soil.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Tehran's outspoken MP and deputy speaker of parliament Ali Motahari has called for former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be held accountable in a public trial.

Ahmadinejad and his companions are not worthy enough to be considered the opposition, Motahari said, adding they should stand an open trial.

Meanwhile, in a letter, Ahmadinejads former chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, accused Irans judiciary of becoming an instrument for empowering and establishing the authority of a number of specific persons and groups while crushing opponents and those who criticize the current situation.

In an interview with Iran Students News Agency (ISNA) on December 6, Motahari emphasized that Ahmadinejads trial must be open to the public and that he should be held responsible for his illegal actions.

Deriding Ahmadinejad and his allies as the members of the Basketist Cult, Motahari said, They do not have the necessary caliber to even be considered the opposition.

After Ahmadinejads former deputy for executive affairs, Hamid Baghaei, attended a court hearing session carrying a red basket full of documents, a state-run news agency close to the judiciary, Mizan, coined the term Basketists to describe the former president and his supporters.

There are pending cases against Ahmadinejad in the Judiciary, but so far no action has been taken. These cases deal mainly with financial improprieties.

A self-exiled Iranian journalist, Mehdi Mahdavi Azad, told Radio Farda that labeling Ahmadinejad and his followers is beside the point.

Ahmadinejad is trying to represent himself and his school of thought as a new voice protesting the current situation in Iran, he said. He is trying to distance himself from the ruling system while attracting dissident parts of society who are enraged by [Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei and the head of the judiciarys actions.

Mahdavi Azad said theres a consensus among political groups in Iran, including groups supporting subversion, that Ahmadinejads new attempts are opportunistic and doomed to fail.

The real reason behind the former presidents recent vitriolic attacks against the judiciary, according to Mahdavi Azad, is the fact that Ahmadinejad has concluded that, after prosecuting his closest allies, they will soon directly come for him as well.

However, going after the former two-term president -- who was repeatedly praised by Khamenei as an epitome of servitude for the people and the revolution -- requires the supreme leaders approval. Khamenei, however, has distanced himself from the war of words between the two sides.

Ahmadinejad has learned over the years that so long as Khamenei remains neutral, it is next to impossible for anyone to hold Ahmadinejad accountable for a series of charges, including financial corruption and mismanagement.

In November 2010, several MPs attempted to call the then-president out for what they charged was sidestepping the constitutional powers of the Parliament and circumventing checks and balances.

The protesting MPs, in a letter to the Guardian Council, listed 14 infringements, including foot-dragging by the administration on the implementation of a variety of laws as well as financial irregularities.

Ahmadinejad was also accused of three years of unauthorized imports of gasoline and diesel worth around $10 billion and the failure to account for up to 40 percent of his spending on numerous visits to cities across the country, which he called provincial travels.

The MPs attempt was nipped in the bud when Khamenei refrained from giving his backing.

Ahmadinejad and his supporters recently described the judiciary as ruthless, unjust, tyrannical, and devious. Nevertheless, the justice department, notorious for prosecuting anyone who dares to criticize the ruling system, has preferred to carry on saber-rattling with the former president rather than legally charging him.
(Reuters) - Iran "seriously condemns" the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and its recognition of the city as Israel's capital, read a statement on Wednesday from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried by state media.

The move violates international resolutions, the statement said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel's security.

The U.S. action will "incite Muslims and inflame a new intifada and encourage extremism and violent behavior for which the responsibility will lie with (the United States) and the Zionist regime (Israel)," the foreign ministry statement said.

The statement also called on the international community to pressure the United States not to go through with the embassy move or the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has reiterated that the most important reason for the falling apart of stability and security in the Middle East is the continued occupation and the biased and unequivocal support of the American government for the Zionist regime," the statement said.

"And the deprivation of the oppressed Palestinian people from their primary rights in forming an independent Palestinian government with the noble Quds as its capital," it said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem.
Student protests in Iran this week were propelled by different grievances and demands. Some were concrete issues related to financial issues and others were the result of constant pressures and interference by security organs in universities.

One hotspot has been the Petroleum Industry University (Sanaate Naft), where student protests began even earlier.

The university in Abadan, a petroleum industry center in southern-western Iran, has announced it will close until further notice due to a student strike that has lasted for more than two weeks.

In a statement, the university accused students of disrupting university affairs and said that the decision is based on the fact that students have refused to attend class since November 18 under the pretext of employment demands.

Students at the university, which is funded by the Oil Ministry, have organized protests in Abadan and Tehran demanding the ministry hire them after graduation as they were promised upon admission. The guidelines were changed in 2015, and the ministry now says it will only hire those who pass written and oral employment tests.

The court of the first instance has issued a verdict in our favor that obliges the Oil Ministry to fulfill its commitment toward students, one of the protesters, who requested anonymity, told Radio Farda. Unfortunately, because the ministry has the best lawyers, they have appealed all the points in our lawsuit and we have to wait until the appeals court issues its verdict next year.

Simultaneously, students at other universities organized protests against political suppression, gender discrimination, and increasing tuitions.

Iran's constitution provides that citizens should receive free education; however, only 7 percent of the countrys universities are actually tuition-free, current student activist Mohammad Sharifi Moghaddam told Radio Farda.

Protesting students are also demanding security agencies should stop keeping universities under tight watch, Sharifi added.

There is rarely a politically active student who has not received an anonymous threatening phone call from security agents, he said.

On December 4 and 5, hundreds of students at major universities across Iran demanded an end to political suppression, gender segregation, and discrimination, and what they call a monetization of universities and capitalization of social life.

Since the 2009 protests against the re-election of former president Mahmud Ahmadinejad, hundreds of students have been harassed and arrested by security forces for political activity. Their publications have been systematically banned or censored, and some students have been suspended or discharged from universities.

During his election campaign, President Hassan Rouhani criticized the increasing pressure on students and promised to improve the situation. Students say the president has yet to fulfil his promise.
Turkmenistan has agreed to seek international arbitration of a dispute with Iran over $1.8 billion Ashbagat says Tehran owes for deliveries of natural gas, Turkmen news media reported on December 5.

The energy-rich Central Asian nation halted shipments of natural gas to Iran at the start of the year, saying Iran owed $1.8 billion for supplies it never paid for.

Myrat Archayev, the head of Turkmenistan's state-controlled Turkmengas company, reported that negotiations with Iran over the dispute have been unsuccessful, and the Iranian side had proposed taking the matter to arbitration.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov instructed Archayev to accept the offer to seek mediation in an international arbitration court, according to the Turkmen state news agency and Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper.

Turkmenistan exported gas to Iran under a 1997 agreement, but occasionally raised its prices during the winter. In 2006, it suspended shipments and demanded a nine-fold price increase. Iran eventually accepted the higher prices for a short period.

In 2016, Russia stopped buying gas from Turkmenistan. With the cutoff of supplies to Iran, Ashbagat is now left with China as its sole customer.

With reporting by AP and Interfax


Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

Poland reaffirms its full commitment to solving conflicts in the OSCE area, inclduing the Nagorno-Karabakh protracted conflict, Poland's Undersecretary of State for Security, Consular Affairs and Eastern Policy Bartosz Cichocki said during the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Vienna Dec. 7.

"We believe that the OSCE should play a more significant role in conflict resolution. Our principal need is a full compliance with the unconditional implementation of the existing commitments in all three dimensions, including confidence building and security building measures and arms control agreements," he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

Unresolved conflicts in the OSCE region, including the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, undermine security in the region, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said.

Linkevicius made the remarks at the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna Dec. 6.

"Unresolved conflicts in Moldova, Ukraine and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict impede the strengthening of security in the region," he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Toivo Klaar within the framework of the 24th Ministerial Council of the OSCE, the press service of Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry reported.

During the meeting, the sides discussed the current state of relations between Azerbaijan and the EU and highlighted the importance of the strategic partnership agreement currently being discussed in the development of bilateral relations.



Mammadyarov briefed Toivo Klaar on the recent meetings with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and Foreign Minister of Armenia on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Vienna, and stated that the conflict must be resolved in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the Helsinki Final Act, on the basis of territorial integrity, sovereignty and internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan.

He emphasized that attempts to change the internationally recognized borders of states and acquisition of territory by use of force are unacceptable.



Mammadyarov drew attention to the importance of developing a dialogue between the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in the process of conflict resolution and reiterated Azerbaijan's support for such contacts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

If Armenia is genuinely interested in seeking a political solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, then it must engage constructively in the conflict settlement process, said Elmar Mammadyarov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, in a statement at the 24th Ministerial Council of the OSCE in Vienna Dec. 7.

The months ahead will demonstrate if Armenia is a serious partner for peace, genuinely interested in engaging constructively in substantive negotiations to reach a breakthrough and resolve the conflict or we will continue down the road of further instability and conflict, Mammadyarov said. Azerbaijan retains its right act under the Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

Yesterday, I and Foreign Minister of Armenia had all together with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs hours of talks on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution. This reinvigoration of substantive, result-oriented talks is a reason for cautious optimism, the foreign minister added.

The summit of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, held in Geneva, on October 16, 2017, was the step in right direction. The meeting proved that attempts to precondition the resumption of substantive talks are doomed to failure.

Following the Summit meeting, Azerbaijan and Co-Chairs are focusing on substantial issues with a view to finding the ways of bringing positions of Armenia and Azerbaijan closer towards the settlement. However, it remains to be source of serious concern that certain forces in the region are not interested in taking necessary political steps to move beyond the unsustainable and unacceptable status-quo.

Mammadyarov said Yerevan continues its unlawful practice of altering the demographic, cultural and physical character in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, demonstrates its systematic policy aimed at consolidating the occupation and imposing a fait accompli.

Opening of a church in the occupied Jabrayil district, which was solely populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis before its occupation in 1993, is yet another manifestation of Armenias gross disrespect for international humanitarian law. In parallel of its provocative actions on the ground, Armenia rejects our initiative to dispatch needs-assessment mission to the occupied territories comprising of relevant international institutions.

Azerbaijani FM said such steps by Armenia, including armed provocations along the Line of Contact, as well as the recent illegal military exercises held by Armenia in the occupied territories undermine the peace efforts, and shall be comprehensively addressed by the OSCE Minsk Group and its Co-Chairmen.

OSCE participating States should implement their commitments under international humanitarian law and human rights instruments to prevent and reverse illegal economic and other activities of their natural and legal persons, wherever located.

Relevant UN Security Council resolutions, principles of the Helsinki Final Act and decisions and documents of OSCE form the basis for conflict resolution and for mandate of the Co-Chairmen of the Minsk Conference. The UNSC resolutions of 1993 demanded immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of occupying forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and, as a reciprocal step called for opening up communications and transportation links and urged assisting the return of internally displaced persons to their homes.

The underlying concept of this approach is based on removing consequences of the conflict, while deferring remaining political issues for future negotiations within the Minsk Conference. If Armenia is genuinely interested in seeking a political solution to the conflict, then it must engage constructively in the conflict settlement process.

As it was stated today by a number of speakers, in OSCE area in addition to blatant violation of Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and internationally recognized borders, we observe also similar situation in Ukraine, Georgia and Republic of Moldova.

Azerbaijan believes that lasting solutions to the conflicts mentioned above can only be assured through respect for the norms and principles of international law, particularly those pertaining to sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of Member States of OSCE, said FM Mammadyarov in conclusion.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

Azerbaijan supports the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hikmet Hajiyev, Spokesman with Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Trend Dec. 7.

"Azerbaijan stands for the two state solution of this issue with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine. We call on all parties involved to comply with relevant UN Security Council resolutions", he said.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he will move the American embassy there once a location is secured.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said from the White House.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.7

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and first lady Mehriban Aliyeva have attended the inauguration of the Guba branch of "Azerkhalcha" Open Joint Stock Company.

President Ilham Aliyev and first lady Mehriban Aliyeva cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the branch.

Chairman of the Board of "Azharkhalcha" OJSC Vidadi Muradov informed President Ilham Aliyev and first lady Mehriban Aliyeva of the work carried out here.

The Guba branch of the "Azerkhalcha" OJSC occupies a total area of 1300 square meters. 150 weavers and 12 administrative staff members will be employed in the branch. The building features a textile workshop, artist`s room, warehouse, canteen, medical point and sales room.

The head of state was informed that the weavers are residents of Guba and different villages of the district.

President Ilham Aliyev then met with carpet-weavers and posed for photographs together with them.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

The public of Azerbaijan is extremely concerned on an unfair position demonstrated in the period of independence towards the country by certain circles in the West and in Europe, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the Azerbaijani President for foreign policy issues, head of the department, said on Dec. 7.

"A new example of such a position was demonstrated on Dec. 5 during the discussion in the Council of Europe of the issue related to Ilgar Mammadov," Mammadov said.

He said that this issue has continued to be a concern of one of the figures supervising the activities of the Council of Europe - Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland.

"He believes that no one knows what goals he serves. Apparently, Jagland is aiming to "punish" Azerbaijan, at any cost, to demonstrate Azerbaijan what he is capable of, making the issue of Ilgar Mamedov a flagship for the "defender of human rights". He thinks that it will be easy to achieve this. It's not in vain that the EU is called a Christian club, so why should not the Council of Europe be a Christian club? Who can stop it when Islamophobia has reached such a level? And this is way he can achieve "main goal". Otherwise, over the past years he would have at least once said a word somewhere, expressed his position on Armenia, which occupied the territory of Azerbaijan, which is a member of the Council of Europe. But alas. This European structure is constantly speaking about human rights and obligations, as if there are no obligations. According to Jagland's position, the state that occupied the territories of another country does not bear any responsibility," Mammadov said.

Mammadov said that despite the fact that Armenia keeps under occupation Azerbaijani lands for many years, violates the fundamental rights of more than one million Azerbaijanis living there, committing the Khojaly tragedy, no measures are taken against it, no sanctions are applied, and this country is still a member the Council of Europe, which is a symbol of human rights.

"Are these the European values? Why had Azerbaijan to wait 26 years to get support from the EU for its territorial integrity," Mammadov said.

"Since Europe, which was indifferent to the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia, itself faced separatism today, it began to change its position on this issue, to make statements in support of the territorial integrity of its members, which is a clear example of double standards. Although we repeatedly voiced a need to form a unified position against separatism, that separatism will return to Europe itself with the boomerang effect," said the presidential aide.

If the Council of Europe, by such steps, tries to justify the intention to remove Azerbaijan from the structure, there is no need for it, he added.

"Since Azerbaijan joined the Council of Europe the country faced a prejudiced opinion of both the structure and its leadership instead of hearing at least one positive opinion on the projects of international cooperation implemented with the European Union, or about the assistance provided within the framework of various organizations. Azerbaijan is a full member of the Council of Europe, but the withdrawal of Azerbaijan from the organization is not a tragedy, against the background of violations in other Council of Europe member states (violation of membership fees, non-enforcement of judgments, pressure on journalists and representatives of civil society and restriction of their activities), and non-fulfillment of thousands of rights and human rights, as well as violations of the Council of Europe Statute and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, such a step in respect of Azerbaijan alone is nothing more than a disregard for international law, justice and the continuation of the above relations," said Mammadov.

Mammadov said that lack of any criticism against Armenia on the backdrop of facts evidencing numerous violations of human rights in this country raises serious questions in connection with this decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

"This again demonstrates a prejudiced attitude towards Muslim states. Is not this a manifestation of Islamophobia in some form?" Even those states that are trying to act as friends during bilateral negotiations appear quite differently during the voting. Although Azerbaijan, while remaining true to its promises in connection with the use of all possible means for the implementation of the said decision, continues to carry out the relevant legislative amendments. In this connection, in accordance with the changes introduced in the legislation, starting from Dec. 1, 2017, on the basis of the appeal to the court, Ilgar Mammadov can get the right to conditional release because he has already served two third of the sentence. The Azerbaijani side can agree to constructive negotiations to find other ways of resolving the issue. But one structure of the Council of Europe, not taking into account the direction in which the process can go and getting under the influence of certain circles, continues its preconceived position. The decisive role for Jagland in bringing the situation to such an extent is obvious," said the presidential aide.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

The 10th meeting of Azerbaijan-Turkey High Level Military Dialogue in Baku has finished its work, the press service of Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported Dec. 7.

During the meeting, the two countries working groups reviewed a wide range of issues of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey in the military, military-technical, military-medical, military-educational, military-industrial and other spheres, as well as defined the main directions of activity for solving the forthcoming tasks.

In conclusion, a protocol of the meeting was signed between Azerbaijans Defense Ministry and the Turkish General Staff.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.7

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The UK Minister of State for Trade and Export Promotion Baroness Rona Fairhead will visit Azerbaijan on December 14-15, said a message from the UK embassy in Baku.

She will co-chair with Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Shahin Mustafayev the second meeting of the UK-Azerbaijan Joint Intergovernmental Commission (JIC).
Details aded 15:30

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

The public of Azerbaijan is extremely concerned on an unfair position demonstrated in the period of independence towards the country by certain circles in the West and in Europe, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the Azerbaijani President for foreign policy issues, head of the department, said on Dec. 7.

"A new example of such a position was demonstrated on Dec. 5 during the discussion in the Council of Europe of the issue related to Ilgar Mammadov," Mammadov said.

He said that this issue has continued to be a concern of one of the figures supervising the activities of the Council of Europe - Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland.

"He believes that no one knows what goals he serves. Apparently, Jagland is aiming to "punish" Azerbaijan, at any cost, to demonstrate Azerbaijan what he is capable of, making the issue of Ilgar Mamedov a flagship for the "defender of human rights". He thinks that it will be easy to achieve this. It's not in vain that the EU is called a Christian club, so why should not the Council of Europe be a Christian club? Who can stop it when Islamophobia has reached such a level? And this is way he can achieve "main goal". Otherwise, over the past years he would have at least once said a word somewhere, expressed his position on Armenia, which occupied the territory of Azerbaijan, which is a member of the Council of Europe. But alas. This European structure is constantly speaking about human rights and obligations, as if there are no obligations. According to Jagland's position, the state that occupied the territories of another country does not bear any responsibility," Mammadov said.

Mammadov said that despite the fact that Armenia keeps under occupation Azerbaijani lands for many years, violates the fundamental rights of more than one million Azerbaijanis living there, committing the Khojaly tragedy, no measures are taken against it, no sanctions are applied, and this country is still a member the Council of Europe, which is a symbol of human rights.

"Are these the European values? Why had Azerbaijan to wait 26 years to get support from the EU for its territorial integrity," Mammadov said.

"Since Europe, which was indifferent to the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia, itself faced separatism today, it began to change its position on this issue, to make statements in support of the territorial integrity of its members, which is a clear example of double standards. Although we repeatedly voiced a need to form a unified position against separatism, that separatism will return to Europe itself with the boomerang effect," said the presidential aide.

If the Council of Europe, by such steps, tries to justify the intention to remove Azerbaijan from the structure, there is no need for it, he added.

"Since Azerbaijan joined the Council of Europe the country faced a prejudiced opinion of both the structure and its leadership instead of hearing at least one positive opinion on the projects of international cooperation implemented with the European Union, or about the assistance provided within the framework of various organizations. Azerbaijan is a full member of the Council of Europe, but the withdrawal of Azerbaijan from the organization is not a tragedy, against the background of violations in other Council of Europe member states (violation of membership fees, non-enforcement of judgments, pressure on journalists and representatives of civil society and restriction of their activities), and non-fulfillment of thousands of rights and human rights, as well as violations of the Council of Europe Statute and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, such a step in respect of Azerbaijan alone is nothing more than a disregard for international law, justice and the continuation of the above relations," said Mammadov.

Mammadov said that lack of any criticism against Armenia on the backdrop of facts evidencing numerous violations of human rights in this country raises serious questions in connection with this decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

"This again demonstrates a prejudiced attitude towards Muslim states. Is not this a manifestation of Islamophobia in some form?" Even those states that are trying to act as friends during bilateral negotiations appear quite differently during the voting. Although Azerbaijan, while remaining true to its promises in connection with the use of all possible means for the implementation of the said decision, continues to carry out the relevant legislative amendments. In this connection, in accordance with the changes introduced in the legislation, starting from Dec. 1, 2017, on the basis of the appeal to the court, Ilgar Mammadov can get the right to conditional release because he has already served two third of the sentence. The Azerbaijani side can agree to constructive negotiations to find other ways of resolving the issue. But one structure of the Council of Europe, not taking into account the direction in which the process can go and getting under the influence of certain circles, continues its preconceived position. The decisive role for Jagland in bringing the situation to such an extent is obvious," said the presidential aide.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

Since the beginning of 2017, 250,000 foreigners have visited Azerbaijan using the "ASAN visa" system, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

President Aliyev made the remarks addressing the opening of the ASAN Hyat complex of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Guba.

"We have expanded ASAN's functions and I have signed relevant orders. When starting activity, ASAN Service was providing only public services. ASAN Kommunal, ASAN visa, ABAD centers are now being established," he said.

"As you know, we are very busy with the development of tourism and the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan has increased by 20 percent in 10 months of this year. Last year it increased by 24 percent," President Aliyev noted.

The president stressed that the main thing that prevented the arrival of tourists was the visa issue.

"I have repeatedly gave serious instructions to the relevant government agencies in the past that serious reforms should be made regarding the issuance of visas. But these reforms were incomplete, and we handed this issue over to ASAN. Today, I was informed that 250,000 foreigners have come to our country using the "ASAN visa" since the beginning of this year.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 7

By Diana Aliyeva  Trend:

It is planned to simplify the process of considering applications for registration for media outlets in Uzbekistan, as well as improve procedure for registration of news websites.

This should be provided by the law On Amendments and Additions to the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Mass Media, the draft of which was considered in the first reading by deputies of the lower chamber of the countrys parliament.

The adoption of the law will help create legal, economic and organizational conditions that ensure freedom of activity, access to information, and protection of the media from unlawful decisions of state bodies, actions or inaction of their officials, said the message of the parliament.

In addition, legal mechanisms will be established for providing state support to journalists and creative groups through privileges and preferences for taxes and other mandatory payments, financial and social assistance.

Particular attention is paid to strengthening the material and technical base, as well as retraining and upgrading the skills of editorial staff.

Another draft law under discussion is the bill On Amendments and Additions to the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan On the Protection of Professional Activities of Journalists.

As noted by the deputies, the draft law is aimed at increasing the authority of journalists in the field of ensuring the transparency of state bodies, as well as in covering topical issues of great public interest.

Representatives of the media will be granted additional rights in implementation of professional journalistic activities.
Details added (first version posted on 17:28)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

"ASAN service" is the most effective tool against corruption and bribery, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev addressing the opening of the ASAN heyat complex of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations in Guba district.

Of course, all countries, including Azerbaijan, must fight this disaster, he said. We are fighting it, penalty, administrative measures are being taken. However, the most effective, fruitful measures are systemic and institutional measures. ASAN has undertaken to solve this issue. In all state structures, the attitude towards citizens, responsible approach to work should be the same as in ASAN. Today, ASAN is not only our national brand promoting Azerbaijan; today ASAN applies new, modern cultural values inherent to the mentality of our people, promotes them, and thus ASAN plays an important role in public life, said the president of Azerbaijan.

He expressed confidence that the activity of the ASAN center will be very successful.

Thats because every new center has innovations, Ilham Aliyev said. Every time I attend opening of a new center, I get informed of new ideas, innovations, each new center has more functions than the previous one. I am confident that the Guba Center of the ASAN Service will render very good services to all citizens - not only to the residents of Guba, but also to the residents of the surrounding districts  500,000 people will be able to use this center. I wish you great success in your work and I congratulate you on this wonderful event.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva have today attended the opening of Guba ASAN heyat complex of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations.

The head of state and his spouse cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

Assistant to the president for work with law enforcement bodies and military issues, department head Fuad Alasgarov and Chairman of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations Inam Karimov informed the head of state about Guba ASAN heyat complex.

This complex is the 12th center of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The construction of Guba ASAN life complex, which is located on the Heydar Aliyev Avenue, was carried out at the highest level. The construction of the complex started early this year. The complex consists of a four-storey administrative building and six public catering facilities. ASAN xidmet center, ASAN telim center, ABAD center and ABAD school were established here.

The head of state toured the center. A total of 32 types of services will be provided for citizens by 10 state bodies in ASAN xidmet center. The center employs a 170-people staff and 45 volunteers. Guba ASAN xidmet center will serve nearly 500,000 citizens in Guba, Gusar, Khachmaz and Shabran districts.

President Ilham Aliyev was informed about Ready 2.0 equipment.

President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva were also informed about new projects.

ASAN visa 2.0 system allows Azerbaijani citizens apply for foreign travel visas electronically.

ASAN heyat complexes are scheduled to be put into service in Shaki and Imishli districts in 2018.

President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva also visited ABAD center of the complex.

Large scale landscaping and construction work was carried out in the territory of Guba ASAN heyat complex. The complex occupies a total area of 1.58 hectares.

President Ilham Aliyev met with employees of Guba ASAN heyat complex.

On behalf of the complex staff, employees Tunzale Piriyeva and Fakhriyya Balakishiyeva thanked the head of state for the conditions created there.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The European Union (EU) is ready to support the establishment of the Agency for Small and Medium-sized Entrepreneurship in Azerbaijan.

The head of Operations Section at the EU mission in Baku, Jeroen Willems made the remarks at the first meeting of the working group on the project to support the implementation and monitoring of the "Strategic Roadmap for the Production of Consumer Goods in Azerbaijan at the Level of Small and Medium Enterprises" on Dec.7.

He said that the creation of the Agency will greatly assist the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

"We have already seen the positive impact of the establishment of the agency in other countries and are ready to support its establishment in Azerbaijan."

Work on the creation of the Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises began this spring.

The issue of creating a centralized Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises in the country is reflected in the "Strategic Roadmap for the Production of Consumer Goods in Azerbaijan at the Level of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises".

The management of the agency will include both representatives of the state and private sectors. Subsequently, in 2017-2018, it is planned to create a SME House under the agency, where a special center will operate to provide entrepreneurs with services on the principle of a "single window", employment services, a training center, a representative office of the Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO), departments of international organizations and other instances.

The creation of the agency can increase Azerbaijan's GDP by 200 million manat by 2020 and create 240 new jobs. It is planned to attract investments worth 10 million manat in this regard.
Details added (first version posted on 12:01)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have prepared a "road map" to expand trade and economic cooperation, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov said.

Shahbazov made the remarks during the 14th meeting of the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation in Baku Dec. 7.

The minister added that the commission has carried out professional, constructive, complex and fruitful work over the past two days.

"In particular, a roadmap for trade and economic cooperation was prepared between the countries for 2018-2020, which includes an action plan and aims at increasing the trade turnover between the countries and strengthening economic cooperation," he said. Following the meeting, a protocol will be signed and a road map will be adopted.

The minister said that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 3.7 percent and amounted to $102.5 million over the three quarters of this year.

In particular, export from Azerbaijan increased by 7.3 percent and amounted to $21.8 million, while import from Kazakhstan increased by 2.7 percent and amounted to $80.7 million.

"Relations between our countries have long history, the minister said. The countries have close political and economic ties. Moreover, the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan has been marked this year.

Our countries were developing rapidly, very dynamically over these years, he said. Both countries have rich natural resources and have been able to attract foreign companies for cooperation."

The minister added that both countries have favorable geographic location, the minister said, adding that as a result, the countries successfully implement transport projects.

SOCAR Trading company transported 835,100 tons of Kazakh oil in 2016 and 3,500 tons of Kazakh oil for 10 months of this year.

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan does not correspond to its potential, Kazakh Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said at a briefing following the 14th session of the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation.

"The trade turnover reached at least $120 million in 2016, he said, Trend's correspondent reported from the event.

The presidents of both countries set the task to double this figure in the next few years. We worked out a road map, dedicated to the intensification of bilateral cooperation, said Bozumbayev.

He also added that both sides will take the necessary actions to intensify cooperation in the energy sector.

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan adopted a "road map" of trade and economic cooperation for 2018-2020 within the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation and signed the final protocol of the 14th meeting of the commission Dec. 7.

The document includes a plan of activities on a wide range of issues, namely, cooperation in energy, economy and transport sectors.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

The next meeting of the working group on the project to support the implementation and monitoring of the Strategic Roadmap on production of consumer goods in Azerbaijan at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will be held in March 2018, Daniel Quadbeck, the project manager, said.

Quadbeck, who is also an expert of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was speaking Dec. 7 in Baku at the first meeting of the working group on the project to support the implementation and monitoring of the strategic roadmap.

He said that expansion of access to financial resources and globalization of SMEs in Azerbaijan will be the main topic of the next meeting.

At the next meeting, development and use of alternative financial instruments, as well as expansion of cooperation of Azerbaijans SMEs with international ones will be discussed, he said.

Initial results of a survey among business structures, which is planned to be prepared within the first meeting, will be also considered within the framework of the next meeting, he added.

The expert noted that the third meeting of the working group is scheduled for June next year. Development of womens entrepreneurship and its cooperation with other business structures will be the main topic of the meeting, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Kazakhstans Kyzylorda region expands trade cooperation with Iran, a source in the executive body (akimat) of the region told Trend.

"Business ties between Kazakhstan and Iran continue to grow stronger. The work of Kazakh entrepreneurs with the business community of Iran has been intensified. The entrepreneurs of Kyzylorda region has already visited Irans agro-industrial complex and signed memorandums on cooperation," the source said.

One of the priority areas of production of the region is rice production, according to the source.

Kazakhstans Kyzylorda region produces more than 500,000 tons of rice per year and consumes only 5 percent from the total amount the produced rice, which leads to search of potential export markets, one of which is the Islamic Republic.

"In addition, a pilot party of the Iranian "Torem Hoshemi" rice variety was seeded this year in Kyzylorda. The contract on supplies of Kazakh rice to Iran was signed in November during "Baikonur-Invest" forum," the sources added.

The most scarce commodity groups in the region include dairy products, meat, eggs, potatoes, flour products and vegetables, and this area may be used by the Iranian investors, according to the source.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The next round of negotiations on a new agreement between the European Union and Azerbaijan will be held on December 15, Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan, Ambassador Kestutis Jankauskas told reporters in Baku Dec. 7.

Jankauskas added that the negotiations will be held as a video conference.

The European Council adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan in November 2016.

The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today.

The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

Over 60 companies with Azerbaijani capital are operating in Belarus, head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) Rufat Mammadov said during the Azerbaijan-Belarus business meeting on Dec.7.

He added that there are 31 companies with Belarusian capital in Azerbaijan.

Mammadov noted that investment cooperation and trade relations between the two countries are also developing on an increasing scale.

"A number of Belarusian goods have been on the shelves of Azerbaijani markets for a long time, besides, several Belarusian shops operate in Baku.Azerbaijani products are also supplied to Belarusian stores, facilitated by the opening of an Azerbaijan Trade House in Belarus. I think that the activities of the Trade House will allow us to achieve our goal, " Mammadov said.

The Azerbaijani-Belarusian business meeting kicked off in Baku on Dec.7.

According to the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan, the trade with Belarus in January-November 2017 amounted to $113.15 million, of which over $ 100 million accounted for the import of Belarusian products.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

Belaruss Grodno region intends to greatly increase trade turnover with Azerbaijan, Mieczyslaw Goy, chairman of Grodno City Executive Committee, said.

Goy made the remarks at the Azerbaijan-Belarus business meeting in Baku Dec. 7.

"Over the first 10 months of 2017, the trade turnover between the Grodno region and Azerbaijan is $5 million, he said. But this figure does not reflect the full potential of our trade relations. I think we can double and even triple this figure."

The delegation, headed by Goy, included representatives of seven Belarus companies operating in various spheres.

The meeting, supported by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Economy, was organized by AZPROMO.

The data from Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee shows that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Belarus amounted to $113.15 million in January-November 2017.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Dec. 7

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

President of Turkmenistan Gurbaguly Berdimuhammedow received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Korea Jong Tae-In, the Turkmen government said in a message.

An exchange of views took place on the prospects for cooperation in the trade and economic sphere, energy and transport sectors, and in the field of advanced technologies.

As an illustrative example of effective partnership - active participation of world-renowned Korean companies in large-scale infrastructure projects implemented in Turkmenistan, said the message.

Seoul looks to partner with Turkmenistan in such areas as development of gas fields, creation of petrochemical and gas infrastructures and the modernization of industry.

At this stage, South Korean LG and Hyundai with Japanese TOYO are building a polyethylene and polypropylene production complex in the village of Kiyanly (near the Turkmen coast of the Caspian Sea).

The total cost of the project is more than $3.4 billion. The facility is scheduled to be commissioned in September 2018. The capacity is estimated to be 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year and production of 386,000 tons of polyethylene and 81,000 tons of polypropylene.

Meanwhile, Ashgabat and Seoul pay special attention to the transport sector in the context of the development of transit and logistics infrastructure along the East-West and North-South lines with access to European and Middle Eastern markets.

According to the Turkmen side, the total trade between Turkmenistan and South Korea in recent years has grown from $200 million to almost $2 billion.
Details added (first version posted on 13:45)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have set up a working group to study the prospects of transporting Kazakh energy resources through Azerbaijan, the countrys Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov said.

He was speaking at a briefing in Baku Dec. 7 following the 14th meeting of the Azerbaijani-Kazakh intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.

He said that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan always cooperated in the energy sphere.

Transportation of Kazakh energy resources through Azerbaijan is at the heart of this cooperation, and we are ready to consider this, Shahbazov said. Following the meeting of the intergovernmental commission, a working group was established. The working group will conduct intensive work to study mutually beneficial prospects in this direction.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

In connection with increase in the capacity of oil and gas fields, Kazakhstan is considering the possibility of transporting its energy resources through the territory of Azerbaijan, said Kazakh Minister of Energy Kanat Bozumbayev at a briefing on Thursday.

Today, we signed a protocol and a road map for development of bilateral relations, including the establishment of two working groups. The first working group will have to study the possibility of transiting Kazakhstan's oil through the territory of Azerbaijan," the minister said.

Bozumbayev said Kazakhstan's oil is now supplied in several directions, the main of which is the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, and a new competitive direction of oil transportation through Azerbaijan should be worked out by the working group.

We supply oil to China, to countries of the Black Sea, as well as through the Atyrau-Samara oil pipeline to Finland, Bozumbayev said, adding that transit of oil through Azerbaijan is a promising option.

The minister also recalled that last year, one of the largest deposits in the world, Kashagan, was put into operation in Kazakhstan.

We are also planning to increase the capacity of the Tengiz oil field, Bozumbayev said.

The minister said that every year gas production is growing, and this year Kazakhstan started exporting gas to China.

This year we extracted about 50 billion cubic meters of gas, 30 percent of which was directed to the domestic market," said Bozumbayev.

The minister said Kazakhstan is interested in transiting gas through the territory of Azerbaijan under acceptable conditions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.7

By Huseyn Valiyev Trend:

Azerbaijan's mobile operator Azercell LLC will discuss the possibility of canceling the state duty for re-connecting to the mobile electronic signature Asan Imza service after three years of its use, Company head Vahid Mursaliyev told reporters on Dec.7.

He said the price policy is not regulated by the operator, however Azercell can discuss this issue with relevant structures that are related o this project.

Mobile signature Asan Imza allows to use mobile phone as a secure electronic identity card. Like any other technology based on the use of SMART-cards and e-signatures, it can be used for secure access to e-services and the verification of e-documents by digital signature. Unlike other technologies, there is no need for a card reader.

The basis of the system is a special Sim-card Asan Imza, which the user receives from the mobile operator. The card stores personal access keys and an application for identification and signature.

The cost of connection of civil servants, legal entities and individuals engaged in entrepreneurial activity, to the service of ASAN-imza in mobile networks is 18 manats. The term of use of Asan Imza is determined within three years. The monthly subscription fee for the use of the Asan Imza service is one manat.

The use of mobile e-signature Asan Imza in Azerbaijan began in May 2013. The e-signature certificate for Asan Imza is issued by the certification center Asan of the Ministry of Taxes of Azerbaijan in cooperation with the ASAN Service and the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Huseyn Valiyev  Trend:

AzInTelecom LLC, operating under Azerbaijans Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Microsoft Azerbaijan, Trend was told.

In accordance with the agreement, the sides will start negotiations on future cooperation in implementation of the latest information and communication technologies through the Data Center of AzInTelecom.

To this end, it is envisaged to create a joint working group.

The document was signed by Leyla Mammadova, acting director of AzInTelecom LLC, and Sarhan Hashimov, head of Microsoft Azerbaijan.

AzInTelecoms obtaining a partner status in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program may become one of the areas of cooperation between the parties, and through Microsoft, AzInTelecom will be reselling licenses, or distribute solutions after purchasing licenses for server software from Microsoft, the company noted.
Details added (first version posted on 15:23)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Huseyn Valiyev  Trend:

AzInTelecom LLC, operating under Azerbaijans Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Microsoft Azerbaijan, Trend was told.

In accordance with the agreement, the sides will start negotiations on future cooperation in implementation of the latest information and communication technologies through the Data Center of AzInTelecom.

To this end, it is envisaged to create a joint working group.

The document was signed by Leyla Mammadova, acting director of AzInTelecom LLC, and Sarhan Hashimov, head of Microsoft Azerbaijan.

AzInTelecoms obtaining a partner status in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program may become one of the areas of cooperation between the parties, and through Microsoft, AzInTelecom will be reselling licenses, or distribute solutions after purchasing licenses for server software from Microsoft, the company noted.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 7



By Diana Aliyeva - Trend:



Japan will help Uzbekistan to create an educational media center at the Tashkent University of Information Technologies at no cost.



According to the Embassy of Japan in Uzbekistan, for this purpose, the Japan government has allocated 187.9 million Japanese Yen (about $1.6 million).



The relevant document was signed by Japanese Ambassador in Uzbekistan Nobuaki Ito and Chairman of the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan for Investments Azim Ahmedkhojayev.



This project, according to the Embassy of Japan in Uzbekistan, aims for the provision of educational media equipment for training technical personnel of television companies.



The educational media center is created at the Faculty of Television Technologies amid Uzbekistan's implementing a plan to switch to full terrestrial digital television broadcasting. This transition is also supported by Japan within the framework of the project under the loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

Iranian ICT minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi has called for expansion of cooperation with Azerbaijan in the sphere of startups.

"I believe the private sector between Iran and Azerbaijan has a chance to reach agreements in the field of startups. Iranian embassy in Baku has established a special field in this regard to facilitate such cooperation," the minister told Trend on the sidelines of the three-day Bakutel 2017 in Azerbaijan.

On the other hand, there is an existing political will for expansion of such type of cooperation, he added.

According to the minister, the cooperation between Iranian and Azerbaijani startup companies heavily relies on market demands.

"The companies normally cooperate in a situation where there is atmosphere for developing business. There is an existing ground for cooperation between Iran and Azerbaijan, for instance in tourism and heath tourism sectors as well as transportation and agriculture. These fields are proper spheres for setting up startups, which can facilitate economic ties between the two nations."

Saying that several Iranian startups have attended the ongoing Bakutel exhibition in Azerbaijan, he added that Iranian and Azerbaijani counterparts are studying the avenues for cooperation in the field of digital business.

Azari-Jahromi further called on Azerbaijani companies to attend similar fairs in Iran to exhibit their products and find partners for joint cooperation.

"Considering the existing ground for cooperation in the real world and the possibility of extending that into the virtual world, it appears that the capacity between the two countries regarding the startups is capable of growing," the minister concluded.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:

Iran's cement sector, is suffering various problems including deep recession in construction activities and an inadequate provision of natural gas to industrial users, as well as a considerable export fall due to global slump in oil prices and regional issues.

The Islamic Republic has exported 3.5 million tons of cement during the first seven months of the current fiscal year (started March 20), according to Abdolreza Sheikhan, secretary of Iran's Cement Industry Employers Association said.

Meanwhile the data of the association indicates that the Islamic Republics cement export in the same months of the preceding year, accounted to 4.7 million tons. So the countrys cement export in the 7-month period of the current fiscal year has registered a 25-percent decline.

Iraq is destination for about 50 percent of Irans cement. The Islamic Republic also exports cement to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Persian Gulf states.

In early 2015, Iraq banned cement import from Iran due to low quality, which deprived Iranian producers of their most lucrative market. However the ban was removed later, after extensive negotiations but the volume of shipments decreased significantly.

There were also reports that Russia has returned Irans cement shipment due to quality problems, meanwhile Sheikhan rejected the claims, saying that the country has exported some 55,000 tons of cement to Russia during the first seven months of current fiscal year, according to IRNA news agency.

Last year, Sheikhan warned that Iran is gradually losing its domestic and foreign cement markets. Iran has lost its 2014 position as the second cement exporter in the world. The Islamic Republic was the third cement exporter in the world in 2016 and is predicted to stand at eighth place among top cement exporters in 2018.

Iranian cement exporters need to find new markets to replace Iraq. African countries such as Tanzania and Egypt are among the considered destinations.

The latest statistics released by Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade of Iran also reveals that the countrys cement output has diminished in the current fiscal year.

The countrys cement industry witnessed a decline in its performance as the industrial materials output over the first six months of the current fiscal year (started March 20) registered a fall by 3.7 percent, year-on-year, to 28.514 million tons.

On a monthly basis 4.914 million tons of cement were produced in the sixth Iranian calendar month (Aug. 22-Sept. 22, 2017), 2.6 percent less compared to the preceding month.

Cement production capacity of Iran soared from 29.5 million tons in 2001 to 83 million tons in 2017. The number of cement producing factories also increased from 30 to 72 in the same time span.

Before the ongoing stagnation, Iranian cement industry experienced a seven-year boom due to a large-scale construction program initiated in 2007 by the previous administration to provide two million low-income people with housing units through free land and cheap credit.

However, the programs progress slowed down due to lack of funding, which dragged down domestic demand for construction materials in turn.

While the country ranked first in the Middle East and fourth in the world in terms of cement production in 2014 with 75 million tons of output, its global ranking fell to sixth in 2016.

Iran produced 54.1 million tons of cement in last fiscal year (ended March 2017), 6.6 percent less year-on-year.
Tehran, Iran, December 3

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The amount of export and re-export of products via Iranian free zones is rising by more than 100 percent per year, according to Ali Rajabi, the director of the free zones commerce affairs.

Re-export is technically defined as the export of imported goods, typically after they have undergone further processing or manufacture. In recent years the Iranian government has encouraged foreign producers to work with Iranian partners in turning Iran into a regional trade hub by finishing their products in Iran-based joint ventures.

"This rise is achieved in fulfillment of requirements of the resistance economy agenda, making free zones leading areas in implementation of free zone policies," Rajabi told Trend December 3.

The official refuted previous statements that free zones in Iran have become a place for unbridled imports in contrast to their intended role.

On December 1, Ali Akbar Karimi, deputy chairman of the Economic Commission of the Parliament, told the state TV that free zones in Iran are now rather a place to import foreign products rather than to make and export home-made products.

This is while, according to Karimi, the reason behind the creation of free zones was to encourage production by giving tax discounts and legal exemptions to production and exports.

"This is not a right statement to accuse free zones of providing a route for imports. When there is need for imported goods, people will meet the need by importing via borders, no matter if free zones existed or not," Rajabi said in response.

He went on to say that based on well-documented records, exports are going to beat imports in free zones across Iran in the near future, changing the trade situations both in Iran and neighboring countries.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Azer Ahmadbayli  Trend:

A matter that for decades was a severe headache for the whole Middle East and generations of negotiators from all over the world has been sorted out with a stroke of the pen by charismatic president of the US.

The news is really world-shaking and many have begun to guess whats going to happen next and how it will all end.

But what confused me more is the role and place of the EU in the story.

On December 5, after a bilateral meeting between High Representative Vice President Federica Mogherini and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Brussels, in a joint statement to the media Ms. Mogherini said: Our meeting has confirmed the importance that the EU and the US attach to their close partnership and cooperation... its also an opportunity to renew collectively our commitment to a close cooperation on a number of important points.

And then: we discussedthe resumption of a meaningful peace process towards a two-state solution. We believe that any action that would undermine these efforts 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 also said that they would discuss that with Prime Minister Netanyahu next Monday and with President Abbas later, at the beginning of next year.

Tillerson in his speech said that the meeting illustrated again the strong commitment that the U.S. had to the European alliance and the important role that the European alliance played in their shared security objectives.

But in exactly a day later Mr. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

That is, while Mogherini and Tillerson were exchanging bows with each other in Brussels, the matter has already been decided in Washington and their words about the allied commitments were worth nothing.

No wonder if tomorrow, when fate of the nuclear agreement with Iran comes to agenda the US could act the same way, bending Europe to its will or, otherwise, taking the EUs opinion into no account as it happened this time.

Now it is a good time to remember Trumps America first slogan. While EU members are busy with Parliament crisis in Germany, state sector reforms in France and Brexit in Great Britain, Washington is advancing its national interests in the region that were clearly expressed by Zbigniew Brzezinski back in 1980: Let our position be absolutely clear - an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

To be honest, in 1980 those words were addressed to the leadership of the former Soviet Union but times change, and now Iran is trying to play the first chair violin in the Middle East. And, as Donald Trump believes, Tehran took that way too far.

By making the first step in an attempt to close down the chapter of the decades-lasted Palestine-Israeli history Washington wishes the enmity between Israel and the Arab states to come to an end. Then a ground will be made to concentrate its own and its regional allies efforts for destroying Irans ruling regime  a single power that defied USA and encroached on the US vital interests in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East as a whole.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has paid his first visit as Turkish President to Greece today. Before him, Turkish President Celal Bayar visited Athens in 1952.

In an interview with one of the Greek TV channels before his visit to Athens, Erdogan said Turkey proposes to amend the Treaty of Lausanne.

All agreements in the world should be updated over time, Erdogan said, adding the Treaty of Lausanne should be amended too.

"Making changes to the Treaty of Lausanne will serve not only Turkeys interests, but will also benefit Greece," Erdogan said. Turkey is ready to discuss the details of the Treaty of Lausanne with Greece in case of obtaining consent to making such changes."

Athens was concerned with Erdogans statement. During a meeting with Erdogan, Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos openly said that making any changes to the Treaty of Lausanne is out of the question.

President Pavlopoulos said there are no unclear points in the treaty, everything is clear and concrete.

It seemed that following the Greek presidents statement, the Turkish leader would close the topic, but Erdogan's answer was more than interesting.

Erdogan said there are many details in the Treaty of Lausanne, of which few people have an idea.

"The Muslims of Western Thrace still do not have the right to choose a mufti themselves and this testifies to the fact that the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne are not fulfilled," Erdogan said. The inhabitants of Western Thrace are subject to ethnic discrimination. When I talk about changes in the Treaty of Lausanne, I mean all these aspects.

In response to Erdogan's tough and loud statements, the Greek president said that as opposed to the Turkish leader, he does not have the authority to discuss and make decisions on such issues, as Greece, unlike Turkey, is a parliamentary republic.

Erdogans visit to Greece will be remembered not only because this is the first visit at the presidential level for the last 65 years, but because of his political polemics with President Pavlopoulos.

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Rufiz Hafizoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Arabic news service, follow him on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
China expressed strong dissatisfaction with India on Thursday over the recent crash of an Indian drone in Chinese territory, an incident that could cause more friction along their disputed border, Reuters reports.

Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other between June and August this year - at one stage even resorting to scuffling and throwing stones - on a remote plateau near the borders of India, its ally Bhutan, and China, in the most serious and prolonged standoff in decades.

The nuclear-armed Asian giants have tried to develop their ties in recent years but there is still deep distrust over their disputed border, which triggered war in 1962.

Chinas defence ministry said in a statement the Indian drone had crashed in recent days but it did not give a location.

This action by India violated Chinas territorial sovereignty. We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition, Zhang Shuili, a military official in Chinas western battle zone command, was quoted as saying in a ministry statement.

Chinas border defence forces took a professional and responsible attitude in conducting an inspection of the device, Zhang said, adding that the military would resolutely defend Chinas sovereignty and security.

The Indian army said an unmanned aerial vehicle was on a training mission over Indian territory when it developed technical problems and crossed a so-called line of actual control separating the countries militaries.

Indian border guards alerted their Chinese counterparts about the drone soon afterwards, an Indian army spokesman said.

China had provided the Indian army with details about where the drone came down and Indian authorities were investigating, Colonel Aman Anand said in a statement.

The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols, Anand said.

China also lodged diplomatic representations with India, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular briefing.

China asks India to immediately stop its activities of using unmanned aircraft near the border, and to work alongside China to maintain the border areas peace and tranquillity, he said.
General Electric (GE.N) said it plans to cut around 1,600 jobs in Germany as it shrinks its troubled power generation business, Reuters reports.

The cuts will affect staff in Mannheim, Stuttgart, Berlin, Moenchengladbach and Kassel and will be confirmed after talks with labor representatives, GE said in a statement.
A 25-year-old Bosnian man has been arrested in the Austrian city of Graz on suspicion of planning an attack on its Christmas market, police said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

The Muslim man was detained on Dec. 1 at an emergency shelter where others saw him watching videos about last years attacks in Nice and Berlin on a computer, a force spokesman said.

Witnesses heard him talking about Berlin and death, the spokesman added.

He had visited mosques, but it was not yet clear whether he had been radicalized or had any accomplices, police said.
In a telephone conversation on Thursday, the presidents of Russia and Turkey, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed serious concern in connection with the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, the Kremlin press service reports.

"Both sides expressed serious concern in connection with the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and its announcing plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. These moves can derail prospects for the Middle East peace process," the report said.



In a conversation initiated by the Turkish side, Erdogan informed Putin about convocation on December 13 of an emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the situation around Jerusalem.

The two leaders stressed inadmissibility of escalation of tensions in the region. They said efforts of the international community must be aimed at contributing to restart of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with an aim to seek a compromise solution for all problems, including the status of Jerusalem.

"Russia and Turkey confirmed commitment to achieving a just and viable settlement of the Middle East crisis first of all on the basis of corresponding resolutions of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and enforcement of the rights of the Palestinian people to creating their own state," the press service said.

The two presidents also looked into topical aspects of bilateral cooperation. Special attention was paid to strategic projects in the energy sector. The presidents agreed to continue contacts.
Officials say 41 students in Kentucky have been injured in a crash involving three school buses, ABC News reports.

Jefferson County Public Schools spokesman Daniel Kemp told news outlets the crash happened Thursday morning on a highway in Louisville as the students were being transported to three different schools. He said student injuries appear to be minor.

Louisville Metro Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said two buses were stopped in traffic when a third bus hit one and caused it to hit the other.

The school district's transportation director, Randy Frantz, said another bus was sent to take uninjured students on to school.
The white former policeman caught on video shooting an unarmed black man in the back after a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison, with a federal judge ruling that the killing amounted to murder, Reuters reports.

The decision came a year after Michael Slagers state murder trial for the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott ended with a deadlocked jury. Slager, 36, is one of the few police officers in recent years in the United States to receive prison time for an on-duty shooting.

Everyone recognizes that this was a tragedy, U.S. District Judge David Norton told a Charleston courtroom packed with members of both mens families.

Whats just for the Scott family is not necessarily just for the Slager family, and whats just for the Slager family is not necessarily just for the Scott family, he said.

Slager was a patrolman in North Charleston when he pulled over Scott, a father of four, for a broken brake light on April 4, 2015. He said he opened fire because he felt threatened after the motorist tried to take his stun gun during a struggle.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim compared the US decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with "playing with fire" phrase, the Turkish media reported Dec. 7.

Reportedly, Yildirim added that the US decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is like a bomb ready to explode.

He said that the consequences of such a decision can be very ugly.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump proclaimed that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The United Nations (UN) Security Council will convene an emergency session Friday to discuss US President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, according to the French mission to the UN, Xinhua reported.

"France, together with Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, UK & Uruguay, has requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council on #Jerusalem," the French mission to the UN tweeted on Wednesday.

Aymeric Chuzeville, spokesman for the French delegation, confirmed in a separate tweet that the meeting was scheduled for Friday morning.

The Bolivian mission to the UN also confirmed the request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

France is a staunch opponent of US decision on Jerusalem, which was announced by Trump earlier Wednesday. The French Foreign Ministry quoted President Emmanuel Macron as saying that Paris supports the two-state solution that calls on Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security, with Jerusalem being the capital of both states.

"We must prefer appeasement and dialogue," the president was quoted as saying.

Nikki Haley, the US permanent representative to the UN, hailed Trump's decision as "courageous and historic."

"For 22 years, there has been an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of moving the US Embassy in Israel to its rightful place in the Israeli capital city of Jerusalem. Today, the president took a courageous and historic step that was long overdue," the envoy said in a statement.

"Across the globe, America has its embassy in the capital city of the host country. Israel will now be no different. It is the just and right thing to do," she added.

The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Palestinians regard East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, as the capital of their future state.

The status of Jerusalem as a whole has long remained an unresolved issue. It is feared that Trump's decision may trigger violence in the Middle East.
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland Wednesday said Canada's longstanding position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, Xinhua reported.

"We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel," Freeland said in a statement after US President Trump announced to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and demanded the State Department to develop a plan to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

She said the Canadian embassy will remain in Tel Aviv and its policy on Jerusalem won't change. The city's status can only be determined as part of peace talks.

"We call for calm and continue to support the building of conditions necessary for the parties to find a solution," added the Canadian foreign minister in the statement.

Despite urgent appeals from Arab and European leaders and the risk of anti-American protests and violence, Trump Wednesday declared it was time for a new approach to Mideast peace after decades of failure. Calling Jerusalem Israel's capital, he said, was merely recognizing the obvious.

The Canadian media reported that Freeland has been briefed on the announcement in a call Monday with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The US policy change "is a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process," said Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Ahead of Trump's announcement, Arab and Muslim leaders spoke about the potential for violence. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian protesters burned American and Israeli flags. They also waved Palestinian flags and banners proclaiming Jerusalem as their "eternal capital."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

A protest rally is being held near the US Embassy in Ankara over Washingtons decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Turkish media report Dec. 7.

The number of protesters exceeds 1,500 people, according to the report.

The protest rally is expected to last a week.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump proclaimed that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 7

Trend:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the Greek judicial authorities to make a final decision on the extradition of persons suspected of having ties with the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), to Turkey, the countrys media reported Dec. 7.

Turkey has been long fighting against terrorist organizations, Erdogan said at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens. Greece is one of the countries with which it is easiest for us to find mutual understanding in the issue of combating terrorism. We immediately started a dialogue with the Greek prime minister on the return of FETO members to Turkey.

Erdogan noted that the death penalty and tortures are not applied in Turkey.

Therefore, the extradition of this group of people is quite possible, Erdogan said.

Eight Turkish servicemen fled the country by helicopter on July 16, 2016 after a military coup attempt and landed in the airport of Greeces Dedeagac (Alexandroupoli) city.

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.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 7, 2017 - 21:48 | Urgent, Feature, All

The bodies of another four men were found recently on the Sea of Japan coast, police said Thursday, the latest in a series of cases in which bodies apparently from North Korean boats have washed ashore in northern Japan.

A local resident called police after discovering one of the bodies washed ashore in the city of Oga in Akita Prefecture around 8:50 a.m. on Thursday. The police found a second body about 300 meters away at around 10:30 a.m. The heads of the bodies had been reduced to skulls, the police said.

They also found a wooden boat washed ashore in the neighboring town of Mitane, several kilometers from where the bodies were found. Judging from the shape of the boat as well as a life vest bearing Hangul letters found in it, the police suspect it came from North Korea.

Police in Aomori Prefecture said, meanwhile, they had found the bodies of two people in the town of Fukaura on Sunday and Tuesday, and one or two months had elapsed since they died. Suspected North Korean boats have been found washed ashore recently in the area.

Earlier in the day, another wooden boat, 7 to 8 meters long, was found capsized around 7 a.m. on a beach in Oga, the Akita police said.

Also on Thursday in Niigata Prefecture, a fisherman found a wooden boat floating around 2 km off Sado Island and notified the Japan Coast Guard around 7 a.m.
By Imogen Pullan, KYODO NEWS - Dec 7, 2017 - 17:11 | Arts, All

A biography of renowned British author Angela Carter sheds new light on the influence Japan had on her writing while also detailing the role she played as a mentor to Nobel Literature Prize Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.

Carter, an acclaimed author of feminist and magical realist fiction from the 1960s until her early death from lung cancer in 1992, was named in 2008 as the 10th greatest postwar British writer by The Times newspaper, a list that also included Ishiguro at 32nd and "Harry Potter" creator J.K. Rowling at 42nd.

(Angela Carter's Estate)

Later in her career, she took up a post teaching creative writing at East Anglia University in Norwich, Britain, where she oversaw Ishiguro, according to Edmund Gordon, author of the biography titled "The Invention of Angela Carter."

"They went from a teacher-student relationship to being friends. She was incredibly supportive of him from the beginning," Gordon said in a recent interview with Kyodo News. "They did not always have the same ideas about writing, but they had a lot of respect for each other's work."

"They did certainly talk about Japan, about Japanese literature and cinema a lot. They were both huge film buffs."

Gordon said Carter showed him the importance of individuality and not worrying about literary trends. Carter taught Ishiguro about structure, or "the nuts and bolts," and how to deal with suspense in his first novel, he said.

"Certainly, he saw her as the senior writer, but he became very quickly more commercially successful than she did. By his second novel he was getting larger advances than she ever did," Gordon said.

In 1969, Carter escaped her failing marriage by using money from a prestigious literary award to travel to Japan, where she lived periodically for the next few years. It "completely changed her as an artist, as a writer, as a person," according to Gordon.

At a time when few British people traveled to Japan, Gordon offers several reasons for her choice of destination.

"I think she was very interested in the culture. She loved Japanese literature; she thought Junichiro Tanizaki was one of the world's great novelists," Gordon said, adding that being in a place very different from Britain was also alluring.

Carter wrote to a friend that Tokyo was "probably the most absolutely non-boring city in the world." In the biography, Gordon recounts how she found the city on the cusp of immense change, offering dazzling neon and vending machines against a backdrop of reeking sewers and cranes towering over low-rise buildings.

She began a relationship with Japanese writer Sozo Araki and they lived together in Tokyo and, for one winter, at a beach house in Kujukuri, Chiba Prefecture.

Her experiences in Japan feature in her work both directly and indirectly.

"Fireworks" is a collection of short stories where accounts of her time in Japan are weaved around fictionalized, often disturbing tales, and she also wrote nonfiction essays about the author Yukio Mishima, fertility festivals and other elements of Japanese culture.

Despite multiple attempts to learn Japanese, Carter never succeeded. "She said it was a great thing having to interpret the language purely through its visual aspect," Gordon said. "Before she went to Japan her cultural criticism was well written but not particularly intellectually bold, and it becomes much more (so)."

Carter's feminism was informed by the sexism she witnessed in Japan. "She found it was an incredibly repressed culture, and an incredibly misogynistic culture," said Gordon.

Carter moved back to Britain in 1972, her relationship with Araki having broken down, and visited Japan only once more in her life for a publicity tour in 1974.

"She was very disillusioned by (Japan) when she returned," said Gordon. "She felt all the traditional buildings she had loved had been replaced by high-rise office blocks and love hotels."

While Japan left a lasting impression on Carter's life and work, Gordon emphasized moving anywhere would have resulted in some form of liberation, although perhaps with different outcomes.

"She had lived quite a closeted life until then... she felt very constrained by her husband, and then finally she was living entirely on her own terms," said Gordon. "I think a change, a sense of artistic freedom, would have happened no matter where she went."

Although Carter had become an established and successful author by the 1980s, she never experienced the levels of fame of many of her male contemporaries.

Her work has been cited as an influence by a huge range of British writers including Salman Rushdie, author of "Midnight's Children" and "The Satanic Verses," and David Mitchell, who has also lived in Japan and set his novel "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" in Nagasaki at the turn of the 19th century.

"She's one of the few genuine intellectual authors among British novelists," Gordon said. "Funny, brave, and unconstrained, (is how) I would describe her."
KYODO NEWS - Dec 6, 2017 - 20:43 | Feature, All

An association comprising major social media service operators Wednesday urged its member firms to ban users' solicitation of suicide through their sites following the alleged serial murder case near Tokyo in which the suspect contacted Twitter users expressing suicidal thoughts.

The association, formed in July this year to improve internet safety for children and young people, is led by CyberAgent Inc., DeNA Co., Facebook Japan, Gree Inc., LINE Corp. and mixi Inc.

The association is urging member firms to limit access to their services by users who offer to help people commit suicide in their posts and to cooperate with police more closely when they find particularly alarming posts.

In the murders in Zama just outside Tokyo earlier this year, Twitter was the key communication tool that brought together the suspect and some of the nine victims. The suspect used a Twitter account to boast knowledge about hanging to get in touch with people who wanted to commit suicide.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 7, 2017 - 15:25 | All

A Japanese doctor was among about 150 Americans and Japanese who took part on Wednesday in an annual ceremony using a U.S. soldier's blackened canteen to commemorate all the victims of the Pearl Harbor attack, a day before the 76th anniversary.

This is the 26th year that Hiroya Sugano, a doctor from Shizuoka City, central Japan, has sought to promote peace while commemorating the Japanese attack in Hawaii that left some 2,400 Americans dead.

(US Navy)

"I am deeply moved by the fact that the reconciliation between Japan and the United States has progressed to such an extent," Sugano said at the ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial, referring to last year's joint visit to the harbor by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the then U.S. President Barack Obama.

"I would like to continue to convey the nobility of peace to younger generations," added Sugano.

Sugano commemorated the victims by pouring whiskey from the dented and scorched canteen into the waters at the memorial site. The flask was retrieved from a U.S. B-29 bomber which fell in Shizuoka during an airstrike in June 1945.

In the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona and other three ships were sunk during a sudden assault by the Imperial Japanese forces.

Yosuke Matsuzaki, the eldest son of a Japanese soldier, Mitsuo, who fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor, attended the ceremony for the first time.

"I don't remember my father because he had left home for another operation when I was in my mother's womb. I was reluctant to come here, but now I feel relieved," said the 73-year-old, a resident of Takarazuka in Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan.

The Japan-U.S. joint commemorative ceremony will be held on Friday following one by the U.S. Navy on Thursday.

In December last year, Abe and Obama illustrated their nations' reconciliation and strong relationship by visiting the harbor together.
Bobby Schnabel has returned to CU Boulder as the College of Engineering and Applied Science faculty director for entrepreneurial leadership, external chair of computer science, and campus thought-leader on computing.

I first met and worked with Bobby in the mid-2000s at the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), where he was a co-founder and on the board with me. Bobby is awesome and Im really psyched hes back in Boulder at CU.

While you may not know Bobby, this is a huge add for CU Boulder and the Boulder Startup Community. Bobby has a long history with CU Boulder. He was on the computer science faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder from 1977-2007, and Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Technology and Chief Information Officer from 1998-2007, and founding director of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) 1997-2007.

In 2007 when he left CU Boulder to become the Dean of the School of Informatics and Computer at Indiana University I was bummed for CU Boulder (but happy for Bobby and Indiana University.) When he joined the Association for Computer Machinery as CEO in 2015, I had the sense in the back of my mind that he might make his way back to Boulder at some point.

Bobby is returning to CU Boulder to strengthen the partnership between the incredible tech business and startup community we have in the Boulder area and in Colorado, and the tech-programs at CU Boulder.

Welcome back, Bobby! And, if you are in the Boulder Startup Community and want to connect with Bobby at some point, just give me a shout.
CNBC's Jim Cramer remembers the days when kids bought the same brands as their parents, afraid that deviating would mean they were questioning their elders' judgment.But now, consumer patterns are suggesting that the exact opposite idea has taken hold. "Customer loyalty? Hard thing to come by these days," the " Mad Money " host said. "Now that the internet gives you the ability to comparison-shop for just about anything, younger people just reach for what's on sale or what can create the most exciting experience. Those choices are roiling the whole market and I think a lot of investors fail to understand their implications." This millennial-driven shift has created a "void" where bank, housing, materials and health care stocks trade together, while hard-to-value stocks like Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) , Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) , Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) , Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) reign supreme. But that shouldn't deter investors from investing in individual stocks, Cramer said. "This is why so many professionals just say go buy an index fund, it's too hard to pick individual companies. I come back and say, no it isn't," he said. " The mores and methods of the next generation are not unfathomable." Off the charts with tech's top dogs After a brutal rotation out of the technology stocks that came on the heels of the Senate passing its tax reform bill , Cramer wanted to check in with tech. Tech stocks recovered on Tuesday after Monday's storm of selling, caused in part by investors trying to buy shares of domestic companies that stand to benefit from corporate tax reform. So Cramer called on technician Carolyn Boroden , one of his colleagues at RealMoney.com and the brain behind FibonacciQueen.com , to help him get a better outlook on the tech sector. "Specifically, we're going to drill down into the action in the now-despised and left-for-dead roadkill that are Facebook, Apple and Netflix," the "Mad Money" host said. "The big question: when we look back on this moment a year from now, will the pullbacks in these stocks look like fabulous buying opportunities?"Tech too expensive? Think againCramer knows how hard it is to compare stocks using their individual valuations.The only tools investors really have to value a stock are the given company's total addressable market and its price-to-earnings multiple, or the share price relative to the earnings per share."In the end, valuing stocks is either totally straightforward or totally mystifying  one or the other," Cramer said. "For a certain group of stocks, it's much more of an art than a science." For example, investors trying to pin down the value of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) will run into trouble because the streaming giant barely has any earnings, Cramer said. But there are better ways to value the tech titans than just run-of-the-mill metrics, he said. CyrusOne CEO on game-changing Chinese deal The rise of the cloud isn't just a U.S. trend. It's happening globally and growing rapidly in places like China, where CyrusOne (NASDAQ: CONE) President and CEO Gary Wojtaszek just closed a promising deal. CyrusOne, a real estate investment trust that operates data centers, recently announced a partnership with Chinese data center company GDS. "You have the FANGs here, you've got the TABs there. So between Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, they kind of dominate that space. GDS is the primary provider to all those companies," Wojtaszek told Cramer in a Tuesday interview . The CEO said that the partnership, which included CyrusOne taking an 8 percent stake in GDS, was mainly "strategic" given the opportunities for both companies to help each other get international business."We had several meetings and we realized that we're basically the same company, the way we engage our customers, sell to them. We have a dominant position in cloud like they do, and we thought there was an opportunity to work together," Wojtaszek said.Alteryx CEO on managing the 'data deluge' Newly public company Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) is changing the way companies interpret their data, at least according to Dean Stoecker, the company's co-founder, chairman and CEO. "The analytic process in enterprises has been completely broken," Stoecker told Cramer in an interview on Tuesday.Nowadays, key business questions tend to be addressed by teams of data, IT and analytics experts, "all with disparate tools and technologies" and swaths of paperwork to boot, the CEO said."What we've done is we've put the thrill back into problem-solving," Stoecker said. "I think that people are realizing that we're living in this data deluge and they're trying to get value and analytics out of that data. And our platform is the platform that allows people to prosecute analytics and turn every data worker into a discoverer of marginal profitability for the enterprise."Lightning Round: Don't go all in on OLED... yet In Cramer's lightning round , he zipped through his take on some callers' favorite stocks: Universal Display Corportation (NASDAQ: OLED) : "OLED is one of my favorites. I've been recommending it for 90 points. I want it to come down. You will not get a turn in OLED before you get a turn in Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) , in Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) , in Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) , so you wait." Magellan Midstream Partners (NYSE: MMP) : "I think it's insanely valued. My charitable trust has been buying it right here. It is ridiculous. Yield 5 and a half [percent]. Everybody needs oil pipe from the Permian. They've got it. But you know what? I'm a lonely voice in the wilderness." Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Facebook, Alphabet, Apple and Magellan Midstream Partners. Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - VineQuestions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com CNBC's Jim Cramer remembers the days when kids bought the same brands as their parents, afraid that deviating would mean they were questioning their elders' judgment. But now, consumer patterns are suggesting that the exact opposite idea has taken hold. "Customer loyalty? Hard thing to come by these days," the " Mad Money " host said. "Now that the internet gives you the ability to comparison-shop for just about anything, younger people just reach for what's on sale or what can create the most exciting experience. Those choices are roiling the whole market and I think a lot of investors fail to understand their implications." This millennial-driven shift has created a "void" where bank, housing, materials and health care stocks trade together, while hard-to-value stocks like Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) , Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) , Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) , Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) reign supreme. But that shouldn't deter investors from investing in individual stocks, Cramer said. "This is why so many professionals just say go buy an index fund, it's too hard to pick individual companies. I come back and say, no it isn't," he said. " The mores and methods of the next generation are not unfathomable." Off the charts with tech's top dogs After a brutal rotation out of the technology stocks that came on the heels of the Senate passing its tax reform bill , Cramer wanted to check in with tech. Tech stocks recovered on Tuesday after Monday's storm of selling, caused in part by investors trying to buy shares of domestic companies that stand to benefit from corporate tax reform. So Cramer called on technician Carolyn Boroden , one of his colleagues at RealMoney.com and the brain behind FibonacciQueen.com , to help him get a better outlook on the tech sector. "Specifically, we're going to drill down into the action in the now-despised and left-for-dead roadkill that are Facebook, Apple and Netflix," the "Mad Money" host said. "The big question: when we look back on this moment a year from now, will the pullbacks in these stocks look like fabulous buying opportunities?" Tech too expensive? Think again Cramer knows how hard it is to compare stocks using their individual valuations. The only tools investors really have to value a stock are the given company's total addressable market and its price-to-earnings multiple, or the share price relative to the earnings per share. "In the end, valuing stocks is either totally straightforward or totally mystifying  one or the other," Cramer said. "For a certain group of stocks, it's much more of an art than a science." For example, investors trying to pin down the value of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) will run into trouble because the streaming giant barely has any earnings, Cramer said. But there are better ways to value the tech titans than just run-of-the-mill metrics, he said. CyrusOne CEO on game-changing Chinese deal The rise of the cloud isn't just a U.S. trend. It's happening globally and growing rapidly in places like China, where CyrusOne (NASDAQ: CONE) President and CEO Gary Wojtaszek just closed a promising deal. CyrusOne, a real estate investment trust that operates data centers, recently announced a partnership with Chinese data center company GDS. "You have the FANGs here, you've got the TABs there. So between Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, they kind of dominate that space. GDS is the primary provider to all those companies," Wojtaszek told Cramer in a Tuesday interview . The CEO said that the partnership, which included CyrusOne taking an 8 percent stake in GDS, was mainly "strategic" given the opportunities for both companies to help each other get international business. "We had several meetings and we realized that we're basically the same company, the way we engage our customers, sell to them. We have a dominant position in cloud like they do, and we thought there was an opportunity to work together," Wojtaszek said. Alteryx CEO on managing the 'data deluge' Newly public company Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) is changing the way companies interpret their data, at least according to Dean Stoecker, the company's co-founder, chairman and CEO. "The analytic process in enterprises has been completely broken," Stoecker told Cramer in an interview on Tuesday. Nowadays, key business questions tend to be addressed by teams of data, IT and analytics experts, "all with disparate tools and technologies" and swaths of paperwork to boot, the CEO said. "What we've done is we've put the thrill back into problem-solving," Stoecker said. "I think that people are realizing that we're living in this data deluge and they're trying to get value and analytics out of that data. And our platform is the platform that allows people to prosecute analytics and turn every data worker into a discoverer of marginal profitability for the enterprise." Lightning Round: Don't go all in on OLED... yet In Cramer's lightning round , he zipped through his take on some callers' favorite stocks: Universal Display Corportation (NASDAQ: OLED) : "OLED is one of my favorites. I've been recommending it for 90 points. I want it to come down. You will not get a turn in OLED before you get a turn in Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) , in Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) , in Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) , so you wait." Magellan Midstream Partners (NYSE: MMP) : "I think it's insanely valued. My charitable trust has been buying it right here. It is ridiculous. Yield 5 and a half [percent]. Everybody needs oil pipe from the Permian. They've got it. But you know what? I'm a lonely voice in the wilderness." Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Facebook, Alphabet, Apple and Magellan Midstream Partners. Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Vine Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com



More From CNBC


President Donald Trump will announce Wednesday that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move the embassy there, senior administration officials said. The officials said the embassy move could take "years"  possibly three to four  and there is no location yet for the new facility. The president had already told Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision that breaks with decades of U.S. policy and risks fueling violence in the Middle East. The U.S. decision, which was reached through a "collaborative" process between multiple agencies, is a recognition of the "historical reality" of the situation, the officials said. Trump notified Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to make the major change in calls to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia 's King Salman. Many of the leaders warned that unilateral U.S. steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling U.S.-led peace effort and unleash turmoil in the region. U.S. endorsement of Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse long-standing U.S. policy that the city's status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman, who all received phone calls from Trump, joined a mounting chorus of voices warning that unilateral U.S. steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling U.S.-led peace effort and unleash turmoil in the region.This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.Reuters contributed to this report. President Donald Trump will announce Wednesday that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move the embassy there, senior administration officials said. The officials said the embassy move could take "years"  possibly three to four  and there is no location yet for the new facility. The president had already told Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision that breaks with decades of U.S. policy and risks fueling violence in the Middle East. The U.S. decision, which was reached through a "collaborative" process between multiple agencies, is a recognition of the "historical reality" of the situation, the officials said. Trump notified Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to make the major change in calls to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia 's King Salman. Many of the leaders warned that unilateral U.S. steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling U.S.-led peace effort and unleash turmoil in the region. U.S. endorsement of Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse long-standing U.S. policy that the city's status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman, who all received phone calls from Trump, joined a mounting chorus of voices warning that unilateral U.S. steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling U.S.-led peace effort and unleash turmoil in the region. This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates. Reuters contributed to this report.



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By PTI: (Eds: Updating toll)

Lahore, Dec 7 (PTI) An overcrowded boat carrying devotees capsized in a creek in Pakistans Sindh province today, killing at least 21 people including women and children, authorities said.

The boat carrying members of the Dawoodi Bohra community capsized near to Thatta city.

Deputy Commissioner Thatta Nasir Baig the accident took place as the overloaded boat lost balance and tipped over in a creek, 30 kilometres away from Bohara. He added that the boat was carrying passengers travelling to the shrine of Pir Pathai to celebrate a festival.

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He said the boat was carrying 60-70 passengers.

At least 21 bodies have been recovered, Dawn newspaper quoted officials at the Mirpur Sakro Taluqa Hospital as saying.

Officials said the dead included women and children.

About 15-20 people were rescued and admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state, Baig said.

Commissioner Hyderabad Division Saeed Magnejo said that the ongoing local rescue efforts are being supported by coordination between Navy and Army units in the area.

According to local rescue officials, the passengers were devotees seeking to attend the annual urs celebration of the sufi saint. They are believed to be members of the Dawoodi Bohra community.

Chairman Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Muhammad Ali Shah said that one boat capsized at the Bohara jetty when the boat tilted over as passengers rushed to exit it. He said there were nearly 100 passengers on board at the time.

Shah said he had received reports of at least 40 bodies being recovered. These reports, however, have not been independently verified, the paper said. PTI NSA/CORR NSA

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Now that tax reform bills featuring 20% tax rates have passed the House and Senate, it looks like companies across the country will get to distribute a lot more of the profits they generate. Of course, some will be affected more strongly than others.

Although nearly all U.S. corporations hand less than 35% of global profits over to the taxman, there are a handful of big healthcare companies that don't get to take advantage of some important loopholes. Anthem Inc. (NYSE: ANTM), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH), and CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS) consistently pay more than 35%, suggesting they'll have heaps of extra cash to distribute in the years ahead.

Cash, glasses, a calculator, and a notebook with dividends written at the top.

Image source: Getty Images.

We can't say exactly how low these companies' effective tax rates will fall in response to the GOP tax plan, or when -- the House version would slash the corporate rate in 2018, while the Senate version waits until 2019. Instead, here's a look at how much more each of these companies could have available to distribute if their effective tax rates plunge to 20% from present levels.

Consolation prize

The U.S. Justice Department won't allow the top five U.S. health insurers to merge to maintain a healthy level of competition. Although these companies won't be able to boost efficiency by combining redundant operating expenses, they are in line for some massive tax breaks that would give them a lot more cash to distribute.

Perhaps the largest break will go to Anthem Inc., a health insurer that boasts around 40 million members. Last year, the company reported earnings of $9.21 per share, which was impressive considering it also set aside a whopping 45.8% of pre-tax profit to pay taxes. If Anthem's effective tax rate had been 20% last year, earnings would have come in about 48% higher at $13.82 per share.

At recent prices, Anthem shares offer a meager 1.2% yield, but a tax cut to 20% could leave enough profits on the table to bump the yield above 3% without raising the percentage of post-tax profits that dividend payments eat up. Over the past year, Anthem used just 23.4% of its post-tax profits to meet its dividend obligation.

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A big break for the behemoth

With a 40.4% effective tax rate, UnitedHealth Group Inc. is another big health insurer that might offer its shareholders a big payout bump if the GOP tax plan becomes law. In 2016, the company reported post-tax earnings of $7.37 per share. If the company had been required to set aside just 20% of pre-tax profit it would have earned about 35% more, or around $9.97 per share.

In recent years, UnitedHealth Group has successfully integrated a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) and a data analytics service into its giant health insurance operation, and the combined behemoth is more profitable than ever. The company used just 31% of earnings generated over the past year to make dividend payments, which means it could probably forward every penny of a tax break to the distribution.

At recent prices, UnitedHealth Group stock offers a meager 1.3% yield that could rise significantly. Forwarding all proceeds of the proposed tax break would probably allow the company to bump that up to around 2.5%, based on the stock's recent price, without breaking a sweat.

Hands exchanging money.

Image source: Getty Images.

A very big deal

CVS Health practically wrote the book on vertical healthcare mergers, and it just announced a $69 billion megamerger that will most likely add Aetna's (NYSE: AET) health insurance operations to the house its retail pharmacies built. That house has expanded several times over the past decade and now includes the country's largest PBM, plus a chain of 1,129 private health clinics across 33 states.

Insurers like Aetna save a bundle when their members visit CVS Health's MinuteClinics instead of hospital emergency rooms, and again when CVS Health's PBM negotiates lower drug prices from pharmaceutical companies. Merging with Aetna could give CVS Health tons of synergy-driven profits to look forward to, and the GOP's tax plan could help the company distribute heaps more to shareholders.

The company earned $3.13 per share last year after setting aside 38% of pre-tax profits for Uncle Sam, but a 20% effective tax rate during the period would have resulted in earnings per share about 30% higher, or around $4.07 per share.

Although the benefits of the proposed tax cut probably won't be as dramatic for CVS Health as they could be for Anthem or UnitedHealth Group, they could make an already tempting dividend downright irresistible. At 2.8%, this stock offers the highest yield of among these three healthcare players at recent prices. Forwarding all proceeds of the proposed tax cut to the dividend could raise the yield above 4%, and that's before we factor in this company's tendency to boost its dividend at an impressive pace.

A more likely scenario

Remember, we still don't know if a final version of the tax bill will lower the corporate rate to 20%, and there's a good chance these companies won't be able to lower their effective tax rates all the way down to 20% even if it does. Even though there isn't much incentive for these companies to hire more workers with their potential savings, we really can't expect them to funnel every penny to shareholders.

For example, CVS Health needed 40% of post-tax profits to make dividend payments over the past year, but management intends to lower its payout ratio to 35%. The company also intends to pull off a $69 billion acquisition in the months ahead. Even if CVS Health can lower its effective tax rate to just 20%, distributing every penny saved might not be a prudent course of action when the time comes.

More From The Motley Fool

Cory Renauer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends CVS Health and UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The boom in low-cost, passively managed index funds has been one of the biggest finance stories of the 21st century thus far. And its been supported by the fact that over the long run, most active fund managers underperform their benchmarks.

But 2017 has been an unusual year. According to data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, most active fund managers (55%) were beating their benchmarks year-to-date (YTD) through October. That number slipped to 49% in November, but continues to be noteworthy.

The silver lining: 49% is still the highest hit rate (at this time of the year) since at least 2009, Bank of Americas Savita Subramanian said in a December 4 research note.

The debate about active versus passive rages on. This conversation has occurred against a backdrop where index exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have become massive as the stock market (^GSPC) has rallied for over eight years. Stock-picking, active fund managers have seen their picks get lost in a rising market that has lifted all boats. Its a tide that has seen billions flow out of actively-managed funds and into passively-managed funds.

But things might be starting to turn for the active managers.

Low correlations make for a stock pickers market

Part of the story of this years performance is that correlations, or the degree to which stocks move together in the same direction, have come down and an opportunity for stock picking has presented itself.

[Correlations] between stocks have actually come down quite a bit this year. That allows for more opportunity for stockpicking and often times it corresponds to a less macro-driven market and [to a] more micro-driven market, Bank of America senior equity strategist Dan Suzuki said. That tends to be when you see lower correlations, which a lot of active managers tend to be fundamental stock pickers and so that environment, in theory, should help those types of people.

Correlations have fallen to a 24-year low

Its one thing to have the opportunity to pick stocks in a low correlation market, but its another thing to pick the right stocks.

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This year, the stocks that have outperformed tend to be the stocks that active managers have positioned in, Suzuki said, adding, This year, the biggest driver of market performance has been tech, and tech is by far the biggest overweight for fund managers.

One of the overarching themes of the market in 2017 is how performance has been largely driven by the tech stocks. Goldman Sachs recently looked at 804 hedge funds with $2.1 trillion in assets. The banks analysis found that the top five most popular stock positions include Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT).

Dont bet on consistent outperformance

In general, the active managers are making a comeback in the sense that they are on track for their strongest year as far as Bank of Americas data goes back.

Now are they going to put together consistent outperformance? I think thats less likely, Suzuki added.

That said, he noted that active fund managers performance tends to do better late in cycles and also during bear markets.

So, as we get later in the cycle that should in the near term help fund manager performance. And, also, if we do start going into bear markets that could help their performance. In the very near term, there are factors that would suggest fund performance would be better than what we are used to.

Dont ignore fees

Another factor that could help performance is fee pressure. As fees come down, its less of a drag on performance. And the only thing investors care about is the performance on an after-fee basis.

One of the arguments that has been driving this ongoing shift from active to passive management is the fees. For the most part, active fund managers performance doesnt justify their fees. Even famed investor Warren Buffett, known as the greatest stock picker of our time, has argued that investors should put their money in low-cost index funds.

The bottom line: When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients. Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds, Buffett wrote in his annual letter.

John Lynch, the chief strategist at retail investment advisory LPL Financial, argues that the dynamics that have supported passive strategies have begun to fade.

Theres almost been a mania relative to passive and I think its important that if you no longer have the worlds largest central bank artificially suppressing the short end of the curve, there will be ramifications, Lynch said. You may well see passive perform well in Europe and Japan, for example, but I think you will see active outperform passive in the U.S. with the Fed going in a different direction.

The long-term outlook looks good for stock pickers

According to Lynch, monetary policy has been a great tailwind for passive investing. With the Federal Reserve hiking rates and reducing the balance sheet, it presents an opportunity for investors to determine which companies are strong or weak.

The bottom line is that the re-emergence of a more classic business cycle, where investors can determine winners and losers based on fundamentals, should support active managements recent positive momentum in 2018, Lynch wrote in a recent report.

During Bank of Americas year-ahead press briefing on Tuesday, Savita Subramanian, the head of U.S. equity strategy, also made a case for fundamental stockpicking.

I think the easy money to be made today is stock selection based on fundamentals with a long time horizon. Im not talking 2018. Im talking about the next ten years. I think thats the most contrary theme, the theme that nobody talks about anymore thats likely to be the most alpha generative for our clients, Subramanian said.

The range of opportunities on the short-term basis have shrunk.

Economic theory would suggest that returns are greatest where capital is scarce, Suzuki added. Over the last few years, theres been a tremendous amount of money flowing to shorter-term, more quant-oriented strategies. Billions have flowed into the hedge fund industry, which is typically focused on shorter-term strategies.

As all this money is competing on different parts of the short-end of investment horizons  one of the greatest opportunities are areas where theres more scarce capital is investors that are investing in fundamental stories with long-time horizons, Suzuki said, adding, If you are Graham and Dodd-based, essentially youre basing your investments simply based on valuation and fair value, then those returns work best over long-time horizons.

Unfortunately, very few people in the industry truly have long-term investment horizons.

Thats one of the greatest opportunities, he added.

Of course, all of this comes down to manager selection. And on aggregate, active managers havent been able to outperform the market. For most investors, though, having the ability to pick the right manager is elusive.

So much time is spent picking the right manager, like stock-picking in a sense, Suzuki said. Picking your manager based on previous performance doesnt translate into future performance.

Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
Modobag

Modobag

Airlines are starting to announce policies to ban smart luggage that includes non-removable lithium ion batteries on their flights.

The first bans are set to go into effect on January 15.

American Airlines, Delta, and Alaska Airlines have announced bans so far. United and Southwest are expected to do so soon.



The future of luggage may be delayed, as airlines are set to ban smart luggage that includes non-removable lithium-ion batteries.

American Airlines announced its ban on December 1, and other airlines have followed, including Alaska Airlines and Delta. United and Southwest are also expected to announce similar policies, according to CNN. The first bans are set to go into effect on January 15.

Smart luggage bags have features like USB ports that can be used to charge phones or laptops, motors, and tracking systems. But airlines fear that the lithium ion batteries the bags carry could spark fires in overhead compartments or cargo holds.

We love innovation and understand why smart bags are so appealing for travel," Alaska Airlines manager of dangerous goods Mike Tobin said in a statement. "While these restrictions may pose a challenge to some of our guests, there have been no incidents to date with smart bags on airplanes and we want to keep it that way."

Most airlines will allow smart luggage on their flights if the batteries are removed, but some smart luggage bags don't give users that option.

"Before and at the time of production, we did our due diligence to make sure that we complied with all international regulations defined by DOT and FAA," smart luggage company Bluesmart said in a statement. "While most airlines understand and approve of smart luggage, others might still be getting up to speed. We are saddened by these latest changes to some airline regulations and feel it is a step back not only for travel technology but it also presents an obstacle to streamlining and improving the way we all travel."

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NOW WATCH: The best travel hacks, according to a top airline CEO

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SEE ALSO: This is the carry-on suitcase I use every time I travel
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have recently issued terrifying warnings about the potential for artificial intelligence, should it go unchecked. "I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it," billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss said in July. "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization...." "Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization," Hawking said at the Web Summit technology conference in November. Monday, Alphabet Chairman and billionaire Eric Schmidt highlighted another area of potential for artificial intelligence, this one significantly less terrifying: making really good, innovative chocolate chip cookies. And that, he says, is awesome. "Love this - a Pittsburgh baker invented a new cookie with the help of Google AI!" tweeted Schmidt. "Over the past year, a small research team at Google has been experimenting with a new technology for experimental design. To demonstrate what this technology could do, our team came up with a real-world challenge: designing the best possible chocolate chip cookies using a given set of ingredients," says senior staff engineer Daniel Golovin in a blog post about the experiment. To come up with the perfect chocolate chip cookie, Google engineers established the inputs: chocolate, flour, vanilla etc. Google employees would test a recipe, give it a numerical rating and then the system would recalibrate the recipe based on the feedback. "We did this dozens of timesbaking, rating, and feeding it back in for a new recipeand pretty soon the system got much better at creating tasty recipes," writes Golovin. Once the Google engineers had an AI perfected baseline cookie, they teamed up with Jeanette Harris of the Gluten Free Goat Bakery & Cafe. They added a couple of wildcard ingredients to the mix  cardamom and szechuan pepper  to see what their AI cookie-baking system would do. And the final product had to be gluten free.

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Two months and 59 recipe iterations later, they had, with the help of the Google AI, a new cookie recipe: The Chocolate Chip and Cardamom Cookie.

Above, the recipe the Google AI system generated The future of artificial intelligence is likely to include both negative use cases, as Musk and Hawking have warned of, and positive, as Schmidt has celebrated with the chocolate chip cookie success. Potential upsides of artificial intelligence include increased productivity, medical advances and innovations in the financial systems that have the potential to help low-income users, writes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. "[AI] could be the greatest thing ever," says Sam Altman, a top Silicon Valley tech executive Sam Altman, who is president of Y Combinator. "I really do believe that, if we could eliminate a huge percentage of human suffering with AI." "I also believe there will be down sides. Any super powerful technology is good and bad." Other similarly dualistic technologies include fission and social media, according to Altman. "When we learned to split the atom, we were able to make huge destructive bombs and also very cheap, clean energy," he says to CNBC Make It . "We got Twitter and Facebook, which let us connect with loved ones but also makes us unhappy because we read crap all day. Any really powerful technology has huge good and huge bad." See also: Stephen Hawking says A.I. could be 'worst event in the history of our civilization' Elon Musk: 'Robots will be able to do everything better than us' Ahead of Elon Musk, this self-made millionaire already launched a company to merge your brain with computers Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook.



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E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, with online retail being its much-vaunted segment. Amazon.com Inc. AMZN has a huge role to play in this booming space and has bright prospects too, given the optimism surrounding it.



eMarketer expects retail e-commerce sales to reach $2.290 trillion in 2017, accounting for 10.1% of total retail sales. This share is expected to surpass 16% by 2021, when e-commerce sales are expected to hit $4.479 trillion.



China and the United States together are expected to garner $1.584 trillion in ecommerce sales this year, representing 69.1% of global ecommerce.



Another research firm, Forrester Research Inc. projects online sales to account for 17.0% of all retail sales in the next five years. It expects e-commerce to account for 17.0% of retail sales by 2022, up from a projected 12.9% in 2017.



Why Amazon Is Still the E-Commerce Hero



Amazon seems to be the undisputed leader and a trendsetter in this space. While new players are emerging, it wont be easy to unsettle Amazon simply because of the size, experience, prices and loyalty it commands.



Aptly, shares of Amazon have exhibited a bullish run in the last two years. During this time, the stock gained a significant 69.3%, outperforming the industrys growth of 66.4%.





Given that the company is a pioneer in online retailing, it enjoyed first-mover advantage and has grown at a tremendous pace. The e-commerce giants popularity can be attributed to its solid technological expertise, which enables it to offer consumers an unmatched level of convenience. Moreover, the companys takeover of Whole Foods Market has further helped in strengthening its foothold in the e-commerce business.



Driven by these efforts, Amazon once again emerged a winner on Cyber Monday. The company announced that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day worldwide in its history, surpassing Prime Day 2017 held in July. Also, per a research by SimilarWeb insights emailed to Retail Dive, on the Black Friday weekend, Amazons desktop conversion rate rose nearly 23% and site visits increased 50% compared with other Black Friday weekend holidays.



Although Amazon is well ahead of others in terms of turnover and competitiveness, it has time and again made hefty investments in expansion. However, it has always provided limited details on when this investment phase would end. Further, the saturation of Prime in the United States and currency headwinds due to international operations are likely to be deterrents. So at best, we can say its a long-term hold.



Our Picks



Here are three other stocks that are a good buy right now.



EVINE Live Inc. EVLV operates as a multiplatform video commerce company in the United States. Currently, it has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and a VGM Score of A. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has increased in the last 30 days. EVINE Lives projected growth rate for the current year is 109.5%, a lot higher than the industrys 7.7%. The stocks earnings are likely to grow more than 100% next year.



PetMed Express, Inc. PETS, headquartered in Delray Beach, FL, is involved in marketing health products directly to consumers through online and direct mail/print advertising. Currently, the company has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and a VGM Score of B. The company managed to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, with an average positive earnings surprise of 23.5%. PetMeds projected growth rate for the current year is 42.5%.



The company has outperformed the industry it belongs to on a year-to-date basis. The stock has returned approximately 77.4% compared with the industrys growth of roughly 58.1%.

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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT, the countrys largest brick-and-mortar retailer. We note that the company is making huge investments in e-Commerce initiatives. Its online gains can be attributed to its push toward bolstering its e-commerce business by making more items available and improving its online sales portal. The company also improved its online grocery business.

Also, Wal-Mart partnered with Alphabets Google in an effort to add voice-controlled shopping to its e-commerce arsenal. Notably, the company grew its online sales by 50% in the third-quarter. Currently, the company has a Zacks Rank #2 and a VGM Score of B. The projected growth rate for the current year is 2.48% and for 2019 is 5.82%.



Also, Wal-Mart has outperformed the industry it belongs to on a year-to-date basis. The stock has returned approximately 40.4% compared with the industrys growth of roughly 31%.





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Zacks has just released a Special Report on the booming investment opportunities of legal marijuana.



Ignited by new referendums and legislation, this industry is expected to blast from an already robust $6.7 billion to $20.2 billion in 2021. Early investors stand to make a killing, but you have to be ready to act and know just where to look.

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Sahar Tabar was called 'zombie' by Instagram users when reports emerged that she had undergone 50 surgeries to resemble Angelina Jolie.

By India Today Web Desk: Last week, pictures of 19-year-old Sahar Tabar from Iran went viral after it was reported that she underwent a whopping 50 surgeries to look like Angelina Jolie. Sahar, who was looked at as the poster child of plastic surgery gone wrong, has now revealed that the pictures were fake.

According to reports, Sahar told Russian news outlet Sputnik that she used a combination of make-up and Photoshop for the photos, which she doctored to "amuse" herself. The teenager, whose Instagram followers multiplied since the pictures went viral, called it a "form of self-expression".

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"Over time I post a photo, I make my face more fun and funny, it is a form of self-expression, a kind of art," Sahar said, adding that her "fans" knew that this was not her real face.

Untampered photos of Sahar have surfaced on the internet, which allegedly show what she actually looks like. They are definitely a far cry from her gaunt appearance that shot her to internet fame.

This is what Sahar reportedly looks like without make-up and Photoshop

ALSO WATCH: Angelina and Brad call it quits, actress files for divorce

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US President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel 's capital on Wednesday, rebuffing the warnings of American allies throughout the Middle East. Trump announced that the U.S. will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision that breaks with decades of Washington policy. Saudi Arabia has called the move a "flagrant provocation," while Turkish President Recep Erdogan described Jerusalem's current status as a "red line for Muslims." Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a Trump pledge during his electoral campaign. In defense of the move, his administration said: "We view this as a recognition of reality." Some see Trump's stance as a pandering to his domestic conservative base, but why is recognizing Jerusalem, and not Tel Aviv, as the Israeli capital viewed as potentially dangerous? Jerusalem: A history of worship and conflict Founded 3,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, Jerusalem was transformed into a city of worship for Muslims, Jews, and Christians during the biblical era. Its Old City houses sacred religious venues for all three faiths, including the Western Wall (sacred to Jews), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (a pilgrimage site for Christians), and the Dome of the Rock (a 7th-century Islamic shrine). The Old City is now a world heritage site, but modern-day Jerusalem extends far beyond its borders, with a wider population estimated at about 1.2 million people. Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital and its status remains a key point of argument in the conflict between the two. According to historians, the original kingdom of Israel emerged during the Iron Age. After a series of battles with neighboring empires, an independent Jewish Kingdom, Judea, was established before then being co-opted by the Romans. Arab control of the area followed over several centuries, leaving the Jewish people without an officially recognized land. A determination to reclaim a Jewish homeland was led by the Zionist movement and during World War I, the United Kingdom's foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, announced support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. After 30 years of this "British Mandate," a United Nations partition plan was devised for the area. In 1947, this resolution was adopted by the UN but never implemented as war broke out between Arabs and Jews. This conflict led to the division of Jerusalem. Israel captured the west of the city while Arab-Jordanian forces annexed the city's east.

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In the six-day war of 1967, Israeli forces then captured and claimed the east of the city. To this day, many countries do not recognize the whole of Jerusalem as an Israeli state and don't hold embassies in Jerusalem, choosing Tel Aviv instead. It is therefore widely considered that Trump's relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would recognize the city as Israel's alone, dismissing any Palestinian claim to seek East Jerusalem as a capital for a future state of its own. That plan sits in alignment with the UN resolution to create a two-state solution for the region, offering an independent Palestinian state, along the boundaries set in place prior to the 1967 war. The situation is further confused by Israeli settlements in the city's east that are considered illegal by international law, but not by the Israeli government. It is estimated that about a third of families living in Jerusalem identify themselves as Palestinian.

Trump sparks reaction Ahead of his announcement Wednesday, the U.S. president called several leaders in the region to forewarn them of the embassy move. In addition to Saudi and Turkish dismay, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas warned that there would be "dangerous consequences" for the region and the world. Egypt's President Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi also urged Trump not to "complicate the situation in the region". Already, there have been protests in the streets with pictures emerging of Palestinians in Bethlehem burning pictures of Trump. A "day of rage" has also been called for this Friday by the Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization, Hamas. In expectation of violence, U.S. government employees have been barred from personal travel in the Old City and West Bank.



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Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) is dropping a 48-year-old habit, the hyphen in its name. It's also ditching the word "stores." Wal-Mart said Wednesday it is changing its legal name to Walmart, as the company looks to emphasize its shift from a company that sells in stores to one that sells online and off. "While our legal name is used in a limited number of places, we felt it was best to have a name that was consistent with the idea that you can shop us however you like as a customer," said President and CEO Doug McMillon in a statement . The name change comes as Walmart been investing in its digital initiatives, propelled by its acquisition of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) competitor Jet.com last year. Through Jet, Walmart has been building a coterie of online brands, which now includes Modcloth and Bonobos. The retailer also recently struck a deal with Lord & Taylor, giving the department store dedicated space on Walmart.com. Hyphen aside, the retailer expects to maintain its famous cheer . McMillon said in a company blog post on Wednesday that employees who incorporate the Walmart "squiggly" into their cheers, may continue to do so. "It's important to have some fun at work, so for our associates in countries where your cheer calls for the squiggly, keep doing it!" Walmart's formal legal name when it incorporated in 1969 was Wal-Mart, Inc. It changed its name to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in 1970 and kept that name in place until now. The legal change to Walmart Inc. will be effective in February.WATCH: Cramer Remix: Wal-Mart is Amazon's only long-term challenger in retail Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) is dropping a 48-year-old habit, the hyphen in its name. It's also ditching the word "stores." Wal-Mart said Wednesday it is changing its legal name to Walmart, as the company looks to emphasize its shift from a company that sells in stores to one that sells online and off. "While our legal name is used in a limited number of places, we felt it was best to have a name that was consistent with the idea that you can shop us however you like as a customer," said President and CEO Doug McMillon in a statement . The name change comes as Walmart been investing in its digital initiatives, propelled by its acquisition of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) competitor Jet.com last year. Through Jet, Walmart has been building a coterie of online brands, which now includes Modcloth and Bonobos. The retailer also recently struck a deal with Lord & Taylor, giving the department store dedicated space on Walmart.com. Hyphen aside, the retailer expects to maintain its famous cheer . McMillon said in a company blog post on Wednesday that employees who incorporate the Walmart "squiggly" into their cheers, may continue to do so. "It's important to have some fun at work, so for our associates in countries where your cheer calls for the squiggly, keep doing it!" Walmart's formal legal name when it incorporated in 1969 was Wal-Mart, Inc. It changed its name to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in 1970 and kept that name in place until now. The legal change to Walmart Inc. will be effective in February. WATCH: Cramer Remix: Wal-Mart is Amazon's only long-term challenger in retail



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Commercial real estate is one of the clear winners in the Republican tax plan, according to The New York Times: House and Senate Republicans, in their divergent bills, both offered steeply reduced rates to corporate giants, partnerships and family-owned firms across the board. But when it came time to eliminate special breaks or impose tighter standards, real estate was generally excused from the room.

Coincidentally or not, President Trump and his family stand to gain considerably from the new rules. Real estate investors will be able to use a more favorable depreciation schedule on their properties, and rental income will be taxed at a lower rate.

Real estate investment trusts also do exceptionally well in the bill, and the Trump Organization has substantial deals with several REITS, including Vornado Realty Trust in New York. Income from REIT investments will be taxed at the new, lower pass-through rate, giving Trump big savings while creating what tax lawyer Steven M. Rosenthal called giant new tax shelters for investors.

Those and other loopholes are raising plenty of eyebrows, both in shock and in eager anticipation. Rather than simplifying the tax code, the Republican plan seems to be creating more nooks and crannies that can be exploited by clever tax layers.

Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution told the Times, Suddenly, there are a dozen different tax rates that apply to different businesses, in different industries, and to different investments. Experts expect to see a wave of restructurings and asset shifting as businesses and wealthy investors maneuver to take advantage of every new tax break in the code.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times
Bitcoin (Exchange:BTC=) rocketed higher Thursday, crossing the $16,000 mark in less than two days after topping $12,000 for the first time. In trading on the Coinbase exchange, the digital currency rose above $16,900 and was last at $16,748. The price on Coinbase is often at a premium over other exchanges. Coinbase is one of the major cryptocurrency exchanges accounting for a third of bitcoin trading volume. Bitcoin 1-hour chart Source: Coinbase Bitcoin now has a market value of more than $272 billion, meaning it would rank among the 20 largest stocks in the S&P 500 (^GSPC). The latest swing higher came as bitcoin topped $12,000 Tuesday night in a rapid recovery from a 20 percent drop last week. The digital currency began the year below $1,000 and its gains have accelerated as investor interest grows. Chicago-based Cboe Global Markets (CBOE) is planning to launch bitcoin futures on Sunday, while the world's largest futures exchange, CME (CME), is set to launch its futures product the following week. The addition of bitcoin futures by two respected exchanges marks another step towards establishing the digital currency as a legitimate asset class. "While we launched [in the U.S.] just a week ago, bitFlyer has already seen strong interest from institutions looking to gain exposure to bitcoin. We're glad to have expanded to the US at this time with so much interest due to the impending Bitcoin futures launches," bitFlyer COO Bartek Ringwelski, said in an email. The Tokyo-based digital currency exchange is the largest in the world by trading volume and announced last week it received a "BitLicense" to operate in New York. However, many remain critical of bitcoin. JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon has called bitcoin a "fraud." Digital currency investor and former Fortress hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz also said last week that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are "going to be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes." Novogratz also predicted last week that bitcoin could reach $40,000 by the end of next year. Between 5 and 6 a.m. New York time, bitcoin jumped past $15,000, its latest milestone after soaring through $12,000, $13,000 and $14,000 over about the last 33 hours, according to an index on CoinDesk.

Source of chart: CoinDesk WATCH: Bitcoin's origin story remains shrouded in mystery. Here's why it matters



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What is Bitcoin?

How to Trade Bitcoin in 3 Easy Steps

Buying and Selling Bitcoin in Russia via Exchanges

Bitcoin Exchanges in Russia

Where can I use Bitcoin in Russia?

Bitcoin ATMs in Russia

Conclusion

It is not very easy to buy or possess Bitcoin in Russia as the government has been going back and forth over this issue. Although the use of cryptocurrency was legitimised in 2016, this year the government decided to reverse the decision. It is difficult to understand this love-hate relationship between the Russians and Bitcoins.

However, there is a recourse left to aficionados of crypto-currencies. It is known as contracts for difference or CFDs, which allow people to trade movements in the value of Bitcoin, without having to own them. This could be beneficial as one does not need to worry about security issues such as downloading back-up, encrypting ones wallet, etc. Traders have the option of speculating and making money off Bitcoin without needing to store their crypto-currencies safely.

One of the better-known CFD brokers where traders can trade Bitcoin CFD is Libertex. To trade bitcoins with CFDs, one has to choose their currency pairing, just like any other form of currency. For instance, if one chooses to pair CFD with Russian Roubles, the XBT/RUB for one month in 2017 would be close to 450,000 roubles. (Apart from BTC, bitcoins abbreviation can also be written as XBT).

What is Bitcoin?

Before moving ahead, we should familiarize ourselves with what exactly is Bitcoin. It is a form of digital currency which was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto; whose identity remains a secret. Bitcoin offers lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and is completely autonomous. Todays market cap for all Bitcoin (abbreviation BTC or XBT) in circulation exceeds $150 billion.

There are no physical Bitcoins, only balances kept on a ledger in the cloud which along with Bitcoin transactions is verified with the help of excessive computing power. Despite this digital crypto-currency not being strictly legal tender, it still ranks high on popularity charts. Such is the popularity, that several countries have approved the currency.

Story continues

Balances are kept using public and private keys which are long strings of number and letters linked through the math encryption algorithm that was used to create them. The public key serves as an address to which people can send bitcoin to the user. The private key (similar to an ATM PIN) should be kept a secret. A loss of the private key means that the access to the wallet is lost forever and any bitcoins stored in the wallet will also be lost. Considering the high prices of bitcoins these days, it is likely to be a large loss as far as the fund size is concerned and hence definitely something that traders, investors and all Bitcoins holders need to keep in mind.

How to Trade Bitcoin in 3 Easy Steps

Trading bitcoin and Bitcoin cash are simple, even for an amateur trader. Bitcoin is highly volatile which makes it perfect for CFD trading. Traders can trade one of their chosen brokers who have BTC on their platform and open an account with them to start buying and selling.

Traders should choose carefully between buying the CFDs at brokers and buying the actual bitcoin at exchanges. Buying bitcoins at exchanges ensures that the bitcoin gets delivered to the wallet of the trader. The trader can then use this bitcoin to trade off or can use it to send payments to others. On the other hand, the buying of the CFD of bitcoin only helps to speculate on the volatility of the bitcoin prices and does not lead to physical delivery of the bitcoin. Thus, those who have bought bitcoin CFDs do not need a wallet and they cannot send the bitcoins to anyone else later.

Both of these methods of bitcoin purchase are available in Russia at this point of time though, after the withdrawal of support to BTC from the Russian government, all these brokers and exchanges operate in a covert manner over there.

One of the top leading brokers, providing cryptocurrencies trading, is Libertex. The broker provides buying and selling of cryptocurrencies and offers cryptocurrencies pairs trading. For example BTC/ETH, LTC/BTC. Below is a complete guide to buying Bitcoin via Libertex in 3 steps:

Step 1  Open an Account

To open an account with Libertex is a simple process. Click here to proceed.

Libertex Bitcoin 1

Step 2  Fund your Account

Once you enter Libertexs trading platform, you will be able to see the quotes, charts, and trade the available instruments. In the upper right corner, click the button to fund your account.

libertex 2

Here you can fund your account with various payment methods such as credit card, Skrill, Neteller, WebMoney, etc.

Libertex - Fund Acct 4

Step 3  Buy and Sell Bitcoin

Now you can choose Bitcoin as your preferred instrument and click on the trade button. You can choose the size of the position and the amount you wish to invest.

Libertex Bitcoin Trade 3

Buying and Selling Bitcoin in Russia via Exchanges

In a surprising move last year, Russia took a liberal approach to not criminalize mining, buying and selling bitcoins. The cryptocurrency community in the country had started taking steps to promote the use of bitcoin since that period. In August last year, Moscow set up the first offline bitcoin exchange.

Buy and sell bitcoin anywhere around the world comes with their own set of rules and regulations and it is the same in Russia. Here, one could buy bitcoin through cash, credit/debit card, wire transfer as well as PayPal. There were many different exchanges that facilitate to buy and sell. There are a few exchanges that used to support cryptocurrencies in Russia such as CEO.IX, Coin Cafe (a New York-based exchange), Brawker, HitBTC.com, and so on.

CEO.IX is a well know exchange that supports clients from Russia. These are the steps in order to purchase Bitcoin via CEX.IO.

Step 1  Open a Digital Wallet

A digital wallet is where you hold your cryptocurrencies and interacts others via the blockchain technology. There are many providers of digital wallets, however, it is important to make a deep research before you decide which one is the best for you. Currently, the most popular digital wallets provider is Blockchain.info.

Step 2  Register & Open an Account

Once you enter CEX.IO website, register and open an account that can provide you with their service.

CEX.IO Login

Step 3  Receive the 2FA Code

This is the authentication code as well as your password when you access CEX.IO. The code will be generated by an application and will be delivered to you by SMS.

CEX.IO F2A Code

Step 4  Purchase Bitcoin

Now you can easily purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Note that you can always buy fractions of Bitcoin and CEX.IO allows you to choose fixed amounts with your own currency.

CEX.IO  Buy Bitcoin

Choose the payment option that is most convenient for you.

CEX.IO Payment

In order to complete the purchase, the broker will ask you to verify your identity with documents and various details.

CEX.IO Verification

Bitcoin Exchanges in Russia

Elaborating on bitcoin exchanges in Russia, here are some pros and cons to investing in Russian exchanges. They are listed below:

Coin Mama CoinMama allows customers from every country to buy bitcoin with either credit or debit card and levy 6% charge on every transaction. The advantages of investing with CoinMama is that it is accessible in most countries around the world, highest limits for buying bitcoin with a credit card and is a reliable and trusted broker. The downside is that it charges very high fees among credit and debit cardholders.

LocalBitcoins- This is an escrow service that helps match bitcoin buyers and sellers. The most common method of payment is cash deposit. Users can also advertise for whichever method of payment they prefer. The pros for using this exchange are: it is easy to use and private, inter-personal trades do not require personal information. The con is that one cannot buy a large number of bitcoins, as compared to other large exchanges.

Matbea- This is a bitcoin exchange based in Russia and one can fund his/her account by cash deposit or bank transfer. The upside of trading with Matbea, it is one of the few Bitcoin exchanges in Russia and there are many ways to deposit funds. The downside is that the exchange does not offer prices close to the market price and consequently, traders receive less value on their bitcoins.

Mycelium Local Trader- This exchange helps one find local bitcoin sellers. Once a seller is located, one can meet up in person and complete the transaction. The best part about Mycelium is that it charges absolutely no fees. While the exchange is great for high-density areas, people in low-density areas may face obstacles and may not find sellers.

Where can I use Bitcoin in Russia?

As of 2017, using bitcoin in Russia has been a contentious issue after current President of Russia Vladimir Putin banned it. Echoing Putins sentiments, the Deputy Finance Minister of Russia Alexei Moiseev also stated that bitcoin settlements in Russia will not be legalized. The central bank also added that Bitcoin cannot be used as an alternative payment option. So, as of now, it looks as though the Russian government has clearly set its mind not to approve the use of bitcoins anytime in the short or medium term.

Due to the unclear legal situation, there are only a few exchanges and brokers that exist. Many people prefer trading with localBitcoins. BTC-E is one of the major exchanges to trade Rubel and bitcoin. It works with a variety of payment providers to permit depositing of funds.

As the government continues to stand divided on the issue of crypto-currency, some places have started looking at bitcoin as an acceptable payment option. Parting from tradition, restaurants such as Valenok and Vintage 77 in Moscow even started accepting bitcoin as a payment option.

Another sign of changing times is the fact that many Russian universities are also offering courses on crypto-currencies. The courses will be incorporated into the schools programs in the academic year 2017-18. Some of these universities are Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, The Saint Petersburg State University of Economics, etc.

Bitcoin ATMs in Russia

Despite Russian government partially banning cryptocurrencies in the country, some exchanges continue to thrive, nonetheless. For instance, Russia-based InvestCoin24 will oversee the installation of Bitcoin ATMs in Moscow.

The project had modest beginnings when an ATM popped up in St. Petersburg. This ATM allowed users to buy bitcoin for a 4% fee. The machine was operated by crypto-currency exchange Bitlish and provides Bitcoin, Ethereum, LiteCoin, among others. The machine is located at a shopping center, on the Vasilevsky Island.

Now, there are 100 ATMs scheduled to be set up in Moscow by the end of 2017.

Previously, InvestCoin24 had installed one in Moscow as a dry run. Now, the company is planning to collaborate with airport owners to set up ATMs in the departure and arrival terminals which will give access to cryptocurrencies to those leaving and entering the country.

The company said they are relying on their own funds to get the project running, without the help of any external funding.

Earlier this year, Russian startup CoinSpot had apparently brought one of the first bitcoin ATMs to Moscow.

Another encouraging sign that crypto-currencies are the next big thing in Russia was that Russias third most populated city Novosibirsk saw 10 bitcoin ATMs installed by a local startup. The practice of installing ATMs in different cities in Russia has been growing day by day but as of today, the government does not seem to have taken any action against these as yet.

Most of the terminals are located in stores selling bottled beverages. The initial plan was to set them up in the citys high-end shopping malls, but the rents were high. It took three months to develop the software operating the machines and the machine will levy a charge of 6% on each transaction. It is indeed a costly way to buy bitcoins but considering the volatility that we have been seeing in the Bitcoin prices, many of the Russians still believe that it is a good way to trade this instrument and apart from using it as a method of payment across borders, they also use this to speculate on the prices of bitcoin so that they could make some quick profit on the Bitcoins price movements which seem to be headed only one way of late.

A local Russian daily stated that by the end of 2017, there will be around 100 one-way crypto-currency ATMs that will dot Moscow. Apart from airports, InvestCoin24 will install some terminals in hotels to make sure Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrencies are accessible to whoever seeks them.

Conclusion

Although there is a lot of confusion surrounding Russias flip-flop on legitimizing crypto-currencies followed by banning it, the citizens of the country seem to be headed another way. With start-ups facilitating import of bitcoin ATMs and restaurants and hotels accepting bitcoin as payment, the tide seems to be turning. Bitcoin is an innovative form of payment and the rest of the world seems to agree on that count. There is a slight possibility that the government may pay attention to what people actually want and pass laws that will favor crypto-currencies.

Till that time, the citizens of Russia have to fend for themselves as far as bitcoins are concerned through the exchanges that operate in a covert manner and also through the use of ATMs that are currently installed in various cities. It remains to be seen how long it would take for the government to come after such exchanges and ATMs but while the ATMs might be easily tracked and controlled, it might be an impossible challenge to track the online exchanges and ensure that no such buying and selling of bitcoins happens through these exchanges in Russia. Until that time, the business of buying bitcoins in Russia is likely to thrive.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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China Hints That It May Back North Korea in the Event of a War

The increasingly tense stand-off between the U.S. and North Korea may have hit a new high this week.

As U.S. and South Korean military units conducted an annual air power exercise over the Korean Peninsula, Chinas air force reportedly staged exercises in routes and areas it has never flown before over the Yellow and East Seas. The exercise involved reconnaissance planes, fighter jets, an early warning and control aircraft, and a joint operation with surface-to-air missile units.

The South China Morning Post quotes Li Jie, a Beijing-based military expert, as saying the drills were done specifically to send a message to Donald Trump.

The timing of this high-profile announcement by the [Peoples Liberation Army] is also a warning to Washington and Seoul not to provoke Pyongyang any further, Jie told the Post.

The U.S. and South Korea used over 200 aircraft in their recent drills. North Korea has protested the exercise as an all out provocation.

Whether Jie is correct about the intentions of the Chinese air force is tricky to determine at this point. China has previously condemned North Korea for launching test missiles and, three months ago, backed U.N. sanctions against the country after a significant nuclear test.

Trumps view of how China has reacted to North Koreas actions, as judged by his tweets, has run the gamut. In early November, he wrote My meetings with President Xi Jinping were very productive on both trade and the subject of North Korea. He is a highly respected and powerful representative of his people. He praised the country for sending an envoy to speak with the North Korean government, but seemed frustrated earlier this month by the lack of results from that meeting.

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Shares of the Snapchat's parent company (NYSE: SNAP) jumped more than 8 percent Tuesday, and CNBC's Jim Cramer said it may finally be at a good level to buy. Cramer cited a note on Snap stock by investment bank Barclays , which upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight and raised its price target to $18 a share from $11. "We've been on the sidelines since the IPO, but feel now is a good time to start accumulating shares," Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote. "I thought this was a very good upgrade. ... I like this piece," Cramer said on " Squawk on the Street ." "Ross Sandler has been historically very good. I've known Ross Sandler for years. ... Ross Sandler does quality work." When asked whether Snap has reached an "entry point" for investors, Cramer said, "I have felt that there is a level where you just have to accept the fact that younger people like this.""This whole notion that Facebook is killing [it]  that seems to be a narrative we could live without in a sense that there's room for more," said Cramer, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Cramer said he also appreciated some of the changes coming to the social media company, including a redesign."I've been trying to find an entry point for it," Cramer said. "I think that it is down for the year, so you may have some people with tax law selling. You see the stocks that are down aren't coming back. But (the upgrade) was very clever."Snap shares had fallen nearly 45 percent since going public in early March. Shares of the Snapchat's parent company (NYSE: SNAP) jumped more than 8 percent Tuesday, and CNBC's Jim Cramer said it may finally be at a good level to buy. Cramer cited a note on Snap stock by investment bank Barclays , which upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight and raised its price target to $18 a share from $11. "We've been on the sidelines since the IPO, but feel now is a good time to start accumulating shares," Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote. "I thought this was a very good upgrade. ... I like this piece," Cramer said on " Squawk on the Street ." "Ross Sandler has been historically very good. I've known Ross Sandler for years. ... Ross Sandler does quality work." When asked whether Snap has reached an "entry point" for investors, Cramer said, "I have felt that there is a level where you just have to accept the fact that younger people like this." "This whole notion that Facebook is killing [it]  that seems to be a narrative we could live without in a sense that there's room for more," said Cramer, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Cramer said he also appreciated some of the changes coming to the social media company, including a redesign. "I've been trying to find an entry point for it," Cramer said. "I think that it is down for the year, so you may have some people with tax law selling. You see the stocks that are down aren't coming back. But (the upgrade) was very clever." Snap shares had fallen nearly 45 percent since going public in early March.



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In turning around its business following the Great Recession, Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) has leaned heavily on partnering with foreign airlines to broaden its global reach. These foreign partners include Air France-KLM, Alitalia, and Virgin Atlantic in Europe; GOL and Aeromexico in Latin America; China Eastern and Korean Air in East Asia; and Virgin Australia in Oceania.

Delta Air Lines hopes to use this same playbook to improve its position in Canada. Earlier this week, Delta and WestJet (TSX: WJA) announced that they intend to form a joint venture to serve the U.S.-Canada transborder market. This could boost both carriers' financial performance -- if they can get the necessary regulatory approvals.

A Delta Air Lines plane parked on the tarmac

Delta plans to form another joint venture -- this time with WestJet. Image source: Delta Air Lines.

What Delta and WestJet want to do

Delta and WestJet already have a limited codeshare relationship. This allows customers to seamlessly book itineraries that include flights on both carriers.

The airlines now want to deepen their relationship to form a full joint venture. This would entail cooperating on everything -- from scheduling to pricing to marketing -- and sharing the revenue from transborder flights. In other words, for travel between the U.S. and Canada, Delta and WestJet would function as if they were a single airline.

From a customer perspective, the two carriers have promised to offer full reciprocal frequent flyer benefits so that travelers with elite status will be recognized regardless of which airline operates a given flight. They will also coordinate to make it easier for customers to connect between Delta and WestJet flights.

A joint venture could propel growth

By offering full access to each other's networks, a joint venture would help Delta and WestJet increase their share of the transborder market. Delta flies to hundreds of small cities that WestJet could never hope to serve on a stand-alone basis. Meanwhile, as WestJet has started to transition from being a pure low-cost carrier to being more of a network carrier, it has moved into numerous small markets in Canada that Delta can't reach today.

Story continues

A WestJet plane flying over clouds

WestJet has moved into smaller markets in recent years. Image source: WestJet.

WestJet is the No. 1 airline in Calgary, and it has a large presence in Toronto and Vancouver, as well. A joint venture would make it worthwhile for Delta and WestJet to add flights between those three cities and Delta's hubs. These new routes would help the carriers capture more connecting traffic between Canada and the U.S. by tying their respective route networks more closely together.

For example, there are no nonstop flights between Atlanta and Calgary today. A new route between those two hubs would give WestJet's Calgary-based customers one-stop access to numerous cities across the Southeast U.S., while giving Delta's Atlanta-based customers significantly more options for one-stop travel to western Canada.

Will regulators approve?

A joint venture would clearly be beneficial for both Delta and WestJet. However, before they can begin implementing the new joint venture, the carriers will need to secure approval from regulators in the U.S. and Canada.

Air Canada and United Continental were blocked from implementing a similar arrangement several years ago. Regulators in Canada argued that the two carriers would dominate the transborder market if they were permitted to work together. Indeed, Air Canada alone accounted for 45% of industry capacity in the transborder market last year.

Even on a combined basis, Delta and WestJet would control a much smaller piece of the market. Thus, they have a good chance of getting approved, as they will argue that teaming up is the only way they can compete effectively with Air Canada.

Still, investors shouldn't discount the possibility that the joint venture will hit regulatory hurdles. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways don't fly to Canada, so the transborder market already suffers from limited competition. Regulators on both sides of the border may be reluctant to authorize any deal that leads to further market concentration, regardless of the offsetting benefits it may provide.

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Adam Levine-Weinberg owns shares of Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways and is long January 2019 $10 calls on JetBlue Airways. The Motley Fool recommends JetBlue Airways. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
By PTI: (Eds: With details of deliberations)

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) In a setback to the Art of Living Foundation of spiritual leader Ravi Shankar, the National Green Tribunal today held it responsible for causing damage and environmental degradation of the Yamuna flood plains by holding a three-day cultural extravaganza last year.

While refusing to impose an additional environment fine on the AoL which has already deposited Rs 5 crore, the NGT ordered the DDA to use this amount to restore the floodplains and bill the AoL if the cost is more or return to it the balance if the cost is below that amount.

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The AoL termed the verdict as "erroneous and untenable" and said they would move the Supreme Court against it.

Ordering that the Yamuna riverbed should not be used to hold any cultural activity of this kind in future, the green panel directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to assess the damage caused on floodplains and compute cost of restoration in line with the recommendations of the expert panel appointed by it.

"We hold and declare that AoL is responsible for causing damage and environmental degradation of the floodplain of river Yamuna limited to the area that was awarded to it by DDA and the State of UP, in terms of the report of the High Powered Committee," the NGT said in its judgement.

The AoL had organised the World Culture Festival from March 11-13, 2016, on the floodplains and constructed an oval-shaped stage over an area of seven acres.

Noting that the AoL has already deposited Rs 5 crore with the DDA, it said "in the event, the expenditure for that purpose on the portion of the land forming part of Phase-II of the project of DDA is found to be in excess of Rs 5 crore, DDA would be at liberty to recover the said amount and AoL shall be liable to pay the said amount on demand.

"If finally the expenditure to be incurred on that amount is less than Rs 5 crore, the remaining amount would be refunded by DDA to AoL," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said.

The tribunal rapped the DDA over its failure to maintain the natural features and ecology of the Yamuna floodplains and said it has failed to exercise its statutory duty in consonance with the environmental laws in force.

It, however, refrained from imposing environmental compensation on the DDA on the ground that it has already planned construction of a bio-diversity park and improvement of floodplains from its own funds.

The bench, also comprising Justice Jawad Rahim and expert member B S Sajwan, said that even the Delhi Pollution Control Committee had failed to exercise due caution in granting permission to AoL. It should have considered the request for permission in accordance with environmental laws in force.

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Before the pronouncement of the judgement, the NGT was informed that Justice R S Rathore, who had earlier heard the matter, had recused from the bench.

In a statement, the AoL termed the verdict as "erroneous and untenable" and said they did not agree with it and will approach the Supreme Court.

"The Art of Living will approach the Supreme Court. We are not in agreement with the verdict. AoL is disappointed with the decision taken by the NGT for damaging Yamuna floodplains during its World Culture Festival.

"We do not agree with the verdict. Our submissions have not been dealt with/considered. We will appeal to the Supreme Court. We are confident that we will get justice before the Supreme Court," AoL said.

Yamuna activist Manoj Misra, who had claimed that severe damage was done to the river and the floodplains and had filed a plea in the NGT in this regard, termed the decision as a victory for Yamuna.

"Our contention has been vindicated. We had said that the damage was caused to the floodplains and the NGT has upheld our plea. This is victory of river Yamuna. I hope a strong message will go across the country to those who are damaging the floodplains of the rivers. People need to know that river floodplain is not waste land," Misra said.

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The expert panel had earlier told the NGT that an estimated Rs 42.02 crore would be required to restore Yamuna floodplains which was ravaged due to the cultural extravaganza.

Misra had claimed that severe damage was done to the river and the floodplains and it must be restored by authorities concerned. PTI PKS AG RKS ARC

--- ENDS ---
Quite a few pharmaceutical industry mergers may be in the cards in 2018 if the proposed tax reforms are finally approved.

Quite a few pharmaceutical industry mergers may be in the cards in 2018 if the proposed tax reforms are finally approved. The U.S. Senate passed an amended tax reform bill last week, thereby successfully passing the second stage. The bill will now be presented to a conference committee where representatives from the House and Senate will come together to draft the final bill.

The tax reforms propose to cut the tax rate for corporates from 35% to 20%, which can boost profits of large drug/biotech companies. Meanwhile, the change in tax code will also allow companies to bring back huge cash held overseas at a one-time tax rate of 10%.

These changes should definitely leave more cash in the hands of drug/biotech companies. The cash can be invested for mergers/acquisitions, which have been few in 2017 compared to 2016. Contrary to expectations of increased pharma and biotech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in 2017, the focus was mostly on small bolt-on acquisitions and licensing deals and agreements.

Gileads GILD nearly $12 billion acquisition of Kite Pharma and Johnson & Johnsons JNJ $30 billion acquisition of Swiss biotech Actelion were the only two noteworthy deals of this year.

With rising investor expectation that Trump's action on drug prices may not be as onerous as previously feared, there is a lot of chatter about a possible increase in M&As.

Meanwhile, the major drug/biotech players struggling with organic growth need an infusion of new growth drivers in their pipeline/product portfolios  either from internal development or from buying assets. Strategic M&A and licensing deals are therefore inevitable for innovation starved drug/biotech companies looking for growth in a highly competitive and global marketplace.

Drug/biotech companies have regularly tried to merge or acquire competitors in mega-merger deals to achieve critical mass both in R&D and sales and marketing. Meanwhile, smaller biotech research firms investigating new therapies or interesting pipeline candidates have also attracted the attention of larger counterparts in the last few years.

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With focus on drug pricing taking a backseat and possibility of repatriation of funds, hopes are high that M&A activity will pick up. Companies like Pfizer PFE, Merck MRK, and J&J are expected to take the lead supported by their robust cash flow and balance sheet.

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When Senate Republicans voted by the narrowest of margins  51 to 49  to pass their sweeping tax overhaul after midnight last Friday, many of the bills critics turned their anger to Sen. Jeff Flake: the Arizona Republican who has taken a defiant stand against the populist ethos of the Age of Trump, only to decide at the eleventh hour to cast his ballot in favor of whats been dubbed Trumps tax bill.

Flake had been won over by two concessions from his party: a provision in the bill that reduced its impact on the federal deficit, and a verbal commitment from the White House to prioritize a legislative replacement for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era executive policy canceled by Trump in September that protects young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally. His willingness to believe an administration with which he has repeatedly clashed, some pundits said, was naive at best.

But in an interview with TIME on Wednesday, his first since Fridays vote, Flake defended his decision. While conceding that the bill was less than perfect, he said that its emphasis on slashing corporate taxes would facilitate economic growth. He also condemned the notion that his yes vote nullified his past criticism of Trump  exemplified in an Oct. 24 Senate speech where he announced he would not seek reelection  as hollow or hypocritical.

I saw a New York Times op-ed that said it was my responsibility, if Im opposed to Trumps policies or behavior, to hobble him, he said. Thats never been the case. Ive always said that Ill work with the president when I think hes right, and oppose him when hes wrong.

Read More: Fighting Donald Trump Cost Jeff Flake His Job. But Hes Not Going Quietly

People assume that anything Republicans in Congress do is Trumps initiative, he said. But weve been working on tax reform for years! Ive been pushing for lowering the corporate rate for well over a decade. This notion that its the presidents agenda that were fulfilling just doesnt tell the story.

Story continues

The story, as it were, is more complicated. Flake is an ardent deficit hawk; in the dramatic days preceding the tax reform decision, speculation swirled on Capitol Hill around how hed vote on a bill that by one official estimate would hike the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade. Indeed, Flake had said that he was skeptical, citing the bills permission of full expensing  a measure that lets companies deduct their assets from their tax bills, costing the government billions in potential tax revenue. To fit within the budget limit, a previous draft of the bill had phased the measure out after five years  but Flake wasnt convinced that would actually happen.

Whenever that happens, we never end it, he said, pointing to the so-called doc fix that until 2015 reimbursed medical providers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Businesses will come  just as physicians and hospitals came and said no, you cant do that, and so we extended it for almost twenty years.

Flake fought hard against the full expensing provision, and in the end he secured a compromise: after the five-year limit, it would sunset out gradually over the following four years, to preempt the ire of businesses that would otherwise swiftly lose a beneficial tax loophole. We said, smooth that, ramp it down after the first five years, and they were able to do that, Flake said.

I am concerned about the debt and deficit, he concedes. Ive always described myself as a supply-sider with caveats. Basically it was about trying to get a balance I could live with. And I think we got it.

With the bills fate still uncertain on the eve of the vote, Flake saw an additional opportunity to wield his leverage: to insist that, in exchange for his support, the White House and congressional Republican leadership would focus on passing a legislative replacement for DACA. Flakes moderate stance on immigration has long set him at odds with Trump, who voided Obamas amnesty program in September. Flake has since been frustrated by Congress inaction to pass legislation that would protect around 800,000 beneficiaries from deportation before the program officially expires in March. I just think its unfair to those kids to make them wait for this long, he said.

On Thursday and Friday of last week, Flake says he spoke twice and at length to Vice-President Mike Pence.

Ive always thought that the presidents instincts on DACA  and I dont say this about every area where the president has policy preferences  are better than the advice that he gets, Flake said. They want this done, and frankly, I was telling [Pence]: hey, you guys need an excuse. We have a Republican Senator whose vote we can get if we agree with DACA  use it however you want!

The verbal commitment, Flake says, amounts to an iron-clad guarantee that well get it done by this date. It gives traction to his behind-the-scenes efforts  he has assembled a bipartisan Senate bloc to pursue legislation, with six members and counting  and, he says, assures his spot at the negotiating table. The bottom line here, and the reason that Im at the table, is that we need 60 votes, Flake says. And in order to get that, its got to be bipartisan. Were going to have to involve those who are serious about it on the right, like me, to get some of those on the left.

Some are skeptical of this deals fortitude, citing the September meeting where Trump and congressional Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi reached a compromise to replace DACA  a compromise that, three months later, has amounted to little more than smoke.

But Flake says he has Republican prudence on his side. The [March] deadline  were going to come up on that pretty soon, he says. Nobody wants to go over those falls. Thats not in our interest.

Flake is aware of the criticism that has come his way in the wake of his vote. On Tuesday night, he tweeted a photo of a $100 check he had written for Democrat Doug Jones, who is running in Alabamas Senate special election against the controversial Roy Moore. Flake was criticizing Moore even before allegations emerged last month that the far-right Alabama judge had pursued teen-aged girls sexually; now, with the election one week away, Flake says he wanted to make a statement, at least.

Country over party, Flake tweeted with the photo.

Okay then vote against the abhorrent tax bill, big spender, one person snarked back.

But as Flake sees it, the expectation that he counteract Trumps agenda simply to validate his criticism of the president is not only misguided  it also evinces the crude partisan polemic that he says has characterized contemporary political discourse.

Well push back those areas where our agenda is different from his, he says. But this notion that its my responsibility, because Im opposed to what a lot of the president is doing, to hobble him  it smacks of the same disdain that Democrats had when McConnell made the statement that it was our responsibility to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. That wasnt right, nor is this. I dont see it that way.
Ford (NYSE: F) believes China is poised to become the most favorable market for the development and sale of electric vehicles, according to the U.S. auto giant's executive chairman. "I do think electric vehicles make sense. For a lot of reasons it's a good way to go around the world and so I am a big believer in it  We are betting very heavily in it," Bill Ford, executive chairman at Ford Motor Company, told CNBC Wednesday.Speaking on the sidelines of Fortune's Brainstorm Tech International conference in Guangzhou, China, Ford said, "The entire Ford nameplate will be electrified by 2025 here."Ford recently announced a $756 million joint venture with Chinese auto firm Zotye Auto to produce and sell electric vehicles in Beijing. The U.S. auto company plans to have at least 15 models ready by 2025. Ford's investment joins the like of General Motors (NYSE: GM) , Daimler (XETRA: DAI-DE) and Volkswagen (XETRA: VOW3-DE) as major manufacturers increasingly look to develop an aggressive electric vehicle strategy in the world's second-largest economy. Ford (NYSE: F) believes China is poised to become the most favorable market for the development and sale of electric vehicles, according to the U.S. auto giant's executive chairman. "I do think electric vehicles make sense. For a lot of reasons it's a good way to go around the world and so I am a big believer in it  We are betting very heavily in it," Bill Ford, executive chairman at Ford Motor Company, told CNBC Wednesday. Speaking on the sidelines of Fortune's Brainstorm Tech International conference in Guangzhou, China, Ford said, "The entire Ford nameplate will be electrified by 2025 here." Ford recently announced a $756 million joint venture with Chinese auto firm Zotye Auto to produce and sell electric vehicles in Beijing. The U.S. auto company plans to have at least 15 models ready by 2025. Ford's investment joins the like of General Motors (NYSE: GM) , Daimler (XETRA: DAI-DE) and Volkswagen (XETRA: VOW3-DE) as major manufacturers increasingly look to develop an aggressive electric vehicle strategy in the world's second-largest economy.



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By Mostafa Salem, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Ellen Francis CAIRO/AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Arabs denounced President Donald Trump's plan to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as a slap in the face but few thought their governments would do much in response. Trump phoned allies in the Middle East late on Tuesday to tell them the United States would acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday and prepare to move its embassy there. "It incites feelings of anger among all Muslims and threatens world peace," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Egypt's al-Azhar mosque, one of Islam's most important institutions. "The gates of hell will be opened in the West before the East," he added, warning of the possible reaction. Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which it seized in the 1967 war, is not recognized internationally, and under the U.S.-brokered Oslo accords of 1993 the city's status was to be decided in negotiations with Palestinians. Arab governments issued statements of concern or condemnation and emergency meetings of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have been called. But the U.S. decision has been taken. In a bitterly divided region, backing for Palestinians is often seen as a unifying position, but it is also often a source of internal recriminations over the extent of that support. A cartoon in al-Arabi al-Jadeed, a London-based Arabic news website, showed Trump raising a hand against an Arab as if to slap him, wearing a large glove marked with the Israeli flag. In Lebanon, the Daily Star newspaper ran a full page photograph of Jerusalem on its cover with the headline "No offense Mr. President, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine". Around the Arab world - including Egypt and Jordan, its only two countries to recognize Israel - and across the bitter divide between allies of regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, people denounced the move. "Neither I nor my children nor my children's children will give up our right to Palestine and Jerusalem," said Hilmi Aqel, a Palestinian refugee born in Jordan's al-Baqaa camp after his family fled the fighting that accompanied Israel's creation. "America does what it wants because it's powerful and thinks it won't feel the consequences ... Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, not of Israel. It never can be," said Nada Saeed, 24, a property broker in Cairo. "This is a provocation for the Arabs," said Mahdi Msheikh, 43, a taxi driver in Beirut's Hamra district. ETERNAL CAPITAL However, few people Reuters interviewed on Wednesday expected their governments to take any real action. "What saddens me most about this is that Palestine in the past was an ultimate rights cause for us as Syrians and Arabs ... Palestine has retreated from our priorities," said a lecturer at Damascus university, who asked not to be named. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, pushed a plan in 2002 offering Israel peace with all Arab countries in return for a Palestinian state including east Jerusalem. But a recent newspaper report suggested it was willing to compromise on several areas that are regarded by Palestinians and some other Arab countries as red lines. Riyadh has denied that and called on Trump not to move the embassy. "The current events on the world stage and especially in the Gulf help Trump take this step because the most important thing is that Saudi Arabia is not against it," said Adnan, a 52-year-old trader in Beirut. The kingdom's top clergy issued a mild statement saying Saudi Arabia supported Jerusalem, but did not explicitly denounce Trump's move. Many Saudi Twitter users posting under the hashtag "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine", shared a film clip of the late King Faisal, who launched the 1973 Arab oil embargo against the West, pledging never to accept Israel. But one Twitter user posting with a common Saudi family name said that while Muslims and Arabs would be provoked by the move, its top royals would not be. Instead, they would "suppress any move or call to jihad against the Zionist enemy", he wrote. REFUGEES In Cairo, Khaled Abdelkhalik, a lawyer, said: "We paraded Trump as an ally of the Arabs, but he turned out dirtier than his predecessors." Jordan, which agreed peace with Israel in 1994 while the peace process with the Palestinians still seemed on track, held a special session of parliament. "I call on my colleagues to tear up the treaty of humiliation and shame," said MP Yahya Saoud, referring to the peace deal. Jordan, like Lebanon, is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. "This is a conspiracy that is denying us our rights, the first of which is to return. They think we are a branch of thorns that they can step on and break," said Fadia, a social worker with two daughters in Lebanon's Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp. "But we are a bomb. If they step on it, it explodes," she said. In Israel, analysts said that despite such warnings, they expected little violence or opposition. "The moderate camp in the Arab world needs the United States as well as Israel in order to face their main threat, which is Iran," said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. "We may see some public announcements maybe denouncing the American decision, but in substantive terms I don't think much will change." (Additional reporting by John Davison in Cairo, Tom Perry in Beirut, Ulf Laessing in Tunis, Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Reem Shamseddine in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing By Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Giles Elgood)
General Electric logo - AP

US industrial giant General Electric is slashing almost a fifth of the global workforce in its power business, a move that will result in a swathe of job losses in the UK.

The power division - GEs largest unit which makes turbines used in energy generation - said that it will shed 12,000 staff worldwide, including 1,100 employees in the UK.

Tough global markets were behind the cuts, GE said, along with questions about demand for gas and coal-fired power stations as renewable energy gains momentum.

Demand for new-built power plants dramatically dropped in all OECD countries, the company said in a statement.

Traditional utility customers have reduced their investments due to market deterioration and uncertainty about future climate policy measures.

GE said renewable energy means there is less demand for its turbines which are used in traditional power plants Credit: Alamy

GE described the worldwide market for power and grid business as being essentially flat, with regions such as Western Europe experiencing a decline.

Shedding almost one in five employees in the power division is part of the companys target of cutting $3.5bn of costs by the end of 2018.

Mark Elborne, chief executive of GE in UK & Ireland, added: These are not proposals we ever make lightly and we understand that this news will be difficult for many people.

Unfortunately, we believe that these changes are necessary to ensure that we can remain competitive and secure the future of GE Power in the UK.

Job losses in the UK - which will affect about 6pc of the companys workforce in Britain - will be focused in GEs operations in Rugby and Stafford.

GE's power business was responsible for $26.8bn of the total group revenues of $113.2bn last year and the division delivered a profit of $5bn.

The cuts are part of GE chief executive John Flannery's restructuring of the business Credit: GE

The shake-up comes under recently installed chief executive John Flannery who took over in the summer from Jeff Immelt, who had led GE for 16 years.

In his annual letter to shareholders in February, Mr Immelt hinted at a major upset coming to the business.

Were in an era when some very basic assumptions about the global economy are being tested, he said. For an American company, our country is diverging from the rest of the world. We will be less of a leader in trade.
By India Today Web Desk: Arjun Kapoor, who is currently shooting in Uttarakhand for his film, Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar was allegedly assaulted by a drunk man on sets. The man, who is a driver by profession, has been arrested.

According to a report in Times of India, a driver approached Arjun in his vanity van in Pithoragarh on Monday and wanted to shake hands with him. When Arjun shook hands with Kamal Kumar, the driver who was allegedly drunk, twisted the actor's hands and mandhandled him.

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The police also seized Kumar's car under the Motor Vehicle Act and slapped a fine of Rs 500 for driving under the influence of alcohol. Police have asked the assistant regional transport officer to cancel his licence for driving in an inebriated state.

Arjun plays a policeman in the film. His character wants to play a better role in law-enforcement and has to undergo special training, so that he can be assigned to high-profile cases.

Arjun will work with Parineeti Chopra, again after their debut, Ishaqzaade. The two will also be seen in Namastey Canada .

ALSO WATCH: Up close and personal with Arjun Kapoor

--- ENDS ---
General Electric - AP

As many as 670 British jobs are at risk after US conglomerate General Electric said it had submitted a proposal to employee representatives following a review into its power division.

The UK cuts are thought to be part of a wider cull, with 4,500 roles to be slashed across Europe, according to French newspaper Les Echos.

Along with the UK, Germany and Switzerland are also expected to be heavily affected by the cuts, with up to 1,300 jobs set to go in Switzerland and as many as 1,050 in Germany. The jobs will be in Alstom's energy business, the newspaper said, citing a union source.

General Electric bought Alstom's energy business for $10.6bn (7.9bn) in 2015, combining it with its existing power and water unit and renaming it GE Power, but earlier this year said it had "clearly performed below expectations".

The GE Power unit currently employs 1,600 employees in the UK, meaning the cuts would slash the British unit's workforce by 42pc.

General Electric, in a statement on Tuesday evening, said that, "based on the current challenges in the power industry and a significant decline in orders, GE Power is currently reviewing its operations to ensure the business is best positioned to respond to our market realities and for long-term success".

"We have shared our proposal with the European body representing legacy Alstom employees but we are not able to share any additional details at this time. Before any plan would be implemented, we would first discuss our plans with employees and employee representatives, as required by and in accordance with local laws."

Trade union Unite, which last year represented UK workers from General Electric, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
- By Mayank Marwah





U.S. automaker General Motors Co. (GM), in collaboration with its joint ventures in China, posted a 12.5% sales gain year over year to 418,225 vehicles for November. November was a record month for the Detroit automaker on a volume basis. The company"s year-to-date sales stood at 3.55 million units, up 3.3% from the prior-year period. SUVs remained the highlight of the month as sales surged a whopping 73% from November 2016.





Here"s a comprehensive look at General Motors" monthly performance in China.

Performance of GM"s brands

Buick sales came in at 112,738 units, up 3% on a year-over-year basis. The brand"s performance was bolstered by Excelle GT sales, which remained the brand"s top-selling vehicle for November (30,000 units sold). While Buick GL8 sales surpassed 13,000 units, Buick GL6 sales reached almost 4,000 units.

Baojun set a monthly sales record at 113,711 units, 52.1% surge on a year-over-year basis. Baojun 510 remained the brand"s top-selling vehicle at 48,000 units. On the other hand, sales of Baojun 310 and E100 also stood out. Sales of the 310 increased 97% to 28,000 units and E100 sales exceeded 1,900 units.

The automaker"s Cadillac Luxury brand put up a stellar performance this month as sales rose 23.4% to 16,629 units. November marked the brand"s 21st successive month of double-digit sales growth in China. Cadillac ATS-L sales improved 21% to approximately 5,000 units in November, which was the model"s 17th consecutive double-digit sales increase. CT-5 sales surpassed 1,200 units, thereby doubling last November"s sales. While sales of the XT-5 exceeded 6,500 units, XTS" sales improved 12% on a year-over-year basis.

Chevrolet sales in China totalled 61,229 units, up 16.8% year over year. November not only marked the brand"s fifth consecutive month of double-digit sales growth, but was also a record month. While Malibu sales stood at roughly 15, 000 units, Cavalier sales exceeded 21,000 units, making it Chevrolet"s best-selling model in China. On the other hand, Equinox, which completed its seventh full month on the Chinese market, surpassed 6,900 units.

Story continues

Wuling, the only brand to post a sales decline, saw sales fall 6.3% to 113,919 units. Hong Guang sales amounted to more than 59,000 units. Hong Guang S3, in its first month on the Chinese market, sold more than 13,000 units. Rong Guang sales, on the other hand, came in at approximately 43,000 units.

Last word

November was a blockbuster month for General Motors as demand for larger vehicles, luxury cars and entry-level cars were high. It will be interesting to see how much GM"s sales in China grow in the last month of the year. Until then, stay tuned.

Disclosure: I do not hold any positions in the stocks mentioned in this article.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






A former Treasury official says that in their haste to write and pass a major tax overhaul, Republican are creating bountiful opportunities for tax avoidance in the future. Greg Jenner, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy in the George W. Bush administration, told Politico: The more you read, the more you go, Holy crap, whats this?' We will be dealing with unintended consequences for months to come because the bill is moving too fast.

House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady says hes aware of some of the problems and will be using the reconciliation process to fine-tune the final legislation. But there isnt much time, with Republicans aiming to have the bill on President Trumps desk before Christmas. You can never catch all the implications, Jenner said, and the problem is magnified exponentially when youre rushing through like this.

A Republican lobbyist agreed, telling Politico, Its crazy. I dont think anyone could explain it, let alone comply with it by the time the new tax bill takes effect on January 1.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times
By Sruthi Ramakrishnan (Reuters) - Home Depot Inc announced a $15 billion share buyback plan on Wednesday and said it would invest in improving its stores to hit a $120 billion annual sales target in the next three years. The retailer's shares fell 1.4 percent to $180.22 on the New York Stock Exchange as its latest buyback target pointed to a slowdown in the pace of repurchases. The largest U.S. home improvement store chain said it expects to buy back $12.5 billion over the next three years, compared with the $8 billion it plans to buy for the year ending January 2018. It plans to buy $2.1 billion of shares in the current quarter. Home Depot is riding a multi-year recovery in the U.S. housing market and has benefited from reconstruction and repair work after Hurricanes Irma and Harvey struck the United States in August and September. But it also must contend with growing competition from online and brick-and-mortar rivals, so it plans to speed up investment in its in stores, employees, deliveries and online business. "The retail landscape is changing at unprecedented rates and we plan to invest for the future to address the evolving needs of our customers," Chief Executive Officer Craig Menear said in a statement. The Atlanta-based company said it would invest in making check-out faster for customers as well as wages and scheduling for employees. It would also change its merchandise more frequently and make it easier for customers to navigate its giant stores by adding digital signs. The company is doubling its total investment spending over three years, which puts a limit on its profitability expansion and the shares it can buy back, which could be weighing on investor appetite for the stock today, Edward Jones analyst Robin Diedrich said. The company on its investor day call sought to allay concerns about limits on deductions for mortgage interest proposed under the Republican U.S. tax overhaul, a factor that may curb the appetite for new homes. There was no empirical evidence to suggest that tax deductibility influences the rate of home ownership, Home Depot's Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome said, because only 5 percent of mortgages are more than $500,000, the proposed cap for tax deductions. Its target range for sales for the year ending January 2021 were for between $114.7 billion and $119.8 billion, compared with this year's goal of $100.6 billion. Home Depot said the new buyback program would replace its previous authorization of $15 billion set in February. Home Depot's shares have climbed about 36 percent this year. (Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anna Driver and Meredith Mazzilli)
Fears that the housing market could be weakened by possible mortgage interest provisions in an upcoming tax bill are "overblown," according to Home Depot's CEO."When it comes to deductibility as it relates to mortgage, we believe that's not as big a deal as people are making it out to be," Craig Menear, the home improvement retailer's chairman and CEO, told CNBC in a phone interview."Only about 20 percent of Americans deduct mortgage interest, and the numbers show less than 5 percent of folks have a mortgage greater than $500,000," he said. Although the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are still hashing out the details , the final tax reform bill will likely include changes to mortgage interest deductions . A strong housing market has helped fuel Home Depot (NYSE: HD) 's record run. As recently as Monday, the retailer's shares hit a fresh all-time high as sales and profit have been strong. The home improvement retailer has made good choices with its business but investors still watch the housing market closely. Home Depot noted it will benefit from a lower corporate tax rate. For its most recent fiscal year, it paid an effective tax rate of 36.3 percent. "With tax reform, Home Depot would have an immediate and significant benefit for our tax rate. We are in favor of tax reform, if it puts more money in the pocket of the average American and drives GDP growth at a higher rate than previously, we are all in," Menear said. In a note to investors, Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Baker said if the corporate rate drops to 20 percent, as currently being considered, Home Depot's "earnings power goes up by at least 20 percent." At an investor meeting Wednesday, the company outlined its three-year financial plan, earnings and sales forecasts. Home Depot expects sales to grow between 4.5 and 6 percent to between $115 billion and $120 billion, with a resulting operating margin between 14.4 and 15 percent. It also announced a new $15 billion stock buyback plan . Both earnings and sales expectations came up short of analysts' consensus. The retailer plans to invest $11.1 billion over the next three years to improve its stores, pay workers more, build a new website for professionals and enhance its supply chain, delivery and product innovation. While Home Depot has been "incredibly fortunate and blessed with great performance" over the last number of years, it has to do more to catch up with consumer expectations, Menear said. While 45 percent of Home Depot's online orders are picked up in its more than 2,280 stores, Menear said, the retailer still isn't where it wants to be for shoppers. "We are accelerating the pace of investment to truly create the 'one Home Depot experience' because our customers are blending the physical and digital world together, and that's candidly, not how we were built. We have to be that for them," he said. Menear added, some of the initiatives include shortening the typical two-day delivery window to next-day and same-day, and adding self-serve lockers in store for online order pickup. Home Depot shares traded lower Wednesday as investors were disappointed with the financial targets, hoping for more. The stock is up 35 percent so far this year. However, analysts point out that the world's largest home improvement retailer has a history of conservative guidance, and the company's Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome pointed out during the meeting that Home Depot has beat or exceeded its forecast every year since 2009. "This is a substantial increase in investment and we want to make sure we are delivering on the same high level of execution that we have been able to deliver," Menear told CNBC. "I don't know that it would be prudent for us to push to far beyond that, for our conservative nature." Correction: Home Depot plans to invest $11.1 billion over the next three years. An earlier version misstated the figure. Fears that the housing market could be weakened by possible mortgage interest provisions in an upcoming tax bill are "overblown," according to Home Depot's CEO. "When it comes to deductibility as it relates to mortgage, we believe that's not as big a deal as people are making it out to be," Craig Menear, the home improvement retailer's chairman and CEO, told CNBC in a phone interview. "Only about 20 percent of Americans deduct mortgage interest, and the numbers show less than 5 percent of folks have a mortgage greater than $500,000," he said. Although the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are still hashing out the details , the final tax reform bill will likely include changes to mortgage interest deductions . A strong housing market has helped fuel Home Depot (NYSE: HD) 's record run. As recently as Monday, the retailer's shares hit a fresh all-time high as sales and profit have been strong. The home improvement retailer has made good choices with its business but investors still watch the housing market closely. Home Depot noted it will benefit from a lower corporate tax rate. For its most recent fiscal year, it paid an effective tax rate of 36.3 percent. "With tax reform, Home Depot would have an immediate and significant benefit for our tax rate. We are in favor of tax reform, if it puts more money in the pocket of the average American and drives GDP growth at a higher rate than previously, we are all in," Menear said. In a note to investors, Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Baker said if the corporate rate drops to 20 percent, as currently being considered, Home Depot's "earnings power goes up by at least 20 percent." At an investor meeting Wednesday, the company outlined its three-year financial plan, earnings and sales forecasts. Home Depot expects sales to grow between 4.5 and 6 percent to between $115 billion and $120 billion, with a resulting operating margin between 14.4 and 15 percent. It also announced a new $15 billion stock buyback plan . Both earnings and sales expectations came up short of analysts' consensus. The retailer plans to invest $11.1 billion over the next three years to improve its stores, pay workers more, build a new website for professionals and enhance its supply chain, delivery and product innovation. While Home Depot has been "incredibly fortunate and blessed with great performance" over the last number of years, it has to do more to catch up with consumer expectations, Menear said. While 45 percent of Home Depot's online orders are picked up in its more than 2,280 stores, Menear said, the retailer still isn't where it wants to be for shoppers. "We are accelerating the pace of investment to truly create the 'one Home Depot experience' because our customers are blending the physical and digital world together, and that's candidly, not how we were built. We have to be that for them," he said. Menear added, some of the initiatives include shortening the typical two-day delivery window to next-day and same-day, and adding self-serve lockers in store for online order pickup. Home Depot shares traded lower Wednesday as investors were disappointed with the financial targets, hoping for more. The stock is up 35 percent so far this year. However, analysts point out that the world's largest home improvement retailer has a history of conservative guidance, and the company's Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome pointed out during the meeting that Home Depot has beat or exceeded its forecast every year since 2009. "This is a substantial increase in investment and we want to make sure we are delivering on the same high level of execution that we have been able to deliver," Menear told CNBC. "I don't know that it would be prudent for us to push to far beyond that, for our conservative nature." Correction: Home Depot plans to invest $11.1 billion over the next three years. An earlier version misstated the figure.



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Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) and T-Mobile Us Inc ( TMUS) are the latest companies to announce they will be committing billions of dollars buying back shares of company stock.

With Republicans seemingly on the brink of passing major tax reform plan that could lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, American companies could soon be ramping up capital return programs like never before.

[See: 7 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2018.]

On Wednesday, T-Mobile announced a $1.5 billion stock buyback program through 2018. Deutsche Telekom, which holds a 64 percent ownership stake in T-Mobile, also said it was considering buying additional shares of T-Mobile stock. T-Mobile may have a bit more cash on hand than anticipated these days after buyout talks with Sprint Corp. ( S) recently stalled.

In addition, Home Depot announced a massive $15 billion buyback program that will start in February. The company also said it expects its 2017 full-year buyback to total $8 billion.

The announcements from T-Mobile and Home Depot come just a day after Bank of America Corp. ( BAC) announced $5 billion in buybacks on top of the $12 billion buyback plan it announced earlier this year.

Republicans have argued that the huge corporate tax cuts and proposed repatriation holiday would free up massive amounts of cash that U.S. companies can invest in job creation for the middle class. Opponents of the tax reform bill argue that companies will instead choose to return that cash to wealthy shareholders in dividends and share repurchase programs. Buybacks help support share prices by creating artificial market demand for a stock.

Barry James, manager of the James Balanced Golden Rainbow Fund, says it makes more financial sense for companies to buy back stock than to acquire other companies or hire more employees.

[See: 7 Stocks Primed for an Amazon Buyout.]

"Over the long run, we are fans of companies that reward shareholders, and now is not the right time to find an acquisition cheaply," James says.

Story continues

American companies certainly have plenty of cash on hand for buybacks with or without a tax cut. Standard & Poor's 500 index components currently have more than $1.5 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

Investors looking to target buyback leaders can invest in buyback-themed exchange-traded funds, such as the PowerShare Buyback Achievers Fund ( PKW). The fund's three largest holdings are McDonalds Corp. ( MCD), Boeing Co. ( BA) and United Technologies Corp. ( UTX). It has an expense ratio of 0.5 percent, or $50 per $10,000 invested annually.

Wayne Duggan is a freelance investment strategy reporter with a focus on energy and emerging market stocks. He has a degree in brain and cognitive sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and specializes in the psychological challenges of investing. He is a senior financial market reporter for Benzinga and has contributed financial market analysis to Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha and InvestorPlace. He is also the author of the book "Beating Wall Street With Common Sense," which focuses on the practical strategies he has used to outperform the stock market. You can follow him on Twitter @DugganSense, check out his latest content at tradingcommonsense.com or email him at wpd@tradingcommonsense.com.
SINGAPORE, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Indonesia motorbike-hailing startup Go-Jek plans to set up operations in the Philippines in early 2018, with other Southeast Asian countries to follow later that year, the company's chief technology officer said on Thursday.

Go-Jek, backed by private equity firms KKR & Co LP and Warburg Pincus LLC, competes with Uber Technologies and Singapore-based Grab to lure customers in the Southeast Asian market, home to 600 million people.

Ajey Gore said in an interview that "almost all Southeast Asian countries are on the radar over the next three, six to 12 months. The Philippines will be the first one just to figure out how things work."

He declined to identify which other countries it would launch in next. Apart from Indonesia and the Philippines, Southeast Asia comprises Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, East Timor and Myanmar.

Gore declined to comment on reports about funding and whether the company had any plans for an IPO. The company is also backed by venture capitalist Sequoia Capital and recently raised funds from Chinese giants JD.com and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Gore said that his team would test some of Go-Jek's core services such as transportation and then payments, "just to pilot it, learn from mistakes." It would be the company's first such operation overseas, he said.

Key concerns were to test whether the company's data and systems applied elsewhere: in Indonesia, for example, motorcycles were more expensive than some cars because they could weave through traffic, making journeys faster, he said.

He said the company was also planning to roll out new services soon, including installing charging stations in retail outlets that users can access through their app. The company also plans to launch a laundry pick-up and delivery service. (Reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Stephen Coates)
"The issue is only being kept alive by the politicians and religious leaders to cook their bread," a local said.

Muslims put up black flags at a mosque as they observe the Babri Masjid demolition anniversary as Black Day, in Ayodhya on Wednesday (Photo: PTI)

By Rajat Rai: Amid the ongoing debates on news channels and people across the country eager to know the mood and environment in Ayodhya on the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the disputed site, the temple city woke to its routine life and the residents showed hardly any interest on the presumed "important day".

"It has become a routine day for us as it does not affect our day-to-day work. I am going to work and my children are going to school," said Ram Kumar Maurya, a native of Ayodhya.

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"The issue is only being kept alive by the politicians and religious leaders to cook their bread. We do not have anything to do with it nor it will benefit us and our generations," said Arshad Khan, another local.

Mohammad Alam, 18, who runs a shop of pictures of Lord Ram and other religious items in the market near the Hauman Garhi feels that it is the feeling and devotion of the people that helps them earn bread and butter.

"I took over this shop from my father as he old now. Our earning depends on the three fairs and if the Ram temple is constructed, our business is definitely going to increase," said Alam.

'SHAURYA DIVAS'

Meanwhile, 'Shaurya Divas' was celebrated as usual on the premises of the Kaar Sevak Puram amid presence of over 2,000 people and saints.

Besides the offering and routine prayers, the place roared with chants of "Kasam Ram ki khaenge, hum mandir waheen banayenge". "If Modi and Yogi show determination, the temple could be constructed easily. They can get the temple constructed without any hindrance. It will be going to cause a big loss to the BJP if the temple is not constructed now," said Nritya Gopal Das, president of the Ram Janmay Bhoomi Nyas.

Suresh Das of the Digambar Akhara also expressed similar views.

"If the SC doesn't take a positive stand (for the construction of the temple) then a law should be passed in the parliament and the temple should be constructed at the earliest," said Das.

"My father Hashim Ansari died waiting for a solution. We are still open for an out-of-court settlement and are waiting eagerly for Supreme Court to give an amicable verdict," said plaintiff of the suit Iqbal Ansari.

Meanwhile, the city was guarded be a huge battery of force on Wednesday. As per the record, besides police of Ayodhya and neighbouring districts, six battalions of PAC and two battalions of RAF were deployed.

"This is the fourth time I came here on duty but I have noticed nothing unusual," an aged cop of the PAC said, preferring anonymity.

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WATCH | The truth behind Babri demolition

--- ENDS ---
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Monsanto asked a judge Tuesday to prevent Arkansas from enforcing a proposal going before lawmakers next week that would ban the use of a weed killer that farmers in several states have said drifts onto their crops and causes widespread damage.

The agribusiness giant asked a Pulaski County judge to issue a preliminary injunction preventing the state from banning dicamba's use while the company challenges a prohibition approved by the Arkansas Plant Board last month. The board's proposal, which would ban dicamba's use from April 16 through Oct. 31, is scheduled to go before a legislative committee next week. The company also wants the judge to block enforcement of a previous rule restricting its dicamba weed killer's use.

"Monsanto is presently losing sales every day the ban on in-crop use of dicamba herbicides remains in effect," the Missouri-based company said in its filing. "The losses cannot be recovered in an action against the state."

A spokeswoman for the state Agriculture Department declined to comment on Monsanto's request.

Dicamba has been around for decades, but problems arose over the past couple of years as farmers began to use it on soybean and cotton fields where they planted new seeds engineered to be resistant to the herbicide. Because it can easily evaporate after being applied, the chemical sometimes settles on neighboring fields. The state earlier this year approved a temporary ban on the herbicide's sale and use, and has received nearly 1,000 complaints about dicamba this year.

The company has said the ban will deprive farmers of a needed tool and that an injunction is needed to avoid confusion while the judge considers its claims that the regulatory panel exceeded its authority.

"Growers need clarity," Scott Partridge, vice president of global strategy for Monsanto, said. "They need to understand what tools they have."

Farmers have also complained about dicamba causing damage to their crops in other states, including Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee. The Environmental Protection Agency in October announced a deal with Monsanto and two other makers of dicamba herbicides, BASF and DuPont, for new voluntary restrictions on the weed killer's use.

___

Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ademillo
Hackers may have gotten away with $60 million worth of bitcoin (Exchange: BTC=) after a cyber attack hit the cryptocurrency mining platform NiceHash. Users highlighted the cyber breach on Reddit and Twitter Wednesday, with some saying they could lose hundreds of dollars. NiceHash lets people offer computing capacity for bitcoin miners to mine digital currencies. Cryptocurrency miners work out complex mathematical equations to add cryptocurrency transactions to decentralized public ledgers called blockchains. The mining marketplace initially said its service was undergoing "maintenance"on Twitter, later adding it was "working hard" to resolve issues affecting the site. Tweet Tweet NiceHash said in a statement it was "investigating the nature of the incident," and that it would close down its site for a day. "We are working to verify the precise number of BTC (bitcoin) taken," the company said. "Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days.In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency." While NiceHash was unable to specify how much bitcoin had been stolen, users have pointed to a bitcoin wallet which holds 4,736.42 bitcoins  equivalent to $68 million. Andrej P. Skraba, head of marketing at the firm, confirmed to news agency Reuters that around 4,700 bitcoins  worth roughly $68 million at current prices  were lost in the hack. CNBC reached out to NiceHash Chief Executive Marko Kobal for comment but he was not available at the time of publication. This wouldn't be the first time people have lost millions in cryptocurrency. In November, millions of dollars worth of Ethereum were "accidentally" frozen on the cryptocurrency wallet provider Parity after a user "suicided" the wallet, deleting its code and freezing all ether tokens contained within.

WATCH: Six ways to protect your bitcoin and ethereum investments from hackers



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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites (AFP Photo/MENAHEM KAHANA) (AFP)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday as "historic" and a "courageous and just decision".

Netanyahu also pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

"This is a historic day," Netanyahu said in a video message released immediately after Trump's speech.

"Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. It's been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years ... Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia."

"We're profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to prepare for the opening of the US embassy here."

Netanyahu also called on "all countries that seek peace to join the United States in recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move their embassies here".
Creative Artists Agency took the unusual step of issuing a public apology to anyone the agency let down following a New York Times story about Harvey Weinsteins complicity machine, which details how the powerful mogul commanded enablers, silencers and spies to keep his alleged sexual misconduct a secret.

The story describes how agents and managers across Hollywood sent actresses to meet Weinstein alone in hotels and advised them to keep mum when things went wrong. It singles out one of the most powerful agencies, CAA, where at least eight talent agents were told that Weinstein had harassed or menaced female clients  but the agents continued to arrange these private meetings.

We want to make clear to clients and colleagues that even one of our clients being harassed over the companys 42 years is one too many, CAA said in a statement. We are here to serve, fight for, and protect our clients. We apologize to any person the agency let down for not meeting the high expectations we place on ourselves, as individuals and as a company.

That appears to be a reference to an account from Canadian actress Mia Kirshner, who said CAA set up a meeting with Weinstein in New York, ostensibly to discuss a film about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Instead, he wanted to exchange sex for career opportunity, the newspaper reported.

Kirshner said she discussed the Weinstein encounter in 1994 with her primary agent, Lisa Grode, who sounded shocked, and, subsequently, with her talent manager, John Carrabino, and his boss, Sandy Gallin.

I was told to forget about it; it was pointless to do anything about this, Kirshner told the New York Times, adding, I was very disappointed by them.

Grode and Carrabino declined comment; Gallin is deceased.

Asked by the Times if he knew about Weinsteins alleged harassment, CAA Partner Bryan Lourd declined comment, citing client confidentiality. Weinstein stormed into Lourds office to complain about an article that Ronan Farrow, an agency client, was writing for The New Yorker article. Lourd reportedly tried to arrange a meeting, which apparently didnt happen.

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CAA said it is committed to championing the work of female actors, writers, directors an producers, achieving pay equity and adding more women into positions of leadership and operational supervision at the agency. Indeed, the agency recently elevated two women  Motion Picture Department Co-Head Risa Gertner and Global Chief Human Resources Officer Sherrie Sage Schwartz  to its management committee.

The talent agency established an initiative called Evolve, led by a group of 17 women, to evaluate and improve CAAs existing policies and practices to ensure even greater vigilance, awareness, and information-sharing in preventing harassment.

We are determined to succeed for our clients and employees in this regard, CAA said in a statement. We will continue to use the influence and resources we have, inside and outside the company, working alongside equally motivated women and men, to help create permanent change.

Related stories

Al Franken To Make Thursday Announcement, As Stampede Of Dem Senators Demand His Exit

New York Times Goes After Weinstein Company Again, For Unpaid Ad Bills

"Predator" Harvey Weinstein Faces New Class Action; Sexual Harassment Suit From Ex-Assistant Looms
Todd McKinnon Okta

Business Insider

Okta is offering startups a free year of its password management services as part of a new promotion.

Okta for Startups includes access to the company's primary Identity Cloud service, which allows users to store login credentials for multiple services behind a single user identification and password.

The promotion is also offering startups the ability to build Okta's login feature into their applications.



In a bid to hook new customers on its password and authentication services, Okta is offering a free trial for startup companies.

Starting Wednesday, Okta will offer its services for free for up to a year to companies with 25 or fewer employees. The promotion, dubbed Okta for Startups, includes access to Identity Cloud, the company's primary product, which allows users to store login credentials for multiple websites and applications behind a single user name and password.

Okta for Startups also includes the option for companies to build Okta's login and authentication service into their customer-facing applications, as long as those apps have no more than 25,000 monthly active users.

Okta is trying to make it easier for startup companies to focus on their core products, Frederic Kerrest, its chief operating officer, said in a statement.

"Founding a company is hard," Kerrest said. "And its even harder when you have to build a business model for something that hasnt been done before, or that youre trying to do differently  all while getting your core systems up and running."

Okta, which went public in April and is now worth $2.7 billion, is scheduled to release its latest quarterly report on Wednesday after the market closes. While the company has been operating at a loss, its business has been rapidly growing; in its previous quarter, its subscription revenues were up 67.7% from the same period a year earlier.

NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL explains what to do if you're attacked by a dog

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SEE ALSO: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon is officially the 14th fittest man in the world  for his age
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.
Jerusalem (AFP) - US President Donald Trump's decision Wednesday declaring Jerusalem as Israel's capital outraged Palestinian leaders who said it disqualified the United States as a peace broker, but was hailed by Israel as historic.

The city, however, remained calm on a cold and rainy evening after Trump's speech with no sign of protests, while Israeli authorities projected an American flag onto the walls in one area of Jerusalem's ancient Old City in celebration.

Palestinian demonstrations were set for the occupied West Bank on Thursday, and several thousand marched in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Wednesday night, burning US and Israeli flags while chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank were left fuming after Trump's speech and responded with outrage, declaring that the United States could no longer serve as Middle East peace broker.

President Mahmud Abbas called it "deplorable".

"These deplorable and unacceptable measures deliberately undermine all peace efforts," Abbas said in a speech after Trump's announcement.

He said it amounted to "an announcement of US withdrawal from playing the role it has been playing in the past decade in sponsoring the peace process."

Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation who long served as the Palestinians' top negotiator, said Trump had "destroyed the two-state solution".

"As a chief Palestinian negotiator, how can I sit with these people if they dictate on me the future of Jerusalem as Israel's capital?" he said.

"I think tonight he is strengthening the forces of extremists in this region as no one has done before," Erekat said, referring to Trump.

Trump's move upturns decades of precedent and runs counter to international consensus, with no other country currently taking the same stance.

Jerusalems status is among the most difficult issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the US traditional position has been that it must be negotiated between the two sides.

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While Israel has long considered Jerusalem its capital, with the prime minister's office and parliament building located there, countries have avoided recognising it as such to prevent damaging hopes for a two-state solution.

The Palestinians see the eastern sector of the city as the capital of their future state.

- 'Focus of our hopes' -

A decision like Trump's has been long sought by Israeli leaders, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed it as "historic" and "courageous and just".

"This is a historic day," Netanyahu said in a video message released immediately after Trump's speech.

"Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. It's been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years," he added, referring to Jewish history in the region and the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

"Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia."

"We're profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to prepare for the opening of the US embassy here."

Netanyahu also called on "all countries that seek peace to join the United States in recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move their embassies here".

Netanyahu pledged no change to the status quo at Jerusalem's highly sensitive holy sites in the city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims -- frequently the source of tension.

But while Netanyahu may have hoped to calm tensions with the pledge, the fallout from such a controversial decision concerning a city so intensely disputed remained unpredictable.

While Palestinians have been divided between armed Islamist movement Hamas and Abbas's Fatah in recent years, Jerusalem remains one of the issues that unites them.

Hamas had issued warnings in recent days as news of Trump's intentions spread, and it reacted to his speech on Wednesday with another.

"This decision will open the gates of hell on US interests in the region," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told journalists after Trump's announcement.

He called on Arab and Islamic states to "cut off economic and political ties with the US embassy and expel American ambassadors to cripple" this decision.

Separately, Palestinian officials said they switched off the lights to the giant Christmas tree in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, believed to be the city where Jesus was born, in protest.

But in another illustration of the starkly different viewpoints, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said of Trump's declaration that "there is no more fitting or beautiful gift as we approach 70 years of the state of Israels independence."
This Thursday marks the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which led the United States to enter the Second World War. A series of invasions by the Japanese into China and rising tension with the U.S. made conflict between the two countries "inevitable" but American military forces did not expect that Pearl Harbor, 4,000 miles from Japan and 2,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, would be targeted.

Pearl Harbor: Date and time of attack

The Japanese attacked the U.S. Naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. The assault took American forces by surprise early in the morning. The first wave of Japanese fighters fired on the island at 7:55 a.m. Hawaiian time and five additional attacks followed throughout the day, until 9 p.m.

Defenders of the military base were caught unprepared as they expected any attack, if one occurred, would come from the sea rather than the air.

How many people died during the Pearl Harbor attack?

More than 2,400 Americans sailors, soldiers, and civilians died during the attack and another 1,000 were wounded.

Few of the veterans who experienced the attack are still alive. On this anniversary, two men will be awarded medals posthumously for their bravery in saving the lives of fellow sailors in 1941. The late Lt.j.g Aloysius Schmitt, the Navy chaplain who sacrificed his life to save his shipmates, will receive the Silver Star. The remains of Schmitt, chaplain on the USS Oklahoma, were identified last year using DNA evidence. Chief Boatswains Mate Joseph George of the USS Vestal, who died in 1996, will receive the Bronze Star for saving the lives of several sailors aboard the USS Arizona.

Ira "Ike" Schab, 97, is the lone survivor of Navy Band Unit 13. He was a 21-year-old tuba player when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and he returns there whenever possible.

I feel I have a duty to go back. At least to, you know, talk to the guys. I go back to that memorial and Ill sit there and Im having conversations with them," he told The Oregonian.

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How many ships were sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack?

Nearly 20 American naval vessels were destroyed in the attack, including eight massive battleships. More than 300 airplanes were also lost.

Japanese forces did not target the most important vessels in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, aircraft carriers which were all away from the base on December 7, or vital facilities like oil storage depots, repair shops, and shipyards. This made recovery easier for the U.S. Navy after the attack.

Earlier this week, a crew of researchers explored the wreckage of the USS Ward, the first U.S. ship that fired on the Japanese vessels during the Pearl Harbor attack. The ship has remained unseen at the bottom of the Ormoc Bay in the Philippines since it was destroyed by a kamikaze plane in 1944.

The U.S. response to the Pearl Harbor attack

President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation at a joint session of Congress the next day calling December 7 "a date which will live in infamy" and called on legislators to approve a declaration of war against Japan.

In the wake of the attack, prejudice-fueled rumors spread about Japanese-Americans sabotaging the war effort. Many American media outlets, including Fortune, painted a racist picture of the enemy as well as Japanese immigrants and their American-born children living in the U.S.. Time magazine published "How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs" two weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, outlining the differences between stereotypes of Chinese and Japanese people.

The New York Times also contributed to anti-Japanese rhetoric, explaining how the Japanese "have kept their savage tradition unbroken through ages eternal,' from the fabulous age of their savage gods to the present day, as did Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times.

Hollywood also participated in the response with films--such as those by director Frank Capra, who is known for It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington--that included racist anti-Japanese propaganda despite being presented as documentaries.

Two months after the attack, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which initiated an evacuation of all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast of the U.S. This resulted in the creation of internment camps across the country where approximately 120,000 people, many American citizens, were held for years during World War II in a serious violation of their civil liberties.
(WASHINGTON)  President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital on Wednesday despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests.

Trump will instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, U.S. officials said Tuesday. It remains unclear, however, when he might take that physical step, which is required by U.S. law but has been waived on national security grounds for more than two decades.

The officials said numerous logistical and security details, as well as site determination and construction, will need to be finalized first. Because of those issues, the embassy is not likely to move for at least 3 or 4 years, presuming there is no future change in U.S. policy.

To that end, the officials said Trump will sign a waiver delaying the embassy move, which is required by U.S. law every six months. He will continue to sign the waiver until preparations for the embassy move are complete.

The officials said recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital will be an acknowledgement of historical and current reality rather than a political statement and said the citys physical and political borders will not be compromised. They noted that almost all of Israels government agencies and parliament are in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, where the U.S. and other countries maintain embassies.

The U.S. officials spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity Tuesday because they were not authorized to publicly preview Trumps Wednesday announcement. Their comments mirrored those of officials who spoke on the issue last week.

The declaration of Jerusalem as Israels capital is a rhetorical volley that could have its own dangerous consequences. The United States has never endorsed the Jewish states claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has insisted its status be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

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The mere consideration of Trump changing the status quo sparked a renewed U.S. security warning on Tuesday. Americas consulate in Jerusalem ordered U.S. personnel and their families to avoid visiting Jerusalems Old City or the West Bank, and urged American citizens in general to avoid places with increased police or military presence.

Trump, as a presidential candidate, repeatedly promised to move the U.S. embassy. However, U.S. leaders have routinely and unceremoniously delayed such a move since President Bill Clinton signed a law in 1995 stipulating that the United States must relocate its diplomatic presence to Jerusalem unless the commander in chief issues a waiver on national security grounds.

Key national security advisers  including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis  have urged caution, according to the officials, who said Trump has been receptive to some of their concerns.

The concerns are real: Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital could be viewed as America discarding its longstanding neutrality and siding with Israel at a time that the presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been trying to midwife a new peace process into existence. Trump, too, has spoken of his desire for a deal of the century that would end Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

U.S. officials, along with an outside adviser to the administration, said they expected a broad statement from Trump about Jerusalems status as the capital of Israel. The president isnt planning to use the phrase undivided capital, according to the officials. Such terminology is favored by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and would imply Israels sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians seek for their own future capital.

Jerusalem includes the holiest ground in Judaism. But its also home to Islams third-holiest shrine and major Christian sites, and forms the combustible center of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Any perceived harm to Muslim claims to the city has triggered volatile protests in the past, both in the Holy Land and across the Muslim world.

Within the Trump administration, officials on Tuesday fielded a flood of warnings from allied governments.

The Jerusalem declaration notwithstanding, one official said Trump would insist that issues of sovereignty and borders must be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians. The official said Trump would call for Jordan to maintain its role as the legal guardian of Jerusalems Muslim holy places, and reflect Israel and Palestinian wishes for a two-state peace solution.

Still, any U.S. declaration on Jerusalems status ahead of a peace deal would harm peace negotiation process and escalate tension in the region, Saudi Arabias King Salman told Trump Tuesday, according to a Saudi readout of their telephone conversation. Declaring Jerusalem as Israels capital, the king said, would constitute a flagrant provocation to all Muslims, all over the world.

In his calls to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordans King Abdullah II, Trump delivered what appeared to be identical messages of intent. Both leaders warned Trump that moving the embassy would threaten Mideast peace efforts and security and stability in the Middle East and the world, according to statements from their offices. The statements didnt speak to Trumps plans for recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, the head of the Arab League, urged the U.S. to reconsider any recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, warning of repercussions. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Parliament such recognition was a red line and that Turkey could respond by cutting diplomatic ties with Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he reminded Trump in a phone call Monday that Jerusalem should be determined through negotiations on setting up an independent Palestine alongside Israel. Meeting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said actions undermining peace efforts must be absolutely avoided.

Despite Trumps comments to world leaders, U.S. officials said an embassy announcement wasnt seen as imminent. Instead, they said Trump on Wednesday would likely sign a waiver pushing off any announcement of moving the embassy to Jerusalem for another six months.

Trump also will give wide latitude to his ambassador in Israel, David Friedman, to make a determination on when a Jerusalem embassy would be appropriate, according to the officials. Friedman has spoken in favor of the move.

Majdi Khaldi, Abbas diplomatic adviser, said Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israelscapital could end Washingtons role as mediator.

This would mean they decided, on their own, to distance themselves from efforts to make peace, Khaldi told The Associated Press in perhaps the most sharply worded reaction by a Palestinian official. He said such recognition would lead the Palestinians to eliminate contacts with the United States.

Changing Jerusalems status would be a stab in the back, Husam Zomlot, the Palestinians chief delegate to Washington, told the AP.

Palestinian political factions led by Abbas Fatah movement called for daily protest marches this week, starting Wednesday. East Jerusalem, now home to more than 300,000 Palestinians, was captured by Israel in 1967 and then annexed in a move most of the international community has not recognized.
By Ross Kerber BOSTON (Reuters) - A UN supported group pushing for "responsible" investment said it has adopted tougher rules aimed at making fund managers deliver on pledges to pay attention to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. The requirements described in recent interviews by leaders of the UK-based Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) include that signatories adopt policies that describe their approach to responsible investing and that top executives oversee the work. Laggards could be delisted starting in 2020. The new rules pose a test for U.S. asset managers led by BlackRock Inc, Vanguard Group and State Street Corp. These firms lately have emphasized ESG factors but some responsible investment activists want them to push for further changes at companies whose shares they hold. Once seen as irrelevant by many financial executives, ESG issues have taken on a new importance as a way for asset managers to distinguish themselves to clients. Currently about 200 of the PRI's membership of 1,873 would not meet the new standards, said Fiona Reynolds, the group's managing director, in a recent telephone interview. She declined to name specific under-performers but said the general view among members is that "Those that have no commitment to doing anything should not be able to use the PRI brand." By some measures 2017 was a watershed year for ESG efforts. BlackRock and Vanguard each cast rare votes in support of a measure on climate issues at Exxon Mobil Corp this year, for instance, while State Street Corp drew attention for its boardroom diversity efforts. Yet all three firms have faced calls to take further steps like backing critical shareholder resolutions more often. A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment. A Vanguard spokeswoman said the firm is "actively engaged" with the PRI, and sent a statement from Vanguard Chairman Bill McNabb that "Our PRI membership is a natural extension of the Vanguard mission." State Street executives said the firm was given the PRI's highest grade, an "A+," in a review of its strategy and governance, the broadest area the PRI evaluated. All three firms employ ESG specialists and have been publishing more ESG reports and policies, which should help satisfy the new requirements. Asked if that means those managers are less likely to be delisted than smaller ones with fewer resources to devote, Reynolds said big firms are "not always" the ones with the strongest commitment to ESG practices. "Size is no guarantee of success," she said. (Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Andrew Hay)
The students of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) were baffled when they were asked to answer the "nature of GST in Kautilya Arthshastra" and "Manu is the first Indian thinker of Globalisation" during an exam.

By India Today Web Desk: "Write a essay on Nature of GST in Kautilya Arthshastra". Can't figure out the relation between GST and Kautilya? There is an option then, "Manu is the first Indian thinker of Globalisation".

Baffled?

The students of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) felt the same when they were asked to answer any one of these questions for 15 marks during an examination for a course titled "Social and Political Thought in Ancient and Medieval India".

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via GIPHY

The paper comes under BHU's MA in Political Science course.

It was difficult for the students to come up with a "correct answer" as the textbooks didn't explain Kautilya's views on GST or Manu's thoughts on Globalisation, maybe because these concepts are relatively "new".

However, a student told the Indian Express that the professor, who taught them and set the question paper, had dictated answers to them and told them that they would be asked these questions in the exam.

"They are not part of our textbooks but we took down notes", a student told Indian Express .Other students of colleges affiliated to BHU, however, claimed that the questions asked were not a part of their course material.

Professor Kaushal Kishore Mishra, who set the question paper, told Indian Express that he "interpreted the two thinkers and taught their philosophies through new and current examples like GST and globalisation".

On Kautilya

Professor Mishra is of the belief that Kautilya's Arthashastra is the first Indian book which hints at GST. "Kautilya is one such thinker who propounded national economic integration - ekikaran", he said.

FYI: Chanakya, also known as Kautilya, was the chief advisor of first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta and is considered a pioneer in the field of political science and economics in India.

On Manu

Mishra went on to tell his students that Manu was first thinker to "introduce the tradition of globalisation in the world". He said German philosopher Nietzsche lauded Manu's economic, political and religious principles and later his ideas were adopted by various countries.

--- ENDS ---
Troubled US industrial conglomerate General Electric says it is making progress in its restructuring plan despite massive charges in the fourth quarter and an SEC probe into accounting practices in its insurance business (AFP Photo/LOIC VENANCE) (AFP)

New York (AFP) - Embattled industrial giant General Electric announced Thursday it will cut more than 12,000 blue and white collar jobs in its GE Power unit, part of a turnaround plan launched by the new company leadership.

The layoffs will primarily hit facilities outside the United States, as part of an effort to reduce overall structural costs by $3.5 billion in 2017 and 2018, the company said.

"This decision was painful but necessary for GE Power to respond to the disruption in the power market, which is driving significantly lower volumes in products and services," GE Power chief executive Russell Stokes said in a statement.

Labor leaders in affected countries balked at the announcement.

"GE's announcement that it wants to cut thousands of jobs in Europe serves no strategic purpose other than to maximize profits short-term for its shareholders," said Klaus Stein, director of IG Metall the metalworkers' union in Germany, where about 16 percent of GE's workforce will be eliminated.

The move comes as newly-installed chief executive John Flannery attempts to get the US industrial giant back on track as key divisions -- power and oil and gas -- struggle in the face of weak demand as they compete with the growth of renewables.

GE shares have fallen more than 40 percent in 2017, and the company has been downgraded by leading ratings agencies, including S&P and Moody's. The company's share price gained 0.9 percent to close at $17.82.

The company faces anemic demand and global overcapacity of gas turbines and other power equipment which has pressured results at GE and rivals such as Siemens, which last month announced it would cut 6,900 jobs globally due to weak demand.

GE's job cuts affects about 18 percent of the energy unit's global workforce. The company said it also plans to reduce its capital spending and research and development.

- 'Work in progress' -

About 1,100 jobs would be lost in Britain, 1,400 in Switzerland and 1,600 in Germany, where several cities including Stuttgart and Berlin would be affected. None of the job cuts announced Thursday will affect France, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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About half of the job cuts are in Europe, with the remainder around the world, said a person familiar with the matter.

GE was required under a 2015 deal to acquire the energy assets of France's Alstom to increase overall French employment by 1,000 by the end of 2018, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Flannery, a longstanding GE executive promoted over the summer to the top post, last month unveiled a turnaround plan that included cutting about 6,000 jobs in its corporate division, as well as an unspecified number of layoffs in operational divisions.

The plan also included divestitures of some businesses, a dividend cut, a reduction in the size of the board of directors and a new compensation system to better tie executive pay to performance.

Flannery expressed disappointment with the performance of the Alstom business, which GE bought in 2015 for $13.5 billion.

And although he has expressed faith in the long-term prospects of GE's businesses, he warned it will take time to boost its performance, a point also emphasized in statement's about the huge layoffs.

"Power will remain a work in progress in 2018," Stokes said. "We expect market challenges to continue, but this plan will position us for 2019 and beyond."

CFRA Research kept its rating on GE shares as "hold," questioning whether the move will be enough "to turn around Power, which has struggled with poor execution and demand shifts," analyst Jim Corridore said in a note.

"We still feel GE has great assets and great technology, but we think that the company faces a long drawn out restructuring, and think it's best to wait for signs of improvement before adding to positions," Corridore said.

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T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced a $1.5 billion stuck buyback program on Wednesday morning. "This repurchase program underscores our Board of Directors' and management team's confidence in our business and our commitment to creating value for shareholders," said T-Mobile President and CEO John Legere. "Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation give us the ability to return capital while continuing to make significant investments in our network and operations." T-Mobile is one of many companies expected to initiate stock repurchase programs ahead of the GOP tax overhaul. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) recently announced an additional $5 billion stock buyback program, following an already-planned $12 billion repurchase initiative, which garnered criticism from Sen. Chuck Schumer , who said the move was "another signal big corporations can smell the huge tax cut they have coming." T-Mobile said it will not purchase stock from its parent company, Deutsche Telekom AG, under the program but DT is considering its own repurchases of common stock. The repurchase program "may include open market purchases, private negotiated transactions or otherwise," the company said. T-Mobile said it will analyze market conditions before making potential common stock repurchases and noted that the "program may be suspended or discontinued at the company's discretion."Correction: This story was revised to correct that T-Mobile said Deutsche Telekom is considering its own repurchases of common stock. T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced a $1.5 billion stuck buyback program on Wednesday morning. "This repurchase program underscores our Board of Directors' and management team's confidence in our business and our commitment to creating value for shareholders," said T-Mobile President and CEO John Legere. "Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation give us the ability to return capital while continuing to make significant investments in our network and operations." T-Mobile is one of many companies expected to initiate stock repurchase programs ahead of the GOP tax overhaul. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) recently announced an additional $5 billion stock buyback program, following an already-planned $12 billion repurchase initiative, which garnered criticism from Sen. Chuck Schumer , who said the move was "another signal big corporations can smell the huge tax cut they have coming." T-Mobile said it will not purchase stock from its parent company, Deutsche Telekom AG, under the program but DT is considering its own repurchases of common stock. The repurchase program "may include open market purchases, private negotiated transactions or otherwise," the company said. T-Mobile said it will analyze market conditions before making potential common stock repurchases and noted that the "program may be suspended or discontinued at the company's discretion." Correction: This story was revised to correct that T-Mobile said Deutsche Telekom is considering its own repurchases of common stock.



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FILE PHOTO: A T-Mobile logo is advertised on a building sign in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

(Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) said its board approved the U.S. wireless carrier's first-ever buyback program, a month after the company and rival Sprint Corp (S.N) ended their deal talks.

Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE), which holds over 60 percent in T-Mobile, also plans to purchase additional shares, T-Mobile said on Wednesday.

The buyback of up to $1.5 billion of shares would start from Thursday and take place through Dec. 31, 2018, T-Mobile said.

"Coming off the Sprint deal with significant shareholder rotation happening, we think that we have a tremendous value here," CFO Braxton Carter said at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Wednesday.

Combined with Deutsche Telekom's planned repurchases, the program could approach the $2 billion level, Carter said.

"(Deutsche Telekom) is finalizing plans right now," Carter said.

Through the buyback, Deutsche Telekom aims to hold its stake broadly steady, within a range of 1-2 percentage points, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The issue of control was one of several deal-breakers in the T-Mobile-Sprint talks and the buyback would strengthen Deutsche Telekom's hand in any future merger talks.

Carter also said the company was focused on smaller, "tuck-in" acquisitions. "We think there's a lot of potential out there," he said. "That would be another use of cash."

T-Mobile's shares were up 1.3 percent at $61.73.

(Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru, Anjali Athavaley in New York and Douglas Busvine in Frankfurt; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
via shutterstock.com

Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and start preparations for the US to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested city, has the potential to further inflame tensions across the Middle East.

Although this is not an unexpected move  Trump expressed his intention to do so during his electoral campaign  the decision breaks with years of precedent.

Trumps decision to move the embassy means he will not follow his predecessors by renewing a waiver on the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which required the embassy to eventually be moved from Tel Aviv.

Since then, there has been a cross-party consensus in the US that any act which recognises the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel and its designation as the countrys capital would affect the fragile balance of power in the Middle East  and the ability of the US to promote its interests in the region. US diplomats have sought to tread carefully on this issue in one of the worlds most treacherous political landscapes.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the move before Trump spoke, as did leaders from the Arab world and beyond. The announcement of the embassy move is likely to cause a wave of resentment among Palestinians in the occupied territories and the city itself, especially after two decades of stalemate in the peace process and deteriorating conditions throughout the Palestinian territories. Ahead of the speech, US citizens and government employees were told to avoid Jerusalems Old City and the West Bank until further notice.

Central to the peace process

Jerusalem is not just a city of historical importance to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, but also a site key to both Israeli and Palestinian identity. Add to this the centrality of the status of Jerusalem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often described as one of the worlds most intractable disputes, and its clear why the decision to move the US embassy there has been described as tantamount to political arson.

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At the political level, most Israelis and Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be the capital of their states, present and future, and that this is non-negotiable. This is why the final status of Jerusalem was deemed to be one of the thorniest issues in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. It was envisaged to be circumnavigated, dealt with only at the stage of permanent status negotiations, once all other issues between the state of Israel and the Palestinians were resolved.

As there has not been any progress in less important, yet substantive issues since Oslo, the issue of Jerusalem has acquired a symbolic importance among Palestinians.

Jerusalem is a city dense in symbolism in the Palestinian national imagination. Particularly so as other, more material anchors of identity such as territory, governance and self-determination are continually being eroded by the harsh realities of Israeli occupation, the blockade of Gaza and deteriorating cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

The response to Trumps announcement by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and most of his government was muted. But its symbolic value among nationalist circles in Israel, and also among many ordinary Israelis, should not be underestimated.

The Israeli government has been active in strengthening Israeli claims to the entire city since its annexation in 1980. Settlement building around Jerusalem has aimed to ring-fence the city and integrate it more into Israel. Meanwhile, there were building restrictions in East Jerusalem, and a series of restrictions to Palestinian access to the Al-Aqsa mosque, built on the remnants of the last Jewish Temple. Both sets of restrictions were lifted.

Equally important in terms of symbolic politics has been Israels archaeological intervention around Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as an attempt to strengthen Israels historical connection with the city.

Wider significance

Trumps decision seems oblivious to the fragility of coexistence in the city between its Israeli and Palestinian inhabitants. It also ignores the significance of Jerusalem in Palestinian national identity and national aspirations, and the devastating impact on the future of a moribund peace process.

It has the potential of not only affecting the political ecology of a place where history is a matter of life and death, but could also cause a ripple effect much further afield. It can destabilise a Palestinian authority already deprived of legitimacy and an array of fragile Arab regimes. And it is likely to accentuate the enmity between Israel and Iran. Iran perceives such a move as a violation of Islamic sanctities and, together with Trumps revitalised alliance with Saudi Arabia, a clear sign of the US presidents anti-Iranian stance.

Last but not least, it could further stoke the flames of anti-Western Islamic movements in the Muslim world and the West alike, which have always put Jerusalem and the Palestinian issue in a central position.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Trumps decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is already affecting travel to Israel

The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, Israel, is warning travelers to avoid parts of the city ahead of anticipated demonstrations.

The message from the consulate on Tuesday bars government employees and their family members from Jerusalems Old City, the West Bank, Bethlehem, and Jericho.

It also discourages U.S. citizens from gathering near large groups of people or the military. Germany and France issued similar warnings on Wednesday.

The warnings follow on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trumps announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trumps decision has ignited controversy, drawing ire from European and Middle Eastern leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jordans King Abdullah.

Muslims leaders and U.S. allies have criticised President Trumps decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision was welcomed by the Israeli government. pic.twitter.com/3XiLEpOPZE  Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 6, 2017

Related article: Airlines are rerouting flights to avoid North Korean missiles

The city is sacred to Jewish people, Muslims, and Christians. The international community at large has not recognized Israels sole sovereignty over Jerusalem, choosing instead to keep embassies in Tel Aviv.

The status of Jerusalem is probably the most combustible issue in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, NPRs Larry Kaplow and Camila Domonoske reported. The city is sacred in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Disputes there have prompted violence and protests not just in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories but around the Middle East.

The consulates message comes as a travel warning from the U.S. state department remains in effect for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The warning, issued April 11, 2017, warns U.S. citizens from visiting the Gaza strip and advises a high degree of situational awareness and exercise caution at all times.
Trump Says GOP Tax Plan Is Becoming 'More Popular.' Is He Right?

Perception is everything.

As President Donald Trump sees it, the GOP tax plan is growing in popularity. But public opinion polls dont necessarily back that up.

Trump told reporters Tuesday that he views the tax plan as a tremendous bill for jobs and for the middle class. He continued, And I think people see that and theyre seeing it more and more, and the more they learn about, the more popular it becomes. And I think the end result will be even better.

But citing several polls, CNBC notes that the plan remains deeply unpopular as the House and Senate move closer to passing a joint bill.

Read: The Republican Tax Bill Is Unpopular With Voters. But Heres Who Loves It

A Gallup poll completed on Friday and Saturday as the Senate rushed to pass its version of the bill found that 29% of American adults approved of the proposed plan. Fifty-six percent, meanwhile, disapproved.

Quinnipiac University polled a sample of Americans from November 29 to December 4 and similarly found a 29% approval rating, with 53% disapproving. A full 61% of respondents felt that the bill favors the rich at the expense of the middle class.

Both polls broke along party lines, with the bill gaining higher approval from Republicans and higher disapproval from Democrats. Independents overwhelmingly disapproved of the proposed legislation in both polls.

Read: One President Dominated Twitters Top Tweets of 2017, and It Wasnt Donald Trump

CNBC also cited a Reuters/Ipsos poll from late November that similarly saw a 29% approval rating versus a 49% disapproval rating. CNBC did concede, however, that one recent survey has shown a slight improvement in the plans approval rating.

The House and Senate are going to conference to unify their bills and hope to have a plan approved by Christmas.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and that the American Embassy will be moved there, risking a huge backlash from across the Muslim world."That city is Israel's capital," Trump said at the White House. "It is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."Trump said the U.S. will build an American embassy in Jerusalem, where it currently maintains a consulate. The current U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv, where most other countries' embassies are maintained."This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality," Trump said. "It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done."Trump acknowledged that his decision was driven by a political campaign pledge, saying that "while previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering."The president went on to say that his decision "is not intended in any way" to hamper a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He said the United States would "support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides."While welcomed by Israel, Trump's decision has already angered leaders across the Arab world, who warned the president that his decision would effectively doom any future peace negotiations and could further destabilize the entire Middle East."Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach for it," Trump said. "So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance." He added: "Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts."Until the 1967 war, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. The western part housed the seat of Israel's government. During the war, Israel captured the eastern part, which house sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Palestinians consider the eastern sector the rightful capital of any future Palestinian state.Trump said he would immediately begin the process of designing and building a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Upon completion, he said, it "will be a magnificent tribute to peace." President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and that the American Embassy will be moved there, risking a huge backlash from across the Muslim world. "That city is Israel's capital," Trump said at the White House. " It is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel." Trump said the U.S. will build an American embassy in Jerusalem, where it currently maintains a consulate. The current U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv, where most other countries' embassies are maintained. "This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality," Trump said. "It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done." Trump acknowledged that his decision was driven by a political campaign pledge, saying that "while previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering." The president went on to say that his decision "is not intended in any way" to hamper a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He said the United States would "support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides." While welcomed by Israel, Trump's decision has already angered leaders across the Arab world, who warned the president that his decision would effectively doom any future peace negotiations and could further destabilize the entire Middle East. "Peace is never beyond the grasp of those willing to reach for it," Trump said. "So today, we call for calm, for moderation, and for the voices of tolerance." He added: "Our children should inherit our love, not our conflicts." Until the 1967 war, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. The western part housed the seat of Israel's government. During the war, Israel captured the eastern part, which house sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Palestinians consider the eastern sector the rightful capital of any future Palestinian state. Trump said he would immediately begin the process of designing and building a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Upon completion, he said, it "will be a magnificent tribute to peace."



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Banwarilal Purohit met with officials and citizens in Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli. He was accused of "overreach" when he met with officials in Coimbatore in November.

By Akshaya Nath: Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, whose meeting with officials in Coimnbatore in November was described by Opposition parties as overreach, has held another such meeting.

This time, Purohit met officials from various departments in Tirunelveli. Among them were top police officials and the collector.

Purohit also met citizens and discussed the Swachh Bharat mission. A circular issued by the Raj Bhawan in Chennai had said anyone could come and meet him.

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After the Coimbatore meeting, DMK Working President MK Stalin demanded that Purohit stick to his described duties, and asked for a floor test in the Assembly.

In fact, political infighting within the ruling AIADMK has led to multiple demands by political parties for a floor test.

Banwarilal Purohit succeeded C Vidyasagar Rao as Tamil Nadu's governor in October.

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The White Houses announcement today that the United States will be recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital and potentially moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is commanding headlines and provoking consternation from some Middle Eastern leaders (for a balanced articulation of the many nuances and ramifications of this issue, see this insightful assessment by Dennis Ross and David Makovsky). As newsworthy as the Jerusalem announcement may be, will it be strategically significant, either in the immediate or long term?

I have just returned from a brief trip to Israel as part of a small bipartisan delegation of former American policymakers, ably organized and sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) American Israel Education Foundation. We met with a broad array of current and former Israeli officials and scholars. As others who have visited Israel know, discussions with Israeli policymakers, military and intelligence leaders, journalists, and scholars are often illuminating not just about dynamics within the country but also about the broader region. Israelis are among the most perceptive and insightful observers of trends in the Middle East. Of course, for them knowing what is going on in their neighborhood is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity but of national security and even survival.

My principle takeaway from our many interlocutors is that Israel currently sits athwart two countervailing strategic trends. Which of these trends becomes more dominant will do much to shape Israels future, and in turn will be a leading indicator of the ramifications of President Donald Trumps Jerusalem decision. On one hand, Israel stands at its strongest position ever in the broader region. Its rapprochement with Sunni Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates is being translated into deep military, intelligence, and diplomatic cooperation, primarily directed against their shared enemies of Iran and militant jihadi groups such as the Islamic State. There are even whispered speculations that de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman might take a page from former Egyptian President Anwar Sadats historic playbook and make his most audacious gambit yet by visiting Israel. In short, Israel appears to be in the midst of a diplomatic revolution in which its previous mortal enemies now stand as friends. The proverbial ancient, intractable religious and cultural hatreds that have been so tiresomely invoked to explain (and sometimes rationalize) Arab hostility to Israel turn out to be rather tractable and even transient in the face of geopolitical interests and security concerns.

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Meanwhile, Israels global position is quietly but measurably improving as well. A combination of diplomatic outreach, converging economic values, and the growing ideological exhaustion of the developing worlds endemic hostility to Israel is leading to substantially improved relations with nations such as Mexico, India, South Africa, and numerous other African and Latin American countries. Against this backdrop, Israels perennial diplomatic isolation within the United Nations might be giving way to a few more friends. If such regional and global trends continue, the potential negative fallout of the Jerusalem announcement will be minimal, especially as Israels new partners among the Arab states take a more strategic perspective on their shared interests.

The other trend is more ominous. The threats at Israels immediate borders are acute and growing. In the south, Gaza appears to be in the midst of a burgeoning humanitarian and security crisis, with massive electricity and water shortages, and an almost complete breakdown in the already strained utilities and services. The potential for a social implosion and accompanying outbreak of Hamas attacks on Israel is real and worrisome. Those holding the primary leverage over Gazas plight appear to be Egypt and the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank, both of whom want to apply maximal pressure on Hamas but appear less concerned about the humanitarian costs of this squeeze. In the north, Israels small borders with Lebanon and Syria contain large threats. On the Lebanon side, Hezbollah has substantially expanded its rocket and missile arsenal to some 120,000 projectiles while continuing its vile practice of hiding its weaponry in residences and using civilians as human shields. On the Syria side, the continuing fallout from the Syrian civil war poses multiple threats, especially the prospect of Iran establishing a permanent military and intelligence presence from which to terrorize Israel. Finally, to Israels east in the West Bank, a major concern is the political uncertainty of the Palestinian Authority leadership, with the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas now in the eleventh year of a four-year term and no designated successor in sight. As precarious as these fronts are, a failure to deftly manage the announcement on Jerusalem could further inflame existing tensions.

Looming over Israels security in the region, and looming over virtually all of our meetings, was Iran. Notwithstanding the Iran nuclear deals temporary slowing of the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran has been emboldened by its windfall of unfrozen assets and new commercial investments. It has stepped up its malevolent activities in other domains, including terrorism, ballistic missiles, and covert and overt campaigns to destabilize numerous governments in the region and bring them into Irans orbit. All of these activities pose considerable risks for Israel. And Tehrans steady stream of threats and fulminations against Israel makes clear that the Islamic Republic remains committed to Israels destruction.

The other consistent theme we heard concerned Russias re-emergence as a dominant power in the region. After Sadat expelled Russian forces from Egypt in 1973, Russia had not had a significant presence in the Middle East until Russian President Vladimir Putins intervention in Syria to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assads hold on power. Just as Putin hoped, Russias gambit has reshaped perceptions well beyond Syria, and we heard consistently how Russia is now perceived in the region as an agenda setter and power player. This may turn out to be one of those strategic shifts that was rather underappreciated at the time but in history will appear of profound consequence. In terms of diplomatic prowess, military power, and intelligence footprint, the United States is still the most influential outside power in the region, and across all of those domains U.S. presence outstrips Russia. But in the Middle East, perceptions matter as much as material power metrics, and the perceptions are of Moscows ascendance. This is an unhappy legacy of the Obama administration, and one that thus far the Trump administration shows little sign of reversing.

Finally, in this centenary of the Balfour Declaration and 70th anniversary of the United Nations resolution establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, it bears noting again what an astonishing achievement the Israelis have wrought in the ensuing years. Few countries could have survived the obstacles that Israel faced, let alone thrived to become such an influential and capable nation. From a small and relatively barren strip of land, threatened and not infrequently attacked for decades from every direction by enemies sworn to its destruction, perennially besieged in multilateral fora, the Israelis have forged a vibrant, multiethnic democracy and flourishing economy, with a capable military and intelligence services that are the envy of the region. Some seven decades after its nativity, Israel remains a valuable and worthy ally for the United States, and a nation to admire in its own right.
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday slapped steep import duties on steel products from Vietnam that originated from Chinese-made steel.

The agency said the Vietnamese products were circumventing existing U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy orders on the same products from China.

The Commerce Department said it would apply the same anti-dumping duties on corrosion-resistant steel from Vietnam using Chinese substrate of 199.43 percent and anti-subsidy duties of 39.05 percent.

U.S. anti-dumping duties on cold-rolled steel from Vietnam using Chinese steel substrate will be set at 265.79 percent, with anti-subsidy duties of 265.44 percent. (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrew Hay)
United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) is warning customers that there may be a delay on their orders.

UPS Delays: What Cyber Monday Shoppers Should Know

Source: Mike Mozart Via Flickr

The UPS delays specifically have to do with orders made on Cyber Monday or the few days after. These orders may face a one- to two-day delay. The reason for this was the sheer amount of orders that were made during this period of time.

UPS is saying that this large amount of orders caused a slight backlog to build up at some of its locations. However, it notes that this issue has mostly been taken care of. As a result, future orders wont be affected by these UPS delays.

InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips

Steve Gaut, a spokesman for UPS, says that the company will have the delays completely taken care of by tomorrow. He also notes that the delivery backlog wont cause it to miss any Christmas deadlines this year. However, UPS did have to start working its drivers more to deal with the surge of orders, reports Bloomberg.

This years forecasted volume is about 5 percent more than 2016s holiday volume of more than 712 million packages, UPS told CNBC. Thats about 40 million more packages than last year.

The UPS delays occurred despite it preparing for the busy shopping season by hiring extra employees. However, it wasnt ready for the amount of orders that were made around Cyber Monday. The company notes that more shoppers were doing their Christmas buying then than what it was previously expecting. This is why some packages had to be delayed, despite it preparing for heavy online ordering during the holidays.

UPS stock was down 1% as of noon Wednesday.

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As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

The post UPS Delays: What Cyber Monday Shoppers Should Know appeared first on InvestorPlace.
Brussels (AFP) - US President Donald Trump's decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital could take the region "backwards to even darker times", the EU's diplomatic chief warned on Thursday.

"President Trump's announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact. It is a very fragile context and the announcement has the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we're already living in," Federica Mogherini told a press conference in Brussels.

The EU, along with other major international powers, has repeatedly voiced deep concern this week about Trump's declaration. His move upends seven decades of US ambiguity on the highly contentious status of the holy city, which is claimed by both Palestinians and Israelis.

Trump's announcement sparked a Palestinian general strike and a call for a new "intifada" or uprising. The Israeli military deployed hundreds of more troops to the occupied West Bank.

The EU has long supported a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Mogherini said the 28-member bloc would keep working with both sides -- as well as regional players such as Egypt and Jordan -- to restart direct talks.

Mogherini, who meets Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Brussels on Friday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, called for cool heads, saying demonstrations against the decision should be peaceful.

"What we truly need in these difficult times is wisdom and to listen to the wise voices calling for peace and peaceful reactions," Mogherini said.

"We believe this difficult moment calls for an even stronger engagement for peace. The most urgent priority now is that all relevant actors avoid to further escalate tensions on the ground," she added.

Netanyahu's visit, which is to include an "informal" breakfast with EU foreign ministers, was planned before Trump's announcement, but the Jerusalem issue is now set to dominate the meeting.

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British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Trump's decision made it all the more urgent that what he called "the long-awaited American proposals on the Middle East peace process" were brought forward.

In recent months Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been working with a small team to develop a new US proposal to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

But a senior EU official said that despite close contact with Washington on the matter, "we have not seen elements of a plan for the moment".
For years, Baluch separatist leaders have launched media campaigns, organized protests, and lobbied international organizations and governments across Europe to bring attention to what they describe as Pakistani atrocities in their beleaguered homeland.

But Islamabad is now retaliating by reaching out to European authorities about the separatists alleged involvement in violence.

The development reflects an uneasy stalemate in Pakistans southwestern province of Balochistan. Years of government crackdowns and political maneuvering have prevented a fragmented Baluch nationalist insurgency from taking hold. But Islamabad's tough handling has added to the grievances in a region reeling from underdevelopment, poverty, and neglect.

Mehran Baluch is a one of the latest victims of Islamabad's efforts to stop Baluch separatists from campaigning in Europe. Last month, authorities in Switzerland prevented the young Baluch leader from entering the country at Zurich airport.

After a 12-hour detention, Mehran Baluch was forced to leave. He is now debating legally challenging a lifetime ban on entering Switzerland.

Mehran Baluch, now in his mid-40s, travels between European cities to lobby officials, diplomats, and lawmakers. He has addressed open sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council and held demonstrations outside the global body's offices in Geneva.

While denying any involvement in violence or connection with the numerous militant groups active in Balochistan, Mehran Baluch thinks his activism has prompted Islamabad to try to clip his wings in Europe.

"Obviously I am doing something right for my cause that I am a thorn in their side," he told RFE/RLs Gandhara website. Now everyone [among exiled Baluch leaders] is facing harassment at a certain level -- some far more intense and some less.

As a British passport holder, Mehran Baluch doesnt need a visa to travel to most European countries, but for more than a decade he has been at the receiving end of Pakistani efforts to stop him from campaigning. His ordeal began in 2007 when Pakistans former military dictator Pervez Musharraf wanted to swap him with British-Pakistani terrorism suspect Rashid Rauf.

But over the years, he has faced lengthy questioning at airports and suspicion over his activities. I was the first target of this international campaign that Pakistan began to target the Baluch leadership, he said.

Mehran Baluch highlights what he says are contradictions within Islamabad's effort to go after him.

Three days after they imposed a ban to prevent me from entering Switzerland, Hafiz Saeed, an internationally proscribed terrorist, was released from house arrest in Pakistan, he said.

Acting on a court order, Pakistani authorities freed Saeed, the leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its militant offshoot Lashkar-e Taiba, on November 24. The U.S. Justice Department has designated him a terrorist for allegedly masterminding numerous terrorist attacks including the 2008 attack in Mumbai, in which 166 people were killed.

Mehran Baluch is the youngest son of the late Khair Baksh Marri. The Marxist politician and tribal leader is widely seen as a pioneering figure of the Baluch nationalist movement, which has repeatedly clashed with Islamabad in armed insurrections over demands for autonomy. Marris opposition to Islamabads exploration of oil and gas in his native Kohlu region is seen to have first prompted the ongoing nationalist rebellion in 2000.

Multi-ethnic Balochistans more than 12 million people make up a small part of Pakistans 200 million population, but their resource-rich region makes up nearly half of Pakistans territory. Straddling the Iranian plateau, Balochistan extends into Afghanistan and Iran and boasts a 1,000-kilometer coast on the Arabian Sea.

Pakistan is a state of paranoia and a state of denial. They never take responsibility for what they have done. They have carried out five military operations and killed our prominent leaders, Mehran Baluch said of Balochistans 70-year history with Pakistan.

Nawab Akbar Bugti was perhaps the most prominent Baluch leader killed by Pakistani forces. In an interview with Gandhara, his grandson Brahumdagh Bugti explained why he sought shelter outside Pakistan after his grandfather was killed by shelling in August 2006.

I am [a] political activist, so after consultations with friends and tribespeople I deemed that it was pointless to live in the mountains, he said. In late 2006, Bugti led thousands of Bugti tribespeople into exile in neighboring Afghanistan.

But after Bugti faced repeated assassination attempts, Kabul helped him to seek shelter in Switzerland in October 2010. But nearly seven years later, Swiss authorities rejected his asylum application last month.

I have been told that I do not qualify for asylum because there are allegations that my political organization, the Baloch Republican Party, has links with militant organizations in Balochistan, he said.

Bugti, now in his 30s, says he is not in danger of being sent back to Pakistan and vows to continue his activism in alliance with Mehran Baluch and other exiled leaders.

Our struggle continues under the shadow of gunship helicopters in Pakistan. These bans and hardships in Europe are nothing compared to what we have endured, he said.

In an apparent reconciliation bid, Bugti met with senior Pakistani officials two years ago. But he now sees little chance of a political resolution. We have never given up on a political course, but its the Pakistani military that has always adopted the violent path, he said.

Bugti now sees no option but to soldier on. If someone thinks that they can achieve their ultimate goal [of independence] then it is impossible. It is something people on the ground have to do themselves, he noted. The only thing we can do here is to tell the world about the reality of Balochistan and the problems there.

Officials in Pakistan, however, are adamant that Bugti and other exiled Baluch leaders are involved in violence.

Anwarul Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Balochistan provincial government, says Islamabad wants to notify European authorities -- especially the Swiss and UK governments -- that their land is being used, which indirectly is helping in the gory activities against the people of Balochistan.

Kakar says Bugti is responsible for running the Baloch Republican Army (BRA) while Mehran Baluch looks after the United Baloch Army. He says a third exiled leader, Javed Mengal, runs Lashkar-e Balochistan. (Mengal denies being involved in violence).

Their duplicity needs to be exposed. While they are sitting in the West they are talking of human rights, and back home these individuals are running militant outfits, he said.

On the ground in Pakistan, the Baluch separatist movement is a patchwork of militant outfits, student unions, and political and protest organizations. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) was the biggest guerrilla faction in the early years of the uprising until the killing of its leader Balach Marri in 2007. He was Mehran Baluchs elder brother. While Islamabad now accuses another of his brothers, Hyrbyair Marri, of running BLA from exile in London, Marri denies any links with the organization.

Today the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) led by former physician Allah Nazar is among one of the most active separatist militias. It is active in Balochistans southern Makran region. In recent years, Nazar has become Islamabads enemy number one for threatening and targeting Chinese investments geared toward turning Balochistans Gwadar Port into a regional trade and transportation hub.

While accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, thousands of civilians, soldiers, activists, and guerrillas have been killed in more than 15 years of simmering violence. Both sides accuse each other of grave rights abuses and indiscriminate violent acts such as enforced disappearances, assassinations and kidnappings.

International and Pakistani rights watchdogs, however, have noted enforced disappearances, torture and detentions by Pakistani security forces.

While Baluch communities such as members of the Bugti and Marri tribes have endured exile and displacement, the nationalists have targeted Punjabi settlers and workers, some of whom had lived in Balochistan for decades.

Despite repeated pledges, Islamabad has generally avoided reconciliation with the separatists. Instead, it has focused on their elimination and blaming India in particular, and Afghanistan and other powers in general, for fomenting and bankrolling their insurrection. New Delhi, Kabul, and Baluch separatists deny Pakistans allegations.

Islamabad remains highly sensitive to the Baluch campaign in Europe. In recent months, it officially lodged complaints and lobbied hard to remove #FreeBalochistan posters from public transport and billboards in Geneva and London.

Kakar says the posters violated Pakistani sovereignty. We feel it is an interference in our internal affairs, whether it is an attempt -- in imaginary terms even -- to undo our territorial integrity, he said.

At home, Islamabad has encouraged pro-Pakistan Baluch political parties and embraced figures associated with the families of separatist leaders once they express their willingness to live in the country peacefully.

Gazain Marri, another elder brother of Mehran Baluchs, is the latest such figure. In September, he returned to Balochistan from 18 years of self-exile in the United Arab Emirates.

Late last month, a Pakistani court released him on bail in a nearly two-decade-old murder case. He now urges caution and dialogue.

These people [Baluch separatists] who have gone to the mountains, they must have some concerns and were disappointed over their inability to obtain their rights [through peaceful politics], he told Radio Mashaal in Balochistans provincial capital, Quetta. If their concerns are removed, they will come back.

Marri blames both the government and separatists for making mistakes. I want to engage in consultation to work out a middle path toward compromise, he said before setting off for his ancestral homeland in Kohlu district.

In London, Mehran Baluch is determined to continue his campaigning.

It really takes a toll on your body and your mind when you are constantly under pressure for living just a normal life, especially when governments are after you, he said.

Radio Mashaal correspondents Abdul Hai Kakar and Ayub Tareen contributed reporting to this story.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has signed a decree ordering what state media outlets called the first mass pardoning of convicts in the Central Asian country's history.

A total of 2,700 convicts were pardoned under the decree signed on December 7, and 956 of them will be released from prison, state media reports said.

Others were serving suspended sentences or were not in prison for other reasons.

Mirziyoev's decree was timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the constitution Uzbekistan adopted on December 8, 1992, months after it gained independence in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The media reports said that the decree differed from previous presidential amnesties because a commission was created in September to determine convicts eligible for pardons.

Several jailed journalists, politicians, and others seen by rights groups as political prisoners have been released since Mirziyoev came to power in September 2016, after the death of longtime autocrat Islam Karimov.

In October, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Uzbek authorities had taken "some positive steps" during Mirziyoevs first year in office and called for "sustainable" improvements in human rights.
Finnish English

GOFORE PLC COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT 5 DECEMBER 2017 AT 09:00

Gofore Plc has established new subsidiaries in Spain and Germany

Gofore has established subsidiaries in Spain and Germany. Gofore has operated in Germany since 2016. The objective of the newly established subsidiary in Spain is to promote Gofore's growth and the expansion of its operations to Western Europe in accordance with the company's strategy. A strong work culture serves as a great base for internationalization.

Gofore has been operating in Munich Germany since 2016 with customers from the private sector. The current local business has been transferred to the 100% owned subsidiary Gofore Germany GmbH. The subsidiary was launched in December 2017.

New office in Madrid

Gofore has established a subsidiary in Spain, Gofore Spain SL. Extending international operations to the emerging digital services market in Western Europe is a key part of Gofore's strategy. The company is committed to serving its customers internationally in digital transformation. Local presence and seamless cooperation with customers are key success factors for modernizing services and work culture. The presence in Spain supports the utilization of new business opportunities.

In the first phase, operations in Madrid will start with current Gofore Group personnel and, with the expansion, will open up international career opportunities for both new and existing employees. The goal is to increase the number of employees via local recruitment and to increase diversity and expand expertise within the Group. Gofore's unique corporate culture which won second-best workplace in Europe in the Great Place to Work 2017 survey, and global service delivery capability, ensures that services are able to be delivered to customers in all countries.

Further enquiries

Timur Karki, CEO, Gofore

timur.karki@gofore.com

tel. 040 828 5886

Gofore Plc is a digitalisation specialist operating since 2002. We offer modern services that help operators in the private and public sectors to face digital change. Our mission is to change the world for the better through digitalisation and by renewing ways of working. Our services cover the entire value chain - from management consultation to service design and implementation as well as cloud services. Staying on top and ahead of the development requires us to be fast-paced, regenerative and competitive. We have 15 years of expertise in this. Our operations are characterised by top expertise, alacrity and genuine interaction. We believe that we are the best partner to our clients on the path to digital change. Gofore currently employs over 360 people in Helsinki, Jyvaskyla, Tampere, Swansea and Munich. Gofore was chosen as the best workplace in Finland and the second-best workplace in Europe in the Great Place to Work survey in 2017. More information: www.gofore.com.
The 1992 Bombay riots wracked the city and thousands fled in fear. Here's how the uproar affected the city, instilled suspicion and created communal divide.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: After the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, there were riots across the nation. But the most sharp reaction came from the financial capital of the country, then known as Bombay, and it claimed more than 900 lives.

The 1992 Bombay riots wracked the city, thousands fled in fear and even after 25 years the memories of the destruction remain firmly etched on the minds of the people.

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Life in the 1992 riot hit areas may have moved on the there is still no closure. The Supreme Court still has to give its final say on some cases related to the Mumbai riots.

Behrampada, a predominantly Muslim slum near Bandra, became a name synonymous with mayhem during the riots. Not much has changed in Behrampada even after 25 years. The dingy lanes are equally stinky as they were 25 years ago, the open drains continue to flow amidst multi-storey shanties, open cables hang in middle of the slender lanes.

The only visible change is the dish antennas atop every shanty. Amidst the green flags, one can also see posters of Bal Keshav Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray wishing 'Eid Mubarak'.

No one would have imagined this 25 years ago, but today the Corporator of Behrampada belongs to the Shiv Sena, a party that referred Behrampada as 'mini Pakistan'. Mumbai may have always lived in small ghettos, but the the 1992 riots only deepened it.

Liyaqat Ali has been staying in Behrampada for half a century now and for him the riots have alienated the Muslims. "After the riots, we have accepted everyone from other communities but when we want to shift to neighbouring areas like Kherwadi we are told that Muslims are not allowed there", he told India Today.

"One of us had bought a flat there but he was asked to sell it off. Our new generations then have no option than to leave this area and stay far away in areas like Mira road, Nala Sopara", he added. It's not only the alienation, the memories of riots still shake up people like Shaikh Zakir.

In his small 10 x 10 shanty, Zakir and his wife Saira Bano get goose bumps when they recall the days of 1992 riots.

After the riots flared up, he was picked up from Behrampada by the police. Zakir, who used to sell mops at the Bandra signal, claims that he wasn't even aware of any riots. What followed was unimaginable for the family, with the sole bread earner behind bars Saira Bano had to beg to feed her small baby.

Zakir fought a court battle for 18 years before being acquitted. Now, 25 years later, even a slightest of reminder of the harrowing times has the family in tears.

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"My family lived like beggars, they asked for food from mosque and I had to pay Rs 1.5 lakhs for bail. Ask anyone in the mohalla I'm a clean guy. Whenever I remember the past I get tears in my eyes. I always thought that once I'm free, I will leave Mumbai forever but Alhamdulillah, everything is fine today," Zakir tells as tears roll down his cheeks. Zakir and his family still lives in the trauma.

More than 2,200 cases were registered during the riots but almost 1,300 cases were closed and labelled as "A Summary"- true but undetected. Most of these cases were related to Behrampada.

During 1992 Bombay riots (Photo: India Today Archives)

Although there were convictions and acquittals, the sense of closure still eludes the Behrampada.

Ahmed Shaikh, who runs a computer institute for youngsters in Behrampada, wants the youth to move on. Though he believes in looking forward but the fact that justice was delayed and subsequently denied angers him.

"I was hardly one-year-old when the riots took place. But even today I see many who were responsible (for the riots) roaming freely. Our elders tell us that these are the guys who were involved. Due to delayed justice people are angry but how to vent it out? People are so upset that they do not even want to talk about it" says Ahmed.

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But if Behrampada saw attacks on the minority community, the Gandhi Chawl in Jogeshwari area or Radhabai Chawl as it is referred to became a symbol of minority aggression. A mob torched a room here killing 6 people from the Hindu community. That room still lies vacant as a testimony. For some time an NGO called Yuva Sanstha ran a computer institute here but that too has shut down.

Unlike Behrampada, a majority Hindu population lived in Radhabai Chawl before the riots, but the incident changed the picture. Almost all the Hindu families fled the locality, and only a few returned.

Kantibhai Solanki and his family returned, albeit with fear in their minds, and now Kantibhai's is the only Gujarati Hindu family living in the vicinity. Kantibhai, who used to work in the BMC, fled with his family to his native place near Valsad in Gujarat. He returned only after things normalised. The Radhabai incident dented the trust that local claims existed there for years.

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Noorjahan says she had maximum friends from the Hindu community, but after the riots she was always seen with suspicion. "After riots there was mistrust, everyone looked at us with suspicion. We stopped talking with each other, people from the other community left the place. We came back but they never did."

Image from India Today's 1992 magazine issue

It has been a quarter of a century since the horrific riots, people of Behrampada and Radhabai Chawl have moved on in their lives, but still when any communal flare up takes place in any part of the country, people here miss a heart beat. Some even allege that the system does not want them to forget.

But it seems that the riots have taught them a lot too, as youngsters like Humayun feel the need to bride the gap.

Humayun and his friends run an NGO that works in fields like healthcare, education in Behrampada. They have also made an attempt to bridge the gap. "Whatever happened was because of ignorance, they did not know each other's religion. We tried to make them meet and exchange greetings. No Hindu or Muslim religion teaches hatred. We got a good response", Humayun says as he is flanked by youngsters.

One Amiruddin too wants to change the current order.

"There was a loss of life in 1992 that's what I have heard. But, I want to change the identity of Behrampada. I want people from Hindu and Christian communities to stay here. Past is past and we should leave that behind. Whatever happened was bad but I want to request everyone to stay together in harmony. If we stay united then only our country will progress and soldiers who fight for us will feel proud", an excited Amiruddin said.

Mumbai has moved on, so has Behrampada and Radhabai Chawl, but as Nisaar Khan says they want to forget but the system does not allow them to.

Photo: India Today Archives

So whenever there is a small communal flare up in any part of the country, Behrampada misses a heartbeat. 25 years may have gone by but the fear factors refuses to go.

--- ENDS ---
Meteorite explosions in the Earth's atmosphere as large as the one that destroyed forests in Siberia, with approximately the force of a twelve-megaton nuclear blast, occur about once a century.The response of highly automated systems controlled by complex computer programs to unexpected circumstances is unpredictable.Which of the following conclusions can most properly be drawn, if the statements above are true, about a highly automated nuclear-missile defense system controlled by a complex computer program?The passage says meteorite explosions have approx. the force of a nuclear blast The passage did not say that the meteorite explosions have the SAME force. What if the 1/10000th value did matter? We don't know for sure. (Small things do make a big difference)(A) Within a century after its construction, the system would react inappropriately and might accidentally start a nuclear war.--> How do we even know this? What a far-fetched conclusion(B) The system would be destroyed if an explosion of a large meteorite occurred in the Earth's atmosphere.--> This contradicts what the passage says that the response by the system would be unpredictable should any unexpected circumstance come about.(C) It would be impossible for the system to distinguish the explosion of a large meteorite from the explosion of a nuclear weapon.--> IMPOSSIBLE is a stern usage here. How do we know this for sure? What if the system has been designed to do so?(Definitely possible!) We don't know for sure.(D) Whether the system would respond inappropriately to the explosion of a large meteorite would depend on the location of the blast.--> Location of the blast? Do we know anything about this dependency? Has anything been mentioned about the distance of the blast from whichever reference point used? No..eliminate this out of scope answer.(E) It is not certain what the system's response to the explosion of a large meteorite would be, if its designers did not plan for such a contingency.--> BINGO. This answer choice really tells us that we would not know the response of the system if the system were not designed to detect a meteorite explosion.Hence choice (E). Look at how (C) was a very warped version of what might have been correct if the word 'may be' had been used.
Hi JohnAHD Thanks for getting in touch! What an interesting back-story. And amazing that you can speak so many languages. What I like is that you have the luxury of time, something few MBA candidates have. I suggest is that you set up a free consultation with us to talk more in detail and get more personalized advice. To your point about money, there are a few schools who will waive your application fee if you attend some of their admissions events (Fuqua and Georgetown come to mind). Given your lower GPA, I would like you to have some safer options in your portfolio of schools so that's where Fuqua and Georgetown can come in handy. Your GPA also puts a bit more pressure on your GMAT score so ideally, I'd love to see 740+ if you can swing it. There's definitely a lot to like here -- your international background is very compelling! -- but our challenge is that we don't know what your competition looks like so it's best to plan for different outcomes.I hope that helps! Definitely set up a free consultation with the first available consultant.Krista_________________
Profile Evaluation Request for Full time MBA [ #permalink

Hello Sir/Ma'am,



I'd like to kindly request you to evaluate my candidacy for Full-time MBA programs for the Class of 2021. Below is a brief description of my profile.



Background:

Ethnicity: Indian

Gender: Male

Current age: 24 years

GMAT: Target 760 (Scored ~700 on mocks after a month of preparation)



Education:

Business graduate from a Tier 1 business management undergraduate college in India (Top 0.1% selected out of ~30,000 applicants based on a written aptitude test)

GPA: 63.3% on a percentage scale



Work Experience: ~3.5 years (4+ years at the time of applying)



1. Analyst, Ernst and Young in Gurgaon (India)

Duration: June 2014  June 2016 (2 years)



-Member of the Ethics and Integrity Due Diligence Team - worked on 70+ due diligence engagements spanning across various sectors over 2 years



-Key engagements include:

Conducted pre-investment due diligence for one of the largest Indian e-commerce companies looking to acquire a popular online recharge portal for USD 467 million

Conducted pre-investment due diligence for a leading private equity firm on a USD 34 million investment in a real estate firm

20+ similar high profile engagements for leading private equity clients



-Received the KUDOS award in July 2015, awarded for consistent superior performance amongst peers in the year-end appraisal

-Received multiple emails of appreciation from the Partner and Senior Managers for exemplary performance on various projects



2. Co-Founder, Garment Manufacturing Company

Duration: July 2016  Present

The garment manufacturing company is based in India and is engaged in manufacturing womens winter accessories such as shrugs, ponchos, stoles, capes, mufflers, gloves and caps, among others as well as women's summer tops and dresses.



I started the company with my mother who works as the production and operations head and my father who works as the CEO of the firm. I directly manage a team of ~10 people, heading the business development and marketing functions.



-We have grown to 80+ clients (retail outlets) across India with an annual turnover of INR 6 million in ~2 years.

-We sell on various e-commerce websites which amounts to an annual turnover of INR 500,000.

-We aim to increase our customer base to 150+ clients with an annual turnover of INR 15 million over the next year.



Internship:

Worked with the strategy consulting team at KPMG India for six weeks during the summer before the final year of undergrad



Extra-curricular:

Strong volunteering experience spanning 5+ years at a specially abled children's school, old age home, juvenile prison as well as experience of teaching less fortunate children.



Letters of Recommendation:

1. Senior Manager at Ernst & Young with whom I had a direct reporting relationship over my stint of two years at the firm.

2. Top billing client with four retail outlets  have been dealing directly with the client since inception of the garment company.



Post-MBA goal:

Business development/Strategy role at an early/growth stage startup.



I would be highly grateful if you could guide me with the following queries:



1. Please evaluate my candidature for top 20 US schools as well as top 5 schools in Europe.



2. Please suggest areas where I can improve my profile over the next year before I apply to schools in September 2018.



Thank you very much!
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Angelina Jolie revealed in a podcast that she and Brad Pitt had been having problems for a while.

By India Today Web Desk: Ever since they fell in love on the sets of their film, Mr And Mrs Smith, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were the ultimate #CoupleGoals. So when Angelina filed for divorce from Brad in September last year, fans of 'Brangelina' were crushed.

Murky details soon emerged - it was said that an inebriated Brad hit his 15-year-old son Maddox during a mid-air scuffle on a private jet. Shortly after this incident, Angelina decided to call it quits with Brad, who she had been with for 14 years, including two years as a married couple.

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However, the cracks in their marriage had started to show long before that, Angelina revealed in a recent podcast. In fact, their film, By The Sea (2015), a film written and directed by Angelina about an unhappy married couple, was an attempt to save their relationship.

"We had met working together and we worked together well. I wanted us to do some serious work together... So I thought that it could be a good way for us to communicate. And I think in some ways it was. And in some ways we learned some things. But there was a heaviness during that situation that carried on and it wasn't because of the film," Angelina said.

Many felt that By The Sea foretold the end of Brangelina. Just like his character Roland, Brad had been "boozing too much", he admitted.

Angelina also seemed to feel that it was the beginning of the end. "Things happen for different reasons... Why did I write that exact piece? Why did we feel that way when we made it? I'm not sure," she said.

ALSO WATCH: Brangelina is no more, our generation's greatest love story ends

--- ENDS ---
Ottawa, Dec 7 (IBNS): Though US President Donald Trump has triggered a firestorm by announcing that American embassy in Israel will be shifted to Jerusalem to recognize it as the capital of the Jewish nation, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country's embassy will continue to be in Tel Aviv, media reports said.

Trudeau, who is presently in China, told media: "We will not be moving Canadas embassy from Tel Aviv."

Trumps announcement of Jerusalem as Israels capital has triggered Palestinian protests and clashes and a call for a new intifada (meaning Palestinian uprising against Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip), setting off fears of a fresh turmoil in the region.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, said on Wednesday that "the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute".

"We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel," Freeland added.

The United States will officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as the first country in the world to do so since the foundation of the state in 1948.

Israel has welcomed the American decision but the Palestinians and Arab leaders have warned the move will jeopardise any Middle East peace process.

Israel considers Jerusalem as its capital city, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

U.S. allies, including France, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have reportedly urged Trump to avoid the extremely sensitive topic.

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, has warned Donald Trump of the dangerous consequences" if he went ahead with the move.

Reports said after President Donald Trump told Jordan's King Abdullah II on Tuesday that he plans to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the latter warned Trump of "the danger of taking any decision outside the context of a comprehensive solution that establishes a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem".

"Jerusalem is the key to achieving peace and stability in the region and the world," the statement from Jordan said.

(Reporting by Suman Das)
The Houthi quickly took credit for Salehs death on Monday. The killing took place just a few days after the former president broke away from an alliance that he and his supporters had maintained with the Houthi since before the start of the current civil war in 2015. Saleh urged an end to the fighting, which has created a humanitarian crisis among the people of Yemen, the Gulf regions poorest country. He also indicated that he would pursue improved relations with Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Arab coalition.

It remains to be seen what impact Salehs death will have on the Yemeni Civil War, but by reasserting their control over the rebellion the Houthi have certainly pushed back any hopes of a politically mediated solution. At the same time, the family and associates of the former president continue to exert significant influence within parts of the country, suggesting that his death may represent some long-term divisions within the rebel movement. At the same time, the widespread recognition of the Houthi as an ally or even proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran points to the possibility of reprisals against the Iranian regime.

In fact, this possibility was explicitly highlighted by Salehs son Ahmed Ali Saleh, whom Reuters reported as saying on Tuesday, I will lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen [and] the blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran. The younger Saleh had supposedly been under guard in the United Arab Emirates prior to making this public statement, and some sources have taken this to mean that the Arab states are backing him in his efforts to direct a portion of the rebelling Yemenis against the Houthi and their Iranian sponsors.

Meanwhile, Jafaris praise for the Saleh assassination is a clear indication that this phenomenon operates in both directions. In fact, CNN issued a report on Tuesday that affirmed the Iran-Saudi rift would almost certainly widen in the aftermath of the killing. The report also quoted a representative of the Houthi political office as saying that the Arab coalitions member states would pay a heavy price in their own capitals for allegedly turning Saleh against the Houthi as part of a coup attempt.

It is not clear whether there was in fact a coalition hand in the decision that led to Salehs death. But in any event, his death may have opened the door to a more explicit alliance between coalition states and those who had been loyal to the former president.

CNN quoted Anwar Gargash, a senior official of the United Arab Emirates as saying, The events in Sanaa are murky, but its national uprising needs support  to protect the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian expansion. The same report went on to say that despite the recent status of the Saleh clan as enemies of Saudi Arabia and its allies, those states now seem to consider an agreement with Ahmed Ali Saleh and others to be a price worth paying for the sake of undermining Iranian influence in the region.

Indeed, it can be credibly argued that there are few compromises the leading Gulf Arab states would not be willing to make in order to achieve this end. This idea has been on display with virtually every report that points either to a break with former allies over the future of Iran policy, or the reduction of tensions with longstanding allies as a result of mutual antipathy to the Iranian regime.

In the first place, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain all broke off ties with neighboring Qatar in June, in response to remarks apparently made by the Qatari emir regarding cooperation with Iran as an established Islamic power. The ongoing diplomatic crisis has seen the obstruction of supply routes that Qatar previously relied on, while the Saudis issued ultimatums in an effort to bring Qatar back in line with an aggressive policy toward constraining Iranian influence. These efforts at isolation have, however, proven unsuccessful so far and have actually prompted Qatar to move closer to Iran. But in any event, the incident represents a sharpening of the dividing lines spanning the Middle East.

At roughly the same time, Saudi Arabia and its existing allies have shown more and more willingness to cooperate with the Jewish state of Israel, owing to the Israelis also viewing Iran as the primary contributor to instability in the region. This surprising trend was prominently referenced in a Washington Post article on Sunday regarding White House advisor Jared Kushners approach to Middle East policy and the pursuit of a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine.

The article quotes Kushner as saying that the entire region, including both Saudi Arabia and Israel, with their mutual American support, is unifying against Irans aggression. These regional dynamics, the Post claims, are central to virtually all of the Trump administrations foreign policy calculations regarding the Middle East.

The Drive elaborated upon this trend in an in-depth report that it published on Monday regarding Israels regional strategy and specifically its rising levels of focus on Iranian influence. The report made mention of recent discussions of prospective intelligence-sharing agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as series of military drills that took place with the assistance of the US and six other countries, plus Jordan as an unofficial partner.

But the main focus of the article was on a series of Israeli airstrikes in Syria, which were apparently aimed at targets with links to Iran. Although the Israelis given little information about such strikes, not even officially confirming that they took place, international reports indicate that at least one had succeeded in destroying an Iranian-run base, possibly killing twelve members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the process. The report also highlighted intelligence reports about Iranian contributions to the Syrian ballistic missile program, thereby underscoring the significance that Israeli intervention might have to other countries that are concerned about Iran establishing a deeper foothold in surrounding territory.

It is worth noting, however, that the Washington Post and Drive articles were published shortly before it was reported that President Trump was planning to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such a move could present a formerly unanticipated challenge to the efforts by Gulf Arab leaders to work with their former Israeli adversaries. If they continued to find the same common cause after such a move, it would no doubt feed into Iranian propaganda.

This phenomenon was already on display on Tuesday when Reuters reported that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had issued a public statement calling upon Muslims all across the Middle East to disrupt efforts by regional governments to reconcile with Israel. I am sure that the Muslims around the world will not let this sinister plot bear fruit, he said while remaining vague about the details of the supposed plot or the specific identities of any governments involved in it.

But Iran Daily indicated that the supposedly moderate president was far less cagey about his anti-Israeli rhetoric. He described relations with the Israeli government as ominous and detestable and asserted that until recently this view was so universally shared that no head of state could count Israel as a friend and the resistance [front] as an enemy to the region.

Of course, Rouhani did not address the fact that widespread anxiety about Iranian influence appeared to be the primary factor in any recent shift in attitudes regarding Arab-Israeli relations. But UPI further highlighted that anxiety in a report that referenced experts from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and David Adesnik both argued that unless the US steps in to prevent the entrenchment of Iranian forces and proxies in Syria and elsewhere, the region will face a much greater likelihood of open conflict.

Naturally, though, the same warning has been given about the possible relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem. This new complication is perhaps indicative of an observation that was made by an editorial in Hurriyet Daily News on Monday regarding the Trump administrations Iran policy. The article quoted Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund as saying during a recent panel discussion, There is a big gap [for Trump] between what is politically attractive and what is strategically possible.

But the broader message of that editorial was that Iran remains perhaps the most pressing problem for the US and for many nations of the Middle East. Accordingly, the White House continues to push its Iran policy into ever more assertive territory. Many forces in the Middle East, including both state actors like the Saudi government and non-state actors like the Saleh clan, are making the same moves. And while it remains to be seen how effectively each of these entities can cooperate, the overall trend apparently remains unimpeded.
The Times piece observed that despite the Trump administrations aggressive stance on the Islamic Republic, his administration retains much of the previous administrations interest in getting away from direct participation in regional conflicts. It added that Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is apparently committed to getting ahead in the Middle East with modern reforms while curtailing the influence of the Iranian regime, which is equally committed to spreading throughout the region by force and through a variety of militant proxies.

Friedman suggests that this threat could be better countered through a focus, by both Saudi Arabia and the US, on reforms within the Middle East. In his view, this would provide regional populations and power-players with an attractive alternative to the violent preoccupations of the Iranian regime, which has ostensibly won it a broader sphere of influence, but at the expense of long-term domestic interests such as education and job creation. A contrary focus from the likes of Saudi Arabia would be, according to Friedman, the best revenge on Tehran.

However, other observers clearly believe that direct confrontation of Iranian imperialism is a necessary component of the policies being advanced by the Saudis, Americans, and others, regardless of whether it should be considered the primary component of those policies. This is to say that many observers are understandably very concerned about the extent of the regional gains that Iran has made against the backdrop of conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War.

This concern was underscored by the Washington Times on Tuesday in an article that declared the Islamic Republic was nearing completion of the Shiite crescent through which the regime hopes to link Tehran and Beirut across an unbroken overland route passing through Iraq and Syria. The article underscored that this project poses a serious threat to regional adversaries and to US interests in the Middle East. It also said that despite the ongoing shift in Western attentions toward the Iranian threat, the White House has done little so far to directly confront that threat and thus has given Tehran little reason to back away from its expansionism.

The Washington Times cited intelligence from the Iranian opposition Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran to suggest that Iranian influence in Syria is greater than what most analysts have said, and that it includes the payment of approximately one billion dollars in salaries to members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and various local militant proxies fighting there.

Meanwhile, Rudaw, pointed to American intelligence to essentially corroborate the PMOIs account of Iranian influence. That intelligence reportedly estimates that 80 percent of the forces supporting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad were sourced in Iran. Rudaw also noted that this dominance over Syrian military affairs is recognizably being leveraged toward the creation of the land bridge connecting Tehran and Beirut. In a possible effort to forestall this, the US has announced the maintenance of a conditions-based military presence in Syria, and US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has affirmed the importance of addressing Irans growing capability, their use of militias, proxies and terrorist organizations in Syria and elsewhere.

The American announcement was, however, unclear about the precise conditions or planned duration of the US military presence. Questions also persist about what support the US will receive from regional allies if this presence is indeed intended to prevent the entrenchment and expansion of Iranian influence. At the very least, Israel can be expected to pursue a parallel military effort, as the American announcement emerged just after it was reported that the Israelis had launched a series of air strikes in Syria, presumably targeting Iranian bases in the interest of upholding the Jewish states promise that it will not accept the permanent presence of Iranian forces of Hezbollah near the Israeli-Syrian border.

Iran News Update previously mentioned these airstrikes in the context of Israeli relations with Irans Arab adversaries. Then, on Wednesday, Reuters reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had specifically stated that his government was expanding relations with all of the Middle East, excepting Iran. Netanyahu also called attention to concerns over the Tehran-to-Beirut land bridge, as well as declaring Israeli opposition to Irans efforts to dominate the region.

But according to a report from Iran regimes own Mehr News Agency, the German Foreign Minister expressed the view on Tuesday that the expansion of Iranian dominance had been made possible in large part by the diminished American role in the region. Speaking at the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, Sigmar Gabriel observed that Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China were all taking advantage of an apparent power vacuum to strengthen their footholds in the Middle East and reclaim the legacies of old empires.

He went on to suggest that purely economic or reputational threats, like those which were emphasized in Friedmans Times editorial, may not be enough to curtail such imperial ambitions. They are in a way ready to pay a kind of a tax for the status of being a great power, Gabriel said of Iran and its most powerful partners. Economic losses, diplomatic tensions, financial penalties, sanctions, many such things are accepted by them to uphold their claim to regional leadership and to demonstrate their national sovereignty.

For many policymakers, Gabriels assessment is certain to raise questions about the future of one of the most prominent issues of foreign policy for the United States and the European Union: the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations, consisting of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China.

On Wednesday, a number of members of the European Parliament affiliated with the Friends of a Free Iran intergroup held a meeting in which they accused EU leaders of being obsessed with the nuclear deal to such an extent that they had proven willing to overlook Iranian human rights abuses and acts of regional belligerence. On the other hand, CNBC reported that in a meeting of foreign ministers held in Brussels on the same day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg advocated for Western powers to keep the nuclear agreement separate from the issue of Iran-backed terrorism. But many critics of the Iranian regime consider this to be practically impossible.

Participants in the European Parliament meeting criticized EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini for encouraging Western businesses to pursue investments in Iran, apparently without regard for how this capital might be misused by the Iranian regime or the economically powerful Revolutionary Guards for the purposes of regional imperialism and domestic repression. Despite this criticism, Mogherini herself reasserted the EUs commitment to preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and keeping it separate from other issues involving the Islamic Republic.

As the Associated Press reports, her remarks came in the wake of a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in which she argued that undermining the JCPOA would put the world community in a worse position to address other issues. Yet the German Foreign Ministers remarks raise questions about this claim and highlight the possibility that the Iranians might consider the nuclear deal to be useful if it advances imperialist goals and expendable otherwise.

In October, US President Donald Trump withheld certification of Irans compliance with the JCPOA, claiming that provocative Iranian activities such as ballistic missile tests constituted violations of the spirit of the agreement. Nonetheless, the deal remained in effect and the US Congress is nearing the end of the process whereby it must decide whether to continue extending relief from economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Al Jazeera reported that after his meeting with Mogherini, the American Secretary of State indicated that the US still aimed to alter the nuclear deal without dismantling it, in hopes that doing so would allow the international community to address Iranian behaviors that have been neglected in the midst of an expansion of Iranian influence. Of course, Tehran rejects any notion of a revised agreement, and now it remains to be seen whether the regime will indeed allow the JCPOA to fail in order to preserve its regional advances, as well as whether the international community will let the deal go in order to curtail them.
By PTI: Pune, Dec 6 (PTI) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today filed a charge sheet against 16 people including senior officials of IRB Infrastructure in the sessions court here in connection with a land scam exposed by the slain RTI activist Satish Shetty in 2009.

CBI prosecutor Vijaykumar Dhakane said the 2,000-page charge sheet names 16 persons including IRB chairman and managing director Virendra Mhaiskar, Deepak Gadgil, authorised signatory of M/s Aryan Infrastructures (a subsidiary of Ideal Road Builders), revenue officials, land agents, lawyers and some farmers.

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Based on documents received under the Right to Information Act, Shetty had filed a cheating and forgery case with Lonavala police in October 2009 against Mhaiskar and others, alleging illegal purchase of government land in Ozarde and Pimploli villages in Maval tehsil of Pune district.

On January 13, 2010, Shetty was hacked to death at Talegaon Dabhade by unidentified assailants.

While the land scam case was initially closed after the Pune Rural police filed a closure report, the CBI, after taking over the Shetty murder case, moved the Bombay High Court in August 2014 and sought permission to reopen the land scam case.

In January 2015, the CBI conducted searches at 21 residential and office premises of IRB and its senior officials in Mumbai and Pune and claimed to have seized some incriminating material.

IRB, in a statement today, said, "...it appears that the charge sheet focuses on alleged conspiracy to attempt to cheat for acquiring certain land parcels belonging to the government/MSRDC. We deny all allegations made against Mr Mhaiskar, Mr Gadgil... the company will seek appropriate remedies under law." PTI SPK KRK SMN

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Media reported that there was a plan in effect where Tillerson would be replaced by current CIA director Mike Pompeo, who would then be replaced at the intelligence agency by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), who has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, especially the nuclear agreement.

Some say that this launched a campaign of fear mongering as a PR tactic, that pushed the narrative that Trump administrations primary focus is to somehow foment a war with Iran, although no administration official has never even hinted at such an outcome, let alone advocated it.

An editorial authored by Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello of the NIAC on its website ran a provocative headline: Cotton, Pompeo and Trump are a Recipe for War with Iran. In it, Parsi and Costello write, What of the man that Pompeo would replace, Rex Tillerson? It is indisputable that Tillerson has been a disaster on many fronts, in particular, his campaign to gut the State Department which will do untold damage to American diplomacy for years to come. Yet, on the Iran nuclear deal, Tillerson has actually allied with Secretary of Defense James Mattis to urge Trump against ripping up the deal. The loss of Tillerson, combined with Cottons elevation, would mean that Pompeo and Cotton could face little resistance in their campaign to unravel a nuclear accord that is working and downplay the likely alternative  war.

Following implementation of the Iran nuclear deal, the bloody civil war in Syria escalated, and another sectarian uprising in Yemen now threatens to bring Saudi Arabia into direct conflict with Iran.

French president Emmanuel Macron has criticized the missile expansion program, and Bahram Qassemi, regime foreign ministry spokesman, denounced his comments. He said, 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, according to state media. The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues, he added.

Tension increased last month between Iran and France when 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, Irans hegemonic temptations. Frances criticisms echo those made by the US.

At the 2017 Reagan National Defense Forum in California this weekend Pompeo and national security adviser HR McMaster spoke at length about Iranian expansion in weak states in the Middle East. Pompeo confirmed that he recently sent a letter to Maj. Gen Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards foreign operations arm or Quds Force.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 said.

He refused to open the letter. It didnt break my heart to be honest with you. What we were communicating to him in that letter was that we will hold he and Iran accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control. We wanted to make sure he and the leadership in Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.

Pompeos effort to reach out to Soleimani displays that the Trump administration is attempting to rein in Iranian expansionism, not start a war.
KMMK-G said that Iran has so far executed at least 64 Kurdish prisoners, killed 57 kulbar (border couriers) and injured 120.

Landmine remnants of 1980 war with Iraq killed 7 Kurds, as well.

KMMK-G also reported that Iranian Kurdistan endures high levels of unemployment and discriminatory policies. Although ethnic constituents are highly diverse in Iran, its alleged that the Persian-Shiite group holds ultimate state power. In fact, Article 1 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran declares the Twelver Shia School of Islam as the formal religion of the state.

The Iranian 1995 Selection Law that is based on Religious and Ethical Standards known as the gozinesh affects the equality of employment opportunity for for persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, according to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

At least 64 Kurdish prisoners were executed in the first half of this year, according to KMMK-Gs collected data. The report said, About 50% of these prisoners were executed for drug-related crimes, about 30% for murder and others for membership in Kurdish opposition parties and other such allegations.

Despite secrecy surrounding executions, and the fact that the names and the ethnicity or whereabouts of the executed prisoners are not published, KMMK-G claims to have been able to identify at least some of those executed.

Morteza Rahmani, a Kurdish political prisoner, and Seyed Jamal Mousavi, charged with religious (Sunni) and belief-related allegations, were executed, KMMK-G says, and adds that the majority of these executions take place after unfair trials and for crimes that do not constitute the most serious crimes under international law.

Taimoor Eliassi, founder of the organization said, In this context, drug-related offenses and the execution of individuals on vaguely worded offenses, such as moharebeh or enmity against God are examples of insufficient and unfair forms of crime formulation. He also said that the Kurdish prisoners face unfair trials. He alleged that they suffer abuses including the use of confessions obtained under torture, and denial of access to a lawyer.

The number of Kurdish executions is dramatically high in proportion to the population of Iran, and Kurdish political imprisonment remains dramatically high in 2017. Kurdish political prisoners represent almost half of the total number of political prisoners in the country, according to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Eliassi added that the Islamic Republic has executed more than one-fifth of the Kurdish prisoners outside Kurdish region, in provinces like Qazween, Hamedan and Rasht.

Thus far in 2017, at least 1828 Kurdish citizens have been detained for a variety of reasons, and often in groups, for environmental rights advocacy, eating while supposed to be fasting during the month of Ramadan, working as border couriers, cheering for the Kurdish referendum in neighboring Kurdistan of Iraq held in September 2017, and other such charges, KMMK-G reported.

The daily life of civilian, such as farmers, nomads, shepherds and traders, are marred by high rates of unemployment, and land contamination caused by landmines and explosive remnants of the Iran-Iraq war. To earn a living, Kurdish youth and farmers from four Kurdish provinces engage in smuggling commodities, such as tea, tobacco and fuel. The indiscriminate killings of Kurdish Kulbaran (border couriers) continues to be high in 2017. However, KMMK-G claims, Border security forces involved in indiscriminate and blind killings do not respect Iranian domestic laws, which authorize the use of lethal force only as a last resort.

While several international bodies and entities such as the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Iran (2010) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (January 2016) have urged the Islamic Republic to clear its territory of landmines and all the remnants of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), still, the Islamic Republic refuses to cooperate with international NGOs and entities and to ratify the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty.

It is reported that more than 20 million landmines were planted in Kurdistan and Khuzestan provinces during to eight years-long Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).
This claim, if substantiated, adds to indications of covert Iranian support for the Houthi insurgency against the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-backed Hadi government.

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley referred to a Houthi ballistic missile as the Qiam-1, when she specifically referenced a missile fired in July 2017.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrington, Commander of U.S Air Forces CENTCOM stated, there have been Iranian markings on those missiles, when describing the Houthi missile used in the strike on November 4th, but refrained from formally calling the missile a Qiam-1 SRBM.

In April 2017, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, We see Iranian-supplied missiles being fired by the Houthis into Saudi Arabia.

As well, in a New York Times article in September 2017, Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, Commander of U.S. Naval Forces CENTCOM stated, these types of weapons did not exist in Yemen before the conflict.

According to the Reuters article, while refraining from formally pointing a finger at Iran, UN sanctions experts opted to say, as yet has no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier, of the missiles. They suggested that missiles could be smuggled by land into Yemen in pieces and assembled there by missile engineers.

Oman was one land route the UN monitors mentioned. In fact, Reuters broke a story about Irans use of Omans lax western border with Yemen to ship weapons to its Houthi partners in October 2016. Reuters reported that this overland supply route was likely chosen by Iran as a response to interdicted shipments of light-arms and anti-tank weapons by a maritime coalition.

However, the UN Panel of Experts has doubts about Irans ability to ship SRBMs over land. The UN report in January stated, although anti-tank guided weapons are now being smuggled on the land routes, the Panel assesses it as unlikely that the network using these routes could covertly transfer any significant quantities of larger-calibre weapon systems, such as short-range ballistic missiles, into Yemen at the current time. An anti-tank guided weapon is less than 1 m in length and easily hidden in a large truck, while a short-range ballistic missile of 7 m in length is much more difficult to conceal.

Transferring the Qiam-1 would constitute a violation of the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2216 that formally levied an arms embargo on Yemen in 2015. It would also be a violation of Annex B of UNSCR 2231, which codified the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and contains clauses governing transfers of ballistic missile technology found in the MTCR list.

According to an article by France 24 analyzing the same UN report, the Iranian missile was marked with a logo similar to that of the Sahid Begheri Industrial Group (SBIG) a subsidiary of the Iranian Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO). Both entities are reported to be a part of Irans defense-industrial base, with AIO being a formal subsidiary of Irans Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). The three entities are sanctioned in the US under Executive Order 13382, according the 2015 nuclear deal. The European Union is slated to de-list them no later than 2023.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior Iran Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) writes in an article for Long War Journal, o
At the same time, on Wednesday, state media reported that Irans foreign ministry was denying the US accusations that Tehran is playing a destabilizing role in the region. Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi was quoted as saying, Repeating the groundless accusations and lies will not help solve the large and strategic mistakes America has made in recent decades against Iran and the region. He added, While theres time remaining, Mr. Tillerson should become more familiar with the realities and history of the region and American policies, and its effects which has led to serious instability and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children and people.

On Tuesday, the first day of the Brussels meeting, Tillerson said that Iran is carrying out destabilizing actions by supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, supplying missiles to Houthi insurgents in Yemen, and sending weapons and militia fighters to Syria.

Tillerson also said during his visit, that Iran must comply with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which it agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of a number of sanctions. US President Trump refused to certify that Tehran was complying with the accord even though international inspectors said it was, last October, kicking the problem to Congress.

Tillerson also reassured his 28 EU counterparts that the US remains committed to a strong partnership. The partnership between America and the European Union  is based upon shared values, shared objectives for security and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic and we remain committed to that, he said at a meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs.

Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, has spent much of his time as secretary of state trying to smooth the America First foreign policy that has alarmed Trumps allies, but the president has publicly undercut the secretary of states diplomatic initiatives.

His trip to Europe this week was partly overshadowed by reports the White House had a plan to replace him, which Tillerson denied on Wednesday.
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By Mail Today Bureau: The Chhattisgarh government has erased the footprints of Naxalism, poverty and malnutrition with the help of development and skill training of the youth, said a usually quiet, but determined chief minister Raman Singh, who coincidentally completed 14 years of his uninterrupted rule in the tribal-dominated state on Thursday.

The CM was speaking at the first Mail Today "Skill and Entrepreneurship Summit" at a glittering function in Delhi. The three-term CM and veteran BJP leader introduced the audience to two radiant girls from his state.

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"I would like all of you to meet Lalita Ikka and Sita Naag. My daughters (the girls) have come from one of the most backward, isolated villages in Chhattisgarh in district Jashpur. They took the benefit of fire safety training under the skill development schemes offered by our government, and are today providing services in the Capital city, Delhi," he said.

"With their background, they could have been farm labourers or household maids. But they are examples of a new, shining Chhattisgarh that is growing by leaps and bounds."

'FASTEST GROWING STATE'

The CM, known for developing the most robust public distribution system (PDS) of ration food in the world, said there were many challenges before the state.

"Chhattisgarh has been in existence for only 17 years now. Even our Bastar is bigger than Kerala. Over 45 per cent of our land is under forest cover. Plus, decades of negligence of the region had pushed it into darkness," he explained.

"But now, we are developing our population. We have created skill upgradation colleges in 27 districts. We have tied up with 2,000 plus vocation training providers like Maruti in the automobile sector and several hospitals, created a whole education hub in Sukma, 68 nursing colleges, several agricultural colleges and schools. Chhattisgarh has already been recognised as the fastest growing state in the country and has gained reputation on national and international level."

Singh informed the audience about the sectors in which the youth of the state is being trained. People here have traditionally been into mining of minerals and collecting forest produce. So training is being given to them for doing these better and making more earnings, he said.

"Minor forest produce here includes tendu leaves, saal leaves, honey, herbs, mahua, lac, etc. We are providing our tribal markets to sell these to, and tying up with various food processing companies. Further, we are skilling them in poultry, dairy and fishery," he said.

"Even our murga kadaknath (a breed of chicken) is selling across India now. At least 50 SHGs (self-help groups) have come up in Chhattisgrah which are rearing these murgas and selling them to various hotels and restaurants."

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FASTER DEVELOPMENT WITH MODI AT CENTRE

The CM also noted that after the formation of a new government at the Centre under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the pace of development has increased in Chhattisgarh, in line with the spirit of 'Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas' (all together, development for all).

Singh said the state government has consistently worked for the betterment of the poor, farmers and all the sections of society.

He further said his government was committed to the development of the state, including basic necessities of people such as education, health, roads, communication, electricity and drinking water.

"We have laid out several hundred kilometers of road network in spite of the Naxal problem. We lost 12 BSF jawans to just rolling out 1km of road in our Naxal infested areas, so you can judge how difficult it is," he underlined.

"We have laid out 600 km of cable lines in Bastar, providing smartphones free of cost so that people may benefit of connectivity and internet, and given 50,000 solar pumps for irrigation work to our farmers. We are not leaving any stone unturned in turning around the state."

FULL COVERAGE OF MAIL TODAY SUMMIT | CM Raman Singh on Chhattisgarh | 'Sabko hunar, Sabko kaam': UP govt's skill mission | On capacity building | Overseas Opportunities for Skilled India | Social entrepreneurship with focus on rural employment

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American Senator Al Franken of Minnesota said he will resign from Congress in the coming weeks. The Democrat announced his decision Thursday.

Over several weeks, eight women have accused Franken of sexual wrongdoing. Democratic lawmakers pressured him to resign because of the reports.

I may be resigning my seat, but I am not giving up my voice, Franken said in the Senate chamber.

Before he became a senator, Franken was a comedian and cast member of the television show, Saturday Night Live. He had gained respect as a serious lawmaker in recent years. Some people were considering Franken as a possible candidate for president in 2020.

On Wednesday morning, a woman said Franken used force to try to kiss her in 2006. Franken strongly denied the report. Hours later, another woman said Franken held part of her body inappropriately while taking a photograph with her in 2009.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said Wednesday, Enough is enough, in reaction to the latest accusations. Gillibrand is also a Democrat.

She said We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is OK, none of it is acceptable. She also said the behavior of elected leaders should be held to a higher standard.

Several Democrats quickly followed Gillibrands call for Franken to resign, including Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats.

Franken has admitted to some of the accusations of sexual wrongdoing and apologized. But he strongly denies the latest accusations.

I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator  nothing  has brought dishonor on this institution, Franken said Thursday.

Franken noted that he was being forced out while President Donald Trump remains in office. Several women have accused Trump of sexual wrongdoing. The president was also recorded years ago talking about grabbing women sexually.

I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls, campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party, Franken said.

Trump has given his support to that campaign, in which Republican Roy Moore is seeking to represent the state of Alabama. Several women have reported that Moore sexually harassed them when they were teenagers and he was a state official. The candidate has denied all accusations of sexual wrongdoing.

The pressure on Franken to leave the Senate increased this week after the resignation of Representative John Conyers. The House lawmaker, a Democrat from Michigan, resigned following several reports of sexual wrongdoing.

The accusations against Franken began in November. Leeann Tweeden, now a Los Angeles radio announcer, accused him of forcibly kissing and touching her in 2006.

I'm Caty Weaver.

Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on AP news reports. Caty Weaver was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

chamber - n. a large room where members of a legislature meet

a line in the sand - idiom, a limit to what one will accept or a point beyond which one will not go

standard - n. a level of quality or achievement that is considered desirable

institution - n. an established organization

irony - n. a situation that is strange because things happen in the opposite of what you expect

brag - v. to talk about yourself in a way that show too much pride

prey - v. to hurt someone
2 A giant U.S. flag screened alongside Israel's national flag by the Jerusalem municipality on the walls of the old city. U.S. President Donald Trump recognized the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and kicked off the process of relocating the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.


The self-declared Islamic State (IS) group is close to defeat in Syria and Iraq.

Now, some observers say the groups hope of winning the information war is also failing. They say IS propagandists are unable to say their side is winning. So the propagandists are redirecting their attention and calling on IS supporters to carry out attacks in other areas.

The group released a video showing the change in its media strategy. Gone are the images of hundreds of victorious IS fighters and their many weapons. In the past, the militants also would describe the large areas of territory under their control. The new video has no claims of people living happily in an IS-ruled caliphate.

Instead, the video shows just a small group of fighters on an armored truck.

It looks like this is Raqqa, said Charlie Winter, an expert on terrorist propaganda. He works at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at Kings College London. He said the militant group wants to prove it is still a strong fighting force. Yet the video shows only three men in a truck in a largely empty city.

Winter noted that the most important change took place during the past few weeks. He said it was as if someone had told the IS propagandists to stop talking. He believes one or more media centers around Raqqa (in Syria) have been destroyed. Because of the groups shrinking territory, it is difficult for IS to get source material for its propaganda.

United States-supported coalition forces fighting IS militants have also learned the importance of propaganda. Coalition forces are targeting the media operations.

Winter said the militants are changing their message to lower expectations  from hope for a caliphate to simple survival.

It (Islamic State) still has the true believers killing themselves in its name, he said, explaining that IS still exists even if it does not control land.

In past years, IS propaganda tried to appeal to foreigners with the dream of an Islamic utopia.

No longer is it calling for people to travel to Syria and Iraq, Winter said, adding that it is pushing for believers to carry out attacks in their own countries.

That is where Islamic State propaganda is trying to claim success. The group says it has influenced recent vehicle attacks in European capitals and in New York City. Yet there is little evidence to support those claims.

Winter said the international media helps the militants when it reports their claims. It makes them look powerful when, in fact, they are very weak.

The most recent propaganda video from Islamic State said that the group will soon be in control of Egypts Sinai Peninsula. Gunmen claiming to represent IS attacked an Islamic religious center there, killing more than 300 people.

I'm Susan Shand.

Henry Ridgwell reported this story for VOANews.com. Susan Shand adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

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United States President Donald Trump has declared that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Trump made the announcement Wednesday at the White House. He said the U.S. will begin steps to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

That process is expected to take years to complete however.

The move had been expected after Trump informed Palestinian and Jordanian leaders of the U.S. decision Tuesday.

Trump had promised to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital during his presidential campaign. The action is seen as an effort to complete a promise to political supporters, U.S. Jewish groups and American evangelical Christians.

However, many political and religious leaders around the world voiced serious concerns about the move.

Palestinian and Jordanian leaders condemned the U.S. plans.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned the move could have dangerous consequences to peace efforts in the Middle East.

In a statement Wednesday, he said Trump's decision was a declaration of withdrawal from the role (the U.S.) has played in the peace process.

Jordans King Abdullah also expressed deep concerns. He said that ignoring the Palestinian Muslim and Christian rights in Jerusalem will only fuel further extremism and undermine the war against terrorism.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem represented a red line for Muslims. He also warned that Turkey may decide to cut ties with Israel.

Jerusalem is home to important holy places for three major world religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Israel captured the Arab area in east Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel then declared the whole city its capital. However, the move is not recognized internationally.

Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

The international community does not recognize Israels control over the whole city but says negotiations should decide Jerusalems status.

Officials in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt also warned that Trumps decision could harm peace efforts and increase tensions in the region. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators burned U.S. and Israeli flags in protest.

Several major European leaders  including those of Britain, France and Germany - expressed strong concerns. They said any change to Jerusalems current status should be decided by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump's decision, calling it "historic" for his country.

In his announcement, Trump said the decision was long overdue and one he believed was in the best interest of the United States. He added that the current course had failed for many years to move forward the peace process.

Trump said the decision marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He said the U.S. remains deeply committed to helping both sides reach an acceptable peace agreement.

Trump said he would accept a possible two-state solution for Jerusalem if the Israelis and Palestinians are willing to negotiate such a settlement.

We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders, Trump said. Those questions are up to the parties involved.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from the Associated Press and Reuters. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

evangelical  adj. of or relating to a Christian sect or group that stresses the authority of the Bible, the importance of believing that Jesus Christ saved you personally from sin or hell, and the preaching of these beliefs to other people

consequence  n. something that happens as a result of a particular action

undermine  v. make something weaker or less effective

role  n. a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation

status  n. official position of something

overdue  adj. not appearing or presented by a stated, expected, or required time

course  n. a direction of certain action

approach  n. way of dealing with something

specific  adj. special or particular

boundary  n. marker setting the division of one area from another

sovereignty  n. a country's independent authority and the right to govern itself

contest  v. to not agree with or accept something
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. was founded in 1869 by Marcus Goldman as an investment bank catering to institutions and businesses. Among the firm's first products are the revolutionary use of commercial paper for entrepreneurs which opened a new method of finance for business and industry.

The original firm expanded to Goldman Sachs in 1882 with the inclusion of son-in-law Samuel Sachs and again in 1885 with a son and another son-in-law. The firm joined the New York Stock Exchange in 1896 expanding into trading of its own and in 1898 it was worth $1.6 million. The company began its work in the IPO market in 1906 with the initial public offering of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and then moved on to Ford and other prominent names of the time.

The 1930s brings a change of leadership and a new direction for the firm. The company shifted toward a purer play on investment banking and embarks on a campaign of acquisition that lasted until the present day. The company doesnt go public itself until 1999 and from that point on it will change into a bank holding company that not only offers investment banking services but takes deposits too, and in 2016 the company added consumer banking to its list of services.

Today, Goldman Sachs is a financial institution that provides a range of financial services for corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals globally. The company operates through four segments that include Investment Banking, Global Markets, Asset Management, and Consumer & Wealth Management. According to US banking regulations, it is systemically important to the financial health of America.

The company is headquartered in New York, New York, and operates 6 regional headquarters as well. Regional headquarters are located in financial hotspots such as London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangalore, and Warsaw. Among its many prominent CEOs are John Corzine and Hank Paulson who both went on to successful work in government.

The company's Investment Banking segment provides a full range of financial advisory services as well as underwriting for the public markets. The financial advisory services include but are not limited to strategic advisory for mergers and acquisitions, divestiture, restructuring, and spin-offs. This segment is also engaged in middle-market lending and transaction banking. Underwriting services include IPOs, preferred stock, debt instruments, and bridge loans.

Goldman Sachs Global Markets segment facilitates market transactions for institutions, banks, brokerages, corporations, and governments. Services include execution, derivatives, financing, clearing, settlement, and custody.

The Asset Management segment manages client portfolios across the investment spectrum while the Consumer & Wealth Management segment provides advisory and banking services to consumers.
China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

By PTI: An Indian drone "crossed over" the border with China and crashed in the Sikkim sector which includes Dokalam after losing contact with the ground control, prompting Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with India over the violation of Chinas territorial sovereignty.

China's Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashed into the Chinese side of the border recently.

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"Recently an Indian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) invaded Chinas airspace and crashed in the Sikkim section of China- India border," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here.

He said the Chinese border troops had taken a "professional and responsible attitude" to verify the device.

Geng did not spell out when the incident had taken place.

In New Delhi, India's defence ministry today said an unmanned aerial vehicle had "crossed over" the border with China in the Sikkim sector after losing contact with the ground control due to some technical problem.

It said the Indian border security personnel, as per standard protocol, immediately alerted their Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV and they later reverted with its location.

The defence ministry said the exact cause of the incident is under investigation.

Sources said the UAV belonged to the Indian Army.

The incident comes to light days before Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi to attend the Russia- India-China trilateral meeting.

"I want to point out that the Sikkim section of the China India border has been delimited," Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman said, in an apparent reference to the 1890 China- British Treaty.

Beijing often referred to the 1890 Britain-China treaty during the lengthy Dokalam standoff, stating that it has defined the Sikkim section of the boundary with Tibet, therefore the border in that area has been settled.

"The action of the Indian side violated China's sovereignty and it is not conducive to the peace and tranquillity of the border area and China is dissatisfied with this and lodged solemn representation with the Indian side," Geng said.

In its diplomatic protest to India, "China asked the Indian side to stop the activities of the devices near the border and work with China to maintain peace and tranquillity of the border areas", he said.

Geng declined to reveal the details of the drone. He did not confirm whether the crash has taken place near the Dokalam where the two countries were locked in a 73-day-long border standoff which ended on August 28.

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The standoff ended after Chinese troops stopped building a key road close to India's Chicken Neck corridor.

Asked whether the protest was lodged in Beijing or Delhi, he said he is not aware of the details. "I know that China has lodged solemn representation to the Indian side," he said.

Earlier, the Chinese military alleged that an Indian drone has "intruded" into its airspace recently and crashed into the Chinese side of the border and voiced strong dissatisfaction and opposition over the incident.

The Indian UAV "intruded" into China's airspace and crashed recently, and China's border troops have conducted identification and verification over the vehicle, Zhang Shuili, deputy head of the combat bureau of the Western Theatre Commands joint staff department said.

The Chinese military's western theatre command jurisdiction covers all most all of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and including Tibet's border region with India and the Ladakh region.

"Indias move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang has been quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

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"We will fulfil our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely," he said.

Asked whether the drone issue would figure in Wangs talks with Indian officials when he visits New Delhi, Geng said the "goal" of the Chinese foreign ministers visit was to attend the RIC meeting.

"When he is in India he will meet with the senior officials of the Indian side. At that time, the two sides will exchange views on China-India relations and other issues of the common concern," he said.

Wangs visit to Delhi will be the first visit by a top Chinese official to India after the Dokalam crisis and commencement of the second five-year term for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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Baxter International Inc., through its subsidiaries, develops and provides a portfolio of healthcare products worldwide. The company offers peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis, and additional dialysis therapies and services; intravenous therapies, infusion pumps, administration sets, and drug reconstitution devices; remixed and oncology drug platforms, inhaled anesthesia and critical care products and pharmacy compounding services; parenteral nutrition therapies and related products; biological products and medical devices used in surgical procedures for hemostasis, tissue sealing and adhesion prevention; and continuous renal replacement therapies and other organ support therapies focused in the intensive care unit. It also provides connected care solutions, including devices, software, communications, and integration technologies; integrated patient monitoring and diagnostic technologies to help diagnose, treat, and manage a various illness and diseases, including respiratory therapy, cardiology, vision screening, and physical assessment; surgical video technologies, tables, lights, pendants, precision positioning devices and other accessories. In addition, the company offers contracted services to various pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. Its products are used in hospitals, kidney dialysis centers, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, doctors' offices, and patients at home under physician supervision. The company sells its products through direct sales force, as well as through independent distributors, drug wholesalers, and specialty pharmacy or other alternate site providers in approximately 100 countries. It has an agreement with Celerity Pharmaceutical, LLC to develop acute care generic injectable premix and oncolytic molecules. Baxter International Inc. was incorporated in 1931 and is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois.
First Horizon Corporation operates as the bank holding company for First Horizon Bank that provides various financial services. The company operates through three segments: Regional Banking, Specialty Banking, and Corporate. It offers general banking services for consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments. The company also underwrites bank-eligible securities and other fixed-income securities eligible for underwriting by financial subsidiaries; sells loans and derivatives; and offers advisory services. In addition, it offers various services, such as mortgage banking; title insurance and loan-closing; brokerage; correspondent banking; nationwide check clearing and remittance processing; trust, fiduciary, and agency; equipment finance; and investment and financial advisory services. Further, the company sells mutual fund and retail insurance products; and credit cards. It operates approximately 500 banking offices in 22 states under the First Horizon Bank brand; and 400 banking centers in 12 states under the FHN Financial brand in the United States. The company was formerly known as First Horizon National Corporation and changed its name to First Horizon Corporation in November 2020. First Horizon Corporation was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.
By PTI: Kolkata, Dec 7 (PTI) Classes resumed today after nearly a week at the G D Birla Centre for Education here after the school management and guardians reached a settlement over the demand for removal of the principal in the wake of the sexual assault of a minor girl.

A school managing committee spokesman told PTI that classes of the senior section began this morning.

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"The classes of the junior section will resume from tomorrow," he said.

The stalemate ended yesterday night after the management decided to "relieve" principal Sharmila Nath from her present responsibilities, following a three-hour long meeting with the Guardians Forum.

"The principal has been relieved of her present responsibilities with immediate effect, and the vice-principal and a coordinator will be officiating," the spokesman said.

A guardian of a senior-section student said, "We are very happy that classes resumed today. The stalemate would have affected studies of children had it continued."

On November 30, a four-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted in the school, which led to the arrest of two physical training instructors amid a massive agitation by guardians.

The parents of the girl had lodged an FIR against Nath on December 2, demanding her arrest for allegedly suppressing facts about the incident.

Subsequently, Nath was summoned to the Kolkata Police headquarters in Lalbazar on December 5.

West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights chairperson Ananya Chakraborti, who was also present at yesterdays meeting, said, "The principal has been relieved of her responsibilities. We are happy over the outcome."

The meeting was attended by the school management, representatives of the Guardians Forum and senior police officers.

A spokesperson of the forum said the school management has promised to look into their other demands -- having no male teacher in both junior and senior sections and installation of CCTV in school buses.

The police have also formed a special committee to look into the allegations of negligence and false representation on part of the school principal. PTI SUS RBT DV

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The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..

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NextEra Energy, Inc. is the largest electric utility holding company in the US. It operates a network of power generation and distribution facilities that include fossil-fuel-generated and green energy. As of mid-2022, the company was capable of generating 58 GW of electricity with nearly 60% of the load produced by green sources including wind and solar. In their view, going green isnt an option, its the solution. NextEra Energy has been recognized multiple times as a leader in clean energy and ESG practices and was ranked the #1 electric and gas utility on the Forbes list of Most Admired Companies.

The company is the result of several mergers that begin with FPL Group. FPL Group is now a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and the third-largest provider of electricity in the US servicing nearly half of Florida. FPL and its affiliates are the single largest provider of renewable energy generated from wind and sun. The group changed its name in 2010 following a decision to shift focus onto renewable energy sources.

Today, NextEra Energy, Inc through its subsidiary FPL serves about 12 million people in eastern and southwestern Florida. The company employs nearly 14,900 people who service 5.8 million accounts. The company is in business to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to retail and wholesale clients. Electricity is generated through wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired facilities.

The company is also engaged in the construction and operation of new facilities, specifically renewable power generation, storage, and delivery facilities, and can offer custom solutions tailored to any need. Offerings include tailored services to assist businesses with their transition to clean energy.

NextEra Energy also owns and operates 7 nuclear power stations in Florida, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin generating power for the wholesale market.

Unlike other companies that are targeting net-zero emissions, NextEra Energy has a plan to reach real zero and is investing heavily to reach that goal by 2045. The company had invested nearly $50 billion in green energy infrastructure and initiatives by mid-2022. The plan is to first work on reducing its own emissions and then take its knowledge and expertise to the world.
The following companies are subsidiares of Quanta Services: (De) Lazy Q Ranch LLC, 1 Diamond LLC, 1Diamond AS, 618232 Alberta Ltd., 8246408 Canada Inc., Advanced Electric Systems, Advanced Electric Systems LLC, Advanced Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Alexander Publications LLC, Allteck GP Ltd., Allteck Limited Partnership, Apprenticeship Programs Inc., Arby Construction, Arcanum Chemicals LLC, Arnett & Burgess Oil Field Construction Limited, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners (Rockies) LLC, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners Ltd., B&N Clearing and Environmental LLC, Banister Pipelines Constructors Corp., Banister Pipelines Constructors GP Ltd., Banister Pipelines Limited Partnership, Brent Woodward Inc., Brink Constructors Inc., Brink Constructors Inc. A Corporation Of South Dakota, Brown Engineering and Testing, CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership, CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership (Regd Name) CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-Spec Limited Partnership, Canadian Utility Construction Corp., Cat Spec Limited LP, Cat Spec Ltd, Cat Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat Spec Ltd. LP, Cat Spec. Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd (A Domestic limited Partnership), Cat-Spec Ltd LP, Cat-Spec Ltd., Cat-Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat-Spec Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd. Limited Partnership, Catalyst Changers Inc., Chatham Electric, Citadel Industrial Services L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Coe Drilling Pty Ltd., Computapole, Conam Construction Co., Consolidated Power Projects Australia Pty Ltd, Conti Communications Inc., Crux Subsurface Canada Ltd., Crux Subsurface Inc., Cutting Technology - 1 Diamond LLC, DB Utilities Inc., DE Lazy Q Ranch LLC, DNR Pressure Welding Ltd., Dacon Corporation, Dashiell (DE) Corporation (Dashiell Corporation), Dashiell Corporation, Dashiell Corporation DBA Dashiell (DE) Corporation, De Mears Group, De Mears Group Inc., Delaware Quanta Technology LLC, Delaware Underground Construction Co., Didado Utility Company Inc., Digco Utility Construction L.P. Digco Utility Construction Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services. Ltd. L.P., Driftwood Electrical Contractors, EHV Power ULC, ELITE PIPING & CIVIL L.P., ELITE TURNAROUND SPECIALISTS LTD, Elite Fabrication Ltd. Elite Fabrication LP, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Lp, Elite Piping & Civil Ltd L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. Limited Partnership, Elite Piping and Civil L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists L.p., Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. LP, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. Limited Partnership, Energy Consulting Group LLC, Enscope, Enscope Pty Ltd, FIC GP LLC, Field Personnel Services LLC, First Infrastructure Capital Advisors LLC, First Infrastructure Capital GP L.P., Five Points Construction Co., G-Tek, G-Vac, GEM Engineering Co., Grand Electric Inc., Great Lakes Line Builders, Grid Creative Inc., Grid Manufacturing Corporation, Grid Training Corporation, H.L. Chapman Pipeline Construction Inc., Haverfield Aviation, Haverfield Aviation Inc., Haverfield International Incorporated, Heritage Midstream LLC, IM Electric Inc., IUC ILLINOIS LLC, IUC Nebraska LLC, InfraSource Construction LLC, InfraSource Field Services LLC, InfraSource Services LLC, InfraSources Construction LLC, Infraestructura ETP de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Infrasource Engineering Company PC, Infrasource Iowa Underground LLC, Infrasource Of Pa LLC, Integracion Tecnologica del Peru SAC, Intermountain Electric Inc., Intermountain Electric Inc. A Corporation of Colorado, IonEarth LLC, Irby Construction Company, Irby Construction Company Inc., Iron Mountain M.J. Electric LLC, Island Mechanical Corporation, J.C.R. Construction Co. Inc., J.C.R. Utility Construction Co., J.W. Didado Electric Inc., J.W. Didado Electric LLC, J.w. Didado Electric, JBT Electric LLC, Kingston Contracting Inc., Lazy Q Ranch LLC, Lazy Q Training Center LLC The Lazy Q Lineman School, Legend Foundation Services, Lex Engineering Ltd., Lindsey Electric L.P., Logical Link, Longfellow Drilling, M. G. Dyess Inc., M. J. ELECTRIC LLC IRON MOUNTAIN, M. J. Electric LLC, M. J. Electric LLC - Iron Mountain, M. J. Electric LLC DBA M. J. Electric Iron Mountain LLC, M.J. Electric LLC DBA M.J. Electric Iron Mountain, M.J. Electric LLC Iron Mountain, MTS Field Services, MTS Field Services (Richmond Co), MTS Quanta LLC, Manuel Bros. Inc., Marathon Construction Services, Mears Canada Corp., Mears Equipment Services LLC, Mears Group Inc., Mears Group Pty Ltd, Mears Installation LLC, Mearsmex S. de R.L. de C.V., Mejia Personnel Services LLC, Mercer Technical Services, Microline Technology Corporation, Mid America Energy Services Inc., NACAP Niugini Ltd., NC Northstar Energy Services Inc, NGI Construction, NGI Construction Inc., NGI Construction Inc. (FN), NLC CA. Inc., NLC FL. Inc. Northwest Lineman Center, NLC ID. Inc. Northwest Lineman College, NLC TX. Inc., NPC Energy Services LLC, Nacap Australia, Nacap PNG Limited, Network Communication Services, North Houston Pole Line L.P., North Houston Pole Line Limited Partnership, North Sky Communications, NorthStar Energy Services Inc., Northern Powerline Constructors Inc., Northstar Energy Solutions LLC, Northwest Lineman Center, Northwest Lineman College, Northwest Lineman Training Center, Northwest Lineman Training Center Inc., Nova Constructors LLC, Nova Constructors LTD, Nova Equipment Leasing LLC, Nova Group Inc, Nova Group Inc (CA), Nova Group Inc., Nova Group Inc. DBA NGI Construction, Nova NextGen Solutions LLC, O. J. Pipelines Canada Corporation, O. J. Pipelines Canada Limited Partnership, O.J. Industrial Maintenance, O.J. Pipelines Canada, One Call Locators Canada Ltd., P.D.G. 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People are confused about Aadhaar as several doubts have been raised about its data security system.

Government is moving towards making Aadhaar linking mandatory for all services and schemes. Photo for representation: Reuters.

By India Today Web Desk: The Centre may have agreed to extend the deadline for mandatory Aadhaar linking till March 31 next year but there is still no way you can escape it.

Most people are confused about Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identification number, with doubts being raised about its data security system. To make matters worse, myths and half-truths on Aadhaar are doing the rounds.

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The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the 12-digit Aadhaar number, is trying to clear some of the confusion by dispelling the myths associated with Aadhaar.

MYTH 1: Aadhaar database can be hacked and vital information can be leaked.

FACT: A few weeks ago, UIDAI in response to an RTI query said that 200 central and state government websites publicly displayed details of Aadhaar beneficiaries.

The UIDAI, however, maintains that reports of data leak are false. According to the Aadhaar-issuing agency, some Central and state government agencies are putting up details of beneficiaries through a search menu as required under the RTI Act. The UIDAI says restrictions are in place to ensure Aadhaar number and bank account details are not published.

In this particular instance, when it was brought to the agencies' notice that Aadhaar numbers and personal details of beneficiaries were put up publicly, the same was removed immediately.

UIDAI maintains that biometrics were never displayed and said that it will be incorrect to say that Aadhaar was breached.

MYTH 2: Aadhaar will be used to track me.

FACT: According to UIDAI, the Aadhaar Act provides that no agency will be able to track an individual through Aadhaar. An attempt to do so is an offence under the Aaddhar Act.

MYTH 3: People without Aadhaar are being denied of subsidies and benefits under various welfare schemes.

FACT: Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act makes it clear that the government can ask beneficiaries of various social welfare schemes to provide their Aadhaar numbers. If the beneficiary does not have an Aadhaar number, he or she is required to enrol for one. However, till the time the person does not get an Aadhaar number, he or she will not be denied of the benefits of social welfare schemes.

MYTH 4: Aadhaar database is poorly verified.

FACT: The agencies involved with enrolment are empanelled by the UIDAI. Also, Aadhaar enrolmnent is done through customised software which is developed and provided by the UIDAI. At the time of enrolment, the captured data is encrypted and cannot be read by anyone but the UIDAI server.

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MYTH 5: I gave my fingerprints to a telecom company for getting a SIM card and fear my biometrics can be used by the company in future.

FACT: The telecom company CANNOT store your biometrics at its end and has to send the encrypted biometrics to UIDAI immediately. Under the Aadhaar Act, storing someone's biometrics is a punishable crime with imprisonment up to three years.

MYTH 6: I shared my Aadhaar number on a social platform and now anyone can steal my identity.

FACT: Aadhaar number, bank account number and mobile numbers are not secret but sensitive personal identity information. It is your PIN and passwords that are secret numbers and should not be shared with anyone.

When you write a cheque to someone, it carries your bank account number and it is wrong to assume that a person can hack your account using that number.

That said, you should try and not share your bank account numbers, your Aadhaar number on a social media platform.

(Source: official website of UIDAI)

WATCH: How to link Aadhaar with your PAN card

--- ENDS ---
Chinese phone maker Xiaomi is bringing 18:9 (or 2:1) aspect ratio displays to its budget Redmi line of smartphones.

The Redmi 5 is a $120 with a 5.7 inch, 1440 x 720 pixel display and slim bezels, while the Redmi 5 Plus is a 6 inch model with a 2160 x 1080 pixel display, more powerful specs, and a starting price of about $150.

Both phones will be available in China at launch, although Xiaomi does sell its Redmi phones in some other markets.

Heres an overview of the specs for each model:

Xiaomi Redmi 5

5.7 inch, 1440 x 720 pixel display

Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor

2GB RAM and 16GB storage for 799 RMB ($120) or

3GB RAM/32GB storage for 899 RMB ($135)

3,300 mAh battery

Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus

5,99 inch, 2160 x 1080 pixel display

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor

3GB/32GB for 999 RMB ($150) or

4GB/64GB for 1299 RMB ($195)

4,000 mAh battery

Both phones have fingerprint sensors on the back, 12MP rear and 5MP front cameras, microSD card readers, and the phones come in black, blue, gold, and rose gold color options.


The Talents Development Committee revealed that one-third of Macaus current local labor force has a tertiary education degree. According to Macaus first five-year plan, by 2020, the ratio is expected to grow to 40 percent. Recently, the committee has conducted thorough research on Macaus human resources demands. One of the research efforts focused on the finance and construction industries. The committee also established a plan to attract Macaus talented human resources living abroad to return to the city. Many education subsidy programs have also been launched, including a UN internship program, and a masters subsidy program at the University of Coimbra.

New wholesale market begins operations

On Monday, Macaus new wholesale market begun operating with double the number of stalls (222 in total) compared to the previous wholesale market, according to a statement released by the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau. All business operators from the old market (127 stalls) have already moved to the new one. The market provides 274 and 223 public parking spaces for cars and motorbikes, respectively. Vegetables and fruits are available for purchase from the ground floor up to the second floor. The third floor is reserved for sales of frozen poultry. Later, new stalls will be arranged on the fourth up to the sixth floors of the market.

Hoi Va Pou appointed IAS deputy director

Hoi Va Pou has been appointed deputy director of the Social Affairs Bureau (IAS), according to an announcement released by the office of the Secretariat for Social Affairs and Culture yesterday. He will commence his term on January 1, 2018. Hoi joined the civil service in 1994 and has been head of the IAS Department of Prevention and Treatment of Problem Gambling and Drug Dependence since 2016. He has held leadership positions for 18 of his 23 years working for the Macau government.

CPCS suggests exemptions to minimum wage regime

Wang Sai Man, a representative of the Employers Organizations of the Standing Committee for the Coordination of Social Affairs (CPCS), suggested that small companies, domestic helpers, and people whose jobs lack fixed hours be exempted from the minimum wage regime. Along with representatives from the Federation of the Trade Union and the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL), the CPCS representative said the work of domestic helpers falls into a special category and that the minimum wage should not apply. DSAL acting director Ng Wai Han said that the minimum wage will not become a standard for increasing salaries.

CE to visit Guangzhou for annual conference

Chief Executive Chui Sai On will lead a government delegation to visit Guangzhou on December 11 for the 2017 Guangdong-Macau Co-operation Joint Conference. During the meeting, Chui and the Governor of Guangdong Province, Ma Xingrui, will review past achievements and discuss issues of mutual interest. According to a statement issued by the government, topics for discussion will include enhancing efforts for the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area; outlining major annual tasks for the Framework Agreement on Co-operation between Guangdong and Macau; advancing facility connectivity and integration to build an international technology and innovation center; boosting industry modernization; and strengthening participation in the development of the mainlands Belt and Road initiative. The two governments are expected to sign several agreements during the conference.
China scolded Australia yesterday over its plan to ban foreign interference in politics  either through espionage or financial donations  in a move motivated largely by Russias alleged involvement in last years U.S. election and Chinas growing influence on the global political landscape.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said this week that foreign interference in politics would be outlawed under updated treason and espionage laws. The announcement comes as a U.S. investigation into alleged election meddling by Russia continues and follows concerns about Chinese money and influence in Australian politics.

Foreign powers are making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process, both here and abroad, Turnbull told reporters this week.

The Chinese Embassy in Australia responded in a statement yesterday that said: China has no intention to interfere in Australias internal affairs or exert influence on its political process through political donations.

We urge the Australian side to look at China and China-Australia relations in an objective, fair and rational manner, the statement added.

Under legislation expected to be introduced in Parliament this week, it would become a crime for a person to engage in conduct on behalf of a foreign principal that will influence a political or governmental process, including opposition party policy, and is either covert or involves deception.

The foreign influence and interference package will be complemented by another bill on electoral reform that will ban foreign political donations.

The laws would criminalize acts such as opposition Sen. Sam Dastyaris soliciting of a donation from a Chinese businessman, Huang Xiangmo, to cover personal expenses; it got Dastyari demoted last week. Dastyari then misrepresented Australias policy on Chinas sweeping territorial claims in the South China at a press conference held exclusively for Chinese reporters and attended by Huang.

Dastyari has been dubbed Shanghai Sam for his dealings with Huang, a wealthy Sydney-based donor to Australian political parties whom Australian security services suspect is linked to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. The Australian government argues that Dastyari should quit Parliament for giving Huang counter-surveillance advice last year when he told the Chinese citizen to leave his cellphone inside his Sydney mansion while they stepped outside to talk.

The government argues that by helping Huang avoid Australian security surveillance, Dastyari had not put Australias interests first. Dastyari has not denied the accusation, but said he did not know Huang was the target of a surveillance operation.

The Chinese statement said Australian media reports reflected a typical anti-China hysteria and paranoid and tarnished Australias reputation as a multicultural society.

Some Australian politicians and government officials also made irresponsible remarks to the detriment of political mutual trust between China and Australia. We categorically reject these allegations, the statement said.

Unlike the U.S. and many other countries that ban foreign donations, Australian law has never distinguished between donors from Australia and overseas.

Former President Barak Obamas administration last year called for the Australian system to be reformed to remove the influence of political donations from China  Australias largest trading partner and its biggest source of foreign political funds.

Then-U.S. Ambassador John Berry said the U.S. was surprised by the amount of Chinese money and influence in Australian politics and wanted Australia to resolve its foreign donation issue. Rod McGuirk, Associated Press, AP
Japan has launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and has declared war on Britain and the United States.

The US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, has mobilised all his forces and is poised to declare war on Japan.

Details of the attack in Hawaii are scarce but initial reports say Japanese bombers and torpedo-carrying planes targeted warships, aircraft and military installations in Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, the third largest and chief island of Hawaii.

News of the daring raid has shocked members of Congress at a time when Japanese officials in Washington were still negotiating with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull on lifting US sanctions imposed after continuing Japanese aggression against China.

At 0755 local time the first wave of between 50 and 150 planes struck the naval base for 35 minutes causing several fires and untold damage to the Pacific Fleet.

The Japanese squadrons dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs.

A second strike followed at about 0900 when a force of at least 100 planes pounded the base for an hour.

At least two Japanese airplanes have been shot down but it is reported that at least 350 men were killed by one single bomb at the Hickam Army Air Field, an Air Corps post on Oahu.

Officials announced a further 104 Army personnel were killed and 300 were wounded in the raid.

It is believed the attack was launched from two aircraft carriers.

One radio report says US forces downed six Japanese planes and sunk four submarines.

There are reports the Hawaiian capital Honolulu was also bombed as well as the Pacific island of Guam and the capital of the Philippines, Manila.

A British gunboat, the Peterel, has also been sunk at Shanghai in China.

Reports from Singapore suggest a build-up of Japanese warships in the South China Sea and seem to be headed for the Gulf of Siam, towards Bangkok.

President Roosevelt is working on a message to Congress tomorrow in which he is expected to ask for a declaration of war with Japan.

The Times newspapers Washington correspondent says the US Government expects Germany and Italy to declare war on the US within hours.

Although the attack has shocked the American people there is little doubt that it had been brewing for some years.

Relations with the United States have deteriorated since 1931 when Japan occupied Manchuria in northern China. Over the last decade conflict has intensified into a full-scale war between Japan and China.

Last year, the US imposed trade sanctions on Japan.

Then in September 1940 Japan signed a Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. It became a formal member of the Axis alliance fighting the European war but continued to negotiate with America for trade concessions until today.

Japans fury over the embargoes and allied support for China prompted a declaration of war.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

Within two hours, six battleships had been sunk, another 112 vessels sunk or damaged, and 164 aircraft destroyed. Only chance saved three US aircraft carriers, usually stationed at Pearl Harbor but assigned elsewhere on the day.

The attacks killed fewer than 100 Japanese but more than 2,400 Americans died  1,000 of those were on the battleship Arizona which was destroyed at her mooring. Another 1,178 US citizens were injured.

The next day, President Roosevelt called the attack on Pearl Harbor a day that will live in infamy and America declared war on Japan ending its policy of isolationism.

There were six wartime and one post-war investigation into how America was taken so totally by surprise. They revealed a lack of co-ordination and communication between Washington and Oahu, and between different armed forces.

As a result local US commanders Admiral Kimmel and Lt-Gen Short were fired.

The attack was a victory for Japan and allowed it to launch a full-scale invasion of South-east Asia. But out of the US warships damaged or sunk on 7 December 1941, only three  the Arizona, Oklahoma and Utah  were beyond repair, and Utah was already obsolete.

Pearl Harbor also united an outraged American nation behind President Roosevelt and behind the war against Japan, and failed to destroy the major US ships , the aircraft carriers.
Bangkok, long a food-lovers paradise, at last has its own Michelin guide but no restaurants achieved the coveted top accolade of three stars.

Indian restaurant Gaggan is among three that won two stars in the debut assessment of the Thai capitals dining scene by the French tiremaker and publisher. French eatery Le Normandie and European restaurant Mezzaluna were the others to get two stars.

And in a city famed for its roadside eating experiences, street food vendor Jay Fai was awarded one star for dishes such as crab omelette and curries.

Bangkok joins the likes of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Macau, Seoul, Shanghai and Singapore in getting the Michelin treatment. Thailands military government is hopeful that promoting the citys gastronomic delights will help keep tourism buzzing and encourage more spending. The nation expects about 37 million arrivals next year  equivalent to more than half the Southeast Asian nations population.

Were confident the launch will attract more food connoisseurs, which will contribute overall to Thailands tourism and leisure market, Yuthasak Supasorn, the governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, said at the launch event yesterday at the Grand Hyatt Erawan in the capital.

Michelin is introducing its guide in Bangkok as part of a broader effort to increase the companys appeal in Asia, as it locks horns with Chinese tire competitors like Shandong Linglong Tyre Co. and Aeolus Tyre Co. Michelin sees the unprofitable guides as helping to position its brand as high quality.

The companys restaurant reviewers anonymously award stars based on creativity, quality and service. Three stars are given to restaurants where the cuisine is akin to art and worth a special journey, two stars are given to those worth a detour, while one star is awarded to establishments that are considered good restaurants in their category.

The accolade for Gaggan comes after it scored a third straight win in the closely watched Asias 50 Best Restaurants ranking earlier this year.

My food is what it was yesterday, and it is what it is today, and theres no difference, Chef Gaggan Anand said in an interview. But today people will look at me and go  hes two stars.

A total of 17 eateries were recognized by Michelin in Thailand yesterday, with 14 getting one star. The guides International Director Michael Ellis said it would take some time before a Bangkok restaurant gets the top rating. Natnicha Chuwiruch, Bloomberg
A talk was held on Tuesday night at the Rui Cunha Foundation, outlining the current geopolitical and security challenges facing the European Union.

Presented by Victor Angelo, a former special representative of the UN and Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, the talk covered the difficulties in a number of regions in close proximity to the European member states, including Russia, the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Sahel.

Can we be an optimist after so many crises [affecting the European Union] and after so many have not been resolved? he asked attendees at the talk.

According to the speaker, the biggest security threat facing the European Union at present is its giant neighbor to the east, Russia, which is believed to have interfered in democratic elections, spread disinformation and propaganda, and is the source of a number of cyber attacks.

Angelo stressed the EUs position that it will not recognize Russias illegal annexation of Crimea nor accept the destabilization of eastern Ukraine.

He also warned that Russia could replicate its tactics in Ukraine in the Baltic states in a bid to extends its influence there. Although Angelo believes the fear of Balkan state officials is exaggerated, he admits that there is a real concern for the countries involved.

The relationship with Russia has to be [approached through] a peaceful settlement of disputes and a respect for the national sovereignty of EU member states. We must say that that kind of annexation [in Crimea] is unacceptable and must be resolved. We must also be able to establish strong relations with states of the former [Soviet Union] and those states do not need to ask Russias permission to establish relations with Brussels.

Although Russia is intent on undermining the European project, Angelo argued that China has an interest in bolstering it  partly because of its trade interests in Europe, but also because it divides the attention of its antagonistic neighbor, Russia.

Angelo also highlighted EU concerns with Turkey in his presentation. Though it was not explicitly mentioned in yesterdays talk, the underlying tension in EU-Turkey relations involves the issue of migrants. Under the terms of a controversial 2016 deal, Turkey is holding back tens of thousands of migrants that might otherwise cross into Europe. This therefore presents a geopolitical vulnerability for the European Union.

Other potential security threats originate in the Maghreb and the Sahel regions of northern Africa, which are increasingly becoming a source of terrorism and large numbers of migrants. Though these lands are separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, they are still relatively close to the southern periphery  and soft underbelly  of the European Union.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.s Jack Ma said China benefits from the stability of its single- party system, contrasting that with the unpredictability of U.S. politics.

The Chinese billionaire made the comments in response to a question about the countrys economy and its prospects for growth. He said he has confidence in Chinas potential and cited as his number one reason the stability of one party in the country, which has been led by the Communists since 1949. In the U.S., the Democrats go one way, then the Republicans go another, he said, which complicates planning.

I am very confident about China, Ma said during an onstage interview at Fortune magazines conference in Guangzhou.

It is Mas second explicitly political declaration this week. At Chinas World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Alibabas chairman spoke out in support of the governments tight control online and lectured foreign competitors on their strategies in the country. He said companies like Facebook Inc. and Google that want to operate in China need to follow the rules, implying they need to adhere to censorship controls to gain access to its citizens.

Also speaking in Guangzhou are Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, Tencent Holdings Ltd.s Pony Ma and Terry Gou, CEO of iPhone manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

Cook emphasized the importance of China to his company, both as the primary place for manufacturing iPhones and iPads and as a market for its products. He said the No. 1 attraction of China for manufacturing is the quality of people. Though Apple has lost ground in the smartphone market against local rivals, Cook said the company is regaining share and he couldnt be happier with sales of the iPhone X so far.

Cook had also given a keynote speech at the Wuzhen conference, his first appearance there, and he defended his involvement against criticism he was lending support to Chinese authorities and their censorship of the internet.

When you go into a country and participate in the market, you are subject to the laws and regulations of that country, he said in Guangzhou. Your choice is, do you participate or do you stand in the sideline and yell at how things should be? My own view, very strongly, is you show up and you participate. You get in the arena because nothing ever changes from sideline.

Tencent CEO Pony Ma talked about the history of his company, which isnt as well known abroad as Alibaba. He explained that several teams competed against each other in messaging services, which led to the success of the companys WeChat and QQ platforms.

Ma, whose company is now the seventh most valuable in the world with a market cap of USD444 billion, said he sees the next big opportunities in education and health care. Tencent has invested in at least seven internet medical companies, he said, without giving their names. Bloomberg
By Kiran Tare: In yet another jolt to the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) a BJP candidate Prasad Lad won the by-poll of Maharashtra Legislative Council on Thursday by managing nine votes from the Congress and NCP.

Out of 284 votes, Lad secured 209 whereas the Congress candidate Dilip Mane got 73. Two votes were termed as invalid.

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As Shiv Sena (63) and a few independents (7) had backed Lad's candidature he was expected to get 192 votes including 122 of the BJP.

Arjun Khotkar of Shiv Sena could not cast his vote as the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court has disqualified him for filing his nomination after the deadline in the October 2014 Assembly election.

On the contrary, Lad got 209, 18 more than the expected.

Mane was expected to get 83 votes including 42 of Congress and 41 of NCP.

Chhagan Bhujbal of NCP did not turn up for voting from the Arthur Road jail where he is lodged in a money laundering case. It means nine votes from the Congress-NCP kitty went to Lad.

Total 288 members of Legislative Assembly were voters in this by-poll.

Apart from Khotkar and Bhujbal two MLAs of MIM did not turn up for voting saying there was no point in voting as Lad's victory was certain.

Interestingly, the BJP has managed to get one vote more for its candidate than the 208 votes it had secured for its candidate in presidential election Ramnath Kovind in July.

In other words, everyone including the independents and small parties has voted for the BJP sending an alarming signal to the Congress and the NCP.

Lad thanked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for "giving an opportunity to contest the by-poll". The atmosphere in the BJP headquarters, however, was not joyful.

No office bearer of the party was present at the Nariman Point office when Lad's victory was announced. While a team of players was playing band at the office the workers were not seen enjoying the by-poll result. No sweet was distributed like victories in previous elections.

The BJP workers had expressed dissatisfaction over the candidature of Lad, who joined the party only two years ago, defecting from the NCP.

The by-poll was conducted after former CM Narayan Rane quit Congress, resigned from his membership of the Council and floated a new outfit, Maharashtra Swabhimaan Party.

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The U.S. would be ready to talk with North Korea if it renounced further nuclear or missile tests and followed through on the pledge, U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad said.

If they announce that theyre not going to be doing any more nuclear tests and theyre not going to be launching any more missiles, Branstad told Bloomberg Television yesterday, when asked what it would take for talks to start. If they announce that and do that, I think theres an opportunity for us to get back to the bargaining table.

Branstad, speaking on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, also said that sanctions against North Korea were starting to have an impact. Calling Kim Jong Uns push for nuclear weapons the biggest threat to humankind right now, the former Iowa governor repeated the Trump administrations call for China to cut off oil sales to Kim Jong Uns regime.

We believe we need to go further, Branstad said. We think oil and also these North Korean workers working in China and other countries, that needs to stop.

President Donald Trump has sought to pressure China to rein in its ally and neighbor, which last week tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile. Kim said the test showed that North Koreas nuclear program was complete because it could deliver an atomic warhead anywhere in the U.S.

While Kim hasnt yet proven he has the technology to put a warhead on an ICBM and deliver it safely to a target, the test has put new pressure on the U.S. and its allies to find a solution. By declaring his weapons program complete, Kim may have created a path to resume negotiations from a position of strength.

I interpret this as a starting gun, signaling that hes opening up the negotiating pas de deux, the dance, Daniel Russel, who until June was assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters in Beijing after the test. The likeliest scenario is that well start seeing some initiatives from one quarter or another and there will be some testing of the ground for negotiations.

The United Nations top official for political affairs is in Pyongyang this week to discuss the nuclear issue, and countries from Canada to Germany are seeking to help facilitate talks. Branstad told the economic forum later yesterday that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was attending the same event, would meet with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss North Korea on Dec. 19.

A spokesman for Trudeau declined to comment on the possible meeting.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling has continued on both sides, with the U.S. sending a B-1B bomber to join massive aerial drills with South Korea (see p12). North Korea had previously threatened to retaliate against the exercise with the highest-level hard-line countermeasure in history.

The U.S. must work with China and others to convince North Korea what they are doing is a suicide mission that makes no sense, Branstad told the forum. He declined to rule out a Trump visit to North Korea at some point, but said the timing is probably not right.

Branstad, 71, has ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping that go back decades. The two men met in 1985, when Xi visited Iowa as part of a delegation from the northern Chinese province of Hebei. Chinese officials refer to the envoy as an old friend of the Chinese people, a designation reserved for foreigners whove demonstrated a particular understanding of the country.

But the ambassador told Bloomberg that the very good chemistry demonstrated in meetings between Trump and Xi was more important. Building a relationship of trust and respect hopefully can go a long ways to these two big countries, the two biggest economies in the world, working together, he said.

Still, the U.S. has sharpened its tone toward China since Trumps state visit last month to Beijing, which ended with no big breakthroughs on trade. The Trump administration has in recent weeks hit China with a probe into the countrys aluminum imports, and accused its leadership of backsliding on market-oriented reforms.

Branstad said he agreed with such criticism. Bloomberg
A senior United Nations official met with North Koreas vice foreign minister yesterday, the first full day of a four-day trip to Pyongyang.

It was not immediately clear what Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, discussed with Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk.

Feltman, an American citizen and former State Department official, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday. A U.N. spokesman said he was to have a wide range of talks in Pyongyang during his stay, but did not elaborate.

Feltman is the first person in his position to visit Pyongyang since 2010.

He is also expected to meet Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and with the U.N. staff based in the North Korean capital.

Although Feltman does not represent the United States, hopes are high that visits by him or other diplomats  a senior Chinese official visited last month  might help relieve tensions that have been growing amid threats and taunts between Pyongyang and Washington.

North Korean officials rarely brief the media on the content of discussions with foreign dignitaries. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said they do not expect to update the media on Feltmans visit until it is concluded.

Six U.N. agencies, with approximately 50 international staff, are represented in the North.

DIPLOMATIC PIPELINES

North Koreas decision to hold talks with a senior United Nations official, who is also an American citizen and former U.S. diplomat, presents a rare opportunity for both sides to sound each other out in the increasingly isolated North Korean capital.

It may take a while to find out exactly what is being discussed during Jeffrey Feltmans visit this week. North Korea almost never discloses the details of its discussions with foreign delegations, and the U.N. says it doesnt plan to brief the media until after Feltman, its undersecretary-general for political affairs, completes his four-day visit.

Here is a look at other delegations North Korea has hosted recently, and some other ways it is engaging with the outside world that dont involve launching long-range ballistic missiles.

THE CHINESE ENVOY

China last month sent its highest-level envoy in two years. His official mission was to brief North Korean officials on the outcome of the recent congress of Chinas ruling Communist Party. The official, Song Tao, visited as Chinese President Xi Jinpings special envoy. He met with Choe Ryong Hae, one of North Koreas most senior leaders after Kim Jong Un. Chinas relations with North Korea have deteriorated under Kim, who has ignored Beijings calls to end the Norths nuclear and missile tests and return to disarmament talks. The visit was seen as an effort by Xi to explore a new approach in relations and his desire to head off further pressure from Washington to take stricter action against Kims nuclear program.

WASHINGTONS RESCUE

Efforts by the U.S. State Department to obtain access to four Americans held in North Korean jails, including secret talks in Norway, led to a mission by special envoy Joseph Yun in June to retrieve college student Otto Warmbier. Yun was allowed to travel to North Korea to bring back Warmbier, who had fallen into a coma and was in critical condition. Warmbier, who entered North Korea as a tourist, had been sentenced to 15 years for trying to steal a propaganda banner. He died just days after arriving bank in the United States. President Donald Trump declared a ban on most travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea because of Warmbiers case and concerns about Americans safety.

EXCHANGES WITH MOSCOW

Though it didnt get much attention in the West, Choe Son Hui, the head of the North America desk at North Koreas Foreign Ministry, traveled to Russia in September and attended a non-proliferation conference in Moscow in October. A Russian political delegation visited North Korea in early October, and the head of Russian state-owned news agency TASS visited North Korea for the 69th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

OTHER CHANNELS

According to the U.S. State Department, Washington and Pyongyang do have a pipeline known as the New York channel for communication, though its unclear how much either side has utilized it as tensions have ratcheted higher lately. Also, a trickle of low-profile delegations from around the world still arrive in the North Korean capital, while the North sends its own abroad. MDT/AP
A Hawaii woman is waiting to hear back from Guinness World Records to find out if the massive avocado she snagged is the worlds largest.

Pamela Wang of the Big Island found the 2.3-kilogram avocado last weekend on a walk, the West Hawaii Today newspaper reported .

I see avocados every day, and I pick up avocados every day, but this one  it was hard to miss, Wang said. It was as big as my head.

She met up with friends and showed them the enormous avocado. Wangs friends began making inquiries online, uncovering information that indicated that the avocado might just be the largest on record.

Wang submitted an application to Guinness and expects to hear back within two months. She had Ken Love, executive director of Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers, witness the avocados weighing. Guinness requires an expert to be present.

Ive seen [avocados] longer and Ive seen them fatter, but not both, said Love, who verified the fruits weight at 5.23 pounds. I think people have other ones that they dont weigh, but I think this one, it was way up there.

Elizabeth Montoya, assistant public relations manager of Guinness World Records America Inc., wrote that the company doesnt have a category for the largest avocado. It does, however, have one for the heaviest.

Guinness verified in January 2009 an avocado submitted by Gabriel Ramirez Nahim of Caracas, Venezuela, which weighed 4 pounds, 13.2 ounces, Montoya said.

Wang said she found the avocado under a tree that hangs over a street. Anything overhanging or dropped outside a private property line is free for anyone to claim.
FamilyMart Uny Holdings Co., Japans second- largest convenience store operator, is considering a sale of its Hong Kong retail business, people with knowledge of the matter said.

FamilyMart Uny is working with a financial adviser to gauge potential buyer interest in its three stores in the Chinese territory, according to the people. It is seeking to fetch close to USD100 million from any sale, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Deliberations are at an early stage, and Tokyo- wbased FamilyMart Uny could decide to keep the business, the people said.

Any deal will add to the $26.5 billion of retail acquisitions in Asia this year, up from $19.8 billion during the same period in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In Hong Kong, FamilyMart Uny runs department stores targeting the citys affluent middle class under the Apita, Piago and Uny brand names. They sell stationery, clothing and food ranging from fresh local produce to imported chocolate, wine and wagyu beef.

Sales in Hong Kongs supermarket industry fell 0.1 percent in the first 10 months of the year, lagging the 1.2 percent gain in the citys overall retail industry, government statistics show.

A representative for FamilyMart Uny said the company has no plans to sell its Hong Kong stores at the moment.

FamilyMart Co. bought rival Uny Group Holdings Co. last year in a stock swap valued at $2 billion at the time of completion. The deal created the countrys second-biggest convenience store chain, overtaking Lawson Inc. Uny opened its first outlet in the former British colony in 1985, according to its annual report. Vinicy Chan, Bloomberg
Myanmars Rohingya minority has very likely faced crimes against humanity and possibly genocide at the hands of Myanmar security forces and their helpers, the U.N.s top human rights body and a top U.N. official said yesterday [Macau time].

The comments came at an urgent session of the 47-member Human Rights Council, which overwhelmingly approved a resolution that said crimes against humanity very likely occurred in Myanmar against the Muslim minority group since a security crackdown began in August.

The crisis has left untold numbers of Rohingya killed and injured, and forced more than 626,000 to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

Marzuki Darusman, who heads a council-mandated fact-finding mission on Myanmar that has received no access to the troubled state of Rakhine where many Rohingya once lived, chronicled a litany of allegations including the rape of young girls  some burnt to death or with their throats slit  and the mutilation of victims.

The allegations are numerous and many of extreme severity, Darusman said. Some have concluded that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place. We have not yet come to any conclusion on these issues, but we are taking such allegations very seriously and are examining them in depth.

But the U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, challenged the council, insisting that the possibility of genocide was real.

Zeid, a Jordanian prince, cited the longtime segregation, exclusion and discrimination faced by the Rohingya. He referred to allegations of killings by grenades, shootings at close range, stabbings and the burning of houses with families inside. He noted that Rohingya see themselves as a distinct ethnic group.

Given all of this, can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present? Zeid asked. Ultimately, this is a legal determination only a competent court can make.

But the concerns are extremely serious, and clearly call for access to be immediately granted for further verification, he added, decrying how Myanmars government has rebuffed U.N. monitors.

Myanmars army began what it called clearance operations on Aug. 25 following an attack on police posts by Rohingya insurgents. Refugees arriving in Bangladesh said their homes were set on fire by soldiers and Buddhist mobs, and some reported being shot at by security forces.

Zeid said actions by Myanmars government to dehumanize the Rohingya minority were likely to fan more violence and affect more communities across the region.

Myanmars ambassador in Geneva, Htin Lynn, denied any state efforts at dehumanization of the Rohingya, saying it could be an act of extremist individuals.

My government is doing everything possible to deter these extremist acts, he said.

With his government in the spotlight, the ambassador said the priority should be on returning displaced people to Rakhine.

Zeid, however, said no repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar should occur without sustained human rights monitoring to ensure they can live safely.

He said Myanmar authorities had refused to give his office access to Rakhine, and that he had instead sent three teams to Bangladesh to monitor the situation and interview refugees.

The councils resolution broke little new ground other than calling for Zeids office to report on Myanmars cooperation with U.N. rights investigators.

It passed 33 to 3  China, the Philippines and Burundi voted against it  with nine abstentions. Two delegations in the 47-member council were not present. Jamey Keaten, Geneva, AP
The United States flew a B-1B supersonic bomber over South Korea yesterday as part of a massive combined aerial exercise involving hundreds of warplanes, a clear warning after North Korea last week tested its biggest and most powerful missile yet.

South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Guam- based bomber simulated land strikes at a military field near South Koreas eastern coast during a drill with U.S. and South Korean fighter jets.

Through the drill, the South Korean and U.S. air forces displayed the allies strong intent and ability to punish North Korea when threatened by nuclear weapons and missiles, the military said in a statement.

B-1Bs flyovers have become an increasingly familiar show of force to North Korea, which after three intercontinental ballistic missile tests has clearly moved closer toward building a nuclear arsenal that could viably target the U.S. mainland.

The five-day drills that began Monday involve more than 200 aircraft, including six U.S. F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighters.

North Korea hates such displays of American military might at close range and claimed through its state media on Tuesday that the U.S. imperialist war mongers extremely reckless war hysteria has put the region at risk of a nuclear war. The North continued to describe the B-1B a nuclear strategic bomber although the plane was switched to conventional weaponry in the mid-1990s.

North Korea typically uses strong language when commenting on U.S.-South Korean war games, which it claims are invasion rehearsals. Still, perennially bad tensions are at a particularly dangerous point with North Korea rapidly advancing its nuclear weapons program.

South Koreas military says the Hwasong-15 the North tested last week has the potential to strike targets as far away as 13,000 kilometers, which would put Washington within reach. The test flight used an arched trajectory and the missile flew 950 kilometers before splashing down near Japan.

The North also tested a different intercontinental ballistic missile twice in July and conducted its most powerful nuclear test in September which it described as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon designed for ICBMs. AP
President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital today [Macau time] despite intense Arab, Muslim and European opposition to a move that would upend decades of U.S. policy and risk potentially violent protests.

Trump will instruct the State Department to begin the multi-year process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, U.S. officials said yesterday. It remains unclear, however, when he might take that physical step, which is required by U.S. law but has been waived on national security grounds for more than two decades.

The officials said numerous logistical and security details, as well as site determination and construction, will need to be finalized first. Because of those issues, the embassy is not likely to move for at least 3 or 4 years, presuming there is no future change in U.S. policy.

To that end, the officials said Trump delay the embassy move by signing a waiver, which is required by U.S. law every six months. He will continue to sign the waiver until preparations for the embassy move are complete.

The officials said recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital will be an acknowledgement of historical and current reality rather than a political statement and said the citys physical and political borders will not be compromised. They noted that almost all of Israels government agencies and parliament are in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, where the U.S. and other countries maintain embassies.

The U.S. officials spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview Trumps announcement. Their comments mirrored those of officials who spoke on the issue last week.

The declaration of Jerusalem as Israels capital is a rhetorical volley that could have its own dangerous consequences. The United States has never endorsed the Jewish states claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has insisted its status be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

The mere consideration of Trump changing the status quo sparked a renewed U.S. security warning. Americas consulate in Jerusalem ordered U.S. personnel and their families to avoid visiting Jerusalems Old City or the West Bank, and urged American citizens in general to avoid places with increased police or military presence.

Trump, as a presidential candidate, repeatedly promised to move the U.S. embassy. However, U.S. leaders have routinely and unceremoniously delayed such a move since President Bill Clinton signed a law in 1995 stipulating that the United States must relocate its diplomatic presence to Jerusalem unless the commander in chief issues a waiver on national security grounds.

Key national security advisers  including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis  have urged caution, according to the officials, who said Trump has been receptive to some of their concerns.

The concerns are real: Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital could be viewed as America discarding its longstanding neutrality and siding with Israel at a time when the presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been trying to midwife a new peace process into existence. Trump, too, has spoken of his desire for a deal of the century that would end Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

U.S. officials, along with an outside adviser to the administration, said they expected a broad statement from Trump about Jerusalems status as the capital of Israel. The president isnt planning to use the phrase undivided capital, according to the officials. Such terminology is favored by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and would imply Israels sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians seek for their own future capital.

Jerusalem includes the holiest ground in Judaism. But its also home to Islams third-holiest shrine and major Christian sites, and forms the combustible center of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Any perceived harm to Muslim claims to the city has triggered volatile protests in the past, both in the Holy Land and across the Muslim world.

Within the Trump administration, officials on Tuesday fielded a flood of warnings from allied governments.

The Jerusalem declaration notwithstanding, one official said Trump would insist that issues of sovereignty and borders must be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians. The official said Trump would call for Jordan to maintain its role as the legal guardian of Jerusalems Muslim holy places, and reflect Israel and Palestinian wishes for a two-

state peace solution.

In his calls to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordans King Abdullah II, Trump delivered what appeared to be identical messages of intent. Both leaders warned Trump that moving the embassy would threaten Mideast peace efforts and security and stability in the Middle East and the world, according to statements from their offices. The statements didnt speak to Trumps plans for recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Majdi Khaldi, Abbas diplomatic adviser, said Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital could end Washingtons role as mediator.

This would mean they decided, on their own, to distance themselves from efforts to make peace, Khaldi told The Associated Press in perhaps the most sharply worded reaction by a Palestinian official. He said such recognition would lead the Palestinians to eliminate contacts with the United States. Matthew Lee & Josef Federman, Washington, AP

Whole world is against Trump move

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the whole world is against President Donald Trumps move to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and eventually move the U.S. Embassy there.

Cavusoglus remarks came just before a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday.

He says that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a grave mistake.

Cavusoglu says such a move would not bring any stability, peace but rather chaos and instability.

The Turkish diplomat says the whole world is reacting, not just the Muslim world. He says hes raised the issue with Tillerson in the past and plans to do so again.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has called for dialogue that respects the rights of everyone in the Holy Land and expressed his hope for peace and prosperity for the Palestinian people, ahead of the expected announcement that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Francis made the comments during a previously scheduled meeting with a Palestinian delegation of religious and intellectual leaders. The Vatican said it was coincidental that the audience fell on the same day as the U.S. announcement.

In his remarks, Francis said the Holy Land was the land par excellence of dialogue between God and mankind.

The primary condition of that dialogue is reciprocal respect and a commitment to strengthening that respect, for the sake of recognizing the rights of all people, wherever they happen to be, he added.

In Britain, foreign secretary is expressing concern about reports that U.S. President Donald Trump might recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Boris Johnson said, Lets wait and see what the president says exactly, but we view the reports that weve heard with concern.

Not everyone is unhappy with Trumps move.

Israels justice minister said she welcomes Trumps declaration on Jerusalem and encouraged him to move the embassy de facto to Jerusalem.

Ayelet Shaked told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Jerusalem Posts Diplomatic Conference yesterday that Trump has to go beyond the paperwork stage and not be intimidated by Arab threats of violence.

Shaked says: I wouldnt be worried about this event or the other. If Arab leaders take steps to prevent unrest, there wont be any unrest.

She spoke ahead of a speech at the conference by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. MDT/AP
Credit: University of Bristol

A new app to help people who are considering self-harm or having suicidal thoughts is now available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play. The distrACT app which has been designed by doctors with young adults and University of Bristol researchers to provide easy, quick and discreet access to general health information and advice about self-harm.

Nationally, there are around 200,000 hospital emergency department cases of self-harm reported every year. The number of people who self-harm in Bristol alone is around 25,000. It is the highest predictor of suicide, with self-harm patients 35 times more likely to end their own lives.

Through distrACT, people will find reliable answers to their questions in plain language  anywhere, anytime, in private.

Expert Self Care Ltd, who developed the app, is a UK social enterprise certified by the NHS England Information Standard as a provider of reliable health information. It is led by practising NHS doctors, and aims to give people at different stages in their lives access to reliable, clear and useful health information - 'on-the-go' and without the need for an internet connection.

The distrACT app has been created by doctors together with young adults and experts in self-harm and suicide prevention, including Bristol Health Partners and the Improving Care in Self-Harm Health Integration Team (STITCH HIT), University of Bristol and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, as well as other local and national organisations. Self-Injury Support and Self-Injury Self Help helped involve young people with experience of self-harm in the design.

Dr Knut Schroeder, a GP and founder of Expert Self-Care, said: "This app is designed for people when they're at their most vulnerable. It can be hard to seek help, so distrACT aims to make that process as easy as possible. The young people we worked with have informed the content and design, so we hope that it can become a reliable source of support during difficult times.

"We named it distrACT for two reasons. People wanted it to be discreet, so we deliberately didn't use the term 'self-harm'. And distraction from thoughts about self-harm can help people avoid actually going through with it."

Designed to work for people of all ages in the UK, it will be helpful to English speakers anywhere who are struggling with self-harm. Its aims include:

Suicide prevention: Help reduce the risk of suicides in people who self-harm

Crisis support: Advice on how to access help in an emergency, lists of useful emergency numbers and support sites, and tips for safety planning

Signposting: Guide people who self-harm to further sources of support

Self-care: Encourage self-monitoring strategies and self-management of symptoms

Health literacy: Increase knowledge and understanding of self-harm and related issues

Practical support: Give practical tips and provide ideas for safer alternatives to self-harm

Stigma: Reduce stigma and dispel myths about self-harm

Resilience: Help people develop skills to build resilience and increase well-being

Accessing health services: Support decisions around accessing health services and other means of support

The app is available to download in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.
By PTI: (Eds: Recasting the intro)

Shillong, Dec 6 (PTI) Downplaying the dissension in the ruling Congress ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections, Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today claimed that the party will come back with a majority in the 60-member House.

Assembly elections are due in Meghalaya early next year.

"I am telling you we are coming back with close to 40 seats in 2018. Watch my words," he told reporters at the sideline of a programme here.

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His statement came in the wake of at least three Congress ministers including state Congress president and four times chief minister D D Lapang announcing that they would not contest the upcoming poll and four former cabinet ministers not seeking re-elections on Congress tickets.

Hitting at those who intended to desert the Congress, the chief minister said, "Thousands of Congress supporters are betrayed (by such legislators). It?s not a question of betraying Mr A or B, but its betraying thousands of Congress supporters who have given them opportunity to serve them and the state."

On his style of functioning, which some ministers have complained about, the chief minister said "as per procedures, if a minister is not available, the file noting will be written minister on tour" and then put up to the chief minister."

He said "In the interest of the people, We don?t wait for people who don?t come and attend office."

Taking a dig at former Forest Minister Prestone Tynsongs travel to Kolkata, Mukul said, "They travel like they have someone important waiting for them there."

"The post of a minister is a very responsible post it is not for someone to go Shillong to Kolkata and Kolkata to Shillong you find out you do RTI of these ministers how many times these ministers have been travelling to Kolkata and Kolkata to Shillong what job they have in Kolkata?," he asked. PTI JOP RG RG

--- ENDS ---
Budenz performs an eye exam in Ghana. Credit: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine

In each of the past 22 years, Don Budenz, MD, MPH, has gone to Ghana  first right after his fellowship training and now as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at UNC and founder of Christian Eye Ministry, an NGO dedicated to preventing and curing blindness in the developing world.

He keeps going back because there is still a lot of work to be done.

"I remember after my first trip, thinking if I never saw another patient in the United States no one would go blind. If I didn't return to Ghana, people would," Budenz said.

According to the Ghana Glaucoma Association, around 700,000 out of 24 million Ghanaians have glaucoma, the second highest rate in the world. There are fewer than 50 ophthalmologists in the country and even fewer willing and able to perform the surgery necessary to treat the condition. There is a general lack of cultural understanding of glaucoma, and its chronic nature is an ongoing challenge for both providers and patients.

Even with those challenges, Budenz remembers the exhilaration and long hours of those early trips. That, and the progress made in the past two decades keep drawing him back.

"You get there in the morning and there are already 100 people lined up outside the clinic, which in a lot of cases is just a converted house," Budenz said. "These patients don't have appointment times; they just want to get in line to be seen. So, you see those patients, you screen, you recommend surgery for those that need it, and then you go into the operating room and you work late into the night."

Budenz said many of the patients he sees in Ghana fit a similar profile. Their glaucoma is at an advanced stage. And 93 percent don't even know that they have it, according to research published by Budenz in 2013.

"Glaucoma is a difficult problem in general because of a low understanding of the disease coupled with the fact that people don't really have discernable symptoms until it's really almost too late," Budenz said.

With glaucoma, Budenz explains, patients will retain their central vision until very late in the disease, when they begin to develop tunnel vision. Many of the patients Budenz sees in Ghana are at that point when the patient is visually disabled and all that can be done is to slow the deterioration.

"The damage from glaucoma occurs to the optic nerve. When we are born there are approximately 1.2 million fibers going from the optic nerve to the brain. We'd like to catch people when they still have around a million fibers. If we catch them too late and there are only around 100,000 fibers left, then slowing things down helps, but patients may still lose vision due to aging," Budenz said.

It's a numbers game.

"Our goal is to reduce the rate of blindness before death, which sounds rather stark, but truthfully if we lived long enough we'd all go blind because optic nerve fibers die just from aging. Glaucoma accelerates the process."

The challenge, then, is to catch patients in earlier stages of the disease, make the diagnosis, and begin treatment. Of course, it's not so simple.

Even in the United States, Budenz says, there is low understanding of glaucoma. It's even lower in Ghana. But, as educational efforts increase, the economy improves, and the burden of infectious disease across Ghana is reduced, Budenz is hopeful that rates of early glaucoma diagnoses will increase.

The Root of the Issue

While in Ghana, Budenz spends a few weeks at the time seeing as many patients as possible, doing as many surgeries as possible, teaching local surgeons to do what he does. He knew the burden of glaucoma was incredibly highhigher than most other places in the worldbut he wanted to take a closer look. He'd just finished a Masters of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, and after reviewing the available literature, he realized that there had not been a good epidemiological study of glaucoma prevalence in West Africa.

There was a study that had been done on people of African descent in Baltimore, others in the Caribbean, and also in Tanzania and South Africa. Those studies done in Eastern and Southern Africa showed lower rates of glaucoma than the Baltimore or Caribbean studies.

Budenz and his colleagues set out to understand the scope of the problem in Ghana. They examined 5,600 Ghanaians and found that 362 had glaucoma. Of those, only 7 percent knew that they had the disease.

"There's clearly a huge ethnic diversity in sub Saharan Africa, but Americans just tend to lump everyone together. It was important to show the differences across the continent and really understand the scope of the problem in Ghana," Budenz said.

In addition to being screened for glaucoma, participants' DNA was taken and categorized into glaucoma and non-glaucoma. That information is being used currently by researchers at Duke to try and establish a genetic basis for glaucoma in people of African descent.

Changing the mindset

One of the issues in Ghana, Budenz said, is a lack of patient education related to glaucoma. For years, eye care had been a minor concern for people facing HIV and other infectious diseases. But now, as life expectancies are increasing and the economy is improving across the country, Budenz is hopeful that vision care will become prioritized and more accessible.

"The old paradigm said if people are dying before they turn 50, why would you treat a disease of aging?" Budenz said. "But, life expectancy is rising fairly rapidly, and they don't have the resources or infrastructure to treat this disease in the developing world."

Still, as rates of diagnosis increase, Budenz and his colleagues have to fight a misunderstanding that exists among both patients and other physicians.

Patients, Budenz said, have more experience with regimens involved with treating infectious disease and less experience dealing with a chronic condition like glaucoma. It has to be explained, he said, that while the surgery can help to slow the progression of the disease, regular maintenance and medication is required for life.

As for Ghanaian ophthalmologists, Budenz said there is still some hesitation to operate on patients with glaucoma.

"The complication rate for glaucoma is probably four or five percent, compared with one or two percent for cataract surgery. In cataract surgery, 99 percent of the time your patient will see better. But, with glaucoma, one in twenty patients will probably see worse as a result of a complication, and many others don't really understand why it was necessary to have the surgery in the first place because they hadn't been aware of symptoms affecting their vision yet," Budenz said.

But, despite this, Budenz and his colleagues continue to make the training of young Ghanaian ophthalmologists a priority.

"There are a few Ghanaian ophthalmologists who are doing glaucoma surgeries, and most of them are trained through our Christian Eye Ministry clinics," Budenz said.

In 2018, UNC ophthalmology residents will travel with him and observe in Ghana.

"Most of the potential residents that we interview seem to have done some international health work and we definitely want to foster that," Budenz said. "Beginning in the next 2 years, each of our four residents will be able to have an international experience with one of our faculty members. It's important for them to get a sense of the good they can do outside of the US once they finish training."

Budenz and his colleagues at Christian Eye Ministry will keep going, year after year. And in the meantime, they continue their work is to increase the capacity of the Ghanaian ophthalmologists. Christian Eye Ministry has started four clinics across the country, all with surgical capabilities. to the ministry's members continue to supplement the training of the doctors in these clinics, since many were trained in Eastern Europe where training is not as hands on as in the United States. Budenz is working with a consortium to try to get glaucoma lasers in clinics across sub-Saharan Africa, after a study involving patients from the Caribbean showed that laser therapy could be especially effective.

"We are always looking to scale things up," Budenz said. "We know we can treat this disease, we just have to be able to deploy the resources and training effectively across the Africa."
Actors are often required to tap profound emotions in their performance, which is one of the reasons for poor mental health in the industry. Credit: Shutterstock.com

Performers are twice as likely as the general population to experience depression, according to the 2015 Australian Actors' Wellbeing Study. Many suffer from performance anxiety and report high levels of stress arising from work-related pressures such as low income and job insecurity.

Research over many years has acknowledged that those drawn to working in the arts tend to be highly vulnerable to depression and anxiety. However, there are contributing factors to the strikingly high levels of anxiety and stress specific to the acting community. These include the deep emotions they are often required to access and express when playing a role and the strong identification they can form with their characters.

I recently conducted research into the stresses incurred by acting students at the country's leading drama schools. Most of the acting teachers I interviewed acknowledged that their students did not take the time and space to separate themselves from their roles. This resulted in emotional hangovers, which often caused extreme moods and difficulties in their personal lives.

Although it became clear that more still needs to be done to safeguard these acting students' wellbeing, mental health issues in the arts  along with other stressful workplace environments  are fortunately now being given more significance. Many performing arts schools and companies are actively seeking to address their artists' mental health and wellbeing concerns.

Getting in character

Getting into character is not just as simple as "putting on" or "taking off" a role. Performing arts scholar Mark Seton argues that playing a character is a complex process that cannot be separated from the life of the actor.

Sometimes actors are unable to let go of the emotions associated with their characters. This boundary blurring can result in them carrying the role into everyday life  with negative effects.

One acting teacher described how a gentle, polite male student became rude and aggressive during the time he played one of the men involved in a re-enactment of the Anita Cobby murder. The teacher had to point out to him that "seepage" seemed to be taking place between him and the character.

Actors frequently tap into their personal histories to evoke the emotions required to play a role. This can be traumatic if it triggers deep issues or elicits difficult experiences and memories.

One drama school director disclosed that he had to be very careful when choosing plays if they involved domestic violence or sexual assaults because he was aware some of his students had lived through these experiences. It could be emotionally dangerous for them to act out such scenes.

The 2015 Australian Actors' Wellbeing Study found that almost 40% of actors surveyed had difficulty shaking off intense emotional and/or physical roles.

Although strategies have been developed to help actors detach from the roles they play  to de-role  in my experience and in my research, actors or acting students rarely use these practices. It has long been acknowledged that heading to the bar for a drink after a performance is the traditional way for actors to unwind after performances. The 2015 study found that, perhaps unsurprisingly in light of this fact, actors' alcohol consumption was high.

How to de-role

There are many ways to warm down from a performance. Actors can participate in a brief feedback session with cast members. This can involve sharing how the performance has gone as well as other procedures such as deep breathing, visualisations or physical releases.

Other de-roling suggestions include ritualistically disrobing in order to consciously let go of the costume and the character by leaving them both on the rack. Any post-performance sense of closure that actors can create is helpful if it assists them in leaving their characters in the dressing room.

It could involve the use of a symbolic talisman that is carried only when playing the role and left backstage, or the singing of a little tune that represents to them a sense of completion. Whatever works!

The teachers I interviewed maintained that more needed to be done to help acting students better differentiate between the theatre space and the space outside the stage door. This would reinforce healthier work habits, which could eventually transfer into the profession.

Performing arts companies paying attention

The 2015 study resulted in the establishment of an Actors Equity Wellness Committee. Its aim is to educate the industry about mental health and wellbeing while providing resources for those who may be at risk.

More performing arts companies are employing psychologists. The Australian Ballet and contemporary dance company CO3 have resident psychologists to assist with dancers' mental wellbeing.

Theatre productions are more frequently using the services of psychologists  particularly if the subject matter is dark or difficult and likely to trigger psychological or emotional reactions in the actors. Cases in point are recent productions of Sarah Kane's 4.45 Psychosis, an exploration of mental illness, and a dance-theatre production, Good Little Soldier, which dealt with the family of a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD.

Drama schools tend to rely on their instructors and affiliated university counselling services to help students with mental health issues. Sydney drama school NIDA has had a resident counsellor one day per week for many years  and he is always booked out. My research suggests that specialised counselling services are an essential backup for students in all areas of the performing arts.

In the future artists will hopefully suffer a little less for their art in order to provide audiences with their best work.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The initial aim of political correctness, to establish non-hateful language was, and still is, admirable. Credit: Nathan Anderson/Unsplash

In the second half of the 20th century, we came to accept that in certain cases we should avoid deliberately hurtful language. While many deride political correctness for going too far, its initial aim to establish non-hateful language was, and still is, admirable.

In the early 20th century, "moron" was a medical term for someone with a mental age of between eight and 12. "Mongol" was a person with Down syndrome, and also was indirectly a slur on people from Mongolia, some of whose features were supposed to resemble those with Down syndrome. "Retarded" described someone mentally, socially or physically less advanced than their chronological age.

We know these terms now primarily as pejoratives. "Mongol", following the Australian tendency to form diminutives, has even given us "mong", meaning someone who is stupid or behaves as such. Yet there is also a consensus such language is unacceptable. How did we get here?

The path to dignified language

In December 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Affirming the dignity of all humans, Article 1 of this landmark document states:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Article 2 goes on to specify this should apply "without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

The declaration, prompted by the dehumanising events of the second world war, soon led to concerted initiatives to avoid hurtful and denigrating language.

Race and ethnicity was the first area to be addressed in Australia, where the philosophy of respect was enshrined in the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. This included the currently controversial section 18C, which made it an offence to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone else on the basis of race or nationality.

In the 1980s the scope was expanded in Australia to include gender and sexuality, with the legitimisation of terms like "queer", and an increasing range of different kinds of sexuality now evident in the LGBTQI designations.

The third big change involved the language for people with disabilities, whether cognitive or physical. Here the English vocabulary was full of terms that mixed description with pejorative overtones.

People first

Words like "deaf", "blind", "dumb" and "lame" are not only descriptions of physical ability and disability, but are commonly used in negative ways. For instance, "deaf as a post", "blind Freddie".

We have now moved away from such language. Especially unacceptable are nouns like "retard" or adjectives like "demented". In their place we have the principle of people first. The person and the disability are separated.

Instead of a phrase like "demented person" we have "person with dementia" or "person living with dementia". The New South Wales Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care has a list of such terms.

We should avoid terms that suggest deficit in a negative way, such as "disabled", "invalid", "retarded", "handicap", "spastic" and "cripple". We should also avoid terms that explicitly specify limitation like "confined" (say, to a wheelchair). "Suffering from" is to be eschewed for the same reason, since it suggests the person is passive and incapable.

A number of paraphrases allow us to avoid sensitive terms. Instead of "blind" we have "visually impaired". People are not "disabled" but "differently abled".

Some of these terms can go too far and are effectively euphemisms because they sound overdone and excessively delicate, like "intellectually challenged".

It is preferable to use language that doesn't exclude people with these conditions from society. A good example of such inclusive language is "ambulant toilet", often found in airports and public places, which simply indicates the toilet is suitable for anyone able to walk.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 consolidated these issues in Australian legislation, which now forms part of an expanding suite of anti-discrimination legislation both here and overseas.

Talking to someone with a disability

A general guideline for talking to someone with a certain condition is to ask that person how they wish to be described. In some cases, words like "deaf" have been reclaimed by bodies like the National Association of the Deaf in the US. The presence of the capital letter legitimises the term's use, so long as it is done respectfully. In a similar way, various gender groups have reclaimed the word "queer", and the fact they use it licenses others to do so too.

The requirement for respectful and considerate speech is not just a matter of good manners; it has teeth. Governments, education systems, companies, societies and other bodies often have guidelines for language use for people with disabilities.

The US National Institutes of Health recommends "intellectually and developmentally disabled" or "IDD" for people with Down syndrome. Bodies like Dementia Australia have language recommendations.

Institutions and governments can apply a variety of sanctions to people who violate this principle in a persistent and hurtful way. These principles are now common in the English-speaking world and countries of the European Union, especially as enshrined in its Charter of Fundamental Rights.

In little more than a generation and half, we have become a more caring and inclusive society, and one much more aware of the importance of avoiding hurtful language. We don't always get the expression right. But we are getting better at seeing the effect of what we say and write from the point of view of others.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new large-scale international study expands the number of genetic markers now known to be associated with exceptional longevity.

Researchers at the University of Connecticut, University of Exeter, University of Wisconsin and University of Iowa undertook a genome-wide search for variants influencing how long participants' parents lived. Their findings indicated genes that could one day be targeted to help prolong human life.

The team studied 389,166 volunteers who took part in the U.K. Biobank, with confirmation in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. DNA samples carry the genetics of biological parents, which provide a practical way of studying exceptionally long lifespans.

Eight genetic variants had already been linked to lifespan, mainly variants that are involved in heart disease and dementia. The latest study, published in the journal Aging, has expanded this to 25 genes in all, with some specific to mothers' or fathers' lifespan separately.

"We have identified new pathways that contribute to survival, as well as confirming others," said study author Dr. Luke Pilling of the University of Exeter. "These targets offer potentially modifiable targets to reduce risk of an earlier death and improve health."

Researchers found a genetic risk score combining the top 10 variants was statistically associated with parents being centenarians.

How long we live is determined by a range of factors including our lifestyle and how well we treat factors including blood pressure and cholesterol from midlife. However, genetics, and how long our parental relatives lived, also play a role.

Genes involved in senescence, the "frozen" state that cells enter into after being damaged, played an important role in longevity. Drugs targeting senescence have already been shown to extend life in laboratory animals.

Genes related to inflammation and auto-immunity related genes were also prominent, opening up the possibility that precision anti-inflammatory treatments may one day be helpful in extending life.

"These findings add to a growing body of knowledge highlighting specific targets and biological pathways useful for the development of interventions designed to help maintain health, function, and independence in later life," said Dr. George Kuchel, professor of geriatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and director of the UConn Center on Aging.

The results confirm that many genetic variants combine to influence human lifespan: no single gene variant has been found to be responsible.

Professor David Melzer, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the group said: "This study helps open the way to novel treatment, but the strong role for genes affecting heart disease risk again underlines the importance of controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels throughout the lifespan. Of course, adopting healthy lifestyles is important, and can probably overcome the negative effects of most of the genes found so far."

More information: Pilling LC, Kuo C, Sicinski K, Tamosauskaite J, Kuchel GA, Harries LW, Herd P, Wallace R, Ferrucci L, Melzer D. Human longevity: 25 genetic loci associated in 389,166 UK biobank participants. Aging (Albany NY). 2017 Dec 6. [Epub ahead of print] Pilling LC, Kuo C, Sicinski K, Tamosauskaite J, Kuchel GA, Harries LW, Herd P, Wallace R, Ferrucci L, Melzer D. Human longevity: 25 genetic loci associated in 389,166 UK biobank participants. Aging (Albany NY). 2017 Dec 6. [Epub ahead of print] www.aging-us.com/article/101334/text
A new study has shown that HIV-infected women do not use statins as recommended by the most recent guidelines. Control of blood lipid levels to prevent heart disease is especially important in HIV-positive women, and they may also benefit from the potential anti-inflammatory effects of statins, as described in an article published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs.

In the article entitled "Underutilization of Statins When Indicated in HIV-Seropositive and Seronegative Women," Jonathan Todd, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a national team of coauthors evaluated the use of statins by both HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women in whom their use is indicated. Statin use 5 years after indicated was low for both groups of women, with a rate of 38% for HIV-infected women. New guidelines for statin use released in 2013 increased the percentage of HIV-infected women for whom statin use is recommended from 16% to 45%.

"Despite the fact that HIV-infected individuals in the U.S. may have greater contact with healthcare providers than uninfected individuals of the same age, that is not reflected in consideration of their cardiac health," says Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Laurence, MD, Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY. "This is clearly an important message as a major impediment to reaching a normal lifespan for HIV-positive individuals may be acceleration of disorders associated with aging, particularly cardiovascular disease."

More information: Jonathan V. Todd et al. Underutilization of Statins When Indicated in HIV-Seropositive and Seronegative Women, AIDS Patient Care and STDs (2017). Journal information: AIDS Patient Care and STDs Jonathan V. Todd et al. Underutilization of Statins When Indicated in HIV-Seropositive and Seronegative Women,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/apc.2017.0145
Diabetic retinopathy is the most common diabetic eye disease and a leading cause of adult blindness. Chronically high blood sugar from diabetes damages the tiny blood vessels in the retina, leading to diabetic retinopathy, according to the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Credit: Kathy Keatley Garvey

An international team of scientists led by Professor Ingrid Fleming of Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, and including Professor Bruce Hammock of the University of California, Davis, provides new insight into the mechanism by which diabetes leads to retinopathy and often to blindness.

An inhibitor to the enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), discovered in the Hammock lab, prevented the eye disease in diabetic mice, Fleming said.

The paper, "Inhibition of Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Prevents Diabetic Retinopathy," involving six years of research and 22 scientists, is published today (Dec. 6) in the journal Nature.

"This has been a long but exciting project where Dr. Fleming's team used tools developed to study the biology of fatty acid epoxides to probe the fundamental mechanism of diabetic retinopathy," said co-author Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center "This work has targeted many possible sites for intervention that could preserve vision, and one such target is using inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase which block diabetic retinopathy in mice."

Fleming, who directs Goethe University's Institute for Vascular Signaling, Centre for Molecular Medicine, said a major cause of blindness stems from diabetes "where there is a loss of vascular cells in the retina of the eye, loss of barrier function in vessels, edema, and a cascade of inflammatory events leading to blindness."

The eye generates a dihydroxy metabolite from polyunsaturated fatty acids that initiates pericyte loss and breakdown of the endothelial barrier function in the eye, the scientists said. This leads to vascular edema and ultimately to a proliferation of new blood vessels and loss of vision.

The small molecule which initiates this process is a diol of a long chain poly unsaturated fatty acid produced by sEH, the researchers said. The enzyme converts an anti-inflammatory epoxy fatty acid into the pro inflammatory and in this case, toxic diol. The research team demonstrated this process and the cellular mechanism involved in diabetic mice and in transgenic mice that over-produce the sEH enzyme.

They were able to block the process by inhibiting the sEH enzyme. The expression of the sEH enzyme also increased with severity of diabetic retinopathy in human patients.

"The expression of the soluble epoxide hydrolase gene was shown to increase in the retinas of human patients with the severity of the disease with non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy," Hammock said. "Thus, there appears a connection to human medicine."

Diabetic eye disease can affect many parts of the eye, including the retina, macula, lens and the optic nerve. Credit: National Eye Institute

Diabetic retinopathy is the most common diabetic eye disease and a leading cause of adult blindness. Chronically high blood sugar from diabetes damages the tiny blood vessels in the retina, leading to diabetic retinopathy, according to the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health. The blood vessels can leak fluid or hemorrhage, distorting vision. NEI officials predict that the number of Americans with diabetic retinopathy will nearly double from 7.7 million in 2010 to 14.5 million by 2050.

Fleming said the sEH enzyme generates a toxic metabolite, but when the enzyme is inhibited, eye disease is prevented.

Earlier work reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from the Kip Connor laboratory at Harvard University showed that inhibiting the soluble epoxide hydrolase preserves fatty acid epoxides which reduce the late or proliferative stages of diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration. Now the Fleming team used the same soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors to block production of a pro inflammatory mediator that initiates the early stages of vascular permeability and inflammation of the retina.

Connor, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, praised the work as bringing to light "a previously unknown mechanism of action." Said Connor: "The identification by the laboratories of Drs. Fleming and Dr. Hammock that 19,20-dihydroxydocosapentaenoic acid, a product of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) activity, as a key regulator of pericyte loss and endothelial barrier breakdown has brought to light a previously unknown mechanism of action in the induction of diabetic retinopathy. Moreover, the authors clearly show that inhibition of sEH blocks formation of this degenerative lipid metabolite thereby halting disease progression, which is of vital interest for the potential management of this blinding disease.

Mehran Moghaddam and David Grant, then with the Hammock lab, demonstrated that the diol of the fatty acid linoleate produced by the soluble epoxide hydrolase was highly toxic to cells leading to vascular permeability and sepsis. They published their work in 1997 in Nature Medicine.

"It is interesting how discoveries of years ago resurface as a critical lead in another disease indication," commented Moghaddam. "It certainly seems hopeful we will be able to treat blindness resulting from severe diabetes."

The Hammock laboratory has published almost 900 peer-reviewed papers on the sEH enzyme, discovered while Hammock and Sarjeet Gill (now of UC Riverside) were researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides at UC Berkeley. The work, begun in 1969, led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation as by biosynthesis, Hammock said. These epoxy fatty acid chemical mediators control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, pain and inflammation to name a few processes, and now Fleming's team has shown the diols products from these epoxides can cause diabetic retinopathy.

For many years Gill and Hammock were alone in studying this enzyme but today its importance is well recognized in mammalian biology, with more than 17,000 peer-reviewed papers in the area. Hammock credits the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for supporting research in this area since the 1970s.

A Davis-based company, EicOsis, has received a large grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to move inhibitors to the clinic to treat diabetic neuropathic pain. "We are developing a non opiate analgesic to treat the chronic pain often associated with diabetes," said William Schmidt, vice president of clinical development at EicOsis. "It would be wonderful if the came drug also could be used to prevent the blindness driven by diabetes."

More information: Jiong Hu et al. Inhibition of soluble epoxide hydrolase prevents diabetic retinopathy, Nature (2017). Journal information: Nature Jiong Hu et al. Inhibition of soluble epoxide hydrolase prevents diabetic retinopathy,(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature25013
A new web-based tool aimed at improving experiential learning for medical students has demonstrated that learning occurs in patient rooms and in other areas within the hospital, including workstations. Developed by clinicians at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and BU School of Medicine, "Learning Moment" allows students to electronically log their learning experiences and share them with their peers. This tool provides an organized way for students to reflect on their learning experiences, which is a critical component of lifelong learning that is sometimes lacking in clinical learning environments.

Learning Moment, which was piloted among third and fourth year medical students rotating through BMC's emergency department, uses data capture to track precisely where learning experiences take place (for example at the bedside or the physician workstation).

With the increasing administrative demands on providers, the study authors noted that the bedside teaching model is thought to have declined in recent years. Thus, their hypothesis was that most of the learning experiences reported by students would occur away from the patient bedside.

Surprisingly, they discovered that the majority of learning moments logged in their study still took place in patient rooms, although there were some differences between students planning for a career in emergency medicine and those who intended to pursue other specialties.

Specifically, researchers found that students who planned to pursue training in emergency medicine reported that while most of their learning moments occurred in patient rooms, a large proportion also took place in workstations, resuscitation rooms and other areas. Conversely, for non-emergency medicine bound students, a large majority of learning moments occurred in patient rooms, with a much smaller percentage taking place in other areas such as physician workstations.

The authors concluded that the bedside remains an important component of medical education for students entering multiple specialties, despite a reported decline in this teaching modality.

Regardless of the location of learning moments, the creators of Learning Moment hope that it will serve as a tool for optimizing experiential learning, one that can be adapted to various clinical departments and institutions.

"We hope that our study will highlight the potential of Learning Moment as a tool to foster experiential learning by encouraging reflective observation during practice," said Alexander Sheng, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine at BU School of Medicine and emergency medicine physician at BMC who is the study's lead author. "The data from Learning Moment has the potential to help educators better understand the intricacies of local learning microenvironments as well as the broader clinical learning ecosystem."

A study based on the initial implementation of this novel program is published online in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Provided by Boston Medical Center
Meta-analysis of individual patient data from five randomized clinical trials provided a high level of evidence that treatment with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone analog (GnRHa) could safely and effectively protect ovarian function and potentially preserve fertility in premenopausal women receiving chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer, according to a study presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 59.

"Temporary ovarian suppression obtained by administering GnRHa during chemotherapy is a medical intervention with the potential to preserve ovarian function and fertility in premenopausal breast cancer patients; however, to date, the role of this option remains controversial and it is still considered an experimental technique by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)," said Matteo Lambertini, MD, medical oncologist and ESMO fellow at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, Belgium.

The possibility that anticancer treatments will cause premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) and subsequent infertility are prevalent concerns affecting young women diagnosed with breast cancer, which adds significant anxiety and emotional strain as they make treatment decisions, explained Lambertini.

Temporary ovarian suppression with GnRHa during chemotherapy was primarily developed as a strategy to reduce the risk of developing treatment-induced POI than as a fertility-preserving procedure; therefore, the majority of the trials that investigated this strategy had a very short follow-up and did not report on post-treatment pregnancies, Lambertini said. Further, different randomized clinical trials that investigated the efficacy of this approach showed conflicting results, and some of these trials included very few patients, making it difficult to draw solid conclusions based on the results of individual studies, he added.

Lambertini and team aimed to provide more conclusive clinical evidence on this topic by conducting an individual patient data meta-analysis of five randomized clinical trials in which premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer were randomly assigned to receive chemotherapy alone (437 women) or with concurrent GnRHa (436 women).

The study found that the POI rate in the GnRHa group was 14.1 percent, versus 30.9 percent in the control group; patients in the GnRHa group had 62 percent less risk to develop POI as compared to those treated with chemotherapy alone. Treatment effect was homogeneous among the different patient subgroups.

Patients in the GnRHa group had one- and two-year amenorrhea (absence of menstrual periods) rates of 36.8 percent and 18.2 percent, respectively. One- and two-year amenorrhea rates in the control group were 40.4 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

"Although the absolute numbers remain low, we observed a doubling in the number of post-treatment pregnancies in patients in the GnRHa group compared with those treated with chemotherapy alone. This suggests that GnRHa during chemotherapy is not only a strategy to preserve ovarian function but may also potentially improve future fertility," Lambertini said.

Thirty-seven patients in the GnRHa group had at least one post-treatment pregnancy during the follow-up period, versus 20 patients in the control group.

There were no significant differences in disease-free survival and overall survival between the two groups; this suggests that administering GnRHa during chemotherapy can be considered safe in breast cancer patients, he said.

"Our study adds important evidence on both the efficacy and the safety of temporary ovarian suppression with GnRHa during chemotherapy, not only in patients with estrogen receptor [ER]-negative disease but also in women with ER-positive tumors, who account for the majority of new cases of breast cancer in young women," Lambertini commented.

"This study provides solid evidence on this specific topic," Lambertini said. "We believe that the results of our study would serve as the reference evidence for updating the international ASCO and ESMO guidelines on the use of this strategy."

The five clinical trials studied were PROMISE-GIM6, POEMS/SWOG S0230, Angelo Celtic Group OPTION, GBG-37 ZORO, and a Moffitt Cancer Center-led trial.

Limitations of the study include the impossibility of including all the randomized clinical trials on this topic, the lack of data on the extent of ovarian function preservation using more sensitive biomarkers, and limited information on patients' wish to have a pregnancy, according to Lambertini.
Postmenopausal women with hormone-receptor positive (HR-positive) breast cancer who took the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole for two years after an initial five years of adjuvant endocrine therapy received an equal benefit to those who took the drug for five additional years. The trial results suggest that a shorter duration of treatment may provide sufficient benefits while protecting women from harmful side effects, according to data from the ABCSG-16 phase III trial presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 59.

"In early-stage HR-positive breast cancer, the risk of relapse persists despite many advances in treatment," said Michael Gnant, MD, FACS, director and chairman of the Department of Surgery, Comprehensive Cancer Center, at the Medical University of Vienna. "Adjuvant treatment with aromatase inhibitors has been demonstrated to improve disease-free survival of postmenopausal women with this subtype of breast cancer. However, the optimal duration of extended AI has previously been unknown. Because this treatment leads to prolonged side effects and impacts quality of life, it is important to establish how long the treatment should be given."

In this trial, between February 2004 and June 2010, 3,484 postmenopausal women with HR-positive early-stage breast cancer were randomized in 71 centers in Austria to receive either two years or five years of extended adjuvant therapy. All had undergone an initial five years of adjuvant endocrine treatment, either tamoxifen or other regimens containing aromatase inhibitors.

The trial's primary endpoint was disease-free survival. Secondary endpoints included overall survival, contralateral breast cancer (cancer in the opposite breast), fractures, and toxicity.

As of June 30, 2016, 78 percent of women in both trial arms were alive without recurrence; 757 women experienced recurrence, relapse, or other disease-free survival events: 377, or 22 percent, of women in the two-year group and 380, or 22 percent, of women in the five-year group.

There was also no significant difference in overall survival or time to contralateral breast cancer. Bone fractures were more likely in years three to five after randomization, suggesting that a longer duration of anastrozole treatment may be a risk factor for fractures.

Gnant said the trial results suggest that clinicians should consider a two-year course of anastrozole sufficient for most patients.

"I believe that these trial results should be implemented into daily practice at once," Gnant said. "There is simply no rationale to keep most patients on extended AI for longer than two years. This result can help save a lot of unnecessary side effects for many women around the world."

In addition to bone fractures, other side effects of prolonged AI therapy include bone fractures, hot flashes, arthralgia, sexual dysfunction, and hair loss.

Gnant cautioned that researchers cannot rule out benefits for some patients who take anastrozole for longer periods. He said future translational research using data and biomaterial from the patients in the ABCSG-16 trial could be useful to characterize potential molecular factors that influence patients' response to anastrozole.
Another encounter in region which has seen similar incidents in past

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: A cow smuggler was killed in an encounter with police yesterday

The incident took place in Rajasthan's Alwar district. 5 to 7 cow smugglers opened fire on police while they were illegally smuggling cows. One of the smugglers was killed in the encounter which took place in Janta colony area of Alwar. Alwar SP Rahul Prakash had reached the spot

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The smugglers were transporting 5 cows in a Tata 407 vehicle.

Mewat region in Rajasthan has seen several such incidents of stone pelting, firing between the cow smugglers and cow vigilantes

Recently, a man named Umar Khan had died allegedly after an altercation between him and cow vigilantes in Govindgarh region of Alwar district. The police had claimed that both Umar Khan and his accomplice, Tahir Khan, were cow smugglers and that the cattle was being taken for smuggling.

Alwar police had also claimed that Tahir Khan had faked a bullet injury

Umar Khan was allegedly shot at and killed by cow vigilantes.

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French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he did not support U.S. President Donald Trumps unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and called for calm across the region, REuters reported.

This decision is a regrettable decision that France does not approve of and goes against international law and all the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council, Macron told reporters at a news conference in Algiers.

Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said he would move the embassy to the city, despite warnings from around the world that the gesture further drives a wedge between Israel and the Palestinians.

The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, he said.

Macron, who has developed a good working relationship with Trump since taking office in May, spoke to the U.S. leader earlier this week to try to convince him to change his mind.

France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognized international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said, adding that Paris was ready to work with partners to find a solution.
Armenian financial technologies to enter international market: VISA and Idram sign memorandum in Yerevan

Incident in Poland causes disagreement between Kyiv and West

New NATO Secretary General to be announced at Vilnius summit in 2023

Finnish Defense Ministry announces largest batch of military aid to Ukraine

Armenian soldier wounded in Azerbaijani shooting

Erdogan: Turkey-Israel relations entered a new phase of development

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YEREVAN.  Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian, who is in Vienna on a working visit, on Wednesday met with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov.

The talk kicked off with the presence of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, then continued in the format of a tete-a-tete, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The avenues for the implementation of the agreements that were reached at the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents summits in Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and Geneva were on the agenda of the meeting of the two foreign ministers.

At the suggestion of the Co-Chairs, an agreement was reached on organizing the next talk between the FMs of Armenia and Azerbaijan in early 2018.

Dates for the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs next visit to the region also were discussed at this meeting.
By PTI: (Eds: Adding reference to deadline extension in para 2,3)

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) The UIDAI, the authority which issues Aadhaar, today said the law and deadlines for verifying bank accounts, PAN cards and mobile SIM cards with the biometric ID are valid and there is no change in them.

While the deadline for verifying bank accounts and income tax Permanent Account Number (PAN) by providing Aadhaar is December 31 and for SIM cards is February 6, the Centre has told the Supreme Court that it is willing to extend the timelines till March 31, 2018.

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The UIDAI said the deadlines agreed in the court will be the valid timelines for verifications.

Refuting social media messages, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that as on date there is no stay from the Supreme Court on Aadhaar and its linking to various services.

"That Aadhaar Act being in force, all notifications for requiring Aadhaar for various welfare programmes, verifying bank account, PAN card and SIM card with Aadhaar stand valid and lawful," it said in a statement.

"Todays legal position is that there is no stay as on December 7, 2017 from the Supreme Court on Aadhaar and its linking to various services," it added.

The government has made it mandatory for verifying bank account and PAN to weed out black money and bring unaccounted wealth to book. The same for SIM has been mandated to establish identity of mobile phone users.

"The mandatory requirements of Aadhaar for PAN, bank accounts, welfare programmes, and SIM cards have been challenged in the Supreme Court and no stay has been granted. Therefore, it is clear that the video is outdated because it does not reflect the latest legal position as on today (December 7, 2017)," the statement said.

The UIDAI said the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 was passed by Parliament on March 16, 2016 and notified in the Gazette of India on March 26, 2016.

"Therefore, subsequent notifications issued under section/s of Aadhaar Act for requiring Aadhaar as primary identifier by various ministries and departments of Government of India and States/UTs Governments for various services, benefits and subsidies hold the field today," it said.

The UIDAI asked people not to get misled by an outdated video doing rounds in the social media and Whatsapp and said "people should instead verify their banks accounts, investment accounts, SIM cards, etc as per the current laws and deadlines as early as possible to avoid any inconvenience."

"The UIDAI has clarified on a video circulated purportedly out of context of a lady lawyer on WhatsApp, Twitter and Social Media and said that the video refers to an order passed by the Supreme Court on August 11, 2015 when the court had restricted use of Aadhaar to only few programs," the statement said.

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The video, it said, does not reflect "true legal position" as it stands today, because after the said Supreme Court order of 2015, Aadhaar Act was passed by Parliament in 2016.

Subsequent to the Act, notifications have been issued making Aadhaar mandatory for availing various welfare benefits such as public distribution services (PDS), cooking gas LPG, MNREGS, scholarships and pensions.

The Income-Tax Act was amended in March 2017 to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards. On June 1, 2017, PML Rules have been amended to make Aadhaar mandatory for linking all bank accounts, insurance, pension, mutual funds and DMAT accounts.

"Supreme Court too in Lokniti Foundation case through an order passed in February 2017 has approved verification of all SIM cards with Aadhaar," the UIDAI said.

The apex court has upheld the linkage of Aadhaar with PAN in the case of Binoy Viswam vs Union of India which mandates Aadhaar for income tax returns and PAN. PTI ANZ MKJ

--- ENDS ---

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Azerbaijan does everything to keep the status quo intact, at the same time claiming that, allegedly, it is advocating for the change of status quo.

Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on Thursday stated the above-said in his address at the 24th meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council, in Vienna.

Reflecting on the matter of settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict, Nalbandian stated as follows, in particular:

Ten years ago the Basic Principles for the Peaceful Settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict were presented to the sides by the Minsk Group Co-Chair countries in the margins of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid.

Two years later the Athens Ministerial Council of the OSCE adopted a statement on behalf of all participating States that strongly supported the Basic Principles and noted the commitment of the parties to reach an agreement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution based upon the principles of Non-Use of Force or Threat of Force, Territorial Integrity, and the Equal Rights and Self-Determination of Peoples. The presidents of the Co-Chair countries in their five joint statements issued since 2009 reiterated their support to these principles and main elements for the conflict resolution which were presented by them as an integrated whole. Since then the Co-Chairs have reaffirmed this approach on many occasions, including during almost all OSCE Ministerial Councils and most recently in their joint statement made in Hamburg. On numerous occasions Armenia has continuously reiterated its readiness to continue negotiations based on these principles and elements with the aim of the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict.

There are several reasons why till now it has not been possible to advance the peace process despite numerous meetings on the presidential and ministerial levels, many rounds of negotiations, the tireless mediation by the Co-Chair countries, and the strong endorsement of the OSCE and all others who have supported the efforts and approaches of the Co-Chairs.

First, Azerbaijan made a step back and has refused the abovementioned three principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution as a basis for the conflict settlement.

Second, Azerbaijan adopted a selective approach towards the elements proposed by the Co-Chairs, who have continuously warned against such practice, since they conceive their proposals as an indivisible whole, and made it clear that any attempt to select some principles and elements over others would make it impossible to achieve a solution.

Third, Baku does not comply with the reached agreements and backtracks from them, as it happened during many rounds of negotiations, most notably during the Summits in St. Petersburg (June 2010), Astrakhan (October 2010), Sochi (March 2011), Kazan (June 2011). The pattern of refusal by Azerbaijan to honor prior agreements seriously questions Bakus credibility as a negotiating party.

Fourth, almost constant profanation of the Co-Chairs efforts and the attempts to shift the mediation to other formats have been illustrative of Azerbaijans intentions to derail the negotiations. It does not come as a surprise that the Co-Chairs in their public statements called on Baku to reverse this stance.

Fifth, the use or threat of use of force by Azerbaijan, regular ceasefire violations and provocations, unnotified military exercises in a blatant noncompliance to the OSCE Vienna document, bellicose statements of the high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan demonstrate that Baku considers the war as a viable option. The Co-Chairs have appealed to Azerbaijan to refrain from the escalation of the situation, to reaffirm the commitment to peaceful settlement. Nobody doubts that it is Azerbaijan that constantly violates the ceasefire and resorts to the escalation of the situation.

Sixth, a serious damage was caused to the negotiation process by Azerbaijans aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in April 2016 that was accompanied by the grave violations of international humanitarian law, atrocities against the civilian population, including children, women and elderly persons, mutilation of the bodies, DAESH-style beheadings.

Seventh, after April aggression the Co-Chairs organized two summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg with the participation of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to address the consequences of the war. Azerbaijan refused to implement what had been agreed upon and emphasized in the framework of these Summits particularly on the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict, full adherence to the 1994-1995 trilateral ceasefire agreements, which do not have time limitations, creation of mechanism for the investigation of ceasefire violations, expansion of the team of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office with the aim to increase efficiency of the monitoring capacities on the ground. The reported goal of these agreements was to create conditions for the advancement of the peace process, thus, by rejecting them Baku intentionally hinders the negotiations.

Eighth, Azerbaijan continues to practice anti-Armenian hate speech, it calls all Armenians of the world its enemy number one, it writes in the textbooks that Armenians are genetic enemies of Azerbaijan, it erases all traces of indigenous Armenian cultural heritage and religious sites, it claims that allegedly territories of Armenia are ancient Azerbaijani lands. Azerbaijan has long blacklisted the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, and then it started to put in the blacklist all those who visit Nagorno-Karabakh. Those who genuinely aspire for peace do not do such actions.

Ninth, after many years of negotiations on the Basic Principles, Azerbaijan started to claim that there is no need for adopting them, in a sheer disrespect to other negotiating parties, to the Co-Chair countries and huge efforts and time invested in the process.

Azerbaijans uncompromising and maximalist stance has become a serious obstacle to the advancement of the peace process and has heavily contributed to the preservation of the status-quo. The Co-Chairs conflict settlement proposals are a way that could bring to the change of the status-quo. However, Azerbaijan rejects those proposals, doing everything to keep the status-quo intact at the same time claiming that allegedly it is advocating for the change of status-quo.

Mr. Chairman,

Next year people of Nagorno-Karabakh will mark 30 years of their struggle for the right to choose their destiny, for human dignity and freedom. In three decades people of Artsakh despite the devastating war and all difficulties, succeeded to create a society based on the respect of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic institutions. The settlement of the conflict should respect all inherent rights of the people of Artsakh and should ensure their unhindered implementation.
Armenia has always been a strong advocate for advancing the indivisible security in the OSCE area and has continuously contributed to the discussions aimed at reinvigoration of the framework of arms control and CSBMs.

Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on Thursday said the aforementioned in his address at the 24th meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council, in Vienna.

Building trust and confidence does not rest only with the first dimension, he added. We strongly believe that the economic and environmental basket of our Organization has an untapped potential. In this regard the OSCE could be a natural platform for promoting an inclusive dialogue between participating States, including on regional integration processes.

About two weeks ago Armenia signed a Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It vividly demonstrated that the membership to one integration framework, in the case of Armenia to the Eurasian Economic Union, does not preclude cooperation with the others. We hope that pragmatic and result oriented dialogue will be the driving force of the economic cooperation in the whole OSCE area.

We would also like to emphasize Armenias contribution to the human dimension of our activities and highlight in this regard our effective cooperation with the OSCE institutions. The April Parliamentary elections in Armenia demonstrated that the progress achieved in upholding fundamental freedoms is irreversible and sustainable and we acknowledge the contribution of the OSCE institutions in this regard.

We are glad that the theme of protection of the ethnic and religious groups from identity based violence and atrocities especially in our neighboring region  in the Middle East, is getting more and more attention within the OSCE. Armenia has been among the first to raise this issue and support the strengthening of the OSCE commitments in this regard. The further development of effective measures to counter hate crime and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions was the main focus of the recent high-level conference in Yerevan, co-organized by the OSCE Chairmanship and ODIHR with the support of the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Ministerial Councils provide an opportunity to talk about the achievements and vision for the future. However, it is equally important not to omit to address the setbacks of the Organization in an open and candid manner.

The consequences of the closure of the OSCE Office in Yerevan pertain to very essence of the OSCE, which is designed to settle the issues through dialogue and cooperation and never through imposing the position of one participating State at the expense of all others and the entire Organization. It created a very negative precedent. The refusal of Azerbaijan to join the consensus on the extension of the mandate of the Office damaged not merely the integrity of the field missions of the OSCE, but its capacity of inclusive cooperation. Azerbaijan failed to respect the OSCE commitments and eliminated the OSCE Office in its own country before it attacked and closed the last OSCE full-fledged mission in the region. It is particularly deplorable that the Office was closed against the will and consistent efforts for its preservation exerted by the host country and all participating States with one exception - Azerbaijan. We would like to recall that both German and Austrian Chairmanships rejected the accusations of Azerbaijan against Yerevan Office. It does not come as a surprise that Azerbaijan found itself in isolation in challenging the OSCE Office in Yerevan.

We are determined to continue our close cooperation within the OSCE framework. The Armenia cooperation programme opens good opportunities in this regard.

Mr. Chairman,

In conclusion, I would like to assure Italy, the incoming Chair that it can count on Armenias support. I would also like to welcome Slovakias joining the Troika.
Azerbaijans intentions can be easily tracked by its expenditures.

Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on Thursday noted the aforesaid in his address at the 24th meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council, in Vienna.

Baku spends billions to buy influence in the world capitals, as once again became obvious through notorious Laundromat affair, it spends much more for purchases of advanced weaponry, but it has not invested anything so far to prepare its population for peace, as the [OSCE Minsk Group] Co-Chairs have been continuously urging, he added. If Baku abides to the calls of the Co-Chairs to strictly respect the ceasefire, implements previously reached agreements, reiterates its adherence to the principles of the conflict resolution proposed by the Co-Chairs and constructively engages in the negotiations that will pave the way to move the peace process forward and change the status-quo.

We are convinced that there is no alternative to the peace talks and there is a need to conduct intensive negotiations based on the proposals of the Co-Chair countries.

It is with this understanding that I met six times with my Azerbaijani colleague during past year and the last one was just yesterday in the framework of this Ministerial Council. The meetings between the Ministers and the able mediation of the Co-Chairs helped to prepare the Geneva Summit of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on October 16th, 2017. This was the first meeting between the Presidents after about sixteen months interval and it passed mostly in a positive mood.

For the first time in about four years at the Geneva Summit it was possible to adopt, although quite brief, a joint statement. On numerous previous occasions Armenia expressed its readiness to join the statements of the Co-Chairs, however, Azerbaijan always refused to have a common statement. This joint statement reflected what Armenia has been long advocating for: to take additional steps to reduce tensions on the Line of Contact. These steps have been identified in the statements made at the Vienna and St. Petersburg Summits of 2016. The Geneva statement also stressed the necessity to intensify the negotiation process, and this too has always been strongly advocated by Armenia.

Unfortunately, just after the Summit Baku again resorted to its language of groundless accusations and warmongering.

Yesterdays meeting with my Azerbaijani colleague generally passed in the positive mood. We will see the developments after it.
By PTI: International waters

(Eds: Updating with details)

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 7 (PTI) 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. Defence sources said search operations will be extended to International waters around Maldives. This followed a request from some fishermen from Tamil Nadus Kanyakumari district.A

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They requested the Southern Air Command here to extend the search operations to international waters to trace 72 boats with 1200 fishermen who may have drifted to international waters due to the cyclone.

The state government approached the Centre with the request of the fishermen following which Defence Ministry has approved sending of C-130J Hercules transport aircraft around Maldives by tomorrow morning, the sources said.

The fishermen missing hail from Vallivilai, Thuthoor, Neeroodi, Puthanthurai, Poothurai and Marthandamthurai in Tamil Nadu.

Hundreds of fisherfolk staged a rail roko at Kuzhithurai station bordering Kerala, leading to Southern Railways cancelling two trains--Tiruchirapalli-Trivandrum Intercity and Kochuveli-Nagercoil passenger, besides partially cancelling five other trains.

Ninetysix fishermen are still missing from Kerala following the cyclone causing havoc to the states coastal region, according to official estimates.

Rescue operations are going on in full swing to trace the missing fishermen.

Sources in the state control room monitoring the rescue operations, said with the recovery of three more bodies, the death toll in Kerala due to the cyclone has gone up to 36.

While a body was recovered near Alappuzha by the Marine enforcement wing, two bodies were found by Coast Guard ship Vaibhav off Alappuzha-Kochi coast this morning, defence sources said.

An Air Force aircraft AN 32, flying between Kozhikode-Kochi coasts sighted a fishing boat with about 15 fishermen this morning following which Navy sent a Dornier aircraft and shipAto the area which is close to Lakshadweep islands, the sources said. The fishermen said they only wanted food and water and that they would reach the shore on their own in the boat.

Meanwhile, shipping services from Kozhikode to Lakshadweep began today with around 60 passengers boarding the high speed vessel from Beypore this morning.

M V Minicoy, the passenger vessel, berthed at Beypore had suffered some damage in the cyclone following which MMD officials had not granted travel clearance.

Yesterday, the high speed vessel arrived at Beypore from the islands to ferry the passengers, the sources said.

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Around 1,600 passengers were transported from Kochi to various islands of Lakshadweep when the shipping services resumed on December 5, according to the sources.

Shipping services from Kochi to the Union Territory were stopped from November 30 to December 2, causing immense hardship to passengers.

From Mangaluru port, M V Amini Divi, will sail for Lakshadweep with 46 passengers tomorrow, the sources added.

Due to the cyclone, 1,098 passengers had been stranded in Kochi, Kozhikode and Mangaluru ports since November 30.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will visit the cyclone hit areas in the city outskirts on December 14, according to Opposition leader in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala. PTI UD JRK BN

--- ENDS ---
The first official visit by a Turkish president to Greece in six decades got off to a tense start Thursday, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeating comments that have alarmed his Greek hosts about the need to update the 1923 treaty that delineated the borders of modern Turkey, AP reported.

Erdogans first meeting was with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, and the televised discussions between the two men were visibly awkward.

In fact, all agreements in the world should be updated with the passage of time, Erdogan said. This update would be beneficial not only for Turkey but also for Greece.

His comment raises serious concerns and questions, said government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos. The Greek government and the prime minister want his visit to be a reason to build bridges, not to raise walls.

Respecting the treaty is the exclusive and non-negotiable foundation on which the honest cooperation of the two countries can be built, Tzanakopoulos said.

But Erdogan reiterated his views on the treaty during his meeting Thursday with Pavlopoulos.

This happened in Lausanne, that happened in Lausanne. I get that, but lets now quickly do what is necessary, he told the Greek president.

Many things have changed in 94 years. If we review these, I believe that all the sides will agree that so many things have to (change.)

Pavlopoulos told Erdogan the treaty doesnt need revision or updating. It is valid as is. He added the treaty didnt allow space for territorial disputes and clearly set out the status for Greeces Muslim minority.

It is clear that to achieve our goals and to make this visit a historic one ... this requires the full respect of international law, Pavlopoulos said.

Erdogans televised chat with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras immediately afterward was calmer.

We have to put the empty side of the glass to one side and focus on its full side. We have to build our negotiations on this, Erdogan told Tsipras. We have no designs on neighboring countries territories. But in the past, we were nations that lived one within the other.

He noted that mistakes had led to the dwindling of Turkeys Greek community, which largely fled the country after decades of persecution, leaving a very small minority still in Istanbul.

We are leaving such mistakes to history. We have to build the future on stronger ground... If we manage to form a shared wisdom we can resolve (issues), he said.

Tsipras, for his part, noted that Greece and Turkey had long had differences.

What matters is that beyond those differences, we look for common ground and that the differences are addressed in a constructive way, with respect to the others opinion and without provocations and exaggeration, he said.
An Indian drone on a routine training mission did enter Chinese airspace due to a technical fault, but soldiers on the ground informed their Chinese counterparts, sources in India said.

China earlier expressed strong strong dissatisfaction and opposition to what it said was an Indian intrusion (Picture for representation)

By India Today Web Desk: An Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) did cross the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and entered Chinese airspace in the Sikkim sector, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, confirming a Chinese military claim made earlier today.

MoD, however, provided a slightly different picture from the Chinese claim, which was accompanied by 'strong dissatisfaction' and 'opposition'. A ministry statement said the drone was on a routine training mission in Indian airspace when it lost contact with ground control and crossed the LAC.

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The loss in communication was due to a technical error, which is being investigated, the statement said, adding that Indian border personnel, following standard protocol, immediately informed their Chinese counterparts.

The Chinese soldiers soon responded with the location details of the crashed UAV, the ministry went on to say. It remains unclear whether the drone is currently with China or whether it has been handed back to India.

The matter is being dealt with in accordance with established protocols and through institutional mechanisms that exist for similar situations in the India- China border areas, the statement added.

Indian border security personnel immediately alerted Chinese counterparts to locate the UAV. In response,Chinese side reverted with location details. Exact cause of the incident is under investigation. Matter being dealt with in accordance with established protocols:MoD statement- ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2017

Earlier, the Chinese military claimed that an Indian drone had "intruded" into China's airspace and expressed its "strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the intrusion". A Chinese military official, speaking to official news agency Xinhua, did not say that Indian border troops had contacted their Chinese counterparts about the incident and instead struck a more strident note.

"India's move has infringed upon China's territorial sovereignty, and we are strongly dissatisfied with and opposed to this," Zhang said. "We will fulfill our mission and responsibility and defend China's national sovereignty and security resolutely".

The UAV incident comes as India and China look to ease ties that were frayed during the 72-day Doklam standoff. The standoff was marked by particularly strong rhetoric from both the Chinese military and official media.

(With inputs from Manjeet Singh Negi in New Delhi)

WATCH | India, China agree to disengage on Doklam ending two-and-a-half-month-long standoff

--- ENDS ---
The Heads of Delegation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries remain united in the commitment to mediating a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of the core principles of the Helsinki Final Act, including the non-use of force or threat of force, territorial integrity, and the equal rights and self-determination of peoples. The statement was issued by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and French Permanent Representative Veronique Roger-Lacan.

We reiterate our joint commitment to negotiating a peaceful resolution to this conflict as the only way to bring real reconciliation to the peoples of the region.

We welcome the resumption of high-level dialogue between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Geneva on 16 October, as well as the meeting between their Foreign Ministers that took place 6 December in Vienna, under the auspices of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs. We express satisfaction with the intensified negotiations, and appeal to the sides to focus their efforts on finding compromise solutions to the substantive issues of political settlement. Further delays will only complicate the situation and could call into question the commitment of the Parties to reach a lasting agreement, the statement reads.

With reference to the declared commitment of the two Presidents to take additional measures to reduce tension on the line of contact, we urge Baku and Yerevan to accept the expansion of the existing Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. Other decisions adopted during the Summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 2016 should also be implemented. We welcome the Parties consideration of the Co-Chairs proposals aimed at restoring people-to-people contacts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and support the International Committee of the Red Cross in its efforts to move forward with the exchange of data on missing persons. We encourage the Parties to avoid the unnecessary politicization of these important humanitarian steps.

Our countries remain ready to work closely with the Sides to reach a lasting and peaceful settlement. We have instructed our Co-Chairs to continue their mediating activities to promote compromises on the working proposals submitted to the Parties, but stress that the primary responsibility to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict rests with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) The Art of Living Foundation (AoL) today said it will move the Supreme Court against the National Green Tribunals verdict holding it responsible for the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains due to its cultural extravaganza held in March 2016.

Expressing "disappointment" over the the NGT verdict, the AoL claimed that it had complied with all environment norms and its submissions were not considered.

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The NGT, in its verdict pronounced today, held the foundation headed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar responsible for the damage to the floodplains "in terms of the report submitted by the expert committee".

"The Art of Living is disappointed with the decision taken by the NGT.... We do not agree with the verdict. Our submissions have not been dealt with/considered," a statement issued by the AoL said.

It said the AoL is a law abiding body and would appeal in the Supreme Court for justice.

"We will appeal to the Supreme Court. We are confident that we will get justice before the Supreme Court," the statement said.

The green panel, while indicting the AOL, refused to impose any further environment compensation on it and said the amount of Rs 5 crore submitted by it earlier would be used for the restoration of the floodplains.

The Art of Living said that the World Culture Festival was conducted from March 11-16, 2016 to spread the message of global peace and harmony in diversity by bringing together spiritual and religious leaders, politicians, peacemakers and artists from across the world.

It claimed that the event was conducted after complying with all environmental norms by procuring approvals from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change department, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Committee, Delhi Disaster Management Authority, Irrigation and Flood Control Department of Delhi and others. PTI PKS RRT RT

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Colombo, Dec 7 (PTI) A group of dissenting Sri Lankan Tamil lawmakers has formed a new coalition to challenge the TNA which has come under severe criticism for going soft on the governments delay in delivering justice to the minority community, a parliamentarian said today.

Tamil parliamentarian Sivashakthi Anandan said the Tamil Liberation Alliance (TLA) has been formed to challenge the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which is the main political front for the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka.

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The new alliance hopes to contest the forthcoming local council elections as their first endeavour.

Anandan, who represents Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front, said that his party along with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) of veteran Tamil leader V Ananda Sangaree have joined together to form the TLA.

"We cannot agree with the current TNA policies, there will be more Tamil parties joining the TLA soon," he said.

The moderate TNA and its leader R Sampanthan, the main opposition leader, have come under strong criticism from the Tamil nationalists for going soft on the governments delay in delivering justice to Tamils.

The TNAs moderation has meant they no longer espouse the cause for a separate Tamil homeland.

They have expressed willingness to work for a solution within an undivided Sri Lanka.

The Tamil nationalists allege that President Maithripala Sirisena, who was backed by them against Mahinda Rajapaksas pro-Sinhala majority regime, has not delivered justice to the Tamils.

The government has said that its resolve to deliver justice to the victims of the countrys three-decade long civil war remains firm and it is working towards making the reconciliation process with Tamils a success.

The UN Human Rights Council has criticised Sri Lankas "slow" progress in addressing its wartime past and reiterated its earlier call for hybrid court of international and local judges to investigate allegations of rights violations.

The Tamil minority insists on a probe with foreign judges, saying that the Sri Lankan judicial system could not be relied upon to deliver justice to Tamil victims of the conflict.

According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during Rajapaksas regime that brought an end to nearly three-decades long civil war in Sri Lanka with the defeat of the LTTE in 2009. PTI CORR CPS TRK

--- ENDS ---
Two Democrat leaders said in a statement that "legitimate questions have been raised" about Trump's fitness to lead America, but "now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment."

Yes, very few lawmakers didn't want to kill a resolution to impeach Donald Trump (File photo: Reuters)

By AP: The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to kill a resolution from a liberal Democratic lawmaker to impeach President Donald Trump as most Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the move.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said Trump had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism.

To back his claim accusing Trump of high misdemeanors, Green cited incidents such as Trump's blaming both sides for violence at a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his recent sharing of hateful, anti-Muslim videos posted online by a fringe British extremist group.

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After his resolution was read aloud, the House voted 364-58 to table the resolution.

All the no votes came from Democrats, and four Democratic lawmakers voted present. In all, 126 Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table Green's effort in the GOP-led House.

'NOW IS NOT THE TIME'

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement shortly before the vote that while "legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation," they argued "now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment."

Several Democratic lawmakers said they agreed that it's premature to act before special counsel Robert Mueller's team completes its investigation into Russian election meddling.

Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., said Democratic lawmakers cannot allow themselves to be drawn into a process "that's not thoughtful or complete or might not even be the conclusion we ought to draw."

"We ought to let Mr. Mueller complete his full investigation rather than engage in what would essentially be a public relations stunt," Kildee said. "This is a serious thing. It ought not to be done on a whim."

'STEP IN THE PROCESS'

Green said on the House floor that he planned to take the road less traveled in seeking Trump's impeachment. He's convinced it's a road worth traveling, but he said, "I ask that no one take this journey with me."

Afterward, Green said the vote would not deter him from trying again. He said he was already working on additional articles of impeachment.

"I didn't lobby anybody. I didn't ask anybody, but I'm grateful for those who did vote with the Constitution. I assure you, it's a process and this was a step in the process," Green said.

Pelosi has said any impeachment drive should wait until there's evidence of an impeachable offense. Another problem for Democrats is that opposing Green's resolution puts them at risk of angering the party's rabidly anti-Trump voters. Some Democrats tried talking Green out of his plan. They did the same in October, when he proposed a similar resolution but never demanded a vote on it.

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ALSO WATCH | SO SORRY | What happens when Donald Trump gets a WhatsApp message from PM Modi

--- ENDS ---
Grover Norquist and other anti-tax advocates have pointed to North Carolina as an example of tax and spending policies done right. North Carolina has dramatically cut taxes and held down spending. That is the model, Norquist tweeted early this year after critics pointed to the budgetary failures of tax cuts implemented in Kansas.

So how is that model playing out? Its a question with national implications given the tax bill likely headed to President Trumps desk this month. Changing the national tax code is much different from changing a states code, Todd C. Frankel writes in The Washington Post. But whats happening today in North Carolina offers potential clues about the grand experiment with tax cuts the entire nation is close to embarking on.

Like what you're reading? Sign up for our free newsletter.

Frankels summary: North Carolina has enjoyed the same steady growth as much of the country. The state has fared better than Kansas since it started rolling back taxes in 2013. But its hard to tease out how much of that is related to tax cuts and how much stems from non-tax factors.

The tax changes in North Carolina havent produced the fiscal calamity that led Republican legislators in Kansas this year to reverse dramatic cuts they passed a few years earlier, Frankel writes, but nor have they produced the kind of win-for-all economic prosperity national Republicans say their effort will spur. In the meantime, the state projects a budget squeeze of at least $1.2 billion starting in 2019.

Read Frankels full piece here.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times
China's stock market is having a banner year, and Asia expert Stephen Roach sees reasons for investors to be optimistic  but not without a caveat. If the right steps aren't taken, he warns, a stock market shock could come from outside its borders. "There's just been a progression in the advances that North Korea has made in terms of nuclear weapons capability and in missile delivery capability. And now, we're at a really dangerous point," the Yale University senior fellow said Monday on CNBC's " Trading Nation ." Roach, who spent five years as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has been arguing that China's economy is in the early stages of a " long-heralded structural transformation ." He's been closely following China's evolution into a services and consumer-oriented economy. "My base case for the fundamentals of the Asian economy remain constructive," said Roach, who visits China five to six times a year. "China is in a period of addressing a lot of its structural challenges." The Hang Seng (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: .HSI) stock index has surged more than 32 percent this year. There have been concerns that China's economy has been overheating, and too much speculation is baked into its stock market. Roach doesn't share those concerns but says it's vital for North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions for China's growth story to continue. "This is a potentially destabilizing threat with a very aggressive leadership that seems absolutely fixed on developing a capability and a presence in a nuclear club," he said. Roach believes sanctions are necessary , and China could set up the most effective ones. "China is North Korea's largest trading partner," he said. "There's no question that China has leverage." China provides key items such as fuel and food to North Korea, which has been dealing with serious shortages. "It's just a question of whether or not they have the willingness to use it or whether or not we have the ability to put pressure on them to use that leverage," Roach said.



More From CNBC


A huge controversy has broken out over who Kapil Sibal represented in the Babri Masjid title suit in the Supreme Court on December 5. Here are the facts of the case.

By Prabhash K Dutta: CLAIM

Kapil Sibal represents Sunni Waqf Board.

RATING

Debatable.

ORIGIN

On December 5 senior lawyer and Congress leader Kapil Sibal left many bemused with his remarks in the Babri Masjid title suit both in the Supreme Court and outside. Kapil Sibal argued for deferment of hearing of the Ayodhya dispute till completion of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

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This submission of Kapil Sibal led to huge uproar with the Sunni Waqf Board and his own Congress party dissociating themselves from the suggestion to delay resolution of the over 70-year-case.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed a tirade against Sibal and Congress over "the cause of the Muslim community" and suggestion "to stop the hearing of Ram temple (issue) in the name of elections".

WHAT IS THE CONTROVERSY?

Soon after Kapil Sibal's suggestion hit the TV screens of the news channels and flashed on news websites, the Sunni Waqf Board rejected the move saying, "No such directive had been given by the board."

The Sunni Waqf Board Chairman Zafar Farooqui said, "The board is of the view that hearing in the case be held and the matter be disposed of promptly... I do not know on whose behalf the counsel for the Muslims appearing in the apex court Kapil Sibal stated this."

Campaigning for Gujarat Assembly election, PM Modi too launched an offensive. He said, "Does the Waqf Board fight elections? Are these thoughts of delaying the hearing for elections that of the Waqf Board? The elections in the country are being fought by the Congress party. You want to keep the issue unresolved for political gains and losses in the elections?"

Kapil Sibal's party too distanced itself from his plea. Senior party leader Anand Sharma said, "The Congress is clear that the matter is before the Supreme Court and our party will support whatever the court says. The prime minister should decide if he is giving any direction to the Supreme Court?"

Under attack, Kapil Sibal denied having represented the Sunni Waqf Board on Tuesday in the Supreme Court in the Babri Masjid title suit.

WHAT DOES RECORD SAY?

The Supreme Court's Record of Proceedings is as confusing as the claims of the parties engaged in the controversy. Describing the Coram, the Supreme Court document lists Kapil Sibal as Senior Advocate in four Civil Appeals numbered 2894, 7226, 4192 and 8096.

The Supreme Court record shows that Kapil Sibal as counsel for Sunni Waqf Board.

Of these four, Civil Appeal number 4192 relates to the plea of the Sunni Waqf Board. The screenshot below shows it clearly that C.A. No. 004192/2011 belongs to petitioner Sunni Central Board of Waks (now known UP Sunni Central Waqf Board).

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The Supreme Court document shows CA 4192 is petition by the Sunni Waqf Board.

This leaves no doubt the Kapil Sibal is one of the designated counsels for the Sunni Waqf Board in the Babri Masjid title suit.

But there is still a catch. The order of the Supreme Court issued on Tuesday reads, "Kapil Sibal, learned senior counsel appearing for the appellants in Civil Appeal Nos. 2894/2011 and 7226/2011".

This means Kapil Sibal is right when he says he did not appear for the Sunni Waqf Board on Tuesday.

But then it would also mean that no one appeared for the Sunni Waqf Board as the same document also lists him as a counsel for the Board. The Supreme Court order mentions names of other lawyers like K Parasaran, Rajeev Dhavan and Dushyant Dave. But, none of them represented CA 4192.

Read the Supreme Court Record of Proceedings here

--- ENDS ---
What is going on with his hair situation? The blonde is nagl.

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lol i commented before entering this post. he looks cute!!

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he's taking style tips from frankie grande

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That's exactly what it looks like.

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The blonde looks fine on him.

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i like the blonde 

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his face is not cute at all now :(

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Ew no he looks like a teenager here. Pedophilic.

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He peaked at 17 Again

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I think I read somewhere that they suspected he was using steroids and his face changed bc of it.

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I watch everything all Adam's shows, movies etc now. I love him and think he's more attractive than Zac.





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lmao i do love him, he's always the best part of what he's in

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he kills me lmao

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Ahhh so cute!! Never seen this before :D

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He's too good for Modern Family but I wish he'd come back because he and Haley are perfect

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he is so ugly now

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he and colton haynes have morphed

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mte, I was gonna say, are we sure that's not Colton Haynes ?

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Even they look alike....almost. Blah

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He looks like Colton Haynes who in turn looks like Chris Crocker 

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That first picture is serving some serious Blue Steel.

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He looks so fucking gross now 

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omg no why does he look like a wax figure in that pic?!!?

my deep deep infatuation with him is starting to wane

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dear god,



what happened

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I'm all for strong arms on a guy, but his are so bulky they make him look stocky...if that makes sense.

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yeah, you have to be very careful as a shorter guy. Too much mass makes you look bad.

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Is it the bad angle that made him look so unattractive in dat photo? have he gotten skinny? Because he's gaunt asf

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I cackled hard at that gif during the movie.

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when will shawn mendes tbh

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It's disgusting that outlets are leading with this headline. Nice way to blindside women who did nothing wrong. No matter what they say or do now, some people will always think this about them.

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I knew this was going to happen, women would be accused of sleeping their way to the top. I still consider it rape, there was nothing 'consensual' about these relationships when someone was threatening your livelihood.

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Like it isn't bad enough that he probably assaulted Rene and Charlize (they haven't said anything so I'm not going to assume they were victims), but then he turned around and used his victims to leverage other victims. It's sickening.

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They're not favors if you forced them to bitch

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Favors? Gtfo

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This pervasive, disgusting lie.

The amount of men Ive seen on social media saying that these women are all liars because if youre raped but get a film role in return, then its fine.

I cant.

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He is just so disgusting.





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Wow, what a prick!!!!

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The fucking audacity of this piece of shit.

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the level of manipulation is disgusting

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When is he going to die?

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i thought this scene was hilarious. still makes me lol irl.

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The New York Times story published today about him is totally insane and disturbing.

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Could he be any more disgusting?

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get a fucking kidney stone blocking your uterine tube you grease ball

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Gaaahhh I love Three's Company!!

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Perfect gif is perfect

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omg a Three's Company gif

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john ritter <3333333333333333333

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whuuuuuut

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Praying that they get the most messy and dramatic beauty youtubers as contestants on this show.

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Well, considering the fact that Kandee Johnson will be on the show...

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is kandee messy or just annoying and not all that talented?

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Kandee Johnson tho?

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just an excuse for her and the social media beauty clique to get attention



Edited at 2017-12-06 11:25 pm (UTC)

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I feel like she's really trying to market as this beauty/makeup queen but it's just not working. She's too old to be hanging amongst youtubers and way late on the makeup trend. Fenty Beauty killed all the hype her and her now hermit little sister had with their brands.

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lol...



i wonder how kkw beauty~ is doing. she releases the oddest shit

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Dark/Deep Dark Powder Contour and Highlight #KKWBEAUTY pic.twitter.com/YCqIOnhKza  KKW BEAUTY (@kkwbeauty) September 10, 2017





Trying to catch up to queen Rih Trying to catch up to queen Rih

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Ultralight Beams Highlighters and Glosses launching Dec 1 https://t.co/32qaKbs5YG pic.twitter.com/3rOUN9XSZR  KKW BEAUTY (@kkwbeauty) November 28, 2017



lmao the galaxy collection and gloss bomb have ha shook

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beauty blogger = makeup artist

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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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i'm on the fence about how to feel about makeup. and ontd has some interesting debates about it. the industry is just such trash ughhhhhhhhhhh

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I am of the opinion that the industry is trash. And that the cultural expectation for women to wear makeup is an arm of the patriarchy that values women for their appearances.[



But also I really like to play with makeup.



So...



\_()_/

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Haha yes, exactly.



I'm so critical of the makeup industry and makeup culture but I fully know that I'll never stop wearing it. A lot of it is that I just love makeup but I also can't deny that I feel ugly without it and I don't think that feeling comes out of nowhere.

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I feel like makeup lines are the new athleisure brands for celebrities.

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but most beauty bloggers dont have any talent??

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I don't want to discount them. I think they have talent and can be creative, but they really only know how to do makeup on themselves.



Edited at 2017-12-07 02:13 am (UTC)

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forever kailyn plzzzzz

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To quote MST3K, "Looks like somebody needed to make a house payment."



Still...



I saw Laverne Cox's promo for this on her Insta and went into cognitive dissonance brainlock. Cos I like her so much...why would she get involved with someone like...how...what...?!To quote MST3K, "Looks like somebody needed to make a house payment."Still...

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The trailer is pretty

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I saw a video that looked like the end of the world, I would be really scared living in the hills.

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I know this is serious but I screamed when I read Chelsea Handler's tweet.



On a serious note....I hope any ONTDers who live in that area are safe!

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Yeah, this isn't great. I am nowhere near the danger zone (right smack dab in the middle of the city, really), but it's really troublesome that so many people have already been affected.



Stay safe, ONTD!

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same. stay safe los angeles ontders<3

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I'm glad to hear the city isn't a danger zone, haha. This is my first year in LA and I live in ktown/work on Melrose and was wondering what the chances were I'd have to evacuate.

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Terrifying, hopefully people who aren't celebs have the resources they need to evacuate too.



I loved living in CA but I do not miss the rampant dryness of the mohave.

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Yeah it's a beautiful state but I wouldn't live there again.

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Not the typical morning commute... pic.twitter.com/kJIOQeqsIK  A. Mutzabaugh CMT (@WLV_investor) 6 December 2017



Saw this on twitter earlier, crazy...

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never thought Id get to actually play what I thought was a hypothetical game of what would you grab if there were a fire. so far all I have is Luna, some limited edition Oreos and my spike tv award  christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) December 6, 2017





we are fine and we will be fine. thinking of everyone else affected and continuing my lifelong intense love of firefighters.  christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) December 6, 2017





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honestly, i felt california was on fire most of this year D: i havent heard back from my bestie in LA :/ im hoping she is safe at least

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Holy crap that hole encompasses much of the west coast

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i check my weather forecast every week hoping for some rain. fucking sucks.

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That's just stunning.

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Some of Rupert Murdoch's properties are on fire in the area. I'd make a glib comment about how he "deserves" this, what with being the biggest driver of anti-environmental propaganda in the world. But it's a fallacy to think of natural disasters as having morality, and the disasters caused by climate change fuck over poor people and minorities far more than the likes of Murdoch.

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This comment is like my conscience. It's so much more fun to have a good "HA HA" though.

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I would totally go haha.gif if it hurt Murdoch more, although I'd still be mindful that that wouldn't be "justice" or "karma" and that Murdoch is far better equipped to deal with it than most people who get fucked over by his anti-environmental propaganda.



Edited at 2017-12-07 02:42 am (UTC)

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I read his mansion burned down?

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My aunt called a couple of times to say that the fires were a couple of miles away yesterday..but it looks like they've gone west of where they are, which is good. My cousin's ex-husband and his girlfriend had to evacuate, but it doesn't sound like any of my actual family had to evacuate at least.



Hope everyone else still within the paths of the fire stay safe :/

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Its absolutely insane out here. This reminds me of the major LA fires of 2003/2008. Ash was everywhere. Luckily I think I live far enough east that the fire isnt too much of a danger but its still scary. The local news is nothing but fire coverage

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Ah, yes. The 2008 fire was when I was a freshman and that very weekend I was visiting home. When I got back to my dorm, my roommate had the window open the entire time and I had ash all over my side of the room.



*please give us rain, mother nature.*

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Why is California so prone to bad weather? I feel like one of these days California is gonna fall off.

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california is popular for having amazing sunny weather, the problem is that it doesn't rain often here

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It's a vicious cycle of no rain drying everything out. And then here in Southern California we have a weather pattern called the Santa Anna winds which is winds that come down through the mountains and blow to the west. And the winds are VERY strong and VERY dry. So a small fire can become huge very fast when it's fulled by the winds.



And then we do get some rain which can then cause mudslides due to the fires burning up all the vegetation. Or that rain will lead to some vegetation growing but then summer will hit and those plants will dry up and make excellent fuel for fires.

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climate change is creating longer period of hot, dry weather which is the perfect setting for wildfires. throw in some active fault lines and there you go..

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its not. we just have santa ana winds and dry weather. some places have hurricanes. some places have tornadoes. some places have monsoons. we have this.

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I mean, you also have earthquakes. And not having water is kind of a big deal.

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These huge fires are from strong winds.

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Winds and dry climate/literally no rain in he forecast will do that. As it does every year in California, come on sis.

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It was never meant to be inhabited by humans but we're arrogant and think we can just settle anywhere.

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Im pretty sure I just cant smell the smoke anymore because I saw ashes in the air on my way home but I dont smell anything.

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SOPHIE, Fatima al Qadiri, Jenny Hval and Kristin Kontrol on the lineup and this chick would rather be in a pit with boys??!

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https://open.spotify.com/album/0UrMMuOJVSRLG6xptMg72F mte, stream Ponyboy on Spotify!

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Aint SOPHIE a guy tho, or is this a different person?

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She's a transwoman

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She just came out as trans a month ago



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this line up is so tight. i'm going to try and go.



i know some people who have worked with caroline, including a guy who was in the touring lineup for chairlift on their last tour. that community of people in brooklyn have seem really apolitical to me.. like "let me create, i don't want to engage politics." they have some people of color in the group but not many. it just rings so false to me.. especially in this day and age.

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lmao...idk hew this is but her anger is amusing. why would something like this make her completely pull out? smdh.

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please.. she hangs out with kanye, jay z, nicki.

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lol at "she hangs out with jay z"

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Really? You can't believe that?





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Beyonces a TERF!!!!1

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lol beyonce just rented out an entire theater to see woody allen's newest film

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that's an overreaction for sure, but I'm not mad at her



And i get no "cool girl" vibes from her statement like some are suggesting

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her make up is cute

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This is so fucking awesome. Also as someone who is non-binary, I say oh well fuck you @ Caroline too. Yer loss. I loved Chairlift, "Bruises" was great. Smh so fuck off then

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What kind of I'm not like other girls bullshit? Heaux, I bet your music doesn't even slap. Also how insulting to the other performers in the lineup.



Like if this lineup brings a mostly women audience, I'm not going to be mad because even being at festivals can be a nightmare for women.

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It doesnt, its really boring and has only gotten worse with time

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lol how ridiculous, good thing tbh someone better can take her place.

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I really love Chairlift but she's been making statements here and there that make me have reservations about her political/social leanings for a while now. I want to be wrong about her but this is not a good look without elaboration.

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Really? A mess, how is she bff's with Solange then?

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IDK. if she ever says something full on fucked up I'll be in the corner like



Every once in a while in an interview she'll say something and I'll get the vibe that she's that one friend that you raise an eyebrow at like "I really want you to explain what you mean by that?? But then again maybe I don't..."IDK. if she ever says something full on fucked up I'll be in the corner like

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i don't think she's bffs with solange. maybe she worked with her because of a dev hynes connection. but caroline's in the brooklyn scene of minimalist, white-dominated performance art scene and solange lives in new orleans.

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I was saying that in my own comment too. I've started to notice a pattern lol.

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I never was interested in Chairlift enough to download their discography tbh

Maybe she feels like this is a forced and insincere gimmick that male curators are trying to play up for sales and has a particular beef with them personally but worded it wrong but the "put me in the pit with the boys" part is truly y i k e s

I remember seing this line-up yeasterday and thinking how strong it was

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Maybe she feels like this is a forced and insincere gimmick that male curators are trying to play up for sales and has a particular beef with them personally but worded it wrong but the "put me in the pit with the boys" part is truly y i k e s



mte. i was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and think of her decision as well intentioned even tho v misguided... and then i saw the boy pit part, lmao.

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Same. Once she mentioned the pit I was like eaux.

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met

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(i used the masculine version for u caroline, can't have any girly emojis can we?) (i used the masculine version for u caroline, can't have any girly emojis can we?)

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Someone photoshop the Joanne hat on here

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Lmao

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That's way too feminine for Caroline!

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I saw this on twitter last night and saw people applauding her and I was like ???? am I high? Especially because "put me in the pit with the boys" likely erases a lot of people involved in this. I definitely understand that the festival should have communicated with her better but I find her tweets to be extremely suspect. Although this isn't the first time I've read a few interviews with her that left me questioning her.

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mte... even my friend (who is usually very aware and thoughtful) retweeted it and i was like ??? am i missing something? i legit had to re-read it several times



i love chairlift, but haven't really paid attention to caroline herself/the things she says and this certainly wasn't a great first impression

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Whats wrong with centering marginalized voices? Women in music often arent given the same opportunities as men in music. And listen, I am not a fan of Azealia as a person (although I still love some of her songs), but she had a point when she recently said that male rappers have done way worse shit than she has and still have a great record deal.



Also keep in mind that this festival is taking place in North Carolina, where LGBTQ people do not have equal protection under the law until at least 2020. The HB2 repeal was a lie. No municipality can pass ANY laws protecting the LGBTQ community from any kind of discrimination (including employment, meaning wed have to sue on in federal court if we were wrongfully fired based on gender identity or sexual orientation). Of course, theres also a ban on the introduction of any statewide legislation that might offer equal protection for us. My local rep in the state legislature is a lesbian, and even if she wanted to submit anti-discrimination laws for the LGBTQ community, she cant. Her hands our tied. And trans kids in schools still cant use bathrooms concordant with their gender because the law still bans local schools from allowing administrators and teachers to regulate bathrooms.



So I can certainly understand why they want to feature trans and non-binary performers in particular here.



Edited at 2017-12-07 04:03 pm (UTC)

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Tbh, the difference between any other male hip hop artist who did problematic things is that he is mainstream, Azealia Banks was a promissing indie darling with one hit that music media loved when she started being a fucking homophobic mess. A lot of people in the fashion industry and from the liberal media believed in her and invested in her (numerous photoshoots and private parties that she had of 1991 success) and they are way more sensitive to this topic than your casual str8 bro catering media. Like, she barely was a one hit wonder and the only people who were here for her were hipsters and gays and none of those demographics will eat up shit like that. And at the same time, Migos are as popping as they could be even though they were so unaplogetically and publicly homophobic twice in the last 12 months. Or Cardi B who said some transphobic shit in her past but nobody cares because Bodak Yellow is charting good

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Whats really fucked up is that during the first special session to debate a repeal they suggested a 3 month moratorium on anti-discrimination laws, which was bad enough. Then the fucking compromise democrats agreed on stretched that moratorium out to three years. And businesses, like the NBA, fell for it and agreed to do business with the state again.

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No Angel is the worst song on self-titled.



Edited at 2017-12-07 04:02 pm (UTC)

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lol this i always skip it

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ehhh I used to think that but then I watched the video and everything came together and it became my favorite track on the album

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you're entitled to your wrong opinion.gif

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Lying is a sin.

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first song I deleted tbqh, that and Drunk In Love. now I hav the jay z-free version lol

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This is such an interesting case. What August said coulda been worded better, but she didn't deserve the shit she got on Twitter for it either.

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I could lie and say I had no idea people in porn were this unstable and emotionally despondent, but that would be rude.



Shut down the industry and get these people the mental and emotional help they so clearly need.

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They literally prey on women like August. I understand that some women in porn might find it empowering but I honestly just feel like they are totally eclipsed by the number of women who are in it because they're desperate and don't feel like they can make it anywhere else. Plus reading stories from ex-porn stars where they talked about how they were treated by the male actors and producers will haunt me forever.

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There's a type of porn that has become somewhat of a meme (which is how I found it; some celebrities were talking about it) and I was so disturbed watching it. It was set up to be about young girls (18) wanting to get into porn and was basically a casting couch situation for them to get there. It was straight up predation and I'm not sure how it's legal. Imagine the stuff that isn't shown. The entire industry is based on women being objects, not humans.

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i know i read once that the stats of porn actresses committing suicide is very high :(

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OMG

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hmmm

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here go hell come.

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I really don't understand why "don't post anything on the Internet that you don't want around forever" is so fucking hard for some people to grasp. Particularly disturbing that everyone in this involved is a goddamn grown-ass adult.



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He sounds delightful. My scream would make you realize your place in this world?

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1. that sounds disturbing

2. what does it even mean

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what does that even mean????

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Come on Black Canary.

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Conner Habib is a mess.

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I dont remember why but he blocked me on Twitter because i called him out on something



Nvm i looked it up. Its because he was blaming women for the rentboy arrests.



Edited at 2017-12-07 05:59 pm (UTC)

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I remember I unfollowed him because there was a discussion about testing and he said that you shouldn't have to disclose your status to your scene partner. This was also before PrEP was released



Edited at 2017-12-07 06:28 pm (UTC)

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I had to unfollow him because he was always constantly going in on Hilary Clinton but rarely said him say one word about Trump and this was only like a couple of months ago. Then when people rightfully came for him, he said something like "It's my twitter. I can say what I want and if you disagree I'll just block you."



Edited at 2017-12-07 08:55 pm (UTC)

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rme at anyone who still tries to play dumb with "I never said that on Twitter"

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lmfaoooo the hilarious thing is this is backlash coming from the same community that ignores racism and harassment pertaining to race.

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Sounds about white

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Nnnnn

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the comments in the last post were hideous. Between that and the Time Magazine cover, many people on here have shown themselves to be absolute horrible people

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Cosigned. Seriously, I cannot even believe the shit I've read on this site sometimes. There are some truly despicable people in this community.

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I avoided that post like the plague.

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this is the same site that joked about taylor swift's assault with "how could he grab her ass, she doesn't have one" jokes so idk why I ever expect better but I'm continually disappointed lmao

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The reason August and many other porn stars have crossover stars on their no list is because not all gay porn studios test as consistently as straight porn. Its every two weeks in straight porn. Some gay studios dont even require testing (which is rare, but obviously a concern). And while its true that crossover stars would have to get tested just as regularly as straight stars, theres no guarantee that all of their scene partners for gay studios are regularly tested which could potentially be risky.



Conner Habib himself talked about how testing in gay porn is not as consistent here.



https://www.thedailybeast.com/risky-business-or-none-of-your-business-gay-xxx-films-and-the-condom-question



If the testing in gay porn was as rigorous as straight porn, this wouldnt be an issue. I understand her tweet came off as insensitive, but I understand the concern about inconsistent testing in gay porn.



That being said, Jaxtons tweet is disgusting. Im going to repeat this here:The reason August and many other porn stars have crossover stars on their no list is because not all gay porn studios test as consistently as straight porn. Its every two weeks in straight porn. Some gay studios dont even require testing (which is rare, but obviously a concern). And while its true that crossover stars would have to get tested just as regularly as straight stars, theres no guarantee that all of their scene partners for gay studios are regularly tested which could potentially be risky.Conner Habib himself talked about how testing in gay porn is not as consistent here.If the testing in gay porn was as rigorous as straight porn, this wouldnt be an issue. I understand her tweet came off as insensitive, but I understand the concern about inconsistent testing in gay porn.That being said, Jaxtons tweet is disgusting.

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straight porn is chock full of condomless sex, and constant back and forth anal to vagina penetration. testing depends on the studios, and for you to claim that straight porn is more vigorous in testing based off one article is just plain ignorance.

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http://adultbizlaw.com/testing-and-condoms-straight-porn-vs-gay-porn/ Okay heres another one

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back and forth anal to vagina penetration



This needs to be illegal. You gotta wash you hands before inserting a damn tampon so you don't get sick - and these guys are shoving literal shit stained dicks up there. How long before these women are immune to penicillin? Not safe at all yikes.

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What you're saying would work, but these people are not just having sex with their scene partners or people in the industry.

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/porn-hiv-penis-bleeding_n_3944401.html well considering theres been more health shutdowns in straight porn, it is not really much safer at all. and the socalled stricter things they do I wonder are even considerable after reading about the last hiv outbreak. literally they were about to shoot a performer even after a positive testing

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Porn stars have gone on the record saying that the testing in gay and straight porn is bullshit. You say whayt you need to please the public but a lot of these production companies let stuff slip because they dont give a fuck about their employees. For every person not willing to do a scene for some reason there is always going to be someone out their willing to say yes.



And not every case of a porn star testing positive and still doing a scene is in the news.

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I think the issue with this is that men view women in the sex industry as not being entitled to any standards when it comes to their health and physical well-being, since men feel a greater sense of entitlement over any random woman's body than they'll allow women to have themselves.

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sis, please don't. She was being homophobic and you know it;

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lol @ the studio feigning like they give two shits about antibullying when worse behaviour probably goes down unchecked on their own productions.

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It should but it will never happen. The people who run these companies and free websites with advertisig makes hundreds of millions of dollars of amateur and professional porn. Like even the adultcon in Vegas makes millions. The actors dont make anywhere near what it use to be decades ago and abuses is rampan but they will never shit it down because its money over people/safety.

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"RIP young girl. Im sorry for calling you homophobic without initiating private discourse."

Hmm.

There's definitely smth to be said about the obvious points in this case such as homophobia, the porn industry, depression, etc, but I've mostly been thinking about it all day in relation to "call out culture"



Edited at 2017-12-07 06:02 pm (UTC)

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Illinois Streamlines Firefighter State Training Certification Process

"The Illinois legislature has mandated that the firefighters of Illinois receive training from the Fire Service Institute and certifications from the Office of the State Fire Marshal in order for them to operate smarter, safer, and more effectively," said Illinois State Fire Marshal Matt Perez. "The closer alignment of these two state agencies will offer unparalleled quality in fire service education."

Illinois State Fire Marshal Matt Perez and Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI) Director Royal Mortenson announced an intergovernmental agreement on Dec. 5 that they say streamlines the process for Illinois firefighters who complete IFSI courses to receive state certification. Under the terms of the agreement, IFSI will be granted state certification equivalency for its end-of-course examinations, which will eliminate the requirement imposed on Illinois firefighters who attended IFSI courses to take both a final end-of-course examination and an OSFM examination in order to receive state certification.

"The Illinois legislature has mandated that the firefighters of Illinois receive training from the Fire Service Institute and certifications from the Office of the State Fire Marshal in order for them to operate smarter, safer, and more effectively," Perez said. "The closer alignment of these two state agencies will offer unparalleled quality in fire service education. I look forward to continuing work with Director Mortenson to maximize the capabilities of both our agencies."

Mortenson said the agreement "is the product of the close working relationship between the OSFM and IFSI, our shared responsibilities, and our shared commitment to provide Illinois firefighters the best training possible as well as making access to state certification as easy as possible."

OSFM is mandated under the Illinois Fire Protection Training Act to select and certify a training program at the IFSI for Illinois firefighters. IFSI is mandated under the Illinois Fire Service Institute Act to provide firefighters, department officers, and others opportunities to comply with the OSFM state certification program. Both state agencies are members of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force, which provides to the governor information and recommendations specifically related to Illinois fire service response capabilities and firefighter training. In addition to state certification equivalency, IFSI is accredited by two international third-party organizations (The Pro Board Fire Service Professional Qualification System and the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress) to deliver accredited certification programs.

The agreement will take effect on Jan. 1, 2018. All IFSI end-of-course examinations taken after that date that are submitted for state certification will receive OSFM equivalency status.
By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan: Families of 19 missing fishermen from Tuticorin district in Tamil Nadu visited Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday, seeking government's help to trace them.

These fishermen were reported missing in Cyclone Ockhi that lashed across the southern parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Fathima, a native of Tuticorin who is waiting for her husband Jude and Son Bharath, said that the Tamil Nadu government is not doing enough to find the missing fishermen. A six-member team, including Jude and Bharath, ventured into the sea on the evening of November 28.

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Next day, their boat was hit by strong winds and everyone on the boat except one Jagan drowned when it capsized. According to Jagan, all the others were thrown into the sea by huge waves and strong winds caused by Cyclone Ockhi.

However, Jagan managed to cling on to one side of the capsized boat and was later rescued and brought to Thiruvananthapuram Medical College by combined rescue forces.

According to Fathima, the family received information that several bodies were brought to Kerala hospitals. "They have taken our DNA samples for identification. All we need to know is if our family is dead or alive," she said.

"We've heard that Kerala government has been extensively coordinating search and rescue operations, which is why we came here. We asked the Tamil Nadu government about our missing members but we are not getting any response", a weeping Fathima said.

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has assured that the DNA test results will be provided within 24 hours. The Kerala government will ensure all necessary support to fishermen stranded in the sea irrespective of which state they hail from.

--- ENDS ---
A lawsuit by three female former Google employees claiming that the company paid women less than men has been dismissed, but may reappear in a different form.

The women - Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri - sued in September, alleging that Google had a "sexist culture" and systematically discriminated against women by segregating them into lower-paying jobs and career tracks, while men with equivalent qualifications leaped ahead.

Google, which is also facing a federal investigation of its pay to women, has denied paying women less than men, and says its own annual analysis shows no gap in pay between the genders.

A California state court judge threw out the lawsuit because in seeking class-action status, it cast too wide a net, Reuters reported.

The plaintiffs had sought to include in the suit all women employed by Google in the previous four years.

Wiss gave the three women 30 days to file a new complaint "on behalf of only those women who faced pay discrimination," Reuters reported

James Finberg, lawyer for the women, said they would file a new complaint by early January that "makes clear that Google violates the California Equal Pay Act ... by paying women less than men for substantially equal work in nearly every job classification," according to Reuters.

For plaintiff Ellis, a former senior software engineer, the lawsuit was not the first time she's gone after Google on gender issues. In 2015, she said in a Twitter post that she had been subjected to sexual harassment at the company. She complained, but instead of investigating her claim, Google reprimanded her, Ellis alleged said. Google did not respond to a request for comment on that claim by Ellis.

2017 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: University of Granada

An international team of researchers led by the University of Granada (UGR) has explained for the first time the scientific basis of the old Spanish saying 'perro no come perro' (dog eats no dog): for a carnivorous animal, eating carrion of another carnivore, especially if it is of the same species, increases the probability of contracting pathogens that could endanger its life.

This work, which also includes the participation of the University of Berkeley (USA), the University of Murcia (Spain) and the Miguel Hernandez University (Spain), has been published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This study provides new information about an idea whose origin goes back at least to the times of ancient Rome. The saying in Latin is "Canis caninam non est," which says, in a social context, that members of a certain guild tend to avoid conflicts among themselves.

The expression 'dog eats no dog' seems to have originated from empirical observations about the aversion of carnivorous animals to eat the carcasses of other carnivores. And, as Marcos Moleon Paiz, researcher at the Department of Zoology of the UGR and main author of this work, explains, "humans love to eat, but not anything, or at any price."

Among the countless species of animals and plants that inhabit the planet, only a handful provide the bulk of the carbohydrates and proteins demanded by mankind. Examples are wheat, rice, chicken and pork.

"Moreover, tastes change from one culture to another and from one person to another. Should the rest of the animals behave differently? Could a scavenger animal, the paradigm of opportunism, be selective in deciding what type of carrion is advisable to eat and which is not? These were the questions that gave rise to our study," explains Moleon.

The UGR researchers have verified that this aversive behavior is for a good reason: For a carnivorous animal, such as a fox or a marten, eating carrion from another carnivore, especially of the same species, increases the probability of contracting pathogens that could endanger its life. Prions such as the virulent kuru, which, in the 1950s, ended the lives of many natives of Papua New Guinea who practiced cannibalism rituals, are examples of such pathogens.

In order to carry out this work, the researchers monitored and studied a total of 89 carcasses of carnivorous and herbivorous animals during the winter months of several years between 2005 and 2016. The carcasses were monitored by automatic cameras that were fired upon the detection of movement. The study was carried out in two different regions of the Southeast of Spain: the Sierra Espuna and Sierra de Cazorla mountain ranges.

A field experiment was also conducted in which apparently identical pieces of carnivorous and herbivore meat were placed in different sectors of Sierra Espuna to check whether carnivorous animals can "smell the risk." This information was complemented by mathematical models that simulate the evolution of the feeding behavior when carrion of both types is offered to hypothetical carnivorous animals.

Throughout evolution, carnivores have learned to discern safe and unsafe carrion, probably because of the smell. "This co-evolutive relationship between carnivores and their parasites has not been described so far, and it indicates that carnivore carcasses play a very different role from carcasses of other animals in ecosystems," says the UGR researcher.

More information: Marcos Moleon et al. Carnivore carcasses are avoided by carnivores, Journal of Animal Ecology (2017). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12714 Journal information: Journal of Animal Ecology
After David Bowie's death, grieving fans gathered online to plan real-life memorials. Credit: University of Colorado at Boulder

After the deaths of David Bowie, Prince and actor Alan Rickman in 2016, grieving fans flocked to public comment threads on social media to pay their respects in what has been likened to a virtual wake. But many arrived to also find a toxic space where so-called "grief police" mocked them for lamenting the loss of a stranger, chastised them for emotional rubber-necking, or even dissed the dead.

That's the key finding of a study published this week by CU Boulder researchers who analyzed more than 7,000 Facebook comments to gain insight into how people mourn death in the internet age. Their conclusion: People are surprisingly mean to each other online even in times of tragedy, but some technological fixes could likely make things better.

"Social media has become such a big part of us sharing life together, and by necessity it has also become a big part of sharing death," said lead author Katie Gach, a PhD student at the ATLAS Institute. "Throughout our data we saw people in conflict over when, where, who and how to grieve."

Gach, a social computing researcher and avid Harry Potter fan, got the idea for the study after Rickman, who played Professor Snape in the films, died of cancer in January 2016.

"I went on Facebook that morning to see if there were any pictures of my nieces and there it was. I sat there and cried. Then I started looking at the comments and was really touched that there were other people who were legitimately sad like I was."

David Bowie had died four days earlier, and Prince passed away three months later. To she and co-author Jed Brubaker, an assistant professor in the department of Information Science, the swelling digital response seemed an ideal environment for studying both online mourning and "parasocial relationships" (those between fans and celebrities).

Gach spent months analyzing public comments responding to news articles about the deaths, taking care to keep spam, fake accounts, or obvious troll-like behavior (commenting only to intentionally disrupt) out of the dataset.

She found that some posted elaborate fan art or made plans to gather in person for memorials. But she also noticed another trend. Grief policing - the phenomenon of some users telling others how or what to grieve - was ubiquitous.

In one comment cited in the paper, a Facebook user scolded another for grieving excessively over Rickman's death.

"You didn't know him, move on to being sad about something that matters!"

In another, one commenter accused another of posting about Prince's death to draw attention to herself.

"Shut up. You posted this exact same thing somewhere else. You're not here to pay respects, you're here to get likes."

Some reacted to posts about Bowie's death by bringing up his alleged sexual misdeeds.

"Good riddance!" one wrote.

"It was baffling. These people were fighting in what was essentially an online wake," said Brubaker. "In a normal, pre-news feed world this wouldn't happen."

Why people are mean

The authors point to several potential explanations. Due to algorithms that move comments to the top based on click rates, the most contentious  rather than the highest quality  interactions were often prioritized, leading more people to see them and comment.

"In terms of design it could be that top comments is not a compassionate algorithm," said Gach.

News about death is also presented in the same visual format as funny cat videos or friends' vacation photos, catching people off guard as they scroll their newsfeed.

"It's like a funeral procession has barged into your living room, so people feel entitled to have any kind of reaction they want to," she said.

The authors looked only at public comment threads, where users pop in and out without worrying about the risk of being unfriended. They suspect fan pages would have more established social norms and civil discourse. They did not look at discourse about deaths of personal loved ones, focusing instead on parasocial relationships, which have become more visible in the internet age.

But they believe their findings could have broad application, helping to inform the design of future online platforms that better accommodate expression of all kinds of grief.

"What this research starts to speak to are questions of how we want to design our systems now that they are handling the entirety of our social lives - not just the happy birthday parties but the harder moments, too," said Brubaker. "How can we design them in a way that helps us be kinder to each other?"

More information: Katie Z. Gach et al. "Control your emotions, Potter":, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2017). DOI: 10.1145/3134682
Google is teaming up with Chance the Rapper to bring computer science education to Chicago's public schools.

The Internet giant's philanthropic arm Google.org is giving $1 million to Chance the Rapper's SocialWorks organization and $500,000 to the schools. Chicago is the first national school district to mandate computer science education for all students.

Chance the Rapper made a surprise appearance at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Academy on Wednesday where fifth-grade students were working on a coding activity with Google employees as a part of Computer Science Education Week.

The performer, a Chicago native whose real name is Chancelor Jonathan Bennett, is the latest to join a growing national effort to put computers and computer skills in the hands of boys and girls from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Computer science skills such as analytical thinking and creative problem solving are critical for young people who will be hunting for jobs in an increasingly automated society.

Chance the Rapper was educated in the public schools and has been vocal during the funding crisis for the school system, which is the nation's third largest and serves more than 400,000 students. The mission of SocialWorks, an organization he helped create, is to empower youth.

Coding classes are popping up in high schools and in lower grades across the country. And those classes may have the potential to address unequal access to computer science education.

Research conducted by Google shows that black students are less likely to have computer science classes in school and are less likely to use computers at home even though they are 1.5 times more interested in studying computer science than their white peers. Black and Hispanic students are less likely than white students to use computers at home, too. Some 58% of black and 50% of Hispanic students say they use a computer at least most days at home compared with 68% of white students, Google found.

And, even as more kids study computer science, too few of them are African American, Latinos or women. That's reflected in the lopsided demographics of the technology industry.

Google, which three years ago pledged to close the race and gender gap to make its workforce better reflect the panoply of people it serves around the globe, is still overwhelmingly male and employs very few African Americans and Hispanics. Tensions over that diversity drive are running high at Google, which recently fired an employee who wrote an internal memo suggesting men are better suited for tech jobs than women.

Justin Steele, principal with Google.org, says the grant will bring computer science and arts curriculum to Chicago classrooms. David Drummond, Alphabet's senior vice president of corporate development, the Google parent company's most prominent African-American executive, was on hand to make the funding announcement.

"There's so much talent and creativity in the communities that these schools serveand Chance The Rapper embodies what can happen when that creativity is unleashed," Steele said. "With exposure to computer science, students can use technology to turn their creative passionswhether that's art, writing, music or something elseinto something bigger."

2017 USA Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
It's Christmas Eve, you still have gifts to buy, and as the hours tick by, your options grow thin.

Anything you order online won't arrive in time. A gift card feels impersonal. You're skeptical that something picked primarily because it was in stock at a retailer open late on a holiday will be a hit, and don't want to saddle the recipient, or yourself, with the hassle of returning a slapdash gift.

This year, more retailers are giving desperate last-minute shoppers another option - e-gifts.

After choosing an item to give on a retailer's website, a gift-giver can send a message by email, text or Facebook message inviting the recipient to "unwrap" their present. The customer doesn't have to know the size, color, or even home address - the recipient provides all that information. If the recipient doesn't like it, the giver never has to know - the gift's value can be applied to something else.

Like gift cards, which more than half of consumers plan to buy this holiday season, e-gifts are procrastinator-friendly and reduce the risk of guessing wrong on size or style. But unlike the ubiquitous gift card, which can be grabbed while in line at the supermarket or printed from a home computer, e-gifts are designed to let givers show they put in at least a bit more thought.

Nordstrom, Macy's and American Giant have offered e-gifting options for at least a year. But more retailers have joined the bandwagon within the last year, including Target, Lilly Pulitzer, Vera Bradley and Gap's Banana Republic and Athleta divisions.

"People don't necessarily know what size their friends or family fit in, or what flatters them. Fit isn't just size, but how they like it to fit, which can be very personal," said Noam Paransky, senior vice president of digital at Gap. "This gives the gift-giver the option of choosing something they think would be great or want to share, but they can give without the concerns around having to make those decisions."

The concept seems to be catching on with last-minute shoppers, said Loop Commerce CEO and co-founder Roy Erez, who is working with several retailers to provide the GiftNow service. About 40-50 percent of all gifts bought through GiftNow are purchased within a day of their intended delivery, he said.

But while digital gifts can eliminate some of the barriers to last-minute buying and hassles of dealing with returns, they're not entirely seamless.

Givers can see whether an item is in stock when they purchase it through GiftNow but can't reserve a specific item. If the item has sold out by the time the gift is delivered, the retailer will provide a credit equivalent to the gift's value. Erez says that's rarely an issue in practice, since most recipients claim gifts quickly.

Prices also can change by the time the recipient opens the gift, especially during the promotion-heavy holiday season, and policies vary by retailer.

If the gift goes on sale after the giver purchases it, the recipient will get a credit for the difference at Target and Athleta, while Neiman Marcus says it will refund the giver. If the price goes up post-purchase, Nordstrom says the recipient can choose to cover the difference, or accept a gift card for the amount the giver initially paid, while other retailers say they will let the recipient claim the gift without paying more.

Liz Ladner, 57, of Western Springs, who recently bought her daughter a digital gift at Oakbrook Center's Athleta store, considered it a "win-win." "I get to personalize it, and if she changes her mind, she has that option," Ladner said.

But Lynn Hare, 54, of Oak Brook, was skeptical when told the gift would be unveiled to its recipient as an image on a smartphone or laptop. "Eew. That's not nice," Hare said. "That's like something a college boyfriend does."

E-gifts should help stores reduce returns since most people do a better job picking out items for themselves than other people, said Bobby Stephens, a senior manager in consultancy Deloitte Digital's retail practice. Some retailers limit the items available for e-gifting, suggesting it could be used to nudge customers to relatively high-margin products or away from those that are selling out, he said.

"I think it's a holiday wish for retailers that it will catch on," Stephens said.

A new version of the GiftNow service being tested in 10 Athleta stores this holiday season, including one at Oakbrook Center, lets customers who buy an e-gift take home a square purple card. When the recipient unwraps the card and visits the website address on the back, the selected gift is shown.

Store manager Lisa Stasch said she could see it being popular with customers who don't want to risk guessing wrong. "I believe it will be a big sell for men, especially as it gets closer to the holidays," she said.

2017 Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: James St Clair

Biologists at the University of St Andrews have discovered how New Caledonian crows make one of their most sophisticated tool designs - sticks with a neatly-shaped hooked tip.

New Caledonian crows are the only species besides humans known to manufacture hooked tools in the wild. Birds produce these remarkable tools from the side branches of certain plants, carefully 'crafting' a crochet-like hook that can be used for snagging insect prey.

The study, published in Current Biology today (7 December), reveals how crows manage to fashion particularly efficient tools, with well-defined 'deep' hooks.

The hook is widely regarded as one of humankind's most important innovations, with skilful reshaping, a useless piece of raw material is transformed into a powerful tool. While our ancestors started making stone tools over 3 million years ago, hooks are a surprisingly recent advance - the oldest known fish hooks are just 23,000 years old.

Project leader Professor Christian Rutz, from the School of Biology, has conducted field research on New Caledonian crows for over a decade. His team recently noticed that crows' hooked tools vary considerably in size and shape. While some tools only exhibit a small extension at the tip, others have immaculate hooks.

Professor Rutz explains: "We suspected that tools with pronounced hooks are more efficient, and were able to confirm this in controlled experiments with wild-caught crows. The deeper the hook, the faster birds winkled bait from holes in wooden logs."

Credit: Pedro Barros da Costa and Rutz Group

This finding raised the intriguing question of what it takes to make such well-formed hooks. The researchers started planning their study by imagining how humans would approach a comparable task. "When a craftsperson carves a tool from a piece of wood, two things ensure a quality product: good raw materials and skill," Professor Rutz said.

Researchers found that the same, apparently, applies to New Caledonian crows. The researchers discovered that the depth of the hook was influenced by both the properties of the plant material, and the technique crows used for detaching branches. When birds made controlled cuts with their sharp bills, the resulting hooks were significantly deeper than when they used a 'sloppier' alternative method of simply pulling off branches. Careful cutting may leave more wooden material at the tip of the stick from which the hook can subsequently be 'sculpted'.

Surprisingly, adult crows, which are expected to have considerable tool-making experience, did not produce the deepest hooks and regularly employed the 'quick-and-dirty' manufacture technique. Professor Rutz notes that making very deep hooks may not be the best strategy in the wild: "It probably takes more time and effort to make such tools, and experienced birds may try to avoid these costs. It is also possible that deep hooks break more easily when inserted into narrow holes and crevices."

Professor Christophe Boesch, a world-leading chimpanzee expert and Director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, comments: "We have recently discovered that chimpanzees routinely use naturally-hooked stems to fish for algae, but they don't actively craft these hooks. The crows can reshape plant material with their pointed bills, which act like 'precision pliers', but this would be very difficult for chimpanzees with their large fingers."

The present study is the first to examine in a non-human animal what factors determine the morphology of crafted tools, and as a consequence, their foraging efficiency. Palaeo-anthropologists try to understand how our ancestors produced relatively complex tool shapes from basic raw materials, such as wood, bone or seashell, but they face the challenge that the manufacture process cannot be directly observed.

The New Caledonian crow, with its remarkable ability to fashion hooked tools from plant stems, provides a fascinating window into humans' evolutionary past.

More information: 'Causes and consequences of tool shape variation in New Caledonian crows' Current Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.11.028 Journal information: Current Biology
Biology and biotechnology have entered a digital age, but security policies around such activities have not kept pace.

That's according to Colorado State University's Jean Peccoud, Abell Chair of Synthetic Biology and professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Peccoud is lead author on a new paper in Trends in Biotechnology, published online Dec. 7, urging awareness of "cyberbiosecurity" risks for researchers, government and industry.

Co-authored by CSU postdoctoral fellow Jenna Gallegos and colleagues at the University of Nebraska and Virginia Tech, the paper outlines how the evolving nature of biotechnology should sound alarm bells for new ways to keep life sciences assets safe. This could be from accidental cyber-physical breaches, or more nefarious threats.

"In the past, most biosecurity and biosafety policies were based on sample containment," Peccoud says. "Now, it's so easy to read DNA sequences, for example, or to make DNA molecules out of sequences publicly available from bioinformatics databases. Most projects have a cyber dimension, and that introduces a new category of risk."

Peccoud is a synthetic and computational biology who specializes in the design of new DNA molecules. He has led trainings for federal government agencies interested in increasing security around life sciences infrastructure, and has also helped assess the state of the nation's biodefense infrastructure.

Peccoud and co-authors explain that security policies in the life sciences fall into two categories: biosafety and biosecurity. Biosafety procedures are designed to prevent exposure to pathogens and accidental release of biological agents. Such measures include protective clothing, sterilization procedures and airlocks.

Biosecurity policies, however, are usually associated with travel, supply chains, or terrorist activities. Breaches of biosecurity can be accidental (a traveler bringing contaminated material from overseas) or intentional (bioterrorism).

Such policies fall short in protecting against threats from "the intricate relationship between computational and experimental workflows," according to the paper.

Nowadays, software tools can design DNA sequences with new properties. Gene synthesis techniques can theoretically be used to develop biological weapons derived from genomic sequences of pathogens. In fact, the federal government has developed new screening guidelines for providers of gene synthesis services.

Peccoud stresses that cyberbiosecurity risks are not always doomsday scenarios. There's a broad spectrum of risks that can start with fairly low-impact mistakes, such as mislabeled samples in a lab. Despite the risks, there is too much naive trust among partners in the biotechnology supply chain. That needs to change, he says, in order to increase productivity around biological research and to limit the risk of a significant incident.

Peccoud likens this needed change to today's increasing awareness around cybersecurity, in response to high-profile hacking incidents of credit card and other companies. Decades ago, it was possible to use computer systems without a password, and it was common for several employees of a company to share a computer. Today, most people have at least some sense of how to manage their own cybersecurity. The same should be true for the life sciences, he says, and a major incident shouldn't need to be the impetus for change.

The authors recommend employee training, systematic analyses to examine potential exposure to cyberbiosecurity risks, and the development of new policies for preventing and detecting security incidents.

"Once individuals in a community are aware of cyberbiosecurity risks, they can begin to implement safeguards within their own work environments, and work with regulators to develop policies to prevent cyberbiosecurity breaches," they write.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the largest and most pristine patch of publicly owned wilderness in the U.S. Credit: Hillebrand/USFWS

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is America's largest and wildest piece of publicly owned land. Polar bears, caribou, and wolves roam its 19.6 million acres; golden eagles build their nests on its cliffs, migratory birds rest in its waters, and "the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man."

But, unfortunately for the 700 species of plants and animals that rely on the refuge (called ANWR for short), the land sits on 7.7 to 11.8 billion barrels of oil. Last week, the Senate voted to open up the refuge to oil and gas drilling for the first time ever. The measure tagged along in a revision of a tax bill, which would need approval from the House of Representatives and President Trump. Although Congress has unsuccessfully attempted to open ANWR to drilling nearly 50 times, The Hill reports that this time the provision is likely to survive and become law.

Pros and Cons

The argument for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is economic. Proponents say it will create jobs, generate $1.1 billion over the next decade, and make the country more energy independent. Alaska's economy depends on the oil industry for one-third of its jobs, but other oil prospects are drying up, according to Alaska's (pro-drilling) Resource Development Council.

Opponents fear that drilling would threaten the way of life for indigenous tribes who rely on caribou and other wildlife for sustenance. Others argue that the oil in the reserve isn't enough to put a dent in oil prices or imports (America brings in about 3.7 billion barrels of oil per year from foreign nations), while contributing to climate change and outdated energy policies. And, last but not least, there's the potential threat to wildlife.

Natalie Boelman studies how climate change is impacting animals and plants in the Arctic. She's an earth scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory whose research often brings her into the remote areas near ANWR. We asked her how she thinks oil operations would impact the region.

The Last Frontier

Boelman has firsthand experience with the oil industry in Alaska. Ironically, she says the only reason she and her colleagues are able to gather data from the far-flung regions of the 49th state is because of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. The 800-mile network of tubes and pump stations carries crude oil from the state's northern coast to the southern coast, abutting ANWR on part of its route. Access roads run alongside the pipelines so that workers can maintain the pipes. The pipeline company works with the researchers to get them access to some of the restricted roads.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers 19.6 million acres in northeastern Alaska. Credit: USFWS

"It gets you into this totally remote location, into the little nooks and crannies of the tundra," says Boelman. "It's actually pretty pristine for the most part. But all that is poised to change with the current administration's plans."

When the company was building the pipeline, many wildlife biologists worried that wildlife would avoid the pipeline, or wouldn't be able to cross it. Fortunately, the caribou were not as cautious as expectedBoelman says she sees caribou grazing underneath the pipeline as if it wasn't even there. "Surprisingly, they don't really seem to be bothered by it. I don't think they care at all."

But she thinks the animals will care quite a bit if drilling starts up in the refuge and other nearby territories.

Effects on Wildlife

Oil spills can be devastating for wildlife. Oil can coat fur or feathers, destroying their insulation or water-repelling abilities and increasing the animal's risk of hypothermia. It can be poisonous if ingested. It can also kill plants, and is very difficult to clean up.

When companies are exploring for oil, they drive huge tundra tractors that can rip up vegetation and destroy permafrost. "You can still see the tracks decades later," says Boelman.

She also worries about the construction trucks, the power lines, and the increased road traffic that would come along with oil development. Even the noise and the dust from such operations can harm the local fauna. Boelman suspects waterfowl and caribou are most likely to be affected.

"In the spring, every pond or puddle is covered in ducks and geese," she says. "It's loud. There are millions, billions of them that count on these areas for breeding habitats. The region is essentially one of the Earth's most important bird nurseries." Some of these birds, like Steller's eider, may even be threatened or endangered species. And the impacts may not remain local.

Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This area is essential for raising newborn caribou calves, but is targeted for drilling. Credit: USFWS

"Birds migrate there from all over the world," says Boelman. "If something happens to their breeding grounds, it will impact the rest of the planet."

The area designated for drilling (ANWR's North Slope) is also a key calving ground for caribou. Females return there year after year to give birth in the coastal plain. Caribou aren't a threatened species, but biologists think they may be on the brink of a steep decline due to climate change. Spring keeps coming earlier to the Arctic, but the deer have kept to their age-old schedules, meaning they miss the prime foraging season. At the same time, warmer conditions support hordes of mosquitoes and flies that can attack, weaken, and kill calves. Oil and gas development has exacerbated caribou decline in other areas.

"They may not be able to adapt to whatever changes come with the oil industry," says Boelman.

Priming the Pump

If Congress and the president open the refuge to drilling, the changes won't be felt immediately. It could take a decade or more for Alaska to work out leasing details with interested oil companies. After that, it could take a few more years to set up the necessary infrastructure for drilling.

Companies are not exactly chomping at the bit to drill in ANWR, some analysts say. In addition to the lawsuits and negative attention from environmentalists, The Hill reports that oil explorers would face additional challenges from drilling in an area where they haven't got much experience. Plus, a democratic Congress or president could put up additional roadblocks in the intervening years. At the same time, rising oil prices could make the refuge a more tempting target.

For now, the future of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge looks to be as uncertain as ever.
UBC researchers (from left to right) Abby Yang, Associate Professor Adam Wei, Krysta Giles-Hansen and Qiang Li discuss the role forest vegetation plays while monitoring water resources. Credit: UBC Okanagan

Freshwater resources are critical to both human civilization and natural ecosystems, but UBC researchers have discovered that changes to ground vegetation can have as much of an impact on global water resources as climate change.

UBC Okanagan Earth, Environmental and Geographic Sciences Professor Adam Wei, PhD candidate Qiang Li and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Forestry recently published a study examining the impacts of how changes in forest vegetation effect water supplies. Using several decades worth of data, their work examined how water resources are responsive to vegetation ground cover and climate change.

"As we urbanize land and continue to convert forests for other uses, our water regimes change," says Wei. "We end up with the systems we do not design for, and entire watersheds are being affected."

Forested areas are critically important water resources, explains Li. But as land is developed or the green vegetation is destroyed, watersheds are irreversibly damaged.

"We need to recognize the importance of vegetation," says Li. "Forest cover is an important element and we need to keep this in mind for the future. Scientists talk about how climate change affects waterwhen they measure global warming. We're suggesting they also need to keep an eye on forest vegetation. It's a key indicator of the health of our water resources."

Forests cover more than 30 per cent of the world's land surface and Li says about 21 per cent of the global population directly depends on these catchments for their water supply. Using computer modelling, the researchers examined historical data from 2000 to 2011. They looked at changes in land vegetation and annual water yield in boreal and tropical forests in locations such as British Columbia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Finland and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with development, intensive forest logging, fire, and insect infestation were reasons for forest and ground vegetation loss.

"Our simulations show that the average global alteration in annual water flow due to vegetation change is as high as 31 per cent. Our results also show that on average, in 51 per cent of the study area, vegetation change and climate change operate together and can lead to either fewer water resources, meaning higher chances of drought, or an increase in water supply and higher chances of devastating floods."These findings have far-reaching implications for assessing and managing future global water resources, says Wei.

"Our watersheds and landscapes are experiencing significant pressures from vegetation or land cover change and climate change," he adds. "Because vegetation change and climate change play a similar role in water resources change, ignoring either one will likely lead to an incomplete understanding and ineffective management of our future water resources, particularly for the regions where intensive forest change occurs."

Future water resource assessment must, he says, consider both climate and vegetation or land cover change, and our management paradigm should be shifted from "adapting and mitigating climate change impacts" to "managing both climate and land cover change together."
IBMs new POWER9 processor. Credit: IBM

AI workloads are different from the calculations most of our current computers are built to perform. AI implies prediction, inference, intuition. But the most creative machine learning algorithms are hamstrung by machines that can't harness their power. Hence, if we're to make great strides in AI, our hardware must change, too. Starting with GPUs, and then evolving to analog devices, and then fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Let's start in the present, with applying massively distributed deep learning algorithms to Graphics processing units (GPU) for high speed data movement, to ultimately understand images and sound. The DDL algorithms "train" on visual and audio data, and the more GPUs should mean faster learning. To date, IBM's record-setting 95 percent scaling efficiency (meaning improved training as more GPUs are added) can recognize 33.8 percent of 7.5 million images, using 256 GPUs on 64 "Minsky" Power systems.

Distributed deep learning has progressed at a rate of about 2.5 times per year since 2009, when GPUs went from video game graphics accelerators to deep learning model trainers. So a question I addressed at Applied Materials' Semiconductor Futurescapes: New Technologies, New Solutions event during the 2017 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting:

What technology do we need to develop in order to continue this rate of progress and go beyond the GPU?

Beyond GPUs

We at IBM Research believe that this transition from GPUs will happen in three stages. First, we'll utilize GPUs and build new accelerators with conventional CMOS in the near term to continue; second, we'll look for ways to exploit low precision and analog devices to further lower power and improve performance; and then as we enter the quantum computing era, it will potentially offer entirely new approaches.

Accelerators on CMOS still have much to achieve because machine learning models can tolerate imprecise computation. It's precisely because they "learn" that these models can work through errors (errors we would never tolerate in a bank transaction). In 2015, Suyong Gupta, et al. demonstrated in their ICML paper Deep learning with limited numerical precision that in fact reduced-precision models have equivalent accuracy to today's standard 64 bit, but using as few as 14 bits of floating point precision. We see this reduced precision, faster computation trend contributing to the 2.5X-per-year improvement at least through the year 2022.

That gives us about five years to get beyond the von Neumann bottleneck, and to analog devices. Moving data to and from memory slows down deep learning network training. So finding analog devices that can combine memory and computation will be important for neuromorphic computing progress.

Neuromorphic computing, as it sounds, mimics brain cells. Its architecture of interconnected "neurons" replace von-Neumann's back-and-forth bottleneck with low-powered signals that go directly between neurons for more efficient computation. The US Air Force Research Lab is testing a 64-chip array of our IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System designed for deep neural-network inferencing and information discovery. The system uses standard digital CMOS but only consumes 10 watts of energy to power its 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses.

But phase change memory, a next-gen memory material, may be the first analog device optimized for deep learning networks. How does a memory  the very bottleneck of von-Neumann architecture  improve machine learning? Because we've figured out how to bring computation to the memory. Recently, IBM scientists demonstrated in-memory computing with 1 million devices for applications in AI, publishing their results, Temporal correlation detection using computational phase-change memory, in Nature Communications, and also presenting it at the IEDM session Compressed Sensing Recovery using Computational Memory.

Analog computing's maturity will extend the 2.5X-per-year machine learning improvement for a few more years, to 2026 or thereabout.

While currently utilizing just a few qubits, algorithms run on the free and open IBM Q experience systems are already showing the potential for efficient and effective use in chemistry, optimization, and even machine learning. A paper IBM researchers co-authored with scientists from Raytheon BBN, "Demonstration of quantum advantage in machine learning" in Nature Quantum Information demonstrates how, with only a five superconducting quantum bit processor, the quantum algorithm consistently identified the sequence in up to a 100-fold fewer computational steps and was more tolerant of noise than the classical (non-quantum) algorithm.

IBM Q's commercial systems now have 20 qubits, and a prototype 50 qubit device is operational. Its average coherence time of 90s is also double that of previous systems. But a fault tolerant system that shows a distinct quantum advantage over today's machines is still a work in progress. In the meantime, experimenting with new materials (like the replacement of copper interconnects) is key  as are other crucial chip improvements IBM and its partners presented at IEDM in the name of advancing all computing platforms, from von Neumann, to neuromorphic, and quantum.

More information: Diego Riste et al. Demonstration of quantum advantage in machine learning, npj Quantum Information (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41534-017-0017-3 Journal information: Nature Communications

Provided by IBM
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) France today welcomed the International Solar Alliance (ISA) achieving the status of a global organisation, saying the progress was in line with the efforts to combat climate change.

The ISA was launched by India and France at the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015.

Its goal is to facilitate large-scale deployment of solar energy in 121 countries in the area between the tropics by aggregating the demand for funding, technology and innovation.

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"I welcome the achievement by the International Solar Alliance of status as an international organisation. The framework agreement defining its statutes has been signed by 46 countries and ratified by 19 of them," Jean-Yves Le Drian, Frances minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.

It was released to media here by the French Embassy.

"This progress is in line with the efforts to combat climate change, which will be central to the One Planet Summit on December 12 in Paris.

"It is one of the most promising coalitions for combating climate change. It is also the first international organisation on the Indian subcontinent," the statement said.

Australia has also joined the ISA, it said yesterday, adding that its entering of the alliance will support the governments commitment to clean energy cooperation and help meet the Paris Agreement emission targets.

The ISA will "deepen cooperation on solar research, reduce technology costs and harmonise international standards", Australias Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop said in a statement which was released to the media by the Australian High Commission here. PTI KND KJ

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Credit: CC0 Public Domain

More must be done to tackle air pollution in China, according to a leading climate change expert in a new study published today in the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Professor Wang Hui-Jun, from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, outlines five specific ways in which the issue could be more effectively managed. These steps, which can also be applied to other heavily polluted countries, center upon the need to conduct more research to better identify the cause of the pollution, and create more effective prevention and control methods.

Specifically, these strategies are:

Identifying the role of human-caused emissions on climate change.

Understanding what other factors (particularly, climate change and variability) affect air quality.

Recognizing the formation process and creating in advance prevention and control regulations.

Promoting the seasonal prediction of air pollution.

Implementing stricter air pollution prevention and control policies in key areas such as central North China.

It is emphasized in the paper that behind all the action points outlined, deepening scientific understanding of air pollution is crucial in order to better manage the problem.

In China, the pollution problem has progressively worsened. At the same time, both the public and government departments lack the necessary knowledge of its formation, the causes, and ongoing management.

China has invested substantial financial, human, and material resources in reducing the emissions of pollutants, and in promoting scientific research and technological development to support the protection of the atmosphere. Research has even been supported by organizations such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, the China Environment Protection Agency, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

However, Professor Wang outlines that so far, the actual effects of current attempts to control and manage haze pollution in the country are very limited, with air pollution still occurring frequently. One such recent example occurred in Tianjin and the surrounding areas, when a continuous outbreak of a wide-ranging and persistent haze pollution on 17 December 2016 caused two long-term severe haze pollution processes within 20 days.

Professor Wang comments, "The motivation of this paper is to offer some clarification on the key issues related to haze attribution and control measures. It is hoped that if these guidelines are put into practice the solution to the problem could be more achievable."

More information: Hui-Jun Wang, On assessing haze attribution and control measures in China, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1080/16742834.2018.1409067
Greenland narwhals. Credit: M.P. Heide-Jorgensen

Narwhals released after entanglement in nets and outfitted with heart monitors performed a series of deep dives, swimming hard to escape, while their heart rates dropped to unexpectedly low levels of three to four beats per minute. This combination of hard exercise and low heart rate while not breathing under water is costly and could make it difficult for the deep-diving whales to get enough oxygen to the brain and other critical organs, according to a new study.

"How do you run away while holding your breath? These are deep-diving marine mammals, but we were not seeing normal dives during the escape period. I have to wonder how narwhals protect their brains and maintain oxygenation in this situation," said Terrie Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz who has studied exercise physiology in a wide range of marine and terrestrial mammals.

Williams is first author of a paper on the new findings published December 8 in Science. Narwhals, known as "unicorns of the sea" for the large tusks on the males, live year-round in Arctic waters. They have been relatively isolated from human disturbances until recently, when declines in Arctic sea ice have made the region more accessible to shipping, oil exploration, and other human activities.

Narwhals monitored after release gradually returned to more typical behavior and normal heart rates. But Williams said she worries that the stress from human disturbances could cause behavioral responses in narwhals that are inconsistent with their physiological capacities. Their natural escape response to avoid killer whales and other threats typically involves moving slowly either to great depths or into shallow coastal areas beneath ice cover where killer whales can't follow. "This is not a speedy animal," she explained.

Heart rate monitor used in this study on the back of a narwhal. Credit: M.P. Heide-Jorgensen

A decreased heart rate (called bradycardia) is a normal part of the mammalian dive response, along with other physiological changes to conserve oxygen. In narwhals, the researchers measured resting heart rates at the surface of about 60 beats per minute. During normal dives (after the escape period), their heart rates dropped to between 10 and 20 beats per minute, depending on exercise level. Heart rate normally rises with increased exercise, even during a dive.

"That's what is so paradoxical about this escape responseit seems to cancel out the exercise response and maintains extreme bradycardia even when the whales are exercising hard," Williams said.

The extremely low heart rates that Williams observed in fleeing narwhals are similar to those seen in animals with a "freeze reaction," one of two mutually exclusive responses animals can have to perceived threats, the other being a "fight or flight" response that revs up heart rate and metabolism. The narwhals, in their response to a stressful situation, seem to combine elements of a physiological freeze reaction with a behavioral flight reaction, with potentially harmful consequences.

"For terrestrial mammals, these opposing signals to the heart can be problematic," Williams said. "Escaping marine mammals are trying to integrate a dive response on top of an exercise response on top of a fear response. This is a lot of physiological balancing, and I wonder if deep-diving marine mammals are designed to deal with three different signals coming to the heart at the same time."

Immature male narwhal resting in shallow water in Scoresby Sound, Greenland. Its heart narwhal heart rate pulse of 60 beats per minute can be heard on the audio as well as some breathing sounds. Credit: T.M. Williams

The same phenomenon may occur in other deep-diving whales when they are disturbed by human-generated noise in the oceans, which has been associated with strandings of deep-diving cetaceans such as beaked whales, she said.

"The disorientation often reported during strandings of deep-diving whales makes me think something has gone wrong with their cognitive centers," Williams said. "Could this result from a failure to maintain normal oxygenation of the brain?"

She calculated that the escape dives her team monitored in narwhals required 97 percent of the animal's oxygen supply and often exceeded its aerobic dive limit (meaning depletion of oxygen stores in the muscles, lungs, and blood, followed by anaerobic metabolism). Normal dives of similar duration and depth used only about 52 percent of a narwhal's oxygen store, the study found.

The study was conducted in Scoresby Sound on the east coast of Greenland, where coauthor Mads Peter Heide-Jrgensen, a research professor at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, has been studying narwhals since 2012. Native hunters in the area set out nets to catch fish, seals, and other animals, including narwhals. Heide-Jrgensen developed a collaboration with the hunters to allow scientists to tag and release narwhals caught in the nets. He has been using satellite tags to study the movements of the East Greenland narwhal population.

Team release of a male narwhal with a heart rate monitor (in yellow). Credit: T.M. Williams

Williams's group at UC Santa Cruz developed unique tagging technology for marine mammals that enables researchers to monitor exercise physiology during dives by recording electrocardiograms, swimming movements (stroke rates), and other data. The tags function much like the Fitbits people use to monitor their daily activities. For this study, resting heart rate was measured in nine narwhals, and five were monitored during dives after release. The instruments were attached to the narwhals with suction cups and fell off after one to three days, floating to the surface where they could be recovered by the scientists.

In previous studies, Williams has used the instruments to study exercise physiology and dive responses in bottlenose dolphins, Weddell seals, and other species. "This was our first opportunity to put the tags on a deep-diving whale to monitor its physiological and behavioral responses," Williams said. "It all began with the work on dolphins in our facilities at Long Marine Laboratory."

Among the findings of her earlier studies was a surprising frequency of heart arrhythmias in dolphins and seals during intense exercise at depth. The new findings add to her concerns about the effects of disturbances that cause an escape response in deep-diving marine mammals.

"Unlike threats from predators like killer whales, noise from sonar or a seismic explosion is difficult to escape. Problems can start if the whales try to outrun it," Williams said. "The implications of this study are cautionary, showing that the biology of these animals makes them especially vulnerable to disturbance. This technology has given us a window into the narwhal's world, and what we see is alarming. The question is, what are we as humans going to do about it?"

More information: T.M. Williams el al., "Paradoxical escape responses by narwhals (Monodon monoceros)," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao2740 Journal information: Science
Fishing in Cambodia. Credit: John Sabo/Arizona State University

Nearly 100 hydropower dams are planned for construction along tributaries off the Mekong River's 2,700-mile stretch. The river, one of the world's largest, flows through Burma, China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. It is an economic engine for fishermen and a food source for millions of people worldwide. And while the dams are expected to provide clean energy to the region, if not managed properly, they also have the potential to offset natural river patterns, which would damage food production, supply and business.

Arizona State University professor John Sabo and collaborators have proposed a solution to this problem in the Dec. 8 issue of Science magazine that allows dam operators to generate power in ways that also protect - and possibly improve - food supplies and businesses throughout the Mekong river basin. The proposed solution, the first of its kind for this problem, can be applied to other large river systems around the world facing similar tradeoffs.

"We have figured out the relationship between river flows and fish catch, and we have developed an algorithm for dam operators to use that will increase fish harvests and still generate power," Sabo said. "Dams are going to be built no matter how much fuss we make, our research shows how we can be more strategic about the buildout and operations of these dams in the Mekong."

The Mekong river floods annually, and it is known that those floods are important for fisheries, Sabo said. New in this research is the recognition that seasonal droughts are equally important. Long droughts combined with short floods may create the ideal conditions for terrestrial nutrients to be entrained into the freshwater system. With that in mind, the algorithm presented by Sabo et al. in Science recommends long low-flow periods punctuated by pulses of flooding, which will allow dam operators to co-manage their power generation priorities, while protecting livelihoods for fisheries downstream.

Sabo worked with other ASU researchers on the project, as well as researchers from the University of Washington, University of Maryland, Conservation International, the University of South Florida, the Mekong River Commission and Aalto University.

"We have taken this conversation around fisheries and dams in the Mekong from a yes-or-no conversation, from a good idea-bad idea conversation, and we have come up with an alternative, a mathematical formula that has the possibility to achieve dam operator goals and protects fisheries," said Gordon Holtgrieve, an assistant professor at the University of Washington.

With recent funding from the National Science Foundation, Sabo, Holtgrieve and a team of researchers will expand the project to better understand how dam operators can balance power generation needs with other factors, including rice production, food nutritional quality, ecological goals and more.

More information: J.L. Sabo el al., "Designing river flows to improve food security futures in the Lower Mekong Basin," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao1053 Journal information: Science
Credit: NASA

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo spacecraft at sunrise, prior to its departure from the International Space Station at 8:11 a.m., Dec. 6, 2017. Expedition 53 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA gave the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm the command to release Cygnus.

Later today, Cygnus will release 14 CubeSats from an external NanoRacks deployer. Cygnus also is packed with more than 6,200 pounds of trash and other items marked for disposal.

The craft will remain in orbit until Monday, Dec. 18, when its engines will fire twice, pushing it into Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up over the Pacific Ocean.

Provided by NASA
Nanovesicles released from red blood cells infected by Plasmodium falciparum, viewed under an electron microscope. Scale bar: 100 nm Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science

Global efforts to eradicate malaria are crucially dependent on scientists' ability to outsmart the malaria parasite. And Plasmodium falciparum is notoriously clever: It is quick to develop resistance against medications and has such a complex life cycle that blocking it effectively with a vaccine has thus far proved elusive. In a new study reported in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, together with collaborators in Ireland and Australia, have shown that Plasmodium falciparum is even more devious than previously thought: Not only does it hide from the body's immune defenses, it employs an active strategy to deceive the immune system.

Among transmittable diseases, malaria is second only to tuberculosis in the number of victims, putting at risk nearly half of Earth's population. More than 200 million people become infected every year; about half a million die, most of them children under five years of age. "Malaria is one of the world's most devastating diseases - it's a true bane of low-income countries, where it kills a thousand young children every day," says Dr. Neta Regev-Rudzki of Weizmann's Biomolecular Sciences Department. "To fight malaria, we need to understand the basic biology of Plasmodium falciparum and figure out what makes it such a dangerous killer."

Regev-Rudzki had previously discovered, in her postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Alan Cowman at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, that these parasites communicate with one another while in the incubation stage in the blood. They do so by releasing sac-like nanovesicles - less than 1 micron across - that contain small segments of the parasite's DNA. Apparently these signals help the parasites learn when it's time to start transforming into male and female forms, both of which can be carried by mosquitoes into new hosts. This finding was all the more startling because the nanovesicles need to cross six separate membranes to communicate the message from a parasite inside one red blood cell to another.

A monocyte converted into a decoy by the malaria parasite: The green dot is the genetic material "cargo" inside the nanovesicle produced by the parasite. Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science

In the new study, performed in collaboration with Prof. Andrew G. Bowie of Trinity College Dublin and other researchers, Regev-Rudzki and her Weizmann team discovered that in parallel with communicating with other parasites, Plasmodium falciparum uses this same communication channel for yet another purpose: to deliver a misleading message to the infected person's immune system. Within the first 12 hours after infecting red blood cells, the parasites send out DNA-filled nanovesicles that penetrate cells called monocytes. Normally, monocytes form the immune system's first line of defense against foreign invasion, sensing danger from afar and alerting other immune mechanisms to mount an effective response. Naturally, the immune system dispatches its next line of defense to these cells.

But in fact, the nanovesicles have converted the monocytes into decoys. While the immune system is busy defending the organism against fake danger, the real infection proceeds inside red blood cells, allowing the parasite to multiply unhindered at dizzying speed. By the time the immune system discovers its mistake, precious time has been lost, and the infection is much more difficult to contain.

Regev-Rudzki's team has identified a key molecular sensor, a protein called STING that becomes activated when the parasite's nanovesicles penetrate monocytes. It is STING that delivers the fake alert to the immune system, tricking it into "thinking" that its monocytes are in danger. When the scientists "knocked out" the gene that manufactures STING, the chain of molecular reactions generating the misleading alert was interrupted.

"We've discovered a subversive strategy the malaria parasite employs in order to thrive in human blood," Regev-Rudzki says. "By interfering with this subversion of the immune system, it may be possible in the future to develop ways of blocking malarial infection."
Johannes van Dijk, a doctoral student at the USC School of Pharmacy, received the Charles and Charlotte Krown Fellowship for his work in genetic engineering. Credit: Photo/Eric Lindberg

Creating a lab-grown burger that sizzles, smells and even bleeds like real meat might sound like sci-fi fantasy, but for one USC student, it's a promising career path.

Johannes "Jan" van Dijk, a doctoral student at the USC School of Pharmacy, plans to use his knowledge of genetics and biochemical engineering, coupled with his experiences as a butcher, to develop new and healthier meat alternatives.

"I love the multifaceted effect on society," he said. "It's about sustainability, health, efficiency, ethicsall of those things in one project."

The average American consumes nearly 200 pounds of meat from chickens, cows, pigs and sheep each year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which projects that figure to grow to more than 207 pounds by 2024 as part of a global shift toward increased meat consumption.

That trend is concerning to van Dijk. Although he still enjoys a good steak or slice of bacon, he acknowledges the environmental effects of raising livestock such as methane emissions that contribute to global warming; increased risk of heart disease and obesity related to eating too much meat; and ethical quandaries presented by slaughtering animals for food.

"I have a really good appreciation for meat, but consciously, I can see that it's not the best thing," he said. "I still want to be able to enjoy it, but without the ethical and environmental and health issues."

Future food

Lab-grown meat has become a hot topic in recent years. One company is already adding a protein from fungi to its plant-based patty to make it pinkish when raw and to give it a slightly metallic and meaty taste when cooked. Some scientists are making artificial egg whites with components derived from fungi or yeast. Others are growing animal muscle from stem cells to create slaughter-free meat.

Van Dijk hopes to join the race to build a convincing faux burger after he graduates from USC next spring. He traces his interest in manufacturing mock meat to his part-time job as a butcher in the Netherlands, a position he took as an undergrad to make ends meet. He later worked for half a year as a full-time butcher in Brisbane, Australia, chopping and packing lamb, beef, chicken and pork for a wholesale operation.

Although eating genetically modified food might be a scary prospect for many people, van Dijk insists that the process is often misunderstood and misconstrued.

He sees genetic engineering as an essential approach to solving food shortages and ensuring environmental sustainability. It's also the main component of van Dijk's current research, which involves genetically altering fungi in hopes of discovering new drugs.

"Right now, I'm working on drugs for sick people," he said. "But food is for everyone, so the impact of creating healthier food would be way bigger, plus it would help people not get sick in the first place."

For now, as the lab manager of a research team led by Professor Clay Wang, he is genetically engineering enzymes that naturally exist in fungi. By tinkering with its DNA, he can force a fungus strain to mutate, potentially creating new substances that might be useful to scientists.

"What I'm trying to do is to study what the fungus is doing and then manipulate it so it does something slightly different, to make novel molecules that could become drugs in the future," van Dijk said.

Making the cut

It's similar to the process that led to the discovery of penicillin, the well-known class of fungus-based antibiotics, and lovastatin, a drug also derived from fungi that can lower cholesterol. However, van Dijk's methods are far more advanced. He uses CRISPR-Cas9 technology, a tool that allows him to precisely target sections of a fungus strain's genetic structure.

He likens the DNA sequence to an assembly line. By cutting it at a certain spot, he can determine which genes are responsible for building certain molecules. Then he can force the fungus to mutate at that specific point, either creating new compounds or boosting its production rate of existing molecules.

His work in the lab earned van Dijk the USC School of Pharmacy's most prestigious award, the Charles and Charlotte Krown Fellowship, which comes with a $5,000 stipend and a $5,000 allowance for research supplies and travel expenses. Only one doctoral student receives the honor each year, and the winner is selected after finalists present their research to a committee of faculty members.

To be eligible, applicants must have a 3.5 GPA and a first-authored paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, in addition to passing their qualifying exams. The fellowship is named in honor of Charles Krown, a major benefactor and honorary alumnus who also served as a member of the school's Board of Counselors. Krown funded the fellowship as part of a $1.1 million gift to the school in the 1980s.

As van Dijk finishes his final year as a PhD student at USC, he is making contacts in the food engineering industry and dreaming up ways to put his knowledge to good use. He already has an idea for a healthy burger that incorporates omega-3 and omega-6 acids from one of his least favorite foods.

"I want to be able to eat those healthy fats without the taste of fish," he said. "What if you could engineer a burger that has those fatty acids? That would be amazing."
Oil flares in Syria and Northern Iraq. Credit: CIRES and NOAA

Between 2014 and 2016, it was taxation and extortionnot oilthat filled the coffers of the militant Islamic group ISIS, according to a new assessment that relied on NOAA satellite data. The publication also describes how anyone can use rapidly updated NOAA data to quickly assess the production status of oil wells around the world.

Quy-Toan Do, a senior economist with the World Bank's Development Economics Research Group, led the research, which estimated 2012-2016 oil production rates in areas of Iraq and Syria taken over by ISIS, also called ISIL, Daesh or the Islamic State.

Do and his colleaguesincluding NOAA's Chris Elvidge and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder's Mikhail Zhizhin and Kimberly Baughfound that production in 43 key sites peaked in 2014 at about 80,000 barrels per day. That figure dropped to about 35,000 in 2015, and plummeted to just 16,000 in 2016.

"This is important information if we are talking about postwar reconstruction," said Do. "Most of the oil wells are not as operational as they were before. This information is critical for people who will try to rebuild the area."

It's also important for anyone seeking to understand the impact of conflict on oil production rates, Do and his colleagues concluded. Their work could be applied almost anywhere in the world, to inform decision makers who need to understand oil production rates for social, political or other reasons.

In Syria and Iraq ISIS expansion began in 2013 and accelerated in 2014. At times, some governments and media suspected that the terrorist organization was financing itself primarily from oil revenues. The new study shows that to be highly unlikely.

"These results lend support to the view that Daesh is financing itself out of other sources such as taxation and extortion rather than oil," the team wrote in the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, released online Nov. 1.

The analysis relied on a heat-sensing technique developed by a team of Boulder, Colorado-based researchers associated with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Zhizhin, who has been part of that team for five years, is a mathematician, and his recent focus has been on working with data from an instrument called VIIRS (the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite.

Since 2012, Zhizhin has produced monthly updates on gas flaring around the world with incredible precision, using an algorithm dubbed "Nightfire." "These are at level of individual flares," Zhizhin said.

The technique relies on the fact that during oil production, engineers must somehow deal with gas that comes up to the surface along with oil. Generally, that gas is flared, producing a nighttime signal that's possible to see by satellitethough it takes careful analysis to separate flaring from other signals, such as electric lights.

For verification that their oil production estimates were reasonable, the team compared their estimates other sources of information, e.g, administrative data in documents captured in May 2015. That month, U.S. Army special forces killed Abu Sayyaf, known as a leader who "helped direct the terrorist organization's illicit oil, gas and financial operations," and the raid also yielded production statistics.

Pre-war estimates compared well, and the satellite data also matched the captured administrative data for 2014. However, the Daesh documents indicated significant output later, from a few sites at which satellites detected no activity at all, not even the electrical lighting one would expect at a production site. "It's possible that internal political motivations may bias administrative data upwards,' the authors concluded.

Do said his work with the Boulder-based team was, in part, accidental. "I was working on Syria and contacted Chris Elvidge with the idea of trying to see damage from the war. Could we detect electrical power outages, for example, or areas under ISIL control that might be blacked out?"

Elvidge explained that one of the challenges in reliably tracking electric light signals by satellite is removing the signal from nearby flaring activity. "So we began talking about how we might use this to our advantage, looking at production," Do said.

Although the oil production analysis took several months to complete this first time, it demonstrated that the technique can be reliable and could be applied in real-time to other situations.

Zhizhin said it's been rewarding to work on a project with real-world implications. "I am a mathematician. I just love numbers. But you have to be able to touch results sometimes. This is touching the result."
Members of the Monash BDI led research teams (L-R) Dr Fernando Rossello, Dr Anja Knaupp, Associate Professor Jose Polo and Dr Christian Nefzger. Credit: Monash University

A series of studies led by Monash University researcher Associate Professor Jose Polo have this week shed light on vital, yet previously unclear, aspects of cell reprogramming.

Cell reprogramming, in which one type of cell can be turned into almost any other type cell in the human body, is revolutionising medicine. It gives scientists the capacity theoretically to create any tissue to repair damaged organs such as the heart or liver, or for use in transplantation.

In 2006, the Japanese researchers who made the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells identified a set of four transcription factors as being capable of turning any cell into iPS cells. These iPS cells, as with embryonic stem cells, have the potential to produce any cell of the body, but avoiding the use of embryos or carrying the risk of being rejected by the patient's body, a limitation of transplantation.

Yet more than a decade later it was still not fully understood precisely how these reprogramming factors work.

"You don't need to know about mechanics to drive a car from A to B, but if something goes wrong or you want to improve the car's performance, then you do need to know how a car works in order to fix or improve it," said Associate Professor Polo.

Remarkably, and testament to the world-leading research being undertaken in his lab, two of Associate Professor Polo's studies were published within a week of each other in highly regarded Cell Press journals, unearthing new evidence in this decade-long mystery, while a third related study was published late last month in Nature Methods.

Monash's Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) and Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute's Associate Professor Polo is an expert in the field of iPS cells.

The first study, published this week in Cell Reports, is the result of an international collaboration led by Associate Professor Polo and Dr Owen Rackham from Duke-NUS Singapore. It built on landmark research into iPS cells that Associate Professor Polo conducted in 2012 which described a 'roadmap' of what was happening in the process of reprogramming fibroblasts (skin cells) into stem cells.

"Before our 2012 study it was a black box about how the fibroblasts used for reprogramming became iPS cells - we traced the roadmap of what happened," Associate Professor Polo said.

In this new work, the team found that the roadmap was not the same for every cell type.

Using fibroblasts, neutrophils (white blood cells) and keratinocytes (another skin cell type) from animal models, the researchers revealed that the route to pluripotency depended on the original cell type.

Monash BDI's biologist Dr Christian Nefzger, joint first author on the paper with bioinformatician Dr Fernando Rossello, said the findings have important implications for research.

"Studying how different cell types convert into pluripotent stem cells revealed that we need to look through different lenses to comprehensively understand and control the process," Dr Nefzger said.

The other study, published today in Cell Stem Cell, led by Associate Professor Polo and Professor Ryan Lister from University of Western Australia, unveiled how the reprogramming transcription factors switch specific genes "on" or "off", or "open" or "close" them.

The Cell Stem Cell study provides an explanation of how these factors do their job.

Genes are part of the chromatin, a complex of DNA and proteins that form chromosomes within the cell nucleus. The scientists were able to explain the mechanisms behind a process in which the reprogramming factors go into areas on the chromatin that open and close.

"This has unveiled areas of the chromatin and transcription factors that previously we didn't know were important in pluripotency," Associate Professor Polo said.

"Now that we know they're significant, we can study these areas in more detail and see what role they may play in development, regeneration or even cancer," he said.

Co-first author, Monash BDI's Dr Anja Knaupp added: "Through our molecular analyses we are now able to better understand and consequently improve the reprogramming process which is essential if we want to eventually move this technology into clinical applications," said Dr Knaupp.

Associate Professor Polo said that such findings may pave the way in the future for tissues to be regenerated within the human body rather than in the laboratory, for the production of 'synthetic cells' with properties tailored to the needs of researchers or clinicians, or for the production of drugs that mimic these factors.

"Every layer we're adding to helps us take a step forward," he said.

Last month's paper in Nature Methods characterised and established a protocol for creating a form of human iPS cells - 'naive' cells - that most closely resemble the first cells of a human embryo.
The scheme of the experiment (for practical use). Credit: Alexander Obraztsov

A research team from the Faculty of Physics of Lomonosov Moscow State University stretched acicular diamond crystallites using an electric field. Deformation occurring during the stretching causes changes in the luminescence spectrum. This effect can be used to develop electric field detectors and other quantum optic devices. The work was published in Nano Letters.

Similar to other crystals, diamonds always contain structural defects. Some of them cause changes in coloring (light absorption) or luminescence and are called color centers. Specific characteristics of some types of color centers in diamonds make them suitable for use in quantum optic devices such as qubits that are based on entanglement of the photons quantum states. For a diamond to be used in such devices, the distance between its individual color centers should be about 30 nm.

A research team headed by Alexander Obraztsov, professor of the Department of Polymer and Crystal Physics of the Faculty of Physics, MSU, has reported a method to mass produce diamond micro-needles in previous studies. This method includes the growth of diamond crystallites as a fraction of the films formed by chemical vapor deposition of methane and hydrogen. After that, all spare materials are removed from the films via heating in the air.

"In this new work, we tried to learn as much as possible about diamond needles that we produce, specifically about their color centers," said professor Obraztsov. In order to understand the location of color centers in the structure of the samples and to find out their properties, Russian scientists turned to their French colleagues, who used a unique methodology for the required analysis. "Our French colleagues apply it to study chemical composition and location of impurities in different materials," explained Obraztsov.

During the measurements, diamond needles were attached to an electrode placed into a high vacuum chamber. To achieve the stretching effect, high voltage was applied to the electrode causing electrical polarization of the dielectric diamond, as well as considerable mechanical stress stretching the needle. The stretching caused deformation of diamond's crystal structure.

According to the authors, this leads to changes in individual color centers, as well, and their quantum optic properties are altered along with the structure. Before that, scientists were only able to compress diamonds; this is the first time that diamond has been stretched.

During sample stretching, it was irradiated with a laser, and luminescence of the color centers was registered with a spectrometer. The experiment showed changes of shape and energy of the luminescence bands depending on the stretching force determined by the applied voltage. The team believes that similar diamond needles could be used to create detectors for contact-free measurement of electric fields with high spatial resolution.

"Detectors like this could be used not only to measure the fields created by high voltage in high vacuum, but those existing in biological molecules (DNA, RNA, etc.). Measurement of such fields is an important scientific issue today," said Obraztsov. The dimensions of diamond needles at their apex are of several to several hundred nanometers. Therefore, according to the scientists, measurements could be made with precision that corresponds to certain molecule fragments.

Diamond micro-needles produced with the use of the method developed by the MSU team would also be able to secure contact-free optical detection of magnetic fields, temperature, and other characteristics with nano- and microscopic spatial resolution.

More information: L. Rigutti et al, Optical Contactless Measurement of Electric Field-Induced Tensile Stress in Diamond Nanoscale Needles, Nano Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b03222 Journal information: Nano Letters
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Police officers are highly responsive to the scrutiny of their superiors, a Princeton University study shows. The findings suggest that rules and supervision can be effective at reforming police behavior.

Published Dec. 7 in the Journal of Politics, the study examines millions of police records from the New York Police Department's (NYPD) stop-question-and-frisk programa controversial police tactic wherein officers detain, question and potentially search pedestrians.

In 2013, the NYPD suddenly mandated that officers provide thorough, narrative descriptions of their stops of criminal suspects to their superiors, justifying their reasons for each stop. Immediately after the change, officers began limiting their stops to scenarios in which the probability of criminal activity appeared high.

Some officers cited increased managerial scrutiny as the reason they adopted more conservative tactics, worried that commanders may have been "trying to find a reason to penalize" officers for misconduct in the streets.

In a time when calls for reform and oversight of police organizations are widespread, the findings have important implications for police organizations.

"My study finds that officers are highly responsive to rules and supervision, suggesting that institutional changes offer a promising, straightforward avenue for police reform," said study author Jonathan Mummolo, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The stop-question-and-frisk program has generated a tremendous amount of debate since its escalation in New York City during the 1990s. Between 2005 and 2011, hundreds of thousands of stops were made each year, and the vast majority of those stopped were non-white.

Stops are recorded on "UF-250" forms, which are filled out by officers and convey the date, time and location of the stop, as well as the reason for the stop and any outcomes. With a trial for a class action law suit concerning the policy about to commenceDavid Floyd, et. al, v. City of New York the plaintiffs in the case filed a memo dated March 4, 2013, asking for several forms. Among these was that the UF-250 form be amended to include a narrative portion for police officers to justify their stops.

Interestingly, on the next day, the NYPD's then-Chief of Patrol James P. Hall issued a memo to the commanders of all patrol units, essentially mandating this exact reform. Officers were instructed to record detailed, narrative notes on the reasoning for these stops, and then photocopy these descriptions and submit them to their supervisors after each shift.

"This intervention suddenly increased the perceived level of supervision being applied to officers' decision-making on the street," Mummolo said. "The fact that the directive may have been a strategic response made to a brief filed just one day earlier is important, since it implies it was not long-planned or anticipated by officers. This makes it much easier to measure the directive's impact."

Using more than 3 million records of police-citizen interactions, Mummolo measured the rate at which officers found evidence of the crime that motivated stops, a metric known as the "hit rate." This measure explicitly links the suspected crime to tangible evidence, providing an objective basis for determining whether a police officer's suspicion was warranted in the first place.

Of the 3 million stops recorded from 2008 through 2015, close to 830,000 were listed as criminal possession of a weapon. Of these stops, Mummolo found that around 3.5 percent produced a weapon in the "pre-treatment" stage of the study, or before the mandate was issued on March 5, 2013.

Following the reform, the hit rate increased dramatically, rising sharply in the months that followed. This means the reasoning for the stops was more in line with the actual outcomes. This result was caused by a sharp drop in the number arguably unnecessary weapon stops being performedthose where a weapon was not foundnot by an increase in the number of stops producing a weapon, Mummolo found.

So why was this memo so effective? The NYPD has more than 30,000 officers, and the volume of memos circulating its halls is considerable. But for many officers, this particular memo signaled heightened scrutiny from supervisors.

One officer said, "They're really watching us now," after recalling the day the memo was released. Another said, "We need to protect ourselves." The perception of risk led some officers to forgo making stops unless they observed something highly incriminating.

Unlike previous research, Mummolo's work is among the first to examine a rare case in which police behavior was recorded with very high frequency before and after an unanticipated procedural change. Still, limitations remain.

Reporting bias is always a concern, and it is difficult to determine how long the effect of the new order lasted. The data are based on only one city, so this concept should be tested in other areas and across police departments.

"Calls for reform and oversight of police organizations are now widespread," Mummolo said. "Even if social movements aimed at reforming policing garner victories in courts and legislatures, reforms will have to be implemented within police organizations. Knowing that officers are so responsive to new agency rules bodes well for the prospects of effective police reform."

More information: "Modern Police Tactics, Police-Citizen Interactions, and the Prospects for Reform," Journal of Politics (2017). Journal information: Journal of Politics
The Centre said that the provisions of the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, 2017 are meant to protect the interests of depositors. Here is all you need to know.

By India Today Web Desk: The Ministry of Finance has said that the provisions of the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, were meant to protect interests of depositors. Allaying fears about the bail-in provisions that are being seen as making your bank deposits unsafe, the ministry said the bill does not change the present protections to the depositors.

"Certain misgivings have been expressed in the media regarding "bail-in" provisions of the FRDI Bill," one of the tweets from the Ministry of Finance said.

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The provisions contained in the FRDI Bill, as introduced in the Parliament, do not modify present protections to the depositors adversely at all, the central government said.

The central government maintains that these provisions provide additional protections to the depositors in a more transparent manner.

Presently, each person who makes a deposit in the banks can be only protected up to a limit of Rs 1 lakh by the guarantee of the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC).

For remaining deposits, that is, beyond Rs 1 lakh of deposits in a bank, depositors do not have any deposit protection guarantee and are treated at par with claims of unsecured creditors as of now.

Besides providing similar protection / guarantee of Rs 1 lakh to depositors as it exists today, the Centre said, the rights of uninsured depositors are being placed at an elevated status in the FRDI Bill compared to the existing legal arrangements over the unsecured creditors and even government dues.

The FRDI Bill is far more depositor-friendly than many other jurisdictions, which provide for statutory bail-in, where consent of creditors / depositors is not required for bail-in, according to the finance ministry.

The FRDI Bill will strengthen the system by adding a comprehensive resolution regime that will help ensure that, in the rare event of failure of a financial service provider, there is a system of quick, orderly and efficient resolution in favour of depositors.- Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) December 7, 2017

"The FRDI Bill does not propose, in any way, to limit the scope of powers for the government to extend financing and resolution support to banks, including public sector banks. Government's implicit guarantee for public sector banks remains unaffected," the government said in a press release.

The FRDI Bill does not propose in any way to limit the scope of powers for the Government to extend financing and resolution support to banks, including public sector banks. Governments implicit guarantee for public sector banks remains unaffected.- Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) December 7, 2017

The release added that Indian Banks have adequate capital and are also under prudent regulation and supervision to ensure safety and soundness, as well as systemic stability. "The existing laws ensure the integrity, security and safety of the banking system. In India, all possible steps and policy measures are taken to prevent the failure of banks and protection of interests of depositors (e.g. issue of directions / prompt corrective action measures, capital adequacy and prudential norms)."

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The FRDI Bill will strengthen the system by adding a comprehensive resolution regime that will help ensure that, in the rare event of failure of a financial service provider, there is a system of quick, orderly and efficient resolution in favour of depositors, the government said.

--- ENDS ---
Doctoral student Greg Madejski's illustration of the layers comprising his new DNA detection device. Credit: University of Rochester illustration / Greg Madejski

Greg Madejski held his breath as he looked into the microscope, trying to weld two fingernail-sized chips together: a tiny chip containing a nanofilter on top of another chip with a DNA sensor.

It was frustrating work. The chips weren't making good contact with each other. Madejski gently poked at the chips, then peered over the top of the microscope.

And exhaled.

The sudden waft of warm air swept over the nanofilter, transferring it to the sensor -right on target. The "accident" led Madejski to an important insight: the water vapor in his breath had condensed on the device, causing the nanofilter to adhere ever so neatly to the sensor.

"It was like a really high-tech temporary tattoo that I created by accident; lick and stick!" says the PhD student in the lab of James McGrath, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Rochester.

And that's how water vapor became integral to the development and design of a novel device for detecting DNA biomarkers affiliated with disease. Created by McGrath's lab in collaboration with Professor Vincent Tabard-Cossa and graduate student Kyle Briggs at the University of Ottawa, the device is described in an article published online at Nano Letters. The article, and an image from Madejski's homemade animation of the device in operation, will be highlighted on the cover of the February 2018 print issue.

This video explains the design and function of a novel nanoscale device to detect DNA biomarkers. Credit: Greg Madejski/University of Rochester

'A remarkable structure'

The device is comprised of three ultrathin layers:

a nanoporous silicon nitride membrane which serves as a prefilter.

a biosensor membrane with a single nanopore.

a spacer layer that separates these by only 200 nm.

The arrangement creates a nanocavity filled with less than a femtoliter of fluidor about a million times smaller than the smallest raindrops.

During operation, the device uses an electric field to lure a strand of DNA to enter one of the pores of the prefilter and then pass through the nanocavity to reach the pore of the underlying sensor membrane. This triggers changes in the device's electrical current that can be detected and analyzed. The fact that DNA must elongate itself in a consistent way to pass through the two-membrane combination improves the precision and reproducibility of detection.

"This is a remarkable structure," says McGrath. "We've built an integrated system with a highly porous filter within molecular reach of a sensor. I think there are many sensors, particularly those that hunt for biomarkers in raw biological fluids, that would benefit from filtering away unwanted molecules immediately upstream of the detector."

This animation shows, as graduate student Greg Madejski explains, the thin films of water, seen as rainbow colors, swelling and shrinking the space between the prefilter and the nanopore as its exposed to additional water vapor.. Credit: University of Rochester

The method of fabrication instantly wets the nanocavity, which is often difficult at the nanoscale. The device contains dozens of these nanocavities, which may eventually increase the amount of material that can be screened by enabling parallelized biomarker detection.

Solving problems that others need solved

Tabard-Cossa's lab uses solid-state nanopore devices to find new ways to manipulate and characterize single molecules. His lab was interested in finding new materials that could be used for biomarker detection. The prefilter in the new device addresses a problem with other silicon nanopore detectors: They are more likely to clog than alternative devices that use that biological pores for sensing. Biological membranes, on the other hand, are less stable than solid state nanopores, McGrath noted.

"We love to apply our membrane technologies to solve problems that others need solved. This is a very nice example.," McGrath says.

McGrath is co-founder of SiMPore, a University-based startup that develops highly portable, chip-based devices that incorporate silicon membranes for a variety of applications, from biological sensing to dialysis.

"I think we're going to realize the practical advantages of this technology in the near term," he says. A second generation of the new device, developed at SiMPore, incorporates the prefilter right on the chips during manufacturing at the wafer scale, "so there's nobody breathing on it anymore," he notes. "It's actually all built as one unit and should make future studies very easy. That's a credit to the ingenuity at SiMPore and quite a legacy for Greg."

More information: Kyle Briggs et al. DNA Translocations through Nanopores under Nanoscale Preconfinement, Nano Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b03987 Journal information: Nano Letters
An image of the Earth constructed from NASAs Terra satellite. Credit: NASA/Goddard

Scientists have long known earthquakes can cause the Earth to vibrate for extended periods of time. However, in 1998 a research team found the Earth also constantly generates a low-frequency vibrational signal in the absence of earthquakes.

Since then, seismologists have proposed different theories to explain the existence of this continuous vibration, from atmospheric disturbances to ocean waves moving over the sea floor. They've also measured the vibration using seismometers on land, but had not yet successfully measured it at the sea floor, which could help scientists better quantify the sources of the vibrations.

Now, using seismic instruments on the bottom of the ocean, researchers have successfully quantified Earth's vibrational "hum". A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, determined at the ocean bottom the frequencies at which the Earth naturally vibrates, and confirmed the viability of using ocean instruments to study the hum.

Capturing the hum at the ocean bottom could provide new insights into the source magnitude, according to Martha Deen, a geophysicist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in Paris, France and lead author of the new study.

Additionally, the new findings could be used to map the interior of Earth with more detail and accuracy. Including the hum from seismometers on the ocean sea floor can give a better overall picture than using land seismometers alone by increasing data coverage in large uncovered areas, Deen said.

"Earth is constantly in movement, and we wanted to observe these movements because the field could benefit from having more data," she said.

Capturing the hum

The new research examined Earth's permanent free oscillations: low-frequency seismic signals that can only be measured with sensitive instruments. The vibration caused by these signals is constantly present in the ground, and is observable in the absence of earthquakes.

A previous study published in Geophysical Research Letters demonstrated the movement of ocean waves over continental shelves is responsible for generating a large portion of the signal, and provided the first quantitative modeling of the hum over one year. Other research has suggested atmospheric turbulence as a source of the signal, but this mechanism can only explain part of the vibration.

An Ocean-Bottom Seismometer used in the study being put into the water. Credit: RHUM-RUM experiment/Meteor Cruise

Most of the existing research on the hum signal successfully examined it using seismometers located on land, not at the ocean bottom. Gathering accurate data from seismometers beneath the ocean surface was regarded as impractical because ocean waves and seafloor currents generate high amounts of ambient noise.

However, 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water, so being able to measure the hum on the sea floor would enable scientists to analyze the phenomenon using data over the entire globe, Deen said.

In the new study, the researchers first gathered seismic data from 57 seismometer stations located at the bottom of the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. These stations were deployed from 2012 to 2013 as part of an earlier study published in Eos, which was designed to image volcanic intraplate hot spots.

The authors selected seismic data from the two stations with the highest data quality, and made sure to correct for the signal generated by any earthquakes. They then applied a combination of techniques to remove interference from ocean infragravity waves, currents and electronic glitches, and were able to reduce the noise level to approximately the same level as a quiet land station.

Because Deen and her colleagues were able to account for these sources of interference, the researchers were able to successfully capture the hum using seismometers at the bottom of the ocean.

The study determined Earth's natural vibration peaks at several frequencies between 2.9 and 4.5 millihertz. These vibrations can't be heard by people because they are approximately 10,000 times smaller than the lower hearing threshold of the human ear, which is 20 hertz.

The authors also compared the magnitude of their observed hum signal to measurements from a land station in Algeria, and found both signals have a similar amplitude.

Deen and her co-authors believe other researchers can apply their findings to better model the structure of the Earth's interior. Scientists traditionally examine the interior using seismic waves generated from earthquakes, but this only works at specific times and in areas where quakes commonly occur. Using the hum signal as a source of seismic waves would avoid this problem because the hum is generated continuously in many ocean-continent areas at the planet's surface.

Combining data from both land and ocean bottom seismometers gives seismologists a more complete picture of the entire hum signal compared to using land stations alone, according to Deen. The increased density of possible data points would improve image resolution and could help scientists better map the Earth's interior down to 500 kilometers (310 miles), she said.

More information: M. Deen et al. First Observation of the Earth's Permanent Free Oscillations on Ocean Bottom Seismometers, Geophysical Research Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2017GL074892 Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

This story is republished courtesy of AGU Blogs (http://blogs.agu.org), a community of Earth and space science blogs, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here.
Scanning electron micrographs of the epicuticular ultrastructure of flag leaves collected from plants that had fully emerged heads. Images were taken from adaxial and abaxial surfaces of Stettler and Superb spring wheat grown under well-watered (control) and MdS conditions. Magnification = 10 000, scale bar = 2.5 m. Credit: Canadian Light Source

Scientists from the Canadian Light Source (CLS) have teamed up with researchers from the University of Saskatchewan to develop a new technique to examine drought tolerance in wheat.

Chithra Karunakaran and Karen Tanino's team developed a simple non-destructive method to screen hundreds of wheat leaf samples in a day, reducing the time and cost associated with traditional breeding programs to select varieties for drought tolerance. Their findings were published in the November issue of Physiologia Plantarum.

"Developing these types of tools better enables physiologists to complement breeding programs," says Tanino, Professor of Plant Sciences at the U of S.

"By identifying key traits of interest, which can be targeted and rapidly screened, we can enable breeders to accelerate crop improvement."

According to Statistics Canada, Canadian wheat production is anticipated to decline by 19.5 per cent in 2017, in part due to the dry conditions experienced in the prairies. As global temperatures shift and rainfall patterns become more erratic, drought will continue to contribute to low yields and loss of food production.

Using the wax of a flag leaf as their test subject, the team members examined the morphological characteristics of the plant, as well as the chemical signatures, comparing the drought-resistant Stettler wheat variety to the Superb, which is more vulnerable to drought conditions. The flag leaf is the final leaf to emerge during plant development and is crucial for attaining high yields.

"The agriculture community knows that leaf wax plays a role in conserving water and acts as a physical barrier to disease," says Karunakaran, Science Manager, Environmental & Earth Sciences at the CLS, "but before this we hadn't understood why that's happening on a molecular level."

Using the bright light produced at the CLS, Karunakaran and her team were the first to link micro and macronutrients in the leaves in relation to their ability to tolerate drought, finding higher levels of zinc in the drought-resistant Stettler. These results could have significant implications for future breeding programs, and also raise questions about the role of zinc in fertilizer.

Current breeding programs base drought tolerance on crop yields, using field trials to determine results. The new method will allow scientists to characterize drought-tolerant varieties much earlier, resulting in reduced costs and taking the new variety from the lab to the field much faster.

Now that methods and protocols have been established, this project will extend to new varieties, eventually looking at other crops such as canola, allowing Canadian farmers to stay competitive in a global market.

More information: Wheat flag leaf epicuticular wax morphology and composition response to moderate drought stress is revealed by SEM, FTIR-ATR and synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy. Physiologia Plantarum (2017). DOI: 10.1111/ppl.12637
Reconstruction of Wakaleo schouteni challenging the thylacinid Nimbacinus dicksoni over a kangaroo carcass in the late Oligocene forest at Riversleigh. Credit: Peter Schouten in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology

A team of Australian scientists has discovered a new species of marsupial lion which has been extinct for at least 19 million years. The findings, published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, are based on fossilised remains of the animal's skull, teeth, and humerus (upper arm bone) found by University of New South Wales (UNSW) scientists in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of remote north-western Queensland.

Named in honour of palaeoartist Peter Schouten, Wakaleo schouteni was a predator that stalked Australia's abundant rainforests some 18 to 26 million years ago in the late Oligocene to early Miocene era. This meat-eating marsupial is estimated to have been about the size of a dog and weighed around 23 kilograms.

The new species is about a fifth of the weight of the largest and last surviving marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, that weighed in at around 130 kilograms and which has been extinct for 30,000 years. Members of this family, the Thylacoleonidae, had highly distinct large, blade-like, flesh-cutting premolars that they used to tear up prey.

The discovery comes just a year after the fossilised remains of a kitten-sized marsupial lion were found in the same famous fossil site in Queensland. The UNSW scientists named that miniature predator Microleo attenboroughi after broadcasting legend Sir David Attenborough.

With this new find, the researchers believe that two different species of marsupial lion were present in the late Oligocene at least 25 million years ago. The other, originally named Priscileo pitikantensis, but renamed Wakaleo pitikantensis, was slightly smaller and was identified from teeth and limb bones discovered near Lake Pitikanta in South Australia in 1961.

This latest discovery reveals that the new species (W. schouteni) exhibits many skull and dental features of the genus Wakaleo but it also shared a number of similarities with P. pitikantensis - particularly the presence of three upper premolars and four molars, previously the diagnostic feature of Priscileo. Further similarities of the teeth and humerus which are shared with W. schouteni indicate that P. pitikantensis is a species of Wakaleo.

According to the authors, these dental similarities distinguish W. schouteni and W. pitikantensis from later species of this genus, all of which show premolar and molar reduction, and suggest that they are the most primitive members of the genus.

Lead author Dr Anna Gillespie, a palaeontologist from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia says that the latest finding raises new questions about the evolutionary relationships of marsupial lions: "The identification of these new species have brought to light a level of marsupial lion diversity that was quite unexpected and suggest even deeper origins for the family."
"Astronomy" as it is represented in Sign Language in different counties. Credit: IAU-C1 WG3 and collaborators

During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, an encyclopedic dictionary of astronomy for French Sign Language, entitled Hands in the Stars, was published under the direction of Dominique Proust. This dictionary contains approximately 300 signs describing several classical celestial bodies such as planets, asteroids, galaxies and quasars, as well as technical terms such as telescope, spectrograph and photometry.

In 2016-2017, a large project led by the IAU Commission for Astronomy, Equity and Inclusion (IAU Division C, Commission C1 WG3 ) , with funding from the IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, translated Proust's dictionary into English (by Lawrence Augustin Orchard) and Spanish (by Maria Roser Garcia and Amelia Ortiz-Gil). The dictionary can be accessed from the website of the Commission through these links: French , English and Spanish .

Based on this previous experience, the Commission recently embarked on a long-term project to collect the different signs in several languages, starting with a selection of 47 words that the experts of the Commission agree are amongst the most commonly used in astronomy education and outreach. The languages involved include German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Polish, among others.

Sign language is now officially practised in almost every country, but diverse heritages and different cultures independently developed specific signs to designate common objects or identical situations. "A Universal Sign Language is gradually being developed, mainly to designate objects and situations related to contemporary technology or events. Nevertheless, there will always be differences between signs in each country that need to be noted, as countries have developed its own signs through time", says Dominique Proust.

Many astronomical words have no equivalent hand sign in any sign language. The signs presented in this list represent a collaboration between deaf communities, educators, and astronomers all over the world. The suggested signs are meant to engage the deaf community in scientific discussion.

The compilation of 47 terms is also available online here . Its main goal is to help to reflect on the differences between the various languages, perhaps even helping communities to develop their own sign if they did not yet have one for a particular term. The work is a joint ongoing effort between many individuals and organisations. Signs in some of the languages have been retrieved from the Spread the Sign project.

The group working on this task is also analysing the case of words without a sign in some countries. One alternative could be to suggest the use of the sign of a closely related language, for example, Spanish for the Italian community.

The Commission is also considering the possibility of studying each sign in order to determine the similarities and differences between different languages and suggest, if possible, a common and unique sign for each word for every country. This may be an impossible task, but it is one worth exploring.

Provided by International Astronomical Union
A startup based on an Indiana University innovation could help federal and international organizations conduct more-efficient quantitative risk assessments of chemicals in food, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other products.

Traditional methods to conduct quantitative risk assessments have drawbacks, according to Kan Shao, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health in IU's School of Public Health.

"Regulatory agencies face two major challenges," Shao said. "The first is the gap between the speed of conducting assessments and the speed of new chemicals being developed. The second is determining how regulatory risk-assessment results can better support benefit-cost analysis-based decision-making."

Shao has launched Dream Tech LLC, a high-tech startup that uses a Bayesian estimation system for the dose-response assessment phase, which addresses a chemical's toxicity.

"Dream Tech can improve the dose-response modeling approaches to make the assessment more efficient and effective," he said. "The Bayesian method incorporates historical and other types of data to reduce animal use in toxicological studies, which enhances the efficiency of risk assessment.

"Dream Tech's online dose-response modeling system also provides probabilistic estimates for the most important quantities, which cannot be achieved by current dose-response modeling systems."

Shao said Dream Tech's focus on the dose-response step of quantitative risk assessment sets it apart from other companies.

"Few businesses provide quantitative and analytical support for risk assessment, and almost none focus solely on dose-response modeling. The two current most-used systems were developed by U.S. and Dutch government agencies," he said. "Dream Tech is relatively unique in its focus."

Shao disclosed his innovation to the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office, which protects, markets and licenses intellectual property developed at Indiana University so it can be commercialized by industry. Shao licensed the innovation and launched Dream Tech to commercialize it.

Shao said Dream Tech continues to develop the Bayesian system to build novel functionalities and is seeking funding to support the company's financial and personnel growth.

"The next milestones include the acceptance of our system as an alternative dose-response modeling system to support regulatory risk assessments and to engage external sources for financial support," he said.
Map of sites and postulated migratory pathways associated with modern humans dispersing across Asia during the Late Pleistocene. Credit: Bae et al. 2017. On the origin of modern humans: Asian perspectives. Science. Image by: Katerina Douka and Michelle O'Reilly

Most people are now familiar with the traditional "Out of Africa" model: modern humans evolved in Africa and then dispersed across Asia and reached Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago. However, technological advances in DNA analysis and other fossil identification techniques, as well as an emphasis on multidisciplinary research, are revising this story. Recent discoveries show that humans left Africa multiple times prior to 60,000 years ago, and that they interbred with other hominins in many locations across Eurasia.

A review of recent research on dispersals by early modern humans from Africa to Asia by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa confirms that the traditional view of a single dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa around 60,000 years ago can no longer be seen as the full story. The analysis, published in the journal Science, reviews the plethora of new discoveries being reported from Asia over the past decade, which were made possible by technological advances and interdisciplinary collaborations, and shows that Homo sapiens reached distant parts of the Asian continent, as well as Near Oceania, much earlier than previously thought. Additionally, evidence that modern humans interbred with other hominins already present in Asia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, complicates the evolutionary history of our species.

New model: Multiple dispersals of modern humans out of Africa, beginning as early as 120,000 years ago

The authors brought together findings from multiple recent studies to refine the picture of human dispersals out of Africa and into Asia. While scientists once thought that humans first left Africa in a single wave of migration about 60,000 years ago, recent studies have identified modern human fossils in far reaches of Asia that are potentially much older. For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Additional finds indicate that modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Australia prior to 60,000 years ago.

However, other recent studies do confirm that all present-day non-African populations branched off from a single ancestral population in Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. This could indicate that there were multiple, smaller dispersals of humans out of Africa beginning as early as 120,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal 60,000 years ago. While the recent dispersal contributed the bulk of the genetic make-up of present-day non-Africans, the earlier dispersals are still evident.

"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations. A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter," explains Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Multiple interbreeding events

Recent genetic research has resolved the question of whether or not modern humans interbred with other ancient hominins - they definitely did. Modern humans interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with our recently-discovered relatives the Denisovans, as well as a currently unidentified population of pre-modern hominins. One estimate is that all present-day non-Africans have 1-4% Neanderthal heritage, while another group has estimated that modern Melanesians have an average of 5% Denisovan heritage. In all, it is now clear that modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and perhaps other hominin groups likely overlapped in time and space in Asia, and they certainly had many instances of interaction.

The increasing evidence of interactions suggests that the spread of material culture is also more complicated than previously thought. "Indeed, what we are seeing in the behavioral record is that the spread of so-called modern human behaviors did not occur in a simple time-transgressive process from west to east. Rather, ecological variation needs to be considered in concert with behavioral variation between the different hominin populations present in Asia during the Late Pleistocene," explains Christopher Bae of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

In light of these new discoveries, our understanding of human movements across the Old World has become much more complex, and there are still many questions left open. The authors argue for the development of more complicated models of human dispersals and for conducting new research in the many areas of Asia where none has been done to date. Additionally, it will be important to review materials collected prior to the development of modern analytic methods, to see what more can now be learned from them. "Fortunately," states Katerina Douka, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, "there have been an increasing number of multidisciplinary research programs launched in Asia over the past few decades. The information that is being reported is helping to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary records."

"It is an exciting time to be involved with interdisciplinary research projects across Asia," adds Bae.

More information: C.J. Bae at University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, HI el al., "On the origin of modern humans: Asian perspectives," Science (2017). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aai9067 Journal information: Science
Credit: Georgia State University

Urban development dramatically increases the flow of water in streams and rivers, creating an uptick in flood events, according to a study by Georgia State University researchers.

This is one of the first studies to successfully minimize the influence of precipitation when analyzing the effects of urbanization on streams.

In the paper, published in the Journal of Hydrology, Georgia State Geosciences faculty examined trends in water flow over 30 years (from 1986 to 2015) in eight streams in the metropolitan Atlanta area: Big Creek, Flint River, Line Creek, Peachtree Creek, Sope Creek, South River, Suwanee Creek and Sweetwater Creek.

Of the eight, the Big Creek and Suwanee Creek watershedswhich are in the city's booming northern suburbsexperienced the largest population increases. Both watersheds were among the three least densely populated in 1990, but by 2010 the population for Big Creek had nearly quadrupled, while Suwanee Creek's population had tripled. Between 1992 and 2011, the amount of developed land in these watersheds also doubled, almost entirely at the expense of forest land.

In both watersheds, this urbanization led to a 26 percent increase in annual stream flow from 1986 to 2010, as well as a doubling of high-flow days.

"This means that during a storm event, you'll now see more runoff, more extreme flows and more flooding than you would have seen for a similar storm event in 1986," said Jeremy Diem, the study's lead author and associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State.

Urban development affects more than just stream volume, said Richard Milligan, co-author of the study and assistant professor of geosciences. "The increase in impervious surfacesor surfaces that water can't penetratealso affects water quality, as the liquid runs over asphalt, picking up pollutants."

Among the other rivers the researchers studied, the two least developed watershedsLine Creek and Sweetwater Creekhad the lowest maximum stream flows, while the two most developed watershedsPeachtree Creek and Sope Creekhad the highest. Researchers also found an extremely strong relationship between the amount of developed land and the average stream volume during high-flow days.

There were a few surprises, researchers said. The Peachtree Creek watershed, which was already highly developed before the 1986 start date of the study, experienced a decrease in annual stream flow. Diem and Mulligan hypothesize this is because of soil water leaking into the area's aging sewage pipes, which direct it into a wastewater treatment facility.

"This is an area with older homes and buildings, which tends to mean older pipes with more cracks for water to infiltrate," Diem said.

Line Creek also experienced a drop in stream volume, despite the fact that the area saw a growth in development from 1986 to 2010. The researchers surmise this is the result of actively pumping water out of the stream. Line Creek was the only stream studied in which there were large increases in withdrawals for municipal consumption.

The South River experienced a larger-than-expected increase in annual stream flow and the number of high-flow days. The authors say this is likely because of a quirk in the way that water is distributed via utilities in the area. The water used to flush toilets or fill drinking glasses comes from the Chattahoochee River, yet after it's treated the water is released into the South River, transferring the water from a basin flowing to the Gulf of Mexico to one that flows out to the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, an annual average of 37 million gallons per day is transferred out of the Chattahoochee and into South River in DeKalb County. By far the largest inter-basin transfer of water in Georgia, it is also the most contentious because of its implication in tristate water conflicts.
The tunicate Ciona robusta ranks as one of San Francisco Bay's most dominant invaders. But it needs salty water to thrive, and its numbers dwindled when a single wet winter sent freshwater streaming into the bay. Credit: Melissa Frey/Royal British Columbia Museum

For many Californians, last year's wet winter triggered a case of whiplash. After five years of drought, rain from October 2016 to February 2017 broke more than a century of records. In San Francisco Bay, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center biologists discovered a hidden side effect: All that freshwater rain can turn the tables on some of the bay's invasive species.

"As you get wetter and wetter, there are fewer and fewer [marine] species that can tolerate those conditions," said Andrew Chang, lead author of the new study published Dec. 7 in Global Change Biology.

Chang, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's branch in Tiburon, Calif., has been watching San Francisco's invaders since 2000. He is especially interested in the fouling community, underwater creatures like tunicates and bryozoans that grow on boats, docks and fishing and aquaculture equipment. Though some of them can look stunningly beautiful underwater, they are less attractive when they clog fishing gear or ruin nets.

Some species, Chang has noticed, need a salty bay to survive. When a wet winter sends massive surges of freshwater into the bay, those organisms start to suffer. And last winter may not have been a fluke: Those kinds of extremesyears of deluge and years of droughtare already becoming more common as climate change accelerates.

In the past, scientists have generally tracked how shifting weather patterns impact a single species. In the new study, Chang and the center's Marine Invasions Lab examined how San Francisco's fouling community as a whole changed over 13 years of wet, dry and moderate weather. Starting in 2001, the team tracked the growth of these species in Richmond Marina, a mostly saltwater marina in northeastern San Francisco Bay. They suspended square PVC panels from docks, where they remained underwater for one month, three months or, starting in 2004, three to five years, collecting all kinds of colorful marine life.

During dry years, when bay waters remained salty, one invader dominated above all others: the invasive tunicate Ciona robusta. A translucent, vase-shaped filter feeder from Asia, Ciona has invaded five continents, including North America's West Coast. It has a reputation for crowding out other species, thanks to its rapid growth, and similar Ciona species have thrown a wrench into shellfish aquaculture.

During dry years, solitary tunicates (left) dominated San Francisco Bay's fouling community. But when wetter years poured more freshwater into the Bay, colonial tunicates (right) took over. Credit: Andrew Chang

But when the wetter winters of 2006 and 2011 hit, Ciona and other solitary tunicates like it were unable to cope with the massive influxes of freshwater. In their place, mat-like colonial tunicates and encrusting bryozoans took over.

To confirm that wet weather was indeed behind the species switch-ups, Chang's team ran an experiment in addition to the 13-year field surveys, taking panels from the marina and exposing them in lab to near-freshwater (wet year), near-oceanic saltwater (dry year) or medium-saltwater (moderate year). Marine life on panels exposed to the fresher "wet year" water suffered near total mortality. When they put the panels back in the marina and pulled them up eight weeks later, an entirely new suite of species had colonized. By contrast, species on the medium- and high-saltwater panels barely suffered at all.

As Chang sees it, freshwater years reset the systema situation that could work to the advantage of some of the invaders. "If you're a new invader arriving to San Francisco Bay, for example, what better time to come in than right after a wet winter has killed off most of your potential competitors?" he said.

Many of the new species, like colonial tunicates and encrusting bryozoans, are non-native. However, Chang's team noticed a couple native species did better in wet years too. This suggests with the right strategy, managers could use the situation to help native species instead.

"When you have a wet winter and it kills off a huge number of species...we're really knocking back the non-native population," Chang said. "Perhaps that would be an opportune time to take some aggressive management action."

According to Chang, that action could involve addressing boat trafficone of the key ways invasive species arrive in San Francisco Bayor other tactics to pump up native species or ensure invasive ones stay low.

San Francisco almost certainly has not seen its last rainy winter or its last drought. What extreme wet years offer, biologists suggest, is a window of opportunity. When a dominant invader like Ciona gets cut down, it could be a godsend for another invader, or a new shot at life for some of the bay's struggling natives.

Provided by Smithsonian
By PTI: (Eds: Adds full name of Bangladesh Army chief)

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Army chief General Bipin Rawat today held extensive talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart Abu Belal Muhammad Shafiul Huq on ways to further deepen the cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.

They deliberated on enhancing cooperation in ensuring adequate cooperation between security forces of the two countries, guarding the India-Bangladesh border, official sources here said.

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A number of key issues related to defence and security were discussed in the meeting, they said.

They also discussed issues of mutual concern, a senior Army official said.

The Bangladeshi Army chief is currently on a visit to India. PTI MPB KND ABH

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In the latest installment of CNBC Investigates, CNBCs Contessa Brewer is uncovering how gift card crime is fueling opioid addiction across the U.S. Clips

are airing across Business Day Programming today, Thursday, December 7th. Following and below is the article from CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/gift-card-crime-fueling-opioid-addiction-across-the-us.html . Following is the full video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/12/07/gift-cards-fueling-opioid-crisis.html.

Contessa Brewer, Scott Zamost A shadowy world of criminals has been targeting major retailers around the country to take advantage of lenient store-return policies and fuel their drug addictions, a CNBC investigation has found. And they use an unlikely currency to pull off the crime: gift cards. For years, thieves have taken aim at big-name stores, including Home Depot, Lowes, Target and Walmart, by stealing items and returning them at another store without a receipt. They typically receive a gift card for the stolen goods and then sell it to a pawn shop or secondary store at a discount. While retailers say they are doing everything they can to reduce return fraud overall, both law enforcement and the drug users themselves say the scam is relatively easy to pull off. When youre suffering from addiction, any length means any length, said Kristen Booth, 23, who has been arrested twice for retail return fraud in connection with gift cards. Booth was among four patients who candidly spoke to CNBC at Gateway Community Services, a drug rehab center in Jacksonville, Florida.

A recovering heroin and oxycodone user, Booth said getting the gift cards for the stolen items was routine.

Ive definitely stolen, I have, you know, took advantage of people, she said. I would get receipts and take them back in there, and I would go and take things off the shelf. I would make sure I left the store so on camera it looked like I purchased the items, and then come back go to customer service. While there are no national figures linking gift-card crimes to drugs, retail-return fraud itself continues to be a major problem. A 2017 survey by the National Retail Federation found 57 percent of companies reported fraudulent gift cards or store credit in at least one location, which is lower than previous years, when it stood at about 66 percent. The association estimates that retail return fraud losses cost $9 billion to $15 billion a year. Amber Ross, 27, another patient at Gateway, had a similar experience.

I would go to Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart to take stuff, leave, go to another Hope Depot, take it back to get a gift card, she said.

She said if she didnt want to use her own ID, she often found other people to use theirs to cash in the gift card. She would then share the cash proceeds with them.

And then theyd give me the cash, and Id call my drug dealer, she said.

Law enforcement officials say cashing in gift cards to pay for opioids is becoming more prevalent throughout the U.S. The outright theft is not as common as it used to be, now that there is loading of gift cards and the online sales of these gift cards. And law enforcement is just really not familiar with tracking it yet, said Sheriffs Lt. David Ballard in the Shelby County, Tennessee. Typically, after thieves gets the gift card, they take it to a pawn shop, a secondhand store or a business that buys cards at a large discount, Ballard said. The cards are then resold usually to an online exchange. Booth says addiction makes users ignore the consequences of getting caught. And you dont care how many charges you have, you dont care what youve been through; you just care about the next one, she said.

The recovering drug abusers at Gateway told CNBC they clearly remember the feeling of desperation for quick cash. I feel like I couldve found a way around any rule they make, said Ashlee Smith, 24. She used drugs for the past decade. As an addict, I just feel like I go to any length. Joshua Lopez, a behavioral health tech at Riverside Recovery of Tampa, helps others in recovery. He said the gift card scheme is well known. You hear it from the grapevine. Like you have one friend thats like, Oh yeah, so I went and I stole this and returned it,' he said.

You choose a big chain and then you steal something thats small and that has like a high dollar amount per item, he said. And then go to the same chain in a different location and thats they way that they normally do it, if you dont have a receipt, you show your ID. Certain places, if you return something, like the reason they show their ID is because they look it up to see if youve returned anything else in any other store. And if youve had, like more than three, they flag you.

At least one state  Tennessee  has found a direct connection between gift cards and drug overdoses. In Knox County, police linked 16 of 19 overdoes to the sale of gift cards during a one month period this year. In the city of Knoxville, police tracked 83 to 98 overdoes to gift cards during a three-month period. Those numbers stunned Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs, who is also a cardiovascular surgeon. Absolute shock, Briggs said. It would be no different than if there was a rock lying there. And if you lifted it up, and this horrible smell came out, and this monster came out. We had no idea that the organized retail theft was related so intimately with the opiate and drug trade in general in Appalachia.

Briggs sponsored legislation this year that requires all transactions involving cash for gift cards on the secondary market to be reported to local law enforcement. But the law does not impose a penalty for not complying, and Briggs said he plans to push for tougher rules next year. Tennessee loses more than $14 million a year in sales tax revenue due to this crime, according to a retail industry report. The criminal element is very creative, Briggs said. And I dont think this is the sole problem to solving financing of the opiate problem in Tennessee. But its one part of the problem. And right now its a very big part of the problem. Home Depot said it has changed its policy to crack down on return fraud and acknowledged the link between gift cards and drugs. Of course, it impacts our bottom line, but its also about safety of the community, drug trafficking, even terrorism, Home Depot spokesman Matt Harrigan told CNBC. Home Depot only accepts store credits for in-store purchases and we require proof of ID when store credits are redeemed at checkout because of the increase in return fraud, Harrigan said. We never want to inconvenience our customers, but this policy impacts more than just our bottom line. It helps minimize returns fraud tied to bigger organized crime in the community.

The home-improvement retailers store credits differ from gift cards because they cannot be used online, which limits their resale value. Its gift cards are more open to resale. The company also does not allow customers to buy gift cards with store credits or another gift card due to the potential fraud linked to that behavior, Harrigan said in a statement. Targets return policy also attempts to limit gift-card fraud. If the store cant find a receipt when employees try to look one up, they may offer exchanges or store credits. The company also says it limits the number of returns without a receipt. Walmart has in place a series of policies and procedures to closely monitor merchandise returns where no receipt is required, said Charles Cro wson, senior manager of corporate communications. Lowes, which also works with law enforcement and the retail industry to combat return fraud, will hold perpetrators accountable for their illegal conduct, said Steve Salazar, corporate communications manager. On the police side, the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail sees the return fraud-opioid connection as a top priority. The group will be leveraging its public and private partnerships to combat the crisis in both areas, said Curt Crum, president of the coalition.

The larger business community is also taking aim at the issue. Retail Theft Analysis, a Florida-based private company, is pitching software to police departments to help track the number and value of gift cards that stores buy and individuals sell. CEO Matt Ryan said the company found one example of a customer who sold $349,000 worth of gift cards to a store in Tennessee during a three-month period. Most of them were iTunes cards.

This data tells me this is somebody that they should look at pretty closely, Ryan said. The other thing I would look at is what store he is selling to. Because this type of store is obviously not really examining who theyre buying cards from. Because anybody thats bringing in [$349,000] worth of iTunes cards is probably doing something fraudulent.

To the drug abusers in treatment, all of these efforts are positive signs as they all try to rebuild their lives. Ive always told myself Id be a wonderful mom, Booth said, wiping away tears. Id do anything for my little girl. And its crazy to look back and see all the times that I didnt care, how selfish I can be.
By PTI: airport at Jammu

Srinagar, Dec 7 (PTI) Srinagar Airport will soon have night landing facility, Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha said here today and batted for connecting the Valley directly to international destinations like Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.

"My endeavour will be to have international flights in Srinagar by the time tourist season starts in May-June," the minister told reporters while replying to queries.

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The minister, who was speaking at the day-long Ideas Summit 2017 of entrepreneurs, announced that the ministry is exploring the possibility of a new airport in Jammu region, preferably in Katra so that Vaishno Devi pilgrims are also benefited.

On Srinagar airport, he said most of the arrangements for night landing at the airport here have been completed.

"We are going to be working very hard to get night landing done in Srinagar as soon as possible. We are going to build approach lights so that landing takes place in night and they also help in safer landing even in low visibility.

"I have been told that most of the arrangements for night landing have been done and the approach lights will be readied soon and it will be implemented. This will happen in just a few months and should not take more than that," Sinha said.

Sinha said Srinagar needs to be connected directly to other destinations across the country as well as internationally.

"We need to connect Srinagar directly to other major hubs and destinations and these include places like Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.

"I cannot give you a firm commitment on this, but we are going to do our level best to enable Srinagar to get connected towards the east to Kuala Lumpur and we are going to see a possibility to connect you to Dubai as well," he said at the event organised by Foundation for Resource Development and Education (FRDE) at SKICC.

"Of course, we have some over-flight issue as you know, I will try for that. But east is not an issue, therefore as far as Kuala Lumpur is concerned, through Air Asia, I am sure in six months we will have it done," he said.

The Union minister of state for civil aviation said a scheme like Udaan will be devised for connecting Srinagar with other major cities especially in the peak tourist season.

"We were also discussing about ways in which we can connect Srinagar with direct flights particularly during the tourist season to other major cities of this country, so whether it is Ahmedabad or Chennai, these cities deserve direct flights to Srinagar," he said.

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The initiative will be sponsored by the Centre and the state in partnership so that more tourists can be brought comfortably to Srinagar, he said.

He said about 40 flights operate at Srinagar airport in the peak season but with these changes, it can have many more flights and that would help tourists, business people and craftsmen to Kashmir.

Sinha also announced that cargo facilities would be expanded at Srinagar airport.

He also said the ministry would explore the possibility of building a pilot training facility in Srinagar and a flight simulator as well.

Asked about the surge in airfare especially during the peak tourist season in the Valley, the Union minister said, "We have investigated the surge in pricing and we found out that only one or two per cent of fares increase whether in Srinagar or elsewhere in the country".

Asked if the civil aviation ministry has discussed with the Ministry of Defence about converting Srinagar airport into a civil airport, Sinha said, "No, I have not discussed this with Ministry of Defence. So I cannot speak on it. But since you have raised this issue.. we will see the status of that."

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He said the ministry has undertaken many developmental works at Jammu airport.

"It has a new terminal, now the work on runway will start. There has been an expansion.

"We have held discussions with Chief Minister (Mehbooba Mufti) and her deputy about a new airport in Jammu preferably in Katra so that Vaishno Devi pilgrims are also benefited," he said.

Asked about his father and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinhas statements on Kashmir and his suggestion that the Centre should talk to separatists, the Union minister said he fully supports the policies of the government and his father is free to express his views as an independent person.

"I have full faith and confidence in the prime minister, the home minister and all of the senior leaders of my party. I fully support the policies of the government and I am fully backing all of those policies," he said.

"As far as my father is concerned, he is an independent person, he has his own independent views and of course as a citizen in our democratic country, he has full rights to express his views and pursue his thinking," Jayant Sinha said.

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The minister shared many ideas with the audience while speaking on entrepreneurship and assured the business community of government support. PTI SSB MIJ RT

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At present, scientists are using GPS technology to track the movements of our modern continents. As you're reading this, the Americas are inching closer to Asia while Australia and Antarctica are shifting north.

Dr. J. Brendan Murphy, a geologist at St. Francis Xavier University, explains that if the Americas stick to their present course, "the Pacific Ocean will close and the Atlantic will widen" until we get an all-new supercontinent in 70 million years or so.

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But maybe the Pacific isn't doomed after all. A different school of thought holds that it's the Atlantic Ocean whose days are numbered.

The argument goes like this: Oceanic crust gets denser with age. Eventually, the crust becomes so dense and heavy that it starts subducting. At the Atlantic's center is a mid-ocean ridge, which is the reason why the body of water is currently expanding. The ridge is constantly producing new crust on the sea floor that pushes older crust  which had previously been created by the same ridge  further and further outward. Hence, the Atlantic grows ever wider.

How long can this status quo persist? Some geologists think that the very old crust on the Atlantic's edges is bound to go under. Eventually, these scientists say, new subduction zones will emerge along the coasts of Africa and the Americas. As the zones devour old, dense ocean crust, the Atlantic will theoretically shrink, pulling the American continents backward until they slam into Europe and Africa.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen, though. "The Atlantic's been expanding for 200 million years, so if you assume that the rate at which it will subduct is similar, it'd probably take [the same amount of time] to close," Murphy notes.

A third possibility was put forth in 2012. That February, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University by the name of Ross Mitchell published his thesis, which centered on supercontinent formation. After evaluating prehistoric trends, he predicted an impending closure of both the Caribbean Sea and the Arctic Ocean. This means that the Americas would merge together and meet up with Eurasia somewhere around the North Pole.

Mitchell now works at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, where he is a member of the Earth Dynamics Research Group, which seeks to enhance our understanding of plate tectonics and supercontinents. Mitchell informs us via email that hes sticking by the viewpoint expressed in his 2012 thesis. "Nothing has changed my mind yet," he says, "but hopefully some additional lines of evidence we have in the pipeline should help convince others."

For his money, Murphy says he thinks that of these three scenarios, the first one seems like the safest bet. But when all's said and done, there'd be no way to collect on that gamble  not unless somebody devises a way to live for 70 to 200 million years. "It's not really a testable hypothesis, that's for sure!" he says.

Now That's Interesting Historically, Scotland and England haven't always seen eye to eye. At least 500 million years ago, the two landmasses were separated by an ocean. Back then, Scotland belonged to an amalgamation of continents that also included North America and Greenland. Meanwhile, England and Wales existed as a modestly sized island. But as the plates kept moving, these two places found themselves on a collision course. Roughly 420 million years ago, Scotland fused with England  and they've been connected ever since.




Receiving racially charged hate mail is nothing journalist Sharon Reed hasnt experienced before. But after getting one this week, she decided shed had enough.

Live during her 9 p.m. CBS46 show, Reed shared an email from viewer Kathyrae1962, who used the N word to describe the anchor.

You need to be fired for the race-baiting comment you made tonight, Its o.k. to discuss certain subjects, but not whites  Really??? You are what I call a Niger. Not a black person. You are a racist Niger. You are whats wrong with the world,  the email read, the slur spelled wrong.

In a video she shared to her professional Facebook page, Reed showed the world what journalists of color deal with on a daily basis and responded directly to Kathy Rae herself.

Number one, you mischaracterized what I said, Reed said. I didnt say that white people couldnt talk about race. Quite the contrary; we think race is an authentic discussion to have  its one thats clearly entered Atlantas mayors race. Thats why my colleagues and I, white and black, said lets go for it. We keep it real here.

Photo: Facebook/Sharon Reed

Reed is referring to the recent mayoral race in Atlanta between city council members Mary Norwood and Keisha Lance Bottoms. But Bottoms is black and Norwood is white. If Norwood won, shed be the first white female mayor of Atlanta, according to ABC News. On the other hand, a Bottoms win would continue a run of African-American mayors that began with Maynard Jackson in the mid-1970s.

Kathie Rae didnt want Reed talking about race, but Reed wasnt backing down.

When arguing with someone, you have to be careful not to miscategorize their viewpoint, so I wont miscategorize your viewpoint, Reed continued. I get it, on Dec. 5, 2017, you think its OK to call this journalist a n*****. I dont. I could clap back and say a few things to you. Instead, Ill let your words, Kathie Rae, speak for themselves.

Her video has gone viral and has been shared more than 84,000 times in less than 24 hours, with the majority of people applauding Reeds monologue.

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Them: "You can't be petty as a professional" Me: pic.twitter.com/mbLmZnMpB0  Altif Brown (@altifbrown) December 6, 2017

She @SharonReedCBS46 made the email her header on Facebook. An icon. A queen pic.twitter.com/EW3tOhIcKh  lah-juh (@fabuLaja) December 6, 2017

. @SharonReedCBS46's face is every woman of color dealing with the Kathy Rae's of the world. pic.twitter.com/izNkYMBqDw  Cyn Diesel (@Cynstyle) December 6, 2017

Yes! Her station really deserves a lot of credit for letting her speak out. Horrible social media comments rarely see the light of day and if people were held up like Kathy Rae is here,maybe theyd think twice before putting out hate.  JennS (@jelisa12) December 6, 2017

Reed explains to Yahoo Lifestyle that her show is different from other news broadcasts because the anchors interact with their viewers more about whats happening in the world. The racial identities of the mayoral candidates constituted as such.

Reed has worked at CBS46 for more than two years and says that she and other black journalists are familiar with these types of critiques. Its not the first, second, third, or hundredth  voicemails, emails  not necessarily to my face [but] over the phone, she says. When black journalists get together, weve all had these similar horror stories.

But she felt like this one in particular needed to be addressed. She went to her manager, who gave her the green light to share the email without a problem.

Do I care to shine a spotlight on a racist? Not really. Lets move on. That said, theres too many people getting too comfortable that were postracial, she says.

She notes that she also responded to Kathie Raes email personally, reiterating her on-air comment and to tell her she made the show.

Kathie Rae emailed back, taking issue with Reeds implying she was stupid.

But Reed has no regrets, except not telling her crew to show the full email.

I dont have to have an army of supporters. Its inherently wrong, she says. To me, it was an easy decision.

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In a report by the Japanese Red Cross Society, the number of blood donors in Japan decreases yearly especially among those who are native Japanese.

According to Takehara Takimi, head of Red Cross Society in Japan, the number of blood donors drops by 100,000 every year. From the previous 4 million 900, 000 in 2016, the number decreased to 4 million 800,000 only this 2017.

This is why they are hoping for more help from foreign blood donors.

Every year, people who donate blood are decreasing at the rate of 100,000 in a year. Due to the low birth rate of Japan, it seems to be difficult to have blood donation from Japanese. Meanwhile, we are having blood donation from embassy, groups and non-Japanese, said Mr. Takimi.

With the help of the volunteers of UNTV and members, Members Church of God International (MCGI), the groups were able to conduct a massive blood donation drive in Tokyo. They were able to collect 46 blood bags for patients.

Its my first time to donate blood. It feels good to help those in need. Those who need blood. Thank you so much, God, said Baby Iijima, an OFW.

This is my third time to donate blood in Japan. Donating blood is good for our health. It cleanses our body and at the same time, it can help save the lives of others, said Andro Paor.

I came to donate my blood today to be of service to someone, said Katsunori Tanaka, a Japanese national.

Japanese Red Cross Society is hoping to conduct more blood donation drive so that more people, especially Japanese, would be encouraged join such an activity.

We are grateful to everyone for coming despite this season which is hard to gather due to cold and sickness. Even its crowded on the bus, it is very helpful that there are many people who came today. We are hoping that your cooperation will continue for a long time, said Mr. Takimi.  PAULINE OMPICO / UNTV News & Rescue

The post Blood donors braved the cold weather to join Japan Red Cross Society in a blood donation drive by UNTV, MCGI appeared first on UNTV News.
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)

(Re-inserts the word "not" in paragraph 13)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under a month-long crisis triggered when he announced from Riyadh that he was stepping down and remained outside Lebanon for weeks.

His coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. Hariri's Saudi allies accuse Hezbollah of waging war across the Middle East as agents of Iran.

Hariri's shock resignation had thrust Lebanon to the forefront of the regional quarrel between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has been played out on battlefields in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Lebanese officials said Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time Saudi ally, into resigning and put him under effective house arrest until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri have denied this.

President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, refused to accept his resignation while he remained abroad.

Saudi concern over the influence wielded by Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah in other Arab states had been widely seen as the root cause of the crisis, which raised fears for Lebanon's economic and political stability.

The Lebanese policy of "dissociation" was declared in 2012 to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Despite the policy, Hezbollah is heavily involved there, sending thousands of fighters to help President Bashar al-Assad.

In its first meeting since Hariri's resignation, the cabinet on Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to the policy.

"All (the government's) political components decide to dissociate themselves from all conflicts, disputes, wars or the internal affairs of brother Arab countries, in order to preserve Lebanon's economic and political relations," Hariri said.

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PARIS MEETING

Lebanon, where Sunni Muslim, Shi'ite, Christian and Druze groups fought a civil war from 1975-1990, has a governing system designed to share power among sectarian groups.

Hariri, a wealthy Sunni businessman with long ties to the kingdom, had denounced Iran during his resignation speech and said he was outside Lebanon because he feared for his family's safety. His father, an ex-prime minister, was assassinated in 2005.

In a speech during the cabinet session, Hariri warned that the tensions in the region could easily drag Lebanon down a dangerous route, and the issues which had led to the crisis could not be ignored.

"Developments in the region suggest a new wave of conflict ... Perhaps the conflict is nearing the end, and Lebanon cannot be plunged into chaos on the finish line.

"If we are rejecting interference by any state in Lebanese affairs, it cannot be that we accept that any Lebanese side interferes in the affairs of Arab states," Hariri said, an apparent reference to Hezbollah.

"We have to address this issue, and take a decision announcing our disassociation, in words and deeds," he said.

Hariri's resignation was accompanied by a sharp escalation in Saudi statements targeting the Lebanese state, with Riyadh at one point accusing the Beirut government of declaring war against it. Western governments, including the United States, stressed their support for Hariri and Lebanon.

Hariri will be in Paris on Friday for a 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.

The meeting, to be opened by French President Emmanuel Macron, aims in part to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran to desist from interference in Lebanon, diplomats said.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Ellen Francis in Beirut, John Irish in Paris; editing by Mark Heinrich, Larry King)
Five candidates - three from Congress and two from BJP - have declared their assets that are over Rs 100 crore.

By Jumana Shah: Politics is power, but it is inherently powered by money. In Gujarat Assembly election , as many as 78% of BJP's candidates and 70% of Congress candidates are crorepatis. The wealthiest of the lot is a Patidar candidate of Congress - Pankaj Patel from Daskroi seat in Ahmedabad district who has officially declared his assets worth Rs 231 crore.

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As many as five candidates - three from Congress and two from BJP -- have declared their assets are more than Rs 100 crore.

The connection between money and politics is an open secret. Politicians bankrolling political campaigns is a notorious fact of India where accountability is very much a grey area. But, here are a few politicians who are forthright about their affluence and, given the entrepreneurial capitalist mindset of Gujarat, it is often even a qualification.

In the Rs 100 crore club is also Indranil Rajguru, who is contesting against Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on the Rajkot West seat. Rajguru has declared Rs 141 crore as assets, while Rupani has declared Rs 3.4 crore in assets.

1. Raghubhai Desai (Rs 108 crore) 2. Saurabh Patel (Rs 123 crore) 3. Pankaj Patel (Rs 231 crore) 4. Indranil Rajguru (Rs 141 crore) 5. Dhanjibhai Patel (Rs 113 crore) 1. Raghubhai Desai (Rs 108 crore) 2. Saurabh Patel (Rs 123 crore) 3. Pankaj Patel (Rs 231 crore) 4. Indranil Rajguru (Rs 141 crore) 5. Dhanjibhai Patel (Rs 113 crore)

Also in this club are Saurabh Patel, former minister in Modi's cabinet, who's revealed Rs 123 crore in assets, BJP's Dhanjibhai Patel, contesting from Wadhwan in Surendranagar with Rs 113 crore and Congress's Raghubhai Desai, contesting from Chanasma with Rs 108 crore as his wealth. Saurabh Patel's assets have doubled from Rs 57 crore in 2012 when he contested from Akota seat in Vadodara.

Pankaj Patel has disclosed his source of income as agriculture and he is also a land dealer and builder. This is the first time Congress has fielded him.

Indranil is also a builder in Rajkot, while Saurabh Patel is a businessman based in Ahmedabad. He is, however, contesting from Botad seat near Bhavnagar.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan begins the first visit by a Turkish head of state to Greece in 65 years Thursday, with concerns over relations as Athens said it was "worried" by his comments perceived as reviving territorial friction. Ties between Turkey and Greece have warmed over the past 20 years, after decades of tension that almost sparked a miltary confrontation in 1996 ended when earthquakes struck both countries in 1999. Relations today are relatively cordial, but a Greek government spokesman expressed concern after the Turkish president called for "improvements" to how airspace and waters between the two states are delineated in the Aegean Sea in a television interview on Wednesday. "The interview today with Erdogan raises serious worries and questions," said Dimitris Tzanakopoulos in a statement, adding that Athens sees the visit as "an opportunity to build bridges, not walls". With Turkey's bid to join the EU at a standstill and relations with much of the West frigid, Erdogan's trip will be only his second visit to an EU member since last year's failed coup, after talks in Poland this October. Turkey's president Celal Bayar visited Greece in 1952, the same year the two countries simultaneously joined NATO with strong American backing. Erdogan visited Greece twice as prime minister in 2004 and 2010, building on a rapprochement between Ankara and Athens that only began in earnest after the destructive quakes. - 'Wide divide exists' - The two countries have uneasy relations dating back to the creation of the modern Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. But Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power in 2002, sought a more pragmatic relationship based on trade and tourism, and Greece became a key backer of the Turkish bid to join the EU. "Erdogan's visit can be seen as part of the long phase of rapprochement between the two countries that began in 1999," Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, director of the Centre for International and European Studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, told AFP. But he added that while Greek-Turkish relations can be seen as "relatively robust", none of a whole range of outstanding issues between the two sides have been resolved. "Beyond the pragmatism, a wide divide exists between the two countries," he said. Athens is unhappy over Turkey's upkeep of Byzantine heritage in Istanbul, the former Constantinople, including the Hagia Sophia, which is officially a museum but has seen an uptick in Muslim worship in the last years. Greece has also been rattled by Erdogan's sometimes angry tirades against the post World War I treaties that set the countries' modern borders and meant almost all the Aegean Sea islands are Greek territory. Erdogan revisited the issue Wednesday in an interview with Greece's Skai TV, saying existing territorial waters were "quite problematic" for Turkish maritime liners plying the Aegean, "and this is not something that we can live with". Ankara, meanwhile, is unhappy that Greece is hosting suspects wanted over the 2016 failed coup and who fled Turkey, notably eight troops who escaped by helicopter on the night of the putsch. Another festering sore is Cyprus, where the northern portion of the island is still occupied by Turkish troops following the 1974 invasion in response to an Athens-inspired coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. Much-touted peace talks this year that brought together both sides on the divided island as well as Greece, Turkey and colonial power Britain ended without a breakthrough. "While over the last decades economic cooperation and commercial and tourist ties between the two countries have been very active, their relations still get stuck on the same differences," said Jean Marcou, associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies. - 'Deep relations' - Athens and Ankara are cooperating over the migrant crisis, following a deal between Turkey and the EU which has significantly stemmed the flow of people to Europe. The Turkish president's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey had "deep" relations with Greece and applauded Athens' support for the embattled Turkish EU membership bid. He confirmed Erdogan would first go to Athens to meet Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and then to the northeastern Thrace region, home to Greece's main Muslim minority. Erdogan has a relatively warm relationship with Alexis Tsipras, the leftist politician who became Greek prime minister in 2015 and generally eschews nationalist rhetoric against Turkey. Tsipras told Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency in an interview ahead of the visit that suspected coup plotters "were not welcome" in Greece and emphasised the importance of dialogue between Turkey and the EU. In a move seen by Turkish commentators as a gesture to Ankara, nine suspected members of the Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), branded a terrorist organisation by Turkey were last week charged by a Greek prosecutor.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for territorial "improvements" in the Aegean Sea on the eve of a state visit to Greece, in comments that are likely to raise hackles in Athens. "Airspace and territorial waters and the different measurements can be improved," Erdogan told Greece's Skai TV on Wednesday, ahead of what will be the first official visit by a Turkish president in 65 years. "And I think there are certain problems that can be easily surmounted, and I think if we can surmount those challenges both of the countries will be relieved," said Erdogan, who last visited Greece in 2010, when he was prime minister. Relations between Turkey and Greece have been fraught with territorial disputes in the Aegean, with the two NATO allies nearly going to war in 1996 over uninhabited islands. Greece claims sovereign airspace extending 10 miles (16 kilometres) from its coastline and islands, but Turkey recognises only six miles, arguing that under international law Greece's airspace should match its limits for territorial waters. As a result, there are often confrontations when Turkish warplanes enter airspace that Greece claims as its own, prompting Greek authorities to scramble jets in response. To Athens's annoyance, Turkey also says there are a number of Greek islets and islands whose sovereignty remains unclear. In the interview, Erdogan also repeated his view that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, one of the defining documents in Greek-Turkish relations, should be revised. "I think during the course of time, all of the treaties need a revision, and Lausanne in the face of the recent developments needs to be spruced up, a revision if you will," Erdogan said. "This revision is not only for Turkey, but also it's for Greece, it could be mutually beneficial." Earlier this week, a Greek government spokesman said Athens was hoping for a "substantial improvement" in relations to emerge out of Erdogan's visit. But he also emphasised that the treaty of Lausanne was "binding" and "in force". In an interview with Turkey's Anadolu news agency, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said relations with Turkey had to be based on "mutual respect and international law, with full respect to the treaty of Lausanne." But Erdogan said existing territorial waters were "quite problematic" for Turkish maritime liners plying the Aegean, "and this is not something that we can live with." He did not give further detail. He also repeated a request that eight officers who fled to Greece after allegedly participating in the attempted coup against him last year should be extradited. "(Tsipras) said he was going to follow up the situation, and not later than a fortnight they shall be extradited to Turkey. That was what he said. But, unfortunately, right now, they are still in Greece," Erdogan said. The Greek Supreme Court has blocked the extradition of the officers, and Erdogan lamented that taking the legal route "takes longer". "Terrorists, when they are detained in Greece, they should be extradited to Turkey. If you leave it in the hands of the judiciary no outcome can ever be cultivated and you won't be able to cultivate any results," he said. "Delayed justice is no justice."
A masked Palestinian takes part in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (Reuters)

By Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded on Thursday that the U.S. government backtrack on a decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital to avoid fuelling terrorism, and a prominent Iraqi militia said the decision was a reason to attack U.S. troops.

President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperilling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike.

"We caution against the dangerous repercussions of this decision on the stability of the region and the world," an Iraqi government statement said.

"The U.S. administration has to backtrack on this decision to stop any dangerous escalation that would fuel extremism and create conditions favourable to terrorism," it said.

The Iran-backed Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba said Trump's decision could become a "legitimate reason" to attack U.S. forces in Iraq.

"Trump's stupid decision to make Jerusalem a capital for the Zionist will be the big spark for removing this entity from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces," said the group's leader Akram al-Kaabi.

The U.S. is leading an international coalition helping Iraq fight Islamic State and has provided key air and ground support. It has more than 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq.

Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is one of the most important militias in Iraq. Though made up of Iraqis, it is loyal to Iran and is helping Tehran create a supply route through Iraq to Damascus.

It fights under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a mostly Iranian-backed coalition of Shi'ite militias that played a role in combating Islamic State. The PMF is government sanctioned and formally reports to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli,; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein,; Editing by Larry King)
From forced labour in Libya to a job as a founding member of an Italian fashion start-up, Bassirou has come a long way in two years, thanks to his skills with scissors. The 26-year-old Burkina Faso native is the star student of a novel project aimed at training asylum seekers in one of Italy's most emblematic crafts: making leather handbags And after a 15-month apprenticeship, Bassirou has just become the first employee of a small company set up with the aim of turning the project into a self-sustaining venture. "It is a great opportunity," he says of his new career move. "I had done a bit of cutting and sewing back home but that was with cloth, not leather. "It wasn't easy at the start, every little thing seemed difficult, but after a certain point, you get the hang of it." Bassirou left Burkina Faso in west Africa, and a partner then pregnant with his now two-year-old daughter, in 2015. He says he fled because he feared for his life in the tumultuous aftermath of yet another military coup in the impoverished former French colony. Now he is awaiting the outcome of his application for asylum in Italy and is one of some 400 recently-arrived immigrants being looked after by Lai-Momo, a social cooperative that runs the EU-funded leather skills project in the small town of Lama Di Reno near Bologna. The decision to leave home was not an easy one, Bassirou says, and it is one he might have reconsidered had he known of the horrors that awaited him in Libya, the jumping off point for most Africans trying to get to Europe. - 'It's slavery' - Shocking recent images of slave auctions in the troubled north African state came as no surprise. "These are things that are really happening in Libya," Bassirou told AFPTV. "I had a bit of a taste of it. They put us in a prison. At any time they could come and get us to do forced labour, all sorts of jobs. They never gave us enough to eat. "All that, it's slavery," he said. Bassirou endured these conditions for four months before the traffickers controlling his fate finally put him onto an inflatable dinghy packed with over 100 others. After many fraught hours at sea, mostly spent praying it would not sink, the overcrowded dinghy was spotted by a British ship. "At the moment we were rescued there was a bit of a stampede to get off and the boat started taking on water. In the end they got everyone off." The date, March 20, 2016, is etched permanently in his memory. "These are things you don't forget easily," he says. Now he dreams of being able to open his own shop, but the future path of his life remains uncertain, as is the case for tens of thousands like him in overcrowded reception centres across Italy. Few of them will benefit from the kind of support that has helped Bassirou pursue his education to Italian high school level, or the distraction from the stress that comes with living in limbo. "Doing this (working), you are going to have positive rather than negative thoughts, you're thinking that when you're finished, you'll have a trade," he says. - 'Return issue not easy' - A total of 15 migrants have completed the first round of training and another 18 have just started, including Bassirou's compatriot, Issa. The 21-year-old recounts a similar tale about his time in Libya. "I have friends who are still there in slave camps,"Issa says. Having made it to Italy, he is now relieved to have escaped the frustrated boredom that is the lot of many asylum seekers. "Before I came here, I was in another house, just sleeping all the time, doing nothing," he says. "Now I feel much more relaxed. I have contact with (local) people and I'm beginning to learn the language." Not all the apprentices can realistically aspire to the proficiency Bassirou has attained. As some have limited literacy and numeracy, lessons in cutting have to be preceded by an introduction to basic concepts of measuring and geometry. "The objective is to provide people with the ability and skills they need to enter the labour market here in Italy, but also in the event of a possible return to their country of origin," said Lai-Momo's president, Andrea Marchesini Reggiani. The Lama Di Reno project is part of a wider programme overseen by the Ethical Fashion Initiative run by the United Nations and WTO-backed International Trade Centre with the aim of creating new economic opportunities in developing countries to help curb irregular migration. People like Bassirou say going home is not an option they can contemplate, for now. And Marchesini Reggiani admits that the emphasis on voluntary repatriations can be problematic, given the risks, sacrifices and struggles involved in many migrants' journeys to Europe. "For sure, it is not an easy thing to address the issue of return," he says. "For us the important thing is to give people skills. Whether they can use them here or whether they are refused the right to stay, they are being given an opportunity, let's say a plus. "It is clear though that, after the journeys they have made, the ideal solution is to stay here and that's why we believe giving people the skills to work and integrate is so important."
Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak walks towards his car after his arrival at the airport in New Delhi, March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Files (Reuters)

By Joseph Sipalan

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, as he rallied his party ahead of a tough election due next year.

Muslim majority Malaysia, a significant U.S. ally in Southeast Asia, warned of grave repercussions as it joined other countries condemning President Donald Trump's decision on Wednesday to reverse decades of U.S. policy and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"How can we accept that?" Najib said in his speech at an annual gathering of the ruling United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) party in Kuala Lumpur.

"I call on all Muslims across the world to let your voices be heard, make it clear that we strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital for all time."

The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) said it would hold a protest outside the U.S. Embassy on Friday to condemn the decision.

Dogged by a long-running multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund that he founded, Najib is expected to court Muslim sensibilities as he seeks a third term in next year's election, though the strategy could lose votes for his coalition partners from Malaysia's sizable Chinese and Indian minorities.

"At this father of all elections, we will fight to the end," Najib said, leading three cheers of 'God is Great' from the thousands of UMNO delegates in the conference hall.

Najib's greatest challenge is expected to come from an opposition alliance that has re-grouped under 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad - who led Malaysia for 22 years - and charismatic leader Anwar Ibrahim, rather than from the Islamists.

Observers still expect Najib to steer UMNO and the multi-racial Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to victory despite the controversy over state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Najib has denied any wrongdoing in a scandal that is being investigated in at least six countries including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.

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On Monday, U.S. attorney-general Jeff Sessions described the Malaysian graft case as the worst form of kleptocracy, and said the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) was working to provide justice to the victims.

Holding onto power, Najib has purged dissent among the 3.4 million members of UMNO, clamped down on media and civil society, and blocked a damaging internal probe on him related to graft at 1MDB.

(Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Taiwanese security experts had flagged the breach as early as June

Singapore bike-sharing platform oBike was the victim of a data breach that affected its users globally, according to a report by Bayerischer Rundfunk, or Bavarian Radio (BR).

Journalists from the German broadcaster were able to access names, phone numbers, profile pictures, email addresses, and location data of oBikes users online.

They also discovered oBike offered no form of protection for users data. When oBike users connected their social media accounts to the app to share invitation codes and completed rides, they openly exposed their personal data, which could be exploited.

Also Read: Mobike testing ride-hailing feature to challenge Didi, ofo tie-up

The data breach reportedly lasted for at least two weeks.

An oBike spokesperson told CNET that the security flaw was the result of a gap in its application programming interface (API) that enabled users to refer friends to sign up. They have since removed the compromising API.

oBike emphasised that only a small group of users were affected. Passwords and credit card details of users were also not compromised because the app does not store these information.

oBikes security vunlerabilities were flagged several times by security experts located in Taiwan, as early as June this year, but no action was taken then.



Image Credit: oBike

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Syria's U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja'afari arrives for a meeting during the Intra Syria talks at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland November 29, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's negotiating team is set to arrive in Geneva on Sunday to participate in peace talks, Syria's state news agency SANA reported on Thursday, quoting a foreign ministry source.

The delegation, led by Bashar al-Ja'afari, walked out last week and returned to Damascus. Negotiations resumed on Wednesday without the Syrian government delegation.

The talks began last week and after a few days with little apparent progress, the U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said that the government delegation was returning to Damascus to "consult and refresh".

The government delegation blamed its departure on the opposition's uncompromising stance on Assad's future. Last month, the opposition drew up a statement in a meeting in Riyadh that rejected any future role for Assad in Syria.

During last week's sessions, de Mistura shuttled between the representatives of the two warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15.

The opposition negotiating team arrived at the U.N. offices in Geneva on Wednesday morning to resume talks with de Mistura.

France accused the Syrian government on Wednesday of obstructing the peace talks with its refusal to return to Geneva and called on Russia not to shrink its responsibilities to get Damascus to the negotiating table.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Besides underplaying the issue of sex CDs, Hardik attacks BJP saying it has raked up Ayodhya temple dispute to make people feel insecure.

By India Today Web Desk: Patidar quota leader Hardik Patel, just days before the Gujarat Assembly election, has sought to underplay the sex CDs allegedly featuring him and which have been released recently. He has also lashed out at the BJP accusing it of raking of the Ayodhya in a bid to make the people feel insecure.

Speaking to India Today, the convener of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) said he did not have any issues with the sex CDs.

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"If I do not have any problem with the sex CDs, why should those watching it have any? Have fun," he said.

'BJP IS CASTEIST, COMMUNAL'

Hardik Patel, who has been spearheading a movement demanding quota benefits in government jobs and educational institutions to Patidars under the OBC category, is of the view that BJP's refrain about contesting Gujarat poll on the issue of development was just a facade.

Ironically Hardik Patel, who is accused of pandering to the caste sentiments, accused the BJP of dividing the society on caste and communal lines. He asked the ruling party not to broach casteist and religious issues in the run up to the Gujarat election.

"When we were small children, we were taught that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians were all brothers. But when we grew up, they differentiated between Hindus and Muslims," he said.

He also lashed out at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) over the Ayodhya dispute. "The people from Gujarat went to Ayodhya with bricks for the construction of Ram temple. Where have the bricks vanished? Have they been deposited the donation fund of the VHP?" he said.

Hardik Patel said the BJP was needlessly attacking senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal for advocating in the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya dispute case. "It is but natural in the court that if one is defending an issue, the other will oppose it," he said.

He regretted that the BJP had got back to raising the Ram temple issue instead of contesting the election on development issue. "The people of Gujarat are being made to feel insecure in the name of religion," he said.

He said Lord Ram was in the heart of the people. "Lord Ram teaches us humanism. He had eaten the berries pre-tasted by Shabri, a tribal lady," he said.

LOST PEOPLE'S SUPPORT

Hardik Patel claimed that the BJP had lost people's support. To buttress his point, he alleged that the BJP leaders were holding press conferences instead of holding public rallies.

"Earlier, the leaders of Gujarat would hold election rallies while the Congress leaders used to hold press conferences. Now, while the Congress leaders were out in the field, their BJP counterparts were holding press meets," he said.

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(With inputs from Supriya Bhardwaj)

--- ENDS ---
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a news conference during a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (Reuters)

By Francois Murphy and Shadia Nasralla

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States would "badly" like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties.

Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop.

"We've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine," Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. "It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalising the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do."

On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticised Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies' intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West.

The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that "all the responsibility is with Ukraine" as far as violence in the east was concerned.

In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia's involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence," Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine.

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"Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission."

While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was little sign of concrete progress at Thursday's meeting.

"We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence," Tillerson told the news conference.

"NEVER"

He and Lavrov met on the sidelines of the conference, though both ignored reporters' questions when the meeting began.

Asked later what commitments he had received at the meeting, Tillerson said: "I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get. We get progress, that's what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation, we don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting."

In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

"In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments," Tillerson said.

He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

"We will never accept Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine," he said.

(Additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle, Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Balmforth)
Buddhist monks walk past a banner of opposition leader and President of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) Kem Sokha at the party's headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Samrang Pring/Files

By Eric Walsh and Prak Chan Thul

WASHINGTON/PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it would restrict entry to people involved in the Cambodian government's actions to undermine democracy, including the dissolution of the main opposition party and imprisonment of its leader.

The visa sanctions were the toughest steps by any Western country since a crackdown on critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of an election next year in which the authoritarian leader seeks to extend more than three decades in power.

"We call on the Cambodian government to reverse course by reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities," the State Department said in a statement.

"The secretary of state will restrict entry into the United States of those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia. In certain circumstances, family members of those individuals will also be subject to visa restrictions," it added.

Cambodia's Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), last month at the government's request.

Kem Sokha was arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with U.S. help. He has rejected the accusation as a political ploy.

The dissolution of the CNRP has been condemned by some Western countries as the most serious blow to democracy since an international peace deal and U.N.-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of war and genocide.

Cambodia's government condemned the visa restrictions announced by Washington.

"This statement shows that the United States is destroying democracy," government spokesman Phay Siphan told Reuters, saying that the actions against the opposition had been legal and took place through the courts and parliament.

"The CNRP are not politicians, they are rebels and terrorists," he said.

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The United States said after the banning of the CNRP that the election "will not be legitimate, free or fair," and withdrew an offer to help fund it.

The European Union has raised the possibility of withdrawing trade preferences which are vital for the garment industry that accounted for well over 60 percent of Cambodia's exports last year.

Hun Sen has dismissed Western pressure and built closer ties to China, while opposing U.S. efforts to rally Southeast Asian countries to stand up to Beijing's expanding power in the region.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hun Sen accused Sam Rainsy, who stepped down as CNRP leader earlier this year in a bid to forestall a ban on the party, of committing treason by inciting soldiers to defy orders.

Hun Sen said Rainsy, who lives in exile in France, would face new legal action over the comments.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Michael Perry)
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is facing mounting pressure from the West for his failure to fight high-level corruption that helped drive pro-EU protests and topple a Russian-backed government in 2014. The fear in Brussels and Washington is that Kiev will follow the failed course of a similar revolution in 2004-2005 and dissolve into political infighting between vested interests tied to powerful ministries and tycoons. That era ended with the election in 2010 of a Kremlin-backed leadership that quickly realigned the former Soviet republic with Russia. Scrutiny of Poroshenko is also growing because of the security service's attempt on Tuesday to arrest former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili -- an anti-corruption campaigner who is leading protests against the president. The ruling party's desire to defang the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) by giving parliament the right to remove its leaders appeared to be the final straw for Kiev's chief Western backers. IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Wednesday said she was "deeply concerned by recent events in Ukraine that could roll back progress that has been made in setting up independent institutions to tackle high-level corruption". The US State Department and European Union issued similarly blunt statements this week. The World Bank and British Foreign Office have also rallied to NABU's defence. The new agency has won numerous enemies by targeting people who seemed untouchable to law enforcement in the past. These have included the powerful interior minister's son and three senior defence officials. Poroshenko's party bowed to Western pressure by withdrawing the NABU bill from a debate planned for Thursday and agreeing to rewrite the legislation. But analysts said they expected the attacks to continue. "We have won this battle but the war goes on," Vitaliy Shabunin of Kiev's non-profit Anti-Corruption Action Centre told AFP. - 'A disgrace' - The International Monetary Fund believes that corruption is a $1.8-billion (1.5-billion-euro) problem that accounts for two percent of Ukraine's gross domestic product. But its true extent may be far greater because the handful of billionaires who control most of Ukraine's prized assets prefer to conduct their business through shell companies. The extent of Western disenchantment with Poroshenko was encapsulated by Michael Carpenter -- a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense who is also a senior director of the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. "If (parliament) votes to dismiss the head of the Anticorruption Committee (Yegor Sobolyev) and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all US government assistance to #Ukraine, including security assistance," Carpenter tweeted. "This is a disgrace." Lawmakers agreed to remove Sobolyev hours after Carpenter posted his comments. Conflict-riven Ukraine has relied on various sources of Western support to climb out of a dire 2014-2015 recession that nearly emptied the central bank. Now those funds are drying up. The European Commission last week decided against sending a 600-million-euro tranche payment of a 1.8-billion-euro assistance programme because of Ukraine's foot-dragging on institutional changes. Poroshenko appeared to try Thursday to reassert his reformist credentials by vowing to introduce legislation supporting NABU's work with special anti-corruption courts. But many remain unconvinced. "The attacks against the anti-corruption agency will continue," Transparency International Ukraine chief Yaroslav Yurchyshyn told AFP. "The question is whether the remaining clean members of the ruling elite can withstand pressure from the corrupt ones."
The United States and Russia clashed over the crisis in Ukraine as OSCE foreign ministers met in Vienna on Thursday, casting doubt on efforts to negotiate terms for a UN peacekeeping force. The regional body has 57 members, but all eyes were on US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who were due to meet one-on-one later in the day. At stake are efforts to end the brutal war between Kiev government forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine by deploying a United Nations force to protect the OSCE's unarmed monitoring mission. Moscow and Washington both back such a mission in principle but disagree over its mandate, and as ministers sat down together in Vienna's magnificent Hofburg Palace there was little sign of a breakthrough. "We've reached an absolute low point regarding confidence between the main players," Thomas Greminger, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's secretary general, admitted as talks began. After long resisting the idea, Russia now wants a UN peacekeeping force to help end the war between Kiev and Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country that has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. But under Russia's vision, the force will have a limited mandate to protect the OSCE's ceasefire monitors. Western powers, led by the United States, want a force with a robust mandate that would allow it to protect the 600 OSCE monitors there, police ceasefire lines and investigate ceasefire breaches across eastern Ukraine. They fear that a United Nations mission that only polices the front line would serve to create a frozen conflict that would de facto lock in Russian gains from its intervention in Ukraine. - 'Vexing' situation - Addressing the opening OSCE session, Lavrov accused Western powers of seeking to "disrupt specific consideration" of a draft UN Security Council resolution to set up a UN force to escort the OSCE under its current mandate. The US idea of a robust force, he argued, would amount to "an occupational administration ... in order to bury a package of measures unanimously approved by the UN Security Council and to solve this problem by force". Tillerson did not directly address the peacekeeping issue -- which is not a matter for the OSCE to decide -- but was strident in his condemnation of the threat he said Russia poses to the existing unarmed mission. "Of all the challenges confronting the OSCE today, none is more challenging nor vexing than the situation in Ukraine," he warned, stressing the US will never lift sanctions until Russia returns control of Crimea and the disputed Donbass region back to Ukraine. Tillerson noted that more civilians were killed this year in eastern Ukraine than in 2016, and that ceasefire violations are up 60 percent. "We should be clear about the source of this violence. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces," he said. "We call on Russia and its proxies to end the harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE special monitoring mission," he demanded. And he paid tribute to an American paramedic who was killed in April when his OSCE patrol hit a landmine in a separatist-occupied area. - Diplomatic standstill - The OSCE was created during the Cold War to ease dialogue between East and West. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago it expanded and now has 57 members including the United States, Russia and Ukraine. The Vienna-based body monitors conflicts, elections, media freedom and human rights. Italy will take over the rotating presidency from Austria in January. The nosedive in relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine and other points of contention has brought OSCE decision-making to a near-standstill, diplomats say. "Everything is blocked," a Western diplomatic source told AFP on the eve of the two-day meeting in Vienna on Thursday and Friday.
Central Europeans oppose change while Americans find opportunity in it.

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Andrea Sadlonova is a Slovak-born scientist who returned home after 19 years in the USA.

People who have never had to relocate to a different country might be skeptical about my approach to life. Americans, for example, are familiar with the process of migrating, moving around, looking always for a new place or opportunity, integrating into a new society and culture. Many of them have grown up hearing stories about their families coming to America. They remember their great grandparents yearning for some lost home that they might never see. I certainly heard many beautiful stories about my great-aunts and great-uncles that left Slovakia a hundred years ago, starting new lives for themselves and generations to come.

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With living in new places comes a balancing act of loss and gain. One experiences a mixture of feelings that comes from discovering something very beautiful and blissful and then having an urge to share it with people that they love, people somewhere else in the world. So I would buy gifts for these people to remedy my yearning for them. I felt like they were sharing the present moment with me. Hence, I had so many suitcases filled with gifts traveling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. I know that I will always struggle with a yearning for lost places, lost people, lost moments of happiness and beauty, and lost opportunities, but I know I need to keep moving to get myself motivated again and find new visions and drives.

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Read also: Less money and missing links await expats upon return Read more

I know that I will never be able to have everything I love in one place and that's okay. What's important is that I can draw necessary positive energy from these past experiences. I can ask people from my past, if they are still alive, for advice, just like I used to draw support from people in Slovakia during my tenure in the USA. And I know that the only way to cure these moments of melancholy is to keep going, discovering and falling in love again with new places and people.

This is what I have always admired about Americans- their never-ending courage to rejuvenate themselves - to rebuild what has fallen apart, to stay true and regroup, to learn how to connect with others, even with total strangers with whom they do not take resources from but rather help out on the journey. They know their existence is dependent on creating the connection.

Us Europeans, not understanding this aspect of American culture very well, frown upon the small talk, the superficiality or fleeting connection. Europeans hold on to their roots with anxiety and aggression. It is understandable because Europeans, especially the Central Europeans, have always had less resources and less money to start fresh. We were always ruled over by somebody else and somebody always wanted to take our resources and keep it at our expense. Historically, Americans had more resources so starting over was always easier for them. Central Europeans see a loss in the change, while Americans see an opportunity. But I dont blame the Central Europeans for being opposed to change because of what it brings. For myself, I just hope I can keep this American point of view.
Easier immigration procedures and cooperation with schools are important issues.

The majority of BSCs are still clustered in Bratislava, but Kosice as well as other locations are growing in popularity. (Source: TASR)

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The recruitment of people from non-European Union countries and their easier access to the Slovak market as well as the closer cooperation of business service centres (BSCs) with secondary schools and universities were the main topics of the third conference organised by the Forum of Business Service Centres (BSCF) running under the auspices of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Slovak Republic (AmCham).

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The availability of a highly qualified and flexible labour force with above-standard language skills is the principal motivation for BSCs in Slovakia, said the BSCF head Gabriel Galgoci.

The current situation in the labour market and the increasing lack of a qualified labour force will probably force BSCs to employ foreigners to maintain continual development.

If Slovakia wants to keep its competitiveness in the global market, it must quickly search for solutions that will motivate highly qualified foreign experts to come to Slovakia, Galgoci continued. Quickly, simply and with the minimum of obstacles.

Equal opportunities for men and women

BSCs are one of the quickest-growing economic sectors in Slovakia. They are the second main pillar of the economy, following the automotive sector, said Rastislav Chovanec, state secretary of the Economy Ministry.

While in 2015 there were 36 such centres, now there are at least 62 in 16 cities. They employ nearly 31,000 qualified people, which is 8 percent more than last year.

The average age of BSC employees is 33 and they earn 1,730 a month on average. Almost three quarters of employees hold a university degree. The BSCs have a lean management structure with only 9 percent of their staff holding people management positions, according to the survey carried out by AmCham.

BSCs also employ predominantly Slovak citizens. Only 11 percent of their staff are foreigners with those from the EU in the majority (84 percent).

From the point of view of gender diversity, the proportion of women and men employed in the BSC sector is balanced, 48 percent of their employees being women. BSCs offer women opportunities to hold positions in management as well as STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). As many as 40 percent of the managers are female but only 11 percent of the female employees work in STEM roles, the survey suggests.

Slovak managers play a role

The majority of BSCs are still clustered in Bratislava. However, investors are gradually discovering the advantages of Kosice, as well as other locations.

Chovanec says that the new centres are usually established by companies that already operate industrial plants here.

The second pillar is created, Chovanec said, when a company establishes industrial production here. After some time, the parental companies create business service centres, in part thanks to Slovak managers.

Following the discussion with the BSCs representatives, the state has already changed several laws, Chovanec said. This includes the changes to regional investment aid that fail to reflect the current state. The new rules will become effective on April 1, 2018.

BSCs moving to new premises

The BSCs in Bratislava have started pushing for higher requirements in the working environment. Most recently, three centres have relocated to new spaces: Adient, Swiss Re and Johnson Controls.

Adient moved to the premises on Sturova Street on November 28, relocating its employees from five different buildings into one.

Jeff Stafeil, Adients executive vice president and chief financial officer, highlighted the importance of the Bratislava centre.

Slovakia and the business centre are absolutely instrumental for the success of Adient, Stafeil said at the premises opening, adding that around 90 percent of the volume of transactions go through the Bratislava centre. You are an engine that makes Adient work globally.

Johnson Controls opened its new premises in the Bratislava Business Centre on November 15. It is the companys biggest business centre in the world. The offices are among the most modern in Slovakia with a capacity of 1,700 employees, the TASR newswire reported.

Swiss Re opened the spaces on Mlynske Nivy Street, close to the temporary bus station.
Tram decorated as gingerbread house

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The Christmas tram resumed rides in Bratislava after a one-year break on the day of St Nicolaus, December 6. Citizens and visitors of the capital can use it for free until December 30, except December 24 and 25. This year it looks like a gingerbread house.

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Christmas is coming and in Bratislava this is a magic time when the city is preparing surprises for Bratislavans, said Bratislava Mayor Ivo Nesrovnal as cited by the TASR newswire, adding that the tram with special Christmas decoration is riding the city for the seventh time. One surprise is the Christmas tram.

The tram will ride between 16:00 and 20:00 for 30 minutes at a time during working days and between 10:00 and 20:00 during weekends.

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The route will start at the nicely decorated tram stop at the Slovak National Theatre (SND), via SNP Square, the tunnel, SNP Bridge and back to the SND.

In total, seven employees of the Dopravny Podnik Bratislava (DPB) city transport company worked 150 hours to transform it into a gingerbread house. Apart from other material they used 30 strings of small lights at a total length of 672 metres with 2,680 lights.
They were similar to the Finnish originals, observer pointed out.

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One month after Defence Minister Peter Gajdos, nominee of the Slovak National Party (SNS), announced the development of the new 8 x 8 armoured vehicles in cooperation with Finland, the army introduced its prototype, the Sme daily reported.

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It was shown during the 2017 Industrial Day at the Zahorie Military Technical and Testing Institute on December 6. The event was also attended by manufacturers from several countries who presented a total of eleven 4 x 4 multi-purpose armoured vehicles.

Its a definite prototype, a certain level of development to date, Gajdos said about the vehicle developed in cooperation with the Finnish Patria, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Of course, it hasnt passed military tests yet, and only later when all bugs are fixed we will know what the vehicle must be equipped with  what kind of weapon and defence systems.

video //www.sme.sk/vp/36337/

Only small differences

The minister reiterated that the Defence Ministry expects 70 percent of the vehicles components to be produced in Slovakia.

The prototype shown in Zahorie is very similar to the original transporters produced by Patria, and there are only very small differences. One of them is the Slovak battle tower on top of the vehicle, said defence analyst Jaroslav Nad.

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Its impossible to carry out real research and development in such a short time, so theres nothing to be surprised about, Nad told Sme.

Though the Defence Ministry admitted to the cooperation with Finland only in early November, it signed a memorandum of understanding in May, which means that the state-run company Konstrukta Defence could have been working on the prototype since then.

He also suggested that the real reason for the ministry to develop a new vehicle instead of purchasing the existing one might be an attempt to avoid proper procurement, as reported by Sme.

Though Nad considers the Patria vehicles good, the method the ministry uses is obviously non-transparent.

It is possible to purchase the original version of any foreign transporter and place the battle tower from Slovak producers on it, without carrying out ones own research. Similar contracts have been signed in the Czech Republic and Poland, Sme wrote.

video //www.sme.sk/vp/36339/

4 x 4 vehicles also on display

Manufacturers also presented 4 x 4 vehicles at the event. All of them were shown in dynamic demonstrations, during which they had to overcome a demanding track with several obstacles.

Visitors to the 2017 Industrial Day could also see the German Dingo 2, Turkish Cobra II, Swiss Eagle, French Sherpa and the Slovak armoured vehicle Aligator Master II and the Patriot, TASR reported.

video //www.sme.sk/vp/36336/

The Slovak government chose to acquire a maximum of eighty-one 8 x 8 armoured fighting vehicles as well as four hundred and four 4 x 4 vehicles to meet the needs of the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic on November 15. The Slovak army should gradually acquire the 8 x 8 vehicles between 2018 and 2024, for a total of 1.2 billion.
By PTI: By Kunal Dutt

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Emphasising on the growing cultural and people-to-people ties between New Zealand and India, its envoy Joanna Kempkers said here today Hindi is now the "fourth most-spoken" language in her country.

"We both share common values, such as commonwealth heritage and democracy. And, also, the common language i.e., English and now also Hindi," she said at an event here.

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"In fact, Hindi is now the fourth most-spoken language. Also, we have about 1,85,000 people belonging to the Indian community, who are living in New Zealand and they are contributing to the growth story of our country," Kempkers said.

She also emphasised that the inflow of Indian tourists to New Zealand and the number of students going there are "on the rise".

"In 2016, the number of Indian tourists who visited New Zealand stood at 58,000 while the corresponding figure from New Zealand to India was 66,000. Besides, the place is also attracting Bollywood," she told PTI on the sidelines of the the New Zealand-India Sustainability Challenge 2017 here.

A few months ago, Education New Zealand, a government agency for international education, had signed up Bollywood actor Kriti Sanon as its brand ambassador.

"We offer 35 scholarships to students (applying for our universities) and after Kriti tweeted about it, the number of application went up dramatically. So, we feel the connect," the envoy added.

John Laxon, Education New Zealands Regional Director - India, South East Asia and Middle East, also endorsed the rise in the influx of students applying to universities in New Zealand.

"Indian students are increasingly choosing to study in New Zealand. For the Januart-October period this year, there has been a 24 per cent increase in student visas, compared to the corresponding period last year," he told PTI.

In tourism sector, Kempkers said, people are choosing New Zealand as wedding destinations, shooting locales, and even corporate groups are sending employees for recreational tours there.

The population of New Zealand stands at about 4.5 million, Laxon said and the Indian community forms about 4 per cent of it.

"There are people hailing from different parts of India, who reside in the country, and so they speak, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and other languages," the envoy added. PTI KND KJ

--- ENDS ---
But only on a voluntary basis.

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Patients will be able to make specific time appointments with some doctors, as the parliament approved the introduction of voluntary overtime hours. The doctors will be able to claim a maximum fee of 30 for the appointments.

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The change, sponsored by Health Minister Tomas Drucker (a Smer nominee), will be implemented as of May 2018, the TASR newswire reported.

Appointments scheduled for these additional hours will not be covered by public health insurance.

I consider this change to be good and systemic...It paves the way for more stringent conditions regarding health payments, said Drucker, as quoted by TASR, adding that this will also dramatically increase access to health care during regular doctors opening hours. Health providers will now be forced to treat everyone equally, even patients who visit during regular hours.

Opposition critical

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The legislation received scathing criticism from the opposition. Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) chair Richard Sulik claimed that the government is clueless when it comes to health reform.

What this desperate cabinet is displaying here is pure chaos, Sulik said, as quoted by TASR. Our health team will present a comprehensive health reform soon.

The reform should include the debt removal for state-owned hospitals, he added.

The new measure is non-systemic and anti-social as people will be forced to pay for health care twice  once via health insurance and then in appointment fees, said Marek Krajci, MP for the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO).

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This measure serves as evidence of the ministrys incompetence in tackling real problems plaguing the health sector in Slovakia, Krajci claimed, as quoted by TASR, adding that the legislation legalises direct payments to health care, which does not sit well with OLaNO.

The opposition party would prefer to see the multi-source financing of the health sector or additional insurance options.

Moreover, additional working hours for doctors will work to the benefit of private establishments, which enjoy affluent clientele that can afford to pay appointment fees.

Yet our elderly will continue to wait the entire day at overcrowded waiting rooms in hospitals," said Krajci, as quoted by TASR.
Farm expected to be located near Levice.

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A new farm for breeding 4,500 sows may be built in the village of Sazdice, near Levice. The Danish company Pigagro plans to invest 10 million for this purpose and create 25 new jobs, according to the material the company submitted for the environmental impact assessment.

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The capacity of the new farm is expected to be 4,500 sows, 30 boars and 3,000 weaners, the TASR newswire reported.

The company wants to respond to the demands of the Slovak market for pork by increasing its own production of pigs. The new farm is expected to be situated about one kilometre from Sazdice, on the land currently used for agricultural purposes, TASR wrote.

The farm is expected to consist of five breeding halls that will include the birth hall and nursery (two halls), two gestational halls, and one insemination hall. Part of the operation will be three storage tanks and technical infrastructure.

The proposed solution corresponds with the current technical possibilities and meets the criteria for an up-to-date operation, the company said, as quoted by TASR.

Pigagro plans to launch the construction in December 2018, with production expected to be launched in November 2019.

The company already owns five farms in Slovakia, TASR reported.
The visualisation of the Stanica Nivy project (Source: Courtesy of HB Reavis )

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Slovakia continues to experience a solid economic growth which is even expected to further accelerate after the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) launches production in its brand new plant in Nitra in late 2018. This reflects especially in a boom in construction of industrial real estate while the retail real estate market remains attractive thanks to the decreasing unemployment and growing purchase power.

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The driving force of JLR

The development of Slovakias industrial and logistic real estate is stable, and reflects the dynamics of this sector.

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, consultant of the industrial agency at Cushman & Wakefield Slovakia, estimating the new industrial premises at about 50,000 sq m. But we should not forget the construction of a new logistics centre, which Amazon is building in Sered to be about 60,000 sq m large.

But the biggest event of the year of 2017 from the viewpoint of transactions in this sector undoubtedly was the sale of the fully leased 240,000 sq m Prologis Park Galanta-Gan in western Slovakia to the Chinese company CNIC in September for an undisclosed sum.

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The park is the largest logistics asset, both by area and investment volume, ever sold in the CEE region, said Miroslav Barnas, CEO of JLL CZ&SK, head of Capital Markets Slovakia. The overwhelming interest of investors once again confirmed that western Slovakia, the hub of European production and innovation, is an extremely attractive and liquid investment destination, even when it comes to large single asset deals.

Rakovsky expects that the construction of industrial real estate will continue next year in particular around Nitra. But the lack of qualified labour in this region will indirectly support other regions of Slovakia.

Especially localities in central Slovakia with sufficient infrastructure will get a chance, Rakovsky told The Slovak Spectator. An important fact is that people in this region are historically used to the work in manufacturing factories.

Majority of industrial and logistic spaces are still concentrated in Bratislava and the western part of the country but there are several projects planned for eastern Slovakia as well. Speculative development aims at the regions of Senec, Nove Mesto nad Vahom and Zilina, according to the Slovak arm of the real estate consultancy company Colliers International.

New forms in retail

The year 2017 brought a very progressive development in the construction of retail real estate.

The first hybrid centre, a combination of a retail park concept and a shopping gallery built on a transportation hub, opened in September in Banska Bystrica, said Katarina Paule, head of retail agency at Cushman & Wakefield Slovakia. Terminal Shopping Center combines a bus/train station with a shopping mall.
But the countries of Central Europe need to look for reasons at home, and double their efforts, analyst says.

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Slovakia has experienced two losses in high EU politics just a few days apart: first, Bratislava did not succeed in its bid to host a major EU agency after having to relocate to the continent due to Brexit, and subsequently the Slovak finance minister failed to get elected to the chair of an informal but important Eurogroup.

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While there were a number of substantial reasons behind both, the two events provoked reactions to the effect that Slovakia and its neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe, still colloquially labelled the new EU members, are discriminated against when it comes to high EU posts as well as hosting EU institutions.

Europe is not just about a balance between the north and south, but about equal chances between old and new member states, Kazimir said as he arrived to the Eurogroup meeting before the vote and suggested that the representation from new member states is very small.

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The Eurozone finance ministers gathered within the Eurogroup did not change that balance in favour of countries in the eastern part of the EU in the end, when they chose the Portuguese representative, Mario Centeno, for the post.

I think Central Europe is also often disregarded because of old stereotypes of a backward post-communist Europe, Jakub Wisniewski, director of the Bratislava-based Globsec Policy Institute think-tank told The Slovak Spectator. But let us be fair and honest: very often we are the culprits ourselves.
Slovak minister points out that the latest proposals by the Estonian presidency resemble Slovakias proposals from the Bratislava summit.

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Slovakia is standing in solidarity with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, countries which were taken to the European Court of Justice, Europes top tribunal, by the European Commission on Thursday, Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said during an EU Home Affairs Council session.

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Kalinak indicated that this did not come as a surprise as the EC had brought up this possibility several months ago. He expressed the opinion that this is a solution that could drive a bit of a wedge between the countries of the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia).

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He added that Slovakia has been more successful when dealing with this issue. It adopted needed measures and arrived with concrete proposals at the EU Bratislava summit in September 2016. As well as this, Slovakia won some points when it helped the Austrians with their refugees in 2015. At that time, the Slovak government made an agreement with Austria to temporarily house 500 refugees who were seeking asylum there. The refugees were given shelter at the former refugee camp in Gabcikovo.

Kalinak believes that Slovakia has shown that there are solutions that allow zero secondary movement of migrants and absolute security and help a country that is burdened with a high possibility of migration.

Also because of this Slovakia, unlike the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, was active and successful, said Kalinak as cited by the TASR newswire. It has shown that these measures are effective whereas compulsory quotas have been shown to be completely ineffective; this is also the reason why Slovakia is not in this group today [meaning the remaining countries of the V4 being taken to court].

He added that this situation does not please Slovakia and that that it stands squarely with the other three members of the V4 group.

Compulsory quotas

The minister warned that in this respect the latest proposals from the Estonian presidency of the Council of the European Union, according to which member countries buy out of the scheme of compulsory quotas by providing a higher number of policemen or needed equipment for problematic borders, resemble Slovakias proposals from the Bratislava summit.

This is the correct path, said Kalinak. Many countries do not want to acknowledge mistakes. They should show their political maturity and acknowledge that they were wrong in September 2015 and acknowledge that it is necessary to take a different path.

About the latest proposals by the EC dealing with the reform of the Dublin asylum system, indicating the possibility of compulsory quotas during crisis management situations and volunteer relocation quotas during calmer periods, Kalinak said that these are compulsory quotas painted pink.

Slovakia will not change its position

They will be still compulsory quotas, said Kalinak. This will be still be against the principles we follow. I do not understand how somebody, even after years of experience, can have a tendency to adopt measures that have shown to be ineffective and do not work.

Kalinak recalled that there are now many more member countries that are against the system of quotas than in September 2015, when Slovakia was the leader of this campaign. Gradually the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and Romanians have aligned with their position.

He added that Slovakia will not change its stance because experience has shown that the compulsory quotas are ineffective against illegal migration. Kalinak expressed the hope that the upcoming Bulgarian presidency would support other, more effective solutions.
By PTI: (Eds: Adding details of the contest results)

New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) India and New Zealand have warm and long-standing relationship and share common values and concerns, including in areas of counter-terrorism and cyber security, New Zealands envoy Joanna Kempkers today said.

Addressing a gathering at the New Zealand-India Sustainability Challenge 2017 here, the High Commissioner also noted that "Hindi is now the fourth most-spoken language in New Zealand."

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"We both share common values, such as democracy, and sustainability, and we also have same worries. So, that means (working on) counter-terrorism and cyber security," she said.

Kempkers said the Indian community in New Zealand was contributing to the growth story of his country.

Sustainability is of important to us. A large part of energy in the country is sourced through renewable resources, she said.

"Over 80 per cent of the electricity is sourced from renewable sources. Also, New Zealand is planning to go carbon-free by 2020. So, we are on the path," the envoy said.

Six finalists, whittled down from 90 shortlisted teams, presented their ideas today to a jury at the event.

"Each team consisted of two students from Indian institutions and one from a university in New Zealand, who worked under a mentor," said an official of the TERI, a partner of the competition.

The ideas pitched ranged from clean energy to waste management.

The three partnering universities from New Zealand are University of Canterbury, University of Otago and University of Waikato.

Team VaxiBead from Manipal in Karnataka were adjudged the winner. The project calls for equity of vaccine delivery through innovative technology.

Dhruv Suri and Saisri Akondi from the Manipal Institute of Technology and Nicholas Steyn of the University of Canterbury walked away with the winning trophy.

"They also won a sponsored internship in the three partnering New Zealand universities. Each of the three winners would spend a week each at the three institutions," said John Laxon, Education New Zealands Regional Director-India, South East Asia and Middle East. PTI KND RT KJ

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Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
By PTI: New York, Dec 7 (PTI) India is proud of its Caribbean diaspora for their resilience, achievements and contributions to their host countries, a top Indian diplomat here has said.

Speaking at a conference on "History, Present and Future of Indentured Indian Diaspora", Consul General of India at New York said that India is making efforts to connect its diaspora and address their concerns.

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"India is proud of the Indian Caribbean diaspora for their resilience, achievements and contributions to their host countries," Consul General Sandeep Chakravoorty said.

"Under the leadership of Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is making efforts to connect the diaspora to India and address their concerns," Chakravoorty said

at an event in New York on occasion of 100th anniversary of abolition of Indenturedship.

The conference was organised by the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies in association with the Hindu Yuva Chapter of the prestigious Columbia University.

Ravi Deo, ex-Member of Guyanese parliament and founder of political party Rise and Rebuild Guyana talked on the politics of entitlement in a ethnically divided society of Guyana.

"Until the politicians and other actors in the public arena openly and publicly confront the ethnic bases of Guyanese political culture and structures, and deal with their consequences affirmatively, Guyana will remain mired in a Sisyphean paradigm," he said.

"Amid aspirations toward modernity, Indians do not necessarily dismiss their preexisting values? education, gender relations, and family cohesion and connection?when they migrate", said Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine from Jakson State University.

Vishnu Bisram, New York based Indian Caribbean political analyst said, "India has had an institutionalised caring, compassionate relationship focused on culture, business, education, diplomacy and other non-political fields."

"India must develop the courage to address political issues like the racial persecution of Indians especially in Guyana similar to how the Chinese or Israeli government speak out against victimisation of their Diasporas," Bisram said. PTI LKJ AMS AKJ AMS

--- ENDS ---
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The title in English would be The Emperor Showa. And his Majesty's Mausoleum is named the Musashino no Misasagi, thus the long title: ...
The next time you are offered one or two tiny pieces of candy in lieu of small change from a supermarket or grocery store in Vietnam, insist on getting the banknotes, no matter how small the denomination.

Vietnams biggest banknote is the VND500,000 bill, equal to US$22, while those with smaller face values, such as VND200 and VND500, are often ignored or considered nearly worthless.

That attitude has led to retailers, ranging from supermarkets to sidewalk stalls, offering candy in place of small change.

Unbeknownst to many, however, is that the lowest value Vietnamese banknote in circulation is actually VND100, a fact that sparked serious debate when the forgotten bill grabbed headlines following a tollgate scandal in southern Vietnam.

Vietnamese dong with small face values and their issuing dates. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Surprise comeback

In a show of protest against what many believe is an unfairly positioned toll station in Tien Giang Province, many drivers chose to pay the VND25,000 toll fee with VND25,100 before insisting on receiving their VND100 change.

The Cai Lay toll station was forced to temporarily shut down after failing to meet the demand, due primarily to the fact that the VND100 banknote has been effectively absent from circulation for nearly a decade.

The situation led the State Bank of Vietnam, the countrys central bank, to issue a statement asserting that the VND100 bill is still valid as legal tender and immediately provided a huge stock of the banknotes to the operator of the contested tollgate.

The 100 dong bill is currently listed in the Vietnamese banknotes section of the central banks official website.

A driver (right) poses with a VND100 bill he receives from the Cai Lay tollgate. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Currency is national sovereignty

Protests at the toll station are one issue, but the refusal of many businesses to use banknotes with small face values is becoming a hot topic across the country.

Many businesses employ a candy as change policy that many local consumers oppose, yet still accept rather than waste energy on insisting they be given a VND200 or VND500 banknote.

However, with the return of the VND100 banknote, a call to end the policy is beginning to circulate amongst the public.

Those who welcome the low value notes say the issue runs deeper than just what one can buy with 100 Vietnamese dong, or 1/220 of a U.S. dollar.

In other countries businesses are expected to give every single cent of change back to customers. This shows respect for that nations currency, one reader wrote on news outlet VnExpress.

The 100 dong banknote is seen in this photo taken from the website of the State Bank of Vietnam.

Many countries also have laws against destroying national currency or refusing to pay in the national currency on home soil.

National currency is a designation of a countrys sovereignty, aside from its national flag and official name, Assoc. Prof. Vo Tri Hao, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

In Vietnam, the erstwhile Penal Code 1985 criminalized such activities, but the current law only slaps a civil fine on violators, according to Hao.

Money, of a small or large denomination, is national currency and no one is allowed by law to refuse payment in small change, Hao underlined.

The professor added that those drivers who protested the Cai Lay tollgate will not be fined, because it is those who refuse to use small change, such as supermarket cashiers or tollgate attendants, are the real law offenders.

There are no legal documents that ban the use of small change in payment, he added.
Read what is in the news today, December 7:

Society

-- Ho Chi Minh Citys tax department has proposed the mandatory use of point-of-sale (POS) machines in place of cash payment at restaurants and other high-end services to move toward a cashless society and allow for better tax administration.

-- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has agreed in principal to upgrading the rural district of Sa Pa in northern Vietnams Lao Cai Province into a district-level town and requested that efforts be made to conserve the tourist destinations green space and natural beauty.

-- Vietnams Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs and the Government Office on Wednesday launched a national hotline for childrens protection as 111, at which citizens are encouraged to reach for reports of child abuse, harassment and other forms of violence against children.

-- Police in north-central Thanh Hoa Province on Wednesday initiated legal proceedings against Pham Thi Xuan, 65, for the alleged murder of her weeks-old grandson over superstitious beliefs.

-- The Government Office of Vietnam on Wednesday announced that the base salary  based on which the pay of state employees is calculated  would be raised from VND1.3 million (US$57) to VND1.39 million ($61) starting July 1, 2018.

-- Five out of 20 smoking-related diseases cost the Vietnamese people VND25 trillion ($1.1 billion) in medical expenses a year on average, according to the latest reports announced at a health conference in Hanoi on Wednesday.

Business

-- Vietnams Ministry of Finance has dismissed Netherlands-based Uber B.V.s petition against an earlier decision by the Ho Chi Minh City tax department to collect VND66.68 billion ($2.95 million) in back taxes from the ride-hailing app operator.

-- Budget carrier Vietjet on Wednesday inaugurated a new flight route connecting south-central Vietnams Nha Trang City with the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Education

-- Vietnamese students will get a chance to experience basic programming for free through Microsofts Hour of Code campaign held across Asia later this month, which is aimed at improving local youths interest in information technology for better global integration.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
A grandmother in the north-central Vietnamese province of Thanh Hoa has admitted to faking the kidnap of her newborn grandchild after accidentally killing the infant.

The provincial Department of Police on Wednesday released an initial statement from Pham ThiXuan, the prime suspect in the murder of her 23-day-old granddaughter.

Investigators and the provincial Peoples Procuracy have agreed to pursue a murder charge against Xuan, according to Colonel Khuong Duy Oanh, deputy director of the Thanh Hoa police department.

Officers intend to continue their investigation until all details of the case have been clarified and accurate offenses can be determined, Col. Oanh added.

According to Xuans statement, the incident took place at the house of her son, Le Huu Thuan, in Bim Son Town on the evening of November 25.

Xuan was at the house watching TV with the baby when the child awoke.

Keeping her attention on the television, Xuan began walking around the room with the baby when she tripped on an uneven surface between the yard and the living room and fell.

Officers investigate the crime scene at the house of Le Huu Thuan. Photo: Thanh Hoa Department of Police

Pham Thi Thanh Huyen, Thuans wife, was at home cleaning their bedroom, while Thuan was picking up their eldest son from a martial art class at the time of the incident.

Assuming the baby did not survive the fall, Xuan covered her with a blanket, brought her outside, and put her in a bag.

After hiding the child, Xuan faked a kidnap scene, declaring that a strange man and woman had abducted the girl.

On the morning of November 27, officers discovered a babys body in a local landfill and were able to identify the infant as Thuan and Huyens missing daughter.

An autopsy revealed mechanical suffocation due to upper airway obstruction as the cause of death.

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Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City plan to open bidding on contracts for the management and maintenance of green trees across the metropolis.

Deputy Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Tran Vinh Tuyen recently approved auctioning contracts in order to select suitable contractors to care for trees in 12 out of 24 districts in the southern city.

The plan will take effect on January 2, 2018.

Areas included in the scope of work include District 2, District 7, District 9, District 12, Tan Phu District, Tan Binh District, Thu Duc District, Hoc Mon District, Cu Chi District, Binh Chanh District, Nha Be District, and Can Gio District.

Bidding for tree management in Tao Dan, Gia Dinh, and Le Van Tam, three of the citys major parks, will begin in the second quarter of 2018, following flower festivals and markets held in the parks in celebration of the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February.

City officials will evaluate the effectiveness of the maintenance plan after the first year in order to determine whether it should be conducted in the remaining districts, Tuyen said.

The municipal Department of Transport will be charged with the process, the official continued.

The management and maintenance of green trees in Ho Chi Minh City was previously overseen by Greenery Parks Company and a local public services firm.

However, an unofficial auction of the management tasks was carried out and several other organizations now oversee the process.

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Vietnam on Wednesday launched a new national hotline for child protection at 111, which citizens are encouraged to reach for reports of child abuse, harassment and other forms of violence against children.

The three digits were chosen for their memorable pattern compared to the old hotline number of 1800 1567.

Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam was among the government leaders to attend the hotlines launch ceremony in Hanoi, organized by the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) in cooperation with the Government Office.

Deputy Prime Minister Dam on Wednesday was also appointed chairman of the newly established National Committee for Children, Vietnams latest effort in promoting childrens rights.

MOLISA Minister Dao Ngoc Dung was appointed vice chair of the committee, which oversees the running of the child protection hotline.

Speaking at the ceremony, Minister Dung said the brief and memorable hotline would ensure that it is known to as many people as possible and becomes a go-to number for people who wish to make reports of child abuse, harassment and violence.

Reports of all kinds are welcomed, whether they are made by individuals, organizations or educational institutions, Dung underlined.

Three call centers in Hanoi, Da Nang and An Giang Province are in charge of handling calls from the northern, central and southern regions of Vietnam, respectively.

The hotline is toll-free and available 24/7, including holidays, to guarantee uninterrupted support of children in an emergency.

The old hotline of 1800 1567 will be kept temporarily active until the public becomes familiar with the new number and no more calls are made to the old one, according to a counseling official from MOLISA.

Since the establishment of the national child protection hotline in 2004, over 2.5 million calls have been received by operators, at an average rate of 240,000 calls per year, according to the official.

The new hotline is on stream amidst repeated reports of violence against children in Vietnam in recent weeks, including the brutal beatings of kids at a household-run daycare center in Ho Chi Minh City and the alleged torture of a seven-year-old with heated iron by her own father.

Just last month, a 65-year-old woman in northern Vietnam became the prime suspect in the death of her weeks-old grandson, whom she allegedly killed over superstition.

Earlier, a court in the southern beach city of Vung Tau sentenced a 77-year-old man to three years in prison for molesting two preteen girls aged six and 11.

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In the background of President Donald Trump's announcement of recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, here's a quick guide to India's bilateral relations with Israel and Palestine.

By India Today Web Desk: The US President Donald Trump has announced recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital overturning decades of US foreign policy.

Earlier today, in response to queries regarding India's position on recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel by the US, the official spokesperson said: "India's position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country."

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But, what is India's stand on Israel and Palestine?

Here's a 14 point guide for the curious minds:

India - Israel

1. 1948: India voted against the creation of Israel as a separate state.

2. May 1949: India voted against Israel in its admission to UN.

3. September 17, 1950: India announced recognition of Israel, two years after its creation.

4. 1992: Upon establishment of full diplomatic relations, embassies were opened in Tel Aviv.

5. October 2015: President Pranab Mukherjee visited Isreal.

6. November 2016: Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited India.

7. 4-6 July 2017: Prime Minister Modi made the first ever official visit to Israel. The relationship between the two nations was turned to 'strategic'. Modi, however, did not stop at Ramallah in Palestine, a traditional stop for most foreign heads of state or dignitaries visiting Israel.

India - Palestine

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in India in May 2017(Photo: Twitter/Gopal Baglay)

1. 1974: India became the first non-Arab state to recognize Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

2. 1988: India was one of the first countries to recognize the State of Palestine.

3. 1996: India opened its Representative Office to the State of Palestine in Gaza. 2003: It was shifted to Ramallah. Unlike in Israel, India does not have an embassy in Palestine.

4. October 2011: India voted in favour of Palestine for its acceptance as a full member of UNESCO.

5. November 29, 2012: India co-sponsored the resolution that made Palestine a 'non-member state' of United Nations General Assembly.

6. April 2015: India supported the Bandung Declaration on Palestine at Asian African Commemorative Conference

7. September 2015: India supported installation of Palestine flag at UN premises.

(Information and dates sourced from the website of Ministry of External Affairs, with inputs from Geeta Mohan)

ALSO WATCH | Modi: Israel's welcome makes it feel like a home away from home

--- ENDS ---
Danish drama series Ride Upon the Storm begins soon on SBS.

The series, starring Lars Mikkelsen (The Killing, Borgen) as a priest headed for the top job of Bishop of Copenhagen, but whose favouritism for one son forces another to a desperate choice.

This is a 10 part series which has just launched in Denmark.

From award-winning screenwriter Adam Price (Borgen) and starring Lars Mikkelsen (The Killing, Borgen), Ride Upon the Storm is the new, modern character  led Danish story about faith  both in the traditional, religious sense, and in the wider context of what it is that guides us through existence.

At its centre is priest Johannes (Mikkelsen) and his two sons August and Christian. In many ways, Johannes, as a father, is God to his sons. Hes the father who gives, who takes, who loves and who punishes.

His favouritism for August and his disappointment with Christian forces both in to desperate choices in order to either gain the love of their father or break free from him.

Leading into war and to encounters between different religions, Ride Upon the Storm explores good and evil and the spiritual journey of seeking a greater meaning in life.

Season One, Episode One:

In Denmark, 2017, the Krogh family have been priests for more than 250 years. Johannes, the current head of the family, is headed for the absolute top as the Bishop of Copenhagen.

Thursday, 14 December at 10.30pm on SBS.
Standard Chartered is probably best known in the UK for sponsoring Liverpool FC (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

The boss of one of the UKs largest banks says Brexit is already driving potential talent elsewhere.

Bill Winters, chief executive of Standard Chartered, says there was evidence that standout foreign students were choosing universities outside of the UK, or moving on shortly after graduating.

In an interview with the BBC, Winters said: We have already had some setbacks for the talent pool in London through the restriction on student visas. Thats already a problem.

MORE: What is euro clearing and why does it matter to the UK and Brexit?

Some of the best talent that we can have in the UK marketplace is coming from students that have chosen to study here and then stayed for some extended period afterwards Weve noticed thats been impacted already.

More through a sense from non-UK [people] that this might not be such a hospitable place any longer  its more psychological than contractual.

Standard Chartered is Britains fifth largest bank, employing more than 1,700 people here.

Standard Chartered employs more than 1,700 people in the UK (REUTERS/Eddie Keogh)

While it does not have any branches, it is a major player in international markets and is best recognised in the UK through its sponsorship of Premier League Liverpool FC.

MORE: No Brexit deal will deeply damage UK, Lords report warns

Along with various other international banks, it is making plans for life after Brexit in March 2019.

The bank is expanding its Frankfurt branch amid growing unease at the outcome for the financial services sector post-Brexit.

While Brexit secretary David Davis has promised special travel arrangements will be in place for people working in the finance industry, there is much confusion and concern about the future.





Many global banks based in London have indicated they are readying to move operations into the EU  potentially costing thousands of jobs in the UK.

MORE: Bankers promised special post-Brexit travel deal

Winters told the BBC: London will take hits in the context of Brexit I think big parts of the euro-denominated corporate banking business will be forced into Europe.

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Its possible that through the Brexit negotiations that there is some sort of extended passporting rule [ability of banks to sell services across Europe from a UK base] but none of us are expecting that quite frankly, or preparing for that.

We have to prepare for the worst lets hope for the best, but were prepared for the worst.

The future of the multi-billion euro clearing sector has been the subject of much speculation, with Frankfurt and Dublin vying to steal the business off London.
LONDON, Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) 7 (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group said on Thursday it has sold its London headquarters to a Chinese property investment company for an undisclosed price.

Under the terms of the sale to Hengli Investments Holding, Lloyds will lease back the 25 Gresham Street building, which it has occupied since its construction, for the next 20 years. The building sits in the heart of the City Of London (LSE: CIN.L - news) 's financial district.

($1 = 0.7472 pounds) (Reporting by Emma Rumney; Editing by Susan Fenton)
LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group said it has sold its London headquarters to a Chinese property investment company for an undisclosed price.

Under the terms of the sale to Hengli Investments Holding, Lloyds will lease back the 25 Gresham Street building, which it has occupied since its construction, for the next 20 years. The building sits in the heart of the City of London's financial district.

The sharp drop in the value of sterling following Britain's vote last year to leave the European Union has lured foreign investors into the British real estate market.

That coincided with plans outlined by Lloyds in 2016 to cut its non-branch property portfolio by 30 percent as part of a cost-cutting drive. It said at the time that the initiative would result in one-off savings of 100 million pounds and an additional 100 million pounds in run-rate savings by the end of 2018.

There will be no disruption to Lloyds' operations or staff in the building as a result of the sale, a spokeswoman said.

"The transaction enables the group to capitalise on the market conditions and realise value in its property portfolio for shareholders," she continued.

According to Savills, a real estate agency that advised Hengli Investments Holding on the deal, the purchase of the 119,742 sq foot (11,124 sq m) building is the firm's first purchase in the UK.

Chen Chang Wei, chairman of Hengli Investments Holding, said the firm was pleased to have reached a deal on the property in less than a month, and that it would continue to consider other investment opportunities locally.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
(Adds quotes)

LUSAKA, Dec 6 (Reuters) - The Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) has suspended all train services, including the transportation of copper following a strike by workers in Africa's second-largest producer of the metal, the company said on Wednesday.

The line is an important route for copper exports from Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa's top producer, but the firm transporting the metal struggles to pay its workers, prompting strikes.

TAZARA spokesman Conrad Simuchile said train services between Zambia and Tanzania were suspended indefinitely after unionized employees in Zambia went on strike, demanding payment of their unpaid salaries for October and November 2017.

"In the last few months, we have been transporting at least 7,000 tonnes of copper exports from DRC and Zambia per month," Simuchile told Reuters.

"In addition, we have also been conveying at least 3,000 tonnes of steel and 10,000 tonnes of fertiliser imports destined for Zambia every month."

In the 20152016 financial year from July to June, TAZARA's annual total freight traffic reached 130,000 tonnes from 87,000 tonnes in 20142015.

The TAZARA railway is jointly owned by the governments of the Tanzania and Zambia on a 50-50 basis. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by James Macharia and Louise Heavens)

See Also:
By Michele Kambas and Renee Maltezou

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece and Turkey squared up over old disputes on Thursday during a state visit to Athens by President Tayyip Erdogan that quickly descended into verbal sparring over a list of historical grievances.

Designed to boost relations between the two nations, the first visit of a Turkish president in 65 years quickly turned into a blunt grudge-fest between the NATO allies.

The two countries agreed to revive a consultation process for confidence-building measures, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said. By the end of the first day, both sides appeared to pull back from what threatened to be a massive diplomatic flop.

"There is a lot more which unites us, from that which divides us, as long as there is will," Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos told a state banquet in Erdogan's honour.

"We can live side by side," Erdogan said in a translation provided by Greek state TV. "Our aim is to build the future differently, with unity, coexistence and solidarity," he said.

Earlier, he and Erdogan turned what was expected to be a staid welcoming ceremony into an unprecedented bout of diplomatic sparring over a host of differences.

The topics vented ranged from discrimination against Muslims in northern Greece to Turkey's military presence in ethnically-split Cyprus, and loose interpretations of an international treaty defining the borders of the two countries.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne covered a range of issues and defined the borders of modern-day Turkey, and by extension, Greece.

Erdogan told Greek media outlets before he even landed that the treaty needed a revision, putting Greeks in a defensive mode.

At the noon meeting, Pavlopoulos ruled out any change to the treaty while a stern-looking Erdogan, seated beside him, said there were details in the treaty which required clarity.

Though Erdogan focused on religious rights of the Turkish Muslim community in northern Greece, he said there were also problems on 'military topics'.

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"The truth, is I'm a little confused regarding if what he is putting on the table is to modernize, to update, to comply with the Lausanne Treaty," Tsipras said at a news conference as Erdogan stood at his side.

SHOW-STOPPER

The long exchange between Erdogan and the Greek president was the show-stopper, however.

"This is the bedrock of our friendship," said Pavlopoulos, referring to the treaty and pointedly telling his VIP guest he was a Professor of Law. "It has no flaws, it does not need to be reviewed or updated," he said.

Erdogan responded by saying it was a treaty signed 94 years ago and did not apply only to Greece or Turkey but also included countries such as Japan. It was also supposed to protect the Turkish minority in northern Greece, whom Erdogan said were still discriminated against.

"You can't find such treatment of my Greek citizens in Turkey," Erdogan said in a 30-minute, back-and-forth exchange where notes were slipped to both him and Pavlopoulos by ministers.

"Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Athens since 1952. He is now doing his best to make sure that the next visit will not take place in the next 150 years," said Wolfango Piccoli, Co-President of Teneo Intelligence.

'YOU ARE IN NATO BECAUSE OF US'

In Northern Greece, Erdogan said, Greece insisted on calling the Turkish community there Muslim rather than using the term "Turkish". There are more than 100,000 of them in the area known as Western Thrace.

"They can't accept the word 'Turk' being written outside a school," said Erdogan, who is due to visit the region on Friday.

Tsipras told Erdogan he too had sensitivities on religious freedoms. The Greek government, he said, had moved ahead with the reconstruction of a series of mosques around the country.

"Yet not once did it cross our mind to hold an Orthodox religious ceremony in Fethiye mosque (in Athens) as wrongly, in my view, is taking place repeatedly in Hagia Sophia," he said of the imposing structure in Istanbul that was once a church, converted into a mosque and now a museum. There have been readings of the Koran in Hagia Sophia in recent years.

The NATO partners teetered on the brink of war in 1974, 1987 and 1996 over long-running disputes on ethnically divided Cyprus, mineral rights in the Aegean Sea and sovereignty over uninhabited islets in that sea.

"We allowed your re-entry to NATO," Erdogan told Pavlopoulos, referring to the departure of Greece from the bloc in 1974 after Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in response to a brief Greek-inspired coup.

It rejoined in 1980. "If it wasn't for us, you wouldn't have been able to (rejoin)," Erdogan said.

While relations have improved, many Greeks believe Turkey has territorial aspirations against their country, an issue Erdogan said on at least two occasions was not the case.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Ali Kucukgocmen and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Boris Johnson will raise the case of a British mother jailed in Iran when he travels to the country this weekend - his first trip there as Foreign Secretary.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian national from north London, was sentenced to five years in prison in the country in 2016, over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government - charges she denies.

:: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: A timeline

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested during a family holiday, a trip in which the 38-year-old was taking her baby daughter Gabriella to meet her parents.

She is due to face fresh charges of "spreading propaganda" during a court appearance on Sunday.

:: Richard Ratcliffe: My fight to free Nazanin from jail in Iran

Mr Johnson has been under intense pressure to act to secure Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release.

The Foreign Secretary was widely criticised after incorrectly telling a parliamentary committee that she had been training journalists in Iran, later acknowledging that this was not the case.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard, had urged Mr Johnson to take him to Iran, but Sky News understands Mr Ratcliffe will not be going.

Mr Johnson's trip to Iran will be the first visit by a British foreign secretary since 2015 and only the third since 2003.

Sky's Diplomatic Editor Dominic Waghorn said the visit has been planned for "some time" as part of a bid by London and Tehran to improve relations.

Mr Johnson will meet with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, during the trip.

As well as the case of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iran's nuclear deal with the West is also expected to be on the agenda, an agreement that US President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said the trip comes at a "crucial time" and "provides an opportunity to discuss a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen, the future of the Iran nuclear deal and the current volatility in the Middle East".

Story continues

They added: "This is the first visit of the Foreign Secretary to Iran and we expect talks to cover a wide range of issues from the bilateral relationship to regional security.

"The government remains very concerned about all our dual nationals detained in Iran and has been doing everything it can to make progress on their cases, while approaching them in a way that we judge is in their best interests.

"The Foreign Secretary will urge the Iranians to release dual nationals where there are humanitarian grounds to do so."
By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) voted on Thursday to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives on forming a government after their leader made an impassioned plea for a free hand to work for a social "United States of Europe".

The vote clears the way for talks that could resolve the impasse into which Europe's economic powerhouse was plunged after Merkel and the SPD shed support in a September election, greatly complicating the parliamentary arithmetic.

Martin Schulz urged reluctant centre-left SPD members to be open to Merkel's overtures to renew the coalition that has governed for the past four years, saying the party had a responsibility to revive social democracy in Germany.

A new "grand coalition" with the reluctant SPD is Merkel's best hope of extending her 12 years in power after talks with two smaller parties failed, giving the smaller SPD greater leverage in any negotiations.

"The question isn't grand coalition or no grand coalition," he said in a speech to his party's biennial congress, "Nor minority government or fresh elections. No - it's about how we exercise our responsibility, including to the next generation."

Schulz said the party would only recover if it could offer a clear vision of a Germany and a Europe that worked for their citizens, calling for deeper European integration and a "United States of Europe" by 2025.

"Europe does not always work for its people, rather too often for the big companies," he said, outlining a populist vision that goes well beyond Merkel's own openness to limited structural reforms and bureaucratic streamlining.

Talks between the two parties are expected to begin in earnest in the new year. A special congress will have to be convened at which party members will vote on whether to support a final agreement, which could fall short of a formal coalition, and could include tolerating a minority government.

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Stephan Weil, the influential premier of the state of Lower Saxony, said the SPD would want to see its policies reflected in return for supporting any government.

"I think the majority of the delegates see themselves as a European party and they expect that Germany becomes a driving force in Europe again," he said of Schulz's proposals regarding the European Union.

Schulz's proposals were received more cautiously by Merkel.

"The (EU's) ability to act should be at the forefront now," she said at a Berlin press conference. "So I will concentrate on more cooperation in defence by 2025 and on other issues," including employment and innovation.

Outside the congress hall, SPD youth activists, many of whom want the party to chart a distinctive course after spending eight of the past 12 years in centrist coalitions, handed out red cards reading "No Grand Coalition".

"Merkel leads this country without direction," said one speaker addressing the conference. "She has no plan for Europe, she leads the country from week to week. We need a strong social democracy in this country."

Schulz, who initially said his party should go into opposition after being punished for participating in the previous grand coalition under Merkel, apologised for his party's disastrous electoral result.

UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

Schulz attacked European moves to support big banks while doing little to counter high youth unemployment.

"When states can't balance their budgets they face draconian sanctions from Brussels. If we can mobilise billions for bank rescues but have to fight for paltry sums to support jobs for young people, then this is definitely not my Europe."

He struck a tone that was more critical of big companies than French President Emmanuel Macron, who is pushing for deeper euro zone integration and pro-business reforms under a euro zone finance minister.

He took aim at U.S. technology firms Apple, Facebook and Google, saying a strong Europe was needed to make them stick to the rules and protect the rights of workers in a changing economy.

"We don't want an app-directed service society but we want digitalisation to lead to more individual freedom," he said to applause, calling for steps to protect the digital economy's self-employed from becoming "self-exploiters".

On the issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel's first attempt at a coalition, the SPD opposes a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some accepted asylum seekers.

"There can be no upper limit to the right to protection from war and persecution," Schulz told delegates, rejecting conservative demands for a ceiling of 200,000 immigrants a year.

(Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Toby Chopra)
By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) - A blockade of Yemen's key ports appeared to have been broken on Wednesday as ships arrived with food and fuel for the desperate population, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an humanitarian aid agency, told Reuters.

A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen has blockaded Yemeni ports since Nov. 6, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards its capital Riyadh.

Although it later eased the restrictions by allowing U.N. flights and aid ships, that has not changed Yemen's dire situation much. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria.

"Today for the first time (there was) a little glimmer of hope... the first commercial goods have arrived in port, and the first ships that were let through this iron grip," NRC chief Jan Egeland said.

Egeland said the first food and fuel had arrived in the key ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, but it remained a trickle compared to what was needed, since Yemen's population of 27 million is almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine.

"We need a lot of ships every single day and now we've had months with no ships, so I still fear the famine, I still fear starvation, I still fear epidemic disease in new areas."

Citing information from the U.N.-led logistics cluster of aid agencies, Egeland said three vessels had berthed at Hodeidah with 87,000 tonnes of food, and one with 38,000 of food had arrived at the anchorage area of Saleef port.

There were seven other vessels with more than 177,000 tonnes of food waiting to enter Hodeidah anchorage area, as well as three vessels with 52,000 tonnes of fuel.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
The Enforcement Directorate got permission from the special CBI court to question and record statement of Peter Mukerjea in connection with the INX Media case being investigated by the agency.

By Divyesh Singh: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday got permission from the special CBI court to question and record statement of Peter Mukerjea in connection with the INX Media case being investigated by the agency.

Peter and his wife along with Indrani's ex husband Sanjeev Khanna are accused of murdering Indrani's daughter from her first husband, Sheena Bora in 2012.

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The trio are in judicial custody while hearing of the case is going on.

ED is investigating an Rs 304 crore money laundering scam which involves INX media, a company created by Peter and Indrani in 2006.

Peter and Indrani along with Peter's son from his first wife Rabin had set up INX media private limited in 2006 in Mumbai.

They had then sought permission of the Foreign Investment Approval Board for investment through FDI route from three non-resident investors.

ED in their application to the CBI court stated that INX News deliberately concealed the fact that they had already received investment to the extent of 26% including FDI, and in pursuance to criminal conspiracy again approached FIPB and sought permission for the downstream investment.

ED investigation has revealed that FIPB, in its letter on 31st may 2007, permitted INX media to receive foreign investment for Rs 46.2 million approx as total investment inflow including premium.

INX media however received foreign investment totalling Rs 3053.6 million during the period 22 August 2007 to 12 may 2008.

Thus excess foreign exchange award equivalent to Rs 3007.4 million beyond the disclosed and permitted foreign investment was received by INX media from 3 Mauritius based foreign investors.

Officers from the agency quizzed Indrani in connection with the case on November 24 for nine hours, sources from the agency claimed that Indrani provided them with some vital clues regarding the case.

Indrani will be quizzed again by a team of ED officers from the Delhi zonal unit.

Meanwhile, based on the clues that the officers had gathered from Indrani, the agency moved CBI court to question Peter.

The CBI court granted the permission and Peter will be questioned on Friday and Saturday within the Arthur road jail premises where he is presently lodged.

--- ENDS ---
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian health authorities will launch an immunisation drive next week to contain a sharp rise in cases of diphtheria, which has killed at least 32 people, including many children, in the world's fourth most populous country this year.

The health ministry said at least 591 cases had been reported since January, a 42 percent increase from last year, and called the outbreak an "extraordinary event".

"We have seen an acceleration in cases compared to last year ... We are implementing an immunisation programme to prevent a pandemic," said Dr Mohamad Subuh, director general of disease prevention and control, at the ministry.

The ministry recorded 415 cases and 24 deaths last year.

Indonesia has among the world's highest rates of diphtheria - along with India and sub-Saharan African countries - even though vaccinations have helped minimise global cases over the past 30 years.

The World Health Organisation recorded about 7,000 cases around the world last year. In 1980, the figure was 100,000.

Diphtheria is a bacterial infection that spreads through close physical contact or through the air and can be fatal. Symptoms include fever and a sore throat, and the airway can sometimes become blocked.

None of those affected in Indonesia had been vaccinated against the disease. The rise in cases was attributed to several reasons, including some people rejecting vaccinations and a lack of access to healthcare, Subuh said.

The Pediatric Society of Indonesia urged the public to participate in vaccination programmes.

"Immunisation is the best protection," it said.

Immunisations will be carried out in the capital, Jakarta, and two neighbouring provinces, which have reported the highest concentration of new cases.

The campaign would be stepped up in other regions from January.

(Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Momentum are being investigated over their election campaign finances (Rex)

The Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into whether the Jeremy Corbyn-backing Momentum movement breached spending rules at this years general election.

The democracy watchdog said its probe would look into whether the groups spending breached the limits for non-party campaigners in national elections.

It will also consider whether returns submitted by the group, founded in 2015 as a grassroots movement to support Mr Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party, accurately recorded donations and payments relating to the 2017 campaign.

Momentum was founded in 2015 as a grassroots movement to support Jeremy Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party (Rex)

The Commissions director of political finance and regulation and legal counsel, Bob Posner, said: Momentum are a high-profile active campaigning body. Questions over their compliance with the campaign finance rules at Junes general election risks causing harm to voters confidence in elections.

There is significant public interest in us investigating Momentum to establish the facts in this matter and whether there have been any offences.

Once complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its enforcement policy.

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Electoral law imposes strict spending limits on non-party campaigners seeking to influence people to vote for one particular political party or any of its candidates.

Spending is limited to 31,980 in England, 3,540 in Scotland, 2,400 in Wales and 1,080 in Northern Ireland for the regulated period, which in this years case stretched for 12 months before the June 8 ballot.

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Electoral Commission records show that Momentum reported total spending of 38,742.54 across all four parts of the United Kingdom during the general election campaign, 257.46 below the 39,000 limit.

Records show Momentum reported spending of 38,743 in the General Election (Momentum)

Momentum has become increasingly influential within the Labour Party and are campaigning to make Mr Corbyn the Prime Minister (PA)

Founded by Jon Lansman as a means of bolstering Mr Corbyns leadership at a time when he was seen as being under threat from centrist MPs and activists, Momentum has become increasingly influential within the Labour Party.

It boasts a network of more than 23,000 members, 150 local groups and 200,000 supporters, many of whom took part in campaigning around the 2017 election.

The Commission stated that its investigation will look at whether or not Momentum:

Spent in excess of the spending limits;

Submitted a return that did not include accurate donation information;

Submitted a return that was not a complete statement of payments made in respect of controlled expenditure; or

Submitted a return that did not include all invoices for payments of more than 200.

The watchdog added: It is possible that during the course of the investigation, the Commission will identify potential contraventions and/or offences under PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000) other than those set out above.

Momentum said their election campaign was delivered on a low budget because it tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of volunteers (Rex)

A Momentum spokesman said: Much of the Electoral Commission investigation refers to a series of administrative errors that can be easily rectified.

Momentum put a lot of effort and resources into detailed budgeting and financial procedures during the election to ensure full compliance.

Our election campaign was delivered on a low budget because it tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of volunteers across the country.

We have a good working relationship with the Electoral Commission, and will fully comply with the investigation going forward.
RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires to express its deep concern over the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, state news agency MAP said on Wednesday.

Morocco's foreign minister "reiterated the constant support and full solidarity of the Kingdom of Morocco towards the Palestinian people so that they can recover their legitimate rights," a statement carried by MAP said.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing and Zakia Abdennebi; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that U.S. military exercises and aggressive rhetoric were causing an unacceptable escalation in tension on the Korean peninsula, the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Lavrov met Tillerson on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna where they discussed the standoff over North Korea's weapons programme.

"Lavrov once again underlined that the escalation of tension, which is resulting from U.S. military manoeuvres in the region of the Korean peninsula, and from aggressive rhetoric, is unacceptable," the ministry said in a statement describing the meeting with Tillerson.

The Russian foreign minister, in his conversation with Tillerson, "called for a renewal of responsible work to resolve the nuclear problem on the Korea peninsula exclusively by diplomatic means," the statement said.

(Reporting by Christian Lowe; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Small groups of youths have clashed with Greek police before a demonstration to mark the ninth anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens that sparked the worst rioting Greece had seen in decades.

Groups of youths threw flares at riot police, who responded with limited use of tear gas in central Athens. The tension came ahead of a student demonstration through the center of the capital scheduled for mid-day. Another protest by mainly anarchist groups is planned for the evening.

About 2,000 police were deployed in Athens for the commemorations of the 2008 death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, shot by police while out with friends in a central neighborhood of Athens, a district popular with anarchists.

See Also:
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson opens a bottle of water at the beginning of a meeting of OSCE Foreign Ministers in Vienna, Austria, December 7, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger (Reuters)

By Francois Murphy and Shadia Nasralla

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States would "badly" like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties.

Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop.

"We've made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine," Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. "It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalising the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do."

On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticised Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies' intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West.

The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that "all the responsibility is with Ukraine" as far as violence in the east was concerned.

In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia's involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels.

"We should be clear about the source of this violence," Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine.

Story continues

"Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission."

While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was little sign of concrete progress at Thursday's meeting.

"We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence," Tillerson told the news conference.

"NEVER"

He and Lavrov met on the sidelines of the conference, though both ignored reporters' questions when the meeting began.

Asked later what commitments he had received at the meeting, Tillerson said: "I'm not going to tell you specifically what we get. We get progress, that's what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation, we don't have it solved. You don't solve it in one meeting."

In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

"In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments," Tillerson said.

He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

"We will never accept Russia's occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine," he said.

(Additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle, Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Richard Balmforth)
In the last two years, Pakistan's security agency Inter-Services Intelligence has tried to fan separatism and terrorism by making major changes in its strategy.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Pakistan's security agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI ) is hell bent to revive terrorism in Punjab. In the last two years, the agency has tried to fan separatism and terrorism by making major changes in its strategy.

ISI had first tried to make holes in the communal harmony in 2016 by masterminding desecration of religious books and targetted Sikh and Hindu temples to radicalise the youth. ISI and Khalistani terror groups wanted to create a divide between the Hindus and Sikhs by targeting killings of Hindu and RSS leaders. Five such leaders have been killed so far.

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On October 30, Hindu Sangharsh Sena leader Vipin Sharma was shot dead by two gangsters in Amritsar in a broad day light. He was the fifth Hindu leader killed during the past two years. On 17th October 2017, RSS leader Ravindra Gosai was killed by two motorcycle-borne gangsters in Ludhiana.

Earlier in January this year, Shri Hindu Takht District Ludhiana chief Amit Sharma was killed. On August 6, 2016, RSS leader Jagdish Gagneja was attacked with bullets in Jalandhar who died later. Durga Prasad, another Shiv Sena leader was also killed on April 23 2016 in Khanna town of Punjab.

Not only the Hindus, but the Khalistani terror groups have also killed two other religious leaders who belonged to Christian and Namdhari communities. While Pastor Sultan Masih was killed on July 15, 2017 in Ludhiana, Namdhari Sikh leader Mata Chand Kaur was killed under mysterious circumstances in April 2016.

CBI investigation has revealed that the modus operandi to kill the Hindu, RSS and Christian pastor Sultan Masih was similar. The assailants came on motorcycles, had covered their faces and had used similar type of weapons to kill the victims.

Though, ISI has been making concerted efforts to revive terrorism in Punjab since the last decade, but till 2014 it did not get any success. In July 2015 and January 2016 respectively it was successful in masterminding two major terror strikes in Dina Nagar and Pathankot. Though, these incidents were foiled, but had in fact left the Indian security agencies worried as Punjab shares 553-km international border with Pakistan.

The security was beefed up on the international border after the Dina Nagar and Pathankot attacks, but ISI found a different way to fan fanaticism, separatism and terrorism in Punjab by uniting Khalistani, Kashmiri and Jaish militants.

Sources say joint training camps were organised for Khalistani, Jaish and Kashmiri militants along the international border to fan terrorism in Punjab. And on the directions of the ISI, Khalistani terrorists established connections with Punjab gangsters and smugglers who know the state and its escape routes better than anybody.

Hundreds of Hindus were gunned down by Khalistani militants when terrorism was at its peak in Punjab during the 80s. The terror wounds are still open as displaced and affected families are still fighting for justice.

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Khalistani terrorists and their financiers based in foreign countries including UK, Australia, Canada, America and Germany besides Pakistan are targeting Hindu and RSS leaders to pave the way for Khalistan for which a social media campaign, referendum 2020, has already been launched.

--- ENDS ---
Hotel Chocolat , which listed on AIM in May, posted a 12% increase in full-year revenue, which was slightly ahead of market expectations.

In a trading update for the 52 weeks ended 26 June, the company reported revenue of 92.6m, with revenue in the digital retail channel up 20%.

Hotel Chocolat said that since its admission to AIM, the new store opening programme has continued to progress well, with one new store opened in Sheffield on 9 May, and a further four new stores expected to open later this year.

In addition, it said that since the initial public offering, the group's new Father's Day campaign 'Better than Socks' performed particularly well.

Hotel Chocolat said its capital projects, namely the increase in manufacturing capacity at the its facility near Cambridge, are on schedule and within budget and the board maintains its focus on operating margins and tight cost control across all aspects of the business.

Trading since full-year 2016 continues to be in line with managements expectations and the groups maiden preliminary results for the year are expected in mid-October.

Co-founder and chief executive Angus Thirlwell said: "Hotel Chocolat has had a good start as a listed company, with pleasing growth slightly above expectations. We remain confident in our strategy. Our plans to invest further in our British chocolate manufacturing operations, in new stores, and in our digital offering are all progressing well."

At 0940 BST, shares were up 2.6% to 180p.
A pair of Debenhams directors have dipped into the market as shares in the department store group sank to a seven-year low, while the chief executive of NewRiver Retail has also looked to top up his holdings as the retail property investment group subsided to a 20-month low.

Senior independent director Terry Duddy, the former Dixons and Home Retail chief who was added to Debenhams' board earlier this year, spent 53,350 buying 100,000 shares at the price of 53.35p.

Stephen Ingham, a recruitment guru and an independent non-executive on the board since 2013, splashed out around 40,000 on 74,557 at a rock-bottom 53.25p.

Debenhams, whose shares last wallowed for any time below this level during the financial crisis, last month reported a 0.2% fall in like-for-like sales and decrease in expected margins but was encouraged by progress made with its strategy to diversify its product range and manage its stock better ahead of new chief executive, Amazon Europe's Sergio Bucher, taking the reins in October.

Goldman Sachs recently trimmed it short and medium-term forecasts and target price on the shares, but at 70p this offers the directorial pair plenty of upside on their purchases.

At NewRiver, CEO David Lockhart, has made three purchases of shares in the company since the Brexit result.

On Thursday he spend 76,771 on 28,000 shares, mostly at a price of 273p, following Wednesday's purchase of 25,000 at 287.5p. On the day of the referendum NewRiver's shares were changing hands for 325p, and in December were topping 355p.

May's final result showed a EPRA NAV of 295p per share.

At the time Lockhart said the year had been "truly transformational", delivering record financial results and significantly increasing all operations across the business.

"The scale of the business has grown exponentially and is now of a size befitting a FTSE250 Main Market company where we intend to be later this year as we move from AIM. Importantly, NewRiver has again demonstrated its ability to swiftly deploy new equity and debt capital to acquire strategic income producing assets, supporting our progressive quarterly dividend policy. The Company has significant further growth potential and we look forward to the future with great excitement and confidence."

Top Director Buys

Securities Trust Of Scotland (STS)

Director name: Evans,John

Amount purchased: 50,000 @ 148.00p

Value: 74,000.00



Vietnam Enterprise Investments (di) (VEIL)

Director name: William Lawson,Gordon

Amount purchased: 25,000 @ 263.88p

Value: 65,970.00



Value And Income Trust (VIN)

Director name: Oakeshott,Matthew A

Amount purchased: 27,500 @ 233.50p

Value: 64,212.50



Newriver Retail Limited (NRR)

Director name: Lockhart,David

Amount purchased: 23,000 @ 273.00p

Value: 62,790.00



M Winkworth (WINK)

Director name: Neoh,Christopher

Amount purchased: 57,000 @ 110.00p

Value: 62,700.00



Zegona Communications (ZEG)

Director name: OAHare,Eamonn

Amount purchased: 50,000 @ 109.00p

Value: 54,500.00



Londonmetric Property (LMP)

Director name: Livingston,Andrew

Amount purchased: 35,669 @ 139.90p

Value: 49,900.93



Londonmetric Property (LMP)

Director name: Pelmore,Alexander

Amount purchased: 25,000 @ 139.90p

Value: 34,975.00



Hayward Tyler Group (HAYT)

Director name: Lloyd-Baker,Ewan

Amount purchased: 32,395 @ 79.00p

Value: 25,592.05



Wynnstay Group (WYN)

Director name: Roberts,B Paul

Amount purchased: 4,500 @ 478.00p

Value: 21,510.00



Cvs Group (CVSG)

Director name: Connell,Richard A

Amount purchased: 3,000 @ 688.75p

Value: 20,662.50



Newriver Retail Limited (NRR)

Director name: Lockhart,David

Amount purchased: 5,000 @ 279.63p

Value: 13,981.50



Cvs Group (CVSG)

Director name: Perrin,Nick

Amount purchased: 2,000 @ 698.50p

Value: 13,970.00



Vianet Group (VNET)

Director name: Dickson,James

Amount purchased: 10,000 @ 96.97p

Value: 9,697.00



Greene King (GNK)

Director name: Weedall,Lynne

Amount purchased: 1,000 @ 720.82p

Value: 7,208.20



Cvs Group (CVSG)

Director name: Connell,Richard A

Amount purchased: 1,000 @ 688.63p

Value: 6,886.30



Cvs Group (CVSG)

Director name: Connell,Richard A

Amount purchased: 1,000 @ 688.25p

Value: 6,882.50



Qatar Investment Fund (QIF)

Director name: Wilson,Nicholas Vernon

Amount purchased: 1,200 @ $1.03

Value: $1,239.00



Mj Gleeson (GLE)

Director name: Harrison,Jolyon

Amount purchased: 46 @ 450.00p

Value: 207.00



Mj Gleeson (GLE)

Director name: Allanson ,Stefan

Amount purchased: 44 @ 450.00p

Value: 198.00



Countrywide (CWD)

Director name: Clarke,Jim

Amount purchased: 66 @ 229.50p

Value: 151.47



Countrywide (CWD)

Director name: Platt,Alison

Amount purchased: 66 @ 229.50p

Value: 151.47





Top Director Sells

Matchtech Group (MTEC)

Director name: Dyer,Tony

Amount purchased: 59,678 @ 310.00p

Value: 185,001.79



Matchtech Group (MTEC)

Director name: Dyer,Tony

Amount purchased: 4,839 @ 310.00p

Value: 15,000.90




UK retail sales growth slowed to just 0.2% in June, with like-for-like sales dropping 0.5% compared to the same month last year, according to the retail sales monitor survey from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG.

A decline in clothing and shoe sales was the biggest drag on the sector, dragging non-food sales growth to lowest level since April 2012, outweighing improvements in food sales.

Sales slowed in the last week of the month after the 23 June vote to leave the EU, but the BRC argued it was too early to define this as a trend.

KPMG head of retail David McCorquodale added: While the ramifications from the Brexit vote may well affect consumer confidence, retailers will be hoping the long-promised heatwave and potential stay at home holidays will be enough to drive shoppers back to the high-streets over the months ahead.

However, a rival survey from Nielsen on Monday indicated more than half of consumers were planning on cutting spending on new clothes and some other discretionary spending, as well as looking for cheaper grocery options.

On a three-month basis, the BRC-KPMG survey found total UK retail sales rose 0.5%, and 1.2% on a 12-month average basis, which is the lowest 12-month average since May 2009.

Food sales increased 0.8% on a three-month basis, the best performance by grocers since March 2015, with the 12-month average remaining positive at 0.1%.

The surprise result of the referendum appeared to trigger an immediate drop in food and drink spending, which more than offset some modest sales growth earlier in the month," noted Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD.

"Hopefully, this will prove to be a short-lived shock and calmer waters lie ahead.

Non-food sales rose 0.3%, the lowest since April 2012 and taking the 12-month average to 2.1%, its lowest level since June 2013.
George Osborne also criticised by report for pressurising US DOJ

HSBC escaped prosecution from US officials in 2012 , after accusations of money laundering led to fears that the bank's failure could lead to a "global financial disaster", according to a report published on Monday.

The report, which was carried out by a Congressional committee in the US, said that UK Chancellor George Osborne contributed to pressure for HSBC to be let off.

The London-based multinational bank was accused of permitting drug cartels to use US banks to launder money. It paid a $1.92bn (1.48bn) fine but did not face any criminal prosecution.

"George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the UK's chief financial minister, intervened in the HSBC matter by sending a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke... to express the UK's concerns regarding US enforcement actions against British banks," the report said.

It continued that any criminal charges brought against HSBC would have "very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia".

Rather than following the case further, the Department of Justice in the US reached the settlement, a decision criticised by many.

"Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBC's criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ [Department of Justice] leadership declined to pursue [the] recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank 'could result in a global financial disaster'," the report said.

Although the letter did not single out any particular official in the DOJ, it did imply that Attorney General at the time, Eric Holder, was reluctant to bring any charges to HSBC, due to its standing in the financial markets.
Marks and Spencer Group has appointed Archie Norman as chairman to take over from Robert Swannell at the start of September.

Highly respected Norman has earnt a reputation for improving the fortunes of several major companies including Kingfisher, Asda and ITV.

Said Swannell: "I am delighted that Archie, with his deep, relevant experience is to be M&S's next Chairman."

He added: "With the appointment of Steve Rowe in 2016, I am confident that we have an excellent team, well-equipped to grow and strengthen the business. I wish them all the very best for the future."

Independent director Vindi Banga, who led the selection process, thanked Swannell for his contribution and commitment to the FTSE 100 company over the last seven years and said Norman was "one of the most respected business leaders in the UK with extensive experience as both CEO and Chair, and a proven record in retail and other areas. We are delighted he has accepted."

For his part, Norman, who had a political career as a Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, said he was looking forward to taking on the role "as the business under Steve Rowe's leadership faces into the considerable challenges ahead in a rapidly changing retail landscape".

Shares in M&S climbed strongly on the news, topping 375p for the first time since last June.

Norman is a "formidable appointment", said broker Shore Capital, pointing to his leading "one of the greatest turnarounds in British commercial history at Asda before it was sold to Wal-Mart".

Independent analyst Nick Bubb added: "Some people thought that Archie was too heavyweight for the role, which is non-executive, and it remains to be seen how much of 'a back-seat driver' he is to CEO Steve Rowe.

"When he took over at the struggling Asda in 1991 he famously played down expectations of the turnaround and we see he is up to his old tricks again in todays statement," Bubb said.
Real estate-related stocks and miners paced gains at the start of the week, with the former deriving support from news that Theresa May was set to become Prime Minister on the following Wednesday, helping to lift a tad of the uncertainty which had been weighing on the UK market.

Reports that Phoenix Asset Management Partners had increased its holdings in shares of select homebuilders, such as Barratt Developments and Bellway also helped to give the sector a boost.

According to Marketwatch.com, since the referendum vote the fund had raised its holdings in Barratt from 7.1% of the housebuilders share capital to 10.5% and that in Bellway from 11.2% to 12.0%.

"The bounce in UK mid-caps is more than partly due to hopes that, with Remainer May as PM, talks with Europe may be smoother, while the disappearance of a summer leadership contest has helped clear road ahead for UK equities.

"Before everyone gets too excited, it is important to remember that this week sees the start of earnings season. Alcoas update will be duly over-analysed for clues about earnings for the rest of the market, but at least the steady flow of company news will give investors something else to focus on besides the seemingly-unending focus on Brexit," IGs Chris Beauchamp told clients.

"The [share] prince was a good opportunity. Nothing has changed in [house-building] fundamentals," Tristan Chapple, head of research at Phoenix Asset Management Partners reportedly said.

Gains in miners, on the other hand, were most closely linked to speculation of further easing from the Bank of Japan.

Not to be missed either, in recent weeks many analysts had begun to consider the possibility that the European Central Bank would not be far behind.

Indeed, following the Brexit vote the Bank of England was seen cutting Bank Rate again as soon as the following Thursday.

As of 19:00 BST Comex-traded September 2016 copper futures were higher by 1.27% to reach $2.1460/lb..
Household and personal care manufacturer McBride said its adjusted operating profit for the year will be slightly ahead of previous expectations but it cannot not determine the long-term effects of Brexit.

In its trading update for the year ended 30 June the company said the better performance was due to better-than-anticipated cost saving initiatives which included the companys restructuring project.

McBride said purchasing-driven savings, in part a result of the decision to reduce the companys range of products and customers, also contributed to the better results.

The company said since the UK decided to leave the European Union on 24 June there has not been an impact on the day-to-day operations, however the company said it was too soon to determine the long-term effects of Brexit. About 70% of its subsidiaries are based outside the UK.

The Manchester-based companys aim to reduce the number of small customers it served is on track as full year sales decreased by about 6m.

On a constant currency basis, the companys revenues for the year ended 30 June were 1.9% lower than 2015. McBride said it was due to the effects of ongoing price pressures in key markets which affected revenue.

The company added that it remains confident in the execution of the Manufacturing our Future strategy, through the three-stage 'Repair, Prepare, Grow' implementation plan.

McBride is Europes biggest maker of retailer own brand household and personal care goods. It has over 20 manufacturing operations in 10 countries including France, Belgium, Spain, China, Vietnam and Malaysia. Its brands includes Oven Pride and Limelite.

Shares in McBride were up 3.27% to 158p at 1504 BST.
UNCW Student Wins North Carolina Campus Compact Community Impact Award

UNCW senior Jocabed Aragon 18 has been recognized for leadership and service with the 2017 Community Impact Award, presented by North Carolina Campus Compact. The compact is a coalition of 37 colleges and universities with a shared commitment to civic engagement.

Jocabed embodies the values of our university in her actions, caring nature, creativity and leadership by example, said UNCW Centro Hispano director Edelmira Segovia, who nominated Aragon for the award. Our Centro Hispano team would not be complete without her support, encouragement and talent. I am certain that Jocabed will continue to build on her UNCW education and serve our community.

Aragon has supported Hispanic and Latinx communities on and off campus. She was a work study student at Centro Hispano and has been active with the centers programs and with the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Aragon, who is majoring in communication studies and film studies, has documented Centro Hispanos programs and in 2016 created a film that was featured in WilmFilm Chick Flick Film Festival and Cucalorus Festival. She is producing a full-length documentary on environmental issues relevant to the Cape Fear region.

In 2016, Aragon completed an internship with a social justice institute in Oakland, California. Last summer, she interned as program coordinator for the Community Summer Fest by El Refugio, which promotes learning and healthy lifestyles in her hometown of Sanford, NC.

Aragon was one of 23 students who were honored at the compacts annual CSNAP (Citizen Service, Networking and Partnerships) Conference in November.

-- Tricia Vance

#SA

#OIDI

#ENGAGEMENT

Jocabed Aragon received a 2017 Community Impact Award.


By India Today Web Desk: Vinay Katiyar isn't new to controversies. The Bajrang Dal chief is famous for his fiery, religion-driven statements. He is now stirring a hornet's nest by claiming that Delhi's Jama Masjid was originally a 'Jamuna Devi Madir'

"There were about 6000 places that were broken down by the Mughal emperors. Delhi's Jama Masjid was originally Jamuna Devi temple, similarly Taj Mahal was Tejo Mahalaya" said Katiyar while talking to ANI.

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This adds to the string of controversial statements made by the members of the saffron groups that seek to appropriate Muslim monuments as having Hindu origins.

Recent statement by Katiyar assumes significance as it comes just a day after the 25th Anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition. Saffrom groups have always resented the plunder of India by Muslim rulers.

Taj Mahal built by traitor, says BJP MLA Sangeet Som

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What is the smallest thing you can think of?

Visitors are asked this question as part of a new exhibit at the SEEDS Blacksburg Nature Center in downtown Blacksburg thanks to a team of Virginia Tech biologists.

Among living and preserved animals  bears, snakes, and turtles, to name three  the exhibit reveals the vast smaller side of what plants and animals are made of: cells.

The new exhibit, called Its a small world, first engages visitors by asking them to pick their favorite animal, such as a beaver, fox, or owl. Then, a video slideshow takes them from the animals body down to its tissue, and then down to its cells. Real footage then shows cells dividing, or the process of cell division known as mitosis.

The hardest task was to figure out a way to teach kids this concept, explained Ellen Garcia, a doctoral student in biological sciences in the College of Science. Garcia initially developed the exhibit for the Virginia (now the Virginia Tech) Science Festival. She then expanded it for the center to show the scale from animal to cell in order to better contextualize the process and importance of cell division for others.

Although teaching young children about cells is quite challenging, we think the center is a great setting for doing so and we hope that young visitors can take something away with them they will remember for years to come, said Daniela Cimini, an associate professor of biology and Garcias advisor.
Marlene M. Preston, associate professor of communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, has been conferred the title of associate professor emerita by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The emeritus title may be conferred on retired professors, associate professors, and administrative officers who are specially recommended to the board by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board receive an emeritus certificate from the university.

A member of the university community since 1993, Preston has made significant contributions in the discipline of teaching communication and is recognized as an authority in instructional development and innovation in oral and written communication.

Preston taught undergraduate courses ranging from communication skills and virtual public speaking to interpersonal communication and international perspectives on communication. In addition, she served the Department of Communication in several administrative capacities, including assistant department head, director of undergraduate programs, director of communication skills, director of CommLab, and director of public speaking.

Throughout her career, she received several professional awards, including the Grand Award for Innovation from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education for Course Design, the Program of Excellence Award from the Basic Course Division of the National Communication Association, and two Communication Centers Section Service Awards of the National Communication Association.

At Virginia Tech, Preston received several additional awards, including an Award for Excellence in Career Advising, the 2015 University XCaliber Award for Technology, the 2013 Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence, and a Certificate of Teaching Excellence. She also was inducted into the Virginia Tech Academy of Faculty Service and the Academy of Teaching Excellence.

For 12 years, Preston served in various part-time positions in the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research (formerly the Center for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching), including assistant director, coordinator of the University Writing Program, Faculty Fellow, and program coordinator.

Preston earned a bachelors degree and masters degree from Bowling Green State University and a doctoral degree from Virginia Tech.
The road connecting Ladakh and Kashmir is also blocked due to heavy snowfall in nearby areas.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : As the mercury continues to drop in the hills, fresh snowfall was witnessed in the areas of Sonamarg, Zoha and Meenamarg on Thursday.

The 434 km-long Srinagar-Leh highway has been closed due to continuous heavy snowfall in the region for the past 24 hours.

According to the ground reports, the road link that connects Ladakh region with Kashmir Valley remains blocked due to heavy snowfall in nearby areas.

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Approximately 3-4 inch of snow has accumulated at Meenamarg, Zojila and Srinagar-Leh road. A number of vehicles were also stranded in Zojilla.

Moreover, the snowfall has made the road extremely slippery. According to the MeT department's forecast, weather will remain cloudy.

Due to extreme weather conditions in the region, the authorities have decided that no vehicular movement shall be allowed today.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface.

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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.
Ecopetrol S.A. operates as an integrated energy company. The company operates through four segments: Exploration and Production; Transport and Logistics; Refining, Petrochemical and Biofuels; and Electric Power Transmission and Toll Roads Concessions. It engages in the exploration and production of oil and gas; transportation of crude oil, motor fuels, fuel oil, and other refined products, including diesel, jet, and biofuels; processing and refining crude oil; distribution of natural gas and LPG; sale of refined and petrochemical products; supplying of electric power transmission services; design, development, construction, operation, and maintenance of road and energy infrastructure projects; and supplying of information technology and telecommunications services. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 9,127 kilometers of crude oil and multi-purpose pipelines. It also produces and commercializes polypropylene resins and compounds, and masterbatches; and offers industrial service sales to customers and specialized management services. It has operations in Colombia, the United States, Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos and changed its name to Ecopetrol S.A. in June 2003. Ecopetrol S.A. was incorporated in 1948 and is based in Bogota, Colombia.
Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates in two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems; production solutions comprising coiled tubing, hydraulic workover units, downhole tools, and pumping and nitrogen services; and pipeline and process services, such as pre-commissioning, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning. This segment also provides electrical submersible pumps, as well as artificial lift services. The Drilling and Evaluation segment offers drilling fluid systems, performance additives, completion fluids, solids control, specialized testing equipment, and waste management services; oilfield completion, production, and downstream water and process treatment chemicals and services; drilling systems and services; wireline and perforating services consists of open-hole logging, and cased-hole and slickline; and drill bits and services comprising roller cone rock bits, fixed cutter bits, hole enlargement, and related downhole tools and services, as well as coring equipment and services. This segment also provides cloud based digital services and artificial intelligence solutions on an open architecture for subsurface insights, integrated well construction, and reservoir and production management; testing and subsea services, such as acquisition and analysis of reservoir information and optimization solutions; and project management and integrated asset management services. Halliburton Company was founded in 1919 and is based in Houston, Texas.
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 7 (PTI) Private carrier Jet Airways today reported a 91 per cent plunge in standalone net profit at Rs 49.63 crore for the three months to September on account of a deep decline in other income.

The Naresh Goyal-owned private carrier had posted a net profit of Rs 549.02 crore in the same period last fiscal.

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Total sales also declined to Rs 5,758.18 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs 5,772.79 crore in the previous fiscal, Jet Airways said in a regulatory filing today.

Other income, which is generally the non-aeronautical revenue, came down by 59 per cent to Rs 131.57 crore in the reporting quarter, from Rs 319.58 crore in the year-ago period, according to the filing.

Jet Airways attributed the fall in other income to nil sales from share of profit and no income from the sale and leaseback of aircraft in the reporting quarter.

Income on this account stood at Rs 190.22 crore in the quarter, the airline said.

Later, in a release, the airline said the group reported a net profit of Rs 71 crore for the second quarter of this fiscal.

"The weak demand in the Gulf continues while low fares as well as yields in the domestic market have limited the ability to offset the increase in fuel prices," Jet Airways Chief Executive Officer Vinay Dube was quoted as saying in the release.

Jet Airways continues to grow its domestic presence while keeping a tight control on costs, as reflected in reduction in non-fuel unit cost or CASK (Cost per Available Seat Kilometre), he said.

The carrier had last month in a presentation told investors about its plans for strategic growth where the key focus would be on cost minimisation.

As per the presentation, the carrier will look to reduce maintenance expenses from January 2019 as well as bring down cost of sales and distribution and also focus on enhancing ancillary revenue by around Rs 250 crore.

Passenger revenue went up to Rs 5,147 crore while the Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) rose by 7.7 per cent to 14 billion during the reporting quarter.

Jet Airways also carried 7.7 per cent more passengers at 7.29 million in the September quarter over the same quarter of 2016-17, the release said.

The airline also saw its revenue from codeshare partners increasing by 8 per cent over the year-ago quarter while it managed to shave off total debt in the books by Rs 194 crore.

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Jet also derived significant operational and business advantages via synergies with its strategic partner, Etihad Airways, as well as other codeshare partnerships, Dube said.

Significantly, the Mumbai-based carrier had last month announced a new enhanced cooperation agreement, which primarily deepens the already existing codeshare partnership signed in 2014. It is expected to further boost connectivity between India and Europe. PTI IAS ARD

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Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) announced his intention to resign in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday morning. Many of his Democratic colleagues had called for his resignation on Wednesday, after additional allegations of sexual harrassment became public. The date of his Senate departure has not yet been announced.

The state's Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, will appoint Franken's replacement. Speculation is centering around the state's Lt. Gov., Tina Smith. Regardless of who is picked, a special election will be held, coinciding with the midterm elections on November 6th, 2018. The winner of that election will serve the final two years of the six-year term. The next regularly scheduled election will be in November, 2020.

Both Minnesota Senate seats will now be contested in 2018. While Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar seems a safe bet for reelection, this seat may be competitive. Franken initially won this seat by just 300 votes over Republican Norm Coleman in 2008. Additionally, although Minnesota hasn't voted Republican since 1972 - the longest such streak across the 50 states - Hillary Clinton only won here by 1.5%.

Sabato's Crystal Ball starts this race as 'Leans Democrat'. Inside Elections says 'Likely Democrat', while the Cook Political Report has it as Toss-up. These varied ratings will likely coalesce once we know who the governor appoints, whether that person is likely to run again in 2018, and who the Republican nominee will be. The pundit analyses can be read in their entirety by clicking the respective links in this paragraph.

We are working to update our Senate interactive map to reflect the addition of a 2nd 2018 election in Minnesota.
The R&D Explanation

The pharmaceutical industry offers several responses to the charges of excessively high prices. First, it notes that prescription drugs account for just 10 percent of the nations health care costs; by comparison, 32 percent of costs go to hospital care, according to a 2016 report from Medicare.

It also notes that an open market means that patients in the U.S. can access the most innovative treatments far earlier than any other country, says Robert Zirkelbach, executive vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry trade group. For example, data from PhRMA show that patients in Europe wait an average of nearly two years longer to get access to cancer medicines than American patients.

But the industrys primary defense of rising medicine prices are the high costs associated with drug development.

Drug companies spend over 10 years and up to $2.6 billion bringing a drug to market, according to a 2016 Journal of Health Economics article based on research by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (which gets a minority of its operating funds from the pharmaceutical industry). Of that amount, $1.4 billion is actual costs  items like salaries, labs, clinical-

trial expenses and manufacturing. The remaining $1.2 billion is capital costs: what the company sacrifices by investing time and money in an unproven drug. Some experts dispute these numbers, saying they overstate the true costs.

Even after accounting for their research investments, however, drug companies are among the most profitable public businesses in America. And an analysis from the research company Global Data revealed that 9 out of 10 big pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than on research. Most of them also have big budgets for lobbyists to ensure the laws continue to work in their favor. The Center for Responsive Politics puts the number of pharmaceutical industry lobbyists at 804 in 2016.

Further, some drug companies are moving away from doing all of their research in-house and instead are buying smaller companies with promising products. About 70 percent of industry sales come from drugs that originated in small companies, up from 30 percent in 1990, according to a Boston Consulting Group survey.

In addition, drug companies increasingly focus on products that can generate the highest profits. The majority of drugs approved by the FDA are now expensive specialty drugs. Many drug companies are also pursuing orphan drugs  medicines targeting diseases that afflict fewer than 200,000 people. These medications cost an average of $140,000 a year. The catch: Many orphan drugs eventually receive additional approvals as a treatment for other conditions, dramatically increasing the market for the drug.

The government supports orphan drug development with tax breaks and other incentives. In 2016, the pharmaceutical industry netted $1.76 billion in orphan drug tax credits.
CRC Deputy Director Kevin Stein said that while the explanation for the surge in foreclosures isnt clear, data previously obtained from HUD indicate that many older reverse-mortgage owners are falling behind on property taxes and home insurance. Nearly 90,000 homeowners defaulted for those reasons in fiscal 2016, he said.

Reverse mortgages generally contain clauses that require lenders to reinstate the mortgage as soon as the homeowner makes up the back payments and cures the default, even after a foreclosure suit has been filed. But advocates complain that lenders routinely ignore that requirement. Lenders also sometimes wrongly accuse older people of not maintaining occupancy, and some even have received notices at the homes where they supposedly no longer live, Stein said.

We suspect there are aggressive and improper servicing practices that have led to and are leading to unnecessary foreclosures, Stein said.

The organizations called upon the federal government to do more to protect seniors with reverse mortgages from losing their homes.

HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan said the department is still preparing a response but disputed the groups analysis. We believe that the data is being misinterpreted to leave people with the false impression that there has been some sudden spike in foreclosure activity, he said.
Conn's legal woes now go beyond his plea deal in March, as he faces escape and failure-to-appear charges. Conn's attorney, Scott White, entered a not guilty plea.

White told reporters he expects prosecutors to pursue more than a dozen charges that would have been dropped in the original deal. Conn could face a life sentence.

Conn, who fled in June after cutting his ankle monitor, was sentenced in absentia last summer to a 12-year prison term for stealing from the government and bribing a judge as part of the more than $500 million Social Security fraud case.

Conn represented thousands in successful claims for Social Security benefits. But former clients and their families cheered his capture. As part of the fallout, the Social Security Administration identified about 1,500 beneficiaries who had retained Conn who were made to undergo hearings to keep their benefits, said attorney Ned Pillersdorf, an attorney for many of Conns former clients. About 700, he said, have been found eligible.

But his empire crumbled when authorities discovered he had been bribing a doctor and a judge to approve disability claims based on fake medical evidence.
By Nagarjun Dwarakanath: In the wake of the recent controversies about Tipu Jayanti and Hanuman Jayanti in the state, Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy compared BJP leaders to terrorist organisation ISIS.

"I agree I compared one or two BJP leaders to ISIS, they are behaving like that. They are spreading communalism as the elections are nearing," said Home Minister Reddy.

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On Friday, BJP Mysore MP Pratap Simha was arrested under preventive custody in Mysore as he was heading towards Hunsur to take part in Hanuman Jayanti. Hanuman Jayanti was on the same day as Eid in Karnataka.

"No one is above law; Pratap Simha wanted to have a procession in a different route that wasn't approved by police department. We had given him a certain route for the procession, I am also not above law," added Minister Reddy.

Earlier Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde said, "Karnataka is becoming a Home for terrorists. I won't be shocked if CM Siddaramaih will go ahead and carry out Kasab Jayanti in the future. "

Karnataka Home Minister said that the police department is efficient and ready to maintain peace and harmony across the state as the next 6 months will be crucial as the state heads for assembly elections.

Retorting to the comparison by the Home Minister, BJP MP Shoba Kharandlaje tweeted, "Irresponsible statement from Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy, Karnataka has been a hub for Jihadi activities thanks to these mindsets who govern the state. Outrightly condemn Home Minister Reddy's statement of comparing BJP with terrorists. Has the minister lost his senses or is he trying to please the Jihadis?"

Irresponsible statement from Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy,Karnataka has been a hub for Jihadi activities thanks to these mindsets who govern the state.- Shobha Karandlaje (@ShobhaBJP) December 7, 2017

Outrightly condemn HM Reddy's statement of comparing BJP with terrorists.Has the minister lost his senses or is he trying to please the Jihadis?- Shobha Karandlaje (@ShobhaBJP) December 7, 2017

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Putting more funding into pre-K is where we can get the biggest bang for our buck, but where we invest the least, said Danila Crespin Zidovsky, policy analyst for New Mexico Early Childhood Development Partnership.

Members of the NMECDP have been touring state-funded pre-K classrooms across the state, often with state legislators and other officials, to raise awareness about the benefits of pre-K and the importance of expanding it to every 3- and 4-year-old whose family seeks a placement.

On Wednesday they spent time at Youth Development Inc.s Centro de Amor pre-K at Third Street and Stover SW.

The short-term advantages are all the children in here are learning and developing academic and literacy skills, as well as maturing emotionally, socially and getting used to the daily routine of school, Crespin Zidovsky said.

They are also provided a nutritious breakfast, lunch and a mid afternoon snack, something that is particularly important because most of the children in state-funded pre-K come from lower income families and the majority of their meals are from the pre-K sites, she said. The long-term advantages of early childhood learning are a decrease in juvenile incarceration, a decrease in teen pregnancy, and an increase in kids graduating from high school and going on to college.

This is the time we should be investing in children, Crespin Zidovsky said, adding that 95 percent of a childs brain development occurs by age 3.

There are currently about 10,000 kids in New Mexico enrolled in pre-K programs that are funded through the Children, Youth and Families Department or by the Public Education Department. Combined, they provide about $55 million for pre-K, but we need about $260 million to get to 80 percent capacity, she said.

We know pre-K is working, we know parents want it and we know theres waiting lists across communities in this state. If were going to make an impact as far as economic development goes, this is where we should be making that investment, Crespin Zidovsky said.

The availability of high quality, low-to-no-cost pre-K makes a huge difference to working families, and could be a major draw for employers who are trying to attract new workers to the state, she said.

Gloria Orona, associate director of the pre-K program at Centro de Amor, said there are two other YDI pre-Ks in Albuquerque. All three are funded by the state for about $790,000 in total. Each has an enrollment of about 20 kids and each program is consistently filled.

District 2 City Councilor Isaac Benton was among those who toured Centro de Amor. A long-time proponent of early childhood programs, Benton said it was not likely the city would allocate money directly for pre-Ks, but the city does have community centers with classrooms and other buildings that could be used to expand pre-K programs in Albuquerque.
SANTA FE  A 10-year veteran of the Santa Fe County Sheriffs Office was arrested for driving drunk in Northern New Mexico Saturday.

Leonard Martinez, 36, is charged with aggravated DWI and failing to maintain traffic lanes after he was pulled over by a State Police officer in Ojo Caliente and refused to take breath tests. SFCSO spokesman Juan Rios said Martinez, who started with the department in October 2007, has been put on desk duty pending an internal investigation.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Taos Magistrate Court, an officer patrolling in Ojo Caliente around 6 p.m. Saturday got behind a pickup truck that was pulling a trailer with two all-terrain vehicles that crossed the center line several times. The officer pulled the truck over and later wrote that he could smell alcohol as soon as the windows were rolled down. There was a male in the drivers seat with a female passenger. As I spoke with the male, I could see his eyes were bloodshot and watery from across the cab of the vehicle and also noticed he was slightly slurring his words, Officer James Tremann wrote.

Tremann wrote that the driver, later identified as Martinez, was having a hard time following field sobriety test instructions and was swaying while he was standing. Martinez said he had a beer quite a bit earlier.

When asked what Martinez does for work, he first replied, I work behind a desk. He later said he was a Santa Fe County deputy.

Martinez refused to take a breath test and was arrested. State Police notified the SFCSO of the incident, according to the complaint. He was released on his own recognizance by Taos Magistrate Judge Jeff Shannon and is not allowed to drink alcohol or enter liquor establishments.
Albuquerque police arrested a woman they say ran a red light, T-boned another car and fled the crash scene  this with a 4-year-old girl in the car.

Albuquerque police arrested a woman they say ran a red light, T-boned another car and fled the crash scene  this with a 4-year-old girl in the car.

Levonn Tafoya, 32, is charged with child abuse without great bodily harm. The criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court doesnt say how or if Tafoya is related to the child.

Police say officers were dispatched to the crash near San Antonio and Ellison NE around 5 p.m. Tuesday, after Tafoya had fled. Officers found Tafoya in a damaged Lexus, with a child in the backseat, parked at a nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant. The child wasnt injured.

Officers knocked on the door and window several times before the highly intoxicated Tafoya woke up, according to the complaint.

Tafoya told police she had two drinks Tuesday morning, but didnt know where she was or that she was involved in a crash.

She believed she was in Santa Fe, an officer wrote.

Police say Tafoya, who couldnt provide registration or insurance, performed very poorly on a sobriety test.

She blew over three times the legal limit, an officer wrote.
SANTA FE  New Mexico is scaling back its proposal to impose premiums on some Medicaid patients and require more copays  partly in response to blunt criticism in a series of public hearings this year.

But opponents say the proposal still needs substantial work.

The states application to revise its Medicaid system  submitted Wednesday for federal approval  still would impose a $10 monthly premium on adults who make about $12,100 to $16,600 a year in 2019, with the possibility of $20 a month in future years. An earlier version of the proposal sought to apply the premiums to more income categories.

The state Human Services Department also withdrew some of its proposed copays. Under the application submitted Wednesday, the state is asking for approval to impose new copays on Medicaid patients who go to the emergency room when they dont actually have an emergency and on people who buy brand-name drugs when a generic is available  but not for office visits and hospitalizations, as first proposed.

Brent Earnest, secretary of human services, said the goal is to really drive better use of the health care system, encouraging people to seek preventive and other less costly care.

The proposal still would eliminate a rule that allows people to seek retroactive coverage if theyve received care before enrolling in Medicaid, though the elimination would be phased in over time. (Now, people can request coverage for health bills in the three months before they enrolled.)

Abuko Estrada, staff attorney for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said the states proposal still needs work.

While HSD has removed or delayed some of the harmful proposals, Estrada said, we are deeply concerned about the significant cuts that remain that will jeopardize coverage and access to care for our children and families. Premiums for adults with low wages who live near the poverty line will cause thousands of people to lose coverage, as experience has shown in other states.

Phasing out retroactive coverage, he said, will leave our families in financial debt and shift more uncompensated care costs onto health care providers, hurting their ability to provide quality care to all New Mexicans.

Earnest told legislators Wednesday that his department expects the proposal, if accepted by the federal government, to save about $90 million in New Mexicos general operating budget over a five-year period.

He delivered some good news on the departments budget request for next year. The improving economy and enrollment trends suggest the state will need an extra $68 million for Medicaid next year  not $82 million, as projected earlier.
Film and TV productions in New Mexico have a history of giving back to the community.

On Monday, NBC donated 20 racks of new clothing from The Brave to the Albuquerque Public Schools Title I Homeless Project.

We were really fortunate to receive a phone call from NBC and The Brave,  said Patrick Scott, liaison of the APS Title I Homeless Project. Producers heard about our program and reached out to us.

The homeless project helps homeless students to reach their potential as productive members of society.

Scott is expecting another shipment Thursday from The Brave. The clothing racks and office fixtures will be donated to the APS Community Clothing Bank.

Were going to share the wealth, he said. Were hoping to foster a relationship with the industry and NBC.

Bill Johnson, co-executive producer of The Brave, said NBC Universal always looks for a way to make a difference in the community where a production is filming.

The clothes are from the first episode shot in Albuquerque, Johnson said. We had doubles, triples and quadruples of plenty of items. We thought this is something that could really help.

Homeless children are eligible for these services regardless of where they attend school.

Scott said the program is more than 20 years old and has helped thousands of teens. Its purpose is to keep children stable and in school.

He said many families experience circumstances that can cause the loss of a permanent home.

Children and youth are considered homeless if they:

 Live in transitional or emergency shelters;

 Live in motels, cars, abandoned buildings or other inadequate accommodations;

 Are doubled up (two or more families in the same household); or

 Are runaways or youth rendered homeless by their parents.

Scott said donations are welcome year-round, but new clothes around the holidays really help.

Title I is a federally-funded program designed to meet the needs of students primarily in the areas of language arts, math, science and higher thinking skills.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh is chairing a crucial meeting with states sharing border with Bangladesh at the West Bengal Secretariat in Kolkata.

By Indrajit Kundu: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday chaired a crucial meeting with states sharing border with Bangladesh at the West Bengal Secretariat in Kolkata.

The meeting was called to review Indo-Bangladesh border issues with chief ministers of states that share international border with the neighbouring country.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, her Assam counterpart Sarbananda Sonowal and Mirzoram's Lal Thanhawla along with officials from Meghalaya and Tripura attended the meeting.

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Stressing on the need to prevent entry of illegal migrants with links to extremist groups into the country, Singh said, "We must be prepared for every eventuality. Bangladesh is a friendly country but we should be alert to make sure Bangladesh land is not used for terror activities against India."

Apart from cattle smuggling and illegal infiltration from across the border, the unfolding Rohingya refugee crisis in neighbouring Bangladesh was also discussed at the meeting.

"I have requested states to remain vigilant on the Rohingya issue," Singh told media persons. The union minister also emphasized on the need to fast track border infrastructure to strengthen border security.

Out of 4096 kilometre long international border running through five Indian states, 3006 km of border security infrastructure is currently in place and work on the remaining 1090 km is yet to be started.

Construction in some parts is yet to commence, mainly due to land acquisition issues. The home minister urged CMs to take personal interest to expedite the land acquisition process in the interest of national security.

The minister said areas where fencing was not possible will be covered using technological solutions like radars, day-night cameras, sensors etc.

According to the ministry, Border protection Grid (BPG) shall be put in place for multi-pronged and foolproof mechanism to secure the border.

"People living in the border areas are our strategic assets and need to be provided with all the infrastructure and socio-economic development facilities," Singh added.

--- ENDS ---
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

WASHINGTON  Breaking with 50 years of American precedent in the Middle East, President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and begin taking steps to move the U.S. Embassy to the holy city from its existing location in Tel Aviv.

In a speech at the White House, Trump noted that Congress passed bipartisan legislation in 1995 urging the U.S. Embassys relocation to Jerusalem, which is the nations proclaimed capital despite Palestinian protests. But for the past 22 years, U.S. presidents have exercised a waiver in that law in hopes of fostering the peace process.

Trump said the strategy clearly hasnt worked.

After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump said, adding that his decision was in the best interest of national security. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result. Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The move drew unanimous condemnation from New Mexicos congressional Democrats, while Rep. Steve Pearce, the delegations only Republican, backed Trumps decision.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the American announcement as an important step toward peace, and Israeli opposition leaders echoed his praise.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trumps shift serves extremist groups that want religious war and signals U.S. withdrawal from its role as a peace mediator. Protesters in Gaza burned American and Israeli flags.

Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the decision a major setback in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The president has undermined Americas role as the most effective broker for a two-state solution to the conflict, and his decision will have long-lasting implications, Udall warned. The final status of Jerusalem should be resolved through peace negotiations, which has been the bipartisan position of U.S. presidents for decades.

But Pearce called Israel a steadfast ally and said Trumps decision would strengthen the bond.

As a nation, we must continue to do what we can to support our ally, Pearce said. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital reinforces the bond between our nations. A stable Middle East is a stable America, and we must continue to support our allies in the region to prevent further risks to global security.

Trump did not set a time for the embassy move, but White House officials said it would take several years.

The response from Albuquerques Jewish synagogues was muted. Two rabbis were unavailable for comment. Rabbi Evelyn Baz of the conservative Congregation Bnai Israel in Albuquerque told the Journal in a voice message that the announcement was significant, but said her congregation was focused Wednesday on the plight of fellow Jews affected by California wildfires.

Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital is a powerfully symbolic statement about an ancient city that houses sites of great significance to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Trump cited several: the Western Wall that surrounded the Jews ancient Temple Mount; the Stations of the Cross, which follow Jesus path to his crucifixion; and Al-Aqsa Mosque, where, Muslims say, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

And there are major ramifications over who should control the territory.

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish states claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has seen the citys future as indelibly linked to the deal of the century between Israel and the Palestinians that Trump believes he can reach.

Trump has dispatched emissaries to the region in recent months  including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner,  in hopes of advancing new negotiations.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was one of few Senate Democrats to publicly support Trumps announcement. Cardin told CNN Wednesday that the effort needs to be wrapped in a diplomatic effort to help prevent violent flare-ups in the region.

Its going to involve controversy and courage both from an Israeli and Palestinian point of view, Cardin said, adding, There are things that can be done to smooth the politics of this.

Pope Francis voiced worry about Trumps move saying, I cannot remain silent. The U.N. secretary-general and European Union also criticized the new U.S. policy.

Sen. Martin Heinrich and Reps. Ben Ray Lujan and Michelle Lujan Grisham  all New Mexico Democrats  said the presidents decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a mistake.

Lujan Grisham and Lujan both called Israel Americas most important ally in the region but said Trumps move would further destabilize the peace process.

Trumps dangerous decision could inflame already volatile regional tensions, jeopardize peace efforts, alienate our Arab partners who are critical in combating terrorism, and lead to violence and instability that will ultimately threaten U.S. national security, Lujan Grisham said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The FBI obtained a warrant to search a vehicle in Portales that may be linked to the death of a Border Patrol agent in West Texas.

The warrant, issued Dec. 2 by a federal judge in Albuquerque, is to search a Pontiac Grand Am for trace evidence associated with the murder of a Border Patrol agent and assault of another.

The search is based on a tip from an informer who contacted the Border Patrol to say he heard from a coyote, or human smuggler, that two brothers who live in Portales were present with a group of unknown immigrants during an assault with rocks on two agents near Van Horn, Texas.

Both agents suffered head trauma on Nov. 18. Agent Rogelio Martinez died the next day. His partner survived but told investigators he has no memory of the events that night. That agents name has not been made public.

Neither of the Portales men has been charged or arrested in connection with the FBI investigation. One of the brothers is in custody for crossing the border illegally.

The action is one of the many leads we are pursuing, said Jeanette Harper, FBI spokeswoman for the El Paso Division, which is handling the investigation.

Some other suspected possibilities for the agents injuries include an accidental fall or being sideswiped by a passing vehicle.

Harper would not provide additional details about other possible developments.

The FBI is aggressively pursuing all leads from the 1-800 tip line, Harper said.

The FBI on Monday continued to ask for help and doubled the reward for information about the Border Patrol agents death. This was after seeking a warrant for the vehicle in Portales and interviewing one of the brothers and others with knowledge of their whereabouts the night the injured agents were found at the bottom of a culvert.

Electronic billboards with the tip line 1-800-CALL-FBI, or 1-800-225-5324, are up in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California.

The FBI doubled the reward Monday to $50,000. The state of Texas is offering $20,000 more for a total of $70,000 for information that can help solve the case.
On Nov. 17, educational history was made in New Mexico. I was there to witness it. The most successful Title 1 charter school in New Mexico serving a predominantly low-income, high-minority and high-special-needs population, Mission Achievement and Success (MAS) charter school, bravely, boldly and unapologetically blazed a new trail as the first charter school in New Mexico to replicate its successful school model.

Whats the big deal about that, you ask? Well, if you live in other parts of the United States, in New York or New Jersey, for example, you might be thinking, Ok, so what? We do this all of the time out here. If you live here in New Mexico and follow education policy, you know this is a big deal. No other charter school has yet succeeded in replicating, and many have said it cant be done. Weve been stuck in the past, essentially.

With one member of the Public Education Commission (PEC) remaining, the vote was tied. The request being presented had been given the highest of recommendations by the Public Education Department (PED), which recently received a $22.5 million federal grant to fund replication of successful charter schools in New Mexico. When the tie-breaking vote was cast, the PEC approved MAS charter schools replication.

As the 30-plus mid/high school students so aptly put it afterward in their video message to their friends, teachers and families, M.A.S. 2.0!

The big deal is that, on the face of it, there is no statute or policy in place to mandate how a charter school replication is carried out in New Mexico or what criteria must be met to qualify to replicate a successful charter school. Commissioners who voted against approval of MAS application for replication were not voting against the school or communicating that they didnt think the replication could succeed. They made that abundantly clear. If anyone could do it and if anyone had the track record to prove that they could succeed, it was JoAnn Mitchell, who founded the school, they emphatically repeated. Their main concern was not having established policies and criteria that would be followed for future requests, especially by other schools that are not succeeding in the same way that MAS charter school is.

The message from the PEC and the PED was loud and clear, though. They want to invest in, and approve the operation of, only the highest quality charter schools in New Mexico for all of our youth. Many voices in New Mexico echo this sentiment: if a public school is continuously failing to adequately educate its students, even after being provided assistance from the PED, the federal government, or mentor principals or teachers, it should not be allowed to continue to fail our students and our communities. Funds supporting those schools can be better used by channeling them to schools that are consistently successful, to allow them to grow or replicate and serve more students.

The doors of possibility are opening, and the winds of change are being ushered in, finally. New Mexico is now poised to offer more high-quality educational alternatives for students. The resistance to change that has kept us living in the Old West, where the typical loyalty to a district, a principal, a school, a teacher or a location that has persisted beyond what is rational, is over. What we need, and is now being resurrected, is our personal and professional commitments to be loyal to the students. As Commissioner Karyl Armbruster said when she made the motion Friday to approve the application of MAS charter school, Not even one student on their waiting lists should have to wait another day for this high-quality education option to be provided to them, so we have to act now.
SAN DIEGO  As I absorb the reaction to the verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial from my perch in southern California, I am reminded of just how ignorant and dishonest the New York and Washington media can be in covering the immigration debate.

The San Francisco killing two years ago of 32-year-old Steinle by an illegal immigrant in front of her parents was a tragedy. And the fact that her alleged assailant walked out of court with nothing more than a conviction on a minor gun charge amounts to a travesty.

But, contrary to what they tell you on Fox News and conservative talk radio, this had nothing to do with those fabled lands of make-believe known as sanctuary cities.

The right-wing media refuse to let go of that fantasy. But sanctuary cities arent real. This is because of three things: federalism, criminal law and common sense. Federal immigration agents dont take orders from local officials who pass symbolic resolutions so they can feel more powerful than they are. Nor are the local police who arrest bad guys or the sheriffs deputies who put them in the county jail under any legal requirement to do the job of federal agents for them  except in Texas, where its now a state crime for local and state cops to not help federal immigration agents.

In the Steinle case, there is only one reason why Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents didnt take Jose Ines Garcia Zarate into custody when he was released from the San Francisco County Jail in April 2015. Its because ICE didnt issue a warrant demanding that Garcia Zarate be handed over. The agency only issued a detainer requesting that the suspect be kept in custody until immigration authorities could pick him up  when they got around to it, if they got around to it.

Garcia Zarate was set free  because he was small potatoes.

Sure, Garcia Zarate had at that point been deported five times, a fact that really angers the critics of sanctuary cities. Yet they dont seem too angry at those who employ illegal immigrants. Its also strange that many of the same people who are bothered by the fact that Garcia Zarate kept coming back after being deported still support President Trumps call for a deportation force. What good will that do?

Nevertheless, even with multiple deportations, Garcia Zarate was still a low priority for law enforcement. Thats because  while he had been convicted of seven felonies  his offenses were tied to nonviolent drug crimes. He was not considered dangerous.

The undocumented immigrant became dangerous when he accidentally shot Steinle by playing with a loaded gun that he claims he found under a bench  a gun that belonged to a park ranger, who said he left it in his locked vehicle  and firing off a bullet that killed Steinle.

Once that shot was fired, Steinle became  for then-presidential candidate Trump and conservative media  a martyr for the cause of eliminating sanctuary cities. Thats when ICE resorted to CYA. The federal agency pointed the finger at local authorities and insisted it wanted Garcia Zarate real bad and was denied access to the murderous fiend.

A nickel-and-dime criminal with a second-grade education who was living on the streets was, as a result of politics, suddenly raised to the level of famed drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

Thats how prosecutors treated him, charging Garcia Zarate with second-degree murder and allowing jurors to consider first-degree murder, which requires premeditation and motive. They were never going to get that in this case from a jury that was halfway sober and sane. And while they gave jurors the option of convicting Garcia Zarate for the crime he actually committed  involuntary manslaughter  they either confused or angered the panel by giving them a menu of outcomes.

The prosecutors messed up. They should have just charged the defendant with what he actually did, and take the bird in the hand. But political pressure likely got the better of them, and as a result, a killer did not answer for his crime.

We should not be surprised by any of this. Politics has a way of distorting reality and making the absurd seem plausible. And in the immigration debate, the effect is magnified exponentially.

E-mail: ruben@rubennavarrette.com. Copyright, The Washington Post Writers Group. His daily podcast, Navarrette Nation, is available through every podcast app.
JERUSALEM  Thousands of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, demonstrators in the Gaza Strip burned U.S. flags and pictures of President Donald Trump, and a top Palestinian official said Vice President Mike Pence would not be welcome in the West Bank, in a show of rage Thursday over the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Israeli forces were bracing for the possibility of even stronger violence on Friday, when tens of thousands of Palestinians attend weekly prayers at Jerusalems Al Aqsa Mosque, the citys most sacred Islamic site. In Gaza, the supreme leader of the Hamas militant group called on Palestinians to launch a new uprising against Israel.

The Palestinians were blindsided by Trumps move to depart from decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem and upend longstanding international assurances that the fate of the city would be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. Israel claims the entire city, including east Jerusalem, home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, as its undivided capital. The opposing claims lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have often spilled over into deadly violence.

The Palestinians declared three days of rage, shuttering schools and businesses, and staging angry demonstrations at Damascus Gate, one of the entrances to Jerusalems Old City, and cities across the West Bank and Gaza.

We are here. We believe in our rights and one day it (will) become Jerusalem, the capital for the Palestinian people, declared Rania Hatem, a protester outside the Old City.

The Israeli military reported demonstrations in some 30 locations across the West Bank on Thursday, saying Palestinians had hurled stones and firebombs at troops. A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity under briefing guidelines, said troops were instructed to use minimal force and avoid live fire to avoid escalating tensions.

In the West Bank, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in Bethlehem, the biblical town of Jesus birth, just weeks before thousands of foreign tourists are expected to visit for Christmas celebrations. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tires on fire, sending thick plumes of black smoke over the city.

Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were slightly wounded, most from tear gas inhalation. Spontaneous protests also took place in Gaza, with angry youths burning tires, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

A senior Palestinian official said the Palestinians would not meet with Pence during his visit to the region later this month when Pence is expected to visit Israel and make a stop in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. We will not receive him in the Palestinian territories, said the official, Jibril Rajoub.

However, a White House official said Pence still plans to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as scheduled and said it would be counterproductive to cancel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss upcoming plans.

Israeli security officials were preparing for more unrest on Friday. In a pre-emptive move, the military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank, while other troops were put on alert.

Israeli officials said Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, along with the expected unrest in the West Bank, would set the tone for the coming days.

Palestinian officials in the West Bank said they had no interest in bloody violence but warned that individual attacks were possible.

Israeli police were considering whether to impose age restrictions on worshippers at Fridays prayers, but as of Thursday evening, had made no changes.

In Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas supreme leader, called on Palestinians to launch a new uprising. We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision, he said.

Hamas, which seeks Israels destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. However, the Islamic militant group, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, has been weakened by a decade-long Israeli blockade and three painful wars with Israel.

Nonetheless, it still has cells in the West Bank and possesses a large arsenal of rockets in its Gaza stronghold. Late Thursday, Israeli tanks and aircraft attacked two military posts in Gaza, following a series of rocket attacks, including one that landed in southern Israel. There were no reports of casualties on either side.

Trumps decision had no immediate impact on daily life in Jerusalem, which already is the seat of Israels government.

While Trump insisted that the move was meant to acknowledge the current reality, and not prejudge negotiations on Jerusalems status, it carried deep symbolic meaning and was seen by the Palestinians as siding with Israel.

And even if Trumps move cannot singlehandedly determine Jerusalems status, policies of the U.S., the lead mediator for over two decades of unsuccessful peace talks, carry special weight.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump bound himself forever to the history of Jerusalem and maintained other countries were already interested in following suit.

Abbas suggested that Trumps move disqualified the United States from continuing as an exclusive broker. He met with his closest Arab ally, Jordans King Abdullah II, in Amman on Thursday, saying that he was rallying international opposition to Trumps move, which he called an unacceptable crime.

The king could play an important role. He is one of Washingtons most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region, and his country is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making him an influential player.

Abbas said he was also speaking to countries in Europe and Africa. International opposition has been widespread, including Americas closest allies in Europe. Fortunately, there was a positive response from all the countries in the world, Abbas said.

On Thursday, the Palestinians asked the Security Council to take urgent action and demand that Trumps decision be rescinded. The council scheduled an emergency meeting on Friday.

Meanwhile, anger at the U.S. rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia condemned Trumps decision in a rare public rebuke by the U.S. ally. The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said it had warned against the step and continues to express its deep regret at the U.S. administrations decision, calling it unjustified and irresponsible.

The Arab League, which represents most states in the Middle East and North Africa, was to meet Saturday. Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

Despite the verbal support, Palestinian officials are concerned the Arabs will not provide the sustained backing Abbas needs. While quick to condemn Trumps decision, Arab leaders have not threatened to reduce ties or take any other action against the U.S. or Israel.

There were also feelings of resignation from many in the region who said they have long given up on their leaders standing up to either Israel or the United States.

Preoccupied with their own tribulations, there were barely any protests in capitals like Beirut, Baghdad or Damascus.

People are tired, exhausted. Personally I feel that we are doomed anyway and nothing we do makes a difference, said Ghinwa Barakat, a 43-year-old shopper in Beirut. Whos going to support the Palestinians? Syria is destroyed, Iraq is destroyed. The Gulf countries are fighting each other and competing over who will normalize relations with Israel first. So, who?

___

Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem; Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip; Ken Thomas in Washington; Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.
BEND, Ore.  Dr. Byron Maas surveys a supply of marijuana products for dogs that lines a shelf in his veterinary clinic. Theyre selling well.

The Up and Moving is for joints and for pain, he explains. The Calm and Quiet is for real anxious dogs, to take away that anxiety.

People anxious to relieve suffering in their pets are increasingly turning to oils and powders that contain CBDs, a non-psychoactive component of marijuana. But theres little data on whether they work, or if they have harmful side effects.

Thats because Washington has been standing in the way of clinical trials, veterinarians and researchers say. Now, a push is underway to have barriers removed, so both pets and people can benefit.

Those barriers have had more than just a chilling effect.

When the federal Drug Enforcement Administration announced last year that even marijuana extracts with CBD and little or no THC  marijuanas intoxicating component  are an illegal Schedule 1 drug, the University of Pennsylvania halted its clinical trials. Colorado State University is pushing ahead.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned companies that sell marijuana products online and via pet shops and animal hospitals that theyre violating laws by offering unapproved new animal drugs. The FDA threatened legal action.

But, seeing potential benefits of CBDs, the American Veterinary Medical Associations policy-making body said last summer it wants the DEA to declassify marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug to facilitate research opportunities for veterinary and human medical uses. It asked the board of the national veterinarians organization to investigate working with other stakeholders toward that goal. The board is awaiting a recommendation from two group councils.

The concern our membership has is worry about people extrapolating their own dosages, looking to medicate their pets outside the realm of the medical professional, Board Chairman Michael Whitehair said in a telephone interview. This is an important reason for us to continue the research.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican, became an unlikely champion of this push when he introduced a bill in September that would open the path for more clinical research. While Hatch said he opposes recreational marijuana use, he wants marijuana-based drugs, regulated by the FDA, produced for people with disorders.

We lack the science to support use of medical marijuana products like CBD oils, not because researchers are unwilling to do the work, but because of bureaucratic red tape and over-regulation, Hatch said.

Dawn Boothe, of Auburn Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine, is waiting for federal approval to begin a study of marijuanas effects on dogs with epilepsy. The classification of marijuana products containing CBD as a Schedule 1 drug, the same category as heroin and LSD, creates a major, major, major, terrible roadblock for researchers, Boothe said in a phone interview.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine were studying CBDs effects on dogs with osteoarthritis and pruritis, or itchiness, until the DEA released its policy statement.

The ambiguity in this process has really brought us to a screeching halt, said Michael DiGregorio, director of the universitys clinical trials center. It is research that needs to be done, because there are a lot of CBD products out there.

When it clarified that marijuana CBD extracts are Schedule 1 drugs, the DEA said it was assigning a code number to those substances to better track them and to comply with international drug control treaties.

DiGregorio complained that researchers seeking federal approval to study CBD products are told to provide certain data, but that data isnt normally available until the study is done.

If you dont have the data, you cant get the registration to do the work, he said.

On a recent morning, Maas took a break from seeing four-legged patients in the Bend Veterinary Clinic. A stethoscope dangling from his neck over green scrubs, Maas said his clients have reported CBDs help relieve pain, arthritis, anxiety, loss of appetite, epilepsy and inflammation in their pets.

Unfortunately theres not a lot of research out there, especially on animals, on CBD compounds, Maas said. The research is really necessary to help us understand how to actually use these compounds on our pets.

Veterinarian Janet Ladyga of the Blue Sky Veterinary Clinic, also in Bend, said she doesnt recommend marijuana products because of the unknowns.

We dont have a lot of evidence right now, so we dont know the toxicity or the safety profile  and we dont have any good evidence to show either if its safe or efficacious, she said.

The study at Colorado State University aims to provide some data. The roughly two dozen dogs in the arthritis study and the 30 in the epilepsy tests are given either CBD oil or a placebo. For the arthritis study, activity monitors are attached to the animals collars, to determine if theyre more mobile when theyre taking CBD.

Principal investigator Stephanie McGrath said she hopes the results will be a stepping stone for longer and more diverse studies, and that they provide useful information for human medicine.

Every medication were taking has been given to a dog first, the University of Pennsylvanias DiGregorio noted.

Meanwhile, Boothe said she had everything ready to start her study in January, and was waiting for a green light from federal officials.

I dont know whats taking so long, she said.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trumps move to recognize the divided city of Jerusalem as Israels capital may have triggered a worldwide chorus of critics but the president had his ears closely tuned to his supporters at home.

For Trump, the proclamation was an important way to make good on a pledge to his political base, which includes evangelical Christians and pro-Israel Republicans eager for such a move.

While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver, the president declared Wednesday in announcing his decision. Today, I am delivering.

Those were words to savor for a president whos been frustrated to see a number of key campaign pledges stalled or slowed  sometimes by a bitterly divided Congress, some by larger national or international concerns.

Repealing the Obama era health care law is a promise unfulfilled, much to Trumps frustration. Withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement remains in his TBD column. And Congress has yet to approve money Trump has requested for his promised border wall.

The president counts the successful confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as a key victory. And he has acted on certain other campaign pledges with some caveats: He refused to recertify the Iran nuclear deal, but left the matter of new sanctions to Congress. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement but left open the possibility of rejoining it later. And he ordered an end to a program protecting young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as kids, but gave Congress six months to find a way to protect them from deportation.

On Jerusalem, Trump had pledged during the 2016 campaign to recognize Israels claim to the city and to move the American embassy there from Tel Aviv. Hes now checked that box  although he offered no timeline for the embassy relocation and signed a waiver officially delaying any move for six months.

Steve Bannon, the presidents former chief strategist, repeatedly counseled the president to take the step as a means of holding to his campaign promise and energizing evangelical voters.

Observers were divided on how to score the presidents action.

If I were keeping score, I would rate this as fulfilling a campaign promise, said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official now at the Brookings Institution. Any move is significant and the world is right to regard it as a serious step.

But Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, saw Trumps words about the embassy as just a grandiose statement on Jerusalem without a line in the sand.

A host of world leaders had urged Trump in advance to reconsider his decision, warning that the action could have serious and immediate consequences in the tinder box of the Middle East.

But after Trump announced his plans from a White House room laden with Christmas decorations, his backers gleefully heralded the move.

An email from Trumps campaign operation trumpeted: Jerusalem: Another Promise Made and Promise Kept. And conservative faith leader Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said in a statement that Trump continues to deliver on his promise to the American people to strengthen the solidarity between the United States and the people of Israel.

Critics warned the consequences could be dire, arguing that the move could inflame tensions in the volatile region and complicate Mideast peace efforts.

My hope is it doesnt change much, and we have a couple days of protest, said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Wilson Center who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents, called the announcement a triumph of domestic politics and personal ego over sound foreign policy.

Trump insisted he was not trying to derail a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians. He repeated the U.S. position that Jerusalems borders must still be worked out through negotiation, saying he wants an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians.

The president hasnt hesitated to assess his first year in office as a banner success, pointing to promises kept, such as the installation of Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

During a recent speech in Missouri, Trump said: I will tell you this in a non-braggadocios way. There has never been a 10-month president that has accomplished what we have accomplished.

Trumps critics see bold words, but said he often delivers half-measures or rhetoric.

What he does is he wants to give the perception of campaign promises filled, said Brinkley. Its making people feel theres activity and boldness going on. But what it is is rhetorical boldness.
VIENNA  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that Ukraine was the sole sticking point keeping the United States and Russia from forging a closer relationship, suggesting that all other disputes were secondary.

The issue that stands in the way is Ukraine, Tillerson said.

The assessment from Americas top diplomat notably played down other areas of dispute, particularly Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, have concluded the Kremlin interfered in the election in an effort to help now-President Donald Trump and hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on that finding, and a special counsel is investigating whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian effort. He has said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putins personal denials that Moscow meddled.

But Tillerson hasnt shied away from accusing the Kremlin of election interference. One of the Trump teams toughest voices on Russia, he said in a speech last week that there was clear evidence of Russia meddling in democratic elections in the U.S. and Europe, and he called it part of an active threat of a recently resurgent Russia.

Tillersons focus on Ukraine came as he met with European diplomats at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, established during the Cold War to serve as a bridge between East and West. Tillerson insisted the U.S. could never overlook Russias attempted annexation of Crimea or Moscows military intrusion in eastern Ukraine.

We should be clear about the source of this violence, Tillerson said. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces.

Trump campaigned on the need to improve ties with Russia, Tillerson said, adding that normalizing relations between the nuclear powers was something the U.S. still badly would like to do. He said that from the start, the Trump administration had told Moscow that addressing Ukraine was essential to warmer ties.

We can have differences in other arenas, in Syria. We can have differences in other areas, Tillerson said. But when one country invades another, that is a difference that is hard to look past or to reconcile.

The sharp rebuke of Russia came just before Tillerson met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Seated around a large table with their aides, the two said nothing of substance when journalists were allowed in for a few seconds to witness the start of their meeting.

Tillerson met later with OSCE special monitors who track the security situation in Ukraine  including one injured by a hand grenade. The secretary of state said hed made progress with the Russian diplomat, though he declined to tell reporters what it was.

We get dialogue, we get cooperation. We dont have it solved, Tillerson said. You dont solve it in one meeting.

The strained ties between the two countries were also palpable in Moscows description of the meeting. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov had told Tillerson that aggressive U.S. military rhetoric about North Korea is impermissible. The Russian statement also included an unusual allegation: that the United States is trying to recruit Russian journalists in the U.S. as spies.

Earlier, in remarks at the OSCE conference, Lavrov acknowledged no fault in his countrys actions in Ukraine. He said Kiev was dragging its heels regarding proposals for U.N. peacekeepers, as well as obstructing several international channels set up to try to reduce violence and move toward a resolution to the conflict.

The whole responsibility for it lies with the Ukrainian authorities, Lavrov said.

Although he didnt bring up election concerns Thursday, Tillerson did briefly mention long-standing U.S. tensions with Russia over Syria. The Kremlin has propped up Syrian President Bashar Assad while the U.S. has aligned itself with opposition groups seeking his ouster.

Washington and Moscow have worked to ensure their militaries, both active in Syria in recent years, dont accidentally end up in confrontation. Yet there are growing U.S. concerns that Russias significant influence in Syria will make it harder to resolve the war there and to limit Iranian influence in the country now that the Islamic State group in Syria is near defeat.

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Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshlederman
CHARLESTON, S.C.  One by one, relatives of the late Walter Scott urged a judge to mete out a significant punishment for Michael Slager, the white former police officer who fatally shot Scott, an unarmed black man, in the back after a 2015 traffic stop.

Through tears, Scotts family told Slager they felt sorrow for him and the loss his young children would feel in his absence. In the end, a judge sentenced Slager to 20 years in prison, giving the Scott family the justice they had sought ever since a stranger came to them with the shocking video of Scott being killed.

I forgive Michael Slager. I forgive you, Scotts mother, Judy, said as she turned toward her sons killer. I pray for you, that you would repent and let Jesus come in your life.

Sitting just a few feet away, Slager wiped tears from his eyes and mouthed: Im sorry.

The punishment wrapped up a case that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Slager, 36, is one of only a few police officers to go to prison for a fatal shooting, and his sentence is by far the stiffest since the shootings came under extra scrutiny in recent years.

Attorneys for the former North Charleston officer said he shot the 50-year-old Scott in self-defense after the two fought and Scott grabbed Slagers stun gun. They said race didnt play a role in the shooting and Slager never had any racial animus toward minorities.

Still, Slager pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Scotts civil rights. As part of a plea agreement reached in May, prosecutors dropped state murder charges.

This is a tragedy that shouldnt have happened, U.S. District Judge David Norton said.

Slager apologized to the Scott family, calling Scotts mother and brothers by their names.

With my actions that day, Walter Scott is no longer with his family, and I am responsible for that, Slager said. Of their forgiveness, he added: I am very grateful for that.

Slagers emotions stood in stark contrast to his stoic demeanor during his state murder trial when jurors deadlocked over a verdict. He has several weeks to appeal his sentence and will be housed at the Charleston County jail until hes assigned to a federal prison.

After the sentencing, Judy Scott and Walters two brothers told reporters that, while they had made peace with the case, they remained adamant the officer should pay for his crime.

Who are we not to forgive? Rodney Scott said.

A bystander recorded the shooting on a cellphone, and it was shared around the world, setting off protests across the U.S. as demonstrators said it was another egregious example of police officers mistreating African-Americans.

Slager fired at Scotts back from 17 feet (5 meters) away. Five of eight bullets hit him.

The video was seized on by many as vivid proof of what they had been arguing for years: that white officers too often use deadly force unnecessarily against black people.

When the jury failed to reach a verdict in the state murder case, many black people and others were shocked and distressed, because the video seemed to some to be an open-and-shut case. Some despaired of ever seeing justice.

The shooting angered local African-Americans who complained for years that North Charleston police harassed blacks, pulling them over or questioning them unnecessarily as they cracked down on crime. But after the shooting, the Scott family successfully pleaded for calm, asking everyone to let the justice system run its course.

Two months after the shooting, a young white man killed nine black church members in a racially motivated massacre during a Bible study in Charleston. The family members of those victims struck a similar forgiveness tone after that attack.

Before Slagers sentence was handed down, the judge had to decide whether the shooting amounted to second-degree murder or manslaughter. Norton found that it was murder.

No matter what sentence I give, neither the Scott family nor the Slager family is going to think that its right, the judge said.

After the shooting, Slager picked up his stun gun and placed it next to Scott. Slager contended he was securing the weapon. Prosecutors think he put it there to bolster his self-defense story.

The judge also found that Slager obstructed justice when he made statements to state police after the shooting.

A pre-sentencing report for Slager found that he committed manslaughter and recommended 10 to nearly 13 years in prison. But the judge was not bound by that review.

If Slager had faced another state trial and been convicted of murder, he could have been sentenced to anywhere from 30 years to life in prison.

Convictions in police officer shootings are uncommon in the U.S. and prison time is even rarer.

South Carolina has been aggressive in charging white officers who shoot unarmed black people. Four have pleaded guilty in state or federal court in the past six years. But only Slager and former state trooper Sean Groubert, who shot a man as he tried to get his wallet during a seat belt violation check, will have been sent to prison. Groubert was sentenced to five years behind bars.

___

Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP . Read her work at https://apnews.com/search/meg%20kinnard .
GLENDALE, Ariz.  Police say a man was shot in the neck while on his way to work in the Phoenix area, and he continued driving to get help.

KNXV-TV reports that police say the man and another person were involved in an argument involving traffic, and the person fired a gun into the mans vehicle on Thursday morning.

Police say the man then drove a few miles to his place of work in Glendale to get help.

Police say the mans injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.

Glendale and Phoenix police are investigating and have not provided information on a suspect.

___

Information from: KNXV-TV, http://www.abc15.com
Kumbh Mela, the largest peaceful gathering of pilgrims on earth, has made it to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

By India Today Web Desk: Kumbh Mela, a famous Hindu festival, has been added to UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

On a rotational basis, it is celebrated once in three years at four different ghats - Haridwar, Ujjain, Nashik and Prayag. Given the math, Kumbh Mela returns to each location after a span of 12 years.

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From Nagas to devotees, Kumbh witnesses millions of spectators and is also known as India's largest religious gathering.

It is also said that the water in the four sacred rivers turn into nectar during the Kumbh Mela.

UNESCO added Kumbh Mela to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during its 12th session held at Jeju, South Korea from December 4 to December 9, 2017.

Kumbh Mela is also the largest peaceful gathering of pilgrims on earth.

The festival attracts millions of devotees and celebrates its history without any discrimination. It teaches tolerance and inclusiveness to the contemporary world.

The festival was appreciated for supporting human rights due to its equal behaviour towards every attendee without any kind of discrimination.

Photo: Reuters

An expert body, which recommended the nomination of Kumbh Mela, said that Kumbh will always maintain its continuity as it is an event where Guru-Shishya parampara is given preference. During Kumbh, saints and sadhus teach their disciples about traditional rituals and chants and pass on their knowledge to the newer generations.

Why Kumbh Mela is celebrated

Devotees believe that the holy water which turns into nectar during the mela has the power to wash away their sins.

The legend has it that during the battle between demigods (Devas) and demons (Asuras) over of a pot of Amrit (the elixir of immortality), a few drops fell on earth, one the four sites were Kumbh Mela is now celebrated since the belief is that the drops of elixir made the four rivers pure.

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CLOVIS, N.M.  A former deputy with a sheriffs office in eastern New Mexico has pleaded no contest to tampering with public records.

The Eastern New Mexico News reports the charge against 31-year-old Brandon Nolen will be dismissed if he completes 18 months of supervised probation.

The former deputy with the Curry County Sheriffs Office was arrested in June, and he also was charged with perjury and possession of a controlled substance. The other charges were dismissed under the plea agreement reached Wednesday.

Authorities say Nolen stole methamphetamines obtained during a March traffic stop and lied about it in sworn documents.

Nolens attorney Michael Garrett says the agreement is a conditional discharge and not an adjudication of guilt.

Prosecutors say more than 30 criminal cases were dismissed this summer because of Nolens association.

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Information from: The Eastern New Mexico News, http://www.easternnewmexiconews.com
WASHINGTON  Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt on Thursday defended his frequent taxpayer-funded travel and his purchase of a custom soundproof communications booth for his office, saying both were justified.

Pruitt made his first appearance before a House oversight subcommittee responsible for environmental issues since his confirmation to lead EPA in February. While his fellow Republicans largely used their time to praise Pruitts leadership, Democrats pressed Pruitt on his proposed rollbacks of environmental regulations, his past statements denying carbon emissions are primarily to blame for climate change and his spending while in office.

The former Oklahoma attorney general is under scrutiny after expense reports showed he often leaves Washington on Thursdays and Fridays for appearances in westward states before spending the weekend at his home in Tulsa and then returning to EPA headquarters on Mondays. The EPAs inspector general is currently investigating whether Pruitts trips violate EPAs travel policies and procedures.

Every trip Ive taken to Oklahoma with respect to taxpayer expenses has been business related, Pruitt said, before giving examples of meetings and environmental issues in his home state that he said required his personal attention. When Ive traveled back to the state for personal reasons, Ive paid for it. And that will bear out in the process.

Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, asked about the nearly $25,000 he spent on a custom soundproof booth for making private phone calls in his office  something none of his predecessors had.

Pruitt said the booth serves as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, known as a SCIF, which typically are secure rooms used to house computers and equipment for communicating over classified government networks. Former EPA officials said that explanation doesnt make much sense.

There was already a SCIF at EPA headquarters in Washington where officials with the appropriate levels of security clearance can go to access classified information. EPA employees rarely deal with government secrets. The agency does occasionally receive, handle and store classified material because of its homeland security, emergency response and continuity missions.

Pruitt said he needed the booth to have a secure phone line with which he could communicate with the White House, located just a few blocks away.

Cabinet level officials need to have access to secure communications, Pruitt said. Its necessary for me to be able to do my job.

Committee Democrats also grilled Pruitt over what ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey called an unprecedented assault on independent science by purging academic experts from federal advisory boards and replacing them with industry representatives.

Pruitt in November appointed a new slate of members to 22 boards that provide input on issues such as drinking water standards and air pollution limits. For the chairmanship of EPAs Board of Scientific Counselors, he selected a former agency official who became an executive of a company that burns waste to generate electricity.

He also said he has barred from the boards current recipients of EPA grants or those in a position to benefit from them to avoid conflicts of interest. Twenty scientists on three committees have received $77 million in grants, which causes a perception or appearance of a lack of independence in advising the agency on a host of issues, Pruitt told the subcommittee. Pruitt made no such prohibition for those who receive funding from industries regulated by EPA.

Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., asked for specific examples of an EPA grant recipient offering conflicted advice. Pruitt said he could provide many examples of scientists who received grants over a period of time that were substantial and it called into question that independence, and we addressed that through the policy that we implemented.

Tonko said Pruitts EPA was ignoring scientific consensus through its downplaying of climate change and its approach to regulation and eroding staff morale by censoring experts.

I believe EPA has all the signs of an agency captured by industry, he said.

___

Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan.

___

Follow AP environmental writer Michael Biesecker at http://Twitter.com/mbieseck
A jury on Friday sentenced an ex-priest  who once headed the Servants of the Paraclete retreat house in Jemez Springs  to life in prison for murdering a 25-year-old Texas schoolteacher and beauty queen.

Prosecutors asked for 57 years, reflecting how long John Bernard Feit, 85, has walked free since he killed the young woman who went to him for confession at a Texas church in 1960.

The Edinburg, Texas jury found him guilty Thursday in the killing of schoolteacher Irene Garza in McAllen, Texas.

She disappeared April 16, 1960. Her bludgeoned body was found days later. An autopsy revealed she had been raped while unconscious, beaten and suffocated.

Prosecutor Michael Garza, who is not related to the victim, asked the jury not to view the now elderly and weak Feit as he is today, but to try to imagine him as a 28-year-old man capable of subduing the woman.

Feit, then a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, came under suspicion in the investigation early on. He told police that he heard Garzas confession in the church rectory rather than in the confessional, but denied he had killed her.

Among the evidence that pointed to Feit as a suspect over the years: Two priests told authorities that Feit had confessed to them. One of them said he saw scratches on Feit soon after Garzas disappearance. His portable photographic slide viewer was found near Garzas body.

Feit had also been accused of attacking another young woman in a church in a nearby town just weeks before Garzas death. He pleaded no contest and was fined $500.

Feit was administrator in the 1960s at the Servants of the Paraclete facility in Jemez Springs, where he oversaw priests sent there for counseling. Several were later accused of sexually abusing New Mexico children while serving in parishes here, according to court records.

Among the priests Feit oversaw was James Porter, who pleaded guilty in 1993 to molesting 28 children during his time as a priest in the 1960s and early 1970s in the Fall River (Mass.) Diocese.

Porter was sent to the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs in 1967 and, from there, was transferred to St. Alice Church in Mountainair, where he allegedly abused more children. Porter died in prison in 2005.

Feit told New Mexico attorneys in a 1994 deposition that he became the superior of Via Coeli retreat house the Servants operated that accepted troubled priests sent from dioceses across the U.S., including priests accused of sexually abusing children.

The Servants closed its retreat house in the early 1990s as the first of hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the order and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe alleging their complicity in sexual abuse cases by priests.

Brad Hall, an Albuquerque attorney who has filed 58 lawsuits on behalf of alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, said Feit participated in decisions to assign known abusers to New Mexico parishes.
WARSAW, Poland  Polands prime minister resigned Thursday and will be replaced by Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, as the conservative ruling party took the risk of trading a popular leader for a former international banker who seemed better-suited to representing Poland to critics outside the country.

The reshuffling came after weeks of speculation that Prime Minister Beata Szydlo might be replaced, even though her government is popular with many Poles and the economy is booming.

Szydlo resigned during a meeting of the ruling Law and Justice party in Warsaw, party spokeswoman Beata Mazurek said. The party leadership wants Szydlo to serve in another senior government position, Mazurek said without elaborating.

Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Dziedziczak suggested Szydlo will be the deputy prime minister, a post also Morawiecki held in her government.

Government critics interpreted the leadership change as primarily an attempt to divert attention from a vote scheduled for Friday on laws that would give the ruling party significant power over Polands judicial system.

Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski is widely seen as the real power behind the government, and its not clear if Morawiecki will seek to set an independent course or if he would also largely follow the direction Kaczynski sets, as Szydlo did.

Some analysts think Kaczynski wanted Szydlo to step down because she was unable to manage government infighting. They said Kaczynski respects Morawiecki, a party newcomer, but does not see him as a threat.

The state news agency PAP reported that lawmakers will vote Tuesday on Morawiecki and his Cabinet. Approval is expected given the ruling partys majority in parliament.

While Szydlos 2-year-old government is riding high in opinion polls, Morawiecki has overseen its economic development. Poland now enjoys record low unemployment of around 7 percent, growing wages and growth of over 4 percent per year.

Still, the countrys international image has suffered dramatically since Law and Justice assumed power, mostly over new laws that have eroded the independence of the judicial branch.

The government also drew criticism from abroad following an Independence Day march last month that was organized by far-right groups. It drew an estimated 60,000 participants, including some who carried banners and signs with white supremacist messages.

Some government members praised the march. The interior minister calling it a beautiful sight, although Polands president denounced it unequivocally.

Some see Morawiecki, a former international banker who speaks foreign languages, as better placed than Szydlo to defend the country in dealings with European partners who believe democracy is eroding in Poland.

He is expected to reassure financial markets, given that he is regarded as business friendly, especially by the standards of the others in the Law and Justice party.

Szydlo, a coal miners daughter and the mother of a priest, has wide support among conservatives. Many party supporters said in recent days they didnt want her to resign.

She thanked her supporters in a tweet Thursday night.

These two years were an amazing time for me, and serving Poland and Poles an honor, she wrote.

Earlier Thursday, Szydlo and her Cabinet easily survived a no-confidence vote in parliament called by the opposition centrist Civic Platform party, which accuses the government of harming Poland with laws that it says are anti-democratic.

Two bills are set for a final vote in parliament Friday that would give the government greater control of the judicial system. The bills have been criticized by the European Union and others as an anti-democratic threat to Polands rule of law.

___

Vanessa Gera contributed.
SANTA FE  A bipartisan group of New Mexico legislators is pushing to expand

dental care in rural areas by creating a new system of licensed dental therapists  a mid-level professional between a dentist and a hygienist.

Oral health, supporters say, is a foundation for good overall health care and well-being.

Can you imagine yourself as a kid having a tooth ache? It just bothers you, Sen. Benny Shendo, D-Jemez Pueblo, said in an interview. Youre not going to focus on school and so forth.

A dental proposal in this years legislative session, House Bill 264, won overwhelming approval in the House but failed to reach the Senate floor. It would have established a licensing system for dental therapists and allowed them to practice in New Mexico.

The primary sponsors were Rep. Dennis Roch, R-Logan, and Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque.

But a new coalition of lawmakers has signed onto the push for dental therapists: Roch, Shendo, Democratic Sen. Bill Tallman of Albuquerque, Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of Alamogordo and Democratic Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque

Barbara Webber, executive director Health Action New Mexico, a consumer health advocacy group, said dental therapists would be mid-level professionals, akin to physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

They would get an associates degree, probably through a three-year program at a community college, she said. The job might pay in the neighborhood of $60,000 to $70,000 a year, Webber said, and fill a critical need in New Mexico.

About half of the states population has advanced gum disease, one of the worst rates in the nation, Webber said.

The upcoming legislative session is generally dedicated to the state budget and financial matters. The dental proposal includes an appropriation, Webber said, so it might be considered germane to the session, even if Republican Gov. Susana Martinez doesnt place it on the agenda.

The 30-day session starts Jan. 16.
PHOENIX  A former convict has been arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting his ex-wife and holding her against her will for nearly two weeks in suburban Phoenix home.

Maricopa County Sheriffs officials say 31-year-old J.W. Carlson is being held on $500,000 bond on suspicion of kidnapping and aggravated assault.

They say Carlson was released from a state prison in May after serving 14 months for aggravated assault.

Sheriffs officials were notified Nov. 30 after the woman went to a hospital for treatment.

She reportedly agreed to go with Carlson to his house in Tonopah, about 50 miles west of Phoenix, to help him with some repairs.

The woman told authorities Carlson took methamphetamine, beat her when she refused to have sex with him and refused to let her leave for 13 days.
HOUSTON  Prosecutors say a Wisconsin man must serve 11 years in federal prison for traveling to Texas with the intention of having sex with a 4-year-old girl.

Benjamin David Sherwood of La Crosse, Wisconsin, was sentenced Thursday in Houston as part of an online sting. The 42-year-old Sherwood in August pleaded guilty to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and also to enticement of a minor.

Authorities say Sherwood in 2015 thought he was chatting with a mother offering her then-2-year-old daughter for sex. The woman is in law enforcement and theres no child.

Prosecutors say Sherwood in May was arrested in Houston where hed rented a hotel room and had child clothes and a stuffed animal in anticipation of sex with a preschooler.
Some high-profile Democrats are flying into Alabama this weekend to encourage people to send Doug Jones to the Senate.

His campaign wants it known that he didnt ask for the help as he tries to upset controversial Republican Roy Moore in Tuesdays special election.

Jones and national Democrats have tried to keep Washingtons fingerprints off the race, given the partys unpopularity in Alabama.

Jones has to win over an electorate that President Donald Trump carried by 28 percentage points, and hasnt elected a Democrat to be senator in a quarter-century. Hes trying to persuade reliably conservative white voters to abandon their usual loyalties while firing up turnout among black voters and white liberals who typically combine for about 40 percent of the vote.

Even with an opponent like Moore  twice removed as the states top judge and now accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls  Democrats quietly admit that Jones cant build a winning coalition if hes viewed as tethered too closely to potential colleagues on Capitol Hill. So Jones keeps his distance, and national party operatives and grassroots organizations stay in the background.

This is an Alabama-based campaign run on issues all Alabamians care about, like jobs, education, the economy, says Jones top campaign aide Giles Perkins, a veteran Democratic player in Alabama.

Jones, who grew up in metro Birminghams old steel mill neighborhoods, is a former prosecutor best known for helping convict two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for killing four black children in the 1963 bombing of Birminghams 16th Street Baptist Church. He mixes attacks on Moore with an emphasis on his biography and economic arguments about kitchen-table issues.

Even when it comes to sexual misbehavior, Jones notes that Democrats stand accused as well.

I applaud the women who have come forward against Roy Moore. And I think its time that those women be believed, just like the women who are coming out against Sen. (Al) Franken, Rep. (John) Conyers and others, Jones said Wednesday.

Jones also walks a tightrope with surrogates. Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned with Jones in October, but the candidate has crisscrossed the state mostly on his own since. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will appear with Jones this weekend, but Perkins emphasized that it was Rep. Terri Sewell, Alabamas lone Democrat in Congress, who extended the invites to her fellow black Democrats.

Sewell spokesman Chris MacKenzie said that the congresswoman invited Booker and that her constituents asked Patrick to visit. Shes been working with Doug to make sure these are successful events, MacKenzie said.

The campaign is maintaining its cautious course, even as Moore has regained support from his national party and Trump. The president said he accepts Moores denials of sexual impropriety and warned we dont need a liberal Democrat in the seat held previously by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

National Democrats reluctance is evident in their lack of a major advertising push or cash transfers to the Jones campaign by party committees. Asked about the race, a spokesman at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees Washington headquarters declined to say anything on the record, deferring to Jones.

Its a stark contrast to this years other headliner campaigns, which gave Democrats big wins in Virginias statewide and legislative elections, and a bitter defeat in Georgia. In both cases, the national party and activist groups poured millions into advertising and voter turnout.

As Georgias special congressional election became the most expensive House race in American history, Republicans used the spending to define Democrat Jon Ossoff as a tool of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, an unpopular figure in Atlantas GOP-leaning suburbs.

Its just part of the Republican playbook right now to nationalize these races where they have the built-in advantage, says Keenan Pontoni, who managed Ossoffs race.

Jones has mostly escaped the onslaught of attack ads Ossoff faced, but both races offer reminders that Democrats must address their own branding challenges ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and not simply count on dissatisfaction with Trump and Republicans.

Jones is targeting likely voters with the help of national Democratic Partys database of Alabamians voting history, consumer preferences and political leanings. National party fundraising emails urge donors to support him  but theyre boilerplate campaign tactics.

There are no campaign offices financed or staffed by the Democratic National Committee, no national party ads on television. Jones television ads dont mention his party. The state Democratic Party, such as it is, has been sidelined.

We just have two paid staffers, and no DNC funding beyond the $10,000 monthly allowance every state party gets nationwide, Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Worley said.

What Jones doesnt lack is money: As of Nov. 22, he outraised Moore $11.8 million to $5.3 million.

Perkins said donations paid for enough staffers to shepherd in-state volunteers.

We are out there every day finding progressive voters in every neighborhood we can, says Susan Griffin, a leader of Huntsvilles chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots organization of the left.

Democrats say they havent ceded organizational advantages to Moore, because the Republican National Committee also kept its distance before belatedly committing to a mere $170,000 in last-minute support.

This is the first time since the 90s that we have seen anything like this, all this excitement, Worley said. Democrats truly believe we can win.

___

Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP.
"The country will be benefited from Rahul's elevation as party's next President", says Lalu Prasad Yadav, backing Congress scion's candidature as Prime Ministerial candidate for 2019 elections.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Just few days after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's elevation as party's next President, RJD chief Lalu Prasad has declared that Rahul will be the PM candidate of the opposition parties in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Speaking Exclusively to India Today, the RJD chief said that Rahul's elevation in the Congress will be beneficial for the nation.

"I extend full support to Rahul Gandhi as he is set to become Congress president. The country will be benefited after he becomes the party president. Why can't he be the PM candidate of the anti-BJP forces in 2019? RJD will fully support him", declared Lalu Prasad Yadav, RJD supremo.

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He also said that BJP was trying desperately to import the controversial issue of Ram temple to Gujarat to polarize the voters ahead of the first round of polling on 9th December. Lalu said that BJP had realized that they have been pushed to the mat in Gujarat and therefore PM Narendra Modi was raising the issue of Ram temple.

"BJP's fall in the country has begun from Gujarat. PM is trying to divert the issue of Gujarat election by raising the Ram temple issue.

Only Supreme Court will decide on the Ram temple issue but it is already clear that BJP will lose elections in Gujarat and therefore they are raising Ram temple issue to get votes. I know there will be no polarization this time", said the former Bihar CM.

Lalu who has not been invited by the Congress to campaign in Gujarat, said that he was keeping a close eye on the developments in the poll bound state. He said he was regularly getting feedback from Patidar leader Hardik Patel and Congress leader Ashok Gehlout through telephone.

"I am connected to Gujarat polls through phone conferencing. I speak to Hardik and Ashok Gehlout often. The voters are in a silent mode and I know that they will punish the BJP on 9th and 14th Dec, the voting days", said Yadav.

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BigRock, part of Endurance International Groups family of brands, in association with Neustar, operator of the global registry for .biz and .co has tied up with The Viral Fever (TVF) for their first ever video content partnership. With their association, BigRock and Neustar, will address the market jointly through the campaign, highlighting the benefits of getting online with .biz domains in India. The campaign titled Naam Mein kya Rakha Hain (Whats in a Name?) will be streamed through TVFs sister channel, The Screen Patti (TSP).

Indias push towards digitization has transformed the business and the consumer landscape in India. As consumers are moving online, the need of the hour for small businesses and entrepreneurs is to rapidly migrate to online mediums for both convenience and growth. According to a recent Google-KPMG study, digitally-engaged businesses are able to grow their customer base significantly with 52 per cent catering to customers beyond their home city versus only 29 per cent offline. In order to stay relevant, businesses will need to carve out an online presence and bring in fresh set of potential customers. The association between BigRock and Neustar aims to enhance and stimulate the demand for .biz domains by encouraging Indian entrepreneurs and small businesses to adopt the domain and get online in a seamless and quick manner with BigRocks Website Builder.

India as a country is experiencing rapid internet penetration and businesses everyday are realising the importance of having an online presence. We have also witnessed an upsurge in the .biz domain as a globally accepted TLD. Through our partnership with Neustar and TVF, we are excited to promote the highlights and benefits of getting online with a .biz domain to expand their brand presence. said Shashank Mehrotra, Managing Director, APAC at Endurance International Group (EIG). TVF has been enthralling its audience with unique and compelling web content and brand partnerships since its inception. As we understand the importance of content, we aim to achieve great success in effectively engaging with Indian businesses and SMBs through the sketch.

The sketch conceptualized and created by TSP, addresses the common dilemmas faced by professionals who wish to expand their customer base. It will be promoted on all digital platforms of BigRock and The Screen Patti.

"Slowly but steadily Digital is impacting all of us whether how we shop, travel, entertain, transact etc and the next big wave of adoption is going to come from the SME / Trader community. BigRock wants to talk to that community and be the stepping stone to that successful transition and have engaged with The Screenpatti (TSP) from the TVF network to tell some delightful and relatable stories with 'Naam mein kya rakha hai," said Vijay Koshy, Head of Brand Partnerships at The Viral Fever.

BigRock has previously created ad films like Rachels Yoga, Satya Lie Detector and Vickys Make up studio, which emphasized on the importance of a .biz domain for budding entrepreneurs, while taking on a humorous tone to appeal to wider audiences.

BigRock will be giving out a .biz domain at a discounted rate of Rs. 249 along with 50% off on a 5 page website builder package (both for the first year)
Omnicom Media Group India, COO Harish Shriyan, has been promoted to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the media group. In his latest capacity, Shriyan will now be in-charge of the performance of the groups four offices in the country and will drive the companys expansion process across the country to meet the demands of new growth.

Shriyan has been associated with the group since its establishment in India in 2007 and has been serving as the Chief Operating Officer since 2013, Shriyan has developed an unrivalled understanding of its agencies niche offerings amidst a highly competitive marketplace. In this new capacity, Shriyan will work closely with the leadership of OMD and PHD, namely Priti Murthy and Jyoti Bansal respectively, fueling the agencies continued growth, driving digital transformation and innovation for its clients, and delivering exceptional performance in the Indian market.

Over the past decade, Shriyan has played an integral role in establishing Omnicom Media Groups presence in the Indian market, commented Torie Henderson, CEO, Omnicom Media Group, South East Asia and India. This promotion is a testament to his hard work and dedication over the years, as well as the respect and trust he has earned from our staff, clients and partners. He has a clear mandate to drive innovation, digital transformation and performance for our clients and I am delighted that he has risen to this challenge.

Having been with the group for just over a decade, the agencies and its people have become like family and I cant think of a better place or team to be a part of, added Shriyan. I am excited to take on this new challenge and work closely with our talented management team on the next chapter for our agencies, especially at a time when the media and marketing landscape is transforming so rapidly and profoundly. There has never been a more exciting time to work in the industry, with emerging opportunities allowing us to make an even bigger impact for our clients brands. I look forward to raising the bar even further for our agencies, our people and our clients.
Directed by Rahul Dholakia, starring Shah Rukh Khan in and as Raees and set in the 80s and 90s, Raees is a parallel government, an outlaw and also a Robin Hood figure; a vigilante who is a voice to the voiceless, the underdog and the daring crook. The movie premieres on Saturday, 9th December at 8PM on &Pictures. Raees is a criminal with a heart of gold, the man who gets teary-eyed before shooting his mentor, donates books to the local school, cooks for his wife and even helps women start their own businesses. But he is also the smart gangster who always outsmarts the cops with his witty plans. Rumored to be based on a true story of a Gujarat based bootlegger, the movie also features Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mahira Khan, Atul Kulkarni, Narendra Jha, Jaideep Ahlawat amongst others in pivotal roles.

The movie marks the first time when Nawazudding Siddiqui shares screen space with the superstar Shah Rukh Khan and his portrayal of an IPS officer with dry wit, humour, intelligence and an equal opposite to Raees is another highlight of the movie. The wordplay with dialogues like Koi dhanda chhota nahin hota aur dhande se bada koi dharam nahin hota, Baniye ki dimaag aur Miyabhai ki daring, dono hai iske paas, Mohalla bachate bachate shehar jala diya and many more coupled with chartbusting music inlcuding Zaalima, Udi Udi and Laila Main Laila makes Raees a blockbuster family entertainer. The movie also boasts of jaw dropping high-octane action, thrilling cat-and-mouse chase, and a unique sneak peek into the world of smuggling, politics and much more.

The master of gangster dramas, Amitabh Bachchan had commented, Congratulations Shahrukh RAEES loved your anger in it!! Seriously some moments were electric.

The film captures the journey of Raees (Shah Rukh Khan) who, as a child, learns the tricks of the liquor smuggling business and later decides to branch out on his own once he grows up. When ACP Majmudar (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is posted in his area, he meets his equal and a dangerous cat-and-mouse chase begins. Intoxicated by success and power, Raees not only reaches unimaginable heights but is also drawn into dirty politics, earning him countless enemies. His final consignment turns out to be a betrayal by those closest to him.

What does fate have in store for the most dangerous criminal of Gujarat?

Catch the rise of Gujarats most infamous gangster Raees on Saturday, 9th December at 8 PM only on &Pictures.
New York Festivals International Advertising Awards has announced the 2018 Grand Jury. To date, NYFs powerhouse 300+ Grand Jury represents the most diverse brain trust of global creative minds in the advertising industry from 50 countries.

From Cape Town to Sao Paola and Berlin to Tokyo, this peer-nominated panel provides a 360-degree creative view of the advertising world today. 2018s Grand Jury is comprised of Chief Creative Officers, Executive Creative Directors, Creative Directors, Art Directors, Copywriters, Executive Producers, and Marketing/ PR pros all playing a pivotal role in selecting the Worlds Best Advertising winners.

From India, there are two members in the Grand Jury  Viral Pandya, CCO/ Co-Founder, Out of the Box, and Prashant Issar, Executive Producer/ Owner, Tubelight Films (Film Craft Jury).

New York Festivals is honoured to have these prominent industry creatives participate on the 2018 Grand Jury. This 300-strong creative jury were all nominated by their peers, creatives who were judges themselves last year, and are respected globally for their innovative work and award-winning creative talent, said Michael Demetriades, President/Executive Director of New York Festivals International Advertising Awards.

Using New York Festivals online judging platform, the Grand Jury will review global entries through two rounds of meticulous judging and select the creative work that merits Finalist Status. These entries will then move on to the medalist round. NYFs Grand Jury is also the first line of defense, scrutinising ads to provide security against possible scam ads.

2018s trophy winning entries will be determined by the 8th annual Executive Jury, an elite panel of 30+ Global CCOs. The Executive Jury will gather in April 2018 in New York City for four rounds of judging across all mediums and select 2018s First Prize, Second Prize, Third Prize, Grand Award winners, and Best in Show. The members of the 2018 Executive Jury will be announced soon.

NYFs juries are dedicated to the process of selecting the Worlds Best Advertising, these creatives that are nominated to serve on the jury provide both their time and creative insights to ensure that the best creative work from around the globe is honoured, Demetriades added. Their creativity and industry expertise represent the diverse range of creative talent present in todays international advertising space.

The 2018 New York Show awards ceremony and gala will take place on the evening of Thursday, May 17, 2018 at Jazz at Lincoln Centers Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, New York City.

The 2018 competition entry deadline is January 31, 2018.
BEIJING, December 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded VFS Global an extension to its global contract for visa processing services. The contract extension covers four regions - Asia and Oceania, Europe & Russia, Middle East & Africa, and the Americas.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150528/747609-a )



VFS Global has been serving the Royal Norwegian Government since 2010 and currently operates 101 Visa Application Centres across 39 countries for Norway.

The contract renewal was signed by Per Egil Selvaag, Director General, The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Chris Dix, Head - Business Development, VFS Global.

This is a significant win for the company, which processes approximately 260,000 Norway visa applications globally each year.

Chris Dix, Head - Business Development, VFS Global, remarked, "We are delighted to continue our partnership with the Norwegian Government. This is not only commercially important for VFS Global, but also demonstrates the Norwegian Government's satisfaction with and trust in VFS Global, and further reinforces our company's position as the leading visa services partner to Schengen member states and to 57 client governments worldwide."

The Royal Norwegian Government reported the country's tourism industry had another record year in 2016, following strong growth in the number of visitors in 2015. Figures compiled by Statistics Norway show average annual growth in the number of foreign visitors to Norway has exceeded the international average since 2010. The tourism industry accounted for over 4% of value creation and almost 9% of employment in the Norwegian business community in 2015. Nearly 160,000 people work in the tourism industry in Norway. Travellers from China, Russia, Thailand and India account for most of the inbound traffic into Norway.

For VFS Global, 2017 has been an eventful year and has outperformed competition by being awarded contracts for seven new client governments this year alone namely, Bahrain, Cote D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Nigeria, Slovakia and Ukraine. VFS Global is the trusted partner to 57 client governments worldwide, offering a range of visa, permit, passport, and consular services.

About VFS Global

VFS Global is the world's largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide. With 2430 Application Centres, operations in 129 countries across five continents and over 158 million applications processed as on 31 October, 2017, VFS Global is the trusted partner of 57 client governments. VFS Global's worldwide operations are certified ISO 9001:2008 for Quality Management System, ISO 27001:2013 for Information Security Management System and ISO 14001:2004 for Environmental Management System. For more information, please visit http://www.vfsglobal.com.
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
Accused claims that he burnt the man to 'save a girl for Love Jihad'

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Shambunath Raigar, the man allegedly behind Rajsamand hate crime, has been arrested by the district police. Shambunath was arrested from Kelva region in Rajsamand.

Shambunath had allegedly burnt a man alive for committing 'love jihad'. A video showing him burning the man alive had surfaced after which senior police officials from the district had been camping there keeping tight vigil on the law and order situation.

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After the first video, another video of Shambunath had surfaced in which he admitted to committing the crime and mentioned that he will surrender.

In one of the videos, Shambunath can be heard mentioning that he committed the act to save a girl from 'love Jihad'.

Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh was identified as the person seen in the video killed allegedly in the name of 'love Jihad'.

Senior police official, IG Anand Srivastava of Udaipur Range, has been camping in Rajsamand to keep an eye on the law and order situation prevailing there after the incident. The police had been searching for the accused who was arrested today morning.

The perpetrator of the heinous crime had made a video of the act which was later put on the social media.

The entire incident happened on Dev heritage road in Rajnagar area of Rajsamand.

The police had initially received information about the semi - burnt body of a man being found. Senior police officials including SP Manoj Kumar, ASP Manish Tripathi, DSP Rajendra Singh reached the location and found a badly disfigured body. A team of FSL, dog squad was summoned.

The police also asked people in the nearby areas to identify the person. The man in the video was identified by some as Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh.

From the location of the murder, an agriculture equipment used in the murder and the dead man's bike and slippers were found.

An attempt was made to burn the victim by pouring kerosene on him.

The police had been conducting its investigations. The video that surfaced on social media showed Shambhu Nath Raigar hitting the victim, Mohammad Bhatta Sheikh. In the video, it can be seen that initially the perpetrator hits the man killed with an agricultural equipment, then pours kerosene on his body and burns him. Raigar can be seen mentioning that those who indulge in 'love Jihad' will be met with same fate.

Viral Video: Man burnt to death to 'save girl from love jihad' in Rajasthan

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A day after seven Maoists were killed in an encounter in forest near Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, two wanted Maoists surrendered in front of the Gadchiroli Police and officers from the Anti-Naxal Operations of Maharashtra Police.

By Divyesh Singh: A day after seven Maoists were killed in an encounter in forest near Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, two wanted Maoists surrendered in front of the Gadchiroli Police and officers from the Anti-Naxal Operations of Maharashtra Police.

The two Maoists identified as Kamla Gavle and Nagesh Madavi had joined Maoist operations since 2011 and were involved in various cases across the red corridor in border areas of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. Gavle and Madavi were wanted in cases of murder of police informants, gram panchayat members , landmine blasts and attack on security forces. They had rewards of Rs 2 lakh declared on them by the government.

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Officers from the Anti-Naxal Operations said that the numbers of Maoists surrendering to security forces were rising. The surrender could also be due to fear after the encounter that happened on Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday morning, C 60 commandos from the Anti-Naxal Operations were carrying out patrolling in the Kalled forests about 15-km north of Zinganoor outpost in Sironcha tehsil of Gadchiroli. Between 6 and 7 am, some Maoists opened fire on the C 60 team, commandos retaliated and the encounter went on for nearly an hour. C 60 commandos found seven bodies of Maoists on the spot from where they had received fire.

The deceased Maoists were identified as Ashok Pendam alias Aaytu, 34, resident of Lingampalli, in Gadchiroli who was the Dalam commander for Aheri area with Rs 8 lakh reward on him.

From the five women killed in the encounter, one was Sunita Kodape, the Sironcha area assistant commander. Another assistant commander killed in the encounter was identified as Chandu from Aheri area.

Both Kodape and Chandu had reward of Rs 6 lakh declared on them by the government. Three others killed were identified as Sarita Kavande from Bijapur, Chhattisgarh, Shaila Pokur from Bhamragarh are and Akhila Kulmethe from Aheri -- the three had rewards of Rs 2 lakh each declared by the government.

As part of rehabilitation project, officers from the Anti-Naxal Operations help the surrendered Maoists with jobs, residence and other facilities so that they could start their life afresh. Other than rehabilitating them, police also help the surrendered Maoists in conducting medical surgeries for vasectomy that every Maoist is forced to undergo while joining. The rehabilitated Maoists are helped in getting married and start their life with needed financial help too. The rehabilitation has been very successful as in 2017 around 19 Maoists surrendered, which included some top commanders of PGLA.

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December 7, 2017

CAIRO  Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit transmitted a warning from the league to Ethiopia during the opening session of the fourth Arab Water Forum Nov. 26, saying, Water security for Egypt  the biggest Arab country in terms of population  is part and parcel of the Arab national security.

After announcing, on Nov. 12, the failure of negotiations to resolve the Renaissance Dam crisis with Ethiopia and Sudan, Egypt is now taking several measures to internationalize the Nile River quota crisis. Egypt mainly wants to establish an international coalition for the downstream countries harmed by the dam projects conducted by upstream countries. The measure was proposed during the Arab Water Forum, which was organized by the Arab Water Council and held in Cairo on Nov. 26-28, under the umbrella of the Arab League and in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.

Egyptian and Arab officials talked about the internationalization of the Renaissance Dam issue on the sidelines of the Arab Water Forum.

Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan, the honorary president of the Arab Water Council, called for holding a water summit to face water piracy and terrorism. He said in his speech, Water terrorism is as dangerous as any other kind of terrorism. We have to be armed with all methods to fight it. He added that a force is needed to prevent water extortion.

Aboul Gheit noted that the Arab League is following up on the talks between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia with concern. He said, We do not feel Ethiopia is willing to coordinate and cooperate much. Ethiopian plans to operate the dam and use its water for irrigation are still vague and worrying.

Meanwhile, a meeting is scheduled in Cairo between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn at a date to be decided on, some time in mid-December. Desalegn will address the Egyptian parliament and discuss the Renaissance Dam establishment on the Blue Nile and Egypts concerns of the negative repercussions on its water share.

On Dec. 4, 19 members of parliament submitted a memorandum to Egyptian parliamentary speaker Ali Abdel Aal refusing to welcome Desalegn in parliament, as the visit could give Ethiopia the upper hand in international forums over Egypt.

Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the head of the Arab Water Council and former minister of water resources and irrigation, told Al-Monitor, The Arab Water Forum discussed  with government officials and water experts representing 22 Arab and African countries in different sessions  ways to deal with conflicts over water shares in the Middle East and North Africa region. He indicated that the council is trying to develop a global coalition of downstream countries to face the dominance and control of upstream countries with transboundary rivers over water.

Hussein el-Atifi, the coordinator of the forum and former minister of water resources and irrigation, told Al-Monitor, Upstream countries like Ethiopia believe the agreements regulating the management of shared rivers with their neighbors conflict with their desire for sovereignty and control of river resources.

One of the forum's sessions  titled Shared Water Resources  discussed the actions of Ethiopia, a state from which 22 rivers flow, against seven of its neighbors that share rivers with it. Al-Monitor attended the session in which an official Somali convoy took part. Abdullah Elmi Mohammad, the head of the Somali Center for Water and Environment, explained the damages on Somalia due to Ethiopias construction of the Melka Wakena Dam on the Shebelle River.

During the session, Abu Zeid elaborated on Ethiopias construction of 15 dams, excluding the Renaissance Dam, on the shared rivers with seven neighboring countries without consulting anyone, which constitutes a threat for these countries water security. There are four dams on the Blue Nile shared with Sudan, South Sudan and Egypt; the Upper Atbara Dam that is shared with Eritrea and Sudan; four dams on Awash River shared with Djibouti; two dams on Shebelle River shared with Somalia; and three dams on Omo River shared with Kenya.

Abu Zeid noted, The total annual hydropower capacity in Ethiopia is about 3,696 megawatts. Ethiopia's current export of electricity, its national hydropower annual potential of 45,000 MW generated from all its rivers and its plans to export electricity generated from the new 6,000 MW of the Renaissance Dam confirm that the country does not need the power it wants to generate from the Renaissance Dam for local demand.

Ashraf Badr, the media adviser at the Arab Water Council, told Al-Monitor, Ethiopias greed to produce hydroelectric power from dams aims at monopolizing the energy export markets rather than fulfilling local demand.

Somalia's Minister of Irrigation Salim Aliyu told reporters on the sidelines of the forum, Somalia is currently negotiating with Ethiopia through the East African Community to reach an agreement on the joint management of transboundary rivers.

Egypt started mobilizing Arab support on the Renaissance Dam issue through various steps. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir, on Nov. 14, and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the kingdom understands the Egyptian concerns about its water security. The Egyptian government also issued a statement Nov. 15, in which it affirmed that it has taken the necessary measures at all levels because its water security is one of the pillars of its national security.

Egypts former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hossam Maghazi told Al-Monitor, Egypts political escalation in the Renaissance Dam issue has become necessary. With the dead end that the technical negotiation path has reached, Ethiopia seems ready to start filling the dam reservoir in 2018.
December 6, 2017

In the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Egypt's history, Sinai tribesmen have begun calling on the government to arm them so they can help counter further such actions. The Nov. 24 bomb and shooting attack  thought to have been carried out by Wilayat Sinai, an Islamic State (IS) affiliate  at a Sufi mosque in the Bedouin village of al-Rawda, in northern Sinai, left more than 300 civilians dead, including 27 children.

Sheikh Issa al-Kharafin of the Rumailat tribe told Al-Monitor that military officials and leaders of north Sinai tribes have held several meetings to develop a framework for coordination going forward. According to Kharafin, the meetings were conducted separately with each tribe, some of which requested that the state arm their members to actively participate in military and security operations against violent extremists.

There are some 11 tribes in the Sinai Peninsula, and over the years, they have quietly worked with the army, most recently by providing information about the extremists' hideouts. Kharafin said security officials told the tribes' seeking arms that their requests would be taken into consideration. He, however, opposes such a move, asserting, Weapons must be kept in the hands of the army and the police alone. Only Sinai residents who can help and accompany the security forces during their security operations should be armed.

Kharafin believes the role of the tribes, who are Bedouin, should be limited to intelligence on hiding places and accompanying security forces on their raids and combing operations, because they are knowledgable about the Sinai's terrain, including the mountainous areas.

Hassan Khalaf, the leader of the Sawarka tribe, supports the idea of arming tribesmen to help security forces confront extremist groups.

We have been asking for this solution for years, Khalaf told Al-Monitor. Tribes should be armed as well as provide intelligence. He said tribes have proposed taking up arms only under the umbrella and supervision of the armed forces, working alongside them.

Sheikh Abdel Qader Mubarak of the Jarirat tribe, a section of the Sawarka, told Al-Monitor that he agrees with Khalafs statement. Mubarak added that arming tribesmen could pose a threat to the entire region, which is why it should only be done under the supervision of the armed forces.

Nasser Salem, the former head of the military reconnaissance apparatus of the armed forces and professor of strategic sciences at Nasser Military Academy, told Al-Monitor that arming Sinai residents and allowing them to individually confront extremist groups risks civil war in the event of disagreements emerging between or among the tribes.

Assuming that this proposal is indeed approved by the General Command of the army, several controls must be established, the most important of which is working under the command of the army and limiting actions to security operations only, Salem said.

The army and the Ministry of Interior have yet to comment on the tribes demands. On Nov. 25, after the mosque attack, however, military spokesman Col. Tamer al-Rifai issued a statement in which he noted intelligence cooperation with Sinai tribes to assist the army in carrying out airstrikes on extremists' positions used for planning and launching attacks.

Ahmed Ban, an independent researcher focusing on Islamic groups, opposes calls to arm the Bedouin and said attempts to apply Iraqs Sahawat (Awakening) model will not succeed in Egypt.

The Sahawat forces, mostly Sunni tribal groups, emerged in late 2006 to confront al-Qaeda in Iraq. The United States helped create the forces by directly providing arms and financial support as well as indirectly through the central government.

Ban added that IS is seeking to loosen the tightening siege it faces as a result of army security operations. It is trying to do so by igniting the situation to prompt the arming of tribes, a move it hopes will create security and political chaos, which would serve its interests.

On Nov. 25, the Union of Sinai Tribes had issued a statement following a meeting to discuss the implications of the al-Rawda attack. We will take revenge on extremists, the union said. The Sinai massacre will backfire. We shall not rest before we take revenge.

In an article published Nov. 26 in Al-Masry Al-Youm, Amr al-Shobaki, a political adviser at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the al-Rawda attackers are seeking to ignite tribal conflict and civil strife in Sinai by killing worshippers with the expectation that leading tribes will call for extrajudicial revenge.

Shobaki claimed that the potential escalation in Sinai  which he said is being fueled by unnamed state parties and media outlets  by advocating the arming of tribes portends a catastrophic situation promoted by people unaware of the potential consequences. It is as if people are calling for a civil war in Sinai, he said.

Mohamed Noureddine, a former assistant to the interior minister, agrees with the need to be wary of such calls to avoid sliding toward civil war. We will not form armed militias, even if the objective of such militias is to confront terrorism, he told Al-Monitor. Sinai residents are only required to provide information [to the security forces].

Despite the overall positive role played by Sinai tribes in supporting the army and police forces in their battle against extremist groups, some tribesmen have been accused of supporting and providing intelligence about the army to these groups.

These accusations prompted the Union of Sinai Tribes to issue a statement Nov. 30. Any entity, party or individual providing logistical, material or moral support [to terrorist groups] will be dealt with like a murderer and deprived of their rights, and all tribes are now aware of this, the union said. The preparations are underway for the battle to cleanse Sinai. It is a right for all of the Sinai residents, and we shall take action soon with our armed forces against terrorists.

Ban expects the al-Rawda attack to change the minds of some tribesmen previously reluctant to support the state in confronting terrorism. The groups destroyed a favorable environment with the attack and can no longer use religion to mobilize and recruit people.

On Nov. 29, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi tasked Mohamed Farid Hegazy, the army chief of staff, and Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar with restoring security in Sinai within a period not to exceed three months. He stressed that the state is moving to confront terrorist plots.

Khalaf, Kharafin and Mubarak praised this step, with Mubarak also calling for full coordination between all security services in Sinai and for working with a unified tribal leadership to address the terrorist threat.

Ban expressed some skepticism, however, stating, I have no idea what data the president has relied upon to set a time limit for restoring security in Sinai. Given the current developments and the fact that the war on terror has been ongoing for four years now in Sinai, the deadline seems unrealistic.
December 6, 2017

TEHRAN, Iran  The Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi, widely known for its tourist attractions, has recently turned into a diplomatic hub, with dialogue over the Syrian crisis now serving as its main international attraction. On Nov. 22, the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey attended a trilateral summit in Sochi to coordinate their efforts on the future of Syria. Just a day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in the resort, with his warm welcome catching the eyes of the media. Moscow has also declared its plans to host a national Syrian congress in Sochi, consisting of different Syrian factions, to discuss the political process as well as a new constitution for the country.

In a broader perspective, it could be said that with an eye to post-war Syria, the Russians are trying to play the main role on the Syrian stage.

First and foremost, by initiating various meetings with their partners in the Astana process, namely Iran and Turkey, and at the same time underlining the importance of Iran and Russias military support for the Syrian government in shaping developments on the ground, the Russians want to be recognized as the main pillar of military success over the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorists. Moscows frequent criticism of the US-led anti-IS coalition, accusing it of not being serious in fighting terrorism, could be interpreted in the same vein. In other words, Russia is trying to say that without its efforts there would be no end in sight to the rule of the United States, nor would it be possible to forge a compromise between Iran and Turkeys military plans in Syria.

The delicate point here, however, is that by continuing to be active in both the Geneva and the Astana tracks, Moscow is effectively the only link between the two different sets of actors involved in the Syrian conflict.

Second, Moscow has frequently insisted that it sees the Astana track as complementary to the UN-mediated Geneva peace process and not as an alternative. As the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov puts it, If in Astana there was a team that extinguished the fire of the Syrian war, then in Geneva there will be designers and engineers to restore the building of the Syrian state. The delicate point here, however, is that by continuing to be active in both the Geneva and the Astana tracks, Moscow is effectively the only link between the two different sets of actors involved in the Syrian conflict.

Third, by proposing its initiative for the national Syrian congress, Moscow is also seeking to have final say in the domestic equations in Syria during the transitional period ahead. While some hurdles, such as Turkeys objection to the inclusion of Syrian Kurdish groups in the political process as well as the hard-line stances of some opposition groups regarding the role of Assad and his government in the future of Syria, have forced Moscow to delay the congress, Russias actions show a willingness to act as a mediator between different Syrian factions.

The key question here is, how do Moscows partners in the Astana process see their current multilayered Syrian policy?

As far as Iran is concerned, it seems that the final joint statement of the Sochi summit addresses some of its main concerns regarding the future of Syria. The statement underlines the necessity of preserving Syrias unity and territorial integrity, without raising any preconditions for the start of the transitional period. The fact that Turkey was a signatory to the declaration without any further insistence on Assads removal was another success for Iran.

But this does not mean that Iran feels wholly safe in the face of Russias plans. First of all, Tehran sees Moscows desire to consider the Geneva track as an integral part of the political process as a challenge to its long-term interests in Syria. In fact, from an Iranian point of view, the Geneva process was primarily designed to sideline the role of Iran and its allied forces in Syria, and it was solely Irans active fight against terrorism in Syria that forced other actors to accept its role and interests, at least temporarily. So, any revalidation of the goals of the Geneva track could pose a direct threat against Irans interests. In fact, during the recent trilateral presidential summit in Sochi, it was only Putin who clearly spoke of the necessity of following up the Geneva process, while Irans President Hassan Rouhanis main emphasis was on the need for Syrias future to be decided by the Syrian people.

Irans second concern is related to Russias policy of working with everyone involved in the Syrian crisis. For instance, after his meeting with Assad, Putin held separate phone calls with US President Donald Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to brief them on the results of the Sochi summit. There is no doubt that Iran sees the American, Saudi and Israeli plans for Syria as opposed to its core interests and, therefore, is worried about the substance of any Russian agreement with these actors.

The joint statement issued by the presidents of Russia and the United States on the sidelines of the recent APEC summit in Vietnam, which entailed some hints about the exit of foreign troops in Syria, is a good example in this regard. Although its highly unlikely that Russia will put direct pressure on Iran to force it out of Syria, Moscow may not find particular issues with defining Lebanese Hezbollah or other pro-Iran forces in Syria as foreign troops, which could, in turn, weaken Irans position in the country.

Finally, although the three presidents in Sochi insisted on the necessity of holding the national Syrian congress, it is, in fact, Moscow that will have the main role in the endeavor. In this vein, what Russia sees as legitimate opposition forces, invited to attend the congress, may not necessarily match Irans viewpoint. In fact, during the six years of the Syrian conflict, Russia has tried to establish ties with various Syrian groups and factions, some of which Iran deems radicals or even terrorists. The case of Ahrar al-Sham is an example of such a difference of opinion.

Thus, although the Sochi summit was widely interpreted as a sign of the three countries willingness to coordinate their efforts on post-war Syria, Moscows attempt to centralize the political process around its own role could potentially alienate Iran down the road, thereby challenging their so-far-successful partnership in Syria.
December 7, 2017

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have both condemned US President Donald Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. Their condemnations were to be expected. However, they did not offer a window into how Iran would likely respond to such a move. At moments like these, it is helpful to study the reaction of influential analysts, who will write and speak with more details.

Saadollah Zaeri, an analyst who often writes for hard-line Kayhan newspaper and is believed to be linked ideologically to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), wrote that Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital has certain advantages. This situation in reality under these conditions makes Irans work in forming a resistance front with a focus on defending Palestine easier, Zaeri wrote in Tasnim News Agency.

One of the biggest groups that Iran has helped form in the Middle East is the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, presented a similar analysis as Zaeri. America has made clear what it has always hidden, Qassem said of Trumps move on Jerusalem. Now, the option of resistance must be supported at various levels. He continued, South Lebanon was freed through resistance, and it became clear that Israel can be defeated.

Fars News Agency published a list of Palestinian condemnations in reaction to Trumps decision on Jerusalem. The first two groups on the list were Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two groups Iran has supported militarily. Although Iran had a falling out with Hamas over differences involving the civil war in Syria, Iran has maintained contact with the group. In their statements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad both echoed similar statements by Iranian officials saying that the move has removed any doubt about US impartiality regarding the Israel-Palestine issue. Ahmad Al Mudallal, a member of Islamic Jihad, which has stronger ties to Iran than Hamas, called on the Palestinian Authority to end peace negotiations being mediated by the United States, saying, America cannot establish peace in the world because it is the cause of instability in the region.

Iran has had success in setting up armed groups throughout the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq, in recent years. Irans support for Palestinian groups, however, dates back to the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has continued to varying degrees since.

The idea of resistance is often in reference to American and Israeli hegemony and their regional allies. It still has a strong resonance with conservatives and hard-liners, particularly the IRGC, which favors countering US influence rather than compromising. For instance, neither Rouhani, Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement referenced resistance in their condemnations of Trumps decision.

There was also heavy social media reaction. Many Iranians joined Arab users with the Arabic-language hashtag Jerusalem is ours and Quds. Javan Online, which is linked to the IRGC, headlined an article Trump has opened the doors of hell to Israel. The article, which contained world reactions to Trump's announcement, began, A Middle East after Daesh [Islamic State] apparently will not see calm.
December 6, 2017

Minister of Transportation and Intelligence Yisrael Katz was the first to renounce Yedioth Ahronoth's front-page headline announcing a quiet rebellion in the Likud Party against its chairman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to the Dec. 5 report, five leaders of the Likud discussed the possibility of uniting forces and calling on Netanyahu to resign in light of the criminal investigations that could hurt the party and lead to a loss in the next election.

Although Katzs name was not mentioned in the report, he was considered the leader because of his unstable relationship with the prime minister and his ambition to vie for the leadership of the Likud on the day after Netanyahus era. Thus he hastened to distance himself from the report. Katz tweeted, This morning I read a strange report of Likud leaders organizing against Prime Minister Netanyahu. It looks more like the authors organizing against Likud leaders, or just lousy journalism. Such things never happened. The tweet was disseminated by his people on the Likuds WhatsApp groups, and Katz reinforced the message in interviews in the established media.

Whats interesting in this story is not the report itself, which seemed to portray a wish on the part of some Likud leaders as well as the media, but the quick response by Katz and other leaders who rushed to declare allegiance to Netanyahu. Minister of Social Equality Gila Gamliel was interviewed on the "Lifnei Hahadashot" ("Before the News") show on Reshet, and clarified that she is not part of any scheme. She emphasized that Netanyahu enjoys wide support from the party. Knesset member Miki Zohar delivered a similar message on the same show.

Gideon Saar, who took a break from politics following a bitter conflict with the prime minister and intends to vie for the leadership of the Likud, used this agenda to make headlines. Saar responded to the head of the Zionist Camp, Avi Gabbay, who said that not only is Netanyahu corrupt, but so is all of the Likud. Gabbay also referred to the new criminal investigation into the chairman of the coalition and Netanyahus strong operational arm in the Likud, Knesset member David Bitan, and the Channel 2 investigation of the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Likud man Danny Danon.

Theoretically, as a democratic party for which a million citizens voted in the 2015 election, the Likud should have formed internal opposition to Netanyahu at this point in response to the corruption surrounding him and his associates. But the ruling party's leaders, including those who think Netanyahu should go home because of the investigations and those who promote the heavy-handed legislation meant to enable him to shirk justice, are silent. They fear for their political lives if they dare hint that a recommendation to charge Netanyahu in one of the cases means he should vacate his seat.

If one of them nevertheless considered challenging Netanyahu's leadership, the response of most Likud members active on the social networks has clarified that they can hope for no political resurrection after such an act.

For instance, Nili Aharon, a well-known Likud activist from the southern branch in Yeruham, wrote in one of the WhatsApp groups: Its very sad that there are ministers who decide to get together and plan how to depose Bibi.  We protest against those ministers or leaders who want to take the leadership in such a vile way. What they dont understand is that if Bibi goes home, the Likud would be destroyed, and no one could lift it off the floor or out of the opposition when we arrive there.

In practice, there is no possibility of a rebellion against Netanyahu in the Likud. The prime minister has made sure to politically destroy any leaders who threatened his leadership or who amassed too much popularity in his eyes. The list is a long and respectable one that includes former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, Minister of Finance and Chairman of Kulanu Moshe Kahlon and Gideon Saar. Those who remained within the Likud  Ministers Katz and Gilad Erdan  understood that its best for them to express support for the chairman even if they harbor a bellyful of resentment toward him.

Today theres no significant force in the Likud that offers an alternative to Netanyahu.

There are two reasons for the moral corruption of Likud leaders: Netanyahus strength among Likud activists despite the investigations; and the realistic possibility that despite everything Netanyahu will lead the Likud in the next election. The only righteous man in Sodom is the only Likud member who has nothing to lose: Knesset member Benny Begin doesnt need the votes of Likud members, is not interested in being prime minister, and retirement from political life wont be a disaster for him. Thus the son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin is the only Likud figure to speak against the corrupt "recommendations law," which was intended to rescue Netanyahu from the investigations. In response, the Likud expelled Begin from the Interior Affairs Committee of the Knesset.

The latest numbers broadcast Dec. 4 on Channel 2 showed that the Likud, led by Netanyahu, still leads and Netanyahu is still seen as the best candidate for prime minister, making any possibility of a real challenge to his leadership in the near future unlikely.

A senior Likud figure who is not one of Netanyahus backers described the atmosphere in the party to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Netanyahu is very strong. Hes iron. No one dares defy him, certainly not after the latest poll, because the activists would destroy him. Im slapping my forehead: How could no minister be able to say something moral that would challenge Netanyahu and the corruption? That would challenge the recommendations law? Its unreal. Theres never been such a situation in the party.
December 6, 2017

Every rookie cadet in the foreign service knows that in diplomacy, as in business, there are no free lunches. When a seasoned businessman like President Donald Trump grants Israel the coveted US recognition of Jerusalem as its capital, he expects a quid pro quo. That is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered members of his government to lie low and, to the extent possible, abstain from crowing over the expected news from the White House. As a former furniture salesman (Netanyahu once worked in marketing for an Israeli furniture firm), the prime minister knows that an overly enthusiastic buyer jacks up the price of the goods. Netanyahu can assume that Trump will not risk upsetting his Saudi clients over the sensitive issue of Jerusalem  holy to both Muslims and Jews  just to please his Jewish and evangelical supporters/constituents. No one gives away such a gift, and with a 50% discount, at that. The first recognition by a foreign nation of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state will come with a price tag, and it wont be cheap.

Trumps envoy Jared Kushner, speaking on Dec. 3 at the Saban Forum in Washington, indicated that his father-in-laws administration was preparing another pricey gift for Israel. The presidents adviser told participants at the prestigious gathering that many countries in the region, traditional enemies of the Jewish state, now view Israel as a potential partner given their shared enemies: Iran and the Islamic State. He noted that the US Mideast peace team, which he leads, was focusing on efforts to implement what the countries in the region want  economic progress, peace for their people.

However, hatred of Iran, love of Israel and even covert intelligence support are not the only ingredients of regional peace. If were going to try to create more stability in the region as a whole, you have to solve this issue, Kushner said, referring to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The Saudis, Egyptians, Qataris, Jordanians, Emiratis, everyone weve spoken with, all view a solution to the Palestinian problem as important.

Indeed, with all due respect to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and despite the importance of efforts being invested by the president of the United States, two additional partners are needed to advance resolution of the Palestinian problem: Palestinians and Israelis. Shortly after being elected prime minister for the first time in 1996, Netanyahu announced that negotiations with the Palestinians would be based on a simple equation: "If they give, they will get; if they dont give, they wont get. In a campaign message prior to the 1999 elections, Netanyahu accused the left wing of abandoning the principle of reciprocal peace. He pledged to renew negotiations with the Palestinians over Israels permanent borders right after the elections. Almost in the same breath, he promised to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. At a press conference in 2005 announcing his run for the Likud Party leadership, Netanyahu boasted, I have already proven in the past my ability to conduct tough negotiations vis-a-vis the Palestinians. I determined a principle with which youre familiar  the principle of reciprocity. They give, they get.  By insisting on reciprocity, I stopped the wholesale compromises over the Land of Israel.

Netanyahu has had more than one opportunity to conduct negotiations with the Palestinians his way, i.e., according to the if they give principle. Over the eight-year term of President Barack Obama and almost a year of the Trump presidency, we have heard over and over what the Palestinians must give and what they will not get in return: They have to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, to allow Israelis to settle on Palestinian lands and to fight Hamas. In return, they will not get an independent state, they will not get an inch of the Israeli-annexed city of Jerusalem, they will not control the borders of their nonexistent state and, of course, discussion of returning a single Palestinian refugee to Israel is a nonstarter.

When late PLO chief Yasser Arafat conducted negotiations with Israel over a permanent peace agreement, the Israeli right said he was not a partner for peace because he was unwilling to pay the price for a deal with Israel. His successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is also dubbed a nonpartner because he lacks the ability to pay this price. The pervasive view in Israel is that Arafat failed because he was too strong, and Abbas failed because he was too weak. Since Netanyahu is having to divide his time between Cabinet meetings and meetings with police anti-corruption investigators, not only does he not want to pay the price of an agreement with the Palestinians, he is unable to do so.

When Netanyahu was at the peak of his power, he could have promoted a regional peace agreement under the auspices of the Obama administration, but he didnt want to. With Netanyahu at the nadir of his power, he does not want to, nor is he able to push forward anything, big or small. The reaction by Netanyahus opponents on the right to every attempt to give the Palestinians something or other, and even to give Trump anything, is already prepared: In recent years, theres been a terrible deterioration in the state.  The State of Israel is plummeting to the lowest ebb of corruption. We are the second most corrupt state in the West. The World Bank never wrote this about anyone (else)  not about my government, not [Yitzhak] Rabins, not [Menachem] Begins  and if we continue this way, we will be No. 1. All rights to this remark are reserved to Netanyahu in the above-mentioned 2005 press conference. They were said in reaction to the plan advanced by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to pull Israeli troops and settlements out of the Gaza Strip, claiming it was designed to distract public opinion and shield the prime minister from police investigations of suspected corruption.

The Israeli right claimed at the time that the deeper the questioning [of Sharon by police], the deeper the uprooting [of Israelis from Gaza], in the words of former Knesset member Zvi Hendel. Today, one can paraphrase that slogan and say that the extent of the legislation being orchestrated by the right against Israeli law enforcement  as seen with the Recommendation law preventing police from recommending to indict  is commensurate with the extent of criminal investigations against Netanyahu. Netanyahu rightfully accused Sharon at the time of making concessions to the Palestinians without getting anything in return. Sharon pushed through a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza without seeking an agreement with the Palestinians nor the support of Arab states. An opportunity has now arisen to right that wrong. The diatribe Netanyahu directed at Sharon in 2005 is all the more apt now: The Likud and the state need a leader who will stop the corruption and work to heal the rift among the people.
Mani Shankar Aiyar said the word "neech" has many connotations and he never intended to comment on the Prime Minister's caste.

By India Today Web Desk: Hours after calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi", Mani Shankar Aiyar went on the back foot and said that he is a freelance Congressman and not the party's official spokesperson.

"I am not an official spokesperson of the Congressmen. I am a freelance Congressman," Mani Shankar Aiyar said, adding that he will apologise for his remarks if they have hurt the Prime Minister.

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The Congress leader denied calling Narendra Modi a "low-born" but accepted that his statement has embarrassed the party. Aiyar said that he is not well-versed in Hindi and his words have been "misconstrued".

Aiyar said the word "neech" has many connotations and he never intended to comment on the Prime Minister's caste.

"I am ordinary worker of the Congress, (I) have not even been asked to campaign in Gujarat, so why such an uproar over my comment," Aiyar asked.

Aiyar's carefully crafted apology to Narendra Modi came immediately after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi condemned the "neech" remarks and said the Congress "expects him to apologise for what he said".

BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 7, 2017

Aiyar, speaking to news agency ANI, said, "Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajneeti karne ki kya avashyakta hai?" (This man is a low-life person, he isn't cultured... why does he need to practise such dirty politics?).

Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in poll-bound Gujarat, attacked the Congress for its leaders using unparliamentary language.

"A Congress leader, who has studied in one of the premier institutions, served as a diplomat, was a minister in Cabinet, said that Modi is 'neech'. This is insulting and nothing but Mughalai mindset," Modi said.

I have nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling me Neech'. This is the Congress mindset. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box. https://t.co/2McoZnaoar pic.twitter.com/icGqAphUzy- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 7, 2017

Modi said the comments were an insult to Gujarat and its people, and were made by the same people who earlier called him 'Gaddha' and 'Gandi Naali Ka Kida'.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley trained guns on the Congress for Aiyar's "neech" remark. "Mani Shankar Aiyar's 'Neech' remark against the Prime Minister displays a mindset that only one elite family can be a ruler and the rest are only the 'Neech'," Jaitley tweeted.

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Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah in a series of tweets attacked Congress after Aiyar made the neech remark. Shah said that he was neither shocked nor surprised by Aiyar's comments on PM Modi.

He said that it was the culture of the Congress party. He also tweeted a series of names used by Congress to refer PM Modi in the past.

Neither shocked nor surprised by Mani Shankar Aiyars referring to PM as Neech. This is the culture of the Congress Party. People of Gujarat will punish anti-poor, anti-Dalit, anti-Tribal and anti-OBC Congress.- Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

YamrajMaut Ka SaudagarRavanGandi Nali Ka KeedaMonkeyRabies VictimVirusBhasmasurGangu TeliGoonThese are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians.- Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

WATCH: Manishankar Aiyar: Sorry for calling Modi neech, which can be interpreted as low-born

--- ENDS ---
December 7, 2017

The million-dollar questions that everyone all over the world was asking Dec. 6 were: Why? Why now? What prompted President Donald Trump to do what no other US president did for the last 22 years (since the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995) and undo the booby-trapped Gordian knot of recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? This question is being asked from the Persian Gulf to Berlin, from Ramallah to the UN headquarters in New York. It is being asked in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Ankara  but also in Tel Aviv and in Washington.

What stands behind the strange decision made by Trump in spite of the heavy international pressure that was inflicted on him from all directions in recent days? Are we dealing with a grand plan of which this is the first step? Is Jerusalem recognition just a prelude that precedes the far-reaching, hard-to-digest diplomatic plan that will soon be placed on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus table?

Most assessments say not.

Countless political pundits have tried and failed to predict or interpret Trump using the conventional tools of the field. Every time that there is a choice between sophisticated conspiracy and unprofessional populism, its best to pick the latter option. This is true despite words pronounced Dec. 6 by Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. According to an American source who spoke on condition of anonymity, Kushner, who made a rare appearance Dec. 3 at the Saban Forum in Washington, said after Trump's decision that this is just the first step of something big.

Israels Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer also adopted a similar style of speech. According to a political source who spoke on condition of anonymity, Dermer has been hinting over the past few weeks that something big is going to happen. On the other hand, it is possible that Dermer was only referring to the president's decision on Jerusalem. As far as Dermer is concerned  as well as Dermers boss, Netanyahu  the American initiative can end here with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. They already got what they wanted.

The presidents announcement regarding Jerusalem was a vital lifebelt thrown into the stormy waters that threaten to drown two leaders: Netanyahu and Trump himself. The announcement quickly assumed center-stage in the media agenda not only in the Middle East but also in New York and Washington. Television stations that were, until that very minute, broadcasting nonstop about Michael Flynns hardships, Robert Muellers investigation and the suspicions piling up in the presidents close environs  immediately focused on the Jerusalem issue and the Middle East drama.

The same was true in Israel as well, but with higher intensity: On Dec. 2, tens of thousands of Israelis went out to demonstrate against Netanyahu and against the wave of anti-democratic legislation he and his people were leading. For the first time since the summer of 2011 during the social-justice protests, it seemed that the average Israeli was shocked at Netanyahus indifference. Simultaneously, the advanced criminal investigations of Netanyahu continued to capture the headlines. For the first time in many years, it seemed that the political life of the great sorcerer was about to be cut short. And then, along came Trump.

The presidential announcement constitutes a rare political victory for Netanyahu  a victory at exactly the right time, for him. This victory strongly confirms Netanyahus claim that his close friendship with Trump is an Israeli strategic asset of the first order. It also shores up his main claim of defense, according to which his critics deal with nonsense issues such as cigars, champagne and a few gifts here and there, while Netanyahu is the best prime minister that Israel has ever seen. He has no replacement; he is the be-all and end-all.

As time marches on, the similarities grow between the two political twins Netanyahu and Trump. Both operate under a heavy cover of investigations and publicity, both harass the media and both owe their loyalty to the mythological base that granted them victory in the elections. The step taken by the president this week is attributed to his obligation to the evangelists, who put heavy pressure on him to recognize Jerusalem. Trump has not carried out most of the promises he made to this giant electoral bloc, which voted for him despite his attitude toward women and his numerous ethical-moral transgressions that were uncovered in the course of his campaign. Now evangelists can be content, together with Sheldon Adelson, who poured $20 million into Trumps floundering campaign in the last stretch before the elections.

Beyond all this, we must remember that Trump is correct. The recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is recognition of reality. Trump promised to think outside of the box, and this is the first example of such an act.

Trumps decision will be judged only later on when all will see whether he triggered the final death of the peace process and, perhaps, a wave of violence. The Palestinians, furious and disappointed, will be tested in a few days: Will US Vice President Mike Pence be received in Ramallah when he comes to visit the region Dec. 17-19? Or will he be rejected? Will Israel be flooded by a wave of violence, as Hamas and jihadis threatened? When violence is threatened in the Middle East, it usually does not erupt. Instead, the gates of hell open when no one expects it. Only time will tell who is correct.

And what will be the fate of the presidential peace program? Neither side is willing to place bets at the moment. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat, his representative to nonexistent negotiations, announced that the American recognition of Jerusalem has distanced chances for peace. By showing a preference for one side over the other, say the Palestinians, the United States is no longer an honest broker for both sides, thus is neutralized from being involved in the talks. We must remember, however, that the Palestinians have made many such threatening declarations over the years, usually without following through on them.

On Dec. 2, Palestinian intelligence director Majid Faraj visited Washington, where he met his American counterparts. Abbas was supposed to arrive after Faraj, but has canceled his trip until further notice. Faraj shared a lunch in Washington with Erekat, who is recovering from successful lung transplant surgery. According to a diplomatic source, Erekat  whose life was spared thanks to American medicine  told Faraj that so far the Americans have not brought up even one original idea to anyone connected with negotiations: not to the Palestinians, not to the Egyptians and not to the Jordanians.

The level of trust of the Palestinians in the ultimate deal Trump promised is hitting rock bottom. Moreover, the cards given them in this round are bad and leave them no room in which to maneuver. Abbas has no alternative but to suppress his anger and continue to wait for the American plan to come to fruition. In this sphere of alternatives that were exhausted and options that were blocked, Abbas has almost no one to blame but himself.
December 6, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas moved Nov. 27 to delay the final transfer of power over the Gaza Strip from Hamas to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by 10 days. Under the reconciliation agreement signed in Egypt on Oct. 12, the PA was to take over the Gaza Strip on Dec. 1.

On Dec. 2, Egyptian intelligence services urgently summoned to Cairo Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar and Fatah reconciliation official Azzam al-Ahmad to discuss the obstacles hindering the reconciliation.

On Nov. 18, Hamas had accused the Palestinian Preventive Security (PPS) in the West Bank of ongoing politically motivated arrests of its members. A committee of families of political prisoners in the West Bank documents on Facebook all of the Hamas members and political activists from other parties arrested or summoned for investigations by the PA on a daily basis.

On Oct. 25, following the Oct. 24 rearrest of six Hamas ex-prisoners, the committee denounced the continuing arrests and warned that they may hinder the reconciliation.

The committee posted on its Facebook page that on Dec. 4 the PPS arrested Ahmed Shaltaf in Nablus. Shaltaf, a student at the Kadoorie Technical University in the city of Tulkarm, was arrested after being summoned for investigation. It also reported that Palestinian intelligence in Hebron kidnapped two liberated prisoners Mustafa Bastanjani and Samih Bastanji.

Hamas activist Bahjat Yamin, from Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, was released from an Israeli prison in 2008. On Nov. 5, he was surprised by the PPS, who raided his workplace in Qalqilya and then placed him under arrest. He remains under arrest at the PPS headquarters in the city.

His wife, Lubna Yamin, told Al-Monitor that her husbands arrest came as a surprise as no prior summons or notices were received, questioning the seriousness of the reconciliation in light of the continued arrests.

Lubna, a school teacher who visited her husband at the PPS headquarters on Nov. 28, said, No charges have been made against my husband. He is a political detainee. From the first day of his arrest, they have been telling us he will be released soon, but have yet to free him. I saw him in one of the PPS offices and an interrogation officer stayed with us throughout the visit.

The reconciliation seems to be a bad omen for us, she said. After the signature of the Cairo agreement in 2011, I was dismissed from my job by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education for political reasons. I filed a complaint with the High Court of Justice, and in October 2012 a decision was issued to bring back all employees dismissed for political reasons. This time, after the reconciliation agreement in Cairo on Oct. 12, my husband was arrested.

Yamin is considered 73% disabled due to neck issues and back and shoulder pain. The torture and violent interrogations in Israeli jails during his detention from 2004 to 2008 left him with nerve damage, she said.

Mousa Abu-Edheim, the director of the investigations and complaints department of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, told Al-Monitor that its October report contained 31 cases of arbitrary arrest in Palestine (20 in the West Bank and 11 in Gaza). The report also showed that 34 complaints of torture and mistreatment were filed (24 in the West Bank and 10 in Gaza).

For his part, Hamas leader in the West Bank Hassan Yousef told Al-Monitor, Despite the reconciliation, security services in the West Bank continue to pursue Hamas members and activists. These services are repeating the tight security measures they previously applied to each reconciliation agreement. It is as if they were telling us that the reconciliation will not affect the security approach.

Yousef added, The continued arrests are an obstacle to reconciliation. No one can accept reconciliation amid severe ongoing security clampdown.

On the number of detainees in the PA jails, he said, Cases of prosecutions cannot be counted. The PA arrests and releases Hamas members and political activists on a daily basis. The PA security services are constantly issuing summonses and carrying out investigations. Some people are detained for a few days and then released. These prosecutions and this security policy have never stopped.

Yousef explained, Hamas stressed the need to resolve the issue of these arrests in the Cairo reconciliation talks. It was agreed to resume the work of the Public Freedoms Committee in the West Bank. This committee, however, told us that it is waiting for a meeting with the heads of security services in the West Bank to put things back on track.

Indeed, it was agreed at the Cairo talks on Nov. 22 to reactivate the Public Freedoms Committee ensuing from the 2011 Cairo Agreement. On Nov. 26, the committee held its first meeting in the city of Ramallah and called for a halt to political arrests.

Committee member Khalil Assaf told Al-Monitor, Political arrests did not stop despite the reconciliation, and they were discussed during the committee meeting.

He said, The Freedoms Committee is awaiting a meeting with Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, in his capacity as minister of interior, and the directors of the security services to agree on its operational mechanisms."

Assaf told Al-Monitor, Orders must be issued by the directors of the security services to stop arrests without a warrant. The PA has drafted a number of laws to help it execute its political arrests. For example, the recently enacted cybercrimes law facilitates political detentions, as some of its vague provisions are interpreted to accuse, prosecute and arrest political activists. Members and activists are arrested under the pretext of provoking sectarian or civil strife.

The Freedoms Committee operates under a legal document signed on Feb. 5, 2013, consisting of 11 articles setting forth general principles clarifying the freedoms of citizens, factions and political action that must be safeguarded and protected. The Egyptian sponsor of the talks and the Palestinian factions were informed of this document and approved it.

On Oct. 14, Assaf told Wattan News Agency, Whoever violates the Freedoms document shall be held responsible for sabotaging the reconciliation.

Throughout the decadelong division, which saw various reconciliation agreements, political arrests have never stopped. These arrests are likely to continue despite the ongoing reconciliation meetings and understandings that have yet to reach a full-fledged reconciliation.
December 6, 2017

The Pentagon is publicly revealing that a larger number of US troops are stationed in Syria, after helping local fighters clear most Islamic State-held areas in the war-torn country.

As of today, the Pentagon says it has approximately 2,000 troops in Syria, up from the 500 figure it was touting as recently as last month. With the self-described Islamic State (IS) caliphate almost 97% gone, according to the Defense Department, those forces will now assist local groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Raqqa Internal Security Force (RISF), as they seek to stabilize the country.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning also said that 5,200 US troops are serving in Iraq, consistent with the previous count.

Officials also said the Donald Trump administrations mission in Syria, backed by a US-led coalition of 73 nations, will not be subject to pre-imposed timelines. The Pentagon first announced plans to revise the number on Aug. 31, when they unveiled a higher troop count in Afghanistan.

US officials are refusing to put precise timelines on the new phase of the anti-IS mission. Manning said the US presence in Syria is conditions-based to ensure that IS cant reclaim lost ground or plot attacks in the West. He added that theres still a lot of work to do in terms of demining and removing explosives from IS-held areas before many civilians can return to their homes.

Last week, the US-led coalition announced it would withdraw 400 US Marines from combat who led a monthslong artillery barrage against IS in Raqqa. Some 3,000 IS fighters remain distributed between Iraq and Syria, according to coalition estimates.

The Defense Department did not immediately clarify how those forces were accounted for or how US troops would be positioned throughout the country during the stabilization effort, which will proceed as the Trump administration backs UN-led talks to decide the political future of Syria.

The revision changes long-held procedures to account for troops at the Pentagon. Under force-management levels unveiled by the Barack Obama administration, the number of US troops in Syria had been capped at 503 and 5,262 in Iraq, figures that did not account for temporarily deployed personnel.

Figures released by Defense Manpower Data Center in November, which tracks counts of Pentagon military and civilian personnel deployed overseas each quarter, showed nearly 2,000 US troops in Syria and more than 9,000 in Iraq. Its not clear if that release and subsequent reports by Al-Monitor and other news outlets prompted the long-planned revision.

The Obama-era policy  continued under President Trump until recently  aimed to draw down US troops in Afghanistan and create a limited presence to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria. Critics say the policy masked the true extent of US forces fighting IS and prevented the US military from using support troops, such as mechanics and equipment maintainers in-theater, creating greater reliance on contractors.

As troops enter a stabilization phase, US officials said there will not be clear front lines as American troops support efforts to remove mines and other explosives, return displaced people to their homes and support the growth of indigenous institutions in former IS-held territory that hasnt been seized by President Bashar al-Assad  who has long called the US presence illegitimate  or Russian and Iranian forces backing the embattled Syrian leader.

But with Syrian negotiators walking out on the UN-backed Geneva talks this week, the Pentagon offered its heaviest criticism of Russian-led military efforts in recent memory.

The Syrian regime and Russian federations actions have thus far demonstrated that countering [IS] and other violent extremist groups like [Jabhat Fatah al-Sham] and al-Qaeda is not their foremost priority, Manning said. Their collective actions call into question their commitment to dealing a lasting defeat to [IS] and other extremist groups.

Manning added that Syria and Russia did not offer a plan for how to bring about a meaningful conclusion to the civil war by addressing the future presence of terrorist groups like IS and Iran-backed Shiite militias that have flowed into the country. Speaking in California this weekend, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said that as much as 80% of pro-Assad forces in Syria are proxy forces controlled by Iran. The United States maintains two hotlines to directly de-conflict military operations with Russia: one based in Kuwait to handle ground combat, and another to deal with air actions at al-Udeid air base in Qatar.

Yet its not clear exactly which Syrian partners the remaining American troops will be supporting to create sustainable and ethnically diverse local security forces.

By September, the US-backed coalition trained 8,500 SDF troops in Syria and provided vehicles and equipment to 40,000 troops in the Arab and Kurdish units. The Arab-dominated RISF that was stood up to stabilize Raqqa is 1,600 members strong and recently graduated 500 new members, coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon said at an August briefing.

Though the RISF and SDF are still in place, US Defense Secretary James Mattis during a trip to the Middle East last week indicated that the Pentagon would draw down support for Kurdish-backed units that led the fight against IS. The move is in line with Trumps promise to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a call made last month. The Pentagon hopes to recover heavy weaponry from the People's Protection Units (YPG), but the group may keep some small arms and light vehicles.

The YPG is armed, and as the coalition stops offensive ops, then obviously you don't need that; you need security  you need police forces. That's local forces. That's people who make certain that [IS] doesn't come back, Mattis said. We're going to go exactly along the lines of what the president announced.

US operations against IS in Iraq and Syria that began in October 2014 have cost American taxpayers nearly $16 billion, according to a Pentagon inspector general report unveiled last month. The Pentagons budget for the new fiscal year will provide $13 billion for the operation next year, including $1.8 billion to train and equip partner forces in Iraq and Syria.
December 7, 2017

Based on recent actions by the United States, all indications suggest a desire by Washington to dictate a peace rather than mediate negotiations between the conflicting parties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. US President Donald Trump's pro-Israel administration seems to have adopted the view that the best way forward on the Jerusalem issue is to remove it from the negotiations by predetermining who has rights to it.

The Trump administrations tactic appears to be the implementation of actions advocated by the right-wing Jewish American writer Daniel Pipes. In A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All, a December 2016 article for the Jewish News Service, Pipes calls on the United States to reject all Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. For Washington to be helpful means supporting Israel taking tough steps, he wrote. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the Palestine refugee farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

In less than a month, the United States has undertaken three actions designed seemingly to harm or coerce the Palestinians. The campaign began on Nov. 17 with the Trump administration threatening not to renew the PLO's mission in Washington. This was followed Dec. 5 by a voice vote in the US House of Representatives approving the Taylor Force Act to defund the Palestinian government because of its financial support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and their families. Trump capped the campaign on Dec. 6 by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in violation of United Nations resolutions, and announcing that he will be moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

On Dec. 5, The New York Times reported Trump administration officials as saying that the policy change could hasten, rather than impede, peace negotiations by removing a source of ambiguity from the American position. Trump presented this idea in his declaration, stating, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Of note, Trump, who prides himself as an America first president, referred to Americans four times while mentioning Israel and Israelis 21 times. The US president, with this unilateral decision in defiance of the international community, appears to be saying that he is not necessarily seeking a negotiated peace between the Middle Eastern parties, but is deciding that the conflict is over, that Israel won and that the Palestinians must quietly and submissively declare defeat.

On Dec. 5, even before this folly was made official, Fatah Central Committee member Mohammad Shtayyeh had asserted to the independent Palestinian news agency Ma'an that Palestinians have not lost the will to say no. He said that the Palestinian leadership, in coordination with Jordan as well as other Arab states, will resist US dictates. We have the ability to say no to any plan that touches on the status of Jerusalem, Shtayyeh said.

In summer 2017, when the Israeli government tried to impose metal detectors at entrances to Haram al-Sharif and access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians of all walks of life demonstrated outside the mosque for two weeks until Israel rescinded the unilateral decision it issued July 27. Some 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem  along with 12 million Palestinians around the world, 370 million Arabs, 1.8 billion Muslims and many other peace-loving people of all creeds and faiths  support the just demands of Palestinians for a shared and agreed-to solution in Jerusalem.

The US shift in policy would make sense if Palestinians were being totally unreasonable and making excessive demands. It would also make sense if the Trump administration's position were supported by others in the international community and had the full support of the American people. This is not the case.

World opinion is overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinians' moderate position calling for a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Numerous resolutions by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, as well as in the International Court of Justice, support the Palestinians just and reasonable demands.

Leaders of the Muslim and Arab worlds are not going to allow an issue that has become so ingrained in international law to simply be changed to satisfy the desires of a voting bloc in the United States. Riyadh's current honeymoon with Washington is the result of their joint opposition to Iran, not about Jerusalem and Palestine, on which Arabs and Muslims and others are united in supporting the need to resolve the status of the holy city in negotiations rather than by diktat. Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud publicly warned against Trump's move on Dec. 5.

Even in the United States, the majority of people  including most American Arabs and American Jews  support the idea of two states for two people. A poll released by the Arab American Institute on Dec. 5 shows that only 20% of Americans favor moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Not everyone has been celebrating in Israel either. Twenty-five prominent Israelis, including former diplomats, generals and academics, sent a sharply worded letter to US envoy Jason Greenblatt on Dec. 5. They expressed their opposition to unilateral US action on Jerusalem, stating, The status of Jerusalem, the city that houses the holy sites of the three monotheistic religions, lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and must be determined within the context of resolving that conflict.

Successful peacemaking requires that any deal be strong enough to weather the test of time. To work and survive, a deal has to be fair and just. Any deal imposed against the will of the Palestinians is inherently unjust and will not be accepted by them.

It has repeatedly been proven that the status of Jerusalem is not simply a Palestinian issue, but is also of keen and emotional interest to other Arabs, Muslims and supporters of peace around the world. The idea that forcing a solution down everyones throat will resolve the problem is unwise and will not work.
December 7, 2017

A mysterious explosion near a refugee camp harboring thousands of displaced Turkish Kurds has killed five members of a Kurdish militia and injured three others amid claims that Turkey was responsible for the alleged attack.

The administrative council for the Makhmour camp, southwest of Erbil, claimed late Wednesday's blast was caused by an airstrike carried out by Turkey. The council, which is believed to have close ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said, It is significant that a camp under the protection of the United Nations, located in the middle of Iraqi territory was attacked. The Federal Iraqi State, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the UN will be clearly implicated until they issue convincing explanations on the matter. But the statement failed to specify by what means Turkey had conducted the alleged aerial attack.

Kurdistan 24, an Iraqi Kurdish media outlet, claimed the camp had been struck by a rocket but also did not explain how it may have been launched. Earlier reports suggested the explosion was caused by a car bomb.

Turkey and Iraq have not responded to any of the accusations so far. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which provides assistance to the camp, has not commented either.

Leyla Arzu Ilhan, a former co-chair of the Makhmour Council, backed the claims of an airstrike. She told Al-Monitor, Residents saw a flash in the sky then heard a loud explosion, so this points to an aerially launched device. Ilhan said a structure housing local self-defense forces that were established after Islamic State militants attacked Makhmour as they swept across Iraq in the summer of 2014 had been targeted.

Much of the building collapsed and we have been clearing debris to rescue two of our friends who were stuck under the rubble, Ilhan said. Now that we have buried our dead we will undertake a further exhaustive search of the debris for evidence.

Ilhan acknowledged that an initial search around the site of the blast had yielded no material evidence that could help determine its source. She agreed that IS may have been responsible.

IS militants have used armed drones to attack Iraqi forces and the Kurds, be they in Iraq, Syria or Turkey, are among their archfoes. But Ilhan insisted that Turkey was the more likely culprit. She speculated that the alleged Turkish attack was meant to pressure the PKK into freeing two Turkish intelligence operatives who were netted in a sensational sting operation in September as they met with their moles near the town of Dukhan in Iraqi Kurdistan. We cant be sure but its a distinct possibility, she told Al-Monitor. The men remain in PKK captivity despite protracted efforts on the part of MIT chief Hakan Fidan to secure their release.

A Kurdish-Turkish politician living in self-imposed exile in Europe took a different view. He argued that the attack was part of a broader pattern of emerging cooperation between Turkey, Iraq and Iran against the Kurds. The politician, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, told Al-Monitor, Ever since the referendum [on Kurdish independence] we have seen signs of these three countries reverting to their old ways of ganging up against the Kurds. The politician predicted that it is only a matter of time before Turkey and Syria reconcile and do the same," pointing to last months wave of Turkish airstrikes against Asos Mountain on the Iraq-Iran border.

Turkey periodically rains bombs on PKK bases in the Qandil Mountains but the attack against Asos was a first. The pro-PKK Firat news agency claimed the strikes occurred after Iranian drones scouted the area and then passed on target coordinates to Turkey.

Makhmour has long been a Turkish bugbear because of PKK entrenchment there and every so often rumors surface of an imminent Turkish attack against the camp.

Many of Makhmours residents began fleeing military brutality in Turkey in the early 1990s, when the blood-soaked PKK-led Kurdish insurgency was at its peak. The militants have a firm grip over the camp, where giant images of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan are commonplace.

Some Western aid workers caustically refer to the place as a rest and recreation center for PKK fighters pausing from their ongoing battle against Turkish forces for self-rule inside Turkey. With its sand-colored cinderblock dwellings, multiple schools and convenience stores, the dusty settlement looks more like a small town than a camp.

Repatriating an estimated 14,000 Turkish Kurds who live in the desolate desert outpost was envisaged under now stalled peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK. With few prospects of them resuming, it seems they will be stuck there for the foreseeable future.
December 6, 2017

After becoming president of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1978, Ali Abdullah Saleh went on to be president of all of Yemen following the latters reunification with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1990. Saleh was thus president during the 1994 civil war, and in the 21st century the Yemeni strongman played off both sides of Americas counterterrorism campaigns against al-Qaedas local wing and waged six wars against Houthi rebels in Yemens underserved Saada governorate beginning in 2004.

Salehs death Dec. 4 at the hands of Houthi rebels marked the end of a chapter in Yemeni history. Saleh had cunningly balanced and played off Yemens different factions while in power for 33 years, and he exercised his political prowess to remain extremely influential in the country following his 2012 departure from power. However, it was his decision to end his forces unnatural alliance with the Houthis and open himself to dialogue with the Saudi-led Arab coalition that ultimately cost him his life.

On Dec. 2, Salehs forces turned on the Houthis, whom they had been in a tactical alliance with based on their shared opposition to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The ex-president indicated his willingness to work with any forces seeking to defeat Iranian-allied groups in Yemen in exchange for an end to the Arab coalitions bombing and blockading of the country. Of course, Saleh also wanted Saudi and Emirati support for his return to power, which some Gulf Cooperation Council states saw as a valuable opportunity to bring Yemen back into the Sunni Muslim/Arabian fold after years of Iranian-backed rebels controlling the capital and other parts of Yemen. Despite the fact that Saudi Arabias Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman sought to avoid cooperation with Saleh, the Saudi medias label for Saleh went from deposed dictator to former president after he ended his alliance with the Houthis earlier this month.

Yet for the Houthis, Salehs opening to the Saudi-led coalition was an absolute betrayal. His killing delivered a powerful message to domestic and regional actors about the Houthis determination to continue fighting the Saudi and Emirati military forces and their Yemeni allies, as have their two recent claims of firing missiles at the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is intensifying its air campaign against the confident Houthi rebels in Sanaa, naturally offering Iran its own opportunity to step up Tehrans involvement in Yemen via Ansar Allah  the official name of the Houthi militia.

Although the former president himself was to blame for many of Yemens plethora of ongoing problems, Saleh was in a position to offer hope for the country. Unfortunately for Yemen, his death further complicates the multidimensional conflict that has left Yemen in the throes of a humanitarian crisis that threatens to starve millions to death. It is simply too early to tell how or to what extent Salehs death will impact Yemens civil war. The risk is that the ex-leaders killing will elevate violence levels that are high even by Yemens standards. After Salehs death, Hadi called on Yemenis living in Ansar Allah-controlled areas to rise up against the militia. Yet thus far, few if any seem to have done so. It is not clear that the Houthi-Saleh split has seriously weakened Ansar Allah, raising questions about how realistic Hadis plans are for capitalizing on recent developments in his efforts to return to Sanaa.

The Yemeni people  8 million of whom are on the brink of famine while nearly 1 million have been infected in the worlds largest cholera outbreak  will lose the most from any further escalation of violence. The cholera epidemic in Yemen, and the extent to which it has spread throughout most parts of the country, has been a direct outcome of the armed conflict. Humanitarian aid cannot enter without a cease-fire among the warring factions and an end to the Arab coalitions bombing, which is increasingly unlikely due to Salehs killing.

Could Ahmed Ali Saleh  the ex-presidents son and former Republican Guard leader whom many expected to be Salehs successor  prove capable of filling his fathers shoes? Now that Ansar Allah has pushed out Salehs loyalists from Sanaa, how much strength and unity can the backers of Yemens slain president achieve? Will influential figures within the General Peoples Congress, Salehs political party, fight each other in competition for power?

The shocking news of the killing of the man who masterfully manipulated Yemen for decades marks the beginning of a new era for the beset Arabian country. To be sure, Salehs potential comeback could have drastically changed the course of events in Yemens future. Yet his miscalculation that led him to abandon his Houthi allies for the Saudi-led coalition and others committed to fighting Iranian-backed forces in Yemen cost him his life.

Ultimately, the prospects for peace and prevention of an unprecedented famine in Yemen depend on an end to the Saudi-led coalitions bombing campaign, as US President Donald Trump surprisingly stated Dec. 6. Yet for Riyadh to pull out of Yemen without achieving its key objectives that Saudi Arabia set forth in 2015 would be difficult to imagine, particularly given Prince Mohammeds aggressive approach toward countering what he sees as Persian expansionism. Long-term peace and security in Yemen requires a political settlement that enables all sides, including the Arab coalition, to feel a sense of dignity after years of fighting.

Unfortunately, without Saleh in Yemens political picture, the odds of the country achieving such a settlement are substantially lower. To be sure, blame for many of Yemens problems  from poverty to sectarian violence and Salafist-jihadi threats  belongs on Salehs doorstep as he was a leader who had an abysmal human rights record and who mismanaged the economy while engaging in countless corrupt maneuvers that enabled him to accumulate billions for his cronies while Yemen was the Arab worlds poorest country. Nonetheless, despite all his responsibility for Yemens countless ills, it was more realistic for Saleh, over any other Yemeni figure, to have been the leader to have played a productive role in averting a looming famine amid the exacerbating humanitarian crisis and civil war.
The Android-powered mid-ranger from HTC codenamed Ocean Harmony will be released and marketed as the HTC U11 EYEs, established industry insider Evan Blass said Thursday, giving much more credence to the possibility of the device actually existing. The leaked name may be related to that of the HTC Desire Eye, one of the companys previous smartphones released in late 2014. With the Desire Eye having a rather massive front-facing camera that was centered on its top bezel, its possible that the U11 EYEs follows a similar design language, though the handset isnt believed to be a premium offering and is instead rumored as being closer to the recently released U11 Life in terms of specs.

With the U11 Life launching earlier this fall and the U11 EYEs appearing to be a relatively similar offering, it remains to be seen whether HTC opts to release its upcoming Android phone on a global level. The handset was recently certified in China, making a release in the Far Eastern country a likely scenario, whereas HTC recent product launch practices suggest that Taiwan will also eventually receive the U11 EYEs. The original Desire Eye was available on a global level but much has changed in the last three years and the Taiwanese original equipment manufacturer is now employing a more targeted product strategy after numerous consecutive quarters of underwhelming performance.

According to previous reports, the HTC Ocean Harmony will sport a 5.99-inch Super LCD5 display with an FHD+ resolution and a tall aspect ratio of 18:9. A 3,930mAh non-removable battery was also previously alleged to be part of the package, much like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 and 4GB of RAM. Like every other U11-branded handset on the market, the U11 EYEs is expected to ship with support for Edge Sense, HTCs pressure-sensitive frame that allows users to launch apps and perform various actions by squeezing the sides of their device. The smartphone is rumored to ship with 64GB of expandable storage space and a single-lens camera setup, in addition to being likely to run Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. HTC may release its next mid-ranger in the coming weeks in an attempt to capitalize on the traditionally lucrative holiday season.
Android Wears Oreo software update has started today, already hitting some devices and bringing a fresh crop of new changes to the users that own them. While not all users will likely receive the update today as these things do take time, there will be some users who have already completed the update or will be completing it by days end, and with it comes things like notification channels and much more. Since this is Oreo, notification channels may be one of the bigger improvements to the software and will certainly be one to look forward to.

In addition to the Notification Channels users will be getting more battery saving features too. Battery life on Android Wear has not exactly been the best, unfortunately, but with each version update to the software Google has been trying to improve it however it can. This time around it comes in the form of background limitations, so as long as users implement these then some apps wont be able to initiate certain background functions, thus using up less battery life in the process. For users that live in Belgium, Czech Republic, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nigeria, Honduras, or Portugal, Android Wear is not only now supported but those languages are supported by the software too, naturally, meaning it should be a lot easier to use the device as the native language will be available.

Another improvement that Google has made with Oreo on Android Wear is the touch lock option. This wont necessarily be something that every user will have a need for, but there are bound to be times where it may benefit just about everyone. The touch lock option is there for wet conditions, so if you live in a rainy state or if you just happen to be caught out in the rain from time to time, enabling this will make it so that the touch screen is not able to respond to the water hitting the screen. There is also now a new vibration strength setting for notifications on the watches so if you felt the vibration was either too strong or too weak, you will be able to adjust things to your liking from now on.
Ankers first pair of truly wireless earbuds checks all of the right boxes, and cost under $100!

Anker started out as a company that made accessories for your smartphone. Making high-quality accessories for a low price. And since then, have expanded into other areas, including the smart home, premium audio and much more. The company has decided to launch a few different brands for these different niches, and thats where Zolo comes in. Its the companys new premium audio brand, and the first product it announced was the Liberty, a pair of truly wireless earbuds, that the company crowdfunded on Kickstarter over the summer. Now the Liberty is available being sold for $99. Weve been using it for a few weeks now, and its time to talk about them.

Specs

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There are actually two sets of earbuds in the Liberty series. Theres the Liberty and the Liberty+, the Liberty+ are a bit more expensive and have larger drivers, newer version of Bluetooth and a few other things. Here, well just be talking about the Liberty, since that is what we have been using. The Liberty earbuds come with 5.5mm drivers in each earbud. Frequency response is 20Hz to 20kHz, with Bluetooth 4.2 on-board for connectivity. There is a microphone, but in the right earbud only, which works with Google Assistant (or Siri, if you have an iPhone connected). These are rated at IPX5 for sweatproof and waterproof, additionally, these charge via a micro USB cable. Anker does not mention the size of the battery, but quotes it as lasting around 3.5 hours on a charge, and with the case it can get up to 24 hours.

In the Box

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In the box, Anker provides the Zolo Liberty, which are stored in the charging case. You get three sets of ear tips and four sets of the GripFit jackets (also known as wings on other earbuds), these are in different sizes, so that you can use the pair that fits your ears the best. There is also a micro USB cable and then the usual assortment of paperwork.

Hardware

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The Zolo Liberty are pretty small, as youd expect, since these are truly wireless earbuds. They are mostly made out of plastic, which in most cases this would be an issue, but with truly wireless earbuds, its a good thing. The reasoning for that is because plastic is much lighter than metal or aluminum, and you will want earbuds that are lightweight and ones that dont fall out of your ears easily. So its a good choice here. There is a button on either earbud, which can be used for different things like adjusting the volume, switching songs and more. There is a light on the right earbud, which indicates that the earbud is charging, when in the case, or turned on when not in the case. Otherwise, these are quite small earbuds and are in black, so they look pretty stealthy. Now there is a Zolo logo on either earbud, but that shouldnt really bother you.

These do come with a carrying case that you will actually use. And thats because it is how you charge the earbuds. The Zolo Liberty sit in the charging case which has a micro USB port on the side for charging. This case is pretty nice, nothing too special here, with a nice Zolo logo on the top. The case is actually a bit larger than what the Jaybird RUN sit in, but that is largely because this has a much bigger battery inside for recharging the Zolo Liberty. These can give you up to 24 hours of playback, which is roughly about 8 recharges before the case itself needs a recharge. Thats actually unparalleled when it comes to truly wireless earbuds.

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You will notice in the pictures throughout this review that the case for these earbuds do scratch really easily, and thats because it is also made of plastic. Not necessarily the best material for a case thats going to be knocking around in your gym bag, or really any bag, but it doesnt affect how the headphones work, so its not the end of the world. But it is something to be aware of, if you do decide to pick up the Zolo Liberty truly wireless earbuds. As mentioned already, the Zolo Liberty do come with a number of ear tips, which I didnt use myself. I found the ones that were on the earbuds out of the box to be comfortable enough for my liking. But that wont be the case for everyone. I also didnt use the GripFit Jackets on the Liberty, which is actually a surprise, since I always use them or the ear tips (what most companies call them) on earbuds, as they stay in my ears better. But that wasnt needed here.

Audio Quality

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The audio quality on these earbuds are not going to win any awards for being the best, but it is good. Zolo is using Graphene technology to give immersive sound on the Liberty earbuds, and it does really sound good, but the bass is not that deep. So if you listen to a lot of bass-heavy songs (like I do), youll definitely notice that. Of course, the mids and highs are nice and clear, theres nothing to complain about on that end. The real complaint is only on the lows or the bass. For most people, the audio in these earbuds are going to be pretty good, and nothing really to complain about, but those audiophiles out there will want something with more bass for sure.

It would also be nice if there was a way to adjust the EQ on the Liberty earbuds, like you can do with most other smartphones. This would normally be done with an app on your phone, and its something that Jaybird does quite well. But being able to adjust the bass to your liking would actually get rid of our only complaint in the music quality  as long as the bass is good, obviously. This is something that Zolo has on the more expensive Liberty+ model, with the Zolo Life app, we havent used them or the app (since it doesnt work with this model), so we cant say how good, or bad the app is.

Battery Life & Connectivity

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The battery life here is pretty impressive. The 3.5 hours on a charge isnt really that impressive, but it is about the industry average for truly wireless headphones. Thats really because these earbuds are so small, you either skimp on the drivers and offer lower-quality audio, or have to skimp on the battery and offer shorter battery life, or do like Bose with their SoundSport Free which dont skimp on either, really, but are also really big and hang out of your ears, which is pretty uncomfortable. So Anker struck a pretty good balance here with the Liberty. Its long enough battery life for most workouts or even a nice long run, and since you are going to keep these in the case anyways, they should always be fully charged. So you shouldnt need to worry about forgetting to charge them. Now since the case does last up to 24 hours, we didnt even need to charge these once a week, it actually lasted us almost two weeks, which is pretty impressive. Luckily, Anker did add a battery indicator on the front, so you can see how much juice is left (and whether you should charge them now or wait a day or so).

Connectivity is almost always a downer for truly wireless headphones. This is because you dont just have one Bluetooth connection, but you actually have two. Each ear is connected to the phone, which can become an issue. We noticed this with the Jaybird RUN truly wireless earbuds a few months ago when we reviewed those, and found that you sometimes needed to turn on each earbud separately then they would sync up, and that the left earbud would sometimes drop connection and take a good 30 seconds to reconnect. So not the best experience out there, but Jaybird did fix that in the retail version, as the one we reviewed was an unfinished product. But, that is not a problem with the Zolo Liberty. I take the earbuds out of the case, put them into my ears and turn on the right earbud and they automatically connect to the Pixel 2 XL without any issues. No need to turn on the other one, as it turns on automatically. The Liberty also have not dropped connection to the phone at all during our review process, which is a really good thing. As it is really annoying when youre listening to music then all of sudden you are only getting audio out of one ear. Good thing thats not a problem here.

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Wrap Up

The Zolo Liberty might be the best pair of truly wireless earbuds out there, if youre not an audiophile. And what we mean by that is that the audio quality here isnt as high-end as some of the other models that are out there from Jaybird, Bose, JBL and others. But every other box is checked on the Liberty. From the battery life, to the comfortability, to even the price tag. For $99, the Liberty earbuds are a pretty tough pair of truly wireless earbuds to pass up (and Amazon will have them marked down to $79 for the next week, as of this publishing). But if you are wanting something with better audio quality, you may want to spend the extra $50 on the Liberty+, which also double the battery life (which is really incredible).
Dish Network CEO, co-founder, and majority stakeholder Charlie Ergen has reportedly chosen to step down from his role, as the company shuffles around several top employees. The shift in employees, according to the associated press release, comes as the company is reorganizing into a group structure in order to more effectively face the challenges of supporting DISH TV, Sling TV, and its IoT-centric wireless network. Ergen, who currently owns a 52-percent share of the company, will be continuing in a role of providing oversight. Following Ergens decision, the company is said to have promoted Erik Carlson, who previously worked as president and COO of Dish, to take on the role. Executive vice president (EVP) and Chief Technology Officer Vivek Khemak is also said to be joining Carlsons leadership team.

Aside from the primary leadership team, Brian Neylon will be taking on the role of group president for DISH TV. Neylon previously held a position as EVP of customer acquisition and retention. Neylons new role will place him at the head of Dish TV, with accountability for the groups performance and strategies moving forward. However, Neylon will be continuing to provide oversight for customer acquisition and retention, in addition to the newly added responsibilities. Meanwhile, Warren Schlichting, who previously filled the role of EVP of marketing, programming, and media sales, will take on the role of EVP and group president of Sling TV. As with the role filled by Neylon, Schlichting will take responsibility for Sling TVs strategy and performance. However, Schlichting will also maintain a position providing oversight for the Programming and Media Sales departments at Dish. EVP John Swieringa will be placed to oversee operational departments that support the companys DISH TV, Sling TV and Wireless groups, filling Carlsons previous role as COO. Each of the newly appointed positions will, in turn, report directly to Carlson and his leadership team. Splitting the burden of management of each Dish Networks project into individually managed partitions, with oversight, should help the company refocus efforts where they are most needed. The deeper separation, for starters, will allow the company to more accurately track, monitor, and assess DISH TV, Sling TV, and the more recent wireless efforts with less overlap. Moreover, it should free up the employees directly responsible for making use of Dishs highly-valued wireless spectrum to operate more efficiently.

In the meantime, those top executives were not the only employees shuffled around by the restructuring. David Scott, a former Walmart executive, has been moved into position as the companys Chief Human Resources Officer. Scott will also report directly to Carlson, and serve as an EVP on Dishs management committee beginning in February. Other employees that will now report directly to Carlson include EVP and General Counsel Tim Messner, as well as SVP and CFO Steve Swain. Rober Toevs, who fills the role of VP of Corporate Communications will report to Carlson as well.
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar - the same person who dismissed Narendra Modi as a 'chaiwallah' during the 2014 elections - has now called PM Modi a 'neech aadmi'.

By India Today Web Desk: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has gone and made a personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi yet again. Before a crucial election (in Gujarat), yet again.

Aiyar, who famously dismissed Modi in 2014 as a 'chaiwallah', has now called PM Modi a "low-life" who is practising "dirty politics".

Speaking to news agency ANI, Aiyar said, "Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajneeti karne ki kya avashyakta hai?" (This man is a low-life person, he isn't cultured... at this moment, why does he need to practise such dirty politics?).

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Aiyar's comments came in response to PM Narenda Modi launching a subtle attack on Jawaharlal Nehru at a rally in Gujarat today. Without naming the first Prime Minister, PM Modi said, "Baba Saheb Ambedkar's contribution to nation building is very important, there had been attempts to undermine his role, but such attempts were unsuccessful."

In response, Aiyar told ANI that Jawaharlal Nehru played the biggest role in furthering BR Ambedkar's wishes, before going on to make his "low-life person" comment.

PM MODI RESPONDS

Around an hour after Aiyar made his comments, PM Modi tore into the Congress, saying its leaders are "speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy."

Without naming Mani Shankar Aiyar, PM Modi hit out at him: "One Congress leader, who has studied in best institutions, served as a diplomat, was a Minister in Cabinet, he said Modi is 'Neech.' This is insulting. This is nothing but a Mughliya mindset."

Aiyar's comment will cost the Congress in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly election, the Prime Minister went on to say.

I have nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling me Neech'. This is the Congress mindset. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box. https://t.co/2McoZnaoar pic.twitter.com/icGqAphUzy- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 7, 2017

For the Bharatiya Janata Party, Aiyar's comments today could turn out to be a blessing, just like his 'chaiwallah' statement did in 2014. Then PM candidate Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders went to town using Aiyar's comments to portray Congress as an elitist party that does not care about the poor.

This is the second time the Congress has slipped up in the days leading to the Gujarat assembly election. Just a fortnight ago, the Youth Congress's online magazine - Yuva Desh - sparked a huge furore after posting a meme mocking PM Modi and his past as a tea seller.

The meme was tweeted out by the Yuva Desh and had PM Modi conversing with US President Donald Trump and British PM Theresa May.

In the meme, Modi asks, "Have you guys seen how the Opposition gets 'maymays' created about me?" Trump responds, "It's called 'memes' not 'maymays'."

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May, on the other hand, is seen making the disparaging comment that has raised the hackles of many in the Bharatiya Janata Party: "You sell tea."

The controversial Yuva Desh tweet on PM Modi that was later deleted

The meme, which was taken down within two hours, was quickly panned by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, who called it elitist, and was disowned by the Congress.

The Youth Congress chief later apologised for the tweet while suggesting it was the work of a "volunteer".

2014

On a winter day in 2014, during the run-up to the general election, Mani Shankar Aiyar dismissed PM Modi as a 'chaiwallah'. The Congress leader also went on to express his confidence that Modi would never become PM.

Speaking at an All India Congress Committee convention in New Delhi, Aiyar said, "I promise you, in 21st Century, Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country. But if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him," he said, and this changed the course and narrative of the general election.

WATCH | Modi is a low-life with no values: Mani Shankar Aiyar

--- ENDS ---

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Google teamed up with a number of celebrities to launch a new feature of Search on Android and iOS, allowing users to receive responses to various questions about their favorite actors, musicians, comedians, and even chefs directly from those famous individuals, with the results being delivered in the form of short video messages. A dozen celebrities are participating in the initiative announced on Thursday, with Googles list of partners involving everyone from Mark Wahlberg, Allison Williams, Seth MacFarlane, and Gina Rodriguez to Will Ferrell, Dominique Ansel, James Franco, and Priyanka Chopra. Nick Jonas is also participating in the program, as are Kenan Thompson, Jonathan Yeo, and Tracee Ellis Ross.

The feature itself is currently only available on mobile but is supported both by the browser version of Google Search and the actual Google app that can be downloaded on Android and iOS devices. Every celebrity that contributed to the project has a least half a dozen of video messages answering some of the most popular questions about themselves, with the functionality itself possibly taking inspiration from Wireds popular Autocomplete Interviews that often went viral in the past. The questions answered by Hollywood stars are as varied as one would expect from celebrity-related searches, ranging from queries about Priyanka Chopras hair and Will Ferrells ability to speak Swedish to Seth MacFarlanes love for musicals and Mark Wahlbergs dominant hand. Apart from the most asked questions on the Internet, the celebrities that partnered with Google also answered some seemingly random inquiries related to things like the result of a theoretical fight between Wahlberg and Ferrell and the mechanics of kissing a person.

While typing specific questions that have a corresponding answer filmed by Google will propel the newly introduced clips directly to the top of your search results, simply searching for any of the aforementioned celebrities will let you scroll through all of their existing videos answering what Google deems are top questions, with this particular section being located immediately below their biography cards on the Search results page. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant said more similar partnerships are on the way, suggesting its list of celebrities personally answering the Internets many questions is likely to grow in the coming months.
The Google Pixelbook doesnt have much to go on for protection, at least not in terms of official accessories, but thats about to change soon. A sleek new Pixelbook sleeve is now listed on the Google Store with a coming soon label, albeit not many details are available at this point. Google has yet to reveal when the accessory will actually become available for purchase, or how much it will cost when it does. For now, the product page just lists a few pictures, a brief description, and the dimensions of the sleeve.

The premium Google Pixelbook made its debut back in early October and raised plenty of interest, sparking a slew of positive reviews due to its great hardware, sleek design, and the overall experience it delivers. In terms of accessories, however, Google remained silent so far and launched no official sleeves, cases, or anything else, for that matter. A Bellroy sleeve has been available for the device, but the official one from Google should make a worthy alternative. The description on the Google Store touts a seamless construction, a sleek design, and a smooth finish due premium layered microfiber. The sleeve offers protection for the Pixelbook and its stylus, as it also has a custom compartment specifically designed to fit the Pixelbook Pen.

Speaking of the Pixelbook Pen, Google has also listed replacement tips for the stylus on the Google Store. This is an important addition since the Pixelbook Pen doesnt come with any extra tips in the box, and the original tip can break or pop out. Google notes that new tips should help ensure a natural pen-on-paper feeling when using the stylus. Google will be offering a set of three Pixebook Pen replacement tips for $15, but the pack is also listed with a coming soon label and no specific release date yet. The three-pack will also include tweezers to help users replace the stylus tips with ease. Although no official release date is available yet for the Pixelbook sleeve or the Pixelook Pen replacement tips, the official product pages on the Google Store indicates that the accessories will become available momentarily. Both items will likely be on sale in time for Christmas.
Google is looking to shift from using Chrome apps to Progressive Web Apps once it stops supporting the usability of Chrome apps in its browser on PC, Mac, and Linux systems sometime next year, and while Google hasnt given a hard date on when exactly Chrome app support will stop on these platforms, it is supposed to happen sometime in the first quarter of the year which will be sometime within the first three months. While Google may not have intended to support apps in the Chrome browser on PC, Mac, and Linux at all after Chrome app support was to end, the advent of Progressive Web Apps seems to have have shifted Googles intentions and it makes sense as Progressive Web Apps are apps which can be used in more than just the Chrome browser, in addition to being compatible with more than one operating system.

Google sent out an email to developers which explains the state of PWAs and the way theyll be taking over for Chrome apps in the future. Googles plan was to stop support for Chrome apps in early 2018, but its now saying that the complete removal of Chrome apps from the above-listed platforms wont be happening until the availability of PWAs are there, meaning users are able to install Progressive Web Apps onto their desktops. Once this is possible Google says it will be stopping the support of Chrome apps in the Chrome browser, though it still doesnt have a date, just a time frame of some months after what it originally had planned.

Since much of this will affect developers in different ways than users, Google is also looking into ways that it can help developers in the change from app type to app type, as it notes that it has recognized not all Progressive Web Apps will have the same functionality as a Chrome App counterpart due to the use of the specific Chrome App APIs that are only part of that Chrome App and wouldnt be available to the PWA. To that end Google is investigating ways to make things simpler for developers here. From the user side of things, not much should change. PWAs will be installable on desktops with launch icons just like Chrome apps, Google says, so that will still be no change on the user side.
Tech giant Google is seemingly always looking for new ways to push the limits of what artificial intelligence can be and do through experimentation, and its latest AI plaything has learned how to craft algorithmically optimized cookie recipes. It all started with a Google team in Pittsburgh looking to test out an AI that they were creating for experimental design. Meant to create experiments by adjusting variables and monitoring experiment results to tweak things until it got the desired outcome, the AI got its first real-world test by teaming up with a local bakery to create the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

The whole experiment revolved around Bayesian Optimization, a design strategy that, in AI technique form, essentially boils down to figuring out the best possible result with a given set of variables. The variables in question were cookie ingredients. With the variables set in place, the AI team in Pittsburgh started with a basic cookie recipe, rated it against generic store-bought cookies, and fed that data back into the AI to see what it would do with the information. Through many iterations, the AI got better and better at crafting cookie recipes. This technique is essentially the AI equivalent of Pavlovian training, a psychological trope that consists of serving a subject positive or negative stimuli in association with other stimuli, essentially programming a response. The name comes from originator Igor Pavlov, who demonstrated it in dogs by training them to salivate when they heard a bell, knowing food was about to be served.

To help it transcend the variables set before it and start to creatively enhance recipes with new ingredients and methods, the team brought in Jeanette Harris, founder of local bakery The Gluten Free Goat Bakery & Cafe. Along with the Google teams resident chef, Harris started putting some more unusual ingredients into the mix to expand the AIs horizons, and the machine eventually settled on a recipe that involves some seriously atypical ingredients for a chocolate chip cookie, with cardamom as the star of the show. That recipe can be found in the gallery below, if youd like to try it yourself. It even comes with precise instructions, making it nearly impossible to bake the cookies in a way that the AI didnt intend.
Most of you probably know that Xiaomis smartphones ship with the companys proprietary UI called MIUI (with the exception of the Xiaomi Mi A1 which comes with stock Android), and the company has just announced that MIUI now has over 300 million active users on a global scale. This information was shared by the companys CEO at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, and the news was published by the companys official MIUI.com website.

Now, on May 10, 2016, the companys CEO announced that MIUI has crossed the 200 million mark, which means that it took the companys OS about a year and a half to attract an additional 100 million users. This is yet another landmark for this China-based company which is quite young compared to other tech giants out there, for those of you who do not know, Xiaomi was founded back in 2010. In any case, Xiaomi has also released a timeline for MIUI, so that you can track its progress ever since it was announced back in August 2010. It took the OS about 14-15 months to reach its first million of users, while it managed to hit 10 million in January 2013. The 100 million users mark was reached in April 2015, and the only two and a half years later, MIUI is at 300 million active users. If youd like to check out the whole timeline for yourself, which contains exact dates and everything, check out the image provided down below. For those of you who have not used MIUI just yet, this OS is quite fast, though considerably different than stock Android. MIUI does not offer an app drawer, and its design is also considerably different compared to stock Android, as are some of its features.

It is worth noting that the company already started rolling out MIUI 9 to both Chinese and global users, though not everyone received it just yet, the company is rolling out the update for one device at a time, though a ton of devices will get the update. Having said that, Xiaomi had recently announced that the newly-announced Snapdragon 845 SoC will fuel its upcoming flagship, the Xiaomi Mi 7 which was to be expected. The Xiaomi Mi 7 is expected to arrive in the first half of next year, though were still not sure when, it is possible that the Mi 7 will land in April, just like its predecessor.

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Following the official announcement of the Snapdragon 845 on Tuesday, Qualcomm finally detailed its new premium system-on-chip during the second day of its Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui, Hawaii. While many semiconductor manufacturers are now delivering AI-focused chips, the San Diego, California-based tech giant is quick to point out that the Snapdragon 845 is actually its third-generation AI silicon, a refined version of what the previous two product lineups offered. So, while most of its rivals are still trying to get the basics right, Qualcomm is already deeply involved in highly specific optimizations encompassing various AI-related technologies like TensorFlow, Googles software library used for machine learning applications. Essentially, if you plan on buying a cutting-edge smartphone with countless AI capabilities next year, chances are it will be powered by Qualcomms latest offering.

The Snapdragon 845 is still an SoC manufactured on Samsungs second-generation 10nm FinFET process with eight Kryo 385 CPU cores configured in two clusters, a high-performance quad-core one clocked at a maximum operating frequency of 2.8GHz, and an energy-efficient configuration running at up to 1.8GHz. The Adreno 630 is also part of the package, succeeding the Adreno 540 found inside the Snapdragon 835. Support for LPDDR4 RAM is still here, as is compatibility with the latest and fastest flash memory chips. The follow-up to the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem integrated into the new chip comes in the form of the previously announced Snapdragon X20 which is a fully 5G-enabled module, featuring peak download speeds of 1.2Gbps. The modem comes with support for all contemporary wireless technologies like 520 MHz carrier aggregation and 44 MIMO, being designed as a truly next-generation offering as far as cellular connectivity is concerned. Another massive advantage of the Snapdragon X20 is its support for the new U.S. Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band that not only allows for private LTE networks but also benefits wireless carriers efforts to improve their networks. While Qualcomm EVP Cristiano Amon acknowledged the world is still between Gs while speaking at the first day of the firms summit, the tech giant expects 5G networks to be commercialized as soon as the first half of 2019 and 2018 handsets powered by the Snapdragon 845 will be ready to take advantage of gigabit mobile speeds that the next wireless revolution promises to deliver.

The Snapdragon 845 boasts simultaneous support for two dual-camera setups, each featuring two 25-megapixel sensors, with this particular aspect of the chip presumably being meant to make it especially appealing to phone makers seeking on bringing their photography game to the next level. In other words, Qualcomm is betting on quad-camera Android flagships becoming much more prevalent over the course of the next year. While dual-camera setups became a common occurrence in 2017, the vast majority of such systems were featured on the rear panels of smartphones, whereas front-facing two-sensor setups mostly remained reserved for niche and extremely selfie-focused offerings like the Huawei Mate 10 Lite and OPPO F3 Plus. With the Snapdragon 845 now extending support for two premium dual-camera systems on a single device, the company may starting a new trend in the mobile industry that many Android flagship manufacturers end up supporting.

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Content capture is definitely one of the Snapdragon 845s highlights even beyond its quad-sensor support, with the SoC taking the 4K UHD Premium and HDR10 compatibility of its predecessor and giving it another dimension by providing support for recording content compliant with the Ultra High-Definition Premium standard. As Qualcomm SVP Alex Katouzian put it yesterday, the Snapdragon 845 will allow consumers to capture Hollywood-quality videos, and being able to do so in accordance with the latest and greatest standards for image excellence should ultimately help resolve one of todays biggest issues with UHD Premium  lack of content. On a related note, the digital signal processor (DSP) of Qualcomms new offering was also revamped and is now even more efficient, being able to process video and audio data separately.

The Snapdragon 845 will be made available to phone makers starting early 2018, with Samsung being expected to be the first to commercialize the chip with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus variants sold in the United States and China. Regardless, if recent product launch practices in the mobile industry are any indication, expect multiple Snapdragon 845-powered devices to be announced at the next iteration of Barcelona, Spain-based Mobile World Congress scheduled to start in late February. Xiaomi already confirmed that its next Android flagship will be powered by Qualcomms new offering, likely referring to the Mi 7 which should launch come spring.
Aiyar hit out at the central government for its handling of matters in the Valley and that BJP should stop blaming it on Pakistan.

By Geeta Mohan: After his controversial remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling him a "neech aadmi", former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyyar has taken on the Modi administration on its policies regarding Jammu and Kashmir and on Muslims in India.

Speaking at an event organised by the Ananta Center on Thursday titled, 'The Current State of India-Pakistan Relations', Aiyar hit out at the central government in its handling of matters in the Valley and that BJP should stop blaming it on Pakistan.

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"There is confusion in the valley we require to sort it out by dialogue with them and not by having recourse to saying that the Pakistanis are responsible. If Pakistan were to disappear there will be no Kashmir problem, there would be and therefore we need to integrate Muslims with ourselves and integrate Kashmir with India to make it an inseparable part of India," he said.

"We cannot claim the territory and reject the people. There is so much anti-India feeling in the valley that I am afraid there is a problem," said Aiyar.

Referring to the issue of nation building, the former Union Minister said that the "single biggest" issue is "integrating" the "Muslim" community into the rest of the country. Explaining why Muslims in India should not be likened to Pakistan he said, "there is a large section in our country that believes that Muslims were responsible for the vivisection of India and therefore draws a parallel between Muslims who made Pakistan and Muslims who remained in India. Are we going to integrate them? Can we do it if there this hostile relationship with Pakistan? We are damaging our own nationhood by enabling Pakistan to continue being considered as enemy territory for no reason other than that it is inhabited and created by Muslims."

Also alluding to Muslims in India being held responsible for terrorism, Aiyar argued that only better ties with Pakistan can help the situation of Muslims in India. "We need to work out ways of consolidating our own nationhood and one very important aspect of that is somehow creating a relationship with Pakistan which will enable our Muslims to not be held responsible for what Hafiz Saeed does or did or will do", Mani Shankar Aiyar said.

Earlier in the day, he courted controversy with his "Neech Aadmi" remark which led the Prime Minister to mention it at one of his rallies in Gujarat. The Congress Party reacted to it by suspending Aiyar from the "primary membership" of the party over his purported casteist slur against the Prime Minister.

The suspension was preceded by a tweet from Rahul Gandhi where he said, "BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said."

WATCH: Manishankar Aiyar: Sorry for calling Modi neech, which can be interpreted as low-born

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Southeast Asia has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as much of the rest of the world. In response, cou...
Money Talks: A Gay Military Couple Making $160,000 A Year

Meet The Same-Sex Military Couple Making $160,000 A Year

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Everyone wants money, yet discussing it within the parameters of a relationship can be intimidating. When handled incorrectly, finances can crumble a romantic partnership  but when done in tandem, the right money conversations can go a long way. That looks different for different people, though. Welcome to Money Talks, AskMen's series on the relationship between our money and our relationships. Let's talk about cents, baby.

Pete and Danny are a military couple who are obsessed with one another. They met at work at the fire department and have never looked back. The two married in June of 2016, one year after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in each state. Pete took Dannys last name. I know it sounds old-fashioned to take a spouses last name, but since Ive always gone by Peter and with a last name of Johnson it was sort of like being Dick Dickson, Porno Star, Pete says. Despite coming from different financial backgrounds, they have learned from one another and found a planning system that allows for both responsible saving and splurging on items such as Armani suits and Doc Martens. Danny recently returned from a year-long deployment in Iraq, but the couple found time to catch up with AskMen to share advice on money and love (and the joys of compatible kinks).

Names: Edward Peter Johnson Delacroix and Daniel Babineau Delacroix

Location: Utah

Ages: 50 (Pete) and 39 (Danny)

Occupation: Pete is a senior paramedic and EMS Lieutenant with the city fire department, and Danny is a full-time paramedic with the city fire department and a Master Sgt (E-7) in the Army Reserve, as a Critical Care Flight Paramedic assigned to a medical helicopter rescue squadron.

Relationship status: Married

Separate income: Pete makes around $95,000 per year, and Danny makes around $65,000 a year.

Combined income: $160,000

AskMen: How did you meet?

Danny: I transferred from my Army unit in Florida to a Reserve unit in Salt Lake City. I took a job with the fire department, and was partnered on an ambulance with Pete. We worked together about three months, and I asked him out on a date. We have been together since. I know, youre not supposed to date at work, but for me it was worth the risk!

Pete: I was lusting after him from day one. It was hard (tee hee) to concentrate with him around, especially since, like me, he speaks French fluently. His Cajun-accented French is sexy as f*ck. I swear, he whispers French in my ear and my clothes fall off. When youre partners on an ambulance you get very close, which we did. I have never before broken my rule about dating at work, but when he asked me out after three months of working together, I said yes with no hesitation. We went out that morning after work for breakfast (and dessert in bed after) and the rest is history! It helps a lot that we have the same sexual likes and kinks. Were well paired in that department.

Does the way you were raised affect how you view finances?

Danny: I was born in a very poor family in St. Martin Parish, St. Martinville, Louisiana. Thats way down south near Bayou Teche. I am the oldest of seven children, and we never had much. I think that has made me sometimes not responsible with money. Pete, he says I'm making up for not having much growing up, and he's probably right. He is a saver, and I am a spender, but I am learning to be more responsible with money. Sometimes we argue over money; mostly I get angry because he grew up with money and I did not. He handles most of our finances. This is a good thing because I was deployed to Iraq for the last year and he took care of everything. Now that I'm home I will of course help with that.

Do you keep finances separate, or shared?

Danny: We have both shared accounts and personal ones (shared account for all the bills and such, and each of us have our own personal accounts for personal expenses). We share the bills evenly, but Pete puts more of his money into our shared Roth IRA. I don't like that so much but he says it is because he makes more than me. No arguing with him; I tell you what. Stubborn.

What are some of your favorite ways to spend your money when you want to splurge?

Danny: I like clothes. I think I have three times the clothes Pete does. I also like gadgets, electronics and such. I like to eat out and take trips. That last one is something both Pete and me believe is money worth spending. We don't have kids so we sort of like spending that money on us! We recently bought a nice trailer to go camping in, as Pete does not like sleeping in tents or on the ground. He says his idea of roughing it is a hotel without 24/7 room service.

Pete: Im not quite the spendthrift that Danny is; again, that goes back to his growing up dirt poor. He never had anything, and now that he can afford it, he spoils himself. I dont blame him, I just have to nag him sometimes to make sure to leave enough to put into savings. Me, I love to travel and eat at good restaurants and go to movies, that sort of thing. I do enjoy well-made clothing. I dont buy much, but what I do buy is quality. My wardrobe ranges from an Armani suit to several pairs of Doc Martens (Im still a goth at heart, have been since I was a teen!). Oh, and I love good jewelry. I collect art and antiques.

You mentioned long distance financial planning  would you share how that impacted talks about money, and do you have advice for other long-distance couples?

Pete: My best advice if youre handling finances for you both when one party is away, such as in the case when Danny was deployed is, even if you are married, see a lawyer. I cannot stress this enough. Make sure you have power of attorney over their pay, bank accounts, everything financial. Because if you dont, and they get hurt or cannot communicate with you, youre screwed. Oh, and make sure your will(s) are up to date and include the financial power of attorney. If you own a house together, make absolutely certain youre both on the deed, not just on the mortgage; a will alone doesnt protect you, especially if you have predatory family members, like Danny does. I know that if something happened to either one of us, or both, some of them would swoop in quick like damned vultures. Dannys made it very clear who he wants to leave money to and who he absolutely does not want getting a dime. And make sure you have a really good financial planner to help you with building and maintaining your retirement funds and legacy planning.

Is there anything else youd like to add?

Pete: Danny and I decided we would each share one little personal note about each other with you: Danny is my life. I never knew what love was until I met him, and I have loved him since the day I met him, and I will love him until the day I die. I am the luckiest man on the planet. I have never had anyone love me like he does, so completely, so perfectly. He is my hero. Sappy, I know, but its true.

Danny: I want you to know how much I love Pete. Il est le coeur de mon coeur. And now I'm going to share one thing with you. My nickname for him is Tink. Like Tinkerbell? Because he can be a cute but annoying little fairy sometimes.

How much do you spend per month on the following? (answers by Danny)

Food:

Danny: $500 depending on how lazy we are about cooking. Pete: We tend to do quite a bit of eating out, partly because of our jobs, partly because we both like good food.

Mortgage:

Danny: $1100 (Utah has crazy low cost of living!)

Debt:

Danny: We keep our debt low, pay all credit cards at the end of the month. The total is less than $1000 a month in miscellaneous debt.

Car payments:

Danny: I just bought a new truck, payment and insurance is $600 month. Pete's car is paid off so all he has is insurance, but he is looking to buy a new one. Peter: My car is paid off, so I only have insurance at $600/year. We also bought a new travel trailer (one of those Airstreams) and that runs $250/month for that loan. Whatever is left over, half we keep for personal use in our own accounts, the other half into our joint saving/retirement account.

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Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, by his controversial remark, seems to have once again scored a self goal for Congress just ahead of the Gujarat Assembly election.

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: In a span of just three days, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has made a controversial statement for the second time. The latest one comes on the last day of campaigning for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly election.

Aiyar launched a frontal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging that the latter was a "low level person bereft of any culture".

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Speaking to news agency ANI, the former Union minister said, "Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai? (This man is a low-life person, he isn't cultured... at this moment why does he need to practise such dirty politics?)."

Aiyar was responding to Modi's subtle attack on Jawaharlal Nehru.

Aiyar's controversial remarks provided fodder to the BJP to milk them to their advantage. In the past too, the party has sought to use such attacks on the prime minister to its advantage.

Modi's OBC caste and background of a tea-seller is being highlighted now.

The PM, speaking in an election rally at Surat, hit back at Aiyar. He said the voters will give the Congress a befitting reply.

"They can call me 'neech'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and OBC communities. They can keep their language, we will do our work," he said.

Even in the past, the BJP has projected such attacks on Modi's humble past of a tea-seller as Congress' elitist mindset which is against the poor.This may jeopardise the Congress's prospects and may ultimately harm party vice-president Rahul Gandhi who is leaving no stone unturned to defeat the ruling BJP in Gujarat.

After Rahul's admonishing, Mani Shankar Aiyar apologised to Modi.

However, Rahul's supporters have already started feeling that Aiyar may be sabotaging his leadership.

Rahul is all set to replace his mother Sonia Gandhi as the Congress president this month.

Soon after Aiyar's comments, Tehseen Poonawalla, who is considered to be a Congress supporter, posted a tweet and feared attempts from insiders to harm Rahul's interests.

He said, "I have said this privately to those that matter and I say this in public... an attempt is being made to sabotage RGs (Rahul Gandhi's) leadership. I simply cannot understand how the same people are making the same mistakes."

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Tehseen is brother of Shehzad Poonawalla, Maharashtra Congress secretary who has raised a banner of revolt against the dynasty politics in the Congress.

Tehseen went on to call Aiyar an "embarrassment" and asked him to "shut up".

It is not the first time that Aiyar has said something which was seen as damaging Rahul's prospects.

RAHUL VS AURANGZEB

On December 5, when Rahul filed the nomination for Congress president's post, Aiyar compared the succession process in the party to the Mughal rule. He asked whether there was an election when Jahangir succeeded Shah Jahan or when the latter gave way to Aurangzeb as the emperor.

This comment was immediately highlighted by the BJP and Modi. While addressing an election rally, the prime minister took a dig at Rahul congratulating the Congress on their "Aurangzeb rule".

ONLY MOTHER-SON AS CONGRESS CHIEF

In October, he said that only two people can be Congress president - mother or son.

However, he was quick to add that if there was only one candidate, how an election could be conducted in the first place.

OPPOSITION'S PM CANDIDATE

In March, Aiyar had gone to the extent of questioning Rahul's capability to lead a rainbow coalition of the opposition parties to take on Modi and the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

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Aiyar said Rahul, if needed, should forsake his claim over leadership of the alliance as the Congress did in Bihar in 2015, when it was the third junior partner of Mahagathbandhan and in Uttar Pradesh when it played a second fiddle to the Samajwadi Party.

TEA-SELLER

In fact, Aiyar was the first one to mock Modi's humble origins. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he had said that the Congress would welcome Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister at that point in time, to sell tea at AICC meetings.

Aiyar had also taken a jibe at Modi's prime ministerial ambitions and said a place will be identified for Modi to distribute tea in AICC headquarters.

The BJP drew maximum political mileage out of the statement and went on to launch the 'Chai pe charcha' campaign which was an instant hit among the electorate.

Aiyar has done it again. While the BJP may well use the controversial remarks to score points over the Congress, the loser in all likelihood is going to be Rahul.

--- ENDS ---
Geoffrey Sinclair

Barry.Nilsson. principal Geoffrey Sinclair has been appointed by Attorney-General George Brandis QC as a part-time commissioner to assist the Australian Law Reform Commission in a review of the Family Law Act.Sinclair, along with his fellow part-time commissioner, the Hon. John Faulks, will assist commissioner Helen Rhoades in what will be the first comprehensive review of Australias family law system since the enactment of the Family Law Act in 1976.Brandis announced the in-depth inquiry earlier this year amid criticisms that the family law system is slow and expensive. The review aims to ensure that the act still serves the best interests of Australian families. It also focuses on the childrens needs, child abuse, and family violence.Sinclair, whos based in Brisbane, is an accredited family law specialist by the Queensland Law Society. He is currently the chair of the World Congress of Family Law and Childrens rights.Sinclair has been with Barry.Nilsson. since 1988. He is the immediate past chair of the family law section of the Law Council of Australia and the former director of the Australian Institute of Family Law Arbitrators and Mediators.Faulks was a judge of the Family Court of Australia from 1994 to 2004, before being appointed as the deputy chief justice of the court. He retired last year.Before joining the bench, he was in private practice for 26 years. He is also a past president of the Law Council of Australia, a past chair of the Family Law Council, and a past president of the ACT Law Society.Related stories:
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SUV

Cadillac used to stand for classic American luxury: big boats with soft suspension and leather tops. However, the world has changed. The XT4 is an, but not in the same sense as the Escalade.The XT4 is the most car-like 4x4 the company has ever made. The smaller brother of the XT5 is designed to compete with things like the BMW X3, Audi Q5 and Volvo XC60 - some of the most popular luxury vehicles in the world.The model is very much what we expected, both regarding design and proportions. But as usual with Cadillacs, the final production headlights aren't going to be shown until the official debut.All those little circular projectors are probably going to merge into something similar to the XT5. The grille looks the same too. The profile reveals a swooping roof, while large exhaust ports dominate the back. With both the GLC and Q5 having fake trim instead of muffler tips, we have to show our appreciation to the American automaker.The brand's smallest crossover will be built on the C1XX platform. It should be powered exclusively by a 2-liter turbo making 272 horsepower. An 8-speed automatic will send power either to the front or all four wheels. Though Cadillac has access to Chevy's diesel technology, we don't expect them to borrow anything. However, there could be a downsized version for China... like always.To be competitive, the XT4 will need a lot of technology. That obviously includes some version of Caddilac's controversial infotainment system, leather everywhere, 360-degree cameras. There should also be some level of autonomy involved, the Super Cruise. Will it come to Detroit?
SUV

Focusing on the most prominent details' it's difficult not to notice that the Aston Martin grille seems a bit... happier than before. As for the headlights of the 2019 Focus, these appear to resemble the Thor Hammer scheme used by Volvo, another brand that used to be owned by the Blue Oval.However, you shouldn't allow yourself to be tricked into believing that the taillights will be as slim as those shown here. Zoom in on the rear light elements and you'll notice these are actually larger, with their upper side covered by the camo.As for the Focus hatchback losing its third side window, you could say that the side window of the rear door now resembles the Hoffmeister Kink of the BMW 1 Series, but that might be a bit of a stretch.Underneath the skin, we'll find a new modular global platform, which will also underpin the next Kuga/Escape, for instance. While the proportions of the car won't change too much, the wheelbase will gain around 50mm, with most of the extra space being destined for the rear passengers.Higher-powered incarnations of the newcomer will be offered with all-wheel-drive, while a Focus Active model fitted with more generous ground clearance will offer analternative.As for the cabin of the compact, a series of spyshots we delivered back in the summer has shown us what to expect, with the newcomer showing plenty of similarities to the new Fiesta. The dash will receive the latest tech goodies, with Ford's SYNC infotainment game set to receive a massive screen. And yes, a digital instrument cluster will be offered.The majority of the engine lineup will be comprised of updated versions of the current 1.0-liter and 1.5-liter turbocharged gasoline engines, while the pillar of the diesel range will be the 1.5 TDCi motor.The fourth generation of Focus will continue to be offered in the US. Nevertheless, while the hatch and the sedan will make it stateside, the wagon will remain on the Old Continent. Note that, starting next year, the North American-destined Focus units will no longer be locally produced, with these set to be imported from China.The 2019 Ford Focus will debut in the first quarter of next year, so we wouldn't rule out a Detroit Auto Show unveiling.
Congress today evening suspended Aiyar from the primary membership of the party.

By India Today Web Desk: Hours after Mani Shankar Aiyar called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi", the Congress swung into action to control the damage done to the party ahead of the Gujarat Assembly election.

The Congress today evening suspended Aiyar from the primary membership of the party.

The Congress also issued a show cause notice to the Rajya Sabha MP.

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Earlier today, Aiyar had launched an offensive against PM Modi calling him a 'neech aadmi' (low life) and not a cultured person.

This led to an outrage with the BJP attacking the grand old party for the controversial statement.

PM Modi, who was in Gujarat, while addressing an election rally said the voters will give a befitting reply to Aiyar's jibe.

To control the damage, the Congress distanced itself from the derogatory remark. The party vice president Rahul Gandhi admonished Aiyar and asked him to tender an apology to Modi.

Aiyar said sorry to Modi. However, he blamed his poor Hindi for the gaffe.

Finally, in the evening the Congress issued a show cause notice to the Rajya Sabha MP and suspended him from the primary membership of the party.

A battery of BJP leaders strongly condemned Aiyar's disparaging remarks against PM Modi.

Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah in a series of tweets attacked Congress after Aiyar made the neech remark. Shah said that he was neither shocked nor surprised by Aiyar's comments on PM Modi.

He said that it was the culture of the Congress party. He also tweeted a series of names used by Congress to refer PM Modi in the past.

Neither shocked nor surprised by Mani Shankar Aiyars referring to PM as Neech. This is the culture of the Congress Party. People of Gujarat will punish anti-poor, anti-Dalit, anti-Tribal and anti-OBC Congress.- Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

YamrajMaut Ka SaudagarRavanGandi Nali Ka KeedaMonkeyRabies VictimVirusBhasmasurGangu TeliGoonThese are some words or phrases Congress has used for PM @narendramodi in the past. Not much has changed. We wish them well. We will continue to serve 125 crore Indians.- Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 7, 2017

WATCH: Manishankar Aiyar: Sorry for calling Modi neech, which can be interpreted as low-born

--- ENDS ---
A majority of Americans (59%) believe that President Trump's campaign probably or definitely had improper contacts with the Kremlin in 2016 and believe the investigation will be fair (56%), according to a new Pew Research poll.

Between the lines: Republicans and Democrats, however, are sharply divided over the investigation's importance, with 19% of Republicans saying it's very important, compared to 71% of Democrats.
Pence looks on as Trump signs a proclamation to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP

The Palestinians will not meet with Vice President Pence during his upcoming visit to the region, AP reports, citing a senior Palestinian official. The rebuke comes in response to Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The backdrop: Palestinian protestors pledged "three days of rage" and demonstrations over the decision.
A judge has ordered that Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's former president, be arrested for "treason against the fatherland" for allegedly covering up possible Iranian involvement in a 1994 terror attack that left 85 people dead, per the Telegraph.

She is accused of offering immunity to Iranian perpetrators of the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in order to secure a deal to import Iranian oil. As she is currently a senator, Kirchner would have to be stripped of parliamentary immunity to be prosecuted,

Reuters notes

. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman had been investigating the incident before he was shot dead in January, 2015. Kirchner, who left office in 2015, has previously been indicted over an alleged corruption scheme.
President Trump and Vice President Pence sat down with bipartisan congressional leaders  Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Chuck Schumer  at the White House this afternoon to discuss averting a government shutdown at some point this month.

After Pelosi and Schumer cancelled a similar meeting last week over a combative Trump tweet, POTUS expressed a more positive view about today's summit:

"Were all here today as a very friendly, well-unified group, well-knit together group of people. We hope that were going to make some great progress for our country. I think that will happen and well appreciate it very much."
7 December 2017 10:14 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 155 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on December 7.

Armenians were using heavy machine guns.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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7 December 2017 14:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The huge external debt has been haunting the Armenian economy for many years. Today it makes about $6.4 billion, but despite the overwhelming figure, it continues to grow by tens of million dollars every month.

Recently, Armenian Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan presented to the government draft amendments to the laws On the budget system and On state debt. Experts say that most likely, the upper threshold of Armenias state debt will be raised and the government will continue to borrow funds.

Under the current law, the state debt of Armenia cannot exceed 60 percent of GDP, but it will obviously surpass it by the end of this year. Armenians already have no doubt that the amendments to the law on state debt will be adopted. The authorities simply have no choice but to take loans. The GDP growth is either missing or too small, so it cannot keep up with the growing debts.

Today, only a couple of million dollars remain to reach the fixed debt threshold. The Armenian government has already signed an agreement to get a new $100-million loan from Russia. Inflows are also expected from international financial institutions. The Armenian government recklessly accumulates debts, without thinking about how they will be paid back.

Armenian media reports urge that the state debt was less than $1.1 billion in 2003, $1.5 billion in 2008, $3 billion in 2009, and now it is $6.4 billion. That is, every citizen of Armenia owes the foreign lenders about $2,150.

Although Armenias debt is increasing monthly, the well-being of the countrys population is not improving. One third of Armenia lives in poverty, according to statistics, and this indicator is not decreasing for many years. In addition, the unemployment rate in Armenia is highest in the CIS area. This suggests that the government of the country continues to spend much of the borrowed loans for its own needs, but not for improving the social and economic situation in Armenia.

Today, the Armenian authorities say that if they stop taking debts, it will lead to a decline in the countrys economy. However, they obviously cannot understand that continuation of borrowing money from abroad will anyway lead to a default in the economy sooner or later.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 December 2017 16:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Armenia, which is a hostage of the Armenian diaspora, has isolated itself from all energy, transportation and other regional projects, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on December 7.

He noted that due to Armenian diasporas pressure, Yerevan shut all channels of friendly relations with Turkey.

Erdogan compared Turkish-Georgian and Turkish-Armenian relations, stressing that by strengthening relations with Turkey, Georgia created a favorable future for itself.

The countries that have friendly relations with Turkey are thriving, while those that have hostile relations do not have any future, Turkish president said.

Turkey and Armenia severed diplomatic relations in 1993 due to occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenian Armed Forces and Yerevans claims over recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide. Borders between Turkey and Armenia are still closed.

Turkey has always supported the resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of the country's internationally recognized borders.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
7 December 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Mark Leonard

Deep divisions within Europe are increasingly threatening the values upon which the European project of ever closer union is based. In 2015, during the refugee crisis, many commentators saw a divide between German Chancellor Angela Merkels Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbans vision of ethnic purity: a Western Europe of bridges versus an Eastern Europe of walls.

But another threat to European unity comes from within individual countries. In Germany, talks to form a center-left, center-right coalition have broken down. In the Netherlands, it took Prime Minister Mark Rutte 208 days to form a new government after elections in March. In the United Kingdom, the political establishment is in disarray over Brexit. And in Poland, white nationalists and neo-Nazis recently staged a massive march through the streets of Warsaw.

Which gulfs are wider  those between member states or those within them? The answer to that question matters a great deal. If Europes biggest problem is that it is divided along national borders, then liberal-leaning countries like France and Germany could try to change the balance of power within increasingly illiberal countries.

Every EU country agreed to a set of liberal-democratic standards (part of the so-called Copenhagen Criteria) when it joined the club. But, over time, the governments of Hungary and Poland have decided that they no longer want to abide by the rules. One solution could be to create a smaller club with better benefits. Countries that wish to join this privileged inner circle would have to agree to a new  or rather, the original  set of rules; and countries that break the rules would be left out. There would finally be a cost to breaching EU standards.

But this solution could work only if the biggest problem is the divide between member states. As for the divisions within member states, consider Germany. After the federal election in September, Merkel embarked on a fascinating experiment, in which she tried to unite her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its more nativist sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), and the left-wing Greens.

Merkel is a talented negotiator, and far better suited to write about the art of the deal than others we wont bother mentioning. But it remains to be seen if she can heal the divisions in her own country.

While the Greens would like to uphold the Willkommenskultur, the CSUs position on migration is closer to that of the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). In fact, at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, the CSU hosted Orban at one of its party conferences.

Moreover, while the Greens are European federalists who support greater economic solidarity with Greece and Italy, the FDP channels the fiscal discipline of the Finns, the Dutch, and German Swabians. They are staunchly opposed to deeper European economic integration.

Many hoped that Merkel would succeed in forging a Jamaica coalition (named after the colors of that countrys flag). But, in the end, the experiment failed. The FDP abandoned the talks out of frustration that, as its leader Christian Lindner put it, The four discussion partners have no common vision for modernization of the country or common basis of trust.

Even without a Jamaica coalition, Germany still has a stable liberal majority in the Bundestag. The same cannot be said for the rest of the EU, where almost every other member state is now a 50-50 society: half cosmopolitan, half communitarian. In these countries, the government at any given time represents whichever side won the latest round in an ongoing culture war.

In the UK, for example, 52% of voters opted to leave the EU. The country is now hurtling toward an isolated state of provincialism and xenophobia, but its leaders keep telling the public that Britain will be better off on its own. For those who believe it, the fact that the UK will lose a say in EU decisions affecting its economic environment doesnt seem to matter.

France, on the other hand, has an energetic new pro-European president, Emmanuel Macron, who is committed to preparing his country for the years ahead. And yet France is not much more cosmopolitan than Britain. In the first round of the presidential election this spring, the nativist campaigns of Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Melenchon, and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan collectively won 46% of the vote  almost as much as the UKs Leave campaign.

Clearly, the EU is both a society of states and of citizens. That means intra-national divides are as important as the diplomatic spats between countries.

Earlier this year, a Brookings Institution report tried to determine if Europe is an optimal political area, a concept borrowed from economist Robert Mundells theory of optimal currency areas. The report concluded that cultural and institutional differences between EU countries have not changed much over the past three decades of European integration. But it also found that the divisions between countries are far smaller than the differences within countries. Or in other words, on the issue of freedom of movement, there is greater polarization between London and the British Midlands than between the UK and Poland.

Creating a flexible or multi-tiered Europe could solve some short-term problems, by bringing together coalitions of the willing to address specific issues. But it could also introduce new dangers. After all, most European countries, regardless of what tier they are on, will still be 50-50 societies that could opt in or out of deeper integration with a single election or referendum. In the future, one cannot rule out the possibility that Le Pen will be elected president of France, or that the anti-EU Five Star Movement will come to power in Italy. By the same token, the more moderate Civic Platform might return to power in Poland.

Confronting the intra-societal challenge to the European project will not be easy. It is a deep, generational problem that goes to the heart of national identity, history, and geography. No quick institutional fix can solve a problem like that.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Europes Crisis Starts at Home

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7 December 2017 10:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

New shops in accordance with the new concept of Azercell-Nordic will be opened in Sumgait, Shamakhi, Lankaran and Ganja soon, Company head Vahid Mursaliyev told reporters on December 6.

Since 2018, the expansion of the network of shops operating under the new concept of Nordic will be strengthened, he added.

Currently, Azercell stores are open in Baku, Khirdalan and Guba. Shops are characterized by the availability of free space, where subscribers can test products, take advantage of the advice of sellers, connect to services, conduct subscriber operations, buy mobile phones, accessories, etc.

Commenting on the possibility of the company's acquiring a mobile retail network, Mursaliyev said that the company does not consider this issue.

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Security forces have intensified combing and anti-insurgency operations against the Maoists in the states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand because of the ongoing People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) week.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: At least seven Naxalites were killed in an encounter with the Maharashtra police's special anti-Maoist unit C-60 in Gadchiroli yesterday morning. The massive operations eventually paid dividends. Similar exercise has been carried out by security forces in other Maoist affected states.

A thick blanket of security has been spread for the ongoing People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) week which started on December 2. Combing and anti-insurgency operations against the Maoist have been intensified in states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

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In Sukhma , the current Maoist hotbed, 1500 personnel are on the hunt for top Maoists in the area once considered a liberated zone by PLGA.

With the force once labelled as "sitting ducks" after spate of killing of CRPF men by the Maoists, the CRPF has worked hard to change the notion by launching one of its biggest operations.

The district is also where CRPF has faced its most severe casualties this year.

In April 24, 2017, Maoists killed 25 CRPF personnel and injured seven in Sukma district of south Chhattisgarh. The incident came barely days after 12 CRPF personnel were killed when they "walked into an ambush" laid by Maoists.

In both the incidents the troops came under heavy fire. Their weapons were snatched and they faced a brutal defeat at the hands of the Maoists.

In Jharkhand, the CRPF and Jharkhand Police recently successfully completed combing operations recovering huge cache of arms and ammunition from Budhapahar in Latehar District. At least 30 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to be used against the security forces by the Maoists were seized.

CRPF DG RR Bhatnagar confirmed to India Today that the force is carrying out massive operation in Sukhma. "We will know if it yields dividends. We also carried out successful operation in Latehar."

In view of the Maoist week, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an advisory to the security forces in the Naxal-affected states to take security precaution. They were cautioned against the Maoists attempting to perpetrate violence against security forces and damage properties.

The advisory pointed at the Maoist literature which said the attacks in Sukhma against CRPF needed to be replicated in other parts of the country. The Maoists directed their cadres to develop expertise in IEDs and booby traps and to target informers of the forces.

Inputs from various sources said that Maoists, who have suffered losses with 115 of Dand Karanya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) including 45 in South Sub Zonal Bureau getting killed, may try to avenge their loss.

According to an incident tally accessed by India Today, there were 46 incidents in one week of 2013. It was one of the highest incidents in the past five years in which eight security forces and six civilians were killed while only two Maoists were eliminated.

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In 2014, the number of incidents came down to 30. But the number of killings of security forces shot up to 14. Then too, only two Maoists were killed in the same week of this year.

In 2015, the number of Maoist incidents dipped to 22. The violence was the lowest. Only two security force personnel and civilians each were killed. No Maoist was killed in the period.

In 2016, the number of incidents stood at 25, with one security personnel and three civilians losing their life while two Maoists were killed.

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7 December 2017 15:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

India will begin exporting container cargo to Russia through Iran and Azerbaijan from January 2018, Sandeep Kumar, the Commissioner of the Central Board of Excise and Customs of India (CBEC), told India Today.

He noted that transportation will be carried out as India joins the North-South international transport corridor.

Kumar said this step will cut down the time of cargo transportation by half  to about 17 days from the earlier 35 days, when only the sea route was used.

India will shift its first export consignment via Bandar Abbas [port city in Iran] to Russia from mid-January. It will probably transit Iran, Azerbaijan and then reach Russia, he noted.

Kumar added that the customs department receives many requests from different sectors for using this route, and noted that North-South corridor will help save money and time.

The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) will connect Northern Europe with Southeastern Asia, as well as link railways of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia. The corridor is planned to transport 5 million tons of cargo per year at the initial stage and over 10 million tons of cargo in the future.

The corridor is expected to bring huge benefits to the Azerbaijani budget. The route enjoys several advantages compared to other transport corridors, as it is considered to be more profitable for each parameter than other alternative routes, including reduction of the distance and delivery time two or threefold.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
7 December 2017 15:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

Azerbaijan has great potential for the development of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and the achievement of European indicators in this area.

The head of Operations Section at the EU mission in Baku, Jeroen Willems made the remarks at the first meeting of the working group on the project to support the implementation and monitoring of the Strategic Roadmap for the Production of Consumer Goods in Azerbaijan at the Level of Small and Medium Enterprises in Baku on December 7.

He said that SMEs play a leading role in the economic growth of Europe and the creation of jobs.

About 99 percent of all businesses in Europe are small businesses. 85 percent of new jobs and two-thirds of all jobs in the private sector account for the SMEs. SMEs make up 60 percent of GDP and employment in Europe, Willems said.

He went on to say that in Azerbaijan these figures are much lower than European ones: SMEs account for less than 10 percent of GDP and employment. The development of SMEs will help increase the country's income and achieve European targets in this direction.

Further, he added that the EU is ready to support the establishment of the Agency for Small and Medium-sized Entrepreneurship in Azerbaijan.

He said that the creation of the Agency will greatly assist the development of SMEs: We have already seen the positive impact of the establishment of the agency in other countries and are ready to support its establishment in Azerbaijan.

The next meeting of the working group on the project to support the implementation and monitoring of the Strategic Roadmap on production of consumer goods in Azerbaijan at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will be held in March 2018, Daniel Quadbeck, the project manager, said.

Quadbeck, who is also an expert of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that expansion of access to financial resources and globalization of SMEs in Azerbaijan will be the main topic of the next meeting.

At the next meeting, development and use of alternative financial instruments, as well as expansion of cooperation of Azerbaijans SMEs with international ones will be discussed, he said.

Initial results of a survey among business structures, which is planned to be prepared within the first meeting, will be also considered within the framework of the next meeting, he added.

The expert noted that the third meeting of the working group is scheduled for June next year. Development of womens entrepreneurship and its cooperation with other business structures will be the main topic of the meeting, he said.

The issue of creating a centralized Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises in the country is reflected in the Strategic Roadmap.

The management of the agency will include both representatives of the state and private sectors. Subsequently, in 2017-2018, it is planned to create a SME House under the agency, where a special center will operate to provide entrepreneurs with services on the principle of a single window, employment services, a training center, a representative office of the Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO), departments of international organizations and other instances.

The creation of the agency can increase Azerbaijan's GDP by 200 million manats ($117.65 million) by 2020 and create 240 new work places. It is planned to attract investments worth 10 million manats ($5.88 million) in this regard.

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7 December 2017 14:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Christmas is sneaking up around the corner!

The German Embassy in Baku prepares surprise ahead winter holidays. A traditional Christmas concert will take place in German-Azerbaijan Cultural Society "Kapellhaus" on December 7.

During the concert, guest will enjoy works of such legendary composers as Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel. At the same time, a number of Christmas, folk and church compositions will be performed, including works by famous national composers.

Entrance is free. The concert starts at 18:30.

Azerbaijan and Germany have been implementing mutually beneficial, equal and fruitful cooperation for a long time. Both countries are interested in deepening the existing relations, as well as in raising them to a higher level.

Two countries give importance to the development of cooperation in the spheres of economy, culture, trade and policy.

Many cultural events are organized in Azerbaijan and Germany in order to strengthen the cultural relations.

Every year German-Azerbaijan Cultural Society "Kapellhaus" hosts Arts and Crafts festival in Baku.

The festival presents ethnic handmade crafts by talented artists. Beautiful samples of arts and crafts including stained glass paintings, ceramics, beading, embroidery, decoupage, jewelry, aromatic soaps, handmade, woodcarving and dolls are put on sale.

Moreover, "Kapellhaus" hosted "Buddy Bear" award ceremony in 2016.

The contest was held to choose an artist, who would decorate a Buddy Bear sculpture, a symbol for Germany. The sculpture was installed near ISR Plaza business center.

The Days of Azerbaijani Culture were organized in Koln, in 2013.

The guests with interest viewed the photos reflecting the life style of the Germans who moved to Azerbaijan. The exhibition also featured the works of young Azerbaijani artists. Then, Azerbaijan State Chamber Orchestra named after Gara Garayev conducted by Fuad Ibrahimov gave a concert. The audience enjoyed the performance of national musicians.

Thereby, a gala concert featuring national ethno-jazz music took in Berlin this month.

Political relations between Azerbaijan and Germany develop very successfully. The year 2017 also marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between two countries.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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7 December 2017 13:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The works of Azerbaijans world-famous artist Nigar Narimanbayova are demonstrated at an international exhibition of contemporary art dedicated to the New Year.

The exhibition opened in the Parisian gallery Monod on December 6, was held with the support of Stella International Art Society. The exhibition will last until December 16.

The national artist presented four paintings at the exhibition, which brilliantly reflect mother's strong feelings in different colors.

There's some large, overwhelming, and beautiful piece at the center of motherhood that is so hard to put words to. Maybe that piece is best called love.

The paintings by national artist encouraged viewers to think deeply.

Chairman of the Stella Art International Association, Stella Kalinina, who has a great reputation among artists in Paris, told reporters in France that she has been working with Narimanbayova for five years. The works create a high mood in the exhibition in visitors and encourage viewers to think deeply.

Famous for her brilliant works, Nigar Narimanbayova lives and works in Baku and Paris. She graduated from Azerbaijan State Art school named after Azimzade and All-Union state Institute of cinematography. S. A. Gerasimov in Moscow.

Her famous painting Marionette, which enters the artist's series of paintings Love Toys, won the main prize of the Salon of independent artists - TOILE D'OR 2016. The painting Adagio received the prize of the Salon of independent artists - TOILE D'OR 2016.

Nigar Narimanbayovas five paintings including The Puppet, Kiss of a Nymph, Magic of the Night, Broken Wings and Confession of a Mermaid were also displayed at the largest international exhibition of contemporary art Salon Business Art Fair 2017.

She was awarded with an honorary diploma signed by the commissioner of the salon Georges Levy and art magazine La Gazette Des Arts, with inscription For the creation of a magical unique world filled with fairy tales and magic

Narimanbayova is a member of the Union of Artists of Azerbaijan and the International Association of Art. Her paintings are displayed in the exhibition halls of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism, National Museum of Art of Azerbaijan as well as in private collections.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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7 December 2017 17:32 (UTC+04:00)

Economic growth of the countries is being driven by a number of factors including technological progress. Information and communication technologies (ICT) contribute to reshaping many aspects of the worlds economies, governments and societies.

Although the digital revolution is a global phenomenon, there are still huge disparities between and within countries when it comes to the penetration, affordability, and performance of ICT services.

The penetration level of mobile communication in Azerbaijan is 106 percent and about 80 percent of the countrys population accounts for Internet users.

Azerbaijan views ICT sector as a priority direction in the states future and is recognized as the leader on the South Caucasus in terms of ICT development. The nation ranked 65th place among 176 countries in the development of ICT, according to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) report.

A number of international meetings, conferences and exhibitions devoted to ICT sector take place in Azerbaijan annually. All this positively affects deepening of cooperation between different countries in ICT.

During the latest visit of Irans Minister for ICT Mohammad Javad Azeri Jahromi on December 5 who came to participate in the Bakutel 2017 exhibition, a platform to gather the world's major companies in the capital, the Islamic Republic expressed interest to cooperate with Azerbaijan in ICT sphere.

The minister said that there are several directions of cooperation between Iran and Azerbaijan and interaction in transit of internet traffic from south of Iran to Azerbaijan onward in the northern direction -- to Russia -- represent one of them.

He also specified that the two countries cooperate in the field of cyber security, as well as in postal service and e-government. The postal operators of the two countries inked relevant agreements and set up transit of postal deliveries.

Today Azerbaijan is turning into a regional transit center both in logistics and information exchange. The interconnected terrestrial cable networks running through the region are of high importance for the countries' connectivity. Examples include the TAE line, the Europe-Persian Express Gateway (EPEG) and the Trans-Eurasian Information Superhighway (TASIM), all of which involve Azerbaijan.

The Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM) project, which aims to connect the biggest data exchange centers of Europe and Asia, was lately discussed within the framework of the meeting of IT ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organization.

The implementation of the project is expected to improve Internet quality and ensure economic development not only in the participating countries, but throughout Eurasia.

During 2017, the TASIM project was discussed in meetings with the embassies of Russia, China, Turkey and Kazakhstan in April aimed at accelerating the negotiations on the project, during a regular meeting of the working group and other various formats.

TASIM, which is a key infrastructure for the development of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, is expected to give significant contribution in diversifying the routes of Europe-Asia data flow and to improve connectivity in Central Asian landlocked countries.

The project was officially proposed in November 2008, during the Azerbaijan International Telecommunication and Information Technologies Exhibition and Conference. When the UN General Assembly adopted the Resolution on Transnational Eurasian Information Super Highway (A/Res/64/186), the project received its first political recognition at global level.

The project is implemented in two stages. During the first stage, key regional operators are expected to build major transit and transport infrastructures within their national territories. In the second stage, TASIM will provide with broadband connection at affordable rates final users in the Eurasian landlocked countries, including Central Asia, by using the new transit infrastructure.

Russia (Rostelecom), Kazakhstan (KazTransCom), Turkey (TurkTelecom) and China (China Telecom) are also involved in TASIM project. Azerbaijan is represented in the project by AzInTelecom Ltd of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies.

Azerbaijan continues to take consistent steps for further development of the ICT sphere. A strategy for the development of information and communication technologies for 2018-2021 was prepared in Azerbaijan, according to the concept and forecast indicators of economic and social development for 2018 and the next three years.

It is based on the national strategy for development of information society in Azerbaijan for 2014-2020, which envisages the formation of an effective mechanism to carry out reforms for the future development of industry.

The medium-term priority direction of ICT industrys development will be the improvement of governance structures and strengthening of the ICT industry, the liberalization of telecommunications market, the continuation of work to expand e-services, the formation of e-government, a unified national information environment and the countrys integration into the global information society.

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7 December 2017 11:15 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Another round of talks to find a peaceful solution to the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has finalized in Vienna. Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian on December 6 to discuss the ways to move forward the peace process .

First, Mammadyarov had a meeting with the co-chairs  Igor Popov of Russia, Stephane Visconti of France, and Andrew Schofer of the U.S., and then he met with Nalbandian under the co-chairs auspices.

During the meeting, the sides held intensive and concrete discussions on the existing proposals in connection with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The parties also agreed to hold the next meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in the second half of January next year.

Azerbaijan will continue its efforts together with the OSCE MG Co-Chairs for the soonest resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict via substantial talks, Hikmat Hajiyev, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman tweeted on December 6.

He also noted that Azerbaijani FM said that the meeting in Vienna was positive and constructive.

The long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied in 1992 as much as 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the countrys Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding regions.

During the war, more than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994.

Since then, the OSCE Minsk Group has been working to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Unfortunately, no major progress has been achieved in the conflict resolution so far. The main reason for this is the unwillingness of the Armenian side to join substantive negotiations and Yerevans attempts to preserve the unacceptable status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh by any means.

Until now, the occupier country controls fifth part of Azerbaijans territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions. However, no world powers have yet exerted the due pressure on Armenia in order to make the occupier leave Azerbaijani lands.

Azerbaijan has long ago stated it is ready to settle the conflict through direct negotiations with Armenia through mediation of the Minsk Group. However, the Armenian side is obviously not interested in these talks, therefore it constantly tries to make up reasons to avoid a constructive dialogue and preserve the status quo, thus indefinitely delaying the settlement of the conflict.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 December 2017 16:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine should be given more attention, said George Tsereteli, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on December 7.

He made the remarks while addressing foreign ministers at the OSCEs 24th Ministerial Council in Vienna.

As President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I am equally concerned by all conflicts around the OSCE area, he said.

Tsereteli added that increasingly intense hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh are a cause for deep concern.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, in turn, also touched upon the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict while addressing the Ministerial Council.

Unresolved conflicts in Moldova, Ukraine and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict impede the strengthening of security in the region, he said.

Foreign Minister of Montenegro Srdjan Darmanovic, who also addressed the event, said positive signs have been recently observed in the settlement of conflicts in the OSCE region, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The minister also noted the need for peaceful resolution of conflicts on the basis of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Until now, Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 December 2017 10:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijan is expanding its partnership with Russia on the issues of technologies, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev answering a question of Russia 24 TV channel at the Bakutel 2017 exhibition.

The head of state noted that new challenges to the world security, for example cyberattacks, bring about new spheres of cooperation.

"Azerbaijan is developing successfully, its role in regional and international issues is growing. Our country has a great potential. Surely, our country can face such a threat. We are open for cooperation with all our partners and there are good prospects for cooperation in this direction with Russia. We know that Russia pays much attention to cybersecurity issues, so, of course, our structures are working with their Russian counterparts," the President said.

Russia 24 TV channel in its report added that President Ilham Aliyev also met with the Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia Nikolai Nikiforov.

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7 December 2017 10:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree to provide grants to the citizens of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member-states for their education in Azerbaijan's higher education institutions on December 6.

According to the decree, taking into account the special importance of cooperation with Islamic countries within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a program of educational grants is being created to support citizens of OIC member-states in education in Azerbaijani education institutions from 2018.

The number of people for whom educational grants are provided will annually increase by 20 and will be brought to 100 in five years.

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7 December 2017 11:08 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijan supports the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hikmet Hajiyev, Spokesman with Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Trend on December 7.

"Azerbaijan stands for the two state solution of this issue with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine. We call on all parties involved to comply with relevant UN Security Council resolutions", he said.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he will move the American embassy there once a location is secured.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said from the White House.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.

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By PTI: Shillong, Dec 6 (PTI) Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today laid the foundation stone for the states first medical college to be set up on a PPP mode here.

Addressing the function, the chief minister said establishing infrastructures and taking up projects on Public -Private-Partnership (PPP) mode is a very challenging task for a government as the concept of PPP model is still new for many.

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He, however, added that Meghalaya government has successfully taken up many developmental programmes in the state on a PPP mode and that the establishment of a medical college in Shillong and Tura will bridge the shortage of medical professionals while providing better health facilities to the people of the state.

Till date Meghalaya does not have a state-run medical college except for the Central Government-funded North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences near here.

The chief minister said, "Having such medical colleges in our own state will not compel our beloved people to travel to Delhi, Vellore or Chennai for tertiary health care. It is not just for medical students but for a comprehensive health care system that we need to put in place for our people."

The state government had signed an agreement with Kolkata-based KPC Medical College for setting up of a 500-bedded medical college which would be set up at the sprawling campus of the present R P Chest T B Hospital in the heart of the city.

According to the MoU, initially the student intake of 100 will be taken up of which 40 per cent will be reserved for students from Meghalaya.

The state government intends to come up with another medical college in the Garo Hills region under the PPP-mode to cater to improve the health care system in the state. PTI JOP RG

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7 December 2017 12:03 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Mobile Training Team of Allied Joint Force Command (JFC) Brunssum conducts a training course on the topic "Joint campaign and operational assessment" in Baku in accordance with the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program between the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense and NATO for 2017.

The ministry reported that during the course that is held in the Military College of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, NATO's Mobile Training Team will inform the military personnel about "NATO Military Structure", "Military Partnership in NATO", "Operational Planning Proccess", "Operation Assessment", "Collection & Analysis of the Information", and also will conduct a number of practical training.

Servicemen from different branches of the Armed Forces participate in the seminar which be held until December 8.

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7 December 2017 13:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva have attended the opening of the complex ASAN Hyat of the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Guba.

The head of state and his spouse cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

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7 December 2017 16:11 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The 10th meeting of Azerbaijan-Turkey High Level Military Dialogue in Baku has finished its work, the press service of Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on December 7.

During the meeting, the two countries working groups reviewed a wide range of issues of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey in the military, military-technical, military-medical, military-educational, military-industrial and other spheres, as well as defined the main directions of activity for solving the forthcoming tasks.

In conclusion, a protocol of the meeting was signed between Azerbaijans Defense Ministry and the Turkish General Staff.

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7 December 2017 17:36 (UTC+04:00)

Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan, Ambassador Kestutis Jankauskas told reporters in Baku that the next round of negotiations on a new agreement between the EU and Azerbaijan will be held on December 15.

The European Council adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan in November 2016.

The new agreement is expected to replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement which marked the beginning of a mainly positive relationship between Azerbaijan and the EU and provides for wide-ranging cooperation in the areas of political dialogue trade, investment, in economic matters, legislation and culture.

Currently, the EU is Azerbaijan's first trading partner representing 51 percent of Azerbaijan's total trade. The EU's exports to Azerbaijan consist primarily of machinery and transport equipment whereas EU imports from Azerbaijan cover mainly oil and gas (98 percent of total imports).

Touching upon the aviation agreement with Azerbaijan he stressed that the EU hopes to initial the agreement in the second half of January 2018, adding that 99 percent of the agreement's articles have already been agreed upon.

Creation of a common aviation area is an initiative of the European Commission and aims to open and integrate aviation markets. This will lead to new opportunities for consumers and operators, and, most importantly, to high standards in terms of flight safety as well as air traffic management.

A horizontal agreement between Azerbaijan and the EC was signed on 7 July 2009. According to this agreement, any EU airline to operate flights between Azerbaijan and any EU Member State if there is a bilateral air services agreement and if free traffic rights are available.

A Communication on developing a Common Aviation Area with the Republic of Azerbaijan was adopted by the European Commission in August 2011 as part of the process of creating a wider Common Aviation Area with its Eastern and Southern Neighbours.
7 December 2017 11:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

World oil prices rise on Thursday after the fall in the U.S. Energy Department data on a significant increase in gasoline stocks in the U.S. last week.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, are at $61.49 a barrel, up 0.44 percent, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $56.18 a barrel, up 0.4 percent from their last settlement, according to RIA Novosti.

WTI prices cratered despite a drop in weekly crude inventories ... Traders were more concerned about the steep rise in gasoline inventories, said Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia-Pacific at futures brokerage OANDA in Singapore.

The U.S. Energy Department reported on December 6 that by the end of the week to December 1, gasoline reserves in the country increased by 6.8 million barrels, or 3.2 percent - to 220.9 million barrels.

Analysts had expected the growth rate of 1.741 million barrels, that is, the forecast was almost four times less than the actual figure. After the release of these data, oil prices fell by 2.5-3 percent.

At the same time, commercial oil reserves in the U.S. (excluding the strategic reserve) for the week decreased by 5.6 million barrels, or 1.2 percent, to 448.1 million barrels. Experts expected a decrease of only 3.4 million barrels. Oil reserves at the country's largest terminal in Cushing decreased by 2.7 million barrels, amounting to 55.6 million barrels.

In December 2016, OPEC and non-OPEC producers reached their first deal since 2001 to curtail oil output jointly and ease a global glut after more than two years of low prices. OPEC agreed to slash the output by 1.2 million barrels per day from January 1.

Non-OPEC oil producers such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Sudan, and South Sudan agreed to reduce oil output by 558,000 barrels per day, including Russia by 300,000 barrels per day, starting from January 1, 2017 for six months, extendable for another six months.

OPEC and its allies reached an agreement on prolongation of the deal until the end of 2018 on November 30 in Vienna.

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7 December 2017 11:51 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The European Union expresses serious concern about the announcement by US President Trump on Jerusalem and the repercussions this may have on the prospect of peace, said Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

The EU position remains unchanged. The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, she said in a statement released on December 6.

Mogherini stressed that the EU and its Member States will continue to respect the international consensus on Jerusalem embodied in, inter alia, UNSCR 478, including on the location of their diplomatic representations until the final status of Jerusalem is resolved.

The EU reiterates its firm commitment to the two-state solution and to its existing policies, as set out in its successive Council Conclusions. A negotiated two-state solution, which fulfils the aspirations of both sides, is the only realistic way of bringing the lasting peace and security that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve, she said.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that he will move the American embassy there once a location is secured.

I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he said from the White House.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.

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7 December 2017 11:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Uzbek-Chinese joint venture New Silk Road Oil & Gas Company started gas production at the Khojasayat section of the Dengizkul deposit in Bukhara region of Uzbekistan, Uzbekneftegaz reported on December 6.

The construction of a gas condensate field and production drilling there began in late May 2017.

Within the framework of the site development program, two new wells were drilled and three previously drilled wells were overhauled.

Also, a modern automated control panel was built to monitor the production of natural gas in real time.

In the near future, the joint venture plans to start development of Khodjadavlat and Sharqiy Alat fields, drill eight new wells, perform workover of three previously drilled wells, and lay 43 km gas pipeline, the statement said.

The project is expected to allow annual production of 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which will be exported and about 6,500 tons of gas condensate will be realized on local market.

In 2006, China National Oil Development Corporation (CNODC, part of the CNPC structure) signed an agreement with Uzbekneftegaz for geological exploration at five investment blocks within the Ustyurt, Bukhara-Khiva and Fergana oil and gas regions during five years. To implement the project, an operator - CNPC Silk Road Group was created.

In 2011, the Chinese company fully completed the geological exploration program in the amount of 8.9 million linear kilometers of 2D seismic and 1 million kilometers of 3D drilling with 13 exploration wells. The total investment amounted to $260.2 million.

As a result, three fields, promising for industrial gas production, were discovered on the Karakul block. Volumes of reserves of deposits are not yet announced.

In 2013, Uzbekneftegaz and CNODC created on a parity basis a JV New Silk Road Oil & Gas Company Ltd for arrangement of gas condensate fields Dengizkul, Khojadavlat and Sharky Alat (Karakul investment block), opened by a Chinese investor in the course of their own exploration.

Initially, the implementation of the project for development of these fields was planned to begin in 2014, then in 2015 and 2016, but these plans could not be realized.

Currently, in Uzbekistan, CNPC participates in the implementation of the project for construction and operation of Uzbek part of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline system.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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7 December 2017 13:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim compared the US decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel with "playing with fire" phrase, the Turkish media reported on December 7.

Reportedly, Yildirim added that the US decision of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is like a bomb ready to explode.

He said that the consequences of such a decision can be very ugly.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump proclaimed that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the West Jerusalem, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Ramat Gan.

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7 December 2017 15:28 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Kazakh First Vice Minister of Agriculture Kairat Aytuganov informed about plans to examine the most important hydraulic structures of the country until 2021 during the presentation of the draft law On Amendments and Supplements to Some Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Regulation of the Agro-Industrial Complex in the majilis of the parliament.

The bill provides for the development and approval of regulations for the implementation of a multifactor survey of water management systems and facilities which will provide unified requirements. The proposed changes and measures will make it possible to assess the actual technical state of the water infrastructure, determine the remaining resource. In the framework of the State Program for the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex, funds in the amount of 1.7 billion tenge for conducting a multifactor survey of 182 hydraulic structures located in the republic's property have been allocated until 2021, he said.

The official said that the service life of 97 percent out of the 1,665 hydrotechnical facilities functioning in Kazakhstan exceeds 25 years.

According to the current legislation, they must undergo multifactor survey, regardless of their condition, with an assessment of strength, stability and operational reliability.

But there is no single methodology that allows conducting these activities. Failure to implement preventive measures, primarily multi-factor inspection of hydraulic structures, leads to disastrous consequences, such as the breakthrough of the dam of the Kokpektinsky Reservoir on March 31, 2014.

By timely inspection of hydraulic structures, assessment of their technical condition and timely measures, the state's costs of damages can be minimized to the cost of a multifactor survey, according to Aytuganov.

The bill also provides for changes that clarify the boundaries of the construction of buildings and leisure and health facilities within the water protection strips.

The fact is that, according to the Water Code of Kazakhstan, the construction and operation of buildings and structures within water protection strips, on average 35-50 meters, is prohibited, with the exception of recreational areas.

However, the concept of a recreational zone also includes the construction of leisure and recreational facilities, which allows the construction of objects of recreational value within the water protection belt.

This leads to a negative impact on the environment at water bodies of special national importance, as well as to the flooding of buildings and facilities of leisure value.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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7 December 2017 15:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The recognition of Jerusalem as a capital of the Jewish state by U.S. President Donald Trump caused great concern of the international community.

The move may potentially destabilize situation in the region and anger Arab world countries. A number of politicians and officials have opposed the decision.

The question of the status of Jerusalem should be resolved in direct talks between the parties, said OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurtz.

Our position here is clear - both the Austrian authorities and the EU authorities hold the view that the status of Jerusalem should be clarified in the course of direct negotiations between the parties, he told journalists on the eve of the meeting of the Council of Ministers of member countries in Vienna.

Earlier, eight member countries of the UN Security Council including Bolivia, Egypt, France, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Uruguay have requested an extraordinary meeting this week with the Secretary General of the world organization, Antonio Guterres, in connection with the U.S. statement.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemns the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as the transfer of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is directed not only against Muslims and Arabs, but also against the Christian population of Jerusalem, the OIC said.

As noted in the organization, on December 13 of this year, OIC will hold an emergency meeting of representatives of member countries of the organization.

Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and signed a document on the transfer of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on December 6.

Israel calls Jerusalem its single and indivisible capital, including its eastern districts and historic center, repulsed half a century ago from Jordan and later annexed.

Israel proclaimed Jerusalem its capital after the end of the War of Independence in 1949. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, it seized East Jerusalem and united it with the Western, but the UN did not recognize this. Embassies of countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel are located mainly in Tel Aviv, Ramat-Gan and Herzliya.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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By PTI: Indore, Dec 7 (PTI) The Central Bureau of Narcotics (CBN) has seized 5.2 kilograms of mephedrone or `meow-meow drug, worth around Rs 50 lakh in international markets, and arrested one person.

Superintendent Sabiha Khan of the CBNs Indore unit said Aazaad Khan (35), resident of Mandsaur district, was arrested from Madhumilan Square here on December 5.

Some 5.2 kg of mephedrone was recovered from his possession.

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Khan had come to Indore to hand over the contraband to someone else, the officer said, adding that he was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Mephedrone is also known as meow-meow and MD. In local drug circuits, one gram of this prohibited drug costs around Rs 6,000, according to CBN officials. PTI HWP ADU MAS KRK

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7 December 2017 18:36 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Housing prices in Kazakhstan continue to show an upward trend in 2017.

The average cost of 1 square meter of new housing in Kazakhstan amounted to 253,134 tenge in November and showed a 0.3 percent increase compared to the previous month, according to the Committee on Statistics under the Kazakh National Economy Ministry.

The price has risen by 1.3 percent compared to December 2016.

The average resale price of 1 square meter of well-maintained housing in November stood at the level of 185,716 tenge that is 1 percent less than in the previous month and 1.6 percent less than in December last year.

The resale price of 1 square meter of ill-equipped housing averaged to 114,496 tenge that is 0.8 percent lower than in December 2016.

The average rental price of 1 square meter of well-maintained housing in Kazakhstan last month amounted to 1,314 tenge that is 0.1 percent lower than in the previous month and 2.7 percent higher than in late 2016.

Previously, Kazakhstan has experienced a sharp decline of the real estate market due to adverse external conditions. Devaluation of the national currency, along with a decrease in real wages and purchasing power affected the demand side, while slight overinvestment and high exposure to currency risks shocked the supply.

In January-May 2017, the cost of new housing as compared to the same period of 2016 has decreased by 3.2 percent. Over the year the resale prices have fallen by 3.1 percent for well-maintained housing. However, the resale cost of ill-equipped housing has not changed much. In this regard, the number of deals for apartment purchase and sale in Kazakhstan has grown by 30 percent this year.

In the same period, about 63,000 deals for purchase of apartments have been made in Kazakhstan (14,400 more than a year before).

The Kazakh government is committed to resolving current issues on the real estate market with massive programs, which aim to provide affordable housing, including rental, refinancing foreign currency mortgages and stimulating construction of infrastructure for individual housing construction.

Cost of living in Kazakhstan is 4.24 percent higher than in Azerbaijan while rent is 2.43 percent higher than in Azerbaijan.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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Here are seven updates for ASC leaders to know for the past week.

UnitedHealth to buy DaVita Medical Group for $4.9M, adding 300 clinics and 6 outpatient centers

UnitedHealth agreed to purchase Denver-based DaVita Medical Group for $4.9 million. DaVita Medical Group, a division of DaVita, operates around 300 clinics and six outpatient surgical centers across six states. Post-transaction, the facilities will become part of UnitedHealth's Optum division, which is the umbrella for all non-insurance business, including pharmacy benefits, data analytics, consulting, clinics and surgical centers.

29.3% of practices failed to report value-based payment information in 2015

A study, published in Health Affairs, examined physician performance and participation in Medicare's value-based payment modifier program finding that 29.3 percent of practices failed to report value-based payment information in 2015.

Covered California selects The Joint Commission for certification incentive

Covered California selected The Joint Commission's Primary Care Medical Home Certification as an incentive option for members. California-specific ambulatory care organizations, hospitals and critical access hospitals that offer primary care services can now fulfill Covered California's incentives by earning The Joint Commission's PCMH Certification.

Children's National Health System plans 60k-sq.-ft. outpatient facility

Washington, D.C.-based Children's National Health System announced plans for a 60,000-square-foot outpatient health center in Glenarden, Md. System officials are seeking a certificate of need to build the pediatric outpatient and specialty medical center. Officials plan to house 50 treatment rooms and two ambulatory surgery operating rooms in the center.

Seaside Surgery Center begins offering pain management services

North Naples, Fla.-based Seaside Surgery Center physicians began offering radiofrequency ablation services, Dec. 4. Seaside Surgery Center invested in Cosman Medical's G4 four-electrode radiofrequency generator unit to begin offering radiofrequency ablation services.

PatientPay receives $6M in growth capital

PatientPay secured $6 million in growth capital for significant company expansion in the future. The company, which partners with specialty care medical groups to drive patient payments, plans to use the investment for continued enhancements to its patient payment platform and company growth.

Apex Surgical Center 1st in NY to perform same-day total knee replacement

Westmoreland, N.Y.-based Apex Surgical Center became the first ASC in New York to host a same-day total knee replacement last week.
Marquis Who's Who awarded Eric Everett Lindstrom, MD, its Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

Here's what you should know:

1. Dr. Lindstrom is an ophthalmologist who practices at Lindstrom Eye & Laser Center in Laurel, Miss. He also serves on the surgical staffs of Laurel Surgery and Endoscopy Center and South Central Regional Medical Center, both in Laurel.

2. He earned his medical degree from College Park-based University of Maryland and then joined the U.S. Army, completing his internship at Ft. Lewis, Wash.-based Madigan Army Medical Center. He then completed a residency at USAF School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

After his residency, he served as a surgeon in Vietnam. After his tenure overseas, he returned to the U.S. to complete a second residency at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He served an additional year before retiring from active duty and moving to Laurel.

3. Dr. Lindstrom was awarded a Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal and the combat Air Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters. He retired from service as a colonel.

4. Throughout his 30-plus year career, he has earned several honors. Dr. Lindstrom is an American Board of Preventive Medicine and American Board of Ophthalmology diplomate. He is an American Academy of Ophthalmology, American College of Surgeons and American College of Preventive Medicine fellow. He is a past president of the Mississippi State Medical Association and the Southern Medical Association.

5. Marquis Who's Who recognized him for his life's achievements.
Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens Boots Alliance said Wednesday it would invest about $416 million to acquire a 40 percent stake in Sinopharm Holding GuoDa Drugstores, which operates and franchises retail pharmacies across China.

Walgreens believes it can provide expertise to GuoDa and support its growth ambitions.

"We are very pleased to become a strategic investor in GuoDa," said Walgreens Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Stefano Pessina. "It is China's leading pharmacy chain and we believe that we can positively contribute to its continued successful development with our global pharmacy expertise. We have had a presence in China for around 10 years, initially through Alliance Boots, and we are excited about the opportunity to further invest in the country's fast growing retail pharmacy sector."

GuoDa, which operates more than 3,500 retail pharmacies, is a subsidiary of China National Accord Medicines.

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Brian Fengler, MD, was working as an emergency room physician when a patient came in with a pulmonary embolism. She was pregnant, and he wasn't sure if the usual treatment would affect her unborn baby.

He also did not know where to find the information he needed quickly enough to make an informed, evidence-based decision at the point of care.

"Brian went about creating this tool that works the way ER doctors work," explains Deb Miller, chief experience officer for EvidenceCare. Dr. Fengler's tool provided physicians with clinical decision support for conditions that are the most common, complex and costly. This tool eventually became the basis for EvidenceCare, a company founded by Dr. Fengler.

EvidenceCare is a clinical decision support tool that equips physicians with the knowledge they need to make evidence-based decisions when caring for patients. It helps physicians look up expert-designed protocols on a number of diseases and conditions so they can be confident a specific treatment will not harm their patients in any way. It also features a patient engagement tool so physicians can provide patients with additional, customized information about their care.

"One thing about the platform from the technology side is we build it to be basically EHR daunting, for it to be framed into the workflow of a provider at any EHR," Jim Jamieson, EvidenceCare's COO, says.

Because no such comprehensive platform existed before EvidenceCare, the solution is drastically improving physicians' workflows, according to Ms. Miller.

"We're filling a very important gap and we're doing it in a really great and effective way," she says. "This isn't a pipedream; it's a real product."

Ms. Miller and Mr. Jamieson recently spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about how EvidenceCare is improving physicians' lives.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Question: Where is EvidenceCare now and where would it like to be in 2018?

Deb Miller: We're in the midst of a Series A round of funding, some of which has been from friends and family, and the rest from a small angel investment group out of Nashville, Tenn. But 80 percent of our investors are physicians, hospital executives or revenue cycle leaders, because they see what we can do and the gap we are filling, and they get it and want to be a part of it.

Jim Jamieson: One of the challenges I see with CMOs and chief medical information officers is they see the work of clinical decision support has been patronized, but when you get into the weeds of it, it is no where near what the doctors and nurses actually want. When they see our product, they love it and they want to embed it in the EHR, but they have to go through IT, which might be short-staffed. So, one of our goals is to embed the solution into the Cerners and Epics of the world. We're really focused on execution  building the product, getting the data, garnering feedback, launching the new version of the product and fundraising.

Q: How do you develop the information within your system?



DM: We go to the foremost expert in the field. Sometimes that expert is a single physician  like in the case of Peter DeBlieux, MD, for sepsis  but sometimes it is an association. For example, we are working with the American College of Gastroenterologists, and we are producing their protocols. They've gone out and curated those protocols with experts in the field. And, we're aligning with associations and experts in the field who are doing education on a regular basis.

Q: What is unique about the EvidenceCare tool?



DM: What's great about our tool is it counts as education. Physicians earn Continuing Medical Education credits for the time spent in our system  that's with our premium version. We work with various associations to accredit the CME. What is also unique is we offer a free version of our tool as well that has all of the content, and it has the patient engagement piece  the clinical documentation customized for the patient  for all providers to use. That was Brian's primary mission: 'How do I make the experience better for my colleagues and our patients and the community?'

Q: Does EvidenceCare integrate with hospitals' EHRs?

DM: Every step is documented and it's all captured within the system so at the end of the encounter, all of that documentation  including the citation, all the resources and graphs  are captured and can be pasted back into any EHR. It offers full clinical documentation, which reduces risk for the hospital because the entire encounter, all the decisions made and clinical support used, like the calculators to assess risk, are all captured and documented. It really helps with the time spent because only about 12 percent of a doctor's time is spent face-to-face with patients and the rest is either in research, in looking up things or with their head down in the EHR. No physician went to school saying, 'I want to spend most of my time in a computer.'

Q: Which EHRs or health systems currently use EvidenceCare?

DM: We're in the process of implementing our first two enterprise versions  one is in conjunction with MedStar Health out of Columbia, Md.  and we are working with them to create protocols for urgent care. We're also in the process of integrating with Cerner because the two hospitals we are working with are Cerner innovation centers. And, we've signed an agreement with athenahealth, and we are working to find a pilot  one of their clinics  to start that process.

Q: What has been your biggest challenge so far?

DM: Building awareness around the tool, because nothing like this has been available before, so doctors don't think about it. Making it part of their every day is what we are working on right now. It's more of an opportunity as opposed to a challenge. Our other opportunity right now is to drive value and keep it top-of-mind so physicians understand it is available to them, and it is just a click away. Obviously, when fully integrated with an EHR, that streamlines the adoption right there.

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Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health withdrew its bid to operate Mark Twain Medical Center, a 25-bed critical access hospital in San Andreas, Calif., the Mark Twain Health Care District said Wednesday, according to The Union Democrat.

Randy Smart, MD, executive director of the Mark Twain Health Care District, confirmed Adventist's decision not to draft a proposal to lease the facility during an interview with The Union Democrat Wednesday.

With Adventist out of the running, the healthcare district has three options: sell the hospital, operate independently or finalize a new lease agreement with San Francisco-based Dignity Health, which currently operates MTMC.

Dr. Smart said he believes the board, which is set to reconvene later this month to discuss the issue, will vote either to run the hospital independently or lease it to Dignity.

MTMC's current lease with Dignity expires Dec. 31, 2019, and the hospital is unable to simply renew the lease under state law.

More than 150 staff members and providers signed a petition in October to remain with Dignity, the report states.
Phoenix Children's Hospital is threatening legal action against a hospital under construction in Dublin, Ireland with a nearly identical name, according to Arizona Republic.

Phoenix Children's in Arizona is arguing the name similarities will confuse patients and disrupt care.

The Irish hospital is named Phoenix Children's Hospital Ireland, after the mythical bird that represents renewal and optimism.

In October, Phoenix hospital officials asked Irish project managers to reconsider the name. However, when that request was unmet, Phoenix officials took a more aggressive approach. On Nov. 27, the Arizona-based hospital sent a letter to the Irish Minister for Health asking officials to refrain from naming the hospital Phoenix Children's Hospital Ireland and warning they would "pursue all available legal remedies" if the name moves forward, according to the report.

Irish officials "are aware of the concerns of the Phoenix Childrens Hospital  and  the Minister will be responding directly to the hospital on the matter," the Children's Hospital Group, which is overseeing the Irish hospital construction project, told the Arizona Republic.
A judge arraigned a 29-year-old Pennsylvania man Wednesday morning on charges of simple assault, terroristic threats and harassment after he reportedly called Easton (Pa.) Hospital and threatened to kill a patient, WFMZ-TV 69 News reports.

Police said Thomas Schaad allegedly called a patient at the Boston-based Steward Health Care-owned hospital during the evening of Oct. 27 and threatened to "catch [the patient] outside and blow [his] brains out," the report states.

Authorities said hospital staff heard the threat and promptly locked down the facility for several hours that day.

The victim told police during an interview Mr. Schaad was a member of a gang and was known to carry a gun, though court records do not specify which gang Mr. Schaad was allegedly a member of, nor do they indicate how the victim knew him, according to the report.

The judge released Mr. Schaad on $25,000 unsecured bail Wednesday. As part of the order, Mr. Schaad must undergo random drug and alcohol screenings and enroll in an anger management program. He was also forbidden from contacting the victim.

Mr. Schaad will return to court for a preliminary hearing Dec. 14.

Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review reached out to Easton Hospital for comment and will update the article as more information becomes available.
Constantino Perales, MD, of Peru, Ill., pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with the intent to distribute.

Here are three things to know.

1. In 2013, Dr. Perales provided Andrew Strandel with hundreds of Oxycodone and Alprazolam pills to sell on the black market. In return, Mr. Strandel was supposed to pay Dr. Perales $15 to $20 per pill, according to a plea agreement. Mr. Strandel previously pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge as Dr. Perales.

2. In the plea agreement, Dr. Perales also admitted he prescribed hundreds of thousands of milligrams of controlled substances like Oxycodone, Suboxone and Alprazolam to three patients in exchange for sex from 2011 to 2013.

"[Dr.] Perales required the individuals to have sex with him in order to continue receiving the medications," said the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Illinois in a release. "[Dr.] Perales knew these patients were addicted to the pills, yet he dispensed the medications without performing a medical examination or ordering any diagnostic tests to manage their conditions."

3. The 66-year-old physician faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible $1 million fine. Sentencing is scheduled for March 22, 2018.

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By Manjeet Negi: As the clock strikes six in the morning, Mohmmad Tariq gears up for his daily boot camp with his steely resolve to kill terrorists.

He is not alone in his mission; Mohmmad Shafqat accompanies him as they begin the daily three-month gruelling schedule, comprising chin-ups, monkey crawl and various other physically demanding exercises.

By the time they finish late evening, they are exhausted, but more determined to complete their mission to help the Army combat terrorists.

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Tariq and Shafqat, who are from Uri, are part of one of the 18 training camps organised by Colonel Ajay Kothiyal, principal, Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, in various parts of Dehradun to bring misguided, unemployed Kashmiri youth into the mainstream.

After three months, these youth would don the colours of Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry. So far, 2,000 such youths, and even women, have been trained by Colonel Kothiyal.

"Both Mohmmad Shafqat and Mohmmad Tariq are from Uri, alongside LOC. After completing the training, they want to join the Army and fight terrorists," Colonel Kothiyal, under whose guidance the Youth Foundation camp organises the training, told India Today.

"The youths have been training here for the last two months. Fifteen more youths have applied for training," the ace mountaineer said adding "we could set up a separate camp for Kashmiri youths in coming days".

A charged-up Tariq is unrelenting in his resolve to give a tough fight to terrorists from across the border.

"I want to kill, at least, 10 terrorists, who have shattered Kashmir's peace," he told India Today. Shafqat seconds him. "We have been sent here by the Army to get basic military training so that we help in restoring normalcy in border areas, which are targeted by terrorists."

Colonel Kothiyal, who had a prominent role in rebuilding efforts after the Kedarnath tragedy, had earlier organised similar training camps for the youth of Uttarakhand.

Around 2,000 such locals were moulded by him to join the Garhwal Rifles and Kumaon Regiments.

Young women from remote hilly areas have not been left behind either. With increasing importance for women in the armed forces, Colonel Kothiyal is moulding them at the Youth Foundation camp into lean, mean fighting machines.

From scaling a 30-feet wall with the help of bamboo sticks to other arduous tasks, these women are sweating it out at the camp.

"After completing the training, these women can prove their mettle in the Army," the Colonel said.

--- ENDS ---
Many insurers are slated to have their best financial year to date under the ACA, according to a Politico analysis.

For the analysis, the publication examined 31 regional Blue Cross Blue Shield plans.

Here are six things to know.

1. The analysis comes as insurers substantially increased premiums for 2017 plans by an average of more than 20 percent. It also comes amid Republican efforts to repeal the ACA's individual insurance mandate.

2. During the first nine months of 2017, insurers spent an average of 78 percent of premium revenues on customers' medical claims, the analysis found, according to Politico. The publication notes this percentage is "well ahead of the 85 percent threshold that's typically viewed as a rough break-even point for carriers doing business in the individual market" as well as "far better than health plans have fared in prior years under" the ACA.

3. Politico provides multiple individual examples of this trend. For instance, the report states the Health Care Service Corp., an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, with 1.2 million individual market customers in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, spent 70 percent of premium revenues on medical costs through the first three quarters of 2017, compared to nearly 90 percent last year through September.

4. The analysis overall found 26 of the 31 regional plans examined have improved operating margins through the first three quarters of 2017 compared to same period of the two prior years, according to Politico.

5. In total, the report states, the 31 studied regional plans had 4.6 million individual market customers when September ended, and their premiums came to a combined $22.2 billion.

6. But Politico notes insurers could lose financial steam in the final quarter of 2017 as customers use all of their deductibles.

Read the full Politico report here.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, released three policy guidelines Dec. 7 outlining the agency's approach to digital health oversight.

Here are the three policies the FDA released.

1. "Clinical and Patient Decision Support Software." The draft guidance clarifies which types of CDS and PDS software the FDA defines as a "medical device" in need of agency oversight. Software that allows a user to "independently review" the basis for its recommendations are excluded from FDA regulation, such as CDS that suggests clinicians order particular tests consistent with existing guidelines. The FDA will continue to oversee software programs that analyze data to make treatment recommendations or diagnoses.

"These are areas in which the information provided in the clinical decision software, if not accurate, has the potential for significant patient harm, and the FDA plays an important role in ensuring the safety and effectiveness of these products," Dr. Gottlieb said.

2. "Changes to Existing Medical Software Policies Resulting from Section 3060 of the 21st Century Cures Act." The draft guidance outlines digital health technologies  such as mobile health and lifestyle apps  that FDA officials have determined fall outside of the agency's purview. These technologies "no longer qualify as medical devices that would be subject to the FDAs oversight," according to Dr. Gottlieb.

"Such technologies tend to pose a low risk to patients, but can provide great value to consumers and the healthcare system," he said.

3. "Software as a Medical Device: Clinical Evaluation." The final guidance establishes common principles for regulators to use when evaluating the safety and performance of Software-as-a-Medical-Device services, with an emphasis on analyzing the overall risk the product poses to a patient or user. The guidance builds on a draft guidance issued in October 2016, informed by the FDA's work with national and international regulatory authorities.

"We believe the FDA must, whenever possible, encourage the development of tools that can help people be more informed about their health," Dr. Gottlieb said. "We must always lean in the direction of enhancing access to more information  not restricting information flow  given the ability of reliable information to positively impact daily life."
Here are three spine surgeons or neurosurgeons who recently received awards.

Pediatric neurologist and lieutenant governor Ralph Northam, MD, won Virginia governor's race over Republican Ed Gillespie. He is board certified in neurology and child neurology and has clinical interests in epilepsy and neuromuscular disorders.

Neel Anand, MD, received the Andrew M. Swanson, MD, Memorial Spine Award from New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery's alumni association. The award honors HSS alumni who excel in spine education, research, practice or humanitarian efforts while demonstrating leadership, academia, clinical innovation and societal involvement.

Ronald Lakatos, MD, is now a part of the International Association of HealthCare Professionals. He specializes in orthopedic spine surgery and reconstruction as well as adult degenerative spine conditions and trauma.
It has become a habit and a critical requisite for Captain Vijayakanth that he must visit Singapore for a medical review every year. This year, the Ramana actor left to Singapore on November 28, and he was spotted at the Chennai International Airport this morning, returning from the trip.



He landed at 11am in Chennai, and when his wife Premalatha spoke to the press, she revealed that his health has been improving very well. It is also said that he will be returning to the silver screen with Thamizhan Endru Sol, in early 2018. The film stars his son, Shanmugapandian.
Bombardier has hinted that it is against any move to redraw the UK's trading border with the Republic to place it in the Irish Sea as its boss here said regulatory convergence could be one way forward.

Michael Ryan, who heads up Bombardier's workforce of more than 4,000 in Northern Ireland, said bringing in some form of "regulatory convergence... or non-divergence" from the current border relationship might work.

"We're not like Airbus, which wants to be able to move people between France, Germany, Spain and the UK," Mr Ryan told Bloomberg.

"Most of our employees are local to Belfast. We have very few from the mainland and even fewer from the south."

He said the firm's supply chain is mainly from Britain and not through Dublin, and that it already dealt with staff requiring visas to work here.

"Most of them come via the mainland, through the ports of Liverpool and Southampton, whether from UK suppliers, European suppliers or from North America and China," he said.

"A certain constructive ambiguity has allowed us to move on and go to the next step before, and I expect that this will be much the same."

Mr Ryan also said Bombardier will look for "other opportunities" to work with Airbus following a tie-up with the French firm in a bid to avert potentially damaging tariffs on the sale of its C Series planes to the US.

A spokeswoman for Bombardier said: "We continue to align our position on Brexit with that of (industry body) ADS.

"We are following the current negotiations very closely and, as they progress, we will transition our business plans accordingly.

"As always, we are committed to our businesses, employees, customers and suppliers in the UK and Europe.

"We will continue to work with government and other industry stakeholders to maintain the necessary business environment to ensure our success." A number of Northern Ireland firms have already taken action following the vote for Brexit in June last year.

Almac, which is based in Craigavon, told a House of Commons committee in February that it was opening a base in Dundalk as a direct result.

And Caterpillar, which is retaining two sites in Northern Ireland, said a Brexit team "continues to assess potential impacts across all aspects of our business".

Meanwhile, there have been calls from the UK Government to stand up for jobs at Bombardier.

Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Manufacturing NI, said thousands of posts may be at risk.

"The UK needs to stand up for all those jobs, whether they are Boeing jobs or Bombardier jobs."

He told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: "Because of Airbus as well, the partnership makes it more important that the UK Government becomes more robust with Boeing as a company."

Production of the C Series will be extended to the US state of Alabama, which bosses from Airbus and Bombardier believe will mean it avoids the heavy import tariffs.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said planes built in the US would not be subject to duties under the US investigation.

But US aerospace giant Boeing has said it looked like a questionable deal between two heavily state-subsidised competitors to skirt the recent findings of the US government.

Earlier this year the US Department of Commerce announced it would impose an interim tariff of nearly 220% on the jets, following a complaint from rival Boeing, with unions warning the move could cost jobs in Belfast.

A second preliminary levy of 80% has been loaded on sales of the Bombardier aircraft.
More than a quarter of manufacturers here say they are looking at setting up a base outside Northern Ireland following the UK's exit from the EU, it has been revealed.

And a no deal Brexit would be a complete and utter disaster, local companies insist.

More than 25% of firms surveyed by the Manufacturing NI representative group said they were considering expanding outside Northern Ireland to ensure a continued presence in the EU.

Many are "terrified" by the ongoing uncertainty as they try to plan for the future.

The lobby group's chief executive Stephen Kelly said he was not predicting factory closures here, and added that the separation also presented positive opportunities if it was well-handled.

But he warned: "No deal would be a complete and utter disaster."

He said Northern Ireland would be hardest hit in the by any impediment of trade with the Republic, with almost a fifth of cross-border commerce predicted to be lost.

Our economy is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises.

The organisation representing manufacturers told MPs from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that smaller companies traded more on a cross-border basis than larger firms.

Mr Kelly added: "If we crash out, there is a responsibility on the UK Government then to put in a border."

He said under international rules, every single territory had to trade on the same basis, adding World Trade Organisation tariffs varied depending on the product.

Mr Kelly warned manufacturers were trying to make decisions without certainty on the Brexit situation.

"People are terrified of making the wrong decision and asking us and (Government jobs agency) Invest NI and a raft of others.

"This will make or break their business for the next 10 years and none of them can provide that."

DUP MP Ian Paisley sits on the committee and challenged some of the evidence from manufacturers.

He said: "If there is no deal, the one country in Europe that suffers the most is the Republic of Ireland."

He said Ireland would lose 3.8% of its GDP "overnight" if there was no agreement.
Coppi Restaurant in St Anne's Square was opened five years ago by restaurateur Tony O'Neill

Northern Ireland restaurateur Tony O'Neill is to open a new venue specialising in Mediterranean food in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter.

But he closed Bartali in Portballintrae on the north coast at the beginning of the year, after first opening in 2015.

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"Trade was good during the summer but the winters were just too long," Mr O'Neill said.

Work is starting today on Buba Restaurant in St Anne's Square - on the site of The Fourth Wall, which closed earlier this year.

Mr O'Neill's latest opening is close to Coppi, the venue specialising in Italian food which he opened four years ago.

He and fellow company director Andrea O'Neill have applied for an alcohol licence for Buba under new company Buba Restaurants Ltd.

He told the Belfast Telegraph he hoped to open in late January.

"We want it to be quite relaxed. At the start it will only be open in the evenings, but open quite late.

"It will be serving food from small plates along the theme of Middle Eastern, Turkish, Mediterranean and North African food."

Mr O'Neill formerly worked in the Merchant Hotel as executive chef, and went into business with entrepreneur Sam Spain in 2011.

Their first opening was Il Pirata in east Belfast. That venue is now run by Mr Spain.

Belfast Telegraph restaurant critic Joris Minne described Mr O'Neill as "the quiet man of restaurants".

"He has huge pedigree, having come from top flight operations such as The Merchant and Coppi.

"His collaborations with Sam Spain in Il Pirata and elsewhere show just how talented he is.

"Sharing plates are increasingly popular, although we remain a largely conventional and traditional market which likes starters, mains and desserts. O'Neill has a nose for trends, however, and this venture is likely to work very well."

The former Fourth Wall restaurant had been advertised to let through commercial property agents CBRE at a rate of 45,000 per year.

Other tenants in the square include restaurants Pizza Express and House of Zen, arts centre and theatre The Mac, The Ramada Encore Hotel and Pure Gym.

Mr O'Neill's new venture is the latest in a series of restaurant openings in Belfast. The Dog Track -a spin-off from Michael Fletcher and Michael O'Connor, owners of the Barking Dog restaurant on the Malone Road - has opened in the Weaving Works office block in Ormeau Avenue in the city centre.

And in Stranmillis, a new Mexican restaurant, El Chapo, has opened on the site of the former chicken restaurant Birdcage.

Jonny Elliott, who worked with top chefs Gordon Ramsay and Gary Rhodes, has opened tapas restaurant Edo (pronounced Aye-doh) - which is Latin for 'I eat' - on Upper Queen Street, Belfast.

And the Michelin-starred chef Danni Barry, formerly of Deanes Eipic, has started work at Clenaghan's Restaurant in Aghalee, Co Antrim after it was taken over by Stevie and Cristina Higginson.

Glasgow pizza chain Pizza Punks is also to open in Longbridge House on the corner of Waring Street and Hill Street.

Longbridge House is also home to Bunsen Burger, a Dublin chain. It has five locations in the Republic.

Co-founder Tom Gleeson has said that the restaurant could look at a second spot here in the near future
By PTI: Kohima, Dec 7 (PTI) MLAs, MPs and former lawmakers of Nagaland today appealed for a solution to the vexed Naga political problem before the state Assembly elections due early next year.

The MLAs, MPs along with ex-MLAs and former MPs made the appeal during a closed door consultative meeting called by the Nagaland Assembly Speaker Imtiwapang Aier, at the Regional Center of Excellence in Music and Performing Arts, Jotsoma.

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A copy of the resolution passed in the meeting said the lawmakers placed on record their deep sense of appreciation for all the positive steps taken by the Government of India (GoI) and the stake holders so far in seeking to arrive at an honourable and acceptable solution to the Naga political issue.

"Urges the GoI and other stake holders engaged in dialogue to resolve the issue well before the next state Assembly elections", they resolved.

The MLAs and MPs also appealed to the Election Commission of India to conduct the elections to the 13th Nagaland Legislative Assembly only after an honourable and acceptable solution is reached with regard to the vexed Naga political issue, the resolution said.

They also urged the members of the present Assembly to pass resolution on similar lines during the ensuing winter session, scheduled for December 14 and 15, it said.

Todays resolution was appended by Nagaland Assembly Speaker, Chief Minister TR Zeliang and president of Ex-Parliamentarians Association of Nagaland, T Khongo. PTI NBS RG

--- ENDS ---
The Government is to give Taoiseach Leo Varadkar a new text within 24 hours which it hopes will break the logjam in the Brexit negotiations.

Speaking in Dublin last night, Mr Varadkar pledged to review the fresh wording with an "open mind" but warned that "red line issues" adopted by the Republic remain.

Earlier, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds warned that the Taoiseach was "playing a dangerous game" with the Republic's economy by taking such a tough stand.

In a 15-minute telephone conversation with Mr Varadkar yesterday, Theresa May (right) said that, having consulted with the DUP and officials in London, she was preparing new wording.

Mrs May also spoke to DUP leader Arlene Foster on the telephone.

The party said its negotiators were still continuing to "work through the detail" on the matter with officials in London, adding "there is still work to be done".

The text of the previous agreement the Prime Minister offered Mr Varadkar on Monday was rejected by the DUP who torpedoed the deal believing it amounted to a border in the Irish Sea.

The Taoiseach said while "room to manoeuvre is small", he believed Mrs May was "negotiating in good faith". Agreement has to be reached in advance of next week's EU summit if Brexit negotiations are to move to stage two trade talks.

Following a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Mr Varadkar adopted a diplomatic tone in a clear attempt to calm tensions which have developed between Dublin, Belfast and London in recent days.

He vowed to work with Mrs May to heal the divisions that had opened up during the Brexit negotiations.

"I wouldn't like to be the Taoiseach, and I know she wouldn't want to be the Prime Minister, who began the unravelling of all that progress that has been made in the past 20 years," he said.

Mr Varadkar stressed that his government had no hidden political agenda but just wanted "normal business and normal people to continue their normal lives".

He warned that Dublin wasn't worried that a border would have to be erected the day after Brexit, but that a "creeping border" would develop over time.

Language wasn't a major problem for the Republic but the outcome was vital and "the risk is over a number of years".

Supporting regulatory alignment, he maintained that while it wasn't an attempt to impose the same laws in Northern Ireland and the Republic, there had to be sufficient alignment so a "border by stealth" didn't develop.

Mr Varadkar again denied a claim by Mrs Foster that Dublin had prevented London from showing her party the text of Monday's deal. "I know it's not true," he said.

The Taoiseach insisted that the accusation made no sense since the British Government wouldn't take instructions from him in the first place. Relations between the DUP and Dublin deteriorated yesterday after Mr Dodds accused Mr Varadkar of playing a "dangerous game" with the Irish economy.

Earlier, with the clock ticking to next Thursday's EU summit, the Taoiseach had warned that London may have to wait until the new year for the green light to move to start trade talks with Brussels.

Maintaining his tough position on a deal with London, he told the Dail if it wasn't possible to move onto phase two of the Brexit negotiations next week, "then we can pick it up in the new year". Mr Varadkar acknowledged it was in the Republic's interest for trade talks to begin as soon as possible, but took a side-swipe at the DUP.

"I think we should listen to all parties in Northern Ireland and not accept this idea that seems to be gaining prevalence in some parts of London, and maybe other places as well, that there is only one party in Northern Ireland and that that party speaks for everyone," he said.

"I don't accept that premise, which seems to be accepted by too many people at the moment." But Mr Dodds hit back, saying: "Mr Varadkar may try to appear calm on the surface but he is playing a dangerous game - not with us but with his own economy. His statement about Brexit talks continuing into the new year will send more worries through the business and commercial sectors of the Irish Republic than it will in Northern Ireland or the rest of the UK."

Mr Dodds said the longer the delay in moving onto the second phase of the talks, the greater the chances of a 'no deal' scenario.

"The Irish Republic would suffer far worse economically from no trade deal than the UK," he said.

"The Republic of Ireland has 13.4bn worth of sales to the UK. It is estimated that tens of thousands of jobs are at stake."

Meanwhile, Mrs May came under intense fire at Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons over her failure so far to seal a deal.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the Government's Brexit approach a "shambles", with the DUP "ruling the roost".
The government has won the latest Commons votes over key Brexit legislation - amid warnings that dissident republicans would target border officials if there is no deal.

Majorities ranging from 20 to 28 helped ministers ensure the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill remains unamended after five days of MPs examining it line by line, although further battles await in the final three days before Christmas.

North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon had attracted Conservative support for her proposal to make the commitment to the principles of the Good Friday Agreement clearer in the Bill although she later decided against forcing a vote.

Her decision came after Brexit minister Robin Walker offered to meet her to discuss the issue further and also urged her to work with the government to ensure the agreement is "respected as we moved forward".

Lady Hermon opened proceedings by issuing a direct warning to Tory MPs about the consequences of a hard border, which she argued would "inevitably" exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic if the UK and EU failed to agree a deal.

She said the UK government had a "moral" responsibility to take care of all officials, including those from HM Revenue and Customs, PSNI and UK Border Force.

The Bill seeks to transfer European law into British law, and says it may not amend or repeal the Northern Ireland Act 1998 - which is underpinned by the agreement.

Lady Hermon said she believed the wording was technically correct but questioned what it meant, insisting the language must be clearer in stating its commitment to the principles of the agreement.

She told the Commons: "It's an absolute nonsense, it is so reckless and so dangerous because dissident republicans ... are active, they're dangerous, they're utterly ruthless."

Lady Hermon added: "In the event of no deal, we certainly face a hard border and dissident republicans will regard PSNI officers, HMRC officers and UK border officials as legitimate targets.

"I don't want that on my conscience and I don't believe for one moment the Prime Minister wants that either, or the government."

Earlier, DUP MP Nigel Dodds claimed Lady Hermon was viewed as "being on the side of the Dublin government" over Brexit issues.

Conservative former cabinet minister Ken Clarke had challenged the DUP to confirm further details about why they objected to a proposal for post-Brexit border arrangements.

Lady Hermon said she hoped progress had been made between the government and DUP, adding: "If I'm not right I'm sure one of the members for the DUP will quickly be on their feet and contradict me, and they haven't."

Mr Dodds intervened at this point to ask: "Could she answer the question posed by (Mr Clarke) when he said 'do you accept, as he does, that it's a good idea to have regulatory convergence and common rules between Northern Ireland and the Republic'.

"Could she give a straight answer to that because many in Northern Ireland now view her as being on the side of the Dublin government on these issues."

A shout of "shameful" could be heard from one MP, with others groaning at Mr Dodds' final remark.

Lady Hermon replied: "I am a unionist and I am not in the pocket and I'm not propping up and have not spoken to the Dublin government, and I strongly resent the implication in his question that I was."
The father and son of Carraig View in the town, are charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent and affray.

A father and son allegedly jumped on a Czech national's head in a "wanton, unprovoked attack" outside his Co Down home, the High Court has heard.

The man sustained a fractured cheekbone, along with puncture wounds to his chest and lung possibly inflicted by a glass object, prosecutors said.

But a judge was also told police don't suspect any racial motive for targeting the man as he walked home from a night out in Downpatrick last month.

Details emerged as bail was refused to one of the two men accused of carrying out the assault.

Sean Fitzsimmons, 22, of Carraig View in the town, is charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent and affray.

His 45-year-old father, Martin Lynch, who lives at the same address, faces similar allegations.

The victim, who speaks little English, was taken to hospital after being discovered with head injuries close to his home at Kennedy Square on November 12.

It was claimed that he struck to the back of the head, knocked to the ground and beaten repeatedly.

Prosecution counsel Philip Henry said the man tried to flee but was pulled back down.

"He did lose consciousness, and the next thing he remembers is waking up with a neighbour cradling him and shouting for help," the barrister said.

Two witnesses who live in the area claimed Fitzsimmons and his father were involved, the court heard.

One of them also alleged they had been in his home that night, and that Lynch left with a pint glass.

Mr Henry continued: "The witness described the assault as including jumping on the injured party's head, and kicking him whilst on the ground."

Asked if there was any racial element to the alleged assault, the barrister replied: "This was a wanton, unprovoked attack, it doesn't appear that the injured party's nationality was a factor."

Defence counsel Richard McConkey agreed that no element of hate crime was involved.

"It's alleged that one of the attackers said to one of the eye witnesses 'All I wanted was a cigarette'," he told the court.

"This had noting to do with race or ethnicity at all."

With Lynch previously refused bail, Mr McConkey contended that Fitzsimmons could be released to care for his mother.

But denying his application, Sir Anthony Hart cited the risk of re-offending.
A man excluded from an enhanced severance package when the Gallaher tobacco factory in Ballymena closed was the victim of age discrimination, a tribunal has ruled.

Bernard Barlow (66) worked for Gallaher Limited, once a major employer in north Antrim, for 27 years.

He was employed as a machine worker at the factory owned by Japan Tobacco International (JTI) Limited since October 1998, having previously worked at their plant in Hyde, outside Manchester.

After the company announced the Ballymena site was to close, all staff were asked to sign a settlement agreement.

Mr Barlow refused to sign up as the sum he would receive was less than the amount employees aged under 65 would get. He believed this was discriminatory on the grounds of his age.

He took a case - supported by the Equality Commission - with an industrial tribunal ruling in his favour.

A decision on compensation will be announced at a later date.

Mr Barlow said: "I had worked for Gallaher's for 27 years and hadn't had a sick day in over 10 years. I considered myself to be a loyal and dedicated employee.

"It was hurtful and upsetting to be told after all those years of service that I was being treated differently than some colleagues simply because of my age.

"I found it offensive to be excluded from the company's redundancy scheme just because of my age and it is still distressing when I consider how I have been treated."

In May 2014, Mr Barlow notified the company that he wished to continue working after he turned 65 in February 2016. However, in the meantime JTI announced that it intended to close its Ballymena factory.

Discussions took place between management and the Unite trade union on the redundancy package, based on a contractual redundancy scheme in place from 2009 which stated "entitlement only applies up to age 65". Employees aged over 65 would only receive statutory redundancy pay. This scheme had not been amended following the government's removal of the Default Retirement Age in October 2011.

The tribunal noted that during the negotiation process, the views of the workers over 65 years were not specifically canvassed by either the management or trade union side.

Nor did management undertake an equality audit to ascertain whether the scheme might potentially discriminate against that group of workers.

A final severance package was agreed between management and union officials in February 2015. Following this, all employees were asked to sign a settlement agreement.

Mr Barlow did not sign up as the sum he would receive was less than the amount employees under 65 years would get. He believed this was discriminatory on the grounds of his age.

An internal grievance was unsuccessful and he lodged a claim with the industrial tribunal on May 12, 2015.

The company did not dispute that the scheme adversely affected employees over 65, but contested the case on the ground of objective justification - a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

The tribunal accepted that the company was "genuine in its desire to see that the resources for enhanced redundancies payments would be spread fairly and equitably across the workforce, but the inescapable reality was that those employees who, like Mr Barlow, were over 65, were completely excluded from the benefits of the company's enhanced severance scheme".

In its decision, the tribunal found "no evidence that the company seriously considered any alternative methods which could have constituted a proportionate way of achieving its aims i.e. by tapering provisions or amending the net pay limitations... no transitional measures were considered, which could have mitigated the discriminatory effects of the scheme".

The tribunal found that Mr Barlow suffered both direct and indirect discrimination on the ground of age.
A welcome centre in Belfast, as researchers stressed the need for a Stormont strategy aimed at supporting integration

More needs to be done to support refugees and asylum seekers struggling to integrate into Northern Ireland society, a report has found.

That is the conclusion of researchers from Queen's University who conducted a study examining the everyday life experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in the region.

The report noted that Northern Ireland was relatively inexperienced in relocating people fleeing from their homelands overseas.

The researchers stressed the need for a specific Stormont strategy aimed at supporting integration.

The report was conducted by the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen's on behalf of Stormont's Executive Office.

Project lead Dr Fiona Murphy said: "This study found that a refugee integration strategy is urgently needed in order to improve pathways to integration into Northern Ireland's society.

"A number of issues that are highly complex due to Northern Ireland's unique historical and cultural experiences as a society were identified in the research, as well as issues such as housing, legal support and lack of opportunities for asylum seekers and refugees in society.

"How we address the issue of asylum seekers and refugees living in our society is now imperative given the refugee crisis in Europe."

Researchers said Northern Ireland would benefit from one overarching organisation like a refugee council to help newcomers settle in their new home.

Report participant Makhosi Sigabade from Zimbabwe, who moved to Northern Ireland in 2015, said: "I came to Northern Ireland from Zimbabwe as an asylum seeker, fleeing persecution by the government due to my activism against human rights violations.

"Since then it has become my adopted home and I have settled well into life here.

"There has been support available to me, but I have also had my fair share of difficulties and challenges, and I also miss my family who are still in Zimbabwe, which is hard.

"I think this report highlights the difficulties and challenges faced by asylum seekers and refugees coming to Northern Ireland, and suggests how things can be improved to make integration easier for everyone."

Dr Mark Browne from The Executive Office (TEO) welcomed what he described as an "important piece of research".

"TEO commissioned this research to fill the knowledge gap in our understanding of the lives of asylum seekers and refugees," he said.

"While asylum policy is made in Westminster, the Executive has powers to address some of the problems faced by asylum seekers and refugees here.

"It has exercised these powers in the past to place very positive initiatives in important areas like education, health and helping people in crisis.

"This research will now help us develop a refugee integration strategy."
DUP MEP Diane Dodds has said "Sinn Fein are deliberately misleading people about the DUP's position" in relation to negotiations.

The DUP member was responding to Sinn Finn leader Michelle O'Neill's comments that the next 48 hours are crucial for Northern Ireland in the Brexit negotiations.

Ms Dodds stated: "The DUP has been absolutely clear and consistent. We do not wish to see a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

"In pursuance of that objective however it is completely unacceptable to place such a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

"What is required from everyone in this process is a positive attitude and a determination to achieve an outcome that is acceptable to all sides. Unfortunately we have some who appear to revel in the prospect of failure.

"This is not the DUP's position and we will continue to ensure the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK is maintained and that we do not see a return to the borders of the past with the Republic of Ireland."

The DUP MEP added: "Sinn Fein deliberately mislead people about the DUP's position. Of course Sinn Fein know well that the hard border of the past existed to stop semtex and not powdered milk."

EU leaders said there is a deadline of Sunday to find a solution after the DUP scuppered a proposed deal at the beginning of the week.

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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said talks on the border could extend into the new year, while Nigel Dodds said negotiations would continue for as long as was necessary. It is understood a DUP delegation met Conservative officials on Thursday.

Stormont Sinn Fein leader Michelle O'Neill said the DUP did not represent the majority view in Northern Ireland, where 56% voted Remain in last year's referendum.

Mrs O'Neill was speaking as work continues to craft a border deal that will satisfy the EU, UK, Dublin and the DUP.

"They are consistently turning their face towards a hard border," she said in Belfast.

"I have made that very clear to Theresa May."

Her comments came as a Sinn Fein sponsored opinion poll suggested a clear majority of people in the region - 58% - are in favour of Northern Ireland retaining membership of the single market and customs union.

The Lucidtalk poll, commissioned by the European United Left - Nordic Green Left group in the European Parliament, also suggested that, in the event of a "no deal" hard Brexit, more people in Northern Ireland would prefer to join a united Ireland to maintain EU membership than stay in a UK outside the European Union (48% to 45%).

Mrs O'Neill said the region was facing a crucial "48 hours" and called on the Irish government to stand up for everyone on the island.

She said there could be no "roll back" on what was on the table on Monday, insisting protections to ensure a soft border should even be made stronger.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine, its envoy Adnan A Alihaijaa said today without elaborating when it will take place.

His announcement came on a day when the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting tomorrow after US President Donald Trump, in a controversial move, recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital.

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Many Arab leaders warned that the controversial decision could trigger an upheaval in the already volatile Middle East.

"I will announce here and no one before you knows that Mr Modi will visit Palestine," the ambassador told Rajya Sabha TV.

He, however, did not elaborate when the visit will take place.

Participating in a discussion on the channel, he said India has been supportive of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution.

In July, Modi became the first prime minister of India to visit Israel.

Reacting to the US announcement recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, India today said its position on Palestine is independent, consistent and not determined by any third country.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Indias position on Palestine is shaped by its own views and interests and not determined by any third country.

"Indias position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country," he said responding to a query regarding Indias position on recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US. PTI NAB MPB ZMN

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The aftermath of the fatal crash in Co Wexford

The nephew of a couple who lost their lives alongside their two sons in a horrific collision in Co Wexford has said the family are finding it hard to accept their loss.

Tyrone-born Dougie Alexander, his wife Lily, both 75, and their sons Steven (49) and Doug jnr (52) died when their car collided with an articulated lorry on the New Ross Road on Monday at around 6.30pm.

The family were making their way from Shannon Airport to the wake of Lily's sister Winnie Keevey.

All four died at the scene.

The Alexanders lived in Oaklawn, Chicago.

Building contractor Dougie - a well-known musician - was born and raised in Sion Mills. His wife was from Limerick.

Their children were born in America, but lived in Ireland sporadically over the years.

People in Sion Mills, where Dougie's brother and other family members still live, were in shock yesterday as they attempted to come to terms with the tragedy.

Dougie's nephew Billy Cochrane, who lives just over the border in Donegal, said that his cousin Debbie, the only surviving member of the Alexander family, was devastated by this most unthinkable of losses.

"The family were just the best of people," he said.

"They were very close, very family-orientated people.

"They were all very friendly, very nice people.

"I was called after my uncle Dougie. My middle name is Douglas.

"Steven and Doug jnr were just brilliant cousins, we were all very close.

"We are totally devastated.

"We just can't accept it at the minute.

"It just doesn't seem real.

"My uncle and aunt have a daughter Debbie who lives in America. She is the only one left now, God bless her.

"I was just in touch with the police department in Chicago - Steven was a policeman - because I couldn't get a number for Debbie.

"When I was talking to the police, it just didn't seem right to say that they were gone.

"It was a very strange feeling, particularly when it's four at the one time.

"You can lose a family member, you will grieve, but when four are lost, it's different.

"We lost our uncle Noel, Dougie's brother, last year, which was hard, but now four of them are gone in one day.

"It's hard to take in."

Dougie and Lily are to be cremated and their ashes flown back to America alongside the bodies of their sons after a memorial service in Co Wexford next week.

Billy will be travelling south in the coming days to help with the funeral arrangements.

"We have to wait and see about getting them repatriated," he said.

"We think there is a memorial service for the four of them on Monday in Wexford, but that has to be finalised.

"Dougie and Lily are being cremated here in Ireland and the two boys will be heading back to America along with their parents' ashes.

"There is obviously no good time for a tragedy to happen.

"But for it to happen coming up to Christmas, such a precious family time, is just totally and utterly devastating.

"They were a very, very close family.

"My cousin Debbie and Steven and Doug jnr's partners and the children are so close.

"This is such a terrible, terrible loss."

Local priest Fr Sean Devereux told RTE earlier this week: "The community is absolutely numbed by the tragedy and all that has unfolded.

"All we can really do, as a faith community, is offer support and to be with those who are bereaved and be with the Keevey family, who have had this tragedy impacted upon them as they were grieving the passing of their mother."
Brandon Lewis said it was important to help asylum-seeking children

A scheme to relieve pressure on local councils caring for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children is set to be rolled out.

Under new legislation the National Transfer Scheme (NTS), which allows hard-pressed local authorities to transfer children to councils with greater capacity, will be extended to include Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis said that he hoped local authorities across the United Kingdom would continue to "play their part" in providing protection for the thousands of children who need help each year.

Local councils are currently providing support to over 4,500 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Mr Lewis said: " The National Transfer Scheme is essential in ensuring all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the care of local authorities get the support they need.

"I am delighted that so many local authorities have already expressed their interest in getting involved. By bringing forward this legislation we will have a truly national scheme.

"I hope that going forward, local authorities from all across the UK will volunteer to play their part in providing protection for the thousands of children who need our help each year.

Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns said: " I want to be sure that all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Wales can secure the best possible care.

"Welsh local authorities have a long history of collaboration and I am glad that they are prepared to work together to support each other in this vitally important area."

Since 2010 more than 49,000 children, including almost 9,000 in the year ending September 2017, have been given asylum in the UK.
The scene in Birmingham after the bombings

Self-confessed IRA man Michael Hayes could be questioned by the British authorities in connection with the Birmingham pub bombings, High Court judges have heard.

Two senior judges were also told Dublin-based Hayes may separately be spoken to by lawyers acting for the coroner in the currently suspended inquests into the deaths of the 21 victims.

Hayes previously told a BBC interview he took "collective responsibility" for the organisation's activities in England, including the pub bombings.

He also claimed to have defused a third bomb placed outside Barclays Bank on the city's Hagley Road, when the scale of the bloodshed on the night of November 21 1974, became clear.

Speaking in July, when asked if he had planted either bomb in the Tavern in the Town or the Mulberry Bush, he replied: "No comment. No comment."

Hayes had also made remarks about the explosives' timers and the telephone warning given prior to the blasts, Lord Justice Simon and Mrs Justice Carr were told on Thursday.

Late last month, West Midlands Police secured a court order to obtain un-broadcast material from the BBC interview as part of the continuing criminal investigation.

Ten of the victims' families were at the High Court in Birmingham on Thursday, in a legal bid to overturn coroner Sir Peter Thornton QC's ruling banning the identification of suspects at fresh inquests.

The relatives are asking for a judicial review of that decision, in order to widen the inquests' scope and include "the perpetrator issue".

Progress on the hearings is currently suspended, pending a legal ruling on the issue.

In submissions for the coroner opposing the families' application, his barrister Peter Skelton QC said it was an important distinction in law that coronial and criminal processes were entirely separate.

In court, Mr Skelton said the criminal process was continuing, and raised Hayes as an example of the police's on-going work.

Mr Skelton said: "The West Midlands Police must go about their own function and the coroner will not seek to in any way compromise that."

He added: "It is conceivable that if there was a criminal lead during the coroner's hearing the inquest would again be suspended.

"A person could be charged and prosecuted during those proceedings.

"For example, Michael Hayes.

"That is a possibility and it will will remain a possibility throughout the inquest."

Lord Justice Simon asked what the aim of the coroner would be in viewing the un-broadcast BBC footage, given the perpetrator issue had so far been ruled out of the inquests' scope.

Mr Skelton said: "No, the coroner isn't investigating whether Mr Hayes perpetrated the attacks, but whether the IRA perpetrated the attacks.

"It may be Mr Hayes is interviewed in due course by the coroner's legal team in order to further those issues."

After two days of legal submissions, Lord Justice Simon told the hearing judgment would be reserved until the new year.

He said: "This may seem to some to have been rather dry legal analysis.

"But we have not overlooked the background and concerns of those in court over these issues.

"We will however reserve our judgment.

"I don't think there's any serious possibility of a judgment being made before the new year."
Theresa May has to satisfy demands from the Irish and the Democratic Unionist Party for Brexit talks to progress

Theresa May is engaged in a flurry of diplomacy which could continue through the night and has fuelled speculation that a Brexit agreement on plans to maintain a soft Irish border could be edging closer.

The announcement that European Council president Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday morning added to talk that the Prime Minister had made progress.

Under-pressure Mrs May had been hoping to make a new offer by Friday on the Irish border to satisfy both Dublin and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her Government.

A mooted agreement between the UK and EU on divorce issues including the Irish border, which would allow talks to progress to the future trade relationship, was torpedoed on Monday by the DUP.

On Thursday evening, Mrs May spoke to European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, after he had phoned Irish PM Leo Varadkar.

Mr Juncker's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said after the calls that an early morning meeting and "press point" on Friday was "possible", but added: "We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night."

Downing Street did not comment on suggestions that Mrs May could fly to Brussels very early on Friday to seal a deal.

Confirming the PM's calls, a Number 10 spokesman said: "Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing."

And earlier on Thursday evening, a UK Government source said: "We're not there yet."

DUP sources urged caution, insisting talks were continuing and stressing suggestions that a text had been signed off by MPs but not the leader Arlene Foster were not fully accurate.

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am UK time) - before the London Stock Exchange opens - but would not give further details.

The DUP objected to plans for "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic to maintain a soft border between the two, arguing it would amount to the drawing of a new frontier with the UK mainland in the Irish Sea.

The Prime Minister is under intense pressure to get leaders at the December 14 European Council summit to declare "sufficient progress" has been made on divorce issues so trade talks can begin.

On Thursday evening, an Irish Government spokesman said: "Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government."

But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.

DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: "Discussions are ongoing."

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has insisted any Brexit deal must stick to the spirit of the Leave campaign.

"It is very, very important that whatever happens now, whatever we agree, has got to be consistent with taking back control of our laws, of our borders and of our cash," he said.

Pressed on whether he was comfortable with a widespread regulatory alignment between the UK and EU after Brexit, the Foreign Secretary said: "You can take it from me that whatever comes up, whatever the solution that we come to, whatever we devise getting on to the body of the talks, it's got to be consistent, it's got to be consistent with the whole of the United Kingdom taking back control."
Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, forced the Prime Minister to cut off talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

A still image taken from footage broadcast by the UK Parliament's Parliamentary Recording Unit (PRU) shows Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May as she speaks during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) session in the House of Commons in London on December 6, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / PRU AND AFP PHOTO /

Theresa May is preparing to make a fresh Brexit offer on the Irish border by Friday to try and break the logjam in negotiations amid warnings she may have to wait until the New Year for trade talks, the Irish prime minister has said.

With the clock ticking to the December 14 summit of the European Council which must decide whether sufficient progress has been made on the UK's divorce deal to clear the way for talks on the future relationship, there was no sign of a breakthrough on the crucial issue of the Irish border.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's office characterised a phone-call with Mrs May as a "stock-taking" exercise, and later he made clear he would not back down on his position that Dublin's approval for the opening of the second phase of talks is dependent on agreement on the border.

But he said he discussed with the Prime Minister the idea of Britain amending its offer to win over the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, which scuppered a proposed deal on Monday .

With Mrs May under intense pressure from business for certainty by Christmas over the transition to a new UK/EU relationship, Mr Varadkar said she is hoping to return with a new formal written offer "tonight and tomorrow".

The Irish PM said he would consider any new proposal, but added: "Ultimately it is up to them to come back to us, given the events that happened on Monday.

"And having consulted with people in London, she wants to come back to us with some text tonight and tomorrow."

After talks with Dutch PM Mark Rutte in Dublin, he said his "absolute red line" that Brexit should not create a hard Irish border remains.

And earlier he told the Irish Dail: " We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week because of the problems that have arisen, well then we can pick it up of course in the New Year."

Mr Rutte made clear the EU would not compromise and allow the Irish border to kicked down the road to phase two of the talks, even under threat of Britain crashing out with no deal or divorce negotiations dragging on to 2018.

"You cannot just say because we need a soft Brexit that we will somehow compromise on some of the fundamentals on the three issues now on the table - citizens' rights, the exit bill, the border," he said.

"On each of three issues these sufficient progress needs to be established and if somehow your scenario would play out and somewhere along the line Britain would opt for a hard Brexit all by itself, the impact on the United Kingdom would again be infinitely bigger than on us."

He added: " We will not loosen our position.

"We will stay very firm."

Downing Street said Mrs May told Mr Varadkar she was "working hard to find a specific solution to the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland" and was committed to "moving together to achieve a positive result on this".

The PM also spoke by phone with Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster, whose rejection of plans for "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic led to the collapse of a proposed deal on Monday.

It is understood Mrs Foster has no immediate plans to fly to London for talks with Mrs May and any such move would depend on progress in talks.

A DUP spokesman said: "There is still plenty of work to be done.

"The (Government and DUP) teams in London are continuing to work through the detail".

Meanwhile, opposition MPs demanded that Brexit Secretary David Davis be sacked and face investigation for contempt of Parliament after admitting his department had produced no impact assessments of the likely effect of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy.

And opponents of a hard Brexit accused the Government of being "breathtakingly dysfunctional" after Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed that - 18 months after the EU referendum - Cabinet has not yet discussed details of the UK's preferred long-term relationship with the EU.

Downing Street later said a discussion on the "end state" would be held in one of the two Cabinet meetings scheduled before the end of 2017.

But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable questioned the long delay in taking this step, asking: "Is this because ministers know they will not be able to agree? Ministers are behaving like a couple no longer on speaking terms but forced to live under the same roof."

Mr Hammond also received a slapdown from Downing Street after suggesting it was "inconceivable" the UK would not pay a financial settlement to the EU, regardless of whether it obtains a trade deal.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman swiftly said the payment - estimated at up to 50 billion - was "dependent on us forging (a) deep and special future relationship with the EU".

At Prime Minister's Questions, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the Government's Brexit approach a "shambles", with the DUP - on whose votes Mrs May relies for her Commons majority - "ruling the roost".

But Mrs May attempted to downplay the deadlock over the Irish border, insisting that it was an issue which could only properly be resolved in the context of the upcoming trade talks.

"We will deliver this," she responded. "We aim to deliver this as part of our overall trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

"And we can only talk about that when we get into phase two."
The latest member of the Chennai Six has touched down on British soil, saying words could not describe how it felt after spending more than four years in an Indian jail.

Nick Dunn, from Ashington, Northumberland, wept as he embraced his family who had been waiting for him at Newcastle Airport.

The former soldier and five other British men had been guards on a ship to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean but were jailed in October 2013 after being charged with carrying unlicensed firearms and ammunition.

They won an appeal against their convictions last week after years of campaigning and were given permission to leave India.

Surrounded by supporters, he said he was going to have a hot bubble bath on Thursday evening and was looking forward to eating steak.

Words cant describe how I feel, Im on cloud nine and its all down to my sister, shes made this possible, he said. Ive been quite calm, I hadnt been anticipating being this calm, it wasnt until I came through the door there that it hit me.

After four long years of not being able to see my mum, its the best Christmas present I could ever wish for.

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I want to relax with my family and I think a lovely hot bubble bath is on the cards for tonight. Its something simple that we all take for granted but I will never take it for granted ever again.

For everyone that has campaigned for me, I am overwhelmed. Everyones support got me through this dark period of my life.

Without them I dont know where I would be so I really want to thank the British public for their amazing support.
By India Today Web Desk: China says Indian drone violated airspace, crashed

An Indian drone entered China's airspace and crashed behind the border, the Chinese military has claimed while expressing strong dissatisfaction over the incident.

Donald Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, al-Qaeda and ISIS threaten bloodbath

Trump has also directed his government to begin preparations to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

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Suspended Ben Stokes and Alex Hales in England one-day squad for Australia

Ben Stokes is currently unable to play for his country pending a decision on whether to charge him in connection with an altercation outside a Bristol nightclub in September.

Akshay walks out of Gulshan Kumar biopic after director ignores all his suggestions

Akshay Kumar wanted some changes in the script of the film, but director Subhash Kapoor ignored his suggestions.

--- ENDS ---
The Queen has welcomed the UKs new 3.1 billion aircraft carrier into the Royal Navy fleet and declared it the best of British.

Accompanied by the Princess Royal, the Queen arrived on board HMS Queen Elizabeth at Portsmouth Naval Base using a specially installed lift to bring her up to the hangar for the occasion.

Wearing a purple outfit, she was led onboard by the ships commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson also attended to witness the 65,000 tonne vessel joining the fleet.

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At 280 metres long and with an estimated half a century working life, the behemoth warship is the biggest and most powerful ever built by the UK.

A total of 3,700 guests including families and VIPs gathered in the ships giant hall for the ceremony.

In a speech, the Queen said: We are gathered here in Portsmouth today just a short distance from HMS Victory, a flagship of our seafaring past and a reminder of the debt we owe to the Royal Navy which for more than 500 years has protected the people of this country and our interests around the world.

Like HMS Victory, HMS Queen Elizabeth embodies the best of British technology and innovation, a true flagship for the 21st century. The most powerful and capable ship ever to raise the White Ensign, she will in the years and decades ahead represent the countrys resolve on the global stage.

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She praised the service personnel who will crew the carrier and added: As the daughter, wife and mother of naval officers, I recognise the unique demands our nation asks of you and I will always value my special link with HMS Queen Elizabeth, her ships company and their families.

The ceremony was organised to commission the carrier into the fleet but the Aircraft Carrier Alliance confirmed that the Royal Navy had formally accepted the ship on Thursday, meaning it had been fully handed over to the Ministry of Defence.

Mr Williamson said the commissioning ceremony marks the start of a hugely significant chapter for the Royal Navy.

He added: Our new aircraft carrier is the epitome of British design and dexterity, at the core of our efforts to build an Armed Forces fit for the future.

For the next half a century both carriers (work is continuing on HMS Prince of Wales) will advance our interests around the globe, providing the most visible symbol of intent and commitment to protect the UK from intensifying threats, wherever they may come.

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Cpt Kyd said it was an historic day that marked the culmination of over a decade of work and paid tribute to the thousands involved in the creation of the aircraft carrier, which he said reflected the truly national nature of this endeavour.

On the Queens arrival, the national anthem was played before she, along with Anne, inspected a guard on parade.

The Queen then received the royal salute as the ensign was raised for the first time on the flight deck, broadcast into the hangar on large screens.

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An audible sigh of relief could be heard from the ships company as the ensign, initially slightly entangled, opened out fully and flew freely in the wind.

On show were cakes created for the event including a model of the carrier and others depicting the Queen and sailors on parade, including one who has fallen on his face after fainting.

The ceremony finished with the cake representing the ship being cut by the commanding officers wife Karen Kyd and the youngest member of the ships company Steward Callum Hui, 17, from Lynton, Devon.

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After the ceremony, the Queen met two members of crew from the previous HMS Queen Elizabeth, before then greeting a select number of the current ships company and their families.

Dressed in purple and wearing a triple string of pearls, the Queen became engulfed by those onboard as they were keen to catch a glimpse of her.

Among the families mingling in the hangar, Naval Airman Karle Belding, 26, from Kings Lynn was enjoying a glass of carrier ale, alcohol which can now legally be consumed on the ship due to being accepted by the Royal Navy.
Theresa May is under pressure to move on to the next stage of Brexit talks before the end of the year (Virginia Mayo/AP)

Theresa May is engaged in a flurry of diplomacy which could continue through the night and has fuelled speculation that a Brexit agreement on plans to maintain a soft Irish border could be edging closer.

The announcement that European Council president Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday morning added to talk that the Prime Minister had made progress.

Under-pressure Mrs May had been hoping to make a new offer by Friday on the Irish border to satisfy both Dublin and Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her Government.

A mooted agreement between the UK and EU on divorce issues including the Irish border, which would allow talks to progress to the future trade relationship, was torpedoed on Monday by the DUP.

On Thursday evening, Mrs May spoke to European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, after he had phoned Irish PM Leo Varadkar.

Mr Junckers chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said after the calls that an early morning meeting and press point on Friday was possible, but added: We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night.

Downing Street did not comment on suggestions that Mrs May could fly to Brussels very early on Friday to seal a deal.

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Confirming the PMs calls, a Number 10 spokesman said: Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing.

And earlier on Thursday evening, a UK Government source said: Were not there yet.

DUP sources urged caution, insisting talks were continuing and stressing suggestions that a text had been signed off by MPs but not the leader Arlene Foster were not fully accurate.

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am UK time)  before the London Stock Exchange opens  but would not give further details.

The DUP objected to plans for regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic to maintain a soft border between the two, arguing it would amount to the drawing of a new frontier with the UK mainland in the Irish Sea.

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The Prime Minister is under intense pressure to get leaders at the December 14 European Council summit to declare sufficient progress has been made on divorce issues so trade talks can begin.

On Thursday evening, an Irish Government spokesman said: Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government.

But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.

DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: Discussions are ongoing.
Only 26 areas of the country recorded a significant jump in life expectancy for males between 2011/13 and 2014/16 (Joe Giddens/PA)

Growth in life expectancy has stalled across many areas of the UK, new figures suggest.

Only 26 areas of the country recorded a significant jump in life expectancy for males between 2011/13 and 2014/16, compared with 203 areas between 2001/03 and 2004/06. The equivalent number for females has fallen from 128 areas to 17.

Though life expectancy is continuing to increase in all parts of the UK, there is big variation between areas.

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The London borough of Camden saw the fastest improvement in life expectancy between 2001/03 and 2014/16 for both males (7.5 years) and females (5.8 years).

By contrast, Denbighshire in north Wales saw the slowest improvement for males (1.4 years), while Hull recorded the smallest improvement for females (0.7 years).

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show the overall rate of improvement in life expectancy at birth during the first half of this decade was 75.3% lower for males and 82.7% lower for females when compared with the first half of the previous decade.

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Chris White, principal researcher at the ONS, said further studies would be needed to understand what is driving the slowdown in improvement.

He said: We have seen a trend of a levelling-off of gains in life expectancy, that has been reported in a lot of research reports since around 2011.

There is quite an intense debate at the moment about what is driving that: some people point to provisions in social care or health epidemics and other factors affecting older people, so there is a lot going on.

Some of it is really just related to the ageing of a modern population but the trend in the data is definitely pointing to a thaw in the rate of improvement and it does require further research to unpick what is driving it.

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The ONS will be producing further studies next year on what ages are most affecting the improvement rates, and what causes of death might be driving the slowdown, he added.

The figures also show that healthy life expectancy, a persons lifespan spent in good health, differs by as much as 18 years across parts of the UK.

The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames recorded the highest healthy life expectancy of anywhere in the country for men between 2014/16 (69.9 years), while the Orkney Islands saw the highest for women (73.0 years).

By contrast, Dundee saw the lowest healthy life expectancy for men (54.3 years), and Manchester for women (54.6 years).

The variation across different areas of the UK amounted to stark contrasts in the number of years people can expect to live in good health, the ONS said.

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Chief executive of the older peoples charity Independent Age, Janet Morrison, said there were deep-rooted health inequalities contributing to the slowdown in gains across the country.

She said: It is deeply concerning that people in some parts of the country can still expect to have over fifteen years more good health than people living elsewhere, while overall increases in life expectancy are slowing down.

It is imperative that the reasons for these persistent health inequalities are understood and addressed, to ensure that older age is not just about living longer, but having a good quality of life in older age, no matter where in the UK you live.
Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock has called for a massive programme of building prefabricated homes to tackle Britains housing shortage.

Lord Kinnock said he had been brought up in a comfortable and affordable prefab and suggested it was a rapid and effective way of addressing the housing problem.

Communities and local government minister Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth said the Government was undertaking the most ambitious house building programme for a generation.

As peers warned at question time about growing homelessness, Lord Kinnock said one of the major causes of the rise in homelessness was the shortage of supply and the huge rising cost of housing, particularly in the rented sector.

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He urged ministers to engage in a programme of massive building of prefabricated housing.

Lord Kinnock added: As someone who was brought up very happily in a prefab  a comfortable and affordable prefab  right through to my late teens, can I recommend strongly this is a rapid and effective way of addressing the fundamental problem of this 21st century.

Lord Bourne said it was a factor in this complex area but was not simply a question of supply. The Government had a target for 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s.

He said Lord Kinnock was right about the importance of modern methods of construction and about 15% of new homes were constructed that way.

Youre right, we can get that up and we are looking at doing that, the minister added.
US and Israeli flags are projected onto the walls of Jerusalem's old city (Sebastian Scheiner/AP)

Theresa May has criticised Donald Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, describing it as unhelpful for the peace process in the region.

The Prime Minister said she disagrees with the presidents decision and reiterated Britains position that the city should be the shared capital of Israel and Palestine in a negotiated two-state solution.

In a White House speech, Mr Trump said his move marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and that it was in Americas interests.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described Mr Trumps move as reckless.

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The president also announced plans to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city but Mrs May said Britain had no plans to follow suit.

In a statement, the PM said: We disagree with the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement.

We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The British Embassy to Israel is based in Tel Aviv and we have no plans to move it.

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Our position on the status of Jerusalem is clear and long-standing: it should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Jerusalem should ultimately be the shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian states.

In line with relevant Security Council Resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Mr Corbyn tweeted: Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, including occupied Palestinian territory, is a reckless threat to peace.

The British Government must condemn this dangerous act and work for a just and viable settlement of the conflict.

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Mrs May said Britain shares Mr Trumps desire to end the Israel-Palestine conflict and welcomed his commitment to a negotiated two state solution.

She also noted the importance of his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including the sovereign boundaries within the city, should be subject to negotiations.

We encourage the US administration to now bring forward detailed proposals for an Israel-Palestinian settlement, she added.

To have the best chances of success, the peace process must be conducted in an atmosphere free from violence. We call on all parties to work together to maintain calm.

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Palestinians see Mr Trumps move as a decision to side with Israel on one of the most sensitive issues in the conflict.

They see east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967, as their capital.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Mr Trump has destroyed his credibility as a Middle East peace broker, describing his decision as a declaration of withdrawal from the role it (the US) has played in the peace process.

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But Israels prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country profoundly grateful, adding that Mr Trumps announcement marks a historic day and is an important step towards peace.

He said his country will continue to work with the president and his team to make that dream of peace come true.
Momentum was founded in 2015 as a grassroots movement to support Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party (Aaron Chown/PA)

An investigation has been launched by the UKs democracy watchdog into whether the Jeremy Corbyn-backing Momentum movement breached spending rules at this years general election.

The Electoral Commission said its probe would look into whether Momentums spending breached the limits for non-party campaigners in national elections.

It will also consider whether returns submitted by the group, founded in 2015 as a grassroots movement to support Mr Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party, accurately recorded donations and payments relating to the 2017 campaign.

The Commissions director of political finance and regulation and legal counsel, Bob Posner, said: Momentum are a high-profile active campaigning body. Questions over their compliance with the campaign finance rules at Junes general election risks causing harm to voters confidence in elections.

There is significant public interest in us investigating Momentum to establish the facts in this matter and whether there have been any offences.

Once complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its enforcement policy.

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A Momentum spokesman said: Much of the Electoral Commission investigation refers to a series of administrative errors that can be easily rectified. Momentum put a lot of effort and resources into detailed budgeting and financial procedures during the election to ensure full compliance.

Our election campaign was delivered on a low budget because it tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of volunteers across the country. We have a good working relationship with the Electoral Commission, and will fully comply with the investigation going forward.
FBI director Christopher Wray has countered strident attacks on his agency by US President Donald Trump, saying: "There is no finer institution than the FBI."

Mr Wray gave evidence before the House Judiciary Committee as Democrats and Republicans clashed over the significance of Mr Trump's attacks on the agency.

In a storm of tweets last weekend, Mr Trump called the nation's top law enforcement agency a biased institution whose reputation is "in Tatters - worst in History!" and urged Mr Wray to "clean house".

Democrats pushed Mr Wray to respond forcefully, while Republicans echoed Mr Trump in suggesting they worry about political bias in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

Like Mr Trump, they seized on revelations that an FBI agent was removed from Mr Mueller's team because of anti-Trump texts.

"There is no shortage of opinions out there, but what I can tell you is that the FBI that I see is tens of thousands of agents and analysts and staff working their tails off to keep Americans safe," Mr Wray said of the agency he has led for just four months.

"The FBI that I see is tens of thousands of brave men and women working as hard as they can to keep people they will never know safe from harm."

Mr Wray conceded that agents do make mistakes and said there are processes in place to hold them accountable.

His defence of the FBI came after the committee's chairman, Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, said he was concerned by reports about Peter Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent involved in the Hillary Clinton investigation, being removed from Mr Mueller's team last summer following the discovery of text messages seen as potentially anti-Trump.

"It is absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation," Mr Goodlatte said.

"Even the appearance of impropriety will devastate the FBI's reputation."

Representative Jerrold Nadler, top Democrat on the House judiciary panel, predicted Mr Trump's attacks on the FBI will only grow louder as Mr Mueller continues investigating.

"Your responsibility is not only to defend the bureau but to push back against the president when he is so clearly wrong, both on the facts and as a matter of principle," Mr Nadler told Mr Wray.

Mr Wray's tenure as the new FBI chief would be difficult enough even without the intense scrutiny of the Russia investigation.

Since he was sworn in on August 2, the US has experienced two of the deadliest shootings in its modern history and an attack seen as terrorism in Manhattan.

Mr Trump's weekend tweets created a fresh dilemma for Mr Wray.

With his bosses, attorney general Jeff Sessions and Mr Sessions's deputy Rod Rosenstein, staying publicly silent, it fell to Mr Wray to defend the agency.

But FBI directors traditionally have been low key and stoic - with Mr Wray's predecessor James Comey a notable exception.

And Mr Trump's firing of Mr Comey while he led the Russia probe shows what can happen to a director who antagonises the president.

Mr Wray repeatedly deflected questions about the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation, saying the entire matter was under review by the justice department's inspector general.

Republicans repeatedly pressed him on reports that Mr Strzok tweaked the language of the FBI's finding from "grossly negligent" - the standard laid out in the relevant statute - to "extremely careless", which was the language that Mr Comey ultimately used in discussing the Clinton case with the public.

AP
At an Eid-Milad event, Abdul Hameed Khairati was filmed saying that the Hubballi neighbourhood of Ganesh Peth looked like Pakistan, reports said.

By India Today Web Desk: A Muslim cleric who was seen comparing a Hubballi neighbourhood to Pakistan in a viral video, was arrested and sent to judicial custody for 14 days.

At an Eid-Milad event, Abdul Hameed Khairati was filmed saying that this neighbourhood - Ganesh Peth - looked like Pakistan, reports said.

There were calls for action against the cleric, and "several BJP activists and Hindu leaders" said he should be taken into custody, the Kannada newspaper Vijaya Karnataka reported.

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In an apology, Khairati said what he really wanted to communicate was that Muslims in Ganesh Peth celebrated Eid-Milad "more enthusiastically than Pakistan, but wrongly made the statement likening Ganesh Peth to Pakistan," the report added.

On Tuesday, the Deccan Herald quoted Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law & Order) Renuka Sukumar as saying a case was filed against Khairati "under IPC Section 153A, which includes promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony."

ALSO WATCH | India responds to Pak PM at UNGA, says it has become terroristan

--- ENDS ---
Qatar's ruling emir and Emmanuel Macron have signed 12 billion euros (10.5 billion) in deals during the French president's visit to Doha.

They include the purchase of 12 French-made Dassault Rafale fighter jets with the option of buying 36 more.

The agreement brings the total number of Rafales the Gulf Arab country will have to 36.

Mr Macron is travelling with foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who in 2015 as defence minister helped negotiate a deal with Qatar to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets.

As part of a deal negotiated two years ago, Qatar exercised its right to purchase 12 aircraft.

France and Qatar also agreed that Qatar would purchase 490 VBCI armoured vehicles from French firm Nexter, and signed a transportation deal with France's national rail authority to manage and maintain Doha's planned metro, as well as a light rail system north of Doha.

Qatar announced it would additionally buy 50 Airbus twin-engine A321s, with the option of buying 30 more.

Mr Macron's one-day trip to Qatar comes as the Gulf nation faces continued isolation and a boycott by some of its Arab neighbours.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut relations with Qatar over allegations it supports extremists and has too-close relations with Iran.

Qatar has long denied supporting extremists and shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Tehran.

It has also rejected demands put forth by the quartet as an infringement on its sovereignty.

In a rare press conference, held with Mr Macron, Qatar's ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said it was especially disappointing that neighbouring states cut off ties with Qatar during the holy month of Ramadan in June.

"For us, our dignity and the sovereignty of Qatar are above everything. If our brothers want to resolve this crisis then we are ready on a basis that is clear and feasible to everyone and without the interference of anyone's sovereignty," he said.

Earlier this week, a Gulf Co-operation Council meeting in Kuwait failed to bring the standoff any closer to a resolution.

While in Qatar, Mr Macron travelled to the vast al-Udeid air base, which hosts US-led international coalition operations against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the war in Afghanistan.

The air base is home to some 10,000 American troops and the forward headquarters of the US military's Central Command.

France also has a contingent of several hundred troops in Qatar as part of the 1,200 French forces active in the region in the battle against IS.

Mr Macron smiled and shook hands with the French and American soldiers who greeted him at the base before walking into a meeting with the base's top commanders.

Speaking to coalition soldiers, he said the next few months of battle will determine the outcome of the war against IS in Iraq in Syria.

"This military win does not signify the end of the operations and the end of our battle because first we need to stabilise and win peace in Iraq and Syria," he told troops.

"Next spring is decisive in the situation in Iraq."

Mr Macron also stressed in his remarks at the air base that France wants to avoid partition in Syria and "avoid the domination of certain international elements whose interests contradict peace".

Later, during his joint press conference, he noted the importance of maintaining the Iranian nuclear accord that France helped negotiate alongside other world powers.

He also called for an internationally defined framework to contain Iran's regional ambitions and "ways to put limits" on Iran's presence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

AP
Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops have erupted across the West Bank while demonstrators in Gaza burned Israeli and US flags after Donald Trump moved to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The leader of the Hamas militant group, which runs Gaza, called for a new armed uprising in a widespread show of anger over the US president's move.

In the West Bank, crowds of protesters set tyres on fire and threw stones at anti-riot troops.

In the biblical town of Bethlehem, troops fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse a crowd in clashes that could cloud the upcoming Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus's birth.

In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, protesters set tyres on fire, sending a thick plume of black smoke over the city.

Mr Trump's dramatic break on Wednesday with decades of US policy on Jerusalem counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations.

The Palestinians seek Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.

Palestinians closed their schools and shops on Thursday to begin three "days of rage" over Mr Trump's decision.

Rallies were under way in other West Bank cities, and a demonstration was being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

There were no serious casualties reported in Thursday's clashes.

But Friday, the Muslim holy day, could provide an important test when Palestinians gather for weekly mass prayers.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to launch a new intifada, or uprising, against Israel on Friday.

"The American decision is an aggression on our people and a war on our sanctuaries," Haniyeh said in a speech, urging supporters "to be ready for any orders".

"We want the uprising to last and continue to let Trump and the occupation regret this decision," he said.

Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in the early 2000s.

But the group's capabilities are more limited now.

Gaza, Hamas's stronghold, is closed by an Israeli blockade, while in the West Bank many of its members have been arrested.

Nonetheless, it possesses a large arsenal of rockets capable of striking much of Israel.

Spontaneous protests sparked in Gaza overnight, with angry youths burning tyres, American and Israeli flags and Trump posters.

The Israeli military said it would deploy several battalions to the West Bank ahead of Friday, while other troops have been put on alert to address "possible developments".

The conflicting claims to Jerusalem, and especially its Old City, where sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are located, lie at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Mr Trump's decision had no impact on the city's daily life, it carried deep symbolic meaning, and was seen as siding with Israel and an attempt to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

Israel, which claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, has welcomed Mr Trump's decision.

Mr Netanyahu said Mr Trump "bound himself forever" to the history of Jerusalem with the move and claimed other states are considering following suit.

"We are already in contact with other states that will make a similar recognition," he said at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

Anger at the US has rippled across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia's royal court, led by King Salman and his powerful son, condemned the Trump administration's decision in a rare public rebuke by the US ally.

The regional powerhouse, which could help the White House push through a Middle East settlement, said the kingdom had already warned against this step and "continues to express its deep regret at the US administration's decision", describing it as "unjustified and irresponsible".

Mr Trump's move puts the Sunni nation in a bind.

The kingdom, particularly its powerful crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, enjoys close relations with Mr Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads Mr Trump's efforts to restart Middle East peace talks.

US embassies across much of the Middle East and parts of Africa warned American citizens of possible protests following Mr Trump's move.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has suggested that with Mr Trump's move, the US disqualified itself as mediator between Israelis and Palestinians, a role it has played exclusively in more than two decades of stop-and-go negotiations aimed at setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The talks, stalled in recent years, have failed to bring the Palestinians closer to the state they seek in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

In parallel, Israel has steadily expanded Jewish settlements on war-won lands, even as it said it wants to negotiate a deal.

Mr Abbas has not said what steps he would take, if any.

He is to meet with his closest Arab ally, Jordan's King Abdullah II, to co-ordinate positions.

Jordan plays a central role in the mounting controversy and, alongside other US allies in the region, has criticised Mr Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

The king is seen as one of Washington's most dependable partners in the battle against Islamic extremism in the region.

At the same time, the legitimacy of his Hashemite dynasty is closely linked to its special role in Jerusalem, as religious guardian of a key Muslim shrine in east Jerusalem.

Jordan, which has a large population with Palestinian roots, cannot afford to be seen as soft on Muslim claims to the holy city.

The consultations between the monarch and Mr Abbas will kick off a series of meetings in the Arab and Muslim world on how to respond to Mr Trump.

The Arab League, a group representing most states in the Middle East and North Africa, will meet on Saturday.

Next week, Turkey will host a gathering of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which has 57 Arab and Muslim member states.

The region has been bracing for fallout from Mr Trump's seismic policy shift.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Mr Trump of throwing the Middle East into a "ring of fire" and said his motives were difficult to fathom.

"It's not possible to understand what you are trying to get out of it," Mr Erdogan said, referring to Mr Trump in a speech to a group of workers at Ankara's airport.

AP
The Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon at the foot of the Oraefajokull volcano (David Keyton/AP)

Scientists have expressed concern about an increase in seismic activity at one of Iceland's most dangerous volcanoes.

The Oraefajokull volcano, dormant since its last eruption in 1727-1728, has seen a recent rise in seismic activity and geothermal water leakage that has worried scientists.

With a 72ft snow hole on Iceland's highest peak deepening 18in each day, authorities have raised the volcano's alert safety code to yellow.

Experts at Iceland's Meteorological Office have detected 160 earthquakes in the region in the past week alone as they step up their monitoring of the volcano.

The earthquakes are mostly small but their sheer number is exceptionally high.

"Oraefajokull is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in Iceland. It's a volcano for which we need to be very careful," said Sara Barsotti, co-ordinator for volcanic hazards at the Meteorological Office.

What worries scientists most is the devastating potential impact of an eruption at Oraefajokull.

Located in south-east Iceland about 200 miles from the capital Reykjavik, the volcano lies under the Vatnajokull glacier, the largest glacier in Europe.

Its 1362 eruption was the most explosive since the island was populated, even more explosive than the eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD that destroyed the city of Pompei.

Adding to the danger is the lack of historical data that could help scientists predict the volcano's behaviour.

"It's not one of the best-known volcanoes," Ms Barsotti said.

"One of the most dangerous things is to have volcanoes for which we know that there is potential for big eruptions but with not that much historical data."

Iceland is home to 32 active volcanic sites, and its history is punctuated with eruptions, some of them catastrophic.

The 1783 eruption of Laki spewed a toxic cloud over Europe, killing tens of thousands of people and sparking famine when crops failed. Some historians cite it as a contributing factor to the French Revolution.

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in April 2010, prompting aviation authorities to close much of Europe's airspace for five days out of fear that its volcanic ash could damage jet engines.

Millions of travellers were stranded by the move.

To remedy the lack of data for Oraefajokull, scientists are rushing to install new equipment on and around the volcano.

Those include ultra-sensitive GPS sensors that can detect even the slightest tremors, webcams for real-time imagery of the volcano and sensors in the rivers that drain the volcano's glaciers to measure the chemical composition of the water.

Police inspector Adolf Arnason is now patrolling the road around the volcano, which will be used for any evacuation, and residents have received evacuation briefings.

"Some farmers have only 20 minutes (to leave)," he said, pulling up to a small farm on the flank of the mountain.

If an evacuation is ordered, everyone in the area will receive a text message and the radio will broadcast updates.

Police are confident that Oraefi's 200 residents will know how to react, but their biggest concern is contacting tourists.

Iceland has seen a huge boom in tourism since the 2010 eruption - a record 2.4 million people are expected to visit this year and about 2,000 tourists travel through Oraefi every day.

While some stay in hotels that could alert their guests, others spend the night in camper vans spread across the remote area.

"The locals know what to do. They know every plan and how to react. But the tourists, they don't," said police chief superintendent Sveinn Runarsson.

"That's our worst nightmare."

AP
This has certainly been a remarkable week in politics here in Ulster, across the United Kingdom and, indeed, beyond that. The major story for many of us has been the ongoing Brexit negotiations.

The story has involved London, Dublin and Brussels, but right at the centre of it all is Northern Ireland, with a particular focus on the border with the Irish Republic and the role of the 10 DUP MPs.

Over the past few months, the leader and deputy leader of the DUP have been consistent in saying that, in implementing Brexit, the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom should not be compromised in any way.

The same message has also been restated by other prominent members of the party. No one can have been in any doubt about that.

Moreover, that is the view of the overwhelming majority of unionists in Northern Ireland. It is not only the view of what is sometimes described as political unionism, it is the view of the broad unionist community.

Why, then, did the UK Government negotiators and the European Union think that they could proceed down a path that would breach that economic and constitutional integrity and create a new sea border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain?

Did they imagine that they could orchestrate a situation where they would be able to bounce the DUP into accepting this?

Did they believe that, under the spotlight of international media attention, and with a panoply of senior European politicians, the DUP would crumble? How wrong they were.

The DUP response was calm, measured and resolute. Arlene Foster left the political elites in London, Dublin and Brussels in no doubt when she said: We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically, or politically, from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Theresa May will now have some hard thinking to do, as indeed will the Eurocrats in Brussels and the Fine Gael government in Dublin.

Everyone says that they want a good outcome from the negotiations, so lets get it right this time. Here is some advice.

Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney should learn the meaning of respect. We hear a lot about respect these days, but sadly it is something that is missing from the current Fine Gael approach.

A series of statements and interventions by Varadkar and Coveney have displayed what unionists rightly regard as an arrogant and bullying approach.

The Dublin approach has been one of confrontation rather than co-operation. That may play out well for Fine Gael politically in the short term, but it is not good for Northern Ireland, or the Irish Republic. If Theresa May has a lot of thinking to do, so too does Leo Varadkar.

Irish nationalists and republicans, along with the Remoaners, the metropolitan elite and assorted European politicians and bureaucrats, seem intent on running a second Project Fear  one that is designed to create a border fever.

I listened the other day to a resident of Donegal who was almost distraught that her journey to work in Londonderry might take a few minutes longer unless everything at the border remains exactly as it is.

A few minutes longer travelling to work in Londonderry probably didnt really strike a chord with those who have to sit in traffic jams in London, Manchester, New York, Dublin, or Belfast.

So, instead of devoting their energies to Project Fear, why not put the same amount of energy and effort into developing practical solutions for movement across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic?

Of course, Sinn Fein love this Project Fear.

It was part of the Sinn Fein strategy for the March Assembly election, and they relaunched it again last night with an old-fashioned white-line protest at the former Andersonstown barracks site, a poster about No border in Ireland and a video clip starring John Finucane.

Its not much, but I suppose that, since Sinn Fein collapsed the Northern Ireland Assembly and since they refuse to take their seats at Westminster, standing in the middle of the road in the dark is all they can do.
'There are even suggestions of frost between Theresa May and DUP leader Arlene Foster after the PM's humiliating climbdown earlier this week'

Everyone agrees that Brexit represents the greatest challenge to the UK and Irish economies in generations. As such, it would be expected that structured game plans would be in place to progress negotiations on the issues of how to deal with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the divorce bill payable by the UK, and what the final relationships between the UK and the EU will look like.

Unfortunately, that is far from what we have got. The question of the border has aroused ancient tribal passions and the language between and by the Irish Government and the DUP has become increasingly hostile.

There are even suggestions of frost between Theresa May and DUP leader Arlene Foster after the PM's humiliating climbdown earlier this week. Relationships across the border are always tense and loose words can do enormous damage.

Of course, the Irish and British Governments and the DUP all have their own priorities, but history tells us that is always the case in Anglo-Irish relations. The way differences are fudged is through clever use of language, which offers each side room for manoeuvre, and that is the hope in solving this current impasse. After all, if the DUP and Sinn Fein could find enough common ground to allow them to form a devolved administration at Stormont for 10 years, it should not be beyond the wit of the various sides to reach a consensus on the border.

However, the admission by David Davis that no impact assessment has been made on the effect of Brexit on various sectors of the economy underlines the chaotic nature of the UK Government's response to the surprise referendum result. It does not augur well for the vital trade talks, whenever they take place.

Another casualty of the current Brexit controversy is politics in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein appears to have adopted a policy of sitting on the sidelines of the debate - even though it represents the majority view on the issue - and of course has called a halt to further attempts to resurrect devolution.

The lack of a functioning administration at Stormont has left Northern Ireland in a perilous state, with a health service on the point of crumbling, some schools cutting teaching hours, infrastructure projects on hold. We are trying to sell the province as a place to invest and to visit, but keep making the wrong headlines to inspire confidence.
Northern Ireland's constitutional position is now the key issue in the Brexit negotiations.

The very public spat between the DUP and the Conservative Government was deeply unedifying and presents an image of a dysfunctional relationship.

This is deeply concerning, as the outcome of the Brexit negotiations will profoundly impact upon Northern Ireland's economy.

It is appalling that the Prime Minister and the DUP allowed a situation to develop where the outline of a deal was leaked to the Press and pulled at the 11th hour. Clearly, communications between the DUP and the Conservative Government are so dysfunctional that they now take place on our television screens.

The way this issue was aired has also emboldened nationalists in the rest of the UK, who have made clear their desire to effectively remain in the EU if there is any compromise on Northern Ireland's constitutional position.

The Ulster Unionist Party has made its position on the border very clear: we will accept no compromise on Northern Ireland's economic and constitutional position within the United Kingdom. We would prefer to maintain an open border with the Republic of Ireland.

The insistence on customs checks is coming from the EU Commission - not the UK, or Irish, governments.

We have long called for special status for the Republic of Ireland that will allow them to maintain their trade relationship with Northern Ireland, with the UK outside the EU. On this point, the ball is very much in the EU's court.

cllr alexander redpath (uup)

Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council
The demise of An Phoblacht says as much about the evolution of Sinn Fein as it does about the transformed media landscape.

The weekly newspaper comes out of a time when the IRA was widely feared and reviled. One simple, obvious reason for having a newspaper to explain and justify IRA operations was that no one else was doing it.

It is questionable whether the An Phoblacht of the 1970s would even be legal now, the war on jihadis having spawned new laws about the promotion of terrorism.

The IRA could speak then to the communities in which it operated with little interference.

There are a number of good reasons why a paramilitary organisation like the IRA would want its own paper, apart from just disseminating propaganda.

There were rival republican papers at that time, notably The United Irishman, which was published and sold by the Official IRA.

The two organisations were often murderously at war with each other, but the more routine competition over territory was expressed in newspaper sales. Sellers would be driven out of rival patches.

In my book about Gerry Adams, I have a story about Adams Snr confronting sellers of The United Irishman on the Whiterock Road in Belfast - Provo territory - and demonstratively tearing up a copy of their paper. Back then the Officials predominated in the Lower Falls and the Provos had Whiterock, and you knew where you were as much by the papers on sale as by the graffiti on the walls.

An Phoblacht carried a regular feature called 'War News'. This was the only media outlet which was describing the Troubles with that kind of vocabulary. For others, it was 'terrorism' or 'extremism'.

Now, even critics of the IRA lightly fall into using terms like 'war' and 'armed struggle', having absorbed them from the political discourse in the regular media over the last 20 years.

And the 'war' itself was defined by Adams as propaganda - armed propaganda.

When a group of IRA prisoners broke away from the Provos in the Maze in 1987, led by Tommy McKearney, Oliver Corr and others, they argued that killing people and risking the lives of 'volunteers' (another word no one else was using then) was not legitimate for propaganda purposes.

This was the most under-reported split in the IRA, but it was a serious ideological divergence from the Adams strategy.

An Phoblacht was, at first, a merger with the Sinn Fein paper Republican News. This represented part of the shift of control of the Provisionals from Dublin to Belfast in the late-1970s.

Danny Morrison, who had published Adams' Brownie column while Adams was in Long Kesh, was rewarded by being made the editor of the merged papers. A Republican Press centre was formed under the control of IRA GHQ and the operation extended beyond running An Phoblacht to developing a media service for a political party that intended to grow.

And, in any political party, the one who controls the party organ controls the party message and ultimately controls the party itself.

So, An Phoblacht was part of the project to build a political party that would replace the IRA as the cutting-edge of republican activism.

The paper would represent the violence on the street to the community as a war between Irish revolutionaries and British imperialists.

Having a paper to sell also helped the IRA extend its influence through those communities. Sellers and writers could be recruited. Not everyone who wanted to help the cause needed to shoot people or move bombs around; some could be diverted into social activism and the movement could grow among people who had no talent for violence.

And those same people could gauge how much real sympathy existed for the movement at street level; who was buying and who was not buying.

And, in time, the paper passed from volunteer sellers, who went round the pubs and clubs of the Falls, to being sold over the counter in shops and garages, becoming itself an indicator of the degree to which the republican version of our problems was normalised.

An Phoblacht was not a forum for totally free discussion of the issues. Even Morrison, the former editor, had an article binned (or "banged", to use his word).

This was after the West Belfast seat was retaken from Adams by the SDLP's Joe Hendron in 1992.

Morrison had argued that the IRA campaign and the political growth of Sinn Fein were incompatible and that the IRA had either to escalate, or withdraw and leave the field to Sinn Fein.

But this was not a discussion the then-editor thought should be aired in front of the ordinary reader.

The history of An Phoblacht is the history of Sinn Fein's transformation and growth under Adams, and it feels at least like an appropriate coincidence that it should close in the same year in which he is stepping down as president of the movement he refashioned.

At the start of that journey the Provisional movement was adamantly opposed to the reform of Northern Ireland, the six-county state.

It was suspicious of politics as a distraction from the immediate business of driving out the British and uniting Ireland.

But a paper and a party cannot thrive on a single concern. They face the same problem; they have to broaden to attract readers and voters.

An Phoblacht is no longer needed to knit a community together and the party is more concerned to be a national party now.

And there has been another revolution coinciding with its own retreat from revolution into party politics.

Sinn Fein now reaches more people through the internet than through its paper. A week is too long for most people to wait for the news when they can get it online.

Instead of paper sellers who can come back to the office and snitch on those who wouldn't buy a copy, they have their army of online activists, monitoring ideological heresies and homing in on critics like hives of nano drones out of an Ian McDonald novel.

And the messages of the party can no longer be ignored by the mainstream media. There is a clutch of community and provincial papers sympathetic to Sinn Fein, and the party is so big that it cannot be excluded by broadcasters committed to providing balance.

Adams and Morrison may legitimately consider that their work is done.

Malachi O'Doherty's Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life is published by Faber & Faber, priced 14.99
On a freakishly sunny day in Belfast they take in the sights and sounds of the big smoke and are given a cheeky welcome by the peerless Pamela Ballantine.

This week sees the release of the final episode of Harps online comedy series Pure Here & There, as the two intrepid roadtrippers complete their tour of NI by motoring into Belfast city centre in their trusty, sky blue campervan.

On a freakishly sunny day in Belfast they take in the sights and sounds of the big smoke and are given a cheeky welcome by the peerless Pamela Ballantine.

Facebook fans of satirical website The Ulster Fry and the iconic lager Harp have, these past seven weeks, been treated to weekly instalments of Pure Here & There episodes every Thursday lunchtime.

Part travelogue, part meditation on friendship and all very silly, the seven-part series was written and directed by the creative minds behind The Ulster Fry. The comedy shorts track the exploits and adventures of two lads  one a bit of a culchie and the other his city-slicker BFF  as they navigate their way around the six counties in the Harp campervan, stopping off to take in the spectacular views and landmarks that adorn the limited edition Pure Here Harp cans.

When that same van broke down in the wilds of Armagh, the two fellas were grateful to be able to call on the generosity (and unmatched power) of Ulster and Ireland legend Rory Best to give them a helpful push towards Armagh Planetarium.

In Antrim, they stopped Jackie Fullerton for a quick question and ended up getting far more than they bargained for. In Fermanagh, they wondered whether it was the infamous McLaughlin brothers who were responsible for plastering Enniskillen Castle, while up in the North West they discovered how the Peace Bridge really got that name.

Whether trying to get to grips with Co Downs legendary Magic Road, balking at the extortionate price of a bite to eat in Hillsborough, or merely trying to get a phone signal in Tyrone, their good natured approach to all things Pure Here has seen the two lads learn that no matter what county you call home or what part of the community you come from its hard to beat a pint of Harp and a packet of crisps.

Watch all seven episodes of Pure Here & There here back to back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGOra4Hp4uI&list=PLFjDpMGcaq71y5CCV4dtvPofeHmqIT2U6

And we have it on good authority that the boys might well be back for a Christmas special. So stay tuned...

DRINK RESPONSIBLY. Visit drinkaware.co.uk for the facts.
By Siraj Qureshi: Reacting to PM Narendra Modi's recent statement against triple talaq in a public meeting in Gujarat, Muslim scholars have charged Modi for throwing baseless aspersions on Islam without knowing the facts.

In a meeting held in Agra on this issue, noted Muslim scholar Naseem Ahmed Advocate said that contrary to the general notion that is being spread by such statements being made by BJP leaders, that Muslim women are being oppressed by their religion, Islam grants women a number of rights, all of which have been mentioned in the Holy Quran and Hadith.

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Quoting a verse from the Quran, he said it is clearly written in Surah Barqaran 2:228, "And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them according to what is equitable," while Surah Nisa 4:124 says "And whoever does righteous deeds, whether male or female while being a believer - these will enter Paradise and will not be wronged."

Mufti Mudassar Ali Khan Qadri said that Surah An-Nisa 4:129 says "If a woman fears either ill-treatment or aversion from her husband it is not wrong for the husband and wife to bring about reconciliation among themselves (by compromising on their rights), for settlement is better.

Man's soul is always prone to selfishness, but if you do good and are God-fearing, then surely Allah is aware of the things you do." Which means that the matter of talaq is something between husband, wife and Allah and if the two agree on something, then only Allah is the One who can decide what is just and what is not.

He said that the first step towards settling any marital dispute is a mutual attempt for reconciliation as mentioned in Surah An-Nisa 4:129 and the Prophet himself had frowned upon talaq and instructed the believers to avoid it. Surah Nisa 9:71 clearly says that "The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and establish prayers and give Zakah and obey Allah and His Messenger."

Social activist Syed Irfan Saleem said that Islam regards men and women as being of the same essence created from a single soul i.e. the equivalent position. In the Islamic perspective, a woman has an honoured position with assured respect, love, affection and gentle feeling along with her legal and civil rights. She plays multiple roles of the compassionate mother, the beloved wife and the affectionate daughter which is explained in verse 46:15 of the Quran, "We have enjoined man to be kind to his parents. His mother has carried him in travail, and bore him in travail, and his gestation and weaning take thirty months. When he comes of age and reaches forty years, he says My Lord! Inspire me to give thanks for Your blessing with which you have blessed me and my parents, and that I may do righteous deeds which may please You and invest my descendants with righteousness. Indeed I have turned to you in penitence and I am one of the Muslims".

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He said that there is an instance which highlights Prophet's tender love affection for the womenfolk. Prophet had a daughter Fatimah whom he loved very deeply and tenderly and used to say "Fatimah is a part of me; whoever wrongs her wrongs me and whoever pleases her pleases me." He used to visit her frequently and on his return from any journey, calling on her first before going to his home. Whenever she approached him, his eyes glowed with joy. He would take her in his arms, kiss her warmly and offer her his own seat. This is an ideal model for the mankind, of love and respect to the womenfolk.

He said that the general perception about Islamic society being unjust to women needs to change, but statements like what are being made in the media about so-called injustices meted out to the women in Islam are giving an entirely incorrect picture to the society. He said that Islam was the first religion to give equal property right to women whereas other religions are yet to give them the same rights.

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Check out the top stories from BGSU and beyond in our newscast and online edition of our newspaper every Wednesday. You can also view past papers by clicking the e-edition header above.
Is AMR Modern-day FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER?

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) continues to pose a significant public health problem in terms of mortality and economic loss. The rising AMR is a matter of huge concern that needs to be tactfully handled and health authorities of several countries, including India, have formulated action plans for its containment. Significant efforts by the government, an active involvement of startups and diagnostic players is a good start. The question remains, whether this will be enough.

For Feedback, please email us at: communications@mmactiv.com
The new funding aims to increase the resources available to market and to develop the next generation of robotics dedicated to the treatment of strokes

To treat the vascular diseases Robocath, designs and develops innovative robotic solutions. The company announced an increase in capital of 1.7 million ($2M).

In total capital, 1.25 million ($1.5M) contribution is from Credit Agricole Innovations ET Territoires (CAIT); a fund dedicated to technological innovation in France, managed by Supernova Invest.

Co-owned by Amundi and the CEA, Supernova Invest is a key player in investment capital in Europe; particularly in France.

Cardio Participation, a holding company bringing together several business angels, also invested 450,000 ($530K).

This latest financial contribution supplements the 4.7 million ($5.6M) rose by Robocath in a previous round of fund raising in May.

R-One TM is a unique technology that optimizes and increases the safety of robotic-assisted coronary angioplasty.

This medical procedure consists of revascularizing the cardiac muscle by inserting one or more implants (stents) into the arteries that supply it with blood.

This type of procedure is performed more than one million times each year.

There are many benefits to R-OneTM, for both the patient and the doctor.

The technology allows the surgeon to operate with extreme precision and in optimal conditions.

Intuitive to use, the technology allows the surgeon to operate from a seated position and to use a portable protective screen to guard against X-rays. This first robotic platform will be marketed in Europe and the Middle East in 2018.

Due to this funding, Robocath will also begin researching and developing the next generation of robotic solutions.

The new platform will be used to treat neurovascular diseases such as strokes; the second leading cause of death in the world after heart attacks. The new solution will also aim to improve care for these conditions.
Pricing of drugs and medical devices is always a matter of concern as it is connected with human sufferings and loss of life

There is a blatant contradiction. On one hand, US President Donald Trump recently expressed concern over the prices of prescription drugs going out of control, describing the trend as the drug companies getting away with murder. On the other hand, just prior to that his administration wanted freedom for US medical devices companies to take the prices out of control in India.

Pricing of drugs and medical devices is always a matter of concern as it is connected with human sufferings and loss of life. On the other side are the profits of the pharma and device manufacturing companies, which spend a lot of funding as well as time on research & innovation, trials, approvals before bringing the product to the market.

But who is to be blamed for the high drug prices in US? According to the Harvard Medical School research, the most important factor that drives prices higher than anywhere else in the world is the existence of government protected monopoly rights for drug producers, preventing generics from coming to market at reduced price.

So, the action is required from Trump only when he says that the drug prices have gone through the roof. Trumps statement has a support from a recent study done only about the cancer drug prices.

The joint study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Rabin Medical Center and Tel Aviv University in Israel, as well as Emory University in Atlanta published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology is the first one that systematically investigates oncology drug price changes with time and the correlation to the market structure. It studies the monthly trajectories of 24 US FDA approved cancer drugs calculated with the cumulative and annual drug cost changes for each drug. It was found that after a follow up period of 12 years, the mean cumulative cost increase was 37%. Prices of one type of Leukemia drugs increased by 85% and that of another type by 95%. In case of breast cancer drug the prices jumped by 78%. Only the metastatic colorectal cancer drug prices have decreased with time.

The prices have increased regardless of competition or supplemental indications. The study has felt that there is a need of new regulations to prevent additional increase in drug costs after launch.

This is what exactly Indian government is doing in case of coronary stents and knee implants by slashing the prices up to 75% to make them affordable in order to provide relief to needy patients and stop illegal profiteering, which in is some cases was exceeding 400%. The government has clearly announced its policy of providing affordable healthcare taking precedence over the interests of companies.

But, it is an irony that the same Trump administration that is worried over the drug prices in US has asked Indian government not to extend its price control on more medical devices. With an obvious intention to protect the interests of US companies, the US administration has also asked the Indian government to permit the device companies to withdraw their products if they are unwilling to sell them at the government controlled price. India controlling the device prices is a principal concern for US, so much so that earlier in May even a group of US Congressmen had urged India to reconsider its decision of price control.

All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN), an NGO has urged the Indian government to reject the US demand and in fact extend the price control to 20 more devices as access to affordable healthcare is non-negotiable. Indian government needs to take a serious view of the US dictate and strongly oppose the suggestion from the US administration. It can use the Trumps statement about prices of drugs in US itself as the Trump card opposing US moves to try to de-control the prices of medical devices in India in the interest of the manufacturing companies. As US president wants to provide relief to the countrys citizens, so does the Indian government to its citizens.
Massive protest held by fishermen community in Kanyakumari against the government for not doing much for the missing fishermen.

By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan, Pramod Madhav: Massive protest was held by fishermen community in Kanyakumari against the government on Thursday for not saving missing fishermen who were in the sea during cyclone Ockhi.

People from 44 fishermen community including, Arokkiapuram, Neerodi, Chinnathurai, Vallavilai, Marthandamthurai, Inaiyam, Iraiyammanthurain and Ramathurai conducted a rally and walked for 15 km.

After reaching Kuzitharai railway station, they sat and blocked the tracks in protest.

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Many claimed that no officials visited their village to inquire about the missing fishermen.

Families of missing fishermen also alleged that a wrong number was projected and given to the center.

They were also angry over Central Minister Pon Radhakrishnan who was also from their constituency.

People also demanded that the Chief Minister should visit them at once and provide a solution to find the missing fishermen.

Over 8,000 people participated in the protest turning the railway system dysfunctional.

Kanyakumari fishermen were extremely angry over the fact that CM Edapadi K Palanisamy was busy celebrating MGR Centenary birthday celebrations while Kanyakumari got battered by cyclone Ockhi.

ALSO WATCH | Rahul cancels public rallies because of Cyclone Ockhi

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The Mystery About Bruce Lee's Death; Revealed! Pulse oi-Lekhaka

Lee Jun-fan popularly known as Bruce Lee is the founder of the martial art Jeet Kune Do, which is one of the popular wushu or kungfu styles.

Bruce Lee is one among the famous personalities who is appreciated not only for his martial arts but also for many justified reasons. The cultural star continued to teach people how to live in harmony and love with the universe.

He always emphasized on making peace with them and wanted to penetrate the art of martial art in the world. Bruce Lee is still remembered to be the great icon of martial arts cinema and a figure to idolize by modern media and India as well.

As a kid, each one of us has associated Bruce Lee as the king of martial arts and dragon! He is known as the craftsman who mastered in making significant changes in the basic martial art moves, which were later followed by others.

Hey, wait Bruce Lee was not only a talented martial artist but he was also a great poet. Yes, when Bruce Lee was not lifting up his legs and training others, he was making peace with poems. We still crave to catch the fresh moves of the legend but the world was left shocked by the sudden demise of the star.

The world's greatest fighter took his last breath on 20th July, 1973, at the age of 32. His sudden death lead to many rumours and speculations, wherein a few media agencies claimed that he died from a brain aneurysm, while others said that he was murdered by Chinese gangsters.

How Did Bruce Lee Die? Few media reports strongly suggested that Bruce Lee died at the age of 32 from a brain aneurysm. However, a large section of people had witnessed the other side of the death story. It is believed that the Martial artist was murdered by a secretive Chinese organization for some unknown reason. The Chinese organization suspected behind Bruce Lee's death is known as "triad" However, the real cause behind the death of Bruce Lee is believed to be Cerebral Oedema. It is a disease which leads to a swelling in the human brain that inturn causes unusual behavioral patterns to be noticed and difficulty in breathing for the individual. Cerebral oedema was the reason why Bruce Lee fainted many times on the sets while performing his acts. On The Death Day: According to available information and facts, it is said that Bruce Lee had met the famous producer, Raymond Cho in Hong Kong for his next film, 'Game of Death', on the same day he died. The meeting was held at 4 AM and it was said that Lee was suffering from a severe headache. After the situation went out of control, Lee's friend Betty Ting Pei, gave him an analgesic medicine, which is basically a combination of two drugs - Aspirin and Meprobamate. His Planned Dinner With George Lazenby On the same day, Lee was supposed to have dinner with actor George Lazenby over a discussion of the movie. Lee did not turn up for the dinner, in fact, his headache was getting worse. The artist was quickly rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital where he was declared dead. Post-mortem Reports On further inquiry, post-mortem reports indicated that Aspirin and Meprobamate had an allergic reaction, which led to increasing his brain size by 13 percent. This harmful reaction also caused an increase in the cerebrospinal fluid, which resulted in the ultimate death of the legend on the very same day. Bruce Lee's body was returned to Seattle, where he was actually buried. Did Chinese Gangsters Kill Bruce Lee? After Bruce Lee's death, another report started circulating around. Where the world was in deep shock for losing a legendary artist, few people claimed that Lee was actually killed by Chinese gangsters.

The reason behind the murder was not known; but the claims lead to further inquiry on the same. However, no proper evidence or proof was found on the same. Even to this day, various experts are still working to find out the real reason behind Bruce Lee's death.

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Story first published: Thursday, December 7, 2017, 18:40 [IST]
Police arrested an ISI spy who obtained money and weapons from the intelligence agency of Pakistan.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Batala Police on Thursday arrested an ISI spy who has been identified as Gurmukh Singh who hails from Jhumka village falling under Mattewal Police Station.

The police has recovered two mobile phones, a passport and some photographs showing the movement of the Indian Army. The spy was arrested on a specific tip-off received from a military intelligence unit based in Jammu and Kashmir.

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The military intelligence officials had told the police that the accused spy Gurmukh Singh had visited Pakistan two times - one visit was made in 2009 and the other one was made in 2012 under the pretext of pilgrimage.

Gurmukh Singh told the police that he had met ISI officials in a Nankana Sahib Gurudwara room in 2012. He was given the task to send information on Indian Army installations, movement of vehicles and deployment of army units along the international border. In return he had demanded weapons and money from ISI.

Police interrogation has revealed that he was in touch with ISI handlers in Pakistan via Social Media channels like WhatsApp and Facebook.

The police has registered an FIR against the ISI spy under section 3,4,5 and 9 of Official Secrets Act, 1923, and section 120-B of IPC. He is being interrogated for more information.

It is still not known how many times he shared the secret information with the ISI and how many weapons and money he received from Pakistan.

Sources said Gurmukh Singh could also be a Khalistan terrorist as he wanted to use weapons to disturb peace in Punjab.

"We have recovered photographs of sensitive Indian Army installations from his possession besides two mobile phones and a passport. We are interrogating him to find out more information," SHO Batala Police Station Mukhtiar Singh told India Today.

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Hardik Patel claims that Patidars are backward in Gujarat. A historical reading of Patidars reveals many interesting details about the transformation of a peasant caste in Gujarat since British period.

By Prabhash K Dutta: Figures suggest that Patels can influence election results in 70-80 out of 182 Assembly constituencies in Gujarat. Of about 6 crore population of Gujarat, Patels constitute 1.5 crore. Considered as strong BJP supporters till recently, Patels are an influential community in Gujarat.

Business leaders like Nirma, Cadila Healthcare, Lincoln Pharmaceuticals, Suzlon Group, Surya Group, Parswanath Group, Harekrishna Diamonds -famous for giving unusually expensive gifts to its employees and several others including the ceramic industry of Morbi are controlled and dominated by Patels.

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On the other hand, Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader Hardik Patel has emerged as a pivot in Gujarat Assembly election with his demand for a separate quota for youths from the community claiming that Patels are backward. But, the history of Patidars tells a different story.

WHO ARE PATIDARS?

In literal sense, Patidars are the holders of strips of land for cultivation. The practice of issuing a patta (permission to cultivate a land in lieu of payment of revenue) can be traced medieval period. But, it brought a huge socio-economic change in Gujarat under British Raj when new land reforms were introduced.

Patidar's history is an interesting socio-economic narration of two castes from the medieval times, namely, peasant caste Kanbi and warrior Koli. Before the British land reforms were introduced in central Gujarat and Saurashtra, Kanbis and Kolis enjoyed equal socio-economic status.

The British Raj land reforms came in two forms in Gujarat. Under one category a village was considered as land revenue unit and the ownership of land was given to the entire community. The Kanbis adopted this practice.

The Koli villages adopted the other form where a landlord treated as a unit for land revenue cultivation. A number of ryots (cultivators) worked under him. The landlord was responsible for payment of tax.

BIRTH OF PATIDAR

Over the time, the Kanbi villages proved better both in payment of land revenue and creation of wealth on the account of more produce from the land. Kolis found it difficult to till all the cultivable lands under one landlord.

The Kolis grew poorer as after payment of land revenue, they had little to survive on. Moreover, the uncultivated land was next transferred by the British Raj to the Kanbi group, which increased it wealth further.

The rich and powerful Kanbi Patidars By 20th century, the Kanbi group had moved from upper Shudra class to Vaishya while Kolis downgraded from their previous position. The caste census of 1931 recognised Kanbis as Patidars for the first time as a distinct caste.

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DESCENDANTS OF LORD RAM?

Today Patidars are categorised under various sub-castes. Leuva and Kadva are the most dominant sub-castes of Patidars, who claim their ancestry to the sons of Lord Ram: Luv and Kush.

Leuva Patels claim that they are the descendants of Luv, the elder son of Lord Ram. Kadvas are descendants of Kush, the younger son of Lord Ram. Leuva outnumber Kadva Patels. Leuva are more widespread while Kadva are more concentrated in Saurashtra region.

There are also Anjana, Satpanthi and Chaudhary Patels. Of these, Satpanthi Patels practice Muslim rituals and follow a Pir. Chaudhary Patels are included in OBC category in Gujarat. Koli Patels are another sub-caste of Patidars in Gujarat.

During their days of progress under the British Raj, the Patidars shed their family names and acquired the surname of Patel, which was a designation for the village chief in western India. A Patel was responsible for payment of land revenue to the ruler.

As they acquired a new surname, the Patidars also declared themselves as devotees of Lord Krishna and worshiped mother goddess as well. They adopted the strict vegetarian food habits and rituals of of Brahmanical religion.

Patels of today are leaders in all the fields in Gujarat. There are 37 Patels in the outgoing Gujarat Assembly. Yet, the claim of Patidar backwardness made by Hardik Patel, a Kadva Patel, has found immense traction in the Gujarat Assembly election.

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A typical Sydney first homebuyer can afford just one in every 10 properties in the city and must move an average of 31 kilometres from the central business district to buy a flat and 56 kilometres from the CBD to buy a detached home, a Reserve Bank study has found.

A new housing accessibility index developed by the bank shows the purchasing capacity of the "median potential first homebuyer" in Sydney last year was $474,000.

That puts 85 per cent of apartments and 93 per cent of detached homes in the city beyond their reach following a five-year boom in Sydney property prices.

The Reserve's investigation of affordability for first homebuyers found the average distance to the CBD of homes accessible to the median potential first homebuyer in Sydney has grown "consistently over the past decade for both houses and apartments."
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Power Minister R K Singh today said most of the states have agreed on 24X7 power for all, 90 per cent pre-paid meters and direct benefit transfer (DBT) of subsidies for electricity consumers across the country.

"Our vision is that we want 24X7 power for all by March 2019. Now it will be a legal obligation. After March 2019, if there is any load shedding without any reason, there will be penalties except in case of technical issues or act of God," Singh said.

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He was addressing reporters at a conference of Ministers for Power and New & Renewable Energy of States & Union Territories here.

The minster said all the participant states have agreed to provide 24X7 power to all.

He further said there would be 100 per cent metering (of electricity supply) and 90 per cent of this would be pre- paid meters.

"We are doing away with the human interface totally in metering, billing and collection. The payment for electricity consumption will be through mobile phone. All states have agreed on this," he said.

Asked about the deadline for achieving the goal of 90 per cent pre-paid meters in the country, the minister said there is no deadline.

"But we have to reduce losses by January 2019 to ensure 24X7 power for all by March 2019. It is agreed that the (distribution) losses would be reduced to below 15 per cent by January 2019," he said.

Singh said the other issue that was discussed was cross subsidisation, as some states have 19 slabs of tariff. The power tariff will be remodelled according to the report presented by an expert committee today.

He explained that the cross subsidy would not be more than 20 per cent (the difference between highest and lowest tariff).

Tariff policy provides that cross subsidy would be brought down to 20 per cent in the first phase. It will help in reduction of tariff for a section of consumers.

About the direct benefit transfer for consumers he said: "Any subsidy you want to give to any category of consumers, it has to go through DBT. That would be the law. All states agree on that."

The minister also made it clear to states that any tariff decided after the bid has to be adopted and power purchase agreements have to obeyed because that is the law.

About Saubhagya scheme, he said: "We would provide electricity connection to 4 crore families by December 2018. We are running a public awareness campaign to tell people that they are not required to go anywhere and pay a single rupee for getting electricity connection. We would organise camps to do that."

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He also said after March 2019, the loss will be capped at 15 per cent for fixation of tariff.

"If there are losses of more than 15 per cent, you cannot set that (additional amount over the cap) off by (higher) tariff. The consumers should not be asked to pay for theft committed by others," he added.

On availability of power in Gujarat for farmers, he said power is very much available for farmers in the state.

"We have agreed that states will set up their own roadmap for separation of carriage and content in power sector," he said.

This move will help consumers choose their service providers in power sector on the lines of telecom services.

About village electrification he said: "As many as 2,100 villages are still to be electrified including 1,100 in Arunachal Pradesh. Some of these are affected due to rain and snow. Thus, the electrification of these villages would be completed by February or March."

A total of 17 states including Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha, among others and 1 UT attended the conference and deliberated on a host of issues including 24x7 power to all. PTI KKS ANU

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In the Greenwich unit where he has lived since 1961, Neville Wills is in high spirits. The cheeky 98-year-old has a wedding to plan.

Mr Wills and his partner Ian Fenwicke have been together 39 years - just days ago marking the anniversary of their first meeting at an ebullient breezy Beverly Hills luncheon in 1978.

"We've virtually been together ever since," says Mr Fenwicke, 74.

The pair have been successful professionals - Mr Wills a university professor, Mr Fenwicke a commercial accountant - and enjoyed lives largely free from discrimination and hate. But they could not, until today, cement their lifelong partnership with marriage.
Melburnians cop some of the country's worst traffic, Canberrans are the most inventive and those in Albury-Wodonga will live the shortest lives, according to an Australian-first comparison of our cities.

Assistant Minister for Cities Angus Taylor will launch the federal government tool, known as the National Cities Performance Framework, on Friday. It compares Australia's 21 largest cities, plus Western Sydney, on indicators covering jobs and skills, housing, infrastructure, liveability, innovation and planning.

Yes, Melbourne's peak hour traffic is bad  but it's slightly better than Sydney's. Credit:Luis Ascui

Just 60 per cent of Melbourne residents can drive to work inside half an hour. Only Sydney, at 58 per cent, was worse.

A car journey taken during the morning or afternoon peak in Melbourne takes 57 per cent longer than at other times, or 68 per cent longer in Sydney.
Nationals MPs are pushing for Malcolm Turnbull to expand his cabinet to 22 people after Nationals backbencher Bridget McKenzie was promoted to the junior Coalition party's deputy leadership on Thursday.

And Peter Dutton's new super portfolio of Home Affairs, which will include police and security agencies including spy agency ASIO, the Federal Police, Border Force and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission will begin operating by the end of the year, about six months ahead of schedule.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce congratulates the new deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie. Credit:Nick Moir

The new Home Affairs portfolio will be similar to the British Home Office and function as a central department that provides strategic planning, co-ordination and other support to independent security and law enforcement agencies.

It will be led by Mike Pezzullo and the decision to move the spy agency from being the responsibility of Attorney-General George Brandis and to the new portfolio represents a win for Mr Dutton; however, some legislation will need to be passed to move ASIO over to the new department.
Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy backs US President Donald Trump in declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, in a move at odds with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's stance.

Mr Trump has promised to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite a furious reaction from Palestinian and other Arab and Islamic groups.

As Premier Daniel Andrews opened the state's trade and investment office in Tel Aviv this week, Coalition MPs said it should have been located in Jerusalem.

But Australia's official policy, re-iterated by Ms Bishop on Thursday, is to wait for the status of Jerusalem to be resolved through two-state solution negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar to address Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said in response to Aiyar calling the PM a low-life person.

By India Today Web Desk: Hours after Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar put the party on the backfoot ahead of the Gujarat election by calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "low-life person", he was strongly chastised by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

I do not "appreciate the tone and language" used by Ayiar, Rahul tweeted as he asked the veteran Congressman to apologise for his comments.

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"Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said," Rahul said, after using the opportunity to hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party for "routinely " using "filthy language to attack the Congress party."

"[But] the Congress has a different culture and heritage," Rahul, who is tipped to take over as Congress president soon, added.

Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi during a recent Gujarat trip had called for "dignified" campaigning that does not "ridicule" the Prime Minister's Office.

"He [Narendra Modi] is the prime minister of our country and he must be respected. I remember how Manmohan ji was ridiculed when he was the PM. I said we will not do that to Modi ji," Rahul had said.

Soon after Rahul's tweet today, Mani Shankar Aiyar issued a clarification and a carefully crafted apology. Aiyar said he used the word "neech" to mean "low" and not "low-born". I apologise if the comment hurt PM Modi, Aiyar said, adding he realised his comments hurt the Congress.

BJP and PM routinely use filthy language to attack the Congress party. The Congress has a different culture and heritage. I do not appreciate the tone and language used by Mr Mani Shankar Aiyer to address the PM. Both the Congress and I expect him to apologise for what he said.- Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 7, 2017

'NEECH KISAM AADMI HAI'

Just hours earlier, Aiyar, who famously dismissed Modi as a 'chaiwallah' in 2014, said PM Modi was a "low-life" person who is practising "dirty politics".

"Ye aadmi (PM Narendra Modi) bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, is mein koi sabhyata nahi hai, aur aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai? (This man - PM Narendra Modi is a low-life person, he isn't cultured... at this moment why does he need to practise such dirty politics?)," Aiyar told news agency ANI.

Aiyar's comments were in apparent response to PM Narenda Modi subtly attacking Jawaharlal Nehru at a rally in Gujarat earlier today.

Without directly naming Nehru, PM Modi said, "Baba Saheb Ambedkar's contribution to nation building is very important, there had been attempts to undermine his role, but such attempts were unsuccessful."

In response, Aiyar told ANI that Jawaharlal Nehru played the biggest role in furthering BR Ambedkar's wishes, before going on to make his "low-life person" comment.

Soon after Ayiar's controversial comment, Prime Minister Modi launched a blistering attack on the Congress and Aiyar himself.

I have nothing to say on a wise Congress leader calling me Neech'. This is the Congress mindset. They have their language and we have our work. People will answer them through the ballot box. https://t.co/2McoZnaoar pic.twitter.com/icGqAphUzy- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 7, 2017

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Congress leaders are "speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy," PM Modi said before tearing into Aiyar without expressly naming him.

"One Congress leader, who has studied in best institutions, served as a diplomat, was a Minister in Cabinet, he said Modi is 'Neech.' This is insulting. This is nothing but a Mughliya mindset," PM Modi said at another rally in Gujarat.

WATCH | Mani Shankar Aiyar should apologise to PM Modi: Rahul Gandhi on neech comment

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Irelands first Peer to Peer property-backed loan of 1.5m was launched by Initiative Ireland today. This positions the finance company as Irelands 2nd Largest Peer to Peer Lender.



The loan was made to North Strand Five Lamps limited, to finance a social housing development in Dublin 1, consisting of 10 apartments and a ground floor cafe. With full planning in place, the development is expected to deliver the units to the market in late 2018.

The first loan of its kind in Ireland, at 1.5m it is the single largest peer to peer loan approved in Ireland to date. It is the first of many according to the CEO, with the company aiming to finance up to 60m by the end of 2018, supporting the construction of over 250 new family homes.



As Private Lending Members, individuals and institutions can sign-up for free to view loans via the platform, which are pre-approved by the companys experienced Credit Committee prior to listing via their digital platform. As an approved Private Lender, individuals can earn returns of 3.00% to 8.00% APR on their committed funds, dependent on the risk tier and loan term they select.

Each loan is secured with a first legal charge over the properties and whilst committed funds accrue interest monthly, these are only released to the borrower on a phased basis. Initiative Ireland approve the release of funds provided they are satisfied with the ongoing reports from their appointed Quantity Surveyors and Relationship Management Team. This helps to ensure the release of funds occurs in line with the completion of works and scheduled increasing value of the site.



Peer to Peer lending, which has become popular in the US and UK, (where it now exceeds 3.2bn) enables individuals and institutions to pool funds and collectively finance loans together, as an alternative method of offering finance to businesses and individuals. Traditionally, peer to peer lenders offer unsecured, high-cost loans to businesses which are otherwise unable to secure finance.

In contrast, Initiative Ireland offers market leading loans, at mainstream finance rates, to attract experienced property developers. In return for the attractive borrowing rates, these developers provide a first legal charge over their properties to the company, which is held from day one for the benefit of Initiative Irelands Private Lending Syndicates.

Initiative Ireland aims to provide competitive terms and rates, exclusively to experienced property developers. Primarily focused on residential developments which have full planning in place, the company will consider loans of up 10m. Each loan is carefully assessed and pre-approved by an internal credit risk committee prior to syndication amongst members and must meet those standards set by the company and their Primary Credit Partners.

Speaking today, CEO of Initiative Ireland, Padraig W. Rushe said, "At a time when many sophisticated investors are looking to diversify beyond equity, were making secured real estate debt accessible to investors through our syndicated finance platform. Weve already seen solid demand from our Private and Institutional Members, with many indicating their intention to commit additional funds via the platform. Since launching the platform in October, weve seen high volumes of new borrowers and lenders attracted by our Peer to Peer, Property Backed Loans."



He added, "Feedback from private members has been extremely positive. Experienced peer to peer lenders find our rates very attractive compared to unsecured business loans theyve funded in the past. First time lenders have responded positively not just to the attractive rates offered, but also to the idea that they can do something to help fund the building of additional homes across Ireland. At our rates, even small projects become viable where before they were priced out of the market so our members are helping to make a difference."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Online gambling company GVC Holdings is in talks to buy LadbrokesCoral for up to $5.2 billion in a long-awaited deal that would transform it into a bastion of British betting.

GVC's bid marks the biggest wager yet by Kenny Alexander, who would become chief executive of the combined group, which is expected to be large enough to enter Britain's FTSE 100 index.

Since becoming chief executive a decade ago, the Scot has built GVC through a series of increasingly ambitious deals, including the 1.1 billion pound reverse takeover of Bwin.Party, growing it from an upstart gambling firm to a FTSE 250 business.

Alexander's latest acquisition would see GVC, which operates Sportingbet, Partypoker, and Foxy Bingo, swallow up the 130-year old Ladbrokes brand, as well as Coral and Gala.

It would also mark GVC's entry into British retail gambling through its acquisition of approximately 3,500 betting shops, making it the biggest player on the high street and competing with William Hill and Paddy Power Betfair.

"We've come along in a fairly short period of time, we're very proud of what we've achieved," Alexander said.

Talks between GVC and Ladbrokes Coral, led by CEO Jim Mullen, have been "on and off" for about a year, Alexander said.

The two firms, whose previous unsuccessful deal discussions leaked in August, said in a joint statement on Thursday they were in detailed talks over a takeover that would give Ladbrokesshareholders around 46.5 percent of the combined group.

Shares in Ladbrokes jumped by 26 percent, while GVC shares rose 6 percent on confirmation of the potential offer, which is for 32.7 pence in cash and 0.141 GVC share per Ladbrokes share.

GVC's move comes at a pivotal moment for the British gambling industry, which is undergoing a government review.

The final price GVC pays will depend on the outcome of this review into fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), which are big moneyspinners for companies like Ladbrokes but have come under fire for leaving gamblers with very heavy losses.

Following its so-called triennial review, the government said in October that the maximum stake allowed on FOBTs could be sharply cut over concerns they fuel addiction. It started a 12-week consultation to consider cutting the stake to between 50 pounds and 2 pounds, from 100 pounds currently.

GVC's offer values Ladbrokes Coral at 160.9 pence per share, equating to a total equity value of around 3.1 billion pounds, plus a contingent fee of up to 42.8 pence a share, meaning the bookmaker could be valued at as much as 3.9 billion pounds.

Alexander said the offer both "protects GVC shareholders" and "allows Ladbrokes Coral shareholders to get value for whatever the business may look" like following the FOBT consultation.

On Nov. 2, GVC struck a deal to offload its Turkish business, which had been an obstacle in talks with Ladbrokes Coral because of the risks associated with operating in a country where many forms of gambling are banned.

Alexander said that talks with Ladbrokes Coral restarted in recent weeks after a deal structure was devised that could account for the different potential FOBT consultation outcomes.

"This triennial review has run and run and run and with the political climate in the UK who knows how much longer it may well run for?" he said. "You can only sit and wait for so long."

Stricter regulation and higher taxation have hit betting shops in recent years and in 2015 prompted Ladbrokes to agree a merger with Coral and Paddy Power to tie-up with Betfair.

Alexander said buying Ladbrokes Coral would not leave GVC over-exposed to declining betting shops. Based on results from the first half of 2017, he said that 56 percent of the enlarged companys earnings would come from digital and 38 percent from UK retail. The latter would fall as online grows, he added.

Stockbroker Davy said the deal made sense strategically, adding "it creates an online and retail gaming company of enormous scale and should lead to material synergies." (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Sterling held steady near an eight-day low on Thursday as investors paused to monitor developments in Britain's tense negotiations over leaving the European Union.

"Brexit news is going to drive sentiment, and though the headline risks are negative, investors are staying on the sidelines," said Manuel Oliveri, an FX strategist at Credit Agricole in London.

Britain wants to agree with the EU on Dec. 14 to move the Brexit talks to the next phase focusing on trade and a two-year transition deal to smooth its departure in March 2019.

But the timetable has been thrown into doubt after discussions broke down in Brussels on Monday over the future situation on Northern Ireland's border with Ireland.

The pound edged 0.1% lower to $1.3364 in early trades, just shy of a Nov. 29 low of $1.3358 hit the previous session.

Though sterling has weakened 1.4 percent since hitting a two-month high of $1.355 last Friday, investors have generally sat on their hands due to the uncertainty over the Brexit negotiations.

Against the euro, sterling was flat at 88.10 pence.

The Northern Irish party that props up May's minority Conservative government rejected a proposal this week on the post-Brexit border with Ireland that could have helped move forward negotiations on Britain's exit from the European Union.

High-frequency indicators of market positioning and options market hedging have also shifted markedly in recent weeks to show some optimism emerging on sterling. But money managers have warned against buying the currency across the board until more clarity emerged.

Some disappointment on the Brexit negotiations progress is also becoming apparent in the foreign exchange derivatives markets, with one-month risk reversals, an indicator of how much sterling calls are purchased relative to puts, slipping back after hitting a two-month high earlier this week.

One-month risk reversals on sterling have slipped back to minus 0.625 after hitting a two-month high of minus 0.177 on Monday. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
French Economic Minister Bruno Le Maire (third from left, shaking hands with Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai) said that there are no major problems standing in the way of Sino-French trade relations moving forward. Photo: Visual China

China and France held their fifth High-Level Economic and Financial Dialogue late last week in Beijing. French Minister of Finance and Economy Bruno Le Maire and Chinese Vice-Premier Ma Kai co-chaired the annual dialogue. The two sides reached 71 agreements during the meetings, agreeing to boost cooperation in automobile, aerospace, nuclear power, advanced manufacturing, the Belt and Road initiative and other areas. In an interview with Caixin reporter Qing Ying on Friday, Le Maire said that the dialogue will serve as a positive prelude to French president Emmanuel Macrons visit to China in January. Le Maire also called for the Chinese government to make further progress in opening China up to French companies.

Caixin: After meeting with the vice premier today, how do you feel about this trip?

Bruno Le Maire: It was a very fruitful meeting. We have been able to reach a compromise on many issues. It will be the beginning of the new era in the economic relationship between France and China. The purpose of my trip to Beijing was to prepare for the French presidents next visit. We now have a solid basis for having huge success during Emmanuel Macrons visit to China

Caixin: What will be the main topic of Emmanuel Macrons visit to China?

Le Maire: The economy will be one of the main topics. We have been able to register some important steps forward with Vice Premier Kai today, in the sectors of aeronautics, agrobusiness and banking. Weve reached some compromises and have some concrete projects on the table. I think it is very positive for the visit of President Macron in general.

Caixin: What do you think of the relationship between China and France?

Le Maire: There are always some problems. But frankly speaking, in the economic field, I do not see important issues between France and China. Of course, there are always some points we have to improve. I think the question of the openness of the market might be one question on which we could make some progress. But we are on the right track with the willingness from both sides to move forward.

Caixin: President Macron is now pushing forward the European integration and you also emphasized cooperation between Germany and France. Now the coalition talks in Germany have stalled. Do you think there is a good chance for France to gain more power within Europe?

Le Maire: The point is not to gain power within Europe. The purpose of President Macron is to have a better and stronger integration within European countries. When we want to move that way, we need to support Germany. The bilateral relationship and friendship between France and Germany is really at the core of European integration. So we are waiting for the new German government. I think we should not have to wait too long because the process is now once again on the right track. At the beginning of the next year, 2018, I think we will have all of what is required to make a step forward in European integration. President Macron will want to see a concrete improvement of the European situation.

Caixin: Emmanuel Macron is now waiting for (Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union to enter into) coalition with the Social Democratic Party, so do you think it is a good chance for European integration?

Le Maire: Yes, I think China should not be afraid of the situation in Europe. Because when you are looking at the current situation, a strong power in France with President Macron, a new majority, we have adopted many very important reforms for pushing forward the French economic recovery, such as reforms of tax, liberal market and universities. These are the three key reforms for improving the economic and social situation in France. I am deeply convinced that it will pave the way for a further and stronger relationship between our two countries. We have exactly the same goals. President Macron and (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel want a stronger integration of the eurozone and of European countries, which means you should have a stronger Europe for the sake of stability and growth in a few years. And it is in the interest of China to have a stable and stronger Europe.

Caixin: Are you worried that the fiscal integration between the European countries, especially the joint budget, will further make central and eastern European countries more skeptical toward the EU?

Le Maire: I dont think so. All that we are doing with Germany is opening up to other countries. We are doing nothing against other European countries. We want to do everything with the other European countries. Of course, first with the members of the eurozone, because there is a logic in that choice. We are 19 members in the eurozone, we have the same currency, the euro. This is the logic of why we try to improve the situation to support economic growth within the framework. It will remain open to the other European countries. We are 27 member states, which belong to the same political and economic project. We are all deeply convinced that united we are stronger.

Caixin: Do you think Chinas growing influence in Eastern Europe is a threat to France?

Le Maire: I dont think so. Theres cooperation between China and eastern countries which is called the 16+1 China European Initiative. We are also willing to reinforce economic cooperation between France and China. This cooperation and this development of trade should be based on reciprocity. If the new relationship between China and Europe is based on a level playing field and reciprocity, there wont be any problems.

Caixin: The European commission is now pushing for a wide-range investment in the UNCAC review mechanism. Do you think it is possibly anti-China?

Le Maire: No, its against no country, it is just for the sake of protecting our strategic sectors. And every country does the same. We fully understand the choices made by the US and China. Nobody would criticize Europe when we want to do the same. We have very critical and strategic sectors, for instance, in the field of energy and defense. Its just for the sake of protecting our strategic interests.

Caixin: France is now being criticized for stronger protectionism. Do you think France will be more and more cautious to Chinese investors?

Le Maire: I dont understand this question. Thats not the case. We have just adopted with Vice Premier Kai a joint statement between China and France to have more investment in very important fields like the banking, aeronautical and financial sectors. I think this is clear evidence that we are an open country, open to investment, growth and economic recovery. Chinese investors are mostly welcome in France. The rules must be the same for everybody. If French businessmen want to invest in China, we want the same openness just like Chinese investors feel in France. We want China to be as open as France and Europe.

Caixin: What do you think of the possibility of Paris becoming the most important financial center in Europe?

Le Maire: Paris has a lot of key advantages to become the most important financial center in Europe. First of all we have important banks which have the power and the basis to be attractive. We also have measures to provide stability. Third, there has been the recent decision of European countries to have the European banking authority located in Paris. Its a clear signal that Paris is becoming one of the most important financial centers in Europe.

Caixin: What are your main expectations for the China and French relationship in the future?

Le Maire: Lets make a dream. Having a stronger economic relationship would be in the interest of both countries. Having more cooperation in the field of technological innovation would also be in the interest of our two countries. China and France are two big countries of innovation with research, labs and everything required to be an innovative country. Innovation is the key for the future, for the economic growth. The last point is that cultural communication is the basis to build up a solid friendship between us.
China must motivate local authorities to prioritize financial stability over high economic growth to ensure they are aligned with government policies to control debt risks and put less focus on expansion, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report Thursday.

Some of the underlying causes of financial risk in the worlds second-largest economy stem from the overriding objective, especially among local governments, to achieve high growth rates, which has fueled a substantial expansion in debt and shadow banking, the IMF said in an assessment of Chinas financial system.

Although the leadership has made financial stability a top priority and authorities are aiming to shift their focus from increasing headline gross domestic product (GDP) to improving the quality of economic development, these efforts will not succeed unless the incentives of local governments can be aligned with this goal, notably by improving social safety nets to reduce the social costs of higher unemployment, the fund warned in the report, which listed 35 main recommendations for Chinese authorities.

The IMFs report is part of its Financial Sector Assessment Program, which was set up in 1999 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of mid-1997. The assessment involves an in-depth examination of the strengths and weaknesses of a countrys financial sector, and provides recommendations to promote financial stability and reduce risks and the potential for crisis. Assessments are mandatory for 29 jurisdictions, including China, which have financial sectors deemed systemically important in that they could affect global financial stability. The last IMF assessment on China was published in 2011.

The results of stress tests carried out on Chinese banks as part of the assessment showed that many were undercapitalized, making them vulnerable to any significant financial distress, the IMF said. These institutions should raise more capital, giving them a buffer to absorb potential losses that could arise as Chinas economy shifts away from its investment and export-dependent model to a more-sustainable consumption-driven path.

The Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) on Thursday acknowledged the IMF reports assessment of Chinas financial system was objective and impartial and that its recommendations will be considered as the government deepens financial reforms.

However, the central bank downplayed concerns on the banking systems ability to cope with crisis, arguing that the report failed to fully capture the results of the stress tests on Chinese lenders, according to a statement released in response to the IMF publication.

The countrys nonperforming loan ratio is unlikely to be underestimated, given the recovery of corporate earnings, including those of state-owned enterprises, since the beginning of this year, and that the repayment of many local-government debts is backed by income-generating assets, it said.

Our financial system has a relatively strong capability to fend off risks," even based on an extreme scenario, the PBOC said.

Powerful incentives

Chinas economic growth has been fueled by a massive buildup of debt, and the credit gap, an indicator of financial stress, has reached about 25% of GDP, which is well above its long-run trend and six times the ratio for Japan, according to data listed in the report.

This level is very high by international comparison, and already above levels consistent with a high probability of financial distress, the IMF said. Reducing excessive credit expansion and debt overhang will require de-emphasizing high GDP projections in national plans that motivate setting high growth targets at the local level.

The report said that regardless of plans to emphasize quality rather than quantity of economic expansion, credit growth is seen by local governments as essential to maintaining employment and social stability and also to supporting infrastructure investment. As authorities crack down on risks, this creates powerful incentives for financial innovation and finding imaginative ways to finance firms despite their lack of economic viability, the report said.

In order to reduce the pace of credit growth, the government needs to overhaul state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and allow those that arent viable to fail, and also to strengthen the social safety net so that the impact on the population when companies close down is minimized, the IMF said.

Speculation has grown that the government may lower the annual GDP growth target or abandon it altogether after President Xi Jinping stopped short of following his predecessors in setting a long-term economic expansion target at the twice-a-decade National Party Congress in October.

Although the government is trying to use credit and fiscal policies to support employment and the economy as the shift away from a high-growth focus continues, these policies often conflict with financial stability, the IMF said. It pointed to the problem of moral hazard that runs through the financial system based on the widely held perception of implicit guarantees to compensate losses of investors and lenders. This encourages excessive risk-taking by households, companies, local governments and financial institutions, it said.

Banks often compensate retail investors for losses, while lenders assume that loss-making SOEs or financial intermediaries will be bailed out, the IMF said, calling for the government to allow bankruptcies and failures, and to let the market decide the cost of capital and bear the risks. The government should also put more focus on restructuring the operations of distressed companies that could survive rather than resolving their debt problems.

Some of the other major concerns highlighted in the report were the complexity and opacity of the financial system and increasing regulatory arbitrage by financial institutions that use a variety of means to capitalize on loopholes in the system to circumvent controls. These factors could undermine authorities ability to measure asset quality, and to assess and mitigate risk, the IMF said, calling for the government to beef up supervision of financial institutions, especially conglomerates and firms in the fintech sector.

Staff shortages

China announced the establishment of a Financial Stability and Development Committee (FSDC) in July, reporting directly to the State Council and chaired by Vice Premier Ma Kai, to strengthen supervision of the financial system, prevent system risks and formulate new laws and regulations to provide one unified regulatory framework.

But the IMF said a more-effective macroprudential policymaking structure was needed, and to ensure the FSDC made well-informed decisions, a Financial Stability Sub-Committee should be set up, composed of the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) and the banking, securities and insurance watchdogs, to take on the sole mandate of ensuring financial stability. Regulators should reinforce the primacy of financial stability over development objectives, it said.

The IMF pointed out that Chinas financial regulatory agencies lack independence, have insufficient resources for supervising a large and increasingly complex financial sector, and inadequate interagency coordination and systemic risk analysis. It urged the government to provide more money to help regulators do their job, noting that the staff count at the headquarters of the PBOC and the other agencies had not risen in 10 years, while the financial sector had doubled in size.

It is essential that the regulators expand their range and depth of skills before industry developments leave them unable to maintain meaningful oversight and authority, the report said.

This story has been updated to add comments from the People's Bank of China on the IMF report.

Contact reporter Fran Wang (fangwang@caixin.com)
A spokesperson for the Macau government denied that the territory is a tax haven, saying the territory has been working with the EU and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries to police cross-border tax evasion. Pictured are the Ruins of St. Paul, a Macau landmark. Photo: Visual China

Macau, a small Chinese island famed for its casinos, is among the 17 territories that the European Union has recently blacklisted as tax havens.

In the EUs first such list, territories or countries are labeled so-called non-cooperative jurisdictions if their tax regimes are not sufficiently transparent or fair, or their tax systems encourage multinationals to shift profits out of the territory to evade tax payments, the Council of the European Union said in a statement dated Tuesday.

In the same statement, the EU said 47 other territories or countries have been placed on its watchlist which included Hong Kong and Taiwan. These territories or countries, the EU added, have been willing to engage in dialogue, and promised to change their tax regimes to meet EU standards by end-2018.

A spokesperson for the Macau government denied that the territory is a tax haven. As one of Chinas special administrative regions, Macau said it has been working with the EU and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to police cross-border tax evasion. The government has also been advocating fair taxation, as well as studying ways to improve the law concerning offshore businesses, it said.

Macaus finance ministry added that the government will proactively engage with Beijing, hoping the current Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters  a multilateral anti-tax evasion instrument  will expand to cover Macau. If that happens, the ministry believes Macau will be off the EUs blacklist next year.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government said the city has been working with other countries on improving the transparency of the tax regime and combating cross-border tax evasion. It said Hong Kong will continue to work closely with the EU, and has promised to take further actions including information sharing and participation in the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.

The territories or countries blacklisted by the EU also included American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, St. Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

Contact reporter Aries Poon (ariespoon@caixin.com)
A former graft-buster has been put into the leadership of Chinas top banking regulatory body, highlighting Beijings determination to root out misdeeds that threaten the stability of the financial system.

Zhou Liang, 46, has been named as a vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), according to a statement on the commissions website late Thursday.

Zhou previously led the organization department of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Communist Partys top anti-corruption watchdog. The organization department oversees appointments, management and training of officials at CCDI and its subsidiaries.

Zhous appointment was announced at an internal commission meeting on Nov. 20, Caixin learned from sources close to the CBRC. Zhou has been assigned to oversee joint-stock banks, policy banks, policy research and information technology, a source close to the commission said.

Zhou joins Guo Shuqingnamed chairman in Februarythree other vice chairmen and a discipline inspection chief to form the top leadership of the banking regulatory body.

Zhou is the second senior CBRC official appointed with a strong anti-corruption background. In late September, 45-year-old Li Xinran, a veteran in the central discipline commission system, was named head of discipline inspection at the CBRC, as the former head neared the mandatory retirement age.

Li had participated in top-level corruption investigations, including of Bo Xilai, a member of the Politburo and the party chief of Chongqing who was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013.

Also in September, another well-known graft-buster, Lin Guoyao, was appointed to head discipline inspection at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign in 2012. And the reshuffling at the countrys top financial regulatory bodies is being seen as a signal of the central governments determination to uncover corruption and market misdeeds that threaten the financial system.

Since last year, disciplinary inspections have swept through the central bank, the CBRC, the CIRC and the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Top officials who have been brought down include Zhang Yujun, then the assistant

chairman of the securities regulator; Yao Gang, then the vice chairman of the securities regulator; Yang Jiacai, then the assistant chairman of the banking regulator; and Xiang Junbo, then the chairman of the insurance regulator.

Investigations have also been launched at financial institutions seen as thriving over the years through dubious relationships with graft officials and questionable practices to maneuver market resources. Companies in the spotlight include Anbang Insurance Group, one of Chinas most acquisitive dealmakers that has sparked questions about its complicated ownership structure and highly leveraged investments; and conglomerate Tomorrow Holding Group, whose founder Xiao Jianhua has been assisting authorities with unspecified investigations since January, according to several overseas media outlets.

At the annual meeting to set financial policy in July, President Xi reiterated the threat of regulatory corruption.

Financial regulators should cultivate a solemn regulatory environment, Xi said. Under such an environment, each failure to detect financial risks should be regarded as negligence of duty, and each failure to alert and handle financial risks should be regarded as misconduct.

According to the CBRCs website, Zhou, a Hunan native, holds a masters degree in economics from Jinan University in Guangzhou. After graduation, he worked for the Guangdong provincial government. In the late 1990s, he became the secretary to then-deputy Guangdong governor Wang Qishan.

Wang, who recently stepped down as China's top anti-graft official, headed the Guangdong government between 1997 and 2000. Wang is credited with averting a crisis in the provincial system after the $4 billion bankruptcy of state-owned Guangdong International Trust & Investment Co.

Zhou was later appointed to positions in the provincial government of the southern island of Hainan, the municipal government of Beijing, the State Council and then the CCDI. In August 2015, he became head of CCDIs organization department.

A CCDI official told Caixin that Zhous appointment to the CBRC leadership will reinforce discipline on officials and oversight of the financial system.

The other three CBRC vice chairmen are Wang Zhaoxing, who is in charge of prudential regulation, large-scale banks and international banking; Cao Yu, who oversees city commercial banks, financial innovation, regulation and inspection; and Zhu Shumin, who supervises rural finance, non-banking sector and trust business.

In late October at an internal meeting at the CBRC, officials pledged to strengthen efforts to discipline officials, crack down on market violations and bolster supervision to prevent systemic risks in the financial system.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
Delhi University (DU) will soon be launching a postgraduate diploma in Cyber Security and Law to train professionals with practical handling of the issue. According to reports, the programme caters to the niche domain of cybersecurity with a unique combination of cyber laws.

The course is likely to start from February next year and classes will commence from March. The course will be held in two semesters with six papers in each.The programme intends to produce professionals who can administer security for varied virtual platforms, banks, social media, industrial applications, mobile data, and cloud interface.

This course will be offered by the Department of Operational Research, Department of Computer Science, and Department of Commerce. Meanwhile, Delhi University's central library has put out a notice stating that the students from the School of Open Learning (SOL) will not be allowed to use the central library located at the Arts faculty in north campus.

The university said it has received approval from the statutory bodies to start the course. "This programme caters to the niche domain of cybersecurity with a unique combination of cyber laws," said DU registrar Tarun Das. With this programme the university intends to move into the domain of teaching and research in cybersecurity and allied disciplines, Das said.

The university said the new programme addresses the dire need of professionals in the domain of cybersecurity and intends to produce professionals capable of administrating the end to end security for varied virtual platforms and websites, banks and financial intermediaries, social media platforms, industrial applications, mobile data and cloud interface as forefronts.

"The course is well equipped to cater the needs of industry for employment as well as entrepreneurship opportunities," the registrar said.

About Delhi University:

The University of Delhi is the premier university of the country and is known for its high standards in teaching and research and attracts eminent scholars to its faculty. It was established in 1922 as a unitary, teaching and residential university by an Act of the then Central Legislative Assembly. The President of India is the Visitor, the Vice President is the Chancellor and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India is the Pro-Chancellor of the University.

Ever since its inception, a strong commitment to excellence in teaching and research has made the University of Delhi a role-model and path-setter for other universities in the country. Its rich academic tradition has always attracted the most talented students who later on went on to make important contributions to their society.

Ethical Hacking - An Offbeat Career Prospect
Shambunath Raigar, who was filmed burning a Muslim man alive, said, "I do not think I committed a crime."

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Shambunath Raigar was filmed burning a Muslim man alive in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district. In another video, he said he killed the man to save a girl from "love jihad."

And he doesn't think it was a crime.

"I do not think I committed a crime," Shambunath said at the Delwara police station, where he underwent intensive interrogation by Rajsamand police. "He (Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh) committed the crime of threatening to kill my entire family."

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Raigar, who was arrested Thursday, made statements which revealed the possibility of a girl being at the centre of his enmity with Mohammed Bhatta Sheikh.

"He had eloped with a girl of our colony. I helped in bringing her back, that is why. The video was made through my nephew. Yes, I knew the girl since childhood. I used to study with her brother," Shambunath said.

'VERY BRUTAL CRIME'

The police told India Today that Shambunath Raigar's nephew, a minor, had been detained for questioning.

They say he was involved in making Raigar's videos.

"In this case, the police has arrested the main accused, Shambunath Raigar. This is a very very brutal crime," Udaipur Range IG Anand Srivastava told India Today.

"So, we are collecting all possible evidences so that in due course of law, most stringent action against the culprit is taken. We have detained few couple of people," he added.

"We are trying to get the correct story. And we have arrested this Shambunath and we have detained a relative of his who is a minor boy, who made all these videos."

Anand Srivastava and several other senior police officials were present at the Delwara police station during Raigar's interrogation.

WATCH | Viral Video: Man burnt to death to 'save girl from love jihad' in Rajasthan

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If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
BUA seeks President's support to end mining rights squabble

07 December 2017

Nigerian conglomerate BUA group has asked Nigeria's President, Muhammadu Buhari, to intervene in its argument with Dangote group over limestone mining rights.



BUA's Chairman, Abdulsamad Rabiu, said Dangote group was undermining security around his plant in southwest Edo state, a region with limestone. Dangote's cement operation is in the central state of Kogi.



The mines ministry said BUA group does not have a mining lease for the disputed site, which is the subject of a legal case, and it had issued a stop work order to BUA. It added the area was within a section owned by Dangote.



"Our cement business has of late come under intense, consistent attacks ... as the minister, Dangote group and their cohorts have sought to employ instruments of state ... to forcefully wrest control of our mining areas," BUA said in a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari and seen by Reuters on Wednesday.





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CRH exits PPC talks but LafargeHolcim discussions continue

07 December 2017

Irish cement producer CRH has decided to pull out of the process to bid for rival PPC, the South African company said on Thursday. Last month, CRH made an undisclosed cash bid for PPC and had been given time for due diligence and to submit an updated bid, but CRH has now opted to drop its interest in PPC.



"CRH has decided not to submit an updated expression of interest and therefore considers it appropriate to withdraw from the Independent Boards process," PPC said in a statement.



In November, PPC turned down a takeover attempt by AfriSam, backed by Canada's Fairfax Africa Investments. However, regulations allow Fairfax until 12 December to post its partial offer circular.



PCC told Reuters that it is still talking to Swiss company LafargeHolcim over a possible deal.

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Cement Association of Canada welcomes Albertas output-based allocation system

ICR Newsroom By 07 December 2017

The Cement Association of Canada has welcomed the publication of the Alberta governments overarching policy framework for the output-based allocation system (OBAS).



The new system marks a step change from the current Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) in the state. The OBAS will set an industry-specific performance benchmark for emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries (EITEs). This includes the province's two cement plants, the Lafarge Canada-run works in Exshaw and the Lehighs Edmonton plant. Combined with output-based allocations, the benchmark will drive best-in-class performance while maintaining the competitiveness of industries in Alberta.



"The cement industry applauds the Alberta government for their 18-month collaborative consultation process as part of the Output-based Allocation System Engagement, and we are happy to have been a convener for several of these sessions," says President and CEO of the Cement Association of Canada, Michael McSweeney. "From the cement industry's perspective, today's framework demonstrates that the Alberta government understands the pressures EITE industries face to remain competitive in the global market. Climate change is the single most important issue facing our society today and Alberta's Climate Leadership Plan lays the foundation for industries to play a major role in assisting government in meeting its 2030 targets and transitioning to a low carbon economy. The cement industry in Alberta is a leader in innovation, and we look forward to engaging the province in keeping our industry competitive while fostering further innovation to lower our environmental footprint."

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When youre a prince and a famous actress, spending time together can be hard, especially out of the spotlight. That is why it was so important for Prince Harry to take Meghan Markle to one of his favorite getaways in the early months of their relationship. Now, the royal couple share a unique bond to the vacation spot  its where they fell in love!  and consider it a home away from home.

Ahead, we take a look at Prince Harry and Meghan Markles favorite place to vacation, including where they stay and what they do while visiting.

1. Their favorite vacation spot

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb4UunQgfR2/?taken-by=meno_a_kwena

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement, they drew attention to their favorite vacation spot (and origin of the center diamond in Meghans engagement ring): Botswana. Located in the southern part of Africa, the landlocked country is one of the royal couples favorite places to spend some time alone together.

2. Where they stay

Want to know what its like to camp as a royal? Well, for starters, they dont rough it. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle enjoy a luxury camp site (aka glamping) called Meno a Kwena in Maun. The camp feature nine luxury tents with en suite bathrooms for ultimate privacy.

3. Their tent overlooks a river where wild elephants roam

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXsi6JAgoGA/?taken-by=meno_a_kwena

In addition to staying in a luxury tent, the couples camp site overlooks Boteti River  a waterhole for African elephants. But thats not all. If theyre vacationing between May and November (the dry season), they get to witness one of Africas largest zebra migrations, too.

4. They enjoy the privacy

Between the paparazzi and the royal familys strict rules, running off to Botswana is like privacy paradise for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. That is probably why Harry invited Meghan on a trip to the country just four weeks into their relationship.

5. They spend their nights under the stars

https://www.instagram.com/p/BO2NTgzgshG/?taken-by=meno_a_kwena

Talk about romantic. During their royal engagement interview, Prince Harry noted how after he persuaded Meghan Markle to join him in Botswana, the couple camped out under the stars. Its no wonder this is where the royal couple fell in love.

6. They celebrated Meghan Markles birthday there

As far as we know, the couple have enjoyed Botswana a couple of times in their relationship. That includes a trip to celebrate Meghan Markles 36th birthday.

7. They consider it a second home 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWu4PpwA1cy/?taken-by=meno_a_kwena

 Or at least Prince Harry does. Hes been visiting Botswana for 20 years. And in January 2017, he was appointed a patron of Rhino Conservation Botswana.

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Vasundhara Raje noted that the culprit had been promptly arrested in a short statement released Thursday.

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has said the brutal killing of a Muslim man in Rajsamand was "deplorable," and needed "to be condemned in strongest possible terms."

In a short statement released Thursday, Raje noted that the culprit had been promptly arrested.

"Culprit promptly nabbed by Police. Have directed them to prosecute the criminal in the shortest possible time. Deplorable Act which needs to be condemned in strongest possible terms," the statement read.

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The main accused in the case, Shambunath, was arrested Thursday by police in Rajsamand's Kelva region.

After a video showing Shambunath burning a man alive for committing 'love jihad' surfaced, senior police officials kept a tight vigil in Kelva.

In a second video, Shambunath admitted that he committing the crime and said he would surrender.

At the Delwara police station, where Shambunath underwent intensive interrogation by Rajsamand police, he said he didn't think he had committed a crime.

He also alleged that Sheikh had threatened to kill his entire family.

WATCH | Viral Video: Man burnt to death to 'save girl from love jihad' in Rajasthan

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A British missionary who was abducted in October by a Nigerian cult has reportedly been killed.

According to Open Doors USA, Ian Squires was shot after leading a group in singing Amazing Grace.

This missionary, Ian Squire, he was a real person, said David Curry, of Open Doors USA. Hes a real human being who was giving his life to try to help these folks in the south of Nigeria, and he was kidnapped and killed for his faith.

And there are many people like him in Nigeria who have names and faces and families. Theyre not all British, most of them are Nigerian themselves but they love Jesus and theyre dying for their faith.

Squires was one of four British missionaries who were abducted by the Nigerian cult in the country. He was working to help provide eye care for people in the country.

Its just another example of whats happening in Nigeria, although in a different vein, Curry said. Nigeria is a country thats divided intoyouve got the southern portion thats largely Christian, but you have tribal factions in the north. You have these extremists from Boko Haram. Its a country that is being pulled in a lot of directions.

In November, a child suicide bombing killed more than 50 people in a mosque attack and another conflict between herders and farmers killed at least 30 people.

Nigeria is ranked number 12 on the Open Doors World Watch List of countries where Christians face the worst persecution.

We are a particular people called by the name of Jesus, Curry said. We are called in Scripture to care for, to pray for others who are in chains or persecuted for the name of Jesus, and we have not done it. We do it on an incidental basis if we hear about an episode.

This needs to be integrated into every church, every small group, every persons prayer life that youre praying for what God is doing in Africa, in Nigeria, those imprisoned and hurt and attacked, because were family.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: December 7, 2017
Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch in the Chicago suburbs, will be distributing Christmas gifts to every inmate in the state of Illinois this Christmas season.

Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels has said that church volunteers are ensuring that every inmate in the entire state will be receiving a Christmas gift bag. According to RelevantMagazine.com, Hybels started the effort as part of a larger effort to reach out to those who are spending Christmas in prison.

I follow Gods son, Jesus Christ, who was blindingly clear about how I should engage with prisoners, Hybels told his congregation. If I had passed away at 55 despite all that clear training and additionally because Im a pastor, I wouldve had to explain to God that I didnt pray for prisoners, that I had never visited one, I had never lifted a finger to help prisoners in any way.

Willow Creek is not reaching out to prisoners only during the holidays, however. The church regularly sends volunteers to local prisons to conduct Bible studies and minister to inmates.

One inmate who received one of Willow Creeks gifts stated, Those bags are phenomenal  It gives us a sense of love,  of joy. We get a sense that somebody out there that love us that dont even know us. That love is very strong and profound.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/sackhorn38

Publication date: December 7, 2017
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh stressed on the urgency of securing the Indo-Bangla border from illegal migrants to curb extremist and radical activities.

By Romita Datta Sengupta: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh stressed on the urgency of securing the Indo-Bangla border from illegal migrants to curb extremist and radical activities.

After a prolonged two-hour meeting convened at West Bengal secretariat, Nabanna, to discuss the problems and issues faced by five other states sharing the border of the country with Bangladesh, Singh made it clear that illegal immigrants were not welcome and have to be dealt with firmly. His attitude towards the Rohingya refugees was also firm.

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The state unit of BJP for quite some time had been complaining against the Trinamool Congress government going soft on infiltrators for vote bank.

The RSS had also been alleging that West Bengal borders are being used by radical forces for creating law and order problem and threatening the national security. Both the BJP and RSS had held Banerjee's appeasement politics responsible for giving a safe corridor and shelter to the jehadi elements.

Reflecting on these complaints, Singh had asked the government to be vigilant and alert of illegal immigrants for the sake of national security.

"Out of 4096-km, 1090-km are unfenced," Rajnath said emphasising the need for creation of physical or non-physical barriers.

Problems of cattle smuggling, fake currency notes, drugs and arms are going on because large areas of border are unfenced.

He had asked the chief minister to expedite the process of land acquisition at the earliest so that construction of boundary wall can begin.

Banerjee had been going slow on land acquisition, since it is a sensitive issue in Bengal and she herself had spearheaded an anti-land acquisition movement in the past. Fearing a backlash in the event of village council elections, she had been ignoring it for so long.

After the meeting, Banerjee invited Rajnath Singh for a cup of tea at her chamber on the 14th floor.

As a perfect hostess, she presented uttariyas and dokra work to Singh, junior minister of home, Kiren Rijiju and chief ministers of Assam and Mizoram.

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Should the US declare Jerusalem the Capital of Israel? Jerusalem has been continuously inhabited for almost six thousand years.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," President Trump announced yesterday. After his statement, Palestinian protesters burned photos of the president in Gaza City. By contrast, the walls of Jerusalem's Old City were lit with the colors of the American and Israeli flags.

Why is this such a controversial and divisive issue?

I have been to the Holy Land more than twenty times. Each time, I am amazed again by the complexities surrounding Jerusalem, the religious capital of more than half the world's population.

Rather than make a case for one position, I will survey the history of the Holy City and briefly outline the various arguments on this divisive issue. Then I will ask you to join me in a commitment to two principles that transcend controversy and advance God's Kingdom.

An introduction to Jerusalem

Jerusalem has been continuously inhabited for almost six thousand years. Three millennia ago, it was captured by King David and made the capital of his kingdom (2 Samuel 5:6-10). His son Solomon built his palace and the first temple there (1 Kings 6-7).

Babylon destroyed the city and its temple in 586 BC; they were rebuilt after the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great liberated the Jews in 538 BC. King Herod enlarged the temple and city greatly, but both were destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. Emperor Hadrian rebuilt the city in AD 129-30, naming it Aelia Capitolina. When Constantine became emperor, he changed the name back to Jerusalem in AD 324.

In AD 614, the Persian army conquered the city and destroyed most of its churches. Muslims called the city "el-Quds," meaning "the holy." They believe that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from a rock in Jerusalem known as the Foundation Stone. (Jews believe this rock is where the creation of the world began and was the location of their temple.) In AD 691, Muslims completed the famous Dome of the Rock over this location. It is the third-holiest site in the world to Muslims (next to Mecca and Medina, the places of the Prophet's birth and death).

The Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque comprise the Temple Mount. The structure enclosing this elevated area on its western side is the famous Western Wall or Wailing Wall. Jews are not permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, so this Wall is their place of prayer closest to where their temple once stood. It is therefore the holiest site on earth to them.

Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in AD 1099 but surrendered it to the Muslim general Saladin in 1187. Ottoman Turks took over in 1517, rebuilding walls around the city. This enclosed area is known today as the "Old City." It is only .35 square miles in size, with a population of approximately 35,000 people, and is located in what is known as East Jerusalem. The larger city of Jerusalem is home to more than 857,000 Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Jerusalem in the modern era

During World War I, the British army captured the city in 1917. Jerusalem remained under British rule until 1948, when they withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared independence. The new State of Israel gained control of West Jerusalem. However, East Jerusalem came under the control of Jordan, which denied Jews access to their holy sites, many of which were destroyed or desecrated.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Jewish forces regained East Jerusalem. Jewish and Christian access to the holy sites was restored. Israel left the Temple Mount under the jurisdiction of an Islamic authority (the waqf) but opened the Western Wall to Jews.

To this day, Palestinians regard East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Since 1950, all branches of the Israeli government (except the Ministry of Defense) have resided in West Jerusalem. In 1980, Israel declared Jerusalem to be its "complete and united" capital.

In response, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 478 ruled this declaration a violation of international law and called on UN member states to withdraw their diplomats from the city. All twenty-four countries that had their embassy in West Jerusalem eventually moved them to Tel Aviv, where eighty embassies now reside.

However, in 1995 the United States Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, requiring that the American embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all signed waivers delaying this move every six months, citing security concerns. The US took the position that the final determination of Jerusalem should be part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace resolution.

What the president announced

Yesterday, President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced a plan to move the American embassy there. He also signed a waiver delaying the move another six months. White House officials explained that the waiver decision was necessary since it would take several years to move the embassy.

The president noted in his remarks that the Jerusalem Embassy Act was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress and was reaffirmed by unanimous Senate vote six months ago. Presidents have delayed the move in a desire to advance peace. However, according to the president, "After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result."

The president noted that Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. He therefore considers his announcement "nothing more or less than a recognition of reality." However, he made clear that "this decision is not intended in any way to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement." He also voiced his support for a two-state solution and called on all parties to "maintain the status quo at Jerusalem's holy sites."

Arguments for this decision

At least four assertions are being made in support of the president's decision.

One: It recognizes reality.

Nearly all the agencies of Israel's government reside in Jerusalem. For this reason, Russia recently recognized West Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Is Israel to be the only nation in the world that is not permitted to choose its own capital?

Two: It strengthens Israel's claim to Jerusalem.

On December 23, 2016, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem." The US chose to abstain, allowing the resolution to become international law.

This resolution affected not only settlements in the West Bank but also historically Jewish sites such as the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The UN resolution forbids renovation or even maintenance of these areas.

UNSC 2334 is part of a larger attempt to undermine Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The "Temple Denial" movement claims that no Jewish temple ever existed in Jerusalem. Last week, the UN General Assembly voted one hundred and fifty-one to six (with nine nations abstaining) to adopt another resolution disavowing Israeli ties to Jerusalem.

UN bodies have adopted eighteen resolutions against Israel so far this year. In response, the president's announcement lends America's support to Israel's solidarity with its capital city.

Three: It does not change the status quo in East Jerusalem.

The American embassy will be in West Jerusalem, an area that has been under Israeli sovereignty since its independence in 1948. The status of East Jerusalem will still be resolved through the peace process as before.

Four: It refuses to bow to the threat of terrorism.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz responded to the danger of terrorism: "No American decision should ever be influenced by the threat of violence. Terrorists should not have a veto over American policy. If the United States were to give in to threat of violence, it would only incentivize others to threaten violence in response to any peace plan."

Arguments against this decision

At least three assertions are being made in opposition to the president's decision.

One: It escalates the threat of violence.

Some commentators believe that the president's statement will not provoke significant violence. Others claim the Arab world is less centered on the Palestinian cause than in the past.

However, King Abdullah II of Jordan fears that the move could be exploited by terrorists to stoke anger in the region. Saudi Arabia has condemned the plan for this reason; Turkish President Erdogan threatened to cut diplomatic ties with Israel as a result.

The patriarchs and heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem issued a statementwarning that this step "will yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive divisions." The US State Department is reportedly bracing for violenceat its consulates and embassies as a result of the announcement.

Two: It could undermine the peace process.

A statement from the Palestine Liberation Organization claimed that the US will be "disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace" and will "contribute to the further destabilization of the region." The president's announcement might limit the ability of moderate Arab states such as Jordan to support a peace process initiated by the US. It could force Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to walk away from the peace process at a time when his leadership is vital to its success.

Three: The timing is not right.

The president has stated that his administration is working on a plan for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Some argue that yesterday's announcement should have been part of this process.

Conclusion: What we should all agree on

Whether we agree or disagree with the president's decision, we should all agree on two biblical facts.

One: Jesus is the only hope for lasting peace.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is difficult to resolve in part because both peoples lay claim to the same holy sites. After millennia of animosity between Jews and Arabs, distrust is deep and difficult to overcome. But Muslims around the world are turning to Christ in unprecedented numbers, many after seeing visions and dreams of Jesus. And missionaries to the Middle East tell me that remarkable numbers of Jews are making Jesus their Messiah as well.

We are all sinners in need of a Savior (Romans 10:13). True peace comes only from the "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:7). We should intercede daily for spiritual awakening in this conflicted region of the world.

Two: We must "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122:6). This is a present-tense imperative for all believers.

Have you obeyed God's command yet today?

Otinall posted at the Denison Forum.
The Case of Masterpiece Cakeshop Now Hangs in the Balance Society is seeking and destroying a God fearing Christian and their business.

The legal case of Jack Phillips came and went and now they wait with bated breath to find out how the Supreme Court rules and were Justice Neil McGill Gorsuch stands on the issue of religious freedom and freedom of conscience. We shall find out if voting for the Republican candidate is still the right thing to do for the Conservative Christian, or if the argument can finally be torpedoed.

We know why Jack Phillips is in court to begin with, and all because of the ideal that homosexual rights are the same as the rights of minority groups who were truly discriminated against in the past. In a piece written by Jack Phillips himself that was published in the USA Today; he says that he would sell your basic cookies, cakes etc anyone regardless of their faith and choices on who they go to bed with, and if the statement did not conflict with his faith, he would create one of his 'masterpieces' for you and whomever to gorge on. Charlie Craig and David Mullins however, wanted Phillips to create a cake that would affirm their 'marriage.' As Phillips said in his article, they were living their beliefs as Phillips was living his.

With Phillips as the owner, he told them quite clearly that he would not use his skill set to promote and affirm that ran in conflict with his beliefs. He would still sell them a cake, or whatever but he would not affirm their lifestyle or marriage. From the stories I have heard Craig and Mullins were enraged and the Rainbow Jihad coupled with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission came down on Jack like the weights in an Olympic competition. With the CCRC as progressive as they are, they naturally sided with Craig/Mullins and found Phillips guilty. Phillips was not willing to just give up and thus his day with the Supreme Court.

Charlie Craig meanwhile talked with the press saying; "This entire time Dave and I have just been asking to be treated equally in public. We're two regular guys that just were wronged and decided to stand up for ourselves. Dave and I do not have an agenda, we all deserve fair and equal treatment, and that's why we're here today."

This should bring up a lot of questions that the press should have asked. Why did you want Jack Phillips to affirm your marriage with his cakes? Why could not have taken your business to a gay friendly bakery? You say that have no agenda and you just want to be treated equally; why did you want to make a business transaction with Masterpiece Cakeshop? I honestly think that Craig/Mullins are not sincere in their statement about having no agenda. I honestly believe that they (and perhaps others sympatric to their cause) were searching for someone who would refuse service based on their so called 'love of each other." To paraphrase the old song from the heavy metal group Metallica, they wanted to seek and destroy a God fearing Christian and their business, and put other likeminded Christians on notice. This is just as much of a terrorist attack then any attack in which actual people have been killed. They are not alone, but this the one that made to the highest court in the country.

Progressives see the LGBT community as a force of arms in order to finally corner and marginalize Christians who believe in the Bible and take their faith seriously and literally. The public education system has done a good job in turning many children against the Christian faith or at least got them to embrace certain anti-biblical ideals that have crept into Christian teaching. So has our mainstream media which for many years pushed a liberal to progressive narrative on its viewers.

The LGBT community does not want to be told that their sexual acts are self-destructive to them and the people around them. They want that sexual fix, cause it "feels good." They don't want to be told that its destructive. They might know it deep down, but like drugs they just keep doing it. Because they don't want their neighbor to remind them of their impending fate, they have to force people to tell them, it is ok to be gay. While I disagree somewhat with Denver pastor Bob Enyart that telling a child that homosexuality is good will inoculate him or her from the Gospel of Jesus Christ (God through the Holy Spirt can still draw people to himself regardless), he is right about how the devil can use people to allow a community of people to die slowly. By using people to encourage wickedness, a community destroys themselves from within rather than without, with the approval of the community's leaders, and much to the pleasure of the devil watching the people with glee, self-distrust slowly.

Will America as a whole go the same path? Justice Gorsuch could allow for such a fate, in the name of judicial precedent. If so, the LGBT battle will be elevated to the same level as the abortion fight for the progressives have supported two things that enable the destruction of humanity, and why satan himself maybe pulling the strings of our justices in order for the American people to eventually parish, or cause another empire to fall.
7 worst countries to be an atheist named

The seven worst countries to be an atheist have been named in an annual report documenting the persecution of non-believers around the world.

India, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan all actively persecute the non-religious, according to the Freedom of Thought report published this week.

It found the majority of countries 'fail to respect the rights of humanists, atheists and the non-religious' either by denying them citizenship, obstructing access to education and in the worst cases executing people who leave their faith.

In Pakistan, India and the Maldives the report highlights the murder of humanists and atheists and in Malaysia and Mauritania it points to 'new waves of incitement to hatred or violence'.

In Sudan and Saudi Arabia in particular there have been new death sentences faced by those who convert from Islam to atheism.

The report is similar to the Christian persecution charity Open Doors' annual World Watch List of the worst countries to be a Christian. It's 2017 report named North Korea, Somalia, Afghanisatan, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria and Iraq as the countries where Christians face the most persecution.

Andrew Copson, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) which is behind the report, said: 'When the non-religious are being persecuted, it's usually the case that specific religious minorities are too.'

Copson, who is also head of British Humanists UK, added: 'This is not a coincidence. It is part of how human rights work. If you violate one right, then not only are you likely to be violating others, you will also be degrading the social good, and making other rights harder to achieve. This is why human rights are interconnected and indivisible.'

Focusing on the non-religious, the report says in most of the worst-performing countries they are caught in a dilemma.

'On the one hand, they can remain invisible, perhaps conforming to religious practices for the sake of an easy life, and be largely safe,' the report says.

'Most of the time they are invisible. Unlike most sizeable religious minorities there is not even a pretence that they are welcome to their idiosyncratic beliefs or permitted to build their churches. Rather, the non-religious cannot freely associate or express themselves in daily life, and outside of online networks they cannot build the non-religious equivalents of religious associations in the "real world", as humanists do in "Western" countries, for example.

'On the other hand, if they so much as state their non-religiousness, let alone offer any rationale for it, or advocate for explicitly humanist ideas or values beyond that, then they are immediately shouted down for trying to "proselytize", or as a cause of "hurt sentiments" or "offence". It is very often an all-or-nothing scenario: silence, or be immediately regarded as a pariah and a provocateur.'
'Days of Our Lives' spoilers: Will discovers Hope's engagement ring; Sami, Belle have heated confrontation

Rafe (Galen Gering) and Sami (Alison Sweeney) may have gotten away with hiding their hookup in front of Hope (Kristian Alfonso), but can they keep it up? Perhaps not. "Days of Our Lives" spoilers suggest that these two will definitely have a difficult time hiding what happened.

Rafe is still in love with Hope so he obviously does not want her to know about his one night stand with his ex. This decision was made on the spur of the moment and he is determined to keep it a secret.

As it is in the soap world, keeping secrets often take Herculean strength. Either way, Rafe believes that he can cover this whole thing up. While he does not see how this hookup could be exposed, one careless move will probably have Hope or someone else suspicious.

It seems that he will make a careless mistake come next week's episodes. Will (Chandler Massey) will find something interesting that could potentially expose Sami and Rafe's romp in the sack. He will visit Sami at her hotel room. Will may likely try and make things right between the two of them after a talk with his uncle Eric (Greg Vaughan). After patching things up, this is when Will will spot something.

He will suddenly see Hope's engagement ring and wonder where it came from. Will might not realize that it belongs to Hope or that Rafe is the one who accidentally left it behind. But, there is a good chance that he will start looking for its owner. Susan (Eileen Davidson) taught him how to be kind and helpful, so he might insist on doing what is right and find the owner of the ring.

Alas, here is where things could get tricky for Rafe and Sami. If Sami finds out what Will has found, she might cover up for Rafe and tell Will that she will return it to him herself. She might try and keep Will out of this mess. But it is also possible that Will might find the ring on his own and keep it. This will result in more trouble if he ever decides to hand it over to Marlena (Deidre Hall) or someone else he knows.

As is the case with all secrets in Salem, it will come out eventually. It is still too early for Hope to learn about Rafe and Sami's hookup and there is a big possibility that it will sort of slip to another character too. By the time Hope finds out, Sami may have already left Salem as well, so Rafe might probably be on his own to defend his actions.

Before Sami leaves Salem, however, she has a few words to say to another sibling of hers.

"Days of Our Lives" spoilers reveal that she will have a heated confrontation with Belle (Martha Madison). Fans know that Sami has quite a temper and usually does crazy things, but her latest plan for Will to get his memories back ended disastrously.

Will was undoubtedly furious with her and never wanted to see her again. Despite the hookup with Rafe, Sami will still feel miserable. Her dark mood will result in her taking it out on Belle. After Belle met Will again, she definitely let slip about his history with Paul (Christopher Sean) and that he slept with Paul while still married to Sonny (Freddie Smith).

When Sami found out, she was enraged. While she can no longer speak nor see her son, at least for the time being, she will still try and look out for him. Sami was furious that Belle made Will's life a lot harder than it already is. But that was not the only thing Sami was mad about when it came to Belle.

Longtime viewers can recall that Belle received a lot of money after the last stunt Sami pulled years ago. She stole millions from the DiMera family and Belle wound up with a big chunk of the money. Belle, later on, gave the money back to Chad (Billy Flynn).

The two hurled one insult after another with Belle saying that Sami was just as bad as the DiMeras. That only made Sami angrier after their confrontation, leading her to trash her hotel room.

"Days of Our Lives" airs Mondays to Fridays, 1 p.m. EST on NBC.
'Ecstatic' evangelicals line up to praise Trump over controversial Jerusalem move

While Arabs across the Middle East protested and the rest of the world looked on with concern, 'ecstatic' American evangelical Christian leaders were not only heaping praise on Donald Trump for recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last night, but also claiming, with apparent justification, considerable credit for the controversial move.

Pastor John Hagee, the conservative leader of Christians United for Israel, told Fox News that Trump 'will be remembered for thousands of years for his act of courage to treat Israel like we already treat other nations'.

And Hagee revealed to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), in a sign that this was more about pleasing Christian evangelicals than Israelis or Jews: 'President Trump, when I spoke to him in the White House about this several weeks ago, he said this very emphatically. He said, "Other presidents have failed you, but I will not disappoint the Christian community in this issue. I will stand with Israel, and we will at some point in time, move the embassy."'

And Johnnie Moore, who coordinates evangelicals and their contacts with the White House, said: 'I have no doubt that evangelicals played a meaningful role in this decision. I don't believe it would have happened without them.'

As Jerry Falwell Jr, the president of Liberty University and a close Trump ally, explained, he had not talked to the President about the issue but had received emails from other leading evangelicals in the past several days 'asking me to support this or tweet that, and try to get the word out'.

'The faith community has talked to the administration for months and months about the need to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,' said Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas and an evangelical adviser to Trump.

'But the fact is, we didn't have to do any convincing of this administration. This was a campaign promise that President Trump was happy to keep because he feels that way,' Jeffress told Reuters yesterday.

They were joined by a host of other evangelical leaders hailing the move.

James Dobson, the founder and president of Family Talk, contrasted Trump with past presidents, saying: 'Throughout the years, I have had the great privilege of serving and advising political leaders at all levels of government, and yet, I have witnessed many promises made concerning Israel that were never fulfilled. With the decision to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, President Trump stands apart, once again demonstrating that he intends to keep his promises to the American people. I am greatly encouraged by this declaration and believe that America is always stronger when it stands firmly behind its allies, especially when it comes to the Jewish people and the land of Israel. Please join me in praying for continued wisdom for President Trump and this administration, and for a lasting peace in Israel and throughout the Middle East.'

Governor Mike Huckabee, the honorary national chairman of My Faith Votes, did the same. He said: 'For over two decades American presidents have talked the good talk on Israel. But when it's come to taking action, they've hesitated and kicked the can down the road instead of standing with our ally and recognizing its right to call Jerusalem its capital. Today, President Donald Trump did what his predecessors didn't have the courage to do: recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital city. In so doing he set two great examples for us  how to make good on promises and how to treat your friends.

'There is no brighter beacon of democracy in the Middle East than Israel, and President Trump's announcement of Jerusalem as its capital reinforces  for the whole world to see  the truth that it has a right to exist.

'Christians in America should be proud that one of our closest allies, also the ancient homeland of our Judeo-Christian faith, exudes tolerance, steadiness and strength in a region too often marked by all the reliability of deserts full of shifting sand.'

Paula White, the senior pastor at the New Destiny Christian Centre, said: 'Promise made. Promise kept. Once again, President Trump has shown the world what I have always known  he is a leader who is willing to do what is right however loud the voices are of the sceptics and the critics. Evangelicals are ecstatic, for Israel is to us a sacred place and the Jewish people are our dearest friends.'

Rev Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference who has at times criticised the President over policies including those on immigration, backed the move too, saying: 'The historical record, empirical fact and our faith all confirm that Jerusalem is in fact the capital of the Jewish people. I therefore enthusiastically applaud President Trump's decision to formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a promise every president has made since Clinton, and which none has fulfilled until today.'

Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, said it was a 'major milestone in America's historic relationship with Israel'. He added: 'Under the bold and courageous leadership of President Trump, America is finally putting American interests and the interests of our key allies first. America's foreign policy, as it pertains to Israel, is coming into alignment with this biblical truth: Jerusalem is the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state.'

And televangelist Pat Robertson also celebrated the announcement and claimed it was God's will. 'In the Six Day War, Jews finally took sovereignty over Jerusalem, and it's absolutely crucial in terms of biblical prophecy that they maintain control over that,' he said. 'Remember, you go in favour of breaking up Jerusalem, you're gouging against the direct word of Jesus. God is not going to let anyone break that. It's going to be a major battle, it will be over Jerusalem.'
Gospel fiction, ungodly truth? Why Christians should recover the art of storytelling

Christians should love stories. After all, the Bible  the greatest story ever told'  is full of them. But 'Christian' fiction these days has unfortunate reputation for not being the best, to put it kindly. Meanwhile the more 'ungodly' tales seem to also be some of the most profound, engaging  and even theological.

The tale of God and human storytelling is a complex narrative. It's a puzzle that was engaged this week by the think tank Theos, whose event 'Fiction or Gospel truth: can good stories tell a godly story?' hosted a fascinating conversation on fiction and theology.

Theos director Elizabeth Oldfield mediated a dialogue between two writers using fiction to cast new light on Scripture and human reality. The theologian and biblical scholar Paula Gooder is on a quest to tell the story of a sometimes-forgotten figure from the New Testament: Phoebe, the female deacon commended by Paul in Romans 16:1-2.

Far more than just a 'helper' to Paul, Phoebe may have been his 'patron'  an influential interpreter of his writings to the Roman community; the letter's 'first exegete', Gooder ventured. Her forthcoming book Phoebe (Hodder & Stoughton, 14.99) is an effort of 'historical imagination', exploring 'what it would feel like' to be Phoebe in the first century world.

Working in the opposite direction, journalist and author George Pitcher's book A Dark Nativity (Unbound, 18.99), a 'psychological thriller' set in the contemporary Middle East, narrating a young woman priest's 'descent into madness and violence in the worlds of international aid and diplomacy'.

Pitcher described how human beings 'make stories our own'; his novel draws on the biblical Nativity story, but highlights its murkier themes. Cosy Christmas cards might neglect them, but Pitcher points to the more distressing events surrounding Christ's birth: misogyny, antisemitism, abuse, genocide, refugees in a flight from terror.

In its embrace of 'brutality', A Dark Nativity somewhat contradicts the status quo for 'Christian' fiction. Asked why this genre of the Christian novel tends to be sentimental, two-dimensional and 'quite bad' (in Oldfield's words), Pitcher suggested it was because many Christians apparently want a story void of violence, sex or profanity  but committed to a happy, revelatory and 'salvific' ending. His book aims to be a more 'ugly...un-sanitised' perhaps even 'cynical' work.

Rejecting the 'happy ending resolution' because 'life 'aint like that', Pitcher's tale focuses more on 'God's absence', promoting not a 'dualism' between dark and light, but their intimate relationship  and discovering God's 'vulnerable availability in a broken world'.

Gooder's book seeks to illuminate the past with a fresh perspective from the present, adding colour to what many often only read in 'monochrome'. In contrast Pitcher's story re-evaluates the present drawing on stories from the past. Both represent a kind of Christian fiction, imaginative works using 'made-up' stories to illustrate 'truth'.

In the session's Q and A, the group heard from Luke Walton, a Christian film-maker/producer who offered insight into the challenge of communicating biblical stories in the medium of film. Film demands emotional affection, he said: 'If you didn't feel, it didn't work.' In contrast Christian stories or particularly sermons 'primarily try to make people think rather than feel'. In that case, the challenge for Christians is to better engage the heart, and not only focus on the mind. That said, if, as we heard, a problem with modern Christian fiction is that it is overly sentimental, that impulse to provoke 'feeling' might require restraint.

Gooder reflected on early Christianity's 'sharing of stories' that wove human experience into divine narrative. The ancient Greek word for conversation is 'homileo', Gooder said, from which we get the English word for a sermon: - 'homily'. 'How did we go from a conversation to a monologue?', she asked.

'Early Christianity was about sharing stories, if we can't recover that we won't be affective or effective...Can we craft stories about God so that readers don't realise his presence in them, but recognise him when they meet him?'

The evening provoked fascinating, wide-ranging conversation though it inevitably asked more questions than it answered. It was open about the struggle of Christian creativity and communication, but also held out hope for the 'impossible' enterprise of theology. Narrating divine truth might be like 'grasping at clouds' in Gooder's words, but it's an 'exhilarating' adventure.

Writers like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis threw down a heavy gauntlet with their towering works of fiction  fantasy that re-enchanted a materialistic, world, inviting downcast audiences to imagine a deeper, more magical reality  one made and graced by God. Thankfully, that torch of 'gospel fiction' or even 'ungodly truth', is still being carried today. Christian storytelling faces the paradox of being familiar and human enough to be believable, while offering enough daring hope and imagination that readers might at least 'want to believe' that God exists, to go beyond what they know.

Such works we might properly call 'evangelical'  not dour dogmatism but announcements of 'good news' that take the form of fiction, but invite readers into something profoundly real.

You can follow @JosephHartropp on Twitter
'House of Cards' and Kevin Spacey news: Robin Wright becomes the lead in sixth and final season

Despite the controversy surrounding "House of Cards" star Kevin Spacey, the show is pushing through production for its very last season. Only this time, Robin Wright will be taking the reins from Spacey as the show's lead.

According to The Guardian, the sixth and final season of the Netflix series will continue production in 2018 without Spacey. The actor was already filming episodes for the upcoming season, but the streaming service cut ties with Spacey following sexual harassment allegations.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos announced during a press conference on Monday that the remaining episodes will now shift its focus to Wright.

Sarandos shared that they are excited to bring some closure to the fans of the show. He went on to say that the 2,000 people who work on the show will be able to come back to work next year.

Compared to the previous seasons of "House of Cards," the sixth season will be shorter, with only eight episodes instead of 13. Details of the sixth season's plot have yet to be revealed, but it can be assumed that it will focus on Wright's character Claire Underwood's actions as the new president.

With the shift in lead characters, the show's executive producer Michael Dobbs revealed that the scripts for the remaining episodes were undergoing a big overhaul. The writers are reportedly doing a lot of rewriting, which is serving as a challenge.

As to why the producers and Netflix have decided to push through with the show despite Spacey's sexual harassment scandal, Dobbs revealed that it is important that the series continues.

"It's art imitating real life: you know that women will triumph over desperately flawed men," said Dobbs.

Spacey was fired from the show after accusations of sexual misconduct on and off the set surfaced to the public. Netflix also decided to shut down a film that would star Spacey as Gore Vidal.

Meanwhile, Christopher Plummer took his place in Ridley Scott's film "All the Money in the World" which resulted in last-minute reshoots just before the film's release on Dec. 22.

Spacey is one of the many names in Hollywood being accused of sexual harassment.
iPhone X unlocked and SIM-free edition can now be bought from Apple's website

Apple's latest flagship phone iPhone X can now be bought SIM-free via the company's website. This allows buyers to get the phone unlocked and without an associated carrier upon shipping. Buyers can always choose a carrier any time after purchase.

The carrier-free iPhone X can be purchased by visiting Apple's official website. Buyers can see a new option on the list of carriers called "Buy without a carrier (SIM-free. Activate with any carrier later)." This option is placed below the list of major United States carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.

There are several payment options, either in monthly installments or one-time payments. The 64 GB edition costs $999, and the 256 GB model costs $1,149.

Besides the actual phone, the package also includes earpods with the lightning connector, lightning to universal serial bus (USB) connector, a 5W USB power adapter, and lightning to 3.5-millimeter headphone jack adapter.

As indicated, the carrier-free version of the iPhone can work with any major carrier and can be used with a prepaid SIM card. The phone is compatible with both GSM and CDMA networks, so switching between these two network types will not be a problem.

Previously, the carrier-free version of the iPhone X was only available via Verizon. However, purchasing from them require Verizon credentials, even for the carrier-free models.

Best Buy once offered a carrier-free version of the phone, but for an additional $100 cost on top of the $999 price tag. They never really went into detail with the reasoning regarding the additional $100 cost, and the retailer was forced to take the offer down because of consumer backlash.

In any case, Best Buy now only offers iPhone X via monthly installment plans. The retailer does not currently sell the phone for a one-time, lump-sum payment.
Rees-Mogg calls on ministers to lift 'damaging' faith schools admissions cap

The Catholic Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has called on the Education Secretary, Justine Greening, to lift the Government's 'damaging' cap on admissions to faith schools.

The influential backbencher highlighted that abolishing the policy was in the Conservative Party's 2017 manifesto, and said that it effectively prevents the Church from opening new free schools.

'This policy has been damaging to the provision of education to Catholics and non-Catholics alike,' Rees-Mogg wrote in an article for the ConservativeHome website entitled: 'Why won't the Education Department honour our manifesto pledge on Catholic schools?'

He wrote: 'The problem with the current rules is that they limit the number of places for Catholics in new schools to 50 per cent if other, non-Catholics, wish to attend. This policy was not introduced with Catholic schools particularly in mind, but has a greater impact on them because, unlike some religious schools which attract virtually no one from outside their own community, Catholic schools are popular with non-Catholics.

'However, under Canon law Catholic bishops have certain obligations which mean that places cannot be preferentially offered to non-Catholics at the exclusion of Catholics. As far as possible, a bishop is meant to provide a place at a Catholic school for every pupil in his diocese. They naturally could not agree to establish schools which had to turn away pupils because they were Catholic.'

Rees-Mogg's intervention adds pressure on the Government to drop the cap.

Last week, fellow Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh wrote in the Catholic Herald describing the policy as 'harmful', adding: 'Removing the cap doesn't require a new law to be passed as it's only a policy. All we need, effectively, is the Education Secretary's signature.'

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales last month launched a petition urging an end to the policy. The bishops said: 'By forcing Catholic schools to turn away Catholic school children on the basis of their faith, the very principle of a Catholic parent's right to choose a Catholic education is under threat.'
'Sadistic' Catholic priest found guilty of historic sex abuse at London school

A former Roman Catholic priest has been found guilty of sexually abusing boys at the London school where he taught in the 1970s and 80s.

Fr Laurence Soper, 74, had previously fled to Kosovo after withdrawing 182,000 from a Vatican bank account, fleeing accusations of sex abuse against minors. He had been extradited back to the UK to face 19 charges of indecent and serious sexual assault against 10 pupils while headmaster at St Benedict's School, Ealing.

Yesterday an Old Bailey jury found him guilty on all charges, according to BBC News.

Prosecutor Gillian Etherton QC had told the London court: 'It is the prosecution's case that 'punishments' as described by the complainants in this case were carried out by Soper in entirely inappropriate ways and circumstances and on many occasions with what can only have been sexual motive.'

She added that he had used 'fake reasons' to justify punishments; students could face a caning  or sexual assault  for 'failing to use double margins', and 'using the (wrong) staircase'. It was heard that Soper, described by an alleged victim as a 'sadist', offered more lenient beatings with the cane if students would receive it with their trousers off.

Soper, formerly the Abbot of Ealing, has denied all the charges laid against him.

He was living in Rome at the headquarters of his Benedictine order when was called to the UK to be interviewed about the claims of abuse. He was granted bail to return to Rome, but fled to Kosovo in March 2011 just before he was due to attend a police station in the UK, taking 204,000 euros with him. He told the court he fled the country out of 'stupidity and cowardice'.

The judgment follows four other allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of teachers at the private school. The most recent conviction was that of the 'devil in a dog collar' Father David Pearce, who was jailed in 2009 after admitting to 11 historic charges of indecent assault. In a statement heard by the court St Benedict's apologised for 'serious wrongs of the past'.

'The school regrets that Soper did not have the courage to plead guilty,' said Lord Carlile QC.

'The result has been that innocent victims, whom he abused when they were boys in the school, were compelled to give evidence. The tough lessons of the past have been learned, and the errors and crimes of the past are in the daily consciousness and conscience of the school management.'

Soper is being held in custody and will be sentenced on December 19.
By Pramod Madhav: The RK Nagar Assembly by-poll drama in Chennai turned grimmer on Thursday with Actor Vishal claiming that K. Sumathy and Deepan, the two proposers in his nomination papers who had earlier met the RO alleging that their signatures were forged, are missing.

The actor was asked by the Election Commission earlier during the day to produce Sumathy and Deepan in front of returning officer (RO) Velusamy before 3 pm to hear their versions. If the two proposers meet the RO before 3 pm and agree with what Vishal had said, his candidature would be re-scrutinized.

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The actor had claimed that Sumathy had been coerced by the ruling AIADMK to allege that her signature was forced. He had submitted an audio clip claiming that Sumathy was forced to appear before the RO, but Velusamy had rejected its veracity.

"As time passes by, Dheepan and Sumathi, who proposed my nomination are not traceable. I'm very much worried about their safety & security.... Whether I Win or Lose, Democracy truly Lost !!" Vishal tweeted.

Thursday is the last day for withdrawal of candidature. Symbols would be allotted by 3 pm and the final candidate list issued by 5 pm. After the EC's directive, Vishal had tweeted: "Just received info thru media that I have to produce the 2 people who supposedly alleged that their signature in my nomination for RK Nagar Election has been forged, in front of the Election Commission before 3 PM today. Less than 2 hours to do this..."

Vishal had written to the EC and the RO requesting recalling the rejection of his nomination. If the EC asks the RO to reconsider Vishal's nomination, the actor could contest the election, scheduled for December 21. "Still awaiting Democracy to lift its head up again.... God save my beloved country from this anarchy!! #JusticeDelayedIsJusticeDenied," he tweeted earlier. Vishal had met Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni on Wednesday and petitioned him seeking a recall of the order passed by the RO.

In an exclusive interview with India Today on Wednesday, Vishal had said, "Democracy has been mocked and targeted. The rejection was a big surprise to me; my papers were in order. I didn't forge any signatures. Rules were flouted. Chennai still witnesses civic apathy. The youth should enter politics. We can't be mute spectators."

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'Speechless' spoilers: Dylan and JJ to work together to get a family dog

On the next episode of the family comedy series "Speechless," Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) dives into her plan of asking for a family dog, and he asks for JJ's (Micah Fowler) help in doing so. In order to give something back, Dylan takes a vow of silence to experience what it is like to walk in his brother's shoes.

Episode 10 of the second season will air on Dec. 13 at 8:30 p.m. EST on ABC. The next episode is titled "S-I- SILENT N-INIGHT." The episode will focus on three story angles. First, Dylan asks her parents, Maya (Minnie Driver) and Jimmy (John Ross Bowie), for a dog. Dylan then leverages JJ into getting the dog she wants.

Next, Ray (Mason Cook) arranges a meeting between Maya and her girlfriend's mother so the two can get to know each other. However, Ray and his girlfriend Taylor (Sedona James) discover that the two happen to have a history.

Finally, Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) is dragged by Jimmy into a supermarket contest promo to win a free Christmas turkey. According to the episode description, Jimmy drives Kenneth crazy in his attempt to win.

Episode 10 features television star Sarah Chalke and of course Jonathan Slavin as Mr. Powers.

There are still no information about the 11th episode and its plotline.

In the previous episode, American filmmaker Kevin Smith made a short cameo to help Ray get into the premiere of the "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

Based on online reviews from critics, the ABC television series is doing well. The series received a perfect score of 5 from Common Sense Media. "Speechless" also got impressive scores of 7.7 out of 10 from IMDb, and a 79 percent rate from Metacritic. Based on comments, the ensemble of the series brings a unique and effective chemistry to viewers.

"Speechless" season 2 episode 10 airs on Dec. 13 at 8:30 p.m. EST on ABC.
Why now? Thats the question being asked in Arab capitals, at the Vatican, at the United Nations, and even in Washington, after President Donald Trump declared that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Calling it long overdue, Trump described his decision as the fulfillment of a campaign pledge and nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. Thanking him, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu agreed: Jerusalem, he tweeted, has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. Israels Knesset, its parliament, is in West Jerusalem. So are its Supreme Court, its key ministries, and most key official institutions. Trump maintained that the dramatic step, endorsed by Congress in 1995 but consistently avoided by his White House predecessors, would not damage the search for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or change the status of Jerusalems geographic and political borders. Those issues would still have to be agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, the White House said.

Initial responses were angry and swift, albeit predictable. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, calling for three days of rage to protest the move, said that the U.S. had disqualified itself as a neutral broker between the Palestinians and Israelis. So did militant Islamic leaders of Hamas, which rules Gaza and which the State Department has designated as a terrorist group. Eighteen countries also denounced the change, including some of Americas usually more dependable allies. British prime minister Theresa May called Trumps decision unhelpful in the pursuit of peace. Saying he cannot remain silent, Pope Francis worried that the move would spark new tension and violence in the city revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also expressed alarm.

Perhaps of greater concern was the reaction from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, all key players in the search for what Trump has called the ultimate deala solution to the Arab-Israeli conflictand vital allies in the United States war on ISIS and Islamic extremism. All three, but particularly Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, have worked closely with Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and prime Middle East envoy. Administration officials recently promised that Trump would unveil Middle East peace plans soon. Given that ambitious and, some critics say, improbable diplomatic goal, wrote Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator, it's even more curious that Trump, seemingly committed to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would want to inject the Jerusalem issue into the mix right now. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly advised Trump against the announcement, warning that it would undermine American security interests in the region and efforts to negotiate a solution. While Trump stressed that he remained fully committed to the search for peace, his recognition of Jerusalem seems to complicate the political fortunes of the Arab allies whom he needs to accomplish his broader objective of defeating ISIS and weakening Iran.

The presidents timing is certainly subject to debate. Some see Trump shoring up support among evangelical Christians, part of his political base. Others say that his decision is little more than political payback to Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, philanthropist, and strongly pro-Israeli Republican megadoner who pledged $25 million to an anti-Hillary super pac during the campaign and gave $5 million, the largest single donation, to Mr. Trumps inauguration. Others point to the influence of Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom were said to have pushed for the move. Still others say that his decision reflects his customary scorn for experts who consistently underestimate his survival skills and political resilience. Still others see Jerusalem merely as Trumps latest effort to distract attention from the deepening investigation of his administration and himself. Special counsel Robert Muellers recent indictments of key Trump transition and administration officials have rattled the White House and, judging by recent tweets, unnerved the president. Whatever the case, Trump seems determined to be regarded as an unconventional leader who goes where his predecessors and rivals feared to tread.

Meantime, American officials will nervously monitor international reaction. Hours after Wednesdays announcement, U.S. embassies in Amman, Beirut, and other capitals warned American diplomats and residents to be wary, given anticipated protests that could become violent. Review your personal security plans; remain aware of your surroundings . . . and monitor local news for updates, warned the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, which also declared a temporary suspension of routine public services, ordered its diplomats not to travel outside Amman, and urged American civilians living in Jordan to maintain a low profile.

In 2015, Palestinians comprised about 37 percent of Jerusalems 850,000 residents. No one knows how they will react to this new development. An Israeli effort last summer, in the wake of a Palestinian terror attack, to install metal detectors to screen worshipers.on Jerusalems Temple Mount, sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, prompted days of protest and riots that led Israel to back down. But perhaps while paying lip service to the sacred cause, the Arabs have finally tired of constant Palestinian demands for unwavering financial and political support. Perhaps, after the failed Arab Spring uprisings, a decade of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Yemen, the threat posed by Iran, ISIS, and other like-minded militant Islamic groups, the rallying cry of keep Jerusalem Arab no longer packs the same emotional punch. What if the Palestinians plight no longer outrages young Muslims and sends them into the streets to protest and riot? The day to watch is Friday, when mullahs and clerics in the so-called city of peace, and throughout the Muslim world, take to their mosques to rally the faithful.

Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images
A new organisation, HelpForce, has been created to double the number of volunteers in hospitals. Catherine Johnstone, chief executive of Royal Voluntary Service talks about the urgent need to maximise the use of volunteers in hospitals.

Royal Voluntary Service is in its 79th year of providing the gift of voluntary service in support of our National Health Service. With a variety of roles, from patient transport; Home from Hospital support; Ward Trolley services; and an extensive range of cafes, tea bars and shops we are particularly focused on supporting people as they age to stay active and independent.

Joining Royal Voluntary Service in August this year I have visited a range of our frontline services and have seen the significant difference they make to patients, staff, families and friends.

Moreover, I am proud to lead an organisiation that is supported by an army of 25,000 volunteers of which 5,000 are providing regular support to our hospitals across Great Britain on a daily basis. Research has told us for many years that volunteering is good for you. It keeps you connected to your community; offers additional networks that can reduce or prevent loneliness and social isolation and keeps you physically active. It can also give you a real sense of pride and purpose and is increasingly beneficial as you get older when, through no fault of your own, your world can begin to shrink.

During these visits, I have also seen the huge opportunities for my organisation and others to do more through the gift of voluntary service. Whether this be expanding the existing services such as patient transport or exploring new ways of relieving some of the pressures in busy hospitals, I firmly believe that volunteers can support the NHS to have more time to care.

HelpForce is a practical solution to a growing problem, and Royal Voluntary Service is delighted to be a key part of it. Few of us will need convincing of the benefits that volunteers can bring, but there is a growing recognition within the NHS of the need to bring together staff and volunteer teams on a more strategic basis.

Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to make this happen. Working in an integrated team of NHS Trusts, volunteer involving organisations, Unions, Professional Bodies and NHS England, HelpForce can extend proven practices and test new initiatives. We can measure the impact and pinpoint what works within the hospital environment.

With the overarching aim of supporting older people who are in hospital to return to their communities and avoid readmission, HelpForce will be exploring the support that volunteers can provide to patients and their carers to aid their recovery. A good example could be where healthcare teams know only too well that lack of mobility causes patients to lose muscle strength, have a higher risk of infection and ultimately have a longer stay in hospital  yet for practical reasons, many patients are confined to bed and unable to mobilise frequently within the ward environment.

In the community, Royal Voluntary Service runs a successful partnership with Move It or Lose it, where our trained volunteers help people to rebuild their physical strength through simple exercises to strengthen their muscles in support of them remaining at home. Bringing these services into the hospital environment on either a one to one basis or through a small group approach, could support the healthcare teams and the patient with earlier discharge from hospital. This independent contact with a charity can then be continued into the community after they are home. Helping to build their confidence and to be there to help with the practicalities of returning home from a stint in hospital.

'Not about replacing staff roles'

There are many examples in society where volunteering successfully fits into structured roles, and HelpForce will be working with NHS Trusts to consider where volunteers can provide greatest value. This is not about replacing NHS staff roles but is about providing extra time for care and support, particularly for people without their own network of family and friends.

Discharge from hospital is often complex and daunting for older or vulnerable people. Royal Voluntary Service has seen the benefits of using trained volunteer teams to ensure individuals return home with the right prescriptions, groceries and people who are happy to help them get settled. Several of the HelpForce pilot interventions will focus on discharge and we will be working closely with them.

Our NHS is envied across the world and with the continued developments in medicine that are helping us to live longer, it is of no surprise that there are constantly new pressures for the professionals who work within our hospitals. Therefore as a society we need to find new ways to support our NHS and like all the best initiatives, HelpForce is an exciting combination of common sense and extraordinary potential.

Catherine Johnstone is chief executive of the Royal Voluntary Service.
Insurers Seek Reimbursement for the High Cost of Opioid Addictions

Big Pharma is having a Big Tobacco moment. Since 1999, the number of prescription opioids sold in America has almost quadrupled. Over the same period, prescription opioid deaths have more than quadrupled and millions have become addicted to legally-prescribed painkillers that are 50 times more powerful than heroin. Nearly two million Americans met criteria for prescription opioid abuse and dependence in 2013. In the same year, there were more than 16,000 deaths from prescription opioid overdose. Dozens of lawsuits and class actions have been filed against physicians, pharmacies, and the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and distributing painkillers such as Fentanyl, Hydrocodone, and Oxycodone (under the brand names OxyContin, Roxicodone, and Oxecta). U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has endorsed the lawsuits and claims that prescription painkillers are handed out in his home state like M & Ms. Even President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump spoke out publicly last month about fighting opioid addiction.

Much like the tobacco litigation over the past 50 years, there is no precedent for these opioid lawsuits. The complaints allege that by prescribing and supplying these powerfully addictive drugs, despite knowing their highly addictive characteristics, the physicians and pharmacies in question caused the plaintiffs to abuse the opioids and even engage in criminal activity to obtain them. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits arent just the families of those who died from overdose, incurred the cost of rehabilitation treatment, or suffered lost wages and jobs. Like the tobacco litigation, suits are now being filed by municipalities, counties, and states, claiming that the dangerous products have cost the government substantial sums of public funds to deal with the consequences of an opioid epidemic that was fueled by the defendants acts of placing these highly addictive prescription medications into the stream of commerce and fraudulent marketing regarding the safety of these analgesics. Even insurance companies are waking up to the fact that they have had to pay billions in claim dollars as a direct result of this preventable epidemic. They too are lining up to seek compensation and reimbursement for increased workers compensation and health insurance claims costs that could amount to more than $25 billion.

Opioid addiction starts with a legitimate doctors short-term pain relief prescription and a trip to the pharmacy, rather than a dark alley rendezvous with a drug dealer. Opioids are narcotic painkillers that work by preventing pain signals from reaching the brain. They are synthetic drugs that resemble the effects of natural opium, derived from the opium poppy. A 2016 survey reveals that 99 percent of doctors are prescribing opioids for longer than the three-day period recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies show that prescribing opioids isnt the best treatment for chronic pain, and can actually increase a patients sensitivity to pain, requiring higher doses, and leading to addiction. Employees taking opioids (even if not addicted) pose a safety risk to themselves and others. In that way, opioid pain treatment in one employee can lead to the injury of a second employee, and so on. The behavior of someone on opioids can be similar to that of someone who has been drinking. Jobs that involve working from heights, being on construction sites, and driving are among those that cannot be safely performed while on opioids.

Last months issue of Medical Care magazine estimated that the societal cost of the U.S. prescription opioid epidemic tops $80 billion and is growing. Health insurers and workers compensation carriers shoulder about one-third of this cost, while only one-fourth of it is borne by the public sector. For employers and workers compensation carriers, this means that even employees who dont fit the stereotype of drug users will struggle with this potentially deadly addiction.

The crisis has led directly to increased workers compensation costs. A 2012 report by Lockton Companies concluded that prescription opioids are presently the number one workers compensation problem in terms of controlling the ultimate cost of indemnity losses. The report says that there has never been a more damaging impact on the cost of workers compensation claims from a single issue than the abuse of opioid prescriptions for the management of chronic pain. It says that an estimated 55 to 86 percent of all claimants are receiving opioids for chronic pain relief. Read the Lockton report: http://www.lockton.com/Resource_/PageResource/MKT/wc-pbm10-9-2012.pdf

The perceived insurance cost of the opioid prescription crisis can easily be under-estimated. Ask most claims professionals, CFOs, or corporate risk managers how much influence prescription drugs have on their cost of claims and the answer will typically be a small percentage. They reference discount pricing, as communicated by their third-party administrator, but are missing the bigger and more expensive picture not revealed in pharmacy stewardship reports. Not only is there a crisis in opioid prescription proliferation and the subsequent misuse of these prescription drugs, but the total effect is unseen and unknown. Half of prescription drugs are dispensed and billed by the physicians, unseen in most reports and costing up to 300 percent more than when run through a pharmacy benefits manager.

A 2012 Hopkins-Accident Research Fund Study determined that employees prescribed even one opioid had average total claims costs four to eight times greater than employees with similar claims who didnt take opioids. The reasons include increased emergency room visits from overdose, death, addiction treatment, related illness, and abuse and misuse of prescribed drugs. It is estimated that 35 percent of employees receiving long-term opioid pain treatment are addicted. In Illinois, physicians are engaging in a process called physician dispensing, in which they not only prescribe opioids, but also sell them to injured workers. Research shows that when physician dispensing takes place, doctors prescribe 3.2 times the quantity they should, at a 60 to 300 percent markup. This partially explains why a recent study found that workers in Illinois spend twice as long away from work after an injury as workers in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

Many work-related injuries occur to the back, for which doctors are increasingly prescribing opioids both short-term and long-term to address pain, despite broad medical recommendations against long-term use of such painkillers in back cases. Washingtons Department of Labor & Industries has revealed that 42 percent of employees with back injuries received an opioid prescription in the first year after an injury. However, after one year, 16 percent of those employees were still taking opioids. According to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) and the Workers Compensation Research Institute, while all 50 states are experiencing a similar problem, long-term use of opioids was most prevalent in New York and Louisiana, with significant long-term opioid usage found in Texas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, California, and North Carolina. This translates to billions in additional costs for workers compensation carriers, since the medical benefits portion of a claim may be open for years or even for the lifetime of an injured worker.

The increased claims costs of prescription opioids are astronomical. An annual workers compensation report from pharmacy benefit managing giant Express Scripts recently noted: The issue of opioid prescribing becomes even more important in workers compensation settings as prolonged opioid use has been shown to be associated with poorer outcomes, longer disability, and higher medical costs for injured workers. In 2002, less than 1 percent of injured California employees were prescribed opioids. By 2011, it was 5 percent and payments for these prescriptions rose from 4 to 18 percent  an astonishing 321 percent increase in payments.

The politics of pain management is about to get very ugly. Many states have either put parameters on opioid prescribing in place or are in the process of doing so. For example, both New Jersey and Pennsylvania now limit first-fill prescriptions for opioids. As of April, Delaware and Ohio were well on their way to doing the same. California is proposing that its closed drug formulary, which will go into effect July 1, keep opioids off the preferred list for pain medications. New Yorks budget for 2018 includes the creation of a formulary. Other states such as Florida and Louisiana were considering similar moves as of April.

The full scope of the opioid crises includes an investigation by Congress, lawsuits by individual states, counties and cities around the country (and in Canada), collaboration among attorneys general, and class action lawsuits. Workers compensation carriers and governmental agencies on whose shoulders these huge additional payments have fallen want their money back  and they are taking action to make that happen.

The growing opioid litigation is following in the footsteps of the infamous tobacco litigation. In the 1950s, individual plaintiffs sued tobacco companies alleging negligence in the manufacture of and advertising for cigarettes. Tobacco fought back and prevailed in all of those early lawsuits. A second wave of lawsuits emerged in the 1980s, and plaintiffs found their first victory in the landmark case of Cipollone v. Liggett, although the $400,000 verdict was reversed on appeal. Tobacco successfully argued that smokers knew and knowingly assumed the risks and that federal law governing advertising preempted state laws.

A third wave of litigation occurred in the 1990s, and the first big win for plaintiffs occurred in 2000, when a California jury ordered Philip Morris to pay $51.5 million to a California smoker with inoperable lung cancer. At the same time, much like the current opioid litigation, more than 40 states sued the tobacco companies under state consumer protection and antitrust laws. These states argued that cigarettes contributed to health problems that triggered significant costs for public health systems. In 1998, the attorneys general of 46 states and four of the largest tobacco companies agreed to settle the state cases for $368 billion. In 2014, a wrongful death lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds in Florida resulted in a verdict of $23 billion in punitive damages.

Opioid class action suits being filed against doctors, pharmacies, and the opioid manufacturers are eerily similar to the tobacco litigation  and could be just as successful. More than two dozen states, cities, and counties have filed similar lawsuits accusing pharmaceutical companies of making false claims about the dangers of their drugs to make a profit. West Virginia has been the loss leader on these class action suits. However, recent lawsuits have been filed by Illinois, California, Ohio, Mississippi, New York, Kentucky, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and Washington State. With the hindsight of the tobacco litigation behind them, some of these cases are already settling. In December 2015, a suit in Kentucky against the manufacturer Purdue Pharma settled for $24 million. More recently, suits against opioid distributors in West Virginia have reaped over $40 million in settlements.

On November 7, 2017, nearly two dozen Wisconsin counties filed a federal lawsuit alleging that nefarious and deceptive marketing campaigns from pharmaceutical companies are responsible for the nations opioid overdose epidemic. The lawsuit claims that local governments health and law enforcement services have been strained to the breaking point because of widespread opioid abuse, and seeks unspecified monetary damages from Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Endo Health Solutions Inc., and subsidiaries of the companies. In Wisconsin, 1,824 people died from opioid overdoses from 2013 to 2015, according to the lawsuit. MWLs home county of Washington County, Wisconsin, is aggressively seeking to recover costs associated with the opioid epidemic. With a population of about 131,900, the county had 542 hospitalizations involving opioids last year, according to the lawsuit, and 70 opioid overdose deaths from 2013 to 2016.

Lawyers working the opioid litigation against those responsible for the prescription opioid crisis recognize that billions have been spent unnecessarily by the insurance industry and are looking for insurance companies to join the litigation. MWL is part of a nationwide litigation team who is putting together a coalition of insurers to join in litigation to recoup these costs.
A medical marijuana card used to be the key to buying and possessing pot in Oregon.

But the rise of recreational marijuana is making the cards primarily valuable only as a discount card, and not a necessity to buy, said Sam Elkington, owner of Track Town Collective in Glenwood. The card exempts the buyer from Oregons state and local pot taxes, which are levied on recreational pot.

Daily sales at medical pot dispensaries  once cutting-edge hubs for the marijuana industry  have plummeted as a result.

Medical only is smaller than small, Elkington said of the dispensary niche. On Monday at Track Town, customers had bought just $58 worth of pot products by midafternoon, reinforcing why Elkington so far has been able to employ only himself at the store.

Elkingtons little green pot shop draws about three medical marijuana customers a day. Another 15 to 20 potential customers come in asking for recreational pot, but he cant sell to them  yet.

The rapid growth and evolution of the marijuana marketplace in Oregon is prompting Elkington to apply with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to become a recreational pot shop. He plans to let his status as a medical pot dispensary with the Oregon Health Authority lapse in March.

Its a financial decision, Elkington said.

Hes not alone in going recreational.

Medical marijuana cardholders these days can get their pot either at a medical pot store or at a recreational one. That has put medical marijuana stores in an increasingly untenable financial position.

Nearly a quarter of the dispensary license holders with the state  five out of 21  had notified the state as of Monday that they plan to apply with the OLCC to sell recreational pot rather than medical marijuana, according to Oregon Health Authority spokesman Jonathan Modie. Only four indicated plans to remain a medical marijuana shop.

Dispensary owners faced a deadline to decide on Friday.

The deadline caused medical pot stores to submit a flurry of forms to the OHA and OLCC. Officials at both agencies still were sorting through them on Monday, and they expected more to come in throughout the week.

Lane County had 31 medical pot dispensaries as of April 2015, a couple of months before the sale of recreational pot became legal. As of this year, the medical-pot dispensary count had dropped to just two stores. And the county may have none next year.

While, obviously, weve seen a significant drop over the last year or two in dispensaries, patients still have the option to purchase medical (marijuana) at recreational shops, Modie said.

And, more shopping options seemingly open each day when it comes to recreational marijuana. The OLCC has licensed 74 recreational marijuana shops in Lane County, with another 22 proposed, according to agency data from late last week.

Senate Bill 1057, which lawmakers in Salem passed in May, established the deadline for dispensaries to choose whether to remain medical or change to recreational pot stores.

If the businesses stay as dispensaries, they must take part in a new state medical marijuana tracking system.

Recreational marijuana shops, under state rules, may sell medical-grade pot to customers with medical marijuana program cards. Medical flowers and products, such as pot-laced foods, can be stronger than their recreational counterparts.

The cards allow customers to avoid paying state and local sales taxes for marijuana, which can be as high as a combined 20 percent.

Still, the number of medical marijuana cardholders statewide has dropped since recreational pot became legal two and a half years ago. The Oregon Health Authoritys latest figures, from mid-October, show 59,137 medical cardholders statewide and 6,369 in Lane County.

The state had 78,045 medical cardholders as of October 2015  when recreational marijuana sales became legal in Oregon  and 8,382 patients in Lane County.

Cardholders must renew each year and pay $200 annually to maintain their card. The state offers fee discounts for a variety of reasons, such as $60 off for low-income residents who receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program assistance, $50 off for Oregon Health Plan eligibility and $20 off for having served in the U.S. military.

Even before Fridays Oregon Health Authority deadline, Lane County was down to just two medical marijuana dispensaries. One dispensary is Track Town Collective. The other dispensary is Inhale Cannabis Co. at 86784 Franklin Blvd.

No one picked up the phone at Inhale on Friday, and the shop was closed Monday. A sign on Inhales door said it is open Tuesday through Saturday.

If Inhale remains a medical dispensary, it would be the last in Lane County.

Elkington, owner of Track Town, said he in effect had made a bet that the federal government might outlaw state-licensed recreational marijuana sales this year, so he opted to stick with medical pot.

I lost, he said. (The Trump administration hasnt gone after recreational sales), so the (dispensary) market has dwindled down to near nothingness.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Munish Chandra Pandey: In a major development in the murder case of RSS worker Ravindra Gosain, the Ghaziabad Police today arrested the weapon supplier in connection with the murder.

Accused identified as Malook was arrested after the police conducted an extensive 4-day search operation near the Delhi-Ghaziabad border.

On December 3, following a tip off regarding the whereabouts of Malook the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Uttar Pradesh Police conducted a joint search operation. Incidentally, the investigators were attacked by a mob during a search operation.

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A constable of the UP Police suffered injuries after one of the persons from the mob opened fire at the police. The angry mob even damaged the police vehicles. Following the attack, several teams of the Ghaziabad Police were deployed to track down Malook.

"We had information that Malook will be coming to Seema Puri near Delhi border. A team was already tasked to nab him as soon as his presence was confirmed. Moments later we arrested him," Senior Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad, Harinarayan Singh told India Today.

Sources said that Malook was involved in the trade of illegal arms in the past. He had supplied arms to the murderers of Ravindra Gosain. Hardeep Singh alias Shera, the main accused in the case is presently in the custody of NIA.

RSS leader Ravinder Gosain was killed on October 17, in broad day light in Ludhiana. Gosain was shot dead by Hardeep and another person identified as Ramandeep Singh. Both the accused were arrested by Punjab Police and later handed over to NIA which has been conducting the investigation ever since.

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The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's decision declaring Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

By Ashraf Wani: The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) on Thursday condemned US President Donald Trump's decision declaring Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.

The leadership in a statement said, "Kashmiris are and will continue protesting against this horrible US decision and will stage peaceful protests across the valley on December 8, after Friday prayers."

The leadership also called for a shutdown on December 10, on the International Human Rights Day. The leaders said that for last 70 years, people of Jammu and Kashmir are facing Indian "aggression and oppression".

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"Lakhs of people have been killed and this killing spree is continuing unabated. Thousands of young and old have disappeared in custody, thousands of unmarked graves bear witness to extrajudicial killings, attacks on the chastity of women are being used as a weapon of war and thousands of innocents have been going through jails and incarcerations," the statement said.

The leaders said that on December 10, Kashmiris will observe a complete shutdown and blackout to protest against "gross human rights violations" and the criminal silence of the international community.

The statement said that JRL leaders Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Muhammad Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik will lead a protest rally from Hamza Masjid Kokarbazar, Lal Chowk towards UN observers' office in Srinagar where a memorandum will be handed over to the UN representative.

A seminar will also be held in this connection on Saturday, December 9, in which human rights abuses in Jammu Kashmir will be highlighted.

The seminar titled 'Human rights violations in Kashmir and criminal silence of the international community' will be held at Hyderpora (office of Syed Ali Geelani), the statement said.

Meanwhile, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq has been put under house arrest ahead of proposed protests he has called for after Friday prayers in Kashmir.

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By PTI: Jammu, Dec 7 (PTI) Scores of Shiv Sena activists took out a march here today against the detention of some party workers in Srinagar where they had gone to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk.

Workers of the the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) also staged a demonstration against the detention.

Six activists of the Shiv Sena were detained briefly in Srinagar yesterday as police thwarted their bid to hoist the tricolour at Lal Chowk.

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Raising slogans against the BJP government at the Centre and the BJP-PDP government in the state, Shiv Sena activists took out the protest rally here.

Shiv Sena leader Manish Sawhney said, "Every Indian citizen has the right to hoist tricolour in any part of the country but the governments led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti not only prevented us from hoisting the tricolour in Srinagar but also detained our activists." PTI AB SMN

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Burkina Faso troops stand guard outside Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou on January 18, 2016 following a jihadist attack by Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen late on January 15. Security forces are hunting for any possible surviving gunmen from the attack claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that left at least 30 people dead and showed the expanding reach of regional jihadists in west Africa.

An affiliate of al-Qaeda that has executed several attacks across Africa  and is considered the organization's wealthiest branch  is sitting on millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains that help fund its deadly activities across the region, a new report said.

According to a new analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has reaped about $100 million through a combination of ransom, drug smuggling, taxes on locals and donations from other countries.

Abductions of foreigners  with ransoms paid by Western countries  are AQIM's most lucrative source of funding, the center noted, with illegal drug trade becoming increasingly important.

A 2014 United Nations estimate pegged AQIM's yearly budget at $15 million, the FDD noted, with the group's funding derived predominantly from activities such as ransom, smuggling, cigarettes and trading in contraband.

Most of those proceeds are in cash and are moved under the radar, in ways that make it easy to avoid traditional monitoring and regulatory mechanisms.

"AQIM's first major kidnappings came in 2003, before it joined al-Qaeda, when it abducted 32 Western tourists," according to Yaya Fanusie and Alex Entz, the report's authors. By 2012, AQIM vaulted to the top of al-Qaeda's table of richest branches solely by "vast sums it obtained through ransoms," Fanusie and Entz noted.

"For the next ten years, ransoms yielded roughly $100 million, becoming the predominant source of funding that allowed the group to spread its influence" across the Sahel region of western and north-central Africa, the study added. From 2008-2013, AQIM netted $91.5 million from just seven abduction payments from governments  including those of Austria, Spain and Switzerland  and a state-run French company, FDD noted.

"The U.S., in collaboration with European partners, should support better governance by Sahelian countries and encourage wealthy nations to stop paying ransoms. Degrading AQIM's financing starts with a strict enforcement of a ransoms ban," Fanusie and Entz wrote.
Just months after Ford cancelled plans to build a plant in Mexico and not move some vehicle production south of the border, the automaker says it plans to shift future production of an electric vehicle from Michigan to Mexico.

The move is part of a larger plan to free up production space at the automaker's plant in Flat Rock, Michigan so it can build its first autonomous-drive vehicle.

That vehicle, will be a gas-electric hybrid model capable of operating 20 hours a day.

"You're starting to see the foundation of Ford's bet on A-V's (autonomous-drive vehicles). We're very excited about what we are doing," said Jim Farley, president of global markets for Ford.

For now, Ford is not revealing many details about the autonomous-drive vehicle it plans to build in Michigan except that it will have commercial grade performance and durability.

"While others are focusing on A-V's for ride-hailing, our business model will be much more diverse," said Farley. "We'll move people and goods."

Earlier this year, Ford announced a partnership with Domino's Pizza to develop self-driving cars to deliver pizzas to customers. Farley says the automaker will announce more commercial partners in the months to come.

The automaker says it will be investing an additional $200 million and adding another 150 jobs as it makes the Flat Rock assembly plant a center for autonomous vehicle development and production.

While the additional jobs and investment are welcome news in Michigan, it remains to be seen if moving future production to Mexico will raise the ire of President Donald Trump.

While campaigning in 2016, Trump repeatedly bashed Ford for its plan to open a small car assembly plant in Mexico. The constant attacks and promises to force Ford, as well as other automakers, to move production back to the U.S., were part of Trump's appeal to voters in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

After Trump was elected, Ford canceled plans to build a new assembly plant in Mexico and later said it would cancel plans to move production of the Lincoln MKC crossover utility vehicle from Louisville to Mexico.

Farley declined to comment on whether Ford's decision to shift production will sit well with the president: "This is not a trade-off. We are hiring and investing in the U.S.," he said.
"The system's increasing complexity has sown financial stability risks," the fund said in the 2017 China Financial Sector Stability Assessment report released on Thursday morning Asia hours.

Those tensions emerged as China moves away from its role as the world's factory to a more modern, consumer-driven economy, the IMF said. The financial sector is critical in facilitating that transition, but in the process it evolved into a more complicated and debt-laden system.

An almost two-year long study of the Chinese financial system by the International Monetary Fund found three major tensions that could derail the world's second-largest economy.

The report was a culmination of the fund's several visits to China between October 2015 and September 2017. The assessment is intended to identify key sources of systemic risk in the financial sector so that policies can be implemented to enhance resilience to shocks and problems that could spread across the globe.

The first tension in China's financial system, according to the IMF, is the rapid build-up in risky credit that was partly due to the strong political pressures banks face to keep non-viable companies open, rather than letting them fail. Such struggling firms have, in recent years, taken on more debt to achieve growth targets set by the authorities.

The overall debt-to-GDP ratio in the Asian economic giant grew from around 180 percent in 2011 to 255.9 percent by the second quarter of 2017, data by the Bank for International Settlements showed. The rise coincided with a slowdown in productivity growth and pressures on asset quality in the banking system  increasing the risks faced by the Chinese economy.

The second tension identified by the IMF is that risky lending has moved away from banks to the less-regulated parts of the financial system, commonly known as the "shadow banking" sector. That adds to the complexity of the financial sector and makes it more difficult for authorities to supervise activities in the system, the IMF said.

And the third issue identified by the international organization is that there's been a rash of "moral hazard and excessive risk-taking" because of the mindset that the government will bail out troubled state-owned enterprises and local government financing vehicles. An example is the "implicit guarantees" that financial institutions offer when selling products to retail investors. That is a situation where the financial product sold are not guaranteed, but banks almost always compensate investors for principal losses by dipping into their own capital.

The People's Bank of China, in response to the IMF assessment, said in a statement on its website that it disagrees with some points in the report but the fund's recommendations are "highly relevant in the context of deepening financial reforms" in the country.

One of the points the Chinese central bank said it disagrees with is the conclusion that many banks lack the ability to withstand shocks. The IMF's stress tests found that 27 out of 33 banks studied were under-capitalized. But the PBOC said the Chinese financial system is resilient.
China's economy may be set for a gradual slowdown, but the world's largest cosmetics company isn't worried about business in the country being negatively affected.

Instead, L'Oreal is pinning its hopes on the growing affluence of China's middle class.

"The growth potential [is] I believe unlimited in China because of this rise of [the] middle class," L'Oreal China CEO Stephane Rinderknech told CNBC on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, China.

"If we can really continue to be consumer-centric and to innovate in China for Chinese, as we do currently with our research and innovation center in Pudong, then the growth rate can be really phenomenal in China ... I'm very confident for next year," he added.

Much of that has to do with a middle class with increasing purchasing power that has what Rinderknech called a "craving for beauty."

While experts see headwinds to growth as China attempts to contain financial risks in its economy, L'Oreal was confident trends in the beauty and wellness space meant that Chinese consumers were unlikely to cut back on their demand for skincare and cosmetics products.

"I think the economy slowing down is maybe in GDP growth but I think we're really going towards quality ... More quality [and] more sophistication of consumers. Consumers that want more and more beauty," said Rinderknech.

Rinderknech also pointed to how the tech revolution was partially behind the growing demand for beauty and cosmetics products in China.

"China is much ahead in the digital revolution and the selfie is making you really be willing to improve your self-expression. This is why [there's] a boom in make-up, a boom in hair color [products]. You want to have your individual personality, your individual appearance, your self-expression. And this is a huge trend we're seeing in China, with a scale of hundreds of millions of people," he said.
As he rounds out his last few months as CEO of the now-private Panera Bread, Ron Shaich told CNBC that one of his biggest worries is the "pervasive short-term-ism" of the public market.

"The greatest competitive advantage Panera had, the reason we produced these results we did, is because we could think long term," Shaich told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "And the reason I took our company private is I'm increasingly worried about our ability to do that in a public market."

Shaich, who co-founded Panera and remained at its helm for two decades, highlighted a sea change he's noticed in his 26 years as CEO of a public company.

After issuing and watching the results of more than 100 quarterly earnings reports, the restaurant industry veteran said that traders, not institutional investors, increasingly run the show in the stock market.

"What's driving today's shareholdings are traders on the market," Shaich said. "We had large shareholders like [Capital Research & Management], Goldman Sachs, Baron Funds, but the reality is, they don't drive the price. What drives the price are the traders who are betting on next week's comp. And that affects the entire organization."

"Do you think this is good for economic growth?" the CEO added.

Shaich called attention to the recent upheaval in Buffalo Wild Wings to cement his point. Over the summer, activist firm Marcato incited a proxy fight that ended with the resignation of the chain's CEO, Sally Smith.

Shaich said that Smith called him when the proxy fight started, and they talked about "drawing a line in the sand" to push back against the activists.

"Her management supported her. Her franchisees supported her. She lost the proxy fight, the stock popped 10 percent for a couple of weeks and then it fell 40 percent. And they were forced to sell the company for no more than it was trading at at the beginning," Shaich said.

Shaich expressed his frustration with activists who take minority stakes in companies only in order to boost the stock price in the near term.

As Shaich sees it, the long-term view often serves companies much better than the day-by-day, quarter-by-quarter sentiment that today's market has adopted.

"The greatest competitive advantage of the FANG stocks  Facebook , Amazon , Netflix and Google  is they have the ability to be long term. They have a capital structure that's long term,' Shaich said. "I think that increasingly, if we're going to have change, we need to really express this. We need to recognize how these markets have changed."
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., told CNBC on Wednesday that she wants two Securities and Exchange Commission nominees to answer questions about activist investors, stock buybacks and executive compensation.

Without the responses from the nominees, Robert Jackson and Hester Peirce, she won't agree to a unanimous consent request to hold a vote on their confirmations, which would expedite the process.

In an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell," Baldwin said she's concerned about the role of activists and the proliferation of buybacks, which she said has ballooned since the SEC instituted its "safe harbor" rule in 1984.

"The SEC has statuary authority to do a number of the things I'm calling for with regard to reining in activist hedge funds as well as looking more closely at what's happened with stock buybacks," said Baldwin, a vocal critic of Wall Street.

Those buybacks have "major impacts" on the economy, she said, with companies giving back to shareholders instead of investing in their workers or business.

In letters sent to the nominees last week, Baldwin wrote, "The SEC has presided over this 'financialization' of our economy, which has facilitated the looting of the American corporation by short-term shareholders."

Her letters come on the heels of a bill she reintroduced a few months ago that seeks to restrict the powers of activist investors through more stringent disclosures.

Any delay to Peirce and Jackson's nominations is significant because with only three commissioners currently, the SEC faces challenges engaging in any major rule-making. SEC quorum rules stipulate that the SEC cannot consider any rule-making unless at least three existing commissioners are present, so the absence of any current commissioner prevents that work from occurring.

Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment and a spokesperson for Peirce declined to comment, citing the ongoing confirmation process.

 CNBC's Leslie Picker and Reuters contributed to this report.
Singapore Airlines , one of the world's top ranked carriers, has taken measures to reroute some flights in response to North Korea's missile tests, Channel NewsAsia reported.

The change involves the airline's Seoul-Los Angeles flights and was put in place following Pyongyang's July 27 missile launch into the Sea of Japan, the company reportedly told Channel NewsAsia.

North Korea has received global criticism for its missile launches. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in October condemned the rogue state for its repeated launches, saying they severely undermined the safety of international civilian flying.

North Korea, a member of the ICAO, is required to provide prior notice of any activity that could threaten civil aviation, the report said.

News of Singapore Airlines' change followed a crew on board a Cathay Pacific aircraft seeing a North Korean missile blow up over the Sea of Japan last week.

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.

Read more about Singapore Airlines' rerouting move on Channel NewsAsia.

CNBC's Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.
By India Today Web Desk: Dil Se Dil Tak actor Sidharth Shukla has decided to bid farewell to the Colors show. After many rumours of the actor parting ways with the show, it is now confirmed that Sidharth has finally quit the show.

"I wasn't happy with the way my character was shaping up and the track didn't pan out as I was promised. I had a meeting with the producer and we decided to part ways mutually," the actor told the Bombay Times. Sidharth will be replaced by Kaala Teeka actor Rohan Gandotra, who will essay the role of Parth Bhanushali on the show.

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Producer of the show Sumeet Mittal also confirmed the news saying that his team had some creative differences with the actor, according to a report in The Times of India.

Earlier there were also rumours about how Sidharth's alleged spats with his co-stars Jasmin Bhasin and Kunal Verma had created a rift between the actor and the makers.

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A vast project to prove that fusion power is sustainable and can be generated on a commercial scale is now 50 percent complete, it has been announced.



The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is based in the south of France and described by those working on it as "the most complex science project in human history." ITER members include the European Union, the U.S., Russia, China and India.



The project will use hydrogen fusion, controlled by "superconducting magnets," to generate heat energy. This heat is planned to be used in commercial facilities to drive turbines and produce electricity.



According to the World Nuclear Association, fusion power "offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy for future generations." The team behind the ITER project said that fusion energy is carbon free, environmentally sustainable and more powerful than fossil fuels.



The first stage of ITER operating as a functional machine, known as First Plasma, is slated to commence in December 2025. ITER scientists have predicted that fusion plants will subsequently come online as early as 2040.



"The stakes are very high for ITER," Bernard Bigot, director-general of ITER, said in a statement.



"When we prove that fusion is a viable energy source, it will eventually replace burning fossil fuels, which are non-renewable and non-sustainable. Fusion will be complementary with wind, solar and other renewable energies."
Anheuser-Busch InBev has officially opened its newest brewery in China  a sign of the significance of the Chinese market to the world's largest brewer.

The company's new Putian Brewery was commissioned for operation on Dec. 6 in China's Fujian Province and will have the capacity to produce 1.5 million tons of beer a year. According to AB InBev, that makes the brewery the largest such facility by capacity in Asia Pacific.

Among the technologies employed in the plant will be production lines that can produce 160,000 cans per hour, a speed that's twice as fast as previous production lines, according to the brewer. Other technological updates will aid quality control at the facility through the use of high-speed scanning and automatic discarding of products with defects.
A federal judge in Argentina indicted and asked for the arrest of former President Cristina Fernandez for trying to cover up Iran's possible role in the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994 that killed 85 people, state news agency Telam said on Thursday.



As Fernandez is a senator, Congress would first have to vote to strip her of parliamentary immunity before she can be detained. The judge, Claudio Bonadio, also indicted and ordered house arrest for Fernandez's Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, Telam said.



Fernandez and Timerman have previously denied wrongdoing.



Earlier on Thursday, two lower level allies of Fernandez were arrested in the same case on Bonadio's order: Carlos Zannini, a legal adviser, and Luis D'Elia, the leader of a group of protesters allied with her government.



An Argentine appeals court ordered the re-opening of the investigation into the potential bombing cover up a year ago. In January 2015, the prosecutor who initially made the accusation, Alberto Nisman, was found shot dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment.



The death was classified as a suicide, though an official investigating the case has said the shooting appeared to be a homicide. Nisman's body was discovered hours before he was to brief Congress on the bombing of the center.



Nisman said Fernandez worked behind the scenes to clear Iran and normalize relations to clinch a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran.
Former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins told CNBC that whenever you have money "sloshing around, you have criminals that are attracted to it."

This was the first high profile case the SEC has handled within the broader ICO space but will likely not be the last.

Just this week the SEC froze assets of Plexcoin, which raised $15 million dollars in an initial coin offering by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.

The SEC said it is devoting more resources towards its new minted Cyber Unit to monitor digital currencies, specifically on violations involving "ledger technology and initial coin offerings."

The rapid surge in bitcoin has prompted Washington to take a closer look at digital currencies and the rise of initial coin offerings  a method used by internet entities to raise capital in exchange for a new cryptocurrency.

Another active voice in this space is Kathryn Haun, former cryptocurrency director at the Department of Justice and current board member of exchange Coinbase, who recently testified in front of the Senate judiciary committee.

"But I think the real action in the ICO space with the SEC is yet to come: I predict we'll see some large enforcement actions in the coming year. That said, because the SEC cannot bring actions against every single ICO that does not comply with the securities laws, they'll want to choose those that will pack the most deterrent punch, so instances where massive amounts of money was raised but also where investors may have lost money will provide the most natural targets," said Haun to CNBC.

Beyond the SEC, other government agencies are monitoring bitcoin activity.

The US Treasury Department has been reviewing how the Finance Crimes Enforcement Network  FinCEN  is addressing money laundering and terrorist activity that involves virtual currencies.

Another agency bitcoin investors could hear from is the the Internal Revenue Service. Last week, the IRS demanded account information for over 14,000 users.

One bitcoin investor said to CNBC: "The IRS is trying to send a strong warning to bitcoin holders that any profits on bitcoin are considered taxable income."

However Haun says the IRS did not even recognize bitcoin and cryptocurrencies until three years ago.

"Interestingly, the IRS subpoena seeks information dating back to 2013, even though it wasn't until 2014 that the IRS put out any guidance on how cryptocurrency should be treated for federal tax purposes. That whole question is still a bit unclear in the minds of many, but the IRS has said that it views cryptocurrency as property for tax purposes," said Haun.

Growing number of former regulators who spoke to CNBC said more action is coming from one or all of the agencies. However the goal is not to shutdown bitcoin, at this point, experts say its to find the bad characters that are using cryptocurrencies to fund illegal activities and/or are committing fraud with initial coin offerings.

So while bit coins rise continues, regulatory hurdles could make investing in this space more challenging.

"Investors need to be wary and try to do their homework putting their money in," said Atkins.

Correction: Kathryn Haun is former cryptocurrency director of the Department of Justice and current board member of exchange Coinbase. An earlier version misspelled her last name.
Roxane Gay is a bestselling author, New York Times contributor, associate English professor at Purdue University and one of the most prolific writers working today. Some of her most popular books include "Bad Feminist," "Difficult Women" and "Hunger." Most recently, she co-authored "World of Wakanda" for Marvel. In an interview with Lifehacker, the successful author and teacher shares the career advice that has kept her on track throughout her professional journey.

"When I was going on the academic job market, worrying about the campus interview, my friend Matt Seigel told me to just be myself because otherwise, if I got hired as the person I was pretending to be, I would have to keep up that pretense for the rest of my career," she says. "He was absolutely right about being myself, for better and worse." In an interview with Rebecca Jarvis for her "No Limits" podcast, Uber's Chief Brand Officer Bozoma Saint John also shared how bringing her truest self to work has been key to her success. But Saint John first had to take some bad advice. Early in her career, she says she was told by a female leader at a former company to not wear red nail polish or red lipstick in the workplace.
Hackers may have gotten away with $60 million worth of bitcoin after a cyber attack hit the cryptocurrency mining platform NiceHash.



Users highlighted the cyber breach on Reddit and Twitter Wednesday, with some saying they could lose hundreds of dollars.

NiceHash lets people offer computing capacity for bitcoin miners to mine digital currencies. Cryptocurrency miners work out complex mathematical equations to add cryptocurrency transactions to decentralized public ledgers called blockchains.

The mining marketplace initially said its service was undergoing "maintenance"on Twitter, later adding it was "working hard" to resolve issues affecting the site.

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NiceHash said in a statement it was "investigating the nature of the incident," and that it would close down its site for a day.

"We are working to verify the precise number of BTC (bitcoin) taken," the company said. "Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days.In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency."

While NiceHash was unable to specify how much bitcoin had been stolen, users have pointed to a bitcoin wallet which holds 4,736.42 bitcoins  equivalent to $68 million.

Andrej P. Skraba, head of marketing at the firm, confirmed to news agency Reuters that around 4,700 bitcoins  worth roughly $68 million at current prices  were lost in the hack.

CNBC reached out to NiceHash Chief Executive Marko Kobal for comment but he was not available at the time of publication.

This wouldn't be the first time people have lost millions in cryptocurrency. In November, millions of dollars worth of Ethereum were "accidentally" frozen on the cryptocurrency wallet provider Parity after a user "suicided" the wallet, deleting its code and freezing all ether tokens contained within.
Take that Elon Musk! Boeing will beat SpaceX to Mars, CEO Dennis Muilenburg told CNBC.

Musk has made it clear that sending humans to Mars is one of his primary goals, even saying it is the reason he started SpaceX in the first place.

But Boeing is in the final assembly stages of building a rocket called the Space Launch System with NASA, and the company will be the first to bring humans to the red planet, Muilenberg told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer in an exclusive interview.

Boeing expects to have the system ready for a test flight in 2019.

"Eventually we are going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe that the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there in a Boeing rocket," he said.

SpaceX was not immediately available for comment.

Musk unveiled plans for a massive SpaceX rocket and spacecraft system called the "BFR" in September. It will ultimately replace all of SpaceX's current lineup, and will be used for space exploration and for rapid transport around Earth.

"I feel fairly confident we can build the ship and be ready for the launch in five years," Musk said during his presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia in late September. "Five years seems like a long time for me."
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note sat higher at around 2.367 percent at 3:33 p.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was up at 2.764 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

U.S. government debt yields rose on Thursday after the U.S. Labor Department reported that the number of Americans filing for state unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly.

Yields moved higher following reports that President Donald Trump is making headway in his infrastructure plans. The president will likely push his legislative agenda forward in January by unveiling a plan to fix and develop infrastructure in the United States.

Trump campaigned heavily on the need to improve the country's infrastructure, an area in which he may find more support from Democrats. However, with a big tax cut in the pipeline, commentators have questioned whether a Republican Congress will be able to pass a spending plan.

Unemployment benefit claims dipped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 236,000 for the week ended Dec. 2, according to the Labor Department. This marks the third consecutive week of declines and suggests a rapid tightening of the labor market.

With the Bureau of Labor Statistics set to release its monthly report on the employment situation Friday, Wall Street will watching to see any changes in the already-low unemployment rate, which sits at 4.1 percent. Investors will also be watching for an increase in the hourly wage, a metric known for its relationship to inflation.

While new economic releases are expected to shake up sentiment Thursday, politics is also expected to keep investors on edge.

President Donald Trump and his administration announced Wednesday that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said that the American embassy would be moved there, even though officials recently said the relocation could take "years".

The announcement was met with condemnation worldwide, from Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East, to the United Nations and European Union; with the latter two institutions both voicing fears about what ramifications the decision would have on the peace-making process between Israel and Palestine.
A firefighter walks near a swimming pool as a home is in flames from the Skirball fire along Linda Flora Drive on December 6, 2017 in Bel-Air, California.

With October's massive wine country wildfires and current monster blazes sweeping Southern California, this year will go down in the record books as one of the most devastating fire seasons ever for insurance losses.

A spokesman for the state's insurance regulator said Thursday that year-to-date losses from the state's fires already top $10 billion. However, a state ballot measure passed decades ago by California voters may save them from massive increases next year in property and casualty insurance rates.

Insurance claims for the October wildfires in Northern California alone now top $9.4 billion, which includes destruction of or damage to more than 21,000 homes and 2,800 businesses, the California State Insurance Commissioner revealed Wednesday. As of Thursday evening, at least 439 structures have been destroyed so far in the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, and that's before the catastrophic losses from other blazes in Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

"These are extraordinary loss figures  $9.4 billion in October alone  and sadly as the fires rage in Southern California we can anticipate that we will see significant losses there as well," California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones told reporters Wednesday.

It's too early to say what the exact dollar amount of losses is from the current Southern California wildfires since the fires are still raging, but S&P Global Ratings is estimating the October fires alone caused more than $12 billion in losses. Some of the homes that burned or were damaged in the Bel Air fires this week in Los Angeles County include properties costing tens of millions of dollars, while further north the so-called Creek Fire damaged or destroyed at least 30 homes.

"We may experience increases in insurance costs in the future as a result of the fires," said Janet Ruiz, a California-based representative with the Insurance Information Institute.

Ruiz said insurance companies also can decide not to write new policies for homes in areas deemed high risk. She also said they manage risk in areas deemed larger fire risks "so they'll spread it out. A company may feel like they have too much risk in a high-risk area, and they might not renew."

There are also cases where new insurance companies come into high-risk areas because they might be able to get higher premiums. Either way, the existing and new insurers would need to get new rates approved by California's Department of Insurance.

For those insurers that spread risk to reinsurers, experts said, a lot of the impact will depend on whether or how much the reinsurers start rerating. Even before the October wildfires, there already were signs some reinsurers were looking to reduce exposure to the property catastrophe business due to the impacts of hurricanes.

Regardless, a voter measure passed decades ago will present a challenge for insurance companies looking to jack up rates right after the California wildfires.

Proposition 103, approved by California voters in 1988, requires the "prior approval" of the state's insurance regulator before insurance companies can implement property and casualty rates, including homeowner's insurance.

"California has a consumer-friendly approach with Proposition 103, and the insurance industry hates it," said Kenneth Klein, a California Western School of Law professor and expert on natural disasters.

Added Klein, "The insurance industry has been battling that proposition for a long time."

Under Proposition 103 and other California insurance regulations, property and casualty insurance companies cannot take all the losses associated with one event, such as this year's wildfires, and then simply put them onto next year's rates. The state requires a longer-term trend, not a one- or two-year disaster impact.

"California is a state that you can say is a little bit tougher to get rate increases versus other states," said S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Tracy Dolin.

"The insurers cannot take all of the losses associated with a catastrophe like this [year's wildfires] and dump it into next year's rates," said Jones, the insurance commissioner. "Instead, there's a catastrophe factor in the rate, which is a trend that looks back at catastrophes over the last 20 years."

Jones said that means losses this calendar year  whether from the wine country fires or the current wildfires in Southern California  "will be added into that 20-year trend and will have some impact on rates."

He estimated the catastrophes will have a "modest impact" but wouldn't say how much he thought it would be.

"It will not be a dramatic impact," he said.

Jones estimated that his office has saved California consumers and businesses nearly $2.6 billion in premiums since 2011 by rejecting excessive rates or rate increases from insurers.

Without Proposition 103, Klein said, Californians could experience what happened in the Gulf Coast in the wake of 2005's disastrous Hurricane Katrina. He said the industry was able to pass along big increases right after the disaster.

"After Katrina, the insurance industry immediately re-rated on the assumption that a Katrina event would happen the next year, which of course it didn't," Klein said. "As a consequence, I believe that was the single most-profitable year they ever had  the next year."

Nonetheless, Klein said, California's insurance regulators can't ignore the increased wildfire risk in urban areas of the state and will need to work with the insurance companies.

"There's no question that insurance companies are going to have to react to what is apparently a consequence of climate change, which is the increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires and wildfires in urban interfaces," he said. The state's insurance regulator "is already having extended discussions about how they will make sure that the insurance industry remains healthy and robust in this state."
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7(PTI) Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today contributed to the Armed Forces Flag fund for the welfare of soldiers and ex-servicemen.

The Ministry of Defence launched a special digital campaign from December 1 to December 7 to enable people to express their solidarity with the soldiers of the Indian Army.

The country has been observing December 7 as the Armed Forces Flag Day since 1949 to honour the martyrs and the men in uniform who valiantly fought on the borders to safeguard the countrys honour.

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"Indias Armed Forces show supreme excellence during wars, natural calamities, rescue ops. As a token of respect, I have contributed to the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund. I urge you to contribute to the fund as well using http://ksb.gov.inA #ArmedForcesFlagDay," Sitharaman tweeted. PTI PR SMN

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H-1B visas offer an opportunity for highly educated foreign workers to obtain work visas from the United States, often for jobs in fields such as science, engineering, and information technology  areas in which highly skilled workers are in high demand. Each visa lasts for three years, and the application process is extremely competitive. The government receives H-1B applications by the truckload, and in 2017, the application quota was reached in just four days.



H-1B visa holders bring skills that help fill knowledge gaps in certain fields. And, the more advanced companies become in specialized areas, the more competitive they become globally, creating better revenue and growth opportunities and an opportunity to seriously impact the U.S. economy.



Foreign-born workers are often leaders in ventures that drive innovation and change within the U.S.; without their contributions, it is very possible that growth in these areas will face major setbacks. For example, 45 percent of high-tech Fortune 500 firms were founded by either an immigrant, or the child of an immigrant. Examples of the profound impact that immigrants have made on U.S. companies are impressive and endless: Google, Tesla and even eBay have founders hailing from across the globe, including Russia, South Africa and France, respectively. These corporations are headquartered in the United States, and are all industry innovation leaders used consistently by consumers around the world.



These visas also allow a major demographic of business owners  immigrants  to get their chance at launching American ventures, further stimulating the U.S. economy. According to the American Immigration Council, increasing H-1B visas will allow for almost 1.3 million new jobs to be created by 2045.

A lot of people don't realize the direct correlation between immigration and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Although immigrants represent only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they're twice more likely to start a business than a U.S.born citizen.



There are over 28.8 million small businesses in America, accounting for a whopping 99.7 percent of all businesses. These businesses employ almost half of the country (48 percent), which helps to stimulate the well-being of the economy as a whole.



If the Trump administration and Congress do decide to further tighten the rules around the number of H-1B visas available, then the U.S. would face serious repercussions in both small businesses and major corporations. H-1B workers help to create new jobs and opportunities for economic expansion, enabling money to flow throughout the country. Restricting this opportunity won't just hurt immigrants, but all of us.



Commentary by John Suh, the CEO of LegalZoom. He was the co-founder and CEO of several companies, including StudioDirect, the Internet division of a global supply chain company, Li and Fung. Follow him on Twitter @_JohnSuh.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told an interviewer he is satisfied with the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation is being criticized by President Donald Trump as "the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history."

The interview was posted Wednesday by NBC's Washington affiliate. Rosenstein, who wrote the memo that was the basis for Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director, is overseeing Mueller's probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.



Asked during the interview with NBC4 Washington whether he was satisfied with Mueller's probe, Rosenstein said "yes" but declined to offer more details.

"We don't talk about criminal investigations while they're ongoing, so what the American people will see is only if and when a case is charged," he said. "And there have been several cases charged to date."

The special counsel's office has charged four Trump associates with criminal wrongdoing since Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May. Two have pleaded guilty.

One of Mueller's lead investigators was reassigned for reportedly sending anti-Trump text messages.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has called for an investigation into the matter.

The special counsel's office operates with a degree of autonomy within the Justice Department, but reports to Rosenstein regarding its budget and "certain other matters," Rosenstein said.

Rosenstein is overseeing the probe because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was a Trump campaign surrogate, recused himself in March.

A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy!

The deputy attorney general, who has served for Republicans and Democrats, was appointed by Trump in January and confirmed by the Senate in April.

Click here to watch the whole interview.
European markets closed up by only a tiny margin Thursday afternoon as investors reacted to merger and acquisition news and looked ahead to fresh economic data.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 swung both higher and lower in Thursday's trading, closing up 0.02 percent and with major bourses and sectors pointing in different directions.

Telecoms rallied 1.28 percent with France's Orange leading the charge, closing up 2.32 percent. The company announced Thursday that investments would peak in 2018 at 7.4 billion euros ($8.7 billion) as it spends on networks to grow its customer base.

Banks were 0.85 percent higher.

Europe's travel and leisure stocks did well earlier in the day, eking out some gains in afternoon trade. They closed up 0.53 percent. Shares of Ladbrokes Coral topped the Stoxx 600, up just over 29 percent after bookmaker GVC Holdings offered to buy the firm for 3.9 billion. The move could create an online betting giant from both London-listed brands.

Basic resources stocks were down on softer copper prices, and finished the day's trading 0.24 percent lower.



Steinhoff tumbled to the bottom of the benchmark Thursday. The South African retailer extended dramatic losses from the previous session, after it revealed accounting irregularities and its chief executive resigned. Its shares closed over 46 percent lower Thursday.

In the U.S. the tech-heavy Nasdaq continued to trade higher, led by chip-maker Broadcom 's positive earnings report.
Criminals target a variety of retailers by stealing items and returning them for gift cards which they cash in for opioids.

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Patients at Gateway Community Services rehab center in Jacksonville from left (front row) Kristen Booth, Ashlee Smith, (back row left to right) Ashleigh Thornburg, Amber Ross. CNBC

"When you're suffering from addiction, any length means any length," said Kristen Booth, 23, who has been arrested twice for retail return fraud in connection with gift cards. Booth was among four patients who candidly spoke to CNBC at Gateway Community Services, a drug rehab center in Jacksonville, Florida. A recovering heroin and oxycodone user, Booth said getting the gift cards for the stolen items was routine. "I've definitely stolen, I have, you know, took advantage of people," she said. "I would get receipts and take them back in there, and I would go and take things off the shelf. I would make sure I left the store so on camera it looked like I purchased the items, and then come back go to customer service." While there are no national figures linking gift-card crimes to drugs, retail-return fraud itself continues to be a major problem. A 2017 survey by the National Retail Federation found 57 percent of companies reported "fraudulent gift cards or store credit in at least one location," which is lower than previous years, when it stood at about 66 percent. The association estimates that retail return fraud losses cost $9 billion to $15 billion a year. Amber Ross, 27, another patient at Gateway, had a similar experience. "I would go to Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart to take stuff, leave, go to another Home Depot, take it back to get a gift card," she said. She said if she didn't want to use her own ID, she often found other people to use their's to cash in the gift card. She would then share the cash proceeds with them. "And then they'd give me the cash, and I'd call my drug dealer," she said. Law enforcement officials say cashing in gift cards to pay for opioids is becoming more prevalent throughout the U.S.

Lt. David Ballard of the Shelby County, Tennessee, sheriff's office says drug addicts have turned to gift cards as a way to buy opioids. CNBC

"The outright theft is not as common as it used to be, now that there is loading of gift cards and the online sales of these gift cards. And law enforcement is just really not familiar with tracking it yet," said Sheriff's Lt. David Ballard in the Shelby County, Tennessee. Typically, after thieves gets the gift card, they take it to a pawn shop, a secondhand store or a business that buys cards at a large discount, Ballard said. The cards are then resold usually to an online exchange. Booth says addiction makes users ignore the consequences of getting caught. "And you don't care how many charges you have, you don't care what you've been through; you just care about the next one," she said. The recovering drug abusers at Gateway told CNBC they clearly remember the feeling of desperation for quick cash. "I feel like I could've found a way around any rule they make," said Ashlee Smith, 24. She used drugs for the past decade. "As an addict, I just feel like I go to any length." Joshua Lopez, a behavioral health tech at Riverside Recovery of Tampa, helps others in recovery. He said the gift card scheme is well known. "You hear it from the grapevine. Like you have one friend that's like, 'Oh yeah, so I went and I stole this and returned it,'" he said. "You choose a big chain and then you steal something that's small and that has like a high dollar amount per item," he said. "And then go to the same chain in a different location and that's they way that they normally do it, if you don't have a receipt, you show your ID. Certain places, if you return something, like the reason they show their ID is because they look it up to see if you've returned anything else in any other store. And if you've had, like more than three, they flag you." At least one state  Tennessee  has found a direct connection between gift cards and drug overdoses. In Knox County, police linked 16 of 19 overdoses to the sale of gift cards during a one month period this year. In the city of Knoxville, police tracked 83 to 98 overdoses to gift cards during a three-month period.

Source: CNBC

Those numbers stunned Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs, who is also a cardiovascular surgeon. "Absolute shock," Briggs said. "It would be no different than if there was a rock lying there. And if you lifted it up, and this horrible smell came out, and this monster came out. We had no idea that the organized retail theft was related so intimately with the opiate and drug trade in general in Appalachia." Briggs sponsored legislation this year that requires all transactions involving cash for gift cards on the secondary market to be reported to local law enforcement. But the law does not impose a penalty for not complying, and Briggs said he plans to push for tougher rules next year. Tennessee loses more than $14 million a year in sales tax revenue due to this crime, according to a retail industry report. "The criminal element is very creative," Briggs said. "And I don't think this is the sole problem to solving financing of the opiate problem in Tennessee. But it's one part of the problem. And right now it's a very big part of the problem." Home Depot said it has changed its policy to crack down on return fraud and acknowledged the link between gift cards and drugs. "Of course, it impacts our bottom line, but it's also about safety of the community, drug trafficking, even terrorism," Home Depot spokesman Matt Harrigan told CNBC. Home Depot only accepts "store credits for in-store purchases and we require proof of ID when store credits are redeemed at checkout because of the increase in return fraud," Harrigan said. "We never want to inconvenience our customers, but this policy impacts more than just our bottom line. It helps minimize returns fraud tied to bigger organized crime in the community." The home-improvement retailer's store credits differ from gift cards because they cannot be used online, which limits their resale value. Its gift cards are more open to resale. The company also does not allow customers "to buy gift cards with store credits or another gift card due to the potential fraud linked to that behavior," Harrigan said in a statement. Target's return policy also attempts to limit gift-card fraud. If the store can't find a receipt when employees try to look one up, they may offer exchanges or store credits. The company also says it limits the number of returns without a receipt. Walmart has "in place a series of policies and procedures to closely monitor merchandise returns where no receipt is required," said Charles Crowson, senior manager of corporate communications. Lowe's, which also works with law enforcement and the retail industry to combat return fraud, will "hold perpetrators accountable for their illegal conduct," said Steve Salazar, corporate communications manager. On the police side, the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail sees the return fraud-opioid connection as a top priority. The group will be "leveraging its public and private partnerships to combat the crisis in both areas," said Curt Crum, president of the coalition. The larger business community is also taking aim at the issue. Retail Theft Analysis, a Florida-based private company, is pitching software to police departments to help track the number and value of gift cards that stores buy and individuals sell. CEO Matt Ryan said the company found one example of a customer who sold $349,000 worth of gift cards to a store in Tennessee during a three-month period. Most of them were iTunes cards. "This data tells me this is somebody that they should look at pretty closely," Ryan said. "The other thing I would look at is what store he is selling to. Because this type of store is obviously not really examining who they're buying cards from. Because anybody that's bringing in [$349,000] worth of iTunes cards is probably doing something fraudulent." To the drug abusers in treatment, all of these efforts are positive signs as they all try to rebuild their lives. "I've always told myself I'd be a wonderful mom," Booth said, wiping away tears. "I'd do anything for my little girl. And it's crazy to look back and see all the times that I didn't care, how selfish I can be."

WATCH: Big retailers being targeted for gift card opioid scheme
The House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly passed a stop-gap spending measure to continue funding the federal government through December 22. The bill prevents a shut-down that would be triggered if Congress fails to pass a spending bill before a deadline of midnight Friday.

The final tally was 235 yes votes, and 193 votes against. Thirty-two members bucked their respective parties: 18 Republicans voted no on the overwhelmingly GOP-backed bill, and 14 Democrats voted to pass the measure.

The bill maintains current federal spending levels for two weeks, and includes a provision to ensure that states can continue to fund the popular Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which last year provided insurance coverage for nearly nine million poor children across the country.

Once the two-week spending bill is signed, lawmakers will move on to the far more contentious task of passing a longer-term spending bill before December 22, when Thursday's bill expires.

Precisely how to reauthorize the CHIP program is only one of a number of issues that have yet to be resolved by congressional leaders, who met Thursday afternoon with President Donald Trump to begin talks on the longer-term bill, known as a continuing resolution.

"We're here in the spirit of 'let's get it done,'" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said in the Oval Office, where he was joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., both top Republicans, Trump and Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis.

Over the next 10 days, negotiations are expected to center around Republican calls for an end to defense spending caps and Democrats' demands to fully reauthorize the CHIP program and extend protections for so-called dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
People who are consistent with using a calendar and to-do list are about three times more likely to be millionaires than those who don't keep a set schedule, socio-economist Randall Bell says. If you haven't yet started the habit of keeping and marking a calendar, 2018 can be your chance. Many of today's most influential leaders accomplish all they do by using their calendars not only to schedule work events, but also life events. As a result, they maximize work-life balance. Here is a list of five leaders and executives who have shared their best scheduling tips to stay productive and happy.

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama, then first lady Mark Wilson | Getty Images

At the Obama Foundation Summit in November, former first lady Michelle Obama said people tend to use their work as a distraction from focusing on what they need as individuals. "I'm very ruthlessly efficient, but I have to be organized about [myself]," Obama said. "I have to be as organized about my life as I am about my work."



One of the things Obama said she has learned as a mother is that "you have to be fiercely organized to get anything done." When it comes to school events for Sasha and Malia, Michelle and Barack made a point to speak with teachers and principals at least a year ahead to make sure they marked each event they needed to attend.

"If I'm not protecting my time, if I'm not learning how to say 'no,' even to the best things, even to the most worthy things  because I need to sleep or I need to eat or I need to take time out to exercise  then I am no good to my children," Obama said. One of the tricks Obama uses is to book time with her family and for herself before accepting invitations to conferences, speeches, rallies or political events. Instead, she asks herself, "When do I want to hang out with my girlfriends?" "When am I going to exercise?" "When am I going to take a vacation?" "When am I going to breathe?" and "How do I want my life to flow?" "I have to plan my happiness. That's the thing, we think happiness just happens and it can, but you've got to work in some happiness too," she said.

Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson. Cameron Costa | CNBC

When it comes to scheduling, Richard Branson is a strong believer of writing long to-do lists that help him prioritize his time. Even as head of Virgin Group and a serial entrepreneur who manages a packed daily routine, Branson is a strong proponent of making time for yourself. Just as easily as you are inclined to accept or schedule a meeting, Branson said that you should "open your calendar and schedule time just to dream." In order to do so, Branson recommends penciling in this time to let your mind wander (just like you would schedule a meeting). "Far too many people get weighed down in doing, and never take the time to think and feel, Branson wrote on his blog. By scheduling time to think freely  whether it's an hour, a day or even a holiday  "you'll be able to see the bigger picture much easier," he added.

Mary Callahan Erdoes

Mary Callahan Erdoes speaking at the 2017 Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Sept 12, 2017. David A. Grogan | CNBC

CEO of JPMorgan Asset Management Mary Callahan Erdoes recently told CNBC that "you have to be maniacally focused on owning your calendar, on having the lists of what you need from other people and what other people need from you." To take this forward-looking approach, Erdoes recommends you look at the short-term and long-term issues that need to be dealt with and make sure that you are able to "stay on top of that religiously." "Calendar management is the single most important thing, especially as you get busy and have more responsibilities," she said.

Jeff Weiner

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Bloomberg/Contributor | Getty Images

For years, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has found a habit that he says is crucial for him to be efficient at his job: Schedule time every day to do nothing. Each day's schedule includes 30- to 90-minute blocks of time that allow him to "process what was going on" around him and "just think." "At first, these buffers felt like indulgences. I could have been using the time to catch up on meetings I had pushed out or said 'no' to," Weiner said in a LinkedIn post. "But over time I realized not only were these breaks important, they were absolutely necessary in order for me to do my job."

But feeling inundated by seemingly endless meetings is exactly why Weiner took up this habit. "Use that buffer time to think big, catch up on the latest industry news, get out from under that pile of unread emails, or just take a walk," Weiner said. "The buffer is the best investment you can make in yourself and the single most important productivity tool I use."

Robert Herjavec

Robert Herjavec Ilya S. Savenok | Getty Images
Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, a Japanese physician and longevity expert who died at age 105 in July , took her advice one step further: Don't retire, he said in a 2009 interview with Japan Times journalist Judit Kawaguchi . If you feel you have to, retire much later than 65.

Personal finance maven Suze Orman challenged the assumption that that's wise last month, though, when she suggested that " 70 is the new retirement age ."

Dr. Hinohara, who worked up to 18 hours a day until the last few months of his life, pointed out that the current retirement age in Japan, 65, was set years ago, back when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68.

Today, people are living much longer: Japanese women, on average, live to 87, and men live to 80. Plus, "in 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100," the physician noted.

Orman brings up a similar point. Americans are living longer, she writes on Money, meaning your retirement savings need to last longer: "You likely have plenty saved up to breeze through 15 years or so of retirement. But, people, if you stop working in your 60s, your retirement stash might need to support you for 30 years, not 15."

She continues: "Healthy people in their 60s today have about a 50 percent chance of living into their 90s. Can you honestly tell me you're 100 percent sure you will not run out of money if you start spending down your retirement funds in your 60s and end up living into your 90s?"

As for how to maintain energy as you age and continue to work, the key isn't to eat well or sleep enough. "Energy comes from feeling good," Dr. Hinohara said. "We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too.

"It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime."

Read all of Dr. Hinohara's guidelines for living a long, healthy life.

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Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, signaled Thursday that the GOP could tweak its treatment of popular tax deductions in its final tax bill.

The separate bills passed by the House and Senate scrap most state and local deductions but leave up to $10,000 in property tax deductions in place. As the chambers move to strike a joint plan in a conference committee, some House members in high-tax blue states have pushed for a state and local income tax deduction, as well.

Cornyn, a Texas Republican, suggested Thursday that more changes to those tax breaks could come.

"I talked to [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy the other night, and he did tell me that this is an item of contention in the House," the Senate majority whip told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "I don't know what's going to happen to that. We did adopt the $10,000 deduction for property taxes but there may be some movement in that space. I, frankly, would anticipate that."
Consumption and innovation will be the two major growth drivers in China in the years ahead as the economic giant moves into its next phase of expansion, a JPMorgan Chase expert said Thursday.

In the next three years, China's consumption will grow from the current $4 trillion to $6 trillion  an addition that is roughly equivalent to the size of Germany's consumer market, said Jing Ulrich, JPMorgan Chase's managing director and vice chairman of Asia Pacific.

On innovation, the Chinese government is not only encouraging technology companies to go abroad, but also urging old industries such as manufacturing to adopt new ways of doing business. That will lift the country's growth prospects, added Ulrich, who is a well-known expert on the world's second-largest economy.

Speaking from the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, China, Ulrich highlighted China's newest inventions: "China's payments system is number one in the world in terms of size and sophistication, and also the sharing economy. So we're really seeing innovation taking hold in the whole economy."
By PTI: (Eds: Correcting slug)

Dehradun, Dec 7 (PTI) Six teachers of a rural school were killed and five others injured today when their vehicle plunged into a gorge in the Almora district.

The vehicle, a Bolero, met with the accident near Chitai temple about 10 km from Almora, Superintendent of Police P Renuka Devi told PTI on phone.

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The incident occurred at around 9 am and the vehicle was ferrying eleven persons, mostly teachers, to a rural school.

Three teachers died on the spot while three others succumbed to injuries at a hospital, Devi said. Five injured were rushed to the Almora base hospital from where some were referred to a higher centre in Haldwani, she said.

The teachers had apparently hired the vehicle to drop them at their school, the SP said.

It is not yet certain what led to the accident, she added. PTI ALM ADS SMN

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Houston and San Francisco are separated by two states, approximately 1,934 miles and about four-and-a-half hours in the air. Still, a Houston-based law firm thinks a long-haul commute is actually the frugal and practical choice. That's because the in San Francisco is among the highest in the country. In San Francisco proper, according to a study from financial website Smart Asset, the cost of living is nearly 63 percent higher than the U.S. national average. Real-estate site Zillow notes that the median rent for an apartment there is an astonishing $4,400 a month, and the median price for a home borders $1.2 million. That's a lot more expensive than Houston. The median rent for an apartment there is just $1,500, Zillow finds, and the median price for a home is $324,900. So when law firm Patterson and Sheridan, which deals in patents and intellectual property, decided to expand its reach into the Silicon Valley market, it opted to keep its staff where they were.

Instead of relocating its office or opening a new one in the Bay Area, the firm decided to have lawyers commute once a month for meetings on a nine-seat, $3 million jet equipped with maple-paneled cabins and plush leather seats. It was, remarkably, the cost-effective decision. Even with the cost of the jet, plus the $2,500 per hour cost to operate it, the firm says it can offer clients lower prices because most of the work is done in Houston, where commercial real estate is 43 percent cheaper, salaries are 52 percent lower and competition for technical talent less fierce, according to an original report in the Houston Chronicle. Plus, the staff works during the flight, so those travel hours are billable, Todd Patterson, a managing partner at the firm, tells the publication. "We fly it full," he says. "It's not a luxury item." Flying private works out to be less expensive than flying commercial, too, since lawyers can avoid about 36 hours in time spent arriving early at the airport, checking bags and waiting at security checkpoints. According to the Chronicle, the firm came up with the idea of a plane in 2010 when teleconferencing with clients became unsatisfactory. "[The] inventors want to sit down and to show their inventions," it reads. And staff "could find more business by being around after work."
Mexico's secretary of tourism disputed reports of tainted alcohol and described warnings about criminal activities from the U.S. State Department as "misleading" on Wednesday.

"There is no evidence about tainted alcohol," Enrique de la Madrid Cordero said on CNBC's "Power Lunch." Cordero said the case he reviewed concerned "excessive alcohol"  a problem associated with beach drinking culture  rather than tainted alcohol.

"The case that I've seen, where I have medical evidence, gives the evidence that the amount of alcohol that was drunk was excessive," he said.

Cordero also responded to reports of thousands of bottles of illegal alcohol being rounded up from resort suppliers. He stressed the distinction between tainted and illegal alcohol.

"Illegal, in Mexico, is alcohol that is not [being taxed]," he said. Despite being illegal, Cordero says, that alcohol is "good alcohol" that is not tainted.

Accounts of crimes against tourists, including rape, tainted alcohol and physical injury, surfaced last month after TripAdvisor was found to have deleted multiple users' complaints about their experiences at Mexican resorts, an investigation from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found.

The U.S. State Department updated a warning about traveling to Mexico in August, highlighting the risk of organized crime activity in a number of Mexican states. The warning said that "U.S. citizens have been the victims of violent crimes, including homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery in various Mexican states."

While Cordero doesn't want the U.S. State Department to remove its warnings, he said that "sometimes, that information is misleading."

"I don't think it's a wise way to help Americans to make an intelligent decision, but that is for the U.S. to decide," he said.

Cordero said the problems with regard to tainted alcohol have mostly been of perception. But Mexico could do more to help promote "a more responsible drinking of alcohol," he said. "That's something we should work on."
Chipmakers focused on artificial intelligence are in a race to get their hardware out the door, a theme that's on full display this week at a major industry event in Southern California.

A little-known start-up called Wave Computing shared exhibit floor space with tech giants including Google and Microsoft at the 31st annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference.

Wave is showcasing a motherboard sitting inside a glass case, but one key component is missing: a processor. The chip itself will be ready "very soon," Lee Flanagin, Wave's senior vice president and chief business officer, told CNBC.

Graphcore, a European AI start-up, similarly has space on the floor but doesn't have a chip to show. In fact, the company is even without a board at the conference. Graphcore said in July that its chips would become available to early customers before the end of the year, but the timing has since slipped to "the start of 2018."

A well-funded start-up called Cerebras is among other industry newbies with representatives floating around the sold-out NIPS conference.
Cans of Coca-Cola , bottles of Budweiser and packets of Oreos are instantly recognizable for their distinctive packaging and logos, which have helped them become billion-dollar brands.

But their value could be sorely dented if food and beverage companies are forced to introduce plain packaging on alcohol, sugary drinks and snack products, which is already the case for cigarette brands in some countries.

A report suggests that $186.7 billion could be wiped off the combined enterprise value of firms such as PepsiCo , Mondelez and AB InBev if they were prevented from using logos, familiar brand colors and images.

Marketing consultancy Brand Finance analyzed 907 brands from eight large food and beverage companies, including PepsiCo, Nestle , Heineken and Danone , for its "Plain Packaging 2017" report published Thursday.

It found that The Coca-Cola Company could lose $47.3 billion from the value of its brands if it was forced to put sugary beverages such as Coke and Powerade in plain bottles, while rival PepsiCo could lose $43 billion.
Xavier Bonghi | Getty Images

Changes to an agreement among financial firms could have a big impact on your relationship with your financial advisor. The agreement, known as the protocol for broker recruiting, is under siege. That means communication lapses when your advisor switches firms could become more common. Established in 2004, the agreement is aimed at helping smooth a financial advisor's transition from one firm to another amid a fierce competition for talent. The protocol sets standards as to how much client information an advisor can take with them when they transition, with the idea that it paves the way for less litigation between firms. But a couple of large Wall Street firms have recently pulled out of the agreement, creating new complications for advisors and their clients.

Firm participation

Morgan Stanley was the first to pull the plug on its participation in the protocol. In late October, the firm announced its decision to pull out of the agreement, which it said had become "replete with opportunities for gamesmanship and loopholes" as other firms allegedly bent the rules. "In its current state the protocol is no longer sustainable," Morgan Stanley's announcement said. "Exiting the protocol will allow the firm to invest more heavily in its world-class advisors and their teams, helping drive additional growth opportunities." UBS announced its exit in November, a year after it said it planned to scale back its recruiting efforts and instead focus on the retention of its existing advisor force. About 1,700 firms currently participate in the protocol, but Morgan Stanley and UBS are among the four biggest wirehouse firms. Morgan Stanley had 15,759 total wealth management representatives, according to its latest quarterly earnings report. UBS' U.S. wealth management business had 6,861 advisors as of the third quarter.

The clients are the net loser. Dennis J. Concilla Carlile Patchen & Murphy

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, another wirehouse firm with 17,221 advisors as of the third quarter, surprised industry experts when it announced this week it will stay in the protocol. "While other firms are focused on leaving the Broker Protocol as a way of retaining advisors and clients, we're staying focused on making sure that our advisors have everything they need to serve their clients and grow their businesses," Merrill Lynch Wealth Management head Andy Sieg told his leadership team and market executives on Monday. "We're asking our advisors, in turn, to concentrate on two things: First, to help existing clients achieve their financial goals, and second, to acquire new client relationships." Wells Fargo, the fourth top wirehouse firm, has made no decisions regarding its participation, a spokeswoman for the firm told CNBC.com. The wirehouse firms represent a shrinking portion of the financial advice market. Wirehouses had 47,029 total advisors as of the end of 2016, according to research firm Cerulli Associates. Independent channels, including independent and hybrid registered investment advisors and independent broker-dealers, had 124,464 advisors.

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Client rights

Tash Elwyn, president at the Raymond James & Associates Private Client Group, said the protocol should be the bare minimum  and the industry should aspire to reinforce it. "We should really do more to strengthen the adviser-client relationship and the ability to serve them," Elwyn said. It would be "unconscionable" to prevent patients from moving their medical records to another office or hospital, he said. Yet under the protocol, there is only a finite amount of client financial information that can travel between firms. "That information can and should follow the client at the client's direction," Elwyn said. "I would encourage clients to accentuate the advisor's ability to provide a smooth transition  to request those 'medical records' to follow his or her advisor." Firms could also do better by providing more advance notice to clients that an advisor will be transitioning to another firm. Currently, an advisor is not able to disclose that move ahead of time, which prevents a preparatory conversation. "The only party it's good for is the losing firm," said Danny Sarch, an advisor recruiter and president of Leitner Sarch Consultants in White Plains, New York.

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Financial advisor David W. Karp, a founding partner at PagnatoKarp in Reston, Virginia, left Merrill Lynch with his team in 2011 to establish a more independent practice. "Because of the protocol, we had the opportunity to build the best solution for our client base," Karp said. "If I didn't have the protocol to utilize, I might have thought twice about that decision." Without the protocol, advisors who are changing firms would face an "unknown abyss of legal ramifications," he said, which could limit their ability to choose the best model for their clients. But eliminating the protocol could also do away with one dark spot in the industry: the advisors who change firms every seven years to bolster their personal balance sheet through recruiting bonuses, Karp said. "The reason why that's bad for clients is, change is disruptive," he said.

We should really do more to strengthen the adviser-client relationship and the ability to serve them. Tash Elwyn Raymond James & Associates
Fraudulent retail transactions are on the rise, especially as more shoppers turn to the internet to ring up purchases, making tracking consumers more onerous and costly.

The level of fraud as a percentage of retailers' revenues has climbed to 1.58 percent year to date from 1.47 percent a year ago, according to a study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an Atlanta-based data analytics provider. The group surveyed more than 650 risk and fraud executives from retail organizations.

"Merchants selling physical and digital goods often apply a one-size-fits-all program to fight fraud, and they use a limited set of solutions," Kimberly Sutherland, a senior director of LexisNexis' fraud and identity management strategy, said in a statement.

"These less advanced and less sophisticated legacy solutions do not appear to be working, given the sharp rise in costs and volume of successful fraud attempts."

Driving the increases in fraud for many retailers this year are more international transactions and new payment options, such as mobile wallets, the study found.

Retailers say it's still difficult to verify a shopper's identity online, and there's a lag between the time an order is placed and when that transaction is confirmed, which opens the door for more errors or fraudulent activity.

LexisNexis has found more retailers are investing in fraud monitoring, but the technology isn't always "optimal" or effective.

For example, companies must also take into consideration their trustworthy customers, whom they don't want to turn away when being overly protective, said Lindsay Sakraida, a marketing director at DealNews.

This is especially true as retailers craft their own procedures for returns, where crime can skyrocket around the holiday shopping season.

"Return fraud is a major problem for the retail industry, but [stores] still want to encourage shoppers to shop with them, and they don't want to make it too difficult to make a return," Sakraida said. "Return policies become a way for customers to know if they want to be a loyal shopper."

A 2017 survey by the National Retail Federation has found that retail return fraud losses will cost companies as much as $15 billion this year.

This type of crime often involves an individual first stealing merchandise, and then trying to return those items for a gift card or other currency. Some criminals have even targeted major retailers, including Home Depot and Target , to take advantage of lenient return policies to fuel their drug addictions, a CNBC investigation found.

"Self checkouts are one area where thieves love to go," said Bob Moraca, NRF's vice president of loss prevention. "There is a price of doing business. ... Retailers just have to continue to work with law enforcement and prosecutors to protect their assets and brands."

Moraca's team found that retailers are expecting, on average, 11 percent of their total sales to be returned this year. And 11 percent of those returns are then expected to be fraudulent, which is slightly up from 2015, according to NRF's survey of 63 retailers.

Moraca said criminals are also getting more creative in counterfeiting store receipts, which can then be used to process a fraudulent return more seamlessly, if an employee doesn't notice the difference.

While less prevalent than other methods, Moraca said this tactic is on the rise.

In turn, retailers are looking for solutions that aren't too aggressive. This could include making a receipt necessary for a return, compressing the window of time within which a return can be made, or requiring the item's original packaging to still be intact. Demanding a form of identification is another tactic most retailers use to keep track of frequent violators.

This past year, nearly 30 percent of retailers have altered their return policies to address organized retail crime, more than in 2015 and 2016, NRF said.

Home Depot told CNBC the company has changed its policy to crack down on return fraud, only handing out "store credits," which can't be used online, in place of gift cards. Target has taken a similar approach in offering store credits, or solely an exchange, when a person doesn't present a receipt.

Other companies, including Lowe's and Walmart , have said they look closely at returns where no original receipt is presented.

On the whole, technological advancements should allow for better fraud prevention in the future, NRF's Moraca said. For example, facial recognition is already being tested to keep track of shoppers who frequent certain stores, in place of a license or other ID, he said.

"Imagine a world where you walk in [a store], and you don't even have to show ID  even if they don't know [your] name  they know this customer has been in this number of times."
The summit also feature several other success stories by inspirational people from across the country.

By India Today Web Desk: People from a variety of small and big industries across the country today came together for the Skill and Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 organised by Mail Today. The entrepreneurs also shared their experiences and gave insights on importance of skills in the present times.

The event organised by Mail Today gave a platform to industrialists, who have fuelled the economic progress of the nation, to interact with individuals from different areas in a bid to accelerate the pace of development.

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The summit started with the speech by Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Dr. Raman Singh. After the inauguration, entrepreneurs from different fields shared their views. The objective of the event was to promote Skilled India.

"Skilled India is more important than an educated India. Encouraging skills will further pave way for education," said Madhav Chavan from the Pratham Foundation.

Chavan also cited the exemplary life of Lakshmi Dorjee from Darjeeling. Dorjee who acquired skills set up her own parlour and is now employing four others.

"We have fought many struggles. I always had this spark to do something different. Now I am not only providing for my family, but has also succeeded in taking care of four other families. However, there is much more to do," said Dorjee.

The summit also feature several other success stories by inspirational people from across the country.

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"It has now been four years since 'Shark Tank,' and the business is now valued at $1 billion," Siminoff, 41, says on an update for the show that aired Nov. 12, 2017. "Today we're over 1,300 people, 10 core products, [sold in] 16,000 stores."

But the airing of the episode created enough publicity to drive a flood of sales for Siminoff's company, then called Doorbot, which sold WiFi enabled doorbells. Siminoff, who started the business in his garage, re-branded the company as Ring in 2014 and added new home security products in addition to the doorbells, which let users see and talk to visitors through their smart phones.

"I remember after that 'Shark Tank' episode literally being in tears," he tells CNBC Make It . "I needed the money, we were out of money at the time."

Jamie Siminoff, the CEO and founder of Ring, was rejected by a roomful of celebrity investors during his 2013 appearance on "Shark Tank." All of the sharks except Kevin O'Leary passed, and he made what Siminoff considered an unacceptable offer . He left without a deal.

The guest encountered a common problem on his trip: He wasn't around to answer the door for a delivery to his home back in San Francisco. He used Ring's video doorbell and his smartphone to check in with the delivery person as they were dropping off the package.

Ring's video doorbells caught Branson's eye in spring of 2015 through a guest visiting Necker Island , Branson's resort in the British Virgin Islands.

While the "Shark Tank" investors missed out, there is one celebrity entrepreneur who didn't: Richard Branson.

"[The guest] showed it to Richard, and Richard thought it was wonderful," Siminoff explains. So the customer reached out to Siminoff to tell him about Branson's interest.

"This guy emailed me and Richard and said, 'Hey Jamie, Richard wants to use [the Ring doorbell] as a holiday gift," Siminoff recalls. "I'm thinking, like 'Oh great. I'm introduced to some guy named Richard who wants to buy like 20 of them for the holidays.'"

Then, he caught the last name on the email address. "I'm like, 'Wait a second,'" Siminoff says. "That was Richard Branson."

This wasn't his first encounter with the billionaire. Siminoff  who has been a serial entrepreneur since graduating college  missed a chance to connect with Branson in 2001 when the pair shared an elevator in a hotel, according to Fortune.

"James and I first met by chance in a lift in Brussels many years ago (he didn't do the elevator pitch!)," Branson writes on his blog.

This time, Siminoff took full advantage of the opportunity.

"[Branson] emailed me saying, 'I'd love to give this to my friends for Christmas,'" Siminoff remembers. "We started going back and forth. I slipped in there  I, a little bit of knew what I was doing  but I said, 'That's great because now all your friends will have safer homes and safer neighborhoods.'"

Siminoff explained a bit more about his idea for disrupting the home security industry and peaked Branson's interest.

"Now he's obviously getting interested and realizing this is not just a toy, and he said, 'Well, maybe I could invest,'" Siminoff says. Great news, but the timing was tricky  Ring was already in the midst of raising its Series B.

Siminoff replied to Branson, "If you want to invest, you have to do something like right now.

"He sent over his investment guy literally the next day," says Siminoff.

Branson participated in that $28 million round of funding in 2015, which gave the company a $60 million valuation, according to Ring's blog. Ring's latest round of funding in January 2017 (in which Branson also participated) brought the company's total funding to $209 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. After the round, the Los Angeles Times reported Ring's valuation at $460 million.

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Branson  a guest investor on "Shark Tank," who Siminoff says owns 5 percent of the business  belives the sharks' loss was his gain.

"I couldn't quite work out why the sharks turned him down, it just seemed to be a wonderful idea," Branson says on the "Shark Tank" update.

"Sorry, Mark [Cuban]," Branson teases.

On his blog, Branson explains that he invested in the company because of its focus on making communities safer.

"I love building companies that have real purpose behind their mission, and this goes for my investments too," Branson writes. "Ring's mission is to reduce crime in neighborhoods. It is a simple, clear, powerful purpose and one that can have a global impact. It is just the type of business I like to invest in, run by a passionate founder who wants to make peoples' lives better and safer through technology."

And for Siminoff, Branson is bringing his big-idea style of leadership to the company.

"He's very hands off from the day-to-day type stuff," Siminoff says. Instead, Branson is much more likely to ask, "What are we doing in five years? 10 years? What is the real big thing that we're going to do next?"

According to Siminoff, "That is the stuff that excites him."

Don't miss: Billionaire Richard Branson: This skill set is the most critical to achieving success

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Disclaimer: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to "Shark Tank."
News that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman bought the $450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting came as a shock to the Western world.

But to those who have followed the Prince, it's just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping purchases.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Prince Mohammed was the mystery buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvatore Mundi," which was auctioned off at Christie's last month for $450 million  the highest price ever paid for a work of art.

Initially, the New York Times reported that the buyer was Prince Bander, a friend of Prince Mohammed's. But the Wall Street Journal reports that Prince Bander bought it as a "proxy" for Prince Mohammed.

The news is sure to send ripples through the Middle East  not just because the leader of a Muslim nation bought a portrait of Christ. But also because Prince Mohammed is leading a crackdown on corruption and imposing new austerity measures in Saudi Arabia.

Yet the 32-year-old Crown Prince's purchase is just the latest of his nine-figure shopping sprees. Two years ago, he was vacationing in the South of France and admired a 440-foot yacht in the distance, owned by Russian vodka magnate Yuri Shefler. The Prince sent an aide to buy the ship for over $500 million. Shefler sold it, moved off and turned the ship over to the Prince the same day.

He is also building a giant resort near Jidda, with seven palaces for the family  all built around a giant artificial lake in the shape of a flower.

It's unclear where the da Vinci will hang. But at least for a while, it will go to the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The Saudis have not yet responded to CNBC's request for comment.
Real estate technology firm Compass announced on Thursday it's getting an investment of $450 million from the SoftBank Vision Fund.

The infusion from the $93 billion venture vehicle  whose backers include the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund  brings Compass' total capital raise to $775 million.

Other Compass investors include Goldman Sachs , outgoing American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and major property developer The LeFrak Organization, run by billionaire Richard LeFrak.

Robert Reffkin, co-founder and CEO at Compass, told CNBC shortly after the announcement that the company is much more than a real estate company because it's "powering the best of technology."

"Compass is on the path to be the largest owner of real estate data, globally, and the No. 1 real estate technology company in the world," Reffkin said on "Squawk Box."

"We have our own in-house technology team that's building an end-to-end platform for agents to run and manage every part of their business," he said. "Is Amazon a store? Is Tesla a car? I think that distinction is getting a little fuzzier."

Reffkin was chief of staff to Gary Cohn when Cohn was the No. 2 executive at Goldman. Cohn is currently a top economic advisor to President Donald Trump as director of the National Economic Council.
A trader wears a DOW 24,000 hat as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crosses 24,000, in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017.

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Shake Shack  The fast casual chain got a positive bump from Morgan Stanley , which raised its rating on the stock to "equal weight" from "underweight." Shake Shack new store openings have consistently outperformed, the firm wrote in a note, and this next year should see heavy investment by the burger makers.

Expedia  Both Priceline and Expedia were lowered to a "neutral" rating by MKM Partners. The firm lowered its outlook from "buy" on both of the online travel companies, saying in note the future holds a "significantly lower earnings outlook."

Dollar General  The discount retailer's third quarter earnings came in a penny below the 94 cents per share which analysts surveyed by FactSet expected. Dollar General said hurricanes accounted for 5 cent negative impact on earnings.

Sage Therapeutics  Shares of the biopharmaceutical company ripped higher after announcing positive results from Phase 2 testing of its depression drug known as SAGE-217. Leerink Partners wrote in a note that Sage now has 90 percent odds of approval for the drug.

Broadcom  The chipmaker reported first quarter earnings 7 cents above what Wall Street expected with earnings of $4.59 per share, as well as a healthy $4.85 billion in revenue. MKM Partners and Drexel Hamilton both issued notes saying the results were "solid," with the former firm noting that investor focus is now on Broadcom's proposed acquisition of Qualcomm .

Vail Resorts The Colorado company reported an earnings loss of $2 per share for its first quarter, missing Wall Street anaylsts' expectations of $1.83 per share loss.
The United States' proposed tax reform is projected to boost corporate earnings  and most of those savings are likely to go into shareholders' pockets, said former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

If the tax plan is passed, as many are expecting, the U.S. will see corporate taxes fall from current rates of 35 percent to as low as 20 percent.

But the benefits accrued will be distributed unevenly among Americans, creating winners and losers, according to billionaire Pritzker.

"I think there will be some (savings) that will go to wage increase, and some that may go to investment, but I think a lot of it is going to go frankly to corporate share buybacks or dividends," Pritzker told CNBC.

Buybacks occur when firms purchase their own shares, reducing the proportion in the hands of investors. Like dividend payments, buybacks offer a way to return cash to shareholders, and usually see a company's stock push higher as shares get scarcer.
Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje has launched her election campaign by spending a night in every constituency even when the polls are due in December 2018.

By Rohit Parihar: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has launched her election campaign by spending a night in every constituency even when the polls are due in December 2018.

She celebrated birth of two girls with their mothers in Surajgarh on Wednesday.

She has already been to four constituencies Udaipurwati, Pilani, Surajgarh and Jhunjhunu in Jhunjhunu district.

The kind of struggle that ruling BJP has been made to do in Gujarat to retain power has made Raje realise that it is the time she tackles anti-incumbency in her own state.

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Before getting into Jhunjhunu, she had visited two parliamentary constituencies of Ajmer and Alwar and assembly of Mandalgarh, whereby polls are to be held. No dates have been announced yet.

Extensive interaction with party workers in the constituencies made her realise the weak points of her administration and get a grasp on the political mood.

Party leaders have said that one year is enough to visit around 200 constituencies.

"We began visiting divisional headquarters and districts immediately after getting into power, and then we went with the entire government to districts. There is no anti-incumbency but only enthusiasm for BJP," she says.

Results of Gujarat polls will impact Congress too. The party has kept its strategy closely guarded for by-elections but if Congress wins or gives a very good fight, it will create problems for Sachin Pilot, president of the Pradesh Congress Committee.

Although, he has worked hard and Rahul Gandhi will continue to back him but it will become difficult to ignore former chief minister Ashok Gehlot. Gehlot will regain some of his lost ground and his old loyal will stand up for him more vocally.

In the aftermath of Gujarat, both parties will relook into their strategies. That will set the mood for assembly polls.

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The Nio EP9 self-driving concept electric vehicle (EV) is displayed during the media day of 17th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition on April 19, 2017 in Shanghai, China.

The Chinese are much more positive about autonomous vehicles than Americans, according to a new report from Ford .

In fact, citizens of India and Brazil  two other large, developing countries  also appear to be considerably more hopeful about a future with self-driving cars than those from more developed nations, such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

And what this means is that if and when autonomous vehicles become fit for widespread adoption, different regions or countries may approach them differently.

"What this tells us is that autonomous vehicles are not going to be a universal solution, they are only one option" said SherylConnelly, who is manager of global consumer trends and futuring at Ford.

Instead, the picture is nuanced and is driven by context.

Ford asked 10,000 people in nine different regions around the world whether or not they agreed with the statement "I am hopeful about the future of autonomous vehicles." The survey was included in Ford's 2018 Trends Report, which examines attitudes around the world on a wide variety of topics, many of which are not directly related to transportation.

The Chinese were most positive about an autonomous future  93 percent of respondents in that country agreed with the statement. India was close behind, with 81 percent agreeing. Three-quarters of Brazilians surveyed agreed.

And 71 percent of respondents in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which were combined in the survey, said they agreed.

Compare that with the considerably smaller numbers seen in developed countries. Just 52 percent of Australian respondents agreed. Half of the respondents in both the United States and Canada agreed. Only 45 percent of respondents from the United Kingdom said they are hopeful about an autonomous future, as did just 44 percent of Germans.

The table below breaks down how much respondents from different countries agree with the statement "I am hopeful about the future of autonomous vehicles."
Norway's $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund has invested in Asian property for the first time.



Norges Bank Real Estate Management, which manages the sovereign fund, the world's largest, said Thursday that it had signed an agreement to buy a 70 percent stake in five properties in Tokyo, Japan.

The fund will pay 92.75 billion Japanese yen ($820 million), according to a statement.

"This is the fund's first real estate investment in Asia and is in line with our strategy to build a high-quality, global portfolio," Karsten Kallevig, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Real Estate Management, said.

In what is described as a joint venture, Tokyu Land Corporation will acquire the remainder as well as manage the properties.

The venture plans to finance almost half of the deal with a bank loan.

According to its website, Norway's sovereign wealth fund is 65.9 percent invested in equities, 31.6 percent in fixed income and 2.5 percent in unlisted real estate.
President Donald Trump will undergo a routine physical early next year with doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the White House said Thursday.

Following the exam, the president will release a health report, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

The announcement followed an incident Wednesday in which the president appeared to slur his words during a speech recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As the president arrived at the end of his remarks, he noticeably slurred the pronunciation of the word "states" in "United States of America."

"There is clearly some abnormalities of his speech," said CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon. "You could call it slurring or just a little bit of difficulty forming the words." Gupta has never treated the president.

"The president's mouth was dry, nothing more than that," Sanders told reporters on Thursday, calling their questions about the incident "ridiculous."

Trump "does have a physical scheduled for the first part of next year, the full physical that most president's go through," she said. "That will take place at Walter Reed, and those records will be released following that taking place."

Trump will turn 72 in June, and he is not known to have any serious health problems.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump released a letter about his health from a Manhattan gastroenterologist, Dr. Harold Bornstein. The letter quickly came under scrutiny after Bornstein admitted he had written it in just five minutes, "while [Trump's] driver waited for me" to finish.
It's been a chaotic year for Uber, but one part of its business is a bright spot: food delivery. Since launching two years ago, UberEats is now in 200 cities and is profitable in almost 40 of them, the company told CNBC.

Uber is now competing in a crowded market, alongside GrubHub, Caviar and Amazon following its purchase of Whole Foods. Food delivery is a $100 billion-plus market, about 1 percent of the total food market, according to a study from McKinsey. Uber is betting that the edge in logistics from its ride-hailing business will help it make a push into food delivery.

UberEats was in 71 cities in March and profitable in three of them. As of October it was in 165 cities and profitable in "nearly 40." Uber said "profitable" means that the program is paying for all costs incurred in the cities and is sending money back to headquarters. It declined to share revenue numbers or more financial details.
Didi Chuxing, China's ride-hailing behemoth, plans to expand into Mexico next year, intensifying its global rivalry with Uber, according to two sources familiar with the plans.

Didi has spoken before of global ambitions, but has not formally announced where or when it would expand. The Chinese company is the second-most highly valued, venture-backed private firm in the world, after Uber Technologies Inc.

Didi has no cars outside China, meaning Mexico could be its first international operation.

Didi, whose brand is ubiquitous in China but little-known in the West, will launch a smartphone app in Mexico and recruit local drivers to the platform, according to the sources, who declined to be named.

It is unclear which cities Didi will target, although one of the sources said the company was aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year. The company has already begun trying to recruit corporate talent in the sector, the source added.

A spokesman for Didi declined to comment on Thursday.

About a month ago, Didi met with ProMexico, a government trade and investment body, to discuss opportunities in the country, according to a Mexican official, who declined to provide further details about the conversations.

The company has made no secret of its desire to expand beyond China, particularly in light of the growing number of Chinese customers who travel overseas. In April, Didi raised $5.5 billion from investors, in part to fund global expansion.

But until now, its plans have been limited to financial commitments to ride-hailing companies in other countries and a research lab in Silicon Valley that opened earlier this year.

Didi has invested in Uber rivals around the world, including U.S.-based Lyft, Brazil-based 99, India's Ola, Singapore-headquartered Grab, Estonia's Taxify and Careem in the Middle East.

The company acquired Uber's China business last year after Uber lost roughly $2 billion trying to compete.

After ceding its China business, Uber doubled down on Latin America, where Didi is now encroaching. Uber has established a stronghold in Mexico, with seven million users across 45 cities. Mexico City is Uber's third-biggest market in the world by rides, after the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Didi will also compete with Spanish ride-hailing company Cabify, which operates in seven Mexican cities.

Regulatory battles are looming. In the touristy state of Quintana Roo, for example, Uber has said the proposed regulation is so onerous that it would drive the company out of the market if passed in its current form. The regulation would ban cash fares, which Uber has said are critical for reaching riders without credit cards.

Mexican authorities fear that allowing ride-sharing apps to accept cash payments would put them in direct competition with traditional taxis, which are a political force in some cities.

Despite Uber's presence in Mexico, competitors have room to grow, particularly if they can find a way to reach "unbanked" consumers while addressing regulators' concerns about cash, said Enrique Garcia, a PhD student at Mexico's CIDE university who has published research on Uber's presence in the country.

"There is not a point of saturation," Garcia said.
Sex toys are not the first things that spring to mind when visiting Yucheng, a sleepy, riverside town in the Yangtze River Delta, about an hour's drive from Shanghai, best known for its grapes, mulberry trees and turtle ponds.

But the town government, which wants to turn it into a one-stop market for adult products, signed a 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) deal with a Chinese company this summer to develop a "Happy Town" that will include a sex toy shopping street, a sex exhibition center and an "adult-only" hotel.

It is a dream partly fanned by a central government plan to create a thousand "charming towns" across the country to represent a new face of rural China and arrest the relative decline of small, rural towns compared to booming cities in recent decades. The policy envisages vibrant local economies featuring a sense of "culture", ideally a unique industry, and a livable environment.

The strategy fits well with President Xi Jinping's desire to make China "a beautiful country" by 2050. In the work report he delivered to the Communist Party's national congress in Beijing in October,the word "beautiful" was added to a previous formula, dating back at least three decades to the time of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, calling for the development of a "rich and powerful, civilized and democratic" country.

Villages and towns across China  dreaming of becoming the next Greenwich in Connecticut, known for its hedge funds, or Hershey in Pennsylvania, famous for a chocolate factory  are scrambling to come up with a "theme" of their own.

"It matches the trend of pushing forward the development of small towns that gained momentum after 1978 and falls in line with China's industrial upgrading," said Hu Zhiyong, an assistant professor at Education University of Hong Kong's department of Asian and policy studies.

The government hopes the charming towns campaign will woo funds and talent back to rural areas and help narrow the urban-rural development gap. Official statistics show the average urban resident had a disposable income of 33,616 yuan last year, more than 2.71 times that of the average rural resident. While more than 90 per cent of households in cities were connected to tap water and piped gas last year, only 70 per cent of those living in Chinese villages had tap water and just 20 per cent were connected to gas.

Government spending on the construction of public facilities in Chinese cities last year totalled 1.74 trillion yuan, dwarfing the 402.6 billion yuan spent in rural areas.

Wanda, the conglomerate controlled by Wang Jianlin, spent 700 million yuan three years ago developing the Danzhai tourist town in Guizhou, one of the country's poorest provinces, to help reduce poverty.

The Yucheng government views the Happy Town project as a new growth engine for the local economy. Home to 22,000 people, the town currently relied on energy-intensive and polluting industries such as dyeing, the manufacture of machine parts and silk spinning for most of its revenue, it said in August.

Happy Town's developer is JC Group, which is based in Zhejiang's provincial capital, Hangzhou, and owns Hong Kong-listed Gold Finance Holdings. It has 59 charming towns on the drawing board or under construction.

A spokesman said the Happy Town blueprint was based on Yucheng's "advantages" in manufacturing  advantages locals seemed unaware of when the South China Morning Post visited the town on a breezy November day, with the main sign of activity being dozens of fishermen making fishing nets and playing poker on the river bank.

Xu Xueguan, a Yucheng resident who lives on government subsidies, said he knew the plan called for his two-storey brick home to be torn down for a tourism site. And while he had not heard it would be based on adult products, he was glad that a dyeing factory which polluted a lake near his home would be gone.

His 28-year-old son, Xu Xiaojun, back home from Hangzhou for a visit, struggled to come up with an explanation for Yucheng's rebranding.

"One possible reason is that Yucheng is a transport juncture that is close to almost every major city nearby," he said.

Zhejiang province, where Xi worked from 2002 to 2007, is known for its small towns such as Yucheng and the president has personally endorsed the charming towns movement as a new approach to urbanisation.

In 2015, then Zhejiang governor Li Qiang, a former aide to Xi, announced a 500 billion yuan plan to create 100 charming towns in the province in three years, each with its own distinct charm. In a typical development, the local government would designate an area of up to 3 square kilometres for the building of a park or other attraction that might appeal to affluent consumers.

The plan called for at least 5 billion yuan to be invested in each town within three years, saying they would then become triple-A tourism attractions. If those goals were reached, the provincial government would free up more land and offer tax refunds.

Zhejiang's charming town initiative was turned into a national strategy early last year following a visit to the province by Xi in May 2015.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has so far approved 403 national-level charming towns in two batches. But even more have been approved locally, with each province and city eager to join in. In the south of China's far-western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, 100 such towns are in the pipeline over the next three years.

"I'm not surprised that the whole idea came from Zhejiang, because it's the best at industrial clustering," Hu said. "Every town has its own unique industry, a brand company. Many of these towns simply changed their ways of marketing as a fresh 'charming town'. It's basically new wine in an old bottle."

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For instance, Datang, a town south of Hangzhou that is the world's biggest producer of socks, rebranded itself as Socks Town. Dayun, about 30km from Yucheng, used to focus on producing animal feed but now markets itself as Sweet Town after the opening of a chocolate factory.

China's bigger cities have fared better than its small towns when it comes to attracting talent and migrant workers because they offer more opportunities and a better quality of life. Only 12 per cent of China's 1.38 billion people live in the country's more than 18,000 towns, compared with the 70 per cent of Germans who live in towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants.

The authorities view the charming towns initiative as a way to rebalance development, boost job prospects and improve public services such as health care and education in rural and suburban areas that have been hit hard by the population drift to China's top cities.

China plans to reach an urbanisation rate of 60 per cent by 2020  up from 57.35 per cent at the end of last year  by moving about 100 million farmers from rural areas to cities and towns.

But Professor Lu Ming, an economist at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said it would be an exaggeration to claim the charming town campaign could become the key to a new model of urbanisation because the total population of the 1,000 towns was a drop in the ocean of China's urban population.

"The whole campaign has little to do with urbanisation," he said. "It's something that started in Zhejiang and somehow turned into a national movement.

"The biggest problem with these charming towns is they lack economies of scale."

He said towns that were far from big cities  where the demand for services was high and where high-end manufacturing was located  were unlikely to survive in the long term.

Hu, from Education University of Hong Kong, said: "Building a 'charming town' in less urbanised middle and western parts of China sounds a bit ridiculous, because what they need is actually more development of big and mid-sized cities.

"If these small towns all serve cities, what happens to the agricultural industries in rural areas? It could widen the urban-rural gap. That's exactly the opposite of what the government wants."

Some officials are also concerned the charming town campaign could get out of hand, making the same mistake as the blind expansion of industrial parks in suburban areas in the 1990s  which saw the creation of more than 7,000 such zones according to one World Bank economist.

The central government has warned developers against any attempts to use cheap land offered in charming town projects for property development.

They have also cautioned against the inclusion of any foreign cultural elements. An official notice in July said the government opposed any "big, Western and bizarre constructions" and banned the assigning of Western names to charming towns.

In a review of historical Wenanyi Town in Shaanxi province, an approved tourism-themed charming town, the ministry suggested it drop a planned "Greek Boutique" because it "differs significantly from local cultures".

At an urbanisation forum in July, Xu Lin, the director of development planning at the National Development and Reform Commission, said many charming towns had turned out to be "ghost towns" without any residents or actual industries, and it was common for one town to blindly copy another.

For instance, at least 30 hedge fund towns have been planned across the country  almost half of them in Zhejiang.

"But how many hedge funds in China will actually register and set up offices in each of these towns? The result isn't too hard to fathom," Xu said.

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Bitcoin will likely become a global force for good once it's treated as a transaction currency, according to the co-founder of Yahoo .

"Bitcoin as a digital currency is not quite there yet," Jerry Yang, who now heads AME Cloud Ventures, told CNBC on Thursday.

"Personally, I am a believer in how digital currency can play a role in our society but for now, it seems like it's more driven by the hype of investing and getting a return rather than using it as a transaction currency," he said, while speaking on the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, China.

On Thursday, bitcoin accelerated past the psychologically key level of $15,000. The landmark happened on the Coinbase exchange at 10 a.m. London time (5 a.m. ET), trading as high as $15,200 on that platform.

The digital currency began the year below $1,000 but gains have skyrocketed in recent months as investor interest grows. Bitcoin's dramatic uptick in market value means it would currently rank among the 20 largest stocks in the S&P 500  with an estimated value of more than $250 billion.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 7 (PTI) Deliberations are currently underway in Vienna over Indias membership to the Wassenaar Arrangement, a major export control regime that deals with non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

An entry into the export control regime would enhance Indias credentials in the field of non-proliferation despite not being a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

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Official sources said the plenary meeting of the 41- member grouping was examining Indias application for its membership.

Yesterday, Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said India was likely to get the membership of the grouping in the ongoing plenary session.

India has been eyeing membership of all leading export control regimes including the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group.

Last year, India gained entry into the Missile Technologies Control Regime (MTCR), which paved way for it to get critical missile technologies and also export its missiles.

China has been stone-walling Indias bid for membership to the NSG. But it is not a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, the MTCR and the Australia Group.

Membership to the Wassenaar Arrangement would give India a chance for a closer interaction with member-states and also hold up its credentials, despite not being a signatory to the NPT, said an official. PTI PR MPB SMN

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